Adimas was standing in an empty alleyway in nothing but an oversized white shirt that covered more than half of her body, looking up at the gaping hole leading into her apartment, five stories up. Focused solely on the hole, everything around Adimas sounded muffled and hollow. The only sound she could hear was the soft whistle of a gentle breeze. But then, ringing into her ears, was the echoing sounds of footsteps, along with a door creaking open and slamming shut. The coast was clear. Adimas hopped up from the ground to the hole in her apartment, allowing herself back into the living room, which was now an absolute wreck. As expected, Travis was gone, but that doesn’t mean the complex was free reign just yet. At lightning pace, she sped through the other apartments on their floor, breaking into every home, checking every room. Not a second pass, and she confirmed that Travis was the only unfortunate soul running late for work today. Every other resident has either left or was sound asleep, if only she was as well instead of having to deal with this mess. “Great, of course someone would come in here and wreck my house. I should’ve taken a look at his face when I had the chance. I swear if I see him, that man’s going to pay!” She stomped the floor, cracking it throughout the whole living room. Adimas jumped back, realizing what she just did. “And now I have more to fix.”
“Mom, what’s going on?” Her 12 year old son, Quinn, came out of his room. Rubbing his eyes and wearing nothing but gray shorts, as he looked around the living room, a feeling of dread started to wash over his face. His eyes frantically darted around the room, his breathing becoming more rapid. He ran over to Adimas and grabbed onto the bottom of her shirt. “Mom, what happened? Where’s dad?”
Adimas rolled her eyes at how far behind the curve her son was. “What, did you really just wake up? Also, Travis already left for work, no one else here is up yet either.”
Quinn immediately let go of Adimas’s shirt as his expression flipped from concerned to bored upon hearing Adimas. “Well for your information, I did just wake up, not willingly mind you. It’s been two days and you’re already ruining my summer vacation.” He yawned before walking into their open kitchen to look around for food. He scoffed at the fact there was none to be found on the counters or stove. “No breakfast? C’mon Adimas, you could at least pretend like you know how to play the role of housewife.” Quinn’s demeaning comment, while accompanied by his laughter, was also accompanied by the kitchen aisle. Noticing it just a quarter a second too late, it was kicked out of place as it slammed into him. He was rammed through both the fridge and the kitchen wall, leading into his room, which he landed on the far side of. Holding the back of his head as he got up, Quinn’s eyes bursted open upon seeing his room covered in rubble and his dresser and television being destroyed. “No! C’mon, I just cleaned up yesterday!”
Adimas stood right outside the hole leading into Quinn’s room. “Oops, I’m sorry but just like you, it was a freak accident. Now be sure to clean all this up. You wouldn’t want to end up back in the orphanage for being too troublesome.” She smiled with glee.
Quinn looked unimpressed, “Yeah? Well if I’m in the orphanage, who will help you find a present?”
“What are you talking about? Who would I be getting anything for?”
Quinn sighed. “Travis, of course.”
“Father’s day is weeks away, I’m sure I can think of something before then.”
“That’s great to hear, but what about today’s anniversary?”
It took a moment, but Adimas’s eyes lit up in shock, and it quickly led to her pacing across the living room. “Damn myself! I completely forgot about our anniversary!”
It’s 6:40am. Travis was making good progress, walking downtown. Buildings towered around him, with most finally having been fully repaired. Not many people were around on the sidewalk, just a couple of businessmen that seemed to be also on their way to work, and a python snake, slithering in the opposite direction of him. There was also a traffic jam on the right side of the street as a jet appeared to have crashed, halting the cars on that side of the road and forcing people on that side of the sidewalk to climb over the jet wing. The other wing on the other side of the road was luckily close enough to the ground that vehicles could simply drive over it on their side. Travis was about halfway to the cafe. While strolling down the sidewalk, on the left side of the street, he took the time to take out his phone. Travis was checking the reservations he made to a restaurant for later tonight at around 9:00pm. After hearing Adimas’s words to him just before leaving, and before the intruder incident, he could tell she was anticipating whatever he had planned for their anniversary, and he already planned to make sure this was something truly special. Though he would first of course need to make it through the day until then, and hopefully whoever broke into his home won’t be still trying to kill him by then either. However, one of those necessities was already being challenged.
“Don’t turn around. Pull out your wallet, now.” A low, gravelly voice whispered in his ear. Travis froze the moment he was threatened by whoever this new mystery man was. “Don’t stop walking, just pull out your wallet.”
“Yeah, this is the Eternal Bandits you’re dealing with.” Hearing the words of this higher pitched, gravelly voice, Travis deeply exhaled and his body ceased to tighten up.
He could hear one of them getting slapped behind him. “Shut it Lemmy! What’s the point of disguises if you’re finna tell everyone we mug who we are? Just drive us to jail yourself, why don’tcha?” The first voice berated his friend. Travis slowly turned around to face his aggressors. Just as he thought, two ruffians with messy clothes, ruffed up hair, dirty faces, and wearing hoodie jackets, assumingly their disguise. Luke and Lemmy, The Eternal Bandits aren’t criminals unknown to the public, they were also not anything to worry about, even with Luke now holding up a spiked wooden bat to Travis’s face. “Hey! What did I say about turning around?” His words didn’t feel as threatening anymore, not that fighting back would be a smart move, he would still wind up dead.
“Sorry, I just figured you would want me to see your faces since you already told me who you were.” Travis explained to Luke. Lucky for him, Lemmy was on his left side with Luke on his right.
“See, this is why I should be the only one talking! You’re confusing our victims!” Luke continued to yell at Lemmy. He then quickly stopped to cover his face with the hoodie as a car rushed past them. Seems no one cared enough to help Travis in this situation, that should be fine though.
“How do we become famous robbers if no one knows who we are?” Lemmy asked.
“I think you guys are technically muggers at the moment.” Travis corrected Lemmy.
Luke shoved the bat closer to Travis’s face, forcing him to back up. “No one asked you! Now hand over your stuff before you lose more than just your wallet.”
“Ok, I hear you. I’ll hand it over.” Travis slowly pulled out his wallet. As Travis was holding on to the wallet, Luke covered his face again, this was his chance. Travis tossed the wallet over toward the street.
“I got it!” Lemmy yelled, reaching his hand out into the street to grab the wallet just as another car passed by. “Phew, that was close. Nearly lost the wallet.” He held his hand toward Luke, and while his arm was soaked in blood, the wallet wasn’t there. “Uh, where did it go?”
Doctor Linza Nicole was driving through the city, in a rush to drop off a child in her car. “How long did you say you were outside the hotel past your return date again?” She asked the child. Linza got no response, the child blankly stared forward as she sat back in her carseat, with her neck strapped to the seat with an extra seatbelt. Linza turned her head to face the kid. “I need you to work with me here young lady. It will only be worse on both of us if it looks like I’ve been harboring you. Unless I can get Hoppy to take you in. No, let me not bother the old man, you need help we can’t really give you anyway.” While speaking to the little girl, Linza could hear the loud thump of something hitting her windshield, along with what sounded like the tearing of bone and muscle. She noticed a disconnected arm, holding a wallet, on her windshield. “Oh perfect, I needed a fresh arm for today’s surgery. I hope it’s the right size. Young lady, I need to-” Linza paused before looking back at the little girl. Her non blinking, dead eyes still faced forward, her jaw agaped and mouth salivating, as she stared down the freshly dismembered limb. “Actually, forget about that. I need to make sure I get your problem handled first.”
“This wasn’t my fault, I definitely caught it.” Lemmy explained himself.
“You probably got your arm ripped off by a passing car, dummy. Now let’s get our money.” Luke ordered. The both of them ran off in search of the car that drove off with their wallet, leaving Travis alone and unbothered.
Travis reached into his other pocket to pull out his actual wallet as he flipped it around in his hand. “For immortal criminals, they’re a couple of idiots.” with a chuckle to himself, he turned around to continue walking to work, in hopes this encounter wasn’t enough to make him late for work.
It’s 6:50am. Quinn was in the living room and had just finished eating a stack of pancakes that he made himself on the half of the couch that was still intact, albeit burned. Adimas was still pacing around the living room, thinking about her gift for the anniversary. Though at this point, she just gave up. “Forget it, I’ll just bake a cake and maybe buy some lingerie.”
“20 minutes of pacing to come up with that? That sounds nice.” Quinn responded sarcastically, “But unless there’s something I was lucky to not know about until now, I don’t think Travis will appreciate that type of clothing as much as you’re thinking.”
“Obviously the lingerie is for me. I’ll be the one wearing it later tonight as a display of affection.” Adimas explained, slightly irritated. “Most likely, Travis has something pretty big in store for me. But as long as I’m more endearing than usual today, I can get away with not much thought being put into my gift. It's essentially creating the perfect balance of a meaningful gift with minimal effort that’s equally as effective as his own.”
Quinn applauded Adimas. “That’s genius! It almost made me not notice how you know barely anything personal about Travis despite having been his wife for the past fifty years.”
“You can stop with the commentary already. In fact, why don’t you start cleaning this mess, while I get my gift ready.”
Quinn stood up with a smirk, “Actually, I have a proposition for that.”
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