The four of us stood - and sat - around the table in our hideout, staring at the meticulous plans we had spent the last 3 months learning front to back. The blueprints, the false identities, the passports, the engineering plans... it was beautiful. Flawless. And, by now, useless.

"What a shitshow," Geralt finally said, breaking the silence. "You said you planned for everything!" he yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at me, though a finger was underselling it given its size. He was a massive man, a perfect hitter. It wasn't immediately obvious; some people even called him fat. They stopped doing so when he would lift them up with one hand.

"I did!" I protested loudly. "The plan was literal perfection! It's why you agreed to it!"

"Perfection?! Then why the deep-fried fuck," Geralt replied and picked up the TV remote, tuning in to the evening news. Our faces were plastered all over the screen, capturing our confusion beautifully, "are they naming the museum after us?!"

"Well it is a nice museum," Nassor chipped in from their corner where they were peacefully reading the newspaper which, once again, featured us on the front page. Heroes of the Year, the headline read. Geralt threw an angry look their way but then turned his anger back towards me.

"You said nothing could go wrong," he kept pressing.

"Well, how could I possibly predict that some other group of thieves would be mad enough to break into the impenetrable Royal Mint? And on the same day as us! And, lest we forget, if you didn't trip the alarm during the scuffle, we would have still had the time to make it out with some money. But no, by the time we were finished incapacitating them, the League of Heroes was on site, shaking our goddamn hands!"

"Oh don't throw this at me," Geralt growled. "That hitter of theirs would have snapped you like a twig had I not stepped in."

I shook my head in hesitant agreement. The woman on our competitor's team nearly matched Geralt in size. I was almost impressed.

"She was kinda hot though," Nassor commented again. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"Not the time, mate," I sighed.

"I just wish we could have spared a second to grab her number, ya know?"

"Oh let me grab the world's tiniest violin for you! Oh wait, we can't bloody afford one!" I yelled at them angrily. They merely shrugged and went back to reading the paper.

We all slinked back into silence as we stared at our plan. It was supposed to be the heist of a century.

"Goddamit," I mumbled and looked around the room. Geralt was still fuming, Nassor more blank-faced but clearly disappointed. My eyes finally rested on Lilian, our hacker. Her face was buried in her hands. She was white as a sheet, though not because she was scared.

"Lilian," I said slowly. "You're awfully quiet."

She sighed and removed her hand from her face and looked around the room with her bright-red eyes. Her albinism was often enough to catch everyone's attention, but combined with her elegant mannerisms and sultry voice, when she spoke, people listened.

"I am," she replied calmly, "because I know how the rest of this conversation is going to play out. I can see it on your faces, no matter how much you try to hide it. You all feel it too."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Geralt narrowed his eyes.

"Don't pretend with me, tiny," Lilian scoffed. "I saw how you looked when that old lady hugged you."

Suddenly, it was as if Geralt deflated, his bravado and anger replaced with meek embarrassment.

"...she reminded me of me gran, alright?" he mumbled.

We all exchanged looks.

"Really?" Nassor raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, my gran was the best person I ever knew, alright?!" Geralt blew up. "Don't you even dare!"

"Hey, I'm not saying anything," Nassor shrugged.

"Face it," Lilian continued. "We all liked being... heroes." She almost spat the last word out. We all looked down at our feet in shame. "Seeing all those people all happy."

"...yeah," I murmured. Geralt and Nassor did not reply, but I could see it on their faces. They liked it too. Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. Bleh.

"There's bound to be more people like us out there, you know?" Nassor said. I looked at the team. My team. I took some of the world's best criminals; the toughest hitter, the slickest thief, the sharpest hacker, not to mention my immaculate planning brain... and turned us all into good guys.

"Wanna stop them too?" I asked.

Lilian smiled. Nassor folded the newspaper and put it on a nearby table. Geralt tried resisting the idea before sighing loudly and cracking his fingers.

"Ah, what the hell. Sounds fun," he said.

"Alright," I chuckled. "Let's get to it."

They truly didn’t know who we were.

“Look, I know I’m no Terrible Termite, and don’t approach the property damage levels of the Evil Weevil, but still,” I said to my team after the heroes had paraded us about the city and awarded us with honorary membership to their little ‘League’. “You’d think after three years of villainy I’d have built up at least a passing level of notoriety.”

“You’re telling me,” said the Ancient Aphid, our most senior—and I mean that in the geriatric sense—team member. “I’ve been a thorn in the side of these masked maniacs for going on 35 years and they still don’t recognize me? It’s downright discouraging.”

Our team of five was rounded out by the Gnotorious Gnat, the Furious Fruit Fly, the Calamitous Cricket, and yours truly, the Lucky Louse. We assembled as a villainous quintet a couple years back, ever since then our output had been quite prolific—or so we thought. It turns out that our antics posed nothing more than a mild inconvenience to the heroes of Homefront city.

“I can’t believe this,” said the Gnotorious Gnat. “They just paraded us around the city like we were heroes or something. The audacity! I’m going to have to change my name—I’ve clearly not lived up to it.”

“Oh shut your fuckin’ trap,” said the Furious Fruit Fly. “You losers are too short sighted. Does it chap my ass that they didn’t know who we are? Fuckin’ sure. Ok, you got me. But you’re not looking at the big picture. They think we’re in their group now—we’re under the radar! What’s better than being a pest?” She paused for a response.

The other members of the group were…well, let’s just saw that thinking wasn’t their strong suit. However, I knew just what she was getting at. “The only thing better than being a pest is being an undetected pest,” I said.

“Fuckin’ exactly!” Replied the Furious Fruit Fly. “We can run amok!”

“….,” said The Calamitous Cricket. He kept quiet as his sing-song voice could cave the building in on top of us. If I’m honest, I’m not sure why he ran with us—he could have led his own group of villains. He was that strong. Still, we were lucky to have him in the group, we’d not be in the position we were in without him having almost single-handedly defeated that other troupe of villains.

“What shall be our opening salvo?” Asked the Ancient Aphid. “It must send a message.”

“I say we go to the League HQ and smash all their dinnerware!” Said the Furious Fruit Fly. “That way, when they sit to have dinner they’ll be like ‘what happened to all our dinnerware?’ And then they’ll have to leave to go and purchase more. When they return—this is the best part—their dinner will be cold!” The Furious Fruit Fly let out a villainous cackle.

“Now who’s thinking small?” I ribbed. “That’s not enough. We need to cause some real bodily harm. Here’s what we do. We go into the HQ and we loosen the screws on all of their office chairs, that way when they sit down in them, they’ll collapse and the heroes will suffer injuries, maybe even bonk their heads.”

“That’ll never do,” said the Gnotorious Gnat. “There’s a big problem with your plan, Lucky. They’d have no way of know that it is us! We need something that puts our names on their radars.”

“I thought we were trying to stay under the radar, the whole ‘the only thing better than being a pest is an undetected pest’ thing. Remember?” I said.

“How the heck and I supposed to be Gnotorious if we stay undetected?” He said in a huff.

“Ok ok, what about this?” Said the Furious Fruit Fly. “We break all their dinnerware, but we assemble the broken ceramic in their bunk area so that they step on it when they get out of bed in the morning.”

“Diabolical!” I said.

“Ingenious,” said the Ancient Aphid.

“….,” said the Calamitous Cricket.

“What’s Gnotorious about that?” Said the Gnotorious Gnat.

“That’s the best part!” Said the Furious Fruit Fly. “We arrange the broken bits into our group name. It’ll spell out ‘The Sinister Small Things,” she said as she made a rainbow motion with her hands so we could picture it.

“I love it!” Said the Gnotorious Gnat.

“You think they’ll have enough dinnerware to spell out our whole name?” Said the Ancient Aphid.

“They’re heroes,” I said. “Of course they have enough dinnerware. Buncha prima donnas—can’t expect them to wash a dish.”

“….” Said the Calamitous cricket.

We were all in agreement. Our opening salvo would be one to remember. We’d finally earn our place in the minds of the public and heroes alike.

They would soon know who we were.

“Yeah, they bought it,” said the Calamitous Cricket. “Totally think we have no idea who they are….Yep, still small, scale stuff, I swear they’re harmless, but dumb as rocks. Hey, by the way, let the other guys know to wear shoes to bed next Wednesday….yeah for sure….easiest job ever. Hell, I don’t even have to talk—got these guys thinking I’d level a whole building with just my voice. They don’t know that the sound comes from my goddamn wings haha. Dimwits. I’m worried I might catch stupid by osmosis. Still, it’s nice to relax for once….yeah, you too. Bye now.”

r/InMyLife42Archive

“This is where we gather for the morning coffee and croissants,” The Liberator said showing us the cafeteria of the superhero headquarters.

I was still trying to get used to his size and appearance. We have all seen him thousands of times on tv and in various videos, but once he stands this close to him, it’s truly uncanny.

I myself was higher than most people but I barely came to his chest, and he was almost three times as wide as me even though I was in my peek, training every day.

His size was one thing, what made me feel uneasy was his carapace that had grown as armor around most of his body. Some of it was hidden behind his suit, some incorporated, and some fully visible like that big piece around his neck and ears.

“This is nice,” I said looking over at my team, who was cringing at the site of the giant. “You sure have a nice interior decorator, can we get a number?” I asked jokingly.

Liberator let out a loud thunderous laugh, don’t know why it wasn’t that funny, but he laughed a lot. “Lady Zap had done all of our decorating, doubt she is for hire.” He said and continued to walk. “Let me show you our meeting room.”

This was the further from our plan we could get, we were in the middle of the superhero quarters with some of the stolen things still with us, and the Liberator himself, one of the strongest superpowered people alive was giving us a tour.

“Can we come back for a full tour some other day?” I asked trying not to sound disrepsctull. “We appreciate it deeply but this was our first superhero stint and all, we feel truly tired,” I said and all of my friends nodded in agreement.

“Ohh, silly me,” Liberator said. “I remember my first time, my heart was pounding after the mission, I couldn’t wait to get home and just relax.” He stopped and turned towards us. “Let’s go back to the cafeteria you can sit there and relax, but you can’t go before Lady Zap comes, she wants to meet you and thank you in person.”

“When will she arrive?” I asked.

“She will be here in 30 minutes tops,” He said and pointed back towards the cafeteria and we had no other choice but to go.

We sat down and ordered some coffee and on Liberator’s suggestion, we got some donuts and croissants. So here we were sitting in the most secure building in the world, surrounded by dozens of superheroes and their sidekicks and we had just robbed the most secured vault in the city a few hours ago, I had some of the items hidden in the secret compartments of my suit.

How did we get here when we had a perfect plan? Well, those idiots that call themself the Shadow Sidicate had the same idea as we did, to rob the Ambiens Vault, the most secure place to store your valuables on the planet.

They as we did, knew that most of the heroes would be away on this day due to the impending crisis in Asia. We made a distraction on the other side of the city to give the rest of the heroes something to do as we silently broke into the vault, they didn’t think that far.

We were almost done with everything in under fifteen minutes, no one would have noticed that the vault was broken until they’d done the routing check in the morning, have those morons not shown.

They surprised us but we gave them chance to leave without a fight, to choose something different to rob, we even offered part of the loot to them, but they wanted it all, greedy bastards.

None of us react well to the threats so we kicked their asses right away. We dismantled them quickly and easily, but unfortunately, our fighting signed the alarms and the heroes were there as we tried to leave.

Luckily for us, they thought we were a new group of heroes, those showed up almost every day these days, so we played along and well our plan of getting not revealing our powers for a better part of a decade and getting rich out if it failed miserably. We were sitting silently sipping our coffee and eating some of the best donuts as we await Lady Zap to arrive and probably figure everything out on the spot.

Like the story? Check out my sub r/LukasWrites for more!

Krueger rapidly unrolled his shirt sleeves, covering his shitty stick-and-poke swastika tattoos.

Jorge put on a mask and began coughing, hiding his teardrop tattoos.

“What say we heroes go out for a brewski?” Captain Man said.

“Are you sure, sir?” Sergeant Woman said; their hero organization was still sexist, I realized in that moment.

It struck me with the same rapidity as, when I was a child, I realized how sexist Catholicism, which I was a part of, was. I didn’t really think about how women couldn’t be deacons, or priests, or bishop, or cardinals, or the pope.

I looked at Sergeant Woman with pity, wishing I could ask her into our gang, from which no sexist vibes exit. Yet, sadly, my pro-woman, nonsexist organization does not accept woman; for their own protection, of course.

We hire them for more menial labor, such as cleaning or catering and the like.

Regardless of that tangent, Sergeant Woman had just asked Captain Man if he was sure about brewskis.

“Of course I am sure!” Captain Man declared. “What say you, boys?”

My peers and I awkwardly agreed. We appreciate free brews. We appreciate praise.

I encouraged my boys to order the most expensive fair possible, after which we snuck out the bathroom windows.

Ryder slumped down into the sofa with a heavy thump, his heavy kevlar armour making the sofa groan in protest. His face could not be seen behind his motorcycle helmet but his shaking hands gave him away.

“You alright Ryder?” Ghoul asked.

“Sure,” he answered in his soft synthetic voice. “Just wasn’t sure we were walking out of there free.”

Ghoul felt for him. Of their four person team Ryder was the youngest and newest to a life of a supercriminal. He had never faced major league super heroes before and the stress had clearly gotten to him. She went to the fridge and got a can of beer and tossed it to Ryder.

“Get us some too,” Amber said. Ghoul obliged with a sigh and brought three beers to Amber and Umbra and had a seat with them.

The walking void in a trench coat that was Umbra slugged back the entire can. “What in the world went wrong? We have been planning to break the Baltic Bank for months and some amateurs manage to ruin the score of a century in a breath. HOW?” Umbra asked indignantly.

“A breath is usually the time it takes to ruin any heist,” Amber said. His glowing yellow eyes reflecting off his beer can. “Besides, we had a greenhorn with us too.”

“Ryder is a good kid, capable too. He did his part perfectly,” Umbra said.

“Seconded,” Ghoul said. “I suppose the world’s greatest plan falls apart when introduced to bumbling third parties. I mean the other guys didn’t even have a way to counter the infrared sensors and how they intended to enter the vault silently is beyond me,” she said and heaved a sigh.

“They probably intended for that brute to take the vault doors off its hinges. I will be feeling that left hook for weeks,” Amber said and stroked his sore side.

A moment of sullen silence followed.

“You think Thunderstorm recognised any of us?” Ryder asked.

“Low chance, only Ghoul and Amber have any notoriety and the voice changers you provided and the new armour disguised them well,” Umbra said. “And good thinking Ghoul, telling them we were new heroes. Would never have thought of it myself.”

Ghoul chuckled. “And that is why I’m the boss.”

“Still, are you certain that doing time is not preferable to being congratulated as heroes? Yuck,” Amber spat.

“Stop bellyaching,” Umbra said.

“What do you think kid? Jail time or pretending to be a hero?” Amber tossed at Ryder.

Ryder didn’t answer. He had felt terrified when the most powerful hero in Europe came to apprehend him. He was on the verge of running in a panic at the time. But when Thunderstorm swallowed the story of them being heroes and gave his heartfelt thanks was an experience he had not felt in years. That kind smile and warmth. What if the fiction became true? He looked over at the trio.

“Shut up Amber,” Ghoul said. “Get some rest, we can rob a money transport tomorrow or something to make up for today.”

Ryder cradled his unopened beer can in his hands and let his mind wander.

I've been planning this score for six months and I practically had everything accounted for. In the vault of the Lilith Liberty bank are 3 beautifully cut diamonds that came from the Icarus meteor about five years back.

The diamonds are sealed in a Plexiglass box that if not removed properly will have the vault dispense sleeper gas which sets off the alarm. To even access the vault you need the get the right rental and handprint scan at exactly 4:22 pm Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday while the other days are opened at 5:38 pm.

Every other bank teller has a button which will set off the alarm locking the vault and notifying the police, there is a total of 7 buttons. With the help of the building's electrical planning along with paid individuals there are a total of 93 cameras four of them in the vault room 20 in the bank's main lobby while the rest of the cameras are in hallways offices and around 32 outside for maximum security.

Needless to say I had planned out every possibility and had found 3 options with 83 to 97 percent success rate. We were ready, Danny being the technological genius would be able to disable security long enough for us to enter and exit without suspicion, and if suspicion were to arise he would be able to disrupt communication giving us more time to work with, and in the vault he will disable the counter measures so that the gas and alarm will not go off.

Jessie was gifted with the ability to take on different forms, she will be able to take the bank owner's form so that we can get pass hand print and retina scanner, she can also use this to slip past bank security and staff.

Rox is the muscle. Born with superhuman strength she will act as both the enforcer and the power tool. She can bend steel like it's nothing and with that not only will people stay in line but should also help for when the bank gets a bit rebellious.

Then there's me, Lance, I have always had a gifted mind even when I was young. I have taken basically everything into consideration.

So you can imagine our surprise when four other people come to rob the same bank for the same diamonds, We were not about to let our score be taken from us by some cheap copies.

With a team like ours we wiped the floor with them, we were about to quickly go and rob the bank but someone from outside the bank must have heard the commotion because the Heroes show up shortly after.

We were preparing for the worst, I could even recognize Miss Olympia from a run in a while ago, However, to our surprise they hailed us as brave heroes taking down some villains who were going to pull the heist of the century.

I quickly chimed in to save our asses, "We couldn't let these villains rob the Lilith Liberty bank it is against our morels", "How did you know about this and get here before us?" Miss Olympia spoke starring into my soul as if to say I KNOW to me. "We've been casing this crew when one of us saw suspicious activity at this bank" I quickly produced trying not to give away the fact that we were going to do the same thing to this bank.

After nearly thirty minutes of praise and question we had all dispersed into the city going home or back to base.

When arriving home I was met face to face with Miss Olympia who had a smug look on her face. "How bout you tell me what y'all were really doing at that bank" she said that southern accent of hers.

It was gonna take me all of my brain power to talk out of this one and the only thing that my mind can process at this moment is "shit".

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