Chapter 91: Homelander Saves Someone Again

With that, the bald thug maniacally hoisted his right leg, clad in a heavy combat boot, and kicked viciously at the pregnant woman’s fragile stomach with a sharp whistle of displaced air!

If that kick connected, the unborn child wouldn’t stand a goddamn chance, and the woman herself would likely suffer a fatal hemorrhage.

The pregnant woman closed her eyes in pure despair.

However...

Thud!

A heavy, muffled impact rattled the alleyway.

The agonizing pain the woman anticipated never materialized.

The bald thug felt as though his right leg had smashed into an immovable mountain of solid steel. The sheer kinetic backlash caused his leg bone to shatter with a sharp, sickening crack.

"Ahhh!!!" The bald thug shrieked, lifting his head in absolute fury, but the moment he registered the scene before him, the scream died in his throat, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

Standing before him, having materialized out of nowhere without a sound, was a towering man clad in a super-suit and a cape. The man’s right hand was clamped around his mid-air ankle, crushing it as effortlessly as a toothpick.

"Ho... Ho... Homelander?!"

Beside him, the pockmarked thug’s legs instantly gave out, dropping to his knees with a heavy thud as a foul, yellow stream trickled down his pants and pooled on the pavement. He couldn’t wrap his brain around it—how the hell had America’s greatest superhero descended from the sky in the absolute dead of night, right into an unmonitored slum alley completely devoid of cameras or press?!

Homelander paid no attention to the trembling waste who had just pissed himself. His gaze settled freezing cold onto the bald thug whose ankle he held captive.

Activating his super vision, Homelander caught sight of a tattoo etched inside the thug’s collar, which had pulled wide open from his violent movements. The ink was a full-color portrait of Homelander himself. Scripted beneath the portrait were the words Forever Idol.

By all accounts, this was a fanatical, die-hard loyalist.

In the past, laying eyes on one of his disciples, Homelander would have likely gone through the motions of turning him over to the police just to safeguard his farcical approval ratings. He might have even assumed that because this piece of shit loved him, he was fundamentally a decent guy.

But right now, staring down at this beast in human skin and looking at the pregnant woman shivering in the dirt... His father’s insights echoed in his mind once more.

"You have to drop that morbid obsession with forcing the entire world to love you unconditionally."

"If people love you because you save them..."

An expression of profound disgust suddenly washed over Homelander’s handsome features.

"I finally get it. Father was right. I don’t need everyone’s love," Homelander murmured under his breath, as if speaking to himself, yet declaring it to the entire world. He cast a repulsed look at the portrait on the thug’s chest, his voice freezing. "Especially the love of sewer maggots like you."

"Using my name to brutalize an unarmed, helpless pregnant mother?"

The mere thought of his own miserable childhood—of growing up without even knowing who his mother was—paired with the sight of these two pieces of garbage trying to slaughter an unborn child caused the long-suppressed malice deep within his soul to explode entirely!

"The love of trash like you makes me want to fucking vomit!"

"No! No! Homelander, I’m your fan! I canvas votes for you every single day! You can’t—" The bald thug pleaded in pure despair, trying to leverage his status as a fan to barter for his life.

But his only answer was a pair of twin crimson beams hot enough to burn through the earth’s crust.

Zzzzt!

He didn’t afford them a microsecond to react. Homelander’s eyes instantly erupted with a maximum-output burst of Heat Vision! Sweeping through the narrow alleyway, the crimson beams sliced across like the twin scythes of the grim reaper.

Thud! Thud!

A pair of wet, muffled cracks echoed out like bursting watermelons. Before the two scumbags could even register a shriek, their heads were entirely vaporized. The headless corpses slumped straight forward into a rapidly expanding pool of blood, a sickening stench of charred flesh hanging thick in the air.

The alley descended into a dead silence.

Her nerves thoroughly shattered, the pregnant woman slumped against the ground, trembling. Staring up at the towering silhouette before her like a god descended to earth, her tears spilled over like a broken dam.

"Y-You’re Mr. Homelander..."

The woman shakily wiped her face, her hands maintaining a protective shield over her stomach, her voice overflowing with raw, post-traumatic gratitude and absolute awe. "Thank you, thank you so much! If it weren’t for you, my baby and I would have been destroyed tonight... You’re a superhero. Our superhero."

Hearing the weeping gratitude behind him, Homelander’s heavily heaving chest slowly fell still. He spun around, the crimson glow in his eyes completely extinguished, returning to their clear, deep blue. He didn’t flash his trademark, plastic corporate grin.

Homelander dropped to a crouch, gently resting his palm against her swollen stomach. He merely gazed silently at this ordinary mother, using his palm to feel the pulse of the child within her, and using his own heart to register hers. It was a wave of pure, unadulterated gratitude—entirely detached from corporate publicity stunts—born solely from the raw reality of being delivered from death. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Love is a two-way street.

Protecting the weak... shielding someone else’s child, someone else’s mother... is this what it actually feels like? It felt leagues better than staring at cold rows of polling data.

Homelander gently hoisted the woman to her feet. "Take care of your baby."

With that, a sharp whoosh tore through the alley as he launched into the sky, converting into a blur that vanished into the midnight expanse. Only the grateful mother remained. Homelander’s departure had been effortless.

Yet, having just undergone a total psychological awakening, Homelander was completely oblivious to the fact that barely twenty meters away—perched behind a third-floor window of a crumbling apartment block—a pair of eyes hidden in the dark had just witnessed the entire affair. What’s more, a gaping high-definition camera lens was poking directly through a sliver in the curtains, its crimson recording light blinking steadily.

Gulp.

Hiding behind the fabric, the man gave a heavy swallow. Cold sweat blanketed his skin, the hands clutching the camera chassis shaking uncontrollably. Yet across his grease-stained, acne-scarred face, an expression of profound terror twisted with a deeply depraved, volatile fury.

His name was Thomas, a deadbeat shut-in who spent his days rotting inside his dim room. And he had been coveting the solitary pregnant woman living downstairs for a very goddamn long time.

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