Starting from scratch, Batman crushed my dream of getting rich

Chapter 573 PTSD
Taking advantage of the attention drawn by the news of the execution of several remnants of Shining Glory in the street that morning, Vought officially announced that Soldier Boy would replace Deepsea, who had just left Vought, and rejoin the Vought Corporation's eight-person team. This news was published in newspapers and at press conferences and spread extremely quickly.

"Yes, I served on the battlefields of World War II for a long time—that's right, I ate a lot of spicy crisps."

"The Blood Debt Pays Off Squad? Sorry, I have no intention of rebuilding this squad. The eight-man group is already quite good. My comrades are all getting old, and everyone has their own careers. Besides, there's no Spicy anymore. At most, there are some superpowered individuals and villains with ulterior motives, like that superpowered individual who appeared this morning."

"Where have I been all these years? Well, all I can tell you right now is that I haven't been in the United States all these years. Instead, I was imprisoned by some kind of evil organization. I only recently fought my way back. As for more details, I'm not sure if I can say anything. I need to discuss it with Walter and the government."

"No, I didn't kill them all. I'm sure that evil organization still has many people left, scattered in many places, and perhaps quite a few even within the United States."

On the screen, the soldier boy is talking confidently to reporters at a press conference, a stark contrast to his superhuman, incoherent state earlier that morning.

"This is probably Barrett's masterpiece, writing a speech for people to memorize." Maeve, staring at the TV, couldn't help but give the national idol on screen a mocking smile: "That idiot A-Train is just like that. He's been on live TV twice without a prepared speech, and he talks like he's thinking with his toes."

“Or maybe he finally recovered on his own?” Starlight stood next to Maeve, feeling slightly dissatisfied with Maeve’s behavior of making fun of this heroic veteran. After all, she had always admired and liked real heroes. The other members of the Vought Seven were indeed rotten, but she had heard about this soldier boy since she was a child.

In other words, it's almost equivalent to Captain America's status in the hearts of Americans.

So she couldn't help but retort, "After all, the soldier boy served as the captain of the Blood Debt Repayment Squad for so many years during World War II, and he also participated in the filming of many war propaganda recruitment films and public service announcements. He must know how to give speeches, right?"

"Bullshit, he has no speaking skills whatsoever."

The soldier boy wasn't in the Vought Building, nor did he have super hearing. Maeve was surrounded by starlight, so she spoke much more directly: "Have you seen the original versions of those recruitment films and public service announcements he made? I have. They're not like the ones these actors are making now, nor are they the versions Vought cut to fool people."

"In the original WWII film, the soldier boy was a foul-mouthed bastard who kept telling vulgar jokes. If he had any speaking skills, he wouldn't have said something like, 'Those Americans who hate me should all go to the concentration camp.'"

The starlight was immediately awestruck.

"He really said that?!"

"Don't ask. This happened when I was very, very young. I only saw it once, and then the TV station never showed that video again. After that, people gradually stopped seeing even the slightly normal original version and could only see the edited version."

Maeve waved her hand: "Let's not talk about anything else, just think about that old man Edgar—what kind of good person could make a deal with him? If Soldier Boy really was a hero, he wouldn't be joining the group of eight now, but should be kicking Walter again—because we all know that Walter has made the word 'hero' utterly repulsive."

"There's only one thing we should be doing right now—Soldier Boy is definitely no weaker than Homelander, maybe even stronger, and a bigger bastard than him."

Maeve earnestly warned, "There's only one thing we need to be careful about: not dying at his hands."

On the other side, Kimiko and her younger brother Kenji also finished communicating with the butcher and others, explaining their experiences and clarifying the ins and outs of the matter.

"That's the situation."

Ma Zhaodi asked, "Any other questions?" "That guy can clearly speak English, so why is he still speaking Japanese?" Franky was the first to voice his opinion: "Can't we all just speak English?"

Kimiko nodded at this point; she had no objection.

Kenji remained silent. He didn't trust the Black Robe Squad. In fact, the only people he trusted most were his sister and Shining Radiance.

He had been in that organization for so long that he was almost completely brainwashed, to the point that he gradually came to believe that his glamorous style of doing things was justifiable.

Rather, he hadn't immediately run away with his sister because his superpowers had completely disappeared, and the Black Robe Squad also had to deal with Vought. Both sides had a common enemy—Homelander had massacred Shining Glory's headquarters. His first priority in mind was Vought, and the second priority was the other Americans.

"I have a question too," the butcher suddenly asked. "Your name is Kenji, right? You fought with the soldier boy this morning. Do you know why he suddenly went insane and went berserk?"

Kenji then thought about it seriously: "I'm not sure if he seemed to be quite clear-headed when he first attacked, and then when he almost killed me, he suddenly turned the laser behind him—and a corner of the building was sheared off, and he started to go crazy."

What was there at the time?

"There's nothing there. As far as I remember, everyone else ran away because of the fight in the street. There's no one in that direction."

Before Kenji could finish speaking, Ma Zhaodi had already swiftly located a car surveillance camera across the street from the building and displayed the image.

"A radio?"

The mother walked forward with a frown, scrolling through the image on the computer screen where the monitoring had paused. Under the white light on the soldier boy's chest, a small radio hung there.

What did he hear?

"Just look at the radio frequency on the screen. Wait a minute, the image isn't clear enough; we need to do some image processing—"

Cybertronian Technology secretly channeled its power, frantically searching through all vehicle cameras and street cameras on the road at that time, piecing together their images to find the answer—and two seconds later, it obtained a radio frequency.

"emm is a Russian music radio station, and at the time it was playing a Russian military song."

Ma Zhaodi immediately thought of Bucky, Captain America's good friend, and suspected that the two characters' personalities had been sewn together into the soldier boy's body.

“It might be PTSD.” He rubbed his chin. “Excuse me for being blunt, but everyone here seems to have some kind of psychological problem.”

(End of this chapter)