ic Monopoly Misappropriations

[The Sailor]

Seahawk's faceplate on her helmet went full clear, her masked eyes and cowled head keeping her identity secure for now. "Yep, I'm Seahawk, this is Shrike. And actually m'little sister heard some unusual scratchin' from the main entryway... you know the doorway that looks like a surplus airlock from Doctor Who. She's got a test pilot's ear for hearin' weird stuff. I sent her rainsuited rear home when I and Shrike saw security all rustled up."

"T'be honest I've started t'pick up on when a crisis is about to break out. Your people were starting to mobilize like an invasion force and knowin' hospitality and customer safety are your two priorities... my talons started itchin."

"I understand discretion is the better part of valor in this instance?" She said, smiling. "What sort of info ya got for us?"

Edited August 9, 2015 by The Osprey

[Heritage]

For just a brief second, Shrike's eyes widened behind her mask.

 

Wait a second, did she just throw me under the f###ing bus?! What gives! Ohhhhh okay; she's temporarily sacrificing my credibility to gain their trust, which is more like throwing me under a scooter. I guess I can live with that.

 

In response to Ms. Allen's question,  the younger heroine cleared her throat and raised a gloved hand. "I'm pretty good at finding stuff; what do you need found?"

 

Edited August 9, 2015 by Heritage

[Mad Scientist]

Ms. Allen regarded the pair for a moment longer, her eyes unfathomable.

"I would normally not involve Freedom City's...heroic community in such matters, but considering your happenstance to be here on top of the event in question, your assistance might be timely enough to make enough of a difference," she told them, quite flatteringly, oh yes.  "Please, follow me."

She lead the way at a brisk pace, her heels only being prevented from crisp, loud reports by the durable carpet covering the casino floor in an ever-so-tasteful coral and fish motif.  They passed through a door marked 'Employees Only', and she paused before a doorway flanked by opaque camera bubbles typical of a security system.

"Less than five minutes ago, we had a breach in security," she began without preamble.  "A transfer of currency from the hard count room to the vault had just occurred, a routine transfer that is done several times daily, and this one transpired with no unusual activity."  Punching a code into the keypad, she opened the door.

Within the room was a heavy vault door, standing open, soft lighting illuminating the interior.  An additional pair of camera bubbles covered the interior of the room, and Allen lead them over to the open vault.

"Perhaps seven or eight minutes after the transfer, an alarm was triggered by an unscheduled opening of the vault door.  Security responded immediately, only to discover the room like this, and the vault empty.  ...nearly so," she qualified, and gestured inside.  Sitting on the very centre of the floor was an origami butterfly, folded carefully from a sheet of yellow paper.

[Mad Scientist]

When neither of the heroes gave any sign of recognizing the significance of the paper butterfly, Ms. Allen continued.

"According to word in certain circles, an origami butterfly being left at the crime scene like this is the calling card of a certain catburgler known as 'The Papillon'," she explained.  "He or she has stolen various works of art, jewellery, precious artifacts, bonds, quantities of cash -- essentially, anything of significant value, and most often with strong security measures in place."  Her lips tightened for a moment, clearly displeased that the Atlantis had joined the ranks of 'hard' targets.

"No one seems to know how The Papillon is accomplishing these crimes, but it seems safe to assume that they are some sort of paranormal," she continued.  "It's been only minutes since the vault was breached -- do you think you might be able to intercept this thief before they make good their escape?"  The request almost seemed to pain her, but she her voice and gaze both were steady and unflinching.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Mad Scientist

[The Sailor]

Seahawk sighed. "If she's that good, getting past all this technology and security, and I was hearing scraping near your entrance some couple minutes ago, this whole thing just delayed us even more. We're 10 steps behind already."

"In fact what's to say they've not gotten away scot-free?"

"Of course leaving something like this behind only implies they're arrogant. But I'm no detective. I'm just going off what various detectives I've been appraised by would say about people leaving trophies."

Edited August 12, 2015 by The Osprey

[Heritage]

Shrike crossed her arms and shook her head. "I don't know; she's probably got a pretty good head start, unless she hung around to gloat. Wouldn't put that past her, since she does the whole 'calling card' routine." She touched her fingers to the sides of her mask as she concentrated, shifting the Helm's senses as she scanned the vaulting, even floating up towards the ceiling; Lynn told her you often find interesting things up there.

"We need to check the security footage. I also need to see schematics for your security system, see if I can find any holes." Lastly she floated back down towards the paper butterfly, thoughtfully stroking her chin as she gave it a good once over.

[The Sailor]

"Yeah that's gonna be key... unless she modified the video feed in the first place, then we're back at square one." Seahawk said, already looking frustrated. "I'm a pilot not a darned Detective."

As she looked about, she looked for anything out of the ordinary with the room they were in. Hoping there was some clue as to a trail she's left behind. The more this played out the more she was itching to make her meet her knuckles in a up-close board meeting. She started to feel like she was out of her element at this point. Here she was being expected to work a miracle in catching a "master" thief, and she's not even getting past the opening introduction.

[Mad Scientist]

A search of the vault turned up nothing that could be considered especially out of the ordinary, with the possible exception of a few flakes of blue paint that upon comparison do indeed match that which was used on the ceiling of the casino to provide the 'looking up at the surface' effect.  An effect, worth noting, that was not extended into the employee areas, including the vault.  None of the electronics give any indication of being tampered with, and upon unfolding the origami butterfly, all that is seen is that it was made from a yellow sheet of the thin rice paper commonly used for such art.

"I can show you the surveillance footage; I had just finished reviewing it myself when our security...recruited you," Ms. Allen informed them as she lead the way out of the vault and two doors down the hall to a door marked, appropriately, 'SURVEILLANCE'.  "Unfortunately, while you can see when the crime happens, there's nothing there that shows how."

Rather than explaining that any further, she simply queued up the recording and played it back for the two heroines.  The timestamp shown on the feed was from a bare ten minutes ago, and it showed the vault room exterior door from a camera across the hall.  A pair of screens flanking the main display showed the view along the hall from either side.

After a moment, the leftmost screen showed a door open, and a pair of uniformed guards emerged.  One was holding a locked money drop bag, reasonably bulky, and the other was clearly there as security -- both against someone trying to jump the first one, and to keep the first one himself honest.  They entered the main viewscreen, and after unlocking the exterior door both passed into the vault.  Ms. Allen paused the playback and switched it over to the feed from inside the vault room -- but not before Seahawk noted that the door had seemed to...hesitate for an instant in the process of closing behind them.

Inside, the pair keyed the vault which swung ponderously open, entered, deposited the bag alongside a number of identical others, then closed the vault door behind them, clearly making sure it was secured, and then left.  This time Ms. Allen left the recording to run, and it was perhaps ninety seconds later that an alarm abruptly began to blare and the vault door swung open again, revealing...nothing, other than a now-empty vault.  A few seconds later, the exterior door opened and security rushed in, at which point Ms. Allen stopped the recording again.

"You see what I mean?" she told them with a note of frustration in her voice, and Seahawk had to agree.

 

...Shrike, on the other hand, saw perhaps just a little bit more.

As the money-toting guards had opened the exterior door and entered, a man had come out of what had been a blind spot between the three cameras and entered behind them, catching the door for an instant with a gloved hand to allow himself time to enter.  Once inside, he'd stood out of the way of the guards and simply slipped past them into the vault, the guards' eyes passing over him like he wasn't even there.  After the alarm sounded and the vault door opened, he emerged and stood off to the side until the guards rushed in, and used the opportunity to slip out the door.

As if that hadn't been odd enough, his outfit had been truly...bizarre, and this was saying something in a time and place where costumed superheroes were commonplace.  His boots were black leather, folded down like a character from an Errol Flynn movie and embossed heavily in silver.  His gloves were long, leather swordsman gauntlets, in burgundy, and he wore riveted brass goggles over his eyes.  A heavy belt hung with pouches encircled his waist, the buckle an ornate engraved gold, and a green sash of some kind was pulled over one shoulder and tucked under that belt before and behind.  None of it really went with the rest, and all of it was worn over what looked for all the world to be a set of military surplus BDUs.

[Heritage]

As the video played, Shrike cocked her head to one side as she was wont to do; now that she was wearing a bird mask, it seemed an oddly appropriate gesture. Her darting eyes hungrily devoured all that she saw, and widened slightly when the third man entered the frame; he was just slightly transparent to her eyes, which let her know he was invisible to pretty much everyone else.

"I see him," she announced abruptly. "He's going for a steampunk D'Artagnan look." She turned to the others and gestured towards her face and body. "He's got these retro goggles on, maybe brass and covered in rivets. Lots of belt pouches, leather gloves and boots, a green sash across his chest. All the Puss in Boots stuff is over Army fatigues, maybe surplus." She shrugged. "Hard to make out details like height, weight and age, though he's probably young, to wear that outfit. He's not in any hurry, just waits for the guards to get out of the way to slip past. Which means he's invisible, not intangible, or else he'd just walk through the walls."

The young heroine shrugged again. "So we've got that to go on."

[The Sailor]

Seahawk scratched her thread. "You sure you're seeing that, Shrike? Because all I'm seeing are people milling about."

There wasn't much at all to go on. "Look, we're wasting time in here. By now this person's already got away if they're this good. And if all we got to go on is this origami crane, we're pretty much sunk."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Lovely."

She was starting to get the expression on her face that she wasn't wanting to be there. Something needed doing and she couldn't even do that in the holding pattern the two heroines were in.

Edited August 21, 2015 by The Osprey