Chapter Text
On one street of San Francisco, California, sits an abandoned warehouse. A shadowy figure steps onto the curb next to it. The person stuffs his hands into his pocket as a wind blows, fluttering the cape he’s wearing. “Now let’s see, it’s isolated.” The person’s voice is thick with a Transylvanian accent.
He looks around. “And it’s in a neighborhood that you can make people not mess with you and not get a police call.” The guy looks back at the building and smiles, revealing teeth with very sharp canines. “Perfect.”
A couple of days later, all the windows are fixed, as well as the broken door. People passing by look at the warehouse with a sense of awe and fear; someone has just moved in.
Captain Black is sitting at his desk typing up a report when his screen suddenly opens up a video feed. On the video nothing can be seen but a blurred shadow. “What the?”
“Yes, ‘what the’, indeed. Hello, Captain Black. This is the criminal Lestat. You may know me by the name Dracula, which the media has given me.”
“How’d you hack into my computer, and what do you want?” Black narrows his eyes at the screen.
“Oh, hacking is easy for me. As for what I want, this is a message of intent.” Black raises an eyebrow. “I intend to break into your vault and steal the twelve talismans. I have heard of them, and they pique my interest.”
Despite being the figure being only a shadow, Black is surprised as the figure apparently smiles, his teeth becoming visible.
“You have until midnight tonight to get your men ready for my arrival. Good day to you.”
At midnight, everything is ready, and the Chan group is waiting near the vault, Jade included.
“Okay, Jackie. You must be alert. This Lestat is supposed to be pretty quick and slippery,” said Captain Black.
Jackie nods his head in agreement. “Yes, I’ve heard about him on the news. No camera has ever been able to capture his image, despite him walking up to and turning some off.”
Black looks down at Jade as she walks back and forth with her hands behind her head, obviously bored, but not wanting to go to sleep and miss the action. “On the video we received, all we saw was shadow, despite the room being well lit.”
Their conversation stops as shouts and gunfire emit from the rest of the complex. “He’s here.”
They come to attention and move their heads slightly as the sounds of battle get closer. The door suddenly flies open as an agent is knocked through it. Standing in the doorway is a boy. His clothes are the sleek clothes of the thief with a cape added.
“That’s Lestat? But he’s just a kid,” Jackie says, shocked.
Lestat bows to the ones in front of him. “Ah, the Chan family. Nice to finally meet you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must break in.”
Lestat smiles, showing his sharp fangs, and causing Jade to suck in her breath in shock upon seeing them. He dashes at the group. But instead of engaging the fighters, he dodges their attack by twisting his body inhumanly, and gets past.
The Chans blink before they turn around and dash after him, only to find the vault already open. Inside, a blur spins around the room, stopping to reveal Lestat, now holding all the talismans.
Lestat glances up and dodges as Jackie jumps over. The skilled fighter looks around in confusion. “Heh, you guys may be great fighters, but apparently you can’t deal with a quick thief with no wish to fight – especially people of your caliber.”
Jade tenses up and moves her head slightly to see Lestat is behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder. She stares at him as he shifts his eyes to look back at her.
“You’re quite cute. You know, I would even say beautiful.” Jade blushes, but continues to stare at him in surprise. “Of course, though, you’re a good guy intent on catching me. So I’ll see you later.”
Jade blinks and turns quickly in surprise as he vanishes; she blinks in confusion as a small slip of paper slowly floats down into her line of sight.
She grabs it and looks at it. It says,
‛And I do mean later, ‛cause if you want, I can take you on a little adventure, since I know you like adventures. I’ve done some research on other things and found some other criminals who really need to be stopped. I only steal, whereas they actually harm living things. If you’re interested in helping out then call this number.’
Underneath that is a phone number and the closing of the letter.
Back home, Jackie divulges everything that happened to Uncle as Jade sits in a chair, staring at the note, and then glancing at the nearby phone. She shifts her eyes back and forth a few times before glancing in the direction of Jackie and Uncle. With a determined look she gets up and picks up the phone.
Meanwhile, back at the warehouse, the boy cloaked in shadows tosses a talisman into the air and catches it. “Hmm, 12 talismans. How neat. But the only useful ones I prefer are super-strength, speed, flight, hand and eye blast. I have no need for invisibility, since I’m not seen on cameras.”
He glances briefly at a TV in the room to see the latest news about him on it, smiles, and then looks back at the talismans. “No need for astro-projection. Why would I need that?” he asks himself as he picks up the Sheep talisman, and then puts it down.
He holds up the Rat talisman. “Bring life to the lifeless. Well, there’s a couple things I could do with that, but not much.” He looks at the Monkey talisman. “Shapeshifting. Now that’s a neat power I could use, especially on these villains I want to stop.” Next he picks up the Tiger talisman. “Balance, or to be more precise, ying/yang. Now I could also use that on them, make ‘em turn themselves in.” He chuckles to himself slightly at this thought going through his mind.
Then he looked at the Dog and Horse talismans. “Immortality and healer – well, I’m already immortal and therefore no need for healing. There’s only one thing I need to watch out for, and I avoid running into them – the blasted nocturnum hunters. They can be such a nuisance if one does get wind of me, despite the fact that I don’t…”
The toothy smile is quickly placed on his face as he hears a phone ringing.
“So, she’s calling. Time to arrange a meeting to begin our crime hunt.” Lestat walks over to a desk and picks up a cell phone.