"Fifty...sixty...seventy...eighty...ninety...one hundred!" Cinder Red said, as she slid the money from one pile to another pile, her thumb pushing the bills from their holding straps with a soft
shush shush shush
noise. "And that's the count, two million, five hundred thousand, six hundred and eighty dollars." She flashed a huge smile at Jeremy, who was sitting in his office chair, wishing he had a brown paper bag to breathe into. Penny and Nova cuddled against his sides, while Rayne lay on her belly, watching the piles of money as if they owed her something. Skye was just stalking back and froth, rubbing her palms together.
"Step one," she said. "Seduce Jeremy's mom."
"How is that step
one
?" Jeremy asked. "You stole two million dollars from the bank!"
"Your mother's clearly a noble of some kind, she has casual access to a magic mirror," Skye said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe. "So, we use magic to make you appear to be another suitor, from a far off land. Maybe a Moore?"
"Moores are hot!" Penny said, cheerfully.
"Then, you marry her-"
Jeremy put his hands over his face.
"-then she can use her noble status to wipe away the little bank robbery thing we have here," Skye said, smugly. "Step two, you fake your own death. Can't have you be fucking your own mom as a Moore."
"Oh, thank god," Jeremy whispered.
"It's way hotter when she knows it's you!" Skye said, slamming her knuckles into her palm, her eyes gleaming eagerly.
"Yeah!" Penny said, throwing her arms up into the air. "Incest is wincest!"
Jeremy was pretty sure that even if it was still the 12
th
century, this plan had enough holes to count as a cheese-grater. And, like a cheese-grater, he wanted to get his dick as far away from it as he possibly could.
Liar,
a tiny part of him whispered. The tiny part of him that had been slapped dumb by the sight of his mother sliding her blouse off, revealing her tramp stamp, her winding tribal tattoos, her fiercely assertive attitude. Jeremy wrapped his mental hands around that tiny part of him, squeezed it into a ball, kicked the ball into a mental sack, then threw the mental sack into the mental river, then put that mental river into space, then put the mental space into a box, then smashed it with a hammer.
"Firstly," Jeremy said. "My mom's not a noble. Secondly, there aren't nobles. Thirdly, the Moores were kicked out of Spain in the 7
th
century! They haven't been a major player in European politics for five centuries even
before
the point where you say your historical knowledge stops! So, like, fourthly, I am not going to be involved in any plan that starts at act three of Oedipus Rex and goes from there! And finally, last by far from least..." He pointed his finger right at Skye. "Aren't you supposed to be someone who fights evil and battles injustice? How can you
rob a bank
!?"
"...I thought it was a dungeon," Skye muttered, her head ducking forward. "And, you're our protector. You deserve lots of money."
"Jeremy?"
The voice that came through the door caused Jeremy to freeze in abject terror. Panic filled his brain. He opened his mouth, closed it, then saw the door swinging slowly inwards. The only good thing he could say about right now was that he had, at some point, put on pants. That was the
only
good thing about this situation because he hadn't covered up the two million dollars in stolen money from the bank, the five completely naked half-human, half-dragon girls who were lounging around the room as if they owed the place, nor had he come up with an explanation for why he was here, home, and
not
at his first shift at Crazy Nick's Wing Dump.
Because the voice was his mom.
Opening the door.
She stepped in at the same time a bright flash of light filled the air. When he blinked it away, he saw that the dragons had all shapeshifted. They looked remarkably similar to how they had before, save that their scales were gone, their tails were gone, their wings were gone, and they were wearing clothes. Cinder was dressed in a gothic lolita outfit with a frilly skirt in patterns of red and black, her red hair done up in a complicated ponytail braid thing. Penny was in a bright yellow T with jeans, while Skye was in bootie shorts, sandals, and a belly exposing halter top with silver stripes, which showed off her taut, nut-brown girl abs. Rayne was in a blue hoodie so big that it covered her entire gangly body, leaving her dark features the only thing visible atop a nearly perfect pyramid of blue jacket. Finally, Nova Cosmos was dressed in a pale white shift that looked like it'd have fit right in, if this had been a hippie commune around April 4
th
, 1968 and not right fucking now.
"Hello Mrs. Bayer!" All the dragons said at the same time as Mom stuck her head in.
"...Jeremy..." Mom said. "Who...are...these girls?"
"Uh..." Jeremy said, blinking. "...we're...in a group project."
"Okay," Mom said. "Why is there..." Her eyes swept along the piles of money. "Why is there a massive pile of money there?"
Jeremy, reaching desperately, fumbled around and caught on Season 3 of the NBC sitcom
The Good Place
. "I won a contest," he said. "We won a contest."
"Ah," Mom said, her brow knitting forward. Jeremy tried to not think about how, with her blouse on and her skirts back around her hips, she looked completely professional. No one could see the tattoos. Nor the tramp stamp that invited random strangers to fuck her in the ass. Why, if you didn't know better, you'd think she was Jeremy's mom and not a cam-girl! Hysterical? Who was hysterical! Jeremy, Jeremy was hysterical right now. "What contest?"