"Hi Mr. Acker!" Stacia greeted cheerfully. The grizzled old teller barely nodded at the young woman as she passed by him, clutching a tray of coffees. "I left some donuts in the break room, if you want any."

"Thanks Stacia." Acker said miserably, then proceeded to recount his drawer to avoid talking to his bubbly coworker. The new ones were downright annoying until they had their spirits crushed.

Stacia continued moving down the row of tellers, handing out coffees she'd picked up for her coworkers and informing them of the donuts, offering each person a personalized greeting and a bright smile. The rest of the tellers at the Central City branch of the bank were a lot less enthusiastic about their job, but most of them appreciated Stacia's effort. Some mornings her good mood was catching, after all.

Humming to herself, Stacia put her nameplate up in front of her window, checked that her candy basket was full (for the kids of course), shifted her pen cup just so, and nodded, satisfied that everything was perfect, and that she was ready to start another day.

Less than an hour into her shift a series of shrill notes exploded the glass front doors of the bank and cracked all the plexi-glass teller windows. All of the other tellers ducked down, used to hold ups, but Stacia was still new and had never seen anything like this. She stared open mouthed as a man dressed in a ridiculous polka dotted tunic and stocking cap jogged into the bank. He had an odd looking flute in one hand and a large sack with a dollar sign drawn in sharpie on it in the other.

"Not again." One of the customers groaned. "What are you going to do, club us with that thing if we try to go for help?" He was an angry looking middle aged business man with a silly looking comb over. The bank robber looked thrown by the man's comment and took a second to answer.

"N-no, I'm not here to hurt anyone. I just need the, er, want the money."

"Call the cops! This one's an idiot! He doesn't even have a gun, call the cops!" The business man yelled. The rest of the customers seemed to unfreeze at this, and Stacia caught Mr. Acker edging towards the alarm button at the end of the row out of the corner of her eye.

"Can't have that." The bank robber muttered. He put his flute to his lips, and at the sound of the first note everyone in the bank froze. Everyone except Stacia.

The young man in the silly green outfit skipped up to her box, smiled pleasantly and extended the money sack. "Would you be so kind as to fill this up for me please?"

Stacia's smile wavered. She looked from the bag, to the criminal's expectant face, and back to the bag again. Her lower lip started trembling, her eyes welled, and then she burst into tears and buried her pretty young face in her hands.

"Oh no, are you okay?"

"Don't hurt me!" Stacia screamed. She almost fell to her knees, shaking with her sobs.

"I won't hurt you, I promise!" The young man leaned over the counter to reassuringly pat her arm. "Is this your first bank robbery?" He asked.

"Uh…uh huh!" Stacia sobbed out.

"I'm so sorry, it's mine too and I feel like I'm making a mess of everything. I had all these ideas for a really cool looking entrance, but the glass didn't blow out very well, and then that old man made me feel like a moron or something-"

"That's Mr…Mr. Taylor, and he's always re-really rude! He comes in on, on Thursdays and goes th-through my line and he takes a handful of lollipops and I buy those myself so that I can-can give them to kids, and he doesn't have any kids!" Stacia accepted a tissue from the strange criminal. She delicately dabbed at her eyes. "And he always calls me sweetcheeks, but I don't think he's talking about my face! And, and I try to be nice, and pleasant but the customers are in such a hurry, most of them are rude to me, and I'm not really making any money here, and I can't afford my groceries and my electricity's going to get shut off and then you have to come in and rob me-"

"I'm so sorry, I didn't even think of how it would affect you. Have I ruined your morning?"

"Uh huh!"

"Oh geeze…here, can you fill this up while I think of a way to make it up to you?" He asked. He handed her the bag, which she numbly accepted. Stacia filled it up with bands of bills, vision so obscured from her tears that she couldn't tell if she was giving him twenties, ones, fifties or rigged bills with exploding ink packs.

"Here you go." She said heavily, passing the sack back.

"Thank you very much miss…" He leaned over to read her nameplate. "Stacia? Well that's a very pretty name."

"Thank you. What are you calling yourself?"

"The Pied Piper. Is it too obvious?"

"No, no. I like it." She wiped her face once more with the tissue before tossing it in the garbage. "Are you all done robbing me?"

"I think so. I really am very sorry. I hope that situation with your electric bill works out, and really, I think your boss should give you a raise. I mean, if you have to deal with people like me you should at least be earning a living wage."

"They keep our hours just under full time so we can't have benefits-"

"That's monstrous!"

"Tell me about it! Tanya over there, the one frozen with her hand on the phone, she's a single mom with two kids and she doesn't have health insurance."

"That isn't right."

The sound of approaching sirens pulled them out of their conversation.

"Oops, I took longer than I'd planned." The Pied Piper pulled back one of his sleeves to look at a battered watch. "Very nice meeting you Stacia, but I've got to run."

"Good luck!" She called after him with a wave. She winced, as a thought struck her. "I hope he has a getaway car. It's his first robbery, he might not have thought of it."

The next morning on her way to work Stacia skipped buying coffee and donuts for her coworkers, or candy for her dish. Instead she bought herself a latte and a newspaper, called in sick and sat down in a café to read Iris West's write up on the Pied Piper, who had managed to get away clean from the bank robbery.

Unfortunately for him though, he'd gotten arrested later that same day trying to pay the electric bill of a Central City citizen (name withheld). He'd forgotten to take off the stocking cap when he'd gone in and the employees had recognized him from a breaking news report.

Stacia shook her head, sympathetic for the pleasant young costumed criminal. "He'll get better eventually." She decided.