Song: Adagio in D Minor – Kick-Ass

She had forgotten what it had been like to roam the city when all you can see is the dark underbelly, the criminal sewage clogging up the streets when no one else even notices. She was prowling through the back alleys, a shadow that no one could see, a mere flicker of movement that one dismissed in their peripheral vision. The first few jobs had been easy, quick…flawless: a few drug rings, a few gun smugglers, nothing she couldn't handle. Surprisingly the absence of her teammates almost seemed to liberate her. There were no cameras watching her, no surveillance telling her what she could or couldn't do based on the moral codes of others. There was something dead to her when she went on her night runs, something hollow and automatic, as though she shut off Stella Coulson when she was out there and ran only on automated programming.

The thing was that Stella Coulson was weak. Stella Coulson was a failure. Stella Coulson couldn't stand up for anything without losing.

But Nightmare, Nightmare could do anything, say anything, get away with anything, and there would be no consequences.

But Asgard had changed that. Nightmare was broken after Asgard, the assassin forever overthrown even though the base programming was still there, even though the monster's skeleton lay rotting at the bottom of the rusted cage that was the girl's mind.

Stella may have been strong enough for the job nearly a decade ago, but she wasn't anymore. Her mind was weak, fragile, and swayed by morals and judgment. So, if she turned it off, ignored what was going on around her and remained fixated on that one goal, that one outcome of getting her guy, she could get the job done. For the most part.

Her past five assignments had gone relatively well, except for the fact that there were minimal casualties. The names she had been given were crossed off. Everyone else was incapacitated, left for the police or SHIELD to clean up afterwards. When Fury confronted her about it in a back alley meeting before her next assignment was given to her, she had shrugged, feigning indifference and allowing the cold deadness to seep back into her voice.

"You're paying me to kill the names you give me. Not any one else."

And the Director had had no response to that.

So it was that Stella ran things her way, on her own terms, to maintain the shreds of humanity that she had left while still carrying out her end of the bargain. Each night that she returned back was another lie, another explanation to her husband. A late night at work, a meeting with the managers of the gym, a visit to Ian and Lily or the others. It didn't seem to matter what she said, Will always seemed to believe her.

But that was worse than if he'd had doubts or questions.

Slightly harder to hide were the nicks and scratches she would get from work, or the heavy bruising from some hard hits she took, or from attempts to stab her through her knife resistant clothing. Fighting to minimize casualties meant letting people get closer to her than she would like, and that meant she got wounded more often than she would like.

I cut myself on the rose bushes.

Some idiot at the gym dropped a bell weight on my leg.

I missed a step on the stairs and fell flat on my face today while you were at work. I felt like such an idiot!
I must be getting clumsy in my domesticity.

The lies kept building up around her, choking her and suffocating her as she tried to swim in them, tried to keep them straight and remember which was which. She felt sick to her stomach every time she kissed her daughter goodnight, every time she laid down in bed with her husband, knowing that she was inevitably coming closer and closer to becoming the monster she was before. Sometimes the urge to tell everyone what was happening became so consuming, so heavy, that she actually wanted to leave the house on her assignments. At least it gave her something to do other than lie and fabricate a life for herself.

But all of that got harder when the press caught wind of her activities, when a few assholes with cameras who didn't know any better snapped a few grainy pictures of a dark hooded figure leaping over the sky-line. Stories of criminals put in jail of a monster pacing the alleys started filling newspapers and finally Stella brought it to the attention of her husband.

"Looks like some poor fool's decided to try his hand at being a costumed hero," she commented one morning at breakfast as she read the front page, titled New Crime Fighter on the Streets: A Villain or a Hero?

"Yeah, well, that's not going to last very long though the 'fool' as you put it does seem to know what he's doing," he commented as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

"He'll get clumsy. Soon he'll get himself killed…I speak from experience when I say that he is way in over his head." She thought she had ended the conversation and went back to eating when her husband passed her another article.

"Seems like someone started talking about someone else called 'Nightmare.' Apparently your methods are pretty similar." Stomach churning, Stella snatched up the paper and skimmed it through. "Some guy who survived one of your attacks gave first hand accounts to the press and the guy he gave the information to talked to some guys this newbie put in jail. He's gone and renamed this guy Nightmare, too. Says he's a next-generation Nightmare. A copy-cat."

"Well," Stella countered, proud at how steady her voice was. "He's a pretty lousy copy-cat. He wants to do the job right, he has to leave no survivors." And with that she went back to eating her cereal, one thought on her mind.

She had to be more careful. She had to put Will's suspicions off of her before he even realized he was piecing things together.

And so it was that a few nights later she got an assignment to interrupt a business transaction of the illegal sort involving massive amounts of narcotics, weaponry, and potentially human organs. It was a huge black market sale, and it was supposed to take place in the middle of the city, in an old building marked for demolition to make space for a new set of office buildings.

Perfect moment to let the press get a name to couple with her. She needed a fake identity, a random citizen's name to throw everyone off the scent. Things were starting to hit a little too close to home.

~'*'~

"You're going out again?" Will called as she grabbed her duffle bag from the closet under the stairs.

"Yeah…I've got a late night training session again. I should be back around eleven, tops. But if it goes well, and the guy doesn't give me any crap for being a female personal trainer who knows?" She smiled and went over to kiss her husband goodbye. "I may be back by ten."

"Okay," he answered, kissing her again before she ran out the door, snatching her car keys off the wall as she went. "Stay safe!"

"Always do!" The door slammed, and Will sighed to himself, heading over to the kitchen to prepare some form of pasta for him and his daughter. Stella would raid the fridge when she got home as usual. Without even really thinking, he turned on the TV as he walked into the side room, not paying attention to the news station as the electronic device came to life.

"Police have a serious lead as to the whereabouts of notorious drug cartel leader Howard Knox, and there have been reports that he has been found at an old warehouse scheduled for demolition. There are rumors that hostages have been taken from the apartment building next door, but police have yet to confirm those rumors and are advising people to start slowly and discreetly evacuating the area until they can get there to provide protection."

~'*'~

Stella took a deep breath as she ducked into the manhole in the back of an alley, trying to minimize her noise and movements to not draw attention to herself. The heavy circle of metal came free and she dropped down, pulling the duffle bag with her and the manhole cover back over her head. Once, the smell had gotten to her. Now, though, she didn't even notice it. Checking left and right for rats, Stella began taking off her clothes, pulling the black uniform from her bag as she did so, and began pulling the layers on. First, the undergarment, then the cargo pants, then the overcoat. Clip the stomach plate across the abdomen. Strap the cuff equipped with a hidden blade to her left arm. Slip the vibranium cuff over her right. Slide the holster over her back and the other on her leg. Clip in the knives, slip in the guns.

Finally, flip up the hood, and die inside.

Pulling aside a grate, Stella dropped her duffle back inside an abandoned ventilation shaft, where she always hid it, and headed down the sewer, finding a maintenance shaft that lead up to the street at the next alley and going up. When she pushed the manhole to the side, she quickly took stock of her situation, making sure she was unseen, before pulling herself out of the underground maze of tunnels, closing the cover. As she stood there, across the street from her ground zero, she began taking in the environment. People were walking across the busy streets as people tended to do on Saturday nights. The closed down building stood at a corner street right beside an apartment complex that looked like it housed people of lower income, and Stella started making calculations as to how she could avoid civilian casualties in that area.

Her eyes traced the pipes on the outside of the brick building beside her and looked to the telephone wires crossed the street and ran around the corner, anchoring to the ground just between the apartments and the drop site. That would be her landing position then. Taking a deep breath, she turned to face the brick building beside her, getting a foothold in the eroded rock and the pipes that ran to the roof and started pulling herself up, effortlessly using her upper body and legs to climb to the flat roof, crouching on the ledge as she took in her jump to the telephone pole that would then let her tight-rope walk across to the opposite side of the street. People never looked up, so she probably wouldn't have a problem there.

That was when the sirens started and the whirring of a helicopter grew loud in her ear as the vehicle went swooping over her, landing skids missing her ducking head by a foot, spotlight dropping down to provide a direct light on the face of the building Stella was planning on infiltrating. Police cars pulled up before the building, setting up a perimeter, and officers began setting up for a standoff, using their vehicles as barriers as they lined up, weapons pointed at the tall building before them.

"This is the police, we want everyone near the closed down warehouse to evacuate the area immediately. If you live within a block radius we want you to evacuate immediately." Heart pounding, Stella stood up and instantly realized her mistake. The spotlight that had once been focused on the building now swung around to face her, illuminating her as she stood there before the ticking time bomb the authorities had just created.

~'*'~

Angela was singing softly to herself, drawing a dark figure fighting bad guys at the coffee table when she looked up at the TV, eyes widening and gasping in wonder as she saw the news cameras zooming in on the tall figure standing on the edge of a building, staring at a police barricade that was facing a different building.

"It is a girl!" she whispered and quickly set her drawing aside to stare in awe at the TV screen. "I told them it was a girl, I told them! Sarah and Andrew are going to be so happy tomorrow!" Then she gasped again as a thought hit her. "Daddy!" she shouted, running up the stairs to her dad's office. "Daddy, come look at the TV!"

"Not right now, sweetheart, daddy's busy," he answered distractedly as he added up the last of their bills.

"But daddy the Shadow's on TV!" Here, Will frowned, turning around to look at his giddy daughter in confusion.

"The what's on TV?"

"The Shadow, daddy!" Then, theatrically rolling her eyes, she explained, "You know, the superhero everyone calls Nightmare and says is an evil man? Guess what, she's a girl, and I was right! She's going to be helping the police with a bad – daddy, slow down!" Angela complained as her father tore down stairs, nearly tripping on the last few steps and came to a terrified stop, staring at the TV, at the warrior posed for fight, staring around at her surroundings.

"What have you done?" he breathed, heart pounding in his ears. "Oh, god, what have you done?" Angela came skipping into the living room, sitting down on the sofa to watch the news, and, speechless, Will joined her, picking her up and holding her close.

~'*'~

Stella took in a deep breath and watched in trepidation as the police swung their guns to face her instead.

"Nightmare, you are called to stand down! I repeat, stand down!" the officer with the megaphone shouted, but Stella's attention quickly shifted as she caught movement in the corner of her eye.

"LOOK OUT!" she bellowed, pointing, and the officers turned around, helicopter banking to face its original threat once more, just as machine gun fire started raining down on the dazed authorities. Without waiting any longer, Stella jumped, landing perfectly on the machine bolts sticking out of the wood like they were landing platforms made specifically for her use. In the same motion, she vaulted over onto the wire, feet finding their places as though she were walking on a floor and she ran, perfectly balanced to the telephone pole on the opposite side of the street, placing her foot on another machine bolt and jumping for the building, armored and reinforced arms crashing through the glass of one of the windows and giving her a foot hold.

Without wasting a second, she pulled herself along the side of the building, lining up directly below the gunman, and, taking a deep breath, she pulled herself up, climbing using the windows and ledges like a ladder to grab the man's gun, yanking him forward and to the pavement four floors below. Pulling her knife from her leg holster, she pulled herself up into the room, somersaulting across the floor and knifing a dark shadow moving towards her that she saw was one of the men frequently seen accompanying Knox as a body guard. But before she could take in anymore information, there were more people closing in on her and she quickly took in their positions before assuming her stance. One quick roundhouse kick took out one of the assailants, and she followed up with a jump kick so powerful that the man went toppling out of the window. Suddenly, the room was flooded with bright white light as the helicopter lowered itself to their level, light shining in, and Stella looked quickly in the direction of the annoying police nuisance before she saw the news camera right along side it and quickly looked away.

She needed to show people that she was a hero and not a villain. Well, this was the best way to do it.

~'*'~

"Why can't you see her face?"

"Because the picture is grainy. Sweetheart, you need to go to bed now," Will said, forcibly picking up his daughter and carrying her upstairs.

"Aw, but I wanna see the Shadow defeat the bad guys!"

"No, Angela. You need to go to bed. Now." He quickly set her in her room and closed the door. "If you come out, you're going to be grounded, and I am going to be very angry with you do you understand?" he called through the door, and a very sullen voice responded.

"Yes, daddy…"

But he was already downstairs, watching with a sick, nauseous feeling as he finally saw what his wife was capable of.

A few minutes later though, the footage was cut, leaving a stunned news anchor to stammer out something about the scene of the crime being unfitting for the general public to view.

~'*'~

Stella rocked back in the hold of the man who was holding her around her middle and kicked a man in the head, breaking his nose, before bucking forward, throwing her captor over her back to crash painfully onto the ground. Without waiting, she dropped to one knee and brought and elbow crashing down into his sternum, cracking the bone and followed up with a painful uppercut that knocked him out. Somersaulting over that man's body, she got to her feet and took out another four in quick succession, unleashing the hidden blade and stabbing and cutting whenever someone got close.

Dimly, downstairs, she heard another door get broken open, and she could hear the clatter of police boots on the rickety stairs as they came up. She had little time left. One thing she was thankful for though was that her back was always to the spotlight shining in. Her opponents were blinded, couldn't see her attacks coming, but she could see where all of them were without trouble.

And that was when she saw Knox run up to the next floor, dragging a screaming child with him.

"HEY!" she shouted, but before she could pursue them, four men tackled her to the floor and her hood was yanked back in the process, spotlight hitting her full in the face. Snarling, she clamped her teeth down on one of the men's hands and he pulled away, howling, leaving her free to head-butt another and dislocate the third's shoulder and elbow. The fourth though scrabbled on the floor beside him and seized a brick, lifting it up and bringing it smashing down into her ribs, just above the armored plate, and she grunted, grabbing his head between her hands and snapping. The corpse dropped down over her, and she shoved it off, getting to her feet, pulling her hood back up, and vanishing up to the fifth floor – the roof – just as the rest of the police force made their way up to the fourth floor, gaping as they saw the twenty-five incapacitated or dead criminals strewn across the entire room, the goods that were going to be sold forgotten and abandoned in the corner.

~'*'~

While Knox had a head start on her, Stella was faster, and she wasn't dragging an uncooperative kid along with her, and as she cleared the stairwell and reached the roof, she looked around for her target, eyes fixating on the tall man, bleach blond hair slicked back to reveal pointed features and dark, dangerous eyes. A small boy was held close to him, and both were standing precariously close to the edge, the criminal staring at her in warning. The boy was crying silently, shoulders shaking as he tried not to make any noise. His dark brown eyes looked at her in fear, pleading for help, and his pale skin was streaked with tears beneath his shock of dark hair.

"Come any closer, and I shove the boy over!" he barked, and Stella stopped, holding her hands at shoulder height, watching him carefully from below her hood. "I'm not lying!"

"I know you're not," she responded, voice soft, and he looked taken aback.

"Hold on a second," he began, almost laughing. "Are you a girl?" In response, she pulled back her hood, revealing her scarred face beneath. "You are! Man, can I say that I am impressed! I haven't seen many women who fight like you do."

"I can name the ones I know on one hand. And they're all friends of mine," she answered coolly. "Tell me, sir, have you been reading the papers?" He scoffed.

"If you mean the stories that you've made then yeah. And I think you're a little chicken playing in a big world that can't stomach killing. So, I've got the advantage here, and I'll be asking the questions and telling you what to do. How's that?"

"I'm going to have disagree with you there," she countered, smirking to herself as he looked uncomfortable and put off by her disagreeing with him. "See, I'm not talking about the headlines. I'm talking about that one, tiny article that compared me to another assassin. One who went by the name of Nightmare?" The man's expression went cold and stony. "Yeah, that one." She took in a deep breath and prepared herself for the suicidal thing she was about to do. "See, that man was close. He was real close to the truth, but he didn't connect the dots. I am Nightmare. There is no copycat; there is only the one and original Nightmare. And that's me. And I'm not going to play nice anymore."

And then, without warning, she ran forward, tackling both her target and the child, and pushed them both over the edge of the building, grabbing the child from Knox's panicked grasp and turning mid air so that her back was facing the ground and the child was held against her chest. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable smash of pavement against her back that would signal the end of her life.

Except when she hit the ground, it moved beneath her, crunching painfully with the sound of bending metal and shattering glass, and her head slammed against the bent exterior of what used to be a blue Prius so hard that she saw stars. And as people ran over towards her, police and civilians alike, she painfully sat up, holding the stunned and shaking child close to her, shielding him from the bloody pulp on the pavement that was Knox.

"Hey…you okay?" she asked, looking down at the small boy and in response he tackled her in a hug, holding on so tightly her eyes started smarting as he applied way too much pressure to her probably broken ribs. "It's okay…it's okay, little one, you're safe." She eased herself from the demolished car and limped towards the police. "What's your name?"

"Patrick," he whispered, and Stella's heart dropped.

"Okay, Patrick. Did they take you from your apartment?" The little boy nodded, and she sighed, smoothing down his hair with a gloved hand. "You're going to be safe now. I promise. I'm watching over you." He nodded against her, and she set him down on the ground. "Go over to the police, okay? They'll take care of you." He nodded and looked around at her. "Go on. It's okay."

"Hey you!" an officer yelled, but Stella just turned around, heading for the middle of the street. "Hey!" Finally, she took in a deep breath and turned around, facing the young, fresh-faced woman who ran over to her.

"No gun?" she asked in dry amusement, and the woman looked down at her holstered gun. Mutely, she shook her head. "Surprising. After what I just did I would have approached me with a whole unit behind me. At the least I would have my weapon free, ready to counter any sort of move I would make."

"Why?" Stella frowned in response to the question. "Why'd you do that?"

"Which part?" she responded, still baffled.

"Why'd you risk your life for all of that? All the other cases that you've been doing, why'd you do it?" The police officer felt fear in her as she looked up at the tall, hooded figure. "Please. I just want to know." Stella thought for a minute before scoffing.

"Consider it my civic duty. Glad I could be of help." And with that, she left. And before the officer could even blink, the mysterious hero seemed to disappear into the night, vanishing within seconds.

In reality, she had just dropped through a manhole, vanishing into the sewer system and quickly changing back into her civilian clothes. And as she drove home, wincing with every breath she took, she couldn't help but know that her life as she had known it was over.