14471/The Mountain That Came To Gotham

The Mountain That Came To Gotham
Date of Scene:	21 March 2023
Location:	Kingston - Miagani Island
Synopsis:	A Bird invites a Bat to a grave and intimate dinner party.
Cast of Characters:	Kate Kane, Sandra Wu-San

---

Kate Kane has posed:
There are never enough hours in the day, days in the week, or weeks in the month. And Kate's been running behind on running behind, to the point that she's had to push back various vigilante activities by at least two of those three measurements.

She can still smell diesel fumes and wood smoke on her cape as she works her way across rooftops.

There's a low murmur of Gotham's emergency dispatch channel in her ear, keeping her appraised of the efforts to extinguish a burning dockside warehouse.

It's not going well. There's some mention about checking if Firefly's still locked up.

Kate knows he is, but that's kind of validating. Them thinking her work was that of a dedicated arsonist. Professional pride and all.

But she can't dwell on self-satisfaction. She's got a meeting to surveil. Maybe interrupt if the intel's right. But mostly she's planning to hit up some cars with bugs, once she can ID the mafiosos in attendance. She's running late though.

She'll just have to get an eye on the highest ranking ones and try to nab the biggest fish.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Gotham's been a Family town for decades, now. The brutal rise of costumed vigilantes has done plenty to loosen the deathgrip of Gotham's mob, but its talons have sunk in deeply. The higher cost of doing business comes with a higher potential for profit, a quirk which Gotham's Families have adjusted to in the best way they know how: warily, with an excess of balls. Where many of the city's more modern gangs are essentially cults of personality built around a single supercriminal, cargo cults twisting advanced science into weapons, or some of both, the Families have largely stuck to what they know: bribery, leverage, intimidation, and merciless brutality, all tactically applied for maximum effect. Rather than dream of ways to kill or crush the Bat, they by and large seek to simply continue making money in spite of the dark shadows that stretch across their every dealing-- to work their way so deeply into the fabric of society that the city would crumble without them to support its creaking weight.

One of those Families in particular - the Maronis, who have absorbed a heavy share of superstar DA Harvey Dent's fearless crusade against Gotham's syndicates - has long specialized in maximizing profit above all else, with many of its higher ups diversifying into broad portfolios of legitimate industries throughout the city to further harden themselves against legal pursuit-- and for the past several weeks, its ranking members have felt the steadily ramping tension of a seemingly random string of murders among their ranks. Three men so far - Benny Zucco, a major player in his uncle Tony's gambling operations; Luca Talete, who helped coordinate the Family's heroin business on Miagani Island; and Johnny Stacks, who used his MBA from ESU to serve up fat, tempting slabs of shaky investments to hungry, greedy maws - have been discovered with their throats slit on their own properties, days apart from one another. Accordingly, a meeting has been called by Angel Carbone to discuss strategies for ferreting out and eliminating this dire risk-- a fact which even a Batwoman who's been occupied wrestling with a predator more than has the means to discover.

(Face-punching frustration venting counts just as much as informants, surveillance gear, and stakeouts, obviously; justice doesn't discriminate.)

Whatever tactics were employed, the result is the same: Batwoman, presented with Il Giardino Dei Piaceri, an institution in Little Italy handed down through the Carbone family for several generations. The lights within and without are dim, but the parking lot's still populated -- albeit sparsely so -- with cars, most of which lean towards expensive and meticulously cared for. No more seem to be forthcoming; everyone who's going to be here already is.

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate's being careful. Not super careful, but she's also not just strolling through the parking lot shattering joints and breaking jaws. Her drones are doing some far orbit surveillance, enough to let her pick her path closer to the restaurant, even as her stomach clenches.

Right. Right. She hasn't eaten in... okay, she's not going to think about that right now.

Kate flies through the air with that classic cape gliding technique, because once you master it and have a grapple gun, why travel any other way over short distances? Her bike's for high speed chases and having fun. Plus, it can't get up on the rooftop like Kate does before she's anchoring her grapple to slink down the side of the building, head towards the street below, boot soles gripping brick and tile as she edges down until she can peek in a window.

She doesn't bother to open a comm channel to Babs or anyone else, this isn't a hostage situation or something, she can take her time doing up a report at the Clocktower while she takes care of that whole 'No eating in a few days' thing.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Worse still: the kitchen is apparently active, if the bouquet of smells wreathing the restaurant is any indication.

There are several windows Kate can peek through from her vantage. Most show different angles of the same empty dining room: the tablecloths are pristine white, the chairs are all tucked beneath their tables, and the places are all set, wine glasses and all. The lights are low enough for setting an intimate atmosphere, despite the stillness.

Around the back end of the building, there's a window into a separate dining room. This one's smaller, with a single long table; the lights are just as low, but candles spaced along the table add some dynamic shadows to the palette. Between the candles lie dish after dish of food - several pastas, a platter of roasted game hens, half a dozen vegetable plates, a mostly empty tray of aroncini, among other family-style treats - each of which has been sampled from to varying degrees. Each chair is occupied: ten men dressed for a night out at a nice establishment along the sides and one -- person -- all in black, back to the window at the head of the table and meticulously cutting into a piece of steak.

'Sampled' is the operative word: each man's plate is mostly full, and altogether no dish save for those crispy little balls of rice and joy seems to have taken much of a hit, the kitchen having taken pains to prepare for a roomful of hungry, demanding customers tonight.

'Occupied' is the operative word: each man just sits in his chair, still and silent as if deep in meditation over the grave crisis they face.

'Mostly empty' is the operative phrase: while there are only a couple aroncini left on that tray, there's also a stream of vivid red dots arcing across its otherwise bare left corner. It continues on past the tray, growing ever more sparse as it wanders past the edge of the table.

Moments after taking a bite, the figure in black takes a small, thoughtful sip from the wine glass beside their plate.

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate's eyes dart, track, her mind whirring... really, it's the unsettling stillness that has her thinking something's wrong instantly. These Gotham mafia meetings always involve hotheaded young lieutenants yelling out the usual threats and tough guy banter and usually some heated shoving back of chairs before everyone stops short of drawing down on each other.

Sitting silently? That's weird. Motionlessly? Even weirder.

A figure all in black cutting at a steak and then taste testing and trying the wine?

Those guys are dead. Kate doesn't bother checking thermal readouts, hell, they're probably still warm anyway.

She twists around on the line and kicks off the restaurant wall, legs stiffening as she crashes into the window, all snapping cape and violent momentum when she lands alongside the table in a skid, glaring directly towards that dark figure.

And words fail her... she feels like she ought to have a quip, but she's been fighting a lunatic serial killer feral monster recently.

Quipping's gotten a little rusty. Bette would be so disappointed.

Kate springs up and smoothly shifts into a boxing stance, "Alright, I don't know who you are, but just because these guys are dead doesn't mean you get to dine and dash."

God, that was terrible. So goddamn bad.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"... hm."

The woman in black - her voice is a hard, cold thing like an icicle between the ribs - doesn't look up.

-- well. She -- probably doesn't look up. Her head doesn't move; her eyes, however, are hidden behind a mask. Most of her is hidden behind a mask, save for the exquisitely sculpted angles of her lower jaw and lips. It features a short, sharp beak where the nose should be, just beneath dark eyeholes and heavy brows carved into a permanent glare. The multitude of tiny arcs and long, parallel lines across its forehead and down its sides deepen the illusion instigated by the beak, giving it several different textures of feathers. Despite its jet black finish, subtle highlights hug the painstakingly tooled channels covering its surface. Its sides disappear into a black hood; the hood blooms out into a cloak pooled around the bottom of the chair and draped loosely over the rest of her.

"I wondered which of you it might be; that it's one unfamiliar to me is a pleasant surprise."

The woman takes a sip from her glass.

Another man lies twisted at her side, just shy of touching the cloak.

He lies twisted at her side, wheezing too softly for the naked ear alone to hear.

One wide, shell-shocked eye twitches towards Batwoman--

"They aren't dead."

To demonstrate, she reaches for the man sitting to her right and touches the tip of her index finger to the far side of his throat. She draws it towards herself slowly like silk; just past the halfway point, he gurgles softly.

He thrashes, briefly.

Pale flesh unknits along a previously hidden seam, a straw-thin line of blood sweeping across his neck in her finger's wake.

"Though they may wish it otherwise," comes with a barely apparent shrug and a drop of blood flicked from her finger.

The masked woman finally turns her head just enough to make it plain that there's at least one eye on Batwoman.

"You may join me if you like," she then offers along with a sweeping gesture towards the chairs on her left. "To keep me honest, lest I leave my debts unfulfilled."

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate's tensed, wary, on full alert. For one thing, dressing all in black is never a sign of... oh. Right. She dresses all in black. Well, she also doesn't eat steak immediately after whatever the shit happened here. She waits until she's had a chance to change and shower and unwind.

That mask has her nerves tensing even further. She doesn't recognize the mask entirely. Not to the point one might recognize Joker's face, or something from the Riddler covered in question marks. But that's a tengu mask of some sort, and it just screams badass ninja assassin.

Kate manages a soft sigh, "Do you want me to call someone you know? I mean, hey, I'm willing to wait for..." She narrows her eyes slightly, "Okay, yeah, I've got no clue which of our little caped crowd would be one of your main rivals. Batman? I'm betting Batman. But he's busy, so... hey. I'm Batwoman. Minimal relation."

Kate quirks an eyebrow, unseen under her cowl, but she reaches out to confirm the pulse on another frozen body. "So... what? This is some sort of prank? It's not some reality TV show junk is it? Because like... this is /really/ extreme."

But then Kate's untensing ever so slightly to cautiously close the distance, head shaking. "Oh, no. I've got a frozen pizza with my name on it at home. Going to add some sauteed mushrooms and extra cheese and everything."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"I did say 'pleasant'," the woman reminds Kate.

In her midnight garb, she's relaxed, calm, utterly at peace.

"The Batman has spent the better part of two decades fighting crime in this city. The results...?"

She gestures her steak knife around a tableful of men responsible for sucking the city's money and blood out through its underbelly, all to enrich themselves and fund the further degradation of Gotham City.

Beyond the man the mystery woman touched, there's another with a faint crimson line traveling along the fold of his neck; others still sport cuts invisible to unmagnified vision. This close, prolonged observation reveals a slight twitch here, a desperate jerk there; the bare, labored rise and fall of chests working on tattered shreds of biological instinct; groans creaking in and out of audible range.

None of them are dead, despite their best wishes otherwise.

"They speak for themselves."

The masked woman returns her attention to the plate, to cutting another bite of steak.

"I have yet to meet one I would call 'rival' in this city, and I am entirely disinterested tonight in interrogating the meaning of failure," she explains. Her tone's an unwavering, eerily even thing, a void too cold and stable for the fire of emotion. And yet--

Every word, every sound, every last pause is laced unerringly with intent, as if there's nowhere she'd rather be than sharing this moment with Batwoman.

As if she's been waiting for the moment she'd get to share a meal with her fellow stranger in black.

One last, smooth cut, then she's on her feet--

She's just a few feet from Batwoman, practically gliding between the folds of creation with impossibly smooth, precise movements--

She's got a bite-sized piece of bright pink steak between her fingers, extending to hover just inches from Batwoman's mouth.

"I neither need nor want the Batman," she softly states. "What use is he to one who wishes to cut the corruption from his city?"

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate Kaneate's tension is easing, bit by bit. She glances around at the still bodies, at that wide eye staring at her. "So, they're not dead, but uhhh... the paralysis is... temporary. Right? _Right_?"

That tension ratchets back up as that smoothly moving form closes in. She hisses out a low, lingering breath.

She's not going to rise to the bait of being called a failure. For one thing, she's not one to focus on the big picture, on stopping all crime. She stops the crimes she can. The people she saves are better off than they would have been. That's success. It's enough.

And then, somehow, that figure is so very close, easily within reach of offering that bite of steak. It's impossible to see where her gaze is focused through her cowl's lenses, but the intent is clear. Locked on that mask, on those dark eye holes.

Lips part as she leans in, tongue stretching out to curl and capture that morsel and draw it in. It's probably not a great idea.

But hey, there's no way this figure is offering up steak because it's poisoned. It's clearly more. It's about control and daring and...

Well, Kate's certainly daring. And she's got a pretty good track record for being daring with criminals. Sure, Felicia threw her off a roof that time.

But it was, like, a friendly roof throwing.

Totally.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"They are not dead," the stranger whispers as Kate accepts her offering.

"They are not paralyzed," accompanies the vigilante tasting what is, all told, a beautifully cooked piece of meat.

"But they will die," the bird-masked woman promises, fingers curling together so that her thumb and the beads of jus stuck to it hover an inch from Batwoman's lips. "One movement -- one breath too great -- and their throats will open; their blood will drain, and Gotham will be ten parasitic souls lighter."

It is, indeed, about control.

"And one of Gotham's great Families will find itself scrambling to account for what's been lost -- monetarily or otherwise," she asserts. Every seat in the room represents not just a made man in the Maroni family, but what would in other fields be referred to as 'middle management'-- men of prestige and clout responsible for directing the day to day operations of the Family so that their bosses can focus on the bigger picture. Individually, no one of them is so critical that he couldn't be replaced expeditiously; collectively, they play a critical role in maintaining the Family's ability to operate smoothly.

"A hospital might -- might -- have the capacity to undo what I've done, should they be seen in time; I do not, however, have any interest in allowing them to BE seen while their dinner grows cold," the masked woman states. "I would much rather play the gracious host and ask my guest for the evening: 'Is it enough, to drape yourself in the iconography of a failure, or do you yearn for more?'"

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate's movements are slow, controlled... tense, careful. Accepting t hat offering might have been a mistake... but she doesn't die instantly. So hey, only possibly top 10 mistakes Kate's made. She can surf that line.

She pulls back, eyes rolling as she sighs out softly, "In the 'we all die eventually' way of dying? Because like... I don't think I'm supposed to be getting involved in like... stopping the philosophical source of death or whatever. Just stop people from killing people. Like... directly. Violently."

Her lips press into a thin line again, a glance back to the immobile men, "So they're not paralyzed, they're not dead... but are going to die..." She sighs out and mutters, "I don't do well with this riddly shi-... stuff. I'm... listen, can we just break this down to brass tacks? I've had a long night. I'm /having/ a long night."

She groans, a soft, telltale groan. A 'Guess I'm not getting home before the sun's up.. again.' groan. It was so much easier when the reason for that was wild parties, hedonistic excess, self-destructive behavior. But still, she can't be letting the mysterious stranger get all... down on the Bat brand as it were. Oh, not for her, as inspiring as the symbol is, she'd be doing this shit in her street clothes now. But there's a family bound by it. She's not giving that up.

"Sorry, I can't just let you kill them. So if you're going to try and stop me from getting the paramedics here..." She cracks her knuckles and backs up a few, fluid steps, "We might as well skip to the dance portion of the evening. If you'd run into Huntress? You'd probably be sharing that steak and having a nice evening, but..." She shrugs and grins wryly, "Sorry, you just got the wrong gal."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
'So they're not paralyzed...'

When Kate pulls back, the mystery woman does too. She paces weightlessly towards her seat, but slows just before reaching it.

'... listen, can we just...'

She touches her fingertips to the back of one man's head -- the one whose throat she so gently stroked to draw blood from him in a quiet demonstration of the danger he's in.

'... down to brass tacks? I've had...'

And she pushes.

Firmly.

So firm, in fact, that his head doesn't just loll to the opposite side-- it drops, abruptly. It snaps into an angle far too sharp for comfort, eliciting a series of frantic, stop-start screeches as he flails between the self-preserving instinct she's forced him to develop and the raw, unignorable agony of tearing flesh. What was a cut so fine as to be invisible to the naked eye unzips into a horrific canyon of bulging fat like snow dipped in grenadine. Blood erupts from the wound in a hissing fountain that quickly settles into pulsing arcs, each frantic beat of his heart filling the air with a fresh arterial spray.

"Why expend your energy on feigned ignorance or desperate hope...?"

The question's so soft, so gentle that her chiding's only just audible. In this moment, she's less a predator, less a murderer than a maternal soul disappointed in the brash, impetuous errors of youth.

And in the one that follows she's a whirlwind of motion, a reaping storm crossing the gap between she and Kate in too few, too fast steps: maternity becomes brutality, becomes a scything strike that hooks around Kate's body as the tengu-masked woman shifts sideways, intent on landing a single palm thrust to the base of Batwoman's spine powerful enough to send her hurtling into the man-turned-blood geyser.

"It demeans you."

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate reacts in an instant. Not an instant soon enough for the poor son of a bitch who just got turned into the world's worst Pez Dispenser, that doesn't even dispense Pez. There's a noise from Kate. It's not a word, it's not even an attempt at a word that's cut off.

It's a snarl, but it's so much less than a snarl, there's no conscious drive to it, there's no attempt to intimidate Shiva as she whirls into motion.

It's deeper than conscious mind. It's somehow more primal, more deeply buried in Kate's nature than even the brutality and focused aggression that Sabretooth drew out of her in their cat and mouse encounters. He got her angry, taunted her, drove her to unleash her anger.

Shiva has somehow pushed back any such conscious release, to simply stab directly into the roiling, heated furnace of consuming rage that fuels Kate in her darkest moments.

Batarangs are leaving her fingers before her conscious mind can register she's angry, flying through the air to slice through where that tengu mask had just been. Kate doesn't even feel the impact to her spine before she's lurching forward, time seems to be disjointed, out of order. She's flying towards the geysering criminal before she realizes she's been hit from behind. She uses that momentum to twist and flip forward.

Kate's apprentices would probably be shrieking at their first exposure to gruesome, hideous violence. Kate is all harsh breath and focused, controlling rage. Kate doesn't shrink from the rapidly expiring gangster.

But she does use him as a pivot point to plant her feet in his chest and kick off him, face a snarling grimace, right fist flying towards the mystery lady.

Kate's fine. This is fine. No one should be concerned.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"Does it anger you?"

Even now, the question's as collected, as cold, as eerily calm as every other word she's spoken.

Even beyond the precipice of violence, she is measured in her earnest curiosity, her interrogation of what roils beneath the cowl and badge of this Bat.

"To see one of the men responsible for flooding Chelsea with cocaine bleeding? Suffering...?"

Utterly sincere in her reservation of judgement, at least for now-- at least, until she knows where exactly Kate stands. Not that Kate's doing much standing at the moment, of course: a billowing tide of black fabric and furious red hair's flying fist-first towards the masked stranger-- who doesn't so much meet her aggression as refuse it, slipping just clear of Batwoman's fist at the last second with a brisk, circling step. A hand snugly wrapped with black leather threads into another man's hair; his eyes are wide, straining as best as they can to look at the one who's bleeding out-- echoing the mounting terror of men who'd already watched two of their own similarly burst along an artfully sewn seam before Batwoman's arrival.

"This one," she softly says, eyes trailing after Kate as her grip tightens, "lures the hungry and ignorant into indentured servitude, spinning tales of opportunity which leak across the southern border."

She yanks backwards, summoning another scream.

"Just how much satisfaction would you derive from his continued existence?" she wonders.

A crimson streak splashes across the left side of her face, punctuating the question.

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate can't bring herself to answer.

Not verbally, not even vocally. That growl is gone, replaced by steady, trained breathing.

She nearly vibrates with the tension of the moment as Shiva grabs the next mobster and runs down his resume. Of course, she knows his acts. Her body shifts, slowly, rising up into less of a near feral crouch as her voice croaks, almost cracks. "It's not about them being good people. It's about us being better." She rolls her eyes, not that it can be seen behind the lenses of her cowl, her voice low, clipped, barely controlled. "I could murder every mobster in this room nine times over before they ever saw me. I could turn the next family conference into a bloodbath that would literally make the history books."

She stalks forward slowly, body trembling, fingers flexing and curling slowly, knuckles almost cracking. "Do you think what you've done tonight is going to make a difference? Do you think they won't just slot in the next selfish, amoral prick they find to replace them? You're barely a speedbump to them. We need to inspire people not to exploit people. To be better. And we need to be better ourselves for that to work."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"I do," she crisply states.

The masked woman neither advances on Kate nor towards her next victim. Her heels draw a touch closer; her spine straightens. Both hands fall behind her back, presenting Batwoman with a dark and imperious tower of cold-fired Will and meeting the encroaching woman's gaze dead-on.

"Because once the Maronis are without rudder or captain -- once they are crippled and starved, broken of their stubborn presumption of superiority...?"

One arm sweeps out in a broad, graceful arc.

"They will find me, arms open to receive them -- hands poised to mold them into something more than jackals and leeches. If I am the speedbump," is underlined with barely audible steps forward, the tail of her cloak swishing just inches shy of dragging through blood, "then what are you, but the open road?"

If Kate lets her, she'll pace within arm's reach and then some-- close enough to try and catch the underside of Batwoman's chin with her fingertip and tilt the red-haired vigilante's gaze up, past her own.

"Where you are content to rely on the hope that they will change, I am willing to make them change-- to slow their pace as they careen through your city and prevent them from crushing its people beneath their wheels."

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate snarls out once more, but not until after Shiva has moved in so terribly close, has captured her chin and directed her gaze. It's enough to elicit a low, almost pained groan. "Please. I stop plenty of crime. It's slow work to root out the cancer that's taken hold... your complaint is the cancer isn't serving you."

Even with that cowl masking her eyes, it's clear Kate's doing her best to lock gazes with Shiva. "So you kill their middle management, their boss even, and they run to you and... what? You turn them into a car dealership? An import export firm that's /not/ importing human cargo and exporting drugs? No, your issue isn't that they're committing crime. It's that they're not doing it for you."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"I'll turn them into whatever I like," she evenly replies.

"And as a rule, I do not like human cargo or preying on addiction," she continues, curling her finger and brushing her thumb across Kate's chin with a featherlight touch.

"Nor ill-spent lives."

"Nor ruined potential."

"Nor waste," she whispers, "of any kind. They will be better, or they will not; but watching them linger in bleak liminal space is tiresome."

As the last syllable leaves her lips, the bird-masked woman's hand drops into a fist; that fist surges an inch forward, driving a blunt explosion towards Kate's sternum in the hopes of leaving the Batwoman crumpled on the ground to contemplate her motives.

Kate Kane has posed:
Kate's beginning to think she's got a weakness for listening to women she really shouldn't listen to. Of getting trapped in their words and looks and... apparently, now, brutally harsh punches to her sternum.

Luckily, she can manipulate her phone's touch screen to summon medical aid for anyone who might be left alive in the wake of Shiva's statement of intent.

But it does take three tries for her bike's vocal processor to recognize her verbal commands to park outside for her to make a quick escape.

So she can type up a report on what happened. Because bad news is in town, and she's not going to leave any of her comrades in the dark.

Because Shiva is most definitely too serious of a threat.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Instead of the floor, Kate's face hits the black leather curve of the masked woman's boot, cheek nestled against the ankle. Gingerly, she stretches and shifts, directing Kate's gaze once more until she's looking into the fiery-haired fighter's eyes.

"I want you to think - carefully - on what I've said, and what it could mean for your city-- on the efficacy of waiting and praying versus acting and guiding," she softly instructs.

"I want you to ask yourself whether you're content with having sacrificed pieces of yourself to live a life predicated on watching a city bleed to death for the sake of your morals," she whispers, edging the Batwoman towards something approximating an upright position and clasping her hands behind her back.

"And most of all, I want you to know that -- should you ever decide to explore the fullness of your potential, I will be here, ready to receive you," she quietly promises.

"You may call me 'Tengu'."

A twist of her foot/headrest jolts Kate free for a split-second; the crushing downward arc of her heel that follows it drives the Bat to the ground, its bone-rattling force precisely aimed to send the red-haired vigilante spiraling down,

        down,

                down into the deep, dark depths of unconsciousness.

Whenever Kate manages to claw her way back into the light - whether it's before or after the paramedics arrive - she'll find just two whimpering, trembling bodies seated around the table, the rest having been sanctioned by the lethal stranger on her way out.

Even though the table's a nightmarish web of blood spatter now, the place where Kate found her's clean. The plate she ate from's still got plenty of food left, but the steak's missing an additional bite.

That bite sits beside the rest of the meat, angled against it, fork stuck deep within and waiting-- just in case Kate decides she'd like another taste before this part of her night ends.