Who: Maria + OPEN NPCs: SHIELD agents When: 3/21 Where: Gotham Harbor What: SHIELD preforms a standard take-down...to a non-standard reaction. Rating: Low
"Okay," Maria Hill, still Director of SHIELD, said as she listened into the headset. "That's it. They're moving on the bait. Move to perimeter B." On the monitors, she could watch the image feeds from a dozen agents - goggles and scope cams - as they worked their way through a very dark warehouse to hold a position just outside the man floor. Some of them were actually in the line of sight of the Very Bad Men in question, enough that Maria had to figure that secret agents with tech was the only thing keeping them from being discovered by Very Paranoid Very Bad Men.
She had enough of a view, at least, to watch the money change hands, followed by the one Mob boss having his muscle haul one crate forward and into the other's truck. It was a pity for him that this SHIELD op had been in the works since before the Skrulls decided to start cropping up as dead bodies, and then decided to take over the world. His luck had stretched only that far - SHIELD had cleared her decks of the aliens, and settled back to the usual work of tracking Very Bad People who wanted Very Bad and Very Regulated materials, such as what was in the crates.
And as soon as money changed hands and crates were loaded into a suspiciously unmarked truck, SHIELD had the proof they were required. "Go," Maria ordered. The screens suddenly cut bright and hot as the strike teams stormed the warehouse, blinding everyone on the ground and in the command post. Before the light had time to fade, the agents had everyone involved arrested, in cuffs, and all the crates open and were accounting for all nasty SHIELD-based weapons and miscellaneous drugs with affects that the general population did not need, much less anyone they had been on track for.
"Good work people," Maria said, unable to keep the pleased tone from her voice. But then one of the techs tapped her on the shoulder, and wordlessly handed her a cell phone. "Hill," she barked. After a long moment of political blustering on the time of night, Maria cut him off: "Mr Mayor, I would like you to understand that SHIELD's mandate is international. We will move on what threats we see fit, when we have an acceptable opening."
In the end, it took much longer than she ever wanted to spend on the phone with the Mayor of Gotham, explaining to him that she did not care what he'd heard, he was wrong, SHIELD was clear of aliens, yes, they could be trusted, and yes, their mandate spread just that far, and he should get used to it, fast, because no, they would not be coordinating with the local authorities (on the private grounds that Maria thought the local authorities were thoroughly corrupt, and gave even odds that the mayor was as well). Finally, she hung up, tossed the phone back at the tech, and slid out of the mobile command unit.
She watched the agents in their Kevlar and SHIELD-suits dealing with handing off the gangsters to the Gotham police, and neatly fending off requests for what they'd been selling, and felt irrationally proud of them. Things were still bad, but she was starting to think that they might, in a year without aliens, get better.