1822/Cloak and Dagger meet Spies. Ironic

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Cloak and Dagger meet Spies. Ironic
Date of Scene: 25 May 2020
Location: Hell's Kitchen
Synopsis: Cloak and Dagger bite off more than they can chew. Black Knight to the rescue! Jane helped!
Cast of Characters: Tyrone Johnson, Tandy Bowen, Jane Foster, Dane Whitman




Tyrone Johnson has posed:
    Investigations aren't the strong suit for Tyrone and Tandy. Well, at least not the detective part of things. Investigating by scaring the pee out of drug dealers is Tyrone's -strong- suit. The last group they interrogated in their patented bad cop, worse cop routine informed them that he was working for Cade Hansen, a man who lives in a more... uptown part of New York City. A man who is on SHIELD's radar in a related investigation.
    You see, Cade had put out feelers on the dark web as he was seeking some SHIELD tech. Most notably weapons. But Cloak and Dagger have no idea of that....
    The surveillance part of this is boring from time to time. Cameras have been rigged so that Jane and Dane could take turns watching the feed from the disguised truck they are hanging out in. The remnants of dinner are off to one side in the back of said truck, and things are quiet.. too quiet. At least until the cameras all go dark... and nightvision lenses don't seem to penetrate the darkness. And then... they overload as light blasts outward towards their lenses.
    To specify, Cade's elite guards are caught off guard as Cloak just... apepars silently in the room, spreading his darkness field out to envelop them all.... he lets it drop away in time for the newly arrived Dagger's light to get put into play. It's a normal routine they have worked out, and it can be devastatingly effective...

Tandy Bowen has posed:
Tandy covers her mouth to burp politely, a surfeit of chicken murgh plate having been left behind in the surveillance truck, before stepping out from under Cloak's darkness. As user friendly as the travel is, she often miscalculates arrival times.

Fists balled tightly in concentration, as she steps out into the pitch black room, she opens her hands releasing all of the lightforce energy that she had been storing. Sometime or another they should take a lumen reading. The unwary and unprotected naturally cower and cover their eyes from the scintillating light. Daggers appear in each hand as she readies herself to launch into battle.

Jane Foster has posed:
"The next time we agree to take over from Gutierrez," Jane murmurs, "let's do it on a night we had a good dinner and not the five mile run. I ache in places I should not ache. Those sneakers aren't made for trails." This is said from the seat of said truck, most definitely uneasy. Because a car parked in Hell's Kitchen for any length of time has the possibility of being jacked or tagged, regardless of its contents. Driver and passenger can complain all they like, not a lot of good it will do without some strong arguments involving shows of power. She grins at Dane anyway. "At least we get to work together? He has always done me a good turn. Having a favour is good, but I'm still feeling that scramble. No dashing down the alley, please, if we're lucky." Nope. They are not lucky. For this, she sits as low as she can, staring into the darkness that suddenly becomes impenetrable to their scanners. She taps a button on the tablet. Nothing changes in the readings. Fussing with a few of the settings requires digging into an app while the mechanical side of things is Dane's to worry about, particularly as it's almost a two-person job.

SHIELD really could stand to shrink down some of those devices. Fortunately she has a spare sensor or two with the full ESM array monitoring profile built in, but she gets no time to even consider going for one of them as the low building erupts into dark and then what must be full daylight. She has no way of knowing who or what caused it -- some random interlopers from the other side of the surveilled building, it seems.

Her hand claps over her eyes when that burst wipes out her nightvision, day vision, and possibly anything in between. "Mimir's bloody neck." Ooh, burn. "Two bogeys on screen and please tell me you're seeing anything." Right now, she's trying not to remember what the insides of her eyelids look like. Furious blinking isn't helping.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"I can think of worse stakeout company." Dane notes to Jane with a bit of a grin, screwing a small access panel back into place from where he's just finished fixing the faulty wiring on one of their many sensors. "Hopefully no dashing, but with our luck?" He says wryly, grin turning a bit mischievous, "I'm half surprised we're even allowed to be on a stakeout together, if I'm being brutally honest." Because he does assume that at least some of the higher-ups are aware of things. Whether his entire house is bugged or not.

Dane has the benefit of being in the back of the truck and not looking at camera readouts, so the burst of light manages not to blind him, though he misses the darkness too. He's looking at the sensor readouts that he's privy to back there, scrambling a bit to adjust the calibration on a few pieces of equipment to capture as much data as possible.

"Call it in and see if HW wants us to intervene or just observe. Hansen's relatively small time so I don't know if they're going to sweat the superhero du jour taking him down."

Tyrone Johnson has posed:
    It's not exactly like fighting a walking, talking strobe light for the folks in the building. But it may as well be. Light blinded, the darkness washes over them again. Two of them enveloped by the folds of the giant cloak before they, and Tyrone, vanish. A second or so later, there's a loud thud from outside the truck as Cloak drops the two thugs into a dumpster, drained of a portion of their life energy, but still alive.
    Then he vanishes once more and reappears behind Dagger... intervening to place his body between her and a shotgun wielding guard. "Your boss uses children to make his money. You have two choices. Leave and rethink your life, or perish in the darkness along with your coward of a boss." he says in his deep resonant voice.

Tandy Bowen has posed:
They are playing 'Peek-a-boo' with the thugs - now you see me, now you don't. A high, sweet voice follows a beat later, "He does mean it. He just talks like he's from a book from your high school English class. Your choice!"

The silence that follows is enough for Dagger to make her decision, the lightforce makes the twirl out from under the cover of darkness hard to follow with the human eye.

Once again the room bursts into light as two daggers are hurled at the shot gun wielder. The first hits his bicep, the second his lower arm right in the nerve that would control his trigger finger. The shotgun clatters to the floor. Dagger dims her light a moment to conserve energy.

"What now?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Jane shrugs her shoulders to Dane's statement, still pressing her palms selectively to her eyes. It doesn't help much, but the pressure eases up the explosive bursts of black and blue and gold filling her vision. Teary-eyed a moment from the flashbang-pop against nightvision, she ducks forward to force her eyes to focus on a single point: Dane's shoes. It works well for the most part. Not a lot of variation there. "Is it a bad sign I have too much experience with this from university fieldwork? I wish I had Erik's eyedrops or those glasses he came up. Maybe you and Simmons can work out the film coating. We got past this when I was seventeen, seriously." Once she isn't seeing the afterimages of her own ocular veins and arteries, she sits back up.

"Got it." She turns back to the phone and draws a complex pattern, breaking through security. If someone doesn't know the constellation Circinus inverted, it won't make a whole lot of sense. Operational handshake codewords exchanged and she drops in with her report. "We have an interruption here for the operation. Two targets were just transported out of the building at speeds consistent with paranormal means. They didn't go out a window. Yes, confirmed. /Yes/." She pauses and taps her headset. "WAND. Safe at a distance. Got it, we will stay linked and report any changes. Roger."

Looking over to Dane, she gives him a good shake of her head. She hits the mute button on the the headset; it's useless, of course. "Probably because of situations like this. We keep our head and focus on a mission. You cover me when things go tits up, and we get analyst Wilkins telling us to keep our eyes open just like now. So... we have casualties outside. Or someone just jumped out of the dark. Thoughts?"

He's the cool one with the sword and shield. She is the one who gets excited by wormholes.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Well, I guess if we're gathering data, I may as well go see just how bad off our casualties are." Dane notes, making a few last-second adjustments on their sensors, "So one's got a flair for the dramatic and one sounds like she might still be in high school. Male and female, from the sounds of it." He adds, "And now I'll go look at the goons that just got dropped off."

He may have his photonic blade in hand, just in case, but either way Dane makes his way out of the truck and over to the dumpster to see about the condition of the partially-drained thugs.

"Huh. They're alive, but they're in shock, as near as I can tell. Not a mark on them."

Tyrone Johnson has posed:
    "Heed the words of Dagger." intones Cloak in that confident voice he never got to even hear himself speak before his powers manifested. Now that he doesn't stutter, he truly enjoys being verbose. One could see Asgardians approving of his manner of speech.
    "Or you will know precisely -why- you fear the dark. And trust me, admit it or not, you -do- fear it."
    To make a long story short (too late!) things end up with the guards defeated... And outside the truck, Cloak appears once more, totally silently... in the middle of the air as two more thugs drop out of his cloak, into another dumpster before he vanishes again. It was so quick that he didn't even have time to start falling more than an inch or two... and inside, it is Cloak, Dagger, and Cade with a pistol in each hand. But not only that... he holds a gem in one hand... a gem imbued with magical properties. Properties that send waves of pain out from it into both Cloak -and- Dagger. A gem that is in the SHIELD files, and something that Dane's predecessor has dealt with... the intent was to destroy it with the Ebony blade but he never got that chance.
    As for the thugs... they have had some of their life energy drained... and if they were left to rot, they might perish. But they are not on death's door just yet.

Tandy Bowen has posed:
There are questions that a person could regret asking. What next, indeed? There is that high school lit word, again. Not twenty feet from the duo of shadow and light a man stands covering them with two guns. In their recently discovered world of powers, a threat that either of them could face and stand down with no difficulty.

It is that awful thing he holds in one hand that engenders the worst nightmare headache wrapped in the keenest pain of mourning all of your loved ones real and imagined, that staggers Dagger. Her light dims under the pall of hurt the gem casts.

"God, Cloak, what is that?" Dagger gasps, holding her hands out in a vain attempt to use her lightforce against it.

Jane Foster has posed:
Cade might be up there in a two-storey building among the other shady spots in Hell's Kitchen. Right now he takes second fiddle to people who landed in a dumpster abruptly. Jemma is the SHIELD battle medic but Jane has enough ranks in healing to know how to stabilize someone and diagnose them as hosed, screwed or generally fine, walk it off. She snatches up the first aid kit in a black field bag meant to endure anything short of nuclear blasts, slipping out of the truck several moments after Dane. She doesn't leave the truck, matter of security protocol.

"Can you recover them safely? We have zip ties at the ready. I can make sure they are stab-- /incoming/." That alone has her stiffening in the seat, bag forgotten in her lap. Falling bodies that come raining down into a dumpster at least are recorded, caught by a variety of sensors. "Three inside, I can't get a good trace on the sensors. Keep your earpiece in, I'm patching through the conversation. Mirroring Wilkins." The visuals and audio go patching through whatever satellite hangs in their sky.

"Visual spectrum shows intense light fields. Let me get the dim-stick up and see whether I can haul any more, but tell me where you want to go with this, Whitman." Her voice is tense, not out of its league yet. No rainbow bridges, no men with sceptres.

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane peeks back into the truck, humming "It's Raining Men." But he gives a glance to one of the screens and stops short, "Wait, what're they talking about now?" He moves to the screen and looks more closely. "Hold on...Camera's got...damn it..." Dane thought he saw a glimpse of something, and scrolls back to find the frame. "Shit. Sorry Jane, I'm going in. Cade had an ace in the hole and I'm really going to hope he sticks around long enough to tell me where the hell he got it. Pass it up to WAND that there's a Threat Level Alpha artifact in play. And I'm going in to contain and neutralize."

And then Dane's out of the truck again, working his way up the fire escape with athletic grace and well-honed speed, the armor of the Black Knight flickering into place around him as he goes, though once again he goes for the jacket instead of the cape. It just seems to make more sense in most instances. Still, Cloak and Dagger will have to hold out a few moments more while he gets there.

Tyrone Johnson has posed:
    Inside, it is a strange feeling for Cloak. He is mostly insubstantial all the time. So pain is something that he is not accustomed to. This is psychic pain, the manifestation of it in his brain. And he crumples as if he were made entirely of fabric. Even his strong voice goes weak. "I d-d-d-don't know w-w-what is happen-en-ening." his voice intones, reedy now rather than strong. Like a child, not a terrifying entity.
    Cade is gloating now, stepping closer as he lifts his heavy pistol and aims it at Dagger. After all, threaten the girl... the classic move of a powerhungry and insecure man. Especially one who wants to scare folks. But he is gloating and taking his time.... the worst part is that Cloak and Dagger have no idea that backup is coming.

Tandy Bowen has posed:
Dagger tries to fight back, the aura around her strobes with the effort. A dagger appears in her hand which she opens, flipping the weapon in a blur of light. She staggers with the effort it takes to keep it on target and airborne. Through the miasma of pain she barely keeps it directed at Cade, the thwip of a sharp object entering flesh reaches her as she collapses toward Cloak. "Tyrone..."

Jane Foster has posed:
Sometimes a girl has to sit back and let action take its course. Let's be clear. Jane Foster is patently terrible with this. She has the bruises and cuts to prove it. History knows her name dimly in conjunction with an Asgardian prince and an extraterrestrial invasion because she couldn't leave well enough alone. Sitting there in the SHIELD truck waiting for Dane to do what he does best leaves her grinding her teeth and clearly unhappy; this, however, is her job. Therefore she passes on warnings that Agent Whitman has engaged with whomever is in the building, and the broad-range mics capture conversation and details. A number of injured victims of these unknown pair are passed along too. "One sounds young, probably college-aged at best. Target B is named 'Tyrone?'"

The ICER gun comes loose as a precaution. She twists the bracelet around her wrist once as the only show of nerves. Her chewed cuticles show the evidence of more physical worries. Still, she whispers in Dane's earonly when necessary, opening up that broadcast channel.

"Got the path. Go left, the first door will lead you into the stairs. When you emerge, avoid anything to the left. You have a utility closet and a blind wall for the adjacent building." She can read the secrets of the cosmos from Matlab spillovers; a floor plan is nothing.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"These kids aren't going to have time for the long way. I'm taking a shortcut." Dane replies to Jane, and it's a sure sign of how serious he thinks the situation is that it's not the photonic blade that appears in his hand, which he usually tends to use as a first resort, right before he dives through through the second story window, tucking into a combat roll (quite carefully positioning his blade so as not to harm himself, of course), which carries him right in front of Cade.

And hopefully while the man's still trying to figure out what's going on, The Black Knight swings the Ebony Blade up as he rises, actually seeking to slap the hand bearing the gem upward with the flat of the blade, hopefully causing him to lose his grip. As for the guns? Well, that's what the photonic shield is for, and it ignites as he rises as well.

Tyrone Johnson has posed:
    Indeed, the man has no idea what to make of the sword wielding guy who just appeared before him. He reaches down and covers the puncture wound in his right thigh with a hand. The dagger vanished the moment it wounded him, and indeed... he's feeling sluggish, and the energy waves of pain are ebbing a bit.
    THis means that Cloak and Dagger feel the pain lessen... but the guy growls and holds the gem out, powering it up with his will once again.
    The big problem he has right now is that the more power he forces out of it, themore the Ebony Blade absorbs.... which in seconds, has freed Cloak -and- Dagger entirely. They just need to recover a bit. But Dane is given a priceless opportunity since the gem is presented almost as if begging to be cut in half.

Tandy Bowen has posed:
Light melds into darkness but she gives Cloak too little of her light force, too late. Cloak fades to the ground at Dagger's feet. One glance down at the supine form, she flames into anger, the room bursting with light like ten Klieg lights flipped on at once, directed at Cade. A step away from launching herself at their adversary and Dagger stops in wonder as man flips into the room directly at the gun-bearing man's feet. The maddening pain that made it so difficult to concentrate abates enough for her, to stutter, "Who, who are you?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Dane's form appears through the screens filling the truck. Doing things that stand out in a momentary lag time, painted in green on black or the heat signature of infrared. Jane watches not with the avid interest of the committed audience, but calculated worry. "I trust you. I've got you covered." Words murmured under her breath aren't exactly happy, but urging Dane on. She swivels to watching Cade thrust out his hand to a sword that has yet to lop off the offending hand or arm. That blade suddenly on display. Her eyes narrow with the flaring blast of light, but this time she's faster, looking away mostly in time.

The medkit is ready. So are zip ties. Time to trust in the system.

Dane Whitman has posed:
With such a tempting target, why not take advantage? The Ebony Blade lashes out in a black blur, and Dane is more than precise enough to slice the gem without so much as a scratch on Cade himself. Though the minor explosion that happens probably doesn't do any favors for Cade's hand.

Even if he manages not to lose a couple fingers or such, he's still not getting off scot-free, as the photonic shield coalesces around his fist as he uses the momentum of the slash to carry his off-hand forward in a punch that's accompanied by the neural shock his photonic weapons can produce, leaving the man on his back, out cold.

"I'm the Black Knight, and an agent of SHIELD." He replies to Tandy, moving to offer her and Tyrone a hand up, "And that guy was totally cheating." He lifts his wrist and speaks into the communicator there, "Can probably use those Zipties now, Stargazer. Looks like we're clear. One perp for pickup and one artifact destroyed."

Jane Foster has posed:
A comment to Dane over the comms, too quiet, but audible. A sigh, satisfied. "That was awe-inspiring. You might win move of the week in the coffee pool." Jane isn't grinning. Nope!

Tandy Bowen has posed:
Not more than a few questions remain to be answered. SHIELD??? A pair of new vigilantes on the streets???