Thieves and Explosions (Shatter)

Maura wasn't particularly thrilled to be a robber for her first "big" job. Really she wanted to be more than a petty thief, but her anonymous employer was paying handsomely for the small USB drive that her target had in his possession. Plus, there was no doubt all sorts of information packed into the little device that could up her value as an informant, and, a clean steal would hopefully increase her reputation in espionage. One that wasn't reliant on her borrowed name. That's why the young woman was willing to follow a forty-something year old balding man around for days through horribly cold and rainy weather, just to finally figure out after some light investigation that he'd be picking up the device from his safety deposit box some time soon. She'd staked him out day and night, silently analyzing his routine and harshly judging his unhealthy obsession with chili dogs just to find the right time to nab the item she was looking for.

As soon as she got the twenty grand that was promised for the delivery of the USB, she was going straight to her preferred occupation of simple intelligence gathering. Unfortunately that left her currently trudging down a sidewalk made unexpectedly slick with a surprise thunderstorm. It had been deceptively sunny not one hour prior, and Maura was only wearing a long black trench coat to hide her disguise. Of course manipulating her Kevlar and spandex suit to be slightly more dense made repelling the water and cold from her body a whole lot easier so it wasn't completely miserable. Her brown bob was glued down to the sides of her face and head as she ducked into the cafe her target had gone into. The warm, coffee scented atmosphere was a welcome change to the dull gray world outside and she found relief in her rosy cheeks by it.

The brunette took a moment to let her green gaze scan the coffee shop casually, spotting a seat at a window table in perfect view of her tote lugging target. The cafe was otherwise pretty busy with the rain pushing even more customers in behind her. Maura wiped away the water dripping down her face as she quickly ordered an Americano in her carefully covered Spanish accent before sitting herself down at the table she'd scoped out. Rain distorted her view of the street, across which lay the destination bank of the man she was tailing. Or so she thought, at least. As she waited for her black, hot beverage to be handed to her she watched from her peripherals with slight confusion as the balding man took out a laptop from his medium sized duffle and began typing furiously into it. He'd never had such a bag with him before, let alone come into this cafe. Street vendors and other on-the-go meals, though grotesquely out of the range of a balanced diet, were more his kind of scene.

The middle aged man was fidgety and continued giving periodic glances to his bank across the street. Maura could just tell something was wrong. Her hand went to her coat's pocket where Void's mask was, ready to don it should the occasion arise. Until that time, though, she was willing to wait for her target to move.

Lilith liked to go to cafe's sometimes because it made her seem that much more normal, she had a laptop with her though in truth it wasn't actually all that spectacular. Mostly because she didn't really need it. As she sat there with her frappe, she turned on what little powers she had in human form and interacted with the laptop in front of her using those abilities. Though to everyone else it'd just seemed like she was using the laptop normally, but she was also looking at the digital data of others in the room.

Most of it was fairly basic and harmless, silly facebook posts or pictures of their meals which she never understood or cared for. But one stream of data was more then a bit serious, it came from a middle aged balding man with a laptop. He was fairly well dressed to a certain degree but didn't seem like the person to be doing what he was doing, it seemed he was trying to get access to the bank across the road in a digital sense and a surveillance sense. She knew this could only mean a couple of things and most of those weren't good, so with a twirl of her finger. Lilith put a bit of nastiness on the mans computer.

It made it so the thing started giving him problems and not working correctly, load times would increase and windows/programs would flicker or close continuously. She smirked and hoped she'd given him enough to stop whatever he was doing, but Lilith remained vigilant and would react harsher if need be. She herself jumped into the guys systems with less then a thought, she was checking what he'd been looking up and hoping her instincts were wrong. He was either a bank robber or some kind of cyber terrorist , neither were good for those around her.

Maura wouldn't have noticed her target's panicking if she hadn't been watching him for four days straight. It was a subtle kind of slow onset panic. His watery grayish eyes widened ever so slightly and his shoulders bunched up towards his neck, much like a slightly on guard cat. The spy shifted her gaze slightly to look directly at his computer screen, which seemed to be the source of his problems. One hand was opened wide with its palm facing upwards on the side of the computer while the other was wildly clicking the return key. On screen was a window that kept opening and closing while the page itself seemed to be buffering at a rate that suggested the cafe had little download capabilities. Maura only looked away when the barista came to deliver her coffee.

"Thanks." She said shortly with a nod to the woman, hoping that would be the end of the conversation and she could watch the man's progress further. Unfortunately her waitress seemed to be of her chatty sort.

"Oh, honey! You're drenched! Why don't you take off your coat and settle in?"

"No, I'm fine." Maura replied a bit forcefully to the pestering girl. She received a tick of disapproval as the woman's quip.

"You'll catch your death in such wet clothes."

At this point her target's key pounding was getting more desperate and other customers were looking at him in annoyance when the clattering became audible. "Well, let's just hope your coffee can abate hypothermia." She tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice as she sipped her scalding beverage and avoided making eye contact. Apparently the lady finally got the hint or she had become offended by Maura's probable tone of exasperation. Either way the young woman finally had a clear view of the computer once again.

Maura didn't like the plain black screen she was looking at. A timer with digital block letters blared in white against the opposing background, the clock set to five minutes. Below that was a simple white rectangle with a single black, blinking line. The target seemed relieved to see this and had started typing into the white box. Five  asterisks appeared before he clicked enter.

4:59

The timer had started, though the screen flickered on and off and she could tell something was still wrong with the laptop. Maura watched the man look across the street briefly before setting his now expressionless eyes back on the computer screen. It didn't take a genius to realize that this man had just started something terrible in the bank across the road. As she continued to both watch and process what was happening,  he started slowly pulling out something small and rectangular from his pocket.

Though the sting of the cold did next to nothing to Cebra's comfort level the rain was starting to annoy him, the dark blue dress shirt and pants did little to stop the harsh rain. The rain however was nothing compared to the ping, the repetitive pinging in his cybernetic receiver. For some time now Cebra had been tracking down a certain signal being broadcast from a small device. He wasn't sure exactly what bothered him about the signal save for an ill feeling. Cebra stands across the street from from a cafe standing at the corner waiting for a green light. He stares with a robotic fixation on the window contemplating what he might be walking into and how to handle it. Would this be a situation where subtlety was needed? Or was he to walk into a donnybrook?

Slowly but steadily the door to the cafe opens, Cebra peeks his eye in discreetly making sure everything is calm. When he makes his way in fully he gets a better picture of the situation. Nothing too strange, A blonde woman at her lap top typing, a few other patrons sitting going about their day. Cebra takes a seat in a corner diagonally to one older gentleman who seemed to be heavily focused on his lap tops screen. Seeing as Cebra was tracking down a seemingly dangerous signal it was prudent to maybe have a look at the mans screen.

Before he can find a way to position himself better Cebra notices the man starting to act strangely and get frustrated with his computer. The air around him becomes heavy with tension, even stranger at the same time the blonde woman seems to be pleased about something occasionally looking over at the old bald man. Cebra orders a macchiato and sits back down but now something catches his eye. On the corner of the mans screen Cebra can now see a series of numbers, they start to count down.