Hughie looked around intently, then glanced into the convenience store, then motioned for Superman and Butcher to follow him.

"What?" Butcher asked, confused.

"Come on, I need to talk to you guys in private." Hughie said, furrowing his brow as he marched away from the facade of the store.

"What about?" Superman asked.

"You three stay with the van, stall Kent if he comes back." Hughie said to Annie, Frenchie, and Kimiko as he walked away.

Superman and Butcher glanced at Hughie, then at each other uneasily, and followed him behind the store into a small grove of trees out back.

Hughie placed himself with a tree to his back, and Butcher and Superman in front of him.

"How much do you trust this Kent guy?" Hughie asked Superman.

"I'd trust him with my life." He replied without hesitation.

Hughie shook his head, inhaled, and sighed through pursed lips.

"Alright, if you say so." He said, shaking his head.

"Why?" Superman asked.

"Hughie," Butcher said, raising an eyebrow. "He's just some cunt in a suit, makin' naive declarations about how the world's supposed to be. He's just like you were, before Robin."

"I don't think so!" Hughie exclaimed. "He's got a shady vibe to him, like he's hiding something from us."

Superman shrugged. "We're all hiding something, Hughie. Some of us more than others." He glanced back to the van, then back at Hughie. "Eventually, everything comes out. It just depends on when, how, and what kind of damage they do."

"Okay... What about the change of plans? We really doing this? Letting Homelander this close to us just to skip a few steps?" Hughie asked. "He's dangerous."

"I can handle him if he tries anything." Superman replied. "He's..." He trailed off, and his gaze drifted away. "Homelander's self-obsessed, he'll play his role as long as he thinks he's getting what he wants."

"And it's better to have Vought pushin' us where we want than trying to stop us." Butcher said with a grin. "Absolutely diabolical."

Superman nodded somberly.

"Why the long face?" Butcher asked with a laugh. "You should be happy about gettin' home faster."

"Homelander. He's such a waste of potential."

"Don't tell me you feel sorry for the bastard. Surely your friend told you about all the shit he's done."

"Homelander's tried a lot of things with me that tell me he's probably beyond saving. I just wish he'd had the same opportunities I did. He's a monster, but he's a monster of someone else's making, not his own."

"Enough o' throwin' a pity party for that narced-out psuedo-patriotic rapist twink!" Butcher erupted. "I need to know that you can have our backs if he decides out of the blue to turn us into mollusk-bait!"

"Absolutely." Superman said, his expression hardening.

"Nah," Butcher said, crossing his arms and butting his chest up to Superman's. The man of steel stood above Butcher by three inches, but Butcher didn't seem small by comparison. "That ain't good enough for me. I want you to swear that if he so much as touches a single hair on one of our heads, you'll fuckin' end him."

"Without hesitation." Superman replied, without blinking. The swiftness of the response took Butcher and Hughie aback.

"Wait..." Hughie said, coming to a realization. "You've done this before."

"Enough to know I don't like it, but that I can if I have to." Superman said, levitating into the air. "If you'll excuse me, I have something to take care of."

He took off into the sky with a roar of wind, followed by a sonic boom.

"Well, that was unexpected." Butcher said with a scoff. "Guess one of our little friends isn't a stranger to a spot o' the old ultraviolence."

Hughie just stood there, shaking his head.

"What's the matter now, kid?" Butcher asked, throwing an arm around Hughie's shoulders as he strolled them back to the van. "Sad to hear your golden god's bloodied his hands like us?"

"You're always just one step away from asking someone to do something terrible, aren't you?" Hughie asked.

"Nah." Butcher said. "Just when we got something needs doin'. He was more cooperative than your pet supe, anyway, so why you bitchin' like a dog?"

They returned to the van just as Mother's Milk and Clark Kent exited the convenience store.

"MM, how's our boy?" Butcher asked as he withdrew his arm from Hughie's shoulders and shoved his hands in his pockets.

MM shrugged. "He's got a weak stomach." He said with a chuckle. "Said something about a football injury in college. Hope nobody ever tries to take him on a plane, I gave him a bottle of Dramamine and he was still hackin' up his guts. You'll never fuckin' guess what helped him."

"What?" Hughie asked.

Kent smiled. "Ginger-ale, a couple saltines and a Tums."

Hughie shot a smug look at Butcher, but Billy didn't pay it any mind.

"Got a visit from our mutual friend, mister Kent." Butcher said as he opened the door of the van. "Change of plans. Vought wants to give us the item. All we need to do is let the star-spangled wanker sit in on our little adventure."

Kent raised an eyebrow. "Is that a good idea?"

Butcher barked out a laugh. "Our friend promised there won't be any problems."

Homelander stared into the darkness as he heard Mesmer struggle to make his way up the stairs. He could've met him on a lower floor, or even the ground, but that washed-up crook was lucky Homelander even agreed to meet him at all, much less wait as long as he had.

"You're late." Homelander said as Mesmer burst through the door, clutching a messenger bag to his chest."

I'm sorry, I had-"

"I don't care what you 'had,'" Homelander said as he turned on his heel to look Mesmer directly in the eyes. "I care what you have for me now."

A look of equal parts terror and discomfort crossed Mesmer's face.

"You- you do have something for me, right?" Homelander asked, pushing a Cheshire smile onto his face as he walked toward Mesmer. "You didn't just call me up here and make me wait forty-seven minutes to give me absolutely fucking nothing, did you?" He demanded as he reached the spot Mesmer was frozen in place.

"No, no!" Mesmer said, waving his arms in front of his face. "I didn't-"

"Then cut to the chase and tell me." Homelander growled.

"Look, I don't have as much as I thought, but I have something else!" Mesmer rummaged through the bag and pulled out a handful of broken electronics. "Some people came to me asking for help. They wanted me to read a woman's mind. She was Asian, I think."

Homelander started. "Alright, who were they?"

"I don't know, really. I got a couple of names, but some guy showed up and broke my spy-cam before I could retrieve their pictures."

"Who?"

Mesmer paled, and shoved the electronics back in his bag.

"Look, I was thinking you could take the camera to your forensics department and they could maybe-"

Homelander cut Mesmer off by grabbing his throat.

"Names. Now." He said in a raspy whisper.

"They said one of them was Billy Butcher!"
Homelander's eyebrows shot up. "The CIA agent?Rebecca Butcher's husband?"

Mesmer nodded frantically. "Yeah, they talked about her!"

Homelander's gaze drifted away from Mesmer, but his grip didn't loosen for a second.

"Who came to the door?" He asked, softly.

Mesmer struggled with Homelander's hand around his throat.

"WHO WAS IT?!" John shouted, turning to face Mesmer with his eyes glowing red.

Mesmer whimpered.

"He made me promise not to say!" He wept. "I don't know what he'll do if I-"

Homelander levitated himself and Mesmer into the air above the roof, and intensified the glow. Flames sparked and erupted from the edges of his eyes, and the heat threatened to scorch Mesmer's beard.

"WHO WAS IT?!" John demanded as Mesmer began to cry. "Who are you more afraid of than me?!"

They'd ascended to several times the height of the building at this point. Mesmer had gone from fighting to free himself from Homelander's grasp to clutching his arms for dear life.

"I don't-"

"You might not know what he'll do to you if you tell me... But you know for damn sure what I'll do to you if you don't. Tell me who was at the door and who the rest of the people at your house were, Charles!"

"It was Clark Kent!" Mesmer choked out.

"Clark Kent? The fucking reporter?" Homelander demanded. "I didn't think I lost that much cred that some weedy, oversized nerd was more intimidating than I was!"

"Clark Kent is Superman!" Mesmer exclaimed.

The fire in Homelander's eyes died as a look of disbelief crossed his face. John pulled Mesmer in closer as they continued to ascend through the skies.

"...What?" He asked in an aggressive whisper.

Mesmer nodded as much as Homelander's grip would allow.

"That's impossible." Homelander said, dismissively. "Clark Kent's just some hack with a blog. He- he can't... He can't be as powerful as me."

"He made me read his mind, to show the others he was telling the truth, that he really was from a different world!"

"What else did you see?" John demanded, trying to clear his mind of the idea that Superman had tricked him.

"He-" Mesmer hesitated. "He's going to steal something from Vought so he can get home! Butcher agreed to help him do it!"

"What?"

Mesmer clutched at his throat as they ascended. The atmosphere was too thin for him to breathe normally.

"Please. Put me down." Mesmer whispered.

"Poor choice of words." Homelander said with a smirk.

Mesmer hadn't noticed that Homelander had taken them sideways, as well as upwards.

When John let his grip loosen, Mesmer dropped several thousand feet... Through clouds and sky, until he was split in two by the exposed I-beams of a skyscraper under construction.

John stared down at the bisected corpse with a baleful glare, then soared off toward Seven Tower.

On the way over, his phone beeped. It was Ashley. John tapped the screen to answer the call.

"This is Homelander. You got it done?" He asked without skipping a beat.

"It's done. Five of them, actually. Just in case you decided to fuck up a few."

"I don't know how much of a problem that'll be going forward." Homelander replied smugly. "Put them in my room. I'll try them on when I get back."

John hung up his phone, and flew toward the tower even faster than he had in a long time.

He dropped onto the roof of the tower with a satisfied smile on his face. Sure, Superman had pulled one over on him... But now he could get the drop on him if he ran into Clark Kent again.

He entered the elevator, and descended to the ninety-ninth floor. He entered his room (Really, a three story house inside a much larger building) and found his new belts waiting for him on the central table of the main floor, each in their own velvet-lined box with a sheet of printed instructions tucked in beside it. They were a shining gold, with many pockets all around, and his eagle symbol in the center of the belt, wings held proudly. He didn't care about most of what it could do, he tossed the instructions that came with the first one to the side. All he was interested in were the big pockets on the sides. He pulled a lead-lined box containing the knuckledusters from its' hiding place beneath his bed, and slotted them into place. They fit perfectly.

John slung the belt on, and clicked the clasp into place. It, too, fit perfectly. He stared at himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and admired the first steps he'd taken towards a new look. He pressed a button on the bottoms of the compartments that contained the knuckle-dusters, and they popped open, allowing him to lace his fingers through the loops and withdraw the green-inset golden weapons.
He smiled widely, and his grin grew into a fit of mad laughter, which died into a satisfied, smug smile.

"Oh, I can't wait to see the look on his stupid fucking face!" John said aloud to himself.
His reverie was cut short, when his phone on the nearby table buzzed with a message from Madelyn. "Meet me in my office now." It read.
Homelander shot the phone a dirty glare as his cheeks twitched in annoyance, but he put the weapons away in their storage compartments, and tossed his phone into one of the open pockets.

He walked through the halls of the tower until he reached Madelyn's office, and rapped one knuckle on the door.

"Come in!" Her voice came warmly from behind the door.

John turned the handle, and entered her office to find it lit softly by candles, scented with cinnamon and strawberries, and Madelyn lounging on her couch in slinky lingerie.

"What's the occasion?" Homelander asked as he approached her.

"Marking the last day Superman is the most popular hero on the planet." Madelyn said, sliding into a sitting position. "I made a deal with our little problem that'll send him back to his world forever..." She crossed her legs, and gave a coy smile as she uncrossed them, and rose to standing to plant a kiss on his neck. "And this is just a taste of what you'll get when he's gone for good." She said in a breathy whisper. "Love the belt, by the way." She slid her hand down his chest, to his stomach, down to the buckle of his new belt, and further. "It emphasizes your... Masculinity." She purred as she squeezed.

"What, just a deal to send him packing?" He asked, gasping. "Not to- to end him for good?"

"You know as well as I do that probably wasn't going to happen." Stillwell said. "Besides, this way we can be on good terms with his people if we need to. All you have to do is help him and his support crew shove our other problem into a black hole, then they send Superman home, and we'll be right back where we need to be, alright?"

John gave a noncommittal nod as Madelyn disconnected his belt, but didn't let it fall.

"Homelander... Promise to play nice with Superman... If you do, he'll never bother us again. If you don't, you won't get that reward you deserve, okay, baby?"

Homelander stroked the compartments he'd stored the knuckle-dusters, and grinned. She's manipulating me... But I'll play along for now... Right until it's time to strike. He grabbed Stillwell by the arms, and gently raised her up to look him in the eye, and nodded with a barely-restrained sense of newfound confidence as his new utility belt dropped to the floor with an audible THUNK!

"Yes, Madelyn." John replied, his smile never fading.