first stop on the journey to save the multiverse: the Demo Squad (as featured in A World in Flames).
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, plus shameless expository dialogue. dorky 616 references. innuendo. rampant pop culture references. gentle violence. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus f*** and g**damn).
pairing: Logan/Wade (with a fluffy little hint of Wade/Nessa).
timeline: other than "right after Forecast," doesn't matter.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies or the characters. or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.
notes: 1) and now you have a better idea (or not?) of how the Network works, and how it's possible for them to chase Bishop without having to go back in time and retcon his ass. 2) the title comes from the Champion song "No Heaven." i have no excuse for this, other than liking the song. 3) notes? i have notes? i really don't know if there's anything else to say. it's really just a big fat chapter of exposition. if you start to go cross-eyed from the technobabble like poor Logan, just skip down until the part where he says "um, WTF?" and they put it in layman's terms. or have MerianMoriarty explain it, since most of the Network tech is based on her physics-y theorizations.
visit The Fateverse Glossary (merianmoriarty (dot) deviantart (dot) com/art/Fateverse-Glossary-174203180) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.
No Heaven
The actual process of timesliding turned out to be a lot less fun than Wade expected. He was hoping for some kind of cool wormhole-ish tunnel, something kinda Sliders with a touch of Stargate. And, yeah, okay, it was basically like that.
Buuuuut it was a lot faster. In fact, there was a definite sensation of being dragged behind a roller coaster on skates with a rope around his waist.
Somehow, it all managed to take maybe five seconds while feeling like it went on for quite a while.
When they landed, the sense of way-too-fast directionless motion stopped, and Jamie let go of his arm to hurl.
And now three hot agents of Fate are pointing nifty future-guns at them, so Jamie being busy losing his lunch is just a little embarrassing.
"We come in peace," Wade says, holding a hand up in the Vulcan sign for 'live long and prosper.'
"Right," snorts Neena. "Timesliding from a Trek convention?"
"Somebody hasn't taken today's chill pill. Life is more fun if you relax a little, Neena."
At Wade's side, Jamie has finally finished saying hello to his breakfast. He extends both sets of claws. "Should we start phonin' ahead to cut down on gunpoint greetings?"
Nessa waves a hand. "So you come in peace…and brought Wolverine along? Those are just about mutually exclusive, you know."
"You hear that, honeybunch?" Wade gasps in mock-affront. "Base slander. All the same, put the claws away, tough guy, we're here to play nice. Anybody up for five-way Jell-O wrestling? Seven way, if the other gals get back. Okay, okay, I can't be cruel—if the other me gets back, he can join in. To deny any Wade Wilson a dogpile of pretty people would be an act of supervillainy. Or, y'know, unethical treatment of an animal. Whatever."
~Can we focus, please?~ says Forecaster, drawing the girls' attention. ~This is important enough that we're sort of in a hurry.~
Wade points to the Fate Node. "Like he said. Okay, I'm sure you ladies take excellent care of a nasty little doohicky like Ragnarok, but you should know that there's somebody out there who's been offing Keepers to steal their Nodes. Effcee, do we know how many?"
~Well, like the asshole said himself, he's killed eighteen Keepers. He's only gotten his hands on fifteen Nodes, though—Steve Rogers HG552 chased him off Freyr, and when he found out that Oracle was chronometrically keyed, he chucked her into the ocean.~
"That's good," snorts Inez. "Oracle's got a big mouth. Who's this 'asshole' you're gabbin' about?"
~Lucas Bishop MP618-Delta, the Hunter.~
"Never heard of 'im," Nessa says disinterestedly. "I'd like to remind everybody here that we kill whole timelines as a profession, and the Wades are completely backed up on the Network."
"That's an ambiguous and misleading assertion," snorts Wade. "Even if you consider each major branch to only have one Wade, that's just over two thousand Wades, and I will bet my shiny bones that people like Pizza Boy Wade do not have full redundant backups that will let them be replaced good-as-new if they get nerfed."
Neena gives a sheepish little shrug. "Well, no, only high-entropy deaths get undone, because of the energy required to either convert tuneable mass or grow a clone, but…I mean, we've got at least time branch bookmarks for all the Keeper designations, and they're the only ones that matter."
"Oh?" says Wade, sidling up to her and putting an arm around her shoulder. "So…what you're saying is that normal people aren't important? Those happy-go-lucky Wades that actually give me some mental vacation time don't matter?" He headbutts her (gently enough that he doesn't crack her skull).
"Ow! Dammit!"
"How'd you like it if I went and blew up your favorite vacation spot, huh? 'Oh, gosh, Nate, I'd just love to go back to that little bar in Tijuana, but Wade blew it up!' Goddamn inconsiderate world-killing little bitches. It's not cool to off people who haven't done anything."
Nessa makes a face. "God, do all Wades have burning consciences, or just the ones we meet?"
"Naw, I met an evil one once," Inez says. "Right before he got brain-wiped so ours could move in."
~Hey, 'scuse me, matter of multiverse security!~ grumbles FC. ~Things would be very un-good if the Hunter got his filthy mitts on Ragnarok. In fact, I'm thinking of recommending that we shut off all transmissions and lock the Network down until he's been waxed. Uh, waxed as in 'made dead,' not waxed as in 'made less hairy.' Because. Y'know. Awkward.~
"Ew, clamped transmission would make our job way harder," says Nessa. "I dunno about you gals, but I don't feel like sliding all the way back to the Core for each new mission."
"I don't feel like relying on that nasty little black ball t'be Wade's only backup," adds Inez. "If we lockdown and somethin' happens to it, we can't finish."
Neena shrugs, rubbing at the bump Wade put on her forehead. "Well, we could."
Nessa hits her shoulder. "Bite your tongue! You'd be fine with a, a reset Wade? We'd mention something that happened after his last backup and he wouldn't know what we were talking about, and he'd make that face…"
"Just saying…y'know. We technically could. It's not like he'd die or something. Not permanently."
Nessa pokes Wade aggressively in the chest with one (neatly manicured) finger. "As you can see, sweetheart, we're not keen on the idea of locking the Network."
Wade looks at her (and he's not going to get over looking at her any time soon, no matter how hooked he is on Jamie). "This guy's been using unlocked or partially-locked Nodes to hitch rides to more Nodes. But because of the way the things are built, they don't actually exist in multiple timeframes—they resonate across neighboring branches and only seem to be in several places at once. The only way to find a Node except by accident is to query the Network. If the Network's in lockdown, the Nodes can't find each other."
"I'm not ignorant, Wade, I know how the damn things work."
"I know you know, that was expository dialogue. Got all that, readers?"
"Oh. Well, carry on." She waves generously, then mutters, "Fucking lunatic."
"Where were we?"
"We know how they work."
"Thanks. Then you know why Ragnarok is one of the Nodes that chocolate psycho cannot be allowed to find."
She pouts a little, just because she hates admitting he's right (she always has). "Yeah, okay. We don't need somebody running around re-tuning things willy-nilly. Since we leave Rag unlocked in case we need it before we get to our target zones, he'd just have to wait until we split and he only had to fight one of us. When we hook back up with Wade, we'll have him lock it in receive-only, and then we'll wait for the Network itself to tell us this Hunter guy's been taken care of."
Jamie waves a hand to get their attention. "And how the hell does that work, anyhow? Guy can travel between dimensions and times, what's to stop him just going back to a point before the thing was locked?"
The girls look at Jamie like he's the slow kid in the class.
Wade pats him on the shoulder. "It's all down to resonant signatures again, pookie. The Nodes exist on the same timescale as the Network Core, they only appear to exist in other times. Say I take a Node to prehistory and ask it questions about cave men—it picks up the resonance from that point, queries the Network, and projects the response backward in time. Which you can only do because of weird photonic vibration stuff, resonance crap again."
"If ya think about it," says Inez, "it knew what you were gonna ask before you did."
"Nevermind all that!" Neena puts in. "What it comes down to, Wolverine, is that without an exact time and place, he can only timeslide to wherever and whenever the Node actually exists. I guess if he found some whack-job who could throw together a time-machine that used curved-space tech, he could go backward and look for the Node before it was locked, but none of the smart Nodes would respond if he asked where it was once he got the when right."
Jamie throws both hands in the air. "Ah, fuck it. You coulda said he just can't."
"He just can't," Wade and the girls all chorus.
"Where you headed next, hun?" Inez asks.
"Good question," says Wade. "Well, Effcee, where to?"
~The other two re-tuning Nodes will certainly have to be locked down, and the central database Node, too.~
Neena makes a face. "Yuck. Have fun with Atropos. That should be the most epic 'I told you so' bitchfest in about a century. And I haven't even met the guy who's been taking care of Node 250."
~That's…complicated,~ Forecaster says evasively. ~I think we'll go there last. All-righty, let's truck on over to bundle 056-1181.~
"But what did you mean by—" Nessa tries to say.
~Nope, no time, gotta go, seeya, bubbye, call's dropping out, no reception!~
"Love ya, Nessa!" Wade calls, and grabs Jamie just before the world vanishes again.
.End.
