This was deliberate on Ivan's part. If he didn't shut off the Carbon Super Sensitivity ability, his brains would spray straight out of his eyes.
"That bitch is attacking you?" Homelander looked confused.
He'd already figured out who was behind it, but he hadn't expected Greevs to get hit too.
Ivan coldly scanned the room. The live broadcast had been cut. Mallory had risked it and dragged Victoria out of the chamber.
A dozen or so terrified people still sat frozen inside. To keep his power from becoming public knowledge, dozens of invisible tentacles suddenly slid out of Ivan's body.
In complete silence they wrecked every recording device in the place.
Bang! Bang!!! The remaining survivors' heads were crushed one after another. Blood flooded the hearing chamber. Looking around, it was pure hell.
"You don't look so good."
Homelander felt a mild pang of regret at the idea of Ivan dying. Any real sadness was just the thin fox-mourning-the-rabbit kind.
"No big deal. Just a scratch."
Then, right in front of Homelander and Stormfront's horrified eyes, Ivan calmly reached up and pulled his own head clean off.
The next second.. POP!squelch! The severed head exploded into fine meat paste and bone shards that splattered across both of their clothes.
"Holy shit!" Homelander's pupils shrank. He dropped the arm he'd been using as a shield and stared at Ivan like the man was a monster.
Stormfront couldn't stop herself from stepping back. Even she felt sick at the sight.
"Told you, just a scratch. Don't look so shocked."
A mass of bloody flesh burst from Ivan's neck stump and grew at visible speed. In the space of a few breaths a complete new head had formed, identical to the old one in every detail.
"I must still be asleep…" Stormfront muttered, jaw hanging open.
Homelander wore the exact same expression. He blinked hard several times, half-convinced he was hallucinating.
"Greevs?" Homelander's Adam's apple bobbed.
"Something wrong?" Ivan acted like nothing had happened, straightening his suit collar and wiping the blood off his blue tie.
"N-nothing. Just surprised. Yeah, surprised. Why? Why can your head grow back after it's gone?"
Homelander couldn't hold the question in.
The power Ivan had just shown had cracked his worldview. He'd seen every kind of ability under the sun, but never once had he met anyone who could lose a head and just grow a new one. This was absurdity's own mother opening the door for absurdity. Peak fucking absurd.
"Just rapid regeneration. Pretty common, right?" Ivan stepped through the sticky, stringy blood on the floor and headed for the exit.
"Regeneration?"
Homelander's expression was complicated.
True enough, what Greevs had just done could be explained as regeneration.
The regeneration speed was still ridiculously fast, though. Once Homelander snapped out of it he wiped a hand across his face and started calculating whether his own power could put Greevs down for good.
Final answer: should be no problem.
With his heat vision he could turn Greevs into a charcoal briquette without breaking a sweat, right?
No matter how strong the regeneration, you can't grow something from nothing. So Homelander decided Greevs was no real threat to him.
Still, his attitude toward the man shifted a little. In his eyes Greevs was the same kind of creature he was: a genuinely powerful supe.
...
Cut to Butcher's side.
Halfway through the head-popping feast the TV signal died. Hughie and the others sat frozen, jaws practically unhinged. Nobody spoke for a long time. The only sound at the start had been Hughie's terrified yell.
Butcher walked over to the side counter and lowered his head in silence. He knew he'd lost again.
A few veins bulged on his forehead. When he looked up again his eyes were pure stubborn grit.
...
Ivan's group made it back to Vought Tower.
They hadn't even changed clothes before Edgar summoned them to The Seven's conference room.
The second Ivan stepped in he saw The Deep rubbing his own skull like he was terrified it might explode the same way the ones on screen had.
"Situation's critical, that's why I ordered you all back to the tower at top speed. I saw what happened at the hearing. I have to say, the super-terrorists have completely lost all restraint. They actually dared stage a massacre right in front of Vought's own vice president, Greevs!"
Edgar's acting was every bit as polished as Victoria's. Flawless didn't even cover it.
Ivan glanced at the staff holding the live-stream gear and immediately understood this was a carefully staged performance Edgar had arranged.
"What the hell do these super-terrorists want? They even murdered the committee clerk! And Dr. Jonah Vogelbaum! They're trying to throw the blame on Vought, make the public think this whole thing was our conspiracy! Pure malice. Tell me, how is Vought supposed to explain this?" Edgar's face was black as thunder as he slipped on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.
That level of pure rage wasn't something an ordinary person could fake.
"I suspect Starlight is behind all of it. We already know she stole Compound V and sold it to terrorists. She may have been the one pulling the strings on this slaughter. Don't forget, the night before last a group of terrorists snuck into Vought Tower while every member of The Seven was away and extracted her. That's an ironclad fact."
Ivan's voice stayed flat.
Scapegoating had always been one of Vought's finest traditions, and he knew exactly what answer Edgar wanted to hear.
Sure enough, once he finished, Edgar went silent.
A few seconds later he spoke in a heavy voice. "I'm an incompetent CEO. If I had stopped Madelyn from bringing Starlight into The Seven while she was still alive, a tragedy like this never would have happened. As Executive CEO of Vought International…"
Edgar stood, placed his right arm across his abdomen, and bowed deeply toward the camera. "I solemnly apologize to everyone, and I promise to locate Starlight in the shortest time possible. Then I will personally deliver her to the court."
In the live chat, viewers who had started to smell a conspiracy suddenly felt their brains short-circuit. Watching such a sincere Vought CEO, they couldn't help wondering if their own conspiracy theories had been wrong all along.
____
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69