Topic: Tea Time

Greyson Devereux

Date: 2010-08-03 21:17 EST
No matter how busy the Baron's schedule, no matter his plans, if he's in RhyDin at all his feet eventually head to WestEnd." Today it takes until sunset, and the last orange rays are filtering past a hundred bobbing masts in the harbor as he winds his way through the streets. He subtly checks his back every so often, usually when he's crossing a street, or if he finds an excuse to pause by a vendor, inspect something, check a newspaper or a listing." Still, he's been off the 'beat' for a couple of years, and his instincts aren't what they were then. There are some things he's liable to miss.

The two thieves were not behind the Baron. Oh, no." They were taking the" highway, the rooftops, at present." Much easier to follow prey who were canny enough to keep checking their backtrail.?" Most people though, did not think in three-dimensions." Whether Alain would or not was all part of that great game of chance." For now, they slunk along, following, watching, and carefully assessing things from above, and just ahead of him." Sometimes they were behind him, but they were always above."

Gem studied her friend, feeling terrible guilt that wracked her every second. It was very hard to keep that professional edge she needed just now." She never " never - stole from friends." It was her Rule. She never varied from it." Until now." Now, because it meant life or death for her." If she knew Alain better, she would have just gone to him and asked for the damned teacup." But she didn't know him all that well, and so she just could not take the chance." For now, she glanced at Greyson every few minutes, eyes meeting to silently converse." Ever the way of thieves.

Grey had to admit - but not to her face, of course - that he'd had reservations about working with the tiny elf." Of course, he had reservations about working with anyone." He was a loner, through and through, preferring to be in control of every situation." Still, after a long inactive period, it was nice to be back in the game, skulking over rooftops, the thrill of the chase snaking through his veins." He returned Gem's looks with a fierce smile and a thumb's up."

Eventually Alain comes to a warehouse, an old brick building with plenty of activity through the open doors." A crane at a nearby dock is taking cargo off a long wooden ship, and men and some women are moving some of it into this building. There are three women out front, all of them red-eyed and blue-skinned." Two are playing cards, and only the third's really paying attention." She doesn't have a gun, though there's one nearby, resting in a corner just inside. Alain pauses, really freezes, standing still for several seconds, and he looks over his shoulder instinctively." Over and up, at the rooftops, scanning, scanning....nothing." If he had been looking for thieves, for regular tails, then just maybe he would've seen something....But he's scanning for signs of assassins, and finds none." His eyes pass over Gem and her partner without seeing either of them." He heads inside, towards the back of the warehouse.

The elfess studied the scene below as Alain arrived at the building. From having cased the area previously, she knew this is where they would be going inside." This is where it was going to get dicey." As Alain froze in his walk, Gem melted into the surrounding shadows of the rooftop, noting that motion and thinking it might mean he would look up where they were." She trusted that Grey would do the same." As the Baron's eyes passed over them, she gave a sigh of relief. Alain was a very intriguing person, and she had the feeling he could handle a lot of things." That was the main reason why she had asked for help from Greyson." She didn't feel confident of being able to handle Alain alone." He was too canny, for one thing."

She gestured to Grey as she slipped over to the nearest drainpipe." She began to move down it, a silent monkey lost to sight in the shadows." Once on the ground, she made for her assigned spot, the plan being for Gem to knock out the alert watcher, and for Grey to somehow handle the other two women.

Red eyes and blue skin." Huh." Under normal circumstances, Grey's approach would be to charm the pants off the birds and then sap them neatly in the back of the head, effectively dropping them to the ground for a nice, long nap." But that was before he took a look at these two." He shook his head and shimmied down a different drainpipe, as silent as a shadow and about as inconspicuous as one as well.

Alain's visible from some vantage points, not at all from others, but his voice can be heard, talking with someone, though the words are instinct." Nearby conversations, involving the guard-in-disguise and one of the workers, drown them out." This one, though, is fortuitous....

"...can't believe how late they came in." I told them they'd be home by dinner — "

"There's nothing we can do, I've explained this a hundred times, we just — "

" — fifth night like this in a row — "

"...Alright." The blue woman strays near her rifle and fidgets with it." Checking things, idly.

"Seven o'clock." That's two hours — and have them here no later than four tomorrow, okay?" I want these unloaded before sunup."

Very fortuitous." There'll be two more hours of activity, and then....the warehouse empties out, and until four o'clock the next morning, too." A verified clear area for insertion and egress.

It was so very nice when people were helpful with information like this.?" Gem was quite thankful to hear this, as she had been feeling very uncertain about those red eyes." They might have easily been able to see in the infrared spectrum, and that meant the two thieves hide in shadow ability would be negated." Gem hung back, and looked for Greyson. A hand flipped in thieves cant, that handy, silent language." Wait for two hours." Then proceed." She waited for him to answer her back, eyes watching the watchers warily.

He gave her a lopsided smirk and nodded once, sliding into the shadows at his back and falling into a comfortable lean, oak-leaf green eyes moving ceaselessly over the scene before them." He was more than okay with waiting until the place emptied." He was a thief and a grifter, too." He didn't like killing.? He felt it was unnecessary and messy.

Seeing that smirk and nod, Gem settled down, a silent, waiting bird of prey intent on the scene before her, as well as keeping a roving check all about them.

Greyson Devereux

Date: 2010-08-03 21:18 EST
Eventually the warehouse empties." The workers file out, returning home to friends and families, but not all at the same time." There's a stretch, maybe ten minutes, when there's only a handful of people, very light activity, few alert eyes, and the only present guard is still expecting movement. When the warehouse is empty, it will be another matter, but for a little while yet, the guard won't make much of a few shifting shadows, as the few remaining workers are still shifting plenty of their own. The Baron is long gone, though while he was inside, he never left that particular corner in the back, where the wall is covered by several large, busted planks, piles of scrap wood, but it may be worth investigating.

Gem noted that stretch, of course, and rose slowly up, eyes over to Greyson. This is it! She eased forward, elven skills blending with thiefly arts causing her to move silently amongst the detritus and other debris laying around." She headed for the building into which Alain had gone, sticking to shadows, using them like the handy helper they were." Once inside, she held still, listening, stretching her senses, testing the air, waiting for Greyson.

Grey waited for a moment or two after she'd gone ahead." Sure, it wasn't chivalrous to let the lady go first, but Grey was practical, a survivalist not prone to altruistic behaviours." He ghosted out of the leeway of the building that had sheltered them during their wait, following the exact same path, picking his way quietly over the broken cobbles, discarded rebar, and other cast-off artefacts of harsh labour." He paused again at the doorway, ears pricked, though his mere human senses were nothing like the elfess's." After a short moment, he entered the warehouse, standing just behind and to the left of Gem." His eyes, probably like hers, were zeroed in on the corner covered in scrap wood." Seems a good hidey-hole for something, doesn't it'

Gem was already looking at that oddness, after having made sure that there was nothing going to come out at her, nothing like men in shadows, icky watchdogs, and so on." As Grey came in, she gave an upnod to that section of the wall, and moved in towards it, cautiously." Elves had a way with finding secret doors that were often better than the average humans, but she wasn't sure that was all that Grey was, and she could miss things." So she studied the area for wires first, any signs of traps on the potential portal.

Grey circled around, going the opposite way as Gem, crouched slightly towards the floor of the ostensibly empty warehouse." As he moved, he slipped a hand into the jacket he was wearing and extracted a pair of thin leather gloves and put them on, making fists to worm his hands comfortably into the fine material." After the gloves were on, he pulled out a blackjack and held it loosely in his hand." Hey, one never knew when a silent weapon might come in handy, right"

There is a small black wire running along the bottom of the door frame that doesn't appear to run to anything damaging, probably an alarm." It's just high enough for someone unsuspecting to step on or trip over, but if one knows it's there, it's very easy to step over it."

It's nearly impossible to see in the passageway beyond, but there seems to be a narrow ramp that goes down about ten feet and maybe a railing before it becomes completely pitch black. The ramp leads down, down, down, too far down to fit with normal physics, or at least RhyDin's probable water table." Something arcane hums in the air there in the darkness, and there appears to be no other way in.

Gem's particular skills were in trap finding and removal and it was no time before she found that wire. She knelt and studied it enough to figure it out, and taking out her lockpicks and tools from her neat little roll, she went to work." She didn't remove it, but she did negate it." A little "hisst" in near-silent sibilence to Gray would call his attention to it." To anyone looking for the wire, it would be still be there. It just would not now do whatever it was supposed to have done."

The elven thief then slipped further in through the doorway, noting that ramp and the taint of magic, though only because she had an elf's slight sensitivity to the arcane." As it grew darker, she switched her vision to the infrared, hoping that the blackness would become more penetrable for her that way." A hand motioned to Grey, signalling that she was heading in.

Well, wasn't this bloody wonderful?" Magic - he could feel its greasy weight against the exposed skin of his face - and darkness." He quietly slid the sap back into his pocket and pulled out a small Maglite flashlight and covered it loosely with his free hand before turning it on." A pale light was spread in small, thin lines across the floor in front of him, picking out just enough for him to navigate comfortably behind her." He kept the light pointed down, trying to keep it out of the elf's face, since he was reasonably certain she was using her handy infrared vision, and followed along behind her, cursing the fickle whims of Fate that he'd been born a mere human. The elfess gave a nod of approval at Grey's thinking." She was not bothered by his muffled light, and it did not keep her special vision from working. She thought it smart of him. Picking her way lightly, she rolled her shoulders, disliking that feeling of magic." She did not mind magic at all, normally. Several of her items were magicked, in fact." But in an unknown place, with the taint of it thick in her throat, and not knowing just what it did, well. That was a different matter."

The depth of the shadow may have been deliberate, and the flashlight doesn't seem to penetrate as far in it as it would in normal darkness." So it's very sudden, almost as if they've just stepped through a curtain, that they're bathed in fluorescent light, or something that resembles it. The ramp comes out into a narrow corridor with a patterned tile floor of little tiny black dots. The suddenness of it is the most significant part, and a nasty shock for anyone using infrared vision." It's sorta like shooting off a flare right in front of someone's night vision goggles. And just to make matters worse, there is the sound of footsteps somewhere still a ways around the corner.

As she came out into that area of patterned tile, she only had a split second to absorb it, for suddenly the world exploded in light." Pain exploded in her retina's, or so it seemed, and she only just managed not to actually cry out, but a gasp did escape her." She fell back a step, instinctively, one hand clamped over her poor eyes." She heard the steps and just crouched down, one hand drawing her dagger, while the other held her eyes protectively." She was now useless for the next several minutes, at least.

Greyson Devereux

Date: 2010-08-03 21:19 EST
Grey winced as Gem crouched back and yes, he did step in front of her now, putting himself between her and whatever threat was coming." Hey, she was paying him after all." He'd only gotten half of his money - the other half would be delivered after the job was done." It was just good business to protect his employer, right?" The flashlight went back into his pocket quickly and just as quickly, the sap appeared again in his hand." He shook it out, telescoping it to its full two feet in length." He flattened his back against the wall, taking pains not to step on the floor." Those black dots made him feel uneasy in the extreme.

The black dots appear at a glance as a normal part of the pattern, but every tenth or so (actually random, not always every five) glistens a little more than the other tiles." They're image orbs, or more specifically, surveillance orbs." Pick up movement, vague video, things like that." They can be avoided, but will require great care.

Whomever it was who was walking towards them paused at the sounds, then they resume at a normal pace, away from them." The easy assumption would be that the guy decided what they heard was nothing and walked away." The truth was that he was probably just an analyst who heard noises, and as he has no combat training himself, turns around and calmly walks away." Whatever it is, he's sending someone back down to investigate it." Could be nothing, but if it's something, he can't run the risk of confronting it." He's only trained to look at images.

The hallway is well lit and has a number of doors, all of which seem to lead in some way to the same destination, the same room stuck in the middle of the rectangle of corridors." Runes glow faintly along most of the many doors, though there are a couple where they are flickering/gone." Arcana is inconsistent in WestEnd, after all.

Gem was not happy, not at all. Hearing steps and being unable to do anything about it' Not good." She wanted that person taken out." She knew she had made a noise, so she was gesturing frantically to Greyson to take care of the person. Her vision was already starting to come back after about a minute, but she was blinking furiously, seeing spots and having a time focusing just yet.

Grey was largely ignoring Gem's frantic waving, focusing instead on the sound of retreating footsteps." Good for them...for the now, anyway." Then he hunkered down, squatting at the edge of the tiles and giving them a pretty thorough once-over." He noticed the oddly spaced glistening and cocked his head to the side, trying to figure out what they were." Some sort of surveillance?" Motion, sound, heat?" He chewed his lower lip and then turned to Gem, speaking softly, nearly silently, "This floor isn't right." Think you can spider-crawl along the walls?"" The hallway was a little too wide for her shorter limbs, after all." Yay for being a tall, toned, strong man!

When she realized that Grey was not going to go after whoever that was, she gave a frustrated sigh. Damn her for making noise!" His comment on the floor made her still and look it over." Yes, she could see what he meant, through her watering eyes.?" His question had her looking at the walls on each side of the hallway, always looking for levers or things to indicate traps or ways to remove them." It was just her nature."

Gem could climb up just about any wall...but moving laterally meant it really did need to have some kind of grippable surface.?" She could not spider-climb, in the true sense, of course, but she could cling and slip sideways. If the wall was rough enough." Otherwise she was going to have to pick her way through those dots. On the interior side, surrounding what appeared to be doors to the vaults, the walls are very smooth, mostly featureless." The other side, though?" Rough stone, some brick, the odd iron piece." This area, however redone, is very old, has a lot of history to it, though only the outer wall seems to reflect that anymore. Three doors are within sight, and thankfully one of those seems to have its rune-marks flickering.

Grey straightened and slipped the sap and his gloves off, replacing them in his pockets." He looked down at Gem again, awaiting her answer." He, himself, was planning on bracing himself between the two walls, his body arched over the floor, and slip sideways to whichever door she pointed out." On the plus side, he'd be some ten feet above the floor, and as we all know, people generally did not look up." On the down side, he'd be some ten feet above the floor, and if his grip slipped...well, down would come Greyson, cradle and all.

Indeed, she was most happy that Alain chose to have his warehouse here in WestEnd." It made pesky things not work, sometimes." She nodded to Greyson, indicating the rough wall." With the ease born of long practice, she slipped up onto that surface, nimble feet and hands finding footholds that most would not even see." She began to sidle sideways, aiming for the area where that flickering door was, checking for traps all the way.

Grey waited until she stopped moving and then slowly, carefully leaned towards the interior wall, bracing his hands against it at shoulder level, and then kicked one foot and then the other up behind him, pressing his feet tightly against the rough brick wall." He scuttled quickly, quietly up until his back was some twelve inches below the ceiling.

As they moved closer to the door, it becomes clear that it has traditional locks, in addition to its currently non-functioning arcane security." Several complex locks, but still traditional, the kind that lockpicks and other tricks can deal with.

Having landed back on the flooring in an area devoid of the suspicious black dots, she nodded approval at Grey." That was a move she could not do if the walls were too far apart. Once again, she silently bemoaned her tiny stature." Gem was wearing her fingerless gloves and she wiped them on her leathers as she carefully approached that doorway, judging and assessing what may be traps." The locks got a very close scrutiny, as she removed her tools again." If she found no traps, she would begin trying to open locks.

Once more, he thanked his father for pushing him into rowing and cross-country running." With his upper body and leg strength, he could conceivably hold himself up here for some time without suffering from fatigue." However, he wasn't really excited about doing that." He studied the floor beneath him and then dropped down, landing in a silent crouch in a spot that seemed devoid of those pesky and odd glistening dots." He turned his body a bit, using his size to hide the much smaller elf behind him, hoping to buy them some time in case that person or persons came back snooping around.

The thief found no traps and she gave a silent little smile to Greyson when she got the lock opened." No footsteps were yet coming along, and so they had at least a few minutes more." Listening with her elven hearing, she waited tensely, but did not hear a thing." With a little thrill of excitement, she slipped into the waiting room beyond."

Erevan had told her what to expect, and how to find the box holding the little teacup." As she entered, she looked around, her jaw dropping" open. Even though she knew, still it was impressive and overwhelming." Row upon row of? items, stacked as" high as she could see.? The sheer number of things must be beyond counting.

Greyson Devereux

Date: 2010-08-03 21:19 EST
She pulled in a deep breath and then squinted as she tried to make out the order that things were in." Stepping along, she finally made sense of it, nodding to Greyson when she figured it out. This way, she indicated, and then moved off in that direction.

He followed Gem, eyes wide at all the stuff crammed into this room." How in the hell...?" Never mind that." He took a deep breath and cleared his head, following the elf, keeping an ear and eye out for unwelcome visitors.

There are no unwelcome visitors (besides these two), at least not yet." The analyst has only just reported the suspicious noise, and it had just come to the attention of a young man who is very paranoid by nature.

One wooden box along the way, though, near to where Mr. Devereux tarries, stands out. A few of the nails appear not to have been driven in properly, so the wooden lid on it is loose, revealing the unmistakable glimmer of a decent-sized solitaire diamond within, even in this low light." Maybe not large enough to buy a house, but enough to help with the down payment, certainly.

Gem had eyes only for what they were here for. Her continued life depended on it." She had already informed Greyson they were" here only for a dire situation, though not the details. She had told him he better never hit Alain again, specifically, or Grey would have to answer to her." She had made sure he knew this was strictly an in and out, a hit for one item." She had every confidence that he would obey her strictures, naturally." Why wouldn't he?"

Gem's quarry is within sight, the rows marked with a series of letters and numbers much like a library, and each box bearing a very small label." She moved unerringly for that one particular box, and after making sure there were no traps, she opened it up, holding her breath, afraid in the last moments that there would be no cup there." Her life depended on it, after all and she was very much enjoying being alive again.

Something shiny caught Grey's attention and he paused briefly, glancing down into the box." His eyes grew wide when he spotted that solitaire." Nearly too quickly to be seen by the naked eye, his fingers slipped down into the box and curled around the diamond, pulling it out silently and palming it." His hand dove into his pocket casually and he dropped the rock into a secret, hidden pocket-within-his-pocket." He picked up his pace once more, nothing about his face or his carriage indicating the fact that he'd just nicked the rock.

The box shifts as he moves it, but at the same moment Gemethyst lifts hers. Whether one or both caused it, alarms go off, bells buzzing all over the basement." Footsteps just coming into the corridors outside are suddenly in a big hurry. Several people burst in through the doors at the other end of the vaults, partly obscured from view by all the shelves and struggling to make out where the perpetrators are." There are a number of doors out, and a small labyrinth of shelves to navigate through.

Among these men is Alain DeMuer." The reported noise roused his earlier suspicions, lent some weight to the strange feeling he had outside the warehouse, and now he feels vindicated." He picks his way rapidly through the shelves, careful not to knock anything over.

All hell broke loose." That is the only way to describe it." She winced, figuring she had missed a trap. She threw a penitent look over at Greyson, and clutched the box to her, sliding it with quick fingers into her bag of holding, which was snatched from a thigh pouch, even as her feet took off." The rest of her followed, aiming for a door to the North, where she had not heard any feet or hollering." The two thieves already had a pre-arranged meeting place, for just such a case as this, and so the elfess did as they had planned....they were to scatter upon discovery!" She darted and wended her way between shelves, a dark shadow weaving through taller shadows." Fear leant her feet wings, her heart thudding and adrenaline pumping.

Grey gritted his teeth and swore in seven languages under his breath." He took off at a long-legged sprint in the opposite direction of the little elf, dodging and weaving through the shelves, doubling and even tripling back on his own trail, circling around and around, hoping somehow to buy himself time." As he ran, he slipped on his gloves again and brought out his sap once more, shaking it out to extend it to its full length." Hopefully, a few sharp cracks on tender parts would help to dissuade his pursuers.

As Gemethyst makes her way to an exit, the Baron comes skidding out into her lane, not thirty feet behind her, and draws his pistol instinctively to level at her retreating back, catching sight of the silver hair bouncing away." He hesitates just a moment, after all this is theft, not murder, not even an assassination attempt. She slips around the corner and out of sight, Alain's small window of opportunity has passed him by.

Completely unaware of her very near miss, the elf was praying and running, and aiming throwing knives at anything resembling" a light." Once free of the warehouse room itself, she bounded up the ramp and away, hoping like hell that Grayson had gotten out." She wasted no time worrying about it though, simply focusing all her considerable skill on making good her escape.

Greyson manages to shake off most of his pursuers, but one just about meets him head-on, thankfully in a darker part of the vault, where faces aren't clear." Lethal force is frowned upon under these circumstances, but non-lethal was perfectly within acceptable bounds." The big guy throws a haymaker at Grey.

Luckily for Greyson, one could practically grow a tree in the time it took for a haymaker to make contact." He lithely ducked underneath it, despite his height, coiling his body into a compact crouch, and used all of that massive upper body strength to send that blackjack shooting out at the guy's knee cap.

Greyson might have cussed in seven languages when they were caught, but this man uses at least eight as he goes down, his knee in very bad shape, leaving the thief's egress open once more.

Grey gave the bloke a love tap to the temple with the tip of the sap as he sped past, putting enough force into it that his unfortunate victim would have a nice sleep. The long-legged grifter leapt over the falling body and cornered around a shelf, spotting a doorway with daylight - or what he fervently hoped was daylight, anyway - spilling out from underneath." He shot forward, arms and legs pumping fiercely, covering the ground and slamming into the door." Here's hoping it was unlocked and open!

It's a door they'd been working on sealing up, the lights accidentally left on from earlier on the work day.? Beyond this short corridor is a maze of stinky sewers, and after that, mercifully, escape.