Louise happily put her arm around Jimmy's shoulder, "I think you, Jimmy, are unexpectedly compatible with me as a partner. How about we form a fixed team in the future? I'll be the reporter, and you'll be in charge of photography. Maybe the next Pulitzer Prize will belong to both of us!"
"Cooperation?"
Jimmy chuckled nervously at Louise, saying, "Compared to that, I'd still prefer to be with Chloe!"
Before he could finish his sentence, Louise slapped him on the back of his head.
Inside Lex's building, a dozen meters behind Louise and Jimmy.
Lex Luthor and his good friend Grayson watched everything happening outside through surveillance.
"He..."
While bandaging his injured wrist, Lex said with a complex expression, "He has established his authority!"
"Who? Homelander?"
Grayson asked him.
"Yes, the whole world will praise his name!"
Lex looked at the display showing the crowd coming down from the plane, cheering "Homelander," and slowly said, "People like to be ruled by authority!"
"Especially when this authority is a god who is almost omniscient, then people will become accustomed to power and 'greatness'! This is the result of their free choice; they desire safety and peace more than the so-called vague 'freedom and democracy'."
Lex sighed.
He increasingly felt that going against his good friend was becoming more and more difficult.
What would he face by choosing such a path?
"Are you saying he saved countless lives?"
Grayson had been in the underground laboratory all this time and didn't have a very clear understanding of what was happening outside.
He asked Lex, "If he eliminates those monsters in that way, I think it will affect many innocent people. This kind of super-high-speed impact will cause incurable damage to humans! That is to say, he also killed many people!"
"Maybe!"
Lex's eyes became even more obscure, "But in the eyes of almost everyone in the world, he is a hero!"
"That's truly complicated!"
Grayson shook his head and said.
On the other side.
In the cities outside Metropolis.
Flash Barry Allen, who was currently investigating various cities across America, had transformed himself into Flash, running faster and faster, even feeling as if he had become a beam of light. At this moment, he saw a black lightning bolt fly over his head.
A look of astonishment appeared in his eyes, because he had already recognized him.
That black lightning bolt was Eric!
In the bustling city of New York, Barry had not yet stopped to admire the city's scenery when he saw the Parademons appearing in the sky turn into a burst of fireworks.
Amidst the brilliant explosion, the shattered remains of their bodies, blown apart by the explosion, drifted down in the wind like snowflakes.
Barry stopped, watching Eric destroy the alien monsters with lightning-fast speed, his mouth slightly open, his face full of disbelief.
"That's truly..."
He tilted his head, trying to find a suitable word to describe his current feelings, but in the end, he frustratingly uttered a word he found very unsatisfactory.
"Incredible!"
After everyone had left the battlefield, Courtney still stood dazed in the center of the battlefield, unwilling to leave.
"We need to go, Courtney."
Wildcat came over and said to Courtney.
Although she was a bit frustrated that she hadn't been of much help in this great battle, only killing two or three monsters.
But she quickly adjusted her mindset and came over to call Courtney to leave together.
"My Star Scepter..."
Courtney looked down at her hands and said with some distress, "It was still taken from my hands!"
"At least it still remembers you and will come to protect you when you are in danger, which means your bond hasn't been severed, right?"
Jenna didn't know when she had walked over and comforted Courtney.
"But I'm still a bit unwilling!"
Courtney was not only distressed by the "lost and then regained, then lost again" of the Star Scepter, but also because Eric had not looked her way the entire time.
Although she outwardly claimed to treat him as an enemy, she didn't entirely harbor resentment towards this enemy.
After all, no matter what, Eric had saved her and her family.
In the young girl's heart, she still held complex feelings for her "enemy."
"Thank you, Jenna!"
Courtney adjusted her mood and smiled at Jenna.
"Hey! Your most beloved superhero has arrived!"
Courtney was about to say something else when she suddenly heard a voice behind her.
She turned around and saw a strange figure, crimson and flashing with lightning on its surface, suddenly appear behind her.
The being, whose body surface flashed with pink lightning, like an "Electric Man" from an animation, asked the group:
"Am I late?!"
His expression was a bit comical, like a clown who often performs on a circus stage, showing his usual funny and cute smile.
"Sorry, this isn't my fault. I could have been faster, but my master told me he had to come up with a really cool entrance. You know, I had to be a model and show him all those great entrance ideas I came up with! That took a lot of my time."
As he spoke, he struck a pose for Courtney and the others, with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out.
"Uh... May I ask who your master is?"
Courtney reacted, asking the other party in confusion.
"Cough cough... It's me!"
Her younger brother Mike's voice came from behind the "pink Electric Man."
Mike was a bit afraid to look his sister in the eye and weakly introduced, "This is my friend, his name is Thunderbolt Sprite!"
"Thunderbolt Sprite?!"
Courtney thought of the pen in her room that she had secretly taken from the Justice Society earlier.
That was the tool for summoning the Thunderbolt Sprite.
And the Thunderbolt Sprite, according to her father Pat, was a very dangerous being.
He could grant any wish, but he would do so in the worst possible way.
"Why do you always take my things without permission?"
Courtney asked him angrily.
"I wanted to help you too! Not as a reserve member, but with you."
Mike mumbled.
"No! You just want to show off. You never consider your own safety, and you never consider how Pat, Barbara, and I feel. Mike, I am very, very disappointed in you!"
Courtney shook her head, "You've never learned to grow up, even after all this! I'm going to tell Pat!"
At this moment, Courtney no longer wanted to talk to her brother and simply turned and left.
Jenna and Midnight Doctor and others wanted to comfort Mike, but they were quickly pulled away by Courtney.
Leaving Mike standing there, at a loss.
Four hours later.
What had happened in Metropolis was already known to the entire American populace.
As Lex had predicted, countless people were celebrating the defeat of the alien plan, and humanity was saved again!
And Eric's name was praised by countless people.
He had become the savior once more!
In the Metropolis government building, Eric sat in the top-floor room.
Beside him was his personal secretary—Hanna.
The mixed-race girl who had been a member of his fan club since college.
"Is there anything else?"
Seeing that she had no intention of leaving, Eric frowned and asked her.
He had no other intentions towards the girl in front of him.
But it seemed she didn't think so.
"A gift?"
Eric looked at the small cake in front of him and asked with some surprise, "Did you prepare this for me?"
"Yes."
Hanna said softly, "The day after tomorrow is your birthday, and I was afraid I wouldn't make it, so I prepared it in advance."
Her face was a little red.
But she quickly composed herself and changed the subject, "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. This is the information you asked me to compile, the damage report regarding this alien invasion!"
Hanna said as she handed over the report.
Looking at Hanna in her professional attire and black stockings, Eric took the report, then looked at the exquisite small cake.
"Thank you!"
He thanked her, paused for a moment, and then said to Hanna:
"Do you know my abilities, Hanna?"
Without waiting for Hanna to reply, Eric said himself, "X-ray vision, microscopic vision, dynamic vision..."
"All of these combined make up my Super Vision, which is what you perceive as my superpower."
"However, for me, this is merely the vision I inherently possess."
"It's like how a normal person's eyes instinctively use their vision."
"Just like ordinary people cannot keep their eyes closed, if I wanted to block my Super Vision, it would feel as awkward as an ordinary person walking with their eyes closed."
"So..."
Eric's gaze fixed on Hanna as he slowly said:
"For me, the human skin that I normally see appears like a landscape of deeply furrowed mounds and cracked ground. The countless tiny skin lines resemble interconnected, crisscrossing abyssal fissures."
Eric spoke words that left Hanna stunned.
"The ever-present pores on the body's surface are like indescribable holes, densely covering the entire skin. When you gaze at pulsating, bloody organs, listen to the flow of human blood, and experience with your senses the strange odors from sweat and food residue in the mouth... then can you still calmly regard them as your own kind?"
"I..."
For a moment, Hanna opened her mouth to speak, but was so baffled by Eric that she didn't know what to say.
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