Tricks, Cons and Bamboozles | Wednesday | Period 1

[charming_thief]

Today in class, the students were fortunate enough to have a fully-human, fully-clothed teacher. Sure, that teacher was one who had spent the weekend sobbing into an empty bottle of Bordeaux, but that was neither here nor there.

“Today,” said Neal, “we’re going to do a couple of workshops.”

The room was set up with three main tables, with various pieces of equipment in buckets on each one. Yes, the class was a bit small to do workshops like this, but that was what he was doing and that was that.

“I’ve set up three main stations for you all, and each one focuses on a different manual task that’s pretty much essential in this field. I’m not saying you have to be experts at it, especially if you want to move to the more white-collar stuff, but you’ve got to know the basics. So here we have lock-picking, pickpocketing, and forgery.” He pointed to each table as he spoke, then shrugged.

“Any questions?” 

Comments

Sign In

[charming_thief]

Like an amateur.

Re: Sign In

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Bruce Wayne

Re: Sign In

[exactlyaverage.livejournal.com]

Jack Carter

Re: Sign In

[its-theclimb.livejournal.com]

Miley Ray Stewart

Station One: Lock-Picking

[charming_thief]

There's little combination locks and more heavy-duty padlocks to practice on, and wires and various moddable other things you can use to get at them. Plus maybe an instruction book or two, if you're into that.

Re: Station One: Lock-Picking

[exactlyaverage.livejournal.com]

Jack sat down and began to fiddle with a padlock. And fiddle. And fiddle. And fiddle some more.

Each bit of fiddling of course resulted in more frustration.

And Jack muttering under his breath. A lot.

Re: Station One: Lock-Picking

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Bruce grabbed a few locks at random and opened them all inside of a minute. Really, you needed a better lock than that to delay someone who trained in lock picking with John Zatara. He could do the same thing nearly as fast even if he were upside down in a tank of water.

Re: Station One: Lock-Picking

[hasadestiny]

Lex had never picked a lock before, but he had steady hands and a knack for gadgets, and eventually he managed to get the padlock undone.

Re: Station One: Lock-Picking

[bigshoestofill.livejournal.com]

Bart looked at the padlock in front of him for a good long while. Then at the book. Then at the lock. He looked at the tools. Then back at the lock.

He looked around to see if anyone was looking at him, leaned over the lock and vibrated it through the loop it was locking.

Station Two: Pickpocketing

[charming_thief]

For this, Neal's set up a couple of clothing items on hangers with little bells in the pockets. You can reach in to take the wallet, but if you set the bells off, you've faaaaailed.

Re: Station Two: Pickpocketing

[its-theclimb.livejournal.com]

Miley only succeeded in knocking over one of the mannequins Neal had set up.

Twice.

Re: Station Two: Pickpocketing

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

The bad news: Bruce had big, strong hands that would make it tough to just reach in and grab the wallet. On the other hand, he trained in multiple hidden cities in the ways of martial arts, where they taught speed and stealth.

If he needed to steal a wallet from a real person, he'd probably create innocent physical contact and use that to distract from the theft. But with bells, he just had to take his time and be careful.

Which he did. And he was. So that went easily enough.

Re: Station Two: Pickpocketing

[hasadestiny]

Lex could see how this would be useful skill, but he really had no idea how to go about it, especially since he wasn't exactly inconspicuous.

Re: Station Two: Pickpocketing

[bigshoestofill.livejournal.com]

Bart stretched a bit and grinned. Bells? He was stealing things from Conner's stupid leather jacket all the time without the so called superhero noticing.

He stood nonchalantly against the wall (or with as little chalance as Bart could, which is not so much), then there was a blur and he was holding a wallet in his hand, grinning.

Station Three: Forgery

[charming_thief]

This one's got a lot of instruction books, and some writing in various handwritings that people can try to copy over.

Re: Station Three: Forgery

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

This was something Bruce hadn't studied much at all, so it actually took him time to do right. But still, not as much time as it could have taken. He had trained himself to have four distinct writing styles, so it wasn't TERRIBLY difficult to adapt some of those techniques.

Re: Station Three: Forgery

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

Kenzi was having sooooo much fun with this. Not that she didn't know a lot of it, but this was cool! And helped her work on her impression of the handwriting of her classmates around her.

Re: Station Three: Forgery

[hasadestiny]

Considering how he'd ended up here, Lex was confident enough with this exercise. His end result mightn't have fooled an expert but it was good enough for the lay person.

Re: Station Three: Forgery

[its-theclimb.livejournal.com]

Miley was really doing her best here, but she was having a serious problem not dotting her i's with little hearts.

Re: Station Three: Forgery

[bigshoestofill.livejournal.com]

Yeah. This. This took patience and skill and, well, patience.

Bart wasn't good at patience.

He squinted at the books and the writing and his pen and the paper. After a couple seconds he started scrawling something down. He tried to make it look different than his normal practically illegible handwriting. All that served to do was make it more illegible.

Talk to Neal

[charming_thief]

Who is watching you amateurs regally.

Re: Talk to Neal

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

Have some coffee, Mr. Caffrey. Kenzi curled up and started slurping hers. "I am so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so glad you weren't here last weekend. Where were you? or did you turn into a plant or a cat again or something?"

Talk to Kenzi

[charming_thief]

When she pings in, likely disgusted by these amateurish tasks.

Re: Talk to Kenzi

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

Seriously, people? Seriously?

Yeah, Kenzi is smirking at you.

OOC

[charming_thief]

I am sorry class sucks. I am dead tired from orientation omg.