Planning ORTOS, part I

'Hey. Come in.'


'Hello. Has your brother arrived yet?'

'Yeah, he's talking Wed's ear off.'


'Hi. The people you called should be coming soon, right?'


'Yes, that's right. I can't imagine we'll have to wait long.'


'Well greetings and salutations!'


'Heeeere we go.'

'Shh, dear sister.'


'Hi, I'm Edward, and this is Ellis. It's nice to meet you.'


'And a pleasure to meet you too! I am Lazarus Magus Gore, Indigo's little brother, though you can figure that out for yourselves, albeit only her little brother in age, eh Indigo?'


'...Yeah.'

'So are you allies in this mission to stop our tyrannical beast of a father and his pet eldritch nightmare of unknown origins too?'


'...Uh, I am.'


'I, um, did the hacking.'

'It's nothing to do with me, but I want to see how it's going to go.'

'Ahh, I see -'


'- Don't worry about him, Laz could continue a conversation with the fucking wall.'

*RING*


'So you don't want me to get the door?'

'Fuck no. You stay here and try not to bore everyone to death.'


'Hi?'


'Is this the residence of Indigo Lilan Gore?'

'Yeah, that's me.'

'Nice to meet you. We're from the institute; your friend Ms Faux phoned us on your behalf?'

'Great, okay, come in.'


'Hey, guys!'


'Hello. This is Anstine Shen, Anastasia Houck -'


'- Hi!'

'And I am Charmaine Vreer. We're from the Institute of Arcane Research.'


'Ah, hello. Nalini Faux, we spoke on the phone. Nice to meet you all. Or again, in Anstine's case.'


'You know each other already?'

'Not really, we've just seen each other at the gym before a handful of times.'


'Oh yeah, I recognise you.'


'...Are you Tony's partner, by any chance?'

'Fiancé now. But yeah, I am. Who're you?'

'I'm Edward. I work at the school too.'

'Ah! He's mentioned you.'


'Can you tell us about the problem? Ms Faux didn't want to share many details over the phone.'


'Don't blame her. Yeah. The thing we're after is an alien called Yahzoputl...'








'...Wow.'

'I see.'


'The plan is to just get proof of it so far, not necesarily to try and kill it.'


'Yeah, but from what I hear about the shithole it's hiding in, just catching a glimpse of it is going to be hard.'


'Definitely. It's ORTOS. We've gotta be well-prepared.'


'Oh, you have familiarity with the facility of doom that we are to be breaking into?'

'I know someone who works in one.'


'Lucky them. Right, so first thing's first. We're going to need to look the part, and preferably hide our actual identities as best as possible.'


'I could take the strips out of my hair. Perhaps slap on some temporary dye, and wear a false moustache. Though with the long length of Indigo's hair, hiding hers will be significantly more difficult.'


'Bald cap.'


'So I guess that means dyeing mine back to black. What a bummer. I'll have to look normal.'


'Aww, diddums. I'll have to do it too.'


'If the Devil's Port facility is anything like the Midnight Hollow one - which is the assumption I'm under, we'll be able to freely enter the reception area, and even the Main Level. The Main Level contains the entrances to the rest of the work places, levels one to seven. However the work levels are guarded by a card lock. We'll need someone's ID card in order to gain access ourselves.'


'Hmmm. And how perhaps do you think we could attain sufficient cards?'

'I'm not sure... I can't help but think the only way we can get one is by force...'


'I can't see anybody giving one up willingly.'


'Me neither. Force it is. In a way that doesn't draw any unwanted attention, and doesn't hurt anybody.'


'I could perhaps whip up a batch of sleeping elixirs.'


'That sounds good. How long would they last?'

'Well, I know two strengths. The tamer version isn't actually that good for this particular purpose; it would require three of the potions to be used on the same person in order to render them fully unconscious, which as you can imagine would heighten the risk and chances of being noticed. The more potent strength will have an instant knock-out effect on the target, but they will remain asleep for quite some time. Quite a number of hours.'

'That sounds better than nothing, though.'


'It'd just be sleeping, wouldn't it?'


'Oh yeah. Nothing sinister if you know how to make them right.'


'Oh absolutely! Fear not my good sir, I have absolutely zero malicious intention towards an innocent party, this is purely to maintain a feasible way of getting into the level area of importance, to secure the proof that Indigo so dearly needs to expose our villainous father.'


'You don't need to do that, Dad exposes himself enough already.'


'No joke. Heath found one of his, um... videos.'


'...Oh.'

'And he insisted on showing me, because he's an ass.'




'I kinda wanna see this for myself. It sounds bad.'


'...Someone at school told me Dad's porn name once.'


'I don't want to know!'


'We're dealing with a psycho porn star, is that it? Can't say I've ever had a case like this before.'

'He's called Girth Vader -'


'JESUS CHRIST WEDNESDAY!'


'Oh goodness.'


'Oh my God.'


'...I like Star Wars.'


'Oh nooooo, I know who that is! He wore a Darth Vader helmet and it almost made the video watchable because it covered his face!'


'...We are getting very wildly off topic.'


'I'm looking this up when I get home. That's hilarious. Okay, okay, back to the plan.'


'...But yes. I can make sleeping elixirs just right so that it gives the target a nice nap, not death. Perhaps it would be prudent to find someone that we already know works in the correct level and create some kind of distraction.'


'Like finding them on the database beforehand?'


'I could hack in again and grab the details of Level 3 employees.'


'That'd be great. Then we'd know who to look out for.'


'Then perhaps one of us could grab an employee's attention, and lure them away somewhere quiet. Perhaps under the guise of being a lost new employee.'


'I'm not sure. It would only take one person to look through the database to try and verify our position to find out that we're intruders.'