Charlatans of Revenge

3. Plans are Made and They're... ehh

CW: Swearing, empty threats

Kat had a theory. Catnip... Mous worked underneath the Owl because of bad and mysterious circumstances. Therefore, Mous could help be inside eyes on the problems happening in Charlatown. The problem was this: Where the fuck was Mous? Throughout all the jobs the only person that Kat recognized as Mous's friend was Wolf. She supposed the shapeshifter could also be around somewhere, but that was a pretty unstable source of information to trust. So step one, try and befriend Wolf! Even though he seems the most okay with murder based off what Mous has mentioned before and her own observation.

But she had to try at least. Arish and Kat walked into a job. It felt weird hoping for a specific person to fight. Wolf was one of the harder people to beat. Kat still hurt thinking of the fire back at the beginning of her career. She had to move past that, for Mous. She spent most of the job pacing around the office space while Arish tried to ask what's wrong. Nothing was wrong though, well... Not specifically. She just needed to think about a lot of things. Kat sighed and leaned against one of the cubicles, she felt really tired. "This is stupid."

"What's stupid, Mousetrap? You're going to burn a metaphorical hole in the ground." Arish speculated while raising an eyebrow. "Are you... waiting for something."

"Yeah, you could say that." She was dreading it really. Fire was not that fun to deal with when you only have one very close weapon. Fire helped get people away while Kat was good at fighting up close. They were kind of opposites. Like her and... "I just really think that something's going to happen today, Fox. I'm all pumped up on adrenaline and I want to stay ready for whatever happens."

"Like that?" Arish pointed from behind Kat and she saw Wolf breaking through a window.

-

Mous woke up in a dimly lit room, arms tied behind their back and Leo looked at them from the other wall. It was a relatively small room, but what Mous was annoying about was the fact that they couldn't sign without their hands. They grumbled.

"Yeah, I've been awake for about twenty minutes now. Blue Jay dropped by to basically talked about how he knows how we got hired and shit. He was trying to be menacing but it didn't really go as he wanted it to. You snored loudly during one of his sentences." Leo smiled at Mous. "That was my favorite part."

They nodded as they looked around, to show they were paying attention. There was one light at the top of the room, a fluorescent one. The ground had a drain pipe in the middle and the room was emptied out like it was supposed to have something but didn't. Mous tried to think of where they were but nothing immediately came to mind other than 'fuck'. They looked down at their feet, realizing that they weren't binded, but Leo's were.

"Oh yeah I untied you as easily as i could, which wasn't much. But hey, now you can stand up!" Leo pointed out. "Yo this reminds me of our high school days. Remember when we were stuck in the school overnight because we wanted to spray paint Jeremy Biker's locker? God he was such an asshole. Why'd we do that again?"

The answer that Leo would be unable to hear is because... Jeremy made fun of Mous because of their absentee parents. Leo couldn't let that shit fly and after class basically shoved Mous into the custodian's closet to talk about pranks. It's actually how the two originally met. They had a small smile before finally making it to their feet. They walked around the room a little bit before turning their back to Leo and untying their feet.

"Wow now we can walk the 25 squared feet of this place."

Mous looked at them inquisitively. Leo shrugged their shoulders. "I got bored. Did math."

Now it was their turn to shrug, working to untie Leo's hands. "Oh! This reminds me of when I finally convinced you to cut your hair. It was so long before and you seemed really unhappy with it. You'd complain about it all the time but refused to cut it because you were scared of coming out as nonbinary to your family... And I have yet to convince you to dye your hair." And this point Leo was freeing Mous's hands.