Crazy Train

Disclaimer/Author's Note:

This is an experimental work in progress co-written with the wonderful Ghouse89, a big thank you to him. Audrey and co belong to me all Marvel characters do not. Any and all insight and/or criticism is much appreciated.

The figure under the blankets groaned at the incessant knocking. Ignoring the noise was no good and drowning out the sound with a pillow garnered the same result. Finally flinging off the over stuffed comforter, a barely dressed blond woman stalked out to her door. Wrenching it open ready to rip whoever had the nerve to knock before her alarm was supposed to go off a new one.

"Whoever you are this had better be damn…" She stopped short at the sight of an auburn haired young woman shivering and dripping water onto the hallway carpet. "Good?"

XxXxX

"Thanks Molly," Audrey muttered as the blond sat a steaming coffee mug in front of her. She sat at the tiny kitchen table in a borrowed robe, Molly took the seat across from her and propping her chin on her hand she eyed her friend critically.

"So again… you woke up under water… because your apartment flooded?" Audrey just nodded numbly, wake up call via near death obviously having shaken her. "So… you were sleeping on the floor?" Molly pushed on wanting desperately to understand.

"No!" Audrey took a breath pushing damp strands of hair out of her face. "It was flooded! Floor to ceiling full of water."

"How does that even happen?"

"I don't know." She gave a frustrated sigh her head falling to her arms. "I thought I was going to die! All my stuff is trashed, and I'm going to have to call Sampson and tell him." She paled at the inevitable conversation with one Warren Sampson. Her landlord was the owner of the only two apartment buildings in their little one-horse town and an all around sleaze. Audrey had one of the basement apartments in the building across the street from where she currently sat. "He's going to blame me for this."

"Like hell, if that ass can't keep the damn pipes up to code that's his problem." The conversation was broken by the sudden sound of the alarm. Molly groaned to herself as she made her way to the bedroom to turn it off. "And we," she stated leaning herself on the door frame, "officially have an hour and a half to get our butts to work."

"I'm gonna have to call in sick again."

"Do you really think you can afford to right now. Besides you'll never live it down after last week." Molly drummed her fingers idly on the door frame before coming to a decision. "Okay, you shower," she pointed to the bathroom, "you can borrow some of my clothes today and I'll call Sampson to let him know what's going on."

"Mol, you don't…"

"Shush! Just go." Audrey didn't quite know how to express just how grateful she was to have Molly in that moment. She just gave the older woman a small smile and headed into the bathroom while her friend picked up the phone.

XxXxX

It was a five minute walk from the apartment to the diner where the two worked and already Audrey was distinctively uncomfortable. Where she usually wore what was comfortable and casual Molly dressed to attract a certain amount of attention. The top she had borrowed wasn't nearly as cleavage exposing as it would have been on Molly, though that wasn't saying much. The real problem she was having was with the skirt, She'd pick the longest she could find which also wasn't saying much but it seemed to her to be a bit tighter than it would have been on her friend. As they approached the kitchen entrance to the building she craned her neck back for the fifth time since they left the apartment.

"My ass looks totally huge in this." Molly only chuckled as she fished for her keys.

"No, it's probably just the first time you've worn something where you can tell you actually have one." She pulled the door open admitting them into the warm kitchen. "Now would you stop fidgeting, you look fine." As if to confirm the statement a wolf whistle cut through the conversation.

"Well would you look at that, she actually has legs." Audrey glared in the direction of Seth the cook who was giving her a lopsided grin.

"Don't get used to it." She ducked away to grab her serving apron off the hook while hiding the blush that was spreading across her face.

"Not that I mind," Seth continued going about his routine, "but what's with the new look?"

"Desperation." At his questioning look Audrey just shook her head. "It's a long story."

"Her apartments under water." Audrey turned to the small blonde who just gave an unapologetic shrug.

"Or not… my apartment flooded this morning." Seth whistled as he flipped a burger onto a plate.

"Good thing you're okay, that could have turned out nasty if the water reached the electrical sockets." Audrey and Molly shared a look as their co-worker continued on. Molly shifted over to her stunned friend and lowered her voice.

"I didn't even think of that, how is it that you weren't fried?"

"They cut the power yesterday to update some of the electrical work up stairs." Audrey replied numbly.

"Someone upstairs must really like you."

"Or they're just messing with me."

XxXxX

It was nearing the end of the shift and they had been moderately busy so far, Audrey stood behind the counter discreetly counting her tips from the last couple of tables when she saw Molly approach from the corner of her eye.

"Is it me or are people being oddly generous with the tips tonight?" She glanced over at Molly who was spotting a smug I-told-you-so grin. "Oh, shut up." She muttered quickly stuffing the cash into the jar under the counter. Audrey, deep down was grudgingly starting to admit that Molly had a point when it came to attire, especially considering the majority of their clientele consisted of truckers but it still made her uncomfortable.

"Yeah well be thankful you don't have my section," Molly conversed in an undertone as Audrey picked up a tray of water glasses, "I've got some mouthy Nightmare on Elm Street look-a-like who keeps giving me the bedroom eyes."

"You shouldn't judge people by the way they look." Audrey replied earnestly as Seth put down a plate on the divider behind them and gave the bell a quick tap before disappearing again.

"Oh I can forgive the looks," Molly went on picking up the order and following the other girl around the corner, "but if he starts humming 'I'm in the mood for love' when I go to his table again, he's getting a lap full of coffee."

Audrey snickered as the two split off to their sections when a kid came running out of nowhere towards the washroom clipping the waitress on the arm. Audrey stumbled to recover the tray but the glasses on it were far too over balanced. Her heart skipped a beat and she winced in anticipation of the crash when all five of them seemed to right themselves as if nothing ever happened. She stood there in the middle of the floor blinking at them.

It had happened so fast but she was sure…

Shaking her head she cast a quick glance around to see if anyone else had noticed before continuing on to her table. She carefully set the glasses down before taking the tables order, all the while completely unaware of the eyes on her.

XxXxX

It had been a long shift and the two women walked slowly back towards Molly's apartment as it began to get dark.

"Are you sure you have no problem with me staying with you until this is all sorted?"

"Audrey, honey, For the fifth time, I already said it was fine so as long as you're alright with sleeping on my crappy couch there is no problem." Audrey all but tackled the other woman in a hug as they approached the building.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She hesitated before following her friend in side. "Um, I'm gonna be just a minute. I want to run next door real quick to see if the place has been drained yet," she gave a shrug, "maybe see if there's anything salvageable."

"Okay, just don't be long."

With that Audrey crossed the street to her building and walked to the back parking lot and the entrance to her apartment. Just as she was descending the stairs a figure emerged from her open doorway.

"Well, well, well," came the slurred voice, "come back to burn it down this time?" Audrey squinted through the shadows and just made out the features of her landlord.

"What? I didn't…"

"No burst pipes," he cut her off her protests and continued towards her forcing her to back up into the parking lot, "no drainage problems, not even a leaky faucet. So what? You just get board and decide to take a swim?"

"I didn't do anything, it just…"

"I don't want to hear it!" He cut her off again as she backed into a parked car, he was uncomfortably close now and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. It was no secret that he was a drinker, few things were in that town but Audrey had never seen him in this sort of state before and it was making her more than a little bit nervous.

"Do you have any idea how much this is going to coast me you little bitch!" He grabbed her by the arms and slammed her against the car sending a sharp pain shooting up her back. Audrey struggled as he continued to rant in her face, her head started to throb and anger started to bubble up inside her.

"Get off me!"

Bracing herself against the car and planting her feet Audrey shoved the drunken man backwards as hard as she could. He stumbled backwards his face contorted in pain and he opened his mouth to scream. The sound was cut short as he seemed to just stop. Then in all the time it took to blink the tall, husky and imposing man was a withered and dried husk of a person. Audrey stared open mouthed.

What used to be her landlord stayed up right for a few seconds, a sort of red tinged mist swirled gently in the air around him, before falling to the asphalt. The mist remained, coming together into streams of water that continued to swirl unnaturally in the air. Stunned, Audrey's legs gave out from under her. She collapsed to the ground beside the body the water dropped as well hitting the parking lot with a splash, drenching her bare legs. Covering her mouth and suppressing the urge to scream her eyes began to fill with tears as she scrambled to her feet. She was barely two steps before she ran face first into something solid and a sharp pain tore through the side of her head as her vision blurred to a mass of red and black before everything faded.

XxXxX

When she eventually came to, groggily, the first thing that she felt was the pain in her head, which since her initial reception of it had dropped to a dull ache. Her head was still spinning but she regained clarity rather rapidly when she realized that she was on a strange couch, in a strange apartment, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. Quickly exerting a little strength, she effectively pushed herself up into a sitting position. In the mean time, she had officially started to freak out.

"Calm down, calm down, calm down…" She repeated this to herself over and over, hoping to focus on how she could get out of her predicament. But as the waitress-turned-captive glanced about the room whose strange and unsettling unfamiliarity threw her for loop, despite its apparent normalcy, she knew that her mantra was not going to be of any help at all.

"Don't calm down, don't calm down, don't calm down…" Her face betrayed her concern now; actually bearing more of a similarity to 'Oh-my-God-I'm-gonna-die' levels than to the mild concern that she had experienced moments before her discovery of where she was. "Hello? …is anyone…is anyone there?" She called out, looking into the hall way which obviously led to the kitchen and bedroom. Her captor had to either be in those two rooms that completed the ridiculously small apartment unit, or he had gone out. "Or she," Audrey mumbled to herself, "It could be a she." Unclear on why she had just uttered words that were of no comfort at all to her, she was startled when she heard the door to the apartment creak open. She looked over at it dreading, and at the same time, curiously expectant to see whoever was responsible for her current misfortune.

A man clothed from head to toe in red and black spandex stepped in with a huge bag slung around his shoulder, closed the door behind him and actually bellowed out "Honey, I'm home!"

Audrey's expression was something of a mix between fear, surprise and disbelief. "…What?" she managed.

The man, who was apparently one of those costumed nuts that she was always seeing on the news, proceeded to walk right up to her and drop the bag right next to her on the couch. "Sorry, I've always wanted to say that…or have it said to me; either way would work." He revealed, facing her with his hands on his hips. "Sorry for not leaving the TV on while I was gone. But, now that you're awake we can finally get going!"

You haven't told her where.

"What?"

You assume that during the break in the chapter, she somehow got caught up with your plan. But she's kinda been unconscious.

And now…she's freaking out.

"What? Oh…" Withdrawing out of his mental conversation with voices that he frequently heard in his head, he suddenly realized that she was pleading with him.

"Please, please don't kill me. If you let me go, I promise that I won't tell anyone. You do not want to do this, please…" Her voice was shockingly not that shaky as she implored him, which caught his attention. At least she wasn't completely scared of him.

"Hey, whoa, I'm not gonna kill you!" He reassured her, pausing a while before digging through the bag that he had placed next to her. "Hey, in case you want it, I got some superhero type spandex for you to wear during the trip. The waitress sheik is so last year anyway."

Not if you're a struggling actress in Hollywood. Cuz if you are, then the waitress thing is so fetch.

Thank you for your input, Gretchen from 'Mean Girls'.

Her captor was starting to look like less of a threat and more of a crazed lunatic. "What trip? Who are you?" Audrey demanded, instinctively cringing from him as he sifted though the contents of the bag. Upon hearing the question, he stopped, looked at her and spoke in a deep, low voice as if he'd practiced it.

"I'm Deadpool, mercenary extraordinaire who has seen that you possess a talent that is too dangerous to be left unchecked. So, I plan to take you to the X-Men… island… thingy where you can get the proper training for your hydrokinesis –the stumbling, retarded younger brother of telekinesis."

Audrey blinked in astonishment, still very confused at what exactly was happening. "Hydrokin—what the hell is that?" He either didn't hear her or was pointedly ignoring her, from what little she had seen of him so far it was hard to tell. Leaving the bag he was rummaging through Deadpool stepped into the hallway.

"Hey, I'm going into the kitchen. Want a mimosa?"

Ignoring him as he spoke to her from the other room Audrey thought about all that she had experienced recently and despite her unwillingness to trust a nutjob in a costume, his babbling was starting to form a very disturbing conclusion. A dangerous talent? The X-Men? Superhero Spandex? It was all lining up in her imagination with everything else that had been going on her life lately. The migraines, the spontaneous flooding of her apartment, the glasses back at the diner…and… the thing with her landlord. The realization of what she had done hit her so fast that she didn't have time to process it. Tears that had since decided not to fall, abruptly welled up again.

"I… killed him, didn't I?" She asked herself out loud.

"Yeah, but it was self defence." Deadpool called out from the kitchen, amazing her at how he had heard what she had said. "Don't worry, the X-Men will help out once we can get to San Fran. Hey, you might even get into a romantic relationship with one of the guys! Like Remdrey. Or Lodrey! Can you say 'favorite shipping ever'?"

I never cared much "shipping" couples that would be great together.

I don't know. I have to admit that I always liked to think of what 'Wagan' would be like… Ah sweet, I finally met my 'bi-curious' quota for the day.

As she heard Deadpool argue with himself, Audrey's brow knit as she considered what she had to do. This… Deadpool or whatever, claimed that he wasn't going to kill her but that it didn't exactly inspire her to trust him. Besides, he did say he was taking her all the way to San Francisco, which was really kidnapping because she had no plans of willingly going along with him. She had seen and heard about the "X-Men" on T.V and though they were interesting and colourful characters to put it mildly, she certainly didn't think that she wanted to be part of their ranks. Even though the idea that she may indeed be a mutant still loomed over her it was too much to process at the moment. She decided the first thing to do was ditch the insane guy and get out of dodge before investigating how or if it was even possible.

Unfortunately for her, just as she began to struggle to get the tape loose, she heard Deadpool coming back into the room, and when she took a good look at him, all the color left her face and the erstwhile discarded fear came rushing back. "Oh God…" she breathed, to the site of him wielding a cleaver, with his mask off. "What… what happened to your face?" she yet again whimpered.

Unbeknownst to her, it just happened to be one of the subjects that the mercenary was a bit touchy about. "Umm… botched face painting. Now, if you'll hold still for a moment…"

She couldn't take it anymore. He was walking toward her with a huge knife in one hand and an unreadable expression. All the fear and panic she had felt upon first waking came rushing back with a vengeance as he came closer. She screamed, falling back into the couch and closing her eyes while anticipating the worst. However, when seconds later, nothing seemed to happen, she tentatively opened an eyelid, curious as to why she hadn't died yet. What she saw chilled her to her core.

If his face had alarmed her before she was now horrified to see his mummified features, a grotesque doppelganger to her former landlord. His body hit the floor with a thud, the reddish swirling liquid splashing over him as it reacquainted it's self with gravity. There was a pause, the only sound was her shaky breathing before the body convulsed. Screaming again a couple of times, she watched as Deadpool worked his jaw.

"This…this is…because I…didn't leave the T.V on…isn't it?" he barely managed to say, with a hint of obviousness in his tone, even though he was clearly in agony before his eyes rolled up into his head.

Yes! He's dead! Finally, I can now chase after my dream of becoming a world famous pianist!

You do know that being a pianist has nothing to do with sex, don't you?

… Better wake the fuck up, Wade!

Audrey had no idea how long she just stared open mouthed at the seemingly dead body in front of her. She hadn't wanted to die but she also didn't mean to kill him. She didn't even know how she had done it. "Oh God, Oh God" she kept mumbling to herself, toiling even harder to get the binds loose and escape the hellish nightmare that her night had become. "I'm a murderer… I'm a…" Not understanding how all this could happen to her in the space of a couple of hours, she unexpectedly stopped everything that she was doing and just… cried.

Head bent low and sobbing softly, the tears continued to drop unhindered until she heard sounds coming from Deadpool. Looking at his body sceptically, she didn't know how to describe what she felt when he stirred… and actually started to get up, groaning as he did so. Now, as she saw him rise to his feet, with his body slowly, yet surely, somehow returning to its former vigour, she had nothing to say. She was paralyzed with horror.

"Well, that was new…" he muttered, holding his head in one hand with the cleaver still in the other.

New in a painful, unnecessary way or in an exciting, sexy way?

For me it was definitely the latter.

"Seriously, toots, that was completely uncalled for. And rude!" The recently revived merc complained, shaking his head to make the room stop spinning. "It's not like I asked you to literally de-moisturize me and besides, I just wanted to… cut your… bonds…" He trailed off once he saw that she had passed out. "Really? Fainted? What is this, the Golden Age of Comics?"

All that's left is for you to fight some classic pulp fiction-y robots or aliens that'll never appear in continuity again.

Sighing as he went over to Audrey and lay her down on the couch in a comfortable position, Deadpool, a.k.a Wade Wilson knew that taking her to Utopia was going to be a challenging task even for him. "Well… more mimosas for me, I guess. Good thing too; I need to get properly rehydrated." He concluded as he turned back to go to the kitchen and fix himself a drink before leaving with her on their road trip that he was sure was going to be eventful.