Finger-Painting With Fire (Part One)

As hard as it might be to believe, freeing Deadpool from the brig had not been the worst decision of the day. Once he was loose, he hadn't tried to make good on claiming my bounty, even when Logan had re-armed him.

"Why'd you give him his swords back?" I asked.

Logan didn't seem to find much of an issue with it, "If he was still planning to kill you, he'd find a weapon to try it with anyway. This just makes the method obvious so we can kick his ass if he does," With that, he meandered off to get the jet ready.

I wasn't sure how I felt about his line of logic, but what did I know? After all, Logan had known Deadpool for years. I'd only met him that morning. Not that I was otherwise particularly concerned. Laura would probably see anything coming before I did, and she would cut him in half the moment he made a move.

And no, I didn't have a problem with letting my woman fight my battles for me. I was perfectly okay with having her fine ass as my enforcer, just as long as she didn't get hurt. Laura was way tougher than me anyway.

Deadpool didn't look like he was going to be a problem anyway, at least not because of his conduct. Mostly because he couldn't do the one thing we freed him from the brig for.

"You don't even know who hired you to kill Marcher?" Julian asked, sounding just as annoyed as Laura and I felt, "Why did we even bother letting you out?"

By this time, we had made it back to the upper levels of the school and made a stop in the cafeteria kitchen. Deadpool took the liberty of raiding the fridge. His mask was off by this point while he ate, showing off his devastatingly pocked, bald head. It would have been jarring, had we not been a) students at Xavier's where we saw weird-looking people all the time, and b) X-Men, who by now had seen our share of intense crap in the field.

"I don't know how much they teach you brats about the noble profession of mercenary work, but you usually don't meet the people who actually hire you," Deadpool remarked, mouthful of a sandwich crammed with every kind of cold cut we had in stock, "There's usually at least one degree of separation between whoever's pulling the trigger and the guy plopping down the cash for it."

That sounded just fine to Julian, "Okay, so we put the squeeze on whoever put you onto this," He said, punching into his own palm for emphasis, "Easy."

Deadpool was far less enthusiastic with this approach, "Yeah... I like having steady work, so no. Daddy's got bills to pay."

So, he had nothing, which meant he was useless to us, "Cool. Hope you enjoyed lunch. Back to the brig," I said before turning to call out, "Saberwolf!"

Deadpool dropped his sandwich on the floor to wave his hands frantically, "No-no-no-no-no!" Someone clearly wanted no more of the school's resident hall monitor, "I said I wasn't going to drag my fixer into it. That doesn't mean I still can't find where the hit came from."

"And how are you going to make that happen?" I skeptically asked.

"Because, boy wonder-," Deadpool snapped back, "-I'm supposed to deliver your carcass to a drop-off spot to secure payment."

Well, that certainly changed things. An opportunity looked to be afoot, just as long as I was willing to take a risk.