Marvel: Raising — Chapter 172 - The Beginning of the Story

Homelander 2.0 was shocked. Completely and utterly shocked.

In that long nightmare, he had imagined countless times what it would be like to become Azu. To become the heir to the farm.

He had imagined countless times the battles with Azu. Even his own defeat.

He had even imagined being slapped to death by Pops with a single strike.

Because that was always how the struggle between heirs went.

He had desperately wanted to become Azu.

Precisely because he knew he never could. A moth flying into a flame, doomed from the start.

Because he was just a failed product rotting in the corner.

Never mind Pops.

Even Vought International. Even Edgar. Both utterly, completely disappointed in him. He had screwed everything up, and he had done it all by himself.

He didn't deserve anything.

But now.

That man from his dreams, that ordinary yet invincible father, had actually lowered his gaze and looked at him.

And so for the first time in his life, the giant baby in the corner felt sunlight touch him.

He didn't need to be Homelander 2.0 anymore. A joke. A failed superhero product.

He could just be John.

"Hey, hey, hey — what are you spacing out for?"

Azu reached out his hand. Resting in his palm was a ball of light: The Father's Agony System, stripped free and extracted.

John stared at it. Motionless.

A long moment passed.

Then, like a cat sneaking up on something it had no right to want, he slowly extended one hand, hooked the ball of light with his fingers, and pulled it against his chest.

"Heh heh."

He held it tighter and tighter. As if he were terrified it would all dissolve, terrified of waking up.

"Did getting beaten make you stupid?"

Azu watched, scratching his head. Cured or not, this guy would still be drooling.

"I'm heading home," Azu said. "You should go back too."

"Mm."

John answered quietly.

He stood, hugged the system close, and flew toward the past.

Not the Speed Force's time reversal. Not a quantum realm parallel traversal.

Just a single thought from a certain Guan, his will bending causality into place.

...

John flew for over a decade. The closer he got to his destination, the smaller he became, shrinking down until he was entirely 8 years old again.

The closer he got, the hazier his memories grew. The lab. The experiments. The absurd, grotesque years inside the superhero entertainment machine. All of it turned to smoke and scattered.

His powers, his mutations, that fractured gene code — smoothed away too.

He felt no attachment to any of it.

No.

More than that: losing it all felt like relief. Like shedding something rotten.

He had finally walked out of the laboratory. He bid farewell to a lifetime of nightmares and despair, and his whole being felt light. The hysteria inside him went quiet, and what was left was only anticipation.

That anticipation built as he arrived in Marvel's past, touching down in the heart of New York City.

It hit its peak.

8 years old.

He stood on the street corner, staring. Neon lights blazing, crowds surging past. Super-criminals in gaudy spandex and flamboyant superheroes swaggering through the streets, screaming and hollering at each other and anyone within earshot.

The famous ones flew, swung, drifted overhead.

The lesser ones brawled on the sidewalk, grunting and hollering.

"Pew pew pew!"

Ordinary people weren't about to be left out. Free shopping everywhere. Live-action firefights. Someone keeled over and hit the pavement every other second.

The whole vibe: pure, honest, wholesome chaos.

Clean aesthetic.

Reassuring, even.

"Five, four, three, two..."

John's memories were still dissolving. But his sense of self had never been sharper.

"One!"

The word landed. And the Abomination answered.

"ROAR!"

A howl that split the sky open. Gamma radiation. Super Soldier Serum. One laboratory. One cornered Avenger with nowhere left to run. Abstract America at its finest.

Once all the ingredients were in place, things stopped being controllable.

In Marvel, though, that loss of control just became a supervillain.

Right now, it was the Abomination.

It moved like a volcano stuffed inside a kaiju, each footstep booming like rolling thunder. The street shook like an earthquake. The asphalt buckled and cracked like a wrung-out rag, shards scattering like buckshot through the walls of buildings.

"AHHH!"

Only then did the people who'd been busy shooting at each other snap to attention, as if a director had finally yelled "Action!" They screamed. They ran.

John kept standing there, motionless, amid the stampede.

He craned his neck.

And finally, for real, he saw the man in the black trench coat appear.

[DING!]

[The Father's Agony System, activated!]

[As the name implies, the primary function of this system is to grant the host a father's agony.]

That was the sound the man heard.

...

"Kid, come with me. Or I'll gut you."

America had no shortage of predators and related criminals. In American terminology, they'd probably be called "persons attracted to children."

In the chaos, someone noticed that John looked reasonably human-shaped.

And decided to take him.

But he still had Compound V running through him. He was still superhuman.

And he still remembered every principle Pops had ever taught him about how to conduct himself.

"Shhk!"

One small hand. One motion.

The man came apart instantly. His life in this timeline: concluded.

John stood there with blood across his face, holding the severed limbs, and looked up at Guan Fuyun.

Their eyes met.

Both thought the same thing at the same moment: him.

And then.

John saw it. The scene he would carry for the rest of his life, the one that would burn itself into his DNA.

The Abomination came charging in like a rampaging kaiju, kicking up visible shockwaves as it moved. The concussive force shattered every building along the street in a clean, invisible wave.

Glass. Chunks of wall. Debris. All of it flew skyward at once, catching the city lights, framing the screams of everyone below, glittering down like scattered art.

Inside that stunning tableau.

The most striking man John had ever seen moved against the tide. Against the crowd. Against the Abomination. His tall frame interposed itself between John and all of it, blocking out the blood and the noise.

The world shook.

In this hysterical place, packed with gods and demons, madmen and science experiments, a world that offered no safety at all, the man looked down at him and smiled.

"Hello, boy."

"Where are your parents?"

"I don't have parents."

"Where did you come from?"

"I don't know. One second I was in the lab. Then I was here. Like a dream."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. I have nowhere to go."

"Then would you like to be my son?"

"Pops!"

John said it loud and clean and without hesitation.

That single word came out so free, so completely unguarded, that it left his life without a single regret. His memories followed. His consciousness dissolved. He became Azu.

Good.

That was exactly what he'd wanted.

John smiled. Radiant. Because he had always known this was where the story ended, known that Pops was the finish line, and so he had come here no matter what it cost.

This one moment was worth everything that came before.

Let the story begin.

"What's your name?"

Guan Fuyun asked.

"Pops, are you asking for my human name or my product name?"

Azu answered.

"What do you mean?"

"My human name is John. The scientists who ran experiments on me and threw me into the high-temperature furnaces gave me that. My product name is The Homelander. The company gave me that one — it's meant to be sold for profit down the line."

Guan Fuyun: "Grass (a type of plant)."

...

Azu's story, the main line of it, is wrapped up here. Some of the original outline had to be adjusted for review reasons, but it still reached its period.

Updates continue from here. Side stories, some absurdist chaos, filling out the work properly.

➤ Next: DC Really Does Have a Lot of Lunatics