2013.06.23 - Business Ethics, Part 2: Neutralized

The Club is supposed to be a safe haven, after a fashion. Safe if you're in one of the Families, at least; somewhere to go where you can relax without having to worry about who's watching you. Neutral ground. Violence happens, of course, unavoidable with this crowd, but there are very clear lines that aren't crossed.

Family lines.

Someone has queued up the first season of The Sopranos on the televisions. It's a joke, though after 539 had a very serious problem with an influx of wannabees trying to get in while the show was airing, not everyone is laughing. Still, the mood of the club is casual. It's just starting to get busy, people flooding in after their various illicit activities have been completed, and the booze is flowing.

Lots of booze. Really just a ridiculous amount of it. It's not even midnight yet and most of the occupants are well past tipsy at this point and earnestly making their way towards blackout.

A Falcone man hits on the wrong girl, and gets his face beat in for his troubles. He's still alive when he's dragged out the back door, though; that's a rule. Outside grudges stay outside, but if something happens in the club, you take care of it in the club, and it's over when you walk out the door. No deaths, though. A little blood getting spilled isn't something to get worked up about, though.

Another one of those rules is that you don't talk about what goes on in the Club. There are over two dozen wanted men and women in residence at the moment, but you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to admit to it.

Someone squealed, though. In Gino's defense, the guy wasn't even supposed to be there. Some ranting, balding hippie who got thrown out a few weeks back.

It's a lead, though. A desperately needed one, after all 21 individuals involved in the incident at the Wayne Botanical Gardens just over a week ago turned up dead in their cells one morning. Poisoned by unknown means, and with a very big question mark as to their real identities.

"I'm in position," Robin says into the mic hidden under his collar. Well, not Robin. Some random guy behind the bar who just got hired three days ago. Wet behind the ears, still. Except Tim's memorized the bartender's handbook back to front.

Y'know, just because.

He scans the crowd. If he had his mask on, just about every person in the club would have a red outline. Potential hostiles. Criminal records. Outstanding warrants. Very, very bad people.

And somewhere, in here, someone that knows who this guy was.

Batgirl is perched on a building across the way, watching the back entrance. She's crouched down and in the shadow of the gargoyle there. Her dark cape is wrapped around her, trailing down over the parapet. Robin's words get a single-worded reply over the channel, voice rough with disuse and flat, without the overtones of emotion. "Ready." Across the street and up abit, Terry McGinnis sits shrouded in his suit's adaptive camouflage system. Not like many of these guys could actually pick out another black form against the night sky, but better safe than sorry. While Gotham might have changed in the 50 years hense, somethings stay the same. He gazes through the upper skylight, his suit's lenses magnifying and zooming in on faces. "Sometimes, I miss the old man," He says to himself. "He could identify all of them just from a look." He carefully flexes his fingers, his entire body on edge.

"Do we have any idea who has the information?" a voice on the commlink asks. That's the Question. And so is the figure talking into his watch, wearing the Gotham Janitorial jumpsuit and baseball cap, with the mop and bucket cleaning up the blood that was just spilled. Hat pulled down low over Vic Sage's unmasked face, the figure is all but ignored as he moves around the room eavesdropping on the things that get said inside the Club and left there.

Sat behind her console, Oracle rakes her fingers through her still damp hair -- she had a swim only a short while ago -- and scowls at her monitors. There is nothing... virtually nothing... she can do at the moment, as her people slowly drift into position. The club is their best lead. "Copy that," she says, her digivoice soft in the ears of each of her operatives. "Remember, people, this is a highly volatile situation. I have no clue what's going on in there. They have no broadcasts, no visible networks, no electronic signals whatsoever. And whoever these mooks are, someone went to a lot of trouble to wipe them from absolutely every system I can possibly get my digital paws on..." Which is what's made her so grumpy. "So... We got nuthin', except Robin's intel, to go on here. So, keep your eyes open."

Twenty one dead? Poisoned? God knows that Dinah Lance has dealt with larger statistics - far larger, in fact, monstrously larger - but it's no trivial matter. Even the lowliest individual has a person or two who cares for them, as a rule; by her reckoning a hundred or more could be grieving. Anyone who's felt loss, or even seen it, can't stand idly by whilst arrogant maniacs run free causing such damage. Oh yeah, the Canary's eager to bust some heads on this one, which is why...

...she's a little perturbed when she realizes this is to be a 'discreet' op. Packing away her leather and PVC, Dinah has rifled through her wardrobe for something more appropriate to rubbing shoulders with those who believe themselves better than everybody else. One would be mistaken to think she's not spoilt for choice. A tough girl she might be, but she's still a woman.

A fact that helped her get inside via the back, a word in the right ear and a brush of the lips buying a moment's distraction and selling a little white lie from the Black Canary.

"Nice place," comments she now clad in a slinky red dress, her hair swept into loose curls at the front and hauled into a high ponytail at the back. Not ideal for fighting, but she'll get by; she always does. "Why don't we get a drink and mingle, hm?"

As to her audience? Oracle's in her ear, sure, but she's got an escort tonight. Beside her, a handsome youth in a stylish suit that fits almost *too* well, considering it was bought for a man twenty years his elder. Genetics is the damnedest thing.

Huntress slinks toward the bar wearing black jeans that seriously had to be body paint not fabric and a glittery blouse of the club-goer variety. She leans against the bar and waves a hand at Fresh Meat pouring the drinks to get her a beverage. She's been taking a single sip and abandoning her drinks since she got here about a half hour ago to make it look like she's as tipsy as everyone else, but she's still more than sober enough.

To Oracle in her ear, she offers quietly enough to hopefully not be noticed by anyone else, "I'm inside, HAL. Your octal is my command." Yeah, okay, it was lame, she tried, all right?

This may very well be the first time Connor has ever...EVER worn a suit. He certainly never wore them before going to the Ashram and he certainly didn't need one there. Moving around has been...interesting, to say the least, and he's not really looking forward to having to do more movement than walking but he understands the need to go 'undercover'. His hands smooth down the necktie as he glances over at Dinah, "Are you sure I should be here? I don't want to get you in trouble." He doesn't have his bow tonight...that would be rather conspicuous to say the least. He did, however, assure Canary that he knew how to fight without it as well.

He leans in and offers quietly, "I hope that I don't mess the suit up."

It's nice, knowing there are so many people capable of watching your back nearby. Relaxing, even, if Robin were capable of relaxing when on the job. He's doing a good job of looking relaxed, at least, or rather, looking like the two drinks a girl at the end of the bar keeps buying him are taking effect. Rookie bartending mistake.

Considering he's making the drinks himself, it's pretty easy to swap them out for something non-alcoholic. Besides, paying him to make himself a drink? That's some seriously crappy flirting.

He rests his elbows on the bar, wet rag in hand, and looks around nonchalantly. There's no deliberate averting his gaze from his fellow undercover agents- too obvious, he's better than that. Question doesn't get more than a glance because he's a janitor and pretty much invisible to everyone in the room, anyway, though Dinah gets a very obvious eyeing up. Or maybe Connor does. Actually, yep, Connor does. The girl at the end of the bar huffs out a breath and stalks off, frustrated, and Tim rolls his eyes. "Finally," he mutters, adjusting his glasses.

"I'm not seeing any of the guys that escorted our target out two weeks ago." Tim's kneeling behind the bar now, ostensibly pulling out a few bottles. "They're here every Saturday, though. Clockwork. Keep your eyes open."

When he stands, he looks up at the second level. It seriously annoys him, being this close to some high-profile targets without being able to take them down. There'll be another time, though. Always is. Someone drops their drink and the sound of glass shattering has Tim turning his head, and when he looks back-

A cloaked figure, standing at the top of the staircase. Definitely wasn't there a second ago. Tim blinks and squints, unsure, and then his stomach drops. This isn't good and Tim doesn't know why. "Staircase," he mutters. "Staircase." Is anyone else seeing this?

Batgirl isn't really the 'undercover' sort. That whole lack of social skills. Sneaky though, she can do sneaky really damned well. She waits with the patience of an assassin for their target, watching the points of exit from where she can see them, in case anything funny happens out here first. When Robin makes the call for the staircase, at first she doesn't get it. She's got the ASL interpretation going on with her HUD but the word doesn't make any sense to her. She's still struggling with simulating 'normal conversation'. Finally, seconds too late, it clicks for her and she's leaping across the dark alleyway to one of the second-floor windows to see about circumventing any security to get into that upper level.

Tomorrow Knight stands up slowly. As Cass moves and darts toward the window, he catches that as a signal and decides to jump into the action. He rolls his shoulders, and carefully folds his arms back. He unfurls his wings and dives down to the roof of the warehouse/club/den of iniquity, landing with only a soft sound on the tar and asphalt roof. He slips up to the skylight, and looks through. With a touch to the ear, his radio reconnects with the Bat-Family frequency. He doesn't make any noise, just listens quietly trying to gauge what is happening.

While it's true Darkwing wasn't involved in the planning that Robin may have done, he did tail Robin has he's want to do. He actually swings in to land upon the roof of the club. The dark haired violent youth could really do with pummeling something right now. He hasn't had a good fight in days. The young teen rolls his shoulders a little bit as if preparing to get into it good. "Run into something you cannot handle again?" Darkwing says over the batfamily frequency.

The janitor makes his way around the room, tidying up. Like Robin he never looks or suspiciously abvoids looking at his allies. Here and there he grabs used napkins offthe tables and stuffs them in his pockets. Along with a steak knife, a pepper shaker, a cigarettr lighter and and a boittle of hot sauce. He dumps the napkins off the edge of the bar ande gives the bar tender just the barest nod. The dark haired woman in the painted on jeans gets a wink no one else can see.

The disguised Question cleans up the broken glass taking great care to position himself near the bottom of the staircase. Janitor's might not be allowed upstairs, but if anyone makes a break to go up - say chasing any other hewro - he's in position to obstruct them.

Hey! It's the Birds' frequency, thankyoukindly... ;)

Staircase? The best Oracle has are satfeed thermals -- which are great for the upper floor, but not quite so great for the lower-levels... though the minicam Dinah smuggled in with her get-up does help. "Canary? You wanna point me in the right direction?"

She is partially distracted though. There's a blip on her radar -- a new tap on her signal. Off-com, she gives the voice command to her system, "Trace that, damnit!" and watches her little tracking programs go to work. The satellites above the city tick and zoom, thermals and visuals overlaying a wifi grid to tell her just where the 'listener' is. She quickly eliminates Cass and Damian. So, that leaves...?

She hits her channel scrambler and switches the frequency, pinging the coms held by each of her operatives with a secondary channel. "Batgirl. Darkwing. Heads up. You've got company on the roof... and he's got our frequency."

Which means, if he was able to track the frequency change, he's also got forewarning.

"If you do," Dinah smoothly counters Connor, those bright baby blues flicking across the main floor of the club before she looks to him with upraised brow and a devilishly sweet smirk. To everybody else in the room she probably looks like she's flirting with him. "Make sure it's with someone else's blood this time."

Spitfire that she is, the blonde is unable to curtail an impatient flex of her right hand, knuckles whitening beside her. She catches it with a cooling breath, and reaches out to instead hook Connor about the elbow and steer him toward the bar. *Just* him; either she's got the makings of a plan or is flat broke.

"For now, just relax," she directs casually, hoping to keep their exchange lost to eavesdroppers beneath the general din. "Go and get us some drinks. I'll--" Tim's voice registers, her hesitation brief but noticeable at least to the young archer. She's already turning away when she finishes confidently, "--be right here."

A turn which just so happens to present her not only backfirst to a handy column she can lean nonchalantly against, but - with a little creative twisting of the torso and heaving of the bosom - angles the face of her obsidian pendant just-so toward the indicated stairwell. Baby blues follow with a gentle sweep that takes the view in without staring; she'll leave the 'staring' to the hidden camera dangling at her sternum.

"Pointed," she murmurs, as if to herself, lips barely moving.

Huntress watches Fresh Meat the bespectacled bartender eyeing the young man over there in the sharp suit with... Helena would choke on her drink if she HAD ONE. Because that, over there, in red, doing the slink even better than she was doing... that's her BOSS from the florist's shop. Holy mother fucking shit. She forgets that Fresh Meat scorned her for Dinah's jailbait escort and turns her seemingly casual gaze past the red-clad woman to the staircase Oracle mentioned, but not in time to see the cloaked figure. "Any ideas what's up there?" she asks of Oracle quietly, then quirks a playful eyebrow at the janitor, or maybe the homeboy behind him.

Connor Hawke gives a nod and a bit of a grin, "I'll do my best." At the instruction to relax, he takes in a breath, lets it out...and does just that. His muscles aren't overly-tensed anymore and he does his best to look like being in a bar isn't a completely foreign experience. He looks around, briefly noting the dark haired man at the bar's eyes on him and giving him a slightly quizzical look before he looks back to Dinah, "What?"

He's eighteen and he's supposed to be getting drinks at a bar?

The bar is looked at for another moment before he steps back over to Dinah and leans in to murmur, "Uhm. I don't have any money...and...what do you want to drink?"

The man in the cloak just stands there. Robin can't explain why it's so alarming, but he feels... out of place. Just wrong. Even more out of place than the team of undercover vigilantes. It's a gut feeling, and Robin trusts his gut.

He just stands there, though. It's the weirdest thing. So still that most people don't even notice him, a laughing couple half-tripping down the staircase together that pass him by without so much as a second glance. Might as well be furniture to them. Robin's fists clench on the bar. "Kind of in the middle of something," he snaps back at Damian under his breath, momentarily more annoyed than uncomfortable, but then the figure's head turns. His eyes are obscured, but Robin knows he's being looked at. It makes his breath catch in his throat momentarily, and he makes an excuse to his coworkers to head back into the kitchen.

That's about when all hell breaks loose.

It's not the hired help that stand up, this time. It's over two dozen low-level mooks, all with criminal records of varying lengths, all in just the right place within their respective crime family to get just a little info here and there. Just enough to be allowed into the VIP section. Just about everyone's armed, here, but the element of surprise is a powerful thing. Guns start firing, and people start dying.

And the cloaked man finally moves. One Yakuza lieutenant tries to flee down the stairs, and his neck is snapped one-handed. Two bouncers try to rush upstairs to where most of the more well-connected mafioso drink their drinks, and they're both impaled by swords the man produces from within his cloak. Their bodies tumble back down the stairs.

When gunshots start to ring out, whatever security might be on the window doesn't matter, Batgirl breaking through and landing in a forward roll that takes her to the door opposite the room she's appeared in. One kick sends that crashing open and then she's onto the second floor balcony. She knows there's still the unknown on the roof with Damian, but she has to trust that the littlest Bat can deal with whoever that might be. Batarangs flip down into her hand as she takes in the chaos and then go flying out to knock guns from hands. The active fight is more pressing to her than the potential fight above.

The aerial view from Oracle's positions definitely shows a tiny blip of radio signal, but nothing visual. As the frequency shifts, the Tomorrow Knight raises his eyebrow. "Huh," he chuckles. "They finally caught me." He's about to say something else, when all hell breaks loose down below. "Wonderful," he sighs. Standing, he deactivates his cloak and jumps, smashing through the glass of the skylight. His red wings are rather flashy and make his entrance rather dramatic. He lands with a crash, destroying a table. "Sorry to stop the poker game," He growls. "But I don't think the big blind is supposed to use hot lead." He grabs a pair of mobsters and slams their heads together.

When all the goons stand up and start shooting the janitor convinently bends over to pick up the buckey. The man behind him gets the mop handle in the throat. As he is bent over he pins a second through the foot with the steak knife. He tuirns around to help the first and smacks a third with the bucket. He stumblesd back hiotting a fourth wit the mop head in the face. A path is now clear up the stairs.

Yellow smoke envolpes the janitor. When it clears the grey jumpsuit and hat are blue. The insignias are gone, reoplaced bu orange piping. The janitor's face is completely blank.

"Here, you might need this," the Question says to Connor, handing him the mop handle with the head taken off. "But stay away from this hot sauce, it will burn your face off." He tosses the bottle over his shoulder hitting another goon in the eyes without looking.

"Someone might try and kill Robin. No way am I letting someone take that from me." Darkwing says as he jumps down as well following the Tomorrow Knight, his cap allowing him to not fall rapidly to the ground. Ok. So his priorities are a little bit skewed. He lands into a crouch his cape pooling around him. His cowl's fully up, so that the only thing clear is the white of the mask eyes. Instantly the young vigilante's taking stock of where everyone is and who is firing what right now so that he can do his best /not/ to get him by a stray bullet.

Annnd.... now we get to the part where all Oracle can do is sit and watch. And hope. And try to make sense of the crazy images from the swinging pendant cam and the blips on her radar... "Haven't a clue," she tells Huntress, trying hard to keep the pique out of her voice. "I'm more blind than usual on this date..."

When Connor rather abruptly returns, Dinah bats her eyes, glancing toward him with initial surprise passing through amusement and sympathy before she settles on 'businesslike'. A hand slips to the hem of her dress, disappearing and re-emerging - with dextrous expediency - now laden with flexible plastic.

"They'll take this," she says with absolute assurance, "Buy something for yourself and..." Her lips curl into a mischievous smile that's haphazardly hipbumping with outright laughter. A finger raises, indicating with passable accuracy one of the more 'distracting' figures at the bar. "Something for the brunette." Beat. "She looks our ty--"

That's *exactly* when all hell breaks loose.

"--pe." She's started so she'll finish, but her eyes are already snapping wide as she does. "Never mind. Move." A brightness burns fierce in those baby blues now, her command to Connor simple and direct - she's sure he'll know where to move *to*, but damned if she's got a clue herself. Brain, off. That's what Oracle's for.

Acting on instinct, Dinah spins around and takes a single step toward a man still raising his gun. It's a revolver. Good. The Canary's hand darts out, slamming the credit card between hammer and pin. He looks up, stunned, to see the incoming back of her other fist. A sharp kiai leaves her windpipe as his collapses.

"Hope you're getting an I.D. on these guys, B," she follows up, a finger nudging the transmitter secluded in her ear as she spins to nail the choking man's snarling buddy with a searing roundhouse kick to the head that leaves very little question as to how far up those legs go. There's a *reason* that dress is so tiny. "Can't promise you a repeat performance!"

Huntress sees the shit hit the fan and does her best to act like most of the other club-groupies in the room, screaming and ducking down against the bar to 'hide' from the erupting gunfire. One advantage of her outfit: no one thought she'd conceal throwing knives on the insides of her knee-boots. "HAL, maybe y'oughta try going clubbing with me some..." She pulls a knife and throws it at the nearest gun-wielder, aiming for the man's forearm to stop the shooting of innocents since Billy Badass on the stairs is too far away. "...time."

Then Q's smoke bomb gives her (she hopes) enough cover to make a dash for a set of tables under the balcony railing to one side of the stairs. A dash, a running hop up onto the table, and a parkour-ish leap, and she's pulling herself up the railing to reach the second floor landing. The pants, if not painted on, are most definitely made of something stretchy.

Connor Hawke looks up at the sound of the gunfire and pauses only a moment before he pulls off the jacket and necktie. "Sorry," is offered quietly to Dinah as he steps away, but if he's going to need to move, he doesn't want to be encumbered. They jacket and tie are draped neatly on a bar stool and he turns back around in time to see the broom-handle held out to him. There's a nod and, "Thanks," before he takes the staff and spins it expertly in his hands. Quickly noting where Dinah has moved to and where others...without guns are, he starts swinging the staff at some of those with the automatic weapons. The butt of the mop end gets one man in the solar plexus and another gets the other end of the makeshift staff at the spot where the shoulder and neck meet.

He seems to be capable enough even without the bow. The staff is being used as if he knows exactly what one should do with it.

The cloaked man does little more than stand there while chaos erupts around him. When someone tries to flee from upstairs, where most of the action is, he stops them. Quickly and permanently. The same goes for anyone trying to storm up the stairs. He doesn't involve himself more than that. A gatekeeper, rather than an active combatant.

Which is lucky. The way he moves and kills suggests something more than just impeccable training: it says metahuman. Powerful metahuman.

There's a beep from one of Oracle's monitors, and then Robin's cowl-feed comes up. Quick change is another one of those skills he has. Y'know, just in case. He's actually still mostly in street clothes, though with a red jacket over the shirt he was wearing, his utility belt slung around his waist, and the product rinsed out of his hair. It's not a lot, but considering what's going on right outside, it should be enough.

He bursts out of the walk-in, staff in one hand, and the cooks are too busy cowering to even look at him. "Give me a sitrep, people," Robin says as he ducks back out into the club proper. There's too much activity for him to get a proper read, but he looks up, and the tech in his mask starts taking freeze-frames of as many faces as it can, feeding it directly to Oracle's systems.

Two women go tumbling over the railing, landing in a heap together on the dance floor. The one underneath has three bullets in her, all from simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the killing blow- her throat's slashed- is from the knife in the other woman's hand. "Target six neutralized," she says as she stands and heads towards the staircase.

She isn't stopped. Not by the man in the cloak, at least.

Upstairs is chaos to most, but to Batgirl the violence around her is like being at the orchestra. Each movement a note that plays off of another creating a great symphony. One that she effortlessly becomes a part of, directing the flow of some of it. Her priority is keeping people alive. Batarangs go end-over-end across the space, narrowly missing those that go flying by from a kick or a punch or a bullet as if coreagraphed to slam into the hand holding a gun and knocking it free even as the black-clad girl is knocking out another guy with a knife about to gut someone. She never stops to assess the fighting, she just moves like everything is scripted and she knows just where to be. Bodies drop in her wake, but all of them keep breathing.

Tomorrow Knight closes the distance between him and another armed mobster. "Chaos boy wonder," He says simply, grabbing the mobster's arm and breaking it like a twig. "Who the hell is that?" He indicates the woman with the knife as he grabs takes the mobster whose arm is broken and spins, launching him into a group of his compatriots and knocking them over like bowling pins.

If The Question had eyes to narrow, he'd be doing it at the cloaked figure. He raises his watch to his lack of mouth. "We have a problem," he tells everyone, "a problem with a penchant for lethal force and powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. H, watch your butt." Was the Faceless Flatfoot already looking at the Huntress' posterior? Good Question.

Upon hearing 'Target six neutralized' The Question grabs Connor's suit jacket from off the barstool. He whips it around to make a rat tail. Coming up behind the woman going back up the stairs with the knife, he crosses the jacket in a loop around her weapon wrist and yanks it. As she turns he drinvs a knee toward her stomach.

As fast as Robin sends her the images, Oracle's systems start processing information -- adding to it the bits that are useful from Canary's cam feed. Facial rec software engages. Identities and rap sheets start popping up all over.

And a pattern starts to emerge.

"Okay," Oracle says, reengaging in the action. "The female with the knife that just came over the balcony is one of several partiers at this shindig with a some sort of cover file. I'm beginning to collate a list of mob moles a mile long. Virtually every one of the big orgs represented here has at least one... I'm thinking they're plants."

She still doesn't know why.

"I want a closer look at the Hood at the top of the stairs. Robin, do you have a batlink in that belt of yours? Snap it onto one of the in-house cams for me, if you do, would you?"

"Unknown." That's all that Darkwing has to say about that. "You can call me Darkwing for now." Because he's going to take over the role of Robin, and he'll do it hopefully by breaking at least a few of Tim's body parts. While he doesn't have the effortless look of Batgirl when he enters into the fray of fighting, he is still quite good at what he does, and that's breaking limbs. Anyone who looks like they're going to try and cause him trouble gets hit as viciously as possible. He's been told there's a nonlethal violence rule for the family, so he's at the very least left his sword back at wherever he's staying. That being said there are probably a few knives on him hidden away for now. "Let's subdue these scum and then we can find out what's going on downstairs."

It's not the chaos that Dinah loves; it's the adrenaline surge that comes with it. For all the peace and solace she finds in the painstaking arrangment of a floral boutique, and all the bliss a certain impossibly-frustrating man might occasionally bring, she can't deny that this-- right now, right here, as she narrowly escapes the wild slash of a mobster's pet butterfly knife, this is where she feels completely at home.

"Sorry," she murmurs, drawing from the same deceptively blank easel of thought that compels the contraction of her honed muscles, stepping around the blade with hand securing wrist. "Bigger fish to *fry*!!" The last comes out in a shrill grunt, her second step dragging the unbalanced man facefirst into the ground; and she, onward. Past the faceless enigma as he waylays the fallen assassin, and toward the stairs.

She's not stopping, heeding Oracle's words as she snaps out a backfist, a palmstrike and a sweeping kick to clear a path. Then she's bounding up the stairwell with reckless abandon.

"On it, B. H? Coming up! Hit him from the side!"

With no regard for her own words, she ditches the last possible air of caution and shouts a wordless challenge, rushing the empowered goon firmly in view of her dangling pendant-camera. She takes the last three steps in a lunge, shielding throat and upper body with an out-facing hand as the other lashes out a tight hook. Nothin' fancy, nothin' sexy; signature Wildcat.

Huntress startles when the knife-wielding woman and her victim topple past her to the ground level, but she recovers quickly enough when Dinah gives her a heads up and throws another of her concealed knives at Billy Badass before charging toward him. She has no illusions that that knife will do any damage at all, but if it distracts the man enough to let the blonde get the first lick in, she'll be right there in the next second throwing a stiletto-assisted kick at the caped swordsman's head.

The young man who was Black Canary's escort continues to use the Staff to try and disarm and incapacitate as many as possible on the first floor. With others going down, it makes swinging the staff around a bit easier. Of course, he's also happy to lash out a kick or two if one comes at him fro that angle.

A bow would have been totally out of place here. Probably a good thing that Connor left it behind.

He's also trying not to kill, but rather subdue. The goal is to get the guns away so that the firing of them is taken out of the picture. With a few brief glances, he tries to keep track of where the apparent allies are so that they don't end up on the wrong end of the staff or foot.

Robin's already on it, Oracle. He'd been hoping to get her linked into the club's camera feeds at some point, tonight, without attracting attention, but... well, there's really no point in being stealthy now, is there? He jumps up onto the bar and runs across it to the camera affixed to the wall.

It's not a great view, aimed down at the bar to keep the people making drinks honest, but as soon as Robin's hooked the small device he pulls from his belt into it, the club's systems are compromised. It begins broadcasting every camera feed directly to the Clocktower.

He jumps back down after, taking cover behind the bar with two scared former coworkers of his (somehow, he doubts he'll be working here again) and throws the occasional shuriken into the fray, but he's mostly trying to figure out what's going on. His suit has a built-in computer system linking to the feed from his mask, and it's doing its level best to catalogue everything going on, but there's a staggering amount of information to process, even for his top-of-the-line tech.

The man on the staircase gets a very big red outline, though, and a warning symbol to go with it. "Possible metahuman," he says. It falls on deaf ears, because two green outlines- Black Canary and Huntress- advance on him anyway.

He seems utterly unconcerned by Question taking out one of his people. Utterly unconcerned by his attackers, as well; Dinah's hook is diverted with one smooth movement, and she's twisted into the path of Helena's oncoming knife. It embeds itself in her back and then the cloaked man throws her aside, before catching the kick by Huntress's ankle, effortlessly absorbing the impact. She's spun off the stairs, to the side.

Upstairs is still chaos, bodies and blood littering the floor, though the combined efforts of the Bats on this level have negated some of the lethality. Two of the targets Oracle has pinged as possible plants are down, though they'd already neutralized their assigned victims. Four more remain, clustered around an accountant for the Russians. He's bleeding out.

Neutralized.

Batgirl has been working her way through the second floor because she knows how fast she can put people down. She can normally drop even trained thugs with a hit and she moves with a speed that most assume to be metahuman. But as she sees the figure on the stairs dealing with Huntress and Dinah, she starts to push that way. She doesn't have the time to try to find the words in her limited vocabulary. Doesn't have anyone to sign to what suggestion she might give in regards to the figure standing there so instead she'll put herself in the way.

"You guys clear out the rest!" the Tomorrow Knight yells. "That guy is mine!" Terry's rocket boots fire off, sending him flying at the Cloaked Figure. Claws extend from his fingers.

Speed is something that Darkwing has as well. He's able to move faster than the guys around him and his short stature makes it easier for him to use his opponents weight and height against them. "Are any of these guys going to put up a real fight?" He asks breaking a guy's leg in the process. "Someone may want to call an ambulance, or thirty." He says as he punches a guy in a not very nice place to hit a guy. This isn't a fair play event, and even then he's Darkwing, fighting fair's not his thing.

The Question elbows his reeling opponent between the shoulder blades, and then slams the bucket doen over her head and drives it into the column that Black Canary was leaning against a short while ago. Lunging over the bar he grabs a bottle of vodka and bashes the top off. Connor's tie gets stuffed in the opening. As the jumpsuited-Question runs up the stairs in Canary's wake the strip of cloth is treated to the cigarette lighter.

"Hey! Samurai Jack!," he yells, "have a drink on the house!" The molitov cocktail is hurled at him. Too bad the Question doesn't speak Japanese.

Jackpot! Love that bat-tech. Awesome stuff!

Oracle grins as her monitors finally light up... But the expression shifts quickly to one of horror as Dinah takes a knife to the back. "Dinah!"

Followed up quckly, of course, by the meta's quick dispatch of Huntress as well. "NO!"

It all happens in an instant. Everything does when you're this close, and this good; if the tables were turned, and Dinah had the upper hand, it would be the same for her opponent. But this one's too quick for her - probably too strong, and possibly even too skilled. She sees everything happen, taking it in with the trained senses that only one of the best comes to possess.

But it's not enough. She sees the blade well before it enters her body, but she's already engaged in attempting to turn the diverted punch to a clean landing beside the cloaked figure. There's no way she *can* move, and as the weapon passes her vision in that same, infinite immediacy, she damn well knows it.


 * shunk*

There's a bizarre abstraction of thought when taking such an injury-- pain doesn't even register, really, the knife's tip igniting a sensory explosion that numbs everything. It's not until she's flung, and tumbled end over end over end, that the Black Canary becomes aware how much it hurts. She hisses as she rolls to a crouch, reaching back to touch the offending area. The hiss becomes a harsh grinding of teeth, vision flashing red, then white-hot, then black. Oh no, she thinks, please don't...

"Rrrrrgh!" Gritting out her frustration at her own weakness, she shakes herself back into consciousness, righting the slump of shoulders with a briskness that only worsens the pain. By now it's too late to take any other action - in a fight, seconds are everything. It's over by the time she's able to even consider rejoining it; and she's a few centimetres from paralysis.

Probably best not, then. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

"Hope you caught all that," she manages for Oracle's benefit, pain and bitterness lacing her tone even as she tries to keep it calm, and glancing entirely pointlessly toward the side of her own head as she does so. Funny how the brain ceases to work when there's a sharp implement lodged an inch from the spine. She can't see Babs, but it's a weird kind of comfort. "No face, but... movement. Know anyone..." She feels another tremor, a reminder of where her body sorely wants to be. Her head swims. "Who reads bodies... like a book?"

There's a sort of strangled gasp then, and a tight swallow as she makes one last, desperate attempt to fight it. But whoever the cloaked man is, he had her number today. Thump. Knockout in round one.

Huntress's attention is distracted by her own knife hitting Dinah and her eyes go wide even as Billy Badass is flinging her over the side of the staircase by her ankle. "SHIT!" Really, the only thing she can do is try to mitigate the fall by either trying to shoulder roll as she hits the floor (her parkour is only SO good, though) or by using a person as some kind of cushion to land on. Damn, neither is a good choice, and not one she really has much say in, ultimately. Oh, and for the record? The furniture here is surprisingly sturdy.

Down for the count as well.

"No!" Connor jabs the staff at one mobster and kicks another towards the bar as he sees Dinah fall from the stairs, obviously injured. Freeing himself of attackers, he rushes over to her to try and catch her before she falls. Her pulse is checked before he glances around and grabs a fallen mook's cell phone. He doesn't have one himself and all phones can dial 911.

"Come on, Dinah...wake up, all right? Someone's going to have to explain why your blood is on this suit!" He looks about as Huntress lands..."Are you all right?" When will the ambulances get here?

One man lifts his gun. One more shot fired. The accountant is dead, and then the assassins calmly drop their weapons, sit down on the ground and put their hands behind their heads. Placidly waiting to be arrested. The rest, aside for the handful that the Bats (and Question) managed to incapacitate, are dead.

This was not a mission they intended to return from, clearly.

The molotov sails through the air where the man in the cloak was recently standing. There's alcohol spilled on the floor, and more blood (with a high BAC in it) mixed with. Within seconds, the second floor starts to burn. He looks, briefly, at Batgirl, clear by the tilt of his head, and then moves almost faster than the naked eye can see, catching the Tomorrow Knight by one arm as he flies by. There's not even a flinch as the claws dig into his arm, and using Terry's momentum against him, sends him flying into a wall.

Then he's gone. Through the blaze erupting upstairs like it's nothing, and then an impossibly high leap to the skylight. There's no trace of him beyond.

Robin dashes past Question and Batgirl towards Canary's prone form. "Don't move her," he says, hurriedly, and helps Connor ease her to the floor as gently as possible, doing his best to keep any pressure off his wound. "I don't have the skills to deal with this kind of injury, but it's lodged close to her spine. We can't risk the knife moving. Oracle, we need transportation."

The flames travel to where the four assassins are still seated upstairs. It consumes them, and they don't even scream.