2013-01-26: Another Day In Gotham...

It was late in Gotham City, not the time of night people typically enjoyed walking around in unless there was plenty of light and patrol cars were cruising up and down the street. The night was made even LESS safe by the fact that the Church of Blood was apparently in town and up to no good. Various law enforcement agencies were on high alert, but none knew the location of the cultists or just WHAT they were planning. They simply knew that there was something valuable here in Gotham that they had come to get. Considering it was a demonic cult, anything they could want to get their hands on couldn't be any good for anyone else.

The girl known as Raven was in Gotham for an entirely different reason. Namely seeking a book that had once belonged to an Azarathian monk, a book which might help her against the doomsday that she knew would come eventually. Unfortunately, she had turned up nothing.

Before the hoodie-wearing girl had a chance to teleport out, however, she'd been cornered. And attacked.

They'd known who she was, WHAT she was, and used a strange glass vessel which emitted a strange smoke that made it hard to think. She felt sluggish, hard to concentrate. The cultists had attempted to assault her, to haul her off into the sewers and out of the city, but the teenaged daughter of Trigon had proven more resilient than that. Her Soul-Self had managed to be wielded, albeit clumsily, and she had managed to get away.

Temporarily.

The men, almost a dozen or so, had chased her through the warehouses as Raven attempted to make her escape, and into the business district. Her legs were weakening, her head made it impossible to think, to call upon her powers, to teleport herself to safety. The girl in the blue hoodie and low-cut jeans stumbles out from the mouth of an alley, knocking over trashcans and tripping, falling to her hands and knees, skinning the palms of her hands. A couple were across the street, walking arm in arm, startled into staring in surprise as three men emerge from the darkness between the buildings and begin to drag the dark-haired girl back into the alley.

Raven struggles and cries out, "HELP MEEEEEEE!" A shrill scream, but this is Gotham, and the couple believes it simply safer to walk on than to intervene.

The Church of Blood finally had their hands on Trigon's prize, and He would be pleased with them.

Most of the time, Janet interviews witnesses in her office. Or in jail. Or at the police station. Occasionally, however, special circumstances come up and she takes a trip out. She doesn't go alone, though, because she's not an idiot. She's the Gotham City DA. That means that people have tried to kill her more than once, have tried to abduct her more than once... she is, in general, a troublesome woman to try to keep safe.

This troublesomeness is exacerbated, of course, by the fact that she gets into /more/ trouble than she should. She's just leaving the apartment complex where she was speaking to a rather paranoid witness of a particularly complicated crime when she sees the girl trying to dash out of the alley. The slight woman steps forward, concern etched on her face. That concern turns to shock and outrage when the three men reach out for her and drag her back in.

Because she's no fool, she doesn't go wandering around Gotham defenseless. She has Ol' Sparky, her faithful taser. She also has Patrick O'Leary, her freckled and ginger-headed police officer escort, who immediately grabs her arm as she starts after the trio of kidnappers.

"Ms. Van Dorn," he says frantically, "that's /really/ not your job!"

"Then either you stop them or call for backup, but I'm not going to -- HEY!" She sprints to the mouth of the alley, reaching into her lovely long wool coat and pulling out her faithful taser. "Three against one? Those are really unfriendly odds..."

Just as Janet reaches the mouth of the alley, she'd feel a hand on her shoulder, and being pulled to the side, where a red-haired and bearded man looks at her with a bit of annoyance. "You really should listen to that cop friend of yours, Ms. Van Dorn."

One might as why Marty was there at that moment, to intercept. Truth be told, he was planning a furthur chat, a discussion with Janet in the background of an impressive and mysterious 'coincedntal meeting' that had been arranged due to the fact that computer security for the municipal government was horrible, and that included official scheduldes. That had been an easy, routine enough plan. And then this happened.

Martin moves his hand, and looks down to the taser that Janet holds, sighing for a moment as he moves into the alley itself, opening up his coat. "That's really not something you want to bring into a situation like this. You maybe get... one shot off? And then what happens?" He says, before clearing his throat. "Hello? Whoever it is, you'd better run! We've called the police!" Always try the simple things first.

More of the cultists, most of them wearing simply-tailored suits, are waiting in the alley as Raven is drug, struggly vainly to break free, her powers neutralized. Her head was filled with a thick fog, but she can still clearly see, even as she's drug away from the alley mouth, spun around to face her pursuers as seven of them form a loose semi-circle before and around her. She's panting, wild-eyed, on her knees. It was so hard to think, hard enough to force her limbs to MOVE, panic and that damned smoke still emanating from the vessel in the one man's hand lending the alley an aura of a foggy night.

"Come, our Queen. Be not afraid, He waits for you. Brother Blood wishes only to take you unto your destiny." The bastard was SMILING, as if performing a benevolent act! The frightened teenager could only shake her head, slowly at first, then faster, in denial. For her, it was the culmination of all of her greatest fears, what this man was 'offering'.

All heads turn towards the new disturbance at the head of the alley, even the two men holding the young, pale-skinned girl by each of her arms, excluding Raven herself, who is passively kneeling in a half-crumpled heap, the hood of her dark-blue hoodie drawn up over her head and hair. Three more men step forward out of the shadows, bringing the total to ten, and two of them reach into jackets to pull out shiny silver revolvers.

"This does not concern you, madam. I suggest you heed advice and forget anything you have seen." The leader speaks. He's got those kind of abnormal eyes, the ones that stare a little too intently and are open a little too wide. In fact, most of the men do. His small, chilling smile never wavers as Martin enters, and he extends his hand up towards the mouth of the path between buildings invitingly. "Go in peace. ...While you still can."

Meanwhile, the last of the dozen, two men in the car are out on the street. Their headlights highbeams come on as the one in the driver's seat floors the accelerator as he sees the cop Janet came with. In fact, he's aiming the grill of the SUV right at the officer and attempting to run him down!

Officer O'Leary is franticaly calling for backup, staring at Martin with evident displeasure. Janet, for her part, also looks up at Martin with surprise and a general lack of delight. "Long time no see. And usually a little shock is enough to stop /most/ people from dragging someone off..."

But given that there's seven crazed cultists surrounding the young girl, one little taser doesn't feel like it's going to do much good. "The police are on their way. We don't just dial 911 around here. Let the lady go -- "

And that's when the pair in the SUV start in. Janet stares in horror before she leaps toward O'Leary, shoving him out of the way of the careening vehicle. He's shouting rather frantically into his radio and shouting, as an aside, "That's MY job!" to Janet as she drags him out of the way of danger. Troublesome.

This was certainly not according to any plan that Martin had thought up for today, and certainly not to the half-cobbled together idea when he thought this was a simple street gang deciding on a female for some nightly fun. The group was large, trained, armed, and unlike Martin, they had a plan. Obviously. Slowly, Martin moves to pull his hands free, his coat open, the holster rig underneath the cheap suit jacket partially visable. "Look... I don't want any trouble but you... can't expect us to walk away. Look at that poor girl! The police are coming, and they're not too far away from her. She came with a cop! Just think about it." He says, his face white, a little bit of sweat showing on his brow from the not fiegned fact that he was looking at so many enemies without the items nessecary to defeat them.

His hand reaches into his pocket. "Look, is it money? I've got... look." He says, slowly coming out with a smartphone. "What if I give you this? I just bought it, it's worth... at least a few hundred bucks. I've got more in my wallet. Just... please, leave her alone."

He puts on a frightened face to meet the smile, that frightening, damned smile on the leader's face, turning his head minutuely as the SUV carens forward to try and kill the cop, as Janet has rushed away to help. Okay. That was both a blessing and a curse. That taser could have been useful, but he had a few tricks... including the one currently held out in offering to the leader.

The SUV manages to narrowly miss O'Leary and van Dorn as one is shoved out of the way by the other, the brakes locking up and skidding as it turns an almost perfect one-eighty when the wheel is turned. It leaves black tire treads on the dark concrete. But the two men exit the vehicle, one drawing a gun, the other a knife that looked like it should a foot-and-a-half long prop in a Hollywood movie's sacrificial ritual.

The gun, naturally, is swung towards the cop, while the knife-wielder runs right for Janet, it held up in a reverse grip for a downward stab at her. There's no typical thuggish war cries, just quiet fanaticism as they attempt to kill the duo.

Back in the alley, the leader merely continues to smile, before dropping the hand that offered retreat. "Raven shall be taken to Him, no other would suffice." He states as Martin attempts to reason with him. "We fear no worldly men, for our souls are already His. 'Those who do not accept mercy shall receive none.' Kill him."

The two men holding onto Raven's arms begin to drag her deeper into the alley as the leader motions for them to do so, the seven remaining men stepping forward to come between the people at the head of the alley and their 'cargo'.

"No... no... no... NOOOO!" Raven fights with renewed energy as her heels attempt to dig into the ground, but her legs feel like wet noodles and her captors don't even seem to need to be putting in much effort to drag her along.

"SILENCE!"

The leader thunders, rearing back his hand to smack Raven across the mouth while the other tightens about the small glass vase. Her head snaps to the side with a *KRACK* of flesh-on-flesh. "You are His daughter and you will not deny the honor He has chosen for you!"

The two men with the gun hang back, (the perks of having a gun!), whilst the other five draw knives akin to what the man out on the street was wielding. These five do not run, they close with methodical precision on the man attempting to barter for Raven's life. None appear to be properly trained, but the light of insanity burning brightly behind their eyes is likely to make them dangerous enough!

She's not a cop. She's not a commando. Janet is, in the end, just a lawyer. Well, a lawyer and a cop's daughter. Well, a Gotham cop's daughter. One who got into more than her fair share of fistfights as a girl. One who's taken a few self-defense classes. One with a taser.

So as she's rolling to one side, she's not actually panicking. She's the /unperturbable/ daughter of a clean Gotham cop who was taught self-defense not by some master on top of a mountain but Jim Gordon, Uncle Jim, who knows how to roll with the punches. The knife swishes through the air and Janet fires the taser even as Officer O'Leary fires off three shots at his own attacker's center of gravity. That man staggers back, turns, and collapses onto the street. Patrick gasps for breath as the knife-wielder collapses twitching to the pavement. Janet scrabbles in her briefcase. Did she bring it? She rarely goes out without it -- ah, yes. Her father's Police Special.

"Don't go back in there," Officer O'Leary breathes. He clasps a hand around her wrist. "Only if they come after you." He rises to a crouch before her as police sirens start wailing through the night. The cavalry's coming. The /official/ cavalry, anyway.

Martin Kavanagh takes one step back, as the girl (Raven, was it? He'd have to log that to do an intelligence search back at base for that, assuming he was still alive at that point) cries out in denial of the fate that they had in store for her. And then /his/ fate is proclaimed. "Really? There's something unnatural about not having fear..." He says, as those seven people advanced toward him. He looks nervous, still holding the phone itself as the knife wielders start to walk forward. He takes another step back, as they move forward... and then ahead of those men with gun. Then he lets out a sigh of releif. "Okay. That'll work." He gives a slight smile. "Sorry, guys. I thought I was going to be in trouble there for a moment-

A button is pressed on the phone itself, and the screen lights up to a level that no commercial device should be capable of generating, a white hot flash that would hopefully blind anyone looking at it. And right after it goes off, Martin's heading forward, to the closest assialiant, the phone already on the ground as he grips the man's wrist, then bring his hand down with deliberate force, attempting to break the arm holding the weapon before charging forward, cultist first, into the two men with the revolvers. He needed a firearm that wasn't registered.

There were no other sirens going off right now. Just beaten up windowless deliver van crusing sedately, and, coincidentally, in this direction.

With both men out on the street taken down, the officer and the DA seem to be out of direct harm's way. Of course the police aren't that far away, after all, this is GOTHAM. Half the force on the current shift probably spends their time in patrol cars just WAITING for such calls. The half that aren't on the take, that is.

The SUV meanwhile, is still just sitting there, both doors open, engine running, headlights illuminating the street and the mouth of the alley.

The men in the alley weren't expecting much resistance, or at least not any TRAINED resistance from the male they were cornering. He might receive a few cuts and scrapes from wild knife swings, but one of the cultist's arms is broken and he's slammed bodily into the men with guns, one going down with an *OOF* with his buddy on top of him and other firing wildly as he stumbles, hitting one of his comrades in the arm and causing him to drop the knife he was close to trying to stick into Martin's back. The remaining three combat-capable knife-wielders try to converge on the SHIELD agent from behind as the two gunmen try to regain their wits, bearing, and line up the sights on their revolvers.

"Quickly!" The leader shouts, even as the two near him bodily lift Raven up and after them, struggling and all, that damnable thick smoke seeming to surround and invade her head, keeping her from connecting to her powers. It felt odd, as if a piece of herself were somehow missing, as if she had lost an eye.

Regardless, the three carting off the teenaged girl bolt down the backside of the alley, back down the route they had chased her from in the first place.

Ah, yes. That's more what Janet expected out of Marty. Flashing smartphone. A bit more James Bondy. Now she no longer has to ask him whether he left all his gadgets at home.

The car they came in is parked somewhat down the road. Glancing into the alley, O'Leary yanks his head back away when he sees all that wild firing. They're closing in on Kavanagh, and as he assesses the situation, the cop glances back at his charge: "I'm -- I've got to get you out of here. I need to get the car." He glances at the SUV, swallowing hard as he makes the decision: "You stay here. /Stay here/. Don't do anything crazy. I'm going to get the car and I'll be /right back/."

"I'll be fine, Pat. And I'm all too happy to get right out of here as soon as the rest of the party shows. I'll cover you." She ends up covering them both, Patrick and Martin: crouching low, she fires off a few shots to keep the cultists' heads down and to stop them from doing any of their own firing. As long as she doesn't hit Raven or Martin, she's quite content.

Meanwhile, those sirens are getting wonderfully loud...

Martin doesn't waste any time, moving to grip the hair of the knife weilder who's been so useful so far, grabbing his head and /slamming/ in hard onto the hard surface of the street. His hands move quickly after that. He's crouched, but he gets up quickly, almost vaulting as his hands bring one of the armed gunman's gun arm up, and then around, pulling it into a painful position and squeezing the wrist until it has to let go of the revolver.

Then he's thrown forward, and Martin, without the slight smile of before raises the weapon and fires a round into the disarmed man's throat, before sweeping around. His leg moves to slam into the other gunman's foot, before his free hand spins him around by the shoulder and then wraps tightly around his throat, squeezing the air out of him as he's manuever in front of the other knife wielders. Another shot, this time aiming for the closest one's eye.

At the very least, he's got covering fire from the taser at the rear, and he wouldn't mind if it distracted those people at the back, and turned this into a confusing two front melee.. for them, anyway.

He looked over to the end of the alley, where the three other's were dragging off the poor girl, and /really/ hoped his own back up got here soon....

As bullets start coming INTO the alley, cultists begin to duck and cover as best they can. After all, not ALL of them had the same level of fanatical certainty as their leader and were willing to willy-nilly throw their lives away. One of the men screams as a bullet catches him right in the backside, going down to the pavement clutching the left cheek of his bottom. Another lets out a pained hiss as one of Janet's bullets grazes his arms and causes him to dive into a pile of crates to avoid any more of them.

The cops manage to show up, tearing down the road in the old-style beaters they had to drive because the politicians at the top were too busy skimming off the top of the police budget to upgrade them. Lights flashing up the street like a strobing effect, several officers jump out of their vehicles almost before they've come to a stop and begin running towards Janet and her escorting officer. More are coming from down the block.

Two men go down permanently, killed by Martin's newly-acquired firearm, a third held hostage. The rest were quickly entering into a losing battle, with shots coming at them from both sides and between all of them (and their injuries) having a few knives and one gun (which was currently dropped and not in any bad guy's hand). For all practical purposes, those men had been taken out of the fight, and that'd be quite official once the policemen just outside the alley figure out what's going on and enter to apprehend.

The three retreating men and their captives cut a corner and knock over a few crates and trashcans to impede pursuit. "Hurry up, get her in the sewer, we'll make our escape there!"

And then a high-pitched, screeching feminine voice: "YOU WILL NOT!"

"Just knock her out and stuff her- AAAAHHHHHH-" Three men screaming abruptly cuts off as a wave of dark energy lashes out, passing through buildings and people in the surrounding area with seemingly no effect, other than to leave behind a vague feeling of numbing cold.

Janet's a bit surprised that any of her bullets hit home, frankly. It was a bit of spray and pray, except she was at least suitably careful to prevent Martin getting hit by anything. Patrick, meanwhile, brings back the rather old (but still reliable!) Town Car that ferries the DA from place to place. Not as energy efficient as a Prius. Swankier, though, and somewhat more bulletproof.

Janet quickly tucks the gun away and rises from her crouch as the police come; she lets them hustle her toward the car, but she looks up sharply when she hears that scream. The cops are quickly pulling their sidearms and several are crowding toward the mouth of the alley, but as Janet slips into her car, she's smiling rather unpleasantly. That wasn't a scared teenaged girl. That was an /angry/ teenaged girl, and Janet's.. she's just not going to think about what that girl must have done to terrify those men.

Martin Kavanagh keeps up with the weapon, tracking down to the man who's arm's been wounded, tracking him down to shoot him in the head and make sure he didn't get back up That was... three bullets left, he beleived... And those were the cops. He couldn't stay here any longer without his name being plaster across police blotters, and that was something that wasn't supposed to happen to spies. And that girl that was in trouble-

With the focus on 'Was' in this case. he turned his head briefly as the blast of energy comes from that location, or near it, scanning for those men with the girl... and dragging his hostage back with him. "I've got a name. That's going to be all we're going to have.

Right at this time, just before the cops ca get to the other end of the alley, a van slides in front of it, the doors pulling open to reveal a group of balaclaved men and women, dashing out of the van itself, bringing up silenced assault carbines and aiming for the cult members. Hey, some of them might still be dangerous... and unless they start surrendering, the team isn't going to ask for them.

Martin starts to drag his captive back to the van, as the men rush up in front of him, providing covering fire. as another jabs the hapless man in the thigh with a syringe. "Gear." He says, handing the man off as he's given a jacket and a balackava of his own, quickly donning them and an assault weapon, before moving forward and toward where the girl was. He had to make sure whoever these people were didn't actually /win/.

The arrival of the police, in force, with weapons drawn puts a quick end to resistance in the alley. The one or two men who aren't injured quickly surrender, and those that still have both working arms are put into handcuffs, while ambulances are called for the ones with injuries. Of course, four of them are pronounced dead at the scene, the three killed by Martin and the one by Officer Pat.

With them neutralized, the hapless man being taken by the SHIELD agent offers only minimal struggle, and most of that a desire to BREATHE more than escape. He's quickly drugged and tossed unconscious into the van. When Martin turns the corner, he finds an open sewer grate, three unconscious men, and the girl, also sans consciousness. The vase lies on its side, still spewing its pungent smelling smoke, though it doesn't seem to be having much of an effect on anyone.

The men remain catatonic, save for their eyes, which are wide open, while it appears that the girl seems to be sleeping peacefully, albeit in a crumpled heap. But either way, Martin has mere seconds if he wishes to remain undetected with the police beginning to comb further into the alley with their flashlights!

Janet, for her part, has every confidence that Martin will be capable of getting out of Dodge with his identity intact. Nevertheless, she does call out to the officers to get their attention now that the gunplay appears to be over: "They were trying to drag off a girl. Some of them are gone already, I think, but it sounded like she might have got away from them. If you do find her, she might have some idea what's going on."

Not that she's likely to actually tell them, of course. Everyone assumes the police can't help them.

But then she's in her car, snug and warm and next to Officer Pat. "Nice going there," she manages, slumping back and running a hand over her face.

"Just once," he murmurs, starting up the car and piloting it out of the press of police, "I'd like it if you didn't start dodging out and shooting while I'm trying to keep you alive."

"It's worked so far," Janet replies, her eyes still closed.

Martin Kavanagh turns the corner... and sees that there are three men there, now, her three attackers, who didn't look very able to attack anything right now. So the girl was fine, but this ended up being more of a problem; if those folks got better, they would capture her again. If he killed them... well, the girl was going to have to answer a lot of questions anyway, and Gotham interrogation rooms really weren't protection from anything at all. So that left only one alternative.

Martin brings up the rifle he was handed, firing three silenced bursts, one each into the chest of the canatonic men on the ground. He couldn't risk anyone reporting what they saw, and doing it now saved the effort he'd /already/ have to go through to clean this up.

The rifle behind him, he doesn't waste time in being gentle as he grabs the teenager from the ground, lifts her up, and sprints back to the van itself, the police close on his heels as he leaps into the open car. "Site 2C for debrief and research." He says, as the door's slammed shut, the photovolic paint on the van switching over to a popular courier service (complete with the correct plates) as the van drives off, and into the night.

The District Attorney and her officer have to file purfunctory police reports, of course (and Patrick has file the gazillion pages of a firearm discharge report as well), but they're allowed to leave and give their statements the next morning. Perks of the job and all.

The police comb the alley, removing all the suspects they find, the living ones, anyway. The bodies are simply left for the crime scene team to go over for evidence, photographed, outlined, all that good regular policework that superheroes never want to do.

Marty manages to grab Raven, execute the bad guys, and get into his van to drive off JUST as the first of the cops turns the corner in the alley and calls out "HEY, STOP!" But he's already gone down the street, with no hope of being caught.

The girl struggles a bit in her sleep, murmuring 'no' a few times. She won't awaken for several hours, and when someone goes to question/check on her, Raven would be found to be gone. Any witnesses would later say she 'just melted into shadow'. In reality, she teleported back to Titan's Tower, with new troubles on her mind, sequestering herself in her room away from her teammates.

Of course, little can be gleaned by law enforcement from the Church of Blood cultists. SHIELD, with a few harsher, more invasive methods, would be able to learn more of the Church of Blood and their worship of Trigon, though not much more than they already did. The new information would be that the girl, Raven, his child, was the key to his return. And that Brother Blood would inevitably try again to capture her.

However long, or many generations, it would take.

And, of course, Janet van Dorn would have a few new cases to try, most of which would try to plead out on insanity and/or be murdered before even getting to trial.