Chapter 19

Tiff watched her dad’s face carefully as it scrolled through a whole index of emotions. The first was panic…no, that wasn’t quite right. It was something deeper and more concentrated. Like a shrewd calculation of whether the scenario unfolding around them was harmful to his children. She could tell he wasn’t afraid for himself, and Tiff felt light and dizzy knowing that this man, her dad, would do anything to keep her safe.

The second emotion was wariness, or perhaps more accurately, self-preservation. Again, not for himself, but if simply removing him and his family from the area would be the easiest and safest solution.

And then there was conflict. Rick was not like Melissa or Victoria. He wasn’t a Might-based Meta and he couldn’t take on a whole gang of goons by himself and come out without a scratch. And, as a dad, there was no way he was going to send his eldest daughter into a potentially dangerous situation if he could help it. If things came to a fight, he was no better than a common Citizen.

And any mundane Citizen should, by common sense and recommendation from those in power, do nothing. They should flee, make themselves scarce; hunker down and hide; or otherwise remove themselves so they couldn’t become collateral in a Powered struggle.

But Rick wasn’t mundane, and he had the tools necessary to dissolve the tension before it could devolve into chaos.

Tiff watched his face harden momentarily as he burned the image of the thugs into his eyes, but then softened as he turned to his daughters. He seemed to weigh some internal struggle as he stared at Victoria and Amy, but whatever it was, he kept to himself.

“You’re handling this rather well,” he eventually muttered to Tiff, loud enough for her to notice but not so much that her sisters would overhear. In fact, they had already set up the machine and Amy was about to bowl. “I’m proud of you for not panicking. Normally, that’s the first thing an innocent bystander might do when confronted with a potentially dangerous situation, which makes everything so much worse.”

“Hmmm,” Tiff agreed, noncommittally. She watched Amy pick up her heavy ball and exhibit a flawless execution of “granny style” bowling…where she squatted down and rolled the ball between her legs. It quickly strayed off course, fell into the gutter, and knocked down zero pins.

“So what do you want to do about it?” Rick asked. Tiff blinked and stared up at her dad.

“You’re asking me?” Tiff questioned.

“Well, you found them, so I’m curious what your first thoughts would be.”

“Shouldn’t we do something about it?” Tiff asked.

“You, Tiff?” Rick asked. “What would you do if you just discovered something you felt wasn’t right and needed to be corrected? Would you actually go over and confront them?”

“Well, no,” Tiff admitted. She thought it was obvious that she wouldn’t confront a bunch of burly dudes potentially breaking into an ATM. But now that her dad mentioned it, what would she do? What should she do?

“I suppose I’d call the police?” Tiff asked. She wasn’t exactly entirely sure what to do, to be honest.

“That’s-“

“Dad! Tiff! What are you guys doing?” Amy called out. “It’s Tiff’s turn!”

“We were just doing a thought exercise in unexpected encounters,” Rick said with a smile. His expression didn’t change at all, but he turned to Victoria, and something she saw must have alerted her that something wasn’t right. Her smile slowly turned into a frown as she put the ball she was fiddling with back in the rack.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” Rick said with a weak chuckle. “It looks like I forgot to charge my phone and it’s almost dead. Fortunately, I normally carry a power brick with me. Tori, can you go to the car and pick one up? Actually, better make that two. There’s a black one and a blue one. Take Amy with you, will you?”

“Sure thing, Dad,” Victoria nodded quickly. “Come on, Shorty. Let’s go.”

Amy started slapping her big sister because of the nickname, but otherwise didn’t complain as she hopped up and followed Victoria back toward the exit. Tiff waited until they were out of earshot before whispering to her dad.

“Is your phone really dead? Why’d you send Tori away? Shouldn’t she be more useful here?”

“No,” Rick shook his head. “My phone’s fine. And I don’t have a blue brick in the van.”

“So why’d you ask Tori to pick one up?”

“To get Amy out of here,” Rick said grimly. “Normally I’d do the same with you. But you already know about the situation and you’re remarkably calm…and my gut is telling me to have you stay. I think Victoria picked up that I wanted Amy out of the bowling alley. The blue bank is just an excuse to have them look longer before they get suspicious or come back. So that just leaves us with the original question: now that we suspect something bad is about to happen, what do we want to do about it?”

“What can we do?” Tiff asked with a tilt of her head. If it was just herself, there was nothing she could do, and if it was only her dad, she didn’t know how much better that would make it.

“We have options,” Rick said cheerfully, and it struck Tiff as odd how calmly her dad was taking this. She had the benefit of her Skill, but her dad was basically an overpowered Citizen. While he worked for some heroes, he wasn’t one himself. Like Melissa, Rick was a Sidekick.

“Normally,” Rick said as he got out his phone and started fiddling around. “A bystander in our shoes would do one of three things. A: They might be oblivious and not notice anything. B: They might panic, alert the crooks, and cause a situation. People could get hurt, or in the best of cases, they’d end up as a hostage.”

“That’s…not ideal,” Tiff frowned.

“Right,” Rick chuckled. “And then there’s C. They keep their heads down, call the cops, and let the authorities handle it.”

“Well, that’s what we do, right?” Tiff asked. Rick shook his head.

“We can. And we might! But we have other options. We know there’s a problem, but we don’t know what we’re up against. We can simply remove ourselves from the situation.”

Tiff’s frown deepened. That option didn’t sit well with her. It was reasonable, smart, and most of all, safe. But didn’t those with power have a responsibility to help those without?

…or had she been reading too many of Amy’s comic books?

“That doesn’t sound right,” Tiff shook her head.

“The last option is doing something ourselves,” Rick said with a lopsided smile.

“But, Dad, what can we do? I’m not Tori and you’re not Mom.”

“It’s for the best,” Rick laughed. “This way, we might still have a bowling alley left standing afterward.”

“But we can’t confront them,” Tiff complained, peeking back at the group. It had only been a few minutes and they were looking just as fidgety, but they hadn’t gotten violent yet. A quick glance at her Quest told her they weren’t making great progress either. Whatever the vague bar represented, it was only up to 3%.

“And I’m not saying we should,” Rick countered. “But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless. So I’ll ask you again. Tiff, what do you want to do? We can go meet your sisters back at the van and go home. Honestly, if this was any more serious than it already is, this wouldn’t be up for debate and we’d already be leaving. Or, I can do something about it.”

“But I don’t want to put you in any danger either,” Tiff said. She hated this. Why did the System have to point out stuff like this? Why did it have to happen to her? Why couldn’t this be like Saturday morning cartoons, when the heroes in bright capes would show up out of nowhere?

…and why were these thugs so bad at their jobs? The progress bar had only moved to 4%, and by now Tiff was fairly certain a competent thief would have either been done and gone or given up and tried to escape.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rick smirked. “I can stop them in their tracks and they won’t ever know it’s me. I barely have to lift a finger! See?”

Rick showed Tiff his phone, and a program was running that Tiff had no idea how to parse. It looked like the classic scene in The Matrix, with all the 1s and 0s cascading down a monitor, while at the bottom a command prompt ran a mile a minute. Just staring at all the lines rushing by in waves made Tiff dizzy.

“What…is that?” She asked, shaking her head.

“Just a little program I whipped up to buy us time,” Rick grinned.

Tiff’s mouth formed a small O as realization dawned. Those people weren’t necessarily incompetent…her dad was amazing! But that begged the question: “Wait…why do you have something like that on your phone?”

“You think I have a program dedicated to stopping ATM hacking attempts sitting around on my phone?” Rick almost laughed. Tiff nodded. It made no sense to her, but how else would it get there? “I’m a Techie, Tiff. Whipping up something like this is child’s play.”

“But,” Tiff frowned. She watched her dad type away on the screen like sending a sternly worded text, but she couldn’t keep up.

“Look,” Rick said seriously. “There’s a lot of moving parts in a situation like this. I can’t stop them; only make their lives harder. We’re lucky none of them are Techies; otherwise, they’re bad. How do I know? They aren’t hacking into the machine themselves. They’ve got an interface doing it for them. Which is good for us, because if they were trying to do something physical with the ATM, there’s not much I could do about it. They’d either set off the machine’s safety protocols or they’d be untouchable at a distance. As it stands, whatever they’re using is wireless. I’m slowing them down.”

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“Why not stop them entirely?” Tiff asked.

“Because then they’d know something is up,” Rick frowned. “And the risk of them trying something stupid goes through the roof. Right now, their machine thinks it’s cracking the world’s biggest code, and all the lights should be green. It just needs time. Time…we will now use.”

Tiff opened her mouth, but Rick held up a finger and put it to his mouth. He dialed a number and put it up to his ear. It only rang for a second or two before it connected.

Tiff couldn’t hear the person on the other end, but her dad was as focused as she’d ever seen him.

“Hey, Liam- look, yeah, it’s after hours, I know, but this is serious. I don’t have much time to explain, but do we have anyone on duty? Yeah, Cape stuff. Not huge, looks like some local punks. No, haven’t called them yet; I wanted to see if we had anybody in the area I could trust to do this quietly. What? Hell no, are you stupid? I’m a non-combatant and-…look. 5 guys, mid 30s, average builds. Concealed. Boulevard Bowl. …what? It’s a night out with the girls. Go to hell, Liam, my score has nothing to do with this! I did my part; you get someone over here, pronto!”

Rick closed his eyes and let out a huff. Tiff didn’t often hear her dad swear, so whoever that Liam guy on the other end was probably pushing his buttons. Rick took another deep breath and dialed another number. This time, the person on the other side was much louder, and as Tiff leaned closer, she could hear both sides of the conversation.

“911, please state your emergency.”

The woman’s voice was crisp, clear, and most of all, calm. It was no-nonsense, brooked no argument, and gave the caller a sense of security.

“I’d like to report a robbery in progress,” Rick quickly said. “At the Boulevard Bowl in Setma Heights.”