2013.04.19 - Typical Night in Gotham City

Another night, another horribly-lit dockside warehouse. And, another clandestine shipment of crates whose logos and tracking documents are just a little too good, too pristine. At least the men unloading the crates from a dilapidated old cargo ship are slightly noteworthy: not a one of them looks like the ocean-going type.
Watching the unloading commence from a rooftop three warehouses over, Huntress makes a minute adjustment to her small binoculars, studying the overseeing man standing just outside of the building in question. She's seen him before, and seeing him here cements her suspicions. this building will likely burn to the ground. Tonight.
Green Arrow is being a little different tonight. He is not on a rooftop but rather hiding between warehouses just one up from the unloading ship. He narrows his eyes under his hood as he watches. He draws an arrow out slowly and with deliberateness. He keeps his bow low, however, as he looks for the best opening.
Huntress keeps watching the unloading in progress, her free hand going to her belt to check and see how much explosive material she brought with her, and curses softly. Not nearly enough. That's gonna make this extra annoying. Her decision made, she stows the binoculars and gets ready to sneak toward the building. Once she's inside she can see what objects inside can be used to make the most of the too-small amount of C4 on her person.
Green Arrow does not have a lot of the gadgets. His quiver is packed with mostly old fashioned points. His eyes move over the smugglers as he looks for the over seer. He raises his bow as begins to pull back on the bow string and taking aim.
Huntress makes it to the ground quickly and hurries toward the building and the ship being unloaded. She pauses in the shadow of the last building before her target, and stops dead as she sees someone else there, someone already aiming an arrow at HER targets. NOW she knows what the red hooded guy was bitching about, and she can't let this guy ruin her chance here. Pulling a knife from the back of one glove, she ghosts forward hopefully quietly enough to reach the archer before he notices her presence.
Green Arrow aims down the length of his arrow. He holds the pulled bow for a beat and then lets the arrow fly as he tries to pin the overseer to the wall of the warehouse. Even as he fires, he begins to move. He gets on top of the dumpster against the building and is jumping upward to catch hold of a maintenance ladder along the side of the warehouse. He has not noticed Huntress coming towards him and now has his back to her as he begins to try and climb quickly to the roof of the building.
Huntress bites back a rather harsh curse as the archer takes a potshot at the overseer. That's gonna REALLY mess up her plans here. Tossing her knife to her off hand, she pulls her crossbow and takes a fast draw shot at the man as he jumps for a maintenance ladder, her aim on the man's quiver as a warning for screwing with HER targets. Then she's bolting at a full sprint toward the building to try and salvage what she can of the situation and make sure that building -- or at least its contents -- do not survive the night.
Green Arrow swings back and forth on the ladder as his feet scramble for a bit of traction for a moment. That saves his quiver of arrows. The bolt from Huntress slams hard just inches from him. He whips his head to the side as the noise and sees the crossbow bolt. He blinks once as he recognizes that particular bolt. One, he has an eye for craftsmanship, and two, he once had something similar sticking out of his leg. He manages to secure himself to the ladder and turns his head this way and that, trying to spot Huntress. He catches just a sight of her cape as she darts away. "Oh hell in a hand basket," he mutters as he makes his way up to the top of the warehouse. He gets to the top and lets himself begin to slowly slide down the slanted roof towards his target as he readies another arrow.
Meanwhile, the overseer is struck by the arrow and pinned to the wall by his jacket. He yells out in anger. Guards turn and begin to fire into the alley where the arrow had come from which is why Green Arrow had gotten out of there quickly. Two gunmen are hit by flying arrows in the shoulder of their gun arms making the automatic weapons drop to the ground.
Huntress throws herself to one side when the goons start to shoot back at the archer's previous location. DAMNIT. She hisses as one lucky shot cuts a stripe in her left leg but still fires back, seeing two of the goons are taken down by arrows while she herself is still aiming to disable the weapons themselves. Damn the Bat, and damn HAL. And if EITHER of them try to blame her for what that jerk archer is doing...
Green Arrow is gotten to the bottom of his slide and now has his feet braced against the storm drains along the roof. "Like shooting ducks at the carnival," he says with a laugh. As more goons come flying out of the warehouse, they are hit by a string of arrows which cause them to spin or drop. None of the shots are lethal, but they won't be using much strength in those shoulders for a bit. He glances around again and sees Huntress dodging gunfire. "I've got ya covered. Lets put the kabosh on this thing once and for all," he yells out.
The head guy is screaming and cursing as he tries to get out of the pin to the wall shot. "Look up, you idiots, before you come running out here." He is kicking the wall trying to get their attention even as another guard goes down. "Why did I have to get discount thugs for this job?"
Huntress snaps a new pack of wooden bolts into her crossbow, the knife already tucked away again, and fires a couple of shots at the overseer to keep him firmly attached to the wall by his jacket. Then she takes some more potshots at the emerging goons as she continues to approach the building at a run. If she heard the archer's call that he's covering her, she doesn't say anything about it. Honestly, she's privately glad to have backup at the same time as she's worried he's gonna try and put an arrow in HER back the moment he can. But, warehouse first.
Well....turnabout might be fair play...., but Green Arrow is wearing his white hat today so no shooting of Huntress in the back. 'sides, if he really wanted to get even with her it would be face to face. He pushes himself up to his feet with his weight split between storm drains and roof. He stands to make himself the more visable target and less watching of Huntress. His hand moves quickly as he draws arrows and fires a few high to keep goons' heads down. 
Huntress finally gets up close and personal with the goons, her crossbow doing double duty as a billy club as she punches and kicks and bashes her way through them. Her fighting style is only partly martial arts, most of it appears to rather strongly resemble dirty street fighting. She takes one solid hit to her lower back and grimaces, and this time the bolt from her crossbow intentionally hits flesh. The unlucky goon goes down with the bolt embedded in his leg, and she looks around to see if anyone else wants to test her temper.
Green Arrow slings his bow up onto his shoulder and runs towards the corner of the roof he is on. He drops over the edge and grabs hold of the storm drain. He lets his weight pull it loose from the building and swings it down towards the ground. He leaps before slamming into the tarmac and is quickly following Huntress into the warehouse. As he comes into the warehouse, he is pulling his bow back down into his hand. "You keep going. I'll pick 'em off before they get to you," he calls out as he fires over Huntress's head to nail another goon coming around a corner towards them.
Huntress turns to look Green Arrow up and down briefly, then rushes into the warehouse proper, taking goons down as necessary. Though with the archer firing at them ahead of her, there's really little need. She stops and takes quick stock of everything piled in the building, then darts off to one side where she noticed some barrels with the word 'turpentine' spray painted on them.
Green Arrow climbs atop several crates which he only assumes has illegal weapons inside them. He uses the high ground to keep an eye on Huntress and keeping her path clear. From outside, the sound of engines approaching can be heard and then the yell of men. "Better hurry," Green Arrow calls out again. "Think we are about to have a lot of company." He jumps down from the crates and moves quickly through the warehouse, getting behind a fork lift which has a better angle toward the door.
Huntress opens one barrel... whew. At least this is correctly labelled. She kicks it over to get the liquid inside to start pouring out, then sets one of her scant explosive charges on it before rushing around the room and setting the rest where she can. "Okay. Timer's got thirty seconds, move!" She rushes past the archer and clambers up onto a stack of boxes to reach a dingy set of windows. After all, the goons /would/ be expecting them to exit the same way they went in.
Green Arrow sees the barrel go over. He watches Huntress set the charge. He looks towards the door which he was preparing to defend. He holds for a second before he is scrambling after Huntress. "Window sounds good," he says with a nod as he follows Huntress out the dirty portal. "Hit 'em where they ain't. Good rule for baseball. Good rule for us."
Huntress wrenches the window open then sets a grappling hook kind of bolt in her crossbow and fires it at the taller building across the way. Once it's got a secure hold, she looks at the archer. "Do you trust me?"
"And if I said no at this point?" Green Arrow asks with a roguish grin on his face and a wink in his eye. "Going to have to now." He glances back into the warehouse and towards the timer. "It's either trust you or else go back in there with explosives and ticked off goons."
Huntress knew that that would be the answer, so she simply throws her arm around the man, grabbing a handful of his shirt-jacket-thing underneath the quiver and expecting him to reciprocate as she lets the grappling hook thing pull them out the window. One problem: she never really thought to design it to handle much more than her own weight, so it's only ten or fifteen feet before the thing snaps off of her crossbow leaving them to fall.
Green Arrow grips her back and they swing out. As they seem to be descending quickly, he relaxes for a moment and then the line snaps. With a curse, he goes falling through the air and crashes into a bunch of empty crates next to a dumpster. There is a crash of wood, archer, and foul language as he slowly begins to move from the stack of broken down crates. "Remind me not to order the in flight meal."
Huntress is contributing her own foul language to the mix, as well as a bit of coughing. She didn't have time prepare for the fall, and hit the closed lids of the dumpster pretty squarely. "Bitch later, we're still too close." She scrambles a bit unsteadily off of the dumpster and tries to regain her bearings.
While a little slow on his feet as he works out the sore bits, Green Arrow quickly gets his feet under him and makes a run for an alley across the way before the explosives can go off. He tries to offer Huntress a bit of support and help across the alley as they both try to get some distance quickly.
Huntress requires little coaxing to get her moving again, running alongside the archer away from the warehouse and the shouts of men getting louder. Her mental timer screams a warning and she throws herself behind yet another dumpster, pulling the green-clad man along just as the first small whump of an explosion follows the physical sensation of the blast wave. Three others echo the first quickly.
Green Arrow collapses behind the dumpster quickly next to Huntress. He is quiet as the explosions begin to go off. He fishes into his pocket and pulls out a disposable cell phone. He quickly dials a number. "Emergency?" he asks into the phone with a pause. "Fire Department is needed in the Bowery. My name? Jack Frost....Yeah, with a F." He snaps it shut to disconnect and then throws it up into the dumpster. He looks over at Huntress. "I hope you didn't leave anything in there because we are not turning this car around to go get it now."
Huntress has her eyes closed as she leans into the corner the dumpster makes with the building it's pushed up against. She's still reeling a bit from that stupid broken line, and now it's catching up with her. No, can't let it, this random variable in green is still here. Her eyes snap open and she looks at the archer for about a second before the knife is in her hand again and she's lunging to attack him.
"Whoa there," Green Arrow is caught by surprise by the sudden attack and is trying to get his bow up between them and force Huntress back. "What the hell you doing that for? We just beat the bad guys didn't we? Shut down some would be weapons broker, right? Jeez, lady, hate to see what you would do if we had lost."
Huntress is forced back surprisingly easily, and she tries to not let on that she's favoring her left leg. "Who the fuck are you, anyway? And why are YOU messing with MY targets? The Bat gets wind of this and he'll blame all that shit on me, even though those are YOUR arrows sticking out of people."
"The day I let some pointy eared know it all tell me where or when I can do something, I will eat my quiver." Green Arrow relaxes a little bit as she is forced back. "This is my town too. I don't "by your leave" to any one." He suddenly lightens up and grins. "I'm Green Arrow." He extends a gloved hand towards Huntress. "Good to meet you with words this time rather than an arrow out of my leg which I still am quite grateful for by the way."
Huntress looks at Green Arrow's hand but doesn't reach to return the gesture. She does put the knife away, though. "Huntress. You gonna stay out of my way now?" She needs to get back to her bike, that fall knocked something out of whack and if she can't get to a safe place soon, well... she won't.
"Look," Green Arrow says as he brings his hand back to him, "We are both on the same side here. We should be working together. Helping each other out if we can. Sure would beat getting shot or getting in each other's way. I thought we did alright together in there." He offers a smile. "Look, I have a spot not far from here. Got some good people I work with too. I think you could fit in with us. Maybe a bit rough around the edges, but that is true of all of us." He fishes into a pocket and finds a bent card of Sherwood Florist. He offers it to Huntress. "If you want to, come by here. Just ask about the Major Oak. Alright?"
Huntress looks at Green Arrow suspiciously and takes the card with an abrupt snatch. She glances at it, and has to force herself to not visibly react. Dinah's shop? The hell? Her eyes flick back to the man, and she tries to put the pieces together. Still too many gaps. What the hell is going on?
Green Arrow slowly gets up to his feet and arches his back to get the chinks out. After stretching, he looks back at Huntress. "Think about it. Either way, I'll probably see you around. This town isn't that big." He gives her a half grin and moves off quickly on foot down an alley way. In the distance, the howl of the fire engines can be heard as they make their way towards the fire left by the explosion.
Huntress stays where she is a few moments longer before the sounds of the approaching sirens decide for her. She scrambles to her feet and hurries off in a different direction, presumably toward her Ducati.
Category:Log