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Daisy stared at her tablet with uncharacteristic hesitancy. The text cursor blinked waiting for her to press enter on the execution command. Once she hit it…there would be no turning back. She would throw this world into chaos, drag every shadow and monster into the light. Some would burn up and shrivel in that light, others would do what every animal does when cornered: fight. And then there were those who would go beyond even fighting for survival and who would lash out like the crazed beasts they were, intent on causing as much mayhem and death as possible before they were finally stopped.
Stopped. That word was oddly appropriate in this world. Daisy still struggled to understand it, and even after exhaustive investigation she couldn’t tell if it was a cultural difference born of some societal historical quirk, a magical geas or whether there was some unseen shadowy organization like Hydra manipulating the legal and political systems of the world. “Stopping” the bad guys in this world seems to mean placing them in prisons or mental institutions which have revolving doors. The escape statistics for metahumans and powered villains is too high to be anything other than suspicious…and yet the heroes remain stuck inside the seemingly self imposed restrictions of never killing, never even really permanently maiming either. It is illogical in the extreme. Especially when she researched some of the members of the equivalent of the Avengers in this world. A literal demi goddess from ancient Greece should not be so against the death penalty or death in battle, no matter what paper thin excuses she gave about respecting the morals of “man’s world.” Daisy gave a small shiver at the thought of the woman. The thinly veiled prejudice and privilege in every sentence the woman spoke had made Daisy very glad she had been unable to find Themyscira on any hacked satellite imaging.
This world’s acceptance of evil as a fact of life made no sense. Especially here in America where there were still states that had the death penalty. Some of the villains who have been repeatedly arrested and locked up had even been on death row, but those were rare. Lengthy appeals and having to re-try them for their latest crimes when they escaped seemed to protect them from ever actually seeing the inside of a death chamber. Then other villains were more often than not judged too mentally unstable for trial and sent to “secure” mental health asylums from which they inevitably escaped again.The whole thing was insane.
Daisy had investigated various police stations and the fact that at least some of these villains haven’t died of sudden medical issues or “accidents” when in police custody, even when they have been charged with killing other police officers….it makes no sense. On her world, she knows the Joker would have ‘tripped’ down some stairs and broken his neck in some police station, or perhaps been found ‘hanging’ in his cell in prison. It was pessimistic but realistic. Humanity had self preservation instincts that should have seen someone attempting to cull the most dangerous villains from their number if given even half a chance.
Either the people of this world are wired differently, or there is something hinky going on.
It’s not even like the capacity for violence is missing on this strange new world. The Robinhood dude who was a knock-off Hawkeye had killed people in the early days of his career as a vigilante. Mainly mundane crime bosses but still. She had had to dig to find those reports and suspicions which dead ended when his image got rehabilitated and he went from a shadowy figure to an almost campy public hero. The furry with a bat obsession had put plenty of people in hospital too with broken limbs and compound breaks. But again they were mostly mundane mobsters and henchmen. It was like no-one had ever explained basic social economics to the flying rat, he was putting ordinary criminals who were already struggling to make ends meet in the hospital. They racked up huge medical debts and got criminal records which inevitably meant they always had to go back to crime to try and survive. Then the cycle started again and got passed to the next generation, or to the next poor idiot who just wanted to pay rent and fill their belly. Even the scarlet motorbike helmet guy had only executed the usual run of the mill drug dealers and mobsters as far as she could see. None of the more violent ‘heroes’ ever just executed the real supervillains or the metahuman villains. It made no sense. This entire world seemed to run on kid gloves, a system made all the worse by a lack of a global taskforce for out of the ordinary threats like SHIELD on her home World. The UN on this earth seemed to have much more power but was ultimately as politically flawed as her own world’s version. They seemed only to exist to put hurdles in the way of entities who would hunt the villains across borders. Don’t get Daisy wrong, the had much the same affect on her own world, but at least they had SHIELD and mundane agents with global reach to fall back on.
Daisy stared at her tablet and then back out over the dark and foreboding city she had found herself calling home since the portal accident had spit her out. That was another gripe she had, this world had dumb names for cities. Gotham? Metropolis? National City? Ridiculous.
And yet…Daisy found Gotham, for all its darkness charming. It was remarkably honest about what it was. A dangerous city. A place where darkness dwelt. And yet there was hope and beauty too.Ordinary people trying to raise good families. Soaring gothic architecture, vibrant nightlife, diverse food and despite all the trauma the city had endured; an unrelenting sense of hope…a baseless idea that tomorrow might be better.
Daisy tensed her jaw and hit enter on her tablet. The signal was sent to the server farms and masses of unaware private PCs across the world her programs were backdoor puppeting for shares of their computing power. The tablet screen dissolved into a blinking and scrolling mass of code as commands were sent and the programs she had spent weeks creating initialized.
The Robinhood program she had made for SHIELD to defund terrorists and Hydra back home had been easy enough to modify to work with this world’s networks and various banking infrastructure. Using a photostatic veil and basic spycraft to infiltrate and plug directly into a few bank’s secure networks just made her programs all the more efficient.
Illicit organizations around the world would soon be finding their various accounts being raided. 90% of the funds would be redirected to hundreds of legitimate charities around the world while the last 10% would be funneled into a few slush accounts for Daisy to use as a war chest against future enemies. She knows this first shot across the bow will not be decisive, but it is merely that, a first shot. She has just plunged herself into yet another war…but really that was inevitable. She was Quake. Without a mission she wasn’t sure anymore who she was.
The programs tore through firewalls and used openings that Daisy had hard networked into the banks by in person infiltration. Combined with the cyber trojans, using a mix of old fashioned hacking and social engineering across a number of international organization’s systems and …well, the accounts Daisy’s programscouldn;t reach really were an absolute minority. It was a truly huge web of financial dirty money that was suddenly under attack. It encompassed players like the League of Shadows, the Court of Owls, Intergang, numerous Mob families, the Calculator, The Penguin, Yakuzza, Triad and a host of others. Numerous numbered accounts with suspicious activity held in tax havens and small nations with “unique” private banking laws were all simultaneously hit. Daisy was unsure who owned those accounts but if they met her program's parameters for suspicious activity then they would be emptied out too.
Hundreds of billions of dollars were drained from accounts all across the world.
With one keystroke Daisy had likely made herself countless enemies who would seek her head. It was a damn good job that she was one of the best hackers to ever live and a complete unknown in this universe, on this world. All anyone would be able to find, even with the best forensic accountants working for years and enhanced metahuman aided backtracking of her hacks, would be her handle: Skyenet. Perhaps a half dozen of the very best enhanced hackers in this world would be able to dig deep enough through her code and back track it enough to find that breadcrumb which she had left…alongside a host of nuclear level viruses and traps. Pity for them that being able to follow those breadcrumbs would just lure them into her traps so she could get a closer look at who they were and whether she needed to pay them a more personal visit. Getting on one of her ‘Lists’ in this world was a bad idea for the bad guys afterall.
Closing the folding tablet she stored it in the thin pouch at the base of her back before looking out across Gotham. Even in summer a muggy haze seemed to hang over the city at night.
The darkness suited Daisy and her plans for the rest of the night. Gotham was to be the first city she cleaned up, but it was not intended to be her last.
In the distance she could see her target, Arkham. She had infiltrated the security last night, created the looped recordings and stolen the passcodes to make access cards and to bypass all the security she needed. Arkham held the worst of the worst, yet even there, there were some who Daisy was prepared to give one more chance to. Two face, Harvey Dent, his story was tragic and when on his medication he actually seemed cooperative and desperate to atone for his sins. If he was left alone and not broken out by other elements or used by them he actually might stand a chance of living a peaceful life, even if he is never released. Dr. Harlene Quinzel was the epitome of stockholm syndrome and brain washing. Daisy wanted to see if she could become something more if finally separated from the Joker before she decided what to do with her. Dr Pamela Ivy reminded Daisy painfully of inhumans whose powers drove them to act but who had not learned appropriate and sensible ways to do that in a modern world which was slow to change and slower to embrace the good their powers could do. Daisy had a deep instinctual belief that if she could get Ivy out of the poisonous urban sprawl of Gotham and to some remote environmental project that she could not only be rehabilitated but that she might actually be useful.
There was a second list on Daisy’s mind however, a list of people who did not warrant a wait and see attitude. Those who had earned the death penalty a hundred times over. Those, who if they had been executed the first time they escaped…or hell even the third time they escaped, then hundreds of lives would have been saved. Daisy had tried investigating how many people’s lives had been irreparably damaged or ended by the Joker after his first, second, third…even his tenth escape…but once she had hit four digit numbers she couldn’t go on anymore. Reading the stories of families torn apart by his sick games, the family members permanently mentally damaged by smilex, disabled by physical injury or outright killed had turned her stomach.
Joker, Victor Zsasz, Bane, and Blackmask were all currently incarcerated at Arkham and soon to meet their ends. Daisy intended for there to be nothing left for any mad scientist to bring back after she finished vibrating them each down to the atomic level.
Others like Deadshot and Ra’s Al Ghul were just two of the villains not currently in Gotham that Daisy had plans to track down and dispose of. The entirety of the League of Assassins would have to go in fact. Doubly so since at this very moment their accounts were likely being emptied by Daisy’s program and they were likely to become…violently reactive as a result. Part of Daisy wanted to see if she can just sink Infinity Island and be done with it, but she knows that like Hydra the League has agents all over the world she needs to track down.She needs to infiltrate the island and get the intel of their network before she sinks the island. The thought of the tedious infiltration makes Daisy’s shoulders tense in annoyance. Infinity Island had been almost easy to find once she went poking about and gathering intelligence on the League of Shadows. The fact almost every government on earth had some kind of record of it yet none had ever considered just nuking it spoke to how deeply the League’s tendrils were implanted all across the world.
At best, five years was the timeline in Daisy’s head for stamping on the worst offenders across the world and putting the boot up the heroes' butts. Targeted assassinations of Villains like Metallo, Reverse Flash,etc. across the world. Rehabilitation of others in ways she found kind of ridiculous that no-one had ever considered offering: the Lilo and Stitch approach might actually work for the likes of Ivy, Dr Freeze, Cheetah and the Terror twins. Plastering the dark secrets of numerous governments across the internet and world media like Project X, Lex Luthor’s human experimentation, Queen Bee’s mind control and assassinations, Count Vertigo's numerous crimes and embezzlement in his own country of Vlatava where his international diplomatic immunity wouldn’t save him from a rebellion and his own people turning on him. Sometimes winning the PR war by just throwing open the closet doors so the world can see the skeletons is enough to cause change.
Daisy pulled her mask up to cover her face and braced her feet, preparing to launch herself through the dark haze of the Gotham skyline on route to Arkham. The trick was to fly low enough that the shadows of the tall buildings would hide her passing. Her black tactical suit would make her just another shadow in the dark city. She needed to be fast and unseen. She didn’t want to risk drawing the attentions of the brooding Bat. Daisy was confident he could take him in a first encounter, his entire schtick seemed to be that he was a master of counter strategy but in a first encounter when her abilities would be unknown she would have the advantage. Even then, Daisy was still quietly confident she could take the World’s Scariest Furry. He seemed to be used to fighting well trained mundane humans or metahumans with little to no training. Daisy had powers but she wan’t dependent on them and had been trained by the best in hand to hand combat and in unconventional thinking in battle.
Even then, she had her trump card: She knew the stubborn, pointy eared hero was none other than Bruce Wayne. Using his identity as a shield against him wasn’t exactly playing by the rules and made Daisy feel kind of bad but all was fair in love and war. And anyone who thought this world wasn’t at war with the villains was a fool. Finding out Bruce’s secret hadn’t even been that hard for someone like her, someone who knew what to look for when unmasking heroes. Hacking all the tech companies in Gotham who could possibly be supplying Batman, cross referring with experimental equipment, then making a list of who had Tony Stark levels of wealth to blow on being a hero and a basic algorithm to run predictive paths on Batmobile sightings as well as a body recognition and a gait recognition program had made it pretty conclusive. Daisy had actually been impressed. The kind of long term undercover assignment that Bruce Wayne’s life had to be so that no one associated the playboy billionaire with the clinical Batman spoke of deep seated trauma and mental health issues. Daisy knew cause it takes one to know one. Daisy loved a bit of undercover work as much as the next spy, but the idea of living her entire life under an assumed persona…yeah, she was impressed.
With a flex of her knees and a faint whooshing sound Daisy launched herself into the air, arrowing for Arkham. The time for self reflection and planning was over.
Now it was time to end the threats that lingered in Gotham once and for all. Next stop, Metropolis.