So, good news first: Michaela picked the right warehouse! Three cheers all around, she didn't get the fifty-fifty shot wrong on her first try.

Now the bad news: Inside the old, abandoned warehouse... is not an old abandoned warehouse.

Two steps in and she comes to a grinding halt, a zing of apprehension shooting down her spine. It's like she's stepped inside the TARDIS; not so much that everything's bigger on the inside, but the insides do not match the outsides at all. Come to think of it, she's dated people like that. What disappointing human beings they turned out to be.

The warehouse, though. It's... more reminiscent of an old library, she thinks. High walls, soaring ceilings, wood paneling everywhere. Shelves upon shelves of leather-bound books, stacked floor to ceiling. It's cooler in here than the dead heat of summer that permeates the outside world, and the scent of filth and shit stopped the second she crossed the threshold, as if it hit a barrier it couldn't cross. Straight ahead of her there's a set of solid-legged wooden tables, some of them adorned with clothes, others bare and topped with things she can't name but that look like they belong in museums across the globe. Artifacts from ancient lands, almost, something resurrected from the earth and sealed behind glass for the rest of human existence.

Except. You know. They're all just casually out here, uncovered, looking pristine and not at all like they've been damaged by time or neglect.

A thud from behind her makes Michaela nearly shriek, and she almost bites off her tongue in her haste to stifle herself. She glances back, groans at the sight of the closed door. That's fantastic. Lovely.

Where the fuck is Grace?

That's what she should be channeling her focus into. Finding Grace and getting the fuck out of here. She'd guessed whoever took Grace has powers of their own, so the grandiose interior shouldn't freak her out as badly as it does, but she just. Wasn't expecting this. She'd been imagining something akin to a gritty action film, the damsel in distress handcuffed to a protruding pipe, the abductor cackling madly in the corner while he rattled off his nefarious plans.

The sleep deprivation, as always, is her go-to excuse for the fucking shitshow that is her mind.

She's wishing for a cliched action movie fix right now, though – the Avengers swooping in at the eleventh-hour kind of thing, busting through a wall and shouting out some hackneyed line about saving the day, twisting up the bag guy in a conveniently placed length of rope. No rope here, just her and her toaster-oven hands, slinking along the edge of a bookshelf and hoping to whatever deity is potentially watching from the ether that she's learned something from Matt, the king of sneakity-sneaking. The floors are some glistening, exotic hardwood and unlikely to creak, but she steps lightly anyway, trailing a hand along the spines of the books lined up beside her.

There are hardly any sounds that she can make out besides the soft inhales and exhales of her own breathing. No voices, no sounds of a struggle. There is, however, a faint hum that she honestly feels more than hears, a vibration of the air, almost, prickling over her exposed skin and competing with the electricity zipping through her body for making her practically tremble with anticipation.

She'd downplay it, write it off as nothing more than faulty wiring or whatever those paranormal debunkers usually tout as the reason for ghostly encounters, but. Uh. The only lighting she's noticed so far comes from the frankly absurd number of candles that are planted on every available surface. They're perched high on top of the bookshelves, scattered in between the artifacts on the tables, cradled in candelabras hung from the wall. The effect they all generate is almost hypnotizing, watching the play of flickering shadows across the walls and the book spines, warm golden light glinting off the shinier artifacts in the room. Every momentary flash catches her eye and she has to fight to urge not to chase the perception of movement.

Fucking hell, she wasn't built for stealth missions. Matt knows this, it's why he never has her enter possibly hideouts for gangs first. Although they have made use of powers more than once, having her knock out the lights so Matt can duck in and do his thing. Too bad that's not applicable here, what with the lack of electrical lighting. Goddamn medieval lighting fixtures, ruining her rescue missions.

Michaela pauses at the edge of the room, flattening herself against the bookcase at her back and leaning forward just enough to peek around the corner. She squints, berating herself for not thinking to push her goggles up; the lighting's dim already, and the extra layer only darkens the shadows and freaks her out all the more. Her identity isn't the main issue here, so she rips the goggles off and tucks them into the pocket of sweatshirt, blinking to adjust herself to the half-lit gloom. Fewer candles dot this new space, but a there's an oddly cozy-looking fire roaring in a hearth towards the back wall that makes up for it, casting the tell-tale shadows across the adjacent walls.

And – oh. That is a woman, lying atop a wooden table. In the center of the room.

"Please be Grace," Michaela whispers to herself, because good god, does she not want there to be multiple women being held hostage in this librarian nightmare hellscape.

No one else is around (at least, that's what Michaela's five senses are telling her, but fuck if she's the most reliable when it comes to observation), so she makes quick work of crossing the room and circling around to the head of the table, which. Her footsteps must alert the woman to her presence because she turns her head when Michaela gets close, her brown eyes blown wide with fear. Sweat beads at her temples, dampening her hairline, but her mouth is a flat, thin line, expressionless.

That's so very not good.

"Grace?" Michaela whispers, watching the woman's face and biting back a sigh of relief when she twitches in an approximation of a nod. "Shit, okay, so you're still frozen. We'll fix that, I promise, just. Hold on for a sec." As if she has any other choice. Judging by the look in her eyes (visible just beyond the sheen of terror, which is to be expected), Grace is duly unimpressed with Michaela's word choice. And that's fair, it really is. If their positions were reversed Michaela would be loudly thinking every curse in her rather extensive vocabulary in the hopes that her thoughts might be felt, if not heard.

Backtracking, Michaela lifts her hands in surrender, her brows furrowing as she flicks her eyes along Grace's body. She's prostrate on the table, held down with nothing visible. No ropes, no chains, nothing Michaela can get her free of easily. Fuck, her DnD campaigns in high school were really not any sort of preparation for dealing with real-life magic. Michaela didn't even believe in magic until a few months ago! Not even with Thor, and that guy is as close to a living god as Michaela is ever going to find. Her own powers are... something genetic-related, right, so not magic. This is not her area of expertise, or anywhere in the vicinity of that area.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

None of that can show on her face, not even for a split second, and Michaela debates the merits of pulling her goggles back on just so Grace won't see the uncertainty in her eyes, the wrinkle between her brows that says very fucking clearly that nothing about this situation is okay.

"Alright," Michaela says, breathing in sharply through her nose. "Alright, okay, we're gonna figure this out. Is the guy here? Blink once for yes, twice for no, yeah?"

Two quick blinks. Okay, good. Granted, Grace's visibility is severely limited, but Michaela will take whatever breaks she can get.

"Do you remember anything about when he... fuck. Uh. When he cursed you, or. Whatever we're calling this?"

Two blinks, slow and pointed and okay, yeah, Michaela gets it, Grace would have told have told her that when she was in the jackass' body if it were something she knew. Or she could be reminding Michaela with subtly that she's in no condition to recite whatever mystic bullshit she may or may not have overhead. Again, fair point. That just doesn't leave Michaela with many options. Unless. Well. These books have gotta be here for a reason... right?

"You want weapons? We're in a library. Books!" Michaela mumbles to herself. "The best weapons in the world!" She cuts a glance at Grace and, uh. Shit. That's some recognition she wasn't anticipating. Heat floods Michaela's cheeks and she awkwardly shoves away from the table. "Yes, it was a Doctor Who reference, no, I wasn't expecting you to get it. Please don't leak it to the tabloids that I'm a nerd, my reputation takes enough hits as it is."

The closest shelf brackets the fireplace, every book tucked nearly into its place, the spines carefully aligned, though the order of them makes no sense to her. It's not alphabetical, and there's no distinction between languages. English sits right next to what she's pretty sure is Latin, the both them between Cantonese and Arabic. Italian, Portuguese, French, a dozen languages she can't name or even begin to comprehend. The titles of those she understands are vague and unhelpful, a fair number of them devoted to specific categories of magic that aren't remotely applicable to the situation right now.

Who the fuck needs to know how to read the auras of stag beetles? Stag beetles, of all things. A whole book on stag beetle aura reading. Someone really sat down one day and decided hey, this is something the world is sorely lacking. And then they wrote a thick-ass book on it.

And Michaela thought she had too much time on her hands.

She skims over one shelf, scowls beneath the mask and ducks down to check the one below it. Most of the leather is warm and soft against her fingers, supple with age and that peculiar devotion found only in the lovers of old books. She hits something that is not leather and also furry and she moves the fuck on without letting her brain register the title. God, she has not one iota of a clue as to what she's looking for here. There are, apparently, spells and incantations for literally everything, but she's not seeing anything that could unfreeze Grace and possibly unlock that door so they can escape with their lives (and hopefully their dignities) intact.

The Art of Grecian Transfiguration, interesting but useless under the circumstances. Intent: Overcoming the Limitations of the Human Form, cult-like and not what she's in need of at the moment. Something in French that maybe possibly has to do with butterflies and the blood of worms, Michaela took a year of it in high school, she's by no means fluent. A Treatise on the Many Facets of Control—

Ooh, promising.

Michaela's hooked a finger over the top of the book's spine, intent on pulling it down and skimming the fuck out of it (a skill she's very much perfected since enrolling in college) when someone clears their throat, in that obnoxious way that's meant to convey that you have royally fucked up and are about to get reamed for it.

Yikes. Michaela has heard that exact sound in her nightmares, usually accompanied by the gap-toothed grin and soulless eyes of Mr. Kelly, her ninth-grade history teacher.

Given that it is statistically unlikely that Mr. Kelly has suddenly materialized in this magical library of fucking terror, that really limits the possibilities as to who just walked into the room.

"I see that you've finally tracked me down, Blackout. You've taken your time with it. And here I thought I was leaving breadcrumbs for you all this time."

Yup. That's that last voice she wanted to hear tonight.

Fucking wizards and their fucking bullshit magical agendas.

Michaela snags the book when she turns, doing a piss-poor job of casually tucking it behind her back but going for it regardless. Her shoulders tense instinctively, her feet spreading to adjust her balance, distributing her weight as evenly as she can. Like that's going to stop her from getting flung head-first into a portal to fuck-knows-where, but. It soothes the high-pitched bitching her anxiety's started on, the almost-static that fizzles in her head and sparks down her spine, numbing the tips of her fingers. Could also be the surge of electricity that's now coiling around her muscles, stimulating nerve endings with pain-not-pain and giving her the insane urge to just fucking run.

He looks about the same as he did the last time she had the pleasure of having her ass her ass handed to her by him. Decked out in a long, sleeveless forest-green cloak, the hood of which he's drawn so far forward that it casts his entire face into shadow. Intricate tattoos inked in gold on his tanned biceps and forearms, spiraling into foreign designs that practically radiate energy of their own. He's carrying a wooden staff, though, that's new. It rests against his shoulder now, but she doubts it's there to help him walk or climb stairs or any other innocuous reason. Golden lines are carved into the wood's smooth surface, not an exact match for the script on his arms but definitely the same language judging by the characters she's able to pick out.

"Would you just, ya know, cutting the shit and letting the woman go?"

Wizard man huffs a laugh, tapping the staff rhythmically against his shoulder. Michaela doesn't know what's so fucking about her question, but he's crazy, so she figures it's not something for her to understand anyway.

"You don't know, do you?"

Michaela narrows her eyes. What kind of question is that? "The assumption here is that I don't, so let's just roll with that."

She watches him step closer to Grace, who's gone deathly pale with the wizard's appearance, and Michaela moves towards her as a result, wanting to get between them but knowing she isn't fast enough even with the minor enhancements she can manage with her powers. And as tempted as she is to just launch a barrage of bolts at him, she knows from painfully personal experience that he can get those fancy shields of his up fast enough to block her without much effort. Attacking is only going to put Grace in more danger – she remembers that first fight, when everything she threw at him only ricocheted into the asphalt or the nearby buildings.

Michaela is not going to fry the person she's promised to save. That's just common sense.

"You Inhumans, you're powerful," the wizard says, close enough now to Grace to reach out and – his hand encircled with those golden glowing circles that always mean trouble for Michaela – pass a hand down the length of her body, though he's careful not to touch her directly. Light seems to shimmer out from beneath Grace's skin, like sunlight seen through clear water, pulsating in time with what Michaela would guess is her heartbeat. "There's so much potential inside of you, so much raw energy, and it can take any number of forms. For you, Blackout, it modeled itself after the lightning that screams through the heavens; for this woman, it gave her the power to deliver her spirit from her body and implant it inside another's. That's a trick I'm only half able to complete myself. As for the others..."

Alarm bells clang around in Michaela's head. Her grip on the book tightens to the point of pain but she doesn't spare it a thought. Others. She'd thought – she'd made that connection weeks ago, but it was a hunch, a gut feeling, an itch under her skin that no amount of assurance from Matt could soothe. Jessica sort of confirmed it for her, or at least gave her some steadier footing for her paranoia to take root, but she. She didn't know until right this fucking second that this asshole had been the one to kidnap all those other Inhumans.

Nausea rises in her throat like bile, choking her. When she manages to speak, the words are rough and sharp, cut up from grating against her teeth. "What the fuck kind of god complex do you have?"

She swears he smiles, even though all she sees of his mouth is a faint outline, the barest impression of cheekbones and a square chin. "There are no gods," he says, "none, except for those we grant power over ourselves. But when you are the one in possession of power, when you cannot be conquered or subdued... You bow to no one. And isn't that what humanity is ultimately after? Freedom from our oppressors?"

"You didn't answer the question," Michaela says, risking a glance at Grace. She hasn't moved still, hasn't so much as twitched a finger, and her skin still glitters with whatever the wizard did to her. From his insane ramblings, she's gathered it's probably a visual representation of the energy inside of Grace, the genetic potential that comes with being an Inhuman descendent. It's troubling, is what it is, because all that energy, that power? That's Grace – that's a part of her, down to the bone, to the DNA. And the wizard's talking like he wants to hoover it out of her.

"I don't have a god complex. I'm not passing judgement on who lives and dies, and I'm not shaping creation to my will. What I am is a collector looking to add to his collection."

"You don't have enough books already?"

They're not talking about the books.

The wizard definitely smiles now, white teeth pale and ghostly in the hollow shadow of his face. "What collector is ever satisfied with what they already have?"

Okay, fuck that.

Michaela lunges for Grace, throwing out a burst of electricity at the wizard, who gamely deflects with his shields, sending the lightning into the closest bookcase. The leather-bound tomes erupt with flames, the scattered sparks catching on anything flammable, which – is a lot in here.

Michaela ignores it, though, braces herself over Grace and slams the book down on the table beside her prone body. It's flung open to a random page and Michaela scans it quickly, desperate for the right words to jump out at her; before she even makes a dent in the page the wizard is there, whipping his staff around and nearly taking Michaela's head off her shoulders with it. As it is, she only just manages to duck, curling her hands around the far edge of the table and heaving it sideways with her. It sends Grace tumbling to the floor (which Michaela will apologize for profusely later when they're not about to die, holy fucking shit this is madness).

The table's a flimsy shield, Michaela's not kidding herself with this, but it gives her a second to (gently) roll Grace back behind her. Grace watches her the whole time with wet eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, and Michaela has never felt as helpless as she does right now. She snatches the book from the floor and tucks it into Grace's side, masterfully avoiding eye contact, then pops back up just as the staff is making another swing for her. Only, it's too far away, there's no way it's going to make contact—

A yelp escapes her as she's thrown back into the shelves, the breath punched from her lungs as her shoulders and back connect hard with the wood, the impact enough to drive splinters into the nape of her neck. Fuck. Michaela drops down to the ground in a heap of uncooperative limbs, choking out a gasp. Blood coats her tongue from where she bit into her cheek, and she spits out as much as she can, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

Fuck, fuck, what was that? The staff didn't come near her, but it felt like, like something smacked into her chest. Something hit her and sent her flying across the room. Fuck, she doesn't have time for this, Grace is—

Ugh.

Michaela struggles to her feet, vaguely aware of the sparks she's emitting from practically every inch of her skin, most of them harmless and fizzling out in her clothes.

And there's the asshole, casually twirling the staff around, head cocked to the side. Curious, maybe, or impatient, waiting for her to do more than get her ass handed to her time and again.

"Have I introduced myself yet?" he asks, calm and cool and getting on every single one of her nerves. "Most call me Cato, though I must admit the name doesn't suit me these days."

Is he... is he serious? Cato? Like the dick from The Hunger Games? "Suits you... just fine, in my opinion," Michaela grits out, eyeing where Grace is still sprawled out a few feet away, unmoving. Except— Michaela snaps her attention back to Cato, the fucker, waves a hand absently and says, "What do you want outta this? To kill us?"

Another knife-edged smile. "You? Not quite. Not yet. Now, come. That can't be the best you can do?"

Well, since he's asking so nicely...

Michaela usually holds back when she's using the electricity on actual real-live people. She's not a fan of murder, you know? Vigilantism is the extent of her illegal activities, and she's never really run into anyone who took more than a few strategically placed shocks to take down. Even with the other Inhuman, Rodriguez, when she went overboard it was instinctual, unconscious. But now? Now she's not so sure she cares about the consequences so long as she gets Grace out of this alive.

That's a dangerous mindset, and if Matt were here, he'd be readying some pacifying speech that would no doubt have her dialing back the voltage in a heartbeat, because the guy may delve into the gray area more than she does, but he's got a moral compass that Michaela would bet her soul on.

Matt's not here, though. What a shame.

Lightning crackles in the palms of both her hands, hot and shrieking, tendrils of it streaking up her forearms. She's never tested this, how much damage she can do in one go, one concentrated blast. It's heady, too, holding this much power in her hands, knowing it's probably enough to blackout an entire block, if not more.

God, she really needs that therapist.

Cato, evidently done waiting on her to make the first move, parkours his way over the overturned table, swinging his staff down in an arc that—fuck, she sees it now, the shockwave it throws out. She scrambles to dodge, feels the air rush past the side of her face and nearly yank her hair out of its braid; she manages to turn her fall into a roll and comes up standing at an angle from Cato, the lightning bright and burning in her hands. He twists to face her, the staff moving, and she doesn't think, doesn't question whether she's making the right choice – she claps her hands together and a white-hot bolt of lightning lances into Cato.

He's still fast, still smart as hell, and the bolt hits his side rather than his chest, but it spins him from the impact, and he crashes shoulder-first into the wall. Michaela takes her chance and fires off another blast, aiming for the hand holding the staff, but Cato adjusts his grip and another shockwave counters her electricity with a resounding boom.

This is about when the acrid smell of smoke hits Michaela head-on. It's so strong she has to swallow down her gag reflex, pressing both hands over her nose and mouth. Over the near-constant crackling of her electricity there's the sizzle-pop of fire eating away at a university's worth of books. Shit. What started off as a small blaze on one shelf has blossomed into something that really wants to be an inferno, the fire overtaking shelf after shelf, climbing up to the ceiling. Shit, shit, shit, she needs to go, Grace needs to get out of here; Michaela turns to find her, god, she took off her goggles and her eyes are stinging—

Another shockwave knocks her into the table. Her head rings from the impact, every thought shaken loose and rattling around her skull in a rush of white noise. She hears something, a voice, garbled words, fuck that hurt – Michaela grabs at her head and forces herself to look up, straining to see through the growing smoke. A haze of gray, flashes of orange-red and burgundy, and. Ah, fuck, Grace.

She moves faster than her thoughts can process; one second, she's sitting, dazed and teary-eyed, on the floor, the next she's launching herself at Cato's broad back, wrapping her arms around his neck and trying to jam a sparking hand under his hood. It breaks his concentration and the golden portal he'd been creating sputters and dies as he grabs at her wrist, pulsing bracelets of gold encircling his forearm. Michaela only faintly registers the pain of whatever he's doing to her, most of her focus on Grace, who's finally regained control of her limbs and is fighting to push herself to a standing position.

"Get outta here!" Michaela yells, desperate to heard over the roar of the fire, though the tail end of her sentence gets sharpened into a high-pitched whimper as something hot as hellfire latches onto her waist, jerking her free of Cato.

That's the third time she's been tossed aside like a ragdoll and she has to say, she's not a fan.

Easing herself onto her stomach, hissing air through her clenched teeth, Michaela takes stock of her various aches and pains. Her head is pounding out a staccato beat but it's bearable for now; her upper back throbs from her run-in with the shelves; there's a smattering of surface-level burns on her hands, the result of her channeling so much power at once – it's left her gloves singed, too, and god, she cannot catch a break tonight. The newest addition, though, is the searing strip of heat wrapped around her waist, which she can trace back to the... what does she even call that? Cato's holding what looks like a whip of pure magical energy in his hand. He must have... grabbed hold of her with it and pulled. Fantastic. He's got even more tricks up his nonexistent sleeves. What a resourceful guy.

Okay. Okay, she's not dead yet, right, that's the takeaway here. She's not dead, and that means she needs to get back up, get to Grace, and finish what she started here tonight. Cato's a not-altogether-unexpected wrench in her plans but she's very much seething with rage right now, and she's sure as hell not letting him get what he wants from Grace. Over her fucking dead body.

Grace, thankfully, seems to have been able to move some during the struggle. She's closer now to the doorway Michaela originally came through, further away from Michaela, technically, but also further away from Cato. She can work with that, she can.

"Grace!" The name feels scraped out of her, her throat raw from the smoke, but it gets Grace's attention. Michaela gestures wildly to the exit even as she's heaving herself to her feet, moving to intercept Cato. "Grace, go, go, go! Get out, go—fuck, go find Daredevil! He'll help you, okay, he'll—"

The whip winds around her wrist, yanking her off-balance. She bites back a scream, unwilling to give Cato the satisfaction. The hold on her wrist tightens and she sees him maneuvering the staff again, fuck, that's not good, she can't take another hit from that. Thinking fast, she fires off one more bolt at his chest at the same time as she electrifies the opposite hand, disrupting the energy of the whip enough that it disengages from her arm and she's allowed to fall back onto her ass.

A hand lands on her shoulder and it's only because she can barely see straight that she doesn't immediately shock whoever it belongs to. Lucky for her, seeing as it's Grace, crouched down at her side and tugging at her, urging her to her feet. Michaela is a little peeved, honestly; she told Grace to go, and generally that's understood to mean the person should, ah, get the fuck out of Dodge? Grace is staring at her, wild-eyed with her panic, and it occurs to Michaela that some of that thought might have slipped out. Whoops. No time to take it back, though, as she can see Cato rising from the corner of her eye. They've got a very small window here and Michaela is damn determined to shove Grace through it with everything she has.

"Grace," Michaela hisses once she's upright, "Grace, I'll be right behind you, but you have to go now, okay? Go, uh, go—" She rattles off her home address, latching onto the first semi-safe place that comes to mind. Grace doesn't question it, doesn't ask where it is she's being told to go. She nods tightly, her mouth pressed into a trembling line, tear-tracks cutting through the soot staining her cheeks. "Through there," Michaela says, pointing at the doorway. "Run through there and then it's a straight shot to the exit, alright? It..."

She can't guarantee it's going to open when Grace reaches it, but Michaela's not snuffing out that flicker of hope, she's not. There's no point. If that door won't open, then neither of them is making it out of this alive, and that is not an outcome she's willing to entertain at this juncture.

Grace is gone, then, downright booking it through the entryway despite the aftereffects of whatever magic she had done on her. Michaela nearly breathes a sigh of relief. Seeing Grace rounding that corner... it lifts a weight from her shoulders she hadn't realized she'd been carrying, and the resulting loss of pressure makes her want to drop to her knees. Except, you know. She has other things to deal with presently before total loss of coordination is acceptable.

The heat licks at Michaela's skin as she turns back to Cato; sweat trickles down from her hairline into her eyes, pools at the small of her back and dampens her hands, which. Ouch. That only aggravates the burns on her palms, and she irritably shakes out her hands in some vain attempt to waft away the pain. Cato, when she spots him, is watching her again, his staff held loosely in both hands, his hood tossed back, revealing the half-mask that covers the lower portion of his face, and bright eyes she can't make out the color of from this distance, especially not with the cloud of smoke between them. His head is shaved, though, she thinks, only a layer of fine, bristly hair left behind.

They observe one another for a few suffocating moments. A chunk of burning ceiling crashes down a good half a foot from where Michaela's standing, and she's so caught up in ensuring Cato doesn't get the drop on her that she hardly flinches. Michaela's only an idiot part-time – she's aware that if he wanted to, Cato could sparkler himself a portal and chase after Grace in an instant. The fact that he's here instead, with her, means something, though she's loathed to know exact what.

"What now?" she finds herself asking, so keyed up she's shaking with it. Everything hurts, though she notes, somewhere in the back of her frazzled mind, that this isn't anywhere near as debilitating as her fight with Rodriguez. She'll bruise and scar, maybe, but she can walk away from this as of right now.

"What now, indeed," Cato says, apparently unruffled by having his book collection in flames around him.

Michaela grits her teeth. Lightning curls around her fingers, flicking off into the fire with every minute flex of her hands. She's at a clear disadvantage, which is frankly obvious to everyone involved. Cato could shoot her into space with one of his portals, probably, and she'd be helpless to stop him. There's no happy ending in sight for her that she can see. At least Grace got out – Michaela did something right, there. She can be proud of that when she's rotting in hell, or wherever all the nonbelievers go. She's pretty sure they have an actual circle of hell dedicated to them, which is pretty damn cool, honestly.

Only.

Only Cato is there one second and gone the next, a shower of golden sparks cascading down in his wake.

Michaela's almost vibrating with panic and fear and about eleven other terrifying emotions, and that, that's just rude, because now she's hyperventilating over the possibility that he went after Grace anyway, despite whatever bullshit connection she'd tapped into earlier. She glances frantically around the flaming room, sees neither hide nor hair of the magical bastard, and abruptly takes off after Grace, stumbling her way past the towering walls of fire and not giving one fuck about her safety in the process.

(These clothes are a lost cause and she just doesn't want to admit it to herself at this point)

The door is open, thank fuck, and Michaela doesn't hesitate as she runs out of the warehouse-slash-villainous hideout into the blessedly cool night. Well. It's cool, yeah, but by no means quiet – sirens from about three different emergency response vehicles are absolutely wailing, there's firemen yelling and the roar of the hose as it works to douse the warehouse's flames, and yet more yelling from four or so cops, and—

Oh, fuckity fuck, that fucker set her up.

Michaela has nowhere to run – it's either straight into the restrictive arms of the police or back into the currently-on-fire warehouse, because she knows this alley dead ends, and she does not, unfortunately, have Matt's parkour skills. Plus, two of the cops have already spotted her and are making their way over, handcuffs all nice and shiny on their belts and guns raised and at the ready.

She lifts her own hands, places them on the back of her head. Oh, no, no, no, now is not the time for a panic attack, she has to stay focused, she has to, to figure out how she's going to—god, how she's going to not get arrested.

Fuck, she really thought it would be Spider-Man.

Michaela doesn't say a word as she's read her rights; there's nothing to say, and, really, she just plain doesn't want to open her mouth. She'd like to know where Grace is, if she made it out before the cops arrived or if she's huddled in the back of an ambulance somewhere. If Cato got to her in the end. But no one is going to answer her questions, she can read that much from their stony expressions, so what's the point? They don't immediately rip her mask off and demand to know her identity, so. There's that.

The humiliating aspect of all this will come later, she supposes, when they stick her in an interrogation room and try to get her to confess to setting the warehouse alight. No one is going to believe that she dueled a wizard and saved a woman who body hops, okay. She can throw lightning around and Captain America is just about a hundred years old and can still lift a car, but wizards? That's asking too much.

Michaela's just about shoved into the back of a squad car when semi-familiar voice calls out, "We can take care of this one, gentlemen."

Michaela's head snaps up and she strains to see over the shoulder of the very rude officer with his hands still insistently pressing at her shoulders. And – huh. Phil Coulson, in the flesh, appearing out of the shadows of the alley like a bad fucking omen.

Well, ain't that an interesting twist?

...goddamn, she hopes Matt doesn't already think she's dead, she doesn't know when she's going to be able to contact him. The last thing she needs is a repeat of her last encounter with SHIELD. Although her heart-to-heart with Matt wasn't all bad...

Ugh. Whatever this is, she just wants it over with so she can sleep for the next two weeks, uninterrupted.

Or death. Death actually sounds pretty good right about now.