Groups of strange men in nice suits coming into a business especially late at night was never a good thing.  Edith's brow furrowed in concern as she spotted the minor bit of commotion up front and she quickly nodded in the direction of the argument to draw the others' attention that way.

"Oi..." she muttered low.  If there was some sort of trouble at hand, surely the likes of Moon Knight or Cloak and Dagger would best know how to deal with it.

Dagger stands up and shouts at them.

”HEY! Can’t a girl eat her noodles in PEACE around here?”

One of the thugs gestures to his companions to throw the foreigners out. They rush towards your table. They are certainly in for a few surprises.

Marc sighed as he stood up from the table. He pulled his hood back on, in case these thugs had just thought he was a guy in a white suit for no special reason. Hopefully his reputation as Moon Knight would give them pause.

He didn't really expect it to, but it was worth the shot.

OOC: Would anyone object to Kludge getting involved in this?

OOC: The more, the merrier, I say.

---

Edith was likewise quick to act as things became aggressive.  Rather than rise to square off with the suited men, however, she scurried around to crouch and take cover behind the table.

Go for it!

The door to the restraunt opens, but no one comes in. Instead a robotic hand almost 14 inches across comes through. One of the nice suits who just happened to be standing in the wrong spot got punched out of the way as it telescoped into the room then there was a definate crunch followed by screaming as the hand clamped closed around a second suit. For a moment nothing else happened then the man was dragged helplessly out the door. "IF YOU ALL STEP OUTSIDE YOUR FRIEND MIGHT KEEP THE ABILITY TO WALK AND FEED HIMSELF AND THE REST OF YOU CAN TAKE A MESSAGE TO YOUR BOSS. IF YOU DON'T STEP OUTSIDE YOU BECOME THE MESSAGE TO YOUR BOSS. ONE CHANCE TO GET IT RIGHT."

The rest of the thugs look at each other in confusion for a moment…then bolt towards the kitchen’s back exit.

Marc hadn't slept in a couple of days. He was used to that sort of thing, but now he had t wonder if he'd gone past his limits and started to hallucinate.

"You're all seeing this, right?"

As Marc looked back to his companions to make sure he wasn't seeing things, there was one distinct thing he certainly would not see: Edith.  The young woman had ducked down under the table to take cover yet, in the moment everyone took their eyes off her, had vanished.

Meanwhile, out the back of the restaurant, the goons fleeing out the kitchen exit into the alleyway were surely in too much of a panic to notice Edith either.  Not when she darted low and swift after them, quick to bound up onto a neighboring awning and scurry her way across the rooftop's edge in pursuit.  The night was still dark and the shadows were plenty, so she had an abundance of places to hide as she tailed after the fleeing men.

A fight?  Cloak and Dagger?  Giant robot fists and painfully loud noises?  Nah.  She didn't want that - not when she wasn't certain how stable she and the Symbiote would be under pressure.  But following the grunts to see where they fled to for safety?  That, she could.

Out in the street the large robot/exo-frame stood up to its full height holding the oriental gangster up by one leg. "IT WOULD SEEM YOUR FRIENDS DON'T REALLY LIKE YOU. THAT IS BOTH GOOD AND BAD FOR YOU. GOOD IN THAT IT MEANS YOU WILL BE ABLE TO WALK UNDER YOUR OWN POWER. BAD IN THAT YOU GET TO DELIVER RTHE MESSAGE TO YOUR PUPPET MASTER." extending its free hand the robot seized one of the man's hands and squeezed to thsound of popping and crunching bones. when it opened its hand there was nothing resembling a hand remaining. "TELL YOUR BOSS THAT HE HAS NO PLACE ON THE STREETS OF THIS CITY AND ANY ACTION AGAINST THE BUSINESSES AND PEOPLE WHO LIVE NHERE WILL BE DELT WITH HARSHLY. ANY ONE GOING AGAINST THIS WILL BE BROKEN, CRUSHED. SPREAD THE WORD. WHATEVER YOU ARE PAID IS NOT WHAT IT WILL COST YOU. It dropped the man to the sidewalk and stood motionless. "GO."

Even Moon Knight had to wince at the robo-bruiser crushing the thug's hand like that. Moon Knight had inflicted such pains on other such mobsters and gunsels in the past, but this... thing... made it look easy.

Maybe too easy. Something like that could do a lot of damage to people and property without so much as a thought. Strength needed limits. Were these going to be imposed from within, or without?

"Identify yourself," he said. He even considered saying 'please'.

"WHY?" Even the echoing distortion of the voice didn't disguise the curiosity.

"Because without a name, now I have to call you 'Rusty'," Moon Knight replied. This thing was refusing to give its name? Fine. If Edith was listening, she might catch a hint of Jake's voice. All swagger and sarcasm. "You want that, Rusty?"

"CALL ME WHAT YOU WANT BEDSHEETS, BEEN CALLED WORSE. DON'T CARE WHAT THEY CALL ME AS LONG AS THEY LISTEN. YOUR POLITE WAY OF DOING THINGS ISN'T WORKING, IT'S TIME TO MAKE IT EXPENSIVE FOR THEM."

"Polite?" Moon Knight laughed. It was a sound that had made grown men wet themselves. He had never been called 'polite' before. Brutal? Yes. Psychotic? Of course. Sadistic? Frequently. But polite? Not even once. "You must have me confused with someone else, Lugnuts."

"DON'T SEE HOW THAT'S POSSIBLE AS I HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE. POLITE, BECAUSE YOU COSTUMED CHARACTERS ONLY STOP CRIMINALS ONE AT A TIME. I AM BGOING TO MAKE IT TO EXPENSIVE TO WORK ON THE STREETS. I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY DO ELSEWHERE AS LONG AS THEY KEEP IT OFF THE STREETS." Turning ponderously the robot started clomping away. For all of its size it moved with a fair turn of speed. From the back there was an armored hatch visible  but there were no latches or dogs visibles to hold it closed.

Two nights ago, Moon Knight had sent over a dozen thugs to the Emergency Room with concussions, lacerations, and broken bones. Whoever this robo-putz thought he was one-upping, he'd need to try harder.

With a disgusted wave of his hand, Moon Knight returned to the restaurant.

”That was…an amateur performance. I’ve met Ben Grimm and even he has more subtlety!”

"I just hope he doesn't step on someone," Marc said, pulling his mask back off. More seriously, he added, "Or hurt someone who doesn't deserve it. But if he thinks he's going to clean up the streets en masse then he's probably going to."

And when he does, I'll take him down.

From a few streets over the rumble of a large diesel chuffing to life joined the background rumble of another that was already running then after a few minutes the pitch changed as they began to move.

Even with as far and quickly as Edith was moving in pursuit of the fleeing goons, she could still hear at least one side of the distant conversation thanks to how loud that booming speaker voice was.  She paused a moment, perched on the edge of a rooftop, to glance back the way she'd come and sigh.  If biting a cop was enough to get SHIELD to pick up an alert on her, there was no way this guy wasn't going to be hounded by agents in no time.

Ultimately, the young vagrant just shrugged it off and continued her stealthy chase.  Whenever goons got spooked, they always fled back to their nearest safe haven or meeting point.  Got to be one of the Tong gangs, she figured.  Normally Edith wouldn't go poking around like that, but she felt indebted to the Wongs... seeing them getting shook down by a bunch of suits didn't sit right with her.

---

Going to need a bit of DM involvement for the guys Edith is tracking, as well as what kind of trail they're leaving behind if Marc or anyone else follows as well after they notice Edith's ducked out.

Marc looked around.

"Where did Edith go?" he asked. He'd gone out the front door for a minute or so, so if she'd left by the back, she'd have had a really good head start.

The real question, of course, was Should I chase her? Marc didn't have long to ponder this, because she would be getting further away with every passing second.

She can be tomorrow's problem, he decided. There was a limit to how much even Moon Knight could accomplish in a single night.

Edith watches from the rooftops as the thugs open a pair of cellar doors in a quiet corner of Chinatown and jump down into it, locking it loudly behind them.

Up on the neighboring rooftop, Edith watched in dour silence as the thugs vanished underground.  A cellar could mean a lot of things.  Could be one of many little hidey-holes they have around the area.  Could lead upstairs into the building itself as a back entrance.  Could have a long tunnel that lead to a whole other building, as was so often the case for the speakeasies and runners.  No matter what though, it was trouble.

"Alright, we need cover.  Tong and the Mafia talk to each other..." Edith muttered aloud.  She couldn't afford to be seen outright, not when there were people after her.  She needed a mask.

All at once, the dark fabric of Edith's blouse surged up from her shoulders like a fluid rather than cloth.  It warped and wove its way up, joining with her hair to shroud her entire head, to form into a cowl and long cape down her back.  Like a negative of Marc's own garb, rendered in inky black rather than bone white.  "Nope!  Nuh-uh, nah!  Absolutely not."  Edith insisted from under the appearance of Moon Knight.  "These are like his religious wear!  That ain't somethin' to mess with.  No wearin' stuff from religions what ain't ours."

The cape wound itself around Edith's form as her dark clothing shifted once more.  The mask pulled away into a habit instead, as the rest pulled down into a long, modest nun's garb.  Edith just rolled her eyes.  "Oh, we got jokes now?  Real funny, smart-ass." she grumbled as she looked herself over.  Actually, it wasn't a bad look.  She liked the boots.  But it was no help to her in the moment.  She needed a proper disguise, something that covered and protected and...

A smirk lit across Edith's lips as her dark clothing flowed like fluid once more, to fully shroud her entire body from head to toe.  She was left in the dark vest, striped trousers, and goggle-set mask of one friendly-neighborhood wall crawler.  Given Edith's slim figure, she passed rather well for a man anyway when none of her other features could be seen.  She gripped about to test the stretch of her gloves, and her smirk remained in full from behind the cover of her mask. "This'll do.  Hope you don't mind us takin' your look for a while, Web-Head..."

"Spider-Man", such as it appeared, hopped down from the edge of the roof to land deftly on the battered alleyway below.  She crept to the cellar, not perturbed by the lock that secured it at all.  Edith set her palm flat on the lock and, unseen from outside, more of that viscous matter flowed off her to fill the lock and grip into its mechanisms.  With a dull clunk muffled by her hand, it unlocked and the viscous Symbiote-matter retracted back into her.  Now or never... Edith ever so cautiously drew open the cellar door to peer through the gap, not yet ready to delve inside until she could scope it out a bit from outside.