The Abomination filled the warehouse like a small moon. Emil Blonsky's skin was a sick, mottled green-brown, veins and muscles bulging as if someone had stitched lightning under his skin. He looked less human than a raw, walking anatomy lesson—terrifying and stubbornly self-aware in a way the Hulk never was.
Deadpool, impossibly casual, lounged on a concrete slab, twin katanas across his knees and a grin audible even through the mask. When Emil loomed, Deadpool popped upright like a rubber man.
"You ready, kid?" Emil rasped, voice a rumble of concrete and metal. He took a step and the floor trembled.
"Born ready, ugly giant!" Wade chirped, brandishing the blades. "I'm gonna carve your face into modern art!"
Emil charged like an avalanche. Each footstep shook dust from the rafters. He hurled a chunk of concrete the size of a microwave at Deadpool—who, with his usual lack of alarm, sliced the slab clean in two mid-flight and quipped about smashing a midrange boxing match's vibe.
"Eh, you're all brawn and no choreography," Wade sang as the Abomination barreled through the debris and then back again. He flipped high, drew pistols, peppered Emil's rear with suppressive fire, then snatched his swords back and retreated—only to be pelted by the monster's fist and slammed into pillars until the warehouse looked like it had hosted a tornado.
Deadpool's whole schtick is that he can't stay dead, and he leaned into it with gleeful morbidity. A pillar drove through him once—then again—and Wade tapped the pole with a bloody finger, humming like a bored man at a very bloody recital.
"I've been torn up worse on a Tuesday," he announced. "Once I tried to slice my own heart to see how long the repair took. Spoiler: it was educational." He winked at no one.
Emil snarled, furious that the merc refused to respect the stage. "Join me," he bellowed between roars. "Dark Avengers. Power. Revenge. We take the world."
Wade spat blood and laughter in the same breath. "Join a club? I'm a one-man circus. You want me in your costume party, throw five mil on the table, I'll consider it. And don't call it a 'Dark' anything—so edgy, so 2012." He flicked a bit of his own entrail like confetti.
Abomination's temper boiled over. He meant to intimidate; he meant to recruit; he meant to make the merc pay for mockery. He slammed pillars, he roared promises of tracking down Banner and tearing him alive. He swelled, gamma expanding until the concrete groaned and he became a living wrecking ball.
Deadpool clapped, knives glittering. "Ooooh, glow-up! I thought you were a cautionary tale. Live reunion fight? Can't wait. If you kill me, tragic. If you don't, I'll smash you into abstract expressionism." Then, with some genuine, schlocky affection: "Let's see how many organs you can invent in one hour."
They traded blows—hilarious, shocking, and brutal. Emil's fists collapsed pillars and punched holes through floors. Wade ricocheted, bled theatrically, cursed at the scaffolding, and told the Abomination how boring his career choices were. The warehouse slowly turned into a cratered mess.
At one point Emil picked Wade up by the throat and growled some variant of, You will obey me, but Deadpool, arms dangling, shrugged. "Obey? I don't even obey my alarm clock."
Emil's rage metamorphosed into something colder—strategy. "If you will not join, you will be contained." He didn't mean a cage; he meant obliteration, or worse: use. The Abomination's plan for a Dark Avengers needed freaks who'd bend or break—if Wade couldn't be coerced, he could be neutralized.
And Deadpool? He kept talking like a man trying to audition for every possible movie role. He delighted in telling Emil about his own grotesque history and how boredom was his true enemy. When Emil's fist caught him and threw him through a concrete pillar that collapsed like paper, Wade popped up seconds later, leaning on the ruined pillar, bleeding and still smiling.
"Seriously, man, you're a monster who needs a hobby," Wade said. "Try pottery."
The Abomination roared and metamorphosed more fully—gamma muscles swelling, the monster's chest heaving with animal bravado. The warehouse shuddered, the fight escalated into a monstrous ballet, and somewhere in the background the Senate's stamp of "Dark Avengers" was being rubber-stamped with invisible blood on its edges. The idea of a government-blessed monster as a front for revenge was ugly and real.
Deadpool, unkillable and infuriatingly unbothered, danced on the edge of destruction and survival—threatening, taunting, surviving. Emil's ambition had teeth now, and a livewire of chaos was on his stage.
The world had already pushed the gas pedal. Someone had ignited a fuse. Two very different kinds of madness were answering the call.