Midtown Savings & Trust
Night 2 - 1:45 AM
Murphy's coffee had gone cold an hour ago.
He didn't notice. The security monitor's glow painted his face blue-white in the dark control room, twelve screens showing empty corridors, silent teller stations, the vault door sealed and still. Midtown Savings & Trust at 1:45 AM was a tomb with air conditioning—nothing moved, nothing changed, nothing happened.
Exactly how Murphy liked his shifts.
He stretched, joints popping, and glanced at the other monitor. Sharon, the night deposit clerk, was visible on Camera 7, head down over paperwork, probably half-asleep herself. Night shift solidarity—they'd both learned to look busy while doing absolutely nothing.
His radio crackled. "Murphy, you still awake up there?"
He keyed the mic. "Barely. You making rounds, Jenkins?"
"Yeah. Everything's dead. I'm thinking about checking the break room vending machine. You want anything?"
"I'm good. Just—" Murphy paused, rubbing his eyes. Strange. They felt heavy. Really heavy. "Just finish your circuit."
"Copy."
Murphy blinked hard, trying to focus. Three cups of coffee tonight. He shouldn't be this tired. Must be the recycled air. The fluorescent lights. The soul-crushing boredom of watching empty rooms for eight hours straight.
On Monitor 7, Sharon slumped forward.
Murphy frowned. "Sharon?" He keyed the intercom. "Hey, Sharon, you okay?"
No response. She didn't move.
His hand went to the radio. "Jenkins, something's—"
The world tilted sideways.
Murphy tried to stand, tried to reach for the alarm panel, tried to understand why his legs wouldn't work and his vision was tunneling and why Jenkins was saying something on the radio but the words were stretching like taffy—
His last conscious thought was: This isn't right.
Then: nothing.
***
2:47 AM
"—urphy! Jesus, man, wake up!"
Hands shaking his shoulder. Murphy jerked awake, neck screaming in protest, coffee cup somehow still upright on the desk beside him. His mouth tasted like copper and confusion.
Jenkins stood over him, face pale in the monitor glow. "What the hell happened?"
Murphy blinked, trying to process. The monitors. Twelve screens. Everything looked... normal? He checked the timestamp: 2:47 AM.
"I—" His tongue felt thick. "I must've dozed off."
"Both of us?" Jenkins gestured at himself. "I woke up in the third-floor hallway. Just... sitting against the wall."
"And Sharon—"
They both looked at Monitor 7. Sharon was stirring, lifting her head slowly, confusion written across her features.
Murphy's heart hammered. He pulled up the camera logs, scrubbed through the footage. 1:45 AM: everything normal. 1:47 AM: static. 1:49 AM: static. 2:15 AM: footage resumes, showing him slumped in his chair, Jenkins on the floor, Sharon at her desk.
Thirty minutes of static.
"System glitch," Murphy said, not believing it.
"Both of us passing out at the exact same time is a system glitch?"
Murphy checked the vault camera. Sealed. Time-lock active. Motion sensors: no triggers. Door sensors: no breaches.
Nothing was wrong.
Everything was wrong.
"We check everything," Murphy said, standing on shaky legs. "Vault, floors, doors, everything."
They did. Fifteen minutes of walking every hallway, checking every lock, testing every door. The vault was sealed properly, time-lock engaged, no signs of tampering. Cash drawers in the teller stations were untouched. The safe in the manager's office was locked.
Nothing missing. Nothing disturbed. Nothing wrong.
Except Murphy's splitting headache and the thirty minutes of missing time.
They stood in the lobby, Jenkins chewing his thumbnail, Murphy staring at the vault door.
"We report this?" Jenkins asked quietly.
Murphy thought about it. Thought about explaining to their supervisor that they'd both fallen asleep simultaneously. Thought about the disciplinary hearing. The probable termination. The black mark on his record.
"Report what?" Murphy said finally. "That we dozed off? That the cameras glitched?"
"Something happened—"
"Nothing happened." Murphy's voice was firm. "The cameras glitched. We got drowsy. It's 3 AM and we're running on shit coffee and boredom. We stay alert for the rest of the shift, and we don't mention this to anyone. Agreed?"
Jenkins looked like he wanted to argue. Then his shoulders sagged. "Yeah. Agreed."
They returned to their posts. Murphy sat in front of the monitors, watching empty rooms, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his gut that whispered: You missed something. Something important. Something right in front of you.
The vault door stayed sealed.
The bank stayed silent.
And Murphy tried very hard to believe nothing had happened.
***
48 Hours Earlier
QUEENS STAR MOTEL - VACANCY
Day 1 - 9:23 AM
Seraph sat on the motel bed, smartphone in hand, studying the target.
Midtown Savings & Trust. Three stories, West 48th Street, brick facade that had seen better decades. The kind of bank that served local businesses and personal accounts—profitable, established, but not significant enough to warrant federal scrutiny.
Small enough to avoid attention. Large enough to matter.
He formed the seal. Chakra split, divided, multiplied.
Twenty shadow clones materialized in the cramped room, each wearing his face, each carrying his memories. They looked at him with unified understanding.
"Intelligence phase," Seraph said. "Day and night rotations. I need layouts, routines, patterns, weaknesses."
Transformation Jutsu came next. His clones shifted: elderly woman with a cane, teenager in a Yankees cap, businessman, jogger, construction worker, mother with stroller. Two became dogs. One became a pigeon.
"Disperse. Rotate every six hours. Don't draw attention."
They vanished—through the window, through the door, dissolving into the city's morning chaos.
Three clones remained, still wearing his face. "Equipment acquisition. Clothes, tools, phones, parts for a device. Stay scattered, stay cheap."
They nodded and left.
Seraph pulled out blank paper and began sketching the storage seal—concentric circles, linking kanji, directional flow markers. Hashirama's fuinjutsu knowledge made the work almost meditative. Each stroke had to be perfect. Each symbol had to align.
This seal would hold millions.
He worked until sunset, checking and rechecking, ensuring the compression ratios were stable.
By the time the first clones returned to dispel, the seal was ready.
***
Night 1 - 11:34 PM
The manager's apartment building had no doorman.
Seraph's clone—transformed into a forgettable delivery driver—had confirmed that hours ago. Third floor, corner unit, no cameras in the hallway, fire escape accessible from the alley.
The clone waited on the fire escape now, watching through the window.
Inside, David Chen—branch manager, fifteen years with the company, divorced, no kids—poured whiskey into a tumbler and collapsed onto his couch. Tie loosened, shoes off, the exhausted posture of a man who'd survived another day of corporate bureaucracy.
Alone. Vulnerable. Perfect.
The clone waited another twenty minutes, watching Chen's breathing slow, the whiskey glass tipping in his loosening grip.
Then it moved.
The window lock was simple. A thin root grew from the clone's fingertip, slipping into the mechanism, manipulating the latch with surgical precision. The window slid open silently.
The clone stepped inside, moving like shadow, and knelt beside the couch.
Chen stirred, eyes fluttering open—
And froze.
Genjutsu.
Not Hashirama's specialty. That had been Madara's domain, the Uchiha's art. But the God of Shinobi hadn't earned that title by being one-dimensional.
The clone's eyes met Chen's, chakra pulsing in a specific rhythm, and the world shifted.
To Chen, the room dissolved. He stood in his office—safe, familiar, normal. A routine day. Nothing unusual.
"Mr. Chen," the clone's voice was calm, professional, "I need to verify some security protocols."
"Of course." Chen's voice was distant, dreamy. In the genjutsu, he was simply being helpful to a colleague.
"Vault access codes."
Chen recited them without hesitation. Primary code. Secondary override. Time-lock bypass sequence. Manager emergency protocol.
"Guard rotation schedule."
Night shift: Murphy and Jenkins. Shift change at 6 AM. Standard patrol routes. Break times.
"Camera system details."
Network configuration. Junction box location. Backup power supply. Remote monitoring service provider.
"Security response protocols."
Alarm triggers. Police response time estimates. Bank policy for after-hours incidents.
Ten minutes. The clone extracted everything, committed every detail to memory, then carefully withdrew the genjutsu.
Chen blinked, looking around his apartment in confusion. Headache blooming. Glass of whiskey still in his hand. Must've dozed off. Strange dreams.
He finished the whiskey, stumbled to bed, and forgot.
The clone was already gone, dissolving into smoke in the alley, memories flowing back to Seraph like water finding its level.
***
Day 2 - Morning
Intelligence returned in waves.
Day shift clones dispelled first: business hours operations, customer traffic patterns, teller behaviors. Then night shift: guard movements, building sounds, ambient security.
One clone had infiltrated during business hours—transformed as an HVAC technician, clipboard and uniform, checking "ventilation issues" in the basement. It had mapped the vault's exact location, the door's hinges, the camera blind spots.
Seraph processed it all, Hashirama's tactical mind organizing the data into actionable intelligence.
Weaknesses: single junction box, overconfident guards, time-lock vulnerability at 2 AM reset.
Strengths: off-site monitoring, police proximity, reinforced vault.
Solution: non-lethal witness elimination, evidence manipulation, ghost protocol.
He pulled out the equipment the acquisition clones had gathered—components scavenged from electronics stores, pawn shops, tech recyclers. To anyone else, it would look like junk. To someone with Peter Parker's engineering knowledge and Hashirama's precision, it was exactly what he needed.
The hologram projector took six hours to build.
Not elegant. Not sophisticated. Just functional—a one-time-use device that could project a convincing three-dimensional image for seventy-two to one hundred sixty-eight hours before component failure.
In Marvel's world of Stark tech and SHIELD holographics, this was crude. But it would fool bank cameras and casual inspection. That's all it needed to do.
By evening, Seraph had:
- Vault codes (from genjutsu)
- Complete facility intelligence (from clones)
- Storage seal (prepared)
- Hologram device (functional)
- Escape routes (planned)
- Alibi (shadow clone sleeping in his motel bed)
Two years of ninja warfare experience compressed into forty-eight hours of preparation.
He was ready.
***
Night 2 - 1:47 AM
Flowers began to bloom.
Seraph stood across the street, hands together in the seal, feeling his chakra flow outward with focused intent. Not the massive six-block deployment Hashirama could manage—just one building, surgical and precise.
White five-petaled flowers grew from cracks in the bank's brick facade, from the ventilation system, from potted plants in the lobby, from the concrete of the basement floor. They blossomed silently, releasing pollen that the HVAC system pulled through the entire building.
The pollen was invisible. The effect was immediate.
On the security monitor Murphy couldn't see, his own image slumped forward. Jenkins collapsed mid-step on his patrol route. Sharon's head dropped to her desk.
Thirty seconds. Every person in the building was unconscious.
The flower technique cost Seraph roughly six percent of his reserves—a testament to Hashirama's absurd capacity. Most jonin would have burned through twenty percent for the same effect.
He waited another ninety seconds, confirming the pollen had dispersed completely, then moved.
***
The junction box was exactly where Chen's memory had placed it—basement utility room, behind the water heater. Seraph's clone disabled the camera network in forty seconds: not hacking, just physically disconnecting the relay cables. The off-site monitoring service would register a connection failure. IT would check it tomorrow.
The clone dispelled. Seraph moved through the sleeping bank alone.
Murphy slumped in his chair, breathing steady and deep. Jenkins sprawled on the third-floor hallway. Sharon's head rested on her desk, face peaceful.
No harm. Just sleep.
The vault was in the basement, exactly as the infiltration clone had mapped. Reinforced steel door, biometric scanner, time-lock display showing 1:53 AM—seven minutes before the 2:00 AM reset window.
Seraph pressed his palm against the keypad.
Chen's primary code: 7-4-9-2-1-6
The pad beeped. Green light.
Time-lock override sequence: 0-9-3-STAR-STAR-2
The mechanical locks began to disengage, tumblers clicking in sequence. At exactly 2:00 AM, the time-lock released.
Seraph pulled the door open.
Inside: metal shelves lined with bundled cash, deposit boxes, financial records.
More than enough.
He unrolled the prepared storage seal scroll, placed it flat on the floor, formed three hand seals, and channeled chakra.
The seal glowed faintly green. The air pressure shifted.
Cash vanished from the shelves—pulled into the dimensional pocket like water down a drain. Bundles disappeared systematically: hundreds, fifties, twenties, all compressed and stored. The seal's kanji pulsed with each extraction.
Three minutes. The vault was empty.
Seraph checked the seal's capacity indicator—near maximum. He rolled it up carefully, tucked it inside his jacket.
$11,847,000.
He pulled out the hologram device—crude assemblage of smartphone parts, LED arrays, and refraction lenses—and positioned it on the vault floor. He activated it with a simple switch.
The device hummed softly, projectors engaging. An image materialized: the vault, fully stocked, cash bundled neatly on every shelf.
Perfect illusion. Static, not interactive, but the cameras wouldn't know the difference. Neither would casual inspection.
The device would function for seventy-two hours minimum, one hundred sixty-eight maximum, before component degradation caused failure.
By then, the trail would be ice cold.
Seraph closed the vault door, heard the locks re-engage, verified the time-lock reset properly.
From the outside, nothing had changed.
He moved through the bank, checking each sleeping person—breathing steady, vitals strong, no distress. The flowers had already begun to wither, petals dissolving into faint pollen that would break down completely within hours.
By 2:15 AM, he was gone.
The escape was textbook shinobi movement: rooftop to fire escape to alley to rooftop. Body Flicker technique for short burst speed, chakra-enhanced leaps covering distances that would snap normal human ligaments. Silent footfalls, shadow-to-shadow transitions, the art of becoming invisible in plain sight.
By 2:25 AM, he was twelve blocks away.
By 2:47 AM—when Murphy and Jenkins woke confused and scared—Seraph was in Queens, disposing of his black clothing in a dumpster fire three neighborhoods from his motel.
By 3:15 AM, he was showering in lukewarm water, watching soot and ash circle the drain.
By dawn, he might as well have been a ghost.
***
Day 3 - 5:34 AM
Seraph unlocked the motel room door. His shadow clone—maintaining the alibi, sleeping peacefully in the bed—opened one eye, nodded, and dispelled.
He locked the door, engaged the chain, closed the blackout curtains.
The storage seal scroll went on the floor. One hand seal. The compressed cash materialized in neat stacks.
He counted methodically, muscle memory from Hashirama's administrative duties making the task automatic.
$11,847,000.
Seraph stared at the money for a long moment.
Two days ago, he'd been a failed experiment marked for termination. Yesterday, he'd been scrambling for resources, stealing from laundromats, robbing the desperate to fund basic survival.
Today, he had more money than most people would see in ten lifetimes.
And the best part? The bank didn't even know yet.
Murphy and Jenkins would finish their shift in a few hours, report nothing unusual except a camera glitch. Sharon would clock out, go home, forget the strange drowsiness. The morning shift would arrive to a functioning bank with a vault that *appeared* fully stocked.
Three to seven days from now, someone would need to withdraw a large sum. Or the hologram device would fail. Or an auditor would notice something off.
And by then?
Seraph would be a legal person with ID, apartment, resources, and power.
Untouchable.
He packed the money into duffel bags, already planning the storage units he'd rent across the city—never keep it all in one place, never create a single point of failure.
But first: sleep.
Seraph lay back on the sagging mattress, staring at the water-stained ceiling, and felt something he'd never experienced in this short, violent life.
Satisfaction.
Not guilt. Peter's voice had faded weeks ago, leaving only accessible memories. Not emptiness. Not the hollow ache of survival.
Just pure, clean satisfaction. Pride, even.
He'd planned something complex and executed it perfectly. Used abilities that shouldn't exist in this world, bent a modern city's infrastructure to his will, and walked away without leaving a trace.
One of the most successful heists of the decade, he thought. And no one will ever know.
The frightening part wasn't how easy it had been.
It was how natural it felt.
No hesitation. No second-guessing. No moral crisis. Just a problem identified and solved with maximum efficiency.
I'm not a hero, Seraph thought, closing his eyes. Not a villain either. Just someone who does what's necessary.
Someone dangerous.
Someone free.
Someone powerful.
He smiled in the darkness and let sleep take him.
Outside, the city woke to another ordinary day. Delivery trucks rumbled past. Morning joggers hit the park paths. Coffee shops opened their doors.
And in a bank on West 48th Street, a hologram projected an image of money that no longer existed, while three confused employees tried very hard to convince themselves that nothing unusual had happened.
The perfect crime.
Silent.
Invisible.
Complete.
End Chapter 7
A/N : Thank you for reading!
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