11076/Clouds over Gotham

Clouds over Gotham
Date of Scene:	08 May 2022
Location:	Gotham Narrows
Synopsis:	One of the Young Widows tries to take out a clinic in Gotham.
Cast of Characters:	Cassandra Cain, Natasha Romanoff

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Cassandra Cain has posed:
Gotham Narrows is an area where the streets aren't built wide enough, and buildings are too close together on the sides as well. There's never enough room, things go wrong so easily, and it always seems dark. Crime is high, police are few. It's almost something from a film noire.

Natasha has tracked the little witch here. Not literally, but she's had so many close calls with this particular lost girl, that it almost seems to be magic. She clearly went all-in on the stealth training course.

She's here, somewhere. There's a target close by. A woman who used to come in to check the girls' health. Runs a clinic. It should be soon.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Red Room training prioritizes going to cleanse out everything. The woman here that runs the clinic.. she's going to be down the list of tertiary targets. Other Widows have been neutralized in the last days.. So that means that Cassandra will be handling it with the quickest speed. Natasha has to ekep this careful. The woman who runs the clinic has a great number of injured in there and will try and fight Cassandra hereslf.

Brave, but stupid. From her profile she won't listen to Natasha either. So that means having to keep things as fast as possible.

There are a few entrances to such a location. Natasha has done her best to setup traps along all of them. A series of heavy stickywebs, paralytic gasses and other such things. The girl will be heavily resistant to any poisons or tranquilizers, but she won't be immune. All it has to do is slow her down some.

And now, in a position with clear line of sight and overwatch, a small drone hovering overhead the area, hopefully giving her total coverage as best she can. Now Natasha waits.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Stakeouts are boring, until they aren't. It's a matter of waiting and not getting stiff, staying alert while dealing with a myriad distractions which are essentially nothing. This is no exception.

An hour passes, then another. The idea of ordering pizza almost hits when a whiff of pepperoni in the air becomes tantalizing. Then a trigger goes off, and a stickyweb is activated. There's the sound of scuffling, and clothing tearing. Motion on the drone's sensors.

If someone were going in that entrance, a straight line would put them in THAT hallway, in just a few seconds.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Direct route. Reliant on speed and surprise to get through. In and out quickly into the hallway. Make the kill, flee. Only seconds. A good recruit could do it in under sixty. Cassandra probably in a quarter of that if not less. So Natasha is diving in. She's somwhat out of a position for the direction Cassandra is going in from. A chase means that Cassandra gets in and out and Natasha has no time to take her down.

That's what the traps are for. They're set for motion. Cassandra's fast. Too fast for some electric sensors to trigger.

These ones alas are the type that are fast enough to register the girl that goes so quickly she's almost invisible to cameras.

Cassandra racing along would have two along the hallway. The first being a rapid released heavy gas and paralytic combination. THe next being a rapid deployed ensnared web harness. So the first would hopefully disorient her just by a few microseconds to tumble into the next. All just to hopefully slow her down enough for Natasha to catch up.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
An instant slower than Nat may have expected, the traps go off. Slower, hrm. Then nothing. Silence, as if the traps actually managed to work, to stop the attacker. No way in hell, she's got to be planning something. Even a novice Red Room girl would fight to the last ounce of her endurance.

But if Natasha enters the hallway, she'd find the girl's arm caught in the webtrap. She has pulled out a knife, and is in the process of starting to cut her own arm off to get free.

That sounds a bit more like it, but also not exactly the best route here. As she sees Natasha, she throws the knife. And pulls another.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha goes to have the knife flick at her and goes to duck underneath it. A knife can only be thrown so fast even by an excellent thrower. Even by one who knows how to and has the strenght to do so. There's only so much leverage that can be put into something not made to be thrown. Natasha goes to duck underneath it cleanly even as she's going forwards. A hand going to prime two small gas cannisters, launching them through the air. They're not aimed directly at Cassandra.. But rather at the webs above her head! Natasha's intent being that they would hit and get stuck, deploying the gas. At a place where it would be extremely difficult for Cassandra to move to catch and intercept them even with her speed and strength. Hopefully at least.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
The younger woman's eyes flick up as the canisters are thrown. She turns, then slams her free hand into the wall against which she's pinned. Not a fist but a finger-strike, that penetrates the wall and splinters the wood. She puts a boot to the wall beside her arm, then pulls hard.

The wall gives way, and though she leaves part of her skin behind Cassandra frees her arm as the gas begins to fill the room. Natasha has had seconds to close the gap then, though. So she drops as soon as she can, into a defensive crouch.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff likewise goes to a defensive stance on the approach. As she does so, she starts to sing. Singing some of the songs that the girls in the Red Room had sung. Part of the training and indoctrination. Patriotic songs designed to, at least in her era, give them a sense of community and loyalty. The songs hopefully having not changed in the connecting decades. She needs to keep Cassandra focused and a little confused on her approach as the other woman breaks free.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Personally Cass wouldn't sing, not with the room filling with gas other than oxygen. But she does frown - it's an odd tactic. Moving in, she reaches for Nat's closest arm. Hand snapping out like a snake, she tries to grab and throw.

There isn't a great deal of room in the hallway, and she still needs to gauge her opponent's skills.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha is extremely resistant to the gas so she doesn't have any sort of immediate issue. She awnts to keep Cassandra confused. Natasha moves in using an advance typical of the Red Room. Hands up in front of her. Going to casually draw out a set of batons. In a neutral posture, one that could shift to defense or aggressive as needed. Ther'es little given away in her positioning beyond the rapid ability to respond and react to an attack. Natasha's playing by the 'book'. Cassandra moves to snap out with an arm and grab her. Cassandra's fast; faster than Natasha. Natasha can't defeat it in time. What she can do is roll with it to land cleanly and be barely slowed. Her posture goes back to neutral, taunting. Not giving away so much about her own abilities. Body language hard to grasp beyond the casuality of the landing.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
But Cass doesn't stay there once Nat's rolled out of the throw. It was a good move, one that she had practiced ten thousand times. But it also gave her an opening, and as Nat is coming up again, Cass is taking a step backward.

She leaps sideways, smashing out the nearby window with her shoulder. An instant later Cassandra is outside, rolling on glass and regaining her posture. She finally takes a deep breath - the gas was affecting her and she needed air!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Now the chase is on. Cassandra is a shade faster and Natasha is several meters behind her and just a little slower on the twist. But that's fine. Cassandra is in midair and Natasha goes to hurl out a single Widow's Bite. This one is over on a small 'teeth' and sticky field. Cassandra was fast enough to dodge anything at her, so it's hurled at her while she's in midair and she has minimal room to dodge other than twisting her body roughly. which she can. The wider 'web' of it would hopefully throw off her evasion some as it would have a wider reach. And Natasha was hoping that Cassandra would be operating on 'maximum efficiency' and using minimal room to evade.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Cass seems to lack the toys. She isn't wearing armour, only has a knife, and one of her arms is bare. She's not 'faster' than Nat, she just has a weird way of doing things that lets her react before things happen.

So she's trying to twist in mid-air even as Nat throws her Bite. She clearly knows that Nat's going to do something, and the time she's got her feet off the ground with that kind of jump is very small.

She rolls on the glass. She comes up. She stumbles, then drops to one knee, body twitching.

Clearly not immune.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
She's vulnerable to some degree. Now is the time to strike. Cassandra's off balance even if just for a few seconds. Now Natasha goes to full power. She's a blur, going on the assault with two large batons nsapping out and yanked from her bck. She goes on the attack to lash with them as she's charging at Cassandra. Baton's going in heavy arcs, glowing with the charges in them. Natasha's outfit is insulated and resistant to them.
    Cassandra's is not. Natasha going to use the power of her strikes if possible to hit Cassandra hard. Going in for attempted quick body shots with them, giving her a powerful charge, and hopefully using the metal weapons to disable.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
A bone cracking sounds as one baton lands. Then another. Then a baton takes Cass in the jaw. She's evading some of the strikes, but every one that lands slows her more and more. Then, with what had to be an immense use of willpower, the girl catches one of the incoming batons.

With a broken rib on that side, she has to be hurting. But she caught the incoming baton hand anyway, rising up from the ground. It's not a win, it couldn't be a win. Because Nat still has another baton, and the next swing sends the asian girl tumbling onto the dirt.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The baton is flung away, sent sprawling. Natasha's strikes are meant to try and slow Cassandra. Broken bones are something that can't be powered past as easily. Brutla shocks cannot be shrugged off so quickly. One baton knocked away, the other going up to slam towards Cassandra's neck. From what Cassandra had seen so far, the charged baton had plenty of power. Her neck was vulnerable, Natasha was going to strike on that side. the move telegraphed. The extended reach of the baton letting Natasha put more power into the strike to leverage past any sort of defense or evasion.
    Ohter hand snapping up and over with an attempted puncha t Cassandra's torso. Not powerful. Going in for an angle to try and hit at her cracked rib. Natasha's own fingers seemingly numb from the strike that had knocked the baton away. The move was designed to pin Cassandra in and limit her mobility to evade. So something that could likely be easier to evade or block whiel teh strike wsith the most power was clearnly going for a crippling hit.
    which is where hopefully Nat's ability to choreograph would come in. her movements would be precise and brutal and even with disguising them there would be enough logic to them to be read.
    Which is where the Widow's bite gauntlet would come to play in. Which would hopefully let even a glancing strike be -quite- rough.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Laying on the ground, Cass gets hit. The first punch to her torso lands, and she loses her air. Then Nat starts to groundpound her, and she tries to block what she can. The woman is brutal! And at last, the Widow's Strike? Almost seems unnecessary.

The Young Widow is clearly down.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff goes to quickly check Cassandra over to make sure she's breathing. Presuming Cassandra is down and not faking it, Natasha is going to rapidly start to put her in restraints. Reinforced zip cuffs to twist her arms around to difficult angles. The cuffs being reinforced enough to be hard to cut through and difficult to tear apart. Then similar ones going around her ankles, knees, and elbows.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
And it seems to be working. A ziptie to her ankles holds her firmly, and her hands go behind her. The rest are readied, when a sound would make Nat instinctively move. The sound of something going through the air towards her, fast.

A blowdart, whipping through the air from a nearby window. Seems that while she was taking down this one, another of the young trainees got an angle on her. They learned teamwork in their classes.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Lovely. Natasha would whip around her baton, deflecting it quickly from midair. Other hand gonig to snap down to a pistol, going to fire it in the air towards the target with the blowdart. That would make them duck low to go for cover. then move to engage her at close range since they had to neutralize both her and the incapaciated asset. Natasha is going to lift up Cassandra in a fireman's carry now.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Or that's the plan. A sudden twist has Cassandra's hands free, and a poke to a pressure point that Nat doesn't even know exists gives the girl the chance she needs. Her compatriot provides cover, allowing the two to separate. But Cassandra is hurt, so instead of combat she dives for a sewer drain.

She loses some skin getting inside, but it's too small for Nat to manage. Size matters!

Leslie Thompson will live, but the Gotham sewers are famous. And the sound of the girl running off in them is almost taunting.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
There's a mental swear from Natasha even as she can only take another pistol shot over at Cassandra that misses widely. So much for taking the girl out. The other Widow had backed her up. Which was expected but bad. It meant that they still had communications and coordination with one another. And given that the facility ahd been targeted and aborted.. They would come back later on. But only when things had cooled down. The clinic was only likely a tertiary target after all.
    And by teh time Natasha catches up to the nearest entrance, Cassandra will be long gone. The girl's taken at leas tsome small injuries. Pain management will only get her so far. Having the ribs set will as well. She'll be at a disadvantage next time.