Summary:Luke, Spider-Woman, and Blackbird all end up at sushi night where some shenanigans go down Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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A quiet night in Brooklyn. People are out and about, the streets are clean, the damaged areas are still being worked out, and really, that's that.
Of course, in Gwen's experience since getting chomped on by a spider, 'quiet' is as often as not a prelude to 'not quiet', but at least that means that right now she gets to enjoy some sushi from one of those places where you just walk up and sit down. It's probably not every day that a costumed super-hero makes her way to this particular sushi place, but judging by the owner's utterly inflappable response, it's not the first time, or the second time, and probably not the third time.
"Uhhmm…." Gwen pauses, half-way through her order, one hand on hip and the other pulling some cash out of her backpack's side pocket. "Oh! Right. The California Roll, Avacado Roll, three pieces of Salmon Nigiri, two of Tuna, and two Tamago please!"
The guy behind the counter grunts, takes her money, grunts, gives her some change, grunts again, and starts making rolls. Meanwhile, Gwen turns to glance over her shoulder as a couple guys in trenchcoats walk past; since when did the back of her brain buzz when two guys in trench coats walk past?
"Oh come on," she grumbles. "If everyone could please behave for five minutes."
Five minutes is a lot to ask for in this city. Deprived of much of her usual hunting grounds by the dome over Staten Island, Helena's taken to staying in practice on the streets of Manhattan. And Brooklyn. Basically, anywhere not currently occupied by fairies, who are not her favorite people at the moment.
The rooftops here are a little harder to move along if you're not the web-slinging sort, but she manages. A shadow in a cape and hood, bounding and swinging along the rooflines, she's been tracking those men in trenchcoats for a few blocks. She may not have a spider-sense, but…they just look fishy.
Brooklyn. It isn't Luke's usual stomping grounds. The bar owner and sometimes 'Hero from Harlem' usually sticks to his side of the river over on the isle of Manhattan, but today an errand brings him over to The Borough of Churches.
Sometimes a man just wants a steak, and there is no better place in town than the famous Peter Luger's Steakhouse.
Dressed a bit different from his normal t-shirt and jeans combo, the large man is decked out in a nice 3-piece suit. Slacks, vest, and jacket of a light grey material cover his frame with a crisp white shirt underneath, the top button undone since he is without a tie.
He casually strolls along the street after his meal, enjoying the night air as passes a particular sushi restaurant, and walks into a pair of trenchcoated fellows as he is distracted by the costumed hero ordering sushi.
"Another spider? I wonder if she knows Spider-Girl?" Luke asks himself as he bumps into one of the trenchcoated guys.
"OH!, 'Scuse me. Didn't see ya there."
Gwen's eye twitches, and she turns around to look at the two men in trenchcoats. C'mon, fellas, no need to start anything right now, right? But the feeling in her brain just can't be ignored, especially after one of them turns to give her a second look in kind, and walks right into Luke in the process. (And he feels… solid. Unusually so, and unyielding, kind of like how it would feel to walk face first into a fridge.)
Across the street in a building currently closed for repairs, something is definitely taking place, however; and it's definitely going south, as there's a series of bright orange flashes accompanied by loud bangs.
Gwen's head snaps to attention, and she looks back to the sushi chef, "I'll be back in five minutes," she promises, "And if I'm not just… keep it handy, I'll be back!"
While she's talking, one of the men in a trenchcoat is busy giving Luke some cold, hard stink-eye as he steps around him. "Watch it," he snaps, ignoring the obvious gunshots. The other one meanwhile puts a hand up to his ear. "Hero out here," he mutters; outside of Gwen's hearing most likely, but definitely inside of Luke's. "Seven meters south of our position.
And then there's a rocket flying out of the building and right across the street.
Up on the rooftops, Helena might realize she's not alone; that rooftop over there has, in the last couple of minutes, become occupied. That guy has a sniper rifle (probably a military surplus Barret Light 50) and is busy training it on the streets below. "Contingency's ready," he mutters into his comms. "I see the spider, I'll get her and any other heroes if necessary, the operation is covered."
The rooftops are Helena's comfort zone. If her parents are to be believed, she was probaby conceived on one. She tries not to think about that part though. The sniper is going to be a problem. Luckily, the bats are in the habit of disabling guns whenever even remotely possible.
Reaching into the belt at her waist, she flips out a batarang, activating a small charge on the body with a flick of her thumb before she wings it across the street at the shooter, a tiny light blinking. When it lands, there's just enough time for a count of two before it goes off in a small explosion - mostly light and smoke and noise, but hurting people isn't really the point of those anyhow.
Before the batarang even lands, she's already running toward the rooftop and the sniper, ready to pounce.
"No need to be a jerk…" Luke calls back to the trenchcoated guy, his annoyed expression turning a bit more hard as he hears the guy talking into his communicator.
And then there are gunshots. And rockets.
"Sweet Christmas!" Luke exclaims, running to try and intercept the rocket before it explodes where there is a crowd and hurts someone, his suit and his anonymity be damned.
The rocket slams into Luke like… well, a rocket, which promptly explodes and does exactly as much damage as you might think it would, and shatters the glass of nearby parked cars (not to mention setting off alarms). Well, except to Luke himself, to whom it basically does nothing other than send him flying backwards; and he would go straight into the sushi place, except that a webline catches him and stops him just short.
"NOT THE SUSHI!" Gwen yells — after marvelling at the fact that Luke isn't, y'know, dead; tough boss, apparently — before she turns and runs for the building where the problems are coming from; just in time for there to be a second rocket, that comes roaring across the street. Gwen instinctively fires a webline at it, and succeeds in changing its direction so that it's rocketing up, now, instead of horizontally.
Unfortunately, she goes with is, with a loud "WoooaoAAAAAAoh!!" as it carries her upwards at breakneck speed.
The batterang landing beside the sniper draws a surprised "Hunh?" …Afterall, he did spend time clearing that rooftop. He has time to look at it, and mutters "Bat—" into his comms, before it goes off, and he instinctively throws up a hand to cover his eyes. "Christ!" he yells. "Bravo position under fire!" he draws a sidearm — a revolved that would make Rick Grimes proud — and fires off three shots, in the general direction of where he thinks the baterang came from. Nothing wrong with a little indiscriminate shooting, right?
The two men in trenchcoats are still there, of course. One of them observes Gwen rocketing upwards, before they both turn to Luke.
"We have a second metahuman," one of them mutters into his comms.
"It's the anomoly from Harlem," mutters the other.
"Affirmative, we'll deal with it," states the first, after a short delay.
In unison, the two men shed their trenchcoats, revealing some… heavily cyborged bodies underneath. Someone's been playing far too much Deux Ex; one of them just starts advancing on Luke, running to close the last few steps and throw a punch without so much as a warning. The other, meanwhile, is ripping off the lower half of a lamppost destroyed by the rocket blast. Kinda like a pool cue in a barfight, just… bigger.
Helena doesn't rely on her eyes when she runs into the cloud of smoke left by the batarang. Instead, she rolls her thumb over the edge of her index finger, toggling her contacts to infrared vision. It means she can easily avoid the wild shots as she closes the distance to the shooter.
"Now, now, no sharing," she says through the smoke, drawing the staves from her hips and giving them a spin in her hands. One helps to trap his arm caught straight out, while the other strikes out quick as a snake to numb his wrist and disarm him.
Luke is blasted back by the blast of the rocket, stopping just short of the sushi joint by Gwen's webline. He falls to the ground with a thud, but quickly scrambles to his feet. He shakes his head, as if to clear it, as he tears away the smoking tatters of what remains of his suit jacket, vest, and shirt. "Damnit! I hate it when that happens! Another suit ruined…"
Luke takes a moment to mourn the loss of his attire before he looks up and notices the pair of cyborgs on an intercept course just before he gets clocked in the jaw and goes flying back through the wall of the sushi joint, turning it into a pile of bricks and debris.
From inside the shop just past the Luke shaped hole in the wall a voice rings out. "Alright, Motherfuc**r. Now you have gone and just pissed me off."
The popping sounds of knuckles being cracked echoes from the other side of the hole.
"Argh!" is the response from the sniper, as Helena's staves numb his hand. The revolver falls from his fingers, and clatters onto the ledge around the top of the building, just… sitting there, now. The sniper himself is clearly not the unprepared sort; weapons, body armor, balaclava… but fortunately not a cyborg, he seems more like the squishy sort of good old human. With a knife, springloaded under the wrist that Helena didn't pulverize. (Actually, to the observant, he has two; just, that other wrist is out of order right now, sorry for the inconvenience.) He scrabbles back to gain some composure, and smiles under his balaclava. "A worthy opponent," he seethes. Did he just say that? He dars forwards, cradling his hurt wrist and slashing at Helena with the other.
Down on the ground, the two cyborgs move up to stand side by side; they look at the Luke-shaped hole, and look at each other; they each draw a pair of pistols, and point them at the hole, waiting for something to move. "Withdraw," one of them shouts. "This is not your problem, metahuman. Mind your own business in Harlem."
Rockets are fast, as it turns out; really fast, and Gwen isn't quite sure what to do with hers, but it's quickly carrying her upwards. "Not good not good!" she shouts.
Well, do something, Gwen!
So, she does; she releases her webline, and while the momentum is still carrying her upwards, fires a glob upwards to hit the rocket. Somehow, that works, and it explodes, as the spider fires another line to pull herself in against the top of a building. "Phew!" she declares.
The sushi chef, meanwhile, just watches as Luke goes flying through his shop, and mutters something dire in Japanese. He shakes his head, and continues about making some Nigiri. The young lady did place an order, afterall, and paid up front.
"Not even close," Helena snorts to the shooter. "Do you know what I've had to deal with lately? Fairies. Lots and lots of fairies." She talks as she fights, probably even more than usual. The anti-tech field beneath the dome has made her grateful for the voice-modulator that provides even more cover for her identity.
"And last time, one of them was half-spider. Like a centaur, except the bottom half was a giant freaking spider."
The knife is something to be aware of, but Helena has her own claws as well. Trying to hit her is like fighting with the lingering smoke. When he moves, she's already darting away, lashing out for a strike of opportunity.
"Can you guess where you rank in comparison to a giant spider-centaur?"
"You made it my problem when you destroyed my suit, asshole." comes Luke's voice from the hole in the wall just before a basketball sized chunk of masonry and brick comes flying out of the hole towards one of the cyborgs. Closely following behind the makeshift weapon is Luke, in now tattered and torn pants that give him his modesty but not much else, rushing towards the other cyborg with a primal scream of rage as he goes for a haymaker to the underside of his jaw. "You think I am mad, just wait till my tailor sees this!"
"Yoink!" Gwen arrives on the side of the building where Helena is busy fighting the Sniper, and grabs the man's revolver. She squeezes her fist tight around the barrel before dropping it back where she found it, now freshly scrunched. "Better do this one too!" she cheerfully adds, reaching over to bend the barrel of the sniper rifle. (Oooh. Kids these days; no respect for expensive stuff that belongs to other people.) That done, Gwen sizes up the situation; and hearing the tale end of Helena's story, apparently decides that she more than has this handled. She leaps off the side of the building, casting a webline out so she can swing down towards the street where cyborgs are currently menacing Luke and her sushi.
The first cyborg simply doesn't see that coming, and takes a big piece of flying masonry right in the chest. He barely manages to make a sound as he's sent flying across the street, and makes a large dent in the side of a van, rocking it off the two wheels on that side. He collapses to the ground; something in there got crushed, but he's still moving. Just… not up yet.
The second cyborg empties the magazines of twin machine pistols into Luke, with loud 'thththththzzzzzzzzpt' sounds, that… just kinda… bounce off him. They do tickle a bit; and then he's flying through the air, to plant another dent in the side of that poor, abused van.
Gwen comes to a stop on the street, right about to help Luke, but it looks like… he's got this. "Wow, that was… pretty good," she muses.
UP on the rooftops, the sniper doesn't really get a chance to answer Helena; he just gets slashed by her claws, and staggers back onto the ledge. He pants loudly, clutching at himself where he's hurt. "Cool story," he gasps, as he pulls a grenade off his belt, pulls the pin, and then just holds it, keeping the handle tight against the explosive. "You seem like a smart girl. Figure this one out."
Down in the streets, one of the cyborgs touches a finger to his ear. "Send them out," he gasps. "The Harlem Anomoly is… strong.
The sushi chef mutters something, as he's putting the finishing touches on some Nigiri. He reaches under his counter and produces an M16 with one of those double-drum magazines. "STOP DAMAGING MY SHOP!" he yells. "I just got it fixed from last time!"
"You're volunteering to blow yourself up so I don't have to?" Helena doesn't attack just yet, though she prowls around him in a slow circle, keeping him off balance. "Or were you thinking about throwing it at the bullet-proof man down there? I'm not really one to judge people for their choices, but I'm not sure you're making a smart enough one for me to really guess it."
The sheer level of noise down below definitely has her curious, but she doesn't look away from the man she's dealing with now.
"I'm not an anomaly!" screams Luke as he runs towards the van, grabbing the fallen lightpole as he runs by. The large man chokes up on the lightpole, rearing up the lightpole like a batter in a baseball game, before he plants his foot and swings the pole forward trying to clock the cyborg in the side.
"I'm Luke Cage!"
"There's a family with two kids in the apartment beneath us," the sniper sneers. "If this goes off, it'll take the corner of the building with it, so you do the math, bat. Either you back off me now, or you lose this fight, one way or another, even if I also lose it. Call it an insurance policy — and I don't even have to make monthly payments." He backs off a step, but keeps relatively close; close enough that Helena would get caught in it as well. Also, he has sweat forming on his brow, a fact which Helena's infrared van probably tell her.
As he's standing, the sniper lifts his wounded wrist up to his mouth. "The bat is contained," he mutters. "But hurry up with the operation just in case. Use secondary extraction."
The cyborg gets launched by the lamppost, and goes flying through the side of the building; the one where gunshots came from at the start. As he goes flying in, the other one raises a hand. "No more — I give!"
Well, he might, but a couple more people have emerged from the building; a couple of women, one with purple hair and one with blue, both carrying rather over-sized swords.
"What is this, anime now?" Gwen inquires, as she walks up near Luke. "Well, whatever." she fires a webline and sticks it to one of the swords, giving a good, sharp tug; which… really ought to have pulled the sword from that lady's grasp, except it doesn't.
The purple-haired lady gives her blade a twist, severing it, and she nods to her compatrion. "You take the clod, I'll squash the bug," she offers.
Blue gives a nod, and turns to advance on Luke. A bright glow wreathes her sword; she swings it, cutting the front off the parked van, before lunging forwards and winging it in a wide arc. "Let's see if you're really invincible!"
Gwen lifts her fists, and waits for Purple to charge her, jumping backwards and summersaulting out of the way of the first sword swing, and the second. "Get back here," snarls the Purple haired one. "I thought you Spiders were supposed to be formidable."
"Oh, just wait," Gwen replies, as she vaults over a car — and then kicks it. Purple has just enough time to jump over it and land, while Gwen jumps two stories up the side of the building.
"Can we talk about this?" inquirse the spider.
"No."
"Darn."
Helena tilts her head at the man, working through her possible options. Grenade. Muffling. Range… Oh, hey, look, someone down there has swords. Swords are much more her speed. "Hey, Spider-Woman," she calls without really looking, a slow smile curving behind her mask as she reaches slowly for the grappling gun behind her back. "Trade ya!"
With the guns aready handled, the grenade is the only thing the sniper has in play, and a spider with webs is vastly more equipped to handle that. Even as she's drawing the grapple gun, Helena fires across the street, bolting to the edge of the roof to leap, swing, and roll to her feet near purple hair.
"Mind if I cut in?"
"Let's not…" says Luke
Rolling his neck, Luke looks to the blue haired woman with the energy sword as she approaches and swings the blade towards him. As the blade arcs towards him, he moves to one side, trying to sidestep the blow as it comes swiping towards him and mostly manages to dodge as the tip of the sword carves a line in his chest, leaving a long thin trail of crimson that starts to trickle down the chest of the muscular man.
Luke lets out a grunt of pain as he looks down at his chest in surprise.
"Ok.." he says, looking back to the blue haired woman. "Let's see how good you are with that thing."
Luke raises a fist, then drives it down into the ground to send a shockwave of seismic activity in the general area around him in attempts to knock her off balance.
"HAH!" shouts the blue-haired one at the sight of that line of crimson; but her jubilation is short-lived, as Luke pounds on the ground and the shockwave knocks her off her fieet, while setting off a couple more car-alarms that somehow have not already been triggered. Just as she's standing up, the sushi chef wesighs in with a burst of gunfire from his M16. "Look what you did to my shop!" he shouts, before firing off another burst of rounds, forcing Blue to run around the van for cover instead of making another attempt on Luke.
"Mind your own business, sushi chef!" she yells from cover. "THIS IS MY BUSINESS!" replies the chef, firing off more rounds at the can, before he nods to Luke. "Go punch her out!" he shouts. "Free sushi!"
Purple-hair raises an eyebrow as Helena lands on street level in front of her, and perks an eyebrow upwards. "Very poor choice of words, bat," she replies. She points her weapon at the bat, and it ignites into brilliance like blue's, before she darts forwards, first with a lunge and then slashing in a wide arc. "Spider, bat, big guy, whatever, everyone bleeds the same color."
Gwen watches Helena jump in, and hunhs. "Nice landing," she comments. "Sure, she's all yours."
Some rapid climbing brings Gwen up to the top of the building, where the man is still standing there holding the grenade — not that he has much choice, since the pin is long gone.
"Can we talk about this?" inquires Gwen for the second time tonight.
"No," snarls the sniper. "Here's how it's going to work. I—"
He stops short as a glob of webbing sticks hand and grenade together as one.
"Good talk," Gwen replies.
"Actually, they don't, but that has to do with how the blood processes oxygen," Helena starts to explain, just in time for blue-hair to charge in. This is a challenge in its own way, sure, but the staves at her sides are metal, strong enough to deflect a sword, and the rhythm of the practice is familiar enough not to present too great a challenge.
Why go around when you can just go through, or in this case use the cover your opponent is using as a weapon itself. Instead of following the blue haired swordswoman around the van, Luke just takes a few steps and shoulders the van with some power behind towards the wall in an attempt to pin the blue haired woman against the wall with the van. "Free is good. I like free."
There's a loud scream that follows the fall of a man off the roof of a building; the sniper plummets towards the ground, and comes to a stop mere inches from the asphalt, suspended by a webline around his ankles. Moments later, the spider makes her reappearance on the ground, landing in a crouch beside Helena.
"You're outnumbered," she points out.
Luke picks his moment well, and it sure must be satisfying to have Blue pinned up against the van; he hits her hard enough to leave her dazed, which really only leaves Purple in the fight.
Purple pauses for a moment, touching her free hand to her ear, before she nods. "Withdraw," she calls to blue, before throwing something at the ground; there's a bright puff of purple smoke and she vanishes.
Blue, however, is far too daxed for that; she just collapses on her face, and passes out.
"Wasn't that Zorro's trick," Gwen inquires, folding her arms. "So what the heck was all that about?"
"Sushi's ready," comments the chef. He's put his gun away already; nothing to see here, nope. Just a styrafoam take-out container with some of those little wooden chopsticks.
"Hell if I know." says Luke as he shoves the van out of the way and takes the remains of the lightpole, using it as a makeshift bond as he wraps it around Blue. "I think they might have been targeting you though. Something I heard one of them say."
Blue secured, Luke sighs and looks down as what is left of his clothes, shaking his head. "Now, if you will excuse me I should probably get out of here before I get arrested myself for indecent exposure."
Gwen shrugs lightly, "I dunno, might just be that I was the most visible," she replies. "I mean, I was the one standing around ordering sushi in a superhero costume." She pauses, quirking an eyebrow upwards. "Uhh… yeah, sorry about the suit," she adds. "It was a really great suit."
The spider collects her sushi from the chef, who grins at her. "You two come back any time!" he calls out, as Spider-Woman is off and away, swinging off to some unknown location to enjoys some rolls and nigiri. Mmm.