Pow! Right in the pocketbook

The fake angel, Gertie, answers as I drive, “Oh… you know that messy, fat, bald guy who bosses everyone around?”

Too well. He called me a worthless waste of skin often enough, “Yes.”

“Turns out he has a lot of ‘current’ employees that are ‘working regular hours’ with their auto-deposit all set to the same account.” Yes, she uses air quotes, “Seems the parasite never officially takes anyone off the books… and he also leaves his workstation unlocked when he goes to yell at people for doing their jobs correctly. So I just… updated the auto deposit account numbers, opened his bank and investment accounts, transferred his ill-gotten gains elsewhere, reset a few passwords, visited a ‘nice’ website, installed some software that was ‘completely unquestionable and totally legit’, then locked his workstation, all while he was telling a perfectly good and valuable employee how awful and worthless they were.”

I consider that a moment, “So by the time he figures out how to get back into his workstation,” I take a breath, “the virus will be running through all the systems in the building, distracting him from the fact that his little fraud operation is now working for someone else. It'll be weeks, if not months, before that sloppy idiot notices his finances aren't in order. And he's probably going to end up audited to boot, then do jail time for the embezzlement.” I pause, “Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. So where are those paychecks going now?”

“Oh, I picked up your bank statement earlier, and remembered the numbers,” the fake angel shrugs, “up to you where it all goes now.”

I pause: That man's been running that show since before I was in grade school… “How much?”

“About three million…” Gertie grins, “and about another fifty thousand twice a month until someone figures it out.”

Ah. “That's. Umm. That's. Ah. Um.” Grand theft? Wonderful? Horrible? More money than I expected to see in my entire life? I need to hide it, don't I? I need to wait until the transactions clear… then get it into stable investments… an S&P 500 fund? But. Umm…

“The light is green,” Gertie reminds me as people behind us honk their horns.

“Right, right…” I get the vehicle moving again.

We get home, I park the car, dismiss my illusion, and we walk up to my apartment… where I see a search warrant taped to my door. I read it… what's the 1890 Humanitarian act? Evidence to be seized… why do they want my hairbrush, toothbrush, trash, and any loose hairs they can find? I can maybe understand my electronics… ugh. I flip to the next page… inventory of items seized… well, I guess I need a new hairbrush, toothbrush, and a few trash cans… they seriously collected and counted hairs from under the couch? Well, at least I won't need to empty the garbage tomorrow? I don't have a real computer now, though. List of attending officers… this makes no sense. Why?

Sighing, I push open the door (the lock is broken… couldn't they have just asked the landlord for the key? Ugh… I'll have to get that fixed, my landlord's gonna kill me) and walk in.

And I thought my apartment was messy before.

Nothing is in place. The furniture is upside down, cushions scattered, lamp overturned, and when I flip my couch right side up, I find they cut into it to get inside: Cushions too. I pause, and start taking pictures of everything: The mess, the pages of the warrant and associated documentation, the damage, and such. When I get to my dining room, it's in a similar state: All cupboards open, all drawers pulled out and dumped, most of my glasses and cups broken… I keep taking pictures. The same is true of my bathroom (where they apparently used enough **** to break the medicine cabinet mirror), and bedroom. Well… at least I don't have to sleep in that utterly ruined bed.

I pull out my phone and call Adam… I leave a message letting him know I got raided by the police while I was out, and that my apartment is trashed. I follow up with Brian and Charles, leaving voice mails for both. After a little research on my phone: The judge that signed the warrant retired last year, and the executed warrant isn't in the state public databases.

Which… means I need to file a police report for vandalism, theft, and impersonating a police officer? Ugh.

I dismiss my decoy, make an illusion of my old self, cast Vocal Alteration to sound like my old self, and call 911.

“911, what is your emergency?” A lady picks up immediately.

“Hi, someone broke into my house and left a search warrant… but the signing judge retired before the signature, and the warrant itself isn't in the public systems. Which means there's some people out there impersonating police who broke into my home, trashed the place, and stole my stuff,” I explain.

“Are they there now?” The operator inquires.

“Not that I can tell, no,” I frown.

“Is there any immediate danger to yourself or another person?” She further asks.

“Not that I know of,” oh, I think I get why she's asking.

“Okay. We'll send an officer when one is available… looks like Officer Hutchinson will be about thirty minutes. Please remain on the scene and on the line until they arrive and release you. Is this,” she reads off my full legal name, “and are you at…” she reads off my address.

“Yes to both,” I confirm.

“Great.” She stops talking.

Less than five minutes later, I see a police car, lights and sirens on, pull into the apartment parking lot. I smile, and give an update to the 911 operator, “Looks like you got an officer free much earlier than expected.”

I get a puzzled reply, “Ah… Officer Hutchinson is still working with a vehicle collision ten minutes away from your address.”

I pause, “Please confirm: No officer has been dispatched to my address as of this moment?”

“...get out of there. Now.” The lady's voice brooks no

[argument.

An](http://argument.An) order to Gertie and two quick spells later (Jump and Expeditious Retreat) and I'm moving… up onto the roof, by jumping. I use my phone to take pictures while I re-summon my decoy, who is still dressed up as me. I grab his weapons, and send him down to greet the … ah, two… supposed officers, feeding him lines.

“Good day officers,” my proxy smiles as I start recording, “what can I do for you?”

The two officers look almost identical: Each is six feet tall, looks mostly caucasian with a touch of the orient, and looks like they do way too much weight lifting (seriously, their necks are bigger than their heads, and their biceps match). They both wear identical sunglasses, have the same brown hair… I honestly can't tell them apart. Both of their badges say “Smith”... and have the same badge number, and… oh, wow that service revolver is huge. Okay, yeah, that's fraudulent, and now I have the video to prove it.

The fake officers smile, and walk up to my decoy cordially… before grabbing him: “You're under arrest for violation of section sixty-six of the Humanitarian Act."

“Let them arrest you; say nothing and answer no questions, but otherwise cooperate.” I whisper through a Message spell. Meanwhile, I direct Gertie mentally, ‘I'd like to follow them. Come pick me up from the roof, carry me, and shadow them invisibly.’

We watch and follow through the area as they cuff him, search him (he doesn't have so much as a wallet), read him his Miranda rights, march him to the car, toss him in the back, and buckle him up. We follow invisibly as they drive right past the police station, and park at a small office complex in town. We land and walk in as they take him inside an office marked as the “Department of Humanities.” We sneak along behind as they go through a darkened hallway with tinted windows into very brightly lit rooms where Brian and Charles are chained to desks. We watch as they chain my decoy to a desk in a similar room, and the two “officers” walk into positions from whence they can easily see into all of the apparent interrogation rooms. I record the whole thing: I'm gonna pretend I used a drone.

Not that it's likely to matter with the demonstrated degree of censorship; still…. I stop the recording shortly after it becomes obvious the goons are just waiting: There was no booking, no due process. And the two goons are eerily still once they settle in place.

After a few seconds, one of them raises his gun and fires three shots at Gertie, hitting her left eye, right eye, and heart before she can react… and Gertie goes down, melting into a puddle of water that immediately evaporates. Also, I am REALLY glad for my Invisibility and anti-divination choices all of a sudden.

I start summoning: I can duplicate Summon Monster I via spending Mythic power as a swift action and by using a standard action to ready a swift action for "right now” I can do that twice a round, sending Celestial Bald Eagles after them… which is good, as these muscle mountains shoot crazily accurately… but they apparently can't actually see ME, and so the fact that they're doing one shot, one kill isn't a problem. I'm still stuck running them out of ammunition, at which point the summons slowly scratch the brutes until they bleed

[out.

By](http://out.By) the time they're finally dead, I'm fully convinced that those things were not human. Oh, they have all the normal human organs in the expected places, as far as I can tell… but they had no pain reaction when they took a hit, and didn't panic even slightly when they started getting swarmed, indoors, by bald eagles. They just shot them all until they ran out of ammunition, then calmly used their guns as clubs until they eventually die from their wounds… creepy things.

I get a notice from the ‘Adam’ in my head: ‘Two dead modified flesh golems. 6,400 experience; you were the only one present for the fight, so it's all yours. You can level up to fourth at the next long rest.’

Confirmation that it's not ****, at least. Just out of curiosity I scan for magic… and find it. Their glasses register as having a faint divination aura… the school of magic that detects magic. Ah… so we got too close, and they saw. Okay… but first thing's first. I disable all the cameras I can find, then pick the locks on the door to my decoy, disable the camera in the room, pick the cuffs, and get him out… walking him through doing the same for my friends (I still pick the locks and do the actual work of disabling the cameras… but I make sure they see decoy briefly, having him look at things when they fail). Why? I want them to think I didn't change much. Not that I know who “they” are.

Yet.

Brian beats me to a suggestion, “Let's regroup away from here and compare notes… after looting the place.”

I smile, and we pocket everything that pings as magical… just the glasses on the goons… plus the cash in the goons’ wallets (both of their ID'S say “Smith, John”, and they apparently have FBI, CIA, IRS, and State Patrol badges to go with the local police shields… also ten each of hundred, fifty, twenty, ten, five, and one dollar bills on their wallets. Yes, we take the cash and their guns.

Then we skeddadle... and I notice my phone call is still connected.