Chapter 256: So we should join forces, Mysterious Man

They left the room and walked into the living area.

"Hey. Look who I brought." Frenchie showed up in front of Hughie with Billy behind him.

"..."

It had been a while. The second Hughie saw Billy he pressed his lips together and could not find a word.

"Quit staring. We have Termite. Best we get out of here." Frenchie knew they should not linger. He had not touched the pile of meat in the other room. Once somebody found that body the whole place would explode. They needed the gap while it was still quiet.

They got back to the car.

The weird air eased a little. Hughie spoke first. "How did you grab Termite? Where is he?"

"Here." Billy took his time pulling a zip bag from his pocket. A little flour still sat in the bottom. He shook it and tossed it to Hughie.

"Billy caught him. He saved my ass, actually." Frenchie rubbed his backside like the feeling had not left yet.

"You didn’t kill him." Hughie looked at the tiny knocked-out man in the bag and could not hide the surprise.

Billy had a cigarette in his teeth and leaned back in the seat. "Honestly I wanted to pinch the cunt dead. Then I figured he might still be useful to you."

Hughie went still for a second.

"Thanks."

"Don’t mention it."

The wall between them was still there. It was lower than before.

"You still hunting supes?" Hughie asked.

Billy blew smoke and frowned. "Weeds don’t burn out. You have to rip them up by the root. So I folded the hunter squad."

"That’s the right call." Hughie was glad Billy had worked it out. As long as Vought stood they would keep making new supes. If you wanted them gone you had to hit Vought first.

"Coming back can wait. You had MM call me. What’s so urgent?"

Pride, really. Billy had walked out of the Boys on his own. Walking back in without a word would make him look like some stray with nowhere else to go.

"Look at this." Hughie handed him the paper.

Billy read it and his face changed. "Our Mystery man gave you this shit?"

"No. Vought’s VP, Ivan Greevs. He said he found it on his desk." Hughie repeated what Ivan had told him that morning.

"You piss the mystery man off lately?" MM asked from the side.

"Piss him off? I don’t even know who he is." Billy’s face went cold. He pulled out his phone and dialed the number on the paper.

The call went through easy.

Half a minute later Billy put the phone down. His voice was low. "It’s him."

"And? What did he say?" Hughie asked fast.

"He wants us to get the leader of Payback out. Soldier Boy."

"Soldier Boy? Wasn’t he dead?"

MM had seen an old write-up years back. The article said Soldier Boy died in some foreign war and his team got chewed up with him. Casualties everywhere. End of story, or so the internet claimed.

Billy shook his head.

"Looks like he is not dead. And he is sitting on something big. Mystery man would not be this hungry to pull him out otherwise."

"Can we just say no?"

The words left Hughie before his brain caught up.

Billy gave a short, ugly laugh.

"Sure you can. Long as you throw away everything you have now and crawl back into a basement like the old days, so he cannot find you."

The car went quiet after that.

Hughie could not drop the life he had built. Badge, office, Starlight, the whole clean surface.

MM and the others did not want to give up the quiet they had either. Nobody said it out loud. Well.. Nobody needed to.

...

The next afternoon a rare visitor walked into Ivan’s office.

Ivan sat at the computer going through the files Ashley and the rest had sent up. The real decisions still belonged to Edgar. Ivan handled the small stuff, the paper that kept the machine turning. He flipped a few pages, skimmed them, then opened the panel and checked fantasy value.

Nothing major had blown up in six months and the number still sat past eight thousand. The movie alone had dropped six hundred in. Even if he sat on his hands and did nothing, ten thousand was four months away at most.

"Hm?"

He looked up.

Queen Maeve pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"Oh? Maeve. First time in my office, no? Want a drink?"

Ivan stayed in the chair. He did not get up.

"Thanks. I have something more important."

Her face was tight. Before she came, Stormfront had already put the threat on her. Maeve had turned it over more than once. In the end she decided to talk to Ivan.

Ivan smiled.

"Let me guess. This is about you and me. You would not walk in here otherwise. We are not exactly friends."

"You are smart, Ivan. Fine. I will keep it short."

She had waited until Homelander and Stormfront were out of the tower. Only then did she come.

"We need to work together."

She set a phone on the desk in front of him.

"Stormfront found me. She wants me to stand in front of the cameras and say you sexually harassed me. Her meaning is simple. She wants you ruined. She wants you out of Vought."

Ivan picked up the phone and went through the photos with real interest.

"So you want to hit back with these. Why not do it yourself? Why come to me?"

Maeve’s voice stayed flat. "I watched you fall more than ten meters and walk away clean. You are not a normal man, Mr. Greevs, are you?"

She kept going.

"We met a long time ago. My teacher even said your hands were good. Hard to believe a guard climbed all the way to Vought vice president."

"And that means what?"

Ivan shook his head like he did not follow.

"Does none of this feel too clean to you? If nothing goes wrong, when Edgar retires you take the chair."

"So?" Ivan smiled.

"So we team up and take that bitch out. Mystery man."

"...!"

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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69