The X-Project

Farouk, Wanda and Sarah go to scout out the bank.



The main floor of Die Kreditinstitut Schmidt were richly appointed. This was obviously a boutique bank, built around investment and finance services which were coordinated from offices around the world through this building. They bank was small, but well regarded and possessed an excellent reputation. It was known for its exclusivity, eschewing opportunities for expansion in exchange for control and freedom from a more general investor base. In many ways, it was the cliché of a Swiss bank; private, obsessed with secrecy, and immensely dignified. There had been a scandal in the early 60s, with charges that it held Nazi gold, but it had been hardly alone in being accused, and had simply waited for the furor to die down and be forgotten.

“Herr Colakoglu?” A fastidious man in his forties approached the trio, adjusting his jacket as he did so. “I am Markus Schlosser. I spoke with your assistant by phone this morning.”

This was a prime example of why Amahl had liked being the boss. When it came right down to it you just could never tell what other people would do. Why they would do it. And how it as bound to come around and bite him in the ass.

Case in point being him, once again and yet even more inexplicably than usual, finding himself in a middle of a field op. The lack of sleep had long since became habitual, and the finely tuned paranoia, helped by a particularly well-adjusted cocktail of chemical assistants, had sharpened Farouk's instincts into a pulsating web of neurons calculating probabilities with greater speed than he could process. The Shadow King was moaning somewhere deep within his psyche, and Amahl was perfectly aware that he was rapidly exhausting the last reserves of his body, nearing the inevitable crash and nervous break down. He could feel his left eye twitching slightly, the heavy and foul-smelling sweat gathering just beneath the hairline, and he could almost hear the marrow thinning in his bones. It rather tickled.

It was definitely shaping up to be one of his bad days.

Which, of course, meant, that about 70% of their prepared game-plan just ceased to be viable.

None of it mattered, however. It was as if he was looking, dispassionately from outside himself at the unfolding situation. The tiny, almost imperceptible facial twitches and unconscious body languages of the little Swiss money rat clicked together into the picture of a man more than a bit uncomfortable with what he perceived of Farouk. Field operations were messy and uncomfortable things. They never caught his fancy. A plush chair, good cognac, a stack of documents. That's how good intel work was done.

On the other hand, one hardly ever got the chance to parlay one's swiftly approaching mental collapse into a rapidly improvised cover story.

He smiled, stretching the expression just slightly to make it a fairly horrifying death head's snarl, and recoiled from the banker with the all the speed that his enervated organism was capable off. Turning toward Wanda Farouk gesticulated wildly, firing off a rapid and increasingly agitated stream of Turkish, while simultaneously sending the other two mutants burst of thought and images.

Wanda's face remained fixated in a pleasant smile, even as her mouth suddenly tasted of curdled milk. Instead of a wife of a respectable immigrant and the sausage king of Frankfurt seeking a safe haven for his daughter's inheritance, she just became the glorified arm candy of a germaphobic, hypochondria Turkish drug lord looking for a privacy-minded bank to keep watch over his opium profits.

It was definitely shaping up to be one of her bad days.

When everything was said and done, Wanda was going to kill Farouk, messily if possible, as soon as they were safely away from the bank. Her smile never wavered and she gave no outward sign of the rude gestures she was sending back through the loop between the three of them, thankfully. A professional even in the face of Farouk's special brand of "humor" or "insanity". She 'translated' based off what he was mentally saying since she didn't speak a word of Turkish and edited it as any good wife might do.

"In essence Herr Schlosser, my husband is seeking a bank that guards its internal secrets well," she said. "We have high demands of any that we go into business with but especially in regards to our financial institutions as the last one -” She looked aggravated. "It was simply not up to our standards of security and it proved unworthy and unsafe for our investments. We are hoping that Die Kreditinstitut Schmidt's reputation precedes it in this case."

"Of course. Of course. Die Kreditinstitut Schmidt elite reputation was built on clients' like yourselves, where their money would be protected and investments increased without the risks associated with pandering to the hoi-poli of common investors." Schlosser said unctuously. "Now, in your email you indicated shifting both investment capital and physical assets over to our care. Is that correct?"

It wasn't often that Sarah felt like the sanest person on a mission. Stepping forward with a folder full of paperwork, she began flipping through its contents. "There's an inventory in here somewhere..." she began, continuing to search in the stack of papers perched dangerously close to tumbling all over the floor at their feet. Of course, there was no inventory, but they didn't need to know that.

"Perhaps we can discuss that in a moment." He said, already imagining the papers flying around his clean lobby. New monied thugs; still, they were useful because of their wealth and their habit of disappearing and defaulting their accounts to the bank itself. "In terms of physical assets, would this be small potables? Bonds?" Markus waved them along with him as he walked. "We have a secure safety deposit vault here on site, but if the assets are of a larger nature, we can arrange for space at one of our secure facilities off-site."

Farouk stared at the man glassily, the feverish furor of his earlier explosion giving way to sudden lethargy which he used to turn slowly, as if in a daze. He grimaced back at the passive-faced but alert security men, fixating easily their positions. They had divided the spheres of responsibility early on, and while he marked what he could of the electronic surveillance, he concentrated on the human element. The uniformed men with identical crew-cuts loomed in perfect balance between threatening (and thus reassuring to the clients) and vaguely disassociated, reinforcing the aura of privacy and harmonious efficiency.

The fact that the lowest level of security was trained to this standard of subtlety was impressive in and of itself. But it was the realization that the ganja-smoking dread-locked alcoholic lounging against the wall with a vapidly humorous sign, and a stoically bored Japanese businessman waiting in the corner of the bank with his nose in the newspaper were both part f the second layer of the bank's defenses. And both were mutants. He swallowed dryly, licking the cracked and peeling lips. It was inevitable - or at least it inevitably had to be assumed - that there were more undercover men that he simply failed to pick out. This was not going to be an easy run...

He completed his unsteady circuit, an arm lunging out to grip Wanda's shoulder for support. "Don't need to know what. Want box." He let go of Wanda momentarily to measure a space with his hand, drawing a container's shape with the faintly trembling fingers, while elongating and roughening his vowels, chopping his German into a mangled wreck. "Show me box room!"

"He wishes to see the safe deposit area," she further explained, though she assumed Herr Schlosser had already figured it out. But the role demanded certain actions, so Wanda responded accordingly. "After how the last institution handled his investments, he insists on seeing various parts of the bank in order to satisfy his expectations and needs. Will that be an issue?"

The question was mostly redundant as she 'supported' Farouk, refraining from pinching him out of spite. Unless Schlosser suspected something, they should be allowed to view further into the bank - it was an irrational but relatively harmless request that would go a long way to ensuring their business. When one dealt with crazies with a lot of money, one generally made allowances.

"Not at all." The banker said smoothly, and ushered them down a hallway. He waved for one of the guards to follow, and when they reached an elevator, it was the guard that swiped through the card to make it open. "We have a wonderful two tiered security system here. Not even our President has direct access to the safe deposit area alone. Security has to unlock the elevator, and there is a guard on duty downstairs that has to swipe it to let you out. We only have three security cards; the men at both levels of the elevator and our chief of security, and those cards are changed daily. They are also chipped, so if they are tagged outside the building for any reason, the entire bank locks down. Your valuables will be very safe." The elevator was a short trip, and they walked out into a large steel room, dominated by deposit box doors and a bank of privacy screened desks. A guard sat beside the elevator at a desk of his own.

"Oh my." Sarah murmured, wondering just how hard it would be to compromise the security staff. "It seems you certainly have all of the bases covered."

"Good. Good." Amahl muttered, affecting sullen boredom as he looked around the room. No real surprises here - it looked like any other such room in a thousand other banks. The real unpleasantness lurked invisibly all around them, but thankfully the assessment of the technological ugly that would be waiting for team was out of his purview. Farouk reached into his jacket lazily, the half-lidded checking the reaction time of the guard. It was quite excellent, despite what had to have been a mind-numbing afternoon of ennui preceding it. The man relaxed fractionally as the Professor produced an elaborate snuff-box, opening it with a practiced snap and consuming a pinch of something that (clearly to all observes) was definitely not tobacco.

"Gooooooood....."

As if they'd done this a thousand times, Wanda deftly plucked the box back from his hand and placed it back in his pocket, as if afraid he'd drop it if she didn't. While her hands were busy, she snuck a quick look around them with her powers, sufficiently hiding the shimmer of red with her activity. Her polite smile never wavered but she was internally wincing at all the lines in her head that screamed "don't touch" or "go away". You touch a light fixture in the place and an alarm was set to go off.

"That usually shows that my husband is pleased," she said, mildly, as if it were an every day thing. "I believe, Herr Schlosser, that we can do business with one another, after all."

"Excellent madam. If you'd all care to follow me upstairs, we can start the paperwork to open your safety deposit account, and I can provide your staff with the information for your other investment properties." He said, beaming with pleasure.

Farouk grunted in vague displeasure at the mention of paperwork, then shrugged bowing to the inevitable (in both of his incarnations). Some things simply could not be avoided. "Sign paper quickly." He growled at Schlosser as he moved toward the door, pulling Wanda along by her elbow. "I have the sex soon."

Doug and Cammie spend a little time underground near the bank.



The emblem of Schweizerische Aktiengesellschaft für Erdgas was emblazoned on the access panel, and looked relatively new in the fetid surrounding of the access shaft. It was only the work of a few minutes to disconnect it, and step into the reeking pipeline. Being sealed into a metal tube, even if it was a relatively comfortable four foot diameter, was an unnerving process, especially one heavy with natural gas and sitting only a few feet behind a plug. The plug – or ‘pig’, as it was called in the industry – was designed to both clean and test the integrity of the pipeline, going places that would be immediately toxic to a normal person. With a mechanical growl, the pig started up, and the pressure from the pipeline began to push both of them along the pipeline.

"I swear to god, I must be getting high," Cammie said, though she was lightheaded more over the fact that she was shoved in a small ass space than any toxic fumes. In fact, it smelled good to her. It was the accommodation she could do without. "Ride the pig, pig!" she quoted to herself. There was something very cartoonish about this. "And I didn't even have to be in an episode of Invader Zim. So, what the fuck am I looking for?"

"Ride ze shoopuf?" Doug quipped over the comms as he drew up a grid map of the underground area on his laptop. "You're looking for a repair access at some point down the pipe, looks like...a couple hundred yards or so," he estimated. "In the meantime, just keep talking to me." It wouldn't do for her to pass out and miss the spot.

"Ride the whosthewhat now?" Cammie returned. After a moment she was pretty sure she wasn't actually getting high. She could still think clearly, wasn't giggly or any of the other weird things she had seen happen to people on some sort of drug. Too bad. It would've been nice for ONCE in her life, but it simply wasn't to be, apparently. "This thing could be faster," she muttered.

"Yeah, well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, it's the perfect infiltration vector." Doug shrugged as he watched the blueprints on his screen. "I mean, you're about the only person I know that could get through that way." The combination of her complete resistance to toxicity, combined with her size, made her perfect for the job. "Bet you didn't know how glamorous the job was when you took it," he quipped with a chuckle.

"I know, I was totally looking forward to being a Bond girl, only with more survivability," Cammie returned, "You know, things blowing up, seekrit agents, all that crap." It was hard to tell just how sarcastic she was being.

"Life's full of disappointments," Doug said with a chuckle. He could tell Cammie's brashness and sarcasm was part of her feeling out her place within the X-Force team. "If you're lucky, those disappointments don't end with you getting stitched up."

"Me bleeding bad," Cammie said simply. If only because it tended to be the truth. Toxic blood, for the loss. Of course, what it allowed her to do was, most of the time, pretty cool. The jury was still out on this. "Okay, I think I'm almost there..."

"Well, yeah, I'm just sayin..." Doug said, breaking off at Cammie's report and switching back to 'professional' mode. "Okay, you'll be able to break out from inside, just hit it hard and it'll unseal." The panel was designed to seal shut to prevent fumes escaping, but it wasn't exactly built to withstand a determined person using it as an entry point.

"Alright then," Cammie said, testing the surface a bit and then punching hard. Once, twice, third time was a charm, "Open says-a-fist," she said happily, "And I'm in."

"Good. Okay, now all you have to do is leave Amanda's totem," Doug avoided using the word 'fetish', mostly because he knew it would lead to bad jokes from Cammie, "somewhere where it won't be seen or accidentally broken." He shrugged, though Cammie obviously couldn't see it through the audio comms. "And then you just walk right out the front door." The easiest and best cons were the type that were carried through simple self-assurance, the sense that you were exactly where you were supposed to be and doing exactly what you were supposed to be doing. Really, the most difficult part of this one had been the possibility that Cammie would pass out or not be able to get out of the access point.

"I thought it was called a fetish. Like leather, whips and cherries," she said, snickering to herself. She knew what fetish meant in this case, it didn't make it any less amusing. She placed the thing easily, and getting out was a lot easier than it should have been either. Who knew, something where being small was actually an advantage. "All this and a paycheck too. I bet at least four people pass out from the smell on the way to the door, whaddya say?"

"You're on. Twenty bucks."