Scenario: The Subway Car Challenge

[SaintOfNoogies]

Our hero is at one end of a tighly packed subway car, which is between stations.

At the other end is a mook who, if not interfered with, will release a noxious gas that will sicken many people six seconds from now. It's in a canister on his belt, and he's got a gas mask on to protect himself. He's fanatical enough to do it even without the mask. If he sees trouble in his immediate area, he'll do it right away.

What heroes can stop him?

Before you decide this is easy, consider:

• If you want to "push people out of the way," you have to explain where you're pushing them to in a tightly packed subway car, and how hard you push them to make it across the whole car in six seconds. Bumping and bruising civilians is OK for a hero, but injuring or killing them is not.
  
• You know roughly where the bad guy is, but you can't see exactly where (unless your powers let you see through people). The train is jostling back and forth unpredictably, so a freely thrown object can't be aimed precisely even with perfect skill.
  
• It's just as crowded at his end as at yours. If you phase out and run through the crowd, you'll have to explain where you find space to phase back in.
  
• The total free space in the car consists of: about 1-3.5 feet (variable) over
  passengers' heads; narrow corridors of air over the people who are sitting down along the sides (although some standing passengers lean into that a bit),
  
• Outside the car is a couple of feet of space all around, and then concrete tunnel walls.
  

Some heroes can clearly do this:

Superman flies up into the space overhead, crosses the car quickly by flying, grabs the mook from overhead, punches a hole in the roof of the car and flies him out.

Nightcrawler *bamf*s his way to a similar strategy. (He needs to *bamf* to a spot above the guy, not next to him where there's no room.)

Zatanna simply shouts, "!ria eht ni sdnah ruoy dloh ydobyrevE"

For other heroes, it may be a challenge. Does Iron Man have any way to do this? If he tries to fly, would he cook someone with his jets?

Can the Thing do it? Step one could be to clear himself a little space and jump through the roof of the subway car...but with the tunnel ceiling rather close, it's hard to know what to do from there.

A sleeping gas canister launched to the other end of the car might do it...but once the mook sees it he'll deploy his own canister, so it had better work extremely quickly!

Who's the most powerful hero who can't do this at all?