[Cable & Deadpool] Good Intentions (9/?)
May. 10th, 2013 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopTitle: 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: 9/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, Weasel, Domino, Vanessa, X-Force, Six Pack, reference to past Cable/Domino
Rating: NC-17 (over all), PG (this part)
Word Count: 3940
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Thanks go to Emily for betaing this one for me (my regular beta being kinda snowed under with that other monstrous thing I'm writing *cough*).
The first thing Deadpool noticed upon teleporting back to his new team's home base was... well, technically it was the lack of anything to notice, owing to how he was standing somewhere shrouded in complete darkness. Oh fuck a duck, had his teleport belt gone and materialised him inside a cupboard again? If Weasel's rotten tin-can zappifier had set him up to burst out of some half-dressed X-kid's closet to inevitably land in a completely accidental compromising position, that no-good mechanic would be finishing his next project through a straw.
But when stretching and flailing his arms around failed to put him in contact with any walls or shelves or even coat hangers, Deadpool had to conclude that perhaps he wasn't in a closet after all. Fishing through his pouches by feel, he located a small flashlight with working batteries and flicked it on.
Well damn, if he didn't know better, he'd say he was standing in the library. In pitch darkness. Guess at least now he knew how many X-Men it really took to change a light bulb.
By the light of his tiny flashlight, Deadpool navigated his way to the door. Much as expected, the light switch by the doorframe failed to offer any help in illuminating matters, no matter how many times he switched it up or down. None of this twigged as cause for great concern until he'd reached the hall outside to find it equally dark, and the light switch there equally unresponsive. He tried his teleport belt next, but none of the buttons produced anything more useful than a slightly strained hissing noise.
"Okay," said Deadpool. "Never seen a horror movie that started like this or nothing."
There was a short, unhelpful silence. Then a squad of six men in riot gear burst in through the ceiling.
"Oh, great timing!" said Deadpool happily, over the ensuing chaos. "I was almost starting to get worried back there. Say, anyone seen Cable? Big guy, glowing eye, metal arm, really weird take on prisoner hospitality?"
"Who the... Deadpool?!" yelled someone.
"Yes? That you boss?" Deadpool sidestepped a couple of inexpertly wielded batons and peered in what might have been the appropriate direction. Was that light glinting off metal he saw? "I spy with my little eye..."
"Try something ending with 'Weapon X'!" The owner of the voice launched himself over several heads and tackled a blindsided Deadpool to the ground, where the latter found himself pinned under the grip of two metal arms. And what felt like at least two metal legs.
Recognition got him on the rebound. "Kane?" Deadpool squeaked. "Garrison Kane? Department K's own favourite guinea pig mascot amputee Kane? Oh my god, are they throwing all our class reunions as surprise parties now?"
"You're working for Cable?" demanded Kane.
"You know Cable? Wow, small industry! It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only-"
"The only thing I want to hear from you, Wilson," yelled Kane, with a light hail of furious spittle, "is a really short explanation why one of Tolliver's flunkies would be hanging out in Cable's lair!"
"Uh, rude. Jeez, a guy lets his facebook status go three days out of date and everyone takes it personally. See if you stay friended under my next alias."
"Wrong answer." Kane's fingers dug into Deadpool's flesh. "Where's Cable?"
"Whoa. So, uh, if I have a bit of an inappropriate reaction to metal hands in my personal space a few seconds from now, you know not to take it personally, right?" Deadpool tried not to squirm. "Say, were you asking me something just now? Wh..." He froze suddenly, staring over Kane's left shoulder. "Nate! There you are!"
Kane got about halfway through exclaiming, "You seriously expect me to fall for that?" before Cable kicked him in the head.
"I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?" said Cable, though not without a certain fondness, and offered Deadpool a hand up.
Deadpool snorted back at him. "Like you wouldn't reschedule your whole day around an opening for a good heroic entrance, Na-whoops, we're in work hours, right, Boss?"
"Cable?" Kane rolled to his feet with a gun already trained on them. "Don't you even think about moving."
Cable gave him a dispassionate look. "For what it's worth, Kane, I'd be only too happy to explain exactly what Deadpool's doing here, but since I'm in a hurry and I doubt you'd believe me anyway, I can only assure you that every assumption you just made is wrong. Bodyslide by two."
The first thing Deadpool said after noticing the abrupt change in his surroundings that followed, "That didn't work when I tried it!"
"Personal teleporter trouble?" said Cable, already moving towards the nearest corridor. "That would be SHIELD's jamming net at work. You must have ported in just moments before they brought it online."
"Kane and them were from SHIELD? I thought we were the good guys!" protested Deadpool, following along behind.
"Tolliver set us up through an old associate of mine with a grudge," said Cable, perhaps a trifle apologetic. "There was no time for diplomacy. We could have been in real trouble back there if their jamming tech was advanced enough to deal with a translocation system operating through a satellite relay."
"You have access to a satellite relay?"
"Not exactly," said Cable and pointed Deadpool to the nearest window. "Welcome to Greymalkin."
Roughly ten seconds and only a few creative expletives later, Deadpool gave up on staring out the window in favour of glaring at his host. "Did the concept of 'subtle' murder your teddy bear or something?"
"Come on, you love it," said Cable, bumping him on the shoulder.
Deadpool grumbled and elbowed him in the ribs. "So how'd you know Kane, anyhow? You guys get your nails done at the same mechanic?"
"Domino and I were in a small mercenary team together with Kane some years ago."
"And?"
"And it's a long story."
"Aw, c'mon-"
"And I have a team of teenagers in need of a full briefing on the situation and a new permanent base," said Cable, nodding towards the hall ahead where the rest of the team was waiting.
"You have a satellite and you need another permanent base?"
"I was thinking maybe something more subtle for everyday use."
"Oh, I see what you did there."
"Cable?" called a concerned-looking kid as Cable strode into the room.
– Cannonball, from what Deadpool remembered from Tolliver's briefing packet and what everyone had been calling everyone else since he joined this outfit.
"Clean in-and-out, Sam. SHIELD beat me there, but they didn't have time to give us any trouble. Alright," said Cable, to the room at large. "Now I'll take questions."
The room only exploded a little bit, which was probably something like a win.
***
Deadpool mostly tuned out as Cable gave his team the low down on why SHIELD was raiding their hideout, why SHIELD would be looking for Nessa in the first place, how everything was Tolliver's fault, why just handing Nessa over to SHIELD and working with them to sort the whole mess out like reasonable adults was completely out of the question, why going back to the mansion was likewise completely out of the question, and why they needed a new hideout down around sea level when they had a perfectly good satellite to hang out in. After fielding a long string of questions, he eventually got to picking three of the kids to take with him to scope out some new real estate, leaving everyone else – including Deadpool – to amuse themselves upstairs until he got back.
Deadpool took up amusing himself by experimenting with all the buttons on a nearby console until a polite computer voice informed him that a) it had been instructed to ignore any input that came from anyone but Cable, b) it found his impersonation of Cable thoroughly unconvincing, c) it could not be convinced to reveal any embarrassing personal details about its master whatsoever, and d) that its designation was not "Scotty" and it would not respond to requests to "beam me up". It also informed him there was no holodeck, and nor were there any nymphomaniac alien babes on board, green-skinned or otherwise.
He through about going to chat to Nessa for a bit, what with how the rest of the team were still giving her an awkwardly wide berth, but the glare she shot at him could've stopped a mule at twenty paces, so that idea was out. He was just trying to remember where 'gets raided by SHIELD agents' and 'owns a private satellite' rated on the official 21 signs you're dating a supervillain list when he spotted one of the younger members of Cable's team – the hot red-head with the accent – coming towards him with the look on her face of someone determined to start a conversation.
"It's Wade, right?" she said, frowning her way through her obvious uncertainty.
"Um. Yes?" A very pretty girl is talking to me, thought Wade. A very pretty girl who is probably very underage, while her single-father-figure who you are (discretely) screwing has shamelessly abandoned you to deal with this alone. Now would probably be a very bad time to say anything inappropriate.
"Theresa," said – well, Theresa, "Or Siryn, if we're doing code names, but my friends call me Terry."
That sounded awfully like a trap. "...so I should call you...?"
"Oh, whichever. Look, me and the others were talking, and we decided we didn't give you much of a chance before, but if it weren't for you Domino would still be a prisoner and we wouldn't have any idea we had a traitor on our team. You didn't have to do that for us, but you did, and we owe you. So I thought one of us ought to... I don't know, come over and extend the olive branch and say we were sorry for judging you so quickly before."
Deadpool's mouth dropped open. Several seconds passed before he regained enough jaw control to get out the word, "What?!"
Terry treated him to a long, suspicious sort of look. "Which part are you having trouble with?"
"The 'sorry Deadpool, we misjudged you' part! My name does not happen in that script!"
"You don't get a lot of that, huh?"
"Oh, the judging I get! I get judged more often than reality TV about diehard fans of Nicolas Cage! I look out my window in the morning and there will be three guys on the sidewalk holding numbers over their heads! It's the 'sorry' part I'm thinking I misheard somehow!"
"Well, you didn't," said Terry. "Should I maybe leave you to come to terms with that for a bit and come back later?"
"Swell, let's do that," said Deadpool, and stuck his head between his knees. When he looked up again after giving himself a stern mental pep talk and doing maybe just a little girly freaking out, Terry had wandered off.
Deadpool leapt for the nearest console and scaled it like a monkey.
Fifteen seconds later he swung back into Terry's view from an overhead walkway, upside down and hanging out all casual and everything. "So as I was saying, before we got rudely interrupted back there and you wandered away..."
"Before you had your little freak-out, you mean?" supplied Terry.
"...as I was saying... uh, remind me where we were when I was saying it?"
"I was telling you how the team took a vote and decided we don't want you off the island after all?"
"Yeah. So that's swell, no hard feelings, and hey, I guess I'm sorry for punching your face in that one time?"
"That was Tabitha, not me," said Terry, amused. "But I can pass it on if you like."
"Sure, but you know – like I was saying, don't get your spandex in a bunch over it or nothing. I'm used to folks being judgey, but then I kill people for a living, so who'm I to complain? 'Sides, even I thought Cable was taking the mickey when he first said he said he wanted to hire me, so we all got that to share."
Terry gave him a thin-lipped smile. "Well, truth is I've not been here much longer'n you have, but from what I've seen, that's Cable in a nutshell. Sam and the others say they met him on the street one day on the run from some MLF goons. No hellos, no by-your-leave, he just started giving orders. After the last guy in charge, they weren't going to complain. Xavier left them with Magneto before he showed up, can you believe that?"
Deadpool waved that away. "Ehhh, I've heard worse, but people get funny when I bring up publishing stunts from the other side of that-wall-we-don't-talk-about."
Terry arched an eyebrow at him. "My point was, Cable has this history of pulling stuff that makes no sense to anyone but him until after the fact. Right before you showed up here, there was this whole other mess with these guys called the Externals and Sam and Roberto, and ugh, you'd swear he knew it was Sam they were really after before even they did, don't ask me how, and don't even get me started on that whole thing with his evil twin. His idea of a 'need to know basis' makes the CIA look like the marketing division of a public awareness campaign. Drives you half-mad, or it would except somehow he comes through for us when it counts."
"Not to cut you off, babe, but you have no idea how hard you are preaching to the choir on this one," said Deadpool, fervently.
"Oh, I bet, but I'm also betting you know more than what he's told us," said Terry, watching him from the corner of her eye. "We know what he's like; we should've known when he hired you there was more to it than it seemed."
Somewhere under the mask, Deadpool's eyes took on the approximate diameter of two saucers. "Um."
Terry pressed on regardless. "So basically, the rest of us were wondering how you knew Cable."
"Just for the record, roughly how incriminating would it be if I asked you to clarify exactly what sense you're using the word 'know' in here?" asked Deadpool, twitching slightly.
"I mean, we were wondering how you met," said Terry. Deadpool stared at her blankly.
"Um, I broke in, tried to kill him? Pretty sure you were there?"
Terry frowned at him. "You sure you'd never met him before that?"
"Pretty sure?"
"How sure is that?" asked Terry, shifting awkwardly. "Because we were all thinking him hiring you out of the blue like that would make a lot more sense if you'd met before somewhere. You're a merc, he used to be a merc, it seemed like it added up. Maybe he was using a different alias back then, or it was before all his hair went white, or... Wade?"
Deadpool, no longer content with merely fitting crockery in his eye-sockets, had frozen to the spot like someone's tongue on an iceberg. "Excuse me. Just remembered an urgent appointment to go powder a man about a horse," he squeaked, and scampered away.
***
"It's clear," Wolfsbane announced, shifting back to human even as she stepped back into the main room of the mountain hideout. "No human scents here less than months old. Not even any new oil leaks." She wrinkled up her nose. "Except in here, of course."
"Hard to imagine they'd have left a nearly-full fuel tank for us to find if the former tenants had ever been back here to clean up," said Cable, wiping grease off his hands and extinguishing the last torch. With the old generator up and running again and most of the lights still working they'd be able to move in almost right away.
"Is it wise, taking the base of an enemy?" Shatterstar wondered aloud. "We can but guess what surprises they've left behind for us, and they know of its location. If they trace us to nearby..."
"It's a risk, but we take that risk anywhere we go, Star," said Cable. "I have tech back on Greymalkin we can use to scan this place for us for any unpleasant surprises. Meanwhile, neither Tolliver or SHIELD know this place exists and the Sentinel program is long gone from here. If they ever come back, we'll be the unpleasant surprise waiting for them. This facility is as secure as any we could ask for."
Footsteps in the hallway announced Sam's return from the main console room. "Computer systems have all seen better days, but some of it might be salvageable, not that I'm the best one to tell," he reported.
"Don't bother, we'll scrap whatever's left and replace it," said Cable. "Less chance of alerting anyone left on the Sentinel program that this place has guests."
Sam looked a little unconvinced. "It's a bit further from civilisation than most of the team will be used to."
"Bodyslides are still an option, Sam, but this way the Professor won't have to transport us all the way from orbit for every mission. Be glad we're still in New York state."
"Don't look at me, I was born down in Kentucky," said Sam, shrugging his shoulders. "Apart from that, well, the place needs some sprucing up, but it's something to work with." Outwardly, he sounded a little stiff, but Cable could hear something buzzing angrily just below the surface of his mind.
"Is there something else, Sam?"
Sam shifted once, surprised, then hardened his stance. "Well, truth be told, Cable, not everyone's so ready to move their while lives on a dime as you are. I don't know if it's going to be so easy for some of us to leave the mansion behind like that, and I might just be one of them. After everything we've been through there with Professor Xavier and the X-Men, good and bad – even when we only had the basement left to live in, it was something."
"I know, Sam. If it helps, don't think of this as a new home, think of it as a stop along the way." Cable rested a hand on his shoulder briefly, then stepped into the clear. "I'll bring the others down."
He had a lot on his mind as he requested a Bodyslide back to Greymalkin, and seeing as he was entering friendly territory, was less alert than he might have been. Under the circumstances, it would be hard to decide what exactly would have been the very last thing he might have been expecting, but finding himself suddenly tackled by a wet, naked man yelling "EUREKA!" at the top of his lungs had to come pretty close.
Slightly over three seconds later, after a brief tussle ending with his assailant pinned to the ground with a gun to the head, Cable was actually much less surprised to make out who it was. "Wade?"
"Ooh, nice reflexes!" Wade crowed, seeming characteristically pleased to find himself pinned under Cable's imposing bulk.
If it had been anyone else, Cable would have damn well kept him pinned there until he'd explained himself, but Wade would only make a point of getting the wrong idea. Cable returned his gun to his holster and got stiffly to his feet. "Wade, this is really not the time."
"Au contraire, this is the only time!"
Cable gave him a look. "If satellites or teleportation particularly turn you on, feel free to let me know sometime-"
"Oh you and your Freudian slips. How dirty does your mind have to be to find something sexual about this situation?"
That look Cable had been giving him continued.
"Actually, don't answer that, 'cause I'm talking, and have I got an epiphany to share with you, Mr Oh-so-coy. You knew I was coming! How didn't I see it before, it explains everything!"
Cable waited a moment to see if this statement would start making sense of its own accord. It didn't. "Possibly I'm going to need you to explain this from the top for me."
"You know that moment, right, where you're not even working the case no more," said Deadpool, still seated on the floor but gesticulating enthusiastically, "maybe you're sitting there down the park feeding the ducks, maybe you're chatting to the waitress about what the zodiac says 'bout her relationship problems, and suddenly bam! It clicks, that's why the pyramids weren't in a line! The game is on! And before you know it, you're out of that bathtub and galumphing down the street in your birthday suit hollering it was lupus all along!"
"Mixed metaphors are a way of life for you, aren't they?"
"Excuse me, did it smell like I was done in there? As I was saying, you knew I was coming! That day Tolliver sent me to cook your noodle, someone tipped you off! I mean, no offence, Boss, but we both know you're not really crazy enough to seduce some passing brawn-for-hire you don't know from any other goon, but if someone told you 'Pool was on his way... maybe even let you in on what an animal I am in the sack – that's it, it was one of my exes, wasn't it? I mean, couldn't have been Vanessa, and it's not like me and Kane ever made the beast-who-must-not-be-named, don't you even try distracting me with that one... but it wouldn't be totally unlike the old boss to call you up and gloat about me being on my way..."
Cable sighed. Sometimes, there was much to be said for the path of least resistance. "Will it make you happy if I tell you you're right?"
"Yes!" Deadpool leapt to his feet and punched the air. "I knew it! So c'mon, spill, who was it?"
"Now you're asking me to reveal my sources."
Deadpool went strangely still. "No, seriously, Nate, who was it? You don't get to keep me hanging on this one, that's not how the script goes. This will keep me up at night, you feel me?"
"I'm sorry, Wade. I'm not about to sacrifice anyone's confidence for your curiosity."
"Curiosity, schmuriosity; if there's someone out there who's hacked my desk calendar and has been giving me good references, then I want to know. I am willing to pull I'm-sleeping-with-you privileges on this one! I am willing to pull your sleeping-with-me privileges out from under you if that's what it takes!"
Cable stared at him. "Let me get this straight. You're threatening to refuse your own employment perks because you think I misled you over how you originally came to my attention?"
"Oh. Oh, perks, that's how he's going to play it, huh? Like withholding the goods only hurts one of us, huh?" Deadpool stabbed him in the chest with a finger. "I think someone might be underestimating how dirty The Pool is prepared to play!"
"Dirty, hm?" said Cable, pushing past, "I look forward to finding out." The look of blank frustration on Wade's unmasked face as he turned around went largely ignored.
"Not kidding, Nate, red flag. This is not one you get to keep below the belt."
"Let me know how this new streak of paranoia works out for you," said Cable over his shoulder as he made for the hall where the others were waiting.
So Wade was asking questions – it would keep. If he hadn't put it aside or forgotten about it by this time tomorrow, Cable had every faith the Tolliver situation would find ways to provide ample distraction enough.
Fair warning on the GI front - it's likely to be a while before chapter 10 materialises. This chapter marks the end of the material I had planned out in detail, and while I know where the story is headed in the long run there's still a lot of niggly logistic plot stuff that needs sorting out before I can get it there, and that's going to set my rate of progress back a good deal (plus I'd be lying if I pretended I wasn't a little distracted by that ridiculous Teen Wolf epic I've been posting lately.) So. Hopefully nothing on the scale of the chapter 7-8 hiatus - this story's still very much on my priority list - buuuuut I wouldn't want to get anyone's hopes up that there'll be more any time too soon.
Summary: Deadpool thought killing that 'Nathan' guy was going to be a fairly routine job. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Chapter: 9/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, Weasel, Domino, Vanessa, X-Force, Six Pack, reference to past Cable/Domino
Rating: NC-17 (over all), PG (this part)
Word Count: 3940
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Thanks go to Emily for betaing this one for me (my regular beta being kinda snowed under with that other monstrous thing I'm writing *cough*).
The first thing Deadpool noticed upon teleporting back to his new team's home base was... well, technically it was the lack of anything to notice, owing to how he was standing somewhere shrouded in complete darkness. Oh fuck a duck, had his teleport belt gone and materialised him inside a cupboard again? If Weasel's rotten tin-can zappifier had set him up to burst out of some half-dressed X-kid's closet to inevitably land in a completely accidental compromising position, that no-good mechanic would be finishing his next project through a straw.
But when stretching and flailing his arms around failed to put him in contact with any walls or shelves or even coat hangers, Deadpool had to conclude that perhaps he wasn't in a closet after all. Fishing through his pouches by feel, he located a small flashlight with working batteries and flicked it on.
Well damn, if he didn't know better, he'd say he was standing in the library. In pitch darkness. Guess at least now he knew how many X-Men it really took to change a light bulb.
By the light of his tiny flashlight, Deadpool navigated his way to the door. Much as expected, the light switch by the doorframe failed to offer any help in illuminating matters, no matter how many times he switched it up or down. None of this twigged as cause for great concern until he'd reached the hall outside to find it equally dark, and the light switch there equally unresponsive. He tried his teleport belt next, but none of the buttons produced anything more useful than a slightly strained hissing noise.
"Okay," said Deadpool. "Never seen a horror movie that started like this or nothing."
There was a short, unhelpful silence. Then a squad of six men in riot gear burst in through the ceiling.
"Oh, great timing!" said Deadpool happily, over the ensuing chaos. "I was almost starting to get worried back there. Say, anyone seen Cable? Big guy, glowing eye, metal arm, really weird take on prisoner hospitality?"
"Who the... Deadpool?!" yelled someone.
"Yes? That you boss?" Deadpool sidestepped a couple of inexpertly wielded batons and peered in what might have been the appropriate direction. Was that light glinting off metal he saw? "I spy with my little eye..."
"Try something ending with 'Weapon X'!" The owner of the voice launched himself over several heads and tackled a blindsided Deadpool to the ground, where the latter found himself pinned under the grip of two metal arms. And what felt like at least two metal legs.
Recognition got him on the rebound. "Kane?" Deadpool squeaked. "Garrison Kane? Department K's own favourite guinea pig mascot amputee Kane? Oh my god, are they throwing all our class reunions as surprise parties now?"
"You're working for Cable?" demanded Kane.
"You know Cable? Wow, small industry! It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only-"
"The only thing I want to hear from you, Wilson," yelled Kane, with a light hail of furious spittle, "is a really short explanation why one of Tolliver's flunkies would be hanging out in Cable's lair!"
"Uh, rude. Jeez, a guy lets his facebook status go three days out of date and everyone takes it personally. See if you stay friended under my next alias."
"Wrong answer." Kane's fingers dug into Deadpool's flesh. "Where's Cable?"
"Whoa. So, uh, if I have a bit of an inappropriate reaction to metal hands in my personal space a few seconds from now, you know not to take it personally, right?" Deadpool tried not to squirm. "Say, were you asking me something just now? Wh..." He froze suddenly, staring over Kane's left shoulder. "Nate! There you are!"
Kane got about halfway through exclaiming, "You seriously expect me to fall for that?" before Cable kicked him in the head.
"I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?" said Cable, though not without a certain fondness, and offered Deadpool a hand up.
Deadpool snorted back at him. "Like you wouldn't reschedule your whole day around an opening for a good heroic entrance, Na-whoops, we're in work hours, right, Boss?"
"Cable?" Kane rolled to his feet with a gun already trained on them. "Don't you even think about moving."
Cable gave him a dispassionate look. "For what it's worth, Kane, I'd be only too happy to explain exactly what Deadpool's doing here, but since I'm in a hurry and I doubt you'd believe me anyway, I can only assure you that every assumption you just made is wrong. Bodyslide by two."
The first thing Deadpool said after noticing the abrupt change in his surroundings that followed, "That didn't work when I tried it!"
"Personal teleporter trouble?" said Cable, already moving towards the nearest corridor. "That would be SHIELD's jamming net at work. You must have ported in just moments before they brought it online."
"Kane and them were from SHIELD? I thought we were the good guys!" protested Deadpool, following along behind.
"Tolliver set us up through an old associate of mine with a grudge," said Cable, perhaps a trifle apologetic. "There was no time for diplomacy. We could have been in real trouble back there if their jamming tech was advanced enough to deal with a translocation system operating through a satellite relay."
"You have access to a satellite relay?"
"Not exactly," said Cable and pointed Deadpool to the nearest window. "Welcome to Greymalkin."
Roughly ten seconds and only a few creative expletives later, Deadpool gave up on staring out the window in favour of glaring at his host. "Did the concept of 'subtle' murder your teddy bear or something?"
"Come on, you love it," said Cable, bumping him on the shoulder.
Deadpool grumbled and elbowed him in the ribs. "So how'd you know Kane, anyhow? You guys get your nails done at the same mechanic?"
"Domino and I were in a small mercenary team together with Kane some years ago."
"And?"
"And it's a long story."
"Aw, c'mon-"
"And I have a team of teenagers in need of a full briefing on the situation and a new permanent base," said Cable, nodding towards the hall ahead where the rest of the team was waiting.
"You have a satellite and you need another permanent base?"
"I was thinking maybe something more subtle for everyday use."
"Oh, I see what you did there."
"Cable?" called a concerned-looking kid as Cable strode into the room.
– Cannonball, from what Deadpool remembered from Tolliver's briefing packet and what everyone had been calling everyone else since he joined this outfit.
"Clean in-and-out, Sam. SHIELD beat me there, but they didn't have time to give us any trouble. Alright," said Cable, to the room at large. "Now I'll take questions."
The room only exploded a little bit, which was probably something like a win.
***
Deadpool mostly tuned out as Cable gave his team the low down on why SHIELD was raiding their hideout, why SHIELD would be looking for Nessa in the first place, how everything was Tolliver's fault, why just handing Nessa over to SHIELD and working with them to sort the whole mess out like reasonable adults was completely out of the question, why going back to the mansion was likewise completely out of the question, and why they needed a new hideout down around sea level when they had a perfectly good satellite to hang out in. After fielding a long string of questions, he eventually got to picking three of the kids to take with him to scope out some new real estate, leaving everyone else – including Deadpool – to amuse themselves upstairs until he got back.
Deadpool took up amusing himself by experimenting with all the buttons on a nearby console until a polite computer voice informed him that a) it had been instructed to ignore any input that came from anyone but Cable, b) it found his impersonation of Cable thoroughly unconvincing, c) it could not be convinced to reveal any embarrassing personal details about its master whatsoever, and d) that its designation was not "Scotty" and it would not respond to requests to "beam me up". It also informed him there was no holodeck, and nor were there any nymphomaniac alien babes on board, green-skinned or otherwise.
He through about going to chat to Nessa for a bit, what with how the rest of the team were still giving her an awkwardly wide berth, but the glare she shot at him could've stopped a mule at twenty paces, so that idea was out. He was just trying to remember where 'gets raided by SHIELD agents' and 'owns a private satellite' rated on the official 21 signs you're dating a supervillain list when he spotted one of the younger members of Cable's team – the hot red-head with the accent – coming towards him with the look on her face of someone determined to start a conversation.
"It's Wade, right?" she said, frowning her way through her obvious uncertainty.
"Um. Yes?" A very pretty girl is talking to me, thought Wade. A very pretty girl who is probably very underage, while her single-father-figure who you are (discretely) screwing has shamelessly abandoned you to deal with this alone. Now would probably be a very bad time to say anything inappropriate.
"Theresa," said – well, Theresa, "Or Siryn, if we're doing code names, but my friends call me Terry."
That sounded awfully like a trap. "...so I should call you...?"
"Oh, whichever. Look, me and the others were talking, and we decided we didn't give you much of a chance before, but if it weren't for you Domino would still be a prisoner and we wouldn't have any idea we had a traitor on our team. You didn't have to do that for us, but you did, and we owe you. So I thought one of us ought to... I don't know, come over and extend the olive branch and say we were sorry for judging you so quickly before."
Deadpool's mouth dropped open. Several seconds passed before he regained enough jaw control to get out the word, "What?!"
Terry treated him to a long, suspicious sort of look. "Which part are you having trouble with?"
"The 'sorry Deadpool, we misjudged you' part! My name does not happen in that script!"
"You don't get a lot of that, huh?"
"Oh, the judging I get! I get judged more often than reality TV about diehard fans of Nicolas Cage! I look out my window in the morning and there will be three guys on the sidewalk holding numbers over their heads! It's the 'sorry' part I'm thinking I misheard somehow!"
"Well, you didn't," said Terry. "Should I maybe leave you to come to terms with that for a bit and come back later?"
"Swell, let's do that," said Deadpool, and stuck his head between his knees. When he looked up again after giving himself a stern mental pep talk and doing maybe just a little girly freaking out, Terry had wandered off.
Deadpool leapt for the nearest console and scaled it like a monkey.
Fifteen seconds later he swung back into Terry's view from an overhead walkway, upside down and hanging out all casual and everything. "So as I was saying, before we got rudely interrupted back there and you wandered away..."
"Before you had your little freak-out, you mean?" supplied Terry.
"...as I was saying... uh, remind me where we were when I was saying it?"
"I was telling you how the team took a vote and decided we don't want you off the island after all?"
"Yeah. So that's swell, no hard feelings, and hey, I guess I'm sorry for punching your face in that one time?"
"That was Tabitha, not me," said Terry, amused. "But I can pass it on if you like."
"Sure, but you know – like I was saying, don't get your spandex in a bunch over it or nothing. I'm used to folks being judgey, but then I kill people for a living, so who'm I to complain? 'Sides, even I thought Cable was taking the mickey when he first said he said he wanted to hire me, so we all got that to share."
Terry gave him a thin-lipped smile. "Well, truth is I've not been here much longer'n you have, but from what I've seen, that's Cable in a nutshell. Sam and the others say they met him on the street one day on the run from some MLF goons. No hellos, no by-your-leave, he just started giving orders. After the last guy in charge, they weren't going to complain. Xavier left them with Magneto before he showed up, can you believe that?"
Deadpool waved that away. "Ehhh, I've heard worse, but people get funny when I bring up publishing stunts from the other side of that-wall-we-don't-talk-about."
Terry arched an eyebrow at him. "My point was, Cable has this history of pulling stuff that makes no sense to anyone but him until after the fact. Right before you showed up here, there was this whole other mess with these guys called the Externals and Sam and Roberto, and ugh, you'd swear he knew it was Sam they were really after before even they did, don't ask me how, and don't even get me started on that whole thing with his evil twin. His idea of a 'need to know basis' makes the CIA look like the marketing division of a public awareness campaign. Drives you half-mad, or it would except somehow he comes through for us when it counts."
"Not to cut you off, babe, but you have no idea how hard you are preaching to the choir on this one," said Deadpool, fervently.
"Oh, I bet, but I'm also betting you know more than what he's told us," said Terry, watching him from the corner of her eye. "We know what he's like; we should've known when he hired you there was more to it than it seemed."
Somewhere under the mask, Deadpool's eyes took on the approximate diameter of two saucers. "Um."
Terry pressed on regardless. "So basically, the rest of us were wondering how you knew Cable."
"Just for the record, roughly how incriminating would it be if I asked you to clarify exactly what sense you're using the word 'know' in here?" asked Deadpool, twitching slightly.
"I mean, we were wondering how you met," said Terry. Deadpool stared at her blankly.
"Um, I broke in, tried to kill him? Pretty sure you were there?"
Terry frowned at him. "You sure you'd never met him before that?"
"Pretty sure?"
"How sure is that?" asked Terry, shifting awkwardly. "Because we were all thinking him hiring you out of the blue like that would make a lot more sense if you'd met before somewhere. You're a merc, he used to be a merc, it seemed like it added up. Maybe he was using a different alias back then, or it was before all his hair went white, or... Wade?"
Deadpool, no longer content with merely fitting crockery in his eye-sockets, had frozen to the spot like someone's tongue on an iceberg. "Excuse me. Just remembered an urgent appointment to go powder a man about a horse," he squeaked, and scampered away.
***
"It's clear," Wolfsbane announced, shifting back to human even as she stepped back into the main room of the mountain hideout. "No human scents here less than months old. Not even any new oil leaks." She wrinkled up her nose. "Except in here, of course."
"Hard to imagine they'd have left a nearly-full fuel tank for us to find if the former tenants had ever been back here to clean up," said Cable, wiping grease off his hands and extinguishing the last torch. With the old generator up and running again and most of the lights still working they'd be able to move in almost right away.
"Is it wise, taking the base of an enemy?" Shatterstar wondered aloud. "We can but guess what surprises they've left behind for us, and they know of its location. If they trace us to nearby..."
"It's a risk, but we take that risk anywhere we go, Star," said Cable. "I have tech back on Greymalkin we can use to scan this place for us for any unpleasant surprises. Meanwhile, neither Tolliver or SHIELD know this place exists and the Sentinel program is long gone from here. If they ever come back, we'll be the unpleasant surprise waiting for them. This facility is as secure as any we could ask for."
Footsteps in the hallway announced Sam's return from the main console room. "Computer systems have all seen better days, but some of it might be salvageable, not that I'm the best one to tell," he reported.
"Don't bother, we'll scrap whatever's left and replace it," said Cable. "Less chance of alerting anyone left on the Sentinel program that this place has guests."
Sam looked a little unconvinced. "It's a bit further from civilisation than most of the team will be used to."
"Bodyslides are still an option, Sam, but this way the Professor won't have to transport us all the way from orbit for every mission. Be glad we're still in New York state."
"Don't look at me, I was born down in Kentucky," said Sam, shrugging his shoulders. "Apart from that, well, the place needs some sprucing up, but it's something to work with." Outwardly, he sounded a little stiff, but Cable could hear something buzzing angrily just below the surface of his mind.
"Is there something else, Sam?"
Sam shifted once, surprised, then hardened his stance. "Well, truth be told, Cable, not everyone's so ready to move their while lives on a dime as you are. I don't know if it's going to be so easy for some of us to leave the mansion behind like that, and I might just be one of them. After everything we've been through there with Professor Xavier and the X-Men, good and bad – even when we only had the basement left to live in, it was something."
"I know, Sam. If it helps, don't think of this as a new home, think of it as a stop along the way." Cable rested a hand on his shoulder briefly, then stepped into the clear. "I'll bring the others down."
He had a lot on his mind as he requested a Bodyslide back to Greymalkin, and seeing as he was entering friendly territory, was less alert than he might have been. Under the circumstances, it would be hard to decide what exactly would have been the very last thing he might have been expecting, but finding himself suddenly tackled by a wet, naked man yelling "EUREKA!" at the top of his lungs had to come pretty close.
Slightly over three seconds later, after a brief tussle ending with his assailant pinned to the ground with a gun to the head, Cable was actually much less surprised to make out who it was. "Wade?"
"Ooh, nice reflexes!" Wade crowed, seeming characteristically pleased to find himself pinned under Cable's imposing bulk.
If it had been anyone else, Cable would have damn well kept him pinned there until he'd explained himself, but Wade would only make a point of getting the wrong idea. Cable returned his gun to his holster and got stiffly to his feet. "Wade, this is really not the time."
"Au contraire, this is the only time!"
Cable gave him a look. "If satellites or teleportation particularly turn you on, feel free to let me know sometime-"
"Oh you and your Freudian slips. How dirty does your mind have to be to find something sexual about this situation?"
That look Cable had been giving him continued.
"Actually, don't answer that, 'cause I'm talking, and have I got an epiphany to share with you, Mr Oh-so-coy. You knew I was coming! How didn't I see it before, it explains everything!"
Cable waited a moment to see if this statement would start making sense of its own accord. It didn't. "Possibly I'm going to need you to explain this from the top for me."
"You know that moment, right, where you're not even working the case no more," said Deadpool, still seated on the floor but gesticulating enthusiastically, "maybe you're sitting there down the park feeding the ducks, maybe you're chatting to the waitress about what the zodiac says 'bout her relationship problems, and suddenly bam! It clicks, that's why the pyramids weren't in a line! The game is on! And before you know it, you're out of that bathtub and galumphing down the street in your birthday suit hollering it was lupus all along!"
"Mixed metaphors are a way of life for you, aren't they?"
"Excuse me, did it smell like I was done in there? As I was saying, you knew I was coming! That day Tolliver sent me to cook your noodle, someone tipped you off! I mean, no offence, Boss, but we both know you're not really crazy enough to seduce some passing brawn-for-hire you don't know from any other goon, but if someone told you 'Pool was on his way... maybe even let you in on what an animal I am in the sack – that's it, it was one of my exes, wasn't it? I mean, couldn't have been Vanessa, and it's not like me and Kane ever made the beast-who-must-not-be-named, don't you even try distracting me with that one... but it wouldn't be totally unlike the old boss to call you up and gloat about me being on my way..."
Cable sighed. Sometimes, there was much to be said for the path of least resistance. "Will it make you happy if I tell you you're right?"
"Yes!" Deadpool leapt to his feet and punched the air. "I knew it! So c'mon, spill, who was it?"
"Now you're asking me to reveal my sources."
Deadpool went strangely still. "No, seriously, Nate, who was it? You don't get to keep me hanging on this one, that's not how the script goes. This will keep me up at night, you feel me?"
"I'm sorry, Wade. I'm not about to sacrifice anyone's confidence for your curiosity."
"Curiosity, schmuriosity; if there's someone out there who's hacked my desk calendar and has been giving me good references, then I want to know. I am willing to pull I'm-sleeping-with-you privileges on this one! I am willing to pull your sleeping-with-me privileges out from under you if that's what it takes!"
Cable stared at him. "Let me get this straight. You're threatening to refuse your own employment perks because you think I misled you over how you originally came to my attention?"
"Oh. Oh, perks, that's how he's going to play it, huh? Like withholding the goods only hurts one of us, huh?" Deadpool stabbed him in the chest with a finger. "I think someone might be underestimating how dirty The Pool is prepared to play!"
"Dirty, hm?" said Cable, pushing past, "I look forward to finding out." The look of blank frustration on Wade's unmasked face as he turned around went largely ignored.
"Not kidding, Nate, red flag. This is not one you get to keep below the belt."
"Let me know how this new streak of paranoia works out for you," said Cable over his shoulder as he made for the hall where the others were waiting.
So Wade was asking questions – it would keep. If he hadn't put it aside or forgotten about it by this time tomorrow, Cable had every faith the Tolliver situation would find ways to provide ample distraction enough.
Fair warning on the GI front - it's likely to be a while before chapter 10 materialises. This chapter marks the end of the material I had planned out in detail, and while I know where the story is headed in the long run there's still a lot of niggly logistic plot stuff that needs sorting out before I can get it there, and that's going to set my rate of progress back a good deal (plus I'd be lying if I pretended I wasn't a little distracted by that ridiculous Teen Wolf epic I've been posting lately.) So. Hopefully nothing on the scale of the chapter 7-8 hiatus - this story's still very much on my priority list - buuuuut I wouldn't want to get anyone's hopes up that there'll be more any time too soon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-05-10 06:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-10 06:47 am (UTC)And as a lifelong-Pratchett geek, it would be remiss not to also mention that in the Discworld country of Ephebe, one can reliably spot a philosopher based on the fact he'll be the one running naked down the street away from the bathhouse. An enterprising street vendor can make good business by keeping a few clean towels on hand. ;)
Naturally, to Wade's mind, there is no more traditional way to share a moment of genius than naked and soaking wet.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-21 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-21 02:45 am (UTC)