infiltrating the court

[msmortal]

The plan is refined and strengthened, contingencies are set to deal with various ways Thorn could've strengthened his defences, Mortal receives a very interesting email concerning one of their mother's contingency plans - namely that her assets have all been either frozen or transferred to Mortal themself, so Thorn doesn't have access to them -, and when Mortal and Promise judge there's nothing more to be gained from further planning they (eat dinner, sleep again, have breakfast, go over the plan once more when it's not completely fresh in their minds so they see if they come up with anything new, purchase Promise a mobile phone and a power generator to charge its battery in fairyland, eat lunch while Mortal teaches Promise how to use that, and) part ways.

On this side of the veil, Mortal gets to work. The first step: getting at least two safe houses, one for their HQ and the other for contact with the place near Thorn's court. They end up getting five, for redundancy's sake. The main HQ is near Seattle, the other four safe houses are in Greece, Russia, Japan, and Argentina. That, and getting the necessary existing equipment, is the easy part - you end up with contacts of the relevant sort when the bulk of your wealth comes from the kind of thing you can get with sorcery. The hard part is getting the various specific bits of technology that don't exist yet, including the the many types of trap and ammunition they'll need. Processing fairy voices with software turns out to be a dead end - apparently they're weird magical superpositions of sounds that make software go ?!?!?!?!? - but everything else, as agreed upon, can be made to spec nicely enough.

It'll take a couple of weeks beyond the one month for everything to be ready. Mortal hires someone who talks very fast.

And after the ball's going, there's not actually much for them to do with their time. They fret about details of the plan, order more redundant pieces of stuff (especially the to-spec stuff, not being mass-produced means they'd better have a lot of it to start with in case anything goes wrong), and have various antsy and anxious and calm and relaxed and terrified and panicked moods. A month is a long time...

At one point it occurs to Mortal that Promise might've decided to run away and not help, and then they'd never see her again and that would be terrible, and why would it be terrible anyway? It's just some fairy, fairies are evil, one must remember that. Even though she wasn't, of course, she was smart and resourceful and moral and ridiculously hot, and if they never see her again she'll never order them again and the tingly feelings won't ever happen again. Except what the heck, what are they even thinking? The answer, of course, is that they want to see Promise again. Why? To save their mother, of course. The only reason being ordered like that felt good was because Science. Of course. Of course.

The month passes-

Comments

[mrmortal]

Well, they might just be able to pull this off? And that'd be great? Mortal won't hold out too much hope, though. He emails his employee with instructions about learning bits of sign language.

[alicornucopia]

Waaaaaiting.

[mrmortal]

Yaaaay waiting!

He's gotten quite used to waiting. That does not translate to having learnt to enjoy it.

[alicornucopia]

Eventually Verve arrives, unmolested.

[mrmortal]

And Thorn still hasn't left?

[alicornucopia]

Nn - yes, there he goes.

[mrmortal]

Then Verve can follow after him invisibly, yes? As can Yellow, at an angle, and both of them not terribly close to the entourage.

[imeanforever]

Promise supplies stealth for Yellow, who can't do it himself and hasn't been around Verve enough for her to do it in a hurry.

[mrmortal]

Stealth! Small cameras! Not quite as small radars but still small enough to be carried! And following.

[imeanforever]

"The person knows sign?"

[mrmortal]

"Not everything there is to know, but a few basic words and sentences like 'stop' and 'order' and 'order everyone to stop' and stuff like that."

[imeanforever]

"And you're sure they'll do it correctly on the first try?"

[mrmortal]

"Pretty sure but you can verify if you want."

[imeanforever]

"Seems worth checking."

[mrmortal]

So he calls his employee, tells them he wants them to show what they know of sign language on the webcam, then starts the call, with no outgoing video - they don't need to know they're dealing with a fairy.

The video feed starts, and the employee turns out to be a fairly sharp-looking woman in her thirties.

[imeanforever]

Promise watches.

[peterxy]

She demonstrates a few words and short sentences in sign language, which of course don't work on Promise since she doesn't have Promise's name. She even adds a few other words Mortal didn't instruct her to learn to the list, and Promise is able to understand them all.

[imeanforever]

"They're all right," Promise confirms.

[mrmortal]

He thanks the employee and hangs up. "She's very conscientious."

[imeanforever]

"Good. We won't get more than one chance at this angle."

[mrmortal]

"Yeah, I made sure to get someone good, cutting costs here would do us no favours."

[imeanforever]

And waiting until they can strike -

[peterxy]

- Yellow's screen is the first one to become visible, with Verve off to one side so she won't be hit by whatever Yellow's hit with in case this goes wrong:

STOP ORDER EVERYONE STOP

(In sign language, of course, quite fast.)

[imeanforever]

Thorn's wings stop beating, for a moment, and then start long enough for him to turn to face his entourage and sign; one of them looks away in time and streaks ahead of the group, but the rest collapse to the ground, Thorn among them. Promise dives for the microphone and un-stops Verve and sends her after the fleeing fairy to heal her ears.

[mrmortal]

"Yellow, go retrieve Thorn's name."

And Mortal's employee will sign WHISPER YOUR NAME TO YELLOW at the appropriate time.

And Promise and Mortal will, of course, hear it too.