2013.06.20 - Party Crashers

The block is one of those forgotten parts of town, the sort the Bowery specializes in. In order, the storefronts along its eastern facade are a struggling laundromat, a shifty looking pawn shop, a well-reinforced adult video store, a run down smokeshop, a boarded up print shop, and a bar with a half-lit neon sign that reads 'Health Inspected'. (No word about whether or not it actually passed inspection.) There are three abandoned cars along the street, though none of them are in front of the XXX shop. (Those ones have been towed.) There's also access to a 'parking alley' behind the street, where broken chip'n'seal is littered with shards of shattered beer bottles and battered garbage bins alongside delivery access doors.

The buildings themselves are narrow and squat, only a couple of storeys high -- the sort with postage-stamp apartments for the shop owners, though many of them are derelict and used for other purposes these days. Madame Mystica, self-purported Psychic to the Stars is probably the most legitimate of the inhabitants of the upstairs flats. Certainly, she's one of the least skeevy.

She's also off visiting her sister in Queens for the night.

It's the print shop, however, that has Oracle's attention for the evening. Her digivoice crackles over BoPRadio, tonight. "It was actually a pretty clever plan," she can be heard to say. "It costs, what? A few hundred bucks at most to put together one of those maker-bot 3d printers? Smuggle it into the mint, copy the plates, smuggle it back out with none the wiser. Until the fakes started showing up at local businesses. Cops don't have the manpower to cover this case, and the feds haven't gotten off their collective asses to deal with it, yet. So, it's our turn, before someone decides to turn his own personal printing factory into something a whole lot more dangerous."

It's another one of those 'right place, right time' scenarios for Domino. She hadn't planned on getting drawn into all of this, but hey, what could she do? It's a few blocks out of her way, she wasn't involved in any pressing business when the call came through, and if she's really lucky this will all somehow tie in to her other work. The kind that pays and doesn't care if certain people wind up dead. Mutual back-scratching followed by one giant blind eye in compensation.

Working with the good guys can sometimes pay in one's favor.

A blacked out BMW quietly rolls into place not too far away from the print shop. It's a nice car in an awful neighborhood, though she's willing to play the odds. A quick stop to the trunk gives her a variety of options on how to deal with tonight's gig. Her trench gets tossed aside. Grenades and jacketed rounds are swapped out for non-lethal sorts. Collapsible batons are added into her evening's presentation. Then, just to top things off, she hauls out a short but bulky shotgun and several spare shell holders for her person, offering payloads across the board from solid rubber shot to explosive slugs.

Even without murder entering into the equation, she still lives for this.

Once more the triple A-sized HUD camera gets hooked onto her headset, poised right over her left ear. "Alright, Shodan. How big of a crater you want tonight?"

Money laundering. Not too uncommon in Gotham, really- all kinds in this city- but it's almost like taking a break, for Robin. Regularly confronting the worst Gotham has to offer gets tiring, after a while. Draining. Luckily, you don't do what he does without having a hell of a lot of willpower to spare.

"We've already got enough dirty money in this city," he says into his comms. Robin is, like usual, found a perch nearby to observe. A fire escape shrouded in shadows, and his cape folded over him like ink. "Thermals coming online."

Oracle's got his cowl feed. Not too many people do, besides the big man himself and the Batcave's computers, and she could hack it if she wanted, probably, but Robin's a team player. Generally. Depends on the team. Oracle's got a good team, though, and she always has something for him to do when he needs to keep himself occupied. Like tonight.

Domino's voice comes over his comms, and Tim cracks an actual grin.

"Look at you, hacker," he mutters.

Oracle loves working with tech-friendly vigilantes. It makes her life SOOOOOOO much easier. As Robin's thermals come online and Domino's HUD fires up, she devotes monitors to each of them and scans her feeds. Getting street-level surveillance of this sort of area is difficult. Most external cameras get vandalized pretty quickly. The video shop keeps theirs in fairly good working order, however, so that's something. The rest of the block?

Well, let's just say she'd have more luck with Madam Mystica's psychic visions... and those are nothing more than situational hot reads -- which Oracle already does without thinking.

"23 minutes ago," she says into her com, now, "A fellow by the name of Tyler Koch enter the building via the back delivery door. He's our mint employee, but I don't know that he's the brains of the outfit." Could be. Never know.

"Eyes-high traffic patterns suggest, however, he and his business partners are getting ready to move a fairly sizeable shipment out tonight. There's a white delivery van around back, near the door, and it's motor's been running for the past 10 minutes. The driver is still in the cab, but two companions left the back of the van and entered the building. My thermals suggest the main floor is empty, but I can't get a read on the basement. You getting anything, Robin?"

In answer to Dom's question, however, she chuckles. "I'm inclined, Domino, to want to make sure that any plates or equipment these yahoos are using end up as total write-offs before the night's out. But, we'll need at least a little damning evidence to leave for the cops to find when we leave them tied up in the garbage bin."

"They're about to take their show on the road, huh?" Domino comms back, already starting to grin in anticipation. If it gets to that point she can out-run anything they've got under the hood of their van without breaking a sweat. Could be good times. "Lucky me."

"My first impression is to tag or disable the van on the sly, as boring of an option as it is, then corner the other idiots inside. Should be a walk in the park with two of us working the case. These guys won't know what hit 'em. As for mission-critical sabotage, we've got it covered."

Even if it means hauling out an RPG launcher from the trunk. She likes to be prepared. First step on her recon run is to find the van and figure out what routes it has available, then figure out possible building entrances and exits. People on foot are a lot easier to catch, especially when they're lugging a lot of stuff.

"What's your spin on this, Mystery Cowl Number One?"

She'll figure out Robin's codename and voice one of these days.

Robin pings the Batcomputer for a search on 'Tyler Koch'. He's browsing through the results as he keeps an eye on the front and an ear to what Oracle is saying. Multitasking. Another one of those things you need when your career is vigilantism. "I've got nothing on the basement. Getting a better angle."

Some creative roof-jumping and climbing later, Robin is on top of an entirely different building, more out in the open this time but with a clear view into the basement with his thermals. "There's a window," he says, and when he lines up with it, yeah, there they are. Plus a few extra. "Six potential hostiles in the basement. Printing crew, maybe? Or muscle to protect the money." Could go either way. Too early to tell now.

"Call it, Oracle. This is your show."

Tyler Koch has a rather thin file. That is, he was born and raised in a better part of town than the Bowery, but not so great that he regularly hobnobs with the rich and famous by any stretch. He was a good student, kept his nose clean, and generally played by the rules. There's the standard educational and work history. He raised no flags whatsoever when the treasury department did their usual pre-employment screening. About the only thing that stands out about him, lately, is that his bank account is more than a little thin. In fact, it's barely above flatlining, which maybe provides a source of motive... or motivation.

"Domino, can you turn that van into a lemon? I don't want them to realize it's useless until it's too late." She chuckles dryly. "It's a shame we can't just box them in." But she doesn't really have the manpower, tonight, to close off the ends of the alley effectively.

"Ok. Let's make this simple. Go in, round 'em up, and shut 'em down. Then, see if you can find out who they were delivering to." Then, maybe later, she'll follow up on that delivery address.

"Six inside, copy that."

There are some notable differences between Domino and the core supporters of the Birds of Prey. She has no cowl, which eliminates any connection to the level of intel which Robin is able to receive. She can transmit her location and whatever her head is directly facing, and keep tabs via audio. That's it.

To be fair, that's usually all she really cares about.

Most getaway drivers aren't all that observant until they get to the driving part. Sitting around in a running vehicle while trying to look inconspicuous is really quite boring. She's counting on this as she slinks closer to the van, there's only so many places she can go for cover. Fortunately, that's what smartphone games are for. Instant distractions!

For a woman that's managed to walk right through the front doors and been in just the right places at the right moments to completely defeat high-tech security, slipping past a bored driver in a darkened alley is child's play. Slipping small pieces of plastic explosives inside of the rear wheel wells, that's more down to skill. She's got a remote trigger with a two hundred yard range (miniaturization does have its limits) which should sever the rear axle with the push of a button. Great way to quickly conduct a traffic stop.

By the time the van gets rigged Robin should have plenty of time to prep his next move. If her timing is accurate enough then they should be able to press onward into the building with only a few seconds separating their assault.

"Bun's in the oven, ready to round up the rest of the party."

This is only a step above flying completely blind. It makes Robin uneasy, but situations like this happen all the time. No real intel, just trust your gut and your training.

At least he has Oracle. And backup. Though Domino would probably be offended if she knew he's categorized her as "backup," but he hasn't ran with her before. Until he knows her capabilities, he's not going to rely too heavily on her.

"About to make my entrance," comes his voice across the comms, and then the sound of a window shattering. A shuriken embeds itself in the floor at one man's feet, followed by a flash-bang and a few smoke pellets for extra measures. Then Robin dives in, thermals still activated as he tries to sweep the legs out from underneath one bright red figure and tosses a few more shuriken towards another.

Oracle knows what each are capable of, and is pretty certain they'll compliment each other better than either imagine -- despite the fact there's a good 12 years difference between them. The ninja and the mercenary. It's not really the strangest pairing. After all, the merc seems comfortable with her blue swashbuckler friend, who has less of the gadgets but many of the same predilections as the Bat-types.

Really need to find out more about Herr Wagner, O.

"Nicely done, Domino," the digitvoice says to the merc as she finishes planting the charges in the van's wheelwells and moves to follow Robin inside.

Their attention is on a boarded up print shop in a strip of failing stores (well, except for the thriving adult video shop) in the Bowery. The bored driver of a white, non-descript delivery van completely missed the albino mercenary who rigged his van to chuck an axle at a highly inopportune time, too engrossed in a game on his phone to care. Inside the print shop, in the basement, are six nefarious individuals -- a young counterfeiter named Tyler Koch and a handful of gun-toting mooks that are effectively both muscle and printmen. Of course, the room they occupy is smokey and semi-obscured, thanks to Robin's smoke pellets. Shuriken are flying to pin at least one of them to the nearby furniture. The mooks are slow to respond to the attack, thanks to the confusion caused by the initial flashbang Robin threw. Nonetheless, they struggle to right themselves.

One of them grabs Koch, physically manhandling him down behind a counter. "Whadya do, you fisking idjit? Lead the fisking SWAT team here?"

Truth be told, she's been called a lot worse than 'backup.' As an outside supporter to the Birds as a whole, she'll probably wear that title for quite some time.

Game on! The sound of breaking glass is easily overheard in the quiet night air. It's all that Domino needs to hear. She goes to cut off any possible retreat toward the van by rushing the most likely door that the others had arrived from. If she can hold the stairs then the guys left in the basement shouldn't have anywhere left to go. Simple and effective.

"Printing money at a bankrupt print shop, the irony could just kill me," she mutters while rushing and sliding down the hall toward the top of the stairs. The first guy that lands within her sights gets a dense rubber pellet sent toward his torso, Robin's flashbang followed through by the louder report of a short-barreled twelve gauge speaking its mind.

"Points for consistency, anyway," she continues more to herself as the spent shell goes flying out of the chamber, clicking down the steps. "Stairs covered, no one's getting out this way. Hey, uh..I can't see Jack through all the smoke down there."

Oh. Right. "Sorry," is said at some point during the chaos. Robin is used to his backup having similar tech to his own. Thermal vision comes standard. And Domino has none of that. Whoops. "Two targets to your left behind cover, I've got the rest."

Well, he doesn't have them yet. One is on his back on the floor, though, which gives Robin ample opportunity to deliver a jab to the throat, aiming to cut off enough air supply that he won't be causing any trouble for a good long while, and with the other guy still pinned to the wall, that means he has enough time to approach the other hostile.

There's a lot of flailing around going on, so Robin keeps out of his reach, instead extending his bo staff with a flick of his wrist. "Over here," he says, placidly, and when the guy spins around, Robin swipes his staff at his head.

"And here we have yet another prime example of Stupidity At Its Finest. Or as I like to call them? Batman's Droppings."

The digitized voice of the Red Hood can probably be heard to anyone that's still outside... which is really nobody that matters. At all. "See, kids, the problem with being a complete idiot is that you don't think to Watch Your Back. You always go all the way in. Alway go so gung ho that you never stop to think that there may be a bastard with a bone pick keeping tabs on you all."

The Red Hood leaps from his perch, swings around a street light and drops down behind the van. "I, the Red Hood, just happen to be that bastard." He looks ever so calm and in his stealthy movements that have him moving from tire to tire. A flash of metal happening each time, as he makes sure to puncture each and every one of them. It's just what he does.

"Hey! Angry Birds!" Red Hood pops up and onto the hood of the van at this exact moment. "Tell the Bat Brats I said... oh fuck it." And with that pulls out his gun, shoots the windshield in the perfect place to shatter it and hurls a grenade inside, before flipping backwards and off the vehicle with acrobatic ease!

Oracle continues to monitor the situation, but there are no useful cameras or feeds in the area aside from what Domino and Robin can give her... and the video store two doors down, of course. But, that's not much help either. She does have her satfeeds, however. And though she can't hear anything anyone might be saying, she does pick up unexpected movement around the van.

The hell?

*Zoom, pan, tilt, zoom again... extreme close up*

"Oh, shit."

Those two words come across the com just as the Hood's grenade sends pieces of the van -- and its unfortunate driver -- sky high.

Oracle's software does a replay of the moments leading up to the explosion and she swears again. "Robin. It's the Red Hood." Because Robin will know who she means when she says that. And for Domino, she adds, "Homicidal maniac incoming. Watch your six, Domino, he's coming your way. He's ninja-fast and believes very much in a weapons-free style of engagement." And no. She's still not allowed to kill him.

It sure is nice having a buddy that can help call out the shots. When two more are identified within Domino's area she transmits back "On it" as she goes leaping down into the basement. It's difficult for her to see down there and those two baddies are behind cover. It's a tricky situation for anyone to find themselves in.

Still, somehow, she manages.

Another shot thunders out of the shotgun's wide bore, the shaped slab of rubber missing both of the guys altogether. Instead it ends up somewhere overhead, colliding into old, rusted hunks of pipe and ductwork. Stuff that's had plenty of years to grow loose and decay.

Stuff that would be fairly easy to knock completely loose and drop on top of the guys taking cover back there, if something were to strike it just so.

The next shell gets flicked out into the room as the albino woman does a forward roll across the floor, coming up behind a spot of cover for herself with the stubby shotgun braced and aimed, roughly, in the appropriate direction. She can still see the stairs, but not much else.

Then there's activity from outside. A gunshot. An explosion. "Shit, I didn't--that's not me! What's going on out there?"

Intel isn't far behind. It earns a forced laugh from the merc. "Lovely! I was just starting to get bored, send him on down."

Well, shit.

"Noted," Robin hisses out, sounding calm as you please, but he's shaken, on the inside. Red Hood has some seriously good training and a huge attitude problem, and that... well, it sure doesn't bode well. He tosses an electrified shuriken at the guy still pinned to the wall, and while it's only a temporary fix, Robin needs no distractions right now.

Actually, what he really wants is an escape route. But running away isn't something he does. Generally. Not supposed to.

"What's he doing here? He part of the op?" Meaning the money laundering one, not Oracle's. Of course.

Red Hood is not exactly trying to engage anyone. He's just trying to make some noise. Which is why he hasn't done anything but flip himself backwards and onto the side of a storefront something or other. He's actually just standing there, relaxing and tossing his dagger up in the air like he's completely and utterly bored. That's actually the case.

"Come on, you losers. I'm getting antsy. And I've got more grenades." He's not even sure if anybody can hear me. Or if he's even patching into anyone's channels/frequencies. But he's honestly not really going anywhere until they come out to fight him. He doesn't look like he's going to be entering any buildings that he doesn't have rigged up himself already either. So. He'll wait.

And hum the Jeopardy theme.

Oracle's priority, now, is tracking the Red Hood... so her operatives don't get inadvertently killed (or otherwise seriously injured). "He's retreated to a stationary position outside," she tells Robin and Domino, now. "Mop up those mooks as fast as you can, but do not leave them open and vulnerable. The Hood will try to kill them, if he can. We need to prevent that."

As her scans pick up his broadcast frequency, however, Oracle hears him complaining. She snirks softly. "Go home, Hood," she says over his comfreq, her digivoice taking on a slightly harder edge. "Your brand of 'justice'," and the air quotes can so very much be heard in the way she says the words, "isn't needed here..." And she doesn't want him tangling with her people, either.

CLANG!

With the falling of old pipes, and two goons beneath it all, Domino's back on the move. Robin's got the situation handled quite well down here, and one thing she understands? It's dealing with gun and explosive-wielding crazies. She always knew all of that time spent around Deadpool would come in handy sooner or later!

The only problem is that she's not readily identified as one of the good guys. Frankly, she doesn't look like one with any stretch of the imagination. If she makes herself known, he's probably going to start shooting at her.

All in all, it sounds like fun.

"You good on cleanup down here? I'll run some distraction."

Back up the stairs she goes, coming around the doorway which would lead her back outside by what remains of the van. Only an idiot charges through a door knowing that someone is waiting for them on the other side. So, she plays it similar to Robin and hucks a flashbang outside first. The door gets shoved closed, braced by one shoulder and one foot, before the grenade gets a chance to strike pavement.

"Got it."

Cleanup? Now that's easy. Zip-ties on the wrists of every mook whether he's conscious or not, and then Robin's out the way he came in: through the window. He fires his grapple-gun towards the roof and ascends rapidly upwards, though the roof's only a brief stop. Once he's seen the distinctive bright blast of another flashbang grenade below, Robin leaps back down off the opposite side, tucking into a roll at the last minute and coming to a stop in front of the remains of the van.

He'll be mildly horrified later. Business to attend to first. "What're you doing here, Hood?"

"Ah. The Oracle. I thought you might be listening." Red Hood smirks beneath his helmet, before he launches a jump-line up towards the roof of this line of buildings and yanks himself upwards. He notices a flash grenade being tossed out as he goes upwards and he shakes his head to himself, while wiggling gloved fingers at the descending Robin. "Toys. I've got toys too. Wanna' see?"

Red Hood grins as he lands on the roof and goes onto his belt and comes off with a small device that looks more like a tricorder than anything else. He flips it open and starts fiddling with a small meter that's checking for recording devices in the area. And then he hits a big red button that /should/ short out close circuit cameras and such. Almost like a baby EMP thing that's tied to a specific frequency of video cameras and such. "That better? Now, let's see. Where was I?"

Hood has no idea if the damn thing worked or not, because he's looking over the side and down to see what he's going to have to deal with. "Oh, it's just you! I was hoping the Old Man was coming out to play! Well, this is going to be too boring for my tastes! Maybe next time, kid!"

I don't recognize "hood".

There are hardly any video cams in the area, in any case. So, even if the video store owner ends up with a bunch of staticky lumps of glass and plastic on his walls, Oracle's bird's eye view isn't affected. His little EM pulse isn't going to reach her satfeeds, after all. "Cute," she says dryly to the Hood. "Nice try, anyway." She doesn't sound too concerned, in any case. So, he'll be left guessing whether or not what he used is a dud or not.

She flips channels and says to Domino and Robin, "Heads up. He's on the roof... and being his usual obnoxious self, I might add..."

By the time Domino gets herself out into the open the guy she was hoping to catch flat-footed is already gone. Up above, as it turns out. She's familiar with the roof-hopping tendencies of the Gotham types, something which Oracle is quick to point out.

Then to hear him calling out that it's just her..? Did this Red Hood even know her?

"No one else has complained," she replies with a wicked smirk falling into place. It's promptly followed by two more giant rubber slugs slamming through the action of her shotgun, manually sliding the bolt so quickly that some people might mistake it for being semi-automatic.

They aren't likely to strike Red Hood, but they are directed very closely in his direction.

Then she's moving, leaving nothing but two smoking plastic and brass hulls in her wake.

"Call me!"

There's a moment where Robin looks honest to God /surprised/ as he's descending from the roof and is passed by Red Hood going up on his way down. "What-" is all he gets out before he can't even see Hood any more.

And then Domino's gone. Robin is left standing in front of the charred remains of a van, a mostly unrecognizable corpse in its front seat, and six tied up thugs and-slash-or counterfitters in various states of unconsciousness in the basement. He touches the bridge of his nose and exhales noisily. "Police are on their way," he says, because he's always listening in to their radio chatter, just like Oracle, and while he only had a brief look around, there was plenty of evidence down there to put them in prison. That's all Robin needs, really. He's not going to be the only one still around when the cops show up.

Shots Fired! Shots Fired!

Red Hood ducks and rolls backwards, just to be on the safe side. "Crazy ass. She must be hired help." He shakes his head a little bit and rolls back to his feet, taking off in the opposite direction of the dramatic heroes and leaps off the backside of the roof! He somersaults and slides down something metal, which brings him around to his bike. Which he hops on and makes with the speedy getaway.

While he still can, he blasts I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift across that Oracle frequency. Just to be a dick. Now they'll be singing it all night!