2013-02-19 Juxtaposition

Why the Hell am I here again? Huntress can't help but question silently yet AGAIN. She KNOWS she's in Bat territory ground zero, but HAL told her that the gun-smuggling evidence she picked up a few weeks ago lead back to a supposedly vacant and decrepit old store front about a block down from the movie theater. Thus, she finds herself on the roof of an old millinery, binoculars in one hand and crossbow in the other, waiting for any sign of, well, anything.
Matt Murdock had come to Gotham to work on getting his law licence for the state. Between Gulliani and public pressure, Hell's Kitchen is becoming less of a cess pool than it used to be. Matt has been here to Gotham, and it does remind him of the neighborhood he grew up in. He has heard heartbeats race when a stranger approaches a small child. He can smell the gun oil that hangs in the air around here and the iron in barred windows. He hears the cries of women in the alleys after losing their purse. He knows the kind of town Gotham is.
So now Daredevil is moving along the roof tops. He vaults over an AC unit and then is leaping off the side of the building. His feet find a flag pole and then is summersault across the street, firing his grappling from the billy club as he does swooping up onto another roof top about a block from Huntress. He pauses as he comes to rest. He tilts his head slightly, listening to the city.
While the Bats are skilled at moving silently and near-invisibly through the shadows, they don't try to disguise their scent or heartbeat. Not knowing of Daredevil's skill in that sort of detection, Nightwing doesn't even think about it as he makes note of Daredevil's appearance and even follows him a bit. He lands as the other does on the rooftop and offers a conversational, "You know, it's generally considered polite to sign the Guestbook when one comes to another's party. Did you at least bring a host gift?"
He's run into Huntress a time or two before and while he does keep an eye on her as well, he first has to deal with the newcomer to Gotham.
Huntress notices the movement about a block away -- most of the unsavory elements know to look towards the rooftops anymore, but they don't usually frequent them -- and turns her attention to see which of the Bat's ilk is over there. Her binoculars pick out one shape and she frowns slightly. Any Gotham regular knows better than stop that close to a roof's edge without something to camoflauge their silhouette. She hasn't seen Nightwing's form yet, so for now she's just observing and splitting her attention between the supposed gun-smugglers' hideout and whoever that is over there.
"And here I thought this was a come as you are kind of affair," Daredevil says without moving, obviously not startled by the sudden appearance of Nightwing. His hearing and nose gets the measure of the man behind him. "Hope you won't be too offended that I didn't." Finally he stands up and turns to face Nightwing. "And which Gotham defender are you? Only met a couple so far."
"It does tend to be Invite-only. Do you happen to have your invitation? Sorry, but we do have to check these sorts of things," Nightwing takes another step forward and inclines his head at the scarlet-clad man. "If you met a couple, you'd probably know better. Not that I'm calling you a liar or anything, but...well, we tend to be pretty territorial. Just like you are, so I've heard." He also glances towards Huntress' rooftop before he looks back to Daredevil, "Nightwing."
Enhanced senses have a bit more trouble with the current iteration of the batsuit: For one thing, it's difficult to pinpoint the actual scent of the man within, or the sound of his heartbeat and breathing. Baffled, like a hunter tracking sensitive prey-- or a stealth helicopter, though in this case the oppositional waves aren't employed to dull thunderous rotors, but simply the passing biological tells that would give the Dark Knight away more easily to a hero like Daredevil... or a villain like Sabretooth. 
For his own part, as he moves the Bat makes little noise, only a rustle of wind courtesy of flourishing, dark cape that one would be forgiven for concluding was an entirely intentional tell; no reason to make it harder on the Man without Fear, just now. "Daredevil." Batman assesses in quiet, but projected and intense tones. A stage voice that the Devil's ears would further deduce as subtly electronically modulated. 
"You're a long way from Hell's Kitchen. Hunting?" Which is apparently the Batman's priority, as queries into purpose go. Huntress and Nightwing are, for the moment, utterly ignored... as Batman drops to the rooftop from an overhanging gargoyle.
Huntress turns her binoculars back to the gun smugglers' hideout just in time to see the tip of a barrel peeking out through a window. She curses faintly in Italian and aims to knock it aside, shouting as loud as she can at the same time as she lets the quarrel fly. "DOWN!"
"No. I'm Daredevil." With a vagabond's grin on his face, he leaps backwards off the rooftop away from the two bats even as Huntress's warning cry comes off shrill from the block over. As he flies upside down through the air, his hands catch a gargoyle one floor down which he uses to spring so that his feet are now facing downward. He lands on a building ledge and is running towards the gunman's rife coming out of the window. His billy club is yanked from its holster and is thrown at the rifle so that Huntress's and his attack are likely to strike together.
Nightwing dives off to the side at the warning, rolling back to his feet once the round moves past. He glances at Daredevil...at Batman...and rolls his eyes under his mask. Fine. Let Batman and Daredevil do the pissing contest. He'll leap and grapple-line swing his way over to Huntress, "What's going on here?"
The Dark Knight is in motion a half-instant after the Man without Fear, and in something of a startling mirror image. Batman throws his weight towards the other edge of the building, releasing a batarang in a wide, whirring arc that brings it in as the punctuation to the others' strikes, aligned for the soft body behind the glass, rather than the weapon itself. 
Catching himself in the first moments of descent, the Caped Crusader hangs from the outcropped ledge, drawing a grapnel gun from his belt and firing the compressed, reinforced line across the distance seperating him from the smugglers' hideout. Seems the quarry noticed the approach; somehow. Half-hidden behind the cowl, the Batman frowns... and rockets upwards, swiftly accelerating towards the building holding their sniper.
Huntress blinks and can't help but curse again at how fast that... oh. She catches a brief glimpse of blood red as Daredevil makes a trapeze artist look like a graceless clod and that explains a lot to her. But, now that she's basically alerted the smugglers to the presence of capes around their hideout, she's got her work cut out for her. Hastily switching out the steel quarrels for her lighter and faster wooden bolts, she aims down toward street level as Nightwing approaches, fully expecting criminals to go swarming out of that building like roaches out of a stomped old cardboard box. "HA...uh, Oracle said that gun traffickers were working out of that building. Guess the damned computer or whatever it is was right." She snaps off two quick shots downwards as a door opens to try and dissuade anyone from bolting.
Daredevil catches his billy club on the rebound. As Batman's batarang clears the gunman himself from the window, the Man without Fear throws himself into harm's way. He leaps, catching the top of the window and flies in feet first. His heels catch a second gunman that was making his way towards the window in relief. "Do you guys have engraved invitations to be here? I was told that was the rule of the town." The second gunman's jaw clicks hard from the impact and he falls back to slump down the wall. The first gunman is working on drawing a handgun from his shoulder holster. Metal sliding against leather gets Daredevil's attention who swings a backhand against the man. That gunman joins his companion. Daredevil makes his way to the door and listens to what is happening in the rest of the building.
Nightwing watches as Batman and Daredevil try to out-do each other with attacking the bad guys. Even as Huntress tries to get her shots in, Nightwing just perches on a fire escape, watching to see if there are any other mooks that need to be taken out. Right now, they seem to be completely outnumbered by the 'good guys'.
There's grace, and then there's preternatural agility; the Dark Knight has only mastered the former. Arriving just long enough after Daredevil for the attention to shift to the Man without Fear, a second window is breached on the adjacent wall. The Dark Knight's grapnel line whips him around the corner in a swift arc that carries both his own, armored feet forward in a spray of breaking glass and splintering frame. A perfectly aligned kick is guided by high-tech thermal lenses, bending a husky thug with a shotgun in around the point of impact... before the target hurtles clear, harshly colliding with a card table and scattering its contents everywhere as he lands amidst a breaking chair. It doesn't look like a soft landing. 
"This kind of trash doesn't belong anywhere." The Dark Knight growls. No, he didn't invite them. Alas for the smugglers. Answering raised guns and their first, panicked shots with a voluminous stream of smoke from his cape, the Bat is in ceaseless motion, difficult to pin down with a good shot. 
That covering fog's not acrid or toxic, thankfully for the Man without Fear, but in instants it spreads through the room, covering the Dark Knight's movement as he doubles back, creeping in on their prey guided by his own enhanced 'senses'. The first all but disappears into that bank of smoke with a yelp, as he's bodily hauled off his feet and disarmed.
Risking a quick glance around to take stock of who is where, Huntress puts mental location markers on each other cape (or capeless) around. Nightwing, over her shoulder. Daredevil, inside. That's a problem as she can't just take potshots at any movement inside now. Someone else who also targeted the sniper. She's going to presume it's the Bat himself as this IS ground zero, because she didn't see him on the roof or entering the building. 
Another two bolts shatter against the door, and then she says aside to Nightwing, "There's a loading bay around the other side of the building. I saw a truck there earlier." No, she's not telling the other vigilante what to do, she's simply stating facts so he can decide for himself, or do the usual Bat thing and boss her around some. Whatever. It stopped being her show when they arrived. She knows that, even if it pisses her off to no end.
Even as smoke begins to fill the upper floor of the warehouse, Daredevil pays it little attention. He moves out of the room he crashed into and can hear Batman dealing with others in the next one. Dulled heartbeat or not, Daredevil just uses the discrpency to mark him that much easier. Obviously it has to be the big man in town to have the sound dampening systems. Even as he moves along the hallway, other thugs are running up the stairs alerted by the sound of breaking glass. As they run into smoke and can't see, Daredevil attacks like a ghost knocking one from his feet and letting the thugs behind him trip over him to go crashing to the floor in the hallway.
The complete lack of impediment the visual cover provides for Daredevil's abilities does not go unnoticed by the Detective, but it's hardly the time or the place to discuss capabilities. |"Huntress. Nightwing."| The Oracle keeps the team in constant contact, much to the dismay of some of the Bat's allies. |"Keep us up to date on the status of the perimeter."| She did think about getting bossed around, after all. It was inevitable. Still, that the Dark Knight trusts them with the task is meaningful-- at least to him. 
The upper floor contains a secured stockpile of arms sufficient to equip a sizable militia, leaving the Bat silently grateful that the element of surprise... is on /their/ side. In that covering fog the Caped Crusader is little more than a flitting shadow of punishing pugilism, deflecting several glancing shots with his cape as he systematically restrains the combatants within.
Huntress can't help the grimace that causes her to actually bare her teeth at the building when the Bat's voice sounds in her ear via HAL's comm unit. She called it, all right. |"Fine."| Yeah, she's pissed all right. She shatters two more bolts against the door then she slaps in a pack of steel quarrels and takes a second to aim carefully before sending the quarrel to hopefully wedge the door into its frame. |"Anything else I can do for you, my liege?"| Sarcasm much? 
Around the other side of the building, the sound of a large diesel engine starting can be heard. 
Daredevil races down the stairs to the ground level. Most of the thugs that had been there had either come up the stairs after Daredevil and the Dark Clad Embodiment of Joy and Laughter or else they had rushed out of the building only to be taken care of by Huntress. Daredevil continues out the door as the sound of the engine and the smell of diesel fuel hits him like a hammer. He kneels for a second, letting his hand run over one of the bolts in a downed thug. A small smile crosses his face as he recognizes the patterns of the flachettes on the bolts. "Please don't shoot me this time," he yells out as he takes off around the corner towards the sound of the truck.
A gauntletted fist relieves another gunman who strayed too close to the Dark Knight of his footing, landing him in a heap on the floor before he's suddenly rolled over and the Bat's knee slams to his back; in the same instant black zipties tighten around his wrist. There's a not-so-neat little trail showing the Caped Crusader's course through the black market den, even as Oracle's input draws attention to the departing truck with what may be the last of the smuggling ring within. .. and probably no shortage of stock, at that. |"Securing escaping criminals will be plenty."| Batman observes in passing, as if he'd never heard of sarcasm. 
While Daredevil clears the low road, the Dark Knight sticks with the high, a glance confirming the efficiency of the Man without Fear's sweep.. and subsequently, the Batman's priority target. With the building more or less secured, and the Huntress' impeccable aim keeping any lingering criminals pinned down, Gotham's Knight simply sprints for a back window, braces an arm around his exposed skin, and hurls himself out into freefall without hesitation, above the departing truck. There's more than one vigilante without a good grasp of 'fear' or 'personal risk' out here, tonight.
Huntress snaps her crossbow toward a flicker of movement and she's about to fire a quarrel at Daredevil when his voice drifts up to her. She manages to pull her shot as he dashes around the corner toward the truck is, and then the vehicle is on the move. She turns her aim toward where she expects the truck to emerge, specifically where its tires will be, and as soon as it appears she looses a quarrel despite the smuggler hanging out of the passenger's side window sending automatic gunfire up toward her location. 
|"SH..."| Her comm signal abruptly squeals static then cuts out, but her one shot was good enough: the truck's front passenger's side tire explodes. 
Daredevil comes in low as the gunman sticks his head out of the passenger window firing towards Huntress. He leaps upward toward the high window of the cab. With one hand he is grabbing the rifle, yanking it down and away, but also pulling himself up. His other hand comes around in a punch his father would have been proud of. The haymaker catches the thug square on the jaw. He releases the rifle and is opening the door of the truck, yanking the stunned man out and down to the sidewalk.
Midway through his descent, the Dark Knight throws his cape out to each side, the fabric suddenly forging a distinctly bat-shaped glider, the force of his drop providing forward velocity as it couples with sudden lift. Daredevil and Huntress are already seeing to the truck's immobility by the time the Caped Crusader lands, an ominous thud on the roof as the driver wrestles out a handgun and prepares to fire on the Man without Fear... though there's little opportunity to line up that shot. 
A vaulting inversion brings the Batman through the truck's windshield, the impact and shock sending the sidearm skittering as an abrupt elbow strike lands home; robbing the driver of consciousness, alongside a spatter of his blood. Batman's attention snaps upwards towards the Huntress' perch, even as the updated situation is relayed to incoming GCPD units.. courtesy of the omniscient Oracle. Consternation etched in taut jawline, the Bat wordlessly, swiftly fires his grapnel line back towards that adjacent structure, ascending to check on the Huntress.
Huntress is lying where she fell, a lucky shot from the truck's passenger having knocked her crossbow up into her face. Her comm unit is on the rooftop a few feet away where it was knocked loose and she's already starting to recover from the stunning blow as Batman reaches her 'perch'.
Daredevil is about to maneuver away from the driver's hand gun when he hears the first cracks of glass as the windshield begins to spider web. He ducks and tucks himself down to the floor as Batman crashes through to take out the driver and then flies back out of the stopped truck. He reaches over and snags the keys, shutting off the engine, before slipping back out of the cab. He turns his head listening for the muted heartbeat of the Bat and for Huntress whom he knows already.
As the Huntress stirs, the Dark Knight aborts his rescue attempt, simply perched in a too-balanced crouch on that precipice, back to the street below. Not to say any sort of relief really makes it to Batman's features, but the change in momentum is notable. Stepping out onto the rooftop, he retrieves the Huntress' communicator and offers it back over to her, nodding once. "GCPD is en route." It's something approaching 'good job', in the Batman's book. He doesn't insult her by asking if she's alright; they've both taken worse. Several shallow wounds are hidden beneath the Bat's sneaksuit even now, in fact.
Huntress blinks a few times, then focuses (mostly) on the Bat offering her comm unit to her. She sits up and accepts the little device, now parsing the words that had been offered as well. "Oh. Um, yeah." She clearly got her bell rung pretty good, and isn't up to speed yet. Blinking once again, her hands start almost automatically checking the crossbow over for damage.
Daredevil follows the sound of the voices. He heads towards an alley running next to the building where the two of them are. He jumps towards one wall, brings his feet against it, launches himself across the ally at an angle, catches hold of a fire escape, flips himself over, and uses his legs to swing himself up and then onto the roof. "Hope you don't mind. I did leave the invite in my other pants."
"You know him?" Daredevil. A jerk of Batman's head indicates the space behind him, the street below by proxy. Where he and the Man without Fear just finished their own parts in the dangerous dance. He doesn't seem concerned with the vigilante's arrival, or particularly inclined to pretend he's not gathering intel from Huntress. 
Blank-eyed cowl lenses turn on Murdock only once she's replied, "Quite the unique style." The Caped Crusader observes, perhaps subtly implying deductions as to Daredevil's actual nature. "You've been at this a while. Keep that kind of precision, and we won't have a problem." At least, not on Batman's front. Other opinions differ. "Gotham doesn't need more bodies in the streets." It's the one unbreakable rule he has.
Huntress seems momentarily preoccupied with the new dent on her crossbow, frowning as she realizes it's going to make using the bundled bolts more difficult to load into the weapon. Then she blinks as she returns her attention to the goings on around her and realizes a third person has joined them. The red-clad man from... well, from a while ago. "Uh, sorry about, you know." She gestures vaguely, possibly toward her shoulder.
"About shooting me?" Daredevil gives a quick little laugh and shakes his head. "Forgotten about." His attention turns towards the Dark Knight. "Thought you'd be taller." He turns and sits down on the wall along the edge of the roof. "And yes, I've been doing it for a while. Got a union card and everything. Don't plan on putting bodies in the streets. Plan on putting folks in jail."
The Huntress' distracted reaction to Daredevil gives Batman all the information he needs, really. From the familiarity to the lack of apprehension. After a moment's contemplative study of the latter, the Dark Knight nods once. "Good." It seems to encompass both the Man without Fear's intentions, and his assumptions about the Caped Crusader's stature. 
Batman's black cape flows around him, draped over both shoulders, as he steps back towards the edge of the roof. "You know how to reach me." The deceptively simple words are offered to Huntress-- even if it's far from the concern for her wounds and continued wellbeing that others might express verbally. Then, the Dark Knight is gone, dropping backwards off that rooftop in the dart of an eye-- lost swiftly to the Gotham night.
Huntress looks at Batman, and THEN scrambles back to her feet as he just disappears off of the rooftop. Of course, considering why she'd been sitting on her rear, standing up abruptly likely wasn't the smartest thing to do. She wobbles a bit unsteadily on her feet and mentally curses her own stupidity.
Daredevil hops off the wall and steps towards the wobbling Huntress. "Careful there," he says as he offers a hand to help steady her. "First step is always the big one." He listens and hears the Batman swooping away into the night and the muted heartbeat disappears into the ambient noise of the city. He turns back towards Huntress. "Thank you for not shooting me a second time."
Huntress startles as Daredevil seemingly appears next to her, further proof that she's still not processing at full speed. She's recovering more quickly as time passes, though. "Uh, yeah. Sure. He said something about the police. I think we need to get moving before they get here."
"Good idea especially since they don't know me here at all. Not like those back in New York know me that well either." Daredevil stands up straight and jumps on top of the wall. He brings out the billy club and launches the grappling hook. Hooking around a stone angel, the devil swings out into the night.
Huntress watches Daredevil pretty much zoom off just like Batman did, and sighs. She shakes her head one last time for good measure, then goes over to the zipline she'd set up earlier, sending her in a different direction from the visiting vigilante. Of course, he'd proably have no trouble at all following her.
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