press conference Who: Open What: The Press Conference (Attack 1 of 2) Where: On the steps of Monarch Industries When: The day after the article is published. Warnings: Violence, swearing, anything goes.
The press conference on the steps of Monarch Industries was a packed affair. Monarch security, along with the help of the police, blocked off the street in front of the building, and the area filled quickly with reporters, Monarch Industries employees, and a vast crowd of civilians.
When Orin Monarch appeared onstage, the crowd burst into shouts. Flashes began going off immediately, and people crowded close to the barrier between Monarch and the crowd at the bottom of the steps. Security held them back, but still they pressed toward him as he began speaking.
The speech had only just started when the shot rang out.
The man had entered the crowd along with the rest of the crush of people, completely innocuous, completely unnoticed. The security at the crowd's edges could only do a quick once over of the people crowding toward the podium, and so no one was being searched, and so no one found the gun stuffed into his waistband. Orin was three sentences into his speech when the man, small and wiry with a mess of dirty blonde hair, pulled out the gun, taking only a split second to aim before firing.
At the front of the crowd, a journalist had been leaning over the barrier to get a shot of Orin. The gunman's aim was off, low of its target, and just as the journalist edged up over the edge of the barrier the bullet slammed through the base of his skull, killing him instantly and splattering gore across the base of the podium.
People immediately began to panic and run screaming toward the barricades. Security and police both attempted to push their way through the crowd toward him, even as members of the crowd around him tried to grab hold of his gun. Another shot went off, high, hitting but not breaking one of the upper windows of the Monarch building. The gunman was laughing, shrill, excited. He had seen blood, and even if he hadn't seen Monarch go down, he felt sure he had achieved his goal. "I killed him!" he shouted, even as several men out of the crowd tried to force him to the ground and take his weapon from him. "I killed the Bat!"
[OOC: Any character may have been in the crowd. Comment to this post with your character's location in the crowd in the subject title. The gunman has been taken out, and is considered out of reach of the crowd, but otherwise your characters are free to react as they see fit.]