Chapter 120: Some Matches Are Lost Before They Begin
Ethan took a moment before answering.
"First," he said, "I don't have apprentices. Second, this requires everyone's consent. Third—" He looked at the room. "I'm curious what they'd do."
He turned to Peter and Harry.
Peter Parker (Tobey version) had been listening with the expression of someone who had been hoping not to be noticed and was now very much noticed. He straightened under Ethan's gaze, ran through several internal calculations, and landed on the one that mattered.
"I'm in," he said. "If you want to see."
Harry didn't hesitate. He'd been looking forward to having a reason to demonstrate what three months of training under the most chaotically effective sensei in any adjacent universe had produced.
"Good," he said.
Wade, from across the room, pumped his fist.
"Wait," Ethan said. He'd been thinking. "Peter and Harry already know each other's patterns. They've been training together since the Raimi arc. That's not a useful test for either of them." He looked at the assembled room. "Each of them picks someone here as their opponent. Whoever defeats their opponent faster wins. If neither defeats their opponent, whoever lasts longer wins."
This reconfiguration appealed to the room considerably more than a Peter-versus-Harry rematch.
"Which means," Ethan continued, "that luck is also a factor. Choose well."
"Or at all," Fisk said, from his seat, with the expression of a man who had already identified what was about to happen.
Peter started scanning the room with the methodical attention of someone who had learned, through spider-sense and basic observation, that threat assessment was a skill worth developing.
Wilson Fisk: enormous, diamond-capable, Ethan's godfather. No.
Caine and Matt Murdock, talking quietly in the corner: two blind men with exceptional combat training. Peter had principles about this. Also they would probably dismantle him.
Wanda: Peter had been in the Raimi universe long enough to understand what Chaos Magic meant when it was actively deployed. Also — and he was fairly certain about this — she was something like Ethan's girlfriend, which put her in a category of people you did not voluntarily fight.
Jessica Jones: thirteen, super strength, still figuring out the full extent of her capabilities. Peter eliminated her on the grounds that winning wouldn't prove anything and losing would be deeply embarrassing.
Tony Stark: Peter knew from Doc Ock's conversations that Tony's suit was now significantly upgraded. Also Tony would definitely make it personal.
His gaze moved on.
Frank Castle: Peter had heard enough to know that Frank Castle was not an opponent you chose for a friendly competition.
Pietro Maximoff: silver hair, relaxed in his chair, playing a video game with the particular quality of someone who was paying approximately thirty percent of his attention to it.
Pietro was Wanda's brother. He was definitely enhanced. But he looked —
Normal, Peter thought. Manageable.
He started moving toward Pietro.
Harry had also been scanning the room.
Harry had less context for most of the people here. He knew Ethan's capabilities. He knew Doc Ock. He'd spent the past several months learning from Wade, which meant his threat assessment had been conducted primarily through a lens of how entertaining is this going to be rather than what are the tactical implications.
His eyes landed on Pietro.
Young. Playing games. Probably doesn't take things too seriously.
He moved first. Faster than Peter.
He tapped Pietro on the shoulder.
"I pick you," he said. "Is that okay?"
Pietro looked up from his game, looked at Harry, looked at the room, and understood immediately what had just happened. He looked at Ethan.
Ethan's expression was doing something specific.
"Okay," Pietro said.
From the wall, where he was still pinned by a strand of Chaos Magic with his mouth sealed, Wade was making sounds. The sounds had the energy of someone trying to scream a warning through a gag.
"Rowan — you sure?" Ethan said to Harry.
Harry stood straighter. "Completely sure."
Ethan looked at him for a moment with the expression of a man who had decided against saying you have no idea what you've just done, because sometimes people needed to find out for themselves.
"Alright," he said. "When you're ready."
Peter, still moving toward Pietro, realized he'd been beaten to his target. He stopped. Looked at the room again with fresh urgency.
He looked at Ethan.
Ethan looked back.
Not me, Ethan's expression said.
Peter continued his survey.
Tony had noticed the dynamic.
He turned to Doc Ock quietly and said: "The Pietro situation."
"The boy has chosen a man who can move faster than the human eye can track," Otto said, without looking up from whatever he'd been writing. "At maximum speed."
"He doesn't know that."
"Evidently not."
They watched.
"Do we tell him?" Tony asked.
Otto considered this. "Ethan gave him a hint."
"Ethan was very gentle about the hint."
"Ethan is sometimes kind in indirect ways."
Tony looked at Harry, who was vibrating with competitive energy, and at Pietro, who had the deeply relaxed posture of a man who knew he was the fastest thing in any room he'd ever been in and had made peace with this knowledge long ago.
"He's going to get absolutely wrecked," Tony said.
"Comprehensively," Otto agreed.
Tony found this satisfying in the specific way that watching physics enforce itself against optimism was always satisfying.
Wanda had unpeeled Wade from the wall once the selection process was complete, on the grounds that he could no longer spoil anything.
Wade sat on the floor looking at Harry with an expression of genuine sorrow.
"Kid," he said. "I should have taught you something more useful."
Harry looked at him. "What?"
"Doesn't matter now." Wade patted his arm. "You're going to learn something tonight. It's going to happen very fast. Try to notice what you learn."
Harry frowned. "You're not inspiring a lot of confidence."
"I'm managing your expectations," Wade said. "Which is what good teachers do."
Ethan, from his chair, watched Harry's expression resolve into the particular stubbornness that came from someone deciding that everyone else was wrong and they were about to prove it.
Some matches, he thought, are over before they start.
But you don't know that until you've started them.
"Ready when you are," he said.
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