Some things seemed more plausible at night. Dangerous plans, crazy ideas. In the light of day, you never would have considered them...but at night, there was darkness to hide in, and things felt a little wild, a little magical. That was how it had been for Matt Murdock. He'd spent the last fifteen years in perpetual darkness, and the radical notion known as "Daredevil" had been born from it.

It was after nine in the evening. Daredevil was running across rooftops, acclimating himself to Manhattan. It probably looked much better than Hell's Kitchen, but, to him, there wasn't much difference. The sounds and smells were roughly the same. Honking horns, car exhaust, buildings that seemed to contain nothing but arguments, industrial stink, and the constant, slithering rumble of the subway.

One of the reasons that Daredevil stuck to Hell's Kitchen was because he was so familiar with it. Manhattan was a different beast, and he couldn't exactly read street signs. He'd brought a pocket map with him, though, which was currently folded up into a tiny square. Daredevil knew where the basic landmarks were, and he was pretty sure that he could orient himself from there. Half an hour earlier, he'd stopped by a local precinct, and waited around long enough to hear about the "winged man." One of the patrolmen had mentioned the location of the newspaper vendor who was allegedly attacked. Daredevil had his doubts about the official version of events, but he still needed to look into it. If this was some kind of copycat...

This must have primarily been a business neighborhood; he didn't hear enough plumbing (or people) for it to be a residential one. It was practically deserted. Daredevil swung down to the street, stuck to the shadows (it was easy for him to find shadows, they were always a bit cooler), and crept around.

There wasn't any evidence near the shut-down-for-the-day newsstand. But, around the corner, he found some interesting things. There was an extremely faint smell of gunpowder in the air. Also, a streetlight pole was dented, and there was a little blood near it. It smelled relatively fresh; probably from the last twenty-four hours. He also smelled burnt-rubber tire tracks on the street.

A shot was fired, somebody got slammed into that pole, and a car sped off. Other than his hand, the newsvendor didn't have any injuries. This winged man definitely tangled with some third party. If it had been the cops, the whole precinct would have been talking about it, so it must have been criminals, instead. But is he a superhero or a rival criminal? And the men that he fought with...are they connected to this neighborhood, or is the location irrelevant?

Daredevil knew that he was in a business neighborhood, but he had no idea what those businesses actually were. Only a few of them had engraved signs that his radar sense could read. Certain types of businesses tended to be mob-connected, or were especially vulnerable to strongarm tactics, and that might give him a clue as to what had happened here. Then again, what if the winged man was the one connected to the neighborhood? What kind of business would someone like him be associated with? A chemistry concern, maybe?

As he returned to the rooftops, he grimaced, because he'd just discovered another difference between Manhattan and the Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen didn't have so many business-type offices. In Hell's Kitchen, it was easy for him to identify all of the businesses. The butcher shops, the sheet metal places, the offices that electricians and plumbers worked out of. Manhattan also had those, without a doubt...but this was a white-collar neighborhood, and most of those offices smelled roughly the same. The mob might be interested in a certain accountant's office or lawyer's office, while they wouldn't care about some political thinktank. But how was he supposed to tell the difference between them without breaking in?

You'll just have to watch and wait, Matt. If the winged man or the criminals are connected to this neighborhood, sooner or later, they'll show up.

He crouched in the dark and let the minutes tick by. Most people would have been afraid-to them, the darkness was a blank screen to project their fears onto. But the darkness that Matt saw was rich, vibrant, and packed with information. It was the known, rather than the unknown.

While he waited, he went back and forth on his copycat theory: if the winged man was really a copycat, why would he be in Manhattan, and not Hell's Kitchen? The driver from the previous night claimed to have seen a flying man over the Kitchen, but he hadn't provided much in the way of detail. New York had more flying people in it all the time. The color coincidence was weird, though. Both of them using red, black, and yellow. He was a devil, and this new guy was an angel...

Daredevil made "laps" around the block where the winged man had been sighted, leaping across rooftops and patrolling the neighborhood. That way, if anything was happening just outside of his sensory range, he'd catch it when he passed by. But he heard the clocks strike ten, and this part of Manhattan seemed to be down for the night.

Matt Murdock could have lived and worked here. He constantly received offers from bigger law firms in better parts of the city; offers that included expensive apartments, personal chauffeurs, and presumably-beautiful personal assistants. Hell's Kitchen was full of hard-luck kids; only a small percentage of them went on to become success stories. Matt was the latest example, and one of the biggest ones. His mother had abandoned him, he'd been blinded, his father had been murdered...and, despite all that, he was now an up-and-coming lawyer. Newspapers and TV stations were constantly calling the office, wanting to do human-interest profiles on him.

But Matt wasn't like the other survivors of Hell's Kitchen. If they felt their conscience tugging at them and came back to help, they did it decades later, after they'd made their money and lived their lives. Matt had only spent a few years in Boston, getting enough experience to start his own firm. People loved to talk about civic responsibility, but he could hear the doubt in the voices of his neighbors and clients: why would a young, promising attorney waste the best years of his life in this hellhole? Matt sometimes wondered the same thing. There were times when he felt like a hero, and there were times when he felt like an angry, vengeance-driven masochist. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle.

(Matt was pretty sure this his blindness was the only cover he'd need, in terms of a secret identity. But, if people ever became suspicious of his strange commitment to the Kitchen, he'd toyed with the idea of adopting a slightly-different civilian persona, one that would make him seem even less likely to be a vigilante. In the end, though, he'd realized that it was unnecessary. What person in their right mind would ever think that a lawyer was a heroic person?)

Daredevil spent half an hour making laps, watching and listening to the city. Then, an interesting car came into his sensory range, and he stalked it from the rooftops. It was a Cadillac, and it had five men in it. The car parked just down the street from where the fight had been. He recognized some of the voices and heartbeats: they were mid-level organized criminals, Hell's Kitchen boys that were starting to branch out into other boroughs, because the Kitchen was getting too hot for them. Unfortunately, I'm not the only reason they're looking for greener pastures. They're afraid of me, but they're afraid of this new 'Kingpin,' too.

"-don't like this, don't like this at all."

"Come on, Jimmy, what other choice do we have?"

"We could try the assistant, again."

"That was a stupid idea the first time, and it didn't work then, either." The man who said that had a deep voice; he was the one driving the car.

"It could've worked!" the third man said. "If that bird-freak hadn't shown up, we would've been fi-"

"Are you kidding me? We're lucky she didn't go to the cops," the fourth man said.

"She can't. She helps her boss keep the books, so she has to know what's going on. She'd be getting both of 'em in trouble."

The deep-voiced man: "Shut up, you idiots. Let's talk about what we do know and what we don't know. We do know that she didn't tell him about what happened, or else he would've come back from his vacation. But we don't know if she knows the combination or not. If she doesn't, we'd be wasting even more time. It's easier to just go in, grab the safe, and crack it later. Anybody doesn't like that, there's the door."

"At least it had a good unintended confidence: the Three Stooges here scared her off, so we won't have to deal with anybody pulling an all-nighter."

"Unintended confidence? Oh my god, you're a fu-"

"Shut your mouths and open your eyes. If we're clear, we'll do it."

"Of course we're clear...all the pencil-pushers have gone back to their fancy houses."

"Wait, are we sure the safe's gonna fit in the trunk?"

"We shouldn't even be doing this. Come on, we had an okay month, we could buy dope from somebody. This is askin' for trouble."

"We have to do this," the deep-voiced man said. He was clearly the leader. "We've got a bunch of new feds running around, we've got the Devil breathing down our necks, and now we've got this new player, too. If we're gonna survive, we need to start moving more product. And we'll make more money if we get it for free."

Wait, new feds running around? As Matt Murdock, he routinely interacted with the city's D.A.s, and as Daredevil, he frequently overheard uniformed officers talking in their patrol cars. If the FBI was stepping up their operations in New York, he would have heard a lot of complaining. The gun-carrying men he came across were usually cops, criminals, or private investigators.

"We'll give it a few minutes, just to be safe, and then go in," the deep-voiced man said.

So, they're after dope that's being stored in some office safe...it must be a front for a criminal operation. An accountant or a lawyer, maybe?

One of New York's most common noises was wings: the city was infested with pigeons. He always heard flapping, which was either loud (close) or quiet (distant). So, as a result, Daredevil didn't think anything of it when he heard a new pair of wings. Given how loud they seemed to be, the pigeon should have been close...but it wasn't showing up on his radar sense, which meant that it was out of range.

And then the winged man landed two rooftops over.

Daredevil had been crouching in the shadows, and from the angle that the winged man was at, a large chimney blocked him from view. The winged man apparently hadn't seen him from the air, either. He just touched down and oriented his head toward a certain building. Daredevil could hear his wings' bones moving, and he heard the muscles in his back moving them, as well.

Oh my god, those are real. I thought it might be some kind of magnetic trick, like the Vulture's suit, but this...this is crazy. Is this an actual angel? Is he really there, or am I losing my mind? The irony makes me think I'm probably not imagining it. A sign appears, one that would give hope to hundreds of millions, and the only witness is a blind man. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Daredevil could use a person's lungs and heartbeat to determine their age. If not for the strange circumstances, he would have said that the winged "man" was actually a boy, because his lungs and heart were incredibly strong. Daredevil would have guessed that he wasn't even old enough to get drafted. But this individual wasn't exactly a normal specimen: for all Daredevil knew, immortal angels always had young-seeming bodies.

Was the winged man simply a human with special abilities? Could he be a small-g god like Thor, or something even stranger? And, if he was a threat, what would happen when Daredevil tried to take him down? Would he break his hand against his face? Was this someone that could demolish buildings, or fry people from a distance? And, assuming that he survived, how many Hail Mary's would he have to do for beating up an angel?

Let it play out. If he tries to capture them, he's one of us...and if he tries to murder them, or steal the dope...

"Okay, it looks all-clear to me," the deep-voiced man said, grabbing a pouch that contained lock-picking tools. Daredevil could hear them clinking together. "Let's try being quiet, for a change. No slamming car doors." The deep-voice man killed the engine, and started to get out.

"Hey, wait, shouldn't we leave the car running?"

"No, it might attract attention. We don't know how long this is gonna take. Once we get the safe loose, Jimmy can come down ahead of us and start it."

Daredevil watched in silence. The five men got out, shut the car doors-quietly-and went to the building's entrance. A minute and a half later, the deep-voiced man had picked the lock. They walked right in. Once they were out of sight, the winged man took to the air, descending on the scene. He looked inside the car, probably checking to see if there was anybody that could warn them, and then he followed the gang into the building, keeping his distance.

It's showtime.

Daredevil swung across the street, casually perching on a narrow windowsill. The window that belonged to it didn't offer much resistance. He somersaulted inside, and he landed on carpet. This particular office smelled like cake and perfume. Now that he was inside, it was even easier for him to track them: the robbers were making their way up the stairs, and the winged man was stalking behind them. He let himself out of the office, locking it behind him.

A hallway awaited. Daredevil walked noiselessly, like a ninja would. Some of the robbers, on the other hand, were being much too loud. The deep-voiced man kept trying to quiet them, but it wasn't working. His less-capable employees were arguing, bumping into things, and occasionally dropping their flashlights. When they left the stairwell and picked a floor, Daredevil was already there. He'd been keeping pace with them via the building's other stairwell. Two of the men were big lugs, who were probably there to haul the safe out, and the other three were average-sized. But the other three were also armed. Guns, switchblades, brass knuckles. The winged man had apparently made them a little paranoid.

Daredevil heard the lock picks, again, and a door was opened. Footsteps went from tile to carpet, and the deep-voiced man whispered to his goons. "His office is over there. It's a free-standing safe, so it won't be in the wall or the floor."

They went inside and partially closed the door. The winged man stepped into the hallway, approached the office, and stood just outside it, cocking his head. Daredevil watched from the other end of the hall.

They'd apparently found the safe: "Oh, man, this thing is huge. It's taller'n my kid!"

"Geez, maybe we should've brought more guys."

"We'll be fine. Carmine, Richie, c'mon. Lift with your knees."

"Well, there's no way this thing's fitting in the Caddy's trunk, so I guess some of us are walking home, huh?"

"Shut u-"

"DON'T MOVE, NOBODY MOVE"-the winged man had pushed the door open, and he had a strange gun in each hand. His voice didn't crack, but it still sounded young, just like the rest of him.

The two lugs cursed and dropped the safe, which nearly went through the floor. Daredevil heard guns clear holsters and waistbands. He drew his billy club, sprinting down the hall.

One of the crooks shouted "MARY MOTHER OF GOD"-and then three of them were shooting, but it was dark, and they probably couldn't see well. One of the bullets ricocheted and shattered a window. The winged man flew above their shots, hitting his head on the ceiling and crashing/bouncing across the floor. He fired some kind of gas container that shattered on impact. A few of the men inhaled (the coughing gave it away), but the winged man got a bit of it, as well. The sudden gust of outside air had probably screwed up its dispersion. Also, the winged man was clearly having trouble operating in an enclosed space: his wings kept hitting the furniture and ceiling. The pair of lugs charged him, and Daredevil heard the sounds of a scuffle, followed by blows landing. The lugs grabbed the winged man's arms, and a gun-toting man tried to get close enough to kill him execution-style, but a wing smacked him across the room.

The winged man accidentally dropped his guns, and the deep-voiced man coughed and screamed "HOLD HIM HOLD HIM HOLD HIM!"

He isn't an angel or a criminal-he's just a kid-

Daredevil charged into the room, throwing his billy club. It disarmed two of the gun-toting men, and it clipped the third one right across the face, startling him so badly that he dropped his gun. While it was bouncing around, Daredevil went after the men holding the kid. He punched one of them in the throat, sweep-kicking him to the floor, and he grabbed the other one's arm, breaking it with one clean motion. The kid stumbled and flapped a few feet off of the floor. "GET AWAY, GET AWAY!"

Just stay out of my way for another ten seconds.

Daredevil caught his billy club, brought it down on the lug who still had two working arms, and then took account of the other three men. Two of them were on their hands and knees, frantically searching for their guns. The deep-voiced man ignored his lost gun and pulled out a switchblade and a backup piece. He coughed, stood his ground, and fired in a wide arc, filling the room with lead.

The kid flattened himself against the ceiling; Daredevil flipped into the air and once again threw his billy club. No fancy ricochets, this time-it hit the deep-voiced man right in the forehead. He collapsed in a heap. Daredevil landed, rolled low, snatched his billy club, and targeted the other two men, who'd gone from searching for their guns to ducking their boss' fire. He grabbed them by their shirt-collars and slammed their heads together.

Everyone was down. "It's over, kid," Daredevil said. "But we need to talk."

The kid coughed, finally found his guns, and aimed both of them at Daredevil. "STAY AWAY FROM ME!"

He nearly got killed, he inhaled whatever that stuff is...and now he's just a few feet away from a guy in a devil suit. Calm him down, Matt.

"I'm a superhero, too," Daredevil said, though he'd never really felt like one. "I just want to help you."

The kid's entire body was shaking, and he (accidentally?) fired.

Daredevil's radar sense detected a firm, round projectile coming at him, and his first thought was to hold his breath...but it smelled like rubber, not metal or something breakable. It was one of those new non-lethal things. Daredevil remained where he was, and he used his billy club to bat it right back at him. The dense rubber ball hit the kid in the shoulder. He staggered backwards, and then he flew at him, swinging his guns like clubs. Daredevil smelled the fear on him-he wasn't thinking, he was panicking.

The kid crashed into him, pushed him into the hall (his wings briefly tightened to avoid hitting the doorway), and slammed him against a wall. Great, another hallway fight. Daredevil blocked a gun-swing. The kid was strong, but he didn't put his entire body into the attack. A second gun-swing came at him. This time, Daredevil caught the kid's wrist, yanked him forward, and elbowed him in the side of the head. He then seized his upper arm and waist, flipping him. But there's no point in flipping someone that can fly. The kid sort of spun in mid-air, remained there, and hit him with a wing. Daredevil landed on his back and slid down the hallway. His wings were stronger than he was, and hard to avoid; it was like getting hit with a door.

"I'm...I'm taking you to jail..." The kid had his hand pressed against the side of his head, and he was trying to line up a shot.

Daredevil bounced his billy club off of the walls, but, before it could disarm him, it actually got stuck in one of his wings. Okay, I've never had that happen, before.

Still, it made the kid flinch and freeze up for a second. Daredevil flipped toward him, landed, and punched him in the stomach. Just hard enough to wind him.

"Are you ready to listen, now?" He yanked his billy club out. "I don't want to fight you, I just want to talk."

Daredevil expected the kid to give up. Instead, he grabbed him with his wings, backed up against a window, and crashed right through it. They both fell out. The kid spread his wings and tried to fly away (dropping Daredevil in the process), but Daredevil snagged his ankle. After some wobbly flying, they crashed on a nearby rooftop, kicking up dust.

"I want answers," Daredevil shouted. "Are you copying me? Is this some kind of crazy coincidence, or-"

Suddenly, his radar sense detected a third person on the roof, and he heard him breathing, as well. Where did that guy come from? Something hit him, though his radar sense didn't detect it, and he was driven to his knees. It felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

A fuzzy, filtered voice said, "I told you, Angel. I told you that the darkness would attack you."