Professional Standards

I had done it!

I made the big score that was untraceable and I paid off all my henchmen and underlings handsomely. I told them I quit and they should too, since they now had enough money to retire and live off the interest. I moved to the middle of nowhere bought a huge farm, hired people to help me run it and lived the simple life. After a few years, I realized nobody was going to find me here, I started dating a local woman who had a couple of kids. She was a sweetheart. Worked as a school teacher, widowed at a young age with a nice settlement. She didn't "worry about money", so that was never an issue. After a couple of years, we decided to make it official and tie the knot.

Her kids were great, we had one on the way, when... The assholes showed up.

Now, Look, I was an asshole, in my previous life. I did illegal shit, but I never hurt anyone, and my property damage was kept to a minimum. I scammed greedy assholes who were trying to screw over regular people. And Look, I know what I did was illegal, but they had it coming to them.

I never hurt any of the white hats either. I knew all of them. I knew their alter egos, I knew who their families were, and in my 18 years of amassing my nest egg, I never said squat to anybody. Because I understood the rules.

It all started on a Monday when I said I would drive our oldest, Molly, to school instead of her mom taking her. I wanted to take my truck by the local guy for a tune-up and general maintenance. Normally, I would send a farm hand in, but things had felt off, and I looked forward to the trip.

As I explained to the kid in the shop that while I know the tires have plenty of tread yet, and yes, it's just a 'farm truck', I still wanted to replace my tires that were 6 years old, because I didn't want to deal with a dry-rot blow out somewhere on my farm. Preventive maintenance is cheaper than fixing crap afterwards. That had no more left my lips when I heard the first explosion.

"Get DOWN!" I yelled at the kid. The explosion was close enough to rattle the windows, I started running toward the sound. As I looked around, I saw where the local bank had been, it was basically blown out, leaving the vault standing by itself. There were people laying around on the sidewalks. I made my way to one, and found they had a pulse, but they were bleeding from the ears and nose. I scooped them up and ran them carefully outside the blast radius. I then started looking for others. I was hauling out the 5 person, when I felt the ground shake again. There were three men trying to blow the vault open.

"You're going to be okay. I'll get you out in a moment. " By this time, the fire trucks had shown up and the fire fighters ran up to where I had gotten this victim out of the rubble.

"Mr. Jones, how did you move that wall?" I recognized the kid. He and his wife were in Lamaze class with the wife and I.

"You're just going to have to believe it's adrenaline. Okay?" I gave him a little 'push' with my brain, and he nodded. "There are more over here, and the ones I got out are behind the auto shop."

I turned toward the vault and then stopped. Two of my old foes on the white hat squad were duking it out with the assholes. One of them managed to knock one of the more powerful white hats to their knees. I knew this guy, I had fought this guy, he was tough. Not even really thinking about the consequences, I picked up a brick and flung it at the asshole using telekinesis. I caught him right behind the knee, and he dropped, giving the white hat a moment to dodge away. I could feel his gaze staring at me, some guy in overalls and a stupid ballcap with John Deere on it. I shook my had a couple of times and I felt he recognized me. He rolled his eyes then nodded a thank you, and looked around to see where his assailiant had gone. They had ran over to the vault, and screamed at the others who had managed to get a drill bit in and I thought that was to open it, but instead, they hit a button on the back of the drill, and the entire vault disappeared. along with the Asshole squad.

"Shit.. where did they get that?" I muttered under my breath. I kept looking for survivors, I knew there were dead bodies in there too, but they could be recovery. I wanted to rescue as many as possible. The White Hats started working on the rescue efforts and I decided to make an escape. I felt someone land behind me and tried to turn around as casually as I could.

"Hey, you, Mr. Jones, was it?" The most prominent white hat was standing behind me, I slowly turned around, hoping they didn't recognize me. We had been, toe to toe before.

"Yes sir. Thomas Jones. I've lived here a few years. Had family here all my life." (Which technically wasn't a lie, because my wife was my family, and her family farmed here for several generations) "I'm sure glad you showed up and ran those folks off. Of course, the bank is gonna be hard to rebuild, and I imagine a few of my neighbors might be upset by missing items from their now missing safety deposit boxes...." I let my voice trail off. Trying to keep things easy as he studied my face.

"Are you still retired, Jonah? "

"I am a farmer. I am Mr. Thomas Jones, I am running the farm out off of Rt. 9. If you come by in the late Summer, I will be happy to provide you with some of the finest organic veggies known to man. Even the super types." I paused. "Look, that's who I am.... now." I shrugged, " Look at me? Would some super criminal wear overalls and drive a POS pickup truck?" I pointed over to the garage where my truck still sat.

"If you find out anything about all of this, you would... Alert the proper authorities, right?" He studied my face fairly hard. I knew he didn't have mind powers, his gifts were really mostly physical. But I had heard rumors he was just really good at reading people.

"Well of course I would. If I discovered where the vault was taken, I would totally let the proper authorities know so they could, handle the situation without civilians getting hurt."

"You still know how to get in contact with me?" he waited for my answer to his trick question.

"Well, I wouldn't try to call you at home. But I know your league has a tip section on their website. That would be appropriate, yes?"

"Did you have anything in that vault?" They leaned in really close, "Anything from, the past that we should be worried about?"

"You don't shit where you eat, Marvin" I whispered in his ear, but amplified it psychically, causing them to lean back. It probably was a bit over the line to use their real name. Not their alias, but their real name, from their childhood.

"I..."

"No. Look, I am a FARMER now. No, I didn't have any of my old toys in there, and to be honest, I was surprised that vault held from that explosion. Go be a White Hat and figure out who they were, and what they got. I thin some of my insurance stocks are gonna take a hit from this. " I turned around and waved back at my former enemy. Well, That's a bit harsh. We were kind of co-workers like the old Warner Brother's cartoons. The sheepdog and the wolf clocking in and out to do what they do, but at the end of the day, they went home.

At home, all anyone could talk about was the bank heist, and how they couldn't believe I was "right there" and how scared I must have been while helping all of those people. Molly mentioned that she heard from a friend that one of the heroes actually came up to talk to me. I told her that was only because I had pulled some people out of the rubble. I apologized for not getting his autograph or a selfie with him.

But these assholes had fucked with the wrong bank in the wrong town. I was going to find out who they were, and I was going to get our town's vault back. Then, they would hurt.

*****

THE END.