Felicia Hardy: The Black Cat #4
Against the Night
The Black Cat wakes up atop of a building spire after being struck by a drugged arrow by a disgruntled thief named Scar the Stalker. She wakes up just as the fabric of her costume rips under her weight and manages to prevent herself from a fatal fall. She figures Scar -- aka Brian Lash -- was still upset with her after their Liberty Armored car job they did a while back. Regaining her wits, she realizes that the spire she was left on was the same one she was on when she contacted her ally Loop, Brain's father. She recalls how she went to the home of Paul Proust shortly thereafter when she was attacked by Scar. That's when she notices Paul's wallet was left on the rooftop for her, and she realizes that Lash is trying to bait her.
She is intent on stopping Scar and rescuing Proust and travels across the city to the warehouse owned by Liberty Armored cars as that seems like the most likely place that Scar would have taken him. Arriving there, she thinks about what led to his desire for revenge. It was a few years back when they were robbing a Liberty Armored car.[1] When he was about to kill a security guard who could identify them, he slashes his face. The job went sour and Lash ended up running from the authorities only to be struck by a subway train that let him in a coma until recently.[2]
When she lands in the parking lot, the armored trucks suddenly start-up and being racing toward her. Thanks to her agility, the Black Cat manages to leap out of harm's way. That's when Scar makes his presence on the roof known by hanging Paul Proust over the edge, daring her to come up and rescue Paul. She rushes into the building and evades various traps to get up the upper floor of the building. There she finds Scar in the head office, where he tosses Paul out of a nearby window. When Felicia tries to leap after him, Scar stops her. As she struggles to get free, Scar prevents her from saving Proust. Although she fears the worst, she discovers that Paul is still alive because Spider-Man had arrived on the scene and saved his life. With Paul safe, the Black Cat lashes out at Scar, incapacitating him. She is about ready to kill Scar, when Spider-Man tells her to stop. She questions why she should do this, pointing out that sparing his foes has never worked out well for Spider-Man. That's when Paul Proust enters the room and tells her not to do it either. He explains that her theory that he was chimera was correct. That he hired her to be his unofficial bodyguard for the sole purpose of her discovering Project: First Strike and stopping it. He also manipulated Spider-Man by activating the spider-tracer he lifted off the Black Cat when they first met. Felicia is upset that he manipulated her but quickly gets over it as they talked her out of making a terrible mistake. Spider-Man leaves, while the Black Cat contains Scar in a vault for the authorities.
A week later, Loop has used his hacking skills to help the Black Cat on her current mission, to break into the New York Stock Exchange. After incapacitating the guards and programming something into the computers, she leaves without taking a thing. The next morning when trading opens, stockbrokers are surprised when the computer screens display the logo for something called Cat's Eye Investigations. At their new office, Felicia Hardy, Paul Proust, and Loop have all come together to start a new security consulting company, and this stunt was just the start in trying secure contracts with high profile clients.
Recurring Characters
Black Cat, Spider-Man, Scar, Paul Proust, Loop
Continuity Notes
This flashback happens after the events of Amazing Spider-Man #195. As such, per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616, this flashback occurred roughly four years prior to this story.
Brian Lash woke up from his coma in Felicia Hardy: The Black Cat #1.
