"With that scrawny skeleton of yours, if I sent you to fight the gangs, what would you do-trap them between your ribs?"
Yang Ming exhaled a plume of smoke, his gaze scraping up and down Dave Lizewski like a blade from behind his gold-rimmed glasses.
Five thirty the following afternoon, amid the ruins on 47th Street in Hell's Kitchen, New York.
Dave arrived on time. Instead of that hideous green wetsuit, he wore his baggy Midtown High School uniform. But with those empty sleeves and a frail body that a gust of wind could knock over, he looked like a quail that had wandered into a wolf pack among the surrounding "monsters."
"Teacher, I... I've been doing push-ups." Dave flushed, guiltily squeezing his practically nonexistent biceps. "I can do thirty a day."
"Thirty?" Jessica Jones strode over in her combat boots, tossing a solid concrete brick half the size of a head in one hand. "I crush more than thirty bricks while brushing my teeth in the morning."
Bang!
Jessica casually squeezed, and the hard concrete brick instantly burst into gray powder in her hand, raining down over Dave's sneakers.
Dave swallowed hard, his calves beginning to tremble.
"Mortal, your foundation really is pathetic." Thor walked over with a shovel over his shoulder. He had just finished digging a cable trench for S.H.I.E.L.D., and his glossy muscles radiated raw, masculine energy.
"In Asgard, babies fresh off their mothers' milk are stronger than you. You can't even withstand the strength of one of my fingers. How are you supposed to learn to fight?"
"All right, stop scaring him." Yang Ming stubbed his cigarette out in a rusty barrel beside him. "Jessica, Thor, change of plans. We're putting combat and strength training on hold."
"On hold? Boss, didn't you say yesterday we