Forty years of regret

They were the ones who actually ran Vought International.

Though the answer was obvious, Homelander did not dare think any further.

Starved of love, he had always regarded those two as his surrogate parents. If they had known everything but kept it from him...

That imagined paternal and maternal love would shatter. Homelander could not bear it.

He could only force himself to make it all fit.

"Hahaha." Homelander gave a sickly laugh. His signature corporate smile had become muscle memory, and his expression shifted on the spot with millimeter precision.

"You really are alive. Welcome back, Soldier Boy. We're very eager to hear what happened over these forty years."

Soldier Boy twisted his neck, making it crack. "Of course I'm alive. Those goddamn Russians locked me in a military base and spent forty years experimenting on me."

Then he walked up to Homelander and clenched his fist.

He needed to complete the system's mission: make first contact with Homelander.

He had thought simply meeting would complete the mission, but the system still had not issued a reward, so he deduced that the mission meant physical contact.

"A military base?" Homelander asked, though his thoughts lingered on the word "experimenting."

Before he could think any further, a fist the size of a sandbag came to kiss him.

The wind from the punch swept Homelander's blond hair aside, and tremendous force far beyond ordinary human limits traveled from the fist into his face.

Bang!

Homelander flew backward in an undignified heap, crashing through a wall. Dust concealed his figure and clouded his thoughts.

"Fuck, what the hell?"

Pain he had not felt in so long made him cry out despite himself. When had he last hurt this badly?

Right, that goddamn laboratory. That furnace heated to over a thousand degrees.

He held his face. A broken piece of mirror happened to lie nearby.

In the mirror, the face revered by all Americans was battered, a huge bruise covering his left cheek. The rattling inside his skull kept him from forming a single coherent thought, and even his superhuman healing could not immediately clear it away.

"That's impossible," Homelander growled angrily.

Just now, his heat rays had left only a red mark on that man, yet a single punch had actually injured him.

Well, even that red mark had healed now.

At that moment, the difference between them seemed clear.

But Homelander quickly composed himself, refusing to believe anyone was stronger than he was.

This was only an initial test.

In a real fight, he was confident he could defeat anyone in the world.

"Oh, just what I'd expect from you, Soldier Boy." Homelander was perfectly composed, his smile appropriate.

His super hearing picked up a flurry of camera shutters, and he knew he was now fully exposed to public view.

So he deliberately emphasized the name Soldier Boy, indirectly explaining himself to the public: this was Soldier Boy, a legend. The media should not smear him for fighting him to a draw.

He really was afraid of online harassment.

"The Soviet Union experimented on me for forty years. And I have you to thank for it, really." Soldier Boy walked up to Homelander and spoke in a voice only the two of them could hear.

"In 1980, that black eel Edgar had me participate in a genetics study. I donated a sample."

"I thought that black eel was some old homo, so I didn't think much of it."

"A year later, a child carrying my genes was born without my knowing anything about it. He had greater potential than I did." Soldier Boy took a drag on his cigar.

He looked Homelander up and down, then smiled and blew smoke into his face.

Homelander's body instantly stiffened. His previously relaxed shoulders tensed abruptly, and his back instinctively straightened.

He did not react to Soldier Boy's provocation. He had already guessed something, his breathing growing heavy as he stared straight ahead.

Soldier Boy continued, "Three years later, Vought International tricked me into going to Nicaragua. They conspired with my teammates to betray me and handed me over to the Soviets."

"Then they experimented on me for forty years. Dripped sulfuric acid into my eyes, fired an AK into my mouth..."

"My teammates said all this after I passed out. That was how I learned I had a child. They thought I was completely unconscious, but I could actually still hear a little."

He smiled, as though he were talking about a tragedy that had nothing to do with him.

And indeed, it had nothing to do with the current Soldier Boy. He was merely a transmigrator who had inherited the original owner's memories.

Homelander tilted his head slightly, his breathing growing heavier and heavier. Soldier Boy's experiences shattered his rosy view of Vought International.

He began to dimly understand the real reason Madelyn and Edgar had kept things from him.

They feared him and did not trust him. They might even discard him just as they had discarded Soldier Boy once the next "perfect product" appeared.

But none of that mattered now.

"So what exactly are you trying to say?" Homelander's voice dropped low, on the verge of losing control.

Soldier Boy ignored Homelander's agitation. "I heard them say my child would stand at the pinnacle of his era, just like me. Then I lost consciousness completely.

"I never heard whether that child was a boy or a girl. I regretted that for forty years."

Soldier Boy paused, jabbing a finger firmly against Homelander's chest. "But today, I found out. It was a boy."

"A boy as strong and handsome as me."

At those words, Homelander's mind buzzed, his pupils trembling.

Confusion, shock, bewilderment, delight, sorrow-for the first time, all those emotions mingled in a complex tangle on his face.

Like the rising tide at the shore, they washed his earlier arrogance and overbearing pride to pieces.

Ever since he was little, Vought International had told him his name was John, that he was a unique, perfect superhuman created in a laboratory test tube.

A "god" Vought had created from scratch with Compound V.

Mortals were unworthy of being parents to a perfect life-form like him.

He had believed it. He always had.

He had grown up in a laboratory, knowing only scientists, experiments, and learning to play a hero.

The concept of "parents" was almost a blank to him. He only knew that whenever he felt bad, hugging that blanket would make it better.

The blanket was fluffy and warm.

Later, he grew up and left the laboratory, and saw those weak mortal children nestling in their parents' arms, clamoring for affection.

Even though he envied them, envied them enough to want to use his heat vision to force those people to pretend to be his family, he could only helplessly bear it all.

More than once, he had thought that this was the price of becoming a god.

Again and again, he had brainwashed himself.

But now, the idol he had worshipped his entire life had actually appeared and said he was his father.

He had family?

A sense of absurdity and the devastation of his beliefs collapsing instantly swept over him.

And beyond that, a bittersweet joy welled up from deep within his heart.