Vought International Headquarters, 72nd floor.
The lights in Madelyn’s office were still on.
She sat behind her desk, watching the convenience store video on the tablet in front of her.
The person filming wasn’t a professional cameraman, after all; the amount of shaking made it look like they had Parkinson’s.
Fortunately, the key footage was very clear...
Bullets ricocheted off the man’s chest.
He slapped a Supe away.
He bent a gun barrel with his bare hands.
Then, he shot up into the sky.
Madelyn paused the video on the frame where the man took off, tapping her index finger twice on the desk.
"Any information?"
The analyst beside her opened the tablet: "Nothing found. There are no records of this person in the Vought International database. He hasn’t registered for a hero license, hasn’t participated in any Vought International projects, and there’s no match in the compound v subject list."
"A Supe who can fly and is bulletproof isn’t in our database?"
"Yes, ma’am."
Could it be that compound v leaked into the black market and created such a powerful Supe?
Madelyn was silent for three seconds.
Theoretically, this shouldn’t happen. Vought International controlled the manufacturing and management chain of all Supes in America; compound v was the only known source of superpowers, and the birth of every Supe was under their surveillance.
Which underground laboratory was this the product of?
"What’s the online view count for that flight video?"
"As of five minutes ago... 370,000, and it’s still skyrocketing!"
Madelyn’s expression changed.
A video from an amateur, with no packaging or marketing, had reached 370,000 views in less than an hour.
After a few hours of fermentation, the final view count of this video wouldn’t be lower than ten million.
You have to realize, Vought International spent ten million dollars last year filming a brand commercial for The Deep, and the first-day view count was only twenty million.
"What’s the public opinion trend?"
"...Positive, extremely positive. The comment section is basically one-sided; many people are saying he’s more like a real hero than The Seven."
"Heh, netizens are fickle. The Seven have dominated the screen for too long; everyone is just suffering from aesthetic fatigue."
Madelyn slowly leaned back into her chair, crossing her fingers against her chin.
She was silent for ten seconds.
She picked up the intercom on the desk and dialed a number.
"Help me look into someone. Codename: Guardian. He’s been spotted in Brooklyn."
"Use all your connections. I want everything on him... his name, address, social connections, and the source of his superpowers."
"Within forty-eight... no, twenty-four hours!"
She hung up the phone and took another look at the paused frame on the tablet.
For some reason, Homelander came to mind.
...
The nights in Brooklyn are never without three things.
Streetwalkers, contraband deals, and Supe crimes.
Lucas had been flying for less than five minutes when he heard about another crime.
Tonight, he had witnessed three criminal incidents with his own eyes.
The people of America really are living in dire straits!
On a secluded street, four Supes were ganging up on an armored truck.
One of them could shoot some kind of acid from his fingers, corroding a large hole in the truck door.
The two security guards inside were trembling, one of them frantically calling the police.
Lucas smashed down directly from the sky.
The moment he landed, the shockwave from his Bio-field caused a spiderweb of cracks to form on the ground.
The four Supes turned their heads in unison.
"Another one, for fuck’s sake?" The acid man sneered and raised his hand to spray at Lucas’s face.
Lucas tilted his head slightly.
The acid flew past his ear and corroded the wall behind him, hissing and smoking.
"Bro, a man can be fast, but he can’t be inaccurate!"
The next second, he was already in front of the acid man, punching him in the stomach.
He still controlled his strength, using about 8%.
The acid man curled up like a shrimp, flew seven or eight meters off the ground, and slammed into the side of the armored truck, leaving a human-shaped dent in the vehicle body.
The remaining three looked at each other.
A minute later, the four Supes were neatly lined up on the side of the road.
The armored truck security guards poked their heads out from the car, their expressions like they’d seen a ghost.
"You... who are you?"
"Guardian."
"What the hell is that?"
"Call the police, buddy, while they’re still unconscious."
Lucas flew away after saying that.
The panel flickered.
+312
Current Evolution Points: 1,159 / 10,000
There were no bystanders, only two security guards, so the emotional feedback wasn’t much.
In the next three hours, Lucas swept through Brooklyn from south to north.
When ordinary robbers held up a jewelry store, he gave them a gentle slap.
A Supe harassing people in the subway station... a gym bro? He walked up and kicked him.
Lucas didn’t dare use his hands, afraid that the guy might get off on it and stick out his tongue.
Two Supe kids were blasting each other on the street, trying to simulate comic book plots, and ended up nearly blowing up an apartment building.
Lucas hit them with a couple of punches, lulling them to sleep.
When buying food at night, a Supe who could discharge electricity held the bar owner hostage.
Lucas walked straight through the wall; the electric current hitting his body felt like a massage. He performed a supersonic shoulder throw, slamming the guy into the floor so hard he couldn’t be pried out.
The bar owner was so scared he kept shouting: "Long live Jesus!"
Lucas glanced at him. I’m the one who saved you; what’s with thanking Jesus?
"The one who saved you isn’t the guy hanging on the cross, it’s me. My name is Guardian, gringo!"
Lucas completely emulated the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, fighting crime all night long.
By 3:00 AM, the number on the panel had become...
Current Evolution Points: 3,741 / 10,000
Three thousand seven hundred.
Nearly three thousand points farmed in one night.
At this rate, it would take at least two more nights.
He couldn’t wait. Lucas had persecution paranoia; he was undoubtedly stealing the spotlight from The Seven right now.
There was an emotionally unstable pervert in The Seven; if he happened to piss that guy off, he might come up and punch him.
Unless...
He could pull off something big.
Lucas landed on the rooftop of an apartment building, sitting on the edge with his legs dangling in the air, twenty stories up.
A crescent moon appeared in the sky.
Getsuga Tensho?
Brooklyn in the early morning was much quieter, with the occasional sound of a dog barking in the distance.
He took out his cracked-screen phone.
Opened social media.
Holy shit.
The #Guardian hashtag had already surged to ninth place on the Twitter trending list for the New York area.
The video of him saving people at the convenience store was everywhere, along with several new videos of him saving people at the armored truck and bar scenes. Some people had even edited videos from different angles together, set to a fast-paced montage.
The one with the highest view count had already broken five million.
The comment section was exploding.
@NewYorkHotMomKaren: He saved the convenience store I always go to! The owner’s family are all good people! Guardian, I love you!!
@SuperheroObservationRoom: Doesn’t belong to Vought International, doesn’t belong to any company. Invulnerable, flight, super strength—the ability model is highly similar to Homelander. Bro, do you understand what this means?
@BystanderOldking: How will Homelander react when he sees this video? Hahahaha.
@VoughtTrueFan: Just another Supe influencer hype, right? In a couple of days, he’ll be signed by Vought International and start selling protein powder.
@BrooklynLocal: I swear, I saw him fly past my window with my own eyes! I almost thought it was Homelander!
...
Lucas scrolled for two minutes, then tucked the phone back into his pocket.
It was still just social media for now; once the mainstream media followed up with reports, that would be the real traffic frenzy.
It just depended on whether Vought International would try to silence it, which would cost a heavy price.
The panel...
+11 +8 +15 +7 +9 +13 +6 +12...
Thousands of mosquitoes added up, and the growth in Evolution Points was quite considerable.
Lucas leaned against the rooftop water tower and closed his eyes for a while.
The Viltrumite constitution didn’t really require sleep, but his brain was still in a human thinking pattern, so he habitually rested for a bit.