xp_logs | Fires From The Ashes

Ororo's team faces cyborg alternates in a literal brush with death.

The buildings around them were barely standing, and the marketplace was quickly clearing of people. It was hard to tell who was injured, and who needed assistance, but before that could even be assessed, a shimmering light filled the area. When it cleared, the rubble was dotted here and there with twisted metal and the smoking wreck of a burned out car, jigsawed together in ways that just didn't fit.

As they cleared their eyes, it became clear that not only were they not alone, but that the light was accompanied by a cluster of people, moving to take cover. Faster than they could react, a rainstorm swept down the street, pelting them with icy rain and pinpricks of hail. In the midst of the unexpected downpour they could hear a familiar lightly accented voice giving commands, as through ordering a well-trained hunting dog - and then the pack of strangers was upon them, and it was blindingly clear that these strangers weren't at all.

Ororo had felt a shiver run across her skin as the rain began to hammer down on them - not from cold, which she barely felt, but from recognition, a feeling of knowing that this weather was not natural, that it came at the behest of a mutant much like her.

Or exactly like her. The silver mohawk was familiar, even if the copious facial tattoos were not; the white-clouded eyes were like looking into a mirror.

Wade stood very still for a moment as he scanned the people in front of him. Then he shifted forward just a little and slightly in front of the people who didn't have healing factors - which was almost everyone else - as he muttered, "Fuck me - I do not look happy to be over there - why am I wearing a leash? Ladybird, just FYI, leashes aren't exactly my thing. Also, why is there so much blue spandex?" The not-him standing quietly - quietly - beside the redhead in white-grey who held his leash turned right then to stare at him and it was, quite possibly, the most unnerving thing he'd ever experienced. Half of his face was nothing but scars, like he'd been badly burned. His eyes were clear, though - sort of. They looked pretty flat.

Callisto's eyes found the other her pretty quickly, a slight smirk playing over her lips as she took in the same shaggy hair, the identical leather-and-denim-and-knives motif, the old familiar eye-patch, the surly Callisto-pout, and the fact that other Callisto actually looked a lot better than she did, free of the patchwork of scarring that now covered most of this Callisto's body.

On the other hand, it took a moment for North to recognise himself, given that all that seemed to be left recognizable on his person was a pair of blue eyes, dead and lifeless. The rest of his face was masked and his body covered mostly by a strange, dark metallic armour - No, wait. The precog blinked against an assault of images as his powers kicked in somewhat belatedly.

Not armor them. Cybernetics.

Cammie normally wore street clothes, no matter what the situation. The woman with her hair and eyes? Was dressed like a stereotypical ninja, her lower face masked and all. She wore no bandages on her left arm but it was just as green as Cammie's if not more so, turning black near the finger tips.

Cammie just stared.

"Holy fucking shit weasels," she muttered.

Marie-Ange was silent, her face set in calm concentration, if you overlooked the irregular twitch in her eye as she pulled card after card from her pockets. "I need cover. A lot of cover."

"Covering fire, covering distraction, covering physically?" Callisto muttered, glancing briefly sideways at the other woman.

"All of the above," Ororo murmured in a voice that could nonetheless be heard by everybody in the group. "Everybody up against their counterpart - I want as long a delay as possible as Marie-Ange does her work."

North unholstered his guns a half second count before his cyborg counterpart swung around the sniper rifle that had been hanging on his back and took a quick aim. The German man blinked at the vision in his head of his doppelgangers arm shifting back to reveal a machine gun and allowed himself to scowl. What the actual fuck.

Without looking at anyone, the marksman turned and sprinted away, leading the deadly spray of bullets away from his teammates and trying to get a shot in edgewise. Vaguely, North wondered if the other North had precognition. The thought didn't go very far as he turned flipside, leaned back mid air and fired a clean shot at Cyborg North's left eye.

There was a searing pain in his right shoulder as he landed painfully behind building corner, but North paid it no mind as his bullet hit its target dead centre.

It should have been a quick death, but what he saw next in his head chilled him to the bone and the spy scrambled ungracefully to his feet as his counterpart paused, stumbled back from the impact and then cracked his neck and continued advancing, his one good eye trained intently in North's direction.

Taking a deep breath Cammie rushed forward, whoever her alt was did so at the exact same way. Suddenly, she was thankful for all the extra fighting training she had over the years because evil!Cammie didn't fuck around. They met at the halfway line. Poison wouldn't work, so this was a brutal fist fight. The first blow clocked Cammie, but she gave as good as she got.

"Do not hesitate to shoot through my images." Marie-Ange's voice was toneless as she ducked behind a overturned market stall. The wind whipped the canvas walls up and tore them away from the wood frame. They twisted wildly and then a gust ripped them away completely, flattening them with a smack against an immense white figure. The headless statue's wings flapped madly, and it stomped forward.

Wade grunted his response rather than attempting words because both he and not-him had drawn guns and started firing. They mirrored one another perfectly - aside from the scars on not-him's face, the only major difference between the two of them was the leash now hanging limply down the other version's back. Duck, weave, fire, duck, find cover, fire, fire, fire, duck. It was eerie, the way they matched one another - even more so when they both dove from cover and flung knives at one another before dodging again.

As the Wades were with guns, so were the Callistos with knives. Other Callisto was taken aback, at first, by her counterpart's appearance, giving the slightest of starts as Callisto drew closer, but it wasn't long before they were running full-tilt toward one another, dodging each other's thrown weapons 'til they were in range and then launching at one another, tumbling to the ground in a scuffle, skinny limbs tangling 'til it was nigh-on impossible to tell which of them was which. Apparently Callisto had thought that abandoning their usual acrobatic mixed-martial combat style for some down-and-dirty wrastlin' would throw the other woman off. Unfortunately, Callisto apparently had the exact same idea. Who'da thunk it.

The two Ororos rose to the sky; perhaps thankfully, neither called down rain nor lightning in their duel since it would have been all but pointless. Instead they sent gust after gust of howling wind at one another, hoping to knock their opponent from the sky or at least disorient them long enough to draw near. This caused the more unstable debris from the surrounding buildings to shower down, obliging those on the ground to dodge out of the way of larger pieces as they crashed to the ground.

Wade had engaged the not-him with a classic tackle. Not-him had countered with a skillful roll to dislodge him and followed it up with an attempt at crushing the vertebrae of Wade's neck with his elbow. But Wade had seen that coming and blocked it - they were literally anticipating every move. It would have been really fucking awesome, actually, if not-him's eyes weren't mostly vacant. It was like he was on autopilot or something - and he kept twitching toward the redhead in white. Wade was pretty sure he knew about her but it was tangential, a niggle at the back of his mind.

And then all the hair on his body stood on end. Both he and his alt froze mid-move, knife edges gleaming brightly, before looking at one another and half-smiling. "This is gonna be interesting," they said in unison as the static electricity in the air suddenly vanished. They looked up at their respective Storms and then glanced back at one another. Wade really needed to find Marie-Ange. Her hulking headless angel was still stomping around, but if the holes in it were any indication, it wouldn't hold up much longer.

The headless statue kept moving forward, striding through debris, rather than around. It's implacable progress was not halted, even when the other Deadpool pulled out a lopsided lump of something, and fastballed it right into the centre of the statue. It collided and then small paff of explosion made the image shudder and slump, and then it reformed itself in mid-step, though smaller and rougher edged than before.

The angel met its counterpart head on as the grey, chitinous monster grew up out of the street, and the two colossal images grappled like wrestlers, until the enormous buglike monster took the angel off it's feet and slammed it down onto the road.

The more the fight between Cammie and her silent, naruto-fuck of an alt progressed the dirtier it got. Hair pulling, scratches, grabbing clothes. It was obvious that her alt thought the same thing she did - that there was no such thing as dirty in a fight.

Both of them were panting, the movements a bit slower. Despite what happened in the movies a fullblown fist fight never lasted that long. You either found an opening and took the pot or you kept going until someone made a mistake borne of fatigue. Thinking fast, Cammie pulled out a move her alt couldn't match and spit right in her face. She didn't bother biting her cheek first. It wouldn't have made a difference, besides it was unnecessary. As her mouth was already bleeding.

The spit hit her alt right on target and Cammie exploited the split second opening with the start of one of the most brutal beat downs she had ever delivered anyone. Even when her alt was on the ground and no longer moving, Cammie kept up, kicking her in the mask until her boot was covered thick in black blood.

"Take that you doppelganger fuck!" Cammie shouted, "Only I get to be me! You hear that?! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!"

Both Callistos were battered and bloodied now. Other Callisto appeared to have the upper-hand, having pinned her scarred double to the ground, straddling her and systematically punching her face, looking more irritated and bored than anything else that Callisto showed no signs of politely falling unconscious. Eventually, Callisto seemed to go limp, and Other Callisto sat back, drawing a knife from the small of her back and smirking down at the prone woman beneath her.

"Well, this was anticlimactic," Other Callisto commented, suggesting a command of the language this universe's Callisto had never quite mastered. Lifting the knife.

As was so often the case with Callisto, a few things seemed to happen all at once right then. First, Callisto's eyes opened. Catching Other Callisto in that split second, while her momentum was all in the downward strike of her knife-hand, a twist from the woman beneath her converted the motion, pitching her sideways at exactly the moment that a massive chunk of debris came crashing to the ground - right on top of her. Like the proverbial wicked witch, the jeans-clad, biker-booted legs were left sticking out from beneath the masonry, still sprawled on top of Callisto... and then faded out of existence entirely.

Callisto, still dazed and lying on her back, frowned down at the space where her double's legs used to be. "...Huh."

Overheard the weather witches still dueled; the winds were ragged now, a howling mess of gusts and eddies that made even staying aloft an uncertain prospect. Each woman desperately tried to call as much electricity to herself, though it was very much like trying to pull against a solid wall; equally matched, there was no way for them to outdo one another and so they were left at a standstill, silver hair bristling on end as they stared at each other through clouded eyes.

And then Ororo felt it; a flicker of energy leeching away at her call. Hungrily she grasped it, pulling harder, and then it was as if the wall had crumbled and the wave of electricity was upon her. As soon as she was able to she gathered it together and sent it at her double in a thick, heavy bolt which lanced through the sky and exploded in a near-instantaneous crack of thunder. When it cleared, the other woman was gone.

The persistent and searing pain in his shoulder told North that he had been shot, but he paid neither the pain nor the blood dripping down his arm any mind as he doubled back and launched over one of Marie-Ange's images and directly at his counterpart, spinning away at the last minute so that he could grab the damn cyborg's machine gun arm with both of his and point it directly in his face.

North didn't need his visions to know that sheer force would work the moment his hands curved around the other man. Cyborg!Maverick was all metal and no give. The machine gun went off as predicted, another spray of bullets he hurriedly sent in Wade's direction, setting off car and building arms alike before the spy kicked up (change of plans!), displaced the large knife in his boot. He caught it neatly in an unbloodied hand, not hesitating in the slightest before he spun to the back, jammed it up the back of the head of his opponent and gave it a vicious twist.

A shower of bright sparks went up, forcing the spy to roll away to safety and collapse behind a wailing car. Its rearview mirror showed that the cyborg was gone, but the spy was quickly distracted by the blood seeping through his abdomen, shirt clinging uncomfortably to another set of fresh bullet wounds. Goddamnit. It was one of his favourite shirts too.

Half of Wade's attention was on the not-him. A quarter of it was on Marie-Ange. An eighth of it was on the statue still standing and the bug thing. A sixteenth of it was on the redhead in white who - yes, looked just like Marie-Ange. And the last little sixteenth was zooming around paying attention to everything else - like a ping pong ball on speed and possibly meth.

Hand-to-hand was all muscle memory for him. He had to assume it was the same for his counterpart. There was no reason to doubt that given how evenly matched they were. The two of them met again, handguns holstered, knives sheathed. They moved smoothly from one martial art to another, the overt violence of Sambo countered by the smooth, elegant locks and attempted breaks of Aikido. They seemed to find a happy place with Krav Maga but discarded that for Odbrana and then Dambe.

Around and around they went, engaging and disengaging, trapping one another with flurries of hits and blocks, sliding through forms and dredging up techniques Wade had used in at least a decade. The dance continued - until not-him moved out of sync, flicked his wrist, and released a throwing knife that he then attempted to throw at Marie-Ange.

Wade broke his alternate's wrist before he could actually throw the knife, taking the blade in his forearm to make sure it couldn't go anywhere else. The snap of bone was audible. As was the bizarre little noise not-him made. "Er..." Wade blinked before throat punching his alt and crushing his windpipe. Not-him smiled. Wade blinked again. "Er?"

The other Wade rolled his neck, which popped several times, and then flicked some razor blades out from somewhere under all that spandex. By the little lines of red seeping out, they might've been under his skin, too. He popped them at Wade, mouthing little air kisses as he did. "Nice. Not as nice as my ladybird, but so nice." He said, in a rough whisper that crackled and popped.

"What are you even," Wade asked, moving his arm so the razors hit the back of his wrist and the metal plate he'd added to protect his forearms. "My ladybird is so much better than yours. For one - fashion sense. Hello, hotness in heels," he said, frowning as he noticed small bugs creeping out of cracks in the asphalt. They were all... coming toward him. Yeck.

"No." The other Wade shook his head and stuck out his tongue, waggling it back and forth. "Not hot.." He swung wildly, aimlessly at Wade, all flailing fists and headbutts and snapping teeth, each move blocked and countered until he was pressed right up again Wade. He laughed off another jab to his throat, and giggled as he found himself locked up in an armbar. "No, no, she's as cold as ice... she's willing to sacrifice.." he sung, whispery cracked voice off-key and off-tempo. He grimaced, twisted his body, and his locked arm snapped, shoulder dislocating and relocating as he grabbed the leash that had been tucked up in the collar of his spandex and got it around Wade's neck, choking both of them.

The bugs skittered over both men, pinching and stinging and melting into hot acid goop before merging and regrowing, until what was left were a score of fist sized evil looking insects. The sky above them went dark as two immense, night-black ravens soared down, each bigger then either Wade. They circled the two men silently once and then swept down, plucking the giant bugs off both Wades with perfect silent precision.

Wade gave up on trying to breathe for a second, singing along with not-him in his head. He knew the song - liked it, even. But there was no way he'd ever sing it in regards to Marie-Ange. He finally broke free, snapping the leash and twisting around so his hand caught in the collar at the nape of other-Wade's neck. "Don't you know," he said, only wheezing a little. "Everything hurts worse when you can feel the burn?" Despite the scrabbling at his hands and the intense attempts to dislodge him, Wade forced his alternate to his knees and then snapped his neck. From what he could tell based on the windpipe regrowth, this other Wade's healing factor was a lot better than his own. Which sucked, but whatever. It'd take him at least three minutes to mend the bone. Probably.

Looking up, he caught sight of his ladybird and the other ladybird - just in time for not-Marie-Ange to cock her head slightly to the side and smile. It was a small smile but it definitely sent a chill down his spine and left him feeling like he completely understood why not-him was so on about her being cold as ice. So he stepped on not-him's neck and ground his heel a bit. The huge bug finally dissolved in a shower of acidic ectoplasm - and when had ladybird's ectoplasm started doubling as acid? It was so good his ladybird's didn't do that or she wouldn't be able to get him out of priest holes anymore.

Not-Marie-Ange literally tutted at him and then said something in French that he didn't understand before a shower of razor blades like the ones still embedded in his forearm protector rained down at him. The razor blades occupied him for a moment, but they dissolved quickly and when he looked up again, a massive grotesque angel grew out of the ground. It was followed a moment later by a stained glass version of the Virgin Mary.

The images grappled for a moment, glass arms shattering and reforming into great sharp spikes that cut the fresco plaster angel down bit by bit. They rained acid and watery goo on the Wades as they fought. As the stained glass cut down it's opponent, the acid rain gave way to the cleaner goo, until all that fell was slippery ooze.

And then the angel fell, all at once, and the wave of goop was so that it splashed up over Wade's feet, and then retreated like the tide. He heard a pop, like a car backfiring, and rolled away to keep from being stepped on by the ten foot tall mighty figure of Bea Arthur, wielding a shotgun as long as her own arm.

Both Wades drew up short, the one with his broken leash dangling about his his shoulders and the other with a smile on his lips. "Dude," they said in unison, both staring up at Bea Arthur.

"I want one," the alternate Wade breathed.

"She's from a comic," Wade said.

"I want one of those, too," the other Wade replied.

"My ladybird's got 'em for me."

"We don't have comics anymore."

"Sucks to be you," Wade murmured, glancing at his alternate with something akin to pity in his eyes. "Seriously, dude. That sucks."

"Yeah," the alternate Wade said, nodding slowly. He halfheartedly chucked a throwing knife at Wade, the blade easily avoided.

Wade didn't respond. It seemed like, for the most part, all these alternate thems were meaner and nastier and overall he was pretty glad he'd wound up where he was if that was who he'd've been dealing with otherwise. "Right, man, this is gonna be pretty epic."

He knew Marie-Ange couldn't make functioning guns with her illusions, but that didn't mean the images couldn't wield things like batons - which is essentially what Bea started doing. She laid into the stained glass Mary with that shotgun like it was going out of style, using moves he was pretty sure he'd shown his ladybird a few months ago. It was remarkably like bojutsu, only the shotgun wasn't as long as a fighting stick would be - it was heftier, though.

Through some sort of silent agreement, both Wades began making their way through the sticky mess of goo toward their respective Marie-Anges, all attempts to kill one another halted because they, whatever else they might be, were more concerned with keeping her alive than anything else. They hadn't made it more than a few steps, though, before they both paused again and turned to face a man approaching from their left.

Hello, the man said, fingers moving through the ASL words with ease, bare chest gleaming despite the debris beginning to whirl around all of them in the chaos of angry illusions.

"Sup?" The Wades chorused as the man continued forward. His skin was dark, covered in tattoos and scars. He wore a do-rag and when he smiled, it was wide - genuine. The real Wade was very glad Marie-Ange had taught him ASL - it'd been so he could communicate more easily with Artie, but it was coming in handy here.

You're not supposed to be here, the man signed to the Wade in the blue spandex, his hands moving calmly - almost soothingly. "We figured that out," the other Wade said, indicating his ladybird.

Let me help you fix that, the man signed, a scythe dropping into his hand from thin air.

Wade knew what was going to happen - apparently so did his alternate, because not-him just looked aside as the scythe sliced toward him. One moment he stood there whole, the next his head had been cleaved from his shoulders and was soaring through the sky. The scythe disappeared and the man moved without seeming to move. Somehow, he was where he needed to be to catch the other Wade's head before it could hit the ground.

You can leave the body, he signed to Wade, not-him's head tucked under his arm now as he began to walk through the ever-growing haze of acidic and non-acidic goo toward the redhead in white.

Bea was losing. Each swing of the shotgun was slower than the one before, and the image had great gaping rents where it's the stained glass opponent had clawed at it.

Marie-Ange was losing - she'd curled herself under an overturned auto to control her images - keeping her own from trampling her, Wade - and the others was - it was impossible. She was doing an impossible thing, this dance of teammates and boyfriend and images and evil alternates from a place she'd only heard described by Molly Hayes and Remy LeBeau.

She could feel her grasp on the image slipping away, the idea of it growing mushy in her mind, and with it, the image itself growing soft and deformed. She felt it when the other her's image tore chunks out of hers, and her wail of pain broke through the noise of the fight.

The stained glass image swiped at the Amazonian Bea Arthur with broken-glass fingers, and Bea's face twisted with the same pain and frustration that Marie-Ange's did. The jagged glass cut Bea across her chest, tearing her open, and Bea screamed silently in sync with Marie-Ange's screams of frustration and pain and fear - but she also stood fast, her feet not moving even though she was almost cut neck to navel. The shotgun turned club rose one last time, swinging for home like Casey at the Bat - but it struck true.

Shattered glass rained down on the street, becoming drops of dilute acid as both images dissolved.

Marie-Ange waited, counting her own breaths, and listening to the fight around her. Cammie's indignant cries, Ororo's windstorms - and nothing else - but she kept counting.

She got to five before the car she'd picked as her hiding spot was pulled away and tossed aside by a hand armored in black steel.

Marie-Ange curled in farther on herself, and the armored colossus raised its hand to pound her flat. But as the gauntlet came down, without even opening her eyes Marie-Ange's hand came up, interposing itself between the knight and her. Just an open hand against a mass of over-sized armor - and she caught the gauntlet in her hand.

Between one glance and the next the the man Wade had been following morphed into a woman, hair long and curled and streaked with blonde. She wore a string bikini, blood from the other Wade's neck stump dripping down her side, and she was as covered in tattoos and scars as the man she'd been a moment ago.

Wade stopped walking, the woman continued on, approaching the other Marie-Ange despite the battle raging. The tattooed woman paused off to the side just a bit and tilted her head, then cupped her hand over the severed head's hair and smiled. She waved her fingers just a little to get the woman in white's attention, then offered her the head, the collar still wrapped securely around the stub of the neck, its broken leash dangling.

For a spit second, the other Marie-Ange stopped everything she was doing to stare at the severed head. Shadows crept up her face, although her hood did not move, and then she pushed the woman's hand away. "We burn dead pets, we do not bury them." She said, crisply - and then turned away.

Marie-Ange stood slowly and deliberately, pushing the gauntlet easily above her head, the knight that not-Marie-Ange had created standing immobile but for the push. Then Marie-Ange turned, a graceful pirouette that put her back to the breastplate and brought the knight's arms around her like those of a lover, before she crumpled back to the ground, unconscious.

And then the knight straightened, rolling its shoulders back and turning toward not-Marie-Ange. Its armor seemed to glimmer as it turned, shifting from matte black to a more burnished gray, and a two-handed broadsword appeared in its hands. Down near the crossguard, a single Norse rune was stamped in the blade - an upward-pointing arrow.

If Marie-Ange had been conscious, and prone to banter the way Wade was, she might have tossed off a remark about how knights were her jam. But instead, the knight moved silently forward and brought the broadsword crashing down in an overhead strike against not-Marie-Ange, leaving nothing but a crumpled white robe behind.

Wade had been oddly entranced by the other Marie-Ange's reaction to her Wade's severed head, particularly since the neck seemed to have started regenerating from the slice down and that might actually be partial ligaments and muscle that he was watching reform. Still, he noticed the knight's attack on his Marie-Ange and was moving without conscious thought again - only it didn't seem to be quite as necessary as he'd feared except... he had no idea what she'd just done. That was some quality Disney Princess-esque transformation going on there, though. Or maybe Sailor Moon was a better analogy.

It was as he skidded to his knees beside Marie-Ange that the mercenary glanced back over his shoulder and saw the woman in the string bikini had followed him. She had wide eyes and her expression was solemn, though friendly, a smile curving her lips upward as she approached them. The other Wade had completely dissolved despite the regeneration that had been going on, neither his head nor his body remaining, which left the pretty pretty princess knight and his awesome sword standing there.

I can't stay much longer, she the woman signed, her brows rising. I've been very busy in India recently. Her image flickered briefly - the man stood there, his jeans hanging low on his hips, his chest still bare, and then it was the woman again. Remember me this time.

Wade nodded, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was agreeing to as he checked Marie-Ange's pulse.

Remember, too, that those who are gone are never truly lost, the woman continued. The blood on her hands had begun to dry, flaking off from the creases in her palms as her fingers flew through the signs. I have a warlord I need to visit in Somalia. Look after one another. I'm very fond of you both. She makes a lovely assistant.

"Uh huh," Wade said, nodding again as he dug through a pouch on his belt for a pill. The woman blew them each a kiss off the tips of her fingers - and then disappeared. He couldn't even find it within himself to be any more baffled than he already was. He just focused on finding the caffeine pills he'd stashed and breaking one in half so he could tuck on piece under each side of Marie-Ange's tongue before he lifted her up as he got to his feet.

Turning to catch sight of everyone else, he counted them off in his head - everyone accounted for except North. If that bastard was dead - but no, no, there his boots were and they were sort of moving. A little. Wade wouldn't let himself thinking about death spasms and things as he carried Marie-Ange over to the car behind which North lay. "Goddammit, Mav," he muttered, kneeling so he could put his girlfriend down before he started trying to count and plug all of the other man's bullet holes.

Marie-Ange woke coughing, and rolled to spit out the bitter paste in her mouth. A harsh query to Wade was on the tip of her tongue, until she saw him wrapping a bandage around North's arm. Two-person job, trying to get David to stay still so they could hold pressure to the unbandaged wounds and tape down the bandages on the rest. Especially with the creeping visions in the corner of her eye, flashing lights and ghost faces. "Storm! We need to get out now! Maverick is injured!"