Blackout | Matt Murdock

chapter seven | knock-off thor vs. knock-off iron man

The same week Tony Stark lets Ultron loose on the world, Michaela finds herself in a stand-off against what could generously be called Iron Man's clone.

She's taken to saying Knock-Off Iron Man in her head, and it feels too damn good to have someone else be the butt of that particular joke.

In the lead up to the big event, though, Michaela's stressing about something other than her mysterious wizard foe for once. School's winding down again, but that means more finals and projects, and she is woefully underprepared. She's managed to stay mostly on top of her assignments even with the hero gig eating away at her free time, though she's insanely lucky that her manager at Cody's rarely drops by to check in with her, because she's been doing the bulk of her work while she's on shift, in between checking out customers. But, reminiscent of last semester, everything's falling apart at crunch time.

Typical.

She's spent her entire weekend holed up in her apartment, chipping away at a few projects and sporadically texting Spider-Man in bursts so that she doesn't completely lose her mind. He's sympathetic, though he has another month until his own finals (basically confirming he's still in high school and therefore no older than maybe sixteen, because there's no way she's committing to him being any older than that), and he's even stopped sending her conspiracy theory YouTube videos that promise an in-depth exploration of her relationship to Thor. Well. He's down to one a week, anyway, and Michaela can't ask for much for self-restraint than that.

She's in the middle of a break, sitting back in her chair, feet perched on the coffee table in front of her and her laptop placed in the space between, reluctantly watching one of said videos when her (actual) phone lets out a distressing, droning beep. She jumps, nearly upends herself from the chair and cracks her skull on the hardwood flooring; she grabs at her phone just before it swan-dives glass-first into the table, breathing a sigh of relief. Then the fucking beep again, and she switches her attention to the other phone.

A news alert scrolls across her lock screen, the beeping returning at regular, annoying intervals. She catches something about the Avengers and her chest goes tight, her heart starting to beat out a staccato rhythm against her ribcage. She still looks for them in the news as often as she remembers, but they've been largely absent from all forms of social media recently. Except for a report a few days ago that mentioned them taking down a supposed Hydra base in Sokovia, of all places. There hadn't been anything particularly attention-grabbing in the article, seeing as how the Avengers have been systematically destroying the remains of Hydra for over a year now, all of their efforts public in the aftermath considering the public's bitter distrust of SHIELD after discovering that Hydra had been thriving inside the organization for decades.

Admittedly, Michaela hadn't trusted SHIELD before the big reveal on principle. Secretive, shadowy spy organizations that more or less operate outside of the government's control? She hardly trusts the more regulated agencies like the CIA or the FBI, like hell she was going to play like SHIELD were the good guys.

Captain America choosing to take on missions with them had fucked with her a little, she remembers, because despite the decades-old propaganda that painted him as little more than a star-spangled puppet of the government, she thought his penchant for rule-breaking would have him either operating exclusively with the Avengers or... dropping the shield altogether. She wouldn't have blamed him, if he'd given up the Captain America mantle after the Battle of New York; supersoldier or not, he's human, and humans can only withstand so much stress and hardship before they break. She thought the captain had more than earned his chance at peace, but obviously he hadn't thought the same. She respected him, still, because she'd seen him in interviews and press conferences and knew he wasn't going to compromise on his morals just because he was allying himself with SHIELD, and honestly? She'd briefly considered that she gave SHIELD too little credit, because if Captain America saw something worthwhile in working with them, then there had to be something good there.