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New York.
Her City.
When the city sleeps, the Phoenix crawls across the rooftops in search for those who do not. When the city sleeps, there are screams that ricochet across the brick-made buildings, where the Phoenix will descend down upon her attackers to rid the evil and keep her clean.
And when she wakes, the Phoenix walks among the lonely few. Following the intrepid stars of New York to their jobs, to her own job, to parks and places of eatery and beyond.
New York.
Her City.
When it cries for her she comes; just like tonight.
The Phoenix skates across the rooftop, leaping and bounding upon the top, stopping to skid down the fireescape and plant herself atop of an offending villain. Like all nights, there is a struggle. And without the use of her gifts she pummels the man to a decent pulp with a full placed kick here or there, and a toss and turn, and a return of the purse that was snatched and whatever diamonds were on their person.
Because the city screamed, she was there. And off into the darkness and up into the sky she was again, keeping an eye on the roof, an eye on the horizon. Because her city needs her, especially this night.
Another cry breaks the night and reaches the ears of the Phoenix.
When she comes upon it, she'll discover a man dangling from a rooftop. A cable is wrapped around his throat with a makeshift noose, his fingers clinging to it and trying to keep it from choking him unconscious, his legs kicking in the air.
The figure that holds the other end of the rope seems terrifying. His face is hooded and masked, clad in white, The emblem of a crescent moon, scarlet, stamped onto the forehead of the hood. He's foregone the cape tonight, his body clad more like a traditional ninja, arms wrapped from wrist to shoulder in cloth. Blood stains the knuckles of it, coinciding with the broken nose on the face of the dangling man.
"Last chance, Rico. Where are the guns?"
Oh..
That was something she never thought she would see in a million of years. But gauging by the conversation, or the question that was going on between attacker and offender, and yet even still.. the way he handles the man was almost brutal.
But she was brutal as well. Was she not?
"There's a better way to do that, Sir.." Jean calls out from across the way, her mind already weaving a web of TK beneath the dangling man, aiming to catch him should she fall. "I'm sure if you don't dangle and strangle, he would tell you what you need to know."
Moon Knight's head swivels like a hawk's, a predator interrupted in the midst of his feeding. In answer to her statement, he simply releases the rope, allowing the man to fall into her grasp. Not that he knew it existed. He would have broken Rico's legs from the fall, at the very least.
His voice is cold and almost inhuman, a sort of empty rage coloring the tenor of his words. "I don't need the answers. I already know them," he says. "I simply wanted him to confess. It would be good for his soul."
He rests his hand at the truncheon on his hip, the multi-part weapon that serves as his right hand. "And what is your purpose here, woman? Protector or avenger? Angel or devil?" he says.
Once he lets go of the man, the weaved barrier allows the man to bounce. There were two forces at work here. One that held the man upright and the other that allowed him to sleep a dreamless sleep, at least until the people came to take him away. Eventually.
But, Jean was positively baffled, her head shook as her red locks nearly spilled from her hood, her fingers clutching it down and tighter over her head as she shrugs her shoulders visibly.
"Could be all four. I never really know unless it's Thursday."
Hah! She has jokes!
Moon Knight isn't exactly known for his sense of humor. But he can relate to that. He, after all, is many things and many people, all at the same time.
"I have forgotten the days," he says. "They run together, smeared like blood on the walls," he says softly.
He narrows his eyes. "Rico Constantino. A merchant of death, Italian by birth, one of Mussollini's own, once upon a midnight," he hisses. "Now grown to old and fat, selling his wares to the highest bidder. A shipment of high ballistic rifles came in through the docks at as the gibbous moon waxed," he says.
"He and his gang are finished. And I will be the one to finish them."
She was joking, but in a sense, she wasn't. But she could hear the tone, know the tone, understand it all the more. Her lips press together as she takes a step up upon her ledge, a simple little leap was given that carried her far further than a normal humans would.
The land next to him was sound, but she heard the way he spoke. How he spoke. What he spoke.
"Do you have a plan to go in all alone?"
"I am never alone."
It sounds like a statement of bravado but, in proximity, Jean can probably get a sense of his mind. Or rather, the nonsense. Even on the surface, he's jagged and fractured, imagery swimming to the surface: a blood-red moon over the desert, a pit lined with skulls, a white limousine cruising through the streets of Paris, a jackal feasting on the body of a crocodile…
He says, "Make sure they don't see it coming. Make them pay," he says.
It wasn't much to scan the surface, to 'hear' many, but she didn't let on that she could do that, though it was a fight to not pry deeper. Her lips purse ever so tightly as she jumps down from her stoop, finally settling her back against it, one foot crossing over the other as her arms fold as well.
"Sure, you're never alone. But, physically, you will be. Do you need someone to watch your back?"
Marc Spector stares at her for a long moment. He has no other senses, no other intuition, than his own madness and the guidance of Khonshu. Something twitches underneath the mask, a flicker passing over his hidden features.
"No."
"But if you want to help me…I will not stop you."
Jean slightly grimaces beneath her mask, but she says nothing to what she was thinking. "No killing, right?" She asks, still keeping that lean.
"I know that's what you mean to do. But I can have the police there to arrest them and make sure that they will never see the light of day."
Marc Spector shrugs, "If you like," he says. He isn't out to murder anyone. But he isn't particularly careful about the matter either. "I want them to suffer. That's the only way they'll learn," he says.
"The police can clean up when we're done. Someone needs to take them to the hospital. I suppose," he says.
"Be careful with that. Sometimes some people think that the art of suffering is a justifiable act to the end of their means." She warns.
With a push back of her bottom against the edge of the roof, she makes ready to depart, but she does stop. "Where?" She asks. "Where is this going to happen and when?"
Marc Spector watches her preparing to depart. "The Onyx Imports warehouse, Dock 37F. Midnight, first night of the full moon," he says. He extends his truncheon to the side and fires a fresh cable, the grappling hook wrapping around a higher rooftop and then he's dragged off into the dark with a snap of gears.