Scott Summers, meet Matt Murdock.

(#00345)

Scott adjusted his tie before he rounded the corner. There was Sam Adrien, looking his usual dapper self, and another man in the kind of suit that didn’t need much in the way of thought. Black and white. With a black tie.

He was too short and too muscular to be the urban horror figure of Slenderman, and too relaxed to be FBI. Or at least, FBI on duty.

“Ah, Scott. This is the young fellow I was telling you about, Matt.” Sam gestured him closer. “Matt Murdock, this is Scott Summers. Scott, Matt’s working with us on a difficult case.”

“Hi,” Scott managed, noting the dark glasses and the cane. He had a special sympathy for the blind. “I haven’t been briefed on the case, yet. What’s up?”

Matt met his hand with his own while Sam scooted over. “There’s a little girl who travels in time when she’s upset. And we can’t tell if she’s disrupting events or cementing them, but a large organisation wants to put the collar on her instead of -say- preventing her from being upset.”

Scott was very much surprised to see that her name was not Amelia Pond or River Song. “Dorothea Chapditch?”

“After her grandmother. Goes by Doddy.” Sam shrugged. “Poor little kid was a family story before she was born. Trying to warn folks of impending disaster. But it was this file that caught my attention.”

There was a braille copy for Matt.

“These are security photos…” of a much older Doddy Chapditch. “They’re trying to alter their own timeline by stopping her from…” flip flip flip… “Losing some files?”

“Set them back twenty years,” said Sam. “It’s only recently that Koch Industries has become anywhere close to a household name. This little kid can make if onlies come true. And they must have done something horrible in a different timeline.”

“And they have -what- seven years to stop her?”

“I asked Sara about the alternate timeline possibilities. She said Koch Industries had the potential power to kill the Earth for fun and profit.”

“She said that?”

“Direct quote.”

“This is new ground, as far as the law is concerned,” said Matt. “Can we wrap the law that exists to fit a mutant whose powers we don’t even have the language to comprehend.”

“I can easily argue that she hasn’t committed the crime, yet. I could also argue that Koch’s actions could easily cause her to go back and attempt sabotage. Her future and ours isn’t written in stone. I don’t believe in fate.”

“Plenty do.”

“But is it the Divine Plan to put a little girl in a collar like she was a dog?”

“That’s the sort of argument I want to hear,” said Matt.

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