Chapter Text
Leonie disabled the alarm and slipped silently through the window at the end of the hallway, closely followed by Claude. The sound of laughter and clinking glasses filtered up from the party downstairs. As Leonie peered around the corner to confirm that the hallway was clear, Claude whispered into his earpiece, “Lysithea, how long do we have before they notice something is up with the camera feeds?”
He could hear the exasperation in her voice as she replied, “Claude, I’m a professional. They won’t notice anything. You should be more worried about someone deciding the party is boring and going to get a book instead.”
“Normal people don’t hide in libraries during parties, we’ll be fine. Hilda, Raphael, be ready with the distraction. We’re about to go in.”
He could hear Hilda subtly clear her throat, the agreed-upon signal, while Raphael loudly whispered, “Okay!”
Claude ran his hand over his face in frustration. The man was undeniably strong and had a big heart, but he was about as stealthy as a freight train. He just had to hope that nobody noticed the comically oversized waiter muttering to himself in a corner. Maybe bringing him in on this one was a bad idea… too late now.
“Marianne, everything ready to go?” Claude asked.
“Yes,” the quiet voice replied into his ear.
“And you’re sure that this thing isn’t going to blow me up when I set it off, right?”
“It should be just strong enough to open the safe door, if I did it correctly…”
“That’s… not exactly reassuring.”
Ignatz’s voice came through the speaker next. “Marianne has never let us down, I’m sure it will work perfectly.” Marianne made a small squeak of embarrassment and Claude could practically feel her blushing over the airwaves.
“Alright. Let’s do this.”
Leonie quickly picked the lock on the study door, disabled a second alarm, and went inside. Claude crashed into her as she suddenly froze. Kneeling in front of the safe concealed in one of the bookshelves was a tall man with purple hair. Judging by his all-black attire and shocked expression, he was there for the same reason they were.
The man quickly pulled himself together, rose to his feet, and eyed them warily. “I regret to inform you that I’ve already liberated this safe of its contents. Good day.” He tightened his grip on the bag he carried as he moved closer to the window, keeping his eyes on the pair, but Claude cut off his escape route.
“Sorry, but we can’t let you leave with the statue. We’re being paid a lot of money to bring that back to our employer.”
“As am I. If you’ll excuse me.” He started towards the window again, but stopped when he saw the device Claude was holding. “I’m sorry, were you going to blow the safe up?” he asked incredulously.
“Only a little bit,” Claude replied defensively. “Just to open it.”
“Amateurs,” the man muttered under his breath. As Claude opened his mouth to argue, the door flew open and banged against the bookshelf behind it. The trio spun around to see Raphael panting in the doorway, apparently having sprinted up from the party below. So much for subtlety.
“I heard someone in here with you. Do you need me to fight them?” he asked eagerly, as if he were volunteering to play with a puppy rather than beat someone up.
Claude sighed. “No, Raphael. This gentleman here had been planning on taking the statue as well, but he was just about to hand it over to us and leave.” An annoyed look crossed the purple-haired man’s face, but he seemed less inclined to argue after the arrival of a gigantic man who had enthusiastically offered to fight him.
“Oh, that’s good,” Raphael said cheerfully. “Acheron would be really annoyed if—ow!” Leonie had punched him hard in the arm and was giving him a death glare.
The mystery man frowned. “Excuse me, did you say Acheron?”
Shit. This was bad. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you, okay?” Claude said, cautiously. “How about you just forget you heard that, give me the statue, and get out of here. I know there’s no honor amongst thieves, but we can call this common courtesy amongst burglars.”
Despite his words, he had no intention of seriously injuring the man. He had two rules: don’t hurt people, and only steal from rich assholes who deserve it. Well, the first one was more of a guideline—knocking out a security guard here or there was inevitable in his line of work, but he really did try to avoid it as much as possible. Serious violence was not on the table though, and despite Raphael’s size and frequent offers to fight people—he was so cheerful that it often came across as an offer rather than a threat, although he was very capable of following through on said offer—Claude knew he didn’t want to do any lasting damage to the man either. This guy was trying to make a living just like they were, even if the occupation they had all chosen was decidedly illegal.
“No, you misunderstand. Did Acheron hire you?” the man asked urgently.
“Can you please just forget—”
“He hired me too.” The gears that had been whirling furiously in Claude’s mind trying to find a way out of this predicament suddenly ground to a halt.
“… Huh,” he said eloquently.
Lysithea’s voice crackled through his earpiece and he jumped, having forgotten about everyone else listening in on their conversation amid all the tension. “That sneaky, two-timing rat bastard!” she exclaimed, loudly enough that Claude flinched and the purple-haired man raised an eyebrow.
“Language, young lady,” he replied automatically, but Lysithea was too angry to notice or care.
“I should have known that that slimy piece of shit…” The rant continued as he took out his earpiece for relief. With the newfound quiet, he noticed a change in the sounds coming from the floor below. The laughter had quieted down and the voices sounded more tense, which Claude recognized as the distinctive sound of a party interrupted by security going on alert. I wonder what alerted them, the suspicious waiter sprinting into a restricted area of the house or the sound of the most heavily secured door in the building banging open? He would have to talk to Raphael about his methods after this, assuming they weren’t all in jail.
“We need to go. Now. We can finish this discussion once we’re out of here.” Into the earpiece, he said, “Hilda, get out of there and have Ingrid come pick us up around the back.” The man started to argue, but Claude said firmly, “Security is on the way and we are all screwed if we stay here. Our ride is outside, we can talk there. How did you get in here?” Footsteps started pounding down the hallway, and Leonie locked the door to the study and pushed a heavy chair in front of it to buy them time.
The purple-haired man pursed his lips but relented as the footsteps approached. “Grappling hook.” Three sets of eyes flicked to Raphael in unison.
“Fuck this,” Leonie snapped as she picked up a heavy bookend and hurled it at the glass French doors that led out onto a balcony. “Raphael, follow me.” She climbed over the railing, hung off the edge of the balcony, and dropped the remaining few feet to the ground. She looked up impatiently as Raphael copied her movements.
Eyeing the broken glass and hard pavement below, their involuntary partner in crime said, “I’ll take the grappling hook.”
“Good call.”
An older-model sedan screeched to a halt as they sprinted towards the street and both doors flew open. Hilda was frantically gesturing to them as they dove into the car, Raphael’s large frame taking up the front seat while the others ended up in a messy tangle of limbs in the back. They had barely closed the doors when Ingrid floored it and the car rocketed off at an improbable speed given its unassuming appearance. As they turned the corner, they could see security flooding onto the balcony and around the perimeter of the house.
There was a moment of silence in the car as they caught their breath and arranged themselves into a more reasonable sitting position, although the back seat was cramped with the addition of an extra person. Ingrid zipped through several turns to put distance between them and the house, then merged into the flow of traffic on a busy road and became nearly indistinguishable from all the other cars on the road. Suddenly, Claude threw back his head and began to laugh uncontrollably. Hilda, Leonie, and the stranger glared daggers at him, but Raphael started to guffaw and the women eventually lost their composure and joined in. The other man gaped at them in disbelief.
“I fail to see what, exactly, is so funny about this situation.”
The others laughed harder in response, their laughter taking on a hysterical tinge. Gasping for breath, Claude managed to get out, “That was a spectacular clusterfuck.”
Tears rolling down her cheeks, Hilda agreed, “Maybe the biggest one in history.”
“The greatest clusterfuck in all of Fodlan,” Leonie added.
Ingrid shook her head from the front seat, a wry grin on her face. “Well, at least none of you idiots got arrested. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thanks, Ingrid,” Claude said with a wink. “We owe you one.”
“You owe me a lot more than one at this point.”
“What is wrong with you?” the purple-haired man snapped suddenly. The laughter quieted as all eyes turned to him. “We nearly got caught and we still need to figure out why Acheron sent us after the same piece of art on the same night. This is hardly a time for such levity.”
Claude sighed heavily and became more serious. “You’re right. We’ve never had a job go to hell like that before and I think we’re all a bit freaked out, but we do need to figure out what to do next. It looks like Acheron tried to screw us both over, and we need to figure out why.”
“Hmph.” The stranger looked slightly mollified by the apology, but still extremely unhappy with the situation. “Well, I suppose as long as we’re temporarily working together while we figure this out, I should introduce myself. My name is Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
Claude and Hilda made eye contact across the backseat and started to giggle at his self-important tone, but Leonie’s eyes lit up. “You’re the safecracker! I heard about your job in Enbarr a few months back, everyone said that vault was impenetrable. How’d you do it?”
Lorenz smiled smugly and said, “A gentleman never shares his secrets.” Leonie looked like she was about to start interrogating him on his techniques when Claude intervened.
“Anyway,” he said loudly, “Acheron. Ingrid, take us home. We can talk there.”
A look crossed Lorenz’s face as it dawned on him that he was in a car with several strangers who were after the statue he had in his possession, one of whom had already offered to fight him, and that he was being taken to their base of operations without a means of escape.
“Get that look off your face,” Hilda said, crossly. “If we were going to kill you for the statue, we would have done it back at the scene.” Oddly, Lorenz didn’t seem comforted by her words.
“She’s right,” added Claude. “I mean, we wouldn’t have killed you, but if we were going to take it from you we would have done it already. We have bigger problems now. I don’t know what game Acheron was playing, but nobody screws over the Golden Deer and gets away with it.”
“Oh? You’re the Golden Deer?” Lorenz looked like he was suppressing a rather undignified laugh as he spoke. “I had pictured a team that was a bit more… refined.”
“Look, asshole,” Leonie started angrily.
Claude sighed wearily. “Tonight was not our finest moment. But you’ve heard of us, and you know what we can do, right?” Lorenz reluctantly nodded. “Okay, good. Now we’re going to go back to the house, talk this over, and figure out what we’re going to do about this Acheron guy.”
With a dramatic sigh, Lorenz acquiesced. “Very well, but I’ll have you know that there are people tracking my location and they are prepared to intervene if I don’t maintain regular contact with them.”
Raphael turned back to look at him. “Isn’t it, like, your whole thing that you work alone?” Claude rolled his eyes. How had they heard about this guy? Isn’t the goal of stealing stuff to not have people know who you are afterwards?
“Well, on this particular occasion—” Lorenz sputtered.
“We’re not going to hurt you, okay? Just come inside, meet the team, and we’ll figure out our next steps,” Claude said with finality as the car rolled to a stop outside a small townhouse in a nice part of town.
“Fine.”
They emerged from the car, with Hilda considerately taking Lorenz’s arm in a vise grip so he didn’t do anything silly like trip or bolt away with the statue. Claude opened the door with a flourish and ushered them inside.
“Time to meet the Golden Deer.”