Superman exploded from the ground at just below the speed of sound, and slammed into the creature's body.
Homelander was momentarily stunned by Superman's statement.
He just told this thing he'd cheat death to kill it if he has to... Homelander thought. That's impossible, right? He tried to convince himself. So why do I believe he could do it?
The thoughts passed in an instant as Homelander dashed into action behind Superman.
The creature snapped its' tentacles their way, but the two darted away from the monster's arms, and slammed their fists into the creature's slimy body in unison, pushing Yl'geth closer to the portal. The creature shot two of its' arms toward the ground, and pulled itself away from the field, though not as far away from it as the blue-clad men had pushed it.
The creature grunted, and shrank its' bulk down by about ten feet, and snapped itself away from the portal. Homelander made to dash after it, but Superman shook his head, just as the mines near the perimeter of the combat zone detonated, sending blue clouds up into the air, into the creatures mouth, and maybe nostrils. Yl'geth hacked and coughed at the aerosolized compounds choking its' skin and mouth, as the powder caused the thing's body to shrink further, and wither.
If I'd gone after it, Homelander thought. I would've pushed it away from the mines. He looked over to Superman, who made a looping motion with his left hand, then took off to the right in a similar motion. Homelander didn't need any further explanation, he read the hand-signals like a book, and swooped away from Superman like a mirror. The two met just outside of the perimeter, and slammed into the creature, knocking it back toward the portal.
The creature used two of its' tentacles to wipe the residue of the substance from its' eyes and body as it flailed the remaining five arms at Homelander and Superman. The two nimbly dodged the uncoordinated flailing of the creature, darting around the arms like flies. Homelander fired his heat vision at the creature, but it snapped away. Slower than before, though. The beams zoomed past the creature, and scorched the ground near the portal. The creature shot its' green arm toward Homelander. Though the arm was missing the tip, and somewhat dried, it moved almost like lightning. Homelander was barely able to dodge the arm, indeed, the jagged green tentacle grazed his cheek as it shot past his face. That sensation Homelander was barely familiar with the concept of until he met Superman lashed across his cheek, ever so lightly. He snapped away as something wet trickled down his face. He knew he was bleeding before he even touched his hand to his face.
"Watch it!" Superman shouted over the wind and thrashing of the creature. Homelander's head snapped over to look at Superman, and met his gaze. His lips parted in what began to be a snarl, but the look on the Man of Steel's face reminded Homelander what they were there for. His lips closed, and he nodded as he wiped the blood from his cheek.
"Together!" Homelander said over the wind.
"Together!" Superman replied.
The two of them swooped into the creature, and slammed it closer to the portal, then darted away as the creature slung its' arms at where they used to be. The two fired their heat vision across the creature's path, first Superman to the left, then Homelander to the right, with both beams cutting off the paths of escape forward, and to both sides... Leaving only the way back into the portal. Superman took a deep breath as he tuned down his heat vision, and Homelander did the same the second he heard Superman take the breath. They shut off their heat-vision in unison, and unleashed a powerful gale of freezing wind that shoved it even further back toward the portal, as ice formed around the creature and edges of the force-field generator.
Homelander stopped blowing, dropped in the air and zoomed toward Yl'geth. The creature grunted, and broke off the frost as it shot two tentacles toward Homelander, an orange one, and the green one. Homelander dodged the green one, but flew straight into the orange one, which seized him and slammed him to the ground. It reared up with its' green tentacle, and stabbed straight for Homelander's chest. John writhed against his restraint, and the ground, to no avail. The green tentacle zoomed closer, closer, closer...
And in a flash of red, blue and yellow, it stopped in a pair of blue-clad arms. Superman grimaced as he tucked the tentacle under one arm, and soared toward the creature. He stabbed the creature in the eye with the stubby green tentacle as his speed began to falter, landed both feet on the creature's shriveling body, and bounded away, landing near Homelander with one knee and one hand dug into the grass, tearing it away to reveal the dirt underneath, as a thumping hiss sounded from near the bunker, and a wave of blue rings collided with the creature, sending it closer to the portal.
Superman rose to his feet, unsteady, but magnificent nonetheless.
"You alright?" He asked as he extended a hand to Homelander.
John swallowed uncomfortably, and nodded as he took Superman's hand. He didn't... He... I... Not again, not again...
"Let's finish this." Homelander said as strongly as he could muster.
Superman nodded, and the two of them took off toward the creature with a snap like the cracking of a whip. John fired his heat vision at the creature. It tried to dodge away, but it ran directly into a punch from Superman, which sent the creature to the edge of the portal.
Yl'geth ripped the green tentacle from its' eye socket with a squelching sound, pulling a wave of black fluid with it. The creature drove its' blue and orange-tipped arms into the ground, and shot the green and yellow ones at the machine the purple arm was mounted in. Like lightning, John zoomed toward the machine and slapped the yellow arm into the green one as hard as he could. The motion prevented the creature from reaching its'arm, but also knocked it off balance. The creature nearly fell through the purple hole in reality, but grasped at the edges of the force-field generator, crushing the device, and causing the field to flicker out of existence as the creature pried itself out of the hole.
In an instant, a wave of golden-orange light exploded out of the portal and washed over seemingly everything in sight. Yl'geth seemed to be unaffected. Superman flinched at the sight, but didn't appear to be affected either. Homelander shaded his eyes from the glow, but when it washed across him, he didn't feel any negative effects, just a light tingle.
"Get down!" Butcher shouted as the light exploded from the portal. The Boys and Starlight hit the concrete floor of the bunker hard, but the light still washed over them, as though it passed through every gap in the building to reach out and touch them, leaving a sharp stinging sensation that passed as quickly as it set on.
"What the fuck was that?" Marvin asked nobody in particular after the wave had passed. He and the others rose to their feet uneasily.
"Fucked if I know..." Butcher muttered as he rose to his feet. "Back to your stations. If you grow a third arm, put it to work. Until then, there's no use worryin' about what it did to us."
Right after the wave washed over the portal machine, the space behind the portal shifted and changed, flickering from one location to another, to another, to another...
It panned and skewed between tropical beaches, the empty void of space, rolling silver plains of grass, sights of distant nebulae, and more... It never stayed on a single image for more than a few seconds.
Frenchie sprung to his feet and went back to the laptop. "Fuck!" He exclaimed. "Whatever that was messed up the coordinates!"
"Can you get it fixed?" Hughie asked.
"Doesn't matter if you can, get it fucking fixed!" Butcher shouted as he shouldered the cannon and lined up his shot at the monster. He fired a single shot at the monster, then another a small ways away. The creature dodged the first shot, but ran squarely into the second.
Butcher dropped the weapon to his chest. "Those two better finish this shit quick." He muttered. "Got three shots left."
Superman tapped his ear, and the communications system inside the bunker crackled back to life. Homelander heard Kal-El's voice over his own comms system, too.
"How much time do we have left?" Superman asked.
"About eight, ten minutes, give or take?" The Frenchman's voice said.
Superman grimaced as he assessed the shifting background of the portal.
"Change of plans. Homelander and I will cut off the yellow tentacle, then we push it through, as long as it's going somewhere uninhabited. If there's enough time left, set the coordinates to my Earth. The Justice League and Green Lanterns can take care of it once it's over there. If not, I'll follow it through, and find my way home from there."
"Roger that." Butcher's voice sounded over the communication link.
"Homelander!" Superman said, pointing to the creature as it lumbered towards them. "Draw the yellow arm out, I'll secure it, you sever it with your heat vision and I'll toss it into the portal!"
"Got it!" Homelander said with a nod.
The two of them took off toward the creature. Homelander soared straight for the thing's yellow arm, into Yl'geth's newly-minted blind side. The creature turned to follow him with its' other eye, and jabbed at him with its' yellow and blue arms. Homelander managed to evade the blue one, which embedded itself below the colored tip in the ground where he'd once stood.
In an instant, Superman seemed to snap into place ahead of John a ways up the yellow-tipped arm. Homelander grabbed the writhing end of the tentacle, and tuned his heat-vision as high as it would go as he pulled the wrinkled, crackled appendage as taut as he could. He fired the beams into the greying, blue-powdered flesh, and in a couple of seconds, he'd cut through it all the way. He tossed the still writhing yellow tip away.
The instant Superman felt the heat and tension behind him dissipate, he snapped the tentacle toward the portal with a twist of his hips and shoulders, leaving his back to Homelander. The creature landed just outside of the portal, and clawed limply at what remained of the force-field generator and ground as ichor continued to hemorrhage from its' eye socket, just as the portal reset to the Black Hole.
John stared at the back of Superman's head for an instant that felt like an eternity. Some part of him genuinely wanted to leave things be, to just let it all play out, and send Superman peacefully on his way... It was the smart thing to do, after all. It was what he'd promised her...
Another part of him overwhelmed that part. All of his humiliations, every lie he'd been told, every lie he'd had to tell, every embarrassing moment he'd ever had welled up, and poured out like a broken dam. Where the hell does he get off, trying to make a god-damned fool out of me? Trying to be better than me!
John ripped out his comlink and crushed it in his hand, then tapped his belt, and the knuckle-dusters popped into his hands.
"Butcher!" Superman began to yell over the in-pouring turbulence of the portal, but John cut him off with a punch to the skull braced by his green-inlaid titanium -alloy bracers. The blow sent Superman tumbling to the ground, and clearly stunned him, because it took several seconds for him to begin to move again. In that time, Homelander saw that he'd drawn blood.
"I'm glad to see you can bleed." He said, stepping over Superman and rolling him onto his back. John grabbed Superman by the throat and pulled him up. "After those bruises you gave me, I wanted to return the favor." Homelander growled. He followed that statement up with a straight punch to Kent's jaw, and allowed the Man of Steel to slip from his grasp, and fall into his back.
"I'm almost going to be sad to see you go..." Homelander said as he stalked towards where Superman had landed. "You're the first real challenge I've ever faced... One I couldn't just pummel into submission." John shrugged, and shined the glowing green knuckle-dusters on his suit. "Until you gave me exactly what I needed to do that." He said, squatting down near Superman. Homelander gently rubbed the outside of his hand against Superman's face. Kal-El flinched away limply, but John closed his fist, and tapped it against Superman's cheekbone. "God, you're fucking pathetic like this. All that power... Taken away by a little green rock." A wicked smile grew across Homelander's face. "They probably think you're really special back home. All that stuff you can do... Wonder what they'd think if they could see you now."
Superman grimaced, and made a dismissive noise as he tried to return to standing, but Homelander tripped him, and knocked him back to the ground. Then, John grabbed Superman's jaw again, and drew him in close as he stood up, and stalked both of them toward the dying creature.
"We'll, whoever's waiting for you won't get to see this! They'll think you just disappeared, never to be seen again. I'll throw you and that thing through the hole, where it'll tear the two of you apart atom by atom... Just try coming back from that!" John said with a smirk. "Next, I'll kill all your little friends, and then... Everything goes back to the way it's supposed to be, where the only big man in the sky is me!"
Butcher tracked the creature as Superman and Homelander zoomed around it. The tentacles looped around. Homelander led the creature straight into Superman's grasp, and Homelander sliced the yellow arm off, and toss it away. Then, Superman slung the creature towards the portal. The angle was almost perfect to send the creature straight through the malfunctioning portal... But the two of them were in the way.
"Got it!" Frenchie said as he hit a final keystroke. The image behind the portal solidified into a steady window directly into the Black Hole Superman had initially set it to.
Then, Homelander pulled out his comms, and crushed them, sending a squealing sound throughout the system, and an instant later, nearly faster than anyone could see, he pulled something green from his belt, and punched Superman in the back of the head.
"Shit!" Hughie exclaimed.
"What the fuck is he doing?" Starlight demanded.
"Something stupid..." Billy muttered as he stared through the sights at the three figures near the portal...
"What do we do?" Hughie asked Billy.
Homelander picked Superman up, and punched him again. He stalked the Man of Steel like a cat, ready to pounce on its' prey. He was taking pleasure with every hit, every taunt they could see, but not hear. It was sadistic, and sickening. Even Billy was shocked when he caught the first glimpse of Superman's blood since he'd been stabbed by the creature back at the lab.
Homelander stalked them closer and closer to the exsanguinating creature. The angle of the shot went from nearly perfect to exactly perfect.
All I have to do is pull the trigger... Butcher thought. If I do, Homelander and that beast go away forever. They get sucked into the void, shredded in the event horizon... Gone. For good.
Butcher couldn't pull the trigger. He knew what he was leaving out.
And Superman with them.
Sparks flew from the portal machine, and the portal changed again... To a bright red star. They were close enough to it they could feel the heat, but not close enough for it to burn the planet up. The creature immediately regained its' composure and stretched as its' skin returned to a lustrous black sheen as the creature drank in the raw solar radiation.
"Butcher!" Hughie yelled at the top of his lungs.
Billy snapped his face away from the cannon to face Hughie.
"What the hell do we do?"
Butcher set the cannon down on the wall of the bunker.
"Stay here." Billy said as he picked a crowbar off the workbench near the laptop.
Butcher's body had moved before he had a chance to think about what he was doing. He spoke before he realized what he was saying. He opened the door of the bunker and dashed toward Homelander before he even knew what that meant. Homelander reeled back for a final blow on the man of steel, with a maniacal expression on his face.
"What the hell is he doing?" Starlight asked in disbelief.
"I don't know, and I don't care." Frenchie said, frantically typing away on Superman's laptop. "The orange shit fucked the control circuits, I can't fix it on the black 'ole!"
"Just give it something!" Hughie said. "That thing's eating the solar radiation, point the portal somewhere else!"
Before the red white and blue bastard could tell he was there, Butcher whacked him across his perfect, ugly face. The crowbar bent across Homelander's skull, and mussed his perfect hair, but it didn't have the desired effect of incapacitating the son of a bitch.
John turned away from Superman, puzzled at the sensation he'd just felt, but before he realized what had happened, Butcher balled up a fist, and landed a punch squarely on the side of Homelander's face. The blow sent John flying further than Butcher realized was possible. Homelander careened to a stop in a crumpled red white and blue pile what had to be almost a quarter of a mile away.
Frenchie's eyes scanned over the screen as fast as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He managed to compensate for the interference, but he still couldn't fix the system on the black hole. He didn't want to just enter random coordinates... But he had to do something... Then, he spotted a set of coordinates under the heading "Known safe locations" that wasn't the other Earth. "Htrea (Orbit)" It was a nonsense word to him, but it didn't matter. Frenchie punched in the coordinates, and hit the "Enter" key.
Superman looked as shocked at Butcher's actions as Billy himself was.
"Don't just sit there, ya cunt." Billy gasped out as he dropped the mangled crowbar. "Go be a fuckin' superhero."
Superman wiped the blood from his mouth, and nodded as the harsh red light of the portal shifted to a bright blue.
Yl'geth launched itself at Superman and Butcher with a screeching roar. Superman reached the creature before it could hit the ground, and collided with Yl'geth with a crack. The creature tried to slither out of Superman's grasp, but the man of steel regained his grasp faster than the creature could escape, and slammed the creature into the scorched ground.
"It looks like it's still powering up from that blue sun!" Hughie said.
"So am I!" Superman's voice sounded over the comms. "Keep it fixed on that location until I say to switch it! When I do, switch to the gravity well!"
"Right!" Frenchie said. He recompensated, recompensated... And he got a fix on the black hole. One stroke of the keyboard was all he'd need to change the location.
Superman fired bright-blue heat-vision at the creature. It dodged nimbly, but Superman was already where Yl'geth had dodged to, and he landed a punch so hard the shockwave rocked the land for miles around. As the creature zoomed away, Superman closed the distance and landed another blow with his opposite hand, sending the creature soaring closer to the portal. It thrust its' tentacles into the ground to arrest its' motion, but Superman landed in the ground it had dug into, powderizing the scorched dirt with his impact, leaving a crater where he landed.
"NOW!" Superman yelled as he sprang from the ground.
Frenchie punched the "Enter" key once more, and the portal shifted back once more. Superman landed an enormous uppercut on the creature, sending it soaring towards the portal. Yl'geth writhed in the air, attempting to get a tentacle-hold on anything as the final burst of the sonic cannon slammed into the thing's body, increasing the speed it flew through the portal . All Yl'geth managed to grab was the barest edge of the destroyed force-field-generator, pulling the ruined ring with it through the portal, and into the event horizon of the gravity well beyond. It let out one last screech as it appeared to melt into the void in spacetime.
Superman set down on the ground near the portal, and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly as he relaxed his posture.
"That was a hell of a hit you landed." Butcher said as he approached. He was clearly fairly shaken by the ordeal, though he tried not to show it.
Superman turned to face Butcher. "Thanks." He replied. "You got a pretty good one in, yourself."
Butcher still looked a little shell-shocked, but he tried to shrug, casually. "I made you promise to handle him if he messed with us. Wouldn't have been fair to leave you hangin', you know?"
Frenchie struck a key on the laptop, and the image of the black hole changed to a bustling city street in a teeming metropolis. The people on the other side of the portal stopped in their tracks to stare through the hole. He and the others ran up to Superman and Butcher from the bunker.
"Génialhomme!" Frenchie said as he lugged the laptop and the wires connecting it to the machine generating the portal. "The reactor is running dangerously low!"
"How much operating power do we have left?" Superman asked.
"Not enough that I'd risk shutting it off and restarting." Frenchie replied. "We lost a lot trying to fight the interference, we have two, maybe three minutes left."
Superman shook his head. "Dammit." He muttered.
A sound like a pair of gunshots rang out, followed by a swift whooshing sound as wind billowed through the portal.
"Dad!" A pair of voices exclaimed from the other side. They belonged to two teenage boys, the oldest couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen. Both of them were the spitting image of Superman, in both their appearance, and dress. They were clad in outfits practically identical to Superman's. Their faces were somewhat tired, but they lit up brighter than the blue sun at the sight of their father, and Superman's face grew into a similar expression as a smile a mile wide spread across his mouth.
Not far behind them was a woman with hair as red the red sun, clad in a purple blouse and black pants. She had black circles under her eyes, but it didn't diminish the expression of joy on her face at the sight of Superman.
"Get on with it!" Butcher said, tapping Clark on the shoulder.
Superman looked at Butcher with surprise.
"What about him?" Superman asked, indicating the unconscious body of Homelander.
"Go home to your family, you daft bastard!" Butcher exclaimed. "We'll take care of him!"
Superman hesitated, then nodded, and stepped through the portal. The three on the other side embraced him all at once, and the woman stood up on the tips of her toes to hug him tight, and kiss him on the lips.
"Here!" Frenchie said as he disconnected the laptop, and tossed it through the portal to Superman.
The man of Steel caught the computer, shook his head, and tossed it back to Frenchie. "Keep it!" He shouted through the portal. "I've got everything I'd ever need over here. You guys could use an edge."
Frenchie looked down at the computer in shock, and clutched it tightly to his chest. "Mon dieu!" He muttered. "To give away such a fortune..."
"Hey, uh..." Hughie interjected. "Not to interrupt the happy moment, but what the hell was that orange stuff that came through the hole?"
"Some combination of dark matter and cosmic radiation." Superman replied.
"Is it dangerous?" Hughie asked.
Superman shrugged. "It affects different people different ways. Could be nothing, could change every cell in your body into cotton candy, or something else."
Hughie looked at the fronts and backs of both of his hands. "Jesus..." He said, trailing off.
"Thanks for everything, guys!" Superman said through the slowly-closing portal. "I'll never forget."
A small smile spread across Butcher's face. "I didn't think you would!" He said, waving his hand in the air. "Take care!"
As the portal slowly closed, other heroes gathered behind Superman and his family. Ones in green, red, white, black. Ones with strange costumes, ones with motifs patterned after animals, ones who looked like robots, ones who looked like regular people in unusual clothing. Neither The Boys, nor the other costumed heroes knew who each other were, but they all joined Superman in waving farewell to the people on the other side of the portal.
The portal winked out of existence, and a feeling of melancholy washed across Butcher and the others.
"So we're just gonna do it, huh?" Hughie asked with a sidelong glance at Homelander's unconscious body. "We've got him dead to rights..."
"Yeah..." Butcher said with a shaky exhalation.
"How the hell did you even do that?" Hughie asked. "When he held me under the water, all he needed was his palm."
"Dunno." Butcher said as he began to march over to Homelander. He was a few hundred yards away... Close enough... "Maybe he's weak to red sunlight or something."
"Or something..." Hughie said.
"Butcher, are you on something?" Marvin whispered to Billy.
Butcher recoiled incredulously. "What the fuck?"
"When you left the bunker, you moved faster than I've ever seen you go." Marvin replied.
"People do weird shit in a panic." Butcher said, dismissively. "I'll probably feel like shit tomorrow." He said as he stooped down to grab his mangled crowbar. "Until then, I have some unfinished business to take care of."
Butcher left the others behind him, and walked over to where Homelander lay still. They saw him wind up with the bent hunk of metal... Then Homelander sprung from the ground, grabbed Butcher, and flew off into the sky.
Author's Note:
Apologies for the hiatus, real life has gotten in the way of writing for a while. I'd had this chapter outlined since the beginning of this endeavor, but the whole flesh of the story didn't come to me until recently. I worked on it little by little, but other time commitments took priority, and the more I delayed, the more I wanted to make sure everything came together properly, rather than just putting out just whatever came to mind. The next chapter will follow sooner than this one did, though.
Also, feel free to imagine You Say Run playing towards the end of you so wish. It's what I had playing on loop as I wrote it lol.