Summary:Two thieves converge on a single location for different motivations. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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One of the first truly warm days of spring in the City comes with many, many folks calling in conveniently ill to go enjoy it! That means that only are they away from their offices, they're away from their homes…and that means easier pickings for someone looking to add new items to their collection. For the man sauntering easily along the back alley between two brownstone houses, it's more a case of need than simple selfish want — and for once, it has little to do with returning lost relics and antiques to their home countries.
Certain to stay to the shadows of one building, Ambrose considers the window of the first floor. Dressed in dark if plain and unexciting clothing, the man reaches into an inner pocket and pulls out what appears to be something halfway between a flat lockpick, a skeleton key, and a small taser. He carefully inserts it into the thin space between window and frame and…click. The window's lock opens.
He lifts the window up and slips inside, leaving it open behind him to an extent in case of need for a sudden departure. Within, the building is cool and the air dry, given it belongs to someone who collects coins. Ambrose, the Jackal, master-thief extraordinaire, is searching for a very specific collection of coins…one with purported charming against illusions and straying. He's had schooling in Talbot about locating them, but…it'll still take some time. Hands in the pockets of his thin black coat, he hums offkey to himself quietly as he wanders through the glass display cases scattered in pillars in this room.
There's a sound on the windowsill behind Ambrose, and if he happens to glance back, there's a large russet brown cat, not a particularly common coloration, with green eyes sitting there on the windowsill staring at him. Did he know that the man had a cat? The cat watches him steadily, long slender tail swishing back and forth, curling up at the tip and then extending again. It bears no collar or identifying information, but it also doesn't seem like it's going anywhere for the time being.
What might not be evident, is that the cat was a hawk only moments ago, perched on the roof of the building on the opposite side of the alley where it had been scoping things out before attempting its own entry. When Ambrose happened along and conveniently opened the window, that seemed invitation enough. Only upon touching the sill did the hawk become a cat.
It purrs.
Ambrose hears the sound and glances over slowly towards the window, perhaps expecting an overly-curious sparrow seeking out French fries in the worst place possible. But no — the Jackal straightens in place and squints back at the sleek and purring cat.
"I suppose the master must have let you out this morning to catch your fair share of fat city rats, hmm? Come in, puss, let's not draw too much attention," the man murmurs before clicking his tongue a few times. He does not, however, make any attempt to approach the cat. After all, the Bane tends to be viciously concise with smaller living beings; a quick slurp a life-force-filled juice box at most. He'd rather not leave a corpse behind, even accidentally.
Ambrose goes back to considering a particular set of five coins. These are a different scenario than the others all set upon plush padding: they're from markedly divergent periods of human history as well as use. Some aren't even money-coin at all, rather religious iconography and even one quaint trolley token from the early 1900s. "…yes, I think you," the man murmurs to himself even as he drops to one knee to look at the underside of the display for alarm wiring.
The cat takes that invitation and hops down onto the floor, sauntering over in Ambrose's direction, idly following and then hopping up onto the table where the coins are, and sitting right on top of one of the displays of coins — not the ones Ambrose is looking at, of course, but one of the ones quite nearby. He tilts his head a bit to the side and seems to be intrigued more than anything else.
"It's not wired. It's wireless, and tied in to the cameras." The voice that Ambrose hears is suddenly in his head, projected there, though from where is not readily apparent. The logical, if implausible, connection would be the cat. Particularly, when the cat glances up and toward the top of a nearby armoire with a very cleverly concealed camera set in the scrollwork along its top that surveils the entirety of the room.
The sounds of the cat's movements from the windowsill and then up to the table itself are mostly ignored, a common enough experience throughout his long years. However, the sudden influx of information?
Ambrose barely misses braining himself on the bottom of the display as he rises upright entirely to his feet, staring indeed at the cat. Having been privy to psychic conversation for a good portion of his life with his fiance, in other forms than than of human, he does make that illogical leap.
"…I…see," he replies very quietly towards the animal. He doesn't turn towards the camera in question, given all its caught so far is his back, luckily enough. By the time he finishes speaking, he's slipped back into the usual confident, crisp delivery. "I suppose…I could convince you to go sit conveniently before the eyehole of this camera? Or perhaps put a paw overtop it? It is for the good of this world's continued existence, you see." He gives the cat a slowly-forming curl of a grin, unashamedly cajoling.
"I could be convinced," Severin says, stretching a little bit in a truly languid feline manner, and then performing the perfect buttwiggle calibration required before making the leap from the table up on top of the armoire before strolling across it. "Only because I kinda like the world's existence. It's where I keep my stuff." He doesn't quite block the camera just yet, though, studying Ambrose from his new vantage point.
"Now, it seems that you and I are in a position of mutual benefit, since I'm not after what you're after, and you don't seem to be after what I'm after, but I am curious.." as cats often are, ".. what exactly these coins here have to do with preserving the continued existence of the world."
An oblique glance over his shoulder has Ambrose realizing that the cat hasn't yet eclipsed the camera's field of view and his smile lessens, sharpens at all once. He still must present his back to the feline. A rock on his feet, toes to heel to toes again, and the sound of a wet click is his tongue tacking off of a polished canine tooth, a tic of long, long habit.
"I see I might be dealing with a fellow patron of the light-fingered arts. Well-met, puss." He hits the name particularly hard, as only a Brit can, like a rock falling on a tin roof. "As to the coins… If you understand the power of belief in the face of the demented and departed, then you understand their purpose. I will be walking in a world beyond our own and, as such, I must bring my own armor. Have I assuaged your curiosity…?" the Jackal asks so lightly.
"Enough," Severin says, not seeming to take offense to the particular tone in which his current form is referred. His tail sweeps down and covers the camera, then, blocking its lens. "It's covered," he confirms after the fact, since Ambrose can't truly see it without turning a little bit. "Security specialist," he supplies. "I specialize in testing the security of systems, and teaching object lessons in improper implementation." It's said in that languid Cajun drawl that is all the patience in the world, despite the sharp-edged tone from the man before him.
"I try not to mess around too much with the dead. The living are a lot easier to see coming most of the time," he opines, but makes no move to uncover the camera, or move from his comfortable roost, allowing Ambrose to do what he came there to do. "When you lift the lid, lift the right corner of the pad nearest you. There's a keypad there. 8 7 4 4 3. You should be able to take them without problems after that."
Now safe to turn around, Ambrose does as such. As he does, the ambient light of the room flashes through his pupils in a flicker of carmine. The Jackal continues to peer at the cat, especially after the sequence of numbers is rattled off as easily as the day's weather or a cell phone contact.
"For a security specialist, you seem inclined to aid in defeating your own contested status in the workfield of this city…" he says quietly. Regardless, he does as the russet cat suggests and lo and behold, no screeching alarms to send him haring out the way he arrived. The Jackal slowly sighs and looks over the coins, his lashes nearly meeting in a suspicious squint.
"And now…do wish me luck, puss, and don't distract me for a moment. If I say this wrong, I may or may not suffer for it." It appears that he's pulled a very specific set of gloves from his pockets and slips them on. Their palms gleam in the wane light with a layering almost auroral and it shimmers even as the Jackal takes a deep breath, preparing to attempt an incantation to break the magical security spell overlaid upon the coins themselves.
|ROLL| Ambrose +rolls 1d2 for: 1
Unfortunately, cats have only twenty-five expressions and twenty of them are various shades of smug, and smug is how the cat appears at the moment, intentionally or otherwise. One ear flicks a little bit but otherwise, he remains right where he is, keeping Ambrose safe from that camera that he already disabled from the roof of the opposite building before he even got there — but what does the Brit know? He was busy crawling around under the table. Keeping a whollly unnecessary vigil, Severin observes as Ambrose manages to get into the table. The combination works. Of course, Severin knew it would work since he'd gone to great lengths to get that combination. But why not let the other guy find out for sure, right?
"Who said I did that sort of work in /this/ city?" Severin asks somewhat coyly, but then Ambrose seems to be about to work some hoodoo, and Severin has little knowledge of hoodoo other than that you don't mess with the veves when they're being drawn, and you don't interrupt the houngan in the middle of his ritual. So the cat simply falls respectfully silent. Credit where credit is due, this is vastly more entertaining than what he'd had planned.
"I stand corrected…" the Jackal murmurs distractedly as he places his hands in the empty space above the open coin display. Severin will see him bring his palms downwards and encounter what appears to be…a near-invisible pane of flexible defensive magic, containment and alarm both. Like statically-charged plastic wrap, it flexes in as he presses on it, hissing something under his breath on repeat again and again. The mantra takes on a slightly frantic air as the magic resists him enough to make sweat spring to his temples, but finally…
POP — like a giant soap bubble falling apart and with a whift of resonance that might stroke Severin's fur, the magic falls apart. No alarms go off…at least, to the mundane ear. With a heavy sigh, Ambrose leans his palms on the box's edging for a second, letting his chin droop. Then, it's as simple as plucking up each coin with the gloves and putting them into a little leather sack he's pulled from his coat. Away they go within the purse and then behind the zzzzzip of a zipper, and Ambrose closes the glass frame.
Turning about in place, he then eyes the cat. Again, slowly, he smiles. There's something overtly coy this time about the expression. "So…puss. Who are you and what did you intend here?"
Severin watches with idle fascination, finding this particular brand of hoodoo particularly interesting because he's never truly watched something like it before. Once the entire process is finished, and Ambrose has his prize in hand, or pouch, as the case may be, Severin seems to relax a little bit as well. For a while there he wasn't sure if Ambrose was going to explode into flame or not.
"They call me Jackrabbit," says the cat, making the name sound much less apt than it might normally. But let's face it, rabbit form was not appropriate for the venue. "And you might want to turn around." Keeping up the ruse of the camera, he lets his tail swish away from it and jumps back down from the armoire, sauntering off into one of the rooms nearby. It's only a moment or two before the cat returns with a satin bag in his teeth. The nice thing about telepathic communication — mouth not required.
"And I'm here for a part of a collection that's been missing for a while. Time to reunite a few sisters who have been separated for a decade or so." There's a slight jingling to the bag which indicates that it probably contains some coins as well. "Thanks, by the way, for opening the windows. No thumbs."
With a slow sigh, the brunet in his dark, inconspicuous clothig turns around to bare his back to the cabinet again. He glances the other direction when he hears the cat — 'Jackrabbit', apparently — land on the floor. Then, smiling to himself, he wanders back over to the window…
…and shuts it, leaving the electrified keycard/lockpick in place. Ambrose has his body leaned against the wall, shoulders filling the frame, by the time he sees the cat again. With a tilt of his head, he listens and nods thoughtfully.
"You're welcome, Jackrabbit. I closed it again for you too." One of those oh-so-helpful thumbs motions back over the master-thief's shoulder and then he folds his arms loosely again. "Clever of you, to pull the camera trick. You see, the lockpick? It emits a low burst of electromagnetic energy after it bypasses any alarm signal sent by broken wiring. Any camera feed would be disturbed and reported as a simple power outage." His smile this time around is really rather toothy. "They call me the Jackal, little rabbit. Let's see who you really are." An unfurling of his hand towards Severin encourages him further.
The cat sits in the center of the floor when he returns to find Ambrose leaning against the window with the window shut. "Oh no, br'er fox, don't throw me in that thar briar patch," he says in a tone that doesn't sound particularly frightened at all. Tilting his head to the side he says, "It was already disabled before you even got to the window. But that's a nice little tool you've got there. So if you knew it was down, why play along?" This seems to intrigue the cat. "Usually I expect a guy to buy me a drink first, but what the hell."
Severin shifts then, but since his clothes are on top of another building, the man stands there, leaning up against the armoire with the small satin bag dangling from one fingertip, stark naked. The green-eyed Cajun smiles an amused little smile and dips a bow before straightening. "Nice to meet you, Jackal."
The apparent lack of concern immediately has the Jackal's metaphorical hackles rising. Generally, standing before the easiest escape route is enough to entice most folks to be more cautious — and here, the cat's talking about drinks. But NOPE.
"Naked. They're always naked, why is this…?" Ambrose muses to himself as he squints at the ceiling. Blunt nails of one hand idly scratch at the line of his jaw as he hums a little sound to himself, slowly shaking his head. Surely those tiles have an answer for him. Ambrose then looks Severin dead in the face, his eyebrows quirked. "Surely you've been on this earth long enough to understand the nature of a good con…though perhaps not. You're but a pullet." Read as: baby-face. "One ensures the target plays along nicely until the moment comes for action otherwise inclined. Also, to test your own inclinations in regards to myself. You've done nothing but remind me of the audacity of youth." A quiet snerk of a laugh behind his teeth bared in a cool smile again. "And you've not magic about you. I would have sensed it. This must make you…?"
"Because my mutant ability doesn't work outside my own body," Severin says, gesturing up and down to the aforementioned corpus. "You know where there's a pair of enchanted knickers lying about, I'll see about nickin' them." His drawl is even more pronounced when he actually talks. "Isn't a pullet a chicken?" Severin asks, because he honestly has no idea what a pullet is. He folds his arms comfortably in front of him and leans one shoulder against the armoire. It's a good thing that the room isn't too chilly. "So I take it you're older'n you look." He looks Ambrose up and down then, from head to toe and back again. "Nope, nothin' magical about me. But you, you've got some hoodoo going on. Nice trick there with the magic bubble popping and all."
"Thank you kindly." The tone is manners enough, even if it is slipping towards haughtily urbane. "The use of the gloves was not of my own devising, but I happen to have collected enough interests over the years to merit the trick. No doubt the owner will be returning sooner than later, but we have time yet. If you were unaware of it, the family is spending the day at the Pine Beaches." Ambrose shifts against the windowpane, still apparently standing sentinel, and crosses his ankles, a display of returning confident comfort in the situation at hand.
"And you are correct, in regards to 'pullet'. You are a spring chicken, are you not?" A lop-sided smirk curls on the Jackal's lips. "In regards to my own age, well…good mutant Jackrabbit…you have no idea," he says, voice dipping low and musical. He still holds those green eyes fearlessly. "Your monicker. It's quaint."
"I was aware," Severin confirms, seeming comfortable enough making small talk in the nude in the middle of the apartment of some dude they both just robbed. He looks no more concerned about Ambrose's position by the window than he first did when he came out. "I could be," he agrees thoughtfully. "Or a rooster, sometimes a pheasant if I'm feeling fancy." He nods though at the Jackal's comment on his own age, that smile ticking up at the edges. "That does explain a thing or two." He dips his head when Ambrose calls his moniker quaint. "Thanks. I do make a damn charmin' little bunny when I'm feelin' so inclined."
"When you feel inclined? Hmm." Ambrose's eyebrows dance upwards. "No doubt that's what your moniker derives from, 'Jackrabbit'. You hail from the southern United States, I suppose? You would have chosen 'Cottontail' or 'Hare' otherwise. So…given you've no concern of using up a well of magical energy in a demonstration, by all means — trot out your zoo. You're proud enough of your mutant abilities to share with a complete stranger."
Another bit of quiet chuckling rounds up from the Jackal's throat. "Truthfully, I'm honored. It has been some time since someone trusted me so easily." He spreads a palm across his chest, above his sternum beneath the black t-shirt. "Either you're daft or you think you've an ace up your sleeve. Or perhaps behind your ear, given you haven't yet found those enchanted knickers you mentioned earlier."
"Let's be honest," Severin says. "If you'd really wanted to fuck with me, you could have done so long before now. And I don't think that you're going to, because I didn't fuck with you, not in any way that hindered your goal here, anyway. If anythin', I was as helpful as I could be — though I suspect you didn't need that combination, either." He does glance down at himself and then back up, "Fraid I ain't got any places to be hiding much at the moment. That is the one downside — no thumbs, no pockets.. could do a kangaroo." He shakes his head then, "But I'm no circus show. You want to see my menagerie, then that'll have to be on a second date."
Those dark eyebrows steadily climb upwards as Ambrose listens, tilting his head in a mildly canine fashion as if to better hear the young man. That louche smile appears in a bright glimmering of teeth and he barks out a laugh.
"There we are — I did wonder where the moxie lay. We do not survive in our fields of expertise without it." The proverbial light-fingered 'we' is implied. "But again, I am indeed honored twice-over now. Not only a delightful sense of trust, but of compliment as well. Drinks and a date now, is it?"
Again, the carmine nightshine flashes through the Jackal's pupils as he tilts his head the opposite direction now. "Were I in the years of my youth and more inclined to stray, I might see if you could survive my affections. However, given I am not and you would not, you may keep your menagerie to yourself." His grin smoothes out to something overtly pleased.
"I can be patient. Patience is one of the greater tools in a thief's box, is it not? A favored tool myself, patience," and he nods to himself, looking between Severin's eyes. "So who's to say that I haven't been waiting for you to slip up, pullet? I have an eternity to dally upon this earth. Perhaps you are my entertainment for the evening."
"Well, then it's fortunate that I didn't mean a literal date, since I'm not prone to straying, myself, and his affections are a tad more pleasant than just survivable, so I think we're good, there," Severin says, not that he's not above flirting at all. That's just in his nature. "But maybe we'll run into each other again sometime, and on that occasion, we'll see what form suits it." He notices that nightshine, and it draws a little twist to his lips.
"It is," which is why he doesn't seem particularly antsy about how long they've been standing around talking, nor does he seem in any particular hurry to depart. He lingers, relaxed, and even a bit amused. "Perhaps I am. You're definitely mine."
"Ah, well," and Ambrose then affects a polite golf clap, his expression mockingly bright. "Brilliant. I suppose we both come out of the affair pleased with ourselves. It is rather nice to have things settled out so soon given the off-chance of running across you again, Jackrabbit. The lack of complication is so gratifying," he purrs. "But…"
And for the first time, his gaze wanders away from Severin's face. It goes towards the front wall of the house and he lets out a hissing sigh. "I believe the family is on their way home." Licking his fingers, he rubs them together in the air before himself as if he might be testing the direction of the wind. "Mmm, yes. There is a gathering, can you feel it? It might raise the fine hairs on your neck. Ooh-hoo-hoo…" the Jackal chuckles with the first true note of cruel pleasure in his voice. "Someone's got a rather nasty temper."
Turning about in place, he opens the window and plucks the key-pick from the frame. "Do be hasty about your retreat, Jackrabbit. This place is filling with potential for witchcraft. I would hate to find you permnanently shifted into a newt, though I would promise you a nice terrarium and many fine slugs." Laughing over his shoulder, Ambrose slips out through the window and into the alleyway. "Adieu, little pullet. Do enjoy your take." The trick is to walk, not to run, and as such, the Jackal ambles away down the alley and towards the street as if he'd had nothing to do with the whole affair.