Free Web NovelChapter 6: 06: Stepping In Front Of A-Train
The end justifies the means.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
____
The next morning.
Both sides of Atlantic Avenue were already jammed with people.
Vought staff had been setting up since early, stringing caution tape along the road and slapping up massive A-Train posters everywhere.
Speakers were wired up, and a formation of drones hovered overhead, ready to go.
The sidewalks were packed from the crack of dawn. Some hardcore fans had even camped out overnight with blankets.
A young girl holding a support sign boldly yanked down her low-cut top, flashing smooth, pale skin.
Reporters with big telephoto lenses were sweating bullets while tweaking their gear.
Hillel got there really early.
He had on a hoodie and baseball cap, blending right into the crowd.
Hughie’s electronics store was just up ahead.
He’d already activated Bloodline Perception on his panel.
It was a new Viltrumite Soldier skill that let him sense the bio-energy of every supe within a one-kilometer radius.
Right now there were only a few weak, scattered signals around—probably low-level supes mixed in with the crowd.
A-Train hadn’t shown up yet.
His bio-electric signature should be way stronger than the rest. If normal people were fireflies and low-level supes were light bulbs, A-Train was a goddamn searchlight.
Hillel scanned the crowd while he waited and quickly spotted his target.
Hughie Campbell stood at the entrance of the electronics store with a girl on his arm.
Robin.
She was tugging on Hughie’s arm, standing on her toes to see over the crowd, muttering away.
Two hundred meters away, Hillel used his super hearing to catch her voice.
"I’m telling you, A-Train is definitely shorter in real life than in the photos. Vought photoshops the shit out of them."
"How would you know?"
"A woman’s intuition."
"Your intuition said the fish at that Mexican place was fresh last time and I had diarrhea for three straight days."
"Haha. That’s because your stomach is weak. What does that have to do with my intuition?"
Hillel’s mouth twitched.
Alright, the daily bickering of this young couple was actually pretty funny.
Nine o’clock sharp.
The speakers suddenly blasted to life and the host’s voice boomed across Atlantic Avenue.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Let’s give it up for... A-Train!"
The crowd exploded into deafening cheers.
In the distance, a figure in a blue bodysuit appeared at the end of the road.
He started running at a casual jog, nothing too fast. Otherwise the people wouldn’t be able to see him properly.
A-Train waved to both sides as he went, stopping every so often to high-five fans and sign autographs. freёwebnovel.com
Hillel watched him from afar.
A-Train’s bio-energy really was more than ten times stronger than those low-level supes around him.
But compared to himself...
Hillel silently sized it up.
A-Train’s power level was probably somewhere between fifteen and twenty tons.
He was sitting at sixty-two tons now.
More than three times stronger.
Hmm. That’s plenty.
The community run went on as planned.
A-Train finished the whole route, spent half an hour posing for photos and signing autographs at the finish line, then got hustled into a Vought commercial van by the staff.
He’s leaving?
For real, man? That’s it?
Just when Hillel figured he’d wasted his time again, he noticed through Bloodline Perception that A-Train’s bio-electric signal hadn’t actually left Brooklyn.
The van drove north for about two kilometers and stopped in another block.
Then A-Train’s signal vanished from the vehicle.
He got out. No way he was heading to his girlfriend’s place, right?
Hillel shifted his focus back to Hughie.
...
At the entrance of the electronics store.
Hughie and Robin were walking home hand in hand.
Not long after, A-Train’s signal started moving again.
This time it wasn’t the slow jog from the event. This was real high-speed movement.
The direction was... straight down Atlantic Avenue.
Here he comes.
Hillel’s Viltrumite bloodline kicked into full gear.
He ripped off the hoodie. With one thought, the dark gray soldier’s combat suit spread over his body in two seconds, the dark gold emblem on his chest flickering.
Hillel built up power and launched at supersonic speed.
The ground caved into a shallow crater under the air pressure, and nearby people stumbled back from the shockwave.
Hughie was holding Robin’s hand when A-Train burst out from three blocks away at over four hundred miles per hour.
Up close you could see his eyes were bloodshot red and his face had this half-drunk, fucked-up look.
At that speed, even if he spotted people ahead, he probably couldn’t stop in time.
Like a drunk driver — by the time you hit someone, it’s already too late.
Hillel watched it all from the air.
Supersonic flight put him faster than A-Train.
He was about six hundred meters behind and to the side, while A-Train was roughly three hundred meters from Hughie and Robin.
He flew straight at them.
One second.
Robin’s hair whipped up from the pressure behind her. She instinctively turned her head.
She saw a streak of blue lightning barreling straight at her.
Half a second.
A gray figure dropped from the sky and planted itself right between her and A-Train.
Crack!
Hillel slammed his feet into the ground. The asphalt cracked into a spiderweb under the force of his bio-field.
He faced A-Train head-on and thrust his right hand forward.
The bio-field shot out from his palm, forming an invisible wall.
A-Train smashed into it almost instantly.
Boom!!!
A massive impact slammed into Hillel’s hand.
The surface of Atlantic Avenue exploded outward from the point of contact, cracks racing more than ten meters in every direction.
Parked cars on both sides slid sideways by half a meter from the sudden pressure wave, and the windows of the tall buildings shattered all at once.
Hillel dug his feet in and got pushed back about twenty centimeters.
Even with A-Train at full speed, that was all he could manage.
Hillel shoved forward with one hand.
A-Train bounced off like a pinball, tumbling twice in the air before slamming hard into the road twenty meters away and carving a long skid mark behind him.
The ground was torn up with shattered asphalt, like someone had plowed a deep trench through it.
Everything went dead silent.
Hillel lowered his hand and checked his palm. It was only a little red.
He turned his head.
Hughie and Robin stood less than two meters behind him, both of them white as sheets.
"It’s all good now."
The panel lit up with a flood of info.
[Major change in the fate of a key character!]
[Robin: Originally destined to die → Survived]
[Hughie Campbell: Original fate trajectory → Completely deviated]
[Key character emotions in violent fluctuation...]
+2,347
+3,891
+1,256
[Milestone event achieved: Rewrite the death fate of a key character (First time)]
[Milestone reward: +5,000]
Total this time: +12,494
Current Ability Points: 12,838 / 100,000
Hillel saw the number and one thought hit him.
Jackpot.
Twenty meters away.
A-Train dragged himself up from the ground, covered in scrapes and bruises.
Hillel hadn’t put in much effort. Those injuries wouldn’t kill the guy.
But A-Train was in a bad way. His eyes were bloodshot red and the Compound V mania still hadn’t worn off. For a supe that shit was like rocket fuel.
He shook his head and stared at Hillel like a rabid animal.
"You motherfucker... you dare to get in my way?"
Hillel looked at A-Train calmly. To normal people, the guy’s rage might look like some prehistoric monster.
But from a Viltrumite point of view, it was basically a pissed-off kitten.
The massive crash had snapped everyone nearby out of their shock. They turned their heads, still rattled, and stared this way.
At some point phones started pointing in their direction one after another.
Hillel opened his mouth, and it nearly got A-Train killed on the spot.
"You know you almost killed two people just now?"
"What?.. I mean.. So what?" A-Train panicked a little, but his brain was still fucked under the massive high of comp V. "I’m in The Seven. Who the fuck are you?"
Hillel tilted his head. A cruel smile crept across his face.
Viltrumites had battle lust running through their bones.
The stronger the bloodline, the worse that hunger got.
And right now, it looked like he’d just been challenged.
