Seeing What Bites

[Ryan Foley]

There's a 4:00 in the morning, now?!

This, and many other discoveries, awaited Robin Stanton, as she had to wake early from her somewhat comfortable spot on an old mattress to go down to the jetty.

Ryan, dressed in a black turtleneck and long black pants, was doing checks on a moderately-sized fishing boat, with the experience of someone who had done this hundreds of times before.

"Get enough beauty sleep, sunshine?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Hrnmblerlgh." Robin notes eloquently, not just her shoulders but her whole torso slumped forward for emphasis. "Who allowed people to be up at this hour?" she continues the joke as she clambers onto the boat. She'd expected something bigger and less... sleek? With nets and stuff. This looks like the kind of fishing boat people take out for fun more than anything.

[Ryan Foley]

"Early bird catches the worm, aye? And maybe a couple other things, while we're at it," Ryan nodded. "You get that we're not just going fishing, right?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Wait, we're doing what now?"

[Ryan Foley]

"Hrm. Did I get you wrong entirely?" Ryan frowned. "Because if you're not in, we can just go fishing, I guess."

"I just thought, you know, with the glancing and the conversation..."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh! You want to teach some guys not to mess with your bar!" Robin realizes and rubs the back of her neck in embarrassment. "No no, that's cool, I just didn't realize you already had something in mind."

[Ryan Foley]

"I mean, we don't have to do it today. It's not like they're going anywhere, and it is asking a lot of you..."

[Robin Stanton]

"Nah, it's fine! My brain's just not running at one hundo this early." she chuckles. "You got a plan?"

[Ryan Foley]

"Well, it kind of depends on YOU. My brain's been whirling all night, about what you can do. When you, like, go inside something and take it over...how easy is that for other people to tell?"

[Robin Stanton]

"I mean, it depends. If I'm making the thing move and walk around it's pretty obvious." she jokes. "But if I'm just hiding it's pretty hard. Harder than when I just try to imitate something, that always ends up with the inside being obviously wrong."

[Ryan Foley]

"If someone were to interact with you when you were inside a thing, would they notice? Like, could you mimic what the thing should be doing anyway?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Kinda. I can make it do what it's supposed to, assuming I know what it is supposed to do. The more complicated the harder. Drill? No problem. Computer? Maybe if they're stupid."

[Ryan Foley]

"Hrm," Ryan frowned. "So, like, if you were hiding out as that moped from yesterday, you could kinda fake it, unless someone knew how mopeds actually worked?"

[Robin Stanton]

"If they just wanna drive it, no problemo. If they wanna check the engine I'd probably have to bail to let it do it's thing normally."

[Ryan Foley]

"Well....if you can fake it for long enough to, say get out of town a little bit...you could then take over, right? You could hide it for 15 minutes or so?" Ryan said, hopefully. "Something large. And important."

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah sure. At some point you're gonna have to tell me what 'it' is though." she chuckles.

[Ryan Foley]

"We need a bigger boat. And I know just who has one..." Ryan said, with a grin.

[Robin Stanton]

"A whole boat? Whew, okay, I can give it a try!" she says and interlaces her fingers above her head and stretches, tilting from side to side.

[Ryan Foley]

"Shit, is it too much? I just assumed again, we didn't really have a chance to talk about things. This isn't gonna work if you can't cut it, and I don't wanna get you in danger."

[Robin Stanton]

"Hey, I said it's a challenge, not that I can't do it!" she says with no small amount of determination. "Besides, I haven't let danger stop me yet and I'm not gonna start now." she grins.

[Ryan Foley]

"Well, I don't want the gestapo from the university coming after me because I squeezed one of their students too tightly!" Ryan laughed, clearly filled with a little nervous energy.

[Robin Stanton]

"I've yet to find a squeeze I couldn't pull myself out of!" she says and grabs her waist, pushing it in until her hands meet and her upper body wobbles unsteadily.

[Ryan Foley]

"Alright! Plus, y'know, you wanna be all goodie-goodie, right? So, yeah, here's a real opportunity.

The Ndrangheta don't want the bar because they're trying to make a tourist trap. It's the whole port they want, aye? We're getting in the way of their business. They want to redo the whole port; take over the whole commercial part of it. They want to dock and unload right here. While us little guys are around, they're out of luck, aye? They've either got to come here in smaller numbers, or keep sailing all the way to Gioia Tauro. And they go to Gioia Tauro, they gotta go through the other families, and they gotta cut them in on a share of the profits. Here at Imperia? They own everything; they control the whole business. And as long as there's some of us little guys holding out, they can't take over to the extent they want. Can't tear down and modernize the place to make it really efficient for the amount of volume they wanna bring.

"That means they have to bring their stuff in the long way, cruising outside the bay rather than just pulling up, docking and unloading right here. And they're not trawling for fish out there. They're bringing in drugs. And guns. And worse. The bring it in here; from South America, Africa, you name it. And then they distribute it out to the rest of Europe, without anyone else taking a cut. That's billions of euro, all for them. And that doesn't seem right, does it?"

Ryan took a pen and doodled a diagram of the docks on paper. "They still bring a couple boats a week in here. Bribe everyone they need to to avoid inspection. Unload and ship. Might as well get some of the cut of it without the other families chipping away at it, aye? Well, they might well stop if it becomes too much of a pain in their ass. If a shipment or two goes missing. Or a ship..."

[Robin Stanton]

"Make it unprofitable to even try, yeah!" Robin nods along. "But where would I take a whole boat full of guns and drugs? Can't exactly sink it with a bunch of people on board, even if they're gangsters..."

[Ryan Foley]

"Well, we don't need to take it far. Just far enough to dump the cargo, right? And maybe tootle the ship into a less friendly port? Or we could always cut and run at that point..."

[Robin Stanton]

"I'm sure there's some equivalent to a brick on the gas pedal on a ship, right?" she chuckles. "Screw it, let's do this and figure out what I can make the ship do along the way."

[Ryan Foley]

"You need to practice in this thing?," Ryan asked, patting the boat. "I mean, it's not the same as a big cruiser or something, but I don't know your experience or how this works."

[Robin Stanton]

"It works very well and by gut." she chuckles. "I dunno, it's like slipping into a glove but the fingers are different bits and wriggling one might rev the engine and the other make a light flicker. Everything's a little different and some stuff needs you to push or pull and be real precise or it's real far away and you're trying to brush at it with your fingertips instead of flexing your arm nice and easy. Be right back!" she says and let's herself keel backwards onto the floor of the boat and turning into a splat of pink goo that disappears into the deck.

The boat's not huge and Robin only has to stretch herself throughout a little to feel out the different parts of it, most of which make a kind of intuitive sense. Easy-going spinny thing's the wheel that makes other parts wriggle. A smooth lever makes the boat slow as she pulls it back and speed up again as she leans forward into it. Simple enough. She can vaguely feel Ryan standing on 'her' and there's the usual stuff of things she can move around and bend out of shape a little like the small handrail on the steps leading up to the cabin with the steering wheel. And a little radio that some intuitive part of her recognizes and maps to her 'mouth'.

"This one's pretty easy. Not a lotta parts I can't easily guess what they're for." her voice crackles from the radio.

[Ryan Foley]

Curious, Ryan walks over to the front of the ship, listening to the 'Radio'.

"So, you gotta understand something to be able to use it?" she asked, staring at the wheel. Tentatively, she grabbed it and tried to steer the boat with Robin inside, seeing how that worked out.

[Robin Stanton]

There's a kind of rubbery resistance to it for a moment before Robin let's go of the wheel.

"Whoa, hey, give a girl a warning before you grab her by the helm." Robin jokes. "And yeah, a little bit but I can usually feel it out, you know? Based on what it does when I try to wriggle it around."

[Ryan Foley]

"Do you want to just sail around for a bit, get your...uh...sea legs on under you? Probably wouldn't be good if you took over and suddenly everything goes kablooey, right?" Ryan said, carefully attempting to increase the throttle.

[Robin Stanton]

"I think I got the hang of this one. Really, depends on how much bigger of a boat we're talking about and it's less about the... boat-ness of it and more if it's got similar enough bits or if it's large enough to have, like, different kinds of engines or steering or I dunno, I know fuck-all about boats." she chuckles as they speed up and cruise through the water. "Worst case I gotta walk around till I find the engines or the spinny-blade thingie and commandeer those by themselves."

[Ryan Foley]

"Yeah, I'm not sure they're gonna give us the guided tour," Ryan grumbled.

[Robin Stanton]

"S'fine, I'll be all sneaky-like. And you can walk through walls, yeah?"

[Ryan Foley]

"Yeah, that's not a problem. I suppose you can kinda...pop in and pop out, right? There's no way you get, like, stuck halfway through, or trapped inside?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Ah, well, that hasn't happened in a long time and more with, like, porous stuff anyway. Don't worry about it!"

[Ryan Foley]

"I just don't wanna turn around and see a pair of legs sticking out of the bulkhead. You're not, like, weak to Kryptonite or something, yeah?" Ryan said, experimentally pushing the throttle down and trying to increase speed to get out of the bay.

[Robin Stanton]

"Electricity's not great. I try to avoid wires and stuuuuuuff." her voice briefly turns into a kind of low-throated engine rumble as they speed up and cut through the water.

[Ryan Foley]

"Noted," Ryn laughed, taking Robin out to the open waters.

In the distance, was the target boat. Quite a bit bigger than Ryan's little thing, but maybe that was for the best; maybe they could sidle up alongside it without being seen?

"It's bark is worse than it's bite," Ryan yelled over the sound of the waves. "They don't get inspected at this port, so they're not, like, expecting any trouble. If we're sneaky enough, they won't know what hit 'em until after we hit 'em!"

[Robin Stanton]

"Coolbeans." Robin says and the wheel wobbles a bit on it's own under Ryan's hands as Robin helps to steer them through the waves created by the larger ship.

"Deffo not gonna be able to get that whole thing under control but I just need the rudder-bits in the back and the propeller, yeah? Means I'm probably not gonna be able to keep them from using the helm to radio in or something."