7334/Open Circuit, Loose Threads

Open Circuit, Loose Threads
Date of Scene:	12 August 2021
Location:	Robbinsville apartment building, Gotham City
Synopsis:	Red Robin and Anarky investigate a lead on a case they've been working on together. Someone takes notice.
Cast of Characters:	Tim Drake, Lonnie Machin

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Tim Drake has posed:
    So far, the local holdings of Perreault & Richelieu haven't provided much of anything. At least the ones they currently own outright, though over the past two years that the wealth management firm has begun to dabble in real estate they've bought and sold well over two dozen other locations in Gotham alone that are in various states of occupation now. It might be worth looking deeper into those buildings at some point, but Tim's marked it as fairly low priority.

    Not something to ignore, just something to hold off on unless their current lead dries up.

    Said current lead is Kevin Baker, who was briefly a technician at the Sheldon Park Generating Station. During the recent take-over by mercenary forces, Mr. Baker had disappeared. He was neither held with the main group of hostages nor kept in the control room, and only made himself known once the hostiles had been neutralized. His excuse had apparently been that he was hiding in the bathroom, and like several of the staff, he'd been given an extended leave of absence after an exam by a psychiatric team.

    He never showed back up to work. Two weeks later he'd sent in his letter of resignation and made off for parts unknown.

    "I don't know if there's actually any connection," Red Robin is saying as he starts to work open the window into Mr. Baker's abandoned apartment with the tip of a shuriken. "But my contact at the Gotham Power says there aren't any suspicious usage spikes at any of the properties Perreault & Richelieu have owned in the past two years, and something about that just seems off."

    The flimsy wood around the window cracks quietly, and with a sigh Tim pushes it open, giving it a final, critical gaze before he slips inside. It's dark, the smell of must and rot and cloying air the only thing to greet him as his boots hit the cheap laminate flooring.

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    "I mean you can hide your power use, you just have to do it in ways that I don't care to disclose. But I mean - with superadvanced technology, anything is possible. Maybe they stole some miniaturized ARC generators from Stark Power-" Lonnie looks around slowly after he slithers in the window, and then the black-clad vigilante takes a heavy reinforced flashlight out of his toolbelt and clicks it on.
    He begins to search the room, humming under his breath. "Na na na na... you see my problem is this, I'm dreaming away, wishing that heroes they truly exist~" He asks, archly, "How does Batman power his mysterious secret base? I don't believe the helicarrier theory, by the way - I think his primary area of operations is wholly terrestrial. The car, servicing a machine like that requires a facility on par with the US military."

Tim Drake has posed:
    "If you had access to superadvanced technology why would you steal commercial-grade computer chips from South Korea, then?" Tim asks. With the lenses of his domino mask he doesn't really need the flashlight, but you do lose color perception with nightvision. So he pulls out a flashlight of his own and hooks it to the edge of his cape collar, where it illuminates a steady cone directly in front of him as he hugs the room's perimeter.

    And it's just a room. Someone lived here, sure, but not in recent memory. There's a frumpy couch and an honest-to-god CRT television on a flimsy stand in front of it. "Wow, I haven't seen one of those in years," he says once he's turned towards it. There's a pile of mail on the nearby counter of the dinky kitchenette, spam mail and nothing of importance, either addressed to 'our neighbor' or the names of long-past tenants. No Kevin Baker.

    The bedroom is similarly furnished, in the sense that it looks like someone bought the cheapest crap at a thrift shop they could to give the passing illusion of a living space. Threadbare blankets on the bed. Flat pillows. A couple of forgotten items of clothing in the closet, but mostly empty wire hangers.

    Tim steps into the bathroom and a few moments later, steps back out with his nose wrinkled. The less the said about what he's found in there, the better.

    Even the kitchen cupboards are almost bare. "Maybe there wasn't anything to this after all."

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    "I mean, I scavenge them, cathode ray tubes are actually very useful. And in a way they're just *neater* than components in modern televisions. A cathode ray tube fires electrons at a screen, it's really quite-" He pauses. "Sorry. I just think they're neat." He taps the chin on his mask with a finger and then reaches down to his belt to take his cane off it, which he snaps out to its full length with the flick of a wrist - and then he casually uses the butt-end of it to smash in the front of that TV.
    "There's hollow space in CRT TVs. People used to smuggle contraband in them all the time, use them for money drops..."

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim snaps the fridge closed again, smart enough that he's pinched his nose shut before he opens it, and glances over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth lifts, and then he turns away with a shake of his head. "They still get a lot of use in the FG circuit for older games. Something about the screen lag?" He doesn't quite know, but it's a bit of trivia that has stuck around in the steel trap of his brain. Could be useful some day!

    There's nothing in the freezer except an empty ice cube tray. He's about to make some sort of comment about it, but then glass shatters and Tim ducks down, his own staff out and extended in half a second. "What the--!" He huffs out a breath as he walks over, mouth thinned into an unimpressed look. There's nothing inside the television. Well, except parts that Lonnie is free to scavenge. But first, Tim crouches down to peer into the innards. "Those capacitors could fry you like an egg, huh?"

    With a sigh, he tucks his elbow against his knee and rests his chin in his palm. "There's just something suspicious about all this. It's one thing for someone in Gotham to disappear without a trace, but his file is so thin he doesn't feel like a real person. I couldn't find any sign of it being a fake identity, but there's something about him that's just--."

    The screech of the tv speakers cuts Tim off, starting off as a sharp burst of static before it starts to blare the sounds of an unseen show at max volume. A laugh track, then someone--maybe a news anchor--talking, rapid Spanish, commentary of some sort of sports game. In the bedroom, a radio-slash-clock begins to cycle through stations rapidly while its alarm goes off. Overhead the lights blink on and off rapidly.

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    "Yeah, they pack a MASSIVE electrical charge, most people just had no idea how powerful the capacitor in a-" Lonnie straightens up, and then murmurs "Well, good news is, Atletico Madrid won tonight." He looks around and then activates his tazer, which crackles to life with a fzzzzzzzzvmmmmm and begins to drip electrical sparks onto the ground. Where do you think Lonnie got the capacitors to make this weapon on the cheap, back in the day?
    "Back to back?"
    He twirls his cane around, and then holds it from the end in one hand, against his shoulders, before he reaches down to his belt and unclips a smoke grenade, though he doesn't pull the pin in it yet.

Tim Drake has posed:
    It's a near thing, but Tim somehow manages to not tip back and land on his ass. The suit would've protected him from the glass, sure, but it's a compromising position to be in. Especially when Tim has no idea what the hell is happening. But he's up on his feet, steadying out his breath as he gives Lonnie a quick nod and takes up position, close enough that his cape sweeps against the back of Lonnie's shins. "Maybe some sort of short circuit, or... electrical overload?"

    There's no smell of burning plastic or metal to suggest melting circuits, not even the hum of electricity except for what's crackling off the end of Lonnie's staff. Tim looks back and forth but there's nothing except the cacophony of sound and the rapid on-off-on-off-on-off of the yellow incandescent lightbulbs in the ceiling fixture above.

    "We should leave, someone's going to come snooping around with all this--."

    And again he's cut off, though this time it's by the sudden cessation of all activity. Outside the window, a faint wind whistles through the Gotham streets. Distantly, a car horn blares. That's it.

    Until the televison speakers crackle to life again with a distorted voice. "Open your eyes," it says, and Tim's head whips towards the source of the sound. His muscles are tense. "You are blind. We will show you the way."

    It repeats, and Tim inhales. "I hate being right," he says, under his breath.

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    Lonnie tosses the gas grenade up in the air and catches it. "Boy, are you barking up the wrong tree with me, hoss!" He rolls his neck, and then shifts, so their backs are to the windows, and he muses, "So what do you think, Robin? Should we stay around and be indoctrinated into somebody's weird techno-cult, or should I drop this gas grenade to obscure whatever camera they're watching us through and then we both mysteriously vanish? Hmmm? Tough call..."
    He pulls the pin on the grenade and drops it, as it floods the room with acrid smoke. Fwoooooooooshhhhhhhhh...
    Of course, before they make their getaway, he takes a flashbang with a *timer* on it off his belt and wags his eyebrows at Tim behind his mask, before he passes it over to him.

Tim Drake has posed:
    All Tim can do is shake his head. His fingers grip tight around his staff as he holds it in a defensive position in front of himself, but as the message continues to repeat for a third and then fourth time, nothing else seems to be happening. Another scan of the room with his eyes doesn't pick up any obvious places a camera could be, but without basically tearing the room apart, there's no way to know.

    He's not picking up anything broadcasting a signal, though, and that's the strange bit.

    "I dunno, if I *had* to join a cult..." He's kidding. He turns his head to nod once, and retrieves a rebreather from his belt to press over his mouth as the room begins to fill with smoke. Lonnie's given the chance to go out first, Tim putting himself between Anarky and the window, and takes the flashbang with a wordless grimace.

    As he throws it into the CRT's exposed innards, the message stops abruptly. Instead, the voice just laughs, and it's robotic, a speech to text algorithm mechanically repeating the syllable "ha" over and over again, rising in volume with each synthetic sound.

    Tim tumbles backwards out the window and lands on the fire escape in a crouch, ducked down to cover his ears as the flashbang goes off. The room fills with the smell of electrical components overloading, more smoke joining what's coming out of Lonnie's grenade.

    And then all is silent.

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    Lonnie goes tumbling out the window, and he physically swings down to grab the ladder, one foot on a rung and one hand gripping another rung as he looks up at Tim and then out along the alley. "Was I ever that pretentious in the way I antagonized you guys?" He asks, quizzically, "Because if I was I will *absolutely* work on upping my game."
    He takes out his gussied-up cell phone and looks through it. "Bringing up all the local GCPD cars. If they chase us, we can use the cops to run them off." His expressionless mask... hides his expression.

Tim Drake has posed:
    For a moment, Tim is visibly perturbed enough that he doesn't reply. His hands brace against the fire escape so that he can push himself up onto his feet, and then he's looking into the ruined interior of the apartment.

    He tucks the rebreather away, into its designated pouch on his utility belt. And then he finally says, "No comment," with a faint smile aimed down towards Lonnie, before he vaults over the railing and lands smoothly in the alleyway below.

    Aside for the smoke now billowing out of the open window, there's nothing.

    Tim pauses to scan through the police chatter, head tilted downwards as he pulls up the recent broadcasts. "Someone just called it in," he says, but his brow furrows as he plays back the recording of the 911 call, automatically logged in his system. His hand tucks against his ear.

    "They're just reporting the smoke and sound of an explosion." He cranes his neck upwards, towards where one of the adjacent apartments is now lit up from inside. It's directly above Mr. Baker's apartment.

    Two GCPD units are already on their way, and Tim's brow furrows above his mask. "What do you think they wanted us to see?"

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    "I think it was more that they wanted to see US. When you know your enemy, you can start preparing for them." Lonnie says before he drops down into the alley and lands in a crouch. He gets up and then shakes one ankle out, then the other in a catlike manner. "...They're playing with us, which speaks to a certain amount of overconfidence. But we know this about them - they like to use technology to jerk people around in a lot of flashy and unsettling ways."
    He pats Tim on the shoulder lightly, "And that sort of lead can be pulled from both ends. Can't it?" He might be smiling... it's hard to tell.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim looks up for just a little bit longer. The alley's sole source of illumination is a light over the apartment building's back door about 10 meters away, but it's enough to highlight the determined set of Tim's jaw. Whatever this is, he's caught the scent of it now, ready to run it down with the relentlessness of a trained bloodhound. "Yeah," he says, distantly.

    And then behind the lenses of his mask, he blinks. His chin tips forward so he's looking straight ahead now. "It means we're onto something, though, and whatever Kevin Baker was doing while his coworkers were held hostage is important." It's something, at least. A new angle to consider. More information to synthesize with the currently known details of the case. He smiles at Lonnie, just a flash of a positive expression, before he sinks back into thoughtfulness. "We can use this," he agrees.

    There are sirens in the distance now, blue and red flashing faintly against the bricks near the mouth of the alley. Tim's head jerks in the opposite direction. "Come on. We can look over the police report later, see if they find anything." He starts to move, cape fluttering behind him as he breaks into a sprint.

    "See you later? Gotta go meet Batman in his base on the moon," he calls out, turning back to grin just before he fires his grapple gun off into the air and zips away.

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    Lonnie stays where he is for a moment, and then he mumbles, "Does he really-" He looks up at the moon, and then says, "...Huh." Then he looks around and says, "...I really wish I could find a good propellent cartridge for those grapple guns. Well, I'll stop and get Yap a Caffe Doggo." He steps backward into the alley. "...Moon base. *Really*. I bet he *does* have a moonbase."