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….
If he didn't have his own physical peculiarities, he wouldn't have had to go to such lengths, but the risk of being discovered when meeting America's favorite was too high.
Unfortunately, after a series of tests with knives, Kevin had established that his covering allowed ordinary clothes to disintegrate into particles of light, while the blade would hit his impenetrable skin, which was perfectly visible through the holes in his clothes before being restored by photons.
Because of this, the whole point of hiding his identity was lost, as the first few shots to his stomach would immediately reveal his distinctive feature as the king of the seven seas.
Because of all these problems, Moskowitz had to contact a guy who was quite well-known in the circles of the top-league supes.
He was a pusher of all sorts of things for supes.
The guy could get almost anything, although his main income came from illegal drugs, which were in very high demand among superheroes.
Almost eighty percent of heroes had tried or were on something because of their invulnerability. After all, it's quite difficult to be afraid of drugs when your body can nullify almost all the disadvantages of this "entertainment."
Kevin was on good terms with Damian, so he knew about a few of his ventures in the drug business, which had been covered up by Vought and because of which he was not on good terms with the organization's top brass.
Therefore, if he ordered a special superhero costume through him, he was unlikely to betray a friend without a very strong incentive.
His conflict with Vought was extremely simple. Damian had decided to start pushing "super-dope" to supes—not the most creative name, but it got the point across.
He spent almost half his fortune developing a drug so potent that a few grams would kill a normal person instantly. And after three years of testing and failed samples, he created his product.
To celebrate, he threw a huge party and invited a lot of heroes to try out the test batch.
Unfortunately, the guy forgot about the egos of some supes, and by morning, he had a couple of corpses from overdoses.
The dumb junkies were used to being able to snort cocaine by the spoonful without any consequences, so they were skeptical about the claims of the new product's potency.
As everyone found out the next morning, that was a mistake.
And in principle, it could have been hushed up; Damian had connections, after all. But a month later, another problem arose.
The product, unlike its more mundane counterparts, was also slowly killing superheroes.
No, if they had quit, everything would have returned to normal in six months to a year, and if they hadn't taken it more than a couple of times a week, there would have been no problems.
But how do you explain to those who have almost never had any prohibitions and who spat on the law that entertainment now had new rules that needed to be followed? Damian tried, but it had no effect.
The product existed for a year, during which people began to notice that the heroes' appearances were taking on some unhealthy external signs.
More experienced individuals familiar with the side effects raised a fuss about the drug addiction of the current superstars—the very people responsible for saving lives.
At the moment when the problems could have reached a critical point, people from Vought came to Damian.
They explained the situation to him, paid him a third of what he'd spent, and took all the developments and research results.
Then they "politely" asked him to stop developing such harmful drugs. A week later, all the hype died down as if it had never happened, and everyone seemed to forget about the super-dope.
As Damian told Moskowitz, he wasn't eliminated solely because of his perfect distribution network for weaker drugs, which hadn't had any failures in many years and allowed supes to blow off steam without the risk of being exposed by journalists.
If his entire business hadn't been based on connections and details known only to him, he would have long since disappeared without a trace, just like his product.
He also admitted that for a week after, he had noticed Translucent following him.
As he put it: "That bastard may be invisible to the eye, but his whole superpower sucks compared to a hundred-dollar thermal imager from Amazon. Let me tell you, Kevin, it was the shittiest week of my life. Literally. Have you ever tried to have breakfast or just fucking fall asleep knowing that a half-naked guy might be standing somewhere in the room watching you?"
Smiling at the funny memory, Moskowitz received a notification from the detective he'd hired to watch Annie January's house.
It was actually quite amusing to learn how often detectives were paid by obsessed fans to spy on their favorite celebrities.
Normally, they would refuse such cases; before the spread of supes, such orders usually ended in assaults or other unhealthy events that no private investigator wanted to get involved in.
But after the superhero boom, such orders no longer caused detectives any concern.
When the target of surveillance can throw a car at an attacker or burn them alive, you're more worried about the client than the victim.
Sometimes, of course, they refused, when the hero's superpower was so minor that he was almost indistinguishable from a normal person, like Mesmer, who was about Kevin's age and, apart from mental powers and slightly faster regeneration, was no different from an average man.
But for the most part, such orders were profitable and almost risk-free, so in 90% of cases, detectives said yes.
They had tried to follow The Seven, too, but apart from Translucent and A-Train, none of them saw their families or appeared on the street in civilian clothes. And both of them were extremely difficult targets for surveillance.
Dressed in civilian clothes, Kevin hid the tracker on one of the shelves in the apartment, then went outside and headed towards the park to discreetly pick up speed and get to Starlight's hometown.
….
If you want to read ahead by 10+ chapters from here you can check out my patreon.
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