What came next went exactly the way Ivan had figured.
Stormfront's death kept spreading, and both the internet and the street lit up with a fresh hunt for Homelander's head.
"This is no way for a man to live." Homelander stood at the window of Ivan's office, hands behind his back, looking down at the protest crowd packed around the base of Vought Tower. The complaint slipped out of him.
Ivan's resignation still had not cleared, so for now he was still Vice President of Vought.
Someone had leaked it, though. The second Ivan walked into Vought Tower that morning, the way people looked at him had flipped. Ashley's side, on the other hand, was suddenly very busy.
"Just hold on a little longer, oui?" Ivan said, then shut his eyes.
Lately he had been studying Blazing Wing, the power he had taken from Sweet Home. He had used it a few times already, but he was sure it had more in it than that.
When he first fused the power, only the cells in his left arm had mutated. Meaning only the left arm could molt into a Blazing Wing that ran at extreme heat.
He had tested it on the fridge at home. Steel that was supposed to take heat turned into a puddle of molten iron in front of him.
The temperature packed into Blazing Wing sat around two to three thousand degrees. Enough to turn a regular person into charcoal in a blink.
Even the rest of his own body could not tank a hit from Blazing Wing.
After he fused a Parasyte's shapeshifting, transfer, and total control, plus Muzan's flesh regeneration, his read on his own cells was sharper than it had ever been. Gotou's total control in particular.
It let him work every cell in his body like lines on his own palm. So he started trying to swap the mutated cells in for the ones that had never mutated. After a few rounds, he had his answer.
First, the idea was sound. Even mutated cells could still divide. Cell differentiation was supposed to be a one-way street, but he had stacked so many healing powers that you could not put a normal human cell next to his and call it a fair comparison.
No regular person could get blown to pieces and still come back as long as one scrap of meat was left.
So Ivan meant to play Ship of Theseus. Use the mutated cells to replace the ones that had never changed. The process was not as clean as he had hoped.
He found that even when the mutated cells split and specialized, only a tiny fraction kept the mutation.
Most of them came out ordinary. Some of them mutated the wrong way and turned into cancer cells.
Those cells sat in his body like invaders. They ignored his control and went to town slaughtering and eating the other cells.
A normal person would have already killed himself doing this.
Even his cells had a cap on how many times they could divide. The number was way past a regular human's, but a cell that actually kept the mutation only showed up after at least a hundred splits.
So even if Ivan wanted to swap every cell in his body as fast as possible, he still had to purge cancer cells now and then, and that dragged the whole thing down.
Ivan dropped his right arm. Fingertips pointed at the trash can.
The cells he dumped, the second they left his body, turned into gray-white dust and went dead.
The nutrients they had been holding went back into him, and he used that to build new cells.
"Seventy-two percent… seventy-five."
Ivan kept his eyes shut and watched the mutation rate inside his body.
"That a side effect of your power?" Homelander got bored watching after a while and glanced at Ivan. More accurately, at the trash can beside Ivan's chair.
In less than half an hour, a can that had been empty was packed with dust, and that was after Ivan had compacted it over and over with telekinesis.
"You can see it that way."
Ivan opened his eyes slow.
Right then the head of PR shoved the door open, wired, and walked straight up to him.
"Hard to believe those photos flipped Homelander's reputation in a second. A minute ago his support had dropped fifteen points. The second the pictures went out, the slide stopped, and now the numbers are climbing. Give it a little time and his popularity does a full reverse. You called it. Like a spring. You crush it all the way down, then it snaps back hard."
The PR director could not help saying it out loud.
"Now they should know who the real hero is." Ivan stood, walked over beside Homelander, and smiled.
"Sometimes the truth does not matter. What matters is how it ends."
Homelander watched the crowd under Vought Tower break and scatter like spooked animals. It did not make him happy.
"Stormfront is dead."
He turned and looked at Ivan.
"You care about her that much? After this, your numbers explode. You pass Starlight easy. The whole country gets back on its knees for you. Next to that, does Stormfront still matter?" Ivan's voice stayed flat.
Homelander laughed. Big, bright, movie-poster laugh. The corners of his eyes did not move at all.
"You pulled me out again. I suppose I should say thank you."
"Skip the thanks." Ivan went back to his chair. After the PR director left, he kept going. "I lined up the American Superhero show for you. They should be here by now."
Half an hour later.
In a Vought soundstage, Courtney was in the chair getting makeup done. The second she saw Homelander walking toward her, she stood and met him with a full smile.
"Well, look who it is. Our superhero." Courtney had black hair and a face that fit American TV. A little older. When she smiled you could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. She took care of herself. Still had it.
"Courtney. Long time." Homelander smiled and shook her hand.
Then she saw Ivan behind him.
"Mr. Greevs. I have heard the name for years. Shame we never got a face to face. Looks like I get that wish today."
Courtney was a senior Vought producer, with more than one superhero show under her.
"Ms. Courtney, I have always been a fan. Citizen Starlight and American Superhero, I do not miss an episode."
The smiles on both of them were pure business.
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69