Chapter Two

Anger. . . with a Vengeance

Kurt Wagner was rushing to recover his senses even as his body pushed itself through a familiar pattern of preservation, his tall and thin leg and trunk muscles pushing the rest of his frame through a nearly flawless somersault as the rest of him plummeted towards the pavement below. He could feel the stale, rank air passing through his nostrils and ruffling his indigo-colored fur as he came closer and closer to the ground, his equilibrium still shaky as the ground seemed to spin in front of his eyes. The trip through the mysterious portal he had all but been forced through left his gut rumbling and his muscles feeling like jelly but the instincts born under Margali's center ring and honed through countless hours in the Danger Room allowed him to remember what needed to be done to keep himself safe. Though the landing was more than a bit shaky and not entirely worthy of applause, the desperate cavorting was more than enough to keep him on his three-toed feet, his glinting, yellow eyes already working to take in everything around him.

Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, at least in terms of the circumstances at hand. The faint smell of aged refuse still hung about the dark alleyway and the brief scants of recent rainfall mixed with the already unpleasing tableau to make for a distasteful but not unsurprising bouquet. A quick glimpse of the paved roads nearly fifty yards away revealed little more than the sparse afternoon traffic that could have been found in the center of any major metropolitan city. More importantly, there were no flying cars or little green men or any other bizarre phenomenon that would indicate that he was now on some alien realm or distant timeline and the thought of that prompted the devout Christian to let out a brief sigh of relief.

Still, that hardly means that everything is as safe as it seems, the mutant known by many as Nightcrawler reminded himself while fighting back another wave of nausea, his long fingers quickly reaching into one of the pockets of his black and red battle armor. I must find a safe spot to recover from all of this before I continue investigating.

A brief perusal of his cellular phone revealed that the usually reliable communication device had been rendered useless, the small screen providing little more information that a garbled series of pixels. Although he would have normally be up to the mercies of Kitty or Peter when it came to fixing such a problem, Kurt was enough of a technophile to realize there were a number of reasons for such an occurrence, the consequences of which ranged from mildly inconvenient to highly distressing. Nevertheless, his quick, nearly instinctual sidle into the nearby shadows was done before his active mind had realized it, the shade provided by the steel stairwell above his head casting his lithe, athletic form into near darkness. Feeling mildly safer in spite of himself, the swashbuckler shut his eyes and centered his thoughts, a long-learned move taught to him by Professor Xavier as a method of getting in touch with his fellow teammates through the X-Men's litany of telepathic measures.

"WOOOOHOO!"

An effort that was being made a great deal more difficult by the ramblings and cavorts of his highly unlikely companion. Snapping his eyes back open, Nightcrawler took a moment to stop and stare as Wade Wilson pulled off a perfect double somersault before breaking into an odd dance consisting of seemingly random series of kicks and shoulder sways. It was quite apparent that the bloodthirsty mercenary hadn't been the least bit disturbed by the physical mayhem inflicted upon them within the portal or had at least recovered from the strain with the aid of his extensive healing abilities. Despite the irritation that such a circumstance could have caused, the elfin-eared mutant couldn't help but let a fairly diverted chuckle creep from his lips as Deadpool began to twirl one of his katana above his head like a hyperactive band leader.

"Why do I have a feeling that you know something that I do not, Herr Deadpool?" Nightcrawler asked as smoothly as he could.

The self-styled Merc with The Mouth suddenly brought his frolicking to a stop, the cease in motion so sudden that the tip of the blade in his right hand briefly grazed against the top of his adjacent shoulder blade. "Ah, so you're here too, huh, Elfie?" The red-and-black garbed assassin merely shrugged his shoulders at this realization, the compulsion to take in his intriguing surrounding simply too much for him to ignore. "Awwwww, why did I have to be dropped off here in the afternoon? How the hell am I gonna see the Batsignal? How am I going to fully appreciate the gothic architecture?"

Nightcrawler wasn't entirely sure what confused him more: the possibility that Deadpool seemed to know everything that was going on or the fact that he was inclined to believe that he did. He had been told of Deadpool's unique awareness, for lack of a better word, after being all but forced to lend a helpful ear after one of Logan's failed attempts to bring in the slippery former inmate of Weapon X. Of course, hearing about it and not being able to believe it and being able to witness it and not understand it were two altogether different matters and the latter was something that Kurt realized he was going to have to deal with.

"Herr Deadpool, whether you know of this place or not, it would be wise for the both of us to lay low and stick together," he reasonably suggested, his long arms lowered in a gesture of appeasement. "It would be hard to believe that this sudden jaunt was nothing but an accident and, until we know more. . ."

Even the mask that fully covered his face could not hide the disdain that Wade Wilson held towards such a suggestion. "Are you kiddin'? We're in Gotham City, Boris! This is an opportunity to put ourselves on the map in two different realities! Ooh! Maybe I can get myself restrained by Wonder Woman and her magic lasso. I mean there's a lot I've got to get off my chest and I'd like to try and be a really naughty boy."

"Mister Wilson, please!" Nightcrawler exclaimed, the veteran X-Man reaching out a hand to grasp Deadpool's shoulder and pull him back before he could escape the narrow passageway. "We must not draw attention to ourselves!"

"ORIGAMI!"

Nightcrawler felt more annoyed than hurt as Deadpool punctuated his bizarre war cry by tossing him into the nearby brick wall. Letting out a sigh of impatience as his rib cage throbbed in irritation, the master teleporter put his chief mutant gift to good use. Catching up to the speedy mercenary with a flash of brimstone, he leapt upon Deadpool's back once again, his right foot digging into Wade's wounded shoulder before teleporting the both of them back to their original spot. Only seconds passed before Wade made another break for it and an even shorter span of time until Kurt had dragged him back, the shorter of the two swordsman sweeping his pointed tail behind him in a gesture of mild irritation as the two of them came to a stop.

"Ugh," Deadpool grunted while quickly swiping his right hand in front of his face. "Ever thought of checking your underpants after those bamfs of yours?"

"I will not have you endanger us by allowing you to pretend to not know what is going on around you!" Nightcrawler fired back with a soft growl, the former leader of Excalibur easily weathering the pointed jibe.

"Oh, COME ON!" Deadpool yelled back, a distinct whine in his voice as he struggled to break the grip the stronger fellow had on his right wrist. "I was capable of hiding out in San Francisco six months before you guys moved in and you X-Chickens still didn't even know I was there until I showed up on your doorstep! Oh, and sorry if the welcoming committee was a little belated."

Nightcrawler narrowed his eyes as he allowed the logic to sink in, his response prompting Deadpool to smirk through his mask as he easily slipped free of the restraint put upon him. He only needed a second or two to peruse his options and make a decision, a moment of time that Deadpool eagerly spent by leaping onto the hanging stairwell and dashing up the tenement building at an impressive clip. He knew that there was little chance that he could continue holding back the hectic anti-hero while continuing to search for clues concerning where they happened to be and why they were here. Deciding to choose the best option available to him, he said a brief prayer for Wade Wilson before melting back into the shadows, his unique form allowing him to make it look as if he was never there to begin with.

It had taken ten minutes for Deadpool to find a halfway decent means of calling attention to himself. And, yes, as much as he could beat himself up for taking so long to think of something, he was fairly certain that the appropriateness of his final decision was enough to make up for a little bit of the wasted time. The citizens below certainly seemed to agree with him, at least judging from the way that a healthy percentage of them were scurrying for cover, but the fact remained that Wade couldn't help but think that he could have done better if he had that megaphone.

BLAM!

"BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!"

BLAM!

"BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!"

Now, granted, the bank office wasn't nearly as imposing as the Pemberton Hotel but the fact that he was standing on top of the building, rather than at the bottom, at least gave him the advantage of height over volume. He took heart in that while firing off another round from his customized Winchester into the air, the shrouded hired gun being careful not to fire directly overhead so that the spray of bullets wouldn't land back down on his head. After all, the effort it took to removal shrapnel out of the top of one's head usually tended to be way more trouble than it was worth. The mild degree of chaos spawned by each and every shot filled his cancer-ridden heart with glee as he once again broke into a little jig.

"NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-DEADPOOL! NA-NA-NA-NA-NA. . . hey, I wonder where all those police dirigibles are at? I mean, it looked like you couldn't throw a rock without hitting one of those things in the cartoon! I want my blimps, damn it!" Wade exclaimed as he fired another shot in the air. "I want to talk to Chief O'Hara! Where the hell is that Egghead guy? I wanna be a contendah!"

It took about a half of a second for Deadpool to realize that he had just been disarmed. Mildly discouraged by the occurrence, and not just because of the fact that he had lost his core source of making noise.

"All right. There's no need to get yourself down," Wade assured himself, his arms stretching and lowering in a failed effort to bring peace to his severely troubled mind. "Any one of them could have pulled that off," he reasoned while reaching for his left hip holster. "Maybe I won't have to deal with the guy in the big, red con. . ."

His MP7 had been pilfered before he could even completely free the firearm from its resting place, the audible whoosh that had preceded the thievery prompting Deadpool to let out a groan of annoyance. His frustration only intensified as his attempt to bring his other Heckler & Koch to bear was brought to an end with even greater urgency and he only began to get more and more cheesed as he was forcefully deprived of his katana blades, his hand grenades, his Scorpion mines, his tazers, and even the handy, dandy cudgel that Blind Al had given to him for his 30th birthday. To his credit, it wasn't until the blur of red had mercilessly pantsed him with a swift swipe of his belt that Deadpool broke into a Donald Duck-like temper tantrum, the spastic waving of his arms and legs looking only mildly ridiculous, as far as he was concerned.

"You know, I normally would have brought this to an end by now," The Flash said rather casually, the speedster seemingly more than happy to watch his prey suffer. "If only you didn't move so very slowly."

"Quit cheating!" Deadpool barked out in a scandalized manner while taking a brief moment to keep his Spider-Man boxer shorts hidden from view. "And speaking of which, how come you managed to hit the jackpot with your fateful accident, Mister West? I mean, the only thing I ever got out of being struck by lightning was having all my body hair singed off." The still steaming mercenary took little notice of the shock and surprise on the face of The Fastest Man Alive as he took a moment to search for something to throw. "Then again, I guess the lack of having to get a Brazilian wax saved me a couple of bucks."

"How in the world do you know who I am?" Wally asked, a note of both worry and menace in the young father's voice. The alarm tempted the speedster to lower his body into a familiar battle stance, his legs and arms suddenly bent, locked, and ready to move.

"Ooooh, I know everything about you, Wall-Eye," Deadpool replied while waggling his right ring finger in The Flash's direction, the mercenary suddenly catching an interesting sight out of the back corner of his eye. "In fact, I even know what you're about to do in ooooooh, three-and-a-half seconds."

Wally West let out an aggravated grunt of his own as the annoying stranger took a header right off of the twelve-story building. Wondering why the real psychos tended to show up in the early afternoon, The Fastest Man Alive gave himself just enough time to rub the sleep out of his eyes before dipping into the power provided to him by The Speed Force, his powerful body soon beginning to move at a speed that most people could hardly even fathom. The hypervibration of his molecules that rendered his body into a state of near intangibility was performed with similar grace and effortlessness, the maneuver allowing him to avoid causing any damage to the building around him as he raced to his new destination. In short, all of the preparation and stalling left him with nearly a tenth of a second to properly position himself in order to catch the plummeting man before he could have a painful meeting with the ground.

"HEY, CONVENIENTLY PLACED BOY SCOUTS! IT'S THE FLASH! AND HE SAVED MY LIFE! YOU SHOULD ALL RUSH HIM AND GET HIS AUTOGRAPH!"

The Flash widened his eyes as the unexpected intruder broke free with an athletic leap, the series of unexpected occurrences leaving him little time to prepare for the rush of fresh-faced youngsters looking to have their picture taken with him. Realizing that he had just successfully been played, the crimson-haired speedster did his best to resist the urge to scream and settled himself down with a seemingly casual shrug of his shoulders while patching in to The Calculator's satellite network.

"Looks like I'm going to be held up for a little bit," he announced with a well-practiced ease, his personal space already well encroached upon by little limbs and notepads. "All right, you crazy kids! Who should I make this first one out to?"

Deadpool couldn't help but feel a little disappointed as he raced down the crowded street, his athletic skills and impressive dexterity allowing him to easily swerve past or bound over the slow-moving traffic. It wasn't as if he disliked The Flash or anything but the simple fact was that he was hoping his first encounter of the DC kind would be someone a little more. . . impressive.

"Maybe if it was Barry Allen," he reasoned while awarding the Polynesian man whose taxi cab he just stomped all over with a cheery wave. The extended middle finger he received in return was hardly the handsomest of rewards but it wasn't as if he had a great deal of time to think it over. "I mean, he was pretty boring too but at least he was the original. Well, I suppose Jay Garrick was the first but I never thought that he should counts. I mean, the guy got his powers from a shiny, silver hat for Pete's sake. How in the world can you take that seriousuck. . ."

Wade honestly wondered if he could sue someone for all the whiplash he was being forced to suffer through today, his sudden realization that he was on top of yet another highrise taking a surprisingly distant second on his standing list of concerns. That understanding soon dipped to an even more disappointing third place as his retinas recovered from the damage done by the sudden burst of motion and he caught a sight of who had gotten a hold of him. He started with the long legs covered by a pair of modestly fitting pair of black jeans, moved to take in the swell of the woman's hips and the smallish breasts deliciously covered by a blue t-shirt before sweeping his roving eyes across the lady's cheekbones and crystalline blue eyes, the slightly chiseled features only mildly blunted by a slight showing of impatience.

"First of all. . . HELLOOOOOOO, NURSE!" Deadpool exclaimed, the outburst prompting Kara Zor-el to raise a mildly intrigued eyebrow. "Secondly, I was hoping that I could ask why you never went back to your Supergirl outfit."

Though the last three years had caused the half-Kryptonian to become far more accustomed to the unusual circumstances that often came with her line of work, the combination of unusual statements still managed to force her into a momentary stupor. To her credit, however, she managed to recover quickly as she placed her hands on her previously perused hips.

"How about I explain that one to you after your peaceful surrender," she offered kindly, her capricious tone causing the masked man to tilt his head to one side in a genuine display of interest. "After all, it's not like you've yet to do anything more than harass a bunch of people so maybe you should quit while you're ahead?" The masked man seemed to sincerely take in the offer as her communicator let off a brief buzz indicating that someone wanted to speak to her. "Come in," she began, her eyes still locked on the stranger.

"Ooh, is that Niles Crane?" Deadpool asked back, the six-foot, one-inch, 210-pound man hopping about like a seven year old wanting to answer a question in math class. "Hey, Calculatorman! Can I have you as my technogeek instead of Weasel? He keeps trying to take my cheesy poofs and I'd hate to waste any more time stabbing him in his extremities!"

Kara took another moment to regard her prisoner, a swift rolling of the eyes accompanying her perusal as she listened to the information provided to her from the nervous center underneath Wayne Manor. "Okay. Have we found out any reason how this guy could possibly know so much about us?"

"I'm afraid that we're left with little more than theories at the present time," The Calculator replied, a brief hint of aggravation within his usually detached demeanor. "For now, simply contain the unknown and return him to The Batcave so that Batman and Black Dog can examine him more sufficiently."

"Right," Kara replied before cutting off her side of the comm. link, the satellite linkup sizzling to a temporary hold as she gave the masked man another once over. "All right. I don't want to hurt you but I'm going to have to ask you to come with me. At least until we can sort all of this out."

"Okay, okay," Deadpool fired back impatiently, "It's just. . . why did ya ditch the whole belly shirt and short skirt thing? I mean, yeah, it wasn't the most functional outfit but I think you could still pull it off."

Kara responded by cocking her head to one side, the young but hardened warrior quickly examining the man's heartbeat to try and see if the question was anything other than an honest query. "I don't know. I. . . I guess it just didn't look really dignified is all." She found herself hemming over the precise wording she would employ, her efforts to find and say just the right words becoming bizarrely intensive. "Plus, I mean, there was always the thing about people taking snapshots of my underwear whenever I flew overhead."

"Point taken," Deadpool reasoned, the mercenary stooping down to take a seat on the nearby rooftop. "But what about 'the S'? I mean, you said you didn't think you earned it but I think you've more than done that by now."

"Well. . . I don't know," Kara stumbled, the 18-year-old slowly choosing to take a seat next to her captive. "I mean, I've done a whole lot of nasty stuff back in my day and. . . and why are you so interested in this?" she added, her suspicions suddenly rising back to where they probably should have been in the first place.

"Wellllllll, it's just that," Deadpool replied with his own share of stalling measures, his head suddenly turned downcast as if he was about to reveal a perilous secret. "You're my favorite Misfit."

"Huh," Kara snapped, her already large eyes widening into almost comical proportions. "Well, um," she continued to hem as she searched for the sanest thing that she could say to that. "You mean, you don't like Robin or Batman or Arsenal more?"

"Nope," Wade said with conviction. "I mean, Roy and Steph are funny and Bruce has got that whole Edward Cullen broodmeister thing happening." Or maybe it should be Edward ripping off Bruce, Wade couldn't help but think to himself before shaking himself free of his own pondering. "But you. . . you've really had so much development. You were this real ditzy blonde at first but now you're becoming, like, the strong, feminine voice of reason. That takes some real effort coming from somebody's whose origin is as fucked up as yours."

"Really?" Kara asked with genuine surprise, the slayer of The Anti-Monitor suddenly feeling the need to hide behind her shoulder-length curtain of blonde hair. "Well, uh, thanks, I guess."

Deadpool responded with what he hoped to be an encouraging nod before leaping to his feet. "Tell you what," he began, his sudden burst of motion putting Kara into a subtle state of guardedness. "How about ya give me a Supergirl-level thump. Come on! Right in the mush!"

"WHAT?!" Kara spat out, the lover of The Black Dog now hopelessly thrown. "I don't. . . I don't think that's a good idea."

"AW, COME ON!" Deadpool insisted, the crackpot murderer-for-hire now so wrapped up in his own eagerness that he began hopping on the balls of his feet. "I've got this super-duper healing factor so, unless you knock my head off, I'll be hale and hearty in just a couple minutes so. . . come on and just give me a good one!"

"No way!" Kara said with adamancy, her slim arms sliding across her chest as she began to float several inches above the ground.

"Please? I promise I'll turn myself in quietly if ya do it!"

"I've already captured you!" Kara couldn't help but loudly point out. "I can fly you back to our base so fast that you wouldn't even know you were moving until we got there!"

Deadpool, however, was just as determined. "Pweaaaaaassssseeeeee?" he needled while wondering if he could pull off a proper puppy dog look through his mask. He continued holding on to that considerably long e for seconds on end, his prodigious efforts threatening to turn his already mottled skin blue due to lack of oxygen. Keeping his efforts up as Kara let out a tired sigh, he almost let out a cheer as the former Supergirl sent him flying with a somewhat stern uppercut that landed right on the center of his chin. He spun himself like a top as he coasted into the clouds, a gleeful "WHEEEEEEEEE!" passing through his lips as Kara looked up at him in utter disbelief.

Caught in the throes of celebrating his ninth birthday, young Brandt Ray appeared to not have a care in the world as he joyfully swung between the steady arms of his mother and father as they walked down the crowded street. His eyes were still sparkling at nearly everything he had seen on the enormous movie screen, his blissfully juvenile mind wafting towards dreams that he would like to fulfill as he grew older and wiser, the ambitions ranging from the somewhat realistic to the amiably asinine.

"I still think that was an awfully violent movie," he dimly heard his mother say, the boy's concentration more centered upon swinging his legs as high as he could. "And all that cursing. . ."

"Oh, since when were you such a worrywart," his father countered, the playful tone filling Brandt with an anxious note of happiness. Taking a moment to decide that the man swinging him about was quite a hero (although hardly as cool as Optimus Prime), the boy let out a loud burst of laughter as his proud poppa continued his counterargument. "It's this little guy's birthday and, as far as I'm concerned today, whatever the boy wants, he gots!"

"Well, let's see you keep saying that as we're cleaning up after the birthday party," Brandt's mother replied, the mildly aggravated woman ceasing her own efforts to lift her child into the air in order to bend her knees and come to eye level with her only child. "Unless you're gonna clean up for us," she offered with her own sense of mischief, the good humor punctuated by a playful buss on the cheek that made the boy toggle between embarrassment and happiness. The laughter that came from his mother and father quickly ended the hasty debate and the young family were soon completely caught up in the joy of the life they had, the happiness that only a family could truly share as they turned down a street way and continued to make their way towards their tenement home.

However, this is a world where such profound though simple pleasures can be taken from anyone in an instant, often in times where we're the least prepared to properly fight for what we already have. The old adage continued to hold true as two men emerged from the shadows, the experienced denizens quickly spying the unknowing prey and slipping into range with a well-practiced maliciousness. The first gun was in front of the mother's face before any of their victims knew that they had become the prey, the surprise brought about by the unwanted encounter offering more than enough time for the gunman's colleague to wave his own gun in front of the boy's face.

"Now you're just gonna give us your purse and your wallet real quick now," the second mugger said with steadily rising speed and volume, the excitement of a clean and easy job causing a hungry glint to make its presence within his eyes. "Right now and none of you'll get hurt, especially the kid here."

A potentially crippling fear took full hold of the young child as the handful of seconds passed as thick as the syrup he had poured over the pancakes during his special birthday breakfast. There was no way that he could have recognized the scent of gun oil but it still had no trouble at all with hanging in the youth's nose and pushing down his throat, that lingering aroma lingering about the deaths of so many working quickly to make its indelible mark upon him. As long as he would remember that, however, what would really remain in the boy's thoughts after this day had passed was the sudden burst of noise that rang in his tiny ears and the horrific stench that came with it. The boy let out a jump as one of the bad men was flung against the unforgiving brick, his glinting, silver gun clattering to the pavement as he shut his eyes in pain. The second gunman quickly became frantic by all the unexpected noise, his hands shaking as he anxiously searched for his friend's assailant.

"Sorry, mein freund," hissed the devilish looking monster in the corner of Brandt's eyes. "But someone in your line of work would do well to be aware of what lies waiting for you in the shadows."

The child let out a gasp as the other bad man was scuttled head over heels before painfully colliding into a gathering of recycling receptacles, the force of the impact causing the large bins to tumble over his already unconscious form as the sounds of crashing plastic rang out over the narrow alleyway. Still, as intriguing as that sight could have been, it didn't take much at all for the boy to shift his sights and look upon his family's rescuer. He took in the creature's dark blue fur, his soft, pupiless eyes, and the black and red vest that reminded him of one of the acrobats in the circus he saw a couple months ago and suddenly felt the urge to step forward and look closer at this bizarre work of nature. His parents did not attempt to stop him as he reached up and touched the beast's face with his palms, the short hairs tickling his palms as the examiner and examinee shared a kindly smile.

"Please, do not be alarmed," Nightcrawler said softly and with the utmost care, his body remaining completely still thanks to the persuasion of so many past encounters. "I only wished to help."

Kurt believed that the mother would scream or that the father would shout at his son to get away from him. There was only a small, foolishly hopeful part of him that guessed that the two parents would slowly pull their child back towards them with only the slightest trace of alarm, a grateful look in all three pairs of eyes as they each thanked him profusely until he finally told them that he needed no such gratitude. The unforeseen fruits of his labors prompted Nightcrawler to look at the family well after they were set to scurry back to where they belonged, the possibilities behind such a reaction excitedly percolating within his already busy mind.

His senses quickly returned to full alarm as he heard the wind shifting above him. His teleportation to a spot twenty feet in front of him was all but instinctual, the additional distance from where he thought the noise had originated allowing Nightcrawler enough time to look up and see the two disguised figures swooping downward. He had to confess that it was quite the impressive sight, the torque provided by the strangers' zip-lines turning what would have doubtlessly been a death dive into a smooth glide down to the ground below. The masks around their faces was a source of both alarm and intrigue as neither figure made any effort to raise one of their many weapons against him. Still, it didn't take much for him to keep at least part of his attention focused upon the bow strapped to the woman's back or the bladed boomerangs and gas grenades clustered around the man's belt.

"Nice moves, stranger," the blonde-haired archer said cheerfully, her slight face brightened by a roguish grin. "Any chance that you can teach me how to do that?"

Wagner tilted his head to one side, his instincts still on alert while his urge to step into the spotlight spurned him forward. "Well, I do try to perform my share of good deeds," he said with what he hoped to be a charming smile. "Even if I don't know just where my feats will draw me favor."

The chuckle that came from the woman's lips provoked the shadowy man to silence his comrade with a sharp glare. Stuck in the silence, the German-born mutant took a moment to examine the obvious leader of the pair, the black-and-blue armor, cape, and cowl briefly tempting him to think that he was being confronted by something that had dove straight out of a cartoon. Of course, he also would have been a fool not to realize either the strength in the man's countenance or the determination and awareness rooted within every little action.

"We know that you're not supposed to be here," the man began, the phrasing of his introduction causing Nightcrawler to understandably narrow his eyes in concern. "I understand that it would be difficult for someone in your current state of affairs to trust anyone but we would like you to come with us. It's the best way that we can help you return to where you belong."

"Ohhhhh, quit being so dark and mysterious," the young woman threw in with a chiding manner, her right hand quick to lift up the mask around her eyes and reveal the blue orbs hidden underneath the cloth. "My name's Cecilia King-Jones. I'll just say that this guy is Batman 'cause if I tell you his real name then he'll get all snippy and sit around in his cave for the next couple weeks or so." She took a moment to stop and wait as her boss continued to silently criticize her. "Oh, and clothing issues aside, we're part of the good guys."

"Is that true?" Nightcrawler asked, his otherwise cheerful retort still tinged with hints of suspicion. "And what makes you think that I should believe you? Or that I am someone you should believe in return?"

The smile on Arrowette's lips grew broader, the gesture prompting Nightcrawler to raise his eyebrows in amused interest. "Women's intuition," she replied, her words causing the longtime X-Man to let out a slow but honest laugh.

"He'd fwy threw de air wif da greatest uf ease, that dawing yung man on dee fwying twapeze."

Deadpool had always found the task of singing through a broken jaw to be a typically tough road to hoe. Tired of having so many w's in his life, the still veiled hired gun ceased flapping his arms up and down in order to wrap his hands around the lower half of his skull. A quick, sideways push and the refreshingly loud cracking of bones sent him slightly quicker down the road to recovery as he began his downward descent through the Gotham skyline.

"I think I'm in love," Deadpool noted while his two front teeth worked to put themselves back together again. "And I wonder who I'm going to run into next?"

The Crimson Nutcase soon received his answer as he was enveloped by a decidedly green glob of energy that had quickly morphed itself into the spectral equivalent of a baseball glove, the quick formation allowing Wade to briefly become cushioned within the soft matrix. It was quite likely, had his arms not been temporarily pushed behind his shoulders by the impact, that Wade Wilson would have rubbed his hands back and forth in his eagerness to begin this particular confrontation. All the words he had prepared were hastening themselves to be said as a flash of black, green, and orange settled in front of his eyes, the wry smile on the face of the young Green Lantern prompting Deadpool to chuckle in return.

"You know, a lot of people have told me that I'm too curious for my own good," Stephanie Brown confessed to her newfound plaything. "My mom always chewed me out for it whenever I'd sneak into the principal's office to try and change my grades and I can't even bother to count all the times Tim would give me those lectures of his whenever he caught me rooting around in The Batcave. Still, after listening to those first two chats, I've really gotta ask. . ."

Assured that her newfound catch wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, the fourth person to don the mantle of Robin swooped in to give Deadpool a closer look.

"Mister Obviously a Deathstroke Wannabe," she continued, the wordy designation causing her to break into a toothy smile. "Exactly what do you know about me?"

Deadpool took a moment to think that over, a space of time just long enough to gnash his teeth in frustration at the fact that his long-desired opponent had drawn the first bit of metaphorical blood. "Well, your name is Stephanie Brown, you're a Green Lantern, you wear a size 32-B even though you could probably be wearing something smaller," he countered, the third fun factoid causing Robin to raise her eyebrows in unwanted interest. "Oh, and you were originally the author's representation of both how he'd like to see women portrayed in comics and what he'd like his little sister to be. Well, if he had one, anyway."

Stephanie took a moment to let Deadpool's words seep in and the previously mentioned initiator of the ongoing action let out another tired sigh. "Is that right? Well, I suppose that I can just slide all this weirdness off as just another Friday. Or Saturday or Sunday, depending on how busy the week happens to be," Stephanie considered.

"Oh yeah," Deadpool quickly agreed, the quick nodding of his head punctuating his easy concurrence. "Still, given the whole baseball glove thing, I'd probably be a little disturbed with how comfortable you are with handling balls. Just screams sexual frustration issues, it does."

Stephanie let out a disgusted grunt as she crossed her arms across her chest. "Really? A penis joke is the best you can do? Well, how about I just say that you don't have enough stick to get it out of the park?"

"You could do that," Deadpool reasoned, a good portion of him equally disappointed by his sudden lack of creativity. "Still, all this kind of banter is not something I would expect out of my own personal Al with dwindling breasts."

"Welllllll, I don't know if you can make that kind of crack," Stephanie fired back with upturned eyebrows. "Now, maybe if you decided to go with a Doctor Phlox joke, you might actually be ready for the big leagues."

"Ooh, a rare Bakula maneuver!" Wade Wilson exclaimed, the infamous loudmouth almost ruthlessly impressed. "Man, you really are a not-so-closeted nerd, aren't you?" Realizing that he was about to get onto a track he no longer wanted, the deformed star of the show finally eased his fervor for a war of words. "But, seriously, I would like to offer you an exclusive opportunity, one that has only been offered to only a chosen save for one sad moment when I was strung out on lime vodka and a bunch of Roofies that The Punisher slipped into my glass."

"Oh yeah?" Stephanie asked with mild interest, her interest in the war of words almost on the cusp of dwindling. "I'm not about to be told about the wonders of Amway, am I?"

"Oh, no, I wouldn't do that to you," Deadpool said in a gesture of appeasement, his desire to make his intentions clear oddly taking precedent over his desire to counteract with a juvenile insult. "What I'm proposing is that you join me as my youthful sidekick. Now, granted, most people think that you're getting a little long in the tooth for something like this but, trust me, if I can take you on as Kid Deadpool then both of our royalty checks are gonna go through the roof! I mean, I'm talking a Ryan Reynolds and Hayden Panettiere film trilogy with beaucoup box office!"

Stephanie began her response with a hesitant frown, the opening salvo already punching a hole through Deadpool's dreams. "Gee, I don't know. First of all, I've always seen myself as being played by Allison Mack. Or Michelle Trachtenberg if she put on a little muscle mass. . ."

"We can make that happen! We can make. . . that. . . happen!" Deadpool assured her with a level of conviction that would make Jerry Maguire proud.

"Secondly, I'm already somebody's junior partner." Stephanie went on, a tone of conviction and cockiness clear as day within her voice. "The Alpha and Omega of junior partners, as a matter of fact."

"Please," Deadpool replied with a derisive snort. "If anything, Arrowette is Bruce's sidekick now. I mean, it's not like you go on patrol with big, bad Christian Bale with his silly grating voice now, do you?"

"It's Batman and Robin," Stephanie hissed back through clenched teeth. "Batman and Arrowette doesn't even make sense from an alphabetical standpoint!"

"Are you sure? 'Cause Bruce and Cissie: The Legendary Journeys sounds like money to me."

"Batman and Robin," the youngest of Earth's Green Lanterns insisted, the former Spoiler determined not to accept any other distinction. "Accept. . . no. . . substitutes!"

"Oh, fine! Well, if you're gonna be that way about it, I guess I've just got one question left to ask you."

"And that would be?" inquired Deadpool's would-be subordinate, the mere thought of a certain Gold Medal winner stealing her spotlight still causing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise in exasperation.

"Ya ever do a dead wood?"

Wade Wilson knew he was in trouble as the palpable jade aura around Stephanie's body began to dissipate, the bright and cheery sight soon being replaced by a startlingly cold shrewdness. As if that wasn't enough, the girl's shift into a dangerous, predatory grin was nearly enough for Deadpool's balls to shrivel up and recede somewhere over by his belly button, the realization that he had gone too far coming far too late to help him.

"Kara brought you up here," Stephanie said rather coldly. "So I'm just going to hypothesize that you'll survive this too."

Five minutes later

KLAAAAAAAAANG!

Wade Wilson didn't bother to stop and think about the irony of falling into an open dumpster for the second time in the last month. After all, the fact that performing such a feat had once been a childhood dream of his was enough to set his lips into a frown and, given his current state of affairs, that kind of muscle movement probably wasn't the least bit wise in his current state of affairs. To his credit though, he still managed to put together enough testicular fortitude to slowly make his way back to his feet, the prerequisite banana peel still perched on the top of his badly beaten skull as he limply crawled his way out.

"Been a long woof. . ." he began, the pained fellow quite thankful to the space gods above that he didn't manage to land on his face upon tumbling out of the mold-ridden receptacle, ". . . long time since I've had a lady try and break my bones in alphabetical order." He let out an aggrieved groan as his legs put themselves back together again. "Didn't even. . . didn't even have to pay for it this time."

Deadpool passed by the next couple seconds or so touching his tongue to the roof of his mouth, his eyes blearily fixed upon his toes as the bones around it began to heal. He let out a rather shaky rendition of Some Enchanted Evening as he finally hefted himself back to his feet, the realization that things could have been going a bit better playfully banging against his skull as the world seemed to turn to cherry gelatin before his eyes.

"Okay. Okay, so we all know who's going to be coming after me next. Now. . . now there's noooooooo way he's going to get in this noodle of mine. Gonna make it a steel trap. Just like the ones Wild E. Coyote used to make."

"Then how come I'm seein' this rather sordid picture of you beachside an' getting a massage from some bloke with a metal arm?"

Wade couldn't help but let out a girlish squeak as his expected company finally made his presence felt, the decidedly unmacho reaction to the business at hand causing the slightest of grins to appear on The Black Dog's face. He strolled down the slim passageway, the easy motions of The Misfits' second-in-command quickly bringing him to a point where he could casually lean against the garbage bin that his quarry had just struggled his way out of. He allowed plenty of time for The Merc with A Mouth to skitter away from him, almost childishly curious about what was about to happen next.

"Don't. . . don't think that you're so cool!" Deadpool warned the raven-haired Brit, the shaky candor somewhat blunting whatever intimidation he could have brought to the table. "I mean, you're nothin' but a walking McGuffin with a curved phallic weapon."

"Says the man whose missin' an arsenal after The Flash had his way with ya," Lloyd replied with a simple shake of his head, the easy tone only angering Wade further.

"HEY! Those are just the tools of my trade! I've had plenty of notches on my bedpost and not a one of them is some adopted big sister who took advantage of me! There's those Gwen Stacy robots. . . an'. . . an' Typhoid Mary, well, at least before she went all kookoo for Cocoa Puffs again." Deadpool supposed that he could have been quite grateful to Lloyd Thomas for his choice to remain quiet throughout all of this but he was still too busy thinking. "Ah, and I once made it to second base with Siryn. . ."

"An' there's this Cable guy. . ."

"ALL! MAN! BABY!" Wade insisted, his temptation for hopping up and down in frustration eventually brought under control. "Oh, that is it! I am now officially tired of being everybody's butt monkey," he declared, his hands quickly digging through a nearby pile of refuse in search of something to kill an annoying half-demon with and finding nothing.

"Oh, come on, now," Lloyd said slowly as if he were talking to a fussy child who didn't want to eat his broccoli. "Now we've both got enough gray matter to realize what's going to happen if you choose to throw down so how about we just skip this part? Save yourself a little bit of dignity. . ."

"Forget it!" Deadpool snapped as he brought a garbage can lid to bear, the wounded hired gun more than ready to pull off a throw that would have made Captain America green with envy. "You may have all the big, hullabaloo powers and the suave British accent and the author-appointed hot girlfriend but I've taken on the best the Marvelverse has to offer and come out standing. If I'm going out, I'm gonna do what I can to bring you down with me."

Lloyd remained quiet as he waited for the other shoe to drop.

"And. . . you just shut down my mind, didn't you?"

"Yup."

Deadpool at least had a little time on his hands before his world turned to a rather distressing shade of black.

"Craaaaaaap. . ."

Misfits Confidential

Okay. So maybe it took three-and-a-half days to write 9,000 words. It's still an impressive task, as far as I'm concerned, especially with the new job and the otherwise hectic schedule. Thanks once again to my rabid dozens and dozens of fans, to borrow a phrase from Mick Foley, for reading this opportunity to shatter the fourth wall as many times as possible within a ten week span. I'd like to say that I'm going to get Deadpool under control for the next installment but, quite frankly, I wouldn't be expecting that much out of me. It's hard enough trying to dig through all these pop culture references of mine.

And, speaking of which, howz about a chapter preview, kids? It's what's for dinner!

Next Chapter Preview

Well, it may have taken 40 percent of the story but at least we finally have all the relatively good guys together in one place. So why has Billy Batson brought them together? What discovery has Kal-L made that will help reveal the cause behind the two universes coming together? And just how long can I put off revealing the actual plot of the story when this tale only has five chapters? Find out the answers to these questions and more in the next thrilling installment: Bargaining. . . with Exposition. Until then, remember to say what you think and write what you feel!