Rubber Band, smugly assuming this was all the strength John had, sneered and stretched both arms out again, ready to wind around John and truss him up like a mummy.
In the instant before his hands could touch John, John reached out.
He didn’t dodge.
He simply took a step forward, perfectly naturally, and clamped a hand around Rubber Band’s neck, tough as rubber though it was.
Rubber Band’s smile froze.
He tried desperately to stretch his neck and slip free, only to find that the boy’s soft little white hand was like an immovable steel clamp, pinning him in place.
John was still smiling, a smile perfect enough to be printed straight onto a magazine cover, his face turned toward the camera, the picture of a hero subduing a villain from any angle.
But he leaned in close to Rubber Band’s ear and spoke softly, in a voice only the two of them could hear.
“Leon told me that when you make a movie, you follow the script.
You just broke the rules, and you almost messed up my hair with that crummy lump of metal.”
Rubber Band stared into those deep blue eyes inches from his own.
At some point, deep in those blue pupils, a cold killing intent had welled up, the kind that turns your guts to water.
John’s fingers tightened, just a fraction.
Only a fraction, and Rubber Band heard his own neck vertebrae let out a pained groan.
“Listen up, Play-Doh.”
John’s voice was still gentle, like he was chatting with a good friend.
“I promised Leon I wouldn’t break your bones.
But if you dare move wrong one more time, I’ll boil your intestines with my heat vision.
Want to guess whether your rubber guts can hold up against a few thousand degrees?”
Rubber Band’s pupils shrank to pinpoints, cold sweat soaking through his uniform.
He felt it.
That was undisguised, pure terror.
The smiling angel in front of him had become, in the blind spot the camera couldn’t see, a tyrant more terrifying than any demon out of hell.
He had no doubt this kid really would cook his organs!
“S…
sorry…”
Rubber Band shook violently from head to toe, his knees gave out, and he collapsed straight onto the floor.
He didn’t dare let so much as the thought of resistance form.
John looked at the terror-stricken Rubber Band, and the chill in his eyes drew itself back, clean and gone.
He let go, still holding that radiant smile, threw out his chest, and faced the camera head-on.
“Evil will always bow before justice.”
John delivered the script’s final line, his voice ringing and full of righteous force.
“Cut!
Perfect! New chapters come out on g.com first.
Absolutely perfect!”
The Legend leaped up from his chair in excitement, leading the applause.
Thunderous applause broke out across the entire set.
The way they saw it, John hadn’t just perfectly subdued the “robber” who’d gone off-script.
He’d even displayed a kingly dominance that made people surrender without a fight.
Only Rubber Band, kneeling on the floor, lay slumped there like a puddle of mud, face deathly pale, gulping for air in great heaving breaths, looking at John the way you’d look at a monster wearing human skin.
Leon stood behind the monitor, quietly watching John bask in the crowd’s cheers and awe under the lights.
He hadn’t missed the sheer terror on Rubber Band’s face, nor the flash of pressure when John had leaned in to the man’s ear a moment ago.
Leon took a sip of the coffee in his hand and found the taste a little bitter.
John had finally learned the highest law of survival in this world.
He had successfully split himself in two: one, a flawless god the whole world could see, radiant and rule-abiding; the other, a tyrant hidden beneath that spotless smiling face, who would use the cruelest methods to cow others into line for the sake of the order he’d set down.
“Quite a performance, wasn’t it?”
Madelyn came over to Leon’s side, watching the playback on the monitor, an undisguised elation in her voice.
“He was simply born for this work.
Even his expression control is flawless.”
“Yeah.
Flawless.”
Leon set down his coffee cup and let out a small sigh.
The fear was that he performed too well, so well that one day even Leon himself wouldn’t be able to tell when the boy was smiling and when he wanted to kill.
That night, after the shoot, the underground apartment in Sector B was thick with the rich smell of fried chicken.
“To reward your perfect performance in front of the cameras today, here’s a top-tier family bucket, specially approved by Logistics, plus your favorite ice-cold cola.”
Leon set a huge red-and-white-striped paper bucket down on the coffee table, pulled out a golden, crispy fried drumstick, and handed it to John, who had been waiting beside him with wide, eager eyes.
“Thanks, Leon!”
John happily took the drumstick and started chomping into it with no regard for appearances.
Buddy, the seventy-some-pound golden retriever, sidled over and rested his chin on the edge of the coffee table, whimpering ingratiatingly in his throat, tail wagging like a propeller.
John glanced at Leon, saw he was watching TV with a can of beer in hand, and quietly tore a boneless piece of tender meat off the drumstick, stuffing it into Buddy’s mouth quick as lightning.
“Buddy’s been overweight lately.
Go easy on the greasy stuff.”
Leon didn’t even turn his head, staring at the TV screen as he said it darkly.
John, like a kid caught in the act, guiltily shoved the remaining half of the drumstick into his own mouth and mumbled indistinctly, “I just felt bad for him.
Leon, do you have eyes in the back of your head?”
“This is what they call a guardian’s intuition.”
Thinking back to a few hours earlier in the soundstage, that cold tyrant who, with just two fingers, could scare a Supe into wetting his pants, Leon felt the extreme split was enough to give a person multiple personalities.
Leon took a sip of cold beer and asked in a tone of feigned offhandedness, “Right, on the set today, when you leaned in to that ‘Rubber Band’ guy’s ear, what exactly did you say to him?
I saw him so scared afterward he could barely stand.”
John licked the ketchup off his fingers and answered perfectly naturally, without concealing a thing.
“I just told him that if he didn’t follow the rules, I’d boil his intestines with my heat vision.”
The hand holding the beer can froze in midair.
“You…
threatened to cook his organs?”
“Yes.”
John nodded seriously.
“You said that when you make a movie, you follow the script, and you can’t break his bones.
So I didn’t hurt him.
I just gave him an objective statement of the physical consequences he might face for breaking the rules.
It was very effective.
He became extremely cooperative right away.”
John even leaned in, looking at Leon with those pretty blue eyes, a trace of smug, praise-seeking pride in them.
“Leon, this is also an application of the ’empathy’ you taught me, right?
I accurately sensed his ‘fear of death’ emotion, and used that emotion to maintain order on the set.
I did great, didn’t I?”
Leon looked at that angelic face, listened to this analysis that could only be called devil’s logic, and felt a chill shoot up from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head.
What empathy!
What maintaining order!
This kid had turned humanity’s complex emotions and fears completely into a set of levers that could be manipulated.
He didn’t think of it as cruelty.
He thought of it as the most efficient shortcut to clearing the level.
“…Next time, use a slightly gentler comparison.”
Leon forced down that mouthful of bitter beer.
“Like telling him he’ll get his pay docked, something like that.”
“Docked pay doesn’t hurt enough.
They won’t remember.
Pain and fear are the deepest lessons.”
John pulled out a napkin and wiped his mouth, an unquestioning coldness in his tone, but the next second he switched back to that obedient smile.
“But since you don’t like it, Leon, I won’t bring up intestines next time.”
Leon sighed, not wanting to tangle any further with this hopeless subject.