Tuesday evening.
The sun hung low over West Hills, painting the sky in copper and rust.
Leon left the house on foot, waving off his parents, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets as he headed for the tree line.
The Mustang sat in the driveway, untouched.
He needed the walk.
He needed to be somewhere without windows and neighbors.
‘The Preserve is close.
Ten minutes if I cut through the back lots.’
He kept to side streets, avoiding the main road.
The Spatial Pocket sat at the edge of his awareness the whole way there.
He’d tested the storage function already.
Gun in, gun out.
Smoothest magic trick in the world.
What he hadn’t tested was the part that actually mattered.
He was three blocks out when an engine slowed behind him.
Leon turned, already running through worst-case scenarios, and found himself looking at a dark green Subaru easing up to the curb.
Allison, window down, elbow on the frame, hair loose in a way that made her look nothing like the girl who sat two rows back.
She caught his eye and went pink before she’d even said hello.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” Leon stopped walking.
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Errands.” She gestured at a couple of shopping bags in the back seat.
“My dad’s out of town, left me a list a mile long.
Wait — how do you know where I live?”
“I don’t.
Bad joke.”
“Oh.” She laughed at herself, a little flustered.
Nothing about her tonight looked like the composed new girl from homeroom, not even the Allison from the show he remembered.
The car idled between them.
He was close enough now to clock the exact shade of brown her eyes went in this light.
‘She really is pretty.’
“Want a ride somewhere?” she asked.
“You’re pretty far from anything in town out here.”
“Nah, I’m okay.
Just clearing my head.”
“I get it.
New school, new team.” Her smile turned knowing.
“The whole school’s talking about you and Scott at practice.
Lydia wouldn’t shut up about it.”
“Lydia talked about me?”
“Yes.” Allison tilted her head, watching him.
“Good things, I hope.”
“That’s between her and I.”
“It’s alright.
I can already tell.” Leon looked at her slight blush.
“So,” Leon said, shifting his weight like the thought had only just occurred to him.
“Lydia’s party.
Are you going?”
“I told Lydia I couldn’t go.
Family thing.” A pause, longer than it needed to be.
“My dad’s out of town this week, though.
So I could probably—”
“Come,” Leon said.
“As my plus-one.”
It came out plainer than he’d planned — no polish on it, no flare about it.
Allison stared at him.
“Your plus-one.”
“Unless someone else has already invited you?”
She chuckled, “Okay.
Yeah.
I’ll come.” She was already reaching for her phone.
“Can I have your number?
For — coordination.”
He gave it to her.
A minute later his phone buzzed with a single text: a red fox emoji, no caption, sent by someone who looked immediately embarrassed about it.
“I’ll see you Friday,” she said.
“Friday.”
The Subaru pulled off.
Leon watched it go, then turned back toward the trees, a small, satisfied smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
‘Sorry, Scott.’
***********
The clearing he found was half a mile in — oak trees ringing an open patch of old leaves, no trail nearby, no reason for anyone to wander through.
He pulled the Desert Eagle from his Inventory, checked the mag.
Fifteen rounds, standard .50 AE.
Racked the slide.
‘Let’s see what infinite actually costs.’
The first shot took a chunk out of a trunk twenty yards off.
The recoil was brutal — enough to snap a normal wrist back — but his Lv1 strength swallowed most of it.
He kept firing.
By the eighth round he felt it: not in his arm, deeper, like something behind his sternum was being slowly siphoned.
By the fourteenth his vision had started narrowing at the edges.
The fifteenth round emptied the mag with a hollow click.
He stood there, breathing like he’d sprinted a mile, and then the gun went warm in his hand — a pulse, almost a heartbeat — and the slide slammed forward on its own.
‘Fifteen rounds, maybe forty percent of my reserves.
Call it around thirty shots before I’m running on empty.
Good to know.’
He was reaching to holster it when the smell hit him.
Copper.
Old, sharp, wrong for a forest — thicker than blood should be, sweeter.
Every hair on his arms stood up at once.
He turned.
Someone was already there.
She hadn’t been standing there a second ago.
Pale and dark-haired, with fresh blood covering her chin and chest, she made his instincts scream before his brain could even process her presence.
She wore a tattered, dirt-streaked corset dress made of heavy, outdated silk — the kind of Victorian relic you’d find rotting in an antique trunk, its long skirts torn to ribbons at the hem.
Veins spiderwebbed faintly under her eyes as she looked him over, unhurried, like she was liking what she was seeing.
“Well,” she said.
Her voice had a dry, amused edge to it.
“You smell interesting.”
She moved.
Leon barely registered the blur before something clipped his shoulder and sent him rolling through the leaf litter.
He came up on one knee, gun already in hand, and fired twice at where she’d been standing.
She wasn’t there.
She was behind him, a cold hand wrapping around his neck and hauling him up onto his toes like he weighed nothing.
“Is that what a gun looks like these days?” She sounded delighted, turning him to face her, one hand tilting his chin up.
“Where does a cute kid like you get a gun like that?”
Her eyes went distant for a second, pupils swallowing color.
“Drop it.”
The word landed like a shove behind his eyes — not a suggestion, a command aimed straight at the base of his skull.
His fingers actually loosened.
[WARNING: Compulsion attempt detected.]
[Super Senses: Lv1 – Resistance chance 20%]
[…]
[Resistance Successful!]
The pressure kept building and then just — slid off, like water off glass.
He felt it fail.
He didn’t let his face show it.
He went slack instead.
Let his eyes glaze.
Let the gun drift down toward the dirt, a puppet with its strings cut.
She grinned, delighted with herself, and leaned in close enough that her breath ghosted against his cheek.
“There we go.
Good boy.”
‘Now.’
The gun came up under her chin before she’d finished the sentence.
He fired point-blank.
She staggered back, more shocked than hurt, blood misting the air.
Leon didn’t wait to see how shocked — he put two more rounds into her chest and one into her skull.
She went down hard into the leaves, twitching, trying to drag herself upright on hands that kept slipping in her own blood.
‘She’s not knocked out, in the show headshots should have.
I guess it has to be a stake to the heart.’
Leon shot the back of her head a couple more times before he crossed the distance while she was still down, thinking fast.
‘She’s definitely a vampire.
But in the show, a shot to the head should have knocked her out cold.’ He stared down at her, heart hammering as her eyes locked onto his with pure menace.
The entry wounds in her skull were already closing, pushing the flattened lead out of her flesh.
‘Even those rules are different here.’
His breath hitched as his eyes swept over her dirt-streaked, ancient lace.
The realization hit him like ice water.
‘The tattered Victorian dress.
The dirt.
She can’t be one of the tomb vampires, right?’
Fragments of lore flashed frantically through his brain — the old church, the tomb beneath the ruins, a whole army of starved, century-old monsters finally released into the woods.
Some fled, some stayed to terrorize the town.
Leon shook his head, desperately looking around the forest floor for a sharp branch.
‘If she’s out, it means the timeline in Mystic Falls hasn’t advanced much yet.
The Originals aren’t even on the radar.’
TVD had never been subtle about one thing, and it was something he hoped stayed the same — that blood healed.
If it worked the same way here, wasting it would be criminal.
Leon shot her twice more in the head and yanked a wide-mouth container he’d saved before from his Spatial Pocket and uncapped it, pressing the open rim directly against the heavy flow spilling over her collarbone.
He caught the thick, dark spill while she snarled weakly beneath him, clawing at his wrist with fading strength.
Blood splashed across his knuckles, hot and vital.
[Vampire Bloodline Detected…]
[Absorption Complete — 20 Supernatural Energy Acquired]
[New Ability Unlocked: Eternal Youth]
[Current SE: 25]
Leon blinked through the notification, quickly capped the container, and stowed it before she could get her legs back under her.
She was already healing — the ragged hole under her chin knitting closed, her grip on his wrist regaining terrifying strength.
BANG.
He shot her one more time in the head.
He grabbed a fallen branch, snapped it over his knee into a rough point, and drove it dead center into her chest before she’d fully recovered.
She went rigid, let out one short, furious sound, and then stilled completely as her body started losing color — the specific, total stillness of something that had never really been alive.
[Supernatural Creature Terminated]
[Supernatural Energy Absorbed +100]
[Current SE: 125]
Leon stood over the body, chest heaving, his hands finally starting to shake now that there was nothing left to fight.
‘I’m really weak.
If even a weakened and starving vampire could easily overpower me, what the hell would I do when a healthy one appears?
Or one of the originals decides he wants me for dinner?
I got really lucky this time, or I would have become a blood bag.’
‘One hundred twenty-five.
That’s more than the last two plot deviations combined.’
He didn’t waste time being impressed with himself.
He crouched, gathering the blood-soaked leaves around the body into a pile, checking the ground methodically for anything a curious deputy or a sharp-eyed hunter might find later — a smear on bark, a dark patch in the dirt.
He was the paranoid type.
He imagined some random person passing by with a dog, and after smelling the blood and body, it would eventually lead to an investigation and him in jail.
Leon looked at his Spatial Pocket Ability and sent the mental command.
[Spatial Pocket — Lv1 (2ft x 2ft)]
[Upgrade to Lv2: 10 SE — 4ft x 4ft]
[Upgrade to Lv3: 25 SE — 8ft x 8ft]
He spent the SE without hesitating.
125 dropped to 115, then to 90.
The pocket dimension expanded around him in a way he felt more than saw — a strange pressure widening at the very edge of his mind.
He willed the body forward.
It vanished silently, along with the ruined leaves and the branch.
The clearing looked completely untouched apart from a scatter of bullet holes in one tree trunk.
Nothing a casual hiker would think twice about.
‘Ninety left.’
He opened the status screen out of habit, and stopped.
[Current Identity: Homelander (1%)]
[Supernatural Energy: 90]
’10 SE per percent.
I can push this right now.’
He didn’t hesitate long.
[40 Supernatural Energy Consumed]
[Current Identity: Homelander (5%)]
[Super Strength — Level Up]
[Super Defense — Level Up]
[Super Speed — Level Up]
[Super Senses — Level Up]
[Current SE: 50]
‘I should have done this from the start.’ Leon took a deep breath as power hummed in his veins.
‘Buying the Inventory Ability and the gun felt smart at the time, but nothing compares to personal power.
I got lucky this time.
It might not happen next time.’
He smiled, and started increasing the percentage again, then noticed the cost had jumped — 10 SE per percent had become 20.
[40 Supernatural Energy Consumed]
[Current Identity: Homelander (7%)]
[Super Strength — Level Up]
[Super Senses — Level Up]
[Current SE: 10]
He flexed his hand, listening to the forest settle back into its usual noise.
Suddenly, he could hear individual leaves scraping against bark thirty yards out that he hadn’t been able to place before.
‘After five percent, one percentage now costs twenty Supernatural Energy.’
He stood there a moment longer, letting his pulse come down, before starting the walk home.
His powers still weren’t on the same level as the vampire, but he felt a bit safer.
[Current Identity: Homelander (7%)]
[Supernatural Energy: 10]
[Internal Abilities: Super Strength: Lv3 | Super Defense: Lv2 | Super Speed: Lv2 | Super Senses: Lv3]
[External Abilities: Regeneration: Lv2 | Spatial Pocket: Lv3 (8ft x 8ft capacity) | Eternal Youth: Lv1]
[Locked Abilities: X-ray vision: Lv0 | Laser Eyes: Lv0 | Flight: Lv0]
(TIP: Eternal Youth slowed the aging process of the body slightly, not stopped it.
Reach Lv 5 for aging block.)
Leon noticed his status had changed, more organized now.
‘Wait, Homelander didn’t actually have immortality.
Soldier Boy and Stormfront stopped aging because of early V1, but Homelander was grown from a baby and aged normally.
He was terrified of getting old.’ Leon smiled as the realization washed over him.
The template didn’t have it because Homelander never possessed it.
‘So I’m un-aging now?
Or at least I will be!’
***********
He showered the second he got back, longer than necessary, watching pink water spiral down the drain and telling himself it was dirt.
By the time he was dressed again the sky outside had gone the color of a bruise, clouds rolling low, the first fat drops of rain tapping his window.
He was on the couch, running numbers in his head, when his phone rang.
Unknown number.
He recognized it anyway — the fox emoji, over a couple hours old.
“Allison?”
The voice that came through wasn’t crying, but close.
“I hit a dog.
I — it came out of nowhere, I didn’t even see it, its leg’s bent wrong and I don’t know what to—”
“Where are you?”
She gave it to him, breathless, scattered.
He was already grabbing his keys.
“Ten minutes.
Don’t move.
I’m coming.”
***********
He found her on the shoulder of a dark road, hazards blinking through the rain, a gray-and-white collie wrapped in a blanket from her trunk.
Allison was soaked through, mascara running, and she leaned into him the second he crouched beside her like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
“Hey.
Look at me.” His voice came out steadier than he felt about most things lately.
“We’re going to fix this.
There’s an animal clinic on Fifth, ten minutes if we hurry.”
She nodded, some of the panic draining out of her now that Leon was here.
Beacon Hills Animal Clinic was dark behind the glass when they pulled in, the sign already flipped to CLOSED, rain hammering the windows.
Leon balanced the wrapped dog against his chest and knocked hard, twice.
A light came on in the back.
A moment later Scott’s face appeared at the door — still in his own clothes, jeans and a flannel, hair a little damp like he’d just come from the employee bathroom.
He clocked the dog first, then Allison soaked and shaking behind Leon, and had the lock turned before he’d finished processing who he was even looking at.
“Leon?
Come in.”
He led them past the darkened front desk into an exam room, flipping lights on as he went, any surprise buried fast by the routine of a job he knew well.
He cleared the table with one sweep of his arm.
“Broken leg.
Clean break, not compound.” He was already pulling supplies from a cabinet without needing to look for them — splint, tape, the same steady hands he must have watched Dr.
Deaton use a dozen times.
“I can set it myself.”
The dog whimpered once when he straightened the leg, and with a look from Scott, it went still, some quiet, careful pressure in the way Scott held her keeping her from fighting him.
Allison stayed pressed against Leon’s side the whole time, shivering more from nerves now than the rain.
Leon shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it over her shoulders without a word.
She leaned into him, and he murmured something too low for a human ear to catch.
Scott heard it anyway.
“She’s going to be fine,” he said, not looking up from the splint, answering a question nobody had asked out loud.
He kept his hands steady out of pure habit while something in his chest settled into a resigned ache.
He didn’t need enhanced senses to read the six feet of space between himself and the two of them.
He just needed eyes.
‘She’s never looked at me like that.’
[Key Plot Point Altered]
[Original: Scott McCall comforts Allison Argent after the dog incident, deepening their connection.]
[Altered: Leon Lockhart comforts Allison Argent.
Bond significantly strengthened.
Scott McCall disengages from romantic pursuit.]
[Cascading Deviation Bonus: Rival disengagement confirmed]
[Supernatural Energy Acquired: +30]
[Current SE: 40]
Leon read it over her shoulder, arm still around her, expression unchanged.
Outside, the rain kept falling.
***********
The next morning the halls smelled like wet backpacks and cheap cologne.
Leon found Scott and Stiles at his locker, Stiles already mid-sentence before Leon had the door open.
“—so this guy just appears out of nowhere, total creeper vibes, tells us it’s private property like he owns the whole forest,” Stiles said.
“His name is Derek Hale.”
“Like the family that—”
“Burned to death.
Ten years ago.
The whole house, everyone in it, except him and his sister.” Stiles said it with the barely-contained glee of someone who found tragedy fascinating from a safe distance.
“And now he’s just back.
Skulking around like discount Batman.”
Scott added, quieter, “He had my inhaler, threw it at me and warned us before leaving.”
“Weird,” Leon said.
Stiles’s attention snapped over without warning.
“Question.
Anything happening to you yet?
Nightmares, sleepwalking, waking up somewhere you shouldn’t?
Scott basically got frequent-flyer miles for the middle of the woods and swam in a poor guy’s pool.”
Leon felt the question settle uncomfortably in his chest.
He could’ve lied.
It would’ve been easy.
“No,” he said instead, flat.
“Nothing like that.”
Stiles’s eyebrows ticked up, and he filed it away without comment.
Scott looked at Leon a beat too long before Stiles moved on to something about silver and wolfsbane he’d found at two in the morning.
***********
Jackson found Leon and Scott by the lockers before the try-outs, radiating the specific hostility of someone who’d rehearsed a speech in the mirror.
“All right, little man.” He shoved Scott’s shoulder into the locker.
“How ’bout you tell me where you’re getting your juice — both of you!” He glared at Leon not far back.
“What?” Scott blinked.
“Where.
Are.
You.
Getting.
Your.
Juice?” Jackson glared at Scott.
“My mom does all the grocery shopping.”
Jackson’s jaw ticked, convinced he was being mocked.
He turned on Leon instead, who hadn’t said a word.
“And you.
The transfer kid shows up, suddenly starts hanging out with this loser and both start stopping shots like all-stars.” He stepped in close.
“You’re the one who gave this idiot his juice, aren’t you?”
Leon looked at him and said nothing at all.
“I’m talking to you!” Jackson glared at Leon’s mocking smirk and lost it, throwing a punch.
Leon caught it on his forearm, barely moving, and shoved back.
Jackson slammed into the lockers hard enough to rattle the whole bank of them, slid down, heaving as the breath left him.
He sat there glaring up with wounded, furious eyes.
“Leon—” Scott started, guilt flickering across his face even though he’d done nothing.
“We should go,” Leon said, already turning away.
They left Jackson on the floor, saying nothing.
He showed up at the game that afternoon anyway, late, moving stiffly, mumbling something about a pulled muscle that Coach Finstock got pissed about but didn’t have the bandwidth to argue — not with two new beasts playing like they’d been born with sticks in their hands.
Scott made first line.
So did Leon, the announcement landing almost as an afterthought.
[Key Plot Point Altered]
[Original: Scott McCall makes first line, a singular defining moment.]
[Altered: Leon Lockhart also makes first line.
Scott’s achievement shared.]
[Supernatural Energy Acquired: +10]
[Current SE: 50]
Stiles’s room that evening looked like a conspiracy board — laptop open, snack wrappers accumulating, a length of chain coiled on the desk like hardware-store nightmare fuel.
“Full moon’s tonight,” Stiles said, dead serious.
“Which means Scott’s chained to the bed frame the second the sun’s down, and you—” he pointed “—are being chained to the desk, right here with us.”
“I have a date,” Leon said.
Scott looked genuinely alarmed.
“Leon, come on.
We don’t know what happens to you on a full moon.”
“I feel fine.”
“That’s exactly what people say right before something terrible happens.”
He let them argue at him for another ten minutes — Scott earnest, Stiles increasingly dramatic about hypothetical scenarios involving claws mid-slow-dance.
“I’ll be fine,” he said finally, grabbing his jacket.
“See you guys tomorrow.”
He left them there.
Stiles shook his head and double-checked the chain’s tensile strength.
Scott stared after him somewhere between worry and helpless resignation.
Leon walked out into the evening already thinking about what he was going to wear.
[40 Supernatural Energy Consumed]
[Current Identity: Homelander (9%)]
[Super Speed — Level Up]
[Super Defense — Level Up]
[Current SE: 10]