Chapter 3
There was a lot about his brother Deadpool didn’t know. He never would have guessed that he had invested in New York property, certainly not a huge townhouse a few hairs shy of being a mansion in a gated neighbourhood, the kind of place where nobody knew their neighbours and had never even heard the word 'community' or at least applied it to themselves, a far larger building then two people really needed. He always lived in a rotating series of safe-houses scattered around the country.
The place felt vast and echoing, like a cavity waiting to be filled. It was tastefully decorated, there were none of the giant, gold-framed mirrors or incomprehensible expressionist paintings that only the most affluent trendy can buy (Slade didn't have a head for art anyway - he knew what he liked, and it was landscapes), but all of the original seventeenth and eighteenth century furniture was still there. It looked a lot like people who buy imitation furniture wanted their houses to look - though it was real it was so lifeless it might have been fake.
Slade never even touched it. To him, the comfort was irrelevant, and the whole place was just window dressing. He actually lived in a bunker underneath, where he stored his armaments and reconnaissance information for his jobs, and only came up to sleep, eat, and leave.
The ceiling was two stories high, and a wide, grand staircase with an ornate metal railing swept up to the second floor, where a straight-backed, dignified gentleman, with fierce whiskers and eyes that remained piercing. Like the two brothers Wilson, he has a face of contrasts and visual reminders of the life it's lived. It might have been pretty once, but now it was littered with thin scars and jowls just beginning to sag. William Randolph Wintergreen had been in the SAS for two decades, and the best man at his masters wedding, and now served as Slade's right hand man, moral conscience, comrade in arms, butler and housekeeper.
Deadpool ran up the stairs three at a time and embraced him in a hug that the gentleman in question found extremely uncomfortable, not to mention unbecoming. "Wintergreen! How I have missed you! My place just isn't the same without someone to pick up pizza boxes and soda cans. You have no idea, because whenever you see them you pick them up, but in your absence they really start to pile up after a while. Hey, maybe you could come over and do something about it." He nudged him in the ribs, and then gave him a big, cheesy wink.
"You could pick them up yourself." Slade pointed out, folding his arms across his chest. He got territorial where Wintergreen was concerned.
"Yeah, but that's kinda what Wintergreen is for."
"Regretfully, master Wade, my work for your brother is somewhat full time. I haven't the time for a life of my own, never mind the time to assist you in yours."
"Well I'm not saying you should drop everything, just that you should be a bit more considerate." Deadpool says, impervious to sarcasm, then skipped back down the stairs. "Twice a week should be more then enough. Just make sure you don't come on saturday. I 'entertain' 'company' on saturday." He nudged his brother in the ribs this time. "If you 'know' what I 'mean'."
Wintergreen had satisfied the expectations of politeness, and was not about to engage any further.
"It's cool that you have a butler."
"He's not a butler. Butlers manage households. He's a valet."
"I know, I too am a fan of Downtun Abbey. And I think the technical term is slave, since you don't pay him."
"Actually, I do. As well as keep him safe. With what he knows, the SAS would kill him if they knew he was still alive."
"And this is your idea of friendship? You can't put a price on it."
The two of them didn't actually work together all that often. Slade was at his most deadly alone (or so he always claimed), and Deadpool took the sort of jobs he felt were beneath his dignity, which was why he'd run into some financial difficulties in the last while. I mean, all that stuff costs money, and as he was fond of complaining, he's gotten paid exactly twice since his 2012 books, whatever the hell that means. More to the point, Deadpool was an unpredictable loose cannon with several cannons of his own, and Slade was a control freak who was obsessed with precision, and had no problem working for people most of their community were terrified of.
Of course, Slade Wilson - despite having no actual morals, or even standards - did have a kind of honour - but it was honour of the most blatant sort, less a sense of fair-play, and more a gentlemen's code of elastic convenience in order to keep the power in the hands it was, and cut everyone else out. Still, it was a personal moral code he remained true to no matter how good the money was even if it was such a self-futhiling, hollowly specific morality that most wouldn't be able make sense of where the lines were drawn.
1.) Family first. Not just blood, family (though Wade Defarge was the acknowledged exception, the unofficial rule being they all hated him and he hated all them). You never sided against the family, you never sold them out, or took jobs against them, and no matter what they did you kept offering them as many second chances as they needed. Also, if they needed help you gave it to them. His own very unhappy childhood had made doing better one of his priorities, and for that much he could always be relied on. You didn't have to like it, or accept it, but Deathstroke would always do his best if you were family, no matter how much you hated him.
2.) Never involve innocent bystanders. Of course, they were only bystanders if they were unconnected to the victim. Family, friends, colleagues and the like were acceptable, even if they were completely defenceless. But unconnected collateral damage was unprofessional. And try to keep the destruction of property to a minimum as well, though that rule could be safely ignored if the circumstances warranted it. Explosions, for instance, weren't particularly controllable, but were a good way to start getting the job done.
3.) Don't kill people you are not being paid for. He'd done that a few times, but the world was full of people who made him want to kill them, and he didn't have time to deal with them all. Deathstroke was in it for the money, a job was a job, no need to let it get personal.
4.) If you didn't want to do the job, you made it too expensive for anyone to afford. He had no interest in committing suicide. If you wanted a job, then you lowered the price. But once you took it, if it was beyond your abilities (and such a thing was far from common), you apologised and paid your client back. Of course, if your client died before you did it, you had no obligation to continue unless their next of kin kept the money rolling in, and if they failed to pay you then you had an obligation to make them suffer.
5.) The rules have to be broken sometimes. Fine. But don't make a habit of it.
"So what does Wintergreen do when he's not with you? I always figured he went into a kind of hibernation, or just ceases to exist whenever you're not watching him."
"He respects my privacy. I grant him the same courtesy." Slade replied. "He does travel a lot, I've picked that much up."
"Wait, you don't know?"
"Why would I?"
“Aside from the fact he’s part of your supporting cast, you mean?” Deadpool shrugged.
"Well, I know he enjoys golfing."
“Fair enough. So can I... No wait, that's just the cancer repeatedly spreading into my brain then instantly healing talking."
"No you can't."
“Really? Just going to deny? You don't even know what I was going to say."
"You're right. I don't." Slade sounded happy about that.
"I'm going to ask anyway. What was that about, or am I going to guess?"
"You mean the money? It should come to half a million once we capture them all. You can have my cut, that should be more then enough. Personally, I've been waiting a long time for someone to make this offer."
"Half a million is cheap for this sort of work and you know it, particularly when we could have gotten that much cubed, and attacking the mansion with two people is suicide any way you call it. And I still don't get why you didn't just hunt him down and kill him in your own time. Or why you want to kill mutants. What are you, a racist?"
Slade's eye narrowed. "My son is a mutant."
"The one that's not dead?"
Slade's hand went to his knife. "Yes."
"Why then? If you want to kill Wolverine for free, why wait until someone asked you to?"
"I'm not a mad gunman, I am a professional. And a professional might give away his services for free on occasion, but he doesn't let things get personal." Slade replied. For him, that was a deep and searching look at his innermost motivations. "As for the mansion, who said we'd be alone? I intend to have a hundred former special forces with big guns at out backs, laying down suppressing fire."
"Oh sure, I'd love to play soldiers again, that's why I escaped to go into business myself. Anyway, this is personal! You said it yourself! Matter of honour, I heard you say it, don't think I didn't. Wait, that first thing. What's the difference?"
"One's an occupation with a noble and glorious history, the others a mental health issue that'll get you locked up in Arkham."
"Huh. Knew there was a difference. You know, they wanted to lock me up in there once."
"Yes I do. I broke you out, as I remember."
“And got your ass kicked by Batman.”
“That time, yes.” Slade agreed. “But I got you out.” Slade stretched his shoulders, then cracked his knuckles and headed to the back room, where a staircase led down to the basement. Slade was old-school, and had converted that into his bunker and headquarters. "I'm going bellow to keep in practice. I've called my contacts, they'll soon have a location for us."
"When did you do that? Off panel?"
"In transit. Try to keep up."
"Off-panel, just say so."
"We'll leave tomorrow. Keep yourself entertained in the meantime, don't let anyone know you're here and don't do anything I wouldn't do." He paused a moment. "And keep out of my liquor cabinet.”
Deadpool didn't stir until he was out of the room, then he rewinded through the conversation. "Dammit, he avoided my question. Well played sir, but you haven't beaten me yet. This calls for a devious and subtle plan of attack..."
* * * * *
There were only so many things you could do to amuse yourself in an empty house, even mansion. You could eat, you could watch television, you could break things, but it wasn't enough. Sooner or later, you needed someone to pay attention to you.
He pressed his hand against a matt black screen at the bottom of the stairs, and a light flashed green. Blast doors opened with a hiss in response, and he stepped into Slade's bunker.
The place was stark and spartan the way Slade liked it, just scuffed bare metal and rivets, exposed wires, a few dim lightbulbs, and a wire screen cage where one could train. The stink of perspiration and ozone was heavy in the air. From within the cage, there came a high-pitched squeal of discharging energy as a training-bot was dispatched.
Slade moved with a subtle blend of power and grace, always steps ahead of his artificial opponents, his moves plotted and figured out well in advance. Every strike flowed into another parry or blow, his every thrust precise and deadly. He displayed an astounding economy of movement, with no unnecessary flourish or extravagance yet undeniable skill. He was stripped to the waist, his lean, muscular body was flushed with perspiration, where it wasn't puckered with old scars. Slade had a healing factor, they'd built him to last afterall, but it was a crude, slow and cumbersome one that was achieved by speeding up his metabolism, and thanks to it he still bore the scars of over four decades of war.
He was using a machete, his favoured weapon for close-work, and his head was lathered in sweat. Four training-bots circled him, their blank helmeted heads and swift moving bodies blurred by their humming shield units. Bladed arms cut through the air as they tried to land a blow against the their owner. Programmed to complement each other, they attacked as one, utilising group tactics to try to overwhelm him.
Far from being dim-witted puppets with a few automated responses, they'd been designed by Doctor Dudley Noble himself with state of the art Virtual Intelligence's capable of mimicking independent thought and creativity too an alarming degree, and had it all applied to violence suitable for vicious combat models quite capable of ripping an ordinary man to bits. Wade had seen it happen when Slade set them on people, back when he had he had a factory in Jump City that manufactured them by the dozen, so that he could use them as expendable drones. Deadpool had no idea how it was he couldn’t get a robot buddy for love or money that was worth a damn (unless you counted his Roomba), but more conventional supervillains never seemed to have any trouble acquiring a plethora of them without any infrastructure whatsoever, but he didn’t feel obliged to point it out.
Deadpool watched Deathstroke curiously. It was always a lesson to watch his brother in motion, circling and crossing, never putting a foot wrong, each motion exact and severe. As it moved, the blade made a hard whistling sound like a whip.
With enviable skill, Slade turned away the slashing blade with the palm of his free hand. Spinning, he deflected a second and third blow coming from different angles, and his sword cut across the face of one of the training-bots. It's shield recognised the hit in a blaze of electronics, and the bot stepped back stiffly, powering down.
Deathstroke kept moving, rounding on another one of the bots. He executed a perfect kill thrust to the chest, before turning and dropping on one knee to perform a disemboweling thrust on another, a blade whistling just inches above his head. The last of the active servitors came at him and he rose to his feet. Sidestepping a vicious slash, he swung for it's neck. His blow was turned aside, and the bot lunged, it's reflexes inhuman, looking to rip out his heart.
Wade looked to make-sure the safety option was disabled, but he needn't have worried. Slade wouldn't have his opponents holding back, even if they were just toys.
With a deft circular movement of his sword Slade turned aside both blades as they jabbed at his chest, braced himself, lowering his centre of gravity. Rising, he lifted his shoulder into the bot's midsection. The weighty machine was lifted off the ground and went staggering backwards, and Slade dispatched it with a brutal blow to the head.
"Pause combat." He said before they could come back online. He went to the side of the training cage and replaced the blade on the weapons rack. Wiping a hand across his sweat slick head, he considered the array of weapons before choosing a heavy double-ended pole-arm. It had an axe-blade at one end and a curving crescent moon at the other. It was called some sort of spade, Deadpool was sure, although beyond that he didn't remember, or had never bothered to learn. Slade spun it around him with deft flicks, gauging it's weight and balance, then nodded, seemingly satisfied.
"You want a turn, brother?" He asked, though he paid Deadpool little attention, continuing to take tightly controlled practice swings with the new weapon.
"Yeah, that's not going to happen." Wade replied, holding up a hand. "Prefer to keep my head in the game by doing, rather then imagining, you know? And robots don't react to me like people. It's totally science. So what about you? Why the three hours in the glass cage of emotion?" He paused thoughtfully, then gave a cheeky grin beneath his mask that was almost invisible. "Getting old?"
A muscle twitched above Slade’s missing eye. “Don't start that. I can knock you on your arse in six seconds flat, and have your head off in half that." Slade warned “long in the tooth as I might be.” He wasn't boasting, he'd already done the calculations.
"Not the falling that matters, it's the getting back up, old timer." Deadpool replied. "His holiness the Dali Lama said that."
“You're taking an old, celibate, pacifist's advice on how to fight?" Slade asked. "Because that doesn't sound like a winning strategy."
"Hey they'll never see it coming. Anyway, all Asians are martial arts experts. Everyone knows that." Deadpool said defensively. "And their monks probably work the same way. Every movie I've ever seen confirms it. If he's top monk, then that means he's undefeated, and that none can best him in the ring of honour. It's totally true."
His brother isn't actually stupid. Sometimes, he has to forcibly remind himself that. "Right. Well, unless Shang-Chi or Sandra Wu-San has got religion and moved to Tibet, or they clone Bruce Lee from the dead again, I think it's a safe bet to ignore the koans when it comes to doing violence to people."
"Lets not go there, brother. Anyway, I came to ask where my favourite niece and nephews are." Deadpool said, while he still had his brothers attention. "The ones that are still alive, I mean. I wish to shower them with gifts, and humorous anecdotes about my life, and give them some hard-won advice about how to make it in this cruel, cruel world of ours. Or possibly patronise them and make them fight for my attention, I haven't decided yet. Maybe over indulge them with sweets and attention and over-priced gifts. Whatever. Either way, it's very important to bond with them now, before they grow too old and stop returning my calls like pretty much everyone else I know, and besides, they're already much too old to want to fly a kite or say 'jeepers' unironically, which means that the magic of childhood is already almost used up.”
“You don’t know much about kids, do you?”
“Well, how hard can it be?”
Slade stared at him levelly, stopping swinging the weapon as he did, and holding it loosely in his right hand. Wade didn't back down. At last he sighed, and shrugged his broad shoulders. "They are both in their twenties."
"So what, turn eighteen and they're out of your house and your life?"
Slade looked at him sharply. It was a moment before he replied. "Grant is dead. Rose is looking for her mother. Jericho is still in Washington. We'll see him after we finish this job, and you can be as bad an influence as you like. He's got a new body, and is talking again." he said, a little defensively.
Wade, tactful as ever, grabbed onto the first point like a tick. "Isn't Rose's mom, you know, dead-"
"Yes. Buried her myself." Slade replied stiffly. Then, before Wade could offer another word, added "Recommence combat, threat level eight." The five training-bots jerked back into motion, circling him again.
"So, is she like, mysteriously back alive and much younger, now wearing a costume and with a more era appropriate history? Because you might just have hit the jackpot." He was forced to raise his voice above the escalating clamour in the training cage, but that didn't concern him. He could be as loud as he needed to be. "I mean, Lillian must have been something special, if she got you to cheat on Adeline. You must have all sorts of unresolved -"
Slade spun, sweeping the legs from under one, before smashing another to the ground with an empathetic blow to the head. "No." Slade said, parrying a swift blow before kicking the bot away from him with a heavy boot. "She's dead. I checked. Rose is deluding herself.”
"Ah. And you figured the sensible parenting decision was to leave her adrift in her own insanity, rather then get her professional help." He clapped his hands together and tilted his head. "Nice going, father of the year."
"She can look after herself. Which is more then I can say about you." Slade said, knocking the last of his opponents down with a series of stabbing thrusts. "Pause combat."
"That's harsh. But it's not really an answer. You're mister control freak, no way would you let her just leave unless you had no choice. What are the two of you fighting about?"
Slade stepped over to the wall where he lifted a heavy, double-headed hammer from the weapons rack. "Recommence combat, threat level nine."
"And why is it so important I come on this really self-indulgent mission with you?"
"Deadpool."
"Yes, that's what they call me, though I'd prefer 'your holiness'."
"Not now." Slade said, adjusting his grip on the hammer. “I’m concentrating.”