Fooling Homelander

News of The Deep being sidelined spread quickly within The Seven.

Though there was no official announcement, by the next day, The Deep's name had vanished from every core event on the schedule.

In its place were a string of ocean charity tours, aquarium ribbon-cuttings, and environmental documentary narration recordings.

His schedule was packed to the brim. Anyone unaware of the situation might have thought The Deep was incredibly popular, but in reality, his range of activities had been pushed out of the core circle.

He had effectively been exiled to the fringes of power.

Ashley Barrett's execution was certainly swift.

Lu Heng stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of Vought Tower and watched The Deep drag a suitcase out of the lobby before getting into a black business van.

Before getting in, The Deep looked up at the tower.

His gaze was filled with resentment and regret.

[The Deep—Emotional Shift: Humiliation/Resentment/Fear]

[Ability Points Gained: +312]

He had been humiliated that badly, yet he had only contributed this much emotion?

The Deep really was useless!

Over the next two days, Lu Heng's life settled back into a steady rhythm.

During the day, he dealt with the superhuman crimes assigned by Vought. At night, he played the role of Brooklyn's friendly neighborhood Guardian.

His ability points increased steadily.

Current Ability Points: 63,541 / 100,000

Lu Heng looked through the list of key characters on the panel.

The list of people he had encountered was growing longer and longer: Hughie, Homelander, Maeve, A-Train, Madelyn, Ashley Barrett, Starlight.

Several names on the unencountered list were still gray and would not trigger for the time being.

But one name caught Lu Heng's attention.

[Billy Butcher—Status: Active · Investigating Vought]

[Estimated Contact Window: Within Three Days]

Butcher.

The most dangerous ordinary person in The Boys Universe.

Because Homelander had injected his wife, he hated every superpowered person.

He was paranoid and insane. In order to eliminate superhumans, he would not hesitate to drag the entire world down with him.

Lu Heng did not think he would be an exception. He had come here intending to be a good person.

But Butcher did not give a damn about any of that. He would kill them all!

"Guardian! Finally found you, brother!"

A voice came from the end of the corridor.

That voice sounded warm and full of goodwill. It had to belong to a good person, right?

Lu Heng looked over, and sure enough... it was Homelander!

Homelander stood at the other end of the corridor, his hands clasped behind his back and his cape hanging to his ankles.

He looked so elegant, peaceful, and gentlemanly.

Lu Heng glanced around and noticed that the hallway cameras had been broken for three days, yet no one had come to repair them.

What a coincidence!

"Long time no see, bro. Where have you been making your fortune lately?" Lu Heng asked with a smile.

Homelander smiled as well.

"I just took a few gigs. I've been running around everywhere, but after I came back, I heard that you had The Deep transferred away?"

"I can't transfer members of The Seven. That was Edgar's order."

"But you made the suggestion, and Edgar thought you were right!"

Homelander tilted his head and said seriously, "The Deep is a member of The Seven. Even if something happens, I should be the one to decide it. Do you understand?"

"Oh, I understand, I understand!"

Lu Heng made an OK gesture to show that he got it.

"Then next time..."

"Next time, I'll do it again!"

Homelander had been about to shake hands with Lu Heng, thinking they had reached an understanding. His hand was halfway out when he finally processed what Lu Heng had said.

What had he just said?

"Listen, bro. Keeping someone like The Deep around you isn't a good thing. Think about it—what if one day he gets horny and decides to screw a couple of fans for fun... Of course..."

"...screwing fans is normal enough, but that kid is not careful at all. If it gets exposed, won't you, as the leader of The Seven, have to take responsibility?"

Homelander was about to speak when Lu Heng cut him off.

"What's your approval rating now?"

"Nin... ninety..."

"Do you want to raise your public approval?"

Homelander was stunned.

He had clearly come to demand answers. How had he ended up being interrogated instead?

As for Lu Heng's question, Homelander had only one answer.

Of course he did!

He dreamed of raising his approval rating.

He wished that all several billion people in the world would cheer, "Long live Homelander," every day.

If there was even one negative comment under his account, he would feel miserable for an entire day. He might even want to crawl through the internet cable and chop off all ten fingers of whoever had posted it.

"You don't even have a seventy percent approval rating, and you want to teach me how to use social media? No one understands social media better than I do!"

Homelander was deeply disdainful.

Even if he was bad at it, he was still the patriot in the public's eyes, Patriot Superman.

What gave a rookie the right to point fingers at him?

"Brother, that's not how people think about these things. Sure, my approval rating is only seventy percent, but think about it—how many days did it take me to reach this point? Has it even been a week?"

"When you first debuted, did you reach seventy percent approval in a week?"

Homelander froze at that. Lu Heng had actually stumped him.

When he had first debuted, he had indeed faced plenty of obstacles. Many people had been worried about his existence.

Vought had spent a long time building his image during that stage, requiring public opinion surveys and constant fine-tuning of details...

In short, it had taken him more than half a year to reach a seventy percent approval rating.

Reaching ninety percent had taken even longer—at least several years.

"That isn't important..."

"It's very important!"

Lu Heng did not give Homelander time to react. He knew that Homelander had always been rather limited when it came to public opinion.

In the original story, how had Homelander controlled public discourse? With high-pressure tactics.

He had even created a speech concentration camp and thrown everyone who said anything unfavorable about him into prison.

"Your approval rating has already hit a bottleneck. Everyone is used to your existence, and you can't pull off any new tricks. If you want bystanders to become fans and increase your approval rating, you need to give them something new!"

What was the biggest taboo in playing the internet game? Having no limits? Chasing attention?

Neither.

It was having no content.

No content meant you were dead. No, worse than dead!

If Homelander dropped dead right now, his approval rating might even climb a little higher.

"W-what new things?"

Homelander was not easy to fool, but he was willing to hear Lu Heng out and see what brilliant insight he had.

"Take The Deep's situation this time, for example. Vought's usual PR method is to suppress the matter. That only treats the symptoms, not the root cause. The flaws within The Seven have always existed."

"Trash like A-Train and The Deep... never deserved to be on this team in the first place... They may be obedient, but if they suddenly pull something huge, sooner or later they'll drag you down with them..."

"When that happens, forget raising your approval rating. It'll be hard enough to maintain your current level!"

Homelander curled his lip. "Alarmist nonsense. Do you think Vought's PR department gets paid for nothing? Look at what happened with A-Train. Wasn't it handled perfectly?"

Lu Heng immediately pulled out his phone and showed Homelander his comment section.

Homelander went red with rage after reading it for three seconds.

Because the comments were all cursing Vought for excessive commercialization and saying The Seven was rotten from the inside out.

The criticism was aimed squarely at A-Train. Not everyone could be fooled by PR tactics.

Internet users were becoming increasingly resistant to poison. Those formulaic whitewashing tactics had stopped working long ago.

Some people had even called Homelander the biggest tumor of all because of it.

He was the captain of The Seven. If his team members had problems, was their captain really so pure and unstained by the filth around him?

"They're fake! They're all fake!" Homelander clenched his fist and crushed Lu Heng's cheap phone.