Finger-Painting With Fire (Part Two)

There was no time to waste as we flew to the coordinates gave us. It turned out his drop off point was supposed to be some middle school in New Jersey, out for the holidays. Mister Logan manned the controls while I divulged my brilliant plan to the others.

We didn't know who would be waiting in the wings, but we knew what they wanted – me. So, we would give them me. All the me they could handle. Me, and my running crew, ready to pounce, hopefully on the poor, unfortunate benefactor paying for my bounty.

"This is a shit-tier idea, Marcher."

I rolled my eyes. Of course, Julian had been the first to dump on my brainchild, though I could tell he had beaten Logan to the punch in doing the same, only by a split-second, "And yet, you're still here."

True enough, I had not invited him. He just never left after we had confronted Deadpool. An extra pair of hands was always welcome, especially when that pair of hands could move things with the power of his brain.

"I could do with less attitude," I said, "With Hisako still on vacation, I was kind of expecting my authoritah to be properly respected for the time being."

"Exactly. Armor isn't here to pull 'bail-your-ass-out' duty, so someone has to do it," Julian shot back.

"I mean, Laura's here too. She knows the drill," I tried to joke, giving the girl in question a playful nudge. She was not much in the mood to joke around, not that she was very often, "What's wrong, Buzzsaw?"

Laura shook her head, "Hellion is not wrong, Bellamy. I do not like this plan."

"See?" Julian said, "I'm the kind of guy who likes to play with fire too, but you're damn near finger-painting with it here."

I didn't necessarily either, even if it did come from my own mind. But if you wanted to catch a big fish, you needed the right kind of bait, "Guys, it's a textbook Trojan horse play," I said trying to make my bare bones plan sound the slightest bit better, "A straight up classic."

"You just made that up to sound cool," Julian accused.

I most certainly did not. I was not blowing my free time getting hands-on instruction in strategy and other leader crap from Mister Summers only to have my concepts questioned, "-I didn't make up jack shit. It's a feint to get me into where the bad guys are," Dump on the validity of my plans all you want, there was always a reason I did something, even if I wasn't consciously aware of it in the moment, "I literally watched Cyclops do this on Breakworld."

I omitted that he kind of had to temporarily die for that plan to work. At least one person onboard would have been very adverse had I let that bit of unnecessary information slip. Unnecessary, because I certainly didn't plan on dying, temporarily or otherwise.

Julian scowled and folded his arms, looking impatient, "Okay, so explain it to me again."

I frowned, but did as he asked. It was all simple enough, "They want my body for a reason, so Deadpool will dump me at the bad guys' feet and they take me to wherever they're holed up-."

The man in question interrupted to interject, "-At which point Deadpool will get paid and make himself scarce."

"Yeah-yeah, whatever," I waved the red-clad merc off to keep on-track, "From there, Saberwolf can lock in on me anywhere on the goddamn eastern seaboard, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep track of me when I'm playing dead."

Julian looked to the back where Saberwolf sat patiently on his metal haunches, then back to me, "And if he can't?"

"He will," I said with complete confidence in my buddy.

This time the dissent came from Laura, "If he cannot?"

"I will," Saberwolf insisted more firmly than I did.

Despite reassurance from me and my A.I. with an ego, it was rough going trying to convince Laura and Julian that things would work. Contingencies were few and far between for the time being, "If everything goes sideways, go grab the Cuckoos or something and fire up Cerebra. I don't fucking know. I had twenty minutes to slap this whole deal together."

I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants. My team was scattered for the rest of the term break and most of the other fully-fledged teams were busy. Besides, the last thing I wanted was for word to get to the people in charge of me until things were resolved. If Miss Frost or Mister Summers heard there was a bounty on me that people already took a shot at, they would lock me down on campus so fast my head would spin.

Deadpool slapped me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs up, "You're doing a great job, champ," he loudly whispered, "Really. I'm so proud of you."

"Shut up, Wade. Let the kid work," Mister Logan turned his head to bark from the controls, "It's your show, Glowstick."

I nodded back to him before regarding Julian again, "There's you, Wolf, Laura, and Mister Logan. Between the four of you, there should be enough resources there to get me out of wherever I end up. Plus, I'll hopefully be able to get myself loose and raise hell from the inside."

There was a lot of 'if', 'should', and 'hopefully' doing the heavy lifting in this explanation. Every time another one came out of my mouth, Laura seemed to be less of a fan of letting me put myself out there. That was just how it had to be here.

You couldn't always account for every possibility. If you wanted to get things done, sometimes you had to rely more on the capability of your personnel than on plugging up any and all holes in your approach. Even if I did know just what I was getting myself into, whatever plan anyone came up with still wouldn't be airtight. That was just how it was. You tried to get things in your own favor as much as possible given what you knew and what you had to work with, but the perfect scenario never existed.

With the Blackbird cloaked, Logan dropped the rest of us off and found a spot to touch down while we moved to get into position. From personal experience, Laura and Saberwolf were great at stealth, so they could drag Julian through their part of the plan well enough. He was the sledgehammer in reserve, just in case we needed that much brute force to get the job done.

In the meantime, Deadpool and I were busy making it look like he had caught me. You know... arms bound... gun pointed at me. The standard stuff, really.

"Alright, we're just about ready," Deadpool said before suddenly thumping me hard in the forehead with the barrel of his handgun, "There. That should do it."

My head snapped back. I saw stars as I stumbled a few steps. It took me a second to shake it off, "Ow! You bag of dicks!"

"Sorry," He didn't sound very sorry at all, "Gotta make it look good enough to sell it. Can't just bring you in completely unmarked."

Ignoring the fact that I could just bend light around myself to make myself look like I had been through the wringer...

I let it slide. After all, I had shot him, cut his head off, and had Wolf use him as a chew toy, all just in that day. I could eat one hit in return. I could feel blood slowly start to trickle down my face from where he pistol-whipped me.

Now all that was left was for the rendezvous with the clients. Speaking of which, I was curious. After we'd put Deadpool in the brig, we backtracked over his infiltration. There hadn't been any vehicles hidden around Xavier's. Security cameras also hadn't picked up anyone dropping him off either.

"How did you plan on getting me here by yourself?" I eventually asked.

Even with the mask, I could see Deadpool's face brighten up. The eyes of his mask were crazy-expressive, "Well, when I had you good and beaten, I'd just planned on grabbing you and-."

He reached out for my shoulder. When he did, he pulled back a sleeve to show some kind of watch, hitting a button on it. One moment we were standing in an empty baseball field, the next, I found myself staring at the dingy interior of a derelict warehouse.

It took a moment for me to adjust to the sudden change in perspective, but I just as quickly realized what had happened, "No..." I said.

"Yeah..." Deadpool replied, patronizingly.

"Tell me that wasn't a goddamn-!"

"Teleporter! Surprise!"

I went to lash out, but was met with tug of my shoulder a swift knee to the balls that took my strength. Arms still bound, I sank to the floor, fighting the urge to vomit, "Teleportation is bullshit!" I managed to squeak out.

Seriously. It seemed like every time I turned around, I had to deal with someone who either had direct teleportation powers, had some kind of technology that let them teleport, or could make portals that let them jump from place-to-place. My goddamn ex learned how to teleport! The odds were absurd. I promised myself from that point on that I would go into every situation with the assumption that a new enemy secretly had the ability to teleport until proven otherwise.

"This is the actual drop-off spot," Deadpool said.

"So, what were those other coordinates even supposed to be?"

"I 'unno," Deadpool shrugged, "I just rattled off some decent-sounding numbers and hoped that'd give me enough time to come up with something," At that, he let out a sigh and drew his swords, "Welp, guess I won't get to collect without, you know, finishing the job," he clicked his tongue at me.

I stood back up and cut through my bonds with light blades, "Fine. Round two then," I said, squaring up with him, "Just so you know, Nobody I've fought's ever seen a round three with me."

"Ooh... ominous," Deadpool taunted, "Boxing metaphors? I like painting metaphors myself. You like Bob Ross?"

From there, it was on.

For as much as Deadpool was a complete pain, as much as he came off as the goofiest son of a bitch on the planet, he was anything but once a fight started. He was as bad as they came. I talked tough, but there was a reason I made sure I shot first back when we first met in NYC – because I didn't want to get into a straight-up fight with him. At least when Mister Logan gave him back his weapons, he didn't give him a gun with any bullets in the magazine.

The way he used his pair of swords, expert level didn't seem to do the kind of skill he displayed justice. The unwritten rule of dual wielding was one for offense, the other for defense; a rule he seemed to both follow and break at the same time, switching which sword was meant for attack and which one was for defense all in the same movement. His swords seemed like an extension of his arms more than some tools he just so happened to favor using. My light blades held up against real steel, but forget attacking; it took everything I had to keep him from slicing me to ribbons.

My experience with enemies wielding sharp weapons in both hands began and ended with training against Laura and Logan. Given that they had claws and not swords, they didn't fight anything like Deadpool – hell, they didn't fight anything like each other – but they had tells and patterns that you could pick up on once you knew what you were looking for. Just about everyone does, really. In fighting Deadpool though, I was just as lost three minutes in as I was three seconds in.

Deadpool kicked me against an empty industrial shelf. I sidestepped when he went to stab me, the blade sliding through the opening. When I went to try and counterattack, it turned out to be nothing but bait. Instead of me slashing him, he got me, once across my arm, the other across my back.

Deadpool let out a whistle and let me stagger away, "Ooh, big mistake kid. Or should I call that a 'happy little accident'?" he joked, twirling his swords in his hands, "Nah, but seriously, that was one hundred percent on purpose."

I grit my teeth through the pain. He was screwing with me. Those cuts had been clean, but they had been shallow. If he had wanted to kill me then and there, he could have. I didn't have the luxury of playing with my food though.

I fired a shot over my shoulder that had no prayer of hitting its target. While it would have been nice if I could have, I just needed to buy some time and put some space between Deadpool and I. If we kept fighting up close, the only result would have been him slicing more chunks off of me.

To that end, I started blasting. Deadpool had insane reflexes, maybe as good as mine. It took a few tries to get a proper bead on him, and I blew a few holes in the warehouse walls, and portion of the shelves and pallets laying around, but I finally caught him in the leg mid-stride.

"Fuck!" With the limb temporarily useless as he tried to take a step with it, Deadpool face-planted on the concrete floor, "What's with kids these days? So violent!"

As he went to push himself up, I took aim at his left arm, the one with the teleporter strapped onto it. I hurled a light blade at it, intent on securing a quick way out of there, but he must have figured that was what I had been after. He shifted position in an instant and stabbed the katana in his left hand into the floor. It didn't help much, but it did enough to deflect my attack.

I grumbled under my breath and used the opportunity to take my thumb and middle finger to pinch the wound on my bicep shut. I used my index finger to cauterize it shut. There was nothing I could do about the one on my back, seeing as how I couldn't reach it.

The short lull in the fight was broken when the phone in my pocket started going off. I eyed Deadpool warily, even when he gestured at me with his swords, "Well? You gonna answer that?"

I held up a finger, signaling to give me a second. As I reached for my phone, that finger turned to a glowing palm aimed his way – just in case, "Hello?"

"Bellamy?"

Circumstances notwithstanding, I couldn't help but smile at the sound of Laura's voice, "Yeah, Buzzsaw. I'm here."

"Ooh, is that Logan's clone?" Deadpool asked excitedly, "Tell her I said hi."

I ignored him in lieu of listening to Laura, "You were nowhere in sight when we took our positions. Saberwolf says your signature is now 217 miles south-southeast of our position. Are you alright?"

"Uh..." I looked down at my own bloody form and then around the ruined warehouse - scattered debris, missing segments of wall, burning wooden pallets, "...Could be worse, I guess."

I heard words from the background that I couldn't quite make out, "Is Deadpool responsible for this?" Laura eventually asked.

"Yeah," I admitted, "I'm kinda in a fight to the death with him as we speak."

"Is she asking about me?" Deadpool said, waving to get my attention, "Hey. Hey. Tell her I said hi."

"Deadpool says hi," I deadpanned.

"I see. Is he in possession of his swords?"

"Yes. Why?" I didn't get an immediate response. In fact, it sounded as though the call had dropped, "Laura? Hello?"

*BOOM!*

I flinched at the sound of an explosion from Deadpool. When I looked his way, he was holding up bloody, mangled masses of flesh that most people would have once identified as hands. His swords (as well as a few fingers) were on the ground, the hilts of them destroyed.

A bomb. Either Logan or Laura had planted a bomb in Deadpool's swords. No wonder Logan had been okay with giving them back. If he turned them against any of us, a quick signal would have blown his hands off.

"Mother! Fucker!" Deadpool shouted, "You booby-trapped my girls? Who does that?" Just as he looked back up at me, I shot him in the head, dropping him to the floor.

"I dunno," I said to my now unconscious enemy as I tucked my phone away, "I didn't even know we kept explosives."

Idly, I realized that the explosion had probably ruined Deadpool's teleporter. As much as I could have used that to go home once I figured out how it worked, my friends were probably less than fifteen minutes away in the Blackbird. In the meantime, I could find something heavy to trap Deadpool under before he woke up again.

Even if I were inclined to kill him, fifteen minutes probably wasn't enough time to come up with a good enough idea to do it properly.