Ten Years After C-Day

'I made a vow' he says, still keeping his guard up and ready to counterattack the moment Omega strikes. 'To wipe you and the rest of those mechanical beasts from the face of the Earth. It's more than a vow... It's a blood oath'

"You're talking about genocide, you stupid bastard," he spat.

"Not that you would understand. The only disability you ever had was your thick head."

'If you want to call it genocide, then so be it! I'd only be returning the favor!'

"To whom, Wilson?

"Just who the fuck are you trying to get back at?
You think you'll gain anything by destroying what's left of humanity?"

Toshiaki shook his head and walked away.

'If that's what you call "humanity", then I'd be putting it out of its misery!'

When Toshi starts walking away once again, Wade yells out angrily and dashes over to him before raising his blades.

'STOP... TURNING... YOUR... BACK... ON... ME!!!' he screams while swinging down at his opponent repeatedly, one sword after the other, over and over again.

Wade's yelling, coupled with the sounds coming from the battlefield, freak Kanna out even further. The girl covers her ears with her shaking hands before turning up towards Hawke.

'Please make them stop...'

"STOP DESTROYING EVERYTHING AROUND YOU!" he howled back as he deflected the strikes.

"You think you can win everything by sheer force?
You will lose everything. You will destroy innocent lives. You will create widows and orphans.

"Just like the SCP tried to end the 'mutant threat' by force.
They lost, and their plan destroyed half of humanity.
Is that really what you want to repeat?

"You think needing this to survive makes me less than human.
You went to a school for the disabled and thought yourself oh-so-superior.

"When will you fucking learn?
You put me in this state, after all.
In 28 years, you are the most bigoted, selfish, conceited piece of shit to dare to call himself human that I have ever met."

She's freaking out. Do something.

Kanna hadn't had a biblical codename for nothing, she could easily call down hellfire and flood the world a thousand times over if she so wished. A Kanna Hashimoto freak-out NEVER ended well. Whole cities had been levelled in mere seconds, simply because she'd had a bad dream.  The team's top priority over the years had been keeping her safe, calm and well. Hawke wasn't about to let an argument between two of his old friends.

He glances around frantically for something to shut one of the two the hell up. Scrabbling around on the roof, he locates a loose brick and pulls it from its lodging, allowing dust to fall down the side of the building to the street below.

He may well be coated in armor, but the idiot has raised his faceplate... A brick to the face should put him down.

Thankfully, Toshi was facing Hawke's position, and appeared to be completely distracted by Wade's relentless, yet futile, assault. Tapping into his primal roots of an Englishman, Hawke makes full use of the evolutionary trait of the English that came about from lobbing bottles at people, and threw the brick as hard as he could directly at the cyborg's face.

{Pretty sure we should've been out of vision, let alone a stone's throw, by several blocks by now, but whatever}

Toshiaki saw the brick in the corner of his vision and stepped out of its way.

What the fuck?
Do you want me to kill you?
No… he wants to break up the fight.
You're aiming at the wrong guy for that, pal.

He walked away again, hoping – but not expecting – that Wilson might actually take the hint this time.

Absorbed by the fight, Wade only notices the brick when it flies right past his face. He jumps back and quickly looks up towards the roof while still keeping Omega in his peripheral vision.

'What the fuck are you trying to do?' he yells out.

[To be honest I have no idea who is where, I thought you were in the alleyway by the building]

"Getting you to stop!" Hawke shouts down to the pair. "You... you should stop." He says, getting slightly worried that the attention was now on him.

[I thought the two were in the street in front of the building between the store and Satoshi's position. Endo turns around multiple times but it's not like he has a pair of gas-powered heelys on to make him fly through the street two whole blocks away in that amount of time. Unless I'm missing something where he did something to increase his movement.]

I stand in my hide, thinking of what I should do.

Do I take Wilson's side and take the shot on someone with his back turned or do I wait?

Dammit, I can't get a shot until he turns around to face Wade anyway, and they keep fighting when they do!

Son of a bitch, man...

{After Kanna first came up there, Toshi was walking to the point presumably a few blocks away where Wade caught up to Chiharu. He should have met Wade a little less than halfway there. But I guess it's not much of a stretch.}

Let them hash it out for a few. Hawke can see Wilson for the worthless maniac he is.
If Wilson touches either of them, I'll take his fucking head off.

Toshiaki disappeared around the next corner, continuing to watch the situation with the use of his microdrones.

As soon as he senses that his opponent has turned his back on him and is moving away, Wade turns back towards him.

'Are you mocking me?!?' he yells out and starts following him, determined to kill the cyborg once and for all.

Still hearing the sounds coming from below, Kanna's fear is gradually turning into a full-blown meltdown. The girl is sitting on the ground, with her legs up against her chest, her head between her hands and her face pressed against her knees. Her entire body is trembling from the pressure - despite Hawke's best efforts to break up the fight, its continuation has pushed the young girl to her breaking point.

And that can only mean bad news.

Suddenly, the asphalt right in front of Wade's feet cracks open, releasing a tall geyser of steam from the ruptured pipe beneath it. The crack keeps growing and growing, and in a matter of seconds it has already reached from one end of the street to the other. Gradually, Toshi's side begins getting further away from Wade's, until it becomes physically impossible for either of them to get to the other side. Three more pipes get ruptured in the process, all of them releasing steam that slowly engulfs the entire area into a thick fog.

Throughout all of this, Kanna has remained motionless, unresponsive and clammed up in her shell. The only sound she makes is a faint and barely noticeable sobbing.

My god.
If just that results in this, if she were under serious distress…
The SCP was right to protect her, at least. Damn shame the directors weren't nearly as well-intentioned as the local agents.

Wilson… you keep that aggression up, you'll have a second apocalypse on your hands. And if that happens, there won't be any survivors this time. So do us all a favor – grow up or fuck off.

Finding his way with his extended-spectrum vision, Toshiaki walked away from the chasm, off into the coming night.

Chiharu descended a level, rolling off the momentum of her fall. When she runs past Satoshi she hurriedly says, "Your gun is on the street and 10 meters to the west." <And I'm guessing so will Wade pretty soon>
She then continued sprinting across the street and into the store. She slowed down as she went up the stairs so as not to create a commotion. Upon arriving at the rooftop she knelt down beside Kanna and wrapped her arms around the girl to comfort her while saying softly, "Hey, I'm here now. We're all here now. Hawke-san and Mesuda-san are here and the robot is gone. We're here for you. Just breath and let us know what we can do to help, whenever you're ready."

Wade spends about ten seconds just staring through the mist in front of him in disbelief. Whatever the hell just happened was like something straight out of a disaster film... Like the gods themselves wanted to keep him and Omega separated. Wade didn't like that.

Not one bit.

Angrily, the man yells out and throws his katanas on the ground with the blades down, causing them to penetrate the asphalt and get stuck in it. He absolutely hated it when his prey got away. While the crack only covered one street, at least as far as he could see, the time it would take for him to go around it would be plenty for the cyborg to escape and hide. For all intents and purposes, this battle was lost.

After pulling his swords back and sheathing them, Wade turns back and starts walking towards the store once again. He didn't know if he could trust the cyborg about anything, but so far, the lead about Rose's location was the only information about her he had. So if there really was a jet at the airport, his only choice was to take it and go to Jump City. Only problem was, Wade had no clue where that airport was. Hopefully, the people at the grocery store were going to be a bit more helpful than they were during the fight.

Navigating through the fog is a bit harder for him than he expected, but about fifteen minutes later, Deadpool finds himself in front of the grocery store again. Much to his surprise, the previously wrecked door is completely repaired.

'What the hell...' he mutters to himself, but decides not to give it much thought. This day has gone on for far too long already, and the sooner he got what he wanted and continued on with his journey, the better. The man enters the store and looks around - the marauders are nowhere to be found. Wade assumes that they must be on the rooftop, where that man who threw the brick was, so his first course of action is to go up the stairs and through the door at the top, which, surprisingly, isn't locked at all.

Just as he expected, there are three marauders on the roof - Chiharu, another girl and the guy who threw the brick. The other girl appears to be in distress, but it's not like Wade cares about that all too much. After all, there's only one thing he wants to know.

'How do I get to the airport?'

"Not even a hello for your old pal?" Hawke says, trying desperately to squeeze some emotion into the tense situation. the last thing Kanna needed right now was a psychopath kicking off, and Hawke hoped to show her Wade was a good person deep down.

He glances over at Kanna and Chiharu, and smiles to himself as Chiharu comforts the girl.

Always was good with her. Guess she's the perfect person to deal with overreactions.

Wade's mouth gapes open when he finally recognizes the person in front of him.

'Hawke? No way... No fucking way!' he yells out, his lips curving into a wide grin. 'It was you this whole time? Man, when C-Day happened, I thought you'd be the first to go... No offense. I'd give you a hug, but... Y'know'

When the ground quakes, I find myself immediately losing my balance. The second table on the stack I made to complete my hide falls off of the first and I nearly fall to the floor, myself.

When Chiharu enters, I am leaning against the rifle and the wall.

'Your gun is on the street and 10 meters to the west.'

"..Uuh.."

I need to get better at picking hides...

When the girl leaves, I sling the rifle over my shoulder and head down to what she said was the position of my weapon.

I quickly grab 'Shiina' and look at the grocery store before looking back in the direction of the Yamaku camp.

Then I look at the strap on my shoulder and back to the camp's direction.

Hirohito can hold down the fort, I need to give the old man his dart back...

Actually, that is only part of the reason. I refuse to think it, but I really wish to see my friends again most of all.

What stops my acknowledgement is the fact that it is a return to the past.

And judging from the things wrong with me and the nightmares I get to this day, a return to the past never comes without the painful parts for me...

I begin to walk through the front entrance of the store and make my way to the back to retrace my steps from the collapsed, shutter door to the staircase, leading to the rooftop.

In a jog through this, I am at the foot of the steps when Wade gets his reunion.

Hawke lets out a dry chuckle, "The first to go? Thanks a lot, buddy."

He could see his point though. Cyborg apocalypse and a nigh-on useless leg didn't really mix all that well.... it was lucky that they'd managed to procure a cybernetic leg for Hawke, although the surgery had been.... dodgy. Hideyo had tried his best, to be fair to him, but his surgery skills weren't brilliant. the only reason his leg had been saved was Chiharu's quick thinking when she told Kanna the surgery had gone well. They felt guilty using the young girl like they did... but it was necessary.

"Do we believe that tool isn't working for Takeshi?"

'The cyborg? No way' Wade responds confidently. 'To do that, he'd need to somehow hack himself out of their mainframe, which is completely impossible. In any case, any serious threats against Takeshi would be detected and get his brain fried, so the bastard must be quite aware of the cyborg's task here. Look, even if he does believe he's broken free and he's acting of his own free will, it's still ultimately just a trap. Either way, he's better off dead. And I just let the fucker walk straight out...' Wade clenches his fist. 'But I'll leave that guy to you. I fried his circuits, and it'll take him at least a few days to recover. If you move quickly, you'll be able to catch him and overpower him easily. Meanwhile, I need to get to the airport and find that jet. I don't believe the cyborg's words for a second, but it's my only lead so far, so I'll take the chance'

"You fried his circuits?" Hawke asks, raising his eyebrows in question. "It's a shame they're repairable...."

Hawke's brows furrow as he comes across a dilemma, is it worth pursuing the cyborg? He could give him the benefit of the doubt and just let him wander off. The group would no longer be able to stay in the town, anyway, so it's not like he'd find them again anytime soon. Their escape plan had been perfected over the years, and now they left absolutely no trace of their trail whatsoever. It would take a miracle to locate them again once they left for pastures new. All it took was a simple "They'll never find us here" whispered in Kanna's ear. It seemed a little cheap to Hawke, but it was what kept them alive all these years. That, and pure dumb luck.

"Can't go after him with Kanna" Hawke says, jerking his thumb towards the girl, "Can't risk her overreacting again. We'll leave him be... for now."

'Well, it's your funeral' Wade shrugged. Really, it didn't matter to him - he was going to be leaving the island soon anyway, one way or another, possibly only returning after he was confident he could successfully take on Takeshi. By not pursuing the cyborg, Hawke was only putting his own group in jeopardy... But then again, considering how they had done absolutely nothing to aid him in the fight aside from Chiharu giving him the EMP grenade, maybe not pursuing was the better choice.

Once Hawke pointed towards the girl and named her, Wade tilted his head in order to get a better look at her. 'What's the deal with her, anyway?'