EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Part I

By Mike Bent

My name is Logan. Wolverine. I’m the best there is at what I do. Only thing is, I ain’t exactly doin’ my best right now.

My story starts off… well, I ain’t sure how it starts off. That’s still a bit of mystery to me, even after all this time. And I ain’t sure how this story is going to end up either. But I do ‘tend to find out.

It was only last night that I was telling my wife I’d be seein’ her soon, today. But the way things are lookin’ right now I ain’t so sure that that’s an appointment I’m gonna’ keep. Not unless I can convince my uninvited guests to come back another time.

Having little time to contemplate much else, Logan narrowly dodged to his left as he felt the blade of a katana marginally missing the severing strike aimed for his neck. Surrounded by ninja, garbed like those of supposedly ‘dead’ Hand, he had to be on top of his game especially since he was without his trump card. The hand that fate had dealt him was one where he was now without his healing factor, his mutant ability to almost instantaneously heal any physical wound. But then, right now, Logan was thinking more on the other injustices Lady Destiny was intend on inflicting upon him.

The Hand were supposed to be dead, gone, destroyed. But here they were, in the living ‘flesh’. Supernatural in one sense, lethal in others, it has always been difficult to define exactly what The Hand have been. Flunkies to some, destined captors for dark arts or and even evil spirits given physical form. Agents of chaos, a fragmented way of force splintered into individual groupings, all being used or using their vile ways for the progression of agony, chaos and ultimately destruction. Whatever this band of Hand this way, Logan had one phrase in mind for them; pain in the ass.

“Knew I shoulda’ stayed outta’ Madripoor for at least a few more years.Every time I come back to this place I get inta’ trouble.” Reaching to his right and grabbing a Hand by the scruff of his hood, Logan yanked the man back into the path of a thrust sword from one of the other ninja, sparring himself and thus turning the Hand in his grasp to dust. “Ya’ freaks still make a mess of things. And here people call me uncouth.”

With a snarl he dove forward, grabbing of another of the Hand to toss aside, sending the ‘man’ crashing into the wall, sparing the assassin no gentleness in that hurl. But then, as The Hand were so fond of saying, you deal with one of them and another shall be there to take the place of that downed Hand. Well, the ninja may be corrupt, but they do not lie as Logan was quickly coming to find himself surrounded on all sides.

Not ten minutes before it hadn’t been like this. He merely had been attempting to check into his hotel, but now he was working not to check out so quickly. Yet, even if he made it out of this scrap alive he wouldn’t be staying here. The room was now trashed, ruined. Like everything else The Hand touched. At least everything involving Logan.

How many times had The Hand been there, in his past, making it more complicated than it had to be? Mariko. Amiko. Yuriko. The X-Men. …Elektra.

Instantly Logan began to think of his wife, a wife he had left in northern Canada only yesterday morning, promising her that all would be well upon her arrival here. She was right, that this would make a horribly honeymoon vacation spot. He said it would be relaxing, but this was far from relaxing right now.

With The Hand here and Elektra having said she needed to remain the extra day for ‘business’, that he was fine to go on ahead… suddenly Logan was worried for his wife, that what was happening here to him would somehow be connected to something happening to Elektra wherever she was. Maybe even something connected to what happened while they were in Canada…? He was worried because, for as much as they had messed with him in the past, The Hand had torn apart her lives on a regular basis. And Logan doesn’t like to be worried.

“I’ll give ya’ flamin’ yahoos ten seconds t’explain why yer here tearin’ up the joint. And me. Thanks t’you I ain’t gonna’ get my despoit back, so I figure I gotta’ right t’take out the payment in yer hides.”

With that The Hand arround him slowed for a moment, coming to a pause. ~Knew it,~ Logan thought to himself. ~Chumps always like to explain why they’re tossing their fists. Not enough you have to feel what they’re dishing out, but they want you to feel their pain as well. Not sure which is worse to endue, but it’s giving me a second to catch my breath…~

“We are here, Wolverine, for the obvious reasons. We wish for your death.”

One of the assassins stepped forward, sharing the information. Logan had to admit it to himself that he appreciated the blunt honesty. But the ‘man’ continued. “Yet not in this time or place. Nor are we the ones for this task. We have been sent as messengers.”

“What if I don’t like t’message?”

“Then, Wolverine, we are prepared to die to deliver it still. That is our will. We have been sent to tell you that you life shall soon be forfeit, to make the way for his return.”

Logan wasn’t sure right off who this ‘his’ was, but he was getting an idea. But that kind of idea was getting his hands itching, the backs of them. With his fists clenched he was getting tired of hearing this pretenious prattling, but there was cause to hear it out. The Hand may be flunkies and has-beens, but they always operate for a reason, and Logan was wanting to know who was behind all of this to make sure to ‘thank’ this mastermind for ruining his honeymoon.

Though he was feeling the need for it he hadn’t popped his claws yet. Without his healing factor there would be no way to heal the wounds there, or anywhere else on his body for that matter. He had to be careful, which right now was anything other than what he wanted to be, especially as he listened to that Hand member continue on.

“… our Sensei has informed us that you will come to him, and know where to find him when the time is right. He wished for us to present you only with this.”

With that The Hand thrust his hand inside his clock to pull out a lock of black hair, holding it out towards Logan. The Canadian didn’t have to hold it to know what it meant. His nose told him that with one sniff of the air.

They had Amiko. His daughter.

Elektra was a happy woman, one who was unaccustomed to having much happiness in her life. As a young woman she watched her father die, an experience that turned to a life as violent and senseless as that murdering of her ambassador father. Studied in the martial arts she became a killer, a rather effective and high paid one. She had been killed, revived with purity in her soul, and then tainted once more. Her life had never truly been her own, always being subject to forces outside her control, having been a pawn to the likes of the Kingpin, The Hand and to a degree even the Chaste. At times Elektra wasn’t sure where her life was headed or what she was meant for. That is why she was content with Logan, a man that allowed her to be free with herself, a man that wasn’t out to control or change her, unlike her pervious love interest, Matt Murdock, the Daredevil, was so fond of doing.

It was more than just being content… she felt that longing for Logan, that love. She wore his ring after all, and that was an accomplishment that even Elektra had to admire as no other man had been able to do that. But then Logan was a remarkable man, one who was so because he didn’t struggle with the fight within him, the human verses the dark side, but he accepted the fact that the struggle was there and did the best he could with it. Always. This was something Elektra knew she didn’t have the strength for herself. Not yet.

The past three months since her wedding had been… a challenge. Coming to this place, to this cabin in the middle of nowhere was a learning experience. Logan had invited her into his world and… she came to find her own place in it. It hadn’t been easy, at first, putting up without indoor plumbing, but she had come to find the sense of purpose in it, in fetching your own water. To survive based on your own efforts. Much like her old life as an assassin had been, but this was more calm. More natural, as cliche as that word might be to use.

But then the unnatural happened. Just when things were the happiest, when she and Logan truly began to settle into their life together… all she could remember, when it happened, was how happy everyone had been at their wedding to hear the news. How everyone had congradulated them. How Logan had smiled.

She had miscarried their children, the triplets.

She remembered Logan burying them, the way he wouldn’t look at himself, and how he had ‘disappeared’ for a couple of days afterwards. That was the hardest time of all and in that time she thought… well, she was glad he returned. From there they talked. And talked some more. In all the time she had been with Logan she wasn’t sure if she had ever heard him talk more than he did in that time. Things got better, almost back to where they were before. He said that he forgave her, and she knew that he wasn’t lying. There was pain there, still. Regret, perhaps, at what they almost had had together. Wherever happiness was it would have to be found… it was a ways off.

But she was getting there, one step at a time. It was something that she at least _wanted_ now, where for the longest time in her life she wanted anything but an acceptance of herself. She wanted to just drift, to let something else guide her… and something else did, her rage, her base nastiness. But that wasn’t a path she could walk any longer. She had changed, be it because of Logan, her husband, her recent… loss or because she herself wished to be different. She couldn’t tell.

It was a New Year, just a day old, and perhaps it was time for a new life.

And she did want this new life, with her new husband. They had only been married what, a couple of months now? It felt like more and less at the same time, but Elektra knew that she wanted more of the ‘more’. Yet in that short span of time they had already gone through so much, much more than they ever deserved to go through. There was still much tension there between them because of what happened to the childrem, their unborn children. If only she hadn’t said the night before it happened that she wondered ‘what their life could be like without them…’ But now was not the time for regret. Logan said that he forgave her, that she just had to forgive herself. While they were on the road to recovery, things very much were still… tense. That’s why she reamined in this cabin, in northern Canada, sending Logan on ahead to make arrangements in Madripoor, while she ‘dealt with something’ at home.

Home. How long had it been since she had a ‘home’? Here in Logan’s cabin she felt at peace, or at least as close to a sense of security as she had in a long, long time.

She wished she could be there with him in Madripoor, now. She knew he wouldn’t be getting into trouble, at least nothing that he couldn’t get himself out of. Logan was very self-reliant in some ways, but so desperate for compansionship in others, something Elektra could understand rather well. Perhaps what it was was that Logan was self-reliant, and that is something Elektra was now working on for herself.

The ‘business’ that she told him that she had to do was important to her, necessary. Likely it should have been something she should have done with her husband, but in many ways Elektra knew that she had to do this alone. It was her way of making a commitment to making things better, to set herself on the path of working things out with her husband.

In her hand was a package, a very important one. Inside where a pair of sai, her personal weapons of choice, her instruments of her former work. Yes, former. The package was to be sent to Stone, a select member of the Chaste, a man who given his life so that Elektra could once again live. If there was anyone capable of understanding what she was wishing, he hoped that it would be him. The package wasn’t meant to be an invitation to invite her back to that, as right now Elektra was wanting to walk away from it all.

Wolverine really wasn’t in a place he’d like to be right now. The hotel room in Madripoor was nice before he stepped through the door. He liked coming to this city, as it was his style of city. But right now he was pissed off. Very. Which wasn’t good because he should be asking The Hand he was tossing around where they were keeping Amiko, his adopted daughter, instead of bashing them senseless.

~SCHLUCT~

The feel of his claws being popped was a satisfying one, but not one soothing enough to quell his rage. He was tired, jetlagged and just generally pissed off. His life was better right now than it had been in some time and with the arrival of The Hand he knew it was about to get worse. So much pain over the years that he had felt and dished out, and no one in his life had been spared the pain he brought. Especially not Elektra. It wasn’t fair, but then what in his life had ever been fair? It was healthy to work out your agressions. Maybe not on others, but at this point Logan didn’t care.

“Wolverine, we have not come here to fight, again we are mess…”

Sure, they weren’t here to fight, they were just here as messengers. But to Logan he didn’t like what they had to say, and that was all the justification that he needed.

No one knew exactly what The Hand were, save for maybe The Hand themselves. The animated dead? The undead? Controled spirits? But to Logan the only good thing about them was the fact that while they wer ein this form, the physical one, they were flesh and bone, until that moment of death. Or at least enough meat that Logan could sink his claws into. And he did, again and again. He could feel his bone claws striking bone within The Hand, and that scrapping of marrow was a feeling that Logan craved.

A good craving or a bad one? Logan couldn’t tell. Part of him told it was wrong to get satisfaction from such a thing, and another part of him was crying out for more. Right now the latter seemed the most fullfilling.

He was swarmed before he could ‘gut’ more than two of them, The Hand believing that they could overcome him with numbers. They’d tried this trick before several time sint he ast and though he was without his healing factor, the assassins wouldn’t be successful this time either. Jabbing one ‘man’ and then tossing another, he knew that the fight was on. He could feel it racing through him, that fire, that drive. it as more than adrenaline. But with how rapidly he was cutting The Hand down he knew it wouldn’t last, at least not long enough. with an uppercut to the jaw of another, driving his claws through the top of the skull of a Hand, Logan whirled to nearly cut another in half with a broad swipe.

There just weren’t enough of them.

There were too many of them.

Despite that the cabin was now flooded over a hundred Hand, the fact that Elektra was most aware of was that the package she had just prepared to send to Stone was now broken, open. It lay at her feet. And in her hands were the weapons she was most accustomed to; her sais.

The Hand had destroyed her life and rebuilt it, literally. There was a time in her life when she went to them, seeking to become one of them, to attempt to turn them towards better ways. They accepted her, and she came to attempt them, not bending them to her hopeful ways but her kneeling before them. She became one of them, and even when she rejected The Hand they still came for her. She was killed and The Hand used their dark arts to resurrect her. They might well be the reason she lost her children. Then again, they were the reason she had the chance to begin with. She wished that she owed them nothing.

If only that were so.

Whatever reason that The Hand was here for, they had her attention. Just a moment ago she was about to leave this place, to go join her husband in Madripoor for a get-away, another honeymoon of sorts. ‘To work on making things right,’ as he would have said. She had been looking forward, to leaving her life behind and seeing where this one of renewed wedding bliss might take her. But with these assassins here before her she knew that the path to getting there was now instantly more difficult.

If they had wanted her dead she would have been already. Shamefully she had to admit to herself that she had let her guard down, becoming lost in her thoughts. Her hopes. She had been trained to have been better, to not be surprised like this. She didn’t like this feeling that she had now, looking into the face of all of these ninja. They had gotten the drop on her.

In a defensive stance, she looked to her left and then her right. How could so many people fit into this apartment? But then they weren’t really ‘people’, so much as extentions of the shadows. Darkness certainly dominated the room. Outnumbered, Elektra knew that she had to do what she did best; take the offensive.

“What do you want?”

“We have come to you for help, Elektra. We have come to ask for your guidance.”

Well, so much for leading the assult…

With the proverbial wind taken out of her proverbial sails, Elektra hesitated for a moment. This would give her time to listen to what these Hand had come to say. Once again they had managed to get the drop on her.

She hated that feeling. But what she feared that she was going to come have the feeling again once she heard them out.

“Thought you bozos were supposed t’be messengers. Yer t’last one left,” Logan snarled as he clenched his fingers in the collar material of The Hand he held close to his face. Logan’s acute senses were telling him he smelt the stench of death, something familiar to all of The Hand, that wretched odor that littered them. But the whole stink of it was in the air, something else about this whole situation Logan didn’t like.

With his claws threaded through the shoulders of the ninja’s cloak, those sharp bone digits on either side of The Hand’s face, Logan looked to this remaining individual for answers. He’d had enough fun, enough of the games. Time to get some answers.

“Don’t tell me I gotta’ go diggin’ ’round in yer insides for yer return of address.”

“It wouldn’t do you any good, Wolverine, as you know The Hand are returned to the ashes from whence we are made upon our demise. It’s true, Logan knew, as the rest of The Hand that he had dealt with were nothing more than empty robes and piles of dirt at this point. I wish for my death if it may be of service to the sensei…”

Again with this ‘sensei’ thing, Logan thought.

“Who the flamin’ hell is…”

“All you need to know Wolverine is… Kanasawa.”

That could only mean…. no. No. No.

But Logan’s attempts at denial were cut short with the brutish sound of his claws severing the head from the body of The Hand he held. With a simple twist of his wrists the ninja crumpled away to dust.

Standing now, Logan relaxed the muscles in his wrists, his bone claws instantly withdrawing. Looking down to his hands he knew he’d have to find some bandages before he went anywhere. The six wounds on the back of his hands were bleeding freely. He hurt, but that wasn’t about to stop anytime soon.

“Definately ain’t ona a’my better days…”

Without bothering to pack Logan knew what he had to do next.

Time to go to Kanasawa. Japan.