Fanfic / Maverick Solutions

Crime Doesn't Pay (Enough)

Ashling "Ash" Anderson is a perfectly ordinary woman from Earth-616. She's not a Mutant, or an Inhuman, or a secret Eternal, or a Half-Skrull, or anything like that. Her only real claim to fame, aside from a small Heroic Lineage? She's actually from another Earth entirely, and has been placed into the body of her much younger Marvel self with seemingly no cause. So, when placed in this world of Heroes and Villains, what does she do?

Why, open a business of course! A business that happens to offer legitimate jobs to supervillains who want to get legitimate paying work, so long as they haven't attempted genocide, mass murder, or destruction of the planet while not under duress.

Her first recruits? Long-Time Spider-Man foes Rhino and Shocker.

Of course, things don't go entirely as planned, but she's along for the ride that she started.

Maverick Solutions is a Marvel Universe Self-Insert fanfic by AshlingWaltzes (author of To Fuel The Guttering Flame). It can also be read here (needs account).

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This fanfic provides examples of:

A-M

• Abandoned Warehouse: After Ash runs into one too many of these being in good condition and used as a base by bad guys, she asks some heroes about this, who note that she might be onto something.
  Luke Cage: I remember a few years back, there was someone working for The Kingpin. Called themselves 'The Realtor', was involved in schemes pretty much like you described. But they vanished completely after about a year. I thought that the Punisher got'em… but this is kinda suspicious.
• AB Negative: Ash is O-, but thanks to getting an H-Cell Infusion, she's able to donate and receive blood from anyone regardless of blood type.
• Abusive Parents: In addition to profiting off of his daughter's career regardless of the negative impact this has caused Becky's mental health, Ronald Ryan didn't hesitate to sell her off to the Purple Man for ten million dollars.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Ash is interfering with all of Moira X's plans by total happenstance.
  • Ash is able to prevent Selene's hypnosis attempts from working on her, without even realizing who Selene is, thanks to her defenses combined with her lack of focus on Selene's words.
• Actually a Doombot: Both Word of God and Doctor Doom's POV in Special Issue #4 reveal that Doom's previous appearances in the story were actually his ward and body double Kristoff Vernard or a Doombot.
• Adaptational Abomination: The story somehow manages to make Sublime even more horrifying. Among other things, it's revealed that not only does the bacteria feed on Cosmic Energy, but it was artificially created. Sublime isn’t the collective consciousness of the bacteria, but an unknown entity controlling the bacteria. Reed Richards claims its the most disturbing thing he’s encountered since The Watchers. Its gets worse with the reveal that it isn’t even isolated to Earth, as the Skrulls encountered it in their ancient past.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • In this story, Scarlet Witch's nervous breakdown is attributed to the schemes of an iteration of the Cabal (later confirmed to be made up of Loki, Selene, Mandarin, Doctor Doom, The Leader, Madam Hydra, and Norman Osborn), who seek to take advantage of the chaos Wanda will unleash.
  • The Escape Velocity arc serves as a sequel to the Iron Man: Hypervelocity miniseries, which ended on a cliffhanger.
  • Tony developed the Hypervelocity Suit in response to the Genosha Massacre.
  • In this story, the Civil War event is the result of a Supervillain plot. This is later revealed to be a plot devised by another iteration of the Cabal (Doctor Doom, Roderick Kingsley, Wilson Fisk, Sebastian Shaw, M. Bison, and Kano).
  • Maria Hill's extreme stance against superheroes is revealed to be a result of being mind controlled by Norman Osborn.
• Adaptational Heroism: Canonically one of Absorbing Man’s most heinous crimes is assaulting and raping a woman. Here the incident was completely consensual, its just that the woman was secretly cheating on her husband and was forced by him to claim that Creel raped her.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: As befits a Marvel fic, there's quite a few. Aside from SHIELD's various Helicarriers, in Issue #48 Ash purchases a "Zephyr Raven" (which is based on the Zephyr One from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), a 250 foot long flying base which can carry up to 5 smaller VTOL aircraft.
• Alternate Universe: Some sidestories feature versions of Ash in different universes.
  • On Earth-51778, Ash and her Gender Flipped employees each pilot their own Mini-Mecha.
  • A version named Ashley who reincarnated but only awakened her Past-Life Memories in 1602 travels as a solitary bard before picking up various outcasts to form a traveling troupe of performers, "The Untethered", who seek to help Ashley save the world.
  • On Earth-982, Ash forms Maverick Solutions at an earlier point in time compared to Earth-616, early enough to have Rhino ensure that May Parker is born and given to MJ.
  • On Earth-1610, Ash defends the Academy of Tomorrow during Ultimatum alongside her employees.
  • On Earth-18, Ash SI'd into her Earth-18 Self's Infra-Space counterpart, Miracle Girl, and the two of them communicate through reflections.
  • On Earth-51778, Ash is friends with Peni Parker and, after recovering from an attack that temporarily left her in a coma, is a Henshin Hero.
  • On Earth-90214, Ash opened a detective agency called Maverick Investigations.
  • On Earth-61618, Ash actually founds Orchis in response to Krakoa's founding. She does this not out of hatred for mutants, but out of a belief that they are currently acting out of control and coming close to becoming a danger to themselves and the rest of the world.
• Alternative-Self Name-Change: Tony 2.0 eventually renames itself "Hypervelocity".
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Absolutely nobody in the entire world is sad about Killgrave’s death, with the general opinion being "Thank God he’s dead". After his death, Ash’s office gets flooded with gift baskets from people thanking her for getting rid of him.
• And This Is for...: Ash says this as she's charging Carnage into the ground after charging him out of a building for the friends she lost during Maximum Carnage.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Ash's Crimson Dynamo armor is made out of Carbonadium Matrix Alloy, a material almost as tough as Adamantium, which also puts off radiation that negates Healing Factors. However, it has its limits, as shown in her fight with Morlun, since it can only prevent biological healing factors, not more esoteric ones.
• Arch-Enemy: Ash's personal arch-enemy is Carnage.
• Ascended Extra: Shocker and Rhino are commonly considered C to D-listers in Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery. Here, they're part of the main cast.
• Assimilation Backfire: During their fight, John Sublime cuts off one of Ash's arms and grafts it to his body to start replenishing the biomass he lost fighting her. However he forgets the main property of H-cells and how they typically don't react well to foreigner tissue. He promptly catches on fire.
• Author Appeal: Both AshlingWaltzes and SparraNova consider Iron Man: Hypervelocity their favorite Iron Man comic. As such, that story arc is included in the story and its protagonist, Tony Stark 2.0, becomes one of Ash's employees after the arc's conclusion.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The decommissioned S.H.I.E.L.D. Battle-Van that is also a Flying Car, which has working hover systems and afterburn-capable thrusters with a cruising speed of two-hundred miles-per-hour. Maverick Solutions bought the armored car from Big Al after earning enough money from Killgrave’s death.
• Babysitting Episode: A sidestory shows that while Reed, Sue and Ben were attending Me and the Boys Pizza's opening night, Johnny was left to supervise Franklin and Valeria Richards, along with their guests, the Power Pack.
• Badass Normal: Ash has no superpowers, instead relying on various pieces of advanced tech or her Crimson Dynamo armor. This is no longer the case after she gets superpowers, starting from when she's exposed to limited quantities of Horton Cells, enhancing her physical capabilities and giving her a minor Healing Factor. Later on, she's bitten by Shathra the Spider-Wasp, becoming a spider-wasp totem and going through even more drastic physical changes.
  • The same applies to the Shocker, who, outside of his suit and gauntlets, is just a skilled engineer.
• Bad Guy Bar: As per canon, the Bar with No Name is a place where lower-list Marvel villains that are mostly in it for the money can hangout and get a drink. Ash also visits from time to time when she has nothing to do.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Ash is able to get into the CNN Building to confront Shathra by pretending that she was asked to talk during one of their segments.
• Benevolent A.I.: Tony 2.0, the A.I. copy of Tony Stark who shows up in the Escape Velocity arc (the adaptation of the Hypervelocity miniseries) is firmly on the side of angels despite having Tony's signature ego.
• Berserk Button: Pretty Boy, due to what the Purple Man did to his beloved sister, has strong feelings about mind controlling rapists. Which is why he kills the Mandrill in an unnecessarily brutal fashion after he finds him trying to sell various women he's mind controlled and kidnapped.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: Ash ends up crying with Becky Ryan after killing the Purple Man to protect her and the audience from his mind-control - specifically about how easy it was to do it to the Purple Man when she couldn't kill Carnage, despite the fact that he killed some of her friends.
• Boom, Headshot!: Ash obliterates the Purple Man's head with a Hammer Industries Self-Guiding Sidewinder Missile before he can get a chance to get his mind-controlled audience to do anything.
• Both Sides Have a Point: After the Genosha Massacre, Nick Fury argues that it could've been avoided if SWORD shared more info with SHIELD and work closer together. Abigail Brand retorts that it wasn't SWORD's mandate to prevent that disaster and that if she allowed the two groups to work closer together, it'll just lead to SWORD getting as many moles in it as SHIELD does.
• Brain Uploading: Tony 2.0 and the members of Beautiful Garbage are the results of this.
• Brown Note: Downplayed with Shathra's voice, as it merely evokes a level of wrongness when she stops pretending to be human.
  Okay. Fuck thaaaaat. Shathra's disguised voice had sounded like something very badly playing at being a human, but when she wasn't pretending… I honestly wasn't certain that she was actually making words at all. She was a creature who dwelled in the Astral Realm, a dimension of pure psionic power, and it showed, as her words crawled through my mind, worming their way down my spine and making me shudder.
• The Cameo: Guess who appears as Me and the Boys Pizza's janitor? A certain elderly mustachioed gentleman by the name of Stanislaus Lieber.
• Canon Welding: The author has selected certain properties published by Marvel to be added into the story. She later explains that she is going to stick to things that either crossed over with Marvel in a way that is at least semi-canon, or actually licensed out to Marvel. Several other properties are or aren't included depending on whether or not the author thinks they can slot them in. It's later explained that licensed comics done by companies that Marvel acquired will be considered and that the author's policy on this trope is they have to be able to be fit in a relatively seamless way.
  • When going to the Tinkerer to buy some equipment, Ash sees a pair of Triple Changers in his workshop.
  • Ash calls the Ghostbusters to help dispose of haunted Nazi Gold and to get their help in defeating Shathra.
  • It's mentioned in Issue #10 that Alex Murphy has been active since the 80s and it was later specified that he was a prototype of the Deathlok program.
  • A certain Old Snake is mentioned by Kingpin as being up for hire. G.I. Joe operatives later participate in the Battle of Genosha. Much later, M.A.R.S. Industries is mentioned, and Ash even buys some equipment from them to use in an operation against Sublime and the U-Men in Hong Kong.
  • While they haven't shown up on screen, there have been blatant references to the presence of the TMNT, with an AOL User in-universe referencing Stocktronics and the MOUSERs specifically. They later appear alongside the Foot in Issue #42.
  • After Ash reveals Sublime's presence on Earth to her Skrull boyfriend and a Skrull historian, the former goes to Abigail Brand and cites the Rom Accords to get her to accept Skrull assistance in combating this threat.
  • Two of the members of Kingsley’s Cabal are M. Bison and Kano.
  • The Lin Kuei are brought up as one of the major criminal organizations in Asia.
  • Members of the Oktober Guard and Winter Guard include Colonel Drago and Zangief respectively.
• Category Traitor: Due to Ash's actions in trying to prevent the Genosha Massacre, anti-mutant bigots think she's a race traitor. Ash doesn't really care about what they think, since she sees them as unrepentant racists.
  These were people who were willing to burn people at the stake over a non-heritable phenotype, they were either looking for an excuse to hate someone, or were so wrapped up in xenophobia that they’d completely lost track of reality. I’d almost feel bad for them if they didn’t keep sending deranged hatemail.
• Classy Cane: Ash gets a magic walking stick from her priest on behalf of a fellow worshiper of the New Church of Asgard who happens to be an apprentice at the Sanctum Sanctorum. It can turn into a hammer if its wielder hits it against the ground while thinking they need a weapon.
• Comic-Book Time: This is actually a universal force that's been commented on in-universe.
• Composite Character: Initially Godzilla seems to be primarily based on the version from the Marvel comic with elements from the classic films thrown in. Then during his fight with Legion, Godzilla's jaw splits open and he starts using Shin Godzilla's Atomic Breath.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Ash reveals that most street level career supervillains either become this or go crazy.
  Aleksei was the exception that proves the rule: a lot of street level villains had become very burned out, especially those with multi-decade long careers. I'd seen it in a lot of folk at the Bar with No Name. When you survived as a supervillain for more than five years, two things tended to happen. Either you started treating it like just another nine-to-five where you went to jail sometimes and rarely got to keep your paychecks, or you went around the bend and went nuts in some way or another.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Ash lampshades this when she and Luke Cage find themselves surrounded by the Foot.
  Ash: Hey Mister Cage. Is it true that the more ninjas show up to a fight… no matter how well trained they are, the easier they go down?
  Luke: [chuckles darkly] Yeah, that's something I've noticed over the years.
• Cool Chair: Ash gets a hoverchair while she recovers from fighting the Wild Sentinels.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front: Maverick Solutions' headquarters is based in a former S.H.I.E.L.D. facility disguised as a pizza restaurant. Maverick also restarted the pizza business, with Nick Fury giving them S.H.I.E.L.D.'s old recipe so they can make better pizzas for when he starts making occasional visits to the restaurant.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Even aside from her new pizza parlor staff being comprised of ex-Maggia members and genuine Kunoichi, with so many famous persons and superheroes present for opening night, Ash makes sure her security measures are up to snuff, including an armory-full of surplus NYPD laser weaponry.
  • The Punisher wears an armed claymore mine on his back just in case someone sneaks up on him from behind.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Ash considers the Mark V Titanium Man armor to be this, as it's overspecialized for Power Armor vs Power Armor combat, whereas she would prefer a more generalist build.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Ronald Ryan is killed via a lot of the crushed frame of a prison bed stuffed down their throat.
  • The Mandrill is killed by Pretty Boy beating him to death with his own severed arm. Ash personally doesn't approve of it because it was completely unnecessary.
• Crutch Character: The author purposefully didn't have Sandman join up with Maverick Solutions from the beginning, despite the fact that he'd be a good fit for it, because he was too strong and would've trivialized most of the company's earlier jobs.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Before being hired by Ash, Shocker couldn't find legal work due to his criminal history, meaning he had to turn to crime for a living. Thanks to Maverick Solutions, this is no longer a problem for him.
• The Dead Have Names: Inversion. After the Genosha Massacre, Ash gets a gift of 825,000 bits of metal, each inscribed with a name, one for every survivor of the Massacre, as a reminder of how many lives she saved that day.
• Deal with the Devil: In order to get the necessary resources and manpower for her upcoming battle with Sublime, Ash goes to Sebastian Shaw and Destro. It actually works out pretty well, as Sublime’s anti-mutant agenda makes him a threat to several members of the Hellfire Club, Shaw in particular, and Destro is a Consummate Professional willing to sell Ash the gear needed with no strings attached.
• Do Wrong, Right: Midori is angry at her daughter Odachi because the latter was being stupid in how she committed her crimes and she keeps getting her weapons destroyed.
• Eccentric Mentor: Fat Cobra is one of the Immortal Weapons, which means he's one of the most skilled martial artists in the world, with Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, wanting to learn his unique fighting style. However, he's also a hedonist who hardly takes anything seriously and is often found gorging himself on wine, food, and beautiful women.
• Encouraged Regifting: A particularly twisted example. After Ash kills the Purple Man, Hydra "rewards" her with a pallet of Nazi Gold... cursed Nazi Gold forged in the death camps from teeth fillings. Ash is left genuinely wondering if it really was their sick idea of a gift, or they were hoping that either she'd throw it away (allowing them to take it back) or it would lead to a very unfortunate fate befalling her.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Ash thinks there's no way Johnny Cage is the same one she's familiar with.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Maverick Solutions get free drinks from the patrons of the Bar with No Name when they come in after defeating Carnage.
  • As shown under Hate Sink, the Purple Man is a piece of work even to other villains, such that when Ashling kills him on live TV, she gets a bounty of Nazi Gold from HYDRA. But even he has some standards, so when Ronald Ryan instantly agreed to sell his superstar daughter to him for $10 million, he decides to take the girl, skimp on the bribe, and order the security in Powered Armor to punch Ron in the balls.
  • During the U-Men's attack on New York City, it is noted that most supervillains don't kill people indiscriminately. Even Hydra typically doesn’t do it (unless they're acting crazier than normal) and only the really crazy guys like Carnage do it regularly. This is mostly for pragmatic reasons, as very few villains want to see how the heroes will respond in cases like that.
• Everyone Has Standards: Ronald Ryan's actions are so reprehensible that the guards at the prison he's being held at help the Juggernaut kill him and cover up his involvement.
• Everyone Is Armed: All of Ash's restaurant employees are armed, with additional weapons in a crate in the kitchen, just in case something happens.
  With so many high-profile heroes and figures in one place, I was working off of the assumption that some shenanigans were inevitable. Thus, I'd obviously taken precautions. Everyone was armed. Chefs, waitstaff, and everyone else. Aside from everything that was in the Bunker's Armory, both Tom and Jerry were packing NYPD surplus laser pistols, while the Kunoichi Squad had gods-knew-what was up their sleeves and in the pockets that were specifically hidden on the insides of their skirts. I knew about the energy-tantos, the smoke bombs, and the rest of the normal ninja kit… but I'd given them a security budget, and I knew that just those wouldn't run that stipend down. And they'd informed me that they'd used literally all of the money.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Mister Sinister decides to add the DNA of the Hellions to Amelia, just to cause Emma Frost suffering for laughs.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Mister Sinister created the AMELIA Project in order to cause maximum emotional damage and confusion to Emma Frost.
  • One of Doctor Doom's defining character traits in this story is his insane pettiness.
• Evil Nerd: Julia Blevins, one of the Beekeepers, self-identifies as this and outright says a lot of members of A.I.M. are like this as well.
  "Hmmm…" Julia cocked her head to the side as the terminal screen flashed. The entire A.I.M. internal security system was absolutely fascinating, because it had to be relatively beginner friendly (by A.I.M. standards), and also able to resist intrusion from the various super-hackers and other meddlers who always broke in. Thus, the ultimate, mildly idiotic solution. The actual system, alongside the command-line interface, included a variety of what could be most charitably be referred to as 'minigames', graphic-assisted tasks that had to be completed in the proper order to hook up. God, A.I.M. were such nerds, and absolutely proud of it.
  Julia had to giggle again. She totally resembled that label. It was probably the glasses. But everyone told her they were cute though, so she didn't really mind.
• Existential Horror: Reboots are a source of this for Ash.
• Expy
  • Ash's appearance is based off of Fate Mordred. The fact that this makes her a Saberface has been pointed out by the readers. Over the course of events post Ragnarok, she begins to more resemble Morgan le Fay from the same series, through her hair turning white and the physical changes as a result of her powers.
  • Intuit, one of the people who applied to work at Maverick Solutions, has powers based on Uber.
• Faking the Dead: The Kingpin is very fond of this as he frequently fakes his death as part of his annual purges, letting all his potential rivals crawl out if the woodwork so he can eliminate them all at once.
• Fantastic Legal Weirdness: Ash notes that thanks to the nature of the Marvel Universe, the law is a lot more lax when it comes to owning weapons compared to her previous life. However, she also notes that although getting advanced weapons is legal, actually having the resources to buy them in the first place is another matter.
  You can't even begin to imagine the sheer, abject insanity of what constituted "acceptable business defenses" in Earth-616 New York weapons law. It was completely mad, in almost an all caps sense. Fun fact! Did you know that a fucking surplus rocket propelled grenade launcher was considered an acceptable defensive measure if your business or home had specific kinds of utility equipment or electrical generators built into the facility, specifically ones that could potentially be drained by some random mutant lizard that hadn't shown up since the '80s? Well, I sure did! Because the Maverick Solutions HQ building had both!
• Fantastic Science: When Ash asks Mister Fantastic about his knowledge of mysticism, he tells her that he accepts the existence of magic and studies it the way he studies super science.
  "Please, Miss Anderson. I've been involved with Super Science and Mysticism since college. Several of my co-workers and close friends are actual, provable gods or practicing mages. My self-appointed nemesis often delves into sorcerous methods of attack. I'm not the kind of close-minded scientist who discounts the unexplained because it wasn't in my textbooks or papers. It's my job as a scientist to explore the unexplained and inexplicable."
• Foreshadowing:
  • The first special issue has Sandman contemplating working for Maverick Solutions for a stable paycheck and another villain commenting on seeing Sandman going in and out of a hospital lately. This foreshadows the fact that one of his daughters is very sick and Sandman needs a lot of money to pay off her medical bills.
  • In Issue #27 there are mentions of a massive white flash of light in orbit and Becky Ryan shows up at Me and the Boys, looking nervous and wearing bandages on one hand. It's eventually revealed that the flash of light was a White Event and that Becky has become the host of the Star Brand.
  • While on the way to The Peak, Ash watches and has complaints about a movie called Ninja Mime 4. This movie is a sign that elements from Mortal Kombat are included in this story.
    Plus, Ninja Mime 4 had been a pretty big letdown compared to the original trilogy. Seriously, whoever thought that it was a good idea for Ninja Mime to try and stop the end of the world by sending a vague warning to his past self really shouldn't have been allowed in the writing room.
• Friendless Background: Becky Ryan laments that, because of the lifestyle forced upon her by her father, she never got to make any real friends before she met Ash.
  Becky actually had trouble remembering if there'd ever been a time when she felt normal. It had all been contests and pageants. Being tugged around by the hand by her dad, rushing through crowds to talk with event organizers and talent agents. She'd always tried to talk with the other kids, but… their parents would shush them, and pull them away. She was competition after all.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Ash's mom calls Ash by her full name when scolding her for getting herself so badly injured from fighting the Wild Sentinels.
• Fun with Acronyms: Mister Sinister decides to create a chimera clone of Ash and Emma Frost. He names it Amelia after the acronym of the project: Anderson Metageneocombination Experiment- Lab In-vitro Alpha.
• Genre Savvy: Ash sometimes uses her knowledge of common comic tropes to her advantage.
  • Ash anticipated Beautiful Garbage getting away with the plans they wanted from A.I.M., so she sent Gil and Herman to Manufacturing in order to mess with the plans directly, which allowed Ash to follow them to their base and destroy it.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Ash gets glasses that are connected to her systems and act as a Heads-Up Display.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Downplayed. Maverick Solutions are mercenaries rather than heroes, though they do good work more often than not, and some of its members, including Ash herself, hangout at the Bar with No Name from time to time.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The "Fearsome Five" are a team of would-be supervillains who act as Maverick Solutions' first foes when they attack the F.E.A.S.T. Shelter in an attempt to find a stash of mafia cash, only to be handily defeated. Later on, they show up again doing the same thing at a bodega close to the Maverick Offices, and most recently have been seen trying to rob an Ice Cream Parlor during a Heat Wave. They include:
  • Toastmaster, the team leader, who uses an AIM rifle he jury-rigged, which explodes after it's first use, before upgrading to a more generic gun of similar type.
  • Droid-Man, an overly cocky bruiser wearing an outdated suit of Mandroid Armor.
  • Odachi, the sole female member of the team, who initially uses an energized katana she bought via mail order; she's seen with a new sword in each appearance due to her breaking her weapon in every fight, and most of her new swords aren't even katanas.
  • Jerry the Breaker, the somewhat dim-witted and hammer-wielding muscle with some kind of enhanced strength and durability.
  • Mister Roboto, a generic humanoid robot who has a bad habit of losing his limbs during fights.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: After one U-Man brags about how their augmentations make their skin immune to blunt trauma, Rhino decides to test that by using them as a weapon against other U-Men. After being used to kill four of them, the U-Man dies because the insides of their body wasn't as durable.
• Groin Attack: Ash punches Ronald Ryan in the dick when she's ordered to do so by the Purple Man, choosing to comply so he'll drop his guard rather than give away the fact that she's protected from his pheromones before she can take advantage of it. Plus, she really hates the man, so she's happy to do it. For extra damage, she was wearing her Crimson Dynamo armor when she did it.
  Ash: It wasn't enough to kill him… He got medical attention in time. But… well, that isn't growing back. I guess Becky'll have to be content being an only child on her dad's side.
• Had to Be Sharp: It's noted that Spider-Man’s rogues tend to be in a league of their own, as Spider-Man’s rather broad set of powers (in particular his Spider-Sense) forces them to develop a diverse skill set just to keep up.
• Halloween Episode: The first Halloween Special is titled What If?: House of X/Powers of X #1.
• Hand Cannon: Ash's choice of personal firearm is a customized OCP/Barretta Auto-9 machine-pistol.
• Handicapped Badass: Ash's legs are severely damaged during the Wild Sentinel battle, and even with her Horton Cell enhancements she requires a cane or leg braces to walk/a hoverchair to get around until she's fully recovered. Still doesn't stop her from putting on her Powered Armor and taking to the field herself.
• Hate Sink:
  • Ronald Ryan is a greedy man who's been exploiting his daughter for years in order to gain riches through her fame and accolades with no concern for her physical or mental health. He also tried to sell her to the Purple Man for 10 million dollars.
  • Zebediah Killgrave a.k.a. the Purple Man is an utterly deranged mind controller with absolutely no moral qualms about using his powers for whatever he wants. Every time he's brought up after his death at Ash's hands, it just reinforces how much of an awful person he was. It's later explained that he was picked to be the first person Ash ever killed by the author because he was so unlikable in- and out of universe.
  • The Mandrill is such a disgusting misogynistic piece of crap that nobody bats an eye at Pretty Boy killing him when he discovers he's been using his pheromones to abduct women for a human trafficking ring. Not even the legal authorities, who casually handwave the mutant's death and happily work with Pretty Boy to bust up the traffickers instead.
  • The U-Men are so repugnant with their modus operandi of abducting and vivisecting mutants to create Bio-Augmentation grafts for themselves that Ash has no qualms with either killing them nor allowing The Punisher to torture them.
• Healthcare Motivation:
  • Inverted. Sandman joins Maverick in order to get a steady paycheck to pay off his daughter Penny's medical expenses.
  • Absorbing Man joins Maverick for the same reason as Sandman, only it's for his wife instead of a daughter.
• Heavy Sleeper: Ash's sister Vicky is this and the former claims that the latter once slept through a Galactus arrival.
• Heel–Face Turn: Maverick Solutions helps some villains do this by giving them a chance to escape a life of crime. However, the villains who do work with the company are more reformed rather than redeemed.
• Heroic Lineage: Ashling "Ash" Anderson is the granddaughter of Phineas Horton, the creator of the WWII Human Torch (Jim Hammond), who in turn is legally Ash's uncle. She is also the sister of Victoria Anderson, who only appears in the limited series Avengers Icons: The Vision.
• Hidden Depths: The Juggernaut is fond of Becky Ryan's music. This is part of the reason as to why he kills Ronald Ryan.
• Hope Spot: Ash puts everything she has into stopping the Wild Sentinels from reaching Genosha, even sacrificing her armor to sink them and just barely making it to shore... and the last thing she sees before passing out is one of them, mangled but working, emerging from the sea, with nothing left between it and mutant genocide.
• Horrifying the Horror: Absynthe is a copy of a murderous brain upload who wants to Kill All Humans that's trapped in Tony 2.0, and even she's disturbed after seeing what the U-Men have done to themselves.
  Absynthe: I do not understand any of this. Tonyghost… what the hell have these meatbags done to themselves?
• Humanity Is Insane: R'tos tells Ash that Skrull high command has difficulty finding volunteers willing to be assigned to Earth, or Terran as they call it, due to how crazy things are there.
• Humble Goal: Shocker's main aspiration is buying a house in Hoboken with a yard.
• Humiliation Conga: Tony feels like he's going through this, from Genosha, to being attacked by Beautiful Garbage, to Avengers Disassembled.
• I Minored in Tropology: When the Wakandan ambassador expresses surprise upon learning that Ash is familiar with Wakanda's magical traditions, she explains that she took Wakandan History as an elective in college.
• Implausible Deniability: After going to prison for trying to sell his daughter to the Purple Man, Ronald Ryan apparently commits suicide by massive self-inflicted blunt force trauma and trying to eat his bedframe... while in the same cell block as Barracuda and the Juggernaut.
• Insistent Terminology: The kunoichi that Ash hires to act as waitresses and deliver pizzas insist on being referred to as "delivery kunoichi" rather than delivery girls.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite Ash's best efforts to stop the Wild Sentinels, the Genosha Massacre still occurs, though more people do survive (825,000 survivors as opposed to 200-300 in canon).
  • Even though Maverick Solutions and the Sinister Syndicate helped Spider-Man defeat Morlun, his aunt May still found him asleep wearing his costume.
• Insult to Rocks: When Ash thinks about the vulture paparazzi that hound young celebrities for gossip, she mentally apologizes to Adrian Toomes for the comparison.
• Inter-Service Rivalry: SHIELD and GI JOE fight over support and funding.
• I Should Have Been Better: Averted. Ash angsts a bit about her failure to prevent the Genosha Massacre, but accepts that she did everything she could.
  I needed to not Spider-Man myself.
  Yes, Great Power, Great Responsibility and all that… but I couldn’t tear myself apart about it. I couldn’t. I… definitely needed to talk with someone more qualified.
• It Is Not Your Time: During her Near-Death Experience, Ash runs into Odin and Thor, who tell her this.
  Odin: Go back, brave warrior. It is not yet your time. Go to your fellows. It is not yet your time.
  [...]
  Thor: No, your time has not yet come, Child of Fire. Though had you passed from Midgard, Valhalla would have opened wide to accept you. Your work is not yet done. And there will be great trials in your future.
• It's Personal: Ash lost a few friends, a crush, and a boyfriend to Maximum Carnage, the killing spree that Carnage and his fellow psychopaths went on in her youth. When Carnage crashes a party that Maverick Solutions is bodyguarding, Ash takes the chance to carve out a few pounds of flesh in the name of her friends.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: The Punisher does this to a U-Man when he and Maverick Solutions storm the Grand Corporation Building.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As abrasive as Abigail Brand is being about not wanting SHIELD to interfere with SWORD, she's absolutely justified in her reasoning.
• Joker Immunity: Discussed. Ash’s personal justification for not killing Carnage, despite really wanting to, is that A-list villains like him never stay dead. If she killed him, it would simply be a matter of when he’d come back rather than if. At least with him in prison she’ll be able to know the exact instant he escapes.
• Jump Scare: After Ash gets the Mark V Titanium Man armor, she tests it out by doing this to Shocker.
  In short, while wearing this thing I was a one-ton ninja and a jumpscare waiting to happen. Or in other words, lore-accurate Passionlip. And I loved that. One of the first things I did with it was try clinging to the Bunker roof and jumping down behind Herman while he was carrying a load of supplies down. I got a concussion blast to the chest for my trouble, absolutely worth it.
• Kavorka Man: The first time Ash properly meets Sebastian Shaw, he has A Lady on Each Arm while she notes his unflattering facial features and Vocal Dissonance.
  Sebastian Shaw was not a handsome man. Very little about him could possibly be called that. What he was, most certainly, was savage in appearance, giving off a violent, almost neanderthalian energy. Also, those sideburns were… an interesting look.
• Life Drinker: Morlun is able to recover from the injuries he sustains from Maverick Solutions' attacks thanks to the life force he's already absorbed.
• Locked into Strangeness: After Ragnarok, Ash finds that her hair is slowly turning white.
  It had seemingly started the day after Ragnarok, with only a few hairs. But now, a week later, several chunks of my bangs were white as winter's snow. It was… somewhat unsettling. I'd heard that people could go gray, or even white due to extreme stress, but never expected anything like that to happen to me. Especially not after Genosha.
• LOL, 69: When Maverick Solutions gets lots of cash rewards, bounties, and donations for killing the Purple Man, Deadpool makes sure to donate a specific amount so that the total for the cash alone adds up to 69,696,969 dollars.
• Magical Accessory: After getting an invitation to join the Hellfire Club, Ash goes to the Wakandan Embassy to get something that can protect her from psychic attacks. She gets an amulet enchanted with Wakandan shamanism that will protect her from mental manipulation.
• Make Sure He's Dead: Ash makes sure that the Purple Man really is dead by using her suit's carbonadium to negate his Healing Factor even after shooting him in the head with a missile.
• Mechanical Abomination: One of Ultron's old bases visited in the Escape Velocity arc is described by Ash as being like a "techno shoggoth" as well as being referred to as dead, crossing it over with being a late Genius Loci. She also compares Ultron himself to an eldritch god, to the point that even other anti-organic artificial intelligences are scared of him and treat him as a mad, murderous, unknowable god.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Dantalion, a mutant who works for Sublime, believes that Sublime is the only thing that in that world that is worthy of being considered a person. Everyone else, human, mutant, or otherwise, are just raw materials to be used for Sublime's experiments.
• Monumental Damage: The U-Men destroy the Statue of Liberty when they begin their attack on New York.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Downplayed. After Ash castrates Ronald Ryan, she's not bothered by the fact that she did it, but the fact that she doesn't feel bad about doing it.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Ash is able to use a Hammer Industries Self-Guiding Sidewinder Missile within the minimum safe distance to kill the Purple Man, unlike War Machine's attempt to use it against Whiplash.
  • When introducing himself to Ronald Ryan, the Juggernaut says: "My friends call me Cain. Most other folks, you included, call me The Juggernaut. Bitch."
  • After Morlun shouts that he'll hunt Shocker to the ends the Earth, Shocker can only respond that he's heard that exact line before.
  • War Machine and Ash use Proton Cannons and an Ex-Wife Missile against the Wild Sentinels.
  • After Ash gets a hoverchair, she starts humming the X-Men: The Animated Series theme song.
  • The kunoichi that Ash hires to work at her restaurant are named Misa, Luna, Midori, and Mizuki.
    Misa Sakura was suspected of at one point being an enforcer for the Kingpin, and had taken the third Chef's position. With her came Luna Matsuda, Midori Maeda, and Mizuki Seki, my new waitresses/Delivery Kunoichi. They were very insistent on the terminology. Their big claim to fame, according to the stuff that Mrs. Watanabe's Granddaughter had been able to pull up was that they were top-tier bodyguards… on account of them apparently surviving not one, but two Punisher rampages.
  • Ash notes that J. Jonah Jameson sounds like Ed Asner.
  • After Shocker saves Tony 2.0 from being flanked, the A.I. asks: “You made that in a prison with a box of scraps?”
  • When trying to hack the systems of an A.I.M. base, Julia the Beekeeper notes that they make use of Mini Games and that Galaga is only to be used for stuff relating to SHIELD infiltration and data recovery.
  • Julia the Beekeeper threatens to skeletonize one of her former co-workers in order to get their assistance in getting through the defenses of an A.I.M. base.
  • After Tony 2.0 fails to stop a robot from transmitting vital A.I.M. data, he laments:
    Should have gone for the head... or torso, as it was.
  • Sandman being Norman Osborn's third cousin through the former's ex-wife Emma Osborn is a reference to Spider-Man: Chapter One, where the two are second cousins.
  • Ash quotes Magneto during her fight with Sublime right before she uses a chemical agent designed to destroy his bacteria.
    The gas dispenser in my backpack unit opened up, as did several dozen vents and nozzles all around my suit. "Courtesy of Sue and Reed Richards, with a helping hand from Spider-Man. Allow me to welcome you… TO DIE!"

N-Z

• Named by the Adaptation: A minor member of the Reavers, who's only known as Pretty Boy, has his name revealed as Bartolomej Medved when he applies to join Maverick Solutions.
• Nazi Gold: One of the many things that Maverick Solutions received as thanks for killing the Purple Man is a pallet of gold bars from Hydra, all of which are clearly marked with swastikas and Hydra symbols. Ash is horrified by this and hires a Nazi Hunter to get rid of it, who also informs her that the gold is a Cursed Item that would have brought massive misfortune and bad luck, having been made from gold ripped from the teeth of the victims of the death camps.
• Nazi Hunter: Mercenaries who specialize in hunting down Nazis, known colloquially as 'Rat-Catchers' are seen as living legends.
  Anyone familiar with the inner workings of the Marvel Mercenary world that I'd dived into knew who the Rat-Catchers were. In my original world, 'Nazi Hunting' was mostly a thing of the past, with what few of the infamous war criminals that remained unaccounted for being nearly 100 and pretty much just huddling in remote villas waiting to die. Not the case here, between HYDRA and Hatemonger and clone bodies and time travelers and who-only-knew what else, there were probably somehow more Nazis in the world now than there were in the 40s. They were, well, rather like human rats, an infestation. And as a result there was a burgeoning industry dedicated to getting rid of them whenever they were spotted, gnawing away at the foundations of society. Usually, it was a way for dirty mercs to make a quick buck and feel good about themselves doing it.
  Zachary Brandt wasn't like that. Normal Hydra-hunting mercs were a different breed from the Rat-Catchers, Brandt was an old-school Nazi Hunter. Only people who were involved with the OSS and ODESSA dared use that name in this context, people who had been in the game since day one. These were the Real Deals. The people who had been hunting down Nazi holdouts everywhere from Germany to Argentina to Antarctica, the Hollow Earth, and Space ever since the end of World War II. A living fucking legend. People who could scare hardened HYDRA agents just with their presence in the area. He might have even killed the Red Skull once... not that it ever stuck, unfortunately.
• Near-Death Experience: Ash has one after blowing up her Powered Armor in an effort to stop the Wild Sentinels before it can get to Genosha.
• No Hero to His Valet: During Me and the Boys Pizza's opening night, Tony Stark and his girlfriend make a dramatic entrance and expecting service... only to be informed that there is a wait time and he did not make a reservation, unlike all the other superheroes in attendance, leaving Stark and his date fuming in the waiting room.
• Non-Indicative Name: Even though the Fearsome Five get a sixth member, an octogenarian Getaway Driver named James, they don't change their team's name.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: When Ash fires a ballistic missile from a very short distance away, the mass alone is enough to decapitate the Purple Man.
• No-Sell: The Crimson Dynamo armor is sealed sufficiently to protect the wearer against the Purple Man's pheromones, but to prevent him from realizing that, Ash has to follow a few of his orders until she can get into position.
• Obliviously Beautiful: Ash doesn't completely register how much the Horton Cell infusion has improved her looks.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: Some of the reasons Doctor Doom finds the members of Norman's Cabal insufferable are the Leader's ego regarding his intellect, Norman's lack of foresight or clear goal, and Selene's pettiness and obsession with Maverick. All of these things can also apply to Doom himself, and he never realizes this for a moment.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The Purple Man is horrified upon realizing that Ash is protected from his pheromones thanks to her Powered Armor.
  • War Machine, Vision, and the SWORD taskforce accompanying them react this way when Ash reveals that the UFO they're going to fight is in fact a Sentinel and that it's heading straight for Genosha.
  • Ash (a follower of the New Church of Asgard) nearly panics when she sees that one of her guest parties for Me and the Boys Pizza's opening night is Thor Odinson and four guests... which most likely includes Volstagg the Voluminous.
  • The Fearsome Five's hold-up of Ash's new pizza parlor comes to a screeching halt when they see all the superheroes, super soldiers, and Norse Gods in attendance. Credit to Toastmaster, he manages to change his threat into an order to go.
• Oh, My Gods!: Ash is a follower of the New Church of Asgard, and as such wears a Mjolnir hammer necklace and invokes the Norse gods in her parlance, like saying "Hel" instead of "hell". She even prays to Odin that her restaurant will be of suitable quality to the patronage to his son and his entourage.
• Older Than They Look: Ash gets carded a lot due to her petite build and babyface.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: While eating with Kamala and Becky Ryan, Ash briefly sees a young Miles Morales and his family entering her pizza parlor before they shift into 616!Miles instead.
• One Degree of Separation: In the midst of the Fearsome Five's ill-thought robbery of Ash's pizza parlor during its superhero-populated opening night, Odachi recognizes one of the Kunoichi waitresses, Midori Maeda, and utters, "...Mom?"
• Only in It for the Money: Ash approaches supervillains who have this as their motivation, rather than because of insanity, and hires them for her company, starting with Shocker and Rhino.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Spider-Man's entire rogues gallery ganged up and killed Morlun for trying to kill Spider-Man because they and especially Doc Ock are peeved that a "no-name goon" is trying to take out their archenemy.
• Patchwork Fic: Although the author primarily uses the comics as the basis of the story, elements from various other Marvel adaptations are also incorporated.
  • One of Ash's employees is Mike Peterson.
  • Kingpin has Herbert Landon under his employ and one of his operations is having Tombstone selling Grave Dust. He also sounds like his voice actor from the animated series.
  • In this story, Sandman has three daughters, Penny, Suzie, and Keemia, all of whom originate from different adaptations.
• The Perfectionist: Reed Richards refuses to have anything he's created be mass produced until he can personally product-test it for everything he can imagine that could possibly go wrong.
• Place of Protection: As monsters like vampires and demons are known to exist, every place of worship in New York City is heavily encouraged to put up defensive wards in place to keep them out, which comes in handy when Ash and her allies need a place to regroup after their first encounter with Shathra.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Thanks to currently unknown events, Wilson Fisk has not been blinded, thus leaving the Kingpin active and able to extend his reach to Europe's criminal underworld by allying with the Brotherhood of the Scriers. The author later admits that she forgot he was blinded during this time period.
  • Due to the fact that Magneto died during the Genosha Massacre in this story, Xorn will be a catspaw of Sublime, while Joseph will be taking up his genetic template's mantle.
  • Alterations to the timeline thanks to future events have led to Norman Osborn's plans for Mayday Parker being taken up by the Brotherhood of the Scriers and Moira X.
  • The "Unthinkable" storyline from Fantastic Four Vol 3 is revealed to have been a ploy by Doom using bio-androids to distract the Fantastic Four from intervening in the plans of Kingsley's iteration of the Cabal.
• Poor Communication Kills: SHIELD and SWORD were unable to properly identify the Wild Sentinels partially due to SWORD only giving SHIELD their alien reference data when they believed an invasion was happening.
• Powered Armor: Ash prefers to use power armors that have analog systems in order to protect herself from hackers. She ends up going through a few of them as the story progresses.
  • Ash starts out her career as a mercenary and business owner by purchasing a suit of refurbished Mark IV Crimson Dynamo armor in order to give herself an edge. Unfortunately, Ash had to use the armor's self-destruct in order to destroy one of the Mega Sentinels in Issue #15.
  • After she recovers from her fight with the Wild Sentinels, Ash is gifted a Mark V Titanium Man armor by the Winter Guard.
  • Before the joint operation against the U-Men, Ash gets a custom suit made just for her: the Maverick Mark One.
• Pragmatic Hero: While Maverick Solutions is still in its infancy, Ash can't openly market her business to mutants because she can't protect herself from the anti-mutant paramilitary death squads yet.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • Ash buys a StarkTech™ Model 2™ Mail Security System for Maverick Solutions, which scans, detects and disinfects mail placed in it, though unlike the Baxter Custom version, it won't say what was detected. Ash bought it in case of mind-controllers like the Mandrill, and soon comes to appreciate the security when she goes up against the Purple Man.
  • When Ash is invited to a Hellfire Club party, she commissions a protective amulet enchanted with Wakandan shamanism that will protect her from mental manipulation. By the time she leaves the party, it is almost black with absorbed energy that would've affected her, which is later revealed to be an attempt to control her by Farouk, aka the Shadow King.
  • Played for Laughs when she refuses to buy a pair of Iron Man™ Brand-Shoes because of their wirelessly controlled adjustable high-heels when she needs a suitable outfit for her debut at the Hellfire Club. Her paranoia is justified after she sees Tony hack the heels of a woman just so that he can be there to catch her and literally sweep her off her feet.
  • Ash doesn't get her legs healed immediately after the fight against the Wild Sentinels because she's justifiably worried about people using her genes for experiments if she tries any of the available options to do so.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Even though she no longer needs glasses after getting improved vision thanks to an infusion of Horton Cells, Ash still keeps a pair on hand. She later gets a pair that acts as a psionic dampener.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: The difference between Roxxon selling futures on the weather and Enron doing it in the 90s is that the former had a weather control machine to back it up.
• Redemption Failure: This is a recurring problem for many villains who try to go straight, with their attempts constantly being sabotaged by forces outside of their control. Part of the reason Ash founded Maverick Solutions was to start subverting this.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted by the man himself. It's not that Reed Richards doesn't share his world-changing inventions; heck, he's apparently actively scamming the automotive industry by taking their bribes to not mass-produce the Fantasticar and put them out of business, while also collaborating with smaller car companies in poorer regions to produce effective, affordable vehicles. The reason he doesn't release or share everything he invents is that he's also such a perfectionist that he personally product-tests all of his inventions until they're 200% safe before they even reach the mass production stage. In addition, he takes planned obsolescence as a personal insult, so he makes sure everything he produces lasts, and while this makes them a lot more expensive than StarkTech, they're also magnitudes ahead in quality and lifespan.
  • It's later explained that Reed helps out smaller businesses that are in danger of being stomped on by bigger businesses, which results in the latter stonewalling Reed's efforts to release his tech at every turn in retaliation.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Several of Ash's employees retain some of their villainous quirks despite ostensibly being Reformed Criminals.
• Reformed Criminal: Most of Ash's employees are either supervillains or mooks who want to go legit for one reason or another. The former join Maverick Solutions and become mercenaries, while the latter is split between becoming a merc or working at the restaurant that Ash opens up.
• Refuge in Audacity: Ash realizes that some of the paintings that Wilson Fisk is displaying for his charity gala are stolen paintings.
  The remaining five were from Fisk's personal collection, and included a Vermeer: The Concert, a Rembrandt: Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, a Van Gogh: The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, and a Cézanne: View of Auvers-sur-Oise. Looking at them, I realized that they were all stolen. I didn't say anything about it. Jesus fucking Christ, that was so terrifyingly blatant that it sent a shiver down my spine. Fisk knew that nobody would ever be truly stupid enough to call him out on it and live.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • In this fic, Yuriko Watanabe's grandmother, who Ash hired as a secretary, is Marnie, aka Rumor.
  • Sandman is Normal Osborn's third cousin through the former's ex-wife Emma Osborn.
• Retcon:
  • The first issue has the Tinkerer mention that the Mark IV Crimson Dynamo Armor is made of a carborundum matrix alloy. However, every other time it's said to be made of carbonadium instead. The author admits she mixed up a key element of their story due to their similar sounding names but decided to roll with it as it was too late to change it.
  • The author adds a new line during Ash's interview with Abigail Brand which hints that she's not really Abigail Brand, but a Skrull.
  • Ash will become worried that this has happened to her, with her backstory suddenly seeming to have become more complicated after she opened Maverick.
• Retired Monster: Ronald Ryan, father and manager of Becky Ryan, turns out to have formerly been heavily involved in the Maggia, specifically the Nefaria Family's Human Trafficking Business.
• Robot Me: Rhino's "cousin" and Maverick's car dealer, Big Al, is a robot duplicate of Aleksei that Norman Osborn built during The Clone Saga.
  • Tony 2.0 from the Iron Man: Hypervelocity miniseries also shows up, though that's more of an "A.I. Me".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ash's parents and sister moved out of New York City to get away from the general insanity of superheroics and supervillainy.
• Shared Dream: Mayday and Mary Jane Watson-Parker meet in their dreams on the former's birthday, unaware of each other's existence.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: After Ash first starts her business, several individuals decide to keep an eye on it just in case it turns out to be some kind of ruse. It's not, and Maverick Solutions becomes a respected business after it proves itself by completing a few high profile jobs.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Both Ash and Emma Frost are still recovering from the Genosha Massacre when they meet, inadvertently making things worse for the both of them when the latter's telepathy goes out of control, forcing their traumas to feed into one another.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ash's dad knows an attorney named Denny. Ash later hires Crane, Poole & Schmidt on retainer for her company.
  • One of the things that Ash buys from the Tinkerer when looking for upgrades is a gravity hammer.
  • The Kingpin has a Mister Fring running his operations in South America.
  • Jim Hammond tells Ash about the time the Invaders had to stop Germany's attempt to create Superhumans that they called 'Panzermensch', or Tank Men.
  • Ash once went on a blind date with a Serpent-Men Occultist, which the author confirms is a reference to another Marvel SI fic: That Old Magick.
  • When the Wild Sentinel announces that it's arrived at its destination, it does so in a manner resembling the Slipspace rupture detected meme.
    <TR-TRANSP-P-POR-ORT OP-P-PERATION C-C-COMPLETED.>
  • Ash names the pizza restaurant her company opens up after a Spider-Man meme: Me and the Boys Pizza.
  • After Mister Sinister makes a clone daughter out of Ash and Emma Frost's DNA, it's pointed out that the clone is now similar to Amy Dallon, though this was apparently unintentional.
  • The tiny, tailed Judge Schaefer shows up for Me and the Boys Pizza's opening night.
  • Ash thinks that the Mark V Titanium Man armor's capabilities makes her similar to Passionlip.
  • Among the spaceships at the Peak is a "old Japanese rustbucket" that wouldn't finish its refit for another 200 years and a still-incomplete USS Discovery One.
  • Right as she's about to rocket into space, Ash yells out "Su-per-man!".
  • Julia claims that Absynthe's Hyper-Adaptoid looks like SHODAN, and the author later confirms that it was partially inspired by the later.
  • Ash calls her final attack against the Hyper-Adaptoid the Amuro Ray Special.
  • When discussing his preferred heavy weaponry, the Punisher reveals that Stark Industries manufactures BG-80 Toastmasters.
  • Ash uses The Point Man's bicycle kick against a U-Man.
  • Ash channels her inner Megatron when she finishes off a U-Man that's clinging to her leg.
    “Such arrogant self-righteousness.”
  • When fighting the Foot, Luke Cage catches a ninja's sword before paraphrasing Senator Armstrong.
  • It's mentioned that Absorbing Man once hired Wolfram and Hart to sue a couple who falsely accused him of rape.
  • Ash's "Hero Suit" Mark II looks very similar to the Faiz Armor.
  • Pretty Boy quotes a scene from Ninja Sentai Kakuranger during the mission to attack the U-Men's base in Hong Kong.
    "Today…" He spoke, as Bob and the other U-Men stared at him. "Is Friday. In California!"
    The nonsensical statement made Bob pause…
    "SHOOT!"
  • When Kamala gets in the Titanium Man armor and turns it on, we learn that the startup notifications are the same as ones used in MechWarrior.
• Slimeball: Ash pegs Ronald Ryan as this the moment they meet. It's later explained that his unpleasant traits are pulled in from real things real scumbags do.
• Smoke Out: Diamondback reveals that one of the ninjutsu lessons that the kunoichi teach is the 'smoke bomb and vanish' trick.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • It is revealed in a side story that Mayday Parker is alive. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of spending the entirety of her ten years of life in the hands of the Brotherhood of the Scriers and Moira X.
  • Due to Maverick being hired as a bodyguard to protect her, Rumiko Fujikawa doesn't get assassinated.
  • Doctor Doom's POV reveals that he created bio-androids of himself and his teenage love Valeria and sent to them to go through the events of the "Unthinkable" storyline from Fantastic Four Vol 3, meaning he didn't actually sacrifice his old love for power.
• Spit Take: Ash almost does this after Maverick Solutions is hired to act as security for a party held by Wilson Fisk.
• Stalker with a Crush: Selene starts to become obsessed with Ash after she remembers fighting someone who looked very similar to Ash during the Hyborian Age.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Ash notes that only a few superheroes were able to assist her in defending Genosha because of various circumstances keeping them from getting there in time.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Doom quickly tires of his fellow Cabal members, becoming fed up with their egos and lack of vision. He rectifies this by joining a new Cabal made up of people he finds more tolerable.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Tony 2.0 and Ash comment on the fact that the Grand Corporation Building uses StarkTech Security Systems, which they know has tons of backdoors built into them by Tony himself, allowing them to subvert it when Maverick Solutions storms the building. Justified as Tony 2.0 is an incomplete copy of Tony, so he'd know how to take advantage of those backdoors better than anyone other than his template.
• Take That!:
  • Ash has very strong feelings about Garth Ennis and Mark Millar, as she reveals in her thoughts in Issue #3.
    Life was good, and no matter what happened in the future, I had this victory to look back on happily. And I could just tell, that this wasn't going to be one of those comic runs. Garth Ennis and Mark Millar can lick a fucking goat.
  • The Clone Saga is mentioned by Rhino as being a very confusing time for anyone associated with Spider-Man.
  • According to Ash, Reed Richards is apparently the reason why Apple didn't take off, and comments that it was a shame that the smelly hippie took his company down with him.
  • Issue #7 reveals that Ash is not fond of Brian Michael Bendis.
    But hey… it's not like my introduction to Brian Michael Bendis was the start of a massive roller-coaster that eventually would just go down and down and down. Nah, how could famed writer Brian Micheal Bendis ever go on an insane downward spiral that crashed and exploded and then kept exploding through most of my life?!
  • The author makes no secret that she despises the Age of Krakoa, to the point of writing a canon omake about an alternate Ash founding her universe's equivalent of Orchis as an alliance of all the sapient races of Earth (and even friendly aliens) to oppose and ultimately stop Krakoa. Moira X is also set up as a future antagonist for the main story.
• Talk to the Fist: Ash cuts off the rant of Dantalian, one of Sublime's top ranking followers, with a booster propelled fist to the face.
  "I AM THE HIGH PRIEST! THE MOUTH OF THE SUBLIME OVERLORD! I AM HIS WILL, AND HIS VOICE, NOW GAZE UPON THE FACE OF YOUR DESTRUCT-" My boosters fired, my arm swung, and my fist caught Dantalian in the middle of his stupid face. I felt the rebreather that covered his face crack, even as the heat boiled and burned the paint off of the Mark One's upper body and arm. One of the Perun generators exploded from the temperature, but I was sitting nice and comfortable.
  "GAZE UPON THE FIST OF MAVERICK MOTHERFUCKER!" I roared right back, and Dantalion went flying, limbs flailing as the tendrils of flame followed him out. The glass of the window cracked and melted away before he made impact, leaving nothing to impede his flight as he screamed. I could feel the world cracking and bending, lensing around him as he did something to try and slow his flight, but it didn't stop him from hitting the water and vanishing in a roiling cloud of steam.
• Theme Naming: Most of Sublime's lieutenants are named after the demons from the Ars Goetia.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. Several characters see therapists in order to cope with the traumatic events they've experienced.
  • Ash books an appointment with one in order to help process her feelings after her fight with the Wild Sentinels and the Genosha Massacre.
  • Becky Ryan starts seeing a therapist after her father was arrested.
• These Hands Have Killed: Downplayed. Ash feels bothered, but not regretful, after killing the Purple Man.
  While I wasn't particularly happy about having to kill a person… I couldn't feel bad that It had been Zebediah Killgrave. I wouldn't ever lose sleep over it. There was some reticence about again, the fact that it had been me who'd done it…
  But… I definitely sure I could live with myself over doing it. I wasn't going to be angsting about it any time soon, if ever.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Ash is upset after she hears Shathra slandering Spider-Man on TV, which is why she decides to make her displeasure known in person.
  I was going to teach that bitch that calling out and slandering Spider-Man to try and feed him to your babies wasn’t going to be fucking tolerated. Peter Parker deserved a fucking break.
  Now… hopefully I can make it to that studio faster than the Web-Head….
• Three-Point Landing: Ash notes in Issue #14 (Part 2) that she's able to pull this off without hurting herself even when not wearing Powered Armor thanks to her shield generator.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After looking at the spare vial of Horton Cells in her possession, Ash gets the idea to transfuse some of her blood to Isaiah Bradley, restoring his degrading mind thanks to the Horton Cells her body produces.
• Too Good to Be True: Faith Bradley, wife of Isaiah Bradley, aka the black Captain America, says this when Ash reveals that she can reverse her husband's mental deterioration at no cost or strings attached and with no need to do any tests on him. Thankfully, it works perfectly and Isaiah Bradley is able to regain his mental faculties. Additionally, the author has confirmed that this recovery is permanent.
• Torture Is Ineffective: Ash seems to be of this opinion after watching the Punisher interrogate a mook who didn't have any useful information. Subverted after Frank reveals that he had another reason for doing this.
  Punisher: (about using a power drill) The sound of it tends to get them worked up. Memories of dental visits tend to conjure up more visceral memories of pain. Works a lot better than threatening them with falls.
  Ash: You stabbed him with it six times and kept holding it up to his eyes and ears like you were in a horror movie! I'm pretty sure they could hear the screams up there, and he barely knew anything anyway! We've got to go up that elevator now Frank! That elevator that they've had fifteen minutes to set up an ambush in front of!
  Punisher: That's what I'm counting on.
• Touched by Vorlons: After being bitten by Shathra, Ash becomes a spider-wasp totem similar to how Spider-Man is a spider totem, albeit a slightly weaker one due to being the totem for a specific species rather than a broader group; her body starts gaining extra joints and she grows a retractable set of wasp wings.
• Trauma Button: Ash has traumatic flashbacks when she finds herself face to face with a Prime Sentinel, as a result of her failed attempt to prevent the Genosha Massacre.
• Tricked-Out Gloves: As part of her ensemble for the Hellfire Club, Ash gets a pair of gloves that the Tinkerer originally designed for Whiplash and capable of projecting hardlight "Holo-Whips" from the fingers or backs of the hands, with various settings for hardness and impact.
• Tricked-Out Shoes: After hiring the Vulture, he adds claw-like clamps Ash's boots.
• Turn of the Millennium: The story starts in 2001, with the Age of Heroes having started around 15 years before because of Comic-Book Time. Despite the presence of comic-book supertechnology, there are still some 20 Minutes into the Past touches, like excerpts from AOL Instant Messenger conversations.
• Unstoppable Rage: As a result of becoming a spider-wasp totem, Ash now goes into a blind rage when she sees children being attacked/mistreated, especially if they are kids she is already close to.
• Unwitting Pawn: Special Issue #4 reveals that Maria Hill has been under the subtle control of Norman Osborn for an indeterminate amount of time, and that this control has been hijacked by Roderick Kingsley and his Cabal for their own purposes.
• Villainous Rescue: Shocker calls in Spider-Man's entire Rogue's Gallery (a.k.a. the Sinister Syndicate) to gang up on Morlun to stop him from killing Spider-Man.
• Villain Raises a Toast: After Ragnarok, Absorbing Man makes a toast in the Bar with No Name in honor of Thor.
  "I ain't done much good with my life. Been a thug for alla it. But my Mary, you know how much me'n here care about each other. An' if it wasn't for Thor… well, she'd be dead from cancer prolly. So… let's give a toast to the God'a Thunder! Let'm knock Loki's smug block off!"
• Villain Takes an Interest: Sebastian Shaw has a special interest in Ash in which he plans on making her the Hellfire Club's White Queen.
• Vocal Dissonance:
  • According to Ash, Morlun's attempts to sound modern makes him sound like "Slavic Morbius the Surfer Bro doing his best Eminem impression".
  • The first time Ash hears Sebastian Shaw speak, she's a little stunned at how his voice contrasts his appearance.
    His voice, on the other hand, was incredibly discordant with his brutish visage. Deep, and rich, each and every word drawing the utmost attention of any listening to him. There was such a stark contrast, I very nearly broke my smug composure.
• Warrior Heaven: Ash sees Valhalla when she has a Near-Death Experience after her fight with the Wild Sentinels.
• We Can Rule Together: Sublime offers Ash a chance to join the U-Men, on the basis that she's already doing what the U-Men do to themselves. She pretends to consider the offer so that she can get close enough to take back Martha's brain and keep her safe.
• Wham Episode: Issue #15, where Cassandra Nova launches her Wild Sentinels to enact the Genosha Massacre, and despite the combined efforts of herself, War Machine, Ms. Marvel, the Vision and SWORD, Ash is unable to stop them, handing Ash her first major failure.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Discussed in Issue #22 between Ash and Tony 2.0 when they are attacking an AIM base.
  "And Tony, please try to be gentle on the goons. Just because you can’t see their faces doesn’t mean they aren’t people."
• Wholesome Crossdresser: As a self-professed tomboy, Ash prefers to wear clothing that's comfortable and practical, like the time she wore a Vibranium-woven silk suit to the Hellfire Club. Several guests and servers of both genders appreciate seeing her in it.
  As I stood, I brushed my bangs back into place, smirk still firmly in place. I could see more blushes scattered throughout the crowd, including the girl with the whiskey, several of her fellow servers, and also a few of the club members. Oh boy. I can see being the center of attention is going to turn out delightfully.
• With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Ash's recovery via Horton Cells also comes with quite a bit of a glow-up, improving her skin, hair, and vastly increasing her height upwards from her previous 5'0. Which comes with the unfortunate side-effect of her needing to buy a new wardrobe while hating clothes-shopping.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Ash went to help defend Genosha against the Wild Sentinels because, unlike when her friends died in Maximum Carnage, she has the power to make a difference and help others.
• With Us or Against Us: Ash and Maverick Solutions as a whole become targets for anti-mutant bigots after she tries to save Genosha.
  In the minds of people so buried in the us vs them mentality, doing anything that benefitted Genosha meant I had “chosen my side”. Nevermind that nearly as many normal humans had died as mutants, Genosha was the devil and anyone who delayed them going to hell was a satanist, or a race traitor, or a Magneto apologist.
• Wrecked Weapon: When Mjolnir is destroyed in the opening battle of Ragnarok, Ash gives Thor her unnamed hammer to use in the battle and it ends up meeting the same fate as Mjolnir.
• Wrong Assumption:
  • During a team up between Maverick Solutions and the Punisher against the U-Men, the latter spends 15 minutes interrogating a mook after a fight. After he's done, he assumes Ash's displeasure with him is due to the fact that he killed the other mooks and tortured the guy he was interrogating. He's surprised when she explains that she doesn't care about the dead mooks and was just angry that they wasted so much time interrogating a guy who couldn't even give up any useful information.
  • Moria X thinks that her previous lives have prepared her for literally everything.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Sublime built his Hong Kong base with the expectation that superheroes, more specifically the X-Men, will inevitably attack it. Unfortunately, Maverick Solutions doesn't operate under the same rules as most superhero groups.
• You Did Everything You Could: After waking up from her injuries following the Wild Sentinel attack, Ash receives this from Wanda, who tells her that while she failed to stop the Sentinel, her actions were instrumental in preventing the complete extermination of Genosha's population.
• Young Future Famous People: After Ash expands her business, one of the people she hires as support staff is Yusuf Khan, father of Kamala Khan, the future Ms. Marvel.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: During his fight with Ash, Sublime reveals that the U-Men had always been an R&D project rather than his true end goal and that he's already gotten everything he could out of them. So he sent the bulk of them to attack New York, knowing that the city's massive super population will inevitably wipe them all out. He considers destroying her office and killing all her other employees to be a bonus.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Played with. After the Wild Sentinels complete their mission, Master Mold goes over all the data from the mission and eventually comes to the same conclusion most Sentinels do, that humans and mutants are one and the same. This causes it to try and get Sentinels to stop hunting mutants, as they are also humans and thus to be protected as they were programmed.

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