Free Web NovelChapter 3: 03: The Guardian
All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.
~ The Joker (The Killing Joke)
____
Vought International Headquarters, 72nd floor.
The lights in Madelyn Stillwell’s office were still on.
She sat behind her desk, watching the convenience store video on the tablet in front of her.
The person filming wasn’t a professional cameraman, after all. The shaky footage made it look like they had Parkinson’s.
Fortunately, the key parts came through crystal clear.
Bullets bouncing off the guy’s chest.
Him smacking a supe across the store like a ragdoll.
Bending a gun barrel with his bare hands.
Then rocketing straight up into the sky.
Madelyn paused the video right on the takeoff frame and tapped her index finger twice on the desk.
"Any information?"
The analyst next to her checked his own tablet. "Nothing. This guy doesn’t exist in the Vought database. No hero license, no involvement in any Vought projects, and no match on the Compound V subject list."
"A flying, bulletproof supe isn’t in our database?"
"Yes, ma’am."
Could Compound V have leaked onto the black market and cooked up something this strong?
Madelyn stayed quiet for three seconds.
Theoretically, that shit shouldn’t happen. Vought controlled the entire supe manufacturing and management chain in America. Compound V was the only known source of powers, and every supe’s birth was under their watch.
So which underground lab had spit this one out?
"What’s the view count on that flight video?"
"As of five minutes ago... 370,000, and it’s still climbing fast."
Madelyn’s expression shifted.
An amateur video with zero packaging or marketing had hit 370,000 views in under an hour.
Give it a few more hours to spread and the final count wouldn’t dip below ten million.
Keep in mind, Vought dropped ten million dollars last year on a brand commercial for The Deep, and it only pulled twenty million views on day one.
"What’s the public reaction like?"
"...Positive. Extremely positive. Comments are almost all one-sided. A lot of people are saying he’s more of a real hero than Lamplighter."
"Heh. Netizens are fickle as hell. The Seven have been on every screen for too long. Everyone’s just bored of the same old shit."
Madelyn slowly leaned back in her chair and laced her fingers under her chin.
She stayed silent for ten seconds.
Then she grabbed the intercom on her desk and dialed a number.
"Help me look into someone. Codename: The Guardian. He was spotted in Brooklyn."
"Use every contact you’ve got. I want everything on him—name, address, connections, and exactly where his powers came from."
"Within forty-eight... no, twenty-four hours."
She hung up and stared at the frozen frame on the tablet again.
For some reason, Homelander popped into her head.
...
Brooklyn nights always had three things going on.
Hookers, drug deals, and supe crimes.
Hillel had been flying for less than five minutes when he caught wind of another one.
Tonight he’d already seen three crimes with his own eyes.
People of The Boys’ world really are living in some fucked up times!
On a quiet side street, four supes were jumping an armored truck.
One of them kept spraying acid from his fingertips, melting a massive hole right through the door.
The two security guards inside were shaking like leaves, one of them desperately dialing the cops.
Hillel dropped straight out of the sky and slammed down.
The second his feet hit the ground, the bio-field shockwave ripped a spiderweb of cracks across the pavement.
All four supes whipped their heads around at once.
"Another fucking one?" the acid guy sneered, lifting his hand to hose Hillel right in the face.
Hillel just tilted his head a bit.
The acid shot past his ear and ate into the wall behind him, hissing and smoking.
"Bro, you can be fast, but you can’t be this inaccurate!"
The next second he was already standing in front of the acid supe and buried a fist in his gut.
He held back, using maybe eight percent of his strength.
The acid guy folded up like a shrimp, launched seven or eight meters into the air, and smashed into the side of the armored truck, leaving a perfect human-shaped dent in the metal.
The other three looked at each other.
One minute later, all four supes were lined up neatly on the curb like garbage bags.
The security guards poked their heads out of the truck, faces pale as ghosts.
"You... who the hell are you?"
"The Guardian."
"What the fuck is that?"
"Call the cops while they’re still out cold, buddy."
Hillel said it and flew off.
The panel flickered.
+312
Current Ability Points: 1,159 / 10,000
No bystanders, just the two guards, so the emotional feedback was weak.
Over the next three hours, Hillel tore through Brooklyn from south to north.
Regular robbers sticking up a jewelry store? He gave them a light slap.
A supe gym bro harassing people in the subway station? Hillel walked up and kicked his ass.
He didn’t dare use his hands—didn’t want the freak getting hard and sticking his tongue out like some pervert.
Two supe kids were blasting each other in the street, acting out their dumb comic book fantasies and almost blowing up an apartment building.
Hillel knocked them out with a couple punches and put them to sleep.
Later, while grabbing some late-night food, an electric supe took the bar owner hostage.
Hillel walked straight through the wall. The electricity hitting his body felt like a nice massage. He grabbed the guy in a supersonic shoulder throw and slammed him into the floor so hard nobody could pry him out.
The bar owner was terrified and kept screaming, "Long live Jesus!"
Hillel glanced at him. I’m the one who just saved your ass, and you’re thanking Jesus?
"The guy who saved you isn’t the one hanging on the cross, it’s me. Name’s The Guardian, gringo!"
Hillel went full Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man that night, cleaning up crime across Brooklyn until dawn.
By 3:00 AM, the number on the panel had climbed to...
[Current Ability Points: 3,741 / 10,000]
Three thousand seven hundred.
Almost three thousand points bagged in a single night.
At this pace, two more nights would do it.
He couldn’t wait around. Hillel had a healthy dose of paranoia. Right now he was definitely stepping on The Seven’s toes, and there was that emotionally unstable pervert in their ranks. If he pissed the guy off, he might just fly over and try to cave his skull in.
Unless... He pulled off something huge.
Hillel landed on the rooftop of an apartment building and sat on the edge, legs dangling twenty stories above the street.
A thin crescent moon hung in the sky.
Brooklyn in the early morning was a lot quieter. The only sounds were the occasional dog barking somewhere in the distance.
He pulled out his cracked-screen phone.
Opened social media. freewebnovёl.ƈom
Holy shit.
The #TheGuardian hashtag had already shot up to ninth on the New York Twitter trending list.
The convenience store rescue video was everywhere, plus fresh clips from the armored truck and the bar. Some people had stitched together different angles into a fast-paced montage.
The top one had already smashed past five million views.
The comments were on fire.
@NewYorkHotMomKaren: He saved the convenience store I always go to! The owner’s family are all good people! The Guardian, I love you!!
@SuperheroObservationRoom: Not with Vought, not with any company. Invulnerable, flight, super strength—the power set is way too close to Homelander. Bro, you know what that means?
@BystanderOldWang: How’s Homelander gonna react when he sees this? Hahahaha.
@Karen’sKid: Hi Guardian! My mom is making weird noises like ’yes, daddy’ again and again while watching your video. Are you going to become my dad?
@VoughtTrueFan: Just another supe influencer chasing clout, right? Give it a couple days and Vought will sign him and start making him sell protein powder.
@BrooklynLocal: I swear I saw him fly past my window with my own eyes! I almost thought it was Homelander!
...
Hillel scrolled for a couple minutes, then shoved the phone back in his pocket.
This was still just social media noise. Once the mainstream outlets jumped on it, the real traffic explosion would hit.
It all depended on whether Vought would try to bury it—and how much that would cost them.
The panel kept ticking.
+11 +8 +15 +7 +9 +13 +6 +12...
Thousands of little mosquito bites adding up, and the ability points were growing nicely.
Hillel leaned back against the rooftop water tower and closed his eyes for a bit.
The Viltrumite body didn’t really need sleep, but his brain still ran on human habits, so he rested out of routine.
