New Teams, Old Problems

Chapter 7: Weapon X is Ticked

Kate was pretty well engrossed in her own thoughts and the idea of teaming up with Wade and Clint again — those were always the craziest of missions, if she was being honest — when she and Cassie pulled up to the mansion again, and so she wasn't really paying much attention to the fact that Scott was there — looking annoyed as usual.

"Hey, boss man," Kate said, half-distractedly. "Sorry I'm late — stopped by Clint's place to say hi."

"Yeah, I saw your interview," Scott said. "Or I should say Bobby dragged me in to see your interview. What happened?"

Kate shrugged openly. "Someone cut out the feed, Scott. JJ knew it was going to happen. He was fishing. Guess he figured they wouldn't think he'd try it on me and not K."

"Why in the world would he be fishing for anything about Weapon X?" Scott asked, clearly more concerned about the direction the interview had taken than Kate realized.

"He's gotten his hands on some stuff. Documents, most of it blacked out — he told me when the cameras went off," Kate explained. "He knows there's a story, and he's going after it, and that whole interview was just to see if he was right — because if they blacked him out, it was true."

"I guess I don't understand why he holds such a sudden interest in a group that dealt almost exclusively in using mutants for lab rats," Scott said dryly.

"Seriously? Blacked-out government conspiracy? This is, like, Watergate-level journalistic bait here," Kate pointed out.

"I just didn't think anyone would care, seeing as it hit mutants so hard," Scott said as he relaxed his stance a bit, though he was still frowning Kate's way. "Is he still pushing it?"

"Oh yeah," Kate said. "He's practically drooling over it, Scott. He asked me for help; he wants it that bad."

"Logan won't talk about it, and he'll probably block K too," Scott warned.

"Can't hurt to ask them, though — and it's not like they're the only ones," Kate pointed out reasonably.

"No," Scott agreed. "But they're probably the most publicly known right now, and definitely the most high profile." He paused for a moment and let out a breath he'd been half-holding. "He's never even told me about it. I don't think he told anyone about it — not outside of the basic 'bad things happened' angle. And technically, K hasn't either. She just left clues on where to dig."

"Yeah." Kate matched his sighed-out body language for just a moment as she rubbed the back of her neck before she looked up to meet his gaze. "But here's the thing, Scott. JJ got those documents from somewhere. And you know wherever he got them, it's easier than where we've looked. So anything else he finds? They'll let him find."

"Right, I get that. You're looking at damage control," Scott said with a little nod. "But unless it's going to help mutants now, you probably ought to step back and not poke them. They will be a problem. For all of us."

Kate chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. "That... might be... um. Wade called me."

"Deadpool?" Scott asked with a frown. "What did he want?"

"To help bring Weapon X down and get all the documents JJ could ever want to dump all over the news," she told him honestly.

"Kate ... what ... what did you tell him?" Scott asked carefully.

"Just that he could meet me at Clint's so we could plan," she tried to assure him. "Just plan, Scott. I thought you'd like that!"

"You can't get involved with him on something this important," Scott insisted. "He'll just make it worse."