There was an underworld emperor in New York, a man whose ears were pressed against almost every criminal racket on the East Coast, including the local gang that had held up Stan's fast-food truck.
On the night it happened, the golden statue of Toby was already sitting in that emperor's office.
The Haitian crew's boss was curled up on a sofa, sniffling like an anxious suburban mom, yet his greedy eyes kept sliding back to the statue. He was Toby's boss, the "victim's" boss, and it was him who'd dragged a pack of his mule goons back to the scene and hauled the statue away.
Damn it. A full-grown man—Toby's sorry ass was seven feet tall and close to two hundred pounds, a huge black guy—turned into a solid-gold statue. The moment it happened, every one of those guys' eyes practically lit up. The statue had to weigh a ton and a half. It was worth so much it felt like you could buy half of New York with it. It was stupidly, obscenely valuable.
Anybody with a working brain would think about hiding it.
And when the Haitian boss looked at the brothers who'd bled beside him, his murder itch flared up so hard it was almost comical. Sure, you can share the bad times. But nobody shares a winning lottery ticket. For my bright future, boys… please go ahead and die.
A gold statue entering the criminal ecosystem was enough to trigger an earthquake. It could wipe out multiple major crews, put thousands in the hospital or the ground. You could already picture it: street violence, shootouts, ambushes and assassinations ripping through the city like a hurricane, the whole underworld getting reshuffled overnight.
But the statue was here. Quiet. Still. Almost polite.
The few thugs who'd robbed the food truck stood in front of the desk, trembling like kids called into the principal's office. The difference was, kids had parents to save them. These men had only one thing left to pay with.
The chair behind the desk faced the window. Manhattan's night skyline looked like a black wasteland studded with a thousand glowing trees, and people were just meerkats weaving through the brush.
"A cook running a food truck… and he can turn people into gold?" the man in the chair asked. "Who the hell is he?"
The chair slowly turned, creaking like it was about to give up on life. A big, thick, heavyset white man came into view, built like a wall. His head looked like a Kodiak brown bear's, and his eyes had a tiger's cold focus.
He was the Kingpin. A single name that made the Haitian boss obediently deliver a priceless gold statue right to his doorstep.
Kingpin rose, stepped around the desk, and stopped in front of the statue. He ran one huge hand across it, kneading the pure gold like it was rubber.
"Hair. Body. Clothes. All of it turned to gold." He plucked a few golden hairs from Toby's forearm; golden dust shook loose. Just that little sprinkle was enough to buy a house in the suburbs. "This is a living man."
Then he yanked off a finger.
A beat later, the severed end began to grow back, slowly, as if the statue itself was healing.
"This is a vicious superpowered person," Kingpin concluded. "He's punishing his enemy."
"Punishing?" the Haitian boss blurted. "Toby's already dead!"
"No." Kingpin's voice stayed calm. "He's alive. And he can feel everything. That superpowered person is using people's greed. He wants someone to hurt the statue, so Toby experiences pain. He can't eat, can't drink, can't move. Maybe he can't even sleep. That's not a death. That's torture."
The room went cold. Every man there felt a chill crawl down his spine.
Kingpin set the torn-off finger segment on his desk. "I'm going to meet him. You go home."
"And Toby?" the Haitian boss asked, too fast.
"Leave him here." Kingpin tilted his head slightly. Tiger-eyes flashed in the dim. "No one touches him."
Before the last word fully landed, alarms screamed.
The lights snapped off. The entire building lost power. In the dark came gunshots and the wet, ugly sounds of bodies colliding.
Kingpin didn't even get a full breath to react before the glass behind him exploded inward.
A intruder crashed through the window with a bow in hand, night-vision goggles strapped over their face. Special shock arrows fired in rapid succession, each arrowhead unfolding on impact into an arc-emitter node. The nodes responded to each other, linking up, surging.
A woven electric net detonated across the office.
Kingpin, with his freakish durability, forced himself to stay upright through it. Everyone else hit the floor unconscious.
"Hmph." Kingpin lunged into the darkness to fight.
Even with his muscles spasming from the current, his strength was obscene. The archer barely dodged a brutal Spartan kick; the office's solid-wood desk—easily a ton—went flying out of the shattered window from the impact.
The archer refused to get pulled into close combat, retreating again and again, but Kingpin's bulky frame moved with shocking speed. He kept herding the intruder into corners, stealing angles, choking off the space needed to draw the bow.
They traded blows for nearly half a minute.
The intruder's back finally met a wall.
Kingpin's mouth curled into a savage grin, like he was about to give a mouse the most enthusiastic wall-slam of its life.
Boom!
The office door blew inward.
Kingpin's attention flicked for a fraction of a second—long enough.
He realized it too late. At the same time, an arrow punched into his left arm. A vicious surge blasted through muscle and tendon, racing for his heart and lungs. He convulsed and dropped to one knee, forced to watch as the intruder hauled the golden statue away.
From somewhere near the ruined doorway, the archer's partner joked, "You were a little slow. That's not your style. Huh… you're hurt?"
A hoarse female voice answered, flat and rough. "Ran into someone annoying. It's handled."
A helicopter hovered outside the building. A cable dropped, hooked around the golden statue. The intruder jumped into the chopper, and the priceless living statue lifted into the night and vanished.
Kingpin stared across the wreckage of his office, his "court" in ruins, and in the darkness he mocked himself silently.
That was the world. Big fish ate little fish. Little fish ate shrimp. And if one day you found out you were the one being eaten… you swallowed it. You lost. Fair and square.
The next day, the spot where the food truck parked had two new customers.
Kingpin, in a tailored suit, stood in line with a surprisingly polite expression. Behind him was a bald, one-eyed black man wearing a single eyepatch.
Two bald heads together radiated enough invisible menace that people around them unconsciously left a three-foot buffer.
They noticed each other. The vibe got awkward. They nodded once, then said nothing.
Right on schedule, the food truck rolled in.
Like something out of an old feel-good American food-truck movie, it was a boxy van that transformed for service: one side lifted into an awning, fold-out counter boards extended for people to eat at, and the kitchen and register were crammed into the narrow interior.
People whistled when it arrived.
New Yorkers were ready to greet the high-energy, sunshine-bright big-eater girl, Gali.
But today there was no Gali.
No grinning face behind the counter. No performance. It felt like a friend who'd promised to show up—and didn't.
Behind the counter stood an Asian-American boy who looked underage, dressed neatly, polite as a choir kid. Instead of doing eating stunts, he idly shuffled a deck of cards.
"Hey, kid," someone called. "Where'd Gali go?"
"She quit," Skyl said. "And the food truck is shutting down soon. Consider this official notice: a week from now, you won't need to gather here anymore."
A wave of disappointed groans rolled through the line.
Skyl apologized, urging them to find new restaurants.
"The truck's closing? Who's gonna keep me alive nutrition-wise?" a high schooler whined, on the verge of tears.
In the back, the kitchen was run by Gally—Gally the house-elf.
Skyl handled the front: taking orders, making change, using little magic tricks to pull in customers, dealing with emergencies, and handling whatever petty cruelty decided to show up that day.
People tried to dine-and-dash. Pickpockets came through. Line-cutters, fistfights, drama after drama. New York was a magical place—live here two days and you'd see every kind of human comedy.
The line crept forward. Some guy slurping noodles was still trying to ask about Gali when a massive hand clamped down on his shoulder.
"Kid, you done eating?" a deep voice rumbled. "Then move. I'm still hungry. Been hungry all day."
Skyl wasn't surprised to see Kingpin. He smiled and handed over a menu.
The thick menu looked like a child's handwriting workbook in Kingpin's hands. He read for a moment, then ordered fried pork cutlet over rice, dine-in.
Kingpin took up half the available space. His presence was so predatory people didn't dare sit near him—except the one-eyed man, who dropped into the seat beside him like he didn't care about fear at all.
One black, one white—like two goalkeepers guarding the counter—made the tiny dining space feel packed. Everyone behind them quietly switched to takeout, carefully collecting food through the service window.
The one-eyed man ordered filet mignon, cooked medium.
They glanced at each other once.
Neither spoke first.
Their food arrived, and they ate.
It was obvious both of them wanted a private talk with Skyl. So after finishing, they ordered again. And again.
Skyl laughed and told the crowd two champion eaters had shown up.
From 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.—three full hours—Kingpin and the one-eyed man kept ordering. The longer it went, the slower they ate. Their bellies swelled. Their faces twisted into grim, stubborn misery.
The surrounding customers' awe climbed with every empty plate stacked by their hands.
At the end, Kingpin and the one-eyed man locked eyes and silently acknowledged each other's appetite.
But Kingpin edged out the win.
He forced down one extra fragrant plum-apple pie, jam spilling at the cuts.
He stood up swaying, and when he spoke his breath smelled like oil and rich food.
"Young man," he said, "thank you for the hospitality. This should cover it. And pay for my friend beside me as well."
Kingpin placed a chunk of a finger on the counter—torn straight from the golden statue.
Skyl smiled faintly, then called out to the remaining customers, "We're closed! We're closed! Go on home!"
The truck shut down for the day. Kingpin and the one-eyed man waited off to the side.
Skyl carried down a crate of fresh bread, bought a bottle of Coke from a vending machine, drank deep, wiped sweat off his forehead, and smiled at Kingpin.
"Disappointed?" Skyl asked. "You thought I was the kind of superpowered maniac who ignores the law and looks down on everyone, didn't you?"
Kingpin went quiet for a moment, then extended a hand.
"We can work together."
"No. You can't," the one-eyed man cut in, stepping forward.
He clearly wasn't interested in playing nice, and interrupting Kingpin like that was a deliberate humiliation.
But he had the right.
Because he was Nick Fury—the famous motherfucker.
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