A.N: So, this really should not have taken this long. Well, here it is, Plan away!
[X] Plan Girl Scout (Pending)
[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[X] Lock picking
[X] Focus on raising the level of a specific skill (Disguise)
You had decided to be slightly daring and try to rob two places instead of one. One of them would be the easy mark of the middle class house while the other one was the significantly harder target of the second richest house.
The first house would be simple, since you could probably break into it without a lot of trouble since you had decided to learn lock picking that week. The second house would be significantly harder, but you already had a plan in mind that made use of the abilities you already had.
In essence, you wanted to pretend to be a girl scout. You had the acting skills to pull it off, and your disguise ability was another thing you were working on during the week. Getting a girl scout outfit on your size and a few boxes of cookies to sell wouldn't be all that difficult, and then once you were inside, you could subdue everyone there with your combat skills and rob the place.
To make matters even harder to discern, you wanted to try and pretend that you were even younger than your actual age. Ten years old seemed like a good age. The right use of makeup and fitting on the clothes would help, but it would be your acting skills that would have to carry most of the burden.
Of course, you were still going to use a camera to execute surveillance of your targets, and you were flexible enough that you should be able to make changes to the plan based on what information you were able to gather by yourself.
Speaking of information, you had pretty much tore holes on the pages of information you had received about the targets you were going to hit, to the point where you had basically memorized everything important.
There was distressingly little information. The middle class house was home to a pair of siblings of "around thirty". Both of them had jobs, the sister was a secretary in a law firm while the brother was a teacher in a nearby school (thankfully not the one you studied in, because that would have been too weird), and due to that the house was left empty for long periods of time, which was the one of the reasons why you felt it would be easy.
Apart from that, information was decidedly scarce. It mentioned that the sister was connected with the gang due to often serving as a messenger in between it and the firm (which was the reason their house had been the target), it also had the exact location of the house (on the edges of the residential zone, far away from the most traveled spots). And that was it. There was not even a description of the house.
As for the second target, there was only a tiny amount of additional information. The family was composed of a mother, a father and two kids, one of 13 and the other 10 years old, both boys. The boys had school in the afternoon from monday to friday (it was one of those schools that separated morning students and afternoon students), and they both spent their saturday mornings on extra activities, the 13 year old learning guitar, and the 10 year old at swimming lessons.
As for the father, he was practically a non-issue, being a programmer and systems analyst that spent his Sunday with family, but during the week he only got home at night.
The mother, on the other hand, was a big enigma. As already mentioned, she was an important asset to the Red Claws gang due to her work as a drug supplier, but that also meant she did not have a steady schedule by the necessity of what she did. There were reports about her driving all over the city at irregular hours, but nothing concrete.
The only piece of additional information was the notice about a security camera positioned to watch the front porch of the house.
So, in order to get more information, you placed cameras watching both locations and left them recording throughout the week. Meanwhile, you were training skills which you felt would be useful for your crime.
One of those was a completely new skill: Lock picking. And you got shocked to see how easy it was to learn and use. Reading reports from locksmiths, you quickly learned that no lock was completely secure. It was fairly easy to replicate keys even from a photo, and that was if you even wanted to open the lock instead of breaking it.
And then there was the fact that houses frequently had security flaws that most people wouldn't even think about. It was easy, for example, to unscrew the air conditioner unit of a house, remove it, and enter through the hole. And that was not even thinking about the fact you could straight up buy "bump keys", which you could use to pick locks as well as obtain detailed information about using them.
You searched for information about the most common lock types, and looked at local locksmiths to get a sense of the kinds of locks people would buy in the city. And finally you practiced, opening up the locks in your house without the use of keys, to get used to the technique.
And the results:
Lock picking Level 11
- The ability to break through locks and related security. At this level, you can easily and quickly get through any normal locks with very little equipment needed.
And then there was another thing you trained, your ability to disguise yourself. For your plan, it was very likely that you would be seen, and so it was paramount that you could disguise your true identity. You went all out, even using your self-hypnosis trigger to make your learning easier.
Weirdly, shadowboxing was perhaps the skill that helped the most with your training. And that was because you could use it to create mental images of yourself and look at them from various angles and pick out any possible flaws in your disguise.
You became even better in your use of makeup, but perhaps even more important was how much more you learned about the distinct ways you could conceal yourself based on the clothes you were using. As such, one of the things you got for your disguise was a specific hat with a tab that you could use to conceal your face depending on the angle you were observed. You really focused a lot on that skill during the week, and the results did not disappoint.
Disguise Level 14
- The skill to conceal your true appearance by faking another one. At this level, even direct inspection will have trouble seeing through your disguise, as long as it is not too unreasonable.
One the other hand, your training at school didn't have that much visible effect. You managed to slightly start being able to perceive things around you even during meditation, but that was clearly something that would need to be trained further.
Meditation Level 16
- The skill to reach inside yourself and obtain a better understanding of your own mind and behavior. At this level, you can relieve even deep seated stress as well as easily filter out distractions while focusing and also not being completely blind to the world. Your mental abilities are also significantly improved, even outside of meditation.
Still, the later levels were harder to gain than the earlier ones, so it still felt like progress.
But finally Thursday arrived, and there was no more time for information gathering, so you collected your cameras and looked through the footage.
There was quite a lot of it, but it was worth going through it all in order to find even the slightest inkling of additional information.
For the middle class house, there really wasn't that much to see, mostly because there wasn't much activity in general in the house and surroundings. You did take a note about some activity, which meant that you were able to narrow down the times that would be better to make your attempt.
You were going to do it Friday, in order to have time to perform your second crime before the end of the time allotted. But besides that, and considering that you wanted to have time to perform your second robbery if you decided to do it on the same day, you decide to set things up for:
[] 08:00 AM
[] 01:30 PM
Besides that, the only thing of note was that, on the Wednesday, the sister came back home earlier than usual, and carrying some packages. It was definitely suspicious...
Now, something much more interesting was the information gained from watching the other house. That place and surroundings were truly full of activity, but you could summarize the useful information you had obtained with a few short sentences:
- When the mother was alone in the house, she got visited by different people four different times during the week. All those people seemed to be delivering packages to her.
- After receiving those visits, the mother always did some things on the camera, which meant the recording system was probably local.
- The mother did indeed go somewhere else more than once, but she did not take the family car, instead calling a private transport.
- While the mother was alone in the house, you caught a glimpse of her in one of the side windows more than once. That would not be that strange, except that you never saw anyone else there.
It really wasn't that much, but you did manage to ascertain a few things about the times in which the neighborhood was quiet, which brought you to the next question: When were you going to put your plan into action:
[] Friday Afternoon: The mother would be alone at home and there wouldn't be much chance of discovery by the neighborhood, but there was a chance she would receive one of those unexpected "visits".
[] Friday Evening: The whole family would be there, including the children, but there was very little chance of unexpected events.
[] Saturday Morning: The mother would be alone again, but the activity of the neighborhood would be high, and thus the chances of discovery.
[] Saturday Afternoon: Only the mother and the children would be there. Low chance of neighborhood attention and of unexpected events.
You had narrowed down the best times to act among those four periods, in order to reduce chances of danger, although it would never be completely safe. Of course, that was all based on your earlier plan, but now that you had new information, perhaps you should change a few things. You never really did think of how to restrain your victim(s) while you robbed the house, for example.
So, now was the time to make your final, detailed plan.
[] Write-in (Plan Girl Scout is assumed as the base unless specified otherwise in the vote)
