Ilia Amitola is color coded for your convenience (amitola) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-01-28 18:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, blake belladonna, ilia amitola |
Who: Reading Rainbow
What: Operation Distraction, aka BURN BABY BURN
When: 11 January 2019, late at night
Where: Office of one Jacques Schnee in Los Angeles
Warnings: Arson. Language.
Status: Log | Complete
Of all the things Ilia had not expected to happen in her life, helping a Schnee was probably at the top of that list. Yes, she’d been worried about Weiss after the weird ass post she had done. Or more specifically, the very obviously PR generated responses she gave without any sort of response to the insults Ilia had ended up throwing at her in the process. But with everything going on and her own issues, the teen had mostly pushed her concerns to the side and moved on.
But then Ruby had asked her about what she knew about the Schnee Diamond Company and asked if she knew anything about the Dust company as well and it was clear the small one was working on something so Ilia had done her best to keep the full force of her anger from turning on the other girl. She had helped to rescue her and she still wore the bracelet that regulated her temperature. But while she’d been confused by what Ruby was up to, she’d tried to push it aside. Which had been impossible once she knew what was truly going on.
And she may hate anyone with the last name of Schnee on principle alone, but she also hated what Jacques was doing to his own daughter even more. Maybe Weiss had meant what she said nearly a year ago, about wanting to make things right. Ilia didn’t know. What she did know was that she’d been taken herself by people who wanted her to be one thing and like hell was she going to let that happen to someone else. Even if that someone else was Weiss Schnee.
So what if her offer of help had been that she was more than willing to burn down the office building? It would provide a distraction and fuck with the company. Win-win for everyone involved. Which was how she and Blake were now at an office building making sure that it was empty of employees and custodial staff and the like. While she would have been fine on her own, Ilia couldn’t deny the fact that it was probably good to have back up and as Blake was both a Faunus and her semblance could be of use, it made sense.
Noticing someone, the teen quickly disappeared into the shadows as she her skin color changed to match her surroundings. Yes she knew that Logan was on lookout but one could never be too careful.
Blake had been worried about Weiss, but she hadn’t known what to do. She wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with Weiss. Well, they had talked, but they weren’t close like they had been in the dreams. Or, well, had been before Blake had left after the attack on Beacon. But even so, she wanted to get to know Weiss here, to maybe be a team again now that she’d been trying to work past her issues enough to be around Yang again without feeling pressured to return the blonde’s feelings. Though really, she’d probably always feel pressured to some extent, she did have two lifetimes of that response drilled into her.
But this was a first step, even if she was only helping Ilia burn down a building instead of going to free Weiss. But it was still a step. And she knew what it felt like to be controlled by someone else. It pissed her off, and somewhat set off the Scientology red flags in her head. Maybe they could find something here to help expose what the Schnee Diamond Company was really doing. Maybe they’d just be a distraction. Either way, she was going to help Weiss in the way she knew best.
And Blake was good at infiltration. She moved silently and quickly, and her shadow semblance certainly came in handy as well. She swept her side of the building to ensure no one was around before they set the fire. Not finding anyone, Blake made her way back to where she was to meet Ilia, keeping to the shadows as she went. Though when she got to the spot, she didn’t immediately see Ilia.
“Ilia?” She whispered. While Blake had night vision, it wasn’t always easy to spot a chameleon Faunus.
First steps were important. It was something Ilia herself was working on. Such as not taking out her anger at the Schnee Diamond (and Dust) Company out on Weiss just because of the misfortune of her last name. And well, Ilia would support Blake in her steps to get to a point where she could be a team again with the others because while she wasn’t super fond of most of them, she cared about Blake and that was what her friend wanted. While being a voice of reason if necessary. Though she also had no problem yelling at people for being idiots and making things worse either if necessary.
Still, it was also good to know where strengths were. Ilia supposed that it made sense that the small one would want her to have back up and of everyone involved, Blake was the obvious choice even if Blake hadn’t initially offered to go with her. They needed the stealth each of them had and so help her, Ilia was going to use some of that Red Room training to do good and help someone instead of being a weapon. That was another step for her.
And it seemed the person she had heard was Blake. Which okay, that made sense given the fact that they had made sure the building would be empty and Logan would make sure no one entered since… well, they couldn’t exactly pull a fire alarm in order to then set the place on fire. So for now, she stepped out and lost the camouflage for the moment.
“Here.”
Ilia and Blake were certainly obvious to be paired together, and not just because of them both being Faunus. They both were more suited to covert missions, things that needed a fine touch and not brute force. While Blake hadn’t been entirely certain the office needed to be burned, she’d help set the fire if it helped the others have attention taken off of them. And she also knew Ilia’s history with the Schnees, both here and in the Dreams. Blake hoped that Ilia wouldn’t go overboard on giving it to Weiss’ father, but if it did happen, Blake felt of all of them from Remnant, she was the only one who had a chance of pulling Ilia back from the brink.
“Oh, good,” she said, keeping her voice low even though there wasn’t much reason to. “We’re good to go, I didn’t see anyone on my sweep. How about you?”
From this point, it was pretty straight forward. If they wanted to search for useful information, which could be anything from proof of wrongdoing to what was being done with Weiss and Elsa, they could do that. Otherwise, it was moving straight to setting the fire and getting out of there before anyone caught them.
The office obviously had to be burned down. Okay, so part of that was definitely because Ilia had a past with the Schnee Diamond Company here, so being able to fuck it up and fuck over Jacques Schnee was an added bonus. But simply breaking in to get information wouldn’t be enough to create the distraction that the rescue teams needed. No. They needed something that would get the attention of Jacques and those involved in this whole mess of a situation and a fire? Well. A fire would certainly do that.
But she also knew that they first needed to get the information as well. Information on taking Elsa and Weiss if it was there, but also the cover ups and business dealings that could take down the business as well. Even with the government and all its deregulations. Which meant they couldn’t just light the place up and watch it go as much as she would like to.
“I didn’t see anyone either. Let’s go.”
And it was now time to figure out where information would be kept. The computer would be an easy guess but computers could be seized and given to IT people to get the information. It would have to be somewhere else. Secret panels and things like that. Stepping into the office but never turning on the light (thank goodness for that night vision given it ensure they could do what they needed to without the lights turning on), Ilia scanned the room for where a secret panel might be. Oh the computer would also be important to look through but Ilia was putting her money on secret wall panels doubling as a safe.
Grabbing a glass in order to hear through a wall for gears once it was found, Ilia found a wall and started knocking along it until something sounded wrong. Just as she thought, now it was time to break into it and see just what Jacques Schnee was keeping hidden.
Giving a nod, she headed to the office with Ilia, keeping her cat ears trained for any sounds of other people around. She had taken the bow out of her hair when they’d gotten here so that she could actually hear better. This was one of the times when she was glad for the cat ears and enhanced hearing ability that came with them.
While Ilia checked for hidden compartments in the walls, Blake checked for hidden panels in the desk. She didn’t bother looking through papers or files, the kind of information they were looking for most likely wouldn’t be on paper. Or at least not ones left out in the open and not under lock and key.
Blake slid a hand along the bottom of the middle drawer, looking for anything like a thumb drive being taped to it. No such luck, but she kept searching. Opening a drawer, she shuffled through a few things before she realized there was a false bottom in the drawer. Shifting things, she opened the false bottom and found a thumb drive. That was certainly suspicious and she picked it up.
Glancing over at Ilia, she saw her friend had found something as well. “Do you need help with that?” She asked. She didn’t know if they needed to look for a code or anything. Or if Ilia was just going to break in the old fashioned way.
No. Paper files would be kept in a safe that no one would think to look for, one that could survive whatever got thrown at a building. Well Ilia was looking for the safe and just as Blake asked if she needed help, Ilia hit a bit of luck in hearing what she had been listening for. Okay now to break into the safe. The initial plan had been to break into the safe in a less obvious way. But Ilia wasn’t the most patient. Plus, they’d be burning the whole place down soon enough, so it wouldn’t be all that obvious that the safe had been broken into.
Not until the police showed up with evidence against the bastard and he realized that everything he’d tried to keep hidden (whatever it was) had been found out.
So giving up on subtle, Ilia braced herself and then used her elbow to break into the safe/wall the hard way, wincing some. And there were papers and files and just...a lot to look through.
“Here.” Handing some of the files over to Blake, Ilia started to sift through the files she was holding. Names of people from the mines in Arkansas. Notations about payments. Notations about people being followed. Blinking some she noticed her last name.
The file was…. It was like she was there all over again. The file on her parents noting that she was the only one left so a note made that no money was needed to be paid. That she was nothing. Shaking some, Ilia kept reading only to see she’d been followed. And more than that, times she’d gotten kicked out of a foster home (always the ones she had felt might be a good fit), Jacques had a hand in it. An entire file on discrediting her…..
The times she felt she was going insane. Each time the ground was again taken from her. The falling. The lack of stability. Her breath was coming out in short breaths, shaking in anger. Anger that erupted into a scream, the files dropping as she grasped her whip and lashed it out, a vase shattering on impact, tears she didn’t even seem to realize were there falling.
Ilia had known Jacques had ruined her life, but she never had known how far his reach had gone in keeping her down. Discredited. And she knew she wasn’t the only, there were so many files. Some thinner than others, people who didn’t speak out, then those like her who never kept quiet and so to keep his secrets….
Taking the files handed to her, Blake started sifting through them. Names, payments, various other notes. It was hard to read just as it was enraging just how far Jacques went to ruin people that could topple him. The level of his greed and lack of empathy was shocking, and it was only rivaled by that of Scientology.
The man was a monster, though she’d known that before. And yet while she was reading, her cat ears twitched a bit as she picked up on the change in Ilia’s breathing pattern. She didn’t jump when Ilia screamed or took out a vase, she just looked over at her friend, noting her body language. And given where they were, she didn’t need to ask what caused the outburst. Clearly Ilia had found something relating to her family in the files.
“He will get what’s coming to him.” She didn’t exactly know what to say, but she wanted to acknowledge what Ilia was currently feeling without calling it outright. Now wasn’t the time or place to get into a discussion about it. They had a job to do, but Blake wanted to let Ilia she heard it, and she was more than willing to help take the bastard down however she could. It wouldn’t bring Ilia’s parents back or erase the pain she’d endured because of it, but it would give her closure. And that was the best thing that Ilia could get, knowing Jacques couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Would he though? Jacques Schnee was powerful, rich, and a white man. People like that rarely got what was coming to them. Even with all of this information….. God she wanted to rip him apart. But she knew that the way people like this suffered the most was by facing punishment for their crimes and finding out they weren’t invincible. She just….didn’t have much faith in the system. And to see how he had manipulated the foster system in Arkansas while in California….
Even so, she just gave a short nod at what Blake said as she struggled to get her breathing under control.
“We make copies of everything we find before handing it over to law enforcement.”
Because if he somehow got out, they’d need it for other ways to destroy him, such as in the court of public opinion. So with some sense of control back, Ilia knelt down to pick up the files she’d dropped, only to find the one he kept on his own family as well as Elsa, photos that had been leaked to Rita Skeeter peeking out. Wow the man was complete trash.
Of course the rich and powerful didn’t always get what was coming to them. But Blake felt that with what she and Ilia just found, and if the others could rescue Weiss, that the younger Schnee would help see to it that her father got what he deserved. Weiss was not her father, which was something that Blake had come to understand in the Dreams before Beacon had fallen. She hadn’t liked Weiss initially, and they’d literally fought for hours straight on the issue of Faunus. But Weiss had proven herself to be different than her father in that world. Blake had hope that she would do the same in this world.
“Definitely. Best to have back ups anyway. I found a thumb drive, but we can look it over later back at home.” That one would require more time than they currently had. While getting information was one of their goals, they were also on a time schedule. They were the distraction to take the heat off of the others going to rescue Weiss and Elsa.
Blake glanced through the rest of the files Ilia had handed her before she slipped them into a shoulder bag she’d brought with her. It made it easier to carry and less likely to lose the evidence while they set the fire and escaped. Part of her wanted to take one of the laptops, but it would be more difficult to get useful information off of it, so she left it. Besides, they’d already found quite the collection of damning information that would bring Jacques down so long as law enforcement remained unswayed by any attempts for him to bribe them.
The laptops would have been amazing to get but those would undoubtedly be examined by law enforcement. True they’d be damaged but she was pretty sure that there were ways they could pull information from it despite it. The point was for them to get this information to law enforcement once they made their copies to get that ball rolling.
Well, Ilia was a bit calmer now. Enough so that she could at least focus on the mission at hand. She’d figure out how to come to terms with what she had just learned later. It would hardly be the first side she pushed something aside for a greater good.
“Sounds like a plan.”
So once they had everything they needed in shoulder bags, it was dousing everything in accelerant as they moved towards an exit, where thankfully they didn’t run into anyone. No workers or security who were working late. Pulling her whip out once they were at the door, Ilia looked to Blake and gave a small nod. It was the moment of truth where electricity and fire dust would be utilized. So with the signal given, Ilia charged her whip and lashed out at a puddle of accelerant in tandem with Blake and then moving further away, watching as the flames began and started to take over the building.
A building built on the pain and suffering of others, of lies and manipulation and death.