Chapter 87: Yay~

Another suffocating few days went by.

For Homelander, every single second of these past few days felt like being roasted over an open flame. He felt like he was about to explode with rage.

On its own, Maeve’s betrayal and deception was like a thorn wedged deep in his heart. And that goddamn woman, Stormfront, was acting like a greedy vampire, frantically draining the spotlight and fan cheers that should have belonged to him.

Homelander couldn’t take it anymore. He had to find an outlet to let it all out. He needed to decompress.

So, overflowing with raw malice, he burst into Doppelganger’s cottage.

Doppelganger: ?

In that dim little cottage, Homelander treated the shape-shifting Supe like a living punching bag. He even forced Doppelganger to shift into Maeve’s form. Then, using his fists of steel, he hammered away at that face, punch after punch. He did Madelyn next, then Edgar, then Becca... As for Stormfront, Homelander didn’t dare, mostly because her relationship with Soldier Boy made him too afraid to desecrate her image.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The sound of fracturing bones echoed through the cottage. Doppelganger was beaten until blood sprayed everywhere, frantically begging for mercy, ultimately losing even the capacity to maintain the transformation. Reverting to their original, gruesome form, Doppelganger lay twitching in a pool of blood like a dead dog.

If it weren’t for the final shred of sanity Homelander possessed in that last microsecond, Doppelganger’s head would have been stomped to pieces like a watermelon.

---<>---

However, giving Doppelganger a beating didn’t extinguish much of the fury in Homelander’s heart. Immediately after, he tried flying into the upper stratosphere to unleash his Heat Vision on the clouds, and triggering avalanches in remote, snow-capped mountains. He tried all sorts of extreme decompression methods. Yet that profound anxiety and insecurity remained completely tethered to him.

Granted, Homelander was heavily suppressing himself; though he vented, he hadn’t actually harmed an innocent citizen.

Doppelganger: So?

Homelander thought about calling Benjamin. How he wished his father could act like a real parent, patting him on the head, telling him, "Good job, son. You’re the best." And then telling him about everything that had happened during this stretch.

But when Homelander’s finger hovered over the dial button, he pulled it back as if struck by electricity.

No! Absolutely not!

In Soldier Boy’s eyes, only pussies and weaklings went crying to their parents the second they hit a little snag. If he couldn’t even handle Stormfront stealing his spotlight, his father would lose all respect for him! Besides, the critical point was that Stormfront hadn’t actually broken any corporate rules. She had just... stolen his spotlight.

"I don’t need help. I can handle it myself!" Homelander gritted his teeth, a morbid light flashing in his eyes. He decided to personally reclaim everything that belonged to him!

---<>---

A few hours later. At the perimeter of The Seven film set.

His face dead as stone, Homelander didn’t knock or offer a greeting, directly bursting through the door of Stormfront’s luxury trailer like a violent gale.

At that moment, Stormfront was reclining comfortably on the sofa, sipping juice while scrolling through her soaring follower count on Twitter. Seeing Homelander barge in, entirely beside himself with rage, Stormfront didn’t even sit up. Instead, she raised an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth curling into a mocking sneer as if watching a circus act.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?!" Homelander raged as he strode in. "Do you think I’m blind?! You think I can’t see right through your filthy, underhanded tricks?!"

"Swooping in on my rescue missions, spouting off your mouth to the media! You want to hijack my team? You want to squeeze me out of The Seven?!" Homelander grew increasingly unhinged as he spoke. "I even know exactly what you’re plotting! You want to climb into my father’s bed, you want to perform better than me in front of him, you want to strip away everything I have!!"

"Let me tell you! There is zero goddamn chance you’ll succeed!!!"

Confronted with Homelander’s hysterical screaming, Stormfront didn’t even blink, merely shifting into a more comfortable posture against the cushions.

"I’m the fucking captain of The Seven!! Not you!!" Homelander continued. "My approval ratings are still through the roof! The 3 to 15s, the 18 to 49s, even the 25 to 53 demographics—every single group, they love me!"

"And the rest of The Seven, and Soldier Boy! They love me!"

As he shrieked that final line—"They love me!"—his voice cracked, carrying a pathetic, miserable tremor.

Staring at the man in front of her—who wielded the power of a god but possessed the psychological fragility of a three-year-old toddler—disgust flashed in Stormfront’s eyes as she looked at him like he was an absolute moron.

"Wow~ Well, that is truly... congratulations." Stormfront’s tone dripped with mocking sarcasm. "I mean, this profound need for everyone to cherish and coddle you like a literal infant—it’s incredibly pathetic... but..."

Pausing there, Stormfront deliberately dragged out her words, flashing an intensely provocative gesture right at Homelander:

"Yay~"

---<>---

A/N: Don’t forget to send Power Stones for more Chapters!!

Want to know what happens next? You can read up to 10+ Chapters ahead on my p@tr~on: 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

[email protected]/ForgottenDaoist (@ = a, link is in my profile).