In a wave of loud applause, The Deep kept going. "After serving in The Seven for a long time and achieving great things, my good friend Lamplighter has retired. But Vought is about to welcome someone very special. I can't wait to work with her. Please welcome Starlight!"
Backstage, Starlight felt a rush of nerves. Ashley gave her a little push, and she walked out onto the stage.
The second she appeared, the entire hall exploded with cheers and clapping.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Starlight and The Deep!" Madeline gestured toward them with a big smile.
"That girl's a looker," Erich Shack, the event supervisor, muttered beside Ivan.
"Exactly what the crowd eats up these days," Ivan replied, clapping along.
The shareholder meeting went off without a hitch.
Too bad Starlight never ended up buying him that coffee afterward.
Understandable, though. First day on the job, she had a lot to get used to.
Meanwhile, The Deep had pulled Starlight aside to "give her a tour" of one of the meeting rooms. Pretty soon she started feeling something was seriously off.
When she turned around, The Deep had already dropped his pants. His sad little dick was out, pointing right at her while he stroked it.
Starlight spun away fast, heading for the door.
"What's wrong?" The Deep said, still jerking himself. "You said you were a huge fan of mine. I figured… hey, you're really hot. I'm not saying we have to fuck. A blowjob would be nice too."
Starlight ignored the pervert and kept walking.
"Hey, hey! This is about how bad you actually want to stay in The Seven."
Those words made her stop. She turned back, Ivan's warning echoing in her head. After a few seconds of silence, a cold smirk formed on her lips.
"Whether I stay in The Seven isn't up to you. Not unless you control every single shareholder in Vought."
With that, she walked out of the room and left The Deep standing there with his dick in his hand.
"Shit! Who the fuck told her?" The Deep slammed his fist on the table the second Starlight walked out, face twisted with rage.
The proud tradition of The Seven had just taken a fat L on his watch.
...
At that moment, Ivan Greevs was heading toward the grocery store where Hughie worked. Lawyer Fast had given him the address.
A notification box suddenly popped up in front of him.
[Congratulations, player. You have slightly altered the original plotline. +10 Fantasy Points.]
"Finally, she's not completely hopeless. At least my words weren't wasted."
Starlight now had real value to him. Planting his own eyes inside The Seven was the best way to control where the team was headed.
As for A-Train, that spineless coward got nervous just being in the same room as Homelander. Using him as a mole would only get Ivan exposed early. Total waste of space.
Ivan stepped into the grocery store. Hughie wasn't there.
Looked like he was already meeting with Billy Butcher.
Perfect timing. Ivan's next target was Translucent. He needed the supe's invisibility power, and he needed the perfect fall guy. Butcher showing up was exactly what he needed.
...
Half an hour earlier.
Billy Butcher had walked into the store and picked up a teddy bear, inspecting it closely. It caught Hughie's attention right away.
"You interested in nanny cam bears?" Hughie asked, stepping closer.
"On special right now. Real popular. Got a camera in the eye."
"Tell me, how many nannies do you think shake babies by the neck?"
"What?"
"Like this." Butcher grabbed the teddy bear by the throat and shook it violently.
Butcher kept going. "One percent? Or less?"
Hughie shook his head. He had no idea.
"Can you imagine? Shit like this pulls in over a billion dollars in global sales every single year."
They kept talking until Butcher steered the conversation straight to Robin.
He laid out the real truth about how she died and how Hughie had turned down Vought's hush money.
Then Butcher took him outside and kept talking while they walked. "Supes accidentally kill hundreds of people every year."
"Bullshit. If that was true, the news would be all over it. People would be screaming murder," Hughie shot back, not buying any of it.
"Yeah, sometimes a story slips through. Like Robin's. But most of them get buried."
"Why?"
Hughie looked confused.
Butcher waved his arm at a massive Vought billboard in the distance. "It's fucking obvious, isn't it? Movie tickets, merch, theme parks, video games. A global industry worth tens of billions. All backed by lobbyists and politicians. The real reason you don't hear about it is because people don't want to know."
"The cunts love the warm fuzzy feeling supes give them…"
After listening to Butcher, something deep inside Hughie started to crack. Everything he used to believe in felt shaky as hell. In the end, he followed Butcher anyway.
Butcher took him straight to the Super bar.
Thanks to some inside connections, they got in without trouble.
The second they stepped inside, the filthy scene hit Hughie like a truck and shattered whatever was left of his worldview.
The place was packed with supes.
He spotted heroes he used to worship balls-deep in some nasty, piston-pumping shit that made his stomach turn.
"Shit. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites."
Hughie's reaction put a satisfied grin on Butcher's face. That was exactly what he wanted.
You had to yank those so-called gods off their high horses before you could see how ugly they really were.
He took Hughie into the monitoring room and pulled up last night's footage of A-Train. The second A-Train and his buddy started cracking jokes about Robin's death and laughing their asses off, Hughie's fists tightened until his knuckles turned white, pure rage burning in his eyes.
Then Butcher led him into a sealed private room.
"They're all like that?" Hughie asked. "Even Homelander?"
Butcher shrugged. "Homelander's the exception. Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink. The guy is a fucking saint."
He dropped a thick stack of documents in front of Hughie.
He'd gone through every police dispatch record from the day of the accident. There wasn't a single report of a bank robbery. Meaning A-Train wasn't chasing any robbers. He was up to something else.
"What do I have to do?"
Butcher told him to accept Vought's payoff money, but demand that A-Train personally show up to sign the agreement. Once they were all in the meeting room, Hughie had to plant a listening device so they could find out what The Seven were really doing behind closed doors.
In short, Butcher had completely suckered Hughie with his fake FBI act.
Meanwhile, Ivan was patiently waiting for them to make their move.
He needed a clean excuse to drag Translucent out into the open. Making direct contact with the invisible bastard carried too much risk of blowing his own cover. So he waited… calm and focused, like a leopard crouched in the underbrush, eyes locked on every little movement of its prey, ready to strike the moment it slipped up.
For the next few days, Ivan deliberately stayed on the first floor of Vought Tower handling paperwork, using his electroreception to keep constant tabs on every supe walking in and out.
___
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69