Superpowered Crime Again

Two months passed in the blink of an eye. Added to the previous month, half of the freshman year was already behind them, and Dilos had reached the age of sixteen in this life.

During this period, the people in town had generally been living in a state of panic, the cause being three separate incidents involving super-powered individuals over the last three months.

The first was the Jeremy incident. Because of it, the police and relevant authorities had spent the first two months investigating. However, since nothing else had occurred, they were already preparing to abandon the investigation and pull out of town.

As it turned out, just as they were about to leave, two more super-powered incidents occurred back-to-back.

In one, Lana Lang was stalked by a man with insect-like abilities who had kidnapped her due to a surge in hormones and other factors. The man, Greg Arkin, was a deranged individual who had used his powers to kill and consume his own mother. After kidnapping Lana, he nearly killed her boyfriend, Whitney, when he tried to intervene. Ultimately, thanks to the meddling of that goody-two-shoes Clark Kent, who provided the intel, the police arrived at the scene and shot Greg Arkin dead.

When Dilos saw the news, he curled his lip. He couldn't say for sure about anything else, but in his personal judgment, the only reason the police managed to gun Greg down in time was that Clark had likely intervened in secret using his powers. Otherwise, if the police had gone in like idiots with sirens blaring, they would have alerted Greg early, allowing him to slip away.

There was also the matter of a football coach at Smallville High who possessed the ability to increase the temperature of objects he touched. He could instantly raise the temperature of a contact point to its ignition threshold and command the resulting flames. His only drawbacks were the long activation time and the immense physical toll it took.

This coach had committed a string of illegal acts to further his star coaching career, including using his position and connections to obtain exam papers so his players could cheat, and nearly burning to death the dedicated and hardworking principal with his powers.

Dilos didn't feel much about these things, feeling at most a bit of pity for the unlucky victims. But what he couldn't tolerate was that this pathetic, turtle-brained bastard had actually tried to burn Chloe to death with his powers!

The reason was that Chloe had accidentally stumbled upon him using his abilities to intimidate and abuse his players.

If it hadn't been for Clark, who sensed something was wrong and arrived "just in time" with a fire extinguisher he'd grabbed from somewhere, his dear sister Chloe would have perished.

The coach was then reported to the police by the two of them. Initially, the police couldn't arrest him due to a lack of evidence, but given the recent string of super-powered incidents, they were forced to take it seriously. When they went to apprehend him, a confrontation immediately broke out. The flames the coach produced kept the police at bay, and they had to resort to everything—smoke grenades, shotguns, fire hoses—to try and take him down. In the end, the disgusting coach, unable to control his own powers, became overwhelmed with rage and began firing them off wildly, attempting to burn everything in sight. Unfortunately for him, he didn't kill anyone else; he ended up burning himself to death due to his loss of control.

Dilos only found out about the incident after it was over, and only because he was summoned to the scene by the police in his capacity as a "family member." If not for that, heaven knows how long that brat Chloe would have kept it from him.

It's just a pity that dying like that was letting him off too easy. Thinking of the danger Chloe had been in, Dilos felt a lingering fear, while the killing intent in his chest continued to boil.

If I had been there, I would have made him taste the feeling of his blood flowing in reverse, bleeding from his seven orifices, watching himself die step by step, making him clearly feel that desperate agony. When Dilos learned of the incident, he wanted to head straight to the hospital morgue to drag the charred corpse out and whip it.

After this event, Dilos returned to school half a month early. As far as he knew, mutants and people with such powers were generally scattered across the globe; they wouldn't just appear one after another in a place like Smallville. If he wasn't mistaken, based on the data Chloe had collected at the Wall of Weird and the circumstances surrounding how these people gained their powers, it was highly likely they were all mutated by Kryptonite radiation.

However, Dilos didn't intend to dwell on the cause and effect for now; he had other things to deal with. After all, such a huge thing had happened, and that brat Chloe had actually kept it from him. If the police hadn't notified him as her family, he would still be in the dark.

"Alright, stop being angry. I just didn't want you to worry, okay? Dad isn't even mad anymore, but you've been fuming for two weeks. If you keep it up, you're going to age prematurely~" Chloe coaxed the scowling Dilos with a wry smile. "Besides, I didn't get hurt, did I?"

"Yes, you didn't get hurt." Dilos curled his lip in annoyance while driving. To prevent Chloe from encountering such things again, he had been driving her to and from school like a parent.

Seeing Dilos's expression, Chloe smiled awkwardly and changed the subject. "Seriously, Dilos, are you sure you want to wear those glasses? You aren't nearsighted, and they make you look really..."

"Dorky." Dilos finished the sentence for her. "Can't help it, I need to keep a low profile. Besides, don't you think the face I reveal when I accidentally take them off is a bit too easy at attracting girls?"

At this, Dilos smiled with a hint of smugness. Chloe rolled her eyes in resignation and said perfunctorily, "Yes, yes~. When you take off your glasses, you instantly leave all the girls at school head over heels. Tell me, is it fun to tease people like that? Taking off your glasses, giving them a wink to 'electrify' them, and making them feel flustered and embarrassed all at once. You've already been blacklisted by a bunch of guys; if they weren't afraid of losing a fight to you, you would've been beaten up long ago."

"They deserve it, don't they?" Dilos said with an impatient flick of his lip. "You haven't seen the way they look at me when I wear these glasses. Even without using my powers, I know exactly what kind of nasty things they're thinking. It's one thing to think it, but they actually go out of their way to maliciously gossip about me. Who did I ever offend? If I don't tease them a little, how am I supposed to vent my frustration?"

"Besides, I'm sacrificing myself to help those guys see these women for who they really are. Look at the girls I mess with—they're like animals in heat. As long as a guy is handsome, they follow him around like lost puppies, and plenty of them have thrown themselves at me because of it. I have a lot of respect for good girls like you and Lana." Dilos didn't forget to butter her up at the end, leaving Chloe feeling both annoyed and amused.

Chloe knew her cousin's temper well, which was exactly why she felt so helpless. "Dilos, it's going to be hard for you to find a girlfriend like this."

"It's fine." Dilos said with an indifferent shrug. "I want a good girl who can spend her life with me, not a bunch of animals in heat. If I can't find someone I like, I'll just stay single forever." He glanced at Chloe.

"And I don't think you have the right to talk. Clark likes Lana, and you're the one who's going to be single forever because you're stuck in the shadows pining for him and ignoring all the other good men."

"You!" Stung in a sore spot, Chloe gritted her teeth at Dilos before saying with a mournful face, "You're a bully, I'm not talking to you anymore."

"Hahaha~"

Teasing Chloe like this made Dilos feel a bit better. Just like that, if nothing went wrong, they would be home in a few minutes.

Yes, if nothing went wrong.

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!

A piercing police siren caught their attention. Dilos looked toward the sound and saw a scene that made him exclaim, "What the hell?"

"Is today April Fool's Day?" Even Chloe looked bewildered.

They saw Lex Luthor running out of a bank, clutching an M500 revolver in one hand and a backpack with a broken zipper slung over his shoulder.

A billionaire like Lex Luthor robbing a bank with a gun? That sounded like Ronald McDonald holding a kitchen knife to rob his own store of fried chicken.

"Wait, that's not Lex!" Dilos suddenly shouted. Upon seeing this bizarre scene, he had already unleashed his powers to sense the individual.

Beyond sensing feelings of anxiety and panic, he discovered that the person's brainwaves were miles apart from Lex's. He even used the X-ray function on his glasses and, through the lenses, saw that a large portion of the person's bones were green.

"I can confirm that's not Lex. Could this be a super-powered individual with shapeshifting abilities?" Dilos watched the "Lex" running away, thinking to himself while, amidst Chloe's gasps, he shifted into reverse and turned the car with lightning speed. He absolutely could not let this person escape, or Lex would be the one taking the fall for this!

Dilos drove his Lamborghini, its engine roaring, and quickly closed the distance to "Lex." His eyes turned sharp as he pulled a tactical civilian defense pen from his jacket.

With a tightening of his muscles and a burst of arm strength, he launched the pen from the driver's side window like a dart.

Whoosh. The pen cut through the air, caught up to "Lex," and struck him precisely in the back of the head.

Thud. "Lex" collapsed, unconscious. And then, in the horrified eyes of the surrounding crowd, his skin and bones changed at a visible rate. Within seconds, he transformed into a pale, cute girl wearing a suit.