Angel & Wade | Friday Afternoon (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Wade welcomes Angel home in his own special way - a way that involves a couple blocks of C4 and a lesson in explosives.

Wade was waiting for Angelica in the quarry, an innocuous black backpack at his feet. He'd had to make a quick stop by one of his stashes in the city to pick up the goods, but he'd still been at the mansion in time for training with Matt and lunch with Molly. After stowing the bag in his room, he'd followed what had become his regular routine.

Angel was smiling/smirking as she made her way down to the quarry. Her disappointment that she wasn't going to get a Calfy had given way to dying curiosity about Wade's surprise. This was going to be good, she could tell. And when had her instincts ever let her down? "Hey!" She called with a grin when she saw Wade was waiting for her. Was she late?...Nah. He was probably just early.

"Hola, Benevolent Overlord In Training," Wade said, grinning back. "So remember that time you let me have fun with those fireworks that I'm never going to tell your mother about? I thought I'd return the favor, but with something that has a bigger boom. Feeling up to the challenge?"

The memory of the day with the fireworks was quickly chased from Angel's mind as her eyes widened and dodged down to the black backpack at his feet. "You'll never tell my mother because I'll set you on fire if you do. And what've you got?" She asked eagerly, her grin widening. Oh instincts. They never failed.

Clucking his tongue like an old grandmother, Wade wagged a finger at Angel and then nudged the backpack. "Threatening imminent immolation should I forget and mention the fireworks is no way to win friends. Or explosives. Which is what I was going to give you. Now I'm not so sure."

"Explosives?" Angel repeated in disbelief. No. No way. He hadn't....had he? Oh what was she thinking? It was Wade. Of course he had. "Wade! My friend. My favorite person. My favorite person to blow things up with. You know I would never really set you on fire, right? Right. Now - you said explosives?"

Wade cracked another grin, wider this time, and waggled his eyebrows. "Did I?" Picking up the backpack, he unzipped it and moved over to a conveniently sized rock. Unpacking the C4 and all its accoutrements, the mercenary gestured to each as he set them out. "So this is C4. It's one of the more stable explosives out there, which is part of why it's what we're going to use today, my favorite little pyro."

If Angel's eyes widened any further, they would probably fall out of her head. Her knowledge of explosives was slightly limited, but if Wade was suggesting C4, it had to be worth the boom. "If the fact that it's more stable is part of the reason we're using it," she said conversationally as she followed Wade to the rock, "what's the rest of the reason?"

Pointing at the C4, Wade said, "Cause I can make it look like a duck." Which was true, but he'd only done that once. "Aside from it's amusement qualities, it also packs a pretty nifty punch." He gestured toward the detonators. "Another reason is that just heat won't set it off. Neither will dropping it. You need a combination of a single source of intense heat and a shockwave, which you get by using one of those little puppies."

Angel almost questioned the duck thing...until she remembered they were about to blow something up. That took priority over anything else. Her fingers were practically itching now - she wiggled them excitedly, her eyes on the detonators that would provide them with their upcoming amusement. "So how do we set these babies up, oh great explosives master?"

"First off, a bit of a lesson," Wade said, picking up a block of C4. "This stuff is good for the reasons I've already said, but going along with the duck thing, you can basically make it fit whatever you want it to. You can also insert it into cracks and crevices that other explosives - like dynamite - won't fit into." Waving the block beneath Angel's nose, he continued, "It's got a chemical in it specifically so people can smell it, though, so you need to be careful where you're using and you need to be aware of who might be around you to find it. Just burning it won't get you an explosion, but it will get you some toxic gasses, which aren't awesome. People without healing factors can also ingest small amounts to make themselves ill, but I don't really recommend that."

He took a breath, then handed the block to Angel. "From here, it's a matter of properly assembling the components to get what amounts to a bomb. Which is obviously very dangerous." Wade gave her a significant look. "So, much like the fireworks, nobody's mentioning this to your mother. Ever."

Angel took the block carefully, turning it over and inspecting it with admiring eyes. "No burning, no ingesting, no using it around people who might be able to smell it and find it." The thought of being found out made Angel think for a moment - just as she had when she'd been going to set off the fireworks - of Xavier. She quickly shook herself of the thought, though. He would have shut them down already if he knew what they were doing. "Awesome. And this will join the fireworks with me in my grave."

"Excellent," Wade said, grinning. "So this is det cord, short for detonating or detonation cord. It goes in the C4 after you've made whatever pretty shapes you want to make. Then you light it and it does the rest for you. C4's actually pretty dangerous in that a relatively small amount can theoretically kill a group of people. It's mostly used for demolition but it's also pretty popular in guerrilla warfare. The danger part is why we're going to set it up in that bit of rock over there," he pointed at a particular pile almost twenty meters away from them. "And why we're going to be ducking down behind this bigger rock over here." Wade pointed at the rock off to their right. "You can watch from around the edge - I'm going to attempt to direct the explosion in the other direction, but if rocks start coming this way, you flame on and head back toward the mansion, alright?"

Oh this was going to be good. Well except for that bit about running away if things went bad. Angel wasn't sure she liked that part so much. "Okay," she agreed reluctantly as her eyes drifted over the det cord. "I doubt it'll come to that, though," she added with her usual, thousand-watt smile. She had faith in Wade. "Can we shape it into a star before we put the det cord in?"

"Sure," Wade said, nodding equably. "It's basically the same consistency as modelling clay, so it's easy to work with. Just don't light it on fire by accident." He grinned and broke the block into four pieces. He had another block in the bag, but there was no reason to use it all up in one go. "You make your star with this and then I'll show you how to connect everything."

"Right-o," Angel said with a smile and beginning to mold it. There was no doubt in her mind it was going to be epic. It took her a moment - art had never been her strong point. "Okay, think that's the best I'm going to get. What next?"

"Next we take our explosive over to where we want it and make sure it sticks just right," Wade said, taking the piece of C4 he'd formed into a miniature pistol and heading toward the rock he'd indicated earlier. "Then we insert the det cord and unroll it carefully as we head back toward our cover. Det cord is a little less likely to randomly explode if we're not careful with it. Blasting caps, on the other hand, sometimes have a tendency to go off at inconvenient times, so we'll talk about those later, after demonstration number one."

Angel was practically vibrating as she followed Wade over to the rock, carefully pressing her star against the solid surface. She pulled away when she was sure it would hold, inserting the det cord and looking over at Wade. "All good?"

"Uh huh," Wade said, smushing his little pistol and shaping it using a piece of the rock that jutted out a bit. He shifted the rock itself slightly, angling it so when the C4 went off it would be less likely to send shrapnel in their direction. "Also, as a point of interest, unless you're a speedster, it's basically physically impossible to outrun a blast from C4, so you always want to make sure you're well away from it before you set off the explosion, preferably under some kind of cover."

Walking back toward the rock he intended to use for just that purpose, Wade unrolled the det cord and laid it down carefully. "Another point of interest - det cord is actually an explosive itself. It actually explodes so quickly that you can use different strands to set off explosions that are different distances from the point of initiation, which is not only handy in a practical sense, but pretty awesome."

And suddenly, all Angel could imagine as she followed Wade, carefully laying her own line down, was a bunch of explosions happening all at once in different places. "We're going to do that, right? I mean, not today, obviously, but provided this all goes well and we don't blow ourselves up? Which I totally don't think is going to happen, for the record."

Wade practically beamed. "Absolutely. I think you should know that it's my dastardly plan to teach you basically everything I know about explosives so you can one day be as advanced an explosive expert as myself. That means turning all kinds of things into explosives. But for today, we have C4 and det cord." Hunkering down, he made sure their lines weren't touching and then nodded. "Light 'em up."

"You're corrupting me," Angel said with a laugh as she knelt beside Wade. She was perfectly okay with that fact, of course. She clapped her hands together for a moment, wanting to savor the moment - oh hell! Forget this, she just wanted to blow something up. She focused on the ends of the det cords in front of her, grinning when the lines caught fire and started sizzling. This was going to be epic.