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55 Dora Avenue is a run-down tenement in Hell's Kitchen. There are narrow alleys on either side of the building with fire escapes that converge from either side in the front of the building. It is four stories tall and some of the units within the building are occupied with some being abandoned. On one side is a boarded up deli that has been closed for the past couple of years with more apartments above and on the other side is a vacant lot with a
few abandoned vehicles in it as well as chunks of old concrete and rebar.
The inside is no more impressive than the outside, with narrow hallways that lead from a basement with storage and laundry up to the flat tar roof that leaks into some of the upper level apartments when there's a particularly heavy rain. There is no air conditioning. Heat is spotty in the winter. The electricity itself can be hit or miss in inclement weather.
The Razor Rats had occupied the upper floors of 55 Dora Avenue for the past six months and had been running weapons into the neighborhood from their warehouse near the docks with little contest. That was up until a couple of months back when Mr. Hill and his drug business took up residence not far away. The two operations had, for the most part, operated without too much interference with one another. That is, until some of Hill's Boys got squirrelly and decided that they were going to try and push the Rats out of their den.
It started with some shouting and brandishing of weapons. Then there was the screaming, the chaos, and the fact that there were way more rats in the den than Hill's Boys had anticipated, and an all out seige on 55 Dora was underway. People were hiding in their apartments. Fights were being waged in the halls with periods of silence followed by periods of abrupt violence. It was chaos.
And so our heroes find themselves right in the middle of it, with plaster falling from the ceiling above, the thunder of feet as people race up and down the stairs, the barking of dogs, the occasional gunshot, and the shouting of residents attempting not to get in the crossfire.
Robbie had been keeping tabs on the Razor Rats and their weapons operations, as well as Mr. Hill and his ilk. Now it was time to pay dividends. He drove his '63 dodge charger right up to the apartment, flame wheels in all even though he wasn't in his Ghost Rider form, and he just walked in with no fear of what would happen, getting right into the thick of it.
he wore his trademark leather jacket, zipped up to hide anything underneath. black gloves, pants, and combat boots. and most infamously, a silver chain wrapped around his torso diagonally. He hadn't transformed yet, but he was in the fight, throwing a goon over the banister and trading blows with two others.
There is a slight pressure imbalance in the air outside the building, just before a flash of scarlet rushes by and destroys one of the windows. Glass showers the darkened room—some sort of storage area. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen moves like a snake, rolls to his feet and kicks open the door that leads out into the hallway.
Almost immediately there's flashes of gunfire as one of the Rats reacts well and turns his shotgun on the masquerading lawyer, firing just as an outstretched hand blocks the muzzle away. The wall on the side of the hall explodes, revealing the brick and wooden bracing, as dust flies everywhere.
Daredevil moves quickly, stepping in close to the thug, and drives his elbow into the throat, immediately getting the advantage. The elbow is brought back and then slammed into the nose, bringing his foe down to the ground. The shotgun, now in Daredevil's hand's is thrown, butt first, down the hallway, where it strikes another Rat in the eye and elicits a misfire from the final shell in the gun. A new hole erupts in the floorboard.
Involving herself directly in things like this hasn't been a natural course of action in the past, but she knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, and a favor was asked. It's why she originally showed up to stick her nose into things, but why she's stayed is for reasons that are greater than just checking in with someone and trying to convince them there was safer places to live than a walking crime scene like this.
First, she started doing the sane, rational thing and try to encourage people to exit before someone caught a stray bullet. But on her way up the stairs and down one of the hallways one of the Rat's took exception to her actions and decided that one single female wasn't going to stop them from using the defenseless people as shields if need be. A narrow hallway is not the ideal place to use a sword, but Colleen has pulled out the sword she carries with her everywhere, and she's locked in awkward, cramped combat with a pipe wielding Rat with an attitude problem.
Carlos wasn't keyed into the particulars, but he heard tale of trouble. For him, that means black pants, a black hoodie, and a reddish-orange bandana around his neck. Now, though its pulled up to cover the bottom half of his face. He's outside when the action starts, but a shard of carnelian light slides like a warm knife in butter through the mechanism of a door, and then the door is kicked aside and Carnelian steps into the fray, sword of light held in his hand and a ready willingness to his posture. Shouting, and such? He's here to save the day, he is.
"Stay inside, get as far back from the hall as you can," Danny says to an elderly couple, leading them away from the stairs and the fighting. He pauses as one of the Hill Boys wielding a knife comes around the corner and elbows him in the face, cracking his nose and drops him to the ground. Danny moves to put himself between the couple and the fighting, getting them back into their apartment. "Lock it, and stay back." They nod in fear but do as instructed.
As soon as Robbie enters the building, he's confronted with a pair of Hill's Boys. One takes a shot at him, the other turns his attention on Carnelian when he comes in not long behind. The guy is thin, wiry, and fast, but he's taken aback for a moment by that carnelian blade. He is, unfortunately, not bright, and so he lunges.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Colleen is shoved back against the wall by the guy with the pipe just before the shotgun blasts down the hall distract him when Daredevil comes crashing out of the room and THROWS a shotgun at his buddy, hitting him in the eye. With a snarl, however, his attention is drawn back to Colleen, but not before giving her an opening. In that upstairs hallway, the tell-tale sound of another shot-gun comes from the stairs above Colleen, but it's Daredevil that this blast is aimed at, one of Hill's Boys shouting, "You keep after them rats and I won't open a window in your chest."
As soon as shotgun blasts are heard, Robbie turns his head just in time to have some hit him -right- dead center in the chest, but it's like the bullets did absolutely nothing, one of the bullets actually hitting him in the face, as if revealing a fire underneath the skin. and with a growl, Robbie literally throws the man next to him straight down the hallway until he smashes against the wall. He looks to the one who shot him now.
"That was a mistake….and it's time to pay for your sins." and as such, his skin starts to turn like ash, burning off his face, even muscle until it's bare skeleton, which is alit with an eternal kind of Hellifre, greeting the cronie in front of him with cold eyes that may look like the hellish realm itself, and a ghastly breath meant to double over mortals, regardless, Robbie shakes his head and storms after the man that shot him.
People upstairs may find said goon flying through the floor…..
Daredevil minces no words with the goon and hits the deck before the blast can hit him. As he moves his left hand draws down to his thigh and grasps his billy club which he flings hard in the direction of the gunman even as another begins to stalk towards him, this one with a chain wrapped around his meaty hand.
Matt knows he's not going to be able to overpower this one. Instead he goes into quicker moves, trying to hit and kick the man at high speeds, with little effect. Finally the thug picks up the hero with his off hand and punches him straight in the chest with the chained hand.
Daredevil lands in a heap in the middle of the hallway, wincing as he brings an arm up to cover his wounded chest and draws himself up to his feet.
The impact of her back against the wall forces the breath out of her, but it only slows her down a little before she sees the opening provided by his distraction. The edge of her katana is kept sharp, enough that the first cut might be missed, but after she slides the blade into the Rat's side and twists to break any suction of muscle around the metal, it might get felt on the pull back.
Knowing a lawyer might prove to be more useful than anticipated on that first meeting, because she doesn't make any attempt to not kill the Rat. Not that she goes for a swift kill-strike either, but wounds have a tendency to bleed a lot, and she's not going to risk not walking away from this from some moral issue of not killing a scumbag. By accident. Slice, remove, and shove. Hopefully the shock of being cut manages to give her the edge and get out from where she's been shoved against the wall.
Lifting a hand as he man lunges, Carlos brings up a wall of light between the goon and himself; its hard and solid despite the glow seeming to be only that of light. He doesn't yet don the armor he usually wears, and he frowns, falling easily into a fighting stance, "Look, I heard trouble's happening but this here? Me? This is not trouble you want to get involved with. Everyone back down, right?" The carnelian katana points towards the one who came towards him with obvious threat, even as the barrier falls to make the threat more visceral.
A great big goon comes lumbering into the first floor hallway out of an apartment with his meaty fist wrapped around the throat of another guy, just in time to watch Robbie throw the guy that shot him up through the weakened floor into the second floor hall. Not to mention the flaming skull. Both stop, stare, and are rendered entirely unsure how to react. Finally the big guy shoves the smaller one down the hall toward Robbie and goes lumbering back into the apartment. The goon launching himself at Carnelian finds himself colliding with that shield of light, knife turned away by the glowing barrier. When it comes down, he shouts "Lou, Joey, need a little help here!" It's then that a blast comes through the wall right next to, but too far back to actually hit Carlos. Through the hole in the wall though, it's clear to see that two more goons are about to come around the corner. They haven't seen Robbie. "What?" comes one of the voices from inside, "You can't hit a guy waving around a light stick?" He hasn't figured out it's a katana yet. That might be a fatal mistake.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the thug on the stairs above Colleen who took a shot at Matt has the gun knocked out of his hands by the incoming billy club which causes him to wince, that finger possibly broken. The gun falls down between the stairs, all the way down to the first floor where it lands in the landing below. The Rat that Colleen slices into with her Katana goes down, grasping his side and bleeding alot, shouting a stream of curses that might be English but it's hard to understand as he snarls. His own pain is enough that he slumps against the wall and leaves her an opening to get out from between him and the wall, leaving the way open to where Matt is pulling himself to his feet.
Danny, somewhere on the third floor, hears all the commotion coming from below and slides down the railing, aiming for the goon that had shot at Matt and was now weaponless. He lands on his feet and the two begin to slug it out on the landing between the second and third floor. Danny is quicker, and the goon has a busted finger, so it swiftly ends with the guy tumbling down the stairs to end up in a lump in front of Matt and Colleen. He's got on the Defenders Standard Issue Hoodie and jeans, but there's nothing masking his identity as he blinks a bit, seeing Colleen with her katana. He seems about to say something when the guy Robbie threw comes up through the floorboards down the hall behind Matt from below and he just stares. Huh.
Ghost Rider turned it's head to the big goon who literally fed the smaller one to the freaking wolves. Ghost Rider doesnt discriminate though, bringing up his knee right into the goon's stomach when he got thrown at him, and punches the back of his head so he probably goes face first into the floor. Moving on.
The Rider just moves down the hallway, not saying a single word, which just makes it all the more terrifying. He sees the whole that he made and performs the same ghastly breath that it did earlier, moving now to the stairs, heading upward, unless someone decided to try to stop him. But then again, flaming skull, good target, bullets likely coming his way.
Daredevil counts himself relieved as the other guy he was worried about seems, from the sounds coming to his ears, to be engaged with someone else. But that doesn't stop the immediate problem. The man with the chain is a giant, perhaps 6 foot 5 and built like a house. As he stalks towards him, Matt can feel the footsteps, like the heartbeat of an ominous monster coming closer, and closer.
There's something that his father used to tell him about boxing. Sometimes, when a guy gets an upper hand you have to do something to slow him down; to level the playing field. Matt can still remember watching his father, getting pummeled, resorting to something in the gray area near the line of the rules to slow down the onslaught.
The chain is brought back and the goon is about to deliver the coup de grace on Daredevil, who looks like he's still recovering from the last one. But on the final step, there's a scurry of activity down below the waist as Daredevil spins and drives his fist right into the thug's groin.
Once that way is open, Colleen moves, pushing past the fallen Rat and leaving him where he lays. She makes her way towards where Matt just crumbled, in time for Danny to appear. That appearance has her come up short, her brows lifting a fraction in surprise, and she looks like she's about to say something right about the same time he is, only to get distracted by the same thing.
And then things just grow weirder. She stares at the man that was literally thrown down into the hallway, and there's Danny, and the redhorned Daredevil and well…a dude with a flaming head. "Is this a dream?"
Carlos hesitates a brief moment, and then the sword of light in his hand changes from a bladed edge to a cylinder, and he steps up and swings— intending to try to bring it down hard against the goon that moved against him. Its less sword now, and more bat, and though it has no mass itself, it is hard and swung with force. Its not that Carnie has never hurt anyone before, but until he's sure he's doing it to defend himself or others, he doesn't want to get with the slicing people to bits thing.
As Robbie ascends the stairs to the second floor, Colleen, Danny, Daredevil, and a great big goon with a chain come into view. Danny and Colleen look at one another, both speechless for a moment. But then that big guy with the chain is bearing down on Matt and Danny leaps down the stairs to give Matt a bit of backup. He doesn't even see Robbie coming up at first. Instead, he gives the big guy a solid kick to the chest that makes him stagger back a bit as he doubles over from Matt's assault from below.
Above, on the third floor, one can hear the rats shouting, "There's a guy with a fucking flaming skull down there!" as they peer over the railing to the floors below. "Get down, you idiot." There's the sound of multiple pairs of footsteps retreating to the upper floors. An old woman in curlers pokes her head out on the second floor and says, "All of you get the hell out of here! I called the cops! They'll be here any minute." Probably not any minute. It is Hell's Kitchen, after all. She then slams her bullet-riddled door and goes back inside muttering something about "damned kids".
On the first floor, the goon that had bounced off Carnelian's shield is left by his buddies to fend for himself. He puts up his arms to hold up against that glowing cylinder of light and begins to back up toward the stairs, trying to find some escape. Meanwhile, the two Rats that had been in the apartment can be heard engaged in their own fight with one of of the Hill Boys, ignoring what's going on in the hall for the time being.
Ghost Rider would growl at the the people there before him, two of them Robbie knew, and thus the Rider removed them as enemies. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen however…not now, they appear to be fighting that big goon, and thus does the Rider start moving forward, as if the Devil was coming to help them.
His steps were cold and methodical unlatching the chain from his torso with a wip of his hand that does a number on the walls around him, Ghost Rider whips the chain at the big man, planning to go around his neck once he doubled over and give it a firm tug to try to knuck him right on his upper back. Sadly, the old lady's words are rendered unimportant by the Spirit of Vengeance, and thus he doesnt really care. Hell's Kitchen was Hell's Kitchen. It's in the bloody name.
But the Rider looks up at the sounds overhead, another ghastly growl there. Guess we know who's next after they deal with the big guy.
Clearly in pain, Daredevil straightens up fully, now, nodding towards Iron Fist and Ghost Rider, giving an appreciative nod. "Thanks." Suddenly he cocks his head to the side, trying to focus on the sounds of the feet to gauge how many there are and where they're headed. "Sounds as if they're in retreat—but they're headed up."
"Odd."
"Half a dozen up there. Must be holing up."
"Hey…wait!" Colleen hollars when Danny leaps down the stairs, and she starts to hurry in that direction as well, only to once again be brought up short. However, this time it is from the announcement that they are all heading upstairs. She looks upwards, "Up? Maybe they are going to take the fire escapes out….she did say that she called the cops, right?"
"Senor, I was being nice." Carnelian remarks to the goon, spinning the light-bat in his hands a moment, "If you lay down and don't get up again, we can be friends and I will not be forced to do something drastic, mi amigo, like cut you at all." The bat shimmers into the sharp edge of a blade again, and he holds it up towards the bad guy threateningly, "Understand?"
The goon on the ground in front of Carnelian stays down, putting his hands on the ground and doesn't move, watching him warily and nodding. His buddies have abandoned him. He grips his arm where that hard crack hit him. It might be fractured. It will be bruised and hurting later. He nods a couple of times and doesn't go anywhere. The fighting in the other apartment continues. There's a gunshot, the sound of a grunt and at least one body hitting the floor, but the fighting between the other two continues.
On the second floor, the big guy that had been after Matt slumps onto the ground and for the moment stops moving. When Robbie makes his way past them toward the stairs to go up to the third floor, Danny just backs out of the way and lets the flaming guy go first, because whoah. Flaming skull. He nods to what Matt says, and then Colleen and says, "Yeah. I'd wager we've got a bit of time left. I'm going to go out back, take the fire escapes up.. see if I can come at them from the other side." And with that, he's taking off down the stairs toward Carnelian. This leaves Matt and Colleen on the second floor to decide their next move.
Ghost Rider didn't even seem to notice Danny or Colleen or even Matt as he walked by, making his way up the stares knowing full well he'd likely be dealing with the Rats and Hills goons possibly in bulk. As such, the Rider cracks his neck and kicks the door to the room clean off, a completely fearless challenge.
The Rider would growl, no matter how many people were in there…..Vengeance was coming.
Daredevil steps back as Ghost Rider moves past him. His radar sense can't make much sense of the flaming skull and he's unsure how to even broach the subject. To be sure, there are more important things to take care of right now. Daredevil gives a nod to Danny. "I'll cover him," he offers to Colleen as he shoots after Ghost Rider.
"Wha…" Colleen starts, moving out of Ghost Rider's way, flattening herself against a wall and pulling her katana in close. When Daredevil starts off she relaxes off the wall, then frowns, "Damnit…" Realization hits that everyone has split off, and pretty-boy-rich-pants has wandered off unsupervised. "I'll just…go…" She calls, but then leaves it unfinished as she turns to start towards one of the apartments on that floor, knocking on the door, "Hello….you have access to the fire-escape through here?"
Satisfied he got his message through, Carnelian goes for the stairs, only to meet up with someone coming down them. "Right." He nods to the fellow, lifting a hand and projecting before him a field of light before him, just about man sized, and projecting it /forward and up/, intending to shove the guy with the panel, assuming he doesn't dodge. "Whatever it is you're doing, it's gonna be stopped, right? This nonsense ain't going to fly."
As Robbie climbs toward the fourth floor, the two remaining Hill Boys that were planning to storm on up to the fourth begin to think better of it. They stare at the skull, and at each other, and at the skull. "Man, that's some fucked up shit right there," one says to the other, and both opt for the fire escape instead, going back in the apartment they came out of. Time to bail. Matt can hear them scurrying off onto the fire escape and heading downward as he covers Ghost Rider on the way up to the fourth floor. When the door is kicked in, there are two goons with guns on the door who promptly unload on Robbie. The other four are busy loading cases into a lift and sending it down, down, down to wherever that stuff is going, possibly the basement.
When Colleen knocks on the door and asks if there's firescape access, there's no answer from within. Whoever is in there has no interest in getting near the door or the hallway where gunshots are coming from. But if she opens the door, she'd find it unlocked.
As Danny comes swinging down to the first floor and Carnelian's shield comes up, Danny literally bounces off of it, not having expected his momentum to be suddenly stopped. He falls back onto the landing with a thud. That's gonna bruise, and begins to pick himself up, "We're trying to HELP," he manages exasperatedly. "They're upstairs.. I'm going to check around the back." He waves a hand in the general direction of the exit.
Bullets unload at Ghost Rider and he just stands there, bullets bounce off of him and his skull even, standing there and serving as a human meat shield for Daredevil, allowing the blind ninja to do what he can from there, which is likely quite a bit.
The Rider doesnt move until they run empty for their clips, then he just cracks it's demonic neck, and spits out one of the bullets. growling in return.
and it was at this moment, they knew….they fucked up.
Daredevil braces himself, but once he sees that Ghost Rider remains standing, he moves quickly into action. Whatever supernatural aspects of the Rider will have to wait for clarification. He leaps past Robbie, putting a boot right to the sternum of the first goon, in an attempt to knock him into the second and in hopes of preventing the latter from reloading.
Knock.
Nothing. Colleen takes a breath, then tries the door, pushing the door open when she realizes that it isn't locked and lets herself into the apartment. She's very careful to not touch anything, or stab some random person with her sword as she heads across towards the windows to see if there is any fire escape access.
It's a process, but she's through both the apartment and the window fairly quickly, and starting to make her way up the fire escape after checking to make sure none have gone down. If there are those going down, well, she'll head that way instead.
Oops! Carnelian has gotten in the way of the good guys. "Sorry, man. Was trying to — well you know, stuff. Bad guys keepin' in one place, you know?" Sheepishly, he lets it vanish and he nods to the guy who bounced off of it, and then he pads up the stairs to go look for more trouble. And as he reaches the second floor, and he hears bullets, a suit of armor made of light comes into existance around him, but even so he peeks out from the stairwell cautiously.
With Ghost Rider acting as not-entirely-human shield, Matt is able to take off across the room at the two reloading goons. As he collides with one, the momentum does in fact take him clear across into the other, knocking both to the ground in a tangle of limbs and weapons that are not getting reloaded any time soon. Two of the men lowering the lift stay behind and pull out their weapons. The other two go out the window onto the fire escape and begin rushing down.
That's when Colleen notices three things as she comes out onto the fire escape: there are four goons coming down toward her at full tilt from the third and fourth floors, there is one guy dragging boxes up from what looks like a basement door into the back of a van behind the building, and that Danny is nowhere to be seen.
Danny pulls himself to his feet and then gives Carnelian a nod and a thumbs-up, "Nice shield," he says but he's in a hurry and maybe there will be time for chit chat later, so he heads out the front door and around the alley. As Carnelian makes his way up the stairs, he finds no resistance on the second floor. It's empty. On the third floor, he also finds no resistance. He can hear from the fourth floor, however, the sound of the battle between Ghost Rider, Matt, and the goons just above him.
Ghost Rider watches a moment as Matt gets his ninja on, but also looks to the two goons drawing their weapons when they give up lowering the lift, and as such, Ghost Rider whips off his chain again, the chain itself catching on Hellfire, and he swings the long chain at the goons, the chain sharp with the superheated links, could easily cut their guns apart, though at that range, if he touched them, he would likely just non-fatally slice across their chests. Here's hoping!
Daredevil leaps, giving Ghost Rider's chain more room as he picks his feet up high in order not to get hit. But as he lands he's got his billy club in his hand, and swings it down at an angle towards the closer goons head, trying to clean up whatever mess Rider may miss.
That doesn't bode well, not at all. Colleen looks up towards the thugs that are heading down towards her, then down towards the ground where they are dragging out boxes. She doesn't take too long to decide which one she wants to deal with, and she starts to head down as quickly as she can getting to a point where she thinks it might be safe before she climbs over the railing and jumps the rest of the way, hitting the ground and tucking herself so that she rolls instead of breaks a leg, coming back to her feet as soon as she can.
Through the armor of light, Carlos flashes a grin at Danny and nods, but indeed, chit-chat later. Heading up and stopping briefly at each floor, Carnelian looks this way and that, and then he follows sound as it takes him up. Emerging at the fourth floor into where the fight is at, he pauses to look around: he's not immediately sure who the good guys are in this situation. Of course, sound bounces oddly off the geometric hard lines of the shield: some sound gets through but some small bit is reflected at odd angles. To one who sees by sound he might look a golem.
That chain goes sailing through the air and catches on one of the guns, swinging around to wrap aroud it and still smack the goon in the chest. It burns! The goon screams and drops the gun and tries to pull back, stumbling away from Ghost Rider, going for the window. Daredevil's billy club cracks into the skull of the other goon who reels and reaches for his head, stumbling back and away, crashing into his buddy who was going for the window and neither one seems to be getting away.
The goons on the fire escape are in a hurry, but Colleen is faster and her leap off the lowest level sends her down to the ground where she confronts the lone guy with the van and his box. He looks at her with the sword, he looks at the box, and drops the box, making a run for the driver's side of the van. Meanwhile, Danny comes racing down the alley and around the corner toward them.
When Carnelian makes his way up to the fourth floor, it is just in time to see the two goons in the room crash into each other. Blocking the door in front of him is a big man with a flaming skull. From the window at the end of the hall next to him, he can hear the shouting and the sounds of the four clambering down the fire escape nearby. "Where do you think you're going?! There's just one of them! Get, her, for fuck's sake!"
Ghost Rider keeps the one he wrapped his chain around burning for a bit, before ripping it away, causing a little bit more pain just from the burning, but nothing that will kill him. However, the Spirit of Vengeance wasn't finished as it picks him up, and finally speaks.
"Look into my eyes."
it spoke in a voice that was cold…dark…evil. Yet fighting for the good guys, which may count the rest of the group lucky. In truth, the Ghost Rider would give the goon the penance stare, making him relieve every evil deed, such as murder, rape, mugging….he made him relieve all of it, before dropping him to the floor when it's effects took place.
The Rider looks at Matthew, before judging he was innocent, and a fighter of the people. His faith keeps him on the straight and narrow, along with morality, so he's good in the Riders book. whew. But the Rider moves on to outside that room towards the fire escape, looking around to see if he can find Colleen adn the ones attempting to escape.
Matt's mouth wrinkles as Ghost Rider brings one of the goons up to his skull-face, not understanding what's happening. Instead, he too is headed for the fire escape, bounding through the window and out towards the alleyway, firing the grapnel on his billy club to swing in the night and give some space between himself and any foes he might encounter out there.
"Damnit!" No matter how much training, leaping from buildings hurts a small bit, and although she's on her feet she doesn't start running immediately. It's not until a few seconds after the one guy starts running for the van that she takes off after him, trying to catch him before he can reach the van. Danny's arrival around the corner doesn't get noticed in her rush to catch the man that was obviously doing…something he wasn't. Moving things.
Guys fleeing out of a fire escape? Bad guys, for sure. Carnie considers going after them, but it seems that's handled, and that leaves guy with a flaming skull. If that's not a bad guy then he's got marketing problems, and Carnelian— sword held up— approaches Robbie with a grave expression on his face through the glowing armor. "Yo, mi amigo, why don't you go letting that guy go, Mister I Have A Skin Condition what with not having you know, skin?"
While Ghost Rider has the remaining thugs on the fourth floor well in hand, one writhing and clutching at his arm as he relives every pain he has ever inflicted on those who did not deserve it. In his mind's eye he feels the crack of a belt, feels his own bones cracking as the victim of his hit and run must have felt, and countless other pains. He writhes and he screams.
Sailing out and away from the building, Matt is able to swing out far enough to have a good view of what is going on outside. Below, on the ground, Colleen takes off running for the van driver and manages to catch and knock him to the ground, subduing him and preventing him from escaping. Danny runs for the bottom rungs of the fire escape and leaps, using a bit of the buiding's architectural elements to loft himself onto it with the skill of a trained acrobat.
The guys on the fire escape are caught between Matt as he swings back in, and Danny coming up from below. There's nowhere to go but back in, and that's where the flaming skull guy is. The four guys give up. There's no way to fight where they are, and they drop what weapons they have in hand, defeated.
Leaving the Defenders to sort out what to do now that they've gotten the situation under control.
Ghost Rider growls at the escaped, if any did. The Spirit of Vengeance would turn around to Carnie, apparently not amused. all he says is "Innocent." in that ghastly voice that tend to make hearts grow faint in fear. Though the courageous tend to be able to resist to an extent. Regardless, fear is not the motive, after all, they did what needed doing. and he moves past Carnie despite his words.
The Rider eventually gets to the surrendered, and if Danny and Colleen returned, tey would see its revert transformation back into Robbie Reyes, the flames dousing, and muscle and skin covering it, layer by layer, inch by inch, to the point where hair even grew…then there was Robbie Reyes, as if nothing had happened.
Daredevil swings back to the banister and crouches there as the men finally give in. He remains quiet, pinning the men and waiting for the authorities to come. It seems as though they all have worked together here, and despite what he had thought, maybe working with others is at least sometimes beneficial.
With the guy in hand, Colleen gets to her feet, cleaning the blood off her sword before she heads back towards the box to gather it up and the meet up with the rest for potentially awkward "why are you heres".
Yeah, Carnelian lets the firey-skull headed guy go by, but he has no idea what or who it is that's innocent. But, with the bad guys being either rounded up or beyond reach, he lets the light fade, and goes to look for a good guy to explain to him what he walked in on.
Outside, folks gather as the authorities show up and try to make some sort of sense out of what happened. Danny goes to talk with them, and explains that he'd been looking for a tenement to buy and renovate when all Hell broke loose. The cops go in to sort out the mess but the story seems to check out, that the Rats and the Hill Boys got into it and that these folks seemed to help keep them from killing any residents. Out back, with the cops dealing with the remnants of the gangs, Danny walks back over to Colleen and says, "Nice sword." He gives her a sidelong grin before looking over to Robbie and saying, "Hey." For the moment, he does not bring up the flaming skull thing. Then, upon seeing Carnelian he chuckles a little bit, "Nice reflexes there." Doesn't seem he bears a grudge for bouncing off that shield.
Robbie would give Danny a small nod at his greeting, though he's silent for now. He was surprised that people didn't start bombarding him with questions, though he does appreciate them keeping quiet, especially with the cops around. "Hey." he says back to Danny, though he does look at all present, looking to his car. "If you guys want, I can drive you all down to the Cigar Factory, and we can decide from there." he offers, he had enough room in that thing to fit all of them and about two more.