CHAPTER 42: THE MOCKING
The video dropped at 8 PM on a Tuesday.
Stormfront, casual and confident in what looked like her personal quarters, speaking directly into the camera with the practiced ease of someone who'd mastered the selfie-video aesthetic.
"So I keep hearing about this 'Mythmaker' guy," she said, air-quoting the name with a smirk. "The one who thinks a cool jacket and some viral footage makes him a hero." She laughed—the kind of laugh designed to sound spontaneous, though I could recognize the rehearsal behind it. "Honey, I've seen tougher people at CrossFit. You want to play in the big leagues? Maybe try developing actual powers first."
The video was ninety seconds long. It never mentioned me by name directly. It didn't need to.
[STORMFRONT VIDEO: 2.4M VIEWS (4 HOURS)]
[ENGAGEMENT: 340K LIKES | 89K COMMENTS | 124K SHARES]
[SENTIMENT: 62% POSITIVE FOR STORMFRONT | 23% DEFENSIVE OF MYTHMAKER | 15% NEUTRAL]
I watched it three times from my apartment couch, coffee cold in my hand again, and felt my jaw ache from clenching.
The contempt in her voice wasn't just performance. It was real—the casual dismissal of someone she considered beneath notice, the amusement of a predator toying with prey. This was the same woman who'd murdered entire communities, who'd stood with the architects of genocide, who'd treated human beings as disposable resources for decades.
And she thought I was a joke.
"Good," I thought, forcing my jaw to unclench. "Let her think that."
The comments section was a battlefield.
Stormfront's fans flooded the replies with mockery—memes of my jacket, jokes about "basement vigilantes," the full arsenal of online derision. But mixed in among them were defenders. The Mythmaker community pushing back. People citing the Groundhawk footage, the charity event, the accumulating evidence that I was more than the media phenomenon skeptics dismissed.
[REPUTATION DASHBOARD: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[ADMIRATION-BELIEF: +40% SURGE]
[FEAR-BELIEF: NEW CATEGORY — 1.2%]
[ANTI-VOUGHT HERO SEED: 4,300 → 5,800 BELIEVERS (24-HOUR INCREASE)]
I stared at the numbers, then laughed out loud for the first time in days.
The Streisand Effect. Stormfront's mockery had done exactly what the Midtown critics' dismissal had done—crystallized a narrative that served me better than silence ever could. Powerful establishment figure attacks grassroots hero. It was the oldest story in the book, and it worked because it was true.
The fear-belief was new. People afraid of what Stormfront might do to me. Fear converted at 1.3x, which meant even her threats were feeding my power.
"She handed me the narrative I couldn't build alone," I realized. "David versus Goliath. And everyone loves rooting for David."
My instinct said respond.
Every fiber of social media conditioning screamed at me to clap back—write something clever, film a video, join the discourse. The engagement algorithms rewarded conflict. The audience expected a response. Silence could be read as weakness.
But I'd learned to check my instincts against the system's analysis.
[REPUTATION INDEXING: RESPONSE STRATEGY ASSESSMENT]
[SCENARIO A: DIRECT REBUTTAL]
[PROJECTED OUTCOME: +15% ENGAGEMENT, -8% ADMIRATION (APPEARING DEFENSIVE)]
[SCENARIO B: HUMOROUS DEFLECTION]
[PROJECTED OUTCOME: +22% ENGAGEMENT, NEUTRAL ADMIRATION (PERCEIVED AS DUCKING)]
[SCENARIO C: STRATEGIC SILENCE]
[PROJECTED OUTCOME: -5% ENGAGEMENT, +18% CURIOSITY, +12% ADMIRATION (STRENGTH READING)]
The numbers confirmed what the back of my mind already knew. Every response I didn't make generated more speculation, more curiosity, more belief. Silence after being attacked read as confidence. Let the audience fill in the narrative they wanted to see.
I put down my phone and opened my laptop.
The next morning, I filmed a video.
Not a response to Stormfront. Not a mention of her at all. Just me, in my signature jacket, helping rebuild a storefront in Queens that had been damaged in a V-incident three months ago. No script. No production value. Just thirty minutes of actual work—carrying debris, holding boards while volunteers hammered, sharing water bottles during breaks.
The contrast was devastating.
Stormfront's video: polished, snarky, punching down at an easier target from the comfort of a corporate tower. My video: unglamorous, genuine, showing up to do the work that didn't generate headlines.
[VIDEO UPLOADED: "QUEENS REBUILD — DAY 1"]
[VIEWS: 47K (3 HOURS)]
[ENGAGEMENT: 12K LIKES | 2.1K COMMENTS | 8K SHARES]
[SENTIMENT: 89% POSITIVE | 4% NEGATIVE | 7% NEUTRAL]
The numbers were smaller than Stormfront's video by an order of magnitude. But the sentiment split was telling. My audience was consolidated, devoted, growing in intensity even as it lost ground in raw size. Quality over quantity. Depth over breadth.
[BP GENERATION: 14/HR → 22/HR]
[LS: 1,030 → 1,120]
The generation rate recovered—and then some. Stormfront's attack had accelerated my growth instead of suppressing it. The same dynamic that had fed the original Midtown miracle was operating again: opposition as fuel, conflict as catalyst.
"She's helping me," I thought. "And she doesn't even know it."
The strategic notebook came out that evening.
I'd been adding to it since the first week—timelines, character notes, system observations, everything I knew from the show that might become relevant. Now I flipped to the Stormfront section and updated it with new data.
STORMFRONT — OPERATIONAL PROFILE
Powers: Lightning manipulation (Rank 4+), enhanced durability, flight. Possibly additional abilities not yet revealed.
History: Liberty (1940s Supe). Frederick Vought's wife/subject. Nazi ideology confirmed. Kenji Miyashiro (Kimiko's brother) killed by her in canon timeline.
Current Strategy: Media dominance, "authentic outsider" branding, building grassroots support among right-wing/populist audiences.
Weakness: Historical identity. Evidence of Nazi connections would destroy her carefully constructed persona.
Delivery Mechanism: Nadia Kazan. Needs hard evidence, not rumor.
Timeline: Unknown. Canon events may be disrupted by butterfly effects.
The challenge was sourcing. I knew Stormfront was Liberty—I'd watched the episode where Starlight found the photograph in the Sage Grove facility. But that evidence didn't exist yet in this timeline, or existed in places I couldn't plausibly access. I couldn't give Nadia information I had no reason to possess.
"Hughie's digital forensics," I realized. "If he finds the gap in her history—the decades of missing records—that's a thread Nadia could pull."
The call from Hughie came at 11 PM.
"I hit a wall," he said, his voice tight with frustration. "Her online footprint before three months ago doesn't exist. Not suppressed, not hidden—doesn't exist. No social media. No news mentions. No public records. It's like she materialized out of thin air."
"That's impossible for a Supe," I said carefully. "Vought tracks everyone with the V-gene. They have records going back decades."
"I know. That's what's weird. Her Vought file exists—it's just classified above my access level. But everything public is blank." He paused. "It's almost like someone scrubbed her entire existence before the launch."
"Or like she didn't exist under this name," I thought. "Because she was someone else for seventy years."
"Keep digging," I said. "There's something there. People don't erase their own history unless they have something to hide."
"Yeah." Another pause. "Harley? Be careful with her. She's not like Groundhawk. Groundhawk was unstable but predictable. Stormfront... there's something under the surface. Something that doesn't match the persona."
"You have no idea," I thought.
"I'll be careful," I said. "Let me know what you find."
I hung up and stared at the ceiling.
The investigation was moving in the right direction. Hughie had found the gap—the missing history that would eventually lead to the truth. But "eventually" wasn't fast enough. Stormfront was building power every day, consolidating her position, moving toward the endgame that would radicalize Homelander and escalate everything toward catastrophe.
I needed to accelerate the timeline.
"The nursing home," I remembered. "Stormfront has a daughter. Still alive. Very old. If I could find her—if I could prove the connection—"
But that was dangerous. The nursing home was in the show's later episodes. I didn't know the exact location, the daughter's name, or whether that evidence even existed yet in this divergent timeline.
And if Stormfront found out I was investigating her personal history, she wouldn't mock me on social media.
She'd kill me.
[BP: 9,247 | LS: 1,120]
[GENERATION: 22/HR (ELEVATED)]
The numbers were climbing. The strategy was working. But the clock was ticking on a threat I couldn't neutralize with belief alone.
Somewhere in New York, a Nazi was smiling for cameras and planning something I couldn't see.
Somewhere in a safehouse, The Boys were gathering intelligence they didn't know how to interpret.
And somewhere in Queens, a transmigrator was staring at his ceiling, wondering if the knowledge in his head would be enough to change the story—or if it would just get him killed faster.
"One step at a time," I told myself. "Build the case. Find the evidence. Let the truth do the work."
The alternative was lightning through the chest.
I chose to keep planning.
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