75/Assault on Wayne Tower

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Assault on Wayne Tower
Date of Scene: 19 April 2017
Location: Wayne Tower, Gotham City
Synopsis: Summary needed.
Cast of Characters: Batman, Gregory Stark, 90




Batman has posed:
"Gotham City is DOOMED!"

Such is the decree of the terrorists who've taken over Wayne Tower in downtown Gotham tonight, a chilly and overcast night that keeps feeling like it's right on the verge of a downpour.

The word on the street--as bled out from GCPD's radio chatter--is that they've planted a series of explosives about the building. What's worse is that they've managed to lock down and reinforce barricades behind all accessible entry points.

Even now, the police blockade that's created a six-block radius around Wayne Tower is populated by tense officers, detectives, and SWAT waiting some word about demands. A head peeks out a window here or there, while a pair of terrorists on what appear to be jet-powered hang-gliders circle the higher floors and roof.

"Where the hell is Batman?!" one of the newer detectives spits out. One of his more grizzled colleagues shakes her head. "No clue, Farkas. But as soon as we get word from the chief, we're goin' in, and you KNOW we're gonna get it done. Nobody dies tonight."

Gregory Stark has posed:
     Gregory sets quietly in the boardroom, white gloved hands folded one over the other as he looks out the window of Wayne Tower. His own reflection comes right back at him, that face he despised nature so much for giving him. Every time he looked at it, even with the work he'd had done it reminded him of his failures.

     He could never abide failure. Not back then, and certainly not now as he catches a look into the eyes of one of the jet-pack laden individuals. His expression is hard, thoughtful as the entire presentation seems to have been ruined by current events. His assistant stands beside him in pure silence, legs locked into place in a measure so solid it gives away there's something not quiet natural in the white clad assistant.

     The sounds of panicked people fade into the background as Gregory calculates the general speed and trajectory of the people whizzing about the building.

     With a measured and calm demeanor, Gregory wordlessly comes to a stand from the comfortable chair and starts walking. "Mr.Stark, please we'll have this situation well under control shortly, if you'll just.. Stay.. uh.. are you even listening to me?" As Gregory gives the board member a quick look right in the eyes, walking around him to get to the exit.

     Gregory slowly makes his way to the main stairwell, collected and controlled as his eyes narrow hard ahead of him, as if he had x-ray vision, or the like. In actuality he's just trying his best to remain calm and what has been an infuriating end cap to an unenjoyable week.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
Can you actually barricade a place against a shadow? Hard to tell. Either way, that's what's trying to come in. It's a shadow, barely noticed unless one actually looks down at the floor. And there are so many other places to be looking. At the police, to make sure they're not trying anything funny. At the surrounding area, to make sure nobody else is trying to be a freakin' hero. And maybe on the inside too, to make sure nobody in there is trying anything. Unless there's like... Super Janitorman in there or something.

In the meantime the shadow crawls across the ground, nearer and nearer to the tower. It keeps to, well, shadowy areas, lest it be noticed. At least, until it touches the shadow of one of the terrorists. The terrorist shudders, emitting a choked 'hrk!', and doubles over. Just for a moment. And then, the terrorists straightens, seemingly fine.

Nearby a second of the terrorists, asks the first, "...You OK, man?"

"Yeah," the first replies. "Just a chill. Somebody walked over my grave, I guess." He grins, in a slightly disturbing way.

('Just a few more seconds,') thinks the one now in control of the terrorist. ('Just need to get my bearings, and then...')

Batman has posed:
The gliding criminals swoop about, keeping their machine guns cocked and ready for any aerial opposition from Gotham's finest. On the lower floors, some of those manning the barricades look about. "Chief, you found what you're lookin' for yet?" one asks over their comms.

"Maintain. Radio. SILENCE," comes the reply.

"Guess I'll pick up the next stair patrol circuit," the silence-breaker mutters. "You want to pair up?" he asks another terrorist not far away, a man with an odd grin on his face.

Outside, in the mobile command unit, the SWAT team lead picks up a phone. "I'm here. We're ready to hear your demands, but--what assurances do we have that those taken hostage aren't and won't be harmed?"

Meanwhile, in the boardroom, Bruce Wayne raises a hand in a futile attempt to stop Gregory Stark from leaving. "...are you even listening to me?" he asks with a sigh. After a moment passes without his return, Bruce stands up. "I...I should go find him. Make sure he's alright," he says to the other attending board members.

When he leaves the room, however, he doesn't head to the stairwell; he heads toward his own office.

Gregory Stark has posed:
     Gregory pushes open the door to the stairwell, and on the other side is a lone terrorist who had the bad misfortune to be traveling down towards the ground floor to meet up with his friends.

     There's a brief moments pause as Gregory moves forward, the door swinging slowly shut, before a loud SQUELCH echos out through the halls. What happens is concealed for a moment by the door.

     Blood slowly flows down the steps and over the side of the stairwell, Dripping its way over the railling and down towards the lower floors.

     Bruce gets a good view of it the moment Gregory's assistant opens the door to follow him. A lone terrorist lays slumped against the floor, a hole in the wall where it seems his entire head has been shattered by something akin to a hydraulic press.

     Gregory himself simply walks down the stairs a single hand on the railing as he calmly makes his way towards where the mooks are gathered. His gloves clean themselves of any blood.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
The man with the odd grin seems to be startled by the question, and looks to the one who'd asked. "Huh?" The grin disappears in favor of a surprised expression. "O-oh. Yeah. Let's go." He turns to go with the fellow on stair patrol.

He's waiting yet. He has control, but he wants to make sure they're the only ones there before he does the thing, otherwise he might get 'evicted' a little sooner than he's ready to be. And that's liable to cause some feedback, a hesitation he doesn't need. So for now, he just follows the terrorist.

But then, on the way up, suddenly... SQUELCH! The possessed terrorist winces; that sounded bad. Hopefully that wasn't a hostage. 'Crap. Don't have time to do this the quiet way,' he decides. And in short order...

The terrorist that had doubled over a few minutes back turns his weapon on his 'buddy' and fires. He's aiming for the head, to at least make it quick. Less because it hurts less, though, and more because these guys need to be GONE. And he's already inside, so...

Batman has posed:
Outside, Gotham PD begins assembling the list of physical goods demanded by those holding Wayne Tower.

"This is bullsh--" the young detective begins.

"Well, it ain't your call, now is it?" snaps the SWAT lead. "We do this my way until we can't."

Inside the building, the armed occupants begin moving up toward the Wayne Enterprises executive floor--some taking various stairwells (meaning that three or four will begin heading up toward Gregory and Todd), others using grappling hooks to head directly up the elevator shafts.

Near one of the stairwells, Bruce quickly blinks several times and asks loudly of Gregory's assistant, "Is-is he a-a-alright?" in a suitably shocked and timid voice. "Oh, I'm...I'm going to be sick." Bruce places a hand over his mouth and runs toward the men's room.

Before long, however, Bruce has disappeared into the ventilation ducts in the ceiling, and he's quickly making his way toward the building's center, where the elevators are located.

Gregory Stark has posed:
     There's a low sigh, as the assistant looks towards the blood, and then towards Gregory. Turning back around the assistant tries to call back towards Bruce. "It's fine, he's just... dead tired?" Before looking right back towards Gregory.

     The man himself is walking with a self determination as he looks about the walls, pulling out a pair of sunglasses to look through. The Glasses themselves house something of a simplistic heads up display for information, and the pure white reflective lenses work so well with his look. Almost as if he designed them himself for the pure white self cleaning suit.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
Things are about to get bad, and Todd knows it. Todd, of course, would be the one in control of that one terrorist of the bunch. He hears footsteps and the terrorist's face scowls. 'Great. Time to send a message.'

He makes the terrorist heft himself up, over the railing of the stairs... and then exits. He floats there as a shadow figure, vaguely male, with a cape that seems to flow in a breeze that isn't there, his blank white eyes glowing. And a very large grin of white teeth on that shadowy face.

If all goes well, this should be the last thing the thug sees on his way down. Probably screaming all the way.

Batman has posed:
"AaaaaaAAaaaaAAaaaAaaaahhhh....." *THUD* is indeed the pair of sounds that echo up through the stairwell.

"Holy hell!" is the shocked reply, and the terrorists below begin radioing that opposition has infiltrated the building.

"DAMNIT!" broadcasts the commanding voice from earlier. "You know what to do. I'm almost done here."

The gliding crewmen above the building suddenly begin peppering the top floors with automatic fire, weakening the windows there before projectile explosives blow open two new exit points.

Those below begin hauling butt as fast as they can up the stairs without making themselves easy targets, barrels pointed ahead.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne finishes crawling through the ventilation system to reach a service elevator shaft. With a relatively quick outfit change, he fires his grapple-gun up and accelerates toward the building's uppermost levels.

Gregory Stark has posed:
     Gregory walks down the steps for some time, taking them one at a time, before looking over the edge. He gives a quick look and nod towards his assistant, before simply jumping off the side of the banister. They're on the executive floor, so it's a VERY long way down.

     While he falls Gregory quietly adjusts his tie, even as the winds try to force it back into place. He stands perfectly straight, white shoes down towards the ground.

     He doesn't say a word as he lands through one of the armed thugs standing just inside the stairwell as his friends travel up to check all the fuss. Externally he's calm and cool as a cucumber as he just starts walking forward, a massive dent in the floor from where he'd hit. Internally of course he's panicking about all the germs and the blood.

     His entire body excluding the face is now covered in what's left of the poor thug. However as Gregory walks forward the Nanites on his suit and in his body get to work cleaning him completely. It cleans down in waves slowly starting from the top of his head and working to the base of his shoes as he walks in the direction of the men waiting in the lobby.

     "Gentlemen" He starts off, tilting his head to one side. "You've made me very VERY cross. Now either you put down your weapons or I personally execute every last one of you." A bright, and cheery million dollar smile given as he adjusts his tie one last time with white gloved hands.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
While Gregory's going down, Todd is going up. That shadow figure passes neatly through walls and floors, looking for the hostages. It's likely they'll pass each other at some point on the trip. Which will, of course, make Obsidian panic a little -- that was a guy in a suit that just dropped down from above! Maybe he was thrown?! There's a few moments, too, where he turns to try to save Gregory... until he notices that the man in the suit sticks the landing and not the reverse.

'...Right. Not as helpless as I thought,' Todd thinks. He waits, though, until he's absolutely sure the guy in the suit isn't splattered. When the guy starts threatening the terrorists? Yeah, that's a pretty good indicator.

So Obsidian starts going back up to search for those hostages. As soon as he gets to a floor that has terrorists on it, he turns two-dimensional again, and sticks to the floor. Time for more sneaking!

Batman has posed:
The terrorists are nearing the top five floors of the tower--excepting, of course, those slowed down by Gregory's terrifying tactics (assisted by Obsidian's possession of another criminal). Those on that particular stairwell are simultaneously too paralyzed with fear to move forward, but not so much that they're unable to spray fire wildly in their panic. "Suppressing fire!" one of them screams, his voice cracking.

Chatter among those terrorists elsewhere suggests the hostages are being corraled into the Wayne Enterprises board room on the top floor--and, apparently, some sort of exit strategy near that area is being set up for the crew.

As Obsidian makes his way to the correct floor, he's likely to spot the doors open to a service elevator shaft--just enough for Batman to slink out and slip behind a pair of oblivious sentries.

"Alright, alright, alright," the authoritative voice from the comms can be heard saying in-person. "Listen up, folks. Stay calm and in just a few minutes this'll all be over...courtesy of /the Kite-Men/!"

Gregory Stark has posed:
     Moving over towards a downed mook as the gunfire bounces off of him and his suit. Gregory kneels down to pick up the radio. "I'd like each of you to know, that you've just made my personal shit list." Gregory starts in a friendly manner before looking back up towards the people shooting him.

     "Can you please stop it with the shooting. I'll kill you in a minute." Before turning back to the radio, yet as one stray bullet cracks the lense of his sunglasses he just sighs. It's the little things really. He puts on that friendly voice shielding the radio with his hand as bullets fly. "Alright, let's just make this clear, it's a little thing, a simple thing but I feel we've misunderstood each other here."

     Such a kind and friendly tone as he ducks behind a wall to hide from some of the gunfire. "There is nowhere on this green earth you will be able to hide, no hole deep enough, no mountain high enough, no bunker thick enough to shield you from the kind of wrath I'm feeling right now." A pause as he pulls off the now shattered sunglasses, almost silver blue eyes shining into the lobby. "I am going to personally hunt down each and every last one of you who leaves this building and take you back to Madripoor" His eyes close as the glasses happen to be shot right out of his hand. "Where I can personally make sure that your last few years, and I do mean years on this earth are as painful and suffering filled as humanly possible." A light pause as he sighs. "You've just made an enemy of the fifth largest company in the entirety of Asia, and I will use every ounce of funds at my disposal to insure there is not a single one of you that makes it out alive."

Obsidian (90) has posed:
Right, up. Always up. Possessing terrorists along the way, Obsidian is no less merciless than if he were taking them out directly. Making them shoot each other -- or themselves -- throwing them off the stairwell -- and the fall only gets bigger as he goes higher up.

...In retrospect, Todd probably needs to get mental help. Being this angry probably isn't healthy for anybody. But that kind of thinking will wait. Right now? Hostages.

He catches some of the words over the radio of one of the terrorists, and... they're actually inspiring! Obsidian himself has no patience for people without the guts to face people on their own... people who hide behind others to hurt people. Gregory's words only fuel Todd's own anger with these guys.

Then he sees something that stops the shadow in his tracks.

Batman.

Hopefully the batty one will be too busy knocking out guards to see a shadow scoot across the floor. But just to be sure, Obsidian moves FAST, skittering across the floor like a very large, two-dimensional spider, trying to get up to where the hostages are before those thugs get away with them.

Batman has posed:
"You know what? Screw this. I don't know about you but I'm bailing, man," one of the terrorists in Gregory's stairwell says to the other. "I like my head not FLAT or EXPLODED!" With that, he takes off to the nearest stairwell exit, footsteps quickly fading in volume as he distances himself from Stark. The other sighs and keeps his gun pointed at Gregory for a long moment before cursing. "Damnit!" he says, throwing his gun down, and following his colleague in retreating.

On the executive floor, Todd can clear the way to the boardroom quickly and easily--after all, who's going to pay attention to odd shadows right now? While most of the terrorists are being subdued silently by Batman, the leader stands at the doorway to the boardroom, a winged jetpack slung over his shoulders. "The Kite-Men are writing their manifesto, here and now, to fight for the people! To help them take back control over their digital identities! We're going to take down the insanely invasive technology companies like Wayne Enterprises has developed...and maybe steal some cash from their reserves, too. Don't judge me!" the man quickly adds.

Gregory Stark has posed:
     Finally after a few moments the shouting stops, the firing stops, there's actually some peace and quiet. Walking over towards the door, Gregory simply uses a single boot to kick over the barricade, throwing it out the front door. After that show of force he simply walks back into the lobby, and begins making his way up the stairs.

     As he looks up towards his assistant he murmurs something into his ivory watch. A quick moments pause as he picks back up his glasses along the way placing them back onto his face. One of the lenses is completely broken but he can still see through the other, and watch the proceedings with a grand sort of interest, even as he makes his jog up the stairs.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
Whew. Obsidian successfully passes what would be a Bat-Blockade at any other moment, and continues on towards where the hostages are being kept. Up walls, through ceilings and floors, until he hears that arrogant crowing. 'Aha,' he notes silently. 'Gotta be him. If I can just get to his shadow...' He skitters across the floor, his shadowy form trying to merge with the shadow of the Kite-Man...

This is not going to be a pleasant thing for Kite-Man. It's going to feel like a cold hand has reached up through his body, gripped his core, and is trying to pull him down through the floor. If it succeeds? It'll feel like falling asleep. But not drifting off into a pleasant sleep. That feeling when one knows one is going to have horrible nightmares, trying hard to stay awake, but not being able to keep one's eyes open, and knowing the horror that awaits...

Batman has posed:
"That's got to be a sign!" the impatient young detective shouts. "Move in! Move in!"

"You're going to get us all--" the SWAT lead begins in protest, but too many officers are already swarming the 'newly opened' entrance to Wayne Tower.

Near the tower's apex, two patrollers continue gliding about...while two others appear to basejump out of the building and then soar away into the darkness.

Kite-Man pauses for a moment in his speech to the hostages, and a strange look passes over his face. It even looks like he might suddenly be sick.

It's at this moment, of course, that Batman appears out of nowhere and tackles the Kite-Man. "Not to knock the wind out of your sails," the vigilante says in a deep, gravelly growl, "but this is over."

Then, from his perch on his opponent's chest, Batman punches Kite-Man directly in the face several times until he seems no longer conscious.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
Obsidian doesn't have time to tell the thugs to stand down -- a surprisingly non-violent plan considering the amount of death that happened on the way up. They aren't people, not when they stoop to this kind of activity. He doesn't think about how hypocritical he's being, considering his own violent actions on the way.

He's reaching for Kite-Man's radio, ready to put that plan into action, when suddenly...

- > POW! < -

Yes, he felt that. He's stunned, unable to react within Kite-Man's shadow. And then, on about the third punch, a shadow goes tumbling across the floor. It looks for all the world that a male figure with a cape just tumbled ass over teakettle across the floor, only... in two dimensions!

Kite-Man's consciousness will return to its body once Obsidian's been knocked out of him. Of course, having been pummelled in the face by Batman is not the most pleasant thing to wake up to, either...

Batman has posed:
"Stay. Down." Batman's tone suggests little room for Kite-Man to argue, but he's snoring anyway.

"Everyone else...it's time to go. Now." The dark knight begins gesturing for the hostages to leave. "Take the stairs. The elevators may be booby-trapped. And stay away from any windows."

As the boardroom clears, Batman approaches the window, looking out to the soaring kite-men outside. "What are you?" he asks over his shoulder to the 'empty' room.

At the same time, Gotham police are doing their best to scale the stairwells and clear the elevator shafts, although it's slow going. "Clear every floor!" the SWAT lead shouts. "Do this by the book, people!"

Gregory Stark has posed:
     About this time Gregory comes into the room. He's calm collected and quiet having been leaning up against the wall for a short amount of time. How long? Only he and well everyone who didn't see him last two poses can know the answer! But slowly claps at the show around him.

     The glasses on his face with the single broken lense go right back into the breast pocket of his white suit jacket. A small smile towards the two 'heroes' of course he's still not quite in a good mood, so many germs on his skin, so much untold filth... It bothered him to be honest. It bothered him deep down to his core. Yet of course he kept the calm and happy exterior.

     A slow clap for the conquering heroes.

Obsidian (90) has posed:
'...Busted," Todd realizes. The shadow bares teeth, blank white eyes narrowing. It's not a gesture of threat, though. That would be stupid. And apparently even Todd is not stupid enough to threaten Batman.

But he's asked a question. What does he call himself? He's not going to just give him his name. That would be stupid, too. So a quick think, and he says, "...Obsidian." Bleh. Lame, but it'll have to do. He stands up, his form becoming three-dimensional, but still retaining the shadowy features.

The clapping draws his attention, and he looks up at the door. Blinks. He doesn't say anything yet, though. He's not sure what to say.

Batman has posed:
Turning his head toward the sound of the clapping, Batman exhales audibly. "It's not time yet for applause--a few of these 'kite-men' are getting away. I'm going after them. I need you two to take care of what you can here until the police arrive."

He lifts his arms to let his cape spread out, which then solidifies into its own glider-like structure. "I won't insult you by asking if you can do that. But we need to talk about the use of lethal force."

And then Batman drops out of the window, soaring off into the night sky.