Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 768: Chapter 768: A Brief Summer Vacation

The man being discussed by the three immortals, of course, had no idea whatsoever.

Although he could have gone back and checked the mecha communications logs—all of which were preserved on the server—Henry wouldn’t snoop through other people’s private conversations unless it was necessary.

The sudden appearance of the little Spider-Man merely confirmed that the Spider-Man of this world was no longer that talkative kid who practically treated Iron Man like his godfather and followed the Avengers around like a living accessory.

Henry had no way of judging what impact this change would have on the world. All he could do was take things one step at a time.

In any case, as long as he didn’t interfere with the little Spider-Man’s neighborhood watch games, he probably wouldn’t get dragged into them.

That summer, Gwen Stacy spent almost all her time at Oscorp’s Research Center, working as Professor Curt Connors’s intern.

Incidentally, Connors was also the one who had written Gwen’s recommendation letter for university. The one-armed professor had clearly put considerable effort into helping the girl.

Gwen didn’t slack off on Skye’s tutoring either. Three evenings every week, she came over to monitor Skye’s academic progress, much to the little girl’s dismay.

Skye wasn’t like ordinary children who wanted to spend every moment of their vacation playing. But she only put effort into the subjects that interested her. The standard school environment, where she was expected to study everything, bored her somewhat.

However, watching the girl become practically obsessed, spending all day cooped up in her room tinkering with strange electronic components and glued to that battered homemade computer, Katherine Hepburn was rather worried about her.

Sometimes, even when it was already time to sleep—despite the fact that the elderly woman herself slept very little—she would pass by Skye’s room and still hear noises coming from inside.

A hundred percent, the little girl was staying up late again.

Henry’s laissez-faire attitude meant he didn’t want to interfere too much in a girl’s life, and frankly, he wasn’t suited for it. The two were fundamentally different kinds of creatures.

This had nothing to do with the difference between a Kryptonian and an Earthling.

It was simply the difference between men and women.

As for the open-minded Katherine Hepburn, honestly, she didn’t know how to raise a child either.

Whenever her nieces and grandnieces had been around her, they had always behaved like little angels. When had she ever encountered such a troublesome child?

It could only be said that playing with someone else’s child and raising your own were two completely different things.

With the former, you only get to see the fun parts.

With the latter, you experience the full emotional roller coaster—up, down, and every miserable stop in between—until you’re so frustrated you want to bang your head against the wall...

Now you understand why elders always urge their sons and daughters-in-law to have children.

They get to enjoy their grandchildren while their sons and daughters-in-law deal with all the troublesome parts themselves.

And if the child grows up badly, naturally, it’s the parents’ fault. Who would blame the grandparents?

Skye’s situation didn’t improve even after school started.

Katherine Hepburn only then noticed that Skye apparently hadn’t made many friends at school.

At least, she had never seen the little girl bring any classmates home, nor had she seen her spend hours chatting with anyone on the phone.

The old woman, who had fallen behind the times, simply didn’t realize that the little girl didn’t use the phone because she was surfing the Internet instead.

And the tricks she was pulling online were far beyond Katherine Hepburn’s imagination.

Pretending to be a mature thirty-year-old woman and fooling some Internet user on the other end whose gender and age she didn’t even know was basic operating procedure.

She wasn’t scamming people for money or soliciting nude pictures.

She was simply tricking website administrators and forum moderators into giving her passwords and access privileges, then combining those with her hacking skills to launch full-scale network intrusions.

Skye had begun to suspect that the people she interacted with online had ulterior motives.

But she had no idea who they really were, which had sparked her interest in tracking them down.

There was the mysterious online big shot known as CK, TS, who only appeared in certain places; Miss_C, whom she seemed to encounter everywhere she went; and a hacker group active on the dark web—Rising Tide.

To investigate these people without exposing her own tracks, Skye could only use indirect methods to follow traces they had left behind.

She would hack into related websites and see whether they had left behind any additional clues.

She wasn’t simply looking up someone’s IP address and charging straight at them.

Based on her past experience, that was no different from telling the other person directly, ”I’m here to play with you.”

If someone didn’t notice that she had hacked them, it only meant their technical skills were too poor to be the people she was looking for.

Alternatively, she might have been deliberately misled by a true mastermind and sent after the wrong target.

And if the hacker’s skills were better than hers, then she had to worry about the other person infiltrating her computer without her even knowing what they had done!

That feeling was extremely unpleasant.

Naturally, Skye wanted to avoid it.

The registration information used when creating website accounts was a particularly interesting clue.

In this era, hardly anyone used their real identity when registering online. The email addresses they used were usually free accounts, which could likewise be registered with fake information.

But even if the information was fake, most people would use only one or two identities repeatedly.

They wouldn’t create an entirely new email identity every time they joined a new website.

So tracing these people through the free email accounts they commonly used was actually quite easy. It was enough to uncover traces of their activities.

Several hackers within Rising Tide had been tracked down by Skye using this method.

For example, she would use their own email address to impersonate the email service’s server and send them messages containing Trojan programs.

Some people who discovered that their identities had been exposed panicked, deleted their online identities, and started over under new names.

Others became interested in Skye and tried to pursue a deeper relationship with her.

For example, there was one Russian hacker who was reportedly somewhere in the United States and had invited Skye to meet offline more than once.

But the highly cautious girl had never agreed.

It wasn’t that she suspected him of harboring malicious intentions.

She simply didn’t think there was much value in him.

He was useful as a practice target, but further interaction?

No thanks.

Incidentally, Skye had learned quite a few Russian swear words.

She still couldn’t swear as creatively as Henry, though.

Who could understand the feeling of being mocked using passages from the original text of War and Peace, with the speaker using Tolstoy’s criticisms of the vanity and hypocrisy of aristocratic women to ridicule her?

And in order to understand exactly what she was being insulted for, she had to look up words in a dictionary and ask her teacher...

The girl’s heart had been shattered on the spot!

In any case, unable to understand what kind of world the little brat was so absorbed in, the worried old woman decided to drag her back into the real world.

This was New York, after all, one of the greatest and most prosperous cities on the planet.

To showcase that prosperity, New York City regularly held all kinds of celebrations, parades, and carnivals.

Some were organized by the city government, while others were sponsored by major corporations.

The World Carnival that Katherine Hepburn dragged the older and younger members of the household out to attend today was sponsored by Oscorp.

There were enormous character balloons, street performers, and a carnival filled with handsome men and beautiful women dressed in various traditional costumes, serving food and selling goods.

”Ah, why did we have to come to a place like this? The sun is so strong, and my feet hurt from walking,” Skye complained in an exaggerated, operatic voice.

”I don’t believe a word you’re saying! I’ll believe your complaints when you throw the cotton candy in your left hand and the ice cream in your right hand into the trash.”

Henry’s retort was completely justified.

The little girl happened to have her tongue halfway out, preparing to lick the strands of cotton candy from the corner of her mouth.

Her movement froze instantly.

The cotton candy and ice cream were positioned on either side of her face like two divine guardians protecting her.

The resulting expression was truly amusing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For 40 advanced Chapters, visit my Patreon:

Patreon - Twilight_scribe1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~