Ten Years After C-Day

Wade.
I know you're still in there.

I can never forgive you for what you did…
but this fight can't bring them back.
I ought to kill you, but I can't.

Toshiaki sheathed his blade.

Hate you or not, you're the only one who might be able to fix all of this.

Don't make me regret coming here today.

He walked towards Wilson, offering a hand to help him up.
"I might, if you're willing to hear me out."

At first, Wade scoffs at the idea of accepting help from a cyborg - honestly, he'd rather die for real than fall that low. No matter what this one was saying, cyborgs were scum. He'll never forget that dreadful night in which his sister and niece died at the hands of a cybernetic warrior who was sent by Takeshi to assess who would be taken for a cybernetic conversion and who would be killed on the spot. Wade was deemed 'suitable'. Ellie and Inna were not.

Deadpool grit his teeth, raising his head up in an attempt to make the terrifying images go away. But as he does so, he notices something moving in the shadows - a person... A woman, more specifically. A woman with absurdly long hair holding something.

Could be? Was somebody taking advantage of the situation in order to attack the cyborg from behind? That woman was clearly human, so maybe she was part of the resistance that the mutant from earlier mentioned... In any case, it was worth a shot. After all, it wasn't like Wade could simply kill the cyborg off with his swords, all things considered.

With a nod, he takes Omega's hand and stands up. 'Well, you did beat me fair and square. And I'm a man of my word. So, what did you want to talk about?'

Toshiaki watched as Chiharu moved herself into position. After all, his numerous sensors and detachment of microdrones kept him fully aware of all surrounding movements.
Eyes in the back of my head, indeed.

"Kinai, I see you. Don't bother. That strobe won't even work."
As he spoke, the strobe discharged with an audible snap.

"As I said, the war is over.

"I've done nothing but fight for ten years, and I'm fucking tired of it. Tired of the pain. Mayhem. Killing. Death.

"For peace's sake, don't make me fight you too.
I have no wish to desecrate Slade's sword with innocent blood."

Wade tightens his grip on the swords.

Shit.

In his heart, the man was hoping that Chiharu was merely a distraction, and that maybe the real attack would come from another place. In that case, he needed to do his share and distract the cyborg as much as possible.

'Hey!' he yells out, subtly placing one foot backwards in order to be able to immediately tackle Omega if something went wrong. 'You're talking to me, not to her. That's your one and only chance, metal junk. Talk, or I'm walking'

"Calm yourself, Wilson.
I'm merely defusing the situation before it occurs in the first place.

"I've come to atone for my sins… to destroy the monster I created."

'Speaking in riddles isn't exactly gonna change my mind about you, you know. I don't have a lot of time, so get to the point already'

"Takeshi Tachibana, Wilson.

"To use your expression, Takeshi Tachibana the man died ten years ago today."

He continued to broadcast his voice over the PA system, so that everyone would hear what he now said.

"You knew I'd been researching under him for a year and a half then. Nayumi had come out of her coma just a few months earlier. And the MRA was announced just weeks before.

"You knew I was breaking ground. The ability to transform and transfer X-genes. The underlying structure. The regulation mechanisms.

"It would've been the cure, Wade. Cancer, AIDS, CF, MD, MS, RA, Alzheimer's, diabetes… everything. It would've saved Nayumi, along with billions of others."

His voice was shaking, rage and pain clear despite the mechanized timbre.

"I was so goddamn close to the answers. You knew I was.

"And you turned us in under the MRA.
You weren't, however, so gracious as to apprehend us in person.

"Shall I tell you exactly what happened when they came for us on C-Day, after you ratted us out?"

'Don't play the victim card, metal junk. Your experiments were illegal and dangerous. If you had registered, you would've been provided with a safe, stable and more technologically advanced environment for your research. What happened to you was your own damn fault!' Wade hisses out.

Of course, in real life, it wasn't as simple as that. Many mistakes were made in the days before and after the Civil War started, by both sides. There was a lot of miscommunication, and neither side was willing to negotiate. The result was catastrophic. Wade stood by his decision to join the Pro-Registration side - after all, going against the government on this would've been completely idiotic, and besides, the thought of having every single mutant in the world registered and ready at a moment's notice in case his or her powers were necessary sounded amazing to him. Jennifer "Hazmat" Takeda was immune to harmful radiation, so she could've been used to assist in nuclear disasters, like what happened at Fukushima. Noriko "Surge" Ashida could absorb and release electricity, so she could have been used as an emergency generator for hospitals in case of an emergency. Practically every single mutant could have been made useful in one way or another.

Except the Resistance didn't see it that way. They thought it was a way to control and subjugate the mutant population. That the information collected on the various mutants would be made public and used against them. A lot of mutants refused to register. But the UN were unwilling to back down. If only the true meaning of the registration act had been made more widely known, perhaps a lot of the drama that followed in the next few years - C-day included - would have been avoided. But it wasn't like Wade could fix any of it now, anyway. Not without a TARDIS, at least.

'Alright, I'll bite. What happened?'

{I'm going to wait for the others to have a chance to reply and catch up.}

When her plan for communicating to Wade without the Cyborg seeing stopped working without warning, Chiharu tried to fix it for but a second before ceasing the act of futility and throwing it aside. The glass surrounding the column of LED's shatters and scatters against the black concrete floor of the alley as Chiharu runs out into the middle of the street behind Deadpool.
<It seems you have eyes everywhere cyborg, well try to see this coming>
She drops to one knee, pulls the butt of Satoshi's rifle up to her shoulder, flicks the safety off, takes a deep breath while gritting her teeth, and takes a shot.

The bullet explodes forwards causing Chiharu to have to use her hand to keep herself from falling and dropping the rifle in the process, not just from the recoil but from dealing with the shock of pain. It flies through the air and within less than a millisecond it's tearing straight through Deadpool's shoulder and out the other end to finally clink off of the cyborg's armor and fall to the ground at his feet.

<Now that I have your full attention>
Chiharu stands up and yells out, "Hey Snakey! Come and get me!"

Flashback for Wade:

Having, hopefully, made her point clear enough, she wastes no time waiting around and sprints down an intersecting street that stretches out away from the store in an attempt to leave the base behind herself.

The sudden shot catches Wade completely off-guard as the bullet tears right through the muscle and bone of his shoulder, forcing him to lose the sensitivity in his hand and drop the blade. The beautiful katana hits the ground with a loud noise as Deadpool falls down on one knee, instinctively using his other hand, still clutching the second blade, to press against the wound. A second later, he finally realizes what had happened.

Son of a bitch!!!

Thankfully, the wound closes within seconds as Wade takes his sword back and turns around, trying not to expose his back to the cyborg too much. To his surprise, he finds out that it wasn't the marauder who shot him - it was the girl from before. A girl that suddenly seemed very familiar.

'Chiharu? What are...'

"Hey Snakey! Come and get me!"

After hearing her taunt, Wade grits his teeth and growls out in rage, feeling confused and betrayed. He hadn't seen Chiharu ever since high school, and while the two of them weren't exactly friends, he never believed that she'd go as far as to shoot at him. Then again, that shot, followed by the taunt, clearly indicated that she didn't intend to kill him, just to make him go after her. Was this some kind of plan? Well, in any case, it was absolutely terrible, as it involved leaving the cyborg all alone, free to murder more innocent people. But then again, it wasn't like Wade could stop him on his own... It wasn't likely, but maybe she was trying to take him away so that he wouldn't get caught in the blast of whatever they were going to use on the cyborg. Either way, Wade needed to know.

'Don't go anywhere! I'll be right back as soon as I deal with this bitch!' he tells the cyborg before running off after Chiharu.

…

What the fuck?

As much as I would like to shoot him too, I need him alive and willing to listen.
Not that he can die anyway…

Toshiaki remotely started his cycle, bringing it around the block and up beside Wilson.

"Make it quick. I don't have time to waste.
And no killing."

Meanwhile, he turned to face the rooftop where he saw Hawke and Veach about to emerge.

As soon as Chiharu runs off, Hawke offers up a silent prayer to whoever was listening. He was far from religious, but he was willing to try anything to get out of this mess. He'd tried too hard over the years to keep everything together, he was not gonna have it ruined by some crackpot, paranoid cyborg.

Motioning for Satoshi and Hideyo to continue on upstairs without him, Hawke makes one last trip down into the dingy depths beneath the grocery store. He walks past the room that Hideyo warned them not to enter, and peered in.

Asleep. Good.

Continuing further into the basement, Hawke tries to conjure up from his fuzzy memories where he'd kept his one last grenade. They seemed the only thing that could really take down a cyborg. Mangling flesh and metal seemed pretty straight forward.

-

A few minutes later, Hawke emerges from the recesses of the secured basement, shutting the heavy steel door behind him, grenade in hand. He makes his way up to the rooftop to join Hideyo and Satoshi. Up on the roof, he reaches the edge in time to see his girlfriend punch a hole in Wade's shoulder with the rifle.

Clever. Now Wade won't get caught in the blast.

Removing the pin from the grenade, and keeping his hand pressed firmly down on the detonator to avoid it going off, Hawke calls out to the cyborg on the street below, "Just what exactly is your ultimate goal, Omega?"

[Sorry, had to powerplay a little - if Satoshi doesn't go with Hideyo that's all fine]

Slightly confused at the implications that Hawke would ever do anything for a cyborg, let alone that he was expected to still keep a track of the days, Hawke shouts back down.

"Yeah... I doubt that happened. I'm not sure I'd feel happy helping out a homicidal maniac who panders to the megalomaniac that murdered the vast majority of my friends. Sorry."

Chiharu knew that she could never lose Deadpool, especially if he's on a Motorcycle. So she looked behind herself for a moment to gauge his speed and acceleration, hoping she could time the detonation right. While running through the rain that had begun to fall, her heart races and her stressed breath is beginning to be visible in the cool air as she reaches underneath her coat for but a moment to trigger the five second internal timer on one of the EMP's strapped to her chest.
<5 seconds left-Wade's 8 meters behind me.
4 seconds-6 meters
3 seconds-4 meters>
2 seconds before the IED goes off Chiharu unhooks it from the bandolier, she then jumps the to side and rolling away from the street as the fairly unidentifiable piece of machinery pops and fizzles harmless sparks in the middle of the street causing any functioning electronics within 20 meters to be either fried permanently or needs to take a few moments to reboot. Sadly the cyborg didn't follow them like she had hoped he would, making it so he's outside of the affected area.

And now my bike is wrecked again, he thought as he lost contact with its internal computer.

Damn it. Now I can't protect you if he goes too far, Chiharu.

"I guess you didn't hear me the first time, so how about I just do this."

The crimson mask covering the left half of his face detached, hissing as it depressurized.

It slid upwards to reveal Toshiaki's face.
Pale as always, it was now hideously disfigured by burns and deep scars. His stony deep blue eye was now replaced by a shining cybernetic. What little remained of his thick dark hair was buzzed down to the scalp.

When he opened his mouth, his voice was the same mechanical drone as before.

"One, I've been hunting down the machines that did this.
I would never kill my friends, Hawke.

"Two, you know exactly who I am.

"Three, I'm here because…
… I need your help to kill Takeshi Tachibana.
What's left of him, anyway."

If there's any good left in you, you won't kill me like this.
If not… then death is the only thing left for me in this world.

Fuck... they got Toshiaki. I can't kill him... but then again, I can't trust him either.

"You'd have no choice in the matter, cyborg." Hawke says, with every bitter memory of the past few years injected into the sentence. More than once a friend had been captured by Takeshi's dogs and been sent after him. More than once he'd had to run for his life from robotic imitations of his friends, itching to turn him into a robot. They'd succeeded once or twice, too... thankfully the team had a workaround for when that happened.

With his hands still behind his back, Hawke removes his thumb from the detonator.

Five second timer. Five.

"You were created by Takeshi to perform further his nefarious schemes."

Four.

"I dunno if you're tricking me, or deluded-"

Three.

"But either way... I can't trust you."

Two.

"I'm sorry."

With barely time to spare, Hawke flings the grenade at Toshiaki's feet, and dives to the floor, awaiting the ensuing explosion, and hopeful end to another cyborg life.

I'm truly sorry. At least your suffering will come to an end now.

I lift my chin to Tiberius when Chiharu exits at the ground floor.

I take the rifle back from my shoulder and follow the older man to the rooftop entrance.

I quickly and quietly find my way to a spot that just peaks on the scene in front. A shadowy area (not all that dark but better than bright sunlight) some distance from the ledge, forcing me to take a standing shot.

But something is wrong...

Wade...what is going on?..

He seems to be cooperating with the cyborg.

What's going on, Wade...

I do not lower the rifle but take my right hand off of the rifle and lift my fist as a signal to the man with me before putting it back.

You better know what you're doing or so help me, God I will end you.-

Just then, more shit hits the fan and Hawke comes out with a-

Holy fucking shit-is that a grenade?!

Then he makes himself known on the rooftop. With which I quickly attempt to hide myself by ducking under the direct potential sight of the cyborg.

THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING-GIVING AWAY MY POSITION, ASSHOLE?!

It is when he pulls the pin that I really mentally flip out.

I hit the deck behind the rooftop entrance.

HAWKE-WHAT THE F-..What are you doing-man?!

He saw it coming from the start, seeing the drone feeds projected within his cybernetic eye alongside its own field of view.

He tucked his face into his left arm and swatted the grenade away with his right.

It detonated just over a meter to his right. The blast rocked him, knocking him to his knees and marring his armor.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!

"You always thought you were so goddamn clever… You never would listen to anyone else! And look where that's gotten you!

"I'm not under some sort of fucking mind control! Tachibana wasn't capable of creating this by himself!" he yelled, gesturing to his own cybernetics.

"I CREATED THIS!

"I CREATED TACHIBANA!"

He stood there wordless for a moment.

"Hawke, I know you've lost so much. We all have. But continuing to kill each other changes nothing.

"Besides, even if you refuse to trust me, there's a bigger threat you should be worried about."

[I apologize for the subpar quality of this post - when I was writing it, I had absolutely zero inspiration or creativity. But I figured a bad post was better than no post]

When Omega offers his bike to him, Deadpool's only response is to raise an eyebrow. Was this cyborg... Helping him? AND asking him not to kill? Just who or what was he, anyway?!?

'No promises' Wade scoffs as he gets on the bike before turning the ignition on. The engine purrs quietly, yet not without exposing its power to the cyborg hunter.

You sexy, sexy thing... You don't belong with a cyborg. I think I'll take you off his hands.

As soon as he pulls down the ignition, the cycle shoots forward at a considerable speed, behaving and handling quite well on the cracked asphalt of the post-apocalyptic road. It takes Wade less than half a minute to catch up to Chiharu, at which point he reduces the speed so that he can drive parallel with her running, raises his body up, preparing to bolt up from the bike and tackle the runaway. And it's a good thing he does so, as the seemingly harmless grenade that she threw suddenly turns out to be an EMP charge that completely wrecks the electronic bike. Thanks to his preparations, though, Deadpool still manages to jump off just in time, finding himself in the air as the useless bike turns around, spinning a few times before finally sliding aside. For the two seconds in which he's in the air, Wade reaches up towards the sheaths on his back and pulls one of the katanas out before landing right on top of the running girl, pinning her down on the ground with all his strength. Without wasting a moment, he grasps her long hair firmly and pulls it up before placing the sharp edge of the katana right on Chiharu's throat.

'Hey there, Wolf. Long time no see' he whispers in her ear. 'You've got exactly two seconds to tell me what your game is before I color the asphalt red'

Damn you, Wilson!
If I can't trust you to do one fucking thing, what good are you?

Omega focused his thoughts on the scene on the other side of the block, taking his attention off of those on the roof. He found nothing to manipulate, as his bike was completely shorted out.
No circuits, no power… damn it!

Hawke glanced at the cyborg screaming himself into oblivion through slitted eyes, not believing a word that came out of the scum's mouth.

"So, you, who was barely a child when Takeshi mastered his technique of creating cyborgs, is superior to him? A man with thirty seven years of superiority in the field?"

Hawke shakes his head, "I'll agree, you aren't under mind control... you're just insane."

Toshiaki turned his attention back to Hawke.

"I saw his research, Hawke. I knew what he had already done. Then I went beyond it. That's the nature of progress. The next generation is always superior to the prior.

"Could a lifetime of research into biomimicry have compared to what Raven or Masuda could do?
Could all the psychoanalysts in history put together have matched Xavier or Grey?

"I don't understand how these powers work, or how they're even possible. With my research there destroyed, I probably will never get the chance again. Regardless, you can't pretend that what we mutants can do isn't far beyond what any normal person ever could.

"I know what I saw and what I did on the day the Sentinels came to kill us.

"Right now, you'd best consider what you want to remember doing in this moment, with 'Deadpool' about to kill Kinai."

His drone was now out of view of that alley, and he was blind to what was going on over there.
… if he hasn't already.

Remaining as still as she can, she forces her response to Deadpool's questioning through a grimace of pain saying, "It was a Trap! It was supposed to be a trap for the cyborg!"
She takes a swift breath causing a drop of blood to well up on to the edge of the blade at her throat before she elaborates.
"He obviously wants you for some reason, I thought if I could get you to follow me, he would come after you leaving the base behind us all at which point I set off the EMP stopping the cyborg for just long enough for the team on the roof to get an easy shot at the back of his neck! I was going to hold up an infrared light to my face so I could mouth the plan to you without him seeing but it just stopped working, I had to improvise. Considering his use of the PA systems, how he seems to have access to local cameras, and disabled the light, he's either not here alone, or a mutant, a technopath or som-"
She's cut off by the sound of an explosion of a Fragmentation grenade down the street, making her flinch back against Deadpool's firm grip of her head. After which she is silent as she looks into Wade's eyes hoping, praying, that her message was enough to persuade him to spare her. Her muscles are quivering, her breath is shallow, and her only deliberate motion is her left hand gently and systematically tapping her side in series of three.