Yuri is still fucking clutching her stomach, and lying on her back on the floor, laughing hard.

Monique is laughing too, in small polite giggles. Kai is laughing as well, holding the staircase railing to use as support.

Blaise looks unfazed and moments later goes back to hacking children's accounts in Roblox.

Let me give a short back story here.

When we got to the safehouse, I was the first one through the door, and when I opened the door to the warehouse, the first face I saw had white pupils and scars all over it, as well as a fucking red wig on its head. I know I'm a psychic. 

The first instinct I had was to punch the shit out of the ghost of the Fruit-fly Creek which had followed us all the way till the safehouse. The ghost, though, ducked, and my fist collided with the wall behind it.

Turns out, the ghost was Alby. An unfortunate subject to one of Pandora's boredom fits. Why Alby? The two don't even get along!

So the makeup artist thought it would be nice to scare the crap out of whoever came here first. And guess who was lucky enough to fall into that trap?

Yuri, Kai and Minnie witnessed the whole thing firsthand and began laughing their asses off as I held my throbbing fist.

The punching caused Dhara to run into the scene in her Hello Kitty pajamas, holding a baseball bat in one hand and a...scalpel in the other hand? Where did she even get the scalpel from?

So there I am, holding an ice pack on my fist which Minnie so graciously brought for me while I scowl at all the assholes laughing at me.

Why me, Mr. God? Why me?

I finally decide to ignore every single one of them and head inside.

Let me describe our beautiful safehouse to all of you. It's an abandoned warehouse, which was once home to a candle factory, and there are still some cartons filled with old unused candles lying around everywhere, so the air smells fresh the entire time. With a lot of mixed scents. Pandora fell in love with it as soon as we came and Blaise begged me to change the location because she claimed that the scents messed with her brain functions. Pandora had then threatened to poison her food with lead makeup. That had shut Blaise up for the rest of the month.

It's a huge open space with a high ceiling, and a small net-mesh-balcony thing a fee feet up, which was probably used to supervise over the warehouse. Sometimes I found Rey or Kai sitting up there, lost in thought. It is good place to be alone though.

In the center, we had dragged in a huge table we found in a corner when we first came here, the table littered with blueprints, cans of Dr. Pepper and some weird beer called Soju, post it's with Minnie's handwriting, Pandora's makeup supplies on one side and Blaise's desktops on the other. 

There are no separate rooms so we have divided the space around the table into rooms by using Japanese paper dividers, which give you close to zero privacy. There are two bathrooms which, as soon as we arrived, were scrubbed to perfection by Ariadne who couldn't stand the look of them.

There's a small kitchen at the far right side of the warehouse, which I make quite good use of, when I don't have much to do.

But first things first, if I care for my life...I rush to Ariadne's little studio space, to keep the clothes on the racks they belong.

Ariadne is a bit... for the lack of better words...protective of the clothes she makes. Like really protective.

If she sees a stain...once Cassandra got a wine stain on her mustard yellow skater dress. Ariadne's face had gone way too coldly calm. The next day, all of Cassie's clothes had been cut into two pieces. Except for underwear of course. I had to lend the girl some sweatpants.

So all of us, without wasting time, try to spend the least amount of time possible in clothes designed by Ariadne. I drop off the dress and my polo shirt on some of the ceramic white clothing hangers and then make my way to my little walled space where I put on my comfiest set of pajamas.

I walk over to where Blaise, Kai and Rey are huddled around the computers.

"Okay, Alicia, the microphone works just fine," Blaise says, tapping around on her keyboard, "It'll take a few minutes to make a strong connection."

I turn to Rey, "So, you made sure of the identity?"

Rey nods at me, "He showed me his badge before walking onto the podium. This one's not a local officer. We're dealing with the Interpol sniffing our trail."

Dammit. We need to throw them off. Did I mention that Rey had been disguised as a security guard?

I turn to Kai, "It's not noticeable right?"

"It's on the bottom of his shoe. He didn't notice, he was too puffed up on his own sense of self importance to notice anything funny."

"Good."

Kai speaks up after a moment of hesitation, "Why didn't you let me put it on his watch? Why his shoe?"

I smile a little as I remember the scene. The dude had been suspicious ever since he had entered the building. The posture, the general contempt for the fanciness of the event...I knew this person did not belong in the setting, just like us. And then he went and talked to one of the guards and I had known for sure. Thank God I had a spare microphone with me.

The question had been where to put it. Kai's suggestion had been his watch, but the dude fiddled with it way too much. Plus, he was decked out in a tuxedo, but his shoes didn't match his outfit. They looked worn, but still I got the feeling that the dude wouldn't be throwing them out anytime soon. They looked workplace issued.

"He would've found the microphone on the watch. He fiddled with that thing too much. Enough with the questions, do you have a connection?" I ask Blaise.

Blaise clicks on a tab on her screen and we immediately hear a male voice, "Yes Ma, I'm in Philadelphia. No, no estoy aquí de vacaciones. Tenía un negocio importante...Una semana mas..."

So he's staying here for a week. He must have to go in for work tomorrow. Maybe we can get intel into what the police are up to.

"Blaise stop the recording," I say and the girl switched the audio off, "Track him bit by bit during business hours tomorrow. Okay?"

~

I call a team meeting after everyone has settled in.

Everyone except for me, pulls up one of the wheely chairs which we had found in the management office of the warehouse, and sits down at the dreadfully cluttered table in the middle of the room. Well except for Rey, she's knocked out on her air mattress but I'll fill her in when she's awake. I'm not waking her up ever again in my life. There's only so many black eyes my face can handle.

"Okay, team...We did it!" I say, holding up the statue a little smaller than the size of my hand up for everyone to see. Everyone cheers, some louder than others, "This shit here is nine hundred grand!"

"Nine hundred grand! Nine hundred grand!" Alby, Elara and Minnie cheer together.

"And has rubies on its toes which are by no means...trackers," Kai clarifies and Yuri chokes a little on the soda she had been drinking. 

"So here's the game plan, for now. Tomorrow is a completely free day. Go out, explore Philadelphia, have fun. Oh well, everyone except Blaise," I turn to Blaise, "You're on duty."

Blaise rolls her eyes at me but nods subtly. 

"Don't make new friends and don't get drunk and tell them you are a thief. Stay away from any area remotely near to the police station."

"I might go to the Liberty Bell, seems like the only place to see in Philadelphia," Alby crosses her arms over her chest.

Cassandra places an arm on her shoulder, "Don't worry, I found out about this charity gala happening in this...fancy place, you're coming with me."

"What do you plan on doing there?" Dharuna asks Cassie.

I stare blankly at Dharuna, "Yeah they are going to donate nine hundred grand to a museum because they are passionate about the modern arts."

"What?" Dhara stares back at me, matching my blankness, but I suspect that her blankness might be a bit too real.

"Cons Dhara, they are going to run cons," Minnie clarifies, and Dhara smiles, "Oh okay, I was planning on checking out a museum for myself."

Yuri stretches her arms out, "I'm gonna go on a hunt for the best Philly cheesesteak, incase I ever revisit this city."

"Of all the places in this world you can visit, what could possibly make you want to revisit this place?" I ask. Okay maybe I am a bit too biased against this city. I don't even know why.

Kai stands up, "I was gonna go to the love park and chill, but Yuri's idea seems better."

"Love Park?" Pandora asks.

"Oh yeah we passed it on the way here. Looked cool."

"That convinced me. I'm going there," Pandora says, then goes back to examining her nails.

Minnie shrugs, "Eh well, I'll join ya."

Elara perks up, "I might be able to get the statue out of our hands in Philly itself. Rey agreed to come help me."

"Be careful, you two," I warn her.

Ariadne speaks up, "I am going to go fabric shopping," then she makes direct eye contact with me, "And you're coming with me."

I shrug, "I'm cool with that. As long as its not Wal-"

"It's Walmart."

"Damn it!"

I would explain my aversion to Walmart, but I had pledged an oath, 'What happens in Walmart, stays in Walmart.'

***

Hey hey! How was this particular chapter? 

The next chapter is completely chill, and one of my favourites till now. 

Also, I would love it if you guys would just spam comment, like write random shit but interact with the chapters you know? It is very motivating to write forward. Also, if you find the story uninteresting and boring and are still reading because you feel obligated to read after I chose you OC, don't bother. It's okay. Because I get that feeling from some people, and I don't like to force anyone to read this book.