Chapter 5 – Pick Your Poison

Some battles are won with blasters and missiles and automatic weapons. When Tony finally uncovered the mess he had been set to unravel, he would have liked to go in as Ironman and pound his enemy into submission, but the enemy was not the small group of military women and men manning the secret subterranean base filled with unlawfully detained civilians. The enemy was wearing a three piece suit and drinking fine liquors on capital hill. If he flew in as Ironman and cleaned house once, he was leaving the real problem to start again somewhere else.

So Tony took a moment to compose himself then he called in a specialist. "Pepper, I need your help."

"If I had a dollar for every time I heard that from you," Pepper said.

"You'd be a wealthy woman? Yeah, I know. Can you come up or should I fly down?" Tony paced to an Ironman suit.

"No, don't even think about it. I'm in Spain as if you didn't know, and I can't come home until after the trade conference. Ironman blasting the shutters off with his loud jet boosters is not the ugly American look I'm going for here. Can I help over the phone?" Pepper asked. "Is this about the crazy guy that sent me the weird birthday card?"

"Sort of and yeah, over the phone is doable. This line is secure, right?" Tony asked. With the security issues they'd been having between Deadpool and spyware, he had to ask.

"Yes, boss," F.R.I.D.A.Y. answered.

"So I found a spy program in the Avengers' computer system and traced it back to one of our I.T. guys, Greg." Tony paced to the bar and poured himself a drink of straight gin. "Now Greg, turned out not to be much of a spy and he spilled the beans on his other employer, our friend, Secretary Ross after just a little questioning. Gregory seemed to think I was being silly getting up in arms over a little friendly spying. Apparently, espionage between peace keeping agencies is like good personal hygiene, everyone who's sane does it."

"Good personal hygiene? Greg's funny. They can't do that without a warrant, and a warrant has to be filed even if it isn't served. Call legal and they can determine if this was legal or illegal. We can go from there." Pepper knew deep down that Tony hadn't called her before taking some action, but she could hope and pretend that he asked her advice before committing treason or whatever he had done in response to this.

"Yeah, already called legal and there was no filed warrant. Now before you get very upset with me, I've got a maniac sending people crazy letters and kidnapping teenagers, so getting to the bottom of things required some expediting. So if hypothetically, I set up my own virtual spy network and placed a couple of technically illegal wire taps, that would be a reasonable tit for tat."

Pepper didn't answer right away, finally sighing deeply. "Tony, even if what you just said didn't have the adjective illegal in it, you have to know better than to do something like this. The Avengers aren't a sovereign country or a government agency. Whatever the FBI does to the CIA and vice versa is not the same here. The team of attorneys that tried to define the Avengers ended up filing 501(c) paperwork and hoping for the best. You could go to jail if you wiretapped a government agency. Tell me we're still in the planning, hypothetical stage of this plan and you're not calling me from lockup?"

Tony leaned back in his chair, oddly comforted by the worry and exasperation in his on again off again (currently on) girlfriend's voice. "Sorry, I've already racked up a few felonies, but I've not been caught so they don't count. Pepper, they've got over a hundred citizens unlawfully detained. No due process, no warrants filed, at least not where I can find them and I looked places I'm not allowed. They've got Bruce and they're keeping him green and drugged with one of the chemical cocktails that they pulled from my hard drive." Saying it made him angry all over again, and he kicked a trash can that had the misfortune to be in his way, strewing paper from one corner of the lab to the other.

"Do not get in your Ironman suit and go bust those people out. Give me two days to get enough legal information to act. This isn't North Korea. When we expose what's happening, the American people won't stand for it."

Tony frowned as Dum-E picked up his mess laboriously, one piece of paper at a time in the background. "But you're in Spain for another week?"

"No, I'll be home in a few hours. Just don't commit any more felonies until I can get there."


An entire arsenal of guns, from tiny handguns all the way up to assault rifles were arranged neatly next to their ammunition and a set of cleaning supplies. Standing over them doing a passable imitation of a school marm, Deadpool described each gun listing pros and cons. "Today you too will become a gun owner, bunny rabbit. Don't bother pretending you have any experience with them. I know you don't," Deadpool said.

"I don't do guns. Thanks but no thanks. My webs make a good, non-lethal projectile." Peter crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head for emphasis. Things had changed a bit between them since the night Deadpool drank himself insensate. Peter worked hard to show how competent he could be in a fight and to learn anything Deadpool deigned to teach him, and Deadpool stopped short of pounding his brains out his ears every night to prove he wasn't there yet.

"Said like a real rabbit there, Peter. Pick a gun, any gun, and it's yours. I'll teach you to care for it and shoot it and then you'll name it. There's nothing like a boy and his gun, especially his first." He pushed the assault rifle forward an inch and using a falsetto, whispered voice sang, "Pick me, pick me."

"No, I can't. Can we just move on?" Peter asked.

"I don't think we can." Deadpool efficiently took one of the handguns apart, cleaned it, reassembled it, and loaded it. He extended the weapon smoothly so that it pointed at Peter's face. "People are going to use guns on you, whether you ever use them in the world yourself. Understanding them as a weapon will help keep you alive and while you're here, you will carry and care for one of these weapons, or don't you ever want to go home?"

"Look my Uncle Ben was shot and killed by a mugger. I can't use a gun. It would dishonor him. I won't do it," Peter said. "If you keep me here forever, I'm not budging."

"A liberal, gun-control rabbit? Fuck me. You know it was the mugger that killed your uncle, not the gun, right? Fine. I can compromise." Deadpool put away the guns and pulled out an impressive array of edged weapons. "We have swords, knives, machetes, and my personal favorites, katanas. Choose."

As much as he wanted to refuse twice, Peter decided to accept the compromise for the miracle it was and picked a set of small daggers. "How about these?"

"Good choice, those can be deadly if you know where to stick them and can serve as a projectile in a pinch though the balance could be better for throwing. Let's learn how to do surgery."

For the next few hours, Deadpool taught Peter the care and maintenance of his new weapons, He taught him different grips and how to throw the daggers. Once they were through the basics, Deadpool took paint and started marking spots on his body in red yellow and blue. He pointed to one of the red spots. "This is a kill spot, no bones to protect and the kidney is right here. It you slide in here under the ribs, you'll hit the liver, another solid kill spot. Everyone wants to go for the heart but with the sternum and the ribs, unless you have skill to slip it between the bones or the brute strength to smash through the bone, it's just almost impossible, also, you might break your blade." He pointed to a spot on his thigh then his knee. "Good arteries there and there, oh and if you've got the aim and the angle, that blade is prefect to slip between the atlanto-occipital joint for an instant kill." Deadpool indicated the spot at the base of his skull.

Peter took in the red kill spots, the yellow wound spots and the blue, too boney to be reasonably useful spots. He wasn't surprised when Deadpool set a new game or even that it involved the new knives, but asking Peter to stab him in as many kill spots as possible was crazy even for him. "I'm not going to kill you."

"No, you aren't, but you're going to learn what it feels like to put that knife in flesh." Deadpool pointed to the liver kill spot. "Like you mean it."

"I can't," Peter said.

"Then you're never going home." Deadpool shrugged. He picked up a katana and stabbed himself in the kidney in a quick, firm motion. "I can't die kid. Take the learning experience. Get a feel for it." When Peter didn't start stabbing, Deadpool changed tactics. "I fucking kidnapped you; beat the Hell out of you every day of your summer vacation. It could be argued that I've tortured you, and you won't even fucking stick me? I shouldn't be surprised. You know what baby bunnies do when they're threatened? They freeze."

"I'm not a rabbit." Drawing himself up, Peter adjusted his grip and he stabbed the spot for the liver. The knife bounced off without going in at all.

"Good, try again but use that point and come at it with more force. There is some Kevlar in the weave of the suit. I'll let you have a go with less protection later." Deadpool tapped the target again, apparently not even woozy from stabbing himself earlier. "Show me some teeth."


It takes a smart man to know when he doesn't know the answer to a question and Tony knew calling in Pepper was the right thing, but it aggravated him to wait and listen to lawyers argue. Drugged into a stupor and just waiting for rescue, Bruce probably wasn't aware enough to wonder where his good friends had gotten off to instead of helping him. The unknown aspect of what was happening with Peter was harder to think about. Once the situation was handled and Peter was out of the middle of things, Tony intended to exhaust his entire efforts on the capture and detainment of Deadpool.

Across the conference room, things seemed to be heating up between Pepper and Jeffrey, the attorney she had brought with her.

"This would never stand up to judicial review. They pulled the justification from the Sokovia Acords, subsection seven part g, enhanced humans acting without supervision can be equivalated to terrorists. They extrapolated the document beyond its intended scope and applied it to the general public. If you start calling enhanced humans terrorists just because they haven't joined the Avengers or some other lawful peacekeeping organization it's a constitutional quagmire that no judge in their right mind would uphold," Jeffrey argued, rather passionately for a skinny blond kid in a thousand dollar suit.

"We've got to find a legal means to make this public. Mr. Stark would rather not spend the next ten years at Leavenworth so how do we get around the Patriot Act and basic intelligence protocol to get this to a judge?" Pepper asked.

"You don't have a legal recourse. Once they were designated terrorists, the citizens in question lost the right to due process. It's not a crime to keep them detained and off the grid indefinitely until you get the court to tell the government they've overstepped. Unfortunately all the documentation goes dark, immune to the freedom of information act, and we can't get the court to help because all the documents that show they should are classified. It's a catch 22, if we could legally know what we know, then there would be a legal recourse, but there is no legal way to acquire the information at this time. With that, I really should be going. I don't think there's anything else meaningful that I can add to the discussion."

"Of course, you have a quarterly income meeting to get to." Pepper shook the attorney's hand. "Thanks for consulting on this Jeffrey. I know it's an ethical gray area."

"Gray? Oh this is a red area. I should be calling the police and reporting myself and both of you for this one, but you pay me enough that I'll overlook a little treason in a good cause. Good luck, and for the record, I wasn't here."

Tony quirked an eyebrow at Pepper as the elevator dinged shut on Jeffrey. "How much exactly are we paying him that he's down with a little treason? He's twelve."

"A lot but he's good. He wrote the 501(c) paperwork for the Avengers." Pepper dropped into the seat next to Tony and frowned. "There isn't a legal way forward with what we have, but I have an idea that might work."

"I'm all ears." Riding low in his chair, Tony slowly rotated toward her.

"Whistle blower. We need a Snowden to commit the treason and get us the documents." Pepper leaned forward. "I mean, you already went in, got what you needed and covered your tracks on the way out. They can't trace the data breach back to you, right? So we fake an anonymous hack and leak the documents. Send them to the alphabet soup, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, print media too, everyone including the Avengers. Second wave, we send a copy to the Senators and Congressmen, the Cabinet and the President. Anyone not named directly in the documents is going to be quick to condemn what happened here, I'm almost certain, whether they were actually involved or not."

"I like the plan. Greg is a loose end. He might point the finger back at me, but it would incriminate him for illegal espionage. Also, we would have to move fast to release the citizens before anyone higher up could feasibly move their transgressions." Tony actually smiled. "I've missed Bruce. It'll be good to see him. Hopefully he's okay."

"And your friend, the Spider-kid, I hope he's okay too," Pepper squeezed Tony's hand.

"Peter's tough," Tony said, "and if the psychopath has harmed him in any way, he'll live to regret it."


Looking more like a character out of a horror film than anything, Peter wiped the blood off his face from the enthusiastic spurting of Deadpool's carotid artery. It had taken some time and practice, but he had a good feel for how to make the knife go where he wanted, how to get it through the tough fabric of Deadpool's suit then through the skin and muscle and tough fibrous wall of an artery.

"That wasn't a bunny rabbit stabbing. That had teeth." Deadpool had applied a moment's pressure but the bleeding only lasted seconds. He leaned against the wall, staring at Peter's blood covered face and hands and clothes. He sighed. "I guess that's enough for today."

Peter held onto his knives and followed Deadpool through the portal his belt generated. Acutely aware of the overwhelming coppery smell that had to have hit Al, he raked a bloody hand through his sticky hair. "I should get cleaned up," Peter said. He slipped into the less than private bathroom and paused to look at himself in the shattered mirror. A hundred grotesquely distorted bloody reflections stared back at him and Peter wished he could just go home, but would May or Ned or Mr. Stark recognize the blood-covered, knife-wielding wild thing in that mirror.

"Clean clothes," Al announced. She dropped an orange sweat suit just inside the door, apparently pleased that Peter was moving of his own power for another night after Deadpool's ministrations, reeking of blood or not.

Peter stripped away the disgusting clothes and climbed into the shower while the water was still running cold. He managed to rinse away most of the evidence of the day, but somehow blood had seeped under the cuffs on his arms and Peter couldn't get the cuffs clean. His acute nose couldn't be fooled by appearances. Eventually giving up, Peter pulled on the orange sweats and made his way back to the kitchen looking for food.

Without really thinking about it, he stowed the set of six razor sharp knives in their leather sheathes into the baggy sweats' pockets. Deadpool seemed to be having a dinner conversation with one of the walls, not a terribly unusual situation. Peter pulled his seat and plate closer to Al and dug into his meal, hunger overriding anything else he was feeling in the moment.

"Things are happening again out in the world. I'm going to be away for a few days. Stark got off his ass and is about to deconstruct the Shop like I asked him to," Deadpool offered suddenly.

"That's great, but how do you know what he's doing and when? You changed the past so it's not future knowledge," Peter asked, not expecting a real answer.

"Trade secret, kid. Hand over the knives. I'll show you how to hone the edge properly." Using a leather strap, he ran the knife over the surface in long steady strokes. "You do the next one."

Peter quickly finished his meal, then slid over to emulate Deadpool's motions. Peter sharpened one of the knives silently. For the first time, Peter felt strangely sorry for the dangerously broken man beside him correcting his sharpening technique. In his own way, Deadpool had just played the hero, saving Peter from a fate he hadn't seen coming in the Shop, teaching him how to protect himself from the next bad situation that came his way. Peter half smiled when Deadpool approved his knife and set to work on the next one. "The Shop is going down this weekend, huh? I'm glad. Will you send me home after that?"

"Probably, if I don't kill you before then." Deadpool looked at Al and gestured dramatically at Peter though she couldn't see his theatrics. "He's pro-gun control. I tried to give him my favorite assault rifle, Winona, and the kid turned his nose up. I'm not sure why I wasted so much time trying to teach him to not be a rabbit. It's what he is."

Peter recognized the current outrageous statements as teasing. There was a tone to Deadpool when he was about to kill you and this wasn't it. Al had claimed it was easy to hear when you knew him well, and it seemed she was right. "You could try to kill me," Peter said. "You'll probably succeed, but you'll have a harder time today than you would have yesterday." Without taking time to think about what he was doing, Peter took the knife he was sharpening and launched himself behind Deadpool. Poking just hard enough that he could feel the knife through his suit and know that Peter had hit the right spot. Peter didn't drive the blade into the atlanto-occipital joint. He stepped back, collected his knives and headed to bed.

"Kids grow up so fast. Bastard already outgrew his nickname," Deadpool said, fondly.