Homelander.
From the top floor of Vought Tower, the glittering New York night sprawled out like it belonged to him alone.
This was the peak of the world. Homelander's private fucking kingdom.
He floated in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling window, star-spangled cape draped over his shoulders, arms crossed, looking down on his city like a king on his throne.
Below, millions of tiny lights blurred into an ocean of stars. Countless people fucking, fighting, and scraping by down there, completely clueless that their so-called god was watching from above.
The feeling always got him hard.
Lonely as hell, but absolute.
This was his favorite part of the day. No cameras flashing in his face, no Madelyn Stillwell's fake-ass smile, no pathetic mortals screaming for him to save them.
Here he could drop the act and just be himself.
He slowly unzipped his pants, a twisted smile spreading across his face, half pleasure, half cruelty.
Time to unload the day's built-up stress in his own special way and remind the city exactly who owned it.
"Haah.. I'm the Homelander..."
Right now he was untouchable. The one true king.
"Haah.. I can do whatever the fuck I want—"
But just as he hit that sweet spot, right before he could start his sacred little ritual, something fucked it all up.
A golden meteor ripped across the night sky from the horizon, barreling straight at Vought Tower like it had a death wish. The thing ignored every law of aerodynamics and physics.
The piercing sonic boom punched right through the top-floor's reinforced soundproof glass and crashed into his private space like an unwelcome cockblock.
Homelander's hand froze mid-stroke.
His whole body locked up.
Then pure rage, shame, and raw brutality exploded inside his skull.
His face turned beet red. Veins bulged on his temples and neck like fat, angry worms.
Nobody, nothing, interrupted his private time. Nobody invaded his territory. Nobody challenged his godlike status.
Some suicidal piece of shit had just flown straight into his sanctuary at the worst possible moment.
"You're fucking dead!"
His eyes flared bright red with heat. Killing intent poured off him so thick the bulletproof glass dozens of centimeters thick started to creak and strain.
Whatever the flying asshole outside was, Homelander had already decided: next second he'd rip it into microscopic dust and scatter it across the universe.
But before he could move, the small figure hovering right outside the window spoke in a calm, almost bored voice.
"Easy there, Put your dick away before you embarrass yourself even more... Dad."
"!!!?"
The word wasn't loud, but it hit Homelander like a sledgehammer straight to the skull.
Time fucking stopped.
All the rage, the killing lust, the burning shame, everything froze solid in that single second.
He stood there completely stunned, the red glow in his eyes fading fast. His face twisted through a dozen emotions at once: pure absurdity, total shock, and flat-out disbelief.
What the fuck did I just hear?
This kid… just called me.. Dad?
His brain short-circuited for a solid few seconds.
He forced the boiling fury in his head to cool down enough to think.
Slowly, he zipped his pants back up while staring hard at the boy floating outside the window.
Just a regular-looking kid, maybe seven or eight years old, wearing plain casual clothes. Golden hair drifting lightly in the New York night wind.
But the way he hovered there, hundreds of meters up, without any jetpack, wings, or gadget bullshit, completely natural, that was what made Homelander's stomach drop.
He could fly.
The kid could actually fucking fly. Not a huge jump or a jet-like flight like some nobody. But a controlled flight.
Right now, in all of Vought, only Homelander could have controlled flight, pushing the air like the ground, as if he had an invisible muscle. It was his signature. The one thing that proved he was the strongest supe, the original, not just another lab-grown product.
And now some random brat shows up doing the exact same thing.
Impossible.
"You…"
Homelander forced the word out, choking back the killing intent that wanted to explode. His voice came out tight, dripping with suspicion and threat.
"Why the hell did you call me Dad?"
He needed an answer.
A good one.
Otherwise he was still more than happy to paint the New York skyline with a bright red fireworks show of blood and guts.
Ryan floated there calm as ever, taking in every twitch and flicker on Homelander's face.
He saw the defensiveness, the barely-contained murder lust, and underneath it all, the raw shock and chaotic storm raging inside the man.
He didn't rush to explain. Words were useless against a paranoid psycho like Homelander. Arrogant, trust issues out the ass, zero patience.
Between gods, only power talked.
So Ryan let his own eyes ignite with the exact same scorching red glow.
The next second, a perfectly controlled Heat Vision beam lanced silently into the distant night sky.
Several kilometers away, a fat cloud simply vanished. No boom, no flash, no drama. Just gone, erased clean like someone took a giant eraser to it.
The level of control was even tighter, even cleaner than anything Homelander had ever managed.
"Because I've got the same powers as you!"
After the little demonstration, Ryan spoke calmly, voice steady and clear enough to cut straight through the glass into Homelander's ears.
"Super Vision, Super Hearing, an invulnerable body, and this…"
He twisted his small frame into a tight, high-speed flip right there in the air. The rush of wind he kicked up whipped into a swirling vortex that tore down the street below.
"…the ability of controlled flight."
Homelander stood frozen, completely speechless.
He stared hard at the kid, searching that young but way-too-calm face, and for a split second he saw a ghost of himself, younger, meaner, absolutely sure of his own strength. That kind of cocky confidence couldn't be faked.
Dead silence stretched between them.
After what felt like forever, Homelander finally forced the words out through gritted teeth.
"Who the fuck is your mother?"
A small smile finally tugged at Ryan's lips.
He knew the hook had sunk deep.
He dropped the name nice and casual, the one guaranteed to rip through Homelander's brain like a grenade.
"Becca Butcher."
The second the name left his mouth, Homelander's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His breath actually caught.
That woman. Of course he remembered her.
The only one who'd ever made him feel something almost human… before she fucking betrayed him.
Ryan watched the reaction and knew the timing was perfect.
So he delivered the knockout punch, the one that would smash through every last defense the man had left.
"Oh, and there's one more thing you might find interesting…"
He let the pause hang just long enough to watch Homelander's face twist between nerves and greedy hope.
"I never took Compound V."
"I was born this way."
"A natural-born supe with the exact same powers as you."
The words "natural-born" slammed into Homelander like three massive wrecking balls, smashing straight into the rawest, most insecure parts of his fucked-up psyche.
Homelander wasn't stupid. Far from it. He was sharp as a blade.
He got the full weight of those words in a heartbeat.
This kid wasn't some Vought lab experiment. Not another knock-off pumped full of Compound V.
This was real. Natural. Pure blood.
His own flesh-and-blood son.
A Son of God.
Homelander stood there like he'd been hit by a truck. His godlike mask cracked wide open.
In the span of a few seconds his expression went haywire: total shock, then ugly doubt, then a sick, twisted kind of joy that looked almost insane.
Right after that, the joy flipped into a deep fear he didn't even realize was crawling up his spine.
He wasn't the only miracle anymore.
He had a son.
A natural-born supe, maybe even purer and stronger than him.
The thought hit him with a rush of excitement he'd never felt before… and a threat that cut even deeper.
And the craziest part? His own kid had come looking for him first.
While Homelander's brain short-circuited and his perfect image fell apart, Ryan drifted down smoothly until he was floating right in front of him.
He looked up with those cold ice-blue eyes, exact copies of Homelander's, and stared straight at the man who was currently losing his shit.
"Dad, if you keep standing there looking this, you're never gonna be able to run Vought the way it needs to be run."
"I still expect you to make those Vought bastards pay for every bit of shit I went through because of them."
"Right now, a father like you… honestly looks pretty ..unqualified to me."