Operation: Wonderwall Day 2
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xp_logsYesterday was Tuesday, but today is Tuesday too... Jubilee picks up the phone at Snow Valley, and it's one Simon Williams, trying to get in touch with Wanda.
The strains of whatever neutral "best of the 80s, 90s, and today!' radio station had replaced Muzak as the background noise of most stores and offices were mutedly playing in the front lobby of the Snow Valley Centre on a very slow Tuesday morning.
"...should be another hot one today. Anyway, here's Wonderwall."
~Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you...~
At the front desk, the phone rang, caller ID showing as the NYPD 6th Precinct.
"Good morning, you've reached the Snow Valley Centre, Emily speaking. How may I direct your call?"
Jubilee was only really in the office for the next few hours before she needed to head back to the mansion, but considering everyone else was currently working their tails off the least she could do was stick around to man the phone till Cammie got back.
"Wanda Maximoff," a cock-sure deep bass answered with haggard strain of someone who had not slept in entirely enough hours or at the hangover-end of a twelve hour bender.
"Of course, Sir. May I enquire what this call is in regards to?"
Jubilee's accent was perfect news presenter American English, no trace of her usual Californian valley girl. It had taken a great deal of time and effort from Doug and herself to get it right but she'd managed it in the end.
"Simon," and there was a short pause as if he was considering, "She knows me. We dated. Just put me through."
"I'm sure that's fine, Sir. Let me just check that she's available."
Jubilee put Simon on hold and dialed Wanda's number.
"Wanda, you got some crazy exhausted ex named Simon? He's like, totes phone stalking you."
"It is not phone stalking if I tell him to call me," Wanda laughed into the phone. "I am not sure whether to blame our line of work or you dating Kurt for what has apparently been longer than forever. Maybe both." She had been thinking of heading off to lunch but if Simon was calling - perhaps her lunch would be more interesting. She smiled a little and leaned back in her chair, wondering what on her calendar would need moving around this time.
"Put him through, Jubilee, and no trying to patch in to the phones to listen. I know everything and will know if you try."
There was a small beep as the call transferred.
"Wanda? Babe?"
Wanda's smile grew even as she winced slightly. He sounded a little rougher than normal. "Simon, to what do I owe the pleasure?" she said, her voice a little huskier than normal. "Please tell me you happen to be in town. Things have been far too boring for my taste."
"I..." The actual relief in his words was almost palpable, but there was a hesitant edge to them. "I am most definitely in New York. Remember that time I joked about punching Stark in his smug bastard face? Well."
"..." Wanda pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a moment. "You did not," she breathed. "Simon, what have I told you about acting on things said while naked?"
She brought up a news site on her screen and groaned. "You even made the news. Have you reached out to your lawyer?"
"No, I decided to use my one phone call for a chance to scratch 'prison hookup' off my bucket list."
A beat.
"Well, that doesn't sound half-bad, but babe you're literally," and he drew out the word in agitation, "the only number I could call that didn't go straight to voicemail or shoot me to a call center in India."
"Your sarcasm is only cute when I am not your apparently only way out of a tough situation, darling," Wanda drawled but there was no heat to her words. "I know I am the be all, end all but even that is pushing things. The only person you could reach? That seems ... highly unlikely." But she'd been living with highly unlikely happenings for nearly her entire life. She'd grown used to it.
"Who am I to argue with fate? My time is yours. Tell me what you need and I will work to make it happen." She smiled. "Outside of a jail break. I'm not yet that fond of you."
"My hero. Still, I need you to play assistant. I need cash for bail and to get out of here as soon as possible. I need my people in Cali. Unfortunately, carrying a wallet while at a premiere creates, well, inopportune bulges." He sighed at this, and there was some slightly muffled conversation as someone else in the room started snickering. …
"Anyway. I'm stuck here and far too pretty for the general population. Save me, babe. I'll buy you a sexy Captain America costume to wear to make it fun."
Despite the situation, Wanda laughed at that. "I cannot tell if I would be dressing up as Captain America for you or if you would be dressing up as Captain America for me. Shh, do not ruin the surprise. Either way will mean an interesting evening." She switched the phone to her other ear as she grabbed a pen and pad. "Consider this your rescue attempt. Tell me everything you can before they make you hang up on me. Who I should call and your backups just in case I too cannot get through."
He did.
A few minutes later, Wanda was gifted with a list of agency contacts and family lawyers, vague dance instructions for interacting with his publicist's anxiety triggers, and a few suggestions on anonymous tips she could feed TMZ about Tony Stark's fighting like a girl.
"I am on it. Just sit tight and ..." She gripped the phone and thought about the strange events Simon had described. Wanda had been doing her job long enough to trust her instincts and they were screaming at her. "Simon, darling, sit tight and be careful. I'll get this sorted and you will spend a very enjoyable evening paying me back."
Once off the phone, Wanda set to work.
This time Doug is the one to accompany Wanda to Simon's bail hearing. But there's a weird sense of deja vu, and a familiar face in the gallery...
"...all rise," the bailiff said in that sort of perfunctory but still formal tone of a ritual that they had performed over and over every day for years. "Docket ending 616404, People vs Simon Williams. Charge is assault in the first degree..."
"They certainly got him into court quickly," Wanda remarked quietly to Doug. "I suppose that is what happens when you assault a man worth more than God." She wouldn't normally even try to talk during a court hearing for fear of being reprimanded by the judge but it was hardly a quiet court room that day. It was like a circus in there, filled with press and people who thought they'd get to be close to Stark and who were probably disappointed that the man himself wasn't there.
The two had found a seat fairly close to the front but they were boxed in and Wanda was freely using her sharp elbows to give herself some breathing room. When she wasn't buying herself some space, she was rubbing idly at her temples. The low level headache seemed to be determined not to budge and the noise of the court room was not helping.
"The weird thing to me is that he couldn't get a hold of anyone. I mean, you said even his studio lawyers wouldn't take his calls?" Doug settled into his seat and watched the chaos around them. He was always a people-watcher, but especially at times like these, his brain trying to make sense and find patterns in it all.
"Studio lawyer, personal friends, no one. Until he tried me, hoping that if we got through, I would be able to help." She shrugged. "I meant for drinks and dinner, though, maybe another trip. Seems the universe had other ideas." She quirked an eyebrow at Doug. "Someone else and I may have ignored this, except for that strange fact that I was the only one he could reach. Too strange to pass up."
Simon had gotten comfortably under her skin, she couldn't have ignored his plight. And it meant Simon would owe her a favor. If he could manage to stop punching people.
Because of who she was, Wanda had a very finely honed sense of the strange and peculiar. Doug had learned to respect that, and it was the reason he'd agreed to accompany her along to the hearing. "So they probably won't judge him a flight risk," he observed. "Too high profile." He pursed his lips, calculating in his head. "Which means bail will be high, but not too high. He'll want to make your friend feel it in his pocketbook. Probably a hundred thou or so." He cocked an eyebrow at Wanda. "What do I win if I'm right?"
"Should you win anything if you can guess correctly based off of the amount of Law and Order you watch?" Wanda teased, not meaning it. Mostly. After a few minutes, she snorted as the court echoed Doug's prediction. "I suppose Simon will be feeling that one for a while. And you just won dinner, courtesy of Simon, I would think."
Wanda watched the front of the courtroom and shook her head. "I cannot put my finger on what, if anything, is going on here."
"Aw, c'mon, I didn't even make the 'chung chung' noise, I think I deserve a cookie for that," Doug said with a pout. He leaned back in his seat and unobtrusively pulled his phone out to tap a few commands. "Did you know that there's a huge debate on the internet on how to transliterate that sound? Also it's apparently a blend of about a dozen sounds like a gavel, a jail door slamming...and if stories are to be believed, the sound of five hundred Japanese monks walking across a hardwood floor. I don't know if I believe that last one, though."
He finished with his phone, then pocketed it quickly again. "And yeah, your Hollywood booty call owes us, because I just got our bail bondsman working to cover him."
She smirked at that. "Hollywood booty call," she drawled, her European accent making the words sound even more ridiculous. "I like the sound of that. I will be sure to tell Simon he has a nickname now. HBC, perhaps, for short?" Wanda sobered up as they led Simon out of the court to begin the bail process. The crowd around them was in full roar now, talking about the bail, Simon, Tony Stark and everything inbetween.
"Thank you, by the way, that will be one less headache for him. And for me, really."
If that was one or two less headaches, why did Doug still have a nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right? A strange sense of deja vu, that sense that any second now, the other shoe was going to drop. And then he spotted her. It was the hair - it was perfect, to the point of being too perfect - not a single stray hair out of place in the elaborately braided bun. Where had he seen that woman before...
"Amanda! Come, daughter, leave the bard be. I have someone for you to meet."
"Bozhemoi," he murmured. Continuing in Russian that could barely be heard over the cacophony of the crowded courtroom, he caught Wanda's eye. "~Blonde, green jacket, ten o'clock. That's...the Enchantress,~" he almost slipped and used her given name, which would have certainly drawn the Asgardian's attention from this close. Names were a funny business when magic was concerned.
Wanda didn't glance over, instead trusting in that Doug knew what he was talking about. "~The one and only?~" she asked, her own way of trying to keep from saying certain key words. Like Asgard. That would have been like ringing a bell - possibly the dinner bell. She kept her eyes on the door where they'd taken Simon and thought about where that door led.
Before she continued, though, the world tilted and Wanda clutched at Doug's arm as everything around them tilted and bile rose in the back of her throat. Some of the cameramen behind them yelped as some of their cameras went black and lost power. "Something's wrong," she said, blinking back tears. "Get me to Simon. Now."
Cameras shorting out was a blessing - it meant that there wouldn't be any kind of record of them. Doug quickly assessed the resources available to him, and whether or not Amora had noticed them. He put it at about even odds. Still, he kept as many bodies between him and Wanda and the Enchantress as he could, slinging Wanda's arm over his shoulder and helping her toward the exit, trusting her to play along. As they approached the door, he staggered, crashing himself into the solicitous-looking bailiff by the door. "Sorry," he murmured. "Not sure what that was, but my friend isn't feeling so well." They made their way quickly out into the hallway, and Doug straightened and let Wanda take her arm back after they rounded a corner. "Come on," he said, a small ring of keys in his hand. "I give us five minutes, tops."
Doug's estimation began rapidly dwindling as they heard the commotion grow behind them - and then suddenly stop. Before they could ascertain whether the cause was magical, mudane, or something in between they heard, in the perfect silence, the click of high heels approaching, one measured step at a time.
"Or not," Wanda muttered. She refused to look backwards, familiar enough with magic to know that it would be a very bad idea. She pushed Doug through the door in front of them, hoping it would lead them to where they needed to go, and the moment it slammed behind it she turned and slagged the handle. It resembled nothing more than melted metal and she knew it would not buy them that much time.
"I suggest running," she said and broke out into a full out sprint, knowing if she looked through the window in the door behind them she'd probably see the sharp smile resembling more shark than person.
"Running is good, yes," Doug muttered, already pulling out his phone, and racking his brain to remember who was in the city and 'on deck' - they were going to need backup.
---
Once again, Simon is taken to a safehouse and given a swift primer on the realities of X-Force.
The safehouse that the members of X-Force had gathered at was a perfectly anonymous townhouse in the East Village — two bedrooms (with weapons lockers in the closets), one and a half bathrooms (cupboards filled with painkillers, bandages, and sterile gloves), and a spacious kitchen (well stocked with a wide variety of alcohol). Doug leaned over his laptop where it sat on the small kitchen island and made a frustrated noise at the lack of anything like productive results. "What does an Asgardian sorceress-slash-possible-demigod need with — no offense, Wanda — at best a C-list celebrity?"
"Trust me when I say he's far more than C-list in the ways that matter," Wanda noted mildly. Shrugging off her business jacket, she tossed it on the couch as her workshirt followed, leaving her in a camisole. She'd been dressed for the courtroom but now she needed to dress for what might be a fight with very powerful enemies. Luckily, they had clothes stashed at their safe houses.
She walked over to where Simon was seated on the table and leaned her hip on the edge of it. "I thought we agreed that I would be the only gorgeous woman in your life," Wanda teased, though her voice was troubled and her entire body language was off and tense. "This one doesn't play as nice as I do."
Her headache was back, she noted with a sigh.
It said something that Simon Williams did not even flinch at the affront to his ego. Then again, judging from his body language, it wasn't at all — the man had practically melted into the chair. In fact, he had to practically been dragged from the car in his exhaustion. Wanda's attention, however, broke some of this past an initial hard flinch as she entered his space.
He breathed, and the swearing came quickly. "The. Fuck. Who the fuck? Is this real life? Is this a joke? Am I being punked? What the fuck?"
He breathed heavily again, and practically folded back into himself.
Wanda sighed knelt in front of him, reaching for his hands. "Well, I have part of an explanation but certainly not all. Do you remember one of our talks on our vacation? You had known for a while that I was a mutant but I told you a bit more, that some of my work was, ah, more dangerous than simply dealing with research. We managed to turn it into drinking game, actually, where you tried to guess what I did. We made it to skydiving airline stewardess before, well, just before."
She shook her head and tangled her finger with his. "How do I ..." Wanda glanced over at Doug, at a loss for the words. "Douglas, a little help here? How do you say an amazing kickass spy without it sounding ridiculous?"
"I dunno, I think 'kickass lady spy' sounds pretty good, personally." Doug shrugged, then looked around the room. No Pete to talk about the bastards of the world. No Remy to harp morbidly about the price of the job. Empty chairs at empty tables. ~I guess everyone has to grow up sometime.~ He dropped his feet to the floor and stood, his hands in his pockets as he gathered his thoughts.
"Okay, Cliffs Notes time, Hollywood," he said to Simon. Most everyone in the room knew the score, except for perhaps Gabriel as the newest of them. "The world is a messier place than you're even starting to suspect right now. Gods and monsters, things that go bump in the night." He waved a hand to indicate all of his teammates in the room.
"We're the ones that bump back."
"And we do it with style," drawled Emma, using her tone to try and lessen the tension in Simon's face. "Style, chutzpah, a touch of snark and truly fabulous shoes." She smiled, as reassuringly as she could manage in the circumstances. "We may not yet know why the Enchantress wants you, but we're almost the best people on earth to find out that and find out how to protect you from her. And if the problem needs money thrown at it, Wanda has convinced me that you are an acceptable investment risk." Emma shrugged at the look Wanda was giving her. "Sometimes throwing money at a problem does work," she pointed out.
"I'm in favor of that," Wade said, nodding along with Emma's words. "And blowing them up. But uh, only as a secondary option," he continued, rubbing at his shoulder a little bit before offering Simon two thumbs up. The shoulder kind of hurt and his hip was bugging him, but he couldn't figure out why. However, the thought at the forefront of his mind was definitely tacos. He was starving. It felt like he hadn't eaten anything in a year, which was patently ridiculous because he was pretty sure he still had at least three cartons of shrimp lo mien in the fridge from dinner the night before. There was, however, that lovely taco truck that he'd passed on the way to the safe house and he decided he was definitely going to stop there once this whole 'ridiculous Enchantress' thing was over. Yes, he would get tacos. There would be a mountain of tacos.
Artie shrugged and tapped out "But honestly, we'd prefer to avoid that option." A line of floating text appeared behind his head. Don't give me that look Wade. And don't need to see you to to know you're doing it.
"Somehow I'm thinking throwing money at Enchantress isn't going to work on this one, Emma," Doug murmured with an amused shake of his head. "I mean, okay, vacation on 'Midgard', what's she want? Figure out what she wants, then we can figure out how to keep her from getting it. It's almost certainly not money, and it's probably not sex - she could get those just fine in Asgard. So why does she need to be -here-? And how does Simon get her whatever that is?"
"As far as I am aware," Wanda said with a frown, "Simon is as baseline human as you can get." She smirked and pressed a kiss to the top of his head at the look he gave her. "Trust me, darling, when I say that in this case, that is generally a good thing." The exhaustion pressed against her and she rubbed her face. "So far, the only thing that seems to be coming out of this is my never ending headache. The Enchantress is interested in power, raw or power she can manipulate."
"I..." Simon frowned as his face tightened in an attempted to reign back his pride. The next words came slowly, like they took a lot of effort. "You're right. Why not go after Stark, if this whole thing was a setup? The asshat is a fucking superhero in addition to be a life-wrecker and looking horrible in a suit."
Marie-Ange twirled a laser-pointer between her fingers, and flicked it on. "The last time we encountered her, she was working with Loki to ..." She trailed off, actually blushed, and frowned, shaking her head. "I am not even sure. There was sex magic, everyone was sleeping with everyone else, I saw far more of the thunder god and Amanda than I ever wanted, and I drew fake tattoos on everyone. She is obsessed with Thor. If the Enchantress was a B-movie actress she would punch him outside a theatre, just so."
"Wait, Tony Stark is Iron Man." Doug held up a finger. "And he's on that Avengers team, that the X-Men got tangled up with a couple months ago." He held up a second finger. "And on that team is also? Thor."
"Okay, so..." Whatever Doug had been about to say was cut off by a loud slam, as of something crashing against the front door of the townhouse.
---
And once again brainstorming is rudely interrupted by a pair of familiar faces...
There is only so much reinforcing that can be done to the door of a townhouse in the middle of New York City without arousing the suspicions of neighbors. Those precautions are good at keeping out the casual B&E set, but don't do much against a determined strike force with a small battering ram.
Even as the loud bang of the door giving way sent X-Force scurrying for their weapons, several men in black balaclavas scurried through the doorway, semi-automatic weapons at the ready. But they held fire, waiting for another person to enter. The person who followed them in, though, was not Amora the Enchantress. Instead, it was another foe that at least some of the people in the room recognized immediately by the bright purple sacklike mask fitted to his head.
Zemo did not walk so much as strut into the townhouse. He looked the definition of poise and confidence as he took in the room, smiling under his mask. Everything was going exactly according to plan.
"Ah," he said simply. "'The gang, it is all here,' as you Americans are prone to saying." He turned an eye to the leader of the mercenary crew. "Remember, I'm simply here for my masterpiece. The rest... are unnecessary, so if they move..." X-Force appeared surprised to see him. Zemo was almost offended.
"Come, come now. Surely you must have suspected, expected my involvement? Who else could have been responsible for such a momentous achievement for humanity? None but I have the intellect, the skills, the genius to have made such a creation! He is far beyond anything the likes of which Red Skull or Hydra could produce!"
He met each of their eyes in turn. There was no reason to show fear; he held all the cards and he knew it. "They claimed he was impossible. A fools ambition far beyond the scope of anything that had ever been achieved before. I, in turn, chose a different path. I chose the impossible. I chose to create a Master Man.
"All things great I have accomplished flow through him. He is to be the first of many; the greatest of them all. Your simple minds cannot comprehend the depths of my accomplishments, so allow me to simplify this in such a way even you can understand:"
Zemo pulled out his pistol and aimed at at the closest target, the Mexican half-breed. The first of many impure vermin he'd need to wipe out once he had his Master Man back. The work of a scientist was never done.
"He is mine. You cannot have him, nor can you keep me from him. It will be as I will it, for I am Baron Zemo!"
"Okay, but..." Gabriel did his best to speak without moving, since the man's gun was set on him, and this wasn't a situation for which he had a survival protocol. Not yet anyway. "Him?" His eyes darted to Simon. "I mean, no offense, guy, but really?"
The nerve. Zemo adjusted slightly and fired. A bullet skipped off the ground by the half-breed's feet. The mercenaries refocused their guns before any of the mutants could even think of moving.
"It seems you can teach them new tricks. Quiet, hündchen, while your betters are talking."
When the gun fired, Gabriel's powers triggered. He knew this, because when he jumped back ever-so-slightly, the bullet seemed to slow down. His heart pounding, he stood, frozen, waiting for something to happen. It felt like he was standing for eternity, waiting for Zemo to shoot him this time, or for somebody to chastise him, or for Xorn to pop out of the ether and warn him not to waste this second chance at life. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself down.
It was a silent moment that felt like forever - and whether that was because his time manipulation was acting up or because he was so freaked out that time felt excruciating was hard to say.
Wade smiled very, very slowly. It was not a pleasant expression. His immediate impulse was to pull his guns so he could take out as many of the mercs as possible, particularly Andi over there in the back who owed him a grand and a sombrero. Something nagged at him, though, a half-formed thought, a sense of unease at that possibility. Something told him it would be unwise.
Which left him standing near the door, a couple guns pointed in his direction. Wade flicked his eyes toward Doug, then looked back at the group surrounding Baron Zemo. He opened his mouth to start in on something, draw more attention to himself, but he didn't get a chance to actually do more than take a breath.
Amora was used to men gasping when she walked in the room - and if they didn't she was used to making them. Dressed from head to toe in form-fitting malachite - was that leather? - she certainly warranted at least a double-take as she entered the townhouse. an amused smirk fixed firmly on her perfect lips. "I see you are having trouble keeping the worms in line," she observed with a flick of her eyes over the assembled group. "But then, your monologues are interminable, Zemo. You speak of gods but cannot even imagine the power at our disposal. Still, this toy will be useful, at least for now. Come, let us take him and go - too much time among the insects and my skin begins to itch."
"And here I thought Mr Trashbag was the only escapee from Mount Delusion," Jubilee quipped, bouncing sparks from one hand to another to grow the charge. "Listen, Miss Ghostbusters outtake, you're not taking anyone anywhere and if you try, we're gonna have a bit of a throw down, so how bout you surrender now and make it easier on yourselves."
When you were dealing with egos the size of small moons, the very worst you could do was no sell their little grandiose posturing. Jubilee had always been good at running her mouth, training with X-force had just also made her good at directing that complete lack of 'give a fuck' that was her outward persona.
Yet despite Jubilee's verbal repertoire, the hired goons had eyes for the least super-powered man in the room. Simon didn't give them any attention, however, as his eyes were glued on Zemo. "You... that voice. You were my doctor in the precedent. I..."
He faltered, sheltering himself beyond Wanda, "I didn't think anyone monologued that much outside 90s cartoons."
"Guys. Gun. On me." Gabriel's eyes flitted from Simon to Wanda to Wade, then back to Zemo. "Can we focus, maybe?"
Zemo sighed theatrically. Apparently it was true what they said; if you want something done right, do it yourself. Especially when dealing with idiots. "Men, I grow tired of these imbeciles. Do with them what you will."
X-Force does the thing again, but something goes wrong. Again. And more wrong than the last time.
"Do with them what you will." Zemo's tone was clearly dismissive, and the room erupted around them as Amora stalked toward Simon and the goons opened fire. Doug, Wade, and Marie-Ange were left closest to the bag-wearing baron.
"Deadpool, gun." Doug said quickly to Wade, trusting that the other man would know that without the pistol he had been waving around, Zemo would be left with only the sword hanging at his hip, and have a major advantage taken away from him, which they could then exploit.
Wade looked from the Thai in his hand to Zemo and back again before shrugging and chucking the carton of food at the man. He followed close behind, a knife dropping into one hand even as he put himself between Doug and Marie-Ange for a moment in case Zemo managed a shot before Wade could disarm him.
Even as he sliced the offending food out of the air, Zemo's eyes never left the crude one with the big mouth. As much as he wanted to mouth off, the numbers had him at a strict disadvantage and that was just unacceptable. Instead, he brought his gun up and let off two rounds at the other man, the one giving orders.
Either way, this was unlikely to take long.
Wade twisted, using his forward momentum and a slightly desperate launch off the seat of a chair to get himself in front of the shots even as he threw the knife at Zemo. The bullets hit the Kevlar under his shirt, obliterating the fabric and barely slowing him as he continued toward the man with the gun.
"Now that's just not nice," Wade said, only slightly winded from the impact over his solar plexus. "Here, let me help you out with that." He had Zemo disarmed a few seconds later and the gun was sailing through the air toward Doug, Wade's fist heading unerringly toward the slice his knife had left behind.
Doug's mind was measuring angles as the gun tumbled toward him. Wade was too close, and was likely to stay there to keep Zemo tied up and unable to do anything but concentrate on the immediate physical battle. It was a solid tactical play - take the leader out of the equation and keep him from influencing the rest of the melee around them. He reached up and swatted the pistol toward the kitchenette, far out of anyone's reach even as he moved in to back Wade up. "Tarot!" he called, trusting Marie-Ange to find the right thing to do to tilt things in their favor.
Oh, the boys wanted to play with sharp things. Long, pointy sharp things. Of course they did, they were boys. Marie-Ange dropped flat to the ground smoothly. Most of her card scattered around her, and the absence of distressed noises or creative French swearing was telling of her understanding of Doug's request.
Swords hit the floor, point first. Ten at once, and they shattered into droplets of ectoplasmic ooze.
Then another eight, clustered around Wade tightly. As he reached for them, all but one dissolved.
And then five, two at Doug's feet, two that fell across his shoulder and dissolved, and one appearing in his hand.
And every single one was a perfect replica of the very sword that Zemo carried.
Ten swords; crisis and defeat. Eight swords; self-ruin. Five swords; conflict and the overwhelming desire to win at all costs. It seemed at least one of his foes appreciated the deeper meanings of things. Zemo would be certain to remember her after he killed her. At least once, certainly. Maybe twice. It wasn't every day a foe was as symbolic as he was.
But for each cheap copy of his own blade spawned he owed her a gift. Cuts, burns, experiments. For twenty-three pale imitations, she owed him twenty three hours of tortured screams.
It was only fair.
Zemo readied his own blade. They wanted to dance? He'd give them exactly what they seemed to want so badly.
And he moved.
Doug grinned somewhat maniacally as one of the copied swords came to rest in his hand and clashed against the Baron's own blade. "Tanz mit uns, herr baron," he said slightly mockingly as he and Wade circled him, looking for openings.
Beat, beat, crossover, disengage. Thrust, parry in quarte, remise, reprise. The back-and-forth of blades in a fencing match was often referred to as a conversation. Conversation and language - there was a reason Doug took well to the sword as a weapon of choice. Zemo's blade spoke, and Doug's blade responded, flicking and then withdrawing to leave a space for Wade to join the discussion.
The sword was most definitely not Wade's chosen weapon. He could use it, if he had to, but it was kind of ridiculous for him to play at it when Doug was obviously excellent with one. Knowing what he knew about Marie-Ange's images, he tucked the sword she'd made for him through a strap on his back and moved in tandem with Doug, supporting his sorties even as he attempted to box the asshole in.
Clang. Clang. Screech. The clash of sword on sword echoed in Marie-Ange's skull as she crept backwards away from the swordplay. Each strike threatened to dissolve the swords in Wade and Doug's hands. Each strike jarred her concentration, as the impact on the imaged weapons translated to the pounding of a headache.
She slid backwards on her stomach, gnawing her bottom lip raw with each parry, until she reached the cool sleek tiles of the kitchenette - and then bolted, uncoiling tense muscles in a burst across the floor to scoop up the gun that Doug had kicked away. Her concentration on the images broke.
It didn't matter. She had the gun, pointed at Zemo's face, and he couldn't know what a lousy shot she really was. "Drop the sword, if you please, or I shoot you in the bag."
Zemo turned to look. She was all the way across the room, and her pretty little toothpicks had all but faded away. Still, she did have a gun, his gun. And it was pointed right at him. It was a risk, but did he dare take it?
He turned, and buried his sword to the hilt in the man's chest. The ragged, wet gasping choking sounds were like music to Zemo's ears.
Yes, yes he did.
Doug looked down at the hilt and sword, scrabbling his hands ineffectually at Zemo's. There was so much blood, so much red spilling over his shirt.
And then the red was everywhere, and...
Reset.
-
"Do with them what you will."
Zemo's dismissive tone and blithe wave was the cue for his black-clad goons to bring their semi-automatics, which had been in a loose sort of ready state while their employer had been talking, up to their shoulders and start firing at the various occupants of the townhouse, keeping well clear of Simon Williams, though, per their orders.
Jubilee had always figured being a hired goon had to be the suckiest job in existence. Not only did you have to listen to your employers delusional rantings, you were also usually the first ones to die when someone pointed you towards the heroes.
Far be it from her to mess with history.
"You know, you should probably have taken up accounting like your mother wanted," Jubilee mused to the foes arranged in front of them before unleashing a wave of plasma energy right at the head of the first one in line.
Artie just smiled, coldly and stepped to one side, fading into the wall, the projection he'd left behind stepping across. Step again, raise the gun, shoot.
Gabriel looked from Artie to Jubilee, completely unsure of how he'd gotten into this situation. And after a sleepless night and a long workout this morning, he was way too tired to handle it. And the fact that there were guns was just... well.
As he darted behind an armchair for cover, his phone started to ring. He swore and started to pull it out of his pocket to silence it. It clattered to the floor, the screen cracking as it hit the ground. "Damn it." He closed his eyes to steel himself. "Ugh, okay." He clenched and unclenched a fist. "Let's do this." He hopped up from behind the couch, and then he was all a blur as he raced toward the goons to disarm them.
Jubilee swore and and ducked out of the way as one of the men came a little too close to shooting her in the head.
She back flipped away and then dove behind the armchair Gabriel had recently vacated.
The goons were disciplined, dividing the trio of X-Forcers between them. After a few bullets failed to do anything to Artie's illusions, a pair started scanning the area nearby, looking for a hint of the disappeared mutant. Several more poured short bursts of fire at the chair Jubilee had gone behind, and the rest tried to react to the blur of Gabriel, classifying him as the biggest threat as he darted too fast for them to track.
Artie placed his shots carefully, avoiding the body armour. Aim, shoot, distract them from Gabriel and let him do his thing. Again.
Jubilee dove out into the open, took a quick look at each of the combatants, and then fired off a number of small sparks toward each of them. After summers quoting over a couch on the other side of the battle, she controlled the sparks, zipping them around her companions and toward each of their enemies; before drilling them into the soft eye tissues of each, and through into their brains.
Once she saw them drop, she allowed herself to collapse, panting as she wiped away blood from a nosebleed. She hoped the others wouldn't need her help from here.
-
"Do with them what you will." Zemo's blithe dismissal of X-Force was a cue to Amora that the time for talking had finished, and the time for doing whatever she liked to anyone between her and Simon Williams had begun. With a flourish she stalked towards the man in question; anybody watching could almost see the imaginary cape swinging behind her. Midway across the room she made another gesture and the space in front of her exploded in a thousand points of blinding light, each one hanging in the air and only dissipating as she moved through it.
"Dear gods," said Emma, "why do so many of our fights end up with me looking like a disco ball?" She had, however, learned from her fight against Holocaust, so unzipping her top, and slipping it off her shoulders took only a second, leaving her diamond skin covered only by the slightest wisp of lingerie. If anyone cared to ogle her, though, they would have been put off by the burst of lights that dazzled around and through her, bouncing and redoubling across diamond facets, until Emma was a blinding blaze of light, sufficient to make anyone near her throw up a hand to shade their eyes.
Things always got interesting when Emma took off her clothes. This time, Wanda was smart enough to slam her eyes shut, though she still saw lights exploded against her eyelids. She kept them closed, unwilling to be blinded, but she wasn't at a terrible disadvantage. It wasn't a complete picture but the chaos lines that were ever present painted a decent enough image that allowed her to function.
After all, she didn't need to see to be able to reach out to the lights in front of her and, with a touch of chaos energy, make them explode backwards towards Amora.
The scintillating reflections were dazzling, but not blindingly so to the Asgardian goddess. Points of light pricked her eyes and she whirled away, with a gesture bringing the lights down until, to those who had previously been shielding their eyes, it looked as if the room had been plunged into darkness.
"I am losing patience," she warned them, "and you will continue to keep him from me at your own peril." With her words the darkness began to snake out, seeking her target, the shadows licking up the walls hungrily.
"Always my peril," sighed Emma, managing to slip her top back on, even as she dropped back away from the stalking demi-goddess. "What about your own peril?" she asked rhetorically, as she managed to reach what she had been aiming for and lifted the quite heavy glass bowl that rested on the table Simon was hiding under and, hefting it for a second in diamond fist, heave it towards Amora. Okay, Emma conceded, it lacked class but there weren't that many weapons at hand right now.
Even if having to deal with the table was only a bother, it was still buying them time. Wanda stretched her powers out and forced the chaos energy to flow into the shadows that were creeping towards them. For a moment it simply looked like she was standing with her arms out, a look of concentration on her face, but nothing else was visible.
Until tiny, thin vein of red light began to appear in the darkness, looking like fine spiderwebs or cracks in the ice. Sweat beaded on her face but she kept pushing, corrupting the corruption from the inside.
The glass bowl shattered off the wall into a hundred crystal pieces, each picking up the crimson threads creeping through the shadows and glowing as they spun through the air. The darkness licked at the chaos hungrily, but its appetite was met with an insatiable need from within and the chaos bloomed like blood on silk as it grew and grew. Amora seemed unaware of this at first, but as the shadows began to leak red she paused, one hand raised in mid-air. She could feel the creeping chaos, the instability of the constructs surrounding them - and then she pulled on it anyway.
The room exploded.
The walls and floor seemed to wheel and list as every light within them was extinguished save for the crimson threads of chaos, now spinning and wrapping them all in their web. Just as disoriented as the rest, Amora nevertheless took this opportunity to strike, conjuring a spear from midair and lunging forward. It fractured in her hand but she gripped it tighter, bringing it down as the room continued to warp and spin.
It bit flesh, bone. The shadows drank in blood. The room contracted.
"Well, that's not good," said Emma, as small things that had once been parts of the room's structure, pattered against her diamond flesh like shrapnel. Then the warring blood and shadows flared again and brought enough light for Emma to see Wanda slumped down in front of Amora, a spear connecting Amora's hand to Wanda's thigh.
There was nothing sophisticated about Emma's response, no subtle telepathic punch or feint. All there was, as Emma turned back to flesh, was something like a telepathic ice-bomb, all shards and dazzling light and pain, all the pain Emma could find and drink in and reflect back a hundred-fold into Amora's mind.
With a howl Amora released the spear; a moment later it disintegrated as the Asgardian fell to the floor. Each thought brought a new stab of agony and she could do nothing but writhe in pain as the mutants gathered themselves to flee.
Simon had immediately wrapped his arms around Wanda's shoulder and chest after she'd fallen and he was pulling them back, away from the insanity in front of them. But she knew, she knew, that the wound was more serious than it should have been. The fucking spear was still planted firmly in her goddamn leg and while she tried to stem the flow of blood, there was too much hot blood pouring through her fingers.
Cradled close by Simon, she wondered how many important things had been severed, even as the room grew colder and she grew tired and sluggish. It took all of her energy but she caught Emma's eyes and she tried to smile as her fingers grew limp and the blood grew from a river into a flood. She wanted to say it wold be okay, she wanted to ask her to get Simon out but there was no time.
The whole room went red.
Then black.
Reset.
The strains of whatever neutral "best of the 80s, 90s, and today!' radio station had replaced Muzak as the background noise of most stores and offices were mutedly playing in the front lobby of the Snow Valley Centre on a very slow Tuesday morning.
"...should be another hot one today. Anyway, here's Wonderwall."
~Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you...~
At the front desk, the phone rang, caller ID showing as the NYPD 6th Precinct.
"Good morning, you've reached the Snow Valley Centre, Emily speaking. How may I direct your call?"
Jubilee was only really in the office for the next few hours before she needed to head back to the mansion, but considering everyone else was currently working their tails off the least she could do was stick around to man the phone till Cammie got back.
"Wanda Maximoff," a cock-sure deep bass answered with haggard strain of someone who had not slept in entirely enough hours or at the hangover-end of a twelve hour bender.
"Of course, Sir. May I enquire what this call is in regards to?"
Jubilee's accent was perfect news presenter American English, no trace of her usual Californian valley girl. It had taken a great deal of time and effort from Doug and herself to get it right but she'd managed it in the end.
"Simon," and there was a short pause as if he was considering, "She knows me. We dated. Just put me through."
"I'm sure that's fine, Sir. Let me just check that she's available."
Jubilee put Simon on hold and dialed Wanda's number.
"Wanda, you got some crazy exhausted ex named Simon? He's like, totes phone stalking you."
"It is not phone stalking if I tell him to call me," Wanda laughed into the phone. "I am not sure whether to blame our line of work or you dating Kurt for what has apparently been longer than forever. Maybe both." She had been thinking of heading off to lunch but if Simon was calling - perhaps her lunch would be more interesting. She smiled a little and leaned back in her chair, wondering what on her calendar would need moving around this time.
"Put him through, Jubilee, and no trying to patch in to the phones to listen. I know everything and will know if you try."
There was a small beep as the call transferred.
"Wanda? Babe?"
Wanda's smile grew even as she winced slightly. He sounded a little rougher than normal. "Simon, to what do I owe the pleasure?" she said, her voice a little huskier than normal. "Please tell me you happen to be in town. Things have been far too boring for my taste."
"I..." The actual relief in his words was almost palpable, but there was a hesitant edge to them. "I am most definitely in New York. Remember that time I joked about punching Stark in his smug bastard face? Well."
"..." Wanda pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a moment. "You did not," she breathed. "Simon, what have I told you about acting on things said while naked?"
She brought up a news site on her screen and groaned. "You even made the news. Have you reached out to your lawyer?"
"No, I decided to use my one phone call for a chance to scratch 'prison hookup' off my bucket list."
A beat.
"Well, that doesn't sound half-bad, but babe you're literally," and he drew out the word in agitation, "the only number I could call that didn't go straight to voicemail or shoot me to a call center in India."
"Your sarcasm is only cute when I am not your apparently only way out of a tough situation, darling," Wanda drawled but there was no heat to her words. "I know I am the be all, end all but even that is pushing things. The only person you could reach? That seems ... highly unlikely." But she'd been living with highly unlikely happenings for nearly her entire life. She'd grown used to it.
"Who am I to argue with fate? My time is yours. Tell me what you need and I will work to make it happen." She smiled. "Outside of a jail break. I'm not yet that fond of you."
"My hero. Still, I need you to play assistant. I need cash for bail and to get out of here as soon as possible. I need my people in Cali. Unfortunately, carrying a wallet while at a premiere creates, well, inopportune bulges." He sighed at this, and there was some slightly muffled conversation as someone else in the room started snickering. …
"Anyway. I'm stuck here and far too pretty for the general population. Save me, babe. I'll buy you a sexy Captain America costume to wear to make it fun."
Despite the situation, Wanda laughed at that. "I cannot tell if I would be dressing up as Captain America for you or if you would be dressing up as Captain America for me. Shh, do not ruin the surprise. Either way will mean an interesting evening." She switched the phone to her other ear as she grabbed a pen and pad. "Consider this your rescue attempt. Tell me everything you can before they make you hang up on me. Who I should call and your backups just in case I too cannot get through."
He did.
A few minutes later, Wanda was gifted with a list of agency contacts and family lawyers, vague dance instructions for interacting with his publicist's anxiety triggers, and a few suggestions on anonymous tips she could feed TMZ about Tony Stark's fighting like a girl.
"I am on it. Just sit tight and ..." She gripped the phone and thought about the strange events Simon had described. Wanda had been doing her job long enough to trust her instincts and they were screaming at her. "Simon, darling, sit tight and be careful. I'll get this sorted and you will spend a very enjoyable evening paying me back."
Once off the phone, Wanda set to work.
This time Doug is the one to accompany Wanda to Simon's bail hearing. But there's a weird sense of deja vu, and a familiar face in the gallery...
"...all rise," the bailiff said in that sort of perfunctory but still formal tone of a ritual that they had performed over and over every day for years. "Docket ending 616404, People vs Simon Williams. Charge is assault in the first degree..."
"They certainly got him into court quickly," Wanda remarked quietly to Doug. "I suppose that is what happens when you assault a man worth more than God." She wouldn't normally even try to talk during a court hearing for fear of being reprimanded by the judge but it was hardly a quiet court room that day. It was like a circus in there, filled with press and people who thought they'd get to be close to Stark and who were probably disappointed that the man himself wasn't there.
The two had found a seat fairly close to the front but they were boxed in and Wanda was freely using her sharp elbows to give herself some breathing room. When she wasn't buying herself some space, she was rubbing idly at her temples. The low level headache seemed to be determined not to budge and the noise of the court room was not helping.
"The weird thing to me is that he couldn't get a hold of anyone. I mean, you said even his studio lawyers wouldn't take his calls?" Doug settled into his seat and watched the chaos around them. He was always a people-watcher, but especially at times like these, his brain trying to make sense and find patterns in it all.
"Studio lawyer, personal friends, no one. Until he tried me, hoping that if we got through, I would be able to help." She shrugged. "I meant for drinks and dinner, though, maybe another trip. Seems the universe had other ideas." She quirked an eyebrow at Doug. "Someone else and I may have ignored this, except for that strange fact that I was the only one he could reach. Too strange to pass up."
Simon had gotten comfortably under her skin, she couldn't have ignored his plight. And it meant Simon would owe her a favor. If he could manage to stop punching people.
Because of who she was, Wanda had a very finely honed sense of the strange and peculiar. Doug had learned to respect that, and it was the reason he'd agreed to accompany her along to the hearing. "So they probably won't judge him a flight risk," he observed. "Too high profile." He pursed his lips, calculating in his head. "Which means bail will be high, but not too high. He'll want to make your friend feel it in his pocketbook. Probably a hundred thou or so." He cocked an eyebrow at Wanda. "What do I win if I'm right?"
"Should you win anything if you can guess correctly based off of the amount of Law and Order you watch?" Wanda teased, not meaning it. Mostly. After a few minutes, she snorted as the court echoed Doug's prediction. "I suppose Simon will be feeling that one for a while. And you just won dinner, courtesy of Simon, I would think."
Wanda watched the front of the courtroom and shook her head. "I cannot put my finger on what, if anything, is going on here."
"Aw, c'mon, I didn't even make the 'chung chung' noise, I think I deserve a cookie for that," Doug said with a pout. He leaned back in his seat and unobtrusively pulled his phone out to tap a few commands. "Did you know that there's a huge debate on the internet on how to transliterate that sound? Also it's apparently a blend of about a dozen sounds like a gavel, a jail door slamming...and if stories are to be believed, the sound of five hundred Japanese monks walking across a hardwood floor. I don't know if I believe that last one, though."
He finished with his phone, then pocketed it quickly again. "And yeah, your Hollywood booty call owes us, because I just got our bail bondsman working to cover him."
She smirked at that. "Hollywood booty call," she drawled, her European accent making the words sound even more ridiculous. "I like the sound of that. I will be sure to tell Simon he has a nickname now. HBC, perhaps, for short?" Wanda sobered up as they led Simon out of the court to begin the bail process. The crowd around them was in full roar now, talking about the bail, Simon, Tony Stark and everything inbetween.
"Thank you, by the way, that will be one less headache for him. And for me, really."
If that was one or two less headaches, why did Doug still have a nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right? A strange sense of deja vu, that sense that any second now, the other shoe was going to drop. And then he spotted her. It was the hair - it was perfect, to the point of being too perfect - not a single stray hair out of place in the elaborately braided bun. Where had he seen that woman before...
"Amanda! Come, daughter, leave the bard be. I have someone for you to meet."
"Bozhemoi," he murmured. Continuing in Russian that could barely be heard over the cacophony of the crowded courtroom, he caught Wanda's eye. "~Blonde, green jacket, ten o'clock. That's...the Enchantress,~" he almost slipped and used her given name, which would have certainly drawn the Asgardian's attention from this close. Names were a funny business when magic was concerned.
Wanda didn't glance over, instead trusting in that Doug knew what he was talking about. "~The one and only?~" she asked, her own way of trying to keep from saying certain key words. Like Asgard. That would have been like ringing a bell - possibly the dinner bell. She kept her eyes on the door where they'd taken Simon and thought about where that door led.
Before she continued, though, the world tilted and Wanda clutched at Doug's arm as everything around them tilted and bile rose in the back of her throat. Some of the cameramen behind them yelped as some of their cameras went black and lost power. "Something's wrong," she said, blinking back tears. "Get me to Simon. Now."
Cameras shorting out was a blessing - it meant that there wouldn't be any kind of record of them. Doug quickly assessed the resources available to him, and whether or not Amora had noticed them. He put it at about even odds. Still, he kept as many bodies between him and Wanda and the Enchantress as he could, slinging Wanda's arm over his shoulder and helping her toward the exit, trusting her to play along. As they approached the door, he staggered, crashing himself into the solicitous-looking bailiff by the door. "Sorry," he murmured. "Not sure what that was, but my friend isn't feeling so well." They made their way quickly out into the hallway, and Doug straightened and let Wanda take her arm back after they rounded a corner. "Come on," he said, a small ring of keys in his hand. "I give us five minutes, tops."
Doug's estimation began rapidly dwindling as they heard the commotion grow behind them - and then suddenly stop. Before they could ascertain whether the cause was magical, mudane, or something in between they heard, in the perfect silence, the click of high heels approaching, one measured step at a time.
"Or not," Wanda muttered. She refused to look backwards, familiar enough with magic to know that it would be a very bad idea. She pushed Doug through the door in front of them, hoping it would lead them to where they needed to go, and the moment it slammed behind it she turned and slagged the handle. It resembled nothing more than melted metal and she knew it would not buy them that much time.
"I suggest running," she said and broke out into a full out sprint, knowing if she looked through the window in the door behind them she'd probably see the sharp smile resembling more shark than person.
"Running is good, yes," Doug muttered, already pulling out his phone, and racking his brain to remember who was in the city and 'on deck' - they were going to need backup.
---
Once again, Simon is taken to a safehouse and given a swift primer on the realities of X-Force.
The safehouse that the members of X-Force had gathered at was a perfectly anonymous townhouse in the East Village — two bedrooms (with weapons lockers in the closets), one and a half bathrooms (cupboards filled with painkillers, bandages, and sterile gloves), and a spacious kitchen (well stocked with a wide variety of alcohol). Doug leaned over his laptop where it sat on the small kitchen island and made a frustrated noise at the lack of anything like productive results. "What does an Asgardian sorceress-slash-possible-demigod need with — no offense, Wanda — at best a C-list celebrity?"
"Trust me when I say he's far more than C-list in the ways that matter," Wanda noted mildly. Shrugging off her business jacket, she tossed it on the couch as her workshirt followed, leaving her in a camisole. She'd been dressed for the courtroom but now she needed to dress for what might be a fight with very powerful enemies. Luckily, they had clothes stashed at their safe houses.
She walked over to where Simon was seated on the table and leaned her hip on the edge of it. "I thought we agreed that I would be the only gorgeous woman in your life," Wanda teased, though her voice was troubled and her entire body language was off and tense. "This one doesn't play as nice as I do."
Her headache was back, she noted with a sigh.
It said something that Simon Williams did not even flinch at the affront to his ego. Then again, judging from his body language, it wasn't at all — the man had practically melted into the chair. In fact, he had to practically been dragged from the car in his exhaustion. Wanda's attention, however, broke some of this past an initial hard flinch as she entered his space.
He breathed, and the swearing came quickly. "The. Fuck. Who the fuck? Is this real life? Is this a joke? Am I being punked? What the fuck?"
He breathed heavily again, and practically folded back into himself.
Wanda sighed knelt in front of him, reaching for his hands. "Well, I have part of an explanation but certainly not all. Do you remember one of our talks on our vacation? You had known for a while that I was a mutant but I told you a bit more, that some of my work was, ah, more dangerous than simply dealing with research. We managed to turn it into drinking game, actually, where you tried to guess what I did. We made it to skydiving airline stewardess before, well, just before."
She shook her head and tangled her finger with his. "How do I ..." Wanda glanced over at Doug, at a loss for the words. "Douglas, a little help here? How do you say an amazing kickass spy without it sounding ridiculous?"
"I dunno, I think 'kickass lady spy' sounds pretty good, personally." Doug shrugged, then looked around the room. No Pete to talk about the bastards of the world. No Remy to harp morbidly about the price of the job. Empty chairs at empty tables. ~I guess everyone has to grow up sometime.~ He dropped his feet to the floor and stood, his hands in his pockets as he gathered his thoughts.
"Okay, Cliffs Notes time, Hollywood," he said to Simon. Most everyone in the room knew the score, except for perhaps Gabriel as the newest of them. "The world is a messier place than you're even starting to suspect right now. Gods and monsters, things that go bump in the night." He waved a hand to indicate all of his teammates in the room.
"We're the ones that bump back."
"And we do it with style," drawled Emma, using her tone to try and lessen the tension in Simon's face. "Style, chutzpah, a touch of snark and truly fabulous shoes." She smiled, as reassuringly as she could manage in the circumstances. "We may not yet know why the Enchantress wants you, but we're almost the best people on earth to find out that and find out how to protect you from her. And if the problem needs money thrown at it, Wanda has convinced me that you are an acceptable investment risk." Emma shrugged at the look Wanda was giving her. "Sometimes throwing money at a problem does work," she pointed out.
"I'm in favor of that," Wade said, nodding along with Emma's words. "And blowing them up. But uh, only as a secondary option," he continued, rubbing at his shoulder a little bit before offering Simon two thumbs up. The shoulder kind of hurt and his hip was bugging him, but he couldn't figure out why. However, the thought at the forefront of his mind was definitely tacos. He was starving. It felt like he hadn't eaten anything in a year, which was patently ridiculous because he was pretty sure he still had at least three cartons of shrimp lo mien in the fridge from dinner the night before. There was, however, that lovely taco truck that he'd passed on the way to the safe house and he decided he was definitely going to stop there once this whole 'ridiculous Enchantress' thing was over. Yes, he would get tacos. There would be a mountain of tacos.
Artie shrugged and tapped out "But honestly, we'd prefer to avoid that option." A line of floating text appeared behind his head. Don't give me that look Wade. And don't need to see you to to know you're doing it.
"Somehow I'm thinking throwing money at Enchantress isn't going to work on this one, Emma," Doug murmured with an amused shake of his head. "I mean, okay, vacation on 'Midgard', what's she want? Figure out what she wants, then we can figure out how to keep her from getting it. It's almost certainly not money, and it's probably not sex - she could get those just fine in Asgard. So why does she need to be -here-? And how does Simon get her whatever that is?"
"As far as I am aware," Wanda said with a frown, "Simon is as baseline human as you can get." She smirked and pressed a kiss to the top of his head at the look he gave her. "Trust me, darling, when I say that in this case, that is generally a good thing." The exhaustion pressed against her and she rubbed her face. "So far, the only thing that seems to be coming out of this is my never ending headache. The Enchantress is interested in power, raw or power she can manipulate."
"I..." Simon frowned as his face tightened in an attempted to reign back his pride. The next words came slowly, like they took a lot of effort. "You're right. Why not go after Stark, if this whole thing was a setup? The asshat is a fucking superhero in addition to be a life-wrecker and looking horrible in a suit."
Marie-Ange twirled a laser-pointer between her fingers, and flicked it on. "The last time we encountered her, she was working with Loki to ..." She trailed off, actually blushed, and frowned, shaking her head. "I am not even sure. There was sex magic, everyone was sleeping with everyone else, I saw far more of the thunder god and Amanda than I ever wanted, and I drew fake tattoos on everyone. She is obsessed with Thor. If the Enchantress was a B-movie actress she would punch him outside a theatre, just so."
"Wait, Tony Stark is Iron Man." Doug held up a finger. "And he's on that Avengers team, that the X-Men got tangled up with a couple months ago." He held up a second finger. "And on that team is also? Thor."
"Okay, so..." Whatever Doug had been about to say was cut off by a loud slam, as of something crashing against the front door of the townhouse.
---
And once again brainstorming is rudely interrupted by a pair of familiar faces...
There is only so much reinforcing that can be done to the door of a townhouse in the middle of New York City without arousing the suspicions of neighbors. Those precautions are good at keeping out the casual B&E set, but don't do much against a determined strike force with a small battering ram.
Even as the loud bang of the door giving way sent X-Force scurrying for their weapons, several men in black balaclavas scurried through the doorway, semi-automatic weapons at the ready. But they held fire, waiting for another person to enter. The person who followed them in, though, was not Amora the Enchantress. Instead, it was another foe that at least some of the people in the room recognized immediately by the bright purple sacklike mask fitted to his head.
Zemo did not walk so much as strut into the townhouse. He looked the definition of poise and confidence as he took in the room, smiling under his mask. Everything was going exactly according to plan.
"Ah," he said simply. "'The gang, it is all here,' as you Americans are prone to saying." He turned an eye to the leader of the mercenary crew. "Remember, I'm simply here for my masterpiece. The rest... are unnecessary, so if they move..." X-Force appeared surprised to see him. Zemo was almost offended.
"Come, come now. Surely you must have suspected, expected my involvement? Who else could have been responsible for such a momentous achievement for humanity? None but I have the intellect, the skills, the genius to have made such a creation! He is far beyond anything the likes of which Red Skull or Hydra could produce!"
He met each of their eyes in turn. There was no reason to show fear; he held all the cards and he knew it. "They claimed he was impossible. A fools ambition far beyond the scope of anything that had ever been achieved before. I, in turn, chose a different path. I chose the impossible. I chose to create a Master Man.
"All things great I have accomplished flow through him. He is to be the first of many; the greatest of them all. Your simple minds cannot comprehend the depths of my accomplishments, so allow me to simplify this in such a way even you can understand:"
Zemo pulled out his pistol and aimed at at the closest target, the Mexican half-breed. The first of many impure vermin he'd need to wipe out once he had his Master Man back. The work of a scientist was never done.
"He is mine. You cannot have him, nor can you keep me from him. It will be as I will it, for I am Baron Zemo!"
"Okay, but..." Gabriel did his best to speak without moving, since the man's gun was set on him, and this wasn't a situation for which he had a survival protocol. Not yet anyway. "Him?" His eyes darted to Simon. "I mean, no offense, guy, but really?"
The nerve. Zemo adjusted slightly and fired. A bullet skipped off the ground by the half-breed's feet. The mercenaries refocused their guns before any of the mutants could even think of moving.
"It seems you can teach them new tricks. Quiet, hündchen, while your betters are talking."
When the gun fired, Gabriel's powers triggered. He knew this, because when he jumped back ever-so-slightly, the bullet seemed to slow down. His heart pounding, he stood, frozen, waiting for something to happen. It felt like he was standing for eternity, waiting for Zemo to shoot him this time, or for somebody to chastise him, or for Xorn to pop out of the ether and warn him not to waste this second chance at life. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself down.
It was a silent moment that felt like forever - and whether that was because his time manipulation was acting up or because he was so freaked out that time felt excruciating was hard to say.
Wade smiled very, very slowly. It was not a pleasant expression. His immediate impulse was to pull his guns so he could take out as many of the mercs as possible, particularly Andi over there in the back who owed him a grand and a sombrero. Something nagged at him, though, a half-formed thought, a sense of unease at that possibility. Something told him it would be unwise.
Which left him standing near the door, a couple guns pointed in his direction. Wade flicked his eyes toward Doug, then looked back at the group surrounding Baron Zemo. He opened his mouth to start in on something, draw more attention to himself, but he didn't get a chance to actually do more than take a breath.
Amora was used to men gasping when she walked in the room - and if they didn't she was used to making them. Dressed from head to toe in form-fitting malachite - was that leather? - she certainly warranted at least a double-take as she entered the townhouse. an amused smirk fixed firmly on her perfect lips. "I see you are having trouble keeping the worms in line," she observed with a flick of her eyes over the assembled group. "But then, your monologues are interminable, Zemo. You speak of gods but cannot even imagine the power at our disposal. Still, this toy will be useful, at least for now. Come, let us take him and go - too much time among the insects and my skin begins to itch."
"And here I thought Mr Trashbag was the only escapee from Mount Delusion," Jubilee quipped, bouncing sparks from one hand to another to grow the charge. "Listen, Miss Ghostbusters outtake, you're not taking anyone anywhere and if you try, we're gonna have a bit of a throw down, so how bout you surrender now and make it easier on yourselves."
When you were dealing with egos the size of small moons, the very worst you could do was no sell their little grandiose posturing. Jubilee had always been good at running her mouth, training with X-force had just also made her good at directing that complete lack of 'give a fuck' that was her outward persona.
Yet despite Jubilee's verbal repertoire, the hired goons had eyes for the least super-powered man in the room. Simon didn't give them any attention, however, as his eyes were glued on Zemo. "You... that voice. You were my doctor in the precedent. I..."
He faltered, sheltering himself beyond Wanda, "I didn't think anyone monologued that much outside 90s cartoons."
"Guys. Gun. On me." Gabriel's eyes flitted from Simon to Wanda to Wade, then back to Zemo. "Can we focus, maybe?"
Zemo sighed theatrically. Apparently it was true what they said; if you want something done right, do it yourself. Especially when dealing with idiots. "Men, I grow tired of these imbeciles. Do with them what you will."
X-Force does the thing again, but something goes wrong. Again. And more wrong than the last time.
"Do with them what you will." Zemo's tone was clearly dismissive, and the room erupted around them as Amora stalked toward Simon and the goons opened fire. Doug, Wade, and Marie-Ange were left closest to the bag-wearing baron.
"Deadpool, gun." Doug said quickly to Wade, trusting that the other man would know that without the pistol he had been waving around, Zemo would be left with only the sword hanging at his hip, and have a major advantage taken away from him, which they could then exploit.
Wade looked from the Thai in his hand to Zemo and back again before shrugging and chucking the carton of food at the man. He followed close behind, a knife dropping into one hand even as he put himself between Doug and Marie-Ange for a moment in case Zemo managed a shot before Wade could disarm him.
Even as he sliced the offending food out of the air, Zemo's eyes never left the crude one with the big mouth. As much as he wanted to mouth off, the numbers had him at a strict disadvantage and that was just unacceptable. Instead, he brought his gun up and let off two rounds at the other man, the one giving orders.
Either way, this was unlikely to take long.
Wade twisted, using his forward momentum and a slightly desperate launch off the seat of a chair to get himself in front of the shots even as he threw the knife at Zemo. The bullets hit the Kevlar under his shirt, obliterating the fabric and barely slowing him as he continued toward the man with the gun.
"Now that's just not nice," Wade said, only slightly winded from the impact over his solar plexus. "Here, let me help you out with that." He had Zemo disarmed a few seconds later and the gun was sailing through the air toward Doug, Wade's fist heading unerringly toward the slice his knife had left behind.
Doug's mind was measuring angles as the gun tumbled toward him. Wade was too close, and was likely to stay there to keep Zemo tied up and unable to do anything but concentrate on the immediate physical battle. It was a solid tactical play - take the leader out of the equation and keep him from influencing the rest of the melee around them. He reached up and swatted the pistol toward the kitchenette, far out of anyone's reach even as he moved in to back Wade up. "Tarot!" he called, trusting Marie-Ange to find the right thing to do to tilt things in their favor.
Oh, the boys wanted to play with sharp things. Long, pointy sharp things. Of course they did, they were boys. Marie-Ange dropped flat to the ground smoothly. Most of her card scattered around her, and the absence of distressed noises or creative French swearing was telling of her understanding of Doug's request.
Swords hit the floor, point first. Ten at once, and they shattered into droplets of ectoplasmic ooze.
Then another eight, clustered around Wade tightly. As he reached for them, all but one dissolved.
And then five, two at Doug's feet, two that fell across his shoulder and dissolved, and one appearing in his hand.
And every single one was a perfect replica of the very sword that Zemo carried.
Ten swords; crisis and defeat. Eight swords; self-ruin. Five swords; conflict and the overwhelming desire to win at all costs. It seemed at least one of his foes appreciated the deeper meanings of things. Zemo would be certain to remember her after he killed her. At least once, certainly. Maybe twice. It wasn't every day a foe was as symbolic as he was.
But for each cheap copy of his own blade spawned he owed her a gift. Cuts, burns, experiments. For twenty-three pale imitations, she owed him twenty three hours of tortured screams.
It was only fair.
Zemo readied his own blade. They wanted to dance? He'd give them exactly what they seemed to want so badly.
And he moved.
Doug grinned somewhat maniacally as one of the copied swords came to rest in his hand and clashed against the Baron's own blade. "Tanz mit uns, herr baron," he said slightly mockingly as he and Wade circled him, looking for openings.
Beat, beat, crossover, disengage. Thrust, parry in quarte, remise, reprise. The back-and-forth of blades in a fencing match was often referred to as a conversation. Conversation and language - there was a reason Doug took well to the sword as a weapon of choice. Zemo's blade spoke, and Doug's blade responded, flicking and then withdrawing to leave a space for Wade to join the discussion.
The sword was most definitely not Wade's chosen weapon. He could use it, if he had to, but it was kind of ridiculous for him to play at it when Doug was obviously excellent with one. Knowing what he knew about Marie-Ange's images, he tucked the sword she'd made for him through a strap on his back and moved in tandem with Doug, supporting his sorties even as he attempted to box the asshole in.
Clang. Clang. Screech. The clash of sword on sword echoed in Marie-Ange's skull as she crept backwards away from the swordplay. Each strike threatened to dissolve the swords in Wade and Doug's hands. Each strike jarred her concentration, as the impact on the imaged weapons translated to the pounding of a headache.
She slid backwards on her stomach, gnawing her bottom lip raw with each parry, until she reached the cool sleek tiles of the kitchenette - and then bolted, uncoiling tense muscles in a burst across the floor to scoop up the gun that Doug had kicked away. Her concentration on the images broke.
It didn't matter. She had the gun, pointed at Zemo's face, and he couldn't know what a lousy shot she really was. "Drop the sword, if you please, or I shoot you in the bag."
Zemo turned to look. She was all the way across the room, and her pretty little toothpicks had all but faded away. Still, she did have a gun, his gun. And it was pointed right at him. It was a risk, but did he dare take it?
He turned, and buried his sword to the hilt in the man's chest. The ragged, wet gasping choking sounds were like music to Zemo's ears.
Yes, yes he did.
Doug looked down at the hilt and sword, scrabbling his hands ineffectually at Zemo's. There was so much blood, so much red spilling over his shirt.
And then the red was everywhere, and...
Reset.
-
"Do with them what you will."
Zemo's dismissive tone and blithe wave was the cue for his black-clad goons to bring their semi-automatics, which had been in a loose sort of ready state while their employer had been talking, up to their shoulders and start firing at the various occupants of the townhouse, keeping well clear of Simon Williams, though, per their orders.
Jubilee had always figured being a hired goon had to be the suckiest job in existence. Not only did you have to listen to your employers delusional rantings, you were also usually the first ones to die when someone pointed you towards the heroes.
Far be it from her to mess with history.
"You know, you should probably have taken up accounting like your mother wanted," Jubilee mused to the foes arranged in front of them before unleashing a wave of plasma energy right at the head of the first one in line.
Artie just smiled, coldly and stepped to one side, fading into the wall, the projection he'd left behind stepping across. Step again, raise the gun, shoot.
Gabriel looked from Artie to Jubilee, completely unsure of how he'd gotten into this situation. And after a sleepless night and a long workout this morning, he was way too tired to handle it. And the fact that there were guns was just... well.
As he darted behind an armchair for cover, his phone started to ring. He swore and started to pull it out of his pocket to silence it. It clattered to the floor, the screen cracking as it hit the ground. "Damn it." He closed his eyes to steel himself. "Ugh, okay." He clenched and unclenched a fist. "Let's do this." He hopped up from behind the couch, and then he was all a blur as he raced toward the goons to disarm them.
Jubilee swore and and ducked out of the way as one of the men came a little too close to shooting her in the head.
She back flipped away and then dove behind the armchair Gabriel had recently vacated.
The goons were disciplined, dividing the trio of X-Forcers between them. After a few bullets failed to do anything to Artie's illusions, a pair started scanning the area nearby, looking for a hint of the disappeared mutant. Several more poured short bursts of fire at the chair Jubilee had gone behind, and the rest tried to react to the blur of Gabriel, classifying him as the biggest threat as he darted too fast for them to track.
Artie placed his shots carefully, avoiding the body armour. Aim, shoot, distract them from Gabriel and let him do his thing. Again.
Jubilee dove out into the open, took a quick look at each of the combatants, and then fired off a number of small sparks toward each of them. After summers quoting over a couch on the other side of the battle, she controlled the sparks, zipping them around her companions and toward each of their enemies; before drilling them into the soft eye tissues of each, and through into their brains.
Once she saw them drop, she allowed herself to collapse, panting as she wiped away blood from a nosebleed. She hoped the others wouldn't need her help from here.
-
"Do with them what you will." Zemo's blithe dismissal of X-Force was a cue to Amora that the time for talking had finished, and the time for doing whatever she liked to anyone between her and Simon Williams had begun. With a flourish she stalked towards the man in question; anybody watching could almost see the imaginary cape swinging behind her. Midway across the room she made another gesture and the space in front of her exploded in a thousand points of blinding light, each one hanging in the air and only dissipating as she moved through it.
"Dear gods," said Emma, "why do so many of our fights end up with me looking like a disco ball?" She had, however, learned from her fight against Holocaust, so unzipping her top, and slipping it off her shoulders took only a second, leaving her diamond skin covered only by the slightest wisp of lingerie. If anyone cared to ogle her, though, they would have been put off by the burst of lights that dazzled around and through her, bouncing and redoubling across diamond facets, until Emma was a blinding blaze of light, sufficient to make anyone near her throw up a hand to shade their eyes.
Things always got interesting when Emma took off her clothes. This time, Wanda was smart enough to slam her eyes shut, though she still saw lights exploded against her eyelids. She kept them closed, unwilling to be blinded, but she wasn't at a terrible disadvantage. It wasn't a complete picture but the chaos lines that were ever present painted a decent enough image that allowed her to function.
After all, she didn't need to see to be able to reach out to the lights in front of her and, with a touch of chaos energy, make them explode backwards towards Amora.
The scintillating reflections were dazzling, but not blindingly so to the Asgardian goddess. Points of light pricked her eyes and she whirled away, with a gesture bringing the lights down until, to those who had previously been shielding their eyes, it looked as if the room had been plunged into darkness.
"I am losing patience," she warned them, "and you will continue to keep him from me at your own peril." With her words the darkness began to snake out, seeking her target, the shadows licking up the walls hungrily.
"Always my peril," sighed Emma, managing to slip her top back on, even as she dropped back away from the stalking demi-goddess. "What about your own peril?" she asked rhetorically, as she managed to reach what she had been aiming for and lifted the quite heavy glass bowl that rested on the table Simon was hiding under and, hefting it for a second in diamond fist, heave it towards Amora. Okay, Emma conceded, it lacked class but there weren't that many weapons at hand right now.
Even if having to deal with the table was only a bother, it was still buying them time. Wanda stretched her powers out and forced the chaos energy to flow into the shadows that were creeping towards them. For a moment it simply looked like she was standing with her arms out, a look of concentration on her face, but nothing else was visible.
Until tiny, thin vein of red light began to appear in the darkness, looking like fine spiderwebs or cracks in the ice. Sweat beaded on her face but she kept pushing, corrupting the corruption from the inside.
The glass bowl shattered off the wall into a hundred crystal pieces, each picking up the crimson threads creeping through the shadows and glowing as they spun through the air. The darkness licked at the chaos hungrily, but its appetite was met with an insatiable need from within and the chaos bloomed like blood on silk as it grew and grew. Amora seemed unaware of this at first, but as the shadows began to leak red she paused, one hand raised in mid-air. She could feel the creeping chaos, the instability of the constructs surrounding them - and then she pulled on it anyway.
The room exploded.
The walls and floor seemed to wheel and list as every light within them was extinguished save for the crimson threads of chaos, now spinning and wrapping them all in their web. Just as disoriented as the rest, Amora nevertheless took this opportunity to strike, conjuring a spear from midair and lunging forward. It fractured in her hand but she gripped it tighter, bringing it down as the room continued to warp and spin.
It bit flesh, bone. The shadows drank in blood. The room contracted.
"Well, that's not good," said Emma, as small things that had once been parts of the room's structure, pattered against her diamond flesh like shrapnel. Then the warring blood and shadows flared again and brought enough light for Emma to see Wanda slumped down in front of Amora, a spear connecting Amora's hand to Wanda's thigh.
There was nothing sophisticated about Emma's response, no subtle telepathic punch or feint. All there was, as Emma turned back to flesh, was something like a telepathic ice-bomb, all shards and dazzling light and pain, all the pain Emma could find and drink in and reflect back a hundred-fold into Amora's mind.
With a howl Amora released the spear; a moment later it disintegrated as the Asgardian fell to the floor. Each thought brought a new stab of agony and she could do nothing but writhe in pain as the mutants gathered themselves to flee.
Simon had immediately wrapped his arms around Wanda's shoulder and chest after she'd fallen and he was pulling them back, away from the insanity in front of them. But she knew, she knew, that the wound was more serious than it should have been. The fucking spear was still planted firmly in her goddamn leg and while she tried to stem the flow of blood, there was too much hot blood pouring through her fingers.
Cradled close by Simon, she wondered how many important things had been severed, even as the room grew colder and she grew tired and sluggish. It took all of her energy but she caught Emma's eyes and she tried to smile as her fingers grew limp and the blood grew from a river into a flood. She wanted to say it wold be okay, she wanted to ask her to get Simon out but there was no time.
The whole room went red.
Then black.
Reset.
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