Quick Buck was not proud. No one who scraped out a living doing what he did felt proud of it. But need outweighed guilt, and he was always in need.
If asked, he’d insist it was all just circumstance. He didn’t ask to be born on the wrong side of Crystal City, far from the prep schools and idyllic little suburbs full of fun little feel-good teen dramas with happy endings. The town of Bloodstone didn’t work that way. The only opportunities there were chances to escape, and Quick had never gotten his.
So he just kept going day by day, purse by purse, trip by trip to one of Bloodstone’s many no-questions-asked pawn shops. And then it all ended up in his landlord’s pocket, because old Flint Skin knew exactly what Quick was up to and was happy to keep the cops away in exchange for jacking up the rent for that shoebox of an apartment higher than a city penthouse's.
Quick Buck was not proud. But he was observant, careful, and quick on his feet, which meant he was able to keep going, hoping for some big score that could let him throw a wad of cash at Flint Skin and leave town with the rest, never looking back.
So when he saw three teenage girls wearing rubies the size of their palms, he felt his reaction was entirely reasonable.
He didn’t do anything obvious at first, of course. They were on the opposite sidewalk; what was he going to do, run across and tackle them? No, he just crossed the street at the earliest opportunity and moved just a touch faster until he’d spotted a trio of hooded sweatshirts and a hairstyle that could swallow an infant.
“Okay,” said the one in the twintails, “so there’s finally magic in this world. What are we supposed to do with it once we find it?”
Quick frowned beneath his own hood. If they were LARPers, the gems might be paste or plastic. But he hadn’t gotten a lot of scores lately, and the first of the month wasn’t getting any further away. He edged closer, staying in the trio’s wake as they made other pedestrians get out of their way.
“You leave that to me,” said the one in the middle, the one with the orange fluff that probably weighed as much as the rest of her. “We all know I’m the brains of this operation.”
“Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so well during the Prench Revolution,” said Twintails. “Or when we riled up that Hosnian kid so he'd shoot that archduke. Or—”
“I don’t see you coming up with anything better!”
Historical reenactors. Huh. Well, Quick supposed it took all kinds to fill his bank account. He kept inching closer.
“If you'd let someone else take the lead, maybe I would.”
“Or maybe I would!” added the third girl, her ponytail bouncing with every step.
“No, Sonata,” the others chorused.
“Aw, but I—“
“No, Sonata.”
“We need people to actually survive our plans,” Orange Fluff continued. “The last thing we need is another Puerto Caballo missile crisis.”
“Heh. Yeah, that was a good one.”
Quick had a number of questions and decided he could live a long, hopefully happy life without getting the answers to any of them. Besides, now he was close enough to see the clasp of Sonata’s necklace behind her ponytail and…
Velcro? Really?
“Ooh, what about that time when I held up traffic across Manehattan because I got my head stuck in a sewer grate!”
Orange Fluff heaved a sigh that spoke volumes about how long she’d known Sonata. “The fact that you take pride in that is exactly why you aren’t allowed to make plans.”
Yeah, Velcro made sense. Besides, they were coming up on an intersection. It was now or never.
In a single smooth motion, Quick moved past Sonata, grabbed the protruding tab at the back of the necklace, and dashed to his right. A loud rip and and a startled shout heralded him running full tilt, dodging around the sparse foot traffic long before any onlookers could even process what has happening, much less try to be heroes. He got lucky with some other intersections, took safe turns when he couldn’t, whatever it took to keep moving.
Once he felt he put enough distance between him and the marks, Quick ducked down an alley to check the score. He held up his hand...
And for a few moments, he just stared at the black fabric and bit of copper attached to nothing else.
“Hey, I kinda need that?”
“Gah!” Quick jumped back and turned, seeing Sonata smiling a bit too wide for comfort. To say nothing of her even being there. “How… how did you…” His mind got over its shock and came to the truly pressing question. “Where’s the—?” He cut himself off as his eyes drifted down and he answered his own question.
There, just above the neck of her sweatshirt, lay the jewel. This close, Quick could tell it was the real deal.
He could also tell it was embedded in Sonata’s skin.
“I told you double-sided tape wouldn’t keep it attached,” Twintails drawled from next to her.
“Honestly, where would you be without us?” added Orange Fluff.
All three were drawing closer. Smiling, or at least baring their teeth.
“I… I…” Quick gulped, eyes darting from girl to girl. He felt all too aware of the dead end behind him. “Um, sorry?”
“Oh, this isn’t how you’re going to apologize to us,” said Orange Fluff.
“I-it isn’t?”
“We need your car. And you to drive it. We have places to be, after all, and I have no intention of walking there.”
Quick did have a car. It usually wasn’t good for much beyond eating up whatever Flint Skin left him. “I don’t know if that’s going to—“
She silenced him with a finger to his lips. “Oh, that’s cute. You think you have a choice.”
“This is gonna take a lot of power, Adagio,” said Twintails.
She shot a glare at the purple girl. “I am fully aware. But it will pay off in the end.”
Then the girls began to sing, and Quick knew no more.