2012-07-22 Sending a Message

Feelers had been sent out for some time, emissaries to the mob, as one might call them. Their task had been simple: deliver messages to arrange a meeting with the prominent mob family leaders in Gotham. A few of those messengers, however, had had a touch of misfortune in their lives: one had been apprehended by a vigilante and had to be silenced, without the delivery of the message; another had been shot simply for 'rudeness'. At least two of the major families were unaccounted for, to date, and so Bane had decided that to compensate, a more /direct/ message would need to be sent.

Tonight is where one of those messages was to be ... delivered. A few of the crew had been selected for tonight's undertaking, and a phone call made from a public payphone had been the means to set up what was likely to end up close to a turf war, with how two groups of men were destined to collide. So at an unreasonably dark hour, after 9pm, in a construction yard shut down for the day, comes this particular meeting.

"Nice of you to show up," crewman Orion had coolly informed the mob thugs he'd arranged at his boss's behest. "Our boss wants to talk to yours." Everyone is armed, and fingers were itchy, even from the start.

A few weeks ago, Spoiler snapped a few pictures of a truck heist in progress; one of them included the perps' car, plate and all.

Tonight, when she happened across that same car cutting down a little-used side street, she decided to creep in after it, just to see where it takes her. Maybe she'll find another truck heist! Maybe the police might even make it to this one before it's too late; that would be /great/.

The violet-clad vigilante keeps her whole body low and tries to stay as far behind her quarry as she can without losing it. There are some snags - she even dips into an alley and waits for a while when the car suddenly stops at one point, but it's a false alarm - but eventually, the car pulls into the construction yard and parks--alongside a number of /other/ cars.

At 9pm, in Gotham City.

Spoiler's eyes widen behind her mask as she hits the brakes and does the math; the thought of turning around and speeding away even crosses her mind, but she quickly banishes it. She's here now; this is--her job. That nobody asked her to do, doesn't pay anything, and involves doing occasional property damage to the city.

She gently slaps her cheek, then climbs off the bike and quietly heads for a nearby back hoe. She /should/ be able to tuck herself into its cab reasonably well, and hopefully, nobody will think twice about checking them out.

Even were they observed, that was somewhat the point. Sending messages on a level that tonight's will embody means that inevitably there will be witnesses. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be apprehended if they're a /discovered/ witness, of course. A matter of semantics, and to an extent, pride.

"Yeah?" one of the mob's goons is replying. The usual derisive tone, the retort about who these men in Bane's employ think they are... it only serves to make Orion look a bit bored. He's glancing between the members of the mob, lingering on one or two in the group of six facing him, seemingly outnumbered with having three others alongside him.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" Orion says in response to all that, never once losing that cool, collected demeanor. The bluster he had just endured only bored him.

"What you need to do is fuck off," the mob replies with a hint of a sneer, as he pulls out his gun along with the others with him. Everyone quickly is armed and ready for violence, having been that way from the start. The first shot that fired is not from the 'leader' of this group of mobmen, however, but rather one behind him. And it's not aimed at the members of Bane's crew that wanted this 'meeting' as it were.

There's a decided turncoat in the mob, one who ever so casually, ever so quickly takes a shot at "his leader's" head and drops him just like that, while gunfire quickly settles the deal and lights up the night...

...and likely the dispatch board as 911 is dialed.

"haa--" Spoiler breathes out before clapping both hands over her mouth. Her eyes are locked on the mafioso as his last thoughts leak from the brand new hole in his skull.

'...ly shit holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit...' loops through her thoughts, meanwhile; when she finally trusts herself to remain silent while she works with her phone, she fetches it and taps at the keys with her jittery fingers.

After deleting 'hol' from the buffer, she has a flash of inspiration: she sticks the camera outside and snaps a few pictures of the chaos, trying to center on the dead mobster as best as her poor vantage and trembling hand will allow.

Several seconds later, the pictures appear on her twitter profile--and the GCPD's. No clues, no pointers to the location of the gunfight, not yet; she'll get to that when she's not quite so worried about catching a stray bullet, or someone trying to use her hiding place as his own.

There will be plenty of bullets, but one thing will become very clear: this isn't so much a meeting as it is an execution. And one done from within, no less. The man who fired the first shot, felling the mobster through the back of his skull, is not idle. One, two, they drop quickly, all while the rest of the crew pick the remaining targets and drop them almost before they can even /think/ about pulling the triggers. That's not to say that the mob goes down easily, simply that the element of surprise worked against them.

"You know what to do," Orion says as he limps slightly towards his comrade who offers a wink in return; Orion's leg had taken a stray round, though the crew had largely been unhurt.

Another gunshot fires in the night, a yelp of pain, and the turncoat's arm is bleeding as he quickly runs. Poor aims follow him as Orion and the others shoot at the man who even now is running towards the car he himself had driven to this meeting, one decidedly emptier.

Gunfire lights up the night and nearby, and soon everyone but you is gone, leaving behind an empty scene full of bodies, bullets, blood, and brains.

@Spoiler_Alert: @Gotham_Police consruction yar gang fght dead bodes evrywhere semd cafs or somthig

As more bodies hit the floor, it becomes clear that now is not the time for leading hints and games; people are dying. /Fast/. Spoiler tries - /tries/ - to follow the 'fight', but there's too much going on. Too much blood. Too many bodies falling limp. Too many bullets pinging off of the back hoe's cab; before long, her eyes are mostly darting around the massacre as a matter of self-preservation.

After what seems like an eternity, the last gunshot is fired, Orion is giving orders for clean-up, and the Spoiler can finally exha--

*BANG!*

She nearly hits the roof when the turncoat takes one in the arm, and has to clap her hands over her mouth again to squelch the cry that nearly slips out. Rather than watch the last man die, she ducks her head and waits for the gunfire to end. And for the tires to squeal as the murderers drive away; that's when she /knows/ it's over.

Only then does she crawl outside; she nearly crumples when her feet touch the ground, her legs are wobbling so badly. She manages to keep herself afoot by grabbing onto her former hiding place, and once she's stable enough to walk, she slowly makes her way to the 'meeting site', camera at the ready.

Except for one, the original group of mobsters are dead. Except for two of them, those cronies had taken shots from the front. Taking out two from behind had grossly skewed the odds. The scene is unquestionably a massacre, with multiple bodies lying in the dirt of the construction yard. Blood is seeping everywhere, as can be expected, and except for those that took lethal shots to the head, faces are largely recognizable, certainly able to be photographed for later analysis (even those that did get headshots are likely to pass facial recognition, with the gore removed).

Of those who did the killing, however, very little remains save for the hints of blood spatter that would require a very thorough investigation of the scene to find, and with GCPD alerted, by more than just you now, time is short.

Now that she can really take her time to get the best shots possible, Spoiler has to force herself not to rush through this. The sights, smells, even the /sounds/ of this horror show - the *squelch* of combat boots meeting fresh grey matter is a memory she'll carry with her for a while to come - are overwhelming, and the job she insisted on doing tonight demands that she capture it clearly. Even then, the worst of the headshots may well remain obscured; she'll poke a few bits of gore aside with the tip of her boot if she absolutely /must/, but she can't bring herself to get her hands quite that dirty.

When she gets to the man who's nearly dying, she can barely bring herself to look at him as she gets his picture; before moving on, she takes the time to call 911 to alert the authorities to expect at least one possible survivor.

For the next several minutes, while the GCPD races to the scene of the crime, its Twitter feed is filling up with pictures from it; by the time they get there, they'll find it empty of anyone save the dead and the dying; Spoiler's motorcycle is pulling away as the squad cars are pulling in.

A few blocks later, she pulls into an alley; there, she yanks the bottom of her mask up and throws up into the nearest trash can, trembling the whole time. Eventually, she'll pull herself together enough to finish driving home; eventually, she'll even remember to let Oracle know about what she saw.

For now, though, she is just sick.