CB's Grim Frequencies IC -- COMPLETE

Feral can't help himself, he breaks up laughing, "Because the action figures are going to gun us down, right? That's great. Thanks for the comedy. I'd complain about you wasting our time, but hey, this beats solitary. So, what's next? Scoping out the 7/11 for hot dog stealing aliens?"

Garvey smiles thinly. "Not interested? No problem." Heels takes Feral's file from the stack and very deliberately sets it to the side. "Are the rest of you similarly disinclined?"

You should all now have enough info to make a Sense Motive check, so everyone roll. If your PC wants to say or do anything additional, include that, too. EDIT: Make sure you include in your Sense Motive what it is you want to know about what has transpired thus far.

Feral stops laughing but continues to smirk, "Oh I didn't say that. You want us to go raid the toy store, I will be more than happy to raid the toy store. I just think its a little ridiculous."

"A year?!? With nothing to guarantee that you're not going to send us off on some kind of suicide mission? Sorry Mrs. Garvey, but that's not going to fly. But I think there's room to negotiate, right?"

While his hands remained manacled to the table, Cyril was still able to interlace his fingers and cracked them expertly. A slight irritation started in the crook of his neck. Smiling, he continued, "So first, you're asking us to trust that you're actually going to follow through on the paper work. You're going to have to forgive us if we might have a difficult time trusting you on that..." The overriding need to scratch the side of his neck finally overcame Cyril, who surrendered to the physical discomfort and tilted his head, rubbing it against his shoulder. The itch satisfied, he said, "I'm going to need a copy of the order signed by Magnus-Stinson and access to a UPS courier before we do anything... well, maybe we can look into this toy thing, but nothing more until we get some insurance."

Holding up a finger, he continued, "But this whole working for you for a year at your discretion? No way. At least not the way you have this deal structured. Our commutation has to be pro-rated and we have to have the option to quit. So, each month we work for you will cut a certain amount of time off our sentences and we walk away whenever we want. Deal?"

For the first time J.R. speaks during the meeting.

"You have to have more information than that. You can't send us in that blind. You say it's a emitting a weird signal? Can you be more specific? Is it something the thing says that doesn't sit right? As for the toy itself who makes it? Is WeeBee the manufacturer or is it just a seller? Why not just go in and buy it and run your tests? This all just seems odd to me."

J.R. leans back a little, tugging on the chains.

"Are these necessary? If you want us to do homework it might be easier if we didn't have our hands tied behind our backs."

(OOC :: Rolled a 13 on Sense Motives with a wis mod of 0)

Death Otter lolled back in her chair as the chatter went on, staring at the ceiling as if counting the acoustic tiles. And she was...but MOSTLY she was listening, and processing. Contrary to the stereotype, and her own persona, you didn't get to be a world-class hacker by not knowing how people worked. Most REAL hacks depended on human error to REALLY pull off...either on the part of the programmers and developers, or on the part of the end users.

It was still a bit of a handicap for Otter. She had a pretty good academic understanding of people, but they tended to annoy her too much to actually want to spend time with them. Maybe she'd just been hanging around the wrong crowd.

Regardless, she had to snicker to herself. 'Flexible' and 'mobile.' 'Discretion' and 'timeliness.' You didn't need a degree in psychology to hear the subtext. She was looking for a team that could go places they weren't strictly speaking supposed to go, and do things that were not, strictly speaking, legal. Expendable, yes...but what that meant was 'deniable.' They were a gang of convicts. If it went south, they'd just say that they were acting on their own...and back to jail.

Timeliness was interesting. They were in a rush. Something was going down -now-. Hence the van and the safehouse. Did they have the ignition in the van running? Death Otter thought they might. Also, hence the hardball. In poker, you played the hardest on the weakest hand, because nine-tenths the game was psychological.

What was it about these dolls that had them all riled up, she wondered. Also...'nefarious.' Who said 'nefarious' anymore?

There was no way Otter was walking away from this, but it'd be fun to see her squirm.

"Lawyer's right. Papers on the table or no deal. Not signing away a year to be expendable unless I know what the black and white is." She looked down from the ceiling at their prospective patron and grinned. "Still faster to let us read through it than it would be to pick your B team out though. I'm a fast reader. Keep the van's engine running."

(OOC - Oh heck, forgot to make rolls!

Sense motive: [roll0]
Knowledge: Behavioral Science (not sure if it applies here, but trying to analyze her words, body language, etc) [roll1]
Knowledge: Popular culture (to see what she remembers about 'BunBun' dolls) [roll2] )

T-dawg sits impassively, somewhat bewildered by the big words Garvey is using. When she assures him it's all legal and above board, he looks reassured, but as he opens his mouth to reply in the affirmative he is cut off by Cyril and JRs responses.

At that point his face contorts in a look of uncertainty and even more confusion, and he bites his tongue, waiting for some sort of conclusion to be reached in the conversation between Garvey and the others and a simple offer to be made that he can either accept or decline.

Garvey purses her lips, considering. "I'll do you one better, Mr. Kennedy. We'll go together to Judge Magnus-Stinson's chambers, all of us. You can wait in the hall while Judge reviews the paperwork. If she has questions, the marshals will escort you to chambers so Judge can ask. I'll get Mr. Hogsett to meet us there; as long as he's present for an in camera interview, it won't be ex parte, so no harm no foul. You can each have a signed copy of the paperwork as soon as Judge signs. No need for UPS courier. As for the rest of your desires, I'm not authorized to negotiate a reduction in your sentences any further than what's on the table."

Garvey leans back and considers the others in turn. "If you don't like what's on offer today, I can present a counteroffer to my boss, but that won't happen until..." Garvey consults her watch before continuing, "Tuesday next week. He's in DC at a conference. And he'll have to get clearance, and then paperwork...."

Garvey's eyes slide to Feral. "You're looking at ten days until we present your counteroffer, then probably a month for higher-up to respond, then another 30 days beyond that for Mr. Hogsett to look it over and weigh in. No clue what he'll say. He's running for Mayor of Indy, and with the election cycle so close, he may not like bartering with inmates. All told, it's probably April before I come back your way with the government's reply to a counteroffer."

[sblock=Sense Motive]Garvey seems sincere. She might be trying to cajole you into agreeing to the deal, but if your own experience navigating a trial, plea agreement, sentencing, and transfer to a correctional facility is anything to go on, she's just highlighting the fact that the government is a bureaucracy and a slow-moving one. She seems perfectly willing to take all of you to Judge Magnus-Stinson's chambers, and to make sure you get a signed copy of your reduced sentence.[/sblock]

Garvey purses her lips a second time and shrugs. "I guess this is where I say 'take it or leave it,' at least for today."

Garvey eyes J.R.. "The Bun-Bun is allegedly emitting a signal in some weird language, with intermittent transmission in English. No clue what the language is, none of our sources can ID it. But I've got a recorded interception of the transmission in English, hang on a moment." Garvey leans down and extracts a small recording device from her bag, puts the device on the table, and pushes play. A staticky tinny voice whines into the interview room. "You must [STATIC] the Wee Bee Toys store [WHINE] Broad Ripple and acquire a BunBun electronic rabbit within [BUZZ] hour. You must go to that [WHINE] store. You must [BUZZ]. You may go with any many [STATIC]."

Garveys pushes stop on the recording device. "Fisher Price makes the BunBun toy. Remember Furbys, about ten years ago? This thing is roughly the same size. It's got a computer chip in it, it learns phrases a kid says to it repeatedly. My niece is dying for one. Pretty popular toy. As for why we haven't gone in, no clue, that's above my pay grade. And that's about the sum of what I know, other than my instructions to take you by van to your new residence. If you agree and sign on the dotted line, that is."

[sblock=Otter]Garvey's accent reveals that she's East coast private school educated. Probably Ivy League, but maybe some place like Bryn Mawr. A woman's college, probably. She detests being in what she considers a filthy MRSA-ridden prison, and she's probably going to wash her hands and bathe in anti-bacterial gel the second she's out of FCI Terre Haute. Hell, she's probably got anti-bacterial gel stashed in her handbag. She thinks she's above what essentially amounts to service as a glorified courier for inmates--that's a sheriff's flunky's work--and she's pissed that she's here having to deal with Mr. Cyril Kennedy and some queer transgender woman. Man? Hell, she can't even figure out if Feral is male or female. What Garvey wants is to broker a deal, get out of here quick, and get back to D.C.. Hoosiers are nice, but the food in Indiana has done nothing for her waistline.

The BunBun is an extremely popular toy. It sold out last Christmas. In October. It's the kind of toy that people brain each other over. It's got a computer chip, like Garvey said, but it should NOT be transmitting signal. Other than standard computer wiring for a miniature block of RAM, a microscopic hard drive, and a speaker, there's just really not enough hardware in a BunBun to transmit signal. Unless there was a mass manufacturing FUBAR. Or a purposeful manufacturing redesign. And that's an interesting thought. Who owns Fisher Price toys, again? Otter can't remember.[/sblock]

Cyril was about to agree to going to Magnus-Stinson's chambers but shut up when he heard the recording.

"Wait... did I miss something or are we actually following the intercepted instructions provided by a toy? Jesus, this sounds like a bad Le Carre novel..."

Smiling his greasy smile, Cyril finished, saying, "I'm... okay with the offer. I'm even fine with not bothering Judge Magnus-Stinson until after we grab this toy, no reason to get on their bad side. With that said, I still want to know what happens when you tell us to jump and we don't ask "How high?" If that cancels the deal, I don't think any of us are willing to take it."