8312/Meeting the Big Man

Meeting the Big Man
Date of Scene:	19 October 2021
Location:	Location
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Frederick Foswell, Peter Parker, Dinah Lance

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Frederick Foswell has posed:
Cigarette smuggling has always been a way for various mobs and other criminal syndicates to make quick and low risk cash. It is relatively easy, just buy a wholesale load of tobacco and somehow ship across the border to Canada or Mexico, sometimes even to Europe, and make profits off of your tax free goods. One of these operations was currently running in Staten Island at the old Wartzman Truck Depot. Wartzman used to be a trucking firm that specialized in transporting toxic waste, but an accident in the 90s brought it to bankruptcy, leaving it's shipping hub sitting abandoned, until now. According to the Underworld's grape vine, a large cigarette smuggling operation has taken hold in this warehouse, and were using it to smuggle Semi Trailers full of tobacco to both Mexico and Canada. The unusual part, no one knew for sure who was running it, but one name kept one popping up, The Big Man. Whoever this Big Man was, he was organized, and apparently had a lot of money to throw around if rumors about the fleet of semi trucks were true.

The relatively quiet industrial area you found yourself in was suddenly rocked by the sounds of a semi truck hauling a trailer roaring through the area, shaking the windows of abandoned buildings and scattering gathered cats and rats. It drove towards the Wartzman Depot and came to a stop at the front gates. Suddenly, it's horn blew, echoing across the area, then blew two more times like some type of code. Suddenly, the gates fly open and the truck drove in.

Peter Parker has posed:
It's so old-fashioned, it's almost QUAINT.
Cigarettes? Do people still smoke these days?
Spider-Man guessed so. He knew that the taxes on them were through the roof, so evading paying the cigarette tax was more lucrative than he suspected.

He had been following the truck, but hadn't believed the scuttlebutt about the cargo until he checked with a couple of other informants.

He wondered if there would be a guy driving up in a 1938 Stutz Bearcat.

He shook his head, then sent out the drone to gather more intel on how many had come to this party, and what kind of fireworks they'd brought...

Dinah Lance has posed:
From a nearby rooftop, the Black Canary, having followed leads similar to Peter's, is watching trucks entering and leaving. "What's he building in there?" she wondered aloud as she lowered the binoculars.

Of course she knows all too well how lucrative cigarette smuggling is. It's a constant thing in Gotham, but this new operation was bigger than usual and scuttlebutt among the Gotham thugs was that it was choking out their business.

So she came to Staten Island on a ferry, astride her bike, outfit in a gym bag, then found a place to change unseen and took tot he rooftops and alleyways.

Good cardio if nothing else.

"Well, only one way to find out!"

She moves back to avoid skylining herself (ask her how she learned not to do that sometime ... when she's drunk), before slithering down an old-timey drainpipe back when those were made to last.

Frederick Foswell has posed:
The drone flies over the courtyard of the truck depot, and sees a group of men patrolling the outside of the depot, carrying various firearms, including tactical shotguns and assault weaponry. Whoever these guys were, they apparently had access to high-end weaponry. As you circle the back of the building you see the semi truck from earlier, now docked at a loading bay. You see forklifts moving in and out of te trailer, apprently loading in boxes of bar soap, but in reality, illicit cargo. However, the depot had absolutely no windows, so you had no idea what was happening inside.

You slide the drainpipe of the depot and land in the courtyard. Besides the occasional footstep or cough, it's surprisingly quiet. However, before you can go further, you hear a walkie-talki blaring. Suddenly, a guard carrying a shotgun turns toe corner and stands still, his back towards you. He suddenly pulls out a cigarettes and starts to smoke it.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man fires a webline to swing over to the roof of the depot warehouse, landing very lightly. The drone doesn't exactly deliver good news, but he might be able to nab the whole group at once.

He does note the lone gunman, but he focuses on the group, waiting for a good time to web the whole group...

And then the drone picks up...a blonde biker chick in fishnets?

"What in the Sam Hill...?" he sub-vocalizes...

Dinah Lance has posed:
Oh come on! With his BACK to her? What is this, life on "Easy" setting?

Dinah, with stealth that belies her reputation, lowers herself the final few feet and silently ghosts up behind the man. Then she has her analysis paralysis moment. Which way to take him down?

She finally decides on short, sweet, and stylish. A high jumping kick gets her knee around the thug's neck, paired with a roll that drags him down and back out of sight into her alleyway. It's then sleepy-time as the other thigh locks behind his neck in a figure-four, cutting off the flow of oxygen through his carotid.

She waits the few seconds it takes for his struggling to stop before releasing her hold to prevent actual brain damage. A few seconds' work with zip ties and a handkerchief--one she specifically wipes in questionable stuff on the alley floor first--in his mouth and she's ready to infiltrate further.

"Easy peasy," she says, slipping out of the alleyway to approach further.

Drones and spiders escape her notice for a moment. Hey, the girl's busy!

Frederick Foswell has posed:
The Man Dinah chokes out struggles for quite a while, before suddenly falling limp, now Koed. As Dinah makes her way out of her hiding sport, the guards suddenly hear a loud crash coming from the center of the courtyard. It would appear that a glass casing from a nearby street light fell off the post, and made a loud noise. As the guards gathered together it left the perfect opportunity for a webbing attack.

Peter Parker has posed:
Start from the back, work your way forward.

A thin webline strikes the two guys in the rear, yanking them up and into the darkness above the light attached to the wall of the depot. A few seconds later, the rest of the group suddenly gets blanketed in sticky webbing, the stuff soon getting into the weapons and fouling them up.

Spider-Man drops to the ground, standing up straight and looking at the biker chick. A penguin says in his head, "She's...GOOD. Kowalski, INTEL."

He starts a facial-recognition search (engineered for including mask styles and the like) while he approaches her.

"New in town?"

Dinah Lance has posed:
The sudden disappearance of two guards, followed by the webbing of the rest gives Canary a moment's pause. Then the brain catches up at about the point Spidey shows up.

"New? Not really, no. I've been in the gig for ages." She gestures vaguely off into the distance. "Mostly Gotham-side, but sometimes work in Queens too. Oh and in Istanbul, London, Kolkata, Hong Kong, Luna..." Wait, Luna? The Moon? "...and a few dozen other places. Except Timbuktu. I've always wanted to go there, but never got the chance."

Canary stands, fists on hips, legs shoulder width apart and regards Spider-Man. "Black Canary, Justice League and a few other affiliations over in Gotham. And you're the famous 'criminal' Spider-Man, are you? Cool schtick."

Her hand briefly departs her hip to wave at the crowd of guards.

"Much less dramatic than what I'd have had to do. And quieter."

Peter Parker has posed:
Justice League? JUSTICE LEAGUE?
Instant Flop-Sweat Time.

"Uhm...okay. Wow. Yeah, uhm, thanks?"
Jeez, he's dying like Michael Richards at the BET Awards.
"Well, there's the other loading-bay door, and then there's the pedestrian door farther down. I can go in through the roof, see about catching them off-guard? Hit them from two different directions?"

Dinah Lance has posed:
What was that thing Batman always said? Something something split the team. It'll come back to her later.

"Sounds good to me. I was looking for some windows, but none are conveniently located, so the pedestrian door was the one I was going to aim for."

Without further ado (or a don't), she sets off on a light jog, circumventing pools of light from various sources, to head to the pedestrian door. At the door she crouches down and ... door, meet lockpicks. Well, after checking that it was locked, naturally. No way was she going to have THAT happen to her again!

Lock clicking open she silently opens the door a small amount and peers within from the resulting crack.

Frederick Foswell has posed:
As you both sneak through the doors of the warehouse, what you see is rather impressive. The entire inside of the warehouse had been converted into one big storage area-hub. Stacked at almost every nook and cranny where boxes upon boxes of tobacco, enough to cover an entire neighborhood in smoke for years. There were thugs and men in blue jumpsuits running around and doing tasks like filling out clipboards, loading forklifts, or patrolling with weaponry. Yep, this operation was bigger than expected, which meant a bigger loss of profit fro whoever built this racket when it fell

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey carefully lifted the skylight, then scuttled in, moving along the high ceiling. He was a little impressed with this. This was a major operation, and it had almost flown under the radar of law enforcement - there hadn't been so much of a sniff of something this big.

Speaking of sniffing, the smell of tobacco was strong in this place.
Time to close the store.

The first one to get yanked into the rafters was one guy who had been rtoo focused on checking product to realize he was all alone. And then YOINK, up into the rafters to hang in a cocoon.

Spidey began methodically picking out stragglers, either yeeting them up to hang like Christms ornaments or webbing them to crates, or walls, or the ground.

"Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette...puff, puff, puff, and when you smoke yourself to death, you can tell Peter at the Golden Gate, you just hate to make him wait, but you gotta have another...cigarette..."

Dinah Lance has posed:
Canary's approach is more kinetic. Like Peter she wanders silent as a cloud, until she comes across people. In her case she's fine with singles or doubles.

Singles get taken out quickly. If they're just workers, no weapons in sight, they're taken out with a choke hold and then zip-tied and gagged. If there's guns the take-out is more brutal with kicks, chops, elbows, knees, or punches as appropriate to creative places. Anything that ends speech quickly, though, so there's little chance of shouting out. So punches to the throat. The solar plexus. Or a really hard shot to where men really don't like to consider shots.

Yeah.

You're already pushing your legs together in sympathy.

That place.

They too will get zip-tied, but ... far less comfortably.

"Live by the sword, get tied up by t... No, that doesn't make any sense, Dinah. Shut up."

Pairs get a special treatment. The coconut conk, followed by chokes or strikes as appropriate. Then zip-tied together in compromising positions. Because it amuses her.

"Gotta suppress that urge to whistle while you work, Dinah," Canary says to herself as she rounds a corner of boxes, only to walk face-into-chest into a grade of thug quite a bit higher than the mooks she'd been taking out.

"Aw, shit!"

Frederick Foswell has posed:
Spidey does a good job taking down the thugs stealthily, as does Black Canary. However, all good things must come to an end, and that end came in the form of a hulking 6ft 9in lunkhead of a thug. The thug, who looked like a cross of Curly Howard and Vin Diseal, gapes at the fishnet clad Canary for a minute, before letting out a savage war cry and swinging both of his fists towards Dinah. Meanwhile, thr thugs cry alerts the remaining guards, who notice Spider-Man and begin to open fire

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey glances over at the yell. For a moment, he is seized by the impulse to head in her direction to help her.
Then he remembers that she's in the Justice League and figures she can handle herself without any help fro-
GUNFIRE!
Spidey jumps to the right, firing web blasts at the ones shooting at him.

Ah, these games of DodgeBullet...so far, he can control how many are shooting at him. He just needed to prune them down...

Dinah Lance has posed:
That gape is probably what ended the fight when it did. Because while Curly Diesel was gaping, Canary was Canarying. Which is to say Canary was tumbling under the guy to one side, finishing off with a vicious sweeping kick at ankle height to try and topple him and knock the breath out of him before he could call out.

And...

Nothing.

Damn this is a big 'un.

Not a pause, however, as the guy calls out his war cry and, turning around, approaches her.

"Ease off there, Buddy," she calls out, warily backing away as she assessed his skill. Big. Strong. Unrefined. He was used to dominating and cowing those smaller than him. Never bothered to learn technique.

"The bigger you are the harder you..." She takes a leap forward, one leg moving with lightning speed high, heel aimed at the jawline. She flies forward, but to no avail as the flailing man moves faster than she'd estimated possible and manages to catch her in the thigh with a punishing, bruising fist, throwing her trajectory off and sending her flying into a stack of boxes.

Full boxes.

That topple over on her (boo!) and him (yay!), littering the battlefield.

"...hit..." she groans from under a box of cigarettes. Thankfully it wasn't the farm machinery that it was labelled.

Crawling out, she faced her foe again, this time more carefully. Next time he's going down.

Frederick Foswell has posed:
As Spider-Man and Canary brawl with the thugs, a projection suddenly appears on the east wall of the Warehouse. The Projection is of a very tall, muscular looking man wearing a green suit, brown shoes, and a fedora hat. The unusual part, the man's face was covered in a iron mask and the back of his head was wrapped in bandages. He looks around, sighs heavily, and says in a heavily distorted voice,

"Well, well, well. What have we here ladies and gentleman? It appears we have two heroes messing with my smuggling operation. The Big Man does not approve."

As Spider-Man webs up the men shooting at him a man wielding a heavy machine gun suddenly appears from another room and begins to open fire, laughing like a maniac as he does.

Curly Diesel groans as he gets up from his own box , and growls upon seeing you. He suddenly picks up another box of tobacco and throws it at you before charging you again, trying to ram you with his broad shoulders.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spidey ducks behind a stack of crates, then moves low to another set to try and avoid the gunfire. As he crawls, he dials up the NYPD and sends them the lowdown on the place.

Then Stupid Mouth put in an appearance.

"Hey, BIGGY! The 1940's called! They want their SCHTICK back!"

Dinah Lance has posed:
Oh, good. He's playing to his weaknesses now. Momentum is a bitch when you're a bruiser.

Canary stands in place, rocking on the balls of her feet, adrenaline killing the pain in her thigh until endorphins can take over. As Curly Diesel approaches she fakes low, to bring his centre of gravity down a bit, throwing him mildly off balance as he adjusts to impact her. Then, just before impact, she takes to the air in a graceful backflip that brings her knee down on the back of his neck, followed by the other, ploughing his face into the rough concrete floor, sliding across as the impact disrupts brain activity and extinguishes consciousness.

Thankfully (for him) his brain decided to go into witness protection shortly before the palette holding up the enormous stack of boxes shattered his teeth and broke his jaw.

And before the boxes rained down on him.

Curly wasn't going to be standing up any time soon. And will probably need an ambulance. Or two. DAMN is he a big'un!

Without pausing, Canary runs in the direction of the gunfire until she can see the machine gunner. Then she takes a deep breath and ...

... cries. The Cry. Piercing the air and the ears of anybody between her and her target. And, naturally, her target's ears (and vital organs). Without mercy she sings her song of chaos and destruction at him, erasing his consciousness the same way that the palette had erased Curly's.

Momentarily winded, she pauses, leaning forward, hands on her thighs, catching her breath from all the motion.

"Get 'em Spidey," she wheezes.