Chapter 4 – All Is Hell That Ends HellHot Springs IV, Clan Jade Falcon Occupation Zone, Fall 3054Hot Springs IV is known for its, well, hot springs. Although Clan Jade Falcon runs the planet, they still saw value in keeping the planet’s tourist infrastructure intact and profiting from it. Tom and I decided to enjoy a hot spring before our mission. While our appearance did not phase the Jade Falcon occupiers much with them believing we were merchants on business, some eyebrows were raised among the tourists, though, especially my ghastly appearance.
Tom and I found a hot spring to lounge in with what looked like a mother, father, and their two children. They seemed awful snooty, which was somewhat refreshing from what I was used to from the Clan Homeworlds. As we settled in the mother looked at me and freaked out.
“GOOD LORDS what happened to you?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be in a hospital for all those burns?”
“I was in a fiery car crash a week ago,” I replied. “My passenger lost his entire left side, but he is all right now.”
The lady nearly lost threw up in the hot spring we were in. Tom was laughing, and so were the lady’s kids. The father stood up and addressed me.
“You have some nerve making a sick joke about an accident like that to my wife! Why I oughta –”
“You ought to do what, insect?” Tom stood up with an unapproving look on his face, the top of the man’s head only coming up to the Elemental’s chest. Tom was also wearing his brass knuckles, just in case we had a problem while we were relaxing a bit.
The father considered his reply for a moment. “I oughta be a little more careful,” and he sat back down. His children thought the exchange was really cool, and so did I!
One of the kids spoke up. She must have been ten years old.
“Hey mister,” she addressed Tom. “Can I try on your brass knuckles?”
Her parents had a look of shock on their face, but who were they to say no with a big, scary Elemental around?
“You can try kid!” replied Tom as he took a set of the knuckles off and gave them to the little girl. She took hold of them and they dragged her to the bottom of the hot spring. She came back up a few seconds later.
“Wow that is heavy!” she exclaimed. The little girl and her little brother – who might have been about seven years old – both went under to try and retrieve the brass knuckles but came back up without success. They went back down again, to get them, but this time Tom helped, reaching to the bottom of the hot spring with one hand and picking up his brass knuckles and both kids holding on to them. Tom was smiling the whole time – they must have reminded him of his kids.
“Thank you for trying, children,” said Tom gratefully. “I think you will both grow up to be great people one day.” The kids smiled back.
“I went diving for brass knuckles once too,” I related. “I dove before they smashed my face in.”
We spent another half-hour there at the hot spring. A few minutes after the brass knuckles diving the parents decided that awkward silence with smiling children was weird so they started chatting us up. We shared our Clan merchant cover story, a story we rehearsed many times in the past year while on our journey to kill the leader of The Society. It does change a little bit each time, though.
“...So do NOT put lemonade in your Water Wow, or else you will attract bees while you are coloring with it,” is how I ended this story. The kids loved it, and the parents? They were totally humoring us like the Not-Named Clan agreeing with The Founder about a government based around fighting furries sorted by a caste system.
You can actually refer to them as Clan Wolverine, Wade. It is easier to read, easier for BATTLEMASTER to type, and the Watch cannot read your mind and rat you out over it.Yeah, sorry. Clan Wolverine. Old habits die hard! Ohhhh what would happen if my buddy from a different universe, Wolverine, was in Clan Wolverine? Less ‘A Betrayal of Ideals’ and more ‘A Slayer with Ideals’, am I right?
Anyway we bid the family farewell and made our way back to our cargo van truck. We silently checked over our ammunition supplies, made sure our suits were fully functional, and I pulled a fresh set of armored gloves off our 3D printer to strap to the back of my suit just in case. A spare pair of gloves is always handy! But then I broke the silence.
“You really enjoyed playing with those kids back there, quiaff?”
“Yes, they remind me of my own, especially my youngest. Though instead of brass knuckles at the farm it was a heavy stone rake,” Tom replied, his eyes beginning to wet.
I set down the pistol I was cleaning and gave him a pat on the back.
“We will get your family back, big guy. This story deserves a happy ending after all.”
“Thanks, Wade, I appreciate you helping me out,” said Tom. “For such an accomplished warrior as yourself, I am amazed that you have so much compassion, especially toward a family.”
“I never really had a family myself. I killed the last of my sibkin before my Trial of Position. It was all about me,” I said. “But when we invaded the Inner Sphere, I got to see firsthand how these so-called barbaric families stuck together, especially against our occupation. They were not trying to one-up each other in trying to kill us, but they were doing it to save each other. I realized that most of these people are not barbarians that really need saving from themselves, but families bound together by their own honor.”
“Seyla,” agreed Tom.
“Seyla,” I concurred. “Now let us make some chimichangas!”
“What are chimichangas anyway?” asked Tom as we made our way to the truck’s cab.
“I am not sure, I just like the sound of the word,” I replied. “Chimichangaaaaa,” I whispered to myself.
We got in the truck’s cab and got going with our final mission.
* * * * *
And here we are – the evil Scientist-General’s lair. Of course it is in a volcano. Of course it is dark and gloomy. Very stereotypical of bad guys. And we are going to put this absent-minded professor down for a dirt nap.
We parked our truck a ways from the volcano in a nearby town, suited up, and hoofed it on foot to the entrance of the lair. Curiously, the guard shack was empty and there was no one around. Instead the big stone-looking door was just closed.
I knocked on the door. “HEY SACK OF BALLS! ARE YOU IN THERE? I HAVE A CANDYGRAM FOR YOU!” I called.
The door did not open neither was there a response, be it voice of a person or an automatic weapon.
“Well I guess no one is home,” I concluded. So we turned around to go back to our van and heard a big CLUNK. We looked at the door again and saw it was opening. The door led to a ferrocrete passage big enough to drive a pair of cargo trucks through side-by-side. The passage was well-lit and we did not pick up anything threatening on our sensors. Everything that made sense said we should leave, but we were on a mission from ROB. And we needed to finish this story after all.
“When Deadpool knocks, open the door, as the saying goes,” I said.
“I believe it is ‘when opportunity knocks, open the door,” corrected Tom.
“We are an opportunity to make that $%&#! $%&#! dead, so they opened the door,” I replied.
“Works for me,” said Tom. “Let us make that $%&#! $%&#! dead!”
He does not talk like that very often, but when he does that voice of his makes the swear words sound very good. With that we started down the passage.
We slowly walked through the concrete tunnel with our weapons ready for anything, probably about a kilometer until we made it to a big blast door.
“I will try this again,” I said as I started to knock, only to be surprised by the door just opening.
I looked around. “Where are the cameras around here? I did not see a Ring doorbell anywhere.”
In front of us about ten meters was a round man in a white lab coat wearing some kind of monocle with black hair slicked backward. His face had a smirk on it. Behind him was the central volcanic magma pool with a containment field over it, something that the Star League Department of Mega Engineering developed long ago to prevent violent eruptions and control temperatures around and near active volcanoes.
“That must be our guy,” I said to Tom as we talked toward the dezgra lab rat. “And he is actually wearing brown pants,” I observed.
The man in the lab coat started pacing in front of the vent and spoke, addressing me first.
“Former Star Captain Wade Winson, formerly leader of Binary Rogue of the 328th Assault Cluster, Alpha Galaxy, Clan Wolf. Was a MechWarrior who piloted a
Gargoyle and passed the Wolf Rite, but busted down to garrison infantry duty on the account of suffering performance due to cancer. Received a mutagenic treatment by Society Scientist Luke and developed tremendous healing attributes and an uglier face than Kael Pershaw. Believed deceased after the clinic blew up. Now going by the alias ‘Deadpool’.”
“HEY, I am NOT uglier than Kael Pershaw,” I said, offended.
Etienne ignored my indignance and addressed Tom.
“Tom of the Tutuola Bloodhouse, Warrior Caste test-down who managed to kill everyone in the room and still did not get a leadership rank because of clumsiness with ranged weapons. Became a farmer and has a wife, Rose, daughters Eva and Felicity, and son Galen. Taken along with family as an asset for The Society with all evidence of life at the farm destroyed. Escaped Society employ and now goes by the alias ‘Tomcat’.”
Yeah, he got that all right – he must have read our character biographies three chapters ago. But I knew who he was too, so I addressed him as he did us.
“Etienne Ball Sack, warrior flunkie turned Bond villain from Clan Green Turkey, professional $%&#! stick begging for a ferrocrete facial. An overall sadistic $%&#! who sees slavery and human guinea pigs as a means to an end since he cannot justify his cause well enough to convince anyone it is worth it except other like-minded dweebs. Also very lousy at choosing a lab name that does not sound like male reproductive anatomy.”
“Rinaldi Balzac was a brilliant geneticist whose work laid the path toward dumb muscleheads like Tom,” retorted Etienne.
“Let us not get personal, egghead,” rumbled Tom.
“Oh but we will, slave,” retorted the scientist as he gestured to the side and up toward the volcano’s ceiling.
Up toward the vent opening an overhead kunckleboom crane lowered a wad of people over the containment field. They were chained together and suspended from the crane’s hook – a woman with two teenage girls and a younger boy. Ohhhh this must be…
“ROSE! KIDS!” Tom yelled in surprise and anger. He saw them swinging above and heard them yelling. Though the yelling was probably about being hung over a pool of magma and not from recognizing him as dad.
“I am so glad that I picked the right laborers to hang over the magma pool,” said Etienne with a smile. “The crane is lowering them into the magma pool’s containment field. When they breach the field in ten minutes, they will start burning to a crisp and turning to ash, starting at their toes and working up to their heads over a period of sixty minutes.”
“Let them go, Etienne, they did nothing to you or The Society. We totally did, though,” I said.
“Oh I know,” agreed Etienne, “which is why I am going to kill both of you thorns.”
As if that was a cue, two massive forms dropped from above, with one doing a superhero landing and the other one doing a Black Widow landing. Each one was half the size of an average battlemech and looked like a big minotaur from ancient Greek mythology, complete with a bull’s head with horns and glowing orange eyes, and with a big-looking gun on each shoulder.
“If you survive my
Minotaurs, you will get to see Tom’s pitiful family die horribly. Each of the
Minotaurs are broadcasting a signal to the crane. If both signals are lost, the crane will just drop those slaves into the magma pool. Should the ECM in Wade’s suit interfere, they will be dropped and incinerated. If you both die, those cow towners will have the best view of it and they will still die horribly because I want them to,” said Etienne. What a jerk!
He continued with smile. “I will stand off to the side and personally monitor the performance of my
Minotaurs in their first bout of combat. Victory is all but assured for me, and I will enjoy it.” With that, the scientist took his position out of the way of combat.
“Well, Tomcat,” I looked toward the armored Elemental, “let us make some corned beef!" I drew a katana and a pistol both with a twirl, hoping to find a weak point in the big monsters. "Maximum effort!" I rallied, then we charged toward the baby battlemechs.
Remember mentioning ‘protomechs’ way back in Chapter 2, Wade? They originated with The Society as an experiment to make Enhanced Imaging a mind-controlled piloting interface for battlemechs. The concept and some designs were passed onto the Scientist Cast of Clan Smoke Jaguar to help save their Clan from impending doom.Why call them protomechs though?! I mean, what the $%&#! kind of name is that? These are not like the first battlemechs!
“Proto” also means “ancestral”, not just “original” or “primitive”.Oh wow, I did not know that! See kids? You can not only enjoy violence, but learn something from it!
As we charged at the protomechs, their big lasers burned past us into the floor where we once stood. That was when we split directions. Tomcat went toward the crane with one Minotaur following behind him, and I went the other way toward Etienne with the other
Minotaur following me.
Tomcat used his suit’s jets to bound toward the crane. The Minotaur chased after him with the grace of an actual mythical beast that would not be as easily done in a regular battlemech, and it was gaining on him.
“Come here and die, Toad!” called the chasing
Minotaur.
Tomcat took a few shots at the following Minotaur, trying to score hits on its legs in an attempt to slow and cripple it. The
Minotaur fired its lasers again, melting the floor where the Elemental was about three seconds ago due to the LAG Shield equipped his suit. When they finally made it to the crane, Tomcat all the sudden boost-lunged at one of the Minotaur’s legs planting explosives in the holes his autocannon made in the leg armor. Tom jumped away toward the back of the
Minotaur and triggered the explosives, blowing one of the
Minotaur’s legs apart. It yelled and staggered in what appeared to be pain, but the Minotaur managed to stay upright on one leg, though a bit unsteady. That was when Tom made a running jump into the
Minotaur’s back with enough force to knock it forward into the crane boom, spinning the crane around in a way that it brought his family over the floor surrounding the magma pool. In its collision with the crane, the one-legged
Minotaur lost its balance and yelled as it fell through the vent containment field and into the magma where it screamed in pain as it sank and melted.
“What was that warrior’s deal?” Tomcat found himself wondering out loud. He was surprised at what he just witnessed. “You cannot possibly feel your machine’s damage. That is pretty messed-up.”
As Tomcat ran to check on his family to make sure they were okay, the other
Minotaur that I was dealing with noticed that the family was safe over the floor and took a shot at them with both of its lasers. I saw this and quickly jumped to take the shot right to the chest. I landed like a hero with no damage to himself at all.
The
Minotaur looked as confused as a non-emotive machine could. “How the hell did you do that?” it asked.
“PLOT armor, tin can,” I said as I charged at the being and jumped over its head, jabbing one of my katanas in a gap the armor had over one of the lasers. I swung around on the sword’s handle to land just above the
Minotaur’s head, between the lasers. I noticed the laser I stabbed starting to spark and smoke.
“CRITICAL HIT: ER MEDIUM LASER,” I announced like Betty from MechWarrior 2.
The
Minotaur thrashed its arms around and growled, trying to reach over its guns to get at me. That is when I took both of my katanas and stabbed the other laser through gaps in its armor. It immediately sparked and started smoking with a few flames coming out from under the armor.
“CRITICAL HIT: ER MEDIUM LASER,” I announced again. “Now it is mano el mano, $%&#! Bull,” I said as I re-holstered my swords.
“You are right, pest!” it retorted as it bent forward fast and flung me off onto the ground.
I rolled and did that addicting Black Widow landing pose, during which I heard a BURP and saw the
Minotaur’s head get pummeled by a few hundred heavy autocannon and FARK rounds from Tomcat. By the time the smoke cleared, holes covered the head an upper torso of the Minotaur and both of its eyes were gone. But it still came at us.
“What… The… HELL?” I asked, bewildered. “That is NOT how blindness is supposed to work!”
“I am virtually a god, freebirth! And now I will smite you!” announced the
Minotaur.
“I have an idea,” said Tomcat as he ran back toward his family, still suspended over the floor by the crane.
“What, leave me here with almost-Blind Alistar?” I asked as the
Minotaur picked me up and drove me into the ground head-first several times.
It kind of hurt. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” I am pretty sure I said repeatedly during the smashing.
I began leaving a small crater Wile E. Coyote-style in the floor and felt a bunch of bones in my spine crack as my vertebrae were violently compressed. The
Minotaur left me in the crater with just my legs visibly sticking out. I let it believe that it killed me. Meanwhile my bones were healing and my back straightened out like an accordion.
“Turn your ECM on NOW!” I heard Tomcat call over the radio. I trusted his judgment, so I turned it on and canceled the crane drop signal being broadcast from the last
Minotaur. Tom’s family dropped to the floor, where he was there to catch them. He set them down and the crane kept paying out steel cable into a pile on the floor next to them.
“I need to borrow your cable,” said Tomcat to his family.
They all looked confused as they recognized the Elemental’s voice.
“Tom?” asked Rose, his wife.
“Dad?” asked the kids.
“Stay here, I will be back in a few minutes,” he said to his family whom was still sitting on the floor bound together by a set of chains. He cut the cable pile from the crane with his claw and picked up the pile, running toward the remaining
Minotaur.
The
Minotaur was looking for Tomcat, grunting and growling in frustration over its partial blindness. It was soon distracted by Tomcat’s FARK. I managed to work myself out of the crater during that time.
“Poolboy, catch!” called Tomcat as he threw me one end of the steel cable. I then got the idea of what he wanted to do. It helped that I also saw Star Wars Episode 5 awhile ago.
At that point we ran with each end of the cable in opposite directions around the
Minotaur, entangling its legs.
“When life gives you the bull, grab it by the legs!” I said as we tangled up the
Minotaur’s legs.
“I do not think that is exactly how the saying goes!” called back Tomcat.
“The Toad is right, you know,” said the
Minotaur.
“Shut it hamburger, that is the last speaking line for you!” I said to the big beast.
It tried to rip the cable free from its legs but could not manage to do it. Then it hopped around like a sack racer and got closer to the magma pit. At that point Tomcat and I jumped at the protomech and drop-kicked it right in the face, toppling it right through the vent containment field and into the magma pit where, like its companion, it screamed in pain as it melted and sank.
“Well, that takes care of those ugly protomech things. I mean, I get why they look so beastly, but it is soooo over the top,” I remarked. “Go tend to your family while I go get Ball Sack.”
“You can do both if you want to,” called Etienne, holding a large laser pistol up to the heads of Tom’s children.
“Dad! Do something!” they called.
Tomcat was lost. “I am not sure what I can do to save them now,” he said to me. But I had an idea myself.
I quickly pulled one of my katanas from my back and threw it towards Etienne. It quickly sailed through the air making several flips. It missed his hand, but cut his laser pistol in half, destroying it.
I ran at him as he looked at his weapon in shock for a few seconds. A few seconds too late for him to notice that I was coming for him. I hit him with a shoulder tackle and his rotund frame flew into the crane’s control console, smashing the control panel and screen. Suddenly alarms in the base were going off and another screen showed a timer.
“SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. BASE WILL BE DESTROYED IN TEN MINUTES!” blared speakers within the lair.
“Crane must be compensating for not having a wrecking ball,” I remarked as I walked to Etienne, who was laying on the floor.
Etienne was cowering as I yanked him up by the waistband of his tighty-whities and dangled him over the containment field. He was absolutely scared and his ass stung – nothing says atomic wedgie like a rope burn right in the crack from forcing briefs into a thong. And he did actually get rope burn – I saw it on my thermal overlay.
“Please, do not drop me! I beg you!” he pleaded.
“Your begging is not compelling you $%&#! of $%&#!. You were about to murder a family just because you could. I bet they would love to have a correctional chat with you.”
“No, PLEASE do not do that! I will share with you all the Society’s secrets! For example, I -”
Then the waistband of his underwear snapped and he fell through the containment field and into the magma pit. Etienne instantly burst into flames, unable to react quick enough to scream or writhe in pain. He just went FWOOM!
Tomcat and I stood there and watched him burn in magma pit for half a minute.
“Nice guy. I am going to miss him,” I finally said with mild sarcasm.
After Etienne’s corpse burned to nothing, all that remained floating on top of the magma was a… Pocket protector?
“Really? A pocket protector? Leave it to the Scientist Caste to design an indestructible Pocket Protector IIC Z,” I remarked. "They probably even crammed an HPG or a Nova system in there too."
Tom was more interested in something else. “I wonder what he was going to say.”
“Who cares? That bag of $%&#! had it coming! I was going to drop him in regardless. He was probably one of the guys who said that Pluto was a dwarf planet, so no loss there.”
Tom got curious. “Where is Pluto?”
Eva, Tom’s oldest daughter, spoke up. “Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Terran system. I learned about it in school sometime ago.”
“Smart kid,” I said. “Maybe you will be a spacer some day.”
“We are ALL going to be spacers if we do not get out of here before the base blows up!” panicked Rose.
Tom knelt down next to his family and cut their binding chain with his battle claw.
“Hop on, there should be enough handholds on this suit to carry you all out of here,” he told them.
They all climbed onto him and we made our best speed out of the base as possible, even using our jets to boost short distances, especially so that Tom’s family did not fall off him. As we cleared the entrance we heard cascading explosions behind us – BOOM BOOM BOOM! We kept running to the town where we parked our truck to get away as far as we could from the base. Once we got to our truck, we turned around and saw the peak of the volcanic base had collapsed into itself.
We got everyone inside the back of the truck and we started doffing our battle suits. You should have seen the looks on all the faces of Tom’s family when he popped the visor on his suit open and they saw each other’s eyes for the first time in two years. It sincerely brought tears to my eyes. That and having not peed since the morning. Like everyone else they were slightly freaked out by my appearance out of the armor, but they got over it faster. Must be a nice country folk thing.
“Now let us go home and get some rest,” I said.
“Wade, we no longer have a home, remember?" Tom reminded me. "Everyone thinks we are dead.”
“Oh, right,” I said sullenly, now having a chance to remember why we did all this to begin with. But then I had an idea.
“Ohhh wait! I know someone who can help with that!” I exclaimed.
Tamar, Clan Wolf Occupation Zone, Winter 3054My idea worked – Weasel managed to find us all a new home on Tamar. With Weasel’s help, Tom and his family started a new, successful farm for the Free Guilds. Tom kept his battle suit just in case he ever needed it again, and some tools to keep it and his other farming equipment in good working condition. I was allowed to keep the cargo van truck with all the killers’ tools it came with. With me just in it now it is like a nice mobile home, much better than any barracks I had lived in. I planned to go off-world to find bounty work, but will come back every so often to visit Tom and his family, like right now for the holidays!
Yep, it is a great feeling knowing that you helped reunite a family and accomplished a mission.
But you did not exactly accomplish the mission, Wade.What the $%&#!? How so?
Well, the Wars of Reaving still happened since it is in a BattleTech Source Book set about fifteen years from now, and The Society was alive and well in that book. That said, there is the issue with the title of this story: “Deadpool Kills The Society”. That is pretty misleading now, quiaff?Well, I mean it is only a little bit misleading. I did kill several hundred Society thugs, and their leader Etienne. What are you afraid is going to happen for that little naming mistake anyway? Is Herb is going to nuke Tamar for it or something? Is Ray is going to fact-check the crap out of this fanfic? I mean come on – it was just a fun story that BATTLEMASTER had in his head for like, forever! Throw us a bone on this one!
… Fine. But we should kill the rest of them later.I guess if I get bored I could kill more of them later, but that is charity work! Right now I can use some extra Kerenskys and C-Bills. Like the economists say, there is no such thing as free ammo – TINSTAFA! But in the meantime, we will take a break and enjoy dinner with Tom’s family, then tomorrow we will make some chimichangas! We have a naughty list to tend to and Santa Pool has a coal shotgun ready to fill skulls with
MECHWARRIOR WITH A MOUTH:DEADPOOL (ALMOST) KILLS THE SOCIETYA crossover by BATTLEMASTERDo not tell Wade I did that!I totally caught that you sly sneak! I am you, remember?
