2019-07-29 - Not On Our Parade

Summary:

In the case of human trafficking, SHIELD and Spider-Man make quick work of trouble.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Mon Jul 29 15:24:33 2019
Location: Red Hook Dock

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

chava-kangclint-bartonpeter-parkerwanda

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

It's a quiet night in Brighton, which is good for this sort of thing. Unspeakable things can happen in the quiet hours.

Tonight, it is the container ship ARCHANGEL that is moving towards Dock 12. The crew is getting ready to make fast the moorings, the captain is down to a quarter speed, and he is already aware of the "special nature" of container 12285 and 12286. Some very powerful people will not be happy if the contents are damaged.

On the dock, men in suits with guns - Russian AK-47s, not the cheaper Chinese knockoffs - wait patiently. The dockmaster has been paid well to look the other way, and the panel trucks are moving into position to collect their cargo.
All will be well.

…ALMOST.
"Fifteen men on the docks, a crew of 20 for the ship."
"Thank you, ALICE. Get the Theme Music ready."
"Yes, Spider-Man."

That's the thing with intel and when it gets out. It sometimes gets spread around, spent, traded. Information as choice as this about the ARCHANGEL, the location, the run, the numbers. It was passed around amongst some of the more enterprising intel brokers of the underworld. Thing was, nobody wants to move against this particular flex of those gangsters down on the docks. No takers, no money.
Info like that, however, it gets kicked up and sold to the other side. Since hey, sometimes the goody-two-shoes will pay. And SHIELD's information network brought it to the attention of two of their operatives.
Over the shared comms between Clint and Wanda, the archer's rough voice is heard, "I got fourteen guys ambling around the dock, automatic rifles. Wait, fifteen." There's the crunch and crackle of him eating someting over the comms, then he continues.
"Manifest of the ship says they're paying for 14 crewmen, the captain. Probably count for a smidge extra of under the table crewhands." More crunch and crackling.
"You set, Scarlet?"

Chava on the other hand lacks a friendly AI that tells her what to do. All she knows is, that one or some of the containers on the archangel are destined to reach some Purifier froup, or at least something similar. For everything else, her security clearance just isn't sufficient, so she has marched out to the docks, hidden in the shadow under a shadowy light blue coat that she holds up in the shape of a container wall disguise herself as part of a Maersk container already waiting at the docks to be loaded later that night. OR tomorrow. She doesn't care, it is a Maersk container and the simple coat she uses for the rounded disguise tonight somewhat matches the color of the container in the shadow. Not perfectly, but on a casual glance… well, she is ust waiting for the right container to try to sneak to it and find that camp that her genetic donors are said to be part of… well, possibly..

It's one of those places nice girls tend not to be. Nice girls stay in the wine bars and the coffeeshop-slash-bookstores, or they stay at home and paint their nails, watching sappy Hallmark channel shows about being rescued by a Norse god. Or goddess. No judgment. Nice girls don't lurk in a place filthy with the residue of sorrow and commerce, the endless appetite for growth a brutal upwelling of misery in an open vein chockful of iron and steel.

No one said Wanda Maximoff was a nice person. If so, wrong file, congratulations, SHIELD cryptanalysis test completely failed. The dark-haired young woman has an advantage here; she speaks Mandarin and Russian with about equal fluency. She can hide in the dark fairly well, too, slinking along the byways and sideways of sorrow and horror. The archer's confirmation earns a faint sound of affirmation. Not surprising; she might be more laconic than Fury himself some days. Not one known for talking a lot, but there it goes. "Yes."

It'll do. The witch pulls up her reinforced collar slightly, too hot for the weather, appropriate for the surroundings. It clings to her protectively, sealed up the front. Serpentine movements with her fingertips resonate with a strange, slight ripple of power. Nothing more than a protective spell; that's always step one. Step two is slinking over the flat edge of a railcar unlikely to be going anywhere tonight. It sits next to another car, and a weird corrugated half-Quonset hut probably meant to protect the open interior of the adjacent car from being filled with rainwater. Well, it shields her plenty while listening to Clint. "Your opening. Band is ready." Her usual follies with English aren't so apparent now.

The ship, with a low groan, stops as the lines are secured, the engines power down, and the crew snaps to. One of the men on the dock signals to a crane operator, who begins the task of moving one contained over to expose the two "special ones,"which will be lifted out and delivered to the dock.

"I think it's time we blow this scene…"

One of the underbosses, Mikelus, watch impassively. "Make sure that operator is careful, or I will have him flayed alive."
His underling looked at him.
Mikelus shrugged. "I saw it on GAME OF THRONES."

"Get everybody and the stuff together…"

The top container is placed on a different stack, and the crane slides slowly into position.

"Okay. Three, Two, One, LET'S JAM!"

A figure jumps from the darkness, Yoko Kanno's "Tank!" playing in his ears, and launches a web grenade at the cab of the crane. It explodes, covering the crane in webbing and blinding the operator.

From his perch on high, atop the curved arm of a low-level crane in a construction site that neighbors the dock, Clint has clean sight lines to the area. He's little more than a dark silhouette against the skyline, barely able to be picked out from afar with his black combat suit and the small purple accents. Though his low-light glasses help pick out details for him on his peripheral vision, he keeps his straight on sight clear of distractions.
"Got two patrollers on your left." He holds an arrow with one hand in place and at the ready, nocked but not drawn as he crouches there. In his other hand a now mostly empty box of Crackerjacks are given a shake as he tries to get the last bit of caramel corn out of the bottom. Fails. For now the empty is set aside.
"Wait a sec, we got more players in on this gig." He stands up and as Spider-Man engages suddenly it changes the entire fabric of the operation. People are in motion, actions are being taken. Now one just has to keep up. "Go in on 'em hard, Scarlet. I'll cover you." As he says that the arrow is drawn, loosed, and distantly one of the gunmen who had been taking a bead on Spidey suddenly gets a tazer surprise.

Music on the beat isn't shared for those with lesser auditory skills, but it needn't be. A strange, atonal tune taken straight from the southern steppes of Mongolia resonates in her throat. It might be strange to hear over the uplink, especially when the percussive scud over the uplink informs Clint no doubt she's on the move. Harder to see Wanda in the dark, given her chronic preference for a dark, almost neo-Gothic palette. Hunched over, she slides along the top of the railcar and makes the leap to the next. A narrow gap, but they're stationary and she can be glad for a lack of rain.

A quick glance to the side confirms troubles: an open dockside, men fanned out. The ship rearing in the distance with the crane nearby offers better choices, given all the goons on the ground. But that thing much bluer than herself causes them all kinds of trouble. "Company. You see it?" she asks, ceasing to sing. She glances from the Russian-made guns to the crane, and her green-gold eyes narrow.

A thrill of anger goes flat, forced to stillness. Faint motes turned rubescent flower around her wrist as she seizes on proverbial threads of fate around the hapless mechanical object. When was that crane last certified and is the city inspector or the port authority going to suffer? You bet. Envisioning jammed gears preventing a turn and frozen workings that keep the crate safely suspended away from the ship, and every ounce of bad luck wrapped into her hex yearns to make the crane into the city's biggest inert toy. Once that hits, the next choice is going airborne.

Here, mafioso, mafioso, mafioso…

Mikelus swears. "SPIDER-MAN." He looks to his underling. "Get those containers OFF!"
"Sir, we CAN'T. The crane operator can't SEE! And the cranes are 30 feet up! Who wants call girls with shattered le-"
BOOM. Mikelus had drawn the pistol and answered any nagging questions his useless servant might have had. The men on the dock are firing, save one, who's doing the Funky Chicken Tazer Dance.
Spidey is actually…dodging the gunfire, or at least staying ahead of it. As he jumps and springs like gravity is not so much a law as a light suggestion, he is firing Impact webs, knocking a few of the shooters down, webbing them to the pavement of the sides of buildings and vehicle.

It's not a new thing for Clint to be supporting other operatives. Their view is closer, tighter, limited to the down on the ground rush of movement and shift to cover. But usually from his perch, the archer can take it all in, quantifies, and then doles out the intel.
With Wanda, though, much easier. Just gotta be the outrider to her stagecoach of pain. "Targets, two containers over, right hand side." Another arrow is drawn even as he angles her towards those targets he's removing the threat of another that's on the docks near the ship and drawing bead.
It's just a distant /pffft-thwok-ZZZZT/ as another tazer impacts one of the gunmen and sends him writhing to the ground.
"Take it slow, Scarlet. Got nothin' ta prove, and Spidey's gonna tie these guys up proper. Move on the containers if you get an eyeball on them." There's a slight hiss of static, then his voice comes over the comms again. "We're lookin' for 12285 and 12286."

Playing support also means playing the eyes. Imagine, a guy codenamed Hawkeye being good at spotting trouble. For that reason alone, she pirouettes on her toes and darts for the aforementioned right, headed to Clint's rough three-o'clock. The simmering power at hand isn't visible, she just looks suspiciously like another statuesque, pretty Eastern European girl who managed not to get wrapped up with a bow and stuck in a metal birthday present bound for some foreign destination (or American, that's almost worse to consider). When everyone's favourite neighbourhood Spider-Man is busy looping webbing and leading his bad men on a merry chase, she slinks around the container that holds a shred of protection. Her back to it, she slips down into a crouch and listens. For conversation, for rounds chambered, or the clumping gallop of feet overhead and coming her way. The relative stillness around her isn't a good sign. No guns blazing. No guns blazing. No melting the wall of the container, that's just collateral and someone will end up complaining.

Her gaze lifts, checking the numbers. Slowly the witch rises, murmuring, "Nyet." Not 12285, but the row she's after isn't the one she is concerned about. The one ahead, ticking forward. Peering around the corner, if she spots anyone her - or she spots them - it's an instant act. Hands rise, her eyes huge. «Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me, please!»

In a silent corner, Cava for now watches the cranes unoading, at times looking down at the note she has scribbled upon her wrist. A container number that is destined for the Purifiers…

Two crewmen spot Wanda, and they don't have assault rifles. However they do have perfectly-serviceable pistols, which they both raise towards Wanda.
Then a round ball drops and hits the floor right between them. They stare down at it with identical looks of CRAP before it goes off, plastering them on opposite containers with webbing.
Sipidey lands on the top of one, looking down at Wanda. "You all right? They didn't hurt you?"

"Aww geez," Across the comms it's hard to mistake Clint's grumpiness as he critiques Wanda. "You're doing Little Bo Peep again? That's what you're doing, you're doing Little Bo Peep." He shakes his head and in the whirl of action and mayhem he'll catch sight of a fire team that's trying to bracket Spider-Man.
He clicks a button on the side of his quiver, causing the arrowhead to cycle to a net icon. A motor in that quiver hums and then he draws the shaft from its housing, nocks, fires. The next instant a large web-thin series of tendrils explode around those men that had been threatening Spider-Man's flank.
"Scarlet," He frowns and focuses, "I got eyes on the containers. 12285, 12286, on the ship. Top of the second and third stacks from the front."

Oh no, there's someone with a pistol! Whatever shall we do? Throw webbing at it. The web bomb splattering in a most impressive sound, because how could it /not/ have a fine sound, sends Wanda back a few steps and throwing up her arms. Her Russian fluidly scampers up the octave to sit in that high, desperate state. «Oh no! You have been taken down by the Spider-Man!» It probably translates more like 'Man who is a spider,' but precision in a very complicated language is like that. But she sounds utterly delighted, for all those webbed people who might be staring at her with hateful eyes.

"Good," Wanda repeats in English, avoiding rolling her eyes. She's a bit too old for that, Clint notwithstanding. Her eyes narrow with the coordinates, and she nods to a direction straight off her shoulder. "People in there. You get six, I get five." That last bit is to Spidey if he hasn't run away, and she makes some vague gesture that could be a salute. Except girls, even ones in sensible, thick-soled boots, don't usually tread an inch or two above the ground. A faint glittering trail rises around her, getting her onto the first platform. Then it's time for an exciting sidescroller quest, Princess of Transia. She's cheating, but that's how she rolls when not equipped with fingers that stick to walls naturally. "I show /you/ Bo-Peep. One day you will hear about Puchta or Aradia."

As Chava waits, action starts up, and Chava is almost in the fray. Almost, because she still had ducked low, trying to hide for a couple more minutes when Wanda and Spidey jumped the gun. GREAT… can't they just wait for the actual punishable offense? Steling herself, she throws herself forward, trying to dodge to the next cover closer at the shooting enemies, trying to get close enough to them to feel what they wear… and then concentrate on their underwear. BEcause, as Chava chose, whatever they grabbed in the morning wasn't what they will end the day in. G-String was the order of the minute, and retailoring those to fit her command she'd do… not just any G-string… super tight crotch biting G-Strings.

Oh…well. Maybe she didn't need help after all. Well, how was HE supposed to know that?
Forget it. Onward and upward.
He leaps up to the container with six people in it, then spots the lock. Tempered steel, rust-proof. He grabs it and TWISTS, and the lock snaps and drops off.
He opens the door and looks inside. "Hey! Take it easy. We're the…"
Then he has to duck as a poop-pail is thrown at him.
"Hey! Good Guy! Me!" He points to himself. "You speaka da lingo?"
Then he heard something that sounded like grown man making agonized cries that start low and end high. What is THAT all about?

Mikelus had seen enough. It was time to put some distance between himself and this…disaster.
He headed towards the armored SUV he traveled around in. "Get me out of this madhouse!" he barks at the driver.

"You act like I haven't worked with a Russkie for a good long decade before meeting you." The comm crackles again as Clint frowns to himself, lightly tapping the ear piece with a fingertip. "Spidey's with you, m'gonna take this chance to relocate. Hawkeye's left the perch, cover yer own butt 'til you hear otherwise."
That said he /drops/ from the crane, a grapple line spooling out with a whirl of cabling that catches once he almost reaches the bottom. The hook is detached from his belt and he drops the last few feet, landing in a crouch then rising up to break into a nearly silent run, heading to the next observation point.
Which, weirdly enough, takes him towards a particular armored SUV as Mikelus rushes in that direction.

The mutant isn't on the coms. She doesn't even have some comm or something with her. Yet despite lacking a chance to communicae her plan, he's hard on trying to get the enemies fully occupied with trying to stay males and not becoming neutrums as she focusses on the remodeled underwear and makes it even tighter while trying to get closer to the container she was actually interested in. Sadly it was still on the ship, among the next to be unloaded, and she only could hide right at thefoot of the crane…

She said thank you! Wanda has good manners, enforced by a many millennia-old sorceress. Honest! That counts for something, surely. Wanda has to climb up the different containers, corrugated metal hot under her hands. When Spidey rips open the door and dodges a pail of offal, the sound from the witch is less than pleased. She darts to the side, hovering in midair. The one crate below — five — is hers. She plants her hand upon the metal, ducked into a low crouch. "Move. I can keep them safe for now." Big words for a girl. But the twisting, complaining parts of the doors originate from the hinges and the lock that holds them safely shut on bucking seas. Any technology, even the simple kind, can fail with the right chaotic resonance. She spins fortune there, focused on that low crouch, until the doors might just fall straight off. Not loud, but there's certainly something to be said for the light of day — or night — showing up.

"Be careful," she hisses in English through the comlink to Clint. It's rare she bothers. This is a rare occasion, especially with the collection of trafficking victims free to go. «The path is clear,» she says in Russian, which is a fair sight better than her English. «Let's go. Straight ahead and then away from the cars. Quick!» If that doesn't get a response, English is next, a distant third Serbian.

The driver had the engine idling the entire time, which was good. This vehicle had a powerful, computer-assisted fuel injection system.
However, the arrow punching through the rood and into the engine block suddenly discharges, the bolt of electrical energy sending the computer to car PC heaven and killing the car. While the doors were locked, which becomes a problem when Mikelus tries to open his door and realizes it has become a four-wheel-drive jail cell.
Spider-Man looked around. There were guys walking around bow-legged or not walking around at all. He was stymied, but far be it from him to look a gift wedgie in the shorts. "Be right back, ladies. No more poop-throwing." He left the container door slightly ajar, then went around webbing incapaciated gunmen to the ground.

Outside that SUV a dark silhouette steps up near the windows of the car. It's enough that the ones on the inside can make out some of the man, can make out the way he saunters up and seems to pull something from behind his back. Then there's the way the man with the… bow and arrow? He sort of rests a little egg-looking object on the hood of the vehicle.
"You," Clint gestures, using a mix of pantomime and ASL, "Stay put, or else this…?" He points at the egg-object that wobbles on the car, "Goes boom?" He spreads his fingers in the air making the universal movement to signify kaboomness.
"Ok? Ok." That said he returns to the comms, "Think I've got some of the guys down here in the SUV. Gonna key emergency services in, give them the all clear unless you got more targets."

Those who haven't gone forth from the crate are given a suggestion by Wanda running across it. No levitation this time, she's here to notify them of her presence. Anyone refusing to come out, too traumatized or cowering in the corner, will be given a few comforting words or, if desperation calls it in, a gesture to hasten them along. A gesture that might include floating nearer, but only if facing an angry, spitting model-type ready to put aside her diet of cigarettes and one lettuce wrap to try and bite the Transian sorceress' face off. Practicalities can be found elsewhere. "This way," she gestures, guiding them away from the webbed goons and finding a clear path back towards the train cars. Relative ease to get them to the nearest safe route where an ambulance is likely to show up. The common thread is lending protection and her involvement. She's an active participant in their rescue, unable to see Clint and watching Spidey jump around, sticking things to the ground. She throws him a thumbs-up for effort, hustling her little geese all the way along. Scuffed feet and the patter of a jog suits well enough, sometimes guiding, sometimes following.

Chava Kang growls a little as she finally jums out of the shadow to reach for one of the ship's lines to pull herself up and get to the container she actually wants to get to. Though as she gets to the ship's edge, she sighs after pulling herself over, eying the containter some 20 feet up over her in a stack down to the bilge. Why can't anytong be easy? She growl as she looks at one of the guys that was out of range when she fixed the underwear of some of his comrads, reworking his boxers onto being about 4 numbers too small and then trying to become a Fundoshi one extra number smaller.

Spidey looks around. This is practically over. Mob boss trapped in his own car, crew and goons either pinned, pained, or popped away. Three cop cars, one SWAT vehicle, three ambulances endering the dock areas. And the Modern Legolas looking all official.
He spotted the woman leading the other women away and asked ALICE to send an ambulance to the train yard.
As he fired a webline to head away, the first cop on the scene looks down at one savagely-wedgied person and said, "I think this one's a woman."
His partner shook his head. "That's a guy."
The first cop said, "Sorry, wasn't clear. I think this one's a woman NOW."

It sucks to be Ms. Demeanor down there, ouch.

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