Blackout | Matt Murdock

chapter one | vigilante buddies

Vigilantism has been on the rise in New York for a while now.

The media has a typical love-hate relationship with the small-time heroes, extolling them for their efforts to combat the ridiculous crime-rate in New York City one minute, condemning them for their flagrant dismissal of the law and reckless endangerment of civilians the next. Michaela's hardly surprised; they've been treating the Avengers the same way since the Battle of New York, and Tony Stark has been getting fan- and hate-mail in droves since he announced to the world he was Iron Man in 2008.

So, not surprised, but a little baffled by the semi-professional mood swings. People on the street are much more consistent, honestly, with most of them pretty damn happy to have Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage around, because they take care of the problems that don't make it onto the Avengers' radar. She distinctly remembers an article from months ago that detailed one mother's account of how Daredevil rescued her son from a kidnapping attempt while they were on their way home — she'd said, explicitly, that without him, she didn't think anyone, the police or the Avengers or some well-meaning attempt at a citizen's arrest, could have brought her son home.

Spider-Man is kind of tricky, though — Michaela's seen the videos of him, swinging between buildings and webbing up petty criminals, and that voice he uses is so obviously fake that she can't help but assume he's young and trying to hide it. Which is. Upsetting, to a degree. It's probably not great if Spider-Man is out there risking his life dangling from high-rises in Queens when he might not even have his driver's license.

Granted, Michaela doesn't have her driver's license, but, well, it's New York, alright, and at least she's old enough to get drunk off her ass on cheap convenience store alcohol if she feels like it.

(She's been feeling like it a lot, lately, but that's not the point)

But, she supposes, either way it's the guy's choice what he does with his... powers. He's got powers, right? What with the clinging to buildings and shootings sticky webs from his wrists... it could be technology, but she's never seen anything like it if that's the case. She'd taken a day trip to Queens to meet up with friends a few weeks ago and she'd seen first hand what those webs are like in real life, and, wow, they're pretty fucking strong. She hadn't been on the receiving end or anything, but she and her friends had sat and watched for an amusing twenty-some minutes while a would-be car thief attempted to extricate himself from the webbing sticking him to the car. The one he'd been trying to steal.

She has to give Spider-Man props, for whatever it's worth; the guy gets results.

Michaela is... not as impressive with her track record.

She's musing about just that, actually, as she sits cross-legged on her cramped balcony, chin cradled in her hands while she pouts down at the police-radio in front of her. She'd gotten it from her cousin, who isn't really her cousin, and who has definitely been arrested more than once. He didn't question why she wanted it, just traded it to her for thirty bucks and a promise that she won't rat him out for growing his own weed in the community garden.

It's been a solid two months since Michaela blacked out her apartment complex, and while life hasn't necessarily gotten any easier for her, she's having less and less panic attacks about the whole thing. That's a win in her book. Finals came and went, and she scraped by, netting a few Bs and a handful of Cs that said, more or less, that she at least wasn't wasting her time with college. It's not like she wants to work at Cody's for the rest of her life, though she's having her doubts about how good of a graphic designer she's going to be, practically speaking. Her professors think most of her designs are derivative, and they're constantly telling her she needs to draw more on her own inspiration, not on the media she's consuming on a daily basis.