Erasmus stared up at the moon, floating weightlessly like a feather high above the quiet estate. Down below, his physical body was still resting silently in his bed. This was his astral form, yet another incredibly useful ability he had acquired from Rufus.
Astral projection allowed him a rare moment of absolute peace, detached from the physical world, and it was also a way to play with people's minds without leaving evidence behind.
Suddenly, a violent pull yanked him downward. He was sucked back toward his room at a terrifying speed, his consciousness slamming heavily into his flesh and bone as his physical body was disturbed.
Snapping his eyes open in the dim light, Erasmus looked around the room, only to discover Ryan standing right there beside his bed.
Erasmus let out a long, audible sigh, covering his face with his hands. "What do you want, Ryan? I'm trying to sleep."
"I'm scared," Ryan said quietly, standing by the bed. He was desperately searching for the gentle, compassionate brother Oliver had told him about, hoping the old butler's stories were true.
"So?" Erasmus replied, his voice completely flat. "Go to Dad. He will be more than happy if you wanted to sleep beside him. Trust me, I know."
"I'm not comfortable with him," Ryan said quietly, looking down at the floor. "And since we're brothers... I thought about sleeping next to you. Just for tonight."
Erasmus dropped his hands from his face, his eyes locking onto Ryan in the dark. "First of all, I only learned you were my brother a week ago. You sleeping with me is weird. Second, we're half-brothers, not full. So no, Ryan. Go back to your room."
Ryan didn't move, his voice a whisper as he pleaded one last time. "But I'm scared."
"Try again later."
Ryan blinked, confused. "When?"
"In a thousand years," Erasmus said, turning his back to the boy and cutting off the conversation.
Ryan stared at his back for a moment before turning to leave quietly. But before he took more than three steps, Erasmus spoke again.
"Stop."
Ryan turned his head.
"You can sleep next to me today," Erasmus said. "Just for today."
Ryan's eyes lit up as he heard those words. Oliver was right after all. His brother was gentle and kind, and the coldness was all just an act.
He walked toward the bed and climbed in gently, taking up a small part of the space. Erasmus still kept his back to him.
"Erasmus?"
"What now?"
"Can you face me, please? I'm still scared."
"Absolutely not."
"Erasmus?"
"For God's sake, what now?"
"Why don't you like me?"
"Why should I like you? You're a stranger sleeping beside me, Ryan."
"I'm not a stranger. I'm your broth... half-brother."
"Do you want the truth, Ryan? Or do you want me to lie so we can both go to sleep?"
Ryan went quiet for a moment before answering "The truth."
"It's really simple. I don't like Becca. And by extension, I don't like you," Erasmus said simply, his back still turned to him.
"You... you hate my mom?" Ryan asked, confused and surprised.
"You are the only reason I haven't killed her yet."
"Why? What did she ever do to you?"
"It's what she's done to you."
"What she did to me?"
"Yes. Look at you, Ryan. You're weird. You've never interacted with any real people besides me and Dad. You grew up in a cage with big, beautiful, fake scenery, and she made you weak for her own gain. She made you gullible. Every single person lies to you, Ryan, because when they look at you, all they see is a lab rat in a bigger, nicer box."
Ryan went quiet after these words. He didn't know what to feel.
A part of him wanted to be happy, because beneath the harsh words, Erasmus was actually showing that he cared. In his own twisted, blunt way, his brother was being protective, proving that he really did have a heart.
Should he feel scared or angry that he mentioned he wanted to kill his mother? Should he feel angry or betrayed by his mother for keeping him in that fake town?
Overwhelmed by the conflicting emotions, Ryan couldn't speak anymore. He just lay there in the silence, staring blankly up at the dark ceiling.
Ryan turned away from the ceiling, shifting quietly onto his side to stare at his brother's back. In the heavy darkness of the room, he couldn't help but hold onto a single, quiet hope. That one day, he would turn to face him and smile.
Meanwhile, in Vogelbaum's room, Homelander lay in bed with his mind in a disarray of anger and hatred. He scrolled through social media, looking at the memes mocking him.
Some of the memes showed Stormfront and his own son, Vanguard, framing them as the true muscle and the real leaders of the Seven. Homelander stared at his phone in disbelief.
They were writing him off as a corporate puppet. A glorified Vought mascot, good only for talk show interviews, movie trailers, and junk food ads, while Stormfront and Vanguard did more in less than a week than he had done in his entire life.
He kept scrolling.
More posts.
More comments.
More comparisons.
More memes.
Stormfront and Vanguard.
Stormfront and Vanguard.
Stormfront and Vanguard.
Vanguard.
Vanguard.
Vanguard.
He kept scrolling.
One image showed Vanguard standing silently and upright like a spear, his face completely expressionless. Right next to it, they showed Homelander's face full of fake smiles and laughter, comparing him to a clown.
Thousands of comments underneath.
"The only real hero left."
"Homelander wishes he was this cool."
"Just retire the old clown already."
They weren't supposed to compare them. That wasn't how this worked. Vanguard was his son. The boy existed because of him. Everything Vanguard was belonged to him. Every comment, every cheer, every smile, every headline, it all traced back to him.
Yet somehow, people kept talking about Vanguard as if he had appeared from nowhere. As if Homelander wasn't standing right there. Right in front of his son. So why were they looking beyond him?
But that was the part he couldn't understand. Every Supe in the world chased attention. They begged for it, bled for it. But not his boy. He never asked for any of it. He didn't do talk shows, ads, movies, or live streams. He didn't care about the spotlight at all.
Yet people simply gave it to him anyway. They chose him. The public chose him. Even now, complete strangers were choosing Vanguard over him.
Homelander slowly lowered the phone onto his chest, staring blankly at the dark ceiling. But he chose me. He told me he would never leave me. I'm all he has in the world.
A thought kept springing in his mind, but a part of him kept stomping it. But as he tried to stomp it, it kept growing back again and again.
No. No, no, no. Not my Erasmus. Not my boy. He would never.
Meanwhile, the peace of the beach was shattered that night. The usual nighttime visitors were repulsed by the sudden presence of a large group of homeless people, prompting an immediate call to the police.
While seeing one or two was common enough for people to overlook, a crowd this large was impossible to ignore. The locals could stomach the sight of one person but an entire crowd of them was too much for their comfort.
"This is so fucking boring," Cerberus grumbled, staring out at the dark water. "What did that depressed crybaby see in this place anyway?"
He sat on the sand, entirely unimpressed. Behind him was the army he'd managed to whip together, a hundred homeless men recruited with the promise of cash, plus dozens of women who had simply followed the scent of free food.
He hadn't given the women a single dollar, seeing no use for them in his fighting force, but he'd tossed them enough food to keep them around. It wasn't like their payments were coming out of his own pocket, after all.
A sudden wail of a sirens cut through the crashing of the waves and mummers of the gathering, followed quickly by the flashes of red and blue lights. Eight police cruisers drove over the curb and rolled directly onto the packed sand of the upper beach, their headlights blinding the crowd.
The army immediately began to stir, muttering in anxiety. A hundred desperate, hungry people, clustered together, prepared for a tense encounter. All of them opened a clearing to the boy sitting on the beach.
Car doors slammed in unison. thirty two officers stepped into the beach, their flashlights cutting through the night, beams moved over dirty faces and torn jackets. Handguns stayed holstered, but every single cop kept their hand resting close to their belt.
"Alright, let's go! Party's over, clear it out!" the lead officer shouted. He stepped forward, squinting through the light of his own headlights at the massive wall of people. "This is a public beach, not a campground. Who the hell is in charge here?"
The lead officer scanned the sea of ragged, dirt-streaked faces, searching for an answer. His eyes naturally gravitated toward the cleanest, most normal-looking person in the entire crowd, except he looked like he was just a kid.
But as the officer watched, the massive crowd of desperate men silently parted, taking a collective step back to leave a wide, empty circle around the teenager.
The officer took the hint. In this day and age, his first thought wasn't that this kid was a dangerous gang leader or a cult ; he figured it was some entitled internet influencer out here exploiting the homeless to film a viral prank or a stunt video for clout.
The lead officer took a few heavy steps into the clearing, the sand crunching under his tactical boots. He unclipped his flashlight from his vest and pointed the bright beam directly into Cerberus's face.
"I'm Sergeant Miller," the officer announced, his voice booming over the sound of the surf. Keeping his tone firm, authoritative, and completely out of patience. "And right now, you and your little production here are racking up a massive list of charges."
He gestured with his flashlight toward the crowd of a hundred men and women watching from the shadows.
"We've got illegal assembly and creating a public disturbance," Miller said, resting his hand heavily on his utility belt. "I don't care if you're an influencer, a YouTuber, or what kind of stunt you're trying to pull for clicks. You don't bring an entire shelter's worth of people out to a private residential beach just to film a video without permission."
The other thirty-one officers shifted their weight, their boots sinking slightly into the sand as they formed a loose line behind their sergeant. The sheer number of uniforms was meant to intimidate the crowd, and they were doing a very good job at that.
"So here is how this is going to go," Sergeant Miller ordered, taking one more step forward. "You are going to shut down the cameras, you are going to tell your people to pack up whatever garbage they brought with them, and you are going to disband this entire gathering immediately. If this beach isn't completely empty in ten minutes, all thirty-two of us are going to start putting people in zip-ties and loading you into the back of our transport vans. Am I making myself clear, kid?"
"So fucking boring," Cerberus finally spoke without looking back.
"Excuse me, what did you just say?" Sergeant Miller asked, wanting to establish authority and make sure of what he had just heard.
Cerberus looked back at his army. Half of these idiots were only here because they were starving; the other half were just chasing the promise of quick cash. It was time to find out who was actually willing to follow orders when things got ugly.
Sure, he could use his powers. He could reach right into their broken filthy heads and forcefully rewrite their minds make them what he wants them to be. But doing it for a crowd this size? Sifting through decades of deep-seated trauma, wiping away all those accumulated years of begging, humiliation, addiction, and whatever other miserable sludge filled their brains, would take an exhausting amount of effort. He really didn't feel like doing that much tonight.
Instead, he wanted to see what they would do on their own when pushed.
Sergeant Miller took a step closer, his hand resting tightly on the grip of his holstered pistol. "I'm not going to ask you again, kid. Shut down the video, tell your people to pack up, and disband this gathering immediately."
"I gave you food," Cerberus spoke to the crowd. "I gave you money. Now earn it. Kill them."
"Hey! Stand up and put your hands where I can see them!" Miller snapped, unholstering his weapon and pointing it directly at the teenager on the ground. The thirty-one officers behind Miller instantly drew their firearms.
The illusion of a hundred-man army vanished instantly. More than half the crowd, the ones who had only shown up for a free meal or an easy buck, took one look at thirty-two loaded service weapons and made their choice.
They didn't yell, and they didn't fight, they just backed away, abandoning the beach altogether. They wanted to eat, not die for some insane rich kid.
Another thirty of them just froze. Paralyzed by the sudden escalation, they stood like statues in the flashing police lights, their eyes darting between the cops' barrels and their payday. They were caught in the middle, waiting to see which way the wind blew.
About ten or fifteen men stepped out of the freezing crowd. These were the ones who had absolutely nothing left to lose, the deeply unstable, the radically desperate.
Before a single trigger could be pulled, Cerberus finally stood up. "Whoa, whoa, wait! Stop! Stop!" Cerberus yelled, his voice suddenly loud, fast, and completely obnoxious. "It's a prank! It's just a prank! Don't shoot!"
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Hey everyone! The author here.
I wanted to let you know that I've officially set up a Patreon. If anyone feels like supporting me and the story, you can check it out! Just a heads-up: there won't be any advanced chapters or special perks locked behind a paywall. It is strictly a tip jar for pure donations if you want to support my writing journey.
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