Screams filled the store. The chubby man in a suit jolted so hard that the carton of milk he'd just bought slipped from his hand, splattering all over the floor.
"An attack?!"
"More monsters?!"
Chaos erupted in an instant. The cashier auntie went deathly pale, almost ducking under the counter. The overexcited muscular guy instinctively reached for a weapon that wasn't there, eyes locked warily on the door. The young woman clutched her friend's arm in terror.
Saitama stumbled with the tremor, but his body automatically adjusted his center of gravity and steadied itself. His attention, however, wasn't drawn to the explosion at all. He was staring fixedly at the cup of instant noodles on the counter—it had just rolled twice with the shaking and nearly fallen off.
"Phew..."
Saitama let out a breath of relief. Thankfully, it hadn't dropped. Only then did he register the chaos in the store, looking around blankly.
The explosion... seemed really annoying.
He frowned, a little impatient, and shuffled forward a bit. To the cashier auntie, who looked like her soul had almost flown out of her body, he said:
"Um... could you ring this up, please? Just this cup noodle."
He pointed at that half-price "braised beef"... no, at this point it was just beef-flavored cup noodles.
"Move! Move! Evacuate the civilians!"
"Over there! The building structure's unstable! Stay away from it!"
"Watch for falling debris from above!"
Shrieking sirens, the hiss of water blasting from fire hydrants, and the shouts of rescue workers all tangled together, pushing the noise and confusion at the city-side end of the Brooklyn Bridge to their peak. The earlier muffled but devastating explosion had gone off at a small freight transfer depot near the bridge's approach ramp—most likely a leftover Chitauri energy weapon core that had been accidentally triggered.
The blast flipped two derelict bus carcasses, ignited a nearby warehouse, and sent jagged metal fragments flying. Some shards even punched through sections of the bridge's guardrail, blazing-hot debris raining down on the bridge deck and into the murky river below like burning meteors.
"Hold the line! Keep the bridge secure! Make sure the evacuation route stays open!"
Steve Rogers' voice cut through the cacophony over the comms. He raised his vibranium shield over his head, neatly deflecting a flaming car hood that came howling down from above. The chunk of metal hit the shield with a heavy thud, spinning off just past a woman clutching her child and tumbling into the East River below.
"Cap! Left side! The evacuation exit needs support! They're blocked by fire!"
Bucky Barnes—the Winter Soldier—slammed his metal arm into a twisted freight container, shoving it aside and revealing the entrance to a choked-off passage.
"Natasha! Clint! I need eyes in the sky! Give me a head count of everyone still stuck on the bridge! And find any possible secondary blast points!" Steve barked, sweat mixing with soot as it slid down his forehead.
Perched on the edge of a taller freight warehouse roof, Hawkeye Clint knelt with his compound bow in hand. His sharp eyes swept back and forth over the chaotic bridge deck and the areas flickering in the glow of the fires below.
"Evac Route Three is blocked!" he reported. "There's a group of students trapped there! Fire trucks can't get through yet! Also... under Pier Three, the bridge structure looks cracked... unstable! Like it got fractured by that last blast! We're gonna need a structural engineer to confirm!"
"Copy!" Natasha's voice came over the channel.
She moved like a swift swallow, swinging along ropes threaded through the warehouse's steel supports. In just a few nimble swings, she landed near the cluster of trapped students.
"Alright, kiddos! Over here!" she called out. "Stick with Natasha-nee! Heads down! Move!"
Her tone carried a deliberate touch of lighthearted teasing, but her movements were swift and precise. She guided the terrified students, bent at the waist, through a path where the burning debris was relatively sparse.
(End of Chapter)
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