2019-05-16 - Nothing To See Here

"You two, go down there and check out this slip. Take Hannah." And that's how, around four in the afternoon, before the club was officially open, Graham and Andre went to the Den of Computer Badassery in the back-room of the club to collect Hannah. It was a real 'hey, come with us' moment, which apparently is just the relationship they have with Hannah: 'hi, get in this car now.'

So Graham drove them down here. They detoured along the way, leaving the car at the Boardwalk, which is technically where they are right this second, waiting for corndogs and cokes. "Y'know, so we blend in," is Graham's explanation. Because Sketchy Guy, Wee Brunette, and Black Giant will look a lot more incognito as a trio if they have corndogs and cokes.

You know what makes people blend in on the boardwalk? A baseball cap and sunglasses. It's fucking overcast as hell, and yet Andre's got sunglasses on and a black baseball cap and no one seems to be paying attention to him, even if that coke bottle looks like a doll toy in his meaty grip. "I'm real happy you came here to live, Hannah-Banana," he says excitedly, because this was all Hannah's decision after all. He strolls and eats his corn dog. "We're going to have such a great time."

When the boss says go, Hannah goes. Also when the boss' people roll up in her work den. That works too. She looks ordinary enough in jeans, boots and a dark jacket except for the shortness, which is only made more apparent by the height of her companions, and she doesn't look super enthusiastic about the corn dog but hopefully the coke will be enough cover. Andre gets a faint smile. "Yeah. A great time." Her heart's not in it, but she's not sarcastic either.

So Graham totally fails to notice that Hannah's not into her corn dog (wtf is with chicks in this town not liking wieners?!), too busy making his DELICIOUS with packets of mustard. It's definitely not even remotely suggestive, guys, the smearing and... "Could be worse," he chimes in helpfully, pitching the spent mustard packet into a trash can and then steering his steps along the boardwalk, definitely in the direction of the docks. "At least it's not legit raining right this actual second." Unrelated: "You know anything about security cameras?" Probably he's talking to Hannah, but feel free to share with the group, Andre.

"The best time," Andre agrees with Hannah, and his WHOLE HEART is in that statement, can't she ~feel~ it? He doesn't bother with mustard, he just sticks half the hot dog in his mouth and makes it disappear like magic, talking as he chews (and smacking his lips, it's kind of gross): "The corn dogs here are the best. They burn 'em just right and they get all shriveled so more of the corn sticks to them." Mm, delicious. As for security cameras? "The government uses them to track us."

Hannah silently offers the corndog to Andre, since his clearly isn't going to be long for this world. Win-win! She nearly has to trot to keep up with the rest of the gang, even if they mosey. Looking out over the water, "Yeah, I know some stuff."

Graham says an enthusiastic, "Amen," to Andre's praise for the corn dogs, munching on his mustardy fried crap-on-a-stick. As for being tracked, he shoots a glance up to the corner of a building where a (long-since broken) camera points to the boardwalk, and he wears a contemplative frown while he chews. "Sounds legit." Does it, though? Does it really? Anyway, "Some stuff about, say, making sure we turn off a bunch of 'em so no one sees us?" While they leave the foot-traffic on the boardwalk and stroll, ever-so-incognito, toward the docks. Passed all the shipping boats and house-boats and whatever-the-fuck-else other kind of boats are out here.

Somehow, Andre avoids eating the entire stick when he shoves the rest of the corn dog in his mouth. He sticks the stick (lol) behind his ear, like a giant toothpick, and his beady eyes bulge wide when Hannah hands him her corndog too. "This is why you're my best friend," he says to her, leaning his elbow on her head momentarily in a friendly sort of way, and then continues on: "And because you don't tell me Coke is gonna give me Alzheimer's like my last best friend did," grumble grumble. "She's the one that told me about the security cameras. We could get rid of 'em, though," he tips his chin to Graham. "Baseball bat works."

It's with an air of pained tolerance that Hannah lets Andre briefly use her as an armrest. "Coke is not going to give you Alzheimers," she confirms, glancing at the same camera Graham looks at when she has the neck mobility to do it. "Like just cut the signal? Or more like freeze them, or feed a video loop to each one so it doesn't look weird when they're being monitored?" She cuts a look at Andre that is almost amused. "Or yeah, baseball bat works."

"Too bad we don't have a bat," Andre says sullenly, while briefly looking at his corn dog as though he were considering it as an alternative. Instead, he just eats it. Too delicious.

Okay, IN DEFENSE OF THAT FORMER BFF. Coke gives you diabetes. ALUMINUM gives you Alzheimer's.

In the midst of this baseball bat conversation, Graham notes, "Not right this second, guys. If we come down here bashing cameras today, someone's definitely gonna notice that by the time we get back here." The docks down here aren't exactly Fort Knox, but there are a few bits and pieces of security, stuck to poles and what-not, and a few of the semi-permanent fixtures have, like, ADT Security signs stuck to them. He meanders them down the walkway, like they're just out for a corndoggy stroll, perfectly normal. "We'll bring a bat when we come back," he promises the big guy. "Could you do that, though? With the freezing and the looping?"

Suck it, former BFF. Andre slurps his Coke obnoxiously.

"I bet she can," Andre says in defense of his current BFF, Hannah. There's a sense of pride in his acknowledgement of all the things Hannah can do. "She's super smart with computers. Security cameras are kinda like computers, right?"

Hannah very casually drinks her Coke and wanders along, every now and again just giving the barest glance at the cameras, the signs. "Good, because otherwise I'd need to go back to the club for some stuff." She scuffs the heel of her book absently on the surface they're standing on and isn't looking at Graham but is definitely talking to him. "Yeah. It takes more time. Maybe more than one trip. Cutting them off is easy but it doesn't take long for someone to notice. The other way, someone might not notice at all. Most security guys aren't actually watching the monitors." Yay, she lives up to Andre's expectations!

Oohhhh. "What kinda stuff?" Intrigued Graham looks at Hannah in a whole new light. She has equipment?! He passes that intrigued look over the top of her head to Andre, totally on-board with his enthusiasm for Hannah's capabilities now. They caaaaasually swing to a halt at a T-intersection, where there's a house-boat with one of those ADT signs just over there, and a couple of commercial slips further down the docks (p.s., player has no idea how docks work, so let's all just pretend together). "So, let's say we needed this particular area to go dark for, I dunno, an hour? Maybe two? How long does that take you to make happen?"

Andre's got stars in his eyes. Hannah's super cool. "All kindsa stuff," he replies to Graham. After all, he probably helped move all of this equipment. And now all eyes are on Hannah - after a beady squint to the boat with the ADT sign and a wistful sigh: "I wanna live on a boat."

"Laptop? Cords?" It's not nearly as exciting as Graham probably wants it to be, or Andre, who did help move a lot of cool stuff but not cool stuff for pushing around on a dock when you're trying to not get noticed. But who would suspect a tiny girl with a laptop, the place is crawling with failed writers. Hannah worries her lower lip with her teeth as she looks-but-not-too-much at the area in question. "So, uhm, you mean like just no surveillance? Or dark like no lights as well? Guess you'll need me to take out the alarms too?"

It's definitely not as exciting as Graham wanted it to be. He shares, "Yeah, I was imagining more like night vision goggles and transmission jammers." Are those a thing? They should be a thing. He finished his corndog a minute ago; with nothing better to do with the stick, he tosses it into the water, where it floats around happily in the oily waves. Littering is cool. "We could get you a boat. Which one do you want?" He hitches his thumb toward the one right over there; it's kind of nice.

"I guess if you do dark but you don't have night vision goggles, that might be a problem. But dark*er* would be good. And, yes, please, no alarms."

"The laptop has a sticker on it," Andre adds in helpfully, as though that will sort of amp up the excitement again. "It glitters." He leans himself against the railing of the dock and frowns thoughtfully, looking at the boat that Graham points out with a shake of his bald head. "Nah. That one," he points a big finger towards literally the smallest house-boat in the entire world. "It looks homey."

Hannah stares at a spot near her feet for a long moment, then draws a breath and looks at Graham. "You can do an operation with a scalpel or a chainsaw, which one is going to work out better in the long run?" With that hypothetical she perks a smile at Andre and nods, because yes, the laptop does have a glittery sticker on it. After another glance around she asks, "Do you have a deadline? Because ideally I'd want to come out here for an hour or so to see how everything's wired up."

With a glance to the tiny houseboat, Graham decides, "We could make that happen, I bet." Read: let's find out who lives there and make them want to not live there any more (or just not live, period). And then there's a glance to Andre himself, while Hannah is talking about scalpels and chainsaws, and his brows climb up before his attention returns to their designated haxx0r. "Are you asking me, personally? 'Cause. Chainsaw." Duh. "But I'm just guessing Felix told us to bring you so we don't wind up just fire-bombing the docks and calling it a night." So he breathes in, holds that breath, and shrugs, like Hannah can do with that information what she will. "We got a few days. Just need it done by," <whatever day/date Tuesday-RL is>. "Could you find out who lives there, while you're at it?"

Andre claps his ham-fists together and smiles a too-wide smile at Graham. "You're great, Graham," he says enthusiastically. He doesn't have anything useful to say except to say: "Chainsaws make too much noise."

"Yeah, you look like a chainsaw kind of guy." Hannah takes a decorous sip from her Coke and looks over the scene at the docks. "Nothing wrong with a fire-bombing if you need a fire-bombing. Cool, that's plenty of time. The more I can spend planning, the faster I can handle things in the moment." If she looks just a little bit troubled about the houseboat tenant? She doesn't say anything about it except, "Yeah. I can do that on the ride back."

Again, intrigued, Graham replies, "I'll keep you in mind next time we're setting up for a good old-fashioned fire-bombing, in that case. But I think just guns and - " He quirks a frown at Andre's take on chainsaws. Fine, be that way. " - baseball bats this time. We should hit up Noah." And wheel on around, before the people that do actually live here decide to call their security company about these three skulkers. "Aces. Can you shoot? Or punch or anything useful?" (Other than haxxing.)

Andre takes out his phone as the two start talking shop, swiping away at one app or another. If anybody looks? He's totally on Tinder and just swiping left at every single girl he passes by. Probably because he doesn't know he needs to be swiping right? He does frown at Graham though. "She don't gotta do that stuff," he says in Hannah's defense. "She can just stay behind me."

"I didn't say I could do a fire-bombing," Hannah says hastily, fidgeting with her Coke. "I mean that's your wheelhouse, right?" She follows along in Graham's wake, shaking her head and looking increasingly alarmed at the realization that she's going to be there with other people shooting and punching. "You...you don't need me in there, do you?"

She didn't say...?! "It's fine. You'll learn." Graham smiles his watch-salesman smile at Hannah, it's FINE, and then tips a nod toward Andre while he retraces his steps back toward the boardwalk. Just three friends that took a nice walk down to the docks and stood there, not being sketchy at all. "Look, if something goes wrong with the tech? We'll need you. You can just - " Stay behind Andre.

Those definitely don't sound like famous last words.

"You don't gotta worry, Hannah-Banana. I got you," Andre pat-pats Hannah on her little head and walks along with the group while focusing on the phone that looks like a toy in his hands. "Oh hey this one's Chinese. And five miles away! Would you swipe, Graham?!" WOULD YOU GRAHAM? Andre sticks his phone in Graham's face to show him the Tinder picture. Graham knows this girl. She's definitely not Chinese.

"No, it's just-" But Hannah snaps her trap shut after that. She really needs to finish this Coke, okay? "Thank you, Andre," seems to be the wisest answer for now, and then she falls silent to let the boys debate the merits of the Tinder girls.

Graham gives that phone the attention it deserves, a brow climbing. "Sure. Chinese chicks are hot." He helps Andre out and swipes right for him. (And now you have to write us the story of Andre and Elise going on a Tinder-date.) Also, now that he's done touching that phone, he tells Hannah, "Don't worry, Andre's got you." And, in a side-note, "We'll get you a gun. And a vest or something." His smile is very trustworthy. "We should get some fries for the ride back." In case they get hungry on the four-minute-drive from the waterfront to the club.