"Looking Up" (Actually, I just recommend whatever song I hear while writing, hahaha.)
Whoosh-
A dark red beam pierced the darkness, cutting straight in through the garage entrance.
The dust and powdered glass suspended in the air ignited instantly in the intense heat, trailing two extremely thin lines of fire along either side of the beam.
Sssizzle~
The heat erupted the instant it touched Black Noir's suit, vaporizing the outer layer of Kevlar fibers directly from a solid state.
The next second, Black Noir was blasted clean off his feet, smashing through the remaining sheet-metal frame of the roll-up door.
But he didn't stop there. Black Noir went on to smash through the windshield of the junked forklift outside.
Broken glass clattered across the ground. He was embedded in the forklift seat, the uniform over his chest still smoking.
Its edges had burned into a charred hole that still glowed red.
As the firelight shone inside, John's figure emerged, walking unhurriedly through the entrance.
The red light in his eyes had yet to fade completely.
The dark red embers around his irises looked like two pieces of iron freshly drawn from a forge in the dim garage, gradually fading as they oxidized.
He stepped over the wreckage of the test tube rack Black Noir had knocked over, his boot soles grinding over broken glass and shell casings, then reached the middle of the battlefield.
John first glanced at Black Noir, embedded in the forklift. The turncoat's chest was still rising and falling, and the charred hole in his uniform was still smoking.
It looked as though he was incapacitated for the time being.
Then he walked farther forward and stopped before The Deep, looking down at the humanoid fish playing dead on the floor.
Hmm. Half-dead.
The dagger was still sticking straight out of his chest, its handle swaying gently with his faint breaths.
Blood seeped from the folds of his civilian clothes onto the floor, gathering into a small, dark red puddle beneath him.
Farther away, Hughie and Frenchie leaned in a corner, the ice pack Mother's Milk had handed him resting on his knee, their faces covered in a mixture of blood and sweat.
Overall, it seemed The Deep was still this fight's MVP?
How had this guy suddenly gotten so brave?
Back when John was still Homelander, all he had to do was casually call him useless, and the coward would hunch his shoulders right up beneath his ears and shut down for the entire day.
This was seriously out of character.
As for why John showed no reaction to seeing The Deep playing dead, his X-Ray Vision clearly showed him that the dagger in his chest was still some distance from his heart.
With The Deep's superhuman physique, it really wasn't much of anything.
Judging by the guy's current appearance, he was probably just pretending to be dead so he could claim credit.
At that, John almost wanted to laugh.
"Quit playing dead, Deep. That dagger's still three centimeters from your heart. You'll get a scar at most. Get up."
Hughie, Hughie leaning in the corner, glanced at The Deep playing dead on the floor and timidly raised his hand to ask:
"John, he just lost a lot of blood. If this keeps up, won't he go into hemorrhagic shock... or something?"
John didn't answer. He merely tilted his head slightly, the faintest curve rising at the corner of his mouth.
What a joke.
Hemorrhagic shock?
If The Deep went into shock that easily, I'd have scared him to death on his very first day at Vought.
He also suddenly remembered a detail netizens had mentioned while making memes about those "spoiler" scenes.
The Deep might have been a dumbass, but the ceiling on his abilities was actually very high.
In theory, his abilities gained an additional boost in water.
And bloody water was still water.
Now that he was soaking in his own blood, his wounds probably healed even faster than usual. He was entirely self-sufficient.
With that thought, John walked over to The Deep, stopping the toe of his boot mere centimeters from his ribs.
Then he looked down at that face, its eyes tightly shut and cheeks still twitching slightly.
"I'll give you five seconds. Otherwise, you're really going to enjoy this kick."
The Deep's eyelid gave a violent twitch.
Fuck! Why?!
Even if I haven't earned any credit, I at least put in the hard work!
He had just taken a knife for Frenchie and nearly died.
Frenchie had seen it, Hughie had seen it, Mother's Milk had seen it. Everyone had seen it.
This was fucking credit. This was leverage. This was his, The Deep's, "hero moment."
As long as he lay there long enough and made his injury look serious enough, John would have to give him a little more in return.
But John sounded far too certain, and the toe of his boot was poised in front of his ribs, right below the knife wound.
If he really kicked him, the tip of the blade would angle upward and actually hit his heart.
Fuck! He's not playing by the script.
The Deep's eyes flew open. His hands instinctively shielded his chest, and his body sprang off the floor like a spring.
Then he plastered on an awkward smile uglier than a crying face:
"I'm up! I'm up!"
John slowly lowered his already raised foot to the floor, slipped his hands back into his leather jacket pockets, and looked down at the fish who had revived at full health.
He hadn't misjudged him. The Deep was still a coward.
"All right, clean up that blood on you, then come inside with me."
"What about Black Noir?"
Frenchie asked as Mother's Milk helped him up.
John turned to look at Black Noir, embedded in the forklift.
He was still alive, faint but steady breathing coming from beneath his mask. But John had hit him pretty hard, so he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.
"Bring him too. And we need to move our base. Black Noir's been here, so this place isn't safe anymore."
"Oh, right, Deep. When I visited your place last time, I took out your tracker while I was at it."
"Now go find the tracker on Black Noir and take it out."
"Wait, sir, are you talking to me?"
The Deep went cross-eyed, pointing at himself. His stupid, confused expression made John really want to slap him.
Why were his subordinates always so stupid? Had their brains been jizzing around with dogs (you know how to translate this)?
Had they grown this old without ever fucking studying physics?
Fuck, I'm a patient here...
The Deep looked at John's exasperated expression.
With no other choice, he carefully pried Black Noir, who was genuinely laid out, off the forklift.
Then he followed Frenchie and the others back into the garage.
And very soon, The Deep's entire worldview was turned on its head.
Under John's disgusted gaze, as though he were looking at some mentally challenged kid, The Deep finally discovered just how many uses his abilities had.
First, his abilities were connected to the ocean. And what did the ocean have the most of? Water.
He couldn't control water, but he could sense it. So if any foreign objects had been placed inside a human body, he could quickly pinpoint their location.
Not only that, although some of John's off-the-wall ideas sounded pretty clumsy, he really had never explored them.
(Made this up on the spot.)
For example, bleeding himself during a fight to stop bleeding with blood.
Also, could he chug a ton of water before a fight?
Or carry a water gun around and spray himself whenever he ran into danger, forcibly boosting his physical abilities.
Then, if he couldn't win, he could play dumb and keep an ace up his sleeve, run into the sea, a water tower, or a swimming pool, and unleash an explosive power-up.
John's words had The Deep feeling so good that even after finding the tracker on Black Noir, he stood there grinning like an idiot.
He didn't even notice when The Boys Squad and John were ready to drive off and relocate their base.
"Hughie... he looks like a fucking idiot, right?"
Mother's Milk folded his arms, packing the surviving Compound V ingredients into the trunk one by one.
"Who knows? Personally, I think most of the supes we've met so far aren't normal."
Hughie shrugged and glanced toward John.
He won't get angry at me for saying that, will he?
Of course, John ignored that pansy Hughie. He was giving Frenchie the location of their new base.
"So are we moving over there now?
That bastard Butcher still isn't back. I feel like we're a little short-handed. A-Train's gone back to The Seven now too."
"No rush. Drive to somewhere near Godolkin University first. I'll introduce you to a new recruit."
"A new recruit? So... you were fucking late because you went to Godolkin University to pick up college girls?"
"...She is indeed a woman."