Bernie glances at the assemblage, chewing lightly on her lip, and nods. "A'ight. So. You guys know th' basic plan an' all; I'll give you more specific directions when we're in an' all." She lays the plans out on the dais, making room for everyone to see. "...we're goin' in there... startin' with this room, here. I think I know th' code, but if not we'll Open Seal it an' either way Elan c'n jam anythin' it might do -- alarms or, like, records or shit. Yeah?" She glances to the Fostern. "...I have gloves, we don' wanna leave prints, an' there'll be labcoats there; first thing we do is put those on. We'll be Blurred, but no harm in makin' ourselves look more like we belong in there anyhow. Plus they'll keep th' gloves from lookin' so suspicious. Just in case. Anyway, this first room's th' DNA stuff; scientists are usu'ly good 'bout labelin' shit so we prolly won't hafta fuck up so mucha their other work, at least. We also gotta get down in =this= room," she points it out on the map, "where they got things like, plaster castsa th' bones. Which we gotta smash t' bits. I mean, y'get th' basic idea, yeah?"

Anneka nods slowly from her perch on the dais, crosslegged and leaning over to eye the plans with some curiosity. "It's kinda sad that we hafta break a buncha stuff, but this is so bad news if it ends up spreadin' everywhere." She grins at Bernie. "So I'm gonna be a distraction?"

Yi waves a little nonchalantly, her hands gloved already. She's in a black jacket, black pants and a dark green shirt. Yup, she's dressed for breaking in... "Ready as always."

Bernie grins at Anneka. "Well. Sucks for them, yeah, but, you know. Th' Veil Shall Not Be Lifted. An' that's what we're lookin' at, here, right? An' yeah. Hide about in lupus, try not t' be seen, keep an eye out. Y'get seen, be cute as y'can an' get 'way. Don' wanna hafta try an' getcha outta th' pound, y'know."

Anneka tugs her fingers through her curly, tangled mop of sandy hair. "Yeah. No way this can get out, 'cause-- Well, it'd be real bad, like a circus." A corner of her mouth draws up into something drifting between a smirk and a smile. "I think I can be cute! An' I'll try t'keep outta th'pound, too."

Bernie nods. "'s why I was doin' all that other shit t' distract people from it. An' why I'm tryin' t' make this so th' media'll focus on motives that don' set off alarm bells an' all. So." She glances around, taking a breath. "...ready?"

The edges of the cub's form start to blur as she draws herself into lupus and onto all fours by the time she's finished changing. Her curled brush of a tail wags about. I'm ready!

Yi gives a short salute, and is already starting to break up around the edges as she calls her gift into play. "How long do we have? And where are we hitting first?"

Bernie eyes Yi, and points again to the room she earlier indicated. "Still here. This room. Like I said..." She pulls gloves from her pocket and slips them on, giving herself a thoughtful look. This will do. "...we have probably the length of the banquet. A couple hours? But we want to work as fast as we can. The less time we take, the better... okay. Follow me." She too blurs, though she makes sure the others see her doing it, so they won't lose her.

[SCCU]

Okay, you slip into the building relatively easily, Elan zapping away, Collin cracking awful jokes until you tell him to shut up, at which point he tells you he's God and no one tells God to shut up until Bernie waves a claw under his face. You find the DNA room. Big lab. Sterile. Lots of big imposing granite slab tables and jars of gunk on the walls. Room was rather difficult to get into, card key locks and such. They keep this room well-guarded.

Everyone's managed to get lab coats from a handy closet nearby, and they looks around as they enter, taking it in. Bernie heads directly for where Ling showed her the stuff was kept, when she was here before, and goes to it, looking for anything that might possibly be in any way related. Any vials of DNA, any prints of results, anything.

Yi slips on a lab coat in place of her jacket in this case, though it must be slightly odd as she's wearing black gloves. Her eyes scan the various cabinets around, while she uses her learned gift to open up locks and eye contents inside. "Don't they keep lab rats around here?" she queries quietly.

There are some vaguely esoteric labeled vials, though the closet that Ling previously pointed out doesn't contain much. Either she did her tests a long time ago, or they are stored elsewhere. There are some notes, though, which have been kept in good order and relate to the DNA testings. Printed sequences of wolf and bear DNA, along with a laminated copy of her own specimen testings. Other than that, it doesn't seem like there is much else here.

Bernie ends up with quite a collection of items, anything she thinks could possibly be in anyway related. Overkill is better than missing things, by a lot.

The lab's been quite scoured, and quite a few thesis subjects rest in Bernie's hands. The locked room where the dangerous stuff is kept sits at the back of the room with a prominent radioactive warning sign on the door.

Well, where there are lab warning signs, there are usually lists of safety precautions and the relevant equipment, too. Bernie looks for them. Never know what might be in there.

Yi glances over the rest of the room, and motions to Bernie and the others. A slight smirk crosses over her face as she goes into a side room, a series of squeaks coming from there. "Hey, there -are- lab rats. And rabbits, and..." She looks over the menagerie. And with deft hands, opens a couple of cages. She'll leave those snakes inside, though...

A long list of precautions, including terms like 'mutagens' 'terategens' and some radioactive stickers stating the various severities of what's within. In a closet next to the door are indeed gloves, boots, lab coats, visors, goggles, and tongs.

Bernie eyes Yi with startlement. "...why are you doin' that?" she asks, getting things out to prepare to go in the forbidding room. Very, very carefully. Geez.

Yi watches the rats scurry free from their nest sites, lifting some of them out and off onto the ground. And the barest of strains of a certain theme involving laboratory mice and world domination can be heard from the Canto-Gnawer in the side of the room. "To make it look more like enthusiastic animal activists. That, and as a child of Rat we have some obligation to them. They won't be cooped up here to be experimented on."

"The second, okay, but we're NOT doin' th' animal activists bit. This is s'posta look like money, pure an' simple," Bernie replies, the slightest bit muffled by the special wear for this other room. "So, yeah, let th' rats free, but..."

Yi glances up as a rat moves over her foot. "But what?" Yi tilts her head at her fellow chaos maker. "If we're to make it look like we're doing it for the money, then we need to take their information. I don't think it would be kept in this lab. Maybe in one of the offices. This lab I think is open to the other graduate students from other science departments." She points at the various cabinets with some other names.

Bernie nods. "I want their other information, yeah. Tryin' t' get =everythin'=. I thought I made that clear. It's s'posta look like holdin' th' bones for ransom. An' that we think they'll want 'em back more if what data they had's gone too. Get it?" She takes a deep breath, and heads into the Scary Room, gingerly, following the precautions as written.

The Scary Room is indeed, scary, a big refrigerator full of things with nasty names on them, things in dark glass bottles with lots of burning hand signs and eyes with circles crossing them out and other 'don't touch me' symbols. In the far back is a small metal box with a big radioactive sticker. Underneath some joker has put a three eyed smiley face sticker. Along one side appear to be various slides and solutions left out to percolate.

Yi shrugs, picking up a particularly timid rat and setting the rodent down in a small corner against the wall. "So, what are we looking for? Test tubes?" She goes to open up a few more cabinets, carefully avoiding any rodentia along the way. Her eyes skim some bottles, but comes up with not much. She gazes over in the direction that the Bernie went.

"Sure, test tubes, files, pictures, ANYTHING. If it looks like it could possibly be related, we want it fucked up." Bernie eyes the slides and solutions warily. Everything else seems to look like storage, but those could maybe be important... she glances around to see if there's some sort of disposal for dangerous things around, as well.

There is a sink, and a showerhead, and what looks like a double-barreled drinking fountain, and a slot for hazardous materials, and a big drum with a lid on it with a radioactive sticker on the side. Where what goes, though, and what the stuff in the actual solutions is, is anyone's guess.

Bernie's in luck, with a couple of tubes left over from Ling's tests. They're neatly labeled, as opposed to the rest of the odd bottles inside, and the tubes are stuck in the very back, stuck on with some stickers of Do Not Touch, and Fragile. Under it are scrawled some characters in Chinese. Great way of keeping out nosy lab lemmings.

Bernie grins within the hood, and gingerly plucks out the neatly labled tubes. She looks for anything else in the same handwriting, while she's at it, or with chinese characters.

Yi continues humming her short, repetitive theme...Bernie and the Yi, yes Bernie and the Yi... She picks up a couple papers, and finds some odd looking series of bars among them running down the paper. Hm. Those are rolled up and stuffed into her jacket, as she continues the hunt. Sooner or later, she works her way to the door of the Scary Room. "Anything?"

The two capped test tubes are all that are labeled with the oriental characters, with a couple more yielding english translation of DNA and a chemical buffer at certain percents. That's it for the tubules.

Bernie takes the tubes, very carefully, and looks them over, pondering whether they seem as though they'd be Bad to send down the drain. Hmmm. Not enthused about remaining in this room, she looks around once more for anything that might relate, and prepares to go back out.

Bernie decides to be on the safe side, having B-movie induced visions of somehow poisoning the watertable and being killed by a bunch of mutant zombies. The hazardous waste slot looks like the best bet. Just to be sure it can't be recovered, she uncaps each of them before gingerly slipping it through the slot. Her hands may be doubly gloved, but she's still squeamish about risking getting anything on herself. Because, well, ew. Who wants a tentacle?

Yi takes a peek through the glass window at Bernie. Her hand waves as she mouths the question, "Are you OK in there?" She glances around again, out of habit. The squeaking lab rats have managed to curl up in some cozy, nontoxic corners.

So, in the meantime, Collin has been poking around. Making sure security hasn't been tripped. Checking for cameras. Searching for anything good that looks like it needs to be gotten rid of. That sort of thing. That's why he's been so quiet. Really.

Avoiding stepping on the newly-freed rats, after Bernie strips off her protective gear, you head on upstairs, narrowly avoiding a cleaning lady, and sneak into the bank of graduate student offices, thanking your lucky stars the entire time for Open Seal.

"My button pushing finger is getting tired." Collin mutters in a George-Jetson like fashion under his breath, but only after the cleaning lady is far gone and there's no one around to be sure. He looks towards Bernie to lead the way to the right office. After all, she's seen the plans.

The TA offices are more like cubicles shoved into one room that back in the thirties would have probably been an office for a professor. Now it looks like about eight grad students are tucked away in here. The name plates show who is who, and when you come across Ling's you are amazed at the neatness and precision. You could swear she alphabetized her pencils by manufacturer.

Yi thanks Joey for the Open Seal first, then the spirits and Gaia for actually showing Ragabi how to use it. Her gloved hands work through the nearest cabinets. Only in the stillness of the room and silence does she chuckle softly. This is just too funny.

Bernie looks around approvingly. Lovely. Neat is very handy. She starts exploring things, gesturing to the others to do likewise. "There's another graduate student," she remarks quietly, "called Gillian. We'll have to check hers, too." She rifles rather delicately through papers, skimming them.

Collin gives a hand, of course, to Bernie in this matter. If the desk has drawers, he'll start rifling through them. But quietly. He's trying not to make any noise when opening them up and the like, nor is he going to clip anyone with them.

Sure enough, the desk is neat. The drawers are all free opening ones save a locked cabinet on the right of it. Looking through the shelves, one could see various folders of her projects all categorized though it's not As Neat as it could be. Another shelf down contains some textbooks in Chinese, though the majority is English. Soon Bernie finds a thin folder labeled in obscure characters, but on it has the translated text of 'DNA Report: Rough'

Yi slips out a short bookend and looks behind it, feeling around before realizing... this isn't some drug lord's office. Why would a TA need to hide something...when it could just be in plain sight? Yi turns around and looks at how the others are faring.

Bernie pulls a folded up fabric bag from her other pocket, and shakes it open, putting the report inside. "Here's a keeper," she remarks, looking it over before sliding it in, and continuing to search in the same are, for now. Someone neat like this is likely to have everything that belongs together in the same place, after all.

Collin opens the cabinet with little noise, the hinges sliding like they were greased even. Efficient. Insane? Inside are a bunch of papers, mostly blank. Printer paper stacks, some notepads blank. The second shelf down is a couple of books on biology, but nothing special.

So he rifles through the papers and finds most of them blank, but he keeps going just to be sure. He pulls the books out, rifles through them to make sure there are no notes being used to mark the pages or anything, and then puts them back in the proper order. Everything back in it's place. Then he'll close it and see if he can't lock it back up if he doesn't find anything.

As the three of them ruffle through Ling's stuff, it seems she has nothing more here except a box full of disks which Collin finds being used as a bookend. Most of them are blank at the back, but up front there are some esoteric coding method Ling uses to keep them in order, cataloguing freak she is. Yi finds another short folder, one of the Smithsonian's carbon dating report and offers it over to Bernie.

Collin peers at the code for a moment, then just goes 'ugh' under his breath. It's not like he's going to be able to figure it out. So he just shows the box of disks to Bernie with an arched eyebrow. A 'should we bother?' sort of thing.

Bernie grins at Yi and takes the report. "Thanks," she murmurs. It's not like they can't get another copy, most likely, but as they're going for thorough. She eyes the disks, shrugs, and takes them all. "Thanks," she repeats.

Yi glances at the two of them. "You know... I would feel bad, if this was the total of her life's work. It wasn't their fault they stumbled onto this, you know?"

"Yeah, well.. it isn't our fault that we have to do what we have to do, either." Collin reminds Yi, gently and quietly, but firmly.

Bernie's jaw tightens slightly. "And if we do this all right at least we won't have to do anything more =permanent= than that," she agrees softly. "...she's nice. I don't want to have to mess up her life more than I have to."

"A sin that is only confessed in secret, na?" Yi replies while hunting through titles of Chinese. "I...think that's it here." She tilts her head to read something. "You know given how neat she is, I'm surprised she hasn't been hired by any company to sort things for them. A regular machine couldn't do a better job."

Now that illicits a small grin. He lifts his fingers to his lips, though and whispers, "I think that's everything here, yeah. Let's go to the next." So he peeks out, checking to see if anyone's coming, preparing to sneak to the next necessary location.

Bernie nods. "Onward and upward," she murmurs, with a slightly wry smile.

As you creep up the stairs to the third floor you hear the squeak squeak squeak of the wheels of some kind of cart or mop bucket, then a woman's voice speaking in some strange language.

Yi stops in her tracks for a second before moving to a wall and going silent. She checks around her, though it's unlikely they'd have security cameras this high up in a campus building.

One can hope. But Collin comes to an immediate halt as well, listening for the lady to get a better bead on just where she is for a second.

Security cameras cost money, and this ain't the stadium so you know its not being spent here. The voice grows louder, another softer voice answers in the same language, there's a sound of keys jinging and then silence.

Once it's silent, Bernie glances to the others, brow slightly furrowed. "Either of you know what they said?" she asks, softly.

Yi shakes her head at Bernie and shrugs. No idea here.

Collin shakes his head too. Unfortunately, his omniscience seems to be lacking at the moment.

The voices start up again, growing suddenly louder, and squeak squeak squeak goes the cart. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Yi takes a step back, blurring further as she shifts down to a more sensing form. With wolven ears perked she motions for the other two ragabi to hang low while she pokes her head around the corner to investigate.

Collin does indeed hang low, though he doesn't look to approve *overly* much of the use of the other form in this particular location.

The two women are just going from office to office, apparently emptying the trash. And talking.

Bernie opens her mouth, closes it, and quietly heads back toward the second floor a bit.

Long minutes pass; they aren't apparently in any hurry. Finally they round the round the corner and disappear from view.

Three-Blades continues watching with nostrils flared, keeping her eyes, ears and nose open. She's cautious in waiting, her tail signifying that things are clear for the most part. Still she waits a couple more minutes until she's sure they would be a few more offices down. Then she withdraws her head, has a look around and shifts back to her birth form.

Waiting for Yi to come back, Collin waits for her to say something. You know, give the all clear. Once it's clear they've moved, he'll head up the stairs, all quiet-like, and head for the area in question with the others.

Bernie does the same, shifting her bag slightly, and following Yi up once it's safe.

You manage to make it into the hall and the office itself okay (aren't those handy directories wonderful). The office is the exact twin of Ling's -- if Ling's office had been hit by an F4 and then bulldozed. To say this place is messy is like saying the universe is big. Books piled halfway to the ceiling, overflowing out of shelves, on top of the desk -- even one corner of the desk is held up by books. And papers are EVERYWHERE. By the time you're done sifting through this mess you'll have learned enough to get degrees yourselves.

There's a minor twitch in Collin's expression at the mess. He looks like he might groan, in fact, but he manages to keep it quiet. He must be a Silent Strider after all. He starts rooting through the papers, trying to find the ones that look right while keeping an ear out for the returning of the cleaning ladies, just in case.

Yi arches an eyebrow at the mess and shakes her head with a sigh. She glances at Bernie, then at the computer on the desk.

Bernie winces at the mess. "Lovely," she mutters, and pulls a screwdriver from her jacket pocket. She goes to work on opening the computer case and taking out the harddrive while the others search the disaster area.

Giving Bernie an odd look, Collin asks, "Why not just take the whole thing?"

Collin finds a stack of emails dating back to 1996. It looks like the guy prints out his emails to read them, makes corrections or notes, then someone else (his secretary?) must type them up and mail them out. Yi discovers several fascinating tomes about the Tasmanian wolf. Bernie manages to wrestle the hard drive out of the computer, which is absolutely FILLED with dust. Dust BUNNIES live in tihs thing.

Yi roots through the main shelf, poking her nose through reams and reams of pages. "You could almost imagine the typhoon that ca--" Aw crap. Dust in the air... no, bad thing... Yi hunkers down, attempting not to sneeze.

"'cause it's big," Bernie replies a tad absently, handling the screws deftly, "th' drives hella smaller. An' we may end up cartin' a lotta stuff 'fore we're done." She stifles a cough as the thing comes out, and puts it in her bag before closing the thing up again. Not necessary, but with a guy this obviously anti-computer, it's fun to imagine him wondering what's wrong when it won't boot...

Giving Bernie a big thumbs up and a broad grin, Collin starts sorting through the emails quickly enough, skimming as quick as he can so as only to take the really, really pertinent ones.

Yi shakes off the impending sneeze, and just sits there for a few moments watching the other newmoons. And finally when the wave feels like it passed, she returns to work. Only to sneeze. But she catches herself in time not to make a mini-typhoon right there. After some swallowing she grins sheepishly at the other two, blinking a few times before rooting through the papers again. Eventually, she comes up with the semi-finalized DNA report Ling gave Dr. Clark, though it's dusty on the cover. "I don't want to know what the Shadow looks like in here."

Books, books, books. The papers are piled on his shelves, the drawers are full of books. Papers are stuffed into books with no apparent rhyme or reason. There are pages on Greek archeology stuffed into what look like first edition Gloria Steinems. Reams of notes about a dig in the summer of 1979 fall out of a Garfield cartoon book. A few spiders make their annoyed way out into the open as their long-undisturbed hiding places one more see the light of day.

"You know, I'm liking this Ling girl more and more." Collin mutters, nonchalantly. "This guy deserves it."

Collin, after reading enough to know the ins and outs of the archeology department from 1998-present, finally finds a slew of pertinent emails, most from Ling, some from Gillian. One or two from Dr. Murphy, very very interesting ones about how to beef up security for the bones.

"Mmn. Now *this* is the good stuff." Collin brandishes the mail towards Bernie and Yi. "Mails on security. We roxxor." He offers most of the pertinent ones over to Bernie, but not before skimming a little more thoroughly over the security precautions. Just in case.

Yi finds lots of sneeze-inducing dust and an interesting picture book of a Stone-Age tribe discovered in 1971 in the Phillipines. And then she hits the motherlode: it looks like every single National Geographic from 1967 on is here.

Yi clears her throat as quietly as possible, trying very hard not to breathe in dust. Eventually she takes out the bandanna from her vest pocket and ties it on. Her muffled mutters in her own language come out in a whole slew that sounds bad enough to make a sailor blush though it's just some mental notes to herself as she searches. National Geographics. "Whoa."

"Niiiiiiiiice," Bernie murmurs, quickly reading the emails Collin pointed out. Sometimes, it's really nice to be a speedreader. She thumbs through the others, and soon all of them are stuck as neatly as possible in the bag, with the others. She grins broadly at Collin, and goes back to scanning for things that look less old than the others.

Bernie sticks to the desk, where supposedly useful stuff should be. She does find one interesting thing: a piece of paper with a phone number and the name Dr. Glissa Nicholson, and today's date. A few doodles and what looks like some Latin are scrawled on the paper as well. And his grocery list is on the back, scrawled over a receipt from the drugstore dated Feb 7, 1999.

If the Glissa name gets seen by Collin, it's quite obvious he recognizes it from the way his eyes widen. Just a touch. He clears his throat once and then shakes his head at Yi. Poor girl. "I think we're about done?" He whispers, glancing back towards the exit from the office. He takes a look around, though, just to make sure there's nothing that hasn't been rifled through at least a little.

Bernie recognizes it too, apparently, judging from the tilt of her head, and the curious look. She adds it to the loot, and looks around, nodding. "Think that's as well as we c'n cover it jus' now," she agrees softly.

There is, sadly, TONS that has not been rifled through, but you just don't have this kind of time. An hour has already passed in here. Collin does notice the poster of Xena and Hercules with a picture of what must be Dr. Clark pasted over the face of Hercules, however. Its signed by a bunch of people.

Yi tilts her head away from the rummaging she's doing as the other two speak, and then pulls down the bandanna off her face. "I wonder if the professor would even notice a difference."

Leaning over, Collin gets an amused look at the picture of Clark in just that place. He covers his mouth with his hand to keep from making any noise. He tries really hard.

As the other two turn to see what it is Collin's smothering himself about, a small sliding noise can be heard, that quickly turns into a big sliding noise and the sounds of books...moving and flapping and falling. Oh my God run, its a BOOKALANCHE!

Yi looks.. well more than vaguely alarmed. She spreads her arms and hands and down to the very tips of her fingers as she attempt to push the books and papers back. Cough, dust, cough.

"...Fuck," Bernie breathes, moving near Yi to do the instinctual thing and try and catch them.

Unfortunately, Collin's too far away, and while he has a good reaction time, there's probably not a whole lot he can do to help immediately without crowding them, but he does get ready to try and help if it looks like it's about to fall. That is, while they're holding it back, see if there's a way to fix it so they don't have to anymore.

"This," Yi exhales annoyedly, "Must have been a trap waiting to spring." She even attempts to use her face to push the books back since her arms are busy. She stops in her movement, listening for a moment and hoping no one is coming. Please, Gaia... and who would be here at this time anyway? She swallows and then resumes pushing the tray table up and putting the stack in its upright position.

While your efforts are valiant, they do result in a few failures. Books too high for Yi to reach slide out and down, thumping on the floor, on heads and feet if they're not quick and protected. The majority of them, though sagging alarmingly in places Yi's body can't cover, are held back. The tide is stemmed. Bernie manages to help those that bulge get back in their places and slowly the wall of books straightens, and you realize one thing: this office is probably twice as big as it looks, because there are a LOT of books behind the ones that sagged ahead.

Bernie pushes the books back as best she can, then looks right and left to the others, in turn. "Run?" she suggests, watching them continue to teeter.

"Time to go." That's Collin's solemn pronouncement. It seems logical that the cleaning ladies, when they come to investigate the noise in question, as there's bound to be noise, will think the shelf just gave way under the evils Doctor Clarke has committed against shelfdom. He'll lead the way out, though, and make sure the door was shut, if it was indeed shut when they arrived, before ducking to hide in another office nearby. Chances are, he hopes, that they can find such a viable hiding spot before the Russian Cleaning Mafia arrives.

Yi clears her throat, and smirks a bit. She nods her assent, ready to bolt.

The shelves almost seem to creak alarmingly as you hurry out of the office, and no sooner than the door is shut than you hear the rumble and actually _see_ the door shake as books pile into it. The noise is a little less than deafening to your straining ears.

Leonard pages to the room: The last stop, you've realized from reading the notes on the 'beefed up' security is going to take a lot more planning than you've currently done if you want to get in there.
Leonard pages to the room: Murphy, from the email address, isn't on campus at all. Gillian's we'll just handwave and say she didn't really have a lot of notes or anything.

It's definitely time to go. With the realization that the Heavy Hands of the Cleaners are not about to descend on them, Collin indeed heads for the exit, sneaking with the others outwards. Or at least that's his plan, anyways.

Yi follows suit, definitely keeping an eye on things still as the Ragabi leave the building with their loot. All in a night's work, really.

Bernie mutters to herself, as they leave, glancing over the security info again. She seems rather unhappy about leaving with that main area still not handled; it could really screw things up. But as long as Joey got the bones... she follows the others out.