Chapter Text
"Gone again." The words left Eren's mouth in a dejected whisper as he realized once again he'd be spending the night alone in the apartment he shared with his sister. Dropping his keys beside the bright yellow post-it note on the table, he picked up the note and headed down the hall to his bedroom. Upon reading it he learnt that his sister was off again to somewhere in Europe thanks to her job as a flight attendant. If Mikasa enjoyed it though he had no room to tell her to not continue, plus it helped pay the bills and that was desperately needed with their current situation. It wasn't enough for him to work part-time at Digital Dreams to cover what needed to be paid, even with Mikasa's pay they barely scraped by. Eren's second job is what helped pay the bills and Mikasa knew nothing of it which was what kept him out late on some nights while Mikasa was working.
Breaking in to houses, stealing information from their personal effects, cloning their cell phones, or maybe even taking compromising photos were some of the minuscule details of his second job. Illegal or not didn't matter to him, as long as he could pay what he needed to prevent what happened to his mother from happening to either one of them. He had simply fallen into the job just as almost every criminal did, someone helped him and it was his job to repay them in whatever they deemed appropriate. Helping them steal people's personal information to sell to the highest bidder or because someone requested it seemed to be what was deemed appropriate. While it was odd for him, he had already been doing it for 3 years and he had gotten rather proficient at it thanks to the on-the-job training he had received from his boss for the first year.
As he laid in bed thinking about what he had been doing with his life and what would happen in the future, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Pulling it out, he noticed a number that he didn't recognize along with a series of numbers that had no immediate connotation to him. Knowing that it was a code from the only person that would send him something so cryptic he rolled out of bed, got dressed and headed back out of the house, grabbing his keys as he flew out the door. Driving across the city to the Wandering Palm's apartments wasn't something he felt like doing but once his boss reached him it was no longer up to him. When she called he answered like an obedient dog to it's master, and within minutes he arrived to their place of business and his boss's home.
The dilapidated building should have long been condemned in his humble opinion but it served as a decent place of habitation for a criminal mastermind. It was an older building that was in no way up to building codes with broken AC units, no heat, sketchy power due to it's faulty wiring, mold spores in most of the corners, and over all it was a health deathtrap. He knew his boss enjoyed experimenting in the basement but if she couldn't keep up the rouse that the place was actually habitable from the outside, than sooner or later the city would actually condemn it. The odors emanating like heat haves from the building alone were enough to think that something or someone had died down there. In retrospect he assumed that it was a highly likely assumption due to the amount of animals he had seen go in over the years but never venture back out.
Once he passed the first floor all the smells and decrepit structure of the building were long past. On the second floor everything was cleaned, devoid of any scent of decomposition and lacking any grime or mold spores. It was like stepping into another building once on the second floor but that was the way his boss had arranged things. Every good criminal needed a secret lair and her's just so happened to be one of the most disgusting places he could have ever fathomed on the outside so he assumed it was that way on purpose. As long as no one came looking for the most wanted information broker in Los Angeles than it had served it's purpose. Her job was to sell information on anyone and everything, if she didn't know it chances are it didn't exist and his job was to help her obtain new information as well as make sure neither of them were discovered.
Passing by the third door on the second floor, he finally came to the end of the hall where their meetings always took place. He had only hoped it wouldn't take very long as he had an early class in the morning and it was already midnight. As he pushed open the heavy white door he saw his boss furiously striking keys on one of her many laptops laying around, her nose buried far into whatever it was that she was so keen on typing. Knowing that even if she didn't acknowledge him she still knew he was there, he walked into the room and shut the door behind him before walking over to the small ovular table and taking the empty seat adjacent from her. Stopping once he sat down, she adjusted the thick, round wire framed glasses on the bridge of her nose smiling widely as she looked up to him.
Her vibrant mahogany eyes met his from behind the glare of her glasses, her mysterious grin only widening as she glanced back to the computer screen. The high ponytail she kept her long cinnamon hair pulled into swung to the side as she switched back and forth between Eren and the screen. He couldn't see much as she had the lights dimmed in the room again, something about how the lights screwed with her focus when she was staring at the screen and when she was working or speaking to him she needed to be able to focus. By what he could see he noticed she was dressed in her pajama's meaning that whatever she had called him for had woken her up as well. Whatever it was it was bound to be something difficult and beyond the measure of his scope of abilities, at least that was what past experiences had told him.
Folding his arms over his chest he sighed and pushed the hair from his eyes "Alright, Hanji, what is it this time?"
Voice practically at the top of her octave she clasped her hands together and leaned over the table "I'm so glad you asked, Eren!! You'll never believe what we get to do. You know Senator Michaels for New York?"
He nodded, only hearing about the horrible rumors surrounding him "I know a bit, apparently he's being accused of all manners of things right now. The media is in a whirlwind about him. What exactly are we doing and how long do I have?"
"Well, we're gonna confirm or negate those accusations. It seems that someone from the media has kicked into their shady business partner pool and one of them came to me asking for my help once they realized he was going to L.A. His hotel room will be rather easy to get into but we need his information in 48 hours. I hate that it's such short notice but I know you can do it, kiddo."
"I have 2 days to plan this?"
"Oh, no honey, you have tomorrow to plan and the next day to act."
"Are you serious?"
"Deadly, but I know you can do it Eren."
"I'm gonna need blueprints."
"You'll have them... like I'd let you go in blind. Everything I know you'll have tomorrow, now get outta here you have class in a few hours. Good luck, I'm counting on you."
He shoved his hands in his pockets and rolled his eyes in a huff as he rose from his seat "Alright. I'll do my best. Thanks." She shooed him out and as always he lowered his head to her and left the room shutting the door lightly behind him. His mind was flooding with self doubt as he exited the rundown apartment complex, wondering just how in the everloving hell he was going to successfully break into a hotel building and get into a Senator's personal belonging's. A senator with some scandalous secrets was bound to be aware that people would be wanting to pry and in that case, it meant security. Someone with security just meant that it would make it that much harder to plan around. Whatever he had to plan for and deal with could at least wait until he could think properly, so he put off thinking of the plan until after class tomorrow morning.
After waking up and getting dressed for his 8am class he was ready to leave and begin the grueling morning. On his way out he stopped by the mailboxes and noticed that Hanji had once again delivered as she said she would, leaving a thin red pen drive in his mailbox. Shoving it in his pocket and shutting the square silver combination door, he headed out of the small complex and began the drive to his campus. UCLA had two campuses and of course his first class had to be on the part of campus that was the farthest away from the apartment and just to rub salt into the open wound there was nowhere to park. It was going to take him 15 minutes to get to class so he always left a little more than an hour early just to ensure that he would get to his class on time. Computer Science wasn't his favorite class and to have it first thing in the morning followed by calculus just added to the hatred he had of Thursday mornings.
3 hours later in hell of both computers and math, he finally had a break but he wouldn't be able to get to the city hall library until after his last class. Printing out blueprints of a hotel was suspicious no matter who was doing it or where, but at a place where blueprints could be asked for it was a little less suspicious. The librarian that worked knew him as an architecture major so he hadn't ever really asked many questions about why he was pulling blueprints of random buildings. After working on a blueprint he'd go to the front desk asking for a blueprint of some random building and study it for an hour just to throw anyone off the fact that he was planning to break into the first building.
The librarian had never really spoken to him once he thought on it, he only ever asked for his identification to ensure that he was a county resident and to say the usual "can I help you" or "we close in an hour.". In fact the only reason he knew Eren as an architecture major was because he had told him when his requests were met by piercing narrowed eyes and an uncomfortable silence. Whoever the man was, he was extremely intimidating for a librarian and it was no wonder why not many people were seen in the building. His initial assumption was that he was dumped at the post and none too thrilled about it so he had a constant scowl on his face. Most people that did come into the city's library were older people and they had never really bothered him, he simply did as asked without any hint of a skeptical glance.
Maybe it was just him, but he couldn't help thinking that the librarian didn't like him. Eren did go into the library almost every week and ask for random blueprints just before close so it probably attributed to the fact that he wasn't his biggest fan. As he wondered whether or not he could even be bothered by something so simple he walked into the library after getting done with the last class of the day. The librarian's gaze didn't shift from the book in his hands as Eren walked through the glass double doors. His steel blue eyes remained focused on the pages of the novel in his hands as the black wire, rectangular glasses began to slip down on the bridge of his nose. At least he could give it to him, the librarian dressed extremely well for just working at the library, he was always in a collared button down shirt with a light dress blazer and tie.
Breezing past him, he headed over to where the last line of computers lay nestled among lines of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Hidden from passerby's and prying eyes he took a seat at the computer on the farthest right-hand end and pulled the drive from his pocket. It popped up on the fluorescent blue screen that the drive was password protected and at that point he knew immediately why she had sent him a text of nothing but numbers. He opened the text and began to input the list of numbers, sighing with relief as the files appeared on the screen. The blueprints were just as he needed so he printed them and removed the drive. Laughing as he watched the computer restart itself several times after pulling the drive, Hanji had always done well to cover her tracks and he did as well.
On the way to grab the printed blueprints he dropped the drive on the floor and stomped on it. The heavy heel of his boot succeeded in turning the small drive into several pieces of plastic and chip. He scraped it into his hands and scattered it in a couple trashcans at the printers. When he made it back to the tables he pulled out a piece of tracing paper, a pattern tracing wheel, and a piece of charcoal. Any normal person wouldn't have had a clue as to what he was doing but any criminal would know that he was copying the print and making it nigh invisible until he smeared the charcoal over it's edges. With each papers overlapping one another he set to work carefully tracing every detail of the blueprints onto various sections of wax tracing paper.
Almost 2 hours later and he was done with the easiest part of the plot. Upon finishing the task he looked around and pulled a match from his pocket setting the blueprints ablaze, watching as the quickly turned to ash on the table. Luckily, he scraped off the ashes before the elderly gentleman passing by caught sight of his action. He shuffled the papers around and pushed them into the cylindrical white tube he had stashed away in his messenger bag before getting up to go to the front desk to ask the librarian for the blueprints to some random building inside the city. As he approached the front desk the man looked up from his book, his black hair falling to frame the sides of his face elegantly as he stared at Eren with obvious disdain.
"Can I help you?" The tone of his voice was flat, no sharp edge, completely devoid of any feeling as he spoke.
Eren swallowed and nodded "I need the blueprints for Tycoon Pizzeria down on 6th and Park."
The librarian silently placed his book down and walked off before returning several moments later with them "Here. We close in an hour." He just smiled and nodded in thanks and he walked back to the table, wondering how many times in 2 years he had told him the exact same thing. It never seemed to fail, the only words out of his mouth to Eren were those same flat words as always. Brushing it off he sat down and unfurled the blueprints flattening them to the table. The place wasn't very big so all he had to do was look at it and look like he was actively trying to remember certain details or anything else of it so just before leaving he walked around the table taking several photos before returning it to the front desk where the librarian was nowhere to be seen.
5:30pm was about the time he got home, thankful that he didn't have to work that evening so he'd have longer to plan the break in and secure routes through the building. As always he'd have Hanji's help once he got into the room but until then he was on his own. Setting out the plans he began to shade the papers revealing the faint lines of the rooms and the layout of the 17th floor of the Hyatt Regency hotel. Getting through the front door would be easy but finding ways to get around and down through the back of the room while the man himself was still in the room would be another story all together. Waiting until he left was never an option as he would take his cell phone with him and store away his valuables including his laptop and he wasn't exactly versed in safe cracking.
As the time passed he thought of two plans to get into the room, the first of which being much better, faster, and easier than the second but he knew better than to try to go in without a backup plan from many painful experiences. The presidential suite had several parts to the room so he could be in one piece of the room and not run the risk of waking the scummy senator. Sneaking in from the veranda would pose several issues but none that couldn't be easily resolved with a set of climbing gear and thanks to the fact that he took a rock climbing course he had some. Of course he took the rock climbing course, that almost killed him, so it wouldn't be suspicious that he had such equipment laying around in his apartment. He'd need to get to the room directly below the suite and climb up since it was located on the top floor of rooms and had zero rooms next door due to the privacy amenity of the room. With most things settled he decided to call it a night at 8pm since he was going to need sleep if he was going to be staying out so late tomorrow night. After a hot shower and dinner he headed to bed not quite ready for what Friday would have in store for him.
The next morning he prepared himself for the day's agenda that would be prove to be more than just taxing. His first class of the day wasn't until 11am and his last ended at 3 as he only had 3 classes, so he had time to rest up. On the way down he grabbed the mail and slid his next present into his hoodie pocket proceeding as if he hadn't just slid and earpiece in his pocket. Outside, he slid the piece in his bag placing it into a pocket that would keep it safe until the job later that night. After his three classes he drove off to the place that could only be described as a "functional hell". Digital Dreams was a video game store in the center of the mall where most kids were brought to spend their money, loiter, and skip class. His coworkers weren't the most charming bunch but they all got the job done and his manager was his best friend so it wasn't too terrible but some he certainly enjoyed more than others.
Digital Dreams' neon blue sign stung his eyes as he approached the store already in what they considered a uniform: casual dress and a name tag. First glances would tell most people it was a gaming store but there were some people that didn't exactly see it that way. Parent's often made their kids steer clear of the store if they thought that television and video games were rotting their already horrible children's brains anymore than their atrocious parenting skills. Upon walking into the store he saw the crew he was going to be working with for the next 6 hours. Armin Arlert, his best friend and manager was behind the counter arranging the drawers of discs correctly. His golden hair standing out rather drastically against the grey of the drawers as he bent over flipping through them making sure they were all in the correct order.
The other worker completing their team for the night was the one person that managed to get under his skin by just breathing: Jean Vincent Kirschtein. Two toned hair, multiple piercings and tattoos, and bright amber eyes made him the easiest person to spot in the store. Jean was from a rather well-to-do family but he wanted to prove that he didn't get into college on mommy and daddy's coat tails so he spent most of his time working to pay for everything himself. He was only part time in the store but the two were almost always scheduled with each other since their class schedules were rather similar with classes ending in the afternoon. While he did admire Jean for working so hard, the two had always been on terms that involved them picking on one another to show their approval of one another. There were moments where he wasn't entirely insufferable but they were few and far between. Eren generally liked to screw with him over the one odd fact that he knew about Jean, something that he knew no one else possessed, and that was the fact that Jean was colorblind.
"Hey, Horseface, you know that your shirt doesn't match your pants right?" Eren grinned ear to ear as he stepped behind the counter of the store, clocking in.
Jean turned around, checking the store for customers before flipping him off "Get bent, Eren. I'm wearing jeans and a black shirt. I match just fine."
Eren shrugged as he chuckled "Mhmm, sure, how do you know it's black? It could be a very dark shade of navy and that's hard enough for most people to distinguish between."
Walking behind the counter he looked to Armin "Armin, the shirt is black right?"
Turning his bright blue eyes up to Jean he nodded and sent a scowl to Eren "Yes, Jean, it's black. Eren, stop picking on Jean and go to the back room and help me sort these out. Somehow they're screwy again." Eren groaned and walked off to the back room of the store bringing back a case of sleeved video game discs to stack into the drawers. Sitting beside Armin the two of them went to work while Jean worked the register, speaking with people and actually doing his job which Eren found odd. After the first drawer was finished he spent the rest of the night organizing the other drawers in the cabinet and putting new games into the computer system. His night was filled with menial busy work making for a rather boring night as it drug on.
Returning home after a less than enthusiastic night at work, he prepared for what it was that he did best: breaking and entering. Heading down the hall to his room he began preparing the necessities for the night's main event packing a small messenger bag with the essentials. Anything larger would draw attention so that meant his climbing harness would be on underneath his second layer of clothing, which meant the drag of having extra bulk. Breaking into a hotel wasn't as hard as it sounded, obviously he could just walk right through the front door, but first things first he'd need to swipe a room key from a maid cart. With a maid's key it would allow him into any door meaning he could easily get into the room below room 1712.
After a long shower and hours of looking back over the plans he had drawn up, he began to dress for the main event. As he dressed out of the usual casual clothing, he opted for a black workout top and a pair of tight, black cargo pants beneath a pair of roomy slacks, black dress shirt, casual blazer and a vibrant hunter green tie. He stood in front of the mirror turning to all sides assuring that his harness couldn't be seen beneath his attire. Once he was satisfied with the way he was presenting himself for a high level of customers he grabbed some cash from his wallet and headed out of the house sliding in his earpiece awaiting for the time he'd be listening to Hanji in his ear.