Weapon neXt
by Ironraven, with editing/beta-reading by BabyBeaver

What one man makes, another man can copy. A machine. A chemical. A physics package. A poem, a painting, a home. Almost anything, really, even a little girl.

If you've not read my other peices, this is the part of an arch. The timeline is as follows:
Graduation - They Never Trained Me (1 - 7) - Home to Meet the Family - Staying Home This Holiday - New Years New Beginnings - Never Trained (8 - 16) - Spring Break - Institutional Fairytale (timing imprecise) - Never Trained (17-25)

Fair warning: This will be a little bit messier than most of what I've written. There will be fighting. There will be bloodshed. There will be profanity. There will be nonsexual nudity and the acknowledgment that yes, people have sex, but there will be no smut. I think it is kid friendly, but I grew up weird, so the warning and rating stand. It is teen friendly.

-neXt-

Sunday morning paper. A big breakfast full of meat and cholesterol and fat. Bottomless cup of black coffee. Early enough that people aren't in a diner. Logan was enjoying a little peace and quiet.

Then he walked in.

"Mind if I join you?" Nick Fury slipped onto the other bench, tossing a large manila envelope on the table.

"Yeah I do. What do you want?"

Fury's voice was soft. "Are you sure X-23 died in that crash?"

"Positive." Logan in this tone of voice would had made most of the X-men nervous- this was a deadly question. She'd been hiding at the Institute for just over a year now, and they'd done everything short of plastic surgery to keep her out of the system so Fury wouldn't find her. Logan hadn't even been sure that letting her go to school was a good idea, but she wanted to treated like everyone else. He growled angrily. "Her bones would have burned- even if we never found her claws, that fire melted titanium, she couldn't have survived that."

"What if she had."

Logan's face hardened, his voice harsh. "She'd have come to the Institute by now."

"I'm sorry. It must have felt like you were losing a sister." Fury genuinely seemed to be apologetic. Or he was a great actor. "I had to ask. We had a possible sighting of her, about five months ago." He opened the envelope, taking out a stack of photos. "Security camera footage." He flipped the first one over.

Logan picked it up. "Short girl with long brown hair, so what?"

"Stealing technical information about nanites in France. Security showed up a few minutes later." Another photo- she was wearing a mask and night vision goggles. The third showed a spray of blood at bullets punched through her, her body falling.

"Yeah, thanks, I want to see a little girl getting shot while I'm trying to eat."

"Don't worry, it gets better." She is still standing, bloodied from her wounds. Two claws sticking out of each fist. The next photo showed her gutting a guard with a spin kick that had a foot claw in it. "Are you sure that this is not X-23?"

"Positive. She died two years ago in Canada, you were there." Logan flexed his fingers, remembering the feel of her foot claw as she made him let go of the ladder. They flexed the same way when she let him hug her, stroke her hair. His voice was turning coldly angry, his appetite gone. "Where did this come from?"

"Not sure I should tell you, but there is more. After Dr Risman left HYDRA we changed her identity. Two nights ago, what we believed to be X-23 showed up at the safehouse we were keeping Dr Kinney in. She killed sixteen of my men and her creator." One of the photo showed what was left of Dr Risman/Kinney. It had been fast, but it wasn't neat.

An 'X' had been drawn on the wall in a blood.

Two nights ago Laura had started watching her favorite movie, The Seven Samurai, and fallen asleep curled up against Alex. It was easily her favorite- she'd watched it three times in a year, when before she'd never seen a movie that wasn't for training.

The security photos clearly showed Laura killing SHEILD agents two nights ago.

"OK, so this not X-23 has a boyfriend, to." A large, husky shape was seen charging into frame. Long blond hair streaming. He wasn't bothering with night vision. The next shot of him showed him elbow deep in the chest of one of the guards.

"What? That looks like a younger version of Creed!"

"I guess they had access to a lot of Weapon X data. He got the other nine guards, plus the lab data and a Honda." Fury glanced at the small plate of toast beside the omelette and pancakes. "You gonna finish that?" Without waiting for an answer, he plucked one of the slices of whole wheat up, taking a large bite after smearing on a little jelly.

Logan was studying the photos spread out in front of him intently. The queen snake herself had admitted that Laura had nearly crippled the organization single handedly. He and SHIELD had just picked up the loose threads. Fury had sworn that HYDRA was gone, sworn it on Steve's cryocontainer. "I thought we'd cut off all the heads." He picked up envelope, pulling out a sheaf of papers. He ruffled through them quickly. Photos, invoices, flight schedules, credit card and bank records. There were even a few computer disks. "Is this everything you've got?"

"Yeah. Facial recognition found them in the data base. They'd flown into JFK from Moscow on Aeroflot. They were next spotted crossing the border in Vermont under different ID; the car they stole from JFK long term parking was found in Quebec yesterday. We've got the three IDs they've used. Still trying to find where they went from there, but I'm thinking it is a safe bet they aren't in the North America."

"Fine." Logan scooped up the papers, stuffing them back in the envelope. "Is there any other information?"

"Why? Are you asking me for a contract? I'd send the Brotherhood, but they are chasing someone in Afghanistan, I don't want to pull them off that."

Logan tucked the envelope into his jacket, before tossing some bills on the table.

Author's notes:
Laura and Lil-Creed. I think we can all imagine how Logan feels about Fury's insinuation; anyone want to tell Victor for me?