Summary:Anya and Gwen team up to teach some ninjas a lesson, and learn that something is afoot — but what? Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's a pleasant evening in New York. Or, at least, it's a pleasant evening in most of New York. On a street in Brooklyn, one masked superhero is standing on the corner of a highrise roof, hands planted on her hips, looking down into the alleyway. Gwen, her identity concealed behind the mask of Spider-Woman, takes off her backpack and plops it down on the rooftep, giving a quick bit of webline to tie it down.
"Hey, anyone nearby here in Brooklyn?" she inquires, speaking over the Spider-Comms. "Nothing serious, y'know, just got a feeling I'm about to get into something way over my head."
And why is Gwen getting in over her head, today? Well, it might have to do with the group of people in the alleyway who are all changing their clothes out of view of the public, dressing up like a bunch of ninjas and getting a variety of weapons ready, from swords to guns. One wonders what they're planning.
Over the Spider-Comm comes the sound of pounding bass and drums, then the voice of Anya. "Spider-Girl here. I can be there like, pretty fast." The sound of music is fading, as if she's headed away from wherever it is she's partying. "Any idea what's up?"
"Uhm, well, I'm not sure." Spider-Woman shrugs her shoulders, and continues watching the people below. "I'm just watching like… eight people in an alley. They're… they're all chicks. They're dresing themselves up like ninjas, and they've got swords, guns, a bow and arrows, nunchuks… Okay, that's definitely a tommy gun, and… is that an AK-47? I think that's what AK-47s look like." She crouches down, and looks up the street one way, then the other. "There's two banks on this street, think it's anything to do with that?"
"Shit! Probably. I'll get there fast as I can!" Anya's voice is rushed, and a door can be heard slamming behind her as the din of the party fades. "Keep an eye on them, and tag 'em all with the network okay?"
"Got it." Gwen takes a moment (she hasn't actually used the Comms that way before) but after a moment, notes about the various individuals start appearing. "Oh geeze, that one's got a rocket launcher? like seriously, where does that crap come from." Gwen takes a moment to load a couple of fresh cartridges into her webshooters — don't want to be running out mid-fight, afterall. "Uhm, okay, so there's Tommy Gun lady, AK-47 lady, Rocket Launcher lady with a sidearm, Katana lady, Nunchuks lady, Bow and Arrow lady, Uzi Lady, and… polearm… lady. I dunno what that thing's called, it's just long and pointy."
"Number one goal is gonna be those guns," Spider-Girl says over the comm. The sound of web slinging can be heard, along with the muted sound of passing wind. "Rocket launcher and archer second. Make sense? Keep following them, quietly, and soon as I get there we'll make a play."
Spider-Girl is whinging it hard, dipping and diving between buildings to close in on Gwen's position.
"Got it." The sound of her making a running leap comes over the comms, followed quickly by a landing on gravel — another rooftop. "So… there's a bank up the street. Closed right now of course, but who knows… there's a jewelry store, looks upscale." She pauses. "Kind of a lot of firepower for an after-hours smash and grab, isn't it?" She pauses, taking another look downwards into the alley. "They're not moving yet. One of them is looking out into the street. Not much traffic though, at least not right around here. Nothing unusual."
"No one outfit that well does a smash and grab," Spider-Girl agrees. "And you said they're dressed up like ninjas? No, this is… ungh! Damn scaffolding. No, this is something else. I'm almost there, like… four blocks!"
"Well, the upside is, I think you'll get here before they do their thing," Gwen muses. "Whatever their… thing is. I mean they must be planning some kind of large assault, but who knows on—" She pauses, looking up the street again. "Hey, that's… that's an armored car. But it's *just* an armored car, I still can't see that they'd need this many people and that much firepower for that, would they? Seems a little random."
"I dunno. Stay sharp."
Spider-Girl's approach goes unnoticed until a sound is heard in the shadows. She draws up next to Gwen, and already has her backpack slung over her chest. First, out comes a granola bar and she shoves it into her mouth post haste. Then comes her sleek, black spider drone, whom she throws into the air with a flick of her hand.
"Arana, marca carro blindado, escolta."
The drone whirrs to life and heads high into the sky, her lights offline as she heads for that armored car.
The armored car is on its way. Coming around a corner up the street, approaching from the opposite direction, is a large semi, carrying a trailer that proudly advertises the awesomeness of Big Macs and Chicken Nuggets. Gwen makes a note of the armored car and the semi on the Network, before planting her hands on her hips once more.
"That's still a lot of firepower," she comments. "I don't think we should just jump down into the alleyway and start trying to beat them silly, that seems like a fast way to get bullet wounds? Also bad if Rocket Launcher person panics."
"Nope," agrees Spider-Girl quietly but with a calm swiftness to her voice. "But they're clearly up to no good. So here's what we do." She gestures across the rooftop, to a neighboring rooftop across the alley within which the bad guys are hunkered. "We take either side, web up the guns first. Then we drop in, and we kick ass." A quick point downward. "A rocket moves slower than a bullet. Guns first, launcher second, then we handle the other ones. You got it?"
She waits for Gwen to confirm, before dashing into the darkness. Her body seems to phase out of existence every time darkness strikes it, and she leaps quietly over the alleyway below without even using webs.
"Ready?" she subvocalizes over the spider-comm.
The armored car and the semi are both still approaching; one of the apparent ninjas is keeping a lookout, waiting for something to be making an arrival. Might be one of those two vehicles, or it might not. The one armed with a Katana pulls out a smart phone, dials, and starts talking to someone on the other end very quietly; not enough to make out from all the way up here, at least. The rest are just standing in some presumed order, waiting; the one with the rocket launcher is standing right near the exit to the alleyway, and at a nod from the lookout, shoulders the weapon.
"Got it," is the quick reply from Gwen. She crouches on the edge of the rooftop where she's at. "I'll get the AK-47, it's closer to me. You get he Tommy Gun? That'll just leave the Uzi." She leans back a bit as one of the ninjas looks up; not a 'suspicious' look up, just a bored and waiting sort of look up, but still. "Tell me when to go, I had to duck back or I was gonna get seen."
"Now." Anya's word interrupts Gwen after she says 'I was', and it's because that rocket launcher was just shouldered.
Twin weblines are fired into the alley, each of them black as night. The first one latches onto the hand that is ready to fire the rocket launcher, the other attaches itself to the Uzi. Both weblines are yanked back hard enough to snap arms in two, and without a word, Spider-Girl is flipping head over foot into the alley, aiming to land right upon Tommy Gun's shoulders.
Two targets is still just a bit beyond Gwen's abilities. (Actually, it is not, but she thinks it is.) She looks back over the edge and fires a single webline, aimed at the AK-47; as she yanks it out of its wielder's hand a single wild shot blows a hole through both sides of a dumpster, but does no further damage. She lets the weapon sail over her head and onto the roof behind her, before she too leaps over the edge, plummeting straight down for the woman with the nunchuks.
The one with the Tommy Gun doesn't waste any time, lifting the weapon towards the roof Gwen is (or was) on, opening up with a spray of fully automatic weapons fire. Bullets ricochet off bricks and smash through windows; around twenty rounds go off before Anya lands on her shoulders, squashing her flat. An Uzi goes flying, unfired, as does a rocket launcher.
"Company!" yells the woman with a sword. "We have spiders," she snarls into her phone, before tucking it away again. All together, the ninjas get to work quickly, taking up positions at either end of the alley. The one who had a Tommy Gun is unconscious; the ones who've been disarmed raise their fists, and the one with a bow jumps up on the dumpster and looses an arrow at Anya.
First goal accomplished; but there's still a wayward Tommy Gun to be worried about. Spider-Girl does nothing to dodge the arrow that is fired her way; it strikes her in the shoulder and glances right off the spider silk that encloses her body.
Hissing, she goes low, legs spread out in an impossibly nimble manner, with hands stretched before and behind her. Weblines lance out, one snatching up the Tommy Gun and dragging it toward her, while the other lashes out for the bow and rips it right out of the woman's hand.
Each weapon is captured in her hands, and she spins around in a circle. Each weapon is turned over and used as a blunt force object, but she isn't attacking. No, this is a show of intimidation.
The woman with the bow is busy drawing another arrow when the bow is abruptly ripped out of her hand; that's inconvenient, and she swears to prove it. The rest of the women who are armed, however, don't seem to be intimidated — or rather they do, but they're going to fight anyway.
"Two, Three, Five, Eight," snaps the woman with the Katana, "Deal with Spider-Girl. Chase her away or kill her if necessary." The one who formerly had a rocket launcher draws her sidearm — a fairly impressive piece — and starts opening fire, while the two who are unarmed and the one with a Naginata (Gwen's 'polearm lady') move in, fists and weapons raised. "Beat it before we have to stab you," shouts one of them.
"The rest of you, get on the newby." Katana-lady leaps at Gwen, taking up a position opposite where the one with the Nunchuks is going after her; the one who no longer has a bow pulls out a couple of arows to try to use as daggers, and Tommy Gun lady just… lies where she is.
Gwen, for her part in this, catches one of the nunchuks and rips it out of the woman's hand, tossing it over her shoulder before doing the same with the other one and using it to block the katana. "Are you all mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Yeah, I'm a newby so tell me how I shoul beat you better," she inquires, making a grab for the katana but missing it. "I don't think they like me," she subvocalizes to Anya.
The one bearing a sidearm manages to get a couple of shots through. One ricochet's off the rocket launcher and pelts into the brick, while another bounces off the Tommy Gun and ends up piercing its former wielder's leg. Not a sound from her; she's out cold, and now with a gunshot wound to the leg.
The third shot bounces off Spider-Girl's shoulder, the same one that had been struck before. At this, the rocket launcher gets sent on a beeline throw to its former owner's chest, a throw strong enough to crack ribs and knock the wind out of a normal person.
"Oh god," she breathes, while wielding the Tommy Gun at the other three, and even goes so far as to check the safety. "I'm so scared. You girls like guns, huh?"
The Tommy Gun is lowered and engaged, loosing a spray of bullets toward the feet of two who are before her. "I hate guns!" she shouts over the din, and is hell bent on making those girls dance until the rounds are spent.
"Make them fear you," she subvocalizes back to Gwen.
The women Anya is shooting at all dive for cover; well, other than the one who got hit in the chest by a rocket launcher and is laying on the ground wheezing. She gets pulled clear by one of her compatriots, as they all duck around the corners of the buildings. The ones fighting Gwen are all doing so with bare hands now, other than the lady with the Katana, who seems to be much more skilled than the rest and is avoiding some rather earnest attempts from Gwen, both with purloined nunchuk and webs, to claim her weapon.
"How about I just make them unconscious?" the newby spider sub-vocalizes back; she clobbers the former owner of the nunchuk on the head with the weapon, hard enough to induce a few hours of mandatory sleep, but not hard enough to cause anything serious (well, maybe a concussion). The remaining two women circle around her, and the unarmed one punches her in the back. "Really?" asks Gwen, glancing overh er shoulder; the one with the Katana takes the opportunity to try and decapitate her while she's not looking, but Spider-Woman just ducks under it.
Once Spider-Girl's Tommy Gun is out of bullets (which actually takes a while), the remaining women on her side peek back around the corner. One of them has dashed off to reclaim the launcher, and is pointing it down the alleyway. "Back off now or we find out if this still works," she snarls. "Bad day for everyone."
With her foes scattered, Spider-Girl ejects the clip and throws it skyward. Then she advances upon the edge of the alleyway, lifts the weapon, and with a mighty growl, begins bending the weapon into an L-shape.
"It's globbed full of webbing," Spider-Girl spits back. "Shoot it, it'll backfire and blow your ass to hell." The Tommy Gun, now bent all out of shape, is thrown to the ground. "How 'bout you tell us what the hell you're doing here, before we beat your asses and web you up for the cops."
"Disperse!" The order comes from the Katana-lady, who's still busy trying to chop pieces off of Spider-Woman, who is likewise trying to take that sword away but so far not managing it. The ninjas who are still upright take that instruction, and rather than answering Anya they all just pick a different direction and go. The semi and armored car drive past each other, and keep going; their drivers are probably unaware anything is even going on. The unarmed woman in front of Gwen would go somewhere, but Spider-Woman hits her with a glob of web that sticks her hand to the wall.
"You should probably WOAH!" Gwen jumps back as the sword almost kisses her neck, spider-sense or not; "That things sharp, be more careful!" she insists, as the still armed woman tries again, and again, before backing off towards the back of the alley — which is a dead end. "Come on, you don't think you're going to get out that way, do you?" She tosses the nunchuks over her shoulder, and flares her hands, palms upwards. "Give up now, I'm the newby. The scary one will be here in a moment and I'm sure you'd rather surrender to me."
"Arana, etiqueta y sigue!" Her bluff seems to have worked, but this isn't over yet. As the drone moves to peg the retreating ninjas with her sensors, Spider-Girl spins around and takes a deep breath. A blue glow in the shape of a spider can briefly be seen through the costume on her back, before an arachnid hide forms around her and changes her, truly, into a monster.
Plodding toward Gwen, her bulbous arachnid eyes are lain upon the retreating one.
"You rang?" she asks Gwen, with attention still upon the other.
"This woman is a big meany," Gwen complains, pointing at the lady with the sword. "I told her she should give up before you come, but she wouldn't." She takes a step back, switching from just pointing with fingers, to pointing with her fingers on her webshooters. "Seriously, you should just give up. I'm way nicer than she is, you're about to have a really bad day. Much worse than anyone else has had so far."
The sword-wielding woman shakes her head. "I don't think so," she replies, taking a few steps back herself. "You've won today's round, but we'll be better prepared next time. Even if you get me, my superiors already have the footage, so we'll be much better prepared next time, just in case you show up again." She shifts her grip on the sword; and despite Anya's appearance seems to be keeping her cool, whereas all the remaining ninjas who are both present and conscious (like the lady webbed to the wall) are all in various stages of freaking right out. One of them has passed out from the sight; the one on the wall right here is busy trying to rip the web off, and is clearly contemplating the act of biting her hand off to get away.
"Who are your superiors?" Anya's voice isn't nice. She's done her fair share of talking nasty to mean people, ever since she was a little girl. It comes naturally to her. She keeps walking toward the trapped ninja, her feet making horrible crunching sounds against the damp, trash strewn alley pavement.
As she walks, black webbing begins seeping out of her claw-like hands. It catches onto her clawed fingertips and is spread in various directions, forming a web work around and behind her that very much resembles a funnel spider's lair.
"Tell me," she demands. "Names. NOW."
Spider-Woman takes another step back, keeping her webshooters trained on the sword-lady. Her eyes narrow, and she watches her movements carefully. "You really should talk," she suggests. "I mean it's not like we aren't going to find out anyway. We're spiders, we're good at this sort of stuff." She steps back to the wall and puts first one foot and then the other, walking backwards and upwards a few steps. "Come on, don't be coy."
The woman stuck face-first to the wall by her hands, meanwhile, seems to be growing more terrified by the minute. "We work for Tessa Winchester," she blurts out. "And she reports to—AIIAAA!" Her voice cuts short as the leader switches her grip on her Katana and plunges it into the captive woman's back, leaving a mark in the brick wall before pulling the weapon out once more. Calmly, she produces a cloth and cleans the end of the blade with it, then drops it.
"I mean it," suggests the woman with the sword. "Back off now. You won this round. Go enjoy your victory."
A gasp is given when one woman kills the other. Anya stops dead in her tracks, and though the lifeless eyes of a bulbous arachnid monster seem to stare, behind them, her eyes are angry.
Taking a step back, she shakes her head at the leader, then turns and scales the brick wall, headed for the rooftops.
Once there, the armor is absorbed back into her body, and she reaches up to grasp the side of her head. "Did… did you see that?"
Gwen stares at the woman with the sword for a long moment; the woman stares back at her, before she backs off another step and turns to run down the alleyway. After checking to make sure that the one who got stabbed really, actually is dead — she is — Gwen scales the wall and hops over the side next to Anya.
"Yeah, I did see that," she confirms, "She stabbed her own—" she was about to say friend. "Her own… I dunno, minion, person, whatever, just to stop her saying anything. Is that, like, normal villain stuff, or is that woman just off her rails somehow?"
"Yeah," Anya breathes, and nods her head. "That's… I'm pretty sure that's normal. I mean, it's like when a gang banger offs another one to keep them from ratting to the cops."
Flopping down on the edge of the rooftop, Anya sighs. "Tessa Winchester." She starts to google, before shaking her head and rising. "Hot chocolate. Come on. We need chocolate. Then we can try to find out who this Winchester chick is."
"Well, I mean, I don't think I've ever seen someone straight up die in front of my before," Gwen replies, "And I'm totally not sure how I feel about it." She pauses, "I mean, not GOOD about it or anything, but like… was she asking for it, hanging out with bad people? Did she get what she deserved? 'Cause it really doesn't feel like it."
The Spider-Woman takes a seat beside Anya, and rests her hands on her knees. "Where are we going to get hot chocolate at this hour? McDonalds drivethru?" She unslings her backpack off her shoulders and unzips the main compartment, "I got two cokes, one half drunk, both probably unsafe to open right this minute… a banana, a cold corndog, and a bag of fuzzy peaches. Any of that help?"
"Dunkin Donuts," Anya answers. They're 24/7 in the Big Apple! She then shakes her head. "No, she didn't deserve to die. You don't have to like it, y'know? But it ain't on us. You saw those trucks… who knows what might've been going down, but it got a lot less ugly now that we got involved."
She stops googling for a moment, shaking her head. "This is gonna be difficult. I might as well have googled Sarah Palin. Y'know, before McCain."
Gwen makes a retching sound. "Ugh. Sarah Palin. That woman is ick-factor ten, seriously." She pulls out the banana, looks at it, and offers it to Anya with one hand, while lifting her mask and then claiming the cold corndog with the other. "These thing are seriously better warm," she comments, before taking a bite anyway.
"And I totally don't like it," she affirms, "That was totally harsh, and I feel like there's something I should've done to stop it but I didn't, because I didn't see it coming. I know it's not my fault, just… feels terrible anyway, y'know?"
"Try googling Tessa Winchester plus ninjas or something? Just… probably won't work, but hey, I don't know."
A smile is given at the banana, and she rips into it voraciously. Swear to God, the woman is always hungry. "Tell me about it," she agrees, then shakes her head. "I dunno if we're gonna have any luck with google. People like that? I'm betting they're not the kind to have social media profiles."
Gwen tears off another bite of the corndog, and takes a moment to check the cartridges in her webshooters. "…I swear there's a better way to do this than cartridges you have to reload all the time," she muses. "I'm gonna have to think about that one. Anyway." She pulls out her own phone, and heads straight to google.
"My Dad would tell us that nobody is immune to leaving a trail," she murmurs after a moment. "I don't have your computer skills, but… there's got to be something. If someone has deleted information to cover their tracks, then… I dunno, could you look for the holes, maybe? There's gotta be something. Even if it's just the digital version of a light spot on the wall where the famiy portrait used to be hanging."
Anya is used to thinking of things on a street level, in a manner of speaking. She's no stranger to roughing someone up for information, using the old scare factor. Being mean and bullying a bully is her modus operandi. She does not think like an investigator.
Her eyebrow arches. "Well, we can't assume they're from New York, but… we also can't assume they jumped off a plane in full ninja regalia, armed and ready to go." A pause. "We need laptops." Their interfaces are one thing, but there's nothing like having a good old fashioned computer at your fingertips.
"Well, I have one at home," Gwen replies. "Well… actually, I have two, but one of them is old. So it's kinda like having a motorcyle and a tricycle sitting side by side in your garage." She destroys the corndog, slurping every last bit off the stick, before tossing it over the side of the building — aimed for the dumpster, of course. Don't litter, kids.
"What do you think? Quick run to Dunkin' donuts, grab your laptop, head to my place? Dad's out of town for two days. We're safe."
A banana peel goes sailing in pursuit of Gwen's spent stick, and Anya's already on her feet. "Sounds like a plan," she says, and grins. "I'll totally raid the fridge. Between Abuela and Uncle Rico, I'll bet there's leftovers just dying to be stolen."