Free Web NovelChapter 41: Chapter 41: My Good Son
Chapter 41: My Good Son
Five minutes later, the dirt at the edge of the maple forest was soaked a deep brown with blood. Corpses lay strewn across the ground in every direction. Some had their chest cavities burned through by Heat Vision, while others had their skulls smashed in by the shield.
As for the TNT Twins, those two pieces of trash had been blown to hell by the nuclear blast long ago. Mindstorm lay flat on his back, his plaid shirt completely soaked with blood, his eyes still wide open and his mouth slightly agape, but he was stone-dead. The Supe leader dispatched by Vought lay face down beside him, a coin-sized hole burned clean through the back of his head by a laser beam.
Not a single Supe hired by Vought International, nor a single member of Payback, made it out of this maple forest alive. As for the livestream, it had been cut long ago, primarily because the phone happened to be right on his chest when he detonated the nuclear blast...
Homelander stood amidst the corpses, the red glow in his eyes slowly dying out. He flicked the blood off his hands, wiped them on his suit, and turned to walk over to Benjamin. Benjamin was currently wrenching his shield out of Mindstorm’s corpse.
"Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?"
Homelander’s voice was a pitch higher than usual. He stood before Benjamin, his cape whipping violently in the wind behind him, his hands hanging at his sides. By the looks of it, Homelander was still locked in a tense, anxious posture.
"Tell you what?"
"Tell me you were going for revenge." Homelander’s words came faster and faster. "Tell me... you were going to handle Payback all by yourself! When you walked out of Vought Tower, you had absolutely zero intention of calling me. I could’ve helped you! I could’ve fucking helped you! Why the hell did you come here alone?!"
Homelander genuinely felt a deep sense of grievance right now; he couldn’t understand why his father wouldn’t tell him. His tone grew increasingly worked up. The maple forest fell into a brief silence. A few maple leaves that hadn’t been swept away by the shockwave still clung to the branches, rustling softly as the wind brushed through them.
Benjamin looked at Homelander, taking in the residual red glow that hadn’t entirely faded from his eyes. Homelander was furious, his chest heaving continuously. Benjamin glanced at his fists clenching and unclenching, finding it entirely hilarious.
"Asking your own son for help? If that’s not being a fucking pussy, I don’t know what is." Benjamin hooked the shield onto his left arm and wiped a smear of blood from his chin with the back of his right hand. "Besides, even if you hadn’t shown up, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. I could’ve handled every last one of them myself."
"If I hadn’t come, a lot of those Supes would’ve run off, and you’d be left with a hell of a lot of loose ends," Homelander refused to back down, pressing on. "A lot of them are faster than you, and you don’t have Heat Vision or lasers or anything. Mindstorm was hiding way in the back just now. If I hadn’t circled around to block him, he would’ve already crawled into the goddamn resort sewers. And some of Edgar’s Supes, they were fast as hell too..."
Benjamin shrugged. Homelander had a point. His speed genuinely didn’t match up to many Supes; facing over thirty of them alone, he could wipe them out, but he couldn’t guarantee catching every single runner. If Homelander hadn’t shown up, at least five or six would have slipped through the cracks today, and those people would have gone into hiding, waiting in the shadows for their next opportunity, becoming a fresh liability. Even if that liability was a total joke.
"Dad." Homelander’s voice suddenly dropped, his tone bordering on submissive. "I’m your son. We’re family."
This seemed to be the very first time Homelander had called him Dad. Benjamin stared at him, not speaking right away. The expression on Homelander’s face was completely earnest.
"Alright, alright," Benjamin said, resting his shield against a nearby tree root. "Stop making that goddamn sappy face."
"I’m not—"
"The fuck you aren’t. The way you’re looking at me makes it seem like you’re about to fuck me, holy shit..."
Hearing this, Homelander’s expression instantly shifted from aggrieved to utterly bewildered. Then... his lips twitched, his brows knitting tightly together as his face contorted into total revulsion. "No! That’s not what I meant! No!"
After a moment, taking in the look of growing grievance on his face, Benjamin stepped up directly in front of him. He raised his right hand from his side, slung it around Homelander’s neck, pressed it against his back, and gave him a few firm pats.
"Alright, my good son, stop being so damn sentimental like a little bitch."
Homelander froze, all his fury, tension, and displeasure gradually melting away. His hands hovered in midair for two seconds before slowly rising to clasp around Benjamin’s back. He lowered his head, burying his face in his father’s shoulder, the coarse fabric of the deep green suit scraping against his cheekbone as his eyes burned hot.
Right then, three sharp rushes of wind cut through the air above the maple forest. Benjamin immediately released Homelander, took a step back, and looked up. Three of Vought’s second-tier speedster Supes were the first to stick the landing on the dirt at the forest edge, snapping a few dry branches beneath their boots.
Benjamin recognized two of them; during the plane rescue operation, one had carried The Deep, and the other had carried him. Having sprinted all the way from New York to Pennsylvania, all three were panting heavily. The one who had previously carried The Deep bent over with his hands on his knees, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose onto the dirt.
Trailing behind the three speedsters were three figures: Maeve, The Deep, and Starlight. After all, A-Train was still confined to his hospital bed. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Maeve led the way. She swept a glance across the bodies strewn every which way over the ground, then noted the blood splattered across Benjamin and Homelander, her expression largely unshifting as she gave a slight nod.
The Deep gave the surroundings a look and clicked his tongue, muttering something indistinct under his breath—likely marveling at the raw power of Homelander and Soldier Boy. Clad in her gold suit with her long blonde hair tied back in a high ponytail, Starlight looked at Soldier Boy, pure adoration surfacing in her eyes.
"What the fuck are you guys doing here?" Benjamin asked.
The Deep stood dead straight, his voice entirely stripped of his usual slimy, sycophantic tone, completely serious: "Sir, we were all worried about you. We watched the livestream—Over thirty people were surrounding you alone. So I figured we should all come support you. Maeve and Starlight agreed, so we tracked down three speedsters who could move and hauled ass all the way here."
He paused, casting a look down at Mindstorm’s corpse by his feet, then at the Vought leader with his head blown through by a laser, the eyebrows on his bald head hitching upward. "But the raw power you and Mr. Homelander possess is frankly insane. We just got here, and you’ve already neutralized every single enemy. Not a soul left standing."
Maeve nodded. "That’s exactly it, sir. We came out here expecting to fight side-by-side with you, but we arrived only to find we’re on body-disposal duty. Though to be fair, the backup initiative was a joint call between Starlight and me." Hearing this, The Deep let out an embarrassed chuckle.
Starlight offered a radiant smile. "Soldier Boy! Homelander! I’m so glad you’re both okay! When that golden shockwave erupted at the end of the livestream, the feed cut out for three seconds. We all thought something terrible had happened."
Starlight deeply idealized Soldier Boy; moments ago, she had genuinely believed he was finished... After all, that was over thirty Supes. Even Homelander might not have been able to handle that single-handedly.
Standing beside Benjamin, Homelander evaluated the three figures before him: Maeve, Starlight, and The Deep. His gaze lingered on The Deep for a long moment. The Deep’s bald head caught the sunlight, looking entirely ridiculous, yet there he stood, completely winded and visibly on edge.
What had this guy been like before? A total joke. A pussy his father explicitly degraded as a "fish-fucking piece of trash." A loser who had scampered out of Vought Tower through the side exit, dragging his suitcase behind him after getting sacked. In the past, Homelander had hounded and hazed The Deep constantly, either intentionally or otherwise—not because he harbored a deep hatred for him, but simply because The Deep was spineless and pathetic. The Deep was the absolute softest pussy on The Seven.
Yet right now, this very pussy stood in the remote suburbs of Pennsylvania, gasping for breath, having traveled across state lines to back up his father. Even if the initial rescue initiative hadn’t been his own call, he had shown up anyway.
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A/N: Want to know what happens next? You can read up to 20 Chapters ahead on my p@tr~on:
[email protected]/ForgottenDaoist (@ = a, link is in my profile).
