One Shot Wednesday – Honey Heist

Over lunch today, I ran Grant Howitt’s Honey Heist. A coworker of mine sent a scan of the rules to me, and upon seeing them, I knew that I needed to run them. The premise is simple:

It’s HoneyCon 2017. You are going to undertake the greatest heist the world has ever seen. Two things:

  1. You have a complex plan that requires precise timing.
  2. You are a GODDAMN BEAR.

The team of seven bears had one hour to come up with and enact a plan. HoneyCon was taking place at a lavish lakeside camp on Lake Geneva, WI. The honey was being kept in an “impenetrable” vault, secured with electronically-locked doors, set up inside of a semi trailer surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and overlooked by security cameras, feeding into a control center in a nearby cabin. With the rest of the honey being judged at the con was a briefcase of pure manuka extract worth over $5 million. The convention organizer, Mary-Beth Danberg, was a greedy and wicked woman, who wanted nothing more than to come out of this as rich as possible.

In order to move about more freely, the face bear rented the adjacent campground to the convention under the premise of having tryouts for new mascots for the Chicago Bears. This also gave them a convenient nearby staging area, which was immediately put to use when they stole a news chopper, landed at the camp, and, with the hacker bears using computers from the nearby library, ordered a briefcase, bear-shaped honey containers (since honey isn’t real unless it comes from a bear), and black and white paint using Amazon Prime Now. To cover their tracks, they painted the helicopter black, and in large, white, misshapen lettering, wrote on both sides: “BAD HUMANS – DEFINITELY NOT BEARS”.

The night before the convention, the face bear tracked down Mary-Beth to a local bar. He successfully convinced the bartender that he was there as part of the mascot tryouts, and saddled up to the bar next to the convention organizer. He struck up a conversation with her (as much as he could, being a bear and all), and as she was distracted, made a move to convince her that the man on the other side of her was being untoward. In a display of feral chivalry, he “defended her honor” by mauling the other man to death. This got him kicked out of the bar, naturally, but it won Mary-Beth’s favor.

The day of the event, some of the more dangerous bears went around and tore up the landlines and knocked down cell towers, cutting off most communication for the camp. The driver bear found the truck driver, hanging out near the disconnected tractor of the semi and smoking a cigarette in the woods, and mauled him to death as well, being careful not to get blood on his uniform. He slipped into the tight-fitting clothing, and put up the ruse of being the driver. One of the hacker bears wanted to ensure that the truck was under their control, but in an attempt to hotwire it, accidentally set off the alarm. This drew the attraction of the organizer, but the driver bear was able to convince her that they’d scared off the “man” who was messing with the vehicle. She insisted that nothing could go wrong with this event.

“It’s like a juice box!”
— Driver bear, as he “cleanly” mauled the truck driver to death

Meanwhile, one of the other bears (and this is where they realized they had made a mistake in otherwise engaging the driver bear) successfully navigated a helicopter full of bears to the semi trailer. He landed it inside the barbed-wire fence, prompting the organizer to radio to the cabin to send out security forces. At that moment, the grizzly bear barged into the cabin, terrorizing the occupants, and another of the hacker bears went in to hack the security cameras. He failed, and instead shoved his paw directly into the communications stack, giving himself a massive electric shock. As he lied there, his fur smoking, one of the honey badger bears (yes, honey badgers are a sort of bear in this game) came in and tore into the communications stack with no issue, cutting off the external feed just as the “BAD HUMANS – DEFINITELY NOT BEARS” text filled the screen.

Outside, the organizer called the “driver” to action. He drove through the fence, hooked up to the trailer, and drove off. Little did she know that a bear was getting away with her honey.

The helicopter took off, following the truck. As they left, they saw Mary-Beth pull out a small, rectangular device with an antenna from her purse. She flipped a cover, and with a button press, set off the explosives that filled the front half of the honey trailer. It blew the thing open and disconnected it from the cab, which skidded to a stop in front of it. The driver wasn’t brave enough to bear the flames to get to the honey, but the face bear, being a black bear and versed in the navigation of heights, leaped from the chopper into the burning trailer. He threw out the briefcase to the driver, as well as a few armfuls of honey before jumping out. They loaded their ill-gotten gains into the chopper, and flew away.

Weeks later, from a bear preserve in Hawaii, they saw a news article about the organizer of HoneyCon 2017 collecting a fat insurance payout for the theft and destruction of the convention’s honey. It seems that everybody won in the end.

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