[Cable & Deadpool] Good Intentions (8/?)
Apr. 5th, 2013 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopKind of weird to think I've been in this fandom this long, and this is the first real scene I've ever written featuring Weasel. Well, better late than never (on so many different fronts).
The whole thing including the new chapter is now AO3 as well, which if nothing else should make navigating through the older chapters a whole lot easier.
Title: Good Intentions
Summary: Deadpool thought killing that 'Nathan' guy was going to be a fairly routine job. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Chapter: 8/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, Weasel, X-Force, plus reference to past Cable/Domino
Rating: NC-17 (over all), PG (this part)
Word Count: 4026
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Having nothing else particularly pressing to do today, Weasel had spent the morning on his latest brilliant scheme to make Deadpool's teleportation belt indestructible.
Customising his specialised gadgetry to meet his clients' needs was always going to be an inexact science at best. Everything was going to fail occasionally; that much you might as well accept from the outset. What mattered, when you go right down to it, was firstly, that you got paid in advance, and secondly, to make sure that when something critical did fail, it did so in a manner likely to prevent your client from coming back to complain about it. But even with years of experience under his own customised-teleport-belt, building for Deadpool remained a job that presented its own very specific challenges - chief among them being that nothing Weasel made, no matter how fastidiously armoured, would ever be nearly so indestructible as the man wearing it. Or to cut right to the heart of the problem: even if Deadpool himself could survive being sliced in half, his teleportation devices couldn't, and this discrepancy in relative robustness had caused friction between the man and his engineer on more than one occasion.
All things considered, Wade had always been very understanding about the issue, which was to say he'd never yet shot Weasel in the head after tracking his way home the long and hard way after a job went bad, but the problem remained. Making a teleporter that could self-repair or function reliably after being halfway smashed was well beyond Weasel's skill, and he had every confidence that the day he actually ponied up the price for enough black-market adamantium to build even a single armoured casing would be the same day good old Wade simply went and lost the damn thing. This conundrum left Weasel with very few realistic options for improving the device outside of messing around with shock absorbers and crumple zones with limited success. All that said, building Deadpool a piece of equipment he couldn't break remained the sort of engagingly futile challenge, which, nowadays, was much less about achieving success than an ongoing fascination with finding out how Wade would go about breaking the thing next. If nothing else, it kept him employed and busy.
His latest masterstroke involved a contoured outer surface designed to deflect incoming blows away from the teleporter from as many incident angles as possible. A minor shortcoming, according to Weasel's calculations, was that a goodly number of those incoming blows would be deflected into the meaty body of the man wearing the device, but Weasel felt that all considered, this had to be a reasonable compromise.
Discarding his welding goggles, he gave himself a moment to admire the new case, then reached for the internal teleport mechanism so he could double-check that its new cocoon wasn't going to be a little too snug. He very nearly dropped it again when the distinctive hum of an activating teleporter met his ears, the sudden jerk dislodging a shock-absorber which catapulted its way across the room. That didn't make sense, he hadn't even attached the power source yet... he hadn't, had he? Another look confirmed he definitely hadn't. Fortunately for Weasel's tenuous grasp on sanity, this was also the moment where he caught sight of Deadpool's locator icon popping up on the map on his laptop screen, snuggled cosily alongside Weasel's own, and realised there was a much simpler explanation for that worrisome teleport noise.
"Hi Wade," he called over his shoulder, absently scanning the room for his lost shock-absorber. "How'd the assassination go?"
Later, looking back on the situation, Weasel would realise that his first clue that this conversation was about to go completely off the rails was the unnaturally long pause before his visitor replied, "...assassination?"
"Assassination," Weasel repeated, louder. "Job. Hit. You know, the one you were telling me about last week?"
"Ohh, that assassination," said Wade, sounding like nothing so much as a guilty schoolboy being interrogated on the whereabouts of his homework.
"So how'd it go?" Weasel prompted, by now more than half-expecting to hear that Wade had forgotten all about it, probably thanks to getting himself into some convoluted mess of the kind only Deadpool could. Giving up his hunt for his lost component, Weasel swivelled around in his chair and took in the shape of his favourite client, frowning a little to find him hunched into a posture that was positively spooked.
"Er. So, hypothetically," said Wade, fidgeting like a champion, "what would you say if I told you that instead of dying cleanly and politely like they're supposed to, the target tied me up and engaged all manner of devious sexy wiles to seduce me into rethinking my job options and taking off my suit?"
It was surely a credit to the length of his association with Deadpool that this whole declaration more or less bounced clean off Weasel's brain without inflicting any real damage. The trick to dealing with Wade, in his experience, was to take a step back and see if you couldn't find an angle that put whatever he'd just said into a context where it was forced to make sense. "Isn't that the plot from Star Strippers of Venus Volume 4?" he tried, scratching his head.
Wade's demeanour abruptly shifted to that of a different species of schoolboy. "Weasel, my good man, you don't mean to tell me you've been stealing your pal Deadpool's porn, do you?"
"Only if by your porn, you mean that stack of my old videotapes that went missing around the same time you-"
"Okay, not the point," Wade said quickly, waving away the petty issue of petty theft. "So, you've got the picture, right – it's the scene from Star Strippers of Venus – except instead of the seven-foot amazon women wearing two pieces of floss and half a litre of purple body paint, I need you to picture this huge silver-fox old merc guy with abs you could bounce a quarter off, a metal arm and the smuggest face you ever saw this side of Jupiter."
This declaration marked the official point where Weasel began to worry, with 'worry' manifesting in the form of a tiny knot of tension in his temples that promised to spread. Wade's crazed scenario was starting to accumulate a few too many very specific details for comfort. "Is this still hypothetical?"
"Um, it could be hypothetically hypothetical?"
"Then I think I may be about to need a really non-hypothetical drink," said Weasel.
***
"You know what I think?" said Rictor, retrieving the ping-pong ball from under the old radiator. "I think Cable knows him from somewhere."
Boomer glanced up from the magazine on her lap. "How'd you figure?"
"Makes more sense than the line he's selling us, doesn't it?" said Rictor. "What, you don't believe he'd really hire a guy who was trying to kill him?"
"And even at that he failed," said Shatterstar.
Cannonball tapped his bat on the table impatiently. "Cable didn't even know his name, Rictor," he said, in what the others were coming to think of as his 'leadership voice'.
"I didn't say they were pals, just maybe they worked together somewhere," said Rictor. "Cable used to be a merc. They could'a got hired for the same job under different code names years ago. They probably never realised they knew each other until they were shooting up the library."
By this point everyone in the rec room was perking up and paying attention.
"I'd buy it," Sunspot shrugged.
"And it would explain why he sent us all out when he saw Deadpool's face," said Siryn, thoughtful.
"Then why wouldn't he say so, genius?" asked Boomer.
"'Cause Cable's usually such a fountain of free information," said Rictor, not bothering to hide a snort.
"Maybe they weren't even on the same side on their old merc job," suggested Siryn, "Maybe they were up against each other last time too, but Cable liked his style."
"Or maybe they're both really embarrassed about not recognising each other sooner," put in Wolfsbane, rapidly warming up to the subject.
"Hope you're writing this down," said Cannonball, tapping his bat one last time on the table before leaving it there, judging the game to be well and truly over. "You'll have the whole plot of next year's summer blockbuster by dinner at this rate."
"Oh come on, Sam, don't grouch – it's not that far out there," said Boomer. "Not like it'd be the first time Cable's kept us in the dark about why he really does the stuff he does."
"Like that time he dragged us all out to a reservation in the middle of nowhere because of 'sources'?" said Wolfsbane.
"No mystery why he did that, he was trying to recruit that guy Warpath," said Sunspot.
"Yeah, that went well, didn't it?" said Rictor.
"Hey, he said we could call him for emergencies, didn't he?" said Siryn. "He just didn't feel like leaving his home undefended again for a while, craaaazy as that sounds."
"He's just desperate to recruit lately, huh," said Boomer, kicking her feet up on the table. "I'd be offended, but hey, less work for me if we've got more hands around."
"Not desperate enough to take morlock cat-girls who crawl up out of the sewers," said Siryn.
"Thank god," muttered Wolfsbane.
"Ugh, it's like you want me cracking cats-and-dogs jokes!" Boomer grumbled right back. Wolfsbane pulled a face.
"Look, it doesn't matter why he wanted Deadpool to join us," said Cannonball, firmly. "Don't you remember how he wasn't here an hour before he sold out a traitor in our own team and helped us rescue Domino?"
"You think Cable knew one of us was a mole when he hired the guy?" asked Sunspot, thoughtful.
"Maybe," allowed Cannonball. "What matters is that Cable decided he was worth giving a chance, and Deadpool proved him right. Whether he knew there was a mole on our team or whether it was just instinct or what, it was the right call."
"You're no fun. What are we supposed to do for fun around here if we can't gossip?" Boomer grumbled, kicking a foot in his direction.
"Come on, Tabitha, that's an easy one," said Siryn, grinning as she leaned her elbows on the ping-pong table. "We're supposed to give Deadpool that second chance Cable asked us for."
"Ugh, fine. Just don't expect me to be any more polite to him than he is to me!"
"Boomer," said Sunspot, with feeling, "some days you speak for all of us."
***
Discovering his fridge to be inexplicably understocked for this sort of emergency, Weasel's drink ended up being a lukewarm cup of tea, courtesy of an ancient box of teabags that he had a strong suspicion had been sitting there at the very back of the cupboard since the day he moved in. As with all his prior experiments with the beverage, why centuries of British swore by the calming effects of this drink remained a mystery Weasel felt no closer to solving, though at least every time he took a sip he could rely on distracting himself anew with at least a second or two of mystery of why people drank this stuff. If he was ever going to get through this conversation, this was exactly the sort of diversion he badly needed.
"So this guy seduced you into leaving Tolliver, publicly burning your bridges to seal the deal, and joining his team instead," said Weasel.
Deadpool wrung his hands. "Aw man, you think we're moving too fast? Shit, we are, who am I even kidding? There I was, playing it cool, laying down the ground rules like a boss – not like I was planning on keeping it on the down low forever, but we're hardly on our second date before we're out in public and I'm throwing it right in my ex's face! Vanessa's too! Weas, I just ditched my whole career to move in with this guy and the kids! What if it doesn't work out? What if it turns out he's secretly into plaid or Oprah or home improvement? What if he hogs the remote? What if we disagree about the AK-47 vs the M16? Weas, what am I getting myself into? I'm too young to be tied down!"
Weasel took another sip of his tea and grimaced. "Only you, Wade. Only you."
"I resemble that remark!"
"So you need me to see what I can dig up on him," said Weasel, scrubbing a hand over his brow and reaching for his laptop.
"Weasel, old buddy, old pal, you are my only hope!"
"Alright. What have you got to get me started?"
"Not a lot." Under the mask, Deadpool's face scrunched up in thought. "Goes by 'Cable', has some kinda history with Tolliver. Looking after some of the X-kids but he doesn't seem to be down with the X-folks. Used to be part a' some kinda merc outfit with this panda-looking mutant chick called Domino. Answers to 'Nathan' and Tolliver gave me the job as 'Nathan Winters' – but, y'know..."
"Probably an alias, yeah. Anything else?"
"Uh, mutant, low-level telepathy and TK. Looks about forty-something, but he's obviously had a lot of work done – I'm talking the kind of work that leaves you with a metal arm and a glowing eye."
"Right." Weasel dutifully noted this down. "Leave it with me, I'll see what I can scrounge up."
"Have I told you how much I love you lately, Weas?"
"Please don't. I'll call you if I find anything."
One teleporter activation noise later, Weasel was alone again. He dedicated ten seconds to pushing everything he never wanted to know about Wade's sex life to the back of his mind, then got down to the job of entering both 'Cable' and 'Nathan Winters' into every civil, criminal or metahuman-run database accessible to a man with a reasonably functional set of hacking skills and a few good black-market contacts to boot.
On the surface, there wasn't a lot to find. The only 'real' Nathan Winters in the whole US of A had a birth certificate registered a mere eight years ago by a family that was largely African American. A 'Cable' fitting Wade's description had links to a mercenary group called Six Pack which appeared to have disbanded a few years back, giving his real name as 'Winters' through most of their operation when he gave it at all, which wasn't often. Before his Six Pack days, appearances of either name vanished altogether, which was as glaring a sign of an alias at work as you could ask for.
Time to earn his salary. Weasel set his laptop to run the name through his first-pass search algorithms for obvious real-identity candidates, then got up for another hunt through his kitchen for something with real caffeine in it.
He wasn't out of the room before the computer pinged with the first likely result under the name of 'Nathan Summers'. Cringeworthy as that was, it was still right on point for the level of creativity you got out of a lot of career thugs. Weasel dutifully clicked through the link, took one look at the attached photo of a frowning toddler, and gave himself a good laugh. Ah well, couldn't expect it to be that easy.
He was halfway to the kitchen when something he'd skimmed over in that article on the young Nathan Summers began to nag at him. Weasel sidled back to the screen to double check.
The words Known Family: Madeline Prior (mother), Scott Summers aka Cyclops (father) – known affiliations: X-Men and later Status: Missing, circumstances unknown were still there. Weasel frowned at the screen. The trouble with trying to track down anything the X-Men had ever been involved with was that the truth was always stranger than any fiction you could imagine. Was it possible that somehow...?
Nah. Even by X-standards, that had to be crazy talk.
***
The warning beeps from the main computer terminal had reached an urgent pitch by the time Cable got to it, and even then, he hesitated several seconds before answering the incoming call. Only a handful of suspects ought to have the means to contact the old Xavier Institute, and fewer still had any reason to believe there'd be someone here to answer now, with the X-Men gone and only the basement rooms of the old building remaining. It seemed doubtful he was about to receive good news.
Hitting 'accept' to find himself looking into the face of G. W. Bridge did little to convince him otherwise. "Bridge. This is an unexpected surprise."
"Cable," Bridge barked. "Hasn't been nearly long enough." There was more grey in his hair than Cable remembered; a little less meat on his grizzled frame, but the sour downturn of his mouth was still ample reminder this was the same man the other members of Six Pack had once voted most likely to unironically utter the words, 'I'm getting too old for this shit,' even five long years ago.
Cable tapped a finger idly against the desk. "How's the SHIELD assignment treating you? Keeping those white gloves good and clean?"
"Oh, spare me. Do you really think I would've called you up to exchange pleasantries? An interesting package turned up on my desk this morning; how'd you like to take a guess what was inside?"
Well, if that was how he was determined to play this. "Why don't you enlighten me?"
"A roll of eight-millimetre film. Undeveloped. Now why do you suppose someone would go to the effort of sending around an old relic like that in the digital age?"
"Archival footage?" Cable guessed.
"Try again. This reel was manufactured only last year – turns out they're still making the stuff for the collector's market."
"Well, putting aside why any of this ought to be my business," said Cable, pointedly, "I imagine someone wants you to believe that what's on that tape is real – no digital effects, no editing."
"Better." Bridge twisted in his chair, leaning into the camera. "Now how would you like to guess what we found on that tape?"
Cable folded his arms. "I'm sure you're about to tell me."
"That footage," said Bridge, "showed us a blue-skinned mutant girl transforming into a perfect replica of one of our staff – an Agent Christopher Mahey."
Cable allowed his eyebrows to inch very slightly up his forehead. "I take it Agent Mahey didn't admit to any comparable mutant powers when he signed up."
"Clearance scan couldn't find an X-gene anywhere in his body. We'd be double checking that now, only our agent's been missing for over two months. Last time anyone saw Mahey in the flesh just so happened to be the same day someone made an unauthorised download of our complete personnel files from his station. Until today, we've been looking for a double agent; as of this morning... well, Cable, why don't you tell me what this looks like?"
"Sounds to me like SHIELD has a major hole in its security measures concerning shapeshifters," said Cable. "And it sounds like someone wants you to think they sent in a shapeshifter disguised as your man, then abducted the real thing to make it look like an employee gone rogue and throw you off the scent. But if so, the first question would be why film it, much less send you the evidence?"
"That's where you'd be wrong. Our own questions start with: who's our mysterious shifter, and is this tape real? Lucky for us, the package came with a note pointing us to a home address for this shapeshifter."
"Is this where I find out what this riveting story has to do with me?"
"Interesting how you'd guess that, Cable," said Bridge, leaning back in his chair, "because our info tells us she's hiding out in the ruins of the old Xavier Institute with a team by the name of X-Force, under the command of someone with your alias."
Cable frowned. "I can promise you I haven't knowingly hired any blue-skinned shapeshifters lately. You'll understand if this information causes me some concern."
"Then I hope you'll understand why some of our people will be coming by to help you out with your search," Bridge replied, and met Cable's glare without hesitation, with an intensity the viewscreen did little to mitigate.
"Your missing man," said Cable, slowly, "was he under your direct command?"
Bridge blinked back at him. "What the hell does that have to do with any of this?"
"I'll take that as a no. I assume I don't have to point out what this looks like, Bridge. There's a reason that film landed on your desk out of every office in SHIELD, and a reason they're trying to frame me for it. Someone's working our... history to play us against each other."
"My thoughts exactly," Bridge agreed. "And the sooner I can get my people in to have a good look around your... facility, the sooner we can get this all cleared up and over with."
"Of course. When should we expect you?"
"'Bout an hour. Roll out the welcome mat. Bridge out."
The screen went dark. Cable took one long, slow breath, to clear his mind, then opened it to broadcast to every other person in the building.
"We have armed operatives preparing to break into this facility as we speak. I'm giving you all sixty seconds to grab anything you can't leave behind before we Bodyslide out. Be thorough, we will NOT be coming back. MOVE!"
***
Copycat was sitting cross-legged on her bed in the Danger Room when Cable stormed through the door. She was halfway to her feet by the time he got to the bed; Cable's hand on her arm dragged her the rest of the way. "You broke into a SHIELD facility?!"
Copycat's eyes went wide. "I- "
"Don't. Don't you dare lie to me. Not now."
"I didn't know it was a SHIELD facility!" Copycat wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "It looked like a regular office block, and I walked in. Tolliver had detailed instructions about the files he wanted. He offered me what should have been enough money to set me up somewhere quiet for a while – it was supposed to be a one-off gig. If I'd had any idea he was going to hold it over my head like that to keep me under his thumb-"
"And if you had known you were breaking into SHIELD?"
She pursed her lips and looked away. "...I would have charged him twice as much, and made sure I had insurance against this sort of crap. That enough truth for you?"
"It would have gone a lot further before I found out I had a team of SHIELD agents hardly minutes from breaking into my base!" Cable roared, and watched her freeze, panic, and finally slump in resignation in barely more than the space of three seconds.
"If you're going to hand me over, I can leave you out of-" she began.
"You're not getting out of this that easily. Move," he ordered, shoving her in the direction of the door. "I'll meet you in the common room; I'm sure you still remember where that is."
Copycat staggered a step, her feet moving on automatic while she stared at him over her shoulder in shock, before it finally sunk in that she was expected to walkout of her prison. She reached the door at a run.
At his quarters, Cable stopped just long enough to retrieve his gun, a tool belt, and a small data disk. The rest... well, it was replaceable.
He reached the common room to find his team spooked but waiting for him, save Boomer, who was still dragging a large, badly-stuffed duffle bag in through the other door.
"No," he said firmly, before she could get beyond opening her mouth. "All complaints and questions will have to wait. Everyone accounted for?"
"Seven kids, two old-timers and one prisoner," reported Domino. "No Deadpool; no-one's seen him all day."
"I'll contact him later." Cable flicked open the comm on his wrist, "Professor, Bodyslide by ten."
Trivia and Plot notes
Fun fact: Nathan Winters is an actual alias that Cable used in the actual comics back in his early days. Ironically, he started using it long before he ever had the slightest clue he was a member of the Summers family (which came as a major surprise to everyone when it first came out). I'm sure the writers still thought it was funny.
I've also recently put together a quick Who's Who guide to the other members of the early 90's X-Force team, which hopefully will be some help in keeping all the names straight.
Chapter 9
The whole thing including the new chapter is now AO3 as well, which if nothing else should make navigating through the older chapters a whole lot easier.
Title: Good Intentions
Summary: Deadpool thought killing that 'Nathan' guy was going to be a fairly routine job. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Chapter: 8/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, Weasel, X-Force, plus reference to past Cable/Domino
Rating: NC-17 (over all), PG (this part)
Word Count: 4026
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Having nothing else particularly pressing to do today, Weasel had spent the morning on his latest brilliant scheme to make Deadpool's teleportation belt indestructible.
Customising his specialised gadgetry to meet his clients' needs was always going to be an inexact science at best. Everything was going to fail occasionally; that much you might as well accept from the outset. What mattered, when you go right down to it, was firstly, that you got paid in advance, and secondly, to make sure that when something critical did fail, it did so in a manner likely to prevent your client from coming back to complain about it. But even with years of experience under his own customised-teleport-belt, building for Deadpool remained a job that presented its own very specific challenges - chief among them being that nothing Weasel made, no matter how fastidiously armoured, would ever be nearly so indestructible as the man wearing it. Or to cut right to the heart of the problem: even if Deadpool himself could survive being sliced in half, his teleportation devices couldn't, and this discrepancy in relative robustness had caused friction between the man and his engineer on more than one occasion.
All things considered, Wade had always been very understanding about the issue, which was to say he'd never yet shot Weasel in the head after tracking his way home the long and hard way after a job went bad, but the problem remained. Making a teleporter that could self-repair or function reliably after being halfway smashed was well beyond Weasel's skill, and he had every confidence that the day he actually ponied up the price for enough black-market adamantium to build even a single armoured casing would be the same day good old Wade simply went and lost the damn thing. This conundrum left Weasel with very few realistic options for improving the device outside of messing around with shock absorbers and crumple zones with limited success. All that said, building Deadpool a piece of equipment he couldn't break remained the sort of engagingly futile challenge, which, nowadays, was much less about achieving success than an ongoing fascination with finding out how Wade would go about breaking the thing next. If nothing else, it kept him employed and busy.
His latest masterstroke involved a contoured outer surface designed to deflect incoming blows away from the teleporter from as many incident angles as possible. A minor shortcoming, according to Weasel's calculations, was that a goodly number of those incoming blows would be deflected into the meaty body of the man wearing the device, but Weasel felt that all considered, this had to be a reasonable compromise.
Discarding his welding goggles, he gave himself a moment to admire the new case, then reached for the internal teleport mechanism so he could double-check that its new cocoon wasn't going to be a little too snug. He very nearly dropped it again when the distinctive hum of an activating teleporter met his ears, the sudden jerk dislodging a shock-absorber which catapulted its way across the room. That didn't make sense, he hadn't even attached the power source yet... he hadn't, had he? Another look confirmed he definitely hadn't. Fortunately for Weasel's tenuous grasp on sanity, this was also the moment where he caught sight of Deadpool's locator icon popping up on the map on his laptop screen, snuggled cosily alongside Weasel's own, and realised there was a much simpler explanation for that worrisome teleport noise.
"Hi Wade," he called over his shoulder, absently scanning the room for his lost shock-absorber. "How'd the assassination go?"
Later, looking back on the situation, Weasel would realise that his first clue that this conversation was about to go completely off the rails was the unnaturally long pause before his visitor replied, "...assassination?"
"Assassination," Weasel repeated, louder. "Job. Hit. You know, the one you were telling me about last week?"
"Ohh, that assassination," said Wade, sounding like nothing so much as a guilty schoolboy being interrogated on the whereabouts of his homework.
"So how'd it go?" Weasel prompted, by now more than half-expecting to hear that Wade had forgotten all about it, probably thanks to getting himself into some convoluted mess of the kind only Deadpool could. Giving up his hunt for his lost component, Weasel swivelled around in his chair and took in the shape of his favourite client, frowning a little to find him hunched into a posture that was positively spooked.
"Er. So, hypothetically," said Wade, fidgeting like a champion, "what would you say if I told you that instead of dying cleanly and politely like they're supposed to, the target tied me up and engaged all manner of devious sexy wiles to seduce me into rethinking my job options and taking off my suit?"
It was surely a credit to the length of his association with Deadpool that this whole declaration more or less bounced clean off Weasel's brain without inflicting any real damage. The trick to dealing with Wade, in his experience, was to take a step back and see if you couldn't find an angle that put whatever he'd just said into a context where it was forced to make sense. "Isn't that the plot from Star Strippers of Venus Volume 4?" he tried, scratching his head.
Wade's demeanour abruptly shifted to that of a different species of schoolboy. "Weasel, my good man, you don't mean to tell me you've been stealing your pal Deadpool's porn, do you?"
"Only if by your porn, you mean that stack of my old videotapes that went missing around the same time you-"
"Okay, not the point," Wade said quickly, waving away the petty issue of petty theft. "So, you've got the picture, right – it's the scene from Star Strippers of Venus – except instead of the seven-foot amazon women wearing two pieces of floss and half a litre of purple body paint, I need you to picture this huge silver-fox old merc guy with abs you could bounce a quarter off, a metal arm and the smuggest face you ever saw this side of Jupiter."
This declaration marked the official point where Weasel began to worry, with 'worry' manifesting in the form of a tiny knot of tension in his temples that promised to spread. Wade's crazed scenario was starting to accumulate a few too many very specific details for comfort. "Is this still hypothetical?"
"Um, it could be hypothetically hypothetical?"
"Then I think I may be about to need a really non-hypothetical drink," said Weasel.
***
"You know what I think?" said Rictor, retrieving the ping-pong ball from under the old radiator. "I think Cable knows him from somewhere."
Boomer glanced up from the magazine on her lap. "How'd you figure?"
"Makes more sense than the line he's selling us, doesn't it?" said Rictor. "What, you don't believe he'd really hire a guy who was trying to kill him?"
"And even at that he failed," said Shatterstar.
Cannonball tapped his bat on the table impatiently. "Cable didn't even know his name, Rictor," he said, in what the others were coming to think of as his 'leadership voice'.
"I didn't say they were pals, just maybe they worked together somewhere," said Rictor. "Cable used to be a merc. They could'a got hired for the same job under different code names years ago. They probably never realised they knew each other until they were shooting up the library."
By this point everyone in the rec room was perking up and paying attention.
"I'd buy it," Sunspot shrugged.
"And it would explain why he sent us all out when he saw Deadpool's face," said Siryn, thoughtful.
"Then why wouldn't he say so, genius?" asked Boomer.
"'Cause Cable's usually such a fountain of free information," said Rictor, not bothering to hide a snort.
"Maybe they weren't even on the same side on their old merc job," suggested Siryn, "Maybe they were up against each other last time too, but Cable liked his style."
"Or maybe they're both really embarrassed about not recognising each other sooner," put in Wolfsbane, rapidly warming up to the subject.
"Hope you're writing this down," said Cannonball, tapping his bat one last time on the table before leaving it there, judging the game to be well and truly over. "You'll have the whole plot of next year's summer blockbuster by dinner at this rate."
"Oh come on, Sam, don't grouch – it's not that far out there," said Boomer. "Not like it'd be the first time Cable's kept us in the dark about why he really does the stuff he does."
"Like that time he dragged us all out to a reservation in the middle of nowhere because of 'sources'?" said Wolfsbane.
"No mystery why he did that, he was trying to recruit that guy Warpath," said Sunspot.
"Yeah, that went well, didn't it?" said Rictor.
"Hey, he said we could call him for emergencies, didn't he?" said Siryn. "He just didn't feel like leaving his home undefended again for a while, craaaazy as that sounds."
"He's just desperate to recruit lately, huh," said Boomer, kicking her feet up on the table. "I'd be offended, but hey, less work for me if we've got more hands around."
"Not desperate enough to take morlock cat-girls who crawl up out of the sewers," said Siryn.
"Thank god," muttered Wolfsbane.
"Ugh, it's like you want me cracking cats-and-dogs jokes!" Boomer grumbled right back. Wolfsbane pulled a face.
"Look, it doesn't matter why he wanted Deadpool to join us," said Cannonball, firmly. "Don't you remember how he wasn't here an hour before he sold out a traitor in our own team and helped us rescue Domino?"
"You think Cable knew one of us was a mole when he hired the guy?" asked Sunspot, thoughtful.
"Maybe," allowed Cannonball. "What matters is that Cable decided he was worth giving a chance, and Deadpool proved him right. Whether he knew there was a mole on our team or whether it was just instinct or what, it was the right call."
"You're no fun. What are we supposed to do for fun around here if we can't gossip?" Boomer grumbled, kicking a foot in his direction.
"Come on, Tabitha, that's an easy one," said Siryn, grinning as she leaned her elbows on the ping-pong table. "We're supposed to give Deadpool that second chance Cable asked us for."
"Ugh, fine. Just don't expect me to be any more polite to him than he is to me!"
"Boomer," said Sunspot, with feeling, "some days you speak for all of us."
***
Discovering his fridge to be inexplicably understocked for this sort of emergency, Weasel's drink ended up being a lukewarm cup of tea, courtesy of an ancient box of teabags that he had a strong suspicion had been sitting there at the very back of the cupboard since the day he moved in. As with all his prior experiments with the beverage, why centuries of British swore by the calming effects of this drink remained a mystery Weasel felt no closer to solving, though at least every time he took a sip he could rely on distracting himself anew with at least a second or two of mystery of why people drank this stuff. If he was ever going to get through this conversation, this was exactly the sort of diversion he badly needed.
"So this guy seduced you into leaving Tolliver, publicly burning your bridges to seal the deal, and joining his team instead," said Weasel.
Deadpool wrung his hands. "Aw man, you think we're moving too fast? Shit, we are, who am I even kidding? There I was, playing it cool, laying down the ground rules like a boss – not like I was planning on keeping it on the down low forever, but we're hardly on our second date before we're out in public and I'm throwing it right in my ex's face! Vanessa's too! Weas, I just ditched my whole career to move in with this guy and the kids! What if it doesn't work out? What if it turns out he's secretly into plaid or Oprah or home improvement? What if he hogs the remote? What if we disagree about the AK-47 vs the M16? Weas, what am I getting myself into? I'm too young to be tied down!"
Weasel took another sip of his tea and grimaced. "Only you, Wade. Only you."
"I resemble that remark!"
"So you need me to see what I can dig up on him," said Weasel, scrubbing a hand over his brow and reaching for his laptop.
"Weasel, old buddy, old pal, you are my only hope!"
"Alright. What have you got to get me started?"
"Not a lot." Under the mask, Deadpool's face scrunched up in thought. "Goes by 'Cable', has some kinda history with Tolliver. Looking after some of the X-kids but he doesn't seem to be down with the X-folks. Used to be part a' some kinda merc outfit with this panda-looking mutant chick called Domino. Answers to 'Nathan' and Tolliver gave me the job as 'Nathan Winters' – but, y'know..."
"Probably an alias, yeah. Anything else?"
"Uh, mutant, low-level telepathy and TK. Looks about forty-something, but he's obviously had a lot of work done – I'm talking the kind of work that leaves you with a metal arm and a glowing eye."
"Right." Weasel dutifully noted this down. "Leave it with me, I'll see what I can scrounge up."
"Have I told you how much I love you lately, Weas?"
"Please don't. I'll call you if I find anything."
One teleporter activation noise later, Weasel was alone again. He dedicated ten seconds to pushing everything he never wanted to know about Wade's sex life to the back of his mind, then got down to the job of entering both 'Cable' and 'Nathan Winters' into every civil, criminal or metahuman-run database accessible to a man with a reasonably functional set of hacking skills and a few good black-market contacts to boot.
On the surface, there wasn't a lot to find. The only 'real' Nathan Winters in the whole US of A had a birth certificate registered a mere eight years ago by a family that was largely African American. A 'Cable' fitting Wade's description had links to a mercenary group called Six Pack which appeared to have disbanded a few years back, giving his real name as 'Winters' through most of their operation when he gave it at all, which wasn't often. Before his Six Pack days, appearances of either name vanished altogether, which was as glaring a sign of an alias at work as you could ask for.
Time to earn his salary. Weasel set his laptop to run the name through his first-pass search algorithms for obvious real-identity candidates, then got up for another hunt through his kitchen for something with real caffeine in it.
He wasn't out of the room before the computer pinged with the first likely result under the name of 'Nathan Summers'. Cringeworthy as that was, it was still right on point for the level of creativity you got out of a lot of career thugs. Weasel dutifully clicked through the link, took one look at the attached photo of a frowning toddler, and gave himself a good laugh. Ah well, couldn't expect it to be that easy.
He was halfway to the kitchen when something he'd skimmed over in that article on the young Nathan Summers began to nag at him. Weasel sidled back to the screen to double check.
The words Known Family: Madeline Prior (mother), Scott Summers aka Cyclops (father) – known affiliations: X-Men and later Status: Missing, circumstances unknown were still there. Weasel frowned at the screen. The trouble with trying to track down anything the X-Men had ever been involved with was that the truth was always stranger than any fiction you could imagine. Was it possible that somehow...?
Nah. Even by X-standards, that had to be crazy talk.
***
The warning beeps from the main computer terminal had reached an urgent pitch by the time Cable got to it, and even then, he hesitated several seconds before answering the incoming call. Only a handful of suspects ought to have the means to contact the old Xavier Institute, and fewer still had any reason to believe there'd be someone here to answer now, with the X-Men gone and only the basement rooms of the old building remaining. It seemed doubtful he was about to receive good news.
Hitting 'accept' to find himself looking into the face of G. W. Bridge did little to convince him otherwise. "Bridge. This is an unexpected surprise."
"Cable," Bridge barked. "Hasn't been nearly long enough." There was more grey in his hair than Cable remembered; a little less meat on his grizzled frame, but the sour downturn of his mouth was still ample reminder this was the same man the other members of Six Pack had once voted most likely to unironically utter the words, 'I'm getting too old for this shit,' even five long years ago.
Cable tapped a finger idly against the desk. "How's the SHIELD assignment treating you? Keeping those white gloves good and clean?"
"Oh, spare me. Do you really think I would've called you up to exchange pleasantries? An interesting package turned up on my desk this morning; how'd you like to take a guess what was inside?"
Well, if that was how he was determined to play this. "Why don't you enlighten me?"
"A roll of eight-millimetre film. Undeveloped. Now why do you suppose someone would go to the effort of sending around an old relic like that in the digital age?"
"Archival footage?" Cable guessed.
"Try again. This reel was manufactured only last year – turns out they're still making the stuff for the collector's market."
"Well, putting aside why any of this ought to be my business," said Cable, pointedly, "I imagine someone wants you to believe that what's on that tape is real – no digital effects, no editing."
"Better." Bridge twisted in his chair, leaning into the camera. "Now how would you like to guess what we found on that tape?"
Cable folded his arms. "I'm sure you're about to tell me."
"That footage," said Bridge, "showed us a blue-skinned mutant girl transforming into a perfect replica of one of our staff – an Agent Christopher Mahey."
Cable allowed his eyebrows to inch very slightly up his forehead. "I take it Agent Mahey didn't admit to any comparable mutant powers when he signed up."
"Clearance scan couldn't find an X-gene anywhere in his body. We'd be double checking that now, only our agent's been missing for over two months. Last time anyone saw Mahey in the flesh just so happened to be the same day someone made an unauthorised download of our complete personnel files from his station. Until today, we've been looking for a double agent; as of this morning... well, Cable, why don't you tell me what this looks like?"
"Sounds to me like SHIELD has a major hole in its security measures concerning shapeshifters," said Cable. "And it sounds like someone wants you to think they sent in a shapeshifter disguised as your man, then abducted the real thing to make it look like an employee gone rogue and throw you off the scent. But if so, the first question would be why film it, much less send you the evidence?"
"That's where you'd be wrong. Our own questions start with: who's our mysterious shifter, and is this tape real? Lucky for us, the package came with a note pointing us to a home address for this shapeshifter."
"Is this where I find out what this riveting story has to do with me?"
"Interesting how you'd guess that, Cable," said Bridge, leaning back in his chair, "because our info tells us she's hiding out in the ruins of the old Xavier Institute with a team by the name of X-Force, under the command of someone with your alias."
Cable frowned. "I can promise you I haven't knowingly hired any blue-skinned shapeshifters lately. You'll understand if this information causes me some concern."
"Then I hope you'll understand why some of our people will be coming by to help you out with your search," Bridge replied, and met Cable's glare without hesitation, with an intensity the viewscreen did little to mitigate.
"Your missing man," said Cable, slowly, "was he under your direct command?"
Bridge blinked back at him. "What the hell does that have to do with any of this?"
"I'll take that as a no. I assume I don't have to point out what this looks like, Bridge. There's a reason that film landed on your desk out of every office in SHIELD, and a reason they're trying to frame me for it. Someone's working our... history to play us against each other."
"My thoughts exactly," Bridge agreed. "And the sooner I can get my people in to have a good look around your... facility, the sooner we can get this all cleared up and over with."
"Of course. When should we expect you?"
"'Bout an hour. Roll out the welcome mat. Bridge out."
The screen went dark. Cable took one long, slow breath, to clear his mind, then opened it to broadcast to every other person in the building.
"We have armed operatives preparing to break into this facility as we speak. I'm giving you all sixty seconds to grab anything you can't leave behind before we Bodyslide out. Be thorough, we will NOT be coming back. MOVE!"
***
Copycat was sitting cross-legged on her bed in the Danger Room when Cable stormed through the door. She was halfway to her feet by the time he got to the bed; Cable's hand on her arm dragged her the rest of the way. "You broke into a SHIELD facility?!"
Copycat's eyes went wide. "I- "
"Don't. Don't you dare lie to me. Not now."
"I didn't know it was a SHIELD facility!" Copycat wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "It looked like a regular office block, and I walked in. Tolliver had detailed instructions about the files he wanted. He offered me what should have been enough money to set me up somewhere quiet for a while – it was supposed to be a one-off gig. If I'd had any idea he was going to hold it over my head like that to keep me under his thumb-"
"And if you had known you were breaking into SHIELD?"
She pursed her lips and looked away. "...I would have charged him twice as much, and made sure I had insurance against this sort of crap. That enough truth for you?"
"It would have gone a lot further before I found out I had a team of SHIELD agents hardly minutes from breaking into my base!" Cable roared, and watched her freeze, panic, and finally slump in resignation in barely more than the space of three seconds.
"If you're going to hand me over, I can leave you out of-" she began.
"You're not getting out of this that easily. Move," he ordered, shoving her in the direction of the door. "I'll meet you in the common room; I'm sure you still remember where that is."
Copycat staggered a step, her feet moving on automatic while she stared at him over her shoulder in shock, before it finally sunk in that she was expected to walkout of her prison. She reached the door at a run.
At his quarters, Cable stopped just long enough to retrieve his gun, a tool belt, and a small data disk. The rest... well, it was replaceable.
He reached the common room to find his team spooked but waiting for him, save Boomer, who was still dragging a large, badly-stuffed duffle bag in through the other door.
"No," he said firmly, before she could get beyond opening her mouth. "All complaints and questions will have to wait. Everyone accounted for?"
"Seven kids, two old-timers and one prisoner," reported Domino. "No Deadpool; no-one's seen him all day."
"I'll contact him later." Cable flicked open the comm on his wrist, "Professor, Bodyslide by ten."
Trivia and Plot notes
Fun fact: Nathan Winters is an actual alias that Cable used in the actual comics back in his early days. Ironically, he started using it long before he ever had the slightest clue he was a member of the Summers family (which came as a major surprise to everyone when it first came out). I'm sure the writers still thought it was funny.
I've also recently put together a quick Who's Who guide to the other members of the early 90's X-Force team, which hopefully will be some help in keeping all the names straight.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-05 06:10 pm (UTC)I continue to enjoy this a lot. I especially like cable lying to people. I squealed in glee when he got bridge to say there'd be there in an hour and assumed that meant there were already there. So very him. I never quite get over just how incredibly untrustworthy he is for a normal protagonist, let alone a superhero one.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 03:42 am (UTC)I squealed in glee when he got bridge to say there'd be there in an hour and assumed that meant there were already there. So very him.
That was totally one of those exchanges I never even really thought about, just got to the end of that scene and it was obvious that a) Bridge was lying, and b) Cable would know. *g* I am having an awful lot of fun writing Cable as the untrustworthy bastard he is in this fic - and I completely agree, it's absolutely one of his most fascinating qualities. 'Manipulative but still likeable' is such a rare combination of characteristics.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-05 07:21 pm (UTC)Ahaha Weasel almost working it out made me laugh. And X-Force's attempts to work it out.
And then PLOT happens and I and wantign ot know what happens next so baaaadly.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 04:11 am (UTC)Poor Weasel, Wade's improbable love life and Cable's impossible family history is far more than any one guy should have to deal with in a single day.
And then PLOT happens and I and wantign ot know what happens next so baaaadly.
heck, you and me both!Lord knows it's only going to get more complicated from here on in. ;)no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 06:22 pm (UTC)I love the length of these. I love background stuff. I love your writing.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 03:13 am (UTC)I love that there are people who still remember this thing after so long, thank you so much!