Chaos.

That’s all Madeline saw in front of her. The job had gone horribly wrong and now there was chaos in front of her. Their goal had been to rob a bank and Madeline had planned it down to the finest of details. But they had still failed. Why?

The bank job had been in the works for weeks. They would hit during the money drop, a time when the bank moved money from its vaults to armored trucks that would transfer it to other locations. This was a dangerous time to act as there was always increased security, but it would ensure the largest amounts of cash possible were up for grabs.

A few days ago, Madeline had gotten passed information that the bank was changing how it handled security. With bank robberies on the rise, they had decided to increase their security and fluctuate the time of the scheduling, leaving the details to the last possible seconds to avoid any leaks. She had enough time to compensate with extra men and the bank manager was already under her thumb (nothing a little female charm couldn’t accomplish) but the information hadn’t been complete. They had done more than just add security guards – apparently, they had also decided it would be a clever idea to line the way to their vault with fucking explosives.

The night had started off without a hitch. She had gotten tipped off, as promised, that the move would happen later that night, after dark. She’d gathered the crew together and things had gone well at first. Her corrupt agent had managed to redirect the police from the truck they were escorting, giving them a chance to take out the guards on the truck about a block away from the bank. They’d stolen their uniforms and driven the truck to the bank. The security guards there were cautious, asking questions almost from the start. Where were the normal men, why didn’t they have the right paperwork?

But it was the presence of the bank manager that really startled them. He never appeared during money transfers, always letting others handle it as he preferred to be home with his family. So, when he appeared tonight, well, things started to go wrong.

Madeline looked back over the scene and wondered how she hadn’t anticipated this; the bank manager was a cocky, stupid fellow. No doubt he wanted to ensure his heist went off without a hitch, not realizing that in doing so he had ensured its failure. Madeline had gone to painstaking lengths to make sure everything was just right but how the man had not realized that explosives were put into his own bank was beyond her. Unless he’d wanted it to fail. Had he been deceiving her the whole time?

The explosives were not strong enough to destroy the entire building, but enough to cave in the hallway leading to the vault. At some point, one of the bank’s guards had caught on that something wasn’t right and when her men went to collect the money from the vault, they set off the explosives, trapping them in the rubble. She had been on standby nearby, in case something went wrong, and when she and her people had heard the explosion they moved in, hoping their friends weren’t dead. Unfortunately, the police had also heard the noise and there was nothing her own agent could do to keep them from rushing to the bank.

This, of course, had led to a firefight and everything had fallen apart. So she stood there, surrounded by gunfire, their escape truck blocked in by police cars, the bank sitting there filled with money.

“Madeline, we have to go, now!”

One of her bodyguards was pulling at her arm, trying to pull her away from the scene, but Madeline resisted. The hallway was collapsed but the vault was still open. They still had a chance to get at some of the cash that the bank was holding, if they could get to it. The weasel of a bank manager had snuck off but she would deal with him later. Right now, she had to get into that vault.

Anyone who came upon the scene would have to be crazy to get involved. But if they saw the opportunity to still get away with some cash, like Madeline intended to do, they might try to find a way to get some of that cash.

Obito wasn't one for jumping into things when they got hectic, usually he's the complete opposite and decides to leave the scene before he ends up getting arrested by cops, implying that he wouldn't make bail quick enough with the amount of agents he has on his payroll, obviously not enough to stop an entire police strike force from raiding the building. He was sitting in a car, watching as the bank was practically going up in flames due to an explosion, anyone that was still inside the place is surely dead but the thought of it left him shaking his head. Blowing shit up was usually his specialty.

The cops were stopped when bullets start whizzing past their ears which made them duck for covers behind their cars, you'd think someone from the military went MIA and suddenly turned face and went full on criminal by blowing up a bank with dynamite or an improvised device, sometimes you'll never know someone's true intentions until it's too late. Yelling was heard in the background as Obito reached into the back of his car and took out the Thompson, there was a good amount of cops and a pistol wasn't really gonna cut it, it was either something automatic or a shotgun. Automatic would've been quicker.

He had no idea who was being shot, could've been just some random civilian who knew what they were doing being all gungho behind this job or it could've been a mafioso who got way in over their head or just had bad luck, either way. It was either do this or spend more years in purgatory; he slid the Thompson over to the front of the car and let it lay in the passenger seat, Obito took the black plain-colored rag that was sitting on his lap and wrapped it around his face. The hat was all that's left as he set it on the top of his head, he's just used to not being known for doing a heroic action or anything really.

His right hand laid on the Thompson as he dragged it out of the car with him, making sure it was prepped before he sent bullets towards an entire squad of cops, knowing that it's about to turn into the next World War for a good few minutes. Obito jogged down the street to get more of a position behind a car that gives a good line of fire, cops kept sliding up and down from their cover to pop a few shots back and forth while somebody popped shots from a truck, looks like that was gonna be the escape vehicle but they had the area locked down good, not for long. 

Obito set the Thompson on the hood of a nice black Derham Tourster, hope the owner won't be too mad but that's inevitable when he wakes up in the morning to find out his car has been shot to shit. His finger on the trigger while he held his breath to control his aim, the brightest things fade the fastest, pulling back on the trigger ended up sending out a barrage of bullets towards the police officers using their vehicles as cover, the suppressing fire was too great for any of them to escape. As their partners ended up jumping out of cover and pointing over to Obito as one of them were shouting out commands.

"God damn it! He's over there, shoot, shoot!"

"I can't get a shot, I can't get a shot! It's-" The officer has his sentence ended quickly as he was sprayed in the chest by bullets, he died before he even hit the ground.

The officer that was standing beside him yelled out in fear, all of his co-workers were dead or dying. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" 

The adrenaline was surely kicking in, the officer tried to make a run for it as he jumped over the body of one of his dead brothers in blue. Obito shifted his aim and let a shot hit him in the lower back, he shouted out of pure pain and fell on the floor, not moving a muscle afterwards. Obito's finger slid off the trigger, that was it, temporarily. More cops would be sent here soon after they found out what happened, adjusting his posture he took the Thompson off the hood of the Tourster and began to walk across the street to the bank in hopes of meeting their mystery criminal.

“I have to get inside the bank!” Madeline shouted, wanting to be heard over the sound of gunfire. Several of her men looked at her like she was crazy, but no one dared question her. She lined them up behind cars and they lay cover fire for her as she tried to get closer to the entrance of the bank.

Suddenly and, to be truthful, rather unexpectedly, a mysterious man emerged, firing an automatic weapon. It caused confusion on both sides – no one was sure where it was coming from or even what side the man was on until it was clear he was aiming for the cops. Madeline tried to catch a glimpse of the mysterious shooter, but all she saw was a rag tied around his face. She had to do a double take, memories of another unexpected encounter coming to mind. A cheer went up from her people, making her focus on the present. Still, Madeline wasn’t quite so excited, as she had no idea who this person was or why they were here.

In no time at all they’d taken out all of the cops that were on site but more could be heard coming, sirens blaring. Madeline knew she couldn’t waste any time if she still wanted to make the evening even half a success. “I’m going in. Find out who that man is!”

Madeline emerged from the cover they’d taken and went running for the entrance of the bank, not giving anyone a moment to try and stop her. She was determined to come out with bags of cash if it was the last thing she did; and while she might be grateful to the mysterious stranger that had appeared, she certainly wasn't going to let him stop her from her end goal. It was reckless, to be sure, but then again that was nothing new for her. 

Time was running out, sooner or later more cops were gonna come and probably with bigger guns, but he likely had shot the first responders quickly enough that they weren't able to get a call in but if they don't report in after a while then it would've made it obvious. Obito lifted the Thompson up from the hood and moved around to inspect the side, two bullets made their way into the car and he frowned. It was really more of a sympathetic moment for the owner of the car that would have to come out the next morning to see there's two fresh bulletholes in his car but he couldn't get distracted, not now.

Obito's Thompson was kept as hidden as he probably could have it under his coat, he jogged across the street to get a closer look at the damage he caused, the vehicles the cops came in were shot to bits and glass was everywhere, another thing that didn't really brighten the mood was all the blood that was casually flowing around the street, there was a stream starting to make it's way to a crack in the road, if it wasn't obvious, it is now. A stranger emerged from the darkness of the alleyways and started to approach Obito, was this the mafioso that was doing this job or was he with someone else? Guess he'd have to find out.

The guy creeped out slowly with a pistol in his hand and was pretty paranoid, you couldn't blame him, they're involved with the murders of police officers and would have to deal with more in a few minutes.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Don't worry about it. Are you alone, did you plan this job?"

"No, no. I didn't plan this shit, I'm not crazy to blow up a fucking bank! I'm with someone."

"Where is this someone?"

"Inside, trying to get the money. Told her we needed to get out of here, the damn place practically collapsed when the explosion went off."

"Alright. Let's go."

It was a her? Could've been any random girl that was crazy enough to blow up a building, or well, nearly blow it up sky high. He'd know too well about that, walking through the alleyway with the supposed partner in crime, they entered where his partner exited out of; they were inside the bank but when he said the place was almost collapsed, he wasn't kidding.

Madeline knew she was crazy. She had to be, really, to go INTO the building that had just had explosives set off in it. But she had promised her boss a large payout for this operation and she’d be damned if she didn’t bring something back. Getting into the bank itself was easy – it was the final hall to the bank vault that was crumbling. When the explosives went off the walls had cracked and parts of the ceiling had come crashing down.

She found herself climbing over or under the debris, her long, thin frame coming in handy. She could see the gate to the vault up ahead and she pushed forward, ignoring all the warning bells that were going off – inside her head and out. She had always been reckless, but since moving to New York she had truly let herself go wild. She was sure some head doctor would say it was the years of trauma she suffered at the hands of her husband, who was now dead. But to Madeline, she had found a new-found joy in life and she didn’t see any reason not to live it to its fullest. And that included taking risks like this one.

When she got to the gate, she found that it was somehow still locked. What in the world? The hallway had fucking exploded but the gate was still locked tight? She grumbled to herself and proceeded to pull some bobby pins from her hair so she could try and pick the lock.

Could nothing go right for her today?! She'd still need to get inside and break open the safe, all while hoping the cops didn't come in and the building didn't come crashing down. She was too busy focusing on the task at hand to notice that their mysterious savior and some of her men were following her. 

Put it into perspective that if someone said this job is gonna go smooth and the whole job is now underway. They'd need to figure out if they were gonna live to tell the tale and say to said person that this job didn't go smooth and it only ended up in a massive shootout with law enforcement and only at least a good amount of the building coming down on them. The bodyguard or by assumption, the accomplice still had to lead Obito through a pile of rubble and they were busy crawling through rubble and going through spaces that had them go one at a time, time was ticking and to Obito it didn't matter much, having to crawl through all these tight spaces made him become frustrated however.

What seemed to be like the end of all the rubble was really just more after the other. This was annoying and eventually by the time they had to crawl out the cops would be there with an entire battalion ready to aim their weapons at the trio and move in for an arrest, was probably be a big score for them and whoever decided to manage the scene was probably gonna get a promotion for it but it was unlikely since it was gonna take more than just a not so simple bank job to get the bump.

The duo finally made their way to the end coming up to the woman, and the obstruction being a locked gate. Makes you wonder how all those explosives didn't blow this gate open along with half the building.

"Should be coming up on the spot now."

"You think? Crawling through all those spaces pissed me off. It was just getting repetitive."

"What I look like? A therapist? Come on."

They had approached Madeline. Obito decided to go over to a chair and remove little rock-like formations from where he could sit down so they don't puncture him in the rear, once that was done he sat down and decided to patiently wait.

Her bodyguard on the other hand approached her.

"He wouldn't tell me who he was. Don't think it matters at this point, why don't you just shoot the lock open? Tired of waitin and we might as well surrender to the cops with the amount of time we've wasted now."

Time was running out.

Madeline could hear more of the building coming down behind her as she fiddled with the lock. The woman was stubborn, there was no denying that. She fiddled with the lock even after she heard people approaching. She knew it couldn’t have been anyone other than her own people, so she didn’t think much of it and she was proven right when she heard the voice of her bodyguard.

“If an explosion didn’t break the thing open,” Madeline said, wiggling the bobby pin just right and smiling as she heard the satisfying click of the lock. “What makes you think a gun would?” She pushed the gate door open and looked over at the man her bodyguard, Nickolas, had brought with him. “That’s the one that shot up the coppers I’m assuming?” Nickolas nodded, and Madeline sighed.

“Come on then, you’re entitled to some of this for getting us out of the bind we were in. Which was appreciated, by the way.”

Madeline wouldn’t have recognized Obito from the store heist some time ago; his face had been covered and really, that day was far from her memory. She was too caught up in grabbing a few bags of money and getting out before more police arrived. The bank manager was already in the process of preparing the money to be transferred via the armored truck when the explosions had gone off, so this part would be easy. She gravitated toward bags that were already filled and handed them off to Nickolas. "We should be able to get two or three bags out each. It's better than nothing."

Looking at the other man, who had found himself a little seat and seemed to be almost annoyed at being there, despite the fact that he wasn’t even invited, she had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. “Gonna get up and grab a few bags yourself? Or are you just tagging along to watch?"

Nickolas looked at Madeline but she waved him off. "Go, make sure everyone gets going back to headquarters, I'll be fine." Nickolas hesitated again but she gave him one of those looks and so he shrugged and headed back out. Madeline grabbed a couple bags of cash herself and looked again at Obito to see what he planned to do.

Usually the funny part of this whole ordeal was that he knew who she was but she didn't know who he was. He probably wanted to keep it like that for a while and break the news at a later date, right know all he cared was about getting out of the area safely and maybe with a little paycheck along the way, or really more of a bonus. This beats having to stroll along to collect payments for Dub knowing the money is exclusively only for him and sneaking away a stack would make him not be able to be trusted, anyone would've been able to see that.

Obito sat down in the chair as the two pretty much bickered about trying to get the gate open. Her lockpicking skills proved to be useful when the gate swung open, clearly the gate was stubborn if a few sticks of dynamite couldn't bust it open, well, to be fair he didn't know where they had placed the explosions. For all he knew, could've been placed improperly and the thought of it makes it annoying since he hates misplaced explosives, just food for thought really.

"Come on then, you’re entitled to some of this for getting us out of the bind we were in. Which was appreciated, by the way." 

That was when Obito jumped up and said...

"No problem. Let's get out of here, kinda tired of sticking around."

Obito walked over and grabbed a bag or two for himself. His eyes just glistened thinking about the amount of money that was inside, they finally had to make their way back by following Nickolas' lead. They had to sneak out another way since going through the rubble again was gonna be a pain in the ass, especially when you have to carry heavy bags of money, it'd save everyone the stress. The truck was still there, it was shot up but then again it was an armored truck so it was supposed to take bullets.

The bags were tossed in the back and the bank manager pretty much scurried off at this point. Whether he'd snitch or not, well, that was a story for another time. Sirens began to get louder and louder just as they were getting ready to leave, not much time now. The bodyguard hopped in the driver seat and Obito hopped in passenger, looks like the lady was gonna find another way judging by what she said earlier, cop cars began to pull up just as they were driving out of the alleyway and the bodyguard just smashed through the vehicle like it was nothing.

Not much longer till they were out of the woods.

Madeline got as many bags as possible down the hallway, so Obito and Nickolas could fill the truck. The sounds of the sirens were getting closer and the two were smart to leave when they did. Madeline watched as cop cars began to pull up; they were no match for the armored truck, even shot up as it was. Nickolas drove the truck right through the cars, barreling down the road. Madeline had stayed behind to make sure they wouldn’t follow, otherwise, there would be no point to their escape.

From a hidden vantage point, Madeline watched and waited. Some of the cars hit by the truck were immediately destroyed, but a few were left that would be able to give chase. She pulled her weapon and took aim, firing first to disable any of the remaining cars – she aimed for tires and gas tanks more than the cops themselves. They scrambled to try and identify how many shooters there were and where they were hiding, but Madeline used the time to switch positions, throwing off their count. She had been shooting weapons since she could hold one, so her aim was good, but she only had so many bullets, so she had to make the most of them.

Luckily, with the cops distracted by the bullets coming at them, Nikolas and Obito were able to pull away from the bank without much trouble. She emptied her clip before planning her own escape; more and more cops would be coming so she had to get out fast. Madeline was quick on her feet and good at hiding in the shadows. The cops were numerous but she just needed to get far enough to blend back into regular society – undoubtedly they’d be looking for a man anyway, not a pretty blonde.

She would meet Nikolas back in the family’s headquarters and maybe learn more about this mysterious man who had shown up to help them.

Nikolas managed to get him and Obito away. More cop cars would arrive over time, but he would lose them, eventually pulling into a dark alley where a car was waiting. “Come on, we can’t keep driving this bucket, it's too obvious.”

This car had been the plan all along if things had actually gone right. The keys were already inside and it had been parked out of sight of the main road. Nikolas would load all the money bags  from the truck into the car and then he’d give Obito a choice. “You gonna come back to HQs with me? I'm sure the boss lady would want to talk to you. Or take your split and head out now? Your choice man."

Obito was riding in the truck and calmly sinking back in his seat even in the face of such a dire situation where it was either the cops or them, the bodyguard, Nikolas, continued to plow through cop cars that engaged the truck head on, you'd think after the last couple of cars they would stop but they were persistent on continuing. Cop cars would be in pursuit but some of them ended up colliding with one of their colleague's disabled vehicles which would render them useless. After that, Obito looked out the window for a second to check if there were anymore cop cars in pursuit, luckily, they got away.

The truck would be reversed back into the dark alley, of course, there was still the money to offload, couldn't exactly leave it there now can they? No sane person would, Obito and Nikolas opened the back of truck and began to off haul most of the money into the car itself and after that, a couple bags remained in the truck. Nikolas must've been aware of the estimated amount since he was already preparing to leave, though he was left with a choice.

The choice was to stay and expose his identity, or keep it in secret and leave. 

"Gonna take my split and leave. When the time is right, I'll talk to her, but not now." 

Regrettably, Nikolas nodded and slid inside of the car and started it. He began to pull out of the alleyway leaving Obito to take his share and leave, wasn't gonna be the best news for his boss but the choice was there and he chose the one that would help him in the mean time, he didn't wanna expose his identity yet and let it be known Obito and his boss were the ones who had a negotiation over a couple stacks of cash in a store.

Obito reached into the truck and took the final bags and began to walk back to his family headquarters. The lady might end up catching on eventually, but, until then; it's a simple game of hide and seek.