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X-Men - Nemesis

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Nemesis


Some people are just designed by nature to rub one another the wrong way, to be enemies in spirit if not in action, to be unscratchable itches, unconquerable challenges.  Nemesis is the term coined by the Greeks for this, after their goddess of divine retribution.

Logan had thought it a bunch of bullshit until joining Team X.

They’d been given dossiers to review, when they’d first joined and each time Stryker added a new recruit to the team.  Dossiers, unfortunately, neglect to mention that every ‘special gift’ has its fine print.

Take Logan’s own case for example—‘heightened senses’ should have come with a warning like ‘household appliances will make you irritable, and the sound of a dog barking in the next county will set your teeth on edge.’  Wraith’s might have been something like ‘for five seconds before and after each jump, everyone will be able to see the results of years of bad posture.’  Nord’s would have been ‘you will feel the need to be an arrogant ass to everyone you don’t shoot on sight,’ Fred’s would have been ‘you will have all the intellectual prowess and emotional maturity of an eight-year-old,’ Bradley’s would have been ‘all electrical toys will fascinate you, especially state-of-the-art aircraft containing airsick teammates.’

They were all minor oddities and annoyances that Logan had to make himself adjust to, just like the personality quirks of ‘normal’ humans.  Admittedly, Victor’s fine print probably would have filled a good-sized book…but if Logan hadn’t managed to adjust to it after almost a century, he never would.

Wade Wilson was a horse of an entirely different color, breed, and possibly species.  ‘Enhanced strength, speed, endurance, agility, and reflexes’ had a deceptively modest footnote of ‘highly increased metabolism,’ apparently important enough to actually rate being typed out and printed on a page.  It had only made Logan raise an eyebrow to read the three unassuming little words.

Those three words could not possibly have prepared Logan for the reality of being in close quarters with the man.  His resting heartbeat sounded like a minigun to Logan’s sensitive ears; his natural body temperature made him radiate warmth like a space heater; he constantly craved high-calorie junk food; his scent was a rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of bloodlust, adrenaline, glee, and sugar; he hardly ever stopped moving; and he never shut up.

Apparently, nature and God had created Wade Wilson (and cramped choppers) to serve as Logan’s nemesis.  There was simply no adjusting to Wade.

“SweeTart?” the merc said beside him, shaking a brightly colored cardboard box.

“What?” Logan muttered.

“Candy,” Wade clarified.  “Want some?”

“No.”

Wade leaned closer, bringing uncomfortable heat and a strong scent of sugar.  “You sure?  They’re Wonkalicious.”

“I don’t eat sweets, kid,” he growled, shoving Wade out of his personal space.

“Right, gotta watch that girlish figure.”  A few seats away, Victor snickered.  “And cavities.  Probably can’t get a dentist to risk life and limb checking those fangs of yours.  I knew a guy once who had, like, this hardcore phobia of Wonka candy.  I think he was maybe traumatized as a child:  had a bad root canal, was raped by a Gene Wilder look-alike, something.  Anyhoo, he’d run screaming at the sight of a Gobstopper.  It was fucking hilarious.  I snuck into his room one night while he was asleep and covered his floor with like three hundred Gobstoppers—the orange ones, ‘cause I don’t like ‘em.”

“What’d he do when he woke up?” Wraith asked.

“Pissed his pants and jumped out the window.  Fourth floor, too—wheeeeeeeeeSPLAT!  Broke both his legs.  Like I said, fucking hilarious.”

“You have got some serious issues,” said Logan.

Wade flapped a hand dismissively, crunched a few more of the little candies.  “Oh, hell yes.  Mommy died when I was little, Daddy beat me every day, except when he forgot, I killed him with his own gun, et cetera, et cetera.  By contrast, I’m sure you and Vicky had whatever the nineteenth century equivalent of Charles Manson woulda been, to end up with such an epic lack of humor.  Y’know the guys who make Lemonheads are planning to do a new flavor soon?  Orange—how weird is that?”

“Nobody cares, Wade,” Wraith sighed, tipping his hat down to shade his eyes and leaning back as though to nap.

“Why, thank you so much, John,” Wade retorted smoothly.  “I care, and that makes me nobody, and nobody’s perfect, and nobody’s always right, so that just proves every point I’ve made today and in the past by extension of infallibility.  I wonder if that makes me God…  Seriously, Logan, these things are awesome, you should try a couple.”

Victor chuckled.  “Might not be a bad idea, Jimmy; way he acts, you’d think they were laced with cocaine.”

“Do it, do it, do it!” Wade prodded, leaning close and rattling the box again.  “C’mon, they’re, like, 120% of your daily value of sugar, guaranteed to make even a grump like you happy and hyper, not that there’s much that could possibly make you grouchier.”

Logan scowled.  “We got three hours left to this trip, and I don’t like flyin’ to begin with.  I swear t’ God, Wade, if you don’t shut up and leave me alone, I’ll knock you out.”

“Y’see, it’s impolite conversation like that that really motivates guys like me to be contrary,” Wade said loftily, tossing a SweeTart in the air and catching it in his mouth.  “B’sides, this’d be a really boring story if you could actually manage to follow through.  Only in your dreams.  The fans would never let it happen.  Ell-oh-ell, less-than-three.”

With a growl, Logan swung his fist, grunting when his knuckles cracked against the steel of the chopper’s hull.

Wade was casually picking up a dropped SweeTart from the floor.  “Ten second rule!” he called triumphantly, and ate it.  “Hey, you should be careful, old man.  I hear choppers are dangerous.  Wouldn’t wantcha to fall and break a hip.  I can ask Major Asshole to get a safety railing installed for ya.”

Thwarted, Logan muttered a string of curses and rubbed at the healing bones of his hand, trying his best to ignore Victor’s laughter from the other end of the passenger compartment.

For his part, Wade just crunched on another pair of button-shaped candies.  “Shouldn’t scowl so much; you’ll get wrinkles.  Wanna try again, slowpoke?  Go on, take another swing.  Call it a gift.”

Logan tried a feint, but Wade didn’t fall for it.  In the space of a second, there was an effortless movement and a brief buzz of accelerated heart rate, and Logan’s fist missed its mark.

“Whoops!  Not quite.  But y’know what they say, third time’s the charm.”

After two more dodged swings, Wade was still yapping (“C’mon, best six out of eleven, you can do it!”) and Victor was in stitches from laughing so hard.  Logan had well and truly had enough.  At the end of his patience, he lunged.  He paid for it—Wade was not a polite brawler by any definition, so he ended up with a lot of uncomfortable breaks and bruises that were already fading—but he finally leaned over with grim satisfaction and set the box of candies on the opposite bench while Wade, trussed up in a flight harness, struggled ineffectually.

“Okay, now that is just cruel,” Wade protested, stretching out a leg to see if there was any hope of somehow retrieving the candy that way.

“Tell it to yer momma, kid, ‘cause I don’t give a damn,” Logan snorted, settling back down in his seat.  “We got anything around here to gag him with?”

Victor leered.  “I got a few suggestions, but he’d probably bite ‘em off.  How ‘bout a pair o’ socks?”

Wade paled.  “You wouldn’t!”

Without tipping his hat back up, Wraith reached down and removed his boots and socks.  “Here.  Anything to shut him the hell up.”

Logan grinned.

Some nemeses, it seemed, could be (temporarily, at least) vanquished.


.End.
god, don't kiill me for this. XD

i actually liked the Wolverine movie. the CG was very mediocre in some places (mostly regarding Wolvie's claws) and, yes, they mangled the comicverse canon (come on, guys, that's totally the standard for comic-to-movie work), but there were far too many pretty people for me to be put off by either of those issues (Ryan Reynolds, David Henney, and Hugh Jackman should not be allowed to share a screen; my brain nearly exploded).

i totally point the finger at ~MerianMoriarty for this fic. she said (approximately): "LIEK OMG TTLY AWSUM MOOVEE, U NEEDS 2 RITE ABOUT WADE ON SUGAR HIGH." and at first i was like "no wai, i dun't wanna rite about teh x-men moovees." .......and then i couldn't stop thinking how frigging funny it would be for poor Logan (who never has liked flying) to be stuck in a chopper with Wade and candy.

warnings: Movieverse (as-yet unnumbered Earth version; NOT Earth-616/Main Comicverse). Wade's slightly sociopathic sense of humor. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).

pairing: none/general.

disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies or the characters. fo shizzle.

notes: 1) "is wade a mutant?" good question. i don't think they ever made that clear in the movie. in the comics, wade is not a mutant, he was just really badass before the Weapon X thing and was really badass with an awesome stolen healing factor and a horrible physical disfigurement afterward. i'm just going to say, for the sake of the fic, that movieverse wade is a mutant badass (possessing the "side-effects" that comicverse wade got from wolvie's healing factor). i find this to be a convenient excuse for his natural hyperactivity. 2) "what's with the weird candy references?" orangeheads (orange lemonheads) are disgusting, and came out in the late seventies. (Everlasting) Gobstoppers and SweeTarts were among the first Wonka candies ever made (the chewy gobstoppers didn't come out for a long time). 3) "did wade just say something in internettish...in the seventies?" why yes. yes, he did. wade doesn't believe in that pesky fourth wall, remember? i blame Loki for telling him about the whole comicbook character thing. 4) Nord. ugh. in the comicverse, his real name is Chris Nord, he went by the alias David North for a long time, and he's used the codenames Maverick and Agent Zero. apparently, in the movieverse his name is David Nord. well, it is in the game, anyway, and the game is much closer to movieverse than anything else.


preview slide by my darling :iconmerianmoriarty:, who is immensely talented when it comes to preview slides... i'm told the font was a 48pt Eurostile Black, horizontal spacing boosted by 50 (boosted by 75 on the hyphen), skewed -20 horizontal and scaled to 80% height, masked with the "easy brushed metal" technique in photoshop (all you have to do is fill a layer with color, apply monochromatic noise, and then motion blur it).

Phase One of the Blood & Tears Progression (thanks to ~MerianMoriarty for giving the arc a name and a Fanmix).
:bulletred: Phase Two: Stillness :pointr:
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apsenarent's avatar
oh my gosh this is so awsome