I Am Your Good Neighbor, Guardian

Vought International headquarters, 72nd floor.

The lights in Madelyn Stillwell's office were still on.

She sat behind her desk, watching the convenience store footage playing on the tablet in front of her.

The person who filmed the video was clearly no professional; the shaking was so bad it looked like they had Parkinson's.

Fortunately, the key frames were crystal clear...

Bullets bouncing off the man's chest.

A superhuman sent flying with a single slap.

A gun barrel twisted like a pretzel with bare hands.

And then, soaring into the sky.

Madelyn paused the video on the frame where the man took flight, tapping her index finger against the desk twice.

"What about the intel?"

The analyst beside her flipped through his tablet. "Nothing. There's no record of this person in the Vought database. He hasn't registered for a hero license, hasn't participated in any Vought programs, and there's no match in the Compound V test subject list."

"A superhuman who can fly and is bulletproof, and he's not in our database?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Could it be that Compound V leaked into the black market and created such a powerful superhuman?

Madelyn remained silent for three seconds.

Theoretically, this shouldn't be possible. Vought controlled the entire manufacturing and management chain of superhumans across the United States. Compound V was the only known source of superpowers, and the birth of every superhuman was under their surveillance.

Which underground lab did this come from?

"What's the view count on that flight video?"

"As of five minutes ago... 370,000, and it's still skyrocketing!"

Madelyn's expression shifted.

A raw video with no packaging and no marketing had hit 370,000 views in less than an hour.

After a few hours of fermentation, the final view count would likely exceed ten million.

One had to remember that Vought spent ten million dollars last year on a brand commercial for The Deep, and it only hit twenty million views on its first day.

"What's the public sentiment?"

"...Positive, extremely positive. The comment section is almost entirely one-sided; many are saying he feels more like a real hero than The Seven."

"Heh, netizens are always fickle. The Seven have dominated the screen for too long; people are just suffering from aesthetic fatigue."

Madelyn leaned back in her chair, crossing her fingers against her chin.

She was silent for ten seconds.

She picked up the desk phone 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 ties, and the source of his powers."

"Forty-eight... no, twenty-four hours!"

She hung up the phone and glanced once more at the paused image on the tablet.

For some reason, Homelander crossed her mind.

Brooklyn nights were never without three things: streetwalkers, illicit trade, and superhuman crime.

Lu Heng had been flying for less than five minutes when he heard about another crime.

That night alone, he had witnessed three criminal incidents with his own eyes.

The people of America were truly living in deep water and scorching fire!

On a secluded street, four superhumans were surrounding an armored cash transport 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.

Lu Heng smashed down directly from the sky.

The moment he landed, the shockwave from his bio-field cracked the ground into a spiderweb of fissures.

The four superhumans turned in unison.

"Another one?" the acid-spitting man sneered, raising his hand to spray Lu Heng in the face.

Lu Heng tilted his head.

The acid whizzed past his ear, sizzling as it corroded the wall behind him.

"Brother, a man can be fast, but he shouldn't be inaccurate!"

In the next second, he was already in front of Acid Man, slamming a fist into his gut.

He still controlled his strength, using about 8%.

Acid Man folded like a shrimp, his feet leaving the ground as he flew seven or eight meters, slamming into the side of an armored truck and leaving a human-shaped dent in the metal.

The remaining three men looked at each other in dismay.

A minute later, the four superhumans were lined up neatly on the side of the road.

The armored truck security guard poked his head out, his expression as if he had seen a ghost.

"Who... who are you?"

"Guardian."

"The what?"

"Call the police, buddy, while they're still out cold."

Lu Heng flew off as soon as he finished speaking.

The panel flickered.

+312

Current Ability Points: 1,159 / 10,000

There were no onlookers, only two security guards, so the emotional feedback was minimal.

Over the next three hours, Lu Heng swept through Brooklyn from south to north.

For ordinary robbers hitting jewelry stores, he gave them a gentle slap.

When a superhuman was harassing... a gym bro at the subway station? He walked up and kicked him.

Lu Heng didn't dare use his hands, fearing the guy might enjoy it and stick his tongue out.

Two superhuman kids were blasting each other on the street, trying to mimic comic book plots, and nearly blew up an apartment building.

Lu Heng gave them two solid thumps and lulled them to sleep.

While buying food that night, a superhuman who could discharge electricity held a bar owner hostage.

Lu Heng walked straight through the wall; the electric current felt like a massage against his skin. He performed a subsonic shoulder throw, slamming the guy into the floor so hard he couldn't be pried out.

The bar owner was so terrified he shouted, "Long live Jesus!"

Lu Heng 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, you yank!"

Lu Heng fully emulated the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, spending the entire night fighting crime.

By three in the morning, the number on the panel had changed to...

Current Ability Points: 3,741 / 10,000

Three thousand seven hundred.

He had farmed nearly three thousand points in one night.

At this rate, it would take at least two more nights.

He could hardly wait, and since Lu Heng suffered from persecution complex, he was undoubtedly stealing the spotlight from The Seven right now.

There was an emotionally unstable psychopath in The Seven; if he pissed that guy off, he might come over and punch him.

Unless...

He could pull off something big.

Lu Heng landed on the roof of an apartment building and sat on the edge, his legs dangling twenty stories above the ground.

A crescent moon appeared in the sky.

Getsuga Tensho?

Brooklyn was much quieter in the early morning, with only the occasional dog barking in the distance.

He pulled out his cracked-screen phone.

He opened social media.

Good grief.

The hashtag #Guardian had already surged to ninth place on the New York Twitter trending list.

Videos were everywhere—the convenience store rescue, plus several new clips of him saving people at the armored truck and the bar. Someone had even edited footage from different angles together with a fast-paced montage.

The most-watched video had already broken five million views.

The comment section had exploded.

@NYHotMomKaren: He saved the convenience store I always go to! The owner and his family are good people! Guardian, I love you!!

@SuperHeroObserver: Doesn't belong to Vought, doesn't belong to any corporation, invulnerable, flight, super strength—his ability profile is highly similar to Homelander. Bro, do you have any idea what this means?

@CasualObserverOldWang: I wonder what Homelander's reaction will be when he sees this video? Hahahaha.

@VoughtSuperFan: Just another superhuman influencer clout-chasing, right? Vought will sign him in a couple of days, and then he'll start peddling protein powder.

@BrooklynLocal: I literally saw him fly past my window with my own eyes! I almost thought it was Homelander!

Lu Heng scrolled for two minutes before tucking his phone back into his pocket.

It was only social media for now; once the mainstream media followed up with reports, that would be the real tidal wave of traffic.

It all depended on whether Vought would try to silence it, though that would come at a heavy price.

Panel...

+11 +8 +15 +7 +9 +13 +6 +12...

With thousands of mosquitoes added together, the growth in ability points was quite substantial.

Lu Heng leaned against the water tower on the rooftop and closed his eyes for a moment.

A Viltrumite's constitution didn't really require sleep, but his brain still operated on human thought patterns, so he rested out of habit.