[COMPLETE] Ghost Rule [CLOSED]

Keeping one's identity secret was a problem that most villains had to tackle at one time or another, those that were long lived enough to be called successful at least. Leon himself took great care to leave as few ties as possible between his civilian and criminal lives. When he was on the job, his face was covered, an alibi was prepared, and his voice was altered. When his helmet was on, he wasn't Leon any longer, he was Wisp. It was just simpler that way, and not to mention pretty convenient. If no one knew who he really was, he never had to worry about his... less savory activities wreaking havok on his day to day business.

On any normal day, that was a huge boon. Today however, the task of keeping the two personas separate presented an interesting complication. He'd been contacted by one of his 'associates' to help plan their next job. That definitely put the meeting under the category of work, but a need for subtlety meant that he couldn't simply don his suit. Sure, in this society you could easily enough explain away an odd outfit like that with some effects of a quirk, but it still drew attention. The fact that he'd been seen in it during their recent dealings with the Yakuza didn't help much either. Luckily, the rather cold weather of the season offered an easy solution.

As Leon climbed off his motorcycle, he pulled his goggles up to rest on his forehead and turned the collar of his trench coat up against the winter breeze. A black fleece scarf concealed the whole of his face below his eyes, leaving his piercing gray irises as the only real distinguishing feature. He made the trek to the cafe, which was a block and a half away, with his hands firmly huddled in his pockets as he resisted the urge to heat himself up with his quirk. By the time he walked through the front door, a quick check of his watch revealed that he was about five minutes early. Close enough.

After making his way to the reserved room, Leon was greeted by the sight of a man with mostly purple hair and a black surgical mask that covered his features. It was pretty obvious that he was in the right place. "So you've gotta be the guy." He stated, rather than asked. "Anyone ever tell you that you kinda stand out?" God this guy looked sketchy, at least he could pass as a member of some gang if he needed to. Well, whatever, from what Leon had seen this guy was actually the most reliable person he'd met in this line of work so far, so that bought him a bit of leeway.

Leon folded his arms and immediately leaned against the wall of the small room, waiting for the door to firmly shut before speaking another word. "You feel like telling me what exactly we're doing here? I hope this wasn't just an excuse for a date, otherwise Rev's going to be pretty jealous." He teased, letting his inner smart-ass out partially to prove his own identity, since neither of them actually knew what the other looked like. The message he'd gotten had mentioned a new job, but hadn't gone into any specifics, so figuring out what was going on was probably a good place to start.

Leon fought the rather strong urge to continue the pointless banter as he plopped down into the other empty seat beside the computer. He left him the easiest target in the world, but Marion just wasn't as fun to tease as the others. It would have just been a waste of time, man tended to take things more seriously than he should have. The room there were in was a bit cramped, but that didn't stop the thief from stretching out as his colleague explained the task ahead of them. "Oh, is that all you're after?" He answered with exactly the same matter of fact tone, though the fact that it was seeped in sarcasm was quite obvious. He'd spent enough time working in Osaka that he knew its streets almost as well as he knew Tokyo. The 'short term loan company' he referred to was almost definitely a loan shark operation that was run out of a nearby club.

And who owned that club? Yep, it was the local Yakuza.

Hitting a place like that with just the two of them it would be tough, especially since they would have beefed up security a bit after the fiasco at the party, but... It wouldn't be impossible. They'd need a solid game plan and a bit of prep work, but hell, the Yakuza weren't that good. If they could get things together, the was no reason they couldn't do this, and make a tidy sum in the process.

Leon was about to ask another question when he noticed the other man seemed to be analyzing him. That wasn't at all unnerving. After a moment The Marionettist brought up the topic of his quirk, and despite his reservations about giving a sociopath more information about himself, Leon answered truthfully. It was pretty obvious that they'd need to trust each other to at least some degree if they were to pull off a job like this.

"Not technically smoke. Ash." He rolled up one of his sleeves to reveal one of the vents on his arm, a metallic structure that resembled the end of a small exhaust pipe, extruding about one and a half centimeters out of his skin. "I think I've mentioned that my stomach has some... 'unique' anatomy before. It lets me do things like this." As he spoke, a light black mist rose off the surface of his arm, followed by a quiet hiss as a more concentrated stream was expelled from the vent. He only let it go for a second before stopping, careful not to do anything that might set off the smoke detectors. "It comes out hot, and I can even work up a bit of fire if I really need to-" He pulled off the leather glove that had been covering his hand and motioned to the burn scars on the back as he continued. "-so it makes for a pretty decent weapon in close quarters, and the jets generate a decent amount of thrust. I can pretty easily get up past 50 kph if you give me some space."

Leon pulled his sleeve back down as he finished his explanation. He left out anything having to do with his weaknesses, but that definitely wasn't something to share with a person you were meeting for the first time, certainly not a villain. "That's me, what can you do?" His cold gaze leveled on the other man as he returned the question. Fair was only fair after all.

Leon's stare sharpened as the other man pushed for more information about his weaknesses. Sure, it made sense to know what to avoid when you were planning a mission, but he still barely knew this guy. The fact that they were both taking efforts to hide their face said everything you needed to know about how much trust they actually had for each other. "Why don't you take your best guess?" He suggested with a rather joking tone, pausing for just a moment actually giving an answer to the question. "Other than making sure I eat a big lunch, If I'm wearing my suit, there shouldn't be any problems." That much was fairly accurate. Unless they planned on going for a swim or he managed to get completely and utterly soaked, the material of his costume did a pretty decent job as a buffer between him and water.

Leon nodded his head as the Marionettist gave a brief description of his own abilities. Literally a puppet master then, that wasn't unexpected. Although... if he could control puppets that suggested that more fine articulation was possible, not just straight telekinesis or whatever. That actually sounded pretty damn useful, but like any good quirk there were almost definitely a few strings attached.

Silently cursing himself for such an awful pun, Leon turned his attention to the next topic. It seemed that his colleague had already done a bit of his homework. That was always nice. "Well, that depends a lot on what type of safe they're using..." With a flick of his wrist, a pair of lockpicks seemed to materialize in his hand. "As long as its not electronic, I could probably get it open in a few minutes. Although...." He paused again as a thought occurred to him. "If you can control objects, couldn't you just unlock the safe yourself? Or does it not work like that?" If he was right, then even without his lockpicking skills, getting through doors would pose no problem at all.

If he was wrong however... well, they wouldn't even necessarily have to kill everyone inside the joint to get what they needed, they just had to get enough people out of the way. One of the more useful aspects of his quirk was that people tended to clear out of a building real fast when they saw enough smoke. Sure, sprinklers were an issue, but most of the time everyone would be gone before that caused too many problems.

"Huh, I see." So technically the man's quirk could be up to the task, but not without a good deal of study before hand. That made sense, but it also meant that it wouldn't be an option for this particular operation. So what did that leave them? His colleague suggested strong-arming one of the staff, which was generally a good idea, but give their particular choice of target....

"That's an option, but remember that we're dealing with Yakuza here. As stupid as these people are, the do tend to be more loyal than most. They'll probably consider it an honor to die for the cause, or some bullshit like that. We can give it a shot, but I recommend preparing a plan C. If I can't get in and they don't give up the code, then we bring along some cutting tools and take what we can... Hmm..." He paused for a moment as he thought his way through it. If it came down to physically breaking into the safe, they'd need a decent amount of time if they were going to avoid turning what was inside to slag. It wouldn't necessarily come down to that, but their plan should include a buffer, just in case. According to the Marionettist, setting off an alarm would only give them twenty minutes to work with... Setting off the fire alarm with his smoke probably wouldn't grab attention from the other offices immediately, but it would bring fire crews directly to them, which was less than ideal as well. So what was the best way to go about buying more time?

Leon thought about it for a moment before an idea sparked in his mind, and a smirk quickly spread across his face. "Hey, can you show me where those other offices are on a map?" He gestured to the computer next to them, figuring they might as well get some use out of the thing since they rented the room. I'm pretty sure I remember you talking about explosives in the past. If you've got anything that can make a big enough boom, We can plant a few at the other offices before hand and set them off when we're ready to go. If they get word that their other bases are under attack, they're going to shoo out their customers and send their guys to go support. They won't figure we're really after the small target, which'll leave the club with a skeleton crew, and if we can take them out quietly, we'll have plenty of time to get in and get out while they put out the fire." He turned back to the other man with a curious look in his eyes. "What do you think?" Doing something like that would draw a lot of attention, so there was a chance that the other villain might not go for it. As far as he knew however, the Yakuza had no way of tracing back to them. Besides, It's not like they had any intention of playing nice with them anyway.

Leon scanned over the map as the other man pointed out the locations of the other two offices, nodding in response to the warning about drawing in larger numbers. Having more of them in the immediate area could make their getaway a bit more tricky, depending on how things unfolded. On the other hand though, only hitting one of them would reduce the amount of men they'd send out. That'd make it harder to get by without someone taking notice. "...That's a fair point. Fine, we leave the larger one alone, but... If I remember correctly, they also have a smaller operation running out of this building... here." He pointed to a spot on the map, a flower shop that they used as part of one of their smuggling rings. It was a bit out of the way and further than the other two, but it was still an option. "If we need another place to draw heat, that might do the job."

Leon took a second to mentally judge the distance between the places that had been marked on the map. His colleague was correct, the closest was about twenty minutes out, but that was assuming they went by car. He guessed that he could get from point to point in far less time by cutting over the rooftops. It'd been awhile since he tried something like that at max speed, but he was still reasonably confident that he could pull it off. "If you can get me something with a... fifteen? Yeah, a fifteen minute timer, then I can plant them in both locations and get back at a standby location, somewhere around here I think-" He pointed to another spot on the map near the target. "-right before the first one goes off. The second should go off about five minutes later if we give it the same fuse. I figure if we stagger them a bit, maybe make the second a bit bigger blast, it'll make them think that the first was a decoy and they'll be panicking to get to the second location in full force. Meanwhile, we sneak in and grab the goods." This plan would put a lot of the opening legwork on him, but he figured that would be the best way going about it. He knew could get around the city faster than a car, and speed would be an important factor if they wanted to avoid detection.

Leon accepted the earpiece when the other man offered and slipped it on, giving a quick test of the mike before tucking it away in one of the many pockets that lined his coat. The Marionettist suggested that he do a bit of recon before they got underway and he nodded. In addition to finding a good target, any extra intel that he could get on these places would help. If he waited until the evening, he was pretty confident that he could snoop around a bit without drawing attention to himself. People never did remember to look up when they were guarding something. "Alright, I can take care of that easily enough. I also already have some tools we can use for the backup plan, so no need to worry about that." He added, recalling a locker full of safe cracking equipment that Zephyr had stashed away in the basement.

The explosives themselves wouldn't prove to be a terrible burden, though they could still slow him down a bit. That had the potential to throw his estimates off, but probably not enough to matter. The more important note was that he'd have to remember to grab something heat resistant to carry them in. With how hot he'd be running by the end of this, the last thing he needed to worry about was setting the damn things off on accident. No, he'd much rather just worry about if his colleague's handiwork was going to work at all. Still, with an actual plan in place, he wasn't feeling too bad about this operation.

With a rendezvous point set, there wasn't much more to discuss until they finished their prep work. "Well then, I'm going to get to it." Leon got back to his feet and made for the door, doing one last check to make sure his face was covered before he left. "I'll contact you if I run into anything out of the ordinary while I'm out." With a final wave he stepped through the door and quickly vanished back out into the streets.

For Leon's part, running a bit of recon wasn't the most complicated task in the world. After the sun went down, he walked over in his casual clothes and took a look around. The flower shop had to be one of the few single floor buildings in Namba, making the rather cozy structure stand out among its neighbors, which were all at least three stories tall. About a half hour of watching people come and go made it abundantly clear that the Yakuza's operation was run out of the basement. The rear wall of the building was exposed to a dead-end alley in the back which, as far as he could tell, wasn't actually guarded since there weren't any windows or doors on that side. That would probably be his best bet setting the bomb, since an explosion there would also expose the basement and help with the diversion.

The larger office ended up being a pretty sizable building, probably eight floors in all. Given all the security around the place and the scrutinizing gazes he was getting, it was probably a good thing that they weren't going to tackle it. He would have given it even odds that he got spotted while trying to plant the explosives. The last office was less guarded, on the outside at least. Leon managed to climb up a building across the street and watched it for awhile. Through the windows he occasionally caught sight of robotic sentries, likely added after the chaos they caused at the party, but they only patrolled the interior. Luckily he'd never have to set foot in there for the plan.

With the targets scoped out, Leon hit up a local buffet, bought an insulated bag(really just a large lunch bag), and then turned in for the night. The next day, he picked up the package from the coin lockers, donned his suit and took to the rooftops. Though buildings in the packed streets of Namba could be a bit of a challenge to scale because of their height, the narrow gaps made it rather easy to traverse once you managed to get up there. His first stop would be the smaller office building, though he was taking his time getting there since he'd need save his energy for later. That, and he was still a bit early.

As Wisp skillfully hopped from building to building, his target soon came into sight. Just like the night before, he crept over to the building directly across from the street and kept his head down while he waited. More than just stalling for the meeting time, he was waiting for the guard patrols to cycle. Based on his observations from the previous night, someone came out to check the roof about once every half hour, so he'd just have to wait until after they went back in to make his move.

It didn't take terribly long for the guy to show up, but he hung around for a good fifteen minutes while he took a smoke break before finally getting back to work, much to the villain's annoyance. Wisp waited an extra five minutes after the guy went in, just in case, then launched himself over and took cover behind the entrance to the stairwell. A quick time check showed that he was roughly ten minutes ahead of schedule, but he figured that was close enough. With one hand he shifted his burden in front of him, while the other switched on the headset. "Alright, I'm in position at the first target, you gonna tell me how to actually arm one of these things, Marionettist?" He pulled the first of the two explosives out of the bag and examined the purple and black casing for a moment, then added with a grumble. "Also, don't you have anything else I can call you that isn't a pain in the arse over the comm? Because if you don't I'm gonna make something up, and I almost guarantee that you won't like it." The guy's name had way too many damn syllables to be at all useful as a call sign.