The same week Tony Stark lets Ultron loose on the world, Michaela finds herself in a stand-off against what could generously be called Iron Man's clone.

She's taken to saying Knock-Off Iron Man in her head, and it feels too damn good to have someone else be the butt of that particular joke.

In the lead up to the big event, though, Michaela's stressing about something other than her mysterious wizard foe for once. School's winding down again, but that means more finals and projects, and she is woefully underprepared. She's managed to stay mostly on top of her assignments even with the hero gig eating away at her free time, though she's insanely lucky that her manager at Cody's rarely drops by to check in with her, because she's been doing the bulk of her work while she's on shift, in between checking out customers. But, reminiscent of last semester, everything's falling apart at crunch time.

Typical.

She's spent her entire weekend holed up in her apartment, chipping away at a few projects and sporadically texting Spider-Man in bursts so that she doesn't completely lose her mind. He's sympathetic, though he has another month until his own finals (basically confirming he's still in high school and therefore no older than maybe sixteen, because there's no way she's committing to him being any older than that), and he's even stopped sending her conspiracy theory YouTube videos that promise an in-depth exploration of her relationship to Thor. Well. He's down to one a week, anyway, and Michaela can't ask for much for self-restraint than that.

She's in the middle of a break, sitting back in her chair, feet perched on the coffee table in front of her and her laptop placed in the space between, reluctantly watching one of said videos when her (actual) phone lets out a distressing, droning beep. She jumps, nearly upends herself from the chair and cracks her skull on the hardwood flooring; she grabs at her phone just before it swan-dives glass-first into the table, breathing a sigh of relief. Then the fucking beep again, and she switches her attention to the other phone.

A news alert scrolls across her lock screen, the beeping returning at regular, annoying intervals. She catches something about the Avengers and her chest goes tight, her heart starting to beat out a staccato rhythm against her ribcage. She still looks for them in the news as often as she remembers, but they've been largely absent from all forms of social media recently. Except for a report a few days ago that mentioned them taking down a supposed Hydra base in Sokovia, of all places. There hadn't been anything particularly attention-grabbing in the article, seeing as how the Avengers have been systematically destroying the remains of Hydra for over a year now, all of their efforts public in the aftermath considering the public's bitter distrust of SHIELD after discovering that Hydra had been thriving inside the organization for decades.

Admittedly, Michaela hadn't trusted SHIELD before the big reveal on principle. Secretive, shadowy spy organizations that more or less operate outside of the government's control? She hardly trusts the more regulated agencies like the CIA or the FBI, like hell she was going to play like SHIELD were the good guys.

Captain America choosing to take on missions with them had fucked with her a little, she remembers, because despite the decades-old propaganda that painted him as little more than a star-spangled puppet of the government, she thought his penchant for rule-breaking would have him either operating exclusively with the Avengers or... dropping the shield altogether. She wouldn't have blamed him, if he'd given up the Captain America mantle after the Battle of New York; supersoldier or not, he's human, and humans can only withstand so much stress and hardship before they break. She thought the captain had more than earned his chance at peace, but obviously he hadn't thought the same. She respected him, still, because she'd seen him in interviews and press conferences and knew he wasn't going to compromise on his morals just because he was allying himself with SHIELD, and honestly? She'd briefly considered that she gave SHIELD too little credit, because if Captain America saw something worthwhile in working with them, then there had to be something good there.

Hydra, though. Can't say she saw that one coming.

This recent raid looked routine. Nothing to fret over, nothing to get her hackles up over. So she'd dismissed it and went back to studying.

Michaela wishes that she'd done more digging, now.

She opens a news channel's website in a new tab and streams the current broadcast. The Avengers have been spotted in Wakanda. Wakanda? She... knows it's a country in Africa, but not much else — a fact she'd be more ashamed about if it weren't also true that she can't name or locate on a map all fifty US states. She's got the east coast down, and a smattering of western states, and that's about it. Texas, Florida, California, Idaho because it looks so fucking weird. Those square ones, though? Fuck them

God, focus! Avengers, possibly avenging! This is pertinent information she should actively be absorbing!

Michaela wrinkles her nose and mentally snips all her branching thoughts, narrowing her focus to the laptop screen and the vaguely confused newscaster covering the latest updates on just what the Avengers are doing in Wakanda. They make a passing mention of Vibranium and that — that lights up a corner of Michaela's flagging brain, flaring with recognition. Captain America's shield is hewn from Vibranium, yeah? And Wakanda's... the only place on earth where vibranium can be mined. She doesn't think the Avengers are there to negotiate getting their hands on more Vibranium weapons for their team, so. Only bad options remain, as far as she can tell.

But, much as she might not want to admit this, she can't do shit for these guys, especially not all the way over here in Hell's Kitchen, when the possible dilemma is taking place on a completely different continent. It's not her problem. She almost wants it to be her problem, but it's not, and she has to accept that.

She is... on the verge of pretending she's accepted that when her eyes catch on a video in the upper right hand corner that claims it's covering a developing story in Hell's Kitchen. Michaela spares an apologetic thought to her future self, who is going to get very little sleep and even less sustenance over the next couple days, then clicks the video.

To say it's not what she's expecting would imply she had any expectations going into this. And yet somehow this is not what she'd been expecting.

Shaky handheld footage (presumably shot on a cell phone camera) pans up from the cracked sidewalk and over to — Michaela thinks that's the bank about six blocks away from Cody's, the one with the Greek-style columns that one hundred percent does not belong in her neighborhood. So, there's the bank, a few parked cars that the person filming skips over neatly, a writhing mass of bodies trying to run in several different directions... and—

"Fuck the police!" a guy at the epicenter of the mass exodus shouts. "Fuck the government! Fuck the Avengers!"

Oh, good. He's covering all his bases.

The camera is quaking too much for Michaela to get a good look at the guy, but he's wearing some sort of mask and riding on what looks like a tricked-out motorcycle, doing fucking donuts in front of the bank, heedless of the pedestrians who narrowly avoid getting hit in his erratic drive-by. And there's... a light about him. Not sunlight glinting off his mask or the chrome finish of his bike, he's lit up somehow, like his skin is stretched over a bunch of fluorescent bulbs. Or it's the clothes, Michaela can't be sure without seeing him in person.

Which she's going to have to do. Fuck her life.

Snapping her laptop shut, Michaela shoots off a quick text to Spidey and Daredevil (who's in Harlem today, fucking figures) to let them know what's the situation is, as best she can, and that she'll contact them if it escalates. Then she grabs the bag she stores her costume in and makes quick work of getting changed; she's been getting better at the quick-change, she thinks, though she's still no Superman. In any case, it's only a few minutes from the time she closes her laptop to when she's racing out her door and pounding down the street.

It's a twenty minute walk to the bank from her apartment, so ten if she's running, which. Not ideal. She doesn't know what this guy's deal is or what havoc he plans to cause, but she knows a person can do a lot of damage in ten minutes, especially if they're enhanced like she is.

Michaela is going to regret this, but what else is new?

She pivots sharply on her heel and jumps out into the street, sliding between two parked cars and waving to hail down a cabbie. Because the universe hates her, two drive right past her without slowing down, a third almost smushes her flat on the pavement, and she has to practically run out in front of the fourth to get him to stop for her. He's deeply unimpressed with her antics, and she gets that, she does. Gal dressed like a blue-accented version of the Winter Soldier, sans metal arm — she's not inviting much sympathy from anyone who doesn't recognize her as a local vigilante. But she has literally no time to explain her get-up, so she just throws herself into the back of the cab and says, "Keller's Bank, please, and I would be really, really appreciative of you not calling the cops on me."

From the rearview mirror, the cabbie — salt-and-pepper beard, deep-set gray eyes, the kind of mouth that looks like it perpetually has fish hooks attached to the corners dragging it down — levels her with an expectant stare, then flicks his gaze meaningfully to the meter at the top of the dashboard.

Michaela fumbles in her pockets, curses for about fifteen seconds, then flails out her hand, fisted around a few crumpled twenties that she stashed in there for emergencies like... like this, she guesses, though god knows she would have preferred a half dozen other scenarios to her having to take a fucking cab to a fight. But needs must, and all that. Plus she's pretty sure these are the blood-splattered twenties she took off an arms dealer three weeks ago, so she doesn't feel too bad about using them to pay for the cab. She'd feel a lot less ethical about using them in, say, the grocery store. People would have so many questions about that. Yikes, no thank you.

The cabbie grunts and starts driving. Mission accomplished.

The traffic gods have apparently seen fit to bless this venture of hers, because four and a half minutes later Michaela chucks the money into the passenger seat of the cab, mutters a harried thanks to the indifferent cabbie, and slams the door shut behind her, not bothering to see where the cab drives off to now that she's here.

It's a lot like the video, which must have been close to real-time, though there are fewer civilians out in the open now, giving Michaela a much clearer view of the asshole who dragged her out here in the first place.

She called it with the mask, though now that she's seeing it in person she realizes why it looked weirdly familiar in the video. It's bulky, probably doubling the size of the guy's head, and haphazardly spray-painted mostly dark blue and silver over the face plate. Michaela claps a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, because that is definitely a cobbled-together Iron Man helmet, not nearly as sleek as the original and barely serviceable from the looks of it. The eye-holes are big enough that, as Michaela slips closer, she can tell the guy's brown-eyed and also in dire need of an eyebrow trim. He's not wearing any other form of armor, though, just a matching navy leather jacket, a button-up shirt, and jeans, along with heavy-duty motorcycle boots that... might be brand-new.

This guy is a total drama queen, she's calling it right now.

He's still atop the motorcycle, though he's sitting side-saddle, hands nowhere near the handles, and yet the bike's still cruising alone, making lazy laps of the circle of space he's carved out for himself by driving everyone else into hiding. Michaela spots a bulge in the pocket of his jacket as he rolls past her, and wishes very, very hard that it's not a gun. She is not a gun fan, very anti-gun. That arms dealer she brought in with Daredevil? Dealt in exotic weaponry, not guns, which was half the reason she went with Daredevil at all.

The other half was because Daredevil asked and she is a weak romantic bitch, alright? It's an incurable condition and she is learning to live with it.

All in all, you could make the argument that Michaela hasn't learned much from that time she first met Daredevil, because she takes about ten seconds to suss out a semi-viable plan, then engulfs her hands in crackling lightning and steps out into the open.

"I didn't know Iron Man had a brother," is what she comes up while she's scraping the bottom of the barrel that is her mind for some quippy remark to start off with.

It gets the guy's attention, at least, as the motorcycle makes a screeching turn to face her, its rider swinging a leg over so that he's looking right at her. The engine revs, the loudest fucking purr she's ever heard, and this is while he's spreading his hands, that light she noticed in the video flickering through his visible skin and pulsing through the cracks in his clothes.

"Fuck Iron Man," is his reply, his voice rumbling and robotic, clearly disguised by some sort of modifier.

Michaela presses her mouth into a thin line. So neither of them are especially creative, that's fine. That just means they won't be wasting time with witty repartee and she can finish this that much faster.

"Has the guy personally wronged you?" she asks, curiosity getting the better of her. It also gives her a chance to size the guy up, though, so she'll run for it as long as possible. "Or are you the kind of fanboy who gets bitter and jealous when your celebrity crush doesn't give you the time of day? Because buddy, that is not healthy. There's gotta be an acknowledged disconnect. Say it with me: I don't actually know Tony Stark."

Surprisingly, the guy takes the bait. "Stark thinks he's a genius for creating that armor, that he's untouchable," he says, practically spitting the words, which does not go over well with the voice modulator, because it comes out all garbled and gravelly, and Michaela barely gets the gist of what he's saying. He lifts a hand, clenches it into a fist, and the helmet he's wearing seems to ripple, the plates lifting, exposing the hardware beneath, until suddenly it's shifting into a much better copy of Stark's. Minus the customary red and gold, anyway.

"He's vulnerable," he says, low and dark. "And I can't wait to show him just how easily I can use his own technology against him."

It strikes her, then, what he's really doing here. He's loud and brash, making a spectacle of himself, all to get Stark's attention, to lure him out here so the guy can take a metaphorical swing at him. Yikes. Michaela's not sure how he's doing this shit with the tech, if it's an ability of his or the result of an invention he's got on him somewhere, but she's realizing that he can manipulate technology to a frankly terrifying extent. He might actually be able to do what he's saying he can, take Iron Man down by way of his own suit of armor.

Thank fuck the Avengers aren't even in the country right now.

"You're gonna have to wait a while if you wanna show Stark your party tricks," Michaela says conversationally, subtly amping up the voltage of the electricity in her hands. The shriek of it gets a little louder, but not so much that it's going to draw the guy's eyes. "The Avengers are kinda preoccupied right now, which you'd know if you watched the news."

No response, but the bike revs again, so she figures that struck a nerve. Idiot.

"In the meantime, I've got a fucking bone to pick with you." Michaela starts closing the distance between them, weighing her options as she goes. They're outside, she doesn't know the limits of his powers (or whatever this is), so she can't anticipate what he can throw at her, literally or figuratively. Does he need to be close to whatever he's manipulating? What can he interact with out here? Phones? The fucking electrical grid? "You picked Hell's Kitchen for your little showdown and that is not cool, buddy, not cool at all. We've got enough problems without you trying to duke it out with an Avenger here!"

"This was just for convenience's sake," he says, not very remorseful, which is, again, typical. He clenches his hand again, light pulsing under the taut skin of his knuckles, and behind him something booms.

Michaela swerves instinctively, looking for the source. There's smoke wafting down from the bank's doors, and she spots what used to be an ATM, now a smoldering wreck that's spitting out thousands of dollars onto the bank's steps. Harmless — but it underlines his point.

"Going for a classic, I see. Robbing a bank, terrorizing the civvies. I'm guessing you don't actually care about the money." He might not, but there's plenty of desperate bystanders who are sneaking over to the fluttering piles of cash, and. That's. Bad. Fuck, was that on purpose? Does he want casualties from this? "Why don't you just... go home, wait for Iron Man to find you? 'Cause I bet once he gets wind of this he'll be real eager to come knocking."

The eye-holes in his mask suddenly blaze with the same light streaking under his skin. "Where's the fun in that?"

Michaela hears the engine rev, louder than before, and her gaze drops to the motorcycle, expecting him to come barreling at her. She makes to move, to dodge, all the while mindful of the fucking bystanders who haven't gotten off the streets yet, but the bike... doesn't move an inch. Michaela's brow furrows, panic lancing down her spine and curling up tight in her gut. What is he—

She hears the skid of tires from behind her, and it's only because of the spikes of electricity she shoots into the muscles of her legs and hips that she moves quick enough, twisting around and throwing herself to the side just as a goddamn Toyota Camry crashes through the spot she's just vacated. Michaela rolls when she hits the ground (a move courtesy of Daredevil, who got tired of her dramatics real fucking quick) and jacknifes back to her feet, breathing hard and fast and holy fuck he just tried to run her over with a car.

Her thoughts are firing a hundred miles a second. Fuck, fuck the newer cars are all controlled by electronics, everything from the locking mechanisms in the doors to the engines. He doesn't need to be touching them, barely needs to look at them, and he's got full control. Can send them careening into her or anyone else, and that needs to be shut down right fucking now.

"Thought you were a bike guy," she says, letting the smirk her mouth has curved into translate into her cocky tone. "Can't say cars are my style, either, though."

He lifts both hands and she raises hers in turn, firing off a bolt in his direction, more as a distraction than anything else, and another at the car that's busy making a hasty u-turn to come at her for a second try. It glances off the headlight in a shower of sparks and she hisses a curse to herself, lighting up her hand to try again. She's not even sure her electricity is going to make it past the outer shell of the car but she doesn't really have the time to pop the hood, and it's heading straight for her again, swerving only slightly while this ass presumably dodges her initial blast. She fires again, twice in quick succession, and she hits the hood this time but the result is the same, and shit—

Michaela makes a very rash decision. She blames, and will continue to blame, Daredevil for her momentary lapse in judgement.

Instead of running away from the car, she takes a running start and makes a flying leap at it. The impact of hitting the windshield drives the air from her lungs, but she scrambles to get a hand hold, grasping at the windshield wipers and holding on for dear life. Her plan sort of started and ended at get closer to the car, consequences be damned, so she's floundering, unsure what to do to shut this thing down even while she's on top of it, and while it's still driving, making razor-sharp turns to throw her off.

It's by the grace of some non-denominational deity that she catches onto the fact that the driver's side window is partly rolled down.

She doesn't have to get her hand into the car, just has to shimmy herself over to hood enough that she can hover a hand over the window, and then she lets loose more electricity in one go than she has since she blacked out her apartment complex. It leaves her ears ringing and heart pounding and her teeth aching, but there's a resounding boom not unlike the sound the ATM made, the hood punches up with a sharp crack and the groan of denting metal, Michaela gets thrown from the car and hits the ground with all the grace of. Well. A deer that's just been hit by a car.

She flails onto her back, overwhelmed for a moment by the agonizing sting of the roadburn on her arms and at least one side of her face, the throbbing of her side and back, the acrid scent of smoke that she's pretty sure is emanating from her own body. Her vision whited out the second the electricity grounded itself in the car, but it's clearing up now, and she blinks rapidly, jerks her head to the side, because if she did all of that for nothing—

But no, the car's crawled to a standstill some feet away from her, its front wheels propped up on the sidewalk. The smoke might not all be her, at least, because the car is wreathed in it, the hood bent up and curled around what is horrifyingly identifiable as the shape of her body, the engine black and— on fire. The engine block is on fire. Fuck, she forgot to take the fuel in the engine into account, of fuck—

Well. Actually. That probably explains the explosion that fucked the hood and tossed her off like a ragdoll. It must've only been residual fuel, because otherwise Michaela thinks she'd be dead right now. By all rights she should be dead anyway. But she's not, and she's not finished with this absolutely dick, so even though her body is currently one giant bruise and her hair is both fried and levitating from the static, she forces herself to her feet.

Knock-Off Iron Man isn't where she left him. The bike is there, but he's not straddling it. Michaela is in so much pain that she is probably going to pass out once the adrenaline is flushed out of her system, but she still looks for him, and it only takes a second to find him. He's a dozen yards away from her, one hand extended towards another car, only it's — not doing his bidding. Michaela flicks her eyes around the street, flashing between one car and the next, and... they're all... sort of smoking. Not as badly as the car she took a ride on, but it's eking out from the closed windows in wisps, from under the hood. More than one of them has flames licking at the shell of the car.

On a hunch, Michaela shakily reaches for her phone and, fuck, yeah, the thing has completely shorted out. Black screen, really warm to the touch. There goes her plan to call Daredevil and Spidey once she was finished here.

Fuck! All her memes are on this thing, too!

Okay, not her primary concern, but it's going to take so long to build up her stash again. At least Spidey will be more than willing to assist.

"The fuck did you just do?"

Michaela doesn't whip her head around to stare at Knock-Off Iron Man because she might throw up, but she does swivel, slowly, painfully, to look at him. He's stalking towards her, waving — yup, that was a gun she spotted earlier. A weird chromatic gun she's never seen before, though the design sort of reminds her of Stark's repulsors, and. Oh. That's also bad.

"In my defense," she breathes, clutching a hand around her possibly-broken ribs, "I didn't mean for any of that to happen."

He's coming closer and she tries very, very hard to summon a flicker of her lightning, because she's still on the defensive, and his finger is on the trigger, and oh, fuck, oh, fuck—

There's a chance that Michaela does black out for a second, because he's right there, the gun is pointed right at her face, she's going to die, and then — she blinks, and Knock-Off Iron Man is on the ground, the gun skidding across the pavement, and straddling his back and pinning his arms to the ground is a— someone. Someone not exactly slight but slighter than Michaela would expect, considering KOIM is throwing all of his not inconsiderable weight around trying to throw them off and they're not budging an inch. There's a hoodie obscuring their face but strands of long red hair spill down from the hood and — are those claws at the tips of their fingers?

Yeah, there's a really good chance Michaela blacked out, and that this is some feverish dream she's living. What the fuck is her life.

"The gun is dead," her incredibly timely savior says, her voice rough and growly (which might be because she's actually growling, but who knows?). "Think whatever you pulled with the cars fried it, 'cause his helmet's offline too."

"That is... great news," Michaela says faintly, taking a few staggering steps closer to the pair. The girl on his back watches her approach, then digs a foot into one of his arms to keep it laid out flat and uses her free hand to just. Rip the mask off the guy's head. The sound of claws scraping over metal grates on every one of Michaela's nerves but she doesn't give a shit right now, just stares in sort of blank surprise at the man she's been fighting not two minutes ago.

He's a little older than her maybe, hispanic, dark curls and darker eyes, and those eyebrows that need some serious manscaping. The light is still moving languidly under his skin, but nothing is responding to it, least of all the gun his fingers keep twitching towards.

"Thank you for... uh. Not letting me die, or something equally as embarrassing," Michaela says, blinking down at the girl, who cocks her head, sweeps her eyes over the guy underneath before lifting them to meet Michaela's. And they're. Purple. That's cool, she can deal with that. It's any more strange than all the other shit she's had to deal with today.

"Don't worry about it," the girl says, her mouth curled into a faint, predatory grin. "I'm not a huge fan of egotistical dicks going after defenseless people." She pauses. "Not that you're defenseless, clearly, 'cause that lightning was cool as shit, but you're, ya know. In need of a break."

Michaela huffs a laugh and immediately regrets it, her ribs protesting the gesture and her aching teeth getting, well, achier. "I still appreciate the save. I'm... god, you're gonna think I'm rude, but I'm Blackout. Local vigilante, part-time fuck-up. And whatever you've got going on there" — she motions towards the claws and the eyes and the sort of feral vibes she's getting from this girl — "is also cool as shit."

The girl's grin widens. She nudges the helmet aside, stands fluidly in one graceful motion, then whips her foot into the side of the guy's head, knocking him unconscious. Dusting her hands off, she extends one, claws... retracted? Michaela might be experiencing a concussion so she's not sure she can trust her eyes here. "Claire," the girl says when Michaela takes her hand. "And hey, it's not rude. I'm a stranger, you don't go giving out your real name to a stranger, right?" she asks, smiling a little wickedly.

"I see you like to live dangerously," Michaela says, mustering a weak grin of own. "You'd get along with... like all my vigilante buddies."

Claire shrugs, brushing a hand through the hair that's fallen over part of her face, though she doesn't tuck it back behind her ears. "I figure that sort of comes with the territory of being a vigilante."

"Well, you wouldn't be wrong." Her grin falters as a shooting pain cracks through her head, but it passes just as quickly, and Michaela waves off the wary look Claire's wearing. "I'm gonna... fuck, I don't know. I should take care of this guy, maybe drag him to Avengers Tower." Which. Maybe not the smartest decision, because that building is practically bursting with the most advanced tech on the planet, not to mention whatever Stark's got squirreled away in his R&D labs. And the second this guy wakes up he's going to be a fucking menace. "Or... not do that. I will... probably... not do that."

She kicks lightly at the guy's side, dazedly. He doesn't move. So that's. That's good. One thing she doesn't have to worry about right this second.

"You should get going, though," Michaeala says, before Claire can open her mouth. "I'm sure the police will be here soon, or some like, delegate from the Avengers. No need for you to get caught up in that."

"You're gonna deal with this fuckery... alone?" The skeptical brow raise is unnecessary, given the incredulity of her voice, but Michaela gives her points for effort.

Michaela shrugs. "Someone's gotta do it, and I'm the one who signed up to deal with the fuckery, so. Yeah. Me, alone." She levels a meaningful look at Claire, lingering on the hair covering her face and the bulky hoodie that hides her figure, the nondescript everything she's wearing. "Something tells me you'd rather not get brought into this, anyway. Not as anything more than a helpful bystander who tackled the crazy guy to the ground."

Claire visibly considers that, frowning, arms crossed under her chest. Michaela waits her out, taking the moment to catalogue everything that's wrong with her at the moment. It's a lot. It's pretty much everything. Fuck, she's gonna need a hospital visit after this, her amateur skills with a med kit aren't going to cut it this time. And she can't even call Daredevil or Spidey for help because she fried her fucking phone.

Michaela's gotta get a better handle on these powers, she just has to. Things like today can't keep happening, even if they had good unexpected consequences this time around.

"How about this?" Michaela says slowly, the idea coming to her in jagged bits because brain went through the electrical equivalent of a blender and she's not firing on all cylinders, so to speak. "Give me your number."

That gets both of Claire's brows to hike up to her hairline, and oh, yeah, that might've sounded a lot more forward than Michaela intended.

"Not... like that," she sighs, scrubbing at the back of her neck. "My vigilante buddies and I, we have burner phones that we use to keep in contact. My phone is about as useful as a paperweight right now so I can't give you my number, but as soon as I get a replacement phone, I'll shoot you a text, let you know how everything worked out. You're not, uh, obligated to keep the number after I text you, 'cause you're not... Ugh, give me a second."

Michaela takes a deep, shuddering breath, wincing at her ribs. Gathers her thoughts from the maelstrom they've been turned into. "I'm not asking for any sort of accountability, I'm just offering you... Let's just say, if you're in New York, and you ever need someone to have your back, you can call me. I owe you a favor, anyway."

Claire's grinning again by the time she's finished, and she's already digging out a pen from her pocket (which she has for some reason, Michaela has seen stranger shit emerge from people's pockets before), grabbing Michaela's less-roadburned arm and scribbling down the number onto what little unblemished skin there is.

This is all very high school, honestly, though Michaela doesn't feel as warm and fluttery as she did the first time she got a girl's number inked onto her arm. Or when she did the same to a guy. No, now she just feels heavy and exhausted and pained, but she still smiles at Claire, only belatedly realizing that she won't be able to see much of it with the mask still mostly in place.

"Thanks again, Claire," Michaela says, giving her hand another firm shake that probably lasts a second too long. But to be fair Michaela is half out of her mind right now and she's lucky she's forming coherent sentences at all. Societal nuances are escaping her and that's just fucking fine. "Seriously, text or call if you need to. Or you just want to talk. These powers... they're a real bitch on the best days, huh?"

"Yeah," Claire laughs, giving Michaela's hand an extra squeeze before dropping her own back to her side. "Not gonna disagree with you there. And I'll keep all that in mind. Not sure how much longer I'll be in New York though."

"Well," Michaela says, a tad loftily but it's clearly an act and she hopes Claire sees through her bullshit, "I do have Thor's number, so. I bet I can send help wherever you need it."

"Are you milking this 'daughter of Thor' thing, or..."

"Oh my— My dad was born in Ohio, I am not a fucking alien."

"Those sparklers of yours kinda paint a different picture, Firecracker," Claire smirks.

"Firecracker." Michaela just rolls her eyes, which, incidentally, also fucking hurt. "Yeah, sure, not the worst nickname I've been given since I started this hero thing. I'll take it."

"Good, because my nicknames usually stick. Fair warning."

"Uh-huh, sure. You gonna get going any time soon, Purple Eyes?"

"That is lame and you can do so much better than that, but yeah, I'll get going, leave you to your hero shenanigans." Claire squints at her and Michaela tries vaguely not to look as much like she's death warmed over. "Am I gonna hear about you dying on the news?"

"Not any time soon," Michaela says, which in retrospect is not a reassuring response but it's the best she's got at the moment. "Seriously. Go. You've done way more than your civic duty or whatever. I'll take the heat for this, and you can... go back to whatever you were doing before you got mixed up in all this. Yeah?"

After a moment, Claire says, "Yeah, yeah, I can take a hint." Then she flashes another wolfish smile and slips away, back into the now-growing crowd. Michaela doesn't watch her go, just shifts her attention to the unconscious man at her feet. Claire was a nice distraction, but she still has no goddamn clue what she's going to do with him. Avengers Tower is out. The police station probably couldn't hold him, or a jail for that matter. Too many things are automated these days — he'd find some way to be tech-savvy and escape, and then probably go do his dick-measuring contest with Tony Stark. That's not good for anyone, so it's probably best that Michaela sorts out his new place of residence as quickly as she can.

God, where are the cops, though? You'd think they'd be here by now. Ugh, she doesn't agree with literally anything this guy said, but fuck the cops struck a chord. At least Hell's Kitchen's cops.

Michaela's dropped down next to KOIM (she'll call him Kim for short), fighting against the tidal wave of unconsciousness that's rolling over her mind, when a shadow falls over her. She doesn't have it in her to jump upright, doesn't feel the usual tingling energy zipping through her, so she just rolls her head back and squints up at the newcomer.

He's a bland kinda guy, balding, expressionless. Nice suit but not too nice. As she watches, he pulls out a strange little smile, friendly but... she can't read much from it.

"Can I help you?" she asks tiredly. "Because unfortunately for you, I'm all outta helpful qualities at the moment."

"I think it's more that I can help you," he says, crouching to her level when it's clear she won't be standing any time soon. She appreciates that, even if she doesn't necessarily want to. "We've known about you for quite a while, Blackout. You've done some good work here, it's why you haven't met us before now."

"I'm gonna need to know who this we is before you say anything else that's vaguely threatening."

The man chuckles. Chuckles. Of course, not even a full fucking laugh from this guy. "That would be polite, wouldn't it?" He lifts a badge from the inside of his suit pocket and holds it out to her. Strategic Homeland I—

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, the fuck? SHIElD doesn't exist anymore, Captain America shut that shit down," she insists, glaring at the badge and then back at the man in front of her, who seems completely unfazed by her reaction.

"SHIELD needed... a reboot," he says, tilting his head. "It couldn't keep existing in its current form, thanks to Hydra, but that doesn't mean we're not still out here trying to make a difference where other agencies can't or won't. I thought you might appreciate that, seeing you don't exactly work within the parameters of the law, either."

Michaela swallows, hard. "Okay. Okay, sure, SHIELD is still a thing, I'm sure Captain America is real ecstatic about that" — the guy flinches, she knows it, it's fractional and minute but he fucking flinches, god — "but what does this have to do with me? You planning on taking care of me?"

He smiles again. "Of course not, Blackout, you've done Hell's Kitchen a world of good since you started down this path. We just want to help." He holds out his hands. "Phil Coulson, acting Director of SHIELD."

Michaela reluctantly shakes hands, and finds his are rougher than she's assumed. Calloused, like he handles firearms and other weapons fairly frequently. That's... interesting.

"Right now, we just want to talk," Coulson says, and then flicks his hand slightly to indicate Kim. "About both of you. You're not going to be forced into coming with me, Blackout, but I think it's in your best interest. We really do want to help."

"This is how like fifty-percent of movie kidnappings start, but what the hell." She lets Coulson help her to her feet, sways a little until she finds her balance. "We meeting in an office, or something?"

"Or something," Coulson says, still smiling. "You'll see soon enough."

Alright, Michaela thinks, alright, fine, this is fine. Definitely not about to get dissected by some possibly-Nazi scientists. On the bright side, at least Claire isn't here for this.

Michaela also doesn't want to be here for this, but. Ugh. She told Claire she'd take care of it, anyway, she might as well keep her promise, tenuous as it is.