Strongest Nova: Path of Vengeance

Chapter 231: Search

Stanley looked at the picture for a few seconds longer to make sure he was seeing it correctly. He didn’t interact with Ulia a lot aside from the first day when she brought him to the association.

Still, he saw her from time to time in the association and they exchanged greetings if nothing else. With all of that, he was absolutely sure that this was most certainly Ulia.

Her thick woolen coat, her purple lipstick, and her curled hair in the photo were not going to make Stanley think otherwise at all.

"Stop gawking at my girlfriend," Fred said quickly pulling away the phone, bringing Stanley back to reality. He looked around at the others who weren’t thinking much of it at all.

Nova was focused on her meal already, and Sol still said that the girl in the picture was fake.

Stanley wished it was fake. Stanley wished that the girl in the photo was a made-up one and that Fred was lying to them about being real.

He wished that the girl he saw in the picture just happened to look like Ulia and that it wasn’t really Ulia.

However, that was certainly unlikely. A girl who looked like Ulia, coming to talk to Fred who was a member of the Blue Oasis, a group that had recently gotten popular for unifying all of the gangs in Fourex City.

There was no way in hell this was a coincidence.

Stanley took a deep breath as he realized that the AAA had already sent people to the city to kill them, and if he remembered correctly from what Fred said, they had been scouted for nearly 2 weeks.

"You said tomorrow was something big?" he asked Fred.

"Kids like you shouldn’t talk to adults about such things," Fred said with a wide grin on his face as he looked at the image on his phone.

’Does that mean that the scouting is done?’ he wondered. ’Are they going to attack tomorrow?’

"Where does this girlfriend of yours live?" Stanley asked.

Fred closed his phone and looked at Stanley with a weird look on his face. He stared at him for a bit before narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "Did you really fall for my girlfriend?" he asked. "What the hell is wrong with you? That’s my girl."

"No, I didn’t fall for her," Stanley said quickly. "I just—"

"Your girlfriend is blonde, Fred," Nova said. "John here likes redheads. Make sure your girlfriend never wears a red wig."

Sol and Fred looked at her. "Oh, redheads huh? A fine choice," Fred said.

"What are you talking about?" Stanley asked Nova.

"You told me just today, didn’t you? That the girl you have a crush on was a redhead?" Nova asked.

"I told you it wasn’t a crush," Stanley said. How could he ever have a crush on Amy? She was beautiful, yes, but there was something about her that didn’t make it feel right for him to think of her as someone he could fall for.

And it didn’t have anything to do with her age either.

Stanley shook his head and didn’t look at any of them as he resumed eating again. He finished eating a while later and walked away from the communal area, to go back to his room.

He spent some time in his room, thinking about what he could do. If the scouting was finished then the attack would start at any time.

To be fair, these people weren’t good people at all, and he didn’t know if he would feel bad if they were all killed. A part of him would be sad for sure, but a part of him would certainly be uncaring about their deaths.

He wasn’t sure which side of him was thinking right now, so instead he let logic guide his next set of thoughts.

One thing that was the most important thing to remember for him right now was the fact that there was a person in this country who could improve other people’s powers.

And given how they were only improving the powers of criminals and people in cults and such, they were certainly a bad group of people.

That was the mission he had been given, and with how important the mission was, he couldn’t let anything come to it.

And with Nova being the one person who knew about it more than anyone else he could possibly be friends with, he couldn’t let anything happen to her at all.

Whatever the matter, he needed to save Nova until she could take him to the person who could improve other people’s power.

After thinking that much, Stanley decided that he knew what he had to do. He had to stop the attack before it happened.

"I need to go meet with the group," he thought.

But that proposed another problem. How the hell was he going to find them at all? There was going to be some sort of safe house for certain, but where was this safe house going to be?

Stanley had absolutely no idea at all.

He thought for a bit and could only come up with a simple idea. He walked out of the room went over to the room closest to his and knocked.

The door creaked open on its own as it was never locked. He tried to step in, but there were already piles of trash by the door that Stanley hated looking at all. Somehow, the pigs back at his old home smelled better than this.

He looked inside the dark room and saw Vera snuggled up in some blankets on top of some chairs, looking at the many screens in front of her. She was looking through multiple different screens at once doing something he could never figure out.

He knocked loudly again and only then did Vera take off her headphones and turn around.

"What do you want?" she asked.

Stanley could see black bags under her eyes from her not sleeping for who knew how many days. Her face was stark white from not getting any sunlight for days, and her hair was in disarray.

He wondered how long it had been since she washed herself.

"I needed something," Stanley said.

"And you couldn’t message me?" she asked angrily.

"No, it was urgent and I needed to be here," he said. He quickly closed the door and walked up to her before looking through her screens. "It’s kind of private, so I want to make sure no one can hear us."

"No one can hear us," Vera said with an annoyed look. "Spit it out already."

Stanley paused for a second and took a deep breath before speaking. "I think... I think Fred’s girlfriend is cheating on him," he said.

"What?" Vera looked at him with a confused look. "No, she isn’t. The poor girl spends all her time with the bastard. How could she cheat?"

"Oh," Stanley was a little surprised to see that Vera knew so much about Ulia. "You’ve been keeping track of her?"

"Yes," Vera said.

"Why?" Stanley asked curiously.

"What do you mean why?" Vera asked. "I keep track of everyone in our group and everyone they come in contact with. How do you think I knew about the Codebreakers breaking into Sol’s phone?"

"Right," Stanley said. "But this girl... are you sure she’s not cheating on Fred?"

"No," Vera said. "Even if she was, why would that matter to you? Are you an honorable knight that is going to punish her for adultery?"

"Uhh... no?" Stanley said.

"Then stop caring about them," Vera said and left me alone.

"Okay, okay," Stanley said. "One last thing. Can you tell me where she lives?"

"What?" Vera looked offended.

"No? I just want to know where she lives currently," Stanley said. "Can you tell me?"

"I can’t," Vera said.

"Please, I just need to check something," Stanley said. "I will buy you anything you might want."

"No," Vera said. "I can’t."

"Come on," Stanley said. "I can’t explain it, but it’s an emergency."

"I told you I can’t," Vera said. "I don’t know where the damn girl lives."

Stanley paused. "What?" he asked. "I thought you were keeping track of her."

"I was," Vera said. "But I don’t know where she lives."

"Why not?" Stanley couldn’t help but ask. That was the most important question of the night and he couldn’t leave without an answer.

"Not my fault," Vera said, getting a little defensive. "Someone set up some sort of jammer in her area, so I can’t connect to any of the networks there. I can’t spy on anyone in a large radius, and her house seems to be in that place as well."

"Oh," Stanley said with a surprised look on his face. That was... somehow both useless and useful.

"What area is this? Can you show me?" Stanley asked.

"Yes," Vera said, bringing up a small map of the city where there was a small blank spot near the edge of the city toward the northeastern section.

Stanley took the map to heart and nodded to himself.

"Well, I guess its fine if we’re certain that she’s not cheating on him then," Stanley said. "Thanks for the help."

He left Vera’s room and walked into his own room. As soon as he entered his room, however, he turned off the light and put on a jacket with a long hoodie to cover his face.

Once he was properly outfitted, he jumped out of the window from the 2nd floor and landed on the soft snow. Then, he made his way toward the northeastern side of the Low to see if he could find the AAA safehouse.