Madame Gao had to admit that these people were causing her some real trouble. The warehouse raid was one thing; she lost a lot of manpower that day, not to mention a lot of product was lost.
Still, it wasn't too bad, at most a minor setback.
Even the raid on her shipment while under transport was just annoying, not enough to truly damage her standing. Sure, some rivals might think her weak, vulnerable, but she would show them the truth if it came down to it.
She wasn't new to his business. She had experienced far more than the entire lifespan of this nation; she wasn't about to panic over lost profits. She, after all, had time on her side.
The attack on the clinic, however, was different. That couldn't be lost. It was an important site not just for her, but for the entire Hand. Should she lose that, she would have to answer to the other fingers, and she really didn't want to do that.
Not because of fear, but because they could hit her where it really hurt.
Thankfully, it didn't seem like it had been reported to the police, so it wasn't the worst case scenario. It could be recovered, and she would ensure it was so.
This newest attack on her own person was the straw that broke the camel's back. She couldn't allow these fools to run around messing with her anymore.
Still, she had to admit, this was one of the worst attacks against the Hand in a long while. Three powerful enhanced people, that wasn't someone to be taken lightly.
In particular, the two blond women were worthy of respect.
From what she had seen of them, either was a dangerous foe, someone even she would have to take seriously. Not just strong, but resilient enough to take bullets and ignore blades, and strong enough to bend steel and shatter stone.
Truly, the name Mordred was rather fitting for her. Because just like the mysterious knight of Camelot, this girl was a force of nature.
So Gao wanted to avoid getting tangled up with her if she could. It was better to let her use her energy fighting the rabble, and only then could she finish her off herself.
But before that, she had two more rats to deal with.
One was the so-called Devil of Hell's Kitchen. He was nothing special, a minor annoyance at worst. Nothing worthy of her attention. However, the same couldn't be said for the final person of this attack team.
Because the older blonde had been replaced with another woman, another enhanced one. Though one thankfully far weaker than the one calling herself Mordred.
Still, it was better to get rid of her before having to deal with the Mordred fangirl, after all, the black haired one, while weaker, was still strong enough to be a risk should she team up against her with the other one.
So, while Mordred smashed her way through her guards, she made her way up to the roof.
And as expected, the last two of the troublesome trio waited for her up there.
-----
Back at the apartment, the mood was raw. The place was still relatively clean from Stark's last emergency renovation, but that didn't stop Mordred from kicking over an empty pizza box as she stormed in.
"She got away?" she growled, spinning to face Matt and Jessica. "You had one job! One! How the hell do you lose a tiny grandma with glowing fists?!"
Jessica flinched, arms crossing tight. "She… she caught me off guard. I didn't expect her to—"
"To what? Hit back?" Mordred snapped, voice sharp.
"Mordred," Matt warned, already peeling off his gloves.
But Mordred wasn't finished. She paced like a lion behind the couch, wild hair swinging, anger radiating off her like heat. "I kicked their asses downstairs. I mopped the floor with their little ninja cultists. And you two had the one job that mattered—catching her!"
Jessica stared down at the table, jaw clenched. "She was strong," she muttered. "Stronger than me."
"And what, that's your excuse?"
Jessica's head snapped up, eyes flashing.
Matt opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Mordred let out a breath—half snort, half sigh—and collapsed into the armchair like she'd just run a marathon.
"…Tch. You know what? Screw it." She waved a hand, like brushing the whole thing aside. "You should've seen the mess she left behind. Bunch of corpses, but no answers. Just drills and tunnels. They didn't care about money, power, or even the people. They only cared about digging. For what, I don't know. But it wasn't good."
Jessica blinked. "You're… not mad anymore?"
"Oh no, I'm still pissed," Mordred said, voice flat. "But not at you."
Jessica stared at her.
"Gao is old, skilled, and she got way more experience than you." She picked up a soda can, realized it was empty, and threw it across the room. "But next time? You don't freeze. You hit back harder. And you make damn sure they stay down."
Jessica was quiet for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "I will."
"Good," Mordred said, grinning now. "Because next time, we're doing it my way. Loud, fast, and explosive."
"That's always your way," Matt muttered from the kitchen.
Mordred smirked. "And it's fun, isn't it?"
Jessica actually cracked a smile.
They didn't have all the answers yet—not about Gao, or the Hand, or the tunnels—but for now, they had each other. And that was something.
Just as the room settled into a tense but manageable silence, a faint ding came from the wall.
Jessica frowned. "Did someone order food again?"
"Nope," Mordred said. "I already ate. Twice."
Matt tilted his head. "That's not the door."
The TV flickered, cutting from static to a sharp image of Tony Stark's face—mid-sip of something dark and expensive-looking, lounging back in his workshop.
"Well, well, well," Tony said, raising his glass. "Look at the three stooges, back from another night of poorly concealed vigilantism."
Jessica rolled her eyes. "Hi to you too."
"You'll forgive me if I skip the pleasantries," Stark continued, setting down the glass. "Because we've got a problem. A bigger one than even your chaos, Mordred, and that's saying something."
Mordred grinned. "Flattered."
"You shouldn't be. I've been tracing chatter, pings, satellite dips, seismic noise—and let me tell you, someone's been drilling deep under half the buildings in lower Manhattan. Not for oil. And not for gold."
Matt stepped closer to the screen. "Then what?"
"I was hoping you'd tell me," Stark said. "Because whatever they're looking for, they're willing to kill a lot of people to find it. And Gao? She's not just some old-school gangster. She's orchestrating a large-scale operation like it's an off-the-books government project."
Jessica's face paled slightly. "How big are we talking?"
"I'll put it this way," Tony said. "You found a butcher shop. But they've got a meatpacking district." He glanced offscreen, as if reading something. "And I think it's time we found the slaughterhouse."
Mordred cracked her knuckles. "Finally something worth punching."
"It's not that easy." Tony sighed. "I think I can see at least a dozen different dig sites, but I can't be sure without someone to verify personally."
"I guess you want us to help you with that?" Matted asked.
Tony shrugged. "Well, unless you think the NYPD's gonna believe me when I say, 'Hey, can you send a squad car to check out the evil ninja death pit I saw with my billion-dollar satellites?' Yeah. I want you to help."
Jessica leaned forward. "Do you think Gao's at one of them?"
"I can't be sure," Stark said, folding his fingers under his chin, "She might be, or she might have been spooked after this close call. But one thing is for sure, they have put a lot of resources into this, so sit them enough, and they have to react."
"What I do know," he continued. "Is that we need to figure out what they are looking for. Once we know that, we can start thinking about taking them down for good, though given how old they apparently are, it might not be easy."
Mordred rolled her shoulders, standing up like she was already ready to kick in a wall. "Then let's go shake a few trees."
Tony raised a brow. "You mean dig through a few buildings."
"Same thing if you hit hard enough," Mordred muttered, brushing past the couch and making a beeline for the fridge, quickly grabbing all the pre-action supplies she would need.
Matt, however, didn't move. His expression was thoughtful, lips pressed into a line.
Jessica looked over. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Matt nodded slowly. "We need to be smart about this. Hit too hard and they vanish underground again. We have to draw them out."
"And then beat the answers out of them," Mordred added.
Tony cut in. "And you need to be less loud out there, you have any idea how hard it is to keep the police off your backs? You keep being that loud, and you have to stop this." He warned.
Jessica glanced toward Mordred, then back to the screen. "We'll keep it contained. No more monster trucks. No more public destruction."
Mordred raised her hands in mock surrender. "Hey, that was one time. And they started it."
Tony narrowed his eyes. "Mordred, you stole a truck and flattened half a derby. I don't care who started it."
"Still won," she muttered under her breath.
Matt stepped in, voice calm but firm. "Let's focus. You said there are a dozen potential dig sites?"
"Thirteen, technically," Stark replied. "But a few are abandoned, and two were cleaned out right after your last little operation. Gao's probably relocating assets."
"Which means we stirred something up," Jessica added. "They're spooked."
"That goes without saying," Tony said. "You have more than five hundred confirmed kills, more than three times the injured, I'm impressed they even had this many people, and more so they got so many more."
It wasn't until he said it like that. That the group realized the sheer scale of things.
Mordred whistled low, her smug grin faltering. "Five hundred...?"
Matt's brow tightened. "That many?"
Jessica sat down slowly, her voice barely above a whisper. "I thought… we'd taken out a lot. But that's a war."
Tony nodded, face losing its usual humor. "You're not just knocking over gang operations anymore. You're in the middle of a shadow war—and the Hand? They've been playing this game longer than anyone else on the board."
He tapped something offscreen, and the display behind him shifted—schematics, maps, thermal overlays of half the city.
"These are the top three sites still active. All quiet on the surface. But JARVIS picked up movement, underground power draws, and delivery patterns that scream 'supervillain hideout.' If they're after something buried, it's gonna be in one of these."
Jessica stared at the map, then at the lines indicating depth. "How deep are they going?"
"Deep enough to get noticed by people who measure seismic stress. That is, dangerously deep, they could cause large-scale structural problems for the surrounding area. so we can't just let them continue." Tony added.
Matt stepped closer, tilting his head slightly as though trying to feel the tension in the images. "If they're digging that far down… they're either reckless, desperate, or both."
Mordred leaned over the table, peering at the map. "Or really confident they'll find something. You don't carve through half a city unless you think there's a prize at the bottom."
Jessica's brow furrowed. "And if they find it… whatever it is…"
"I think we can all agree they shouldn't get it." Tony said bluntly. "Too many people have been harmed by these to allow them to win."
The room fell silent again.
"So what's the plan?" Matt asked, folding his arms.
"I'll keep eyes on the satellite data," Tony replied. "And you three will have to investigate each place, but not too fast, or it might cause a larger incident. And we can't afford to let them keep working unchecked."
"Then we take these three sites," Jessica said, sitting forward. "Check them out, quietly. If they're just more empty pits, we move on. If not…"
"Then we burn the place to the ground," Mordred finished for her, with a grin.
Tony gave a noncommittal shrug. "Or, you know, just maybe arrest someone. Subtlety is still a thing."
Mordred clicked her tongue. "Boring."
Matt ignored the banter. "Give us the site with the least surface activity first. Somewhere we can get in and out without being seen. We'll start there."
Stark nodded. "Sending the files to your secure devices now. Coordinates, layouts, everything we've got."
The TV flickered off, Stark's smirk vanishing with it.
Silence again—this time heavier with purpose.
Jessica finally broke it. "Alright. Time to get back to work."
Mordred rolled her shoulders, stretching like a fighter before a bout. "You know what that means."
Matt sighed. "No explosions."
"No promises," she said, already reaching for her jacket.
Their war wasn't over. If anything, it was only beginning.
(End of chapter)
Alright, that's the end of Mordred's little adventure for this time. We honestly could stay there for longer, but I felt this was enough. Time to get back to Camelot.
Got some exciting things planned, but that's gonna take a few chapters, got the next two being one focus on one of the forces that reacts to Camelot and Albion, and one which is a bit of a recap about something that has happened, and then, some new people, new trouble, and much much more.