1514/Hunting the Faux: Part 3

Hunting the Faux: Part 3
Date of Scene:	05 May 2020
Location:	Manhattan
Synopsis:	Escape? Faux get about it
Cast of Characters:	Bobbi Morse, Jessica Drew, Lara Croft

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Bobbi Morse has posed:
The call goes out to all available agents in the area. Agent Harry Franks of SHIELD is wanted for the theft and sale of SHIELD technology. He is driving a red ferrari and is stuck in traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway next to Manhattan Valley. He is headed to JFK Airport in an attempt to flee the country. It's a call from Agent Morse from the Triskelion, hot on the trail of the Faux, the until now elusive arms dealer selling off SHIELD technology. They have a seller in custody in interrogation, Agent Foster and civilian consultant Achilles just managed to break him.

The parkway is packed, mid afternoon, the traffic is crawling. Harry is getting frustrated and thinks he'll take his chances on the streets of Manhatten. He manages to get to the off ramp on to Riverside Drive. A park on his right, buildings on his left. He is making slightly better progress off the parkway but there are a lot of lights. His SHIELD phone receives the same alert as every other agent, he is aware he is being hunted. The 28 year old has premature balding which he tries to hide with a fedora most days. Fit white male, about 5'11, does a good job of fading in to the crowd at parties.

Jessica Drew has posed:
The call that came through finds Jessica in her office freshly returned from a run. Convenient to be in tights and a hoodie under the grey skies of a springtime New York City. Bent over the table, she studies the map on the phone while belting the holster around her tank top. Chelsea to Riverside Drive puts her within, of all things, bicycling distance.

Mask or no mask? She doesn't like daytime runs masked. Earbud inserted, ammo in her fanny pack, Shield issued guns - Walther and ICER each in underarm holsters only minimally cramp her style. She presses the key that let's HQ know that she is responding to the call.

There is no secrecy on this mission; the traitorous agent being pursued knows he has been outed.

Wheeling her bike out the front door and up the the little ramp leading to the postage stamp yard, Jessica considers using a bike helmet for all of two seconds but ditches the idea like she will most likely ditch the bike. Off she goes, just another crazy bike messenger launched into dense NYC traffic.

Lara Croft has posed:
Normally these kinds of Alerts don't really fall under Lara Croft's jurisdiction. She's an agent in the WAND division of all things, and she's a member of the Research team within it no-less. She doesn't consider herself a big time Agent like out of a spy movie thriller. Far from it in fact. But that's not to say she doesn't have some of the skills that go in to someone being such a thing. Weapons training, and experience, flight school training, survival training, she knows a thing or two even as young as she is yet still.

But this Alert would've been registered and she'd do her best to keep a watch out since she just so happens to be on the road right now. But as luck - if you can call it that - would have it, Lara's brand new black Jeep Wrangler has it's top down. She's behind the wheel with a pair of aviator sunglasses on over her eyes and her eyes look up from her phone just in time to spot the hard-to-miss vehicle being flagged by SHIELD.

"Shit." Lara mutters as she sets her phone down and quickly assesses the situation. There's a break in traffic, but it's small. She has to go, and go now.

Craft's in the opposite lane of traffic though, so when she puts her foot down on the pedal and pulls hard on her Jeep's steering wheel she's up and over the road divider and going /against/ traffic now.

Horns start honking at the mad British woman in the Jeep. But thankfully she's not got to drive far to pull a hard left turn and whip around on to the same exit that that runaway SHIELD Agent gone rogue had just taken!

Lara uses her car phone to call via-voice to report in about her current condition. Speaking loudly she announces herself to the SHIELD operator who answers.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Harry adjusts his rear vision mirror as he sees a black jeep suddenly swerving behind him. "Shit," he mutters under his breath and reaches behind him, pulling a blanket off of a miniature chaff launcher in the passenger and switching it on. The car doesn't have a back seat, it's a sports car. From his side he picks up one of the two uzi's he has and cocks it using the steering wheel. "Shit shit shit." He puts pedal to the metal and starts so dodge through intersection traffic.

Over comms, "Hi team this is Mockingbird, thanks for picking up the call. I'm en-route from the Triskelion by motorbike. This guy has been stealing tech for two months and selling it up and down the coast, Metropolis, Gotham, New York, perhaps Bludhaven too. He knows we're on to him, we caught his New York seller. There's no guarantee the paperwork will cancel his flight in time or ground his flight, so it's up to us to stop him before he gets away."

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Bloody hell, he doesn't care who he kills does he?"

Jessica gives a great view of her behind as she uses her considerable strength and speed to weave between the cars that are at a standstill again. The mic cuts out the ambient noise of horns honking and the guy leaning out of his window and shaking his fist at her after she pushed off the hood of his car leaving a neat set of fingerprints and a flat outline of the palm of her fingerless gloves.

"Who else is responding to this call? Any cars on this route?" She calls pedaling like a fury. Up ahead she catches sight of a car breaking rank and running a light at an intersection. Bingo. "Got eyes on him." Not a second later she catches sight of a Jeep with a familiar face behind the steering wheels.

Grinning like a banshee, she points ahead, yelling, "We're on it!" Only the best and the brightest, head hunted out of Britain and working for SHIELD.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara listens to the rundown from the radio while keeping her eyes forward on the car she's now tailing behind. She's got her eyes right on the back of the driver's head inside of his car. She can see that he's moving around, almost like he's talking to someone in his car... but she doesn't see any other heads.

Over the comms, Lara's voice replies when she hears the question about who else is on this. "Agent Croft. I'm right behind him, as luck would have it." She states, her voice filtered some by the sounds of the wind since the top is down on her Jeep. "How dangerous is this man thought to be?" She asks.

Her own sidearm is holstered to her ribs on her left side, but it is only a simple handgun and far from the uzi that the man in front of her is preparing to wield--unknown to her.

"I'm right on his tail. Please advise how I should proceed with this?" She doesn't know where Jessica is, bicycle or otherwise, so her focus yet remains on the fancy sports car just ahead of her.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi replies over the comms, "It's just us for now, there's a response team scrambling but I'm not waiting for them. He's a level 2 quality assurance officer, he's harmless."

Just as Bobbi says they can both see him driving with one hand, not looking where he's going as he turned around with uzi in hand and starts to shoot back at Lara. Her car getting peppered with bullets. The gun shuts ring out through the streets, louder than the honking of horns. For the astute in presence of mind they can see that Harry is wearing high tech glasses. His fedora flies off in the wind as his ferrari scrapes along the side of other cars and he momentarily returns to looking forward.

Over comms Bobbi asks, "Was that gunfire?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
All Jessica needs is for someone to open a car door and she will be flying to meet the agent they are chasing.

"Croft. This is agent Drew. Croft?" The bike is whizzing between cars straight into the gunfire.

"I can see your Jeep. You're getting another passenger here in less than thirty seconds. You carrying body armor?" They will both need full body shields with an UZI being fired. Around her people are wide-eyed in panic, brakes slam on and traffic dead stops again. Pedaling like a mad woman she comes up behind the Jeep and leaps leaving her nice bike to wobble to a stop snarling traffic further. She makes a four-point landing on the back and climbs into the front seat.

"How d'ye do? My poor bike," she comments deadpan as she buckles herself in. "Ready? This is going to get hot."

Lara Croft has posed:
'Harmeless, thats good to kno---'

Lara's relieved thoughts are suddenly interrupted by the sudden peppering of bullets across her brand new Jeep's hood! Her windscreen is hit by several as well, and Lara ducks down as low as she can go to try to avoid the rapid assault of bullets!

'Was that gunfire?' Lara can hear over the car's speakers.

"Yes it was!" Lara shouts back. "I'm under automatic gunfire!"

It's about then that Drew lands in the passenger seat and buckles herself in. Lara's eyes are still shielded by her sunglasses and she shakes her head quickly, still steering the vehicle effectively - even after swerving a little haphazardly. "No body armor. I was on my wa to the Trisk!"

Lara sits up a little higher again to try and keep on the man ahead of them. "We need a helicopter to keep tabs on him! Where's the NYPD?" She's frantic, but only due to the heart pumping anxiety of having someone shoot at you like that, though she's been through it before ... which is probably why she didn't straight up wreck her Jeep.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Frank hits the pedal hard now that he's effectively slowed you down, only briefly though as you get a second passenger. He swerves about trying to dodge between cars on either side of the road, scraping his expensive red Ferrari against them. His progress is slowed by the build up of traffic ahead, so much so that he has to stop the car in the middle of the street. He stands up in his car, an uzi in each hand and body armor on his chest, special glasses on his face and unloads both uzi's toward Lara's jeep. Aiming those things are next to impossible of course and the bullets go everywhere. People are screaming and running for cover, or cowering in their cars.

Bobbi replies over comms, "NYPD is responding, but that might just be putting more people in harms way. This guy is our problem. I'll get a satellite on him..." There's a pause, "He's stopped between 84th and 85th W on Riverside Drive."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Scrunching down in body armor is a pain, riding the bicycle in it had also been a pain. Catching a bullet is more of a pain.

Grimacing, Jessica shouts over the gunfire, "He's going to take someone out. Shoot his tires if you can."

The words hardly out of her mouth, Jessica stands aiming for the back tires of the Ferrari and the madman driving it. Her shots sound pathetic against the automatic fire.

Ducking back down, "Okay, backup is too far out. We've got to stop him. One possibility is you pin him down and I surprise flank him. Police will be putting a roadblock on this in a minute." Screams and the distant sound of sirens swell in the background as she slams a new clip in.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara has her gun out now in her lap as she ducks down once more of the automatic weapons fire zips around them, not only hitting her vehicle but also the other cars on the road as well. This is a disaster... a terrible disaster.

A quick glance is given to Jessica a she returns fire and while Jess does so, Lara slams on the pedal, causing her Jeep's engine to roar! She gets right up on the tail-end of the Ferrari, bumper to bumper, brushing against the vehicle that's now right in front of them!

"Hold on!" Lara says as she pulls hard on the wheel and loops off to the left of the Ferrari then guns it to get up on them, only to slam her wheel back to the right and send the corner of her heavier Jeep against the sports car's tail!

It's a Police maneuver, one that Lara has seen performed, but never actually done it herself.

Staying on the left side of the rogue Agent also makes it harder for him to gt a bead on them with his Uzi and rive his own car at the same time. Or... so she hopes!

Bobbi Morse has posed:
The device in the passenger seat springs to life at the incoming bullets, firing back at a stunning rate to intercept the bullets with its micro-chaff. This is SHIELD tech, but not something that is commonly seen in the field. It's probably meant to be classified and certainly not meant to be in a Ferrari.

As one car slams in to the other Frank is justled about, dropping one of his uzi's. The two cars come to rest against each other. Frank shakes his head for a moment, then pulls a blank over himself. The blank subdivides, then subdivides a dozen times again as it cloaks him, showing an image of what's behind him. As long as he is still he is invisible, but of course he jumps out of the car and starts to run. He shoots ahead of himself as the blurry slightly out of date image behind him shifts about; he shoots open the glass door windows of 'Magic David', a small magicians theatre which seems to be undergoing renovations.

Bobbi's bike and her black clad body appear down the other side of Riverside Drive where it bends off behind buildings. She sees the crash and starts riding up the side walk dodging fleeing people.

The sirens grow louder as police start to cordon off adjacent roads and people abandon their cars running for the river side park for cover. Frank disappears in to the building.

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Great driving!" Jessica takes a deep breath and closes her eyes despite herself as they go into the controlled crash against the Ferrari. The smashing of glass accompanies the telltale sound of trash cans being dropped from a great height along with the last hard jerk against her seat restraint tell her they have arrived. When she opens her eyes their target is gone.

"Bloody hell? Where did he go?" She yells and opens the door looking for the man only to see fractal images of him disappearing ahead of them. Just as she is about to fire a car door opens and blocks her shot. She sets out at dead run, "I'm in pursuit!"

Lara Croft has posed:
The Chaff was enough to make Lara question who the hell this man was and where the hell he got those kind of 'weapons' to use against them. SHIELD had that sort've tech? She hadn't seen it to-date be used.

"He's harmless." Lara mutters under her breath after their vehicles had collided and come to a stop. Her brand new Jeep is in ruins. She'd picked up on Friday afternoon and was now going to have to drive it back to the Dealer in this ship, that should be an interesting interaction with the Salespeople who she worked with. She'd told them she was with SHIELD and they'd joked about her being a big time 'spy' to which she just smiled and had said 'Hardly!'

Lara looks over to Jessica then. "He's using some kind of a cloaking device, and to be entirely honest with you I can't believe I just said that outloud."

Out of her Jeep, Lara reaches into the back of it to grab her equipment bag. She unzips it and holsters her handgun, then pulls out an ... well it's assault shotgun. She starts to quickly piece it together like she's done it several times before, then she starts to load it shell after shell on her way to catch up with Jessica.

"He's going to try to slip out the back and disappear on us." She raises her shotgun up and starts to move for the store, her sunglasses being pushed up on to the top of her brow now so that her brown eyes can be fully able to see...

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi pipes up over the comms, "I'm almost there. Be careful - he's clearly desperate and I don't think he's thought through any kind of exit strategy. I don't want any of you to get shot."

Outside is paniced noise and police sirens. Inside, it's like being in a cave with those sounds filtered through the entrance. The broken glass under foot momentarily give away Jessica's position. His heart is thumping and his breathing is harder. The sound of his foot falls on wooden floor boards tell them he's gone in to the theatre portion of the building, past the box office and toilets. The sound of him reloading the uzi is evident, the clank of the old clip dropping down some wooden steps, he must be going upstairs. Suddenly *bangbangbang* the bullets rip through the ceiling and wall as if he were shooting at you like he could see through the walls, then silence again as he falls back further in to the building.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Broken glass grinds under her feet as Jessica enters the building. Some instinct has her moved away from the wall as a spray of bullets tear apart old plaster, leaving horsehair insulation and old lathe hanging open. Nothing for it. She waits for a break in the firing which is much too accurate for someone firing blind.

Hand pressed against her ear, she murmurs over coms, "He has special glasses, ladies and some sort of shielding. Sounds like he was on stage. I'm moving up on him." Against all her instincts she climbs the stairs to the next floor, gun extended before her and the other hand extended like a cop stopping traffic. One moment to catch her breath before turning a corner with a fine spray of bio-electricity making a haze in the air in front of her. Spider radar looking to see through his gadgetry.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara keeps her shotgun up and her eyes trained down it's sights. The sounds of the man moving in the theater are almost all they have to go off of so she uses that, and sticks close to the walls, keeping them brushing past her backside as she steps booted foot over booted foot. She doesn't have any body armor, so she definitely doesn't want to get shot!

A glance is given to Jessica before the gunfire from above starts and when it does start, Lara falls back behind a stone outcropping for protection! With splinters and debris flying out of the mayhem of weapons fire, Lara doesn't hesitate to return shots, so when the gunfire from above stops... she steps out and starts to unload her auto-shotgun back upstairs. Unfortunately her shots are much more blind in where they're aimed at, all she can do is guess really.

But it definitely helps give Jessica some cover as she makes her way up to that same floor.

When Lara's shotgun ceases firing, Jessica is up there now and Lara is stepping quickly to try to catch up!

Bobbi Morse has posed:
A spent uzi clip is laying on the ground in front of the wooden stairs. You can hear a groan and the dropping of something else. More foot steps and the clang of a hatch opening and closing. It is clear he has made it up on to the roof. You find a syringe on the ground with a SHIELD logo on its side and the label UX-4224 -- EXTREMELY TOXIC -- as well as the toxic symbol. The contents of the syringe now empty. Harry Franks yells out to you, "If you come up here I'm going to shoot you.. don't do it! Here's what's going to happen. I'm just going to go.. leave.. retire somewhere, you'll never hear from me again. No one has to get hurt, I worked hard for this and I deserve my retirement. But if you come up here, Imma kill you, you understand me? You hear me??"

Bobbi zips through the crowd and down the alley way, "I've made it to behind the building. No sign of him yet. Do either of you have eyes on him?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica looks behind her, pointing ahead of her and up silently to Lara, mouthing, "Rooftop." The rest was heard over coms. Bobbi's question begs to be answered, she repeats, "Rooftop."

Still in a hushed voice, "I'm going to find a window and join him. I can climb the wall. Be careful he's expecting us to come up the way he did."

"Good luck!" She walks down to the end of the hallway to an old fashioned sash window that is half propped open. Thanking and blessing all maintenance men the planet over, she levers it open and disappears neatly out the window climbing upward. The last view is of a running shoe as she clings to the side of the building.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara can hear Bobbi's voice over the comms too, as she sidles up beside Jessica, shoulder to shoulder so that they can whisper more easily to one another. Lara's brown eyed gaze goes to the stairs/ladder that lead up to the hatch and she looks up to see blue sky and to hear the man's voice. She dips back again, before he can get a chance to fire on her, and she nods to Jessica.

"Be /careful./" She whispers to the other woman before she raises her shotgun up once more and keeps it trained on the hatch opening.

Lara, planning to cover for Jessica, starts to talk up to the man.

"I understand you want to retire, but you've chosen a terrible way to go about it." She says up to him, her British accented voice trying to sound calm and as comforting as she can make it. "We're not here to die, any of us. We just need to talk to you."

Lara glances in the directioN Jessica had gone, her comms are open so that Bobbi can hear her trying to reason with the man.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Harry is hiding behind his cloaking blanket. That covers him from the angle of the fire escape. There is a news helicopter in the sky and the police are closing in on the building. For the briefest of moments, Lara can catch sight of a quad copter drone capable of hauling heavy gear about the field. It's a SHIELD drone. It's coming this way.

Harry sounds annoyed, "You don't get it. You don't _get_ it. I spent years training to be a field agent. Years! and what.. what I am put in production line for fucking quality assurance? because I got a heart murmur?? Bullshit!" He is so engaged in argument with Lara, trying to win her over to his point of view that he is completely unaware of Jess coming up the side of the building. "I said don't you move!," he warns Lara watching her shape with his tactical glasses. "Just.. just stay where you are."

Bobbi looks up in the sky seeing the drone incoming, "Is that one of ours?" She gets off her bike and takes cover, opening up her bag and taking out her tablet. She sees the incoming drone and accesses it, "Also stolen." With a few taps on the tablet, the drone halts in its flight path and turns heading back towards the Triskelion. "I think I just hijacked his get away vehicle. Jess, you flank him, when he's surprised, Lara storm the roof. I'll.. uh.. climb the fire escape."

Jessica Drew has posed:
It's not a tall building, Jessica looks up once at the thwop-thwop of a quad copter coming in. It almost drowns out part of the conversation even with her ultra-acute hearing. Just on the edge of the parapet, the spider mutated woman halts to get a fix on the source of the voice. Lara has him well fixated on her from the sound of it.

"Here goes," she announces over coms.

Noiselessly, she drops over the edge of wall surrounding the roof and moves at a run towards their target, hands extended before her as though pushing an invisible wall in front of her. The air crackles with electricity that will reach and envelope him in the next few seconds.

Lara Croft has posed:
"Looked like it." Lara replies in a whisper to Bobbi over the comms with regard to the drone in the sky being 'one of theirs'.

"I'm right here, I'm not advancing on you." Lara tells the man when he insists that she stays put. He can clearly see her, some how, some damn tech she wished she had! Her hands flex on the shotgun, her fingers repositioning themselves as she just rocks gently back and forth on her booted feet.

"You got a bad deal. I'll agree with you on that. But there are people in the Agency who would've listened to you. I, would've listened to you. I'm with WAND. I'm sure I could've found a way for you to help me with what I do." She doesn't really know if that's true, but keeping him talking and occupied was good.

When Jessica said she was advancing, Lara counted to 10, then turns and starts up the incline to the roof, her shotgun raised and her eyes down it's spine! "I'm going up." Croft says in to the comms!

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi starts her climb up the side of the building. She's not as deft at this as Jessica is.

Harry angrily replies, "Yeah sure, you're the kind hearted one. It's a bureaucracy lady, wake up and smell the conspiracy. Fury's favorite children run the place and do whatever they want while the rest of us slave away. I don't need help I made my own way, sold a few products, nothing too serious, nothing that'd... Hey my drone! What the~" he says as Jessica takes him by surprise.

The field hits him like a blast and his cloak blanket fritzes out entirely, as does his tactical glasses. He falls back like he was hit with a stun field, which he was. His body jerks about for a moment, then he flips up back on to his feet with fists up, "Oh you. You. You!" He's at a loss for words, but advances on her with fists flying.

Jessica Drew has posed:
That's a first, the stolen shield from SHIELD absorbs most of her bio-electric energy leaving the man with the receding hairline to come at her angrily like a child on the playground. Shaking her head at him, Jessica feints to the left, ducks to the right and side kicks him hard in the knee before switching feet in a blur of motion that catches him under the chin as he sinks to the ground from the pain.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara Croft isn't a martial artist. She's trained in some boxing and some hand to hand grappling, but she's not a fancy fighter. So when she emerges up on the roof and she sees Jessica engaging in a melee brawl, Lara doesn't hesitate. She charges right at him as Jessica turns and spins with him...

The auto-shotgun is raised up and its stock is spun around to be used as a club to strike at the side of the man's head! A loud grunt comes from Croft as she does this to him before she then uses her leverage against his to get her knee behind his and hopefully push him off balance and drop him back on to his spine!

This is where she'll spin the gun around once more and aims it right at his nose. Her eyes glaring down at him, her brow covered in sweat with the sun on her back and shading her eyes. Her aviators fall down off of her sweaty brow and on to her nose.

"You're definitely retired now." Lara tells the man, with shotgun trained on his face.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi finally makes it up to the roof in time to see Drew drop him and Lara clock him. Harry tries to rise off the ground for a moment and then slumps back down. Bobbi scans the roof top with gun out, then rushes over to the other two agents and takes out some zip tie cuffs and ties his wrists behind his back. "Wow.. great work you two! and not a scratch on you either." Bobbi looks genuinely impressed. She taps the comms and says, "We got him, tell NYPD to stand down." Her eyes scan the roof top, "Okay wow he really got his hands on a lot of our toys didn't he." She walks over to the stealth cloak and folds it up, putting it away in to her backpack. "I'll get a team down here to recover the rest of our stuff."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Hands on her hips, Jessica purses her lips in disgust, looking down on the zip tied man. IN her primmest Oxfordian accent she tears into the man.

"We've got some things to tighten up on if you were out their pedaling stuff to the highest bidder. What were you thinking? I mean really."

Crouching down, she stares hard at him, "I lost a perfectly good ten-speed and Lara here has to talk to you about her Jeep. That was a nice ride!" She cranes her head to the side to look at Lara, "Until it wasn't. You drive like a pro!"

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara keeps the gun on the man as Bobbi joins them and she hears them both. Jessica's words make her crack a faint smile. She doesn't look away from Harry though. "I had a good teacher." She says with regard to her driving skills. Roth had been a good teacher indeed, probably not the best father figure for someone to fall-in with after the passing of one's actual father, but he taught her enough to keep her alive to this day through lots of wild things like what they all just went through together here.

"That being said, I'd be perfectly happy to never have anyone shoot at me like that ever again." She says with a breath voice as her foot sweeps out and kicks the Uzi even further away from where the man on the ground is laying on his back.

"Now then, where do I get one of those cloaking devices?" She asks with a small smirk on her lips.