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Is that even possible?" Henry asked, surprised.
Although he didn't know the specifics, Henry knew one thing for sure: he didn't have a legitimate identity. He had no idea where to get documents—real or fake. So when Tom claimed he could get them, Henry couldn't help but be astonished.
Old Tom grinned smugly. "This is Alaska. As long as you're not a federal fugitive, anything's possible."
He paused and lowered his voice, as if sharing a secret. "Actually, even if you were, there are ways to handle it. You're not, are you?"
Henry quickly shook his head. "Of course not."
"Good." Tom returned to his usual laid-back tone.
He turned a corner and stopped in front of a building with large floor-to-ceiling windows. On the glass were the words: Old Tom's Employment Agency and Consulting. Inside, a middle-aged woman was typing away at a desk, sorting documents with machine-like precision.
Tom led Henry inside, but the woman didn't even glance at them—clearly a seasoned, seen-it-all type of office clerk.
On her desk were a few scattered, strange-looking gold coins. At a subtle nod from Tom, she calmly swept the coins into a drawer, as if they were standard payment.
As Henry passed her, she wrinkled her nose and muttered, "Wow, where'd you find this guy? A smelly ditch?"
"Old George's crewman. Just off the boat."
"Oh. That explains it." Her tone shifted with recognition. She clearly knew Old George and understood what "just off the boat" meant.
Despite Henry's disheveled appearance, he had money. And in her world, money was what mattered. No matter how bad he smelled, she'd tolerate it. Don't be fooled into thinking white-collar folks were above chasing a dollar.
At least she didn't suddenly switch to a fawning attitude, or Henry might've been too embarrassed to speak. He feared that if she went overboard, his long-repressed iron fists might fly.
Still, Henry had seen this kind of attitude plenty of times in his past life. He was used to it.
He didn't feel angry. Her response was, at worst, impolite. It wasn't like she insulted him to his face or threatened him. Besides, he did reek. It was a fact. Who was he to stop people from saying what was true?
Interestingly, this new body didn't actually sweat. It only radiated heat normally. So the stench clinging to him was a mixture of seawater and a variety of mysterious juices from the king crab. The cold weather had only intensified the smell, combining the salt from the sea and whatever organic goo clung to him.
Taking the clean clothes from Tom, he borrowed the bathroom in the back office. On the way, he passed a large bed in one of the side rooms and couldn't help but wonder mischievously if Tom used it for sleeping with his secretary or female clients.
But looking at how shabby the place was, Henry figured it probably didn't see much use.
The shower itself wasn't worth mentioning. He scrubbed hard—no need to worry about damaging his body. He wanted to get rid of every ounce of filth, every layer of crust and dirt clinging to him.
Cleaning his body was easy enough. The real problem was his hair and beard.
Henry tried using scissors to trim them, but quickly found out that they couldn't even cut a single strand. He didn't dare apply more pressure, afraid he'd end up breaking the scissors instead.
So how was he supposed to deal with his face?
He remembered seeing in an animated Superman cartoon that the Big Blue Boy Scout used heat vision, bounced off a mirror, to groom himself.
Could his eyes shoot heat rays too? Henry had never tried.
To avoid damaging the bathroom, he raised his palm as a target and stared at it intently, preparing for a test fire.
But how exactly did one trigger heat vision? There were no online tutorials for Kryptonians.
He widened his eyes, strained hard, as if constipated—but nothing happened.
Next, he silently repeated in his mind: I want to shoot heat vision. Still nothing.
So Henry resorted to memory. He had seen many portrayals of Superman, but the most detailed one was probably the long-running TV series Smallville.
Clark Kent's first time using heat vision was triggered by... sexual desire.
Yes, because he saw a beautiful, fair-skinned, long-legged female teacher. An ordinary teenage boy might've just had a nosebleed or a wet dream, but the future Man of Steel emitted beams from his eyes and nearly burned down a barn.
So... was Henry supposed to summon his delayed puberty?
Or maybe relive the teenage years he missed out on before transmigrating?
All for a shave?
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
He closed his eyes. Images of countless 'teachers' from the D drive of his old computer spun in his mind. Thanks to his new super brain, he could recall every single one of those movies in crystal clarity—even their production numbers.
Unsurprisingly, his lower half reacted first. Then, a strange heat began rising from his tailbone, traveling up his spine, neck, and the back of his skull.
The sensation made him think of Hollywood's new Godzilla, building up nuclear breath before releasing it in a roaring blast.
Was he not a Kryptonian but a humanoid Godzilla?
Then, just as his mind reached "that moment," a surge of heat blasted into his eyeballs. He instinctively opened his eyes, and a red blur filled his vision. His right hand, held in front as a test target, suddenly felt a burning pain.
The sensation was brief, intense, and strangely familiar—like a man's climax.
Then everything returned to normal.
Looking down, Henry saw his right palm wasn't pierced, but two clear burn marks were there. What surprised him most wasn't the damage, but the fact that he could feel pain.
Since leaving the underground research lab, he had tested his limits. He could touch boiling coffee water without flinching, feeling only mild warmth. No pain, no damage—until now.
This was the first pain he'd felt since his transformation.
But it also felt like a breakthrough, like some internal seal had been broken. From that point on, he realized he could fire heat rays at will—and even adjust their intensity and duration.
It was like his brain had just installed a switch and a valve.
Still, he needed practice to control it precisely.
Now that he'd unlocked this Kryptonian-exclusive "hormonal trigger" power, he had an even tougher challenge.
How the hell was he supposed to reflect heat vision with a mirror and burn off his hair?
It felt like asking someone to reflect a Godzilla-style atomic breath with a dollar-store mirror. And yet... Superman did it.
So whenever people claimed Superman was all about "science," and that his resistance to magic made him weaker, Henry wanted to challenge them.
Go ahead. Explain the physics behind bouncing a heat ray off a mirror just to shave. If someone could actually explain that using real-world science, Henry thought, they deserved a Nobel Prize.
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