To say it feels like the world is ending would be – actually, Michaela can't be bothered to think of something even remotely quippy about the situation she's willingly thrown herself into. It does feel like the world is ending, but isn't that just par for the fucking course for New Yorkers these days?

The epicenter of the fight isn't more than a block away from Keller's Bank, which is an uncomfortable reminder of simpler times, when all Michaela had to worry about was not getting flattened by a technopath-powered car. She can't believe those are her good old days, but, well, here they are.

Nothing's changed much from what Michaela saw on the news broadcast. Most of the civilians have cleared out of the immediate area, leaving the streets nearly deserted. Deserted, but not strictly unoccupied – there's evidence of Mordo and Cato's magic clashing everywhere, chunks of asphalt gouged out of the road, scorch marks streaked across buildings, a crooked stop light that's bent around what appears to have been a human-shaped projectile. The wizards themselves are currently nowhere to be found, though Michaela's fairly sure they're still in the general vicinity, which she's basing off the still smoking destruction that's been wrought on her beloved city.

She's so sick of wizards and their magic bullshit. Harry Potter is dead to her after this.

Beside her, Matt takes a moment to assess the situation. Judging by the taut line of his shoulders and the foreboding slant of his mouth, she thinks it's fair to say he's not too happy with what they've walked in on. But he doesn't say anything, doesn't make any complaints, just signals for Luke (who is an absolute tank of a man and also incredibly sweet?) and Jessica to round up the wayward civilians.

Jessica rolls her eyes. "Sure. Put the two powerhouses on babysitting duty. Great plan, devil man."

But she goes all the same, scowling when Luke grins and nudges her shoulder, murmuring something that she snaps out an equally quiet reply to. Luke gives a mock salute to Matt, winks at Michaela and Peter (who's hovering behind her, dangling upside-down from one of his webs and giving off some pretty big I-have-no-idea-what's-happening-but-by-god-am-I-gonna-help vibes), then jogs after Jessica, already calling out a comforting greeting to the panicky people they're moving towards.

Sensing her eyes on him, Matt turns to Michaela. "This is your wheelhouse, Michaela. Where do you want us?"

And ain't that the million-dollar question?

Michaela's had months to consider strategy. She's gone over the facts with Matt a hundred times, done it another hundred with Peter. She's even factored Mordo into her impromptu This Is Why We're Fucked meetings. And yet she doesn't feel any steadier on her feet here, doesn't feel like she's stepped back even an inch from the precipice she's been toeing for a year. Cato is just as unpredictable, just as terrifying as he'd been that first night she ran into him, when he'd flashed his not-so-holographic shields at her and disappeared into the darkness.

But when has that ever stopped her before.

"Spidey, you up for getting us a birds-eye view of the action?"

Peter is buzzing with nervous energy, looking like he might just vibrate off this mortal coil if left unchecked, and she figures this'll have him feeling included without letting him directly engage with the murderous wizards right off the bat. He's quick to nod, anyway, flipping upright without letting his feet touch the ground and webbing his way across the street. She watches until he's out of sight, something knocking loose in her chest even as something else seizes up. Then she's blowing out a slow breath, sparks licking down her forearms and flickering at her fingertips.

"We don't have a plan."

"Little too spur of the moment for us to have anything in place just yet," Matt agrees. His head cocks and she knows he's listening out for Peter. Or maybe he's spreading his awareness out, pinpointing civilians and baddies alike. Matt's good at multitasking like that, she's learned, much better than her at splitting his focus. She supposes it comes from practice and necessity, though she'll admit she's more than a little envious of the talent.

"Matt" – she really can't stress this enough – "we don't have a plan. We are fighting wizards and we're plan-less. We're gonna get ourselves killed." We're going to get killed quickly morphs into she's going to get Peter killed and fucking hell, she can feel the cold sweat breaking out on her skin, her temples damp with it, her mask soaking through as the seconds tick by. "Oh god, Matty, the kid—"

He's closer, suddenly, having moved without her registering it. His hand claps gently over her mouth, another tugging lightly at her braid to drag herself out of her spiraling thoughts.

New York's under magical fire and she's making Matt pause to comfort her. Fuck. The toaster oven vibes are back and she could not be less appreciative of their timing.

"The kid is going to be fine," Matt tells her, his voice firm, and there's no give, nowhere for her anxiety to burrow through the cracks. She just – runs up against it and bounces back, because Matt's close and warm and she can't see his eyes but can imagine them, the promise in them that he'd rather die than break. She swallows hard, struck momentarily dumb all over again by the realization that the universe did her one hell of solid when it had her cross paths with Matt Murdock. "The kid is going to be fine, we're all going to be fine. This is our city, Michaela. It's ours to protect, and that's exactly what we're going to do. Trust me, alright?"

Trust Matt. That's... not nearly as difficult as she might've guessed. Because that's what she's been doing for, god, what, a year? She's put her faith in Matt over and over again, and aside from that whole he-totally-knew-identity-for-months-and-didn't-think-she-should-be-privy-to-that shitshow, he's never let her down. And she's never really doubted him, even in her lowest moments.

Okay. Inhale, hold, exhale. Rinse and repeat.

Michaela cracks a grin underneath the mask, knowing Matt'll understand. "Taking your cues from the good captain again, Murdock?"

Matt smiles back, dropping his hands to squeeze her shoulders once before reaching for his baton. "What can I say? I'm a fan. And I figured it wouldn't hurt to emulate your celebrity crush a little," he adds, his smile tilting into a smirk at the indignant noise she lets out.

"We're – not gonna address that right now. Wizards first."

"Wizards first." Matt gestures with the baton, sweeping out towards the now-empty streets. "Lead the way, Blackout."

So that's what she does.

She's by no means a leader, quite literally has the social skillset of a lemming, but Michaela knows that Matt is right beside her, that he's not going to foist all the responsibility onto her and let her hang. Together they check in with Luke and Jessica, relieved the pair have the civvie situation on lockdown. Then Peter's swinging into view again, nearly crash landing into a dumpster that's been upended in the middle of the street he's so agitated.

The news isn't – great. Peter spotted Mordo and Cato about three streets west of where they are now, tracked them for a bit and realized they're not moving much from their current position. Peter's convinced someone threw up – and she's paraphrasing here – some kind of barrier that they totally ripped off of this really cool anime Ned showed me? He couldn't get a clear view of them fighting, like he was staring through not-quite-opaque glass, and when he shot out test web, it. You know. Got deflected, or so Peter says. Not that she doesn't believe him, and not that that's even out of the realm of possibility at this point (fuck, what is impossible when it comes to these assholes?), it's just – weird. Okay? It's fucking weird, and she hit her quota for magical bullshit like eight months ago and she's frankly appalled at the debt she's been racking up since.

Even without Peter's surveillance, Michael doesn't think it would've taken all that long to find these guys. Matt tenses up when they're a block out, twisting even as they run to better work whatever echolocation thing he's got going on. He catches her staring (she's probably boring a hole into the side of his head, he wouldn't even need the amped-up senses to figure it out) and shakes his head, jaw clenched, and she gets it. It's bad. That's really all she needs to know.

In reality, she could've done with a more... comprehensive warning, but. Well. That's not how things usually go for her.

Michaela's first impression of the fight – of the actual fight, not the remnants of it, the bruised and battered people caught in the crossfire – is light.

There's Mordo, his own shields flaring bright and sharp even in the midday sunlight, fending off Cato's pure-energy whip, with much greater ease than she did back in the Library from Hell – or, at least, she's not seeing any charred clothing or smelling the oh-so aromatic scent of burnt flesh, so. Arguably could be worse.

Mordo jumps – and jumps again, mid-air, what the fuck she wants a double jump – and flips over Cato, slashes down at him with the shields, only for Cato to slip right down into the ground via one of his sparkler portals. He reappears behind Mordo and catches him in the shoulder with the business end of his staff, and the man flies forward, straight into side of a building.

This would be when Michaela – stupidly, god she's so fucking stupid, no wonder Matt told her once she gives him anxiety-induced heart palpitations – lets loose a bolt of electricity on pure instinct, which zigs and zags through the air and miraculously wings Cato on the right side. He staggers back, hood tossed back to reveal the sharp gleam of his disbelieving snarl and the sluggishly-bleeding cut across the jut of his cheekbone, and – fuck. He zeroes in on her immediately, like he'd only been waiting for a sign of her presence. His stance hardly changes, though she watches him twirl his staff around his fingers, the ease of his movements grating on her already fried nerves.

"Blackout," he says, and it's booming, his voice loud and overwhelming, like it's bouncing off the buildings around them and nailing Michaela right in the solar plexus. Beside her, Matt ducks his head, checking a wince, and her nails bite into her palms, harsh enough to draw blood. "So good of you to join us. And you've brought comrades! The Devil and the Spider. What fitting companions for an Inhuman such as yourself."

Michaela doesn't answer. She's rapidly cataloging Cato's surface-level injuries, darting glances over to where Mordo is still slumped over on the cracked sidewalk. Mordo did some damage, little nicks here and there, one of Cato's eyes looks on its way to swelling shut eventually, and when he moves there's a slight hitch in his gait, a delay that says he probably took an unwanted spill earlier and knocked a joint out of alignment. But he's still – he's not unharmed, obviously, but he's confident, unworried. He's smiling, damn him, and the joyful curl of his lips seems genuine, as does the matching sparkle she can make out even at a distance.

There's also the, uh. The glowing.

The intricate tattoos she'd noted last time are incandescent now, lit from within and dazzling in the same way sunlight striking metal is dazzling. It is and isn't like how Grace had glowed, the manifestation of her Inhuman potential turned up to the max; Cato's got the color down, even has the rippling effect that reminded Michaela too much of sunlight filtered through clear water. But it's contained to the tattoos. The light doesn't leak out of his pores the way it did with Grace, and Michaela is enough of a fantasy-slash-sci-fi nerd to make the connection between the ink and Cato's newfound magical steroid boost.

A shudder ripples down her spine as she sizes Cato up. He's – worse than he's ever been, she can tell that at glance. Michaela puts very little stock in Mordo's wizard-catching abilities, but his confidence had to come from somewhere, yeah? He can't have been that much of a push over that it took one good hit from Cato to knock him flat on his ass. Cato's glowing with power, and he – her jaw clenches, teeth grating against each other just at the thought, but he got it from somewhere. Someone.

"Spidey, you're on guard duty," she says, waving absently at Mordo's worryingly prone form without taking her eyes off Cato, which is just as well, given he's looking his fill when it comes to her already. "And no backtalk!" she adds, hissing, knowing he's likely gearing up to deliver an earnest speech on just why he should be allowed to risk his can't-even-legally-drink-alcohol neck, because I have a responsibility, Michaela, I gotta do what I can with these powers or I'm no better than the bad guys! Michaela gets it, she really does; she's got the same mantra on a loop in the back of her head any given time, really, and while it's not quite the same with Matt, he can sympathize. They're all here for the same reasons – they want to do something good because they have the ability to do it.

But fuck if she's putting Peter fucking Parker in front of the firing line when she's got another choice.

"I'm not dismissing you," she says, quick and sharp but not without that hint of too much trickling down from the back of her throat. Too much warmth, too much love. Too much of her stupid fucking heart on her sleeve. "I'm not, kid, I'm—I'm being selfish, okay? I need you as safe as you're going to get, or I'll drive myself insane with it later. Let me be selfish for, like, the next ten minutes at least?"

Despite the mask she can more or less tell he's raising bow brows at her, taken aback by the fierceness of her tone. Or maybe he's picking up on the tears she can feel burning at the backs of her eyes, the stranglehold they've got on her throat. Either way, Peter nods slowly, darting another glance at Mordo before he bobs his head again – to both her and Matt, she figures – and then he's off.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Michaela says, her voice high and tight with absolutely nothing she can do about it, "but I really want Karl back in this fuckin' shit-show of a fight."

"Too bad we don't always get what we want, huh?" Matt says, and Michaela barks out a half-hysterical laugh, because Christ, she doesn't think truer words have ever been spoken. Her whole life is a testament to that, and so is Matt's, and Peter's, and every other godforsaken hero out there. But now isn't the time to lament her life choices, if there ever is a time for that; they have shit to take care of.

But, shit—

Michaela grabs at Matt's hand and squeezes, just for a moment, flashing him an equally fleeting smile that's rendered all but useless given her mask and his blindness. He squeezes back and then she lets go and breathes.

And this would be when all hell breaks loose.