"Butcher!"
Hughie ran as fast as his legs would carry him to the spot where Homelander had taken off with Butcher. All that was left was a large cloud of dust that made Hughie feel like he was going to cough out his lungs.
"Fuck, where the hell is he taking him?" MM wondered aloud.
Frenchie knelt down, and dug something out of the scorched dirt beneath their feet. Starlight did the same thing, and they both retrieved gold-colored hand-bracers with glowing crystal inlays.
"Looks like Kryptonite." Frenchie said.
"So that's how he took down Superman." Marvin said.
"Where the hell did he get it?" Hughie wondered aloud.
"There's no tellin'." MM said. "That must be why he got that new belt with the new suit, he was usin' it to hide these."
"So what the hell are we doing?" Starlight asked. "What's our plan?"
"I don't think we have a plan." Hughie said. "Superman was the plan, and he's gone."
Marvin scoffed. "The way he talked, he made it sound like a sure thing that Superman was gonna take care of Homelander, right up to the end. Butcher's usually not that sentimental, I wonder what they said to each other after the attack in the city."
"So what do we do?" Starlight demanded. "They could be anywhere."
"That's the problem." Hughie said pensively. "They could be anywhere, and as a result, might as well be nowhere."
"Homelander's seen all of us, including her." MM said, indicating Starlight. "He knows we're working with Butcher. If Homelander's going on a rampage, we might as well already be dead if we don't go to ground right now. We need to get our shit together, get anyone they might try to use against us, make sure we're not being tracked, and lay low for a while."
The last thing Billy Butcher remembered before being knocked unconscious was Homelander twisting like a tornado and striking him hard on the side of the neck.
He awoke some time later, as the evening had faded into nighttime. He rubbed his neck as he blinked his eyes to clear his blurry vision, and groaned as he sat up against a ledge. He looked over one shoulder, and spied a hundred-something story drop down a familiar building. He was at the top of Vought Tower.
"Glad to see you're awake." A familiar voice, a voice Billy despised, called from above. Billy turned away from the ledge, and saw Homelander sitting in the shadows at the top of a set of concrete stairs a few feet away.
"I thought I'd hit you a little too hard." Homelander continued as he stood up and walked down the stairs towards Billy. The harsh lighting on top of the building illuminated the bruises on the side of his face, and Butcher couldn't help but feel a little bit smug about being responsible for the marks on Homelander's perfect visage. "I suppose I should apologize, I've never woken up from unconsciousness with a pounding headache and very little memory before, I don't really..." He made a circular, befuddled gesture with his hands as he shrugged, and flattened his lips against each other. "Know what people do in that situation." He let his hands drop to his sides, and linked them behind his back. "So tell me, what happened at the end of our little... Excursion? Last thing I remember is Superman babbling about some big gun he'd made."
Butcher rubbed his head, partially to relieve his actual pain, and partially to buy time. Jesus, he thinks he hit me hard... Gotta play my cards right, I can't count on him still being weakened from that red sun.
"You and Superman beat Squidward back to where he came from." Butcher said casually. "You took a pretty bad hit from it," Butcher indicated the bruise and abrasions in the side of Homelander's face where he'd hit the star-spangled bastard. "Nearly fell into the black hole. Superman pulled your red white and blue arse out of the fire."
Homelander rubbed his own head, touching the bruises tenderly. "Fuck." He swore under his breath. "Well, at least the media didn't see it."
"You can drop the act, by the way." Homelander said as he strolled around the back of the steps and retrieved something. "I know you don't like me, I'd know even if you could lie to me believably."
Butcher raised an eyebrow, and let out an involuntary chuckle. "Suppose it was too much to hope for. Wear my heart on my sleeve, don't it?"
Homelander nodded with a smirk. "A little. If I had to guess, based on who you've been associated with, you've been behind a lot of weird shit, huh? The Lamplighter situation, Translucent's disappearance... I've seen you all over the place, and I wondered why the same guy kept popping up in the background... It's all about that business with Rebecca, which, to be fair, isn't entirely my fault." Homelander said as he led Madelyn Stillwell, bound and gagged with duct-tape from the shadows. "Isn't that right, Madelyn?" He asked as he ripped the duct tape from her mouth.
"John, what the fuck are you doing?" She gasped, desperately.
"I was planning to kill Superman." Homelander said with a dismissive shrug. "Threatened him. Took every step I needed to to make sure I could make him do what I needed to. He could've let me die, and he still saved me. He found the weapons I made to kill him with, and he still saved me."
Homelander grabbed Stillwell's mouth and turned her head towards him.
"How does it feel..." John whispered. "Knowing you could've had that, and you threw it all away?"
Butcher raised an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to give a fuck about this little quarrel with your missus? Gotta be honest, she's right next to you on my list."
"Johnny, please." Stillwell begged. "Let's-"
Homelander cut her off with a sharp, biting chuckle. "Madelyn... That hasn't been my name for a long time." He tightened his grip on her neck. "That little boy died when you chained him to a nuclear warhead and started jacking him off, remember?"
Butcher rubbed his temples in a combination of disbelief, and as an attempt to clear his still foggy head. "Dear god, that explains a lot more than I wanted to know." He muttered under his breath."
"You've been hiding things from both of us for a long time now." Homelander snarled into her face. Stillwell recoiled, but his hand held her close, regardless. "Really, you've been hiding things from the whole world... But this, this is special. You're responsible for everything that's happened for the last five years, in a way. If you hadn't done what you did, Lamplighter never would've left, Starlight never joins The Seven, The Deep never leaves... Billy and his buddies never ice Translucent . Damn near everything comes back to your little cover-up." John said as he lifted Stillwell into the air above his head by her neck. He cut and ripped away her restraints with his opposite hand and heat-vision, allowing her to writhe and flair and kick and punch at him uncontrollably. The flailing didn't affect him at all. Once he was done freeing her, he looked directly into her eyes "You owe a massive debt, and it's time you paid with your life."
Homelander walked over to the edge of the building, never once breaking eye-contact with Stillwell as he stepped up onto the ledge.
"How does it feel, Madelyn, knowing that everything you did led to this moment?" John asked rhetorically. "That there was one man on the planet who still would've saved you, despite every terrible thing you've done and contributed to, and you sent him away!" Homelander yelled, shaking with rage. "Now, once again, there's only one big man in the sky, and he's fucking angry. Say your prayers... Hope I'll answer."
Madelyn struggled around Homelander's ever-tightening grip, but failed to express more than an incomprehensible sound of terror.
Homelander scoffed as a sarcastic smile crossed his face.. "Sorry, didn't catch that."
He let his fist open, and Stillwell slipped from his grasp, and fell off the building . Billy looked over the edge as the woman's death scream faded. A hundred or so stories down, she all but exploded on the pavement below.
Homelander turned quickly with a flourish of his cape, and clasped his hands behind his back.
"Now." John said, with a malicious smile on his face. "I suppose I should show you what she's been hiding from us."
I get the feeling I already know... Billy thought, but he shot Homelander a killer smile of his own. "Now you've got my attention, it wouldn't hurt."