Summary:A Blackbird and a Spider deal with a move into Staten Island by the Maggia. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Helena told Peter she was busy tonight. A family thing. It wasn't entirely untrue, seeing as how policing Staten Island and its criminals is kind of the family business. But the whole truth was just that she needed to get out in the field for a bit, before she took the leap on the SHIELD front.
So tonight, Blackbird haunts the rooftops of Staten Island, looking for crimes to stop. She moves across the rooftops almost as well as a spider can, familiar with them from childhood. A running leap here into a tumble there, a swing along a grappling line. Running full tilt along a slender beam only to leap to a pillar and slide down to the next roof. She's lost to the rhthym of it all.
Spider-Man is also in the neighborhood, which is not so friendly but he's working on that. Someone rumored to be brokering a deal for a mob boss named Silvermane was putting together something tonight. Spidey's big guess was heavy armaments - Silvermane probably had a Rolodex (he was old school) full of arms dealers and probably updated it every year the same way many update their Christmas card list. Probably around the same time, and for similar reasons.
But quite a few arms shipments have been snagged by the NYPD after SOMEONE suspiciously spider-themed had visited their warehouses and left a web-cartridge or two lighter with a bunch of bad guys webbed to the floor, the walls, the ceiling, or various heavy objects.
Tonight, Spidey is expecting Silvermane to make contact with one of his older friends who slipped through CBP's intelligence nets.
Spidey lands on a ledge, looking around. There was supposed to be a panel truck with a Famous Amos Cookies logo on the side. He was going to follow that to the meeting place.
Blackbird is headed from another rooftop to the west, catching sight of Spider-Man just in time to adjust course. She lands lightly on the rooftop next to him, following his gaze toward the street.
"Hey there stranger, long time no see," comes the altered voice, that purr of amusement beneath the surface. "What's brought you out to this neighborhood?"
Spidey blinks. No threat, so no Spider-Sense, but he did get a sense of her before she landed, so he's not completely off-guard as she drops in. He turns to face her, but keeps his face angled for a clear view of the street below.
"…Blackbird. Yes, it has been a while. Hope you're doing okay." He points to the street. "A Maggia boss named Silvermane, old school mobster. He's setting up some kind of alliance with a local gang here and I think a friend of his is supplying arms to sweeten the arrangement. A panel truck should be rolling through here any minute, and I was going to follow it to the big meeting. Someone forgot to bring the donuts…"
"Yeah, we know of the guy," Blackbird nods, looking to the street below. "He's old-school, pretty entrenched. Wouldn't have pegged him for hooking up with the new kids on the block, though." She steps up to the edge of the roof next to him, scanning the street with no apparent fear of falling. "Need some back up?"
Spidey looked to her. She was certainly intent and focused. Still he hated dragging others into his situations. Still…
"Okay…let's see how it works. We can…hey, there it is." He points to a truck just making the turn onto the street, with FAMOUS AMOS COOKIES on the side. He raised one arm, then fired what looked like a glob of webbing to hit the roof of the truck.
"Okay. Spider-Tracer's attached. Now, let's follow and stay above their sight line for now." He angles the arm up and fires a webline, then looks to Blackbird. "Want a lift?"
Hey, if it's on Staten Island, it's already Bat business. This is their home turf. Blackbird smirks slightly behind her mask as the tracer goes onto the truck. Yet another of those different webs, of course. The offer of a ride, though, gets a more serious consideration.
"Sure you can carry two?" she asks, as if she didn't already know the exact tensile strength of the webbing and just how much he can hold. "I can swing myself if not."
Spidey grins. "This webline can support up to 1,000 pounds even on standard brick. Mor on more solid support. Believe me when I say it won't be a problem." He looks to his back, and a harness drops out of one cloth panel, attacked to the backpack he wears. "Strap in. You don't have any inner ear issues or get motion sick, do you?"
"I am not wearing a baby carrier," Blackbird snorts a laugh, stepping over to loop an arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry about me. I've been doing this as long as I can remember." Maybe not to Spider degrees, but…Experience counts for something, right?
Spidey shrugs. "Okay, but hang on tight. It's…kind of a ride."
Then as the truck turns a corner, Spider-Man jumps out into space, one arm uder her arms and along her back. Then the webline tightens and they are off.
It IS different. There is usually the occasional pause when dealing with grapple guns—fire, swing, land, retract the cable, then fire it and go again.
Spider-Man doesn't seem to bother with pausing, or even landing someplace. Many times, he releases one webline and is hurtling through the air before he fires another webline and is off again. Also, Blackbird has run along thin ledges and across roofs. Spidey seems to like running along walls like a videogame character, only dashing sideways along a building for ten or twenty yards. When he fires his weblines, he seems to do it almost carelessly, on instinct, but his instinct is always correct on finding the right place to anchor his weblines…
It's different from grappling, sure. But it's not so different from free-running, except for the sides of walls part. It's everything those things try to be but just can't quite. Blackbird doesn't seem to have trouble staying with him, holding on firmly and even shifting her own body weight to keep them both centered. She meant it when she said she's been doing this for a long time.
Four minutes later, Spider-Man lands on the roof of a parking garage near a defunct office building. "Looks like they're holding it here, two floors down on the 4th floor parking area." He puts Blackbird on her feet again, and isn't even breathing hard after the eight-minute rollercoaster ride. "All right…most likely they're going to watch the stairs, maybe post lookouts. What are your thoughts?"
Blackbird seems to have her feet under herself when they land, though she's grinning broadly behind her mask. It's enough that he can probably see it in her eyes, even in the shadow of the hood. "How's your blind fighting?" she asks, crouching at the edge of the roof to get a look at the lay of the land. "Can shoot in a couple of smoke bombs so they can't see us coming, should take any guns on the field out of play."
Spidey looks thoughtful. "Okay. Try coming in with the pyrotechnics from the east side. I'll come in from the west side, see if we can both catch them off-guard. How does that sound?"
"Sounds like a plan to me, Spider-Man." Blackbird reaches into one of the pouches on her belt, pulling out a pair of small balls and eyeing the distance to the garage. "Ready?"
Once he indicates that he's good, she cycles the vision on her contacts into infrared, takes aim, then whips the smoke bombs into the parking garage, filling it with opaque smoke. As soon as the balls are out of her hand, she grabs her grappling gun, shooting over to the east side and loosing her staff from her thigh.
It was supposed to be a simple arrangement. Go in, get the agreement, hand over the guns, and go.
Silvermane, of course, didn't attend, but the word was passed down to Stark, the mid-level boss, to handle it. He figured he had it all sorted. He brought six of his stand-up guys, and the Islanders brought six of their own. All nice and easy.
Except it all seemed to go wrong in an instant.
Right when they were about to seal the deal with the guns, acrid smoke suddenly billowed into the area. There were few cars to take cover behind, except for his Lincoln Town Car, the bulletproof model he used often, and the panel truck. People scattered every which way, finding a place to grab cover and get ready to shoot trouble as the smoke followed the air currents and filled the parking level in seconds…
Blackbird steps into the smoke knowing exactly where she's headed. In the chaos of the smoke, she snaps the staff out to full length, all the better to allow her to attack and then disappear into the cover of the smoke. Whap whap whap! One end of the staff cracks down on a hand holding a gun, while the other whips upward to crack under a gangster's chin and drop him to the pavement.
Stark looked around. He didn't have anything useful in the smoke, but he didn't want to take the chance. "Stay sharp. I think it's one of those Bat-types they have around here. Put your back to a wall and STAY PUT!"
His men were fairly well-trained. The Islanders, though, where wheeling around, firing every which way. One of them yelped, dropping his gun, then got sent to dreamland. The others were panicking.
Stark swept his pistol from side to side. "Sound off!"
"One!" "Three!" "Five!" "Six!" the men answered quickly, in order…except Two and Four weren't answering. Did their attacker have help?
Stark isn't the only one listening to those sound-offs. As Starks men call out their locations, Blackbird reaches into her pouches to pull out a few smaller pellets. Slightly more than just smoke bombs, these let out loud cracks when they land near the men, enough to distract and disorient. Meanwhile, she keeps her staff spinning in her other hand, slamming the end down on one islander's foot before sweeping his legs out from beneath him with the other end.
The whole situation is terminally screwed, but he needed at least one witness to corroborate what had happened. "Everyone get to the car!"
The smoke is thinning out enough for him to see two of the original six arrive at the car. "Where are the others?!"
"I dunno, man!"
"*I* know."
Stark froze. He didn't look, but one of the others did nad gasped. "Ah, FUCK it's SPIDER-MAN!"
"Jeez, man…LANGUAGE," Spidey says from behind them, crouched on the stone support pillar.
"You know, I'm a little bit hurt to hear that strong a reaction to Spider-Man on Batman's home turf," comes Blackbird's altered voice from the smoke, along with a crack that suggests someone's arm might be broken. Whoops?
Stark glared at him, then saw One reach for his gun. "No, don't-"
But it was too late. Spider-Man had webbed him to the car in an eyeblink, arm still pressed against his chest.
Stark sighed. "Silvermane's going to have your head for this, Webhead."
"Good, I'll add him to the list." He looks into the dissipating smoke. "You got things covered on your end, Blackbird?"
There are two more loud thunks from the smoke, then Blackbird comes out of it, setting her staff on the ground and leaning against it. "Mission accomplished," she declares to Spider-Man, giving Stark a long look. "You should really be thanking him, you know," she points out. "He's a lot nicer than Batman."
Spidey bows to the female vigilante. "Why, thank you, Blackbird." He looks back to Stark. "So…what's Whitemane up to in Staten Island?"
Stark glared at him and hissed, "LAWYER."
Spidey sighed. "Maybe we can ask your would-be friends." He looked back to Blackbird. "Know who runs the Islanders, BB?"
"Lawyer?" Blackbird echoes, laughing. "Who do you think you're talking to, the cops? And in what borough? Even if we were the cops you'd be fifty fifty on that actually getting you a break."
She looks over her shoulder to where the smoke is starting to dissipate around bodies, all neatly zip-tied. "Sure, we know who runs everything around here. And where they meet. Where they live. What their favorite restaurants are…"
Spidey nods. "Can you think of a good reason why they would need…" He walks over to the truck, then slides it open. He opens one of the crates…and stops. "Good gravy…"
Then he reaches in and pulls out a shiny chrome weapon that looks like a rifle.
"These looks like…well, the power source is alien. I think these are reverse-engineered plasma rifles…"
"Damn, I wouldn't have thought any of these guys had the know-how for that." Blackbird comes over to get a look at the equipment, then arches a brow at Stark. "Or the people skills to make friends with aliens, for that matter. Where're you getting this kid of stuff anyhow?"
Stark winces. "See my previous statement, interfering b-"
Spidey points a finger at him. "MANNERS, Stark…"
Stark does the smart thing and shuts up.
"Called the cops…and CBP, and ATF. Figure they can fight over who gets jurisdiction of this mess. Alien tech is a federal beef." He looked to Stark. "Guess what? NOW, you can get Homeland Security up in your…business."
"See? That's the sort of thing that makes me doubt your people skills." Blackbird leans against the door of the truck, crossing her arms loosely over her chest. "If you'd just told us, maybe I could've convinced him not to call the feds, but…" She trails off, shrugging. "I'm just saying, you've made some choices here."
Spider-Man looked around. "Sirens. Cops will be here soon. Shall we exeunt? I am pretty sure Starkman is not going anywhere." He pointed to the stairs leading to the roof.
"You're a dead man, Webhead."
"People keep saying that and here I am, breathing and everything."
"The sad part is the threats don't get any better, do they? Same old same old." Blackbird pushes off the van, stepping over to sling an arm over Spider-Man's shoulder. "Hi ho Silver, away!"
Swinging away is easier. Nothing to chase, no tracker to keep an eye out for. And he does happen to get a little fancier, a little more Olympic-level performance for a solid 15 minutes before he finally slows down to land on the roof of a warehouse, not far from the ferry. He sets Blackbird down, then says, "Well…you seem to have a flair for the dramatic."
"Hey, when you can't dodge the bullets, sometimes you have to work your way around things in different ways," Blackbird replies, wry. "Trade bat-secret. More than half of the battle is mental. If you can unsettle them, scare them, make then doubt themselves? Then you don't have nearly as much work to do."
Spidey chuckles, then tilts his head. "Sorry. The Spider-Comm system also makes sure I get text messages. it's okay." He pauses. "How are things with you guys? It must be nice, having your own built-in support network."
"Sometimes more supportive than others," Blackbird snorts softly, rueful. "But yeah. We usually handle things pretty well. And if someone gets hurt or in a bind, they know who to reach out to. You're not so alone yourself, with your bevy of spider-ladies. How are they all doing, by the way? Seems like we haven't crossed paths that much lately."
Spider-Man sighed. "Well, let's see…Spider-Girl is handling her own thing in Spanish Harlem, Silk is handling her family issues. Haven't heard from any others. Met a Spider-Guy, but haven't seen him since. So, no, my life has very little in common with a harem anime right now."
Blackbird pauses, arching a brow with a sound suspiciously like a laugh muffled behind her mask. "Harem anime is a thing?" she asks, voice strained by trying to keep the laughter back. "Sorry, sorry, don't need to answer that, I probably don't want to know anyhow."
She takes a few steps back, holding her arms out to her sides. "Give us a call the next time you're hitting up Staten Island. No need to go it alone."
Spider-Man sighed. "I'll text you from the Staten Island ferry." He rubs the nape of his neck. "Uhm…okay. If I hear anything about those guns, I'll give you a heads-up, okay?"
He was getting some weird feeling, but it scuttled away from him when he shined a spotlight on it. Maybe he was just tired.
"Take care of yourself, Blackbird."
"You too, Spider-Man," Blackbird replies, tossing a salute his way before the simply falls over the side of the building only to swing safely away back to the depths of Staten Island.
Odd bird, that one.