2014.03.31 - A Hit on Cable

Deadpool is lounging in his apartment, which currently reeks of curry, pancakes, and the unmentionable. This is not his bitchin' apartment, this is his 'I forgot to pay rent' apartment. The run down, mold-covered walls emphasize this. With one leg hooked over the arm of his chair, Deadpool is watching a Golden Girls marathon. Oh, happy day, Bea! He drinks from what looks like the remains of a half-rack of beer, then belches sonorously between 12 oz cans, just for the musical effect of it.

After a few moments, Deadpool's phone begins to ring. Brrring! Brrrring! When answered, a mechanicized voice on the other end says a single sentence. "I am looking for Deadpool. Is this the correct number?"

Deadpool picks up. "Nope!" And hangs the phone up. He goes back to drinking, and squirms a bit in his chair. He fishes under his butt and finds what looks lik a week-old burrito. He sniffs it, then with a shrug starts eating, chawing with his mouth open.

The phone begins to ring incessantly once more. If it's answered a second time, the same voice would offer, "Blank check."

"And I told you, I'm done with that life! I'm never going back to working for the circus, not after what that elephant did to poor Billy!" Click. ...perhaps we should find out /who/ that is? "Ehh, screw it. Probably a telemarketer." Telemarkters don't usually offer you a blank check. "...huh. Good point." ''Let's hang up again! Maybe we can negotiate even higher! How can you negotiate for more than a blank check?  .../two/ blank checks?!''  "I am in favor of this plan," Deadpools says aloud. Who's Billy?

It takes about five minutes before the phone is ringing a third time. Now, the voice has a hint of exasperation. "Do you wish to be paid an inordinate amount of money for killing one man, or should I go elsewhere? I suppose the Cat and Taskmaster have a much more consistent track record, especially given the money I possess. Hmm.... yes, this was a mistkae. I apologize for wasting your time."

"Two blank checks!" Deadpool says immediately. "Naahh, I know it's you, Cable. What's up, buttercup?" he says into the phone, tucking it against his shoulder. "Who am I icin' and why's he worth eleventy bajillion dollars? Wait, do you /have/ eleventy bajillion dollars?" he demands into the phone. "If you don't, it's kind of a dick move to offer a guy a blank check and then tell him he can't single-handedly ruin a global economy." How would that ruin an economy? How do you /know/ that? "I read Forbes sometimes, ok?" Deadpool snaps.

"...Cable?" the voice on the phone asks. It sounds genuinely surprised. "I believe you are mistaken. The man I am hiring you to kill IS Cable." There might be some amount of time before it would dawn that this is not a joke. "I wasn't aware you two had a prior relationship. I suppose this would affect our ability to do business."

"Wait, you want me to kill you?" Deadpool sounds confused. "Ohhh, sorry. My bad. I thought Cable's /player/ was emittin- you know what, forget it. Hi, welcome to Murder Express, Deadpool speaking, how can we help you?" he says, a professional tone of false cheer in his voice.

"...I am not Cable." offers the voice, matter of factly. "Listen. I know your reputation. You are wild. Unreliable. Unpredictable. Acts of subterfuge are beyond you. But I don't desire that. I want the immortal, unstoppable focus you have on pure death and destruction. And I want Cable dead. I don't care how many innocent school children must die. How many buildings are destroyed. If he knows you, use that. End his life. And you will never go wanting for anything in this life again."

"Oooh, so it's gonna /sound/ like I'm hanging, up, but-" Deadpool hangs up the phone and goes back to watching his show. I bet we're really pissing that guy off. "Hell, I bet Cable's player is getting pissed." Are you being deliberately obstreperous? "Well, yeah, but that's part of my charm," Deadpool says, digging around in a box full of KFC chicken bites and popcorn, and tossing a handful in his mouth. "I live to irritate on all levels. NPCs, Cable's player, the staffers, I mean, pick one." Is this because you secretly hate Cable's player? "No, of course not! This is just because it's hilarious anti-climax to derail someone's attempt to create a plot hook."

Unsurprisingly, there's a number of attempts to get Deadpool's attention. "Hello? What are you doing? Are you eating chicken? ...I can you speaking nonsense." After long moments, a single word is uttered. "Chimichangas."

"Go for Deadpool," Deadpool says, promptly picking the phone back up.

"Listen. I have vastly regreted every single nuance of speaking with you. Kill Cable, get money. Don't, get nothing. He is at the St. Patrick's Pub. How long he will stay I do not know, and if he leaves before you get to him, I will NOT be calling back." Having thoroughly rattled whatever voice had been attempting to keep all calm and mysterious, the voice hangs up.

"Well, you know, that's just part of the aura of customer service we here at Murder Express try to cultivate- hello? Hello?" He shrugs at the phone, then goes back to watching his TV show. For an hour or two. Then another hour. Yay for Golden Girls marathons! "I know, right?"

Type E APARTMENT to get Deadpool to get off his ass and go on the mission. To get Deadpool to go into the kitchen, type E KITCHEN.

'e kitchen'

Deadpool gets up and goes into the kitchen. "Welp, here I am, the kitchen," he says, looking at the massive stack of pizza boxes in one corner, the garbage pile that's overflowing out the window, and the massive pile of dishes in the sink. "Now, what do I want to do next?"

Type END PRELUDE at any time to have Deadpool leave his apartment. If you want Deadpool to clean the kitchen, type CLEAN KITCHEN. If you want Deadpool to make pancakes, type MAKE PANCAKES.

'Attempt to make pancakes, burn them badly, find out no mix is left'

"Well, this is going nowhere. Guess I'll go kill Cable." Deadpool walks out of the kitchen and heads out the door. About ten minutes later, he walks into St. Patty's Pub, wearing a fedora and an overcoat. He stops, eying everyone, looking for Cable, who is probably the least covert person there.

A number of random attempts to cause Deadpool to do irrational actions appear in his head. Jumping up and down, clucking like a chicken, walking repeatedly into the side of a brick wall. It's probably rather infuriating by the time he gets to the pub, but at that point it manages to go away, now that meaningful plot developments are potentially developing. Within is a small, smoke-filled bar. Two pool tables to the right have about four large figures in the midst of playing. Shady booths against a wall house murmuring figures, cloaked in shadows. A couple are leaning against tables, nursing mugs of beer. And amongst the three at the bar, one is in a hulking grey coat, hair a familiar silver, glass of whiskey in his head and half-empty bottle adjacent. Yep; that would be the stab-victim. Appears distracted by something. If he had done this as an elaborate prank to throw a surprise party for Deadpool, it's getting more and more unlikely.

Deadpool pounces on Cable. "Hey buddy!" he says brightly, literally standing on the man's back and holding onto the back of his coat. He peers around his shoulder. "How ya doin', big guy? Hey, you mind doing me a favor? I got some dood on the phone says I need to gank you. Now, he /did/ promise me eleventy bajillion dollars, so can we work something out where, like, I kill like a past or future version of you, and then we split the check, fifty fifty?" he asks, in that nonstop, babbling tone of his.

The moment that Deadpool leaps towards Cable, he stiffens reflexively. His orange eye blazes and he twists, attempting to intercept the attempted playful leap by causing him to impact the ceiling with bone-cracking telekinetic force. Only after can he try to determine whether such a response was warrented. "I... buddy...? you..." Suddenly Cable stumbles backwards against the bar, grasping the side of his head. Thumping down on his rump, stool knocked away, he looks more than a little helpless and disoriented right now. Well, if Deadpool REALLY wanted a chance...

Deadpool hits the ceiling hard enough to crack the wood overhead, then hits the ground, shattering a barstool. He pops up a second later and produces a rolled up comic book from his pack pocket. "Nope! Cable and Deadpool, Volume #3!" he says cheerily, waving it at Cable's face. "My favorite. This is the one where there's all this blah blah about the technovirus and then /I'm/ doing all this awesome stuff, and then you're all 'bodyslide by one hurr hurr' and we get stuck together, and there's all this lingering sexual tension... it's a great read," Deadpool comments, ignoring the staggered Cable as he flips through the pages.

After long moments, Cable blinks multiple times. "...Yeah." he admits. Which might startle Deadpool, depending on what he's used to. "...There was that... blue church. Something about... ..." Okay, he won't mention how that ended. But this is a fragment timeline. One that isn't real; divergent. Something that could have happened, may happen in the future, but isn't in this history. "...The hell do you know about that?" Better question might be how HE does.

"That's my secret 4th Wall Advantage, amigo," Deadpool says, helping to haul Cable to his feet. "The ninja mastery of derailing plots and pissing off writers, and then making them jump through hoops like playing a text based version of my videogame Now available on PS3, Xbox, and PC! to get a plot moving forward. Also, where are we on the whole killing you thing? It's nothing personal- we can kill a clone or something. The dude on the phone wasn't really specific. And we can /split/ the eleventy bajillion! That's like...five something bajillions each!"

"Who wants to kill me? Why now?" Cable demands, only thinking of one person who's aware of his presence in this world and would wish to have him exterminated. There's countless reasons that Deadpool is a poor choice in the end, but this was probably not one of them that was expected to happen. "Shit." He grasps the rest of his vodka and drains it down, before looking long and hard at Deadpool. With the whirling echoes of memories, he has a good grasp of what the man wants, deep inside. More than most people could ever say. "I'm not really worried about being assassinated. Can't think of any for hire that can get the drop on me." The bottle is slammed down on the bar adjacent, crack of his neck following. "I..." How can he tell him he has no more alternate Cables? He absorbed them all. Destroyed them. Some inadvertant cancer that wiped the slate clean? Nate? No, probably not a good idea to kill Nate for this. "...got nothing. Guess you'll have to try to kill me?"

Deadpool shrugs. "Well, I wasn't sure if you'd go for it or not, so I might have slapped a limpet mine onto your back," he says, holding up a command detonator on a dead-man's circuit. "Also I wasn't /totally/ sure you were really Cable and this wasn't some crazy gimmick or something where, like, future you hired me to kill past you again, or something. Did that happen?" Deadpool asks with a frown, tapping the detonator against his temple thoughtfully.

Cable does blink at that, taking a moment to give a telekinetic check of his back for anything out of the ordinary. If it's a limpet mine, it couldn't have been all that big. "No. I'm the only Cable." is offered either way, watching the detonator with something closer to curiosity than worry. "There's a man who wants me dead, though. I'm not sure if this is linked to him. ...Timing fits. But he's also new to this universe. Doesn't know how all the lines connect. ...Or that they might connect in different times."

There is indeed a little limpet mine- more accurately, an adhesive-backed breaching charge. It's designed to blow through steel doors. And Deadpool's tapping the activator against his head. "Well, you're the expert on time travel, according to Volume #2," Deadpool says, producing another comic book and waggling it at Cable. "I'm apparently the witty and hilarious one, and in my fanfic, I also boff Psylocke and Domino," he says, producing (yet another) comic, this one crudely drawn in pencil. "It ships well. I'm thinking it needs to be in my next story arc. You think Marvel will buy it?"

"Okay." Cable states, matter of factly. "I do happen to be one of the foremost experts of..." The name Psylocke burns in his head, but relegated to the back of his mind, head shaking as he remains vulnerable through some distant thrums of memory. "...Time travel. But if I remember right, a dead man's switch activates if you stop holding down the button, right?" Slipping forward, suddenly Cable attempts to slug Deadpool right in the chest with his left arm. It comes rather out of nowhere -- and he's incredibly fast, something many people often forget. What Deadpool might not know is that the switch in hand is currently sheathed in a strong telekinetic field, preventing the switch from going off if he lets go. "If you know me, you know better than to threaten me. You can barely handle me when I'm exhausted and powerless. So. Are you going to try to kill me, or not? That's still the question in the air..."

Deadpool goes flying backwards with an 'oof' and hits the ground, but pops up with a gun in hand and a laser tracking right on Cable's forehead. He's not Cable fast, but he's got the kind of sleight of hand that makes his relative speed deceptive. Cracked ribs heal and pop into place without Deadpool so much as grunting in pain. "Well, there's the other question," Deadpool says, his mask writhing into something resembling a smile. "If I was reasonably sure you were going to telekinetically lock down my ignition switch, would I have installed a dead man's circuit or a timing mechanism?" he asks Cable conversationally. "Tick tock, buddyboy."

"Good point. Thanks for the warning." Cable offers, orange eye flaring as he sheathes the entire limpet mine in a telekinetic field as well; with the intent of ripping it off afterwards. If that triggers the explosion, it would be contained within the small circle; although the look of distraction and focus is quite present on Cable's face, regardless. Suffice to say, the population has evacuated the room in droves by now, not wanting to be anywhere near this!

The mine goes off with a *whump* and Deadpool is on his feet, reholstering his pistol. "Cable! I knew it was you the entire time! Well, I was reasonably sure," Deadpool says cheerfully. "But now I'm sure. So who'd hire me to kill you?" he asks the big mutant, tossing the command detonator aside carelessly. "Even I'm not dumb enough to take that contract. For all I know you could teleport me into the sun. I'm reasonably sure I'd come back from that, but I don't think I'd enjoy the experience."

There was a look of worry in Cable's eye after that. He was vulnerable. Deadpool is fast. He didn't have the focus to try to snag his entire body in such a case. ...It could have gotten messy. He's more than willing to leave it at that. "I'd have to take you to the sun with me. I don't think either of us would win that." A slow exhale follows. His attention shifts to the surrounding. Repairing a broken stool, the dent in the wall from above, and then the area of wall that Deadpool got socked into. "A man named Apocalypse. I sort of defeated his attempt to conquer a timeline. Jumped over two years and change to take care of it. He fled back here. I followed." All makes sense. Not a complete lie. "He's bad. Could take out Magneto. Or the X-Men. Or five Bea robots." The latter should put the point home. "Can't say for sure he or one of his intermediaries wanted me dead. But I wager I can expect more people who are less..." After some thought. "...Amiable."

"Probably. But that's why you've got your old buddy Deadpool with you!" Deadpool pops up next to Cable, leaning on his shoulder and painting a picture with the pass of his hand. "Deadpool and Cable on another whirlwind adventure!" he declares, throwing an arm over Cable's shoulders. "Now, who is Apocalypse and how do we go about blowing his presumably ugly face off?"

"If you are putting another mine on me, I swear to god I will crush you into a ball and teleport you into space." is the first thing Cable says, glancing around himself warily. Even on the borderline of amigos, it's best to not let Deadpool within arm's reach. Hell, even if you are borderline immortal. "Imagine Darkseid. But with a personal grudge on Earth. And as a cancer." Cancer might be something that Deadpool knows. "He wants to genocide the world of everything but Omega-level mutants, and then forge it into a metal haven. Probably to move his conquest to the universe. ...He's capable. He's done it in more timelines than I'd care to mention. One of them, my own home."

"So whatchu talkin' bout, Willis?" Deadpool says, eying Cable. "You've got this whole boring, obssessive vibe going. Where's the fun? The punchy one-liners?" He bobs and weaves in front of Cable. "Where are the hot chicks, and the blackjack? In fact, let's forget the Apocabutt, the blackjack, and the the one-liners, and go to Vegas and score us some high-priced call girls," he suggests, dramatically pointing out the window.

"Obsessive. That's one word for it." Cable allows, still keeping as close an eye as he can on Deadpool with that whirrling cybernetic eye. "But I came here for a reason. To finish what I started. You can understand that, don't you? Not wanting to leave a job half-done? Afterwards, I'd have time to tell you future winning lottery numbers, or telepathically make girls think you look like Tony Stark."

"Man, I do look like Stark. Why do you think I have to wear this mask? It's so I don't get mobbed in the street," he dramatically asides to Cable. "But c'mon, it's Deadpool And Cable!" he says again. "The best-shipped teamup since Wolverine And Anyone! We'll go roust out this Alpaca guy and take names, kick some butt, and we should probably get a team together. Huh? huh?" Deadpool bounces up and down and then points at the door. "Avaunte! And awaaay!" he declares, rushing out the door.

"A team...?" is what Cable ends that analysis with. X-Force rolls into his mind, and he tries to fathom Deadpool on it. He'd kill who he was pointed at without reservations. But someone who can't be mind-muddled... then again, who'd believe him? A risk he'll need to take up with Psylocke. "I wasn't drunk enough for that... Bodyslide by one." In a whiff, Cable too has vanished from the premises!