Washington D.C.

Baster Cray, the 37-year-old master burglar, felt stressed out. Nervous. He wondered why. Even the largest theft circles respected him. The Crayer, as , had pulled off crimes much more difficult than this. Heck, he pulled off the same crime 17 years ago, when he stole the ‘96 hundred dollar bill. But the security beefed up- both figuratively and literally. As the guards had gotten steadily less effective, the electronic security system had increased its effectiveness tenfold. But the hardest thing about the heist was not the better security. It was the fact that Baster had decided that this would be his last crime. He would retire, go into a life of selling popcorn at Oracle Arena for a living. But before he could even think about the popcorn, he needed to pull off the crime. He noticed he had been getting less capable at crime, both physically with broken legs and whatnot and mentally with his fear of the younger generation of gangsters taking over. It didn’t help that he had recently started making himself available. Fear of women broke down his once famous mental toughness even more; his want to raise a family had spurred this development.

Ziplining from the warehouse to the treasury building, Baster landed in the guard room, as planned. And a junior guard patrolled the place. Not according to plan. The name tag said Vinbo C.M., though Baster didn’t read it. He did not see Vinbo’s face either, as Vinbo was facing the other way. Baster thought Vinbo was an ordinary young guard.Had it been an older guard, tranquilization might have been used, but Baster didn’t want to embarrass Vinbo. Instead, he tied up Vinbo and left a note next to him that challenged him to break out and chase Baster without calling for backup. Some might call this a risk, but Baster knew young cops want to make a name for themselves and would come without backup. Also, Baster took Vinbo’s walkie talkie and promptly dropped it out the window.

Vinbo’s escape should have crippled Baster’s plan. Baster’s experience didn’t allow that; he simply improvised successfully. But he was a top class police officer, a silver medalist at the NYPD police academy. The gold medalist had suspiciously passed away 2 days after the ceremony. That was Baster’s fault. Vinbo didn't know it, but Baster had been looking out for him since his father had been shot. The shooting? Also Baster’s fault. In an alternate universe, one where Baster was a cop, the two could have been best friends. Alas, instead Vinbo was out to get the FBI’s Number 1 wanted criminal.
Baster would have retired sooner, but being number 1 on the most wanted list for 2 years was on his bucket list. Bin Laden had died quite recently, and Baster was finally able to break out of his shadow. He had set an underworld record- Least Killings for the Most Wanted. The only person he had ever killed was Vinbo’s father, the reason he looked out for Vinbo so much. Baster did not finish the gold medalist- he had used an outside contract killer.

Because he didn’t kill, he had the best collection of nonlethal weapons this side of Batman. He had made shady deals with criminals like the Sweaty Swearer. They had too many guns and they traded with him at a net loss to acquire his legendary knockout weapons. Baster then turned around and sold the guns for a profit. He had made half of his fortune that way.
But sometimes he just acted careless. This was not one of those times. Shooting his new virus dart at the foolishly exposed wires, Baster took out the whole security system, including the alarms and the machine that send out text message alerts. In short, he had taken out the whole building. 2 hours till the authorities would show up. “Fools!” he thought, scooping stacks of bills into his specially designed bags that scanned for bugs and trackers. After filling 17, he put them in a foldable hand truck he designed (patent pending) and left the building. Each bag held 10 million. Getting into a perfectly normal ‘96 Camry, the one he had bought after his ‘96 treasury heist, he sped away toward Memphis.
Vinbo had broken free of his bonds back in the guard room, using a trick from an old Houdini youtube video. Rushing out the door, he took a cop car and chased after Baster, siren blaring.
As Baster soared over a roadblock, Vinbo, flying in from the side, crashed into him. The airbags deployed in both cars as Vinbo and Baster were knocked unconscious. Before he hit the ground, Vinbo hazily heard the thief yelling “YOU ARE THE NEW KING! YOU NEED NO MORE HELP!” As he hit the ground, his training instinctively took over as he landed in the a breakfall, strategically protecting the more important parts of his body. A broken arm is much more manageable than a cracked skull, after all.
Unknown Location
Baster woke up in a cell. This alarmed him, as he had never even visited a jail. The closest he had come was jury duty in 2002. Next to him was Vinbo. As a man entered the room, the Crayer lightly tapped Vinbo’s shoulder to wake him up, which he did so silently it was creepy. “I am Hitler the third,” said the mystery man.
“You got a tic tac?” That was Vinbo.
“Shut up or I shall have you executed,” commanded Hitler III, with a heavy German accent.
Baster, always to the point, promptly asked Hitler three questions. “Are you a member of the Nazis? Are you related to the first Hitler? Are you planning anything evil?”
“Yes, No, and No,“ said Hitler. “You see, the Nazis are not evil. The first Hitler hijacked the organization and put us to war. He was the greatest leader we ever had, but he used his talents for evil. If you two worked in Europe, you would know the story. Anyway Why do you think our symbol is the Swastika?”
“So why did you kidnap us?,” said Vinbo.
“Need money for your organization? Going for a ransom?”
“No, he wants to recruit us- me as the leader, you as a field agent. Is that right?”
“Yes, that is right Baxter. Our top field agent was killed recently, and I have cancer in an untreatable stage. On my bucket list was to recruit you two.”

Taking an Expo marker, Hitler III wrote a bulleted list of about 35 events the Nazis had helped resolve. The three that stood out to the two prisoners were:
1.The Cuban Missile Crisis.
2. World War 1
3. (In progress) Global Warming
Vinbo accepted almost right away, and after a few minutes, Baster decided protecting Vinbo took precedence over his date with Michelle on Saturday night. “Alright,” he sighed. “ By the way, your shoes are untied.” The second that Hitler looked down, Baster knocked him out and leaped out the window, Vinbo close behind. His criminal instincts revealed to him that a highway resided right outside. “Alertness rewards you!” Baster thought. Leaping onto a motorcycle, his paper clip turned the ignition in a matter of seconds. At the same time, Vinbo mapped their location on his phone’s GPS, pinpointing their location in the industrial section of Detroit. They, as the unlikely duo sped away, Hitler III radioed for backup. The two would not live over 96 months, or the length of Hitler III’s remaining life. Baster’s stolen money would fund his own death.
Paris, France
95 months and 30 days later later: Baster and Vinbo, enjoying burritos, chatted about life. And women. Baster had a status of ‘soon to be engaged’ and Vinbo had been with his girlfriend for 8 months. They would both settle down, raise a family. But they knew they would never forget the fateful day almost 8 years ago, when the Nazis captured them. That was the reason the two kept came to Europe every few weeks, to find out more about this organization. It was said no one who turned down a Nazi staffing offer survived over a week;except these two, whose lives had so far continued for 419 times that amount. And a lot more, they both hoped. If they both hadn’t been so infatuated, the two snipers would have been forced down off their 40 story roofs- the hard way. But love is a strong thing, and when the first shots miraculously missed, Baster and Vinbo transformed into combat mode instantaneously. Survival was the only goal. Vinbo’s black hair blended nicely with the locals, but the Crayer’s red buzz cut stood out like a sore thumb in The City of Love. Hitting the ground running, they briefly registered a mob of men with Nazi uniforms running after them before the two split up. Vinbo ran west, and Baster east. After losing a good number of the soldiers with their silky, dangerous manuevers, Baster circled back to the Eiffel tower and, channelling his inner Jordan, practically flew into the elevator’s rapidly shutting doors. Only five enemy soldiers completed the leap of faith with him. He took care of them at the top, putting them away like Bruce Lee. As Vinbo shimmied up the elevator cables, trying to outpace the Nazis that filled the car. The two connected telepathically as Vinbo nodded to Baster. He waited for all the Nazis to come up, fending off the early birds. The civillians did not need convincing, as they left as quickly as possible. As soon as the building became a 2 on 200 battle, Baster connected his super high voltage pen to the tower, and in the blink of an eye the mentor and his progeny took the last remaining parachutes and just jumped off the side of a building. IN 33 seconds, Baster’s non-lethal electrical charge knocked out the soldiers for 2 hours, more than enough time for the police to arrive. As they conveniently landed a block away from their hotel, Baster left Vinbo a phone number.
“Pay phone.” he whispered. And he walked away, remotely checking out of his hotel (he had left no valuable luggage), with a smirk on his face, pride overwhelmed him. “Take the next step buddy,” he whispered, in the vague direction of Vinbo. “You’ll do better than me.”