19847/Desert of Despair Pt 1

Desert of Despair Pt 1
Date of Scene:	17 January 2025
Location:	NATO Embassy - Middle East
Synopsis:	A country in the Middle East erupts into stryfe as a western aligned dictator is assassinated and SHIELD Agents evacuate civilians as fighting breaks out.
Cast of Characters:	Natasha Romanoff, Jane Foster, Richard Stadler

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Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The Middle East had been prone to chaos for centuries. From the Crusades, to the Ottoman Empire, to the peace treaty after the First World War that divided the region up with random lines on a map, to the constant coups and plays for support over the Cold War. Here, in a place where dictators propped up by outside countries for cheap oil, that kept the world economy going, where many countries were at arms with one another via assymetric warfare and terrorist organizations, things ere always one step away from stumbling over with repression so high.
    Now, with the seeming end of the world coming, things were even tenser. In one country, as a dictator backed by the West took even harsher measures against rising 'anarchy' and declared martial law as protests and acts of violence promoted by 'outsiders' rose, embassies of western nations were being put on lockdown and being evacuated.
    Here, at a NATO embassy used for military training, a skeleton crew had been left behind over the months. Now.. Now, these last personnel were being airlifted out.
    As riots, protests, and street fighting were building, the area was on lockdown as helicopters flew in.

Jane Foster has posed:
Name a global hotspot and, without difficulty, most people will point at the confluence of Africa and Eurasia. Standing in the cradle of civilisation means a five thousand year-long history. Well, add another twenty thousand for Homo sapiens versus Neanderthals, just for fun. It's not exactly a mystery.

Asymmetrical warfare during the Bronze Age through to the post-nuclear takes many forms. A helicarrier hovering over non-American airspace, a Lantern ring against a knife, say. Official word brings Jane into the heart of the conflict officially. On paper, she's another agent tasked with that weirdo department pulled in because... well, she's got field hours to make up to satisfy Nick Fury and Maria Hill. They want their folks to dodge the worst life can throw at them, and still earn those hours. Here on paper because uneasy political scenarios can blow apart into a powder keg, and where else in the world except Latveria can someone pull out an unexpected square and unleash yet another permutation of a country or world-ending event?

Either way, she's there, making the concession to not playing civilian wearing a smart black coat and solid boots. Hair pulled back, her expression carries a voluntary degree of seriousness. Straight into an airlift it is then. "What's the sitrep on civilian evacuation corridors? Are they restricted to the rooftop and footprint of the building, or are there external sites?" The question comes as she flicks her fingers over a tablet propped there, and for once it's working exactly as intended. (Yay!) The joys of having actual fingerprints again!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
One of the soldiers present (a civilian contractor of all things carrying a heavy rifle that might as well be a borderline mercenary from a 'reputable' security service) would keep his hands on his weapon, "Tricky, Ma'am." But holding himself professionally. Well trained, wary, and knowing enough not to be triggerhappy around civilians. "We have a perimeter seventy five meters out of the building. That's about as well as we can get without putting every person on the barricades. We have about a third of the civilians out. Will take about four hours if things keep on schedule." Of cousre things won't be. His hands will be fingering on his rifle.

"Rooftop has snipers and we have a few APC's spread about." And some machine gun emplacements. They were taking this seriously.

Around the place were riots, street fighting, and martial law as soldiers fought with civilians and insurgents.

Jane Foster has posed:
Four hours. The information stored away for later, Jane nods, making a crisp note and lifting those cool, concerned eyes to the skyline practically vibrating with seething rage. Pent-up energy doesn't take an expert to trace, and the tinder-dry conditions need only a small spark to become a whirlwind. "We need to expedite that." The soldier isn't the one to relay the order, but she does, tapping onto the comm to alert fellow SHIELD resources. "It's Stargazer. Coordinate personnel to move to the evacuation point at double speed, staying away from the windows. Get the birds down and out as quickly as you safely can."

She'll leave some of the finer details to the technically militarily-competent, since a Nobel astrophysicist probably isn't the person to understand the logistics of moving helicopters in and out. Probably. Even if she has an excellent understanding for the limits of rotor blades, descent and acceleration.

Gunfire and the surging, gnashing beast of battle out there is enough to shift her from observer status to active participant. Its chaotic lion dance chatters in the back of her molars. What they can't see or know is the projection of competency pushed out actively, smoothing over fears or hunting for the nearby mental snarls, giving little nudges here or there. For a localized effect, maybe competency works nicely.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     There are times where Rick feels like he's doing a lot less teaching and a lot more throwing a gun into a suitcase to head off to another hot spot. He was somewhat sure that only archeologists were supposed to do things like that. Maybe he'd have to ask Lara how she managed it... then again, she wasn't really /teaching/ was she?

There was a bit of healthy wool gathering as Rick looked out to the streets filled with chaos around them. "Can't really blame them, you know. World might be coming to an end, and some people call for a settling of accounts. I'm suprised NATO's taking it as well as it is, though... I suppose it means we're in a position to do something about it. Or at least have willful ignorance to fall back on."

Full battle rattle didn't exactly fit the bill, today, even if it did mean he felt a bit naked without a gas mask on his face. That was still present, of course, tucked away in a case connected to the tactical vest pulled down over one of his more disposable dress shirts, dirt and grease already marring it as he gripped a handle at the top of the helicopter's rough with one hand, the other steadying the UMP by the grip in it's tactical sling. Dress shoes made his feet ache, but sometimes apperance was better than comfort.

"We've got good sight lines, from the look of it. So long as we don't see heavier weapons come in to play, we should be able to hold for civilian evacuees for that long. Granted, as we start evacuating, it's going to get tougher to hold this perimiter, and I've never trusted local forces."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It's a tricky middle ground of holding off the civilians without pushing them so hard they went on the offensive, but also not falling back over the evacuation. The rest of the city was in a state o not quite anarchy as police and military personnel tried to enforce a crackdown that wasn't going as nearly effectively as it should be. And the ever so quiet withdraw of western military advisors over it to try and make a diplomatic 'point' without going so far as to directly tell the country's rulers was a small gesture along the tightrope.

Jane's presence helps a great deal. Not as she's parading out and showing herself, but she's helping to keep the rough edge off. OFf some of the troopers that might open fire on someone brandishing a weapon. On someone in the crowd that might surge forwards with a Molotov Cocktail against invaders that supported the dictator that has oppressed the place.

The embassy is on lockdown and ready to hold off a civilian attack. It's not pretty. Effective fields of fire, multiple cordons, and barricades strategically placed to turn into chokepoints if they have to. Helicopters come and go. From the embassy, smoke goes up in the air as papers and computers inside are thrown into the incinerator.

That's.. Not standard procedure.

Jane Foster has posed:
Holding that simultaneous act of paying heed to the changing moods in the crowd and effectively establishing a small, distinct bubble of calm within the besieged building is taxing. It costs her something to do it, and that very well may be coordinating the thrilling evacuation of personnel and functional files without starting bin fires or feeding cabinets' worth of material into the incinerator. Her expression remains focused, as though she's got the first signs of a headache coming on.

Orders relayed through words across the SHIELD-linked comms go with other field sorts. Her coordination really focuses on the most urgent evacuees, though not 100 percent as the agency might consider. Getting out the most exposed, elderly and youngest non-combatants, those with health risks. It's not exactly a neat profile, but the capable soldiers aren't first out if she has a say. "Keep me appraised of what you see up there, and if we need to move reinforcements into a shortened perimeter, we can do that. If it's emergent," this to Richard, a known and recognized asset, "call North Star and we handle it. We otherwise keep this light engagement if we can."

That's easier said that done as she leaves the soldier, shrugging off anyone who thinks she needs an escort. Being a spy has its advantages, like shaking off the occasional tail inside a crammed building. OK, not so much. She scrambles up into the embassy, ducking inside, headed for the thick of the busy work and snagging one of the inevitable bureaucrats not squashed near the door to leave. "Come, I need your assistance. Let's find the deputy chief or whatever passes as their next in command. The burn needs to stop and focus on getting up and out." Right, that light, easy tone of voice would belie the fact she hasn't spoken to this extent in, oh, three years.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Rick's own helicopter lands on the helipad at the facility, and he's quick to disembark; getting in was easy; the helicopter had been empty; lightly loaded with one or two reinforcements. It wasn't leaving like that, however. The line of people streamed toward it, a crew chief pressing forward to try and keep order in the chaos itself in terms of boarding the right mix so that the most people got out without an overloaded bird clipping a midrise nearby on it's way out.

He's heading to the lip of the helipad, reaching into a pouch to pull out a small set of binoculars, looking over the crowd that was forming around the area. Wincing at the nearby sound of the odd gunshot that he was simply waiting to turn into a regular popping. It was a powder keg over here-

A sudden burst of radio chatter in his ear, confused and direct, as Rick key'd over to a different frequency, hitting the PTT button to silence what was coming in. "All on this net, we are going to stick to good radio discipline. One at a time, with call signs." He said. And it was slower, but...

"Damn it."

Another switch of frequencies, back to the SHIELD one. "We're handling it right now, but I just got word we may have had an attempt on the head of government. Sketchy reports, very sketchy. Still unsure whose alive, whose dead, and who did it. I suppose if we start hearing swan lake on the radio stations, we'll know something very bad is happening, and I imagine it's about to hit us."

A look over to the signs of the burn pit. "That may be the smart move right now. We're going to have trouble getting personel out. Sensetive documents..."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
As Rick goes to pass along his warning and Jane goes in deeper to the complex to start to try and calm some of the panicking diplomats and civil servants who are going to full 'paranoid' mode, they go to take af ew breaths. The one going for it goes to try and pipe up, "But this is normal procedure Ma'am.." But as his 'normal procedure' runs into 'this woman massively outranks him' and 'defer to authority' as a junior civil servant kicks in.. He goes to stop with what he's doing, moving to get ready to head out and stop his activities.

That is right up until there's that rush of emotion through the crowd that is a cue that they've all heard the news that Rick has just passed along. Now there's a full force going to rush the front gates and the barricades. The 'contractor' that Jane had been talking to is rushing out to the front along with various other soldiers there that were helping to coordinate the evacuation to hold up the front. In the distance, smoke rises.

In the courtyard, the machine gunners behind sandbags go to tense as up front riot shields snap out.

Helicopters race overhead as those recently loaded go to rush away at far higher speed than is procedure.

Jane Foster has posed:
The brunette probably doesn't look like a standard military sort, and their reasoning probably makes a tremendous amount of sense. They need to destroy the paperwork, they need to erase those precious details and documents before they fall to a hostile government or public. Played out time and again, crack open the vaults and feed the vox populi with the words, facts, and songs deprived them in the silent dark.

"My department deals with special matters like this." WAND, after all, isn't just "N" as in necromancy. The oldest and purest form of that "N" is napalm, and in this neck of the world, it's not only the Greeks who can and do wield it. "Your lives matter more. This is what we're here for, people, evacuate the vicinity unless you have something too large to feed into the incinerator. Pile it together." And if they see fit to argue with that, she contributes a few of the boxes of documents into the incinerator with a casual toss. Nothing too unusual in that, except paper and books weigh a lot. To say nothing of boxy mechanical objects.

"Keep me briefed. Why isn't he evac'ed as a priority? We'll keep monitoring it, and try to get ahead of that." The question lingers, but it's almost impertinent to ask Rick that when he's holding the line up ahead. Faintest shadows crawl, and her lips part as she smartly conveys another box to the flames, and contemplates the computers. There's a much faster way to do this, but she needs everyone out of the room to smartly do it. Then the whirlwind concertina shattering metal carapaces in a proper dervish-dance might actually be conducted, sans Greek fire to light it up.

Outside, trouble. The air of serenity has to collapse inward, tighter, thinner. Shifting weight pulls at the woman already present, and a silent sigh touches her lips. She casually shoves a heavy box against the entrance to the incinerator with the precious little time she has available to her as the stakes become suffocating, as much as the smash and bash moshpit she'd hoped for. Not so much here, not when it's probably necessary to rise like an unimpressive, dark shadow from the gloom to get a clearer take on who. Nearest window or crack will do. Isolate the harbingers. Locate them.

And she plants that knowledge in the snipers' minds.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Stadler usually didn't question the sudden shot of inspiration in terms of looking toward a target that looked... oddly suspicious. But he was someone to question when everyone else seemed to be noticing the same person in the crowd. It's not that he'd /immediately/ jump to magic, but... well, given him enough time, and it might have been his third guess. "Keep an eye on that target." He said, over the net. "Sniper on the north side, only. DO not fire. Overt acts of aggression only." Things were ready to really go off, and ROE had to be tight here. Exceedingly tight, even as the crush of people at the front attempt to move aganist the barricade. It was about buying some time, any time, before the M240s he saw posted at those emplacements went to full auto and cleared an aggressive and unarmed crowd in front of him-

Binoculars scan across the roof tops, then swing back, suddenly, at the familiar sight of a tube being pulled out of a bag. Freezing, before moving to his radio again. "Break. Break. All on this net, irregular with an Igla on a rooftop, five stories up.. three blocks, northwest." He says, His UMP is brought up, before being put down with frusturation; an SMG, at this range, with the silencer, he'd be lucky to hit the roof itself. "Sniper at north, redesignate. Let me know when you have him, and one shot. Just one."

There was a long pause. A longer pause than he'd like, Rick's finger on the radio controls to switch to the aircraft frequency, before there was a single crack of a rifle, a shot aimed toward the man setting up.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The man setting up is immediately dropped down hard as the warning about the manpads goes to rapidly shoot along through the commnet. Now the standard arguments are starting among civilians starting to get more panicked. Should they abort the evacuation if there are weapons that can take down the helicopters? Should they rush everyone out on one last shove? Should they hunker down for rescue? Ironically, there's so much noise outside and the individual with the SAM was quiet enough that the gunshot hasn't been picked up.

Jane's 'presses' have the desired effect as everyone inside is going to quickly get to proper positions as the soldiers out front are going to form up a riot line as barricades are pressed forwards and the crowd goes to surge against them. The riot line is holding, the soldiers are on edge, weapons are trained covertly on some of the far more heavily armed professionals in the crowd that have yet to make thier move.. Everything seems to be in a brutal status quo for the moment as in the distance smoke rises and fires go off, sirens wailing and gunfire goes back and forth sporadically.

The peace of the stalemate is broken, however, when the sound of a mortar firing is broken out in the distance from well outside view.

KRUMPH.

Jane Foster has posed:
WAND is on the scene, there will always be a touch of weird. Weird can be good, especially when it comes to keeping civilians and SHIELD personnel safe. Their mission is not simply looting all the goodies in the background, regardless of what ARMOR or SWORD say.

Tick, tick, tick. The mortar's trajectory is so little over so much, so many lives.

Plum bruises spreading across Jane's eyes before she can process anything more, the double-vision compelling her to action before sound parses into a warning. Some ancient obligation borne of war and loss compels her to motion, scything forward at a run. Fingers slide down her cheeks in evidence of tears, as she splits for the safety of cover with the other civilians just like her. Soft. Vulnerable. Mortal, so painfully...

Enchantments slide across her skin and the great weight of light scissors open from her back, ribbons of radiance along fractal and geometric planes. Hurling herself into the sky goes unnaturally diagonal from a standing jump, but it's not some Harrier or drone popping up from cover.

The blur is too bright to consolidate into a person-shaped anything with the rayed wings pinned close, using leverage of height to get a proper sightline. The great big purple skull? That's the one.

Not nearly as cool as Hawkeye with an arrow, the Asgardian missile streaks down with a slender, elongated spear at hand. Said spear makes an excellent thrown weapon through the illusory eye-socket painted by the death gods with whom she holds court all too often. And if the eye-socket is a person, it's her astral self on the other side ready to receive them, folded wings and burning eyes in judgment. She flings her spear midpass at the unassuming explosive, and uru meets manmade contraption of damnation. Courtesy of Heimdallr Post, wrong address, return whence it came.

And Undrjarn, unlike the average return shot, can think for herself, and she has *words*. Mostly crackle-crackle fuck you.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Richard had learned a lesson a long time ago, that was coming back to the forefront now; the only thing more stressful than the sound of a CRAM screaming 'incoming' and spitting out rounds was the lack of it. Rick twitched at the thump of fire from the distance, dropping to the ground, and definitely ruining his dress shirt. Why the fuck didn't he scope up a helmet when he was gathering this gear. "Incoming! Cover!" He yelled into the radio, and waited...

But the explosion he was expecting didn't come down on them. Instead, it seemed to be in the distance, a response to the thump of the launch from a few hundred meters out. That was... well. Not at all suprising, considering the giant being of bright light that seemed to jump from the compound itself to intercept it, slaming down some sort of weapon in that direction. Well.

"Stargazer, very good to have you back." He notes, before raising himself up. The situation was deteriorating rapidly, and he could see that, gathering up his own SMG. "We've got threats to this compound beyond visual range. Some of them are indirect, and I've seen at least one person with a MANPAD. From now on, we expedite. It's dangerous, but we are rapidly running out of time here. That line isn't going to hold for long without sustained firepower, and there's not enough of it to hold off a determined enemy."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
They can't hold off a crowd. Even if they're just shoving up agaisnt it. The sounds of heavier firepower are oncoming - if not towards them then from everywhere else. The lead dictator of the country is dead or incapacitated. Now all those grievances supressed by troops and brutality have erupted over as power struggles commence throughout the city, and quite possibly in the coming days to the entire country.

The mortar round explodes back as the gun goes silent, shrpanel making the position it had been setup in collapse. The heavily armed troopers that had been observing the entire time are now backing away from the crowd and disengaging, intent on heading back into the city as gunfire spreads, if not here then everywhere else as anarchy is threatened.

What it means is that no one is shooting at them long enough for them to be evacuated, and that command considers it a high enough priority to throw assets at them to get it out of there now that they're not bound by 'we hope that the situation can be peacefully resolved amongst all parties' stage of diplomacy.