Zone C -- Megacity One

[Deadpool]

As they entered the steel mill, the dry odor of used charcoal hit them like fanned air. Though the mercenary's mask filtered most of the stench, the smell still soured his visage; Jak winced harder than a kid anticipating a bully's punch.

The two had entered in where finished steel shipped out for delivery. Bundles of steel bars were bunched together by wiring stood on the right side of the wall. Stacked boxes wrapped in plastic covered the left wall. Dust and charcoal tinged the air a dull orange—the mercenary presumed some chemicals floated in there as well.

Deadpool didn't worry about his own lungs—even if he did catch an illness, his healing factor would stomp it out of existence—but his partner could become ill; while he joked about black lung and the like earlier, those illnesses affected millions of people in the mercenary's universe.

”Make sure you take deep breaths there, Jak,” he said. ”Where I'm from, this stuff does wonders for your respiratory system.”

“Really?” the eco warrior drawled a deep breath, but coughed profusely while trying to exhale. “I think I can feel it working already.”

A grin stretched from ear to ear behind the mercnary's mask. ”Yup, its ya like a quick high.”

That was for his bent sword, he thought.



They roamed the steel mill in search of an exit; the deeper the two went, the more industrial the surroundings became. A huge blast furnace stood as a monolith in the center of the building. The ceiling above it had been removed to allow two adjacent conveyor belts, that started from outside the building, to extend up to its head. Beside the base of the furnace, a mechanical arm held an iron bucket.  Gunk from years of usage looked like tar on its rim.

In it's glory days, the two conveyor belts fed raw materials into the furnace; smoke would come from its mouth as the inferno within it churned those materials into a lava of liquid steel. Deadpool imagined the mechanical arm swiveling around to scoop up the molten iron, and then turning to dump it into an awaiting ladle.

Don't bother googling it—you'll get the kitchen utensil.

“I think there's an exit over here,” Jak said.

A pair of rails loosely zig-zagged from the ladle to where the eco warrior was pointing: an opening partially blocked by an iron carriage.

Jakpool moving from C2 to C20