FicWad

Chapter Five
Round Two

By noon Logan had cut the three men down and buried them. He put his hands into his pants pockets. He remembered that he had a case of cigars with him. “Well, if there was ever a time…” He pulled one out and groped his other pockets for a lighter. He suddenly remembered that he had left his lighter in his bag at the village. “Shit.” He placed the cigar back in its case in his pocket.
He leaped and ran his way back to his campsite. He needed to get his heart going if he was going to hunt. He hadn’t actually hunted anything in quite a while. Sure he had tracked, but it had been a hell of a long time since he’d hunted something that could hunt him back, and be a legitimate threat.
He remembered the first time he hunted after the Weapon X ordeal. It was dark. He was nervous. It was a long time ago. He had been tracking something up in the frozen Canadian North. He had tracked some kind of beast quite a ways. As he passed a ridge, he smelled the beast before it tackled him to the ground. The claws hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but even then he could heal fast. It was a goddamn Siberian tiger! He couldn’t believe it. A tiger in Canada.
He was nervous and hesitant, so it got quite a beating on him before he accidentally sliced it’s chest open. He was blinded with fear or rage. Even now he didn’t know which. He didn’t really want to hurt it. It had just eaten a few animals. It wasn’t a man-eater. After he got back it turned out that a traveling circus had lost a tiger, and were offering top dollar for it. He spent a day drinking the local bar dry.
But this time it wouldn’t be by accident. That sick son of a bitch was going to get a full helping of adamantium through every surface it had. It had killed innocents just to see what they looked like inside. He didn’t know exactly what he would do to it, but he knew it wouldn’t be breathing when he walked away.
He arrived back at his camp site. The clothes he had burned the night before were one with the wood ash, which was no longer alight. “Let’s spruce up this place.” He pulled several branches off a few trees and used his claws to cut them sharp. He climbed the trees and pulled out all the strong vines.
By 3-o-clock he had circled his camp with spike traps, swinging logs, and a few deer snares set to pick up cars. He would wait for the bastard to come to him again later that night. When he did, he wouldn’t get away. As he worked, he thought about what drove him. Why was he doing this? Why was he working so hard to kill this thing? Playing protector for a remote village in Brazil wasn’t his job. It just came down to a primal feeling. He needed to hunt this thing; kill it. All the déjà vu was beginning to piss him off. And a name kept popping into his head. Dutch. Dutch. Over and over again. By 6-o-clock he finished preparing the camp site. Now all he had to do was wait.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He stayed in a small clearing near a stream and his ship. He didn’t want to hunt just yet. He needed to prepare, focus. He spun and jabbed with his spear, repeating the motions again and again. He sharpened his blades on a piece of rock. He practiced with these as well, turning and stabbing, learning to weave and cleave again. He wanted to be in top form for this one. He practiced throwing both his disk and fly-blades, cutting trees down, tearing rock apart. He even got in some target practice with his cannon. He didn’t think he’d need it, but this foe was unpredictable, and he would take it’s head one way or the other.
Only by defeating this thing would his people regain their honor and rightful place as the greatest hunters in the universe. His mind wandered back to the previous hunter. Was he slain by the same beast? Could this being possibly have been waiting for him? Even if it was, he would give it a good fight. To hell with honor. He had already killed more than an exploratory share of humans, of course he would never tell the High Council. All he needed was to kill it. Make the planet fear his race again.
He didn’t go straight back to the beast’s campsite this time. He circled it slowly getting closer. Setting a trap here and there, but mainly trying to find his prey’s traps, if it had set any. By nightfall he had made his final descent on his foe’s camp. As he approached the tree line, he began feeling confident. He had not seen one early warning system.
The fire was lit again. He had turned on his active camouflage, and was confident that he would not be seen by his foe. He scanned the jungle floor, but found no sign of his prey. He kept his spear in reserve. He would kill it with the weapon it had dishonored. He slowly extended his invisible blades to mid range. He would take his prey back no matter what.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Logan had been clever. He had left no prints on the ground, left nothing for it to track, and he had stripped down to just his pants to keep from sweating. He kept his position silently. Even he barely knew he was there. He was glad the trees here were so strong. If not he wouldn’t have been able to gain his perfect position hidden high above his campsite. He was sitting straight against the tree with his arms folded under his armpits, letting his claws support him. Hitting the ground wasn’t the problem. His adamantium would absorb the shock. But if it got here and he slipped he would be a sitting duck.
He barely kept his eyes open, so as to see it if it arrived, which it did. He heard it approach. It still didn’t know about his hearing. He thought his eyes had deceived him. All he saw was moving nothing. He had seen this kind of thing before with A.I.M. & H.Y.D.R.A. agents. Only the best had it, but he had beat them all. Well, it wasn’t the only genius here. He had covered himself in mud from the stream to blend in with the tree. It was quite a ways below him on the opposite side of the camp, the same way it had come before. He knew it’s base must be in that direction. He saw what he guessed was it’s head turn from side to side. It hadn’t found him.
He had been in his position for an hour. His immune system prevented even his own body from releasing those chemicals that made normal people tired and stiff. He thought he saw it’s arm extend. It baffled him, but he had the sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t the only one with claws. It disappeared back into the trees. He knew it wasn’t retreating. After the beating he gave it last night, he knew it wouldn’t run away. He saw it re-emerge from the trees on the ground, walking slowly. He almost lost sight of it when it kept stopping. It moved in a circle barely rimming around the campsite. It was looking for him. He was getting impatient, one of his many vices. It moved directly beneath him, and he released his claws from the tree.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He felt restless. Something wasn’t right. He had arrived here too easily. And his prey was nowhere to be found. He noticed something in the fire. They looked like pieces of clothing. They had been worn by the beast. He approached the fire, and was suddenly smashed to the ground. He rolled over and righted himself quickly. He was staring face to face with his quarry. It had it’s back bent in an offensive pose, ready to strike again. It had covered itself with the mixture of soil and water from the stream to hide itself from his infrared. Fortunately, its brown coat had hardened, cracked, and broken off as it fell to the ground. He could see enough of it to aim and fire it’s plasma cannon. It rolled to his right to avoid it, but he fired another round which it leaped out of the way of again. It attempted to hide behind the rock, but he fired another blast into the stone. It shattered the stone. He tried to fire again. But something was wrong. The cannon didn’t respond. It sparked, so he quickly removed it. The creature had apparently disabled it when it tackled him.
The creature was charging him now. He threw both his disk and fly-blades at it, but it used it’s claws to deflect them. It then slashed him across the chest twice. He had dodged the first, but the second caught him off-guard. It cut right through his left chest plate. He released a hard punch to the beast’s gut, which made it double over. He heard his weapons returning to him, so he grabbed the beast by it’s shoulders, restricting it’s arm movement. It managed to get one claw about an inch into his gut before the blades stuck it in the back. It roared with pain. He expected it to drop down dead, but it was only infuriated. It released itself from his grip and landed on the ground. Each blade had claimed a shoulder, but they should have cut cleanly through it! It used it’s claws to slice his disk in half before the other half fell out of it’s back. How could it do that?! How could it’s limbs survive such laceration? It grabbed his fly-blade, pulled it out of it’s back, and thrown it at him in one fluid motion.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That son of a bitch! Those things it threw must have come back and got him in the back. He was being stupid and impulsive, leaping down rather than waiting for a trap to go off. He cursed himself for it as he pulled some kind of bladed boomerang out of his back. He threw it back at the bastard. It caught it. It caught it! The blades retracted in his hand. Damn. Then it threw it back at him, but he was ready. He held his claws to his face and cut it. Sparks flew like a remote-controlled plane shorting out. It fell to the ground like a toy.
As he looked at the wrecked blades, a rock slammed into his chest, forcing him backward. He saw the monster picking up another rock to throw at him. He had set up vine traps everywhere so he could use them when he needed to. He grabbed for the nearest one. “That’s it. CATCH THIS!” He pulled the vine, which caused a tree truck suspended by vines to fly into the monster's chest from above. It flew backward into the trees. He immediately removed and destroyed the other disc from his back, and chased his foe down. He leaped onto the log and jumped off it for a burst of speed. He saw that it’s camouflage had been knocked out by the impact of the tree. As he approached the slowly-rising monster he jumped into the air and came down stabbing it through the chest with one claw, but it’s hand had come up and stopped the other. It pinched his wrist before grabbing his other hand and lifting his claws out. He pinched the other wrist too. His hands felt numb. He freed them and tried to stab it again in the chest, but he punched it instead. It must have forced his claws back in with that pinch.
He punched again and again, not really phasing it. It grabbed his throat with one hand, choking him. It looked at his dog tags around his neck, and took them with it’s other hand. It then threw him off of it, got up, and began running away. He quickly stood up again and followed it’s trail of blood. He had hurt it. Good. Now he was going to kill it. He chased it madly through the trees.