Standard Disclaimer: I own nothing in regards to Harry Potter or Daredevil. All properties therein are those of their creators. I am only a writer working on my skills with worlds and characters that I love.
Note: Next chapter will take us into the events of season 1!
Chapter Nine - The Russian
"I really don't know about this, Maggie." Lily warily stated as she followed her friend through the back door of the woman's church. "I mean, I'm not even Catholic."
"Well not everyone can be perfect." The teacher chuckled happily and bumped her shoulder against the other woman as she led her down the halls.
"I'm literally a witch."
"And God loves all without any reservation. But seriously, don't worry. This isn't about faith. It's about using the time the lord gave you to care for others. In this case, those less fortunate." Margaret opened a final door and led her friend at last into a massive kitchen absolutely bustling with the activity of countless volunteers as on the other side of a long bench a long line of men, women, and children in rundown clothing and coated in varying levels of grime wandered past with trays in their hands and expressions of unending gratitude on their faces.
"You said you wanted to get more involved with the community." The former nun grinned and pulled the witch out of the path of a bus girl hauling an armload of dirty utensils to a nearby sink. "Come on," She took a couple free trays and handed one to the redhead. "We can clear some of the tables." As they made their way out she added in a much lower voice, "Also, keep your ears open. If there's one thing I've learned after all these years it's that if you want to know what's really going on in your neighborhood, then you should keep an eye on the homeless. They tend to see and hear things that no one else does."
"You think they might have some info for Harry and Elektra?" Lily asked as she began grabbing some used trays and silverware.
"I think they might not know what they know. But if you hear some of them discussing amongst themselves places they are avoiding, people to watch out for who are especially violent to vagrants, or places where they are scoring dope, then file it away for later. Our son has begun a holy crusade, and it is only right and just that we aid him. Even the archangels had their lieutenants after all. God gave us ears for a reason, did he not?"
"I suppose so." Lily mused, nodding with a new surge of warmth in her heart at the beaming smile of a young girl she soon passed. Yes, she'd been hesitant about this activity at first, but seeing how happy and grateful these people were for the mere fact that she and the others were there doing something as simple as serving food or cleaning up after them, offered its own small reward that she'd never expected. Not for the first time she found herself impressed by the wisdom of her son's mom, and she vowed to return here as often as they'd have her from that day forward. You didn't need to be a Christian to care for others, and caring was an emotion she held in vast abundance.
A Few Hours Later
Margaret smiled at the sight of her unexpected friend bustling from table to table. Along the way she would periodically stop to introduce herself to people, listen to their stories, and offer some small words of comfort. The Englishwoman was picking up on the practice of small acts of kindness rather well, and she supposed it was enough to warrant a little bit of time away for herself. There was yet one more soul in need of reassurance that day.
With practiced ease she crossed herself and took her leave of the kitchen before walking the steps leading up to the main church proper. At that time of day there were no services and only a few congregants were gathered in silent prayer and meditation so she was relatively unnoticed as she made her way past the altar and over to the side door leading into the cellar. Only three people had a key and the fact that the door was unlocked brought a smile to her face. It looked like someone else had already decided to pay a visit to their guest.
She closed the door, descended the stairs, and found a rather curious sight waiting for her. "Jessica", as their guest had revealed her name to be, was openly bawling and screaming profanities as she battered a pile of cinder blocks into rubble with her bare fists. Harry was waiting behind her with his scarred eyes closed and an expression of sad understanding on his face. Without needing to look he raised a hand in the direction of his mother and warned her to stay back while whatever this was ran its course.
The super-powered woman continued her breakdown for five minutes more before she finally collapsed to the ground sobbing, the weight of her tortured emotions finally exceeding the unnatural strength of her arms. At that point her son at last waved her forward and he knelt before the girl as she approached.
"Jessica," he asked softly, "may I take your hand?"
The girl looked up and shakily nodded. Then she seemed to remember that her savior was blind for she quickly added, "Y-Y-Yes you m-may."
He gently grabbed her hand in his own and then placed his other one on top of it. "Confronting your trauma is never easy. This I know. My own teacher, Stick, was a right bastard at making me face my blindness head on, but he was right to be so. Living as a victim is no one's idea of a good life, and repressing my anger and pain, pushing it down instead of dealing with it, would have only hurt me and those close to me in the end. What happened to me does not define me, and what happened to you does not define you. Each event was horrible. Each event left scars; even if some are not plain to the eye to see. But I want you to know that no matter how much this hurts you will get through it. You will because I did before you, and I am here to show you the way."
Without changing the pitch of his voice he moved one hand over and his mother dutifully filled it with her own, following his pull she went to her knees beside them and he replaced his hands on Jessica's with his mother's. "This is my mom. I need to go to the office for a bit and then I need to go on patrol, but I swear I am not leaving you alone. My mom is going to stay with you for a bit and then Elektra will be here to take over for her. I will be back myself in the morning."
"O-Okay. B-but you promise you'll be b-back?" Jessica's tears hadn't stopped and the thought that this man would not return absolutely terrified her. This was the man who had killed Kilgrave. This was the man who had freed her from his mind control. And this was the only person on the planet that actually made her feel safe after everything that had happened.
"I promise. You are safe here, Jessica. You are under the eyes of myself, my mother, and God, and not a one of us will let you be hurt again." And with that the young man stood and took his leave, retrieving his cane from a hook on the wall as he did to return to his normal 'blind walk' act.
Margaret smiled after him and then turned back to the shaking woman. Oh yes, she'd met many in the girl's position in her years of advocacy at the church, unfortunately, and she had some small idea of how to help her moving forward. Harry had already done the hard part by making her face what had happened head on, and now it was up to her to build back the foundation of her personality from the rubble. "Jessica, would you like to pray with me?"
"Pray? I… don't really know how. My parents weren't very religious."
"I gathered as much." Margaret patted her hand tenderly. "But I find giving my problems up to God and asking for guidance can provide a peace of its own, after a fashion. Harry says it's good meditation for him and eases his mind, if that helps. Would you like to give it a try?" Knowing that dropping her son's name would have an effect, the educator wasn't surprised in the least when she received an enthusiastic 'yes' for her efforts. Indeed, there was much to be done to set this girl to rights, but she was more than willing to take up the challenge.
That Night
Harry and Elektra stood upon a roof clad in their disguises as the woman stared down at a glass skylight with a pair of binoculars. "What do you see?" He asked.
Elektra grinned under her scarf and replied, "Your mom's intel was spot on. Looks to be some kind of drug packing operation. I see three tables of people packaging white powder and two trucks on the other end; likely for loading and transport. Hey, hold on a second."
"What?"
"I said hold on." the woman focused her lenses a bit more and then cursed. "Looks like a boss just showed up and he isn't alone. He's got two burly men dragging a girl between them. She's tied up and it looks like they already slapped her around a bit."
"Shit."
"You know, if I didn't know any better I'd think she was a cop. The girl's got a deceptively muscular build and with the way she's walking between those brutes it's clear that she's used to the weight of a weapon on her hip."
"Undercover op gone bad?"
"That'd be my guess."
"Hold here." Harry popped away and spent the next couple minutes arriving at varying roofs around their target, letting his senses take in everything they could as he did until he made it back to his girlfriend. "No other units around. If she is a cop she's here on her own."
"Perfect." Elektra drew her sai and her man turned his cane into a pair of short swords. "Kill them all?"
"Are the voices back?"
"Yes."
"Then yeah. This is a bed of sin and sickness. Those who run it are profiting off of the addiction of those beneath them and it must end before its cancerous taint can spread to the rest of Hell's Kitchen. After tonight, that poison will no longer fill our streets."
"Amen." Elektra agreed before gripping his shoulder and bracing herself as he apparated them down to skylight proper. Once they landed she asked, "How do you want to do this?"
Harry considered the question and then pointed offhandedly down at where he could hear the gears ticking form the loading vans. "I've got better spatial awareness so I'll handle the hostage and her captors. You handle the trucks and the drug packers."
"We thinking a 'boom' or a 'burn'?"
"I'll handle the burn. Wait for my signal before getting to the fun part. Let's move."
The two separated and the masked man crept over to the skylight's edge, removing one glove and pressing the pads of his fingers to the glass. Through the contact with his skin he began to pick up the vibrations of the voices within the office below, and soon enough he had a decent idea of the situation facing the strange woman.
Apparently she'd been undercover in this gangster's nightclub, trying to ask questions of some people that were too suspicious for her own good about matters that she shouldn't have been privy to. Such as where certain ingredients in their meth were being supplied from. Harry didn't understand the word that was being tossed around, 'Cordyceps', but it certainly sounded sinister.
Well, time to be a hero. Raising his face to the sky, he intoned, "God grant me the strength and swiftness of arm that I might do your will." He crossed his chest and then promptly smashed the skylight beneath one sword, ensuring the blow would be loud enough for Elektra to hear as a signal, before allowing himself to fall after the descent of the crashing glass.
Each shattering shard created a ping of echolocation that revealed all to his mind, including the two guards that had been waiting outside the door, out of Elektra's sight, and who were preparing to rush in to see what was the matter.
A deep breath in as air rushed past his face, and then he began to warp. Up, down, up, down, constant descent warping from the floor to the ceiling, upping his velocity every time, and the moment the doors opened to reveal to the new men the stunned group already in attendance, Harry was ready.
With a grunt of effort he broke the chain, settled his blades in front of him in a reinforced X of razor sharp steel, and altered course to the leader of the pack. The moment he felt the tug on his blade signifying a tear through skin he warped again, continuing his momentum as he appeared less than a foot in front of the leader's first guard, repeating the process before moving on to the second, then the third, and finally letting the magic cease as he hurtled towards the doormen with blades extended out to either side of his torso. By the time his feet finally hit the ground and started skidding to a stop, the masked man could hear the welcome sound of twin thuds hitting the carpet behind him. Five bodies and two severed heads; a fine result for a little bit of chi.
Through the walls he could hear the screams of the other street toughs cutting out one by one as Elektra wrought her own personal form of havoc amongst their operation. Things were going surprisingly well.
Or… at least that was what he thought until he approached the quivering (he assumed from fear) woman tied to the chair in the center of the room. Once her first wrist was freed, though, he had to duck out of the way from reflex as she immediately swung the fist attached to it at his head.
"You absolute idiot!" She snarled before jerking her torso to the side and shattering the spine of the chair in one motion, freeing herself easily in the process. "You couldn't have waited five more minutes? I had the bastard right where I wanted him!"
Unable to blink, Harry merely tilted his head in apparent confusion. "It certainly didn't seem that way to me. I'm sorry, but isn't it polite to thank someone for saving your life?"
"Saving my life?!" The woman stomped over to the downed gang leader and sent a series of surprisingly powerful kicks into his unresponsive ribs. "This piece of human garbage was 'finally' monologuing! Do you have any idea how annoying it was to get him out of that nightclub? I couldn't hear shit in there so I had to play the 'vapid' seductress, sprinkling 'just' enough pointed questions to make him suspicious and bring me here to his base of operations to 'interrogate' me! Five more minutes and he'd have dropped information on where he grows his stuff!"
"Cambodia." Harry supplied simply. "The meth wrapping has the same scent as my neighbor's favorite tea packing.
"Not the meth, stupid!" The redhead grumbled before ceasing her kicking at last, running her fingers tensley through her long hair, and letting out the deepest breath she could. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. Look, thanks for stepping in. Not many people would in this situation. But I've been on this case for over a month and now it's effectively dead in the water."
"So you were undercover." Harry nodded and leaned against the wall, his keen ears picking up the last cut-off cry from the floor below. "My partner will be thrilled to have been right. What were you looking for anyway? Maybe I can help?"
The redhead smiled at him (not that he could see it) and offered, "I'm not sure my bosses would appreciate me bringing in… private contractors. We're a bit off the grid enough as it is."
"Try me. This is my neighborhood, and I would appreciate knowing if something bad is happening in it." As he spoke the door next to him opened and in walked Elektra, looping one arm around his waist and waving easily to the other woman.
"Right…" She seemed to consider her options for a few moments before finally making a decision. "Alright, but this is all classified material. You can't tell anybody about it later."
Elektra scoffed and gestured vaguely to her own mask and that of her boyfriend. "Do we look like the respectable sort reporters would want to talk to? Who would we tell?"
"Fair enough. My superiors put me on this case after hearing chatter about a new breed of methamphetamine about to be unleashed on United States soil. Normally we wouldn't be so interested in something as mundane as the drug trade, but the information we were hearing about this batch was… troubling."
"How so?" Harry asked.
"Apparently a certain doctor was kidnapped by this weasel you saw-to so handily to work on it. A bio-virologist. One whose primary area of study was fungi, specifically cordyceps."
Remembering a brief passage from her supplementary reading during undergrad, Elektra offered, "Isn't that a sort of hive-minded weed?"
"Something like that." The undercover agent agreed. "Many have theorized that under the right conditions it could be used to control the mental state of other beings, potentially even humans, though that would require a massive change in the chemical structure of the human brain." Looking pointedly around their environment she elaborated with, "Perhaps a change that could be observed from the effects of massive mental stimulants."
Elektra gasped at the possibilities being presented. "You think whoever designed this drug was planning to disburse it amongst the addicts of Hell's Kitchen to see how it affected them? Like a clinical trial from hell?"
"Something like that. Though we are more minded towards a different theory."
"Such as?"
"Specialization. What if this drug could alter the minds of its users to only want 'this' variant. This cordyceps-infused variant. Then it would effectively be a proof of concept for how to make a violently loyal customer base. If it isn't stopped here and now this conspiracy could spread to the rest of the country, and then likely to the rest of the world to boot." she waited long enough for the imports of her words to land before adding, "If nothing else then at least we stopped the test batch from being unleashed. I haven't heard the trucks roll out yet."
"We?" Elektra raised a brow, but the other woman continued as if she hadn't been interrupted.
"Though without knowing where the product came from we won't find where the cordyceps variant is being grown. If we can't burn it out at the source then the syndicate selling this trash will just attempt it somewhere else in a few month's time."
"Oh that's easy." Elektra winked at the startled redhead and nodded to her man. "There's plenty of samples still in the trucks since he hasn't gotten around to flaming them yet."
"Excellent." Harry warped away, Elektra took off running, and the startled agent found herself cursing yet again as she hurried to keep up. And a good thing too, as she found herself confused to find her rescuer outside near the U-Hauls with a solidly wrapped brick of meth held under his nose. It wasn't even a few seconds later before he turned back to her with a smile. "I can take you to the source whenever you're ready."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. But I think calling you 'you' is going to get old really quick. What should we call you?"
The agent cocked a hip, rested one hand on it in a fashionable pose, and purred, "My real name is classified, but you can call me Black Widow. What about you two?"
Harry reached out slowly with his left hand and, when Elektra took it in her own, declared, "We're the Devils of Hell's Kitchen."
Five Hours Later
Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, and spymaster extraordinaire, looked up from the data-slate he'd been reading from and at last gestured to his most effective agent to take the seat across from his desk. "Agent Romanoff, welcome back."
"Thank you, sir." The Redhead, otherwise known as Black Widow, nodded stoically and gestured to the slate. "I assume you were reading the details of my mission report?"
"Yes, but there were a lot of gray areas I was hoping you might fill in for me in your own words. What the hell happened out there after your cover was blown?"
"Believe it or not, my operation was interrupted by a pair of enhanced individuals."
"Enhanced!" Nick forced his features to remain calm, but inside he was incredibly flustered. "A pair? You're saying two Enhanced individuals are operating in New York without our knowledge?"
"Apparently so. They picked up on my 'kidnapping' and assumed I was in imminent danger, so they intervened. Unfortunate, but understandable given the limited information they had to work with. They've seemingly set themselves up as vigilantes in Hell's Kitchen and they've certainly got no problem spilling blood."
"Do we need to be worried about them spilling too much?"
"Not at all." Natasha shook her head to allay her superior's fears. "I read their body language for at least two hours straight. Their only goal is the preservation of innocent lives through the use of their abilities, though I must have heard the male say something close to seven prayers in that time frame too."
"Prayers?"
"The duo call themselves Devils, Director Fury, so that shouldn't be outright surprising. They believe they are on some sort of holy crusade against crime, but it seems contained to a few blocks, so they hardly qualify as a threat SHIELD should be interested in. If they take out a few pimps and drug dealers in the course of their activities then all the better."
"Fair enough." Nick thought those words over and asked, "Do you think they can be trusted?"
"To a point." Natasha answered without a second thought. "It is my impression that we'd get as much trust from them as we give. To that end, I've already begun the process of building a relationship between SHIELD and their operations."
"How so? And are they even worth it?"
Natasha nodded eagerly. "I've provided them with a secure line to my mission phone so that I can aid them in any future operations they might not be equipped for. I expect they'll likely be calling for info more than anything else, but on the off chance we need them in the future it hurts us little to provide what's needed."
"And as for if they're worth it… I personally witnessed the male perform feats of power that could topple the top eight members of our Enhanced List, and his stealth abilities could easily match my own."
At those words Fury at last lost his cool and surrendered to the surprised blink of his one good eye. "How is that possible without us knowing about him?"
Natasha shrugged. "I couldn't say. But the woman is no slouch either. She's quick, efficient, and downright surgical in the art of murder. Don't misunderstand me, these two are definitely not Avengers Initiative material, but they could very well have their uses later. Especially if we can find targets in New York that need to… disappear. People of true Faith, of true Belief, are immensely reliable, just as they are reliably predictable."
"I agree." Fury leaned back in his seat and allowed a small smile to cross his face. "Well, surprises aside, the scientist is back in our custody, the cordyceps has been destroyed, and you've discovered new assets in a city where our influence is less than optimal. Good work, Agent Romanoff."
"Thank you, sir."