American comics: Praising the sun, starting from Gotham!

A new safe house.

Clint leaned against the window, drinking cup after cup of instant black coffee; his face was even darker than the coffee.

Xiu En floated quietly in the center of the living room.

He was watching Kate eat with great interest.

Finally, Kate broke the suffocating silence.

She put down the food in her hand, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and looked at Clint cautiously as she asked.

"So, what do we do next? Go to Queens and find the meeting place Kingpin mentioned?"

She tried to make her tone sound professional and capable, like a competent partner.

"No! Before that, we need to see someone else."

"You mean the Maya?"

"right."

Why?

Kate pressed for an answer, puzzled.

"Didn't Bullseye say she was also working for Kingpin? She's the enemy! We should prioritize dealing with Kingpin, the biggest threat!"

"Because until Kingpin's threat becomes a reality, she is my threat. She belongs only to me."

This seemingly random and incoherent statement completely baffled Kate.

"I don't quite understand."

Xiu asked curiously.

"Isn't eliminating threats one by one from high to low priority the most efficient option? Why deal with a low-priority target?"

"Because it's different!"

Clint seemed to have been hit where it hurt.

This intense emotional fluctuation even caused the sunflower on Xiu En's shoulder to peek out from its flower head and look at him curiously.

Clint seemed to be trying hard to suppress something.

He slumped down and buried his face in his hands.

Sometimes, there are things you have to face yourself.

Even if you know it's pointless, even if you know it will only bring more pain.

Shuen curiously poked the bag. He looked at the sad Clint and tried to take out some cookies, but after searching for a while, he realized that the cookies were all gone. Damn it, the other clones had used up all the cookies!

"You seem to regret it?"

Clint looked up and stared at the black suit on the table that had once represented fear and death.

"After Thanos snapped his fingers... I lost everything."

Clint's story began.

He was telling a story that had nothing to do with himself.

"My wife, my children, they vanished before my eyes. In an instant, the whole world went empty. I frantically called them, but no one answered."

He paused for a moment, as if he were back in that afternoon.

"Then, Natasha came to me. She said, 'We still have a chance.' But criminals all over the world, those scum who survived the snap, they didn't disappear. They're partying. Drug lords, human traffickers, gangsters, they're living better than ever."

"I think it's unfair. Why should my family disappear while these bastards get to live so well?"

So, this is what I became.

He pointed to the evidence bag on the table.

"A ronin. A wandering ghost, a scavenger. Wherever the sins are deepest, that's where I go. Mexico, Tokyo, Budapest... I send those who cannot be punished by law to where they belong."

Shuen listened quietly, and he could feel the fire of obsession rising and burning within him again as Clint spoke.

"Then, I tracked down a transnational human trafficking ring, and the clues pointed to the sportswear gang in New York."

Clint seemed to see that rainy night again.

"They were making a deal in an old warehouse. I infiltrated and killed them all."

"In the end, I stormed into the leader's office. He was preparing to escape when I stabbed him in the heart from behind."

"When he fell, I saw his face. I recognized him, the head of the tracksuit gang, a man with a long criminal record in the FBI files. I felt I had done the right thing."

"but……"

"Just then, I heard a faint sob coming from the next room. I kicked the door open and saw the girl."

"Maya Lopez. She was hiding behind a pile of cardboard boxes, curled up in a ball, biting her hand to keep herself from crying out. Through the crack in the door, she saw the whole thing: her father being killed by me, falling in front of her."

Kate's eyes reddened.

She understood Clint's unspeakable pain.

He is judging his past self.

"Her eyes. I'll never forget them. There was only fire in them. A fire that wanted to burn me alive."

"I'm leaving."

He closed his eyes.

"I ran away like a coward. I didn't have the courage to face those eyes."

"So, you want to go back now? Like a repentant sinner, begging for her forgiveness?"

Sunflowers aren't as reserved as Xiu En.

Kate was startled by the sudden sound and looked at the sunflower on Hugh's shoulder.

Clint's eyes sharpened again: "No! I didn't go to beg for her forgiveness!"

"I personally killed her only relative, turning her from an ordinary girl into what she is now. A ruthless gangster boss, a vengeful madman. It's all my fault."

"Before I go and take down Kingpin, I must put an end to all of this."

He stood up, glanced at the ronin's armor, then picked it up and threw it, along with the evidence bag, into the fireplace.

The raging flames instantly engulfed the black fabric.

It is also devouring Clint's irreversible past.

"I won't let her ruin herself, nor will I let her continue down the wrong path."

"Kate, this is a personal matter, you don't need to get involved. It's not too late to leave now."

"No, I'll go with you."

Kate refused without even thinking.

She stood up, grabbed her bow, and stepped to stand next to Clint.

"You taught me. A partner never abandons the other. And..."

She glanced at Xiu En, who was watching the show from the sidelines.

"We still have our mentors, don't we?"

Clint looked at her, at this girl he had dragged into who shouldn't have to bear all of this, and in the end, all he could do was let out a long sigh.

"Let's go. To Queens."

The King Bowling Alley in Queens.

A place that once symbolized joy and hustle.

Clint and Kate were across the street, dressed in dark casual clothes, like two ghosts blending into the city's shadows.

Xiu En also lowered his own light accordingly.

"The coordinates Bullseye gave us are here."

"The meeting point is located in the basement of the bowling alley. From the external thermal imaging, apart from two guards at the entrance, there are no signs of life inside the building."

"Something's not right."

Clint observed the movements on the other side.

"If they were reporting to Kingpin, this place should be heavily guarded. Something's definitely amiss."

"So, are we going to do that smoke therapy again?" Kate asked jokingly, trying to lighten the mood.

Beside her, Xiu En was watching idly as a pigeon tried to build a nest in the café's chimney, only to fly out covered in soot.

"No."

Clint shook his head and took out a strangely shaped arrow from his tactical backpack, handing it to Kate.

"This time, let's try something new. Remember how I taught you to calculate parabolic trajectories? Shoot at the exhaust fan cover next to that trash can, and let it bounce inside."

It was a specially made ultrasonic jamming arrow with a small sound wave emitter on the arrowhead.

Kate took the arrow and took a deep breath.

She drew her bow and aimed.

Wind speed, humidity, parabola.

All the data flashed through her mind.

"call out--!"

The arrow struck the edge of the exhaust fan's metal casing and then bounced into the gap in the louvers!

The next second, a faint meow came from the back alley of the bowling alley.

The two burly men in sportswear standing at the door exchanged a wary glance, then revealed lewd smiles that conveyed a knowing look to each other.

"Hey, Ivan, wanna go check it out? Maybe it's just a lost Russian Blue cat, Bro!"

"Of course, maybe we can even catch it and give it to the boss as a pet."

The two put down their weapons and walked arm in arm toward the back alley.

"Well done, girl."

"Let's go inside."

Inside the bowling alley.

Bowling balls were scattered on the dusty lanes, and the posters on the walls had long since faded and yellowed. The smiling men and women on the posters looked eerie at this moment.

It's so quiet here.

It was so quiet that Clint could clearly hear every beat of his heart in his chest.

He gestured to Kate to stop and observe discreetly.

The two of them, one on the left and one on the right, hid behind a row of seats.

Shuen floated in the center of the hall, curiously studying the disco-style glittering balls on the ceiling.

Clint did not rush forward.

His intuition, his instinct honed through countless brushes with death, told him that there was danger here.

A gaze is sweeping over the entire venue.

He peeked out from behind the cover, his gaze sweeping towards the deepest part of the hall, to the VIP fairway area where only one overhead light was lit.

Then, he saw her.

Maya Lopez was standing alone, barefoot, in silence.

Her long, black hair was tied into a neat ponytail.

His face was expressionless, and his eyes were not focused on any specific point, but rather stared blankly ahead.

But her body was in a state of focused readiness to unleash a deadly attack at any moment.

The entire bowling alley seemed to be her stage all to herself.

She wasn't looking; she was listening.

With her whole being, she listened to every falling speck of dust and every heartbeat in this space.

Clint's heart sank.

He knew of the records of this ability.

Some people who have lost one sense experience an abnormal enhancement of their other senses.

The Maya, however, took this enhancement to its extreme.

As long as they are still standing on this floor, as long as they are still breathing, as long as their hearts are still beating, nothing can escape her perception.

She had already discovered them.

Now, she is just like a patient spider, waiting for its prey to slip into its web and reveal its weakness.

"This is troublesome..."

Conventional stealth techniques are meaningless in the face of such a complete Pokédex.

"Like the roots of a small flower, it finds its way by the pulse of the earth."

Hugh's voice echoed in Clint and Kate's minds simultaneously.

"However, she has too few roots, only two, and her efficiency in receiving information is too low."

"Wait, what did you say? Roots?"

Clint's mind raced, and he immediately grasped the key point.

The sunflowers seemed to have taken an interest as well.

Her leaves unfurled, and a dark green root silently emerged from the bottom of the flowerpot, then slipped into the crack of the wooden floor beneath the chair.

The moment that tendril touched the internal structure of the floor.

A real-time, dynamic sound wave map unfolds in Clint and Kate's minds!

They can "see" it!

The entire bowling alley's structure, including all the hidden support columns, ventilation ducts, and even the routing of every electrical wire behind the walls.

They could "see" five people pacing anxiously in the second-floor office, their heartbeats rapid, indicating they were tense.

They could "see" the pressure distribution of the tires of the slowly moving cars on the street outside.

Most importantly, they "saw" that the auditory realm constructed by the Maya appeared so rudimentary compared to the sunflower's real network of ley lines covering the entire neighborhood.

They could even see the changes in the pressure distribution on Maya's feet on the graph, thus analyzing which side her center of gravity would shift to in the next second.

"What is this?"

Kate was speechless, overwhelmed by the flood of information rushing into her mind. She felt as if she had suddenly become an omniscient god.

Clint was equally shocked, but he calmed down more quickly.

He knew his opportunity had arrived.

The only chance to have a fair conversation with that girl who lives in a silent world.