I stared at the New York City streets as they passed outside the window, not really absorbing what I was seeing but still enjoying looking at it. Catching a taxi felt like an almost novel experience, these days. I could just use portals to get around the city, but that would have gone against the whole ‘slow down, you’re not always in a rush’ mindset I was trying to cultivate. I wasn’t off using them completely, of course—sometimes I was in a hurry, and sometimes the distance involved meant it would be silly not to. I was still mostly using portals to get to and from the upstate Avengers compound, for example; it was almost a two-hour drive each way, so that was something I was absolutely fine with avoiding, but a twenty-minute trip to Hell’s Kitchen to visit Jessica and Matt didn’t feel overly onerous and I didn’t have anything else I needed to do today.

It turned out that portals were going to be the answer to solving my money problems, too. The specific contract details were still being ironed out, but it was Tony—of all people—who had actually come through for me there with a proposal. Turns out, getting stuff into orbit was expensive as balls. I could charge what frankly felt like a ludicrous amount of money, per kilogram, and NASA would still be getting a massive bargain. Tony wasn’t completely doing this out of the goodness of his heart, of course. Stark Industries would save me doing any of my own paperwork by acting as a go-between for a cut, and I’d do a few launches for them as well.

After all was said and done, though, I was looking at maybe a half-days’ worth of work to earn what would likely be two or three hundred thousand dollars—free and clear, after taking tax into account—a couple of times a year. Now, that was what I called thinking with portals! Stark Industries had even given me an advance, without the contract formally in place yet, which I felt was pretty generous, so that I could afford to actually, you know, live.

Tony’s lawyers were drafting up some pretty spicy NDAs for all involved that kept my methods a relative secret—turns out, we could do all of this pretty legally while skirting a bunch of the usual rules around rocket launches since ‘magic portals to space’ were apparently an edge case that wasn’t really covered by any specific US legislation or regulatory body. I was honestly a little bit surprised that no sorcerer had ever tried to do something like this, but I wasn’t about to complain. Part of me wondered if the whole thing had been entirely Tony’s idea in the first place, or if Nat or Steve had ‘encouraged’ him. Then again, I also got a sneaking suspicion that he might have approached Kamar-taj first and they’d said no.

Either way, just like that, I was basically rich. It was enough to make me feel a bit guilty for freeloading off Nat, but it had only been a week and a half. I’d find my own place eventually but, in the meantime, I was actually really enjoying living with Yelena. She was a bit of a pain sometimes and an absolute slob, but we had fun. Maybe I’d suggest we find a place together and stay as flatmates? I knew from past experience that—even though I was naturally a bit introverted—I tended to go a bit weird if I lived alone for any significant length of time. I needed people around me to keep my head grounded.

Ava Starr—Ghost—was still at large. I got the distinct impression that Pym and Lang were covering for her, but the Avengers were at least nice enough to pretend like that wasn’t the case. Most of them seemed pretty sympathetic to her situation… between Nat, Bucky, Bruce and Clint, a lot of them had had similarly chequered pasts and were prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was finally on track to get a cure for her condition and had no reason to do anything that might jeopardise that, after all. Pushing to go after her, putting her on the run, would only make things worse.

I had made myself available for the discussion with Wakanda about Ava, in case I could think of details that might be relevant, but it had proven unnecessary. Between Natasha and Steve, it was pretty much a masterclass in diplomacy. They never lied, or even particularly stretched the truth, but they managed to make Ava sound so sympathetic even I was surprised. She was a victim. Orphaned as a child by SHIELD, then captured and raised to be an assassin—something that Nat, in particular, heavily empathised with. She was in constant pain, knowing that her condition would eventually kill her. She was vulnerable and Eliza manipulated her. Wakanda weren’t entirely convinced, but had eventually agreed to leave her to the Avengers for now and not have their War Dogs actively hunt her down, which was a better outcome than I’d expected.

The taxi pulled over and I paid him before stepping out onto the sidewalk, looking around. Annoyingly, Jessica didn’t have any street signage and I’d never been to her home office before, so it took me a minute to find the right building and catch the elevator up. At the other end of the hallway, opposite the elevator, was Jessica’s office/apartment—black lettering stencilled on the opaque glass window set into the door spelling out the name of her PI business: ALIAS INVESTIGATIONS.

When I rapped my knuckles on the door, Malcolm—Jessica’s friend and sort-of employee—answered it and ushered me quickly inside. I’d called ahead and made an official appointment, so Jess was expecting me, already sitting down at her desk, sipping from a can of energy drink. Mal sat me down in the chair across from her before moving back toward the door, hovering a little awkwardly in the background.

“Hey, Jessica,” I said warmly.

Jessica Jones looked overtired and a little like she hadn’t showered, as usual—her long, black hair a bit greasy and unkempt—but, if anything, her slightly dishevelled appearance somehow made her even hotter. I was pretty sure she was fully straight but, once I’d finally managed to beat down her defensive façade, I was still kind of hoping against hope that maybe she’d be interested in a fling sometime.

“What do you want?” she asked, folding her arms and staring at me impassively.

“I don’t ‘want’ anything, really,” I said, smiling lightly at her usual surliness as my eyes wandering around her disorganised mess of an office. I noted the repairs that had been made to the wall dividing the living-area-turned-office and kitchen, the plasterboard still unpainted. “I just thought I’d check in on you—see how you were doing, whether you’d made any progress with the IGH investigation, that sort of thing—and thought it’d be easier to get hold of you like this than to ask to catch up over coffee.”

“So you’re wasting my time.” Jessica exhaled sharply and shook her head. “I’ve told you before: We’re not friends, Wanda.”

“Why not?”

She squinted at me incredulously. “What?”

“Why not?” I repeated with a shrug. “We could be. I’m pretty useful to have around, as far as friends go.”

“Because I don’t want to be,” she said firmly, placing both of her palms on the desk in front of her. “Look, if that’s all you’re here for, I have other places to be.”

Ugh, this was always so frustrating. I let out a sigh. “I know being a prickly, stand-offish asshole that doesn’t make friends easily is just who you are, but even so… I’ve helped you. I’ve been honest with you, which is something I know you appreciate. You backed me up when we spoke to Matt Murdock. What’s the deal? What am I doing wrong, here?” Annoyance had started to leak into my tone, but I stopped myself short of outright asking the question I wanted the actual answer to—‘why don’t you want to like me?’.

Jessica’s jaw worked silently as she glared at me. After a moment, she shook her head. “Fine. You’re right, you have been honest with me. So I’ll be honest with you.” She paused, steadying herself with a breath as she looked down at the table, avoiding eye contact, as if she didn’t even want to look at me. “Your powers are fucked up. I don’t like being around you because they make me uncomfortable.”

I rocked back in my seat slightly, a look of realisation passing across my features. “Oh,” I said simply, processing her words.

Of course. I was a fucking moron. The last mind controller she’d met had enslaved her. She’d endured months of what was effectively physical and psychological torture and sexual abuse. Killgrave was dead, at her hand, but that didn’t magically resolve all of the trauma and complex PTSD she had. Of course Jessica Jones, of all people, would be uncomfortable around someone with mind control powers.

“I’m sorry. That hadn’t even occurred to me,” I said slowly, feeling like a piece of shit. “I’ve… I’ve been really thoughtless, haven’t I?”

“It’s fine,” she said brusquely, but she didn’t look up and was fidgeting slightly with her hands. She looked really uncomfortable. I’d seen her like this with me before, but it just hadn’t registered until now what I was actually seeing—I’d thought it was just her being standoffish, utterly blind to her very real discomfort.

“No, it isn’t.”

I’d never used actual mind control to override her will, but I’d still constantly bulled over all her objections and done what I’d wanted to do, regardless of her wishes, in basically all of our previous interactions. That had to be triggering. God. She wasn’t being an asshole—I was. No fucking wonder she didn’t like me.

I stood up abruptly, the legs of the chair scraping loudly against the wooden floorboards. “I’ll just… I’ll go,” I said, hesitating for a bare moment. My cheeks had grown hot, burning with shame and guilt, my vision blurring a little. “If you need help with anything; if there’s something I can do, just ask. Anything you need. Anytime. You’ve got my number. Otherwise, I’ll just… I’ll leave you be. I’m sorry, Jessica, I really didn’t mean to.”

I turned and fled, barrelling past Malcolm and hurrying out the door, down the hall, and hammered at the button to call the elevator. After it failed to materialise in two seconds, I shook my head, feeling a little wetness starting to run down my cheeks, and thrust my hand into my pocket, fishing out my sling ring instead. The elevator dinged as it arrived, but I’d already spun up a portal and returned to the street below.

I leant back against the cool brickwork of the building’s exterior as I dismissed the gateway, ignoring the reactions of the few pedestrians that had seen me appear. Closing my eyes for a minute, I focused on my breathing, forcing myself to calm down and push through the familiar feeling that I was a shitty, worthless excuse of a person. Fucking hell. I should have realised. I’d thought I was better at reading people than that. I’d never meant to make her uncomfortable. I was such an idiot. Even my attraction to her felt gross, now, with that context. I wiped at my face with the back of my hand.

Okay, so, never seeing Jessica again, I guess. Cool. And here I’d thought I was done burning bridges with people I liked.

I’d vaguely been thinking about maybe wandering up to Harlem and trying to track down Luke Cage once I was done catching up with Matt but, after what had just happened with Jessica, I was suddenly feeling a lot less social. If Matt’s office wasn’t so close by, I probably would have just portalled straight home and hid in bed for the rest of the day.

Instead, I steeled myself and took out my phone, bringing up the Maps app to remind myself how to get to Nelson and Murdock from here. It wasn’t too far—Jessica and Matt worked within fairly easy walking distance of each other. Straightening up, I started down the sidewalk.

I walked in a bit of a daze, trying not to think too much about Jessica, and fifteen minutes later I stepped past a familiar bronze plaque to a wrought-iron mesh door covered in peeling beige paint. Moving inside and up the stairs, I found the door labelled NELSON AND MURDOCK, ATTORNEYS AT LAW and headed in. The waiting room was basically the same as it had been the last time I was here—haphazard, mismatched folding chairs and a flimsy card table tucked into a corner with some magazines and a lamp on it.

Across from the door, the office manager, Karen, was already standing up from her desk to greet me, a tight smile on her face. “Hi! Wanda Maximoff, right?”

I made a small noise of approval, despite myself. “I’m surprised you remember me.”

“…Let’s just say you made an impression. Matt’s here, but he’s busy going over some casework.”

“Can you let him know I’m here? He’ll make time for me; I won’t bother him long,” I said, going through the motions for Karen’s benefit—even absorbed in his work, there was no way that Matt hadn’t heard me come in or speak just now.

“I’m sure he will,” she said, sizing me up for a moment before she went over to his office door.

I frowned to myself. Her body language was a bit guarded—she didn’t like me, either. Of course. I mean, I’d made basically no effort to talk to her or put her at ease, but still. I was a mysterious unknown, sweeping in here to have private talks with Matt about something she wasn’t privy to. Hell, she might have even seen me on the news by now. I didn’t like to think of myself as being bad at dealing with people, but after what had just happened with Jessica, seeing Karen also a little visibly uncomfortable with my presence was really just making me want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Karen rapped on Matt’s door smartly with her knuckles, waited a second, then opened the door and poked her head in to tell him I’d arrived. After a moment, she took a step back and held the door open for me. “You can go right in.” She tilted her head toward the open door, still looking at me appraisingly.

“Thanks.” I shot her another smile and stepped inside, making sure the door closed behind me and she returned to her desk before turning toward Matt.

He’d stood up as I’d entered, head vaguely pointed in my direction. “Ms Maximoff. Good to see you again.”

“Little blind person joke?”

“Have to take the humour where you can, in my line of work. Please, sit,” he said, smiling and gesturing to the chair across from him. I sat. Matt did the same. I took a deep breath, sighed, but didn’t say anything at first. After a few moments, he shifted position, leaning forward. “What happened? With the Hand?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head. “It’s complicated and a lot of it you don’t need to know. Their leadership’s gone entirely—I guess some of the lieutenants might try to hold stuff together, but they’ve lost basically everyone that really matters. The rest will probably either dissolve or fall to infighting… or the Chaste will clean them up, I guess.”

“I thought you said we had time.”

“We did. Something else happened that meant the Hand moved up my schedule, is all.”

“I’m assuming this ‘something else’ has to do with the terrorist attack in San Francisco.”

“Is that what they’re calling it? Yeah. Like I said, I can’t really get into the details.” I bit my lip, eyes firmly glued to Matt’s desk. “I’m going to go ahead and assume you completely ignored my warnings and got involved with Elektra anyway.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth twitched and he licked his lips before letting out a small, awkward chuckle. “I don’t know what would make you think that.”

A small smile briefly touched my face but I banished it, my expression turning serious again. “Don’t fuck things up with Karen, okay? Especially not for Elektra.”

He paused, processing that for a moment, before he responded. “I won’t.”

“You’re still working the Frank Castle case, right?”

“We’re on the docket for next week.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay. Well, hopefully this will help you focus on that, then.”

“I’ve been watching Midland Circle; Stark Industries has equipment and drones on site. Iron Legion, same make as the ones that were attacking the Avengers in San Francisco.”

“You don’t need to worry about Midland Circle anymore. Like I said, the Hand’s done. Their plans for what’s underneath it don’t matter anymore.”

“And what are your plans for it?” The question pulled me up short and I glanced up at Matt, surprised. He wasn’t looking in my direction, his head tilted, staring vacantly off to one side, but he seemed like he was focusing very intently.

“I don’t have any,” I said honestly. I hadn’t really thought about Midland Circle much at all since Eliza had been created. I’d need to ask about what the investigation into what the AI had been using Stark Industries for had uncovered. “Stark Industries will try to acquire it, probably, and I guess once it’s unearthed we’ll study it. See if there’s some beneficial purpose it can be used for.” The most likely scenario I could think of was the Avengers handing the dragon bones over to Kamar‑taj—they seemed best placed to deal with something like that.

“Okay.” Matt seemed mostly satisfied with that answer.

“So… yeah. That’s about it. I just wanted to drop in and let you know that you shouldn’t really have any more problems with the Hand from now on. If you do see Stick again, tell him ‘You’re welcome’ from the Avengers.”

There was another moment of silence, then Matt turned to face me properly—his unseeing eyes, hidden behind red-lensed sunglasses, seeming to look right through me. “Are you okay?” he asked, his tone gentle.

I suddenly felt very small. “No, not really,” I said. It was pointless to try lying to Daredevil.

“Anything I can help with?”

“Maybe; got any advice on how to be a less shit person?”

He let out a soft snort of amusement. “I think I’m the wrong person to ask for that sort of advice. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I ran my tongue along my lips to moisten them, then sighed. “I mean, something, but it’s nothing anyone can do anything about. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs lately and things are just… hitting me a bit harder than they should, I think.”

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “Okay, well,” he said, rising to his feet, a small sympathetic smile lighting his face. “Come on. There’s a bar just down the street that I like. I’ll buy you a drink.”

I blinked, surprised. “It’s barely noon.”

“You don’t seem like the sort of person that that’s ever stopped before.”

“Touché.” He had me there. “…Okay.”

--

“You’re famous now,” Matt said, idly fingering his glass. “After what happened in San Francisco, I mean. Helping the Avengers. Karen recognised you on the news.”

We were sitting in a booth at Josie’s Bar, the Nelson and Murdock staff’s favoured haunt. More light filtered in from the clouded, dirty windows and glass door than was cast by the dim lamp over the battered-looking wooden bar and the few scattered flickering neon signs—the place would be pretty poorly-lit at night, which would probably help to conceal just how worn the place was. Actual daylight did the place no favours. It smelt of stale beer, cheap liquor, and something faintly metallic, like rust. On the face of it, it wasn’t the most inviting place, but still… I could see it had its own sort of unpolished charm. We almost had the place entirely to ourselves, with only one older man sitting quietly at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink. I was honestly a little surprised that the place was even open this early.

“Of course she did,” I said with a sigh. “Sorry if that makes meeting with me a bit more awkward.”

“It’s not a problem.” Matt leaned his elbow on the table, ear tilted toward me. “Your brother joined the Avengers. There’s a lot of gossip and speculation as to why you didn’t join as well. Any particular reason he’s on the team and you’re not?”

I didn’t really want to talk about this. I was already in a bit of a mood because of what happened to Jessica, I didn’t need to be reminded of my other failures as well. “Politics, mostly. We’re still working together.”

“You’re not happy about that.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I’m not,” I admitted. “I want to be on the team. It’s just… complicated. It was my decision to step back a bit and not join, though.”

“You wanted to distance yourself, for some reason?”

“Politics,” I said again. Matt seemed to sense that I didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t press the issue again. After a few moments of companionable silence, I drained the rest of my glass. “Would you want to see again?” I asked, placing my empty whiskey tumbler down on the table between us and looking at Matt seriously.

He let out a small, incredulous laugh, as though he couldn’t believe I’d just asked that. “What?”

“If your eyes could be healed. A miracle cure for blindness. Or if you could, for example, speaking purely theoretically, get cybernetic prosthetic eyes. From space. Would you?”

“I’ve never really thought about it.” He seemed amused by the examples. “It would depend, I guess.”

I waved a hand dismissively. “Cybernetic prosthetics. You’d need to have the old ones completely removed, I think, but then you could just literally pop them in and they’d work. Plug and play, so to speak.”

“…I feel like you might not be talking from an entirely theoretical place, here.”

“I might not be.”

“If it were safe—”

I cut him off. “Safe. Free. No complications. Shouldn’t affect your other enhanced senses. Just your vision back. Would you do it?”

Matt hesitated for a few moments. “…Are you offering?”

“You’re really squirming around answering the question, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been blind since I was nine. Would I choose to be able to see again, if I could? Yes. Of course.”

I nodded. “Okay. I can’t make any promises, but I know some people. I’ll look into it for you.” Next time I spoke to Carol, I’d ask her about it. If she didn’t know where to get some space-tech cybernetic eyes, she’d probably know someone who did. If not, maybe the Guardians of the Galaxy would. I knew Rocket got his hands on one at some point.

Matt went quiet again for a bit, his jaw working silently. After a little while, he took a deep breath. “That… seems like a lot to do for someone you barely know.”

“I actually know you better than you might think, Matt. And you’re nice to me. Feels like I’ve had to fight pretty hard to get that from most other people in my life.” I chuckled, running a finger along the rim of my empty glass and shooting him a mischievous look. “You know, if you weren't already with Karen, I'd let you take me home right now and have your wicked way with me.”

He let out an amused snort. “Because I’m nice to you?”

“Not just because you’re nice. You’re also pretty cute. It honestly doesn’t take much more than that, for me.” And maybe it would have helped take my mind off how shitty I felt about what had happened with Jessica.

Matt laughed again and shook his head. “Maybe day drinking wasn’t such a good idea.”

“That’s not it. You’ve got enhanced senses; use them. Listen to my body, the way I’m talking. Do I seem tipsy at all? Alcohol just doesn’t do that much for me, these days. Downside of my powers.” I paused, playing back the last minute of conversation in my head for a moment before I heaved a sigh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have even said it. Inappropriate.”

“You don’t have anything to apologise for,” he said with a small shake of his head. “Who knows? If I wasn’t seeing Karen, maybe I’d even have taken you up on it.”

“I just don’t know when to turn it off, sometimes,” I confessed, looking down at the table. I picked my glass up by the rim, my fingers splayed, balancing it on the edge of the base and rolling it slowly back and forth across the wooden surface. “I didn’t always look the way I do now. It’s like… there’s this thing, where someone who’s experienced poverty—who been through times when they were just never sure when the next meal would come—will overeat when they get the opportunity to. Just pack it in. Because they’re conditioned to feel like they might starve again soon, even if that isn’t likely to happen. I think it’s kind of like that.” I let out an incredulous little laugh. “Wow. God, that actually makes me sound really pathetic and desperate when I say it out loud like that, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” Matt responded, his expression thoughtful. “I think it just makes you sound human.”

--

“We… we didn’t know what to do. Who else to go to,” Brian said, his voice a little unsteady. He stood near the punching bags, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, his eyes darting nervously to the nearby weapons rack. The evening light spilling through the dojo’s sliding windows gave the room a golden glow—normally, Colleen would find it comforting and peaceful, but after getting the news she just had, it felt almost stifling.

She didn’t respond right away.

Instead, she turned and walked toward the back room, flicking her head to indicate that Mary and Brian—her two former students that had come calling—should follow her. They hesitated a moment, but did so. The small space felt even tighter with all three of them inside. Colleen knelt down in front of an old trunk, unlocked it, then took out her grandfather’s katana. Closing the lid, she rested the weapon on top, staring at it for a moment as she knelt, her back to her two visitors as she steadied herself. She could hear Mary shifting behind her, the soft scrape of her shoes on the floor, and Brian’s low, nervous sigh.

“Who was it?” Colleen asked softly after a few moments of relative silence, her fingers tracing along the saya—the sheathe—of the sword, lingering on the white bindings wrapping the hilt. “Gao’s faction?” Madame Gao was a criminal. A monster. If her disagreements with Bakuto had finally escalated to the point where she’d wanted him removed, then Colleen would—

“Gao’s dead, too.”

Her head snapped up in surprise and she turned to look at them. That had been far from the answer she’d been expecting. “What? How?”

“They’re all dead,” Brian said hurriedly, almost tripping over his words. He looked scared. “All of the Fingers. Colleen, there is no Hand. Not anymore. It’s all gone.”

He might as well have punched her in the stomach. It seemed… impossible. Unbelievable. How could something so good just be gone? For all of the faults of Gao’s faction, it wasn’t just Bakuto’s work with troubled youths that was in jeopardy. What would happen to the charities that Alexandra Reid’s foundation managed? The White Hat’s outreach programs in Africa? If the Hand was truly gone, there were so many people that were going to suffer who would otherwise have found help and support. Like she had.

Mary and Brian exchanged a nervous look. “It was San Francisco, near as we can tell,” Mary said. “That big ‘terrorist attack’ where they’re saying the Avengers fought some evil robots. The Fingers were caught up in it, somehow. We don’t know the details… who was fighting who.”

“We don’t know anything?” Whatever had happened in San Francisco hadn’t been just a terrorist attack, Colleen was certain of it. If the Avengers were involved, whatever had happened had to have been serious, but the government and warmongers like Tony Stark had a vested interest in hiding their dirty laundry. They certainly didn’t care about the little people that got caught in the crossfire.

“We have a name. That’s all.”

“What name?”

“Wanda Maximoff,” Mary said, her tone deadly quiet, a small twitch of her lip giving away her feelings. She might as well have spat.

There was something about that name… “Why is that familiar?”

“You probably saw her in the news. She was there, in San Francisco,” said Brian. “She’s been working with the Avengers. Her brother’s the newest member.”

Of course. Colleen didn’t really keep up with celebrity stuff, but a new Avenger joining the team was big, splashy news that had everyone talking about it. Pietro Maximoff… Quicksilver. She didn’t know much about him, and even less about his sister. Only that she was Enhanced, somehow. Powerful. Dangerous.

Colleen stood up, turning to face her two former students properly. “Thank you. This… thank you for coming. Leave this with me.”

Brian shook his head and took a deep breath, steeling himself. “You don’t have to do this alone, Colleen. We’re with you,” he said.

Next to him, Mary’s hands had tightened into fists. “We’re all with you.”

Colleen felt her heart swell, eyes misting up again, and she smiled. Raising her arms, she ushered the two of them into an embrace, squeezing them tightly. “Thank you. I know you’re upset, but this is going to be dangerous. You’ve still got your whole lives ahead of you.” She pulled back, hands lingering on their shoulders, and looked at them seriously. “Take care of the younger ones. Bakuto dedicated his life to helping other people get theirs back on track; you need to honour that legacy. Carry it forward. Promise me, okay?”

Reluctantly, the two of them nodded. Mary’s face was twisted into a determined scowl, but Brian looked like he was almost on the verge of tears again. Colleen gave their shoulders a final squeeze before letting go.

“Go,” she said. “Keep me in the loop. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.”

Brian reaching over and gently touched Mary on the arm. “Okay,” Mary said, nodding again. She exchanged a final look with Brian, then the two of them quietly filtered out.

Once they were gone, Colleen picked up her grandfather’s katana, feeling the weight of it, holding the saya tightly as her mind raced. The tenets of bushido demanded that she only carry her blade if she was willing to draw it, and to only draw it if she was willing to use it. To use it meant to cut… and to cut meant to kill.

Bakuto had given her everything. She’d learned so much from him. He’d treated her almost like a daughter. She wouldn’t have had Chikara Dojo if it wasn’t for him. The training, safety and opportunities she’d helped give to youth who’d needed it—none of it would have happened without him. Bakuto had done so much, helped so many people, touched so many lives… and now he was dead. Murdered. Everything he’d built was collapsing and all the people he would have carried out of poverty, out of despair, would now no longer get that chance.

Her grip tightened. She needed answers. Whoever had done this—whoever was responsible—she would find them and make them pay. She needed to find Wanda Maximoff.