Higher Than Hope: Holocaust, Emma, Wade (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Emma and Wade cross paths with Holocaust in the kitchen. Obviously a food fight is the next logical step.


Somehow, in the confusion of running people, screaming people, panicking people and the occasional outbreak of bleeding among what she thought of as the hoi polloi, Emma found herself and Wade pushed out of the main room of the party and back into the kitchens, where confused waitstaff and chefs were staring at the doors, through which was coming the sound of a running battle. The more savvy among them were already fleeing towards the door that obviously led into the service area behind the building.

"Stay here or back into there?" Emma asked Wade, nodding at the swinging doors that led back to the smoking remains of the party.

Shrugging out of his suit jacket, Wade rolled up the sleeves on his dress shirt so the knives strapped to his forearms would be within easy reach and nodded toward the door. "Tarot and our little trenchcoat dude who needs a codename got pulled that way, so let's check out the main room, see if we can't find ourselves an Archduke to poke some holes in." He undid the buttons keeping the handguns in his shoulder holsters secure and glanced toward Emma. "So you can pick his brains."

Emma made a delicate moue of displeasure. “It will be a sewer in there. It’s always a sewer in there. I always need a long, hot shower afterwards. Though,” she broke off as the kitchen door began to swing open. “We may not actually have to do any searching...”

The figure that appeared in the kitchen doorway was large, imposing and hovering slightly off the ground. The Archduke - no, Holocaust - was furious, his eyes glowing with pent-up fury and his power. "You dare?" he hissed venomously at the pair of X-Forcers. "You have no idea what you've done by coming here tonight!"

"What, ate all the shrimp cocktails and drank all the champagne?" Wade asked, expression all innocence even as he stepped in front of Emma and pulled his weapons with a smile. "Hey, man, sorry about that. But it is a party." He knew there was a very good chance none of his conventional weapons were going to do any good, but at least this fight would be interesting.

“Rather a good one, actually,” said Emma, edging carefully and not too obtrusively behind one of the kitchen benches. She had much preferred the idea of skimming his mind from outside his field of vision. She presumed that anyone who had the poor taste to name themselves Holocaust wouldn’t have the mutant power of changing the colour of paint or being able to talk to kittens. Staying out of organic diamond form might prove dangerous. Being of a rather practical bent, she also took the opportunity to grasp the handle of the large frypan that had been left on the bench she was taking advantage of. Just in case his powers involved some form of telepathy, the waft she sent towards the remaining kitchen staff to convince them to leave (now!) was the merest touch of her mind on the astral breeze. “I always enjoy an open bar and the canapés were better than the usual standard”.

Holocaust let the kitchen staff go - they were innocents in this and he had no interest in harming them. These two, however, and the rest of their group... "So very droll," he replied, pulling back his cuffs slightly and raising his hands. Some kind of energy signature crackled over his knuckles. "I do hope you enjoy the after-party entertainment as much." Blue-tinged energy erupted from his fists, aimed directly at Wade.

To dodge the beam of blue, crackly energy coming at him or not to dodge the beam of blue, crackly energy coming at him - that was the question. Since Emma needed her non-sparkly form for the telepathy, Wade decided not to dodge, pulling his handguns instead. Within seconds of the light hitting him, though, Wade could tell that this wasn't a form of energy projection he was particularly familiar with. "Well, shit," he said, voice almost conversational as he started shooting. "This is going to be uncomfortable in the morning. But I don't think I'm gonna be the one doing the walk of shame."

If there was something Emma didn’t particularly enjoy, it was needing to skim the mind of energy projectors during running battles. But, needs must when the devil drives and all of those clichés. Or, more appropriately, she thought, weighing the contents of the frypan in her hand, if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. With that, and noting that Wade’s bullets didn’t seem to be making any particular impression on Holocaust, Emma grasped the handle with both hands and swung as hard as she could, flinging the bubbling hot paella in an arc at the man in the doorway. At the same time, she stabbed out with her mind hard and wasn’t at all surprised to find enough rudimentary shields to make her telepathy skitter off the hard surfaces. ~I’ll need about five minutes to get through his shields,~ she sent to Wade. ~Also, food fight!~

Wade laughed despite the fact that he'd sort of lost feeling in his midsection. That never boded well. You got it, McSparkles, he thought at Emma, holstering his guns and reaching for a pot of what looked like some sort of sauce. He dipped a finger in before tossing the whole thing at the energy projector. "Hey," he asked, reaching for another pot. "Are you related to the Russians? I feel like you might be."

Emma had scored a hit with the paella, and while the heat didn't effect Holocaust, the stains on his extremely expensive tux did. With a roar he sent a blast at Emma with one fist, before charging at Wade, flinging aside the pot incoming at him as he did.

It was pure instinct that saved Emma, as she flung the now empty frypan up in front of her face, between her and the energy blast. She flickered diamond for a second, hidden behind the pan, but then realised that no splash of energy made it past the metal. Flickering back to organic, she stabbed her telepathy out again, the majority of it scrabbling across Holocaust’s shields, searching for weaknesses, but enough left over to send a message to Wade, glad that they were familiar enough that her telepathy wouldn’t distract him from the fight. ~Try and get metal between you and the blast,~ she sent. ~I think there’s a chance...~ She cut herself off for a second, as she concentrated fully on the first tiny crack she found in the shields. ~Get him to shoot you!~ she flung desperately at Wade, hoping he’d understand, even as she turned her whole mind to her telepathic task.

Getting the guy to shoot him wasn't really going to be a problem, so far as Wade could tell. He revised his opinion, though, when Holocaust engaged physically. So he licked his finger, gave silent props to the chef cause that sauce was tasty, and decided to see if his numb and probably super damaged abdominal muscles would work for a duck and weave and kick and trip combo. He'd gotten a picture of a microwave in his head and so he assumed... the blue stuff had to do with microwaves and that probably meant he'd gotten cooked some. "I am going to make the tastiest treat ever."

"Enough of this foolishness. You have invaded my function, disturbed my guests, irritated me with your attempts at humor..." Holocaust reached Wade, both fists glowing and aimed directly at the mercenary's face. "You would regret your intrusion, but you won't live that long." And with that, he unleashed the pent-up energy at Wade.

Wade dropped to the ground like his life depended on it. Well, maybe not his life. But at least his face. He didn't pause to see where the beam of blue light hit, rolling to the side and reaching for a large, silver serving platter. And that was where he stopped, peering around the side of the platter he now held in front of himself. "He's all yours, McSparkles."

Emma sent a slightly agonised glance in Wade’s direction, as she kept chipping away at Holocaust’s shields, but that glance told her all she needed to know. Holocaust was sending another blast of energy at Wade and there was just enough splash and bounce of blue off the silver platter to show that the energy was reflected off the metal. One of the many benefits of owning Frost Enterprises and having a personal interest in much of the technology that originated within the firm was a very good grasp of the physics of microwaves, metal and diamonds. ~Have a plan,~ she sent to Wade, dumping the picture of what she intended to do inside his head. ~Just need a few more seconds...~ Holocaust’s shields were starting to unravel under her determined telepathic assault but Emma still needed to find the information she needed. ~Throw whatever you’ve got at him.~ Emma made it clear exactly how literal her words were when she reached out with her questing hand and found the nearest knife block. Without even attempting to aim for any kind of damage, she grabbed knife after knife out of the block, throwing them wildly in the direction of their attacker, rapidly following it with a jar of... it broke against the man’s suit, splashed green and filled the air with the strong scent of basil – pesto.

Crouched as he was behind the oversized platter, Wade took a moment to evaluate his middle - abdominal region generally painless but reddened and blistering. That didn't bode well for the after effects of this whole endeavor. "I've pretty much decided," Wade said, standing up while maintaining the platter's advantageous, shield-like position, "That you're basically dead inside." He lobbed a bundle of romaine lettuce at Holocaust and wished rich people would just buy a regular head of lettuce - they had more heft. "I mean, not only do you have no sense of humor," the platter had begun sparking, just like a fork in a microwave, "but you obviously have no sense of, like, appropriateness or irony or style. Dude, you called yourself Holocaust. Who does that? It's tacky. And considering nobody's ever even heard of this country thanks to the Russians, who gained control of the whole fucking Eastern block because of the Holocaust, you sort of just look like a massive douchecanoe." He'd been throwing random objects at the man, not that it was doing him any good, but he finally just hurled the platter because it'd gotten too hot to hold, anyway, and it had some substance to it.

Wade dove for the oven, a big metal monstrosity of a contraption, opened a cupboard, and started pulling pots and pans from beneath it to toss while Emma did her thing.

A burst of energy took care of the platter, melting it to slag. There was no dignity to this, and it irked Holocaust beyond reason. He was a leader among men, a would-be mutant messiah, and these people were throwing food at him? "Don't speak of what you cannot possibly understand!" he bellowed at Wade, following up with a series of microwave blasts as he dove for the oven. "And you will find you are more dead inside than I!" Another blast, catching the metal counter in front of Emma.

That actually got another laugh from Wade as he lay on the floor. "Sicker men than you have tried to kill me, you frumpy Hitler wannabe. They didn't manage it and, no matter how many beams of sparkly blue light you send my way, you won't either." He pushed himself up using only his arms, unwilling to trust the muscles in his middle, and popped his head over the counter to get a bead on Holocaust. The mercenary tossed another pot, this one cast iron and bottom-heavy, at the other man. "Besides, I've probably got a better grasp of world history where wars are concerned than anybody else you'll ever meet - when I tell you you're a fucking asshole for doing something stupid, you should probably just accept it and move on to your next bit of personal drama. Did mommy not love you enough? Wife cuckold you? Do you have an inferiority complex? Are you overcompensating? I think you are, dude - you're like a classic megalomaniac. You've even got the brainwashed minions."

The pot struck Holocaust in the shoulder, and he staggered back a little, not from pain but from the weight interfering with his balance. "My 'minions' as you call them are here of their own choice," he retorted. "They want to help me create a haven for mutants, instead of kowtowing to their genetic inferiors, fearful for their freedom and their lives! I recognise their talents - ALL of their talents - and they believe in our cause with all of their hearts and souls!" The next blast melted the linoleum in front of Wade, turning it into a bubbling, black mess.

"Oh, great," Wade said, rolling his eyes before ducking and elbow crawling farther away. He needed heavier pots. "You're one of the totalitarians who pretends to believe his own rhetoric. Have you hit the part of dictatorship where you start taking pills? Drinking? Has the insomnia set in yet? Killing all those kids who didn't toe your line in the sand has to have had some kind of impact on you mentally. Unless you're a psychopath. I'm betting on that one."

That was it. Holocaust's eyes blazed with blue flame, a blue-white nimbus of microwave energy surrounding. "WILL YOU SHUT UP!" he roared, everything - his power, his attention, his fury - focussed on Wade as he unleashed a massive ball of energy at Wade, heedless of anything else.

Emma wasn't sure why she bothered doing the work, really. Dig away at shields, work on tiny cracks, break open some fairly formidable natural shields as well as some tailored ones on top, use the telepathic skills she'd honed for all those years with remarkable finesse... or let Wade talk to them for a couple of minutes and watch all those shields blow out in screaming rage, leaving Holocaust's mind wide, wide open. Either would do, she supposed. With a deft swoop, she cast her telepathy like a net through the Archduke's mind, tucking a couple of tidbits away in her memory as she sieved, and then found the information she needed. Reaching out she found Marie-Ange and inserted the safehouse locations into her head. ~Done,~ she sent, as an aside to Wade, whose mind was a chaos of some of the more interesting sections of the dictionary (those ones you looked up as a child and giggled over) as various bits of the kitchen melted around him (and she had to accept that various bits of Wade were possibly melting as well) under the onslaught of microwaves.

Emma had, at least, the good grace not to saunter her way to Wade's rescue. It was hardly fair to do so when (a) Holocaust had essentially forgotten her existence in his need to destroy her mouthy colleague and (b) Emma had a number of advantages against the Archduke's powers. So she did run to the largest fridge in the kitchen - a stainless steel monstrosity - and opened it fast, riffling through it to find the most offensive item she could think of to throw at their enemy. She gave the resulting item, a really quite large salmon, a few swings to build up speed and then threw it as hard as she could, directly at the Archduke's head.

As he staggered back from the piscine assault, Emma added insult to (non-existent) injury. "It's the problem with tinpot dictators," she said, coolly. "All the good intentions, all the dead subjects."

Holocaust looked down at the salmon on the floor, and then at Emma, shocked for a moment out of his rage, stunned that she would actually throw a fish at him.

"Who are you people?" he demanded. Then he shrugged. It didn't matter, not really. Not when he was going to reduce them to ashes. He lifted his fists and levelled a blast of microwave energy fully at the blonde woman.

Wade sent out a brief (but loud) mental jab, something to do with turkey, just so Emma would know he was out of the way, then laid in the wreckage of the kitchen, palpitating his midsection while he waited for the light show to really begin.

Emma noted Wade's message, pleased he was out of the way of what was likely to be reasonably unpleasant. The blue crackles of energy heading towards her seemed to almost be in slow motion as she assessed everything she needed to do. With a neat slice of diamond-tipped fingers, she slit open the laces of her corset, shrugging it off her shoulders even as the leading edge of energy came almost close enough to feel against her skin. She still had time to register the slightly shocked expression on Holocaust's face and his suddenly inchoate thoughts as she bared her perfect breasts at him, but it disappeared as her skin sparkled into diamond form and the energy passed through her. It was a strange sensation, but then everything always was when she was in diamond form. She didn't even move as the microwaves travelled through her, but remained as she was, a giant diamond lens: microwave window and microwave amplifier. The wave of energy did exactly as she'd expected, reflecting back off the stainless steel fridge behind her, back through her body again, amplified once more and blasting back to its creator, a mounting blue wave of amplified energy that struck the Archduke full in the face.

The previously indestructible man almost seemed to crumble, his hands clutching at his head as he sank down to his knees. His hands covered enough that Emma wasn't sure of the level of damage she'd inflicted, but there was smoke rising in wisps and tendrils and the noise coming from his throat would best be described as keening.

Emma stalked up to the man and kicked him in the thigh. It was impolite and petty, but she had the courtesy to shift back to flesh before she did it, and didn't connect particularly hard. It didn't stop the keening, or make him take his hands away from his face. "WE...," she hissed. "We are the people who beat you." She straightened up, stalked back to the tattered remains of her corset and slipped it back on, managing to tangle enough of the remaining laces together to qualify it as clothing again. "Or, actually, we're innocent bystanders who got caught up in a terrible fight at a party and barely escaped with our lives from a madman."

"You... are... dead..." the Archduke managed, smoke wisping through his fingers. His face, when he dropped his hands, was a hideous skull, flesh still smoldering in places. "I... will...find...you..."

"Take a number and join the fucking queue," responded Emma, harshly, as she stooped down and managed, with some help from the man himself, to drape Wade's arm over her shoulder and hoist him to his feet. "Or maybe make some different life choices. Like not running organ harvesting rackets. You might find that works out better for you." Not too slowly and keeping a careful telepathic ear out in case the Archduke didn't have the sense to cut and run but decided to start the fight again, she began to walk away from the wreckage. "How are you going?" she asked Wade quietly, as it became clear exactly how much weight he was resting on her shoulders.

Wade managed to snag his miraculously unscathed suit jacket as they passed it, saying, "My shirt is pretty much ruined." The flight home was going to be miserable. "He baconized me - Sammie and I don't match anymore," he continued sadly. There was a brief pause as they made it into the hallway before Wade raised his voice and called over his shoulder, "I'm still the tastiest treat."