That was foolish. Extremely so and unnecessary..
The high faded, leaving only the weight of my own stupidity. Homelander's blood was a toxin. It gave me the power of the ultimate hunter, but it rotted my mind with the need to be seen, to be heard, to be adored.
What good is a hunter if he doesn't want to hunt the prey, but want it to praise and exalt him?.
Foolish, foolish, foolish to the extreme.
I had been "playful." I had been arrogant. I allowed that pathetic bottom-feeder to stab me while I ranted about "forgiveness" like a character in one of their loud, shallow stories. I should have plucked his heart out and fed it to him. That would have been the only logical conclusion.
I reached up and grabbed a fistful of the hair that now brushed my shoulders, thick, soft, and a disgusting, radiant gold and ripped.
Looking at the gold in my hand, I suddenly realized I had just used human insults.
"Pathetic bottom-feeder?"
The words felt heavy and raw, a bitter residue of the blood ego. I needed to calm down and recalibrate; I was becoming loud. I had just completed a grand hunt, an achievement that, on my home world, would have surrounded me with companions eager to be chosen.
I might have even been deemed worthy to accompany a pure-blood. Here, I was simply alone with the infection of human rage and the waves.
"HAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"
Butcher lungs burned and his ribs ached, but he couldn't stop laughing. leaning against the van's side, holding the tablet up like it was the bloody Holy Grail. On the screen, the cunt was mid-meltdown.
Homelander was lasering the Atlantic, screaming at people while a thousand iPhones caught every pathetic second.
"Look at him!" He wheezed, gasping for air. "Look at the big cunt! He's having a proper stroppy! Can you believe it? The Big Cunt is lasering a pier because the homeless runt hurt his feelings!"
Frenchie and Hughie just looked at each other. They weren't laughing. Mother's Milk looked between them and me, his brow furrowed in total confusion
"What the fuck is going on?" MM asked, looking at the tablet and then at me. "Whos the kid? What did I miss?"
Hughie looked at Butcher, then back at MM. "Long story short... there was this homeless kid. I've been feeding him for weeks. When Translucent attacked the shop, the kid... he helped us. He's a Supe.
MM's eyes went wide. "A Supe kid? Where is he now?"
"Butcher here sent him to 'distract' Homelander," Hughie said, his eyes a mix of guilt and anger. "He told the kid he was already dying, Stage Four cancer. So his sacrifice wouldn't be in vain. He used a sick child as a decoy!"
Butcher stopped laughing just long enough to look at them, a wide grin still plastered on his face. "And look at the results! Best seventy-five bucks I ever spent. The runt's a legend."
MM didn't laugh. He stepped into Butcher's space, his massive frame blotting out the light from the tablet. He didn't look at the screen; he looked at Butcher with a quiet fury and deep disappointment.
"A decoy? You sent a kid, a sick, homeless kid, to stand in front of that sociopath just to stall for time?"
"He was a Supe," Butcher replied.
"SO?" MM moved closer. "After you label him a Supe, does that mean he's guilty? Even if he's done nothing wrong? There are lines. We talked about this. We're supposed to be better than them. If WE start throwing kids into the furnace just to shave a few points off Vought's stock, then what are we even doing here?"
"Winning!" barked Butcher. "Look how far we've come! Translucent is a zinc box in the ocean, we have leads, and Vought is in shambles. We are winning! Besides... you think he was 'just a kid'? Oh no. He was a Supe, and more importantly, he was a Supe who was fucked up in the head. He wasn't normal, MM. Not by a long shot. Ask Hughie, the kid was a right weirdo."
MM went silent. He turned around, his eyes burning a hole through Hughie, but Hughie couldn't meet them. He just lowered his head and stared at the floor of the van.
"See?" Butcher continued "Runt came out of nowhere and laid into Translucent. Call it loyalty, call it gratitude for Hughie shoving sandwiches down his gullet, makes no difference. Point is, the kid stared at that bloody, invisible corpse without so much as a blink. Didn't even wheeze. Then he helps us heave the body into the boot like he's tossing out the morning rubbish."
Butcher leaned in, his grin turning sharp and cold.
"If that ain't a fucked-up kid, Marvin, I don't know what is. That wasn't a victim you saw. That was a ticking time bomb in a hoodie. If we didn't get rid of him now, we would've just been waiting for him to grow up and start hurting people for real. I didn't just buy us a distraction; I did the world a bloody favor."
MM looked at Butcher, his face hardening into a mask of pure, cold disappointment. "A favor?" MM asked, his voice a low. "You're deciding who gets to grow up now, Butcher? You're playing judge and jury for a kid who properly hasn't even hit puberty?"
MM stepped closer, pointing a thick finger at Butcher's chest.
"Maybe he was 'fucked up' because he spent years in a gutter while people like you walked past him. Maybe he didn't blink at the body because he's seen more blood than a kid should see in ten lifetimes. He didn't need to be 'got rid of,' Billy. He needed a hand. He needed a bed. He needed HELP. You didn't do the world a favor. You just did what you always do. You found something broken and you used it until it snapped. Don't you ever, and I mean ever, try to tell me you're the hero in this story."
"Hero?" Butcher asked, his voice deathly quiet. "Is that what you think this is about? Medals and a pat on the back? I'm the man who does the things you're too 'good' to do. I'm the one who gets blood on his hands so you can keep yours clean and go home to your family."
He turned back to the bugs inside popclaw apartment, dismissively, like MM wasn't even there.
"The kid is gone. The Big Cunt is crying on the news. And we're still alive. That's the only math that matters."