6873/A Bad Day to Be a Drug Dealer

A Bad Day to Be a Drug Dealer
Date of Scene:	11 July 2021
Location:	Bronx
Synopsis:	A drugs-for-guns deal gets interrupted by two Spiders, one Sentinel, and a very Quiet killer.
Cast of Characters:	Peter Parker, Quiet, Michael Erickson, Andi Benton

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Peter Parker has posed:
It's kinda hard to set up stuff like this.

When teo different groups have completely different goals, it can work well, or very very poorly. It's why the Aryan Brotherhood and the Triad needed a lot of time to work this deal up.
But, the Aryans had a lock on crystal meth, the Wing Chen Triad had a line on cheap Chinese assault rifles. With the help of a Kingpin subordinate, a tentative agreement was made, and the first major exchange was set up in an office building that used to be a Homeland Security call center, so the keycard was given to each representative.

The meeting is scheduled in ten minutes, and people are already beginning to show up.

<Looks like Selma's info was right on the money, Mania.> Spider-Man's text came in clean and clear. <Let's hope her info on how MANY is also on the money.>

Quiet has posed:
There were plenty of people who wanted these this meeting broken up, people with badges and people with masks both. But above that? There were people with security clearences and accounts who wanted to have the heads cut off a few snakes. That was where Quiet came in.

In her skin-baring attire one might expect that she'd be spotted, yet the blurring figure moved between the rooftops into a position over the meet. Touching down, her deceptively delicate fingers reached to unsling her rifle from her back and the silent sniper oh-so-slowly stretched out in almost feline fashion to take her position.

Michael Erickson has posed:
    On the other side of things, there is the man who calls himself Michael Erickson, who calls himself the Red Sentinel. He does not know about the drug deal; he does not know about the sniper uncoiling to sink her fangs into the crowd at distance, at least not yet. His destination is the building itself; somewhere in the abandoned yet not entirely unsecured depths of the structure are data files that he has great interest in, files that should assist him in the his prosecution of the arms dealers of the Tannhauser group operating elsewhere in the city. The wonderful things about government contractors, he has come to find in his forty years on this planet, is that nothing - NOTHING - ever leaves a government facility on the schedule anyone wants it to.

    Which, in this case, is to the betterment of the city. And to humanity, even if it doesn't realize it. Or ever could.

    Slinking across the rooftops, the thin metal skin that coats his body is itself coated in a radiation-consuming skin of holographic darkness. Hard to see already thanks to its wearer's long years of training in covert operations, movements and posture drawing his silhouette to the minimal, the Sentinel's armor gives him preternatural stealth with its void-black skin. He is already on the roof as the scene opens, creeping across the flat tarpaper and slinking between long-dead air conditioner units. Heedless, at the moment, of what unfolds below. Single-minded in his goal.

Andi Benton has posed:
Just this moment, Mania only knows of Spider-Man, for they have been in communication privately about the planned meet. The dark figure perches atop a building within the same block as the location in question, and a tendril holds the phone in front of her as she sends back a short message.

<We stop them in under five minutes, we get extra chocolate later. Under ten minutes, we still get extra chocolate, just not as much.>

It is her way, their way of putting extra stakes in play, whether suitable to this or not.

<How many did she think, again?>

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man checked his notes. <15 Triad guys and their leader, Henry Kim. Like the Lieutenant from STAR TREK: VOYAGER. As for the Aryans, twenty, including THEIR rep Ralph Tremaine.>

He pauses as he referenced the drone that had been working the perimeter.

<The Aryans are here already. The Triad is inbound, five minutes. Three Cadillac SUVs, all white...>
He stopped, frowning. <Might have to have the drone checked. Getting some distortion on the infrared. I'll work on it later. I'm at the south side, overlooking the parking lot. Where are you?>

Quiet has posed:
Eyes more attuned and precise than any humans scan the gathering as the gangers make to move into their meeting. Keeping track of so many moving targets was effortless, but until they were all in place? She couldn't make her move.

Gently her form shifted out of the spectrum, a few moments of concentration and stillness before her form, her 'limited' attire and her gear all shifted into their 'adaptive camoflague'-like state.

It would at least help if the gangs got paranoid enough to post their own lookouts, but the movement she'd eventually spot on the skyline? Well, mooks didn't dress like that!

Michael Erickson has posed:
    On top of the building, the Sentinel has reached the roof entrance. Simple enough mechanism, a mag-reader slot, but thanks to the Penta-Vision provided by the faceless visor built into his helmet he can see the live alarm wire threading down into the structure. Lifting a gauntlet, his eyes track through a list of tools depicted in holographics in front of his face within the helmet; he cycles through a few before finding an appropriate option and squints slightly, causing the armor's systems to engage.

    Hard-light systems conjure a device into being over his extended forearm, a probe made of light and exotic energy that slides into the mouth of the card slot. Electromagnetic pulses gently thrum through the sensors of the lock as surely as they were tumblers on a lock, seeking the proper patterns as another layer probes the machine's integrated computer. A code is found, the fields align to fit, and suddenly the door clicks open. Easy enough, this human technology. The black shadow that is the Sentinel opens the door and slips through, leaving the lock disabled behind him as he descends the stairwell.

Andi Benton has posed:
<That's all?> Mania texts back, then sends another one. <One building over. We can see the back of the building. What do you mean, distortion?>

White eyes narrow shortly afterward as she moves to gain a better view of the roof of the place this is set to go down in. A quick text is fired off once more. <Not alone. Someone or something else on the roof. Went inside.>

As soon as the door shuts, she leaps across with use of webbing to cover any extra gaps.

Peter Parker has posed:
There are no exterior guards when the three white vehicles drive into the parking lot area, but there are four in the lobby. They are wearing suits, but the MAC-10 machine pistols are DEFINITELY non-formal attire.

<Really? Never mind.> Spidey really knew better than to dispute Mania's preternatural senses. Mania never questioned his Spider-Sense, after all.
Mania never acclimated to the augmented-reality interface, so Spider-Man spells it out for her. <Okay, quick rundown. Six Aryans on the ground floor, ten on the second floor where the meeting's being held, four on the third floor near the roof access. Anyone coming down the stairs from the roof, instant Swiss cheese.> A pause. <Five people per SUV, looks like they're coming through the front door. The one in the middle will have the sample hardware...and the key to a storage place nearby, I'll bet. We need to secure the drugs, the samples, and that key.> A pause. <And the timer starts ONLY when you start moving inside. Just to be fair.>

Quiet has posed:
Mania's movement was easily detected for Quiet, even with one eye looking down the scope her other was effortlessly able to process surroundings in perfect details. Noticing was as easy (ironicly) as a spider feeling a tug on its web.

A Spider-family member? She knew New York enough to know of them, but it didn't change her plan. It did mean she couldn't pick off the lookouts...but that was fine. She'd just have to deal with the key targets first.

Michael Erickson has posed:
    Down the stairwell into the gutted remnants of the top floor the Sentinel steals, Penta-vision in effect as he goes. As if a ghostly veil had descended over his senses, the structure ahead is picked out in the glow of the x-ray scanner, silvery renditions of the pillars between the thin walls, the humans standing around at the north and south sides. Humans carrying weapons. Probably the high-cycle matter guns. Slugthrowers. He flexes his fingers, still covered in night; long, raptor-like claws extend from his fingers, flowing out like water. That's him. Big old eagle who long forgot his wings. But no. Claws retract, and he moves quietly through the structure, doing his best as not to be detected. Technology helps, absolutely, but it's never perfect. He still gets found out from time to time.

    For a few minutes, anyway.

    But the computers arent' on this level. Gotta be another down.

Andi Benton has posed:
Thus far, the identity of the one moving inside is unknown, and the sniper seems to be hidden well enough so as to avoid notice. Mania's attention is primarily on getting inside, and rather than using the door she moves toward a venting unit in order to open a panel for access to the ductwork. If the stairway is supposed to be too dangerous, best to avoid it for now.

<We will be using the vents. We are going in now. Whatever went in through the door will have to wait.> Start the timer. Quietly, symbiote and host snake their way through, moving rapidly enough while checking spots where the vents offer a view into rooms or hallways.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man acknowledges with a quick, <...Showtime.>

Mr. Kim steps out of the central stairwall, flanked by his men. The one with the sample, a dangerous lady named Harrier, carried one of the AK-47s slung over her shoulder. The curved box magazine was not in the rifle, as was proper. But Harrier had a habit of keeping a round chambered, just in case.

Kim smiled thinly as one man opened the main door with the keycard, allowing them in. The dog with the buzzcut and the swastika on his cheek was sitting behind the desk that used to be in one of the side offices in the center of the call-center room, with the partitions removed to maintain the empty space and clear fields of fire from the other white supremacists.
"Well, well, well...the CHINK shows. Didn't think Kingpin could make this work."
Kim took a deep breath. Peasants. "Well, here we are. Let us not have this take too long, I do not think we enjoy each other's company." He beckoned for Ling, his chemist. "You brought your sample? I have brought mine..."
Tremaine chuckled, and another man walked forward with a small ziplock bag of what looked like blue rock candy. "Our guy used some different variation, but your chemist will know it's good."

Quiet has posed:
A soft curl of her lips, a slight shift of her form. She didn't need to breath through her lungs, the respiration through her bared skin allowing her form perfect stillness.

It was now a game of choice, practiced patience paying dividends. Whatever personal preference the sniper might have, her scope shifted for the practical option. Kim's vehicle was closer, his bodyguard more alert without having had time to get comfortable with the location.

Her finger eases down to the trigger, her weapon adjusts and...she squeezes.

The bullet was already in flight as she worked the bolt of her rifle, a soft humming tune on her lips shared only with the air around her while she moves to focus on Tremaine.

Michael Erickson has posed:
    Moving between cubicles, his body hunched, the Sentinel seeks the clearest path between the surface entrance and the stairwell to the second floor. The two Aryans with submachine guns are too close for comfort, and the soldier in him decides to deal with them before they can sniff him out. They stand by a window, smoking cigarettes, talking about whatever cornfed racist bullshit that their kind do. Wide open.

    The armor is nearly silent, certainly so to humans - and so when he comes out of the darkness to snag the first it's like something out of a horror film. A fist, mailed in alloy and fueled with the preternatural strength afforded his people, smashes into the man's back, knocking him flat as if he'd been hit with a hydraulic hammer. Knocks a disc out of place. The other's moment of open-mouth shock is lit up by the flash of a neon sign across the street as before that same fist is driven into the man's midsection. Pale skin. Hakkenkreuze tattooed across one side of his face. No chin. Why are the so-called supremacists such fat genetic backsteps? Both men are on the floor and out like sacks of cement in a frighteningly short span, broken bones the only trace of his passing.

    Then, he steals to the door, slipping through and going down to the next floor. Scanners still in action.

Andi Benton has posed:
The ductwork leads Mania down to the second floor, based on the path it takes. This places her in close proximity to the meeting itself, so near to it that she can hear every voice, picking out differences in body language and attitude as she peeks through the slats of a vent.

That's when Kim's head more or less explodes from a sniper shot coming from somewhere outside. It creates an immediate panic in the room, a multitude of weapons drawn as shouts ring out.

Mania is as surprised by this as anyone else in there, but uses it to her advantage by bursting through the venting, webbing as she goes. Catch a gun here, an arm there, bind it to the body, land, kick, punch, throw one into another, make a shield out of its own substance when a gun is turned her way. "We could not wait any longer to play. You have things we want."

Figuring out who was behind the shot will have to wait.

Peter Parker has posed:
Kim is still smiling when the bullet shuts him off. Tremaine is almost pleased for a moment, wondering if someone else from his side had put the Chink in his place. Then he spots the shattered window and dives behind the desk.
"Kill 'em all!" he yells, and then Spider-Man leaps in through the now-open window, briefly obscuring Quiet's view. Mania was already working. She must REALLY want that chocolate lava cake Aunt May made.

He spots Harrier aiming at him, and then she fires. She is usually a crack shot, but Spidey slides under the bullet and webs her and her now-empty gun to a pillar.

Quiet has posed:
Chaos errupts, but Quiet was an oasis of calm. Everyone in there was an acceptable casualty...or at least they were meant to be, before the heroes showed up.

Job first, then...

A shift of her skin, inky black spreads around her eyes as her senses kick into overdrive, hunting the head of the Aryan gang with that soft tune uninterrupted.

The trigger pull comes, a shot headed for her mark and a shift of her aim.

Thought passes, as soon as her targets were down she could leave...

But instead she turns her focus to one of the gang members drawing a bead on one of the spiders.

She wasn't aware of Michael, leaving him unobserved for the moment!

Michael Erickson has posed:
    Somebody's shooting downstairs. A LOT of people are shooting downstairs. That computer is going to get /destroyed/. This is what he's thinking now as the holographic skin melts away from his body and the chrome anatomical model that is its /real/ form is replaced once more, a bulkier, more industrial form of armor being projected over his body by its emitters. Something more like a 1980s toy cartoon, and not a Sorayama exhibit.

    He kicks the door off its hinges into a man with a gun, slamming him into a structural pillar. Just like that. Then he runs into the fray. Matter slugs aren't going to pierce his armor, not when just propelled by simple chordite. It's going to be a melee, and he - and the Spiders, who he tracks coming in from the other side of the structure - are going to win. It's a foregone conclusion. It's just a matter of speed, so that the damned computer doesn't get turned into a collander before he can source it.

    Some days this planet would really do with the Empire giving it structure.

Andi Benton has posed:
Mania lashes out at a few of the white supremacists, going rougher on them than is perhaps necessary. Or, maybe it's just right. Bash a couple together, throw another through a window. If he breaks a few bones on the landing, too bad. Spider-Man's arrival is noted and she fights in such a way as to keep from putting him in the line of personal fire..though another bullet is heard and her head whips around in the direction of the noise. At about the same time, attention is diverted toward the door busted down.

Peter Parker has posed:
The current count of combatants was dropping like the proverbial lead balloon. If anything, Mania was much faster. Maybe even faster than HE was, which was a sobering thought.
Then he webbed one to the wall, checked, and realized...that no one was left. All the others were webbed up, knocked out...or, like Kim and Tremaine, picked off.
The timer in his HUD stopped automatically, and he glanced at it.
Wow...just wow.

<Mania, stand down. All the bad guys are neutralized, one away or another...and the timer has stopped at four minutes, 29 seconds. So congratulations...the lava cake is officially yours by  right.>

Quiet has posed:
The casing from Quiet's rifle is lazily snatched up by her gloved hand, the sniper's task done as the threats are neutralized by web or more permanently.

Rolling onto her back and lifting her hips, the casing is tucked away into one of the pockets on her belt before she sits up with a stretch.

Not bad for a day's work!

Climbing to her feet and retrieving her rifle, Quiet seems to be making her exit at a lazily pace. Barely a care in the world!

Michael Erickson has posed:
    The poor bastard who ate the door is lying in a heap with it on top of him; not dead, but he'll need time in a hospital. They always do with him. The armored figure stands there, light from the overheads splashing off the false skin of his plating, and sweeps the floor with his scanners. Nothing here. There's nothing. /Here/. Punching people through walls for nothing. He looks up at the spiders, heaving a sigh inside his helm, and speaks.

    << I APPEAR TO HAVE INTERRUPTED YOUR OPERATION. >> The voice that emits from the helmet is a mingling of male and female, lots of reverb and an undertone of an animal growl. Unsettling, as it is designed to be. Maybe not for the Spiders though. << I APOLOGIZE. I WILL INCAPACITATE THE REMAINING GUNMEN ON THE UPPER FLOOR ON MY WAY OUT. GOOD EVENING. >> You know. Nice and polite. Like a gentle-skull-fist-punching-man.

Andi Benton has posed:
"Still got it," Mania declares as the room is taken care of swiftly, with her cutting a strangely imposing figure for one so generally small compared to many. "But where is the shooter?" She asks this with no real evidence of a mouth existing or moving, pointing toward the windows.

But, that's not the only draw for her attention. She comes to stare at the..thing that has come through the door, the proverbial hackles up initially as she seems to bristle visibly. "What are /you/ supposed to be?" she asks, ironically.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man ran to the window, looking out and running his own coded version of the KAT (the bullet-trajectory software with the historically-chilling name of "Kennedy Assassination Tool") to pick out where the shooter had come from.

Mania was dealing with Mr. Robotech, and he trusted her to handle things.

After a few moments, he shook his head. "Whoever or WHATEVER the shooter was, they're gone." He frowned. "I wonder if Frank Castle caught wind of this meeting, too."

Michael Erickson has posed:
    It's a fair question that Mania asks, and one he's very used to getting all these years - and the reply is just as easily repeated from years-long rote. << I AM THE RED SENTINEL, >> he says in that fearsome, synthed-together voice. << WE ARE ALLIED IN PURPOSE. GOOD EVENING. >> And with that, the machine-man turns and goes right back up the stairway he came from, unless stopped; the poor jerks who will encounter him will get maybe a few ineffective shots off before he absolutely creams them into the dirt. No computer means no leads, and he has way too many other things to worry about right now than to get into a murder scene, even if the Spiders /clearly/ did not have anything to do with that. Doesn't want to get his bell rung by a sniper, either.

    This planet. These /people/. Never a dull moment on this rock at all.

Andi Benton has posed:
Mania's white eyes narrow as she squints at the one calling himself, or itself, 'Red Sentinel.' There is perhaps something she catches on to, and while the voice does not leave her particularly bothered - Mania has a sort of duality to her own - she begins to raise a finger to say something before he's getting back up those stairs. She stops instead, head canting toward one side in a clear show of wonder before she turns toward Spider-Man again. "Did you hear that? He might have a symbiote, too. A different one than us, but you heard how he talked?"

They still have a few things to do here to wrap up, before it's time for chocolate. The prospect of that being devoured sooner rather than later keeps her from pursing the one taking his leave.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey looks back to Mania, then shakes his head. "We can't worry about that now, Mania." He looked around at the bodies, the living and the dead. As far as he knew, this "Red Sentinel" didn't kill anyone...and they had to do what they could to make sure the drugs and guns never made it to the streets.

"Let's secure this place, Mania. The sooner the cops get here, the sooner you get chocolate."

Because you had to maintain your priorities...