It was early in the evening in a quaint and quiet neighborhood, when the Brothers Basker committed the crime of breaking and entering. The two roguish brethren slipped through shadows and had shared a mind of ill intent, lustful at the thought of what treasures might await them at the corner of Ruby and Twilight.

They had scoped the house for a brief period, and were delighted to see the family who dwelled there leave for a vacation, at least three days by the looks of their luggage. Brother Paul had privileged information that the patriarch of this particular home was a collector of rare pop culture memorabilia, and although its exact contents were unknown to him, he salivated at the potentially prosperous pilfering.

Brother Scott closed the door behind them as they tiptoed into the entryway. Brother Paul reached into his trenchcoat’s breast pocket and pulled out a metal head with glowing green eyes, placing it on the nearby side table. Each eye began to glow in a different sequence, faster and faster until it was a rapid strobe of flashing light. The eyes went dark, then each lit up blue, and a small circular mouth mechanically moaned, “Yim, Yim - Alarm Disabled.”

“That’s my Yim Yim!” exclaimed Brother Paul.

Brother Scott rolled his eyes, but was secretly gracious that he didn’t have to manually disconnect the security systems anymore, though it did slightly sting his pride. He had been renowned for his hacking abilities in the seedy underworld the Brothers Basker operated through. Brother Paul had always been the information gatherer, never leaving them without a high paying job to look forward to, but Brother Scott was the lockpicking master who got them on the inside.

“Let's get started, Pauly. We got a lot of shit to grab. I wanna get outta here and eat an entire plate of burgers, I’m starvin’ here,” said Brother Scott, who had started opening every drawer in the kitchen.

Brother Paul looked really annoyed, but decided to hold his tongue. His brother almost never found anything in the kitchen drawers, but had lucked out on a job in the 80’s and found $10K stashed under the silverware tray, and now he always checked, despite the fact that it was a one in a million chance. Paul headed straight for the master bedroom, but was stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a man looking directly at him through a window in the living room.

Brother Paul quickly pulled out his pistol, which normally would have been a last resort. He pointed it straight at the figure in the window, but it didn’t move a muscle. “Yim Yim, organic threat detection?” he asked the metal head.

Brother Scott poked his head up at that, lips pursed while trying to see what was going on, and drew his pistol as soon as he saw Paul’s. The metal head’s eyes blinked back and forth, pink to white, and then back to solid blue. “No organic threat detected,” the head spoke with a monotone metallic twang.

Brother Paul took a deep breath, and started walking towards the figure in the window, his weapon pointed directly at its heart. Scott did the same, and cautiously approached from the kitchen, his shoes squeaking on the old linoleum. Paul lifted two fingers and flashed a sign at his brother, who swiftly tossed a white ball into the air, illuminating the room for only a second. Paul immediately re-holstered his pistol and walked to the window.

“Its a fuckin’ cardboard cuttout of a super hero, Scotty.”

Brother Scott holstered his gun as well, perplexed by the heroic silhouette looming over their hopeful bounty. “Why they got a caped crusader in their backyard?” asked Scott, hiding his nervousness with anger.

“I don’t think it's their yard, Bro. I think…’ Brother Paul said distractedly as he walked to the sliding glass door beside the window.

He lifted the latch and slid the door over, revealing an additional room where the backyard should have begun. Paul looked back at Scott, his eyes full of childlike wonder. He put his hand in the room and flicked on the light, and a single tear fell from Scott’s eye as he watched. The room looked like a museum, filled to the brim with pristine action figures, sealed comics, first edition collectables, lunchboxes… The list was immeasurable.

Scott let out a quiet hoot and began stamping his feet in circles. “Jackpot, it's the jackpot baby! We are going to need a bigger van!” he said, still dancing in celebration.

Brother Paul, however, had sharp eyes that were wildly calculating the value of the room and its contents. His mouth began to tremble as it whispered silent dollar amounts. He scowled and started moaning, and he scratched his own face so deep that it began to bleed profusely. Paul’s eyes rolled back, and he put his arm in his mouth to avoid biting off his tongue. He sank his teeth deep, but all he could feel was pure joy as the calculations continued running in his head. He slowly turned to Scott as his eyes rolled back down, and said, “Brother, we are going to be rich.”

After two hours of meticulously sorting, storing, and preparing the merchandise to be loaded into their van, the Brothers Basker had completed the ransacking of the corner house on Ruby Ln. The boxes were stacked neat and tidy, as only the Brothers would take the time to do in the middle of a heist. As Brother Paul began to lift one of the boxes, Brother Scott headed down the unexplored hallway. “Scotty, are you kidding with this? We’ve got enough here to fill our coffers for years. Help me get these boxes into the van, before some nosy neighbor catches wind of what we’re up to.”

“You think I’m gonna leave a dime’s worth of value in this house just because we got a good haul in the living room? Not gonna happen, I’ll be right back,” said Scott as he slinked down the hall.

Paul rolled his eyes and looked towards Yim Yim, who gave him two blue flashes from his left eye and a disappointed beep. “I hear ya, Yim.”

Scott entered the first bedroom on the left, slowly inspecting what dosh it may have to offer him. It appeared to be the room of an elderly person; no technology, clearly older furniture and art, old lady clothes and smells, and an ancient quilt on a bed that was at least a half twin. He ran his hand above some books on the top shelf of her case, until he felt a soft pile that brought a smile to his face. “Nothing like a fat wad of cash to put a cherry on top of this lovely evening,” Scott hollered for his brother to hear.

He could easily see that this room had given him everything it had to offer, so he giddily slinked toward the master bedroom. He didn't, however, notice the tempered glass tripwire that had appeared in the doorway. Scott fell face first into the hallway’s wall, harder and faster than a racquetball slamming during an intense game.

Paul looked towards the hall after he heard a huge slam. “Yim, Yim - Fracture detected. Multiple fractures detected,” the metal head said with an urgent twang, its eyes blinking furiously red to white.

“SHIT!” exclaimed Brother Paul as he dashed towards his brother, a look of utter sickness on his face.

Before he made it to the hallway, one of the linoleum tiles opened with a whirring sound, and Brother Paul's foot went straight in. He began to trip, but that was the least of his problems. His foot entered blueflame, as a nearly white fire torched him from under the floorboards and instantaneously melted his shoe to his foot, all before he finished falling from losing his balance. A loud crack exclaimed that his shin broke before he fell flat on his face, but the only thing Paul could feel was the scalding boot dripping between his toes. The ungodly roar that came from Brother Paul was too foul to describe, a mockery of the human voice; something closer to a raging ape eating its own young out of fear.

Scott was still slumped face first against the wall, no sign of movement. Paul was down too, his foot beneath the floorboard and bent as he lay against the entryway’s floor. The metallic head was beeping and buzzing erratically, the eyes flashing every color imaginable. “Yim, Yim - burn detec- fracture detect- burn de- fract- bur -frack - - - calculating - calculating - Organic Threat detected - warning - Organic Threat detect-” buzzed the metal head in a faster and faster metallic twang, until a wrinkled hand grabbed it from the entryway table where it rested.

An elderly woman held the head in her frail hand, and looked into it’s blinking eyes. She couldn’t have been more than four and a half feet tall, her age somewhere in the late 90’s. She contorted her face at the sight of Yim Yim, and threw it against the marble countertop as hard as she could, shattering the head into thousands of pieces.

…

Deep under the ocean in a giant facility, two thousand miles off the coast, a young man looked towards the ceiling and screamed in pain. He was wearing a VR headset, and had nodes from his computer plugged into his head. A placard on his desk read, “J. Yim.” He slammed his fist on his desk and wept silently.

…

The old woman scoffed at the remains of the metal head, and shuffled towards Brother Paul, long unconscious from the pain. She snapped her fingers and two Dachshunds appeared from the hallway, their collars jingling as they hopped towards her with joy. “There are my babies, do your business on the bad man!” the old woman said elatedly.

The dogs ran to Paul’s head and both lifted their legs, a brilliant yellow Trevi fountain splashing off his lifeless face. The liquid woke him, and his eye twisted in circles as the pain of his foot came back into existence. It hurt so much that he was able to drift back into a senseless state, but before he did, the old woman spoke to him. “Nobody messes with Gum Gum Bean’s cash. That’s my gamblin’ money.”

Gum Gum Bean laughed hysterically at Brother Paul’s limp body. “Now now, my babies, go give the other bad man some brown treats! Do it for your Gummy,” Gum Gum choked on her laughter.

The dogs ran towards the hall, and she walked ahead of them, reaching down to retrieve the wad of cash from Brother Scott’s pocket before the dachshunds presented him with their brown gifts. She stepped over the glass tripwire, laid down on her tiny bed, and wrapped herself in the ancient quilt. She reached for an old rotary phone, dialed 911, and held the cash against her chest. “Hello, this is Gum Gum Bean. I’d like to report a robbery in progress on the corner of Ruby lane and Twilight street! Please help, I’m afraid, I heard loud noises, my puppies, please, my puppies! Come quick,” Gum Gum said before slamming the phone onto the receiver.

She smiled, and waited to hear the sirens in the distance.