Chapter 13: The Hell's Kitchen Welcome
John Wick and Marcus watched in bewilderment as Ethan walked toward the window.
"Ethan — this is the fifth floor. You're not seriously about to jump?" Marcus's voice cracked.
"Elevator's too slow. Faster this way." Ethan climbed onto the sill. "I'm not giving these people one more second to shoot up my building."
He jumped.
As the ground rushed up, a dim red glow enveloped his feet — Chaos Magic, acting as a cushion. He touched down softly, without so much as a scuff on the pavement.
He could have just dropped straight down. The Healing Factor meant a twenty-story fall wouldn't kill him. But a raw impact from five stories would've made enough noise to wake every tenant in the building, and that wasn't how he liked to operate.
"What the fuck — is that a superhuman?" one of the snipers hissed into his scope.
John and Marcus rushed to the shattered window and peered down. Ethan stood below, completely unharmed, as if he'd just stepped off a curb.
They exchanged a look. Neither man had ever seen anything like it — and between them, they'd seen quite a lot.
If Ethan could have heard their thoughts, he would've called them sheltered. He'd kept a low profile with his abilities for years — less hassle that way. But ever since the Stark job, he'd accepted the inevitable: the age of superheroes was coming. The endgame fights wouldn't be against street-level thugs. They'd be against gods and gamma monsters, aliens and power armor. Regular humans would end up like Hawkeye — picking off stragglers from the back row. And the less said about Black Widow's late-franchise relevance, the better. She'd been reduced to moral support and a sacrificial plot device.
Ethan barely had time to scan for targets before five gunmen materialized from the shadows, opening fire immediately.
A wall of bullets tore through the air.
His body moved on instinct — dodge — but a split-second glance over his shoulder froze him. The restaurant entrance was directly behind him.
"Dammit."
He threw out his right hand, fingers splayed. Five threads of red light lashed out to meet the incoming rounds. Every bullet the light touched went dead, dropping out of the air like spent casings and clattering harmlessly to the ground.
The gunmen faltered for half a beat, then resumed firing. One of them — clearly the ambitious type — produced an RPG launcher from God knows where.
The rocket screamed toward Ethan with a whoosh.
Right hand forward — red threads intercepted the continuing spray of bullets. Left hand up — the RPG round froze mid-flight, wrapped in crimson light, then redirected skyward.
In the split second both his hands were occupied, a Barrett round came shrieking in from a rooftop half a block away, aimed directly at his skull.
These guys are professionals. Good coordination.
Ethan didn't flinch. His eyes flared red.
The .50 caliber round stopped — then reversed course, rocketing back the way it came.
The RPG detonated harmlessly in the sky above. Down below, five gunmen and a sniper collapsed, each killed by their own ammunition.
"Daddy, look! Fireworks!" A little girl in a nearby apartment window pointed at the sky, tugging her father's sleeve.
· · ·
The street went quiet. Then, slowly, residents started appearing — leaning out of windows, stepping onto fire escapes, drifting out of doorways. They'd been drawn by the gunfire, and now they were watching.
In any other neighborhood, a firefight like this would have sent people running for cover. But this was Hell's Kitchen. These people had grown up to the sound of gunfire the way other kids grew up to ice cream trucks. If you lived here, you were either tough or you were gone.
Right now, they looked entertained.
More suit-wearing assassins poured in as reinforcements. They were regrouping to rush Ethan when one of them made a critical mistake — a stray burst of automatic fire raked across a parked BMW.
A massive tattooed man leaning out of a third-floor window let out a roar of pure rage. "THAT'S MY CAR, YOU SUIT-WEARING PRICKS! I JUST STOLE THAT!"
One of the assassins snapped off a warning shot in his direction. Missed.
Bad idea.
"You sons of bitches think you can come to our neighborhood and pull this?!"
The assassins looked up just in time to see the tattooed man hoist an RPG launcher onto his shoulder — inside his own apartment, apparently unconcerned about what a backblast would do to his living room — and take aim.
The suited killers scrambled. Their tailored bulletproof suits could stop small arms fire, but an RPG was an entirely different conversation.
They scattered from the blast zone, visibly rattled. What kind of neighborhood is this? A car thief with a rocket launcher in his apartment? Who steals cars when they've got anti-armor weaponry? Did people in Hell's Kitchen need RPGs just to jack a Honda?
Ethan watched the chaos unfold and grinned.
"Well, that settles that. I don't even need to lift a finger anymore." He looked left, then right. "See, this is what happens. You could've just dealt with me. I'm reasonable. But you had to go and piss off the residents. They are not reasonable."
The RPG blast was apparently the starting gun.
Windows flew open up and down the block. Residents produced an astonishing variety of firearms — handguns, shotguns, rifles, things that probably didn't have legal classifications — and began laying down fire from every angle. The assassins' bulletproof suits meant nothing when every third round found an unprotected head.
Some residents didn't even bother shooting from windows. Cars roared out of side streets, occupants hanging out of passenger windows with guns blazing. The Marquis's reinforcements never even made it to Ethan's block — they were cut down by Hell's Kitchen locals before they got within two streets.
Up on the fifth floor, John Wick stood at the broken window, watching the carnage below in stunned silence.
"Is... everyone in Hell's Kitchen like this?" he asked, turning to Marcus.
Marcus leaned back, perfectly calm. "'Your Hell's Kitchen?' It's our Hell's Kitchen. This is just how things work around here." He gave John a pointed look. "You're here now, which makes you one of us. What — you were gonna let us bail you out and then skip town?"
Marcus knew exactly what Ethan was doing. He wanted John Wick to stay. And honestly, Marcus was fine with that. It'd be nice to have an old friend around. He'd lived here long enough to feel something for the place, and he was curious to see what Ethan was building.
John said nothing. He just watched the scene below — the fearless residents, the retreating assassins, Ethan standing in the middle of it all like it was a Tuesday — and smiled.
Maybe Hell's Kitchen wasn't so bad after all.
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