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Stormfront stared at Kevin.
In her pupils was Kevin's figure dressed in a suit.
After staring at Kevin for a while, Stormfront took a deep breath and calmed down, saying, "...I understand."
After speaking, Stormfront turned and left, no longer loudly questioning Kevin in front of him, nor angrily venting anything.
She calmly left the office, as if nothing had happened.
Kevin clearly understood why Stormfront left, because Stormfront clearly knew the power gap between her and Kevin.
That was not a tiny, insignificant gap; in front of Kevin, who could control Stormfront's entire bloodstream at any time, if the two truly got into a dispute, the result would definitely be Stormfront's undeniable defeat.
Stormfront might not even be able to exert her own power before being detonated by Kevin as a human bomb.
No matter how strong her body was.
Therefore, even if Stormfront strongly disapproved of Kevin's decisions and current actions, Stormfront had to endure.
She had no other choice but to endure.
Kevin was not surprised by Stormfront's departure, but at the same time, his tolerance for Stormfront grew lower and lower, and the desire in his heart to eliminate her grew stronger.
A dog that only barks is not scary; what is scary is a dog that silently watches you, ready to bite off a piece of your flesh at any moment.
If Stormfront had continued to loudly promote her Supe Kingdom plan to Kevin and displayed extreme, even irrational, anger towards Kevin's actions in front of him, Kevin might have been willing to play along with her.
Because that would prove that Stormfront had been pushed to her limit by Kevin and had no other way to achieve her goal besides barking wildly in front of him.
But now, Stormfront's silent departure meant that she had other methods, and she didn't necessarily need Kevin.
And this would free her from Kevin's control; therefore, it might be time for Stormfront to exit the stage.
"But killing her now would be too easy for her."
Kevin narrowed his eyes, pondering.
It was easy to kill Stormfront; Kevin could do it at any time, but the reasons he hadn't done so had been explained.
Firstly, as a hero, as a 'national idol' possibly more popular than Homelander in this world, he could not have any black marks on his record.
Otherwise, any policy Kevin implemented in the future would be met with suspicion and resistance from the public.
Secondly, letting Stormfront die just like that would be somewhat too simple.
Before killing Stormfront, she should at least be thoroughly disgraced.
She needed to fully experience the pain of being rejected and hated by the world; only then could the people she had harmed receive justice.
"But Hughie isn't here now, so who should I find to get dirt on Stormfront? Can Butcher do it?"
With Hughie missing, the plan to investigate the Church of the Collective and obtain dirt on Stormfront could only be temporarily halted.
Kevin did want to entrust Butcher, but it seemed somewhat impossible for Butcher to get what he wanted without making a big fuss.
Kevin certainly didn't want to hear news the next day about the Church of the Collective's main base being attacked by terrorists.
If all else failed, Kevin could only go to Shockwave.
This guy was a speedster; if he was coerced and enticed, he might be able to do some things that Kevin found inconvenient to do.
Kevin was thinking about how to get information on Stormfront from the Church of the Collective.
And in the very next instant, with a whoosh, a figure suddenly appeared in Kevin's office.
He wore a baseball cap, a high-collared jacket for disguise, and sunglasses on his face.
It was none other than Hughie, who had been missing for several days and couldn't be found anywhere!
"Hughie!?"
The moment he saw Hughie, Kevin couldn't help but stand up from his seat.
"Oh! I'm back!! Oh my god, I'm really back!!"
As soon as he returned and saw Kevin standing behind the desk, Hughie also let out a surprised sound.
Hearing the undisguised joy and excitement in Hughie's voice, Kevin couldn't help but ask, "What's going on? Where have you been these past few days? Do you know you've been missing for three days!"
"Three days!? So the time on both sides is synchronized...?"
"What?"
Catching a few keywords in Hughie's words, Kevin immediately thought of something, and his voice quickened, "What's synchronized? Where exactly did you go?!"
Kevin had a guess in his heart, a very incredible guess, and precisely because this guess was too incredible, he kept questioning Hughie.
"Uh... it's a long story. Um... can I have a glass of water first?"
Perhaps Kevin's attitude affected Hughie; a lot of Hughie's excitement faded, and he calmed down, pointing to the water glass on Kevin's desk and asking.
"Of course, you can. Sit down, have a glass of water, and we'll talk slowly."
Kevin personally handed Hughie the water glass and had him sit on the sofa in the office to talk with him.
...
A few minutes later, a much calmer Hughie placed the empty water glass on the table, organized his thoughts, and began to speak to Kevin:
"Do you remember how, after I injected the Compound V, my body would occasionally show afterimages, like I was about to be teleported away at any moment?"
"Of course, I still remember what you said when you were teleported away... 'Can't control it?'"
"Yes, 'can't control it!' I couldn't control my enhanced ability at all back then! My ability... it seemed to be affected by something, completely beyond my conscious control, and then... I activated my ability."
"You disappeared from my sight. We looked for you for a long time, Hughie. Where did you go?"
Kevin asked with a frown.
Searching for Hughie these past few days had used a lot of Vought's resources, and Kevin had thought Hughie was really in trouble, never expecting him to suddenly appear in front of him today.
Under Kevin's interrogation, Hughie's speech quickened a bit.
He began to answer:
"That's what I'm going to talk about! I was teleported away, suddenly appearing outside Vought Tower's park, that one outside... the park where you previously arranged the Flight 37 survivor appreciation event."
When Hughie said this, Kevin did not continue to ask.
He knew Hughie hadn't finished speaking.
Sure enough, Hughie's words continued without any pause.
"At that time, I thought I had teleported from Vought Tower to the outside because my ability was out of control at that time, but when I wanted to teleport back, I found... my ability couldn't be used at all!"
"Can't be used?"
"That's right! It was like it had failed; I couldn't teleport at all. I was scared stiff, you know? I thought it was a side effect of your Compound V, making me lose my ability. You said that the Compound V might make me lose my Supe abilities for a short time.
"Then I started experimenting to see if I could perform visual teleportation, and it turned out I could! My ability could still be used, but for some reason, I couldn't return to the office where I was talking to you before!
"Normally, that's nothing, right? Since I couldn't use my ability to return to your office, I would just walk back myself. Anyway, I knew where your office was. That's what I thought, and that's what I did, but--!"
Hughie's voice suddenly rose a few octaves, deliberately building suspense as he asked Kevin, "At that moment, I saw someone. Guess who I saw?"
"Hughie, I'm not in the mood to play guessing games with you right now."
Kevin frowned.
"Uh..." Seeing that Kevin was indeed not in a good mood, Hughie stopped beating around the bush and said directly, "I saw A-Train! The A-Train who should have died!!"
Hughie finished speaking, paused, and looked up expectantly at Kevin's reaction.
As soon as he looked up, he found that Kevin wasn't startled at all; instead, after falling into thought, he turned around and asked him, "So, you went to a parallel world?"
"...?"
Hughie's expression became very colorful at that moment.
What's going on?
He had spent a whole day in another world before finally understanding what had happened and where he had gone with the help of another Butcher.
How could Kevin understand what he had experienced just by hearing a rough outline now?
Kevin understanding everything so quickly made Hughie feel like he was very stupid.
Especially when he thought of how excited he had been just now, as if he had discovered some huge secret, Hughie felt even stupider.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Seeing Hughie's expression, which was like 'sharing an interesting video with a friend only to find out the friend had already seen it,' Kevin's face was full of strangeness.
"...No, nothing... it's just that you guessed so quickly, it makes me seem very... never mind, it doesn't matter."
Hughie's remaining bit of excitement completely cooled, his tone softened, no longer as eager as before, and he said, "That's right, I went to a parallel world, and the A-Train I saw was from that world."
"And then? How did you come back?"
"After I found A-Train, I first felt something was wrong, because how could a dead person come back to life? So I didn't enter Vought Tower; instead, I went to investigate first, and it turned out that...
"Oh my god, I was a wanted criminal in that world! All of us, Butcher, Frenchie, Marvin... all of us were wanted, and I even heard that one of us, a Supe criminal, killed a lot of people!"
"You believed that?"
"Of course, I didn't believe it!"
Hughie's voice rose again, then suddenly deflated with a sigh, "Okay, actually, I did believe it a little, after all, Butcher... we all know what kind of person Butcher is, but I didn't believe I would continue to follow Butcher in that situation, so I found them."
"You met The Boys from that side."
"Or rather, I only met Butcher alone. He recognized me and wondered why I was looking for him. It wasn't until I showed my ability and told him I wasn't the Hughie he knew that we... well, settled down peacefully."
When Hughie spoke of Butcher, his words became completely calm, even a little wistful.
Clearly, what happened between him and Butcher was not as simple as he made it sound.
Kevin saw through his experience with the Butcher from the other world at a glance and asked with a smile, "You hit him?"
"You can't say 'hit,' it was just... a slight conflict, of course, the conflict was resolved peacefully in the end..."
Hughie tried to argue, but Kevin interrupted him, "So you did hit him, after all. How was it? Feel good?"
"Huh?"
"I mean, did it feel good to punch someone you used to not have the courage to punch?"
"Uh..." Hughie was silent, and after a long while, he couldn't suppress the corners of his mouth and covered his face, "...To be honest, it felt a little good."
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