Chapter 130: 130: Super Speed 100% Integrated!
Seeing Butcher go completely off the rails with his list, Hughie jumped in fast. "Okay, fine on the rest, but are you sure World War Two exploding had anything to do with Homelander? Pretty sure he wasn’t even born yet."
"How is it not related?" Butcher set the pen down, looking pretty damn pleased with himself. He scanned each line for mistakes while explaining to Hughie. "It’s exactly because supes showed off so hard during World War Two that Vought went all-in on building superheroes. You know what their goal was back then?"
Hughie shook his head.
"To create the perfect supe. A superhero that belonged only to Vought. That’s why Homelander exists. He’s the original sin, a thing that never should have been born."
Butcher slapped the paper against Hughie’s chest. "Remember to tweak it a bit before you give it to Starlight. Let her pass the dirt on to Ryan."
"How much do I even have to change..." Hughie muttered helplessly.
"You can copy the State Department. They’re pros at this shit. Just steal their style."
Hughie ignored Butcher’s jab, folded the paper, and stuffed it in his pocket. "What about the second good news? You said you had two. So far I’ve only heard one."
"The second good news is I already reached out to that mysterious gentleman. He’s willing to help us handle the first job." Butcher walked over to the water cooler and poured himself a cup.
Even though Mallory had given him the trafficker’s address, there was no guarantee the guy didn’t have super terrorists working for him. Relying only on Kimiko felt shaky, so Butcher was ready to use every resource he could get.
"What if he rats us out? We’ll all get wiped out at once," Frenchie said, looking worried.
"He won’t. I already agreed to let Hughie be his little lab rat. In return he’ll hook Hughie up with more Compound Six."
In Butcher’s eyes, the chance of Ivan selling them out was basically zero. Butcher wasn’t stupid. He knew their relationship was pure mutual use. Only when they stopped being useful to that mysterious Frenchman would they get kicked to the curb.
In the adult world, interests were the only reliable thing.
"What the fuck?" Hughie looked completely blindsided. Butcher had sold him out without even asking? And apparently got a decent price for it too.
"Get ready for tonight’s operation."
Butcher gave Hughie a slap on the shoulder and headed off to his room to crash for a bit.
...
Meanwhile.
In a villa on the outskirts of New York.
Ivan lounged on the sofa, using thin tentacles that stretched out from his body to suck the Compound V straight from the tubes.
Several rows of the stuff sat on his living room coffee table. As the last tube of blue liquid ran dry, the fusion progress bar on his panel finally hit 100%.
It had taken almost two months, but A-Train’s powers were now fully merged with his own.
The next second, his body vanished from the sofa.
Everything around him suddenly looked painfully slow. It felt strange, like sitting on a bullet train while the scenery outside whipped past at insane speed.
He grabbed an apple from the table and tossed it across the room. While it was still flying, he casually strolled to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of yogurt, and before he even opened it, he disappeared again. When he reappeared, he had already caught the apple.
"Too bad. Still not fast enough."
A cold glint flashed. The apple in Ivan’s hand got sliced into countless pieces and poured through his fingers like liquid.
"One thousand six hundred kilometers per hour. About one point three times the speed of sound. But this isn’t my limit."
Like a ghost, Ivan suddenly appeared in front of the high-speed testing equipment in the basement.
He had already completed a full run. Only the high-speed cameras slowed down could catch his afterimages.
Just like he said, this wasn’t the limit. In an instant, something like an engine roar started thundering from inside his chest.
Bang bang bang!!! The sound came deep from his ribcage, heavy and muffled. Red light seeped through his skin as his legs began to change.
Boom! He left two deep marks on the solid floor, then vanished. When he appeared again, he had already smashed straight through the basement wall.
He didn’t stop there. He burst outside. His speed was way faster now, and a hell of a lot harder to control.
On the road, a driver puffing on a cigarette stuck his hand out the window to flick the ash. Suddenly a violent gust hit him and the cigarette snapped clean in half.
"Shit, what the fuck was that?"
The startled driver yanked his hand back inside. He glanced at the speedometer.
No fucking way.
He was already speeding, yet something had just passed him even faster. What was the rush? In a hurry to meet Jesus?
He hadn’t gotten a clear look at whatever it was, but he was damn sure something had shot right past his hand.
"Fucking hell." The driver tossed the cigarette butt out the window, lit up another one to calm his nerves, and took a deep drag. Then, without thinking, he stuck his hand out the window again.
"Wind’s pretty strong today," he muttered. He felt another gust whip past his hand. Squinting, he brought the cigarette to his lips and sucked. Nothing came out.
He looked down. Holy shit. It was the same butt he had just thrown away.
After two weird-ass incidents, the white driver was properly spooked. The thing between his fingers didn’t feel like a cigarette anymore. It felt like a burning hot coal.
"Church... Church, yeah. I need to pray." His hand shook and the butt dropped between his legs, but he didn’t even notice. He just kept muttering to himself.
Meanwhile, Ivan Greevs felt his heart hitting its absolute limit.
"Wooo-hooooOO!!"
If you could see through his skin, you’d find his heart burning like molten lava.
The heat was spreading into the surrounding blood vessels. If his skin wasn’t tough enough, it would have split open like tree bark by now.
He pushed back to the basement at top speed.
The high-speed cameras caught it: one point five times the speed of sound. An insane number.
For example, even if someone shot at him, Ivan could see the bullet’s entire flight path clearly and snatch it right out of the air mid-flight. That’s how terrifying his current speed was.
Too bad his heart could only handle so much. This max state would last three minutes at most.
"Whew..." Ivan exhaled a blast of scorching hot air. A blur flashed and suddenly he was holding a bottle of ice water.
___
[]~(￣▽￣)~*
Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69
