1964-11-20 - Legalities and Technicalities
Summary: Jessica Drew ruins a perfectly good op. Of course, it may not have been a neccessarily legal op, but still!
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
nightwing jessica-drew 


.~{:--------------:}~.


Dating. It's not something Jess actually has a lot of experience with. Sure, her training covered things like seduction, and sure, she thought she had a boyfriend for a time, but he turned out to be playing her to keep her happy in HYDRA, so…her confidence level when it comes to things like emotions is less than one hundred percent.

So when she's a little less than sure about one part of her life, Jess seeks out something she knows will work the way she expects - work. Admittedly, this particular group of gangsters isn't actually her assignment. There's another agent working the case of the people trying to fix a local election, but there was chatter that there might be a meeting going down, so Jess volunteered.

At the moment, that means she's perched on the wall of the alley above the Italian restaurant, back to the wall and feet tucked up against it, arms crossed over her chest. "I bet they've got closets full of stuff they lend out to their girls," she muses, watching the men in sharp suits and hats file inside.


Nightwing had been working this side of the town because of the Mafia and Mob pressure that was being used in the election. Unaware that Jess was near, the vigilante is sitting in the convertible car, currently disguised as a delivery truck that's near the restaurant. In the back is a full listening suite that Dick is using to try to hear through the walls and learn what information he can.

After all, Dick was there earlier in the night in his civilian guise and one of the waitress trays was planted with a listening device under the guise of some innocent flirting, as the costumed hero perches in his chair and waits for things to settle so he knows when to make his move.

"You should have gotten her number, Grayson." he mutters to himself. "How is she even going to know when… or where to pick her up?" The thought causes his to frown. "I guess I'll just have to show up at the gym and stand around, or.. meet her at the event? I guess that works."


Jess pushes a hand through her hair, eyeing it through the mask that covers most of her features. "That's all right, at least. Definitely going to have to find something to wear, though. Maybe the wardrobe department will have something that'll do." As a pair of men come out with a box, she straightens up a little bit, leaning off the wall so just her feet and her backside are touching it. Not something anyone without certain powers could pull off.

"'Ey. Which one did the boss say we were supposed to take this to?" One of the men asks the other. "St. Michael's, or St. Vincent's? Or was it the community center?"


As he hears the static and then voices on his comm, Nightwing sits up a little straighter in the back of the truck. Now, it's probably a good thing he doesn't see Jess right now, that would be a distraction. Instead, he's listening to the conversation of the two mobsters as he glances towards the smaller speaker of the mic within the restaurant, listening for more information as he waits.

He can be the patient sort, knowing that those two are the small fish - that the much bigger catch is within the walls at the moment.


Dick may be patient, but Jess is spoiling for a fight to distract herself. Which means she's perfectly happy to hit the little fish and see if it draws out the bigger ones. As she spreads her arms, extra webbing flaps extend between them and her sides, so that when she pushes off of the side of the building, she glides down into the alley, landing lightly behind the men.

"Hey boys," she says with a smirk, immediately turning to kick one in the jaw.


Oh there is totally going to be talk about patience being a virtue later. When Jess drops in on the attack, Nightwing's brows both go up beneath his domino mask and the man blows a breath out of the side of his mouth. However, despite Jess's impetiousness, he doesn't move on the attack himself - he knows well enough to allow the lady her space.

And to wait, because if there was to be trouble, it would be spilling out of the restaurant at any moment as the first mobster is already crumbling beneath Jess' well-heeled boot.


The second man drops his box when he sees his partner go down, rushing Jess, only to find that she's not where he thought she was. Instead, she flips up into the air, clinging to the side of the building only to drop back down on his shoulders and twist. For a split second, she has her hands on either side of his head, looking like she might just snap his neck, before her rational mind catches up with her training and she stops herself. She tightens her legs around his neck instead, cutting off the oxygen to his brain until he crumples to the pavement.

Of course, as quiet as she may have been, the sound of the box clattering to the ground is enough to draw attention from inside, voices rising as they call out. Jess glances over her shoulder, hopping up to the wall just above the doorway to watch.


The commotion and the start of the organized response within the restaurant causes Nightwing to rise up out of his seat, and move to the back of the van. Opening the door, he slips out into the darkness, and taking out a pair of smoke pellets, he's waiting. Though as he does so, he glances towards the woman in red and yellow who has done a pretty good job on ruining his survelliance and draws in a breath. No, you might already be seeing someone. Don't think about it.

Turning his attention to the door, when it opens, he waits watching for the men to deploy before he throws the first smoke pellet, mainly to fill the alley with smoke in order to start to cut off their escape and to obscue where the attacks will be coming from. "You know." he says to Jess, "I've been at this at months, and I finally was going to get a pay off tonight, but you just had to jump the gun."


"Yeah?" Jess smirks beneath her mask, maintaining her perch. "You know, I'd apologize, but it's not like you were going to get anything actually legally done here."

Which is right about when a score of men start pouring out of the door, some carrying boxes like the one that was dropped, others carrying guns. Jess drops into the center of them, starting to move quickly and efficiently through the crowd. She hits hard, to judge by the way some go flying, but she hasn't sacrificed anything in technique.


"It wasn't about the.." Dick sighs, shaking his head as company comes calling. As one of the guns fires in his direction, the vigilante drops in and sweeps his foot, taking down the man and knocks his gun to the side as he pushes past another gangster and near Jess. "It was about finding out who was in charge of the whole thing - and he's probably getting out the front door while we're busy back here." he grumbles.

"And I assume that you're another one of the spiders I've been coming across lately. Woman? Girl? Snark?" he asks her as he throws another punch, ducking beneath a clumsy swing made towards him. "And your idea is more legal?"


"Hey, you know who probably knows who's in charge?" Jess counters as she continues to work her way through the goons, swinging one over toward Dick to let him take the shot. "These guys. Who can testify about who it is and what they've done. So that the whole circle can get taken down and stay down. And yes. I'm official, for the record."

She catches a gun as it's pointed in Dick's direction, pushing it upward and promptly dismantling it, tossing the separate pieces away. "Spider-Woman, for the record."


"Official pain in my.." Nightwing would say more but he's leaping and backflipping from a gun that was aimed and fired in his direction as he lands and flings one of his wing-dings at the gangster, damaging the gun as he knocks it away. "..sure, they can testify, if you can convince them to turn. Ever try to pinch a mobster? They get high priced lawyers for a reason." he responds.

And well, what a woman. "If you think you can make them testify though, more power to you, but I've seen it more often than not that they don't say a word. Even to a pretty girl. Even if she's a Spider-Woman." he adds as he chucks a second wing-ding, taking out a gangster that was trying to climb on a car to get a drop on Jess.


"I can think of worse things to be a pain in," Jess retorts with a glance toward the ass in question, quirking a brow. Huh. Something almost familiar about that. And then there's the voice, of course. "Trust me. We can manage. But if you want to check the front door, I can handle these boys," she offers, taking down two more with a low sweep of her leg.


"I'm sure you could, but the whale is probably long gone by now." comes the response as he leaps backwards again and takes out his escima sticks to defend himself, spinning one around and knocking away one of the few remaining weapons, before clocking the man in the jaw to knock him down. "Nightwing, by the way." Because she offered up her name. He might as well do the same. "I'll get another chance at him, possibly without interruption."


"Assuming we don't get to him first," Jess counters, a flash of yellow-green light in her hand as she takes hold of one of the men, sending him tumbling to the ground with a surprised exclamation. "But hey, if a bad guy ends up off the street, what's it matter who takes him off, right?"


"Taking the little ones down? They'll find more little ones greedy enough to fill the gaps. It's the big ones you need to get. The mob bosses. The mafia capos. Those that bankroll the schemes, and pull the strings. You can take down a hundred of these - and there will be a hundred more to take their places." Nightwing responds dryly. "And that depends on whether or not you know who it is. After all, aren't you busier with alien invasions and the super monster villain of the week to worry about the street level stuff, right?" It's said without any real punch, but it might as well have been.


"That's not how the saying goes." Jess knows. "It's cut off one head and two more shall take its place." Things she heard - and said - often enough for it to be ingrained by now. Also not the point, but she'll get there. One more good punch and the last of the goons is down, leaving her free to turn back to Nightwing with her hands on her hips, not even breathing hard. "I multi-task. You got a problem with that?"


"No problem at all. Problem I had, Spider-Woman, was that I had the situation well in hand to take down a major crime figure. It's like fishing - the first bite you get won't always be the one you want to snag." Picking up one of the boxes to check it, Nightwing glances towards the other crime-fighter and tosses her the box. "Congrats, they were stuffing the ballot boxes. But do you know who it was stuffing the boxes? Can you prove it?"


"Might be able to," Jess shrugs, catching the box and giving it a look. "That's someone else's department, though. Also interrogation, and legal. The ones who check the handwriting and fingerprints. There's a whole lot of potential evidence here," she points out. "What were you going to do if you found the guy in charge? Flex at him?"


"Sometimes, things need to be done outside the lines to get results." Nightwing gives a little snort. "..think that he actually wrote or touched a single one of those and can pick it up out of the who knows how many people that touched it? Good luck." He does seem to know a lot about how the mob seems to operate as he moves to the delivery truck to climb in. "For what it's worth? I would have turned over the tapes with the evidence to put them behind bars, with him." The racing engine turns over inside of the truck with a loud purr and he starts to pull out of the alley to leave Jessica to the cleanup.


"And they would've been useless, since there was no warrant, no chain of custody, nothing to prove they weren't plants." Jess leans against the wall, watching him get into the truck and tipping her fingers to her brow with an insouciant salute. "Good luck, Nightwing."


There is a check to make sure that there isn't a Jessica Drew following him on the way home. Pulling off the highway sometime later, he'll even check the truck for bugs. Because, can never trust a sneaky - if gorgeous woman. As he does so, his watch beeps at him and he frowns at it with a groan. "I'm going to need a few hours of sleep for tomorrow." he mutters before he touches his jaw where one of the mobsters caught him with a gun butt. Hopefully it won't bruise. After the check, he's back in the truck to finish the trip to an area beneath the Cloisters that he's made his home.


Jess eyes the wreckage of the vote-fixing ring once the van is gone, sighing. Chances are someone at SHIELD is going to give her the same speech Nightwing did, but at least it wasn't a boring night. First, though, she's going to have to call it in and get the squints going on the process. Pushing off the wall, she heads for the nearest phone booth to call it in.


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