Must Be Tuesday - For Short Affair 15th Feb

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Prompt Word: Bank
Prompt Colour: White
Word Count: 590

Must Be Tuesday

Napoleon would say that it wasn't every day that your attempt to ask a pretty girl out for dinner was interrupted by someone waving a gun, but truthfully at this point in his life it happened so frequently as to be cliché. The difference on this occasion was that the gun wasn't pointed in his direction, and the man holding it didn't belong to THRUSH.

This had all started simply simply enough. He had left the office at lunchtime to go to the bank in order to deposit some cash Illya had lent him in order to deal with a slight overdraft that had his bank manager excited. Once there, however, he had spied the shapely form of Cherie the bank teller and had immediately realised the money could be far better spent taking her to the Nightingale Piano bar for cocktails on Friday night, and since, as a financial professional she had been perfectly happy to agree, there had been nothing more to do than while away the rest of his lunch break in pleasant flirtation while the queue behind him grew more impatient.

That was the point that someone drew a gun. Not, surprisingly, the voluptuous lady with the pekingese in her arms who kept tutting and sighing heavily, but a man with a black stocking covering his face and a revolver in his hand who fired in the air and screamed “Everyone down on the ground! This is a robbery!”

Really, Napoleon would have been inclined to say that the second half of that statement was made clear by context, but never mind. What mattered here more than obvious remarks, was the shrillness of the man's voice and the fact that he was seemingly doing this on his own. This was no seasoned professional criminal, this was a desperate amateur and that meant he might panic in the way that led to people dying.

So when the gun swept over him and the people standing behind him, he got down on the floor with the others. He'd play at hostage for the moment.

“Here!” the robber snarled, throwing a burlap sack across the counter to where Cherie stood. “Put the money in there. All of it! Quickly!”

She moved to obey, her hands shaking, her face white and already streaked with tears. Outside the sound of sirens grew closer. Evidently some kind of alarm had been triggered.

“Shit,” the robber muttered, shifting agitatedly from one foot to the other. “Shit.”

Alright. So this guy had interrupted a perfectly good flirtation, had made Napoleon's would-be-date cry, and if this dragged out into a full-on hostage situation it was going to make him late for the departmental budget meeting....admittedly that last could be considered a good thing, but he liked to think he had a slightly better work ethic than that. Something clearly had to be done.

Waiting until the robber was nervously facing the door, he carefully reached into his pocket and threw a handful of small change towards the metal ashtray in the corner. The robber turned sharply towards the sudden noise, even taking a step forwards, and that was when Napoleon grabbed his ankle, dragging him to the floor and immediately drawing his gun and darting him in the back. The whole thing had taken somewhat less than five second. Not even nearly long enough for the lady with the pekingese to stop screaming.

Napoleon casually lifted the robber's gun and looked up at Cherie. “So,” he said brightly. “Are we still on for Friday?”