4655/Stretching Your Wings

Stretching Your Wings
Date of Scene:	09 January 2021
Location:	Roof - Renovated Theatre - The Roost
Synopsis:	Spidey goes to Gotham and runs afowl of the Red Robin.
Cast of Characters:	Peter Parker, Tim Drake

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Peter Parker has posed:
Jeez, the place may look like Transylvania West, but the buildings are great for webslinging.

Spider-Man is out of his comfort zone in Gotham City. Spider-Comm doesn't really work here because he hasn't made a point of checking the city out, but the recent events, including connections between certain elements of organized crime between New York City and Gotham City, have strongly suggested that he consider visiting this place to suss out the connections.
And maybe he can do this without worrying about stepping on a certain night-creature-themed hero's toes.

So, that means swinging through town. Webslinging was always good for thinking, letting his mind work through things as he traveled.

Tim Drake has posed:
    A capable swinger, but not in the same league as Spider-man, Red Robin finds himself at one of his favorite gargoyles to perch upon and eye a specific intersection that is a hodgepodge of infrastructure and city planning done poorly only to have the city further develop around it. There's usually /A/ wreck here a night and yet, tonight's been rather quiet, action wise, it's been noisy as hell with horns and the like.

    "MOVE YOUR ASS!" Echoes up to the tops of the buildings from an angry cab driver below and all the Robin can do is shake his head. "Elon save us." The man whispers to himself, though he rolls his own eyes at the sentiment.

    Red Robin's yellow lined cape presses against his back, making the black of his guise camoflauge with the spout he's on nearly perfectly and yet, he's nearly slapped with a splat of webbing and this causes a pause. "What tha?" Asks the hero to himself before he looses part of his staff and presses the tazer to the webbing and turns it on before jumping off the building to give chase with his grappling gun in hand.

Peter Parker has posed:
"I love to swing-a...about the moon and the June and the spring-a...I love ta swing-a..."
He sings, but not well. It's more of a spoken-word sort of thing, because his singing voice causes dogs to howl and whine.

The webbing is fairly well-insulated, and the length of it causes the tazer charge to fizzle out long before it gets to the somewhat-singer. And then he just...leaves it behind as he fires another one. No attempt to retract it like the grapple gun, he just makes more.

Hey...isn't the one in the red-and-blue longjohns the guy the Daily Bugle hates?

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim lifts his free hand up while Peter is on his upswing and Tim is still in the trough of his. Should make it to where his voice carries perfectly to be heard. The physics of sound. He hopes, to at least breach the rush of wind past their ears though not likely. "HEY! WHAT'RE YOU DOING HERE?"

    Tim pulls his arm up as the hook releases and retracts while he's free falling through the air, savoring the rustle of the cape at his back, knowing briefly what it must feel like for Connor or Cassie in these moments, but he snaps the shot at the next anchor point and continues to follow the red and blue "Hey, it's that 'menace' guy." A tap on his wrist computer with his nose, "Warn the cops, I have that New York Spider-Man, dude swinging around." He calls in via his head comms and remains in persuit.

Peter Parker has posed:
Did someone yell at him? Well, okay, he gets yelled at A LOT, but who knows him well enough here?

Then he looks behind him and the HUD in the suit picks up a...

Oh, for the love of Jim Belushi. And here he thought he'd perfected being under the radar.
He looked around for a good place to perch. That was another thing about Gotham - LOTS of places to perch. He wondered if He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named perfected his glower with all the gargoyles around.
In the end, he spots a nice tall building with a clock tower and lands on the roof near it, turning to look at his pursuer.

Tim Drake has posed:
    "HALT!" Tim shouts as he lands on the roof of the clock tower within a few feet of spiderman, his staff swinging out and held in a pair of loose gripped hands in black gloves. "What're you doing in Gotham?" Demands the Red Robin, his bandana like mask obscuring half his face, nose down with a cleanshaven chin and a look on his lips that he's not giving away any emotion in stumbling upon a known source of ills in the neighboring city.

    The Red Robin waits, holding his position, staff poised between him and his foe, waiting for the masked vigilante to make a move. Tim's obscured eyes darting behind his own hud as data readouts scroll quickly before he forces them to stop with a twitch of his fingers, he needs absolute focus in this, as he's not super aware of what the webslinger is capable of.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey holds up both hands. "Hey, don't taze me, bro!"
He takes a step back, his Spider-Sense seeming to make everything stand out. With most bargain-basement crooks, he can sense 10-15 different ways they can open a fight. But this guy is TRAINED - he can sense over 100 possible opening moves. He doesn't even know why he knows that number, just like he doesn't know why he can adhere to almost any surface.
He just can.
"Hey, if you're the Welcome Wagon, I can see why Gotham has such a lousy tourist rating. I'm just here to follow up on a few things...uhm..."

Then Stupid Mouth senses the opportunity and just GOES FOR IT.

"Uhm...who *are* you, exactly?"

Tim Drake has posed:
    Scoffing, mostly at himself, but also the question, "I'm- I'm Red Robin. If you say 'yumm' I'll have to beat you up either way." Tim notes, and figures he might try rebranding again, or taking Dick's persona, he's better at coming up with new ones anyways. Tim takes a deep breath and refocuses his mind back on Spider-Man.

    "Trust me, I'm improving the yelp reviews every night." Tim remarks and motions with the tip of the staff, try and getting Spider-Man to refocus on the situation at hand, "Following up on what?"

Peter Parker has posed:
Don't quip. Don't quip. Don't flipping QUIP!

Spidey takes a deep breath, then exhales. "...All right. If you are working with Big, Buff and Broody, then you know the name Carmine Falcone. He made QUITE a few waves around here. The thing IS, he's pulled up stakes and moved to the Big Apple." A pause. "IMAGINE our joy at getting one of your cast-off crooks. No, really, IMAGINE it, because it DOESN'T EXIST. And I think he's back to his old tricks."

Tim Drake has posed:
    "You're after Carmine Falcone?" Tim asks, the shift in his ankles, the slight bend in his knee, the subtle twitch of the point of his staff. He's still prepared to fight, but the subtle movements, he's more prepared to listen. "What makes you think he's up to his old ways?" Robin asks, keeping the attack and defense position poised at Spider-Man with little room for anything else besides talking or fighting.

    The face of the clock below continues to move, getting nearer and nearer to the hour. "How does a criminal in New York draw your attention to Gotham?" Tim asks, his voice lowered slightly, a few years of doing this and he's learned to sound intimidating, different from his normal self, and not at all sick when he does it. Practice makes perfect. He heard that somewhere before.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man relaxes slightly. He's asking questions. That's good. That's a dialogue. These Gotham types don't usually talk and quip like he does, they just get stuck in there with barely a word.

"Well, there's the fact that his son is into the 'life.' I had my Stalker pick up something during a photo session, and although Mr. Falcone seemed ignorant of it, I wondered if he really was. So, that's enough to wake up the ol' warning bells. Not to mention the fact that he tried to pay the photographer two grand for a photo session. Nobody spends that kind of money unless they want to put the recipient on the payroll."

Tim Drake has posed:
    The stance gets a bit tighter, more cleaned up and presice, seems that Tim didn't like the answer he got. "Sins of the father, or in this case, sins of the son..." Tim says aloud as if it helps him to organize his thoughts more clearly. "You think the photographer is a front, for what? Or is he just a potential goon?" Tim asks, eyes squinting behind the mask as he reenables the readouts, the internal computer doing work on finding out Falcone's son's latest where abouts and checking in on Carmine's lastest news.

    "I don't think you're crazy, or wrong, but..." Tim lingers as he puts things together, "Why shouldn't I believe you're on Carmine's payroll, you're always in the news about some dastardly thing in NYC, so, all things considered, I'm taking everything you say with a grain of salt."

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey suddenly snickers. "The photographer? A potential GOON?" He'd also feel insulted if he wasn't trying to maintain his cover.
"Peter Parker is the guy who takes all the pics of me for the Bugle. He makes me look good, his pics sell so he can afford himself and his family, so it's a symbiotic relationship. And Parker is FAR too smart to get in bed with a guy like Falcone."

The last notation is of a family "dispute" in the Falcones between father and son, around the same time as a photo shoot featuring a fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Project, of which Falcone was a guest, held about a month ago. Some guy named Kolchak identified himself as the photographer...so who is Peter Parker?

Tim Drake has posed:
    "Maybe clarify next time that the guy Carmine tried to pay and your photographer are the same dude!" Tim says, but the notation in his hud gives pause and he retightens his grip briefly before handing with his fingers slightly loose, like water, ready to move at a moments notice. "I'm choosing to trust you..." Tim says slowly and yet his stance doesn't change. "Where's your next objective?" The Red Robin asks, sounding more trusting and yet that weapon between them really doesn't say 'Come be friends, lets go have cheep chinese food together.'

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey relaxes, just a little more. The cheap-electric-razor buzz has dwindled to suspect-'back-massager' buzz, so that's an improvement.

"I was going to rig a little wiretap on a guy named Julius Thorne. Jersey's still a 'one-party consent' state when it comes to electronic intercepts, and I was planning on connecting it via cell-tower. I've sorted out a little hack for the cell-tower encryption, so no one knows it's being used."

Tim Drake has posed:
    "No one except us..." Tim notes and tilts his head just a little bit at Spider-Man, "That's... awfully forward thinking with a wire tap, implanting a small cellphone on the guy, when it would be harder to track down could you simply hack into his personal phone." Tim then lowers the staff but doesn't put it away and with the THUNK of it hitting the roof next to his shoe, Tim's certainly a lot less threatening, immediately that is.

    "What do you expect to learn off Julius Thorne?" Tim inquires, moving slightly to spread his feet apart, almost like a soldier moving to stand at ease, but with that hand on his staff, he's able to react to most anything Spider-Man could throw at him, or so he feels, still safe.

Peter Parker has posed:
Okay, the Spider-Sense just dropped to phone-set-on-vibrate, so this is progress in the right direction.

"It's also slaved to a sub-tracer to be connected to one window. Turns the whole building into a sounding board. Can hear any conversation above a whisper. Saves the audio to a cloud service back in NYC. As for what I expect to learn...? I don't really have expectations other than knowing he's connected, so anything I can pull up can be useful. The best intelligence agencies operate on the premise that no bit of information is more important than any other bit, so I try not to presume or cherry-pick." He smirks. "And if your boss asks NICELY, I'd be willing to share."

Tim Drake has posed:
    "I don't have a -" Tim lift his hand to press the thumb and index and pinch at the bridge of his nose. "I'll be asking you to share your intell in good faith, as far as I know, you're a wanted man across the river, and me talking to you like this could set my ... boss back quite a bit." Red Robin says as he lowers his hand back to his side, "So, help me trust you, hearts and minds Spider-man." Red Robin says, hoping to learn something, and maybe he'll break down that technology from the spider-tracker for his own use soon enough.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey took a deep breath. "Okay...look. If you really want on overture, how about this? I'll give you guest access to the Spider-Comm system and you can listen to what I pick up, unedited, raw footage. You won't be able to edit it, but you'll be able to copy whatever you want."

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim's hand snaps out, glove taking in light and not reflecting anything off of it as he waits to make a deal with the Spider-Man. "Deal. And I'll keep my ear out for Carmine and will, find a way to signal you should I discover anything that might help you in your investigation, though... do be mindful of your reputation when coming down to Gotham... were it anyone else that found you. You might be the Hospital-Man instead." Tim warns, as he's still not super trusting of the spider, but is at least giving the man a shot.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man shrugs, then extends his hand to Red Robin. "I'll be sure to be VERY careful..."

Stupid Mouth is banging on his mental control panel to try to get something out, but Spidey's temporarily locked his impulsive troublemaker out of the system.

He hands Robin a slip of paper with a typed link. "Enter that into the browser or command line of any computer connected to the Internet. The app will do the rest."
Spidey steps away, walking towards the edge of the roof. "Until then...TTFN, ta ta for now!"

And with that, he swan-dives off the roof. One THWIPP! later, and he is swinging away from the building, heading downtown.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim walks over to the edge as he watches Spidey swan dive off the roof and he smirks to himself. "For now." Is all he repeats and then lowers his chin and hunkers down to crouch down on the lip of the building and smirks. "For now."

    Stealling a look at the paper, "What is this a fortune cookie?" He turns it over and then shrugs before stuffing it into a pouch off center of his chest piece and bides his time, waiting for Spider-Man to leave a trail of pheremones he can follow in a few minutes time. Thankfully it's not raining.