Vought International Headquarters, 72nd Floor.
The lights were still on in Madelyn Stillwell's office.
She sat behind her desk, watching the convenience store footage on the tablet in front of her.
The person filming wasn't a professional, after all. The shaking was so bad, it looked like they had Parkinson's.
At least the crucial moments were crystal clear...
A bullet bounced off the man's chest.
A slap sent a Metahuman flying.
He bent a gun barrel with his bare hands.
Then he shot straight into the sky.
Madelyn paused the video on the frame where the man was taking off and lightly tapped the desk twice with her index finger.
"What do we know?"
The analyst beside her opened a tablet. "We can't find anything. There's no record of him in Vought's database. He's never registered for a hero license, hasn't participated in any Vought programs, and there's no match for him on the Compound V test subject list."
"A flying Metahuman who's bulletproof, and he's not in our database?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Could Compound V that had leaked onto the black market have created such a powerful Metahuman?
Madelyn fell silent for three seconds.
In theory, this shouldn't be possible. Vought controlled the entire production and management chain for Metahumans across America. Compound V was the only known source of superpowers, and Vought monitored the birth of every Metahuman.
So which underground lab had produced him?
"How many views does the flight video have?"
"As of five minutes ago... three hundred and seventy thousand. And it's still climbing!"
Madelyn's expression shifted.
A video of an unknown nobody, with no branding or marketing behind it, had racked up three hundred and seventy thousand views in less than an hour.
After a few hours of circulating online, it would end up with at least ten million views.
Last year, Vought had spent ten million dollars on a brand ad for The Deep, and it had only gotten twenty million views on its first day.
"What's the public reaction?"
"...Positive. Extremely positive. The comments are almost entirely in his favor. A lot of people are saying he seems more like a real hero than The Seven."
"Hah. People online get bored easily. The Seven have been hogging the spotlight for too long. Everyone's just tired of seeing them."
Madelyn slowly leaned back in her chair, folding her fingers beneath her chin.
She sat in silence for ten seconds.
Then she picked up the phone on her desk and dialed a number.
"Find someone for me. His codename is Guardian. He's been spotted in Brooklyn."
"Use every connection you have. I want everything about him... his name, address, personal connections, and the source of his powers."
"Forty-eight... no, twenty-four hours!"
She hung up and glanced again at the frozen image on the tablet.
For some reason, Homelander came to mind.
Brooklyn at night was never short on three things.
Streetwalkers, illegal deals, and Metahuman crime.
Lu Heng had spent less than five minutes flying through the air before he heard about another crime.
He'd witnessed three crimes tonight already.
The people of America really were living in misery!
On a quiet street, four Metahumans were attacking an armored truck.
One of them could shoot some kind of acid from his fingers, and he'd eaten a huge hole through the truck door.
The two security guards inside were trembling. One of them was frantically calling the police.
Lu Heng dropped straight out of the sky.
The moment he landed, the shockwave from his biofield blasted against the ground, leaving a circle of spiderweb cracks.
All four Metahumans turned around at once.
"Another damn one?" the acid guy sneered, raising his hand to spray Lu Heng in the face.
Lu Heng tilted his head.
The acid grazed his ear and splattered against the wall behind him, where it sizzled and smoked.
"Buddy, being quick is fine, but you've gotta aim!"
The next second, he was in front of the acid guy, driving a punch into his stomach.
He'd still held back—about eight percent of his strength.
The acid guy doubled over like a shrimp, his feet lifting off the ground as he flew seven or eight meters and crashed into the side of the armored truck, denting it with the shape of a man.
The other three looked at one another.
A minute later, all four Metahumans were lined up neatly by the roadside.
One of the security guards poked his head out of the truck, looking as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Y-you... who are you?"
"Guardian."
"What the hell is that?"
"Call the cops, man, before they wake up."
With that, Lu Heng flew away.
The panel flickered.
+312
Current Ability Points: 1,159 / 10,000
There'd been no bystanders, only two security guards, so the emotional feedback was limited.
Over the next three hours, Lu Heng swept Brooklyn from south to north.
When ordinary robbers hit a jewelry store, he gently slapped them.
When a Metahuman harassed... a bodybuilder? at a subway station, he kicked him.
Lu Heng hadn't dared use his hands. He was afraid the guy would enjoy getting hit and stick his tongue out.
Two Metahuman kids had been fighting in the street, trying to recreate a comic book scene. They'd nearly blown up an apartment building.
Lu Heng gave them two solid punches and sent them off to sleep.
While he was out getting food that night, a Metahuman who could generate electricity took a bar owner hostage.
Lu Heng went straight through the wall. The current felt like a massage against his skin, and with a near-sonic-speed shoulder throw, he slammed the guy into the floor, where he was stuck fast.
The terrified bar owner shouted, "Praise Jesus!"
Lu Heng glanced at him. I'm the one who saved you. What the hell do you mean, thanking Jesus?
"The one who saved you wasn't the guy hanging on the cross. It was me! I'm Guardian, you dumbass!"
Lu Heng went all in on imitating his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, spending the whole night fighting crime.
By three in the morning, the number on the panel had reached...
Current Ability Points: 3,741 / 10,000
Three thousand seven hundred and forty-one.
He'd racked up almost three thousand points in one night.
At this rate, he'd need at least two more nights.
He was getting impatient. Lu Heng was paranoid about being targeted, and there was no doubt he was stealing the spotlight from The Seven.
One of The Seven was an unstable psycho. If Lu Heng pissed him off, he might come after him and throw a couple of punches.
Unless...
He did something big.
Lu Heng landed on the roof of an apartment building and sat on the edge, his legs swinging over the twenty-story drop.
A crescent moon hung in the sky.
Getsuga Tensho?
Brooklyn was quieter in the early hours of the morning. Every so often, a dog barked in the distance.
He pulled out his phone, its screen cracked.
Then he opened social media.
Well, damn.
The hashtag #Guardian had already climbed to ninth on New York's trending list on Twitter.
The videos were everywhere: footage of him saving people at the convenience store, plus a few new clips of him rescuing people at the armored truck and the bar. Someone had even stitched together footage from different angles and set it to a flashy edit.
The most-viewed video had already passed five million views.
The comments were going wild.
@NYCMomKaren: He saved the convenience store I always go to! The owners are all such good people! Guardian, I love you!!
@SuperheroWatch: He's not with Vought or any other company. He's bulletproof, can fly, and has super strength. His power profile is remarkably similar to Homelander's. You get what this means, right?
@NosyWong: What do you think Homelander's going to do when he sees this? Hahahaha
@VoughtFan4Life: Another Metahuman influencer stunt? Vought will sign him in a couple of days, and then he'll start hawking protein powder.
@BrooklynLocal: I swear to God, I saw him fly past my window! I almost thought he was Homelander!
Lu Heng scrolled for two minutes, then slipped the phone back into his pocket.
For now, it was only social media. Once the mainstream media started reporting on it too, that would be a real tidal wave of attention.
It all depended on whether Vought could smother the story. That would cost them dearly.
The panel...
+11 +8 +15 +7 +9 +13 +6 +12...
All those tiny bits of feedback added up to a pretty impressive increase in ability points.
Lu Heng leaned against the rooftop water tower and closed his eyes for a while.
Viltrumite physiology didn't require much sleep, but his brain still worked like a human's, and he was used to taking a little rest.
Before you continue