Before the Carcharodons and the Investigation Department moved out, on the streets of the UED capital, a cold wind spun paper scraps and dust around an empty square.
The once-bustling commercial district now stood deserted. Holo billboards still flickered, but no one stopped to look.
Armed soldiers set up checkpoints at every corner. APCs crushed broken glass and discarded electronics under their treads, engine roars jarringly loud in the dead city.
Outside UED Headquarters, the glass curtain wall that had once been pristine was now laced with cracks, with scorched black patches where Molotovs had burned through—clear signs of a recent riot.
Three rings of blast walls had been added around the tower. Auto-turrets and snipers held the high ground. Anyone who approached without authorization would be immediately suppressed by fire.
Inside, security protocols had been raised to the highest level—
Biometric ID, brainwave verification, quantum encryption—layer upon layer of protection turned the building into an isolated fortress.
Yet no defense could hide one fact: the threat they feared most—the red-caped figure—had vanished without a trace.
In truth, after completing the Antarctic cover mission, Homelander had quietly returned to the stealth-class ship.
Now, "he" hovered in the ship's maintenance bay while nanoscale repair systems tuned "his" biofield and replenished energy reserves.
His eyes were half open, ice-blue irises glowing faintly in the dark like a crouching beast, ready at any moment to rip the battlefield apart again.
Beyond that, the UED faced more than the fear of Homelander's return—it faced total collapse of public opinion.
The UED's internet regulators had completely lost control of the narrative.
Though the Earth Federation government had cut comms in some regions and deleted large amounts of sensitive content, footage of Homelander and positive coverage of the Human Empire still spread like wildfire.
High-quality videos flooded every major forum.
In one, Homelander held up the wreck of a falling battleship with both hands, then fired laser beams from his eyes to precisely vaporize the giant waves that would have slammed into residential districts.
The videographer's voice trembled off-screen: "He could've just left us to die…"
Another clip captured an even more shocking scene: Homelander weaving through artillery to haul a hovercar full of children from beneath the wreckage of a crashed transport.
You could clearly hear a child crying and a mother thanking him, while in the background the UED's mech units continued indiscriminate bombardment.
"They're trying to kill us! And he's saving us!" "Is the UED even a human government??" and similar titles went viral across social platforms.
Worse for the UED's leadership, positive info about the Human Empire began seeping in at scale.
Anonymous data packets hit civilian networks, showing prosperous Imperial colonies, free healthcare and education systems, Astartes aiding disaster victims—
and even a blurry yet staggering clip—
A five-meter giant in black-and-gold armor (suspected to be the Human Emperor) stood in a sector's central square and, with a raise of his hand, healed tens of thousands of plague victims.
"By the Emperor's Grace" slogans began appearing quietly in street graffiti. Some even started to gather in secret to recite the "Book of the Emperor's Word" they'd pulled from the net.
All of it blew the blockade wide open.
At an emergency meeting, the UED Minister of Network Regulation raged: "Our firewall was shredded by some advanced AI! It even altered our internal databases!"
He wasn't wrong.
The stealth ship's Hui AI had already infiltrated the entire UED info-net.
This intelligence, far beyond UED tech, drifted like a ghost through every fiber, cracking ciphers with ease, paralyzing censors, even back-injecting false directives to make the UED's net police contradict themselves.
Whenever UED techs tried to trace the source, a single line of flashing gold text appeared on their screens—
"For Humanity."
So the UED capital went into full lockdown, extreme control measures deployed to stave off protests and riots—but resistance in the shadows was already brewing.
In the basement of a shuttered bar, a dozen young people crowded around a modified data terminal, watching Human Empire propaganda holos.
Hope flickered in their eyes.
"They say… He'll really come save us?"
the youngest barmaid whispered.
No one answered, but in every heart the answer was already there.
Outside on the street, UED patrols wore standard exoskeletal rigs.
One ten-man squad moved with a slightly slack cadence down the empty block, the exo servos humming rhythmically.
Their helmet visors swept the buildings continuously; any suspicious heat signature would trigger an instant alarm.
Yet if you slipped into their encrypted squad channel, you'd hear something else.
"You hear? Third Fleet was wiped in Antarctic orbit," a young soldier's voice said, pitched low but still shaking. "Monitors showed that guy—like out of a superhero movie—he single-handedly—"
"Shut it!" The squad leader's rebuke crackled with static. "Spread one more rumor and you can explain yourself to a court-martial!"
The channel fell silent for a few seconds, then a raspy veteran spoke:
"It's not a rumor. My nephew's in First Mech. They saw with their own eyes—lasers out of that guy's eyes. That thing isn't something humans can fight."
"."
Breathing grew heavy over the comms.
Their boots crunched through broken glass with crisp snaps, like treading on taut nerves.
"You've seen the Human Empire's promo vids… right?" Another voice slipped in cautiously. "That five-meter giant… if that really is their Emperor—"
"Enough!" The squad leader halted hard, exo-boot brakes squealing sparks from the pavement. "Keep this up and we're all getting court-martialed! Eyes up!"
But the seed of fear was already planted.
They all remembered last week's supply list—daily provisions cut by thirty percent, med kits two months expired, even basic maintenance gel now rationed—while the Military Committee's generals still enjoyed luxury goods shipped in from the colonies.
Waaah— wooo—!!
Just as the suffocating silence swallowed the squad, a shrill alarm split the night.
"Warning! Warning! Condition One! All units to stations!"
Scarlet beacons strobed madly on the buildings, stretching the soldiers' shadows into twisted red specters.
Emergency directives flooded the leader's tactical HUD: "Suspected target that caused Antarctic base blackout approaching fast," "Orbital defense platforms and First Fleet under attack," and more.
"Move! Form up!" The leader's voice broke into a higher register of fear.
They turned to run, but hadn't gone a hundred meters before the street ahead flooded with an eye-searing blue light.
BOOM!!!
A deafening blast erupted ahead. The shockwave flipped an APC at the curb.
The soldiers staggered, found their footing, and looked up—then froze where they stood—
A "giant" in heavy armor had appeared in the middle of the street as if out of thin air.
The armored "giant" in the street straightened slowly. The Terminator suit's servos droned low. Over two and a half meters tall, and the power armor made him feel even larger. The Carcharodon insignia— a shark ripping into a warship—etched on his chestplate glowed blood-red under the warning lights.
Shark's teeth and skull icons on his helmet's flank bobbed as the "giant" moved, each metal clink like a whisper from Death.
There was even old, dried blood at some of the armor joints, never scrubbed away.
"My God…"
A young soldier's knees went weak, his rifle clanging to the pavement.
His pupils pinholed. His visor's bioscanner flashed a red "Threat Level: Incalculable." His internal monitor showed heart rate past 160, adrenaline at a dangerous spike.
One hothead still had his finger on the trigger. The rifle's aim assist had just lit blue—
CLANG—!
The bolter's roar shattered the last intact panes on either side of the street.
Splutch—!
The young soldier's head burst like a watermelon, red and white spraying radially across his buddies' armor behind him.
Bits of brain tissue even stuck to a lamppost five meters away, glowing a weird mauve under the red alarms.
The headless body wobbled for two seconds. Arterial spray from the neck stump misted briefly under pressure, then it crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, the exo's servos twitching unconsciously.
"All of you, listen up! Surrender! Now!!"
The squad leader's scream nearly broke. The tear in his vocal cords warped his voice.
On his HUD, a document that had been circulating online—"Prisoner-of-War Treatment Ordinance," purportedly from the Human Empire—flashed up.
Looked like the leader had been browsing Imperial content on the sly.
????
The young soldiers stood slack-jawed.
A minute ago he'd been harping on discipline, and now the squad leader flung his weapon three meters away with textbook form, then threw both hands high.
The greasy old vet moved faster: he dropped his gun, unlocked the exo's weapon safeties, and even popped open his chest plate to show the uniform underneath.
"Do it! Move!"
He booted the nearest newbie so hard it dented the kid's armor. "You wanna live, you do what I say!"
Metal clatters rang in succession. Within seconds, the entire squad's weapons lay on the ground.
They kept their hands up as the exo joints clicked into surrender-lock, a UED exo and power-armor feature.
"."
The giant—the Carcharodon veteran—turned his visor toward the surrendered troopers, scarlet lenses scanning each life sign.
Smoke still curled from the muzzles of his twin-linked bolters. Falling casings pinged with painful clarity in the dead street.
He didn't fire again. Instead, he pointed a power claw at the corpse on the ground. His external vox carried a voice with metallic timbre: "Wise choice. Remember this lesson. Next time, the time to hesitate will be shorter."
Looks like even a Carcharodon won't casually massacre human compatriots who raise their hands to surrender.
Thunk, thunk, thunk—
The heavy footsteps receded.
The Terminator's mag-boots left three-centimeter dents in the pavement, each step paired with the soft hum of servos.
"Hoo—"
Only when that avatar of death vanished into the smoke curling at the corner did the squad leader dare unlock the exo and lower his arms.
His HUD still showed a heart rate of 152.
"L-lieutenant?" a soldier quavered, visor fogging. "What… what do we do now?"
The old vet moved first—he scooped up his weapon but deliberately didn't chamber it.
He checked the rifle's readouts, confirmed it was in safe, then clipped it back onto the mag-lock on his spine. "Per our Seventeenth Amendment, once the enemy accepts surrender, POWs remain in place to await collection."
He glanced at the headless corpse and nudged the still-twitching mech arm with his boot. "Kid had it coming. Didn't you see the claw marks on that pauldron? The rumors say those giants are Astartes, the ones they send against the worst monsters—and he wanted to go head-on?"
"Hiss…"
The leader took another long breath. When he opened the public channel, he found the comms had been switched to another net.
He hesitated, then followed the new prompt and hit transmit. "This is Patrol Seven. We… encountered enemy… supersoldiers and chose to cease resistance. Repeat, we have disarmed per regulation."
His voice shook, but each word was crystal clear, as if reciting the manual.
The channel was silent save for faint static.
After over ten seconds, replies came in fits and starts—
"Th-third Defense Group… surrendered as well,"
"East Tower has ceased resistance,"
"Freight platform garrison requesting instructions."
CLANG— CLANG-CLANG—!
A few more bolter blasts thudded in the distance, but the intervals grew longer, sometimes cut by the screech of overloaded plasma and the thud of collapsing buildings.
Clearly, more and more UED units were making the same choice—
Against an enemy they could never beat, survival instinct, fear of the Human Empire and Homelander, and the UED's neglect pushed them to abandon the fight.
Thump. Thump.
Suddenly, the ground began to tremble in a steady rhythm.
Not an explosive shockwave, but the low-frequency vibration of something weighing tons in motion.
At the far corner, another steel giant in the same panoply stepped into view, advancing toward them. On this warrior's pauldron, golden shark-fin ridges arched. Fresh blood dripped from a power claw whose plasma field was not even active.
"Oh, God…" the old vet murmured—this time not switching off his external speaker. "How many did they send, exactly…"
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