|
  |
It's an axiom of vigilante work that when things go wrong, they go wrong in the grandest fashion possible. And for Kate Bishop, tonight's no exception.
It had /started/ fairly well. A quick and tidy little tussle in the old automotive manufacturing district in New York— three thugs, a little bit of smuggled heroin, and some broken jaws had gotten Kate some answers.
Unfortunately, the three thugs were more like thirty, a fact Kate had realized only after thirty-plus goons had poured out of the warehouse and adjoining buildings at the sound of an improvised alarm clanging.
Well, live and let live. Sometimes site recon doesn't go to plan.
The auto district at large is notoriously high crime and cops rarely proceed into the area without a LOT of encouragement and in big, rolling numbers. For a little gunplay and some riotous shouting in known 23rd Street Crew territory?
Kate was gonna be on her own.
The auto repair yard was most of a city block wide, with high chainlink fences, two big warehouses, dozens of outbuildings, and stacks and stacks of cars rusting in the sun. Rumor had it that shady mafia deals and a stalled city council had prevented the owners from making a profit on junking the old vehicles. Interesting facts, but not terribly relevant to Kate's current predicament.
AM Kate tried to keep her breathing steady as she found temporary refuge behind an old junker. Probably an Edsel or something, from the amount of rust accrued on the thing. Not that Kate knew anything about cars. Horses, absolutely. Cars, not so much. She lived in New York, that's what the train was for.
A tear gas arrow had at least gotten her a chance to catch her breath, scattering a pursuing pack of thugs and getting her a chance to hunker down here. The smart move, of course, would be to pack it up, sneak out, climb the fence out of here and go home to lick her wounds in a nice, hot bubble bath. The bruise on her left thigh was probably going to be the size of a small pizza from Gino's.
But, of course, she wouldn't do that. She would stick it out and keep fighting, because that's what she did. That's who she was. Even if it got her killed. She wasn't going to quit, she'd trained too long to give up. And she really, really didn't like to lose.
AM
There's a *thump* from nearby and someone makes a noise like a sigh, then collapses to the ground. It's hard to mistake the sound of a falling body. Another *thumph*, a choking, gurgling gasp, and one more body drops in place.
Kate can just make out the sight from behind the junker— a pair of gangsters bleeding out, shot rather expertly with broadhead arrows. But the fletching— red? Not hers, that's for sure. And not wood, but some kind of composite. Possibly fiberglass. Very modern and cutting-edge.
There's a flicker of movement. Up to her left, fifty yards away. Someone clinging to the shadows rather expertly, nestled next to a smokestack.
The figure leans out, and looses another arrow. Almost before the first one is gone, the second's in the air, too, and a pair of patrolling gangsters drops.
It opens up an exit path for Kate to take towards the east side of the lot, where she could take cover and have a few moments to reassess and gather her wits.
The shadowy figure fires a high, lobbing shot that starts crackling with a series of noisemakers. It lands a hundred yards off, sparkling and causing shouts of alarm far away from their position. He turns to face Kate, then slips off the building and starts moving towards a point midway between them.
AM Kate Bishop frowns. She should probably be grateful, for the cover and for the help. Like many spoiled rich girls, however, gratitude has never really been Kate's style. The gang had become something of a test - her test - and now this guy was in here spoiling it.
That doesn't mean she won't take advantage. She breaks cover and looses a few arrows of her own, aimed low, taking out a few more. She likes to hit the back of the knee, severing tendons and keeping them from pursuit. Some time in the hospital might make them think twice about their career choices.
She sets off in pursuit of the other figure, letting loose one of her explosive arrows with a high, arching shot that lands on an abandoned school bus, setting it ablaze rather spectacularly and casting a lambent, flaming light over the junkyard. While they may only face two archers, it may seem to the gang that they're being bombarded from all sides.
AM
The archer rather suddenly steps out from behind a container, just at the corner of Kate's vision. He's good— holding himself to near-perfect immobility. His red hair stands out in the dancing flames, and a domino mask obscures his upper face from casual identification. He wears modified leather body armor, with bare arms protected by long black and red gloves that guard up to his bicep and leave his shoulders bare for maximum mobility in his chest and upper back.
His bow is bizarre looking— an ultramodern weapon with compound pulleys instead of a classic yeoman's configuration, and he holds an arrow at nock with one casually looped index finger.
"There's at least twenty left out there," he rasps, in a low voice. An arrow quiver is slung from his belt, and it looks like he's been making good use of them. "They're angry and scared. You can get out by the back fence, there's a break in the chainlinks behind a broken down forklift."
AM Kate Bishop makes her way to him at last. Her own armor is somewhat stylish, slender and custom-made for her by a designer she knows in France. The bulletproofing material has been slimmed down and she's left her arms bare to show off the tone of her biceps. Her gloves leave thumb and forefinger exposed, preferring the skin-to-string contact for maximum control of her draw.
The wrap-around glasses over her eyes give her excellent nightvision, but he doesn't need to see that well to see the snarl on her purple-painted lips.
"If you think I'm running, you really need to work on the detective part of your game," she says. "But that exit sounds like a good idea - for them. If we play our cards right, we can heard them towards it like a stampede and bottleneck them trying to get out. Fish in a barrel," she says.
AM
"Only big enough for a kid to slip through," the man says, shaking his head negative. "Probably local kids sneaking in here before the gang took over."
He looks pretty unruffled by Kate's anger or the fact he's just killed a couple of men, standing upright in the shadows and calmly surveying the scene of chaos being unleashed on the far side of the auto yard. 'Kid' is a stretch— he can't be much older than Kate, if he is at all.
"Stay here and stay under cover, then," he tells her, checking his bowstring and starting to walk towards a better vantage point. "I'll get these goons cleared out one way or another. Maybe find some trunk to hide. I'll make sure to draw them off before they get to your position," he remarks. "Not a good place for a lady to be anyway."
AM Kate Bishop responds more than verbally, reaching out and shoving him hard in the shoulder, "I don't know who you think you are, red ass, but the only person who talks that way to me is my father. And I don't listen to him either," she says.
She reaches back and draws an arrow, lightning quick, this one with a steel cable attached to it. She fires it into one of the electric poles at the center of the yard, the line stretching from here to there.
'Try to keep up!" she calls, leaping up and using her bow to zipline down.
AM
Red Arrow turns to push Kate back but she's already zipping away, and he scowls mightily at the saucy girl as she ziplines towards the heart of the confrontation.
"Stupid dame," he growls. Electing to jog instead of use a zipline, he sticks to low shadows while Kate goes high, pulling his compound bow to half-draw and bringing the fletching up to his cheekbone, arrow angled down.
A thug abruptly jumps out at him, bringing a gun to bear. Red Arrow barely hesitates and brings his bow up, taking half a second to /aim/. The thug gets one shot off— it flies wide— and then an arrow sprouts out of his forehead and he falls over in a lump.
A second criminal pops out from around a fuel barrel, charging at Red Arrow with a heavy hammer in hand. Red flicks an arrow at him underhand, Mongolian style, and then instantly follows it up with a full arrow draw and buries a second shaft in his chest next to the first.
"Stupid dame," he growls again, seeing thugs moving towards Kates position as the fireworks end their distraction.
AM Kate Bishop draws a knife and quickly cuts the line just before she reaches the pole, letting her drop with a somersault to land on her feet. She's quickly surrounded by four of the punks, trying to converge on her like a pack of mangy dogs.
She greets the first with a straight kick to the larynx, sending him falling back, gurgling and grasping his throat. The next she ducks a blow from and drives a palm into his solar plexus, taking his breath long enough to give him a sharp headbutt to the point of the chin, snapping his head back.
"Ow! Shit!" she says, grasping her head and giving a momentary opening for one to try and wrap his arms around her. She drops, slipping through his grasp and backflipping to kick him in the face. The fourth stumbles backwards, bad for him as she catches her bow in hand and comes up to draw and fire, driving the sharp arrowhead just behind his kneecap and drawing a scream of pain.
"Hey, Crimson Avenger, maybe try easing up on the murder, huh? Just pretend you're a good guy for a second, 'kay?" Not that she hasn't ever crossed the line, she has, but it's not her first instinct, at least.
AM
An arrow whistles out of the shadows and hits the screamer in the mouth. It disappears between his teeth and he falls over backwards with a gurgle. The projectile misses Kate by inches.
"It's not murder if they've got guns," Red Arrow says, grimly. "It's a public service. Better to kill them before they kill you."
He shags ass across a short open stretch, moving with a low, loose-kneed gait that would be better served in brushland or a forest. It covers ground fast enough, though, and it's quiet, his toe-heel step slipping him along surely as a deer in the woods. He peeks around a barrier, nocking another arrow, and makes a face.
"They're wising up. Last dozen are hunkering down in a school bus. No good approach," he mutters, mostly talking to himself, and reaches to his belt for an arrow with a different design of fletching than the others.
AM Kate Bishop has to momentarily deal with one more thug. This one seems to at least have had a little training, albeit done with the maximum amount of whooping and showmanship, perhaps thinking he's going to intimidate her.
The scuffle is still relatively brief, a few deflected blows, until at last she just backhands him with the bow itself. "If you threw off the balance with your ugly face, I'm comin' back for you," she mutters, stepping over his prone form.
She draws a strange arrow of her own, pulling it from its quiver. "Then we flush 'em out,' she says, firing the arrow and letting it arc up and crash through the window, where it begins emitting tear gas inside.
AM
Red Arrow watches the gas arrow fly, and grunts once in something like approval when it starts emitting choking, noxious gas from inside the bus. Men start fleeing, and rather calmly, Roy starts picking them off one by one. He's smart— he works from the rear of the pack, mostly, aiming at guys who are out of line of sight or trying to flee into other bits of cover. He doesn't miss much, either, as fast as he's shooting with that strange bow. "Looks like that's most of them. Not that I need your help," he assures the woman, nocking an arrow.
AM Kate Bishop snorts, "Hey, I had everything handled until you decided to stick your nose in. I figured I might as well make use of you," she says. "You're pretty good. Probably don't need to draw so hard, though, I get it, you're strong, but you'd have better control with a more measured pull," she says.
She fires a couple arrows at a stray or two, catching them low and taking them out. "I imagine the explosion lead somebody to call the cops. They overlook a lot in this neighborhood, but TNT is probably outside the usual turn-your-head," she says.
AM
Someone gets off a *spang* of automatic fire from a chopped down old service rifle. It looks like it probably saw use in the big war, and someone took a hacksaw to the barrel and the stock. Roy steps behind the concrete barrier and chips fly near him, divots digging out of the stone. Fortunately, the shooter can't aim for beans and the old weapon is probably about as accurate as thrown gravel.
He leans forward— way forward, bneding almost double— and from an inverted position, peeks around the corner and whips an arrow at the man. It's not a great shot, catching him in his lower abdomen, but the automatic fire stops.
Roy steps back behind cover and slips around the other side of the building, moving in a low hunker as he attracts more gunfire.
"This has gone a little beyond a casual gang fight," Roy admits, raising his voice over the steady popping of gunfire and the *spang* of ricochets against steel. "Most of them are dead or down at this point. Not a bad time to beat feet."
AM Okay, that was pretty impressive. Kate will absolutely admit that. To herself. But not out loud. Red's obviously got enough ego already, she doesn't need to polish it.
"My tipster must not have known exactly what was going down. That or he sent me into a trap," she says. "May have to go back and revisit him to clarify."
She makes her way towards that exit in the fence, brisk but not hurried, keeping her eyes sharp in case anyone decides to spring out of the shadows on the way. "If you have to hitch a ride, my cycle's just down the block, but you'd better watch how you hold on."
AM
"Tipster?" Roy falls back with that same eerie calm, flinging a pair of cylinders by hand into the air. They land with a clatter and smoke billows from the grenades. It's a quiet night with high pressure and low winds; the smoke crawls across the ground, rising upwards like a curtain draw towards the sky.
Just for good measure, he whips a few more arrows into the smoke to keep people honest. At least one connects, drawing a cry of pain.
"I got a word about this place too. Said they were moving heroin, but all I see is a bunch of street dealers. Who gave you the green light on this place?" he asks, jogging along with Kate.
"And I've got my ride covered," he adds, as they round the corner, his feet almost silent on the ground.
AM Kate Bishop makes it to her bike, a sleek, dark purple machine she got imported from Japan. Cutting edge, although not supertech by any stretch of the imagination, just a good fast engine and a hell of an aerodynamic design. She straddles it quickly, securing her quiver.
"A dealer named Pablo Blue. Fancies himself an artist. He gave this place up after I gave him a choice between spilling and ever painting again," she says.
"He probably just got the same message as these mooks. Either someone's gathering together lowlifes, waiting for us to pick them off, or there's some sort of gang dissent happening. I don't know, I'll have to dig into it," she says.
AM
"Cute bike," Red Arrow says— and he pulls a tarp away from a heavy, custom Indian with a massive engine block, heavy exhaust pipes, and custom shrouding and trim. It's a big, aggressive bike with a lot of torque, and he stuffs the tarp into a sidesaddle container, then swings up onto the seat. His quiver and bow are secured to his back in such a way that even if he takes a spill, they'll be secured.
"/Pablo/," Red Arrow grimaces, shaking his head. "I bet he's laughing all the way to the bank. I shook him down earlier today and he promised up and down that there were a dozen junkies here, tops. I'm gonna take one of his kneecaps for this," he growls, before kicking the ignition over. "He's probably gone to ground by now. Damnit!" he snarls in frustration, revving the bike and launching into the night without so much as a by-your-leave.
AM Kate Bishop moves out on her own, her engine a quiet purr compared to the roar of Red Arrow's bike. Stealth was a thing.
She'd have to pay Pablo a visit herself. And she was pretty sure she could find the guy before that Red guy could. Guess they'd just have to race for it. That's okay, Kate never had a problem beating boys at their own game. She'd been doing it all her life.