Black Night (Blake Belladonna TG TF)

    "You’ve befallen quite the fate, I see."




    "Nico! Come on!" Nicolas Gikoken leapt out of the window on the second floor of the house he was sneaking around. A lookout on the street corner had spotted the house’s owners coming home, and they needed to bail. Nico, unlike the lookout, wasn't paying much attention, and when he landed, he heard a loud crack before immediately feeling a pain so horrible he blacked out.


    Nico was a thief, to put it simply, and worked in a small group of thieves. He stole from the rich usually, or at the very least from those who flaunted their money, and usually gave half to the poor and kept the other half. Sometimes they kept it all, sometimes they gave it all to the poor, sometimes they did other stuff with it, but usually it was half to the poor and half to themselves. But things had just been compromised...




    "All right, let's bring him ‘round..." Nico woke up in a severe daze. It took awhile for him to establish where he was, though he eventually recognized by the white walls and the weird machine that beeped every three seconds as it hydrated him that he was in the hospital. Nico’s friends (and partners in crime) were sitting nearby him, looking very concerned.


    "...Guys...did you bring me here?"


    "Well, we called 911 on you. You fell out that window, remember?", one of them responded.


    "Yeah, I do remember, Ryan." Nico looked around at his other friends. "So Daniel, Trevor...you guys wanna mock the shit out of me for being so careless?" The pair shook their heads.


    "No no...never in a million years.", said Daniel. Just then, the surgeon came by.


    "Ah, you"re up? Righty-o, well, according to your friends, you fell out a window. You actually messed up that area pretty bad, but we were able to get everything into position for your body to take care of the rest. You will have to be on crutches for a few weeks while the area finishes healing."


    "...I’m sorry, wha?", Nico asked. What the shit did this guy mean by "into position"?...Oh well. Moving right along...


    "And uh, we were able to seal the opening on your backside where we went in, but the area will be vulnerable to tears for the next little while. So...do be careful, all right?" The implications struck Nico like a ton of bricks. There would be no exploration or thievery for him in the meantime if he didn't convince his friends otherwise quickly. Nico began to brainstorm a couple different things he could say to convince them. After all, they still had quite a bit of work to do...




    Nico, Daniel, Trevor, and Ryan had all been rather poor growing up, and had all been thoroughly disgusted by the many rich people in the neighborhood who flaunted their wealth with lovely cars and expensive decorations. After high school, they formed a group dedicated to fixing what they saw as a massive problem, and had been going strong for a couple of months. Despite Nico’s huge error and some other bizarre maneuvers, they were actually excellent thieves, as all cops had to go on after the couple of months since thefts began to be reported were a few witness statements from people in cars or people halfway down the street.




    "Heads up, guys...the owner’s passed me. You can enter now.", he radioed during a break-in a few evenings later. Nico had managed to sway his fellow thieves in the other direction, and they'd decided to keep going with Nico as lookout. Nico was standing about a tenth of a mile from the house, around a street corner, and had just seen the home owner’s car go by him, presumably headed to a bar or something.


    "Ten four!", they responded, entering immediately through a jimmied back door. Nico hung around on the sidewalk on his crutches for a minute or two before eventually finding a bench. That's when his group finally said something else over the radio...but it was something ridiculous.


    "Oh sweet, a sword. Ooh, hey guys!", said Daniel over the walkie talkie, "I found a drawer of panties in this bedroom! Should we do a raid?"


    "Hell no!", responded Ryan, "Let’s get in here and get out of here...and besides, you don't know how old that girl is! Did you find the jackpot, Trevor?"


    "Not yet. They don't have any money or jewels in the drawers besides simple pocket change and the sort-OW!" Trevor audibly slammed hard to the floor. For a little, Nico was very concerned, but Trevor soon stood up. "Tripped over a backpack. Contents are visible, and it seems to be a high schooler’s. Must go to JAMem." JAMem stood for June August Memorial, the local high school.


    "Anything important in it?"


    "No, don't think so. Uh, so where do you think everything is?" An idea suddenly struck Nico. He looked from side to side to make sure that no one was within earshot, and gave his advice.


    "Old house. Basement. Safe." It was a pretty old house, so it was possible that the house had a safe where the money was held. Indeed, when Trevor clomped his way into the old basement, there was a massive safe that was probably bulging with money.


    "Found it, boys. Basement...rich bastard." As Daniel and Ryan rushed downstairs, Nico began to think about ways he could improve. He wished he had both excellent balance and the ability to be completely silent. Hell, he wanted to vanish into the shadows when necessary, like Blake Belladonna.


    "Okay, we've cracked the safe...what is this?" Nico paused, partially because he was curious what the guys saw, and partially because he’d just seen the house’s owner pass by.


    "BAIL! BAIL! CLOSE!"


    "Shit!" The trio closed the safe and ran towards a small window in the basement, which just barely peaked above the dirt at the side of the house. They swung it open, hopped on a table, and crawled out. They were barely able to run behind the house and out of view when the owner returned.




    "So what was in there?", Nico asked a little while later when they were back in a safe location. The others couldn't help but scratch their head.


    "...They were a set of metallic...armbands, I think. They were yellow, and seemed like they could extend into something, though I didn't get a good enough look to be certain." This absolutely stunned Nico.


    "What!? Are you sure?"


    "Yeah. It was really weird-" Ryan froze.


    "What"s up?", asked Daniel.


    "...I know whose house that is. That's the Cartier household. Remember? The kid of the household took a pill and turned into a chick a few months ago.", Ryan explained.


    "No, I don’t remember." Daniel was a little...out of it. He wasn't stupid, more...distant.


    “So back in...February? I think February...Reese, who is a high schooler, said he went to a gym that offered him a pill. During his walk home, he transformed into a girl, and scared the everloving deuce out of his parents. A little while later, he, er, she beat her tormentors to a pulp, though I think they suffered no permanent injuries. Cops arrived, as did the media, and Reese was arrested, but when they went to took her fingerprints, there was no match.", Ryan listed, "They sat Reese down for a convo, and she told them her story. For some reason, the cops bothered investigating, and when they checked the security cameras a few of the houses have, they confirmed her story. There's now a huge debate as to whether this all is legit, but the media went wild. The Cartiers paid off the media to try and keep the story as local as possible, so it's not too well known outside the area. So as of right now Reese is kinda just chilling as a local celeb, and the feds are currently looking for the gym’s owners. They operated the business without a permit, and I think skipped town after giving the pill. They’re still trying to find a motive as to why they did this, let alone how, and to be honest, it's only a matter of time until this story really makes the rounds, though for right now they've kept it local...whew, that was an endurance."


    "...What"s Reese’s name now?", asked Nico, seemingly unperturbed by this all.


    "Her name is still Reese, but they occasionally call her Yang, because she greatly resembles Yang Xiao Long from RWBY."


    "I see." Nico had to wonder...this wish to become as quiet and skilled as Blake...now that the possibility had arisen, was it really something he wanted to happen?




    "Are you high!? We can't let you enter! You have to be lookout!", responded Trevor to a very surprising declaration made a few days later by Nico.


    "We’re headed back inside the Cartier residence. I want to find these armbands. I want to see for myself." Nico wanted to confirm once and for all if the armbands were indeed the gauntlets known as Ember Celica. If they were...then the possibility of becoming Blake was there.


    "But you're on CRUTCHES!", Ryan insisted.


    "I need to see for myself! I can do just fine! I...*sigh*..." Nico knew he was being unreasonable. He wasn't going to win this. "...I know. I know...but I’d like you guys to wait a week. I get off my crutches then, and while my backside’s still healing, I think I’ll be good. Sound okay?" Ryan and Trevor were reluctant as Daniel stared into space like a fool. But eventually, Nico managed to persuade them, and they pushed off the return break-in to a week later.




    "All right, keep an eye out, Daniel." Daniel nodded as Trevor, Ryan, and Nico set off for the Cartier house again. Nico had just gotten off his crutches that morning, and the area where the surgeons had gone in to fix whatever they needed to fix had only just closed. Nico went over to the exposed basement window from earlier. The three looked around to make sure the coast was clear, which it was. There were no surveillance cameras around that they were aware of, as Trevor had scouted out the area a few days earlier. Unbeknownst to him, the Cartiers had asked the police, who had done surveillance for one week after the first break-in, to put surveillance back up some time after Trevor’s scouting, and a cop was watching from the police station. Nico crawled in through the window and Trevor was just about to follow when Ryan heard something he didn't want to hear: the sound of something moving on an axis.


    "Oh mother...", he blurted.


    "What?", asked Trevor, still on all fours.


    "Surveillance camera was installed after you scouted. I just heard it turn..." Ryan glanced around frantically, looking for it. It took a few seconds, but he found it, obscured by the breaker box. "...I researched the distance from the cop station to here. He's got five and a half minutes, give or take." Ryan then picked up his walkie talkie. "Nico, there's a surveillance camera. Get outta there. We’re taking off into the woods. Can you get out through the window?" Nico had landed on an old chair in the basement. It shattered, but it broke his fall. Unfortunately, the table had been removed from the basement, and while the safe was still there, it was much too heavy to shove over to use for leverage.


    "...No, no I can't. I also don't want to leave through the front door, nor the back. They prolly have systems that"ll immediately alert the Cartiers Ryan glanced at Trevor and shook his head. He then turned back towards the walkie talkie.


    "You know where the burned out cabin is?" Of course Nico did. That had been their old hangout once upon a time- "Meet us there. Good luck." And with that, they took off.




    Nico was beyond livid. Was he really such a useless deadweight that they had to leave him behind? Had his injury and time off made him that out of practice and shape? The dumbasses hadn't even given him the chance to prove himself again! But in any case, he had to leave. He probably had about five minutes until the cops arrived. And he needed to find an exit. Fast.


    Curiosity overtook Nico as he ran over to the safe. It was clear from a glance at the new lock the Cartiers had installed that there would be no opening it, as the new lock was a type that was very difficult to crack. Disappointed, Nico continued on and charged upstairs, hoping that the basement door wasn't locked. Thankfully, it wasn't.


    Nico, paranoid that he didn't have the time to check if the windows were bolted, rushed upstairs. After all, the average family opens the upstairs windows and closes the downstairs, right? Well, not the Cartiers. The upstairs area was rather small, so there weren't many windows, however all of them appeared to be bolted as evident by a very quick scan. Now he had to break a window...but with what?




    Last possible room he could escape out of: a girl's bedroom. A very familiar uniform hung in the corner made it clear that it belonged to Reese Cartier, a.k.a. Yang Xiao Long. But he didn't have time to fanboy. He needed something he could use to break a window. After a few seconds of searching, Nico stumbled across something...odd. It was a cleaver, but it also seemed to be a sheath for a sword. It was in the closet, propped against the wall. Reese had won it recently at a small Roosterteeth convention for being the best cosplayer. It was a replica of Blake’s weapon, the Gambol Shroud. It made of PVC, and was very well built.


    "Woah...well, it’ll do...I hope..." Nico was secretly kicking himself for not doing the logical thing and finding a fucking hammer, but it was a bit too late now. He did have time, however, to check one thing: whether the sword could be removed. Curiosity took over once again, and he unsheathed Gambol Shroud, clumsily dropping the sheath while he was at it, only to be greeted by an actual, beautiful, steel blade.


    "What in the...this was clearly a prop, though!" Well, it had been, but for reasons unknown, it had hardened into cold steel when he lay his hand upon the blade’s sheath, which was also converting into steel on the ground out of Nico"s viewing range. And speaking of converting, that's exactly what Nico"s body was doing, courtesy of laying his hand on the hilt of the actual blade.