Post by webdevil on May 22, 2022 4:49:08 GMT -7
CONTINUITY: This story is set after the events of Ghosts and Tick, Tock
Daredevil ached from head-to-toe.
The wounds from Typhoid Mary's personal vendetta barely closed before he ran headfirst into one of perhaps the longest fortnights in his so-called "superhero" career. Between the Maggia, Gamma-infused meth heads, Midnight and the Moon Knight, and the inevitable return of Bullseye in well over a year despite several false flags, the self-proclaimed "Man Without Fear" had so much on his plate that it consistently put one investigation consistently on the backburner. One that he should have made his priority from the start:
The Devils.
His first encounter with this gang ended with them carting off the criminal known as Jigsaw, but he couldn't dive further into it due to Frank Castle holding a cop at gun point so he himself couldn't be taken down. He never saw nor heard a word about Jigsaw after that. Another puzzle piece he needed to search for, he realized. This was becoming a pattern: He would begin to focus on his life, get a much higher priority event dropped into his lap, and have the Devils come along to try and cause havoc. They did this also during his fight with Mary, tho timely intervention of the Black Widow kept them from causing anymore trouble - and him not losing his life.
And then there was Ben Urich. Ben was a friend - Editor of the Pulse at the Daily Bugle and one of the paper's best crime reporters to boot - and thus no stranger to danger, but he too decided to get involved. Got the whole paper involved in fact. Then again, a riot at Rand Corp was headline news. But that was no excuse: They wore the mask of Daredevil.
Daredevil.
The name hung in his head. His name. His identity. One given to him by school bullies who believed him a coward because he - young Matt Murdock - focused on his school studies and reading rather than going out and playing like he once did. Made worse when he was blinded after saving an old man from a speeding truck. The truck, it transpired, carried illegal loads of radioactive waste that bucked off the back of the truck and splashed into Matt's eyes. He should have died then; instead he was gifted with enhanced superhuman senses and more amazingly, a unique "Radar Sense" that more than made up for his newfound lack of sight. It was a genuine gift, but one young - and sometimes the elder - Matt would could never truly accept as it never took away from the mockery or the isolation.
Many tried over the years: Stick, the man who taught him how to use his newfound senses and channel them into a honed weapon along with more martial arts skills than most would ever know, Foggy, the college roommate turned best friend and law partner who always saw past the blind man and treated him as any other normal person, and a series of lovers that, admittedly, never quite fit due to his own hang ups. But all of them never truly addressed the heart of what ate at Matt Murdock:
Guilt.
Why did he become Daredevil? To keep - as well as break - the promise he made to his father: Help others. Battlin' Jack Murdock, a two-bit pugilist from the Kitchen, was forced to turn into a leg breaker for the mob in order to pay the bills so Matt could grow up as comfortably as he could afford. He never did ask if Jack had the chance to do it again if he would, but Matt felt, deep down, given how Jack would later be killed for refusing to throw a fight for Roscoe Sweeney, the Fixer, that Jack was disgusted with himself. What he had become. In a strange way - an ironic way - Matt too felt he was forced to become someone else so others could live comfortably.
Which brought him full circle to the Devils.
Matt was sitting in the library of the brownstone that housed the offices of Nelson and Murdock. In his day job as one of New York's finest defense attorneys, he had access to one of the largest braille libraries known, having curated it carefully over the years and over the many cases won and lost. The library also contained the best technology money could afford to assist blind men dealing with the wonders of computer technology. He was combing over Ben's latest expose and with each paragraph allowed his face to furrow into an increasingly deeper scowl.
The Devils - it transpired - had gone from common citizens protesting their neighbourhood's organized crime racket and political and economic downturn since Hellzone into a full fledged terror cell. Matt Murdock knew it was unwise to throw such a term around willy nilly - he wasn't the government trying to castigate his political enemies after all - but in any other part of the world, their militant and ideological mission statement would have been designated as such. Whenever, and whatever, Wilson Fisk had his hands in - past or present - was fair game to them along with any criminal who dared set foot in the Kitchen. Even the criminals in Josie's Bar largely only kept to that block these days due to the strength in numbers. Small comfort, Matt thought, seeing as they couldn't distinguish between the likes of Turk Barrett or Foggy!
Then a thought made his stomach lurch as if someone put a large chunk of ice into it: Maybe they can't. Foggy - and even he at one point - have either worked for, or were forced to assist, Wilson Fisk at one point or another. The name alone made his blood boil. The Kingpin. Even when he wasn't directly involved, his fingerprints still found a way to get onto every shred of detail. It made him sick. He took off his glasses a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb. He ought to go talk to Fisk himself, he realized, and that alone made him nauseous because of all the work he'd have to prep to get around Wilson's latest security upgrade designed to keep him out. It wouldn't work of course - never did, never will - but the tedium weighed on his mind.
Then a sound jolted him into full alertness. A crunching thud. The sound of a crowbar on metal and wood. His Radar tracked it to a few floors below and with it, the sounds of heartbeats. Heavy, pounding, and rhythmic; their adrenaline was spiked.
bumpBUMPbumpBUMP
then he picked up more.
bumpBUMPBUMPbumpBUMPBUMP
BUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMP
To be fair to himself, he did decide to put the brownstone in Hell's Kitchen. After selling the land in the Upper East Side and moving the entire brownstone whole cloth down southwest of Fifth Avenue to keep the cost down as well as be closer to his clientele, Matt always knew burglary was a risk, but they never counted on a B&E where they'd run headfirst into Daredevil! He sprung from his chair with blinding speed and agility, out the door, down the hall, and up one more flight of stairs to the residential area. Seizing the door of a nearby closet, he pulled out a spare Daredevil costume and began suiting up in a way a decade or so this so-called career afforded him how to avoid being detected and how to change properly at breakneck speeds.
He heard the door five stories below give way just as he secured the mask and billy club and began to move back down the steps, making sure to close the door. Last thing he wanted was for them to get into the apartment itself. If he was fortunate, they would just skirt the offices - likely try to smash everything in sight - but if he wasn't so fortunate, they would find the locked door to the brownstone's gym and that would be even more unfortunate indeed... For them.
