In the days that followed, Maya called the student council officers together again, walked them through the situation with Matt, and redrew the budget allocations. Once that was sorted, she slipped back into her default low-activity state — though "low-activity" didn't mean doing nothing. She'd just finished working through graduate-level biology and had moved on to reading cutting-edge genetic engineering research papers.
Unfortunately, she hit a wall almost immediately.
It was like being a student at a lower-tier university back home — she simply couldn't access the databases that mattered. Maya's reputation might be impressive, but her school's credentials weren't. The network didn't connect to the major research institutions' internal systems, and she couldn't look at ongoing experimental data even if she'd wanted to. Some projects were so classified that even the names were redacted. She was stuck reading publicly available information.
She made a decision: the moment she entered high school, she'd find a cutting-edge biomedical research institution in New York and apply for an internship. Even if she learned nothing hands-on, at minimum she'd gain access to internal networks and current genetic research archives.
Tony Stark had none of these problems, naturally. For him, "technical barriers" didn't exist. He could walk into any lab he found interesting and strike up a direct conversation with the project lead.
No wonder Tony Stark always seemed so unfairly blessed — born with a halo over his head, and apparently living on miracle pills.
Maya was still in the middle of that train of thought when faint sounds of an argument drifted up from somewhere below. Her perception — which she'd developed into three distinct modes — was running in its most passive setting.
In full-intensity mode, she could reach down to individual cells, even genetic material. In precision mode, she could read muscle movements in real time to anticipate attacks, or detect shifts in a person's biochemical stress markers to gauge their emotional state. But she couldn't run either of those continuously — the mental fatigue would pile up fast.
The third mode was passive and unfocused — a vague, ambient awareness. It cost almost nothing and let her attention drift across a broad space without actively processing anything.
And right now it had snagged on Matt Murdock.
Maya shifted her attention through several floors, down to wherever Matt was. A few school thugs had him surrounded — a familiar setup, the same old routine.
What happened next, however, was not familiar.
One of the three stepped forward and shoved toward Matt's chest. Matt pivoted sideways, his cane sweeping out at ankle height, and the guy went face-first into the ground.
The other two came in with fists raised. Matt ducked, then jabbed the tip of his cane backward — and the one trying to blindside him buckled, clutching himself, and dropped to his knees. Maya kept her perception away from the specifics of that particular injury.
The third guy was still frozen mid-swing when Matt hooked his cane around the back of the kid's neck and drove a kick into his backside. The guy hit the ground with a thud and stayed there, groaning.
Maya sat back slowly, one arm across her chest, her free hand resting against her chin.
That's… very familiar.
The way Matt had moved — reading each attacker's approach before it arrived, positioning himself to neutralize threats before they fully materialized — it was almost exactly what Maya herself had been doing when she'd taken apart William Beck and his crew a few days ago. She'd mapped out where every punch would land before throwing it, like executing a pre-planned routine.
"Matt Murdock has developed some kind of ability," Maya concluded. "Whether it's the same type of sensory expansion as mine, or something more like telekinesis, or something else entirely—"
She turned it over in her head for a while.
A blind kid. One who — if he didn't go off the rails — was unlikely to become a supervillain.
So. A blind superhero.
The Marvel universe had one of those, didn't it? A minor street-level hero. A vigilante who operated in the neighborhood. Given everything — the background, the location, the fighting instincts — that was almost certainly Matt.
Classic origin story: rough upbringing, poverty, being picked on, trying to save someone, getting hurt, radiation exposure—
The textbook tale of an ordinary underdog mutating into something extraordinary. Though to be fair, Matt remained relatively ordinary by Marvel standards. He mostly just dealt with street crime. Hopefully he'd find a wealthy girlfriend at some point to offset the overall vibe.
Maya couldn't really fault herself for not recognizing him sooner. Daredevil's solo movie had been a box office and critical catastrophe — the kind of failure where both audiences and reviewers agreed it was done. Even among people who'd started watching Marvel content out of completionist duty after Infinity War, almost nobody had gone back and sat through the Daredevil film. Even I fast-forwarded through half of it and gave up. It was genuinely bad. The TV series is another story, but the film? Hard pass.
Regardless, knowing Matt was a future hero didn't require any further involvement from Maya. She had her own schedule to keep.
She returned to her after-school routine — heading out in the afternoons to her part-time job. Her time at school needed to count. She had to keep learning, keep advancing. Because Maya was clear-eyed about one thing: the future was going to be full of people with world-changing technology, and she intended to be the most brilliant star in that sky.
New York. Southern Manhattan. Bowery Street. Authentic Sichuan Spice — a Chinese restaurant. Saturday afternoon, 2:00 p.m.
"Thank you, have a great day — come back soon!" Maya gave a small bow and smiled at the two departing customers as she saw them out.
Her hair today was pulled up in two buns on either side — Chun-Li style, the red cord showing off her high, smooth forehead. Her cheeks had been touched up with two rosy blush circles, and her lips were naturally red without any product. The slight almond shape of her eyes — usually carrying an air of cool composure — was curved up now into little crescents.
She was wearing a tailored red qipao embroidered with orchids.
In short, Maya Hansen looked exactly like a Chinese good-luck charm brought to life.
Today was the restaurant's tenth anniversary. Boss Huang had run a thirty-percent-off anniversary promotion, and that generosity extended to the staff — even part-timers like Maya had been fitted with custom red qipaos to mark the occasion. Everyone was celebrating the restaurant turning ten.
Maya had agreed to be dressed up as the welcoming mascot partly because Huang had always treated her well, and partly because — embarrassing as the outfit was — it was generating a genuinely impressive volume of tips. Honestly, not a bad trade.
American middle schoolers working part-time jobs were completely normal. It cut across class lines. Whether you needed the spending money or just wanted real-world experience, you picked up a job during breaks. Work history could even help with college applications — scholarship committees sometimes contacted their former employers to check on their character.
Even Trump's daughter — whose father owned enough hotels to fill a small city — had taken a part-time job during high school. That was just the culture.
Maya's own work history had started out of necessity. With no connections and limited options, she'd ended up scouting for herself. McDonald's was technically available — cashier, burger assembly, five dollars an hour. But the math didn't work. Hourly minimum wage for someone with Maya's profile? That felt like a waste.
She'd found Authentic Sichuan Spice through her Mandarin. Boss Huang had nearly fallen out of his chair the first time a blonde, doll-faced twelve-year-old had walked in and greeted him in fluent, unaccented standard Mandarin. He'd gotten over his surprise eventually — his son, now in college, had placed second in the New York State math competition during his junior year of high school. First place had gone to Maya Hansen, who'd been in elementary school at the time. After learning that through his son, Huang had filed away Maya's inexplicable Chinese fluency as further evidence of her being a prodigy — the language equivalent of her science medals.
He'd offered her twelve dollars an hour. That was before tips.
Maya usually came in on weekend afternoons, two or three hours at a stretch. Weekdays only if something special came up.
The arrangement netted her two to three hundred dollars most weeks.
Today, between the anniversary discount bringing in extra customers and the novelty of the qipao presentation, she'd pulled close to two hundred dollars in tips alone. She'd worked until nearly 3:00 p.m. before Huang let her go.
On her way out, Huang slipped her a red envelope. She opened it as she walked: two Franklins. Two hundred dollars, just for the holiday bonus.
She could understand the generosity. Running a restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown for ten years was genuine success. On these few blocks, a third of the Chinese residents were in the restaurant business — but only a small fraction were actually well-known. The location helped: between Wall Street and Broadway, any restaurant that established itself here could expect a steady stream of business. Boss Huang had clearly made it into the profitable tier.
It was still early, so Maya walked up to the Walmart Supercenter on 41st Street. At four feet three, pushing a full-size cart, she was dwarfed by everything around her.
It's already February — this hooded spring fleece looks good, Jordan logo. XXL. Into the cart. This one too, might as well. A bag of walnuts — Chinese brand, nice — yes. This hardcover edition of Jurassic Park — yes.
She left Walmart with a large, heavy bag. Thank goodness for chakra. Twenty pounds over a few miles would have been miserable otherwise.
She was standing near a street-corner newsstand, plastic bag in hand, hesitating.
Whatever happens, happens. Better sooner than later. The guy doesn't even know who I am. Doesn't know. Doesn't know—
She steeled herself, put on her best neutral expression, and walked straight in.
A quick scan of the shelves. Maya reached out and pulled two magazines from the rack, keeping her voice flat and businesslike. "How much for both?"
The heavyset middle-aged white man behind the counter — full beard, doughy — glanced down at the magazine covers, at the nearly-naked men on the front, then looked up at this golden-haired, peach-cheeked apparition standing in front of him.
"That's, uh — fifteen dollars total. Uh. Young lady. Are you sure you didn't grab the wrong ones? If you actually need something, I've got—" He reached behind the shelf and held out another magazine. Maya caught a glimpse of oiled abs and immediately understood what he was suggesting.
She suppressed the very strong urge to punch him in the face. Instead she set her jaw, said nothing, placed two bills on the counter, and walked out. She nearly tripped over the doorframe on her way through.
The shopkeeper watched her leave, shaking his head with genuine distress. "Such a waste. What a waste—"
Maya did not notice that there was another teenager in the newsstand the whole time — a Black kid with small dreadlocks, flipping through magazines. He was now staring after her with an expression like he'd witnessed a supernatural event.
"No way," he murmured, as if his entire world had been reorganized. "I never would have — Student Council President Hansen is like that?"
Maya bolted around the corner, ducked out of sight, and finally let herself breathe, doubled over with her hands on her knees, face burning.
"That little gremlin system. Every last shred of my dignity — gone."
"Tom Hansen!! That man is in prison and he still can't leave well enough alone! He made his own daughter go buy — you absolute menace—"
She stood there fuming, looking down at the plastic bag on the ground next to her.
She wanted to throw it in the nearest trash can.
But then she thought about it. Tom had been inside for five or six years now. He was in his early thirties — prime of his life — with no physical intimacy for all that time. That was, actually, kind of tragic when you looked at it plainly.
She remembered the last visit to Ryker's Island. Tom had been unshaven and puffy, his formerly decent-looking face gone soft and blurred at the edges. At the end of the visit, he'd brought it up — awkwardly, haltingly, with obvious embarrassment — and Maya had been ready to refuse without hesitation.
But then she'd seen his face. Anxious and hopeful at the same time. And without meaning to, she'd thought back to when she was six years old — when she'd just started stacking up awards and influence points — and mentioned offhand that she wanted a violin.
The next day, Tom had come home with a Cristina brand instrument. Made in Italy.
She'd only found out later, piecing it together from overhearing Tom brag to his drinking buddies: he'd gone out that night, stabbed a couple of people in Uptown, and robbed three thousand dollars. Then he'd gone to a shop on East Broadway and bought the violin.
Maya had only wanted a cheap children's practice instrument — the Fengling she currently used, thirty-dollar Chinese import, did the job perfectly fine. A professional adult-sized violin was more than she'd imagined asking for, and it wasn't even the right size.
Violin sizes came in three basic scales: child, youth, and adult. Same proportions, different sizes. The adult one Tom bought had barely been used.
For Tom, going out and robbing a couple of strangers was apparently no different from stepping out to buy a pack of cigarettes. An extra ten years on a sentence that was already five centuries long — so what? Functionally irrelevant. He'd accepted it without complaint.
But Maya had never forgotten.
She could feel it — that completely matter-of-fact way Tom had given her what she'd asked for. He'd thought it was obvious that his daughter deserved the best violin available. Robbing a few easy marks to fund it was equally obvious. Doing ten extra years for it — also obvious.
If Tom could be that matter-of-fact about his choices, Maya figured she could be equally matter-of-fact about this one.
She picked up the bag and started walking home.