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New York.
The disaster capital of the Marvel Universe.
Looking across the history of global comics and animation, perhaps only Tokyo—the city most beloved by invading giant monsters—could rival New York in the sheer number of catastrophes it had endured.
Maybe it had even surpassed it.
Unlike the superheroes of the DC universe, where each hero generally guarded a clearly defined territory—even if those territories happened to be fictional cities—the Marvel world operated differently.
Most Marvel heroes and villains were concentrated in New York City.
Or, at the very least, somewhere within the greater New York metropolitan area.
This inevitably created absurd situations.
Gunfire and police shootouts might erupt on one street while the superheroes on the next block somehow became blind and deaf to everything happening nearby.
Because if everyone truly acted as diligently as they should, a simple fact would become obvious:
Given New York's superhero density per square meter, not only would supervillains struggle to survive—even ordinary thieves wouldn't stand a chance.
Imagine a shoplifter committing a routine five-finger discount.
No gun.
No violence.
He runs out the store entrance—
Only to find Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Defenders standing shoulder to shoulder.
Meanwhile, the X-Men's Blackbird jet is preparing to land nearby.
The poor thief would probably think:
Is all this really necessary?
If the Punisher happened to arrive as well, perhaps Civil War would start years early.
The factions advocating legal justice and absolute extermination of criminals would immediately begin fighting each other.
And somehow the shoplifter would escape.
---
Fortunately, New York in 1999 had not yet reached the stage where superheroes crowded every corner.
The Sentry—once praised by the media and hailed as a "superhero"—had already been erased from everyone's memory.
The nearest extraordinary force protecting the region consisted solely of the X-Men, hidden away within the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester County.
Of course, most people didn't know that.
Even within the U.S. government, only a handful of individuals were aware.
The President himself remained in the dark.
To the public, the school was simply an invitation-only boarding institution for special students.
The fact that such secrecy could be maintained so completely made Professor Xavier's public claims—that he rarely interfered with people's minds—seem almost charmingly naïve.
The most frightening form of manipulation was never deleting someone's thoughts and replacing them with new ones.
That approach was crude.
Far more effective was gradual influence.
A slow, unnoticed change.
Like boiling a frog in warm water.
Whether Xavier had ever done such things or not, American society had previously improved in remarkably gentle ways.
And if he had?
Then an uncomfortable question inevitably arose:
If evil methods produced good results, could those methods be tolerated?
The scales of morality had always struggled with that dilemma.
---
Regardless of the truth, the excellent reputation the X-Men once enjoyed among the public suffered a dramatic decline after the school was renamed the Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters, Mystique became principal, and Professor Xavier was effectively retired.
Public admiration rapidly transformed into indifference.
In some cases, outright hostility.
The organization increasingly demanded special treatment and rights for mutants while appearing unwilling to accept corresponding responsibilities.
That wasn't even mentioning mutant-related crimes.
Whenever the X-Men were called in, the incidents would indeed be resolved.
The criminals, however, often seemed to disappear afterward.
Quietly.
Conveniently.
This obvious favoritism left the U.S. government wondering how the modern X-Men differed from Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants.
Mutual dissatisfaction steadily accumulated.
Before matters could descend completely into extremism, Mystique—Raven Darkhölme—and Beast—Hank McCoy—left the X-Men.
The school reverted to its original name.
Professor Xavier returned as principal.
Unfortunately, trust once broken is not easily rebuilt.
The direct hotline from the President's office still sat on the principal's desk.
But the line had been disconnected for a very long time.
Now sixty years old, Xavier was no longer the arrogant, impulsive man who believed himself capable of controlling everything.
He continued working to repair relations between mutants and ordinary humans.
He continued trying to reduce conflict.
But some things could never be restored.
---
Throughout American society, racial prejudice was changing.
After years of effort by African Americans and the influence of progressive activists, discrimination gradually shifted away from skin color.
People simply found a new target.
Mutants.
Removing prejudice from human nature was difficult.
Redirecting it elsewhere was far easier.
And much faster.
As a result, the idea of the "mutant threat" began gaining traction.
Newspapers and television increasingly focused on mutant-related crimes.
It appeared that Henry's ability to hide behind the excuse of "mutant powers" would soon lose much of its usefulness.
Of course, the primary victims of discrimination remained mutants whose appearances differed visibly from normal humans.
Someone like Henry, who looked completely ordinary, was another matter.
As long as he avoided demonstrating his bulletproof body by standing in front of gunfire, few people would identify him as a mutant at first glance.
---
As Earth's long-standing leader across numerous financial metrics, New York remained the unquestioned capital of wealth and excess.
Wall Street's notorious reputation had done nothing to diminish its attraction.
Countless people still flocked there in pursuit of fortune.
Compared to the sums involved in Wall Street insider trading, ordinary mutant crime seemed almost insignificant.
A single illegal financial transaction might involve more money than a mutant shoplifter could steal in a lifetime.
Combined with the protection provided by the NYPD, arguably the wealthiest municipal police force in the world, Manhattan's overall security remained quite good.
After all, wealthy people tended to value their lives.
They had no intention of living in constant danger.
There was one notable exception.
The region stretching from 34th Street to 59th Street, from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River.
Officially, it was known as Clinton.
More commonly, however, people called it:
Hell's Kitchen.
---
Hell's Kitchen existed even in Henry's original world.
It wasn't unique to Marvel.
The only major difference was that his previous world lacked figures like the Kingpin and Daredevil.
As a result, areas similar to Hell's Kitchen had largely been cleaned up over time.
Much like Hong Kong's former Kowloon Walled City.
The chaos of Hell's Kitchen had deep historical roots.
During the nineteenth century, the Irish Potato Famine drove massive waves of Irish immigrants to New York.
Poor and working-class Irish Americans eventually concentrated in Hell's Kitchen.
Organized crime flourished.
Property values remained lower than elsewhere in Manhattan.
As for successful Irish Americans?
Those with the means to leave generally did exactly that.
The people who remained were the struggling lower classes.
To real-estate developers, Hell's Kitchen represented prime territory.
Just like Central Park.
The difference was that nobody could touch Central Park.
Hell's Kitchen, on the other hand, remained available for manipulation.
Where gangs and land values intersected, disorder inevitably followed.
America was no exception.
Yet in a universe where extraordinary individuals genuinely existed, Hell's Kitchen had never vanished like Kowloon Walled City.
Instead, it remained embedded in Manhattan like a rusted nail.
A glaring imperfection in one of the most valuable pieces of land on Earth.
Beneath Manhattan's glamorous surface lurked darkness far deeper than most people imagined.
---
When Henry had visited New York previously, he had done so as Audrey Hepburn's assistant.
His activities had largely been limited to the area surrounding United Nations Headquarters and nearby hotels.
He had never truly understood the city.
Now, viewing New York through different eyes, he found many of his assumptions overturned.
To put it simply:
Some people undoubtedly rode the American Dream into the clouds.
But perhaps even more people became the anonymous bones buried beneath it.
As Henry walked through Central Park, supporting Katherine Hepburn during her daily exercise, he found himself considering an important question:
How exactly was he supposed to live in this city?
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