"What the fuck!!!!" Furious, Maeve grabbed Butcher by the collar and hoisted him straight up into the air! "Calm down, Maeve." "Soldier Boy is different from Homelander. Even though both of them are assholes, Soldier Boy is an asshole who can be reasoned with." "He can definitely help us take down Homelander." Butcher tightly gripped Maeve's arms for support, his face turning as red as a pig's liver as he hurriedly explained. After all, his Temporary Compound V had nearly worn off. If Maeve tossed him around like that, he would seriously end up dead or crippled. "You'd better be telling the truth!" Gnashing her teeth, Maeve threw Butcher onto the couch and then asked, "So what's the price you have to pay?" "Not me, it's you." The corners of Butcher's mouth curled into an evil smirk. "Me?" Pointing at herself in confusion, Maeve suddenly figured something out, her pupils violently contracting: "You sold me to Soldier Boy as the price?" "That's right." "The price to get Soldier Boy to agree to wipe out Homelander is you, Maeve." "You should be happy about this. This is our only chance, the closest we've ever been to butchering that bastard Homelander." "The price is simply for you to entertain our secret weapon during this time." "You don't even need to participate in the fight. How safe and cost-effective is that?" A signature evil smirk always hung on Butcher's face as he methodically analyzed the pros and cons for Maeve. "Heh..." Maeve let out a cold laugh, feeling a chill run through her entire body, and said flatly, "Butcher, I now think you're an even bigger asshole than Homelander and Soldier Boy. Are you even human?" "Ever since I discovered the ugly true faces of you lot—you hypocritical, righteous superheroes—I stopped considering myself human a long time ago." "Because humans can't kill demons!" With that said, Butcher abruptly sat up from the couch, grabbed a bottle of champagne from the coffee table, chugged the whole thing in one go, and then violently smashed the empty bottle onto the floor: "One word—are we doing this or not?" "Fuck!" Maeve smashed the coffee table in front of her to pieces with a single punch, trembling all over with rage. Yet, under Butcher's relentless gaze, she finally nodded in angry and helpless resignation. Because having betrayed Homelander, she no longer had a way out. If she wanted to survive, she had to walk down this dark path to the end. Anyway, it wasn't her first time; she might as well treat it like getting bitten by a dog. Maeve thought to herself, then glared fiercely at Butcher. "When do I go find him?" "Now." The corners of Butcher's mouth curved upward into that signature evil smirk. ... Maeve swore she was going to tear Butcher's mouth apart sooner or later! ... Downstairs by the motel. Frenchie, completely high, was spinning in circles around the motorcycle mode Arcee that Leon had driven back, babbling excitedly non-stop: "Holy shit!" "This is definitely the prettiest damn motorcycle I've ever seen in my life. Stark, exactly where did you swipe her from?" "I want one so bad..." Under the correction of the system's power, Leon directly used his own real name. He climbed off the vehicle, patted Frenchie on the shoulder, and gave the exact same excuse he had used to stall Tony earlier: "Found it on the side of the road." "Then you really are a lucky bastard." Completely out of his mind from getting high, Frenchie didn't suspect Leon's bogus excuse at all. Instead, he reached out, wanting to touch Arcee's headlight. Could Arcee endure that? Rumble! She started her engine on her own, and a blast of freshly baked exhaust blew Frenchie flying far away, sending him plunging straight into a trash can. Though he didn't die, all his hair was burned clean off. This scene just happened to be witnessed by Butcher—who had just finished pimping someone out—and Maeve, whose expression resembled that of a resentful housewife. "What's going on, mate?" Butcher walked over and asked. "Nothing." Leon shrugged. "Just that my beauty got pissed off by that guy." "Your beauty?" "You mean this motorcycle?" Butcher looked at the motorcycle mode Arcee, whose styling was intensely futuristic. Although he wanted to touch it and see, with Frenchie as a cautionary tale, he wasn't stupid enough to do that. "Doesn't look like it was swiped from the side of the road." Butcher raised an eyebrow. "Of course not." Leon rested his hands on Arcee's headlight, stroking her with fond reluctance while talking nonsense straight out of his mouth: "To compensate for my weakness of not being able to fly, the former Soviet Union specially built this Jet Glider combat vehicle for me, which I named Arcee." "Meaning she can fly?" Butcher couldn't help exchanging a glance with Maeve. This was both good and bad news for them. The good news was that dealing with Homelander became even more certain; the bad news was... hopefully, things wouldn't develop to that extent. Although Butcher had a plan from the start regarding what he was going to do, he wasn't crazy to that degree yet. Aside from anything else, even for the sake of his surrogate son Ryan, he wouldn't choose to wipe out all superhumans. At least for now, that was the case... The topic of Arcee concluded. Leon looked over Maeve standing beside Butcher with keen interest. Just like Starlight, Maeve was also wearing casual clothes to conceal her identity, though hers were much more alluring. She wore only a loose, off-the-shoulder gray sweater that barely covered her buttocks, paired with semi-transparent black sheer stockings on her legs and bright brown knee-high high-heeled boots. That was the entirety of it. "Woah~" Leon let out an interested whistle, then wrapped his arm around Maeve's shoulder with the easy familiarity of an old friend, not acting like an outsider at all. "W-Wait, I'm not ready yet..." Although Leon was a lot more handsome than Maeve had imagined—meaning she didn't seem to be getting the short end of the stick and might even be profiting a bit—she hadn't expected Leon to be so direct. She subconsciously tried to push him away, only for Leon to lean in close to her ear and whisper softly: "Shh~" "Time waits for no one, beautiful lady." "After all," "You don't want to miss the prime opportunity to deal with Homelander just because you kept me waiting too long, do you?" ... Leon's words made Maeve feel weird, though she couldn't quite pinpoint what was weird about it. She quickly took a deep breath to rapidly settle her emotions, then plastered a composed and charming smile on her face, challenging him without backing down: "Decades have passed, are you still any good? Don't tell me you can't even beat a woman like me." "Heh~" "Who do you think I am?" "I'm fucking Soldier Boy, fuck you!" ... Twenty-five hours later. The door to Leon's room opened. Maeve walked toward the bathroom, supporting herself against the wall. Seeing this, Butcher—who hadn't slept at all in the neighboring room—followed behind her with a pair of extremely heavy dark circles under his eyes. Stepping into the bathroom, Butcher discovered that despite so much time having passed, not only was Maeve acting completely fine, but her complexion was glowing with vitality as she hummed a little tune while touching up her makeup in the mirror over the sink. "What do you think of him?"
Butcher asked with a somewhat twisted expression.
Although he and Maeve did not have any substantive relationship and were merely partners in dealing with Homelander, after this entire night had passed, Butcher always felt a hollow emptiness in his heart, having not slept the entire night, which inexplicably felt very similar to his feelings when he first saw the video of Homelander and his wife.
"Not bad, a lot better than I imagined—oh, I mean personality-wise, you know about the strength part."
"And unlike Homelander, that giant baby, he actually seems like a normal person, even though I also think this sentence is a bit strange, but that's just how it is."
Maeve did not turn her head to look at Butcher in the bathroom doorway, replying while applying her makeup.
"A normal person?"
Hearing this, Butcher fell into deep thought.
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