It was Easter.
Not just any Easter, mind you. This was the Easter that Deadpool had been allowed to be the one who hid the Easter eggs. The entire team had awaited this day in anticipation…anticipation of the problems, trouble, destruction, disaster, turmoil, chaos, mayhem, bedlam…well, you get the picture.
The youngest members had even began taking bets on how the evening would end. The most likely favorites were 'Somebody Having A Cardiac Arrest'; 'Fire Raining From The Sky'; or 'An Out-Of-This-World Experience Induced By Controlled Substances. The odds on these were not looking too good however, everybody was betting on them. On the other hand, 'The Whole Thing Carries Out Smoothly' had the odds of 2000 to 1. Despite that, nobody bet on it, not even with a single cent. Which is just as well. it would have been a really big insult to the intelligence of the one who did.
The average person would be thinking, "Whoa! 2000 to 1?! I can't lose! If I bet a dollar, I'll get 2000 dollars. Whoa!" But, the people who are betting their hard-earned savings are not your average people, they happen to actually know Deadpool.
Everyone had left the house on Saturday and stayed in a hotel that night. While the official reason was to give Deadpool the time and space to hide the eggs as cunningly and as creatively as he could, nobody really thought about it as the real reason. I mean, come on. Who did they think they were fooling? It goes without saying that the reason they were leaving Deadpool alone for the whole day was to prepare themselves mentally and emotionally for the ordeal they would have to endure the next day. That, and the possible shrapnel or the miniature explosions which seemed to happen whenever Deadpool was entrusted to do anything.
There was only so much that one can take and to be brutally frank, Pyro was sick of it. He was sick and tired of having to spend valuable weeks of his time lying in the Intensive Care Unit like some pickled vegetable. Time like that could be better spent…lying in front of a television like some pickled vegetable. It wasn't fair. He was the only one who had to get mortally injured and be useless and in pain for ages. Whatever happened to Bobby, he could just collect all the puddles and drips and re-form perfectly fine; Colossus could hardly even be harmed to start with; Gambit had that weird biological-physics-thingamajig that could heal on a sub-atomic level; which Northstar also had, provided Northstar actually got hit by anything which could not be dodged at breakneck speed; and then there was Deadpool who couldn't be bothered if he had a knife wedged firmly between his eyes, for both physical and mental reasons. Personally, Pyro suspected it was the latter. A normal person (which is to say a normal immortal, which isn't exactly immortal, but you know…) would at least try to dodge deadly projectiles. You would have to be pretty daft to stand there and wait for it to make contact with your head.
***
Pyro had enough. He wasn't going to get hurt anymore. He was going to walk out of that Easter egg hunt with his head held high, and not because he needed to be carried face-up so as to breath better. However, try as he might no ideas came to mind on how to avoid certain doom. He had, as you can see, a good reason to be nervous. Not everybody is lucky enough to be indestructible, immortal or both.
"What do you think he's doing at this moment?" Pyro asked every time someone walked past. To say that he asked was an understatement, he basically waited in ambush like a hunger-crazed panther and pounced with his question like the wrath of the gods had struck. Now, the rest of the bunch had successfully buried their sparks of mixed feelings about leaving Deadpool in charge of the Easter egg hunt, but Pyro not only dug it back out of them, he added generous heapings of kerosene and a couple of flammable oxygen canisters.
Once nervousness had spread to everyone else, the room became tense with unspoken anxieties. Unspoken, but not unseen not unheard. Northstar had just paced his way right through the shaggy faux fur carpet and was busy making furrows into the ground. Bobby sat there radiating chills. Gambit pointed both his index fingers together to creating little popping sounds. Colossus had a more conventional approach of chewing his nails and cracking his knuckles, which in his iron form, sounded respectively like a car being tossed into a wood-chipper and a sledgehammer being slammed into a zinc sheet.
All this was making him jumpy. He couldn't take the din anymore. "So…" He ventured. All sounds stopped. All the heads in the room turned to look at him as one. Freaky. Pyro felt the pressure to say something. Anything. "What do you think he's doing at this moment?"
A noise which was a disturbing mixture of a sigh, groan and a high pitched whine of a person driven crazy by annoyances could be heard from 3 streets away. Glares aplenty were aimed at him.
"What are all of you so worried about? I'm the one who doesn't self-regenerating body parts! I'm the one who doesn't have indestructible skin! I'm the one who can't move from one end of the room to another in 2 blinks of an eye!" Pyro was understandably upset.
Bobby, helpful as ever, offered: "We-ell, they aren't self-regenerating y'know? It takes a lot of concentration and effort and…stuff. Cept for ol' Gambit. And Northstar."
Northstar was not one to take a comment, about him not putting in any effort in a matter, sitting down. So he stood up and gave both Pyro and Bobby the frostiest look he could. The irony was wasted on all three of them, and as there was also a complicated bit that was also a paradox, nobody was going to elaborate on it any further.
Gambit shrugged. "Not my fault. Some are just more gifted than others. No, mon ami?" He said while moving to a better position on the couch, swinging his legs over the spot where Northstar was sitting 2 minutes ago. Having done so, he arranged one leg so that his foot rested on the armrest while the knee was bent. The other leg laid flat on it's side, but was also bent at the knee. In his new position (which bordered on obscene), he turned his head to face Pyro and gave a big wink and a beaming smile to show exactly what he meant.
Pyro could not help but stare at how somebody (who was not him) could stand to be so arrogant.
While all this was going on, Colossus was conflicted between being doing the right thing in terms of language or politeness. It wasn't a long war, he chose the first. "I would not want to interrupt you, but my skin is not indestructible either. It is an organic metal which can be wounded by a harder metal or by high boiling points."
Pyro couldn't believe it. Everybody was picking on him. He took in a deep breathe and was just about to scream his head off at all those idiots when a loud wailing siren beat him by a fraction a second. He was thinking: "You're kidding me right? Even the hotel's alarm system was out to get me?", when he realized it was time to go home and get damaged, or at least survey the damage done to what remained of home.
***
The bus home had been uneventful, nobody was in the mood to say anything. Now, they had reached home. It looked fine, but they had learnt their lesson more times than you can count. When something looks fine, it just meant all the more damage to expect. They collectively took a deep breathe and entered the front door, expecting the house to crumble at their feet at any moment. They kept an eye out for cracks in the walls or live wires. Nothing. Wait! Was that a tick-ticking? That IDIOT! A bomb, of course! They panicked and ran (mostly into each other) but managed to make it back out.
Then, they saw Deadpool. He walked over casually while waving and said: "I'm so excited about the big Easter Egg Hunt later, aren't you?"
Tense silence followed. "So you guys are all geared up for it?"
You could cut the silence with a knife. "In that case, LET'S GO!"
Nobody could move and you couldn't cut the silence with a knife…it was too tense.
Finally, after much pushing and dragging, the motley crew began to walk like zombies. They stumbled around, carefully testing the ground before them, looking out for tripwires and landmines.
***
Much much much much much much later.
"I can't find the damned eggs anywhere!"
"Neither can I."
"Not me."
"None here."
"What the…"
***
Even later. A basket full of painted eggs sat delicately in the middle of the kitchen table. Several words came to mind. "Ostentatious" is one of them, but so was "~$%&=%^+!". Nothing had happened. To anyone. At all. To be honest, they felt kinda disappointed.
"Deadpool, you realize that you are supposed to hide the eggs right?"
"I am?"
"Well…yea."
"But then, how would I join in the Egg Hunt?"
"Well…you don't."
"I don't?"
"No."
"That's not very fun."
"…"
***
At the end of the day, they settled for getting lots and lots of candy for dinner. They were just glad it was over and that they all made it through the day unscathed. One last thing to note however, Deadpool could have won about $632,177,563,284,756,298,347,957,629.68 if the group agreed that the result was 'The Whole Thing Carries Out Smoothly'. In fact, it was unanimously agreed even by Dead pool (who did not get to find any Easter Eggs) that it was more accurate to describe it as 'Disappointing Anti-Climax' which won Deadpool $12, a small bag of white marshmallow rabbits and 3 peanut butter candies. He was much happier with this prize though.
