2013.06.30 - Sunday Night Fight Night

Sunday night, the slums of Scituate in Gotham. Underneath one of the many condemned buildings in this part of the city, a new take on an old idea has started up in the past few weeks. This is a Fight Club, and what differentiates it from other groups is the fact that both men and women are present and participating. Their only other rule besides not talking about Fight Club: no super powers allowed.
Standing amongst the other people waiting for their turn to 'participate', Helena watches everyone with the same level of wariness as many others. Dressed in casual jeans, black t-shirt, and low-heeled motorcycle boots with her hair pulled severely back into a bun to prevent it from being pullable, she's taller that almost every other woman here and at least a few of the men, so that means many of them are studying her with the intent of taking her out of the picture quickly. It's intimidating. Why the HELL is she here again? Oh yeah. HAL. Damnit. Last time she agrees to anything like this. Hear that, HAL? LAST. TIME. Probably a good thing Oracle is actually not a telepath, because there are some occasions where the sheer amount of cussing going on in her brain would likely burn someone's brains to ash.
The worst part, as far as Oracle is concerned, about sending an operative into this particular fight club is that she really has no idea of what they're going to be facing in there. "So, here's the thing," she's saying to Huntress, now, the other competitors size the Italian girl up. "I know this fight club has some sort of connection to the District Kings--" The gang that kidnapped Shelby Knox-- "But, I also know that the word on the street is that there are a handful of Kings' fighters in the rotation that hit a whole lot harder than they should. I mean a whole lot harder." She repeats it for emphasis. "So, seriously, H. If the mook you end up facing has a King logo anywhere on him," or her, "dodging is good. Really, really good." That, of course, in spite of the fact that Oracle sent her in there with the instructions to put on a good enough show that she'll make a viable 'recruit' for whatever op this club is fronting.
Nothing with Oracle is ever easy.
Hal, really, hates, Gotham. It's one of those cities that every planet has and on every single world... Hal hates it. It breeds some sort of mystically charged terrible that saturates the pores and drenches the body in a gross feeling of dread just by walking across the county line. Why on Earth he would come here, still boggles his mind, but here he is anyway. Walking through the crowds with his shirt off and a pair of blue jeans over bare feet.
So why is Hal in Gotham, down in the basement of some ratty building, ready to fight strange men (or women)? Because he followed an intergalactic invader using human guise to infiltrate a local gang known as the District Kings. Why the hell else would a Green Lantern willingly come to 'Gotham'?
"Time to reach out and touch someone..." Murmured quietly to himself... he knows well enough that Oracle is connected to every transmission in Gotham, if not the world, so all he has to do is send something out and the eye in the sky will pick it up. "You've got Green in your black, dingy, gross, city..." Over a League dedicated channel, through the small transmitter in his ear. One hand comes up to cover the side of his face so his lips moving don't attract 'too much' attention.
Huntress has to school her features to not react to Oracle's words whispered to her via a tiny comlink hidden in one ear. She can't even really reply to the woman as that might attract attention, so instead she scratches seemingly idly next to her ear, knowing the sound will be picked up. Heard you, HAL. Fuck you very much for telling me this NOW.
As the current fight draws to an end the gathered crowd becomes more animated and the 'ringmaster' steps into the center of the crowd. "All right, assholes. Time for a newbie or two to earn their stripes." The man, clearly one of the District Kings, looks at the circle of people for an intentionally suspenseful moment. "You, Bunhead, get that sweet ass in here."
Helena allows her expression to darken at the man's words as it plays into the persona she's supposed to be portraying here, and steps through to the open space, allowing her annoyance telegraph in her movements. Let someone thinks she's an angry and stupid fighter. It'll work to her advantage.
Oracle looks up as her League channel lights up and Green Lantern's voice interrupts her fretting over Helena. "Hey," she says in reply to him. "It's not all bad. Otherwise, people wouldn't stay and raise their kids here." And, it's true. There are nice neighborhoods in Gotham.
Her people just don't often get the chance to see them.
Come to think of it, most heroes and vigilantes that end up in Gotham (and you'd think, given the sheer numbers of them, they'd have seriously cleaned up the place by now) never seem to see the nice neighborhoods. Such a shame, that.
"Where are you at, Lantern? Maybe I can give you a hand."
Then, of course, she hears the static on Huntress' line... and she can take a wild guess as to what that means: 'Yeah, I hear you.' (She doesn't bother adding the obscenities. They go without saying.)
As the ringmaster calls Helena out, Babs grimaces. Damn, but she wishes she could be there. And see what's going on. But, the cameras in that place are all on a closed circuit that has no net connection. This is making her life particularly difficult. So, she needs to rely on Helena's transceiver for some sort of idea about what's going on... And it just doesn't sound good.
In the ring, opposite Helena, for this first fight, is a smaller woman than she. She's one of those compact, scrappy types, with bruises and scrapes that tell their own tale, not to mention a scowl on her face to match H's own. She bounces on her toes, shaking out her arms and rolling her head and shoulders to loosen up.
"Some dinky basement." Hal informs Oracle across the channel, turning his head a bit when the ringleader calls some tall woman out to fight some smaller woman in the center. His head keeps scanning the surroundings, unsure if he knows Helena out of costume and not wanting to bring attention to her (or himself) even if he does. "I think I can get you access, but you'll have to lead me to th-.."
A big hand falls down on his shoulder and spins the unpowered Lantern around to face him. "You're MINE next..." The beefy looking fellow informs Hal... who has to look up at the mook with his head canted nearly completely vertical. Then he slinks off back into the crowd.
"Right..." Unafraid, Hal shakes his head and glances around again. "Tell me where to go and I'll manually hack you into the servers.." Murmuring the words, so even with the high powered transceiver, his voice is just barely audible over the howl of the crowds. Nothing Oracle can't sort out.
Helena doesn't bother to loosen up like Pequena over there. She doesn't need to. Of course, in this group it makes it look like she's unprepared and that's an image she won't mind shattering in just a moment. This fight is pretty much already in the bag simply because of a difference in reach, or at least that's what she thinks. She adopts a lazy fighting stance, something someone might have learned from a movie, and grins at the smaller woman to indicate she's ready. It's a dangerous grin, the kind that might not be too foreign on the Joker's face. Pequena charges her and she counters with a neat sidestep and a left arm snapped out to clothesline her opponent. Another misdirection, trying to trick her opponent into thinking she's left handed.
Upon hearing the same feeds coming from both Lantern's and Huntress' transceivers, Oracle blinks. "Bunhead in the ring?" she says to Hal, now. "She's one of mine. Just so you know."
She pulls up schematics of the building and wrinkles her nose. "Okay. If I have to guess, the servers are likely kept in a room one floor up from where you are, toward the back of the house. Schematics place some heavy ventilation there, along with upgraded wiring and a small A/C unit. Servers generate a lot of heat. If I were only going to keep one room of my place air conditioned, the one with the machines would be it."
She hears H's fight begin and winces. Since the vigilante hasn't started grunting or panting yet, however, Babs can imagine that she's more or less holding her own in the early feint.
Pequena picks herself up with a quick flip, demonstrating definite skill -- if not a lot of prudence. She spins and ducks, trying to get in under H's guard, aiming a punch for her mid-section.
Hal is optically following the verbal directions, trying to pick up the general location without actually seeing anything. He could slip his finger through the ring in his pocket, of course... but the Bandor would see it and bolt. Which would lead to a whole new chase... and mean he came to Gotham for nothing.
When Oracle informs him which of them is her operative, Hal glances to the ring and winces a bit when Pequena gets the clothesline. "Tell her to take her time, huh? She ends this thing too fast and Herman Munster is going to be looking for me..."
Then the Lantern is off, working his way through the crowd with a subtle hand directing peoples attention away from him and on the fight. He is wholly unsurprised that Oracle already had someone in the fight-club. Nothing, ever, surprises him about the heroes of Gotham. Ever. Never.
Ever.
"I need a distraction. There's two guys by the vent shaft..."
Easier said than done, Hal.
Oracle glances at her monitors... not that they're very helpful. It's habit.
Her brows crease and she says softly to Helena, as Pequena puts her hips and shoulders behind the power punch she's aiming for the vigilante's solar plexus, "So, I need you to draw things out and put on a real show for me, H. We've got an ally in the building, but he needs a distraction."
She can just about hear the Huntress' inner monologue explode with expletives just about now.
Jim Gordon enters from: Downtown.
Wait, what? Put on a SHOW? What the ever-loving FUCK, HAL? And then Helena realizes a way that she can both communicate with Oracle AND rile up Pequena here. As she grabs the smaller woman's ankle to try and pull her further off balance from that kick and possibly return a gut-kick of her own, she snarls at her opponent (though really to Oracle) in the dialect of Latin only ever used by the patrician political elite. Fuck me sideways, HAL, could you make this any MORE difficult, please? The name HAL probably sounds out of place in the middle of all that Latin.
It worked... the heating up in the ring and Helena's showmanship draws the attention of the two men standing by the vent. Well, to be fair, it drew one of them. His hand comes up when he sees the taller woman grab hold of the smaller woman's leg and pull her off balance. Then he's moving towards the crowd surrounding the 'ring'.
If that's the best he can get, Hal will just have to make due... The Lantern, depowered in jeans and bare chest, heads towards the sole individual overlooking the access point he needs to reach the servers.
From his pocket, the Lantern pulls a pack of smokes, wiggling his fingers to the man, "Hey bud, you got a light?" Glancing over his shoulder to the ring with a lecherous smirk when he returns his gaze to his new pal... "Two fine pieces of tail fightin'..." New Jersey accent and everything. The little deception works, the dude smirks and looks down while fishing for his lighter in one pocket.
Hal snaps his fist out in a jab aimed for the man's carotid. Quick snap and he steps forward, brushing his palm over the back of the man's neck and pushing his face down into an upcoming knee. With an easy motion, he lowers the unconscious fella to the floor and drops his tee-shirt over his face... and quickly enters the vent shaft.
"Alright, I'm in... upstairs you say?"
"You know, Gordon. You really ought to stick with the desk and let us dicks do our job."
"Yeah, well, someone's got to keep you boys in line."
Detective Benson peers at Gordon with a half-cocked eyebrow, before reaching into the bag between them and pulling out another piece of garlic bread. "I swear to God, this is the only major metropolitan city in the whole goddamn U.S. of A. whose Police Commissioner micro manages from the car."
Benson and Gordon, GCPD Commissioner himself, are sitting in an unmarked vehicle about a block and a half away from the very run down house whose basement hosts an illegal fight club. A bag of garlic sticks sits between them, and each has their non-alcoholic drink of poison in hand; Benson has his diet coke, Gordon, his recyclable mug of coffee.
"It's not micro-managing, Tom," answers Gordon. "I just like to stick my nose into the big cases."
Meanwhile, somewhere in the crowd, there is a young man dressed like some random street thug. Undercover cop, of course, complete with a cigarette in hand and a flask of whiskey in the other. "COME ON! KICK THE BITCH IN HALF FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!" he shouts.
Oracle nearly chokes on her own coffee when Huntress starts swearing at her in Latin. Her response, also in the speech of Marc Anthony and Julius Caesar: "Do you really need me to answer that?" C'mon, H. If anyone can make your life even more difficult than it already is, Barbara Gordon can.
As she gets the heads up from GL, she turns her attention back to the schematics. "Upstairs," she confirms for him. "Toward the back of the house." Which, from the basement? "Second junction, turn left. It's at the end."
Pequena is left off balance by Helena's grip on her ankle. She twists her body and wraps her arms around Helena's leg, seeking to roll and topple the taller woman.
Helena simply grunts, both at Oracle's reply and at Pequena getting a grip on her leg. Luckily, because she'd been leading with her left, her stronger leg is still in play, and she bends her 'caught' leg to pull the smaller woman in, straight into a left hook aimed at her face. This kind of fighting is TOTALLY different from what she's become used to with the rooftop-hopping gang. It feels like she almost has to try to be more theatrical and shit, and that's just annoying. Again, in angrily phrased Latin and more for Oracle than the woman she snarls at, Helena adds, "You owe me big for this."
Hal is all up in these vents thinking he's seven different kinds of clever, but the other guy (the one who was chatting with the guy he just knocked out) is coming back over to find his friend unconscious beneath a tee-shirt. At least the Lantern put the vent back in place after crawling inside, right? So he's got a few minutes before they figure out why he had to take the guy out.
"Turn left, at the end..." Hal repeats, wiping sweat from his dirty brow as he crawls. You know what likes vents? Spiders... they freakin' love vents. Big ones. This far north? We're talking the kind that cause serious damage when they bite, too.
"At least it's a good sign that nobodies been in here in a while..." To himself, brushing through the cobwebs as he crawls.
Finally reaching his destination and glancing up at the floor vent above him, Hal pushes the space open. Once it's removed, he works himself up into the space between floors.. crouched down listening for the hum of electricity that would no doubt come from a closed circuit security suite. "Alright, I'm close..." Trailing a finger along the cord used to power the computers in the back of the house. "Where do I need to put the slave module, when I get there?"
"I wouldn't quite call this a 'big case'," answers Benson. "Just some street gang getting funded from some Heisenberg out there."
"Yeah, well, those are the kind of things that end up 'big cases' down the line." Gordon reaches into the bag, withdrawing a garlic stick and munching on it. "You sure about this kid you've got in there?"
"One of the best," answers Benson. "Masters in Criminal Psychology from UCLA. Looks about six years younger than he should, got one of those 'druggie' faces, if you know what I mean." Beat. "Don't worry, Jim. He's clean."
Looking to a gang member to his left, the undercover cop snorts and answers a question that was just asked of him. "Hell, I'd go for the one who loses. Baby, I'll heal up your wounds in ways you never imagined!" After exchanging a fancy handshake-hi-five-combo with the guy, the undercover cop takes a pull from his flask, before slipping out an old flip phone and batting in a text message in rapid fire.
Gordon's phone lights up, and he checks it for a moment. "Holy... shit," he quips. "You won't believe this, Benson. One of the fighters is Bertinelli."
Needless to say, Pequena takes serious damage to her face as it connects with Helena's fist. She releases her hold on the vigilante, moving instinctively to protect her head and upper-body, leaving her lower torso exposed as she thunks to the floor.
"No," Oracle says to Helena, once gain in Latin. "The JLA owes you big for this one." She'd say they owe both of them, except that, really, GL's doing her a favour. She expected to run this op blind. That he's fixing that for her? Bonus!
"Find the main ethernet feed," she tells him. "There should be a router of some sort that acts as the main hub. Link me in there, if you can."
When Pequena goes down, Helena takes a step back rather than taking advantage of the opening the smaller woman leaves her. Now speaking in an affected heavily Italian accent, she actually addresses her opponent directly for the first time. "Come on, Bambina, don't give up yet. I was just starting to have fun." Wait, that might not have been such a good idea, as it could make the District Kings mistake her for someone from one of the Italian mafia families in town. Like a Corleone. SHIT. Stupid, H. Stupid. Too late now, though.
Hal makes it out of the wall through a busted portion of plaster... The building is in serious need of repair over here and moves quietly down the hall with one hand spread out against the wall behind him and his feet rolling against the stone floor to limit his sound. But seriously, this is not really his area of expertise.
As he nears one of the rooms he can hear the hum of at least one large computer.. at least big enough to run all the cameras linked to it and pushes in without really doing much in the way of checking first. Only to find... someone sitting there eating old chinese takeaway. "Sh- hey... uh.. this is not where I parked my car..." The man reaches for the pistol laying on the table beside him and Hal has to act quickly, slapping a big container of egg noodles at the guy and jumping on him like in all the movies.
Elbows dropping down into the cover of his arm, then up into the side of his neck. Spinning him in the chair and pulling him down onto the floor. Both legs wrap around the mans waist, both arms around his throat, face tense and tight and his teeth grinding... The Lantern is honest to Jesus in Gotham, choking someone out on a dirty floor. Give him an invading alien race over Celarian VI any day of the week... "Go...to... sleep..."
"I told you. Kid's good." Benson slurps from his coke, before eyeing Gordon. "Better tell him to keep his hands off. This is about the District Kings, not Helena Bertinelli."
"You sure about that?" asks Gordon.
"We tip off her, she's involved? We tip off the Kings. I'm sure, Jim. Hands off."
With a sigh, Gordon nods and sends two works back to their undercover cop. "Thank God you keep my head screwed on straight, Benson."
After checking his phone, the undercover cop grins widely and puts it away. "Damn. There's my booty call," he says to the fellow next to him. "Says she don't want me unless I come fixed." He perks an eyebrow, then leans over to the fellow and quietly asks, "You got any idea where I might get a hook up around here?" Out from the cuff of his jacket he produces a Benjamin Franklin, and fixes the thug next to him with a very serious look, before turning away to hollar again at the fight. "COME ON!" he shouts toward Helena. "KICK THE BITCH IN HALF!" His shouts are joined by some other jeers from those nearby.
Oh, yeah. The Italian accent was exactly what Oracle wanted to hear. She facepalms, turning off her coms for a moment and sighing heavily. On the other hand, with all that shouting in Latin, what else could the Huntress really do?
The vigilante stands in the middle of the fight club arena -- which is in the basement of a rundown apartment building somewhere in Scituate -- facing a smaller, more compactly built woman who is struggling to pick herself up off the floor. (Think: Michelle Rodriguez with a bloody news.) But, she does, somehow, manage to stuggle to her feet. She shoots the undercover GCPD a dirty look, not particularly appreciating the way he's rooting for Bertinelli.
Then, of course, there's the heavy Italian accent coming out of H's mouth. "What?" Paquena (said Rodriguez-clone) snarks back, her accent clearly Jersey. "Do you see me bleedin' out yet? Till you do, I ain't beat."
She hopes.
Meanwhile, up one floor, on the main level of the building Hal Jordan, a.k.a. Green Lantern, is doing his best Captain Kirk impersonation, wrestling shirtless on the floor with the gangbanger who had been monitoring the security cameras... all so that he can get Oracle a live hook into the building's closed circuit surveillance system.
Eventually, the gangbanger passes out from lack of oxygen, leaving the civilian-garbbed JLA hero to pick himself up off the floor and get Oracle her eyes.
"Good. Bring it, sister." It's her turn to attack first, so she does, rushing the smaller woman and feigning a punch to her sternum. What she's actually planning to do, though, is overshoot, spin the woman around by one arm, and then use one of those martial arts moves that Q loves to freak people out with (when his FACE fails) to slam Pequena to the floor again on her back. You wanted this drawn out, HAL, you got it. Damn you.
As she runs across the rooftops of Gotham with ease, Selina heard that someone she has been hunting for is at this 'event' tonight. She decides that she will make an appearance in hopes to find them and "speak" with them about hitting women in her neighborhood. As she leaps off the edge of the building into a swan dive towards the alley. The loud *CRACK* of her whip can clearly be heard and draw attention to those with trained ears.
As she swings around the fire escape, she lands gracefully on the ledge walking along the side of the second floor before opening a window and sliding silently into the building.
Hal pushes the gangbanger off him and sits up from where he was laying on the floor. One hand props him up, the other wipes sweat from his brow, then both push and his feet slip beneath him and quickly moves over to the computer hooked to the surveillance system. From somewhere he pulls a little clip on slave module... something compact and appropriately high techie... and searches for the router Oracle said would act as hub for the whole system.
"Should have paid attention when they covered all this..." Technology, not exactly his strong suit... but he knows enough to know which box is which, he thinks. "Alright, got it." Clipping it into one of the empty access ports on the back of the hub. "Transmitting signal now..."
Now that he's got Oracle some eyes in this place, time to ask for the favor.. "So... I need you to find someone for... he or she will look like a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old." Moving back through the hallways on his way back downstairs. "Gang markings that look something like a stylized L and F."
"Yeah, well, somebody's got to-" Detective Benson is cut off when the sound of a cracking whip is heard. "What the hell?"
Gordon immediately looks in the direction of the sound. Discarding his coffee, he retrieves a set of binoculars and peers toward the window, scanning it just in time to catch Catwoman slinking into the second floor window. "Oh... Christ."
"What is it?"
"Catwoman."
Meanwhile, in fight club, the thug moves away from the undercover cop after giving him a half-hearted look. The undercover cop hides his nerves well, for he knew how crooked drug dealers could be. He's about to find out the hard way whether or not the District Kings were being funded by a drug cartel. There was never an 'easy way' in this crowd. When Pequena gives him a look, he merely winks at her, then leans his head to the side in order to crack his neck bones. Out comes his flip phone again, which has received yet another text message from Gordon.
"CW..." he murmurs under his voice. "CW." He considers it for a moment, before his eyes go a bit wider. "Oh, hell."
Out in the unmarked car, Benson looks over at Gordon, who is setting his phone back into the dash tray. "You want to call in backup?"
"No, not yet. But text dispatch, make sure there's a car nearby." Beat. "Or two."
Aaaaaaannnd JACKPOT!
"Yes!" Oracle cheers as she starts receiving GL's feed. She sits up, quickly setting up the feed for optimal access. "You're the best, Lantern," she says, though her enthusiasm doubtlessly sounds a little flat, coming from the androgynous tones of her digital voice. Nevertheless, it's there. "Thanks."
Now, for the next trick: Scanning the crowd -- partly to find the LF teen, and partly to start cataloguing attendees. She fires up her facial rec software and starts processing faces through it.
Now, in fact, she does have a police radio scanner going in the background. The only reason she pays it any mind now is because she has a computerized filter parsing on it for anything that references the block where the fight club is located. The last thing she wants, after all, is one of her father's boys inadvertently blowing her op, after all. When dispatch orders a couple of cruisers into the near vicinity -- though not the exact neighborhood -- Commissioner Gordon's little girl glances to the flashing message on her police monitor screen and brings up the map of current squad car deployments. Her nose wrinkles. Awesome... Well, if things go south, at least the cops should be there in good time to clean up.
But, she'd better warn H.
"Okay, Lantern," she says presently, as her camera finds a kid with a stylized LF on her bicep. "Looks like I've got a match. Downstairs, halfway between the door to the street and the center ring."
To Helena: "Okay, H. I have eyes up in your location. Feel free to get back to business as usual. With any luck, your mafiosa routine won't scare the Kings off and we can still make this work."
Yes, she's hoping.
She leans back in her chair. A camera catches a quick movement. She pauses the playback and rewinds, replaying it slowly.
"Aw, c'mon!" Yes, she's whining now. "What is this? Grand central station?"
They're never gonna pull this op off, are they?
Carte blanche to put this chica in her place? Nice. But, Helena can't make it look TOO easy. Her attack is a glancing blow to the smaller woman's ribcage as Pequena dodges and manages to evade the martial arts takedown as well. A return kick to the ribcage manages to knock Helena to her hands and knees on the filthy basement floor. Augh. Gross. She looks up at her opponent with murder in her eyes. "Playtime's over, bitch." And now even the Italian accent is gone. Let's fuck this up even MORE, H! Woo! NOT.
As she walks into the hallway, Catwoman places a hand on her hip walking towards the stairwell down to the first floor. If there are camera's on the floor, she ignores them as if making a point to the man she is hunting that she is indeed in the building. As she gets to the top of the stairs, Catwoman pauses a moment to listen before she makes her way down the stairs not making a single sound as she saunters onto the first floor. She pauses at the bottom of the stairs to look around before she begins to walk down the hallway towards what she is assuming the fight as she hears voices.
The Kitty is walking towards the direction of Hal Jordan.
"Thanks, Oracle." Hal says, equal parts sincere, equal parts self congratulatory 'you honestly thought I wouldn't pull this off' cockiness. The Lantern moves down those stares quickly, ducking behind corners every here and there to keep out of sight until he's back in the basement where all the people are gathered. His ring is on his finger now, but he's yet to call on his suit. "Now the bad news..." As soon as he goes Green, things are going to get very ugly down here and while he 'is' going to have to, he'd rather save Oracle's op until it is absolutely necessary.
"Whatever you're down here doing... get your girl to do it fast." Hal informs the all seeing eye. It would only take a glance back over his shoulder to see Catwoman coming up behind him, but he's focused on something downstairs. Headed in the direction of the teenaged girl who looks like she just stepped out of a Katy Perry video.
"You don't want the weapons they're trading on the streets of Gotham... and I can't let her get away again..." So close. He could literally reach out and touch her.
Then a very familiar hand lands on his shoulder. A hand attached to a very big man, who spins Hal around and punches him so hard the fighter pilot is pretty sure he's going to need dental work. The Lantern grabs his face just in time to get kicked right in the gut and sent flying into the crowd, barrelling over several spectators who both catch and fall with the flying bare-chested man. "I'm tired of waiting..." The man growls and starts stalking after Jordan, pounding one fist into his other palm. Because that's Jersey for intimidating.
"I hate Gotham.."
"YEAH!" shouts the undercover cop. "PUT HER D-"
The cop is grabbed by the shoulder and suddenly drug out of the crowd by one of District Kings gang members. He immediately shuts up and goes along without a fight. They lead him into one of the side doors out of the fighting ring, and start to walk him up a flight of stairs. "Boy, you guys really mean business," he remarks.
"Shut the fuck up and keep walking."
"Hey, alright, alright!"
This leads them onto the same floor as Catwoman, and as the thugs turn around a corner with their undercover cop in tow, they might have spotted her. However, they are already turning on the undercover cop, and begin delivering a series of blows to his face and abdomen. Seems that if they do have drugs to sell, they aren't about to sell to the likes of him.
"The fuck are you doing here, anyway!?" shouts one of the thugs, right into the undercover cop's face. "You a cop? Huh? You fuckin' worthless shitbag!?" The guy shouting at him tears the undercover cop's shirt off, but there's no wire.
Looking up with a blood-stricken face, the undercover cop smirks. "Jesus... Christ, man. I just wanted some..." He coughs, unable to finish, for his eyes have just noticed Catwoman slipping around a corner.
So, let's see... They've got an alien arms dealer, the best cat burglar in Gotham (if not the country... the world?), and... did the guy being dragged up the stairs by the Kings really just flash up on her screen with two IDs? Oracle looks. Yes. Yes, he did. A 'cover' ID -- petty thief and junky. And a GCPD ID. Covert narc. Awesome.
She looks up, out the great glass face of the giant clock in front of her. "You hate me, don't you?" she says to the universe at large. Because... wow. Could this op get any more complicated?
"I'm trying to get my girl planted into the gang, Lantern," she tells Hal. "I'm trying to trace some seriously strange weapons shipments." A beat. She stops. Again with the facepalm. "Tell me about LF's business?"
Except, of course, Lantern's just been cold cocked by the Jersey Juggernaut. Awesome.
Well, let's hope pretty boy can take a hit and give as good as he gets. Or better. Because the hacker can't do a damned thing about it.
So, it's back to H. "Remember, H. Whatever happens here, today, your goal is to get tapped by the Kings. So, don't kill her... but make it look good." A beat. "Oh. And, just so you know, there's an undercover cop getting his ass kicked in the upper halway. That's in addition to Catwoman... and the guy beating on our friend from the JLA." Does she sound happy? Probably not so much.
"Start planning a quick exit, now... just in case things go south."
Because, yeah. That's what she's suspecting.
She looks to the monitor where the cop is getting creamed. Off-com: "Sorry, Dad... Wish I could help."
Huntress charges the woman again, and as much as she wants to just tear into this woman, she knows she can't. Not and keep her cover intact. So instead she employs the dirtiest fighting tactics her cousins back in Sicily taught her. A sharp left hook immediately followed by her left elbow is enough to hopefully put Pequena down and keep her there. "And stay down."
As she makes her way down the hall, she pauses with a raised eyebrow looking as the men begin to beat on the undercover cop. Catwoman slowly begins to unravel her whip as if she were enjoying the show, however they are in her way to get downstairs to where she is looking for the man who beat one of her friends a few nights ago. She rolls her eyes and mutters something about, "When did I become fucking Batgirl." She wrinkles her nose and suddenly lets a loud **Crack** of her whip to get the Thugs attention.
"Now boys...I enjoy a good party and all but why don't you come and dance with me." She nods in the beaten cops direction, "He looks tired." She grins like a Cheshire Cat, "Besides...I need to stretch before the main event."
The Jersey Juggernaut stomps after Hal who is doing his best scrambling away from the huge man. Really it's just to buy himself sometime, once you have been cold cocked by Kilowog in bootcamp, a mook from Jersey ranks pretty low... He's on his hands and knees, just about the time the big guy swings a kick into his exposed ribs... a kick that again sends him flying towards the wall with enough force to knock dust from the rafters.
Hal isnt fighting back, that much is clear. And even better, he keeps glancing up at something, then moving, and angle each attack sent at him to get him closer to it... Is he seriously letting the mook 'beat' him over to the teenager? This is his idea of a good plan. "Brightest day..."
It also gives Helena the time she needs to get her job done... "Darkest night..."
He scrambles, rolling across the floor with one arm wrapped around his ribs, one leg partially dragging behind him. "No evil shall escape my sight..."
The big guy grabs hold of the back of Hal's neck in one beefy hand, "Let those who warship evils might..." and the waist of his pants in the other, lifts him up as easy as a cup of coffee, "Beware my power..." The big guy glances up at Hal, who he's got suspended up above him.. "What the hell are you talkin' about you crazy son of a bitch?" Squeezing the pilots throat in one hand and hurling him in exactly the direction he was hoping for.
Right at the teenager...
Outside, Jim Gordon has rolled down his window, lit a cigarette, and is puffing away. He holds the cell phone in his hand, eyeballing it every three to four seconds. No response.
The crack of Catwoman's whip immediately catches the thugs' attention. The undercover cop is released, and he slumps back against the wall, spitting blood. One of them cat-calls (zing!) at her, while the others advance upon her. One produces a shiv.
"Looks like the main event is right here, boys."
"Hey cat-lady!" calls another. "How'd you squeeze into that thing?"
"I'm gonna cut it right off her!" calls another.
The two in front bum rush her, while the third stays back to keep an eye on the undercover cop. However, his attention is thoroughly captured by her, long enough for the cop to begin scampering away toward the nearest window, where the dirty metal of a fire escape can be glimpsed in the dim light of an alley lamp.
Pequena's tough -- though you wouldn't know it to see her in this fight. Huntress' moves put the girl down on the mat (metaphorically speaking) and, given how she clocks her head against the concrete, it's quickly obvious she won't be getting up again any time soon.
"Not bad, Bunhead," the ringmaster drawls lazily, stepping forward, now. He glances to a couple of thugs. "Get 'er outta here." They move forward and collect Pequena, hauling her out of the ring toward the door. He gives Helena a toothy, unpleasant grin. "You survived round one, anyway." Which suggests the vigilante's work isn't actually done. He gestures with a thumb to a corner of the room, where a trio of Kings lean laconically against the wall, just watching everything. One actually has a clipboard. "But, we'll come back to you, later. For now, you go see Scratch."
Huntress looks at the ringmaster, then over toward the trio of Kings with the expected wary look on her face. And then around toward where Oracle's JLA contact is getting his ass kicked by a huge muscle-bound moron. Should she break her cover to go help him? JLA. Super types, like Superman. She sneers faintly for the benefit of everyone around her. He can take care of himself. Hopefully. She'll have to apologize later if he gets hurt too badly. She starts toward the trio of Kings, clenching her bruised and slightly bloody left fist and glaring at anyone that doesn't get out of her way fast enough.
As she grins, Catwoman elegantly sends her whip at the man with the shiv aiming the end of the whip for the top of his hand to leave a good mark. *CRACK* As if in a one single move the Kitty is rushing the men. As she waits till the last second, she slides onto her back, her hands shooting up toward's the men's crotch. *Chiche* As her cat claws come out, Catwoman's nails sink dead into their target.
With a grunt, she attempts to use centrifugal motion as she slides between the two still holding into the "James and the Gaint Peaches" As the man scream in pain and slam face first into each other. As she shifts her weight to her left hip, Catwoman slides up onto her feet with her claws in front of her, with an excited grin on her face. She looks at the third thug and purrs softly before she says, 'Meow."
"Green Lantern's light!"
Hal grunts the last words and the ring goes to work, wrapping his body in green energy that materializes into his uniform, hardening into the emerald and black suit with the Lantern in the center of his chest.
The Teenagers eyes go wide when she sees the Lantern and tries to bolt away from him, but he's too close and he was counting on this. His momentum is stopped easily, left hovering in the air with the faint green glow casting emerald light in every direction... which is probably quite stunning to those who suddenly have a JLA member in their midst.
He has pressing matters to attend to. His ring points down at the ground and green 'traps' snap closed over the teenagers ankles, barrelling her forward onto the floor. Tendrils of green lance out of his fist and wrap around her wrists and throat, hoisting her in the air like so much balled up pa- THWAK!!
Hal's head is turned by a another huge punch delivered by the giant man whose been chasing him for the last few minutes... The Lantern's head slowly turns towards the Juggernaut, eyes flashing faintly in their white wash behind the mask. "Seriously?"
... the man backs up, cants his head, and raises his hand. "My bad..." Hal just shakes his head slowly, "Okay..." Addressing the onlookers.
"There's two ways this goes... I have no interest in this underground fight club. Exactly zero..." He points to the floating teenager, "But she's coming with me. Anyone who gets in the way of that, is going to have a very bad night... Is anything I just said difficult to understand?" Meet a few eyes, check.. faintly glow with green shielding? Check. Hold an intergalactic arms dealer in green chains? Check...
Be more intimidating than Gotham? They'll probably shoot at him. Then throw their empty guns at his chest.
Gotham...
The third guy just stands and watches, his mouth now a gaping hole. He's no longer paying a lick of attention to the undercover cop. Instead, he scampers away, with the stairs leading downstairs blocked by Catwoman, and goes running up the nearby stairway to the second floor like a frightened child.
The undercover cop is already halfway through the window, when he realizes what has happened. He looks across the hallway to her, and raises his hands in a sign of surrender. "Hey, lady, I don't want no trouble," he calls down to her. "Honest! I'm..." He looks over the edge, judging the rickety old fire escape with doubt. "Probably gonna go out the way I came in, but seriously, do whatever it is you gotta do. I'm just a spectator!"
"Oh, hell." In the unmarked car a block and a half away, Detective Benson gestures with a nod of his head toward the building, where the undercover cop's ass is visible out the window.
"Damnit," curses Gordon.
"What the hell is he doing?"
"Never mind that." Jim raises his non-cigarette wielding arm and points toward the basement window wells. While the windows have been boarded up and pretty well blocked, a faint green glow can be seen, cast against the wells. "What the hell is that?"
Meanwhile, on the first floor, two of the Kings thugs remain curled up in the fetal position, clutching their jewels and whimpering to themselves. Catwoman'D.
Oracle watches everything go down: Helena's retreat to the corner, the crowd parting before her, Catwoman's emasculation of two of the three Kings, the Green Lantern's sudden revelation and capture of the alien teen, and the cop's escape... in sequence.
"Seriously," she says, looking at the little Batgirl plushy doll that sits alongside her main monitor. "This day cannot get any crazier."
(She probably shouldn't have said that.)
Of course, the reaction to Lantern's appearance is somewhat predictable... for Gotham. At first, it's greeted with stunned disbelief. After all, Batman and the Birds of Prey aren't exactly known for flashy fireworks of a verdant cosmic nature. So, there's that momentary delay as not-so-bright light bulbs slowly go off in the gathered low-lifes' brains.
Then, despite his words of disinterest, there's a general scramble to escape the basement. The staircase gets clogged pretty quick, especially when the first of the fleeing rats runs smack into the feline whip-mistress at the top of the stairs.
"Outta da way!!!" is the panicked cry.
"Stay put," Oracle tells Huntress, even when others start to scramble. "No sense getting crushed..." And, besides. There are at least half a dozen of the Kings -- all of them in the so-called upper echelon of the pack -- who don't join in the general flight. Either they're smarter than the gathered mooks, or they think they can actually withstand Green Lantern's light.
The answer comes from one of the three standing near Helena -- one of them without the clipboard. "Hey," he tells Lantern with a shrug. "You want her, buddy? You take her." He looks the girl in the eyes. "We don't need her any more."
There's loyalty for ya.
Huntress is luckily able to look at the now green glowing guy with as much shock and disbelief as everyone else in the room. And when the rats start to flee, she takes Oracle's advice and moves to put her back against the nearest wall to avoid getting trampled. And, besides, with all the chaos going on around her she feels safe speaking up to Oracle, with her eyes still glued to the green-glowing man and his now-captured prey. "HAL? What's going on?" Because let's be honest, she did NOT know why Green Lantern is here, only that the was present.
As she wrinkles her nose, "Good...run off and play nice with the other boys before I spank you." She hisses at him before she turns her attention to the stairs. As she looks down into the basement, Catwoman knows that glow and what is usually attached with it. She rolls her eyes in annoyance and sighs deeply, "I don't have time to be dealing with Green Boy." She growls softly as she begins to walk down the hallway towards the stairs leading to the second floor.
As she passes one of the men on the floor, Selina kicks him with the heel of her boot in face as she begins to run up the stairs two by two to exit in the way she came.
'Any more'.
They had to go and say that, didn't they. Hal sighs quietly and glances back and up at the floating teen he'd come here to capture... then back at the group of King's he'd just promised he'd leave be if they didn't interfere with his 'arrest'. Now, on the one hand, it is his responsibility to stop the spread of weapons the Bandor had come to 'sell'... on the other, Oracle has an operative involved.
Suddenly, Green Lantern becomes aware that he's going to be spending a lot more time in Jersey than he'd ever have intended. Or ever really wanted.
With a growl, he flashes above the heads of the escaping goons and gangers, dragging the teen behind him until he's flashing up into the sky above the apartment. Hal points his ring at his captive and constructs something like a rocket to take her to the Watchtower until he's got time to transport her to Oa properly. "Oracle, you may have bigger problems than you think. She may have already sold them the weapons... I didn't want to put your operative or this op in danger by cracking skulls, though." Beat pause, "I'll upload technical schematics I've taken from the Liberators of Freedom. If these things get loose in Gotham, it is going to get very bad, very quick."
"See the teen all trussed up in green?" Oracle tells Helena. "Some sort of alien weapons dealer. Green Lantern's been tracking her." She shakes her head. "Truthfully? I had no idea he was in Gotham until he contacted me as you began to fight. This whole day's been as bad -- okay almost as bad for me, as it has been for you." At least Babs doesn't have scrapes and bruises, after all.
She turns her head at Lantern's update. Her nostrils flare a little as she inhales a deep breath. "Awesome," she replies to him dryly. "Just what I wanted to hear." Not. "Because, you know, that could explain so much of what I've been seeing here, lately..."
The Kings' 'any more' wasn't lost on her, either.
Right. Next steps?
"Huntress, see if you can get info on the next meet, and then get your tail out of there. We'll debrief as soon as we can. Lantern, let's you and I talk. I'll meet you at the Watchtower." Or, rather, her on-screen avatar will. But, that's good enough.
She starts checking her contacts for Tony Stark's number while she's at it. He'll need to know about this, too.
Oh, yeah. Gotta love Gotham.
Category:Log