A Team in the Making

Archangel shrugs "I have no plans to move in but I'll probably snag a room as a just in case sort of thing. Maybe keep a backup suit and some other stuff here. Couldn't hurt."

As Nadia turns the conversation to the other members of the group Beacon addresses them once more. "Does anyone have any more questions for me right now? If not I'll leave you to it and you can send me any questions or requests you come up with as you get settled in."

"Getting back to business a bit, you guys knew in advance what was going to go down at the bank, or at least that something was going to happen. Was that actually part of the magic show, or did Doctor Weird just dress up the detective work a bit?"

After glancing around for a minute, Tremor perks up as a thought occurs to him. "Hell, this place is a lot nicer than my apartment... Definitely a lot bigger. If you guys are all just going to take a room to have somewhere to crash after a mission or whatever, I could keep an eye on it long-term. Keep it nice and tidy."

"We had a reliable source. The guy who is supposed to broker the deal for whatever weapon is being bought. Based on the description he gave us I'd bet the old guy in the exo suit is who he was dealing with. Our source acts as a middleman for a sort of silent auction apparently, people come to him with a lot number and bid. He tells them if it's enough or not, whether the lot is still for sale, how long it'll be on the market. But he doesn't know what is for sale, the seller gets the word out anonymously and buyers go through him. One day this guy comes in asking about a sale. He puts in a bid twice the amount of the previous one. He gives his usually speech about having the money or the sale would go to the next highest bidder and the guy went nuts ranting about how he'd have the money. The guy practically laid out the whole thing. Time, place, amount they were going to steal. He stormed off before he let loose who was going to do and how." Beacon answers.

"That's as much as our source was willing or able to divulge. He won't give any specifics on the weapon if he even has any. I can't really fault him though, the kind of people and money he's dealing with if they find out he was talking about his business he'd have a hit put out on him lickity split." he concludes

"Oh my god! I'm such an idiot!" Nadia exclaims suddenly. She continues talking no one in particular, as usual speaking without pausing between thoughts. "So yesterday I was assuming that Terror of Temperature had been hired by an intermediary to steal money in order for Omnicorps to purchase a weapon, which made no sense because I'm certain the company would have access to weapons technology already--case in point," she indicates the taser in her palm and lasers at her wrists, "--but anyway assuming that Terror was brokering the deal himself it makes way more sense if he were purchasing the alleged weapon FROM Omnicorps for his own use and the warehouse was rented by Hexatronics as the point of exchange as a prerequisite for Terror obtaining the money for their assets, which is actually good for us because I was worried that since the money was delivered the intermediary would still hand off the weapon to supposedly hold up the city, but if Terror was actually the originator of that plan, well, obviously he's in jail, so..." She gives a slight shrug. "Yeah, I bet they're glad he successfully paid in advance."

Clearly I have to work on getting insight into the minds of criminals...

Logan stares at Nadia while she rants, trying to follow along. The corners of her eyes crinkle as she squints slightly. I think we're still missing someone, Logan scrawls. ToT doesn't seem like a mastermind. As kind of an afterthought, she adds, Omni not off the hook for selling weapons to criminals.

Beacon shrugs "It's certainly possible but we don't have enough information yet. Personally I'd agree with Logan that there is likely at least one other person involved. Why else would the trio in jail be so adamant about refusing to talk? Something is still going on otherwise why wouldn't they just tell us. Either way I leave it up to all of you to continue investigating how you see fit."

Nadia squints at Logan's notepad. "Well sure, obviously we've already established Terror's dubious qualifications as a mastermind," she says impatiently. Belatedly remembering that no one besides Constance had been present at the station the previous day to hear her analysis of that point, she continues, "I mean--but--also there are lots of reasons people don't confess to stuff, but sure, it's possible that with Omni as the provider and Terror as the intermediary, the putative unidentified final recipient may have still obtained the alleged weapon, but in that case the least desirable outcome is less probable with that model than if Omni were the final recipient. Anyway, selling weapons has a distinctly more white-collar flavor to it than buying them, don't you think?" Her tone suggests that she considers the implications of her statement to be intuitively obvious.

Logan gives Nadia a skeptical look. Least desirable for anyone to have a weapon that can destory a city, she writes.

Do we actually have anything to chase, other than pickup VIN? Can we figure out where stolen van went?

Nadia crosses her arms impatiently. "Uh, no, it's objectively worse if the weapon is in the hands of someone intending to use it, as opposed to a risk-averse entity with profit motive," she insists. She appeals briefly to Fear and Shade, hoping for affirmation that at least one other person was on her wavelength. Turning back to Beacon, she adds, "but anyway, we don't have much right now beyond trying to track vehicles. You'll let us know if you find anything we should look into?"

"Correct, as soon as we have something we'll let you know." Beacon answers.

She nods. "Ok, then. Unless anyone has more questions, I think we can get started. Thank you for showing us the place, Beacon. Do you guys have places to be? Should we get organized and pick up where we left off last night, or meet back up later?"

Shade snickers at the certainty with which Nadia rates "entities that should have superweapons".

"I should probably be a bit more active at my kitchen today, but I'm not massively tied down to any particular time. I'm also open to patrols if we want to schedule those. I probably won't be living here, but I definitely would appreciate having Tremor here keeping an eye on stuff."

Beacon says his goodbyes and assures everyone he would see them again soon. He walks out of the room and as the group continues to discuss they see a golden light flash past the windows of the second floor.

Shade's snickering seems to validate Logan's opinion.

She waves a polite goodbye to Beacon as he leaves and then goes to retrieve a bedroom key. Logan makes her way toward the corner one above the washer/boiler room.

"So, I guess, um..." Nadia pauses briefly in surprise as Logan runs off to claim her room. "What were we talking about--right, so Fear, how about you and I go look at the computer systems; if you're going to move in," she says, turning to Trevor, "I expect you'll want to look around the apartments; and you guys"--she turns to Shade and Archangel--"do you have any leads on the missing capes thing? Or do you want to coordinate some kind of patrol scheme? 'Cause I don't really know anything about that... whole process." Unless randomly running into convenience store robbers on the street counts as a patrol incident.

Archangel sees Logan disappear toward the rooms and gets up trying not to hurry after her. Guess we better get used to her just walking away like that, no way I'm going to be the last one to pick a room though Archangel thinks to herself. She starts walking backwards slowly toward the rooms and responds to Nadia. "I hadn't heard anything about missing capes until Shade brought it up but I have no problem looking into it. I can maybe look into a patrol scheme too but planning isn't my specialty."; she starts edging around a corner and calls back "Shade let me know if you want to collaborate on either or both of those things. I'm going to snag a room real quick." with that she ducks around the corner. She takes the room kitty corner to logan above the kitchen across from the bathroom.

After snatching the keys to the only bedroom with two exterior walls, she takes a better look at the details: how big the room is, what kind of lighting it has, what kind of flooring, etc., and tries to gauge how many of her books will fit.

Then she goes intangible and takes a shortcut through the floor into the laundry room to asess the space and its potential for total darkness.

[Spirit (d8) = 7]

Fear nods at Nadia, "Sounds like a plan, maybe we can figure something out for Logan's communicator too, when she's present that is."

"Didn't Beacon say these can text? That should be good enough most of the time, she can still hear us. I'm gonna take a look around and snag a room - looks like we have 8 or 9 rooms for 6 people, so we should be good on space."

Walking around, Trevor takes stock of the facilities. At first glance, it all seems... decent. All perfectly useable, just not amazing. Big garage, laundry, decent enough kitchen, a little workout room... It really wouldn't take a lot to get this place going if their 'little bit left in the budget' is even a tenth of what they spent on the place. Get a tool chest and table saw for the garage, maybe a scissors lift or a jack so we can work on our cars. Reinforce the sparring room like Beacon said. Add some more kitchen... stuff. I'll leave that to the folks that use more than a toaster oven. Nadia can probably figure out some cool stuff for the situation room or whatever we're gonna call it.

Oh shit, we should figure out a logo so we can have it printed on the table or the ceiling or whatever. This is a superhero lair, right? Well, not a lair - bad guys have lairs. But this is a superhero thing. We could put in an alarm system with lasers and shit if we really want.

Heading upstairs, Trevor picks out the middle bedroom on the outside wall. Not a ton of room, but the rest of the place makes up for it. Shouldn't take too long to get everything over here.

Trevor heads back to the living room and checks out the AV system while waiting for the rest to finish their rounds.

Nadia nods at Trevor's retreating back. Addressing the two left in the room, she says, "True, but if we're in the middle of something urgent I'd rather not have to stop to read a text. If we're just hanging around, text is better anyway. We'll work something out."

She shrugs and heads into the command center. She takes a few minutes to examine the hardware before turning on one of the computers.

[Knowledge: Computers d6: {6,6,6,3; 1}=21]

Logan inspects her selected room and it's much the same as the rest. They are all roughly uniform in size though the layout of the closet and door placement changes according to the rooms placement, they are approximately 13' by 9' in size. Each room has a window that slides left to right not up and down to open. When one side is slid open it isn't quite large enough an opening for the average person to pass through but if the entire window was removed it would be. In the center of the ceiling is a set of fluorescent tube lights operate by a light switch near the door. The floors are a cream colored linoleum. The bed is a "full" sized simple box spring and mattress combo on a metal frame, it looks like brand new furnishings, nothing expensive but decently comfortable. The closest has sliding doors and is fairly snug, it contains a wooden rod the width of the closest for hangers as well as a shelf running parallel to the rod and on one half is a set of three drawers acting as a dresser. Apart from that the room is bare with slightly off white walls. There is room for a few shelves or some other furniture but not much.

Having completed her inspection of the room Logan sinks down to the room below her and is met by almost complete darkness. The room contains no windows and the only source of light currently is the sliver coming from under the door.

---

After claiming his room Trevor returns and inspects the entertainments system. It's all pretty normal looking stuff you could pick up at any major outlet and all of it looks brand new and professionally installed with zip tied cables and everything tucked away neat and orderly. One of each of the newest game consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony sit with an a couple of recent games for each. A combination DVD/Bluray player is hooked up alongside a cable tv box. A 42" flat screen TV sits with remotes lined up in front of it for the different devices including a 5.1 surround sound system. Turning on the TV and flipping through the channels it looks like a basic cable package is available and all of the other devices seems to be in working order.

Each item on it's own wouldn't be too expensive, a savvy shopper could save up and find some good deals, but all together and all brand new it adds up to a pretty hefty price tag.

---

Nadia walks into the command center and skirts the round central table to two workstations on their own table next to a black wire closet she recognizes as a some kind of secure server rack. The computers are brand new Dell Towers something in the Vostro series, not quite top of the line but decent machines. They are all hooked up with matching dell monitors, keyboard, and mouse. Before firing them up she inspects the server cage. A sturdy structure mounted to the wall it stands about seven feet high. A set of keys sit in the latching mechanism and taped to the front door is a plastic sleeve with some documents inside. She pulls out the papers and reads through them. They appear to be specifications and credentials along with network diagrams for the room and building both. It's all very professionally done and impeccably detailed. One thing that catches her eye is that the network information indicates the building is hooked up to a T1 network line usually reserved for businesses, that kind of connection costs almost a thousand dollars a month. Inside the closest are a few different models of Dell servers and a storage array with a few terabytes of storage space.

Firing up the computers she finds them to all be pretty default installations of current Microsoft Windows operating systems on the desktops and a mix of Windows and LINUX on the servers. It seems like everything is a clean slate waiting for them to use as they see fit.

Archangel inspects her room with an internal sigh and an external shoulder shrug, This should be fine, might have to do something about the slumber land mattress if I end up staying here more than a handful of times she thinks. She steps out and locks the door behind her dropping the key to her room in one of the concealed pouches in her costume.

She wanders back out to the living room and looks for Shade. Wherever she finds him she strikes up a conversation "Hey, since we've got these new communicators mind if I get my earpiece back?"

Nadia nods appreciatively as she surveys the equipment. "Not bad, not bad," she muses aloud without turning around to see whether Fear had followed her into the room. "We can make ourselves a nice setup here. Maybe connect the communicators back to here with GPS if we want to do the whole control hub thing, get some interactive maps of the city up... Maybe patch into the police radio from here..." She perches on the edge of a chair and attempts to log onto one of the computers, trying to get on an administrator account first before creating a user account.

Having looked through the documentation Nadia finds the section on the existing accounts and passwords. They are all pretty generic and default with a note in bold lettering at the top of the page that advises they be changed or removed after setting up new more secure ones. Using those she sets herself up with a secured Admin account and gets logged in.