Michaela's alone when she gets the call.

She wouldn't be if it came at literally any other moment, but she's out for a run when she hears it, trying in vain to burn off the excess energy that's accumulated with her keeping a tight leash on her powers these last few weeks. Things have circled around to the early days of her vigilantism, when she electrocuted every other appliance she touched and static-shocked herself whenever she grabbed for the pole on the subway, but it's from not having an outlet instead of plain old ignorance these days. Matt helps where he can, reminding her to let off a little steam every now and then, which – loosely translated – means she's currently sweating sparks and should like, go and charge her laptop or something.

Can't say she's a fan of how her life is going, but it's better than it could be. Most likely, anyway. Curbing her fatalistic thoughts means she hasn't been considering worst-case-scenarios as much, and while that's great and all for her mental health, it means she doesn't have anything truly terrible to compare her current misery to and feel all warm and fuzzy about it.

But, the call.

All Star again, and she just rolls her eyes a little as she jogs to a stop at the crosswalk, fishing the phone from her zip-up pocket and bringing it to her ear.

"Peter," she starts, eyeing the light impatiently. She hasn't jay-walked in a while, irrationally worried it'll get the attention of the fucking feds she and Matt have clocked in the neighborhood, but she's tempted to go for it now. "What time even is it? Shouldn't you be diligently committing the entire periodic table to memory, or whatever you little geniuses do at your smart kid school?"

Or, well, that's what she's planning to say. What she gets out is about two-thirds of Peter's name before she's interrupted by his breathless voice:
"I need backup!"

She tenses instantly, adrenaline flooding her system just as quickly – just like old times.

"What the hell?" she says, but she's already reaching for the bandana she's tied her back with, resituating it so that it works as a semi-decent replacement for her usual mask. The goggle's are out, obviously, she's too far from her apartment to make a run for them, and if that were an option she wouldn't need the stupid bandana either. The little crosswalk guy pops up, signaling it's alright for her to keep walking, but she stays rooted to the spot. "Peter, where are you? And – hell, yes, tell me that, but also, what are you doing?"

Michaela darts a glance around her, only just second-guessing her decision to suit-up (as much as tugging a bandana over her face counts in that regard) in the middle of the city, at like – seven-thirty at night. Dusk set in maybe half an hour ago and the sidewalk wasn't crowded to begin with when she ran out of her apartment, but she breathes a quiet sigh of relief when she sees there's no one around to question her. No one besides the guy in the too-big coat conked out against the side of a building a little ways down the street. Michaela hesitates – Peter needs backup and he still hasn't answered, fucking hell – then gives into her first instinct and hurries over, dropping whatever change she has (six crumpled ones and two dimes) into his lap. He stirs a little at the movement, but she doesn't sick around, whispering fiercely into her phone for Peter to answer her, goddammit!

"Dudes with guns!" Peter gasps, barely heard over the sound of his heavy footsteps – he's running? Why is he running, Peter slings his way around the city, he doesn't touch down all that often—"Shot out my web-shooters!"

Ah. Fuck.

That answers that question, and concisely, too. How nice.

"Where are you?" Michaela repeats, her heart in her throat.

Peter's quicker with a response this time, rattles off the street sign he last saw as he mumbles curses and hisses out shaky breaths. Michaela's running the moment she can get a clear enough picture of where he is in relation to her own location, more than a little grateful her antsy habits took her kinda far from home today. It doesn't register that she's familiar with the street Peter gave her for a reason until she's halfway there.

He's in Hell's Kitchen. Why the fuck is Peter in Hell's Kitchen?

She doesn't have time to get the answer out of him now, so she shelves the thought and picks up her pace. The foot traffic doesn't worsen all that much, but she does have to dodge around the occasional pedestrian and also maybe inadvertently breaks up a drug deal by barreling straight through the trio, calling out a hasty sorry! over her shoulder and ignoring the daggers they stare at her as she keeps running. Also the gun – she very much ignores the gun one guy pulls out of his hoodie because she's in a hurry and petty crimes can wait, dammit!

All the while she stays on the line and Peter keeps her updated on the situation as best he can. The real problem, Michaela gleans after she overhears a few hushed conversations on Peter's side, is that he's not just protecting himself.

She gets it out of him in fits and starts – he was coming to visit her and Matt, because with their self-imposed ban on heroing he's had a lot more free time on his hands and Ned was busy, okay, and his aunt was out of the house today and he's been bored. Coming out to Hell's Kitchen seemed like a quick fix to that problem. Until he stumbled on this gang – at least he's mostly positive it's a gang, they're wearing matching jackets with Jackals on the back, and holy fuck, does that ping something in the back of Michaela's panicked hindbrain – and they were maybe-possibly attempting some kidnapping-human trafficking thing, and Peter couldn't just look the other way, it's not how he's wired.

He has the mask on him most days out of habit, so he chucked his bag and slipped it on and went to subdue the gang members, only, like he said, they got a lucky shot on him. The bullet caught his web-shooter and promptly destroyed it, and then someone caught on to the fact that Spidey's webs aren't a biological feature of his and went for the other web-shooter. Which he also destroyed. Peter's acrobatics would probably have been enough to get out of there regardless, but he's got two girls with him (tweens, he calls them, and Michaela would love to laugh if she didn't currently feel like she's going to vomit up the contents of her entire chest cavity), and yeah, one would be fine, he could hold her and wall-crawl away, but two makes things a little more challenging.

Which is when he decided calling Michaela should be his next course of action.

Now he's got the younger girl on his back and he's shepherding the other one ahead of them, and he's freaking out.

"You're gonna be fine, kid, okay? You and the other kids, everything's gonna be alright. Just – keep on an eye out, I'm almost to your location, and. Hold on a second, okay? Hold on, I'm not hanging up, I'm just moving the phone away from my ear for a second, I gotta text Matt—"

She's not making the same mistake, okay? She's not. Matt's going to be upset, he has every right to be, but she's not going into this without a backup plan like every other superhero gig she's ever attempted. It's a quick message, as short as she can make it while still conveying all the relevant details. And she knows Matt stayed late at the office tonight, he has a client who can't meet during the day and he and Foggy are trying to be their sweet accommodating selves; there's every chance he's not going to be check his phone any time soon, even if it is Michaela texting him, but she promised him she wouldn't take risks without at least trying to get him involved, and she's honoring that. Badly, probably, but she figures the whole thing's based on intent, anyway. Matt will understand.

She's just tucking her phone back against her ear when she hears the crack of a gunshot, a high-pitched scream right on its heels, and all the air leaves her lungs in a rush.

"Blackout!"

She doesn't have the disconnect she used to, hearing her hero name called out to her on a random street corner, and she's grateful for it now. Michaela doesn't hesitate to swivel towards the source, picking out Peter and his two charges, as well as the six men on their tail. Six men – six guns, too, she sees the shadow of them in the glare of the streetlight – all of them decked out in Jackals gear. Christ, she's seen these guys once or twice since the night she met Daredevil, but it's been for petty crimes – looting, that one time, and she thinks one of them might've been trying to go all Grand Theft Auto before she zapped his ass. Human trafficking, though, that's – new.

The electricity's crackling in her hands before she's really thought to bring it out, and Peter's head snaps up, either at the sound or the sight of it, his shoulders sagging slightly in relief. She doesn't need to warn him – does it anyway, yells duck with as much composure as she can mine from her depleted stores– and he grabs the older girl and rolls them out of the strike zone, just as Michaela lets loose bolts from both hands. Her aim's gotten better over the past year or so, but it's still satisfying to see two of the men jerk almost simultaneously, the guns flying from their hands and clattering to the ground.

She's gotten better at control, too, partly due to Lincoln's patience and Matt's insistence that she hone her skills. Murder might not be on the table, but possibly debilitating nerve damage? Yeah, she's not all that fussed about it.

Michaela manages to shock another gun to the ground, but she's not Luke, fuck, she's not bullet-proof, and her survival instincts kick in right around the moment she feels the line of heat zip past her right shoulder. Fuck, fuck, it's a graze, she knows that, knows it could be worse, and her body compensates without conscious input on her part, ducks and rolls to follow Peter into whatever coverage he's scrounged up for himself. But fuck her, that hurts.

"Michaela," Peter breathes as she comes to a jerky stop next to him, clutching at her bleeding arm and probably giving off some serious we're fucked vibes going off the wide-eyed looks she's getting from the kiddos. "What're we gonna do?"

She blinks, bemused. He's asking her what the plan is? She came here out of blind devotion to his absolute nerd of a hero, she didn't factor in consequences or strategy.

"Call the cops?" she suggests, vaguely curious if anyone in the neighborhood already has. Gun shots are depressingly commonplace in Hell's Kitchen, it wouldn't be surprising if no one bothered calling them in tonight. Seeing a couple of known vigilantes out and about, though, that might be more tempting, especially with the reward for any information regarding their whereabouts she's seen posted, online and on newsstands. Michaela grimaces. "Shit, scratch that. No police until we're able to safely scram."

"Can't you just fry those guys?" the girl on Peter's back pipes up, which gets Peter tensing up in surprise, like he forgot she was there. Hell, he might've – she's seen the weight he can haul around, a kid that size probably isn't much of a strain.

"Uh," Michaela says, wincing, and only partly because of the muffled cursing she can hear from just beyond the mouth of the alley they're crouched in. "Uh, yeah, technically? But I try not to, ya know. Kill people. If I can help it."

"But they're bad," the girl points out, exasperated. The other girl – and they might be sisters, their faces not identical but their bone structure similar enough that Michaela's willing to bet they're related somehow, however distantly – nods her agreement, her eyes wet with tears but with no less conviction than her. Sister. Cousin. Family relation. "Heroes kill bad guys all the time."

"Uh," Michaela says again, eloquent as always. She darts a glance at Peter, who is no help whatso-fucking-ever; he just stares back at her from behind his bottle-cap lenses, shoulders hitching higher the closer the group of gun-toting dicks get to them. They're gonna have to move, like now, because if Michaela can hear them than they've gotten way too far already. "No killing," she says, jabbing a suspiciously parental finger at the younger girl, who huffs and rolls her eyes but otherwise doesn't fight her. "I'll – distract them. Uh. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'll be the decoy, Spidey can get you two outta here—"

"Wait, what?" Peter shakes his head, not unlike a dog trying to shake off a leaf, or. Something. Michaela's cognitive function isn't really being funneled into pithy comparisons at the moment, she'll cut herself some slack. "That is not happening, Michaela, you'll get shot!"

Michaela frowns, pressing her hand a little tighter against her bleeding arm. She already got shot, thanks. And what the hell? Where's the faith? Is that a Matt-exclusive trait, or is Michaela that disappointing as a vigilante? Or maybe it's a combination – she could see that. Understand it, even.

Still.

"Kid," she says, her eyebrows lifting at the way he leans forward, like he plans to interject. "Vigilante seniority applies here."

"I've been a vigilante longer than you have!"

Michaela pauses. She tilts her head a little, weighing that, then shrugs to concede the point. "Okay, fair. But I'm older, and what I say goes. You trusted me before, yeah? With Cato."

"You almost died, Jesus, you're not making a great case for yourself."

"Not everyone can be Matt! Fuck, never mind, just." Michaela inclines her head towards the girl closest to her, who's watching their exchange with glossy eyes. What they're saying is clearly going over her head, her attention fixated on them only because they're talking and they're something to anchor her focus. Michaela's been there, she gets it. Shock does a number on you, no matter how many times you've gone through it. "You said you wanna be a hero, Spidey. Be a hero and make the sacrifice play, get these girls somewhere safe."

Peter wants to argue, she can see it in the tense line of his shoulders, the white-knuckle grip he has on the fabric of his pants. But she also sees the moment he gives in, slumping just enough to have the girl on his back let out a tiny squeak of protest. He's upright again, moving his hands to curl under her knobby knees, and she shifts her arms around his neck to get a better grip. He holds out a hand to the other girl and she scrambles to take it, scraping her knees in her haste.

"I can handle a few assholes, Spidey," she says, smiling under the mask so her eyes crinkle, so Peter can tell she's smiling. "Besides, I texted Matt. He'll be here soon, he can help with clean-up." When he hesitates, she stands and gestures behind him, sparks rippling across her skin, too loud in the silence. "Get going before I decide to demote you. Or, ya know, confiscate that vigilante card of yours."

"You're not the boss of us," Peter says, but he's getting to his feet nonetheless. Michaela's smile widens a fraction. "If it's anyone, it's Daredevil."

"Eh, he won't mind me stealing the spotlight for a while. 'Snot like I do it a lot."

"Okay, but—"

"Spidey, if you're gone by the time I count to three, I'm taking that burner phone off you—"

He sighs. "I'm going, I'm going! Just – just stay safe, okay?"

Michaela raises a hand and mock salutes. "Can do, Spidey!"

As soon as Michaela's sure he's cleared the alleyway, his charges in tow, she spins around to fire off a warning shot at Bad Guy #1, who's just edged around the trunk of the badly parked car they'd been using as cover. He hisses, patting at the electrical burn streaked across his jacket, but he doesn't drop the gun, and he's – got a knife in his other hand. Fantastic. More deadly weapons. But hey, this one's metal – much better conductor than the plastic casing on the guns.

Without the distraction of two civilians and a grounded Peter, Michaela's more than willing to throw her lightning around – glancing off cars, scorching marks into the street, trying to take these guys down without causing them any serious damage. She just needs them out of commission for a while, long enough for her to make an anonymous tip to the cops and get them picked up by the right people. You know, go through the proper channels, which – that's what she and Matt and everyone else has been doing from the start. Well. Matt to a lesser degree, okay, he beat the shit out of people for a while there, though he did phone in the police more often than not or got a passerby to do it for him. He just. He was just a little extra with his justice, is all.

A clean shot to a wrist – another muffled shout and the gun leaves his hand, the guy dropping to his knees and cradling his burnt hand against his chest.

A light touch to another guy's side, and the shock is mild but it gets him to curl in on himself, which Michaela takes full advantage of – Matt didn't suffer through all their sparring sessions for nothing.

A well-placed kick to the back, electricity passing easily through her non-rubber soles, and that's three down.

Michaela ducks under another baddie's arm as he swings at her, his gun lost in the chaos, then surges forward to elbow his arm back and slide a foot between both of his, hooking it around one ankle and yanking until he yelps and falls back. He grabs for her jacket on the way down but she steps back, her clothes sparking and catching the tips of his fingers. She's learned how to play defense after all this time, and goddamn does it feel good to actually get a chance to prove she's changed. Gotten better, honed her skills.

Of course, the moment that thought crosses her mind is when the bullet lodges itself in her thigh.

"Fuck," she gasps, staggering back a step, which was a mistake, fuck, her leg is on fire, she's fucking burning, and her knees suddenly can't support her weight. She fumbles to grab onto something, anything, but nothing's in reach and she hits the ground, another gasp torn from her lips as she clamps a hand over the wound. Fuck, fuck, she's—her breathing's picking up, her heart jackrabbiting in her chest. Blood roars in her ears, seeps through her trembling fingers, and she tears her eyes away from the sight, whipping her head around to—

The guy's gun is raised again – bright red burns on his wrist, his grip shaky but holding, goddamn it Matt warned her, make sure the guns are out of reach! – his trigger finger sliding back—

And then he's knocked sideways, the gun going flying, and Peter's there, crouched in the space recently vacated by gun-toting baddie.

Michaela can't breathe.

"Michaela! Michaela, shit, you're—that's a lot of blood, ohmygod, we need to call, uh, call an ambulance. Call nine-one-one. Right? That's—" Peter skids over to her, hands frantically moving over her but unwilling to touch.

"Fucking fuck," she hisses, pressing down harder on her leg despite the instinctual desire to never touch her leg ever again, like, she would maybe rather lose both hands than apply pressure but she's doing it, because not doing it means possibly bleeding out and really, she's traumatized Peter enough for one lifetime as it is, she can't add to that. "Peter, why are you—"

"They're safe," he says, quick and panicked, finally making a decision and ripping off part of his sleeve – and Jesus Christ, it's only fabric but she forgets how strong this kid is – so he can wad it up and hold it to the wound. She moves her hands to accommodate, knowing there isn't really a point to arguing with him when he's trying to help her. "I got them – they're hiding out in this convenience store, the owner's gonna call the police so they can go home, but, like, Michaela, I couldn't leave you here! That's, that's like the opposite of what the vigilante buddy club is for!"

"I... uh, I can't really argue with that," Michaela says, and she's laughing a little but it's strained and Peter is definitely not amused. In fact, the tension in his shoulders only gets worse, hiking them up near his ears. He freezes, his head snapping up, and she can't see his eyes but she knows he's looking right at her. "What? Peter, what, why are you freaking out more?"

But, well, she doesn't need him to answer, because in the next second it becomes very fucking obvious what's gotten him so high-strung.

Sirens. Police sirens, rapidly closing the distance.

Fuckity fucking fuck.

"Don't even say it," Peter says, wrapping his fingers tight around her wrist. She blinks, taken aback by how forceful he sounds, by the fine tremble infecting his hand. "Don't, okay? I'm not leaving without you, Michaela. It's just – not happening, end of story. Friends don't abandon each other."

Well, damn. There goes her grand plan to take the heat and let Peter off the hook. How dare she try to protect him, huh?

"Help me up," she urges, and Peter hesitates for only a beat before he's slipping an arm around her and easing her to her feet. Taking any weight on her injured leg makes her want to scream and subsequently bite off her fucking tongue, but she swallows it down, tries to ignore the pain (failing miserably, but she supposes anyone could guess that) as she and Peter make their way towards the alley at a pathetically slow pace.

"Pete, you can carry me, right?"

Peter looks at her sharply. "Uh, yes? Yes! I can do that! Oh, I'm stupid, I should've just—"

"Don't worry about it. But, uh, maybe hurry? We don't have a lot of time."

"Right, yeah, gotcha!"

They get as far as the mouth of the alley before the street's blocked off, three squad cars in total. The lights flash red and blue against the brick walls of the buildings around them, highlighting the grave faces of the cops that surround them. Oh, look, they're all packing heat, very practical of them.

Michaela feels Peter staring at her, waiting for her to come up with some brilliant plan to get them out of this. After all, she's evaded the cops twice, right?

Except both times she had SHIELD backing her, and with the Accords and the general state of the world right now, she doesn't think she can count on them to come to her rescue this time around. SHIELD isn't going to stick its neck out for a random pair of New York vigilantes when they have their own enhanced agents to protect.

Michaela slowly extricates herself from Peter's arms despite his protests. Every cop trains their gun on her, watching for a toe out of line so they have the excuse to shoot. Probably – that's been her experience, anyway. But it's good, sort of; the more they're looking at her, the less attention they're paying Peter, which he would take advantage of if he wasn't such a soft-hearted dumbass. Before she can even hint to him that he should wall-crawl out of her as fast as he fucking can, he's grabbing her hand, linking their fingers together.

She could shock them, the police officers. She could do it, and even though she's bleeding heavily and feeling more than a little groggy, she figures she could even manage to do it without killing anyone, herself included. She could—

"Hands up!"
Michaela barely resists the urge to groan. She lifts her hands, Peter doing the same, keeping them linked, and she feels the barrel of a gun poke into back, right between her shoulder blades. Fuck, she should've noticed them coming up from behind, that's a classic tactical maneuver. Matt would've noticed, Peter might've—well. Maybe he did notice. Maybe he put it together faster than she did that there's now way out of this. Michaela could shock the shit out of all of these officers, but there's no guarantee she'll hit them all, no guarantee they'll all go down, and in her current state, no guarantee she won't hit Peter in the crossfire. Still, she's facing some sort of superhero-proof jail, maybe it's worth the risk—

She finally gets a good look at one of the officers as he steps forward, gun raised, his other hand reaching for a pair of cuffs at his belt. This isn't the usual boys in blue – fuck, they're wearing armor over their uniforms. Specialized armor, and from the slight squeaking she hears whenever one of the moves, she's willing to bet it's plastic, or infused with some kind of plastic fibers. Something that doesn't conduct electricity well. They came prepared, huh.

She and Peter get cuffed, and even that's weird, because they're not normal cuffs. Hers are plastic, but reinforced, like they also weren't sure of her strength levels; Peter's look like they'd give the Hulk a run for his money. If that weren't bad enough, they also get – she can't think of a better to say this, they get collared. Like, legitimately, one of the cops snaps a metal collar around her throat, and Michaela flinches at the cold bite of steel on her sensitive skin.

And it's, it's not just a collar, right, because what would be the point of that?

"I wouldn't try anything if I were you," the cop in front of them says, gesturing to his own throat. "Either of you use your powers and that collar activates. Designed to put pressure on your windpipe until you fall unconscious. And the casing around the wiring protects it from being overloaded, so your electricity wouldn't do you much good anyhow," he adds, pointedly staring at Michaela.

She furrows her brow, frowning under the mask. These clearly aren't standard issue, which means the government's been busier than she thought. What organization came up with these? How do they know they work? Because it seems to her like they would have to have tested it on someone who's enhanced, you know, the make sure it does what it says on the tin. And fuck does that make her mad, even through the haze of blood loss she's quickly losing the battle to.

They're read their rights, which is all well good considering Michaela has no inclination to speak right now, then loaded into the back of two separate squad cars. She catches a glimpse of someone ripping the mask from Peter's head, the quiet murmuring as they all take in how young he is, before her head's shoved down and she's basically pushed into the backseat. Before the door's shut someone reaches in and tugs down her own mask, and she scowls at them, bares her teeth knowing it doesn't mean a fucking thing. The door slams shut.

Michaela's sags back against the seat, like all her strings have been cut. Fuck. Fuck, what is she going to do? They're going to interrogate them, they'll want information about the other vigilantes and—

Matt.

Oh, god. Matt.

He's going to be devastated, furious. And she can't warn him, can she? She might not even get a phone call, but if she does they'll be monitoring it, and she's not clever enough to let Matt in on what's going on without actually saying the words, she'll mess up and out him if she's not careful. Fuck, everything hurts, she can barely think through the pain; they're going to do something about that, right, they're not planning on letting her bleed out in the back of their cruiser before they've had a chance to process her. That's—that would be bad of them. Real fucking bad.

Collar or not, there's a good chance she's going to pass out long before they reach the precinct.