Rockfish tapped the vault guard's broad back casually.
The guard whipped around, there was a stern look on his face that masked how terrified he was at the current moment.
He found a small girl with red hair glaring at him in frustration.
"Hah? Am I seeing things?"
The guard's mature voice was full of doubt.
There was no way someone's kid ended up in the Auction Vault by accident.
The guard began to pull out a taser subtly.
He muttered to himself darkly as he did so.
"...No one gets in the vault, I can't let the boss down. Sorry, little one..."
The little one before him waved at him dryly.
"Eye of truth."
Angjayre's yellow eyes beamed brightly, becoming beacons of ethereal red.
The guard felt extremely heavy, and just like that, he hit the floor in an unconscious stupor.
Thud.
Rockfish ruffled Angjayre's hair like a proud father as he deactivated the invisibility barrier calmly.
"Good job."
Angjayre shoved his hand off in tutting annoyance.
"Let's go."
Rockfish held out a hand.
BOOP.
His hand lit up blue as a brown cotton bag teleported into his grasp.
Rockfish and Angjayre began stuffing all they could into the bag.
There was enough gold to build a temple, stuffed into this one tiny vault.
There were many relics as well, the kind that sold for millions.
A humored voice sounded from behind the two whilst they were madly filling up the cotton bag.
"You two sure are acting greedy."
Rockfish bolted around, sweat was streaming down his face.
He had been on the verge of exploding from how nervous he was this whole time.
A look of relief covered his face as he noticed it was merely the boss.
"Ah. Reta. When did you get here?"
Reta who had removed his disguise flashed a charming smile.
"I arrived when Angjayre took out the guard. Now let's hurry. We don't want to get caught. Pueris should have already fled, he's done his job."
"There's cameras littered all around this place. Don't bother grabbing those gold bars, just get the jewel."
Rockfish stuttered solemnly.
"Eh-. Reta. I think that's easier said than done."
Reta had an obscure, muddled look on his face.
"Hmm? How so?"
Rockfish laughed weakly.
"Look around Reta. There are at least a hundred boxes."
"And there's no way to know which one has the jewel."
Reta's body shifted as he scanned the entire room and realized that Rockfish was right.
There were hundreds of small boxes, all spatially enhanced to be bigger on the insides than they seemed.
It would take a while to find the Jewel, their research had let them know that they were looking for a white crystal in the shape of a dragon.
After the group had spent 2 minutes searching for the jewel in paranoid despair, Reta squinted his eyes at Angjayre in frustration.
"Angjayre, can't you just use your eye of truth?"
Angjayre looked up innocently.
"It would really hurt if I did that."
Reta was lost for words.
Angjayre could always use her eye of truth.
The only time it failed was when the whole group tested to see if she could test whether God was real or not.
He asked her a question in suspense.
"Is it to do with the crystal?"
Angjayre nodded her head gravely.
"Most likely. A jewel worth so much on the black market definitely has more to it than sparkles and shine."
Reta pulled out another box.
He sighed in a vexing manner.
"Nothing but gold and rubies..."
Rockfish raised his eyebrows.
"Oh."
Reta looked back coyly.
"What is it?"
Rockfish raised a white crystal that resembled a dragon, his hand was gripping it loosely.
Its shine was so divine that it looked like something that had been snatched from a dream.
"It's the jewel. The one we've been looking for. At least I think so..."
Angjayre scouted the jewel's angles in suspicion.
"...It looks real enough..."
Reta grinned widely.
"Alright! So now, we flee?"
Rockfish smirked childishly.
"Of course. This was pretty easy-."
"Not so fast."
The room felt stuffy and surreal.
A dark gaping slit tore the room in half.
From that spatial slit, a man came out.
He had deep black hair that was long and styled like a celebrity's.
He was wearing a fashionable suit with no tie or bonnet.
One of his shiny black shoes had been torn in half.
There was a roach tattoo on his left cheek.
"I'll be taking that back."
He spoke rother rough English, and he looked Chinese from the tone of his skin.
Rockfish laughed villainously.
"Sure you will."
"Get him, Reta."
Reta smiled silently.
"...You don't have to tell me twice."
Reta dashed into the new visitor swiftly, sparks of red chaos danced around him.
He was like a mindless blur.
A mindless blur that the hero before Reta knew exactly how to deal with.
"Spatial Blade."
A warping shard of alienist purple manifested into the right hand of the Chinese man.
The Chinese man slashed outwardly with perfect timing and surprising physical strength.
Reta's chest was scraped deeply by this purple shard.
Sharp red blood shot out like a crescent moon across Reta's chest.
Instead of retreating, Reta used the moment to launch a right hook at the strange hero before him who clearly had some kind of spatial ability.
Red chaos infused into Reta's hand and devoured it, this punch would kill if it landed.
A deafening rumbling of thunder was sounding within the room.
The Chinese hero closed his eyes calmly.
From his point of view, he had already won the battle the moment his opponent got within 2 feet of him.
"Gateway."
A rippling vortex of streaming purple rapidly crafted itself into view, it stood in between Reta and the Chinese man ominously.
Reta's punch shot forth like a lightning bolt.
Reta's fist dove straight into the spatial vortex, and Reta's entire body was sucked into the vortex hopelessly.
The spatial vortex swallowed itself and disappeared flawlessly.
Rockfish and Angjayre were in shock.
Reta had never lost a fight.
So for him to lose to some unnamed hero was shocking.
Angjayre put her fingers around her right eye.
She was going to use a crippling attack that would hurt her as much as it hurt her enemy.
"NO."
Rockfish screamed out in exasperation.
Rockfish separated Angjayre's fingers from her face and tugged her back.
Without wasting another moment, Rockfish teleported the two of them away.
The Chinese hero merely watched them struggle smugly.
BOOP.
A neon-blue pillar consumed the two.
When it faded away, the two had disappeared,
The Chinese hero laughed awkwardly.
"Wǒ rènwéi tāmen zhōng méiyǒu rènhé rén jùyǒu kòng jiān nénglì."
(I didn't assume that any of them had a spatial ability.)
The Chinese hero warped away, leaving behind a crackling dark spatial rift.
He could just tell his boss that he got there too late and that the whole scouting department should be fired for their incompetence.
BOOP.
A neon blue pillar gloriously descended onto a sandy scene.
Rockfish and Angjayre found themself on a sandy beach shore at night.
The murky blue sea was rummaging around recklessly before them.
They were on a deserted island.
Rockfish could teleport to many places as long as he knew enough about them.
Angjayre shoved Rockfish away forcefully and began hitting her head on the soggy sand below in pure hatred for her weakness.
"Fuck."
"Fuck."
"Fuck."
Rockfish chased her down warily.
"Stop it Angjayre."
Rockfish pulled her back calmly.
"This isn't helping."
When Angjayre turned around, tears were streaming down her face eerily.
"It all went wrong..."
She mumbled lowly again and again.
"Why..."
"It could've all gone perfectly..."
"Reta never loses..."
She screeched out like a witch in the middle of the night.
"IT ALL WENT WRONG."
Rockfish hushed Angjayre as he stuffed her face into his chest brutishly.
"Take a break Angjayre."
He wasn't feeling great either.
Their leader had just been warped away to an unknown location.
"Once you calm down, try to track the boss down."
"Who knows?"
"That guy could've just been a strong hero working for a weak organization."
"Reta might've already broken out of wherever he got teleported to."
"Don't lose hope yet."
Angjayre had fainted.
Rockfish sighed as his eyes went a ghastly grey color.
"...Who even was that guy? He's not in China's top 10 Hero rankings... He might be a secret agent or something. I need to research him fast."
Buzz.
Buzz.
Rockfish felt vibrations surface from his back pocket.
Moodily, Rockfish pulled out his phone, the screen was lit a wild blue color.
It was Pueris.
{Where are you? I've left the scene and I'm back at the bar. I'll be waiting and I'll avoid attracting too much attention.}
{Also Shrarld and Veleno aren't here. They've either left their job behind or they're currently fighting someone.}
Rockfish sent a message back tiredly.
His fingers strained as they pushed each individual letter out on his phone's virtual keyboard.
{The boss is gone.}
{Get back to you later.}
Rockfish sat down on the cold sand in a rather blissful state.
Angjayre was in his lap, quietly resting.
Her eyes still held an irresponsible golden shine.
Rockfish opened his hand, and under the shine of the moon, he could fully examine the white jewel that had been carved into a wondrous dragon, roaring mightily.
Rockfish laughed coldly.
"Yeah..."
"This really wasn't fucking worth it."
Rockfish chucked the jewel into the sea calmly.
It hit the sea's surface with a loud splash.
Splash.
A wave of white gush and wiggling water consumed it.
Rockfish was in a bizarre state of mind.
Rockfish blinked twice.
"That went further out than I predicted."
BOOP.
A small neon-blue pillar engulfed Rockfish's hand and the white jewel returned, now soaking wet.
"It's cold."