Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 392 SIDE QUEST

“What was all that about?” I asked as we got back into the Mustang. 

“Nothing good,” Logan admitted. It was late Sunday night, so the traffic was becoming lighter. Instead of heading back the way we came though we moved further into the main part of the city. “Hellfire Club has always been a melting pot of new management. They have their whole club divided up. The club has hundreds of members, but at the center is the Inner Circle. The Circle is split to a white and black side.” 

“They uh, segregate?” I asked. 

“Not a race thing, more of an alignment. The White side of the Circle handles their business endeavors. Investing in this or that. Obadiah Stane, who you met, is the White King in the Hellfire Club. They’re always squeaky clean. They have a White Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn. On the other side of that is the Black King, who handles their shadier affairs.” 

“I’m guessing that’s Shaw?” I asked. 

“It is now,” Logan said, annoyance clear in his voice. “Used to be a man named Ned Buckman. But seems Shaw killed Ned and his followers last night. Putting his own people in the positions of the Black side of the Hellfire Club.” 

“Fun,” I mumbled. “So what do we do?” 

“Us? Nothing. There was no evidence whatsoever that anything happened there. I’ll notify Fury and Xavier, and we will simply start keeping an eye on Shaw.” 

“Ugh, another sit and wait job?” Hisako asked, annoyed. 

“Yep, sorry Armor,” Logan said. Pulling into a carport. He drove around it until finding a spot. 

“We monitoring the club then?” I asked. We were fairly close to the Club house. 

“For now,” Logan said. “Usually when there is a power struggle like this there is some more violence after things have settled. Just for a few days. Come on, I’ll show you our New York digs.” He moved to the trunk and pulled out a rucksack. Throwing it over his shoulder I followed behind with Hisako. 

“You know, when I heard of the X-Men I thought it would be more fighting,” I admitted to her. 

“Ha, me too,” Hisako admitted. “The way I hear it, there used to be a lot more turmoil. Back when it was just Wolverine, Miss Grey, Cyclops, Colossus, Banshee, and Professor X. They had to establish themselves. Couple years ago the government got involved. Once it got around we had the backing of the American government the fighting slowed down. We still get crazies and outliers, but mostly things have been quiet.”

“For now,” Logan said as we stepped into the building beside the car port. I guessed it was some apartment building. Doors lining the walls we walked straight to an elevator. Logan pushed the top button and we headed up. “Things are cooking out there. I can smell it. I don’t think things will be quiet for long.” 

“Do we have spy equipment to watch the club?” I asked.

“No,” Hisako said with a laugh, her Haki now bored. “We sit and watch and wait. If something does happen our contacts will give us a call and we can step in more quickly from here.” 

“What about that plane at the HQ?” I asked. “Why can’t we stay at the school and use that?”

“The Blackbird? Cyclops has it booked with Lorna and Alex. They start their training tomorrow with him.”  

“They actually accepted?” I asked. Logan nodded and stepped out onto a penthouse apartment. We were about 20 floors up. Hardwood floors, tall tinted glass windows all around us. I whistled as we stopped off the elevator. The place was at least worth a few million. Tall ceilings, private elevator, brand new everything. There was a 360 degree view of the city. 

“Spare rooms back there,” Logan said, pointing behind the elevator. There were short 1-story pods that appeared to be private rooms. 4 in a row, with a staircase beside each so you could stand on them and look out onto the city. “Kitchen, books, all that crap. I’ll give Xavier a heads up. We can do some training tomorrow.” I noticed a section of the loft apartment had a training mat with a various amount of weights. I nodded, liking the benefits more and more. 

Walking up to the window straight ahead I was amazed to see all the skyscrapers. The view was almost too good to put a price on it. I had been in major cities before, but New York took the cake every time. An ever growing metropolis that would probably be the center of a few alien invasions or world ending bombs that would rock most all of the Comic worlds I would visit. 

“Trust me, the view gets old,” Hisako said, walking up beside me. “Over the last year I’ve spent probably a month in this apartment.”

“We can’t leave?” I asked. 

“We can, but hell I wouldn’t know where to go. You?” She asked. 

“Maybe,” I said. “Lots of stuff going on here. Lots of heroes and villains out in this city.”

“Oh yeah?” She asked. “Haven’t seen anything exciting happen outside this window. You think-” She stopped talking as a huge explosion sounded off in the distance. We both turned to see a massive fireball escaping out the side of one of the buildings. 

“Logan!” Hisako yelled as I received a quest. 

“What happened?” Logan asked, running back over to us. 

“Looks like the Baxter Building blew up,” I said. I only got the clue from the quest. The building name sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. I looked around the apartment. A tall window that opened beside me I walked over to it and opened it up. Only cracking a few inches, the window appeared to be for ventilation, but it was enough room for me. I opened it and stuck my head through. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Logan asked, annoyed. 

“Helping,” I said. “Isn’t that what we do?” I lifted off the ground and flew through the window. Hisako and Logan gave me a surprised look but I wasn’t all that interested. It would come out that I could fly eventually, and I would blame it on my evolving powers. 

Activating the part of my brain that controlled the flight I raised and sped up. Another fireball escaped from the building and a weird glow began to radiate from the large hole. Almost a green hue to the smoke billowing out the side of the building. Sirens began to go off below me so I sped up. 

I got to the building as another huge explosion escaped out the side. The Baxter Building was once lined with brick and windows. A gaping 20 foot wide hole on the side of it, all the windows were busted as well as those for the building beside it. Black smoke pouring out I extended my Haki, held my breath and flew in. 

My inner eye told me all I needed to know as I moved past the smoke. The Spiritual Energy of everything around me said that the interior was destroyed. Lab equipment, electricity shooting sparks this way and that. I could almost feel the radiation hitting me. My skin becoming irritated I didn’t hesitate to keep flying inside. I didn’t want to wait for another fireball. 

I passed over the smoke and fires and came to a disarray science experiment. A huge metallic sphere at the center of the room was spinning way faster than I thought possible. All around it was broken equipment, but somehow the sphere kept expelling out power. I mentally went over the room in a split second. Bodies inside passed out on the floor, their lifeforce was fading rapidly or already gone. 

Coating my body in Nen to maybe help protect from whatever terrible rays were shooting everywhere, I felt I should be safe enough. I risked it and opened my eyes. The sphere was now glowing red, flames licking at the air as if alive, ready to explode out. I flew toward it, noticing a big red button below the growing sphere. I felt the flames double in size. Not so much hot as an immense aura of death radiated from it. I guessed it was some type of radiation because of the quest reward. 

I felt the fire pulse with life, doubling in size again, ready to explode outward. I used my Timeflow though. Speeding up to over double real time as I closed the distance to the big red button at the bottom of the sphere. Pushing it a hiss sounded and the power in the air stopped growing. 

The fire around the sphere immediately died down. The sphere began to slow and shrink in size. As it slowed it quieted as well. Alarms were blaring inside of the building. Sprinkler water began to fire off, the water hissing as it touched the ground. I moved to the people in the room. There were 9 bodies. 5 were dead, blackened and charred corpses not worth saving, but the other 4 were alive. 

As I studied them I slowly understood what the hell was going on. “Fucking Reed Richards,” I said seeing the young man passed out on the floor. He was my age like the most recent failed reboot of the Fantastic Four. Next to him were who I assumed were the other merry members of his stupid band of misfit heroes. 

My eyes went to the only female there. She was blonde headed, perfect skin, not a blemish or set of clothes on her. None of them had clothes in fact. Their skin unhurt they looked way better than their colleagues that had passed on. I picked her up first. She should be the Invisible Girl, and I always did have a thing for invisible girls. 

Flying her out of the room I set her down near the elevator and found a jacket hanging up. Throwing it on her I dragged the other 3 out. Covering them up none of them appeared changed just yet, but I was sure they would be. 

Worried that I had been exposed to whatever they had, I decided to leave it to the quest. It finished as soon as I set Reed Richards on the tiled floor outside the lab. 

Stepping away from the 4 I extended my Haki out again but didn’t feel anyone else around. Since I doubted cameras were working and the whole event only took about 5 minutes I decided I didn’t want to wait for the police to arrive. 

Moving to a window I covered my body in Nen and punched it. The glass broke and I flew out. Hovering over the city the firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances around the base of the Baxter Building made the night air glow red. I flew upwards, ready to go back to the others. But as I moved I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. 

Turning back it was a tall building a few skyscrapers away. Sleek and new there was a name written on the side of the building with massive letters. It read ‘OSCORP’ but the O was in the shape of a hexagon with a circle at the center. 

“Mother fucker!” I yelled at the building, my eyes wide. “Fucking Oscorp made me into this?” 

The hexagon with a dot at the center had been in my dreams for weeks when I was in the hospital. The weird strange blue goop I had bathed in to give me the fusion powers, it had haunted me. Whoever had dumped the chemical caused that truck to be on that road, which my dad hit, killing everyone in my family but me, and made it so I couldn’t touch people. Granted I had fixed the touching part, but a big part of old me wanted answers on what had been done to him, and I shared that interest. 

I received the quest, understanding that whoever sent me to this specific world wanted me to find out as well. Grumbling under my breath I stared at the Oscorp building but eventually flew back toward the X-Men apartment. 

I found Wolverine and Armor in the Mustang a few blocks away from the apartment. Getting in the back seat they both jumped. 

“I need time off,” I said.

“Weston, what the shit?” Logan asked. 

“I need time off,” I said. 

“Dude, you’re glowing,” Hisako said. I stopped my planned speech and looked down, noticing that I was in fact glowing green. 

“Oh,” I said. “Maybe let’s uh go to a doctor first.” My hand on my face it was glowing green. I frowned, annoyed that I was being delayed but guessed it was probably for the best.