870/Mysterious Rooftop Encounters

Mysterious Rooftop Encounters
Date of Scene:	09 June 2017
Location:	Hell's Kitchen, New York City
Synopsis:	Winter Soldier and Daredevil find themselves in pursuit of the same man. They heartily disagree about the manner in which he should be dealt with.
Cast of Characters:	Daredevil, Winter Soldier

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Daredevil has posed:
Daredevil has been stalking the gang member all night. Well, longer than that, actually, but there hasn't been a moment where the man has been alone. Jakey Z generally smarter than that. He's on the roof of an old textiles factory that's waiting for the proper permits to begin gentrification. In the meantime, it's the hideout of a street gang with ties to more global organized crime.
Daredevil is only concerned with the crime in Hell's Kitchen. Jakey has been personally responsible for an uptick in drug dealer recruitment. Kids that might've sold pot or sold prescription drugs are being pulled in deeper with aggressive recruitment tactics. Jakey Z, as a fairly charismatic guy, is a large part of the success.
All that means he's got to be sent a message, and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen will be the one to deliver. He creeps along the edge of the roof, towards where Jakey is leaning on the side, smoking away.

Winter Soldier has posed:
There are men who do their work quietly, under cover of night. Men like Daredevil, who wait, and watch, and gauge in silence, looking for the swiftest and most efficient way to get done what must be done. Men who orient themselves with an eye towards low-impact effect, and avoiding loss of life -- if possible.

Most of the time, the Winter Soldier IS that kind of man -- well, except for the last sentence, that is. But not tonight. Tonight is about sending a message, because this gang has started to shunt money to the wrong kinds of places.

About five seconds before the Devil of Hell's Kitchen decides to strike, someone else starts to get acquainted with the men within the actual factory. There's gunshots, screams, the sound of running. One of the doors to the factory bangs open, and a man makes it about three steps out before a bullet through the back of his head arrests his progress most fatally.

Jakey Z, being outside, is so far untouched, but it's probably safe to say he's the actual target.

Daredevil has posed:
Daredevil can hear the guts of the gun making their very first sound before bullets start cutting flesh. Then it's a cacaphony of noise, the sharp scent of gun and the acrid scent of burning gunpowder. It's a lot of sensory information that takes him a few seconds to process.
Jakey Z spins, cigarette dropping from his mouth, gaunt frame bent, eyes wide with fear. He starts to scramble along the side of the roof, looking down for a fire escape.
It's by the fire escape that the man in red is stationed. He thinks fast and reaches out to grab him, arm twisted into a painful hold, hand clamping over his mouth. He drags the gangster behind the edge of a water tower.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Sounds and smells assail the air. The clicking, mechanical workings of a gun. The sound of bullets tearing through flesh. The smell of burning powder. And eventually, the sharp tang of blood, blood, blood.

Screams. Shouts. And tellingly... in the distance... the familiar clicking whir of something that sounds like a metal arm.

Jakey Z is having NONE of this. He scrambles along the roof, looking for a way down--

--and gets dragged off by another danger lurking in the dark.

A moment later, a last body-- still alive, if mute with terror-- gets kicked right out the door. He's apparently meant to be the token survivor left to spread word of what happened. He takes off like a shot, and a second later the Winter Soldier himself calmly appears in the doorframe. He's reloading. His eyes turn towards the rooftop where he was told his target is.

Seconds later, he's scaled up to the roof, standing where Daredevil and his mark were just a few moments ago. Nothing. The masked figure's head turns, like a hunting dog scenting for prey. His eyes rest on the water tower.

Daredevil has posed:
Daredevil holds fast to the gangster's mouth. But his foot slips, scraping along rock at the foot of the water tower. He doesn't say 'shit' but if anyone could see the lower half of his face, it would have 'shit' written all over it. He kicks out, slamming his foot into Jakey Z's instep. The gangster goes down, yowling in pain. Matt's hand goes to his billy clubs as he prepares to engage the...
....weird guy who was stuffed into Claire's closet? "Uhh."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The masked face of the Winter Soldier turns unerringly to the sound of that initial scraping. As such, he's already looking in that direction when the much more obvious sound and sight of the gangster yelling and hitting the floor transpires.

His attention is not on the gangster, however. His attention is on the man who seems to have dragged the gangster off. He takes in the outfit, the clubs, the readiness to engage, the lingering hints of 'shit' visible on the lower half of the man's face.

Weird Guy Who Was In Claire's Closet does not look impressed. His grasp just tightens on the MP-443 in his right hand.

"....So, you using that?" he drawls, unimpressed. If he remembers Matt, he either doesn't care or doesn't find it relevant to this particular encounter. "Cause I want it."

Daredevil has posed:
Daredevil's hand flexes on his billy club. "Talking about human beings as objects. How endearing." He's in a ready stance, but he's neither attacking nor retreating. "You got all the ones downstairs. You should learn to share."
Meanwhile, Jakey Z is rolling on the ground, whimpering, and staring at both of them with the whites of his eyes fully exposed.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier snorts audibly with derision at the lecture about 'speaking of humans as if they were objects.' "I'm not in a business where it profits me to treat 'em otherwise," he rejoins. He's not backing off either, and seems rather undeterred about the clubs. He spins the MP-443 in his hand once, with desultory insolence.

His blue eyes narrow when Matt tells him he ought to be content with the ones downstairs. "But," he says, "I really wanted THIS one."

His arm snaps up, his pistol aiming, the Soldier trying to draw a bead to shoot the man in question clean through the head.

Daredevil has posed:
Daredevil positions himself between the gun-toting metal armed supersoldier and Jakey Z. Because he's that kind of idiot. "I got here first." If the Soldier can talk like a petulant child, he can play, too. "I was going to break his ribs and maybe a few fingers."
From behind, Jakey Z makes a soft 'hey!' sound.
"You kill him, and you make a martyr of him in this neighbourhood. They'll keep selling and recruiting out of defiance."

Winter Soldier has posed:
Daredevil interposes himself between the gun and its intended target. The trigger finger squeezes-- but stops just short of shooting. Annoyed, the Winter Soldier blows out a breath, before turning the barrel of the weapon upward and retracting it.

His head cants as Daredevil expresses that he wanted to break some bones. Maybe smash up some fingers.

The Winter Soldier seems nonplussed at this turn of events. Usually when people are trying to save people from him, it's not so they can just rough them up themselves. He's intrigued despite himself, his head tilting. "Perhaps," he has to admit, of Matt's argument that he'll just be martyred if he's outright murdered. His orders were technically to put a stop to the funneling of money, with no specification how. Being the Winter Soldier, he just fell back on 'killing everything in sight.'

He folds his arms. "But you gotta beat him real hard, if you're gonna cheat me out of this."

And then he fails to move. He seems intent on sticking around to make sure this happens.

Daredevil has posed:
Daredevil can hear the difference between a confident, definite pull of a trigger and a hesitation. Thankfully. Otherwise he'd be dodging and retaliating just when they're reaching some kind of understanding. He doesn't look back at Jakey, but still manages to slam the heel of his foot back and on the gangster's thumb. It makes a loud, wet cracking noise. Jakey hows in pain. Between that and the instep kick, he's already in a fair amount of pain.
"They're already going to be defiant with the job you did downstairs. You kill their most charismatic recruiter on top of that?"
Jakey starts to get up, to make a pitiful attempt to crawl away. Matt grabs the back of the guy's head and brings a knee up to crack the man's jaw. Blood spatters out across the rooftop.
"If you instead beat the shit out of him, then he's limping around the neighbourhood for months with his jaw wired shut. That sends a stronger message than a corpse."

Winter Soldier has posed:
An understanding is being reached -- of a sort. The Winter Soldier does not look perfectly content with changing his course of action -- he's a type who likes to make up his mind and then execute without delay or waffling -- but the order was not explicitly a kill order, and he isn't invested enough in taking this particular life to pick a fight with some trained and determined vigilante. Waste of a couple good bullets, that would be, and the Soldier does not like leaving lead paper trails behind.

Besides, it's novel enough that someone fights to save someone so they can hurt them themselves that he's intrigued. His head cants as Daredevil gets to work, his skill in administering nonfatal beatdowns becoming quite apparent. Matt speaks as he works, his apparent intent to /instruct/ the Winter Soldier bringing the assassin's brows to lift in skepticism.

"I don't know," he philosophizes, as a man is beaten and blood flies within inches of his boots. "A corpse is a pretty strong message, in my experience. There's a rather thin line between people getting defiant, and people getting /so/ fucked up that their spirits break." Three guesses which side this particular guy errs towards.

Daredevil has posed:
"It's true. But I know Hell's Kitchen. This should satisfy both of us." Daredevil lands another bone-breaking blow. It's a sharp, precise strike to fracture a delicate bone in his wrist. He'll probably never be able to use that hand properly again. "I'm guessing you're after bigger fish than the local drug trade. I know these guys were working with someone higher up."
Jakey would say something, but his jaw is kind of...broken. He's clearly on the verge of passing out.
Matt knees down, and grabs the bloody jaw. He pulls the man's face up to meet his. They'd be staring eye to eye if his worked. "When you speak of this..." a beat, "...//when// you can speak again, you're going to tell people I didn't kill your friends. Because if you do, I'll find you and make sure you never speak a word again."
Jakey looks defiant for half a second, then nods slowly.

Winter Soldier has posed:
I know Hell's Kitchen, the mysterious vigilante says. "Looks like you sure do," the Winter Soldier observes dourly. Looks pretty personal, in fact.

It's hard to say what he feels about what he's seeing, if he feels anything at all. Perhaps impatient with what he perceives as an inefficient solution to a problem. Perhaps mutedly surprised that this man who staunchly refuses to allow a clean and quick kill, will instead happily maim men so that they will never properly use their hands again.

Matt correctly observes that this little group of men probably was not the end goal of the Winter Soldier, anyway. Metal whirs mutedly as the Soldier shrugs. "Pit stop," he admits. Break the small bones before shattering the big ones. It takes a certain kind of man to call the murder of several other men no more than a pit stop; the Winter Soldier is clearly one of those kinds of men. "What? You want the higher-up guy, too? THAT I'm gonna have to fight you about."

He falls silent as Daredevil starts his threatening routine. This is certainly the most interesting vigilante he's run across in some time. Most aren't this brutal.

Daredevil has posed:
What Daredevil is not telling the Winter Soldier is that he knew the kids who got recruited by this man personally - kids who might have had a normal life. He saw a kid die of an overdose. He saw a young mother lose her apartment because drug dealers pushed her out of the building. He has the ability to make it look like casual brutality, but there's more layers to it. It helps that the top half of his face is covered. His eyes can't give him away.
He stands and flicks his hand, spraying Jakey's blood over the rooftop. The man's slipping into unconsciousness, but the Devil is skilled enough that he won't die. "They're not based in Hell's Kitchen." Which is an answer in and of itself. He's not the Devil of Manhattan, or the Devil of New York State. He has his turf, and what goes on outside of it is rarely his concern. He cants his head. "Police are coming." There's not even a hint of a siren until a good minute later. He watches the Solider. "You won't kill him." As he asks that question, he trains his ears on his heartbeat. The lie detector thing has fewer applications in his night job than his day, but it can still occasionally prove useful.

Winter Soldier has posed:
They're not based in Hell's Kitchen.

The Winter Soldier waits for the rest of the sentence, before he realizes there is no rest of the sentence. Such is the man's answer. Not in his neighborhood, not his business. Beneath the mask, the Soldier's mouth curls in a smirk, an expression that shows slightly in the gleam of frost-blue eyes.

Police are coming, the strange vigilante says a moment later. The Soldier's eyes narrow in confusion, up until his own enhanced senses catch the wail of the siren. This man hears even better than he does? Remarkable.

But he is composed, when Matt fixes his senses upon him. No uncertainty, no wariness, no nothing. Just the even, efficient pulse of his heart driving blood through his veins. The only odd thing about him, really, is the sound of his body in its operation. Most people have bodies that express little flaws, that labor audibly under some expression of poor health or another.

But not this man. This man's body is a perfect, purring engine of efficiency. Not a beat or breath out of place, it burns with twice the power of any average human body, and with none of its usual foibles or flaws. Strong as it is, however, it still behaves like a regular body in many other ways, including the ways Matt typically uses to gauge whether he's being lied to.

"No," he says, and his heart does not quicken or jump erratically. His breathing does not shallow. His pulse stays calm and even. "There are others who require my attention."

He turns away, holstering his weapon, intent on vanishing back into the dark, leaving behind one question: how the hell did Claire Temple get mixed up with someone like HIM?