“I should start an account with the credit union…maybe ask Mr. Lee to invest tonight as well.” Emily was slicing onions with her typical precise, methodical skill, in the sort of zen state that always inhabited household tasks. She always thought most clearly during these times. In her opinion at least.

“Absolutely not,” Dwight replied, almost absently as he worked on his laptop at the kitchen’s bar counter.

“It would be a way to cast doubt on any future suspicions toward us,” she argued. A senshi living in Destiny City meant maintaining a certain level of paranoia, along with a strong desire to block problems before they might appear on your civilian doorstep.

“It might. But it would definitely put you in a smaller pool,” looking up from his screen, Dwight watched his boss get extra aggressive on some carrots. “The clientele of a local credit union is a smaller pool than the population of Destiny City. The pool of clientele choosing to join a local credit union in the week leading to the place being blown up or whatever is even smaller. The best thing to do as Emily is to just be a small fish in a big pool.” She looked up from her carrots, knife still moving swiftly, a blur in her hands, and made grim eye contact with him. “Okay, okay, a medium-large fish in a huge…massive pool?” She let him go with a snort, and slid the finely chopped carrots into a waiting bowl.

After a few minutes of companionable silence, both working in their own way, Dwight closed his laptop with a dramatic sigh. “Are you really going to attack a ********> bank?”

“Yes.”

“Without me?!” He whined like she was going to Disney World without him. On his birthday.

“Yes.”

“I’d be good. I'd be so good! I’m a great Jimmy Olsen. Well, better than, really. I’ve never been kidnapped or messed around with a cult. Other than yours.” The last was said extremely quietly, basically just mouthed to himself. When he saw Emily hadn’t seemed to hear it, he breathed a sigh of relief that had her stopping to look at him again.

“What was that?”

“Nothing! Nothing. Anyway, are you guys going to like, rob the place too?”

Shaking her head, Emily grabbed an even bigger knife, “Not as far as I know. Any money I come into contact with, I’ll be burning.” She doesn’t need it for one, and she already has too much on her plate to mess around laundering money into something that can’t be traced back to the credit union.

“And you’re sure you guys don’t need a like, watch out? Getaway driver? Sniper?”

She sighed, “You don’t have glamor, and super hero masks do not count. Magic only for this one.”

“I could deal with cameras, I’m good at that stuff. Isn’t there a bunch of tech nerds helping?”

“Magical tech nerds,” Emily added as she laid into a head of cabbage.

“OooooOOoo, magical nerds,” Dwight rolled his eyes and sulked. “Why suddenly now, anyway? Don’t you guys just usually,” he paused to silently grimace and shrug.

Which was…actually pretty accurate, all things considered.

“Maybe more of us are feeling it? The fact that this isn’t even a war at this point. They’ve won the war. We’re all just,” the knife picked up speed,a blur nearing her fingers, “...surviving until we can simply leave this world, taking everyone we care about away, and then the rest is up to them. But that’s going to be a long time coming, and until then, what do we have?”

“Survival,” he repeated slowly in answer, relaxing slightly as her knife paused and she waited for the rest. “...and people to protect.” She continued waiting. “And what you don’t have…is Earth, right? Not anymore,” he drummed his fingers across the cover of his laptop. “This doesn’t really vibe with your do no harm Hestian stuff.”

“Anger is just another type of debris, Dwight. I’d rather burn it out than build it up”