Chapter 132: The Vigilante and Hell's Kitchen's Aizen
Two days until the federal operation.
Matt Murdock came down the stairs of the Lucky Dragon looking like a man who had already made several calculations and hadn't liked any of the answers.
He held out his phone.
Ethan took it.
The video had been posted six hours earlier and had, in that time, accumulated the kind of engagement that content about violence always accumulated — people who were horrified sharing it, people who were enthusiastic sharing it, the algorithm treating both responses as identical signals.
The title: Judgement on Hell's Kitchen's Dregs — by the Justice Envoy.
A man in a black mask and a business suit, standing in what appeared to be an industrial space. Holding a firearm. Speaking directly to the camera with the measured certainty of someone who had decided they were performing a service.
"Tonight at 8 PM," the masked figure said, "nine Justice Envoys will be livestreaming simultaneous executions. All targets are current or former Hell's Kitchen residents."
He had a list of justifications ready. Ethan listened to them with the specific flatness of a man running separate calculations and not especially interested in the ideology accompanying the problem.
The comments were worse than the video.
He scrolled through them for about five seconds and stopped.
"Nine simultaneous locations," he said.
"Yes," Matt said.
"You want me to intervene."
"I want to stop them from dying," Matt said. "Which requires someone who can be in nine places, or someone who can get to nine places fast enough that it doesn't matter."
He had already worked through the options. He'd listed them in his head on the way downstairs. There weren't many that ended with nine different hostages alive.
"Stay here," Ethan said. "Protect the neighborhood."
"I should—"
"You should protect the neighborhood," Ethan said. "That's what you're here for. The people who haven't left yet need someone watching."
Matt's jaw worked. He had the expression of someone who was right about something and wrong about the timing.
"You can't be in nine places," he said.
"I can get to nine places," Ethan said. "Not the same thing."
Matt opened his mouth again.
"Matt," Ethan said. "You're still too limited for this. Not an insult — a fact. We're going to change that. But tonight you need to be here."
Matt stood with this for a moment.
Ethan turned to the system.
Sōsuke Aizen Growth Template.
He'd been carrying it since the gacha in Ch.89. The system had identified Matt as the match — ninety-five-point-two percent compatibility — but the relationship had needed to exist first, and it had needed to exist for reasons other than the template.
It existed now.
"System," Ethan said, silently. "Aizen template. Apply to best current match."
「DING!」「Applying Sōsuke Aizen Growth Template to: Matthew Michael Murdock」「Compatibility: 95.2%」「Template integration complete.」
The light was brief. Matt registered it — not visually, but through the enhanced senses that had always been his primary interface with the world.
A sword materialized in his hand.
He stood with it for a moment. Still. Something was happening in his face that had nothing to do with surprise and everything to do with a man suddenly aware of the size of the space he now occupied.
"What did you do," Matt said.
"I gave you something," Ethan said. "The full integration will take time — you're working with maybe five percent right now. But five percent of that template is still a significant addition."
Matt processed this. He was running the math — the new capabilities against the existing ones, the sword against the fighting style he'd developed, the way the world sounded and felt and tasted different when you had a different relationship to the space around you.
"Why," he said.
"Because you're Family," Ethan said. "And because you should be able to actually protect this place."
He didn't say: and because the Aizen template has been sitting in my inventory waiting for you since before you arrived. That was true, but it was also a kind of foreknowledge he didn't need to explain.
Matt stood with the sword.
He was a man who had been fighting in a red suit with sticks for two years, in a neighborhood that was about to be hit by an army, doing the work because it needed doing and because he couldn't stop hearing the sounds.
The weight in his hand was different now.
"Thank you," he said, which was not enough but was what he had.
"Work on it," Ethan said. "I'll be back."
He was gone before Matt had fully processed the departure.
Nine locations. Eight PM.
Ethan had a list of addresses, extracted from the video's background details by a quick cross-reference — the specific sounds Matt had heard in the recording, the light quality, a half-visible street sign.
He had the Sling Ring.
He had the On Your Right skill at Lv.2, which could produce two Family members on demand.
He had approximately three hours.
He was already planning the sequence.
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