13149/Unusual Thefts

Unusual Thefts
Date of Scene:	23 October 2022
Location:	Tricorner Docks
Synopsis:	A theft is mostly thwarted and Nightwing gets his very own concussion to take home.
Cast of Characters:	Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown

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Dick Grayson has posed:
    There's been some trouble at the dock and warehouse district in Gotham lately. Several shipments of various chemicals have gone missing over the past month or so. The thefts had flown under the radar until now because none of the items stolen were any 'watched' chemicals, nothing overtly dangerous, or at least not more dangerous than any chemical can be. No explosives or out and out poisonous materials.

    However, enough thefts with a pattern will always raise the alarm with Oracle and thus the Bats. There have been four of these thefts so far, so Nightwing has taken Batgirl with him to do an evening of surveillance on the docks. He's found a perch atop a crane almost in the middle of the warehouse district, giving him a good overview to start, and also using a camera drone to feed back info to his HUD if he picks up movement.

    << Ok, I'm in place, Do you see anything yet? >>

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Lying beneath a truck, but much closer to the chemical shipment that they suspect is most likely to go missing tonight, Stephanie Brown lets out a puff of air that would be meant to blow some hair out of her eyes. Except her hair is all in place beneath her cowl.

<< I think we need to revisit that discussion on who gets the top of the crane and who gets the bottom of the truck. Did I mention it's leaking oil? >> Her voice is good-natured, complaining for the sake of complaining only.

<< I see feet. More feet. A few tires. Hrm. Odd, there's some kind of red clay on the tires. Wonder where else they've had that truck over there. Are they looking like they are going to load anything up soon? >>

Batgirl pulls out a launcher and fits a sticky tracking device into it. She waits until no one is going to see or hear it, and then shoots it over to the truck, sticking it inside the wheel well behind the wheel.

Dick Grayson has posed:
<< Well, I don't recall telling you to choose under a truck as your post for the evening. And it doesn't look like that group is up to anything. >>

    He continues to scan the area for activity. After about an hour, during which the men near Steph's truck get in cars and leave for the evening, Nightwing spots a set of headlights coming up to one of the security gates. He sends the drone in for a closer look, so catches a small detail... the driver shakes hands with the security guard, and there's a moment where he can see money change hands. The guard opens the gate, then goes back to reading his magazine.

    The truck drives to a warehouse two doors away from where Steph is and backs up to the loading dock. Several men jump out and gather around the human sized entry door, which opens after a moment's activity, then they vanish into the warehouse.

    << Looks like we've got something. Warehouse two down from your position. Going to make my way to the roof of it. >>

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Batgirl turns beneath the truck to check out the direction that Nightwing indicates. She pulls out binoculars to get a closer look. << Nothing like a few dollars to make someone forget about doing their job. >> She gives a quiet grumble, the girl's well-developed sense of justice having been irritated by what is going on.

Another truck rumbles along the road by the warehouses, passing close to the one that conceals Batgirl. She waits for it to get near and then rolls out from hers and beneath the other truck, timing perfect to avoid being rolled over by the tires. She grabs the undercarriage and rides along.

As her truck passes the one that is of note to Nightwing, she lets go, letting the truck drive off and then rolling beneath the suspect vehicle. << I'm beneath it now. >>

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Nightwing has an easier time of it. Extending the gliding wings from his armor, he leaps from the crane and glides silently towards the warehouse. He actually lands on the next warehouse over in case his landing makes noise, then pads across the roof and hops across to the warehouse in question, making his way to one of the skylights.

    << Bah, they used that opaque plastic instead of windows, can't see in from here. >>

    The truck Batgirl is under creaks and shifts a little as the driver adjusts position in the seat. These criminals were actually smart enough to have a lookout, who would have guessed it? After another couple minutes the garage door the truck is backed up to rolls up and the rear doors of the truck's cargo compartment open.

    "Ok guys, let's get this stuff loaded. I friggin hate doing jobs in Gotham, those damn bat guys are friggin everywhere." She can hear him talk, then his voice comes from both behind and inside the truck, probably over a radio to the driver/lookout. "You got anything out there? We're about ten minutes from getting all we need." The reply from the drive is also audible, "Nothing yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't out here somewhere."

    Nightwing grins at hearing the exchange, then triggers his comm unit. << Well, we must be doing something right to make them this paranoid. If you can do anything to disable the truck without making noise go for it. I'm going around back to try and get in there. >>

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Just a few years back, Stephanie Brown would have not known how to disable a vehicle short of tearing stuff out of the engine or otherwise beating on it. However, she's done a lot of work on her own Batcycle and has picked up quite a bit.

Of course, she's also get gadgets from WayneTech which make this sort of thing easy. She pulls out a small explosive payload that she'd normally use with her launcher, and just manually sticks it on the axle. Then she accesses her heads up display to send the frequency to Nightwing so either of them can operate it. Along with the message: "Not while I"m beneath it!"

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Those wonderful toys also make an appearance as Nightwing drops from the roof and heads over to the door. Plugging a small device into the security keypad and pressing a button, it quickly runs through codes until the door pops open. The device goes back into a compartment on the utility belt, then he opens the door just enough to slip inside before pulling it mostly closed.

    << I'm in, feel free to take out the driver then join me. >>

    That said, he moves silently towards the loading area of the warehouse, keeping an eye out since he doesn't know where the stuff they want to steal is located.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Batgirl pulls out a device that she points towards the truck cab above her. She fiddles with the controls until it locks in on the radio frequency being used. The jammer is very short range, only a couple of feet, so it will stop the driver from sending or receiving, but not the rest of the men.

Affixing it beneath the cab, Batgirl crawls over to the passenger side. A spray of some quick-drying adhesive seals that door from opening. Then she rolls back beneath and over to the driver's side.

She pops up beside the truck and pulls the door open. "You dropped this," she says, tossing in a few pellets and closing the door on the knockout gas that begins filling the cab. She holds the door closed against the man trying to force it open, but only has to hold it for a half dozen seconds before he's sleeping blissfully.

<< Done. Heading in. >>

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Nightwing finally threads through enough stored cargo that he can see the activity at the loading dock. Several men are rolling a pallet of chemicals into the truck while another holding a clipboard watches. Sound from off to the left indicates that at least one person is moving things around.

    << Ok, I see four here and there's at least one more in among the cargo stacks. >>

    As he starts to turn and move to a better vantage point, he's suddenly hit by a blast of energy from behind that throws him out of the shadows and into plain view of the guys loading the truck. From behind him comes a high pitched laugh, "Wee he he he heee!!" followed by "Make that at least two more, sucker!" The assailant vanishes from sight before Nightwing can even look at him, just catching a shimmer of movement for a second.

    The men loading the chemicals look about as surprised as Nightwing, but since they haven't just been blasted ten feet through the air are a bit quicker to react, pulling out various small weapons. "Crap, it's one of them! GET HIM!!"

    << Ugh, ow. Um, going to need help here. >>

Stephanie Brown has posed:
The sound of pellets hitting the floor all across the area can be heard briefly after Batgirl sweeps her arm out that direction. Followed by the hiss of the smoke that issues from them, quickly obscuring the area.

A female voice doing a Steve Irwin impression issues from the dark. "The Bat's preferred hunting environment is the dark. Crikey, would you look at the wings on that one! I'd hate to have one of those latching onto me!"

A bolo flies through the smoke, with little weights with bat wing shapes on them. It wraps around one of the men, pinning his upper arms to his body. A second one hits him a moment later, pinning his lower arms as well and making it quite difficult to aim. If his balance isn't quite good, standing may actually be an issue.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Despite the blast, Nightwing rolls quickly to his feet, reaching over his shoulders to pull out his batons. Seeing Batgirl's work, he chooses one of the un-boloed ones and moves in on one armed with a knife. The guy actually has some skill and manages to avoid or block most of Nightwing's attacks for about twenty seconds before the combo of greater skill and taser batons put him on the floor, twitching a bit from the electricity.

    Seeing this, one of the other thugs who looks a bit like a gorilla in a jumpsuit drops an aluminum baseball bat, reaches down to the pallet next to him and pulls off one of the two-by-fours with a squealing of nails being pulled out of wood. So he's strong, noted. Fortunately he's also the one closest to the truck, so Nightwing fires a tranq dart at him and moves in to engage the other two thieves. Working together, they actually manage to hold him off. One has an actual wooden bat and the other a machete with a rubber handle, so the taser part won't bother them until he gets an actual hit in.

    It's becoming more obvious that these guys are not your average group of thugs, given that one snuck up on him and these two are working with good teamwork to hold him off.

    In her own personal smoke cloud, Batgirl might notice an unusual swirl in the smoke, almost like something invisible was moving through it. The last thief is looking towards her as he spotted the general area the bolos around him came from. He's wiggling and trying to work out of the bolas with only limited success so far, but they won't hold him forever.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
A sound of a small blast comes from the direction of the truck as Batgirl triggers the small charge on the drive train. The thug moving through the smoke seeking her out suddenly sees her standing just a bit in front of him, her back towards him.

He moves towards her, weapon at the ready. The thug's lips curl back in a grin at the thought of taking down one of the Bats like this. Even if it's one of the girl ones.

A few thousand volts coursing through him as Batgirl sticks him in the neck with a taser reveals things are going to go differently. He goes down and is quickly cuffed by Batgirl. She moves over to where the image of Batgirl is still standing, reaching down and retrieving the holographic decoy with her recorded image in it and stowing it back into her utility belt.

<< Two down. How are you faring? >>

Dick Grayson has posed:
    The two Nightwing is fighting do have some skill without a doubt. But it's skill on a street level, maybe a couple years of basic combat training. Which means that once Nightwing has fought them for a minute, he's got a good grasp of their skills and how to counter them. The baton slips past the machete and connects with it's wielder, dropping him to the floor. After that, it's much easier to put down the bat wielder, which only takes a few more seconds.

    This is where he makes a mistake.

    << Ok, got these cleaned up, how are you doing? >>

    The two by four slams into the back of his head, then a large hand closes around his arm, lifting him and then throwing him into a stack of barrels. He hits hard enough to actually dent the barrel he hits and push it to the side, after which the entire stack collapses on top of him.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Batgirl has had a pretty easy time of so far, owing to working from stealth as the Bats so often do. That smoke cloud goes a long way towards giving advantages to those trained to become part of the darkness.

But it is only an advantage. As Batgirl is looking for the remaining thugs, she hears the whistle of something passing rapidly through the air and only barely manages to get an arm up, the metal bracer of her suit taking the blow of the crowbar, though the sheer blunt force of it transmits through into her arm enough it's going to bruise.

She falls back as her attacker tries to press his advantage. A series of kicks, punches and swings of the crowbar are sent towards her. Stephanie back flips away from the hooked end of the crow bar, then uses her leg to block a kick and throw her own punch back that lands but not hard enough to stop the man.

The smoke swirls about them as the two exchange blows. The man lands a kick to the outside of her thigh, while Batgirl catches him with a spinning backfist as he's off balance from the kick landing, though it lacks some power as her leg takes the blow.

"Goddam Gotham," the man says, spitting as he advances again. The crowbar whistles through the air and Stephanie bends over backwards to avoid it, looking like Neo dodging Agent Smith's bullets. The thug grins at the awkward posture it leaves her in.

Though it was intended, he finds out, as it lets her easily reach her scoping bo staff where it's attached to her leg garter. It extends and swings up between the man's legs. He falls to his knees and she brings it around to connect with his temple and drop him.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Magilla turns from where he tossed Nightwing towards the fighting he can hear from Batgirl's position. He yells into his radio "Bob, we gotta get out of here." Bob, fast asleep thanks to Batgirl's gas pellets and radio jammed at the same time, does not answer. As of yet, there's also no movement from the pile of barrels that Nightwing is under. The big guy closes the back of the truck and runs outside to see why there is no answer.

    From behind Batgirl something hits her foot as she hears that high-pitched voice giggle, "Stick around, girlie." There's an electrical fizzing sound and a high pitched, "Stupid batteries." If she turns, she will see what looks like a humanoid warthog with a visor and mohawk whacking a small box on his belt. It fizzes again and he vanishes from sight, Predator style. A large figure breaks though a stack of pallets with a barrel on his shoulder. It rumbles, "Comon Bebop, time to go." and continues to head for the door. As he steps into a pool of light, he's... well, he's a humanoid rhinoceros. No wonder he can just lug the barrel with him.

    It would most likely be about this point when Batgirl would discover that what hit her foot was a blob of some sort of glue, and she is, at least for the moment, one with the warehouse floor.

    The rhino jogs out the door and into the darkness. As far as Nightwing goes, still no movement or comm contact.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Batgirl yanks her legs, trying to pull them free. "Ah nuts," she mutters. << Nightwing are you ok? Answer please!? >> She looks about, trying to spot him, looking to where he was last fighting.

She pulls out her grapple gun and then leans down, doing something with her feet. Then straightening, she fires the grapple up into the rafter, and swings away on the line. Her boots left behind still stuck to the floor.

Batgirl lands over at the barrels. "Nightwing!?" she says, beginning to move the barrels, rolling them given how heavy they are, but working her way down through them trying to find her partner in more ways than one.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Eventually she will be able to dig Nightwing out of the pile. He is still unconscious, with one hell of a knot on the back of his head where the two by four connected. With a few minutes of work she'll be able to rouse him enough to at least stagger out of the warehouse if she supports him.

    This would probably be one of those times they need to take advantage of their medical contacts and have him checked out, head injuries are not something to play with. She also has several incapacitated thieves who will be recovering at any time, so there's the "cuff them or get him to a doctor" choice to be made.

    Tonight did not go well for Nightwing. Perhaps next time he'll remember the step "Make sure the tranq dart drops the enemy before engaging others."