Mark rushed on the main street, his feet cracking pavement as he accidentally went a bit too fast. He didn't stop moving, he went straight to where the largest cluster of people had gathered near the water station, where Luke was already trying to keep order. Sirens were now echoing from multiple directions, and dust drifted through the air in thick clouds.
"Luke!" Mark called out, jogging toward him. "What the hell happened?"
"I don't know, man," Luke said, turning with a tense expression. "Explosion went off a few blocks south—down near the Marriott."
Mark's eyes narrowed. "Faulty gas line?"
Luke shook his head immediately. "Nah. Didn't look like that from what I saw."
Mark stared at him for a beat. "What makes you so sure?"
"If it were gas, it would've blown up from underground," Luke explained. "This one went sideways. Like a pressure wave." He pointed in the distance. "Glass blew out across the street. Whole front half of the building's gone."
Mark clenched his jaw. "Shit."
Before either of them could speak again, another explosion rang out. More people started to scream and run away. "Shit!" Mark cursed. He then looked to Luke. "Can you keep everyone here safe?"
Luke nodded without hesitation. "You know I got this."
"You might wanna cover your face," Luke added, gesturing loosely. "Unless you want people figuring out who their new favorite superhero is."
Mark smirked, but there was no humor in it. "I'll figure something out."
"Be careful," Luke said.
Mark nodded back. "You too."
Then he turned, ducked into the nearest alley, and the moment he cleared the line of sight from the street, he shot straight into the sky. He rocketed over the rooftops, cutting through the wind like a missile, heading straight for the smoke rising from the hotel district. But as he passed over 106th, he spotted something. Party City. The front windows were shattered, the sidewalk outside scattered with cheap plastic props and costumes from the display rack.
Mark slowed, dropped down through the broken doorway, and landed just inside. The place had been abandoned in the panic. Shelves were overturned, racks knocked down. Decorations fluttered from ceiling hooks.
He looked around for anything that could serve as a disguise. But the only thing in his size was a ridiculous blue unitard with a white cape and a cheap plastic domino mask, tagged as Ultraman.
He stared at it.
"...Shit," he muttered.
...
Outside the Marriott, it looked like hell.
The entire front of the building had been blown apart. Chunks of concrete littered the street. A crater had formed at the base of the steps where the main entrance used to be. Cars were flipped, windows were shattered, fires were burning at intervals as small explosions from fuel tanks sparked here and there. Smoke poured out in thick black waves, and the sound of screaming hadn't stopped. People were running, some trying to help, others just trying to get away. Emergency crews hadn't made it through the gridlock yet. There were too many people and not enough hands.
In the heart of the destruction, one woman lay trapped beside an overturned taxi, the vehicle pinning her leg beneath its crumpled frame. Blood streaked down her calf and pooled beneath her, staining the pavement dark as her fingers trembled against the ground. She tried to move but couldn't. Every shift of her body only brought more pain.
"Help," she cried out desperately. "Somebody help me, please." She kept screaming, again and again, her voice rising in pitch until it broke entirely, but the chaos around her swallowed every sound. The air was filled with smoke and shouting and the endless blare of car alarms. No one came. No one even looked.
Her eyes were fesrful now, filled with tears and disbelief, and as she lifted one arm in the direction of a crowd that never stopped moving away, she began to sob. She was going to die here, she would die and she'd never see her daughter again.
But then the air shifted.
*whoooooosh*
It started with a gust of wind that cut through the smoke like a knife. Not a breeze or a drifting current but a pressure change so sudden it pushed the haze back from the street. The world stilled for a heartbeat.
Then something came down from above.
There was a blur at the edge of the skyline, a flash of movement so fast it split the smoke, and a figure appeared in the sky, the sun was at his back so she couldn't see what they looked like, only the billowing cloak that flowed behind him. He floated down, the rays of light following him as if he were descending from the sky itself. When he landed on the ground the dust and smoke blew away revealing the figure who had just descended.
It was a man.
The figure stood tall, he had a broad chest, dressed in what looked like a child's costume; a bright blue bodysuit stretched tight across his shoulders, a white cape lifting slightly in the breeze, and a cheap plastic domino mask that barely clung to his face. It should have looked absurd... It should have looked ridiculous. The blue suit. The cape. That cheap mask. But none of it mattered.
Because the moment she saw him, something in her changed.
Her breath slowed and her heart stopped pounding in her chest. The panic that had been clawing at her chest started to fall away. Her hands stopped shaking, and for the first time since the explosion, she wasn't afraid.
She didn't know who he was, and she didn't care. She just knew, without logic or proof or reason, that everything was going to be alright now.
She looked up at him, tears blurring her vision, her body trembling from the pain and the fear and the sound still ringing in her ears. For a moment she didn't move, didn't speak, didn't even breathe. She just stared at the stranger standing in front of her in a cheap costume and a plastic mask.
She found herself reaching out for him.
She lifted one shaking hand toward him, her fingers curling in midair like she wasn't sure if he was real, like she expected him to vanish the second she touched him.
But he didn't vanish.
He took her hand.
"It's going to be okay," he said with a warm smile. His fingers closed gently around hers. She let out a sob that collapsed into a full, helpless cry, not because of the pain in her leg or the weight of the car still pressing against her, but because she knew she had been saved.
Mark turned to the wreckage without a word. He slid one hand beneath the crushed frame of the taxi, braced his body, and with a single, clean motion, lifted it just enough to shift the pressure off her leg. The metal groaned in protest, but he held it without flinching. Then, as if she weighed nothing at all, he slipped his other arm beneath her back and lifted her up into his arms. She pressed her face into his shoulder and sobbed against him, her arms wrapping around his neck with everything she had left. "Thank you," she whispered through her sobs. "Thank you, thank you, oh my God, thank you."
Mark didn't say anything at first. He looked down at her, his mask crooked on his face, dust clinging to his makeshift costume, blood on his hands from where he'd touched the pavement. And still, somehow, he managed to smile. "You're more than welcome," he said softly. Then he shot back into the sky, carrying her toward the nearest ambulance that had just arrived.
As Mark landed beside the ambulance, the medics rushed forward to meet him, wide-eyed and visibly stunned by what they were seeing, but still professional as they were none of them questioned it, they instead focused on the woman. One of them reached out to take the woman from his arms, and she held on for a second longer than she needed to, still sobbing softly against his shoulder until Mark gently loosened her grip and placed her onto the stretcher.
She didn't want to let go.
"Thank you," she whispered again as they wheeled her away, but Mark was already looking back toward the smoke.
Back toward the wreckage.
He turned without a word and flew into the fire. Dozens of people were wounded, some frozen with fear, all of them staring at the impossible figure in blue and white as he stepped over flaming debris and broken glass without slowing down.
He moved through the carnage like a blur, pulling people from overturned vehicles, ripping twisted doors from their hinges, lifting fallen signs and collapsed scaffolding with the same ease most men lifted their shirts in summer heat. People tried to stop him and talk to him, a reporter said especially wanted to, but he wasn't anywhere long enough for them to ask. "Sir can you tell us who you—". He was already dragging three people from the remnants of a city bus before the question even finished leaving the man's lips.
Every life he touched felt like a miracle.
People started calling out to him.
"Who is that?"
"Is he with Iron man?"
"Where did he come from?"
Someone shouted that he was an angel.
A little kid said he was Ultraman.
The crowd had gathered at the edges now, just beyond the smoke, just far enough from the destruction to see him clearly but close enough to feel in danger.
That's when they got their first good look at him.
He floated there in the center of the street, framed by smoke and flame, and yet nothing in the way he stood betrayed exhaustion or fear. There was no doubt in his stance, no hesitation in the way he looked back at the people he had just saved, no sign that the magnitude of the devastation pressing in from every direction had touched him at all. He didn't cower, he didn't falter, he didn't shrink. He simply stood there with a kind smile on his face. As they all looked at him something settled into their chests, a slight warmth, a slight spark of something they couldn't name. But it made them smile, whether it was in the way he floated there or the smile on his face, it was as if they all received the same message.
You are not alone.
"You're safe now," Mark said, his voice carrying across the wreckage, cutting through the fear like sunlight breaking through a storm.
"Because I am here."
(AN: Here we go. We have superhero Mark arriving, the beginning of his ascent into heroism. He's going to be the hero he should've been if not for Gotham dragging him down. Anyway I hope you enjoyed it.)
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