Under Dean’s raw strength Homelander was smashed into a perfect human-shaped crater in the turf.
Before the completely dazed Homelander could even climb out of the imprint, another massive force yanked on his arm.
The world spun and he made intimate contact with the ground all over again.
Just like that Dean swung him back and forth with a steady “thud, thud, thud” more than a dozen times.
The people in the stands felt like someone had pressed a vibrating egg against their asses.
By the time their hips were completely numb from the shaking seats, Dean finally stopped.
He grabbed Homelander’s arm the same way you would pick up a dead dog and lifted the completely limp Homelander up in front of his face with a cruel smile.
“What the fuck do you fucking have to fucking say now?” Blood and tears mixed on Homelander’s face.
Listening to Dean’s lion-level language that packed half a pound of “fucks” into every sentence, and with his face already swollen like a pig’s head, Homelander worked his jaw.
“Mom… help…” That finally put a look of pure satisfaction on Dean’s face.
He turned his head toward the commentary booth.
“Wet nurse of the milk-bottle boy, didn’t you hear your baby calling for help?” Madelyn, who had been completely frozen on the high platform, finally snapped out of it.
She frantically hit the mute button and shouted: “The exhibition match is over!
End it right now!
Medical team, get on the field and take the wounded to the medical area for emergency treatment!” Only after the medical team carried Homelander and the other champion contestants away was Dean left alone in the center of the arena.
The audience in the stands finally broke out of their long stunned silence.
Then… “Invincible Dean!
Invincible Dean!
Invincible!!!” Deafening cheers for Dean exploded across the stadium once more.
This time the crowd was not just screaming his name.
They had added the word “Invincible” right in front of it.
Because Dean had just beaten the “invincible” Homelander that Vought had spent years hyping up.
That made Dean the new invincible one.
Dean spread his arms wide, still wearing that same charmingly confident smile, and soaked up his personal victory moment in the middle of the arena.
What Dean did not know was that inside the president’s office at Vought Tower, someone watching the victorious Dean on the live broadcast screen was smiling even wider than Dean himself.
That person was not Vought’s current CEO, Stan Edgar.
It was Clara.
As for Stan Edgar himself… The camera panned down.
A charred, headless corpse lay right at Stormfront’s feet.
That corpse belonged to the same Vought CEO who had sold out Soldier Boy and raised Homelander into a giant baby—Stan Edgar.
In the original timeline, Homelander’s affection-starved psychology left him simultaneously afraid of, respectful toward, and hateful of Stan Edgar, so he never actually killed the man.
But now, because of the variable named Dean, Stormfront—who had figured out that Stan Edgar used her genes to create a hidden child—flew into a pure rage, stormed straight into Vought, and brutally murdered Stan Edgar.
Homelander feared Stan Edgar, but Stormfront certainly did not.
You had to remember she had once been the craziest woman on the entire West Coast.
On top of that she was a fucking Nazi.
The only reason she had left Stan Edgar alive all these years was because their interests never clashed and the man still had some leftover usefulness to her.
Now that a powerful “biological” son had appeared—stronger than Homelander and far more psychologically mature—Stormfront decided Stan Edgar was no longer worth keeping around.
“It is time to hand Vought over to the right person, my son…” Stormfront stared at Dean’s face on the live broadcast screen, eyes full of pure mad affection.
“Woohoo——————” “Wawawa——————” New York, Queens.
Accompanied by two overlapping screams, a bolt of purple lightning streaked horizontally across the sky and finally slammed down in front of a residential house in Queens.
When the lightning faded, three figures stood there.
They were Dean, Harry, and Peter, fresh from the stadium where Vought had just held The Seven selection.
After the final exhibition match ended, under the pure envy of everyone still sitting in the family section, Dean had simply grabbed Harry and Peter and flown off.
For Dean, who could now fully elementalize, carrying people with his lightning no longer risked frying them.
He could even shape the electricity into an electromagnetic force field, wrapping it around himself or extending it to shield others.
It was a bit like Superman’s bio-electric field.
That was something he had never been able to do before injecting V1.
So even though V1 had not made his body noticeably stronger, the massive upgrade in lightning control had made him far more dangerous overall.
Still, when he beat Homelander he had not used a single bit of the post-V1 power.
No elementalization.
Just the strength he already had before V1.
That was enough to completely toy with Homelander, whose mentality and skill were both inferior.
Homelander was not worth burning V1 power on.
Dean did not let the win make him feel invincible either.
This was not a pure The Boys universe.
It was a full mash-up with Marvel.
Plenty of people in this world sat well above Homelander’s level.
Thor, Scarlet Witch, Thanos, Odin, Hela, the Ancient One… the list went on.
Not to mention the possibility of Celestials, the One-Above-All, the Creator, and other cosmic monsters existing somewhere out there.
So Dean was already laying plans to expand his forces and his network of relationships.
The Seven was one piece.
Peter, the kid he was dropping off at home right now, was another.
The noise outside made the door with the Parker family nameplate swing open.
A couple hurried out of the house.
It was not the familiar Uncle Ben and Aunt May.
It was a middle-aged couple most people would not recognize on sight.
Peter’s biological parents—Richard Parker and Mary Parker.
“Oh, Peter, what happened to your hair?” The second Mary stepped outside she locked onto her son’s new afro and rushed forward with pure concern.
Peter, still half-dazed from the high-speed flight, finally came back to himself.
He patted the fluffy curls on his head and realized his hairstyle had completely changed.
That also caught the attention of Harry, who had just recovered from the same thrill.
Harry pointed at Peter’s head and roasted him without mercy.
“Hahahaha, Peter, your head looks exactly like a bird’s nest, hahahahaha!” Peter turned a dead-fish stare on him.
“You think you’re any better?
Your head looks just like Grandma Jack’s permanent curls next door!” “Holy crap?
It really is!” Harry grabbed his own hair and felt the same fluffy mess.
Dean, standing off to the side, could not help coughing lightly in pure embarrassment.
This had been his first time carrying passengers in flight, so the control was still a little rough.
He had not hurt either of them, but the magnetic force had still turned their hair into the current disaster.