What do you do if the heist you are trying to pull off sends you to another realm?

“Remember what we agreed on, Gerald?”

“Sure thing, Toni. We pop the lock, take the goods and split 50/50”

“60/40”

“55/45”

“60/40”

“57.4/42.6?”

“60/40.” Toni stabs a glare in Gerald's general direction.

“Right… 60/40. You remember the combo?”

“Who do you think I am? Yes, I remember. This will be as easy as that one time before.”

“What, that one (and only) time you managed to swipe a couple of your mum's cigs but felt so bad you ended up buying her two new packs?”

“Shut up, Gerald”. The pace of the rusty old van picks up as they are short on time. HR are about to hand them their notices as they learnt just this morning -

“Gerald, Toni, I am going to be straight with you, your contributions to this company have been nothing but a pile of piss”. Gerald turns to face the window, holding back the smirk of the century. Toni sees this through the corner of his eyes and can tell he is not doing a good job at keeping it together by the tightening puffs of his stubbly cheeks. “I can see you take me seriously as usual Gerald. Well as we have been saying for the past couple of weeks… keep fucking around and You. Will. Find. Out.” The man slams the door and fades away down the dark unkempt corridor.

If they don't provide evidence of them being any good at their jobs at HeistRUs they would be labelled consiberable pros at fucking around. While they both enjoy this part, Toni most definitely did not want to do the finding out part.

“Good thing Terry is as dumb as a doughnut. I can’t believe he would leave a job like this just lying on his desk unprotected.”

“Gerald… what the fuck is dumb as a doughnut?” Ignoring the rambling of dumb and doughnuts Gerald is now responding with, Toni swerves into the back road marked with a sparkly sticker on the shoddy map they stole from the office this morning. As they come to a halt, they notice a door is ajar, a door leading directly to the back of the biggest bank in the country: Facades.

“Right, it looks like we can slide in here, take the first left, right, right again, straight for 23 steps and then another left, and we should approach the safe” Toni looks to Gerald expecting some non-sensical comment to find him in silence, mouth gaping wide still in shock at the scale this job is. Toni reaches over and closes his jaw with his index finger, followed by a quick succession of finger snaps. “Come on, Gerald, snap out of fairy land. We are about to hit it big.”

“S… sure thing, Toni. It’s just that… doesn’t this appear too obvious?” Gerald shifts his eyes anxiously between the very blatant open door and Toni.

“No way. This is destined to be, Lady Luck is on our side; I can feel it, can’t you feel it, Gerald?” Toni grins in a way that is a little overconfident for the situation they are and could be in.

Gerald peeks the first corner, checking for any signs of life.

“Clear?” Gerald processes, there’s no one, absolutely no sign of life around. Why would such an area be so empty and accessible? Gerald continued his mission of stealth, carefully navigating the corridors, finger gun and all, as if they would help, should any dangerous situation occur. As Gerald approached the final corner, he could hear rustling sounds echoing off the walls; the weekly self-defence video tutorials he watched religiously had set him up for this exact moment.

“You should know, only one of us will make it out alive, and it won’t be you.” He leaps, exposing his finger gun, seeing nothing but an archway leading into darkness. A figure creeping out of the shadows comes into view.

“Gerald, get in here will you, I would like to get home before the new episode of Desperate housewives is on.” Toni mumbles, mouth full of sandwich.

“Did you teleport or something, Toni?”

“No, I simply walked here without needing all of the theatrics you were performing.” Toni shrugs, turning and going back into the void.

They both approach a beam of flickering light that dimly illuminates a 6 by 6 foot safe with a classic mechanical combination lock on the front center.

“Well, that ain’t fitting in the van”, Gerald nudges Toni, setting him a little off balance.

“I sure as hell ain’t leaving empty-handed.” Toni circles the safe, tapping the dense metallic walls as he goes. They have the combination, but they had hoped that extracting the safe as a whole would be achievable and be done with it outside of this establishment. Caressing the old yet stable lock, Toni gets excited about the future he will get if he accomplishes this feat.

“Let's begin.” Toni squats to get the lock to eye level and begins assessing how best to reach the combination in the quickest succession. Gerald turns to face the entryway, alert and on guard. They both take a breath. An eternal silence in just one second before they proceed to their new rich life.

The clicks of the lock are quiet but just about audible for Toni to identify that he has reached the correct point before alternating to the next. Number by number, he gets closer to the full combination. Right here, right now, it is just him and this combination lock; nothing or no one is going to stop him from this. As he reaches the final point, the lock makes a loud audible click. So proud of himself, he is unaware of his surroundings.

“T…Toni… Toni. TONI!” Gerald shakes Toni out of his narcissistic trance and pulls him up to a stand.

“What is your problem, Gerald? We've done it, the code is locked in, we've made it!”

“Toni… I don't think we are in Brindleton anymore.” Toni pulls away from Gerald, shifting his pupils to understand his surroundings. An ominous expanse of purple sky surrounds them. A bead of sweat trickles south from his forehead, falling down the contours of his face.

“One, Two…” Three suns cast intense rays as if spotlights on a stage, highlighting a vast expanse of land surrounding them.

“It's okay, Gerald. Maybe we can undo the code and go back home?” Toni turns back, returning to the safe in a sweat; the sweltering heat is too much to bear, and nothing is worth this suffering. Toni begins to click the lock; with each click, the world shifts around them.

“Toni! I'm scared. What’s going on!?” Gerald is being thrown around the morphing space, being flung left and right, up and down. He manages to cling to the safe along with Toni, who is still scrambling to reverse the complex combination in hopes of getting them home. “Maybe you could stop for A minute, Toni. Let's work on this together.” Toni takes a pause, the world settles around them. Now, A night sky sprinkled with countless stars is painted above, below and all around them. They stand on a floating disc engraved with countless runes. Toni looks towards Gerald and bursts out in an unhinged, uncontrollable laughter.

“Toni, now you’re scaring me. Keep it together, man!”

“I…it’s just that…” Toni struggles to finish his sentence before continuing his outburst: “Nice dress, Gerald!” Gerald looks down to notice he is covered in a fine purple and gold encrusted robe. He looks up to Toni once more to argue that it is, in fact, a robe and not a dress, but then bursts out into laughter.

“You can talk, Prince Charming.” Toni is dressed head to toe in silver armour and is wrapped in a fancy embroidered cape with a longsword at his hip. Both were so overcome with laughter, they failed to notice the massive dragon standing right in front of them until it exhaled, covering them head to toe in steamy snot.

“Welcome to the quest for infinite riches.” The dragon speaks, so loud the vibrations cause Toni and Gerald to perform a dance of balance.

“What?! I didn’t quite catch that. Could you speak up?” Toni slaps Gerald's arm and glares with the sharpest of daggers. Gerald zips his lips.

The dragon cleared his throat before continuing, Gerald and Toni looking to each other in confusion at the human-like antics this dragon possessed.

“You must defeat any challenge thrown your way on your quest to defeat the locksmith. With each quest you complete a new code you shall receive. find the realm of the locksmith and give him his due, saving us and saving you.” The dragon sneezes, fire blasting past the two dazed men, revealing a path. The safe grows legs and runs down the path out of sight.

“After that safe!” Toni commands, and they both dart, leaving the dragon behind without a word. A tear falls from the dragon's eye, and he fades from existence.

Falling to their hands and knees and out of breath, the two finally catch up to the safe, now inanimate as it were a regular safe, nothing abnormal about it… A figure emerges from the door, slowly growing in size until it is as large as a double-decker bus. Toni pulls the longsword from its hilt whilst Gerald takes a few paces back.

“Feed me, humans!” The bulbus creature spews in a loud, deep rumble.

“Don’t suppose you have any doughnuts, Gerald?” Toni, attempting to be humorous, knows he falls flat when he sees a dazed Gerald respond with a slow shake of his head. “Guess I have no choice then. I hope he likes metal!” Gerald dashes forward, widening his steps to keep momentum. He flanks left, running up a mound of dirt before taking a heroic leap and thrusting the longsword into its face. The beast-like creature tumbles onto its back, deflating like a burst balloon, revealing what looks to be a code in an unreadable language.

“Well that’s just brilliant, I bust my arse defeating this thing, to reveal something we can’t even understand?! Guess we have to make this our new home, Gerald” Toni jumps off the lifeless vessel to see Gerald working his hands on the lock, the world morphing around them once more. “Since when could you read this gibberish? You can’t even read our language!” Gerald pulls out a monocle from his robe, he shrugs, then gently places it over Toni’s eye.

“Seems this monocle is this world's equivalent of text to speech,” Gerald explains in the background. Toni hears a voice in his head repeating a numeric code as his eye is locked onto the scribbles on the toppled creature, still there in front of them, albeit slowly fading.

Tall, thin trees are scattered around them, no end in sight. The safes outer walls fall, revealing a new door with the same lock presented to them. This time, the safe grows arms and swings away as if it were a monkey going from tree to tree. Gerald and Toni look to one another, give a quick nod and follow in pursuit of the safe once again. This time, the safe settles atop a giant mossy boulder in a clearing of the forest.

“After you, my good sir” Gerald gestures to Toni, once again being gifted with a glare as sharp as a shard of fractured glass. Toni proceeds to climb the unusually large stone. Meanwhile, Gerald scans the area with his magical monocle for any sign of the next code.

“Seems this time will be a piece of cake, right, Toni?” Gerald turns to see a massive grey nose. He lowers the monocle, slowly shifting his eyes upward. Toni can be seen dangling off what looks to be an ear.

“Don’t stand there. Run!” Toni shouts down to Gerald and swings off the ear, barrel rolls on the ground, and lifts himself to a sprint, his legs moving as fast as his body can make them as the giant head begins to roll toward them. Gerald follows in a panic, struggling to keep up. Numerous obstacles scatter their path, they clear each one in quick succession as if they had trained for this all their lives, until a slope directly ahead comes into view.

“Oh, come on, how cliche is this?” Gerald gestures to the slope. Toni grabs Gerald’s hand and drags him over the ledge, landing fast and hard. Still holding Gerald's arm, Toni darts back to make cover on the wall of the ledge. The giant head, unable to stop flies overhead, his face upside down when his pupils lock onto the two sheltered humans, forming a shocked expression seconds before smashing into a wall of trees just ahead.

“Oh, my prince charming, how can I ever repay you for saving my life?” Gerald begins to pout, closing his eyes and pretending to go in for a kiss when all of a sudden, his lips are met with something moist and fluffy. Moss.

“You can repay me by doing your job and reading the code, princess.” Toni laughs, continuing to stuff Gerald's face with a muddy moss clump. Gerald spits out the dirt and proceeds to rub his tongue on his robes. “Enjoy your meal?”

“Yeah, it was five stars, but I have some complaints about the service provided.” Gerald stood and began pacing towards the crumbled boulder, now shattered into several shards, each one engraved with a rune. Using the monocle once more, he starts to click the combination into the lock on the safe that appeared amid all the debris. The realm is a blur as each click gets them closer to the riches they so desire.

“Ready, Toni?”

“Sure, Gerald.”

–

With every defeated realm, the safes walls continue to fall, revealing a smaller version of itself inside, each combination porting them somewhere new, somewhere magical. How long will this go on for? Will Toni ever get home to see Desperate housewives, will Gerald ever be able to get acknowledged by his boss?

–

Entering yet another combination, Gerald and Toni are thrown into a realm with a night sky sprinkled with countless stars painted above, below and all around them. They stand on a floating disc engraved with countless runes.

“Toni, I feel like we have been here before.”

“I doubt it, Gerald. With each combination, we have been to some new crazy place. This is no different.” A snotty puff of steam clings to them, bringing them to turn towards the source, a massive dragon.

“Gerald, I feel like we have been here before.” Gerald takes a breath, but before he could respond the dragon takes an even larger more audible gasp of air, sucking the two toward him.

“You have bravely defeated the many challenges on your quest to find the locksmith. You have done well, humans,” The dragon rumbles.

“I would have to disagree with you, Mr. Dragon… Sir dragon? We are still here, after all.” Gerald states.

“That is because you have yet to defeat the locksmith, and as a reward for your efforts, I will now tell you where you may find him.” The dragon smirks. He begins to shrink, continuously getting smaller and smaller until he is the same height as the two standing before him. “The locksmith is yours truly,” he suggests whilst taking a bow before them.

“It’s just some dude?!” Gerald looks to Toni for answers. Toni is already circling the creepy bearded man.

“Just so you know, by defeat, I do not mean to slaughter me. You must be smarter than that to solve this puzzle,” the man says, turning along with Toni with a smug tone. Toni pauses in his stride.

“Oh, that makes this easy then” Toni hops to the safe and lodges his longsword into the crevice behind the lock, using the sword as a lever to pry the lock away from the safe. “Without the lock, there would be no locksmith! Gerald, get over here and help!” Both pulling the sword, they manage to fling the lock off, causing it to shatter on the floor. The safe begins to beep and flash as Toni lifts it off the ground.

“Gerald, care for a safe?” He throws the now tiny safe over to Gerald.

“Oh, uh, no thanks, Toni, you can keep it.” The beeps and flashes speed up as Gerald tosses with an underarm throw back to Toni.

“Mr. Locksmith Dragon man, this belongs to you, right?” Toni throws the safe over to the man.

“Oh, why, thank you, but not anymore. It’s all yours now; you defeated me.” He chucks it to Gerald. They begin to toss the safe to each other like a hot potato until it finally hits Gerald in the face. Dropping to the floor, Toni cracks up in laughter, and Gerald just stares, dazed. Forgetting that there is a time bomb in front of them, they are blasted with an explosion of light.

Gerald lands on his face, and Toni manages to land on his feet. He reaches a hand out to Gerald to help him up. As they rub the light out of their eyes, they realise they have returned to the back room at Facades. The safe is back to its full size, and the door is flung wide open. In the center, there is a piece of paper curled up. Toni walks up to the paper, lifts it off the ground and reads.

“I O U”. They look at each other in silence.

“So… 50/50?”