Steve Rogers fell from a height of thirty meters.
His boots shattered a patch of basalt.
The impact sent shards of glass flying within a half-meter radius.
He landed on one knee, his left hand bracing against the edge of his shield to steady himself.
His rise was clean and swift.
His blue uniform was perfectly wrinkle-free.
His shield folded in front of him, the Stars and Stripes gleaming coldly blue under the spotlights of the three fighter jets.
Ron stood in the center of the ruins.
Beneath his feet lay charred marble and cooled basalt.
His white cloak billowed in the swirling air from the rotor blades, the words "Justice" gleaming black in the bright light.
Steve scanned the area.
Melted-through floorboards.
Shattered exoskeleton armor remnants.
The charred ruins of a bar counter.
A two-meter-long trail of blood—Kingpin's.
The trail ended at a clean marble floor.
No body.
Nobody.
The trail ended there.
Steve's gaze returned to Ron.
"What happened here?"
Ron didn't move.
"Trial." Steve took a step forward.
His boots clattered on the broken glass.
His gaze fell on the spot where the bloodstains disappeared—a ring of dark red scorch marks remained on the ground.
Circular, 1.2 meters in diameter.
The size perfectly matched the vortex that had appeared beneath Ron's feet.
"You dragged someone into...that thing?"
"A criminal with 147 counts." Ron's right hand hung at his side, the temperature of his fingertips returning to normal.
"Murder, ordering murder, drug distribution, human trafficking, laundering three billion dollars, bribing a federal judge. The law has kept him alive for twenty years, not a hair on his head."
Steve didn't reply.
His steps stopped two meters in front of the bloodstains.
The lower edge of his shield rested against his left knee, a standard alert stance—not an attack, but an assessment. "What's your name?"
"Ron Stern. Judge of the Hell's Kitchen District, New York Supreme Court." Steve's right foot stepped slightly outward.
A judge.
Ron saw that subtle movement.
Captain America wasn't afraid of lava.
What he feared was the "judge."
"Fisk has legitimate legal channels."
Steve began.
Ron scoffed.
"Legitimate legal channels? Judge Mickelson took his money and shielded him from three years of prosecution. Ben Urick put his crimes on the front page—he was poisoned in his home eight hours later. The autopsy report said 'heart disease.'"
He took a step forward.
"Fisk's protection goes straight to the World Security Council. Do you know what that means?"
"It means he can bribe judges, assassinate journalists, and clear all 147 counts in court."
"Then you uniformed men stand upstairs, waiting for 'due process' to send him to jail."
Ron paused.
"He'll never go to jail. You know that."
Steve didn't back down.
He didn't argue either.
Three seconds.
"So your 'trial' is the alternative?"
"One person decides who's guilty, who's innocent, who disappears?"
"Today it's Fisk. Tomorrow? Whoever you disagree with disappears?"
Ron stopped.
The distance between them shrank to four meters.
"Captain Rogers. You slept in the ice for seventy years. After you woke up, how many battles did you fight for S.H.I.E.L.D."
Steve didn't answer.
"How many people did you arrest?"
Silence.
"Are all those people you arrested still in jail?" The night wind rushed in through the broken French windows.
It ruffled the hems of their clothes.
Steve's left hand tightened on the grip on the back of his shield.
He thought of Loki.
He thought of the remnants of Hydra.
He thought of those who were sent to jail and then "accidentally transferred" or "released due to procedural issues."
He didn't speak.
"No one has the right to be an extrajudicial judge."
Steve only said this much in the end.
"When the law itself is in the hands of criminals—" Ron stared at him.
"The law is no longer the law."
The megaphone blared again.
"This is an ultimatum. Drop your weapons in ten seconds, or—" Ron didn't even turn his head.
Steve raised his shield.
Not to charge.
He took two steps to the side, positioning himself between Ron and Jessica behind him.
The shield faced Ron.
Defensive stance.
"You can leave." Steve's voice lowered by half an octave.
"But the person you took—I need to know where he is. Whether he's still alive." Ron raised his right hand.
A dark red light seeped from between his fingers.
Orange-red.
Not white.
He was controlling the output.
"He's in a place more secure than any of your prisons. He won't die." The magma light shone on Ron's chin, drawing a hard line. "But he'll never come out." Steve's shield tilted forward three degrees. He took a step. Ron moved. Right fist. Armament Haki covered his entire forearm. Not at full strength—not even half. The fist struck the center of the vibranium shield. The sound wasn't the crisp clang of metal clashing—it was a muffled "hum." The vibranium's molecular array absorbed all the physical impact the instant of contact. No recoil. No sparks. The shield remained motionless. But Steve's feet slid half a meter back on the ground. Two white tracks were ripped into the marble floor by the soles of his boots. —Because the impact wasn't physical. The shockwave seeped from the fist into the shield's surface, through the vibranium's molecular structure. Those perfect molecular arrangements designed to absorb all impacts were meaningless against the shockwave. The shockwave ignored materials. It reached Steve's left arm. The super-soldier serum-enhanced skeleton withstood the impact.
It didn't break.
But his forearm twitched uncontrollably.
The shield shifted two centimeters.
Steve stomped his right foot, regaining his balance.
He stared at the front of the shield.
No dents.
No cracks.
The vibranium was intact.
But a lingering aftershock remained along the entire chain of bones from his wrist to his shoulder—from within.
Not on the surface.
In the bones.
That punch from his opponent was restrained.
Steve didn't let the thought linger.
Ron withdrew his fist.
He took a step back.
"I have no intention of being your enemy, Captain Rogers." The lava receded completely beneath his skin.
The two faced each other in the ruins of the ninety-third floor.
The wind from the rotors whipped up scraps of paper from the ground, scattering them across the open space between them.
A woman's voice came from behind.
"We can stand here until dawn." Jessica emerged from the shadows, carrying Lin Xiaowei.
A white cloak draped over half of the girl's body.
"But this sixteen-year-old girl in my arms needs rest." Jessica gestured with her chin towards the ruins of the bar counter.
"She was just kidnapped by that crime boss who 'should follow due process.' Tied to a chair. Changed clothes. Gagled." Steve's gaze shifted from Ron.
To the girl in Jessica's arms.
Short black hair. White dress. Blood still seeping from the marks on her wrists.
A faint, intermittent white light seeped from her fingertips.
Then he saw the fading black veins on her arm.
Those weren't normal wounds.
They were signs of some kind of erosion.
Sixteen years old.
Kidnapped.
Injected with an unknown substance.
Used as a bargaining chip by the head of a criminal empire.
Steve lowered his shield three inches in front of him.
He looked at Lin Xiaowei's profile, nestled in Jessica's shoulder.
The girl's eyelashes were still wet.
Steve slung the shield back over his back.
"Frey will come for you."
He took a step back.
"The Fisk affair—it won't end like this." Ron didn't reply.
He turned and walked towards the floor of the ninety-third floor, burned through by white lava.
The vertical passageway that ran through thirty floors was still emitting lingering white smoke.
Jessica hugged Lin Xiaowei tightly and followed behind.
Ron stepped on the edge of the passageway.
A thin layer of white lava spewed out beneath his feet as a cushion.
The three of them leaped from the hole in the ninety-third floor.
A white light flashed during the descent.
Then it disappeared into the dark alleys of Manhattan.
Steve stood there.
The night wind blew his blond hair to one side.
The heat on the shield's grip was fading—the abnormal vibrations seeping from within the vibranium had ceased.
But a lingering fear remained deep within the bones of his left arm.
The loudspeaker blared.
"Captain, should we give chase?"
"No." Steve turned and walked towards the fighter's rope ladder.
"Notify Fury."
He gripped the ladder bar, without turning back.
"This man isn't an enemy. But he's definitely not under anyone's control." The Quinjet pulled up.
The three fighters, in formation, left the skies above Fisk Tower.
The searchlights went off.
The 93rd floor plunged back into darkness.
Pedestrians on 47th Street took out their phones, snapped one last photo, and began frantically posting on social media.
#FiskTowerExplosion# reached the top of Twitter's trending topics within twenty minutes.
— S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Trisolaran Mothership.
Fury stood before the command console.
Infrared images transmitted by the Quinjet were playing on a loop on six screens.
The three seconds it took for the crimson vortex to engulf Kingpin were broken down frame-by-frame into 180 screenshots.
"Analysis results?" Hill stood on the right, three pages of data flipping across his tablet.
"Unknown dimensional teleportation technology. Not the Bifrost. Not the Space Stone. The energy spectrum doesn't match any known database." Fury's single eye stared at the last screenshot—the instant Ron's fist struck the vibranium shield.
In the infrared image, an invisible force seeped into the shield, spreading along Steve's arm.
The vibranium didn't absorb it.
"Have Rogers write a detailed report. Focus on describing the feeling of that punch." Fury turned around.
"Also—all official records for Wilson Fisk are to be marked 'missing' starting tonight." Hill looked up.
"Not 'dead'?"
"No body. No death certificate." Fury's finger tapped the edge of the control panel.
"The head of a nine-billion-dollar criminal empire, in his own mansion—vanished." He paused for a second.
"And the person who did this works at the courthouse during the day."
On the screen, Ron's courthouse photo and his infrared silhouette from the battle on the ninety-third floor were placed side by side.
Suit. Robe. Badge.
White cloak. Lava. Fist.
The same person.
Frey turned off the screen.
"Adjust 'Mr. Judge's' threat level from B to—"
He paused.
"S-level."