DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER

By Trevor Carrington

The Weapon X facility….

Currently home to a bevy of scientists and their ‘patients’ who are forced to endure a seemingly endless amount of pain and suffering as they’re experimented upon by their fellow man. Experimented to make them ‘better’. No pain, no gain, says the fathers and grandfathers across the land. But they wouldn’t be talking about this, now would they?

Surely the kind of pain that makes you wish and pray for death as soon as possible isn’t something that can build character. Something to think about.

These two gentlemen certainly aren’t doing much thinking at the moment. Two guards stand at the door of what looks to be a run-down complex, but the lights inside indicate otherwise. Their large rifles shift with their weight and one leans against the wall. It’s a tiring job, guarding the scum inside.

“Hey, Tom. Got a cig I can borrow?” one asks the other, looking at him through his red visor and battleship grey helmet. The other turns to the one leaning against the wall.

“What for? Not like you can smoke it with these damn helmets on! Besides, it’s my last one!”

“That’s all I need, bud.” he responds, grinning behind the visor. The other mumbles and opens up a pouch around his belt, pulling out a crumpled pack of Red Apples. He throws it to the other guy, and he reaches up to snatch it… but it never meets his gloved hand.

“What the…?”

The two look around them, then up to see a man clad in a red and black costume hanging upside down, a cigarette in his mouth, a grin upon his partially masked face, and a .45 automatic in each hand pointed at their heads.

“Evenin’, ladies. Need a light? Then get ready to walk toward it, snoochie boochies!”

“Oh, sh…”

*BANG* *BANG*

Deadpool drops down after the guards fall to the ground. Twirling the handguns around his fingers, he holsters one at his side.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one, guys,” Deadpool starts, while taking out a canister of what appears to be foam. He begins outlining the doorway with the pink substance as he talks.

“A man goes out trekking in the woods, off on a nature walk to rediscover himself – and we all know nature does that, eh? Oh, look what the Canadian land has done to me. I’m speaking their language again. Quick, someone give me a brew and some hockey pucks to throw at Granma’s windows.”

He steps back for a moment, and seconds later the doorway explodes furiously, caving inside and offering a perfect entrance. Deadpool steps in, a .45 in one hand and a Big n’ Noisy Gun in the other.

“Anyhoo-hoo-dilly, this guy gets completely lost. He doesn’t know what he’s doin’. He thinks that after looking at what evil lurks inside toilets and septic tanks, a walk in the wilderness will give ’em more karma. So, as if a plumber surrounded by trees and no pollution wasn’t outrageous enough, comes to this ellaborate mansion, done in a noticable Oriental style. Ya know, the kind you’d see Bruce Lee bust a move inside from back in the day…”

Several shots ring out as he takes down numerous guards who came to the area only moments ago. Deadpool is showing no mercy, however, mowing them all down and not caring what he hits. He has a destination to get to, and he’s going to get there. These people are just bumps in the road. Small ones.

“So he knocks on the door and a short lil Chinese guy answers. But you know how those guys are. Could probably chop yer head off with a freakin’ herring, all the while givin’ you the Eeeeevil Eye. So the guy explains to Mister Miyagi that he’s lost and needs a place to stay. Miyagi dispenses with the wax-on/wax-off crap and tells him that he can stay, but don’t touch his daughter. Asian southerners. Who’da thunk it, eh?”

Deadpool comes to another door, cocks his Big Gun twice, fires, and the door isn’t in his way anymore. As he passes by, mouth blabbing and guns going off, a sign can be seen beside the door reading ‘Weapon X Testing Area – Authorized Personnel Only’.

“So, dinner time comes around and they’re all sitting at the table. Miyagi’s daughter is quite the hotty, too. And I don’t mean the Pam Lee kind. She’s au natural. So he’s enjoying his meal, probably got from a take-out place around the pond and behind Grandma’s house. Meanwhile, she’s playing footsy with the guy, and he’s trying not to. Why? Cuz he’s nuts. But not like me. No, this guy’s stupid-nuts. The nucking futs kind, if you catch my meaning…”

More shots ring out. Deadpool is leaving a veritable wasteland behind him as he makes his way through the facility. From all that he’s been through, trying to be a hero, ‘saving the world’, and getting away from his killer side, which he still believes is an impossible task, he has reverted back to the killing machine once more.

Inside his mind, behind the psychotic backlash he’s letting out now after finding the Weapon X facility fully operational, the place that took his life when they promised to restore it, he hates himself for caving in so easily. He was so close to reaching his dreams, but now… now he’s telling stupid jokes and shooting people left and right. Just like the old days.

“Dinner’s over, and the guy’s still alive. Old fool didn’t even give him a fortune cookie though. Probably forgets to pull his pants back up after doing a number two all the time, too. So the guy goes upstairs and, to make a long story short, he knocks boots with the daughter of Egg Shen, then sneaks back to his room. Can’t resist a pretty face, you know how it is. So the next morning comes, and he wakes up and… and…”

Deadpool’s words are cut short as he reaches where he wants to be. This is where all the testing took place before he was thrown away as a failed experiment. Trash. And this is where Vanessa Carlisle, his former love, is currently being held capture.

Not anymore…

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one, ‘Nessa,” he says in a quiet voice.

“I’ve heard it,” comes another beside him, and he suddenly feels cold metal against his head.

“Exsqueeze me? Is your name ‘Nessa? No, it ain’t. It’s Garrison, cuz your parents were probably doped up on qaaludes.”

“Shut your mouth, Deadpool,” Kane says, looking straight ahead with a stern gaze, only glancing to his side for a moment to see his love, still alive, in a chamber filled with some sort of preservation fluid. It’s all too familiar. “And you’d better drop your weapons before I get impatient and pull this trigger!”

Deadpool smiled beneath his mask, “Why, Gary, I thought you’d never ask!”

Meanwhile, the Canadian superteam known as Alpha Flight, and the renegade vigilante Maverick, also, unsurprisingly, a previous participant in the Weapon X project, are a bit busy themselves.

It seems that an all-new Weapon X has been released upon the ensemble, with orders to kill them all. Something he is all too pleased to do, it seems.

As the team desperately tries to take their assailant down, Maverick is also trying to give some aid to the situation, opting to use firepower over the popular energy blasts and the like being shot left and right. Weapon X shows great agility as he leaps and flips over each shot, dodging them all. His moves are hauntingly graceful, and for the moment he’s being completely defensive.

Could this be because he’s too occupied to offer any sort of attack? Or maybe, frighteningly enough, it could be because he’s enjoying this too much.

“I can’t get a clean shot!” Maverick shouts out.

Vindicator soars into the air, taking careful aim at the agile, leather-clad man. ‘Got you!’ he thinks to himself, releasing a powerful energy blast.

Much to his regret, the blast misses, just barely, and strikes Puck, who jumped toward Weapon X at the worst moment possible. Puck flies back, hitting the ground hard. Maverick comes to his aid, finding that he’s unconscious for the moment, but otherwise okay, from what he can tell.

“You better watch it next time, Vindicator,” Maverick says, eyes still following Weapon X, “You’re not making things any easier, taking out your teammates while none of us can even touch this guy!”

Vindicator grits his teeth and gives a scornful glare at Maverick, but decides not to provoke it even further. There’s a battle going on, and he’s needed.

It all happened in one fluid motion. Deadpool’s hands were in the air one moment, then they were throwing Kane onto the ground. Kane hadn’t expected such strength from Deadpool. Obviously an adrenalin rush, which means he’s pumped. Must be this place, that’s what it’s doing to him after these years and what he’s been through. All his anger and frustration is coming out now, at last. And God knows it won’t end, even after the entire place is levelled to the ground.

Deadpool held Garrison’s arm still, twisting it around. One foot securely on the floor, while the other pushed with extreme weight against Kane’s chest, impairing his breathing.

“Aw, whassamatta, Gary? You no likey me? Can’t mesa you bein’ friends?”

Kane let out a groan as Deadpool pushed harder and twisted even more. Suddenly, a series of thin spikes exploded from Kane’s wrist, digging into Deadpool’s own hand, but he didn’t let go.

“See, Gary. You can’t hurt me. After seeing that Jamaican bunny-lizard three times, nothing can hurt me! Not even Vanilla Ice’s wardrobe!”

“I wouldnae bet on that, lad!” came a voice from the shadows.

“Uh oh. That accent, that thick stench of Irish Spring, the realization that a baker’s dozen Irishman just tinkled all over the Blarney Stone before you kissed it… it’s all coming back to me. Man, don’t you ever die?!”

The face of Black Tom Cassidy emerges from the shadows. It’s not a face a mother could love, that’s for sure. A wild and vicious grin spreads across his face, and his thin moustache and pointed goatee add to the sinister expression.

“Aye, lad, I do. But I just keep comin’ back, ’cause I’m not finished with you yet!”

Suddenly, a blast of fire erupts from Black Tom’s clawed hand, shooting toward the two battling men. Deadpool jumps to the ground at the last possible moment, but it doesn’t prevent him from receiving a good deal of heat and flame upon his back, burning some of his costume off.

Kane, meanwhile, managed to roll out of the way at the right time. He gets back up onto one knee, aiming the gun he just grabbed from the floor, and takes a few shots at Black Tom.

Misses, all of them. Tom managed to dodge each one easily and had enough time to fire another blast at Garrison.

“This isnae yer fight, boy! Leave it to me and this scum ‘ere!” Tom tells him.

“You attacked me, which makes it my fight now. If I somehow end up saving Deadpool’s sorry hide, then so be it, but I’m fighting for myself here.” Man, he never thought he’d hear himself say that!

Taking a golden opportunity, Deadpool flings two throwing knives at Tom, the first catching him the shoulder, but his sudden jerking motion from the pain causes Deadpool’s second knife to miss, sticking into the wall behind Tom.

“Ye wanna play rough, do ye?” Tom says, teeth gritting as he reaches to his shoulder and yanks out the knife, blood pouring from the open wound. “Then take it back!”

He throws the knife straight at Deadpool with such force and speed that he hardly has enough time to react. Hardly enough, but still some, which is all he needs. It tears through the fabric of his costume, making a nice clean rip on his abdomen’s left side, cutting the skin only slightly.

“Dude, that would’ve been the perfect line if you were just about to ice me, but you had to go and screw it all up, didn’t you? If I was in charge of this whole operation, I’d rip you a new one then make you do it all over again until you got it right! You hear that, you Lucky Charms eatin’ sonova…”

*SLIKT*

A sudden, searing pain courses through Deadpool. White flashes in his eyes and he tries to see what’s happening. As things refocus, he finds himself looking down and sees, there in his chest, the other knife he threw at Black Tom, stuck inside him to the hilt.

“Oh… okay… okay… That’s it! I’ve had enough of this Rainbow lovin’ leprechaun! I gotcher gold right… here!”

Pulling the first thing that sticks out of his backpack, Deadpool leaps toward Tom with a Katana sword. The blade gleams in the light and soon with the red and yellow or the fire eminating from Tom’s hands, which soon goes on to burn through Deadpool’s costume.

The butt of the sword knocks Tom in the forehead, and the fires cease. A jab to the stomach, then a knee to the head, and Black Tom flies against the wall, which he slowly slips down from, blood smearing behind him.

“Cheap shot, lad, but that’s one fer ya,” Tom said, smiling. Deadpool let the flames extinguish themselves, a large portion of his skin now visible after the costume has been burnt to mere shreds.

Meanwhile, Kane has been busy releasing Vanessa from the chamber. The fluids are now emptied from the glass tube, and he punches commands into the computer console, releasing the barrier, then quickly moving to her side as she slumped down. Reaching over and grabbing a laboratory coat that was hanging on a stand a couple feet away, he covers the unconscious, and almost naked, love of his life.

“Come on, Vanessa. Let’s get out of here…” he whispers in her ear, knowing that she can’t hear him.

“Wait!” Deadpool stands there, bleeding, most of his scarred torso visible, and holding his blade which is pointed at Black Tom’s throat, who isn’t looking much better.

“Wade, this isn’t the time or the place. We’ve been through this before, and we both know how it’s going to end. You just need to face the facts, Wade. It’s over. Move on for once in your life, and stop trying to ruin ours!”

Deadpool’s eyes look to the ground and he says nothing as Garrison walks out the door with his love. His love.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say…” he says with a sigh.

“Aww, isn’t this touching. Ye make me want to vomit all over your blasted sword!” Black Tom says, then spits forward, hitting the sword in front of his face. Deadpool leans in a little, cutting into him just a sliver.

“Shut it, or I’ll shove that Blarney Stone so far up your…”

“Oh, save it, Deadpool! Ye are obviously runnin’ out of insults for me!”

Deadpool thinks for a moment, “Maybe you’re right, Tombo. But know what? Yo’ mama so stupid, she thinks Fleetwood Mac is a new hamburger at McDonalds!”

A groan escaped Tom’s mouth, but Deadpool’s extra push quickly quieted him.

“There’s more where that came from, slick, so plant it and let it grow. We might be here for a while!”

Meanwhile, another figure comes toward the Weapon X complex. The night masks his identity, but the moon’s light shows the silhoutte of a very large, muscular beast. He claws through the thicket of bushes and trees in the way of his destination.

As he comes upon the lit facility, a toothy grin and a low snarl can be heard.

“Open up, kids. Daddy’s come here to play!” he says, coming to the gate and slashing through the metal fences.

Sabretooth has arrived…

NEXT: Sabretooth has returned to the Weapon X project to get a fresh batch of adamantium bonded to his skeleton, and he’s not going to let any of the assembled heroes stop him! And that includes his long-time nemesis, Wolverine!