Marvel Watch - Chapter 17- Oh, Right, These Guys Were Here

Over the next few weeks, as the cold of winter began to settle in, I increased the frequency of my visits to Hell’s Kitchen. Most days, I just worked in my lair, setting up my computer and getting some designs together for creative projects. However, there was a pressing need that made me patrol the streets. And that would be internet access. If I was going to do some information gathering, I needed internet access.

However, being anonymous made things complicated. The Lackadaisy café above me was not quite in the right year to have free wifi. And besides, that would be too easy for SHIELD or HYDRA to track. They had a lot of resources.

Sombra’s solution was to hack telecommunications satellites from multiple points and bounce the signal across the city to make it difficult to tell where it went. And then encase that in essentially an Easter egg hunt of IP addresses, and that in military level layer of encryption. It was like a Matryoshka doll of internet security paranoia. I guess Sombra took getting caught by that conspiracy pretty hard.

Then again, being the best and getting caught with your pants down would do that to someone. At least she took the experience and stepped up her game even more. Unfortunately, I did not have memories of her claiming vengeance from them. I guess I only got her from the point in the timeline that her game character is from. Pity. And now I was in another world where Blizzard was never going to make a movie out of their background material for Overwatch, even if it was originally going to happen in my first world. I wasn’t ever going to get answers.

I sighed. Sometimes, there were disadvantages to being transferred to another world. So many books and movies I was never going to see.

I quickly finished the wiring on the antenna. This was part of the internet setup. Things were probably secure enough to just surf the internet, maybe hack local law enforcement, but I had a bit more to do before I hacked, say, SHIELD or Stark Industries.

I Resonated with Genji and jumped across the gap to the next building. I hadn’t seen Coulson in a little while, but I knew he had to still be around. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been laying beatdowns on street thugs, I just had other things I was doing at night now. He had to still be investigating. Maybe I should look for him, but not tonight. After getting the power source set up, I decided that I would recreate Symmetra’s photon projector so that it would be easier to renovate the lair further and fabricate other things. I was rather excited and looked forward to messing around with it and no time limit.

As I jumped across to another building, I noticed some thugs on the street below. I could tell from their furtive glances, rough demeanor, and the bags of drugs being passed around. I mean, they weren’t just borrowing sugar to make cookies.

I jumped into position to drop in on them. But before I could, I sensed movement from behind me. Instinctively, I jumped straight up into the air. As I rose up, I turned to face my unknown enemy and drew my wakizashi from behind my waist.

Actually, scratch that, I meant “enemies,” not “enemy.”

Ninjas.

The Hand had finally entered the game. I guess Madam Gao didn’t care about her dealers that much- it had been months since I started work, and only now did I run into any Hand ninjas. I mean, some of the thugs had clearly had military experience, or at least boxing, but compare that to the decades of experience Soldier 76 had, or the harsh training the Shimada brothers had, and they just couldn’t cut it. I had good expectations of these ninjas.

You know, now that I’d thought about it. Honestly, I’d almost forgotten these guys were here.

“I don’t suppose we can settle this peacefully,” I asked as I fell down in the midst of them. They answered with their own blades and fists. Unlike in movies, they didn’t come at me one at a time. They didn’t all move at once either, each making a move that was aimed at a vital spot or covering my likely escape route. They were good.

Unfortunately, Genji could move faster. And I could simply move backwards out of their reach. I wasn’t quite out of roof. So I stepped backwards, parrying one blade with my wakizashi, and a fist with my own. Then I felt an impact against my arm- one blade I had changed its course contrary to my expectations and tried to cut me at the wrist. Luckily, Genji’s body was not made of weak stuff. Still, it wasn’t a good sign. I had grown complacent in the lack of good adversaries for my Resonances.

Though the minor injury was a little troubling, I smiled beneath my mask. Now I really had good sparring partners.

The five ninjas moved forward for another round of attacks. This time, I tried to block all attacks with my wakizashi- just the same as playing the game in my past life. Deflect worked on bullets, why wouldn’t I have the speed to do the same with melee attacks?

Well, turns out, the reason Genji doesn’t do that in the game is that people’s arms are heavy. So, it takes more force to deflect them, whether they are swinging a sword or a fist. So, it didn’t work quite as well as it went in my head. In other words, I deflected two of the swords and took a stab to the shoulder and two fists to my gut.

It was weird. Genji’s body is mostly mechanical, so it wasn’t exactly painful. But the stab did get in a little bit, and as I moved for a counterattack, I could feel that something was moving differently.

To my surprise, the injured ninja, who was relatively close to me but I ignored him because he was injured, struck out with his blade in his good hand and stabbed into my arm. This guy was accurate or lucky, stabbing between plates at my elbow to sink deeper than my shoulder wound. My arm went half dead. I could still move it, but it wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.

Then the ninjas started moving in. They had found a weakness and intended to exploit it. They smelled blood in the water.

And rightly so. I was in trouble.