xp_logs | REMY'S ELEVEN: Viva Las Vegas!

The 'team' arrives in Las Vegas, to find out how exactly insane the job they're going to do is.

"I'm glad to see you all made it." Remy said, the last of his assembled charges straggling through the door. It taken taken the better part of a day for them all to arrive via their deliberately circuitous routes. Only Remy and Nathan had come in directly, heading straight from the airport to the Excelsior to take a look around. The look confirmed that the casino was an even tougher target then they had initially thought, and it was with a somber fashion that they opened the rented house in one of the more affluient suburbs. Slowly, the taxis full of exhausted students and staff had trickled in.

Remy collected the fake passports from each one of them as they arrived,
tossing them into the lit fireplace to be consumed. The identities that they'd
be using for the duration of their stay were organized with the rest of
the equipment on the dining room table.

Nathan sat punching keys on the laptop in front of him, loading the rest of the details into the program. It was wired into the recently purchased large screen plasma television which Remy stood in front of. Both men had stopped to change as well, adopting suits as camoflague in the semi-affluent neighbourhood. The staff and students had drops their
bags in the scattered rooms and returned, taking up seats in the couches and
chairs arranged in a semi-circle around the television.

"All right. Ready." Nathan said, tapping a final set of keys and leaning back. Remy nodded and with a touch of a button, turned the television screen on.

"Bein. I hope everyone enjoyed dere flights." Remy ignored the groans and stepped to one side. "Guess now is de part when everyone starts demanding to know why dat we're all here. For dat, we have to go back almost two years, to William Stryker." Remy clicked the remote, and a montage of security footage recorded during the assault on the school snapped to life. "Colonel William Stryker, a former top level USAMRIID researcher involved in de WEAPON series of development programs. Also a card carrying lunatic who sold the government on the reopening of de Alkali Lake facility and de attack on de school."

"While he was at the school," Nathan said, standing up and moving to the front as well, "Stryker broke into the computer system and removed files from Cerebro. His primary objective were the plans for Cerebro itself, but while he was in there, he helped himself to
more. Rather like the proverbial kid in a candy shop." He let his gaze move over the assembled group, assessing. "Most of the files were destroyed with the rest of Alkali Lake, or recovered from Stryker's Washington office, thanks to Kitty. Unfortunately some rather important ones seem to have slipped through the cracks."

"Most of dem involve de information from both de Cerebro and de Danger Room." Remy clicked the remote again, and a series of Danger Room images came on the screen, with the coresponding computer information scrolling around the images. "When someone comes into de mansion, de Professor takes de information from Cerebro, and combines it with de initial evaluation from de Danger Room. Creating a neat little profile of every mutant under de roof of de school. While meant for training and safety, it's also de perfect intelligence to build detailed countermeasures against de school and de X-Men, if you felt inclined."

A murmur went through the people sitting in the living room, the full implications of it slowly sinking in. Remy clicked his remote again, and a graphic of the file floated in the middle of the screen, slowly rotating. "De files are encrypted on a secure file share
of NSA design. It uses a system called 'quantum encryption' to protect de information. I'm sure dat Doug or Forge could provide a better description, but for de rough
outline, it works like dis." He clicked the remote again, and a second much
smaller flash card appeared by the file share, rotating on its X axis as well. "De file requires an encryption 'key' to complete de encryption. Without dis key, de information doesn't exist in full, so it makes it almost unbreakable. Normally, de 'key' is simply a computer file itself, but de secure data stores were designed for contents dat need to be moved 'cold', or physically moved, as opposed to sending dem over a network."

"Obviously someone in Stryker's office took a group of files just after de shutdown of his program. Some how, dey ended up into de general underworld circulation, and dese ones in specific were acquired by dis man; Jacob Lowenstein." The face of Lowenstein filled
the screen. He was a diminutive man, with greying red hair and a wide smile.
"Lowenstein, or Arcade as he's known, is something of a unique man. He's a brilliant engineer, with degrees in robotics and eletrical engineering. His father made his money in video parlors, and Arcade used that to buy into game systems in de 80s. He's worth
over a billion dollars now, after you factor in his stock portfolio. He's got a thing for crime.
Been working in de darker side of de law ever since his teens."

"So in other words, we're going up against someone who's both smart and ruthless," Nathan added sharply. "Take him seriously, people. Right from this moment. This is not a game, and the instant you treat it as anything of the sort, you jeopardize yourself, the rest of us, and the mission."

"Nathan is right." Remy said, returning to the front of the room and clicked
the remote. "Arcade is dangerous, and so are his handlers. Ms Locke and
Mr Chambers." Two faces appeared side by side on the screen. One was of a
stern, yet moderately attractive Asian woman. The older was a man in his
fifties, powerful looking, and sporting a large salt and pepper mustache.

"Locke is an escapee from a Chinese version of the WEAPON program. Her
arms, spine, parts of her torso and legs are all bionic. Arcade has modified
her original design, so she looks pretty much human. She can also snap your
spine with her baby finger. Chambers is a former Marine sniper. Worked
in mercenary circles in Africa and the Middle East for years. Tough, smart,
and likely responsible for security."

"I don't mean to seem dense, but security for what?" Wanda asked.

"Dis is where the fun part starts." Remy said, but his smile held no mirth.
He clicked the remote again, and a photo of a large hotel/casino replaced
the faces. "This is the Excelsior hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Built only two years ago, it is the most modern facility in the city. Arcade's obsession with technology has
seen to it that it has the best of everything; disaster recovery, top level vaults, surveillance, independent generators, lowest lobster special in town. Dat sort of thing."

"And mutant power suppression and disruption systems equal to or better than
anything I've ever seen," Nathan said sourly.

"Dis is important because dose files dat are so dangerous to de school? Dey
sitting in de vault under de casino. And on de 11th, Arcade is going to auction dem off to de highest bidder in a secret meeting." A ripple of concerned noises raced around
the room. "Dat means we have a week to get dem back from him before they end
up in the hands of someone like Magneto."

"The files document the powers of every mutant living at the mansion at the
time of Stryker's attack. You'll notice that apart from Jubilee and Terry,
you all arrived after that." Nathan let his breath out on a sigh. "Arcade's
been very generous to various politicians and charitable causes. We
can't use the X-Men without risking having every Nevada representative and
senator screaming for the Professor's head. Let's not even go into what it could
do to mutant-human relations in this country in general." He folded his
arms across his chest. "The aim is to prevent any of this being tied to the school."

"Thanks to Arcade's own obsessions, we also can't just teleport into de vault and take de files. Or mind control a guard to do it. De entire building is one big psionic black hole. Even worse is de fact dat we need de key itself, which we believe is being kept in Arcade's penthouse office, which just happens to have an experimental but
effective mutant detection system installed in it." Remy clicked the remote, and
a wireframe of the route to the vault began to play.

Nathan tapped the screen. "The security at the casino ranks up there with
what you'd find at a top-level military installation. Everything off the floor is behind
keycard-access doors guarded twenty-four hours a day. Inside, every hallway
is monitored by camera from a security centre."

"De vault was designed by de same firm dat does work for major bullion storage sites."

"Bullion? The little cubes you put into hot water to make soup?" Jubilee asked.

"No, not the little cubes you put into hot water to make soup." Remy deadpanned. "De vault is accessible by a single elevator shaft. To get into de elevator, you need handprint identification and visual confirmation with de security office. De car travels down a
sealed shaft, with motion detectors every five feet. At de bottom of de shaft, it opens into a forty feet featureless steel corridor, with three guards on duty, armed with automatic weapons. Past dem is a rotating cylinder room, dat sets up to de vault. If de proper
codes are not inputed before opening de cylinder, sound sensors remain active in de cell."

"That means, even if you could get down there without raising the alarms and
subdue the guards, unless you can somehow get vault opening authorization
from the security office--"

"Which we can't."

"--trying to crack the vault door using shaped charges or drilling would
trigger the sound sensors, which raises the alarms across the casino and
locks down every door in the place." Nathan said, ignoring the interruption.

"Dat alarm also ties directly into de Las Vegas Police Department, which
will dispatch a quick response team of SWAT members to enter the casino. Oh,
and de vault and hallway are also under camera surveillance." Remy said. "We also have found points which have been fitted with custom electronics, disrupting powers like
telekinesis or teleportation, so we can't just open the vault from the inside."

"Don't forget the guards." Nathan pointed out dourly.

"Oh, oui. Dere is also a team of mutants dat Arcade employs as guards as his own response team. Mostly physical mutants, super strength, dat sort of thing." Remy said, and then clapped his hands together. "So, we've got a week to bypass all of dese
safeguards. Any questions?" He said with a smile to the stunned group in front of him.

Amanda raised her hand from her seat on the arm of Wanda's armchair. "Just one," she said.
"Are you completely out of yer tree, or what?"

"Mostly. But Nathan had dibs on being de carpet chewer. Anyone else?" Remy shot back.
"Dude, hate to agree with her, but ditto." Jubilee seconded from where she was sprawled on a seat beside Terry.

Wanda shook her head slightly, stunned from the amount of information they were just given. "The implications if we are caught," she murmured tiredly, exhausted from just getting there. "It has to be done but God."

Terry snickered and raised her hand as well, "How many teams are you planning? From what I remember of the man, Arcade'll not be fooled by a simple 'look over there'." The feeling when you first got a job was a sort of nervous high. Terry was pleased that it was as she remembered it.

"Not teams. Each person's been chosen for dere individual powers and skills. De next week is all about putting dem to use."

"You do realize if we fuck this up, we'll all be tried as adults," Clarice pointed out, nervously picking at her socks. "We'll be so fucked we won't see daylight until the next century. And that's if we live."

Forge loudly cracked his metal knuckles. "So we don't get caught, right?" He looked over at Remy, smiling ferally. "So I'm supposing whatever security he's got, I'm supposed to break? Consider it done."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Sometimes you have to take a few risks to stave off a bigger disaster," he said calmly, addressing Clarice first, "and disaster is what we'd be looking at if we didn't do what was necessary to pull this off. On that note," he went on, his voice hardening a little as he looked at Forge, "confidence is all well and good. Cockiness, however, will get people killed. Only you, if you're lucky, but more likely, the lot of us."

"So, 'm guessin' that since we were picked for our skills, there's an actual plan?" Amanda said, cutting, as always, to the point. "Besides 'don't get caught'?"

"Not getting caught is a good idea." Haroun said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his boots at the ankles. "You really think you're going to be able to pull this off with the kids?" he asked with a fine disregard for the presence of said kids. "So let's hear the plan so we can start ripping holes in it."

"Actually, homme, we can't pull it off without de kids." Remy said, and smiled. "De fact is dat Arcade's setup is almost too good. For all de advantages de hotel has, it still has one major disadvantage from a security persepective: it's a hotel. Massive staff, tons of new faces every second. Strange people from all over de country. Dat's what we're going to exploit. Arcade likes his toys, den we use dose toys to our advantage."

"So, since you're mentionin' staff, I'm assumin' one of us is goin' in as a maid or somethin'? Dude, I'm so your girl there." Jubilee said, sitting up a little straighter.

"Dats a start. Everyone is here specifically because dey got a role to play. And selling dat to Charles was not an easy thing, hommes. We play dis one smart, quiet, and at de end of de day, everyone goes home. Screw around, and I break your neck and give de rest to Nathan. He's been eating lions and babies all week preparing." Remy said. Everyone looked momentarily at Nathan, who shrugged and smiled. "Now, dis is how we're going to do it..."