Disclaimer: Daredevil and Elektra belong to Marvel Comics (Although these versions belong to 20th Century Fox Entertainment) and Angel and company belong to Joss Whedon; the challenge below belongs to cherrycoke

Feedback: Please do

Challenge: Matt Murdock has moved to LA and is hired by Angel to be a lawyer at Wolfram & Hart. When a string of murders begin to occur throughout LA, Angel and crew are on it, not knowing that Daredevil is on it too. But when Angel is almost killed, Matt learns that his past has caught up with him. The killer is none other than his former girlfriend, now professional assassin, Elektra Natchios. (don't know if that's how you spell her last name).

Requirements:
Elektra being behind all the murders.
Elektra being hired by Eve to take out Angel. She doesn't know he's a vampire, so she uses a sai and leaves quickly.
Eve specifically tells Elektra not to kill anyone but Angel.
Angel and Daredevil getting into a fight, each thinking the other was the bad guy.
Taking place at the beginning of season 5, with Spike as a ghost.

AN: To cut off questions in advance, the 'jet boots' Elektra uses here are inspired by the storyline Wolverine: Enemy of the State, when Elektra and various other brainwashed heroes and villains in HYDRA's 'employ' used similar devices during an attack on the SHIELD Helicarrier

AN 2: Some ideas here came from Shadowland, but I've put my own spin on it that I hope you'll all enjoy

Justice is Blind

As Elektra stood on top of the building where she had planned her upcoming ambush, she wondered how such a supposedly simple assignment had become so complicated.

She'd had two opportunities to kill this 'Angel' guy in a fight when it would have been easy for people to assume that he'd been the victim of comparatively random acts of violence, and both times had failed because he'd proven to be a more resilient individual than she'd been lead to believe; she wasn't entirely sure what he was, but it was clear that she was up against something that was far from human.

Still, right now, what he was didn't matter; all that mattered was that she had to kill him if she was going to complete her assignment, and the only way it seemed that she was going to pull that off was to abandon her original plan for a stealth approach and attack him directly when he wasn't expecting it.

Tracking down his apartment had actually been relatively straightforward- the man actually lived in the penthouse at the top of his office; a part of her considered it pathetic how easy it was to locate him, as though he didn't even care about the enemies he must have made to reach this point-, and all that she had needed to do since then was confirm that she could enter the building without setting off any alarms before she was ready to deal with them. As expected, the penthouse was equipped with various alarms, but most of them were focused on someone entering the room from the interior rather than the exterior; given the height of the building, they had most likely assumed that nobody would be able to access it from that avenue.

Unfortunately for them, Elektra's backers were not normal people. The small 'jet boots' that she had been provided with to gain access felt somewhat strange, but that didn't mean that she didn't recognise their potential value in this kind of situation, to say nothing of the personal bonus that they would only last long enough to get her in while leaving her solely responsible for her escape; she hated relying on anything but herself to complete her assignments.

Studying the view in front of her for a few more crucial seconds, Elektra went over the statistics that her assignment handlers had provided her with after she'd received the boots; while the window was too far for a glider or any kind of grapple to reach from her current position, the boots should provide her with a continuous burst of speed that would allow her to penetrate the window so long as she was careful to protect her face from the worst of the glass. Pulling out the binoculars she'd packed earlier, Elektra took a quick glance at the window before her, and smiled grimly as she noted her target lying in his bed, seemingly dead to the world, so still that she couldn't even see him breathing despite the allegedly enhanced nature of the binoculars.

It was time to strike.

Refusing to give herself even a moment to hesitate, Elektra launched herself off the roof and hurtled towards her target, the boots sending her flying directly towards the rapidly-expanding glass window before her. Her hands outstretched before her, Elektra shifted her daggers so that their handles would strike the window first, the solid handles shattering the glass immediately around her before her momentum shattered the rest of the window.

As she landed in the apartment, Elektra wasn't entirely surprised when her target sat up in bed and grabbed a blade lying on the ground near his bed- clearly he had learned to be cautious after her previous attacks; she should have been prepared for that, but she was becoming too focused on her current goal to remember the minute details-, but then two doors opened on either side of the room and four more men walked in, three of them armed with various close-quarter weapons that they wielded with the ease of trained professionals while the fourth- a man with pale hair in a long leather coat- stood with the practised ease of a combat specialist.

Despite the obvious threat posed by the swords and axe in the hands of two of the men in front of her, Elektra's eyes were drawn to the third anomaly; a man in red glasses and a full-body leather suit, holding what looked like two short sticks in his hands, held in a manner that made it clear they were weapons despite their seemingly harmless nature.

"A trap?" she said, looking at the group before her with a slight smile. "It's been a while since someone tried something like that on me."

"We aim to keep you on your toes," the man in glasses said, shrugging slightly as he looked at her with a grim smile. "I hate to sound cliché, but you should stand down now, Mrs Natchios; it will make everything a lot easier for you-"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Elektra said, her grip tightening on her daggers as she looked at the man in front of her, ignoring that now-familiar strange feeling she got in the back of her skull when that name was mentioned. "I came here to eliminate my target, and that's all I was here for; simply withdraw now, and the rest of you can live-"

"Not happenin', girl," the dark-skinned man in the suit said, his attire giving the impression that it was slightly uncomfortable on him, as though he wasn't used to wearing something like that, even as he tightened his grip on a large axe in his hands. "We came here to help Angel and you, but don't think that means we're goin' to let you off with just a warning if things get ugly."

"Help me?" Elektra repeated, a slightly sarcastic smirk on her face as she looked at him, training and confidence allowing her to push aside whatever part of her wanted to hear him continue; if she avoided giving him a chance to speak, he probably wouldn't. "Why would you want to-?"

"For God's sake, Elektra, it's me!" the man in the red glasses suddenly yelled at her, staring earnestly in her direction as he pulled off the glasses that were his most distinguishing feature, revealing- Elektra almost couldn't believe what she was seeing after she'd witnessed the way the man had fought earlier; she'd trained to fight in the dark, but what was in front of her was something else entirely- blank white eyes in a face that somehow managed to successfully convey pain even when they couldn't show anything-

Something in Elektra seemed to snap in the back of her mind.

She knew that face...

Those eyes...

The eyes that saw nothing, in the face of the man who saw her in a manner that she never believed anyone could see her in... the man who'd seen past her wealth, skills, and pain to see who she could be underneath it all... the man who'd made her feel so much more than she could have ever felt before...

"M... Matt?" she whispered, looking tentatively at him, assignment forgotten in the face of this new discovery. "It's... it's..."

Before she could finish that sentence, Elektra was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that something had just tried to charge straight through her face after ramming into the back of her head-


"ENOUGH!" a voice suddenly yelled from Elektra's mouth before the group around her could react, Elektra's eyes flaring red as she lunged towards Angel with her daggers outstretched. Gunn and Wesley leapt in to try and defend their friend, but Elektra almost effortlessly knocked them to the side with a rapid series of kicks before either man could realise what had just happened, subsequently pinning the vampire to the wall before she turned back to glare at the downed fighters.

"THERE IS NO ELEKTRA NATCHIOS!" she roared, eyes flaring red in an obviously unnatural manner. "There is only me, my emissary, and her mission!"

With that, she turned around and leapt back to attack Angel, the vampire only just managing to knock her back as he yanked one of the daggers out of his shoulder and struck her in the face with the blunt end. Elektra's momentary loss of balance gave Angel just the opportunity he needed to pull the second dagger out of his other shoulder, only for a rapid kick to the face from Elektra to send him staggering back as she grabbed the weapons in her hands.

Regaining his balance, Angel managed to deflect the daggers before they could repeat their previous attack, but was clear that the vampire was having far more trouble with the fight than he should have been when up against a purely human opponent; Elektra's blows were rapidly reaching a force and speed that he hadn't seen even from Buffy at her worst.

Taking a quick final glance around himself to confirm that everyone who should be in his room was there, Angel grabbed Elektra's wrist as she launched her next attack and hurled her through the open door near his bed, swiftly diving after her into his penthouse's lounge area; it might not be that much larger, but at least he had less stuff in here that he'd object to losing, and his friends were out of the way to limit the possibility that they'd be claimed as collateral damage in the upcoming fight.

"Fine," he said, glaring at the woman before him, hoping that he gave a convincing impression of being focused on the current fight. "If you want it that way, let's dance."


"Well," Wesley said, looking over at where the dazed Matt lay with a grim smile after Angel and Elektra had left the room, "that answers the question of what we're up against."

"Which is?" Gunn asked, his stance constantly shifting as though he was trying to decide whether or not he should be going into the room to help Angel.

"A combination of the Hand's traditional brainwashing infused with at least a portion of the Beast that the inner circle of the cult are said to worship," Wesley explained, looking grimly over at the door to the other room where Angel was still fending off their latest foe. "From what Matt's told us, if Elektra had a desire for vengeance and anger in her heart before her death, she would make a suitable host for the Beast to further the Hand's agendaHanH; the presence of even a part of it is said to enhance the physical and mental combat capabilities of its host, which would certainly explain how she was powerful enough to decapitate a Fyarl demon in direct combat-"

"Yeah, great history lesson, Perce; can we focus on how to get that thing out of Miss Greek Tragedy?" Spike asked, jerking his head at a wall that had just sustained a fairly sizeable dent as something was kicked into it.

"There is a spell that might do the job- we've got a cabinet of ingredients just over there that I can use-, but I need a few minutes to be sure I've set everything up correctly..." Wesley said, picking up the template book he'd left on a nearby table earlier- if he'd needed to do further research he'd wanted to be sure that he could start virtually instantly- and quickly began to read over the instructions he summoned to him, pausing briefly to look up at Matt. "Matt, I recognise that this might be difficult for you, but if you could assist Angel by providing the emotional distraction required for this spell to affect Miss Natchios the way it's meant to- keep her off-balance, remind her of her past, that kind of thing- then, well..."

To his credit, despite his relative unfamiliarity with the rules of Wesley's world, Matt didn't even hesitate at the ex-Watcher's request, but instead simply turned around and headed for the door, leaving Gunn and Spike to look at Wesley in varying degrees of apprehension.

"You sure this is going to work?" Gunn asked.

"Given my relatively unfamiliarity with the Hand, I unfortunately can't be certain, but it's our best chance at getting through to her," Wesley said, walking over to the emergency cabinet in Angel's room- they'd put a few emergency spell supplies in both rooms when planning this trap in case this kind of situation came up- and quickly selecting what was required for the current situation. "If we don't move quickly, there's a strong chance that someone will get seriously hurt, and if we let her get away now that the Beast has asserted itself we may not be able to access her true consciousness again; we have to move quickly while there's still a chance that we can reach the real Elektra Natchios rather than whatever remnant the Beast has been using."

If he remembered the purpose of this spell correctly, setting it up wouldn't be that difficult; it was maintaining the right mental focus to perform it correctly that would be particularly difficult...


As he ducked and weaved Elektra's assault, Angel had to admit that Matt hadn't been exaggerating her skills; this 'Beast' thing she'd mentioned was definitely enhancing her strength, but there was a raw talent underneath her power that he hadn't seen in anything short of a Slayer. She still didn't appear to have a significantly above-human-average level of strength, but she was clearly growing stronger as the battle continued, each blow getting closer and closer to delivering some kind of injury...

The sudden impact of wood on flesh provided a crucial distraction, Angel leaping backwards and out of harm's way as Elektra screamed in rage, one of her daggers falling to the ground as she carefully clutched at her bruised wrist while retaining a grip on her other dagger.

"YOU?" she practically growled, her gaze fixed on Matt Murdock as he stood in the door of the room, looking urgently at her as he drew back the arm, his billy-club coming back together as the string that joined the two retracted back into its counterpart.

"Me," he confirmed, his gaze fixed on her. "Don't make me do this, Elektra-!"

"There IS no Elektra!" she roared, charging forward to grab Matt's throat with one hand, the other holding her remaining dagger as she aimed it at his blank eyes. "If you wish a demonstration, I can-!"

"Think fast," Angel said, grabbing the dagger from the floor and charging towards Elektra, the blade outstretched towards her. As Elektra turned to resume her attack on her original target, Angel quickly shifted his dagger to block her own, the two sides quickly engaging in a close-quarter duel as the daggers interlocked and parted, Elektra's experience with these weapons countered by Angel's broader combat experience.

"Elektra, stop this!" Matt said, 'looking' urgently in her direction as the fight progressed around the room, his body tensed and ready to intervene if the opportunity arose to do so. "This isn't you; it's the Hand's goddamn Beast!"

"There is nothing of HER left in this body, Murdock!" Elektra roared, her focus remaining on her opponent even as she addressed Matt. "There is only ME-!"

"I don't accept that!" Matt yelled, Angel ducking under the latest attack from Elektra before he tried to yank the dagger out of Elektra's hand, only for the former heiress to nearly turn the attack back on him as she caught Angel's dagger's blades between her own and all but yanked it out of the vampire's grasp. "This is your third attempt to kill Angel, and you keep making stupid mistakes; just because you don't know what he is-"

"Mistakes happen; they mean NOTHING-!" Elektra began to protest, only for Angel to take advantage of her distraction to kick her in the chest, sending her staggering back as she gasped for breath, momentarily winded by the force of the kick.

"Come on, Elektra, focus!" Matt said, 'looking' in her directly as urgently as his blank eyes would allow him to. "This isn't you! Don't let this... 'Beast' thing control you; you're stronger than that! I know you're in there; fight it!"

"Nice try... Murdock," Elektra said, her voice already regaining its original strength as she took a few deep breaths while staring in his direction. "But that... won't work... I am... here..."

"And so am I," another voice said from the door, prompting the trio to turn in the direction of the voice, only to witness a sudden, intense golden glow that swiftly faded to reveal Wesley standing in the door, his right fist outstretched in front of him, glowing with a golden energy as he clenched it in preparation for what he was about to attempt.

"Elektra Natchios?" Wesley said, his expression grim as he looked at her. "It's time to wake up."

Before Elektra could respond to that statement, Wesley had lunged forward and punched Elektra directly in her chest, sending her staggering backwards as golden energy seemed to envelop her body, her eyes rapidly shifting between the three men standing around her.

"What... Matt?" she began, her voice changing mid-sentence as she looked in his direction. "What... what happ...?"

As though those words had required the last of her energy, Elektra collapsed to the ground, her body twitching as her eyes stared out blankly at the world around her, leaving her former opponents standing apprehensively around her.