Before Soldier Boy could react, Kailong grew anxious.
"Hey! Do you still want to hear what I have to say about Super Fish?" it shouted.
Soldier Boy instinctively kicked at it but hit nothing. "Go wait off to the side," he snapped.
Anticipation showed on his face. "John, what did you mean just now?"
A hint of recollection entered Homelander's eyes. "When I was twelve, those goddamn researchers threw me into the Mariana Trench to test how tough my body was. They made me keep swimming down. I only went halfway before giving up because it was too dark."
"The Mariana Trench?" Soldier Boy scratched his chin. "Where's that?"
Homelander said gravely, "It's the deepest ocean trench in the world, over ten thousand meters deep. The very bottom is definitely the area with the highest water pressure on the entire planet."
"That rings a bell." It stirred a memory in Soldier Boy. He occasionally liked watching science programs to pass the time, and he seemed to have heard of this trench.
He suddenly grinned. "You didn't reach the bottom because you gave up when it got too dark? Fuck, I knew you were a pussy. Still scared of the dark at twelve."
Homelander retorted irritably, "No, you're wrong. I quit halfway because I didn't want to cooperate with those idiots' experiments."
Soldier Boy neither agreed nor disagreed, already convinced that Homelander was lying. Back then, Homelander had still been a brainwashed brat starved for affection, eager to grovel before the researchers and please them.
At that moment, Kailong could not help interrupting again. "The Mariana Trench? Do you think that's possible? Vogt caught that Super Catfish almost a hundred years ago!"
Those words made both Homelander and Soldier Boy frown, leaving them speechless.
True, concluding from a single sentence that