Red Hands (Kuro)

[Kurosaki]

Bidding time was nothing for her. She had waited patiently in hail storms before in order to get a scoop. This was perfectly fine with her. The Journalist, however, could not help but start noticing the details surrounding her small area. Firstly, pieces of gum had been smashed into the underside of this nice, lavish oak table. It was a real shame, really. A nice piece of furniture like this and someone had the gull to act like a gorilla and sit reading books while smacking gum. Then to actually use this beautiful antique piece to hide their nasty habit, well, that was just a shame. Really, she kind of wanted to do a huge expose on how nasty people were. Seriously? This was just gross. The thought of someone's saliva caked onto a candy pressed up above her was also extremely unpleasant. This was probably, by far, the worst place she had ever had the misfortune to hide. That included the alleyway that had smelled like a dump from earlier too.

Her thoughts began to revolve around how that could be spun into an article when the real matter at hand resurfaced. There was a metal against metal noise as the gate was violently thrown open. For someone hell bent on entering this facility without making himself noticed, this thief was beginning to become fairly full of his or herself. Slowly, cautiously, she leaned forward until her thin body was actually pressed against the carpet and her brown eyes watched a pair of sleek black leather boots as they entered from the elevator. That was pretty much all she could make out. Boot man, who was presumably the one up to no good, began to speak quietly, almost under his breath, confirming her initial assumptions for the most part.

Scooting herself along the carpet under the table, the feisty young woman watched those boots cautiously, holding one hand over her mouth in an attempt to stifle any sounds of breathing that she might have been making. She ceased her movements as soon as the thief had stopped in his tracks. A soft whisper about not leaving evidence later and the man began walking again. This was a good opportunity for her. The cat burglar had no idea that she was right underneath of this table. She had gotten the drop on him! Well, not the drop exactly... She was underneath of him, after all, not on top. Regardless though, she had been clever enough to pick this spot! The only problem was that making her way out from underneath of the table would not be easy. She had boxed herself in to make it look like the table had not been messed with. The chairs were in the way from her simply popping up and surprising him with a grab or trying to smash him unconscious with a book (you had to use what little resources you had, right?). Also, the brunette had no clever tricks up her sleeve either. No traps or nets to toss over his head.

"Come on, Reiko, think of something!" she encouraged herself. From her position it would also be impossible to get a good snapshot with her camera. She would probably also give herself away immediately if she tried as the flash would go off no matter what the circumstances. That was really something she needed to look into...

Eyebrows narrowing, she heard him say something about the security system and make a reference to a 'skeleton key'. Of course, hearing the following beeps as the key card reader took and accepted the key, Reiko was most likely correct in her assumption that it was the very same key card that had been stolen from her previously. Of course, equipped with her equally stolen, though morally justified, key card, the spunky girl would not be far behind the boot man even if he got a head start into the new area.

Sticking her tongue out in response to the soft cat call as the thief insinuated that she was an amateur, she decided the best course of action would be for him to show her how exactly he was getting in and out of the most secure portion of the archives. After all, there was sure to be another layer of security added. The owner had pretty much said as much. Of course, he had trusted her to do her best to catch the man responsible for so much loss of profits, but there were fail-safes in place just in case. I mean, she was only human like all of his guards. Besides, Reiko herself could have been the thief. It was better for her not to know ALL of the tricks in play.

Patiently, she waited for him to continue on his trek before sliding the chair back out from its place cautiously. She wasn't about to risk a huge amount of noise with him so close. After all, spooking him at this point was going to do more harm than good. Walking on all fours for a moment, she slid up to the wall and pressed her back against it, taking a moment to steady her breath but catching the door a fraction before it could click shut again. Hearing the beep from behind him would be a clear signal that someone was on the thief's trail, after all, and might spook him. Carefully, cautiously, she chanced a sneak peak through the door catching a glimpse of a thin figure out ahead.

[White Mimic]

No response. Typical. Jacques wasn’t expecting someone snooping around where they didn’t belong to openly admit they were anywhere they weren’t supposed to be. Along the lines of what he did find acceptable, however, there wasn’t anyone to be seen in the immediate vicinity, no one whose peepers could give up his ghost. “Okay, well I’m coming in anyway, so make sure you’re decent~”

The man in orange slid past the heavy door into the massive room. The old archives were significantly larger than the cubicle room he had just come from. It was like a warehouse on the inside, with shelves and filing cabinets that stretched all the way to the top, each filled with binders and folders and even a few stray papers hanging out. In some places, there were unsorted stacks of papers and portfolios waiting for room to be made in one of the crammed up shelves and ladders sliced upwards into the darkness of the ceiling, fitted with little wheels so they could be moved along. Several yards above, walkways sectioned off stories upon stories of old product blueprints, designs, patents, you name it. Here and there one could see a staircase connecting some PQ100-300 to another RD300-600, product quality reports for clothes and accessories to research developments on consumer trends, evolving fashion styles, and general complaints respectively. The stacking process was a complex one, but just like a library, if you knew what the numbers meant and what you were looking for, you would have no trouble getting what you wanted from here.

On the other hand, Jacques was more like an old woman visiting a new supermarket for the second time. He knew the general layout of corporate archive stacking and could piece together numbering systems, but he had only been here so many times and never bothered to commit the Doskoi system to hard memory just yet. On his ‘shopping list’ this time was a patent and a blueprint, usually kept together if they had both been properly processed, but Doskoi had a strange way of doing things. What the thief was looking for would either be in the PT stacks for ‘patents’ or the PD stacks for ‘designs’. Wherever either of those were.

“Hmmm let’s see…” Jacques wandered forward through the first hall of unimportant staffing memos that was placed right in front of the entry way. He honestly had no clue as to why these sorts of things were sorted, filed, and stored away, Doskoi Panda was the only company that did it to this degree he found. “The last time I was heeeeeere…” Making his way to one end of the shelves where the floor branched off into a labyrinthine grid, the corporate saboteur saw the rows upon rows of shelves extend on either side of him as a hallway of paper bureaucracy continued onward ahead of him. Each row was labeled with the range of its stack numbers in little removable plaques affixed to the hallway ends of the shelves and cabinets. ST: Ah, the employment files.

“I believe I weeeeent~… this way!” Jacques quickly ducked to the left, disappearing from the first hall as he strode into a different wing. Almost immediately however, he returned into view after having turned around. “Nope, nope it was over here.” The last time he had been in the old archives he was looking for some old invoices so a few funds could be embezzled at the request of a certain crime lord who needed something to plant on a problematic traitor. Which was funny actually, considering the man hired the very traitor in question, the pumpkinheaded imp himself. The point was, he was looking for a different wing than dumb old FR.

After a short bit of walking, the rows seemed to extend on to eternity in the dimly lit room and Jacques switched onto autopilot for a bit. Every so often he glanced up to see which stacks he was closest to but the letters seemed to stay on LF for a bit. Legal Files: Not so much patents so much as left over scraps or bits of info used when Doskoi tried to take down knock offs like Dosko1 or the thief’s current contract Cyber Panda. There were, needless to say, many cases to sift through and the empathetic Mr. J had little envy for whoever had to venture in there for even the most trivial reason. It was a mindless maze of rows of similar numbers that was very easy to lose your place in. Maybe if Doskoi Panda decided to chill, the wing wouldn’t be so big. Or you know, maybe if people would stop stealing products from major companies to sell to knock-offs, but that kind of request was absolutely ludicrous, wasn’t it.

Jacques was soon shaken from his mindless wandering in a single direction when he saw a glint in the distance. He stopped in place for a moment, squinting like a geriatric skeptic as he saw it dance for a bit, but when it suddenly twisted around into a beam, he recognized it for what it was. A flashlight… or torch, or whatever you wanted to call it. The quiet murmuring echo of a voice chattered through the darkness from whoever was holding the light but there was hardly any way of making out what was being said. Not that the thief had any intention of risking a total compromise by listening to the inane prattle of the bourgeoisie.

“Hmmmm…” Jacques stared at the light that darted around this way and that for just a moment before quickly turning down the closest row of the LF stacks. He had a nonchalant pace and posture as he disappeared from the main arterial hallway, narrowly avoiding the beam of light as it spread down his hall. “Yeah, not gunna deal with that today.” With a bounce in his step, the flamboyant burglar hopped onto one of the wheeled ladders nearby with a single foot and hand. He gracefully twisted around on the ladder like a bookworm who was destined to be a princess before finishing with his arms and legs straight and his feet held like the angle of a square, rocketing the climbing apparatus down its row like a clown on a trapeze. “Cause I don’t care~”

[Kurosaki]

(Not the best post... Sorry. =( )

Cursing mentally at herself, she realized she had missed a pretty good opportunity right there. Had she been quick enough she might have been able to simply knock out the thief with her bat. Oh, right... Her bat. That image of it slowly spinning in the murky disgusting filth kept springing to mind whenever she thought of it. Perhaps she actually needed to get a real weapon. Like, a sword or something fancy? What weapon would even match a Journalist?

Turning her gaze behind her, slowly biting her lip in contemplation, a spark seemed to light inside of her brain. Grinning momentarily, she turned to the door that she had propped open with the tips of her fingers and the jubilation she felt faded. That was, until she wormed her foot right out of her shoe, planting the less than clean brown flats in the appropriate spot for them to become a temporary door stop.

In a flash, she had retrieved an arm chair. Stumbling forward with it, she finally lost her grip and let the thing slide down and hit the ground with a dull thud. Heartbeat picking up, her brown eyes flicked up toward the door, but fortunately it seemed that the cat burglar was far enough ahead that the noise had not been enough to spark his curiosity.

"Yeah... Just keep believing I'm in front of you, buddy!" she thought to herself aggressively, her knack for getting to a point of obsession with a case rearing its ugly head. She wasn't about to let herself be defeated. And so far, she had been one step behind this entire time. Well, no more of that! She was gonna go in and get that darn scoop even if it meant that she had to wake up this entire factory and get all the guards down here to arrest herself and the culprit.

Rushing now, this time she picked up a big log book that was on a shelf and began to tote it with her. One good thwack with this book and she would have an unconscious or slower moving thief on her hands. If he was at least a little dazed, she could get a picture of him in the act, right? Alright... Maybe that was going too far. She really just wanted to get dirt on him for the most part. If she made herself look bad in doing so, then there would be some bad repercussions. Another item caught her attention and, deciding that she had already gone as far as to take something from the room already, Reiko slipped it into her trench coat pocket.

Slinking out the door and slipping her shoe back onto her foot, the Journalist clutched the huge bound book to her chest as though it were a precious article, though she had no clue what the contents of the volume were. It was at least a method of defense if things ended up turning the wrong way. She had been in a case or two where the culprit had learned that she had incriminating evidence and had resorted to coming after her. Learning from those moments, the brunette was going to make sure she was not caught off guard.

The room was gigantic. Absolutely huge. That made her heart sink a bit. Finding him now was going to once again be difficult. The man was so talented at evading someone. Hm, that made her start to think. Grinning, she reached back and caught the door again just before it slid closed.

-----

It wasn't that long after that Reiko was able to set her brilliant plan in motion. Nervous, since she was not sure if it would work, there was at least no turning back now that she had taken all this time to rig it. Having stuck near the door for the most part while implementing her plan, hoping that there was no other method of escape for him that wouldn't set off an alarm, the cunning woman started the chain of events in motion. Click! Pushing off on the object, she ducked down and began to slink in the opposite direction. A voice came from behind her as the little Den Den Mushi she had discovered began to talk. It was merely a recording. Something that someone had used in order to take down notes on whatever subject they were researching.

Still, it worked out perfectly for her. Having attached her flashlight to the rolling chair from before, now it seemed like there was someone in the process of talking and exploring the area while wagging around their light in the darkness. It would not last for long though. The recording was probably not all that long and the chair would eventually lose its momentum that she had given it and crawl to a slow stop somewhere in the direction Reiko had pushed it.

Having lost track of the actual thief though, she realized this probably wasn't the best of tactics. Sure, he would most likely avoid that certain spot when coming back to make his escape, but that still left him an expansive room and plenty of opportunities to try to bowl over Reiko on the way out. She only really had her giant book as a weapon. That was why she wasn't actually trying to keep him from escaping. Moving her camera up so it was readily available, she left her huge book behind in favor of going further into the room. Panic was seizing her chest. She was about to lose here. How had time gone by so quickly? It felt like she had been on top of her game this whole night but in reality, she had been slowly losing ground.

[White Mimic]

The ladder glided down the offshot hallway while its passenger hung off the side like a madman. The orange man giggled gleefully to himself as careened further and further into the depths of legal documentation. Eventually, the smooth rolling of the ladder slowed to a more leisurely pace compared to its earlier rocketing velocity, and Jacques quickly shimmied up shelves in the darkened space of his paper lined crevice. As he rose up through the air, his coat quietly furled around him. The well trained professional could scale a climb almost as naturally as walking, and the fact he was ascending a fixture meant precisely for that purpose could only close the gap of ‘almost’.

“Quickly, quickly…” Jacques chanted to himself as he approached the catwalk just up above him. There was only so much time before the patrol made it over to his shelf, but even then he was high enough above the hallway proper and far enough away that he doubted any of these two bit rent-a-cops who didn’t even know their own routes would see him. Still, better safe than sorry. He reached up to the steel gridded walkway above him prepping to swing himself up and over the rail, though he stopped as the so-called patrol halted in front of his row. A swivel chair with a flashlight and a Den Den Mushi repeating workplace vernacular. “-account AR2000425… No, it doesn’t look like it… No, yeah I can check, gimme one sec…” The Den Den Mushi then made several horrifying facial expressions as it contorted its vocal chords to imitate the sounds of rustling paper. “What.”

Jacques hung off the ladder with only a hand and a foot keeping him up, frozen in place, reaching for the walkway as he stared at the bizarre little creature on its strange rolling seat. “…Hm.” The Den Den Mushi was staring down the main hallway, repeating whatever it had heard. It didn’t look like one of those that could record or transmit visual capture, but better safe than sorry. The thief slowly returned the rest of his body to the ladder and slid down, keeping his eyes on the chair. “…it looks liiiiike… the order was placed on the 12th… yeah, March…” As soon as his feet touched the ground he slowly walked up to the chair, keeping quiet and staying out of the Den Den Mushi’s glazed over line of sight. With the chair in front of him, the second-story man glanced in the direction from which the device originated. Still behind the shelves, he very lightly levered a few files out of the way so he could see up over them. His few of the main hallway was poor but it didn’t look like anyone was out there in the dim darkness.

Strange. Perhaps his rival was trying to distract him so that she could get her grubby mitts on the goods before he had. Or she was just messing with him. Regardless, it didn’t look like she was still there, not from here anyway. Jacques replaced the files, calmly looking down at the Den Den Mushi on the chair. “…Yeah, it was probably some sort of mix-up in shipping… Yeah… Would you like me to transfer your call to that department?” It looked rather cute sitting on that chair, with the look of your usual sales associate plastered all over its face. It had the look of a man who had his spirit broken by the weight of corporate bureaucracy long ago. To add insult to injury, Jacques wound his leg up and unleashed it just as quickly into the base of the chair. The sweep just beneath the Den Den Mushi’s field of vision was quick, sharp, to the point. The chair rolled once again down the main hallway at a ludicrous speed, rousing the little snail somewhat. It’s formerly placid recording had suddenly changed in tone as the creature continued and squealed in surprise at the same time. “THANK YOU AND HAVE A NICE DAAAAaaaayyyy!”

The chair swiftly wheeled off into the darkness, and the screaming recorder grew distant, out of sight, out of mind. Similarly, as soon Jacques had kicked the chair back from whence it came he had begun climbing the ladder at the end of his row once again. However, this time, he didn’t pause at the peak of his ascent. Rather, the pumpkin headed kleptomaniac hoisted himself onto the walkway and tried to get his bearings. The blueprints would likely be up here somewhere, and if not there was really only one place left to look. He just had to make his way over to the RD stacks.

[Kurosaki]

It was not that short of a wait before she saw an object go shooting across the expanse of darkness in front of her. It was hard to tell what it was detail wise, but the flashlight strapped to the swivel chair clued the investigator in fairly quickly despite the fact that the light was cutting in and out as it past through aisles. The Den Den Mushi's fading voice was almost comical if not for the fact that the strange little creature was probably a bit terrified. All well, those guys were pretty resilient, right? Brown eyes shifted slightly and her right foot scratched the back of her left leg with some semblance of guilt for putting the little mollusk in jeopardy.

Swallowing and straightening up with determination, Reiko decided that now she had the information she would need to bridge the gap between herself and the would-be thief. The little Den Den had done his part to get her this far. Bucking up, clenching her fist and talking in her head to give herself the final resolve that she needed to start moving, the brunette tugged her hat further down over her head and started to slink her way through the darkness. Hiding in wait was one thing, for sure. Something that she was good at. But to stop this guy, she would need to finally get the jump on them, she told herself as her plans changed drastically within her cranium. Reiko wasn't about to let herself get pushed out of the way like some rolling chair once the thief came barreling past her toward escape with the precious documents in hand.

"I'm pretty sure that I can figure out where the thief went... Just got to head toward where I pushed the chair!" That spark of excitement replaced the doubt that had been circulating within her earlier. In the past, her adventures had always been challenging and this one was no different. Looking at things in a different perspective was what was needed now. Lying in wait wasn't going to be enough to cut it this time.

Of course, navigating with an actual light would have made things much easier. Fortunately, eyes tended to adjust somewhat to the darkness with prolonged exposure. The journalist was at least able to keep herself from bumping into corners on the way through the file room. It was a big space, however, which would probably give someone with enough smarts in front of her enough time to also be on the move. That's what she discovered when she hit a dead end at least.

Frowning, she took a moment to consider her options. She could go back to the door and wait as her resolve to ambush the thief this way began to waver or she could continue blindly searching for him. Well, there was also a third option? That was something she only discovered as her back pressed up against metal bars. Eyes shifting upwards, she realized that her back was leaning against a ladder. Convenient!

"I can get a vantage point from here and see if anything is moving down below," Reiko told herself, stilling her anxious heart that had already began to panic that she might have already lost. Taking a deep breath and then exhaling slowly, she began to crawl her way up before finding herself on what appeared to be a metal catwalk. Interesting. Not sure why they had decided to build this other than in order not to get lost within the confines of the room, she dismissed her questions for now and started to look around, squinting into the darkness to see if she could see anything.

[White Mimic]

“RD… RD… RD RD RD… RD boys… Arr dee arr arr. Heh.” Jacques continued through the second level of shelves, glancing this way and that like someone looking for that special brand that they would only ever use. No substitutions. The RD stacks weren’t too far away, they were just in the direction he had come from but up here on the second level of filing instead. Finding the plans for the prototype though would be a different story, however, once he found his way inside the shelves. To his memory, textiles and production techniques were kept in the 200 directories. Actual production mechanisms were in the 700s but most of the big companies could use the product documents and develop their own mechanism instead. It usually helped when patents started getting involved later down the road.

The catwalk was mostly thin but there were spots where it spread out to take up most of the narrow halls between the shelves. On these wider platforms, it was easier to peruse the files in storage, but also easier to move around in general. Jacques imagined only so many people could use the higher levels at once, not only because of safety but because at a certain point moving around up here would be next to impossible, depending of course. The central hallway had a slightly wider catwalk by comparison but no platforms to ease passage. With nothing to look through in the middle, what would be the point.

After a short while of creeping down the corridor, Jacques had almost returned to where he had started on the first floor, as he could see by the stairwell going up to PQ on the third level above him from RD. “Ah here we are.” He quickly examined the sides of the shelves, squinting at the numbers embossed onto the plaques pressed into them. “Let’s see… four hundred, three hundred, two hun-AHA~!” The section was nearly identical to all the other shelf sections; manila folders, loose bits of paper, tiny sample boxes and mini shelves, the only defining feature of the RD-200 section was that occasionally you’d see a sample out of its box. Fabric squares at first, wood panels, color swatches, metal cubes of varying types as it went further down.

“Metal or fabric… hmm… would be fabric wouldn’t it…” At the wider bits of catwalk, the orange thief would rifle through the files on the wall with his metal claws. The prototype could be anywhere in this aisle, or maybe not even there at all, and searching could take all night. If Jacques hadn’t memorized the categorization system. “Fabric…” 240. “Cross Material…” 7. “Metallic…” 247.6. His fingers started to slow down their flipping, for he was closing in on his mark and didn’t want to simply skip over it in his haste. “It’s got to be…” The thief stopped right in front of a narrow section of shelfing. Everything was split into columns and boxes and this was the bit he was looking for, stack 247. Box 6 was quite a ways up though. If the prototype was here, it’d be up there.

Looking up into the encroaching darkness, Jacques shrugged before gently planting his foot on the rail of the catwalk and stepping up. One foot after the other, he stepped onto the edge of one of the shelves and clutched another in his hands. Like a fabulously dressed spider, he clambered up the stack with spindly arms and splayed legs. A ladder would’ve been better but it looked like the last person using it in this aisle left it at the far end, and this one tended to get a little sticky. Noisy, metal clangy piece of junk needed oiling.

After little bit of dexterity, the Athletic Mr. J had shimmied up to Box 6. What was next? Jacques inched up the side of the box and started flicking through the files with an extended arm, angling himself with one foot on the box below and the other underneath a shelf on stack 245. It looked a tad weird, but the thief wanted both his hands free and standing on ones toes alone was dangerous. An important rule of the Thief’s Code Proper: Saftey First. Course that was more for heists but maybe corporate sabotage was a type of heist?

“Okay… interlace… gold, no… silver, no… glossed foil…” The files were grouped by material, and plenty seemed to repeat. They must have been different styles of incorporating the materials into cloth, or different cloth types according to the metal being used. Everything was decisively for the sake of fashion. Tacky. While form was important, even stuff as garish and gaudy and pretty as this, the thief in orange was looking for something with a little more commonplace application. None of this trendy accentuation was important, not to Cyber Panda. Yet. If his objective wasn’t here it was either going to be in metals or the file was still in the third floor offices, and it was most definitely not going to be in metals. That was for alloys and polymers and all that fancy shmancy blacksmithy science stuff. Bleh.

“Oh pbbblt. Never an easy day, is it. Laaaaaaaaaaame~” Jacques leaned against the shelf in placid frustration, swirling a finger around on the spines of the files like a child who hadn’t gotten their way but was too mature to throw a tantrum. “Okie doke, your turn Novac.” Sullen that the job wasn’t as pop-in/pop-out as he figured it might be, the pumpkinhead swung his legs back into normal position on the shelf along with his hands and began his descent back to the catwalk below.