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Buried in bags of groceries, Eliot fought to get through the door in one trip. Wondering, very much aloud, why he was bothering. He'd barely seen any of his teammates the past few days, comings and goings being all goings, so far as they were concerned, and now here he was preparing a planned Christmas dinner he had not planned on eating by himself.
This conclusion was reached as he heaved the bags onto the bar. Looked up for the first time. “What the hell?!?”
~* ~* ~*
“Now this is what I call quality sibling time.” A warm hug of a pronouncement, but for the fingers creeping toward the control screen.
“No, back.” Breanna swatted them away. “You got to go to real-space, I get to play fake-space.”
“Oh you do now?”
“I do, Nana says.”
Hardison gave up the fight (after all, she'd let him take an editing pass at the software) and leaned back against the food truck. “You do know they didn't let me drive.”
“Keep practicing on the sim and you can do the next one.” Tech had come a long way from old-school space shuttles and this drone featured 180 degree camera coverage top to bottom and side to side. Add to that hours of practice navigating every obstacle course Parker set up, (mostly through vents), and... okay, it was actually pretty hard getting the arms to latch perfectly onto the support brackets which held the sign to the Caesars building.
“If you don't slow it down I'll be picking up the pieces of this one.”
“No no my friend, this is where your 1.2 version falls short. There is no factoring for the resistance of atmosphere, or wind vortex off the building. Wait for my perfect dock in 3, 2, 1, click.”
Really he was impressed, but there are expectations of awesomely epic older brothers. “I know I didn't just hear you say click.”
She'd have hit him if watching the little cutting torch wasn't awesome. “Man, you now I couldn't install a microphone without throwing off the balance.”
“Add it in post, this is the highlight of your demo reel.” Some those expectations are unconditional love and respect. Also not forgetting to do his part of the heist, and so he casually grabbed for his tablet to tweak the position of one of the lifting drone so the sign wouldn't take an unexpected faceplant.
“Don't worry, I'll give you credit as a grip.”
Hardison chose to let that one slide. The title was the greatest mystery of every film, of course. “Parker's a little jealous you didn't let her tag along you know. Atlantic City's on her security system bucket list.”
“I know, but if she doesn't pull that job with Harry tonight you KNOW he's going to die tomorrow. We've already got plans for a girl's weekend here next month.”
“Lord save us all.”
~* ~* ~*
“But they're not even kicking anything” Parker groused as she moved her arm back and forth, watching the material reflecting the blue light, making her almost undetectable – from a distance at least. Having a material scientist was coming in very useful.
“That is a very good point.” Hysterical calm was a thing. Harry had already known that, but was now discovering new depths to the meaning as he noticed his desperate cling to the thin cord was dangerously close to the release lever. “I believe the act of synchronized kicking itself is the attraction. Wouldn't this be safer with the power off?”
One thing about Parker – she always gave a query due consideration. “Not really. Sure, we could cause a power outage or play repairpeople, but that's boring. Anyway, we need to test these new suits.” A quick pursed-lips exhale flicked a tiny drone away from her cheek and kicked off hard, swinging to Harry's other side to give him access. “No tickling Breanna, recon only.” The drone flew straight to Harry's face. “Your turn.”
“Right.” As soon as he reached for the clippers, he fell hard against the wall. “Do you think my insurance will cover it if I fall to my death?”
“Don't be silly, it's 35 feet, max.”
It took a moment, and he still wasn't sure, but “I don't think that's the reassuring statement you think it is.”
“Anyway, if you can do this you'll have no trouble with yours. And you're doing much better than Hardison.”
“Well, thank you.” He poked hopefully until his frazzled brain recognized what he was looking at. “If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose the Radio City Music Hall? I'm not saying this isn't fun, and a little bit terrifying, but for you it does seem a little... tame.”
“Sophie said,” with the long suffering sigh of one duped one too many times, “that there were high-kicking rockets. I wanted to see them.”
It took another moment, but “that actually makes sense. I'd be disappointed too. How do I know if it's safe to clip this last one again?”
~* ~* ~*
Sophie stood at the base of the main staircase of the Windy City Versailles, chest rising and eyes closed and head thrown back and arms spread in classically exultant if somewhat camp stance. “Tell me what you smell.”
Parker's sniff was no less deep, just vastly more subtle. “Popcorn. Deep popcorn.”
“Exactly.” After a few years you started to learn the language of Parker. “The Chicago Theatre: 'The Wonder Theatre of the World.' You know when they opened they filled the auditorium, all 3,600 seats, multiple times a day. Every person primed by the grandeur, roused by the live orchestra, awed by the machinations of Norma Talmadge, who had only her face and body on a screen in 'The Sign on the Door.'”
“I thought we just wanted the big sign on the front of the building.”
After a few days you'd already learned the distraction of Parker when she was staring upwards in a five story lobby. “You weren't listening to anything I said- Never mind, you can play later. Do you have your character?”
“Ophelia, Daddy's girl, knows a lot of weird words.”
“Close enough. Less is more on this one.”
“You know, this is way too easy. They don't even care. They know we're giving them a forgery. They even asked for more forgeries! And that's the whole con. All of it!” A blend of awe and embarrassment, tinged with distrust and disbelief sloshed around in her voice. “I don't even think we needed a cover story!”
Deep horror undertowed Sophie's words: “And sully one of the greatest houses of art in the world with banality? No, we must give them: A Story, to add to The Legend!”
After a few years you started to learn the language of Sophie. At least she'd (mostly) stopped trying to get ON the stage. “The paperwork was very interesting.”
“Also we're on a time deadline. By the way, I know you had Harry do the legal bit. What would you have done if he wasn't around?”
Prompt was the reply: “Ask his protege.”
"Fair enough. Also we needed an excuse for Phillip to teach us the ins and outs of neon. Right then, off we go.”
~* ~* ~*
“Does this look right? This looks right. Right?”
Firm tugs on harnesses are reassuring, Harry's vocal wobbling was not. “It's looking like I'm sending you up first is what it's looking like. I'm calling Parker.”
“No, no. I can do this. I took photos, just let me...”
Breanna didn't even try to hide her “stand by” text. She'd drawn the conclusion very early in life that adults weren't infallible. But this was just sad. And could result in very serious injury to her person. And also jail.
When Harry finally made a noise, it was another non-reassuring one. “Ah. I see. This was very close – I'll just move this, and... that does make more sense.” The new tugs did feel a little different than the old ones. “Okay! You're all set, ready to go up?”
“There was no- Why couldn't you just use your lawyering superpower and paperwork this thing down again?”
“You did volunteer to come along.”
These tugs resulted in her full weight supported only by the now-properly-affixed-she-really-really-hoped harness, as up she went, to become the brand new sign topper ready to “Welcome” visitors “to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada.” She signed, resigned, because “True. That's soooo true.”
In the end they both reached the top without incident, riding the high, and it really was smooth sailing from there.
“You asked why I wanted to do this Parker-style? I once heard Eliot say 'If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun.'”
“I had tons of fun with mine, and I fly drones all the time.”
She could feel 'a look.' “I saw you studying the Apollo missions, you and Hardison with all those specs so you could make it- do whatever it is you needed it to do.” Harry had a daughter, he was used to ignoring the eye-rolling. “Are you going to tell me you didn't make it more complicated that it needed to be. Push some boundaries to make it more interesting.”
“Well yeah, of course. The story behind it is part of the gift.”
“And which sounds better to you: Harry dangling in mid-air, or Harry shuffling big words around on a page?”
“Touche my man, touche.”
~* ~* ~*
“I remember when I met you, you were just a kid.”
“Just a little younger than Breanna, I think.”
Hardison and Sophie stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the giant ball: so incredibly suspicious that no one would ever be suspicious at all.
“Our next generation, Breanna and Harry. Do you notice, when they bicker like siblings? They remind me of you, Parker, and Eliot.”
“Only Eliot never grew up.” Or as the man himself would put it, had already reached perfection long before. Or, as Hardison's private thoughts saw it, he'd grown down, and for the better.
Excited children ran by, in search of Captain America by the looks of it. Sophie had always found super heroes a bit dull, though she could understand the appeal. After all, that was her livelihood – being that magical possibility, that touch of other, the one that suddenly made everything easy. “We all grew up, together. But sometimes I wonder if we kept you in the nest, when we should have let you fly.”
“Sophie, you know I'd never leave you. Any of you. No one was keeping me anywhere I didn't want to be.”
“Of course not. Nate and I stayed too, and then we missed you all, every day. And now here I am, back with the Team...”
“Do you regret it?”
“Not a bit of it. I wouldn't trade a bit of it.”
Hardison nodded, until the thoughts were deep enough the zest of living bounced them back up. “I think I could have done with a few more elevators and a few less bladder-emptying falls.”
“One job, I'd love to go back and pack more sunscreen.”
They played that game until dusk fell. Then they got to work. And Hardison took a quick selfie with their handiwork. “We take what really matters with us, and leave an important message behind.”
~* ~* ~*
“What- what is this?”
Eliot's reaction being precisely what they had anticipated, gleeful smiles abounded. And with 5 neon letters filling the stage, there was quite a lot of light to glint off the pearly-whites on display.
Breanna waved merrily from the head of the line. “Go big or go home. This E is brought to you by Ceasars, the most epic font. Fresh off the concrete.”
Harry was easier to see, with his relatively daintier poker-chip “L – formerly part of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas and now,” he glanced to his right, “very much at ground level.”
“-I- very much expect you to come back to Universal Studios for my next birthday. Even you like the dinosaurs.” Hardison held his letter out like a teddy bear.
“O, and I could give a lovely little speech about full circles and this and that, but Chicago is too bold and brash to play around, and the Theatre never lies.”
“And this T is from Harry's first time hanging from a real building! FYI Radio City is not as cool as it sounds, but I think you'll still like it.”
Explanations of the origins were all well and good, but “why did you guys run all over the country stealing these?”
Parker rocked her T back and forth playfully. “Quinn bet us we couldn't steal an on fire Eliot out in the open.”