Disclaimer: I don't own the challenge; that belongs to Lee. Buffy and Angel and respective characters belong to Joss Whedon, and Ocean's Eleven belongs to Warner Bros.
Feedback: Please do.
Challenge: Basically, redo the basic plot of Ocean's Eleven with Buffy and Angel characters. Angel should take the place of Danny Ocean, and Connor as Linus Caldwell. The other characters are up to you.
Other Requirements:
Keep the running gag of the Rusty character always eating/drinking something.
All characters should be at the jobs they were in the movie (Frank a dealer in a casino, Basher in the middle of another heist, Rusty teaching movie stars how to play poker, Danny/Angel in jail, Livingston working freelance for the FBI, etc.)
Angel's Eleven
"First task; reconnaissance," Angel said, looking over at Gunn in particular as he spoke. "I want to know everything that's going on in all three casinos. From the rotation of the dealers to the path of every cash cart, no fact is too minor; the slightest flaw on the night, and we'll be in trouble."
Gunn nodded. "Already been working on it; I've got a basic idea of the casino's regular schedules already," he assured his friend. "Anything else you'll be needing to find out about?"
"Yeah," Angel said, nodding at Gunn. "I want to know everything about every guard, every watcher, anyone with a security pass that we might be able to appropriate. I want to know where they're from, what their nicknames are… Hell, I want to know whether they take sugar or milk in their coffee..."
Gunn nodded again. "On it; I've picked up some titbits so far, but I'll see what else I can gather," he assured his old friend.
"Good," Angel said, before glancing over at Faith and Gwen "Until we get to the driving stage of the mission, you two are going to be responsible for getting to know the casinos. They were built as labyrinths to keep people in; I want you guys to know the quick routes out. Got that?"
Faith raised a hand, but Wesley grabbed it and dragged the hand back down to her chair.
"No, Faith, you cannot take time out to have some fun at the blackjack or roulette tables," he said harshly to the young woman as he lowered her hand. "This is business; you'll have time for pleasure later."
Faith looked over at Angel with a pleading expression, but the former detective merely shrugged. "Sorry, Faith; those are the breaks," he said. "Trust me, you'll have the chance to have fun once all this is over."
He looked over at Spike, who was drumming his fingers on the table near his chair. "Second task: power. On the night of the fight, we're gonna throw the switch on sin city. Spike, it's your show."
Spike raised an eyebrow at his old friend/ rival. "You want broke, blind, or bedlam?" he asked inquiringly.
"How does all three sound?" Angel asked.
Spike shrugged. "Tricky, but possible; just give me a little time to scope out the joint," he said. "I'll probably need to set them underground; no point in tipping anyone off ahead of schedule.
Angel nodded in approval; knowing Spike, in two weeks, he could set up a means of shutting down the power that nobody else could have pulled off in two months.
"Third task; surveillance," he said, nodding briefly at Gunn, who pulled a laptop out of a leather case he'd had beside him for the session and handed it to Willow.
"Um… what's this?" Willow asked, looking up at Angel curiously.
"That laptop contains all information that Gunn could safely download about the casino's computerised security systems with his level of access," Angel said, as Willow opened the laptop and booted up the power. "Casino security has an eye and ear on everything, so we'll want an eye and ear on them. We figured this would be the best way for you to get an idea of what we'll have to deal with."
As the images came up on the screen, Willow scanned the various assorted blueprints and circuit diagrams for a few moments before looking back at Angel.
"Well, it's not the least accessible system I've seen, but it's close," she told them. "I don't suppose they have a closed-circuit feed I could tap into?"
Angel glanced over at Gunn, who shook his head.
Willow sighed. "Then this is definitely a black bag job," she said, before looking back at Gunn. "Do they employ an in-house technician?"
"Two," Gunn said, raising the same number of fingers as he spoke. Then he smiled and glanced over at Faith and Gwen. "And one of them is lonely with a taste for brunettes."
Faith smiled. "I'm in," she said.
Gwen didn't try and interrupt; the two sisters may constantly dress like both of them would shag anything male that moved, but some childhood trauma had left Gwen terribly afraid of sex. Nobody knew precisely what it had been; Faith's own opinion was that one of their least liked babysitters had sexually abused her at some point when she'd been out with her parents. Gwen, however, remained close-mouthed on the topic, and nobody had the nerve to broach an evidently painful subject that didn't really have any relevance to anything going on in their lives at the present.
A few hours later, Faith, dressed- if 'dressed' was the word- in a near-transparent nurse's outfit, with only a couple of red crosses in strategic places to act as any kind of modesty barrier, danced provocatively above one of the technicians from the casino. She'd managed to convince one of the strippers to take the night off so she could visit her family, and had 'agreed' to cover the shift in her place on condition that she received half the money from the night.
She smiled slightly as she leaned over, giving the man a good eyeful of her cleavage, and then gently slid his keycard out of his shirt pocket; the guy had drunk so much already that he probably wouldn't notice for a while.
"I'll be right back, honey," she said, giving him a brief wink as she stood up. "Don't move a muscle."
"Depends on the muscle," the tech said, slurring his words slightly.
Faith pouted at him flirtingly, trying to make it look as though she wasn't just pitying him for his lack of an intellect, and then walked off towards the door, pausing to grab a coat before she stepped out the door.
Outside the strip club, Wesley was standing patiently beside his car, several balloons tied to the car in preparation for the next stage of the plan.
He took the keycard from Faith and smiled.
"Thank you, Faith," he said, nodding at her. "I'll get this back to you in an hour; do you think you can keep our subject occupied for that long?"
"Hey; I'm getting paid for this part of the job, remember?" Faith smiled at him. "I'll last."
Wesley nodded at that comment; he'd already thought to himself that Faith would enjoy this job. After all, the chance to have a man goggle at her and get paid for it? It would be like paying him to read a collection of first editions.
The next morning, Oz was walking through the casino, dressed in a technician's uniform. Willow had wanted to do this part of the job herself, but Angel had pointed out that Oz was a lot less conspicuous than she was; people were more likely to notice an attractive red-headed woman than they were likely to notice a slightly short, relatively average-looking man. Willow had drawn Oz out some sketches to make sure he knew what to do when he reached his destination, but they had mostly been done just to ensure that she felt better; Oz knew computers almost as well as she did, and wouldn't have had many problems in identifying what needed to be done to provide Willow with access to the mainframe.
Glancing over, Oz was relieved to see that Faith and Gwen were already moving into their positions for their stage of this operation; Gwen was posing as a delivery girl, currently dropping off a bunch of balloons, while Faith was just a typical tourist, dressed in clothing that was less revealing then her normal outfits while still appearing sexy. Right on cue, the two of them bumped into each other.
"Hey, watch it, girl!" Faith called out, shoving Gwen back slightly, apparently 'making' Gwen let go of her balloons, which drifted up to obscure the camera above them.
"Who're you calling girl, pal?" Gwen retorted.
"Who're you calling pal, friend?" Faith snapped back.
"Who're you calling friend, jackass!" Gwen yelled back.
"You don't call me a jack-" Faith began.
"Guess what?" Gwen interrupted, smiling and poking her sister sharply once in the chest. "I just did."
While this 'enlightening' exchange of conversation was going on, Oz had kept his eye on the door near the slot machines that led to the security room. When the door opened and a tall man in a business suit stepped out, the door guards following with him, Oz seized his chance and walked up to the door, slid his keycard through the reader, and entered the corridor on the other side, quickly closing the door behind him to make sure that none of the staff noticed him and wondered why he'd waited until then to enter.
Consulting the basic map that Gunn had drawn on his hand, Oz turned right, then left, opened the door he found there, and stepped into a room filled with all kinds of cables and wires.
He smiled briefly as his eyes scanned the room. He may have become more inclined towards acrobatics in the last few years, but he still enjoyed a chance to hack, even if he was nowhere near as good as Willow was now, and this was one of the major challenges of all hackers. This kind of system was hardly the Mount Everest of hacks, but it was still pretty difficult, and Oz was looking forward to getting his hands on it.
True, he'd have some help while he was doing it, but that was besides the point, right?
Outside, the argument between the two Molloys was reaching all-new levels, despite the sentry's attempts to calm them down.
"You hear about this new medical discovery they made?" Gwen asked sarcastically. "It's called a 'sense of direction.' Apparently we're all supposed to have one...
"Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, balloon girl…" Faith retorted.
"Hey, leave that out of this!" Gwen yelled, shoving her sister back as she glared at her. "This is just a temp, you know; I wouldn't even be here if some idiot hadn't forced my office to shut for renovation! I needed money fast, and this was the best thing on offer!"
"What, you couldn't try hooking?" Faith retorted harshly.
"Ladies…" the guard said, although, right now, neither Faith or Gwen looked anything like a lady. Quite frankly, he'd probably have had better luck arguing with the wall; Faith and Gwen just ignored him and continued trading insults, as several people in the casino began to gather around to watch this free 'entertainment'.
Back in their hotel room, staring at Willow as she tapped diligently at the keys on her laptop, Angel and Wesley couldn't help but smile as an image of the corridor to the security centre of the Bellagio Casino came up in front of them.
Willow smiled as she looked back at the two men; evidently, she'd been just as concerned about Oz as they were, although she, admittedly, had a more personal interest…
Angel sighed as he stared at the screen.
"Why do they always paint hallways that colour?" he asked rhetorically.
"They say taupe's very soothing," Willow chimed in, and Angel couldn't help but smile slightly; even after five years, Willow still retained her mountain of random trivia and general knowledge about the world.
As other cameras came up, Angel smiled as Oz stepped out of the door, allowing Faith and Gwen to break up their 'argument' and go their separate ways. Angel still wasn't entirely sure what they'd do with Gwen's balloons when they got up here, but that didn't matter.
They finally had their in to the casino's security system.
"Willow," he said, looking over at the hacker, "start taking down details about the vault; we'll need it for the fifth task."
"Which is?" Wesley asked, looking at his old friend inquiringly.
"Construction," Angel explained. "We'll need to build an exact working replica of the Bellagio vault; the walls, the shelves, the doors, even the floor has to be exactly like the real thing."
"We need it for practice?" Willow asked. "You know, train the people involved in the actual break-in to focus when the time comes for the real thing?"
Angel shrugged. "Sort of," he said. He didn't want to make them too nervous; there was no point in raising too many concerns at such an early stage. When the time was right, he'd be sure to let them know…
But, as things currently stood, he wasn't prepared to take any chances that something would go wrong because of nerves.