Ten thousand meters in the air, Los’s mood matched the plane he was riding: turbulent and suffocating.
Looking back at the history of transmigrators online, he had to rank among the unluckiest of the bunch.
He’d barely lucked into a second life when fate dropped him onto a Boeing passenger jet, hijacked by Middle Easterners and bound for New York.
The debuffs were already stacking.
He’d watched four Middle Eastern men, armed with guns and blades, quickly seize control of the cabin and cockpit.
They’d killed the flight attendants and the captain.
They hadn’t made any demands to the outside world.
Los couldn’t just sit there.
Damn it all.
He’d just arrived in America and hadn’t even gotten off the plane before landing on death’s doorstep.
He’d died once before.
One look was enough to tell him what he needed to know.
These hijackers all had the look of men who’d accepted their deaths the moment they’d boarded.
They had no intention of landing this plane.
This was a terrorist attack in the making.
Can I actually survive this one?
The one thing Los could be grateful for: this world was fundamentally different from his previous life in one key way.
This world had superpowers.
That’s right.
This was a world where superpowered individuals existed alongside ordinary humans.
Supes and normals, sharing the same earth.
The person Los had transmigrated into was one of those supes.
His ability, specifically, was:
The power to [Enhance] or [Degrade] non-living objects he came into physical contact with.
Clearly a support-type ability.
In terms of raw combat power, it barely moved the needle.
But Los didn’t have the luxury of caring about that right now.
Fight like hell and maybe he’d live.
Sit in his seat trembling like the rest of the passengers and pray to God.
That was a death sentence.
He’d just started his second life.
He wasn’t about to hand his fate over to a God he’d never met.
In the middle section of the passenger cabin, in an aisle seat.
Los had already taken stock of the situation.
Four hijackers total.
The only one with a gun was in the cockpit.
The other three were posted along the cabin aisle, blades out, holding over a hundred passengers hostage.
One of the cabin hijackers was making his way toward Los’s row now.
Los took a slow breath.
His left hand moved quietly to the fitted hoodie he was wearing and he pushed his ability into it.
[Enhance].
He gave the fabric a test pull.
The thick material had noticeably toughened up.
With any luck, this reinforced hoodie would hold against a small-caliber round.
At the very least, it should stop a blade from going straight through.
At the same time.
Los slipped off his right canvas shoe and sock and pressed his bare foot onto the blanket in the aisle beside him.
Through direct contact with the blanket and the floor beneath it, he pushed his ability outward.
[Degrade].
The floor looked the same as before.
Underneath, it had already fractured.
Soft, ready to cave in.
Now all he had to do was wait for the patrolling hijacker to step into it.
Los had already run through the whole sequence in his head.
The moment the hijacker’s foot hit the degraded floor, he’d stumble forward.
Los would unclip his seatbelt, grab the man’s blade, hit it with [Enhance], and fight back.
That was the plan.
In reality.
The cabin was tense and shuddering, a hundred and twenty-three passengers trembling in their seats.
Many were crying quietly.
Others were praying.
Four flight attendants lay dead on the floor.
The smell of blood sat heavy in the recycled air.
An unkempt, bearded Middle Eastern man, face completely exposed, moved along the aisle with a small, sharp blade, patrolling toward the middle of the cabin where Los was sitting.
Every step he took, Los’s pulse climbed a little higher.
Sweat had already soaked through the enhanced hoodie.
Fear was biology.
In his past life, Los had never fought anyone.
He’d never even killed a chicken.
The hijacker was almost at his row.
Los steeled himself, unclipped his seatbelt, and got ready to move.
Now.
Then it happened.
The patrolling hijacker, one step away from the degraded floor, abruptly stopped.
He turned his head toward a sound from somewhere else in the cabin.
An unexpected interruption.
Bang.
The plane’s emergency door blew open without warning.
The pressure differential between the cabin and the open sky pulled at everything inside with violent suction.
The hijacker nearest the emergency exit was ripped off his feet by the howling wind and hurled out of the aircraft.
Gone, swallowed by the clouds ten thousand meters below.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Los, the passengers, the two remaining hijackers: everyone in the cabin froze.
Then.
Los watched a white woman in dark armored attire appear in front of the hijacker right beside him.
She moved so fast she was simply there, no transition.
One hand closed around the hijacker’s throat.
She lifted him off the ground.
He was a big man.
It didn’t matter.
A crack of bone.
She snapped his neck.
A shout from somewhere.
The last Middle Eastern hijacker in the cabin spun to meet her, but two beams of red laser light were faster.
They cut through the cabin air and burned straight through the man, blade and all.
It was over in seconds.
All three terrorists in the cabin were dead.
Stars and stripes appeared.
An American flag cape rippled in the residual wind.
A blond, blue-eyed man leaned through the open emergency door from outside, handsome and unhurried, completely unbothered by the altitude.
He pulled the emergency door shut behind him with one hand, as if personally holding back the wind and everything beyond it.
Then he spread his arms and turned to the cabin with a smile so perfect it looked like it had been engineered.
“Everyone, it’s over.
Because I’m here.”
His voice was warm.
Utterly self-assured.
Los stared at the man’s familiar blue costume and the fading heat-glow still rimming his eyes.
His breath caught.
That was
“Homelander!”
Someone in the cabin shouted the name first.
Then came the collective exhale, the surge of relief, the gratitude breaking loose all at once.
“Thank you, Homelander!”
“I love you!
You’re the light of God!”
“The leader of The Seven, as expected!”
The man in the American flag cape drew the response of a savior and a celebrity rolled into one.
The passengers lit up with the giddy, disbelieving joy of people who’d just cheated death.
“I’m declaring this plane safe.
You’re all going to be fine.”
Homelander smiled broadly.
He walked the length of the blood-streaked aisle, stepping over the bodies, waving and giving each section of passengers his warmth, his reassurance, his undivided attention.
The hijacking scene had become a fan meet-and-greet.
The atmosphere of death cracked open and dissolved.
But unlike everyone around him, Los was dripping cold sweat and bracing himself like something far worse was coming.
More memories had surfaced now, and they were complete.
This world, a world of superpowered humans, belonged to the American comics multiverse.
Specifically, the universe where nearly every superhero went bad.
The Boys universe.
The most powerful being in this world was the man standing right in front of him.
Homelander, a knockoff Superman
This so-called first hero, built entirely on PR and packaging, was behind closed doors the kind of man who’d incinerate you with heat vision just for annoying him.
The worst of the worst, even by the standards of the scum around him.
In his memories from his previous life, Los knew exactly how this played out.
In the source material, Homelander had shown up to rescue this hijacked Boeing specifically to make the case for supes being integrated into the military.
A huge PR opportunity.
A defining moment.
And he had wrecked it.
He’d overused his heat vision and badly damaged the cockpit.
The plane was already beyond saving, so Homelander had simply walked away and let it go down with everyone on board.
This aircraft hadn’t been waiting for a savior.
It had been waiting for the thing that would kill it.
The passengers still didn’t know that.
They were applauding.
They were cheering.
Two members of The Seven, Homelander and Queen Maeve, were being walked toward the cockpit like returning heroes.
“Homelander.
Queen Maeve.
Wait.”
Los was on his feet.
He had to stop what was coming.
Both to change the outcome and to keep himself alive.
Homelander paused at the cockpit door and glanced back at Los with a puzzled look.
Los moved quickly from his seat, trying to follow them.
“There’s still a hijacker in the cockpit.
He’s armed.
I ”
He didn’t finish.
Homelander raised one finger and shook it, cutting him off.
“You don’t need to tell me.
I can see right through walls.
I know exactly what’s in there.”
Homelander tapped his own temple with one finger, casually.
Then he looked directly at Los.
His smile stayed in place, warm and easy, like sunlight.
But Los caught something underneath it.
A flicker of impatience.
It made sense.
Some passengers still had their phones out, recording all of it.
For Homelander, this rescue had to be flawless.
Having a random passenger try to brief him.
That wasn’t a good look for America’s greatest hero.
“Your heart’s pounding.
You’re scared, aren’t you?
I already told you, everything’s fine.
Sit down and stay put, don’t do anything.”
His tone was still pleasant, still controlled.
Los stood there and watched Homelander push open the cockpit door and disappear inside with Queen Maeve.
Just like the source material.
The script was already running.
Things were about to go somewhere they couldn’t come back from.
Is there any chance I’m making it out of this one?