The Thinker's Theatre Casino

The streets of London are never quiet, even after the exodus from the cities and the Endbringer attacks. Streets outside of large, prestigious casinos even less so. A flood of people move past you as you stand outside, taking in the ambience of the city. Your power is enough that they avoid you unconsciously so it seems as though you are an island in a river of people.

The lights of the casino are far too bright for you to use your power, but you can see alleys stretching off in every direction, though many of them have occupants already.

You don't know when the group are planning to hit the casino, but you know it is going to be tonight. So you have the choice of waiting outside where you're more able to use your power, or venture inside and see if you can find a hidden spot to utilise it.

 

London. Oliver had been here his whole life, and yet there were still places that held a mystery to him. He had to confess, the Thinker's Theatre was one of those places. As Wraith, he'd never been hired to hit anywhere particularly rich; his "clients" too afraid he'd keep their upfront payment and then use their resources to claim the score for himself, he supposed. Fair, but ultimately foolish. It wouldn't last forever, and nobody hired untrustworthy freelancers. Still, with smaller scores came security that was far more lax, so the status quo suited him fine.

These kids, though- and he had to internally chuckle at the irony of calling people that were older than him kids, even if they were infants compared to his experience as a villain-, they wanted to put their name on the map, it seemed. An understandable impulse, but one that he hoped he could quash a bit. He wanted them to succeed, and succeed on their own, even (he wanted nothing to do with a bunch of incompetents, his money wasn't that low yet), but for him this was a test of their skill, not a way for them to get famous. He didn't need fame right now, he needed a niche.

That was where his mission started; he'd help them along a bit, but ultimately he just needed to keep things from escalating too far. In other words, he was going to be relegated to a great deal of watching, which rather unsettled him. He watched, but he did so in order to take action. The possibility of hiding the entire time this crew of unknowns pulled the most interesting heist of the year was almost painful. Fuck it. He'd have a bit of fun, he was sure; he'd pulled heists. They never went as planned.

Enough pondering, though. These blokes around him might well think he was an invisible bolder in the stream of people, but he was entirely too cut off from his powers here. Time to start setting up and feeling out the place. If his last secret Gooner contact was right, Backblast was due to start fucking things up soon, and then it'd be go time for the men next door.

With that thought, he trained his eyes, honed from years of his own special brand of burglary, on the casino proper and the adjacent alleyways. There had to be an appropriate place to hide and monitor things in the darkness nearby. With any luck, he might even find something that he could use to mask any suspicion, should it come to that.

---------- Post automerged 05-13-2014 at 12:25 AM ---------- Previous post was 05-12-2014 at 10:13 PM ----------

As he casually peered into a darkness that would render normal humans' or even most Capes' eyesights marginally effective at best, Oliver spotted precisely what he was looking for. Nestled behind the vents that helped bring fresher, cleaner air into the casino, a rather Compact, Shadowy Alcove that would work perfectly for his base of operations was completely unguarded and appeared to by all but totally masked by the shadows and the structure of the cooling system. Not only that, but the roar of the fans made it unlikely that he would be heard. Beautiful.

He quickly glanced around to make sure his intensity in looking over the building had drawn no attention, but it appeared the rest of the world was just as oblivious to him as ever. Satisfied, he stalked forward into the shadows nearest him and melted into them, only to fade back out directly in front of his chosen hiding place. It appeared just as good up close as it had from a distance, so he gathered his mind and started preparing.

First, he reached into his shadow, and brought out the gear he intended to use tonight: his new bodysuit and mask, all pure black, and his tranq pistol. He wavered on whether to grab his real pistol while he was there, but he forcefully reminded himself that the whole point of him changing identities was to leave that life behind. Besides, it's not like he had to leave its container or anything. He then spent a moment slipping into his suit and clipping the tranq pistol to his belt then slipping his street clothes back into his shadow, then called on his powers. In moments, his already hidden location was further concealed, cocooning him in shadow. Satisfied that he wouldn't be found, he reached out with his shadow senses, attempting to quickly orient himself to the inside of the casino.

As always, the flashes of information coming from the shadows were overwhelming and even misleading if he wasn't careful, but he had long since developed a system for situations like these where quality of information was more important than speed. Essentially, almost all rooms had some shadows high on the wall, or in a remote corner, and those were Oliver's in. If he could find remote shadows with the best possible vantage point, he could quickly assess a room and even its occupants to some degree. From there, it was simply a matter of rinsing and repeating till he was comfortable with the area and the shadows that would best allow him to watch it with his burglar's eye. It was effective, but it could be time consuming. In this case, with a moderately large target, he imagined it would be quite some time before he could feel comfortable, so he had better get started.