Chapter 4380: Far Star Project (Part 5)

"Originally, there were only two social workers left in the entire community. The three people you saw today, besides me, were all just transferred here. This proves one thing: you must have offended someone. Someone wants to drive you away from here," the female social worker said.

"You performed very well today. Once you let them in, they would nitpick every detail and then declare that your welfare activities do not meet community requirements, using that as an excuse to drive you away."

"What if we just don't leave?" Diana felt a surge of frustration in her heart. She knew this question was irrational, but she really couldn't help it. "Can he use force to evict us? Who could he possibly beat?"

"I heard you are super-powered individuals. He certainly can't beat you, and the police and security teams can't beat you either. However, they can sue the people you are helping," the female social worker said. "If I'm not mistaken, there are some here who are staying temporarily and still need to return to society later. If they are mired in lawsuits, they will never be able to find a job again."

"Sue the people being helped?!" Diana truly felt it was absurd; she raised her voice. Others in the cafe looked at her, so she had to lower her tone and then said, "On what grounds? Is it a crime to be helped now?"

"Many. Disturbing community order, resisting arrest, assaulting police, illegal assembly, and so on," the female social worker sighed and said. "These people might already have legal cases against them; even digging up old accounts would be enough to make them suffer."

Diana pressed her lips together tightly. The female social worker continued, "What you need to do now is quickly find them a way out. If it really doesn't work, you can't just throw them out onto the main road in such heavy snow; they would all die."

"But... but..."

"I know you have good intentions, and they surely know it too. You have such powerful abilities, yet you haven't used them to commit crimes, but instead are trying every way to save people, which proves you are all good people." The female social worker paused, then said in a somewhat sorrowful tone, "This country has many good people, but unfortunately, good people cannot save this country."

Returning to the shelter again, Diana appeared somewhat dejected. Her emotions were urging her to fight to the end, but her reason was telling her that the female social worker was right; she had to find a way out for these people, otherwise, she might truly harm them.

Those who were strong and healthy were fine; having stayed here for so many days and replenished so much heat, surviving this winter was not a problem, but what about the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled?

Before she could think of a solution, another wave of people arrived. This time it was from the Health Office, insisting that the large gathering of people here posed a risk of infectious disease and that a thorough disinfection of the place was required. And during the disinfection process, all things and people had to be temporarily moved away.

Hal could only perform a demonstration for them of what the Green Lantern disinfection method was. He used his super ability to eliminate all viruses and bacteria in the places these health workers could touch. He hadn't even known he had this ability himself before; sure enough, when people are pushed to the limit, they can do anything.

The Health Office people left, and then the Environmental Management Office people came, insisting that the gathering of homeless people damaged the city's appearance and needed to be relocated as soon as possible. Diana looked at the dilapidated factory buildings and the empty streets here and didn't know where it was damaging the city's appearance.

The few of them argued their case at the door again. Thanks to this heavy snow day, which caused the temperature to plummet, ordinary people who were not super-powered individuals could not stay here for too long. After bickering for a while, the Environmental Management Office also left.

Immediately following was the Federal Bureau of Investigation, insisting that a fugitive was mixed in among these people and they needed to go in to inspect. They were asked to produce evidence and a search warrant, which they could not produce. In the end, it was Victor who forged a call from a superior and forcibly made them leave.

After this day, everyone was exhausted. They just didn't understand; isn't it just helping some homeless people? Who could it possibly harm? With just a few hundred people, even if they sold drugs, they couldn't sell much, right? Was it worth using such big connections for such a small amount of money?

The few of them were actually all completely baffled because this was clearly not normal. The various types of personnel and police forces mobilized now had clearly exceeded the scope of gangs or local government. Could it be that the federal government was making trouble again?

Just because they didn't move the Capitol building back?

But thinking about it carefully, it wasn't right. If the federal government was targeting these super-powered individuals, then there were actually better ways to break them up, such as attacking their families or hometowns, such as fabricating charges to file lawsuits against them, or if that didn't work, sending some super-powered individuals to fight them; even if they couldn't win, they could still smash this place to pieces.

But these methods were clearly not targeting the super-powered individuals, but were just targeting these ordinary homeless people. Harassing the shelter managers over and over again, trying to find loopholes using various legal provisions and draft clauses, or having law enforcement officers take turns intimidating them—the goal was just to make this matter impossible to accomplish.

"What do you think is going on?" J'onn asked.

"They might just not want anyone to be able to start this," Arthur thought for a moment and said. "Have you noticed? This matter is actually not difficult at all; helping these people doesn't take any effort at all."

Everyone nodded; they had also already discovered that the matter itself was not as difficult as they had expected. After the previous events, they had already prepared to fight three hundred rounds with the federal government and local government; that scene, even if not called Mission Impossible, would at least be a Firefight.

They had even prepared to be distrusted, rejected, or even insulted by people. After all, these homeless people had already fallen to the very bottom of society, and any kind of disaster could occur here; their vigilance must be very strong, persuading them would not be easy, and being injured by their stress reactions would be normal.

However, things were much smoother than they had imagined.

There was a lot of information about homeless people on the internet, which made it easy for them to investigate the distribution of homeless people. When looking for people, because the weather was already too cold and too many people were too hungry, when you said you could give them a bite to eat, they didn't have much room for distrust; after all, staying in place was also waiting for death, and going out to fight for it at least offered a glimmer of hope, so it was very easy to take them away.

There was no one blocking the transportation link, and they could even hire professional trucks. The few truck drivers they contacted were all good people; even on such a heavy snow day, there were those willing to make the trip, and it could be seen that it wasn't entirely for money.

After arriving at the shelter, although there were some small quarrels and disputes, the vast majority of people were very good, would do things within their power, would help each other, and would even turn around and comfort them.

To speak of the investment in all these matters, besides energy and emotion, the actual material investment did not exceed 200,000 US dollars. Although the super-powered part could not be counted in, all the links did not necessarily require super abilities to be completed; hiring more ordinary people would be the same.

Although there were only a few hundred people here, the homeless people in the entire urban area were only tens of thousands; saving all these tens of thousands of people according to this standard, the cost would not exceed 100 million.

And last year, the total budget of Metropolis was about 150 billion US dollars, and the municipal management funds alone were 6 billion. As long as a fraction was taken from this fund, or even a fraction of a fraction, it would be enough to let these tens of thousands of homeless people survive this winter. There was no difficulty in execution, and the time required would not be very long; taking one week would be enough to solve most of it, and even if the efficiency was lower and they dragged their feet, it could always be solved in one or two months.

However, no one did so. This meant that the difficulty of helping homeless people never existed at the implementation level. Various governments, various institutions, various departments, and even individuals did not do so, not because they couldn't, but what blocked them must be something more abstract.

Once they encountered this kind of thing, the few of them were all a bit lost because the enemy was invisible and intangible.

Community workers came to check; could you kill them all? Health workers came to check hygiene; could you detain them? Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to make trouble; you couldn't use force to confront them. Because the group of people who came didn't have malice toward the Justice League or these homeless people; they were purely acting according to rules and regulations. If their superiors told them to come and check, they had to come; otherwise, who would be willing to come to such a remote place in the wind and snow to bicker with people?

Even, among them, there was no lack of good people who wanted to give them a reminder. People from various departments came and hinted, both openly and secretly, that you had offended someone, this matter couldn't go on, and told them to leave a way out early and not waste their efforts.

It could be said that in this series of events, not one of all the people was a true bad person, and there were even many who could be called good people with quite a bit of human brilliance. Logically speaking, with so many people working toward one goal, they should have been able to accomplish it, but in fact, it just didn't work.

On the second day of the heavy snow, Diana received a mysterious call. The other party said on the phone, "Hello, Ms. Prince, I am calling you in a personal capacity. I just want to remind you that someone is investigating the public art land you applied for in the Biltzig community; they seem to want to file charges against you in the name of illegal use of leased land. I can only help you suppress this indictment for three days; you must resolve the trouble within three days. Please hurry, goodbye."

Diana's hair stood on end. She hurriedly went to find J'onn and said, "When we applied to lease the factory building, what did we write as the purpose?"

"There was no welfare purpose at the time," J'onn said. "You just picked a purpose in your industry, public space art..."

"They found out," Diana said. Then she took out her phone and said to Victor, "Is it too late to change it now?"

"Can't change it," Victor said. "Because there is indeed no category used for relief; it cannot be found in all purpose items, and there are no laws or drafts related to this."

"Then why can those relief points... don't tell me everyone is illegal?"

"They should have applied the community free land entry."

"Then can't we apply it?"

"But this thing requires a vote by the entire community and also requires prior approval; it's definitely too late now." Victor also appeared somewhat worried and said, "Once the lease purpose is violated, not only might you be cleared out, but you also need to pay compensation."

Just as he said this, the phone rang again. Diana answered the phone, and the voice on the other side was somewhat rough: "What the hell are you doing? I agreed to lease the factory land to you at the time because you said you were going to make some art sculpture there, and now someone called me and said you are helping homeless people there?!"

Fear cannot defeat me, and I will control fear!

"We are doing performance art," J'onn took the phone and said, "This is a social experiment-style performance art activity."

The other side seemed not to believe his nonsense at all, but just hummed twice and then said, "Fine, great philanthropist, I must tell you that someone has already come to me and demanded that I sue you for illegal land use. I don't have the spare money to do these things, but you'd better be careful; both the community and the municipality can file lawsuits. Once sent to court, I won't testify for you."

"We will find a way immediately," Diana said. "Thank you for your reminder." ===== CHAPTER 4381 =====