Hope and Scott were just settling into a hard-earned rest in one of Hank's sofas when the doorbell rang. Then rang again. Then kept ringing with the persistence of a telemarketer who'd just discovered cocaine.
"Are you kidding me?" Scott groaned, his face buried in the pillow. "We just saved Hope's mom from a quantum hell dimension ruled by a time-travelling tyrant. Can't we get five minutes of peace?"
Hope threw another pillow at him. "You answer it. I'm dead to the world."
The doorbell rang three more times in rapid succession, now accompanied by enthusiastic knocking.
Scott dragged himself out of the sofa, muttering curses that would have made his ex-wife cover Cassie's ears. He stumbled down the stairs, threw open the front door with more force than necessary, ready to deliver a piece of his mind to whatever salesperson had the audacity to...
He froze.
Deadpool stood on the doorstep wearing nothing but his mask, tighty-whities covered in little hearts, and a white apron absolutely drenched in barbecue sauce. The mercenary struck a pose like he was modeling for a calendar, one hand on his hip, the other holding up a plate stacked with burgers that dripped grease onto Hank's welcome mat.
"Who wants a burger?" Wade's voice carried cheerful enthusiasm that suggested he saw absolutely nothing wrong with this picture.
Scott's brain short-circuited. "What... who... you're... why aren't you wearing pants?!"
"Resource management, baby! I only had the one good suit, and I'm not getting smoke and grease stains all over my beautiful red spandex. These bad boys are washable." Wade did a little shimmy that made his apron strings dance. "Plus, the ladies love my glutes. Check out these bad boys, they're like two perfect cantaloupes."
Scott looked past Deadpool to the front lawn, where his brain tried and failed to process the scene before him and decided this was a dream and went back to wash his face.
The entire Mercs for Money crew had set up what could only be described as the world's most questionable barbecue. A George Foreman Grill sat on a folding table, smoke rising in lazy spirals. Lawn chairs scattered around like someone had just given up on organizing anything. Coolers open, ice melting, drinks sweating in the California sun.
Gorilla Man, wearing yellow robes, stood at the grill, his massive simian form wielding tongs with surprising delicacy as he flipped burgers that sizzled and popped. He wore a chef's hat that said "Kiss the Cook", which looked absolutely ridiculous on his gorilla head.
Hit-Monkey perched on another chair, mixing beer and sake in a Solo cup while taking photos with a phone that looked giant in his hands. A kid from the neighbourhood, maybe ten years old, had wandered over and was trying to get a selfie with a suit-wearing monkey, offering up a notebook with hopeful eyes.
Hit-Monkey, focused on his drink mixing, grabbed a burger bun from the table and chucked it at the kid's face without looking.
"Hey!" The kid stumbled backward, bun bouncing off his forehead.
Gorilla Man reached over and smacked the back of Hit-Monkey's head with enough force to make the chair rock. "Bad Monkey! Apologise right now. We don't throw food at children."
Hit-Monkey chittered something that sounded distinctly like cursing.
"I don't care if you're busy. Apologize or no more drinking sake."
Hit-Monkey made an elaborate gesture that might have been an apology or might have been the monkey equivalent of flipping someone off. Hard to tell.
Machine Man hovered near the property line, where a small crowd of young women had gathered, equal parts curious and entertained. His body flowed with exaggerated confidence, metal stretching and narrowing as his waist rolled in slow, overcommitted circles, like he was halfway between a sultry dance and a malfunctioning inflatable tube man. His limbs elongated and bent into poses that no skeleton should survive, held a beat too long, then snapped into the next with theatrical flair. One arm flexed. A hip popped. Something in his torso squeaked.
The effect was immediate as laughter bubbled up between surprised gasps, a few women covering their mouths while still very clearly watching Machine Man's failed attempt at flirting.
"And for my next trick," Machine Man's voice carried theatrical flair, "I'll unscrew my face!" He proceeded to do exactly that, his head detaching at the shoulder and waving at the crowd independently.
The women squealed with a mix of horror and delight.
Massacre sat alone on the far end of the setup, silent as a grave, focused entirely on his burger. He ate with each bite measured, his expression suggesting he was contemplating the philosophical implications of ground beef or possibly planning a murder. With Massacre, it was always hard to tell.
Domino emerged from inside the house, her expression caught somewhere between exasperation and the kind of exhaustion that came from dealing with Wade's nonsense for too long. "Wade, what the fuck is going on here?"
Her voice had dropped back into the crass, no-nonsense tone of her mercenary days, the refined maternal warmth she'd been cultivating for Luv completely absent.
"Easy there, Goddess," Wade said, holding up a finger like he was about to start a TED Talk nobody asked for. "No need to drop the verbal nukes. Though I will say, hearing you swear again feels like watching a rock star relapse in the best way. That polished 'responsible hero' voice you've been using lately was making my skin crawl. And I already look like a medical experiment."
"Don't call me Goddess."
"Okay, but hear me out," Wade continued, utterly undeterred. "Divine Lady of Luck. Saint Domino of Improbable Violence. Or my personal favorite, and this one's trademark pending: 'She Who Bends Reality and Is Freakishly Accurate With putting lead in a guy's balls.' I mean, come on. That one's practically science."
"Wade."
"Right, right, getting there." He waved his hands like he was corralling an invisible audience. "You summoned us, remember. With a very dramatic group text. 'Need you at these coordinates. Full gear. Weird job.' Capital W weird. That was three hours ago. Do you know how long three hours is for me? I got an entire personality in that time."
Domino pinched the bridge of her nose. "Time was… off. It's this Quantum nonsense. It happens."
"Oh, we noticed," Wade said cheerfully. "But no stress. We just got hungry. Gorilla Man declared that running ops on an empty stomach was 'bad for team cohesion' and 'a violation of bro code,' so we improvised."
He gestured behind him.
A full barbecue setup of Grill smoking, folding chairs and mariachi music playing quietl
"You're welcome, by the way," Wade added. "We brought supplies. Mostly. We may have raided Hank's fridge for condiments. And possibly that bougie imported cheese wheel he pretends he doesn't hide. Call it a late fee. Or foreplay. Depends how mad you are."
He leaned closer, dropping his voice. "Also, I regret nothing. That cheese was slutty."
A shriek cut through the backyard chaos, high-pitched and genuinely startled.
Everyone's heads swiveled toward the house where the sound had originated from the downstairs bathroom. Then another shriek answered it, this one deeper, more masculine, carrying equal parts surprise and indignation.
The group stampeded inside with the kind of coordination that suggested they'd done this many times before when one of their own was in danger or when something interesting was happening.
They found Scott and Slapstick in the bathroom, both of them screaming at full volume, standing maybe three feet apart, fingers locked on each other like they'd just walked in on a murder scene and decided the other guy clearly did it.
"There is a cartoon in my bathroom!" Scott yelled, voice cracking like he was twelve again and getting pantsed. "A living, breathing, bug-eyed Saturday-morning nightmare! It just appeared next to the sink!"
Slapstick recoiled dramatically, jaw dropping so far it actually clanged against the tile. "And there's a flesh goblin in my face!" he screeched. "I'm washing my hands, minding my business, and suddenly this ugly mug pops up like a cheap jump scare! I thought I was about to get murdered by Home Depot!"
"Ugly?!" Scott shot back, turning red. "You're calling me ugly? Your face just detached from your skull and hit the floor like a dropped lasagna!"
"At least I'm supposed to look like this!" Slapstick snapped, scooping his jaw back into place with a wet schlop. "You're meant to be a normal human being, and somehow you still came out looking like that! That's effort!"
Scott jabbed a finger at him. "My daughter calls me the coolest dad in the district!"
Slapstick squinted. "Is your district a prison yard?"
The argument was seconds away from turning physical, or possibly metaphysical, when Domino shoved through the doorway, took one look at the scene, and immediately regretted every life choice that had led her here.
She pressed her fingers to her temples like she was actively fighting off an aneurysm.
"Both of you," she said, voice low and vibrating with murderous restraint, "shut the fuck up. Right now."
Neither of them listened.
"He started it!" Slapstick countered.
"He exists wrong!" Scott yelled.
Domino's eye twitched. "I swear to God," she continued, teeth clenched, "Both of you, shut up. Right now. I swear to God, if I have to deal with one more ridiculous thing today..."
She paused, glanced at Slapstick.
"…And put your jaw back where it belongs. This isn't a cartoon network audition."
Hope appeared behind her, followed by Hank and Janet, all three of them drawn by the commotion. They took in the scene: the screaming men, the gathered mercenaries, the cartoon character's jaw still on the bathroom floor.
Janet stopped in the doorway, and her eyes went wide.
After thirty years in the quantum realm where impossible was the baseline, where beings shifted form as casually as breathing and architecture defied geometry, she'd thought she was prepared for anything Earth could throw at her.
A cartoon character. In a bathroom. With his jaw literally on the floor.
Her hand found the doorframe, gripping it for support.
"Hank," she said slowly, her voice carrying the careful control of someone trying very hard not to lose their composure, "is this normal now? Did I miss something in the past three decades? Are cartoons just... walking around? In bathrooms?"
Hank's expression cycled through embarrassment, frustration, and something that might have been hysteria. "I... no. This is not normal. This is..." He gestured helplessly at the scene. "I don't even know what this is."
"Who are these people?" Hope's voice carried dangerous calm, though her hand had moved instinctively toward where her Wasp suit controls would be. "And more importantly, why is there a nearly naked man covered in barbecue sauce in my father's house?"
Wade perked up. "Nearly naked is such a harsh term. I prefer 'fashionably undressed.' And before you ask, yes, the ladies are free to appreciate my glutes. I'm thinking of starting an Instagram."
Domino slapped the back of Wade's head hard enough to make his mask shift. "Stop talking."
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