11820/Standoff Narrows Style

Standoff Narrows Style
Date of Scene:	29 June 2022
Location:	The Narrows - Miagani Island
Synopsis:	Huntress and Batgirl are surprised to find Poison Ivy assisting them in freeing hostages.
Cast of Characters:	Stephanie Brown, Helena Bertinelli, Pamela Isley

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Stephanie Brown has posed:
Listening to police scanners is even more of a hobby in Gotham than it is in other cities. And those tuning in tonight would hear about police responding to a hostage situation in the Narrows.

Not the best part of town. Quite the opposite end of the spectrum. The residents often comment about how the GCPD don't even want to come into the Narrows. And for quite a few of the boys in blue that probably is the case.

In this case, a robbery of an electronics store went wrong. The four gunmen ended up exchanging fire with a security guard. As a rare GCPD cruiser in the area pulled up, they grabbed hostages and retreated into an old building that is being renovated.

It is missing a lot of windows and even some walls. About six stories high, scaffolding can be found in a few locations, though there are also gaps here and there. More GCPD cruisers have arrived on the scene, the night lit by their revolving lights. They use their small vehicle mounted spotlights to light up the side of the building here and there.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Huntress heard the report on the scanner. He wasn't that far away. She tapped her earpiece to radio to the Birds, <<Huntress here. Responding to hostage situation in the Narrows. I should be on site in the next five minutes.>>

She revved her bike and cut down a side street to make her way to the scene.

Pamela Isley has posed:
The Gotham City narrows are no place for a young college professor to be wandering alone at night. And yet, cloaked in a veil of moonlight is one Dr. Pamela Isley. An up-and-comer in the rather tightly knit science of botany, but relative nobody to most others. She's moving through the city streets with her hands folded delicately across her midsection. She prefers these late night walks alone. The cool summer air can clear the head and, if she can manage to pull it out of the smell and stench of smog from the city, the smell of grass pollen is slightly sweet in the air.

Chance, it seems, is on the side of the hostages within the electronics store. Her path takes her near to it, after all. And beneath a city streetlight, the young woman turns her head over her shoulder at the sound of gunfire in the distance. Mismatched eyes -- one blue, one green -- softly narrow in the dark and, when she turns them up towards the light above, they flash an eerie and bioluminescent sort of blue.

Her feet carry her towards an old-growth oak that provides shade to one of the nearby apartment complexes. As she moves near to it, its branches appear to... reach out. To try and touch her. And she them. A single hand lifts up towards one such branch, and Dr. Pamela Isley delicately cants her head to the side.

"We have work to do, Beautiful."

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Someone who looks up at a nearby building could be forgiven for mistaking the figure on the corner of it as one of the gothic decorations that are common in Gotham's architecture.

Though looking long enough might detect the bit of a moment as the figure's cape flaps in a stiff breeze. << Batgirl here. I'm on the building across the street. Looks like three of them are up on the fifth floor with the hostages. There's one guarding the stairwell on the fourth floor. >>

Down below the police are setting up a perimeter around the building, and getting spectators to back away. A pistol shot rings out, ricocheting off the pavement, which does a lot to send onlookers scampering away.

"We want a car! No, we want a truck! An armored truck! To take us to... to the airport!" one of the gunmen yells from up above.

The GCPD officer in charge yells back up, "Alright but you need to let one of the hostages go as a sign of good faith!"

The answer is another gunshot. The officer curses. "Get a hostage negotiator out here!" he tells another officer, who gets on the radio.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Rolling up to an alley a half block away, Huntress fires off a grapple bolt, and quickly gets to the rooftops. Running and leaping across the buildings, she reported in,

<<Batgirl, I'm on site across the street from you. You were here first. Any updated status? How do you want to play this?>>

Huntress has become much less of a loose cannon than she was early in her time with the birds. Now, she seems quite content with letting the other Bird (Bat?) take lead on this rescue.

Pamela Isley has posed:
The Gotham City narrows may be no place for Pamela Isley, but they are certainly the sort of place where one might find Poison Ivy. The ground shifts beneath the officers gathering around the perimeter's feet. Not seismic activity, but something much more... organic. Like snakes weaving and winding beneath pavement, uprooting mad-made stone as they push beneath the ground and towards the building where the most recent gunshot still echoes off the metallic walls.

"Now now, boys. Don't you think this needs a woman's touch?" Ivy asks. Creamy white shoulders and chest disappear into a shroud of foliage to obscure more intimate parts, but her pretty face and syrupy sweet voice is enough to briefly draw their attention. Her lips press to her fingers, and then to the officer's lips who had just delivered the order. And then the second officer on the phone. Both men's eyes roll briefly back before they collapse on the floor, asleep. And Poison Ivy?

She just walks through the front door, of course!

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Batgirl looks pensively at the situation, running through their options. << They don't seem like any kind of organized or trained group. Just some hoods who botched a robbery. Think we can probably go in and remove the three holding the hostages quietly. Then get the one in the stairwell. Two have shotguns including the one in the stairwell. >>

She rises from her perch and is about to jump across to the abandoned, derelict building when she spots someone walking in the door. << Someone just went inside but I didn't get a good look at them. Cops are... looks like they dare down? I'm heading across. >>

Batgirl backs up then and runs, leaping from the edge of the roof. Her cape briefly solidifies into more of a glider shape, allowing her to cover the distance and land lightly on some scaffolding outside the sixth floor. She begins quietly creeping her way down to the fifth floor then. The inside is under construction.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Huntress frowned. <<I don't have sight on the front door from here. I'll cross over sweep from the west end and work my way down? You take the east end Batgirl?>>

Already in motion, Huntress has made it across the distance between buidings and moves to drop down to the fire escape. Slipping inside through a window she begins to quickly clear the varions rooms and partitioned areas as she worked toward the inner stairwell to drop a floor.

Pamela Isley has posed:
The feeling of the ground shifting beneath feet is something felt only by those officers on the ground floor. Well asleep now, the only evidence of whatever movement lurks beneath the foundation of that building is the sound. A groaning, ticking sort of sound. Like metal pipes expanding due to heat. Little knocks on the inside of the walls and structure. Strange and out of place, but easily missed in the chaos of the hostage situation.

"What the Hell are they--" one of the men with the guns says as he peers out the window. What he expects to see is a a surge or swell of armed policemen standing just outside. What -actually- sees, however, are two police officers calmly snoozing on the ground. Slow, lazy swirls of red and blue.

"What the Hel--"

*crash*

The wall presses in roughly as a massive root caves it in, and out from the dust and dark comes Poison Ivy. Eyes glowing a pretty blue. The man swivels around, points his gun, and fires. Crack. Crack. Crack.

"Mmmm...hmmmhmm," she giggles, and gently presses her fingers to his lips. "Nighty night."

A second vine crushes in through the ceiling and slaps a second criminal to their stomach, winding tightly around them and squeeeezing the gun from their palms.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie Brown slips forward into the dimly lit building. Moving from shadow to shadow and leaving barely a sound has become second nature to her. The differences between now and her days as Spoiler where she got by on spunk and energy are so apparent to the well-trained heroine, but that younger Stephanie never realized just how far behind the others she had been.

The sound of the vines taking down the wall cause Batgirl to tense. Her attention goes to the gunman with the shotgun though. Knowing if he starts firing wildly, a lot of the half-dozen hostages could get hurt.

She moves quickly then, darting behind a stack of drywall that brings her around behind the man. She darts forwards, accelerating to a run and then sliding across the cement floor, ramming into the man's legs from behind.

He falls over backwards as Batgirl grabs hold of him. Not worried about the noise of the takedown with that wall coming down, a knife-hand chop to his wrist causes him to drop the shotgun, and then the lithe blond is wrapped around the man from behind, applying a choke hold to him until he passes out.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Huntress worked her way down from the top floor, sweeping her way down. Turning a corner, she finds the lookout on the 4th floor watching the back of the building. She pulls her staff, extending it. Spinning it, she showed little mercy to the robber turned hostage taker. The staff flew up betwen the man's legs from behind.

Letting out a choked sound of pure pain He wasn't in any condition to really try to fight back and Huntress wasn't looking to draw the encounter out. The longer it took the more risk to the hostages. She followed the first blow with a staff strike to the side of the man's head and down he went. Quickly moving to him, she pulled out a zip tie and bound his wrists. <<Alley side lookout is out of play.>>

Dropping down to the next floor just in time to see.. Ivy? <<Ivy is here. She's, uh, taken the last two down. Hostages appear to be safe. I think we're clear?>>

Pamela Isley has posed:
The man on the ground can feel the tension of those vines winding tighter and tighter around his torso. It pulls his arm roughly up and over his head as he makes a second effort for his pistol, and Ivy stoops low, bending at the hip to delicately boop him on the tip of his nose. Blood pools in his skull, his vision caves in, and a few moments later he is out like a light bulb. Ivy reaches for the pistol on the ground and picks it up by the barrel, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger like it's a piece of garbage instead of a deadly weapon.

She tosses it to a snaking series of tendril-like vines that immediately fill the cracks and gaps within its architecture and pull it apart. "Thank you," she purrs, and turns to look over her shoulder at Batgirl's acrobatic grasp of the man with the shotgun. A small smile touches her face, but when she flicks her eyes towards the group of hostages that recoil in fear, well. That little smile vanishes as quickly as it arrived.

"Fancy seeing you here," she says to Batgirl and then, as if on cue, flicks her eyes towards where Huntress has made her hero landing.