Chapter 8: Upgrade & Conditions!

Much later, Legal Clinic

The Clinic was empty, save for Lilly Choi. It had been a long day for the lawyer. After the guard brought the man in charge she showed him the folder full of names that she received earlier.

Naturally he was flabbergasted since he checked their green card status and saw they were never even registered for it.

He did call her out on the miraculous citizenship and she explained that he could check. Which he did and found that within 12 hours they were all suddenly granted American Passports.

He did say he was gonna release them in a few days but she got them a spot in a women's shelter for that night. As well as legal counsel to advise them of their rights and citizenship.

After that she headed toward the NYPD precinct and threatened them with wrongful arrest, harassment, forced confessions and violating civil rights if they did not toss their statements.

They called her out on blackmail but she stated that in a court of law since none of them got a phone call or lawyer any confession or testimony was inadmissible.

Especially since there was reasonable doubt and probable witness tampering. All charges related to the prostitution ring were cleared for them as they were kidnapped and forced into it.

Her next step was Gunpowder. He knew of the prostitution ring and even paid for their services but only stopped it when cops were close to sniffing it out.

However all the criminals were killed, couldn't talk or paid off. But bad publicity for Gunpowder was bad for Vought so there was definitely gonna be an attempted payoff.

Now she was waiting for that payoff, with only a camera and mysterious new friend as her security.

"Nervous?" A techno like voice asked in the ear piece behind her hair.

"You scanning my heart rate or whatever?" She asked, while going over the documents.

"Don't need to. You're about to meet some sleezy corporate slime ball that will do anything to keep their money and power. Plus he's bringing a lawyer to." The voice responded.

At that moment a man wearing a suit came in, and he came in alone. "Lilly Choi." He spoke upon seeing her. "Thomas Rand, from Vought." He introduces while holding out his hand.

Lilly looks behind him and see's no Gunpowder. "Where's Gunpowder?" She asks.

"I've been given power of attorney as he is dealing with important matters at this time." Rand answers.

"This'll be easy." The voice comments in Lilly's earpiece.

"Now let's begin." Rand says as he sits down and opens his briefcase. "Let's start with-."

"5 million dollars per client." She interrupts him.

"What?" He asks in shock.

"Five million per client." She say's again. "Also has to be on the DL no way Vought is gonna spin this into some charity thing. Gunpowder is also gonna be using rubber bullets as his primary choice and he's gonna take his donations from Samaritan's Embrace to the shelter those women are staying at."

"And finally he's gonna move away from his stance on pro guns and is instead gonna start supporting laws to restrict peoples access to them." She finishes.

To her surprise the man chuckles. "Bold, I like that. But naive, look the highest I can go is 70,000." He countered.

Lilly smiles at this. "You must think I'm an idiot, because if you think I'm gonna budge there's no way. Take it or I'll announce the court date tomorrow."

"Bullshit." Rand replies.

"It's not."

"You take this to court you'll lose." Rand tells her. "You have nothing except the words of women who aren't even citizens and have gone through traumatic events and were involved in the crime itself."

"Wooooow." Lilly drags on. "They really do hire from anywhere." Slides him several documents.

He opens them and sees the legal citizenship status of all the women. Then see's that all their confessions they signed have all been tossed. And finally see's CCTV photographs of Gunpowder entering the establishment days before the raid. "Circumstantial." He plays off.

"So you're tell me." Lilly begins. "A bunch of testimonies from kidnapped victims and images placing him at the scene of the crime are all fake? Because let me tell you something, if I can bluff a Fortune 500 company into pleading guilty and make them pay back half a billion dollars with nothing but bullshit then I can put Vought out of business by next week with fucking shit like this."

"You take this to court, we'll cut your funding, bury you in paperwork and delay this for months and appeal for years." Rand threatens.

"Well it's a good thing my schedule cleared up and we just got a 20 million dollar donation, all in advance." She tells him. "Plus a guarantee that more is coming."

"I never said I was gonna get you more." The voice tells her.

"They'll never go for this." Rand say's.

"They don't have too." She replies then gestures to him. "You said it yourself you were given power of attorney. Meaning you sign that they have to follow it or I can sue them for both things."

"Now sign or else there will be legal consequences." She threatens, then at that exact moment a green dot appears on the man's tie. He seems to have taken notice of this and looks around frantically. "Something wrong?" Lilly questions with faux ignorance.

"You'd really kill me?" Rand asked, and before he goes any further the door bursts open. Stepping in was Black Noir. He immediately takes out a knife in throws it. While it's in midair one of the camera's shoots out a laser destroying the knife.

Noir looks at the camera and some sort gooey substance comes out and morphs into a body. It was a mix of white, and black with green circuitry lines. On it's stomach was a familiar symbol.

"Not so sharp are ya."

Black Noir didn't speak, instead he took out more knives and threw them at the alien.

Upgrade's eye lit up as he fired his optibeam blowing up the knives.

"Jesus!" Rand cried out as he and Lilly ducked down.