For Treason, Act II, scene ix
May. 17th, 2026 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsWeapon X comes to reward their other ‘adult’ for being a team player while Kyle’s out of commission.
🟨And I told them if it ain’t battleaxes, I ain’t interested. 🟨
TW: Discussion of Dubious Consent, Discussion of Sexual Exploitation, Discussion of Violence Indoctrination, Mental Illness
NOTE: There is no sexual content in this log, just discussion.
Wade was laying back on his bed in his private room when the intercom chimed and a familiar voice began speaking.
"Mr Wilson," the doctor said, and the mercenary couldn't help but roll his eyes. He muted the television on the wall and checked the yellow Post-Its covering nearly every surface in his immediate vicinity.
"What?" He asked, watching Bea Arthur move around that cozy shared apartment on the screen.
"You've been so cooperative during this time of reorganization and training... I and the other heads of the Program, wanted to thank you for your efforts," the oily doctor said.
Wade wrinkled his nose. "I've already got all the chimichangas and tequila a man who can't feel alcohol could want, not to mention the supply of t-shirts and knives. If it's not battleaxes, I don't wanna hear about it. You're interrupting my Golden Girls time."
"You'll want to answer your door," the doctor said.
"You're finally giving me battleaxes?" Wade asked, perking up.
"I'm afraid not, Mr Wilson. But given your proclivities, we believe you'll find your reward more than satisfactory..."
"My..." A sinking feeling began in the pit of Wade's stomach, what little bit of his old moral compass was left after Apocalypse and Weapon-X had had their turns with him attempting to make itself known.
Springing up off the bed, the mercenary walked over to the door just as a knock sounded, opening it immediately.
Liam stood there weight mostly on one foot, a hip cocked forward. Licking his lower lip, he smiled seductively. "Hey," he breathed, tail coming around to wrap around Wade's wrist, "I'm your reward."
Wade looked from the fluffy orange tail wrapped around his wrist to the fuzzy baby face to the cat ears and knew that somewhere, someone had written fanfic that started exactly like this. "You are twelve, what even," the mercenary said, wiggling his wrist to free it.
"Do you find him displeasing, Mr Wilson?" The doctor's voice might as well have been echoing through a vacuum for all the attention Wade paid it.
He knew the man would want an answer, though, so he exhaled hard through his nose and said, "He's fine. Now go away. What time do you want him back in the morning?"
"Planning to keep him all night, are you?" The doctor's voice held an unctuous sort of amusement to it.
"Might as well," Wade muttered, gesturing for the kid to step inside.
"Oh, I promise, I'm plenty old... and experienced," Liam answered as he sauntered past Wade, tickling his cheek with his fingers as he passed. He was wearing a pair of loose black pajama pants and nothing else, the darker orange tiger stripes on his torso contrasting with the lighter orange of his body.
Behind the boy's back, Wade made a gagging face, though he was careful to keep from making any sounds as he closed his door.
"First rule of whatever the hell this is -- whatever they sent you here to do, we're not doing it. I don't care how experienced you think you are, you're in no way, shape, or form ready for a sixty-six year old mercenary who looks like me to have anything to do with you in a sexy way. This is not sexy. This will not be sexy. Turn your allure meter completely off," Wade said, gesturing to his scar-disfigured face. "And anyway, you're not my type." Indeed, Wade's type skewed hard toward redheaded women and men with blond curls who did spy things for a living. Not that that mattered anymore these days. Or ever would again, if he had anything to say about it... which he didn't, thanks to Weapon-X. They'd taken Kyle and a bunch of mansion kids and well... he remembered the kind of hellfire that would've rained down on anybody dumb enough to do that before he bounced.
He could only imagine it'd gotten worse in the meantime.
Not that he was going to be telling the douchecanoes in charge of their 'reorganized program' about all that. He'd done what he could with Lolo. He'd do what he could for the catboy in front of him. "What's your name? Cause if you don't tell me, I'm calling you Whiskers."
"Liam," he answered truthfully, trying not to be overtly relieved, though his ears perked right up. He didn't want to do anything with a guy who's face looked like a cheese grater. He knew he was supposed to not care, that was part of his training, but also, he did very much care and was at least honest enough to admit that to himself. "Sixty- six isn't so old though," he had to at least make an attempt. What if they were being watched? "Means you know what you like and what you're doing."
"They coached you on that, didn't they?" Wade said, sighing. "Sixty-six is like three times your age, at least," he counted. "Do you like steak? I've been eating a lot of steak lately. It's like they forgot leafy greens are good for me, too. Not that I can blame them, I'm borderline unkillable now, if what I saw that one time in Genosha was true... fuel is fuel."
He nodded slowly, both that he was coached and that he liked steak. "I eat anything," he agreed. Steak, ass, whatever. Though a steak was better. Always.
It was almost like Wade could read the 'steak, ass, whatever' going through the kid's mind. He turned around and made another silent, gagging cringe face. "Steak it is," he said, opening his fridge and pulling out two massive slabs of beef. He did little more than salt and pepper them, then toss them in a pan on high for a minute or two on each side before throwing them on plates and handing one to the kid. "You need a knife and fork or do you like going claws-out?"
Okay, now he was confused. But. Steak! Instead of replying, he just flexed his fingers revealing two inches of very very sharp claw at the end of each finger. And smiled. Not his seductive come- hither, but one that showed his elongated canines in their cat- like glory. "I prefer not to chase my dinner."
"I'll just bet you don't," Wade said around a mouthful of steak he'd sliced off with a fork and a knife for himself. "Anyway, those things look like they could do some damage. Anybody teach you how to slit a throat with them yet? Cause if not, that's a massive oversight."
"I'm a lover, not a fighter," he mumbled around the meat, "Unless you're a fish. Or moose. Then I'll gut you and eat you."
"Okay, but you could be both," Wade said, pointing his fork at Liam. "At the very least -- here, pay attention." He put his utensils down and pointed to a spot on the side of his neck. "Dig in here on anybody, use the full length of your claws. Rip across. Try and get their windpipe in addition to their arteries and veins. People survive getting their throat cut because whoever cut it didn't go deep enough. Use your whole body to pull your claws across. I guarantee any honeypot mission they send you on can turn into an assassination in a second. I'd let you practice on me, but I'm wearing my favorite shirt and I've let Miss Shifter Extraordinaire ruin enough of my almost-favorite ones already."
Liam stared at him, then blinked. "Yeah...I know," he sighed. He didn't want to kill anyone, but he knew already that his missions would likely turn into assassinations very, very quickly. "But there's.... worse ways to go."
"Oh sure, without a doubt," Wade said, nodding. "Since it seems like you'll probably have them naked at the time, the femoral artery's a great way to kill them, too... though the advantage with the throat ripping is that they can't make any noise but like, gurgles, so the likelihood of you being caught before you get out is less. But I mean, drug their drink when they hand you one, make sure they're asleep, slice the femoral artery, cover them up with a blanket or something, and they'll bleed out in like a minute or two with no one the wiser until they go to check the target's pulse."
"Blood drips and spreads," he pointed out, not disagreeing. "There's plenty of horrible ways, though. That one’s almost.... nice. Polite. And definitely assumes we're more at the beginning than further in."
"Yes, always attempt to incapacitate your targets before it 'gets too far.' Though if you don't mind your fur getting bloody, you could do it in the middle of it. Or use your teeth to bite out their carotid," Wade said. "It's like I told Mimic. You're a tool to these people. Be versatile. Make yourself indispensable. Make sure they never want or need another version of you."
"Fur can wash," and thankfully wasn't over his entire body. Just mostly his tail and ears. The rest of him, while orange tiger striped cat, wasn't furry. "I don't think I want to eat people. Just.... that's a lot."
"Hey, you do what you gotta do to survive," Wade said, shrugging. "If it's you or ripping out someone's jugular with your teeth because your hands are tied, you and I both know what you're gonna pick so you don't leave Kyle and the rest of the pack sad."
Okay, that was true. "When you put it like that..." Liam grumbled. "This is terrible dinner conversation. I can't believe you're talking about this in front of my steak."
"Your steak is dead, kid. I'm just saying nobody wants you dead," Wade said, shrugging.
Maybe Wade's memes were from 1985 like his TV shows? "I hate everything," he said morosely, finishing his steak. Just because everything was horrible didn't mean he wasn't hungry. "And you."
"Yeah, I'm okay with that as long as Kyle doesn't kill me because you died in some totally preventable way," Wade said, taking a massive bite of his own steak.
Kyle’s gone, and the kids don’t know how to handle it. Or when he’ll be back. Or where Laura is. Or if she’ll be back. And the days just start to blur together.
TW: Indoctrination, Despair
Their training that day had been led by someone Not Kyle. Just like yesterday. And the day before. And the entire last week. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.
They were back in the dorm now, mostly doing their own thing. Jessie looked up from the book she was pretending to read. "Where do you think Kyle's been?"
"Something horrible," Liam answered automatically, laying on the floor in full splits. Everything about everything was horrible, why would Kyle be exempt? Especially since they'd taken him instead of Liam.
Something tickled at the back of Fourteen's mind. She was pretty sure it was another migraine. Whatever this extra body was doing to her, it clashed something fierce with the her that already existed.
"Has anything here not been horrible? That is hardly special at this point."
"I mean, next level horrible," he countered, then grew quiet, "Like. He went in my place. He was scared. For me."
Fourteen clearly had no idea what to say about that, so she didn't. The silence settled over the room, heavy and thick.
"...it is unlikely that they would have brought him here if they were just going to kill him, at least?" It was the best she could offer.
"That doesn't mean he's going to be okay when he finally gets back," Jessie said quietly.
"The question is, 'how bad will he be?'" Liam agreed. "Unless something went wrong," not a though he could unthink. Damnit.
"I do not love the idea of our pool of allies shrinking again," Fourteen observed. "It has already gotten uncomfortably smaller than I would like."
"I'm sure he'll be back," Jessie said, because she needed to think that. Kyle would be back, and Laura would come back, and everything would be okay.
---
"He isn't back," Celeste observed a week later. Kyle was still gone. Laura was still missing. Nothing was okay right now.
She looked over at the others from her position on the couch where Mindee was giving her the best pedicure she could swing with such limited hardware. "At this point, we think we are willing to take suggestions." Preferably ones that didn't wind up with her back in remedial physical training classes. She was getting tired of being thrown around.
"He's not coming back, traitor," Liam grumbled, running on the treadmill with weights for endurance. The longer Kyle was gone, the angrier he was.
"Maybe next week?" Jessie suggested with a shrug.
---
It wasn't next week.
Or the week after that.
Or the week after that.
Or the week after...
Time passed. They each accomplished more in their individual training. They earned stars and rewards. They got a couch. And neither Kyle nor Laura came back.
Mimic returned from training one day with aching hands and a whole new disdain for guns. Liam and Fourteen were already in the dorm. Kyle was not.
"Still no news about Kyle?" she asked quietly.
Celeste shook her head. "Some of the less-shielded scientists are starting to whisper around something but..." she shrugged. "...not really, no."
Her eyes flickered down to Mimic's hands for a second, then back up, but she didn't comment.
"This isn't good, he needs to be back here with us," Liam complained, wrapping himself around Jessie and toying with her fingers. "Laura, too."
Mimic wrapped an arm around Liam to hold him close, letting him mess with her fingers. "They'll come back." She just has to keep saying it, and maybe it'll be true. "They have to come back."
🟨And I told them if it ain’t battleaxes, I ain’t interested. 🟨
TW: Discussion of Dubious Consent, Discussion of Sexual Exploitation, Discussion of Violence Indoctrination, Mental Illness
NOTE: There is no sexual content in this log, just discussion.
Wade was laying back on his bed in his private room when the intercom chimed and a familiar voice began speaking.
"Mr Wilson," the doctor said, and the mercenary couldn't help but roll his eyes. He muted the television on the wall and checked the yellow Post-Its covering nearly every surface in his immediate vicinity.
"What?" He asked, watching Bea Arthur move around that cozy shared apartment on the screen.
"You've been so cooperative during this time of reorganization and training... I and the other heads of the Program, wanted to thank you for your efforts," the oily doctor said.
Wade wrinkled his nose. "I've already got all the chimichangas and tequila a man who can't feel alcohol could want, not to mention the supply of t-shirts and knives. If it's not battleaxes, I don't wanna hear about it. You're interrupting my Golden Girls time."
"You'll want to answer your door," the doctor said.
"You're finally giving me battleaxes?" Wade asked, perking up.
"I'm afraid not, Mr Wilson. But given your proclivities, we believe you'll find your reward more than satisfactory..."
"My..." A sinking feeling began in the pit of Wade's stomach, what little bit of his old moral compass was left after Apocalypse and Weapon-X had had their turns with him attempting to make itself known.
Springing up off the bed, the mercenary walked over to the door just as a knock sounded, opening it immediately.
Liam stood there weight mostly on one foot, a hip cocked forward. Licking his lower lip, he smiled seductively. "Hey," he breathed, tail coming around to wrap around Wade's wrist, "I'm your reward."
Wade looked from the fluffy orange tail wrapped around his wrist to the fuzzy baby face to the cat ears and knew that somewhere, someone had written fanfic that started exactly like this. "You are twelve, what even," the mercenary said, wiggling his wrist to free it.
"Do you find him displeasing, Mr Wilson?" The doctor's voice might as well have been echoing through a vacuum for all the attention Wade paid it.
He knew the man would want an answer, though, so he exhaled hard through his nose and said, "He's fine. Now go away. What time do you want him back in the morning?"
"Planning to keep him all night, are you?" The doctor's voice held an unctuous sort of amusement to it.
"Might as well," Wade muttered, gesturing for the kid to step inside.
"Oh, I promise, I'm plenty old... and experienced," Liam answered as he sauntered past Wade, tickling his cheek with his fingers as he passed. He was wearing a pair of loose black pajama pants and nothing else, the darker orange tiger stripes on his torso contrasting with the lighter orange of his body.
Behind the boy's back, Wade made a gagging face, though he was careful to keep from making any sounds as he closed his door.
"First rule of whatever the hell this is -- whatever they sent you here to do, we're not doing it. I don't care how experienced you think you are, you're in no way, shape, or form ready for a sixty-six year old mercenary who looks like me to have anything to do with you in a sexy way. This is not sexy. This will not be sexy. Turn your allure meter completely off," Wade said, gesturing to his scar-disfigured face. "And anyway, you're not my type." Indeed, Wade's type skewed hard toward redheaded women and men with blond curls who did spy things for a living. Not that that mattered anymore these days. Or ever would again, if he had anything to say about it... which he didn't, thanks to Weapon-X. They'd taken Kyle and a bunch of mansion kids and well... he remembered the kind of hellfire that would've rained down on anybody dumb enough to do that before he bounced.
He could only imagine it'd gotten worse in the meantime.
Not that he was going to be telling the douchecanoes in charge of their 'reorganized program' about all that. He'd done what he could with Lolo. He'd do what he could for the catboy in front of him. "What's your name? Cause if you don't tell me, I'm calling you Whiskers."
"Liam," he answered truthfully, trying not to be overtly relieved, though his ears perked right up. He didn't want to do anything with a guy who's face looked like a cheese grater. He knew he was supposed to not care, that was part of his training, but also, he did very much care and was at least honest enough to admit that to himself. "Sixty- six isn't so old though," he had to at least make an attempt. What if they were being watched? "Means you know what you like and what you're doing."
"They coached you on that, didn't they?" Wade said, sighing. "Sixty-six is like three times your age, at least," he counted. "Do you like steak? I've been eating a lot of steak lately. It's like they forgot leafy greens are good for me, too. Not that I can blame them, I'm borderline unkillable now, if what I saw that one time in Genosha was true... fuel is fuel."
He nodded slowly, both that he was coached and that he liked steak. "I eat anything," he agreed. Steak, ass, whatever. Though a steak was better. Always.
It was almost like Wade could read the 'steak, ass, whatever' going through the kid's mind. He turned around and made another silent, gagging cringe face. "Steak it is," he said, opening his fridge and pulling out two massive slabs of beef. He did little more than salt and pepper them, then toss them in a pan on high for a minute or two on each side before throwing them on plates and handing one to the kid. "You need a knife and fork or do you like going claws-out?"
Okay, now he was confused. But. Steak! Instead of replying, he just flexed his fingers revealing two inches of very very sharp claw at the end of each finger. And smiled. Not his seductive come- hither, but one that showed his elongated canines in their cat- like glory. "I prefer not to chase my dinner."
"I'll just bet you don't," Wade said around a mouthful of steak he'd sliced off with a fork and a knife for himself. "Anyway, those things look like they could do some damage. Anybody teach you how to slit a throat with them yet? Cause if not, that's a massive oversight."
"I'm a lover, not a fighter," he mumbled around the meat, "Unless you're a fish. Or moose. Then I'll gut you and eat you."
"Okay, but you could be both," Wade said, pointing his fork at Liam. "At the very least -- here, pay attention." He put his utensils down and pointed to a spot on the side of his neck. "Dig in here on anybody, use the full length of your claws. Rip across. Try and get their windpipe in addition to their arteries and veins. People survive getting their throat cut because whoever cut it didn't go deep enough. Use your whole body to pull your claws across. I guarantee any honeypot mission they send you on can turn into an assassination in a second. I'd let you practice on me, but I'm wearing my favorite shirt and I've let Miss Shifter Extraordinaire ruin enough of my almost-favorite ones already."
Liam stared at him, then blinked. "Yeah...I know," he sighed. He didn't want to kill anyone, but he knew already that his missions would likely turn into assassinations very, very quickly. "But there's.... worse ways to go."
"Oh sure, without a doubt," Wade said, nodding. "Since it seems like you'll probably have them naked at the time, the femoral artery's a great way to kill them, too... though the advantage with the throat ripping is that they can't make any noise but like, gurgles, so the likelihood of you being caught before you get out is less. But I mean, drug their drink when they hand you one, make sure they're asleep, slice the femoral artery, cover them up with a blanket or something, and they'll bleed out in like a minute or two with no one the wiser until they go to check the target's pulse."
"Blood drips and spreads," he pointed out, not disagreeing. "There's plenty of horrible ways, though. That one’s almost.... nice. Polite. And definitely assumes we're more at the beginning than further in."
"Yes, always attempt to incapacitate your targets before it 'gets too far.' Though if you don't mind your fur getting bloody, you could do it in the middle of it. Or use your teeth to bite out their carotid," Wade said. "It's like I told Mimic. You're a tool to these people. Be versatile. Make yourself indispensable. Make sure they never want or need another version of you."
"Fur can wash," and thankfully wasn't over his entire body. Just mostly his tail and ears. The rest of him, while orange tiger striped cat, wasn't furry. "I don't think I want to eat people. Just.... that's a lot."
"Hey, you do what you gotta do to survive," Wade said, shrugging. "If it's you or ripping out someone's jugular with your teeth because your hands are tied, you and I both know what you're gonna pick so you don't leave Kyle and the rest of the pack sad."
Okay, that was true. "When you put it like that..." Liam grumbled. "This is terrible dinner conversation. I can't believe you're talking about this in front of my steak."
"Your steak is dead, kid. I'm just saying nobody wants you dead," Wade said, shrugging.
Maybe Wade's memes were from 1985 like his TV shows? "I hate everything," he said morosely, finishing his steak. Just because everything was horrible didn't mean he wasn't hungry. "And you."
"Yeah, I'm okay with that as long as Kyle doesn't kill me because you died in some totally preventable way," Wade said, taking a massive bite of his own steak.
Kyle’s gone, and the kids don’t know how to handle it. Or when he’ll be back. Or where Laura is. Or if she’ll be back. And the days just start to blur together.
TW: Indoctrination, Despair
Their training that day had been led by someone Not Kyle. Just like yesterday. And the day before. And the entire last week. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.
They were back in the dorm now, mostly doing their own thing. Jessie looked up from the book she was pretending to read. "Where do you think Kyle's been?"
"Something horrible," Liam answered automatically, laying on the floor in full splits. Everything about everything was horrible, why would Kyle be exempt? Especially since they'd taken him instead of Liam.
Something tickled at the back of Fourteen's mind. She was pretty sure it was another migraine. Whatever this extra body was doing to her, it clashed something fierce with the her that already existed.
"Has anything here not been horrible? That is hardly special at this point."
"I mean, next level horrible," he countered, then grew quiet, "Like. He went in my place. He was scared. For me."
Fourteen clearly had no idea what to say about that, so she didn't. The silence settled over the room, heavy and thick.
"...it is unlikely that they would have brought him here if they were just going to kill him, at least?" It was the best she could offer.
"That doesn't mean he's going to be okay when he finally gets back," Jessie said quietly.
"The question is, 'how bad will he be?'" Liam agreed. "Unless something went wrong," not a though he could unthink. Damnit.
"I do not love the idea of our pool of allies shrinking again," Fourteen observed. "It has already gotten uncomfortably smaller than I would like."
"I'm sure he'll be back," Jessie said, because she needed to think that. Kyle would be back, and Laura would come back, and everything would be okay.
---
"He isn't back," Celeste observed a week later. Kyle was still gone. Laura was still missing. Nothing was okay right now.
She looked over at the others from her position on the couch where Mindee was giving her the best pedicure she could swing with such limited hardware. "At this point, we think we are willing to take suggestions." Preferably ones that didn't wind up with her back in remedial physical training classes. She was getting tired of being thrown around.
"He's not coming back, traitor," Liam grumbled, running on the treadmill with weights for endurance. The longer Kyle was gone, the angrier he was.
"Maybe next week?" Jessie suggested with a shrug.
---
It wasn't next week.
Or the week after that.
Or the week after that.
Or the week after...
Time passed. They each accomplished more in their individual training. They earned stars and rewards. They got a couch. And neither Kyle nor Laura came back.
Mimic returned from training one day with aching hands and a whole new disdain for guns. Liam and Fourteen were already in the dorm. Kyle was not.
"Still no news about Kyle?" she asked quietly.
Celeste shook her head. "Some of the less-shielded scientists are starting to whisper around something but..." she shrugged. "...not really, no."
Her eyes flickered down to Mimic's hands for a second, then back up, but she didn't comment.
"This isn't good, he needs to be back here with us," Liam complained, wrapping himself around Jessie and toying with her fingers. "Laura, too."
Mimic wrapped an arm around Liam to hold him close, letting him mess with her fingers. "They'll come back." She just has to keep saying it, and maybe it'll be true. "They have to come back."
