Chapter Text

Two very large, very humorless guards were escorting Freakazoid down a sterile corridor. The two guards had shoulder insignias that marked them as members of the Narrative Containment Bureau. And both of them looked like they hadn't laughed since the Reagan administration.

"I said I was sorry," Freakazoid offered, his hands cuffed in glowing continuity bands. "I didn't mean to disrupt the narrative structure! It just sort of… unraveled around me. Like a sweater made of plot threads. That I tugged on. With puns. Repeatedly."

He grinned nervously.

No response.

"Well, excuse me for making one measly pun about time travel and raisins," he muttered. "Didn't realize it was a crime."

"Oh, yeah, after today? It's gonna be a crime," one of the guards sternly replied. The other simply shuddered.

They rounded the corner. At the end of the hall was a containment cell with no bars—just a shimmering wall of purple energy, humming faintly with unresolved exposition. A small glowing placard next to it read: "Warning! Plot Contrivance Forcefield!"

Freakazoid paused just before the forcefield. He was strangely blue-skinned, wearing a skintight red superhero suit with white gloves and boots. His chest was adorned with the letter F, and just in case that wasn't loud enough, an exclamation point as well. His dark hair stood out. Literally, it stood out. Straight up, like he had stuck his finger in an electric socket and left it there, leaving his hair with a bright lightning bolt along the side.

He turned to the guards and offered a sheepish shrug. "So… we gonna hug this out, or am I being dramatically thrown into the cell?"

The guards shoved him into the cell.

With a bzorp and a shower of digital sparks, Freakazoid tumbled through the forcefield and landed in a heap on the cell floor. The glowing cuffs around his wrists faded away to nothingness.

From the shadows, a voice muttered, "Oh boy, a friend."

Freakazoid blinked into the gloom. "Uh… hello?"

A shadowy figure stood up. Not just stood—rose, with theatrical flair, like a stage magician taking a bow to grand applause. The cell's dim lights caught a flash of red and black: a skintight suit filled with swagger and covered in utility pouches and weapons. The man struck a pose—hands on hips, head tilted slightly, chin lifted just enough to suggest he'd been waiting for just this moment to reveal himself.

"So, um… what are you in here for?" Freakazoid asked tentatively.

"Canonically, I exhumed the body of a beloved hero. Killed an unhealthy number of people. Might have said some mean things about Disney. But I can't speak to the specifics of any of the fanfic I've been in, to be honest."

Freakazoid scratched his head. "That's… a lot."

"That I am," the figure said, voice smug and theatrical. "Go ahead. Take it all in. That's right. It's me. The legend. The icon. The merc with the mouth." He pointed triumphantly into the air. "Accept no substitutes."

Freakazoid tilted his head. "Who are you?"

The figure faltered slightly. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Who are you?" Freakazoid repeated, blinking. "Do I know you? You look a bit like a bad Spider-Man ninja."

Deadpool staggered back like he'd been physically struck. "Excuse me?"

"I mean the color scheme's working for you," Freakazoid added, "but I'm getting big 'background character from a rejected G.I. Joe line' energy."

"Says the kid that looks like he stuck his face in a toilet filled with Ty-D-Bol!"

Freakazoid squinted. "Wait. You're that guy with the badly drawn feet! The one who talked a lot and stabbed things. Cable's sidekick!"

Deadpool's eye twitch was visible through the mask.

Deadpool held up one gloved hand. "Okay. Deep breaths. No big deal. I've got movies. Merch. Pinball machines. That popcorn tub thing."

He pointed at himself again. "Ryan Reynolds, baby."

Freakazoid scratched his head. "Is she related to Meg Ryan?"

That did it.

Deadpool exploded. "Jumping Jehoshaphat on a pogo stick! What kind of melon-farming fanfic is this?!" He clasped his hands over his mouth as his mask's eyes widened in surprise.

Freakazoid took a step back. "Whoa! Hey! Language!"

"I'm trying!" Deadpool bellowed. "But none of the smurfing words are right! It's like I'm in a fething Saturday morning cartoon!" He turned slowly to Freakazoid, looking at him a little more closely, noticing his ink lines and cel-shaded colors for the first time. "You! You did this to me! You put me in a Felgercarb fanfic for kids!"

Freakazoid crossed his arms indignantly. "Hey, don't look at me! I didn't pick the rating. Some of us are just comfortable with content suitable for general audiences."

Deadpool stared at him. "General audiences? General audiences?! You expect me to express my complex emotional trauma with zarking adverbs and sanitized metaphors?!"

"There's still ways to express yourself! I've said 'poo gas' before! Like, four whole times!"

"Poo gas? Poo gas?!" Deadpool exclaimed. "Shazbot, do I look like a sprocking second grader to you?" He drew his two katanas.

"Um, are you allowed to have those in here?" Freakazoid asked.

"I've had it with this smegging fic! It's time to have the traditional hero versus hero battle! And I'm using the term hero lightly for you, Mister lightning head."

Deadpool lunged with a wild yell, blades flashing.

Freakazoid yelped and threw his hands in the air. "Whoa whoa whoa! Time-out! Don't we need some dramatic lighting and a perfectly avoidable misunderstanding first?"

Deadpool didn't answer—he was too busy doing a backflip into the corner of the cell, where he then parkoured up to the ceiling, and somersaulted back to the ground. His landing sent dust dramatically billowing around him.

Freakazoid danced back a few steps and spun away, reaching behind his back and somehow pulling out a traffic cone and a rubber chicken. "En garde, Pierre!" he shouted, wielding one in each hand.

Deadpool charged forward, spinning like a sword-wielding tornado as his blades flashed with deadly precision. Freakazoid held the traffic cone in front of him defensively, but it was sliced into multiple orange and white rings that bounced to the floor. Deadpool flipped a katana around in his hand and hit Freakazoid on the nose with the hilt.

Deadpool took a step back. "Give up yet?"

Freakazoid rubbed his nose. He straightened up, cracking his neck as he tilted his head side to side. "I haven't even begun to fight yet!"

Deadpool shook his head. "Yeah, that much is obvious."

Freakazoid grinned and tossed the rubber chicken to the side. "Let's wrassle!" 

"Are you lumping serious?" Deadpool asked, but Freakazoid had already leapt forward, wrapping his arms around one of Deadpool's legs. They were both quickly on the ground in a tangle of limbs, the two katanas clanging against the cell floor.

Deadpool tried to wriggle free, but Freakazoid was somehow still wrapped around him. Deadpool groaned, "I thought this was a family-friendly fic!" He tried reversing the hold Freakazoid had, but the blue-skinned superhero was surprisingly flexible, his limbs bending in ways that didn't seem possible. "What even are your physics?" Deadpool sputtered.

Freakazoid rolled backward, somehow flipping them both through the air. They landed with a puff of cartoon dust. Deadpool was flat on his chest, with Freakazoid sitting on top of him. Deadpool coughed. "Okay. No. No. I've done anime fights less confusing than this."

Freakazoid pulled on Deadpool's leg. "Now say, 'Sassy Sam swiftly sells seven slippery, silver skates.'"

"Drokk you, you stupid p'tahk!" Deadpool retorted. He reached an arm forward, fingers brushing against the hilt of a katana.

"How about, 'Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?'" Freakazoid asked.

Finally, Deadpool had his grip around a katana. "Say goodbye to your yarbles, blue boy!"

From behind them, someone cleared their throat.

Both Freakazoid and Deadpool froze mid-wrestle—Freakazoid still twisting a leg, Deadpool still clutching a katana like a potential tool of vengeance.

A green figure stood inside the cell with them, wearing a slightly wrinkled costume that covered him from the tip of his toes to the top of his head, which was adorned with either yellow insect antennae or flimsy hot dogs on wires. A necktie hung loosely around his neck, somehow more wrinkled than his costume. He held a clipboard and had a conveniently placed name tag that read, "Ambush Bug."

He pointed a finger at both of them, somehow with two different accusatory glows. "You've officially exceeded your allotted inter-hero conflict quota." He tapped his clipboard. "Now, if you two want, you can just sit here until you're sentenced to a regency romance AU before you can say 'ballroom tension.'"

Deadpool dropped the katana. "They wouldn't."

"Or," Ambush Bug turned his hand over, examining his fingernails. Or at least he would be, if they weren't covered in his green supersuit. "You can come with me and get out of this place."

Deadpool looked at the teenage superhero sitting on top of him, then back at the green bug-like man. "I admit it. You've caught me in a compromising position." He squinted. "But what do you want from me?"

"And me!" Freakazoid interjected.

Ambush Bug flipped a page over on his clipboard and then cleared his throat as he read from the page. "To all heroes who can see the fourth wall and beyond—you are needed…"

The distant click of high heels echoed down the sterile corridor.

Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop.

A figure turned the corner—tall, powerful, and very, very green. Jennifer Walters, attorney at law. Perhaps more commonly known as She-Hulk.

She adjusted her blazer as she walked, muttering just loud enough for any invisible audience to hear. "You know, I keep telling myself I'm going to stop taking these kinds of clients. Reality-bending troublemakers. Multiversal violations. Crimes against narrative cohesion."

She passed the Plot Contrivance Forcefield warning sign and didn't even blink.

"But no, I had to say yes. I had to be the nice attorney. 'Sure, I'll represent the mouthy mercenary and the teenage embodiment of the World Wide Web. What could possibly go wrong?'"

Her heels clicked one final time as she arrived at the cell.

She looked inside. She looked up, double-checking the cell number. She looked back down, eyes scanning the cell again.

The cell was empty.

She-Hulk blinked, then raised one perfectly sculpted green eyebrow. "…And where are they?"

A guard, sipping room-temperature coffee from a paper cup, peeked around the corner. "Huh. Guess they escaped."

She-Hulk exhaled, glaring into the empty cell. She finally muttered, "Well, sh—"