Note: You know the drill. Daredevil and Punisher aren't mine, as much as I wouldn't mind having them. :)

The story focuses on Frank, but also has a dose of Frank/Karen coming! (It may also end up as a preface to a longer story.) This is my first Daredevil/superhero rodeo, so let me know what you think!


It was a simple mission.

There had been bank robberies happening all over Manhattan for several weeks now. He'd seen the coverage in the newspapers, glimpsed it on a TV in a diner. The first few heists went without a hitch. The robbers had walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first couple weeks.

The news reports gave him a little twinge of satisfaction- fuck the banks. Fuck those corporate assholes who hid their ugly greed behind respectable suits.

Until last night.

Something had gone wrong.

Someone had spooked them while they held up a branch on the lower east side. They'd shot into the crowd of customers, several rounds. A pregnant woman, her four year old son, a college boy, all dead. A dozen others in Metro General.

Frank knew what he had to do.

It took him a less than twenty four hours to track them down to a corner of Alphabet City where the gentrification hadn't quite reached yet.

They were still boys, barely in their twenties. A little gang with a lot of love for cars with spinning rims, thumping sound systems and pricey sneakers. Seven of them- most few gangly, a couple beefy.

Frank never would have touched them, if they hadn't left those innocent bodies bleeding in their wake. They were small fish.

But now they had to pay. He just had to determine which one of them was the shooter. The bullets had come from a single panicked gun. Karen's article in the Bulletin had confirmed it. It was an easy job, and the sooner it was over, the better. He could go back to orchestrating the little ambush he had been crafting for a particularly vicious Chinatown gang that had a knack for smuggling enslaved women in cargo containers.

He sat in a grimy corner diner downing cup after cup of shitty coffee, watching one of the robbers show off his car's new paint job (ugly orange flames on the hood and sides), when the door's bell jingled.

Frank glanced up. A girl had walked in the door. A young girl, maybe eleven, twelve. Skinny Bambi legs and long, straggly hair hiding her face.

In that quick first glimpse, she could've been Lisa.

His heart skipped a beat in his chest and he tried to turn his attention outside, beyond the window.

But something in his gut was pulling his eyes away from the ugly flamed car and back inside.

It was nearly two in the morning. What was this little girl doing in this part of town, alone, in the middle of the night?

She took a seat in a tiny booth in the opposite corner, but the place was nearly empty, giving Frank a clear view. She wore a stretched out tank top with over-long straps that fell over her shoulders and flip flops with duct tape on the soles. She emptied a pocketful of change on the table and a couple of crumpled dollar bills and started counting before she referenced the menu.

Frank resisted the urge to tell the waitress to give her anything she wanted and put it on his bill. He knew how creepy that'd look.

The girl ordered something, he couldn't hear what, and as the waitress walked away from her table, she looked up, looked straight up at Frank as he took a gulp of his lukewarm coffee. Her gaze was hard, nothing like Lisa's sweet humor. It was a threat assessment. She had felt him watching.

Frank met her gaze evenly, trying to convey that he meant her no harm, even as he imagined what she was seeing- a hulking, muscled man watching her from under a dirty baseball cap, his eyes hidden except for the shadow of a shiner over his right cheekbone.

But the girl's face didn't flinch. They stared at each other for a long minute, almost like a challenge, before the waitress dropped a plate of silver dollars and the girl turned her full attention to the bottle of syrup, drenching the pancakes completely.

Frank knew he should tear his gaze away and turn back to his intended targets, but there was something off, something a little too strange about the scenario playing out inside the diner.

The girl downed the entire plate in no more than a couple of minutes, finishing it off by draining her water glass in a few gulps.

She counted out her money again, leaving the coins in neat little towers by denomination.

When she finished, she looked up again, eyes boring straight into Frank's, without the slightest trace of fear.

Was he imagining things, or did her gaze look like a challenge, almost?

But a challenge to what?

Eyes still on him, she slid out of the booth and headed for the door.

The bell jingled again behind her, and Frank watched as she walked past the window and around the corner.

He dropped a few bills on the table next to his empty mug and walked out of the diner, all trace of the robbers evaporating from his mind. He gave her enough lead so she wouldn't detect his presence, as he followed her several blocks to an old building with a cracked stoop and graffiti gracing its worn bricks.

She shoved the door open with her shoulder, no keys required, and Frank paused in a shadow across the street, just in case she looked over her shoulder.

But she didn't.

In a second, she was gone.

He crossed the street, making sure to stay silent, and slid into the building behind her.