Watching William Beck cry his eyes out in there, President Maya's first instinct was to march in and kick him twice.
If William had been a completely heartless, ungrateful lowlife, she wouldn't have felt this way. But he clearly understood everything. He knew how hard life had been for his widowed mother. He knew how rare an opportunity like that football recruitment was.
And what had he done with that knowledge? Nothing useful.
The high school coach had already made him a promise, and he'd still gone out looking for trouble. He had a clear path to a sports scholarship at a decent high school—all he had to do was not fail out—and yet he'd been messing around on the street and racking up moral point deductions. His mother's entire reason for getting up in the morning was him—and he'd been throwing his life away playing cannon fodder for gang wars.
Looking at the Beck family's situation, Maya thought of her own. Her own deadbeat father had run with street gangs, too. He'd just been slightly luckier than William's father—he'd gotten shot but hadn't died on the spot.
But William's mother was something else entirely, something Jennifer had never been. Jennifer had once seriously considered running off and leaving Maya behind. Mrs. Beck had never once considered abandoning her son. Year after year, she had carried everything alone and raised him into the big, strong kid standing in that room. That was no small thing.
On top of that, Maya's family at least owned their apartment. The Becks had to make rent every month. By any measure, Mrs. Beck had been carrying a heavier load than Jennifer ever had.
Though—to her credit—Jennifer had been gradually shaped into a reasonably functional mother. And the president had never written her off.
But still. William had everything he needed to make something of himself, and he was squandering it. Maybe it was because Maya's soul was older, more seasoned. But look at Andrew next door, or her friend Nana—they lived in the same environment, faced the same pressures.
Andrew never caused trouble. His grades were solid and consistent. Nana's grades were average, but she worked part-time to help her family, and single-handedly supported her younger siblings. Both of them were doing exactly what they needed to do.
William Beck was a mountain of a guy. After school, he could've gone to McDonald's and bused tables or washed dishes. That alone would've been infinitely more dignified than running with street crews.
Fine, the environment here bred this. Plenty of kids got caught up in it. But you still had to use your head. Even if you couldn't become Chan Ho-nam, at least don't end up like Banana Skin—the first brother in Young and Dangerous to get hacked to death. Tragic guy.
That was essentially what had happened. His moral points had been docked below the passing threshold—again—and he was being held back—again. Any high school in Brooklyn? Gone. Even if he got his act together now, the coach would likely move on. Sports recruiters watched potential, and at this age, the window closed fast.
It was like those cases with some so-called "B-tier demon king" prospect—the first year, people could still convince themselves there was untapped potential. The second year, they were done and moved on. Why? Because the ceiling was visible, and it wasn't high enough.
If this were William's first time down this road, President Maya might have been tempted to pull some strings on his behalf. But William was in the same grade as Morris—and Morris was already in tenth grade, while William was still just a first-year high schooler, held back again. How many times was this now?
There was no point in pitying people who refused to stop being the cause of their own suffering.
President Maya shook herself out of her thoughts and checked the time through the window.
Almost 11:40 PM.
She didn't have time to sit here brooding over the Beck family drama. Shadow Stealth reactivated, and she launched herself off the wall like a gray cannonball, bounding across uneven rooftops at full speed.
Why not use her fantasy 3D maneuver gear? Rooftop terrain in this neighborhood was too irregular. Even Spider-Man only used his web-swinging between Manhattan's skyscrapers—when he showed up to Liz's house party in the suburbs, he'd just run on foot like a normal person.
As for why she wasn't running at ground level—she was trying not to step in anything unpleasant. Whether Spider-Man's huge feet had ever encountered that kind of sidewalk hazard was anyone's guess, though given that the Vulture lived in a decent middle-class neighborhood, probably not an issue for him.
Hell's Kitchen's alleys were another story entirely—runoff, garbage piled in every corner, and most critically, the local infrastructure genuinely lagged behind—nothing like back home in China. In ten-plus years of observation, President Maya had noted that aside from the tourist-facing area near the Hudson River, public restrooms essentially did not exist in Hell's Kitchen. Private apartment bathrooms only.
The consequences were self-evident.
The Butcher Bar sat at the far end of 40th Street in Hell's Kitchen—not exactly hidden, in fact Maya passed it regularly. Tonight the bar was nothing like its usual rowdy self. The whole block felt compressed under a heavy silence. Only the neon signs flickered on as normal, and almost no one walked the sidewalks.
Manhattan's real estate left no room for low buildings. Even here, every structure ran multiple stories up and several floors below ground—the Knicks' home arena alone had underground levels stacked beneath it. The Butcher Bar occupied the first floor of a twelve-story building directly on the street.
Marion's people had eyes posted in every shadow nearby, but President Maya slipped past them and made her way into the fourth floor of the building without a sound.
Not the roof—the roof had coverage too.
Marion had failed to recruit even one student cannon-fodder that night, but he still commanded a few dozen street soldiers. Most of them weren't cut out for anything more complex than standing watch, patrolling the block, or selling weed. But they could hold a post.
A quick sensory sweep located an empty room. Or rather—the entire fourth floor was office space, just currently unoccupied after business hours.
An invisible gray thread extended through the gap at the bottom of a window. The interior latch clicked open on its own. The window eased inward, and a shadow drifted inside.
"If the president weren't above this kind of thing, there'd be legends all over New York about Yi Zhi Mei—no, wait." Maya caught herself. "Chu Liuxiang. That's the one."
With the self-satisfied commentary done, President Maya extended her senses again and surveyed the spacious executive office she'd landed in.
"Perfect. Early nineties—security cameras haven't gone mainstream yet. And whoever thought it was smart to put office space in Hell's Kitchen clearly wasn't running a large operation. No money for cameras makes complete sense."
Empty room, no surveillance. President Maya deactivated Shadow Stealth to conserve chakra.
Fwish.
If anyone had been in that office and happened to look up at the ceiling, they would have received the shock of their lives—because a certain up-and-coming Spider-Man was standing on it. Standing on the ceiling. As though gravity had simply decided to change its mind about which direction was down.
It was the kind of theatrical entrance common to Naruto's more eccentric characters—a certain daimyo here, a certain Danzo there—the ones who arranged their schemes from inverted positions as a matter of principle.
President Maya would absolutely not admit this was for style points.
She was simply being cautious—leaving zero trace on the floor below.
And more importantly, she needed the space. She had plans.