2014.03.28 - House of Pigs Invasion

Rorschach has been watching the crackhouse on and off for a couple of hours. The alley across the way is dingy enough, he can easily just lean against a dumpster and blend in, just another wino trying to sleep it off. So long as you don't look under the hat to see the squirming, judgmental truth in the face of the vigilante. He's counted three whores, four junkies, and at least one crooked cop going in and out. In his heart, he'd like to simply burn the place down, but he's still healing from the burns he suffered at the hands of the Joker. His shoulder aches even now, although he'll never show it. Rorschach doesn't show pain. Not to scum.

At last, his prey is finally making his way down the street, whistling to himself, a stocking cap pulled low. Randy "Uncle" Fenster just looks like another scumbag to most. His rap sheet is light, even, just a mild B&E and some indecent exposure. That's because he was good at covering up. Just not good enough to keep Rorschach away. Uncle Fenster has taken at least four girls in the last three months alone, poor latchkey kids that are only missed by their parents because the news stations are too busy with the latest charity ball at Bruce Wayne's mansion or some politician cheating on his saggy, plastic wife. These girls mean nothing to them, of course, because they're poor and dark and too young to vote. So, thus far, Fenster's gotten away from it, skipping up the stairs towards the front door to go score some horse. Some of it's for him. Some of it's to keep the girls docile. Rorschach grunts softly to himself, putting the pain in the back of his head as he starts to march across the street, head tilted down, inexorable, ruthless.

"Hurm."

Same location, other angle. From above, Robyn Locksley, aka Robyn Hood, was glaring at the pothouse. Yesterday she had started with setting up a Mexican dealer and forcing him do dump some of his wares, today she had trailed him on his way to restock, finding the opium den in this way. The left foot placed on the small wall surrounding the roof across from the institution, she slowly strung the longbow, the red gem over the hilt gleaming in the last, golden sunbeams that were reflected by a window, then the moment was over and shadows mixed with the green of her clothes to make her almost vanish, just a shape in the darkness. Almost silently she moved to a telephone line, using the bow as a balance stick while she passed over it to the building with the shady establishment. Careful steps brought her to the air vent, from which the smell of smoke came out already, even with the fan broken since ages. It took her two minutes to remove the rusty bolt that held it shut. Just when Rorschach was starting to follow his target in, she slowly pulled the grate up to get access to the rooms below.

This really isn't Steve's usual haunt and it certainly isn't his scope of practice, but when in Rome: Do as the Romans do. Set up in one of the houses down the road, but with a clear line of sight on the house, his purpose for being here is actually that the money from the drugs and working girls is being funneled into an anti-mutant group operating out of the neighborhood.

"Contact moving in, Captain." One of the agents says through the comms from their position out in the street in an broken down van. "Copy that, does anyone have eyes on for identification?" Bringing up his binoculars to try and get a better look at the shadowy figure walking towards the crack house from across the street.

A round of 'negatives' are his response. His shield laid on the table beside him and his usually bright armor is a darker colored mette. As well, he's carrying his M1911 beneath his right arm and his helmet set down beside his iconic shield.

When in Rome, Right?

Rorschach catches the door before it fully closes, keeping the glass from rattling in the half rusty thing as he moves inside. Fenster's already scampered upstiars, the junkie's eagerness leading him up quickly towards his dealer up on the second floor. All of the apartments on the bottom floor have had their doors removed, allowing would be security to, in theory, be a first line of defense, although there's not much risk in a city as corrupt as Gotham. So Rorschach makes it halfway down the hallway before a thug in dreads steps out, "Who the fu-" he starts to say and then he sees the mask swivel towards him. Rorschach. He might not get much in the way of headlines, but people on the streets know who he is. The Bat will put you in the lockup. Rorschach will put you in the hospital...maybe the grave, "I ain't got no beef, mahn," the flunky says.

Rorschach stares him down, the ink on his mask seeming to congeal for a moment. Is that a butterfly? A monster? Both?

"I do." Rorschach croaks. He drives his head forward, snapping off a couple of the thug's front teeth as his knee rises with him, hitting him where it really hurts and doubling him over until he falls to the floor, clutching his wounded groin and whimpering as he spits up blood. "Ground beef." Rorschach says and then casually stomps down on the punk's head, concussing him unconscious and probably cracking his skull. And then he moves on, the blood drying on his shoes.

The fan in the ventilation shaft is still, hanging on a pair of rusted bolts of formerly eight in its fastening. The Shaft goes straight down, formerly sucking out the old air from the flats, but now the shafts in some of the flat served as hiding places for guns. Two kicks against the fan moved it out of the way enough to allow Robyn to let herself glide in. It made some noise, but it was more or less the same sound that the fan made when the wind stood on the grate.

The leather feet slipped over the rough wall, the face of the female vigilante towards the thin wall from pressed gypsum. One Meter, two, two and a half. in front of her eye the ventilation grate showed itself, dim light falling into the room. A crackhead lay on the table, a Glock 20 next to his head, a line of cocaine and a rolled dollar bill on the other. It was not much, just a shift of the feet from the side walls to the thin inner wall, which resulted in the first creaking sound, then Robyn fully leaned against the wall to break it open, rolling into the room with a cloud of white powder. In the barrel roll she planted an arrow on the string, aiming it at the doped up man as she ended on her feet. He moved, grabbed for his gun and turned his red swollen eyes to the loud intrusion through the wall - and got the arrow right through the hand that held the gun, forcing him to drop it as the hunting tip cut the tendons. A fluid step later the man had Robyn's right hand pressed on the mouth, forced to look into her glowing golden eye "No sound, or you are dead..." she growled.

"Roche? What's so loud... fell from your chair again?" a voice came from a room two doors down the hallway, away from the stairs.

The problem with the kind of security these guys can afford is the sheer number of people who come and go make it next to impossible to keep tabs on all of them. The open door policy of a drug den has pretty much assured that the Agents watching the house have placed enough bugs (since they have no need for due process or warrents) to build a case against the whole operation.

So when Rorschach attacks and disassembles the man at the door, the Agent listening to the feed from the house radios back to Steve, "Someone's taking the stage, Big Bopper. Should I send in the band?" With a calm voice that is unflustered by that kind of horrible imagery.

Steve grabs his helmet and slides it on, then slips his shield up over his left forearm. "Negative, keep tuning instruments. The Bands go command is: Schools out, say again that's: Schools out. Copy that Daddy-O?" "Loud and, Big Bopper."

The Captain, in darker armor to take full advantage of Gotham's shadowy atmosphere, moves across the street to put himself into position to respond quickly in getting the answers he needs on where the drug money is being funneled before Rorschach can maim or kill the target.

"Potential second roadie on stage, Big Bopper."

"Keep your ears open, Daddy-O." Rogers says while leaping easily over a wooden fence and landing in a roll to his feet. He scampers up to the top floor of the house next door to the target and leans into the shadow of a brick stack that was once a firechute.

Rorschach knows nothing of stakeouts or vigilantes coming in through the rooftops. His vision is a tunnel so narrow that it has no light and the only light at the end of it comes from the flickering flames of Hell. Which is where he's going to send Uncle Fenster, perhaps...although it might just feel that way. Two more guards come out near the stairs to try and block Rorschach's way. One he belts directly in the face, his lead-weighted gloves making the impact like a hammerblow, twisting Thug A's neck hard enough to tear a tendon or two. The other is bringing a gun up from the back of his pants, but, drug addled, shows himself too slow as Rorschach grasps the arm, spinning him around and hammerlocking up until he hears the satisfying snap of bone tearing meat, the white, marrowed protrusion thrust out through skin.

The screams aren't subtle. No more stealth.

Rorschach doesn't care. He makes his way up the stairs, a grim reaper in khaki, the first person to block his way, a skinny prostitute named Sloppy Sammy, finds her throat calmly grasped, choked into the wall until she leaves enough space for Rorshach to pass.

The mercy lasts until she tries to stab him in the back with a syringe. What Rorschach does to her is too gruesome to be described....but she's going to need an eyepatch.

An eyepatch is also what Roche wishes Robyn was wearing as she presses him against the desk, the wood of the bow pressing against his throat and her hand on his mouth. "Tell him all is ok and he is right." she mutters to him, leavng him enough air to answer that threat, but instead the screaming of Sloppy Sammy and her misfortune fill the staircase and alarm whoever hadn't been awake by now. Groaning the green archer forms a fist of her right, slamming it down to Roche's teeth and turning three of them into broken ruins that fall into the thorat with quite some blood from the cut open lip. After he is released, Roche falls to the ground, spitting out the stumps and blood while Robyn throws the table over and pushes it to the door. Once having it in position, she places a pair of arrows on her string.

And she needs both of them, as the loud noise had alarmed all the thugs waiting up here to try their best to protect their Don. Four wait in the doorways, aiming to the stairs with their assortment of guns - a Browning Hi-Power in .45, a CZ Scorpion, an Izhmash Saiga-12 and even a TDI/KRISS Vector peer down the hallway, waiting to fill it with tons of lead at the first sight of at least some cape.

Robyn hears them shouting harsh commands at each other, peering at the doorway two yards away, once across the hallway. A Good kick pushes the desk into the hallway, providing a low cover and drawing a massive wave of lead from the guns. Wood splinter, Thugs scream in extacy... then a harsh voice demands them to stop - which is the moment Robyn chooses to act. One step forth, the bow pulled up and released within a moment, then she dives forward, into the cover of the doorway she had wanted to go to. Hissing, the projectiles pass through the air, the first one hitting Mr. Browning in the shoulder and pinning him to the door frame, while the other is taking a much more dangerous way, digging itself into the chest with its needlebodkin. Lucky for the handler of the shotgun that the tip misses his major organs and just makes him look very odd and the simple fact that the arrow is still in the wound prevents too much bleeding...

That's when all hell breaks loose in the crack house. Gunfire of the fully automatic kind, screams, and the sound of bones snapping under the weight of heavy pressure attacks. Captain is expecting the call from the observer a full second before it fills his ear piece, "Big Boppe-" So Steve cuts him off, "Hold the band, Daddy-O. No eyes on the house manager."

Which just means the Cap has to flush him out. The nature of this mission was suppose to be a surgical strike, but with all that violence it is quickly becoming apparent that it might not be even remotely possible. So, while he will not put the Agents in direct line of fire unless it means failing the mission, the same does not hold true for himself.

He runs at full force across the roof and leaps at the edge. The top floor window shatters beneath his curled body, shouldering through the glass with his shield up to protect his eyes and exposed face from the sharp shrapnel.

The Element of surprise is a powerful thing. Even as Steve is coming to his feet, he's spinning and leaning into the throw that sends his shield whistling down the hallway with enough force to shatter bone when it hits unarmored gun wielding goon. The rattling of the TDI Vector suddenly cuts off as the man holding it is thrown down the hallway by the spherical hurled object that rebounds back into the room. He hits the railing of the stairs and tumbles backwards, falling the couple stories with a gurgling cry of pain.

Cap snatches up his shield in an end over roll and comes up with it up and infront of him in a kneeling position.

"Anyone with eyes on report, repeat."

"Negative, Big Bopper. Moving to new vantage."

Sometimes a full frontal assault is the way to go. It gets results, especially when you have the element of surprise. And there's nothing more satisfying than the feeling of putting a few flunkies in the hospital up close and personal. But Rorschach can hear the chaos breaking through upstairs as Cap and Robyn begin their work. Robyn's is more bloody, certainly, and more in Rorschach's style, but he can tell that, whatever's going there, it will soon sends the rat's' scurrying.

Rorschach will be waiting.

The distractions and gunfire upstairs give Rorschach a bit of time, and he makes the most of it. The barbed wire is strung low and criss crossed at different levels on the last two flights of stairs. Some strings are throat height, some waist, some ankle, strung back and forth and back and forth from a spool drawn from Rorschach's pocket, bound in place by duct tape and the feverish strength of the madman himself.

It isn't fullproof. Some will come through fast and hit the wire and fall screaming. Some will see it and try to weave their way through. But those that do will have to move slowly...and they'll have to contend with Rorschach waiting at the bottom like hell's own guard dog.

Robyn had pulled another arrow from her quiver, using the polished tip to look around the corner for a moment or two while waiting in the room - and then Mr. Vector came flying past her hiding place, leaving only the Scorpion in the game. Nocking the arrow on, she waited for the automatic pistol to run out of bullets or stop firing, using the gap for a quick shot at him right to the knee, sending the man to the ground, probably never to walk without a limp again as tendons snapped.

The next steps of Robyn lead her out to the hallway again, the bow once more supplied with an arrow. But she hadn't even passed the improvised barrier she made from the table, when the backup arrived in the second to next doors. More guns. It was not too easy for Robyn to dodge towards the door one up the hallway, the arrow going loose to just cut open an upper arm. Jumping the last yard and over the downed body of the unfortunate kneecapped and past the guy who still stared at the arrow in his chest, she went to cover behind the door. This was going to be tough...

The next fire break was... maybe exactly that what Rorschach waited for - the thugs tried to swarm and bring the hookers down, or press a counterattack. The one that chose to try to go after Robyn made for sure the wrong choice, as he first got the pommel of her dagger into the face and then the blade stabbed into his groin, doing the two cut for a few prairie oysters and turning the unfortunate one into a soprano as he fell backwards. - Things get out of hand pretty quickly in cramped spaces like this, but it's nothing new to the Captain who is renowned for thinking on his feet in the middle of a battlefield. Thus far, he hasn't grabbed his pistol, preferring to handling things in a less 'permanent' manner than the two others who have made this their personal violence playground this evening.

When the door burst open and Robyn makes a break for new cover, he manages to catch a glimpse of her, but it is a temporary respite when more hoods fill the small void opened up by their combined assault. Some of them spill down the stairs; some of them take up defensive positions ready to unload their weapons into the first figure that shows their head.

One of them, at least, is not going to be fit for service thanks to an impromptu castration.

Steve is up and moving in a blink, his shield held out in front of him to deflect the bullets let fly when the dark clad hero and his iconic shield become visible.

He's a bull in a crackhouse. Swinging his shield to one side and smacking a thug against the wall where he's pinned and held in place by the large metal sphere. His right hand closes around the barrel of an AK and pulls, dragging the owner forward into a short arm clothesline.

By his line of thinking, the most heavily defended room is likely the location of his target. Especially in these sorts of situations where the idea of formal tactics and deceptive misdirection are not the standard. So instead of beating around the bush and letting the boss get away, he goes right in to the middle of the bees nest so as to escape with his prey before the need to call in backup is absolutely necessary.

"Eyes on, Big Bopper."

"School's out. Say again..." His fist comes around and slams into the solar plexus of another henchman, throwing him backwards into the room like he was hit by a truck. "School's out."

There are a few flies that get caught early, straddling wire, stumbling into it, screaming bloody murder. The armed thugs, it's true, try to stay and fight, well paid and hyped up enough on crack and dust to keep them too stupid and too jacked to even consider retreating, making them easy meat for Robyn and the Captain.

The only meat Rorschach came for, though, has just entered the scene again. Fenster showed at least a hint of brains, trying to pick his way over some of the wire. Recognizing his shoes, Rorschach slips into the shadows at the side of the stair, until the killer steps next to him. At that point, two hands grasp at Uncle's ankle and snap it with a sharp twist, the cry of agony quickly turning into a muffled scream as he falls, mouth open and face first into a string of low-hanging wire.

If Rorschach had planned to interrogate Fenster, the shredded wheat that remains of his tongue wouldn't offer much hope of answers. Unfortunately for Fenster, Rorschach already knows all he needs to know. The creep starts crawling on his belly towards the door, his mouth ruined, spitting gore as he drags his belly along. And then a pair of blood shoes step in front of him, blocking the path.

"Maggie Hemmings. Sarah Blake. Phoenicia James," he says, reaching down and grasping at the freak's ruined tongue, yanking him up and tangling him by it, "Jenny Pilton. Malia St. James," he says, and then he's dragging the kicking, squealing freak behind him, his hands rapidly zip tied behind his back to prevent him from fighting too much as he's pulled from the building...

The screams have just begun for Uncle Fenster. Tomorrow, they'll stop. But only because Rorschach finally cut his vocal cords. When he turns up at the hospital, it takes four days for them to identify him. Until then, the orderlies have been jokingly referring to him as "Meat Man".

There might be some cases of mutilation on Robyn's vest today, but that wasn't stopping her from returning to the battle with another arrow on the string, just as Cap had passed her. While the stars and stripes pressed some goon to the wall, she shot a twin of arrows through both legs of another henchman, nailing him to the wall but not preventing him from using his Halcon M60 to try and shoot far too high at the apparently Joint Ops of a female Green Arrow clone and the First Avenger.

He never came to changing his magazine, as the dropped Vector got kicked up by Robyn and then thrown right into his face, knocking him unconscious. The Cap advanced, seemingly not paying too much attention to his sudden back-cover, but then an arrow passes right in front of his throat, the fletching maybe even drawing across his skin before the steel tip buries itself into the shoulder of an unlucky goon who had wanted to try to place a Mossberg at the Captain's head. "You owe me one, Mister."

Alpha team is not some run of the mill group of badges. This is a well trained group of special operatives who have spent the better part of their careers training together in lightning quick attacks on heavily guarded buildings to neutralize a threat without many, if anyone, ever seeing them do so.

Captain America just happens to be the perfect decoy.

His Shield comes straight down to slam flatend into a goons knee, also ducking him down beneath the swing of an assault rifle stock. His fist comes up and over ends the wouldbe attacker into a painful heap on the ground.

Someone with a Mossberg comes at him from behind and catches an arrow in the shoulder, spinning him away to the floor.

Cap glances at the source of the arrow, but it's cursory as his arm hurls around the Shield lets loose towards her... hits the wall to her right and bounds back in a angled arc to smack a goon coming up from behind the archer with a shotgun ready to blow her back out with a round of buckshot. The shield hits another wall and comes right back to him.

"We're even."

In the middle of the swarm, the number of heavy powered weapons is no longer an advantage which rely on distance and superior force to keep an enemy at bay.

Behind them, the window blasts in and three black clad agents repel into the room. Two take up a firing position to either side of the third who drapes a black bag over the big bosses head and quickly disables and zipties his arms. All three back up quickly and jump out onto the rope harnesses that held them to the roof... the mechanically powered pulley yanks them away with only the spray of glass to even indicate they were there at all.

Robyn grunts and passes the Captain through the heavily guarded door, yelling after the dragged away boos. "HEY!" Tossing her bow into the quiver she turns around in a spin, the coat flying free in it. In a swift movement she pulls her dagger and places it at the neck of the slim, acne ridden guy that hides in the corner. "Don't give me a reason... Who is your supplier?" she threatens him, the eye gleaming deadly.

A Quick motion of Robyn and a hiss as steel cuts the air, the dagger no longer in her hand. Something had moved at the right of her, on the floor, just behind Cap. The lousy man with his chest pierced harmlessly by an arrow had pulled it out and then started to bleed out as he dragged himself towards the Hero, over the knocked out and fallen, a knife in his hand which he had aimed at the Avenger's crown jewels. Now he had the dagger propounding from his forehead, eyes glaring at the heft of it before he broke together. That moment was when the geeky guy lost bladder control and shit his pants, weeping the names of not just one of their suppliers, but all, in fear he would end the same.

"Seems like you owe me, Hannibal." Robyn remarked, dragging the geek at the shoulder and tossing the babbling towards Face and BA. Murdock just had stolen the main price.

Alpha team is already gone with their prize leaving only Captain America who just meer seconds from having a knife shoved into him by a wounded guy. He was not, truth be told, unaware of the attack and even as Robyn throws her dagger he's shield bashing the already arrowed goon across the jaw and sending him in an arial spin that leaves him in a heap.

"We'll just call us even." He's not in the playing games mood. His carefully planned operation has just gone very sideways. The shield is slid onto his back as he walks towards the window and leaps out without a care in the world for the fall that's going to follow. He lands with his knees bending to absorb the shock and rolls out of it to jump into the black van that's pulled up for extraction. When he speaks into his comms, all the operatives in place to observe the safehouse speak in the affirmative and disassemble their various observation points with a practice, professional efficiency. "Operation Bring down the House is a success. All instrumentals to rendezvous point 'garage band'."

They didn't take the accouter, who ended as a heap next to the window. Robyn went to pick her dagger and cleaned it at the shirt of the man, putting it back into it's sheath. "Write the names down and where they are." she demands, tossing him a piece of paper and a pen, eying after the leaving cap. When he left sight she picked up a cellphone from a wounded and called 911. "I stand here in the ruins of a opium den and whorehouse, 22nd/Greystreet. There are some dozen wounded. Send an ambulance and a few cops." she told, then dropped it and crushed it under her heel, ripped the paper out of the hands of the man and followed Cap to vanish.