"Vlad wants us to steal fifteen thousand dollars from these stores." Comes a soft voice through the radio.

The four of us exit the vehicle, eyes already scanning around, already alert and ready for action.

The first one out of the van stretches and smiles cheerfully. "Ah, it's good to be back."

"We're not back yet." Says the second, his perpetual smile still planted across his face. "There are four of us, and four stores. Should we each choose one?"

The third member of our little gang looks back and forth between me and the second. "I, uh, I think we should let K-"

"Dallas." I mutter.

"Dallas go in first." She hastily corrects herself.

We round the corner onto the street, and the sight brings me up short.

"Bain?" I say. "Why are there cameras?"

"Cameras?" Bain goes silent. "Vlad didn't say there was going to be cameras. You finish the job, and I'll contact him."

"Right."

We had gone over the plan beforehand. We bust in, grab the loot from the safes in the four stores, then leave before anyone has time to call the cops. With the camera added into the mix, this is going to be tricky.

"I'll go scope things out. Wolf, go check the other side, quietly."

The second one out of the van nods and crosses the street without pause.

I slip into the first store, a Pear store. Laptops and headphones are arranged in perfect rows, adding a splash of green to an otherwise white store. A guard barely glances at me, obviously bored out of his mind just standing around in this store with nothing to do. I step up to one of the overpriced laptops and start fiddling with it. The camera installed over the screen turns on, and I start using it to look over my shoulder into the room behind me. I can see the manager of the store on her phone, and a massive safe.

Okay, good. That should have some good stuff in it.

"Big safe in Pear store." I mutter to the third one as I walk past.

I back away from the laptop, turning to exit the store. Outside, I see the first one out of the van is standing outside of Time Out!

I hope she doesn't do anything rash.

I ignore her in favor of checking out the Twenty-Four Seven next door to the Pear store. In classic convenience store fashion, it's overcrowded with shelves, understaffed with only one person, and has more security cameras than I'm strictly comfortable with. It shouldn't be a problem though.

I step into a corner, pull a magazine off the rack and hold it up. I press my tongue to the third's invention strapped to my molar, activating the small transmitter. "How's the situation?"

"Time Out! has a safe in the back." Come's the first's voice.

"Bo Kung has nothing of note." Says the second.

Bain interrupts. "It's actually Kung Bo. It's read left to right rather than the way typical Chinese text is read." The soft voice corrects without malice.

The second being the second, he takes it in stride. "Of course. Should we start?"

I take a deep breath. "On my mark."

I pull the gun out of my waistband, along with a small wireless transmitter. It has adhesive on one side, allowing me to plant it on basically any flat surface. It's an Electric Counter Measure, or ECM for short. It scrambles signals in the area for about twenty seconds. The battery isn't that good, but that's how the third one got it so small.

I stick it to the wall and press my finger on the button. "Mark."

I pull a mask off of my hip, the grotesque expression of the clown briefly staring back at me before I slip it onto my head.

I step out from the corner and the clerk notices me. She blinks twice before her eyes go wide and she raises her hands over her head, nervously glancing between the pistol in my hand and my masked face.

"Get down on the ground." I shout.

She immediately complies, and I take the opportunity to shoot the cameras. The little transmitter in my mouth is still emitting static, telling me I still have time on before the camera feed start back up.

I pull a zip tie out of my pocket and tie the woman's wrists together. Then I look out the back window. I can see the third holding a security officer at gunpoint, all the cameras in the Pear store destroyed.

Then I hear three really, really load gunshots, followed by some screams.

I run out the front door to find that patrons of Time Out! has been thoroughly terrorized by the first. She has opted for complete and utter shock to keep everyone down. She had taken out the cameras in the front at least.

I run past her towards the back doors. She grins in my direction, and I just shake my head.

Bain's voice comes through the receiver as the static dies. "Traffic diverted."

"Great." I respond. "Wolf, how's things going?"

"Absolutely wonderfully." He responds lightly. "Everyone here is secure."

"Any loose civilians?"

"No."

"I, I don't see any-"

"Nope!"

"Okay. Hoxton, get a drill on the Pear store safe. I'll get the one in Time Out! and Wolf can hold down the fort until you can get over to Ko Bung."

"Kung Bo." Comes a gentle admonishment from Bain.

The first, Chains, speaks up. "Any alarms?"

As if on cue, I turn the corner and find a guard taking a smoke break. He looks surprised for a second before reaching for his radio.

I raise my pistols and put two shots into his knees, dropping him. The radio squawks as a voices comes from the other side, possibly some sort of dispatch. "Hey, is everything alright?"

"Ah crap." I mutter, then pick up the radio. "Yeah, everything's fine. Accidentally tripped on a rock."

"Uh huh. Okay." A short pause. "Okay, I've got it noted."

I allow myself a sigh of relief. That sounds like he bought it.

Hoxton "Eeps" as the radio next to her activates.

Wolf dashes across the street to get the radio as Hoxton continues her work.

I smash the glass leading into the back of Time Out! and step right up to the safe, my stomach sinking as I approach it. "I can't pick this safe." I say over the radio. "Hoxton, I need a drill over here too."

She takes a second before answering. "Ah, come get it. I need to get to Kung Bo and get the charge on the safe over there."

I run out onto the street, happy to find that Chains had been busy herding the civilians into the Twenty-Four Seven and alley beside it instead of wasting time shooting at random things.

Hoxton runs up to me, drops a small drill in my arms and turns to run to the Chinese pottery store. I head to the back of the coffee shop and place the drill in position on the safe, though I can't quite be sure I have it placed in the right spot. After all, I'm unfamiliar with this series of safes.

Now comes the waiting. The drill is going to take about three minutes, and the big one in the Pear store should take about five minutes.

A dull thud comes from next door. Hoxton's voice comes over the radio. "I, I have a gold bar!" She says happily.

Bain chimes in. "That covers the bare minimum requirement. I'm calling in the escape vehicle. It will be on site soon."

I walk out towards the front of the café, grabbing a cup and pouring some coffee while I'm waiting. My right hand never leaves my gun however, clumsily managing the task with my left hand.

My peaceful coffee break is interrupted by the drill bucking out of the hole it had been drilling and grinding loudly on the front of the safe. I sigh and quickly head to the back of the store to fix it.

Chains walks in through the front door. "Bain, couldn't you have gotten us better drills? I heard it from the street! I thought we had found drills that didn't jam every three seconds."

"I was unable to acquire better equipment than those. It is a problem with the quality of the safes in question." Bain responds.

I suck down the rest of my coffee and glance at the screen taped to the side of the drill. Only about thirty more seconds.

"Why on earth did they have a gold bar?" I wonder out loud, referring to the Chinese shop across the alley.

"Something is not right about this job." Wolf says calmly. "I am starting to think this wasn't a simple hit."

"Van has arrived." Bain says.

"Alright, grab what you can and let's scram." I say. The safe had opened

"B-But there's only a minute left on this safe." Hoxton says.

"Okay, you grab that. Everyone else get to the van."

"It's parked behind the Twenty-Four Seven, through a locked door." Bain supplies.

Ah, looks like it's up to me to get to the van. I sprint across the street and into the back alley, lock picking tools already in my hands. Fortunately, normal doorknob locks haven't improved as much as safes had in the time I had been out. It only took me a few seconds to get through the door.

Chains and Wolf follow me back, guns trained outwards.

"Wow! There's a lot of money in here!" Hoxton's voice comes from over the radio. She arrives at the van a few moments later, and we climb in.

I take off my mask to get a breath of fresh air, the rest of my comrades doing the same.

Chains removes her mask to reveal sharp features. Her eyes are brown, and her brown hair is tied up with a yellow ribbon making her seem significantly younger than her actual twenty-three. Her adrenaline fueled smile positively lights up the back of the van.

Wolf removes his mask exposing his features to us once again. He's a very handsome twenty-two-year-old, if I'm to go by the typical reaction of females any time he talks to them. He too has brown hair and eyes, like mine and Chains'.

Hoxton removes her mask to let her long orange hair fall out from behind her mask. She looks almost like a puppy with the way her eyes seem to always be on the verge of watering, but she obviously can get the job done. The oldest yet newest member of our team at twenty-four.

We can't see the driver because of the separator between us and the driver compartment. I bang on the divider. "Hey, who's driving?"

"You can call me Twitch." Comes the voice from the other side. "Hold on, I'm going to run this red light."

I quickly brace myself in place as the van speeds up. Hoxton doesn't brace in time, and she is thrown across the cabin into my lap. She looks up with tears in her eyes. "I, I'm sorry!"

I think it might be physically impossible to be mad at this girl. "Don't worry about it."

"Thanks, Kyon."

"It's Dallas." I grumble.

"Eh, we're safe enough for now. We can call each other by our real names now." Says Chains. Well, Haruhi.

Mikuru gets up off of me and sits back in her seat. "I didn't know your heists were this intense!"

I have to laugh at that. "This was nothing. Just a warm up to get back into the swing of things."

Mikuru's eye go wide as she stares at me. "That wasn't a large heist? But we got over thirty thousand dollars!"

Koizumi grins. "We used to get millions of dollar in one heist, you know. This isn't even that much in comparison."

She turns her gaze to him. Mikuru is kind of new to the whole business, after all. She had taken up the mantle of our former teammate, also nicknamed Hoxton. We don't talk about Old Hox much.

We arrive back at the safe house without incident, and I turn on the TV as Haruhi starts counting money and dividing it into shares.

Bain steps out from her room filled with computers, greeting us all silently with a nod.

Koizumi turns to Bain, or Yuki if you prefer, and asks "Did you find out what is going on with Vlad's misinformation?"

Yuki shakes her head. "I've set up a meeting. Tomorrow at noon."

"Gives us time to get some sleep at least." I say. "Okay, we'll need to be packing something more than silenced pistols, since we're going to have to give Vlad a show of force." The other's look to me. "But for now, get some rest. Who knows, we might need it."

Despite my own advice, I can't seem to get to sleep. I wander out into the main hallway of the underground safe house. There I can see that someone else is up as well.

"Mikuru?"

She starts and looks up at me. "Oh, Hi Kyon!" She looks back down at the desk. "I couldn't get to sleep, so I've been working on improving some of our gear. I think I made the drills a bit better, and while I was looking for parts I found a few bulletproof vests!" She proudly displays the vests she had found.

"Good job." I place a hand on her head and scruff up her hair a bit. "But you really should get some rest. I have a feeling tomorrow isn't going to go smoothly."

She nods. "If you say so. Goodnight, Kyon."

"Goodnight, Mikuru."

Welcome to my latest project, a merger between The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi and Payday 2. As you can tell, the Payday gang has been replaced by the main characters of the novels. Other than that, the world of Payday is going to remain very close to the game. There are some things I will change, such as Bain joining everyone else in the safe house, making some things possible that aren't in the game, such as carrying a decent amount of zip ties, not just two. Of course, I can still work it in… Also, everyone speaks English, and Japanese names are not going to be out of the ordinary. It still takes place in Washington DC. Alternate Universes can be stupid like that sometimes.

I plan of going through the heists in a sort of chronological order. Thucydides on steam has made a rough timeline of the heists(The Unofficial Payday 2 timeline), though I happen to know that it is slightly incorrect (Four stores is the first heist of Payday 2 according to the FBI files) and I will be fixing that. I would go and read it, as it's actually kind of funny with all the detail he puts into it.

Wolf trips out and imagines the Halloween events. Seriously, go read it.

This chapter is on the short side, later chapters will have more to them as the characters interact during their downtime and the heists get longer. Next chapter should have the meeting with Vlad and the next heist.

I hope you all enjoyed, and I'll be back with more! I think!