Logan and Wade embark on a mission to save the multiverse. what could possibly go wrong?
warnings: Movieverse (as-yet unnumbered Earth version; NOT Earth-616/Main Comicverse) with bits of the Wolverine Gameverse and B&T ficverse mushed onto it. incredible amounts of AU and technobabble. dorky 616 references. innuendo. violence. rampant pop culture references. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).
pairing: Logan/Wade.
timeline: maybe the beginning of November.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies or the characters. or the many tv shows and games mentioned.
notes: 1) i love the Red Alert series. 3 was a complete nerdgasm for me. there really aren't very many things in this world as awesome as George Takei doing the evil laugh. 2) Alice Eve would have been a smokin' hot Emma. i already mentioned Rachel Weisz commandeered Wanda's place in my brain...and i'm thinking Perrey Reeves would be a good Lorna. 3) and now you've met Forecaster. he's a well-meaning little drip who thinks he's got the best sense of humor in the multiverse, which should really tell you all you need to know about him.
visit The Fateverse Glossary (merianmoriarty (dot) deviantart (dot) com/art/Fateverse-Glossary-174203180) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.
Forecast
Wade is immensely disappointed to find out that time travel does not involve flaming DeLoreans, reversing the Earth's rotation, or burning spheres with sexy naked people inside.
In fact, aside from a Star-Trekkish swirl of light and a bunch of screaming from the kids at seeing a stranger appear out of thin air, time travel doesn't seem to involve anything fun or interesting. The guy is clearly from the future; he has a metal arm, a giant gun, and a look on his face like he's never even heard of a sense of humor. That, to Wade, is pretty much the essence of 'from the future' (a belief colored by heavy exposure to various Nates).
The kids have fled the room by now, no doubt off seeking assistance of the Responsible Adult variety.
Wade leans to one side and gestures impatiently for the guy to move. "Hey, Scarface, I appreciate the scenery, but your mama wasn't a glassmaker, and I haven't seen this episode."
Nice gun. And the plasma-rifle-thing ain't bad, neither. Pervy snicker.
"Stop emoting," he tells his yellow boxes.
Tall-Dark-and-Disgruntled unhitches the BFG from his back. "Wade Wilson?"
"For the love of Abby, yes, now wait until the frigging ad to tell me you've come from the future to kill me."
The guy narrows his eyes and shoots the TV.
Noooo—space-time continuum!
"My NCIS!" Wade wails. "And you just had to go there…I thought you—"
We.
"—I would have the decency to wait a full minute before making a Red Alert joke in a time-travel fic."
The joke was in-evitable.
"I need you to pay attention, Wilson," the big guy growls.
"Which I would have, if you'd just waited for the damn ad." Wade stands in a huff and finally diverts his attention.
Gosh, they grow 'em big in the future.
Big 'n strapping 'n manly.
Y'know, if you're into that.
Pfft. So gay.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Wade waves a finger vaguely up and down. "Wow, you're a pretty big guy, Mr. Chocolate Assassin From the Future. You did come to kill me, right? And you are from the future, you're not just some super-advanced alien coming to tell me that I'm the only hope for your race or something? Because I got that sob story three lives ago, and it did not go well for me, if you know what I'm sayin', so I'll pass on it this ti—"
"Wilson, shut the fuck up before I blow a hole through your lungs so you can't talk."
Well! Is he allowed to talk to us like that on the first date?
Taken aback, Wade puts his hands on his hips. "Rude much? You haven't even told me your name yet, man."
The huge future gun makes a loud clang on impact with Wade's cheekbone.
What was that, G-flat?
"Ow. Are you tone-deaf? It was A-flat."
Future Guy sighs like he's used to dealing with Wade. "I realize it's difficult for you, but shut up. My name is Bishop. I come from a future, though not your own. I require your cooperation to save mutantkind."
Ooh, I know what comes next!
Wade raises his hand and bounces, like a little kid in a classroom.
Bishop heaves another long-suffering sigh. "Yes?"
"And you're gonna kill me if I don't?"
"If you're anything like the other Wade Wilsons I've met, I could kill you all day and all I'd get out of it would be a few minutes of peace and quiet. It takes a lot of persistence, thoroughness, and ingenuity to make you stay dead."
Heh. True dat.
"But I have managed it, so keep that in mind." Bishop reaches into a nifty Future-Tech Utility Belt and pulls out a glass sphere the size of an orange. Letters and numbers dance on its surface.
Hey, a Fate Node.
Wade keeps his face carefully blank. "Are you gonna turn it into something cool, like David Bowie did in Labyrinth? I always wanted a pet goblin."
Bishop calmly blasts a hole through Wade's middle.
Ow. Apparently the future lacks in anger management classes.
"Ow," Wade wheezes, staggering slightly while the gaping wound fixes itself.
Most inconvenient thing about gaping wounds to the abdomen? Damage to the diaphragm makes it hard to be witty.
He looks behind him. "Aw man, not the couch!" he gargles. "I loved the couch, it was broken in just right for marathon gaming…"
"Adamantium," Bishop notes. "That's new."
Actually, it's been here for twenty-plus years now. Oh, new to him, okay.
"I'm a special kind of Wade," Wade mutters. "This was my favorite Blade Trinity shirt, by the way."
Bishop points the huge gun at Wade's face. "Pay attention, Wilson."
"Yeah, cuz melting my face off will help me pay attention."
That really is a nice gun.
Wade waves a hand at the yellow boxes. "God, you're like a spoiled girlfriend—I'll get you one later."
"This is an F-473 Timestream Maintenance Node," Bishop goes on, ignoring Wade's tangent.
Don't you find it a little patronizing that he assumes we don't know what it is?
Wade holds up his hand again, but doesn't wait to be called on. "Should I take notes? Is there gonna be a quiz?"
"There's gonna be another hole in you, if you keep at it. Shut up. All of the nodes are user-locked. Most of them are keyed genetically, some of them are voice-keyed, and at least one that I've found was actually chronometrically keyed, so it was completely useless to me after I killed its Keeper. All of them have a sleep-mode that keeps them from being activated except by their Keepers, and this is the first one I've managed to get before its Keeper could shut it down."
"Right, okay, and my cooperation comes in where?"
Does the phrase 'red branches' ring a bell?
"Wasn't asking you," Wade mutters.
Us.
Bishop holds out the sphere. "Say your name."
"Hah. Yeah. No. You pop in here, shoot my as-yet-unseen NCIS episode, put a hole in my cool shirt and in the awesome couch, and want me to help you? You're not that hot, pal."
"If you don't, then you're no good to me," Bishop says, raising the gun again.
Okay, done playing nice now.
Wade grabs the barrel of the rifle, kicks Bishop's wrist, twists, catches the trigger with his other hand, and fires a shot.
Elapsed time: 0.8 seconds. Getting rusty.
Shutup.
Bishop, however, doesn't end up with a nice new hole in him the way Wade did. In fact, he barely flinches. Aiming his fist at Wade, he says, "Shouldn'ta done that."
Oh.
"Oh," Wade says, and teleports just as Bishop fires off a blast of energy from his hand. "Okay, now, that was pretty badass, I'll admit," he says from behind the bulky guy.
A bolt of pink light hits Bishop's mechanical arm, and it starts to come apart—the Node falls, bounces and rolls across the room. "Damn!"
Wade pouts. "Awwww. I was so gonna get in some good fight time. Waaaaanda, you spoiled all my fun!"
Wanda and Emma are standing just inside the doorway, the former with one high-heeled boot on the node. They're looking mighty fine, in a Charlie's Angels, 'we know eighty-seven ways to kill you without messing up our hair' kinda way, and it creepily reminds him of the Demo Squad.
"You'd better start explaining," says Emma.
"Before we let Wade do something we'll all regret," adds Wanda.
"What does that even mean?" Wade asks his yellow boxes.
In Martha Stewart terms? Your sword meets his face. It's a good thing.
Brilliant idea, creepy explanation.
Wade shudders and swears off HGTV.
"Let's not have any misunderstandings, now," says Bishop. "After all, I'm here for the sake of the future of all mutantkind."
Wanda scoffs. "I have a feeling this will be a good story. Right out of Star Trek."
"Can I cut off his robo-arm?" Wade asks. "He blew up the TV and the couch and put a hole in my favorite Blade Trinity shirt. And I already made one Star Trek reference in this fic; you should have gone for Red Dwarf or Dr. Who."
"Give him a chance to talk before you start severing limbs," Emma replies. "Interrogations work better when you establish positive and negative reinforcements."
"Not to my experience," Wade says, extending the blade in his right arm. "I find it works best if the guy knows I'm willing to cut something off of him before we start. Then he'll believe me when I tell him I'm going to cut something else off every time he gives me an answer I don't like."
"Definitely Wade Wilson," Bishop mutters.
"So nice to be recognized."
"All the same," Wanda says firmly. "Not before we get at least some answers."
I got this one—42. Say 42.
Wade starts to slowly circle Bishop. "His name's Bishop, he's from some alternate future, and he's been looking for little glass gizmos like the one under your shoe. They're called Fate Nodes. He wanted me to talk to that one. There, some answers." He makes to slice off the metal limb, but finds himself pulled back by an inexorable force. He sighs.
Stupid care bear, always ruining our fun…
Sure enough, Lorna has joined Wanda and Emma at the door.
"What's a…'Fate Node'?" Emma asks.
Bishop looks at Wade with narrowed eyes. "I'm surprised you don't know more about them, given who you are. The reason I ended up here was that I told it to take me to a Keeper designation who could unlock it for me."
Wade wriggles to see if Lorna plans to let him free any time soon—it doesn't seem like it. "I know a little bit about Fate Nodes and how to use 'em. I sure as hell remember what you can do with one, and I know that it shouldn't end up in the hands of a whack-job who shoots people's TVs and says he's here to save the future of mutantkind. Might as well give it to Nate. On the up-side, this is a no-Nate universe, and aside from a freak accident with a magic spear and a giant-ass monster-alien-thing, he doesn't dimension-hop, so we don't have to worry about that."
Bishop slowly grins. "Ma'am, if you would just pick that up for a moment? I swear on my sister's soul, it won't hurt you."
"Wade?" Wanda asks.
Wade shrugs (as well as he can, suspended magnetically in mid-air). "Go ahead. It's a computer, not a weapon."
Uh…that's a little misleading.
Whatever.
So she bends and picks it up. It's still glittering.
"Auxiliary query," Bishop calls out to the thing. "Identify subject designations in this room."
~Scanning,~ says the disembodied voice, startling Emma.
"God," Wanda snorts. "It's like something Tony would make…at least it isn't British."
~Five subject designations present in room: Wanda Maximoff BT823, Emma Frost BT551, Lorna Dane BT502, Lucas Bishop MP618-Delta, Wade Wilson BT562-Omega.~
"Ah," says Bishop, nodding as if something has just been confirmed. "An Omega. That certainly explains a lot."
"Ah, an Omega, that thertainwy exthpwainth a wot," Wade mimicks snidely.
"Omega iterations are Keepers of Fate. I've met eighteen of them. All but two were Wade Wilsons."
"Yay me?" Wade says without much enthusiasm. "What the spork is a 'Keeper of Fate'?"
"Someone entrusted with a Fate Node and charged with using it to help maintain the overall resonant stability of the timestream."
Oh, that's what 'Keepers' are. So it really does explain a lot.
Wade blinks. "Is it odd that I almost completely understood that?"
Nah.
"Yes," Emma says flatly.
Bishop shrugs. "None of those eighteen Keepers was willing to cooperate as much as I needed them to, no matter how I pleaded."
"So you killed them," Wade guesses. "Awesome. You are such a nice guy, I can't imagine why anybody would not want to cooperate with you."
"Your sarcasm was tiresome after the third kill."
"Sticks 'n stones, ya Machiavellian crackpot."
"This is getting nowhere fast," sighs Emma.
Lorna waves a finger, and Wade suddenly can't move his jaw.
Cheater!
"Oh, dat'sh jusht mean," he manages through his clenched teeth.
"Where's Logan?" Wanda asks Emma. "He can always make Wade shut up."
And because Wade is trying to burn a whole in the side of Bishop's head by will alone (not using his eye-beam-things, because they kinda hurt to use, and he's pretty sure Bishop would do the neat absorb-n-zap thing again), he sees Bishop flinch.
"Ohoho, he doeshn't like dat idea," Wade says. "Emmy, you should totally go find Jamie."
She rolls her eyes at the nickname, but leaves the room.
Bishop scowls at him. "Further auxiliary query: clarify Wade Wilson BT562-Omega."
~Wade Wilson BT562-Omega. Precursor locus to approximately thirty-six timestream branches. Direct resonant precursor to Keeper 188. Also Deadpool. Also Weapon Eleven. Also The Traveler.~
"The Traveler," Bishop says in sudden understanding.
"Yeah, can you knock it off wiff da Shinishter Capitalizhation of Ovverwishe Innocuoush Wordsh?" Wade grumbles. "And da dorky shpeesh impediment?"
Lorna rolls her eyes. "Since you're not going to be quiet anyway…" And with a wave of her finger, Wade can talk properly again.
"Thanks, Good Luck Bear. Musta been killing the typist. Seriously, Grumpy Assassin Man, what is up with all the random capital letters?"
"People who do a lot of bouncing between times and worlds have a tendency to collect monikers both obscure and mundane," Bishop says. "In your case, since you've traveled to over three hundred and twenty-two separate timestream bundles, you're The Traveler."
"Yeah, well…I've got a great short-term memory, too. I can spit back strings of letters and numbers with the best of 'em. Yo, crystal ball thingy! Clarify Lucas Bishop MP618-Delta."
~Lucas Bishop MP618-Delta. Secondary precursor locus. Instigator of Lucas Bishop Zeta schism. Responsible for the re-tuning of fifteen timestream branches. Responsible for the loss of eighteen Keepers. Also The Hunter. Warning: subject is a signifcant source of chronometric entropy. Immediate phasic re-tuning is advised.~
"I knew it!" Wade cries. "You're definitely the bad guy! You were all, 'Oh, I'm out for the future of mutantkind,' but you're really trying to destroy the world."
Right about then, Emma gets back with Jamie.
"Were you napping, sweetums?" Wade asks archly. "If this had been a real emergency, all your asses would be dead. Seriously, people, does it take you this long to get out of a burning building, too?"
But Jamie just rolls his eyes. "Who's the big guy?"
"Bishop. He wants me to make his crystal ball cooler so he can go destroy the universe."
"Okay. So why aren't we killing him?"
"Logan," Lorna chides. "We're the good guys, remember? We don't solve our problems with murder."
Sure we do.
"I do," Wade says.
"Zip it," Jamie grunts. "Can we send him back to wherever he came from?"
"How?" asks Wanda. "It's not like we know how he got here in the first place."
"I know, I know!" Wade calls. "Pick me! Mememememe!"
Everybody looks annoyed and tries to ignore him.
"Think we should get the others for a quick conference?" Lorna wonders.
Wade teleports out of Lorna's grasp and bounces. "I totally know how he got here, and I can probably put him back."
They all sigh.
Wanda gestures for him to go on. "We're aquiver with anticipation, I assure you," she says drily.
He takes the Fate Node from her. "Hey. Which one are you, and are you smart or dumb?"
~Biological signals verified. I'm Node 119: Forecaster. And 'dumb' is a very mean word, Wade.~
"Nice to see you again, Effcee. And by 'nice,' I mean really inconvenient. First things first, cancel whatever primary query he had you set for."
~Done. With immense satisfaction.~
"Good. Can you send dork-boy over there to his home timeline?"
~I can do one better. I'll program his timeslide module to surge itself afterward. Have fun fixing that, you Keeper-killing jerk.~
"Why you little—" Bishop growls, reaching for another gun with his remaining arm. He vanishes in a swirl of light.
~I'm inconvenient, Wade? You're going to hurt my feelings if you keep saying things like that. You realize that you're my Keeper now, don't you?~
"What?" Wanda says flatly.
"Am I the only one worried about Wade having some kind of glorified space-time cell phone?" Lorna asks.
"Not by a longshot," snorts Emma.
Wade pouts at them. "Effcee, did you really bring him here so that I could unlock your red branches for him?"
~Please, give me more credit than that. I only have to obey unauthorized physical-contact users within a certain set of parameters. I needed to get to my next Keeper, but you know that Nodes can't independently timeslide—so I 'creatively interpreted' his command. I mean, sure, I brought him to a Keeper capable of unlocking my user restrictions, but I didn't bother telling him he should ask nicely. I consider it fairly sneaky; I thought you'd approve. I still recommend killing his sorry ass ASAP, because it's only a matter of time before he starts hunting Nodes again.~
"Can't you…I dunno, send some kinda message to all the other Nodes?"
~And what exactly would a 'dumb' Node be able to do about it? They couldn't warn their Keepers; they weren't designed for that kind of proactive interaction. Anyway, not all of the Nodes matter. It's more important right now to get to any of the Nodes present at critical resonance loci.~
Ha, yeah, great idea. One little problem there.
"Shush, yellow boxes. You can be so pessimistic."
~Yeah. Real downer.~
"You shush, too—they had a point. Wades don't timeslide."
"First good news we've had all day," says Emma.
Wade scowls at her. "We'd have to get somebody creepy like Stretch da Vinci to build us a time-space-jumpy-thingy that doesn't work on slide tech."
~Actually, the defects in your brainware that let you brainslide make it possible for me to alter your resonance phase just enough for timesliding. Congratulations! You're the first and only timesliding Wade Wilson. Johnny, tell him what he's won…~
Wade considers dropping the thing into the lake.
It just had to be one of the Nodes that thinks it has a sense of humor.
"How would you like to be ground into a fine powder and snorted, you smart-aleck?" Wade growls. "So I'm defective enough for you to make me more defective so that I can timeslide. Why in the name of Stan Lee's sacred shades would I volunteer to leave this nice shiny timeline of yay-ness to go play hero somewhere else?"
~Because I'm going to timeslide you anyway, and you might as well get something out of it?~
"What? What the hell would I get out of it?"
~A sense of accomplishment and moral righteousness?~
"Hah, try again."
~An opportunity to play good guy and lord it over any Nates you find?~
Ooh, good one…
"Tempting, but strike two."
~You drive a hard bargain, Wade. All right…if you help me secure the critical loci and neutralize the threat posed by the Hunter, I'll take you to meet Bea Arthur.~
"Sold. Let's go, Jamie," Wade says, and grabs Jamie's arm.
"Wait, what—"
~Rebooting world, please wait…~
And the world vanishes.
.End.
