Leon drew his hand back and took a small sip of the now-lukewarm black tea from his paper cup.
“And besides, those rule-breakers out there didn’t turn out that way overnight.” Leon explained patiently.
“Do you know what era we’re living in?”
John shook his head.
His concept of time went no further than the simulated lights switching on and off each day.
“It’s the late nineteen-eighties right now.” Leon pointed up at the surveillance cameras overhead, which still looked a bit bulky.
“Human civilization has existed for thousands and thousands of years, and it’s only in the last hundred or so that there’s been an explosion of technology.
But those bad people with power, they’ve already been around for a thousand years, even tens of thousands.”
A flicker of confusion crossed John’s blue eyes.
“A few thousand years?
Then they must be really old.”
“That’s right.
Very old, and very deep-rooted.” Leon shifted into a more comfortable position against the wall, as if settling in to tell a long story.
“In Europe, there are wizards with little wooden sticks.
They hide in castles ordinary people can’t find, studying thick books of magic, passing it down through generation after generation.
And over in Japan, there are onmyoji who command paper talismans and bound spirits, a craft handed down for centuries.”
Leon paused, looking at John’s serious little face, and went on.
“These powers take ordinary people a whole lifetime, even several lifetimes, to learn.
But it’s different here with us.”
“We have Compound V.” John cut in with the answer.
Small as he was, he’d heard the researchers in the lab mention the term plenty of times.
“Right, Compound V.” Leon sighed.
“It’s like a shortcut.
The grown-ups out there with superpowers, they drink the serum and they get power.
But that kind of power is very unstable, and most of them, because the power came so easily, think they can push ordinary people around however they like.
That’s why it’s such a mess out there now.”
What Leon left unsaid was that, in the international circle of the superpowered, Vought was really just an upstart these days.
A few decades ago, the best hero Vought had to show off was that Soldier Boy who ran around smashing things with a shield.
Now nobody knew where Soldier Boy had gotten to, and the last generation’s hero team, Payback, had already fallen apart.
The so-called superheroes active out there now were mostly flashy frauds, packaged up to shoot movies and land ad deals.
Run into a real wizard or onmyoji with hundreds of years of heritage behind them, and they’d often get beaten until they were picking their teeth up off the ground.
It was exactly because of this that Vought’s leadership had sunk into enormous anxiety.
They desperately needed a figurehead who could hold down the entire era.
And that figurehead was this six-year-old blond kid in front of him, still drinking his black tea, his head full of thoughts about how to break someone’s legs.
“So, John.” Leon set the empty paper cup aside and rested both hands on John’s shoulders.
You weren’t mutated by drinking a serum.
You were born with potential that surpasses everyone.
Before you’re fully grown, before you’ve learned how to control your power, going out there would only make things worse.”
John lowered his eyes, half understanding, and looked at his own palms.
“It’s like…
Puppy Hero can’t go running around before he learns to bite, right?”
The comparison made Leon laugh.
“That’s pretty much it.
You have to wait patiently.
Once you’re strong enough, and your head is full of the right rules, then you can push open that door and go tell those hundred-year-old bad people out there what justice really is.”
John nodded hard, picked up a building block again, and his eyes grew even more focused than before.
At the same time, on the hundredth floor above ground in the Vought building, in the president’s office.
On the wide leather sofa sat a young Black man in a sharp suit, his expression cold.
He held a briefing that had just been printed, his brow slightly furrowed.
This was the young Stan Edgar, currently a senior vice president at Vought, though anyone with eyes could see that his taking over the company was only a matter of time.
Madelyn stood in front of the desk, facing Edgar, the look on her face even more severe than it usually was in the lab.
“Has the San Francisco situation been buried?” Edgar set down the briefing, his voice so level it betrayed no flicker of emotion.
“PR has already put out a statement claiming it was a chain explosion in an underground natural gas line.” Madelyn answered quickly.
“We also arranged for Black Noir to go to the disaster zone and take a few photos helping with the rescue.
That drew the public’s attention away a little.”
Edgar leaned back against the sofa, his fingers tapping lightly on the armrest.
“A gas explosion.
We’ve used that excuse four times this year already.
The public is easy to fool, but they aren’t idiots.”
He stood up and walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window, looking down over the bustling streets of New York.
“Those ronin from Japan, why did they come stir up trouble on our turf?”
“Intelligence looked into it.” Madelyn opened the folder in her hands.
“It seems they were fighting over some spirit artifact.
Those ronin clashed with a local supe gang.
Two of our superheroes tried to step in and mediate, and the other side blew up half a street with a single talisman.
The heroes themselves were badly hurt and ended up in the hospital.”
Edgar gave a cold laugh.
That was going out to embarrass us.
Against real superpowers, our product is still too fragile.
The abilities Compound V grants are too one-dimensional.
Up against those characters with their bizarre tricks, there’s no power to fight back at all.”
He turned his head, his gaze sharp on Madelyn.
“How are things going on the lab side?
That boy.”
“His development is perfect.” At the mention of John, Madelyn’s spine straightened a little.
“Every one of his physical indicators is breaking past its limits day by day.
Strength, speed, defense, we still haven’t seen any ceiling.
Most importantly, we just promoted a researcher named Leon to handle his psychological counseling.
So far the results have been surprisingly good.”
“Oh?” Edgar raised an eyebrow.
“That little monster who won’t even spare the other researchers a second glance is actually listening to some low-level employee?”
“This Leon seems to have a method of his own.
He’s instilling a very fanatical set of ideas about justice in John.” Madelyn hesitated, then reported honestly.
“It sounds a little childish, but the boy really has become more disciplined.”
Edgar was silent for a moment, then gave a slight nod.
“Let him use whatever method he wants.
As long as it makes that weapon obedient, I don’t care if he teaches the boy to recite scripture.”
Edgar walked back to his desk and tossed the San Francisco disaster briefing into the shredder.
Over the faint sound of the machine devouring the paper, Edgar’s voice echoed through the spacious office.
“Tell this Leon that the company can approve any resources he wants.
But within ten years, I want to see a flawless Homelander, one who can establish absolute deterrence in this world.
I’m done cleaning up after the guys with their swords and their wooden sticks.”
“Understood, Mr.
Edgar.” Madelyn nodded.
Down in the underground lab, Leon suddenly sneezed.
He rubbed his nose, muttered something about whether the air conditioning was set too low, and reached over to pull the day’s storybook out of the cart beside him.
John immediately dropped the building block in his hand and obediently shuffled over.
“Today we’re not reading Puppy Hero.” Leon opened a new book, its cover showing a little cartoon figure in a cape.
“Today we’re going to talk about what a hero should do when a city has a lot of bad guys causing trouble all at once: how to line them up to break their legs.”
John opened his bright blue eyes wide, listening with the utmost seriousness.