Bfada fad bud leave a comment ubi ubi for the waaaaghhh
The September rain turned the industrial park in Greenpoint into a slick, grey wasteland.
Maya lay flat against the rusted corrugated roof of an abandoned shipping office, ignoring the cold water seeping through the knees of her dark cargo pants. The air smelled of wet gravel, diesel exhaust, and the brackish water of the nearby East River.
Below her, illuminated by the harsh glare of a single halogen work light, three men were prying open a wooden shipping crate in the back of a parked box truck.
She watched them through the downpour. They weren't wearing the slick suits of Farnum's upper management, but they bore the same violent, nervous energy. Fisk's operation was scrambling. With Daredevil bleeding their extortion rackets dry on the West Side, the syndicate was moving physical assets—cash, weapons, untraceable burner phones—out of Manhattan to secure locations in the outer boroughs.
Maya had spent the last two weeks hunting these transfers.
One of the men ripped the lid off the crate with a crowbar, revealing neat rows of matte-black assault rifles packed in heavy grease.
Maya pushed herself up from the roof.
She didn't bother with the fire escape. She simply stepped off the edge, dropping twenty feet into the muddy lot below. The impact made a soft, wet sound, her knees bending to absorb the kinetic shock.
The man holding the crowbar turned, squinting through the rain. "Hey. Who's out there?"
Maya closed the distance in two explosive strides.
She didn't draw The Ashen Wake. The star-iron was sheathed in a heavy leather scabbard strapped diagonally across her back, hidden beneath a long, dark raincoat. Using it against standard grunts felt less like a fight and more like an execution.
The closest man reached for the pistol tucked into his waistband. Maya grabbed his wrist before the gun cleared his belt. She didn't strike him; she just clamped her fingers down and squeezed.
The bone didn't break, but the tendons ground together under the immense pressure. The man shrieked, his fingers spasming open. The pistol clattered into the mud.
Maya pivoted, using his captured arm to drag him forward, and drove her elbow directly into his temple. He went limp instantly, folding onto the wet gravel.
The second man, standing by the open crate, panicked. He grabbed one of the greased rifles, fumbling with the heavy bolt.
Maya kicked the side of the box truck. The thick metal panel buckled inward with a deafening boom, shaking the entire vehicle. The sudden noise made the man flinch, throwing his aim off just as he squeezed the trigger. The rifle cracked loudly, the round sparking harmlessly off a nearby puddle.
Before he could correct his aim, Maya vaulted over the truck's lowered tailgate. She swatted the barrel of the rifle aside with her forearm—the heavy boiled leather vambrace beneath her sleeve deflecting the hot metal—and grabbed the man by the collar of his jacket.
She slammed him backward against the interior wall of the truck box. The aluminum siding groaned under the impact. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.
The third man didn't fight. He dropped his crowbar, bolted out of the truck, and sprinted blindly toward the chain-link fence at the perimeter of the lot.
Maya let him run. He was leaving the guns behind, and terrified men spread the right kind of rumors.
She stepped out of the truck, the rain instantly plastering her dark hair to her forehead. She knelt by the muddy puddle, wiping a smear of gun grease from her knuckles.
A familiar, warm glow bloomed in her peripheral vision, chasing away the chill of the autumn storm.
[Bounty Complete: Disrupt the Supply Line.]
[Target: Syndicate weapon transfer intercepted. Assets neutralized.]
[System Rewards Calculated:]
[Agility EXP +150]
[Agility Level Up! 16 -> 18]
[Might EXP +120]
[Might Level Up! 15 -> 17]
[Vigor EXP +100]
[Vigor Level Up! 15 -> 16]
[Essence Granted: 600]
Maya dismissed the floating text. The numbers were climbing steadily. She was pushing deeper into the twenties, closing the gap between a peak human athlete and something entirely different.
She pulled a cheap, burner flip-phone from her pocket, dialed 911, and dropped it onto the hood of the box truck. The operator's voice buzzed faintly from the tiny speaker.
"Gunshots at the Greenpoint rail yard. Box truck by the south fence," Maya said clearly.
She turned and vanished into the rain before the dispatcher could ask for her name.
The smell of burning bacon filled the small Astoria apartment.
Maya sat at the laminate kitchen table, mechanically shoving forkfuls of scrambled eggs and charred meat into her mouth. It was her third plate. The elevated Vigor required a ridiculous caloric intake just to maintain her baseline mass, let alone repair the microscopic muscle tears from her nightly patrols.
Eleanor stood at the counter, pouring coffee into a travel mug. She was wearing her blue scrubs, her hair tied in a neat, professional bun.
"You're eating like a linebacker, May," Eleanor observed, leaning against the counter. There was a smile on her face, but her eyes carried a subtle, lingering worry. "Are you sure you don't have a tapeworm?"
"Just hungry," Maya mumbled around a piece of toast. "I started doing some bodyweight exercises. Pushups, squats. Trying to build up some stamina for when I have to lug a portfolio around the city."
Eleanor took a sip of her coffee. "It's good to see you energetic. Really. But you've been staying out late. I heard the front door close past two in the morning on Thursday."
Maya didn't miss a beat. She swallowed, keeping her expression perfectly neutral. "I was at the 24-hour diner on 31st Street. They have those huge booths. I needed the space to spread out my charcoal pads. The apartment gets a little cramped."
"At two in the morning?"
"The lighting is better when it's empty," Maya lied smoothly. "No glares from the window."
Eleanor sighed, setting the mug down. She walked over and kissed the top of Maya's head. "Just be careful. The news has been awful lately. They're saying the crime rate in Midtown is spiking. Gang retaliations."
"I stay out of Manhattan at night, Mom. Promise."
"Okay. Have a good day. Don't forget to take the trash out."
The moment the deadbolt clicked, the fabricated domestic peace evaporated. Maya pushed her empty plate away. She didn't feel like a daughter anymore. She felt like an undercover operative living with a civilian.
She stood up, locked the front door, and went straight to her bedroom.
She needed to digest the food, and she needed to bleed off the restless energy humming in her limbs. She lay down on the mattress, closed her eyes, and let the System pull her under.
The cobblestones of the Pavilion were gone.
Maya hit the ground and immediately stumbled. She wasn't standing in an open courtyard.
She was in a narrow, windowless stone corridor, barely four feet wide. The ceiling was oppressively low, constructed of heavy, rough-hewn granite blocks that smelled of damp moss and old earth. Torches sputtered in iron sconces every ten feet, casting erratic, dancing shadows.
"Draw your star-iron," Percy's voice echoed down the tunnel. It bounced off the close walls, making it impossible to pinpoint his exact location.
Maya reached over her shoulder and pulled The Ashen Wake from its scabbard. The fourteen-pound Uru blade hummed instantly, eager for the kinetic exchange.
"You rely too much on the sweep of the blade," Percy called out. The heavy scrape of his boots echoed from the dark end of the hall. "You swing it like a scythe. That works in the open air, against men who give you space. But the world is full of narrow doors and tight corners."
A massive shadow stepped into the torchlight twenty feet ahead. Percy held his broadsword, but he wasn't holding it by the grip. He had his left hand wrapped around the upper half of the actual steel blade, shortening the weapon into a brutal, improvised spear.
"Half-swording," Maya recognized aloud.
"Adaptation," Percy corrected.
He lunged.
In the confined space of the corridor, Percy couldn't swing horizontally, and an overhead strike would clip the low ceiling. He drove the point of the broadsword straight at her chest, using the shortened grip to generate immense leverage.
Maya tried to parry wide, attempting to knock his blade aside.
Her Uru sword sparked against the stone wall to her right. The corridor was too narrow. Her swing was truncated, the metal biting uselessly into the granite.
Percy's thrust slipped past her compromised guard. The heavy iron pommel of his sword slammed into her sternum.
Maya choked, stumbling backward until her shoulder blades hit the stone wall.
"You treat the walls as obstacles," Percy said, stepping back to give her room to breathe. "They are not obstacles. They are boundaries. If you cannot swing the steel, you must thrust. If you cannot thrust, you use the crossguard as a hammer. The blade is a lever. Control the center."
Maya pushed herself off the wall. She adjusted her grip. She didn't wrap her left hand around the sharp edge of the Uru—she didn't have heavy iron gauntlets to protect her fingers—but she slid her right hand up tightly against the crossguard, shortening her reach.
She stepped forward.
Percy thrust again. This time, Maya didn't try to bat the weapon away. She brought her blade up, edge-to-edge, and stepped into his attack.
The swords ground together with a harsh, screaming shriek of metal.
Instead of pushing against his strength, she rotated her wrists, trapping his blade against the wall of the corridor. Using the fulcrum of the bind, she stepped inside his reach and slammed the heavy octagonal pommel of The Ashen Wake directly toward his faceplate.
Percy jerked his head back just in time. The Uru pommel grazed the iron cheek of his helm, throwing sparks.
He grunted, abandoning the bind and throwing a heavy knee into her thigh. Maya absorbed the blow, her Level 16 Vigor hardening her muscle against the kinetic trauma. She didn't back down. She dropped her weight, hooked her boot behind his ankle, and shoved hard against his chestplate with her left hand.
The massive knight lost his footing in the cramped tunnel, hitting the floor heavily.
Maya stood over him, the point of the dark grey sword resting a fraction of an inch from his throat. The dormant green veins in the fuller were pulsing softly.
"Better," Percy breathed, looking up at the point of the blade. He didn't sound angry. He sounded profoundly serious. "You took the space I gave you. You did not ask for more."
He pushed the blade away and stood up, the cramped corridor seeming to shrink around his massive frame.
"The physical vessel is catching up to the mind," Percy noted, pacing slowly backward. "Your bones do not crack under pressure. Your muscles do not tear. The System fortifies you."
"I'm hitting a wall," Maya admitted, lowering the sword. "The street fights are getting easier, but the stat progression is slowing down. The System requires more EXP for every level now. If I want to hit the threshold before the sky opens up, I need larger targets."
Percy crossed his thick arms over his chestplate. The flickering torchlight caught the jagged scar running through his beard.
"The Realm demands risk for reward. If you hunt mice, you will only learn to catch mice. You have bled the Kingpin's margins. You have burned his garages and frightened his runners."
Percy pointed a heavy, iron-clad finger at her chest.
"It is time to stop burning the margins. It is time to strike the heart. The System will provide the bounties, Maya, but you must choose to accept them. Tomorrow, you hunt the wolves."
October stripped the last of the summer heat from the city, replacing it with a damp, biting chill that swept off the East River.
Maya stood by the window of her bedroom, watching the rain streak the glass. The Astoria streets below were slick and black, reflecting the neon glow of the bodega on the corner. She held a ceramic coffee mug in her hands, letting the heat seep into her palms.
She wasn't shivering. The cold didn't penetrate her skin the way it used to. Her body ran like a finely tuned furnace, churning calories into a constant, baseline warmth.
She took a sip of the black coffee. As she lowered the mug, her thumb pressed against the rim.
Crack.
The ceramic snapped cleanly under the pressure. Hot coffee spilled over her knuckles and splashed onto the hardwood floor.
Maya let out a slow, frustrated breath. She carefully set the broken pieces on the windowsill and went to the kitchen for a rag. It was the third dish she had broken this week. The raw physical power accumulating in her muscles was becoming a liability in the quiet spaces of her life. She had to constantly police her own movements—how hard she pulled a door handle, how tightly she gripped a fork, how heavily she stepped on the squeaky floorboard in the hallway.
She wiped up the spill, tossed the rag in the sink, and summoned the Avalon Protocol.
She hadn't looked at the interface in days, focusing entirely on Percy's brutal combat drills. But Percy's words from the Pavilion echoed in her mind. Tomorrow, you hunt the wolves.
The golden text hovered in the dim light of the kitchen.
[Regional Threat Assessment Updated.]
[Faction: The Kitchen Irish / The Russian Syndicate (Fisk Affiliates)]
[Notice: With the localised disruption of Union Allied extortion rackets, rival syndicates operating under the Kingpin's umbrella are absorbing the vacant territory. Escalation detected.]
Maya swiped the text away, pulling up the active bounty board.
Most of the available targets were Tier 1 and Tier 2—street-level thugs, low-tier enforcers shaking down bodegas. Mice. She scrolled past them. She needed the heavy hitters. She needed the operations that Fisk actually cared about.
At the very bottom of the list, glowing with a faint, warning pulse of red light, was a Tier 3 contract.
[Bounty: The Ranskahov Pipeline.]
Target: Vladimir and Anatoly Ranskahov are consolidating their import operations. A major shipment of illicit assets is being moved through the commercial docks in Red Hook tonight, bypassing standard customs via heavily armed proxies.
Objective: Intercept the shipment. Sever the supply line.
Risk Level: Severe. Automatic weapons and military-grade body armor expected.
Reward: 1,500 Essence, Major Tier EXP Yield.
Maya's eyes locked onto the names. The Russians. Fisk's primary distributors. They were brutal, undisciplined, and heavily armed. Hitting them wasn't just burning the margins; it was taking a sledgehammer to one of the Kingpin's main load-bearing pillars.
She accepted the bounty.
The text dissolved into a shower of golden sparks.
She walked back to her bedroom and pulled her gear from the hidden compartment under her bed. The boiled leather vambraces. The dark, reinforced cargo pants. A thick, insulated black jacket that would mask her silhouette and absorb the worst of the harbor wind.
And, wrapped in heavy canvas, The Ashen Wake.
She strapped the scabbard diagonally across her back. The fourteen-pound Uru blade settled against her spine, a heavy, reassuring anchor. The metal hummed faintly, a latent vibration she could feel in her teeth.
Eleanor was working the night shift. The apartment would be empty until sunrise.
Maya opened the window, the cold autumn wind rushing in, and slipped out onto the fire escape.
Red Hook at midnight was an industrial graveyard.
The commercial docks were a sprawling grid of rusted shipping containers, towering steel cranes, and cracked concrete piers jutting out into the black water of the bay. The smell of diesel fuel and rotting kelp was thick in the freezing air.
Maya crouched on top of a stack of shipping containers, three stories above the ground. The freezing rain lashed against her jacket, but she stayed perfectly still, peering over the corrugated metal edge.
Below her, a section of the pier was lit by the harsh, floodlight glare of two black SUVs and a massive, idling transport truck.
There were eight men on the ground. They weren't the nervous, cheap-suited thugs Farnum employed. These men moved with heavy, deliberate purpose. They wore thick tactical vests over heavy winter coats. Several of them carried compact, suppressed submachine guns hanging from single-point slings.
They were unloading large, reinforced wooden crates from a smaller barge tied to the pier, transferring them to the transport truck.
Maya watched the rotation. Two men on the barge. Four moving the crates. Two standing perimeter guard near the SUVs, sweeping the shadows with heavy flashlights.
She couldn't sneak in and slash tires. The area was too well-lit, the sightlines too open. If she wanted to break the pipeline, she had to go through them.
She reached over her shoulder and drew The Ashen Wake.
The dark grey metal slipped from the leather scabbard without a sound. The rain hit the blade and instantly hissed into steam, the star-iron running unnaturally hot in the freezing air.
Maya breathed in the salt spray, feeling the dense, coiled power in her legs. She didn't need to do math from a distance anymore.
She stepped off the shipping container.
She plummeted thirty feet, the wind roaring in her ears. She aimed her descent directly at the roof of the cab of the transport truck.
She landed with a heavy, metallic CRUNCH.
The roof of the truck buckled inward under her boots, the suspension violently groaning as she absorbed the massive kinetic impact.
The noise was deafening in the quiet dockyard. Every man on the pier froze, whipping their heads toward the truck.
Maya didn't give them a second to process the shadow standing on the crushed metal.
She leaped off the truck, launching herself directly at the nearest perimeter guard. He raised his flashlight, the beam catching the rain and the dull, matte finish of the Uru sword, but his finger wasn't even close to the trigger of his slung weapon.
Maya hit him like a freight train.
She drove the heavy iron pommel of her sword directly into the center of his chest plate. The ceramic trauma plate cracked with a sharp, gunshot-like sound. The man was lifted off his boots, flying backward into the side of the black SUV with enough force to shatter the passenger windows.
He slumped to the wet concrete, completely immobilized.
"Contact!" one of the men by the crates screamed, dropping his end of a heavy wooden box. The crate hit the pier, the wood splitting to reveal stacks of shrink-wrapped, high-grade explosives.
Guns came up.
Maya didn't retreat. She rushed the light.
A guard raised his submachine gun, tracking her movement. He squeezed the trigger. The suppressed weapon chattered, spitting a stream of 9mm rounds through the rain.
Maya's reflexes parsed the muzzle flashes. She didn't try to dodge out of the line of fire; she moved the blade. She swept The Ashen Wake in a tight, diagonal parry across her chest.
Sparks erupted in a blinding shower as three bullets struck the flat of the star-iron.
The Uru didn't dent. It drank the kinetic force of the ballistics, the dormant green veins deep within the fuller flaring with a sudden, vicious violet light. The impact vibrated up her arms, heavy but manageable.
She closed the gap before the shooter could adjust his aim.
She didn't use the edge. She stepped inside his guard, wrapping her left hand around the hot barrel of his gun and wrenching it upward. With her right hand, she delivered a devastating, flat-bladed strike against the side of his tactical helmet.
The helmet cracked. The man's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed, his weapon clattering to the pier.
"Spread out! Pin her down!" a voice bellowed with a heavy Russian accent.
The remaining six men fanned out, utilizing the cover of the pallets and the SUVs. They were disciplined. They realized immediately that firing blindly into the dark was a waste of ammunition. They were setting up overlapping fields of fire.
Maya crouched behind the rear wheels of the transport truck, the heavy rubber tires providing temporary cover. Bullets slammed into the side of the truck box above her, chewing through the aluminum and hissing through the rain.
She glanced down at her sword. The fuller was glowing with a steady, pulsing violet hue. It had absorbed the impact of her fall onto the truck, the strike to the guard, and the kinetic energy of the bullets. It was nearly fully charged.
She couldn't stay pinned. The men on the barge were already flanking her, moving to get an angle on her position.
Maya tightened her grip on the leather-wrapped hilt. She looked at the two SUVs parked nose-to-nose about twenty feet away. Three guards were using them as hard cover, laying down suppressive fire.
She took a deep breath, visualizing Percy's lesson in the dark corridor. Control the center. Use the blade as a lever.
She broke from cover.
She sprinted directly toward the SUVs, her boots kicking up sprays of freezing water.
The guards leaned out from behind the engine blocks, raising their weapons.
Maya didn't swing at them. She slid on the wet concrete, dropping into a low, baseball-style slide that carried her the last ten feet. As she slid between the two vehicles, she drove the point of the Uru longsword directly into the asphalt, anchoring it, and released the binding on the star-iron.
The stored kinetic energy detonated.
A concussive shockwave of violet light exploded outward from the blade. It hit the undercarriages of the two SUVs like a subterranean bomb.
The massive, three-ton vehicles were physically shoved violently apart. The tires shrieked against the concrete as the SUVs were blasted backward by the sheer atmospheric pressure.
The three guards using them for cover were caught in the shockwave. They were thrown through the air like ragdolls, crashing into the stacked shipping crates and the metal siding of the transport truck.
The deafening roar of the discharge echoed across the bay, drowning out the storm.
Maya stood up slowly in the empty space between the displaced vehicles. Her sword was dark again, the violet glow entirely spent.
The pier was silent, save for the patter of rain and the hissing of a ruptured radiator on one of the SUVs. Five men were down.
She turned her attention toward the barge.
The remaining three men were standing on the deck of the boat. They had stopped firing. They were staring at the displaced SUVs, the ruined transport truck, and the girl standing in the rain with a sword that had just acted like a localized hurricane.
One of them, an older man with a scarred face, slowly lowered his weapon. He didn't drop it, but he pointed the muzzle at the wooden deck.
"Walk away," Maya said. Her voice wasn't a shout. She kept it flat, cold, and entirely devoid of breathlessness. The acoustic properties of the open water carried the sound perfectly to the barge. "Leave the boat. Leave the crates. Walk."
The men hesitated. Fear warred with the terrifying prospect of reporting a failure to the Ranskahov brothers.
Maya raised The Ashen Wake, pointing the dark grey tip at the man with the scarred face. She didn't say another word. She just let the impossible weight of the metal, and the bodies littering the pier, do the talking.
The scarred man swallowed hard. He slung his weapon over his shoulder, turned, and climbed over the far side of the barge, dropping onto the secondary pier and jogging into the shadows. The other two immediately followed suit, scrambling over the railing and abandoning the shipment.
Maya watched the darkness until she was certain they were gone.
She walked over to the split crate on the pier. The shrink-wrapped packages of explosives were stamped with Cyrillic lettering. Fisk was arming up. Or he was supplying someone else.
She pulled a road flare from one of the SUVs, cracked it, and tossed the sputtering, blinding red light directly into the open crate of explosives.
She didn't wait to watch it burn. She sprinted for the perimeter fence, vaulting the chain-link without breaking stride.
She was three blocks away, blending into the heavy shadows of a residential street, when the pier lit up.
A massive, thundering explosion rattled the windows of the nearby brick walk-ups. A pillar of orange fire tore into the rainy sky, consuming the weapons, the transport truck, and a significant chunk of the Russian syndicate's operating capital.
Maya didn't look back. She kept walking, her boots making a soft, steady rhythm on the wet pavement.
The golden text of the Avalon Protocol flared warmly in her peripheral vision, validating the violence.
She had found the wolves. And she was going to bleed them dry.