Chapter 28: 31. Their City Part 4

There is a window with curtains drawn right next to their spot on the second floor ledge. The window frame appears to be inlaid silver. Shaula contemplates stealing the window frame itself by melting it down. The exterior of the house might be flammable, so she drops the idea. But Shaula realizes something.

[Hm. Problem. To get in here, we’ll have to melt the glass.]

[And?]

[What do you think happens when I apply heat to the glass?]

[Does it shatter?]

[Not if I heat it up fast enough. That’s not the issue. If I apply enough heat to melt glass, the curtains will ignite. I’ll need you here. Right after I melt and pull away the glass, you need to smother that fire.] Ajax looks at the curtains. If they're unlucky and someone is in that room…

[Alright, I can do that.]

Shaula takes a deep breath. She places both palms flat right on the window pane. She makes sure her fingers extend across as much of the window as possible. She waits three seconds before sending a tremendous amount of heat through her flattened palms. 

The window turns from clear to light red, emitting a bright light. The glass window reaches the consistency of soft clay within half a second. There is a slight sound of whistling as the glass melts. The glass starts to stick to Shaula’s palms. Using this adhesiveness, she carefully pulls her hands back with the glass attached.

She removes the red, clay-like glass from the window frame in two seconds. It feels like removing thick pudding skin. No molten glass falls into the house. There is a small fire on the curtains, the diameter of a marble. Ajax quickly reaches his hand into the empty window frame towards the fire. It is snuffed out instantly.

He then quickly sniffs the air for any scent of burning. There’s a little bit, but luckily he’s quick enough. Shaula collects the melted window into a ball and hands it to Ajax.

From Shaula melting the glass to Ajax snuffing out the curtain fire, four seconds have passed. Working efficiently, Shaula sticks her head into the window hole, but not past the curtain. Immediately she hears all of the sounds within the home. All she needed to do was cross the window threshold…

Heartbeats. She hears one in this room. She waits a bit, making sure the person in this room is breathing slowly in sleep. Melting the window might have caused a bright light, but the curtains prevented this heavy sleeper from waking up.

[This one’s a bust. Let’s go.]

They immediately leave. Ajax absorbs the heat from the molten glass ball and leaves it on the lawn of that property. If they’re lucky, the heavy sleeper won’t notice the draft for some time. They move on to other candidate houses.

It takes them one more house filled with sleeping people to find an empty one. Luckily, that time they didn’t enter an occupied room so they’re still hidden. The new empty house is quite extravagant, both outside and in. As soon as they enter this house, they check each floor for any amount of silver or bronze coins.

They find 43 bronze coins and 12 silver coins in tables, shelves and closets on the first two floors. They put their loot in multiple, thick cloth bags, separating silver and bronze coins. They should be good for at least a few hundred kilograms of coin since they have twelve bags on hand.

They had gone to various general stores for three or four strong bags each. They did not want to raise attention by buying all twelve bags in one store.

After collecting their coins, Ajax heads to the basement where he finds what resembles a small safe or strongbox. Shaula sees what he’s found.

[Eheheheheheheheh…] Ajax is surprised that Shaula could make such a con artist laugh. He’s learning a lot more about her in this world.

*Cough* [Ahem… Yeah, good work, Ajax.]

Shaula easily melts through the hinges and lock mechanism of the safe door. As she pulls away the door, they both see hundreds of gold and silver coins. Shaula’s smile widens considerably.

[You’d think they’d keep more of their coins in a bank or something… Oh well, more for us, Ajax. There’s plenty of silver coins for us. Ehehehehe–]

[Stop that.]

*Cough* *Cough* [Y-Yeah, sure]

They pick up a hundred and fifty silver coins from here and place it with the rest of their treasure. As agreed, they leave the gold coins alone.

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They move onto seven more candidate houses within the gated community. Three of them are empty and they loot hundreds more silver coins from the first two. However, the third empty house has an alarm protocol activate as soon as they stepped foot into the house.

They immediately fled the area and Shaula picked their next group of candidate houses at least four blocks away.

Before they continue however, Shaula asks Ajax something.

[...You know, we have a few hundred silver right now. Should we stop for tonight? The guards will start looking for us when they realize that burglars are tapping the houses.]

[Hmm… No. If we’re going to do this, let’s do this right. Let’s get enough cash so we don’t have to do this again for a long while.]

[I could just do this myself next time, you know?] Shaula pouts a little. Ajax pouts right back as if imitating her before sighing.

[Shaula, we’re in this world together. What kind of friend would I be if I let you do all the dirty work? Whatever we need to do, it’s together.]

*Sigh* [Well, I can’t argue with that.]

The two of them continue looting the empty houses. They trip a couple more alarms, but the guards are slower than they thought. Or perhaps they’re just faster at escaping and detecting pursuers. Within an hour of entering the gated community, they retrieve 5091 silver coins and 3253 bronze coins.

They had found so many silver coins that they prioritized those over the bronze coins.

If they assume the house special and cup of wine costing a bronze coin was $5 minimum, then their current sum is over $650000. Both of them hold two hundred kilos of coins in their twelve cloth sacks. Their sacks still hold out well as they carry three in each hand.

With their current savings acquired, they decide to leave the gated community. First, Ajax jumps over the fence. Then, Shaula throws each cloth sack over the high fence. To an observer, it would look as if Shaula is throwing sacks holding tennis balls. Ajax catches each one without injury or wrist or hand pain.

Finally, Shaula leaps over the fence herself. They carry their sacks down empty roads and continue avoiding detection.

They head to the section of the slums with abandoned buildings where not even homeless people enter. So far, everything that they own, they carry around. Even their day clothes are stored in backpacks that they’re wearing right now.

Shaula decides to bring something up.

[So, where do you want to stash our treasure?]

[...I think we should start paying for an inn or something.]

[We can’t just walk into one with eight sacks of shit. Where can we store it for now?]

[...We’re gonna have to use one of these houses.]

Ajax and Shaula change into their day clothes and burn their looting clothes. Then, the two of them wait until morning. They need two things right now. The first is a place to stay and rest if they need to, as well as keep their coins. The second is a way to carry their coins around inconspicuously.

[So, Ajax, find an inn for us, I’ll guard our stash in the meantime. Here…] Shaula empties one of the twelve sacks so she can put 25 bronze and 25 silver coins into it.

[You sure you’ll be fine here?]

[Fuck off, we’ve got superpowers. Hurry up though, I don’t like sitting in this shitty room.] While Ajax goes to look for an inn for the two of them to park their coins and rest, she has to stay here. A room within an abandoned building in the slums. She just has to guard eleven sacks of coins.

The room smells and seems to have mold growing in various places. The mold seems like household black mold, except it’s red. She doesn’t like this place, but this was the best room they found in this dump. She’s assuming the mold is dangerous so she holds her breath.

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