139: Chapter 139 Three Refusals and Three Declinees

Early the next morning, the entrance to the Wuhu Ability Shop was blocked off once again.

The crowd was like a pot of boiling water. A young man held up a hand-painted cardboard sign, on which was a simple sketch of A-Zu's face, with five large characters written in fluorescent marker next to it: "We need you."

A middle-aged woman next to him held a sign that was even more direct: "A-Zu, please be our Mayor of New York City."

Others had printed out and enlarged the photo from yesterday of A-Zu carrying the lost boy on his shoulders at Times Square to poster size, waving it continuously.

A wave of sound rose from the crowd. At first, it was chaotic shouting, but it gradually converged into rhythmic slogans, like waves crashing against the shore, one after another, becoming increasingly synchronized: "A-Zu! Come out! A-Zu! Come out!"

After a few rounds of chanting, it turned into a more specific demand: "We want you to be Mayor of New York City! We want you to be Mayor of New York City!"

A moment later, A-Zu walked out of the main entrance, his face still wearing a perfect smile. He waved his hands and said, "Everyone, I understand your feelings, but I am an alien. How can you let an alien lead you people of Blue Star?"

"Your democratic system has its own rules, candidate qualification reviews, election commissions, and a constitution. I need time to understand and adapt to all of this, but I don't even have a tax record."

"Your election laws have no precedent for my status; this in itself is not legal."

After finishing this, he waved his hand again and prepared to turn back into the shop, but the crowd wouldn't let him leave.

The young man in the front row, holding the hand-painted cardboard sign, raised it above his head, his voice as loud as if someone had stepped on a switch: "Who says an alien can't be Mayor of New York City? Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution does state that the President must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, but the New York City Charter only requires age, residency, and voter status for the Mayor of New York City."

"You have a New York City resident certificate issued by the Ball Chief, which means you have voter registration, and you are more qualified than any other candidate in this city because you are actually saving people!"

A-Zu glanced at Sima Bei behind him, and Sima Bei shook his head slightly.

A-Zu waved his hand again and said, "Even if the law allows it, you should choose a human. New York has eight million people; there must be someone among them who understands this city better than I do, is more familiar with its pulse, and is more suitable to sit in the office of the Mayor of New York City."

"You want an alien to sit in City Hall and approve documents? But I haven't even learned your official document formats."

"We'll teach you!" A voice exploded from the middle of the crowd. Before the shout had even died down, the surrounding crowd started shouting along: "We'll teach you! We'll help you! You don't understand New York, but we do!"

A-Zu's X-ray vision looked at these sincere expressions; he, who had always looked down on the people of Blue Star, could not help but be moved at this moment.

"Fine," he took a deep breath. "If you are truly willing to entrust the future of this city to me, then I will run for Mayor of New York City."

"Not for the race between you and me, not for the planets between you and me, but only because we see each other in this city. I see you, and you see me. This foundation is more solid than any legal provision."

The sound wave that erupted from the crowd was louder than any before, and everyone was cheering frantically.

A-Zu raised a hand: "If I become the Mayor of New York City, I will incorporate the Superpower Serum into the New York City public healthcare system."

"I want the entire New York City—whether it's children living in the Bronx and Brooklyn, or children living on the Upper East Side—to all awaken their own Special Ability."

"Second, regarding institutional transparency. I have criticized many municipal issues before; I am not inciting conflict, I am telling you where the problems lie."

"After I take office, the response time, budget allocation, and policy basis for every public service of the city government will be made public online. New York City citizens have the right to know how your tax money is spent, and you also have the right to know why it wasn't spent where it should have been."

"Third, I will also build a Special Ability response system. I will establish Espers response centers in each of the five boroughs of New York, staffed 24 hours a day by professionally trained awakened individuals."

"Regarding call response time, let's set a small goal: an average of no more than three minutes for all of New York, and ninety seconds for the core area of Manhattan."

He raised his fist above his head: "I know I certainly cannot do these things alone, so I need the strength of every one of you. Let us build a better New York together!"

"Mayor! Mayor! Mayor!" Countless members of the public cheered frantically. Sima Bei, standing behind A-Zu, watched everything quietly, a trace of a disdainful smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.

——————

In the afternoon, Thompson returned to the New York Police Department and saw that the desk of Leon, who had taken his place, was piled with increasingly high folders.

The labels on the covers of those folders all bore the four words "Missing Person," sorted by date, increasing day by day starting from a few days ago.

At first there were only two or three, then it became seven or eight a day, and in the last two days, more than a dozen new case files had arrived each day.

Leon sat behind the desk, inputting a new missing person information form into the computer.

He typed very slowly, looking down at the keyboard every few characters, then looking up at the screen to confirm there were no mistakes.

"Another missing person case?" Thompson stopped beside his workstation, pinched the cover of the top folder with his fingers, and flipped to the first page.

A driver's license photo of a white male, 28 years old, from Brooklyn. The time of disappearance was marked as between 11:00 PM last night and 4:00 AM this morning, and the last seen location was in front of a bar in Williamsburg.

A line of text was written in the remarks column: Single, living alone, no relatives reported it; the employer reported it after finding he had been absent from work for two consecutive days.

"So many that it's about to crush the filing cabinet." Leon pushed the keyboard away and leaned back against the chair, which emitted an overwhelmed metallic groan.

He pressed his eyeballs with his fingers and pointed to the pile of folders on the table: "Look, this stack is from yesterday, this stack is from today, and this stack just arrived and hasn't been entered yet."

"I have to submit a missing person trend briefing to the Chief's office by 5:30 PM today, but I haven't even finished entering today's cases."

"And this doesn't include those who haven't been reported. Do you know how many people in New York have no fixed address, no immediate family, and no one would even notice if they went missing?"

"Are there any commonalities?" Thompson asked.

Leon sprang up from the back of the chair, reached into the pile of files, rummaged through them, pulled out a few, and spread them on the table.

"All disappeared in the middle of the night, and they were either living alone or walking alone late at night, and there are no witnesses to the process."

"No ransom calls, no bodies, no bloodstains, no signs of a crime; it's just that the person walked into the night and then vanished."

He slapped one of the files with the back of his hand, making a crisp sound: "It's as if they were cleanly erased from the city by something."

Thompson was silent for a few seconds, looking down at the missing person file in his hand.

He did not believe in coincidences.

A hero who could rescue nearly two hundred people in a single day could certainly also become a monster capable of making humans disappear without a trace in the dead of night.

And all these mysteries were waiting for him to unravel.