The Boys: I'm the New Hue, I Need More Power

Chapter 11: The Pressure Cooker

" Okay, so I just figured out how to kill an invulnerable Supe. Me. Hughie Campbell. The guy who struggles to open a pickle jar. And I did it by… feeling a hum. And then blurting out a theory that sounds like something from a bad science fiction novel. And the look on Translucent's face? Priceless. He looks like he just realized he left the oven on. Or that I'm about to turn him into a very fine, very invisible mist. Which, ironically, is how Robin went out. Full circle, I guess. A very, very dark, morally questionable circle. And now everyone's staring at me like I just pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Or, you know, like I just revealed the secret to killing a god. No pressure. Just the fate of an invisible, naked Supe resting on my very, very nervous shoulders. And that hum? It's going absolutely wild now, like my brain just decided to host a rave. It's not a power. It's just… a lot. A whole lot of 'oh crap' in my head. "

The silence in the boiler room was deafening, broken only by the frantic thumping of Hughie's heart and the low, persistent hum in his chest. Butcher, M.M., and Frenchie stared at him, their faces a mixture of awe, disbelief, and a healthy dose of suspicion. Translucent, still confined in his reinforced cage, looked like he'd just seen a ghost, his usually smug expression replaced by pure, unadulterated terror. He was trembling, a faint, visible tremor that ran through his carbon skin, making him shimmer under the bare bulb.

"He's not going to talk," Hughie repeated, his voice surprisingly steady despite the internal chaos. He looked at Translucent, whose eyes were wide with a horrifying realization. "He's not going to give you anything. He's too afraid of Vought. Too afraid of Homelander. But… but his skin. It's like a battery. It absorbs kinetic energy, but it can't discharge it. It just… stores it. Until it overloads. And if it overloads… he'll explode. From the inside out."

M.M. gasped, his face paling. "Explode? Hughie, what are you talking about? How could you possibly know that?" His voice was a strained whisper, as if the very idea was too horrific to utter aloud.

" How could I possibly know that? Good question, M.M. Because I don't. Not really. It just… came to me. Like a sudden, terrifying download of information directly into my brain. And that hum… it's vibrating with a terrifying clarity now. It's telling me I'm right. Which is both exhilarating and absolutely terrifying. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a Supe. I'm just Hughie. The guy who sells stereos. And now, apparently, the guy who can diagnose the fatal flaws of invisible, invulnerable superheroes. My resume is getting weird. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a very, very long nap after this. Or a lobotomy. Whichever comes first. "

Butcher, however, was watching Hughie, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. He seemed to be savoring the moment, the dawning horror on Translucent's face, the bewildered expressions of his own team. "Well, I'll be damned. The kid's a bloody genius." He looked at Translucent, a cruel satisfaction in his eyes. "So, you're a walking bomb, eh, mate? Just waiting for the right… catalyst."

Translucent started to sweat, his carbon skin shimmering faintly under the bare bulb. "You won't. You can't. Vought will find you. Homelander will tear you apart. Piece by piece. You don't know what you're dealing with!" His voice was a desperate, panicked whisper, a stark contrast to his usual smug arrogance.

"How did you know, Hughie?" Frenchie asked, his eyes gleaming with scientific curiosity. He was already pulling out a small, battered notebook, scribbling furiously. "This 'hum' you speak of… it is a resonance? A sympathetic vibration with his molecular structure? A… a bio-energetic feedback loop?"

"I… I don't know!" Hughie insisted, feeling overwhelmed by the sudden attention, the weight of his own terrifying insight. "It's just a feeling! It's like… like when you put your hand on a speaker, and you can feel the bass vibrating through it! But it's inside me! And it gets louder when he's near! And when I touched him… it was like… like I could feel his circuits! His… his energy storage! It just… clicked! Like a puzzle piece snapping into place, but the puzzle was made of pure, unadulterated terror and the pieces were, you know, a naked Supe's internal organs. Not exactly a fun jigsaw." He was rambling, trying to explain the inexplicable, the terrifying intuition that had suddenly flooded his mind.

" I sound like a crazy person. I know I do. I'm basically trying to explain quantum physics to a bunch of vigilantes who prefer crowbars to calculations. But it felt so real. So undeniable. And the look on Translucent's face confirms it. He's terrified. Which means I'm right. Which means… oh, God. This is going to be messy. And I'm going to be involved. Deeply involved. My brain is starting to feel like a faulty circuit board, sparking with too much information. "

Butcher clapped Hughie on the back, a surprisingly firm, almost bone-crushing grip. "Right. So, we got a ticking time bomb on our hands. Good to know. Now, how do we make him tick faster? Without blowing ourselves up in the process?" He looked at Frenchie. "You got any ideas, mate? Something that'll get that internal pressure building, without, you know, turning us all into human confetti?"

Frenchie, his eyes alight with a mad scientist's glee, began to pace. "Hmm. Kinetic energy. We need to… overload his capacitor. But safely. We could use focused sonic vibrations. Or perhaps… a series of controlled impacts. Something that his skin absorbs, but cannot dissipate. We need to find his resonant frequency, yes?" He looked at Hughie. "Your 'hum,' mon ami. It is the key. You are the tuning fork."

" The tuning fork. Right. My new job title. 'Hughie Campbell: Official Supe-Sensing Civilian and Human Tuning Fork. Warning: May spontaneously panic.' This is not what I signed up for. I wanted justice. Not… whatever this is. And I'm pretty sure my 'tuning fork' is just detecting my own fear. Which, by the way, is currently off the charts. Like, maximum red. Flashing lights. Sirens. The whole nine yards. And now they want me to help them… overload him. This is fine. Everything is fine. I'm just going to stand here and try not to make eye contact with the naked, terrified Supe. "

The next few days were a pressure cooker. The boiler room felt smaller, more claustrophobic, with the constant, unsettling presence of a terrified, invulnerable Supe. Butcher, now armed with Hughie's terrifying insight, began a campaign of psychological warfare against Translucent, interspersed with Frenchie's increasingly elaborate "experiments." He'd taunt him, remind him of his impending doom, describe in gruesome detail how his internal explosion would feel. M.M. looked increasingly uncomfortable, his moral compass spinning wildly, constantly muttering about "lines" and "human decency."

"This is not how we do things, Butcher," M.M. argued one morning, watching Frenchie set up a series of high-frequency emitters around the cage. "We expose them. We don't become them. This is torture."

"We're not torturing him, M.M.," Butcher retorted, his eyes hard. "We're just… encouraging him to cooperate. And if he doesn't, well, then we've got a problem. And Hughie here," he gestured to Hughie, who was sitting miserably on an overturned bucket, "he's going to help us solve it. He's our little Supe mood ring. He tells us when our invisible friend is getting agitated. Or when he's lying. Or when he's about to go boom."

Hughie hated it. He hated being so close to the man who had punched him, the man who was now a ticking time bomb. He hated being complicit in Butcher's increasingly brutal methods. His lingering humanity screamed in protest, but the desire for answers, for justice for Robin, was a powerful, overriding force. He kept his gaze fixed on Translucent, trying to ignore the constant, low thrum of the hum in his chest, which seemed to vibrate in sympathy with every flicker of fear in Translucent's eyes.

Frenchie, meanwhile, was in his element. He'd constantly try to measure the "hum," to analyze it, to find its source. He'd hold strange devices near Hughie's chest, muttering about frequencies and wavelengths, trying to correlate Hughie's internal sensations with Translucent's energy readings.

"It is a unique resonance, mon ami," Frenchie explained one day, holding a small, glowing orb near Hughie's chest. "It is not a power, no. But it is… a sensitivity. A connection to the energetic signature of the Supe. It is like a… a psychic antenna, yes? You are picking up his… vibrations."

" A psychic antenna. Great. So now I'm a human radio receiver for Supe energy. My life is officially a bad sci-fi movie. Starring me. And an invisible naked guy. And a very angry Englishman. And a mad Frenchman who thinks I'm a psychic antenna. This is fine. Everything is fine. I'm just going to sit here and try not to accidentally pick up Homelander's thoughts. Because I'm pretty sure that would break my brain. And I'm still just Hughie. The guy who sells stereos. The guy who gets punched. The guy who needs to be rescued. And now, the guy who can feel the emotional and energetic state of his captor. Joy. "

M.M., ever the moral compass, pulled Hughie aside one afternoon, his face etched with worry. "Hughie, you don't have to do this. You don't have to be a part of this. This isn't right. Holding him here, like this… it's not what we're about."

Hughie looked at M.M., his eyes filled with a weary sadness. "What else am I supposed to do, M.M.? Take the Vought money? Pretend Robin never existed? Let them get away with it? I can't. I just… I can't. And that hum… it's telling me this is important. This is the only way. It's like a compass, M.M. A really, really terrifying compass that points towards danger and moral compromise."

"The only way to become like them?" M.M. asked, his voice soft but firm. "To descend to their level? To become a monster yourself?"

"I don't know," Hughie admitted, his voice barely a whisper. "I just… I need answers. I need justice. And if this is the only way to get it… then I have to do it. Even if it means… getting my hands dirty. Or, you know, getting my soul a little bit stained. It's probably already pretty stained, honestly. All that guilt and fear? It's probably seeped right in."

The days bled into each other, a relentless cycle of interrogation, defiance, and the constant, unsettling presence of Translucent. Hughie felt himself changing, hardening. The initial horror of his situation was slowly being replaced by a grim pragmatism. He was still terrified, still riddled with guilt, but a colder, more determined part of him was emerging. He was learning to separate the man from the mission, the victim from the target. He was learning to survive. And he was learning to listen to that hum. It was his guide now. His terrifying, inexplicable guide.

One evening, as Butcher was describing a particularly gruesome scenario to Translucent, Hughie felt the hum spike to an almost unbearable level. It was a high-pitched, frantic whine, vibrating through his entire body, making his teeth ache. He looked at Translucent, whose body was trembling violently, his eyes wide with terror, sweat pouring down his face. He was at his breaking point. And Hughie felt a sudden, terrifying clarity. The hum wasn't just detecting his fear. It was detecting the pressure building inside him. The energy. The kinetic force that his carbon skin was absorbing, but couldn't release. It was like a physical sensation of an invisible, internal pressure gauge redlining.

" He's going to pop. He's going to explode. From the inside out. Just like I thought. And I can feel it. I can feel the pressure building. It's like a giant, invisible balloon, inflating, inflating, until… pop. And that hum… it's screaming this truth now. It's undeniable. This is not just a feeling. This is… knowledge. Terrifying, horrifying knowledge. And I'm the only one who knows it. And I'm the one who's going to have to tell them. And then what? Do we just… make him explode? Oh, God. This is getting dark. Really, really dark. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a very, very long shower after this. And maybe a new soul. "

The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. He didn't have powers, not active ones, but he had a terrifying, intuitive understanding of them. He was a human conduit, a receiver for the unseen energies of the Supes. And right now, that conduit was screaming the unspoken truth about Translucent's fatal flaw. The limits of his invulnerability. And the terrifying potential of that knowledge.

"He's at his limit," Hughie blurted out, his voice hoarse, cutting through Butcher's monologue. "He's full. He can't take any more."

Butcher stopped, turning to Hughie, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Full of what, mate?"

"Kinetic energy," Hughie whispered, looking at Translucent, whose eyes were wide with a mixture of terror and dawning horror. "His skin… it's like a battery. It's fully charged. Any more, and he'll… he'll explode."

The air in the boiler room crackled with a sudden, electric tension. M.M. looked horrified. Frenchie's eyes widened, a look of profound awe mixed with a touch of fear. Translucent, for the first time, looked utterly, completely broken. His secret, his ultimate weakness, had been laid bare, not by torture, but by a civilian with an inexplicable hum.