Chen Mo sat in the dust, feeling like a bug someone had emptied out of a vacuum cleaner's dustbin.
He was covered in dust.
His mask was covered in dust.
A gust of wind fluttered what had once been his jacket and was now a collection of shredded rags.
Very tragic.
Very impoverished.
Very much like a little flag announcing that his personal finances had officially gone bankrupt.
Beside him, firefighters hurried past with a stretcher. His remark about how "being a superhero comes with no employment contract" had made them chuckle earlier, but now they couldn't laugh.
Because the sky had started rumbling again.
Not once.
But everywhere at once.
Boom-
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom-!
It was as though something had punched the sky above New York hard from the outside.
Clouds shattered, flames churned, and Iron Man Armor, alien aircraft, spaceship wreckage, lightning, energy beams, and clouds of dust and smoke all mixed together, as if someone had turned the entire city's sky into a battlefield blender.
Chen Mo glanced up.
"Couldn't we take, like, a thirty-minute halftime break first?"
The moment he finished speaking, his Spider-Sense erupted.
Bzzzt-!
Chen Mo's expression changed. He sprang up and fired webs, dragging several patients who had yet to enter the underground passage backward, wheelchairs and all.
The next second, an entire row of windows above the hospital's outer wall shattered at once.
A suit of Iron Man Armor with glowing red eyes crashed out sideways, trailing black smoke, with two small alien aircraft behind it.
The suit was clearly out of control.
Its left palm cannon was still charging, the casing on its right arm had cracked open, sparks crackled wildly inside, and its thrusters flickered on and off. It flew like some unfortunate office drone who had been