Joey didn't even bother to turn around. He simply tilted his head, avoiding the longsword that stabbed straight toward him.
He had no choice but to let go and drop A-Train to the ground. Completely unprepared, the latter ended up putting weight on his injured leg, immediately letting out another round of blood-curdling screams.
"This really is a misunderstanding."
Joey's feet left the ground as he drifted backward, repeatedly lowering his head and shifting his body to evade thrusts and downward slashes coming from tricky angles.
No matter how the woman opposite him whirled her sword, no matter how her silver-red, gold-trimmed classical Greek half-armor and gleaming silver scale battle skirt flared with her aggressive momentum, her blade could not so much as graze a single hair on his body.
"Wonder Wom— ah, Queen Maeve. The conflict between A-Train and me is absolutely a misunderstanding!"
Now fully awake from his earlier Speed Force delusion and with a clear head, Joey had essentially given up on the idea of having a speedster reverse time.
This A-Train spewed profanity the moment he opened his mouth and clearly didn't look like someone capable of shouldering great responsibility.
Since that was the case, there was no reason to escalate things with this world's superhero team. Joey had more important matters to deal with.
"Kill him, Maeve!"
From a distance, A-Train, clutching his leg and wailing, still found the breath to shout at her. "This kid is completely insane! I didn't do anything—he tried to kill me the moment we met!"
Joey felt a bit helpless. A-Train seemed far too vengeful. He'd only broken one of the guy's legs—it wasn't some unforgivable crime.
A speedster could heal a leg like that in under a minute!
This was getting genuinely troublesome. After all, compared to a complete stranger like himself, Queen Maeve would naturally trust a teammate she'd fought alongside day in and day out.
To keep their fight from escalating, he decided to look for an opening to force Maeve back, then withdraw and figure something else out.
At that moment, Queen Maeve's relentless offensive finally slowed. Her voice was refined yet resolute, crisp like a blade being drawn from its sheath.
"I'll count to three. How about we both stop?"
Seizing the opening, Joey instantly burst backward several hundred feet, slowly spreading his hands. "You're the only one who's been attacking. I haven't attacked at all."
Bang!
Joey's ears caught the distant gunshot. He tilted his head, trying to dodge, but his luck wasn't great—the bullet still grazed his ear.
He looked up.
Far away, the side door of a helicopter stood wide open. A soldier in black combat gear lay prone on the cabin floor, a shoulder patch reading 'Red River Security'. A wisp of smoke was still rising from the anti-materiel sniper rifle in his hands.
"That sniper's not bad. From that distance, firing from such an unstable platform, and he hit with a single shot."
Joey calmly plucked the badly deformed bullet from the rim of his ear, examined it carefully, then handed it to Maeve in front of him.
"But it's useless."
A shiver ran through Maeve's entire body. The tension she'd just managed to release snapped tight again. Her palm grew slick with sweat around the sword hilt as she internally cursed the Red River idiots more times than she could count.
How many times had she said it? Conventional firepower was nearly useless against a small subset of powerful supes. She'd finally managed to calm him down, and now these morons were pouring gasoline on the fire.
As for how A-Train's leg got broken—that wasn't important at all. A-Train had never been the sharpest tool in the shed. If he'd provoked the other party and gotten his leg snapped as a result, wasn't that just karma?
"Calm down."
Those words weren't spoken by Maeve.
They came from Joey.
Joey realized that losing his anger actually had one upside. Under normal circumstances, anyone would have at least a bit of temper—one burst of heat vision and the people on that helicopter would've been sent straight into the losers' bracket for resurrection.
But right now, Joey could face this highly aggressive, almost gang-like superhero organization with a tolerance rivaling Jesus himself.
Bang—
In the middle of speaking, another bullet came flying in. Joey reached out and caught it, then turned his head and used his heat vision to precisely melt the weapons in the hands of the people aboard the helicopter.
"You bastards! Who gave you permission to fire without my orders?!"
Only now did Maeve snap back to her senses, roaring into the microphone. This was a matter of life and death. She was facing a superpowered individual who was likely on the same level as Homelander—able to fly, impervious to blades and bullets, equipped with heat vision, and possibly teetering on the edge of losing control.
And yet these people showed zero discipline, choosing at any moment to wildly fire the burning sticks in their hands.
"Fucking unprofessional! If this happens again, I'll twist your fucking head off! I swear—"
Before Maeve could unleash any more obscenities, the line was cut and the call rerouted. The voice on the other end made her shut her mouth at once.
The person on the line wasn't even Madelyn Stillwell, Vought's all-powerful Vice President who could decide the fate of most superheroes with a wave of her hand.
It was someone even higher up, from the eighty-second floor of Vought Tower.
"If he's willing to cooperate, bring him back."
Maeve froze in disbelief. She'd been planning to stall for time, hold the situation together until Homelander arrived to clean up the mess. She never imagined that Vought's upper management would choose a solution she couldn't understand at all.
She'd seen the destruction from the helicopter on the way in. Anyone who wasn't insane would never want to bring a ticking time bomb capable of flattening hundreds of acres back with them.
But an order was an order.
Maeve was still racking her brain over how to talk to the kid in front of her and convince him to come back peacefully, when she realized he already looked ready to leave.
He wiped away the long-dried blood from his upper body and face, revealing clearly defined muscles and a handsome, composed face. His deep blue eyes looked at her calmly.
"I've already heard everything. Let's go. And yes—my name is Joey. Joey Joseph Kent."
Maeve had to admit that if Joey hadn't been covered in blood just ten seconds earlier, then from certain legally questionable perspectives, this kid looked perfectly healthy and radiant. Broad shoulders, a tight waistline, sharply defined abs, an ideal shoulder-to-waist ratio.
Just like Homelander had been before…
Just like Homelander…
The thought sent a delayed chill down Maeve's spine. Not only because of the terrifying memories from her time with Homelander, but because she suddenly realized something crucial.
It made her understand why Vought was being so accommodating toward this out-of-control individual.
Flight. Invulnerability. Heat vision. Immense strength. Super hearing…
He was, in every way, a carbon copy of Homelander.
Except he was only a teenager.
Highly malleable.