Lex was genuinely surprised that someone had still managed to find him.
He was invisible, had no heartbeat, wasn't even breathing and was even using Telekinesis beneath his feet to reduce sound. Every step barely touched the ground physically and yet the moment he turned around, there stood a man in a blackish red jumpsuit with a horned mask staring directly at him.
Not vaguely in his direction.
Exactly at him.
The man didn't even seem to have any equipment either. No scanner, no magic circles, no glowing eyes, nothing.
How the hell could someone see through the Invisibility Cloak? The artifact could literally hide you from Death itself.
There was no way this was coincidence.
“I'm but a humble mutant who had just awakened some powers sir, my apologies for intruding on your terf.” Lex replied while instantly switching to a younger sounding voice and forcing a different accent.
“If you really were,” the masked man replied calmly, “you wouldn't be faking an accent.”
Damn it.
Lex internally cursed. He really should've practiced accents more.
Looking at the horned man again, Lex immediately concluded he was dealing with something supernatural. Maybe some demon related superhero or villain? Because anyone capable of seeing through the Invisibility Cloak definitely wasn't normal.
Of course, the possibility that the man was blind never even crossed his mind.
Lex had no idea the cloak mainly concealed visual and magical detection, not someone brute forcing perception through absurdly enhanced senses. Tiny shifts in air, heat, vibrations and even the faint sound of clothes moving against themselves were enough for someone like Daredevil.
“Ahh… you got me.” Lex coughed awkwardly. “I'm Merlin Dragonslayer, ancient spirit of the Great Hero, here to assist in the great mission.”
If he'd already been caught lying, then clearly the solution was to lie harder while pretending to be naive.
Matt on the other hand almost wanted to sigh.
He had come here following rumors regarding a new cult or gang operating in Hell's Kitchen. Kidnappings, drugs, disappearances… and last time he encountered them, something about them had felt deeply wrong.
Their movements were too controlled. Their heartbeats too slow. Their breathing too calm.
And now this guy in front of him somehow felt even stranger.
No heartbeat. No breathing. Yet unlike the others, he wasn't emotionally hollow. If anything he sounded like someone improvising nonsense in real time and hoping confidence alone would carry him through.
His footsteps were weird too.
Not silent.
Wrong.
The floor reacted inconsistently beneath him, almost like he wasn't fully touching it, but at the same time his clothes still made tiny sounds because apparently the idiot focused so much on hiding footsteps that he forgot fabric itself moved.
Matt's conclusion was simple.
Definitely enhanced. Probably mutant. Absolutely not inexperienced despite pretending otherwise.
Nobody new to powers instinctively layered lies inside other lies while trying to appear harmless.
“You picked a bad building to trespass in.” Matt finally said.
“And you picked a very dramatic outfit.” Lex immediately shot back.
Matt almost answered before suddenly freezing.
Footsteps.
Several people entering through the back entrance.
Controlled breathing. Minimal noise. Weapons.
The Hand.
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
Thunk.
Something sharp embedded itself into Lex's shoulder.
“Fuck!” Lex yelped, immediately stumbling back.
Several black clothed ninjas rushed into the warehouse almost soundlessly, spreading around the room with practiced coordination.
Lex immediately came to the obvious conclusion.
The horned demon guy had called backup.
Great.
So he really was some sort of demonic supervillain.
The Invisibility Cloak disappeared back into Gacha Storage immediately because honestly if everybody in New York could apparently see through it then what was even the point of using it right now.
Instead Lex pulled out Ebony and Ivory dramatically.
If he was fighting supernatural ninja cultists then demonic handguns were obviously the correct answer.
He immediately fired at the horned guy.
Matt dodged casually.
Then paused.
The bullet wasn't even remotely close.
The supposed ancient spirit handled firearms like someone who had learned guns existed earlier this week.
Meanwhile Lex immediately turned and started firing at the ninjas too.
The shots were somehow worse.
Not a single bullet hit.
Matt genuinely didn't know what to think anymore.
This man was either an unbelievably dangerous manipulator pretending to be incompetent or genuinely one of the strangest people he'd ever encountered.
“Okay wow,” Lex muttered while lowering the guns slightly. “Movies made this look way easier.”
The Hand attacked.
The warehouse instantly exploded into violence.
Matt moved first.
One baton strike shattered a ninja's wrist before he ducked beneath another blade and slammed his elbow into someone's throat hard enough to make the man collapse choking. Another ninja dropped from above and Matt immediately spun, his baton intercepting the sword strike mid-air before kicking the assassin backward into a concrete pillar.
Meanwhile Lex very quickly realized he absolutely did not know how to use Ebony and Ivory properly.
Sure, the Gacha technically gave him the “basic skill” needed to use them, but apparently basic skill literally meant “this button fires the gun.”
The Essence of Transcend Self would eventually help him learn properly, but not instantly.
Thus Lex immediately put the guns away and summoned Skybreaker instead before charging directly into the ninjas with complete confidence despite having basically no real combat training.
Honestly, it wasn't like he'd die anyway.
Might as well use this as practice.
Matt instantly noticed the difference between Lex and the Hand.
No rhythm. No footwork. No structure whatsoever.
The idiot was literally learning during an active fight.
Steel clashed repeatedly as Lex awkwardly blocked incoming attacks. Cuts immediately started appearing across his arms and torso because the Hand ninjas were absurdly skilled.
Thankfully those cuts also disappeared almost instantly.
The nearest ninjas visibly hesitated after watching a slash across Lex's side heal in seconds.
Lex meanwhile was busy trying not to get turned into sushi.
As more ninjas swarmed him, he finally unleashed the attack he'd been preparing from the beginning.
He had already been gathering moisture in the air using Telekinesis while slowly cooling it down. The temperature inside the warehouse had been dropping for the past several seconds without anyone fully noticing.
Then Lex released it all at once.
Ice exploded outward violently.
Several ninjas froze solid mid-motion, trapped inside jagged statues of ice before they could even react.
Even Matt paused briefly at that.
Definitely mutant.
Probably.
Looking around afterward, Lex finally noticed something important.
The horned guy was actually fighting the ninjas too.
“Oh.”
Maybe he had misunderstood the situation slightly.
In his defense, the whole demon aesthetic was extremely misleading.
Since both sides were busy trying to murder each other anyway, Lex immediately decided this was the perfect time to leave quietly before getting dragged into whatever weird ninja cult drama this was.
Then someone landed directly in front of him.
A really beautiful woman.
Dark red clothing, twin blades and movements smooth enough to look almost unreal.
And yes, Lex's brain very unhelpfully noticed that her boobs bounced during one of the flips she did while landing because apparently his survival instincts still weren't stronger than teenage hormones.
In his defense, sexy evil ninja girls were probably a universal weakness.
Then she immediately tried to cut his head off.
Thankfully, the moment Lex realized he might genuinely get distracted by lust in combat, he immediately suppressed the emotion to extremely low levels through the Essence of Transcend Self.
The sword still nearly killed him anyway.
Lex raised Skybreaker awkwardly to block while Elektra flowed around his defense effortlessly. Every movement she made felt smooth and practiced while Lex by comparison looked like a guy randomly swinging a sword he found five minutes ago.
Which honestly wasn't entirely inaccurate.
Cuts rapidly started appearing across his body as Elektra dismantled his defense piece by piece.
Thankfully regeneration existed.
Meanwhile Matt had already dealt with most of the remaining ninjas on his side and was beginning to move toward Lex's fight.
At least for now the Hand remained the bigger threat. And if he saved the bizarre mutant afterward, maybe he'd finally get some actual answers out of him.
Then Elektra ended the fight.
One smooth movement redirected Lex's weapon away.
Her second blade slipped past his wrist while he tried blocking.
A single slash crossed his neck.
For a brief second Lex didn't even realize what happened.
Then his vision spun violently.
His head hit the floor and rolled several meters away from his body.
Elektra immediately turned around and started walking back toward Daredevil as if the fight had barely been worth her attention.
Honestly Matt was slightly disappointed.
He expected more from the weird mutant guy.
Then Elektra was suddenly thrown violently across the warehouse.
Concrete cracked beneath her impact.
Silence filled the entire hall.
Every remaining Hand member froze.
Slowly, the headless body raised one arm toward Elektra.
Lex's severed head blinked from the floor.
“That hurt…” the head complained irritably. “I suppose it's time to get serious.”
Nobody moved.
Even Matt felt his heartbeat spike slightly.
No heartbeat. No breathing. No biological dependence on a head.
What the hell was this guy?
One of the Hand members whispered almost reverently.
“Black Sky…”
The atmosphere changed instantly afterward.
Before, the Hand had been trying to kill the intruders.
Now?
They wanted Lex alive.
The remaining ninjas surged toward him with far more aggression while even Elektra visibly paused for half a second before changing stance.
Meanwhile Lex's body casually bent down, picked up its own head and attached it back onto the neck while flesh reconnected itself disturbingly fast.
“Okay,” Lex muttered while rotating his neck slightly. “Now I'm definitely leaving.”
The Hand attacked again.
This time Lex stopped holding back.
Telekinetic force exploded outward from him violently.
The entire hallway practically detonated.
Concrete walls cracked apart while steel beams bent under pressure. Ninjas were launched through pillars and across the warehouse floor as debris, shattered ice and broken weapons flew everywhere simultaneously.
Even Matt was forced backward several meters despite planting his baton against the ground for balance.
Then silence returned.
Most of the Hand were unconscious.
Others were buried beneath rubble.
Lex awkwardly looked around at the destruction.
“…Right,” he admitted after a moment. “That might've been excessive.”
Then he simply walked out of the warehouse.
Matt didn't try stopping him.
Not because he was scared.
But because for the first time in a very long time, Matt Murdock genuinely had absolutely no idea what he had just encountered.
Lex meanwhile had just had the worst night. Who had the luck to first encounter a terrorist arsonist like Pyro in one abandoned building, then run into Horn Guy, Bouncy Boob Ninja and an entire soulless ninja cult in another?
Since it was already close to 4 AM he didn't have the patience to walk city-side and look for a cab, instead he decided to just summon the Dodge Viper SRT-10 at this point. It wasn't like someone was going to stop him for a licence and even if they did, he could claim to have forgotten it or something, change his face or whatever. He was currently too tired for anything else anyways.
As the car appeared in front of him, he was slightly disappointed about the green colour, but the overall look was good so it was ok. It should probably have the ownership documents and whatnot inside since Gacha is convenient like that.
Sitting in the car he felt comfortable, looking around it, he found car papers and other stuff inside the car cabinet but he also found something that almost made him cry. Licence? A Driving licence… everything was dated to today, from registration to the licence issue date etc.
He could probably use the Driver Licence to find other stuff, who knows it might even have an SSN linked to it and a birth certificate probably. He really hoped it did but again if the Gacha wanted it to look legitimate, it definitely would not just create the driver's licence and forget about anything else.
Starting the car, he felt a completely new thrill, the engine roared, the car felt smooth as butter but he only had experience driving ordinary vehicles, so he didn't immediately accelerate. He had just gotten the car, it'd be a shame if he broke it on the first day.
It also had all kinds of modifications made to it, from nitros to an upgraded engine and many other things, the great part was that he had documents for everything.
Thankfully, he reached the hotel safely and after parking it, he went to his suite and fell asleep.
Of course if anyone was to check the cameras, they'll realise that while Lex had gone out only once that night, he had come back twice. It seemed that having perfect memory didn't always mean having the brains to use it.