• Closed • Taboo Strikes V: Corporate Espionage

[Tio Silver]

Almund
31st Saun, 717

Why did rooftops have to be so uncomfortable?

That was a question people with honest jobs rarely found themselves asking. Why should they after all, the only honest jobs that took place on rooftops were tiling work and the occasional chimney sweep, who weren’t supposed to be sitting on the roofs for long periods of time anyway. For people who preferred to work outside of the law however rooftop travel was often the easiest way of getting to places unseen, and so many a dishonest man would find themselves having to travel across the slopping surface of a cities rooftops at least once in their lives. It was these people who came to really appreciate that rooftop’s were nowhere near as fun to get about on as popular opinion made them out to be; the footing was highly unstable, the danger of slipping and falling to your death was always present, but most importantly the tiles on them were very uncomfortable to sit on when you needed a rest.

Tio had been sitting on one such uncomfortable rooftop for hours on end for the past three trials now, and needless to say his rear end was sick of it. He’d been hired by a shipping company to steal the ledger and travel schedule of one of their biggest rivals, The Scalvoris-Western Shipping Company (The SWSC for short), and had been scoping out the place for information for his heist. The good news was that his scouting had revealed that the information he needed was in a locked safe in the boss’ office, and could be opened with a key which he kept on him at all times. All he needed to do was steal the boss' key on his way home from work, take his clothes, shapeshift into his appearance, walk in and steal the ledger. The bad news, apart from the pins and needles in his buttocks, was that he hadn’t been able to hear the boss’ voice clearly from all the way up on the roofs, and so his deception would likely fall apart if he was required to speak. There was also the fact that knocking out the boss would put him on a time limit, so when he began the heist he had to get it done as quickly as he could.

Tio spied movement coming from SWSC office, and stood up despite his protesting rump to have a look. It was the boss, heading home a break earlier than his employees as he often tended to do. From his surveillance Tio had learned that the boss regularly skipped on the last hour of work to go drinking at a nearby bar if he was in either a really good or bad mood, and since the company had been on a profitable streak recently his good mood strikes were becoming more and more frequent. Perfect, taverns were great places for stealing things since everyone's minds were too addled by their drink to be on alert.

Tio crossed over to the other side of the roof and shimmied down a drainpipe to the ground, his eyes flickering amber as he altered a few of his minor facial features and changed his hair colour to an unassuming brown. With a smirk he went out into the street and began tailing the boss, blending into the crowd of passing people.

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[Tio Silver]

It was still a break before most people finished working for the day, and so the bar the boss had gone into was completely empty of customers except for him. It was a fairly dingy place, in need of a few repairs here and there and a good cleaning, but otherwise nice enough. The boss had taken a seat on a stool right up on the bar counter and ordered a glass of wine, and the lone bartender had dutifully complied before getting back to silently cleaning his glasses.

Tio had observed all of this without actually going inside the building, instead opting to peer in through the window. When he was sure that his target wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon he casually walked in and took a seat at the table directly behind the barstool the boss had chosen to sit on, ordering a rum to avoid seeming suspicious. Then he waited, quietly sipping his rum and looking behind him using the reflection in his glass for a moment when the bartender went into the back room, leaving just him and his target alone.

Gently Tio leaded back in his chair, grasping the table so that he didn’t fall over with one hand and reaching towards the boss’ pocket with the other. It was a stretch, but fortunately the target was too caught up in his own inner thoughts and drinking to look behind him and so didn’t notice as Tio teased three fingers into his pocket and gently lifted the key out of it. With a small smirk Tio slipped the key into his pocket and brought his chair back onto four legs again, downing the rest of his drink and heading outside again.

He then hurried over to the house his target lived in and picked the lock when he was sure nobody was looking, slipping inside and searching for a suit identical to the one the target had been wearing back in the bar. It was tempting to pilfer some of the valuables lying about the place but Tio forced himself to ignore them; his employers were paying extra to make it look like the ledger was lost instead of stolen, and if he stole anything here the Elements would be called in and would likely figure out that the ledger had been stolen as well. Once he’d found a matching suit Tio put it on over his clothes and stood in front of a mirror, tapping into the power of Syroa’s mark and pushing around his facial features until they looked almost exactly like his targets, save for a few minor flaws.

Perfect, with this disguise he’d be able to get into the SWSC office without any hassle. Now all that was left was to get his hands on that ledger.

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[Tio Silver]

The SWSC offices may not have been the biggest Tio had ever seen, but they were probably the most lavish for their size. It wasn’t too surprising really, after all the company was a rising success at the moment and undoubtedly had more money than they knew what to do with right now, but it once again made it hard for Tio to resist the urge to take something.

Getting in had been all too easy: using his disguise meant that the receptionist had instantly mistook him for the boss, and by plastering a furious scowl on his face and stomping in the poor lady had been too frightened to question why he’d come back. If there was one thing people were always afraid of it was losing their jobs, and playing to that fear had helped Tio pull of a number of deceptions before.

From there he’d barged his way up to the boss’ office, silencing any employees who tried talking to him with a furious look, and locked the door firmly behind him. Now assured of his privacy, Tio took down a colourful painting of a boat that looked garishly out of place with the rest of the dull office to reveal a safe built into the wall. He wiped out the key, put it in the lock and turned, smiling as it made a dull clicking noise, and then pulled the door open to reveal a single book.

Tio took the book out and flicked through the pages, checking to make sure that this was the ledger his employers wanted. He’d be lying if he said he understood what all the numbers and business jargon meant, but going by the titles and the large increase in the most recent statistics he seemed to have the right book. In the back pages was a list of names that could only belong to ships, such as the Cutty Flint and Prince's Pride, each one with the name of a destination, list of cargo and travel time beside it, which was exactly what his employers had said would be in it. It seemed fair to him to assume that he’d got the right one, after all it wasn't like there were any other books matching that description about the place.

Tio closed the safe door again and locked it, hanging the ill-fitting painting back over the front and correcting it to the same slant it’d been in before. He then put the safe key down on the desk and brushed a nearby stack of papers over the top to conceal it, making it seem as if they’d fallen over naturally and that the boss had forgotten to take the key home with him. Tucking the ledger into his suit pocket, Tio reaffixed the scowl onto his face and stomped back downstairs, heading straight out of the office.

He’d be able to return the suit at his leisure tomorrow whilst the boss was at work, leaving only the ledger unaccounted for. After than it was just a matter of arranging a meeting time with his employers to hand over the ledger, but those were normally such simple transactions that he couldn’t imagine anything going wrong with that. That meant that he was in the clear; the job was practically done.

Maybe he’d return to that bar he’d pickpocketed the key in to celebrate. After all the rum there had been very nice...

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[Noth]

Knowledge:
Acting: Playing an angry boss
Deception: Impersonation and employer
Pickpocketing: Lifting a key from a pocket
Pickpocketing: Make sure nobody's watching
Pickpocketing: Easier on drunk people
Transformer's Toolbox: Mimicking a man's face
Transformer's Toolbox: Mimicking voices is hard
Transformer's Toolbox: Assuming a nondescript appearance

Loot: None
Injuries/Overstepping: None
Fame: -2 (Breaking the law)
Collaboration: No
Magic EXP: No

Notes:
I’m curious as to how many rooftops you’ve sat upon to have so such intimate knowledge of them. Fun thread to read, particularly enjoyed the planning behind getting the key. Very Ocean’s # of you. Haha. The way you pickpocketed the boss was rather humorous as well, and I can what it would have looked like if anyone was actually in the bar.