She assumed it was a thief. The girl was literally wearing a striped shirt and a domino mask, with a bag by her hip that had a large dollar sign on it. There was little room for interpretation, except that no actual burglar would wear such a cliché outfit.

An ironic statement, maybe? Isabel didn’t have time to parse it because she was running after the girl.

She made out more details as she caught up with her and grabbed the kid’s ankle. She had ears, animal ears, and a large, fluffy tail, black with white rings around it. “Oh no you don’t!” Isabel said as she tugged her back into the house.

This situation had just gone from routine to not. She had to call it in. The rules about it being a clandestine operation could rot.

The thief girl kicked and twisted, but Isabel interposed her shields before any blow could land, small, paper-thin panes of black nonenergy that would move in relation to her, and couldn’t be broken, not by anything she’d discovered yet.

Isabel dragged the kid back into the living room. She wasn’t heartless; she wasn’t going to pin the girl on the floor when there was a perfectly serviceable couch right there. “Stop kicking me,” Isabel ordered.

“No! You suck!”

Children. “What were you doing here?” Isabel asked.

“I heard there was someone really ugly here, then you showed up! You’re so ugly I decided to run away.”

Isabel glared. Sure, she had a full-face mask, and sure, it was a childish insult, but still. “Just answer my question,” she said as she reached into a thigh pocket and tugged out her phone.

Then the kid whipped her tail at Isabel’s face. A shield stopped it, but it blocked her vision for long enough that the kid was able to kick her phone away.

“Dammit,” Isabel muttered. She summoned a few shields to pin the girl in place while she went to fetch her phone. The entire time, the girl called her a poop-head, a jerk, a stupid doo-doo eater, and a few other creative yet still somehow entirely child-friendly curses.

“This has got to be some sort of joke,” Isabel muttered. She walked over to the kitchen, opened a few drawers, and grinned to herself as she found a roll of tape. “Never having kids.”

The girl had powers, that much was obvious, and she was on the Villainous side of the spectrum, too, if Isabel had to guess. A Mischief Maker or a Scoundrel or something to that effect.

Maybe a potential new recruit? That would be nice. There was a bonus for that, and Isabel was saving up to buy a nice house in the suburbs. She still had her mission to carry out here, too, but she figured her priorities had just shifted.