15506/Face to Face

Face to Face
Date of Scene:	31 July 2023
Location:	33-01 Northern Blvd, Queens
Synopsis:	A meeting between hackers discussing employment
Cast of Characters:	Jane Roe, Felicity Smoak, Oliver Queen

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Jane Roe has posed:
The building that Vermilion had directed the Ghost Fox Goddess to was made from yellow bricks, darker stripes decorating it all over its 3 story colossal size. However, the whole thing only had three window areas a floor above ground, two of them on the front, one in 33rd Street. In general, it was't a very hospitable building to begin with, and the steel doors didn't make it much more inviting either. The most inviting place on it was the parking lot that surrounded the building on the southern and eastern side with a bypass at the back. A parking lot that was mostly deserted but for a trio of cars. A little nissan suburban in blue, good for resale. A black Volvo SUV, possibly new so much it shines. And a junker of a VW bus. Not a classic flowerpower one, but its younger sibling, and probably worth nigh nothing.

Felicity Smoak has posed:
Although Felicity had suggested she could just ride up to the meeting on the back of the Green Arrowcycle to make a point, that was widely considered too ostentatious an entrance (and as likely to ruin any hope of an amicable first meeting as not). So, the question had been raised... how /does/ Felicity approach this, given the current parameters? There was every possibility that this was some kind of a trap, after all.

For starters, she let Oliver go first to get into position. Second, she established comms between them so they could talk (even if she wasn't behind her command center, she still had control over most of their operations from her phone). Third, she had their driver drop her off.

The third might seem odd given that Vermilion had specifically said she could bring a friend to this, but in the spirit of honoring the rules and playing well with others, once Felicity stepped out of the back of the town car, she sent the driver away (no doubt to park not far away). And so, it isn't long before that otherwise mostly deserted parking lot is occupied by one more figure -- a slender blonde in a ponytail, glasses, loose slacks, flats, and a nice blouse. The overall look is 'business casual,' but she also looked like she could take off at a sprint or go hood-sliding in a moment's notice if she needed.

"So... deserted parking lot in the middle of the night. This is fun. You think it's too late to change my mind? Not that I'm scared. I mean, why would this freak me out, right? Just another Saturday night. Do I knock on the door? Or do you think I just stand here and wait for the sniper?"

Was she talking to herself? It sure seemed like it, aside from the tiny little flesh-toned earpiece in her ear.

Oliver Queen has posed:
There is a reasonable chance that the meeting is exactly what it is supposed to be. That everything is on the up and up.

But these aren't exactly normal circumstances.

If it were him going to some meeting in the middle of the night he would be cautious, certainly, but not entirely concerned. Which is probably ironic given that anyone he is likely to be meeting in the middle of the night is likely to be fairly dangerous. But there are different degrees of danger and Oliver simply doesn't know the dangers of her world, the online hacking world, as well as he knows the more conventional criminal undertakings.

On the plus side, there's probably not many hackers out there that can call on someone quite as well trained and experienced at the more covert sude of things then himself.

So Felicity at least has that going for her.

Leaving his motorcycle tucked away in an alley a block away, Green Arrow takes to the rooftops. The high ground and all that. It does give one a different perspective on things certainly, a better vantgage point and his masked gaze flicks over the quiet -- though not completely deserted -- streets. Even in this, a primarily industrial area there are a few people out and about and he notes each one as he makes his way over that unconventional highway, firing off one more arrow as he makes his way to the rooftop of the building they were told to meet at.

"It's never too late to change your mind," Ollie replies quietly over those comms, standing stock-still for just a moment, letting his gaze roam over that rooftop looking for anything out of place. "But you're not going to," he adds, a brief smile touching his face.

She might not be quite as stubborn as him, but she's probably at least in the same ballpark.

I'm on the roof and everything looks clear from up here. If no one approaches you in the parking lot I'll slip into the building," he says, reporting to her as he moves to the back of the building overlooking that lot and it's trio of vehicles. "I don't think I would bother knocking though. Just try the door. If you're meeting inside I imagine it's a safe bet it's open," he adds, crouching down by the building's edge as he watches her below.

"You've got this."

Jane Roe has posed:
Behind Felicity, on Northern Boulevard, cars drive by. creating a noise background that is not too different from white noise. Just the constant humming and drumming of cars, because after all, it was pretty much in the middle of Queens - just an industrial corner of it that was deserted at night.But still, the comment rang through more than just once the night's air - it made it twice. Once through pushing air together, once through the EM spectrum from the earpiece.

To jane, the modulation of the EM wave was noticeable. A new little tingle for the moment as Felicity's lips moved, So she wasn't alone. Not at all. Where was the other? Dark eyes searched the surroundings, trying to figure out where the unknown other partner was. But she didn't want to let Ghost Fox Goddess wait too long, noticing the return transmission. The contents would need to be demodulated and analyzed to understand what was said, but... the presence of the answer and the strong signal was enough to figure out that there was one other person.

The Headlights of the Volvo turn on, casting their blue LED light onto the concrete and over the blonde, turning that cone into visible colors while the rest of the area appeared to become darker. Just an optic illusion, but one that always worked. The sound of a car door opening and boots on concrete followed, the sihouette of Jane hanging over the doorframe.

"Ghost Fox Goddess? Well, I wanted to say, never send a boy to do a woman's job. But seems like that's already what happened. Relax. If I had wanted to off you, you'd been dead the moment you got off that car. Now, where does your friend hide?" The black silhouette points to their own ear. They knew that something was sending there. A clear indicator that she knew.

Felicity Smoak has posed:
"What do you mean I'm not going to?" Felicity tsks. "Geeze, you act like you know me..."

But this time it was her turn to smile, knowing full well the man she was speaking to knew her better than any living soul on the planet. Then she was looking around until... lights. Bright lights.

Felicity's hand comes up to place her knuckles against the bridge of her nose, squinting through the headlights of the silhouette that steps out. It wrinkles the bridge of her nose and shifts the glasses on her face.

"Is.. all the posturing absolutely necessary?" she calls towards the shape of the figure. "It's not that it's not impressive or whatever, but there's just been a lot of, 'I could break in here any time I wanted,' and 'I could kill you whenever,'" she even deepens her voice, impersonating no one in particular, "the last couple of weeks. It's kind of... I don't know. It doesn't seem productive. Maybe it's a New York thing."

For her part though, she doesn't even look up to where 'her friend' is. She keeps her eyes on the figure at the car.

"If I really thought you wanted to kill me, I wouldn't have gotten out of the car. As for my friend.. you said I could bring one. So, I did. I never said I'd introduce you. Do you want to come out and talk or...?"

Jane Roe has posed:
"The tropes demand to be fed." The figure stays where they are for a couple more moments, then the highbeams turn off as the arm at the steering wheel turns it down to the normal road lights. The door though stays open as she moves around it, taking a seat on the hood, driver side between the lights.

"Though you know, I said no transmitters. Mind handing me that bug in your ear?" One hand is stretched out, the head canted a little to the side. "As for tropes... I never said I wanted someone to break into a building. I just chose a good parking lot with an easy off route. Take a seat? You were the one that wanted to offer me something."

Felicity Smoak has posed:
/The tropes demand to be fed./

That earns a laugh from Felicity. "You have /definitely/ got the whole mysteriously threatening thing down," she says, taking a few steps closer to the car when Jane lowers the lights and moves around to the front.

The bit about the transmitters, though, has her pursing her lips and then reaching up to pluck the little device out. Busted. "Okay, fair. But in my defense, I was pretty sure, but I didn't /know/ you weren't going to try to kill me. So. Precautious."

She doesn't hand it over, though.

"I'm /definitely/ not handing over my tech. But, I /will/ turn it off." Oliver could see them, anyway, and nothing stopped him from coming down if he wanted or needed to. So, that's the last of the audio transmissions. Felicity holds down a button that turns off her device (and kills the link). The EM signal goes down and she shoves it into the top of her bra as a convenient place to hold it, since her slacks had no pockets.

She holds up her hands, then, empty, and turns to sit on the hood, too. Well... more like perch. She leans against it, her feet never leaving the ground, and she folds her hands, letting them rest against her thighs.

"You're right, though. I /do/ want to offer you something. First thing's first.. I don't go by Ghost Fox Goddess, anymore. These days, when I'm out crawling databases like how you saw, I'm mostly called Overwatch. My name's Felicity, and I'm still trying to make a difference. Just.. in a different way than I did back in college."

Jane Roe has posed:
Jane Roe says, "You can have it back in a second." Vermilion offers, the sudden turn off of the device earning a short flinch, but then a shrug as the hand is retracted to rest on the car hood, one foot on the ground with the tip, the other against the front bumper.

"Overwatch? Rolls easier of the tongue. Or do you prefer Felicity?" A moment the head tilts to the other side, the eyes blinking slowly.

She reaches out in the EM, into the car, to the toughbook with the turned off screen. The searchterm Felicity is entered into a database, together with the rough size and age, and then, the bot starts to crawl.

"Sorry, if I can't give you the same information in return. Like, I go by Vermilion, you know that. It's short for the Vermilion bird. I speak fluent Japanese and 4 dozen programming languages, but that's it."

Felicity Smoak has posed:
"For this situation, Felicity," the blonde woman says, smiling. "And it's fine. I've been where you are. Sort of. I mean, I met people online I didn't fully trust. I wasn't usually about to be offered a job in the process of it... but, you're good. The hack intercepted. Picking up on the whole comms thing a second ago. I'm starting up a company, and I could use some talent. Software architecture, encryption, pen testing, and depending on how receptive you are.. I might even have a few things that aren't strictly company business. I'm out to help people. As many as I can. Sometimes, that means getting better software into the hands of people that will use it for good. Other times, that means going digging for information on some really bad people in database we're not supposed to be looking in."

With just the name 'Felicity'... there's a whole bunch of results that mostly feature Keri Russell as Felicity Porter, but statistically, they all score really low hits because of some pretty obvious age and appearance differences.

Interestingly enough, between 1987 and 1991, there were only about 50 babies a year named Felicity. So, there weren't a whole lot out there with her name. Some of them could be ruled out immediately by being deceased or in prison. Only one of them, Felicity Smoak, had an article written about winning the Nevada State Mathletics Competition three years in a row and being accepted into MIT.

After that, it's not hard to trace that to a 2008 National Information Technology Competition that she placed 2nd in (the same year Ghost Fox Goddess was rumored to have pulled off that hack of the Department of Education that Cooper Seldon later killed himself over rather than be sentenced). A year later, Felicity graduated with Masters in both Computer Science and Cyber Security from MIT.

Then it's all Starling City. Cell phone. Address. Registered Democrat. She's got a red Mini Cooper registered in her name. Last known employment is at Queen Consolidated.

These companies like LexisNexis that compiled people's data from all over really were menaces even to people that didn't want their information out there. There's not a huge footprint other than the documents that the government makes freely available, but even that's massive.

Also in the results:

Felicity
1998 . Drama . 4 seasons

80% liked this TV show

Felicity Porter is a shy girl who finds out what life on her own is really following her high-school graduation. Sheltered as a child, Felicity never made any of her own decisions -- that is until she moves to New York to go to college and to follow high-school classmate Ben Covington, whom she had ... MORE->

First episode date: September 29, 1998 (USA)
Theme songs: New Version of You, Felicity Theme

Jane Roe has posed:
"I doubt you have been where I am. Because it's not a matter of trust. You got me into the FBI database by getting you into the NYPD bridge. Which turned out to be a waste of time, since the data I looked for does not seem to exist there either, but hey, now we're here."

Jane brushes over her forehead like to push away a lock of hair, but her hair is already too short to hang there. "Company sounds like money, which is good. As is doing something. But there's a hitch with it all."

She stays silent, tilting the head once again as she skims the data that the laptop gathered, eyebrows wrinkling a moment.

"You see, you got all those pretty numbers. Like..." Jane recites first the car license plate. Then the car's VIN. Felicity's SSN. "You're Felicity Stoak. Me? I am nobody. For those databases? I don't exist. I am the 404 of citizen databases. My face is nowhere. I'm the literal Jane Roe."

Oliver Queen has posed:
There are a number of advantages in the rooftop highway that the vigilantes of this world tend to favor to make their way through cities like these. Of course there is the elebation, that vantage point that tends to give one a better view -- a bird's eye view -- of what's going on down below. There is also the fact that most rooftops are above the casual light pollution of the city, above the street lights and porch lights, the lights from passing vehicles. They are sheathed n shadow.

And the Green Arrow has done a pretty good job of making the shadows his friend.

While it is certainly not ideal to have their audio connection cutoff as it has been -- even if it is by choice -- Oliver's vantage point on the rooftop leaves him with a clear field of sight below and the parking lot there, the background noise of passing traffic making it a little difficult to make out precisely what is being said, some words simply lost to the night.

But he does have line of sight on Felicity and on the nearby van that flooded the lot with that light. For now that will do, will put to rest some of his concerns. Enough so he doesn't feel the need to simply barge in and make his own presence in all of this known. She is here to make a job offer afterall, not complete a sting operation, not to bring this Vermilion down. Amd if tension still fills the air, well, it hasn't boiled over into out and out danger, at least not yet.

So the Green Arrow waits. And watches.

Felicity Smoak has posed:
"Hey, you're not nobody. You're somebody to me!"

Felicity's dark pink lips curl in an encouraging smile, her eyes playfully amused behind her rectangle-framed glasses.

"And I'm sure we can get you some pretty numbers, too. Like, maybe an account number... where I can put even more pretty numbers for helping me out. Unless you only deal in cash, which I get if you're trying to stay off the grid. Numbers are like potato chips, you know? Betcha can't have just one. But it's not super ideal to haul around like a suitcase worth of cash everywhere you go. I mean, good for building muscles, but not so convenient for tech types. That's probably why most of us moved to crypto a while back."

Her lips quirk a grin.

"Cool trick, though. I don't even have my license plate number memorized. You have like a neural interface to a cellular connection or something? See? This is the kind of thing that would be /super/ useful for a startup tech company.."

Jane Roe has posed:
Somebody to her? Jane raises an eyebrow, careful. "Pardon?"

"Swiss bank accounts, bitcoin wallets. I got those numbers and borrow some if I need to. Cash is helpful, but getting paid in cash over the net is a hazzle. Ever tried to send a dead president per E-Mail and then pay with it? Or cash a copy of a cheque? Doesn't work. And Money order places are routinely under video surveillence. Online banking it is."

That's when Felicity picks up that there was some kind of looking the numbers up. "Uhm... It's complicated."

Felicity Smoak has posed:
/Pardon?/

"Which part?" Felicity blinks, that smile still quirking the corners of her lips. "Sorry. Sometimes I start talking and my brain sort of does this thing where it gets ahead and then my mouth tries to catch up. It's kind of annoying, actually. For me, I mean. Also probably for you... Anyway, I just mean that if you were /nobody/, then we wouldn't be having his conversation. Or I'd be having it with myself. Which, again. Maybe not completely out of the realm of possibility."

She waves her hand slightly and shakes her head.

"Regardless, you have skills that I'm sure would come in handy. In one capacity or another. If you don't want to be a W2 employee, we can work around that. And trust me, ever since I sort of got sucked into another dimension.. or.. whatever happened.. complicated has become a relative term." She frowns slightly, her eyes semi-unfocusing. "That reminds me. I need to follow up on that. Man, I've been slipping, recently. Starting up your own company is /time consuming/."

Jane Roe has posed:
"I am not someone that even had a tangent with you a few days ago. And to the world at large, I am nobody of concearn. To the world in general, I do not exist."

Shrugging, Jane made a gesture out to the town around them.

"So, what I am to you? Besides, as you mentioned, a potential asset. I don't think you can legally hire me as a W2. I mean, i don't exist to the states. I don't pay taxes, I don't vote. Hiring someone that doesn't exist sounds like a challenge."

There's a chuckle, the hand gesturing a little again.

"I bet. Catching up on about 5000 years of world history, 200 years of film and trying to understand society is also quite time consuming."

Felicity Smoak has posed:
"You're a very literal person. Sorry. I'll try to be less... me," Felicity points out as if she was making a note to herself, reaching up to push her glasses a little further up her nose, but then there's another smile. "That's exactly what you are to me, which in my experience is a good place to start. With any luck, I'm a potential asset to you, too, so it's mutually beneficial. Because otherwise things tend to get a little one-sided..."

Rambling again.

"Hiring you isn't a problem, depending on what you wanted to do. It's not like fake identities are all that hard. But /that/ starts a whole series of numbers and.. see previous potato chip comment."

She pauses, then.

"Five thousand years?"

Jane Roe has posed:
"That's humanity's recorded history. I hadn't had a history class to break it down for me so I got to figure it out myself, right?"

Jane shrugs, smiling drily.

"A whole series of numbers that can be faked or modified as needed. Take a person that is supposed to be dead, erase the notes that they are dead, alter some name entries... I guess that works for a time, till someone looks at the paper documents. Might work easier with some modified paper documents from somewhere else in hand."

Felicity Smoak has posed:
"Oh, I get it. I just don't get /why/ you needed it. Regardless, girl, you needed YouTube. One night while I was bored, I learned about the history of the Nile Delta /and/ growing my own herb garden..."

At the mention of faking a series of numbers, though, Felicity raises her hand, snaps her fingers, and then finger-guns at Jane. "Exactly. Plus, it's /way/ less mysterious than going around and calling yourself nobody. I mean, if that's something you're specifically going for it's one thing, but eventually that stands out of a crowd because most people like having an identity of some kind."

She shrugs faintly, then, and smiles. "Bright side of starting from scratch is that you get to pick what you want your name to be."