(So for a reference here is a basic map of the corner of the building they are in. It's not perfectly to scale, but just image each hallway is longer than pictured and it's close enough. Sorry this took so long to get out. my iPad deleted this drawing and so remaking it took awhile. ) (also there is a more detailed map with explanation stuff at the bottom, but there's spoilers for the chapter so I put it at the end.)

"Ok guys, we can do this!" Fundy spoke in a hushed but confident tone. No one really believed him, not even himself, but it was sort of worth the shred of confidence it gave them before they probably walked into their own demise. Fundy exhaled a quiet and oddly steady breath as he swiped the stolen keycard into the slot next to the door. To all of their reliefs, the small light on it turned green signifying the door was unlocked. Fundy tried at the handle and pushed carefully, peeking behind it before opening it enough to actually walk through.

Sapnap was the third to step through after Tubbo, and immediately noticed the camera at the end of the hallway pointed directly at them. He stepped backwards in shock and whipped his head to Fundy to see how he was reacting.

"Wait, what about the cameras?!" He asked harshly in a whisper towards Fundy. Cameras and alarms seemed like they were important enough to go over maybe before they started the heist? Not during?! Right??!

Sapnap had stepped forwards to let Bad get through the door too, but kept his attention on Fundy still.

"Only half of them work," Fundy explained. "I have them memorized."

"Why do you have these memorized!?" Sapnap asked again slightly louder and he took his hands out his pockets to emphasize.

Bad had stepped through the door and made sure to carefully let it shut as quietly as he could make it.

"Would you muffinheads be quiet!" Bad shushed them. "This is supposed to be stealthy." He whispered as all eyes were on him.

Sapnap reluctantly dropped the topic with a roll of his eyes. Fundy slyly smiled a little as he got a free pass to avoid the question, but Sapnap noticed it. This didn't seem stealthy. It was in the middle of the day, hardly planned, and they were just going to walk down the hallway where anyone could catch them.

"This is stupid, and that's coming from me!" He thought to himself huffing a little.

Sapnap hated this "plan" already, but he knew more than anyone how badly they needed those crystals.

"Whatever. Let's just get this over with." He stuffed his hands in his pockets again and shook off the thought.

They got down the hallway easily enough and tucked behind the corner before the next hallway.

Fundy eyed the next closest camera as it was turned away, which clearly showed it worked and was on. The hallway was blank, and the camera covered the whole area. There was no way to get past it without getting seen, even if they tried to book it. Fundy motioned to the right side of the wall and everyone flattened against it so the camera just barely couldn't see them as it turned. They let out a sigh of relief and relaxed slightly as they heard the quiet buzz of it turning away.

Fundy peeked around the corner again and saw the hallway they needed to run to. The hallway continued on and also split off to the side on the left, and the left one was the one they needed to get to. Thankfully that hallway had no working cameras, and the corner would hide them from this one, but there was still the problem of actually getting there.

He turned to the others, "Ok good news, the hallway we need to run down only has one broken camera. Bad news, this camera works, and we can't run past it without it seeing us." Fundy whispered.

"Seriously how does this guy know which stupid cameras and which don't?!" Sapnap thought to himself. "Sorta get why George gets all iffy around him. Pretty sus."

"So we need to cover or destroy the camera somehow?" Tubbo asked, snapping Sapnap out of his thoughts.

"Cover would work better. The alarm goes off when one is destroyed." Fundy mentioned.

Sapnap wanted to argue and ask how the hell Fundy knew information like that, but it wasn't the time, and they needed to figure out how to get this hallway. Before he could ask or offer anything, Fundy started to talk again.

"Bad, could you shadow travel and cover the cameras somehow so we can run past?" He asked quietly, raising a finger.

Bad peeked around the corner before answering. There was nothing in the hallway to hide behind and the whole area was covered in an annoying bright white.

"I can't shadow travel with no shadows to travel in." Bad whispered sarcastically, crossing his arms. Was he a little salty about having to be here instead of with Skeppy? Maybe.

Sapnap noticed.

Fundy had an unreadable expression at a loss for words. He was stuck.

"Oh!" Tubbo said a little too loudly. He clamped his hand over his mouth and everyone went dead silent, almost expecting to be caught any second. Nothing happened, so Tubbo took his hand off his mouth while everyone let him continue.

"What if we make our own shadows? Then Bad can go through them and cover the cameras?"

"That's-.... Actually a great idea," Fundy said with a small smile.

"How would we make our own shadows?" Sapnap asked. Everyone looked at him like he was the answer.

"Well since we don't have flashlights," Tubbo started to explain, "You could make a fire with your hands and we could hold something in front to make a shadow." Tubbo said a little nervously at the mention of the fire. He really didn't want an argument and a repeat of the cafe.

"Oh." Was all Sapnap could say. He pulled his hands out of his pocket and was confused as to why they weren't as sweaty as they reasonably should've been. He just stared down at them for a second, hoping they could magically answer for him.

"Only if you feel comfortable, that is." Bad added carefully. He seemed to be the only one to notice how off Sapnap kept acting with the mention of fire.

"Yeah, yeah I can do it." Sapnap said, turning his head up to look at the group.

Fundy turned the corner quickly and saw the camera turning to the other side.

"Let's do it before the cameras turn back." He whispered. Bad nodded and got ready to jump into the makeshift shadow once it appeared. Tubbo held out his hand to block the coming light source in a tight flat shape. He wondered if he would be able to feel Bad moving through his shadow at all, and let his mind wander as he tried to estimate where his hand would need to be to reach the camera. Now it was up to Sapnap.

"Now or never!" He told himself as he held out his hands in a cup shape in front of him. He wasn't really sure how to do it, considering both times before it was an accident, but hey he had to try right!

Sapnap closed his eyes to concentrate and tried to feel the warmth in his hands or something. He honestly had no clue what he was doing, and the weight of everyone's eyes on him definitely wasn't helping.

"Warmth maybe? Or anger? Emotions are tied to this right? I feel like I've heard that somewhere before." His thoughts were swirling. That also wasn't helping.

"Well?" Fundy asked expectantly. Sapnap opened his eyes and glanced up at him forcing himself not to sigh of failure. Tubbo clearly gulped. Afraid of it failing or working, Sapnap couldn't tell, but tried to shrug it off to focus. Bad put his hand on Sapnaps shoulder. The only encouraging thing.

Sapnap closed his eyes again and fueled his rage carefully into his hand, the warmth of Bad's hand keeping him company.

"Dream tried to kill me, and he's going to try again." He thought to himself. His hands felt warmer steadily. "And he hurt Bad's friend! Who's like, a cool dude! We need those crystals, not for me, but for the others." He pushed into his mind.

"And it's up to me."

And with that, a spark formed into his hand, growing into a small flame that seemed content with just sitting there peacefully.

Tubbo held himself from jumping back as he kept his hand steady to form the shadow, keeping one eye closed. Sapnap opened his eyes with a smile and a new wave of confidence washed over him. He tried to look to Bad to see if he was proud, but he was already gone, slipped up to the wall and hovering over the camera that was starting to turn to them.

Sapnap looked at the small flame in his hand which was surprisingly bright. Fundy gave him a nod to get rid of it so they could run, and hopefully not burn the place down. Tubbo's eyes lingered on the fire while Sapnap tried to figure out what to do. Sure, fire was dangerous, but this one seemed much calmer than the first two times, and it was actually sorta pretty.

Bad was hovering over the camera and shot Fundy a thumbs up when the camera part was fully covered.

Sapnap simply closed his cupped hands to squish the flame and opened them again to show it was totally gone. His hands still felt warm, and that was probably the only indication it had ever existed.

Fundy signaled to the others to start to run and pointed to the hallway they needed to get to.

Tubbo eyed Sapnaps hand, now devoid of flames thankfully, and grabbed his wrist to pull him towards the corner they were trying to get to, since Sapnap clearly wasn't paying attention to the direction they needed to go to. Fundy was easily the fastest, but slowed down to make sure Sapnap and Tubbo got around the correct corner first instead of running down the hallway straight.

Bad waited for the camera to turn back to the previous hallway before gliding down the wall and jumping out of the shadows, pressing his back against the wall after turning the corner.

"Phew," Bad let out a quiet breath."We did it, muffin heads." He whispered.

He looked pretty tired, and Sapnap figured going up a wall was much harder than just across a hallway. Even still, he glanced up at Sapnap with a proud smile. He saw the fire Sapnap had made, and how much more controlled it had been.

"Woah I didn't even feel you going through my shadow!" Tubbo whisper-exclaimed.

"Yeah well do you feel your shadow normally?" Fundy chuckled.

"Huh, I guess not."

"Right, what's next?" Sapnap said to get them back on track. Bad had lifted himself off of the wall and looked down the hall, the only direction to go.

"Down this hallway, through those doors, and it's a home stretch to the room with the respawn crystals." Fundy pointed with a smile.

Everyone nodded, and began to follow Fundy.

The group started to walk down the hallway much more casually. They stayed quiet, but the camera seemed to be the only real obstacle, and that was behind them. Literally.

Fundy was in front, and seemed to be lost in thought, trying to remember directions and hallways probably. I mean, the place had a pretty simple plan, but this was only one section of the building. Remembering everything was probably harder than Fundy was letting on.

About halfway through the hallway, Fundy stopped and quickly put his arm out to stop the others too. There were a few doors across from each other, but nothing seemed that out of the ordinary. Except for the poor architecture maybe. The others gave him a quizzical look that did the asking for them: 'Why'd we stop?'

"If there are people in these rooms we can't just walk past or they might see us." Fundy whispered.

"Won't they just assume we are science-y people that work here and ignore us?" Sapnap asked. "We're just walking along."

Tubbo and Fundy looked at each other knowingly.

"What was that look for?" Sapnap asked the obvious, peering at them suspiciously.

"Yeah uhm-" Tubbo started, looking a little more towards the ground. "We are sorta well known as the losers of this place. And since we don't work in this section of the building, if they notice us, and then you..." Tubbo trailed off.

"We'll get questioned and caught for sure." Bad finished with a sigh.

"Yep."

"Guess we have to crawl past then." Sapnap grumbled.

Fundy gave a slight smirk as Tubbo and Sapnap carefully and quietly shuffled across the floor on their hands and knees to avoid the vision of the door windows. Bad just found the slightest shadow on the wall and jumped in it to glide through to the other side of the hallway, past all of the doors. He went a little faster than he should've, and seemed a bit tired as he leaned on the wall to catch his breath. Even still, it saved his dignity from crawling on the floor in an empty and well lit hallway which would've looked very weird to an outside viewer.

Sapnap looked back at Fundy and was about to question why he wasn't crawling too, when instead he saw him shift, downsizing a lot.

Everyone looked back to see a little fox in Fundy's place, happily and quickly walking past the doors with no effort whatsoever. Sapnap saw the smirk on his face still as he held his head proudly. He wanted nothing more in the moment than to snatch the mini hat Fundy had, but rolled his eyes instead as he got past the first set of doors.

Tubbo whispered a tiny awe sound as Fundy scampered past him to which Fundy obviously heard, but ignored completely as he quickened his silent pace and caught up to Bad.

After they were out of view of all the mini windows on the doors, Tubbo and Sapnap stood up, brushing themselves off. Sapnap's knees hurt a little from the hard tile floors but Tubbo wasn't complaining so he didn't say anything.

Before Tubbo could try to pick up the fox on the ground and squeeze him in a hug, Fundy shifted back to normal, with his hat growing with him. It still looked tempting to steal though.

"Right so, the home stretch now?" Sapnap asked hopefully. This was sorta fun, and he felt way better about the fire stuff going on with him now, but it was also taking a lot of time and they still needed to get everything else prepared in only a few hours.

"After these doors, yep!" Fundy said with a nod.

There were two fairly normal doors in front of them with a passcode lock to the side of it. They noticed quickly the fuzzy stuff at the bottom of them, sort of like a toothbrush pointed downwards. It was designed that way so it wouldn't scratch the floor, but it also made it impossible for Bad to shadow travel under to try to unlock from the other side.

Sapnap ignorantly tried to push the doors open normally, immediately feeling stupid when they didn't budge. Bad giggled a little before Sapnap shot a glare and he quickly found a lot of interest in the ceiling tiles. What an interesting design! I wonder how many dots each one has on average!

"Ok Sapnap, melt the circuit." Fundy said, motioning to the passcode that required a simple code to be jotted in.

Would melting it even open it? Eh, who knows?

"Just heat up this pad thing-, right? I don't need to open it up or anything?" Sapnap asked. He tried to focus his energy onto his hands again like from before as he placed his hands on the passcode firmly.

"Yeah-" Fundy started, before his ear twitched and he cut himself off. His head whipped towards the end of the hallway and Tubbo followed his gaze, seeing the problem Fundy was hearing.

"Sapnap you might need to hurry." Tubbo whispered with fear lining his voice.

Sapnap didn't even want to look back to see what was there. He just had to focus on his hands, his fire, his emotions, and whatever the heck else would help speed this thing up.

"Come on uhm- fire hands! Do the thing!"

Maybe his hands felt a little warmer?

Bad noticed what Fundy and Tubbo were seeing too, and instantly froze. Two guards were walking past the hallway pretty slowly, seeming to drag their feet as they went. They were talking together, one of them obviously annoying the other.

Fundy, Tubbo, and Bad all had the same thought; Maybe if they stood very, very still, the guards wouldn't see them?

Like dinosaurs!

Everyone stood eerily still while Sapnap tried to melt the circuit under increasing pressure.

"Come on, come on, come on! I have to do this, please don't fail on me now!" Sapnap thought to himself. His hands were starting to sweat and he couldn't tell if that was in the right direction or not.

Sapnap tried to focus his energy on it, any emotions he had. Dream, George, his other friends and their wellbeings, the fear he felt while falling off the train, the cafe outburst maybe?, the void demon theory-

And something happened.

The guards spotted them.

"Travis, save it for after work. We still have that boring meeting to attend."

"Why do we have to be there again? We aren't normally invited to things around here."

"It's a guards meeting or something." The woman rolled her eyes, and out of the corner of her vision she noticed something off. Stopping in her tracks for a second to see the awkward group frozen in place at the end of the hallway, she pulled the guy's arm to get his attention.

"Huh- HEY WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING?!-" The guy yelled as they both turned and started to run down the hallway.

"Hey SAP NOW WOULD BE A GREAT TIME-" Fundy started to panic and tried to push open the door more forcefully.

"I'M WORKING ON IT!" He yelled back. But it was too late now, panic and pressure overwhelmed any chance he had to get the thing open.

Badboyhalo looked around their surroundings and then at the guards getting closer every second. He rushed to the circuit board, pulled a dagger from the void into his hand, and stabbed the system.

By absolute miracle it worked, and Fundy was able to push open the door and tumble through. Bad practically shoved Tubbo out with Fundy, while Sapnap was facing the direction of the guards in a steady fighting stance. Bad let go of the doors and let them close on their own and he joined Sapnap to face the guards.

The guards had their own swords too, and both sides silently agreed that this wouldn't be solved with a simple discussion. Sapnap and Bad knew they just had to hold off the guards until Fundy and Tubbo got the crystals and got out, and nodded to each other.

The guards didn't try small talk or anything, but took a good second to size up the intruders, and Sapnap and Bad did the same to the guards.

One guard, who was earlier called Travis, had white hair and green eyes, and looked a lot more nervous about fighting than the woman. She had sky blue hair and eyes, and looked a lot more confident and prepared. They each had swords and flexible armor, leaving Bad and Sapnap at a disadvantage.

Bad took out his dagger from the circuit and shifted more out in between his fingers with a flick or his wrist, thinning his eyes at the white haired guard in front of him. Sapnap got a glinting axe out quickly and faced the woman opposite of him in a battle ready stance.

For a quiet second, the only thing that could be heard was the dying sparks of the passcode pad behind them.

The guard with blue hair made the first move, swinging her sword down towards Sapnap with more force than he was prepared for. He barely missed the blade as he dodged and stumbled towards the wall, using it to push himself back up quickly. With the momentum, he got his axe up by the time she swung again, blocking the attack as the weapons clashed together in a fit of strength.

Bad on the other hand made the first move with his opponent. He threw 3 daggers at once towards the white haired guy who narrowly dodged them all, running for his life more than attacking. He blocked one with his sword when Bad threw two more, and looked to the woman to see if she noticed. Unlucky for him, she was a little busy fighting Sapnap. Another dagger flew by his face and he took that as a pretty clear sign to pay more attention to Bad, who did not seem to be running out of knives.

"Katelyn help!" He shouted as he defected another knife.

"My god Travis, get it together!" She shouted back, blocking a swing from Sapnap and returning one just as powerful, causing Sapnap to fall back a few steps.

"Poor guy." Sapnap almost felt pity, but that was quickly replaced by adrenaline as they were face to face with clashing weapons again.

Of course Bad wasn't actually trying to hurt the guy, but he did want to try to pin him to the wall at least to avoid hand to hand combat and keep him stuck.

With her blue hair and cold attitude, she gave off an icy vibe. The other one had his white hair and green accents which highly contrasted Bad's Black and red color scheme. Opposites attack I guess?

Fire v.s. Ice

And Dark v.s. Light.

Not really how Sapnap and Bad pictured this heist to go, but if they got those crystals for the group, it was worth all of the effort. It was up to Fundy and Tubbo now.

(More detailed map! It's messy but I'm too tired to care!)

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Sorry this took out so long to get out! Life got in the way and I got stuck on some of the parts, and my ipad deleted the entire map of the place right before I was finished so I had to redo that too. Not to mention the heatwave over the past few days made it hard to be motivated to do anything since it was just so stupidly hot. Anyway yeah, thanks for reading and hopefully the next chapter won't take as long.

Also another not super important thing, but if I were to make a 3rd book to this thing, (I can confirm mumza and some other new characters would be in it) would you guys like that? I dunno if I'd ever have the time, and this book still has a long way to go, but it's crossed my mind and I have a few ideas. Anyway thanks for reading again and bye!