Homelander considered himself the ideal human being, and in many ways, he was.
A sharp mind, a perfect body, a superhuman being in the flesh.
He might have had a few psychological defects, but they were insignificant.
There was, however, one small flaw that bothered him.
Not much, but enough to remind him that he was still far from perfect.
Every organism exists for a single purpose, something it is born with and eventually dies having fulfilled.
That purpose is reproduction.
Giving life was something practically every human being was capable of, but not a supe.
The moment they acquired their powers, all supes became sterile.
Manufactured products, like androids that could only imitate human behavior.
However…
“Could you repeat that, please?” I asked, unable to believe my own ears.
“You have a son,” Madelyn repeated.
This time, however, there was no trace of her usual smile.
“How old is he?”
“He’s eight.”
The woman pressed her lips together before answering.
“So you’ve been hiding the existence of my son from me for eight years?”
My eyes began to glow red, but there was no anger in them.
Only curiosity.
Apparently, that was frightening enough.
Her heartbeat quickened, and I could clearly see beads of sweat forming on her forehead.
I understood perfectly why they had hidden the boy from his father.
It was simple.
Homelander would make about as good a father as Gandhi would make a terrorist.
He was a narcissistic psychopath who didn’t merely consider himself superhuman.
He practically thought of himself as a god.
That was Homelander in a nutshell.
He couldn’t love anyone.
Friendship and companionship were nothing more than tools to him.
The only thing they had ever been able to use against him was his attachment to Stillwell.
He would have ruined the boy, turning him into a second version of himself, only worse.
Vought’s executives simply couldn’t allow that to happen.
The irony was that I remembered perfectly well what those same executives had done to the boy who would eventually become Homelander.
Being forced to stick his hand into an oven had been one of the milder experiments.
Then there had been the months of complete isolation.
Being locked inside a massive aquarium until he lost consciousness.
Testing all kinds of weapons and poisonous substances on him.
Those were things I didn’t even want to think about.
I didn’t even realize when my eyes began glowing much brighter, far more ominously, while my brows furrowed.
If they did even a third of what they had done to Homelander to this child…
I’d grind every single person at the top of Vought into dust.
“His mother asked us to!” Madelyn practically shouted, pressing herself into the couch.
I froze.
The red glow in my eyes slowly faded.
“Who is she?”
“Rebecca Butcher. She used to work here as the director of digital marketing.”
Madelyn let out a quiet breath when she saw that my eyes were no longer threatening to burn straight through her.
“Right.”
I remembered the name.
I remembered the woman, too.
And I remembered the rather complicated circumstances surrounding the conception of my son.
Classic workplace harassment.
Another corporate event celebrating some meaningless record cooked up by the marketing department. This story is hosted at g.com.
Then some idiot decided it would be fun to play NTR with Rebecca Butcher, who had attended the event with her husband.
A simple threat to fire her had been enough.
The desperate woman had chosen her career over her husband, who had been standing only a few meters away from them at the time.
“She’s raising him herself, isn’t she?”
I already understood that Rebecca could have spent years turning her son against supes, especially Homelander.
Still, I found that hard to believe.
Vought wouldn’t have been happy about that.
“Yes. They live on a large estate surrounded by concrete walls.”
“I recognize your methods.”
I smiled bitterly when I saw her look away.
“Nothing has been done to him. No experiments. He lives with his mother and is growing up like an ordinary child,” the woman hurriedly explained.
I had little choice but to believe her.
I could see straight through her.
Literally.
“What’s his name? Please don’t tell me it’s John Doe.”
I raised an eyebrow, involuntarily remembering the name written on Homelander’s civilian identification documents.
John Doe.
Nobody had called him that in a very long time.
“His name is Ryan.”
“Little king. What an appropriate name,” I muttered under my breath as I calmly walked toward the woman.
“So, are you going to tell me where they are?”
“Homelander…”
“You don’t have the right to ask me for anything after hiding something like this from me for so many years and keeping my son locked away.”
My brows furrowed.
“We aren’t keeping them locked away. They can leave whenever they want. We’re only monitoring them so we can control the activation of his abilities if it happens.”
She assured me of this, but…
“You haven’t forgotten, have you? I can easily tell when someone is lying, especially when the lie is this obvious.”
I spoke with clear displeasure as I touched her chin and gently lifted her head.
“Sorry.”
She swallowed thickly, unable to tear her eyes away from mine.
“Only because of our old friendship am I going to let you keep walking around this miserable earth. But don’t think for a second that I’ll forget what you’ve done.”
A couple of minutes later, I watched through the wall as Madelyn walked toward the elevator on unsteady legs.
She was still tense, her heart pounding like crazy.
She probably suspected that I was still watching her.
I snorted quietly and turned my attention away.
There was something far more important to think about now.
How exactly was I supposed to meet my son?
At first glance, it seemed pointless.
Why would I care about a child who was practically a stranger to me?
I’m not Homelander.
But this was my body now, and there was no way I could ignore what Vought’s executives were planning.
Homelander was the strongest superhero alive, and there was seemingly no way to kill him.
Every attempt to create another supe capable of matching his strength had failed.
Queen Maeve was one such attempt.
Now, however, there was a child who could theoretically inherit all of the power that was now mine.
And if Vought had failed to raise Homelander into a completely obedient superhuman, they could very well succeed with his son by taking a different approach.
For some reason, I really didn’t like the idea of an organization full of unscrupulous bastards having a weapon they could point at me.
I sighed and walked over to the wardrobe.
When I opened the doors, I found four identical superhero costumes staring back at me.
I silently closed the doors, turned around, and flew out through the balcony.
There was absolutely no way I could meet my son dressed like that.
I didn’t think any child would be happy to see a freak famous across the entire world standing in front of him.
First, I needed to present myself as a human being, not some damn demigod.
So the meeting would have to wait.
I wasn’t going to leave him alone for even a single day, though.
They could easily replace the child with another one and give that kid Compound V.
I couldn’t allow that.
So I flew at full speed, exceeding ten thousand kilometers per hour.
It wasn’t surprising that I arrived in roughly ten minutes.
Hovering above the enormous estate, I looked down.
It was indeed surrounded by walls.
My eyes pierced through the walls and clouds, counting more than thirty people working on the property.
Only two of them caught my attention.
A woman and the only child for miles around.
A boy with brown hair and blue eyes.
They were lying together on a couch, watching some melodramatic show on television.
I didn’t spend long observing them.
I simply turned around and flew back.
The problem of finding normal clothes was solved quickly enough.
I simply asked Ashley to bring me something decent.
Unfortunately, the only things I liked were a white shirt and a pair of black trousers.
Everything else was far too colorful for my taste.
For the first time in the past few days, I decided to leave the building on foot.
I’d been relying far too heavily on my newly acquired powers.
The most important thing was styling my hair so it looked naturally messy.
That wasn’t difficult.
As for the final piece of the John Doe disguise, I found it at the nearest clothing store.
“They look really good on you,” the girl behind the counter complimented me.
“Thanks.”
I smiled at her and glanced at myself in the mirror.
The man staring back at me no longer looked like Homelander.
At least, Homelander certainly wouldn’t have worn glasses.
Yes, you could call it plagiarism, but who exactly could blame me?
People loved making fun of Superman for disguising his identity this way, but that didn’t change the fact that it worked.
Readers and viewers could look at Superman and Clark Kent side by side and immediately see that they were the same person.
But most people forgot one important detail.
To ordinary people, Superman was always Superman.
He didn’t hide his face behind a mask, which meant he wasn’t really hiding his identity either.
He even had a perfectly official name, Kal-El.
He even had an official occupation.
So it was basically the same as people suspecting Will Smith of secretly being some guy named Carl.
Imagine the famous, charismatic Will Smith changing into cheap clothes and becoming Carl, a shoe salesman.
Ridiculous, right?
Yet nobody recognized Superman in Clark Kent, even though they occasionally noticed the resemblance between the awkward, absent-minded reporter and the superhero.
The same thing happened with me.
Nobody paid any attention when I walked past them.
The image of Homelander, the perfect man with the perfect hairstyle and a permanent smile on his face, simply didn’t match John Doe.
Add the glasses, which made my blue eyes less noticeable, and nobody would even suspect that I was Homelander.
I even remembered a scene from Back to the Future Part II, when they showed the future McFly family.
I had wondered how anyone could possibly fail to recognize the son and father when they were played by the same actor.
Apparently, all it took was wetting the kid’s hair and having him act like a panicking teenager.
So I walked through the park without a care in the world, enjoying a little peace after all the chaos that had piled up over the past few days.
I even bought myself some vanilla ice cream.
It felt like I hadn’t eaten any in years.
I sat down on a bench and finally allowed myself to relax.
“Peace is the parent of all great thoughts.”
I couldn’t help but remember the quote from Joseph Goebbels.
It couldn’t have been more appropriate for the situation.