( OPEN ) FIGHTING CRIME BY MOONLIGHT

[transmit]

WHO: Every Outsider interested!
WHAT: Catch-all log for cleaning up (or making more of a mess of) Neo Tokyo's crime scene! Refer to the OOC post here for details. Neo Tokyo's current social and political climate can be found under the World / Setting section here.
WHERE: Neo Tokyo, Japan.
WHEN: Nov 2024 & onward.
WARNINGS: Violence, drug use, threats and coercion … whatever else that happens where crime and criminal activity are involved. Please mark for other CWs if necessary!


From the month of November and onward, Outsiders can find recruitment posters around the base for a specialised subsection of an anonymous Neo Tokyo security agency! Feel free to assume that's where most of the directives come from.

Current quests relating to this player plot can be found under < STREET FIGHTER > and < RISE AND THRIVE > on the QUEST BOARD.

People are free to use this log or their own for open and closed starters. However, if you'd like to contribute to the quest chain or setting changes, please remember to eventually submit your links and a summary under the associated quests! Otherwise, go wild!

Comments

[demandsatisfaction]

[For a brief moment, Lilias looks as though she might object to Silco’s suggestion. There’s one very obvious conclusion most people would come to if they saw a man and a woman enter a bathroom together, and the thought of someone making this assumption about her in this instance, with this man, in this establishment’s bathroom, is repellant.

Unfortunately, it is also good strategy. She forces herself to swallow the sour look that wants to appear on her face, and simply offers a curt nod instead.]

Sufficient to get us within, I should think. While we’re at it, I can provide us some protection as well, since our superiors apparently frown on us using those suits for things like this.

[Not that Lilias doesn’t feel intense disdain for the style of the plug suit; it really does look like a full-body set of pyjamas, at least to her sensibilities. But she has to admit the protection they offer does seem quite handy. It had been nice to not need to cast mage armour for a while.

Since they have a plan, she braces her hands against the table and pushes up to stand, abandoning her shitty coffee.]

Shall we?

[zauneyete]

That would be useful, yes.

[ Don't worry, Lilias, Silco doesn't really like it either. Nor the understanding that their superiors would frown on them using their suits. Not that he liked his any better. It's too-tight, ill-fitting, and he wants nothing more than to hide in it. Though he thought the people wearing it under clothing had the right idea.

Perhaps next time. ]

No time like the present. Let's get this part over with, hm? [ He says with a soft sigh, standing. He doesn't reach out to her but instead strode his way there with purpose. Typical, but clearly he wasn't much of a gentleman, was he? ]

[demandsatisfaction]

[Lilias and Silco gripping hands in solidarity at disliking the lewd implications of diner bathroom visit… but not actually gripping hands, because they don’t want to touch each other.

Unfazed by Silco’s lack of gentlemanly manners, Lilias pursues him quickly enough on her own. Though she usually uses her wheelchair for trips into the city, knowing her own tendency to over-exert herself without it, she’s confident in her ability to easily manage a little errand like this on her own two legs. It’s not as though they’re hiking through a mountainous forest to a secluded castle.

For now, it’s simple enough to slip into the washroom after Silco so they she can weave the necessary spells.]

I’ll cast the shields first.

[They’ll be quicker, each taking only a few moments to lay down. She does her own first, a brief shimmer passing over her like holographic foil before it vanishes altogether. Then she’ll recite the same brief incantation, reaching out at its conclusion to touch Silco’s shoulder and deposit the spell’s charge.]

The armour will last about six hours, just like the disguises. It isn’t impenetrable by any means, but if we encounter trouble… Better to have it than not.

[zauneyete]

[ He watched her, his eyes narrowed when she started to cast the spell. Lilias is smart, though. She casts it on herself, and he listens to every word — and then every word again when she repeats it, listening for discrepancies, ready to step away the moment he heard something that didn't sound right, or off.

It was all the same, and he felt only the slightest of... something before he nodded. ]

Quick thinking like that will keep us out of trouble. Even the slightest of advantages may make a difference, and I try not to turn my nose up at them.[ He looked in the mirror, one last time, his wide-open, blackened eye reflected back at him. It reflected and left a glare on the wall behind them, so he turned his head back to her. ]

Other next, and then we'll swipe a card. Leave that to me. [ A twitch of his lips. ] I'm rather practiced.

[demandsatisfaction]

[It was courtesy that led Lilias to cast the mage armour spell on herself first, and Silco second, but she still manages to be ignorant of the full extent of his paranoia. Probably no normal person could fully anticipate it without encountering it firsthand at least once, and she still hasn’t had cause to notice.

For now, she just nods.]

You secure our means of entry, and we’ll go from there.

[She’s assuming he intends to use some sleight of hand to steal what they need, though possibly his plan is going to involve more violence than that. Lilias hopes it won’t be the latter, but at this point it’s far too late to quibble about details.

Instead, she begins casting the spell that will mask their true appearances from prying eyes. She has no need to touch Silco to include him in this one, so she simply recites the arcane words as she holds one gesturing hand before her own face. After a minute of this, she lowers her hand and the spell’s veil falls over them both, altering their features almost not at all—though in Silco’s case, the eye is now disguised.

If Silco regards himself in the mirror, or looks at Lilias, neither of them will look particularly Japanese. If anything, they simply look a bit more plain and unremarkable.]

The spell’s effect depends on the viewer, [she explains.] To the locals, we will look like one of them. Other foreigners will think we are foreigners from their own country.

[zauneyete]

[ somehow, nobody had really seen exactly how paranoid silco is, so it's probably for the best that they continue in ignorance.

At least until he loses it. ]

Hm.

[ He looks at himself in the mirror — he certainly looks unremarkable. He blinked — both eyes blinked — but it's disconcerting on a face that wasn't his, and he certainly doesn't feel any different beneath it. One of his eyes simply didn't, but this guise didn't account for it.

At least he would pass unseen through all of this.

Strangely, he didn't quite like it. ]

Interesting. And useful.

[ He gestured to the door, with a crooked smile that moved differently on his normally thin and tight face. In the mirror, it's easy to see, and while an insidious part of him still warns that this could be yet another trick — there is always the possibility — he proceeds, because there is no war against one another here. In fact, he is the rat in the porridge in this entire endeavor, wasn't he?

He opened the door, and held it for her with a single hand, his eyes watching the room, looking to make sure they were going to come out easily enough. Nobody present other than a couple eating in the corner, he continued on, slipping past a pair of double doors to the back. He busies himself at a counter, fiddling with some of the teacups by a barista's station. Soon enough, someone passes by. He watches them move to walk by, and he allowed his hand to slap against a bag of coffee on the counter, before it falls to the ground — unopened was best, no mess or attention. More likely to help, too.

Which they did.

By the time they'd straightened and handed him the bag, the card was gone from their clip. ]

Thanks. Can you tell it's been a long day?

[ A smile, but by the time they were out, Silco had flashed the card at her, a sign to move on. ]

[demandsatisfaction]

[Lilias’s only immediate reply to Silco’s observations is a nod; the spell is certainly handy for situations like this one, though perhaps ironically, she’d had few chances to actually use it before being brought here. It’s one of the more complex magics she knows, despite the lack of flashiness, and one of the most recently mastered.

For now, she will accompany Silco back out of the washroom, trying not to attract notice as she slips back into the dining area. Her only job at present is to wait unobtrusively while Silco does his work, and she attempts this by finding a seat and re-tying her boots, as if the laces had become too loose for her liking. By the time she has finished with this and is up again, Silco has pilfered the unwary staff member’s card, and they can begin their errand in earnest.

Time to make her way to the door leading further in. If nothing else, she has mastered the art of looking confidently like she belongs, and so doesn’t hesitate to stride over as though the door is going to open just for her.]

[zauneyete]

[ It's a quick and easy thing, he effects the more slow, steady pace toward the back, as if he's juggling tasks on his way back there. It's all theater, but Silco had done plenty of jobs over the years that it's practically automatic. Perhaps a little bit odd, that he could do so readily, but then again, old habits died very, very hard; and as much as Silco had tried to divorce himself from his past, there were parts that surfaced.

He tapped the card on the door when he made his way back, and slipped in with her, his eyes looking back and forth before he nodded.

Empty hallway, but it ends at a junction shortly up ahead. }

Left or right?

[ He asked, his voice low. ]