Star Dust (A Paladin Adventure)

Others crash the party

When I hung up, Steve and I had a date and I emailed Maria, not sure if she was still here. She called me immediately and I ended up agreeing to a meeting first thing in the morning. She also forced other details out of me; I perked up when I realized this meant I could be lazier. "I love a good wedding," she said briskly. "This will be lovely, relaxed and happy."

"That sounds outstanding," I said dreamily.

Then I did work on the interns. There was a coordinator for interns elsewhere in the company, in marketing and so forth, and we'd exchanged some emails, but there wasn't a lot of overlap between the two groups. We were going to organize a party for them at the end of the semester, and we were consulting with each other regarding the selection of the new interns.

Then I got ready for the night's outing. Tony wanted us to check out activities at a few locations with an eye toward making trouble for Silvermane. Plant some cameras and listening devices, the usual. That night we started with a warehouse; I eased a skylight open and we listened for a few minutes to details of a protection scheme. We didn't have a line of sight for the people in the warehouse, so I just stuck a listening device on the inside of the window very discreetly, closed the window, and we put cameras on nearby buildings to monitor comings and goings. The next area was an underground parking garage, which was considerably more difficult to infiltrate, but we managed to plant some devices anyway.  The third was a private residence; we weren't going to be able to get in, not with all the people going in and out. We couldn't even get close; there were men outside who kept their backs to the building and continually scanned the street. We set up a couple of the latest parabolic mikes, very compact and unobtrusive, on two windows where there was the most activity. I was waiting for Pete to come back after setting his, so I wasn't alarmed when somebody in a red suit dropped down beside me.

"Hey, babe, you look familiar. Did I spin you like a beanie propeller and leave you in a hotel room?" That got my attention. It certainly wasn't Peter.

"Who are you?" I inquired icily.

"I'm Deadpool," he said proudly.

I shook my head.

"The merc with the mouth! Seriously, you haven't heard of me?" He sounded like Ryan Reynolds. His mask was really expressive, although I found myself distracted by this little thing on the back of the top of his head; it was as if whoever made his costume had cut things wrong and put a corner where it shouldn't be.  "I need a PR department. Like the Avengers. Crime's the disease, I'm the cure. Well, not really a cure. More like a topical ointment to treat the intimate swelling and unmentionable itch." I couldn't help myself. I let out a laugh. "You want to get lucky later? No, wait, you have no idea how many STDs I could have. But I'm copping a feel later on!"

Just then, Peter showed up. "Hey, Deadpool," he said with resignation.

"Oh, hey, my common sense is tingling!"

Before things could escalate, I eased back from the edge of the roof. The guys followed, and we slipped away. 

"So how do you know each other?" I asked when we were safely away. "And why am I finding out about you just now?" I looked at Peter, my eyes narrowing. He gulped.

"I had a can of Raid. We fought until we were too exhausted to get up," Deadpool said flippantly. I discarded the first part, thought through the second part.

"Is that why you missed two days of school three months ago?" I asked Peter, fuming. May had been worried he was getting into fights.

"Oh, hey, are you his mom?" Deadpool asked brightly. "That's cool, a family that fights crime together... does other things together. I don't know. Whatever. Anybody want to get tacos?"