Jessica looked into the Mirror and couldn’t believe it had
come to this.
Ever since getting pregnant Jessica had been scared to death
of something bad happening to her baby; be it medical because of her mutated physiology,
or with the baby getting caught up in the crossfire of one of the moments of superpowered
madness that seemed to followed her and Luke around, or that she’d be a target
for her and Luke’s old enemies, the list just went on and on...
And something bad had happened, but it hadn’t been due to
her parent’s lifestyle, it hadn’t been due to ANYTHING related to them at all,
just a complete stroke of random violence and misfortune that could have
befallen anyone in the city.
Little Dani had been fussy so Luke's friend, D. W. took her with him to the store; then right
there in broad daylight on a busy street three meth’d up gangbangers and piled
out of their car, beaten D.W. unconscious, taken his money...and little baby
Dani...
The fact that it was Dani that had been snatched was suspicious,
but they quickly found it to be a false trail; this really had been nothing
more than dumb luck, a random act perpetrated by junkies in need of a fix...as soon
as that was clear it became vital that no one know that Dani had been snatched...street
scum would panic and do something stupid if they knew they had a superheroe’s
kid...let alone LUKE CAGE’S...and if it got out to the supervillain community that
Dani was outside her parents protection one of them really might take a shot at
her...worse maybe more than one, and the idea of her little baby girl caught in
the crossfire between two, or more, rival groups of villains was...
Jessica firmly turned her mind away from contemplating that.
The fact that they couldn’t let anyone know they were looking severely limited
their ability to actually LOOK; fortunately they had a lot of really sneaky
friends, both in and outside the superhero community, who could conduct a thorough
but quite search for Dani...
Only they found out that in some cases dumb trumps smart; if
this had been part of some well laid scheme their friends would have found Dani
easy; but it wasn’t, it was a random coming together of events involving a cast
of complete idiots...they even found one of the original three kidnappers...but
he was so brain fried that he genuinely couldn’t remember what colour his own
shoes were or what he did an hour ago...all that bringing in a powerful
telepath did was give the telepath a headache...
Dani’s trail just kept getting screwed up by the sheer level
of dumb ass involved.
Dr. Strange managed to cast a tracking spell using some of
Dani’s clothes as a focus...but could only narrow her location down to an area,
and quite a wide one at that, rather than a specific place.
The area was a delightful little neighbourhood commonly referred
to as “Little Gomorrah”, hidden away in a bad part of New Jersey; how Dani had
ended up on the far side of the river was anyone’s guess, but she was in a large
neighbourhood so bad it generated an aura of corruption so thick the SORCERER
SUPREME OF EARTH couldn’t penetrate it.
They couldn’t just go charging in, and they couldn’t find
the information they needed as “customers” of what Little Gomorrah had to
offer, they needed to infiltrate neighbourhood itself, become part of the local
scene and socialize with those who lived there. But like many such neighbourhood,
Little Gomorrah was incredibly insular, only one type of person could just “move
in” to such a place and not cause the kind of suspicion that would slow them
down...
So that’s way Jessica, and a few volunteers, were getting fairly
extreme Hooker Makeovers!!