9

John wondered, not for the first time, if the Swiss Miss was a telepath.

It would explain why he was going along with all of this. He did wonder, as you just had to question why you were playing along with something when you really didn’t want to, yet couldn’t quite stop yourself. Of course he had no doubt that Logan would kill him if he tried anything, and if half the stories Mystique had told him about Logan were true, he had real reason to believe that he could bake him to his skeleton and Logan would still manage to come back and kill him.  He just couldn’t risk fucking with him, could he?

That was always odd. Even though he had problems with all the X-freaks, he felt he understood Logan the most. He didn’t fuck around - you try and kill him, he’d gut you first.  The others would just smack you around a bit, but no matter how much they kicked your ass, you couldn’t work up a big fear of them. Logan, however, could genuinely fucking kill you, and therefore it was easy to be afraid of him, even though his power was honestly minor and not that impressive by itself.  He couldn’t zap you with laser eyes or mindfuck you stupid or control the weather - he could heal.  Big fucking whoop. Who knew, then, that he’d be the one you always had to keep an eye on?

Magneto didn’t think so. He thought Logan was nothing but a thug, and a manipulated thug at that, brought in by Xavier to do all the dirty work so he could keep his own hands clean. It was one of the few things Magneto and Mystique openly disagreed about. Oh, she felt he was Xavier’s clean-up artist, but she knew he wasn't just a dumb thug; in her opinion, he was smarter than he looked. (Magneto’s answer to that was always an amused, “Well he’d have to be, wouldn’t he?”)  According to her, you dismissed Logan at your own peril - the minute you figured he was down and out for good was the split-second before he showed up and ruined everything. For some reason, she usually referred to him as the “old man”, and told stories about him that hinted at a shared past between them that Logan appeared to have no clue about.  She even admired him, in a strange kind of way.  Mystique obviously knew him, and yet Logan seemed not to really know her at all.  Magneto treated Mystique’s stories about her and Logan fighting over the years as so much trivia, but it was really weird - it was like Mystique considered her and Logan trying to kill each other as a type of flirting. Hell, maybe she did, and frankly that was even freakier. She was a really scary, creepy chick … making her and Logan an oddly perfect match, now that he thought about it.

But why was he going along with this? John didn’t even understand it. They kept talking about this guy like he was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but from what he could tell, this guy was a mutant named Pestilence, and he wanted to kill Brendan for … some reason, that really wasn’t clear. They thought he’d kill a lot more in the meantime, though, just because he could. If Logan could be believed, this guy killed shit by just showing up. He shed a black fungus that dissolved everything, or something like that. There was lots of talk of gods and demons and shit, but John knew they were fucking with him. Maybe just to see how gullible he was.

There were a couple of distressing developments. Sid joined them, and he wasn’t sure if Sid could even be burned; his skin was bulletproof, right? He was also some kind of fucking Human martial arts computer. He never wanted to fight Sid ever, because he knew he’d kick his ass. Hell, Sid could probably kick Logan’s ass, if he didn’t have those claws. If Sid was honestly fireproof, then he was completely fucked.

The second bad thing was Marc and the Swiss Miss seemed rather cuddly. So they were a couple? Frankly, ick. He had nothing against gays personally, but he didn’t want to see that shit up close. The problem here was that unless Marc just went for the pretty boy-toy type - it was possible; he didn’t know Marc well enough to even venture a guess - he had to reclassify the Swiss Miss as possibly dangerous. He didn’t look it, but if he was a telepath or something, John wouldn’t even have a chance to fight.  He really didn’t like telepaths - they took the fairness out of things.

And Marc’s boyfriend kept looking at him. Not in a flirty way (as far as he could tell), but as if daring him to make a move. John thought some really nasty things in his direction, but if he was a teep, he either ignored him or didn’t care.

Then there was the third problem, that if he managed to get a jump on Switzerland there, Marc would kill his ass. Like Logan, he didn’t fuck around, but unlike Logan, the guy packed guns he wasn’t afraid to use with an accuracy that would make most snipers jealous. Or he could just paralyze him with his toxin and do whatever the hell he wanted with him ‘til it wore off, which seemed worse somehow. Leave it to Logan to have morally dubious friends who would probably be better villains. He considered trying to fuck with Logan by asking about his wife - Mystique had said he used to be married to this Japanese chick (a bit of a mindblower - Logan married?  Seriously?  He just couldn’t imagine that … and what kind of woman would marry Logan?  That was really hard to picture …) - but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that pissing off Logan might not be the best strategy right now.  Yeah, he needed him alive, but not necessarily in one piece.

The group took him back to this office, “Angel Investigations”, where a whole buttload of weirdoes was waiting for them. He knew Angel by name if not by sight, and he had no idea what his power was, except that he had something weird. Then there was Bren, of course, although his physical strength when he went all green and spiky was bound to be more of a help than his perfect recall. The others he didn’t know at all - a pretty boy who seemed to be friendly with Bren, a woman who was probably too old for the bright blue hair she was sporting, a young guy who apparently thought he was hilarious, an older British guy (what was he doing here?), and a handful of really freaky looking mutants: one chick was all green and had a tail that twitched like a cat’s when she talked (she was still pretty hot looking, though), a guy with an almost impenetrable accent and yellow glass eyes (how could he see out of those?), and the saddest sack of shit he had ever seen - a guy(?) who was just a pile of clear slime. He gargled instead of talked, but the dude with glass eyes seemed to be able to understand him. Wow, mutations could be a mixed bag, couldn’t they? He couldn’t imagine what the evolutionary benefits of being a small blob of clear slime was.

They were discussing as a group how to find this Pestilence guy and how best to confront him - and Logan finally put on a shirt - and then, when the question came up about whether they could trust John (yeah, like he was the biggest weirdo in the room), Rogue said Logan had pushed him. What the fuck ..? No he hadn’t! Threatened him, choked him, pinned him against the wall, sure, but he never pushed him. What was that about?

The sun was starting to set, which for some reason was important to them. Logan explained that he was the only one who could engage the guy in a direct fight, but he didn’t think it would last long, as he figured that Pestilence wouldn’t bother with him since he already knew that the fight would be a stalemate. Which was a no-brainer - Logan had a healing factor! So of course a fight with a guy named Pestilence would be a stalemate. Duh.

His role in this was to burn off all the black fungus this guy produced as soon as he saw it, and try not to burn up anything else. The old British guy - apparently named Giles - and Angel were concerned other unintended things could catch fire, which led the Swiss Miss - Matt - to say, “It won’t happen. I guarantee it.”

How could he guarantee it?  If he had fire powers too, why did they need him?

John wasn’t completely sure what the fuck was going on. But this was about a thousand shades of wrong.

*****

John spent most of his time in sullen silence, looking at everyone suspiciously, but Logan didn’t give a shit as long as the push stuck.  And it seemed to be holding for now.

Logan wasn't crazy about the plan they'd worked out, even though most of it was his idea, because it relied so much on other people. He was basically distraction, nothing more, but then again they needed lots of distraction if this was going to work. If Reshef got an inkling of what they were really up to, he’d probably run for the hills.

Rags had to draw anti-poisoning symbols on everybody who might be engaged by him, which was a bit of a pain, especially when it came to John, as he thought it was some kind of joke. He thought they were all mutants, and the mention of magic made him think they were all taking the piss. That was fine, though, because it was easier than actually explaining it to him.

After that, Rags, Giles, and Helga went off on their own, as she knew of at least one trick in Bob’s “annoy the gods” arsenal that might work on Reshef.  Of course it was equally possible that it wouldn’t, but they had to give it a shot.

It was up to Logan to find Reshef when they were ready and, much like the push, this was something he hadn’t done before.  But he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, letting Bob’s power spread out from him like a net.  It was an odd thing, but in his mind, with his power, the world was rendered this textural map of energy signatures and lines, dark spots where previous dimensional incursions had taken place, weak dimensional spots as livid as bloody wounds, and Reshef’s power tugged at him like a bright light must pull at a moth. He was a spot of palpable energy, and yet completely wrong; he was a dark, ugly purple, a deep contusion that throbbed with bad energy that somehow seemed tainted. He was like a spotlight of pure malevolence. It made him wonder if Reshef could find him so easily, and he bet that was probably true.

It was Rags who came back and teleported them just outside of where Reshef now was, which was downtown, within two blocks of the Church of the Stone Temple. Coincidence? Unlikely. Logan had asked Rags and Giles if Reshef had anything against the Gorgons, but they were both stumped. As far as they knew, no, but did anyone really know what all went on between gods? Well, maybe Bob, but if Bob had some knowledge of it, it hadn’t been transferred to him.

The problem was, this was a busy downtown strip, and there was not only a lot of stuff the fungus could consume, but a lot of people Reshef could kill.  He wanted collateral damage; he wanted to force a major confrontation.

As soon as they arrived, they found a good spot to put Pyro in, and Giles quickly drew a circle around him while Rags chanted something, much to his annoyance. “What the fuck is this?”

“A protective circle,” Helga told him. “Don’t leave it. Once you start burning off the fungus Reshef’s bound to get pissed at you. This should protect you for a minute or so.”

He stared at her in disbelief, and looked uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure what he should be more pissed about. “A minute? What the fuck good is that gonna do me?”

“I’ll distract him,” Logan said. And he would too. You wouldn’t believe how much could be done within a minute until you actually fought in a battle where the last thirty seconds defined it all.

Matt was standing down the street from him. He was carrying his own water bottle, but he was wisely standing near a fire hydrant, so if he needed more he had instant access to it. Rags had ducked into an alley with Giles as soon as he was done with the protection circle, and everyone else took up positions on rooftops of the nearby buildings with their weapons of choice. Of course they’d all have only one shot before they gained Reshef’s notice, but hopefully that would be all they needed.

Logan took up position in the middle of the road, leading some people to honk at him and curse him in three different languages, but then he gathered up a lot of Bob energy, making his vision turn blue, and commanded, “Get out of here.”

That worked; people scattered. Almost not soon enough though, because after a moment, there was Reshef at the end of the street, glaring at him. “Didn’t you learn anything the first time?” The black fungus was spreading out from where he was standing like a living shadow.

“Light it up,” he said to John.

John sighed, as if extremely put out, and clicked his igniters, saying, “Well, fucking flame-on then.” What started as little more than a spark at the end of his hands suddenly erupted into long tunnels of swirling flames that torpedoed straight for the areas beside Reshef. The flames licked the pavement, and just like he suspected, scorched it clean.

The vortexes of flame around him didn’t bother Reshef at all, but he looked pissed off at the incineration of his disease. Logan felt the power surge from Reshef before he disappeared and then reappeared right in front of John, reaching out to grab him. But even though John flinched, Reshef seemed to come right up against an invisible barrier. “You think magic can hold me?  I’m a god.”

John idly doused the pavement around him with flames, and shrugged. “Yeah, aren’t we all?”

Reshef glared at him, as his hand pushed against the invisible barrier of the protective circle, moving in by increments. Logan ran at him, focusing on the blue energy within him, popped his claws at the last second, and sliced Reshef’s head off.

“Holy fuck!” John exclaimed in shock, jumping as Reshef’s head went flying and his body thudded to the sidewalk in front of him, spouting oily black blood. “I thought you were just gonna distract him!”

“That is distracting.”

John stared at him in wide eyed disbelief. “No it’s fucking not!  It’s killing him!”

“No it ain’t.”

“But -” He stopped as a gloopy noise became quite pronounced, and they both looked down to see a new head growing out of Reshef’s neck stump like a quickly inflated balloon. Even before it had fully formed, Reshef’s hand grabbed Logan by the ankle and swung him bodily into the nearest building, as if he was no heavier than a mannequin made of Styrofoam.

The impact was so hard it was utterly devastating. He didn’t leave a little dent in the building, he took out a huge chunk, and he could feel fragments of the façade in the back of his neck, blood leaking down his back. If he hadn’t had an adamantium spine and skull and Bob’s energy, his head would have easily lopped off. His consciousness seriously wavered, to the point where he knew his eyes were open but he only saw blue tinged black for a couple of moments. “You are merely an avatar,” Reshef said. “Even if you were given all of Bob’s power, you couldn’t stand against me, meat.”

“Bob?” John repeated. “That weird guy? The one who always sang?”

Logan’s vision came back in a wash of blue, in time to see Reshef look back at John. John had two swirling orbs of fire ready to let loose at any moment, but he already seemed to get the idea that while the flames burnt off the fungus, they didn’t seem to do anything to Reshef personally.  He hadn’t moved out of the circle, though. “You think he’s a Human, boy?  How stupid are you?”

John glowered at him, as lippy as always. “Not as stupid as you, asshole. You really think you can kill him?  If Jean couldn’t, you ain’t got a chance, freak boy.”

Reshef really didn’t like getting attitude. “I can kill this entire world, chattle.”

And that’s when Reshef’s brand new head exploded.