Free Web NovelChapter 7: Chapter 7: Beating Up Homelander
Homelander did not let him finish. His eyes glowed red, and his Heat Vision blew the clerk’s head apart.
The man’s head burst like a watermelon.
Only after blowing the young man’s head off did Homelander realize what he had done.
He held back the urge to slaughter everyone there, took a deep breath, his eyes still glowing red, and turned impatiently out of the Archives Management Center.
He did not understand.
Soldier Boy was a superhero. He was supposed to be America’s hero, Homelander’s idol, yet Vought would not even give him a chance to find answers.
The security guards on both sides of the corridor all stepped back at once, their eyes filled with fear. Not one of them dared stand directly in his path.
No one wanted to die. For a few thousand dollars a month, who would risk their life?
The moment the elevator doors closed, Homelander looked at the mirrorlike metal panels and saw his own face, still stained with the young man’s blood.
His expression looked terrible.
It was not anger.
The heavy thing pressing down in his chest was worse than anger.
It was humiliation.
That word had once been foreign to him.
From the day he opened his eyes in the lab’s growth chamber, the word "humiliation" had never existed in his vocabulary.
He was Homelander.
The most powerful being on the planet. Whatever he wanted, he got. Whatever he wanted to do, no one could stop him.
But today...
He had been stopped four times.
And it had not been by some stronger Supe.
It had been by a wall built from rules, confidentiality agreements, and bureaucratic smiles.
Invisible. Untouchable. A wall he could punch without even hearing a sound.
The file does not exist.
Top secret.
Joint authorization required.
Those words were like tiny stones, striking precisely at the softest place in his heart.
Soldier Boy, the man who might be his father. The veteran he had watched countless times in childhood footage. The man in the black-and-white film who charged onto the beaches of Normandy with a shield. The only existence he could call his own kind through blood and power...
The only one of his kind who was as powerful as him.
He had thought he was dead.
Everyone said he was dead.
Killed in action during some top-secret mission, body never recovered. Beneath the headstone was nothing but an old uniform.
Homelander had even visited that cemetery. He had stood there for a long time, unable to describe what he felt, only sensing a faint, hollow melancholy.
Now that man had come back alive.
He had shown up in Brooklyn, alive and kicking, carrying a bucket of lubricant before sending A-Train straight to the medical floor. Even the way he smiled was exactly the same as in the photos.
He had even told Homelander that he was his biological son, even if not in the traditional sense.
And yet Homelander was not even allowed to look at Soldier Boy’s file.
Madelyn had even ordered him to kill the man who might be his father.
Homelander clenched his fists, anger and humiliation twisting together in his chest.
The elevator rose, the floor numbers ticking upward one by one.
He closed his eyes and forced the emotion threatening to burst out of his chest back down.
He was going to meet Benjamin face to face.
...
One o’clock in the afternoon, on the rooftop of an old apartment building in Brooklyn.
Benjamin was sitting on a battered folding chair he had picked up downstairs, holding a can of ice-cold beer. Beside his feet sat a sandwich he had bought from a convenience store.
He was waiting for someone. Unless something went wrong, that person would come looking for him.
Of course, it was also possible that a whole crowd would come looking for trouble.
He took a bite of the sandwich, chewed twice, and was just about to reach for a second can of beer when he suddenly felt a gust of wind behind him.
Benjamin did not turn around.
He swallowed the sandwich in his mouth, took an unhurried sip of beer, then set the can down by his feet.
"I was wondering how many laps you were going to circle my building before coming up."
His voice was as calm as if he were chatting with a neighbor about the weather.
"Three passes, Homelander."
The shadow behind him did not move.
Then a voice sounded from behind him.
"They say you’re Soldier Boy."
Only then did Benjamin slowly turn around.
Sunlight fell across his face, and across Homelander’s.
The two men stared at each other from across the rooftop. One sat in a broken chair, the other hovered in midair, yet the distance between them felt like an entire era.
Benjamin stood up, beer can in hand, his gaze landing on Homelander’s young, perfect face.
Prominent brow, straight nose, a slightly lifted line to his chin.
It was a face plastered on posters all across America, printed on T-shirts, and projected onto the giant screens in Times Square.
Benjamin’s eyes shifted slightly.
He seemed to notice the testing look in Homelander’s expression, and the unease beneath it.
The most powerful Supe in the world stood before him like a high school student who did not know where to put his hands.
Benjamin slowly rose.
He set the beer can on the ground and flexed the knuckles of his right hand.
Then he swung his fist with all his strength and smashed it squarely into Homelander’s multimillion-dollar face.
The force of the punch was astonishing.
A dull impact exploded across the rooftop.
Homelander’s body snapped backward, his feet leaving the ground, and crashed heavily into the concrete guardrail on the far side of the roof.
The guardrail shattered, and Homelander was knocked off the building.
Benjamin followed, jumping down from the rooftop.
Homelander lay in a pile of rubble on the ground, clutching his left cheek, completely stunned.
Because his left cheek was sending him a feeling he had almost forgotten.
Pain.
Real, genuine pain.
It pulled Homelander back to the scenes of his childhood.
Those technicians in cold lab coats, torturing him with every method imaginable.
That incinerator hot enough to vaporize even his tears...
He took his hand away from his face and lowered his gaze to his palm.
A smear of blood was slowly spreading along the lines of his hand.
He was bleeding.
Homelander stared at the blood on his hand, his pupils widening more than twice over in that instant.
When was the last time he bled?
He could not remember.
Maybe ten years ago. Maybe back in the lab.
His skin was supposed to be indestructible.
His body was supposed to be invulnerable. Laser cannons, missiles, even falling meteorites had never left a mark on him. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
He suddenly looked up, staring hard at Benjamin as he jumped down from above.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
Benjamin stood there and shook out his right hand.
That punch really had been hard enough to make his knuckles tingle, but there was no extra emotion on his face.
Truthfully, at this point, Homelander’s overall strength was still greater than his own. But with his powerful Chest Blast, and his understanding of Homelander, Benjamin had still made his move.
He looked down coldly at Homelander lying in the rubble.
"I’m disciplining my unfilial son."
At those words, Homelander’s expression froze.
His anger halted halfway, replaced by something almost blank.
He had never been disciplined by a father before.
Benjamin gave him no time to recover and continued, "Edgar and my old teammates packaged me up and sold me to those Russians. They tortured me for forty years. Not forty days, not forty months, but a full forty years.
Every day. Every hour. Every minute."
He went on.
"They tested the limits of Compound V tolerance on my body. They electrocuted me, burned me with fire, froze my organs with cryogenic gas and watched them heal little by little, fired an AK-47 into my mouth, and ran those damned radiation experiments.
I went through forty whole years of experiments. You grew up in a lab. You should know what that feels like. Forty years."
His voice remained cold.
"Then I finally crawled out of that damn lab.
I crossed half the world to get back to America, turned on the TV, and guess what I saw?" freēwebnovel.com
He pointed at the bright red Stars and Stripes emblem on Homelander’s chest.
"I saw my son wearing Vought’s uniform, giving the cameras that perfect eight-tooth smile, serving as a watchdog for Edgar, the bastard who sold out his father.
You go in and out with Black Noir, work missions shoulder to shoulder with him, and even pat him on the shoulder at press conferences while calling him your ’good partner.’
Black Noir.
The man who personally led the rest of the Payback Squad back then and helped knock me out. So tell me, shouldn’t I hit you?
You pathetic little wimp. You disappoint me beyond words."
Homelander covered his face and opened his mouth to say something, but it felt as if his throat had been blocked.
He wanted to argue, but the wound on his face still hurt.
And Homelander could not find a reason to argue.
Not a single word.
At last, Homelander spoke, his tone carrying a faint trace of grievance.
"I couldn’t access the files."
He said,
"I went to Vought’s Archives Management Center, the records room, and the Board Secretary’s Office. They told me the files didn’t exist. They told me to get lost. They blocked me four times."
