He stood up quickly, pulling out two guns and aiming them towards the door as it opened, and Logan stumbled in. “Next time announce yourself,” Marcus snapped, holstering his guns. “I almost filled your ass full of lead.”

“Everyone needs more lead in their diet,” Logan replied faintly. It was probably a joke, but he didn’t sound good.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Yukio said, standing up from her chair.

Logan’s jeans were now streaked dark with blood, and it was striped on his face like misapplied war paint. There were multiple small holes in his jeans and leather jacket that could only be bullet holes, and while most were caked with blood, he wasn’t actively bleeding anywhere they could see. His throat was crusted with dried blood, like a vampire had tried to make a meal out of him. But none of that actually bothered Marcus, as he’d seen Logan physically worse - what bothered him was the look in his eye.

It was akin to that hollow eyed stare, that one he saw after Leonie’s murder. It wasn’t quite that gone - a hundred yard stare as opposed to a thousand - but Marcus could still see it, that precipice of madness that he balanced on like a gymnast on a beam. What the hell could have caused that? Certainly not slicing through gangster trash. Had they used Mariko against him somehow? Oh shit, did they know who he was? Were they more than prepared to throw her memory in his face, unbalance him, catch him off guard? He didn’t think they were that subtle or that clever.

“Should we, uh, call a doctor?” Tony offered hesitantly. “I know of one -”

“I don’t need no doctor,” Logan replied gruffly, staggering towards the bar. Marc didn’t think he was hurt - still healing maybe, depending on how many bullets he took and where - but not necessarily hurt, not in a physical way. Logan collapsed on a bar stool, and Marcus asked, “Wanna drink?”

He grunted an affirmative. Marc reached down, grabbed the bottle of white rum, and slid it down towards him. Wordlessly, Logan twisted the cap off, and took a deep swig from the bottle.

“Uh, guy, you’re riddled with bullets,” Yukio pointed out, looking paler than usual. He hoped if she was going to ralph, she had the decency to leave the room.

Something metallic hit the floor, and Marcus hoped that was just the bottle cap, and not a compacted bullet being forced out of Logan’s body. That was a tough thing to explain away. “I’m always riddled with somethin’,” Logan replied coolly, shoving the bottle of rum back down towards him. “Tastes like syrup.”

Marc shrugged, picking up the bottle. “It’s rum. It’s supposed to taste like that, but it has a kick like a mule.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Oh shit, right. He wouldn’t. Marcus took a swig - it did taste syrupy warm - and passed it back down to him before crouching back behind the bar. “What happened, man?”

Logan was in full on taciturn mode. “Guys came after me. I made them sorry they did. I wasn’t followed.”

Marcus wanted to say “Well, duh, ya gotta live to follow someone,” but he didn’t. Logan wouldn’t appreciate it, not in mixed company.

“Um, look, I don’t like the guy, but are we really gonna let him bleed to death?” Yukio asked, still standing, as if she was afraid to sit down.

“He’s not bleeding,” Tony pointed out, his voice unusually inflectionless.

“I’m good,” Logan said, without looking behind him. It was a lie, of course; no one with an empty stare like that was ever “okay”, but now was not the time to get into it.

Marcus grabbed the silver box he found on the lowest shelf, and, setting it front of Logan, whispered under his breath, “This doesn’t smell like an explosive to you, does it?”

Logan’s green eyes flicked up at him, a new awareness flashing briefly through them, as if he finally saw him. He then looked down at the silver box. It was about the size of a cigar box, with three intertwined dragons embossed on the front, looking like a knot of serpents. “Smells chemical, but not explosive,” Logan said, and let his bloody fingers (was that his blood, or someone else’s?) trace over the top. “Three dragons,” he muttered.

“Does that mean something I should know about?” He asked him.

It took a moment, but Logan shook his head, and seemed to bust himself out of his inexplicable reverie by opening the box.

Tony got up, as if startled, and said, “What do you have there?”

The box was filled with that fitted plastic lined with blue velvet, like you might get from a jewelry shop, only it wasn’t cradling jewelry. It was instead cradling a rectangular glass bottle, the size of a small flask, filled with a liquid that had a pale lilac blush. Logan’s nose wrinkled, but not like it smelled bad - it was like he was trying to separate scents, parse them. And Marc knew he could, in a way that was completely creepy - no offense to him. “It’s not booze, is it?” Marcus guessed.

Logan shook his head. “It’s … wrong.”

What a funny thing to say. “Wrong?”

Tony looked down at it, and although his brow furrowed, Marcus wasn’t convinced he was all that stunned. “It’s probably more of Tetsuo’s collection.”

Before Marcus could ask him to clarify - collection of what? - Logan said, “Drugs. It’s a drug, but … it doesn’t smell like any I’m familiar with.”

“Smell?” Yukio cracked. “You go around smelling drugs? Is blood loss making you gaga? Did you get shot in the head?”

That brought up an interesting point: Yukio was having a hard time buying all of this, Logan just walking in the door gunshot and bloody but A-okay, while Tony was having no trouble at all. Now, admittedly, he was a cool customer by nature, but still, wasn’t this at all suspicious? Marcus fixed Tony with a scrutinizing look, and asked, “Was Tetsuo into R&D at all?”

Tony reluctantly met his eyes, and once again, he cultivated such serenity he was impossible to read. “I have no idea. But I know he liked to sample the merchandise.”

“What kind of drug is it? Any clue?” He was asking Logan, but he was also asking Tony. How much did he know about his brother’s - his family’s - sideline?

Tony answered first. Was he nervous? “I believe they were working on a new opium derivative.”

“It smells like magic,” Logan said, eying the bottle suspiciously.

“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Yukio wondered. She finally got up and wandered over, but kept her distance, as if afraid Logan would bleed all over her. “C’mon, guys, we have to call him an ambulance.”

At least Tony finally looked mildly surprised. But it was Marc who asked, “What’s that mean, bud?”

“Smells demonic,” he said, not really clarifying. Or was he? “Smells akin to what I found at Yasha’s place.”

“What did you find at Yasha’s place? Drugs?”

Logan suddenly cocked his head to the side, like a dog that just heard a can opening in the next room, and he looked up, as if expecting someone to fall through the ceiling.

“Demonic?” Yukio scoffed. “Jesus, can’t you tell this guy is gone -”

“Shh,” Logan hissed sharply.

“What?” Marcus asked, aware that Logan was picking up on something that the rest of them weren’t aware of yet. Maybe it was kind of creepy, but you couldn’t beat him as an early warning system. He snuck a hand inside his jacket and grabbed one of his guns, and while everyone was looking at Logan, he snatched up the bottle of whatever it was with his other hand, and slipped it into his pocket.

Then Marcus heard it, or at least thought he did - a faint thrum, a mechanical noise tamped down greatly by the soundproofing in the building materials. It also seemed like the large picture window, looking out of a building rich segment of the Hong Kong skyline, was starting to waver. “Shit!” Logan cursed angrily. “Down! Everybody get d-”

But before he could finish the sentence, the helicopter became visible.

Marc grabbed Tony and dragged him behind the bar while Logan launched himself across the room, tackling Yukio and carrying both of them behind the couch, as the entire window shattered with a thunderous noise. The rum bottle exploded like a Molotov cocktail, raining liquor down on them like a sudden squall.

Bullets and shards of glass flew everywhere, the backwash of the rotors blowing into the room like a hurricane, and the fuckers had machine guns: through the open hatch, they were emptying dozens of rounds a second into the room. They were punching through the bar, leaving gaping holes in the wood, and Marcus was sure he felt the wind of several bullets pass by his face and arms. Shit! Who gave the Yakuza a fucking battle chopper?!

He risked getting up his knees and shot towards the copter, hoping for a lucky hit. This was the gun with the adamantium bullets; it just had to punch through one right thing, and it was all over. Marc got off two shots before two bullets tore through his arm. Blood splashed warm on his face, and he almost lost his grip on his gun, but he managed to hold on. But fuck if it didn’t hurt; it felt like his entire forearm was on fire, and he really didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to use it.

He heard Yukio yell, over the seemingly endless battle noise, “What the fuck-?!” and glanced over the bar cautiously, hoping a projectile didn’t pick that moment to take his skull off.

He should have guessed; he should have known. That hollow look in Logan’s eyes was frightening for a damn good reason; Logan without restraints- without a care whether he lived or died or simply suffered - was a terrifying thing.

He ran straight into the hail of bullets, claws out and his blood splattering as bullets chewed threw him and out, body jerking involuntarily under the impact of multiple rounds, but Logan didn’t slow down, he didn’t stop. And Marcus had no idea he could run so fast.

With a roar that sounded inhuman, he lunged out the window, jumping straight for the helicopter.

16

Bob really did take his blasé act too far sometimes.

The fact that he seemed to be stuck in a giant tin can specifically made for holding gods didn’t even make him blink. He just stared blandly at Ragnarok, who seemed disappointed he couldn’t get more of a reaction out of him. Finally, Bob huffed a sigh out of his nose, and said, “You really think I’m that stupid? That’s an ego blow.”

The abyss glared at him, as best as an eyeless void could. “You just refuse to admit you’re beaten, don’t you?”

“Beaten? Oh, I doubt it. Ya see, I knew you might try something like this, and Sy isn’t he only elemental I know - just the only one who would bother dealing with the likes of you.”

“Uh huh. And I’m supposed to start shaking in my boots now, is that it?”

And that’s when Jean felt their reality shift.

The metal cylinder that made up their world melted like an ice cream sundae in the sun, giving way to a mist shrouded landscape full of rolling lavender hills and oddly shaped trees that looked like crosses between banyan trees and twisted witch hazel. The ground was beautiful, a combination of metallics, copper and green and red and black, but on closer inspection … the ground was moving.

With a shock of fear and revulsion, she realized the ground beneath them all was alive.

Alive, and starting to flow up the legs of Ragnarok. They broke from solid colors into a living mass of multi-colored snakes, and she took a step back, unable to conceal her disgust. She could take snakes one at a time, but as many as these - hundreds; the landscape was roiling with hundreds of snakes, thousands, millions upon millions - was just too much to bear. She was not a big fan of reptiles.

Neither was the abyss, judging by the way his face twisted in disgust, and he tried to brush them off. He did, but for all he swept off, about six took their place. “If you wanna start fartin’ sparks, you’d better start now,” Bob advised, grinning maniacally.

“How the fuck..?!” he spat, still trying to brush off the invading snakes. But they started to crawl into his skin, through his slender shell, filling him up - and they kept on going. Apparently the snakes had no fear of a consumptive, cold emptiness.

A group of snakes formed a huge pile just to the left of the abyss, and suddenly melded into one another, forming a human shape. Tangerine sized silver eyes floated up to the surface of a multi-colored, scaled face, but he was mostly cobra black, with rings of red, copper, green, and silver on his limbs and throat, encircling his torso and face. “Welcome to Kauvadra Hills,” the snake man said, possibly to her. He(?) then turned his eyes towards the abyss, who was now covered up to his waist in a growing pile of snakes, and said, “I bet this is a let down, eater. But my snakes will be happy to keep you company.”

“Jean, this is Degei, the Fijian serpent god of the dead. Deg, this is Jean, Camaxtli’s avatar.”

Degei bowed slightly at the waist, an elegant, old fashioned greeting, and Jean didn’t know what to do. It was all she could do to keep the revulsion off her face. (Although she was glad he didn’t offer to shake hands.) “Nice to meet you,” he replied. His voice had an elegant lilt to it.

“You - you can’t do this!” The abyss cried, pulling off handfuls of snakes. It made no difference; the pile didn’t reduce one iota. The entire lower half of his body was obscured by serpents.

“Oh, he can,” Bob replied smoothly. “He’s an elemental death god, as well as one of the few to exist simultaneously in all of the multi-verses at once. He is the many and the one. Ain’t that a kick in the pants? He’s a peace lover, but he could cream your fucking hollow ass. Let us go, or find out what it’s like to be drowned by a zillion snakes.”

Degei glared at him with his flat, serpentine eyes. “I hate you eaters. You’re all so arrogant.” As if this was their cue, snakes started to burrow straight out of the void’s “skin”, instead of into him, out of him. They sprung from his chest like veins that decided it was time to vacate the premises. It didn’t appear to hurt him - how could you hurt nothingness? - but he appeared as disgusted as the rest of them.

“Stop this!” Ragnarok cried, appalled and clearly terrified, as snakes continued to swarm into him and out of him, again and again, skin shell healing up instantaneously - but for no good at all. He was now up to his rib cage in serpents, and they were threading through him like darning needles. It seemed impossible, this was a god eater, so how could snakes ..?

But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Jean started to understand this man - god/snake/thing/whatever - might not have been prone to violence, and may have been obscure (she’d never heard of him, and Ragnarok didn’t seem that familiar with him), but he was quite possibly the most powerful god in existence. It’s just his powers - whatever they were, beyond “calling” snakes - were beyond the realm of what the eater could handle. It was so far beyond the pale of normal god powers that it was at a complete loss. (If he was made up of snakes, did that mean - since the ground was made of snakes - that he was the entire planet/dimension/whatever? Was he his own planet? And what did that mean exactly?)

“I got wiring loose inside my head, I got books that I never ever read,” Bob sang softly, almost cooing, and she looked to see he was singing right into the face of a large coral snake that was wrapped around his left arm. The snake’s black eyes were locked on Bob’s, its split tongue darting out occasionally to taste the air, and it seemed thoroughly enraptured by him. He also seemed to be fond of the deadly thing as well. ”I got secrets in my garden shed, I got a scar where all my urges bled -”

Jean backed away, feeling the ground move beneath her as snakes - trod on but never apparently harmed - shifted position. Now Ragnarok was visible only from the shoulders up in the writhing mound of serpents. This was madness; she was sure she was still locked in her head and imagining this. This was insane! And simply too bizarre to be real. But she honestly didn’t think her imagination was this good - or grotesque.

“I’ll release them if you stop this!” Ragnarok finally shouted, a thin green garter snake working its way out of the empty hole where his right eye should have been.

Could you throw up in a non-corporeal form? Because Jean was afraid she was about to find out.

17

It was hard to run when your body wanted to give way, when your muscles were shredded by bullets and your internal organs were sliced open and pulped by high velocity projectiles. But if you were riding your anger, you could. Or at least Logan could.

And riding it really was what it felt like. A great black beast, much wilder and more lethal than any horse, pushing him to his limits and beyond. It was madness, pure and simple, insanity that made you greater than you were simply by the deeply delusion belief that nothing could hold you back, but as Bob had told him in the past, belief was nine-tenths of anything.

He didn’t know if he had control of his madness, and he really didn’t care. All he could feel was a gnawing, acidic hate as he ran through the bullets, wanting nothing more than to hurt those fuckers. His hate was a swollen, angry black river that he let him carry him away into the unknown. They had taken enough from him, they had killed Mariko -

- (they had killed him) -

- and they weren’t taking any more. It stopped now, even if he had to be shredded down to a metal skeleton, a skinless beast that couldn’t be recognized as Human. He didn’t care.

Blood bubbled in his chest as at least one bullet hit his lung, traveled out and through his back, but he didn’t stop. Oxygen was overrated - all he needed was adrenaline and rage. Everything else was superfluous.

Even though a bad bounce of a bullet sliced through his Achilles tendon, he was able to ignore the pain and the sudden weakness of his right leg -

- (What pain? He was a ball of fire, nothing but endless burning, nerves in overload, too much, too fast) -

- and let the personal velocity of momentum and rage carry him to the edge, where he sprung for the helicopter.

He extended his body to full, even though he was a bigger target for bullets, and felt - for one single second - that he was actually flying, thirty stories off the ground and sailing through the air like gravity had finally decided to stop punishing him - and he heard one of the men yelling over the contained explosions of gun shots to “Pull up! Pull up!” as he knew what Logan knew only a millisecond later.

He was going to make it.

Logan jumped not only into the open side of the chopper, but straight into one of the shooters. He took a bullet in the face for the trouble - it tore through one cheek and went right out the other, taking one of his teeth with it; powder burns made his eyes water - but Logan drove one claw straight into the gunman’s heart as they both sprawled on the floor of the chopper. He didn’t just stop shooting; he stopped living.

The helicopter slewed wildly - both sudden extra weight and general panic; he could smell it, taste it, feel it pouring down his throat like wine - and even though he was still on the floor, claw buried deep in the dead man (who wore a bulletproof vest - too bad it wasn’t adamantium proof), he kicked the gun out of the hands of his partner, who was shifting aim towards him. It went flying out of the chopper, and Logan followed up with a blistering kick to the man’s face: unlike most other times, he didn’t hold back - he got him full strength.

There was a crack that even Logan’s gunfire numbed ears could hear, and the man hit the floor of the chopper convulsing slightly, blood spurting from his crushed nose. Logan figured he’d split the guy’s skull straight down the middle, busted it like a piñata, but he didn’t care. No, that was incorrect, he did care.

He was glad. He was almost laughing.

He could almost feel the weight of his anger - his insanity? - shifting around the inside of his head, loose contents jarred in transit, and he ached like a motherfucker. His body was on fire with agony, making him see red, making him seethe. Part of him wanted - needed - to find a hole to crawl into, to collapse, to be safe while his body undertook its long and frantic healing process … but he knew the moment he gave in, he would be out for a very long time. He was too damaged, too badly hurt; he could taste blood and gunpowder in his mouth, his guts were on fire from organs attempting to knit themselves back together (the shirt could only stand up to gunfire for so long - now it was tatters, and the only thing completely covering his chest was blood ), his chest still bubbled with blood when he attempted to take a breath. (Full breaths were right out, but as long as he kept it shallow, sips of air, he was okay.)

It was his traitorous body that was turning the tide here, keeping the beast at bay - it could no longer take what he - it - was asking of it. But Logan didn’t want to be sane right now. He couldn’t be sane. It wouldn’t help.

He staggered to the cockpit as the pilot swung the chopper back towards home base (wherever that was), and the pilot pulled a handgun out from under the control panel, but not in time. Logan slashed it to scrap with a single swipe of his claw, and retracted them into his left hand in time to grab the asshole by the throat. He let a single claw out to poke him under his Adam’s apple, for added leverage, but he hardly needed to. The pilot pissed himself staring up at him, eyes almost all white, jaw so slack he was going to start drooling in a second. He was terrified by him, almost paralyzed, and he was a fucking gangster.

Logan wondered how bad he looked. Covered in blood, holes still in the face? He knew his eyes were healed; he could see fine. He probably didn’t look Human anymore, or at least not like any Human you’d ever want to meet.

“Put the chopper down now,” he growled, feeling blood ooze out of his mouth when he spoke. He couldn’t do anything about it, so he just let it happen, and the stink of fear coming off the guy increased thirty fold. He wanted to bust out a window to get some fresher air in here. “Put it down or I’m shoving you out and taking it down myself.” The guy was now shaking in his seat, unable to look away, so Logan shoved him brutally towards the control panel, breaking the spell. “Now!”

The pilot did as he was told, and Logan was glad, because he honestly didn’t know how long he was going to be able to stay conscious.

He wondered if he’d wake up again.  He realized he didn't care.