Wade and Adrienne - Lockpicking Training

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Wade teaches Adrienne how to pick locks. Purely for academic reasons, of course!

For months now Adrienne had been telling herself that as soon as she got back to Xavier's she was going to quit smoking. She had indulged quite a lot while in Boston because of the stress, and the promise to herself to quit smoking had becoming something she was looking forward to most about coming back. And then she'd learned of Vanessa's disappearance, and that plan had gone out the window. Now that Vanessa was back, of course, she was planning on quitting again, sticking to the convictions of her journal post from ages ago about anyone who saw her smoking being allowed to punch her in the face.

But it had been a particularly trying day of classes, which was why she was leaning against the boathouse, waiting for Wade, puffing away, coughing, and cursing.

Wade quirked an eyebrow at the sight of Adrienne smoking like a chimney and shook his eyes. Walking over, he plucked the cigarette out of her hand, dropped it to the grass, and ground it out with the heel of his boot. Then, eyebrow still raised, he reached over and flicked her ear. "That's as close as I'm ever going to get to actually punching you in the face for smoking, chicklet, but I can pack a mean flick."

The protest Adrienne had been about to make when Wade had taken her cigarette died in her throat has he flicked her ear. She ended up laughing instead. "Thanks. So this is where you hold your tutorials for your proteges?" she inquired, gesturing at the boathouse. "Is it wrong that I almost find it hilarious that this place used to be an office for an internationally-recognized NGO and now it's a site for lockpicking training?" Life was fucking hilarious sometimes.

Grinning, Wade shrugged. "It's not wrong at all. Though this is one of the only places with the right kind of lock that's not attached to a common area where kids are lurking or something. So we're practicing here. I'm pretty sure the Professor would frown on me teaching underaged kids how to do slightly illegal things."

"Good plan," Adrienne nodded with a smirk. She motioned to a bag she'd set down at her feet. "I brought a catsuit. You know... in case I need one. Seemed like a good idea, for lockpicking training."

Wade pursed his lips on a laugh, since laughing at your students probably wasn't the best way to go about teaching them. "No catsuits necessary for the first day of class," he managed, expression still impressively sober all things considered. "You're not advanced enough yet." Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out the roll of cloth he carried his lockpicks in and knelt near the door. He checked to make sure it was actually locked, then unrolled the fabric and gestured toward his tools. "So, as you can see, you're probably going to want a variety of picks. Options are always good and, if you're ever actually breaking into a building, you should have planned things out well enough ahead of time to give yourself a chance to find the best ones for the lock you're working on. Most people sort of develop their own - there are standard sets out there, of course, but everyone's got a favorite lockpick, you know? One they're sure works better than all the others."

Adrienne giggled about not being advanced enough yet, but then focused in on what Wade was saying. "About getting picks," she began when Wade had finished, "well, where would one get them if one wanted them? Especially if the person who wanted them had been in trouble with the law before and might be again currently?"

"Hypothetically speaking," Wade said, reaching for his other back pocket. "If this person who might currently be in trouble with the law wanted to get a reliable set of lock picks on the side, he or she would really just need to know who to ask." He pulled out a second cloth roll and handed it to her. "And, if this person happened to actually receive the lock picks, he or she would have to promise their ridiculously awesome friend and/or mentor and/or contact that they weren't going to be doing anything horribly illegal with the knowledge and tools that friend type person was imparting. Hypothetically."

Dissolving into giggles again, Adrienne accepted the picks eagerly and gave Wade her profuse thanks. "You're the most ridiculously awesome friend/mentor/contact ever, and I promise I won't do anything even remotely illegal with them. Mostly I just wanted to learn in case I ever needed the skill. And to show off to Vanessa now that she's back."

Wade kept his smile in place and nodded. "So basically what you want to do," he said, "Is figure out which pick will work best for the log you're trying to get into. This one's pretty simple. It'll have a mechanism inside that you want to catch and turn - it's just the same way you'd do it with a key, actually, only you have to hit all the right spots blind."

Adrienne stared at the picks in the roll he had given her and spread the roll out on the grass. "How do you know which pick will work best?" she inquired curiously. "Is there a way to tell what the mechanism is gonna look like inside just by looking at the outside of the lock?"

"Generally speaking," Wade said, "It depends on the type of lock you're hoping to pick. A door's going to be different from a window which is different from a gate. You usually scope out the place before going in so you know basically what you're going to need to bring with you. This door will probably only need one pick, one of the longer ones here." He gestured to the picks on the left. "If one's not doing it, you can always use a second. It's mostly feel, though - you develop technique through practice - basically picking as many locks as you can reasonably get your hands on. I'd suggest ordering some online, since that's fairly easy these days. And that way you can practice in the privacy of your own home without having to worry about pesky things like police and security guards."

"You're kidding me!" Adrienne cried out incredulously, pulling one of the longer picks out of its sheath. "People actually order door locks online to practice on?" That set her giggling again. "Now I'm imagining you with a closet filled with doorknobs and locks. How did you learn this stuff, if you don't mind me asking? Oh, hey, I bet I could use my powers to watch the lock being constructed, that'll probably help me scope it out, right?"

"Actually," Wade said, tilting his head to the side, "I have a couple you could use until you get your own. And I have led an eclectic life, Adrienne. I've picked up many, many skills. My depths have barely been plumbed. If it didn't sound so dirty, I'd tell you that you should really get on plumbing my depths a bit more, but well." He grinned, eyebrows waggling a little before nodding toward the lock. "You've told me sort of how your powers worked - if you can focus on the making of the lock as opposed to all the people who've touched it or whatever, that might be really useful."

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Wade and he blinked over at Adrienne. "Holy shit, do you know how easy it would be for you to crack safes? If I ever decide to start robbing people and banks and stuff, I am so recruiting you."

"I hate to be a Deputy Downer, but my criminal career has ended; you missed it," Adrienne replied, still grinning over the whole 'plumbing' thing. "I have to stay on the straight and narrow now. But, y'know, if you're robbing for a good cause, like robbing from criminals, maybe I can be recruited for that type of thing."

She read the door lock and pulled an eyebrow pencil out of her purse, then set about sketching out the way she'd seen the lock put together on the side of the boathouse for Wade. "You probably have a pretty good mental picture of how it looks on the inside... am I close?" she asked when she'd finished her sketch.

"I would never rob from good people," Wade said, managing to affect an affronted air even as he leaned over Adrienne's shoulder to look at her sketch. "Also, clever use of eye makeup you're probably going to wish you'd saved for later if all your talk of budgeting is accurate." Pointing to the relevant parts of the sketch, he said, "See these? They're the tumblers. They're what you're trying to shift when you're actually picking the lock. Knowing where they are is helpful, sort of, but in the end, it's really just where you stick it and how well you move it - I know, I know. That's what she said." He waggled his eyebrows.

"Why am I even here if you're just going to deliver all the punchlines yourself?" she inquired with a laugh. Adrienne stared at the eyebrow pencil in her hand, thinking on what Wade had said about her budget and wishing she had saved it for later. With an easygoing shrug, she tossed it back in her purse. "I don't really need makeup anymore, it's not like I have anyone I need to look nice for. No one to impress. Besides, with looks like mine I don't need any artificial enhancements," she grinned. "Do you think this pick will work?" Her guess came from an estimation of the size of the lock and the tumblers she'd seen when it was constructed, causing her to pull a pick out of the sheath and hold it up to Warren. "Or do I need something smaller?"

"Give it a shot and see," Wade said. The best way to learn things was through trial and error. He'd explained the basics, at least. Now she just needed to get a feel for the lock itself and the way the picks worked within it. "You might need a second one on more advanced locks - a second pick, I mean, but for now, one should do." He wasn't going to touch her comment about not needing to look nice for anyone with a ten foot pole - other people's drama was their own, after all, and stepping in the middle of some kind of emotional outpouring just wasn't his style.

"I'm still not entirely sure I know what exactly I'm supposed to be doing," Adrienne admitted, frowning at the lock. "Moving the tumblers? Sticking the pick between them to mess them up?" She couldn't figure it out from what she'd seen of how the lock was constructed.

"You're supposed to make the tumblers move," Wade said. "Think about a key - you know how every key's different unless it's a duplicate? It's teeth are different shapes, sizes, lengths? That's because they all hit different tumblers and push them into a certain alignment. You're trying to get that alignment without having to worry about the actual key, which is sometimes why you need to use two lockpicks instead of just one." He considered her for a moment, then said, "This lock's the sort where you stick in the pick, jiggle it a little till you feel it catch, and then turn it. It might take a couple tries to get the tumblers all lined up right, but you'll manage it."

Adrienne's eyes went wide with realization. "Ahh, okay. That makes sense." She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth as she fitted the pick she'd chosen into the lock. With the visual of how it had been constructed in her head, she managed to get the thing inserted, jiggled, and turned before they both aged ten years, which had her letting out a whoop of joy. "I did it!" she cried out as the door opened. "Lookit that! I'm a lock picker! And I probably shouldn't be saying that so loud, should I?"

Wade laughed. "I don't know - there's nobody around to hear and, in a mansion that's got telepaths running around, I don't really think saying things is necessarily your biggest worry. But good work for a first shot. We'll see about graduating you up the lockpicking scale over the next few weeks."

"There's a lockpicking scale?" Adrienne questioned with mock interest. "I didn't know lockpicking was such an organized profession as to have a scale! Also, my sister's one of the most badass telepaths around, so I've been worried about the things I say since I was a kid. Or not worried, as the case may be. After a while you just sort of get used to it. I actually sort of use it as a barometer for getting away with shit." She nodded and tried to hide her smirk. "I figure, if something was really off-limits, a telepath would stop me from doing it before I did it, right? So obviously whatever I've done in the past must be okay. Right? Isn't that how it works?"

Reaching over, Wade actually patted Adrienne on the head. “Right, that’s exactly how it works, McFrosty. Exactly how it works.”

"Don't make me stab you with this lock pick," Adrienne grumbled in response to the head patting.

Wade waggled his eyebrows. "Promises, promises." Then he reached around Adrienne to lock the door again from the inside and swung it shut. "Now do it again - I'm timing you for this one."