Shatterworld #1

The alleyway's across the city of Toronto had a lot in common with one another, Deadpool thought - as it occurred to him that perhaps he should write a guidebook. The one they had parked the Delorean in had a dumpster on the other side of the street, but otherwise was a dead ringer for the alley he and Cable had began their fantastic reunion tour in.

People thought the occupation of a trigger happy mercenary was glamorous, or at least an escape from their dull colourless lives, but tonight he didn't seem to be doing much aside from hanging around in alleyways in Canada. Admittedly all three times he'd been accompanied by macho types who were easily ripped enough to win any regional body-building competition and ruggedly handsome to boot (though perhaps a little more scarred and rugged then conventional standards of beauty endorsed - not that he was complaining), but he was related to one, really disliked the second, and as for the first…

…well, he was happily married, and not to Cable. More's the pity.

Sebastien Shaw had proven easy enough to follow, given he was traveling in a matt black stretch limousine. If he noticed he'd picked up a tail, he didn't seem concerned about it, but Cable kept back and drove cautiously, just in case.

The club which seemed to be his destination, or at least his destinations front, was called the 'Chaos Theatre', and it was as fine a palace as any decadent Roman Emperor would have found more then to his liking, and it sat like a crown of light in the city. As it turned out, the Hellfire Club didn't have much of a presence in Canada, and none whatsoever in Toronto, so it was going to waste, and had somehow evolved into a hangout for the unemployed young-adult slacker demographic.

Sad.

Truthfully, Deadpool wondered what it was they could do to someone living in a place like that, which they were not already willingly doing to themselves, but he didn't put it into words. He was busy was almost shaking with excitement.

Cable was shaking too, but only his head at the pretentiousness of it all.

"OK, here's the plan." Deadpool began, as they got out of the vehicle. "I will be codename Soaring Eagle. I will cunningly infiltrate the building through the air vents and perform reconnaissance."

"That doesn't seem necessary."

"I am entirely open to criticism and suggestions for improving my strategy. And on an entirely unrelated note, that's stupid and so are you." Deadpool replied airily. "Now if there won't be any more interruptions, I'll get on with it. You will be codename Sitting Duck. You will walk in the front door, act surreptitious and inconspicuous, and be ready to back me up if I give you the signal."

"Which is?"

"I'll improvise. Never be afraid to improvise. Of course, you'll be able to figure it out. I mean, you can just pull it out of my head with the powers of your mind."

Cable sighed. "You know, you are working for him. You could probably walk in the front door."

“Working for him. Not with you. We'd have to split up."

"We are splitting up. It's part of your plan."

"Well, yes. Sneaking around isn't really your strength. Strength is your strength. You're much too burly, and heavy-set, and rugged, and mightily thewed…" Deadpool stopped adding adjectives before he actually started drooling again "to ever fit in the vents. And I don't trust Shaw to tell me what I want to know, hence the sneaking and spying."

"So why don't you ask your brother?" Cable paused. "Hell, I look enough like him that with the mask and suit nobody would know the difference. Or I could just mess with their perceptions enough that they think they’re seeing your brother."

Deadpool repressed that thought as deeply as it would go, but he still shuddered a little. If Cable ever mentioned dressing up as his brother again, he'd splatter his brains on the sidewalk and hope they took the memory with them. "No, that's not happening. Shaw'll have a telepath with him anyway. I mean, he always does. Besides I'm not going to scheme against my brother - he's not involved in this. That's why I'm helping you now." Deadpool replied, folding his arms. "Anyway, even if that did work, Shaw wouldn't tell him anything. He's a mutant supremacist. And Slade and I aren't mutants. He's probably got two unmarked graves lined up for us once we 'outlive our usefulness'. This is practically pre-emptive revenge."

Cable raised an eyebrow. “Is that a thing?”

"Sure. Anyway, if we do question him, I'd like to catch him with his guard down. But I'd rather not fight him at all - and that's rare for me, so let's go with my instincts. Let's just try and give subtle a try first, alright?"

"Fair enough." Cable agreed after a moment. Deadpool might be a bit flighty, but there was no denying he was good at what he did, and if he was working to avoid senseless violence, he definitely had his head in the game. "Still, I think the plan could be improved."

"Then it's a good thing this isn't a democracy." Deadpool retorted. "Now, I'm feeling naked, and not in a personally empowering way. Papa needs some heavy ordinance."

"I thought you wanted to avoid fighting."

"Guns. Now."

In answer, Cable opened up the boot of his car. Deadpool couldn't help but drool.

There wasn't the normal selection of over-sized masculinity reaffirming futuristic weapons, superior to contemporary weapons in length, girth and potency, as well as attention they attracted from ladies, and the satisfaction users received after they had finished spending their load… of ammunition. Instead, there was a selection of revolvers and rifles that looked like they came off the set of an old west period drama. Normally Deadpool preferred more bullets then less, spray and pray was how things got done, but he was willing to make an exception.

Deadpool grabbed the first one that caught his eyes, finding just the sort of exception he'd been waiting his whole life for. It was a repeating rifle, a Winchester, complete with the large rounded hoop handle on the lever action. It was seriously heavy, with an octagonal barrel, walnut wood fixtures, and shining brass housing. Elkhorn sights. The gun had a certain comforting mass to it, that was at least as much as a comfort as it's raw power.

He had fallen in love. He wanted to hold it, to tell it how pretty it was, to treat it nice and take it out to a delicious sea-food dinner, while musicians played romantic music with violins. He wanted to tell it how his day went, to spend a lazy afternoon in bed next to it reminiscing on the long years they'd been together. He wanted to argue with it, then make up after the argument, and laugh about it later. He picked it up, and it was his.

It was a first for him, going from coveting to possessing in so little time. He took a couple of over-sized revolvers as well, as even though he vastly preferred automatic weapons you could never have too many firearms.

"So where'd you get all this?"

Cable was a trifle more reserved, although he was clearly excited himself. "Australia. Twenty years from the present."

"You mean now?"

"No. It's always twenty years from now, whenever now happens to be." Cable replied, then shook his head as he made out Deadpool's incredulous expression through his mask. "Just trust me, time travels a fuc-."

"Hey hey hey! Watch the mouth! This is not a MAX imprint." Deadpool admonished. "So what's it like? Can I get some information and win the superbowl?"

Cable looked at him. In his eye was the million yard stare of a man who had looked on helplessly as the world had died time and time again. "Well, one ordinary Wednesday the power is going to go out. It is not going to come back again. The water will turn sour and poisonous. The food will run out. The weak will be ripped to pieces by the strong. Civilisation will meaningfully cease. Giant radioactive storms that have destroyed all the cities will sweep across the desert, because everything will be desert, radically altering the landscape. Breathing unfiltered oxygen will be a slow death sentence. Our bones will be poisoned - a long life will be measured in a handful of decades. And all that remains will be gangs of cargo-cult cannibals murdering each other over imaginary lines in the sand. Water will be more precious then human life. Petrol will become more precious still. Want to hear more?"

"No, I think I've heard enough. Maybe my life isn't that exciting afterall." Deadpool cleared his throat, then stepped underneath the duct. Taking a moment to imagine he was John Wayne in Rio Bravo, the way he always did before a fight, he climbed the brick-wall with ease, using his fingertips and toe-tips and demonstrating amazing agility as he did, used a credit-card to slip under the grate covering his means of entrance and pull it loose. The grill made a tremendous clanging sound as it crashed on top of the car, denting it. Deadpool winced, but Cable only shook his head, as if to say 'get on with it', and made a hurry-up motion with his flesh hand. Deadpool let out a sigh of relief, and began his cunning entry.

Cable walked in through the front door, and didn't even need to use his awe-inspiring telepathic abilities to insure that nobody paid him any mind.

Everyone was far too self-absorbed to notice him.

Cable felt out of place.

Cable was out of place. Or rather, out of time. He didn't belong in this period, and he certainly didn't belong in this room. Nobody acknowledging it somehow only made it all the worse.

Someone had obviously put a lot of love into designing this place. It was deep underground, he wasn't sure how deep, but enough that he needed an elevator to enter. After that, it was all there. Greek coloumns, cage dancers, two art deco designed full bars, and a large platform pyramid with flickering lights for live performances where a marginally talented band named 'The Runaway Five' were giving the people something to dance to - or, to be more accurate, sway and bounce to on the massive dance floor. There were arcade games everywhere and a plethora of seating for patrons, and a listless crowd.

Cable walked over to the bar intending to order himself a couple of fingers of whiskey, before deciding he didn't really feel like drinking. For something to occupy himself, he picked up one of the glossy magazines, and perused the cover.

'Trenchcoats are in. The Spy look. This Fall, being inconspicuous is the only way to get noticed' was the front page article, followed by 'Pizza? For breakfast? The answer might surprise you'. Cable put the magazine back down, fairly confident that he wasn't going to learn anything useful from it's pages, then glanced at another. Surprise, surprise, more of the same. It was times like this that reminded him how difficult his eternal struggle was to see from outside. To the rest of the world, those without the perspective, it was absolutely nothing to do with anything. But as far as waging it went, that information didn't help him much. Cable hadn't paid much attention to what people were wearing, last time through this period, much less what they were eating for breakfast. He picked the magazine back up, and turned to the closest thing he could find to a current events page. He had no idea at all what he was looking for.

"Hi, my name is Scott Pilgrim." Some young man mentioned, having spotted him and made his way over.

"Mmmm." Cable replied, not really listening.

"What do you think I should do?"

Cable put down the magazine, and turned to look at him. "What?"

"It's this thing I do. I talk to people, y'know? Like, without getting them on social media first. Radical, I know. Ask them if they have big problems that only I can solve. You'd be surprised how many people are just waiting for someone to talk to them. Also, I poke through crates, too. Y'know, for items that I can use."

Cable honestly couldn't care less, but he supposed he was marginally more likely to learn something useful from talking to this guy then looking at the magazine.

"So what do you think I should do?"

Cable grunted noncommittally, wishing the kid would quit prattling and leave him some space. "You know, I have my own problems. Work it out yourself."

"Oh." He said, looking disenhearted, then all of a sudden perked up. "So what do you think I should do?"

Cable wondered if this was what kicking a puppy felt like. He suspected it was. "You just asked me that. I told you what I think."

"Oh. Sorry, I like to ask all the questions I can think of, and sometimes I forget which ones I asked already." He blinked. "Sorry, let me just... Knives keeps on wanting to get closer, you know make it more official and she's becoming more and more demanding - and I'm only dating her because I didn't want any of that hassle, plus now I feel bad because Ramona is working night and day to keep the money coming in. So I asked her to come with me to Todd's costume party - knowing that she wouldn't be able to - to cover up the fact that I've already asked Knives to come. And despite the fact that Ramona gave me an out on the phone - which I didn't take - I think I might be having a moral dilemma." He shook his head. "I don't know how to have one. I mean, what am I supposed to do?"

Cable turned slowly to look at him. The old veteran’s face was stable as bedrock and as unreadable as the wind. "Just because you're standing next to me doesn't mean I'm your friend." He sighed. "But as for problems, I tend to find that people wind up with problems exactly as large as they can handle. The trick is to break the big problem down into little, manageable steps."

"Huh. That's really deep. is that like, an eastern philosophy or something?"

Cable opened his mouth, then sighed. "Sure. Why not."

He felt like getting a drink afterall. He didn't, because Deadpool might need him any minute, but the temptation was stronger then he had expected.

“Give me a drink, please? Nothing alcoholic.” He compromised eventually. He drummed his fingers as the bartender fixed him a fruit spritzer, trying to be inconspicuous, then shook his head. “No. Actually, get me a whiskey. Neat. The more alcoholic the better.” Music just loud enough to insulate him from the rest of the boisterous crowd around him beat from hidden speakers.

A trendy club with pretensions of class wasn’t the place you’d expect to be the headquarters of an elite, old-fashioned society club with aims of world-domination, any more than it was where he would imagine an important business meeting would take place - not outside of a the cheesier sort of Hollywood movie, but this was where Shaw had come. Then the sirens started, and everyone came out of their own worlds long enough to start panicking. There was a rush to the exits.

"$#%&" Cable spat, then shouldered his way through the crowd, trying to find his way to the backrooms.