Gang Land (Red White and) Blues

May 23, 2014:

May 23, 2014: Cap lives in a noisy neighborhood with gang boss fights. Some unusual NY Police, a guy from Checkmate, and even a random Human Torch show to help.

Brooklyn - New York City

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

In a small Brooklyn apartment…

Steven Rogers sits in a dark room on an old chair that doesn't recline and flips the channels on his television. It's so new. Everything is so new here except for the old chair. The furnishings are nice and clean, in an interior decorating sort of way. Simple, but modern. The flat screen television boggles his mind, as does the iPad deck that can turn on any Duke Ellington song he could think of on demand. It's an on demand society and when it gets quiet, when Steve has time to think, he only really feels comfortable in the old chair that doesn't even recline.

On the news there's Russia and China and they both hate the United States. There's terrorists and angry South Americans for all of the transgressions since Monroe. Guantanamo Bay and the Prism thing, which frankly he's not even sure he understands other than to only search for things on his StarkPhone that would seem non-descript. And there's enemies of all kinds and shapes and cities in all directions and the only place he feels comfortable is in that chair that doesn't recline.

So when gunfire begins popping just outside his window, down on the streets as a gangfight erupts, Steve feels guilty that he almost feels relieved. Fury had told him not to go out until he was ready. Fury had told him that he should get his life in order before he heads out into the fray. There'd be flash-no, there aren't flashbulbs anymore. There's just camera phones and twitter and FaceSpace, or whatever.

He stands and makes his way over towards his bedroom, looking for his SHIELD.

Downstairs the middle of the road has become a gang fight as two warring factions have spilled out onto the public domain. Mostly these things are fought away from 'normal' people. But that was until Hector Chavez' gang, "Flitros" tried to off resident Don, Giancarlo Giacomo. With about 2 dozen gangbangers shooting, the streets are turning into a warzone.

Sara Pezzini had the spectacular luck to be assigned to the crime scene of the attempted offing, thanks to a downturn in the usual sort of weird that special cases gets sent to. And unfortunately for her, the gangs of New York don't seem to trust the NYPD to handle these sorts of things in the manner they'd prefer. She's claimed a spot of cover behind a cop car, firing only when she's sure she can get a clean shot. "You know," she says to her partner, ducking back to get a better view of the action, "Some days I miss the weirdos. Drop the guns!" she tries calling into the firefight again. "Christ, this neighborhood's been Italian since my grandparents moved in."

Reed and Sue off on some sort of interdimensional second honeymoon, TMI very much. Ben playing poker with dogs somewhere in Vegas. Johnny Storm is free to do WHATEVER he wants. Which… is … nothing. Who knew it could be so boring on a long weekend night? OK. Time to go on patrol.
It takes nearly no time at all for him to discover that something is up when a bullet from nowhere melts on his heatshield.
"Oh, New York, never change," he says, and starts looking for where it could have come from.

Roy Harper, agent of Checkmate, had been keeping an eye out on various gangs lately, those with access to large sums of money -and- feuds that might well escalate, in hopes of managing to track down the extraordinary weaponry that took down heavily armored gangs.

That a war had broken out with the gangbangers was, at least, relatively good news in that they hadn't broken out the -really- nasty weaponry that the NYPD had first discovered and he'd had to take over the feds' case for. The really bad news was, gang war.

Dressed in his usual Checkmate outfit, with black tights and gold armor, Roy grabs his crossbow, and wades into the foray, aiming first for who he felt was the leader. Take the leader down, the rest follows. And hope he gets there before the really nasty weaponry showed up from who knows where they got it from.

"Tell me about it." Paul answers, leaning out from behind the rear of the car only long enough to take a shot. "If I wanted to deal with gangs, I'd have stayed where I was." He takes a second shot then says "What do you think about putting the car in neutral and pushing it closer?" Smart cops would suggest pushing it in the other direction.

Aside from the stray bullet, no one seems to be aiming at Johnny yet. He stays floating above the fray, watching it all. It's tough to see who's on whose side at this point. People are running back and forth and right below Johnny, he'll see the first casualties. Two men fall as if tripped up by something but the red stains on the concrete expand enough to show that they likely won't make it.

Meanwhile, Sara and Paul take cover behind the vehicle and have so far remained hidden. Either way they're terribly outmanned and out gunned. From Sara's vantage point, however she will be able to see a group of thugs are looking for cover and making their way towards the officers' position.

Roy takes a shot at the guy who he'd consider to be Hector Chavez. He's able to do what the others weren't, and get a direct shot in. The bad news is that a group of Flitros begin firing wildly in his direction as two others try to tend to their wounded boss. It's not a lethal shot, but it's an effective one.

From the other side a man in a white t-shirt and navy athletic pants leaps over one of the cars with a shield held in front of him. He begins running and picks up more and more speed until he knocks clean into one of the machinegun armed thugs and bowls him completely over. Never breaking stride he leaps over a small VW and hides behind a newspaper stand.

"I think as long as Roy's wearing that uniform1, no one's going to be looking at us," Sara answers Paul with a snort, popping up to get a better look. "We've got to stop this. Too many civilians here. And we're about to get visitors," she adds, ducking back down behind the door and gesturing in the direction of the men who are moving toward them. "We're not going to be able to move this too far or too fast. But we can at least get it between them and that cafe." She lowers her right hand toward the side of the car, where her arm is hidden as the Witchblade spreads over her arm and shoulder. "Ready?"

From above Johnny can see several things. One of them is that these losers need to stop shooting. So he does something that isn't his usual "green is good" move - he increases the smog problem. A LOT. He can see the guy in the government issued spandex, and the cops… and he generates a thick, choking smoke, sending it billowing down among the thugs. It doesn't go near the cops, or the guy in the show-off-your-abs suit. And it lets him move to the cops.
He lands near them, his flames dimmed, keeping the smoke going. "Hey, Detective. What's up?"

Right. With the gang closed in trying to protect their leader, it would be easier to pick them off since they were packed into place. So disarm them with more crossbow shafts, while keeping an eye out for the -other- gang leader and…

"Oh great, the Keystone Cops," Roy notes as Paul and Sara make their appearance. And then some civvie with supermoves, and … and a Human Torch. Well… he'll just have to keep trying to pick off the bodyguards, and keep moving, until he can get a clear chance to try and yoink Hector off the battlefield. In a physical sense, and non-lethally, of course. Though… he well might end up crossing paths with that civvie if they're both thinking the same thing…

"You're right. That uniform is something. Shows off his ass nicely." Paul notes. "Is that a bug or a feature?" A question to be decided later. "It'll move faster than you think." He starts to position himself to push the car when he pauses. "Was that a guy with a shield? Why don't we get shields like that." Instead of the huge, clunky riot shields. He holsters his gun to get a good grip on the car but it's traction that'll be a bigger problem so he takes his time getting his feet under him while still staying behind the car. "Ready. Or maybe not." Hey look, it's a Human Torch.

"You guys talk a lot," Steve says as he comes up behind the car, shield in hand. He looks over the cusp of the window and then takes cover, looking at the others.

"Steve Rogers. Wish it was under better circumstances officer."

When Johnny begins to smoke out some of the adversaries, they drop their weapons to their sides and bring their hands up to their throats. Rather than shoot, they fall to their knees trying to get low to get air.

"If no one has any ideas, I have some recommendations." Steve doesn't know if anyone recognizes him and it's not apparent that he cares. "The guy up there in the spandex, whoever he is has a good 75 degree angle or so. The guy with the flames could go out to about 130 and create a cross fire. The officers can branch out in an arc. That has us covered from all angles."

Steve stands up on his feet and with a hefty throw he heaves his shield out and flings it. It whirs away and begins to clang all over the place, disappearing from view.

"We've both got shields," Sara retorts to Paul. "Gold ones. Not super great against bullets, though."
Johnny lands next to them, and Sara shifts slightly, trying keep the armor at her shoulder from being too obvious. "Oh, you know. Another day on the- SHIT." She curses as a bullet ricochets off her shoulder, letting go of the car to return fire.
"Seriously, does anyone just let the profession-" Wait. That was a pretty professional recommendation. She pauses for a moment, looking between the others and the scene.
"Roy's headed for Chavez," she notes. "I'll see if I can get to the Don. We take in the bosses, the little guys will scatter. You have enough cover to take the other angle, Paul?"

"Human Torch," Johnny says to the newcomer. He keeps the smoke-cloud in place, since it seems to be stopping the immediate shooting. The shield, and the name, remind him of something he ignored in history class. Reed would probably know, he knows all that old-timey stuff.
"What kind of cross-fire are you thinking? I'm just smoke-screening, but I can't hold it for much longer or people will start dying."

Finding a place to get a view of Sara and the others, and staying out of the fire as he comes closer to getting to his goal, Roy glances back. Checkmate wasn't getting their field agents here fast enough, and anyway, he -was- point.

There's a brief rude gesture to see if Sara -could- detect what he was saying… and then if she -does- recognize it and respond in kind, Roy motions, roughly, pointing at Sara, then at his ass, THEN the other boss. Followed by another rude gesture.

"It's the 'against bullets' part I'm thinking of." Paul counters. "I'm not bullet proof." Unlike some people with tentacled armor. "Well, Mr. Rogers…" Pause. Not being a student of WWII, the one with the sweater is the one he knows of and that almost makes him laugh. He's momentarily distracted by Roy showing off his ass and he just shakes his head. "Yeah, I can get over there. Let's do it." WHy not? It's already too strange.

ZzzzZzzzZzzziiip

The shield returns to Steve's hand as he nods to Human Torch. "Just suppressive fire, should do the trick. If we start encircling them, we might get lucky and they might give up." Cap smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "It could happen."

Steve stops suddenly and peers at Human Torch with a deep glance as he tries to decipher something. Even aflame, Cap can't help but notice the similarity.

Cap holds the shield in front of him and gets ready to make a break for it. "Don't worry, Officer. I'll handle the bullets." The one part that Steve didn't cover was straight up the middle. Like an old school Running Back, he bolts straight up the gut and begins running through the fray. Gunfire begins to be drawn towards him and away from both sides. Some just sort of sit there astonished. Cap takes a deep breath, careful not to take in any smoke and just bum rushes the whole pile up.

"I think you're good," Sara stares as Steve just starts running before giving herself a shake and pushing off in the other direction. She does find the time to give Roy the finger in return, but she's moving full tilt toward the Italian contingent, and she's not doing it without help of her own. It's hard to see through the smoke, but once she's running, she lets the Witchblade loose. Eldritch armor climbs over her hands and feet, tendrils climbing up her limbs to offer some protection against flying bullets.

Suppressive fire. That's easy enough. First, to get rid of the smokescreen.
"Watch out, there'll be a flash," the Torch says to the three just as they take off. Then he transforms the smoke into flame - WHOMPF - that lasts a quarter-second, just long enough to clear the air and suck in new fresh air from the area that wasn't smokey. Oh, and possibly set fire to eyebrows and things, but most of the guys in the smoke are on the ground, and the ones with guns, deserve it.
Once he reaches the position suggested he starts shooting darts of fire out, like a machine gun, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop … they strike and explode rather than setting fire, unless someone stands in one spot like a target.

Taking a deep breath to look at the angles… coincidentally enough, the 75 degree horizontal range that Steve had described, as well as approximately about 145 degree vertical angle for an effective field of view that roughly told him: take this path over the car, sidestepping the thugs trying to hit him (and returning fire with more quarrels, thank you very much), duck while running, leap over the flaming truck and try and … wait, Roy -was- basically trying to get to the boss in person so he could order them to stand down. Which meant take the aforementioned path, but swapping from crossbow to gun so that he could actually make an effective threat: "STAND DOWN."

Definitely want a bulletproof, boomerang shield. As everyone takes off, Paul activates his boost for the extra speed and follows suit. Lacking shield, armor or flames, he doesn't just run he dives, rolls, tic-tacs up a wall and takes other evasive action on his way toward the other gang.

With the combined efforts, it seems as if the thugs are no match for the heroes. It doesn't seem like the two gangs are even bothering to fight each other anymore. Some of them are giving up right here and now, while a few try shooting at the heroes. Giacomo, however, is making a break for his Lincoln towncar. Someone from inside opens the door and the fat man is running as fast as he can away from the battle and to his getaway vehicle.

Roy ends up pretty close to Chavez and takes those attending to him by surprise. They recoils and leave their boss on the ground. One puts his hands up while the other reaches for something at his side…

Sara gets a few shots in her direction by a few foes still brave enough to be fighting. This was easy when they were shooting at mere humans. Now? Only a few remain.

Johnny's air trick makes things very difficult for some of the remaining men who fall to the ground through lack of air and try to crawl their way out.

THWACK!

The man going for the weapon near Roy is hit on the side of the head with a red, white, and blue shield that bounces right back to its thrower. Cap's eyes look past where Roy's standing to see if anyone's ready to attack from behind.

Paul's run puts him towards Giacomo and his quick feet appear like they could track the fatty down.

Sara doesn't much appreciate the bullets that are still flying around her, though there are at least no more ricochets. Instead, she finds herself facing down a pair of enforcers covering Giacomo's escape.
"You boys know better than this," she grunts as she throws herself into the fray, slamming an elbow into one's nose even as the other gets a foot to the gut. There isn't a lot of finesse to the way she fights, but there's no question that she knows what she's doing. Even the Witchblade is just a glimmer now, easy enough to dismiss from a distance or through any leftover smoke.
"You are all under arrest." Or will be. It might be a little premature to start Mirandizing.

And, more bullets spatter on the Human Torch's heat-shield, melting, a few even vaporizing. Man. Inhaling lead is NOT on the list of favorite smells.
"Yeah, you better give it up. I bet none of you has a conceal carry license."
The Torch starts making little fire-cage circles instead of just fire-bullets - holding the ones who were still up and shooting, as he sees them. He starts looking for anyone who isn't a cop of some kind who's holding a gun. And throwing fire at those guns in particular. Too hot to TOUCH. Yeah.

And… right, the Human Torch was covering him. Made up for Checkmate's field agents not arriving on time… at least they could do cleanup.

"So… I don't suppose you wanna tell me how come you guys decided to have a turf war?" Roy asks Chavez rhetorically. "What happened, a bad cannoli? Rotten flan? Next time, I tell you, you should just settle thing with a good ol' Iron Chef cook-off. How about Garces vs Battali next time?"

Seeing the gang boss flee toward the waiting car, Paul adjusts his course slightly to intercept. As they close, he leaps, slides across the hood of the car and lands on the other side just as Giacomo arrives to find a gun pointing at his chest. "You're under arrest." He fires once at the tire of the car before pointing it back to the boss. "And so are you. Get out of the car slowly."

"Shut up, Pig," Chavez says to Arsenal, still holding his wound. "The only person I wanna talk to is my lawyer." Once it's clear that Chavez is done, most of his men follow suit.

Johnny Storm's antics cause a good swath of thugs from each side to give up, because let's be honest: Organized crime pays well, but not well enough to get torched.

The men in Giacomo's car and Giacomo himself know that the jig is up. Three sets of hands get into the air as the men begin to file out of the car in giving up. A long whizzzzz of air seems to take forever as the car tire slowly deflates.

Several of the thugs seem to wine as Sara arrests them. Thugs. And sexists to boot. Now they're going to be sexist thugs in the hoosegow where they'll wish they had the opportunity to see a woman. Good times.

Now that things begin to start settling, Steve bends down to tie the shoe on his black and white Chuckie nonchalantly before straightening and grabbing his shield. He walks over towards Sara to see if there's anything else he can do. "Do you need any more help here, ma'am?"

"Could've been worse," Sara informs the thugs cheerfully when they complain. "I could've let the mick nip you. At least you can tell your mothers you met a nice Italian girl while you were out." Of course, the nice Italian girls probably don't ratchet the handcuffs quite so tightly, but Sara's had her share of objections from perps in the past. She looks up as Steve comes over, and for just a moment there's a crack in her utterly ordinary detective armor when she grins.
"Steve Rogers, huh? Nice. And thanks, but unless you've got jurisdiction from somewhere, I probably shouldn't. These guys will get enough chances to walk from their lawyers without making a claim they weren't handled properly by NYPD." She tips her chin up, looking toward Roy.
"Aaaaand I'm already going to have feds over my shoulder, looks like. Actually, if you don't mind, there's a radio in the car. Speaker's on the dash, push the button and call for a bus," she adds, sobering. "We're going to need medical down here. And more transport."

Johnny Storm lands next to the Detective and the guy with the shield, turning off the flame. He pulls a candy bar out of a pocket — how is there a pocket in that suit anyway, and how did it not melt? — and nibbles on it. He has to wait here until the thugs in flame-cages are all arrested anyway.
"Hey, that was a pretty good idea," Johnny says to the guy. "I think I should know you, but I was kind of a bad student. You're that guy who used to hang around with the original Human Torch sometimes, right? Or was that just propaganda films?"
Because he TOTALLY knows who Jim Hammond was. The guy whose moves he studied from the old films when he was learning to use his powers.

"Oink," Roy responds, turning over Chavez to the late-arriving Checkmate agents, starting to clean up.

Approaching Steve, Johnny, and the cops, Roy whistles, dusting himself off as he looks towards the others. "Thanks, guys. Nice job. Especially with that SHIELD, and the heat, and… man… good thing you guys came along." He gestures towards Paul. "He can't do it all by himself, you know."

Paul herds his four against a wall, having them keep their hands up and locking their fingers together behind their heads as he reads them their rights. "Hey, Pezzini!" he calls. "Get the extra cuffs from the car, would you?"

"Well, that's sort of a long story, Officer," Steve says in response to Sara's comment. He gives a nod to Johnny, and though he doesn't respond, he does give a smile and a wink. Another nod to Roy and it looks as if the large soldier is going to head home. Just as simple as that.

"Nice gimp suit," Sara greets Roy with a smirk. "And thanks for the cover," she adds to Johnny. "The whole getting shot thing always puts a crimp in the day. Yeah, I'm coming!" she calls back toward Paul, nudging her current goon in custody toward the car.
"Seriously, though," she says to the others as she walks away. "Ambulance, transport. Bonus points for anyone who gets that moving."

"Any time, Detective," Johnny grins, and fist-bumps the archery guy. He finishes his candy bar and incinerates the wrapper, then pulls a smart phone out of his pocket. Well, one of Reed's improved phones, so it's actually a genius phone. He slides his finger around on the screen for a moment.
"Huh. Captain America. I knew I'd seen that shield. So, wait, it says he died." slideslideslide.
"OH! I wonder if Ben's done losing at poker. He would HATE to learn that I met him first."
He isn't needed now, so he ignites quietly and drifts skyward, heading for home.

Accepting the fistbump, Roy retorts, "If you like it so much, I'll get my mask on and have a show for you, cougar."

Briefly saluting Steve, and then Johnny as they depart, Roy glances back towards Paul. "So, was it hard?"

Paul perches on the hood of the car, keeping the four thugs covered. "You can flirt after they're cuffed!" he calls back. "You know." he says more conversationally. "You shouldn't run like that when you're that overweight. Your heart could give out. You're still puffing." Never let it be said he wasn't concerned about the welfare of others. "All in a day's work, agent."

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