xp_logs | Mechanisms of Revenge: Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Pete and Blaquesmith hear the news of Apocalypse's breakout on Christmas Day. The ensuing conversation goes even worse than their previous ones.

"He's free. It looks like the Dark Riders didn't waste much time in tracking down their employer." Blaquesmith said disgustedly, blanking the screen he had been reading from. "Your plan, Mister Wisdom, required him in a set location and your tools to reach him. Now he's out in the open and on the move. How are we going to successfully conclude my revenge now, hmm? I hope you'll tell me you anticipated this."

Pete shot him a disgusted look. "Yes, because the really important thing about a genocidal lunatic being on the lose with a squad of serious bastards is how much harder it makes your personal agenda. Grow some fucking perspective. And give me a minute to think."

"I am not interested in the wider perspective, Mister Wisdom." Blaquesmith's voice turned ugly and petulant, a sharp contrast to his normal calm, almost scholarly detachment. "I saved your lives so you could bring me Apocalypse's head, and now your clever plan with the SHIELD holding facility just became useless!"

"Yeah, well I fucking am interested. There's a monster that needs stopping, and it's not the face that you see in the mirror that tells me that, all right? So shut up and let me think about ways that I can start looking in the mirror again."

Pete leant forward, elbows on his knees, hands massaging his temples. After a while he looked up.

"All right then. You know anyone who might still speaking to the nutbag? Anyone else that worked with him, that fed him information, anything like that?"

Blaquesmith slowly climbed down from his rage, visibly trying to rein in his own emotions. "Apocalypse has a network. It's largely informal; sympathizers, paid informants, willing dupes." He paused and nodded. "Yes, I think I could give you some names that could be approached indirectly, but to what end?"

Pete was silent for a minute.

"There's a place I've been keeping half an eye on - mutant hippies and IT types running a commune. Started looking into it because it had that Heaven's Gate, Waco, kind of smell. Turned out to be on the level - bunch of low grade mutant nerds on a back to nature kick. I'm..." he corrected himself "*we're* going to feed them to him. Their philosophy will get right up his nose, and I'll give you even money he won't be able to resist trying to bring them over by force, because they're easier to hit than Charlie's place. And I can't think of any other way to try and put him in one place right now, so I'm going fed him a bunch of poor defenceless bastards, let him stamp on them for a bit, and probably turn some basically decent people into something fucking horrible just as a fucking set up."

Pete's voice rose as he spoke, until he was snarling the last few words. He took a deep breath.

"And I'm just going to have to hope that not all of them will wind up dead before we take him apart."

"Your tools are almost ready at this point." Blaquesmith waved to the area behind him, where the three people lay in the open chambers, their heads hooked into strange helmet like arrays. "The training modules are being loaded directly into their instinctual centres, and my tests indicate a strong response for nerve and muscle memory integration. The overlay on their personalities will have them react instantly to your orders, without any hesitation permitted, but I'm still concerned. There is a collection of homeless mutants in Manhattan that I've heard about. We could easily add several of them to the project, and following experimentation, provide more power to your force. Or perhaps some of the weaker staff at Xavier's--"

"Shut the fuck up, right damn now. I have just about coped with what we're doing to these people, because if we do it right, it will save lives, and prevent you doing this shit to some other bunch of poor cunts when you *don't* have me around to do the actual fucking thinking for you. We do not need a sodding army to do a job like this. No-one does, it's why governments train people like me. You just need the tools and the will to do the job. And we fucking have those, don't we? Don't we, you monstrous little fuck?" Pete's eyes blazed, and his hand went to the collar around his neck, as if to tug it free and regain access to his mutant talents.

"Yes. We do." Blaquesmith turned back to his console without further response, leaving Pete to stare at his misshapen back in impotent fury.

After some ten minutes had passed in silence Pete spoke again, in more neutral tones although his glare hadn't lessened in intensity much.

"You aren't wrong, though. We are going to need more people. So we're going to make sure the X-men know where all this is happening. We're going to time it very carefully, let them know just a bit too late, so that they're dealing with the monkeys while these three go after the organ grinder."

"So the X-Men will face the new troops? Interesting, although, with my cameras..." Blaquesmith turned from the screen, and there was a thin twisted smile on his misshapen space. "I came to you, Mister Wisdom, because the X-Men seemed ready to take Apocalypse into custody, instead of killing the threat when they had the chance. Against the Dark Riders, and Apocalypse's own twisting of this group youn believe you can divert it towards, it seems that the X-Men will have little choice during the battle about killing if they wish to survive. Is this part of your plan?"

"My plan?" Pete laughed, mirthlessly. "Yeah, maybe they'll have to, but to tell you the truth, I am counting on them not killing unless they have no other alternative. I am counting on them to be better people than you, and to find an 11th hour miracle that'll save the poor hippy bastards in the Blue Area from the rest of my fucking plan, and who knows, maybe even lock Apocalypse's new goon squad up. The only important thing from my point of view is that they come in hot and loud, and get everyone looking the other way while we get on with the real job, which is why we won't be letting them know what's going on until it's too late to do anything except break heads."

There was a noise, a twitching from one of the chambers, but it stopped almost as fast as it started. Blaquesmith checked a screen and disregarded it as a momentary twitch. "You are certain that they will not get in the way of killing Apocalypse? Remember, Mister Wisdom, those telepathic overlays will force your tools to remove anything in between themselves and Apocalypse."

"If you wanted certain, sunbeam, you should have shanghaied someone stupider than me. I think this gives us a good shot. Am I sure that they won't get in the way? Am I 100% fucking certain that I won't wind up setting one of these three up to kill or be killed by some of their friends? No." Pete let the words hang there.

"But I'm sure enough to look at what I think the likely outcomes are, and take the risk. Which is why you wanted me, isn't it? So either stop questioning my fucking judgement, and let me get on with the fucking job, or find a precog who can accurately predict everything. Oh, wait, you can't - you were so fucking worried about Angie working out where we were that you set up one of your weird fucking machines to screw with precogs so they couldn't find anything out about this, didn't you?"

"As you've learned so recently, Mister Wisdom, no precaution is too great." Blaquesmith said mildly, his own anger and obsession once more under wraps. "If you say that you have what you need, then we will continue as planned. Be very sure though. I don't pretend that I wish Apocalypse dead for anything other than selfish reasons, but he remains too great a threat to the rest of the world to allow idealists another chance at sparing his life. He must die, Mister Wisdom, if not for my revenge or your friend's lives, then for the sake of the human race."

Pete sighed, and his shoulders slumped a bit, but his voice remained steady. "Yeah, I know that. Fuck, there probably isn't anyone on the planet who knows it better than me, so believe me when I tell you, I am not playing games here. I am coming up with the best possible plan I can to end him in the circumstances, and if it's not 100% guaranteed, it's because nothing ever is. It's a good plan, squire, and we're not going to get a better shot than this. So let's just get on with it, shall we? I'll get you a list of the maps and intel I'm going to need to get the details worked out, and you get on with making sure these three poor sods can do the job we need them to do."