The Horderby mansion stands on top of a small hill, just steep enough to look down on any approaching visitors without actually inconveniencing the owners in any way. This mansion holds within its walls a magnificent, almost obscene amount of wealth, or else the products thereof. Most people, when asked, wouldn’t actually be able to tell you what Arthur Horderby does for a living (rumor holds that even his immediate family wouldn’t be able to answer that question conclusively), but they could tell you that, whatever it is, it lends itself to an incredibly lavish lifestyle: paintings for Arthur Horderby’s (allegedly) discerning eye, clothes and jewelry for his wife Elena Horderby, the finest books and tutors and toys and musical instruments and so on for their daughter, Loretta Horderby – all of these are merely the tip of the iceberg concerning the Horderby family’s list of luxuries.
As, perhaps, a reasonable corollary, the Horderby mansion is also guarded by the best security money can buy. Armed guards at every entrance, attack dogs patrolling the perimeter, motion sensors turned on when nobody is home, you name it, they’ve got it.
In most cases, these things would be enough to completely deter any potential thieves from making the Horderby mansion their target. For the seven people now approaching the mansion, however, these obstacles are not considered challenging enough (in theory, the presence of the local superheroes would considerably up the ante, but the Birds have made sure to schedule this heist on a day when all of the big-name heavy hitters are out of town fighting some mad scientist down in Florida; they’re not interested in that big of a challenge, at least not today), and so they’ve gone the extra mile to impose on themselves a time limit of sorts: the Horderbys are currently out of the house, attending some press conference being held by the governor. Upon the conclusion of the press conference, the Horderbys plan to bring the governor and his family to their home to enjoy dinner (the newspapers seem to have neglected the portion of the evening dedicated to bribery of the governor, or as Arthur Horderby prefers to refer to it, “lobbying”). The seven thieves plan to get into the house and take what they want before the Horderbys return with the governor, and make their escape just as they arrive.
The spectacle of the escape, after all, is, for the Birds of a Feather, part of the fun of the heist in the first place.
Currently, the seven of them are making their way towards the mansion through the grove of trees immediately surrounding it. Not walking along the ground, mind you, but through the trees, jumping nimbly from branch to branch. If there were anyone around to see them, they would find the sight of seven people in strange outfits and feathery masks dashing from tree to tree quite strange and unnerving, but the Birds aren’t so careless as to do this part of the job with anyone watching; the only possible witnesses are the watchdogs and the various mechanical security features, and the Birds have dealt with each of these groups quite easily. Each time one of the dogs’ ears perk up, it’s accompanied by a snap or a whistle from Warbler, a young woman with tied-back blonde hair, a fancy brown coat (complete with cravat) and a matching feathery mask. Channeling her supernatural gift into a form of ventriloquism, Warbler snaps and whistles completely silently, the accompanying sounds instead seeming to originate from somewhere else in the grove. Meanwhile, the state-of-the-art motion sensors and cameras are all shutting down the moment Owl so much as brushes up within a certain radius of them; a woman in a black and green jumpsuit, her head obscured by a high-tech-looking helmet rather than a feathery mask like her companions, Owl shuts down each device she passes with a flick of the wrist or a pointing finger (the nonchalance of these simple gestures veils the sleepless nights and metric tons of coffee required for Owl to craft the small devices embedded in her gloves).
With the dogs distracted and the cameras blinded, the seven pause in the trees just at the edge of the small grove.
“Warbler, Owl, good job getting ears and eyes off us,” Goose whispers to her companions. She wears a white jumpsuit with bright orange boots and a matching belt. She has a white mask with feathers on it, matching the feathers that lightly decorate her outfit. She wears a hood over her head, covering short orange hair. “Owl, how’s the security inside the house looking?”
Owl starts moving her hands around, as if tapping an invisible, floating screen.
“No guards inside the house proper, a few outside patrolling the perimeter, a few underground watching the camera feeds who are starting to panic now that I’ve cut them off. Shutting down their communications…now. There are some cameras and alarms inside the house, too. Will get those momentarily.” Goose gives her companion a thumbs-up, then turns to another of her fellow burglars.
“Alright, Corvid, you’re up. Get the locks, then let us in.”
Corvid, wearing all black, their dark cloak and mask similarly feather-decorated as the outfits of their allies and their jet-black hair spilling out of a matching hood, gives a single nod and drops down from the branch. As they approach the ground, they completely vanish into the shadow of the tree. The others look into the window and see Corvid emerge behind a couch. Just as quickly as they had reappeared, Corvid is gone again. After a few quiet moments, Corvid reappears by the window and opens it up. They gesture for the others to come in. Goose gives them a thumbs up, then opens a pouch on her belt and takes out a coil of wire. As she mutters about getting an actual grappling hook at some point, Goose begins uncoiling the wire, ties one end around her tree, and hands the other to the woman sitting next to her.
“Flamingo, bring this over.”
“You got it, Goose.” Flamingo lets a pair of wings extend, each one made of bright pink fabric and connecting her arms to her sides. A single flap whips up a gust of wind strong enough push her across the distance, a streak of pink feathers and flowing black hair flying from tree to window. She lands gracefully inside and ties her end of the wire to the bottom of the window-frame. With the wire secure at both ends, Goose, Warbler, Owl, and their two remaining companions dash across it from the tree to the window, each step as light and silent as a breeze. Once everyone is in, Goose unties the wire from the window and drops it out of the window.
“Penguin, Seagull,” Goose says, “get the floors downstairs; that’ll give us a bit of extra time in case the guards hear us before we’re done grabbing shit.”
“With pleasure.” Penguin, a slender young man, with shoulder length white hair, a fancy black and white mask, and a full tuxedo (complete with bowtie) exits the room and silently pads down the stairs to the front entrance. He’s followed by Seagull, an incredibly tall, dark-skinned woman wearing dark blue pirate garb. Once they get to the ground floor, Seagull holds out her hands, out of which flow twin streams of water with which she covers the floor. Penguin then places both palms on the floor, and a thin film of ice spreads from his hands to coat the entire ground floor.
“Remind me again why you needed all that water to freeze?” Seagull asks as the two repeat the process on the stairs while they walk back up. “I’ve seen you make a damn blizzard all on your own.”
“Trying to conserve energy, Gull,” Penguin responds. “Freezing the floor without the water takes more effort than freezing it with the water, and Goose and I agreed that it wouldn’t make sense to expend that much energy this early in the day.”
“Fair enough.” Seagull and Penguin return to the others. “Floor’s iced, boss.”
“Great,” Goose begins opening doors and peeking through them, “then start grabbing what you want and bringing it in here. Be back here in…” Goose glances at her watch. “…let’s say ten minutes. That’ll give Corvid another ten to get our haul to the safe zone and still be back in time for our show for the governor.”
“Ooooooo!!” Flamingo’s voice comes from another room. “Look at all of these, they’re gorgeous! Goose, come look at these dresses!”
“Alright, alright.” Goose chuckles as she joins Flamingo in the master bedroom.
“Which of these do you like better, Goose?” Flamingo holds up two dresses, which Goose briefly glances at before turning her attention to the rest of the room.
“Just take both,” Goose says as she begins tapping at the walls, “they’d both look good on you, and there’s nothing stopping you from taking both of– Aha!” Goose rips away a patch of wallpaper to reveal a small safe. “Jackpot!” Goose presses her ear next to the dial and turns it a couple of times. In a matter of seconds, the safe is open, and Goose is staring at an alcove filled wall to wall with cash. “Hey, Flam, go take those dresses to the pile, then come back to help me with all of this.” Goose takes something small out of one of the pockets on her belt and unfolds it, revealing a plastic bag. She begins scooping the cash into the bag. “We are eating well tonight!”
As Goose brings her bag back to the meetup point, she passes by Penguin carrying a fairly large, abstract painting. She takes a look.
“What…what is that supposed to be?”
“To be quite honest, I’m not really sure.” Penguin sets the painting down by the bag of money. “I imagine our friend Arthur doesn’t either. But I like it, so I figured I’d take it. It’s a shame we can’t really take that chandelier hanging over the floor Seagull and I froze, it’s quite nice.”
“Fair enough.” Goose looks around. “I thought I saw Corvid go with you?”
“They decided to go tear up the paintings I didn’t want. Said they wanted to ‘leave an impression’. You know how they are with pretentious rich folk.”
“Ugh. Can you go make sure they don’t leave any daggers behind? I do not want a repeat of the museum run from last month.”
As Penguin leaves, he has to duck past Seagull, who is carrying a piano into the room. Warbler enters behind him, looking absolutely livid.
“Do you see this shit, Goose?!” Warbler yells. “Look at this! This is the nicest goddamn piano I have seen in my entire life, and it’s covered in dust!!! The kid never even uses it!”
“Then I’m glad we’re giving it a new home.” Goose responds. She looks over to Seagull. “When Corvid starts bringing the stuff to the safe zone, go with them. I don’t think they’ll be able to lift that thing like you can.” Seagull grunts in affirmation as she puts the piano down.
“I’m telling you, Goose,” Warbler continues, “this is an outright crime. And not the cool, fun kind of crime, like the ones we do, but like, an actually bad crime.”
As Warbler continues her tirade on the Horderbys’ shallow treatment of music as merely a marker of wealth rather than as a serious art form, Owl enters the room, examining a thumb drive.
“What’s the haul looking like on your end, Owl?”
“About a decade’s worth of financial records, including a decent chunk of tax fraud, embezzlement, and bribery.” Owl responds. “Records of conversations with government officials implicating a fair few of them in bribery and the like. And a couple of conversations between our boy Arthur and some very pretty young women who are not his wife.” Owl puts the thumb drive into a pouch on her jumpsuit. “Plus some rather…explicit photographs of those same young women. And, unfortunately, of Arthur himself.” Goose shudders slightly at that last bit, then turns to Flamingo.
“How soon will you be able to get all of that into the papers?” Goose asks.
“Couple of days, maybe a week at most.” Flamingo leans against a nearby chair. “Give the stuff Owl nabbed a bit of time to ‘leak’ to avoid anyone tracing it back to us.”
“Freeze!” The Birds’ attention turns to the doors that were just kicked down by a group of heavily armed guards.
“Oh crap, it is the Birds!” One of the guards in the back shouts out. Goose stifles a chuckle.
“It’s about time you boys showed up!” Goose says as she gives a little wave. “I hear the roads were awful out there!”
“Put your hands up and surrender or we will shoot!” Every guard aims their weapon at the group of thieves.
“Corvid, Seagull,” Goose whispers, “start moving this stuff to the safe zone. Don’t worry about the dogs and stuff, stealth time is over. The rest of us can take these jokers down.” With a nod, Corvid uses their power, melding themselves, Seagull, and a decent chunk of the loot into a nearby shadow.
The guards have the remaining five thieves surrounded by three doors. The thieves jump into action, and all of the guards open fire.
Goose ducks and weaves through the first few shots, before taking a small black pellet out from her belt and throwing it at the guards’ feet, where it explodes into a thick cloud of smoke. Without hesitation, Goose dashes into the cloud of smoke.
Penguin draws a thin rapier from his side and brandishes it at rapid speed at the incoming bullets. In mere moments, the guards’ guns are letting loose nothing but small clicking noises, while Penguin holds a rapier covered with impaled bullets, like a metallic shish kebab. As he slides the bullets off of the blade, Warbler steps forward and holds one hand out in the shape of a gun. With her other hand, Warbler covers her mouth as she points at each guard with her finger-gun and makes a gunshot noise. With each “shot,” an invisible impact slams into a guard and knocks them out of the room until each one of them is dealt with. Warbler moves her finger-gun to her hip and “holsters” it.
Owl and Flamingo don’t even allow their assaulters a chance to pull the trigger. Owl taps a small button on each of her gloves, then holds her hands out as the guns fly out of the guards’ hands and into hers, sticking magnetically until she drops them and they all fall apart. Flamingo then takes a small object from her side that unfolds to reveal a large, shining pink scythe. With an elegant twirl, she swings the blade through the air, and a massive gust of wind follows the arc of her swing, blowing the armed guards back and all the way down the stairs to the ground floor.
By this time, the cloud of smoke from Goose’s smoke pellet has dissipated, revealing a triumphant Goose standing over a group of guards tied up with more of the same wire she had used earlier. She turns to the others.
“Let’s go to the ground floor; Corvid and Seagull will meet us there, and that’s where we’ll greet the governor and the Horderbys. Penguin, get rid of the ice on the floor, we don’t need it anymore.” Penguin places a hand on the ground and the sheet of ice completely disappears. Goose dusts off her costume as she watches the front door open.
“Hello, Mr. Gov–” Goose is cut off as she and the others are suddenly slammed down to the ground. The thieves watch as the group they were expecting – the governor and the Horderby family – stands at the door behind someone that they were not: a tall lady with blonde hair that seems to float and a brown jumpsuit with yellow lines and a stylized picture of a meteor on the chest, a woman that the Birds recognized as one of the most powerful heroes in the city.
“Oh, hey! Orbit!” Goose tries to stand, but can’t overcome the intense gravity now imposed on her. The other thieves similarly struggle as Goose speaks. “Good to see ya, I didn’t know you were back in town already!”
“I wasn’t, until a few minutes ago,” Orbit replies, her arms crossed, “but I can fly at terminal velocity.” She glances down at Owl. “A fact that it seems you all didn’t factor into your plans.”
“Actually,” Owl strains to speak, “I did. Even at terminal velocity, there’s no way you should have been able to get here from Florida in time to meet us here.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Orbit tilts her head. “The good doctor’s base in Florida was a distraction. We managed to get to his real base in New Jersey yesterday and take him down just this morning. From there, it wasn’t exactly a long flight to intercept you all.” Without waiting for any reply, Orbit reaches into a pocket on her costume.
“Any chance you’ve got a plan to get us out of this, Goose?” Flamingo whispers. Goose is silent for a split second longer than Flamingo would have liked.
“Yeah, I’ve got something,” she finally responds, “we just need to keep her talking for now.” Goose suddenly speaks up loudly. “Hey, Orbit, I’ve always wondered, have any of the villains you’ve fought – I mean, like, the ones that actually try to, you know, kill you – have any of them ever made the joke about writing your Orbit-uary?” What follows is a series of groans from everyone present; Orbit, the other thieves, even the governor and the Horderbys.
“Orbit,” Penguin says, “the rest of us are willing to come quietly and plead guilty so long as Goose is kept in solitary so that we don’t have to hear any more of her awful puns.”
“Oh, screw you, Penguin, that one was good!” While Goose complains, she quietly slips another smoke pellet from her pouch and keeps it under her right hand. With her other hand, she starts tapping, seemingly haphazardly, on the ground. I can only hope Corvid’s got a good vantage point and gets the message, she thinks to herself. And that they’ve retained all those Morse Code classes I made everyone take, for that matter.
“Birds of a Feather,” Orbit addresses the thieves while holding a sheet of paper, ignoring Goose’s comment, “you are hereby under arrest for multiple counts of grand larceny, destruction of property, and assault, as well as one count of interfering with a mail carrier. You have the right to remain silen–” Suddenly, a massive cloud of smoke appears, seeming to explode from thin air. The smoke hangs above the group, between them and the ceiling. Goose tries to keep Orbit from noticing her grin as she herself notices that her smoke pellet is no longer in her hand.
“Gah!” Orbit’s gaze shoots upward towards the smoke cloud. “Dammit, I knew I was missing some of you. You’re all–” Orbit turns her eyes back down, only to find that all of the thieves have disappeared.
“Up here, Orby!” Orbit’s gaze once again goes up as Goose’s voice cuts through the smoke. “Before we continue, I’m curious; do you just not know what kind of stuff your boy Arthur is up to, or are you in his pocket too?”
“What are you–”
“Oh, man, are you one of his mistresses?! Owl, please tell me she’s one of his mistresses, that would be hilario–”
“Why you little–. You’re not getting away from me this time!” Orbit reaches her hand in the direction of Goose’s voice and makes a pulling motion as she uses her power to alter gravity. Expecting the thief to come flying (well, falling, technically) towards her, Orbit is surprised when she instead hears a metallic SNAP and a high-velocity chandelier slams into her with a loud CRUNCH. A moment later, all seven thieves emerge from the shadow created by the slowly-dissipating smoke cloud.
“Teleportation provided by Corvid, ventriloquism from Warbler, and a well-placed question courtesy of yours truly.” Goose gives a quick bow.
“Is, uh…” Warbler points at Orbit, currently prone beneath the chandelier. “She’s still alive, right?”
“Oh, please.” Owl answers. “I’ve seen Orbit survive entire buildings collapsing on her head, I’m sure she can handle a chandelier. Isn’t that right, Orbit?” Owl’s question is met with a low moan from below the chandelier. “Yeah, she’ll be fine.”
“Thank you all for coming!” Goose shouts as she and the rest of the Birds walk around Orbit and the chandelier and out the front door. Goose pulls a few small black pellets from her belt. “I hope you enjoyed the show today, tip your waiters, drive home safely!” She then throws the pellets at the ground in front of her, surrounding everyone present with a thick plume of smoke. As the governor and the Horderbys step out of the smoke and watch it waft away, they see that the Birds of a Feather have all completely vanished. After a brief moment of silence, Elena Horderby turns to her husband.
“So what was it that girl was saying about mistresses?”