Mark was having a bad day.

Not world-ending bad. Not “dad issues resurfacing” bad. Just… the kind of bad where everything stacked wrong and stayed that way.

He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his glove and immediately regretted it when three more villains took that as an invitation.

“Okay,” he said, backing up a step. “So we’re really doing this. All of you. At once.”

They’d cornered him in what used to be a shipping yard near the docks. Containers overturned, cranes bent at ugly angles, the air thick with smoke and dust. He’d already taken down two of them—one unconscious, one definitely rethinking his career choices—but the rest had figured out that overwhelming him was the plan.

And it was working.

A blast hit his side. Another clipped his shoulder. Mark stumbled, boots scraping concrete, barely keeping himself upright.

Focus. Protect the docks. Keep them away from the city.

He lunged forward again, landed a hit, got grabbed midair for his trouble and slammed into a container hard enough to leave a Mark-shaped dent.

“Stay down, kid,” one of them sneered.

Mark groaned, pushing himself up. “Yeah, see, that’s usually the part where I don’t listen.”

He launched himself back into the fight, but his timing was off, reactions sluggish. Someone clipped his leg, another wrapped an energy cable around his arm and yanked.

He was outnumbered. He knew it. They knew it.

Then—through the ringing in his ears, through the chaos—he felt it.

That pressure shift. That familiar, unmistakable sense of someone very powerful entering the area.

Mark froze mid-struggle.

Then he smiled.

“Oh,” he said, breathless, looking past them toward the horizon. “Oh, man.”

The villains glanced at each other, confused.

“What?” one of them snapped. “You finally realize you’re screwed?”

Mark actually laughed. A little hysterically. A lot relieved.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I just realized you are.”

They tightened their grip on him. “You trying to bluff?”

Mark craned his neck, squinting into the distance. Yep. That silhouette? Way too familiar.

“I would start praying now,” he added helpfully.

Silence.

“…Praying to who?” someone asked.

Mark winced sympathetically. “Yeah, see, that’s the problem. I don’t think it matters.”

One of them scoffed. “You think your little superhero friends are coming to save you?”

Mark sighed dramatically. “I should’ve met my girl, like, twenty minutes ago. We had plans. And now?” He glanced back at them. “Now you’re gonna have to explain to her why I didn’t.”

That did it.

“Get him!” someone yelled.

They surged forward—

And then the ground shook.

Not an explosion. Not an attack. Just the air itself shifting as a shadow passed overhead.

One villain hesitated. “What the hell was that?”

Mark’s smile widened. “Oh, cool. You noticed.”

A blur cut through the smoke.