Chapter 372: Deadpool — "Nova's Nothing, My Brother Ethan Is Unbeatable"
"If we want to get out of here, we gotta take down that psycho bald lady. Seriously, why is it that every time a Marvel woman goes bald, she turns out ridiculously overpowered?"
"And the only way to actually neutralize this bald menace — Cassandra Nova — is to shut down her telepathy. We gotta rip that helmet off Juggernaut's head and get it onto the bald guy instead. That's the only thing that'll actually contain her."
The mainstream Deadpool rallied the assembled mutants, urgency thick in his voice.
Of everyone in this crowd, no one was more desperate to get out of the Void than him.
He had two and a half days left before Mr. Paradox's Timeline Shredder deleted his entire world.
He had to get back and stop Mr. Paradox — no other option.
Right now, the mainstream Deadpool and his crew were holed up in a cave. Before that, he'd been locked in a full day-and-night battle against Wolverine in the yellow suit — a fight that stretched from morning light clear through to a star-filled sky, both men finally collapsing from sheer exhaustion.
That fight had happened because the mainstream Deadpool had tricked him.
Afterward, Hell's Deadpool and Wolverine had brought the whole group to this cave.
Hidden in the darkness here lived a handful of mutant heroes who shared a deep, personal hatred for Nova's regime.
Gambit — Remy Étienne LeBeau — sat idly shuffling a deck of cards, each one humming with barely-contained destructive potential, ready to unleash storms of chaos at a moment's notice.
His eyes burned with longing for freedom, and something like anticipation for the coming fight.
Blade — Eric Brooks — sat nearby in quiet meditation, his muscles cut sharp and defined in the dim light.
The vampire blood in his veins warred constantly against his own human will, granting him strength and regenerative power far beyond ordinary limits.
In the deep silence of night, he always felt the pull of something ancient calling from within his own blood — an endless hunger for battle, for justice.
Elektra, once a killer for hire, now carried herself with a gentleness that felt almost impossible to describe.
She stood at the cave's mouth, gazing out into the night sky, her thoughts drifting back to her history with Daredevil, and to the reasons she'd ended up on this path of resistance in the first place.
Her hands had been stained with blood more times than she could count — but her heart, she believed, stayed purer than almost anyone's, because every kill had always served some greater justice.
And then there was X-23 — Laura Kinney, the young wolf-girl — crouched off to one side, carving something into the rock with her sharp claws, as if the act itself were a way of honoring the memory of the old Wolverine who'd fallen here.
Under the mainstream Deadpool's relentless, silver-tongued persuasion, all four mutants agreed to help storm Nova's stronghold and take her down.
They were sick to death of endless running and hiding — years spent shackled by fear, weighing down their spirits and their dreams. What they craved now was a real fight — one that could actually prove they still mattered, even if it meant facing the end of their own lives. Not one of them flinched from that.
What burned in their hearts was a hunger for something greater than mere survival — a longing for one last, meaningful stand.
Because Nova was the only one in this whole wasteland who could actually get them out of the Void.
The rescue party now numbered two Deadpools, two Wolverines, and the four newly recruited mutants — eight in total.
Or maybe seven, technically.
Yellow-suit Wolverine, having realized the TVA couldn't save his world after all, had sunk into a deep depression and hadn't stopped drinking since.
He showed no interest whatsoever in leaving the Void, and even less interest in helping the con-artist Deadpool who'd dragged him into this mess.
Inside the cave, the air itself felt frozen solid, every breath weighing heavy.
Yellow-suit Wolverine's despair and hopelessness hung over the space like an invisible shroud. The bottle never left his hand, liquor dripping drop by drop.
The mainstream Deadpool's desperate urgency.
The four mutants' grim resolve — they all understood, painfully well, that capturing Nova wouldn't be simple.
Never mind how absurdly powerful Nova herself was — she also commanded several hundred mutant enforcers, a force no small group like theirs could hope to handle alone.
None of them feared death. What terrified them was dying and accomplishing nothing against her.
Cross Nova the wrong way, and she could wipe you out with a single lazy gesture — reduce you to a skeleton, flesh scattering to ash on the wind, the same way she'd done to that Human Torch variant.
The only two who seemed genuinely unbothered by any of this were Hell's Deadpool and his own Wolverine.
They'd already called for backup, after all — they knew Ethan was coming with a team of X-Men, and that Professor X would be joining too.
Wolverine walked with slow, deliberate steps over toward yellow-suit Wolverine's side, the two of them framed together under the dim, amber light in a scene heavy with unspoken meaning.
He didn't speak right away — just sat down quietly, something complicated flickering behind his eyes: sympathy, understanding, and a deep unease about whatever fate awaited them all.
The instant Wolverine heard yellow-suit Logan's whole story, his first reaction was simple: quit drinking. Immediately.
Booze wrecked everything.
For this particular Logan, drinking hadn't just cost him — it had been fatal. Who could've guessed a single day of being blackout drunk would end with every last one of his X-Men friends dead?
Hell's Kitchen's own Logan heard the story and immediately resolved to quit drinking himself. Right after finishing off whatever he had left, of course.
He'd also heard what came after — how yellow-suit Logan had woken up, found his friends slaughtered, and gone on an indiscriminate killing spree afterward. That single incident was apparently what had tanked mutants' reputation across the whole world.
Hell's Kitchen's Logan honestly didn't know what to say to that. If he'd been in the man's shoes, he might well have done the exact same thing.
But he hadn't sunk into anything close to this level of self-destruction. Wolverine looked at the version of himself sitting there, seemingly bent on drinking himself into oblivion.
He offered no comfort. Just took the bottle straight out of yellow-suit Logan's hand.
"My world's X-Men are gonna show up here soon. I'm not letting them see another version of themselves fall apart like this. Whether you want them to see you or not — that's on you." With that, he turned and walked off toward the van.
Yellow-suit Logan sat there in silence for a long moment after hearing that.
Meanwhile, Hell's Deadpool did his part trying to keep the four mutants' spirits up. "C'mon, drop the 'walking to my own funeral' energy. Relax, we're basically just here for a formality. My brother Ethan's bringing the X-Men."
The pep talk didn't land especially well. Years spent surviving in the Void meant they'd watched countless "heroes," each one, die at Nova's hands one after another.
None of them believed for a second that this mysterious "Ethan" the Deadpool kept talking up was actually as strong as claimed — Deadpool's word was famously about as reliable as a broken clock.
They said nothing more, just followed Wolverine's lead into the van.
"Hey, come on now, don't be like that! Nova's a total pushover — my brother Ethan is unbeatable, top to bottom, no contest!"
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