Ian only needed to use a little brainpower
to figure out why the stitched-together Homelander had shut down.
Sure enough, the problem really was that it had "run out of power." Embedded in the hollowed-out back of Homelander's neck was a tiny arc reactor that had already gone dark.
Maybe the energy had been completely drained.
Or maybe the power supply had been remotely cut off.
"Now that's some black tech."
Ian neatly pulled out the thumb-sized reactor and slipped it into his pocket. The second he saw the blurred Stark Industries lettering still printed on the surface, he knew it was valuable.
"What a perfect body! Please! Let me experience that body for myself! I'll do anything you want!"
The demon head was still obsessing over the stitched Homelander's body.
Its taste was clearly a little warped.
Which, honestly, was very Hell of it.
"Anything I want? Including betraying Trigon?" Ian sensed just how impatient the demon was getting, so he decided to test it with a casual question.
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
The demon head reacted violently.
"My father served Trigon. My grandfather served Trigon. My great-grandfather was one of Trigon's most capable demons!"
"My family has always been like this! Of course I'll stay forever loyal to the great Trigon! Not even death could shake my loyalty!"
Its tone and will were completely unwavering.
"Wow, you're just amazing, huh."
Ian curled his lip and gave a totally emotionless compliment. Then he looked at the motionless stitched Homelander and casually kicked it over onto the ground.
"In the end, it was still Superman's son who defeated discount Superman and defended the glory of the father-god. A moving victory. I think this achievement means I deserve to open a separate alt account as Patriotlander in the future."
Maybe that was technically taking advantage of an enemy while it was down, but a win was a win.
This was America. Winning was what mattered.
Long before Ian ever crossed over, the true eternal blazing sun of America had already taught him everything he needed to know about the American way of life.
"Don't! Don't spit on this body!"
The demon head rolled its eyes upward. Seeing Ian muttering to himself, it apparently thought he was "charging up" an attack, and immediately panicked due to pure trauma.
"Even though I won't betray Trigon, I can betray other demons in Hell! I can help you summon my own kind, even demon gods. This body could support me in casting that kind of magic!"
The demon went straight to its bottom line and begged shamelessly.
To be fair,
Ian was a little tempted.
"Not bad. You actually said exactly what I wanted to hear. This round goes to you."
Ian weighed it for a moment, then walked over to the stitched Homelander lying on the ground.
"Hngh..."
He pulled hard on Homelander's head, but who knew what kind of ridiculous stitching material those Marvel freaks had used. Even with strength over twenty times that of a normal person, he still could not pull apart the body's structure.
The boy looked a little embarrassed.
Fortunately, he still had a trump card.
"Close your eyes first. I'm about to spit. Relax, I'll only spit a little. Just enough to coat the area."
Ian slapped two clumps of dirt over the demon's eyes.
He tried other methods first.
The results proved that humanity's greatest built-in natural weapon was not nearly as useful as he had hoped.
...
Meanwhile,
after reviving again,
Gwen led a team back to the fountain plaza.
The moment she saw the scene there,
even after considering at least twenty possible outcomes, she was still stunned.
The soldiers with her also stirred uneasily, though their discipline kept them from reacting as dramatically as she did.
"What are you doing now?!"
Gwen's voice shot up into a pitch that probably broke some kind of human limit.
Her hands were shaking.
"Huh?"
Ian did not even turn around. He kept carefully selecting materials as he answered.
"I'm building a Gundam. No, wait. More like an end-of-the-world Evangelion."
He picked up a sturdy arm off the ground.
"Yes! Exactly! I am Evangelion! This is true art!"
The demon's voice was full of excitement. Its head could now twist a full three hundred and sixty degrees like a proper demon again.
"I feel incredible."
It flexed its three heads, six arms, and eight legs while loudly praising Ian from the bottom of its heart, making both the now-disposable Gwen and the soldier-disposables nearby twitch visibly.
"How did you even manage to tear apart Homelander's steel body?"
Gwen snapped out of it and hurried forward. Before the demon bull head could react, she grabbed it and tore it off.
To be fair, Ian's spit only had fel corrosion in it.
He had not mixed in industrial glue.
"No!"
The demon head let out a miserable scream, only to be thrown right back at Ian in disgust by Gwen.
Ian tried to kick it away, but unfortunately his soccer skills were directly inherited from the national team of his previous life.
He missed.
Still, that did not stop him from immediately stepping on the demon head afterward.
"We still need this body. You can't ruin it or take it away."
Gwen spoke with complete seriousness, then directed the soldiers to begin recovering Homelander and Hulk's remains and severed limbs.
"Are you planning to use this body to snap?"
Ian guessed that this must have been why Gwen had been testing the stitched-up corpse's durability earlier. He still remembered what he had learned the last time he came to this world.
AI Tony wanted to use the Infinity Stones to force the world back onto the proper track.
"No."
Gwen hesitated slightly, but still answered him. After all, he did have S.H.I.E.L.D. access.
"See that real giant up there in the sky?"
"If he falls, it won't be any less catastrophic than another asteroid hitting Earth."
There was obvious worry in her voice, but Ian's attention went in a totally different direction.
"He? Not He with a capital? Has mighty Galactus really fallen this far in the rankings?"
Ian was honestly shocked. In his mind, no matter what, Galactus was still one of Marvel's five cosmic gods.
And little Gwen was out here disrespecting a god?
"That's not the point!"
Gwen rolled her eyes.
"The point is, we need the remaining power inside the dead superheroes' bodies to hold him up. At least until the last Infinity Stone is brought back to Earth, he can't be allowed to come crashing down."
"Because of Galactus's status, even if it's only his corpse left, our time-slowing device can't keep working for much longer."
Gwen let out a worried sigh.
After hearing that,
Ian suddenly understood.
"So it was you. I was wondering why he'd been falling for so long without ever hitting the ground so I could touch him."
He sounded deeply emotional. So it really wasn't that Galactus, even dead, had refused to share his power with him.
"..."
Gwen looked completely baffled by what she had just heard.
After a long moment,
"Tony wants to see you. I'm begging you, try to act a little normal."
When the soldiers finished loading the experiment's body parts onto tricycles, Gwen motioned for Ian to climb onto one of them.
"I'm perfectly normal. You're just not smart enough and don't have enough comprehension."
Ian bent down, picked up the demon head off the ground, hung it back at his waist, and hopped onto the tricycle.
"So can your parents understand you? Back when everything in your world was still normal?" Gwen was pedaling in front, and for some reason suddenly threw out that question.
"You mean my alcoholic mom and my dad who wears his underwear outside his pants? Of course. They both think I'm normal too."
Ian answered while looking around at the soldiers nearby, who were also using human-powered tricycles.
"..."
Gwen fell silent.
She was starting to feel like everything somehow made perfect sense.
Soon enough,
the group arrived back at the sewer entrance.
After moving through the underground passageway, they reached the base doors. This time, Gwen opened the doors with her own credentials.
She moved too fast.
Ian did not even get the chance to say, Let me do it.
Stepping into the familiar main hall again, Ian was still stunned by the scale of AI Tony's mainframe. He could not even begin to calculate how much money all those parts would fetch as scrap back in the DC Universe.
"What do you want to drink?"
Digital Tony's face appeared.
And right then,
the demon head, which had been quietly sensing everything around it, suddenly screamed in shock.
"Here! Here! What is this place?!"
Inside Tony's mainframe, the demon head had felt an aura it absolutely should not have been able to feel.
"A single universe shouldn't contain this many souls!"
Its tone was full of fear of the unknown and utter disbelief.
For a moment, it genuinely could not tell whether Tony or Ian was the true dimensional demon god ruling this place.
(End of Chapter)
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