Chapter 1: [The Awakening of New-Hue]
[System Message: Initiating "The Boys: I'm the New Hue, I Need More V" Simulation. Welcome, Player. Prepare for existential dread and gratuitous violence.]
"Oh, for… are you kidding me right now?"
The last thing I remembered was arguing with my roommate, Kevin (who, let's be real, was more like a sentient dust bunny with an opinion), about whether or not Butcher was truly irredeemable in Season 3. One second, I was mid-rant about the nuanced layers of trauma and toxic masculinity, and the next, I was sprawled on what felt suspiciously like concrete, a familiar, high-pitched ringing echoing in my ears. And then, the smell. Oh God, the smell. It was like a butcher shop exploded inside a fish market that had been left in the sun for a week. And the screams. Or rather, a scream. A truly bloodcurdling, soul-shattering shriek that was rapidly fading.
I pushed myself up, my head throbbing like a bass drum solo in a small closet. My vision swam, but even through the blurry kaleidoscope of my sudden, violent rebirth, I knew this place. The streetlights, the brick buildings, the particular shade of grimy, metropolitan despair. This wasn't my apartment. This wasn't even my continent.
Then I saw him. Or rather, me. A scrawny, terrified, and utterly bewildered dude in a plaid shirt, covered in what could only be described as a Jackson Pollock painting done in human viscera. And next to him, or rather, where next to him was…
"No. No, no, no, NO!" The words clawed their way out of my throat, not because I was the one splattered with Robin, but because I knew the guy who was. I was the guy who was. Hughie Campbell. The ultimate sad sack, the poster child for "wrong place, wrong time" who somehow managed to make "wrong place, wrong time" his entire personality.
And Robin. Or what was left of her. A bloody, indistinct smear on the brick wall, a haunting, visceral testament to the fact that some speedsters should stick to the track and stay far, far away from innocent pedestrians. A-Train. The show's first, shocking punch to the gut. And here I was, right in the epicenter of the gut-punch.
A wave of nausea hit me, but it wasn't just the gore. It was the crushing, suffocating realization that my comfortable, relatively mundane life of arguing about fictional characters was over. I was now in the fiction. And the fiction was trying to kill me.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" I muttered, scrambling back, away from the screaming Hughie (who was also me, this was getting confusing). My limbs felt… floaty. Disconnected. Like I was watching a particularly grotesque VR experience, except the haptic feedback was set to "full body trauma."
[System Message: Welcome, Hughie Campbell. Or, as you prefer, "New-Hue." Your journey into glorious self-destruction begins now.]
"New-Hue? Seriously? Is that your attempt at a clever moniker? Because it's pretty on the nose, System. Like, painfully so."
The words just popped into my head, a distinct, sterile text box appearing in my mental vision. My mental vision. Great. So, I wasn't just stuck in the show, I was stuck in the show with a bad case of video game interface in my brain. It was like I had a particularly unhelpful, sardonic dungeon master narrating my impending doom.
[System Message: Designation "New-Hue" assigned based on amalgamated consciousness signature. Please refer to Core Concepts & Themes for further details. And no, it's not an attempt at cleverness. It's efficiency. Something you'll need to learn.]
"Efficiency? You just dropped me into a world where superheroes are basically corporate psychopaths with daddy issues and I'm covered in my dead girlfriend's entrails. I think efficiency went out the window with the rest of my sanity."
I looked down at myself. Same plaid shirt, same unkempt hair, same general aura of nervous energy. But the blood… it was definitely on me. And the smell. Oh, the glorious, metallic, coppery aroma of freshly spilled life. I dry-heaved, but nothing came up. Probably because my stomach had done a disappearing act somewhere around the moment Robin became street art.
Then the panic truly set in. This wasn't just a fanfic I was reading. This was my life. And my life, apparently, was about to be a non-stop carnival of trauma, betrayal, and the occasional exploding head. Homelander. Butcher. Compound V. The whole damn nightmare.
"Okay, okay, deep breaths, Hughie. Or New-Hue. Whatever. Think. What's the logline? 'Cynical fan reborn as Hughie Campbell at the moment of Robin's death, armed with a game-like System…' Right. System. Tell me, oh great and powerful narrator of my impending doom, what exactly is this 'System'?"
[System Message: Accessing "The System: Rules & Mechanics." Interface is passive, mental, and text-based. Function 1: The Blood Meter (Random Growth). Function 2: Supe Power Absorption (Targeted Growth). Full details available upon conscious focus.]
"Passive, mental, text-based. So, like a really depressing instruction manual that only I can read. Fantastic. And 'Blood Meter'? 'Supe Power Absorption'? Is this a twisted version of Pokémon where I gotta catch 'em all… by murdering them?"
The idea was horrifying. I was a fan, not a serial killer. I mean, sure, I'd spent hours fantasizing about what I'd do if I had powers in The Boys universe, but those fantasies usually involved me dramatically saving someone with my witty banter, not… not absorbing powers from their grisly demise. This was a whole new level of dark.
And then there was the original Hughie. The poor, heartbroken, genuinely good-hearted Hughie who was probably still reeling from the shock of losing Robin. I could feel his lingering presence, a faint tremor of decency and awkwardness beneath my own layers of cynicism and meta-knowledge. It was like having a very polite, perpetually stressed ghost sharing my brain. And he was currently screaming internally about the sheer injustice of it all.
"Look, Hughie-Prime," I thought, trying to address the part of myself that wasn't me, "I get it. This sucks. Royally. But we're stuck here. And if we don't figure this out, Homelander's going to turn us into a fine red mist, and Butcher's going to make us eat a deep-fried supe turd. So, for both our sakes, let's try not to spontaneously combust from sheer terror, 'kay?"
The mental text box shimmered, implying a response, but it didn't give one. It was probably judging my coping mechanisms. Or calculating the optimal moment for my next panic attack.
The sound of sirens started to wail in the distance, growing louder. The show was already progressing. Butcher would be here soon. And then the real fun would begin. The fun that involved covert operations, questionable morals, and the constant threat of being vaporized by a laser-eyed psychopath in a flag cape.
"Alright, System," I thought, a grim determination solidifying in my gut. "Let's see what you've got. Show me the goods. How do I not die a horrible, messy death in this godforsaken world?"
[System Message: Analyzing current threat parameters. Immediate survival critical. Suggestion: Engage Billy Butcher. Follow his directives. His hatred of supes, while extreme, aligns with initial survival objectives. Further power acquisition data will be made available as conditions permit. Good luck, New-Hue. You're going to need it.]
"Thanks for the thrilling pep talk, System. Really instills confidence. You know, you sound like a particularly unenthusiastic guidance counselor who secretly wishes you'd just drop out and join the circus."
I glanced at the bloody smear that was once Robin. A fresh wave of sorrow, not entirely my own, washed over me. This wasn't just a game. This was real. And the stakes were higher than anything I'd ever imagined. I was Hughie Campbell, but not really. I was something new. Something… evolving. And the thought, terrifying as it was, also sparked a tiny, dangerous flicker of something else. Ambition. A hunger for power that I knew, with chilling certainty, was going to become a problem. A very, very big problem.
"Alright, The Boys," I whispered to the empty street, the sirens getting closer, "let's dance. And try not to get any more blood on this shirt. It's really hard to get out."