"I'm sorry... I didn't mean to... I'm sorry..."
In a clearing in the woods, Ryan stood beside Becca's still-warm body, tears pouring down his face.
He repeated those words over and over, his young voice filled with irreparable regret and fear.
Homelander slowly descended from the sky. He looked at no one, simply standing silently before Storm's body, which had been burned beyond recognition.
His blue eyes were terrifyingly calm.
He looked at the woman who had once shared his glory and his twisted ideals, now reduced to a crippled, disfigured lump of ruined flesh, and a hundred emotions mingled in his heart.
"Did you do all this, Ryan?" He did not turn around, his voice terrifyingly calm.
"I'm sorry... I really didn't mean to..." Ryan cried harder, shrinking back in fear.
Listening to what sounded to him like Ryan's utterly feeble excuses, Homelander had no desire to say anything more.
He slowly turned around and held out a hand to the boy who carried his blood.
"Come with me."
It seemed Ryan had sensed the overwhelming rage about to erupt beneath Homelander's calm exterior.
Terrified, Ryan slowly climbed to his feet, stumbled around his mother's body, and hid behind Billy Butcher.
"No." Butcher looked at Homelander and shook his head, a trace of determination in his eyes.
The mockery and brutality that usually marked his face were gone, leaving only a heartbreaking numbness.
He had just promised Becca he would protect Ryan.
Behind Homelander, Pero watched the unfolding family tragedy, a contender for the year's best, and found it utterly surreal.
He quickly sorted out their relationships with his superbrain.
The sniveling kid in front of him was called Ryan, the product of Homelander, that blond man in a cape, raping Becca, the ordinary woman who had just died on the ground.
And that still-smoking pile of charcoal on the ground was called Storm, Homelander's current girlfriend.
Who was that man in a black trench coat standing in front of the kid, looking like he had nothing left to live for?
His wife was Becca, the woman on the ground who had just kicked the bucket.
That was right, the legendary ultimate cuckold-Billy Butcher.
His wife had been raped by Homelander and forced to bear Homelander a child with superpowers.
And that child had just accidentally used his superpowers to kill his own mother, who was also Butcher's wife.
Before his wife died, Butcher had demanded that Butcher protect this child.
Even better, this Butcher had actually agreed!
To sum it up: he had to help his greatest enemy protect that enemy's son, who had killed his wife.
Tsk, tsk. What a messy crowd, Pero silently marveled. This plot really does live up to a traditional American script.
Just then, Butcher's gaze passed over Homelander, and he noticed the black-robed figure who had been standing silently behind him as though watching a show.
Homelander noticed Butcher's strange gaze and slowly looked behind him as well.
"Who the fuck are you?" Homelander's mood could not have been worse today, and his tone was deeply hostile and full of impatience.
Before Pero could answer.
"I don't give a fuck who you are!"
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, Homelander's blue eyes were instantly replaced by a violent scarlet!
Two beams of Heat Vision powerful enough to melt steel shot straight at Pero, carrying a fury that would burn everything to ashes!
"?"
Pero did not even lift his eyelids.
He simply extended his right hand casually, opening his palm.
Those two eye beams, enough to strike terror into any superhuman, caused not the slightest ripple when they touched his palm.
Seriously, Homelander, you're actually doing this? You went straight for your ultimate before I even said anything?
Looking at Pero, completely unscathed, with not even the hem of his clothes disturbed, Homelander involuntarily knitted his brows tightly.
For the first time, his Compound V-enhanced brain, comparable to a supercomputer, encountered something it could not comprehend.
Has the company developed another version of Compound V? I've never heard of anyone like this.
Could this be someone the company modified to kill me and replace me?
At that thought, a murderous glint flashed through Homelander's eyes, and he thought viciously.
No. I'm the strongest.
The next moment, he hesitated no longer. Unleashing all his strength, he became a golden cannonball.
He instantly crossed the distance between them, his fist, powerful enough to punch through an airplane, hurtling toward Pero's face with an air-rending sonic boom!
Watching an attack that seemed no faster than a turtle to him, Pero felt a trace of impatience rise within him.
Expressionless, he extended his own hand. Though he moved second, his hand arrived first, seizing Homelander's unstoppable wrist with flawless precision.
Time seemed to stop at that moment.
Homelander's fist, powerful enough to destroy anything, was locked firmly in place less than an inch from Pero's face.
Shocked, he tried to pull his hand free, only to discover that the other man's grip was like a hydraulic clamp, utterly immovable!
"Getting a little too full of yourself, aren't you?"
Pero's other hand became a blindingly fast blur.
One punch slammed straight into Homelander's astonished face.
Bang!
Homelander felt as though a speeding truck had struck his head head-on. Stars swam before his eyes, and his mind went blank.
Every thought was completely scattered by that punch.
Pero gave him no chance to catch his breath.
He spread his large hand and grabbed one of Homelander's ankles.
Then he recreated the iconic "puny god" scene.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Before Butcher's and Ryan's utterly horrified eyes, the man hailed as the strongest on Earth.
Homelander, invincible as a god, was now like a battered rag doll, utterly incapable of resistance.
Holding him by the ankle, Pero slammed him into the ground again and again!
Every impact came with the thunder of splitting earth and a pained grunt from Homelander!
Deep crater after deep crater was hammered into the solid ground!
Finally, as though tossing out garbage, Pero casually flung Homelander, who was now like a heap of sludge, into a crater.
"Puny human."
Pero dusted off his hands, as though he had done something utterly trivial.
He slowly walked up to Homelander, bent down, grabbed his blond hair, and lifted his grotesquely swollen, unrecognizable face out of the dirt.
Then, with a tremendous sonic boom, he shot into the sky and vanished into the distance.
He left behind only a dumbstruck Butcher and Ryan, who was so frightened he had even forgotten to cry.
They stood there blankly, questioning their lives.
Before you continue