Disclaimer: You've all read this before.

I'm back from my vacation so here you all go. Enjoy. SPOON!!!!

Chapter 10

It would only be a matter of time til the X Men decided to look into what Richard was doing at their school looking at classified materials. Richard could only hope the disk was destroyed when he ran over Logan. Oh well, there was nothing that could be done about it now. Richard knew he'd have to figure out another way to find Magneto, but who else had been to his base? The sun beat down on the empty highway, and dust flew through the destroyed windshield. Richard squinted against the grit as he manouvered his hiccoughing car and reflected on what an unpleasant way it was to finish an ill-fated espionage attempt. The car lurched forward and made a sound like rocks were being run through the pistons instead of gasoline. Smoke began to bellow from under the hood, and among the many acrid scents Richard recognized the smell of evaporating coolant. The chevette continued to jump and jolt, and Richard decided his trusty tin bucket had seen it's last day.

He managed to get the car off the road before it stalled completely, and the cloud it bellowed completely engulfed the battered chevette. Richard got out of the car and kicked the door hard enough to leave a large dent in the panel. The hood wouldn't quite open, even after Richard pulled on the release lever hard enough to yank the plastic handle right off its wire chord. Richard got his toolkit out from the back of his now defunct vehicle and found his hammer and brought it around to the hood. The hood gave a good arguement on how it didn't want to open, Logan saw to that, but Richard was able to deform the light metal more than enough to open it; however, when he tried to lift the joints wouldn't work. Richard braced himself, and threw his entire weight into lifting the hood. He could hear the metal crunch as one of the hinges on the hood was torn right out of the car. The white painted metal plate in Richard's hands was so deformed that most people wouldn't recognize it as any piece from a car.

Richard tossed the hood into the ditch and waved his hands at the smoke rising from the cars guts in a futile attempt to clear it faster. The engine was a complete mess. A piston was jutting out of the side of it's chamber, the air filter was cut into three pieces, and the radiator had numerous holes punched into it from the grill. Logan's final farewell, Richard thought. Looking around, Richard wasn't close to any real civilization. He decided he'd call a truck and just take the car to a scrap yard. Besides, he was sitting on enough money: it was time to upgrade. He considered perhaps a Ford Tempo.

Richard called Ajax towing and the woman told him the truck would be about an hour. He didn't want to wait that long so he just unscrewed the license plate and put it in his suitcase. Richard was getting ready to thumb a ride when he looked in his backseat and swore under his breath. The computer equipment which made it's short lived attempt to hack into the X Men's computers were sitting back there. There was way too much to pack into the suitcase, the satellite sat half buried under the burnt out laptop and seemed to grin at Richard with it's lower half, as if saying, "Don't worry, we'll take care of the car. I have enough cash in my back pocket. What if the cops hear of the ten thousand dollar computer set up sent to the scrap yard? The X Men might file a report and they could put two and two togethor. Hell, your description might match up with a certain criminal investigator from Calgary."

Ha, the X Men wouldn't even bother with the cops, they would be able to find him better than any cops, but even then they had no personal information on him. Richard was safe, and he was glad. He had no desire to ever run into Logan again. "Ah yes Logan, did he notice your license plate? You are registered to your bachelor apartment aren't you?" OH SHIT! "You forgot about that didn't you? Oh well, it's my job to remind you of your fuck ups. Remember that sixteen year old Japanese kid too? He probably never got to touch a girls breast aside from his wet dreams. Remember him? The way he branded you with his dying moments? And all that blood on the carpets." Shut up. "You bet. I'll leave you alone, but don't you still find it amazing how much blood a human body holds? Especially of young boys?"

Richard did his best to force that familiar voice away and concentrate on what he had to do. It was very possible that Logan got his license plate number. Richard thought that Logan looked too ferocious and raw to be so refined as to notice the numbers on the back of the car, especially as the wheels ran over his steel skull like an oversized speedbump. He decided it would be a safe assumption that the plate wasn't noticed. He would go get a new plate for his Topaz and tell them his old one was stolen. That would be a reasonable precaution. Besides, all the computer stuff in the back wouldn't make it to the scrap yard. The truck driver, or someone from the scrapeyard would scoop it up for resale. And Logan was way to enraged to bother trying to remember anything, aside from Richard's face. Richard had no doubt that Logan would remember Richard on the drop of a dime. "Remember how Logan's face looked after you emptied your gun into him? Just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He sure bled enough, but not quite as much as that woman in the businessman's bed. And not nearly as much as that young boy." Shut up. The voice did, but only for a few minutes then it snuck back into Richard's thoughts as he stood at the side of the road with his thumb out. This time Richard decided to give up the fight and just listen.

It wasn't more than ten minutes before a beat up, faded blue pick up stopped for Richard. The kid driving it looked like he got his license yesterday.

"Hey dude, what happened to your car?" The kid was smoking a cigarette and listening to raggae. Richard climbed into the truck.

"Got attacked by a wild animal while I stopped to take a piss."

The kid laughed loudly as he pulled away. Richard didn't think he was all that funny, but then again the cigarette looked like it was home rolled, and there was definately more than just tobacco inside. "Shit dude, your ride was mauled. What were you attacked by?" The kid was smiling and Richard couldn't tell if he was being joked with, or if the kid honestly believed some animal ripped the hood off a chevette and tore the muffler off as it was being run down.

"I couldn't quite tell you, it was short and stocky. Had claws that seemed to go on forever, and it was a mean little bastard. Would give up no matter how many times I shot it."

The kid howled at this, and Richard was starting to feel a little lightheaded, no windows were open and the kid had hot boxed the cab pretty good. Richard prayed they weren't pulled over.

"Sounds like it was a wolverine. You ever seen one of those fuckers? Meanest fuckers you'd ever see. They'd rip you to pieces for just sneezin'."

Richard thought that sounded right about Logan. The kid held out his smoke towards Richard and he gratefully declined. Instead he cracked open his window to try breathing oxygen again. The kid looked over and smiled, then decided to put out his smoke in the ashtray and open his window.

"Sorry dude, I don't even realize how stuffy it get's in here. My name's Auston." He held his hand out to Richard who shook it briefly.

"I'm Richard."

"Good to meet you dude, I hope your going to New York cuz' that's where I'm headed."

"Yeah thanks, so am I. Well, I was before the wolverine attacked me that is."

The kid laughed, but didn't quite howl this time. Richard was starting to think that noone would quite realize how bad his jokes were, ever. The rest of the drive was just more of the same. Auston, the kid, would make an observation, Richard, the comedian, would make a bad joke, and Auston would laugh until his sides hurt. Richard was thankful when Auston finally dropped Richard off in front of his house.

"Thanks again for taking me all the way home."

"Hey, don't mention it dude. Your pretty fuckin' funny, and I'd hate to leave a funnyman to take the bus. Hope you get your ride runnin' soon."

"Don't worry about it, I'll be up and driving before the end of the day."

"Cool, peace."

The truck drove off and Richard thought he should've gotten the kid's number. New age hippies were always able to get information the more, refined professionals had trouble with when it came to the lower levels of society. Oh well. Richard realized he left his newspaper in the car so he dropped a couple quarters into the box and grabbed the paper before he went back inside. Richard dropped the paper on the kitchen table and locked the door behind him. As he headed for the bathroom, Richard noticed the answering machine flashing, telling him he had a new message. Richard sat himself down on the toilet for a much needed clearing of his bowels, and he noticed an ant climb out of one of the traps he set by the sink with a chunk of poison in it's mandibles. Richard could remember when he punched the holes in the sides of the traps, it smelled like peanut butter to him. He had to double check the package to make sure he had ant poison, the scent was so convincing.

Some of the most profound moments of revelation in human history seem to come while a man is taking a shit, and Richard had such a revelation while he was on the toilet that day. Richard decided that he didn't need the X Men to find Eric's hideout, there was someone else that was there and came back to tell the tale. It would be through this man that Richard would get the necessary information, and hopefully he would get there before the X Men.
Richard knew where he lived, that was common knowledge to anyone who wanted to know, and now with the new political situations developing in the good ol' U S of A, his whereabouts would always be known by someone who could be bought. Richard sat down at the kitchen table and listened to the answering machine. The last shipment of supplies has arrived and Richard was expected at nine that night. He glanced at the clock and it was only two, plenty of time. Richard thought he'd lay down for a short nap before going to the warehouse. Now that would be alright.

The alarm was set and Richard undressed. As he closed his eyes his thoughts turned back to his ticket to Magneto. Richard was going to have to pay a visit tomorrow. It almost hurt that Richard didn't think of this before, after all it was so widely publicized that Senator Robert Kelley was kidnapped by Magneto, and then converted (or possibly blackmailed) into doing a complete flip on mutant politics. Well, politicians were the easiest people in the universe to bribe for information, and Richard was going to make the most of it.

Chapter 11

Richard found himself in a familiar situation to him. The air was stale and dust could be seen floating all throughout. Light was reflecting from numerous grates, but he still saw the world through a sheen of blood. He was still wearing his infravision goggles. In time Richard found himself looking down through a familiar grate at a familiar room with a familiar young girl laying on a bed sleeping. This time she was alone.

Richard reached down to his belt but found he didn't have a pistol, in fact he had no gun at all and he was wearing a black leather jump suit that he didn't recognize at all. The grate shifted and Richard almost tumbled over, but he stopped himself, only making a quiet thump as his reflexes shot a hand underneath him. The grate moved aside easily and Richard lowered himself into the room, his shoes dangling a few feet off the floor. Richard knew for a fact that he never wore hard soled shoes on a mission, and never gave a second thought to making small drops to the ground. When Richard's feet hit the ground there was a clack of hard rubber striking tiled floor, and Richard's heart beat so fast it seemed like it might burst in his chest while he stood beside the girl. The sound echoed in the room and to Richard it was loud enough to awaken the entire building, but the girl rolled away from him and pulled the blanket up closer. All he could see was the head of brown hair and the shape of her body under the covers.

It wasn't a pleasant realization that Richard had come so far on the mission having forgotten to bring any weapons at all, and that he was so careless to wear hard boots. And this jump suit, where the fuck did he get it from? Richard set his mind to just strangle the girl, whatever get's the job done. He stepped towards the bed without a sound in spite of the clodhoppers he was wearing and stretched his hands towards the girl. He realized just then that the gloves he was wearing were thick, black leather gloves, not nearly nimple enough for Richard's liking considering what his hands were about to be employed as, but since there were no other gloves, and Richard had no intention of leaving finger prints, the thick gloves would have to do.

His fingers wrapped themselves around the girls neck tightly and held on. She woke up and thrashed around in a panic. The covers got tossed off and Richard saw that she was naked, and from the look of her small breasts and hips she was a young teenage girl. What was he doing strangling a sixteen year old girl? She managed to turn towards him and stare at Richard. The entire world was covered with blood from Richard's point of view, but her face was so familiar. Richard couldn't quite place her, but he knew that he had seen her before, and now for a reason he couldn't remember he had to kill her. The girl beat at his hands and he closed his grip tighter, not even noticing her naked beauty (to be honest, murder wasn't the time that Richard felt very much like getting it on anyways). Her thrashing became lighter, and Richard could feel something collapsing in the girls neck, making it softer and allowing his fingers to wrap themselves tighter. Her gasps for air became softer and her arms lay still at her sides, but her eyes stared deep into Richard's, pleading and accusing at the same time. Richard was staring at the Japanese boy, but it was a naked girl instead. It was as if the murdered boy's soul had been reincarnated in this body, only to end up with that same accusing look it gave in it's last death, and to the same man. But Richard knew it was just the girl, there was no otherworldly spirit in her body.

Richard's hands then clapped togethor, gripping nothing. The girl was still laying on the bed just as naked and just as pleading, but Richard's hands were sitting inside her neck, passing through like she were an illusion. The girl sat up and got back her breath. Richard tried to wrap his hands around her throat but they still passed through her. He stuck a hand into her back and the hand dissapeared in her skin and Richard could see it reappear between the swells of her breasts. The young girl stood and looked at Richard and said, "No men are allowed in here, and you are no exception. Since you are in here, you must not be a man." The girl walked through Richard, at one point her small frame was completely consumed in his body, and dissapeared into a wall. Richard looked around dumbfounded, then a slow realization dawned on him, there were no doors to the room. The only way in and out, for people who couldn't walk through walls of course, was through the vent in the ceiling, except there was no longer any vent in the ceiling. Richard jumped and hit the spot where the vent used to be, but only touched a solid surface. It dawned on Richard that this was his punishment for trying to kill a girl young enough that he could be punished for just seeing her naked. Richard was going to spend the few remaining days of his life trapped in a room that noone knew existed except that ghost girl, and it was doubtful she'd return.

The room was completely bare, save the single bed the girl slept on. But something was wrong (aside from the fact that a girl walked through a wall and a hole that was in the ceiling is now gone), but that is the nature of dreams. Richard slowly realized this was a dream and set his sleeping mind to decipher what was wrong with the room, there was light. The room should've been pitch black with no way in or out, and no light fixtures, but it was illuminated just the same. Only to Richard it was illuminated in a bright red, a blood red. No, Richard decided it wasn't a blood red, it was brighter, almost like looking through stained glass, maybe ruby. Then hands grabbed him from the mysterious light...

Chapter 12

...And Richard found himself staring straight into the furious eyes of Logan, that friendly school security gaurd. Richard was no longer in the doorless room, but in his own bed with the overhead light turned on and Logan so close to his face that Richard could smell the cigar breath. For a moment neither spoke, Richard was scared stiff, he wouldn't have been able to come up with two adjacent, logical words in those few moments if his life depended on it which it seemed it now did. And he could feel moisture expanding down at his crotch under the covers. Logan didn't speak for different reasons.

Finally the silence was broken, but Logan barely spoke above a whisper. That didn't prevent Richard from hearing the intense rage in Logan's voice though.

"Hey bub, I have something for you."

Logan let go of Richard with one hand and reached down the side of the bed and brought up a large chunk of metal that Richard could instantly recognize. The muffler was completely destroyed from being torn off, but still retained it's familiarity, like an old friend who came for a surprise visit when your sweetheart was in town for the weekend and all yours for just one evening.

"Don't worry about thanking me, I'll be able to take what I want just fine."

Logan dropped the muffler and it hit the carpet with a metallic thud. Richard stared wide-eyed and speachless as three claws sang out of Logan's free hand. The claws were raised high and Richard closed his eyes and screamed, but no sound came out.