Chapter 43 They Ran Over Captain America!

——Spank a child for three days, and they'll tear the roof off the tiles!

This was Ely's first thought after his perspective was forcibly spun around. His expression at that moment must have been somewhat ferocious, as evidenced by Bob nearby abruptly lifting his front paws to hug his own large head, making whimpering sounds of plea that humans could not understand.

Unfortunately, Ophelia did not feel the oppressive force coming from behind her, or rather, she felt it, but the arrow was already nocked and had to be fired: having already been instigated by Spider-Man, giving up now might earn her a beating, and not giving up might also earn her a beating. Since both meant a beating, rather than cowering, she might as well die for the sake of the country—bah, die for a moment of indulgent pleasure!

Ely had truly been spoiling her a bit too much lately; even Ophelia, who had been terrified to even get close to him at first, had been corrupted by Gal.

Thinking this, Ely felt a slight sense of gratification that she was finally starting to look like a child, and the anger in his heart subsided slightly. Inside the "sphere" of the Yellow Lantern ring, he tried his best to adjust his posture to make himself look a bit more dignified. However, just as they were sailing smoothly and about to reach the protruding platform of Avengers Tower, Ophelia suddenly raised her head and rubbed her nose. Within a few seconds, she rubbed it even more vigorously, a look of extreme agony appearing on her face at the same time.

Ely subconsciously looked down—how high were they flying now? They were only about a dozen meters away from the spire of the tower. Yet, this distance would be enough to kill someone from a fall, and the descent time would not be enough for Ophelia to recover from a sneeze and re-energize the energy force field of the lantern ring.

Spider-Man, already standing at the top of the tower, also noticed that something seemed amiss and was looking up, observing intently.

"Ophelia—never mind," Ely wanted to tell her to hold it in, but realizing this wasn't something that could be held back, he changed the target of his command, "Bob! Prepare for emergency landing!"

"Ah... ah?" Bob crawled up from the sphere looking bewildered, "But Bob Two, the one who drives, went to sleep. I'll go wake him up..."

Why don't your three heads share skills?! Veins throbbed on Ely's forehead: "Go quickly!"

Bob also sensed the crisis and hurriedly went to communicate with his other heads. Up in the air, Ophelia could no longer hold it back, her face turning red as she took a deep breath: "Ah—choo!!"

The yellow light flickered out instantly.

Ely had been prepared. The moment the light shield extinguished, he raised his hand and grabbed Ophelia's arm. The latter let out a short gasp, clearly realizing that this height made it difficult for her to react in time. Then, in less than half a second, a dazzling "mercury ribbon" tens of meters long materialized beneath their feet, followed precisely by an open-top sleigh appearing right under Ely's shoes.

He steadied himself while pulling Ophelia close, his suit jacket snapping loudly in the howling wind. Bob pulled the sleigh forward at high speed, and just as it reached the landing pad of Avengers Tower, it failed to check its momentum due to excessive speed and crashed straight toward the sealed doors ahead!

'BOOM!!'

The alloy doors were shattered into pieces. Behind the doors, the Avengers looked over in bewilderment. Bob continued to run forward, and even with Ely's reflex speed, there was no time to recover. The sleigh maintained its momentum, heading straight for the most prominent figure ahead wearing a blue uniform with a five-pointed star on the chest!

'CRASH!'

Another loud explosion, no less thunderous than the impact against the iron doors. Bob finally switched from running to walking, shaking his head as he moved, as if somewhat dizzy from the collision. Ely had no time to check on the dog and hurriedly jumped off the sleigh to inspect the victim of the traffic accident.

If something had actually gone wrong, they would be held entirely responsible!

The result of the inspection made his heart sink: the person who looked in every way like Captain America was now lying peacefully on the ground after colliding with a high-speed dog head, his chest completely still.

In common parlance, this meant he had passed away.

Before he could process his discovery, another member of the Avengers nearby finished checking the "corpse" of Captain America, wore a devastated expression, and shouted at the top of his lungs to everyone: "Enemy attack—! They ran over and killed Captain America!!"

Ely: "..."

Wait a minute, how did things turn out like this? Don't you guys think it's absurd when shouting those words??

He turned his head, intending to have Ophelia take flight and leave this place of right and wrong first, only to see a superhero sneakily holding snacks to coax Ophelia: "Come here, little girl, are you hungry? We still have plenty of afternoon tea left over."

The person holding the snacks was Hawkeye. Before he could wait for Ophelia's response, he felt a sharp gaze fall upon him.

"What are you planning to do to my daughter?" asked the Parallax, whose features melted into the shadows with only a dangerous red reflection deep within his blue eyes, coldly. "Step away from her."

Hawkeye's advancing footsteps halted, and he shrugged at the others.

Ely narrowed his eyes, looking at them and then at the peacefully deceased 'Captain America', feeling that something was deeply wrong everywhere. So he asked, "What is going on here?"

The superheroes of the Avengers looked at each other, and a young red-haired woman stepped forward and said, "To put it simply, you've messed up. However, the charge isn't property damage—we'll talk about that later—nor is it the murder of Captain America, but rather disrupting our trap operation."

Ely repeated: "'Trap operation'?"

"Right," said the red-haired woman, Black Widow, straightforwardly. She walked over to the 'corpse of Captain America', turned that handsome face over, and patted it a couple of times with a fair amount of pity, "He looks like Captain America, and the face under the mask is identical to Captain America's as well... But skipping the description of those complicated probing processes, in short, we discovered he is actually a clone of Captain America, while the real Captain whereabouts remain unknown."

"We were still pretending not to know about this in order to try and investigate through the clues he exposed—to find out who sent him, what his purpose was, and where the real Captain is. And yet... your dog's driving skills are slightly on the wild side. Speaking of which, does it have a driver's license?"

Without needing Ely to answer, Bob honestly piped up, "No, ma'am."

Black Widow was startled: "You can speak?!"

"That's right, ma'am," Bob said in a gruff voice, "but since my ancestral home is in Switzerland, my English isn't very good. Could you summarize what you just said and tell it to me again?"

Black Widow thought to herself that she was talking to the Parallax, not you; what difference did it make whether a dog understood or not... But glancing at the silent Parallax, she ultimately repeated the explanation.

Then, putting her hands on her hips, she sighed against the wind blowing through the hole in the tower and said, "That's how it is. Since you're already dragged into this, you might as well come inside and talk things over properly."

***

Ophelia finally got her wish to tour Avengers Tower, but what was the price?

It was that her dear old father was trapped in the tower and couldn't leave. Truth be told, it was fortunate that the person run over was a clone of Captain America; otherwise, he wouldn't be sitting here discussing how to catch the mastermind behind the scenes, but rather standing in a courtroom.

Looking back on it later, Ely reflected that everyone present shared some responsibility. He himself should not have allowed an 11-year-old girl with an underdeveloped brain and an ongoing illness to truly let loose, and Bob Two shouldn't have been sleeping during the day. As for Ophelia, she had learned an important lesson in life today:

Excessive joy breeds sorrow, and extremes meet.

The little girl was already scared out of her wits, following behind Ely with a single command for every action. If no one else had been around, she undoubtedly would have hugged her old father, crying and apologizing.

Then again, even setting aside Ophelia dropping the ball in mid-air, why had Bob flown so steadily on the way here, only to lose control right in front of Avengers Tower? Furthermore, Ely felt that when it made that impact, the dog's speed had already slowed down, and the collision force wasn't particularly intense—the evidence being that the deceased clone of Captain America had departed intact, rather than looking like a gruesome, mangled car crash scene.

A suspicion even arose in his heart: Could the Avengers be pulling a scam?!

From the appearance of Spider-Man to their entry into the alliance headquarters, there were simply too many coincidences encountered along the way.

However, if the Avengers were running a scam, how did they pull it off? And what were they trying to gain?

Ely fell into deep thought.

While he was thinking, the others were secretly observing him. Communication between the Justice League and the Avengers was both open and restricted; although they were colleagues, they were ultimately two separate organizations and could not communicate exhaustively.

Right now, the Avengers knew of the Parallax and had heard of Eli Esposito and his Yellow Lantern ring, but they hadn't expected to meet a minor girl wearing a Yellow Lantern ring who seemingly possessed the power to level the Earth with a single punch today, nor did they expect that this household raised a dog that could speak human language. A family that was already bizarre suddenly became even more indescribable, making one naturally want to ask Ely what kind of mindset led him to gather so many oddballs together.

Did he perhaps have a stamp-collecting fetish?

After a moment, a Black superhero cleared his throat and asked, "Do you have any clues about what happened?"

Ely shook his head, "I need to talk to my dog first."

Uh, well, after all, the dog was the one who ran someone over; perhaps this Bernese Mountain dog had suddenly decided to murder humans? The probability of being killed by a car driven by a dog was definitely not zero. The superheroes looked at each other, ultimately deciding to clear out a space so that the Parallax and his dog could have a private conversation.

This slightly alleviated Ely's suspicion about them running a scam.

After everyone else had walked away, leaving only Bob and Ophelia in the area, he asked Bob inside a space isolated from sight and sound by the energy of the Yellow Lantern ring: "What actually happened back there? Did you really hit Captain America's clone?"

His expression was extremely serious, so Bob didn't dare to perfunctorily brush it off and answered honestly, "Actually, no, but Bob One accidentally touched that person with his true form... I'd better let him come and explain it to you personally."

Immediately after, Bob One appeared.

To be honest, up until now Ely still couldn't quite tell Bob One, Two, and Three apart. He had no idea how he managed to enjoy the experience of raising three identical dogs when he only owned one. Bob One seemed a bit more lively than the dog that had spoken earlier, crying out the moment he arrived:

"Boss, I've been wronged! I merely activated my ability while making physical contact with the other party using my true form. One of my abilities is to revert a living being's soul to a 'past' state, but I never expected he would just drop dead on the spot! How can someone be dead in the past, yet alive in the present?"