"Avid"
After a while, the restroom door opened.
The blonde girl came out, the water still unwiped from her face, a few damp strands of bangs clinging to her forehead.
She walked up to John and sat down. Behind her, her companion gave her sleeve a gentle tug.
She ignored it.
"Thanks... so, do you do this often?"
"You mean wiping glasses?"
"No, I mean beating people up."
"Oh... not much. There aren't really many people in Munie who need beating up."
She rested her elbows on the bar and leaned forward a little.
"So... what's your name?"
"John."
"I'm Kelly."
"You know, that thing you just did..."
She pulled her hands back and gestured in the air, mimicking an over-the-shoulder throw.
"Pretty cool, right? I thought you were just a waiter."
"Actually, I just wash glasses."
"Oh, a glass washer."
She repeated it, then smiled, revealing two adorable little canine teeth.
After smiling, she glanced down at the bar, tapped the counter twice with her fingers, then took a pen out of her bag.
Her movements were quick, as though she were psyching herself up, getting it done before she could change her mind.
She quickly flipped over a napkin on the bar, wrote down a string of numbers, and pushed it toward John.
Her handwriting wasn't very pretty. Several numbers were crooked, and the loops of the final eight weren't closed.
"This is my number."
Her voice was a little rushed.
"Not like that... I mean, you helped me just now, and I have to thank you.
But Alice and I are broke students, so I probably couldn't afford anything too expensive if I took you out to eat.
So if you're free, you can call me, and I'll buy you a coffee or something. Speaking of which, Munie does have a coffee shop, right?"
Only after she finished did she realize the logic of that whole speech was a complete mess.
In fact, there was no causal connection whatsoever between buying him dinner and a coffee shop.
A patch of red instantly spread behind her ears, but she didn't lower her head. She forced herself to finish, then slid off the barstool.
She moved too hastily, even knocking her knee against the edge of the bar.
"Mm..."
She didn't make another sound, pretending it didn't hurt.
"Oh, right, my cousin might come to Munie next week. She's a reporter-
Don't worry, she's not the kind of reporter who likes cornering people with a microphone. Everything she writes goes in the newspaper.
Oh, and she said she's chasing an old story from years ago. I think it has something to do with the nearby towns."
An old story?
Why did he have a bad feeling about this?
John's glass-wiping noticeably slowed by half a second.
"Oh... what old story?"
"Oh, I didn't ask much. Something about a fight at a gas station over ten years ago?"
Kelly shrugged.
"An eyewitness back then said a kid sent a grown man flying with one hit, but the kid moved away afterward. All the leads went cold around Munie."
"My friend's calling me. I've gotta go... remember to call me!"
Then she turned, caught up with her companion, who had been waiting by the door for ages, and pushed the door open to leave.
John wasn't particularly taken with this sort of scene where a pretty young woman chatted him up.
After all, in his previous life, his fans had numbered in the hundreds of millions.
Among those fans, there had been no shortage of women with better figures and prettier faces than Kelly.
As for anything that could threaten him?
John glanced down at the napkin, folded it, and slipped it into his pocket.
Mending the roof before the rain always brought a little peace of mind.
That afternoon, Jonathan called and said the combine's transmission had jammed again, asking whether he could come back and lend a hand.
As a family-loving boy, John naturally agreed without hesitation.
The next day, John drove his secondhand Ford back to Smallville.
Yes, John had actually gotten a driver's license in this life.
Going by his usual routine, he came back at least twice a month.
And every time, before he returned.
Martha always baked an apple pie in advance, thoughtfully warmed up the milk he liked, and cleaned his old room upstairs until it was spotless.
Just as John parked in front of the barn, a scruffy little yellow dog came charging out of the farm.
"Woof, woof-"
The dog was a stray Jonathan had adopted a few years ago. He was six now, and his hind leg limped a little when he ran.
John crouched, and Little Yellow shoved his whole head into his arms, making satisfied little grunts.
"Where's the transmission?"
John stood and brushed the dog hair off his pants.
Standing beside the combine, Jonathan pointed at the opened casing.
The gear assembly was still jammed on the bearing, like a wad of chewed metal gum.
"Third time now. This damn thing's older than I am, and the parts manufacturer went out of business. I've got to fix it myself."
His eyes never left the machine as he spoke, his tone sounding like a complaint.
But John could tell he enjoyed this process of "battling" the machine.
According to Joe... this was a man's romance?
She only half understood.
Soon, John rolled up his sleeves and crouched on the other side of the combine, dismantling the gears with Jonathan.
Sunlight leaked through the gaps in the barn roof and fell between them, light and shadow alternating, brightness flickering into darkness.
Both their work shirts were soon soaked with sweat, and engine oil seeped beneath their nails, smelling like a mixture of rust and old gasoline.
It smelled particularly awful.
John had smelled that odor once in Vought's hangar in his previous life.
He vaguely remembered being there that day to shoot a set of publicity photos titled "Homelander Visits Factory, Offers Workers His Regards."
He had stood in front of an old combine of the same model for forty minutes.
The photographer had kept adjusting the lights, while Ashley, that bitch who was good for nothing but taking shits, had kept adjusting the angle of his smile.
That combine had been a rented prop. They had hauled it away after the photos, and he hadn't even touched it.
"That bar of yours."
Jonathan suddenly spoke, tapping the gears twice with his wrench.
"I heard from Old Tom that you got into a fight?"
John froze slightly, then went back to tightening his bolt.
"Three of them. One even had a knife."
"I know. He told me, and he told your mom, too."
"And?"
"And your mom put a new shirt in your closet. Tags cut off, already washed.
She said the one you wore at the bar got torn, so this was a good chance to replace it."
The wrench in John's hand stopped.
Jonathan came around from behind the combine and set his wrench on the toolbox.
"I didn't tell her to buy it. She spotted it herself while shopping at Walmart.
Said you'd definitely look good in that color. She didn't know you'd been fighting, only that your shirt was torn."
John didn't look up.
He tightened the last bolt with his wrench, turning it as tight as it would go before loosening it half a turn.
Jonathan had taught him that, saying it kept the bolt from seizing in the threads.
He put the wrench back in the toolbox, stood, and brushed the dust off his knees.
"You still haven't said whether I was right to fight."
Instead of answering directly, Jonathan picked up the water jug, took a drink, and passed it to him.
"Your mom was right. It's a nice color."
John took the jug, paused, then lowered his head and drank.
The water was lukewarm, with a rusty taste, just like the tap water in Kansas.
Just then, Little Yellow suddenly started barking.
Unlike his usual excited barks, this sound was noticeably higher and more urgent.
As though something had frightened him.
John found it strange, because he had never heard him make that sound before. Even Jonathan turned to look in surprise.
At that moment, heaven and earth darkened in an instant.
The sunlight in the barn turned from gold to gray, then from gray to an eerie dark green, like a rotting bruise.
John narrowed his eyes, set down the jug, and stood.
His extraordinarily sensitive ears picked up a sound of extremely low frequency-
Fucking low.
Ordinary people couldn't hear it at all, but he could.
It sounded like a giant beast slowly turning over above the clouds, each roll pressing the atmospheric pressure down another inch.
"John, what do you hear?"
John's expression turned ugly.
"It's a tornado."
The wind had actually already arrived.
A gray wall of air, broken wheat stalks, scraps of sheet metal, and dirt was advancing from the west at an unbelievable speed.
"Get inside, quick!"
Jonathan turned and ran toward the house.
Martha stood on the porch, gripping the doorframe, her hair blown sideways by the wind.
She looked toward Jonathan, her lips moving.
But the wind was too strong to hear what she was shouting.
"-"
Just then, the town's siren sounded.
That piercing wail, rising and falling, cut through the wall of wind from the direction of downtown Smallville.
Hearing the siren, Jonathan abruptly stopped and turned around with some hesitation.
He looked toward town, then at his own locked barn and boarded-up windows, before shouting to Martha:
"There are still people packing up at the market! Old Mike's legs are bad, and his wife passed away last year... he'll never make it in time on his own!"
Martha leaned against the porch, shaking her head hard, her lips moving even faster.
John heard her words.
"Don't go-"
But Jonathan was already running toward the pickup.
Seeing this, John gritted his teeth, stepped forward, and grabbed his arm.
"Dad, I'll go."
"No, you have to stay with your mom!"
Jonathan shook off his hand. The wind shredded his voice into broken strands of sound, but John heard every word clearly.
"You don't know the people in town. Only I know where they are... stay and look after your mom. Open the basement door and take her down."
Without any unnecessary movement, Jonathan pulled open the truck door, and the engine started.
Then the old pickup's engine coughed twice in the storm before roaring to life.
Jonathan leaned out the window and gave John one last look.
"I'll be right back."
The pickup roared out of the farm, its taillights growing dimmer in the gray-white wall of wind until the gloom swallowed them.
Martha shouted something behind him, but he didn't catch it.
He was listening to sounds farther away-
The pickup's engine, the town siren, the shriek of Old Mike's sheet-metal roof being torn off.
And Jonathan's heartbeat.
The sound he had heard when he was first lifted out of the spaceship in this life.
Amid the wind, the alarms, and the sound of tearing sheet metal, it remained as steady as an old clock.
But he still wasn't reassured.
Now he had to keep that heartbeat under relentless surveillance.
The super hearing he had only used in his previous life to judge people's emotions by the frequency of their heartbeats...
Now condensed into a nail, driven deep into the heart of the area ahead.
Just then, the wind suddenly changed direction.
Something had happened at the center of the tornado, and it actually began veering toward town.
That gray column, several hundred meters across, slowly advanced toward central Smallville, carrying dirt, wheat stalks, and countless sheet-metal roofs.
With the view his super vision provided, John could see everywhere it passed-
Utility poles were uprooted, and exploding transformers spat blue-white sparks that shone with an eerie brightness beneath the dark green sky.
"No... no, ordinary people can't withstand the force of a tornado!"
You want to take Jonathan from me...
Not a chance!
Fuck this goddamn promise. I'm done!
John looked back at his mother, Martha, taking one long look before making up his mind.
Then he crouched, crossed his arms, recalled his old charging stance, and flew straight up.
Running? Jumping?
Flying!
It was the first time in his eighteen years that he had flown with such abandon.
He had promised Jonathan he wouldn't use his powers outside.
But Jonathan wasn't in front of him now. All he could hear was Jonathan's heartbeat moving farther and farther away through the storm.
Distance meant risk.
He couldn't accept even the slightest risk.
Behind him, Martha stood on the porch, watching him shoot into the sky, her hair whipped into disarray and her face deathly pale.
She simply watched her son fly, her lips moving slightly.
"No..."
John didn't hear her. He had already plunged into the storm at top speed.
At that very moment.
The town's market square had already been reduced to ruins.
Awnings had been torn out of the ground, folding tables and chairs tumbled through the air, and a pickup lay on its side outside the post office.
John darted back and forth along the storm's edge for roughly two minutes.
During that time, he pulled five people out of collapsed awnings and overturned vehicles, gently knocked them unconscious with a pat, then tossed them into the school basement.
(A skill John developed himself, with a one hundred percent stun rate.)
Then he charged into the air with his hands behind his back.
(Tapping the blackboard here: personally, I think flying with your hands behind your back is cool beyond measure.)
John's eyes snapped open in the wind. Shredded wheat stalks struck his eyeballs, only to be immediately deflected by an invisible force field.
"-"
He cranked his super hearing up to maximum, searching across the entire area for Jonathan's heartbeat.
Then he heard it.
The engine of the old pickup, near the gas station on the westernmost edge of town.
That gas station...
The gas station where he and Jonathan had experienced another storm together fourteen years ago.
At that moment, Jonathan was pushing the last car away from the pumps.
Inside sat the son of Old Ford, the gas station's former owner-Little Ford, its current owner.
Jonathan stuffed him into the car, then turned and ran back.
He was looking for Little Yellow.
The mischievous dog hadn't followed the pickup back. Instead, Jonathan had tied him to a post at the gas station, where he barked furiously toward the tornado.
Soon, Jonathan reached the post and crouched to untie the rope.
His fingers were trembling.
The wind was too strong, so strong that even an old farmer who had worked the fields for forty years couldn't steady his hands.
And the wind had pulled the fucking rope taut, jamming the knot into a solid lump.
With no other choice, Jonathan found hydraulic cutters in the vehicle and forcibly freed the rope.
The next second, Little Yellow lunged into his arms, his tail tucked between his hind legs, trembling all over.
But Jonathan could no longer stand up.
The funnel was less than a hundred meters away. He could see that gray-white wall violently crushing its way across the wheat fields.
The water tower in the wheat fields was uprooted too, spun twice in the air, then was torn to pieces.
The pressure was so low that his ears roared, and his knees were forced down onto the concrete.
"Vwoom-"
Just then, the sound of something breaking the sound barrier suddenly exploded overhead.
As though sensing something, Jonathan jerked his head up.
Soon, within the approaching funnel, he spotted John hurtling through it in the flesh, his eyes blazing red.
Yes.
His son was passing through the heart of the storm, moving absurdly faster than the wind.
"BOOM!!!"
The next second, another sonic boom rang out. John landed instantly before Jonathan, the shock wave cracking the concrete beneath his feet.
"You..."
John reacted swiftly. Without allowing any argument, he hauled Jonathan up and locked one arm around his waist.
"John, no! Put me down! Go, don't let them see you-"
"Shut the fuck up!"
It was the first time in his life that John had shouted at Jonathan like that.
The wind shredded his voice.
But he knew Jonathan had heard him, and he tightened his grip.
"John! You can't expose yourself! You promised me!"
"I. Don't. Fucking. Care!"
John glared at him, lifted him bodily, then tucked him under his arm.
Then he scooped up Little Yellow with his other hand.
"BOOM!"
With a powerful leap, he kicked off the ground, leaving a shallow crater in the mud.
Just then, the funnel's edge swept past his back, tearing the gas station canopy free and smashing it to pieces behind him.
With a thought, John covered Jonathan and Little Yellow in a transparent bio-force field.
Then, holding the man and dog, he cut straight past the storm's edge, streaking a swift white line across the sky.
In less than three seconds.
They had crossed above the town and the flattened wheat fields, landing safely at the entrance to their basement stairs.
Martha, who had been waiting there for a long time, immediately rushed up, pulled Jonathan away from Little Yellow, then turned to tug John along.
"Get inside!"
"I'll go in and get the first-aid kit-"
John closed the window, then turned and ran toward the basement.
He shoved the first-aid kit into Martha's hands and crouched to examine Jonathan's wound.
He was indeed hurt.
A fresh cut marked his forehead. It wasn't deep, but blood covered his face.
Martha opened the first-aid kit with trembling fingers and took out gauze.
Jonathan leaned in the corner, panting heavily, but his eyes remained fixed on John.
"You flew just now, didn't you?"
"I know."
"But you broke our agreement."
"Jonathan! Stop this bullshit... I can keep my promise, but that fucking doesn't include when you're about to die!"
"You can give me other conditions, but not this one!"
Jonathan looked at him.
There was no reproach in those brown eyes.
No anger, no "What if you're exposed?"
They held only something deeper, something meaningful beyond words.
It was the indescribable state of a father discovering that his son would rather break fourteen years of silence to save him.
"But you shouldn't have-"
"I said, this doesn't count!"
John roughly pressed the gauze against Jonathan's forehead, staining his fingers with blood.
"You can teach me to hide like a turtle, or teach me to numb myself into believing I'm just a fucking ordinary person who grew up on a farm...
But you never taught me to stand by with my hands tucked in my sleeves and fucking watch you die...
You never taught me because you couldn't do it yourself!
So, by the same logic, neither can I."
Jonathan remained silent for a long time.
Beside them, Martha cut tape with scissors. Her hands were still shaking, but she cut it neatly, while the wind outside continued to howl.
With trembling fingers, Martha snipped through the tape and pressed the gauze against Jonathan's forehead again.
The bleeding stopped, and she let out a long breath.
As though all her bones had been pulled out, she sagged back against the wall and closed her eyes.
John let out a relieved breath too. He took his hand off the gauze and stepped back half a pace.
His back rested against the basement's cold concrete wall, his heartbeat still pounding in his eardrums.
"Ugh... ugh..."
But just then, without warning, Jonathan toppled over stiffly.
Without any warning at all.