With Matt in place as her sidekick, Madam President had a lot less to do. For one thing, she didn't have to patrol the Hudson piers herself anymore.
Take tonight's first team-up, out on their rounds of heroic justice...
"Huff... huff... Maya, I had no idea you were Spider-Man. I used to think it was Tony Stark!"
Matt was leaning hard against a wall, legs shaking, gulping air. The web-swinging over here had been absolutely terrifying. His brain must have been waterlogged when he agreed to let her bring him along. Regret, regret, regret!
"Not fun, huh? Your legs are shaking now. Give it a few more tries, you'll get used to the shaking."
Madam President tucked Matt's waist harness away while she consoled him. Whether the consolation actually helped—that wasn't her problem.
She'd taken him flying, after all. That counted for something.
And yes, flying in the literal sense. Maya had dangled Matt from a single line and swung him in loops between the towers using Shadow Escape.
To his credit, Matt was tough. He'd clenched his teeth the whole way. Didn't scream once.
"Maya, I'm never trying that again. It's worse than a roller coaster. I'm walking home. You don't need to escort me." Matt's face was ghost-white. His mind was made up.
"No way. I'm taking you home. You're underage, and it's late. Don't think being a guy makes you safe—some people out there would be happy to meet someone like you." Madam President pressed.
"I'm not scared. I've got my cane. I can take them." Matt waved his folding cane for emphasis.
"Your reflexes are fast, sure. But street thugs aren't like schoolkids. They carry guns. And honestly—don't you feel it, swinging between the high-rises? The neon streaking past, purple, red, that shimmer of color—like the whole dazzling city is flipping past you frame by frame in a—uh. Sorry, Matt. Look—at least roller coasters cost money. Mine is free and safer."
Madam President had rattled off her own impressions, forgetting that Matt was blind and couldn't see a single neon sign. Half the fun of swinging through the sky was lost on him.
"Maya, it's fine. The real problem is that while I was airborne, the noise hitting me from every direction scrambled my senses. My head was a mess." Matt thought it through and explained.
Madam President grew thoughtful. "Matt, I've found a big weakness in you. Your senses aren't stable. Let me put it this way. If you're ever in a real fight, your enemies won't give you time to plant your feet and sort out what you're hearing. We're going to have to train you on this."
Madam President didn't know it yet, but her words would turn prophetic. The adult Daredevil would be able to sense frequencies high and low, smell things miles off, catch someone's punch or the click of a trigger from across a room when standing still.
By all rights, he should've been terrifying. Even if he couldn't match Madam President's super-sense, which let her control whole groups like a one-man Matrix—he should at least have had thirty percent of her skill. He should've been ready to cosplay Neo.
In practice? Any time a fight got intense, or more than three enemies jumped in, Matt got beaten like a dog. Even winning came with a bloody nose and swollen eyes. None of Madam President's strolling-through-the-park, cutting-men-down-like-grass swagger.
Put differently: the more chaos there was, the more people, the more Maya's senses worked in her favor. Matt was the opposite. Standing still, mind calm, he could pick up heartbeats miles away. The moment he moved, he couldn't even track the punches coming at him.
Keep in mind Madam President's martial arts rating was a pathetic 0.1. Barely better than Matt's—nowhere near Daredevil's level. (Note: Matt here is the fifteen-year-old. "Daredevil" refers to him in his late twenties.)
The adult Daredevil came from martial stock—if you counted his father the boxer. He'd been trained personally by a martial arts legend. (Stick really did qualify as a major Marvel martial power, even if his two students—Matt and Elektra—regularly schooled him. Still, he was from a genuine school: Kunlun. Real lineage.) He had sensing ability on par with Madam President. And in the end, he couldn't even back up his "I can take ten of you" line on a New York street.
What a losing streak. What a run of bad luck.
Matt had that "flat-photo goddess" thing going—stunning until the camera caught her wrong and she looked nothing like the picture.
After dumping Matt, Madam President's Spider-Man shadow clone went back out to rack up more face time. Matt switched on "help" search mode and listened for citizens in trouble across the boroughs. Then Maya got her directions from him and dashed from one crime scene to the next.
The citizens of Manhattan started noticing: tonight, Spider-Man was everywhere. Any New Yorker yelling for help got a response almost immediately.
Spider-Man's approval rating was climbing. And back home, Maya heard the System chime a few times too.
Short on chakra and unable to train, Maya was stuck at home entertaining baby James. While she was at it, she couldn't help pulling up her System influence panel.
Remaining after buying Danzo's Notes last time: 52,654
- +128,060 Tony's broken legs
- +25,804 Professor Fowler's prediction post
- +2,308 this week's daily Spider-Man cosplay runs
- +1,795 Matt's assist tonight
- +98 miscellaneous
Total: 210,721
Which shows just how terrifying Tony Stark's reach was. That single incident alone had pulled in over 150,000 points.
And Madam President had only played an indirect role in Tony's mess—her take was already discounted. If she'd gone at it directly, the number would've been even higher.
But Madam President had one admirable trait: she enjoyed the present. Content with what she had.
This haul already made her plenty happy. Especially now that Matt had joined the team—his value was obvious.
The Tony/Spider-Man news cycle had passed. Americans still thought the current Spider-Man was a bodyguard of Tony's in disguise. Even though this Spider-Man's waist-mounted case was new, the influence payout didn't reflect it.
Those 2,308 points and tonight's 1,795—about ninety percent came from rescued citizens. Saving one person gave a couple hundred points, the stingy ones gave a dozen. Numbers varied, but it sure beat the bystanders who gawked without paying a cent.
Over 210,000 points now, and nowhere to spend them. The Black Shop's daily free refresh hadn't produced anything decent in days, and Maya had sworn off the pay-to-refresh habit.
Madam President was locking horns with the Black Shop now. Damn you. I'm not paying for refreshes. I've got time on my side. She'd refresh once a day, free, 365 times a year, 3,650 times over a decade.
Even ten years from now, it would only be 2003. She'd be twenty-three. Surely 3,650 free refreshes would cough up something good. That would've cost 365,000 points if she'd paid for them.
That was 365,000 influence points saved.
This was how poor people thought. If a finance prodigy were standing next to her, he'd tell Maya: borrow 360,000 and put it to work, and in ten years you'd be up 3.6 million.
Then Madam President would tell that finance prodigy: an unlucky, dark-skinned kid borrowing 360,000 to play the stock market wouldn't live ten years. More like ten days, then they'd find her on top of some skyscraper.
She closed the panel, carried baby James into Jennifer's bedroom, laid him in his crib, and tucked the little blanket around him.
When Maya looked up, she saw something that made her jaw drop.