Through the oddly-lit vestibule the "club noise" damps out almost entirely, and when the outside door is opened the team is greeted by the brownian motion of the street, already (continuously) in progress. The night is cool and moist, running about 51.1°F at 89% humidity with no breeze to speak of. The sky is mostly cloudy working hard on becoming overcast, the whispy white clouds reflecting some of the more insistently probing spotlights roaming aimlessly across the heavens. The bouncer leans negligently off to your right, but nobody else seems to register your existence, much less your arrival. At the curb a limo glides up to the curb seemingly frictionlessly, stopping long enough to deliver three sharply-dressed people (two are huge enough to be trolls - obviously bodyguard types, while the third might be a "normal" human, if such a thing exists any more) who take abut a second to get their bearings, head towards the door you just exited from. The bouncer moves to intercept them, and they gather close together in muted discussion. The limo glides away down the street, quickly lost in the lights and bustle of the City That Never Sleeps.
Each member of your team splits off a different way, and nobody appears to have picked up a tail. Ace's vehicle has a "bump" of chalk on the left-rear tire, but it's all right: that's how the meter maids determine whether or not a vehicle has been parked in a single location for too long. Otherwise, everything appears totally unmolested, ready to go. The area has its normal share of indigents, a few homeless scattered along the perimeter with noplace else to go. Nearby a couple of sillouettes shamble around a burning 5 gallon drum, but they pay no attention to your passing.
Without incident, you each get to your perspective "base of operations" to prep for the night's clandestine adventure. Whew! That rolled all out of control in no time, didn't it? Guess that's the nature of the underworld - there are pieces/parts of it that are all excitement all the time, but it feels like *that* type of excitement could turn fatal if left unchecked. That thought in mind, each of you do your grab'n'go, and begin your circuitous routes through the more colorful segments of the Big, Bad City to rendezvous at a less-used parking lot. Ace's car hums gently as it idles there --- at least you *THINK* it's Ace's car, because it's very similar if not identical to the one in which he left the club. A darkish blob fairly skips down the road from the now-leaving bus, and that *could* be Block, but it *could* be anybody else. There is almost no other foot traffic, and the vehicular traffic through this area is light. Garishly-colored neon gleams off of nearby plate-glass windows, the curtains behind them drawn against the onslaught of illumination. (You'd think some of these neighborhood shops would close between 2100 and 0800, but they don't, for a wonder!) Only a few hundred feet further darkness rules, as the streetlight hanging from the lightpole gapes empty, apparently shot out some time ago. Guess New York Street Maintenance doesn't get out here too often.
An NYPD cruiser lurks quietly for a second at the nearby corner stop light, then turns right and skulks further southward, luckily heading away from tonights's fringe of interest. Relative calm descends on that end of the neighborhood...
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