AN: Modern!au because I can never resist a good heist and thieves are my favorite type of characters.
“You know, I didn’t sign on to be the face.” Obi’s voice sounded tinny through Zen’s earpiece but the put-upon quality of it came through loud and clear.
“The face?” Zen questioned as he leaned down to look over Kiki’s shoulder and watched the cameras pan slowly over Obi as he neared the entrance. Thank goodness for mob bosses and their fanatically obsessive security system, it made their job so much easier to just hijack what was already there, and in such high resolution color too.
“I’m the hands of this operation, you’re the face, and Shirayuki’s the mastermind,” Obi muttered, eyes meeting Zen’s through the camera feed for a split second before he kept his gaze moving. “You don’t switch those elements up and expect it to be smooth sailing.”
“We already agreed, Obi. They made me last time, so our only ace up our sleeve is your complete anonymity. Embrace the face.” Remembering the hours of discussion over how to go about doing the job, he knew Obi would perform his role no matter the gripes or groans that might come over the line. He would admit that putting him as the frontrunner was rather like trying to contain wind in a box, it wasn’t free to move as it wanted and sneak in where it would, but unfortunately, Zen had already blown his own chance at it.
He traced the pixels that made up Obi’s figure with a slow look, wishing he could be there even more. It had taken some convincing to get Obi to wear what he suggested, but it looked even better than his imagination could have foretold. It was truly a sin that life did not put Obi in suits more often, the tux’s sharp lines doing him all kinds of favors while the camera did not do it full justice in the least. He’d just have to convince Obi to don it once more for him and Shirayuki, another time.
And speaking of Shirayuki, he checked her progress towards the safe and crouched next to her by the grating, taking one look at the concoctions in her lap and figuring it safe to leave her to her tinctures; judging by the intense calculations scribbled down before her, distraction was the last thing she needed.
Returning to the cameras, Zen wished yet again that he had something more to do than just watch and wait. Obi had reached the weapons check area only one step from the main hall and stood with his hands in his pockets as the guard gestured through the prohibited list of items.
“Ah, I understand.” Obi pulled a knife from his pocket and a handgun from his boot, setting them both on the tray laid aside for his things. Standard protocol, if you attended a mob boss’s celebration dinner then you were expected to be packing at least a little, it was more suspicious to bring nothing. It raised questions of what else you could have as leverage. Zen nodded approvingly, so far so good, now to keep moving—
But Obi continued, unsheathing a set of knives from both pant legs, extracting each from the holsters in order from smallest to largest and laying them carefully on the table, before sliding yet another pistol from his jacket. Finally, he handed over the silencer for it and gestured with a roguish smile.
“All clean. Don’t forget, I’ll be wanting those back.” He strode into the venue and Zen wondered why he’d been reticent to be there if he could joke around like that.
“What were all of those? When did you put those on?” Zen asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose instead of sighing. “That was unnecessary.”
“Got your attention though, didn’t it?” Obi snagged a glass of champagne and took a sip before continuing. “What are you going to do? Give me a patdown next time?”
Zen was glad they were in the maintenance shafts, where the bad lighting could hide the fact that his face felt hotter than the chemical fires Shirayuki sometimes set and he could chalk his distracted cough down to the dust floating in the air. Kiki didn’t spare him more than a glance, but even that was enough to let him know he hadn’t fooled her.
“Mission first,” he managed to choke out.
“We’ll discuss what comes later,” Obi agreed, the purr in his voice not helping Zen’s matters much but thankfully they were interrupted by a group of men approaching Obi. Leaving him to schmooze with the best, Zen got himself more under control during the short walk back to Shirayuki, finding her mixing the last batch with a self-satisfied hum.
“I heard him,” she said before he could make any excuses. “Let’s finish this quickly.”
Unlike him, she was too professional to let anything like that distract her from their work, but even she wasn’t above being motivated by a sense of urgency that wasn’t entirely from the promise of money and a lot of jewels that lay at the end of the line.
Passing him a vial, she kicked open the hatch above the vault’s entrance and jumped. Zen’s heart leaped into his throat, wondering if she’d grown reckless in her haste but she beckoned to him to follow as she set off towards the reinforced door. Dropping into the hall, he straightened up to find the junction of the three corridors an unnerving amount of open space to have at their backs as they worked. The vault door yielded to the contents of Shirayuki’s beakers, slowly eating through the outer casing and revealing the keypad underneath centimeter by centimeter. One workaround for a keycard was merely melting through what it opened, but that only worked for so many inches of hard steel with what little corrosive concoction Shirayuki could make that wouldn’t also be melting through the alarm system embedded inside.
Zen couldn’t keep himself from glancing over his shoulder every few seconds. His usual job was working the crowds, finding the weaknesses in people’s smiles and small talk, and the long meters of empty hallway surrounding them left him with no cover from anything. How could he ever talk his way out of this one, if it came down to it? There might be more mobsters up there but the weapons were words, and although he could handle anything Obi had set on the table, it was where others were stripped bare that he could keep his facade intact.
“Got it,” came the soft whisper in their ears as Obi disengaged from the target. Zen could imagine the look in Obi’s eyes as he lounged against the side of a pillar as if checking his watch while those white-gloved fingers fondled the champaigne’s flute stem in apparent boredom. “Fifteen, twenty-seven, eight hundred ninety three.”
Zen punched in the numbers as soon as Obi said them, letting out his held breath when the click sounded and the door swung open. Doubt didn’t have any place in their line of work, and neither did hesitation.
“Get out now. We’ll see you in ten,” he said, locking eyes with Shirayuki and hurrying to grab what they’d come for. They had a bigger prize waiting for them later.
