And so the year passed exactly as Ethan had predicted.
Nothing catastrophic happened, classes ran their course, and Enid made peace with knowing things about Ethan she had quietly decided not to think about.
She saw the three-timing situation clearly by the end of the year and chose to ignore it, which felt reasonable given everything else she had witnessed.
Pugsley contributed significantly to Principal Weems's stress levels.
Nobody knew the full list of incidents, but by the third month she had been heard cursing the entire Addams family by name from behind her office door.
By the fifth month it was no longer behind the door.
Then summer arrived.
Wednesday, Enid, and Selene left for vacation together. When Ethan attempted to involve himself in the planning the response was immediate and unanimous — girls only, no exceptions.
Now he sat alone in his mansion, sunk into the sofa with a glass of something deep red in hand. Somewhere between wine and something that wasn't wine at all.
He took a slow sip and stared at nothing in particular.
"I'm fucking bored."
Being a god was a pain in the ass. At full power he could sense everything happening within three hundred miles, which sounded impressive until you actually experienced it.
Constant omniscience had a way of making everything feel like a spreadsheet.
That was why he usually kept it switched off. Knowing everything got boring surprisingly fast.
He stared at the ceiling.
Then his eyes landed on something in the system.
[Dimensional Travel]
Ethan blinked. Then sat upright.
He had completely forgotten about that. If this world was boring he could just go somewhere else — somewhere with actual excitement, something worth his time.
"Sometimes I'm an idiot," he muttered.
He selected the option. A blue portal opened in front of him. He stood, stretched, and for the first time all day felt genuinely interested in something. Maybe a fantasy world.
Magic, dragons, ancient gods trying to destroy reality. Anything was better than his living room ceiling.
He stepped through.
***
He appeared in a park.
Trees. Benches. Pigeons. A man jogging past while visibly hating every second of it.
His excitement evaporated.
"...for fuck's sake."
Modern world. Again. He had wanted swords and ancient kingdoms and he had gotten municipal infrastructure and mild weather.
Then he noticed someone walking nearby and frowned.
The man looked familiar. Very familiar. A quick read of his blood answered the question immediately.
Ethan smiled slowly.
Hughie Campbell.
His disappointment vanished. This wasn't a normal modern world at all — this was The Boys.
A world full of corporate-sponsored superhumans, institutional cover-ups, and one flying man-child with deeply unresolved psychological issues. Vought International. The Seven. The whole catastrophe.
He followed Hughie's eyeline and spotted a blonde woman sitting on a bench.
Annie January. Starlight.
Ethan looked at Annie. Then at Hughie heading straight toward her.
He knew exactly how this story went — Hughie would stumble into her life, she'd fall for it, and spend the next year getting emotionally destroyed between his guilt spiral and Homelander's deteriorating mental state.
The man had nearly gotten her killed and somehow the show had framed that as romance.
He genuinely disliked Hughie Campbell.
He snapped his fingers. Hughie immediately became very interested in a completely different direction and walked away with the mild confusion of someone who couldn't quite remember what they'd been doing.
Ethan watched him go and nodded. "Much better."
"Time for my entry."
He fixed his hair, adjusted his clothes, and headed toward the bench.
His scumbag instincts had fully awakened.
"Fuck," Annie muttered, staring at a tree across the park.
Yesterday was supposed to be the beginning of her dream. Instead it had felt like watching that dream dismantle itself in real time from the moment she walked through the door.
The Seven. The greatest superheroes in the world. The people she had spent her entire life admiring.
Now she knew the truth. Translucent spent his time sneaking into women's bathrooms because apparently invisibility had turned him into a full-time creep, and The Deep had made his intentions clear within the first hour of meeting her.
But she didn't do anything.
Fuck no.
There was no way she was staying for that pervert's fantasy. The moment he started talking she got the hell out of there.
And there was no way she was reporting that to anyone either.
Not when she had just arrived.
Not when she already knew exactly how that conversation would go.
"What a mess," she muttered.
"Well, you seem like you're having a bad day."
Annie turned her head and immediately stopped.
White hair. Red eyes. The guy looked like someone had taken a vampire from a television series and dropped him into a public park without any context or explanation.
She hadn't heard him sit down. She hadn't heard anything.
"Hello?" Ethan snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Still with us?"
"Sorry." Annie rubbed her forehead. "Yeah. Bad day. Bad enough that I'm seriously considering quitting my dream job."
"That bad?"
That was all it took. The frustration she'd been holding since yesterday spilled out immediately.
"Can you imagine spending your entire life chasing something only to realize it isn't what you thought it was? You build this image in your head for years, and then when you finally get there, most of it turns out to be fake."
Ethan nodded. "Well, most fans figure that out eventually."
Annie blinked. "What?"
"Never meet your heroes." He leaned back against the bench. "The real person is almost never as impressive as the version your brain has been editing for years. Your imagination does a lot of flattering work."
A small smile appeared on Annie's face despite everything. "So your advice is to never meet your idols because they'll disappoint you."
"Exactly." He pointed at her. "See? You get it."
After the last twenty-four hours, it was becoming genuinely difficult to argue with that.
***
A/N: And on Patreon, The Boys arc started.
The Patreon version is already updated with 46 advanced chapters. If you'd like to read ahead of the public release schedule, you can join here:
👉 patreon.com/JamesA211