New York: Vought Tower
After Edgar took a few silent moments to think, he decided that sending Homelander right away might not be the best option, especially when the factors were very much unknown to them.
Besides, they'd already lost the two escapees' location, and they had one more problem on their hands.
For decades, Vought had used whatever monsters they could find and staged incidents to make the heroes, "heroes" for the world.
But for the last two years, monster activity had spiked to such levels that, in a way, all the heroes around the world were actually being put to "good" use.
With the recent incident, it was scarier to know that, they might have been the ones to deal with that unbelievable number of monsters, if those two hadn't been in that ravine.
Now, they had the secrets Vought had buried for decades and were completely off their radar. If there was a competition for having a bad day, this day would surely take the cake.
Stan walked back to his table and called Madelyn. "Sitwell, let Homelander do what he's doing; no need to look for him right now." He didn't even let her reply and cut the call afterward.
Madelyn just stared at the phone on her desk, confused as hell. One moment she was stressing out about how to bring Homelander back as soon as possible; the next, she was suddenly ordered to do nothing.
For now, Stan had ordered a team of supes and researchers to retrieve any remaining data from their site in Brazil and to bury and destroy anything that remained afterward. If anything was even left after that self-destruction.
Brazil: The Skies above the Amazon River
"Tell me again why we're flying over the Amazon River instead of, I don't know, someplace nice to eat, because I'm so damn hungry!" Satoru's voice rose at the end.
He and Makima were slowly flying along the sky above the Amazon River. It was pretty beautiful at first, but now that hunger was clouding his mind, he was getting more and more frustrated.
Makima was collecting anything strong that they came across, as if she was collecting Pokémon.
Monsters seemed fairly common in this world; nothing that would match the scale of the ravine where they'd been found, but still, she defeated and now controlled some fairly decent ones.
And right when he'd gotten a bit hungry, she sensed something in the river and silently started following its trail after growing a pair of giant, greyish-white wings from her back.
Trying to divert his mind from his empty stomach, he said, "Hmm, you're basically the summoner of our party, then."
Still flying straight, she just turned her head to him, and he clarified, "You know? I'm the mage/DPS, you're the summoner support; all we need now is a tank and a healer, probably."
'I do want to improve the scope of my RCT, though. Being an all around healer doesn't sound that bad,' he thought.
Seeing Makima's confused face, Satoru feigned surprise. "What? You never played a video game?"
"..." She just tilted her head and looked ahead.
Satoru suddenly flew in front of her, saying, "Wait, seriously? Switch? PlayStation? PC? Nothing? Boring. How did you pass your time, then?"
"I pet my dogs," she said in a low voice.
Satoru was too stunned to speak anymore. He silently followed her, not knowing what she was following. He could sense everything within the river below and was sure she definitely wasn't following some big, mutated piranhas.
He just flew along, with his back turned to Earth, as he looked at the clouds, bored out of his mind. Satoru wasn't sure why they were even sticking together. 'Haah, I don't-' His thoughts came to a halt when he sensed something, several hundreds of meters away.
He quickly adjusted his position and sat up cross-legged in the air. He stayed in one spot, letting Makima fly toward whatever it was.
Her wings extended a bit wider, flapping a few times, speeding her toward the river. 'This one feels like the strongest we've encountered yet,' Satoru thought to himself.
Makima sped toward the spot where she, too, felt the presence of a strong monster. Satoru could already see what it was. As the "winged angel" closed in on the murky water, a gaping maw, tens of times bigger than her, splashed out of the water.
It looked like a giant snake with backward, streamlined horns adorning the top of its head and metallic-looking, greyish-green scales as its carapace.
The serpent's length was hundreds of meters; its teeth alone were almost as big as a person. The water surface, silent until then, was now nothing but big waves that clashed against the edge of the forest around the river.
Makima dodged the sudden bite, flying to the side, and made a hand sign, saying, "Kon." A giant white fox with multiple eyes having the same hypnotic pattern emerged from her back, opening its gaping jaw filled with sharp teeth and biting the side of the serpent's head.
Although it was too big and hard for the fox to do any damage, it actually managed to keep it distracted for a few seconds.
Makima, pointing her finger at the head of the serpent, concentrated more energy than she normally would in that kind of attack.
'This is more than when I sent Denji-kun into space,' she thought with that same smug but subtle smile on her face, and just a second before she fired the shot, the Fox Devil was unsummoned.
The serpent, finally free of that annoying pest, turned to its main goal. "Bang!" Makima said out loud, aiming right at the top of its forehead.
Before it could move further, a sudden but intense pressure hit its head, breaking and caving in the hard carapace. A large amount of blood splattered out of its eyes, which were bulging outward at the end.
The force pushed the serpent backward, sending it flying toward the forest, its body rippling out of the water.
Satoru calmly observed the fight and how it ended with the monster now lying upside down, half-drowned in the river and half over the forest.
He was analyzing how attaching her chain to the dead serpent turned it into something neither dead nor alive, just like the other creatures.
He already had a gist of what Makima's origin and powers might be. 'She said devils are born from humans' fear of something, right? And considering how all of her abilities are based on having some form of control over others,' he thought.
"Humanity's fear of control, huh," he muttered. 'More like a necromancer than a summoner, then. I wonder if she, too, died in her world.' (A/N: Just two words, KitKat and Mukbang.)
Makima, after putting the serpent under her control, flew back to Satoru. "Alright, I think that's enough for now."
"You think? I was starting to think you're out to commit genocide," Satoru retorted.
Ignoring his complaint, she asked, "So, where do you think we should go? Flying to New York shouldn't be a problem. I do think we should meet Vought's CEO, after all."
"Stanford Edgar, huh? Well, we'll see him eventually. We do have merchandise worth billions of dollars, after all. Although, I think we should go to Argentina and see that ravine for ourselves; we might find some answers there." He said.
And after a few seconds of pause, "But first! We're eating something! I don't know if a devil feels hungry, but if my stomach's empty for another hour, I will genuinely start crashing out," he said, gritting his teeth.
"Are you planning on catching something?" she asked, looking down at the forest.
"Hah? No way I'm eating anything before filling my belly with something sweet. Now just follow me," he said and started flying south.
"How do you even know where to go?" she asked, catching up to him.
"There's a settlement a few hundred miles straight ahead. I told you; I just have really good eyes," he replied, looking straight ahead.
As they were flying, Makima took a few glances at those eyes of his. She couldn't tell what it was, but the pair of azure eyes, their color having a greater brilliance than the sky itself, had something inexplicable about them, giving him an unexpectedly eerie, almost godly presence.
Back in New York:
Homelander was zooming across the sky, above the city, landing in several places, using his superhuman senses to look for Translucent.
By evening, he got bored and returned to the tower. Mentally exhausted, John went to Madelyn's office, probably hoping she'd relieve his stress, as she always did for him.
He saw Madelyn dealing with some paperwork, so invested in it that she didn't notice him entering. He pulled his cape- less flag, to the side and casually sat down on the couch on the other side of the room.
"130 over 95. Wow, who riled up your day this much, Madelyn?" Homelander asked, startling the woman.
"Huh? John? When did you- You know what, forget it. Why was your phone off?" she asked, sounding a bit angry.
"I needed to focus. Why? Did you need something?" he asked, a suggestive smile plastered on his face.
"There was a problem at one of our bases this morning. Mr. Edgar had asked for you, but it seems like it's sorted out," she replied, getting up from her chair with a smile on her face.
She walked up to him and sat beside him. He slightly shifted, snuggling closer to her. "What sort of problem?" he asked.
She raised her hand, gently caressing his face, and replied, "Since they don't seem to need your help, don't trouble yourself with such minor things and rest for now."
She gently laid his head on her lap and whispered in his ear, "You worked hard today, so just relax-" Before she could finish, though, Homelander suddenly got up and walked toward the window.
"John-" She was about to ask when the building's emergency announcement system blared.
"Warning! A monster is attacking the frontal plaza of the Tower. All personnel are advised to stay indoors. A proper dispatch will be sent soon."
John just clicked his tongue in frustration and opened the hatch of the window, pulling the glass panel back.
"John, wait-" Madelyn was about to call out, but he casually leaped down the building, irritation crystal clear in his eyes, and as he descended, they glowed bright red.
When he got closer to the ground with a loud boom in the air, he flew toward the monster wreaking havoc in front of the plaza.
Madelyn, looking down, thought, 'In the middle of the city? That's rare.'
The monster was a mix between an alligator and a big wild cat, wider than a car and almost three meters tall. It also had insect-like appendages protruding from its sides.
A few people were already dead. The upper half of a human was dangling from its claws as it was busy eating the brains out of the head.
John, as soon as he got near, was about to laser the thing to hell. But his eyes returned to normal when he noticed something strange: the inner skeleton of the thing resembled a human's. A disgruntled face was attached to the back of its head.
Some stretched skin around its body looked very much like the thing had just ripped out of a human body.
He listened to the people frantically running away, shouting things. "Did you see that? That thing just came out of her," one said as he stumbled away with some of his friends.
"The fuck?" John muttered, twisting his nose. He then flew close to the thing, grabbed it by its leg, and before it could retaliate, threw it into the sky.
The force of that throw was strong enough to rip off the leg he was holding, which was still in his grasp. He threw it to the side, disgusted, and cleaned his gloves in the nearby fountain.
Slightly crouching, he flew up, creating a sonic boom in the air. The monster was still flying upward when John caught up and lasered it into dozens of pieces.
Back in the office, Madelyn was looking at her phone, as someone had already uploaded a video of this incident.
More accurately, the start of the incident: a gruesome sight of a woman twisting and tearing up from the inside as she transformed into what John had just killed.
John swiftly flew in through the window, one hand behind his back. "See this?" She showed him her phone and started ranting, "That's why I was trying to stop you. We could have tried to catch it alive and find something from it. John, you've been acting-"
Without letting her finish, Homelander threw the leg he'd torn off from the monster at her feet. "Jesus fuckin-" She gagged, averting her eyes.
He just smirked and walked out of the room.
"Where are you going?" She asked.
"To sleep."
"At least send someone to collect this."
"Call them yourself," he replied without even turning around, leaving her on her own. Madelyn, frustrated, stood unmoving in the room.
Homelander was still his brash, childish, and horny self, coming back to her once in a while, but there was something going on with him lately.
Before, even if she was slightly afraid of him, she felt like she knew everything about him. Now, he acted on his own most of the time, sometimes outright ignoring her orders. That scared and frustrated her at the same time.
Back in Brazil:
The settlement that Satoru had sensed from afar was a big camp of a local drug mafia. It looked like they'd taken over a local village.
Satoru and Makima had already taken them down, everyone who held a weapon either unconscious or dead.
Right now, Satoru was standing in front of a man who was holding a woman hostage, probably one of the villagers they'd kept alive for whatever reason.
Satoru just stared at him, and in a blink, his limbs were crushed under an invisible force. He couldn't even register the pain for the first few seconds.
Now he was wailing on the floor. The woman, still scared, looked at Satoru, her eyes widening as something zoomed past their position.
The man wailing on the ground suddenly stopped as his head was crushed like a watermelon.
'A supe, huh,' Satoru thought, looking down at the guy whose fist was stopped right in front of his abdomen. He spoke (in Portuguese), "Are you supposed to be a speedster?"
The shock on the guy's face was clearly visible. He zoomed around the room again, trying to build his momentum and struck at Satoru one more time.
This time, though, Satoru caught his fist and effortlessly twisted it. "AAARGHH!!!" he screamed when a chain came flying from behind and attached itself to the back of his head.
Makima walked forward, reading his mind, saying, "Hmm, this one got the Compound V from someone. No face or name. He's different from the children who are exposed to the chemical from birth."
"Someone's distributing it?" Satoru asked, intrigued.
"Probably. From what we know, Vought usually only sells its heroes. Maybe they're changing their game, or it got leaked; anything's a possibility. Also, I found something interesting. You'd want to see this," she replied.
He got excited and said, "What? Found some sweets? Please don't tell me it's just a bunch of crystal meth."
"Not quite," she said and looked down at the woman, who was still on the floor. "What are we doing with her?"
Satoru looked at the woman and asked, "You speak Portuguese? Spanish?"
"Sí. Yes… Yes. Are you here to save us?" She nodded her head at Spanish.
"You could say that. There are a few more kept captive in the basement. Take the key from that man and release them," he said, and the woman nodded, then went to do what he said.
Makima didn't say anything; she just waited for him to follow. When he did, she gave a nod, and they both flew to the other side of the camp.
There was a wide cage built underground, covered by steel bars. As they flew down, he looked at what was inside and said with a straight face, "Just a bunch of monsters. They probably-"
Instinctively, his eyes began analyzing them, and when he realized what they were, he got quiet. 'Children,' he thought with a neutral expression.
Human faces, torn apart and distorted, as if the monsters had crawled out of them or they had transformed into them.
Satoru suddenly went through all the details he'd read and that Makima had shared, that were in his brain.
Makima walked forward. "Even in that facility, there wasn't much to learn about Monster Cell experiments. Either it's not progressed to that level, or they've kept it a secret, even within the company."
Satoru thought for a while, then said, "We should put them to rest."
Makima nodded and raised her hand. Dozens of swords hovered over the pit and slammed down, immediately ending the lives of the "monsters."
Makima looked at Satoru, who seemed serious for the first time. Was he taking this too deeply? That was what she thought, but he suddenly turned around and complained in a whiny voice, "Man, my hunger's getting worse." He rubbed his belly, clearly frustrated that it was empty.
She chuckled, guessing she didn't need to worry about him. She slightly widened her eyes in surprise. 'Was I… worried about him?' Her mind immediately denied it, of course.
Smiling, she said, "I found some chocolate bars stashed in their food stores."
Satoru's face immediately lit up like a lantern in the dark. He jumped toward her, grabbed her shoulder, and said, "What, really? I knew you're the best. Now come on, take me there… please." He sounded like he was pleading at the end.
When they reached the food storage, Satoru immediately grabbed the chocolate and fruit bars and started gobbling them like a vacuum.
Makima was amused, looking at his blissful expression as he enjoyed the sweets. He looked just like a puppy happily enjoying his meal, 'no, more like a cat,' granted the cat had an ego bigger than a mountain and the arrogance of a self-proclaimed god.
After a while:
They were both resting inside one of the tents that the people they'd freed had built for them.
Satoru was messily munching on a plump and ripe mango, blissfully enjoying its sweetness.
"So, where to next?" Makima asked, taking a sip of beer from a bottle she was holding. She was quite surprised to know that Satoru hated the taste of alcohol.
"As I said, we'll go to Argentina first, then to New York. I want to see what's really in that ravine where they found us," he replied, tossing the mango seed aside.
"Alright, let's rest for today. We can move out tomorrow," she said, and he gave a nod as she went outside.
His belly finally full, Satoru relaxed on the soft makeshift bed, a content smile plastered on his face.
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To be continued!