Central Park, and then Vought Tower | Thursday Morning

It was one thing to be back in casual, professional contact with Hugh Campbell of the FBSA. Annie -- or, well, Starlight -- was on regular conference calls with Hughie and Ashley and other politicians and members of The Seven, and she'd appeared on a couple different morning shows with his boss, Congresswoman Neuman.

But it had been over a year since she'd gotten a text asking to meet somewhere, and Annie couldn't help but think that this couldn't possibly be anything good.

"We could have just met for breakfast if you wanted," she told him as she approached the park bench where they'd met, just like he'd asked for.

( Meeting an old friend in the park )

( And then off to rehearsal! )

[lots of this dialogue is borrowed directly from The Boys 3.02, 'The Only Man in the Sky.' Homelander is once more coming to you courtesy of the endlessly-amazing knife_bender, and warning for racism and grossness in general from America's favorite hero. NFB, NFI, OOC welcome!]

Vought Tower | Thursday Evening

It had been a very long day.

Annie had gotten out of that tortuous rehearsal to discover that Diego had gone off somewhere -- which wasn't that big a deal, really, but it meant she didn't have any distractions to keep her mind off of how much she was regretting accepting this co-captainship.

Maybe this had been a mistake. Or...maybe she just needed to try harder.

In any case, she was pretty much tension personified as she leaned against a set backstage tonight, trying not to stare herself at how Homelander was just coldly staring off into the middle distance. Weird. Like a robot.

Of course, Alex was out on stage and demonstrating exactly why he didn't want to sing this song, so that wasn't helping either.

"Dangerous curves, she's my sweet sixteen,
Make my engine purr, you're my teenage queen,
Baby, baby, baby, got your license to drive,
Got your license to drive me crazy -- "

Like, yikes, they really should have gone with literally any of his other songs.

( Happy Birthday, Homelander! )

[once more taken from 3.02, 'The Only Man in the Sky,' and I should probably just warn for Homelander for the rest of the season, because he's not only gross/offensive here, but he's also moving into Obvious Trump Parody territory as of this post (and is also being played with aplomb by knife_bender, still.) NFB, and to be continued in the comments! If you want to say you were watching the broadcast in Fandom for whatever reason and would like to call or text, that is totally fine too!]