Set in the original region of Arciel, Legends Rising is a route-inspired, but not strictly route-based, Pokemon roleplay. Pick a faction, pick a class, and strike out into the wild to take on the League, master Contest coordination, research the mysteries of Pokemon and Arciel, and much, much more. Will you be a classic trainer? A criminal? A farmer? Choose your destiny on Legends Rising.
Gabe smiled a little at the question. “Yes, Bastoise and Lapras are mine,” he answered. The mention of his luck, though, earned a small chuckle back. “I have been very lucky,” he answered bridging his fingers and resting his chin on the very tips of them. “And very unlucky.” His features fell for a moment before he sat up again and shrugged.
Contact information… “Ah yeah, let’s see…” Gabe fished out his phone and opened the contacts, adding a new one (or maybe not? Was that her name already in there? Ah but no numbers yet heh). “This number is—“ he read it out and then waited for hers, typing it in whenever it came to be. “I doubt I have to say it to you, but phones can be tapped, traced, and hacked, so discretion would be nice.” He smiled a little. “Any other questions?” It helped him in ways that he was not about to admit to. Thinking up all types of scenarios and being prepared for anything was the hardest part after all.
"Oh, well that's not ominous at all when you say it like that," Senara spoke offhandedly, but her semi-dismissive tone was only skin-deep. She told herself she wasn't going to analyze what Gabe said to her beyond the actual preparation for the heist--anything else might imply she was thinking about him as a actual person instead of a business partner at best or a means to an end at worst. She had ignored the implications so far, but there was just enough of a crack in their mask to be hard to miss. So deflection to the next topic it was. "Can't be too unlucky, since you caught me red-handed, and now here I am agreeing to this utter insanity. God what I wouldn't give for a Lokhlass, they're so pretty. Any other bombshells of amazing Pokemon you want to drop on me now to save time?"
Besides, distracting him might get that look off his face faster.
...not that I care.
She picked her phone back up from the table and entered the number into a brand new contact in her address book, adding the little devil/imp emoji on either side of "Gabe". She'd add in his last name once she had it. "If you're already on a list or something and at risk of getting hacked or tapped or traced, that's your problem to deal with, not mine. I have a perfect record. But if you're paranoid, I'll look into getting a burner phone or two." She sent the number a quick text message so he would get her number in return.
A simple [Quoi de neuf, bâtard? 😈] just for shits and giggles.
"Just one more. I know why I'm going through with this," Senara lowered her phone so she could peer at Gabe from over the top of it, "Why, precisely, are you? It can't just be for the money; any good pick-pocket can make plenty in a city like Bass. Why this gig?"
A laugh came and went from Gabe. “True,” he decided. He had quite a good deal of luck with Pokemon. “Pidgeot, Togkiss, Tsareena, Gogoat, Jolteon,” he named off a couple more with a small semblance of pride. “Among others.” He smiled a little after.
Hm, maybe burner phones would be good for this considering. Or radio receivers for the mission specifically. Gabe folded the ideas in the back of his mind for later. Raising an eyebrow as the message came through, he finally mentioned. “I hope you know I’m going to Chuugle translate this,” he smirked a little. He texted something back in Arroian, but even some of the symbols were strange then <Good luck translating this>
The question that came after had Gabe glancing up again. Why are you? “Hmmmmm,” Gabe smirked a little as he leaned back. “Well, let’s just say I looked into all the safety deposit boxes before coming across the sapphires,” he smirked. “If you figure out which one I’m after before the heist, I’ll give you seventy percent of the cash.” He was grinning then.
Aurghhh, that was a good list of Pokemon he had. All except for that Togikiss. Fairies.
Répugnante.
Senara managed to blend in her flash of disgust with the much more honest envy on her face. With all those Pokemon he had a way to travel wherever he damn well pleased, while she was still trapped with just a Pokemon who could surf. "Pas juste, how come you have two Flying types big enough to fly on, while all of mine are either too tiny to try or," she pointed a finger at Crepe in a quite accusatory manner, and he yelped, looking distraught as always, "Not actually able to fly. Like...why classify Mantines as Flying anyway? Yes they know the moves but they don't have wings, just giant fins. Same with Léviator...what is it, Gyarados? Sometimes I want to find a professor and shake them."
"And do as you will, but those translations are usually pretty bad," she snickered.
There was a challenge hidden in Gabe's answer to her question. Unless they were able (and willing) to hand her a list of the contents of every security box, she had no way of finding out exactly what he was after in there without a good amount of digging. She was smart but she was no hacker, it would take more time than two weeks, she had no doubt about that. Pursing her lips together in half a pout she placed her phone into her lap so she was staring at the damn still-incredibly-punchable smile of his. Cocky little...
"And I don't suppose you would be sporting enough to give me the information for how you found what all the security boxes hold? The sapphires are one thing--they're high enough value and known well enough to have created some stir when they came to Arciel, but you might be after something much better hidden. I don't take sucker's bets."
I say, still getting involved in this bullshit.
Then again maybe having his name and hometown will give me a hint...
Gabe Alim WC: 344 No seriously why is Gyrados flying? It's a Leviathan. Those don't fly. ಠ_ಠ
Gabe snorted. “You know there’s also elemental Typing involved…. You can’t always justify a Dragon,” he answered her probably-rhetorical question. And also. “Maybe you should hunt more Pokemon or find a trainer to buy one off of.” Was that a sneer? No, no of course it wasn’t.
The mention of translations earned a shrug. They weren’t the best, but he wasn’t about to go out of his way to learn her language just yet.
And anyways— The look she gave him was almost worth the cash reward for his challenge right then and there. Gabe grinned. “Same way I got your name— I asked nicely,” he mused with a tone that made it hard to guess whether he was telling the truth or unwilling to tell hi secret. “If you’d rather not, fifty fifty it is then.” He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly after.
Post by Senara Spargo on Nov 28, 2019 13:16:04 GMT
"Fair. I still question the logic, sometimes. And I'm planning an expedition to catch a proper flying Pokemon myself, so shush." Senara folded her arms over her chest with a faint frown rather than a pout. Who did they think they were, implying she needed to buy a Pokemon rather than go out and catch her own. Sure, she had money, but part of the experience was finding a Pokemon of your own. Buying them like some sort of pet just felt weird. Though...adoption wasn't too bad. Maybe if she really couldn't find anything...
Ugh, why was she listening to him like she actually agreed with his bullshit.
Senara finished off the rest of her pastry before answering, no small amount of disbelief in her eye as he explained--or, really, did not explain--how he got the information on the security boxes. He had to be lying. Right? Then again, he had gotten her name from the people around here somehow. People who, as she had experienced first-hand, did not take kindly to strangers, let alone give them information on their fellow townsfolk.
What about them made people give him information? Was he just that attractive? Hah, she definitely wasn't able to answer that question. Aesthetically he was clean and had nice hair, but beyond that, she wasn't a judge of one's sexual appeal. Not in any way.
Is this what they call "natural charisma"? Or maybe "asked nicely" is code for "bribed".
"Cela semble faux, mais peu importe." She huffed, then waved her hand dismissively. "If I happen to answer you question before we get to the bank, I expect that extra twenty percent. If not, split evenly--and those gemstones for me--is fine. Il en sera ainsi."
"If you've got nothing else to say, I do have a stone I was going to examine, and you may want to hurry on your way before people suspect something of this little meeting. Rumor spreads in this city like wildfire to dry underbrush." Senara stood up from her seat, either to walk Gabe to the door if he were done speaking or to fetch her bag from the entry way to pull out the stone she was planning to finish her work on, whichever came first.
A small snort came from Gabe. He didn’t need to know exactly what Senara was saying to be sure she wasn’t happy with his response. “Alright,” he answered with a small chuckle. “Sounds like a plan then.”
At the mention of leaving, Gabe stretched one arm back and folded it before pressing it with the other. “That sounds more like your problem than mine,” he answered. “If asked, I’d just say I’m your long distance internet boyfriend.” Gabe laughed only once before slowly easing forward and standing up. “I do need to get other things done, though, so I suppose for now…” He shifted his hands into his pockets and then started towards the door. “Thanks for the food and drink.” He’d just as easily see himself out if she didn’t come to the door then. “We’ll be speaking soon enough.”
For the first time in the evening, Senara let out a bark of laughter before she could even stop herself. Whoops. She couldn't help it, there was just something about Gabe's little joke that made her feel ever so slightly manic, enough so that she had to laugh. "Yeah, right! Not if you were the last person on earth! Get out of here, vous le cul!" The latter part of that wasn't said as a demand or threat, more of a teasing follow-up than a serious reprimanding. It was an innocent--well, for this conversation--joke. She'd treat it as so.
Senara held the door open for him to step through it, giving a polite small wave. "Don't let the neighbors bite you on the way out. Au revoir et bonne chance." Once he was far enough away she closed the door, locked it, and returned to the couch with her hands on her hips. A cool smile spread over her lips as she waited...one, two, three...
JouJou peeked her ears out from around the side of the couch, then the rest of her head poked out in turn, utterly beaming with pride. Senara's coolness wavered. Darn cute little squirrel, making it hard to be sneaky. "Did you get it?" She asked without expecting an answer. JouJou scuttled forward and pushed past Crepe--who looked like he had gone back to sleep in the time that the conversation had lulled--to the cushions, and squeezing her paws in deep until they found her hidden treasure. She pulled it out and presented it to her trainer who plucked it from her paws and held toward the light to read.
"Absolutely perfect, mon petit voleur chéri! Now let's see here...Gabe L. Alim, can't say t that last name rings any bells. Hailing from Bass City...yeah, that tracks. Age..."
Senara's expression went blank. Those were not the two digits she expected to see on their trainer card, not at all. Twenty-one at least, but...what?? "Dix-neuf ans?! C'est à peine un adulte! Pourquoi planifie-t-il un braquage à son âge?!" She smacked herself on the forehead with her empty hand while JouJou stared at her funny. "When I was that young I was still in school! What the hell is in the water in Arro, for fuck's sake..."
I almost feel bad now. I thought I was dealing with somebody more mature, not a teen.
Ughhhh this is a bad idea...
But she was already in this deep. Senara sighed and pocketed the ID. "Well...good job, JouJou. I owe you a candy for this one. Now...stone to polish, and a name to Chuugle."
A Chuugle search would offer a surprising number of hits. It seemed having such a short name came with many people having similarly short names. However, narrowing it down to either Arro or Arciel would significantly reduce those results.
In Arciel, one Gabe Alim would be the subject of multiple blog posts from a certain Arietta Ostinato of Bass City. They ranged considerably by the date, many of them gushy in the earlier dates to vent posts about a break up in later ones. There was also a small high school article about a missing persons report of a young man with the same name that seemed to have been filed four years ago and was subsequently retracted after some time. What little JouJou might notice was that one of the images in this report was identical to the image on the other trainer ID card.
However, it seemed… aside from that he was roughly absent from social media. There was no Chubook account or Instachu account with that name attached. Perhaps he just had a private account there that wouldn’t otherwise show up on Chuugle? Who knew.
If searched in Arro, Senara would not find Gabe specifically. Chuugle would suggest Abe Alim instead and link to a man with the full name Abraham Alim. He was, apparently, a rather well-known psychologist with several clinical trials and research papers under his belt. He had many gray-haired pictures now, but there was one younger one that would stand out: if only for a familiar shade of purple hair and gold eyes. Would she go down this rabbit hole, though?
Senara clicked through the links as she saw them in her Chuggle search, tabbing them one at a time before going through them. Some were pretty funny but not very useful. Maybe she could go to Bass and look for this little blogger who he'd scorned? Eh, it was all very personal relationship drama, and she had no interest in getting involved with that after high school. And yet just having something to lord over that smug asshole's head might be worth it...if the two were still in touch. Were they still in touch? She scrolled through the most recent entries, scanning for any clues...ooh, what was this, a post on her attending the Halloween dance? As a Gardevoir? Senara's lips curled into a smirk. Just going to keep this bookmarked...~
She clicked to the next tab. A missing person's from four years ago. Nineteen minus four was fifteen, right? Well. Had he decided that fifteen was the right age to run away from home, or had something else happened that caused him to disappear off the map? Did that line up with the break-up posts or the ones when they were still together? Five years ago was also when those portals opened up all over the world. Maybe he'd gotten lost in the chaos surrounding it, or had taken advantage of it to disappear for a while...or maybe it was completely unrelated, and he'd run off some time afterwards.
She closed the tab without saving it. At fifteen she was in school, living her boring, fake little lie that she couldn't get out of, no broken facades or mistakes to mar her perfect reputation. Odds were whoever the boy who ran away was, the person Gabe is now had very little in common with them, like she was with that person. It was irrelevant.
Just like herself they either had no social media accounts or had everything privatized, which was annoying, but tracked with her theory that they'd run away. She clicked to the next article she'd loaded up, squinted at the picture, then, sighing, began to scroll.
This must be his father. I wonder if something you did made him run, papa le plus cher?
...this isn't half as funny as the ex-girlfriend. Family dirt never is.
But it might be the most useful...especially if Alim Senior has a lock box in that bank...
Abe Alim actually had a Wikipedia page of all things, huh. It was written in a mix of Common and a special type of Eran. Chuugle translate would identify it as such and ask her if she wanted to translate it directly or not. Much of his biography and history as uninteresting. He was from Arro and moved to Era for unspecified reasons and then continued to move on after that.
More interesting, perhaps, was a small dropdown tab for family. As Senara clicked it, she would find… a strange sight. It was… an extensive family tree that actually linked to an entirely different webpage in order to support the branches. He had one wife and one son, an Orion Alim-Verdi, not a Gabe Alim…. But he had a sister, Sarah Alim, who shared the dark hair and bright eyes. She was connected to another man, a Calvin Kempler, and under them were three entries, the first of whom was Gabriel Lev Kempler.
Clicking on Gabriel Lev Kempler led to an almost completely blank page. It had a single sentence written solely in Arroian. When translated, it read “redacted, fuck off” which, while humorous, was probably not what Senara wanted.
But anyways, that was… two surnames to look into at the bank.
And hacking the fucking bank was apparently child’s play for this intense woman somehow. What a beast. Immediately into the servers and lock boxes, she would find they had almost a hundred of them stored away in that tiny bank. Only some of them had lists of what was inside of them— but all had the names of the owners. And would you look at that, one belonged to a Calvin Kempler himself. Inside? Well that read confidential, and even hacking further only revealed that it wasn’t even in their systems. Well, at least she had an idea now, yes?
Oh, right, extended families were things that people had. Senara scoffed at her own quick assumptions and continued to click through the list of relatives until she found one vaguely similar to what she was looking for. Gabriel was a longer version of Gabe? Or rather Gabe was a shorter version of Gabriel. Gabriel Lev Kempler. The question of if he had changed his last name to his mother's maiden name legally or just on the card lingered in her mind for only a little bit before she dared to click on his page and found...
Exactly what she had expected, honestly. Senara snorted. Then, because she could, bookmarked the page and organized it to be right next to the ex's blog on her bar.
You might not want to share, but you sure shacked up with a wellspring of information!
There were two others on the tree as well. One Michael Kempler and one Rae Kempler. A brother and sister, though it didn't look like they had any useful information on their pages either. Still she'd add them to the potential suspects list. And maybe look them up, too, if she got super bored and decided to pry more into Gabe's life.
God, when did I become so vindictive?
...hahahahahahahahahaaaaaah.
With more names to try in the bank Senara went looking for them online. And what she found was, well, remarkably poor computer security. Who in their right mind would apply to this bank when she was able to crack into an employee's account with a simple admin log in and basic password? It was like this place was just asking to be robbed. Hell, maybe Gabe was doing the clients a favor by demonstrating how poorly protected their goods were here; teach them a lesson about checking out their security of their potential banks before they made their choice. Anyway, she put in the names from the website, and found a match with far too little information to be fair, but Senara didn't play fair either. Calvin Kempler, the actual father of this little family tree, had something worth hiding in there. She memorized the number of the security box it was in. Hmm.
If she wanted to be mean, she could go for it first. Feign ignorance and grab whatever was inside it before Gabe had the chance to, and see just how much it was worth to him.
On the other hand, she was already collecting more than her fair share of dirt on the poor bastard. Whatever was in there might be something very important to him. And besides, they still had size and strength on her and if she decided to play that game he might actually fuck her up. It would put the whole heist--and herself--in big danger.
So...not worth it? Am I sure?
Senara took a screenshot of the box, cleared her history and cache, and hid the image deep among her personal files. She could decide before they got there if it was or was not worth the trouble she'd gone through to find that information. If nothing else, she would get an extra twenty-percent if he was true to his word. That'd be a nice reward.
But seeing his smug face crack when she called him by his real name might be better.
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