"Bye~"
Stormfront bid Joey farewell as usual.
Of course, maybe not entirely as usual. At least, Joey noticed something.
"What's gotten into you today? Not going to give me a little encouragement anymore? Tell me to be a role model for all the fallen souls in the company?"
"Of course."
Stormfront paused for a moment, then gently patted Joey's cheek. "I trust you to make your own decisions."
"Oh, right." Joey called out to Stormfront just as she was about to leave. He pulled out a carefully prepared box from his nightstand, opened it, and presented it to her.
"What's this, a bracelet?"
Stormfront took the item out of the box. It was a green bracelet made of an unknown material—small cyan gemstones strung together on a silver chain, with a larger, smooth green gem set in the center. Although polished overall, a thin crack ran through it, glinting with a dark green metallic sheen.
"A silicate mineral. On Earth, it's usually called olivine."
If Joey was going to give her a gift she wouldn't refuse, it had to be chosen carefully.
"This isn't an ordinary silicate. It's from deep beneath the surface of Mars. I brought it back myself and shaped it with heat vision."
"Boasting all the time isn't a good habit, Joey."
Although she said that, Stormfront happily accepted the gift, immediately slipping it onto her wrist and waving it at Joey.
"You'd better behave yourself at the company today too!"
Joey smiled as he watched Stormfront fly away. Then the smile faded from his face, and he headed towards Vought Tower.
The moment Joey landed and entered the building, he was immediately intercepted by a waiting Ashley. She was still holding a grudge over him leaving without notice during last night's operation, and launched straight into a tirade.
"Superman! We need to have a serious talk! You can't just keep refusing to cooperate with our publicity campaigns."
"Do you have any idea how many people worked on those proposals? Coordinating media outlets, pulling all-nighters gathering police surveillance footage, finding suitable crime scenes, risking getting shot just to film on-site with you..."
"All of this is for your sake! Only by staying in the spotlight can you gain exposure, grow your fanbase, shape public opinion, and operate the fan economy. You keep disrespecting the audience, dodging the cameras—your follower count has been dropping since your debut. At this rate, you'll be kicked out of the Seven sooner or later..."
Joey acted as if he hadn't heard a word, continuing straight ahead. But this genius only pushed her luck further, stepping directly in front of him, her voice buzzing in his head.
Sigh...
Ever since Joey had thoroughly combed through Vought's internal network via her computer last night, he'd lost all remaining respect for the company—let alone for a dehumanized corporate cog like her.
Still, he couldn't exactly drive her away with violence. He wasn't like the other damn superheroes in the company.
At that thought, Joey suddenly remembered a certain equally embittered hero who had a very effective escape technique. He pointed behind Ashley.
"Look, it's Soldier Boy!"
"Don't think you can distract me with that, Superman. Soldier Boy died decades ago. Today you will learn to respect our team's hard wo—"
Ashley said that, but still instinctively turned her head to glance behind her. When she looked back, all she felt was a sudden gust of wind—the Joey in front of her was already gone.
"Fuck!"
Joey arrived at the most heavily armed floor in Vought Tower, home to the Equipment Department and the Crime Analytics Division. As he passed the Equipment Department, he spotted the sharpshooter who had once tried to assassinate him remotely during the Red River incident, currently checking gear and preparing to deploy.
Joey gave him a distant look of acknowledgment. The man nearly jumped out of his skin.
Then Joey quickly entered the Crime Analytics Division. As soon as he walked in, he saw a junior employee who had just sat down at her desk with a cup of black coffee, preparing to deal with breakfast—whole wheat bread and raw carrots, chewed dry and washed down with coffee.
Although Joey had seen scenes like this countless times in his previous life, he still couldn't help but marvel once again at the extraordinary ability of white-collar workers to eat as if they had no sense of taste at all.
He silently stood behind her, watching her finish this breakfast that would probably scrape even a pig's throat raw. Then Joey lightly tapped her shoulder, successfully causing her to spill the remaining coffee all over her keyboard.
"Oh! Superman! Sorry—"
"My fault. I should've made some noise."
Joey soothed her flustered panic, flipped the keyboard upside down, and quickly dried it with heat vision. He also glanced at her badge.
"An… Annieka, right? I need your help with something."
"It's Anika, Mr. Superman."
Anika tidied up her desk and immediately slipped into work mode.
"What can I help you with?"
Just yesterday, Homelander had come to her asking her to locate Translucent's tracker. Surely today this one wouldn't be—
"I need you to help me locate a tracker."
Ah. Of course.
"Translucent's?"
"Of course not."
Joey shook his head. Who would care where that party-obsessed waste of space was sobering up?
"I need to locate my own."
Vought was an international corporation that had firmly planted its roots in New York since the 1950s. Although Joey had scoured every accessible corner of the internal network, some information—due to age or classification—likely wasn't stored digitally at all.
The company's archives and correspondence contained plenty of personnel files on superheroes, including financial records from PR and legal departments cleaning up their messes. But it was clear that certain higher-level materials did not exist on the surface-level internal network.
More than once, Joey had seriously considered building a gulag hotel and sending over 80% of Vought's superheroes there for a long vacation. But for now, the priority was addressing the problem at the top—figuring out exactly which executives could be spared.
Especially the one he was sleeping with.
Most information about the Seven, a suspicious "Compound V" occasionally mentioned in emails, and keywords like Barbara or Stormfront—all of it was completely absent from the database.
Since it wasn't there, he'd have to use other means.
"I probably knocked it loose during the flight yesterday. I couldn't find it this morning no matter how hard I looked."
Anika wasn't really convinced by the explanation, but she still went ahead and ran the trace. Then she let out a small, puzzled sound.
"Huh..."
"What is it?"
Joey snatched the mouse and zoomed in on the map. No wonder she was surprised.
His tracker was rapidly crossing the Atlantic. Within moments, it had reached the western coast of Africa, paused briefly, then shot across the Indian Ocean towards the Southeast Asian archipelago.
"It might be a system error—"
Before Anika could finish, Joey had already vanished from the office, leaving more than a dozen A4 pages scattered across the floor by the violent gust of wind.
---
Stormfront was engaged in one of her few hobbies besides playing chess with Joey.
Vought was a multinational corporation. Though its primary business had become managing super idols, it had never abandoned its other ventures—most notably biochemical pharmaceutical research, planned military contracting, Red River orphanage charity, and various overseas investments.
To be more specific, those overseas investments meant acquiring land abroad at rock-bottom prices.
As early as the 1960s and 70s, under Stormfront and other executives' direction, Vought had begun mass purchases of cheap land across Africa and the Pacific islands. They then used land ownership to extort political or financial concessions from semi-colonial local governments.
Given Vought's close relationship with Congress and the tacit approval of certain powerful figures, such extortion almost always succeeded.
And if local residents refused to sell their land cheaply?
For Stormfront, that was one of the most entertaining parts.
As possibly the first superhuman created using Compound V, she lived up to the codename she'd given herself—"Stormfront."
Draped in her favorite black leather cloak, she rode lightning across the Pacific skies. With casual gestures, she could summon deadly thunder and torrential rain. A lethal low-pressure cyclone would soon sweep across entire coastlines, cleansing the land of those who refused to comply.
Hidden within dense cloud cover, Stormfront lingered, savoring the moment—relishing the long-missed sight of inferior pests howling in misery after the typhoon's passage.
Lately, she had grown somewhat bored with Joey—but not completely. That was why she'd returned to this old method of entertainment.
This time, there was no land to acquire maliciously. She was simply bored.
The lab's projections were extremely optimistic. She might truly be able to clone a brand-new, perfect Aryan Superman. If she chose the right egg donor, he could even be blond.
Still, the gift Joey had prepared that morning softened her resolve somewhat. Maybe raising a young one wasn't such a bad idea either.
Lost in these thoughts, Stormfront belatedly realized the typhoon she'd created had vanished instantly.
By the time she reacted, the sky had already cleared completely as the pressure equalized. A red cape snapped violently in the air, flying straight toward her.
Following Stormfront's flight path, Joey raced ahead, counteracting pressure differentials along the eastern Atlantic, catching falling people and livestock, placing them safely on the ground before racing onward toward the Pacific.
There, he repeated the process, calming the storm before anyone was harmed. The violent pressure clash dispersed nearly all clouds, fully exposing the black-cloaked figure standing atop them.
Joey didn't need super vision to know who it was.
And Stormfront, seeing Joey charging toward her, understood instantly. She raised a hand, fired a bolt of lightning to force him back, then tore off the olivine bracelet from her wrist. Crushing the largest gem, she revealed the hidden tracker inside.
She had been misled by his apparent youth. His cunning was far greater than it seemed.
Stormfront believed she could handle him in a fight—based on lab data, even Homelander couldn't deal lethal damage to her. But now wasn't the right time or place.
She had Vought behind her. There was no need to brawl like street trash over the Pacific.
"Stormfront, stop! Don't force my hand!"
To be safe, Joey dodged incoming lightning while chasing her retreat. At this moment, he could no longer avoid confronting a truth he'd been subconsciously ignoring.
The woman he'd been sleeping with had gone from someone with ulterior motives, to a suspected extremist, to a Nazi who personally carried out mass murder using her powers.
His mind should have connected the dots long ago—or his body should have moved to uncover the truth. But after upheaval, he'd kept clinging to unreachable hopes, lingering in temporary harbors.
Joey's anger boiled—not because she had deceived him, but because he had been deceiving himself.
In his past life, a colleague once used a phrase to describe a disgraced, lawsuit-ridden former president. It fit him perfectly now.
Thinking with the wrong head.
"Joey, why are you so angry? They're just animals!"
This kind of youthful justice was what gave Stormfront the biggest headache—and why she thought this cultivation project was doomed.
"They're just black apes and yellow monkeys. We're superior to them!"
In the distance, Joey's eyes glowed red, locking onto her.
"This world is not supposed to work like this!"
---
When Annie January first received Stan Edgar's assignment, she was genuinely excited—even expectant.
Especially since he followed through, setting her up with a safehouse in New Jersey: a fully equipped high-end computer system with direct access to Vought's crime surveillance network, shelves of specialized equipment, and three or four pre-prepared fake identities.
It even made Starlight come up with her own slogan.
"Anytime, anywhere. Starlight Detective. On the case!"
At this moment, Starlight was thoroughly intoxicated by her hero dream. A clearer-headed person might have questioned why these cases required someone who officially did not exist.
But Starlight had already thrown herself wholeheartedly into the cold cases—each one unsolved, involving children who vanished after their parents reported them missing.
The time span was enormous, stretching from Soldier Boy's active years forty years ago to the era of Homelander. Even Tek Knight, the "world's greatest detective," would have been stumped—let alone a complete amateur like her.
With no better option, Starlight resorted to the dumb method: visiting families one by one. In three days, she drove from Jersey City to Long Island, barely stopping to eat or sleep. Within that short distance, eleven families were involved.
For the first time, Starlight felt she truly wasn't cut out to be a detective. A detective needed composure, clarity—logic untouched by emotion.
But after days of accumulated grief and regret, her mind was already in shambles.
Families who lost children began with panic and anxiety. When long, agonizing searches yielded nothing, anger and self-blame followed—until only lifelong numbness and despair remained.
Starlight had visited families at every stage—from those who'd just lost a child to those missing one for three or four years. Every word they spoke was unbearable, crushing her bit by bit.
"I only went inside the store to grab two hot dogs. I told him to stay put. Just that little while, and I never saw him again..."
Starlight felt she couldn't go on.
"That year, I picked her up from school. There was an ice cream truck. While I stood in line, she was playing on the lawn with her backpack..."
"It's been over ten years, but I still dream about her—dream about her rolling around on the grass with her classmates, crushing that Queen Maeve doll hanging off her bag..."
Starlight didn't even know how she drove back to Jersey City. She only knew she needed to curl up in her secret base and sleep.
No one can think clearly when everything is this tangled.