Anton Lamont had been thirty-seven years old when he realised that understanding beauty and possessing it were entirely different things. Three years later he now stood in the shadows of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, watching the security guards. Once a professor of art and history, he used to tell his students that the originals were 'priceless treasures held in trust for humanity'.
He used to believe that back then. That understanding them was sufficient compensation for never touching them, never owning them or not even holding them in his own hands. Then he found the cloak.
The Cloak of Cagliostro. Dark as midnight and covered in symbols that seemed to move if you looked too long. He discovered it in a private estate sale. The heir was too ignorant to recognise what they possessed.
Anton had recognised the symbols immediately and had traced them to Count Cagliostro, the legendary occultist and alchemist from the 1700s. The first time we wore it in his apartment alone, he discovered its true power.
He could become intangible, invisible and teleport. The cloak gave him the means to finally possess the beauty he spent his entire life admiring.
Anton checked his watch. He quit Columbia the day after he discovered the cloak's powers.
With the cloak he could do more. Be more. His first theft was a mediaeval manuscript, and all he had to do was walk through the walls and be invisible.
The manuscript now sat in his apartment, properly stored and admired daily. As it should be. Since then he has got more ambitious, building his collection piece by piece.
Not for money. He sold nothing. This wasn't about wealth. It was about surrounding himself in their beauty, and they deserved an owner who truly understood them.
Anton activated his cloak with a thought, and he was now wrapped in invisibility, and he teleported to the entrance of the museum.
The doors were massive and made of bronze, but to him, they were irrelevant as he simply just walked right through them.
He now stood in the grand entrance hall with its marble floors and millions of dollars' worth of art surrounding him in their displays. All of it for his choosing.
He had a specific target. A Sumerian cylinder seal from the third millennium BCE carved from lapis lazuli that depicted a religious ceremony involving the goddess Inanna. Absolutely priceless.
It was on display in a reinforced case with motion sensors. Anton moved through the museum like a ghost, passing the guards and leaving unaware he was even there.
He gazed at it from multiple angles, the cylinder seal still in its case. It was beautiful. Four thousand years old and still perfect, created by an artisan who's name was lost to history. Anton studied, appreciating the craftsmanship.
The guard entered the gallery and shone his flashlight across the displays. The beam passed directly through Anton. He was now standing three feet away from the guard.
The guard checked and left. Anton waited two minutes to make sure he didn't come back, and then he approached the case.
Anton reached through it, his hand passing through the glass. His fingers closed around the seal. A piece of history four thousand years in his palm.
He pulled it back through the case. The seal was still solid in his hand, yet it still passed through the barrier. A power of the cloak that could be explained as magic.
Anton placed it carefully in a briefcase he had brought with him. Proper care for a beautiful artefact. Then he heard footsteps. Mutiple guards started to enter the room.
It was time to leave. Anton teleported into a dumpster outside the museum in an alleyway. Teleportation was the hardest ability to control, and he was still learning. It took him around an hour to get back to his apartment.
Anton's apartment was modest from the outside, but inside was completely different. Every surface was full of artefacts, all properly displayed and cared for.
A museum-quality collection worth billions. All stolen and all his. Anton placed the seal in its designated spot.
He stepped back and admired it along with the rest. It was perfect. This is what mattered. Surrounding himself with history. With beauty.
Anton poured himself a glass of wine, nothing expensive, while he sat among his collection. Some may call him a thief or villain, but they didn't understand.
These artefacts had survived millennia, and they would outlast him and everyone else. In their history, his possession of them was a mere moment, but during that moment he would appreciate them. The cloak had made all of this possible. Gave him access to beauty that he'd always been too close to but forever out of reach while he was just a simple professor.
This was his purpose. His calling. The reason the cloak had come into his life.
Anton turned on his laptop and checked up on the news. The reports were all the same. Another artefact mysteriously vanished. They wouldn't catch him. Couldn't catch him. The cloak made sure of that.
Anton took another sip of his wine and checked the blog again. They were calling him 'The Fadeaway Man'. It all started after his third theft. He liked the name. It had the same gravitas as the great art thieves of previous eras.
Now finished with his glass, his mind wandered elsewhere. Not about museums but about Hawkgirl.
His laptop displayed everything publicly known about Thanagarian artefacts along with pictures of Hawkgirl. Anton's jaw tightened as he read.
She was a warrior. A woman who simply smashed things with a mace. What did she know about their beauty?
Nothing. She was simply lucky to come into their possession, and she treated them carelessly. Bringing them into combat. She was unworthy.
"You don't deserve them," he muttered, scrolling through images.
They belonged in the hands of someone who understood their value. They belonged with him. With him they would be treated with the care they deserved. Antons started to plan.
Soon The Fadeaway Man would pay the warrior a visit.