A Case of Mistaken Theft . . . (Raven... Open)

(If you see any mistakes *other than grammar and spellin* please tell me, its been a while and i finished this rather quickly)

A wonderful night it was, a cool breeze was blowing and the night was clear. A full moon was shining above a figure standing over a nearby building, nothing but the silhouette and two bright golden eyes could be seen. Inside the facility in front of him, had a map for treasure beyond one's dreams. Tora Kline was the one about to go through this small fortress in order to obtain this map. He knew the location and had the proper tools on his person in order to carry out this mission. Well by mission, Tora meant to steal this map and use it to find this rare treasure.Tora picked up a crossbow he had brought with him that had a rope attached to it. Aiming carefully Tora shot it into the side of the building close to a window. An alarm sounded and Tora jumped off and slid down the rope and unto the wall.Using an older than dirt thiefs trick it cut a hole into the glass window and climbed right in. Upon entering the window a guard was caught completely off guard (there's some irony), as Tora ended up running right into him and fell into a desk hurting his shoulder a bit. He quickly got back up and struck the guard with the palm of his hand to his chin. The guard was sent backwards and unconscious by the blow but not for long. Tora took this momment to climb into the ventilation system and began climbing using his armors ability, which allowed him to stick to walls and such with ease. He made it up to the floor he needed and carefully opened the panel. Below him was infared lasers, which he did not want to set off. He leapt down carefully but the panel was wet and slick due to condensation, and Tora fell to the ground. Of all thing to set off an alarm, he still had alot he needed to learn about theft. He hit the lasers which then out from the wall popped hundreds of small needles from the right-side wall. Tora leapt foward just far enough for him to get out of the way, but before he could catch his breathe the floor fell to pieces, luckily Tora jumped to the left wall or else he would have been a 'holy' Mithran.
"Man this thing better be worth it."
He clung to the wall and went over to the door, he used his pick to unlock the door and he was inside. He opened a safe that he found hidden behind a picture of a young woman, that seemed to look familiar to him. Inside he found a rolled up piece of paper with a band around it. Tora's eyes opened wide as he unrolled the roll of paper and found that it was NOT a map, it was schematics for a weapon, and not just any weapon.
"Lionheart Gunblade?"
A weapon said to belong to a man named Squall, and he held the schematics for his famous weapon in his hands. The Mithran did not know that the safe had a built in camera inside the safe set to activate when the door was open, so now whoever would want this back would know his face, and how hard would it be to keep an eye out for a grey tiger-like Mithran?

Raven and Dusty sat in the lobby of Esthar's Research and Development building. They had arrived earlier that morning for a scheduled appointment with the lead scientist in the building's experimental warfare division. Needless to say, they had been kept waiting in the lobby all day. Raven could not stand being told to wait for somehing as trivial as a security check up. If the scientist didn't come out soon, Raven very well go find the man. Nobody wanted that to happen. Shade had enough problems to worry about than her brother royally pissing off a few eggheads.

Raven paced back and forth across the floor like a tiger would do while trapped in a cage. He hated, HATED, political garbage and that's exactly what this was. He had hoped a scientist would have had a little more respct for a schedual, but he was wrong. Dusty laid across the sofa, trying to get to sleep. He was just as bored as Raven was, but was grateful for he small amount of downtime this gave him. "Boss, can ya stop pacing like that? You're making it impossible for a man to get some shut eye. The nerd will come see us when he gets the chance."

Raven stopped pacing mid step, but not for Dusty. No, he stopped mid step because the alarms were going off. Dusty snapped up in his seat as Raven pushed past the front desk and into the hallway beyond. They were here to check up on the security of the building, obviously that security needed fixing. They flew down the hallway to reach the command center. Inside, Raven and Dusty came face to face with a group of half-asleep rent-a-cops. Raven snapped at the first one he saw, "Who the hell is in charge here?"

A portly fellow stepped between Raven and the other man. "I am and who in the name of Hyne are you?" The man eyed Raven through wire framed glasses. The man's hand smoothly dropped to his night stick without ever taking his eyes away from Raven. Apparently, nobody knew about the appointment they had schedualed.

"I'm your security consultant. Obviously, you need me right now. So if you would please point me in the direction of the breach." Raven stared the man down. He knew exactly how to be just intimidating enough for small time soldiers like this one to back down without resenting him. What he did have to worry about, though, was how the others would react. Luckily, they were all good soldiers and followed their leader's, well..., lead.

Raven turned to Dusty, "Stay here and keep an eye on the security cameras. Keep me updated on the intruder's movements." He gave Dusty a moment to nod his head and then took off for the elevator. He reached the floor that was breached and found the guard just as he was struggling to his feet. "What happened here? Who did this to you?

The man struggled to his feet and looked at Raven. "I don't... I don't know. I remember being here doing my rounds and then I heard something cut through the glass, so I was coming in to check on it and a giant.... a giant... CAT rolled into me. The damned thing took me off my feet and then knocked me out cold."

Raven couldn't believe his ears. "You let a CAT get the better of you?" Raven concealed his anger at the man. He hated working with rookies and these guys were so green, they were probably just picked out that morning. He cursed himself for not bringing even a SeeD cadet along for the extra help, because these guys were not going to do anything.

Just then, the headset buzzed to life in his ear. "Hey Boss, you aren't gonna believe this, but we're being robbed by a tiger. He s in the vault right now, rummaging through the schematics." Raven silently swore to himself as he tore off towards the elevators again, leaving behind the guard.

"Ph, I find that very easy to believe, Dusty. Meet me down there."

Tora had definitely found something he had not expected. He put the Lionheart schematic in his vest and began to rummage around the rest of the small vault. There were some small gems and rings lying about it, and even some Gil. Tora gave a quick count of all the valuables he had, not including all the schematics. He had about 700K worth of of treasures here. He may not have been able to find a map to more, but it was quite the haul. As he grabbed the last bit of it all from the vault he noticed a small black circle in the back. It was a camera, it took him a second but he realized what it was. He didn't bother closing the vault, knowing they already should have his face by now. Speaking of which a few voices could be heard from dow the hall.
"Reset the traps we need to get to that vault."
Tora pulled a communications device from his pocket and placed it around his left ear, pressing the button on the side.
"Rhodes I've raided the vault, found something you might like but its not treasure."
"Oh really then what is it?"
"Some schematics for a weapon called Lionheart, I got some more schematics and valuables to go with it as well."
"Estimated cost."
"Minus the schematics about 700K Gil."
"Nice haul, hurry up and get out of there, Xavier is waiting at the rendevous point."
"Roger that."
Tora put the communicator back into his pocket and looked down the hall the guards were heading back his way down the hall. Tora climbed the wall and stopped above the door as the guards ran into the room. They stopped dead center guns at the ready, but none of them expected him to be right behind them. He reared his head back and yelled out emmiting a loud soundwave.
"RAAAAAAAAWR."
The soundwave blasted all the guard out the window, as well as made an opening for Tora to get out. He climbed on the ceiling and out the new door. He began to climb along the outside wall until he was on the roof. The night sky had begun to get cloudy and the winds had begun to blow more powerful. Tora sniffed the air telling him a storm was coming. He looked at the other buildings until he found the one that he was suppose to meet Xavier. A small flare was fired in the distance signalling where Tora was to be. He looked down and saw a building he could land on, he leapt down and clung unto the wall. He begun to climb along the outside wall, only three floor from the top. The communicator in his pocket started to vibrate so tora put it back on.
[color=greena someone knows you're there you better hurry up."[/color]
"Someone you know?
"No it's someone you know, a guy named Raven."
"I met him at that party at the multiplex."
"Well it looks like he was there for security check."
"Hehe, looks like it wasn't quite up to snuff then was it."
He didn't know how Rhodes did all this, but he was a technological whiz, but he did get the job done. Tora stood up along the wall and begun to run right up it, dodging bullets from guards that had come as backup.

Raven and Dusty practically collided when they met in the hallway in front of the vault. There was already a team of special response guards there trying to get the doors to open. Raven glanced over the shoulder of the guard who was trying to override the automated lock system that went into effect after the alarm went off, while Dusty tried to get the men organized into a cohesive breaching team. Raven realized that the man typing away at the wall computer was actually doing absolutely nothing. He reached down and yanked the man out of the way by the shirt collar and helped himself to the computer. After but a few moments the automated locks were disengaging and they were ready to go through the door.

Since Raven and Dusty were there to see how well the security of this place was getting along, they figured they would let the team go in alone and see how they handle it. Raven pressed the button, opening the door, and the squad filed into the room. Raven and Dusty both leaned their heads to see through the door after the men. They all checked their respective corners but the last man on the team made the biggest mistake Raven had ever seen, and it cost them all dearly. He didn’t stop and check their rear. Raven sighed to himself and Dusty threw his hand up to his face when they watched the tiger drop behind the security guards. The cat reared back and let out a screeching growl that sent all of the guards through the window. Raven reached out with his hand to grab the cat by his tail, but narrowly missed. The cat shot off through the window himself and began climbing up the side of the building and Raven bolted for the window.

Dusty helped a guard to his feet, muttering, ”Damned Rookies…”, while Raven leaned out the window and looked up after the cat. He fired five bullets at him just as he was pulled over the lip of the roof. All of them missed. Raven gripped the trigger for the grappling hook launcher on the front of his assault rifle. ”Dusty, quit screwing around and get Dizzy on the horn. I want the Kestrel in the air and waiting for me on the roof ten minutes ago. I’m going after this guy.”

Dusty rolled his eyes before turning on his earcom to signal Dizzy as Raven fired the grappling hook at the roof. The hook found purchase and zoomed Raven to the roof. Once there he found the Cat running across the roof away from him. Raven quickly recognized the grey cat by his attire. The cat was a thief known as Tora Kilne. Raven had met him once at a party in the universal multiplex, but had decided to do a background check on him and anyone else he met at that party. Apparently, Mr. Kline was on the run from his homeland in Vana’diel. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why.

Raven raised his rifle to fire at him again, but he was just about to go over the side of the roof. Don’t you even think about it… But he did. Tora jumped from the side of the building and began running up the side of the opposite one. Raven swore, there was just no way he could keep up with this cat on foot. Luckily, fate was smiling on him that day and he noticed that Tora was running towards a flare in the sky. Raven waited there for a moment for the Kestrel to pick him up. He pointed Dizzy directly towards Tora and had him follow him wherever he went. Tora would not get away.

Tora looked across the heavy winds and rain seeing Raven standing across from him uptop the building he just came from. He did not look like a happy camper, and it seemed like he was calling for some backup or something. Tora kept on running until he finally reached the top of the building. Tora leapt up and landed on a vent that was smoking slightly. He looked around until he saw a figure emerge from the side of the small 'hut' that lead to the staircase.
"Do you have the goods?"
"Yeah, but one in particular we will need your 'expertise'"
Tora tossed the schematics towards him and it was opened in a flash. Xavier Meladorez, was a man of many talents but of many was his ability to look at something and remember every detail. This was due to the robotic eye he had, well the man was a cyborg of sorts, being that one of his arms was comepletely robotic. He finished looking at the schematic and a frown appeared on his face.
"Rhodes this fine weapon will not be a good idea to pursue, according to our data, it belongs in part to the Leonhart family."
"You don't mean."
"Yep you just had Mr. Kline here steal from our friend Shade Leonhart."
"Oh dear god I've done got us each killed."
"Is this Shade woman really that bad."
"She is practically Chaos incarnate."
"Oooooooh, that scary. Well it's not like I can just return it, I mean i just stole it not knowing what it fully was."
"We'll we need to give that back at least or else."
Xavier held out an orb and tossed it at Tora. It was a special storage device of Rhode's own design, a giant marble with space enough to place en entire palaces worth of things inside. Tora put all the other schematics and the valuables into the orb and handed back it back to Xavier.
"Approximately 700K worth added, we almost have enough to get her back."
"That we do, we only need 300K more."
"That schematics alone could get her back, but i'm not taking that and that is that."
Xavier and Tora nodded at Rhodes' words and tied the schematic back up. Tora's ears twitched as he heard something off in the distance. It seemed thatsomething worse than just reinforcements may have been coming towards them.
"Xavier take the goods and get out of here."
"You are not doing this by yourself."
"Get your ass out of here."
Tora picked up Xavier and threw him towards the edge of the building roof. Xavier stumbled and leapt over the edge landing into an airship. The airship resembled the one used by a man named Balthier, but it was modified to fit 2 people only. It was a fighter airship, but right now it was unable to do anythign but escape since Rhodes was still doing modifications on the damn thing. Xavier started up the materia powered thrusters and left Tora there on the building, his blade at the ready. Tora stood there and began to sing a short tune.(Tune) A gust of wind blew around Tora and now he was ready for a fight.

(Sorry its mostly dialogue XD)

Raven watched the scene unravel before him as the Kestrel approached the meeting place. He could see the three in the distance and Tora giving items to the other two. Both were easily identifiable. One was Xavier Meladorez, cyborg and scientist, Raven had done a job in an excavation site in Cocoon with him before. As for the other, well that was an interesting story too. The other was Bernhardt Rhodes. That man was a tech-wiz from what Raven remembered. He had also done a job with him. He had assisted Mr. Rhodes in assaulting a facility alongside Shade and another werewolf girl.

Raven was a little in the dark as to why they were doing this. They didn't seem like bad men when he had met them, but maybe he was wrong. He knew first hand how some people's looks could be deceiving. He had Dizzy turn the weapon systems on and turn down the cargo door before heading towards the back of the craft. If they tried to get away, Dizzy would blast them with everything they had. Raven wasn't about to let thieves get the better of him.

Raven looked off the back of the craft as it sped over roof tops. Dizzy's voice buzzed in his ear, "Partner, you are gonna have a short window of opportunity here. When that red light turns green you better be jumping or you are gonna miss your target."

Raven activated the mic by pressing on it with his index finger. "Don't worry about me, Dizzy. You just make sure that they don't get away, by any means necessary." Raven stepped closer to the edge of the craft. The roof tops were flying by now and he was waiting for the green light to come on. What he was going to do was stupid and could probably kill him if he did not time it right.

The light turned green and Raven didn't have time to think about the possibilities. He had to worry about the now. What he had to do to make this work. Raven took two large steps and jumped out of the back of the speeding airship. He tossed the small AMP capsule at the ground where he was going to land and watched it explode. But what Raven didn't account for was the forward motion. So instead of landing in the middle of the AMP field, Raven clipped the side. It still slowed him down, but it forced him to strike the ground, too. Raven rolled with the fall and came up aiming his pistol in Tora's face.

Meanwhile, while Raven was jumping out of the back, another airship came up infront of Dizzy. Two of the men got inside and began to pull away. Dizzy was under strict orders to not let them get away by whatever means necessary and he was going to follow those orders to a "T". He locked onto the ship and just as he was passing over head, released a barrage of hell-fire missiles straight into the side of the craft. The explosions tore through the haul of the craft, turning it quickly into a ball of fire instead of a fighter-class airship. Dizzy turned the ship around to let it hover over the edge of the building where the other ship was and aim the remaining missiles at Tora.

Raven looked at Tora through extremely pissed off green eyes. "Give up and hand over your weapons and what you stole. Or I will have to do to you what my friends did to yours."

As Xavier ran towards the ship a small device landed not too far from Tora, and from the sky fell Raven. Right where the device had landed he landed from that high of a distance perfectly. The ship he was in shot at the airship Xavier had just gone into, then Raven held a gun straight at his face and told him to give everything back or what happened to that ship would also happen to him. Tora however could do nothing but smile at the man with his pissed off face. Rhodes was in the ship and so was Xavier but they managed to jump out just before gettign any major burns. Though Rhodes's bum managed to catch fire. Xavier stood over him with his jacket fanning it out.
"Seems like we got caught Rhodes."
"Well our mission was a success in all actuality."
"Not for me though, man I never get caught."
Rhodes and Xavier finished dealing with his flaming hiney and Rhodes walked towards Raven. He held out the orb that all the treasure was placed in and dumped it all out on the roof of the building. Tora tossed the schematics into the pile, a look of dissappointment on his face.
"Well at least we know there security doesn't work like they thought. Had Raven not been here it would have gone through"
Rhodes looked over at Raven, it had been a while since they had saw one another, and Raven was probably confused a bit right now.
"Allow me to enlighten you, we were hired to check their security about 3 weeks ago, well we told them to let us handle it, and never got back to them on the subject. They seemed to had called you because of that, the reason you had to wait so long was because we had sent a message just before the robbery saying we were ready to test it."
Tora was tired of talking and sat flopped unto the floor in boredem.
"And because of that they forgot to tell you to go home. We have a crate they asked us to put everything in after we 'stole it', that's our job we test security systems and get to keep some of the spoils if we help them improve the system when it fails."
"Though Tora does steal from arisocrats on occasion but he has a personal reason he wont tell us why."
Tora gave a look of guilt a bit then looked away at the others.
"I have a big family to feed back home."
Rhodes grinned a bit and then held his hand to his earpiece. He was talking to the head man of the company they had just robbed, he raised his voice yelling at the man looking at Raven as he did as he put it on speaker.
"I told you that we had control of the job, and you go and hire someone else to do the effing job, just for this the price just went up, you now owe use 700K Gil instead of the 350K originally."
"But you were taking so long."
"It is best to test a security system if done by surprise, and your security completely sucked it is going to get completely redone, and I know just the guys to do it, well if they feel like taking the job of course."
"Who?"
"Raven, the man you brought in to do OUR job, he knows his stuff I'm sure he found plenty of things wrong."

Raven watched as the two men jumped out of the airship, just before it exploded. The two quickly rushed over to Raven and Tora while they still had a stare-down. Mr. Rhodes began to try to explain him and the others’ reason for being there before returning all the items. All the while, Raven just kept his gun trained on Tora. The man spoke of how they were hired to test the security system and how they were planning on returning all of the items anyway. Raven didn’t believe a word of it. The way the cat had flat out attacked the security guards was proof of that.

Raven didn’t like being lied to.

But he kept his mouth shut as Bernhardt pulled out a phone and placed it on speaker. He began to yell at the man on the other end and Raven rolled his eyes. So they called a man that they had in place in case they got caught, big deal. They still had no proof that their story was legitimate. And Raven was fed up with haring the lies.

Dusty stepped off the ship and came up behind the group, his shotgun aimed at the back of Tora’s head, while still being a good ten feet away. Raven snapped the gun to the away from the cat and instead aimed at the still preoccupied with the phone call. Raven fired once and struck him in the throat. The bullet tore through his windpipe and his voice box before tearing out the other side. Bernhardt reached up and grasped his throat as he fell backwards towards the ground. He tried to cry out but his voice box was completely destroyed, all that was heard was the gurgling sound of blood flooding into his wind-pipe. He thrashed on the ground, trying to breathe but all every inhale brought in was more blood, while every exhale pushed more of his life’s elixir was pumped out of two new holes in his neck. Lucky for him, though, the bullet had torn through the neck without hitting anything vital and missed the spinal cord by mere centimeters. Bernhardt stared up to Rave with disbelief in his eyes as He brought his gun over to aim at Tora again.

Raven stared at Tora. ”Don’t move. I don’t want to make you end up like your friend here.” He glanced down at Bernhardt and said, ”Now… I don’t know who that was supposed to be, but we weren’t hired by anyone. We were sent here by Shade Leonhart, so cut the crap with the fake phone call.”

His attention was brought back to Tora while Dusty forced Xavier down to his knees and cuffed him. He stared directly at the cat as he said, ”Now, because you did give the stuff back, I will let you go. You can tend to your friends as you see fit. But hear this: If I ever hear of you stealing again, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

Dusty went back to aiming at Tora as Raven collected the stolen items up into a bag. He kept his eyes on Tora the entire time as he placed the bag on his back and walked back to the ship. He and Dusty both clambered into the ship and then took off to go back to the compound.

As Rhodes was on the phone with their employer Raven shot Rhodes in the throat and fell to the ground with nothing but a gurgle escaping from his throat. Both he and Xavier looked at Raven with an intense hatred but then Tora watched as Raven's comrade came from behind and held a big gun towards the back of Toras head and the proceeded to cuff Xavier. They had been hired by someone in the company to do a security check, but why didn't Raven believe them, wasn't giving the stuff back and the call enough proof?
"If I ever hear of you stealing again, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
Raven said these words as he was leaving on thier ship, Tora yelled toward him with his bright yellow eyes filled to the brim with an intense urge to kill, but he knew at his level of strength he didn't stand a chance of being able to fight against him. Besides Rhodes was his top priority at the moment, as soon as Raven got far enough Tora ran over to Xavier and used a pair of lockpicks and undid the metal cuff that held Xavier's hands behind his back. Xavier rubbed his wrists as he winced a bit in pain.
[color-red]"How come people never leave those loose even a little bit?"[/color]
"Hurry and get to healing Rhodes."
"Duh you dip."
Xavier got up and ran immiedately to Rhodes's side. He held out his robotic arm and concentrated a for a few seconds. His arm glowed slightly and small ports opened on his arm, barely noticable to a human eye (but noticable to Tora) were very small black dots coming from them. Each of these dots were actually nano-bots made to heal a body at a very rapid pace, but the effects it would leave on Rhodes's voice were going to be heavy and take longer to heal completely. The nano-bots went into the wound and began to release a tiny fast acting medicine into Bern's system. Tora watched in amazement as the wound healed right before his eyes, slowly but surely faster then if done naturally. Xavier laughed a bit as he spoke to Rhodes.
"How come people you know who havent seen you in a while like to shoot you?"
Rhodes just shrugged as he attempted a laugh but he caoughed up some blood in the process held his throat again.
"Don't laugh dude, we dont want you dead yet until your an old man."
As the nano-bots worked their magic Rhodes made slight attempts to speak, only to be smacked on the head by Xavier each time."
"Shut up dude, this is delicate stuff if not done right you could end up with a female voice."
Tora laughed at the thought of Rhodes going to business meetings of a serious nature with a voice like that. Both Xavier and Bern gave him dirty looks which made him stop laughing as his ears drooped down a bit. When Rhodes was finally healed the nano-bots made their way back into Xavier's arm. Bern was helped up by Xavier and Tora as they began to make their way back to their headquarters defeated and 'partly' broken. In the back of their minds they were wondering why Raven had done this to them, Rhodes thought it mostly due to the fact that he didn't know much about them and they though he had been hired. Which if he hadn't been hired why had he been there in the first place?