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Post by Oswald Cobblepot on Sept 12, 2020 5:42:48 GMT -7
Oswald was a combination of exhausted and invigorated himself though he wasn't about to show it either. That was just what a prison break would do to you in his experience and he was gathering some considerable experience in the matter. Constantly watching ones own back and scheming for survival and advantage was the way of life in Blackgate. True that he could never be entirely sure that one of his own men could turn on him even on the outside but the likelihood was less and the proximity to rival gang members out to gather favour and renown far greater when not locked in with them. There was safety in freedom and being surrounded by thugs on his payroll and that relaxed the senses that have been tensed for months. At the same time he had plans. He'd had a great deal of time to think in jail, he had several ventures to branch in to and soon they would be more than idle day dreams from his cell, soon he could act on them. Once of course he'd re-solidified his position, dealt with anyone who thought his incarceration was an opportunity to defy his will and of course, finished Victor's little caper. There was so much to do, who could ever take the time to sleep.
He didn't like it when people told him something wasn't his concern. To Oswald everything was his business and once he knew about it then he could decide whether he cared or not. Fortunately Victor follows up with saying he'd tell him before Ozzy's expression can turn too sour.
He raises an eyebrow at the news of Freeze's wife. Personally he'd rather let the woman die that be controlled in such a way but that was just part of the reason he considered himself better than everyone else "Blackmailing through affairs of the heart...who knew Boyle had the stomach for such things. I see the concern for haste and you have my sympathies" empty niceties of course, Oswald would use family members against people at the drop of a hat of course but Boyle? He thought the man was just the usual flavour of heartless businessman. It just went to show that everyone had their secrets, Oswald was just more honest about them now.
Oswald of course made mental notes to check in to this MacGregor's Syndrome and cryogenic freezing. The first, if he could find a cure it was clear he could get Freeze to do anything for it. The second, well, you never know when being able to hold someone or yourself in stasis may come in handy.
The truth of the operation opened up new problems. Additional time and space for transportation just for a start "I assume you will handle her transportation, if you provide me with the size requirements I can ensure a suitable vehicle, preferably with refrigeration included" Oswald looked to his borrowed phone and began thinking again, he made a mental note to ensure enough time to break through walls if whatever equipment Victor needed to transport her with wasn't going to fit through a standard door. Judging by how fast Victor got through Blackgate's walls he didn't expect much time was needed but planning meant thinking of everything that can go wrong, including being prepared to be thwarted by narrow stairwells.
Another question came to mind as he added this information to his plotting. He started to speak but then remembered he had to stop typing on the phone to press the button to speak. He was already finding that tedious and the phone too impractical. He stopped and pressed the button "You said we would need Boyle to access the vault. I have men tracking him now. Tell me, when this is done, what is it you wish to happen to him?" Just how far would Freeze go to revenge? Oswald was curious. He could destroy the man or kill him, Oswald wasn't much concerned which fate Boyle suffered. After his recent incarceration he was quite partial to the idea of dragging the man's name through the mud and ruining his life the way Oswald's had been when he was caught. The justice system was rather incompetent of course so he would likely have to land a considerable pile of evidence in their lap but helpfully Boyle had actually committed the crime this time so he wouldn't even have to make it up.
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Avalikia
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Post by Victor Fries on Sept 12, 2020 22:56:34 GMT -7
As Oswald commented on Boyle's actions, Victor kept his attention on his computer but his lips curved into a bitter frown. However, the moment the other man expressed understanding and sympathy, the scientist's eyes shifted abruptly to Oswald. Giving a brief but hard stare he simply said, "No, you do not, and no, I do not." While he could tolerate empty niceties of many kinds, as many people were quite prone to them even if he never used them himself, hearing them expressed applied to his wife's situation was actually incredibly irritating. The other man did not know and love Nora, so he couldn't possibly understand what had been lost, and the last thing that his wife needed or deserved at this point was to have her situation be used by others to try to get on his good side by pretending to care when they didn't.
Still, Victor recognized that Oswald hadn't meant to touch that nerve and had possibly even have meant well by those words to a certain degree, so he was content to inform him that he didn't like it by calling him out on it but leave it at that. And in any event, the other man was indispensable to him at the moment so it wasn't as if he'd abandon working with him over something that was so small in the grand scheme of things. That didn't mean that he'd accept it without complaint, though.
When Oswald found the luxury of time to look into MacGregor's Syndrome, he'd learn that it was one of those syndromes that had been neglected by the medical community because the cure was not something simple and also it was so incredibly rare that no medical research facility had decided that it was a good investment. Whatever the cure was, there would be very few customers so why bother? It was much more profitable to research heart disease and cancer and other very common illnesses and conditions with millions of potential customers.
As for cryogenic freezing, every resource that Oswald would be able to find would indicate that cryogenic freezing wasn't actually that strange and had actually been done by others. But what had never been done was successfully unfreezing the person, so it was hardly a 'working' method for putting someone into some form of stasis, unless Victor knew how to unfreeze his wife and didn't tell anybody else how to do it.
He was quick to allow his thoughts to move on to the next matter. He doubted that the logistics of moving around Nora would prove to be a real hinderance in the end, but only so long as they kept it in mind in their plans. It would almost certainly be less difficult than Oswald suspects, at least to judge by his immediate comments. "Her chamber is a 3 foot cylinder, 7 feet tall, though I will transport it sideways. Refrigeration is unnecessary - her chamber maintains its internal environment as long as it has an uninterrupted power supply. That is the difficult aspect to what I will need to make to retrieve her," he explained. But not too difficult - he'd made much more complicated things than that in just the previous two days so he was fully confident in that aspect of the situation. The actual difficulty would be getting into the vault.
Between talking to Oswald, Victor began typing on the computer, starting to write out all the information he needed to be able to give to the other man. He was quite experienced with computers, and it showed by how easily his fingers flew over the keys - he had a lot to write, but it wouldn't take him very long at the rate he was going. He continued even as his thoughts were interrupted one more time with the question about Boyle, as it wasn't a complex answer that would force him to stop and think. "He does not matter to me - he deserves whatever happens to him," he stated rather coldly.
He was angry at the man, yes, but it wasn't a hot anger aside from the occasional flare up when he really stopped to think about what the other man did. But for the moment at least, he had so many other concerns and worries to contend with - Boyle getting what he deserved would have to wait its turn. For now.
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Post by Oswald Cobblepot on Sept 26, 2020 10:58:09 GMT -7
Oswald's eyebrow raised as Victor called him out on his false sympathy. Not many people would do that with him and he wasn't sure he liked it but the man was clearly icy in more ways than one "Very well" Ozzy replied carefully with a little irritation before glancing back to his phone "I understand the concern for haste on a practical level" forget the sympathies. They clearly both knew he didn't care. It only mattered to the plan.
While Oswald was unlikely to start investing in to cures for rare illnesses to Freeze's benefit he might find the cryogenic ideas more interesting. After all Victor was clearly the ice man, Oswald would probably assume that Victor has a way to thaw the woman out. He may end up wrong but it is a reasonable assumption.
He jots down the measurements on the phone and finally gets fed up of holding the button to speak in the process, waving someone over and wordlessly ordering them to stand there and hold it down before he speaks again "Refrigeration is recommended in the event that anything goes wrong with the power, transport or your equipment" Oswald's eyes briefly flick from the phone to look at Freeze's suit with a meaningful look. He was trying not to have his newfound, useful, potential ally get himself killed right away. They were tight on time, planning for everything going sideways was only wise.
Ozzy has to stop and actually look at Victor when he says he doesn't care what happens to Boyle "...It doesn't matter to you?" he looks at the man he has holding the button as if seeking confirmation he heard that right. The guy just looks like a deer caught in the headlights and uselessly shrugs. This earns a slight Ozzy frown before the Penguin looks back at Victor "Whatever happens to him would likely be nothing. An insurance claim for damages and a holiday to alleviate stress from the encounter. Karma is a fraud. The man took your wife and you would leave him to fate?" Yes, Oswald still doesn't care about the woman but try and steal from him and you'll see the rage he places upon people who take his things.
This is one thing he really can't understand from Freeze. His anger almost always burns hot. He can control it with the promise of a plan that will create vengeance befitting the crime but revenge is so often his drive in life. The world owes him, there is a constant rage below his surface and it will never go cold.
He shakes his head, trying to think of the plan rather than this insanity "A raid by night would I imagine be best when the building is quiet. Avoid attracting attention, remove the security and any other staff on site" remove being a very flexible word and open to interpretation "Lead Boyle in, raid the safe, remove any security footage or traceable evidence and leave the building to be discovered in the morning"
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Avalikia
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Post by Victor Fries on Sept 26, 2020 23:04:10 GMT -7
"I have no reason to do this if she is moved," Victor said simply in reply, stating out loud the real reason he believed that Cobblepot would need to agree with his need to hurry. Obviously, if he somehow found out that Nora was no longer in the vault then he'd have no reason to go there. And while the other man could obviously attempt to break in without him, between both the information he had on the facility and the skills he brought to the table the entire difficult venture was clearly far more likely to succeed with his help than without.
If he noticed Cobblepot's frustration with the button, he gave no indication. Even with something so trivial, it was a very practical design from Victor's viewpoint - while a switch like the one on his side would be more convenient to whoever was speaking to him, that also meant that it was possible for someone to forget to turn it off when they left and it would be difficult for him to fix it because he'd have to go outside. Having to do that would be far more inconvenient than the comparatively minor inconvenience of having to hold down a button, at least in his biased opinion, hence the setup.
There was a slight pause after the other man made his point about the need for a refrigerated vehicle. "If her chamber loses power then refrigeration would not save her," he stated first, but then quickly conceded, "But if my own equipment has another failure it would increase the amount of time I would have to rectify the problem." While his own wellbeing wasn't unimportant to him, it was something that was very easy for him to forget when he was busy thinking about Nora's wellbeing.
Still, he was quick to add, "Though if you are able to get the supplies I will request then the possibility of that happening should be greatly reduced." While he wasn't exactly embarrassed by how his suit failed him - in fact if anything he thought he did a really good job with it given the circumstances - he still felt the need to reassure Cobblepot that the incident wasn't an accurate reflection of the durability of his work generally. He wasn't normally one to engineer things that were prone to breakdowns and needed constant maintenance, but at the time it was all he could do to make something that would work in any way at all. If he weren't so distracted by other things at the moment he'd actually be somewhat excited by how the man he'd gone to all that trouble to get would probably be able to get him some actually decent supplies to work with so that he could do so much better.
Not that better supplies were the only helpful thing about Cobblepot, as the other man was beginning to prove. While planning for contingencies was hardly a new concept for Victor, and he wasn't actually bad at it at all, he'd only really applied that skill to engineering projects. He'd never until this day even considered applying it to some sort of a criminal plan, which was a completely different thing - in fact, most of his contingency plan for extracting Cobblepot from Blackgate had been to hope that he could think on his feet if anything went wrong. That being the case, he was quickly noting to himself that perhaps he should rely on the other man's expertise on such matters.
With his focus on the computer, he failed to notice the depth of Cobblepot's surprise when he declared his near indifference to Boyle's ultimate fate. Though when questioned about it he simply stated, "If given the opportunity to kill him after he is no longer useful I would, of course, do so. If not, that would perhaps be a consideration for when I have fewer more important things to worry about."
There was, indeed, a very sharp contrast between the two men when it came to how they felt anger. For Victor, the emotion was usually one of many factors to consider in any given situation, rather than being the most important by default. That wasn't because it was any weaker - in fact, in the future, he would be known as a criminal that was especially dangerous to cross because his sense of vengeance ran very deep and he would always get even eventually. It's just that he wasn't one to insist on settling the score immediately - if it took him days, months, or years to do so then he didn't see it as a problem. Some might even consider him to be even crueler because the delay meant that his eventual revenge would be cold and calculated rather than being a passion of the moment.
Which was why, at least at this point in time, his desire to get even with Boyle was taking a back seat - he had a lot of other things to worry about. He needed to rescue Nora and then... Well, figure out what to do then. He needed to figure out how to keep her safe and to keep himself alive. There was much uncertainty on the horizon, and when he had time to ponder anything besides Nora's immediate rescue that was where his mind went. But later, when things were more settled, he would remember Boyle - Victor was a man who didn't forget and didn't forgive.
But at the moment that wasn't a strong draw on his attention so his thoughts refocused away from that and onto more important things. "Security at GothCorp is not lessened at night, and many of the staff tend to work late, but there would be fewer of those," he commented, "The best time would probably be one to three in the morning - too late for the night owls to stay, too early for the early birds to arrive. Removing the security will be a challenge - there are many of them, and they are armed. It would probably take a lot of well-equipped men to accomplish, and it will likely take some time even so - we need to prevent them from contacting the police somehow." Though he was new at the criminal thing, he had a lot of transferrable skills when it came to problem-solving so it wasn't actually that hard for him to dive deeply into examining the problem in front of him.
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Post by Oswald Cobblepot on Oct 10, 2020 13:11:08 GMT -7
Oswald could see the logic in Boyle moving the woman. By the time news got around about what happened at Blackgate and the police started giving out Freeze's description it would be all too clear the lengths Victor would go to and so only sensible to remove his leverage to a safe location. It would be all the better to remove Boyle before he had a chance to start making new plans.
Backup power unit Oswald notes down on his shopping list with the news that power loss would be deadly. How much equipment makes the journey would depend on space but if he has to get a suitable transportable power source anyway it would be easy enough to just get two "Your supplies will be of no concern. The faster we can be in and out the easier this will be" he sounds very confident that whatever Victor needs he will be able to get it. The only question is how fast he can get it but he's made some outlandish traps and supplied such things to other rogues before, he knows where to go looking for supplies to make unorthodox contraptions.
Oswald was at least satisfied to learn Victor was willing to kill Boyle if given the chance "Then circumstances permitting we plan for the opportunity after we are away" Oswald merely intends to provide that chance and ensure Boyle comes with them when they leave. Provided it will not ruin the main goal of this escapade he would more than happily include a brief moment in the schedule for murder. He liked to bring people down to his level, it was a reminder that people were just as terrible as he always imagined them to be and that notions of heroics or noble deeds were for fools.
There was a long pause where Oswald stood there thinking. His mind was going a million miles an hour as he stares at the building schematics on the phone. Ruling out certain exits to the building and noting places which may be problematic. The main problem of course was the people. Anyone who works through the night needs to get a family, go home and get out of his way. They were unlikely to do that in the next day however and stealth was completely out of the question. Finally he started speaking though he was clearly still thinking things through at the same time "Cell phones can be blocked with the right equipment, which I have" of course he has these things in an age where a phone call can bring disaster "Landlines can be cut. A diversion would be a great help to direct the police elsewhere but they will not stay distracted for long...The building, I take it you were doing your experiments there? Do they have any emergency procedures which may lockdown the building? Vents, measures against perhaps gassing the building? The security are presumably not equipped with gasmasks"
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Avalikia
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Post by Victor Fries on Oct 12, 2020 1:14:45 GMT -7
Victor actually suspected that Boyle would consider the vault at GothCorp to be so secure that he wouldn't believe that Victor could get into it. But he also suspected that Nora would not be left there indefinitely - only long enough for Boyle to decide exactly what he wanted to do with her, likely moving her to one of the branches of the company outside of Gotham. Wherever that was, Victor was determined to rescue her before that because he didn't trust Boyle to do anything with her wellbeing in mind - she was something to study, but how concerned would the man be with keeping her intact in the process? No, she simply wasn't safe in his possession.
When Cobblepot confidently confirmed that getting supplies shouldn't be a problem, Victor simply gave a short hum in satisfaction. If the man's skill matched his words then all of this would be worth it. Though he didn't react at all when the other man went on to comment on the opportunity to kill Boyle, as that was hardly on his mind except for Cobblepot mentioning it. Unless Boyle locked himself into a vault similar to the one that currently housed Nora, he was sure that he could easily have at the man at his convenience whether sooner or later.
But though he had some vague sense that Nora would not approve, he cared little about the morality of the idea. He didn't pause to consider whether or not his actions were heroic or noble or the opposite - he'd never really thought of anything that way. Instead, his thoughts were more concerned with ideas of necessity. Though was it necessary for him to kill Boyle? He would argue yes - what the man did was unforgivable and he'd get away with it too if Victor didn't do anything about it personally. If Nora were around she'd probably talk him out of it, but the very fact that it was Nora who Boyle had taken only underlined to him the fact that she was not around to do so.
He used the silence to concentrate a bit better on what he was working on, not that speaking to Cobblepot while he was working was overly troublesome. In fact, as he was working on essentially listing off everything he knew about GothCorp beyond what could easily be conveyed verbally - the personnel and the details of the security system as well as the specifics of the vault that he could remember - some of the questions the other man was asking him were actually helping remind him of some of the details he might have forgotten. It would certainly pay to be thorough.
He simply nodded to the man's solution to the phone problem, glad that it sounded simple enough. He could probably work out how to make a device like that but the fewer things he had to invent during the next couple of days, the better. "Yes, the bulk of the building is used for research - there are laboratories, containment rooms, storage spaces for experiments. There is no emergency procedure to lock down the entire building at once - in fact, there is the opposite: to both vent the building and allow personnel to escape. But the building is segmented into different areas that can be locked down individually. There are large vents designed for emergency ventilation in most spaces but do not know the layout of those. I do, however, know where the central utility room is - all the vents are linked to it. The security guards are armed but do not generally carry specialized equipment like gas masks, though there are a few places where gas masks are stored," he easily described.
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Post by Oswald Cobblepot on Oct 17, 2020 5:14:02 GMT -7
Oswald was aware of Boyle but not to the point that he knew what the man was likely to do so he goes off what he would do and this woman was clearly the key to controlling someone who could create this kind of ice technology that essentially allowed him to stroll in to Blackgate like it was a walk in the park. Of course currently Oswald doesn't have to control Victor, their goals are aligned but what happens when they're not? Could Freeze be bought? Does he have motivations other than Nora? Oswald isn't sure yet. Certainly his current obsession seems to be his icicle of a wife but once he had her would it open him up to other options? In part Boyle was a test and perhaps a trap to further entangle Freeze in to a life of crime.
From a logical sense Cobblepot would of course prefer if Boyle didn't survive the night anyway, less witnesses. From a personal sense it didn't matter to him, he didn't take something from the Penguin. If he could get evidence of Victor killing the man though that was always useful information to keep stored away, even if Victor didn't care himself.
Another look at his phone and Oswald's brain was constantly working on two tracks. The information he'd requested on Victor and Nora had come back to him. Know your allies like would like to know your enemies. Which is to say, know how to beat them. Oswald knows several cops who are willing to do favours and a quick message sent to one earlier had provided him with a couple of background checks. He wasn't expecting much from it, to go straight from humble scientist to jail break overnight was unusual but something about Freeze's personality made Oswald believe it. Still, it would be foolish not to check where the ice man came from.
As he's reading through it he's also listening to Victor though and it seems they have a possible plan forming "I would propose then that a few men infiltrate the central utility room quietly and take it over in order to lockdown any areas which can be and use the vents to disperse a gas that will bring down the guards. We then simply walk in...Should they fail to gain control the distraction their attempt will provide will make a more direct approach from multiple sides an easier task...I can also ensure that the attention of the police and any other masked heroes is focused elsewhere" he would have to call in a favour or two but a good old fashioned hunt the bomb among the hostages should keep them distracted.
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Avalikia
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Post by Victor Fries on Oct 18, 2020 5:35:25 GMT -7
Victor gave up on any pretense of following the law the moment that he realized that the law would not help him rescue Nora. In fact, one of the main reasons why he'd really cared about the law before was that he recognized that operating outside of it when the things that he wanted were largely legal was simply foolish - the easiest way to avoid getting arrested was to not commit any crimes, after all. That the other main reason why was because he knew that Nora wouldn't approve was the only reason why psychologists trying to analyze him in the future would debate whether or not he was a psychopath.
But now that he was placed in a position where not only did he want something that was technically illegal but also could only be obtained illegally. And not only that, but he highly doubted that he'd get to the end of this without being identified - if for no other reason than the fact that his appearance was really quite distinct now. This meant that there was no point in even pretending to try to operate within the confines of the law, and that was something that his thinking adjusted to with surprising ease - it simply meant that he had more options available and more difficulties. That didn't mean that he automatically had any experience in doing such things but he certainly wasn't emotionally troubled by the transition.
A quick background check would reveal that neither Victor nor Nora had any sort of a criminal record whatsoever - even the traffic tickets were minor and minimal. Victor's parents were still alive but did not live near Gotham and were his only family apart from Nora. She was simply a ballerina before she became ill - and not a bad one at all, but not especially famous, though it was certainly an easy guess that her illness would have affected her career in that regard.
As for Victor, working for a private company since the moment he graduated meant that any great feats of his career became credited to GothCorp generally rather than himself personally, and it would be difficult to sort out which of GothCorp's achievements were his fault. That being the case, it was difficult to find any information about his recent doings but it was much easier to find out that GothCorp's cryogenics lab was considered to be world-class and that Victor's position within it was some level of prominent - the specifics were hazy because the company didn't exactly publically list their employees aside from the upper management and Victor was not one of those. But the hint that he was probably very good at his job was there. Then again, the best evidence of what the man could do was probably what Oswald had personally witnessed.
A somewhat deeper dig would reveal that both Victor and Nora had attended the same private boarding school before they went to the university, though while Nora attended it for just a few years Victor had been there starting when he was eight years old. They very much seemed to have led pretty boring lives compared to the sort of people Oswald normally associated with.
When Oswald began to sketch out a plan, Victor was so focused on the computer in front of him that he may not have appeared to have been listening at first, but then his expression became deeply thoughtful. "I'm uncertain how effective the vents would be at dispersing a gas - they're designed to vent out, not in. It may be that they would not reach every corner. Though whether the gas is feasible or not, I do have an idea about how to ensure that the guards will not be a problem. The gun attached to my suit requires a lot of energy and chemicals - it's heavy, unwieldy, and doesn't last for very long. I mean to improve it, but I have an idea about how to make a... lesser gun. Same principle, less powerful, but lighter and if it works I can make many of them and they would still be better than a rifle or a shotgun - it would be easy to overwhelm any guards. It would also be invaluable if your attempt to distract any outside help isn't completely successful," he replied.
"...If it works..." he added after a pause, emphasizing that disclaimer. He may be good at what he does, but he'd never done any of this before, after all. And he had the experience to know the difference between things that work in theory and things that actually work. Especially given the time frame he had to work with - he was certain that he could make such a thing if given enough time, but he only had two days and that wasn't the only thing he needed to accomplish during that time.
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Post by Oswald Cobblepot on Oct 31, 2020 9:05:03 GMT -7
The idea that Nora perhaps wouldn't approve was only part of the reason Oswald would like proof of Victor's crimes but he could also do things like sell it to people who don't know Freeze won't care about it or use it in some deal with the police. Just because the subject of the incriminating evidence doesn't care that it's incriminating doesn't mean that no one else will pay for it anyway. Freeze was new, right now no one knew more about him than Ozzy and that was always an advantage he'd enjoy.
The background checks were as boring as Oswald expected. If anything he was perhaps surprised they even had traffic tickets. Parents were noted and always a good target for the future if needed. Previous jobs held little insight other that further confirmation that Victor was probably good at his job. Oswald got his first look at Nora from the picture on her drivers licence and he made the assumption they probably met at school but that was about it. Childhood lovers, how sickeningly sweet. At least it was unlikely that he was being played by some nefarious criminal mastermind and it suggested Victor was as new to this as he thought which is of course why Oswald was needed.
Oswald paused to consider vent systems. Perhaps it was just him who would build a vent system that could gas someone at will. Perhaps this wasn't a standard "If they can vent out poisoned air presumably they would have to vent clean air in to replace it?" He mused but it wasn't something he'd like to leave to chance and he'd have to look in to the schematics if he could get hold of them. Freeze's proposal however distracted his attention and he really hoped one of his men had the sense to install a camera in Freeze's room so he could try and recreate everything he makes later.
Freeze's technology may be faster and quieter than going in guns blazing when they were trying not to draw attention. If it worked and Victor was in a good mood maybe he'd leave Ozzy a few of the guns anyway when all this was done. Oswald forgives the suggestion that his distraction techniques could be anything but successful and focus on the weaponry "How many do you believe you could create and just how reliable would this weapon be?" the idea was all well and good but if it didn't work half the time they may as well be using the guns as clubs instead. He'd seen what Freeze could do with this technology at Blackgate but scientists were slow to create and perfect their methods. They didn't have time for slow.
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Post by Victor Fries on Oct 31, 2020 16:56:54 GMT -7
Though Victor had never before considered the possible nefarious uses of a ventilation system before, he was surprisingly knowledgeable about how they worked. It certainly wasn't an aspect of cryogenics, but he'd worked in a lab for long enough to care about the particulars of his surroundings and he had a good mind for the engineering principles for something as simple as moving air around. In fact, the suit he'd built to extract Mr. Cobblepot from Blackgate had required an air intake and, to make things trickier, the air had needed to be cooled.
So it was with more than a little bit of confidence in his voice that he stated, "Yes, but the system supplying clean air is much less robust. Only a few vents, operating under the assumption that the air will find its way where it's needed as the bad air is extracted - filling the void to prevent a vacuum. Unlike the vents going out, which are designed to remove bad air from all parts of the room very quickly and efficiently. So tainting the air going in would work, but unevenly and unreliably. There would be missed corners and problems of that nature." As he explained he didn't look away from his computer, as it hardly took any of his concentration to think about it.
"The number of guns depends on how long it takes for me to get it to work," was the only answer he could give to the other question asked. And he had no idea how long that would take, especially since he was just as concerned as Mr. Cobblepot about the question of reliability. "It would be best for you to ensure we have standard weapons, just in case. I am reasonably confident, however," he added. If he weren't then he wouldn't have brought it up at all - something he'd learned from his legitimate employment was that it was better to surprise someone with something they weren't expecting than to tell them you would do something but not be able to follow through.
"When I'm done giving you the information you need my first priority will be the transportation apparatus for Nora and my suit - my own gun and my ability to participate directly would be more valuable than anything else. What time I have left I will use on the other guns - if I have sufficient time I will make enough for all the men, but that much I doubt," he explained, attempting to make up for his inability to be specific at all by instead explaining how he planned to organize his time.
Oswald would perhaps be horrified to learn that, at the present time, there was not anything at all keeping Victor under surveillance - no camera, and not even a microphone. The main reason being that Victor had supervised the construction of his cold room himself, as he hardly trusted anyone to do it correctly without his direct oversight when it was something so vital to his wellbeing. And not only would he have noticed if someone had added anything when he didn't ask them to, the very men who would have thought of it hadn't been the ones doing the construction.
Simply as a matter of how he organized things, Victor had been very quick to sort out which of the men were actually competent enough to think for themselves, and those had been assigned to run various errands - go find that person, go get that thing. Those who needed to be told what to do in order to do anything useful had been the ones to help build the cold room, but those were also the very same people who wouldn't have remembered Oswald's penchant for putting cameras and microphones on everything.
What's worse, figuring out how to add such a thing would be tricky - Victor might get focused on his work, but not so focused as to not notice and question someone messing with his cold room while he's in it, as he'd quickly come to regard the room as his personal space. And Oswald would also come to find out that Victor felt no need to sleep - at least not during the next couple of days. That was actually good in the sense that it gave Victor much more time to work, but bad in that it provided no moment when he was less alert to his surroundings.
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Character Info
Player Info
49 Posts
Joined May 2020
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Post by Oswald Cobblepot on Nov 25, 2020 7:26:02 GMT -7
Oswald found the practicalities of things like vents and building layouts to be irritatingly limiting. Like every plan they so often start off grand with simple ideas that make it seem like they'll just be able to walk in and take whatever they want but then reality just has to get involved and make everything difficult and complicated. So many things that work on paper wouldn't get past the first step in the real world.
Jotting down some notes Oswald sighed heavily at the detailed explanation of the problems with the venting system. The next time he built a building from the ground up he was going to make sure it behaved how he would like it to! "Very well. We shall discount that option"
Oswald was definitely going to have a few choice words for the lack of any recording equipment around Victors room. They were housing an intelligent newcomer to the underworld of Gotham and no one thought to steal his secrets? Idiots! Oswald was surrounded by incompetence! This is why half the the messages he had to send every time he got out of prison were to inform people he was back and to remind them they work for him. No one could ever be trusted to do things properly when he wasn't around.
The guns were of interest still but the question of their reliability made Oswald disinclined to plan anything that would rely on them "Then I suggest you commence work swiftly. I shall arrange a distraction for the authorities and for Boyle to be acquired. We shall strike when the building is quietest, between one and three in the morning as you suggested. If we cannot achieve stealth we shall simply have to achieve speed, cut any systems which may alert others of the situation and access the vault before the police or any of the vigilantes can interrupt. Depending on the systems cutting the power to the area may be the easiest method" A power cut didn't of course stop alarms going off, rather it actually tended to set a lot of them off instead. When however a hundred voices suddenly start screaming at once it was considerably more difficult to work out which one was really in danger. If his distraction was also the thing that caused the power to be cut then he could lead the police on a merry chase without making the darkness suspicious.
"If your guns are in working condition we shall sweep the guards with them. If not gas grenades will likely cause enough chaos to make the guards ineffective while they're disposed of and force any staff not willing to put up a fight out of our way" As plans went it lacked a little finesse but they were working on a tight schedule here.
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Character Info
Player Info
Avalikia
43 Posts
Joined June 2020
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Post by Victor Fries on Nov 25, 2020 10:05:30 GMT -7
Victor rarely wasted his time being bothered by the physical realities of a situation. The resources he had to work with, including the particular layout of the vent system at GothCorp, were what they were, and each moment of being bothered by it was a moment not being used to do something that would actually help his goals. In fact, he rarely wasted his time feeling anything about anything, which was simply a personality trait and a great help to his personal efficiency. Even when he definitely did feel something, such as his current concern for Nora, he greatly preferred to channel it into action rather than dwelling on it.
Though Victor was new to working with criminals, and not only those on the level of Oswald himself but also those on the level of Oswald's men, he was already starting to have some very strong opinions about what kinds he would want to work with. Who he was working with was rarely a thing he'd had to think about before, but that was because he was a very elite scientist so he'd spent his entire career working with other brilliant and skilled people. But already he didn't understand why the other man even bothered to keep at least half of his men around. While Victor knew that he needed to do things himself if he wanted to ensure that they were done right, there was only one of him and only so many hours in a day. And while, yes, he knew to be careful about who to order to do what, exactly how many tasks were there that could be safely entrusted to a fool? He'd managed to get his cold room made using such labor, but he would have preferred to have not needed to have so closely supervised them. If it were him, he'd have gathered a smaller group of better men.
Though for the time being, he was happy to be able to give up the role of managing things up to Oswald, who was hopefully used to getting the most out of his men. Perhaps now he would be able to give his full attention to the kind of work he knew he was most suited for, especially if supplied with sufficient materials for it. "Everything I am making for this endeavor will be self-powered so cutting the power should not be a problem for us," Victor noted out loud, but he had no concerns about that. He already tended to favor designs that were mostly mechanical in nature and only resorted to incorporating electricity when he had to. And the two items that required the most electricity - his suit and the transportation apparatus for Nora - were already things that by their very nature needed their own power supply in order to be portable.
"GothCorp has a system of backup generators designed to keep its most vital systems operational in the event of a power outage, including the security. But those generators are centrally located and easily disabled. The vault is designed to be unopenable without power, but that is only one circuit, easily isolated, and that would also be the circuit sustaining Nora. It should not be difficult to keep that powered while shutting down everything else," he noted next, a hint of extra energy about him at the thought of just how easy and effective it would be.
He paused then to consider if he could think of anything remaining to be discussed because, while the discussion was important, it was also slowing the speed that he was able to work on the computer. And beyond that, he was feeling much better physically so he knew he would be up to beginning to make everything he needed to make once he was done with everything he needed to write. So he was eager to finish talking if everything necessary had been said.
It was only then that he realized that they'd practically skipped over actually talking about whether or not to kidnap Boyle, as he did possibly have the option to instead make something that could crack the vault. But because he honestly didn't know for sure that he could do that and Oswald seemed to have full confidence in being able to get to Boyle, once noted he dismissed the thought. It was one thing less to design and build, at the very least, so if Oswald was confident then it was probably the better option anyway.
Instead of commenting on that, he simply stated, "It seems that we have our plan. We can further refine our exact tactics when we are more prepared." There were a lot of little details like who would be needed to be where at what time, but it was best to save those for later. Many of the particulars needed to decide such things would not be known until later, after all.
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