"Bradley isn't working for Shaw. He belongs to a secret military task force," Charles explained quietly. His tone was calm, but the words carried enough weight to make the room fall completely silent.
"Yes, and that task force specifically targets mutants," he continued. "More importantly… they've been doing things for a long time that are very likely illegal."
Under the attention of everyone present, Charles spoke slowly and carefully. What he described wasn't speculation but memories he had pulled directly from Bradley's mind. Each detail came from the man's own thoughts, unfiltered and impossible to deny.
The mood inside the room shifted almost instantly. The casual tension from earlier vanished, replaced by a heavy pressure that settled over everyone like a storm cloud. Once the military became involved, the situation was no longer just complicated—it was dangerous.
"In other words," Eric said after a moment, raising one eyebrow, "Rorschach and I killed two mutant agents working for the military and captured another one alive."
His voice carried a note of dry disbelief, as if even he couldn't quite believe how quickly things had escalated.
"Eric, you killed someone?" Agent Moira asked in confusion, staring at him with wide eyes. "What exactly happened? I thought you were just going to talk with them like you've been doing before."
From her perspective, this had been a routine recruitment attempt. A few conversations, maybe some persuasion—nothing more serious than that. The idea that it had already ended with deaths was far beyond what she expected.
"Agent Moira, we were defending ourselves," Rorschach replied calmly. His expression remained serious as he spoke. "They attacked us first and clearly intended to kill us. We didn't have a choice."
He then briefly explained the events that had unfolded earlier—the ambush, the violence, and the chaotic fight that followed. The explanation was straightforward, leaving out unnecessary embellishments but making the situation perfectly clear.
When Moira finished listening, her brows knotted together so tightly they looked almost painful. The expression reminded Rorschach of a wilted chrysanthemum clinging to the last days of autumn.
It was obvious what had happened. The two agents hadn't come to negotiate anything—they had come to silence Bradley for defecting. Eric and Rorschach had simply crossed paths with them at the worst possible moment and been dragged into the mess.
Because the matter involved the military, Moira didn't dare treat it lightly. She immediately ordered several agents to bring Bradley in for questioning.
Unfortunately, the interrogation produced nothing.
Bradley kept his mouth firmly shut. No matter how Moira's team questioned him, pressured him, or tried to corner him, the man refused to say a single word.
In the end, they had to rely on Charles again.
Using his telepathic ability, Charles carefully searched through Bradley's memories and pulled out additional information hidden deep inside his mind. What he found only made the situation worse.
"William Stryker," Charles said finally, his face darkening further. "Moira, the person who created that mutant task force is William Stryker."
"William Stryker?" Moira repeated, her eyes widening as realization hit. "You mean Commander Stryker's son?"
The name alone was enough to make the entire room uneasy.
As a senior CIA agent, Moira was extremely familiar with the upper structure of the agency. The deputy director of the CIA's operations division was Jason Stryker—a powerful and influential figure within the organization.
And Jason Stryker's son was also named William Stryker.
This revelation pushed the entire situation into far more dangerous territory.
Everyone suddenly realized that what they were dealing with might not simply be a rogue group of soldiers. If the Stryker family was involved, then the political and institutional forces behind the matter could be far more complicated than anyone had imagined.
In the conference room at CIA headquarters, Moira and Charles had previously tried to report the existence of mutants to a group of high-ranking agency executives. Instead of taking them seriously, the executives had ridiculed them mercilessly.
Several of them had even suggested transferring Moira to clerical work for wasting their time.
The situation only changed when Raven demonstrated her shapeshifting abilities directly in front of them. Watching a young woman transform seamlessly into someone else was enough to silence the room and finally convince them that mutants truly existed.
Among the officials who mocked Moira during that meeting was Jason Stryker himself.
Now the same people had just learned that Jason Stryker's own son had secretly assembled a mutant-hunting task force operating in the shadows.
The question that followed was deeply unsettling.
Had Jason Stryker really been ignorant of his son's activities, or had he simply pretended not to know?
No one in the room dared to say the question out loud, but the thought hung heavily in the air. If Jason Stryker was involved—or even indirectly supporting the operation—the consequences would be enormous.
The deeper they looked into the situation, the darker it seemed to become.
It felt as if they were standing beside a massive whirlpool, and one wrong move could pull them straight into its depths.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
The room fell into a thick silence, and the oppressive atmosphere only grew heavier.
"Rorschach, you should go back for now," Charles said finally, breaking the quiet. His voice was gentle but firm. "And remember—what happened today must not be disclosed to anyone."
"I understand, Charles," Rorschach replied with a nod.
He greeted Moira and Eric briefly before standing up and heading toward the door.
"Rorschach."
Just as he reached it, Charles called out again.
Rorschach paused and turned back. Charles looked at him with a steady expression and spoke in a serious tone.
"Don't worry. We'll handle this."
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a strange sense of reassurance that made people believe him almost instinctively. That quiet confidence was part of what made Charles so persuasive.
"Of course," Rorschach said with a small smile. "I trust you."
He opened the door and stepped out of the office.
While everyone else inside the room remained deeply troubled by the disaster they had uncovered, Rorschach himself didn't feel particularly worried.
After all, if the sky ever fell, there would always be someone taller to hold it up.
What was there to fear when an organization as powerful as the CIA stood behind them? On top of that, Charles and Eric—two incredibly capable mutants—were involved as well.
With people like that dealing with the problem, it hardly felt like something he needed to lose sleep over.
Rorschach returned to his dormitory in an unusually good mood.
After closing the door behind him, he immediately summoned his personal attribute panel with eager anticipation.
[Host: Rorschach]
[Age: 16]
[Speed: 53 m/s]
[Strength: 7.2 tons]
[Physique: 124 (Average healthy adult male: 10)]
[Mental Strength: 82 (Average healthy adult male: 10)]
[Current Template: Homelander (Unlocked Progress 1%)]
[Abilities: X-ray Vision (Elementary), Super Hearing (Elementary), Flight (Unlocked), Heat Vision (Unlocked)]
[Origin Points: 100]
The numbers displayed across the panel had already updated compared to before.
Most importantly, the Origin Points counter was no longer sitting at zero.
A notification appeared immediately afterward.
[Host currently possesses surplus Origin Points. Would you like to use them immediately for strengthening?]
That question hardly required serious thought.
Why would anyone save upgrade points instead of using them immediately? It wasn't like they were meant to be stored away for some holiday celebration.
Still, Rorschach didn't act recklessly.
Origin Points could be used in several different ways, so he spent a moment carefully examining the available options.
After studying the system interface, he quickly realized that using points to increase individual attributes wasn't very efficient. The cost-to-benefit ratio simply couldn't compete with the bonuses gained from unlocking more of the template itself.
Once he reached that conclusion, there was no reason to hesitate.
Rorschach immediately invested all one hundred Origin Points into increasing the template's unlocking progress.
[Congratulations. Homelander Template Unlock Progress increased by 2%.]
"Wait… only two percent?" Rorschach muttered, staring at the message in disbelief.
He had spent so much effort earning those points, yet the result barely moved the progress bar.
For a moment, he couldn't help feeling slightly speechless.
Still, when he looked again at the updated attribute panel, his disappointment quickly faded.
[Host: Rorschach]
[Age: 16]
[Speed: 61 m/s]
[Strength: 15.2 tons]
[Physique: 144 (Average healthy adult male: 10)]
[Mental Strength: 102 (Average healthy adult male: 10)]
[Current Template: Homelander (Unlocked Progress 2%)]
[Abilities: X-ray Vision (Elementary), Super Hearing (Elementary), Flight (Unlocked), Heat Vision (Unlocked)]
[Origin Points: 0]
Every physical statistic had jumped dramatically.
His speed alone had climbed to sixty-one meters per second, while his strength had more than doubled to over fifteen tons.
Numbers on a screen didn't always feel impressive, but comparing them to real-world examples made the changes far easier to grasp.
For instance, Rorschach's running speed was now more than twice the maximum speed limit allowed on most highways. In practical terms, that meant he could easily chase down many cars using nothing but his legs.
As for strength, the difference was even more absurd.
In Captain America: Civil War, Steve Rogers once struggled to hold down an Air France AS350 helicopter that weighed roughly two and a half tons. Even with all of Captain America's enhanced physiology, the effort left him visibly strained.
Rorschach, on the other hand, could easily grab six of those helicopters with a single hand.
.....
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