Chapter 9: Man of Iron

From start to finish, Alyssa’s rampage through The Hammer base had taken only 12 minutes and 47 seconds. Which is why she was genuinely a little bit shocked to see Iron Man hovering outside as she knocked out the last of the men trying to escape. She knew he couldn’t be more than a few minutes away if he’d been in New York, but she hadn’t sent a feed to the Avengers directly. Shield must have reached out near-instantly for him to have arrived here so fast. Though at least he was alone, which meant that the other current Avenger that could have reached this location fast enough must not have been present.

Alyssa was reasonably confident about being able to handle Iron Man.

She was much less so against someone like Wonder Woman.

“Impressive work. What, less than 15 minutes for the whole base? Not to mention the three you gassed. Clever move with the DEA on that one, by the by, they already had a team in Gotham even if it wasn’t fully ready yet. They are looking carefully over the GCPD’s shoulders as they move in to arrest everyone present at those sites.”

Good to know. She, admittedly, had gotten a little bit of tunnel vision and hadn’t even thought to check on the response to her actions there.

“Hmmm, good response yourself. I admit I expected to be gone before anyone could react to the feed. Probably with KGBeast to drop off somewhere secure.”

That helmet could be surprisingly expressive, the man behind it somehow tilting it in just such a way that it gave off amused acknowledgement. How it did that, she had no idea.

“You did give us a 24-hour warning, you know. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that someone was setting the stage for a grand opening. Though I admit that yours is more impressive than most. A major counterfeiting ring, heroin processing and distribution, and someone on Shield’s Top 10 most wanted? Someone might think you were trying to make a statement.”

Alyssa smirked. If he thought she was going to be thrown off by them figuring it out, he’d be in for a surprise. Admittedly, she hadn’t expected them to be quite this on the ball, but she could roll with it. Even if it annoyed her that this man, of all people, was going to have clear video of her.

“Perhaps I was, a bit. But you of all people have to admit that there’s a certain level of presentation that separates the Super from the merely Heroic, no?”

That got a chuckle out of the man, even as he made the gesture of a fencer acknowledging a point.

“True. The question, though…is who was the show for? Somehow, I get the feeling you’d turn me down if I offered you a slot in one of the Avengers sub-teams. Which I just might have, given how complete and professional this whole thing was.”

Pursing her lips, she shrugged and decided to go with part of the truth, at least.

“I dislike the saying ‘two birds with one stone.’ A bit too cliché. It fits in this case, however. Gotham is the sort of place where such presentation is almost necessary if you want to make certain points. That it also happened to make it clear I was on the side of the proverbial angels, in so much as anyone will believe that so quickly, is only another useful point.”

It was also, of course, so much more than that. She was putting the Bat family on notice along with the rest of Gotham. Not to mention grinding the GCPD’s nose into the fact they couldn’t get away with covering up for her targets, building a reputation for future recruiting efforts, and intentionally dragging national agencies into the muck of Gotham. Really, more like several birds with a shotgun, rather than two with a rock.

“Well, you certainly have our attention. Along with a lot of other peoples’. Are you sure you can handle it?”

Smirking, she activated a special feature of her tactical cloak. Instead of vanishing all at once, she started slowing fading out. The fact this let her double it up with a little bit of ECM that would scatter other methods of seeing through the cloak was part of the reason. Letting her get the last word in was another.

“I’m quite certain. See you around, Gold-Plated-Titanium-Man. Oh…and the name is Star Knight, by the way…”

The last thing to fade was her mouth and eyes, with her accelerating away at high speed an instant later. She always had been a fan of that little gimmick of the Chesire Cat’s…

… … ...

-Conference Room: Avenger’s Tower-

It was rare for the Avengers to all be in one place at the same time and today was no exception. Wonder Woman had returned from her own mission, and Black Widow was present as an expert with a particularly strong knowledge on KGBeast. The Wasp was also present, though Ant-Man was not. Nor was Daredevil, Ghost Spider, Blue Lantern, or Cheetah. Falcon and Beast had been on hand, though, and had joined in on the meeting out of curiosity.

Of course, the two main personalities present were Iron Man and, via conference call, Nick Fury. Maria Hill was sharing the image with Fury, but tended not to speak much in these kinds of situations. It was Fury who, after everyone had watched the under-twenty-minutes of total footage they had of the recent operation against The Hammer, opened the discussion.

“Alright. We’ve all seen it. I want opinions on her. Powers, motivations, angles. Thanks to Stark’s quick reaction we even have a bit of banter from her, so psychological observations too.”

Tony Stark was, of course, the first person to speak up. The man had mellowed a little now that he was aging, the salt-and-pepper of his hair showing less vanity than his younger self might have had. He still had enough ego that everyone knew to let him speak first, if he was present. Better to let it be soothed by small acts like that than to let it build up into some sort of self-aggrandizing action.

“Her powers are only partially her. The invisibility at least is a thermaoptic cloak built into her armor. Extremely well made, even by my standards, and came complete with an ECM package that erased her presence from most of my other sensors. A few of the more exotic ones managed to keep track of her, though, which brings me to another point…she’s fast. I know that seems obvious from how we had to slow the fight with KGBoy down, but her zilch-to-barely-subsonic speed-up at the end was pretty close to instant. I’m fairly confident that bit was an inborne power. Possibly X-Gene or Quirk?”

Beast spoke up when Tony shot him a look at that.

“No known X-Gene matches, and she looks a bit too old to have not appeared before now for either option anyway. Of course, that’s no certainty, but it reduces the likelihood a bit.”

Several people nodded. The two, X-Genes and Quirks, were related phenomena but differed in several expressions. Quirks almost always manifested in childhood for example, typically between ages 3-5. Meanwhile, various X-Gene variants typically expressed in teen or preteen years, unless major trauma was involved. There were always outliers, though…not to mention the possibility of extra-dimensional origins. Their own Ghost-Spider wasn’t originally from their Earth, even if she’d decided to stay after her own put a massive manhunt on her for dubious reasons.

“I’m more interested in the fighting style, to be honest. I recognized parts of it, obviously modified for her enhanced abilities, but there were bits that looked like a cohesive underlying style that I didn’t recognize. Interestingly, I think that underlying style was built for someone enhanced to use. Though perhaps not quite as enhanced as Star Knight.”

They all chewed on Wonder Woman’s analysis for a moment. It implied that the new unknown had actual training from someone enhanced, so it was a good point, though one that only added to the frustration of her being a complete unknown practically right in their backyard.

“Stark, any hits on facial recognition?”

The man shook his head at Fury’s question, lips twitching into a smile that looked like actual admiration.

“Nope. Won’t get any without a lot more samples, either. I figured out pretty quickly that she’s not actually showing us as much as it looks like. The hard-light projections from her visor extend more subtly over her face, changing the outline and skin tone. With enough samples I might be able to break down the algorithm she’s using and make a guess what her unmodified face looks like, but not with just what little I have. Very clever work, I have to say. Which, by the way, extends to pretty much everything she had on the tech side. Her suit’s ICE was insanely thick and very nasty. I didn’t poke more than the surface level for fear it might actually have compromised my suit instead of hers.”

Everyone looked startled at that. Tony, despite not being a netrunner, was considered one of the world’s foremost programmers. If he had been put off of trying to crack the ICE on her software, it would likely be positively devastating for virtually anyone else. Eventually, it was Falcon that got them back on track.

“So, high technology, but some powers beyond that too. What powers exactly go with which. Like those energy bolts. Are those tech or power?”

With that, they were off into a debate, trying to sus out what they could about the powerful new player in Gotham. If Star Knight had wanted attention, she’d certainly gotten it with the stunt she’d pulled. Whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing was hard to say just yet…

… … ...

-Gotham CIty: Batcave-

Barbara tried not to sigh as she watched her boss brood over the ‘Bat-Computer.’ Admittedly, she wasn’t exactly any happier with the current state of affairs than Batman was, but she’d given up her own search six hours ago. She wasn’t surprised to find him still awake, even after she’d taken most of those six hours to sleep and get something to eat. But it still frustrated her more than a little, nonetheless.

Masterfully keeping that out of her voice as she stepped up behind him with a coffee in her hand, she asked the question she was virtually certain she already knew the answer to. She was the better of the two of them at digital investigations, after all. Unlike him, she had a top-of-the-line military-grade cyberdeck and a full-dive rig for netrunning.

“Still nothing on the mysterious Star Knight?”

There was a long pause before the single word answer.

“No.”

Barbara nodded, trying not to sigh. She’d had a strong suspicion even Batman wouldn’t find anything, not yet and not with so little to work with. Yet the terseness of the response told her even more than that. Bruce was annoyed. A superpowered individual of completely and utterly unknown origin had popped up in ‘his’ city, with no warning…and now with him finding no clues at all about where she’d come from or who she really was.

Worse, in a way, Star Knight hadn’t just caught a random mugger, or even stopped one of the typical rogue’s gallery. No, instead, she’d surgically removed, for all intents and purposes, an entire criminal faction. She’d done it in a single night, and in a way that was virtually certain to make it stick. With one of Shield’s Top 10 most wanted international criminals swept up in it, the GCPD would have both Shield and the DEA watching everything they did over their shoulder.

Possibly for months.

Which meant no ‘accidentally misfiled’ bits of paperwork. No random ‘plea deals’ or ‘obviously he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time’ releases. If the GCPD didn’t dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’, they’d be ripped to shreds by organizations that massively outweighed them in both scope and authority. Even if they did everything right, the mere fact that KGBeast had been operating in Gotham without the GCPD knowing would be a strike against them.

Every single person caught in The Hammer raids was going down. Probably for max or close to max sentences. Any attempt to save them would only cause those who tried it to be investigated themselves, with every dirty skeleton being unearthed by experts with access to the very best in tech and metahuman support. It was one of the single largest blows to the underworld of Gotham in years.

And Batman hadn’t been involved.

Hell, they hadn’t even found out about it until their own quiet taps into the GCPD had alerted them to the mobilization. They’d had so little time to react that neither of them had even reached the scene until Star Knight had already left, and then they’d had to stay away because Iron Man was present and personally taking charge of the detainment of KGBeast. To say Batman was less than thrilled would be a grotesque understatement.

Which made it very, very conflicting that Barbara Gordon had no problem with it at all. As far as she was concerned, they hadn’t been making any headway in Gotham in far too long, and she’d take all the help they could get. One of the few points of conflict between her and Batman, who disliked the idea that they ‘needed’ outside assistance.

 Well, for now it only mattered in the sense that Batman would be extra irritable. Until Star Knight surfaced again, Barbara herself would simply mark her as a possible ally in fixing Gotham and keep an eye out for an opportunity to introduce herself…

… … ... … … ... … … ...

A/N 1: Could Alyssa actually take Iron Man at this point? Probably not. She almost certainly COULD escape from him, though.

A/N 2: This is one of the older versions of Iron Man and one of the more sane versions of Fury. Not the MCU versions. This Fury is also USED to working with and around a bunch of other teams and organizations. He's still paranoid, but not to the point that it's detrimental.

A/N 3: A bit of a hint that Batgirl MIGHT be one possible recruit. Maybe. Honestly, assuming I even continue this, I haven't actually committed to any future team members. I'm just seeding possible reasons in, for if I decide they are a good fit.

A/N 4: Yep, you're probably already expecting this bit if you've read my other works. Once per release, I remind people that there is Early Access content available On My Page.  Note that NONE of my fanfiction works are paywalled permanently. If you don't feel like supporting me, that's just fine, it will end up here eventually :-). If you DO feel like supporting me, currently chapters 10-13 of this are already available over on , adding another 12,000ish words to the fic! Generally, there's at least 50,000 words or so of Early Access content spread across my works available at any one time. All for just a single dollar a month! I'm not trying to be super greedy here, just trying to support the writing time I need to maintain several ongoing fics ;-).