Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-08 02:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, damian wayne, door: dc comics, huntress |
Who: Damian, Helena, Selina
What: Intercepting a parcel
Where: Gotham International Airport
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None
Gotham's airport was as busy as any other airport in a busy city with international departures and arrivals. Even at three in the morning, there was bustle. Bags being checked, tickets being taken, security scanning for guns and other dangerous items. The tower was quieter at that time of night, with only two men on the graveyard shift and fewer planes taxiing and taking off than during regular hours. It was rainy, foggy and cold, typical weather for a Gotham evening in late September, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Unless you tried to get near Gate 3.
Gate 3 was at the far end of the terminals, the northernmost gate and, currently, roped off for maintenance work. Inside the terminal, however, there was no work being done. One security guard - clad in a uniform that didn't quite match the others in the airport - manned the roped off entrance, and he was packing much more firepower than the task required.
Inside the gate, nothing seemed to indicate the impending arrival of a flight. In fact, all preparations seemed to be outside the terminal, on a tarmac blocked from view thanks to the location of the terminal itself. A rolling stair was waiting, as was an armed truck, and while there was only one man inside, there were plenty of men outside.
The plane in question had already landed, and it was approaching the gate under the direction of the one man in the tower that was not currently on his break, a nice payday in his pocket for the simple act of allowing an unlisted flight to land. The plane in question was filled to capacity with experimental drugs for one Dr. Crane. Destination? Unknown.
Selina hadn't touched base with Damian about a plan, hadn't discussed any unified approach. She liked flying blind, and she trusted the baby bird to both watch out for himself, and to come up with his own plan. Two different approaches were good; they confused people. And, anyway, the baby bird needed to stretch his wings. He might be back in the batfold, but that didn't mean he was precisely the same as the other feathery creatures under the Bat's wing.
Selina took the inside route, assuming Damian would go for the roof; Damian did always prefer his heights.
Dressed in leather pants that clung in all the right places, and a sequined tank that would do nothing to impeded her movements, Selina glittered like any rich Gotham socialite. Her whip was wound around her hips in lieu of a belt, and she had a wide-brimmed black hat obscuring her features. She'd removed her stitches all by her lonesome, and the bandage was gone from her side, leaving only a memory and a scar behind. She approached Mr. Firepower at the gate with a sway of hips and a very pouty frown on her red, red lips. She was lost. Could he help?
Damian was dressed in his black and gold, making a game out of avoiding the lights and men patrolling the maze of gates and docking bays. As Selina predicted, he was running across the rooftops, his GPS comm telling him where to turn and detailing where security was the tightest. Gate 3 was an enigma, even to his high tech gadgets, and so Damian had to resort to his own eyesight until he could turn the advantage back to his side. It was an acceptable thrill, running blindly into enemy territory even if he wasn’t sure exactly what enemy Catwoman was clawing at now.
With any kind of cargo, the first sign of trouble tended to make the goods scarce. This called for stealth, something Damian took to naturally even if it wasn’t always his preferred way of handling things. It took too much waiting, too much sitting above some bored mook before silently taking them down and pulling their body into the shadows or a closet to be found much later. His job was to not just systematically take down a couple thugs that would prove to be a problem later, but throw a haze over their security and surveillance tech. It was always less impressive than anything he or Batman could come up with and so easy to hack it was child’s play.
Case in point: one of the guards had a laptop on him that controlled practically everything. It was convenient and perhaps savvy in theory, but all it took was one very capable vigilante to take him down and cast a shadow over everything. Comms started to quietly disconnect, doors discreetly unlocked and tracking devices turned on his favor. Uploading the information and programs onto his small tablet, Damian made his way across the Gate to find Catwoman. Down the hall was the thug with what he probably thought was a very impressive weapon and Selina playing innocent. Damian whistled sharply, a bird call, then sent a shock of debilitatingly loud static through the man’s earpiece.
The bird call didn't even register on Selina's face, but that didn't mean the kitty cat didn't hear it. Someone who knew her well would have noticed the slight change in her eyes, the way they brightened. She did like being impressed, and whatever the baby bird was doing? It wasn't precisely what she was expecting. But the kitty cat wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she took the static and made the most of it. As the guard raised his hands to his ears, an elbow met with the underside of his chin, a knee to his stomach, and the butt of the gun she pulled from his holster to the temple, and she had him down, all without raising even one, teensy alarm.
Selina looked over her shoulder, hat still obscuring the majority of her features, and she gave Damian a killer smile, all pleasure at the adrenaline of a good fight, and a compliment in the curve of her blood-red lips. She pulled the hat off, the crown concealing ties, which she used to truss up their new little friend. She shoved the sequined tank in his mouth, in order to muffle him, and she slipped a much more practical top on in its place, also hidden in the brim of the hat. Long sleeves, made to move, and she crooked her head at Damian before moving toward the gate itself, where the accordion hallway that normally connected to the plane was folded back, offering a clear view of the approaching plane, and of the manpower below.
Selina was slipping on tipped gloves, her cowl and goggles under her arm, and the convenient hat discarded at her feet. "Admit it," she said, looking over at Damian as she slipped the cowl and goggles on. "You missed my kind of fun." She knew he would give her a plan in a second. She didn't plan. She ran right in; it was what made them a good fit in situations like this. A little planning, and a little impulsiveness; they couldn't lose.
Damian barely smirked, but to someone who knew him as long as Selina did, it was bright and happy to see her. “Fun? You’ll have to explain what the word means to me later.” He replied all deadpan machine that wasn’t raised in a circus or ran wild on the Gotham streets. Sure, it was partially an act, but it was something he wore comfortably as his own suit of armor. The truth was Selina was the cat that pawed at his window and begged him to come out and play. The wild girl from behind a fence that made him forget about all the rules he normally had to live by. In turn, he gave direction to her freedom. He had a plan and then a backup one just in case they failed.
“Scarecrow.” He said suddenly, giving her a knowing look. The guards, the firepower, the tech, they were all breadcrumbs back to the black bird that bested them weeks ago. “The only valuable thing he has is drugs. Which are what must be on that plane. Not bad for the worst detective bird, right?” Damian snapped the tablet into his utility belt and tried to decide which gadget he wanted to use next. “We have to wait for the plane to stop, power down and start to unload. Then I’ll distract while you steal.”
"I'm teaching by example," Selina said of fun, her bright green gaze looking for the weakness of each man on the tarmac. There would be men on the plane too, but fewer in number. They would feel safe in the sky. Pilot, co-pilot, a couple of guards. A piece of cake for the kitty cat. "Eventually, baby bird, you'll even learn to smile for me," she said, a response to that perpetual little smirk at his. There was fondness in her gaze, though. She liked seeing him in this particular mode; it was good for him to play, every once in awhile. Even if the stakes here weren't play at all.
The knowing look didn't come as a surprise; he was his father's son, after all. "We still need an antidote for Jaybird," she said, completely unaware of whether or not he knew about Hood's run-in with Crane. "Whatever the tin man is synthesizing off me, it isn't the same. That kicked in right away. This shipment, it might help," she explained seriously, and then she shrugged it all off with a smirk. "But, more importantly, the kitty cat likes the idea of paying Crane back for what he did. Stealing his toys seemed like the perfect way to do that. Nevermind that Crane was supposedly locked away. Never mind that at all.
Selina nodded at his plan, anxiously waited for the plane to slow, adrenaline building up, and then she nodded to Damian. "Baby birds first."
The thing about knowing who someone really was under the mask was that it made it so much easier to find out certain things about them. Which was why Helena liked to hide herself as much as possible (and when she could, she was going to find a way to make the journal change her name) and why some villains were so much easier to track than others. Crane had a workplace, a job, things and most importantly, several bank accounts.
The computer systems here were so easy. Helena followed where the money went, but more importantly, she tracked when large sums left via withdrawal, tied them with news articles and waited. It was the only thing worth going back to Gotham for and when the next one came, she was gone in the amount of time it took her to put something on over her suit and grab her crossbow.
It was just going to be one trip. That's what Helena told herself as she entered Gotham, her rented Prius humming. There were three ways for goods to come into Gotham: truck, plane, or boat. Given how many lights were on at the docks as she swung by, she crossed that one off the list, too many of the right kind of people, not enough of the wrong kind. The next stop was the airport. If she didn't find what she was looking for -- trucks it was, and they'd be much harder to find.
Parking her car in short term, Helena strapped her crossbow to her thigh and headed around the airport instead of in. Whatever was going to happen wasn't going to happen in there. As soon as she was around the main building, the crossbow came out and she seated a grappling hook into the table. The shot flew true, latching onto the lip of the roof, the length of rope at her hip uncoiling as it went. Up she went to the roof, and then across to the gates. Heights had always been her preference, something to remind her of home, of training, and she found a very faint smile crossing her lips as she walked across the roofing, the rain washing away any trace of her footsteps. There on the tarmac, the rolling stair was out and there were a few too many men loitering around, carrying far too much firepower than a job on the tarmac would require. Bingo.
Stripping off her civilian clothes, Helena pulled her mask out of her back pocket and slipped it on. Judging by the position of the stairs -- she moved around the building roof as she waited for the plane to come to a halt so she could take her next shot to the belly of the plane, opposite the side with the stairs. Guns down first.
Damian raised his eyebrows. “So that’s what he meant about going crazy.” He had been clearly out of the loop on what exactly Jason and his father had to sacrifice to help Selina, but that was probably for the best. He would have done something stupid. The little bird was never meant to be that kind of hero. Jason was tough though, one of the few who could withstand the insanity Lazarus Pits tended to give those who had been dead for longer than a couple seconds. Still, Scarecrow wouldn’t be above killing Jason instead of just pushing his mind too far. Well, if there was a purpose to this little heist, it made it all the more important.
The second the plane stopped, he signalled for her to hang back. As a Robin, he was naturally skilled at being a distraction. Just the outfit alone was a big target. Now in darker colors, he had to rely on gadgets and showmanship to do the work for him. As the cargo doors opened and the henchmen started to move, he took a leap off the docking platform. He landed in the darkness nearby and called out to one of the thugs. “I remember you from the summer camp. I thought I kicked your ass so hard you went crying all the way to Blackgate.”
And, in an instant, they went charging right for him.
It said something about Selina's trust in Damian's abilities that she let him jump into a group of armed guards on his own. It wasn't that she didn't worry about the baby bird; she did. But they had to trust each other, if they were going to be effective. She could worry about risks after, once it was all done. Her Bat had always chastised her for that, telling her she was going to get people killed. It had turned out that he was right, but now wasn't the time for distractions like that. She watched the guards turn their attention to Damian and, after a three count, she swung her whip and caught one of the turbine slats. A quick tug, and she was using the whip to jump onto the wing. She climbed, a black shadow in the night, and she tried not to listen to the fight on the ground; it would only distract her.
Crossing over the body of the plane, Selina dropped down into the open door. This cargo was being kept inside, and she wasn't expecting the container to be too large because of that. "Hi, boys," she purred at the pilots, who were making their way through the galley. "Not expecting me?" She effected a mock pout as they pulled out their guns, and then she went into motion, sweeping their feet and knocking their heads together once she had them down. "Shame we didn't get a chance to know each other better," she said, even as she noticed the small crates in the back of the plane. "Just what the doctor ordered."
Her shot was already made, the rope between the body of the plane and her crossbow taut when Helena realized she wasn't alone. Oh, there were the thugs down on the tarmac, but now there were others, two of them. Looked like Crane had been making friends. Fixing the end of the rope to the roof with another bolt, she took a brief glance down, trying to identify the two new participants. The woman moved in ways that were all too familiar to her and Helena trusted that she could take care of the men in the plane. The other person -- that was someone she didn't know -- and the one that looked like they were having the most fun.
Boys shouldn't get to have all of it. Hugging the rope, Helena shimmied down and released it to land on a straggler. The man went down with a grunt, barely drawing any attention and soon joined by the closest man to him, his gun stripped and left in pieces around the two of them. It really had been too long since she did this and before the other person on the ground got to take down everyone, she was rushing into the pack of thugs from behind.
Damian was in full baby bird mode. Sonic grenades were thrown down in rhythm with a handful of throwing knives that sent three thugs rolling on the ground screaming over cut up faces and hands. He used the noise and darkness to his advantage, staying above the thugs so he could drop down with humiliating kicks to the head or elbows to the nose. If Gotham wasn’t a breeding ground for killers and fighters, his efficiency might be alarming. While he was about to roundhouse kick the gun out of a thug’s hands, he noticed a spike of purple in the crowd.
“Wh-” He started, too distracted to see the thug next to him punch him hard in the gut. All of the wind was suddenly out of the little bird’s sails. He grimaced, holding his stomach as he tried to defend himself.
Helena didn't know who it was that was bent over, holding his stomach, but she knew he was with the Cat and that was enough to gain her protection. Slamming her elbow into the nearest man's nose, she ignored his nasal whining about how she 'broke mah nothe!' to give him something else to complain about -- her boot to his jaw. It really had been too long since she'd done anything like this and it felt good like a long bout of sparring after not doing it for days. She definitely needed to get out more.
With Mr Broken Nose down, it left three goons (all armed) behind Mr Tall, Dark, and Ugly. "Duck," was the only thing Helena told the guy holding his stomach as she ran towards them. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something pithy that would just dazzle her (maybe right into a nap) when she jumped up and over Damian, kicking her legs forward to connect hard with Tall, Dark, and Ugly's chest. She barely managed to get her feet back under her in time to land, but the stumble step she made was worth it for him to go tumbling back into the three remaining goons. They weren't down for the count, but she'd bought enough time to turn around and offer her hand out to Damian. "You okay?"
Damian took the order instinctively, kneeling to the ground as she sailed over him and downed the remaining thugs with ease. He took her hand and got his feet, a little sheepish about needing some kind of rescue, but had learnt how to be grateful for it regardless. “Huntress.” He said almost instantly, recognizing the outfit right away. “I thought you were staying out of Gotham.” Damian didn’t bother introducing himself, he never did. Usually the high Wayne brow, the dark eyes and that strong chin line let people know who he was related to just as easily.
Just then, the three goons left started to stumble back into action. “Help me take care of these guys. They’re with Scarecrow.” Damian made a hipshot at one of the staggering goons with his grappling hook making it latch onto the man’s leg so Damian could yank it back painfully.
In the interim, the Cat had found what she was looking for and, after making sure the men in the plane wouldn't be getting free anytime soon, she'd loaded up two sets of the drugs in two separate, padded satchels. The rest, she poured down the sink in the plane's bathroom, before molotov-ing the aluminum basin. She could hear the fighting all the while, but Selina didn't worry; she had her own thing to do. They only needed one vial of each drugs per satchel, and there was no way she was letting anyone get their hands on the rest of the shipment, even if the Bat assured her that Crane was tucked away safely.
Once she was done, Selina stepped over the bound men. "Bye, boys," she made her way to the open plane door, ready to drop down to the ground, where the fight was still taking place. She got there, and then she stopped, bright green eyes narrowing behind the yellow of her goggles and her head canting all kitty cat-like to the side. Unlike Damian, she didn't recognize all that purple, but she did recognize the fighting style. More importantly, she recognized the girl. She crouched down in the plane's open doorway to watch. She'd jump down if they needed her.
Helena had been staying out of Gotham. "This? This is just a social call." Helena still didn't know who he was, but she recognized that jaw, those eyes. Had to be Damian if he looked that much like Bruce. "I'm saying hi," she said with a little grin, not waiting for his request -- if it could be called that -- before jumping right back in. There was no bothering to tell him that she already knew who they were with, she was too busy catching one of the remaining thugs with a right hook to the jaw.
The last thug hung back a little, either having the brains to realize that maybe he didn't want to go rushing into them or just out of fear -- Helena didn't know and didn't care. What she did care about was making sure he didn't get away and as Damian was taking down his own guy, she started stepping over the splay of goons around them, using them as stepping stones to draw the last one closer. He took the bait and she side stepped him at the last possible moment, hand crashing down on the back of his neck to send him head first into the grill of the truck.
Helena definitely missed this. "So are you going to tell me what you're doing by now or do I have to guess?" Helena asked as she made a point of stepping on the thugs to cross back to her supposed half-brother.
Selina watched the last man go down, and she chuckled from her perch before dropping down onto the tarmac below when Helena began her walk to where Damian was standing. The Cat stepped over bodies without looking, all slink and experience, and she tossed one of the bags to Damian when she neared. "Get that to your father. I'll get this to the tin man," she informed the baby bird of the bag of experimental drugs she still held, before turning her attention to the girl. One gloved finger slid beneath Helena's chin, just a tip of a touch. "I see you made it to Gotham, kitten." That was accompanied by a red, red smile, and then she moved away. She looked down at the damage, and up at the two of them. Lingering wasn't a good idea.
Damian slung the bag over his shoulder like some kind of vigilante Santa and looked between the women. “This is weird.” He said like he got a strange taste in his mouth. Selina was as close to an old friend as this Gotham got and Helena here was his half-sister with the kitty in the middle as her mother. It all made him glad his own mother wasn’t around to doubly complicate things. He squinted at both of them like he was trying to think of something to say. “I’m outta here.” Was all he could come up with. If Helena wanted to follow him back to the mansion, she could. But, he had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen. At least not tonight.
That touch, the smile -- even though this wasn't her mom, Helena found herself smiling all the same. "Couldn't let you have all the fun." Even Damian's abrupt announcement couldn't spoil the curl of her lips. "I'll see you around," she said to both of them, her head tilting slightly into a slow bob of respect before she left the same way she came. Some other night she might follow him ho -- back to the manor, but not tonight.