Chapter Text
Luke Cage walked in through the door into the small office space he and one Danny Rand had rented out in a building in Harlem. The window on the door was made of pebbled glass and lettering on the front hadn’t been completed due to a dispute with the letterer, leaving the “Heroes for Hire” and their respective names below it looking more like stencils than solid letters. Luke knew well that this would not inspire anything resembling confidence in their prospective clients, but they were having more than a little trouble dealing with the situation at the moment.
Danny Rand was seated at one of the desks, one of the few pieces of furniture they had in the office, and going furiously through spreadsheets on his laptop.
“How’s it going?” Luke asked as he walked in.
Danny looked up to him, seeing his yellow shirt torn in a few places. “By the look of things, better than you. What happened?”
“Just some hoodlums who were trying to hold up the grocer off Frederick Douglass,” Luke said, “I scared ‘em off.”
“Hopefully, yes.” Danny said. “I like Mr. and Mrs. Chen. I hope they don’t go anywhere.”
“Neither do I,” Luke agreed, “but the worst part was getting a name off of them.”
“Someone from the Maggia, I expect?” Danny asked.
“Diamondback.” Luke replied.
There was a moment of silence as Danny processed that revelation.
“Well,” He said, “that’s… that’s not good.”
“Problems for another night,” Luke said, gesturing to the laptop, “what are you working on?”
“A courier showed up and delivered this thumb drive to me this morning at a Board meeting of all things,” Danny said, tapping the device that was attached to his laptop. Looking at the man in his green shirt and acid-washed gray hoodie, very few people would ever suspect that Danny was indeed Daniel Rand, the CEO of the Rand Corporation, “don’t know who it was from, but it has some juicy information on it.”
“About what?” Luke asked, sitting facing the back of a chair, folding his arms over it.
“Balance sheets and copies of some land acquisition deals and construction permits along the piers in West Harlem.” Danny said.
“Does it say who’s buying things up?” Luke asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Danny shook his head, “They’re all for a company called ‘Red Moon Limited’, but I’ve done some digging and I can’t find any company that goes by that name.”
“Shell corporation?” Luke asked.
“It looks like it, though I haven’t been able to figure out where the money is coming from, just that they have it,” Danny nodded, “and they are using that money to buy up land along the piers like there’s no tomorrow. Been at it for at least six months, maybe longer.”
“I think that might be worth poking around at, don’t you, Iron Fist?” Luke asked his friend.
Danny flashed him a grin. “I think you might be onto something, Power Man.”
******
The smell of old oil and brine was pungent inside the abandoned warehouse, completely removing the ability of Tandy Bowen to smell anything else. Luckily for her, she didn’t need to smell anything to feel stone cold certainty.
This was their latest attempt at hitting the Maggia, a quest they had been on for quite some time now. Ever since their encounter with Spider-Man and aiding him, she and her close friend Tyrone Johnson had been working behind the scenes to take down the criminal organization piece by piece.
Light work, compared to helping the Webhead take down a movie madman with delusions of grandeur.
This work was a bit closer to their hearts, though, given that it was a scientist hired by the Maggia - a man by the name of Simon Marshall - who had made them what they were. Each had gotten injections of a drug called D-Lite and their lives were forever changed.
Now, Tandy could generate dagger-like bolts of light and use them as such, the weapon also allowing her to see the hopes and dreams of those she touched with it if she chose to. From the weapon, Tyrone had given her the sort of code name of “Dagger”.
She leaped down from the rafters, landing almost silently atop the stack of crates, the noises she made muffled by the sounds outside of the city and the docks themselves. She watched the three men moving the crates about the room, heading toward a truck parked in a docking bay at the far end of the warehouse.
“Hey, boss! What’s ‘fra-gee-lay’ mean?” One of the men asked.
“Donner, I said if you made that joke again I was gonna shoot out your kneecaps.” One of the others said. “Shut up.”
Tandy lowered her hand, but did not generate one of her daggers quite yet. Instead, she waited, seeing what it was the men were doing.
The place was being emptied out, but why? If Silvermane had known that they were coming, there would have been more guards or rather any guards on this place at all, so that wasn’t it.
Deciding that she wasn’t going to get answers by hanging up here all night, Tandy leaped down onto the floor between two pallets stacked high with crates. She still hadn’t yet been spotted by the men, so she crept through the shadows toward one, her dancer’s build and practiced movements allowing her to use the situation to her advantage as she came up upon one of the men standing alone and took him by surprise, pushing him up against the wall.
“Don’t scream out.” She warned as she generated one of her light daggers, the man able to see it from where his face was smushed up against the wall. “Why are you moving things out of here?”
“Because the boss said so,” The man grunted.
“And who’s the boss?” Tandy asked.
“Vincente Biachi,” the man said.
“And who’s his boss?” Tandy demanded, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice as she pressed the man.
“I don’t know!” The man protested. “I swear, I have no idea! I’m just a scab, man!”
She reached forward to press her dagger against his cheek, an act that would allow her to pierce into his hopes and dreams and would likely leave the man with a psychic wound, but was stopped as she heard the safety clicking on several guns.
“Back off him, girlie. Nice and easy.” A voice of one of the holders of those guns spoke up and Tandy slowly backed away from the man, her hands raised as she saw no less than six men all with a variety of guns drawn and pointed right at her. “You got any last words?
“Just a question,” Tandy said, surprisingly calm and cool in spite of the situation, “are you afraid of the dark?”
She had already seen that living shadow materialize behind the seven men, the widespread of the cloak that he was named for widening as Tyrone Johnson - Cloak - became less a shadow and more of a solid being. The other men noticed this too, and their attention was now split between Tandy and Tyrone.
“It’s some superfreaks! Ice ‘em!” They shouted, and bullets began to fly as all seven of the guns started going off. Tandy quickly ducked and rolled behind some crates, listening for the sound of someone reloading.
‘One…’ She thought counted out the seconds, only coming out from behind cover to lob her light dagger at someone, nailing him in the chest and knocking him over onto his back. Running from a stack to another, she witnessed several of the men trying to shoot Cloak and failing due to his intangibility, allowing the bullets to literally pass right through him as he approached them, his Cloak sweeping out and the darkness of his own powers enveloping the heads of two.
Consumed by their fear, they screamed and fell to the ground in a comatose state.
“Pretty sure that only counts as one!” Tandy called out from behind cover. Tyrone didn’t answer, and she knew it definitely didn’t just count as one. One of the men came around the corner at her and Tandy lobbed a light dagger that found purchase in his shoulder and knocked him back though not enough to knock him down. Tandy leaped up, her legs wrapping around the man’s head and bringing him down, jumping up to deliver a punch to his face that finally put him under.
‘Two…’ She thought, at the very least keeping up with her partner’s count. A bullet whizzed by a bit too close to her head for comfort and she got her head back into actually surviving the fight, pulling off a front flip that saw her within arm’s reach of the shooter. He took a swing at her that she ducked under, her arm snapping out into a punch that hit the man in the stomach, then a pair of fists slamming down into his back as he leaned over to guard his mid-section from more abuse. He crumbled down to the floor without further incident. ‘Three…’
“Four.” She heard Tyrone behind her, her friend smirking a bit below the cowl of his cloak as he regarded the four unconscious goons he had just taken down.
“Show off.” Tandy muttered.
“And you even got a headstart on me.” Tyrone teased her.
“Alright, alright, enough.” Tandy said, pulling up the man who appeared to be the leader of the group and forcing him to sit up against one of the pallets of crates before slapping him in the face a few times to bring him back into consciousness.
“What the hell are you-?” He began, but soon realized his men were unconscious around him. No one was backing him up.
“Hi there.” Tandy said, almost cheerfully for someone who had just helped take down seven armed men in a rather frantic situation. “I’m Dagger, this is Cloak. We’re going to ask you some questions. If I don’t like what you say, then Cloak will get to show you his party trick.”
“Cloak space.” Tyrone corrected her.
“I’m still not calling it that.” Tandy retorted.
“I don’t have anything to tell you guys,” The man insisted, “let me go! We aren’t doing anything illegal or nothing.”
“You’re working for Maggia, that’s illegal enough.” Tandy replied. “Speaking of which, who is your boss?”
“I don’t-”
“And don’t lie, please.” Tandy said, holding up her other hand and generating another dagger of pure light.
“Okay! Okay! Jesus, his name’s Marko. Marko.” The man protested.
“Marko?” Tandy asked. “Mountain Man Marko?”
“Yeah, that’s him.” The man insisted. “He said Silvermane wanted this place cleared out. Something about a construction job or somethin’, I don’t know.”
“Okay, now that I believe.” Tandy said, tapping the dagger to the man’s cheek. He fell into a euphoric state, his hopes and dreams playing out in his mind’s eye. “This is the third one.” She said as she turned from the comatose man.
“Silvermane’s planning something,” Ty nodded in agreement, “something big.”
“Yeah, but we’re still no closer to figuring out what.” Tandy said.
“We keep looking, we’ll find something.” Tyrone encouraged her. “We just have to keep marching around the city.”
“Oh, don’t bring up Father Delgado’s sermons again. Please.” Tandy’s nose wrinkled.
“Fine,” Tyrone said, “but it’s a metaphor. We just keep digging at it until we find something.”
“Right.” Tandy nodded.
******
Felicia Hardy was suspended by a single reinforced wire from the ceiling and was being lowered down on an automatic winch. She smirked as she drew closer and closer to the laser grid below. Anything that touched the grid would set it off, causing a massive lockdown of not only the vault, but the entire building.
The intelligence she had picked up told her that the contents of this vault were an important Maggia asset. She had been surprised to find that all that occupied the safe was a single briefcase.
‘Must be going full digital.’ She thought, shifting herself facing down toward the bottom of the room to pass the grid entirely, moving to be horizontal again once she’d passed it and leaving only the wire dangling down from above between the lasers.
The winch stopped lowering her as she got down to eye level with the case. With a practiced, barely-there touch, she felt around for a trigger or a release and found nothing to indicate a trap. Grabbing the handle of the case, she lifted it up. The winch started to retract her, and Felicia once more shifted herself to hanging straight up and down as she passed the laser grid and came up toward the ceiling, swinging on the cable toward the vent she had entered the room through, Felicia disconnected the winch from the ceiling and started to crawl back out through the same way she had come in.
A few minutes later, she was coming out of the janitor’s closet she had used to enter the ventilation system, dressed in a green jumpsuit zipped up to the neck and a pair of sunglasses, her wig stored away to let her natural blonde hair loose as she started for the exit as per the plan.
This came to an end, abruptly, when a hand grabbed her arm at the shoulder.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.” She glanced over, seeing the man was private security. Overweight, balding, and very likely underpaid for what he was about to have to deal with.
Felicia smirked. “I’m afraid my dance card is filled. Catch me again in the spring.” She threw her weight back, pulling the man back with her. She rolled out from under him as he collapsed onto the floor, snatching up the briefcase and bolting for the door to the stairwell.
“All units converge on the south corner stairwell at the fifth-” She heard the man call out before the door slammed shut. She knew he meant to send the men downstairs to catch her as she attempted to use the front door.
Instead, she headed up the stairs rather than down them. Up she went, the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth floors cleared without incident. As she passed to the tenth, the door into the stairwell opened and two men entered.
“Hello, boys!” Felicia replied cheerfully with a wiggle of her nose. The two men charged her, and she leaped over their heads, clocking one in the head with the briefcase as she did so and bowling him over and sending him falling down the steps toward the ninth floor. The briefcase fell and skittered toward the edge of the walkway, dangling halfway between the floor and the open gap that would drop it further into the stairwell. The second guard turned on her, pulling out a taser that he triggered twice to give two quick zaps of electrical charge.
Felicia grinned, dropping down into a crouch and then sliding to the right as the guard overstepped with his arm holding the taser extended. As he took a tumble to join his fellow, Felicia snatched the briefcase just as it began to fall. With a sigh of relief, she pulled it fully into her grasp and continued up the stairs, hearing the two guards recovering below as well as doors below opening as more guards made to join in the chase.
Up at the seventeenth floor, Felicia headed out of the stairwell and ran through the current empty office space. Heading up to the pre-determined office, Felicia quickly stripped out of the green suit and was once more in merely her skin-tight black leather. Slipping her wig back onto her head and her goggles back over her eyes, she raised a hand to the window facing out into the city.
Her claws were a new addition to the suit, carbon-fiber weave with a retractable claw hidden beneath all four fingers and the thumb. The claw in the index finger extended with a gesture, and she slid them into the glass like a hot knife through butter, making a large circle in it without compromising the rest of the window.
“FREEZE!” She heard just after the door into the office slammed open, several men apparently having caught up with her. Felicia, case in hand, turned back to them. She blew them a kiss before falling backwards out of the hole she had created.
THUNK! THUNK!
By the time the men had made it up to the window, they looked down to see one end of a zip line had been embedded in the wall of the building, the other in another across the street that the Black Cat had landed on top of, quickly taking off into the night and away from them.
******
Captain Walter Nevell stood in the cold, windowless briefing room. The only light in the room was coming from a single projector that was casting a schematic of a large shipping vessel onto the far wall.
“So here we have the Triton’s Scythe,” Admiral Hayes, standing in his uniform that looked as though it were starched with concrete, “flagged out of Cyprus, and leased by the corporation Red Moon Limited.”
“I can’t say I’m familiar with that one, sir.” Nevell said.
“You wouldn’t be,” Hayes said, “they’re a shell corporation. Got established six months ago.”
“Are we thinking it’s the cartels?” Nevell asked.
“Maggia.” Hayes said. “We have reason to believe that Red Moon Limited is a Maggia front. Intelligence reports that the Triton’s Scythe had a port of call in Cartagena around four months ago, around the same time as a heist of a scientific lab down there.”
“What was stolen?” Nevell asked.
“There’s a manifest, but the Colombian government has stonewalled us on the specific details.” Hayes said. “To make matters worse, the Scythe has taken a position in international waters, which means there’s nothing we can do.”
“So, why are we meeting, sir?” Nevell asked.
“We aren’t.” Hayes said with a humorless smile.
“...ah, I see.” Nevell said, understanding what was going to happen.
“We aren’t meeting and I am not telling you all of this,” Hayes said, “this assignment will not be on official record.”
“I understand, sir.” Nevell nodded. This was not a mission for Walter Nevell, Captain of the U.S. Coast Guard, engineer, and oceanographer.
No, this was a mission for someone else entirely.
The Stingray would be swimming once more.
“Given the cargo, are we expecting enhanced defenses?” Nevell asked.
“Given reports on their activities within the city, we do expect some specialist of a superhuman variety,” Hayes nodded, “but unfortunately we were able to get very little intel besides the location of the Scythe. I’m afraid that you will largely be going in blind on this one.”
“I understand, sir.” Nevell nodded, pulling out a tablet and already quickly calculating out his deployment in conjunction with the currents, depths, and trajectory he would take in order to reach where the Scythe was marked as being.
“You’re wheels up in a half hour, Captain.” Hayes said bluntly. “Retrieve the asset or any materials related to it and get back in one piece. Failure is not an option.”
“Understood, sir.” Nevell said, already preparing to go and get his suit prepped for the mission ahead.
The Stingray was ready to strike!