Author's Note: I haven't written fiction in years but now just felt the urge! :) As you may notice English is not my native language, Please excuse me for my errors. I hope the story is gonna be okay though. :) Let me know what you think of my OC and portraying the others.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Chapter Three: The Esoteric Mumbo Jumbo

Abbie was only a few blocks away from her home when she started to regret her quick decision. It's one thing to know Trish for a while now, but hurrying to an unnamed placed at night with Trish's strange stepsister is a completely other one. When Jessica suddenly waved to Abbie to follow her to the subway station, she stopped abruptly. Jessica discovered her hesitance a few moments later, so she had to step back to the other woman.

"What?" she asked impatiently "We need to get there real quick."

Abbie doesn't move. "Where is this place? What are we doing exactly?"

Jessica rolled her eyes irritatedly and also sighed, but figured she needed to answer if she wanted the other one to help her. It didn't escaped Abbie's attention that Jessica looked over quickly but carefully before she started to speak. "There are some, er, friends, so to speak, we need to meet. You're gonna be happy because they also have some special abilities themselves, so… maybe you'll get what Trish wanted me to—"

"Hey, okay, stop!" Now Abbie was the irritated one. Clearly it was a mistake going to Trish and getting this Jessica woman involved. She referred to Abbie as someone who is extremely excited about this craziness in her own head, instead of trying to figure her life out without it. Her entrant didn't go the way she had originally intended, so now it was the time for clarifying things with Jessica. "Look, I might strike you as a person who is totally into this crazy shit, but I can assure you, I'm not. When I talked to Trish I was afraid of going insane, merely talking about it with another person helped a bit" yeah, well, that's not true, it didn't help at all, on the contrary, now she even has to avoid Trish to maintain the remains of her dignity. "I don't need anybody's help, okay? Especially not yours or your whatever-friend's, I'm doing okay myself, so I'm going home now."

Jessica stepped closer to Abbie, the sudden proximity surprised her, but resisted the urge to step back. There was something really, really contradictory in this woman.

"Listen. I don't want to help you. Actually we need your help."

Abbie stood there with a blank face for a second. "What do you mean, you need my help?"

"Your mind-reading skills can come in handy for us. If they're working at all. But you won't try it on me. It was not my idea to drag you there, but they insisted."

"Who?"

"Oh, you'll see!" Jessica rolled her eyes.

Abbie nodded and followed Jessica to the subway. They remained silent for the further part of the rather long journey and Abbie used this time to contemplate about what if her abilities didn't work at her own will at all, only at their own accord, tossing her life into madness, but never being able to get some advantage out of it. These things always just happened to her, she had no clue if she could control it at all.

"Come on, we are heading to the dojo!"

Jessica's words pulled her out from her errant thoughts as they got off the subway and reached their destination. Abbie followed her but was not able to stop herself from looking around constantly as if she was waiting for something bad or at least unexpected to happen. But nothing moved, darkness had already taken over the city, the building was almost empty and very quiet. They took the stairs, then Jessica pushed on a door which said: Chikara Dojo. There were three man and a woman in the spacious room, sitting on chairs and stopping talking instantly as they came in. Neither of them seemed familiar to Abbie. Jessica stood next to the others and idly introduced her guest.

"This is her."

Abbie stared at her for a moment, then decided to introduce herself properly, desperate to break the awkward silence. "I'm Abigail. Jessica and I've just met… uhm, through a friend."

The young woman nodded to her. "Hey. I'm Colleen, this is my place, thank you for coming." Abbie greeted her with a vague smile, but didn't know what to say.

"Can we really trust her?" the voice came from Abbie's right. She turned to the sharped dressed blind man, but before she could answer anything, Jessica snapped at the guy.

"You tell me!"

Abbie was wondering if she had ever felt so stupid in her life, but just couldn't recall another memory like that all of a sudden. She shifted her weight to her other leg and said: "I'm sorry, I don't know who are you or why I'm here, so… I'm not sure I can trust you at all."

Now the big, black guy darted a questioning look at Jessica. "Didn't you tell her anything?"

The dark haired woman casually shrugged like she didn't give a damn to the whole thing. "Fuck off, Luke! I told her, we might need her help, I was not aware that I was supposed to feed her with the background stories."

Background stories, what the hell? Abbie wondered if that was the right time to turn around and leave this strange company for good. But instead, she tried to be polite, yet cautious. "Well, I don't know if I can help you out, guys. Uhm… Jessica told me it would require some certain abilities, but I—I really don't think I'm the right guy for you…"

"Of course, you are!" the man with the shaggy blond hair in the corner exclaimed with such enthusiasm, Abbie was actually frightened of it. "You are exactly the one we need!"

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"I'm the immortal Iron Fist" the answer came immediately.

Okay, that's it then. Abbie was absolutely sure that she shouldn't come here in the first place. Wrong decision's already made, but hey, no problem. Just get a cab, go home and pretend nothing is happened. On Monday I'll ask Trish about her crazy friends, though. Or rather not, well, maybe it's smarter to skip the topic for good.

Abbie waved her hands apologetically and turned back to the door. Even though she was standing on way the nearest spot to the door, she couldn't even reach the doorway when she found her upper arm in a rather firm grip. The hand that stopped her, belonged to an arm in nice, white shirt and the arm belonged to the man she assumed was blind. Abbie's heart started to pound. This is really weird shit. How in the hell he got here so fast?

However his firm grip didn't loosen a bit, the voice of the man was even and somehow friendly. "Please, stay a little longer. We'll explain everything to you."

"Er, no thanks."

"You have seen us here, together, now we cannot let you go until we make sure you're not work for our opponents" with that he manoeuvred her back to the middle of the room. The fact that she was guided by a blind man crossed Abbie's mind for a short moment, but then the blond guy drew her attention to him again.

"You can't leave, you are the Oracle the prophecy predicted!" he wore a big smile and enthusiastic expression on his face but it was not a bit appealing to Abbie in her current state. She managed to tug her arm out of the grip of her guard and tried to control her breathing for starter. "What are you talking about?" she groaned in disbelief.

The guy didn't seem offended by Abbie's coldness, instead he offered the answer more than willingly. "You are the Oracle, who sees and hears beyond worlds to help us in our great fight."

Abbie stared at him in response then looked around in the room, closely observing the strange group. This shaggy guy was undoubtedly mental and also overly enthusiastic, but oddly the others didn't seem to share his temper. Jessica was smirking in disbelief, the girl named Colleen purposely didn't meet Abbie's gaze and the other two guys were obviously busy with suppressing the smiles of their own. It somehow didn't make sense, any of it. Is this some team work here, or not?

"What is this esoteric Mumbo Jumbo here?" she bursted out, doing a really good job not to laugh into their faces. Some strange instinct just told her to be patient and careful, if Jessica had been right earlier, some interesting stuff was going on here after all. That was one rather problematic heritage from her past, Abbie couldn't get rid of: she was unbearably curious. Maybe that was the source of her crazy abilities, always wanting to know what was going on in someone's head?

Presumably the other members of this weird late-night party understood that they needed to provide more information for the new girl if they wanted anything from her at all, because the blind guy started to speak in a calm and objective manner. "We are after a rather big and influential syndicate of organized crime. One of their organizations we managed to track down is dealing with human trafficking. A rather high standing member of it is in detention but the DA is going to let him go since they don't hold enough evidence against him. As long as he's in there, we can approach him, which we already tried but the result was not promising. It's obvious that he won't give us any kind of information, not under his detention, nor later during an occurrent interrogation."

A little, strange feeling started to build deep down in Abbie's guts and ever so slowly it crawled its way upwards. She shuddered for a quick moment.

"So… what do I have to do with all of this?" she asked in a thin voice.

"Jessica told us she knows someone who can read minds." The guy who was called Luke earlier offered the more than obvious answer. "Is this true? Can you really do that?"

Abbie cleared her throat nervously. "It's not how it works. Actually I don't really know how it works. But… proximity helps. Usually I hear other people's inner voices when I touch them. It's not that easy or automatic, though. I don't think, I'm the right person for you." She repeated her former statement vigourously.

After that everything happened really, really fast. The blond guy leaned forward with glimmering eyes and stepped closer to Abbie.

"Of course you can, I believe in you! We waited for you for so, so long and eventually you're here. Just like the prophecy said. I am sorry I haven't even introduced myself properly. I'm Danny Rand and I happen to be the Iron Fist." The guy grabbed Abbie's hand to shake it and as an impact of his touch, all of a sudden something has blown up in her mind. She heard his voice inside her own head, loudly and eagerly as his thoughts rambled around in a loud and fast vortex. Abbie's head turned and she instantly felt dizzier than ever had in her life. Yanking her hand back, she tried to gather herself. Her heart started pounding as she glanced over these people in front of her. Now everything started to make sense, but she wished if it was only a joke. The last guy she looked at was the blind one again, whom she'd learned now was—

"Devil of Hell's Kitchen."

The muffled words lingered for a long moment above them. Someone exhaled sharply. Danny Rand was still standing right in front of her and now gasped at Abbie in awe. "Did you get that from me? Just now?"

The poor girl's heart set up an even faster pace. This was something she was definitely not supposed to get involved with. But what shall I do no? "Oh my God," she whispered. "You are the crazy vigilantes from the news" she stated lamely.

Next to him, the man who turned out to be the Devil of Hell's Kitchen immediately tensed. "You figured this out just now? Jessica told us, she knew you well" he hissed menacingly.

Abbie heard Jessica's voice saying something about that's not exactly what I said, but she couldn't care less right now, her eyes were fixated on the guy who stepped even closer and turned completely into her direction. This move definitely intimated her, so she cleared her throat and tried to clarify a few certain things.

"I'm sorry, guys, I'm sure you're working on something big, but… this is not for me. I'm a normal, regular girl, with that stupid inner voice stuff which is kinda an unfortunate inconvenience I'm trying to hide from other normal people. I thought knowing someone like me might help, but… well, it's obvious that I was wrong. This prophecy thing and all… it's not for me. Please leave me alone and I'll do likewise, is that okay?" Abbie desperately tried to stay calm and prudent so kept down her voice and hoped they would understand that she didn't fit in the picture.

"She seems to be honest," the Devil of Hell's Kitchen stated. "She's probably not a threat."

"Of course I'm not!" Abbie exclaimed sincerely. "I'm not like you. I work at a radio station, doing nothing heroic. I'm not a fighter and can't get involved with this kind of shit. Sorry."

Jessica made an angry sound and turned her head away from the others. She seemed upset and somehow disappointed.

Luke moved closer to Abbie too, now. "Hey" he said in a low and kind tone "we don't want you to fight or team up with us. But we are an inch close to a very high up member of a really big, bad company we want to take down. These people… they deserve the worst. Organ trafficking, prostitution, you name it. The worst kind of guys. But we're stuck now. And can't move forward without help. After that – you can go. It's just a one-time session in a hearing room."

Abbie's heart sank. She would've never in a million years prepared for that. "I am sorry" she shook her head slowly. "I don't think I can really help you. My powers doesn't reliable enough."

"You can't say that, you are the Oracle of K'un-Lun!" Danny Rand interjected with his usual shocking enthusiasm.

That was the last drop in the glass for her. "You're a nutcase man! I'm leaving." Abbie saw Colleen trying to hush Danny, but the Devil of Hell's Kitchen drew her attention to himself again. He handed her own silk scarf.

"Here. It dropped off the floor" he said nicely. Abbie took the scarf confused. Not bad from a blind guy, I didn't even notice it myself. Scary shit is scary. "It's completely understandable if you don't want your life to be effected by this" the man continued. "You can leave, if you'd like." Oh, someone finally speaks my language. Abbie felt relieved.

"Hey, you can't tell her that!" That was Danny again, who seemed to be the most lunatic one here. I can imagine him running around in a mask.

Abbie hesitated for a moment, than just nodded and with an apologetic look on her face, quickly exited the room, leaving the five of them behind. Now she had a lot to process. She tried to recollect every details of this strange meeting and the more thoughts she put into it, the more it became crazy. Oracle and what not… Maybe people with certain abilities is really just another expression for madness. She needs to supress this thing and get over it for good, this is in her best interest.

As Abbie walked her way through the neighbourhood, she decided not to go home. She didn't want to be alone with her thoughts and these brand new memories to deal with if she wanted to be honest. It would be much better if she returned back to average, normal people, maybe her craziness would fade away sooner or later, if she didn't think of it all the time. This made Abbie almost happy, when she entered a bar and walked right to the counter to order a drink. That's what she was needed now, a little bit of oblivion and relaxing. One or two drink would work just fine and tomorrow – tomorrow she'd start everything over. Talk again with Trish and maybe even try the shrink for one last time. Yes, she should definitely do that.

Abbie let out a deep but now relieved sigh.

"Rough day?"

Abbie turned to her side, looking for the source of the voice. Next to her, a very tall, handsome blond man was having his after-hours drink. He faced Abbie with a seductive smile and nodded toward her Cosmopolitan.

"Yeah, we can say that" she smiled back to him.