Chapter 75: Chapter 75: My Lucy...
The Deep thought A-Train had a point, but his pride wouldn’t let him admit he was wrong.
"Relax. This interception will work just fine. My sweet Lucy will definitely stop them."
"Who the hell is ’Lucy’?" A-Train asked.
"This beauty right here under my feet! I named her myself. Cute, right?"
As he spoke, The Deep crouched down lovingly and stroked the whale’s thick hide.
"Oh, my God... Deep." A-Train covered his face. "That’s just a damn whale!"
"Don’t you dare talk about Lucy like that!"
...
While the two of them were busy bickering like maniacs, out on the water, the black lifeboat that The Deep had expected to slow down in fear, maybe even turn and run, showed no sign of slowing at all.
Instead, the engine roared even louder.
"Vroom!!!"
The Deep’s pupils widened in terror.
The bow of the black lifeboat lifted high as it pushed to top speed.
In the driver’s seat, William Butcher didn’t look scared in the slightest. A wild grin was stretched across his face.
He had the throttle pinned, and the lifeboat came tearing straight toward "Lucy," the whale lying across the beach, without slowing down at all.
"Fuck!! These guys are insane!!"
As the fastest man alive, A-Train’s reflexes were far beyond any normal person’s.
"Whoosh!"
Without wasting a single word, A-Train turned into a blue blur and vanished from the whale’s back in an instant.
The Deep, who still hadn’t reacted, was left with his ass in the air and both hands frozen in the middle of petting the whale.
He stood alone on the massive whale’s back, his face locked in shock.
The Deep simply could not understand why anyone would be this crazy.
"BOOM!!!"
A dull, thunderous crash rang out across the quiet beach.
William Butcher drove the lifeboat straight into the massive body of the sperm whale "Lucy."
Driven by sheer momentum, the sharp bow tore through the whale’s thick hide and blubber in an instant. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Blood blasted into the air like a fountain. Chunks of crimson organs and a flood of gore sprayed everywhere, staining the entire beach a horrifying dark red.
"Woo..."
The sperm whale let out one last short, piercing cry. Its massive body convulsed violently, then went completely still, dead beyond any doubt.
As for The Deep, who had been standing on the whale’s back with his ass sticking out, he didn’t even have time to scream before the sudden impact launched him into the air.
With a heavy thud, The Deep slammed into the sand.
His eyes rolled back, and he passed out cleanly.
Behind a huge reef several hundred meters away, A-Train, who had bolted away a split second earlier, watched the blood-and-guts carnage on the beach. Helpless, he pulled off his goggles and slapped a hand to his forehead.
"We’re literally at the ocean, and Deep still managed to screw it up this badly..."
A-Train shook his head.
But this was no time to complain.
He took a deep breath, and the muscles throughout his body exploded with power.
"Whoosh!!"
A sonic boom rang out as A-Train crossed several hundred meters in an instant, appearing right beside the lifeboat lodged in the whale’s innards.
A-Train recognized Kimiko the moment she crawled out of the cabin.
She was one of the first Supervillains he had been responsible for transporting back when he was helping Homelander smuggle Compound V.
Without the slightest hesitation, A-Train flickered and appeared behind Kimiko.
He reached out, ready to use his terrifying speed to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to finish the job.
But just as his hand was about to touch Kimiko, a sharp, needle-like pain stabbed through his heart.
He had just carried The Deep to the beach at high speed, and now the aftereffects of long-term abuse of high-purity Compound V had triggered his heart failure again.
A-Train clutched his chest, pain twisting across his face.
Right then, before he had even had a chance to recover.
"Bzzz!"
An insanely violent Telekinesis shockwave slammed head-on into A-Train’s chest.
"Gah!"
Already in agony, A-Train let out a muffled grunt and was sent flying backward. He skipped across the sand like a stone over water, tumbling more than a dozen meters before finally stopping with a mouthful of sand.
The one who attacked him was Kenji, who had just crawled out of the cabin.
The instant A-Train clutched his heart, Frenchie had decisively unlocked the handcuffs binding Kenji’s hands.
Freed from his restraints, Kenji’s face was full of fury. He gave the scruffy Frenchman a deep, hard look, then Telekinesis flared around his hands again as he prepared to turn and run off on his own.
"Wait! You can’t leave!"
Frenchie didn’t even bother wiping the whale blood off his face before shouting, "Vought’s people found us! The Seven are gonna be here any second! If you don’t come with us, you won’t last one fucking minute alone on this beach!"
Kenji glanced at him coldly and kept walking, clearly unmoved.
"You really want..."
Frenchie pointed at Kimiko, who was desperately trying to hold her brother back, and shouted through gritted teeth, "You really want your only sister to get sliced apart by those goddamn superheroes’ lasers, or beaten to death, just to protect you?!"
Those words made Kenji stop dead.
He turned back and looked at his sister, her face wet with tears, her eyes pleading with him.
Years of imprisonment and torture had taught him not to trust anyone.
But in that moment, blood and family still reached Kenji in the end.
Kenji shut his eyes in pain, then shook his head hard.
"Then we go together! Move! Those monsters are coming!"
Soon, Mother’s Milk and Butcher woke up.
The three members of The Boys Squad took Kimiko and Kenji with them and plunged straight into the maze-like urban storm drainage system behind the beach.
...
Five minutes later.
Homelander descended from the sky with Soldier Boy and landed steadily beside the dead sperm whale.
Right after that, the Stormfront Trio arrived beside them.
The moment they stepped onto the beach, the thick stench of blood and rot hit them head-on.
The smell made Starlight, who was following behind, gag involuntarily.
At that moment, The Deep, who had just woken up, looked utterly devastated.
He stroked the sperm whale with both hands, overcome with grief.
"Boo-hoo... My Lucy! My poor Lucy! How could you die like this..."
The Deep pressed his face against the whale’s corpse, heartbroken.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
Benjamin stepped forward and snapped, "Where’s A-Train?"
The Deep jumped, looked up, and stammered, "Sir... uh... A-Train got hit, and then he went ahead to track those people down."
"And you?"
Homelander stood with his hands on his hips, his deep blue eyes filled with utter contempt. He slowly walked up to The Deep, looked down at him, and asked with a cold sneer, "He went after the enemy. So what the hell are you doing here, Deep?"
The Deep’s scalp went numb under Homelander’s stare, but his grief had completely short-circuited his brain.
"I-I’m mourning my Lucy..."
"Mourning my ass!"
"Bang!"
Benjamin finally snapped and punched The Deep right in the bridge of the nose.
The Deep clutched his nose and cried out as blood started running down his face.
"If you say one more fucking word about that goddamn whale in front of me, I’ll rip your gills out and make sashimi out of them right now!"
Benjamin pointed at The Deep’s nose and shouted, "Get to the point. What the hell happened?!"
Holding his bleeding nose, The Deep told everyone exactly what had just happened.