"Is it still not fixed yet, Joey?"
Laurie was sitting atop the seat of a gigantic tractor nearly two people tall. Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the barn, making her blonde hair shimmer brilliantly, lively and full of youthful energy.
Below her worn denim shorts were a pair of round, sturdy thighs, on which a black-and-white Catahoula Leopard Dog was sprawled, whining boredly.
Laurie idly teased the dog by flicking the tip of her simply tied ponytail back and forth in front of its nose, tormenting the poor dog until it couldn't help but burrow its way into her generous bosom.
"You've been fixing it for almost two hours already! At this rate the sun's going to come up!"
"The sun hasn't even set yet!" Joey's muffled voice came from beneath the harvester. "I'm not some professional mechanical engineer. Just figuring out these pipes are already beyond me... got it!"
Joey pushed himself out from under the machine and immediately yelped:
"Hey—you almost stepped on my head!"
It turned out that Laurie had just got the dog out of her lap and jumped down from the driver's seat. Her worn-out cowboy boots landed on the ground barely brushing past Joey's face.
Joey turned his head, adjusted his black-framed glasses, and hurriedly stood up. "I should head back."
Ever since Joey had been pulled from the wreckage of a crashed spaceship by his adoptive parents, he had lived in Kansas for sixteen years.
This world was, in essence, a completely unfamiliar one. There were superheroes and villains—but not a single person he recognized.
No Bruce Wayne. No Barry Allen. No Diana Prince.
Just himself... and a whole bunch of "superheroes" he had never heard of.
In this strange world, his new life wasn't exactly legendary, but it could be described as uneventful.
For sixteen years, he went to school as expected, went home as expected, helped his parents run the farm as expected—and somewhat unexpectedly helped his classmate and neighbor, Laurie, repair her family's supposedly hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-worth agricultural machinery.
God only knew what Laurie was thinking. The moment she heard he knew a bit about mechanics, she dragged him over to fix her tractor. He ended up digging through the barn's pile of spare parts for half an hour just to find the manufacturer's manual—only to realize that a professional could've fixed the problem in five minutes flat.
"Yeah Mom, it's fixed. I'll be home for dinner. Be back in thirty minutes—no, within an hour."
Joey followed Laurie towards the farmhouse to grab his jacket before walking home. He happened to receive a call from home and casually made a dinner wish while he was at it:
"Nope, I don't that. The pie from two days ago really should be thrown out—I don't even need to look to know the bacteria count is off the charts. Venison burgers are fine, but we can't eat them all the time either…"
"Yeah, tell Dad not to drink too much. Tomorrow's Sunday—we gotta get up early and fill in those gopher holes again..."
"I'm hanging up now. Love you, Mom. See you soon."
"Need a ride home, Joey?"
Laurie's father, Arthur, was sprawled on the couch facing the TV, wiping beer foam from his stubble. Although he sounded polite enough, his eyes never once left the screen, and his body looked like it had taken root in the sofa.
He had never been much of a parent, but ever since divorcing his wife, he was the only family Laurie had left.
"Thanks, but I'll just walk home," Joey said, tossing his jacket over his shoulder and heading for the door.
"I can give you a ride!" Laurie pulled out the pickup truck keys and waved them in front of Joey before dragging him outside.
American rural life and the rural life of Joey's previous world might both be called "the countryside," but they were fundamentally different things.
For example, even though he and Laurie were neighbors, they weren't the kind where they're living in close proximity of each other. Their homes were separated by at least 300 acres of farmland.
Not impossibly far—but far enough that walking wasn't exactly convenient. So Laurie driving him home actually made sense.
"Make sense my ass!"
Old Arthur—who had been rooted to the couch moments earlier—suddenly appeared like a ghost, slamming a hand on the car door. Hanging in front of his beer belly was a rifle that looked old enough to be his grandfather.
"Joey Joseph Kent—let me make this clear, kid," Old Arthur said, gripping the rifle. "If I don't get a message saying you're home in ten minutes, I'll blow your head off. If my daughter isn't back home in twenty minutes, I'll blow your head off. Understood?"
Joey nodded frantically. Even if his head could withstand a .40-caliber round, there was no reason to provoke a Kansas farmer who looked ready to die with him.
"Dad, what do you think Joey is, huh?" Laurie shoved her father aside and tossed Joey into the passenger seat. She bent down into the driver's seat and started the engine. "Love you, Dad—bye!"
Joey sat quietly in the passenger seat, watching the dark green cornfields blur past the window as he estimated the remaining distance to home.
Then he heard a click.
Turning his head, he saw Laurie twisting on the radio—and somehow pulling out a can of beer and taking a drink.
"Isn't this illegal?"
Joey fastened his seatbelt as calmly as he could. Even without paying close attention to local laws, he knew that Kansas—being a core agricultural state—was full of old-school rednecks with simple values.
While enforcement on underage driving might be looser than in other states, underage drunk driving definitely wasn't legal anywhere.
"Relax," Laurie said casually. "No cops are gonna pull us over."
She tipped her head back, drained the entire can, then let go of the steering wheel and cracked open another one without slowing down.
"If there were, that'd be a real problem," she added cheerfully. "I don't even have my license yet."
Cold sweat broke out on Joey's forehead.
Something's wrong with this situation. I need to get out.
Screeech—
As if responding to his thoughts, the speeding pickup slowly came to a stop on the rural road.
"Hehe~"
Laurie finished her second can. With a slight squeeze, the aluminum can collapse like soft clay in her long fingers, crushed into a flattened sheet of metal.
Her flushed face leaned closer to Joey—so close he could smell the mix of earth and heat on her. When he looked up, he saw danger flickering in her bright blue eyes.
"Looks like the car's having a little problem," she said. "Guess we're stuck here."
Her eyes shimmered with excitement and tension. She reached out, combing her fingers through Joey's slightly curly black hair, slowly stroking it—then tracing his sharp facial features—before suddenly pulling him toward her with a strength far beyond what any ordinary farm girl should possess.
"Joey… your face…" she murmured. "Let me take a closer look..."
Joey had never imagined that the carefree country girl he chatted with on the school bus—talking about field mice, wild hogs, and neighboring cows—would turn out to be a superhuman.
He certainly never expected her to use her hidden powers for this kind of behavior.
Is this really the ultra-conservative Kansas?!