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It's kinda fuck-you in the morning hours, the hazy half-real time of night when just about no one at all is ever awake, and certainly no one will be around in an office building. And yet...and yet. Mearc, at least, has the excuse that this is for work. He's coming at a side door of the building with his traveler's hook, not particularly worried about cameras or being caught. If there are cameras, what are the chances of them being monitored this time of night? Just about nothing. He's not dressed like a ninja; in fact, his grey cargo pants are paired with a polo shirt with the logo for a local telecomm company on one side of the chest and across the back.
But he's not expecting to need that excuse, tonight.
The building is predictably deserted. There shouldn't be any live guards, just locks and alarms. But once he's inside, there's a few doors open that probably should be closed. Down one of the halls, there's a faint flickering light coming from inside one open door. There's no real sound of movement from a distance, even in the dead still air...
Mearc adjusts how his messenger bag is sitting on his body, so it'll move more quietly, and slips toward that light slowly, uncertainly, trying to see just how bad his timing is. Employee he'll have to bluff, or...?
Whoever's inside doesn't notice Mearc sneaking down the hall. He's able to approach close enough to see someone standing inside the door with their back to him. The room looks like a utility closet, and is mostly home to fuses and cleaning supplies, and the person standing inside is wearing a navy blue work coverall, hunched over something.
Janitor? Janitor, probably. Well, Mearcstapa knows how to deal with janitors, at least those who see him as a dopey, lanky strawberry blonde nerd in a telecomm shirt. "Ah, excuse me?"
Of course, the illusion might be ruined by his intensely green glowing freckles against blue-black skin, and the loud rhythmic rustle of someone running through dried cornstalks that give him away as an Autumn.
The "janitor" turns around, and Mearc notices several things. He has a PECO logo on his chest, which indicates he's an electrician, and not even an employee of this building, the kind of guy they send out to check the wires. He doesn't have any equipment in here with him, no heavy toolbag. He also isn't actually doing anything with the power, but patching into the network cables arranged inside the closet, a loop of bright blue cable snaking from the wall to a small black device in his hands.
This is all alarming enough, but what Mearc likely notices most is the figure's own mien. The electrician's face is hidden by a baseball cap and dark shades, but the face and hair that peek out are unmistakeably pixellated, made up of a myriad of tiny squares. Some of the pixels are unstable, flickering and scrambling around the edges of his chin and forehead. Dark eyebrows lift up on his light skin as he faces the other Lost, and his mouth drops open slightly, clearly caught off guard. "Uh..."
Mearc blinks a couple times quietly, his pupil-less Vantablack eyes scanning the scene before centering back on Glitch. And it's not necessarily clear if he's making eye contact, but the attention he gives is pointed.
"Okay..." The tone of that word is 'what now' and 'welp' all in one.
Glitch reaches up and removes his shades, exposing his pixellated eyes, and meets Mearc's dark stare. "Do, uh. You work here? I'm not armed, don't freak out," he says, slowly raising the hand that isn't clutching a blackbox. Indeed, it doesn't seem that he is, though he could be hiding a lot in that outfit. "I'm with the Freehold."
"I'm also with the Freehold. And I've been hired to test the security here--so if the cops show up or anything, I'll do the talking; they expect to find me breaking into places, and you won't be the first 'new apprentice' they've seen me with." He almost smiles, head turning to the device Glitch is holding. "Clearly, though, the report I write up needs to include the risk of this sort of attack. So get everything you need now, if you can."
He heaves out a sigh of relief, pulls out a smartphone with a shattered screen, and swipes at what looks like a little mobile terminal app a bit before unplugging the box and tucking it away in his coveralls. "I haven't tripped anything yet. We should be okay." He doffs his hat, hair just as pixellated as his skin, medium length and dark and mussy. "Just getting dirt on someone who deserves it," he half-explains, though he doesn't offer much more detail. "So...you want me to tag along? I figured I was gonna have to bail."
"At this point, it's up to you, I suppose. Yes, I'm working for McFarleigh--" The CIO of the insurance company in question "--but the Freehold has my loyalty first, and you seem like someone I ought to know. Especially if this is something you get up to regularly. Where was your point of entry, if I may ask?"
He seems to be at ease now, and the color of his freckles slowly shifts from almost entirely green to a roughly even mix of green and neon LED red, making him look like the paint job on a laser tag arena.
The literal Sprite looks a bit proud when that gets asked, but plays humble. "Just the back service door. Stuff's shiny up front here but the utility areas are just fuckin' old. Bump keyed most of it." He looks to Mearc and extends a pixellated hand. "I'm Glitch," he beeps out.
Mearc takes the offered hand, and his freckles shift redder when he hears that name. "Glitch? It's nice to meet you, I suppose. I'm Mearcstapa. I'll be playing a Rogue in Sturm's game. Because clearly I don't use thieves' tools enough in real life, you see."
He blinks and shakes Mearc's hand, noting the "freckles", a curious bit of symmetry to his own dot-art form. "Oh shit, really? Yeah, if you're tight with Sturm you must be cool. I'm more of the uh, direct access type. You might have a few locks to replace." He lets go and looks around briefly. "Well, lead the way, I guess. We gonna see what else got left open?"
"My goal's to make it into the server room and put a pink post-it note on the server rack, to show that I could have accessed the data there, directly. Though clearly you've made a point about not needing server access. And yeah, Sturm's...she's good to me. My partners and I are the other players, along with those of you from Direct Action getting involved." (AFK 5 to grab a food delivery)
Glitch arches a brow at mention of other partners, and then smiles quietly. "And you get paid to do this, yeah? I'm kinda jealous..." He moves to step out into the hallway, but lets Mearc take point on where the physical security test goes next.
Mearc gives Glitch a slightly startled look as he begins to walk. "I mean, this is the fun part. Tomorrow, I'm going to have to write up a detailed report on my findings. But yeah, I am getting paid to break into places."
He nods. "Might even be worth doing paperwork. But yeah, lead the way, I'm not here to get in the way of your job." He sticks his hands in his pockets and looks to Mearc.
Mearc heads down the hall toward an unmarked door. "If you're serious about the paperwork being worth it, we can definitely discuss that at depth later. Though I'm sure you probably already have some awesome career that suits you fine. Ninja warrior competitor, stunt double, something like that?"
He snorts, a harsh little static buzz sound, and shakes his head as they approach the nondescript entry. "I wish. I don't have any real-world jobs. Just our own flavor of Ninja Warrior shit, you know? I was thinking about doing some driving or something, just to ground me." He spends a moment eyeing Mearc's face curiously, looking distracted by the mien.
Mearc's freckles do another colorshift, back toward the green, and he seems thoughtful. "What, like Lyft or Uber? The economics of those jobs is less than ideal. The burden of maintenance and gas and everything lands on the driver. At least with traditional cabs, the company takes responsibility for the vehicle."
He pauses to examine the door. "Pop the latch, or undo the hinges and remove the whole door, just to prove a point?"
Glitch shakes his head again. "I mean, yeah, but I don't worry about economics. I got money. I just probably should have something to do that isn't killing monsters and learning magic." He eyes the door. "If you take the hinges off some management asshole is gonna think he just needs security screws."
"He does need security screws. That's part of the point, to drive home that he needs security screws." Mearc laughs. "But he also needs a latchplate that fits, that's a thing. Right, simple way it is."
He pulls out his lockpicking kit, again going for the traveler's hook to pop the latch before grabbing a pad of post-its from his pocket. The server's in a security cage, but that's no barrier to Mearc putting the post-it on the actual machine, with his nimble fingers. "And that's job finished. You need anything else here?"
Glitch pauses to stare at the caged-off server. He puts a hand on the cage almost wistfully, then shakes his head. "Nah. I got what I needed. Don't want to risk touching anything that might get blamed on you. Still fun to...see the heart of it all," he says, indicating the server. He glances around a bit, then opens up a nearby drawer, not even locked. "Hey. Notepad with passwords on it. And a pop-tart."
Mearc pulls out his phone to take a picture of the notepad. "Oh, and they're bad L337-type passwords, the company name with the I replaces with a 1 and that shit, too. Feel free to take the pop tart; I won't tell anyone."
Glitch snorts derisively at the passwords, then lights up at being offered the pop tart. "Score." He plucks it up and tears open the foil, taking a bite and dropping crumbs all over everything. "You want a pic of yourself in here? I'll snap it for you, let you get a better angle."
Mearc nods, offering Glitch his phone and leaning on the server cage. "Appreciated. Do you want to go get Denny's or something after this?"
The Sprite looks surprised, but smiles a bit and nods. "Yeah. That...I mean, maybe somewhere local better than fuckin' Denny's. Got fruit with mold on it there once, no shit." He leans back and frames Mearc up, and snaps a nice photo of him leaning against the server cage, post-it note on display.
"You can pick the place, then. I'm pretty easy to please, given coffee and a chance for pancakes." He nods. "We can even do slightly more proper introductions there."
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