"So um. I've called you all here for a reason tonight."
Ariel rarely calls on people without good reason, but she sets a book down on the coffee table. She's spent some time setting up a room in Lacrima's manor for a sudden and impromptu sleepover. There are plush comfy chairs with cushions and draped with sheets, a few futons set on the floor, blankets strewn everywhere and way more pillows than necessary. There's even a pillow fort. But she's motioning for the book as she flips it open to the newest pages.
Locked away.
Secreted behind steel and asphalt.
The last shard of heart will require a potent assault.
Cash has no value, gold and gems worth nothing more.
Only dreams can be deposited deep in this vault.
"The last shard of the Nightmare Prince's heart is in a bank. ... But not just any bank." She says spreading out a sheet of parchment that looks like it's had a fourteen year old try to draw the map of a building all over it.
Ariel worked very hard on this map, and she pulls out several more like it.
"... We're going to have to get it out of this vault here." She says indicating a cell deeply recessed into the basement floors. "There are going to be guards, and police, and innocent dream denizens all over the place, and we're not going to be able to just walk in and ask for the shard... So... Um. ... yeah. ..." Ariel flusters as she even thinks of suggesting it: "Bank robbery."
Lacrima is here, because this is her manor. Even if she wasn't coming along, she'd still be here. She's dressed in her usual dress, since they're not in the dream world yet. She sighs and smooths her dress out. She's still kinda... confused at the mural at the end of the last dream adventure. Ariel didn't have an answer. She didn't have an answer. She didn't understand it. Why WOULD there be a mural of her and the Prince of Nightmares in some ancient temple? Was it a warning? Was it something else?
"So... we're... gonna have to rob a bank." Lacrima tries to keep a straight face as she sighs. "Right." she says.
She doesn't tell Ariel that she's robbed a bank before, nope. Ariel doesn't need to know that. Not right this moment. Nope.
"So. Um." she says. "I guess we need... someone to watch the top and... bottom and basement...?" she asks as she scratches the side of her head. "And we shouldn't... hurt anyone." she says. "I mean..."
"Unless these police use purification I can soak damage until I can't anymore and not need to hit back but..." she scratches the side of her head.
"Usually..."
She mutters.
"Riventon-sama would have me distract while he went for the actual object we we're after..." she says. "I dunno. If that works here...." she says. "I mean.. um.. uh... if.. we planned that if we did. I mean." she suddenly splutters.
Kotomi is sitting at the opposite end of the table from Lacrima, wearing a tie-dyed nightgown in the colors of sky-blue, pink, and white. "That, uh." She opens her mouth and closes it a few times. "That sounds ... kind of awesome?" She smiles briefly and nervously, which is the only kind of smile she usually gets.
Her face falls slightly at Lacrima's comments, and she looks uncertainly over at her. Still, though, she doesn't worry too much about it, because everything she's actually seen of Lacrima is strictly in the "good guy" and "reluctant vampire" categories.
She clears her throat, then seems to lose her confidence, and doesn't say anything further after that.
Riley looked over, the girl peering out of the pillow fort that she had jokingly dubbed "Fort Kickass" to peer at the map on the table. This was certainly an unexpected turn, normally one doesn't go around a friend's place for a sleepover and end the night by robbing a bank. She listened to the others at first, perhaps trying to suss everything out before she finally spoke up.
"Do most sleepovers in Japan end up bank heists? I dunno about any y'all but I ain't done nothing like this before."
She stepped forwards towards the table to get a closer look at the map, leaning in and taking in all the details. "Right. I guess we're doing this then. Shard of heart and all. What are we up against here? What sort of security stuff do they have over there in dreamland?"
Bank robbery. Seishi was leaning for a closer look at the passage in the book - not that she hasn't seen it already - but at Ariel's conclusion she straightens and blinks slowly.
"This is... definitely a new one on me," she admits, cracking a wry smile. "It sounds like we have a few ideas to start from, though?"
Her eyes shift to Riley. "I'm not sure if Ariel was able to scout it out in detail," she says, "but in general, I'd expect it to be based off of people's imaginations... So, basically imagine every heist movie you've ever seen, probably." Brows lifting, she glances to Ariel for confirmation or contradiction.
Yep. Yep Ariel is serious. Bank heist. Though Lacrima gets a curious look for a moment, the little unicorn does nod. "We'll need distractions. I know it sounds awesome, but we're probably going to have to work by the seat of our pants and improvise a lot. I'll be carrying all the gear necessary to get through any doors and vaults, so I'll leave fending off the defenses to all of you. ... S-some of the Dream Defenders there may use purification please be careful." That last part is especially pointed out to Lacrima.
"I was able to scout ahead a little bit!" She admits. "Just not a lot. I couldn't get past the entry when I tried. But if we can get past the first gate inside without any alarms going off, we may be able to pull this off without having to fight anyone at all."
So stealth IS an option, she does admit. But Ariel is already climbing under some sheets and burrowing into a pillow.
"Most of the sleepovers I've been to uh. Usually just had movies and popcorn." She answers Riley before nodding. "Anyway let's try not to hurt anyone, get in, get out, wake up, and we'll be scott free."
Oh. ... Oh wow she knocked out already. The girl really can just go to sleep on cue.
...
Meanwhile. In the dream world. The van is pulling up on a massive building. Wide and squat, the Great Bank of Dreams is more of a sprawling complex than a single building, with gardens and romanesque architecture.
Ariel is inside said van, waiting for the others, several duffel bags of equipment at her feet as she adjusts the necktie of her pure white business suit, checking to make sure her mask is tucked away in place where she can get it... A unicorn mask, because what else could fit her horn?
The van doors open. She steps out... And starts power walking towards the doors.
It's already like the heist movies Seishi said it would be like.
Lacrima sighs. "So a heist movie or story... okay." she says with a deep breath. Lacrima takes a moment to rest because she isn't falling asleep in her coffin. She 'wakes' up in the dream world in the van in an outfit that seems so similar to the one she wears in UMBRA, complete with gloves. Of course, she grumbles. She already dresses like a fancy fricken Yakuza there. She looks down to the mask in her hands and she looks incredibly angry and unimpressed. "Of course." she says almost with malice.
She walks somewhere next to Ariel wearing a Sailor Venus mask . Not like... the Sailor V mask.. like. A Halloween mask. Of her face.
You can't see the look of 'I want this to be done already' on her face through it at least, as she carries her own duffel bag.
Akashimaru takes a moment to adjust her coat after she steps out of the van, smoothing out the long sweep of the vaguely samurai-styled lapels over the dark red brocade waistcoat. Her hair swings behind her like a banner, caught up into a high tail with red cord. The coat shouldn't lie so perfectly over the tessen and the oni mask she's tucked underneath it, but somehow it does.
"Let's go steal a heart," she says, eyeing the bank's entrance, and she grins.
Kotomi pops out behind Akashimaru, wearing a cool blue women's business suit with a black spades-suit badge, and her face is concealed by a white mask which has the upper half dominated by a black spades shape. She's also trembling; several different worst-case scenarios are playing through her head, each one more worst-case than the last. Argh, why did someone with anxiety go on a stealth-mission!? She just ... stays close behind Seishi for now.
... A ninja pokes their head over the side of the roof and peers at the van. The hood appears to be shaped to fit cat-ears inside it. In fact, yeah, the ears seem to flatten against their head, and the figure quickly darts back and disappears.
"So, stealth is optional for this mission right?" Riley raised her hand, palm up inside the van and let out a small *woosh* of flame. Of course, not anywhere near enough to hurt anything or anyone, let alone risk getting them noticed. "Naw I'm just fucking with you."
Riley was looking sharp! She had a perfectly tailored black tux on, every single crease, fold and little detail was downright immaculate from the bow tie to teh napkin sticking out *just so* from the pocket. Of course, her mask ruined that somewhat. It was one of those comedy latex ones, in this case a slightly cartoonish looking Shiba Inu dog that seemed to be looking off to the side a little. The girl looked down at it, the expression on her face reading simply as "Really? This?" before putting the thing on.
"This is dumb. Why did I get the dumb dead meme mask? Ugh. Much dissapoint, very bank, such dream cops. Wow."
Riley gets a worried look from Ariel, but this is it. The team storms the door and make it inside. The bank is bustling with action, the murmur of countless voices can be heard in the entry alone as myriad dream denizens wander back and forth, conversing with each other, lounging in comfy chairs, talking with clerks. Dreams and Nightmares alike seem to regard the bank as something of a neutral ground as they make their transactions, storing energy, concepts, themes... Anything under the sun imaginable, it's traded and stored here by lions, walking fish, penguins, the occasional lucid human dreamer, or even more out of this world beings.
There are guards though; humanoid shaped masses of light dressed in button down suits and slacks, with little guard hats on, and they are on patrol.
Ariel motions for the gate to the back that says 'EMPLOYEES ONLY'.
And this is when Ariel puts on her unicorn mask and reaches into one of her duffel bags.
And pulls out a power drill. She's going to have to get that gate open, after all.
"Excuse me everyone! This is a heist! If you could all please calmly get on the ground in an organized and efficient manner, we'll make this as quick as possible. Thank you in advance~."
Ariel's expression can be summed up as: n.n
There's a moment of silence.
Before people begin to panic and get down on the ground.
The guards are already in motion though, raising weapons to the ready.
A clerk looks ready to hit a secret alarm switch.
Ariel is already on her way towards the gates, attaching that drill to the lock to start breaking through the lock.
"Hup!"
With the red mask of a snarling oni's face pulled over her own, Akashimaru hops up onto the nearest counter for a good vantage point on the rest of the room. Almost immediately, her eyes fall on that one clerk, and she reaches into her coat.
A split second later, the tessen spins through the air to *ping* off the side of the cabinet just between the clerk's hand and the hidden switch.
"I'll need to ask you to keep your hands where I can see them, please!" she announces, reaching up to pluck the iron fan out of the air on its rebound arc back to her. "Let's keep this civilized, shall we?"
Lacrima sighs behind her Sailor Venus mask and reaches into her duffel bag to pull out... some sort of dark glowly tommy gun, because of course it's a glowly evil tommy gun for her as she sighs and grips the handle and sprays what appears to be 'slightly bigger than the barrel' bullet bill-looking bullets at the ceiling that explode into dark energy.
"Yes, please. Everyone follow what the really nice unicorn wants, please this will only take amoment I promise we're only here for one thing and it probably isn't even any of your things!" she says with no amount of worry.
Pause. Was that too much exposition? Oh. Oh crap guards.
Does.. does she shoot at the guards? No.. No she doesn't yet. "Um-- can you please not.. shoot yes. Or I'll have to um..." she looks around, then down, to right.
"Take this pancake hostage...."
"No, please don't!" says the Dream Pancake Person.
Lacrima keeps a straight face behind her mask because it hit her what she just said, she guesses. Come on Ariel. Hurry up. Please. This is... torture.. of some sort. She doesn't know what sort yet.
Kotomi strides forward, but, like, she's clearly way too nervous about this. "Ho ho ho!" she says. "We're, uh, we're gonna ... take the precious object! And clowns such as you ... uh ... such as you ... I ... um." She gulps. "Will ... not be able to, to stop us!" Oh dear. She nods to Lacrima and then summons bone-white spade-shapes, which start orbiting around her. Menacingly!
Internally, she's going: aaaaargh I don't know what to pay attention to! I have no idea where to aim, or if I should react to anything! What other alarm-thingies are there!?
There's a thumping noise from the air ventilation system. Presumably the ninja(?) is trying to sneak through the air vents, and it's doing more to amplify the noise of their movements than to conceal where they are.
"Really guys? Really?" Riley just looked at her assembled partners in crime and the attempts at being scary before taking a deep breath...
Hours upon hours of really cheesy American movies with bank robbery scenes had prepared her well for this day! Not that she ever planned on robbing a bank, not that many people did, yet here they all were. She fired a spray of rounds into the ceiling like Lacrima, although instead of an old timey tommy gun they came from an odd looking sub-machine gun of sorts, a P-90 in fact. As for why she had it? No idea. Riley hadn't really thought about it, although if she did, perhaps it was from binge watching Stargate again?
"Alright! Get down on the ground, hands where we can see them! You! Get your hand the hell away from the button before I decide you don't need it! On the ground!"
Wait guards?
Heck.
Riley snapped to aim at him, it, whatever that thing was, peering down her sights. "Down on the ground ya' big lamp!"
It all happens so fast.
The clerk; a cartoonish bunny rabbit immediately withdraws his hand when the tessen plinks off the wall where he was reaching. His hands go up.
Lacrima and Riley fire into the air, and between taking a hostage and actually knowing how to be intimidating from The Movies, the guards lower their weapons and get on their knees.
It looks like in no time at all the entry is secure and the patrons are pacified. Which gives Ariel the time she needs to drill through the locked gate and push it open. "We're through!" She calls, clueless of the presence in the vents as she raises a hand.
"Now! If you could all please stay on the ground and not go anywhere we'd really appreciate it!" She calls to the assorted hostages before pausing to stare at Lacrima and her pancake...
"I'm kind of hungry now." She does muse, before moving on.
The gate leads down... And Ariel leads the way from her memory of the maps through corridors and halls to a much larger vault.
"Okay I'll set up the plasma torches and we'll be through this in a few minutes. Then we just need to find the right safe box, grab it, and wake up."
Sounds simple enough. If not for the fact that a gunshot rings out.
Ariel jolts with a bleat. There's a splatter of red on her suit and she slams into the nearest wall clutching her chest in shock. "A-ah..."
"--I got you! You're out!" Says a guard in SWAT armor, pointing right at her. But Ariel picks herself up.
"N-nuh uh!"
"UH HUH, I GOT YOU. I CLEARLY GOT YOU."
"Y-yeah well... I have body armor under my suit!" She says, opening the jacket to reveal a paintball-proof vest. "I can take three shots before I'm out!"
"That's not fair!" The guard shouts, taking cover as the rest of his squad arrives and starts opening fire.
Ariel bleats. "Cover me while I set up the plasma cutters! I can only take two more hits!"
Th... There are rules to this???
Lacrima mutters to the pancake person. "It's okay she probably won't eat you probably...." a pause. "Unless like.. you wanna be eaten? Do... do dream pancake..people..wanna be eaten--you know what. This is really bad time to muse on this." she says as she follows Ariel and---
BLAM!
Her eyes go wide. A..Ariel!? She's about to raise her gun and fires off at at the SWAT ANGRILY as her eyes glow purple because 'YOU JUST SHOT MY GIRLFRIEND AND HOPEFULLY SHE ISN'T DEAD!? but then... Ariel...
Gets up and starts arguing like someone who got tagged during hide and seek and wanted to argue about why she wasn't out---.. W...what!?
Lacrima is now certain that dream bank heisting is dumb and some sort of torture and Lacrima lets loose with the dark glowy tommy gun at the SWAT person. This will probably have the same effect the hit against Ariel did. Bang.. bang bang.
Akashimaru leaps nimbly back down from her pech to follow Ariel through the gate, pausing to bow to the crowd with a flourish of her tessen before she ducks through.
When they get to the vault, though-- "Are you kidding me?!" she yelps, dodging the sudden barrage of paintball fire. Lacrima cutting loose buys her a little bit of breathing room, enough that she can snap the Shinken closed and transform it in a flash of red light and a flurry of red sparks into...
...a grenade launcher?
She stares at it for a moment, dumbfounded. "Uh..."
WELP. This is not the time to be standing flatfooted. With a little shake of her head, she racks the thing, takes aim, and fires down the hallway at the SWAT team.
CHUNK! says the grenade launcher, spitting a bomblet through the air with a puff of smoke. In the next moment, the SWAT end of the hallway is full of crackling, hissing fireworks spitting red and gold sparks in all directions.
Well, this just took a turn, at least, it seemed to do so from where Riley was standing. The girl didn't really see that much, she was was just going about doing her best "menacing Hollywood bank robber" impression while following along with the others and then, *bam*. Ariel was "bleeding" from a hit right to her center-mass while SWAT were trying to pin them down!
"Contact front! Contact front!" Riley shoulder rolled into cover behind one of those big, tough looking Greco-Roman pillars and peeked around to return fire! Or at least, she would, if it wasn't for the argument. She just watched, a confused look plastered on her face before she was forced back into cover once again! All she could really do at this point was to try and break the suppression, occasionally peeking out, firing off a controlled burst then hiding again, flinching away from the...
Wait, were these *paintballs?*
Kotomi dispels the spades, and follows after Ariel --
She shrieks as Ariel gets hit! For a moment, she goes stock still like a deer caught in the headlights. Someone actually shot Ariel!? Someone actually -- oh. Oh! That's paint. That's paint. She deflates, and starts summoning more spades, trying to parry the paintball-shots with her own bullets! ... Only a few of them actually succeed in this, so she just ducks back and fires paint-spades back at them.
A segment of ventilation-duct falls through the ceiling -- and the ninja is inside it, letting out a loud feline yowl! The figure leaps out just as the segment clangs to the ground next to Ariel, and, yes, she lands on their feet.
Oh, wait, it's not a ninja, it's a stagehand. See? She's got no weapons, and her costume says "STAGEHAND" in white stenciled kanji, both on the back and across the chest. "Goodness gracious me," she says archly. "How convenient that someone else is solving one of my problems for me, hmm?" Her voice is dripping sarcasm now. "Quite truthfully, this was going to be rather, mm, touch and go if it hadn't been for you."
Kotomi stares. "Huh!?" And then she quickly ducks as a paintball whizzes by her head.
Ariel is perfectly fine! Her blood isn't even red, it's silver, but her suit is ruined now and she does pout as she hurries to set up the plasma cutters to get the vault open.
She glances up when she hears the CHUNK of the grenade launcher only to watch the SWAT team fall back, between Lacrima and Riley's cover fire and the fireworks flooding the hall, forcing the dream guards to back up hard and fast.
It gives Ariel the time she needs-- only for the vent to drop next to her.
Another bleat of shock and she's staring at a stage hand. "Oh, it's just a stage hand... --Wait a minute."
That voice. There's no mistaking it as the vault swings open revealing hundreds of safe lock boxes.
"... Yasumi? What are you doing here?" Asked cluelessly as Ariel reaches into her duffel bag and pulls out a ring of keys. Each of them looks like a skeleton. And she starts opening up safe boxes at random.
She had best be quick though. The SWAT team is back and they have ballistic shields and-- one of the SWAT guys just ninja-appears right beside Riley and tries to slug her.
"STEALTH GUY!" Ariel yelps.
Lacrima is gonna kick the next Sailor V standee she sees, mark her words. She hates this mask. HA take that Mina, she thinks, TAKE THAT so called defender of justice and ruiner of dresses! She thinks as she fires the tommy gun down the way as she hears a voice. "Oh for the love of---"
"It's her, isn't it." she says. "Yasumi-san." she says.
She levies her gun back towards Yasumi, but she scowls a moment and turns to try to shoot the guy making for Brass.
She reaches into her duffel bag and produces a cartoonish stick of dynamite. Also. It's already lit Somehow.
She panics and fumbles with it before throwing it down the hallway where it explodes into a cartoonish 'Ker-bang!'.
Akashimaru ain't gonna lie - that was pretty satisfying. She doesn't get a lot of time to enjoy the spectacle the fireworks make, however, because the heist is still going and they don't have what they came for yet.
Also, STEALTH GUY.
"Hey!" It's an indignant shout, and the grenade launcher in her hands dissolves into red sparks even as she cocks back her hand. "Hiraisen!"
As she shouts, she hurls her tessen at the SWAT guy who, let's be real, Lacrima probably already shot.
WULULULULULULULULULULULU!
*WHAM!*
"Argh! Fuck off you spooky bastard!"
Everyone Even with everyone including Riley opening up on this ninja guy, he was filled with determination! Determination to smack the absolute heck out of Riley! She reeled from the blow, falling flat on her back with her weapon skittering away across the floor.
In truth, it didn't seem to hurt her all too much, it more just surprised the kid rather than really doing anything. It was kind of similar to Ariel being "shot" before. Still, if that "spooky bastard" was still up by the time Riley had a chance to do so, she would have rolled to the side, snatched up her SMG again and fired on the ninja guard!
That spooky bastard does not have it going well for him very fast. He may have gotten the blow in on Riley, but in the same instant, Lacrima, Akashimaru, and even Riley herself all turn on him.
He's slammed into the wall by the sheer force of dark energy bullets, the tessen, and Riley's fire, he crumples like a sack of potatos, eyes swirling...
As Ariel pops open safe after safe. "Just a few more seconds! I'm sure I'll find it!" She chirrups amid the heavy firefight outside...
Before she gets lucky and opens a box to find a bright red glow.
"Found it! Everyone can wake up now!"
Kotomi does a double-take. "What!?" she exclaims. "You!?" Seems she didn't actually know what Yasumi's voice sounded like. And then she lets out a shriek as a paintball hits her leg!
Yasumi chortles at Ariel's question, and slips in after her. "Precisely the same thing you are, I would imagine!"
And then Ariel opens the box and reveals that red glow.
"Okay!" Kotomi calls back to Ariel, clearly sounding relieved, before turning back to the SWAT officers. "Y-YOU ... YOU WON'T TAKE ME ALIVE!" she says. She reaches up, moves the mask aside slightly, and pinches her cheek and vanishes as she wakes up ...
... just as Yasumi reaches into the box and plucks the shard out. "Thank you kindly for your assistance, my dear Ariel!" she quips, before suddenly rushing out of the vault, shard in hand! In one smooth leap, she jumps right back up to the fallen air vent and scrambles inside, making even more noise than she did coming in. "OW!"
Just as Ariel is reaching into the safe box-- Yasumi janks the shard.
"HEY!" She bleats sharply as the Nightmare catburglar recedes back into the vents. "D-damn it!" Ariel curses. ... And then realized that she cursed, covering her mouth with one hand.
Before a paintball splatters the wall by her head. She ducks and scowls.
Boy is she going to have some explaining to do when everyone wakes up.