Homelander survived. But as he pulled his battered body from the crater, the survival felt like the punchline to a cruel joke. He, the most powerful being on the planet, had been broken, toyed with, and then saved by the very entity that had orchestrated his humiliation. The words of the armored god echoed in his mind, a brand on his soul: My toys are not something you can covet. It was an assertion of ownership, and it enraged him more than any physical blow.
Limping and bleeding, the surviving members of the Seven and their rivals began the long, humiliating trek back to Vought Tower. They were gods brought low, staggering through the ruins of their city like mortal refugees, their divine power having proven utterly insufficient. Homelander's ambition to seize control of Vought was no longer just a desire; it was a desperate, clawing need to reclaim some semblance of control in a world that had suddenly revealed how small he truly was.
They stumbled into the pristine executive suite, expecting a confrontation with Stan Edgar, only to find a bizarre, silent tableau. Vought employees were clustered at a distance, staring at their CEO with a mixture of awe and pity.
Edgar was there, yet not there. He stood behind his desk, his face a mask of purple rage, his mouth moving in a silent, unending scream. But his form shimmered, ghost-like and translucent.
"What in God's name...?" Black Noir tilted his head.
A trembling Vought executive approached them cautiously. "Homelander... sir... It was the Tenno Council. One of them, a man in a top hat, he just… touched Mr. Edgar. And he became like this." The employee demonstrated by waving his hand straight through Edgar's shimmering form.
Homelander stared. The dots connected with cold, terrifying clarity. The same power that had called him a toy had also neutralized his greatest obstacle, and had done so with a casual, almost artistic cruelty. Leaving Edgar trapped as a powerless phantom in the very throne room he once commanded wasn't just an attack; it was a statement. A changing of the guard, orchestrated by a force beyond their comprehension.
This was his chance.
"It seems," Homelander said, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across his bruised face, "that there's been a change in management."
Stormfront, clutching a deep wound in her side, assessed the situation instantly. Edgar was a non-entity. Homelander, though wounded, was now the undisputed power in the room. Her own bid for supremacy was over before it began. Pragmatism won. "He was holding Vought back anyway," she grunted, a strategic alignment with the new king.
But not everyone was so quick to kneel. A woman from Stormfront's handpicked team, a quiet politician known for her explosive ability, saw an opportunity. Her eyes narrowed, focusing on the back of Homelander's head. The air around him began to shimmer and compress, an invisible hand of psychic force preparing to pop his skull like a grape.
Homelander's senses, supercharged by the serum and honed by paranoia, detected the infinitesimal change in pressure. He whirled around, his eyes already blazing. Before the woman could even form a thought, two beams of laser vision, white-hot with his new power, lanced across the room and punched clean through her head. She dropped to the floor without a sound.
He swept his cold, murderous gaze over the remaining supes—his team, Stormfront's, and the handful of test subjects who had survived.
"I may not be their opponent," he snarled, gesturing vaguely towards the heavens, "but I am more than enough to deal with any of you." It was an admission of his new place in the cosmic pecking order, and a bloody drawing of the line for everyone beneath him.
"No one else has a problem," Stormfront said quickly, forcing the words through the pain.
The others nodded or mumbled their assent. The new hierarchy had been established.
A-Train, his own power now a strange fusion of speed and Void energy, felt a deep, burning frustration. He had been remade, become something faster than fast, yet the serum-boosted Homelander still felt untouchable. His leg throbbed, a permanent souvenir from the Iron Cloud, a physical reminder of his own new limits. He limped forward, a rival assessing the new alpha.
"So what's the plan?" he asked, his voice low. "Save the ghost? Or continue with our original business?"
Homelander glanced at the silently screaming, intangible form of Stan Edgar. "Continue, of course," he declared. "As for him? Let him become a permanent part of the Vought collection. A warning to anyone who thinks they can control us."
A wave of perverse relief and joy washed over the assembled supes. Their tormentor, the architect of the Iron Cloud and the Culling of Pawns, had inadvertently become their savior by removing Edgar. It was a shortsighted, morally bankrupt conclusion, but they were celebrating being owned by a new master simply because the old one had been deposed.
Homelander stood as the new king of Vought, but his mind reeled. He was a king on a leash. He couldn't begin to comprehend the Tenno Council's motives. Why toy with them? Why not just kill them? Why orchestrate his rise to power? He had control of the tower, but he knew, with chilling certainty, that he was utterly powerless against the real gods who moved the pieces.
Miles away, while Homelander was contemplating his gilded cage, Billy Butcher and his crew were exfiltrating from the Sage Grove Center. The city-wide superhuman war had been the perfect cover. The normally riotous and insane supe inmates had been cowering in their cells, terrified into silence by the distant, apocalyptic battle. The security guards, mouths agape, had been glued to news feeds showing Homelander fighting alongside a literal storm.
It had allowed The Boys to slip in, gather photographic evidence of Vought's horrific human experiments, and slip out without a single shot fired.
"Well, I'll be damned," Frenchie said, looking at the data they'd downloaded. "While the big boys were playing, we robbed the bloody bank."
Butcher lit a cigarette, watching the smoke curl towards a sky still dark with smoke. "Yeah," he grunted, a grim look in his eyes. "But you gotta wonder... who rang the dinner bell?"