10198/Two Blondes, A Spider, and a Pack of Goons

Two Blondes, A Spider, and a Pack of Goons
Date of Scene:	19 February 2022
Location:	Avenue of Tomorrow - New Troy
Synopsis:	Miles, Courtney, and Heather team up to take out some baddies. And someone leaves with digits!
Cast of Characters:	Courtney Whitmore, Miles Morales, Heather Danielson

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Courtney Whitmore has posed:
It is a time of day in Metropolis, city of heroes. The time of day that inspires criminals to foolishly think that they can get away with something in the city that Superman calls home. Of course, Superman isn't always around, or on Earth. And so criminals keep trying their luck.

Today, the target is Planet Herowood. A van sits, idling outside of the restaurant, as a quintet of miscreants work their way against the outside door. One driver sits nervously smoking outside. There is a pile of four cigarette butts just outside of his door. In New York or Gotham, that would just meaan it's Tuesday. In Metropolis? He's been sitting there.

Courtney Whitmore has been taking her time, walking among the streets, trying to discover herself as a hero. Her last few outings had been less than successful - a battering at the hands of the Hobgoblin, and a complete showing up at the hands of Quicksilver. Sure, she foiled a caper while the Blue Beetle stood around and watched, so she outdid him, but come on. It was the Blue Beetle.

And so she trudges along, hands in her pockets, breath frosting a bit with the winter's chill. Wondering if it was time to give up the costume crusade for good, the way her step-dad Pat Dugan was always trying to convince her to. She almost misses the van down the alleyway, but there is a metal of clanging as a crowbar is dropped. She glances down and sees the small group and the pile of cigarette butts, and continues walking. A grin comes over her face, though, and she ducks down the next alleyway. Maybe it is time for one last run at the old business, she thinks, as she scales the fireescape of the building adjacent to Planet Herowood. Who knows what will happen. She shrugs off her coat and stands perched atop the building, decked out as - the Star Spangled Kid!

Miles Morales has posed:
Miles hasn't been questoining his position as a tights and fights sort of person. At least, not recently. He's been mostly dealing with basic street crime lately, which comes with a lot fewer beatings and near death experienes than fighting the big criminals. He somehow managed to avoid the whole Angel thing entirely. Today, he had no particular plans. So he decided to take a trip over to Metropolis and see what a city that's not as gritty and grungy as his hometown is like. So far it's nice. He hasn't seen any graffiti in a while, and nobody has flipped him off. It does feel kind of unnatural though.

With all of the tall buildings,this city is pretty nice for webslinging though. Currently camouflaged, the only signs of his existance are the lines of webbing well above street level that are thwipped out, the teenage spider relaxedly swinging along. As he passes over a particular alley, he gets a weak reaction from the ole Spidey Sense. He skips sending out his next line, instead falling down to the rooftop silently. He starts to peer down into the alley, when a blonde girl climbs up onto the building across from him. He watches her curiously for a few moments, noting the costume. Man, there are so many superheroes these days. Hard to keep track.

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
The Star Spangled Kid frowns down at the criminals. Well, she assumes they are criminals. Time to show them the old Star Spangled Action! She takes off at a run towards the ledge, and then slows her roll. "Almost forgot." She reaches down and adjusts her belt buckle. "Lesson learned." And then she leaps into the air, off the building, doing a flip. As she plummets towards the ground she grabs the anchor of the firescape and uses it to spin around, her momentum bringing her to the opposite building. Catching herself on another fire escape rung, she spins through that, twisting her hands as she goes to pivot until she is facing down, and tumbles down into another flip.

**THUMP** She lands atop the van, one knee bent up, one knee bent down, one fist on the van, the other arm outside the side, and then she throws back her head to send a wave of blond curls behind her.

Someone has been watching archival footage of Natasha Romanov.

Miles Morales has posed:
Well! That's certainly interesting. Miles leans over the alleyway, watching the desent of the Star Spangled Kid, still hidden from view. After a few moments he skitters down the wall himself, in that vaguely unnerving way that spiders have. Intending on letting the blonde girl stir up the bad guys before stepping in and helping. Sneak attacks are a sort of speciality of his after all. Well, that and who knows. Maybe they're not criminals! Unlikly, but possible. He studies the van, the cigarettes on the ground, the nervous expression on the drivers face that's quickly morphing to shock due to the thump on the roof. His lips twitch under his mask. Hmm. So they're going to rob.... Planet Herowood? Do they really think a few pieces of old hero memorabilia and whatever is in the cash register is worth risking crimes in Superman's town? Wow, some people are desperate.

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
Courtney is feeling flippy today, and so she flips off the van to land in front of it. She eyeballs the driver. He screams in panic. "Oh no it's Supergirl!" and immediately guns it to drive away, directly at the blonde with curly hair.. Oddly enough, she gets that more often than you would think.

There is a certain irony to the fact that this tactic would do absolutely nothing to the Kryptonian the driver /thinks/ it is.

Miles Morales has posed:
Well, crap. Miles has no idea what powers this girl has, if any. Maybe she'd be able to stop a speeding van with her pinkie. Maybe she'd just get run over like anybody else. He does't want to find out, so in the seconds it takes for the van to get moving and is about to hit Courteny, he shoots out from the side like a black and red clad arrow and tackles her out of the way, wrapping his arms around her and rolling to negate the impact and keep her from being the one with possible road rash. When he comes to a stop he blinks then says, "Sorry! I'm sure you had that but I didn't want to take any chances." Releasing her and quickly clambering to his feet, he runs down the alley, leaping and snapping out a zipline at the retreating vans back door, letting it whip him towards the vehicle and latch onto it. Then he knocks on the door. "Hello, have you considered donating to the Metropolis Policemans Ball?"

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
Courtney's eyes go wide as the van approaches her. She has a force field, sure - but it has its limits, and she has never been hit by a van before. She tenses her legs preparing to leap out of the way when all of a sudden she is a tanlge of limbs flying away from it. Confusion and concern hit her at once - was it one of the thieves? And then she hears the apology and looks up.

"Spider-man??" she says, in a voice laden with excitement. She starts to say thank you, and then he is gone. "-wha?" She blinks, and then she nods. "Oh. Right. He's going after the guy who tried to kill me." She turns and looks into the restaurant, where the other thieves have presumably gone, perhaps unaware that their getaway driver has abandoned him. Not that he got far. She turns her head to both side, stretching out. "Ok. You can do this, Court." And then she charges into the restaurant.

Miles Morales has posed:
No response? Man, some people just don't care about giving to others. Like people who rob theme restaurants in the middle of the day. Quickly skittering around the side of the van towards the drivers window, he stretches his head out to peer inside. "You know, a van wouldn't really hurt somebody like Supergir-" And then the driver is panicedly shooting at him, and he quickly withdraws his head. The alley is, well. An alley. So quickly it swerves out onto the streets proper. Seeing a suspicious vehicle frantically driving away from something isn't weird in this town. The lithe figure in black and red clinging to it was a little more so. "That wouldn't have worked on her either!" He grips the side of the van with his fingers, positoning himself to suddenly swing around and through the windowframe, feet aimed for the driver with enough force to slam him into the opposite door. He quickly slips into the drivers seat, guiding it to a safe spot on the side of the road and hitting the breakes. He doens't have a license, because New Yorker. But he's got an awful lot of practice driving anyway due to incidents like this. He looks over at the driver. "So are you going to go along peacefully now." The stunned man shakes himself and starts to raise his gun again, and so Miles just hits him with a Venom Blast. red electricity skittering over him and knocking him out. "Guess not." He sighs, then pulls the van back out into traffic, heading back towards the alley.

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
Meanwhile, back at Planet Herowood (if you heard that in the voice of Bill Woodson or William Dozier, awesome but time to get a colonscopy) ...

Courtney's entry to the restaurant and the subsequent clattering of cans and debris in the alley has alerted the thieves to the presence of masked interlopers. But not nearly fast enough. Upon arrival the Star Spangled Kid charged into the restaurant, and seeing two thieves with their back to her she dove into a spinning legsweep, moving between both of them. Their legs kicked out, the two tumble to the ground, entangled. Courtney looks up quickly - another flip of blonde curls - and then she takes off inside. One thief comes her way but she leaps up and uses the metal pole next to a set of booths to spin around and fling herself foot first into his face.

"Ok, maybe I /do/ got this!" she says to herself as she hunts down the remaining three thieves.

Miles Morales has posed:
Pulling back into the alleyway, Miles parks carefully near the door then looks over at the passed out criminal. Reaching to the side, he scoops him up and then exits the vehicle. Quickly webbing him in case hse wakes up, he settles him on the ground with his back against the van. Then he rushes into the restaurant where he hears the sounds of combat. Seeing the various criminals left behind on the ground by Courteny, he decides to paly cleanup and proceeds to web each of them up in turn before continueing after her. Well, she does seem competent when somebody isn't trying to run her over!

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
Taking a moment to assess, the Star Spangled Kid spins around as she hears the arrival of another hero. "Hey Spider-man! Thanks for the assist back there!" She is literally bouncing in her feet in excitement. "There are three more down this way I think - let's go get 'em!" She seems /way/ too happy and cheerful to be fighting crooks as she turns and runs in their direction.

Miles Morales has posed:
"Actually, it's Shadow-Spider..." Yeah, he gets that a lot. Constantly, really. Miles smiles a little though at the enthusiasm of the blonde heroine. Leaping to the ceiling, he races along with her towars the reamining three. When the criminals start to aim at them, he quickly shoots out a series of web balls that hit the guns and gunk them up so they can't fire, also anchoring them to their hands. "I'll take the one on the right!" He kicks off from the roof, shooting towards the burly thug in question and hitting ground on his head, putting his momentum into a spring kick that catches the thief in the chest and knocks him back into a wall of the kitchen. He's careful to not use too much force. Even if he's the physically weakest of the spiders, it's still a bit much for a normal human. While the mans stunned, he snaps off more webballs quickly secures him there.

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
"Thanks, Shadow Spider!" Courtney shrugs and takes off towards the remaining two thieves, assuing that non-quite-Spider-man can handle the one. They both turn to fire at her as she charges, and she quickly dives down again, sliding towards them to try to kick out their feet. Unfortunately, she had miscalculated the frictional quotient of the floor. Or doesn't even know what that means. In any event, her slide ends up falling about four feet short of her goal, and thus she is now lying on her back, motionless, directly in front of both armed thieves. "Uh oh."

Heather Danielson has posed:
    And so it was that Heather finds herself heading for Planet Herowood. Wasn't it Planet Krypton at one point? Oh skip it. She's starving. Hangry even. But hungry is her usual mode. She was focused on her hunger, and dreaming of a greasy bacony cheeseburger with BBQ sauce.

    And just as Courtney does her power slide, the little bell attached to the main doors jingles. It is just enough to make the armed assailants pause and look back over their shoulders.

    What they see is yet another blonde girl. I mean five nine is not really short for a girl. But she's a girl and obviously a teenager. So of course she's dismissed as a threat. That is, until she sees the weapons in their hands.

    "Oh, tell me you are not trying to rob the place when I am this hungry. That won't go well for you." she mutters.

    And then even as she surges forward, they turn to face her now. Surprised that the kid would move -towards- the armed guys. One of them gets a shot off just as her hand grabs the barrel of his gun. Blood flies, and then the gun does too. "Ow." she mutters as she looks past them to see Courtney. And then she grabs the other man's weapon. "Give me that before you hurt someone." she says... her injured hand already healed by now. "You guys are just too stupid. But hey Stargirl. Sorry to interrupt your fun. You wanna finish these guys off or should I?" She asks, facing the confused thugs down with hanger in her eyes.

Miles Morales has posed:
Turning towards the remaining crooks, Miles sees the miscalculation by Courteny, and is going to help. But... then ANOTHER blonde girl shows up and proceeds to take them out. He blinks a few times, tilting his head. WHat is with this town and superblondes? Shrugging, he moves into the rest of the restaurant, to make sure there's no crooks using the bathroom or something, and to reassure any frightened customers that might be there. "It's okay! Stargirl and... uh. Somebody else are cleaning things up!"

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
The delay caused by Heather's arrival gives the Star Spangled Kid just the time she needs to react to her poor attempt at sliding. She lifts her legs and kicks up, flipping up to her feet in that way that gymnasts and action heroes tend to do. "It's Star Spangled Kid, but Stargirl /does/ sound way more efficient." She grins at Heather. "Wanna split em? I don't mind if you take both, really. I don't want to be greedy."

The crooks look back and forth, clearly confused about how two teenage blondes are bantering about which of them gets to take them out, as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Heather Danielson has posed:
    "I dunno. This -was- your opera... oh is that Spider-Man? He looks skinnier than I remember. And a different suit." Yes. Heather is almost ignoring the goons now. But just to keep them interested, she crushes both handguns... on in either hand.

    "Don't." she says as her blue eyes snap to one of them.. just as he is about to try to bolt. "I mean.. you have a choice. Get beat up... or get tired, and -then- get beat up."

    And then she points at that one and says, "Eenie." Points at the next one and says, "Meenie..." But then she adds, "Oh skip it." and brings up her knee between the legs of the first one she pointed at. That done, she waves to Spider-Man and says, "Hey! You're not the same Spider-Man I met in New York, are you? The one in red and blue?"

    And then she grins to Stargirl. "Sorry, Star Spangled kid. If you can handle this one.." she says with a thumb-jerk towards Skippy the lone goon, "I'm gonna go get his autograph... and maybe flirt a bit."

Miles Morales has posed:
Glancing over at the other two heroes, Miles winces when Heather knees one of the criminals. He can feel that. "Um, no. I'm Shadow-Spider. You probably met the original Spider. He's a great guy." He rubs his head with one hand. The last comment by Heather makes him start a little. Wait, what?

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
"No fair, he saved me first!" snaps Courtney as she socks the other thug in the face without wasting any further time. She starts chasing after Heather to try to beat her over to the cutest Spider.

Heather Danielson has posed:
    "All's fair in fight and flirtation." says Heather in a faux haughty voice. She even turns to walk backwards, giving Courtney a wink before turning back around and stopping right before Miles. "So hi!" she announces. "I don't wear a mask. Wouldn't help but the Star Spangled Kid and I are both Titans. I go by Knockout." A pause, "Don't ask. Some reporter gave me the name..." she shrugs and offers a hand, "But -you- can call me Heather." And that is when her phone starts to ring. The ringtone? GLORIA! What? She is a fan of her hometown hockey team.

    She whips the thing out and glares at it. "You have -got- to be kidding me. Well, nice meetin' ya Spider Dude. Looks like I need to be back at the tower ASAP." she says as she turns to face Courtney, "He's all yours... damnit." she mutters as she winks and heads for the exit.

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
Courtney lacks both the length of leg that the taller blonde has or the closing speed, and so she gets to Miles well enough after Heather gets there. What she does have on her side, but does not yet know, is time.

Courtney flashes a radiant smile to Shadow Spider as Knockout introduces her. And then Heather's phone rings. Courtney is silent, and then looks at the Spider, and then back at Heather with a laugh. "Thanks for handing him to me," she calls after the leggier blonde.

That said, she turns her gaze back towards Shadow Spider. "All kidding aside, thanks for saving my butt back there. You've got some pretty sweet moves." She extends her hand. "As Knock-out said, I'm the Star Spangled Kid. But you're right, Stargirl has a much better ring to it."

Miles Morales has posed:
Two beautiful women want to flirt with him? ...is this what it feels like to be Peter? Miles has sort of frozen up all the same. He's definetly gregarious, but that sort of thing he's still new to. "Uhh, there's... plenty of me to go around?" He can't help wincing after that one. Yeah, that came out awkward. Gotta work on it. He offers a hand to Knockout when she speaks to him. "Hi, nice to meet you Heather. And... I guess you're going then! Okay. Maybe I'll see you around sometime! I could always check out the Titans place?" He waves to her as she goes, then looks back at Courteny.

Taking the hand of the costumed crimefighter, he smiles. The shape of the eyes in his mask showing the expression. "No problem. I was sightseeing, and thought I'd put in a little effort with the locals. I've no doubt you would have handled those guys fine if I wasn't around. I just called you that 'cause your friend did. Both work." He glances at her costume. "Sorry I didn't recognize you. Hard to keep up with everybody in the business. Especially here and in New York."

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
"I mean, I can't blame you, I'm still new to this whole thing." Courtney glances after Heather as she slips away, and then back to Miles. "I'm not really a Titan, honestly. I mean, I visited there once, but they didn't invite me to their club, so..." She shrugs. "But give it time. It's important to practice and put in the hard work." She grins and bounces a little bit, her blonde curls bouncing along with her. "Which clearly you do. Again, those moves." She makes kind of an imitiation of his moves, but not really. "Bzzuu, bzzuu." She adds sound effects, her attempt at mimicking the webshooters. She then realizes what that sounds like while the Spider stands looking at her, and her smile turns a bit more nervous. "Uh, yeah, but not like that."

Miles Morales has posed:
Miles an't help laughing. "You're kind of adorable, huh?" It helps when they're both awkward! "Yeah. I had a... rough start too. You'll find your pace eventually." He looks around. "The police will probably be here soon. Unless you feel like talking with them, this is probably where we should head off..." He produces a paper and pen from... somewhere. "This is a number you can reach me at if you ever need help. Or want to talk, or whatever. It's a safe line so don't worry. And I'm sure you'll be a Titan in no time." He hands it over,if she wants it, then crouches down before leaping up to the roof. A few moments later he's gone.

Courtney Whitmore has posed:
Most heroes wear masks that hide a bit more than the Star Spangled Kid's. That would have been helpful, as Courtney's cheeks immediately start to burn when he calls her adorable. "Uh." She is saved from having to respond as he mentions the cops. "Oh, um, yeah, totally," she stammers as he talks about heading off. The paper is a surprise. She is stunned, so much so that she does not even register the second half of that. Or his moving away. Or his departure. She stands there until the sirens come, and /then/ she realizes it is time to hop to, and she gets out the back and up the fire escape just before the cops arrive.

She looks down at the paper again. "Oh my god. I got Spider-Man's number. Eeeeeeeee." she squeals, before stowing the prized possession and dashing off along the rooftop in search of her way home.