See No Evil: Hazy Vision (ch. 62) (Patreon)

The streets were a mess, Miranda thought to herself. The prisoners from Blackgate escaping threw a wrench in everyone's plans for the city. They swept over the ruins of Gotham like a swarm of locusts, picking clean valuable resources like food, water, gas for generators, and warm clothing. But Blackgate had been overfull several times over. It was the kind of place where even the most innocent of criminals came back out as hardened killers, because anything less and you wouldn't survive.

Which is why it didn't take long for conflict to start brewing. Some prisoners drifted to gangs that they were already a part of. Others drifted to those that already had power. But most, after they saw some initial success with their looting, began to carve out parts of the city for themselves.

Miranda looked over a map that was growing more detailed by the hour. The map of the new state of Gotham. Between Vergil's bugs that Cass planted and her own agents in the field, she was one of the few in Gotham with a complete picture.

Poison Ivy had claimed the entirety of central park, and any man who entered her territory was killed without remorse. A number of women flocked to her, seeking safety from the lawless world outside, and as far as Miranda knew, they had found it.

The police were fighting against an unlikely alliance of the Odessa and Scarface mobs. Even from Miranda's current position, she could hear the shots being traded between the two groups. While Vergil might be disappointed that Jim Gordon was so wary of joining forces with him, it was perfect for Miranda. The Police were struggling. Vergil had a good inside man feeding her quality intel, because she knew exactly how much food and ammo they had down to the last crumb and bullet.

The faster the police collapsed, the faster Lowtown could swoop in and net all of the civilians that the police failed to protect. The cops would join forces with Lowtown one way or the other. Miranda didn't care how many of them died until they realized that inevitable fact.

"You look way too pleased with yourself," Revy remarked lightly, a cigarette dangling from her mouth as she polished her sniper rifle. Miranda didn't even look up, though she did quickly remove the slight smile from her face as she made a new note on the map.

"You aren't the only one that finds satisfaction in what they do," Miranda remarked, an edge in her tone. Circumstances had forced her and Revy to work together. Vergil was unwilling to let Cassandra get blood on her hands, which made Revy a very useful tool. She was a barely functioning psychopath that cared nothing for the lives of other people. Outside of possibly Vergil and Tifa. Revy would gun her down without batting an eye.

"Fair enough," Revy conceded the point, throwing on a satisfied smile of her own. "So, what's on the agenda today, Queen Bee? Day at the spa for yourself while everyone else is in the shit?" She questioned, making Miranda's eyes narrow.

She chose not to rise to the obvious bait. It wasn't the first time they had the… difference in opinion of what role she should play. Instead, she focused on the task at hand, while thinking that Revy would be a lot more tolerable if she couldn't speak. She tapped a spot on the map, a bank. "A group of prisoners are going for the federal gold reserves in Gotham. It was a low priority, but we have reason to believe that with the aid of Firefly and Mr. Freeze, the convicts have made a great deal more headway than anticipated."

The federal gold reserves had been nearly stolen eight separate times, but after the first, the US government ramped up security measures. They coordinated with the Justice League to make the vaults far more resilient, able to ward off most metahumans with super strength or any other kind of power.

It wasn't foolproof because the government didn't take all of their suggestions, but they also hadn't foreseen a scenario where the villains would have over a week to wear down the defenses.

"Eighty tons of gold, that's… over three billion dollars. A nice little nest egg for when this shit is over," Revy remarked, and Miranda took her word for the worth of the gold. Money was the one thing that Miranda was willing to trust Revy with. "But it's worthless unless you can melt it down. Uncle Sam will be looking for their pocket change when they come back to Gotham, and it takes a special kind of idiot to buy a brick of gold with a federal reserve stamp on it."

Miranda looked at Revy, "So, you're saying we shouldn't bother?" She asked, earning a dismissive shrug.

"Not saying that, no. Firefly is a fucking moron, but Mr. Freeze is clever. He knows that too. So, he wouldn't be bothering unless there was a way to scrub eighty tons of gold clean," she pointed out. "I say we let them steal the gold. See who it goes to, find where their scrubbers are, then do the deed ourselves."

The idea did have merit. "The gold would have more value as a bargaining chip with the government. Sainthood Enterprises will own Gotham by the time No Man's Land is over. Three billion dollars will be pennies compared to the president owing us."

"The president is fucked no matter what. No amount of wins is going to undo this clusterfuck. Him owing us one is worthless. Plus, Vergil is already wringing him for all that he's worth while he's still in the big chair." Revy pointed out, but Miranda shook her head.

"Not him. Whoever gets elected after him," Miranda corrected. "London and Beijing have been leveled. Beijing being demolished in particular is bad for the world's economy. China was the single largest exporter across the globe, and their main hub for trade was just flattened along with twenty million people."

People were too busy looking at their immediate problems to look to the future, but the signs were already there. A global recession was incoming. Perhaps the worst one since Black Friday. Global trade had hit a hiccup, so the entire chain of goods was suffering because of it. Miranda was certain that corrections were coming to soften the blow, but to weather that kind of storm, you couldn't start preparing when it was already at your doorstep.

Miranda couldn't foresee the entirety of the disaster incoming. She was no master of economics, but she was an excellent planner, with a firm grasp on cause and effect and how people reacted.

"In a few months, that gold's value will skyrocket as a bargaining chip. Three billion dollars might be pocket change to the government, but in a global recession, even the US will pinch pennies." Miranda said, but Revy seemed unconvinced.

"I'll take your word for it, but... eh. I think it's going to be more of a cherry on top for when Vergil brokers some deal with the government to… I don't even know. He's already blown off taxes and the IRS," she muttered. And that really was a masterstroke on Vergil's part. That would be hundreds of billions in revenue that wouldn't be taken out of their pocket by the government. Which also put him in a perfect position for what came next.

Honestly, it was frightening. Vergil was so prepared for the situation that Miranda really had to wonder if he somehow didn't orchestrate it.

"So, we're going with my plan? Let them steal it, and pocket it ourselves for a rainy day?" Revy asked, getting up from the loveseat she was on and walking over to the counter that Miranda worked at.

She thought it over -- it wasn't that it was a bad plan, much to Miranda's chagrin, but it was resource-intensive.

And, no matter how she looked at it, they were spread thin.

"We'll let them open the door for us. You and a team take them out and secure the gold. We can't wait for them to move eighty tons to wherever they're taking it and then go through all the effort to move it ourselves. Find an address if you can, but it's not a priority," Miranda decided. A compromise. Revy sent her a single finger salute as she strode to the door, tapping on her skin-tight suit to activate her camouflage, before putting on her helmet. It wasn't as good as Cassandra's, but it did do the job.

As Revy left, Miranda gave out orders -- three androids would accompany Revy on her mission. The bare minimum that she could send per Vergil's orders. The androids were incredibly useful. They didn't need food or water, and they were all excellent fighters. She sent them to deal with the worst of the fighting to avoid human losses. After all, even if an Android was 'killed' they had servers with their data on them, and they could just download them into a new body.

Miranda eyed the map once again before she began to roll it up, satisfied with her work. Her sphere of influence was growing rather quickly. The Narrows was firmly under her control, with the Street Kings acting as her proxy. Their numbers were swelling, and they were currently doing well enough when it came to food and warmth. The only issue was the escaped prisoners that were causing trouble.

Many of the hardened prisoners from Blackgate called the Narrows home. And they wanted to move back in.

Sealing the map away, and reapplying the trap to destroy it if anyone but her tried to retrieve it, Miranda walked over to the counter. She was set up in an apartment in downtown Gotham, a loft in one of the grand hotels. The building itself was heavily damaged, to the point that most wouldn’t attempt to climb higher than the first four stories. That wouldn’t last as things became more desperate, but by that time, Miranda intended to move.

She grabbed the suit that was on the counter, starting with the featureless black helmet. A parting gift from Vergil before they had to separate because he was being investigated by the Justice League. Miranda smirked at it before setting it down to tie up her hair. Moments later, she was dressed in a skin-tight black and white suit that fit better than a glove. The helmet pressurized with a hiss as it sealed around her head, while the HUD winked to life. Cameras in the helmet gave her a full three-sixty view around her. The material of the suit itself was deceptively comfortable, and a few test stretches to check her mobility proved that she hadn't lost any of her flexibility.

At the center of her back was a backpack of sorts. An oval-shaped bump of metal, and with a press of a button, it released a blocky rifle that then unfurled. A shot count appeared on her HUD as she went through well-practiced motions with it. The pack also had another bonus, and Miranda wondered just how much Vergil knew about her.

Using the pack, she activated the cloaking tech built into her suit before she leaped out of a window. She fell twenty stories in a blink of an eye, her stomach rising to her throat, but as she neared the ground, the pull of gravity lessened until she landed lightly on the broken street of downtown Gotham. Gravity manipulation tech. Advanced stuff, too. It alone could revolutionize the world, but Miranda knew that Vergil wasn't the first to discover it. Or recreate it.

The laws of America stifled anything that could be called too technologically advanced tech to preserve important industries. Oil, automotive, steel production, and so on -- those with money lobbied to protect their interests, and it was in the government’s interests to comply because radical increases in society's level of technology would render hundreds of thousands of jobs irrelevant. They did it to protect the economy of the planet.

Miranda smiled as she sprinted through the streets, much faster with her weight cut down to a fraction of what it actually was, allowing her to move at vastly increased speeds. With high mobility, as she proved when she nimbly jumped over the small mountain of rubble that used to be the exterior of an apartment building, lightly using one piece of loose rubble after another as a launchpad until she was up and over. Her suits sensors picked up the sound of gunshots, and her HUD zeroed in on the source, while Vergil's bugs highlighted her agents in the area.

She would hide this from Revy, simply because Miranda didn't want the foul-mouthed woman to think she had any influence over her. It was simply a case that sometimes when you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. Especially when things were… personal.

Miranda moved through the streets and quickly spotted the source of the gunfire. Blackgate prisoners, all of them still wearing parts of their orange garb as a makeshift gang flag, were pushing hard against the Street Kings. Their numbers had swelled, but those numbers were spread out all along the Narrows. The Prisoners on the other hand had the advantage of being able to consolidate their manpower to attack a single location in force.

She raised her rifle, only to pause. She had an itch that so desperately needed to be scratched, and it would be her own test for Vergil.

Raising a hand, she clenched her fist and purple and blue energy emerged from her it, it faded in but a second, but the effects were immediate. A squad of prisoners was lifted up into the air as gravity suddenly inverted around them, making them flail as they flew over their cover. Her Street Kings sized the opportunity and slaughtered the exposed men.

Her father called them biotics. By exposing her to a rare mineral called Element Zero when she was en embryo, her DNA had been altered. Her father took no small amount of pride in the fact that there were tens of thousands of renditions of her genetic code prior to her to create the perfect blend of genetics that allowed her to fully utilize the gift given to her. There were times she was almost thankful to her father. Regardless of his methods, she was genetically perfect, powerful, and had the upbringing to make full use of that power.

Which is why a satisfied smile tugged at her lips as she allowed herself to use the gift she had kept under wraps since she entered Vergil's service. It was meant to be a trump card. Just in case things broke down at some point. But, there was no point in keeping an ace up your sleeve if the other player already knew about it. And for Vergil, giving her equipment that allowed her to further utilize her biotics was as good as confirmation that he knew.

How, Miranda had no idea. What it did was prove that Vergil really was a master at what he did, and that she had a great deal more to learn.

Tucking into a building, she flung two orbs from her hand that honed in on two prisoners, sending them flying into a wall hard enough that the brick wall gave out. Unlike the movies, that wasn't something a human typically survived. Tifa had a soft spot, as did Cassandra, but Miranda lacked their compassion. If their enemies wanted to live, then they shouldn't have made the choice to be their enemies. It was simple as that.

As she ran through the back door of the shop she found herself in, phasing through the door with a Blink, as she liked to call it, Miranda took aim with her rifle and opened fire. It was silenced to the point that not even she could hear the gun fire in her hands. It bucked against her shoulder gently, but when it struck the convict’s exposed flanks, body parts flew off from the explosive power of the gun. She could lessen the charge to it, but it seemed foolish to. In seconds, the convicts were mowed down, and the Street Kings were cowering as they watched the death.

It was to be expected. She had targeted the convicts, but there was nothing hinting that she wouldn't turn on them. It was a wise precaution. And a convenient one, because she was able to leave the combat behind as she continued to her true destination.

Vergil had given her permission to act how she saw fit. It would be a stretch to think he meant that she could use the power entrusted in her to resolve her personal issues, but better to ask for forgiveness than ask permission in this case. More so than normal considering that even Vergil's thoughts were being investigated. If he managed to defeat the hero's telepath…

Betrayal wasn't something she often thought about, but it was important to keep your options open. Their interests aligned so far, but that might not always be the case. Having backup plans was simply part of the game. Miranda was certain that this suit he had given her would be used to monitor her movements, possibly even kill her if she stepped too far out of line. She didn't mind. Just the same way Vergil wouldn't mind her plans of potential betrayal.

But if he managed to guard his thoughts to the point even a telepath couldn't incriminate him? At that point, Miranda could admit to herself that her plans for betrayal would never be enacted.

She valued competence. And Vergil hadproven himself very competent.

Dismissing her thoughts, Miranda zeroed in on her destination. A safe house at the edge of the Narrows. It was half-buried in rubble, so it went unnoticed for the most part. Miranda wouldn't even know it was there if she hadn't been plucking some strings to see where they led back to. Miranda readied her rifle, and wished for a moment she knew what she was about to get into. Perhaps later she would request that Vergil implement an X-Ray vision ability into her helmet.

But, you can never know every time what you were getting yourself into. That didn't mean the job could go undone. Especially when the stakes were so high.

Miranda blinked through the cover and the front door of the safehouse, finding herself facing down a staircase that lead to a basement. Her HUD highlighted a tripwire that she hadn't noticed, even when her helmet corrected the dim light so she could see. It also tagged a camera. The suit should prevent detection by visual means, and most didn't have a reason for heat-detection or other spectrums of light. Cautiously descending down the stairs, Miranda stepped over the tripwire connected to a claymore mine and reached the bottom. She heard sounds coming from a door on the left side, while a door on the right was silent.

Her helmet cleaned up the audio, letting her know that the news was playing in the left room.

Miranda blinked through the door and saw what could best be described as someone's Man Cave.

A large TV hanging from the wall, various odds and ends, and a beat-up-looking couch that had a muscular man draped over it. Another sat at a folded-out table, a can of tuna mixed in with a dried meal. A snack as he cleaned a powerful-looking assault rifle. Suits of armor hung up on coat racks or were piled up in the room. Five suits. The Hud highlighted a case and marked that it was a satellite computer, which likely had the intel that she needed.

“The world's fucked,” the man on the couch remarked, earning a scoff from the one at the table.

“The world's always been fucked,” he corrected, cleaning the barrel of his gun with a brush. “It’s just getting fucked in a different position this time.”

“Hm. Well, when society collapses, we should be okay,” the one on the couch remarked, sighing as he watched the news detail the growing tension between the US, UN, and China. China had officially withdrawn from the UN, and it seemed like the US wasn’t far off from doing the same. The UN was threatening sanctions that it couldn’t enforce on both nations.

The UN was a powerful world alliance. Its standing army matched the US and China, and its combined GPD was comparable to the US. However, its fatal weakness was the same as the Holy Roman Empire -- it was comprised of over a dozen different nations, each with their own personal agendas and languages, spread out across the globe. The US, Russia, and China gave the UN the teeth that they bared at other nations. Without the US and China, they would be massively defanged, and they knew it.

The Justice League was calling for de-escalation, which was a reassurance, as much as the world leaders liked to pretend otherwise, but if the Justice League decided to intervene, then they would be dragged to the table, one way or the other.

The channel changed to another channel, this one detailing the upcoming impeachment trial for the current president. It seemed that they had less time to bring Gotham to heel than expected. With that in mind, Miranda took aim with her rifle and executed the man on the couch. The one in the chair seemed to sense something was wrong despite not hearing the shot, because his gaze snapped to the couch, just in time to catch a bullet to the head.

He slumped over and fell out of his chair while Miranda busied herself with grabbing the satellite laptop. It was a risk using it here and now, but it would have a fail safe to alert others if it was moved outside of the building. Booting it up, and almost as it turned on, Pod slipped through the security and firewalls protecting it. It was actually frightening just how utterly pathetic cyber security was to Pod -- the AI was likely the most dangerous out of everyone in Vergil's inner circle, and no one had a clue.

It made him utterly invaluable. Opening the files on the computer, she saw exactly what she expected. Pictures of her going about her day in Lowtown, her with Vegil, Tifa, and the others. Reports of her activities, her connections, and potential locations where she could be… extracted. That, she cared little about.

Trust wasn't something she gave out easily, but Vergil had earned it. Some might think it was all talk, but she had seen his expression the moment she told him that a member of Lowtown had been kidnapped. His poker face was flawless, but she had seen a crack. Underneath the mask was… Wrath. Not anger. Not rage. But Wrath of biblical proportions. If Miranda was kidnapped, then it wouldn't be for long. She was sure that Vergil would have an equal or greater reaction.

Going through the files quickly, she found a great deal of information that she already knew, and some that she didn't. Another safehouse, a planned mission to raid Wayne Enterprises servers for research they hadn't patented. However, she also found the one piece of information she had been hoping to see.

"You won't have her," Miranda spoke in a small, determined whisper, reading a report about how her baby sister's location was still unknown. Her father was still looking for Oriana. He was combing through Lowtown, trying to see if Oriana was still with her, or who she could have handed her off to. As far as his mercenaries knew, there were no leads. That was… good. Very good.

Also unlikely. Miranda had dropped Oriana off at an orphanage, then arranged for an upper middle class family to adopt her. As far as covers went, it wasn't a a very strong one. It had been the best she could do at the time.

Was Vergil helping cover up her sister's adoption? Should she be thankful or fearful that he there was a chance that he already knew her greatest weakness? Was he doing it as a kind gesture, or was he telling her that he had leverage over her?

That was the problem with having a criminal mastermind as a boss -- it was circles within circles with him. She had to second guess every word and gesture for hidden meanings. However, in this case…

"It might be worth sleeping with him," Miranda decided, closing the laptop. It would serve to ingrain herself at his side, and there was the benefit of her best interests becoming his best interests if the reward was sex. The fact that she respected Vergil was an added benefit. She didn't love him, not like Tifa did, but sex was vastly more satisfying when there respect there, rather than as a means to an end.

Tifa seemed open to the idea, though Miranda suspected she was using the other girls to ground Vergil in reality. To not give all of himself to Lowtown until he worked himself into an early grave. It was a convenient opening.

As she made the plans, Miranda Blinked through the door back into the hallway, then into the one she hadn't chosen to see a set of bunk beds. A barracks of sorts. The other three men stationed here were currently sleeping. With three whispers of her gun, she ensured that all three of them would never wake up from their naps.

A quick search of the barracks only revealed some personal information, though she did grab a tracker to use to lure the other team searching for her sister into a trap. Placing it at her hip, Miranda walked back to the stairs, disabled the claymore mine, and dropped a waypoint on the bunker for scavenging purposes. Waste not want not.

No sooner than she did, that her HUD sent her a priority alert, making Miranda go still. It was a message from Vergil.

When she read it, Miranda was very glad for the noise-canceling properties of her helmet because she couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled from her throat. It was a simple message, cut down to convey the bare bones of a plan, but with it, Miranda learned all she needed to know.

She had to marvel at Vergil and his audacity, and admire him for his cunning.

Because he really wouldn't stop until he had the entire world in the palms of his hands.