It wasn't just the blue-gray women in front of him.
The other three blue-gray women—held in attacking postures by Hawk's telekinesis and bound around the speedboat—had their mouths freed and were also croaking the same thing in strained, painful voices: I can't breathe, and the like.
Hawk ignored them, watching with interest as the face of the blue-gray woman before him—deprived of air—grew flushed and shiny, yet hideous.
Her voice grew hoarse, as if a knee were grinding into her throat, growing fainter and fainter.
Her life was on the brink.
Right then—
Boom!
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
The sea beneath the speedboat seemed to come alive. In the instant the water erupted and tore the craft apart, Hawk's eyes went crimson. In less than a tenth of a second, a Phoenix Ray lanced out and reduced all four blue-gray women to ash. His figure vanished from where he stood.
A heartbeat later—
Boom!
The speedboat was shredded by the suddenly feral ocean—torn into bite-sized scraps like jerky you could chew.
Expressionless, Hawk hovered in midair and looked down at the sea.
A silver object burst from the raging water, flashing like lightning as it streaked toward him.
Hawk arched a brow and punched.
With a ringing clang, the object met his fist, and at last he saw it clearly.
A fork—
Proper name:
A trident!
Clang!
Fist and trident collided, throwing off a shockwave. The trident spun backward, whirled once, then ripped forward just skimming the surface, carving the sea with a rolling roar as it howled away toward a point in the distance.
Hawk snorted, stepped forward, and punched again—aimed at the fleeing trident and the sea beneath it.
A wall of water surged skyward at the same time.
Boom!
His howling fist met the towering wave with an ear-splitting detonation. The falling wave stopped his strike's advance for a blink—but shattered the instant it touched the blow, bursting into spray that pattered back into the ocean.
The next second—
A man in an emerald war-suit rose with the receding wave, a pair of tiny wings at his ankles, blue-gray skin, a powerful build, bare-chested—hand closing around the trident as he came into Hawk's view.
Hawk watched the figure who had reined the broken wave back into the sea and now hovered in the air like him, trident in hand, eyes narrowing.
Unlike Hawk's easy, natural hover—
This newcomer had rushed here at supersonic speed beneath the surface while Hawk was savoring the slow suffocation of the four attackers. He was airborne too—but the little wings at his ankles were fluttering in jerky bursts.
Mm.
Quite a sight.
Wings quivering at his ankles, the newcomer hovered with trident leveled, locking eyes with Hawk.
"Hawk Phoenix."
"Who are you?"
"Mackenzie. Namor Mackenzie."
Namor Mackenzie, king of Talokan—the hidden undersea nation like Wakanda—held his trident, his voice as chill as seawater.
Black seawater.
As the man gave his name, Hawk's thoughts spun. In the memory palace of his mind, every notable Marvel figure flipped open at light speed.
A second later—
He had the match.
Namor Mackenzie.
The Sea King.
Not DC's Aquaman, but Marvel's "sea king"—Namor the Sub-Mariner.
DC's Aquaman is king of Atlantis beneath the sea.
Marvel's sea king is also ruler of an undersea realm—Atlantis in the comics, but here it's called Talokan.
DC's Aquaman is a hybrid of sea-folk and surface folk.
Marvel's sea king is… a hybrid too.
As for why DC's "Sea King" is a half-blood while Marvel's is—well, never mind; Hawk wasn't about to explain.
DC's king has a trident.
Marvel's sea king also has a trident.
Namor could breathe freely underwater and even at high altitudes. He could soar at supersonic speed in the ocean, and sprint like the wind on land. His strength rivaled Thor's—and in the water, even Thor might not match him. (So the editor once said in an interview; the movie did him dirty.)
Hawk's thoughts turned to the blue bead he'd found after destroying Wakanda—the one that held a great volume of seawater.
He looked at the trident in Namor's hand.
"Wakanda."
"Yes."
The blue-gray Namor met Hawk's gaze over the trident. "You're just as my wife described. You have a cold heart."
Hawk's brows lifted.
"Your wife?"
"Shuri."
"The princess of Wakanda?"
At that, Hawk's expression tightened, then he glanced at Namor and chuckled. "I thought she died in Wakanda, same as her brother T'Challa."
Namor smiled faintly. "If I hadn't married her, she would have."
His kingdom had little to do with Wakanda, at least before Hawk exposed Wakanda to the world. Until then, the two nations merely guarded the secret of vibranium.
Wakanda had vibranium; so did they.
But when Wakanda's previous king, T'Chaka, was about to die and journey to the Ancestral Plane, he found Namor and betrothed Shuri to him.
Namor had barely brought Shuri back to his undersea kingdom when Hawk wiped out Wakanda.
Mm.
One thing after another.
"You're cruel, Mr. Phoenix."
"Thank you."
Hawk accepted the compliment without expression, then looked at Namor. "So you're here for revenge?"
Namor shrugged.
"You killed my wife's whole family."
"Here's some advice."
"Go on."
"Hand over your wife and get lost. Don't appear in front of me again. Otherwise, I promise your undersea kingdom will vanish from the world the same as Wakanda."
Hawk's tone was flat.
He had assumed Wakanda was extinct.
Who'd have thought…
There were still fish that slipped the net.
And one of them had delivered himself to Hawk's door.
Namor laughed at Hawk's "advice."
Hawk, seeing Namor laugh, smiled too.
Soon—
Namor's smile faded.
"You're not only cruel—you're arrogant."
"So what?"
"Here's my advice."
"Say it."
"Kneel. Kowtow toward Wakanda. I'll let you walk away."
Namor's face stayed calm as he made his offer.
Hawk's smile didn't shrink; it bloomed, his gaze turning cool and heavy on Namor.
"Just you?"
"A wing-footed hybrid?"
"Heh."
Hawk gave a cold snort, then burst out laughing.
Hybrid?
Hearing Hawk's choice of words, Namor's face went still. Without another word, he swept forward, trident leveled, the tiny ankle-wings thrumming as he lunged for Hawk.
"Die!"
"You?"
Hawk's grin vanished as Namor closed—his right fist lanced out again.
"Boom!"
A mightier detonation cracked the air, and a vapor cone bloomed where fist and trident met.
Both men were hurled backward in unison.
But—
As Hawk flew back, his figure flickered and vanished, leaving only a shattering afterimage. When he reappeared, he was behind Namor—who was also flying backward—his sandbag-sized fist slamming forward as if to meet Namor head-on.
Just then—
Namor reacted, whipping his body and snapping the trident back in a tight arc. It flared with an eerie blue light and met Hawk's fist like a sudden counter-thrust.
Boom!
The deafening blast ripped the sky.
Not just the air—the sea itself.
The shockwave from Hawk's power and Namor's collided and drove the ocean down, gouging a pit tens of meters across beneath their feet.
Around the pit, the upsurging water rose like a wall that seemed to stitch sea to sky—an unbroken barricade of water.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite has detected a strong energy surge over the North Pacific."
"Analyzing energy data."
Beep-beep-beep!
"Phoenix, plus…"
"Unknown signature detected. Uploading for database comparison."
"Comparison complete."
"Thor—"
"Director, there's a powerful surge over the North Pacific: Phoenix, and a second unknown energy nearly matching Thor in magnitude."
"Patch in the S.H.I.E.L.D. energy satellite."
"Understood. Linking satellite feed—online in five minutes."
"…Feed is online."
"Put it up."
Commander Victoria Hand gave the order, then looked up at the wall screen.
At that moment, the doors at the back of the command center slid open. Having just been informed, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill walked up beside Hand, eyes on the big screen syncing to the satellite feed.
"What's going on? Weren't we pursuing Merrick? Where did an energy reading on par with Thor come from?"
"No idea—but… the satellite's live."
Hand shrugged. Fortunately, the screen linked up just then and ended that line of talk.
The next second—
The screen that had been dim with a "connecting" status flared bright.
And under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s black-tech satellite, the North Pacific—black as night in reality—was daylight on the big screen.
…
(End of Chapter)
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