Chapter 147: Hell's Kitchen Shocks the World
"Viewers, viewers — this is BCC. I'm Alice, and I am currently airborne above Hell's Kitchen, bringing you coverage that has never been attempted before."
Alice's voice had developed a slight tremor. She was doing her best to control it and only partially succeeding.
The helicopter was keeping its distance — well back from the center of the action, circling the neighborhood's edge with the caution of a pilot who had looked at what was directly below them and made certain professional decisions about proximity.
What was directly below them was Ethan, Carol Danvers, and Ikaris, and the shockwaves from that particular engagement had already forced two altitude corrections.
Through the long-lens camera, the broadcast caught everything else.
Storm's lightning and Wanda's chaos magic were trading exchanges over Fisk Tower — each collision producing a sound that rolled across the neighborhood like distant artillery.
The Thing and Sandman were somewhere in the mid-blocks, and the sandstorm they'd generated between them had reduced visibility in that area to near zero.
Human Torch and Vongola Primo had found each other, and the result was a column of competing flame visible from across the East River. Primo's dying will sky flame burned gold against Johnny's orange, and neither was giving ground.
Near the school, something that looked remarkably like Captain America was working alongside the Hulk against a man who appeared to have turned entirely to diamond.
Doc Ock had re-entered the ground fight, his new arms moving through federal soldiers with the precision of someone who had spent several days thinking about nothing but mechanics and had arrived at some productive conclusions.
And above all of it, the brightest thing in the sky — Ethan's Ultra Instinct aura, white and total, moving through Carol and Ikaris like they were a problem he was finishing.
The worldwide stream was not handling any of this well.
We are NOT watching a movie right now. We cannot be watching a movie right now. I need someone to confirm reality.
Is that Captain America?? Captain America has been dead for decades. This is definitely a film.
Mom asked why I'm watching TV on my knees.
Why does the government have so many secrets about how many powered people exist?!
Why are so many of the super-powered people on HELL'S KITCHEN'S side? Aren't they supposed to be helping the government?
If this many powered individuals are protecting that neighborhood, maybe — and I'm just saying — maybe there's something we don't know?
This is why the government wants them gone. It has nothing to do with crime. They just can't control it.
Super-powered people belong to [nation]! It's unfair that Hell's Kitchen has all of them!
If I move to Hell's Kitchen, do I get powers?
The comment about "something we don't know" was getting more traction than the people who had organized tonight's viewing parties had anticipated.
Alice was composing herself after the third turbulence event when her pilot shouted something.
She looked forward.
Carol Danvers — hit cleanly, decisively, all at once — was falling.
The falling trajectory intersected with the helicopter.
The rotor took the impact. The sound it made was not a good sound. The helicopter stopped being a helicopter in the controlled sense and began being a helicopter in the catastrophic sense, tilting and dropping and spinning at an angle that Alice's body understood was terminal before her mind caught up.
She had approximately two seconds of pure, wordless terror.
Then something caught her.
Both arms, warm, completely solid — and the freefall stopped. Just stopped. Like being caught by a building that had decided to be gentle about it.
She opened her eyes.
White light. The smell of ozone. A face she recognized from approximately one hundred hours of broadcast footage, looking at her with the expression of someone who had interrupted something important to deal with something more important.
"Get out of the airspace," Ethan said. Not unkindly, but very clearly. "This is a dangerous place to be right now. Go."
He set her down on a rooftop.
Then he was gone — back into the sky, already moving toward something else.
Alice stood on the rooftop and watched him diminish into the light above.
Her face was doing something she was not entirely in control of.
He's very— she thought, and stopped herself. No. Alice. Professional standards. He is a criminal overlord. He is a ten-most-wanted situation. He is absolutely not—
She thought about the warmth of the catch. The "get out of here" that had sounded, genuinely, like it was concerned for her specifically.
He's probably like this with everyone, she told herself firmly. This doesn't mean anything.
She believed about half of that.
She picked up her camera, which had somehow survived, and started filming the rooftop view. The least she could do was do her job.
She had a feeling this broadcast was going to define her career.
Ethan had already cleared the helicopter situation from his attention before he landed the catch. It had been peripheral — he'd seen it happening and handled it because letting the woman die was not something he was going to do.
What had his full attention was the signature he'd felt shift in the last thirty seconds.
Jean Grey.
He'd been tracking that particular frequency since the fight started — not because he expected it to move, but because he knew what it meant if it did. The Phoenix Force didn't announce itself gently. It built, and then it arrived, and the window between those two states was small.
The window was currently small.
What happened over there, he thought, already moving toward it at speed. Wanda, what did you do.
He didn't know yet. He'd find out when he got there.
If Jean lost control in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, with this many people on the ground and this much already burning—
He pushed harder.
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