The sun was shining bright and hot over the city, but within the gleaming mirror-windowed tower block the office was cool and dim. What little light filtered through the drawn shutters served only to cast the anthro who stood behind them into darker shadow, silhouetting his large round ears and making his blotchy brown fur seem black. The African hunting dog took a long, deep drag of his cigarette and turned to face the room - and, in particular, the potential employee who sat nonchalantly on the other side of his desk.
The other guy was a Tokay gecko anthro, sky blue-scaled with crimson dots down his head and back, and was dressed as a civilian in baggy combat trousers and a plain white shirt. The only remarkable thing about him was the gaudy gold medallion that hung on a thick chain around his neck, a chunky disk that was studded with winking red gems - that, and the complete ease with which he lounged in the chair in these sinister surroundings, his long tail coiled around an armrest, leaning his wedge-shaped head on his own fist. He looked almost bored, despite the twin thugs that flanked him.
His casual air irritated the businessman, not for the first time that morning, as different as it was to the pristine Gucci suits of himself and his underlings. Still, I need him, he reminded himself. He is the best in the business … “So, Jinx, do we have a deal?” he smiled beguilingly, showing shining white canines and releasing a cloud of smoke from between his sharp teeth.
The gecko known as “Jinx” raised an eyebrow. “Let me just run through this again. You want me and my crew to break into the HQ of one of your competitors, avoiding any corporate superheroes they might have employed, to steal what? Some briefcase? Seems an awful lot of risk for not a lot of payoff…” he shook his head and moved as if to rise, then looked up and grinned. “Unless, of course, you were willing to grant us hazard pay?”
The canine’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Do I need to remind you of the exorbitant amount I’m already offering you?” he snapped testily.
Jinx shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want me, I’m sure one of the… lesser thieves would be more than happy to work for you…” he started to stand, only to find the ham-like hand of the nearest thug, a white rhino anthro with a menacing-looking horn and piggy blue eyes, on his shoulder forcing him back into his seat.
But the businessman shook his head, and the rhino subsided. He leant forward onto the rich mahogany of his desk and stared straight into the gecko’s lemon-yellow eyes. “Aren’t you… strong enough to handle them?” he murmured playfully, but with an undercurrent of threat that would have made any listener shiver. Beneath the innocent words, his tone made clear what he was really suggesting.
Yet the thief just stared back brazenly, and his hand went to his medallion. “Oh, I think I’ll just trust to luck, don’t you?”
For a moment the tension was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
Then, all of a sudden, the hunting dog threw back his head and gave a great bark of laughter that echoed around the immaculate room. “My, my! Yes, you’ll do nicely.” He grinned toothily and held out his hand to shake. The rhino thugs exhaled audibly.
The gecko smirked too and sealed the deal with a dab of spit. “You’re on! I knew you were sharp enough to spot real quality.” He was already looking past his new associate, imagining the challenge ahead. “New Dawn Corp won’t know what hit them!”

“Cyrus, you did what?” The squirrel’s voice was strident as she stormed about the apartment, eyes blazing, the lustrous grey fur of her bushy tail standing on end. “I thought you said we weren’t going to get caught up in these corporate power plays? I thought you said our hits were going to be Syndicate only? For god’s sake, they have twelve supers! Twelve! You’re going up against the goddamn Zodiac-”
“Natalya, I can handle it!” Cyrus the gecko snapped from the sofa, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance. “He approached me first, anyway, and he’s paying for the risk. Fifteen million credits! All for a lousy briefcase.” He snorted derisively. “It’s probably just personnel files, stuff they could have found out themselves with a bit of elbow grease. These kind of people just don’t like getting their paws dirty, and we can squeeze them for every last drop. Trust me, it’ll work fine!”
She spun and faced him, still bristling with fury. “But what if it doesn’t? What if that… that thing lets you down, huh, like it did with the Fawkes job? Re-mem-ber?” she spat the last word as if talking to a child.
Cyrus flinched and looked away.
A dry voice butted in on their argument from the corner of the lounge, where multiple screens covered the wall like high-tech paper. “Nat, cool it. You’re going invisible again.” Kovann the fox anthro swivelled round on his computer chair, the flickering light from the screensavers reflecting off his glasses as he adjusted them irritably.
The squirrel looked down at herself and howled in frustration. Smack in the middle of her stomach, a patch of her black dress the size of a fist was turning silvery and then vanishing completely from sight, making at look as if somebody had punched a hole right through her body. Through it, the sideboard and the ornaments on it were perfectly visible. Cyrus tried not to smirk as she fought to regain her temper and get a hold over her powers - it took a few deep breaths, but eventually the hole shimmered and her body became visible again. “What?” she growled at him, glaring daggers.
Kovann had taken off his glasses and was polishing them as he spoke. “Cyrus might have been stupid, but for better or for worse we’re in this job now. If we back out now it’ll go badly for us, so we’d better divert our energies to preparing for it rather than bickering. Alright?” he said, voice steady and reasonable. The others met his gaze and nodded. “Cyrus, you got a plan?” the hacker questioned, turning to him.
The thief smiled, the old confidence back in his demeanour, as Natalya - still looking decidedly unimpressed - leaned against a wall to listen. “Sure have. What we’ll do is…”

A couple of nights later, a gecko and a squirrel marched into the foyer of the New Dawn building as if they owned the place, wearing identical battered boiler suits and carrying a large toolbox each. Both the suits and their equipment were printed with “J & D Electricals - We Fix Whatever!” and the night receptionist just gave them a bored look as they strode up to him. Natalya leant on the desk and smiled sweetly. “We’re here ‘bout that photocopier on the tenth floor?”
“You’ll have to sign in, honey, it’s out of hours. Who was it that called you?” The receptionist’s hand strayed towards the telephone, but his eyes were lingering on the squirrel’s curves - only partially hidden by her baggy clothing. His eyes gleamed greedily, and Natalya mentally punched the air. I have him!
“Oh, who was it now… James, or John something… over in Accounting? Now let me think…You know, this is a big building. Do you think you could tell me how to get to Accounts?” she changed the subject, leaning in closer and fluttering her long eyelashes.
“Sure! You go up stairwell 4, then down the corridor and the lift is past the third door on the left…” the receptionist chattered eagerly, glad for some kind of conversation on his boring shift.
While his companion kept him occupied, Cyrus had been busy himself - letting his hand drift across the desk and over a stack of ID cards, the top of which he quickly palmed before walking confidently towards the stairs. The security guards didn’t even look at him as he went past, soothed by the receptionist’s easy acceptance of them. Cyrus grinned at their retreating backs.
But his entrance had not gone unobserved. On the wide stairwell he passed a grey mouse with a shock of white hair, dressed as a civilian, obviously leaving the building for the night. The gecko just breezed straight past her without giving her a second glance - but as he disappeared around the corner, she turned back and frowned.
“Cyrus?” whispered Scorpio.

Once past the guards, Cyrus quickly darted into a dimly-lit storeroom and shut the door firmly behind him. Then he stripped, tearing off the boiler suit disguise with gusto - to reveal a skintight black one-piece beneath, an all-over suit that covered everything except his hands, head, tail and bare feet. He reached into the “toolbox” and pulled out a belt, before stuffing various pieces of equipment through the loops on the side. Finally, he tied a Zorro-like mask across his eyes and fitted a communicator over his ear and mouth. The golden medallion bumped against his chest the whole time, the stones glittering as if eager to be off. He looked down and stroked it lovingly.
The communicator crackled. “Cyrus, you in?” Kovann’s voice sounded muffled and far away, though in reality he was just parked across the street in an unobtrusive blue van.
“Yeah, but it’s Jinx when I’m on the job, remember? You never know who might be listening…” The thief scolded playfully.
“Riiiight, I’ll be sure to remember that… Jinx. You just love having a code-name, don’t you?” The fox layered on the sarcasm, and his friend smiled. “Everything’s online here, we’re good to go when you’re ready.” he continued, businesslike now.
“Thanks, Kovann.” Cyrus said affectionately. Then he looked around the small, cluttered room, his eyes alighting on an air-vent set high into the wall - far higher than most people could possibly reach. But that was no problem for the gecko. He just leapt at the wall and landed with both hands and feet, wide, spoon-shaped fingers splayed - and stuck fast. The ridges on his pads were covered with billions of tiny hairs that gave him as strong a grip vertically as a spider ever could. He simply swarmed up the wall and into the vent, his knobbly tail flicking into the darkness behind him like somebody swallowing spaghetti.
Inside the ventilation duct it was cramped and dark, but it wasn’t the first time Cyrus had worked in such conditions and he knew how to move quietly. He scrambled along, around and up with only a few minor bumps, following a memorized map, before looking down through another grill and seeing a deserted corridor. He moved to fiddle with the screws… and froze as he heard voices below.
“… And then this guy just falls over! Boom! I told him, if you’re going to get that drunk around here…” The first voice was female and chatty, the kind of voice you’d expect from an airhead secretary - but when Cyrus looked through the slotted bars he saw it was a cow anthro dressed in a revealing pink superhero costume, gabbling away ninety to the dozen to her companion, who was just grunting in reply. As he passed into the thief’s field of vision Cyrus couldn’t help a nervous gulp - the guy was huge! The ram’s muscles bulged under his red, white and blue costume, and his horns nearly scraped the duct in the ceiling where Cyrus crouched. Taurus and Aries, he thought, remembering the newspaper reports that Natalya had made him read.
Just then Taurus paused in her non-stop chattering and halted. “Did you hear that?” she asked curiously, and Cyrus’ heart froze in a sudden wave of fear. Crap! If they find me-!
Aries stopped too and looked a little puzzled. “Hear what? Not all of us have super-powered ears, you know.” His voice was slow and deep, but filled with wry humour. In the duct, Cyrus moved away from the hole as silently as possible, his fingers creeping to the medallion at his chest. With a mental prayer, he pressed down the central ruby with a soft click, and it started to glow with a very dim rosy light - just enough for the gecko to see his own outline in the gloom.
There was silence below as Taurus considered.
“Ah, it was nothing.” she said at last, and Cyrus had to fight not to breath a sigh of relief. “Probably just somebody in the next building, y’know? So as I was saying, this guy…” she carried on with her tale as the pair walked on, leaving him to watch them go, grinning hugely.
After he was sure they’d gone he removed the grill, with a bit of scrabbling and clanking, and dropped down into a silent crouch on the corridor floor. He paused for a minute, listening, then straightened up and clutched his pendant. “Thank you…” he muttered, and went to deactivate it - noting as he did so that one of the thirteen gems ringing the central crystal had started to glow red, too. Still plenty of time left, though, before I have to discharge. When he clicked it off the aura slowly faded.
As he moved off at a cautious jog, a shadowy figure in a doorway watched him go.
There were only a few more corridors now between Cyrus and his goal, but all of them were covered with security cameras. Waiting just before the sweep of the first, he fished out a mobile phone from his belt and held it aloft, recording the pattern they moved in before pressing “send”. The confirmation made the phone bleep noisily and he shushed it, smothering the speaker as best he could. Then he tapped his communicator. “You get that?” he whispered.
“Yeah.” Kovann’s voice crackled in his ear, sounding distracted. “The bad news is there’s no route through - those cameras cover each other perfectly.” Cyrus smothered a groan. “But the good news is, those wires are exposed, which means I can patch in a loop feed if you can get up to one without being seen.”
The gecko grinned confidently, already on the move. “No problems there then!” he joked, ducking directly beneath the nearest camera into its blind spot and crawling straight up the wall to where the wires dangled, twined around each other like snakes. A few seconds of fiddling and a wifi PDA was hooked up to the camera - allowing Kovann to hack into the network and repeat the same few minutes of footage over and over again.
A couple of tension-filled minutes later, in which Cyrus crouched helplessly below the camera listening to Kovann’s tapping over the communicator, and the message came through. “It’s done.”
“Finally!” Cyrus remarked, but not too loudly. He dropped to the floor again and strolled along to his target, comfortable now in the knowledge that the CCTV was blind to his movements. His stolen ID dealt with the swipe-card doors in his way, and thanks to the power of the necklace none of the patrols decided to check his area. The last few metres to the CEO’s office should have been a walk in the park, except…
“Goddamn these corporations and their laser beams!” Cyrus swore. The corridor looked clear, but to his experienced eye he could see the tiny generators embedded in the walls among the pot plants. A smoke bomb confirmed it, revealing scarlet bars blocking his way like the door of his old jail cell, criss-crossing the entire width of the passage in a deadly spider’s web of alarms.
Cyrus took a step back and scratched his head - then looked up and smiled wickedly. These businessmen, they’re all the same - they never expect you to go across the ceiling! With a jump and a flip that would have made an acrobat proud he was glued to said ceiling, flattening himself as much as he could and keeping his tail tucked underneath him as he swarmed forward and through the thin gap at the very top of the beams. The blood rushed to his head a little and the inverted perspective took some getting used to, but he still managed to get past and drop with a thump on the other side.  Then it was simply a triumphant swipe of his card and he was slipping into the office marked “Ramas”.

The office was dark and silent as the grave, meaning Cyrus’ black clothes blended into the shadows perfectly, leaving his head and hands to float in the twilight. Though the showy windows that made up the entirety of one wall he could see the gleaming lights of the city, orange, yellow and white, like dancing fireflies against a midnight sky, while the wail of a siren gently floated up to the immense height sounding distant and forlorn. Cyrus lingered at the view, trying to imagine the glory it would be in daylight - but I guess I’ll never know, he thought regretfully. This kind of life… it’s a whole world away. The dingy surroundings of the office confirmed that thought, oozing glamour and riches even in the gloom.
Cyrus shook off his wistfulness and went back to his job. The safe, where would he put the safe… Heeeeere, safey safey… Come to uncle Cyrus… “Aha!” he gasped triumphantly, swinging a large portrait of the Board aside to reveal a metal square in the wall, gleaming in the reflected streetlight from outside.
“I take that to mean you found it?” Kovann said over the comms. “You need my help or can you crack it?”
“Don’t worry, I got it.” the gecko reassured him, while simultaneously grimacing at the keypad that graced the safe. The code could be anything… but it’ll take too long for Kovann to hack this thing. We don’t know how long it’ll be until someone comes… He glanced down at himself, at his medallion, and grinned. Looks like I’ll have to trust to luck again!
With one hand he grabbed the pendant and depressed the gem, lighting up his face from beneath in a crimson glow. He took a deep breath to steady himself. Then he closed his eyes, wished for luck, and stabbed a random sequence of numbers into the pad. The four bleeps were loud in the silence.
Slowly, he cracked an eye open.
Then there was a hiss and a chunk, and the safe door swung open with a groan as if reluctant to give up it’s contents. Cyrus yelped with pleasure and kissed his amulet, before punching the air and doing a little dance of triumph. Looking eagerly inside, he saw piles and piles of notes like a miniature green mountain surrounding a simple, plain black briefcase.
“Cy - I mean Jinx, I know what you’re thinking, but we mustn’t take anything other than our contract. If we do we’ll let them - Jinx? Jinx?” the fox in the van stopped in the middle of his lecture when there was a hiss and the line became static. “Hello? You there?” Kovann paused, then turned in his seat to examine the broadcasting equipment behind him. His eyes widened, becoming owl-like behind his glasses. “Goddamn!” he cursed, staring - an entire row of wires were flapping loose, severed, disabling the comms as neatly and simply as only an expert would know how. But the doors are locked and bolted, and I didn’t hear a thing… A sudden thought occurred to him, a surge of memory from his distant past in the Syndicate. Oh no. Not her. He grabbed his laptop in both paws and typed away feverishly, tapping out strings of commands and protocols, delving ever deeper into the New Dawn servers until he found a file marked “government records.” A few more clicks and…
Kovann groaned and slumped over the wheel. We’re doomed. We’re all doomed.
Back in the office, Cyrus frowned and tapped his earpiece, before taking it out and shaking it thoroughly. What the hell… where’d he go?
“It’s no use.” A voice came from the darkness behind him, soft and slick as velvet, and he turned - to flinch and cower as the lights snapped on. Through his protective fingers and watering eyes he stared at the familiar figure that had materialised in the middle of the room, still draped with scraps of shadow that swirled and dissipated around her. The mouse’s normal clothes from before had been replaced by a maroon body suit with a golden “M” symbol, and her white hair was now in an incredibly long plait with a silver blade on the end; what’s more, her left eye was now bisected by a blood-red sword tattoo.
Cyrus’ face creased up in absolute confusion. “Sonja?” he gasped, voice shaky with shock.
“Oh, Cyrus, you bad boy…” Sonja - codename Scorpio - murmured menacingly, fingering the knife on the end of her hair and swinging it in her hand.