Post by Trish on Jun 1, 2014 13:29:23 GMT -5
THE FIGHT
The man walked with purpose through the woods. It was rare for this man to put down the cigars and the beer and move about with any real direction, but this night was different. Living in a house, walking in a city, doing the errands of a civilized creature; this was not his purpose. It did not fit him, it did not feel right, and those around him preferred he just keep out of the way. Tonight, though, his life had meaning. This was his nature. This was his drive. This was his purpose.
This was the reason she let him out of his cage.
The man was dressed for action. From neck to ankles he wore black leather; coming from beneath that a thin turtleneck was pulled up over his mouth and nose. Over the leather suit he wore brown cargo pants, and across his chest a bandolier bearing short sections of pipe and a frighteningly large hunting knife. Over all that, a small leather jacket. He carried no gun nor sword nor other heavy weapon, but the creatures of the night went silence in his presence. The birds and rats and bugs knew he was dangerous. Would his prey?
While the majority of his kind bore keen eyes or quick ears or a sharp nose, this one’s senses were as dull as the intelligent apes he imitated and so he had to resort to tracking them by normal means. Fortunately, tonight his prey consisted of apes who only thought they were intelligent. They’d left him a veritable highway of scuffed trees, broken sticks, tire marks, and diesel stink to follow and he walked with the same ease that the stars twinkled down through the night’s cloudless sky.
For the most part, he found what he expected to at the end of the trail. It was a small metal facility surrounded by a big brick wall. The wall had a chain-link gate at the front and a long curl of razor wire along the top. If it weren’t for that wire glinting in the moonlight, the man could easily hop and scramble over this wall meant to stop mere mortals, but with it there the trip would be… uncomfortable. Fortunately, the gate was a joke held shut by a padlock and there was only one thing keeping the man from kicking the cheap thing off.
There was someone else here.
The man’s senses did not grant him sight or scent or hearing, but with what they did grant them he was aware of the other man in the shadows. The other man stepped out into the light spilling from the little compound. He was a little on the short side, something our hero could sympathize with if he could feel such a thing on a crisp clear night in the wilderness. The other man had a scowl built into his face, weary wrinkles and angry eyes. He had his hair brushed back into two ridiculous tufts. He wore simple work pants and a plaid short and hiking boots; the most dangerous looking thing he had on were a pair of dog tags. The other man’s nostrils flared and he drew in the crisp air. He stared into the first man. “What are you here for?”
The man both did and did not appreciate the gruff way in which the new man spoke to him. He could appreciate a demand for respect, yet he was instinctively offended by it being demanded from him personally. He growled back at the man. “I’m here to go in there, get the girl, and take her home. I’m gonna do you a favor and assume you don’t have a problem with that.”
The other man stared, unsure of what he was dealing with. “You with the Brotherhood?”
“Do I look black to you, mountain man?” he asked, annoyed instead of confused. He wasn’t wired quite right.
“I’m afraid I do have a problem, then. That girl’s coming with me. Considering I have no idea who the shit you are, I’m gonna have to assume that you haven’t been around the block quite as many times as me. I’m gonna do you a favor and advise you to just walk away.
If this had been Storm and Stellar, or Meld and Cyclops, or Qi and Colossus, or even Drift and Nightcrawler, this might be where they’d talk for a minute and compare notes to see if they had the same objective and been glad to have found an ally. This was not any of these people, however.
Our hero clenched his gloved fists and approached the other. The other strode to meet him. “Shoulda took my advice, bub.”
This was Sam Podden and Logan Howlett, and they had their own way of working things out.
Logan could smell the mutant on Spur but wasn’t prepared for how fast his new enemy was. Spur cleared the last five steps between them in a single lightning-quick stride and brought his knuckles into the mountain man’s temple. Sam could smell the stubborn on Wolverine, but wasn’t prepared for how hard his head was. His knuckles throbbed from the impact, but in response he just fired a few more punches at the man’s head. Logan ducked away from the barrage, brain rattling, and threw a punch. Spur jerked back fast enough for the punch to just wing his chest and he hopped back to reevaluate his opponent.
The Wolverine scowled further. Despite what people thought of him, he did not enjoy using the tools that had been forced upon him. A good fight with friend or foe was a treat, but taking the life of a random person killed him a little inside each time he had to do it. Still – this new guy was too fast, too tough – a fistfight would take hours. His adamantium claws cut his flesh, sliding out between each finger to lock in place, ready to cut.
Spur’s knuckles swelled and bled around the cracks Wolverine’s skull had put in them. If a normal man had taken that first punch to the head, he’d be out cold. If the same normal man had taken all those punches, he’d be dead. This guy was barely even dizzy. Now, the mountain man was growing some kind of knives from his hands? Podden was going to have to escalate. By the time he was done planning his next moves, his cracked knuckles had already healed.
Spur made a jerking movement. He feinted left, but instead went up; his legs propelled him several meters into the air. He came down on Logan’s back with the tread of his combat boots. The thick rubber teeth were unforgiving, but not nearly as much as the long enamel-covered spikes that slid out of Spur’s legs. He kicked each spur into Logan’s back again and again and again, driving six deep wounds in, some of them so deep that blood began to spread on the front of that plaid shirt. Spur kicked off again, driving Logan to the ground as he leapt away. Despite the seemingly successful attack, Podden was disconcerted.
He’d felt his spurs make contact with bone inside the other man. Normally his weapons would simply punch through bone and continue on their way, but in this case his spurs twisted painfully aside to go around the skeletal structure. The man didn’t just have knives in his hands – his whole goddamn skeleton was some kind of metal. This guy was on some level of hardcore Spur hadn’t geared up to deal with.
These suspicions were confirmed by an unholy gasp from the other man; Wolverine’s diaphragm had given a violent jerk to re-inflate his lungs. His muscles and respiratory systems repaired, the Wolverine pushed up from the ground and turned to face the other mutant. “That really fuckin’ hurt, you upside-down piece-a shit,” he complained. He moved to return the favor, lunging in with a bladed gut punch.
While his adamantium skeleton had saved Logan many times, it cost him this blow. Spur’s bestial gifts did not grant him sight or scent or hearing, but he perceived a whole new sense. All around him, a faint electromagnetic field kept track of every spark, every movement, every electric impulse of a muscle movement. His brain kept an active map of every living body around him, and tracked their every movement for him. This mountain man’s metal skeleton only reflected that field, making him light up like a Christmas tree under Spur’s special electrosense. Wolverine may as well have been screaming every action before he did it like some bad kung-fu actor, as far as fighting Podden was concerned.
Armed with these extra milliseconds of reaction time, Spur evaded to the right and spun his long leg through the air to put his boot in the back of Logan’s head. Logan grunted and lurched forward, blood dribbling over his lip. Seemed like the new guy’s kicks packed a hell of a lot more than his punches. Spur went with it. A kick to the side of Wolverine’s head sent him staggering to the side, but Spur was already on that side to drive the heel of his boot into the other man’s neck. A might kick to the underbelly was not stopped by the metal skeleton, and a kick to the chest saw blood flying from Logan’s mouth and the older mutant back on his ass in the dirt.
Podden leapt in to stomp the air out of the mountain man’s lungs, but Wolverine acted in those few milliseconds while his enemy was will airborne and slashed his claws at Spur’s thigh. Spur twisted away in time that the claws only drew across his leg, but that was enough to cut through the pants and the leather and the skin and a short ways onto the meat. Podden landed his other kick on Logan’s solar plexus and launched himself away. He landed on one foot and hopped back a few feet as such, three red striped decorating his thigh. He winced and hissed behind his makeshift mask; that really fuckin’ hurt.
The Wolverine was back on his feet and his claws flashed in the moonlight, silver and read, as he took a fresh assault on Spur. One good touch from those blades might leave Podden in halves and from that last stroke he knew that, so his one good leg and his electric senses made sure to frantically launch his body away from each slash and stab. Slowly, his other leg lowered to the ground and soon was on equal footing with the first. His refreshed leg kicked a spray of dirt at Logan’s face before acting with the other to launch him ten meters back from arm’s reach.
Logan scowled again. “Shit – you heal too? We’re gonna be here till sunrise, bub.”
You’re gonna be here -at- sunrise, ‘bub’,” came the response. Logan ran in at an angle, up a tree and from limb to limb. His blades silently nipped through tree branches as he moved along, sending the heavy limbs crashing down at Spur. Spur dodged them with ease, but they were never meant to hit; Logan had guided the other mutant’s path so now his back was to that brick wall. Logan charged in stabbing, once, twice, thrice; Spur hopped back from the first, and back from the second. Near the wall now, he hopped away from the last and left Logan’s field of vision. Logan could still smell Podden, and so he slashed left and jerked his head right. Neither his eyes not his claws found the man, so he flashed his attention left. Nothing.
Spur looked down at the tufts of hair for a moment as he stood horizontally against the bricks, his spurs driven into the wall and holding him in place. He reached down and grabbed the mountain man’s head, slamming his face into the wall. He slammed again, and again, and again, then rubbed Logan’s face forcefully against the rough red bricks. He repeated the action; slamming, slamming, slamming, then striking Logan’s head against the wall like a match. He heard the sound of metal on brick, but no sparks. Spur decided he wasn’t getting through that metal.
Logan’s brain caught up to the action a bit after the second strike and he decided he didn’t want Spur holding his head anymore. Spur’s electrosense tracked a bladed fist flying up at him and he was able to retract his spurs and kick off the wall in time; the claws hit the wall instead of his feet, but Podden looked back to see them pass through the earthy material like butter. Podden was dealing with a bad boy. He was gonna have to take off his belt.
Podden flicked a small piece of pipe at Logan’s feet and it exploded into a flash of fire and light and drywall screws. Logan was fast, but the bomb flash burnt his thigh and drove a few of the screws into his leg. Among the cloud of dirt and smoke, Podden moved silently. He landed behind Wolverine with a warped rattle of metal and soon began wrapping something around Logan’s neck. Spur’s belt was around his hand, enabling him to grip the length of razor wire he’d pulled down from the wall. He wrapped it around Logan’s neck twice, then continued to bind it around his arms and torso. He put a bow on the present by firing his strength-enhanced leg into the small of Wolverine’s back, sending him flying to land on his still-healing face.
Wolverine rolled over; his face had already healed, but he bore strange tattoos where new skin had grown around the dirt. As his body pushed the dirt particles out, he struggled against the wire. Every strain and wriggle and jerk only bound the wire tighter. It soon sliced into his throat, severing completely through his windpipe and jugular, pumping blood down into his lungs as he breathed through two gurgling grins in his neck.
Spur moved over and knelt down next to the older mutant. “If you’re anything like me, and I think you are, then you can walk away from this. Unless you like having gills, though, I suggest you hold still and let me go about my business. When I’m done I’ll send someone to..,” he gave a bit of the wire a painful tug. “…cut you loose.”
Confident that this was a deal that couldn’t be passed up, Spur rose and headed for the wall. He expected to hear the sound of men rushing toward the sound of the explosion from a moment ago, but instead what he heard was his new enemy trashing around on the ground. He turned to look; Wolverine’s flesh had already healed around the wire but he was aggravating the wounds but straining against the wire and flailing his wrists around. One of his long claws managed to nip the length of the wire still attached to the wall. The wire became looser as he rolled around, and his claws cut into his body here and there to sever the wire buried in his flesh. Spur kicked his ribs, his head, reminding him to stay down, but Logan forgot and shed enough wired to rise to his feet.
He ripped the remaining wires out of his arms, and with a grimace he yanked out the two that had grown into his neck. He planted his hand over his bleeding throat, but as Podden fired a kick at his forehead, Logan was able to block it with the back of his arm and stay on his feet. His belly convulsed and he retched up the blood that had gone into his lungs earlier, coughing out a red mist. When he looked up from this, his eyes held an inhuman feral fury that Podden had only ever seen reflected in the weapons of his enemies.
The pain; the rage; the humiliation – something made Logan faster. His next stab drove into Spur’s abdomen and then sliced out through his ribs. The claws were so sharp that Spur didn’t feel it at first, but when he took a step and felt the ends of his ribs grind together he knew this wound might need some attention. The pain came in a surge as he leapt away, but he managed to a good 2 feet up in the branch of a large tree. As the Wolverine slashed at the thick trunk, Spur took his belt from his hand and put it around his abdomen. He pulled it tight to replace the severed support muscles that would still need a minute to heal, grimacing as blood oozed out through the slits in his leather suit. Looked like he was the one with the gills now.
Being from the land of lumberjacks, it didn’t take long for Logan to slice away enough of the tree that it started to fall over. Podden dropped from the tree and stomped both feet on top pf Logan’s head like he was an evil mushroom, jarring the metal vertebrae of his neck together and buckling his knees. Logan was kicked into the path of the falling tree and stumbled as its weight came down on his back. It pressed him into the ground as Spur leapt into another tree, wincing and holding his side. That had not been conducive to his healing.
The leafy branches of the new tree gave him a place to hide for the moment while his muscles and bones knit back together. He kept an eye on the lumberjack, not expecting the tree to hold him forever. Indeed, Logan was already reaching back over his shoulders and stabbing furiously at the wood while pushing up forcefully with his knees, and already the tree was beginning to creak with the early signs of defeat.
Spur was healed by the time Logan broke up through the fallen tree, red-faced and panting. Logan looked around furiously for his enemy, slashing at random trees, remembering to look up this time. Figuring the mountain man was a fast learner, Spur opted to drop low to the ground as silently as he could. He charged the Logan from below. The Wolverine was prepared for another kick or spur attack but was surprised when Spur appeared below waist-level and drove both his fists at his underbelly. He was off-guard enough that the attack head, and he felt an unexpected sharp pain drive into his stomach. Spur leapt far back after the simple attack.
Logan didn’t have to look – he could feel it was just a knife. He’d been stabbed by many knives before and was a little confused that his opponent would try such a comparatively weak attack after all that he’d shrugged off so far in this fight. He squinted at Spur, and noticed a difference; the largest pipebomb was missing from his bandolier. Logan looked down, seeing it strapped to the handle of the knife with Podden’s bloody belt.
“F-” he managed to say, before Podden pushed the button on his remote. A roar of light and flame and fury and shrapnel carried him off his feet and away from the fight, replacing him with a small crater. It may have been a bit of overkill, but at this point Podden was willing to accept whatever kind of kill he could get. He dropped to the ground and strode to the gate, taking a moment to examine the lock. Yeah, he could kick this thing right off. “Cheap-ass security,” he muttered, before feeling a little tug at his shoulder.
He knew that tug; it was the same signal his body sent him when the mountain man’s claws has cut through his side, before it realized it should be in pain. This time it passed into his shoulder blade and up through the top, his left arm falling slack. He turned, expecting to somehow see the mountain man. Instead, he saw a horrible metal skeleton full of pulsating organs, wearing a pair of work pants. An eyeless skull stared at him as blooding nostrils wetly snorted for his scent. Losing his composure for the moment, he used his good arm to grab one of the fallen branches from earlier and began to beat the abomination with it wherever he could land a blow. This held up until two milky orbs swelled up in the skull’s sockets and produced two little black dots that locked onto the branch. A quick swipe of the claws turned his branch into a stick and he backed off. “What the HELL are you?” Spur inquired of the lumberjack.
Hairy skin crawled over those bones and organs, until soon Logan was standing there good as new, but suddenly shirtless – like a bad kung-fu actor. “I’m the best there is at what I do, bub.” He moved in for another flurry of swipes, and while Podden was busy holding his shoulder in place he managed a few more stripes of shallow cuts on the mutant. The cuts began to add up on the leaping mutant, and it wasn’t till Spur was beginning to feel panic that he finally felt the tendon in his shoulder knit together and pull the various parts within nice and taut.
A carefully aimed stomp landed on Logan’s foot and the spur fired between his metatarsals and into the dirt. Spur slapped Logan’s arms off to the side and punished his jaw with a half-dozen quick uppercuts. The mountain man’s brain rattled again, Spur leapt away to stand horizontally on the trunk of a tree. Spur crossed his arms. “You’re really causing me a lot of grief, ‘bub’,” offered the younger man. “I shoulda been in and out of there by now. By now the goddamn guard patrols have changed and the security has changed and I’m gonna be going in there blind. Plus, you’re gonna make me give you something I was saving for those shitheads inside. You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Why don’t you just get the hell down here so I can cut your head off, huh? I got a lot of other people to deal with that are a way bigger deal, and almost as ugly as you,’ he complained. “You know your kicks don’t work, your damn spikes don’t work, you blew me up with a fuckin’ bomb and here I am!” he spread his arms out to the side to verify that he was, indeed, still there. “And, you know I can cut down that tree and shove it up your ass, so why the hell are you even still here? Is the Brotherhood recruiting from Special Ed now?”
Spur watched Logan’s body movements as he ranted. He stretched his electrosense, mapping out the man’s body – looking to see what was still damage, what was weak, what was tired. Upsettingly, it wasn’t very damn much. Still, it allowed him to plot his best possible approach. He retracted his spikes and fell to a low crouch. A quick kick off to the ground turned into a baseball slide and he kicked Logan’s gut again, his spur driving in. Claws stabbed down from above; Spur rolled over to evade it and kicked his other spur into that gut. Finishing the roll to all fours, he leapt away, a clear liquid trailing from the ankles of his boots. Logan took one step after Podden, but stopped as he felt something wrong inside himself.
The mutant known as Spur has long spikes of enameled bone sheathed in his calves. Combined with his powerful legs they can punch into a brick wall or through a bulletproof vest. This, however, is not the true danger of these hidden weapons. The spines are hollow, and when Podden made this attack he inflated Wolverine’s stomach and liver with massive doses of venom. Logan grabbed his stomach and vomited up most of what had made it into his stomach; a thin violet-tinted liquid tainted with a stream of blood. The venom was in his system, though, and he wrenched this way and that as his body struggled to identify and combat the complex cocktail of toxins that Podden’s x-factor produces.
Podden kicked with his boots, and kicked with his spurs, stabbing and battering the Wolverine as his body was being overcome by the venom. Kicks to the head, stabs in the side, kicks into the wall, stabs and small injections into the meat of his limbs. Spur watched the wounds heal slower and slower, and the fight drain out of his worthy opponent. He kicked again, and again, and again, watching Logan’s knees dip lower and lower, and witing for him to drop.
He didn’t.
A kick aimed for the jaw as halted as Logan’s meaty fist leapt up and caught Spur’s shin. The man’s shin was red as a sunburn – his body had finally identified all the toxins and was now burning them out of his system with a full-body fever. Logan grabbed Podden’s lower leg with his other hand and snapped the bone loudly over his knee. The younger mutant was swung by his broken leg, into the wall – then swung the other way and tossed. He landed hard on his shoulder and flopped onto his back, his lower left leg bent at a hideous angle.
Wolverine strode over to him, raising his arm to aim his claws down at the other man. “I think it’s over, bub,” he said.
Spur opened one pained eye and looked up at him. “I think… you should try thinking again.” Spur’s mental map of Logan’s body filled his senses, and fired a last kick with his remaining leg into the man’s throat. His spur fired out at a difficult angle; up through the Wolverine’s larynx, just behind his soft palate, and into the small opening that led into his braincase. A spurt of venom mixed into the fluids around the cerebral cortex. By the time Spur had retracted his spike and begun to drag himself away, Logan’s pending attack had already grown limp.
Wolverine’s pupils dilated and wandered off in different directions. His body forgot that it was supposed to be upright, and he dropped forward to give the ground one last kiss for the night. Spur sat up and straightened out his leg, watching those silver claws nervously until the bone fused back together. He pulled himself wearily to his feet, walking to the chain-link link gate and finally kicking the padlock off. He took a last look at Logan sleeping it off there in the grass. “I hope I never see that asshole again,” he noted, then strode into the compound to save the day.
The man walked with purpose through the woods. It was rare for this man to put down the cigars and the beer and move about with any real direction, but this night was different. Living in a house, walking in a city, doing the errands of a civilized creature; this was not his purpose. It did not fit him, it did not feel right, and those around him preferred he just keep out of the way. Tonight, though, his life had meaning. This was his nature. This was his drive. This was his purpose.
This was the reason she let him out of his cage.
The man was dressed for action. From neck to ankles he wore black leather; coming from beneath that a thin turtleneck was pulled up over his mouth and nose. Over the leather suit he wore brown cargo pants, and across his chest a bandolier bearing short sections of pipe and a frighteningly large hunting knife. Over all that, a small leather jacket. He carried no gun nor sword nor other heavy weapon, but the creatures of the night went silence in his presence. The birds and rats and bugs knew he was dangerous. Would his prey?
While the majority of his kind bore keen eyes or quick ears or a sharp nose, this one’s senses were as dull as the intelligent apes he imitated and so he had to resort to tracking them by normal means. Fortunately, tonight his prey consisted of apes who only thought they were intelligent. They’d left him a veritable highway of scuffed trees, broken sticks, tire marks, and diesel stink to follow and he walked with the same ease that the stars twinkled down through the night’s cloudless sky.
For the most part, he found what he expected to at the end of the trail. It was a small metal facility surrounded by a big brick wall. The wall had a chain-link gate at the front and a long curl of razor wire along the top. If it weren’t for that wire glinting in the moonlight, the man could easily hop and scramble over this wall meant to stop mere mortals, but with it there the trip would be… uncomfortable. Fortunately, the gate was a joke held shut by a padlock and there was only one thing keeping the man from kicking the cheap thing off.
There was someone else here.
The man’s senses did not grant him sight or scent or hearing, but with what they did grant them he was aware of the other man in the shadows. The other man stepped out into the light spilling from the little compound. He was a little on the short side, something our hero could sympathize with if he could feel such a thing on a crisp clear night in the wilderness. The other man had a scowl built into his face, weary wrinkles and angry eyes. He had his hair brushed back into two ridiculous tufts. He wore simple work pants and a plaid short and hiking boots; the most dangerous looking thing he had on were a pair of dog tags. The other man’s nostrils flared and he drew in the crisp air. He stared into the first man. “What are you here for?”
The man both did and did not appreciate the gruff way in which the new man spoke to him. He could appreciate a demand for respect, yet he was instinctively offended by it being demanded from him personally. He growled back at the man. “I’m here to go in there, get the girl, and take her home. I’m gonna do you a favor and assume you don’t have a problem with that.”
The other man stared, unsure of what he was dealing with. “You with the Brotherhood?”
“Do I look black to you, mountain man?” he asked, annoyed instead of confused. He wasn’t wired quite right.
“I’m afraid I do have a problem, then. That girl’s coming with me. Considering I have no idea who the shit you are, I’m gonna have to assume that you haven’t been around the block quite as many times as me. I’m gonna do you a favor and advise you to just walk away.
If this had been Storm and Stellar, or Meld and Cyclops, or Qi and Colossus, or even Drift and Nightcrawler, this might be where they’d talk for a minute and compare notes to see if they had the same objective and been glad to have found an ally. This was not any of these people, however.
Our hero clenched his gloved fists and approached the other. The other strode to meet him. “Shoulda took my advice, bub.”
This was Sam Podden and Logan Howlett, and they had their own way of working things out.
Logan could smell the mutant on Spur but wasn’t prepared for how fast his new enemy was. Spur cleared the last five steps between them in a single lightning-quick stride and brought his knuckles into the mountain man’s temple. Sam could smell the stubborn on Wolverine, but wasn’t prepared for how hard his head was. His knuckles throbbed from the impact, but in response he just fired a few more punches at the man’s head. Logan ducked away from the barrage, brain rattling, and threw a punch. Spur jerked back fast enough for the punch to just wing his chest and he hopped back to reevaluate his opponent.
The Wolverine scowled further. Despite what people thought of him, he did not enjoy using the tools that had been forced upon him. A good fight with friend or foe was a treat, but taking the life of a random person killed him a little inside each time he had to do it. Still – this new guy was too fast, too tough – a fistfight would take hours. His adamantium claws cut his flesh, sliding out between each finger to lock in place, ready to cut.
Spur’s knuckles swelled and bled around the cracks Wolverine’s skull had put in them. If a normal man had taken that first punch to the head, he’d be out cold. If the same normal man had taken all those punches, he’d be dead. This guy was barely even dizzy. Now, the mountain man was growing some kind of knives from his hands? Podden was going to have to escalate. By the time he was done planning his next moves, his cracked knuckles had already healed.
Spur made a jerking movement. He feinted left, but instead went up; his legs propelled him several meters into the air. He came down on Logan’s back with the tread of his combat boots. The thick rubber teeth were unforgiving, but not nearly as much as the long enamel-covered spikes that slid out of Spur’s legs. He kicked each spur into Logan’s back again and again and again, driving six deep wounds in, some of them so deep that blood began to spread on the front of that plaid shirt. Spur kicked off again, driving Logan to the ground as he leapt away. Despite the seemingly successful attack, Podden was disconcerted.
He’d felt his spurs make contact with bone inside the other man. Normally his weapons would simply punch through bone and continue on their way, but in this case his spurs twisted painfully aside to go around the skeletal structure. The man didn’t just have knives in his hands – his whole goddamn skeleton was some kind of metal. This guy was on some level of hardcore Spur hadn’t geared up to deal with.
These suspicions were confirmed by an unholy gasp from the other man; Wolverine’s diaphragm had given a violent jerk to re-inflate his lungs. His muscles and respiratory systems repaired, the Wolverine pushed up from the ground and turned to face the other mutant. “That really fuckin’ hurt, you upside-down piece-a shit,” he complained. He moved to return the favor, lunging in with a bladed gut punch.
While his adamantium skeleton had saved Logan many times, it cost him this blow. Spur’s bestial gifts did not grant him sight or scent or hearing, but he perceived a whole new sense. All around him, a faint electromagnetic field kept track of every spark, every movement, every electric impulse of a muscle movement. His brain kept an active map of every living body around him, and tracked their every movement for him. This mountain man’s metal skeleton only reflected that field, making him light up like a Christmas tree under Spur’s special electrosense. Wolverine may as well have been screaming every action before he did it like some bad kung-fu actor, as far as fighting Podden was concerned.
Armed with these extra milliseconds of reaction time, Spur evaded to the right and spun his long leg through the air to put his boot in the back of Logan’s head. Logan grunted and lurched forward, blood dribbling over his lip. Seemed like the new guy’s kicks packed a hell of a lot more than his punches. Spur went with it. A kick to the side of Wolverine’s head sent him staggering to the side, but Spur was already on that side to drive the heel of his boot into the other man’s neck. A might kick to the underbelly was not stopped by the metal skeleton, and a kick to the chest saw blood flying from Logan’s mouth and the older mutant back on his ass in the dirt.
Podden leapt in to stomp the air out of the mountain man’s lungs, but Wolverine acted in those few milliseconds while his enemy was will airborne and slashed his claws at Spur’s thigh. Spur twisted away in time that the claws only drew across his leg, but that was enough to cut through the pants and the leather and the skin and a short ways onto the meat. Podden landed his other kick on Logan’s solar plexus and launched himself away. He landed on one foot and hopped back a few feet as such, three red striped decorating his thigh. He winced and hissed behind his makeshift mask; that really fuckin’ hurt.
The Wolverine was back on his feet and his claws flashed in the moonlight, silver and read, as he took a fresh assault on Spur. One good touch from those blades might leave Podden in halves and from that last stroke he knew that, so his one good leg and his electric senses made sure to frantically launch his body away from each slash and stab. Slowly, his other leg lowered to the ground and soon was on equal footing with the first. His refreshed leg kicked a spray of dirt at Logan’s face before acting with the other to launch him ten meters back from arm’s reach.
Logan scowled again. “Shit – you heal too? We’re gonna be here till sunrise, bub.”
You’re gonna be here -at- sunrise, ‘bub’,” came the response. Logan ran in at an angle, up a tree and from limb to limb. His blades silently nipped through tree branches as he moved along, sending the heavy limbs crashing down at Spur. Spur dodged them with ease, but they were never meant to hit; Logan had guided the other mutant’s path so now his back was to that brick wall. Logan charged in stabbing, once, twice, thrice; Spur hopped back from the first, and back from the second. Near the wall now, he hopped away from the last and left Logan’s field of vision. Logan could still smell Podden, and so he slashed left and jerked his head right. Neither his eyes not his claws found the man, so he flashed his attention left. Nothing.
Spur looked down at the tufts of hair for a moment as he stood horizontally against the bricks, his spurs driven into the wall and holding him in place. He reached down and grabbed the mountain man’s head, slamming his face into the wall. He slammed again, and again, and again, then rubbed Logan’s face forcefully against the rough red bricks. He repeated the action; slamming, slamming, slamming, then striking Logan’s head against the wall like a match. He heard the sound of metal on brick, but no sparks. Spur decided he wasn’t getting through that metal.
Logan’s brain caught up to the action a bit after the second strike and he decided he didn’t want Spur holding his head anymore. Spur’s electrosense tracked a bladed fist flying up at him and he was able to retract his spurs and kick off the wall in time; the claws hit the wall instead of his feet, but Podden looked back to see them pass through the earthy material like butter. Podden was dealing with a bad boy. He was gonna have to take off his belt.
Podden flicked a small piece of pipe at Logan’s feet and it exploded into a flash of fire and light and drywall screws. Logan was fast, but the bomb flash burnt his thigh and drove a few of the screws into his leg. Among the cloud of dirt and smoke, Podden moved silently. He landed behind Wolverine with a warped rattle of metal and soon began wrapping something around Logan’s neck. Spur’s belt was around his hand, enabling him to grip the length of razor wire he’d pulled down from the wall. He wrapped it around Logan’s neck twice, then continued to bind it around his arms and torso. He put a bow on the present by firing his strength-enhanced leg into the small of Wolverine’s back, sending him flying to land on his still-healing face.
Wolverine rolled over; his face had already healed, but he bore strange tattoos where new skin had grown around the dirt. As his body pushed the dirt particles out, he struggled against the wire. Every strain and wriggle and jerk only bound the wire tighter. It soon sliced into his throat, severing completely through his windpipe and jugular, pumping blood down into his lungs as he breathed through two gurgling grins in his neck.
Spur moved over and knelt down next to the older mutant. “If you’re anything like me, and I think you are, then you can walk away from this. Unless you like having gills, though, I suggest you hold still and let me go about my business. When I’m done I’ll send someone to..,” he gave a bit of the wire a painful tug. “…cut you loose.”
Confident that this was a deal that couldn’t be passed up, Spur rose and headed for the wall. He expected to hear the sound of men rushing toward the sound of the explosion from a moment ago, but instead what he heard was his new enemy trashing around on the ground. He turned to look; Wolverine’s flesh had already healed around the wire but he was aggravating the wounds but straining against the wire and flailing his wrists around. One of his long claws managed to nip the length of the wire still attached to the wall. The wire became looser as he rolled around, and his claws cut into his body here and there to sever the wire buried in his flesh. Spur kicked his ribs, his head, reminding him to stay down, but Logan forgot and shed enough wired to rise to his feet.
He ripped the remaining wires out of his arms, and with a grimace he yanked out the two that had grown into his neck. He planted his hand over his bleeding throat, but as Podden fired a kick at his forehead, Logan was able to block it with the back of his arm and stay on his feet. His belly convulsed and he retched up the blood that had gone into his lungs earlier, coughing out a red mist. When he looked up from this, his eyes held an inhuman feral fury that Podden had only ever seen reflected in the weapons of his enemies.
The pain; the rage; the humiliation – something made Logan faster. His next stab drove into Spur’s abdomen and then sliced out through his ribs. The claws were so sharp that Spur didn’t feel it at first, but when he took a step and felt the ends of his ribs grind together he knew this wound might need some attention. The pain came in a surge as he leapt away, but he managed to a good 2 feet up in the branch of a large tree. As the Wolverine slashed at the thick trunk, Spur took his belt from his hand and put it around his abdomen. He pulled it tight to replace the severed support muscles that would still need a minute to heal, grimacing as blood oozed out through the slits in his leather suit. Looked like he was the one with the gills now.
Being from the land of lumberjacks, it didn’t take long for Logan to slice away enough of the tree that it started to fall over. Podden dropped from the tree and stomped both feet on top pf Logan’s head like he was an evil mushroom, jarring the metal vertebrae of his neck together and buckling his knees. Logan was kicked into the path of the falling tree and stumbled as its weight came down on his back. It pressed him into the ground as Spur leapt into another tree, wincing and holding his side. That had not been conducive to his healing.
The leafy branches of the new tree gave him a place to hide for the moment while his muscles and bones knit back together. He kept an eye on the lumberjack, not expecting the tree to hold him forever. Indeed, Logan was already reaching back over his shoulders and stabbing furiously at the wood while pushing up forcefully with his knees, and already the tree was beginning to creak with the early signs of defeat.
Spur was healed by the time Logan broke up through the fallen tree, red-faced and panting. Logan looked around furiously for his enemy, slashing at random trees, remembering to look up this time. Figuring the mountain man was a fast learner, Spur opted to drop low to the ground as silently as he could. He charged the Logan from below. The Wolverine was prepared for another kick or spur attack but was surprised when Spur appeared below waist-level and drove both his fists at his underbelly. He was off-guard enough that the attack head, and he felt an unexpected sharp pain drive into his stomach. Spur leapt far back after the simple attack.
Logan didn’t have to look – he could feel it was just a knife. He’d been stabbed by many knives before and was a little confused that his opponent would try such a comparatively weak attack after all that he’d shrugged off so far in this fight. He squinted at Spur, and noticed a difference; the largest pipebomb was missing from his bandolier. Logan looked down, seeing it strapped to the handle of the knife with Podden’s bloody belt.
“F-” he managed to say, before Podden pushed the button on his remote. A roar of light and flame and fury and shrapnel carried him off his feet and away from the fight, replacing him with a small crater. It may have been a bit of overkill, but at this point Podden was willing to accept whatever kind of kill he could get. He dropped to the ground and strode to the gate, taking a moment to examine the lock. Yeah, he could kick this thing right off. “Cheap-ass security,” he muttered, before feeling a little tug at his shoulder.
He knew that tug; it was the same signal his body sent him when the mountain man’s claws has cut through his side, before it realized it should be in pain. This time it passed into his shoulder blade and up through the top, his left arm falling slack. He turned, expecting to somehow see the mountain man. Instead, he saw a horrible metal skeleton full of pulsating organs, wearing a pair of work pants. An eyeless skull stared at him as blooding nostrils wetly snorted for his scent. Losing his composure for the moment, he used his good arm to grab one of the fallen branches from earlier and began to beat the abomination with it wherever he could land a blow. This held up until two milky orbs swelled up in the skull’s sockets and produced two little black dots that locked onto the branch. A quick swipe of the claws turned his branch into a stick and he backed off. “What the HELL are you?” Spur inquired of the lumberjack.
Hairy skin crawled over those bones and organs, until soon Logan was standing there good as new, but suddenly shirtless – like a bad kung-fu actor. “I’m the best there is at what I do, bub.” He moved in for another flurry of swipes, and while Podden was busy holding his shoulder in place he managed a few more stripes of shallow cuts on the mutant. The cuts began to add up on the leaping mutant, and it wasn’t till Spur was beginning to feel panic that he finally felt the tendon in his shoulder knit together and pull the various parts within nice and taut.
A carefully aimed stomp landed on Logan’s foot and the spur fired between his metatarsals and into the dirt. Spur slapped Logan’s arms off to the side and punished his jaw with a half-dozen quick uppercuts. The mountain man’s brain rattled again, Spur leapt away to stand horizontally on the trunk of a tree. Spur crossed his arms. “You’re really causing me a lot of grief, ‘bub’,” offered the younger man. “I shoulda been in and out of there by now. By now the goddamn guard patrols have changed and the security has changed and I’m gonna be going in there blind. Plus, you’re gonna make me give you something I was saving for those shitheads inside. You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Why don’t you just get the hell down here so I can cut your head off, huh? I got a lot of other people to deal with that are a way bigger deal, and almost as ugly as you,’ he complained. “You know your kicks don’t work, your damn spikes don’t work, you blew me up with a fuckin’ bomb and here I am!” he spread his arms out to the side to verify that he was, indeed, still there. “And, you know I can cut down that tree and shove it up your ass, so why the hell are you even still here? Is the Brotherhood recruiting from Special Ed now?”
Spur watched Logan’s body movements as he ranted. He stretched his electrosense, mapping out the man’s body – looking to see what was still damage, what was weak, what was tired. Upsettingly, it wasn’t very damn much. Still, it allowed him to plot his best possible approach. He retracted his spikes and fell to a low crouch. A quick kick off to the ground turned into a baseball slide and he kicked Logan’s gut again, his spur driving in. Claws stabbed down from above; Spur rolled over to evade it and kicked his other spur into that gut. Finishing the roll to all fours, he leapt away, a clear liquid trailing from the ankles of his boots. Logan took one step after Podden, but stopped as he felt something wrong inside himself.
The mutant known as Spur has long spikes of enameled bone sheathed in his calves. Combined with his powerful legs they can punch into a brick wall or through a bulletproof vest. This, however, is not the true danger of these hidden weapons. The spines are hollow, and when Podden made this attack he inflated Wolverine’s stomach and liver with massive doses of venom. Logan grabbed his stomach and vomited up most of what had made it into his stomach; a thin violet-tinted liquid tainted with a stream of blood. The venom was in his system, though, and he wrenched this way and that as his body struggled to identify and combat the complex cocktail of toxins that Podden’s x-factor produces.
Podden kicked with his boots, and kicked with his spurs, stabbing and battering the Wolverine as his body was being overcome by the venom. Kicks to the head, stabs in the side, kicks into the wall, stabs and small injections into the meat of his limbs. Spur watched the wounds heal slower and slower, and the fight drain out of his worthy opponent. He kicked again, and again, and again, watching Logan’s knees dip lower and lower, and witing for him to drop.
He didn’t.
A kick aimed for the jaw as halted as Logan’s meaty fist leapt up and caught Spur’s shin. The man’s shin was red as a sunburn – his body had finally identified all the toxins and was now burning them out of his system with a full-body fever. Logan grabbed Podden’s lower leg with his other hand and snapped the bone loudly over his knee. The younger mutant was swung by his broken leg, into the wall – then swung the other way and tossed. He landed hard on his shoulder and flopped onto his back, his lower left leg bent at a hideous angle.
Wolverine strode over to him, raising his arm to aim his claws down at the other man. “I think it’s over, bub,” he said.
Spur opened one pained eye and looked up at him. “I think… you should try thinking again.” Spur’s mental map of Logan’s body filled his senses, and fired a last kick with his remaining leg into the man’s throat. His spur fired out at a difficult angle; up through the Wolverine’s larynx, just behind his soft palate, and into the small opening that led into his braincase. A spurt of venom mixed into the fluids around the cerebral cortex. By the time Spur had retracted his spike and begun to drag himself away, Logan’s pending attack had already grown limp.
Wolverine’s pupils dilated and wandered off in different directions. His body forgot that it was supposed to be upright, and he dropped forward to give the ground one last kiss for the night. Spur sat up and straightened out his leg, watching those silver claws nervously until the bone fused back together. He pulled himself wearily to his feet, walking to the chain-link link gate and finally kicking the padlock off. He took a last look at Logan sleeping it off there in the grass. “I hope I never see that asshole again,” he noted, then strode into the compound to save the day.