The first time we met, I had fistfuls of dollars and she was wreathed in flames.

"You're gonna get singed if you keep standing there."

Eyes on my hands, she stepped away from the crackling doorway and into the vault room. Reasonable girl.

"Drop your weapons and face the wall"

The piece in her hands was entirely too long to argue with, but I'd gambled much and more against flatter faces than hers.

"Girl, that's not really possible, see? All these heavy bags of cash right here, and only two little hands to carry 'em with? How would I ever get away like that?"

Saucy smile on, hips cocked and gloves presented conspicuously. Oh yes.

"I'm not going to ask you again."

Her round pulled enough of the close atmosphere to whip half my hair out of its bun.

I turned, showing her my back, and made a show of poking around the hole she'd left in somebody's retirement fund.

"Oh my. Tooo scary"

In truth, the daylight poking in through two feet of steel and a good six inches of rolled bills gave me pause, but the moment passed and she didn't spare me the wit for a retort. *Slow sigh* I hate it when they skip the playing. Business talk bores me.

"Im gonna take a wild guess and say you've already seen the hole that I left in the wall."

"Destruction of public property will be a hefty addition to attempted theft"

"Happen to check the pipes on your way in? I hear the bigshots are importing Zaunite crap these days. Fragile stuff"

Crackling wallpaper and hissing gas made themselves painfully apparent in the new silence. Her expression never changed, but I could tell she was recalculating her plan. Definitely the planning type.

"Seeing as you haven't shown me a badge yet, I'm gonna offer you a bit of a deal"

"..."

Ugh. The whole not dealing with criminals thing is such an inefficient philosophy. Kinda hard to "cooperate with the law" when they won't talk to you.

"I'm gonna let you stay in this handly little box with me and not hit you. You're going to sit your pretty little butt on the floor and not shoot me. After the big kaboom shakes down, I'm getting outta here with these here bags of cash. Then, you're still not gonna shoot me. We good?"

She still shoots me. I'm five minutes out of the vault, swinging on the lines with my babies juiced and cash on my back, when the shot tears up three of the anterior contractile channels on my right glove. Of course, I reach for the next power scaffold with my left and fall flat on my face when that one fails too. Oh, the petawatt field generator is working fine. On the other hand, the salvaged megawatt sourcing unit is slowly licking flames up my arm and I should probably be too busy worrying about that to wonder how that damn bullet got so damn close through an induction-charging field and a good 2k blotch of city air.

Five years watching and I still can't entirely believe it. All she has to say is that the bullets "go where I please them to go, and thank you very much".

Honestly, that woman.