Chapter 1 - Travelers

I woke up wrong.

"-shouldn't be waking yet! Where's the-"

I was on my back. I never sleep on my back.

"-consciousness transfer completed, but that's all! No Protocols, No Legacy-"

I mean, not NEVER never. Sometimes I sleep on my back. But if I sleep on my back, I snore.

"-body's breaking down the IV sedatives almost as soon as they hit the blood stream-"

My wife's a light sleeper. So if I snore, I get poked in the ribs and told to roll over. After eighteen years of marriage, it doesn't wake me up anymore. I just roll over.

"-should we do?!"

So I shouldn't wake up like this.

"-open it up and brief him, I guess-wait, look, it's happening to oh-two-four-seven, too!"

...I probably shouldn't hear strange voices in my bedroom, either.

I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was a glass canopy about sixteen inches above my face. Fluorescent lights hung from a concrete ceiling about nine feet above me, the four-foot types often used in commercial buildings. The wiring for the lights was exposed, the lights hung on eye-rings screwed into the concrete ceiling. Metal ventilation ducts hung from the ceiling in the same fashion as the lights, wire tied to bolts in the concrete. The effect was a very rough-industrial look; no warmth, no decoration, just function.

I reached up and put my hand on the glass - it looked wrong. My hand, I mean. It wasn't something I could immediately identify, apparently I don't know the back of my hand quite that well, but this looked…wrong. Not mine.

A face appeared outside the glass. I moved my hand out of the way so I could see better. A woman looked down at me, her brown eyes wide. She had very dark skin, and her dark hair was pulled back.

"Hi?" I said.

My voice sounded different, too.

"Traveler oh-two-five-six, everything is going to be fine. Please stay calm," the woman outside the glass said. "I'm going to open this up and let you out, okay?"

I nodded. "Yes, that sounds like a really good idea."

She gave me a plastic smile, her eyes still wide-Was she scared? Nervous? I had no idea-and punched a few buttons on the side of whatever it was I was in. Something hissed, and the glass pulled away.

"Okay, you should go slowly-" I sat up, and she sighed, "- or just sit right up and you'll be fine, apparently."

"Come on, Ortega, you saw his specs," a man chortled off to my right. I looked over. He stood in front of a computer on a rolling cart, his eyes on the monitor as he typed away. I couldn't make out a thing on the monitor. Not that I couldn't see it-my vision was perfectly clear, which it shouldn't have been without glasses-but it looked like flowing gibberish to me.

"Not helpful, Jenkins," the woman, who I assume was Ortega, muttered under her breath. I don't think I was supposed to hear it. She rolled her eyes, then looked down at me and said, "Hey, I'm Jennifer Ortega. How about we get you out of there, yeah? I'm sure you have questions."

I looked around at the room. I was in some sort of science-fiction medical pod thing, and there were eleven others spaced throughout the room. A bunch of men and women in white coats ran around, looking at screens, carrying wires, and doing science-fictiony things. Ten of the pods were closed. Across the room, I saw another man climbing out of a pod that was open like mine. He was bald, with grayish skin covered in bumps, and wore a pair of white boxer shorts.

I turned back to the woman beside me. "I feel like I should have all the questions," I told her, "but I don't have the slightest idea where to start."

"-look like an avocado fucked an older, uglier avocado!" someone said from across the room. He sounded gleeful. I have no idea why that would make him happy. It really takes all kinds.

Jennifer Ortega gently put her hand on my tricep and guided me to slide around and climb out. I felt strange - I wasn't panicked or worried, but intellectually I knew I should be. I almost felt like I was watching myself from inside myself, but I was in control. Sort of.

I stood up. The concrete floor beneath my feet was warm. I expected it to be cool, for some reason, but with all the electronics and equipment in the room that would make little sense. I looked down; I, too, had on nothing but a pair of white boxer shorts. My legs were hairy and strong with thick muscle. That, too, was not how it was supposed to be. My stomach was flat with visible abdominal muscles; also, not how I looked. My chest was broad, hairy, and corded with muscles.

That was definitely not how my chest was supposed to look.

"There you go!" Jennifer Ortega chirped. She patted my arm, then stepped back. From across the room, the strange person shouted, "Oh, damn, even my dick is ribbed!" Jennifer Ortega winced, but kept her smile as she talked over him. "Okay, so, like I said, I'm Jennifer Ortega and I'm your liaison within the Traveler Initiative. I-"

"The what?" I interrupted.

"The Traveler Initiative. We're-"

"Is this about insurance?"

Jennifer Ortega paused and blinked rapidly, her mouth open. After a few seconds, she said, "...what?"

"Travelers," I repeated. "That's an insurance company, right?"

She looked around, as if looking for someone to confirm if this was a joke or not. She turned back to me and pursed her lips for a second before she slowly said, "No. I mean, it might be, I don't know, but that's not us." I nodded, and she continued at her normal cadence. "Okay. So why don't you walk with me?"

We started off toward my left, away from the other pods. Large lockers, which reminded me of the type NFL players got, were spaced along the wall. The one closest to us had Wolf-Spider written on the top. "Like I said, I'm your liaison within the Traveler Initiative," Jennifer Ortega continued. "I'm here to get you up to speed. You woke up early so we have a little extra time, but you didn't get all of the imprints so there's more to cover.

"The short of it is this: due to The Snap and The Blip, the world as we know it starts to Fracture. Realities bleed into one another, everything becomes unstable, and four hundred years in the future humanity - and all of reality - is on the brink of extinction."

Something about the way she talked reminded me of my wife, when she is about to give me two-hundred comics' worth of backstory to explain a single one-liner in a movie. I patted my stomach and said, "Uh-huh. Just skip to the part where this gives me abs."

She smirked, but continued without comment. "In the future, the survivors had access to limited data from the past. Most historical records were wiped out over the centuries. We knew when the Fracture began, roughly, and roughly how it began, but that was all. However, in the year 2438, we made two remarkable discoveries:

"The first, we discovered how to transfer a human consciousness to another body. The second, we found old social-media records from a reality where the events that lead to the Fracture were canonized in popular films."

She stopped in front of a locker and looked at me. She seemed to be waiting for something, but I didn't have a clue what. "Please tell me you're not talking about The Fast and the Furious," I offered.

"I- I don't know what that is, so no, I don't think so," she said.

I nodded. "Okay. Good. I still don't understand why I have abs, though."

"Your reality is the one that canonized history in film!" she gushed. Her eyes lit up in excitement. "We had the technology to transfer a consciousness, so we tested it - could we send it back, to the past, to change things? Traveler zero-zero-zero-one was sent back to the early twenty-first century, just before the nine-eleven attacks, and he successfully sent electronic correspondence that was saved on a server that survived until the twenty-fifth! It worked!

"So more were sent back. We all volunteered. It was so exciting!" Jennifer Ortega turned from me and looked out over the room. The bumpy guy was over at a locker maybe twenty-five feet from me, putting on a blood-red suit. Other white coats ran around the room, talking and shouting, but Jennifer Ortega ignored them all. I wondered what she saw in her mind as she continued, "To get to see the sun, breathe clean air, drink clean water - it was heaven. But we had work to do.

"The earliest we could pull from parallel universes was at the first instance of the Fracture. We knew it had something to do with the Battle of New York, so we kept our ears open, and finally we realized about when it would be." She sighed and turned to me, her energy seemingly spent. "Our social media records were very, very limited. We could only find twelve names we knew had the knowledge, so that's what we have, the twelve 'Parallels' as we call you, the ones who know all about The Avengers and-"

My stomach dropped.

"-can work with them- to-" Something in my face must have given me away. She stopped, reached up, and her hand fluttered in front of my chest. "What is it?"

"You brought me here because you thought I knew all about The Avengers movies?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"I wouldn't say we brought you here, it was more-" I tilted my head, and she squeaked, then hurried, "Yes, you were one of the twelve who had all kinds of Facebook posts about watching the film series!"

My anger felt like a tangible object in my chest. My hands flexed, I didn't know what to do with them. "Send me back," I growled.

Jennifer Ortega's eyes got wide and she took a step back. "I don't-"

"You took me from my wife and kids for this-This complete, utter-" I was so mad I couldn't even form a complete sentence.

"No, no, you weren't taken!" Jennifer Ortega assured me, her voice low and passionate. "You're still there, with your wife and kids. We aren't monsters! We copied your consciousness here. And it's not just our world we need you to save! The Fracture affects your world, too. Your daughters - and yes, I know you have daughters - were at the very least affected by this, and at worst killed. If not them, then their kids, your grandchildren, for sure!"

I stepped back from her, all the anger taken from me. I felt empty, hollowed out. "Send me back," I said. My voice came out weak, tired, and pitiful.

"We can't," she said. She stepped forward and put her hand on my shoulder. "You're still there, you aren't gone. Your girls aren't alone. But they need you here, too." We stood there together like that for a minute, her hand on my shoulder, before she cleared her throat. "Look, take a few minutes. We put your mind through some exercises to find out about your personality and then built your body to be your ultimate warrior-"

"-The wrestler? That guy gassed out just running to the ring! What a stupid choice-"

She ignored me and kept talking. "-so you'll be strong and powerful and everything you need. You'll have the right instincts to use it. In this locker, you'll find a super-suit that is specifically designed for your use. Go ahead and put it on, I'm going to go talk to Jenkins for a minute. I'll be back, or you can come get me when you're ready."

She gave my shoulder one last squeeze, then turned and walked back to where I woke up. I sighed, then turned around to look at my super suit. I had no idea what to expect - I just hoped it wasn't a white speedo and tasseled boots, like the Ultimate Warrior always wore to the ring. Luckily for me, it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't that bad. Black pants, black boots, and a black shirt with some duct tape across the chest. Two weird wrist bracers, one for each hand. I pulled it all on and found a black hood attached to the back of the shirt. I brushed my hair back - another problem, back home I was bald since my late twenties - and pulled the hood over my head. It came down over my chin, and fit perfectly. My entire face was covered, but my vision was unobscured.

All kinds of weird, all kinds of problems, but here was the most ironic thing:

I never saw any of those Marvel movies. Not one.

My wife was a huge MCU fan. She went to all the movies with her friends, opening night, dressed in cosplay, having a blast. She would see them multiple times, then rewatch them at home, even. As a joke, she repeatedly tagged me on Facebook as watching them with her. Everyone got a kick out of it.

I sat down in the locker and put my head in my hands. What the fuck had I gotten dragged into?

Iron Man placed the device around the underwater lines and watched as it sealed itself into place. Satisfied with his work, he activated his thrusters and shot up out of the river, into the air.

"Good to go on this end," Tony Stark said. "The rest is up to you."

Pepper Potts, back at Stark Tower, confirmed, "You disconnected the transmission lines? Are we off the grid?"

"Stark Tower is about to become the beacon of clean, self-sustaining energy," Tony confirmed as he flew toward the tower.

"Well, assuming the arc reactor takes over and actually works," Pepper teased, her voice dry.

"Oh, I assume. Light her up."

Pepper smiled and initiated the power. Tony watched from the air in the Iron Man suit as the lights in Stark Tower turned on from the bottom up, culminating in the large STARK logo near the top.

"How does it look?" Pepper asked.

"Like Christmas," Tony said. "But with more ME."

"Sir, we are seeing a five-percent power bleed from the tower," JARVIS interrupted. "And now it is gone."

"What?" Tony asked. "Five percent? Bleed to where?"

JARVIS took a moment to respond. "I am unsure. It was brief, I almost failed to notice it."

"Find it, JARVIS, let me know when you do," Tony instructed as he landed.

"Yes, sir."

"We need to go wider on the public awareness campaign, you need to do some press," Pepper instructed…

Jennifer Ortega came over to me after some amount of time and put her hand on my shoulder. "Hey, Logan, it looks like the others are waking up. You want to see this?"

I looked up. Behind her, several dozen white coats ran around the sci-fi pods like decapitated chickens. Steam hissed out of some of the pods, and wires sparked. It all looked very serious and cutting-edge-of-science. Then the bumpy-skin guy, now dressed in a skin-tight red and black suit with two swords strapped to his back, danced through the chaos. It looked like a fusion between ballet and contemporary, mostly the latter due to his lack of pointe shoes.

I went with the most confusing thing to me. "Uh, my name's not Logan?"

She smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. "It is now. Protocol two: leave the future in the past." This only deepened my confusion, and even with my mask on she picked up on it, as she explained, "It's 2012 now, not 2020. And you're on Earth one-five-nines; your Earth was ten-five-eighty-seven. My name wasn't originally Jennifer Ortega, but I left that in the future. You need to leave the future in your past."

"Earth one-fifty-nine? Ten-five-eighty-seven?" I repeated.

She shook her head. "Not one-fifty-nine, it's really one-hundred-ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred-ninety-nine. So we call it one-five-nines."

I nodded. "Right, of course, how silly of me."

She grinned. "Okay, so this is Earth one-five-nines, and you are from Earth ten-five-eighty-seven-"

"What the hell did you do to me!?" a voice roared from behind Jennifer.

A massive, unnaturally-muscled man stood in the middle of the room. His skin was blue stone, reflecting the overhead fluorescent light with a polished shine. He had jet-black hair and a clean-shaven face, and his back had an animal-like hunch to it, the way cats and dogs looked when they sat. The white-coats around him backed away, hands up, while a woman in a gray-and-black uniform of some sort rushed over from a locker at the wall.

The blue man threw a leg over the edge of the sci-fi pod. His foot was odd, with three big talons for toes and a sharp talon at the heel as well. He pushed himself out of the tube, and I realized he hadn't been standing before but rather sitting up in the tube - now, as he stood, a pair of large wings unfurled from his back, and the top of his head must have reached at least eight feet from the floor.

The man reached out with a massive hand and grabbed the closest white coat. "What is this?!" he screamed into the woman's face.

The white coat stammered, "You-you choose-you chose this, you chose Gargoyle as your-"

The massive man, Gargoyle, turned and threw the white coat across the room. The poor woman flew head-first into one of the computer carts and the two tumbled across a pod together.

"Sparrowhawk, no!" another white coat shouted as the woman in the gray-and-black uniform leaped forward. A blue glow wreathed her right fist as she brought it back then struck Gargoyle in the chest with an explosion of blue. Gargoyle flew back, across the whole room, and smashed back-first into the massive wall of computer equipment and coolant tanks that lined that one wall. Gargoyle fell to one knee, but quickly rose back to both feet with a snarl.

The woman, Sparrowhawk, stalked forward. The blue glow spread to surround her whole body and holy shit, is that supposed to be Commander Shepard?

"Oh, no, oh no oh no," Jennifer chanted softly to herself. "They're going to wreck everything!"

The Gargoyle and Sparrowhawk raced toward each other and smashed into a brutal fight. Although the Gargoyle stood more than two feet taller and had to outweigh Sparrowhawk by at least two hundred pounds, the blue glow around the woman-which I could only assume were biotics, or some equivalent-acted as a protective barrier and evened the fight. The white coats scrambled to stay out of their way, and several pods were damaged as they rampaged.

Chaos broke out all over. Several new people jumped into the fight, some of them still in white boxer shorts. The bumpy guy in red and black drew his swords and ran around yelling about Mexican food. A petite woman with brown hair flew around the ceiling. I stayed over at the side with Jennifer.

It looked like most of the Parallels were up and out of their pods; I believed the one Gargoyle picked up and threw at Sparrowhawk was empty. At least, I hoped it was. Sparrowhawk caught it with her blue glowy lights and threw it back at Gargoyle, who dodged.

The pod struck one of the big tanks and set off a massive explosion.

I came to in a cloud of dust. I coughed and groaned and waved my hand in front of my face to try to clear the air. The room was very dark, and it wasn't until I tried to move and felt something holding me in place that I realized I was flat on my back with a massive slab of concrete angled about a foot over me.

I can't begin to calculate how lucky I was I didn't get crushed.

I pushed the concrete slab off of myself and light shined through the opening. I scrambled away and let the slab fall back down behind me, then looked around to take stock of everything. The room was a mess. All the tanks on the left wall were shredded scrap metal now. The Gargoyle was face-down on the floor by the right side wall, his wings were broken and tattered, and he laid in a pool of blood. The white coats were scattered all across the room, some moving but most completely still. The fluorescent lights were broken and torn down from the ceiling; the light in the room came from a massive hole in the ceiling over me. I looked up through the hole and saw a tall building rise up beside us, sunlight reflected off the windows and facade. Whatever building we were in, it must be a fairly small one compared to the surroundings.

The pod-people who were still alive and conscious started to pull themselves up. I turned to look for Jennifer Ortega, and quickly found her. A piece of metal rebar pierced her chest and continued out her back, and another large piece of the concrete ceiling covered her legs. I threw the concrete away behind me, then dropped down on my knees beside her to look at the piece of rebar, but there was nothing I could do-she was already dead.

"I'm sorry," I whispered to her. I wanted to say something, a memorial of some sort. That's what you did, right? I had no idea. Words were never my thing, I preferred numbers. After a moment, I settled on, "You were kind. Thank you."

I took a deep breath and looked up, away from the body. I looked up at the building above, the sky reflected in the windows. Shadows flashed in the window over and over, and then I thought I caught a glimpse of a silver chariot fly by. Over the ringing in my ears, I thought I could hear screams and explosions coming from up there.

I needed to find out what was going on out there.

The ceiling in the room was about nine feet high, and the concrete ceiling itself looked about three feet thick. I looked around the room for somewhere I could get a better vantage point or something I could climb to see what was going on outside. The pile of concrete slabs looked to angle up the nearby wall to give me a five-, maybe six-foot ledge I could use to get a better vantage point.

I picked my way over to the rubble. As I got closer, I realized it wasn't just pure concrete-there was concrete, but there were also layers of dirt, sand, limestone, and asphalt. I froze and looked up at the hole in the ceiling in shock.

That wasn't the roof of this building, I realized. That was a road-we were underground!

I scrambled up to the top of the ledge and gave another glance at the room. The guy in the red and black with the swords was up and moving around again, as was Sparrowhawk and a few other pod-people. Otherwise, it looked like a whole lot of casualties. But now that I was closer to the hole in the ceiling, I could definitely hear screams from out there. Explosions, too.

I reached up my hands to gauge the distance. The ledge I climbed onto put my fingertips only a foot or two below the street outside, but it was still a good five or six feet in front of me. I would have to jump, grab a hold, and pull myself up. Hopefully this Ultimate Warrior body they gave me would be able to do that-he was a strong guy, at least, right? I should be able to do this.

I jumped before I could overthink it.

I jumped way too hard. I cleared the distance too easily; I sprang up and over and slammed chest-first into the... either the ceiling or the ground, I wasn't sure which. My arms made it high enough to grab onto the asphalt, but my head snapped forward when I hit and smashed my nose into the ground. "Ow! Mother-" I grumbled, and only two-plus decades of watching my language around students kept me from more. My eyes watered. I blinked the tears away and looked out, only to see a weird metal alien thing turn toward me from a few yards away.

There was nothing I could do as it ran forward and kicked me in the face. My nose exploded in pain. I lost my grip, flew back into the hole, and landed on the ledge I jumped from.

The weird alien thing raised a rifle and shot me in the chest.

I came to on my back.

I gasped and my hands reached up to my chest. I found a small, nickel-sized hole in my top, but otherwise I was fine. My nose didn't even hurt.

Don't overthink it, I told myself. Just keep moving!

I stood up and looked around. The room looked exactly the same, just about, except more of the pod-people were moving about. Sparrowhawk had one of the white coats on his feet, an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and medium-dark skin, her shoulder under his to keep him up. The guy with the swords and red bodysuit had his eyes on me, his head tilted to the side like a dog who saw something confusing.

It didn't matter. Up above was someone who kicked and shot me.

I climbed up onto my concrete ledge again, this time in a matter of only a few small hops. I was confident this body could make the jump all the way up, maybe even enough to let me land on my feet in the road. It would take everything I had, I was sure, so I made sure I had a good footing and leaped-

-way, way too far.

I leaped out of that hole like I was shot from a cannon. I have no idea how high I would have gone, or where I would have landed. It sounded like a ridiculous word problem I might give my students: if you leap out of a hole with an initial acceleration of twenty-five meters per second at a trajectory of-

I crashed head-first into one of those flying chariots, though, so that killed my trajectory.

I fell onto a parked car by the curb, bounced, and flopped face-down onto the asphalt. My right shoulder and ribs took most of the punishment from the car, while my nose got yet another kiss from the asphalt. I groaned and rolled over just to come face-to-face with the same fucking alien who shot me before. Its head tilted to the side, it let out a loud shriek before it raised its rifle and shot me again, point blank in the chest.

I came to on my back.

Again.

Again again? I lost count.

Was that my life, now? I wake up repeatedly on my back in strange places, hurt after being shot and falling and bleeding, grateful I opened my eyes at least. No family. No wife and daughters to go home to. Nowhere to relax-

I opened my eyes and saw that same fucker who shot me, just a few feet away. It turned around after it shot me and walked away; I don't know how long I was out, but unless it stood above me to gloat for a while, it must not have been long at all. After being shot point blank. Again.

Yanked away from everything. Can't go back. Can't even die to get out.

I came to a conclusion: Fuck all of this.

I scrambled up to my feet with a rough, wordless scream and rushed the alien. It turned around and shrieked at me just before I struck with an overhand right. It's head snapped back and it collapsed down to the street. I dropped down into full mount and drove my fists down into its face, left-right, left-right, until the metal place across the face deformed. I drew back both fists and three claws extended from each fist. I screamed as loud as I could and drove both claws into its stupid ugly face.

I looked up and screamed out my rage at the street. Two other blue, metal aliens shot me point blank.

I came to face down, half on the street and half on top of the dead alien.

All in all, Sir Lancelot, I think flat on my back is more my idiom.

I lifted my head and looked down the street. Six of the aliens lined up facing a group of people rushing to get to cover in one of the buildings. The two who shot me strode to join them. I pulled my legs up underneath me and a lock of hair fell into my face. I brushed it out of the way and felt my mask-my face was still mostly covered. There was a small hole under my left eye and a bigger one along the top of my head along the right side, where my hair fell out from. I tucked it in as best I could. It had been a long time since I had to worry about hair.

I looked down at my hands and tried to make the claws come out again. They slid out with a brief sting between the knuckles, three long and sharp metal claws. I realized-they hadn't made me the Ultimate Warrior, they'd made me into an ultimate warrior, someone with a metal skeleton and a healing factor that could bring me back from death.

Someone screamed for help.

I looked up at the aliens. Fuck it-like Victor Criss at the apocalyptic rock fight, if I was here, I was gonna deal out some fucking damage.

"Hey!" I screamed at the aliens. I stood up and brandished my claws in front of me. "If you want to shoot someone, shoot me!" Four of the six aliens looked over at me, including the two who shot me the most recent time. They raised their rifles, and I relaxed and let my reflexes take over.

I leaped over their shots into a backflip that took me up onto the top of the closest streetlamp behind me. The aliens tracked me with their rifles, but I still had time to flick each wrist at them before I leaped away again. Two balls of white, sticky substance shot from the bracers on my wrists and hit perfectly on the barrel of the two closest rifles; when the aliens tried to shoot, the weapons exploded with enough force to destroy their arms and fling them back onto the ground.

My second leap took me to my left, and I landed on the wall of the building. Wait, what? No, stupid, don't think, just keep moving! I spun along the wall, hands and feet holding me up, as I avoided more fire. After two full rotations, I shot a long line from my wrists that stuck high up on the building across the street and leaped off into the air. I swung over into the line of six and struck the third one down feet-first. My double kick to the chest sent it careening back into a parked vehicle, and with a neat backflip I came down on top of the one before it with my claws extended.

"Wooo, go Spidey go!" a voice called from back the way I came. "I got your back, buddy! Maximum effort!"

I spun and threw the alien on my claws at the one closest to my original position, who ducked. I shot a webline behind the projectile alien, caught the one who ducked, and yanked him toward me. One punch to the head later and its brains were out on the wrong side of its skull.

I turned to the other two and saw the bumpy red-suited guy from before slice them up with his two swords. He turned to me before the second one fell and said, "Cool slow-mo walking away shot," as the alien fell to the ground behind him. He stopped after two steps, though. "Holy shit! You're like Spider-Man and Wolverine combined! I'm so hard right now."

I blinked and retracted my claws. I hadn't noticed it before, but the guy spoke with a rough English accent. After a moment, I said, "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, but I'm still going to go with 'eww'."

The guy laughed. "Fair enough, mate. I'm Neville, but call me Deadpool." He walked over and extended his hand.

"Uh, Logan now, apparently?" I replied. I shook his hand. "I don't think I have a nickname, though."

"What did your locker say?"

"Wolf-Spider?"

He winced hard enough it was visible through a thick leather face mask. "Ouch. That name fucking blows. Come up with something better." He gestured wildly with one of his swords. "We really got to work on your branding, you know? Go wider on the whole public awareness campaign-"

"Do you know what's going on here?" I cut him off. I got the impression that, left to his own devices, this guy could talk all day and still say absolutely nothing.

"Oh, those Traveler fuckers? They're completely full of it," Deadpool answered immediately. "I don't give two fucks what they wanted, those guys can bite my bumpy red arse."

"No, I mean-" I waved my hands to indicate everything around us. "-what's going on here?"

"Oh! Yeah. Battle of New York. Chiutari invasion. Loki and the Tesseract. All that."

"What the fork are you talk-The fork-" I looked around at the devastated city block around me helplessly. "What the shirt! I can't even forking curse!?"

"Fuckin' MPAA," Deadpool commiserated. "MCU's PG, so is the X-Verse. Good thing I'm rated R, baby. Fuck yeah. Can't stop Deadpool-"

"I don't have the first clue what the fork you're talking about," I told him.

"We're in the movie, mate." Deadpool stopped talking for a second, then shrugged. "Look, you can hang around and meet up with Scar-Jo, the Chrisses, and RDJ, but me? I'm off to go enjoy being an immortal badass ninja avocado." He waved his sword and gave a grand bow, then jogged past me, back toward the hole in the road. Several flying chariot things, like the one I crashed into during my exit from underground, turned the corner and flew overhead.

"Maximum effort!" Deadpool yelled again. He jumped onto the back of a car, then up to a streetlight, then leaped out at one of the chariots. His sword stabbed into the shoulder of the driver, and he spun around and kicked the gunner off the back. The chariot swerved, then flew around another corner and out of my sight.

I stared where he disappeared. "I think I hate that forking guy."