Chapter 92: Chapter 92: Experiencing What It Means to Be a True Homelander
Before she got pregnant and after, he had tried more than once to chat her up, even stalked her... but the woman had shut him down every single time.
Thomas’s mind was twisted beyond repair. To get his hands on her, he deliberately paid two shady friends from the streets to harass her in an alley.
According to his original vicious little plan, he would stand upstairs with a camera and film the entire assault on the pregnant woman.
Once he had the footage, he would show up pretending to be concerned, drive the thugs off, and stage himself as the hero saving the damsel in distress.
And even if the "heroic rescue" didn’t work, he could still use the video as leverage to threaten that woman for a long, long time.
What a perfect plan.
Except...
He was so close. Just seconds away from getting it, seconds away from capturing the juiciest footage.
Then that damn Homelander dropped out of the sky and ruined everything.
Not only did he save that bitch, he blew his two buddies’ heads clean off.
"Motherfucker, fuck!"
Thomas stared at the camera screen, watching Homelander’s terrifying Heat Vision cut them down in a brutal flash of death, and his legs shook with fear.
But in Thomas’s eyes, a crazed greed still flickered.
"A superhero slaughtering innocent civilians in the street... That’s vigilante execution without a goddamn trial!"
"Homelander, you ruined my plan. You killed my shot..."
Thomas gripped the camera tightly, his mouth stretching into a vicious grin.
"I’m leaking this video! I’m selling it to the big media outlets!
I’m going to ruin you, you hypocritical superhero bastard!"
...
...
Over the next few days, the police departments across New York City and Vought’s PR department were all thrown into a frenzy.
Because they had discovered that the high-and-mighty Homelander had lost control.
By "lost control," they didn’t mean he had snapped and started killing people.
Quite the opposite. It was because he kept saving people.
Saving people without flashbulbs, without reporters, and without a prepared speech waiting for him.
Even Vought, now under Benjamin’s control, would still build momentum and hand superheroes things like speeches when they saved people. Benjamin had not stopped that practice.
Mainly because if superheroes were truly saving lives, then doing that was just icing on the cake. There was no need to refuse it...
Over these past few days, Homelander had become like a lone eagle with no fixed destination, draped in that Stars and Stripes cape as he moved through New York day and night. He even flew across half of America, searching for the "meaning" that belonged to him.
His father Benjamin’s words, "Love is mutual," had stayed carved into his heart.
He desperately wanted to experience that feeling again. The pure, untainted gratitude that came from saving the weak.
That kind of true love.
Because his father had said that only by truly loving others could someone truly be loved in return.
Homelander did not need fanatics who hurt children and bullied the weak.
Across America, in these past few days, every corner of the country welcomed a true "Avenger."
At a high school in Brooklyn, a group of punk students who had bullied their classmates for years, even forcing their victims to drink toilet water, were getting ready to hurt someone again.
Then, with a violent gust of wind, Homelander smashed through the roof of an abandoned warehouse like a god descending from the sky.
He did not kill anyone. He only fixed those little bastards with his cold, sapphire-blue eyes.
Under that crushing terror, the punks pissed themselves on the spot. Then Homelander picked them up like chicks by the scruff and dumped them right in front of the local police station.
On a remote farm in Texas, a chronic drunk and domestic abuser was whipping his wife and child with a belt, beating them so hard they were on the verge of death.
Homelander kicked the farm’s security door to pieces, ignored the shotgun in the man’s hands, crushed the arm holding it with one hand, then wrapped the trembling mother and child in his cape before handing the howling abuser over to the patrol cars that came rushing in after hearing the commotion.
The officers who stepped out of those patrol cars all stared at Homelander with admiration.
Of course, when he ran into vicious gangsters committing massacres or trafficking people, especially child trafficking, Homelander did not mind showing them what Heat Vision really was.
Those sinful souls were instantly reduced to ash in the searing heat.
After every act of justice, Homelander would see the gratitude in the eyes of survivors who had just escaped death, and the worship in the eyes of those children... the way they looked at him like he was a real savior.
No staging.
No cheers.
Yet Homelander felt that this brought him more fulfillment and peace than listening to tens of thousands of people screaming his name in frenzy at Vought Square.
However, in this age where traffic was everything and entertainment ruled all, these "private operations" without PR-team packaging eventually caused a massive problem.
That was why, for most superheroes, even when saving people, even when it was not a drill or a performance, the PR department still had to be involved.
