1964-06-10 - Vigilante Bonding
Summary: Sharon and Roy both decide to get their frustrations out on the same group of poor criminals.
Related: None
Theme Song: None
roy sharon 


Gun smuggling is one of the hottest and most profitable of criminal enterprises, even in America. Exotic European weapons in high demand by importers; American firearms going out overseas; and all manner of back and forth.

In the slums around Hell's Kitchen, where the wharf is obscured by geography and infrastructure, it's easy for small, fast cutters and tugs to slip past security. Some pay off the Coast Guard, others just know the lay of the land.

New York's a big enough town that it's impossible to keep track of everyone.

Roy Harper is one of the vigilantes helping to take up the extra slack. Wearing red and black leather and clinging to the shadows, the as-yet-unnnamed vigilante has a sharp ear quirked towards the warehouse window nearby, where a heated exchange is ocurring.

"I said five crates of Uzis! This is only two crates! You can't count, Rickie?" one man demands.

"Hey, back off me," the other fellow snarls, spitting around the cigarette in his mouth. Shorter and swarthier than the Italian mobster, the other man wears a Star of David partially concealed under his shirt. "You know how hard it was to get -three- crates out? I had the IDF an' military intelligence all over my ass. You're lucky I didn't show up with two and bill you for ten, at the rate it cost me," he spits.

The early midafternoon light filters through the high, soot-darkened windows of the warehouse. It's a big enough area for a person to get lost in if they're careless, and the light street traffic guarantees a fair amount of privacy.
*
Despite the fact that Steve made the suggestion about being a vigilante in jest, well, it's been dwelling in Sharon's head. She was bored. Stir crazy. Angry at the CIA, SHIELD and everyone in between. She also still had her contacts on the ground, even in this city. So, she went to a few of them and got some information. What's the most dangerous thing coming into the city now. And today? It was guns.

Sharon has no 'uniform', no secret identity, nothing but the generic girl-next-door look that means she blends into any crowd. She's in blacks and grays right now, a mix of clothing she'd call urban camoflague, so she blends in with buildings and shadows. THat's where she's hiding now, evasdropping on the men and their crates. ESPECIALLY as they say it's military. Her teeth grit protectively, jaw setting. Not in her country.

So, she inches a bit closer. She's just trying to get enough view of how many there are and her best chance to attack. She's ready to strike any moment, but she's not suicidial. Her eyes trace the patterns of any outside guards, trying to get herself a chance with the least amount of immediate enemies.

*

The guards are hardly putting their best effort forward. Two of them are on the perimeter, one with a semi-automatic in a shoulder holster; the other with a revolver in his belt. Both have the bored look of hired goons with little patience and not much to do. The quiet, common understanding of the rules of the street keep passers-by and idle lookers at distance. No one wants to be seen, or become a potential witness.

Which means Sharon has all kinds of options for making her approach. Inside are at least six men that can be seen— the dealer and his two flunkies, and the Italian, a driver, and some spare hired muscle. None of them are particularly alert, which suggests this is a rather mundane bit of commerce.

She'd also spot Roy disengaging from the shadows with a strange, futuristic bow in his hands— half the length of a longbow and with large pulleys attached to the bowstring. He nocks a black-painted broadtip with a razor's edge to it and starts moving to a better shooting position, with the patience of a hunter stalking his prey.
*
The woman's training gives her a leg up in spying things. She might be over eager and restless, but she's GOOD. She blinks as she sees Roy in the shadows, not nearly the amount of patience he has, but she notices the man. That was a wild card she did not expect. Still, taking a guess that he's on her side and not their's, she moves a bit deeper into the room. As the yelling fight gets worse, she uses the sound to muffle any sounds SHE Might make creeping up the side of the wall, using the underside of hollow stairs and some pipes. She just wants an overhead attack position.

Then, the moment one of the men starts to walk away in frustration, she strikes. Sharon comes down out of the rafters like some sort of howler monkey, but far more targeted. She's on the main man's back with a violent hold, her legs wrapped over his shoulders, and she shoves his face into the concrete with a splatter of blood from his nose. He's down, but she doesn't have time to cheer. She's immediately rolling back with a violent kick to the second man's delicate parts. She fights to win. Fights to put them down and out, if not dead, and fights with the precision of a woman who is well over ten years in the training. She might be small, but her whole body is a weapon.

It's a bold and aggressive move— a high percentage attack. Were she a hair slower or a bit less decisive in her movements, she might have eaten a bullet or gotten thrown into a shipping container. But it's so unexpected and violent that the tall Italian *splats* his nose against the concrete flor, and the Jewish arms merchant falls backwards, clutching his groan and squeaking incoherently in painful protest.

But that leaves four other men in the room, and while three of them gawk in stunned shock at Sharon's blitzkrieg, the fourth is already going after the back of her head with a piece of rebar.
*
Until an arrow whistles out of the shadows and with a *thunk* buries itself under his third rib, precisely in the intercostal space. He grunts, wheezes peculiarly, and pitches violently to the side.

The woman hears the pull back of the rebar, that sound of heavy metal through the air, and she's already moving forward so her head will be out of the way. It doesn't matter. The only other really competent fighter in the room is taken out by her friend in the shadows. Seems her calculation was correct. Sharon spares a SINGLE moment to give the archer a thankful nod, but she was still on the ground with three attackers who were finally getting their wits about them.

So, Sharon spins, around quickly, a high round house kick going to the temple of the next guard that is up. That MIGHT be a killing blow, depending on the exact angle she hit. Sharon doesn't entirely care. SHe then dashes forward, away from the second attacker which might be strange until some one realizes she's running UP the wall to come back in a violent flip on HIS shoulders. She fights strange. She uses levels. A woman trained and practiced to fight in a jungle, not a warehouse.

*
For a man shooting from the shadows with paleolithic weaponry, the archer's giving more than a fair accounting of himself. He hits the first man twice more in the space of five seconds, leaving three heavy broadblades buried in his chest. Gurgling, the fellow collapses into a bloody, soggy heap on the ground.

Another arrow flies overhead and smacks into the door hinge that the perimeter guards would use to enter; the door twists shut with a groan of metal, effectively jamming it halfway shut and making it difficult to open.

Inside, the whole set of enemies have been handled. Dealer, contact, moving men and thugs. People are down, unconscious, dead or dying. It gives the room an echoing, weird silence with just ragged breaths and the moan of a bleeding out man who doesn't yet realize he's dead. Sharon looks down at the man with the arrows in his chest and shakes her head quietly before leaning over and snapping his neck. Put him out of his misery, like road kill still squirming. She then looks back up to the archer, "…Killing them is going to bring more heat down on you, eventually." Sharon's voice, totally neutral of an accent or actual emotion, echoes up.

Then she's back, heading for the door he stuck open, because the two guards realize something is wrong. One is trying to shoulder the door open while the other sprays some seemingly random cover fire over his head. Sharon keeps moving, completely unaware she's been slightly clipped. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. She runs up the side of the door to grab his arrow, which has screwed the mechanism, and shove it violently in the gunner's shoulder. All her motions are crisp, almost inhumanly fast. Almost.

*

"Less talk, more fight," comes the archer's voice— tense, clipped, professional. Not quite calm, but in control of his adrenal response. This is someone else who's clearly been in a few brawls in his time, and he seems unworried that he's just killed one man and more arrows are flying towards another.

Despite a nearly thirty-yard distance, he sends arrows flickering into the foot-wide gap— missing Sharon by mere inches, and flying with expert accuracy.

"You're hurt," the archer remarks, leaving the shadows. He rushes one of the downed men and kicks him squarely in the jaw, shattering bone and sending teeth flying. The fellow drops flat, unconscious, and Roy nocks another arrow and looks around for anyone else who needs a new set of holes in them.

*

No one. They have very neatly taken out this entire operation, the guns still present, and plenty of evidence to try and find guilty any of the thugs left alive around. Sharon's barely breathing hard, a little winded, a lot excited, but it's the first time she's really felt alive since coming back from field work. She pauses, walking across the place to look down to those injured.

"Seems it's done. Cops will be here soon." Then his comment about her being hurt registers. She blinks down to her arm, noticing the blood blossoming on her sleeve now. She tests her fingertips and range of motion. "It's a graze. I'm fine." She genuinely does not seem to have noticed. "Nice work. Hope I didn't… cut in on your dance card." She offers with a wry, cold smile. She's not bothered to hide her face.

*

"I'm not that selfish," Roy says. His tone is so dry it's hard to tell if he's being sarcastic or sincere. The archer moves to retrieve a few arrows, but ends up leaving several of them discarded, deeming them to have been ruined by their use. He moves with a curious prowling step— toe-heel— and very quietly in his low boots, which cling to his midcalf more like dark moccassins than heavy curbstompers.

"You look like you enjoyed this," Roy tells Sharon, his expression very neutral and difficult to read.

*

His comment about being that selfish actually draws a slightly quirked grin from Sharon, "I normally am. You're a better person than me." She winks at him a heartbeat later, that comment now clearly a tease from her. Almost flirtatious. Could she really flirt over taking down bad guys? You know it. She begins slightly limping after him, scooping up the arrows he's leaving behind with a deeper smirk. "I'm serious, though…You leave this shit back and they're going to ID you one of these days. Clean up your mess, get out, don't get caught. Those are the rules." WEll, the rules of a spy working in countries she's not legally allowed to be in. Maybe it's different here.

"And…I like a good fight. Reminds you that your alive, you know?" Sharon admits quietly, even if she's still bleeding freely. SHe really doesn't seem to notice it.

*

Roy grunts noncommittally, and reaches to a small pouch at the base of his spine. He pulls out a length of densely wrapped gauze and moves to Sharon's arm, examining the wound, and starts setting about trying to bind and treat the injury. He's brusque and professional, but knows what he's doing.

"Hard to trace the arrows back to me. By the time they figure out anything with them, they'd find my -real- contraband."

He eyes Sharon specuatively. "You sound like a cop, but you don't fight like one. Ranger? Military or something?" he guesses.

*

Ironically? Sharon gives the same sort of non-comittal grunt to his beginning to treat her arm. She isn't thrilled about it, but she doesn't stop him. This close, he'll realize that she is ALL muscle. Lean, completely toned, about as strong as a woman can get with usual female hormones and nothing more. If she was a man, she'd be stacked, but she's just highly trained and taunt. A body like one of his arrows — narrow, lithe and dangerous. "It's not that bad…" She insists again, a bit tense just that someone could be showing some weird bit of care for her.

"…Real contraband? Something I should be worried about here? And is there any reason to give them motivation to even LOOK? I mean, eventually they will come hunting." Sharon warns gently, as one of those people who has done the hunting. "CIA." She answers to that question. She can, at least, reveal that much.

*

"Just a lot of Cuban cigars and vintage French pornography," Roy deadpans at Sharon, working efficiently. Despite her killer physique, he doesn't linger overmuch on contact and works with a medical professional's detachment.

"CIA. That's foreign service, isn't it? And I don't see the President here," he remarks, glancing at Sharon as he cinches down the bandage. "So not CIA anymore," he guesses. "Or you'd have a team in place."

*

There's a few silent heartbeats as he comments on her not being CIA any more. Though the girl next door blonde is generally emotionless, if he's good at reading people, he might notice a wave of bitter tension that comes up at the consideration of it. It's only years of training that stop her from spilling it all in anger. She just takes a deep breath, flexing her arm against the bandage in a test. She gives him a single nod of approval.

"Still CIA. And yes, generally, foreign intelligence. Not the secret service. We don't have anything to do with the president. And I just…finished an assignment. They pulled me back for a bit to… reasses things in that area. Waiting on the next one." There, that was vague enough not to give away where she was and hopefully not how angry she is at being pulled home.

*

Roy grunts, finishing his medical work, and examines her profile as she grits back that wave of bitter, clenching hostility.

"You're a little raw over it," he observes, moving away from her. He checks his bow, inspecting the pulleys and string for damage. With a small allen key from his pocket, he makes a tiny adjustment to an upper pulley, watching closely to ensure it cams properly as he tests the draw weight.

"How'd you hear about this lot, then?"

*

No sirens in the distance yet. Seems no one calls the cops when it's the bad guys who are getting their asses handed to them. Sharon turns her head, though, trying to listen a bit closer in the paranoia of a woman who cannot get caught doing ths sort of work. Even if she's not bothered to hide or mask herself. His accusation of her being raw over it gets a little smirk, "…Years in the field, enough intel for the government to make major decisions and then they pull me off because it might get too dangerous for a woman? Yeah. I'm fucking pissed." THat is putting it mildly. And now she looks like she wants to beat something up again.

"I needed to work off some steam. Figured I'd try to help clean up some things back home…" Aka, she's going stir crazy and looking for a fight. "And you? When'd you decide you wanted to dance around in a fancy outfit with way better than military tech arrows shooting like some sort of Robinhood Sniper?"

*

"You should take up knitting or something," Roy tells Sharon. It's hard to tell if he's being blunt, wry, sarcastic, or some combination thereof. "This isn't the sort of game you play if your headisn't 100% on the fight. You go in swinging too hard, you'll get killed. Patience. Planning," he tells Sharon.

"Did you even bother with a site reconnassiance? Or did you just walk in and figure you'd shoot first and figure it out as you go?"

*

Roy arrives from Out <O>.

*

Roy has arrived.

*

That last flat statement earns him a rather salty stare. "You entered from the western door and took what was… essentially, a sniper-cross bow position on the western wall at exactly 3:37. The patrols were slow and getting even more sloppy as the afternoon went on. They pulled the morning shipment off the boat at dawn and almost immediately started smuggling half of it out of here, hoping they could claim things were missing." Apparently, Sharon had been doing recon since *dawn*? She was either very dedicated or very bored.

In truth, it was probably both.

She begins to casually move for the back exit, pale eyes still scanning the room, expecting a new threat any second, though the fight is long over. She doesn't seem in an exact rush to leave, but there is the antisiness in her body which says she knows they shouldn't stay around much longer.

*

"Not bad," the archer concedes, grudgingly. "I guess you're not a total amateur." Says the man in tights and leather. He recovers the last of his gear, packs his equipment away, and heads towards the back of the room. He's got a little leather slingpack that he'd squirrel away at a fallback point— a good location for spare gear in case of a retreat. It's clipped over one shoulder and he secures the hood over his quiver, too, a setup designed for rapid movement to keep his gear secured.

He doesn't use the door, though— he scampers out the window on the second floor catwalk and while Sharon walks outside, bounces off two crates and lands on a shipping container above her head. He squats, looking down at her with a grudging respect on his features.

"You were still outnumbered. You're good. But probably not good enough to be that aggressive."

*

The woman watches him. Not directly, she has to watch too many other things. A general, paranoid awareness of ALL Of her surroundings at some heightened levels is how Sharon just lives life. So, he's always in the corner of her eye as he moves over the upper levels. Meanwhile, she knows the cameras there. She's spied them too, and as she slips out the door, she tilts her head down just the exact angle that the camera will get nothing but her hair and stature. Another blonde in a city of them.

Then he's dropping down next to her, speaking again. She smirks a bit deeper, "I was joining the CIA when you were still in secondary school, kid. I'm not an amateur. As for outnumbered? Well… I guess I'll just have to try again without help. It's how you get better. Trust me, on foreign soil? You're always outnumbered."

*

His accent is strange. Midwestern? But with some odd inflections on the vowels that don't quite correlate to anything immediately graspable. Roy folds his arms and looks down at Sharon with a skeptical, upticked brow at her challenge, but relents when she gives him the proverbial scolding finger-wag. "Right, okay, lady, point made," he sighs, holding a hand up between them and looking away. "You can handle yourself anyway. I guess I'm not one to point fingers. We should probably clear out," he remarks, seeing familiar red and blue lights flickering against the buildings a few blocks away. "Cops will be here in a few minutes. That many gunshots is gonna get attention, even in this neighborhood."

*

"We should. But…if you ever need back up…" She reaches into her pocket, pulling out a small card. It has a single telephone exchange on it, no name, no logo. Nothing but a number. She passes it up towards him, if he'll take it. "Ask for Carter and leave a call back number if I'm not there. I'll get to you within an hour. Doable?" SHe actually seems to have softened, just a bit, as he relents to that chip on her shoulder. Sharon, for all her need to prove herself, actually might care.

*

Roy stares at the card— then, to his credit, he takes it from her and examines it before pushing it into a pocket. "Carter. Nice to meet you," he grunts. "People've been calling me Red Arrow. I guess that works," he tells her. "Don't have a fancy phone number though. Guess shoot a few arrows into the air. See if I'm around," he suggests, with a dry, almost Saharan wit. "But I'll be in touch."

*

A brief salute is given in his direction, then she abruptly steps to the side, in one of those little alleyways that was good for little more than air circulation in the warehouse district. It's like she just disappears into those shadows. One minute she was there, talking to him, giving a momentary, enigmatic smile at the thought he'd be in touch, and then there was just wind. She might not be super powerful, but the woman knows her stuff…

And now he has her number.

*

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