Nite Owl begins to pry the pipe.
Batman winces at what he sees Nite Owl doing from above.
Dottie looks at the plastic wrap. If she fails to come up with some kind of shenanigans to get up to with these giant rolls, she will be deeply disappointed. She tears off a piece large enough to, say, wrap around someone's head so that it would completely cover their mouth and nose. You know, just in case.
Still hiding amid the pipes, Dottie waves to Nite Owl to try to get his attention, and pantomimes turning a wheel, e.g., a valve one would open to release the steam. She then recedes further into the machinery, looking to see where everyone is moving to.
Nite Owl continues to try and pry it free
His attack on the steam pipe in vain, Nite Owl takes a more circumspect approach. He finds a small wheel and turns it. Steam streams out, filling the area between Nite Owl/Dottie and the advancing gang members.
Nevertheless, the men continue to advance, moving into the fog as they scan for the intruders.
Dottie peeks around the machinery and sees a lone guard moving nearby who is not, as best she can tell, in the line of sight of the other men--especially now that the steam is clogging things up.
She sneaks toward him, squeezing between the machinery, and spins out, trying to kick the gun out of his hands...
She trips over a pipe instead. She rolls her eyes. Prison had clearly not been good for her reflexes. Not to mention the concussion she got this morning.
She still trains her own gun on him and flashes a smile before she issues a "shhhhhh...."
As the steam pours out, he crashes through the skylight and drops on a foe. The thick steam doesn't seem to impede him as he drives him to the ground.
Xavier rushes in and punches one of the men hard.
Growing impatient with the men standing near him of the catwalk, Qi'n approaches them quietly, hoping to take them both down quickly and silently.
Hoping they have not heard him, he sizes them both up, and then strikes swiftly and accurately, but to disable, not kill.
As the steam pours out, he crashes through the skylight and drops on a foe. The thick steam doesn't seem to impede him as he drives him to the ground.
Batman lands heavily on one of the gangers, knocking him to the ground, unconscious.
"I guess we're going in then." He mumbles as he moves over to the skylight and fires at one of the men holding a firearm.
Icarus snipes one of the gangers though the broken skylight, and the man drops heavily to the concrete floor.
Qi'n makes his way quietly over to two of the men, who are staring at the ground level intently. Both fall quickly, but clatteringly, to the metal catwalk as Qi'n strikes them from behind.
Dottie holds her gun on a man who has a pierced eyebrow and several tear shaped prison tatoos. They face off, guns trained on each other. Just a moment before he squeezes the trigger, she sees the decision in his eyes.
The man closest to Nite Owl opens up with his pistol, but misses him in the steam.
One thug moves in to fight Batman hand to hand. Also swinging wide.
Other men run for cover, more weapons, or help.
You guys are up.
Xavier Sees' the gun and twists before he spins around and swings his fist out to hit the thug again.
The bullet grazes Dottie's arm, the thick leather of her jacket absorbing the bulk of the damage. She already feels the little trickle of blood stop almost as soon as it starts as her enhanced stamina kicks into gear. She keeps her gun and her smile trained upon the gang member, and one might have trouble guessing which is more deadly.
"Oh sweetheart, you can't hurt me with that," she says with a laugh, acting as though she were nigh-invulnerable. "Now, put that useless gun down and let me know who hacked into Horizon. Are they over here?" She begins to walk toward the doors leading west, though she never keeps her eyes and gun off the man.
Qi'n dashes down the catwalk silently, his slippered feet making no noise on the metal grating. He extends his senses out, looking for any sign of the missing girl, or anywhere prisoners might be held for trafficking.
Icarus picks off another.
The man facing Nite Owl takes a blow to the chin and drops to the floor.
Dottie nearly connects with the man's weapon, but he dodges at the last moment.
Qi'n moves along the catwalk, noticing Dottie squaring off against a goon below. He also sees a metal door at the end of the catwalk leading beyond.
Two of the goons respond to the sound of Nite Owl's attack, moving toward him. They go after him with clubs, not trusting their marksmanship in the dense fog.
Nite Owl ducks under one swing, but another catches him.
Two more take shots at Batman, their shots spanging off of machinery and concrete behind him.
Dottie's goon takes in the fact that she is a woman and decides that perhaps more finesse is in order. He lunges toward her.
Well, I grappled Dottie. I think that won't go well for me.
Feeling the blow he grits his teeth and rolls back. With deft maneuvering he galls back catches hismelf with his hands and kicks with both legs
You guys are up.
Nite Owl falls forward on his hands rolls forward to kick out hard with both legs into one of the men in front of him.
"Cat got your tongue, huh? I suppose you're too unimportant to know anything useful. They probably don't even trust you with the lunch orders..." She taunts him.
She cartwheels over to the edge of the bay doors separating the warehouse from the rest of the building and, if she has time, flips the switch to open the doors.
Batman takes a quick look at the guys shooting at him. Under his mask, he smiles as he realizes how well they are set up. He turns to the north wall and screams at it. The sound echoes off the wall, hitting one foe and driving him towards the other.
The sound tumbles to two men away like leaves in a stiff fall breeze.
-------------------
This is a tough one, apparently.
Dottie flips the switch and the doors creak open. Beyond the doors, she sees a blue glow of dozens of ancient (well, not to her) CRT screens glowing. The spacious hall behind the doors is filled with classic arcade video games. Centipede, Galaga, Pac Man, Dig Dug. Everything one can imagine from the 70's and 80's.
"Damn, what did you do train with the Hulk?" Xavier says before rolling forward and springing both feet up into the man's top half.
Seeing the guard not follow her, Dottie steps through and walks along the hall of old arcade cabinets. 70s and 80s was a time she had some freedom to go about and she remembered these things being everywhere. "Someone's a collector of old games... or old tech..."
She stays alert for trouble, looking right and left as she steps through and heads a ways up the hall way.
Nite Owl and Doctor Icarus take out Nite Owl's two opponents.
Dottie heads up the hall way, the glow of the games' screens flowing over he skin like liquid. To the left, she hears a low hum, like machinery. Through an open door to the right she hears loud voices, like someone yelling, then gunfire. Someone says yippey kay a mother --
Dottie freezes for a second at the sound of fighting, but at the sound of "gunfire" she realizes both volume and pitch are wrong... a movie, not actual gunshot.
If it's this loud, the door must be open. She kneels by an old Gauntlet machine near the door, and peeks in.
The hallway beyond the door is dimly lit by the flicker of a massive television hanging on a wall in a room to the west. The rooms to the east are simple metal beds, 8 to a room. A few of the beds are inhabited by a young man or woman in some state of unconsciousness or drug dazed stare. Each of them is handcuffed to the bed. They do not smell clean, but the smell of disenfectant mixes with the odor of their bodies and the burnt smell that accompanies drug use.
From the tv room, Dottie hears a deep laugh at some quip by John McLane.
"Angry" is too simple a summation for how Dottie feels at the sight. Memories of the past ripple through her, a barely-suppressed, bomb of grief, determination, yes, anger, and a lot of fear. And in there, even a strange indignation almost protective of her handlers: At least they kept us clean. And there, she knows, these youths are being kept not for something like training, but for human trafficking or experimentation. Worse. Wasteful. The product of greed. And that does make her angry. In the back of her mind, her own since-childhood training repeats incessantly, focus on the mission, the mission, the mission. But the memory of Peggy also rises up in her mind, and she can hear her voice as if the woman were standing next to her: "Help. Them."
If Dottie has a phone at all, it's probably a "burner phone" and a "dumbphone" at that. If she has one, she replies to whatever the last message sent her (probably from Batman or Nite Owl) and manages to tap out "pr1s0n3r5" on the ordinary phone buttons before hitting send. (If she doesn't have a phone, she just proceeds--running back and raising an alarm would just get her embroiled in a fight again, and she needed to act while the guard(?) was distracted.) She makes a mental note if she keeps working with this group, they need to get some proper comm units or at least walkie talkies. Kids these days and their silly wireless telegrams.
Dottie sneaks slowly and quietly into the TV room. The noise of the TV should help mask her arrival.
Dottie's Plan
If he is armed, first order of business is to remove his gun--ideally without notice. She'll wait until he is especially engrossed in a scene. Then also ideally without notice, she will pull out her handcuffs and try to, without notice, handcuff his wrist to the arm of the chair.
Presuming success in that, she will restrain him-
And then stretch the length of plastic wrap fully across the man's face and lean in close, whispering in his ear, "Hi."
He begins to make his way through the warehouse trying to find his way to their staging area. He does it quietly
While looking for some secret passageway or room. and