The X-Project

Malice and Deadpool continue to fight, and he reveals that he is not the Death they are looking for.



There was a lull as the X-Men were fully engaged with the Marauders and Deadpool had run out of bystanders to murder. In the space stepped Malice, determined more than ever to collect Death for Essex' research purposes; thwarting Nur while giving them more information to use against them.

“You are without a doubt, the most useless waste of DNA in the world, if not the universe,” Malice growled, as she poured adrenaline spiking pheromones onto her claws and tried to work her way around to Deadpool’s back. She wasn’t told to bring him all back, just enough to answer questions. A few heart attacks should make him more than cooperative. “How you managed to become Death is anybody’s guess, I could have thought of much better suited targets.”

The mercenary cracked up, circling to keep his katanas held between him and Barney the Feral Dino. "God, you're so dumb." He kept chuckling to himself. Sure his chest was now fully exposed, tumors revealed in their full, forming and reforming glory, but at least he wasn't a fox feral purple powers thief who couldn't even manage to turn into a villain by herself. "Poor little sweet cheeks, always a sidekick - never a hero. Or the villain. You couldn't even get this right, could you? Think you're so smart, but you've never been able to read a room, have you? Just a whiny little girl full of contradictions and delusions of grandeur." He paused to feint left, just to see what she'd do. "Cause guess what, chicken butt."

Coming in close for swords but too far for claws, Deadpool laughed again. "You're not even in the right place. You were too stupid to notice the sleight of hand. My remaker's not relying on me. What've I always been best at?" He paused dramatically, then beamed at her. "And you fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker."

“Good to know,” Malice replied with a smile, pushing her pheromones out to surround them both. “I’ll be sure to let my compatriots know but you know what that means? You have no value at all, which means I get to kill you. How about we get on with that."

"You can try," Deadpool taunted. "But your pheromone tricks don't work on me. My remaker knows all about your boss. Fixed me up with some nifty improvements and a healing factor that fucks. Wanna play in the big leagues, Wallflower? Bring it."

“Oh Wade, I would bet on my team any day of the week,” Malice replied with a sinister smile. “But please, let us test who is better, it would be my pleasure.”

She launched herself at Deadpool, uncaring of the swords given her own healing factor and went straight for his eyes with her claws.

The fight was vicious but short lived, given the number of Marauders who were already dead and the fact that Deadpool had accomplished exactly what he'd been told to accomplish. His only concern now, rather than continuing to fight, was to make his great escape. Writer only knew what else was going to happen, but his part, at least, was very, very done. A slice of the sword across Malice’s forehead blinded her with her own blood, and when she cleared her vision, he was gone.



Phoenix and Rogue move to neutralize Malice.



With Wade's disappearance, the X-Men pushed their advantage, targeting the head of the beast as both Phoenix and Rogue caught sight of Malice at the same time.

It was probably for the best that Jean and Rogue were the ones to run into Laurie. Had it been others, ones she had ripped their lives apart directly, emotion would have taken things farther than any would have liked. ~She's not who we knew. Not anymore.~ Jean thought to Rogue, meeting her eyes. She hadn't been there for the aftermath. While Jean hoped for the best in people, she also knew when to be realistic to think some would come back from that kind of darkness. Rogue gave Jean a nod. She had always found it hard to respond telepathically, what with all the voices in her head but with some effort, she could.

~Then we don't need to hold back. Didn't hold back with Wade, not gonna now with Laurie. Negotiatin' ain't gonna work, Jeannie.~ Not when there'd been how much carnage and destruction ... no, the full blood lust was coming out of everyone, and it was starting to seep right into Rogue. ~You follow me, or I follow you?~

~How about a team effort?~ Jean said. ~Harder to hit with two.~

“You know,” Malice started, almost idly from her spot several yards away. Her body language was relaxed, but the visible claws on her hands and her shoeless feet spoke of a battle readiness. “My mother always said it was rude to speak about people where they can’t hear you. Of course, my mother is dead here. Something to thank you for Jean, along with all the other missing people. How does that feel? To know you were the cause of so much trauma and misery. I can’t imagine it allows you to sleep well at night.”

Jean tilted her head. "I sleep fine because the Jean you're talking about was atomized. But kudos for trying to get under my skin. Guess you're here to fill the quota on evil bitches in her wake," she said, launching a telekinetic blast Malice's way to punctuate.

Malice stalked closer, her body moving differently given her feet were now clawed and looked longer than a normal human's, her posture leaned slightly forward as she stepped on her toes rather than each foot lying flat as she moved. It was an easy movement, however, speaking of time rather than any particular need for speed, or hastiness.

"Do you see, Marie? She never did take responsibility for her actions. She's always quick with an excuse, is our Jean. Of course, that's when she's not playing the victim for some burly man, she does like all that wonderful physical comfort. But she'll never admit to it, too busy playing the hurt little bird, can't be down here in the mud with the rest of us humans."

Rogue glared and was about to say something when she stopped. Why was that all making sense? Jean did love to be the victim.......and when was the last time Jean really helped with something? Here they were, together, and who was the one racing in? Rogue! Gone were the thoughts of team efforts ...... but that didn't seem right. At all. Rogue shook her head and blinked a few times. What was going on? "You can shut your mouth, Laurie. I know what you're doing here -- and you're not going to succeed!"

Malice smiled, fangs flashing for a second before she shrugged and moved closer, a glitter of purple liquid showing clearly on her claws as she put her hands up, as if showing she wasn’t holding anything at all.

“What am I doing, Marie? Surely we have no ill will between us. You weren’t there when Jean failed to help me, when she played the victim one more time. Poor Dr. Grey, so incompetent she couldn’t even help her friend Laurie. We can be friends, can’t we?”

Malice reached out to grip Rogue’s shoulder, keeping the other woman between her and Jean as she flashed her an icy look, the amiable facade dropping for a second before she turned back to Marie with a smile. Unseen, unsmelt, and undetected Malice’s pheromones curled out from around her, surrounding them all as she continued to push her powers, and continued to try and ‘make friends’ with Rogue.

"Help you with what? Manipulating Darcy's mind? Hurting people? You did that all on your own when you turned your back on the people who cared about you. Rogue, you read the report. You know what she did, what she's doing now. Fight it," Jean said.

Rogue would normally have moved out of Laurie's grip but something was slowing her down. It felt fuzzy yet made sense at the same time -- was Jean really here to help? "Friends are good, Laurie. You know my real name. That's nice."

“They lie, you know,” Laurie continued, as she reached up to briefly touch claw tips to Rogue’s face, glittering pheromones sinking quickly as she smeared them onto Rogue’s skin. “They love to lie about me, and everything they did. You should show her what you do to your enemies, to liars. She shouldn’t be allowed to say those things about me, isn’t that right Marie?”

"No one should say these kinds of things," Rogue responded, her fists clenching in anger. Didn't matter that she didn't have a clue what was being said; what mattered was they were being said. "Jeannie, why would you do that? You're so mean sometimes....is that who you really are? Someone who spreads lies and gossip?"

Jean sighed, absently rubbing her forehead. "You know it's not," she said calmly. There wasn't really a need to plead. Rogue's mind was made up...Laurie's pheromones were seeing to that.

"I'm sorry," she said.

That caught Rogue's attention.

"Sorry for what?"

"This," Jean said. The sound of rumbling was heard, followed by a very large Art Nouveau statue of three goddesses collapsing on top of Rogue.

Rogue gave a shriek and tried to fly out of the way but the statues caught her leg and pinned her down immediately. Her forehead crashed to the pavement and she was blasted with an instant headache, pounding so hard she couldn't think.

And then the rest of the statues fell on her and it seemed like a really great idea to take a nap.

“Well, wasn't that anticlimactic,” Malice drawled with a dispassionate look at the pile of rubble currently collapsed on Rogue. “I suppose a telepath would make a better puppet. What do you say, Jeanie? Would you like to be friends again?”

Malice started to move toward Jean, an ingratiating smirk now spreading across her lips that showed just a touch too much fang.

The moment Malice blinked, something exploded with a fiery heat across her vision. Wings?

"Not particularly, you twisted bitch," came Jean's voice a couple of moments later from the other side of a nearby car.

But Wade's laughter suddenly echoed near Malice’s ear before shoving her from behind.

"Tag!"

“Now that's just not fair at all,” Malice noted with a slight foot stomp as she turned to face Wade. “Aren't you meant to be eating tacos or going even crazier somewhere else?”

“Writer always did like a sequel,” Wade replied with a feral grin and followed up with a punch to the face as he dropped from the roof of the food truck he'd been standing on.

Malice spat to the side, drops of blood splattering the ground before the cut in her mouth healed over. She jumped and brought her feet up and forward to slice downward with her feet claws against Wade’s stomach, going for a classic disembowel.

“Whoa there, foxy loxy, this little black duck ain't for losing his guts any time soon.”

Wade avoided Malice and brought a gun to bear, shooting off several bullets at almost point blank range.

“Fuck you, you crazy son of a bitch,” Malice growled as she flipped and hit the deck to avoid the first set of bullets and then rolled quickly behind a concrete barrier she’d noticed from the corner of her eye. “I don't care what your bosses have done to make you a good little fake Horseman of Death, I’ll tear your throat out just the same.”

"You can tryyy," replied Wade in a sing-song voice. Silence fell for a few moments, save for the occasional cacophonous footsteps in weird places.

Someone tapped Malice on the shoulder.

She didn’t hesitate but buried wicked sharp claws in Wade’s stomach while going for his throat with her teeth. It was only once she’d bit down and torn that she realized with horror that it wasn’t Wade. It was Adam.

“No, no, no,” Malice gasped with horror, withdrawing claws coated in blood to lower Adam’s gasping body to the ground. Her hands fluttered over the wounds, sharp mind cataloging injuries and realizing she couldn’t fix it. She’d bitten through his carotid artery and he was already dead by the time she’d finished laying him down. “I’m sorry,”

She looked up, noting that Wade had disappeared, and Jean was nowhere to be seen. She needed to get Adam to his father. Sinister was the only person she’d ever seen cheat death. He’d be able to fix this.

“Why were you even here?” She asked her lover quietly as she stood and lifted his body, cradling him in her arms. “Your father will kill me for this, see if he doesn’t.”

She turned and started to run.

It'd take Laurie at least a quarter of a mile to realize the body she had been holding was gone. The quarter of a mile was the line of sight that Jean had down the street after dislodging Laurie from her mind and severing the psi connection. After that, it was time to dig Rogue out of the rubble and mend their wounds.

Dust and Cyclops finish off the last of the Marauders and start to come to some unsettling conclusions.



Battered and bloodied, the Marauders had mostly fallen, even as Malice had been taken off the field by Phoenix and Rogue. One more push was all that they needed to complete the task.

There was a difficulty in balancing the moving parts of a battle in your head, keeping track of everyone and their positions. It started off so neat at the start but rapidly devolved into a mess of movement and attacks that made any realistic control impossible. A shift in his stance, swaying backwards as a punch whistled by his head, Scott's own fist burying itself in his opponent's stomach, folding them in two before the man pushed him to the side and glanced back into the fight, a red beam lancing out. "Dust, what's it looking like?"

"It's a mess, frankly. Deadpool and Malice are gone, but the Marauders left are starting to turn on the civilians with no holds barred. Emergency Services are also in the firing line." Dust replied as she spiraled up to get a better overview of the terrain. "Echo needs a medevac, but is being damn stubborn about it, by the way."

"That surprises me not one bit, she was never gonna go quietly," a small sigh escaped the man's lips as he turned his gaze out over the crowd. "Ok, if they wanna play that way, we can do that dance. Can you drop a sandcloud on their head? Mess up their vision and call them out to me, they can't hit people if they can't see them, or dodge the artillery...you know that really should have been my X-Man name."

"It's a bit of a mouthful, to be honest." Dust commented as she scanned the battlefield, pinpointing the few remaining Marauders. "Vertigo and Greycrow are down, just like Riptide and Blockbuster. Emergency services are gathering in the southeast corner and the civilians are trying to get there. You need to avoid that direction as much as possible." Arclight... Prism... where were they... their abilities presented the most immediate danger for the gathering crowd, being able to do massive damage. Harpoon was not to be underestimated either.

As the woman had been speaking Scott had scaled the stage’s scaffolding, providing himself a vantage point to glance down into the area as she spoke, his eyes trying to track through the sand. "Ok, give me a little sand spout above their locations, and I'll take it from there."

Letting her gaze roof over the festival terrain again, she noticed several festival goers certainly grabbing on to each with some not even being able to keep their balance. Speeding in that direction, she added in a low clip. "Arclight first. She's close to civilians at four and eleven o'clock from your position." Arriving at Arclight's position, she sent up a small plume of sand in the air.

It was like having a spotter, the small plume of sand signaling the location of a target as his hand lifted to brace his head, an unconscious gesture from his time wearing a visor, while in Scott's head calculations span like a waterfall of numbers before a read beam lashed out, picking out Arclight through the sand. "Next target."

"Just a second, Cyclops." Pinpointing Harpoon next, Sooraya quickly surveyed the battlefield for Prism, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then her eye was caught by a rainbow glitter and gaining speed by the second, she dove down. A fat rope of sand wrapped around the crystalline Marauder before he was pulled into the air, speeding towards Harpoon. Dropping him onto his teammate from at least ten feet above, Sooraya sent up a small sandplume. "Got a two for one here. Civilians directly behind them though."

"They never make this easy do they?" White teeth worried the soft flesh of Scott's lower lip for a moment as he considered the battlefield, head tilted to the side before he nodded slowly. "Dust, clear off the sand a little, I need a better look at the way people are setup down there." He waited for a moment, a heartbeat or two for the sand storm to abate, the figures starting to resolve as a predatory smile touched his lips. "Ok, this I can work with."

A step back before a twinned pair of blasts cut through the air, bouncing off cars and the ground as they danced a dizzying pattern as they approached the marauders. Like any boxer though, Scott was aiming for a weakpoint, the glass jaw, and both beams hit the ground just before their targets, slamming up like a brutal punch to connect with the two Marauders.

"They are down and out." Sooraya rose up, doing a further scan of the battlefield. "No sign of any of the other Marauders active... Riptide is still unaccounted for, but he might be among the bodies." Diving, she headed for where they were densest, not looking at faces, but for the distinctive Marauders armor. "Something feels off though... outside of causing terror and fear, what was the goal here?" Her eyes would have narrowed if possible, memories of their last training sessions on tactics and strategy flashing through her mind.

"Pull back for now, if there are no more targets we don't want to impede the first responders from getting to the victims here." Scott stood slowly, his eyes sliding across the battlefield one last time before turning away, a hand sliding into his pockets in an unconscious gesture as he settled in thought. "You're right, it's like they weren't doing much more than distracting us with a big target and a fight that we'd respond to, that we'd have to respond to..." The man's voice trailed off for a moment as realisation hit, his hand flying up to his radio. "Cyclops to mansion control come in. Are there any other incidents happening right now?"

The X-Men retire from the massacre, only to realize that this was not the main fight after all.



What had been billed as a pro-mutant winter festival to celebrate art, theatre and cooperation was now a torn up battleground outside of Avignon. Half of the still standing booths were on fire and the bodies of the injured and dead were spread around where they had fallen. Despite their best efforts, between Deadpool and the Marauders, at least a hundred people were dead and many times that wounded. In the distance, the tiny, slightly poppy sound of European sirens could be heard, converging on the grounds with the desperately needed EMTs, and the more difficult to handle police.

Nica had shifted to x-rays and flown invisibly above the scene until she spotted Scott. Between the fights with Deadpool, the realisation that the man she'd killed in a previous mission had apparently come back from the dead, the carnage they'd been unable to stop and the fact that if she solidified she had two knife wounds to deal with, her mind was a confused whirl. Only the knowledge that she needed to report in gave her purpose as she touched down beside the first X-Man and switched to visible light. "Cyclops, we tried to stop Deadpool, but he..." She gulped down a sob. "We tried."

The man shook his head comfortingly, "It's ok, you did your best. He's not an opponent that anyone can handle easily, especially when we're dealing with other combatants at the same time." Dark eyes softened as he held up a hand, not quite reaching out to the girl, but offering it to her, "You did everything you could, that's all we can ask. Mansion says the threat board is clear right now at least." And in the end it wasn't like he and Jean had been any more effective when dealing with the man, and they knew everything he had to offer.

Rogue swallowed thickly as she got close to Scott. What could she say? "You did great, Spectrum," she said softly. "All that training's paid off....Cyclops....it's not good. At all. I gave it my best and barely made a dent in him. His healing factor is through the roof now." She reached up and brushed her hair back into a ponytail in an attempt to still her hands. The after-battle adrenaline was through the roof right now and her head was pounding from the after-effects of Malice’s pheromones and the statue Jean had dropped on her.

Clarice was upright, but only barely, the pressure bandage she’d applied earlier dragged loose by the last fight. "I can.... send you somewhere?" she offered hollowly, "But I need Amelia. I can't...." she was very much stabbed.

Sooraya reformed in front of her after returning from a final round of scouting the field, quickly slinging one of Blink's arms around her shoulder. "You don’t need to send anyone anywhere. Rest as much as you can." She quickly soothed. "We'll figure it out. And will you please stay off your feet for now?" Her voice was a little more exasperated when she addressed Maya.

“Only if I get to lay down somewhere.” Maya replied with a touch of amusement around obvious pain. She could feel the blood currently filling her boot, and she knew if she looked she’d see a blood soaked bandage. It wasn’t something that they could have helped at the time but she was more than happy to get on the Blackbird and go home. “If someone would like to give me a hand?”

Jean-Phillipe provided the hand - he was mostly uninjured, even if the backlash from Scrambler had left him exhausted. He was not looking forward to breaking the news to his cousin about Wade. "None of this makes sense," he murmured. "What was the purpose of all this, if Wilson was not the one we needed to deal with?"

"Look, all I know," Alison said, examining the tips of her hair for singe marks (there were thankfully none), occasionally still dealing with the random twitch, "is that we came all this way just for me to get zapped so bad I still can't feel my left arm and I just--" Alison dropped her head into her hands and groaned.

Jean had been silent, listening to everyone as she quickly grabbed her medical kit and prepared to treat the wounded. Something wasn't right.

"But Wade isn't Death. Laurie figured that out..." She glanced out the window at the carnage. The other Horsemen had a purpose. This felt like violence just for the sake of it. Almost like...a stage. There should have been more. A lot more.

"It was a distraction. They know we've been after them. They know they need to keep us busy. Far away from wherever they were going to be." Europe was centrally located to get to so many places, except for a few: America. One of the most vibrant, open, diverse places for mutants in the world.

"District-X." The thought hit her like a lightning bolt. She reached for her comms.

"Dominion, come in. Dominion." It had been silent so far...maybe she was wrong. She hoped she was wrong.

"Phoenix, still on station." It had taken some work as the French digital networks had exploded with activity. "What do you need?"

"The fight here...it's a ruse. It's not Death. Can you check on District-X? See if there's anything going on there? Send people, just in case."

"It's not Death? How can-" The penny dropped and Kane went white. Of course. Of fucking course. "Yeah, I got it. I- I gotta go. I-" He cut the comm and hit the mansion's emergency comms instead. "I need everyone not in a medlab bed in District-X ASAP."