2020-07-12 - Bad guys met badder guys.

Alexander promised to try and keep Byron and Easton's casino crime and invasion free! He didn't promise to anyone but himself, since he suspected Byron would just roll his eyes about it - and, let's be honest, he is missing several pretty vital pieces of information about this whole endeavor. But the point is that he drops by every once in a while to just...feel better about the whole thing. Usually, it's quiet, and he stares for a little while, makes some notes, and wanders away again.

This time there's gunfire. He doesn't hesitate; he runs /towards/ the gunfire, because he's an idiot with low self-preservation. He heads towards the parking garage and appears at the mouth of it just in time to see the van barreling at him at a suspicious speed. His eyes widen. "Fuck." He tries to roll to the side, and along the way, reach into the car's electrical system with his mind and just overload it all.

He hasn't even seen Graham, Felix, and the others - but the guys running away are usually the ones you try to stop.

Joey is waiting. On time. Just like he is fucking expected to. He does keep checking back with his phone because things have been really weird. Everything feels off with today, this week, the month and the Harbor as a whole. Now he's been texting back and forth with Ruiz, Alexander, and most of the crime syndicate about various parts of that. It still doesn't feel right and nothing feels settled.

Nothing.

And then there's a an... he doesn't recognize it and now? His blood runs cold seeing small moments play out protracted beats. The second of which involves Joey rolling to a crouch behind his bike and drawing a damn weapon. Weirdly the first instinct is to draw fire because then it allows Felix to get and others opportunity. It's instinct. He does for the runner. No one's walking this time. Crawling away bleeding a lot? Maybe.

(TXT to Joey) Ruiz : Hey. Kelly? You going to fucking answer me?

Andre was adorably stupid most of the time, but he tends to take his job extremely seriously. Which was why when things start going down, Andre's the first to leap into action. He's not fond of guns - he told Graham once upon a time that guns kill people, and he didn't want to kill people. It was all pretty laughable considering his fists were deadly weapons all on their own, which was not lost on the gunman that he grabs in mid-air on his way to Felix. "You don't hit the boss!" he chastises the man as they go tumbling, Andre trying to wrestle for the man's gun. In the midst of all the chaos, he throws a look in Graham's direction, "G! You gotta get you and the boss outta here. I got this!"

Alexander scrambles between two cars for cover as shots go popping off here and there, and the van careens off course. He takes a moment to try and figure out what in the /fuck/ he's walked (or run, who's counting) into. He looks around, and starts recognizing faces - Joey first, and then Graham, and hey, isn't that the huge guy who's always---"Oh /fuck/," he mutters. There's a moment where he seriously just considers keeping his head down and hoping everyone involved just gets blown away.

But Kelly is here. And Alexander, reluctantly, likes Kelly. "Alexander, you complete fucking idiot," he tells himself, before he launches out of hiding to try and jump the driver and drive him down into the pavement. Alexander doesn't have a gun, but he suspects the guy's head and the pavement will work just as well.

The Interim Chief of Police, conveniently enough, was just leaving the Casino for some earlier business involving, no doubt, Thorne and his holdings. And not at all anything to do with the booze or the slot machines. He checks his phone at the next intersection, finds his text message to Joey still unanswered. And while that in itself isn't necessarily a red flag, there's something that feels off about it today. Something about the whole conversation that just feels fucking off. He waits for the light to turn green and pulls a U-turn in the intersection, even before his radio lights up with a 10-71 for live fire and potential casualties.

He reaches for his handset, keys the mic, and rattles off a brisk set of instructions for backup units to move in. Even as he speaks, he's already reaching out with his mind, trying to get a sense for whether Joey's in the vicinity, whether he's alive, and if he's on the move. Then he kicks the accelerator on the Charger, keys the lights and sirens to make sure people get the fuck out of the way, and screams back toward the Casino parking lot in record time.

Joey really wanted to text back. Everything today, thankfully has erupted in a steaming pile of shit. Weirdly it's pretty fucking zen. At least now he knows where the problem is which means all that's left is dealing with it. That is until they hit his fucking bike witha goddamn bullet. "THE FUCK is with you buttmunches hitting my ride?!"

Disregard that it was his own guy that took out his then stolen car's back window. Cruz is off the hook because this guy made him. Really he's the wrong Kelly to be called deadeye but there's something about the threat f kill or be killed that evens out his shots. The first one's a hit on Red who...well they're red now. And the second-

"Fuck." That's Alexander. Things aren't so life or death eh's going to shoot at his buddy there. He does call out, "Clayton, those fuckers are armed." He at least tries to get in a position to make sure Felix's return back inside is covered. "G, you breathin?"

"G!" Andre shouts, alarmed, as Mr. Blue's gun goes off to burst through the back window of the car that Graham was piling into. Poor Andre, so concerned with taking care of others; he doesn't want to see his little buddy get hurt. So he pulls back his fist to wallop Mr. Blue right in the face, a curt, "SORRY!" tacked into the slam of a ham-fist into his nose. "But we don't hit the little buddy," he tsks Mr. Blue, before pushing the gunman off and clambering onto his feet. Andre really should have the wits about him to get the fucking gun, but he has no wits and instead goes running full-tilt to the car instead to get a hold of Felix's collar and shove him into the backseat with a polite: "In ya go, boss!" Helpful Andre is helpful. But what he's really trying to do is make sure his duty is done so he can hustle on over to his friend and make sure Graham is a-okay.

Alexander sees stars, and they're not casino lights. He staggers from one side to the other, then cries out as the situation is twisted around on him and suddenly...there's a gun to his head. Alexander goes very, very still. He doesn't look towards anyone in the expectation that they'll save him. In fact, he mutters, "I sincerely doubt he gives a fuck," to the guy. It's matter-of-fact, but Alexander is still trying to make no threatening or startling moves. Electricity would only cause spasms. Now is not a good time for spasms.

Instead, he tries to focus on something other than the feeling of the cold steel resting a half an inch from the place where he does all his thinking. He likes his thinking. So. Alexander. Think.

"Just go," he tells the guy, quietly. "This doesn't end well if you don't. Cops are probably on their way. Good effort, but cut your losses. You haven't killed anyone yet, and don't be stupid enough to do it in front of the cameras. Just go, before you're surrounded." And while he talks, he's pushing, subtly, on the guy's mind. Trying to heighten his uncertainty. Turn that wobble he hears in the guy's voice into a need to just get the fuck away from here.

Hopefully without stopping to blow Alexander's brains out, first.

The unmarked Charger peels in to the parking garage with an unholy squeal of tires as it fishtails in from the entrance and skids to a noisy halt. The driver's side door pops open immediately; de la Vega is not blind, he can see perfectly well what's going on, and that there's a guy with a gun to Alexander's head, and Andre of all people tussling with someone over there. This has suddenly gotten a hell of a lot more complicated than Joey Kelly having a weird day.

His service pistol comes out smoothly, drawn, unsafetied, braced in both hands with his sights set on the guy with a gun to Clayton's head, all in practically the same motion. He'll worry about the car peeling away, later, if his backup doesn't get to it first; one problem at a time. "Put the gun down and step away," he instructs, calmly and with that authoritativeness that tends to come with the territory with cops. Especially high ranking cops. "Put the gun down." He looks the guy in the eye, ready and willing to capitalise on the slightest sign of weakness. Uncertainty.

"That's a fucking goddamn civilian you presumptuous piece of shit!" Awww Joey ate a new word out of Alexander's book. But if it gets them not aiming at the damn. Now Mr. Blue has some seriously good aim. That driver has Alexander dead to rights. So what's Joey do? Well he points his pistol at the asshole who is prone and makes himself just a bit more visible so that they are aware of this fact. Now if Joey can hit the guy is another story, but no one wants to be in a fucking standoff with iron drawn. By fuck or by fire Kelly's willing to be. Of the few people that he gives more than a passing shit about these fucks have weapons drawn on two of them.

Well, here's to life in a box one way or another. It was alright while it was. Some things one just has to resign themselves to, accept, move past, and then go on to get shit done.

Fuck today was feeling off. Oh good, De la Vega (whose first name still isn't fucking De...asshole...) is here. Weirdly it's kinda a relief. Is this making the situation worse? Probably. For now, ya know, he's going to let them do the walking and try to keep things as neutralized as he can.

Andre could, probably, attempt to diffuse the sudden hostage situation by punching the guy that's caught Alexander right in the fucking face. But Andre does not know Alexander from a hole in the ground (sorry, A!) and Mr. Blue's got his gun pointing right at Graham. What happens next, happens in an instant. Andre's shouting: "Go on, get outta here, li'l buddy! You gotta get home, tell Ellie I said hi!" before he jumps right in between the gunman and the car, brandishing those fists of his. "YOU BEST STAND THE HELL DOWN, don't you know that man's gonna have a BABY?!" as though, perhaps, the baby announcement just didn't come to Mr. Blue and he didn't get the message. The baby announcement also didn't come to Andre, for that matter, but that was something 'Dre was gonna have to converse with G about later.

But that conversation's gonna have to happen much later. Much, much, MUCH later. Like, in the next afterlife later. Because he barely gets the words out before Mr. Blue starts shooting, bullets that would have absolutely gone through the driver's window and straight into Graham's pretty little face had Andre's chest not been in the way. One, two, three, four shots bury themselves into Andre's chest in rapid succession, but this isn't a man who goes down easy. With a bellowing yell, he launches himself at Mr. Blue, ham-fists swinging - first, to knock the gun out of the man's hand, and then to knock a hole into his head. And this time? Andre doesn't even say he's sorry.

Yeah, he definitely has the angst.

The gun presses against his temple and Alexander shuts the fuck up. He's mostly not stupid, and he recognizes Ruiz's voice. Surely the cop can talk this guy down.

...and then there are more gunshots, and everything is clearly going STRAIGHT to hell. Alexander doesn't panic, but his expression goes blank, and if there's any moment when the driver's attention wavers, he flings himself to the side, away from the gun, and twists to try and kick the driver's kneecaps in ways that kneecaps don't usually go, in the process of scrambling away.

Situations like these, there are windows of opportunity. Those windows open, and then those windows close. You let them close, you miss your shot. You miss your shot, you die, or someone you care about dies. So you don't let the window of opportunity close, simple as that.

The moment the driver's distracted, de la Vega takes his shot. Round dropped into the chamber, barrel of his gun tapped to the top of the open driver's side door, he lines up on the guy and he fires two rounds. One into his knee, the other into his thigh, attempting to take him down with non-lethal force. Then he racks the slide, aims at the car that comes screeching to a halt nearby, driven by that fucker he swears he's arrested before. Graham something or other. And who should climb out but Felix fucking Monaghan. Just great.

Joey watches what cannot be stopped in slow motion making his limbs feel like lead in comparison. He doesn't run becuase that's how shots go wide, but there is a storm that is the fear and anger of Joey Kelly as he marches over there at high speed unloading shot after shot into the guy as he falls to the ground. The good news is he wasn't movin and now? Now he doesn't have to worry about life as a veggie.

PAK-PAK-PAK-PAK

He moves to Cover Andre laying on the cement trying to protect his head... not that it's doing any good. "Your blood's all here. We just gotta get it back inside... ANdre... Dre... Aw fuck...AWWWW Fuck...." and if the asshole holding Clayton has any question how bad it just got on the other side there is a growl, "MOTHER FUCKER! Graham, get him OUTTA HERE." Now? Now he is pissed. Sorry, there are no more words from that fancy broken in book, Alexander. He needs a cussing thesaurus now.

The thing about getting shot three times in the chest is that it kinda slows you down. Andre gets that one good punch in before the blood soaking through his shirt makes him stagger back, and really - he's lost a lot of blood. It's going to be next to near impossible to get any of it back into the holes when they are still actively squirting blood out of them like tiny little geysers. "G? Li'l buddy? YOU GOOD?!" he was crumpling, but Mr. Blue seems to be in way worse shape. So look, Andre's just gonna take his gun and toss it that-a-way before the big hunk o' man falls to the ground, bleeding all over the place. No one should have to die in a parking garage 🙁 But hey, he's gonna pat-pat Joey, getting some of his blood all over him.

Graham far less calmly exits the car, running full-tilt toward where Andre is bleeding out while he pats Joey on the face. "Get who outta here? Everyone's either shot or cops or the boss!" he answers Joey. To Andre, all breathless and hopefully not getting shot while he runs back to his dying buddy, "I'm good, man, you good? You look good."

Alexander cries out in pain as the bullet lays a hot streak across his skin, but he doesn't stop rolling away until he's clear of the clusterfuck, fetching up next to a car, and checking his arm. He curses briefly as the blood flows down, but it's not like it hit anything vital, and let's face it, being Alexander is suffering. There's a brief, impotent glare of anger towards a certain crime lord, but then his eyes are going first to Ruiz, and then to Joey, to see if they were injured in the last explosion of gunfire.

Things are happening quickly, almost too quickly for the eye to follow. When the smoke clears, multiple people are hit, Andre is lying on the ground bleeding out, and Ruiz and Monaghan are having themselves a little stare-down as the crime boss disarms himself, and the cop tries (and mostly succeeds) in gritting his teeth through the pain of being shot through the leg. It's superficial, but it still hurts like a bitch. And he's getting way, way too old for this bullshit.

So maybe it's retribution, or maybe it's a little of that old killer instinct that has him prowling in closer. Dark eyes shifting away from Felix, and settling on the driver who's on his hands and knees, utterly defenseless. He's been shot multiple times already, he's dropped his gun. He's not a threat, right?

Hopefully that isn't what his official report says, when it mentions the gunshot wound to the head that was absolutely necessary. BLAM, before the cop holsters his gun, takes a steadying breath, then makes a visual check of the scene before speaking into his radio. Sirens in the distance; his backup's arriving in the form of three squad cars, perhaps a block away, and at least two ambulances. They, of course, will hang back until the situation's under control. Rather than go to Alexander, it's Felix and his car that Ruiz starts stalking toward next.

Joey's gun gets stashed (safety back on, thanks), and his hands are bloody as the enforcer tries to keep compression over the holes. It's not exactly like trying to put back together a whole side of beef but it is exactly like trying to keep it from leaking out like a giant water balloon. He snaps back to Graham, "Monaghan. You wan tot stand around and assume these are all the shits they have to give?" He stays quiet while Graham talks to him.

There's a long moment where he's just trying to shove the blood back into Andre's body with a slight futile warp of glimmer. That's... that's not how Lilith does it. It's... yeah it's too late and there's nothing left to punch. Goddamn this town. It takes all the effort in his lungs to take a deep breath and Ask loud enough in the reverb of the garage; blood dripping off his palms and down to his fingers. "Clayton... you ain't dead is you?" He looks to Graham and sighs, "Sorry man." It's a rod he never uses and saves for special fucking occasions, like this one where there's still work to get fucking done. Slowly he stands up and takes a deep breath. This is going to be- and Ruiz' gun goes off. ...fun. Good.

Andre was not, in fact, looking good. He was turning gray, a very bad sign considering his original coloring, and the blood wasn't stopping. But boy did he smile when he sees Graham coming for him, all broad and bright, and he reaches out to grab hold of his little buddy and drag him over here. Except.. Andre's pretty weak now. At least that means he doesn't manage to rip Graham's arm off or something. "I... I don't feel too good, G," he admits, hacking up a little blood in the process. The holes in his chest were pretty significant. He seems to be pretty unaware that anything else was going on while he was LAYING HERE DYING. "But you're good? You're good. You tell Ellie.. you tell Ellie I said hi, okay? And oh! I almost forgot," he reaches into his pocket of his saggy jeans, bringing out a beanie baby from its depths. It was pink and blue and had the scariest huge eyes EVER. They glitter. It's obnoxious, and covered in Andre's blood, but he thrusts it in Graham's hands.

"I figger you gonna have the shower soon. So this is for.. for the.. for the bay --" BLEH! Dead. He's dead. He doesn't even get his last words out. But hey, what a deal for Graham! He doesn't get shot and he gets a present for his non-existent baby.

Alexander starts levering himself up when he notices Ruiz is shot. But before he can get all the way up to his feet, or say the worried words that are on his lips, the cop straight up executes the driver, and Alexander sits right back down with a thump. And blinks. He doesn't say anything for a moment, just watches Ruiz cross over to go talk to Felix. Joey's call makes him flinch, then grimace. But he does say, "No, Kelly. Not yet." The sirens are approaching, and he again starts to get to his feet. He stares at the spreading pool of blood around the driver, expression blank and thoughtful. "What about the big guy?" he asks without looking in that direction. There's no movement from there, so he probably guesses, but...you gotta ask.

Graham still has a gun, and he turns it briefly Alexander's way when Joey starts talking to the guy - but it's just Alexander, who he kinda knows, so whatever. "Gimme your fucking keys, then," he tells Joey, flinging the point of the gun toward the wrecked car over by Felix and Ruiz and the guy that Ruiz just assassinated. All this to distract from Andre, dying right in front of him.

The angst is real, though, especially when a bloodstained beanie baby gets shoved into his hand. Everybody better look away, 'cause he's absolutely gonna wind up blubbering now, covering his face with his hands, on his knees next to the big, dead body of his Lennie. 🙁

"Problems are only problems if they're alive to be fucking problems," retorts the cop flatly, hand still on the grip of his gun as he studies Felix. Then the interior of the car beyond him. A breath's blown out his nose, and a glance is shot at his watch as he makes a few quick mental calculations. "You sit tight, Mr. Monaghan. Sure we'll have you on your way as quickly as possible." They could cut the tension with a knife; surely Felix knows, by now, that de la Vega doesn't do his dirty work any longer. Surely he knows.

Once the captain seems certain there's nobody else hiding out in there with a gun, and a quick check of Mr. Blue's vitals finds no pulse, he keys his mic and calls in an update. 10-26, suspects in custody, situation is under control. Repeat, scene is contained and the situation is under control. And then, finally, he looks up from his crouch and asks first Alexander, then Joey, "You both all right?" He's also going to go over and check Andre's vitals, though that's pretty obviously going to be a lost cause.

And this is how Joey's lost his bike. God bless. Well if they arrest him he'll have a ride back. That's something. Either way the rare exception comes when he reaches into his pocket with two fingers trying not to get blood on himself, all too sober of a mood, and pulls just the bike keys off the ring and hands them to Graham. He turns, back of his knuckles rapping against the back of Graham's shoulder wince in support and just standing and turning so the man can have some fucking privacy for a moment. Failing at preventing it at all it's the very least he can give him.

With something else for his glassy eyes to focus on he watches Felix, Ruiz, Felix again, and spares out a cautious glance for Alexander. The problem here is there's little honestly keeping Felix from having Alexander shot but that there are cameras, but ones he controls, and aside from Alexander? Well he controls all the people too. It's an acrid pit in his stomach hoping the rest of this is going to be a non issue with a fucking 'civilian' witness. The question gets the response of a flinch Joey never intended but he's a little raw right now. Lips press together and there's a silent head shake of No. answering Alexander's question on their status. Looking back to Ruiz he looks at his hands covered in blood and back. "Are we? I'll live." Whether he's alright is a whole fucking other story the plice report will tell.

Andre's still dead, ya'll. So he's just going to stay here and be dead. Dead dead dead, Andre is dead.

Alexander's breath skips an inhale when Graham's gun swings in his direction, and his hands come up - never mind that it hurts. He sidles over somewhere as far 'out of the way' as he can manage without actually making a run for it - although making a run for it surely has to occurred to him. He manages a grimace of genuine sympathy at that shake of the head; if nothing else, Andre always seemed like a pretty nice guy when he wasn't beating someone to death. When Ruiz asks his question, he gives him a long look before jerking his head in that weird, abrupt nod he has when he's feeling nervous and defensive.

The keys he was supposed to take jingle to the ground next to where Graham is having a very sniffly moment. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and everything, just super-juvenile while his composure takes a crushing defeat in this parking garage that smells like gunpowder and burned rubber and his friend's blood. 🙁 Thankfully, it means Graham doesn't grab Joey's keys and take off on the bike, going on some sort of vigilante killing spree (or - as is more likely - getting arrested by the ten billion cops probably showing up any second now). He gets himself together soon enough to look some daggers at Ruiz for checking Andre's vitals, then possessively ditches his July-evening jacket and lays it over Andre's face.

Then Graham rubs his eyes with his arm and shuts up, because cops.

Yep, he's pretty fucking dead, is Andre. Ruiz didn't really know the guy, aside from the one time he punched the cop for mouthing off to Felix, and thus appears to be having no particular feelings around all this. He cuts Graham a brief glance as the jacket goes over the big guy's face, then pushes back to his feet. And yes, right about then, a whole lotta cop cars come screaming into the parking garage, sirens whooping up a storm, lights washing over the rows of parked cars. Officers start spilling out with shouts that echo off the thick concrete walls as one of the senior Detectives works on setting up a perimeter, and another starts clearing a path for the paramedics to get in.

"I've got this," he tells the detective with a palm held up, when the guy (very not on the take) starts toward Felix. There's some hesitation, but when the (interim) Chief says jump, you fucking jump. So he jumps. "Sure, boss." A lingering look for the situation before he heads off to have some words with Graham instead.

Let's be honest this isn't the first time Ruiz and Joey have done this rodeo. This was a little brazen however. Joey's immediate problem now is Clayton getting out of here and being forgotten about by this situation, and also the swarm of cops who will be all up in this situation and he's not exactly permitted to be carrying. Casually he walks over to his bike, unlocks the saddle bag (because he told it to) and carefully drops the weapon back in there so it's not gotten to without a damn warrant or...something. He doesn't know how this works. It's why he asks Vic this shit. He walks over to Alexander and gives him a look over and murmurs, "You're getting out of this. Let the paramedics look at you okay?" There's a pause and he tacks on, "Please."

And the lights. Well Joey knows his part and hands go up in the air, fingers lace together and rest on the top of his head. Not it.

Graham is almost definitely going to wind up going down to answer some questions, FUCKING BULLSHIT, which at least delays him going home and sitting in his car and hugging his new Beanie Baby and sobbing. Fortunately! He only shot like one person, and so did Ruiz (and Felix) so he's probably not going to jail tonight. Anyway, he agrees to go answer questions, but only once his lawyer's present, etc.

Luckily, Joey and Alexander are entirely on the same page here. The investigator is doing his absolute best to fade into the concrete of the wall, but Glimmer doesn't allow that, goddamn it, so he's just...there. Bleeding. And watching Joey approach with flat, wary eyes, like a stray dog who isn't sure whether to bite or cringe. Joey's words bring a soft exhale of air. "It's just a scratch. I don't want...them to touch me," he mutters, but it's the only protest that he really bothers to give. Otherwise, if no one stops to question him, he'll sidle off in that direction. Although he adds, "The Cap--Interim Chief is shot. He needs to get off that leg when he can." Go mother him, Kelly.