I've got no problems with taking our time with this operation, like I said earlier, the more information the better. Plus it gives Rosetta more time to set up his side of things which can't hurt. I think I know the apartment complex you're talking about as well, we can head over there later to see what we can learn using your power to try to fill out the map we've got.

What I think we should do first before we do anything is to have you, me and Dynamo all head to that apartment block to try fill in this map some more, with you providing the raw details and Dynamo and I figuring out what it means. Whilst we're doing that, Zephyr and Rosetta can ask around to see if the Casino is affiliated with any Capes, and if so the basics of what they can do.

 

Bleh. I know it's the best choice and all, but I'm not exactly happy about having my relationship with the Swords used like this. Right now, I know them better than you guys, except for Wisp. Talking to them and running low level interference, sure, but I'd rather not fight them. If we can direct them towards whatever distraction we create, all the better.

As far as scouting goes, I'm probably our current best choice for overwatch and getting to know the area for escape routes and such in case everything goes to shit. With a title like Thinker's Theatre though, it sounds like we're going to need to be extremely careful with any information gathering inside the casino itself. The thought of multiple Thinkers gives me the creeps.

 

The most ideal plan would have us fighting no one at all. I concur with Wisp's scouting plan.

 

So it is agreed then? A few days of scouting and then we make the concrete decisions?

 

Don't worry Zephyr, I don't plan on having to abuse your friendship with the Swords, like I've been saying, I'm trying to avoid us having to see them, or any other capes, I'm just putting all of our options on the table.

 

@Wisp, Dynamo, Zephyr & Fissure: You head towards the casino at a leisurely pace. It is early evening, midweek, and the streets are at the emptiest they ever get in the city. A light mist has settled around the streets; rare this far in to the city but certain to vanish with the dawn. It helps to hide your identities even more than your costumes do.

The abandoned house comes into view as you walk out of an alleyway and onto a side road. A drunk, barely walking in a straight line, catches sight of you all in costume and decides to take a different path home, turning around and marching slightly quicker back the way he came. Nobody wants to get involved in cape business, especially on as foreboding a night as this.

The house itself is more of an old town house turned apartment complex, being the typical six storeys tall for this part of London. Each floor looks to have once been an apartment, with rails covering the patio windows. Some are missing, either fallen or ripped from the building by some cape battle. As soon as that thought hits you the other signs of battle damage begin to make themselves apparent. A blank patch of earth in a fenced off area where a tree used to stand. A patch of plaster that does not match the painted exterior of another town house where something had blasted through the wall. A big fight had happened on this street, but that was not unusual.

Taking a turn off down a side street you come to the back entrance of the house. It is free of security cameras, though it's common knowledge that the Simurgh's attack left the entire CCTV network of London a virus ridden mess and that only the wealthier areas have 24/7 coverage. This is not one of those areas.

You work quickly, breaking into the building with a combination of powers forming a new doorway in the wall. Looking inside you see that the interior is not much better off than the rest of the street. There had been a fire somewhere in the house and tops of everything was covered in a thick layer of soot.

You head inside anyway. Burglary awaits, after all.

There are bits of furniture scattered all over the place and you see the empty oil drum, proof that this was once used as a shelter by the homeless. The smell isn't particularly appealing either, now that you're surrounded by it.

@Fissure: You can sense the casino from this distance with ease as your power stretches to cover the distance between you and it. Only one floor, but huge, the casino itself is full of non-metallic items you can sense, though some seem to float on patches of nothingness and others form partial displays, the other half of which is invisible to you. Lots of metal in there. By a quick count you can tell there are around fifty people on the floor of the casino, with a dozen being in the area your map had marked as VIP. Otherwise it seems like just another building to you.

Following the map in your head you mentally traverse the gambling den to a room full of multiple kinds of non-metallic items, then through to the lift. It extends further into the ground than you had thought it would, but still well within range of your sensing ability. It's outside of your ability to manipulate from the abandoned building though. The offices in the basement are fairly typical of what you know of offices; only the one you've memorised as the Security room being unusual in that it has something that is large, with a casing you can sense, but that is otherwise invisible to you.

Then you focus on the vault. It's large, though not in comparison to the main gambling room. You can sense the packed earth that surrounds it, the cash and other valuables that are locked up within it. Various containers fill the vault, which you can only tell by the floating contents within them and the non-metallic wheels set in pairs a short distance apart. Other floating materials are lined up on the walls, but otherwise you can't sense anything. Someone in charge really likes their metals, apparently.

(I'm going to need an Investigation roll from you for any more detail. I'll judge what to tell you based on how good it is.)

Dynamo: Your first thoughts upon entering the building are that it would make for a terrible place to work. Infection would be all but guaranteed if you tried to make any adjustments to yourself here, though if you took the unbroken hypodermic needles lying about and sterilised them you could use them to implant a set of twelve microchips that your brain insists are possible with your current inventory into your liver that would regulate the flow of toxins so that you'd never get hangovers again.

Your second thoughts are that you're going to be bored waiting for Fissure's power to get up to speed.

Zephyr: You feel cramped as soon as you enter the building. Too used to the open rooftops of the city now, your instincts react to the enclosure with a niggling feeling of dread. Never mind though, you'll be out scouting soon.

Wisp: The satisfaction of a plan in action is a significant part of your emotional state right now so that not even your drab surroundings can bring your mood down. You're careful not to get your clothing dirty though. Even if it's a bit lacklustre compared to your preferred wardrobe, you can't go into a fight looking like you've just walked out of a crackhouse. Oh. You notice the broken pipe and step over it towards the oil drum, taking extra care now that the needles are apparent to you as well.

 

Seems I can't keep out of places like these, I think to myself, surveying the once-dwelling.

The place smells like the sad story that probably led to it - poverty, abandonment and neglect, two of which I'm all too familiar with. At least the floor is wood - rotting wood does a good job of masking the scents of human waste I'm sure are present, judging from the scattered needles. Those are the smells that always made me sick.

Scent of own blood naturally unnerving to humans, stimulates fight/flight sense and triggers flow of adrenaline. Hypothesis: specific chemical scents direct trigger. Proposals, multiple: deployable olfactory offensive device, neurological modification to eliminate panic response, culminate in berserker (origin: berserkgang)-

I cut off the flow of Tinker-thought to clear my head, deploying the Cruel Thesis with a brief, the glove unfolding in a series of pneumatic hisses and clinks into a long barrel, muzzle glowing with red light.

"Keep at it, Fissure. I'm gonna secure the building."

Investigation Roll: 1

 

The ground floor of the building is much the same as the room you were just in; apparently the druggies that lived here tended to group together if the pile of sweat and dirt stained mattresses are anything to go by. The smell is surprisingly muted, which makes you think that this place hasn't been inhabited for a while.

That impression changes when you spot a door down into a basement. You open it and the stench of an untold amount of times' bodily waste wafts up to you. You gag as it hits you, even through your mask, and slam the door shut again. Maybe leave down there til last. If ever.

Deciding to head up instead of down you make your way up the stairs, sturdy but unkempt as they are. The first floor is much like the ground floor; mattresses and old clothing suggest that the people living here had left in a hurry. Perhaps from the same fight that damaged the other buildings on this street?

The second floor tells you a lot more. Mostly because you can see from it all the way up to the fourth. Where there should be an entire floor's worth of stuff there is instead empty space. Emerging from the staircase you see that the second floor is covered in the debris from the third, including what you are sure are load bearing walls. Two steel pillars are all that are left of the main supporting wall of the building, each sharing the load of three more floors of apartments above.

(@Dynamo: Roll Craftsmanship to determine if they're in danger of breaking any time soon. Difficulty 4.)

---------- Post automerged at 03:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:52 AM ----------

@Dynamo: You rolled a 3. Unless you spend a Fate Point, you fail the roll.

You take a long look at the girders and at the floor above it, but you can't tell if they're near to buckling without more sophisticated equipment to aid you. That thought gives you an idea for a bionic eye that would be able to judge as such without need for bulky equipment, along with many other useful little things. A thought for another day.

The staircase heading up is gone too, leaving you with no way to reach the fourth floor without climbing up the walls.

(The stage has gained the aspect Uncertain Stability)

 

Once Wisp and the others arrived at the shitty apartment, Wisp decided to kill time whilst Fissure did his thing by seeing just how shitty the apartment was. And well, apparently the answer to that was really fucking shitty, which was actually a good thing, odds are people weren't going to be paying any attention to the place because well, going by the fact that the floor was made of used needles and condoms (stay classy London), it was mainly used by random fucks to get high in.

As such, Wisp was preeeeeeetty sure that nobody was going to be paying any attention to this place, simply because of the fact that doing so would require you to acknowledge that it existed, and from the looks of it, the people of the London were doing their best to forget the place.

"Yeah no, as fun as this looks, not walking on this floor, I'm going to scout around kay?" And on the last word Wisp changed into his other form and floated around the apartment, looking to see how visible we would be on the first floor from various perspectives. From what he could see, most of the work had already been done for them by various druggies, pretty much all of the possible viewpoints into the house had already been boarded up, there were no cameras looking into the building, and from looking from windows nearby, none of them had a clear view of where they would be set up, so they wouldn't have to worry about some random civilian ruining shit. All in all, it's pretty much exactly what they needed.

And whilst he was up here, Wisp decided that he might as well have a look inside the house for anything interesting, for all he knew the previous owners may have left something fun behind up on the fourth floor, and well, they weren't here any more so he might as well help himself right?

Rolling Burglary to declare the Aspect "Nobody looking at this Apartment" got a 3

Also rolling Burglary to look for shit to steal in the apartment up in the areas that most people can't get to.

 

Sitting on the floor of the apartment complex, I shift position to something more comfortable, making the fluid gray concrete morph into The Thinker by my side. Concentrating on the vault, trying to figure out its contents, leads me to again curse the fact I didn't get the ability to sense metals in addition to everything non-human. Such a frustrating aspect of my power, sometimes.

Roll: -1

 

(@Mishie: There's already an aspect like that in my notes for this building, so this would have been better as an assessment roll, but Declarations and Assessments are two methods of getting the same result so it's not a big deal. This is also why I want Declarations to be posted in the OOC thread before being referenced in here. I can decide whether they can happen/difficulty from my phone at work.)

@Wisp: You float through the rooms of the lower floors, noting the places where people have broken in and places where they could. You also note the Blind Spots the of the building; usually old bathrooms or bedrooms that have boarded up windows. You have no worries about being spotted after the reconnaissance, though. The druggies that had called this place home had secured the living areas well enough to prevent anyone looking in.

You head on upstairs, getting a good look at the empty floor, before heading up to investigate the otherwise inaccessible rooms. What you find are apartments that are mostly whole, complete with appliances and furniture. Apparently the authorities decided to just leave everything here rather than risk toppling the entire structure. That's what you assume, at least, as you take a look around for anything interesting.

(Burglary roll: Difficulty 3)

 

(Rolled a 3 for the Burglary)

 

@Fissure: You try to relax and find the sweet spot that is your power's optimal state, but today just doesn't seem to be your day. While you're aware of the number of people in the building and basement (around seventy upstairs, including in the store room, and a dozen downstairs spread across the rooms), you just can't seem to differentiate much. Perhaps you just need more time.

(Side note: You can devote more time to a roll, giving you a +1 for each step up the time ladder, though it does mean you'll have a reduced role in any scene you opt to do that in. Time ladder's in the rulebook.)

---------- Post automerged at 05:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:01 AM ----------

(Last post before sleep time.

@Wisp: Your search is swift and efficient as donning a well used glove. You've plenty of practice at this and it shows as you net yourself a shiny gold rolex and a cheque book in the name of Alexander Bartleby.

It's as you check a room that turns out to be a teenage girl's that you find something really interesting though. Lying open on the bed is a diary, obviously well used and cared for, but just as obviously forgotten in a hurry. A lock adorns the side of it, not used but not broken.

Out of a vague sense of curiosity you give it a quick look and find something very interesting.

ohmigod hes a cape! i just saw him out in the back alley punching the big bin into scrap! i cant wait to tell lindsey this.

what if he finds out though? he goes to my school and he had this really scary look on his face as he punched that skip. i'm so glad he didnt see me. he like might have killed me or something!

its a shame though. i thought he was pretty cute before all this, though his dad is scary too. not that way though. just big and mean scary. and he yells a lot.

anyway. bye diary! mums yelling about something again.

wonder what that banging noise is.

The rest of the diary reveals little of note, though she does mention a boy called Will that lives downstairs. You wonder if that's the person who got powers.

 

"I'm with Campbell on this one. Seems all right for a temporary hideout, but don't expect me to spend a lot of time in here. Speaking of, I'm going to check out the area, I'll be back in 10. If you hear screaming.... oh, we should get radios at some point. Anyway, if you hear screaming, it's definitely not my fault in advance."

I disappear, popping into existence briefly 40 feet above the building, before using the momentum gained to start exploring the area in a slowly growing circle, all the while looking for a suitable overwatch.

(Rolled a 3 on Alertness to examine area/find overwatch)

 

"Y'know, it's a sign of how boring this has been so far that the most interesting thing so far has been some teenage girls diary, on the bright side, this Will kid sounds pretty interesting so that's a bonus or something."

Wisp has a look at the back of the watch to see if there's a name on the back or anything that could identify the owner, and once that's done he decides to give the room a second look through now that he knows that there could be something interesting, for all he knows somebody has hidden something that could provide more information about the family that lived here, it's not really important but well, it's a way to kill some time whilst the others do their thing. But before he starts his search, Wisp decides to take a moment to catch a break and just calm himself down to focus on this, he knows he's been jittery all night because it's his first big heist, but he can't afford to do anything but his best.

(Rolling Disc to place the temporary Aspect of "Cool, Calm, Collected" on myself, and then rolling Deceit to see if there's anything that I've missed on this floor and tagging the aspect to boost it.)

 

I let Dynamo, being the only one still hanging around, know that I'll be spending the whole evening (+6) doing this, and settle back into a comfortable position as I continue examining the vault.

 

@Zephyr: You feel the tension flow from your body as you activate your power and appear outside, even the polluted air of central London being easier to breathe than the scent of sweat and waste inside. A moment later you settle onto a nearby chimney stack and take your bearings.

The mist limits visibility to perhaps fifty yards in each direction, which is enough for you to see the streets below you, but not much else. Deciding to explore a bit more to get a feel for the area, you use your power to move between buildings in an ever expanding circle. The kaleidoscopic pattern of streets and alleys is memorised quickly and efficiently by your courier trained instincts and you orient yourself to a restaurant that you had visited a year or so before you gained your powers.

Eventually you turn back, going over the area again to make sure you've memorised the area and have a good idea of where the most important places to keep note of are. One of which is a police station. It's a few blocks in the opposite direction of the casino, but within easy reach of any cars they might send to the place. Depending on traffic of course.

(You have gained the Knowledge of the Streets fragile temporary aspect. If you want more detail or you have something you want to search for specifically you'll need to roll Investigation.)

(@Wisp: I'll come out right now and say that you've found pretty much the only interesting thing in the building. This wasn't some supervillain hideout or a gangland armoury. It was an old house turned into apartments. Unless you want some six month old meatloaf, you're fresh out of luck on this. No worries though, this storyline is here to stay and we're about to get moving again.)

@Fissure: (Oops, I meant to mention that since your power requires some start up time that you'd be starting from the 15 minutes mark on the time chart. Sorry, I put it down to me being mostly asleep at that point, but that's the base time for Investigation rolls using your sense power. That gives you a +3 to your Investigation roll. I'll give you a hint and say that you'd get a lot more out of this exchange if you spent a fate point and got yourself up to a +5.

Alternately you could roll Scholarship and try to work out things from a Geology perspective. It would bias what I tell you in favour of that, but you'd likely get more out of it than with any Investigation roll you make right now.)

You settle in for the long haul as your power takes its time in clearing up. Where it usually only takes a few minutes; 10-15 tops, today it seems as though you're having to fight it to see anything. You do eventually manage to work out the difference between some of the larger items in the basement as the hours tick by and you try to guess at what things are.

Tables and chairs are the easiest to make out as the leather and wood make for an easy contrast, and the mixture of plastic and other smaller blobs of material in the manager's office being a PC takes only a little longer. You can't really tell anything more specific than that at this stage, but you'd given up on trying to work those out in favour of more useful things. Like when the guards go home.

It takes a while, but you eventually work out which ones are the security guards and which are the officer workers. There appear to be a lot more guards than there are clerks and other workers, though that might just be because of the time, and they cycle through their shift so that there are around eight guards up on the casino floor at any time, with two more downstairs in the security room.

That changes at 10pm sharp as a shift's worth of employees troop in through the storeroom and switch out with the other guards. They seem to be pretty professional in how they go about the shift change, leaving the casino floor secure at all times and having the two downstairs only leave when their replacements arrive, but you feel confident in being able to tell the difference between security and other people with your power.

While that is interesting to you, you do notice a discrepancy in one of the basement workers. One person, who you can tell is much fatter than anyone else down there, has stayed in the security room the entire time you were observing the building. From what you can tell he's wearing civilian clothes, which makes you uncertain about whether he's a cape or not, but he does strike you as quite odd.

The vault itself remains a mystery to you, however, as the jumble of metal and the seemingly random assortment of goods inside it make for a hellish picture to try and discern details from.

 

Since Wisp has come down with a bad case of the really fucking boreds because there's nothing interesting left to explore inside, he decided to swipe the diary and then join everybody else downstairs.

"So yeah, so far I've found a new watch, a chequebook, and I may have stolen some girls diary. So today has been pretty awesome so far, you guys find anything interesting so far or have you just been watching Fissure do his thing?"

 

"I took a look at the foundations. This building is unstable. If we throw down here, the credit is more likely going to the architect rather than our enemies, when it collapses on our sorry arses."

I look at Fissure, still seemingly lost and far away.

"Anything useful, Fissure?"

 

"I'm not surprised that the building is a piece of shit, what with it looking like shit and all, I'm sure that Fissure can do something to subtly reinforce it whilst we're here though."