As it is in Old Louisiana, leave me a comment and a getor.
The N train crawled over the bridge, the harsh fluorescent lights of the subway car flickering as the wheels ground against the rusted tracks. Maya rested her head against the smudged window, staring blankly at the dark waters of the East River reflecting the Manhattan skyline.
Her mind was a spinning compass, trying to find a true north in a timeline that was rapidly accelerating.
It was mid-July, 2011. She knew the dates from Farnum's ledger. Thor had touched down in New Mexico back in May, kicking off the events that S.H.I.E.L.D. would eventually classify as 'Fury's Big Week'. Captain America was likely either just waking up from the ice or about to, disoriented in a fake 1940s recovery room somewhere in Times Square.
Which meant she had roughly ten months.
May 2012. That was the deadline. That was when Loki would arrive with the Tesseract, brainwash Hawkeye, and open a massive hole in the sky directly over Midtown. The Chitauri invasion wasn't a localized gang war; it was an extinction-level event for anyone caught in the crossfire.
Ten months to jump from a flat baseline of ten—a remarkably average, healthy human—to fifty. To Super Soldier.
She rubbed her thumbs over the stiff, hidden leather of the vambraces strapped to her forearms under her shirt. It sounded like an impossible mathematical leap, but the System's EXP rewards were scaling alongside the danger. Bumping into Matt Murdock had netted her massive gains. The Avalon Protocol clearly favored high-risk, high-reward behavior over mundane grinding. If she wanted to survive the alien armada, she had to stop fighting the small fry and start dismantling the Kingpin's heavy machinery.
She unlocked the door to the Astoria apartment just past ten o'clock.
The air inside was thick and stifling, smelling faintly of stale garlic and the cheap lemon cleaner Eleanor used on the countertops. The single window AC unit in the living room was rattling violently, fighting a losing battle against the accumulated heat of the day.
Eleanor was sitting at the small kitchen table, still in her blue medical scrubs. Her reading glasses were pushed up onto her forehead, and she was massaging her temples with her fingertips, a half-empty mug of lukewarm tea resting next to a stack of mail.
"Hey," Maya said softly, dropping her messenger bag by the door.
Eleanor jumped slightly, lowering her hands. "Maya. You're late. I was just about to call you."
"Sorry. The trains were delayed at Queensboro Plaza. Some signal issue." Maya walked into the kitchen, pulling a bottle of cold water from the fridge. She leaned against the counter, letting the condensation cool the palms of her hands. "How was the double shift?"
"Long," Eleanor sighed, her shoulders slumping. "The billing software crashed twice. But the overtime pay will cover the electric bill this month, so I can't complain." She looked at Maya, her tired eyes scanning her daughter from head to toe. "You look exhausted. Did you get any drawing done, or did you just melt on a park bench?"
Maya offered a small smile. She walked back to the hallway, grabbed the messenger bag, and pulled out the large spiral sketchbook. She placed it on the table in front of her mother, flipping past the rough, blocky sketches of the Union Allied goons to the pages she had filled while waiting at the diner.
Detailed charcoal renderings of the Gothic church on 9th Avenue. A surprisingly expressive sketch of a tired waitress carrying three plates of pie.
Eleanor pulled her glasses down to the bridge of her nose, leaning over the pages. Her lips parted slightly. She ran her fingers over the edge of the paper, careful not to smudge the charcoal.
"May," Eleanor breathed, genuine awe coloring her voice. "These are... these are incredible. You drew this today? Just sitting on the street?"
"Yeah. The lighting was good before the rain hit."
"The detail on the stonework," Eleanor murmured, shaking her head. "I knew you were talented, honey, but this is a completely different level than the doodles you used to do in your room. SVA would be crazy not to accept a portfolio like this."
The lie settled heavy and cold in Maya's stomach. Her mother was looking at the alibi, completely unaware that the girl standing in front of her had spent the afternoon twisting a man's shoulder out of its socket in a loading dock.
"I'm going to keep working on it," Maya said, taking the sketchbook back and closing it. "I'm going to take a quick shower and crash, Mom. I'm wiped."
"Go," Eleanor nodded, offering a warm, exhausted smile. "Sleep well, May. I love you."
"Love you too."
By midnight, the apartment was completely silent. The digital clock on Maya's nightstand flipped, and the ambient hum of the Avalon Protocol vibrated through her teeth. The daily reset washed over her, but she didn't even look at the new tasks.
She lay flat on her mattress, staring at the ceiling, and deliberately pulled her consciousness downward, sinking into the dark.
The transition ripped the sticky New York heat away, plunging her into the freezing, bruised-plum twilight of the Mindscape Pavilion.
She hit the damp cobblestones and immediately pushed herself up. The thick, boiled-leather gambeson materialized over her clothes, heavy and rigid. She rolled her shoulders, expecting to hear the slow, grinding footsteps of Sir Percy approaching from the weapon racks.
The courtyard was empty.
Only the wind howled, rattling the rusted chains of the training dummies.
"Percy!" Maya called out, her voice sharp, echoing off the high stone walls.
A shadow detached itself from the heavy archway at the far end of the courtyard. Sir Percy stepped into the dim light. He wasn't carrying the wooden waster, or the mace, or the massive battleaxe. His hands were empty, resting casually on the thick leather belt wrapped around his blackened chainmail.
He didn't approach her. He just stood there, his icy blue eyes assessing her with a cold, terrifying neutrality.
"You met the Devil," Percy's voice rolled across the stones, low and resonant. The System had clearly updated him on her progress in the waking world. "You traded whispers with a man who breaks bones in the dark, and you walked away."
"I gave him a ledger," Maya corrected, picking up a heavy wooden sword from the ground. She tested the balance, her ten Might making the thick oak feel light and manageable. "And now the System wants me to sabotage a demolition site to back him up. Which means I'm not going to be fighting one guy in a suit. I'm going to be fighting guards. Multiple guards. In the dark."
She pointed the tip of the wooden sword at the massive knight.
"I know how to break a joint," Maya said, her jaw setting in a hard line. "Now teach me how to do it when three other guys are trying to bash my head in from behind."
Percy remained perfectly still for a long moment. Then, a slow, grim smile stretched the jagged scar on his cheek.
"You think you are ready for the pack," Percy murmured. "You have learned to dodge the lone wolf, so you believe you can dance with the hounds."
"I don't have a choice," Maya shot back. "The timeline isn't waiting for me to feel ready."
"Very well."
Percy raised his right hand, heavily encased in thick leather and iron rivets, and snapped his fingers. The sound was unnaturally loud, like a whip cracking in a cavern.
The bruised-plum sky above them instantly went black.
It wasn't just dark. It was an absolute, suffocating void. The ambient twilight was snuffed out entirely. Maya gasped, taking a sudden step backward, her boots scraping blindly against the cobblestones. She couldn't see her own hands. She couldn't see the sword she was holding.
"Hey!" she yelled, her heart giving a violent lurch.
"The eyes are a crutch," Percy's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. It seemed to bounce off the unseen walls, making it impossible to pinpoint his location. "When the lights go out, the amateur freezes. They widen their eyes, desperate for a sliver of illumination. But the knight does not need to see the blade to know where it will strike."
A heavy, shifting sound came from her left. The scraping of a boot against stone.
Maya violently swung her wooden sword in a horizontal arc toward the noise. The heavy oak cleaved through empty air.
CRACK.
Pain exploded against her right kidney. A heavy wooden waster had slammed into her from the opposite direction.
Maya stumbled, crying out, entirely off balance. Before she could correct her stance, a second blow caught her behind the left knee. She went down hard onto the wet stones, the breath leaving her lungs in a sharp rush.
"I am not fighting you tonight," Percy's voice floated above her, calm and detached.
Another scraping sound. Not one set of boots, but three. The heavy, shuffling steps of multiple attackers closing a circle around her in the pitch black.
"The Pavilion provides," Percy continued. "I have summoned three Echoes. They do not possess my skill, but they possess your strength. They do not feel pain. They do not tire. And they will not stop swinging until you are unconscious."
Maya scrambled to her feet, gripping her sword with both hands, her eyes wide and useless in the dark. Her Aether 13 hummed, trying to parse the sensory data, but without her vision, her brain was struggling to translate the subtle shifts in the air currents.
"You want to survive a demolition site?" Percy challenged, his voice fading into the cold wind. "Then learn to listen to the violence before it touches you. Begin."
The blackness didn't just blind her; it felt like a physical weight, pressing against her eyeballs and pouring into her ears. It was the suffocating depth of a sensory deprivation tank, completely severing her brain's reliance on the one sense it trusted most.
Maya stood frozen, her chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid hitches. She gripped the heavy oak waster so tightly her fingers cramped, holding it in a high, desperate guard.
Whoosh.
A heavy draft of cold air swept past her left cheek, smelling faintly of old leather and damp dust.
She swung blindly, putting her shoulders into a tight, horizontal arc. The wood met absolutely nothing. The momentum twisted her torso, throwing her weight onto her leading foot.
A fraction of a second later, a solid block of oak slammed into the back of her thigh, right on the hamstring.
Maya gasped, her leg buckling instantly. She dropped to one knee, the wet cobblestones biting into her skin. Before she could even raise her sword to cover her head, a second strike caught her squarely in the ribs, directly beneath her raised arm. The impact punched the air from her lungs in a violent, wet cough.
She rolled, scraping her forearms against the coarse ground, and scrambled backward like a crab until her spine hit the unyielding stone wall of the courtyard.
"You swing at memories," Percy's voice drifted through the void. It didn't bounce off the walls; it seemed to resonate directly in the freezing air around her. "You remember where the sound was, and you strike the empty space left behind. You are fighting the past."
"I can't see them!" Maya yelled, her voice raw. She pressed her back flat against the masonry, holding the sword across her chest. At least with her back to the wall, they could only come from a 180-degree angle.
"Which is why you are dying," Percy replied, devoid of sympathy. "If you cannot see, your eyes are a liability. They lie to you. They force your brain to search for shadows that do not exist, wasting the processing power of your mind."
A subtle scrape. Leather soles pivoting on wet stone. Not three feet in front of her.
Maya thrust the sword forward like a spear.
The wooden blade was effortlessly swatted aside. A heavy boot kicked her squarely in the stomach, driving the air completely out of her and pinning her momentarily against the wall. A blunt, wooden pommel crashed down onto her collarbone.
She crumpled to the ground, curling into a tight ball, her hands flying up to protect her head. The blows didn't stop. They rained down on her leather gambeson, her thighs, her upper arms. The Echoes didn't grunt with exertion. They didn't breathe heavily. They were silent, mechanical engines of blunt-force trauma, coordinating their strikes perfectly to keep her pinned.
Vigor 10. Her body wasn't breaking, but it was registering every single agonizing bruise.
"Arthur," she whispered through gritted teeth, her face mashed against the cold, wet stones. "Think. Think."
Logic, the older part of her mind demanded, fighting through the panic. Take away the variables. You are overstimulated.
The wind was howling, a chaotic noise that masked the footfalls. Her eyes were straining so hard in the dark they were tearing up, sending false flashes of static light across her retinas.
Maya squeezed her eyes shut.
It felt incredibly counterintuitive, an act of sheer madness while being beaten in an alleyway, but the moment her eyelids clamped down, the phantom flashes of static vanished. The desperate urge to look was severed.
Thud. A heavy blow caught her shoulder blade.
She didn't flinch away from it. She focused entirely on the point of impact, on the kinetic energy transferring into her body. It had come from a high angle. To her right.
She forced her breathing to slow. Inhale through the nose. Hold. Exhale through the teeth.
She tuned out the howling wind above the courtyard walls, filtering it down to background noise. She pushed her consciousness outward, leaning into the strange, electric hum of her thirteen points of Aether. The magical stat had cleared her brain fog in the hospital, but here, in the raw magic of the Otherworld, it acted like a latent radar.
She felt the ambient air pressure.
A heavy, solid mass stepped into the space directly in front of her. It didn't make a sound, but she felt the subtle displacement of the freezing air. It pushed against her skin like a localized wave of static electricity.
She didn't swing. She waited.
The air pressure directly above her head spiked. A weapon was descending, slicing through the void, pushing a micro-current of wind ahead of its edge.
Maya rolled violently to the left.
Crack.
The heavy wooden waster smashed into the cobblestones exactly where her head had been resting a millisecond prior, sending a sharp vibration through the stones that vibrated against Maya's hip.
She didn't pause. Using the momentum of her roll, she swept her heavy leather boot in a tight, low circle, aiming for the origin point of the vibration.
Her heel connected solidly with an ankle.
The Echo didn't cry out, but she heard the distinct, heavy clatter of a body hitting the stone floor.
"Good," Percy's voice murmured, sounding closer this time. "But there are two more."
Maya scrambled up from the ground, staying in a low, compressed crouch. She kept her eyes screwed shut.
Silence stretched. The Echoes had recognized the shift in her tactics. They had stopped their relentless assault and were now circling her, waiting for an opening.
Her right hand squeezed the grip of her wooden sword. Her left hand drifted out, fingers splayed open, hovering just an inch from the damp brick wall to keep her spatial orientation anchored.
Scrape.
Ten o'clock.
Maya pivoted, bringing her sword up.
But it was a feint. The air didn't displace in front of her. A sharp, stinging draft hit the back of her neck.
She dropped entirely, dropping to one knee and ducking her head. A heavy wooden blade whistled over her scalp, so close the friction of the displaced air sent a shiver down her spine.
As the blade passed, Maya drove her sword straight up, aiming blindly into the void above her.
The tip of her oak waster slammed into something solid—a chest, or a heavily padded shoulder. The impact jarred her wrists, but it broke the Echo's stance. The invisible figure stumbled backward, their boots dragging clumsily over the stones.
Before Maya could capitalize, a searing pain wrapped around her left ankle.
The third Echo had moved in while she was focused on the counter-attack, hooking its weapon behind her leg. It yanked hard. Maya flew backward, hitting the ground with a bone-rattling thud that forced a sharp curse from her lips.
She didn't try to stand. She kicked out wildly with her free leg, trying to clear the space, but a heavy boot pinned her right wrist to the cobblestones. The grip on her sword was crushed. Her fingers reflexively unspooled, and the weapon clattered uselessly away into the dark.
"You are listening to their feet," Percy's voice rang out, harsh and critical. "Their feet touch the ground after they have committed to the movement. By the time you hear the scrape, the strike is already in motion. You are still fighting the past."
A heavy, blunt tip pressed against Maya's throat. She froze, her chest heaving, feeling the cold, damp wood resting right over her windpipe.
"If this were the demolition site," Percy said, the wind dying down just enough for his words to carry a lethal finality, "your throat would be cut. Your mother would receive a closed casket."
The pressure on her throat vanished. The heavy boot lifted off her wrist.
"Get up," the knight commanded. "Find your sword."
Maya rolled onto her side, massaging her crushed wrist. Her fingers were numb, throbbing with a dull, heavy pulse. She kept her eyes closed, sweeping her good hand over the damp, freezing stones until her knuckles brushed the coarse wood of the dropped waster. She picked it up, using her thigh to support her arm as she dragged herself back into a standing position.
Her whole body ached. Her Vigor 10 was the only thing keeping her from slipping into unconsciousness, funneling adrenaline to her bruised muscles.
"How?" Maya rasped, spitting a mixture of saliva and blood onto the stones. "If I can't listen to their feet, what do I listen to?"
"The intent," Percy answered. "A muscle must tense before it moves. Armor shifts before the body follows. A man must draw breath before he exerts force. You have a gift, Maya. A frequency in your blood that ties you to this realm. Stop using it like a bat listening for echoes. Feel the tension in the space."
Maya widened her stance. She lowered her center of gravity, bending her knees until her thighs burned. She brought the sword up, holding it at a slight angle across her chest.
She stopped listening for boots scraping on stone. She pushed past the howling wind.
She focused her Aether, pushing her awareness out like an invisible net cast over the immediate ten feet surrounding her.
It was agonizingly difficult. Her human brain demanded visual input. It screamed at her to open her eyes, to look for a glint of light, a shadow against a shadow. She fought it down, forcing the analytical, calculating side of her mind to shut up and let the raw, instinctual magic take the wheel.
The void around her stopped being a static emptiness.
It became a fluid medium.
She felt it. To her right, about six feet away. It wasn't a sound, but a sudden, dense tightening of the air. Like the atmospheric pressure right before a thunderclap.
The Echo was coiling its muscles. Gathering kinetic energy.
It's going to lunge.
Maya didn't wait for the sound of the footfall. She didn't wait for the displacement of wind from the swinging weapon.
She moved first.
She pivoted on her left heel, stepping diagonally forward, completely abandoning her defensive posture against the wall. She drove her wooden sword in a short, brutal, horizontal thrust directly into the space where the dense pressure was localized.
Thwack.
The tip of her oak waster buried itself into the center of the Echo's chest mid-lunge. The forward momentum of the invisible attacker compounded the impact. The heavy crunch of leather padding echoed loudly.
The Echo didn't even have the chance to swing its weapon. The collision halted its momentum entirely, throwing it violently backward into the dark.
"There," Percy's voice cracked like a whip, laced with a dark, triumphant approval. "You felt the tension. You struck the future."
Maya didn't stop to celebrate. The net of her awareness caught another spike in pressure. Behind her. High up.
An overhead strike.
She didn't try to block it. She remembered the mace. She remembered the sheer, overwhelming weight of the iron. She dropped her weight, letting her knees buckle into a deep squat, and raised the shaft of her sword at a severe, forty-five-degree slant over her head.
The Echo's heavy weapon crashed down into the void she had just vacated. It struck the slanted oak of her guard, screaming down the wood with a violent, vibrating friction.
Maya didn't try to hold it. She let the slanted block guide the enemy's blade straight down toward the cobblestones. As the Echo's weapon over-committed, she twisted her hips, driving her left elbow sharply backward into the dark mass hovering right behind her shoulder.
Her elbow connected solidly with a ribcage.
She followed it instantly, sweeping her right leg out to clip the Echo's compromised base. The invisible figure crashed heavily to the ground beside her.
"Two," Maya panted, her chest burning, sweat stinging the corners of her tightly shut eyes.
The third Echo didn't attack immediately. The air pressure remained steady, distributed evenly around her. It was circling. Waiting for her to relax, waiting for the adrenaline to wane.
Maya turned slowly, keeping her sword centered, sweeping her invisible net through the dark.
The silence stretched into a long, agonizing minute. The cold seeped through the thick leather of her gambeson, chilling her sweat. Her injured wrist throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic pulse.
Where are you?
A tiny, almost imperceptible shift. Not a tightening of muscles, but a subtle change in the air current.
Directly above her.
Maya threw herself forward, rolling violently across the wet stones.
A heavy, terrifying crash resonated right behind her. The third Echo hadn't charged. It had climbed the weapon rack and launched itself off the top, aiming a plunging strike at her shoulders.
Maya scrambled up, spinning around to face the sound of the impact.
She felt the dense pressure immediately. The Echo was recovering from its landing, its center of gravity low and coiled.
She didn't give it the chance to stabilize.
She rushed the pressure point, abandoning her sword entirely. She stepped inside the Echo's guard, her hands finding the thick, coarse fabric of its tunic. She grabbed handfuls of the material, locking her grip, and threw her weight backward, dropping to the cobblestones and planting her boot squarely in the center of the invisible figure's stomach.
Using her momentum and the Echo's own forward weight, she kicked upward, executing a flawless, brutal sacrifice throw.
The Echo launched over her head, flying through the pitch-black void, and slammed with devastating force into the solid stone wall of the courtyard.
It hit the ground and didn't move.
Maya lay on her back, her lungs expanding and contracting like bellows, sucking down the freezing air. Her muscles were trembling so violently she couldn't have gripped her sword if she tried.
She slowly opened her eyes.
The suffocating void was gone. The bruised-plum twilight had returned, casting long, dark shadows across the wet cobblestones.
The three Echoes—faceless mannequins made of tightly wrapped grey linen and dark leather—were dissolving into golden ash around her, fading back into the magic of the Pavilion.
Sir Percy stood a few yards away, looking down at her. He didn't offer a hand. He never did.
"You discarded your weapon again," Percy noted, his voice flat, though the icy intensity in his eyes had softened a fraction.
"It was in the way," Maya wheezed, rolling onto her side and slowly pushing herself up onto her hands and knees. Every single joint protested. "I needed leverage."
"You found the tension in the dark," Percy said, ignoring her excuse. "You stopped fighting the shadows and started fighting the intent. That is how you survive the pack."
He turned his back on her, walking slowly toward the shadowed archway that led deeper into the unseen depths of the Otherworld.
"Rest, Maya," the Black Knight called back over his shoulder. "Tomorrow, you take the field."