| To Shell and Back |
| Summary: | A Gotham nightclub is about to get a little bit bloody. (Violence and Language Warning) |
| Date: | IC Date (2014-11-29) |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | Dancers, Mexican gun runners, armed thugs. |
| Scene Runner: | Domino |
| Social/Plot: | Plot |
| Players: |
 .. .. .. |
The chill in the air isn't enough to keep people from the underground city clubs, as the dense population of bodies occupying The Shell within Gotham's run-down industrial district would prove. There's seedy nightclubs, then there's places like this hole in the ground. The entrance is completely unmarked, nothing more than a set of stairs tucked away within a back alley leading to a rusted metal door which is ever guarded not far beyond. It may not take knowing a special someone to get in through the doors but these guys remain selective within their own ways. Only those deemed worthy get inside.
Or those which happen to be under the employ of some of the bigger regulars. The Shell also happens to be a major hangout for a group of Mexican arms dealers who have stormed the Gotham harbor mere months ago, trying to take over the arms trade for the Tri-City area one borough at a time. This has made a number of people mighty unhappy.
Other people happen to be coasting on the prosperity which can be found by playing one side against the other. Domino's got her in, these guys know her from before. After tonight a lot more people are going to know about her, too. She's planning for a bit of shock and disaster though, which is why she might have happened to leave a certain SHIELD agent an anonymous tip that something bad is going to happen here, tonight.
*
Sometimes, the way to open a door is to grease a palm. A lot. And be subtle about dress.
Clint's dyed blond hair brown, grown and darkened a beard and light moustache and turned blue eyes to brown. He's not by any means an expert, but it all changes his appearance enough to give him that swarthy edge. Which means few questions. (Also helps that he doesn't have a quiver on his back.)
So, in the dark and loud 'club', Clint at first winces at the level of music until he finally just takes out the aids and sticks 'em in his pocket. Screw it. Not fighting with that. Not tonight.
Now brown eyes scan the room, hands deep in pockets. Agent Clint Barton is here, and so far, no one knows it. Not yet.
*
It wasn't easy, getting from Westchester County to Gotham City. Still, Laura Kinney figures it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission — not that she plans to ask for forgiveness anyway. Not that she expects it. Why Gotham? Because the school's instructors might be in New York. Why the Shell? Because it was there.
Laura looks like a teenager who combines the styles of 'goth' and 'sex worker.' The latter is mostly covered up, by a tight, ankle-length black coat that has a massive puff of black feathers for a collar and matching cuffs on the sleeves. She looks unimpressed by all of this: the music, the grime, the criminality, the people. She's at the bar, drinking shots of whiskey (for all the good they do — she doesn't feel drunk at all) and watching the crowd with suspicious green eyes. People-watching is the sport that can provide the most disappointment for the least investment.
*
Beer in one hand, two half-clad dancing girls in the other, Clint is laughing it up near the bar, leaning on it. The loud report of the gun is missed, but that's easy enough to explain- he's far too gone to realize!
But he's not.
Clint's gaze flickers towards the brief burst, and catches Domino and the gun runner in the beginnings of 'discussion'. This.. and leaning forward, he kisses one of the girls fully, spinning her around before he looks to stagger to get a better view. The second girl looks rather put-out, and the stomps can almost be heard over the music as she trails after the beast that left her.
*
Senses like Laura's take a real battering in cavernous clubs like this, but at least the acoustics are terrible for music. Her hearing is still good enough to pick out certain things, like say… a gunshot, the rupture of a skull, the shattering of the lights…
Laura puts her shot glass down on the bar and scans the horizon of the club, looking for the source of the disturbance. She hesitates. Direct intervention would save lives — but also risk blowing the whole scheme, the 'go out to a club without permission and in violation of the school's rules' scheme. She weighs the priorities for a moment. And then she starts walking toward the source of the fracas, unafraid of the gunfire, and shoving drugged dancers out of her way callously.
*
The first of the Mexicans to attack has that classic expression most people wear when things turn out in ways other than how they expect them to. The resulting *snap!* of a breaking index finger is much more easily lost to the noise, the massive pistol almost neatly plucked out of his grasp. Point to the albino woman's favor, though there's a lot of other people present. At the table. Out amongst the crowd. Watching over the front, and back, doors. Things like gunfire do get noticed.
A lot of these guys have much more than handguns at their disposal, too.
Another two shots thunder out from the gold colored pistol as Domino leaps off to the side, making a mad dash for the bar and the relative cover which it provides. Two of the gunners at the round table go down amidst an explosion of crimson. The rest press the counter-attack, their shots frantic and not as precise as they should be. Once the automatic fire erupts there's a lot more people who take notice, many ducking or diving for cover.
Some of these people scream.
Some of these people continue to dance, drugged into oblivion.
*
Oh. Crap.
More gunfire, and Clint's got decisions to make. Particularly when Domino does her swandive out and behind relative cover. A quick glance and a two step brings him near enough to a table, and with a pull on the side of it, upends it right by another guy that is beginning to pull. A swift kick right under the chin flips the hombre backwards and onto his back, not moving. Blood welling from his mouth from a few broken and now soon to be aspirated teeth. A grab is made for this tiny semi-auto and he's on his way once again to somewhere just a little safer.
Spinning around, Clint's crossing the floor when he comes nose to nose with 'second girlfriend'. A steady stream of Spanish rises, her anger lighting her eyes, and before anyone realizes it,
SLAP! The girl storms off.
*
No cover for Laura. She continues to walk through the club without even the slightest attempt to hide herself.
This much becomes apparent when everyone else not chemically stupid makes a move for cover. It's just her and the wastoids out there. Laura seems dead set on approaching the Mexicans, or the albinette, or whoever. Her fists are balled up at her sides, pointed straight down.
Snikt.
*
Glass bottles freely explode all around the bar as Domino unceremoniously drops behind the wood and metal outcropping, wooping out loud in ..joy? despite the bullet which punches through and nearly clips the edge of her ear.
"-Now- it's a party!"
-Most- weapons are checked at the door. She's only got what she can steal, and a few well hidden pointy-stabby things. Nothing of the likes of what some -other- woman happens to be carrying around though, as the first thing she sees upon looking up at the mirrored back wall of the bar-
is the reflection of one very pissed off looking girl in black. One that doesn't seem to care, -at all,- that she's in the middle of a hail of gunfire.
"Alright, who invited the Terminator!" Dom yells out before taking the chance, twisting about and sweeping the bulky Desert Eagle across the counter. One swipe, one blind shot, another head explodes from across the bar. She wasn't even -aiming- the damn thing.
*
Gunfire, Barton!
Shaking his head after the slap, Clint's smart enough to find some cover and find it -now-. One step, two, three and he's making a leap towards some chairs and a couple of tables off to the side, and he's in a real mexican shoot-out. One shot from the agent sends a man up and spinning around, his finger on the trigger causing the gun to spit lead even as he dies.
It's the girl that is walking through the hail… and…
What the hell are those? Claws?
*
Some of the gunfire passes through Laura's hair, close enough to make black locks flip into the air for a moment. Close enough to nearly give her a second mouth on her cheek. The intimidation factor hasn't worked — except to maybe confuse the two people fighting back against the Mexicans — so she breaks into a full-on sprint, from zero to sixty in a blink.
Laura charges with those claws out, the polished metal glimmering in what's left of the club's lighting. She ducks and weaves as if she's a professional at moving through a crossfire: but then, what other kind of person has knives sticking out of their arms?
*
Clint's watching. He doesn't need to hear in order to know what is going on. Rising from his bit of cover, exactly what sort of odds would one give if the SHIELD Agent took a flying leap towards claw-girl just to push her out of the way of the trajectory of the bullet. She doesn't look like she 'belongs' here any more than he does. (Okay, when he's not all done up to look like he belongs.)
"Get down!"
*
Domino takes her shot.
Clint takes his jump.
And the Mexican target's head explodes like an overripe melon.
All it really costs anyone is that the bullet passes right through Laura's throat, sideways, instead of where Dom had planned to puncture.
Clint gets a nice up-close shower of crimson as the girl in black makes disgusting gurgling choking noises and thrashes a bit, sucking her claws back into her forearms so that she can lamely grab at her gushing neck. From the amount of blood likely to pump out, she probably has — what, seconds to live?
*
Score!
..-Shit!-
No one bothered to kill the music though there's barely anyone left to dance to it any longer. From behind the sights of a stupidly large pistol Domino's eyes widen, just slightly, before narrowing anew. It's pulling at her conscience but the damage is already done. She knows a kill shot when she sees one. That girl (foolish as she was) just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Her aim adjusts slightly, leveling the Magnum at the girl's chest next. There's no reason to prolong her suffering.
BLAM!
The ping of an empty casing striking the ruined bar counter is easily lost to the frantic music, the albino's aim having already shifted from the girl onto the unfamiliar man that had tried to intervene. Fortunately no one else is shooting at them, though that situation might yet change.
"This isn't your fight, kiddo! You'll want to keep it that way!"
*
Blood.
Everywhere.
Clint veritably slips and slides in it as he tries to get to Laura. The hiss/gurgling sounds, he can't hear, but the bubbles of air as they simply don't really reach the lungs is unmistakable. He's seen wounds like these before. Hell, he's probably (no, definitely) caused some of them too.
"What the hell.." and he's talking to the downed girl. He can't hear a thing, and he's just not looking at Domino at the moment.
*
Domino gets the chest shot on Laura and it makes her coat explode, sort of, the fabric burst like a what a squib does on a Hollywood stuntwoman. She's on the floor in a pool of red, not moving, the most mysterious casualty of the night by far.
*
(Son of a bitch.)
It's an unforseen consequence. But..that chick had -blades.- Coming out of her hands! That is what Domino saw, wasn't it? Well heck, just look at what's left of the Mexicans. It looks like they got thrown into a food processor, some of their guns are no longer in one piece! So..'random innocent' that chick definitely was not.
It doesn't help ease her conscience a whole lot.
The other guy doesn't seem to care much so she leaves him to fuss about within the sticky crimson puddle still growing across the floor. She can put her attention elsewhere, such as making sure the rest of the club is secure. So far so good. She still has to make sure that she got what she came here for, however…
Broken glass gets swept aside by the Magnum before she lets it sit in a puddle of alcohol, the music completely ignored as she pulls out her phone and taps the screen a few times. It won't take long to confirm that she has what she came here for.
*
Another spatter of blood gets all over Clint and the man is coated with it. Hair, face, shirt… and finally, he looks up at Domino as she stands behind the bar. He knows about that one, he does… and rising from his crouch, he begins to make his way there.
"What was she doing here?" There's something of a tinniness to the sound of his voice, and he's making sure he can see Domino's face. "It's me."
*
As soon as the question is asked Domino's closest hand darts out toward the awaiting sidearm, her icy blue stare darting up toward the bloodsoaked man now on approach. It isn't until the 'it's me' that she realizes just who 'me' is in this case, once more narrowing her eyes as her one hand remains across the side of the gun.
"Barton? The hell did you do to yourself?" (Does it matter?) Quickly shaking her head, she says "Glad you got my message" while looking back down to the phone screen, subtly setting her jaw before turning off the screen and tucking it back into a pocket.
"I have no idea who that is or what she was doing." Just another unexpected casualty. "She looked like bad news either way. I've gotta get out of here, go ahead and do whatever cleanup work you need to."
She's keeping the pistol, though.
*
Clean up. "What do you mean what did I do to myself? This is all you." How's that for a gripe to make a positive ID on the SHIELD agent. It's when she dips her head to look at the screen that he has to try and follow; he can't see lips when they're not pointed at him in order to read. "Hey…"
Okay, finally..
"Lemme get a few guys outta Gotham PD." Doesn't matter if they're crooked or straight at this point. He just doesn't want to deal with it. "Get out. I'll call you tomorrow."
*
There's at least a second where Domino and Clint's attentions are focused on each other, rather than on the young girl in the black coat who just had her neck and her chest blown open.
But after that second, the girl is gone. The blood is still on the floor, so she couldn't have been some kind of shared hallucination. But either she's an operator who can pull off an exit worthy of Batman (and survive multiple fatal wounds)… or something snatched her away to nowhere.
*
The blame causes Domino to stop short, spinning back around to face the SHIELD agent. She even thunks the bottom of the Magnum's grip against his sternum, the barrel pointing up at the base of his jaw. "Last I checked your hair and eyes didn't change color when exposed to a little blood. Like -shit- it's all on me."
(Don't screw with my conscience, Barton.)
"And -that,-" she adds while jabbing toward the dead girl with the pistol, "was not supposed to happen." The thought is finished with her turning to look at the-
..spot where the body used to be.
"Not even remotely…" she slowly adds with a lower-pitched voice. How many bullets does she have left..? One. Two, if she's lucky and the previous owner topped off before setting out tonight. "Yeah. We'll catch up. Coffee, donuts, whatever."