3955/Ill Met By Moonlight

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Ill Met By Moonlight
Date of Scene: 24 February 2018
Location: Unknown
Synopsis: Summary needed
Cast of Characters: Shadow, Rachel Cole-Alves




Shadow has posed:
    The internet is back up, the world's communications are restored, and commerce once again flows freely -- and none to soon, because certain local purveyors of quality consumer goods had been getting quite antsy about their supply shortage. After all, When only a third of all global shipments gets moved at all, there's so much less opportunity to sneak a few barrels of cocaine into the manifest....

    Thankfully, that's all resolved now, thanks to the efforts of various intelligence agencies and superheroes making the world safe for entrepeneurs once more. Of course, the local distributors are still somewhat on edge at the disruption, which is why Eli McIntyre himself is accompanying this shipment in order to soothe ruffled feathers and reassure everyone involved that their partnership will be a long and profitable one.

    He sighs to himself as the truck driver turns the final corner. A warehouse at the docks in the dead of night. Doesn't anyone have any imagination anymore these days? Ah well. At least it looks like the local thugs remembered to have sentries out, even if they're standing right underneath a lamp post where their night vision'll be ruined. Idiots.

    He shrugs, then pastes a sincere smile on his face to meet his 'partners'...

Rachel Cole-Alves has posed:
    A curl of white passes from the woman's mouth as she exhales. She's careful to tilt her head lower so that the condensation doesn't give away her position as she surveys the world in front of her through the dark gray of a New York City night. The glare of lights is paradoxically blinding: she needs them to see and their presence ensures she can't make out the details she most needs to know. So Rache leans forward just a hair and adjusts her scope, slipping into the coloured shapes of thermographic imaging.
Each person is ticked off mentally. She shifts her weight slightly, the scrape of all-weather nylon cotton weave scraping against the ground as she adjusts herself. She's laying flat, so she turns to place her shoulder against the roof, adjusts her glove, and tugs a military grade GPS from her bag so that she can mark points on a gridded map. Each one is a body she'd seen. Projected routes... More importantly, a body count.

    A second later Rache shimmies a bit closer to the edge of the roof and takes up the rifle again, tracing a bead through normal vision on her friend the smiling man. She imagines the bullet flying from the barrel of her weapon and striking her target in the center of his forehead. A finger in warm cotton gloves tenses over a hair trigger. She waits.

Shadow has posed:
    Locations, positions, movement, likely weapons... It's a very tired old saying that an armed society is a polite society, but by that definition the gathering below her would be the Miss Manners Olympics event. Of course, the moment she starts shooting people are going to scramble and either try to run or shoot back, which will make things even more interesting for everyone concerned.

    Aside from the two sentries in the front, there are five more walking a patrol around the perimeter with the kind of lack of precision and discipline that would have had her old boot camp instructor send the entire squad to clean toilets with their toothbrushes for a month, while another six are inside the warehouse proper, probably to help offload the cargo.

    Meanwhile, the visitor has brought three trucks with a driver and two (also armed) loaders apiece. Rache's dance card tonight is looking nice and full...

Rachel Cole-Alves has posed:
    Rache takes a second to glance over the various people surrounding her target but she doesn't let her gaze wander for more than an instant. She takes a deep breath and holds it for the space of a second before carefully exhaling. She shifts slightly, as if to chase away a ridiculous itch following the ede of her scalp now that she's made the decision to do... Something. BFrowning, Rache continues to stare at the smiling man, letting him remain the center of her world until she's memorized his features.
    The rifle is incredibly loud, a high-pitched crack that sunders the night despite the suppressor on her rifle. That noise, unfortunately, cannot be heard until after the supersonic bullet has already reached her target. It shatters a face she'd just spent twenty minutes memorizing, smashing a neat hole through the man's forehead and skull and creating quite the mess on the way out the back. He never stood a chance.
    There's a *sproing*, a sharp noise as a bullet is thrown free of the chamber and Rachel works the bolt, squaring up a second shot as people run in all directions. She adjusts herr aim smoothly, firing a second shot at a fleeing figure. One man thinks to take cover behind a corrugated steel wall. It might as well be tissue paper for all the good it would do against a .308 Winchester rifle round.

Shadow has posed:
    Of course, when everyone's already on edge and glaring at each other, a single shot is all it takes to spark an argument. From the sound of it, at least two of Eli's erstwhile bodyguards are assuming Rache's shot was orchestrated by the people they were visiting, accusations are fired back and forth, and it doesn't take at all long for bullets to begin flying as well, Rache's own contributions going almost unnoticed in the ensuing firefight. It's certainly shaping up to be a good evening, until she notices a shadow moving past the lamppost that doesn't seem to have a body causing it -- and a moment later, the driver she'd been lining up in her sights gets knocked down by a blur just before she can pull the trigger. The man next to him turns toward this new, barely seen threat, only to have his rifle yanked out of his hands and slammed into his face by the same unseen force.

    Moments later she can spot that same shadow flitting along the trucks toward another pair...

Rachel Cole-Alves has posed:
    For a second Rache is studying the shadow. She clicks her modular scope over to the thermal imaging again but the shadow remains what it is: a shadow. In fact, it's harder to see this way because it has no presence at all in infrared so Rachel quickly returns to standard imaging through a sixteen times magnified scope.
    One of the undisciplined thugs lifts an automatic rifle and sights it into the darkness in the direction of the slihouette fleeing him. He pulls the trigger, but it's just a brief burst of fire and then he falls to the ground with a gurgle. Rache scquints, scowls, and checks herself. "Minus sixteen millimeters..." She shakes her head slowly.
    With people shooting wildly in all directions the spectre, of course, goes largely unnoticed. Save, it seems, by this mysterious sniper. More bodies are neatly strewn along the shadow's path marking those who decided they would interfere.
    It's nothing compared to the carnage the two gangs are inflicting on themselves in their desperation to figure out who started firing.

Shadow has posed:
    Of course, gang morale being what it is at the best of times, it doesn't take much longer before them to break, running off into the night and deciding a life on the streets without a gang is a safer bet than staying on this killing field.

    The smugglers have a bigger problem, unfortunately -- they've already lost two of their drivers and one of the trucks appears to have taken a few bullets in important places, so it's not going anywhere in a hurry, and the thought of returning to /their/ boss to report they lost the product as well as Eli is definitely more scary than the fire they're taking from these thugs. Of course, so far no one who's realizes they're also under fire from a sniper has lived to warn about it, but as luck would have it they've managed to find cover that even Rache has trouble ranging on or shooting through from her position.

    Unfortunately for them, that cover isn't nearly as safe as they'd hoped, a fact they discover when the last truck driver is yanked out from behind it by a blurry hand grabbing his collar and flinging him into the side of his truck hard enough to knock him out, followed by a human-shaped blur of shadows and laughter flowing over the impromptu barricade and laying into the remaining smugglers with blows that seem to come out of nowhere but hit like jackhammers...

Rachel Cole-Alves has posed:
    Rache shakes her head slowly, glowering as she does. She reaches up and runs her hands briefly through her copper hair. Moving quickly the young marine pulls a balaclava down over her face and rises to a knee. She's timed herself before. the rifle is disassembled, put back into its case, stowed in the duffel with the rest of her ammunition and nonessential gear. From inside the same bag she retrieves an X102 Tavor bullpup assault rifle with caseless rounds and slings it across a shoulder. She hadn't even considered bereaving herself of the knife and pistol already on her belt, not even for sniping. The bag is hidden in a shadowed corner and disguised netting is thrown over it to keep it from view. A person could walk right up on this little cache and still have no idea it was there. Rachel is counting on it.
    the fastest way down is a straight line. Rachel already hammered in two stakes to which she attaches a coil of rope before climbing over the edge of the building and quickly rappeling the fifteen meters to the ground. Combat boots hit stone quickly enough. Then she's got her rifle in hand, holographic sights raised with both eyes open so that the little green dot imbeds itself in her vision, like the rifle isn't even there and she herself is the instrument of death. Cursing softly, Rache sprints toward the dock where the smugglers have holed up.
    Not that the woman has any clue what is actually transpiring.

Shadow has posed:
    By the time Rache reaches the ground level, most of the gang members are already down or fleeing; if any of them notices her in passing, they're in no mood to waylay her. In fact, the gunfire seems to have died out entirely, replaced by the softer sounds of shouts and thuds of fists and boots meeting flesh. She rounds the corner, only to duck on instinct just in time to watch a grown man and two parts of a formerly intact rifle to soar past at head height to land in a crumpled heap a meter or so away...

Rachel Cole-Alves has posed:
    As Rache rises from the rifle flying past her head she takes a split second to assess the situation. She lets the rifle hang on its sling and on reflex draws the knife from her belt. It's held in an icepick grip, held along an arm to parry in case someone is foolish enough to strike several inches of sharpened steel.

    Rache doesn't hesitate to lunge into the middle of a full-on brawl involving a now familiar supernatural entity. She doesn't hit hard enough to break rifles but she does catch one of the smugglers with a swift kick to the calf and then a couple quick jabs to the chest and throat. No blood, for once.

Shadow has posed:
    The brawl doesn't last much longer after that. It's hard enough to fight effectively against something you can't even see coming until the fist connects; adding a rear ambush from a marine is just laying on insult to injury.

    As Rache decks the second-to-last smuggler with her favourite below-the-belt combo, the last remaining smuggler reaches into his jacket for a pistol, only to have it yanked out of his hand hard enough to dislocate a finger, but before the pain registers clearly enough for him to start howling he's hauled off his feet and slammed into the truck, a hand against the back of his head pushing his face into the side while his uninjured arm is being twisted behind his back.

    "This is your lucky day, Steve," the Shadow snarls at him, fading into view. "With everyone above you dead or unconscious, you're the one in charge of this operation now. Which means that you're the one who gets to answer my questions and possibly live to see tomorrow even if you have to do it from behind bars."

    You have to give 'Scott' credit - whether it's bravado, courage or stubborn stupidity, he manages to reply with "Screw you and the horse you rode in on. I ain't talking and ya can't make me!"

Rachel Cole-Alves has posed:
    Rache can't help but crack a grin. It isn't muc of one, given the balaclava. She looks over the carnage and takes a deep breath, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "NYPD's finest. They're going to be a few minutes showing up just to make sure the shooting's stopped," she notes somewhat derisively. "We should consider talking," Rachel adds after a moment, however. "After you have your information, of course." She lowers her eyes, sheathes her knife, and begins to check over her rifle as if to say, 'Do as you please.'

Shadow has posed:
     For some reason, Scott's defiance isn't met with the anger he probably expected, but amusement, sinister laughter echoing off the walls. "Can't I?" The Shadow asks, yanking Scott away from the truck and spinning him around, then pushing his back against the truck before he gets his bearings, those blazing blue eyes boring straight into his. "Tell. Me. Who. You. Work. For."

    Scott's entire face twitches with every syllable, his resistance visibly draining under that inhuman gaze and will. He starts rattling off a name and address almost as if in a daze.

    "See how easy that was? Now, the police will be here soon, and once they arrive you'll tell them exactly what you told me. And you'll confess everything you've done here, and the next time you see daylight will be from jail. Because if you don't, if you somehow think you can weasel your way out of this with a lawyer, I will know. And I will find you. Do you understand?"

    At Scott's frantic nods, the Shadow chuckles, then lashes out with a fist, knocking him unconscious, then turns to regard Rachel. "I'm in no particular hurry to meet with them. I don't think you are, either. We'll have to talk somewhere else."

     The figure indicates a rooftop, nearby enough to offer a good view of the scene, but far enough off that the police likely won't be scanning it.

    By the time the police arrive, there are a number of dead bodies, a few unconscious ones, as well as a whole bunch of illegal guns and enough cocaine to supply a city for a month -- but no trace of either woman or Shadow...