Given that the people on the helicopter either had just had their leg broken by him, had just fired two shots at his head, or were still gripping their swords as if ready to fight him at any moment, Joey wisely chose not to board the helicopter. He only asked to borrow a shirt, then followed along behind, guided by the smell of exhaust from the chopper.
At that moment, he could hear every shout from everyone aboard the helicopter beneath the roaring engines and the thunder of the rotor blades.
Several Red River mercenaries were chatting and joking with each other. Nearby, the sniper was nervously tapping on his phone, probably texting someone.
Off to the side, Maeve was arguing through her microphone with someone named Stillwell, mostly venting about how the personnel Red River Security sent out never had even the slightest discipline, and about how she'd nearly been scared out of her wits when she first saw Joey, covered in blood like a madman. Only A-Train continued to howl in agony as someone bandaged his wounds.
A speedster without the Speed Force or any sense of professionalism; an warrior queen without resilience or courage; the military forces under a world-saving hero team without discipline or lethality.
Everything lined up perfectly with the slapdash troupe theory Joey remembered from his previous life. On the highway, luxury cars raced past one after another, all looking glamorous from afar, but up close you realized they were just four people pedaling bicycles inside a hollow shell.
Everyone was like this—himself included, as well as his peers. No one called it out. Everyone muddled through, either making mistakes or on the way to making them.
If parallel universes really existed like in the comics, then this universe was absolutely the most down-to-earth one.
The two people he had interacted with so far were both members of the Seven, among the strongest seven people in the world, yet their actual performance was deeply disappointing and completely failed to match his heroic impressions from his past life.
One was A-Train—every sentence out of his mouth was profanity, his speed barely exceeded the sound barrier, and a hole punched through his shinbone was enough to make him cry and scream all morning, annoying everyone around him.
The other was Queen Maeve, who performed slightly better, but not by much. Joey couldn't recall any version of Wonder Woman in any world who shoved all responsibility onto powerless ordinary people.
The helicopter didn't fly straight toward New York, where the person on the phone was located. Instead, it made a stop midway at a small base.
The mercenaries disembarked and dispersed on the spot. A-Train was lifted onto a stretcher and carried out of the hangar. Joey and Queen Maeve, meanwhile, boarded another helicopter that had already been serviced, heading straight for Manhattan.
"I'm not going to eat you," Joey said, looking at Queen Maeve, who was deliberately sitting an entire cabin's distance away from him. He couldn't understand why she was so afraid of him. "What happened with A-Train was just a misunderstanding. I didn't attack you either, did I?"
Maeve didn't respond. She simply scooted her hips a little farther away from Joey.
In many ways, Joey was like a copy of Homelander, including the blood-soaked state she had seen on him—something she'd witnessed on Homelander before as well. It genuinely made her uneasy.
But the deeper reason was that Maeve, as a veteran member of the Seven, knew exactly what kind of darkness lurked beneath the glamorous, righteous exterior of Vought and all its superhero teams.
People like her and Joey, powerful superhumans though they were, might be bulletproof—but that didn't mean Vought lacked ways to restrain or control them. The company could persuade him, or escalate force to subdue him, then toss him into Red River Orphanage like any other orphan whose powers had spiraled out of control, leaving him to fend for himself.
She didn't know what about this "little Homelander" had caught the attention of Vought's top brass, but based on experience, the big shots of Vought Tower almost never involved themselves in the company's day-to-day operations. Normally, Madelyn alone was more than enough to keep every superhero firmly under control.
Maeve wasn't a smart person—at least not compared to those figures. Until things became clear, she had no intention of getting swept up in invisible undercurrents and dying without a burial.
"Vought Tower—I can see it."
Joey spotted the towering Vought Tower long before entering New York. The building was cylindrical in shape, which was why it was often simply called Vought Tower.
The tower's exterior windows and lights formed an enormous '7' that reached skyward, proclaiming the Seven's importance within Vought. But the helicopter didn't head in that direction. Instead, it veered off elsewhere.
"Huh? We're not going straight there?"
Maeve still didn't reply. She simply handed her earpiece to the questioning Joey. He took it, and a middle-aged man's voice came through.
"Bringing a guest directly to the workplace isn't my idea of hospitality. I've reserved a room and a table at a more suitable location, awaiting your arrival."
In Maeve's view, these big shots were quite good at shifting risk. She'd been worried that bringing a potentially rampaging human bomb into Vought Tower—a building that cost nearly ten billion dollars to construct—might be too dangerous.
If someone got the urge to redecorate, even losses in the tens of millions would be understating it. But the meeting location hadn't been chosen in their own tower at all—it was—
Joey turned his head to look ahead of the helicopter. Before long, he spotted their destination. Seeing the entire building's gaudy gold color scheme and the familiar surname written in massive gilded letters at the top, Joey couldn't help but smile faintly for the first time in a long while.
Wasn't this the property of that American real estate tycoon he used to write about for KPI-filler back when he was a reporter in his previous life?
The building was quite old. The helicopter landed directly on the rooftop helipad. Before the rotors had even stopped spinning, a servant had already bent low and appeared at the cabin door, guiding Joey toward the meeting place.
As he rode the elevator, Joey found himself curious about who exactly he was about to meet. Judging from Maeve's subtle, cautious reactions every time she took a call, the other party was clearly someone with immense power.
"We've arrived."
The servant led him to a door, bowed slightly, then withdrew.
Joey pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Neither the opulent gold-laden décor, the glittering crystal chandelier, the female musician playing the piano off to the side, nor the long table in the center set with silverware, champagne, and fine food caught his attention.
In just a second, his gaze was completely seized by the uniquely charismatic figure seated across the table.
"This building has hosted many celebrities and political figures—sports legends, senators and speakers, e-commerce tycoons from across the ocean. Even Michael Jackson once stayed here."
Across the table sat a well-dressed African American man in a tailored suit. He had deep-set eyes and a high-bridged nose. With a slight nod, he gestured for a servant to pour him a glass of Macallan 26. He looked elegant and refined. Raising his glass toward Joey, his voice carried an air of mystery and calm.
"Most people go their entire lives without ever qualifying to enter this place. But you are different. In the near future, this building will be honored by your visit today, just as it once was by Michael Jackson. My name is Stan Edgar, CEO of Vought. Please—have a seat."
If this had been an ordinary sixteen-year-old boy, having a comparison to the King of Pop dropped on him like that would've left him dizzy and utterly bewitched by this old fox.
But Joey wasn't ordinary. Not because he was especially resistant to honeyed words—after all, in his last life he'd still been taken out by a shell—but because seeing Vought's CEO in person finally made him realize why that voice had sounded so familiar earlier.
Wasn't this the Chicken man?
Seeing two 'old acquaintances' in one day, Joey spoke without thinking, blurting out:
"So… you don't sell fried chicken anymore?"
Stan Edgar's already dark face darkened several more shades.
Only then did Joey realize his remark was, to put it mildly, extremely politically incorrect.
Fried chicken, due to historical reasons, had been strongly associated with Black communities, and had thus been singled out by the New York Times as a "low-class, utensil-free" food, unfairly bound to racial stereotypes by the NYT and social justice crusaders.
In both this life and the last, Joey was absolutely not a racial crusader. If anything, he'd seen plenty of white dudes stuffing themselves silly with fried chicken in his previous life—no fewer than Black folks.
Tying fried chicken to Black people was an insult to both sides. Fried chicken was good, and Black people weren't all bad.
Just as Joey's mind raced, trying to figure out how to explain himself, the female musician who had been playing the piano behind him suddenly seemed to remember something hilarious and burst out laughing, laughing so hard she nearly ran out of breath.
Joey could see Stan Edgar's expression across the table darken even further.
"Hahahahahahahaha!"
The gentle piano music came to an abrupt stop. The musician stood up from the piano, quickly walked over to Joey, leaned against the back of his chair, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. With an intimacy and indulgence that made Joey uncomfortable, she whispered in his ear:
"Nice joke, my dear child."