Unfortunately, Pants does not find a well-concealed reader to fool with.

However, Pants finds a few people drinking and talking too loudly in the bar. One of them left her open purse a bit too far for her to monitor. At the cost of a drink to avoid looking suspicious, Pants leans back and scoops the badge out of the purse. It'll probably be an hour before she notices; longer if you're lucky.


Meanwhile, DB gets back in contact with Twitch.

"Alright, I did my part. I'm sending over my files."

The blueprints are quite large and in depth, documenting all 25 levels plus four parking levels. The bottom two levels contain the lobby and some small shops. The next ten contain business offices. Levels twelve through nineteen are each dedicated to housing employees who live on site, as well as lesser trideo personalities and stars. Twenty to twenty five house the high-level stars and executives, as well as several large board rooms. This area serves more as a hotel than permanent housing, as most big names work and reside at specialized sets or offices, and only visit the studio for brief periods. The floors twelve through nineteen each contain 22 rooms of different sizes. The rooms towards the center of the floor are smaller, largely as single-occupancy rooms or for lower-ranking employees.

He also comes away with some security information. The building employs eight armed guards, one at the front desk, one at or near each of the four entrances (two above ground, two parking entrances), and three roving, plus a scattering of unarmed "security staff" on an ad hoc basis. The building also has drone nests set around which can be activity as necessary. It's not clear what sort of drone is in the nest. On the passive side, a selection of the windows are alarmed. A keycard system controls user access. The building also LOVES it some CCTV.

Twitch thanks DB and asks how she wants her pay.  After figuring that out he shows the group the maps, "Looks like we have a lot of planning to do.  At least there are only 8 guards."

"All right, I'll check it out.  Thanks for the info.  And feel free to kick a
Crusader or two in the nads for me.  I'll see if I can drop by and see Tina too."

Sticking her phone back in its holster, she hops down off the table and begins to study the blueprints and security specs coming off the printer.

"The eight guards don't worry me too much.  The 3-minute response time of the local lone-star detachment is a bit more of a concern.  We're going to need this to be real quiet and ideally pretty fast.

If anyone's up for a surprise, Johnson lied about who was on top in the competition.  It's not Becka.  Some Mercurial imitator named Lucas."

She heads over to the trid to see if there were any schedule repeats of previous Idolize episodes.  She was sort of curious as to what a drop bear actually looked like.

OOC: Are the Elvis roomies contestants in the show?

Twitch shrugs at Firefox's comments, "Johnson's always tell their side of the story.  I am thinking that if we can find a way to breach the top as opposed to coming in from the bottom we might be able to get it out before security even notices."

Becka looks like an oversized, adorable koala.

There are no elvis impersonators in the competition.

Pants dials up his teammates (Carver) and reports on the situation,

"I am inside the facility as we speak.  The Security around the place is light.  The bottom floors are open to the public so they have to allow for that.  Upper levels are protected by keycard access, I have a keycard though it will only be valid for about another 45 minutes if we want to make use of this window of opportunity."

We can make use of lone star, if we want to get creative. Or we can just start spamming panic buttons on the hour every hour at the location to facilitate a slower response time.


I figured he was lying about something. Perhaps this is a bid to get her in the top, make people feel sorry for her. Hmmm...
This message was last edited by the player at 20:11, Fri 14 Feb 2014.

Firefox easily finds the one entertainment TV in a corner of the warehouse. It looks to be a late 1996 model covered in Lisa Frank stickers and barely held together. The rear casing has been removed and is now a jumble of wires and little black boxes wired to the cathode tube. A quick check shows that it only has access to five channels, three of which are in Spanish.

"I'll give you full points for speed, but we've got a little more planning to do. What do you think your chances are of scoring another card? You wouldn't happen to have a cardreader in your pocket, would you?"

"No card reader, no.  I saw an opportunity and I went for it.  I may be able to score another one when we do this for real, but that depends on your relationship with mistress Luck.  I'll finish up here and head back."

GM:  I would like, if it is possible to use the keycard to access a door and then quickly and simply disable the latch on the door by slipping some folded paper into the mechanism making it so it doesn't properly latch but doesn't set off any red flags with security.  if possible great, if not oh well.

regardless of the above Pants will return the keycard to the lady, "I think you dropped this miss." and then exit and head back to the ware house.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:53, Fri 14 Feb 2014.

You can disable a latch, no problem. I'm guessing you're doing it to a stairwell?

yes sir, that was the plan

After looking over the information that Twitch managed to get his hands on, Saint Velveteen was a little jealous.  None of the blueprints or security information had come up in his search.  Granted, Velveteen had been much faster.  And Twitch's info didn't include a list of current contestants, so St. V figured their abilities for obtaining information were probably about even.  Which was a good thing since now Velveteen knew he wouldn't have to carry the whole team in this regard.

"If you really want to slow Lonestar's response time," St. Velveteen says to Castanova, "don't push the panic buttons on location.  Set them off in a different direction.  That way they'll be busy with something else, somewhere else, if we manage to get ourselves into a jam."

So it seems you guys have gotten the data you want. Are you ready to make an operational plan?

I'm ready to plan. Once Pants gets back, I'll be ready to pool resources.

I'm ready.  This whole time I actually thought we were planning as well as collecting information, so... yeah, I'm ready.

OOC:  Ready and waiting....:)

Okay, so can we stop planning to plan and just ... plan?

(Pants said he's coming back, and unless he gets the munchies and decides to hold up a stuffer shack, he shouldn't have any trouble rejoining you lot.)

In reply to Papa Bear (msg # 78):

OCC: What are you preparing? You are always preparing! JUST GO!

Firefox wanders over to Warlock.  "Care to share your spell list?  I can burn stuff about 5 different ways, though I throw a pretty decent stunball too.  Pretty decent at taking out elementals and spirits as well if necessary."

Ludicrous speed - GO!

So just tossing things out here, Carver offers to update everyone's radios with rating 4 broadcast encryption. He's also got a grapple gun he'll share if we go with a roof insertion. Does anyone have a sequencer or a maglock passkey? (I actually have some cash on the side 'cause I forgot to finish character creation if we need it)

"Now it will cut into profits somewhat, but I can see if a friend of mine in Lonestar could... say... delay the Star's response times a couple minutes if we need it."

In reply to Firefox (msg # 80):

Burning things is a specialty of mine as well, my inner pyro will not be silenced. Stunning and lightning I can also pull off. I can do a little bit of healing, but I am mostly terrible at it. Some personal combat enhancements are also in my repertoire. I am a bit limited due to lack of funds.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:20, Mon 17 Feb 2014.

Firefox grins.  "Then I think we're in agreement on the nature of an appropriate distraction, should one be required.  What sort of material were you looking for funds for?  I may be able to assist."

She chatted with the mage for another couple of minutes before returning to the blueprints and reviewing the options with her teammates.  Getting to the twelfth floor on the inside was going to be a lot easier than on the outside.

Pulling out her phone again, she re-dialed Adonna.  "Hi dear.  Sorry to disturb again.  Looks like a face-to-face meeting with one of your parazoology experts is called for after all.  Happy to do it by trid if they happen to be remote of course.   I can't recall whether your travels have ever taken you down under."

It takes a few rings before Adonna picks up. "Good evening again. No, of course, never an issue.

"Let me check the little friendly rolodex ... Yes, yes, I do have someone in town you might like. Dr. Birwin, parabiology researcher with a specialization in predators. In fact, his first and third PhDs were both in Australia. Is this regarding that bunyip sighting in the Sound? No? Alright. Well I'd be happy to set up a meeting. $500 for expenses ought to cover any inconvenience to him for the short notice. I should be able to arrange something tomorrow."

"Thanks as always.  Tomorrow will be fine.  Can count on his discretion?"

Carver will pull up the nearest spaces for rent he can. If it comes back as a We-Stor-U brand coffin hotel, he will smile widely and pull up his premium membership bonus card (400 nuyen until he gets free airfare for any air travel booked through Southwest UCAS airlines that starts and ends with cities ending in "eattle" or "ewark"!)