Chapter Twenty-Four   - Skill Check

Sam was the one to carry the cash into their base. She dumped the bag onto their kitchen table, then emptied it out.

It was... well, not immensely impressive, but there were lots of wads of disorganised bills scattered across the table. "Wow," Emily said.

"Not bad, huh?" Sam asked with a sly grin. "But... this is before expenses. Things aren't free, and remember, we're only skimming off of this. We're skimming a

lot

but we do need to hand some back out."

"Right," Emily said. All of this was in service of a quest. Or several. Which actually reminded her. Emily turned to her sisters who were crowding the entrance to the kitchen and dining room. "Did any of you complete your quests?" she asked.

"I did!" Trinity said with a cheer. "I pickpocketed so much stuff!" Then she raised a garbage bag and dumped its contents onto the table. It was mostly wallets, small purses, a few crumpled up bills, some keys, and half a subway sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

Trinity gasped and swiped the sandwich away, one of her bodies running away with it.

Emily decided not to do anything about that.

"That's... six wallets, and two purses," Sam said as she swept her arm across the table and divided things up. "Right, let's count that money separately, I guess."

Emily nodded. "That's fair. I think... Teddy, you had a quest to intimidate people, right?"

"Yup," Teddy said, sounding immensely proud of herself. "I scared a bunch of them."

Emily couldn't recall anyone being scared around Teddy, though she did seem to have gotten a disproportionate number of people asking her to sign stuff. Also, she'd turned into a bear a few times, which she supposed had maybe frightened a few people.

In any case, Emily was just happy that Teddy had accomplished her quest. She glanced at Athena and Maple. "Athena?" she asked.

Athena nodded. "I got a quest to steal people's secrets. I didn't tell you about it, though. Is that okay?"

"That's fine," Emily said. "Though, maybe let me know, next time?"

"Okay!" Athena said.

And finally, there was Maple. "Ah, um, I got some points from giving everyone their gifts," she said.

Emily nodded along. That was more than fair. So, as long as they'd made a decent amount of money with their little scam, then Emily would have gained a few points for herself as well.

So she started counting. Teddy got bored with that soon enough, and Trinity followed her back to the living room. Maple and Athena, in the meantime, were eager to help. They stacked all the bills of a similar denomination together into little piles and emptied out the wallets they'd collected.

"What are we going to do with all of those keys and wallets?" Emily asked. The pile was a little daunting. There were cards and driver's licences and all sorts of stuff there that was probably important to people.

Sam grinned. "Well, how about we give them to the police?" she asked.

"Really? Like, anonymously?"

Sam shook her head. "I have a better idea. Hand it in, and claim that you discovered some thief's hideout or something while being all heroic and that you found all of these. Easy rep."

Emily snorted. That was just plain cruel, and definitely the kind of villainous thing that she didn't want to do. But... well, she did feel a little bad for the people who would now have to get new copies of all their cards. They even had a passport. "Yeah, we can do that," she said. "Next time I'm out in costume, we'll dip into a police department, tell them that there's some dastardly little bandit around, stealing people's wallets and any candy they have lying around."

Once the money was stacked by denomination, it wasn't hard to count the number of bills of each kind. Then it was just a question of doing a little bit of basic math on her phone. "Wow, this is just over four thousand," Emily said.

"Not a bad haul," Sam said. "Now, ideally to stop things from looking too suspicious, we should probably hand out about a quarter of this."

"That's fair," Emily said. "Three thousand for us then?"

Sam wiggled her hand in a so-so gesture. "About five hundred for expenses, then you need to pay your minions." She split the piles as she spoke, and Emily noticed that hers was growing smaller with every split. "Which leaves you with... well, just a smidge over two grand."

Emily wasn't going to complain, it was a decent pay for a week's work. She wouldn't have minded making a bit more, though.

They divided the money into a few envelopes, and a grinning Sam left with a hefty chunk of their winnings. "I'll get a receipt from the HRF and the shops. And I'll try to imply that the others got a bigger chunk of the money, I bet they'll buy it," Sam said before she headed out.

Emily wandered to the couch and flopped down onto it. She was burnt right out. It wasn't even early enough for supper, but she felt like she'd been running around all day long.

"Are you okay?" Athena asked as she carefully sat down next to Emily. The others were currently hypnotised by cartoons on the TV.

"I'm okay," Emily said with a small smile. "Just a bit tired."

Athena nodded, then she flopped onto her side, back pressing into Emily.

Maple noticed, of course, and she very carefully, and shyly, left only to come back with Emily's pillow which she tucked under her head. Then Maple climbed up behind Emily and wrapped one arm around Emily's waist. She didn't protest. It was actually comforting.

Still, there was a kernel of worry in her gut, about not doing anything productive. So for the first time in a while, she muttered the magical word. "Status."

Name: Emily Wright

Alignment: Villain

Alias: The Boss

Level: One

Powers

Sister Summoning

Create Sister

Rank 9

Sisterportation

Level 1

Double Trouble

Level Max

Healpats

Level Max

Triple Threat

Level Max

Menagerie Family

Level 1

Quadruple Quirkiness

Level Max

Centre of Attention

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Level 1

Points

Power Slots: 0

Skill Upgrades: 2

Skill Slots: 0