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Dawn broke across the horizon.
The calm ocean surface suddenly erupted with a deafening roar. A two-hundred-meter radius of water exploded upward, and from the churning depths emerged a creature of nightmare proportions—a giant octopus so massive it seemed to blot out the rising sun itself.
"Holy shit!"
"Jesus Christ!"
"Oh my God!"
In SHIELD's command center, every agent who had been holding their breath while watching the main screen let out a collective gasp. The appearance of the monstrous octopus hit them like a jump scare in a horror movie—just when you thought the suspense was over, the monster appears.
Even Hill and Director Hand flinched, their eyes widening involuntarily.
But they were a director and a commander, respectively.
And they were women... Law enforcement and intelligence agencies were a man's world—or at least, that's what everyone believed. Which meant any woman who wanted to lead in that world had to be tougher than most of the men around her.
So Hill and Hand forced down their instinctive reactions and managed not to join the chorus of startled exclamations.
Just then—
A female tech, who'd been covering her mouth, suddenly lit up.
"Wait—look! It's Phoenix!"
"Thank God. He's alive."
"So does that mean the merman's dead?"
"Merman?"
"I was going to call him a mermaid, but do you really think he qualifies as beautiful?"
"Let's just stick with merman."
Hill and Hand exchanged a glance, then turned their attention back to the main screen. There, holding something above the water's surface before casually tossing it aside, was Hawk—shirtless, floating effortlessly in mid-air.
His suit was completely ruined.
When that giant octopus had stirred up the underwater currents, his suit jacket had been shredded to ribbons in seconds. Good thing Hawk had reacted quickly. Otherwise, he wouldn't just be shirtless right now—he'd be completely naked.
Still...
How long had that octopus been alive?
Twenty thousand years, at least.
Hawk hovered in place, frowning as he looked down at the massive octopus corpse spread across the ocean surface like a giant, lifeless tarp. Its head was caved in.
Hawk's gaze lingered on the creature that had appeared at the most inconvenient moment—right when he'd been about to finish off Namor. His thoughts turned to the Trident of Neptune.
No doubt about it. This giant octopus had shown up to protect Namor.
Everyone knew the drill.
DC's Aquaman wielded the Trident of Neptune, which could control the ocean and communicate with sea life.
Marvel's Sea King—Namor—had the same abilities with his version of the trident.
Killing the octopus hadn't taken long.
What had taken time was searching for Namor.
And the results were obvious.
Namor had escaped.
Beneath the collapsed seabed where Namor had been buried, Hawk had discovered a deeper fissure. Namor's presence had vanished into that crack.
He'd followed the trail for a while, confirmed Namor was long gone, then given up. Instead, he'd grabbed the giant octopus and hauled it to the surface.
After all, it counted as a trophy.
Besides, he'd never tasted twenty-thousand-year-old takoyaki before.
And back in Forks, he remembered Gwen eating octopus balls at the town's Christmas food festival. She'd said they were her favorite snack.
So, Gwen would definitely love some twenty-thousand-year-old octopus.
Hawk was still contemplating this when—
Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!
Five speedboats appeared on the distant horizon, arranged in an attack formation as they raced toward him at top speed.
Hawk glanced over, raised an eyebrow, and vanished.
When he reappeared, he was already standing on one of the speedboats.
The two SHIELD agents on board jumped at his sudden arrival.
Sharon Carter, however, had been ready. The moment Hawk appeared, she handed him a black T-shirt emblazoned with the SHIELD logo.
"Here."
"Thanks." Hawk accepted the shirt, then glanced down at it and looked back at Sharon. "How many SHIELD shirts does this make for me now?"
Sharon thought for a moment. "Four?"
Hawk shook his head. "Five."
The first SHIELD shirt had been after his show of force at Quantico.
The second was in Wakanda, courtesy of Hill.
The third was in London, from Natasha.
The fourth was in Texas.
And now this one made five.
Hawk pulled the shirt over his head, then looked at Sharon. "Gwen mentioned last time that she wanted to ask you guys who your supplier is. She's thinking about getting a custom women's version. Matching couple's shirts."
Sharon smiled.
"Gwen already asked me. I gave her the contact yesterday."
"She didn't tell me."
"It was yesterday when she got back to New York. I picked her up at the airport."
"...Thanks."
Hawk looked at Sharon for a moment, then thanked her. His gaze lingered on her face—she was smiling, but there was a faint trace of exhaustion around her eyes.
It was obvious.
Sharon had come straight here after picking up Gwen from the airport. No rest in between.
Hawk felt a flicker of gratitude and looked at Sharon. "Alright. Ask me anything. I'm an open book."
Sharon's eyes crinkled with amusement.
"Anything?"
"Anything."
Hawk sat down on the deck, spreading his arms wide. "Right now, I'm an open book. Nothing off-limits. Oh, and you guys can have the octopus. Just save me three tentacles—nice, fat ones."
Sharon immediately turned and nodded to the agents on the other speedboats.
One of the techs on another boat immediately radioed the nearest SHIELD vessel.
Sharon then sat down on the deck across from him.
"That merman you were fighting..."
"Merman?"
Hawk raised an eyebrow.
Sharon explained. "That's what the command center started calling him."
Hawk nodded in understanding.
"Fair enough. His name is Namor McKenzie. He's the king of an underwater kingdom called Talokan."
"Talokan?"
"Atlantis. Talokan is what Atlantis became."
"Wait—"
Sharon sucked in a sharp breath. "The lost city of Atlantis?"
Talokan? She'd never heard of it.
But Atlantis? That was a name everyone knew. A legendary civilization that existed only in myths and stories. Some scholars even argued it had never existed at all.
Sharon used to be in that camp.
Until now.
"Atlantis is real?"
"Of course. It just changed its name. Now it's called Talokan, the undersea kingdom. Their people live beneath the ocean."
Hawk flipped through the files in his memory palace, pulling up everything he knew about Sea King Namor McKenzie and Talokan.
"Talokan's current location should be somewhere in the Atlantic."
"The Atlantic?"
"Yeah."
Sharon nodded, processing that, then her thoughts returned to the merman.
"So that merman—"
"Escaped."
"Escaped?"
Sharon looked genuinely shocked. Her eyes widened as she stared at Hawk.
Hawk noticed her expression and couldn't help but laugh.
"You seem more surprised than I am."
"Of course."
Sharon nodded instinctively, then caught herself and clarified. "I mean—this is probably the first enemy who's ever escaped from you, right?"
Hawk blinked, looking at Sharon. "Is it?"
There was that Eternal on Skull Island...
Oh, right.
SHIELD hadn't been on Skull Island, so they didn't know about that.
Hawk let out a dry laugh. "Namor McKenzie's title is Sea King. Just like I can't kill the Lord of Hell inside his own Hell dimension, I can't kill the Sea King in the middle of the ocean. At least, not yet."
It was the truth.
Even though he'd found Namor's weakness, that didn't mean he could finish him off on the spot.
If they'd been on land, the punch Hawk had landed on Namor's weak point would have been fatal. No question.
But this was the ocean. Namor's home turf.
So—
By the time Hawk had dealt with the giant octopus Namor had summoned to protect him, Namor had already slipped away.
"Still..."
"Even if he's not dead, he's at critical health."
"Barely hanging on."
"He won't recover for at least a year."
Hawk thought back to Namor—who had dodged his full-power strike at the last second but still taken most of the impact, coughing up blood instantly. A faint smile tugged at his lips.
People tended to forget something important. Right now, Hawk was constantly manifesting the full power of his Sixth Sense Silver Cosmo.
Even without his Saint Armor, every punch and kick carried a trace of Phoenix energy.
Phoenix was fire.
Namor was water.
Fire and water didn't mix.
Even if Namor was the Sea King, so what? If he could control his ocean powers without relying on his trident, maybe he'd recover in ten days or two weeks.
But the current Sea King Namor was just like Thor—who people called the Thunder God but should really call the Hammer God. Namor was the Fork God.
So without that trident, Namor wouldn't recover for a year. And during that entire year, he'd be suffering constant agony from the Phoenix flames Hawk had punched into his body, burning him from the inside out.
That was why Hawk hadn't been the least bit upset when he realized Namor had escaped.
Sharon listened, her expression turning serious.
"We'll keep a close watch for him. The moment he surfaces, I'll let you know immediately."
"Relax. I said he won't be able to come out for a year, and I meant it. Don't be so tense."
Hawk looked at Sharon, who seemed even more concerned than he was, and laughed. Then he raised an eyebrow as a thought occurred to him.
"Oh, by the way."
"Yeah?"
"Talokan has vibranium deposits too. And they've got this special herb down there. The original Talokan people ate it and gained the ability to breathe underwater."
"If the Big Five are interested, they can go looking for it."
"When you find it, let me know. Same deal as Wakanda—I'll clear the place out for you."
"..."
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~# 70 Advanced Chapters Available on my Patreon!
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