Chapter 28 : No Trust
Mother’s Milk climbed back into the van after finishing the job with Hughie, still focused on the laptop in his hands while he mentally went through everything they’d copied from Popclaw’s systems.
Then he looked up at the monitor.
And stopped completely.
On the screen, Mark stood in the middle of the destroyed convenience store surrounded by shattered shelves and drifting smoke while the last traces of red light faded from his eyes.
Mother’s Milk’s face hardened instantly because he recognized the clothes and the face immediately. Just because the man was wearing a mask now did not mean MM could not recognize the same person he had seen barely ten minutes earlier.
And he looked at Butcher because this was not exactly the kind of thing you conveniently forgot to mention.
This was betrayal.
His entire life had been shaped by hatred toward supes and Vought. His father spent years trying to bring the company down legally after what their negligence did to families like theirs, and that obsession slowly destroyed him from the inside out.
Court cases, investigations, stress, paranoia—it consumed everything until the man died still fighting a system that never cared.
Mother’s Milk grew up watching all of that happen.
Watching Vought ruin people and walk away smiling afterward.
So seeing a supe standing on their side fundamentally wrong to him.
He slowly looked toward Butcher, anger building behind his expression.
"Butcher," he said, voice controlled but sharp enough to cut through the entire van, "I can already accept working with this French asshole because at least I know what he is."
Frenchie looked offended immediately and opened his mouth, but Mother’s Milk ignored him completely.
"But a supe?" he continued. "A fucking supe working with us and you didn’t think maybe that was something worth mentioning beforehand?"
Butcher stayed leaned back in his seat smoking calmly like this reaction had been expected from the start.
That only irritated Mother’s Milk more.
"You know what Vought did to my family," he said. "You know exactly why I hate these people. So if you don’t give me one hell of an explanation right now," he said, "we’re gonna have a serious fucking problem."
Butcher took another drag from his cigarette before answering, completely calm despite Mother’s Milk looking ready to throw him through the van wall.
"M.M," he said, "we both know what happens when normal blokes go headfirst against supes."
His eyes shifted briefly toward the monitor where the destroyed store still filled the screen.
"We get flattened."
Mother’s Milk’s jaw tightened but he didn’t interrupt.
"So this time," Butcher continued, "we let a supe deal with a supe."
"That’s your grand plan?" Mother’s Milk shot back. "Trust one of them?"
Butcher snorted at that.
"Trust?" he repeated. "Oi, don’t put words in my mouth. I trust nobody."
He pointed toward the screen.
"But that cunt out there ain’t your average Vought superhero asshole neither."
Mother’s Milk looked unconvinced.
"Yeah, he’s weird," Butcher admitted. "Bit cracked in the head too if we’re honest. But compared to the narcissistic cape-wearin’ wankers up in that tower, this bloke’s at least workable."
Frenchie nodded slightly from the side.
"He has not tried to murder us yet," he added thoughtfully. "That already puts him above most supes."
Mother’s Milk ignored Frenchie completely and kept staring at Butcher.
"You seriously expect me to believe this is different?"
Butcher’s expression lost some of its amusement then.
"M.M," he said more quietly, "we already tried your way once."
That made the van go still for a second.
"We tried exposin’ them proper. Evidence. Legal routes. Pullin’ back the curtain nice and clean." Butcher shook his head slightly. "And you know exactly how that ended."
Mother’s Milk said nothing.
"Vought buried it," Butcher continued. "Same as they always do. Money, politicians, lawyers, media—whole bloody machine protects ’em."
He leaned forward slightly, voice hardening.
"But this time?"
A faint grin pulled at his face.
"This time we actually got a fuckin’ chance to hurt ’em."
"And let’s not forget," he said, "that cunt out there’s the reason Translucent ended up dead in a zinc box at the bottom o’ the harbor."
Mother’s Milk stayed silent, arms still folded tightly across his chest.
"He came up with the gas idea," Butcher continued. "Didn’t blink once while we did it neither."
"And A-Train?" Butcher added. "If the ceiling hadn’t collapsed when it did, that speed freak would already be dead."
At the mention of A-Train, Hughie’s expression tightened immediately.
Even now the image of Robin exploding in front of him still sat in the back of his mind like something permanently burned there.
Butcher noticed the reaction but kept talking anyway.
"So yeah," he said while looking back toward Mother’s Milk, "I trust one thing about him."
Mother’s Milk frowned slightly.
"That bloke genuinely hates supes."
Nobody answered immediately after that.
Because whether they liked Mark or not, the evidence was sitting right in front of them.
The Deep got humiliated publicly.
Translucent ended up dead.
A-Train nearly got buried under a collapsed building.
And none of it looked like someone playing hero.
***
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