Protect Ya Neck (Part Two)

As it turned out, Spider-Man's charity only extended to giving me a ride into Manhattan. From there, duty called, and he left me on my own. I still had my phone, so I tried to reach out to any contact I had that I felt could help. That meant the X-Men.

"No answer?" I muttered to myself. I had tried the school proper, as well as the individual contacts of the teachers I had – Mister Summers, Miss Frost, Mister Rasputin, Dr. McCoy... all calls went to their machines.

They had better have been on a mission or something. I needed a ride! In the meantime, I tried to get in touch with my Uber driver again, not expecting a response. I doubted that simply telling him I'd beaten up the Blob would bring him back, but he still had my stuff.

"I'm not even back at school yet, and shit is just going swimmingly," I remembered complaining aloud to myself, "Can I at least set foot back on campus before whatever voodoo curse the X-Men have cast on them kicks in?"

"Eh, I'd call it more of an Indian burial ground curse if I had to give it a label."

I froze when I realized that in all of my complaining, someone else had fallen into step with me, their gaze down on their phone. It was a man in a dark red bodysuit and mask that covered him from head to toe. The outfit had black accents, and the mask had large, white, expressive eyes, a lot like Spider-Man's. Unlike Spider-Man though, this man had a pair of swords strapped to his back and a pair of handguns tucked into holsters at his thighs.

Deadpool. One of the more... notorious mercenaries of note in the world. One that had his share of dealing with the X-Men in the past, hence why I knew of him. I had yet to have to displeasure of meeting him. No longer, it seemed.

When I stopped and stared at him, he also stopped and looked up to make eye contact. Neither of us moved for several seconds, until he tried to reach for one of his swords.

I jumped away and shot him straight through the chest with a laser before he could draw a weapon. He didn't go down. In fact, he simply looked down at the brand-new finger-sized hole in his torso and placed his own index finger into the opening, "Wow. Center mass. Nice," The moment he removed his finger, the wound started to heal, "Well since you had your chance-."

I preempted his response with a light blade that removed his head from his shoulders. Hey, Spider-Man wasn't around to admonish me, so I let the lethal stuff fly. The masked man's severed head splatted onto the ground as a fountain of blood shot up from the neck. His body then collapsed like a puppet with its strings severed.

"Nope," I said before turning my back to walk away. I stopped mid-step when I heard the same voice from before.

"Man, you're a vicious little shit, aren't you?" The severed head said from its place on the ground, "And they let you in the X-Men? What is this, the 90s?"

"Healing factors are so lame..." I sighed aloud. Turning around, I stomped over to Deadpool's head, idly shooting his body a few more times, just in case, "Okay, this isn't funny anymore," I said as I grabbed his head by the top of the mask, "You are literally the third clown in a costume that's come at me since I stepped foot off of the plane. What the fuck? I definitely don't know what I did to you."

"You mean, you really don't know?" Deadpool asked before letting out a laugh, "Oh man. That's priceless, unlike you, actually."

"Say what?"

"I don't know who you pissed off, but there's a big-ass bounty on your head."

Deadpool's body got up from the ground behind me and fumbled around blindly for his swords, "...How big is 'big'?" I asked, shooting it again to put it back down.

Deadpool didn't seem bothered by my cautionary besmirchment of his body, "Let's put it this way, junior. Once I pop you and show proof of it, ol' Wade's buying himself a gold boat. And that's solid gold, not gold-plated."

"You're kidding."

"No, for real! I don't even give a fuck if it sinks! At least I'd have it!"

"No, you-," I put my free hand up to my temple before shooting Deadpool's body again to vent some anger, "I meant, why is there a bounty on me? And since when? I've been chilling in the Bay for the last two weeks and there hasn't been a peep."

"It went active about three hours ago."

"I was getting off the plane three hours ago!"

"Yeah, it's pretty crazy, right?" Deadpool gleefully replied, "Anyway, be a peach and put ol' Uncle Wade's head back on his body so he can put two in your skull and make his fat stacks, 'kay sport?"

"Oh, I hear you, and as much as I like the sound of that idea, how about instead, we-," I suddenly drop-kicked Deadpool's head into an open dumpster. As morbid as it was, I got a satisfying feeling from the sound of his head banging into the metal.

"Oh-ho, you're gonna pay for that one, junior!"

"I'm sure I will," I said as I walked away. I also shot his body one more time for good measure before walking away, "Goddamn it, a bounty? Who would put a bounty on me specifically?"

The U-Men. The Sapien League. Whatever was left of the Purifiers after I murdered Reverend Stryker. Donald Pierce and the Reavers. Kimura and The Facility. Logan's jerk kid, Daken. My own jerk kid from the future, Riddick; but he was still locked up.

...The more I thought about it, I had pissed off a lot of people in just under one year of being a superhero in training. Still, to upset whatever party decided to make it open season on me in NYC, I must have really done something.

"I can't be that much of a prick," I said to myself, gazing at the phone I had lifted from Deadpool's body. Everyone that had attacked me had been looking at their phones, so they must have had the details of the hit sent to them somehow. It wouldn't take much to jailbreak it. I was trained by Kitty f'n Pryde, I could hack an Android.

Meanwhile, an alert on my phone got my attention. Moments later, the same car I had been in before the Blob had ruined everything pulled up and hit the horn to get my attention. It was the same car, the same guy behind the wheel, and hopefully my same stuff in the trunk.

"I'm so glad you came back," I said as I retook my previous place in the back seat, "I didn't think you would."

The driver shrugged as he went to pull off, "Crazier shit happens in this city every hour, man," He turned back to look at me only to find that I'd bent light around myself, "Uh, what are you doing?"

"Trust me, it's for the best if nobody sees me back here again. So... Salem Center?"