Homelander strolled into the office like he owned the place.
Madeline glanced up, then went back to staring at the list of possible replacements. If Ivan Greevs wasn't one of Edgar's pets, he'd be the obvious choice. Even she couldn't deny the Frenchman was damn good at PR.
"I heard you fired Ashley," Homelander said, dropping onto the couch. His laser eyes had already scanned the termination papers on her desk the second he walked in. "What about Greevs? I think you should go with him."
Madeline's gaze sharpened. "I should've known. You weren't going to sit quietly while The Deep's numbers kept climbing. But how the hell did Greevs know Starlight got harassed by The Deep?"
"Who knows?" Homelander shrugged, completely unbothered. "Maybe he just told her to make something up. Shit like that doesn't need proof anyway."
Madeline's chest tightened with rage. Homelander really was the biggest loose cannon in the whole fucking company.
"Do you have any idea how much damage your little stunt caused?" she snapped, voice rising. "Ashley got the axe because of this mess."
"So what?" Homelander leaned back. "I'm Homelander. I won't allow anyone in this building to get more popular than me. You should be grateful The Deep got lucky. Next time I might not let him walk back into Vought alive."
Popularity was his sore spot. The one thing he actually gave a shit about.
"Fine. Forget it." Madeline waved her hand, done arguing. She knew his twisted personality too well.
The horrific shit he went through as a kid left him with massive emotional scars. All he craved now was affection and absolute power. Give him more fame, more worship, and he didn't care who he had to fuck over or team up with to get it.
"Greevs is too clever. Hard to control. And he's been cozying up to Edgar."
"Edgar…" Homelander smirked. "He's about to retire, Madeline. Keep that in mind. Even if Greevs is one of Edgar's little spies, so what? He's just a normal human. Not even a supe. If I wanted him dead, it'd be easier than stepping on a cockroach."
"I hope this is the right call," Madeline muttered with a sigh.
She picked up the pen and signed Ivan Greevs' name on the appointment document.
The next morning, Ivan Greevs received a fax from the President's office before he even finished his coffee. After a meeting with the top brass, Vought had officially appointed him head of Talent and Public Relations.
Ivan folded the paper with a calm expression and slipped it into his pocket. With this new title, getting close to supes and fusing their powers would be a hell of a lot easier. Take Homelander's super physique, for example. All he needed was to survive three minutes of the guy's attacks without dying.
He could have Marketing whip up a promo video where his transformed Yuji played the villain. The brief only required him to last three minutes. No one said Homelander had to go all out.
The only snag was that Homelander might refuse to film it. Getting held off for three whole minutes by some random villain would bruise his precious ego.
Ivan stepped into the hallway and headed for what used to be Ashley's office. As of that fax, the place belonged to him.
"Hey, Greevs! Congrats on the promotion, man. Drinks on me sometime."
"No, no, I should be the one buying."
Who said people didn't do favors and networking nowadays? Ivan thought it was the opposite. These people were even more cutthroat. Guys who used to barely nod at him in the halls were now grinning like old buddies, slapping him on the back and acting like they'd always been tight.
"Morning, sir."
"Good morning, sir."
"Morning," Ivan said with the same polite smile he always wore. After greeting everyone, a staffer led him to the new office.
All of Ashley's personal shit was already cleared out. Ivan dropped into the big chair behind the desk and started digging through the workflows.
Truth was, the actual workload for department head was way lighter than what Ashley made it look like. She just had to micromanage every little thing, so she always ran around like her ass was on fire.
Ivan liked keeping things simple. He handed off the small stuff and only steered the overall direction himself.
Once everything was delegated, he grabbed a fresh coffee, leaned back in the big chair, and pulled up his panel to check the fusion progress.
[Laser Eyes (Blue) Talent Fusion in progress. Current progress: 65%]
At this stage he burned through seven vials of Compound V every week just to hit his body's limit. Absorption had roughly doubled. So from now on he'd zero in on physique and regeneration powers. Naturally, if something caught his eye and looked worth it, he'd snatch that too.
Being too picky just meant starving to death.
He'd spent the last few days digging through Vought's internal database, checking out dozens of supes. Most were garbage with no fusion value whatsoever, even if their powers sounded impressive at first glance.
Take that one girl who could turn into a ghost. Untouchable, phased through walls, immune to every physical attack.
Fatal flaw: she couldn't switch back.
Once she went spectral, she was stuck that way for good.
Then there were the beast-mode guys who lost their minds after transforming, the girl whose only power was controlling shit, the dude who could spit corrosive acid but burned his own mouth every time… Only a small handful had anything close to normal, usable abilities.
The best match Ivan had found so far was a supe called Gecko.
His power let him numb pain and regenerate lost limbs.
"Feels pretty close to enhanced healing. Wonder if it can stack?" Ivan thought. Based on how the panel worked, unless two abilities were exactly the same, they should fuse together and get even stronger.
...
On the other side of town.
After talking it over, Butcher and the crew decided to use Mesmer to dig around inside Kimiko's head. Waiting for her to open up on her own could take forever, and they didn't have that kind of time to waste.
So Mother's Milk showed up at the washed-up hero signing event and found a pale, chubby Mesmer sitting behind his table.
Thanks to all his old contacts in social services, MM had leverage. He leaned in and made the offer straight-up: "I can get you five minutes with your daughter every month. All you gotta do is one thing for me."
Seeing his little girl again was the one thing Mesmer had been desperate for. He didn't even hesitate. He agreed on the spot.
___
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69