Madelyn Stillwell threw her keyboard across the room, where it hit the wall and all of the keys popped off in an explosion of plastic. She slumped to her desk, fuming.

"Trouble?" A refined voice asked from the doorway. It was Stan Edgar, with his trademark look of smug superiority on his face.

"That might be an understatement, Stan." Madelyn replied. "It's easier to find information about Teddy than it is on the most popular superhero in the world. He doesn't need a PR department, he's a one-man hype machine! He did it all organically!"

"Ouch," Edgar replied with a chuckle. "How's Homelander taking that news?"

"Better than I expected." Madelyn replied. "Probably because he's still got a little edge domestically."

"Anything to keep him from making a fool of himself." Edgar said as he took a seat. "Now, I have a question for you that will determine your future at this company."

Stillwell groaned and stared Stan Edgar right in his stupid, distinguished face. "Are you trying to make me regret not making Ashley handle this?"

"Just answer the question, and think hard about it." Stan said with a smile. "What are you going to do about him, since we clearly can't kill him?"

"What do you want me to do about him?" Madelyn demanded. "Everyone we have under our thumbs has something we can use. Some kind of vice, something that goes against their image, some nefarious doings, a depraved taste that would dull their shining appearance. Superman doesn't exist outside of the superhero business."

"Indeed." Edgar replied. "I've had our best people working around the clock trying to put a name to the face, and facial recognition hasn't turned up anything in any government or private database."

"You mean you've had me working around the clock with our best people to put a name to the face." Stillwell replied drolly.

"Semantics." Edgar said with a shrug.

"If you want to say that, come up here with me and work on this." Madelyn said. "If you want to act like you've got all the answers, I'll put in my resignation right now and let you take over. I'll let you figure out what his angle is."

"I don't think he has one."

"You're fucking with me."

"No, I'm not." Stan said, leaning back in his chair. "I think his intentions are entirely earnest."

"Bullshit." Madelyn said, getting up from her chair to look out of a frosted glass window at nothing in particular. "Nobody that powerful is that good. It just doesn't happen." She turned back to Edgar. "There has to be some kind of endgame, some kind of point to what he's building up. World domination, galactic conquest, a billion-dollar movie deal, a basic ego boost, something!"

Stan shook his head slowly. "That's the scary part, isn't it? Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money, fame or success. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. They're not here for that. They see themselves as having a purpose beyond such petty nonsense. They just want to save the world, and people like that are bad for business. So, I'll ask you again, what are you going to do about him?"

Stillwell pondered what she knew about Superman as quickly as she could, then rushed over to her desk and clicked through folders on the computer.

"Homelander's video rig shorted out during their laser-measuring contest," Stillwell said with a scoff. "But, the microphone was still working." She clicked on an audio file, and it began to play.

"I have two teenage sons back home." Superman's voice said over the computer's speakers.

Stillwell gestured at the computer triumphantly. "He has a family! Children, a wife, probably!" She added the last part as an afterthought. "If he's exactly what he seems, he wants to go home."

"Precisely." Edgar said with a cruel smile. "One doesn't need a dark side to be manipulable."

"Let's see," Madelyn said, pushing a finger into her lips. "When the creature attacked Believe, it screamed that it was looking for its' arm..."

"Witnesses said Superman severed one of its' arms in their initial encounter." Edgar said. "Incidentally, when I examined the footage personally, I noticed that arm was the same color as the portal it entered our world through. The same arm was among the evidence we managed to collect from the ruins of the bowling alley."

"Alright, I'll get that arm down to R&D, and see if they can activate it." Madelyn said, picking up her desk phone. "The last thing we want is to have to negotiate with the monster and Superman together."

"So, I'll ask you again... What are you planning to do about Superman?"

"Send him and that goddamn octopus back where they came from!"

"How'd the lesson go?" Marvin asked Janine as she got into the car.

"It was alright." She replied as she buckled up. "I hurt my toe doing one of the poses."

MM pulled away from the ballet school and took the on-ramp onto the bridge. He drove, and drove... Then, mere yards ahead of them, the bridge exploded as a large black octopus forced its' way through the concrete, away from twin crimson lasers emitted from the eyes of Homelander.

"Starlight!" Homelander shouted. On cue, an explosion of brilliant golden sparks collided with the creature with a deadly hissing noise as it dodged a punch from the blue-suited A-Train. Queen Maeve jumped from an overpass above, and attempted to dig her sword into the creature's hide, but the blade slid in and snapped off with a bouncy POPping sound. Black Noir appeared seemingly from nowhere, and tossed a grenade at the creature, but it swallowed the grenade whole, and belched out the gas. Noir shook his head in rage, and drew an oversized silenced pistol from his hip and emptied the magazine at the monster, to no effect.

"Get out of the car!" MM said, throwing his driver's door open. Janine complied, and Marvin picked his daughter up in his arms and ran back down the bridge the way they'd come.

The creature sliced a yellow hole in the air, but Homelander dashed in fast, pulled it away from the hole and slammed it back through the hole in the bridge. The creature let out a sound like sandpaper as one of its' limbs connected with the hood of Marvin's car, and it cut a new hole in the air and vanished before it could hit the ground.

"Did we have to hit this thing here?" Starlight asked Homelander.

He nodded. "You're goddamn right we did. Who knows what the hell it was doing out here, who it could've hurt."

"Starlight's right, Homelander." Maeve said as she gathered the remnants of her sword. "We should've let Noir tail it where it was going."

Homelander shot her a dirty look. "Maeve, if I want your opinion about this, I'll ask for it. We did just fine, and this made us look really good when we badly needed a PR boost."

"You mean you needed a PR boost." Maeve said, pushing herself into Homelander's face.

"Motherfucker..." MM muttered under his breath as he pulled out his cellphone. He dialed a number and put the phone to his ear.

"MM, what's up?" Butcher asked.

"Is Frenchie there?" MM asked.

"Yeah."

"I need you guys to back me up on something."

"Whatcha up to?"

"That tentacle monster from Believe just destroyed my car and put Janine's life in danger. I want to go squid-hunting."

Later, at the grounds where the Believe Expo had been held...

Frenchie scanned the area the creature had appeared with a geiger counter, and showed the readout to the others.

"Radiation. Beta-waves, it seems to be." He said. "They are strongest where the 'oles were."

"Think we can tap into the city's early-warning system and use that to figure out where this thing's coming from?" MM asked.

"City security is... Not exactly difficult to break into." Frenchie said with a shrug.

"Alright." Hughie said. "But how do we end this thing once we find it? It took a bunch of Annie's blasts, point-blank, and it barely flinched, and it almost crushed Homelander."

"If it's radioactive, maybe a concoction of Prussian Blue, Potassium Iodide and DTPA would weaken it?" Frenchie suggested. "The problem is 'ow to administer the dose."

"Maybe." Butcher said. "MM, you said it ate Noir's smokescreen, right?"

MM nodded.

"Give me that in a bullet or grenade and I'll shoot that stuff right down its' maw!" Butcher declared, pointing two fingers at the spot the creature had crawled through and making a gesture like firing a gun.

Metropolis, on a world far away.

Jon Kent soared through the night skies, the wind flapping his cape and blowing his hair wildly. His super-suit was an almost exact copy of his father's. Blue bodysuit, red cape, golden belt, and a shield with an S-shaped symbol on a bright yellow background. Wearing the suit always made him feel good, even when he didn't think he had anything to feel good about.

Jon landed on the roof of the Daily Planet building, and scanned the city with his X-Ray vision.

"Looking for him?" A female voice asked.

Jon jumped a little bit, and turned to see a figure in a bat-cowl behind him. He knew from the voice who it was, even though the cowl covered her face, even though she had a voice-filter on. Jon didn't even need to use his X-Ray vision to picture the brilliant red hair she always kept tucked tightly under her cowl. It was Katherine, Bruce's younger cousin from his mother's side. She was six months older than Jon, and Conner would never let him forget that.

"I guess..." Jon said, and looked back to the city.

"Shouldn't you have heard me?" Kate asked him. "I thought you'd expect this by now."

"I'm a little distracted."

"I can tell." She replied. They sat in silence for a moment. "He's coming back, you know?"

Jon and Kate turned to look at each other.

"I know." Jon replied. "I just want to make sure I'm there when he does. I should've been there when the League fought that thing."

"Hey, Superman's a big guy. I think your dad can take care of himself."

"It's tearing her up, you know?"

Kate froze.

"Lois?" She asked.

Jon nodded. "Just like it did when he..." The words caught in his throat. "When he-"

"When he died." Kate finished. "It's not like that this time."

"Maybe-" John started to say, but the emblem Bruce had given him began to buzz.

Secret Vought Lab just outside New York City, a world far away...

An unwitting researcher plugged a pair of thick cables into the nerves in the severed end of the purple-tipped tentacle... And a small purple hole opened in the middle of thin-air.

Metropolis...

"That's not far from here." Kate said.

"Damn straight it's not!" Jon said, a fire alight in his eyes. "Hold on tight, Katie!"

Kate wrapped her arms around Jon's chest and neck, and Jon took off like a bullet for the coordinates on the device.

Secret Vought Lab...

A yellow hole appeared in the street just outside the lab, and a drying, shriveled creature crackled through the portal. It struck at the front of the building, destroying the walls. It struck again, and punched a hole straight to the room where its' arm was housed.

"Give it back..." The creature growled hoarsely. "I need it. GIVE IT BACK!"

An explosion of bright sparks collided with the creature's back, and it turned to face the source of the barrage.

"You could start by asking nicely, instead of tearing things to shreds." Starlight said. "Why don't you crawl off into some hole and die with all the rest of the diseased ocean creatures!"

"Hungry..." It said. "You are full of energy... You might do!" Yl'geth lashed a tentacle at Starlight. Annie fired a barrage at the appendage, and again at a second, but it was the third that slipped through, and wrapped her tight.

A fifty caliber bullet collided with the creature's eye, and it recoiled in pain, dropping Annie to the ground roughly.

"ANNIE!" Hughie yelled as he ran toward her.

"Dammit, kid!" Butcher swore. Hughie picked Annie up and ran for cover. Butcher fired another round at the monster, and it swiped the bullet out of the air with an angry growl.

A sonic boom echoed through the air as Butcher emptied the last eight rounds in his magazine at the monster's face.

"Frenchie! Give me the shit!" Butcher shouted as he set down his sniper rifle.

Frenchie tossed Butcher a grenade launcher. "You have three rounds at a four-hundred meter range, use them wisely!"

Butcher strapped up the grenade launcher and closed the distance as Hughie ran by with Annie in his arms.

"Can't drop the cunt to save your goddamn life!" Butcher muttered. "OI, HENTAI!" Butcher shouted at the creature. It turned to him briefly, then turned away, toward the lab. Billy fired the first round from the launcher, but the creature paid it no mind as it reached its' tentacles into the ruined lab. The round bounced off its' skin, and exploded yards away in a cloud of blue smoke.

Then, a red and blue blur slammed into the creature, sending it skidding across the road toward Butcher and The Boys.

"Oh, just what we fuckin' needed." Butcher growled. "MM, Frenchie, Kimiko, Hughie, and Starlight too, if you can! On my mark!"

The monster struck at Superman with six of its' eight tentacles. One after another after another. Each of them embedded itself in the pavement as Superman weaved through the attacks. Unfortunately, the remaining functional tentacle was the green one, and it struck fast. Superman stumbled backward over the tangled tentacles he'd dodged, but he soared into the air in the nick of time, as the glowing green blade sliced off a lock of Superman's hair.

Butcher fired off his second grenade, and the creature caught it as it removed its' tentacles from the ground. The monster made to eat the grenade, but it exploded in its' face, and it clearly felt the effects of the chemicals inside.

"MARK!" Butcher screamed. But his voice was overrun by the roar of a rocket engine.

In the blink of an eye, Superman turned toward the sound of the rocket, and his eyes glowed a burning red, then the monster wrapped its' green tentacle around his throat and slammed him down into the pavement. Frenchie looked up in the sky, and saw a fighter jet soaring away.

"That's a nuk-" His words were cut off as the rocket soared through the air, into the creature's face. It wrapped one tentacle around the rocket, and any observer could see an evil expression cross its' eyes. The monster fed the rocket into its' mouth and bit down.

The explosion was brilliant, small, and brief. The only remnant of the explosion that escaped the creature's maw was a brief gust of air that made Butcher's trenchcoat flap in the breeze, and a blinding flash. Then, its' eyes began to glow a bright white, and its tentacles lit up so hot they looked white. The nuclear warhead clearly didn't have the intended effect, as the monster appeared more invigorated than it had been when it entered this dimension. It dropped Superman to the ground with a thud, where the man of steel gasped for air, and clawed at the pavement.

"Who the fuck called for a nuke?!" Butcher shouted to nobody in particular.

He fired the last gas grenade out of sheer desperation, but the creature grabbed it in a flash, and threw it as far away as possible, where it exploded harmlessly in a cloud of blue smoke.

"Enough tricks, puny human." The monster bellowed. "You have hurt me and now you must die like the others!" It fired the glowing green tentacle at Butcher.

Billy tried to move, but the tentacle moved faster... His heart leapt into his throat... And an image of Becca flashed before his eyes.

I hope I did some good. Was all he thought as the tentacle closed the final meters between him and the end of his life.

But Butcher's life didn't end. He felt the wind fly through his hair and beard as a blinding flash of red, blue, and yellow came between him and what surely would've been his death. Superman caught the tentacle in his hands, but it pushed through, slipped by his hands, and embedded the venom-green blade in the Kryptonian's abdomen.

Metropolis, a world far away...

"DAD!" Conner screamed. He could see Superman turn his head sluggishly toward the tiny hole in reality.

If only I could get through there! If- Suddenly, Conner had an idea.

"Katie, give me a Batarang!"

Kate passed him a small, bat-shaped piece of metal. Conner hit the Batarang with his heat-vision until it glowed Then he took aim, and threw it through the hole just as it closed.

Just outside of the secret Vought lab...

A bright red object flew through the air and cut the venom-green tip off the tentacle, continued on its' path, and embedded itself in a tree.

Superman collapsed into Butcher's arms, writhing in agony. Billy could only stand there in shock as the mighty Kryptonian lay weak as a newborn baby.

"You- Wha-" Billy sputtered as he lowered the man of steel to the ground. "Wh- Why?"

Superman couldn't respond.

The creature made a guttural growling noise in its gullet as it slithered toward Superman and Butcher.

"And so, the Kryptonian makes his mistake, and his life meets its' end." The creature said with a chilling chuckle. "A pity it was not in service of even his adopted world. Goodbye, Kal-El!"

It made to strike, but was met with a barrage of high-caliber gunfire and sparks. It growled, and lunged directly into a punch from Kimiko that hit like a thunderclap. The creature snarled at her, and lunged, directly into a chemical grenade lobbed by Hughie. A cloud of blue smoke exploded in the creature's face, and the creature sliced a yellow line in the air and poured itself through.

"What did you throw at it?" Frenchie asked Hughie.

"A blue smoke grenade." He replied. "It was all we had left."

"Incroyable." Frenchie said, aghast.

The Boys and Starlight gathered around Butcher and Superman.

Superman grimaced, and whispered something.

"What?" Billy asked.

"Pull it out." He said weakly.

Hughie grabbed the severed tentacle and pulled it out of Superman's stomach, then tossed it away as far as he could manage.

"Are you..." Hughie stammered as the wound pumped out blood briefly, then began to close. "Are you okay?"

Superman sat up, and nodded weakly. "What about you guys?" He asked as Butcher backed away and pulled himself to his feet.

"All in one piece, I think." MM said, looking around the group, who nodded in affirmation.

"Oui, génialhomme, I believe so." Frenchie chimed in.

"That was the same one it used on us at the bowling alley." Annie said.

"It's Kryptonite." Superman said. "One of the few things that can hurt me."

"Wait, so... If you'd made one wrong move back then it would've killed you?" Hughie asked as he helped Superman to his feet.

The Kryptonian nodded.

"And if it'd stabbed a little further it..." Billy whispered to himself. "Why the hell did you do that?" Butcher demanded.

The entire group turned to glare at Butcher.

"What?" Hughie asked.

"Why the hell would you risk your life to help us, eh?" Butcher asked. "Why save me, instead of killing that thing?"

"Because it was the right thing to do." Superman replied with mild confusion.

"Come off it." Butcher said with a chuckle. "What are you really doing? What's your big idea. Come on, tell us! It's not like we can stop you."

"The same as it's always been." Superman replied. "Truth, justice, and the American way."

Butcher looked at Superman with disbelief, then burst out into raucous laughter.

"'Truth, justice, and the fuckin' American way?'" Butcher asked between laughs. "What a load o' horseshit!"

Superman shook his head, and felt around his wound. It was completely healed. He pressed a button on his golden belt, and his suit knitted itself back together.

"Holy shit." Hughie exclaimed under his breath.

Superman walked over to a nearby tree, and removed a red-hot, bat-shaped object from a burnt hole in the bark.

"What's that?" Starlight asked.

"A Batarang." Superman said with a smile. "It's from another world. My world." He turned to face the others. "It means I can get home."

"Hughie, who are these guys?" Annie whispered to him.

"Uhhh... That's a long story." Hughie replied. "We uh, work together."

"Billy Butcher, CIA." Billy said, extending a hand to Annie. "You're Annie January, The Sevens rising starlet and Hughie's shaggin' buddy."

Annie recoiled in disgust, but before she could respond, they heard sirens in the distance, and a sonic boom much closer.

"You probably ought to go." Superman said. "I don't think any of you want to answer the questions they're going to ask, and Homelander isn't going to ask anything nicely." Superman pointed to the tip of the tentacle. "Take that, put it in a lead box, and get rid of it. I can't touch it, and Homelander can't know about it."

"Why are you trusting us with that?" Hughie asked.

"Because I can't take it." Superman said. "And I know you won't tell Homelander about it."

"Come on, let's go!" MM said. Annie looked at Hughie questioningly, and when he nodded, she went with him. The rest of the group followed. Frenchie took off his jacket and wrapped the section of tentacle in it, and rushed to the van.