"..."
Jackie Chan opened his mouth, feeling a wave of helplessness wash over him.
He recalled the specialized elevator in Section 13 that led to the underground vault, requiring fingerprint, iris, and voiceprint triple verification, plus manual authorization from Sheriff Black... Take the stairs? That answer was even more absurd than the talismans sprouting legs and running out by themselves!
But he wisely decided not to delve deeper.
After all, incidents like "how did Jade manage to bypass all the security and appear in a place she absolutely shouldn't be"—
had happened so frequently that he was becoming somewhat numb to them.
"Alright..."
Jackie Chan took a deep breath, accepted the rabbit talisman imbued with the power of super speed from Jade, clenched it tightly in his palm, and wore a tragic, determined expression that seemed to say "who else but me?"
"Let me do it. It's... wrong for a child to steal."
He tried to cling to the last shred of moral high ground as an elder before the impending "immoral act."
Jade immediately crossed her arms indignantly in front of her chest, pouting so hard you could hang an oil bottle on her lips, and fired a soul-piercing question:
"Hey! That's not fair! Is it right for adults to steal then?"
"I..."
Jackie was left speechless, his face instantly flushing bright red. He felt his already precarious moral high ground crumbling under the bombardment of Jade's logic.
He stammered, trying to justify himself:
"It's different! I'm doing it to... to prevent something worse from happening! It's... necessary..."
"Necessary theft?" Jade delivered the precise finishing blow, the look in her eyes making Jackie wish he could find a hole to crawl into.
"Alright, alright! Time is of the essence!"
Jackie decided to abandon this doomed debate and forcibly changed the subject.
He gripped the rabbit talisman, feeling the speed power contained within, a force that seemed capable of tearing space, flowing in his palm.
He took one last look at Victor across the street, who was blissfully unaware of the impending "light-speed pickpocketing" and still happily enjoying his ice cream, then gritted his teeth.
"rabbit talisman, grant me success... and please, don't let Sheriff Black find out!"
After silently uttering this prayer filled with little confidence, Jackie's eyes focused, his body leaned forward slightly, like an arrow about to be released from the bowstring—
The next second, the rabbit talisman glowed faintly. Jackie's figure instantly blurred, transforming into a blue afterimage almost impossible for the naked eye to track. With a faint gust of air, he shot towards Victor's direction!
The speed was so extreme it gave an eerie sense of stillness.
Just before Jackie activated the rabbit talisman, a sudden, strange gust of wind swept by.
Victor only felt his hand lighten, and his precious ice cream flew out in a graceful parabola, landing with a "splat" on the ground.
The ice cream became a sticky, brown stain on the pavement, leaving only a lonely, empty cone still clutched in his hand.
"My ice cream!"
Victor looked at the "wreckage" on the ground. Before his lament of annoyance could escape his lips, an even stronger gust of wind roared past his side.
Accompanied by a dull "thud," it sounded as if something heavy had slammed hard into a wall not far away.
Victor, still holding the empty cone in his mouth, turned his head in confusion.
He saw a distinctly human-shaped dent in the mottled brick wall opposite, with fresh cracks radiating from its edges.
Jackie Chan was embedded within it in an extremely contorted, almost performance-art pose, his eyes rolled back, clearly temporarily unconscious.
And the soles of his iconic cloth shoes were precisely and unmistakably smeared with the remains of Victor's recently deceased ice cream.
"Hey!" Victor immediately protested, pointing at the "evidence" on Jackie's shoe soles. "You, using my ice cream as brake pads?"
Just then, *clatter clatter*—
A smooth, warm stone carved with a rabbit pattern rolled out from Jackie's loosened palm, coming to a stop at Victor's feet.
"No—!"
A little girl's exclamation came from the street corner.
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