metabolizes: (pic#13979980)
speedy mcspeed-speed ([personal profile] metabolizes) wrote2024-09-19 10:27 am
Entry tags:

inbox ▣ saltburnt



WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
velocity


text ❖ audio ❖ video


breeding: (pic#17404364)

✉️ text — un: homelander.

[personal profile] breeding 2025-02-01 09:10 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Sent shortly before he and Alicent take to the network: ]

assuming you're not running at the same speed you usually are, go to the library. there's some shit there from my neck of the woods, called temp v.
it'll put some pep back into your step. can't guarantee it'll make you fast again, but it'll make you something.

don't take more than one at a time, and wait until it wears off to inject it again.
and don't take more than three or four shots total if you can help it.
breeding: (pic#17403724)

[personal profile] breeding 2025-02-02 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
basically super serum, yeah.
it's been tested, which is how i know it works, but it's not stable.

vought's been trying to make it military-grade — make a soldier a superhero for 24 hours at a time. easy to use, easy to control.
the real stuff's just called compound v, but that'll make a 24/7 hero, which is bad for business if they're not controlling it.
breeding: (pic#17404218)

[personal profile] breeding 2025-02-02 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
unstable as in "take more than the recommended 3-4 shots and you die."

[ As for the next part— ]

might be easier if i explain it in person.
meet me at my room?
breeding: (pic#17404030)

[personal profile] breeding 2025-02-02 05:02 am (UTC)(link)
[ Feng shui gets a slight grimace but not an outright refusal, if only because he's aware that his room is a bit of a work in progress. That, and it's easier to entertain that thought than trying to explain exactly what the fuck is going on — what he is, what Compound V does, how supes came about in the first place.

But at the very least, there's the chair that came with the writing desk, which he offers to Wally before settling on the edge of the bed.
]

Yeah, the— [ a wave of a hand, a sigh ] —supe thing.

[ It's as he's about to launch into an explanation he hasn't thought through that he decides to change course — one more stall, though it's just as much a marker of how significant Homelander finds this, too. ]

Look, don't repeat any of this to anyone else, okay? Promise me.
breeding: (pic#17404176)

[personal profile] breeding 2025-02-02 07:39 am (UTC)(link)
[ As soon as Wally agrees, Homelander seems to realize that there's nothing left standing between him and the distinctly unappealing prospect of telling the truth. It's not that he's a born liar — far from it, he's never had much of a poker face — but he's— it makes him something different, he thinks, to have to confess to this. Something less. And he can't stand that.

Immediately, the bridge of his nose wrinkles, his lips curling back over his teeth as he lets out an unhappy hiss.
]

So it's— [ start again ] —shit. Okay. Basically, yes. Vought owns supes because they're the only ones, theoretically, who can make them. But it's not like they can have that getting out, right? So they say we're born with it, since Compound V's permanent, not this temporary shit. No re-ups, no problem. Not even most of the supes know. None of 'em knew, until pretty recently.

But I'm not—

[ And here's the catch, the thing that makes it tough for him. He reacts as though it's something to shy away from physically, shaking his head before switching, hardly subtle, to a completely different tack. ]

—What the fuck are metahumans?
breeding: (pic#17404405)

[personal profile] breeding 2025-02-04 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
[ It's ... a lot. Not just in terms of how many words Wally fires off at once — Homelander already knows the kid's a motormouth — but what he's saying, the strange points at which the details overlap with what he's familiar with. Homelander's expression visibly twists as he listens, the idea of trying to maintain a poker face going out the window as soon as he starts to feel the chill of uncertainty begin creeping up his spine.

He doesn't know where to start. With the whole genetic marker thing, which isn't not what Vought had been looking for; the idea of experimenting on runaways, like the girl who'd ended up being his mom, someone Vought had known no one would come looking for; the hours, days, months, years of torture he'd endured while being shaped into something deemed suitable for the public stage. It all feels like the worst fucking migraine he's ever had, way too much for him to process at once. For a second, he squeezes his eyes shut, like that might help him cut through all the noise. When his eyes open, it's as he lets out a breath, his head falling so his gaze finds the floor.

He trusts Wally. That, he knows for sure.
]

Almost all of the supes in my world, [ he begins, slow and careful, ] get Compound V when they're still kids. Babies, really. So long as they're healthy, so long as their genes look good. Me, my son, we're the only ones who were born this way, but even then, I—

—they found some girl, someone with nowhere to go, to carry me, pumped me full of V while I was still in her belly. [ And, yes, he's leaving out the bit about Soldier Boy, because fuck him. ] I was born at Vought. I grew up at Vought. Well, in a fucking Vought lab, so they could test what I could do, what I could endure, make sure I was their good little soldier before they trotted me out to the world and said they found me, made me say I had a normal fucking family and normal fucking childhood before I joined up.

[ His jaw clenches as he wonders why he's saying any of this at all. Wally hadn't asked, not explicitly. And then there's the matter of why it makes him sad. He's alright with it making him angry — he's been angry before. But, thinking about his mother, thinking about everything from a more detached vantage point—

His face flushes. He's already told Alicent this, and he'd felt strange, then, too.
]

I was perfect.

[ And why does he say was? Is it because he's a fucking broken toy, now? Unable to protect himself or anyone else, able to be stripped of his powers without even getting to put up a fight. Because he can't say he's ever had anything else. No aunt, no mom, no dad — not even any friends, not really, not until this place had made him less. ]