sunshine_queen | (no subject)

Did really nothing today but play around online and chat with Hannah and Tess. Gigli and I had deep, soul-searching convos total, but we're countering it now with our usual insanity. Stupid memes and badfic abound.

I tanned today! Yay me! And I GOT KAZAA!

Every fanfic ever written.

The whole point of this mission, of course, is based upon two things. (A) Bringing down the badguys and (B) Bringing home the Rambaldi bacon.

Why Rambaldi? What, you don't about the fifteenth century philosopher/inventor? You, my friend, have never seen Alias before.

But no matter. What you need to know is this: Rambaldi (commonly referred to, at least by me, as 'Rambo') is this Italian guy who invented and prophecized a whole lotta stuff. His inventions were extremely EXTREMELY advanced and his prophecies were always right. On one of his manuscripts, one of the pages was blank- and it wasn't some error or laziness on his part- Rambo wanted to make sure only the people he wanted to could read it by writing in invisible ink, or something. Luckily for our heroes, they have the ink that makes it available. Luck abounds when you realize that the bad guys are salivating over the solution that makes it legible, so Sydhey, our heroine, gets the ingenious idea of luring the bad guys to her by faking that there's a second ampoule of the solution. Mmhmm, I am dead serious.

Best is how Syd gets this idea: her best friend informs her that they have rats in their kitchen, but when discussing which way is best to get rid of them, Francie says, "See, the thing about rats is they're clever. You have to out think them. You can't really just leave out cheese. You have to leave the good stuff. The heavy-duty stuff. The stuff that they want. It's the only way they're going to come out. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time."

And the light dawns on Syd, who goes and tells her not-boyfriend and handler, Vaughn, about her fantabulous idea.

There is a long story about how the bad guy (whose name, in case you're interested, is Alexander Khasinau) thinks that there's only one, so they have to lie and pretend that there's a second ampoule in this art gallery in Algeria. In order to get this rumour spread, Syd and Vaughn are going to pretend to be French insurance agents looking to cover the gallery. While performing tests, Syd is going to actually go and steal the ampoule. After she gets it, they'll use it to bait Khasinau into a meeting to sell or trade for it. Sounds simple, right?

Of course, the CIA superiors do not find the stealing of precious items from a museum a kosher action. Vaughn is all, dude, we're only borrowing them. Without permission. It's all good, though! No worries, all the items will wind up back at the museum- all we need to do is alert Khasinau and everything else will fall into place.

Then Devlin's all, hold on, 'we'? You think you're going with her, desk jockey? Vaughn's all, stutter, she'll need back-up... she trusts me... I lurve her... Well, he doesn't say that last part, but we all know it's true. Vaughn also mentions that this might be their only chance to get Khasinau, and as this is a very desirable end, Devlin caves.

Ooh, Algeria. Stock footage from the Travel Channel. Pretty pretty.

Enter Syd and Vaughn pretending to be French. Well, Syd's pretending to be French, because Vaughn is French and yum. Syd, in her fake, slightly hideous French accent, jabbers about how, as an insurance person, they need to test their security systems to see how they operate during the shutdown of generators, heating, electrical and, most important, ventilation. The Armani-clad Arabs walking with them get translated to before we flashback to Syd and Vaughn on the plane to Algeria not looking nearly as spiffy.

In the flashback, Vaughn is telling Syd how they'll need to separate. Syd's going to inspect the alarm grid in the exhibition space. I swear, that's what he said. It sounds weird, though. Vaughn will be in the control room handling the shut down with the museum officials and a frequency jammer. This frequency jammer is going to give Syd three minutes to do her thing without getting caught by the security cameras. That's one hundred and eighty seconds. That's not a lot of time.

Then we flashback to Vaughn in the museum. He says to the officials, in this gorgeous, wonderful French accent that makes me melt to please shut off their generator or something. Translator translates. The dudes shut it down.

Vaughn takes out his jammer and starts timing. His little watch says three minutes, and all of the sudden the museum guys are freaking out because their cameras are down. Oops.

Another flashback to the plane of exposition, planning and untold desire. Vaughn is telling Syd that when he tells the museum people to shut down their ventilation system, the fan in the ventilation shaft will shut down, and since Syd is travelling via the ventilation shaft towards the vault room on the E level, it makes things a whole less dangerous unless Syd's feeling particularly lucky and feels like battling a giant fan.

Back in the present, Vaughn ignores their lack of surveillance and tells them to shut down the ventilation. Cut to Syd, who was sauntering down the hall with her museum escort. Syd takes her clipboard and knocks the escort out with it. She's subtle, that one. Then she runs down the hall in her heels until she finds the air vent. Syd takes her jacket off and pulls out a power screwdriver from her briefcase. Yes, I am dead serious. She uses this nifty device to take off the vent cover.

Vaughn looks at his watch. This has all happened in twenty seconds. Wow.

Syd removes the vent cover and takes out a gun-like thing. It's really a handy-dandy grappling hook. She shoots it up up up, and up the wire and hook flies. It hooks itself onto the fan-blades that are currently unoperational. Syd tugs on it to make sure it's tight, then attaches it to her belt.

She looks down and realizes that she is in deep doo-dah if something bad happens because a fall down that shaft would be something akin to Wile E. Coyote's plunges into those canyons on Looney Tunes. She jumps out and dangles. She hits a button and starts moving down.

Back in the control room, Vaughn tells the Arabian dudes to keep the heating system offline. Why? I really don't know. Generators I kind of got, ventilation I understand, but heating? Don't know. Don't care, even. His watch says it's been forty-nine seconds. Time goes really slowly here.

In the shaft of death, Syd is still sliding swiftly. She has a cool little meter on the wire in front of her that's telling her how many feet she's going down. This is good, because when we flashback to the plane, we hear Vaughn telling her that the vault room she's going to is located on the east wall of the shaft, 67 feet below where she entered.

Her meter reaches 67, and Syd slows down and kicks that vent door open. Lo and behold, she is now in a hallway outsife of a vault room! Good directions, Vaughn! Syd loosens her wire and goes for a little walk.

Back in our plane of flashbacks and love, Vaughn is saying how according to the information she gave him, the vault is a third-generation Hanvalova. What that means, I don't know, really. Syd picks up a cell phone. Before she can call her best friend to gush about her notboyfriend is sitting with her on a plane on a romantic getaway to Algeria, Vaughn warns her to be careful because the cell phone is actually full of plastic explosives because Sydney went over her minute limit last month. Dammit, Sydney! That extra nine dollars really does get you in the end, doesn't it?

No, the explosives aren't to curtail Syd's gabbing, it's in case the going-steady bracelet Vaughn gives Syd doesn't work. (shhh. It's a going-steady bracelet.) This bracelet will, in theory, not only open the safe, but it'll short-circuit the alarm by two minutes so she can get out of there before it goes off. That is so nifty.

Syd tries it out and yay, it works! The vault is full of all sorts of old stuff. Syd starts randomly shoving things into her swank messanger bag.

Things aren't so stellar up in the control room. Syd's still got a hundred and twenty seconds according to Vaughn's timer, and Vaughn asks for the museum people to shut down the electrical. The translator man does what he gets paid to do, but them this psycho dude comes in and starts telling in Arabic.

Vaughn's all, the hell? Psycho dude turns out to be the president of the museum with an entirely ridiculous last name who agreed to a system analysis but not a shut down. Vaughn's like, hey man, we're testing the security. So far we'll all good. Cool it. And in that french accent. Zut alors.

The translator is all, uh oh. He just ordered the power restored.

This is, of course, ungood, since Syd is sorta kinda attached to one of those things that just started up again. Vaughn gets all crazy and starts yelling about how he and his partner flew all the way from freaking Paris because he wanted to make an offer! In order to do that, he must be able to perform a complete analysis!

But none of that matters, because Vaughn opens his mouth and starts a glorious stream of dulcet french. He's saying how if they weren't going to let them do their work, they should've warned him before they made the arrangements to come, but honestly, who cares? Vaughn could've said that ducks have four legs and fly upside down and I would've been just as affected. I need a moment.

Mr. Psycho President obvious is nonplussed by Vaughn's gorgeous use of the language of love. He whinges about the risks involved with having the system down. Blah blah blah. Inconsiderate.

Back in the vault, Syd is still shoving things into her bag like Winona Ryder at Saks in Beverly Hills.

In the control room, Vaughn is panicking. He flexes his muscles by announcing his intent to file formal complaints. Mr. President waves his hand and demands that Vaughn and his long-lost partner be escorted off the premises. Vaughn gets his stuff in a huff and is escorted out. The President tells the guy to restore power. Well, Mr. President, you won the battle, but you lost the war! Syd is robbing you blind, buddy!

Unfortunately for our friend the Spy Barbie, the power means the fan too. Syd gets pulled across the room before she can do anything and is horrified to see that she is going straight up to the fans and she is going to be sliced and diced like there is no tomorrow.

If it were anyone else but Syd, they'd be saying their prayers and hoping that their death was quick and painless, but Syd can think on her feet (or, on this case, on her wire) and she sees that the opening where she entered is coming up. Yay for her! She grabs hold and releases the belt. Syd bangs into the wall as the wire whizzes up into the fan, and as her hip hits the wall, the cell phone of death falls. Before she can sob over the loss of her new Nokia camera phone, she remembers that it's the cell phone riddled with big explosives, so she decides now would be the time to use her upper arm strength and pull herself up as the phone explodes and fire starts roaring up the shaft. Syd, of course, manages to escape the wave of death because there would be no show without her. She gets up and puts on her jacket, reapplies her lipstick, smooths down her hair, and adds some more blush before meeting Vaughn. Or just puts on the jacket. Either way.

In the lobby, Vaughn is being escorted out by a couple of goons when Syd shows up looking totally coiffed. She's all, what's going on? Like she hadn't almost just died because of some miscommunication or something. Vaughn's all, they're kicking us out. I didn't get to finish my system analysis- did you?

The alarms go off. Syd gives him Bambi eyes and says, barely.

Not too long later, Syd arranges for the artifacts to be sold back- and lures Khasinau and his cronies into their carefully-laid trap.