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Early evening in the city. With twilight approaching, the city night life is beginning. Including the rise of activity of the criminal element. And of course, along with the criminals comes those that hunt them. Down at the corner of 86th and Amsterdam, a few figures are lingering outside of a store at the bottom of a tentement building. Low level street thugs are hassling a few people trying to hustle their way homes as the shop is closing for the night.
And when the Night comes, so does the Batman.
In fact, Batman is already at a vantage point, watching the everynight thugs start to crawl out of their holes. Batman would glide down to get closer to the scene, frankly on the roof right above them, peering over, and ready to instill fear as he normally does. Though he observes for a moment, just making sure these guys are just that: your average thugs.
Once that's figured out, the Dark Knight would grapple onto the ledge, and slowly descend..like a bat.
Don't look up thugs…don't look up.
It's not Aubergine's usual stomping grounds, admittedly. She's a Queens girl behind the dark violet. But she's been tailing one of those thugs. He's a friend of her father's — if her father can be said to have friends — and she wants to know what he's up to.
Hassling people, of course, is cause for breaking cover. As much as she's loathe to do it, Spoiler has a honed sense of ethics that didn't come from either of her parents. She is in a nearby alleyway, hidden among the shadows, but those who are better at observation than the thugs might notice a dark figure reaching to a bandolier strapped about one thigh, extracting something, and throwing it with some accuracy at one of the thugs. The man in question is not her target, as she'd rather not have that one in jail tonight, but one of the others is likely to have a dark purple dart penetrating his posterior in short order.
They're loitering around the store. And it's a few minutes after the owners are gone, the Bat can hear some murmuring from them.
"When's he getting here?"
"He said we'd know the signal."
"Come on, we're close to where those freaks in Mutant Town hang out."
"Chill, man, it'll be soon."
One of the men is suddenly hit with a purple dart. "What the hell?!" he manages, before he stumbles backwards and falls backwards, unaware of the attack.
The other three men are pulling weapons, knives and guns, and looking around wildly. "It's a set up!" one of them yells out. "You set us up, Chauncy!"
"He said it wasn't a set up! He said we'd be in and out!"
Landing on a nearby rooftop is a lithe figure in black and white. But as she sees others arriving on the scene of the ambush, she frowns. Her sources had told her there would be a bigger fish tonight, and the slim pickings have already drawn out some of the usual rabble bashers.
Batman is not one to miss the small things..even though this wasn't even close to small.
Batman saw the man get a purple dart right in the buttocks, and he uses the distraction to his advantage. He would take the one in the far back, descending quickly and grabbing the fellow, a sharp elbow to the ear and a hand over his mouth, moving a hand to properly support him as he is dragged up just as quickly as he came down! talk about scare tactics.
Poor guys just picked a bad day.
Aubergine, who is still unsure of her code name, regards the dark figure that descends to pull one of the thugs into the sky. Vampire, she decides without much concern. It wasn't the one she intended to tail anyway, and the one who took a dart in the sciatic nerve (or fairly close thereto) has fallen over — he'll be fine, she's sure. And if he's not, well, he probably deserved it.
Aubergine is not exactly sympathetic to the woes of the criminal set.
She moves from her current position, drifting out from the alley, still sticking to the shadows so that her next attack comes from another direction. A small bundle of cloth filled with saltpeter, baking soda, and sugar, set on fire, then allowed to smoulder in a fireproof pocket. It emits clouds of smoke as it lands among the baddies, and behind her mask Aubergine smiles to herself, waiting for the right moment to dive in and separate her target from the herd.
Batman's attack is completely by surprise, the man caught off-guard as he goes flying, and the Bat has grabbed his potential victim before he even has a chance to scream. The criminal has no chance to really respond, especially after the explosion causes yet more smoke.. wait, more smoke?
Yes. More smoke. This smoke is coming from the shop, however, as a sudden explosion comes from the shop, expanding outwards as shards of glass fly out and the metal gates are blown off of their hinges.
One of the criminals is grabbed by a strand of spider silk and fwipped upwards as the girl in black and white with a red scarf covering the lower half of her face swoops in. "Didn't they tell you that smoking's dangerous for your health?" she asks as she glances towards Aubergine.
Coming out of the store is a man dressed in what looks like a… moth. Well, a flaming moth. Yellow wings that are aflame, red and yellow suit. "Time for you to burn, Bat!" he calls out, waving a hand sending a blast of fire towards the Batman and his little purple accomplise in the fireproof jacket.
Great. Not one, but two people interfering. How lovely.
However, one of which, that being Silk, is the one he's actually been suspicious of. Of course, that's for another time as an old one from his Rogues Gallery decides to make his grand entrance at explosions and fire-spewing.
He would leap out of the way, catching a street lamp and spinning around it to evade spectacularly. Though he does draw three batarangs in a single hand, tossing them all with painful precision at Firebug. "Firebug. You won't get away from me."
The bat says sternly…in his usual 'I'm your worst nightmare' kind of way.
Who's interfering with who, Batbreath? Aubergine's been tailing this jackass since he left her father's house. The girl in purple peers at Silk as the bad joke is made, chooses not to say anything — she's seen Spider-Man do the same. A defense mechanism, possibly. Rather, she dives into the smoke from her own bomb and grabs hold of the figure she's been tailing, shoves him out the other side of the haze before punching him twice, once in the gut, once in the jaw. Then she leans in and hisses into his ear, "Run."
And then she vanishes back into the smoke to lay down some actual damage on the remaining thugs. The bat thing will have his hands full with Firemoth, no doubt. She can kick the butts of her target's friends. Possibly with Spider-girl's assistance.
Grabbed by Aubergine, the thug takes a half-hearted swing at the purple suited vigilante, but misses as she lays into him, doubling him over and cold-cocking him. He manages to push up, and like the woman said - he runs down the alley as fast as he can.
The batarangs flip through the air, and Firebug turns on them, sending out a spew of flame from his hands, managing to disentegrate one of them before a second hits him in the shoulder and sends him backwards. Getting to his feet, the man sprays down the area with fire, trying to burn everything in the immediate vicinity as the fire starts to spread through the shop and towards the apartments upstairs.
Thwipping into the fray, Silk sweeps by one of the thugs, hitting him square in the chest with both feet and sending him flying - away from the flames. She senses the flames soon enough and sends a line to grab Aubergine, yanking the pair of them off the ground for a moment. "Oh. Purple. That's like to hide the bruises, right?" she asks in confusion. There could have been a smile there. "Didn't want you to get roasted!" With that, she's releasing the purple clad vigilante on the attack.
Batman would narrow his eyes at firebug, cracking his neck a little as he gets into a basic fighting position, having dealt with firebug multiple times before. He seems to rush at him, before attempting to pull out a prototype cryo-grenade, tossing it at Firebug to see it's effects.
What? Batman has to do -something- in his spare time, and running a business is too easy for him. He looks behind him for about a split second, seeing Silk and Spoiler apparently making quick work of those goons, not surprised at the fact though.
"Something like that," says Aubergine, her voice flat, expressionless. She uses the webbing boost to swing around and launch herself at yet another thug. She's not so gentle with this one as she was with the last. Her foot hits his chin, and the other strikes his gut a moment later, sending him into the wall.
The poor goon that got the foot end of Aubergine's Silk-boost probably wishes she didn't get that boost. His jaw is broken in the process and he's slammed against the wall, slinking down onto the ground, completely out of the fight at this point.
The Bat-Cold Grenade - well, it is experimental, right? Firebug attempts to flame it, and when it explodes in close proximity, there's a loud and sudden rush of compressed cold that washes over the criminal and into the shop, dousing the flames out entirely and a thin layer of frost on everything - including Firebug, who is frozen solid in place from the brunt of the grenade going off.
"…that was chilling." Silk comments quietly as she thwips her webs, grabbing up the last remaining goon and slinging him next to the one that Aubergine sent sprawling, covering the pair in more of her organic silk that she just seems to spin easily from her fingertips. "That was fun. Totally should do it again sometime!"
Batman would rise to his feet, looking at the effects of the cold grenade. Note to self, thank Freeze for being foolish enough to underestimate Batman's intuitive and inventive mind. He approaches Firebug, making sure he was still alive and completely contained. Yup. Way to go Batman.
After admiring his work, he turns around, enshrouded by his cape and starts to walk outside the building. Though he gives a glance to Aubergine and Silk, narrowing his eyes a moment. Geez bats, no thank you? harsh.
Regardless, Batman nods to them, but his gaze lingers on Silk a moment, though it may not be even noticeable.
Aubergine shakes her head slightly as she cuffs the unconscious, broken-jawed thug to a lamppost. He won't escape that easily. She glances down the alley after the one who got away — she knows exactly where he'll be going, and who will be somewhat freaked out when he's found there. The question is, which of the costumed folks she's encountered tonight should she send after him?
Aubergine does not attack the home of Arthur Brown. She just arranges for others to do that.
Finally she glances to Silk. "The last one will be here in an hour," she says, holding out a white card printed with an address in Queens.
Glancing at the card for a moment, there's a blink. "I uh.. don't do requests." Silk says with a slow confused look. "Plus I'm new to town. Try the big guy over there." She gestures towards Batman, who's staring at her. And she's totally getting that weird spider vibe. "Well. It's a school night. Make sure you're home by curfew, Purple Girl!" comes the comment to Aubergine before she's shooting a webline up to make her escape.
Batman watches Silk run off, narrowing his eyes a little more at her. Before he looks to Aubergine. "What is it?" he asks, walking over to her. Boy, even though he had no superpowers…was it normal to be that scary-looking? huh.
No wonder the criminal underground have called him 'the literal incarnation of your nightmares' for nothing. Though he actually wasn't trying, just asking a straight up question.
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And truly, Aubergine isn't scared. She's seen far more frightening things. This man hunts the bad people of the world, and she is not one of those. He may not be the most personable, but neither is she. At least, not when her mask is on. "One of Firebug's minions ran off," she says, "but I know where he's going." She offers the card to Batman. "If you want to find him. He's a small fish, but he'll be with far larger ones — and maybe neither of us have information to put the big fish away, but crashing their party to take away the small fish will make them nervous."
Silk moves to thwip away, and as she does so, she wiggles just so to avoid any following that may be going on behind her. Because you can't trust a bat. Supposedly.
Batman would take the card gently from her hands to give it a more in-depth look. "Hnnh." is all he responds to it before handing it back. "Alright. I'll look into it.doesnt matter if it's big fish or small fish. They're going down." he takes out his grappling hook and points it at a nearby rooftop. "Good work." and he launches off with that note.
Who knew batbrain had the capacity for acknowledgementven if it was a small one. But personable? Batman is about as personable as a tree hermit when it comes to other heroes and the like.
Behind her mask, Stephanie Brown smiles. "Have a good night, Dad," she whispers to herself. She knows she'll sleep much better. She retrieves her dart from the buttock of one of the downed thugs, unslings her grappler from her belt, and fires herself into the sky, crossing rooftops for a few blocks until she reaches a place where she can catch a bus — or land on one, anyway — to get back to her dorm.