(Pre-Show) The Lobby

[Deadpool]

The transverse between portals paralleled to a trip through a pitch-black hallway—light in the distance beaconed to the Danteverse like a radiating door eclipsing a bright room. The mercenary perceived the light to be close, but it blurred as if it were far over the horizon. Either way, he had to reach it.

Deadpool threw an imperceptible palm towards the fissure of light and shuffled his feet half-staggeringly forward. Vertigo still possessed him like a marionette, and played with his movement; it sent his knees nearly buckling, more than a few times.

He swore the light dwindled as he advanced, as if fleeing, but before any emotion could latch onto his thought the light shot forward, faster than the headlights to an incoming train; it hit him like a wave of heat.

His foot sank into the light and gracefully emerged out the other side of the portal; the rest of his body followed haphazardly—he stumbled, lost his footing, and crashed into the carrara marble floor with a thud! The mercenary groaned while attempting to rise up, almost crumbling under his own weight, but after a few moments of agony he managed to return to his feet.

Something is definitely fucked up with my Healing Factor, he thought. He could still feel the sharp pain in his belly where he impaled his blade. By now, his Healing Factor would have erased any remnants of damage (other than the vague memory of it), but ever since he was snatched from Marvel, it did nothing more than seal wounds.

I’m not going to let you write out any more descriptive shit. You’d fuck around and give away the juicy shit intended for later.

“You ok?” Gingy asked, watching the mercenary rise to his feet. “Now that I’m stuck in this fucking thing, you better not die on me.”

”Don’t be ridiculous,” Deadpool coughed out, but with a subsequent pound on the chest he quelled the remainder of it. ”I would die in you before I would ever die on you” He looked down at Gingy and winked.

Gingy responded with mischievous smile as he glided a hand over his head. “If that’s how things are, then you would die under me, because I’d be on top,” he bantered.

”I’m glad you’re finally starting to compliment my humor. Took a few thousand words, but looks like you’ve gotten the hang of if.”

“Yeah, just have to sift through all the fucking nonsense.”

”So, where are we, anyways?” the mercenary asked as his eyes swiveled in various directions.

The hall he stood in was grand. By the looks of the crowd—diverse in age, sex, and historical timelines—Primes from all over the Omniverse had converged at the Danteverse. Most of them roamed the hall aimlessly, frozen in awe, but the more conscious Primes were already bustling towards the pockets of media segregated amongst the crowd.

Overhead, the translucent ceiling housed several banners, suspended from its rafters. The left banner was of a blond-haired woman whose visage appeared younger than her age; her cold blue eyes jumped from the image. The banner far right was of a helmeted man in a blue and white spandex suit; below him were the words ‘DRINK PEPSI’. And dead center was a banner of a slender man with thin lips, in a flashy purple suit, which probably cost more than the mercenary’s life.

“I think this is some type of lobby,” Gingy replied.

”Ah man, that Pepsi-man guy was really serious about that whole hydration thing, I guess,” He muttered with his eyes fixated on the rafters.

“huh?” Gingy did as he usually did when the mercenary spewed nonsense—widened an eye.

”Oh, nothing. Let’s just walk around and see where it takes us. “

“Yeah, let’s use the same tactic that got us here. Perfect.”