Max remembered that he was 6 years when he first saw Homelander, not in the person of course after all why would he come to the dead-end middle of nowhere town he lived in, but instead he saw him on the Tv as he was saving a train from falling off the tracks.

Max had since then loved superheroes ever since, there were beings chosen by God, born with extraordinary powers, who then used it to protect the rest of the worlds, he had concluded that they were the final form of evolution that the human species were capable of.

He always imagined what it would be like to have those superpowers to be so great, to be almost god himself, but alas he was just a human, but a human who was extraordinarily smart, he could even be classified as a prodigy seen once in a thousand years.

When he was born, his dad had started teaching him how to speak and read, and at the age of 3 he could perfectly speak, read and write, but that would have been the extent if it had not been for a crucial thing, his parents had decided to get an internet connection when he was 4 years old, this could be considered to be the fact that changed his life, he now had access to an almost infinite pool of knowledge, he could learn whatever he wanted, so he started doing just that, first he started educating himself about courses from primary school, then middle school and then high school, if he would get stuck on any topic he would ask his parents for help, but by age 6 he had completed the average high school curriculum. After which he started studying the fields that he had the most interest in technology, he learned everything from programming to engineering, from C++ to Java, buy the time he was 10, he could write programs that would take entire teams to create.

He had also started mastering other subjects like chemistry and physics and in fact, he had even published several papers and articles under many pseudonyms, many of which had won all sorts of grants, which he used to create a laboratory for himself. But his magnum opus was when he created a fully functioning A.I. at the age of 12, the A.I. was far ahead of anything that was currently in development anywhere in the world, the A.I. was truly intelligent, Max had modeled it after himself and thus it was capable of things that Max was capable of, it could write codes for highly sophisticated software in a matter of minutes. In his little laboratory in a town in the middle of nowhere, he had singlehandedly created technology that was decades if not centuries ahead of the time.

But he wasn't aware of this, his parents were just your average farmers who had only graduated high school most of the people in his town had not attended high school, and no one in the town had attended college. Thus, most of them treated him like someone a little smarter than his parents, and his parents were only concerned with one thing the fact that he attended school and did not cause any trouble, except this they left him completely alone.

Due to this Max had avoided one of the greatest pitfalls of child prodigies most often fall in, the pitfall named expectation, when someone is called a child prodigy at a very early age, they receive the extraordinary attention, but as they grow up, the attention focused on them starts to get lesser and lesser by each passing year, which they interpret as a sign that they have disappointed the world, and thus they try even harder, but still, they do not get as much attention as they used to get, like this the cycles continues until they achieve a burnout and then they fade into obscurity.

But Max's life changed when he was 13 years old, the cause of this was the death of his parents, now it happened something like this, his parents had decided to take their first vacation, so along with their friends from the town, they had gone to Indonesia, but there they were taken hostage by a militant group that was trying to overthrow the government, luckily the heroes arrived to rescue, but sadly only two people could be rescues rest were killed.

When Max heard this he had quite a shock, the news of his parent's death did not devastate him, after all, he had barely spoken to them in 8 years, and he also wasn't worried about his future since he had enough money to live in luxury for the rest of his life. But still, they were his parents so he did feel a little sad and he wanted to personally investigate their death, so he hacked every government department their was and created software that would search all database until they could find anything that related to his parents, and after searching for days he found a video that was taken by the bodycam of one of the soldiers in that mission.

The video showed that the military was in a standoff against the militants, who were using the hostages as a human shield, but then the homelander landed right in the middle of both of them and started to talk to the militants, that was when one of the militants started insulting the homelander and called him a dickless bastard, suddenly homelander fired the laser from his eyes killing the militant along with the hostage he was holding after he which he proceeded to kill all the other militants not caring about the hostages, in the end, he killed everyone except the two people that were inside their base.

Max was shocked seeing this, at first, he couldn't believe it, after all, homelander had been sold to everybody as the ultimate hero, the defender of justice, and the fighter of evil, but the reality was completely different, instead of being a defender homelander was the one killing people.

He was not acting like a hero but like a god that considered the life of everybody to be so insignificant that it was even below his consideration.

Max watched this video many times, to see if it had been tampered with somehow but the video was perfectly legit, Max then thought that the government had not seen this video, otherwise they would have taken some action, so he hacked the phone of the president and send him this video with the message to contact him as soon as he watched the video.

After an hour Max received a call on the untraceable line he had set up and given to the attorney general, as soon as he picked up the phone the president started yelling

"Who the hell are you, and where the hell did you get this footage from"

"From your computers" replied Max

"That is not possible, this video is fake, created to destroy homelander's image and blackmail him," said the president

"Sir, I know that you are smart enough to call me only after you have confirmed the authenticity of the video" replied Max

"Ok, if I believe you and assume that this video is real, then why have you sent it to me," said the president

"So, you take action against homelander, he can't just be allowed to roam free after killing people like that," said Max

"What kind of action do you think we can take against homelander, file a case against him, then I would end up like the people in that video," said president

"Then send agents after him, hell, send the military," said Max

"Agents, military, do you think that they could do anything to him, he can kill entire battalions while strolling," said the president

"Then are you saying that the immense power of the government cannot do anything a man," said Max

"He is not a man, he is a god living amongst us, the best we can do is try to please him, so he doesn't smite us," said the president

Listening to the helplessness of president Max was shocked, till now he had imagined that the government possessed some kind of master plan in case homelander ever turned rouge but it seems that even the president was as helpless as his parents had been.

"I understand the situation" replied Max

"Good, now tell me who are you," said the president

"I am nobody," said Max

"Well, you seem to be somebody who can hack the phone of the president of the United States, tell me do you want a job, I can get you a very special gig at the NSA, you can state your conditions," said the president

"I have no intention of working for the NSA" replied Max

"Why not tell me your problem and I can fix that, if you want to keep your identity secret then you can just work from where ever you are," said the president

"No, I have no intention of ever working for the government, and can you get back to the point, if the government is not able to do anything to homelander than will release this video in public, at least then people will his reality," said Max

"That would be the most stupid decision you can take," said the president

"How," asked Max

"First tell me this have you ever thought why homelander even pretends to be a hero, why he has built his image to be that of a protector instead of somebody like Black Noir," said the president

"No," said Max

"That is because according to our best psychologist the only thing he wants is the admiration of the people around him, he wants them to revere him. Now if you release this video, even if some people say it is fake, there will be people who will believe, this will piss off homelander massively, if that happens, I don't think even vought will be able to control him. The destruction he is able of causing is unimaginable" said the president

"Then what do you want me to do," said Max

"Delete this video and not only that but after today, you will also work to find any such things be it documents, photos, videos, etc, to protect homlander, this will keep him happy and in the meanwhile, our scientists and engineers will work non stop to find some way of stopping him," said the president

Max was stunned by this, everything the president had said made sense but still, he was a little an adverse reaction to this.

"What will I get out of this," said Max

"You seem to be holding all the cards, so you tell me what do you want," said the president

Max thought a little and said

"If I do this then I want access to all the resources available at the government's disposal, even the top classified ones and I won't be answerable to anyone," said Max

"I have no problem with the access, but you have to be answerable to someone, how about you answer directly to me," said the president

"No, no one," said Max

"If that's what you want then, you have to help us from time to time in other missions as well," said the president

"Ok, but last question, how can you trust me," said Max

"Well, you are someone who can hack the phone of the president which was designed by literally the best technology consultant there are, not to mention the fact, that we have been talking for 20 minutes and this entire time everybody from the NSA to the CIA has been trying to track this call and they have given up," said the president

"Ok, then I will be in contact with you soon Mr. President," said Max as he ended the call