Zero (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
awakeningwill) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
smashacademy2015-11-21 11:38 pm
awakeningwill) wrote in smashacademy2015-11-21 11:38 pm
Entry tags:
MISSION: IDENTIFY SUSPECT
Update me on the search for the masks. Do you have any leads so far?
Also... do you remember anyone showing particular interest in the masks, before they were taken? Or suspicious activity on the network lately?
= = =
Being the Sage Guardian, you have experience in isolating irregular activity, don't you?
I need your help with something. Come to my room, when you have a moment.
Also... do you remember anyone showing particular interest in the masks, before they were taken? Or suspicious activity on the network lately?
= = =
Being the Sage Guardian, you have experience in isolating irregular activity, don't you?
I need your help with something. Come to my room, when you have a moment.
[action]
[Even if he's expected, and Zero doesn't have any qualms with just bursting into a room, Harpuia's always been the type to be proper about things. When he arrives, he knocks.]
[action]
He let Harpuia in, heading back to his desk and laptop as he did so. The state of the room was as bare as it usually was, though the cord by table indicated he'd been charging before he got up.]
I'm not particularly good at it. You know that.
But I need your opinion on something.
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Harpuia can't quite rationalize why, but Zero doing something like that... it makes him feel a little better, he thinks.]
Go ahead, then. I'm listening.
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But the poncho was there because... well, he felt a little less vulnerable with it on. A different kind of armour.]
When I first posted video footage of the masks on the network, there were a few people who expressed interest in them. Assuming the obvious first, our thief is most likely someone with access to the network, who wouldn't look out of place on campus. So I've been going back to all the network posts since then, searching for a pattern of strange behaviour. I think I've narrowed it down to a few possible suspects.
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It wasn't a guarantee of anything, but it was a lead nonetheless, and that was something they'd been direly needing.
Harpuia leaned over the desk with the laptop, fingers brushing past the unplugged charger cable. ...It was more than likely Zero had been up working on this a while. Harpuia mentally chastised himself for not keeping a more careful eye on whether Zero had been sleeping well -- another thing he'd allowed to slip once the situation started to get dire.
Zero, on the other hand... regardless of how he was holding up, he had been surprisingly organized and thorough about this.]
...You've done well, Zero. Let's see what you've got.
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The most obvious suspect is the ethics teacher. He expressed interest in studying the masks personally when I first broadcast them. And he seems to have... erased his emotions as part of some delusional saviour complex.
He acts as though he's owed followers, like the head of a cult. I've never talked to him myself, but considering even Eggman thinks he's mad... [That spoke volumes.] It's possible that an irregular human like him would try to obtain the masks in a bid to remake the world in his image.
However, he seems aware of how suspicious his own actions make him. He doesn't sound like someone on the verge of achieving his goals.
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But at the same time, that righteousness...]
He doesn't seem like the type to be quiet about it when he holds all the cards, though. I have no concrete evidence, but I'm inclined to think that if he had the masks, he would make it known, because he'd think he was in the right.
[But gut feelings have never really been enough for Harpuia to pass judgment, so... Harpuia lingered, pouring over all the logs much faster than the average person might; this was the sort of work his processor speed was suited to.]
Does he have an alibi for the night of the theft?
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You're right though - most of the megalomaniacs on campus would've bragged about it by now. Eggman would've held them hostage, and Cyrus would likely try to win people over to his beliefs.
[Zero closed a few windows and began to pull up a few more, this time with footage of the shattered glass cases.]
There was another individual that Gordon pointed out as acting strange. He keeps insisting on the possibility that the masks escaped on their own accord, despite the the fact the glass was obviously broken from the outside. He even asked me about how secure the masks were, though I didn't think anything of it at the time.
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[And on the off chance it's the same person... asking around that persistently could very well upgrade them from someone simply concerned about the situation to someone behaving conspicuously suspicious. The thought stays in the corner of Harpuia's awareness as he gives the footage a close look. There hadn't been anything obviously incriminating at the scene itself -- the broken glass of the cases was about the only significant thing to go off of.]
I suspect we're either dealing with someone opportunistic but not clever, someone relatively low-tech, or both. They smashed the glass instead of cutting it with a beam edge... or even an old-fashioned glass cutter. A risky move, considering the noise and the possibility of triggering alarms. Nor did they concern themselves at all with any attempt at unlocking or hacking, either.
[With the security cameras compromised and the lab already damaged, it may well have been that the thief felt confident enough that they weren't worried about noise, but... it seemed more likely that either they hadn't had time to prepare a less brute-force approach, or they didn't have the sort of tools someone from Harpuia's timeframe would, didn't it?]
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[Zero pulled up the account of the man who had asking around his network post: another member of faculty, in charge of the Lost and Found.]
His name is Garrett. He seems to keep a pretty low profile, but he's been looking for a way out of the city. If he is our man, it's possible he severely miscalculated his escape route out of here.
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[Harpuia can pull the face from his memory easily. It's a connection, but... just asking questions isn't against the law. They're only high-school security officers, too (or, well, one of them is). Warrants are definitely not going to happen.]
We can't go making any accusations without proof, but we don't have much time left to waste, either. We could try to detain him to see if he confesses. I doubt he would, though. There's been more than enough time to realize there's no escaping, and the moon is only getting closer, but there hasn't been anyone coming forward yet.
[A fact Harpuia resents. What is this thief doing...? Were the masks just taken for the sake of having them? If they were going to be used for something, then the fact the set is incomplete... no, even if he's just doing it to prove some kind of point... It's a thought that carries a lot of risky connotations with it, but Harpuia finishes it anyway:]
I think our thief would be more likely to try and steal the remaining mask than return the three they already have.
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[Wow. His brows raised a little. That was a plan so risky, you'd think Zero was the one who thought it up. The fourth mask was the only chip they had left to play - if things went wrong, then there was no saving anyone.
But that didn't mean Zero wasn't willing to gamble on those stakes. Without the whole set, they were useless anyway. Might as well go all in.
He pushed himself away from the desk.]
Makes sense to me. Let's do it.
[What did they really have to lose at this point, other than everything]
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[A pragmatic statement of fact. The value the one mask they did possess only lay in what all four of them could do together. In fact, the only person who would be able to use the mask, as of right now, would be the thief, so who else would consider going after it?
It was a big risk, but an acceptable one -- Harpuia could see no likelier way to draw the other masks out, considering their scant leads and looming deadline.]
We'll have to take every possible precaution, of course. We need an area that we can observe inconspicuously. It needs to be open enough to tempt the thief, but secure enough to be convincing. Then, all it would take is a network post announcing we've moved the remaining mask to a safe location...
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The mask is still with the kid who found it, right? That probably doesn't pose enough of a challenge to tempt our thief...
[Crossing his arms, he Zero pondered the best place to make their trap. But this was far from his area of expertise - usually, he was the one breaking in. A proper guardian would probably have better insight on this than he did.]
What's left of the school at this point? The security office?
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[It would take some utter audacity on the thief's part, too, but... given the brazen way they must have strolled into Gordon's lab while the party was going on, that may actually serve to attract their attention. If there were any possible motive that Harpuia could attempt to assign to the theft, it seemed like it may have just been for the sheer cheek of it -- trying to make some sort of statement, perhaps?]
It has the advantage of a very limited number of entry points, too. If we can give the impression that the office is left unattended after hours... It would be feasible to give the school the impression that we're all out doing manual patrols in lieu of monitoring camera feeds, wouldn't it?
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So, we should announce publicly that the mask is being moved... then wait for Garrett to take the bait.
[Here's hoping that a thief whose technique comprised of smashing through a glass case wouldn't have the technological dominance over the security efforts of two combat reploids from the future.]
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The sooner we put the plan into motion, the better. I can make the necessary arrangements... can I count on you, Zero?
[He's almost a little reluctant to ask, as the reality of a stakeout is a lot of time away from a charger. If anything, Harpuia may just be encouraging an already existing problem.]
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Of course.
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I could start cracking into some private messages if you want to know who was asking about the masks lately...
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If there were any private exchanges, I want to know about them. Be discrete.
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I'll see what I can dig up. If anyone was talking about the masks in private, I'll find out.
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Or do you mean Zero]Was he there the whole time?
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Beats me. I kinda wanted to enjoy myself, so I spent as little time around him as possible.
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That's still good to know. Thanks for the intel.
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[He would have considered that possibility, too, if they had done anything other than look creepy and resonate.]
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There were a few people that came through the lab to study the masks for themselves. Do you remember anything suspicious from them?
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[He grumbles.] In hindsight, I should never have left for the party. It didn't do anyone any good...
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We'll find them, Gordon.