Tilt-Shift

The possum doesn’t belong here.

Charlie hates thinking that because it means he should make a report to his boss and because it’s bullshit and because she’s—pretty isn’t the right word. He doesn’t know what is, but she’s at least six and a half feet tall, stuffed into a black leather jacket straining against her mammoth chest with a black leather miniskirt and a wide studded leather choker and what might be a million piercings give or take, and pretty isn’t the right word but she is the most beautiful thing the civet has ever fucking seen. And she is absolutely without question not a customer of Westchase Private Bank.

She’s not getting into line, either. She’s just leaning against the wall by the entrance door, idly watching the CEOs and CFOs and executive assistants in the lobby area. Her gaze lingers on the Zuckerberg wannabe walking away from Charlie’s teller window, another dipshit techbro pretending Tampa Bay’s going to be the next Silicon Valley, and her lip curls. Then oh shit she’s locking eyes with him. He looks away hurriedly.

A feline woman walks up to his window, tall, like the possum, decked out in a bank-proper business suit barely containing centerfold curves. Her eyes hide behind tinted round lenses. She looks past him, like she’s searching for something.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

“No,” she says, without moving. She keeps turning her head, stops, then abruptly winks down at him through those rose-colored glasses. “I got it.”

“I…good?”

She fingerwaves and moves off.

The possum strolls toward one of the security guards, a middle-aged wolf who probably tells himself he’s burly instead of paunchy. “Rent-a-Cop Toss!” she bellows cheerfully, and before he reacts she lobs him in a high, graceful arc a foot over Charlie’s head.

Everything goes bananas. Silent alarm lights switch on under the counter. Customers dash for the exit. Other security guards charge the possum. Bank staffers do the headless chicken dance. Charlie, though, stands frozen, gaping. The possum’s growing with each sauntering step, hips swaying, making the fall of each shiny black boot a bass beat. Six and a half feet wasn’t enough for her. Now she’s seven, seven and a half, eight.

Oh, fuck, she’s a supervillain.

The two dumbass guards who tackle her aren’t more than hip-height by the time they reach her. She grabs them by their waists, hauls them up, and holy shit is she juggling them?

He stares up at her, mouth open.

The possum locks eyes with him—him, specifically, again—and grins. “Wanna be my third pin?” It sounds less like a threat than an invitation, and he doesn’t trust himself to say anything that won’t sound like god yes please so he just grips the counter in front of him tightly.

Just then the fourth of the four security guards the bank keeps—more than most do, but wannabe zillionaires like to see wannabe stormtroopers—takes a shot at her. As far as Charlie can tell, he misses, but she drops one of her rent-a-cops turned juggling pins. She grunts and hurls the other one at him, and they go down together in a tumble.

The sirens outside get louder, but before the real cops arrive, a superhero does. The panther swings both front doors open at once, striding in like a glowing, caped gunslinger.

Firebolt. Here. Right here.

“Shard!” the panther bellows. “This ends now!”

She circles around slowly, motioning for him to close with her.

“Come on, Firebolt,” he whispers, because he knows he’s supposed to.

Firebolt lets loose, flames roaring right at the giant possum. Right at Charlie. The counter explodes, glass shattering. Shard dives to the side. Charlie dives backward.

The flames still come, a jet blast overhead, and there’s a cracking noise. “Stop!” he yells frantically. “Stop!”

“Fucking hell, Larry!” The possum’s voice is almost lost in the noise. “You almost toasted that kid!”

Charlie scrambles back against an intact piece of counter, cowering and covering his head, as ceiling tiles cascade down around him, over him, in a plume of dust.

Firebolt’s voice rings out clearly. “All that matters is taking you out, you piece of—”

He screams. There’s a lot of crunching.

Charlie tries to see what’s happening, but oh god, there’s something heavy pinning a leg, not just plaster and vinyl. And something hanging from the ceiling looks like it’s about to fall. On him.

“I got the files. We’re good.” That voice—the cat lady in the business suit. “Let’s go.”

Files? Not money? But—

The metal box overhead drops down another foot, held by only one pathetic cable now. Charlie whimpers, struggling to push the debris pinning his leg off.

Abruptly, Shard’s standing right over him, zippered boots towering on either side. She rips out the dangling HVAC unit, drops it behind her. Then she crouches, lifting the debris off him. “Christ. That asshole. Anything broken?”

“N-no.”

“Come on!” the cat yells.

As Shard straightens up, Charlie blurts, “You’re amazing.”

She grins, throws him a kiss. Then she’s gone.

First responders rush in a couple minutes later, most attending to Firebolt. He looks like he picked a fight with a steamroller. An EMT vixen checks Charlie out, but the cops don’t get to him for another half-hour. They don’t care about his story anyway. They already have their own.

“You’re just lucky Firebolt was here to stop that freak,” the tiger says. “And your bank’s lucky he did it before she could get to the vault.”

“Lucky,” Charlie echoes. “Yeah.”

The civet doesn’t belong here.