A line of exasperation crossed Angela’s face; she didn’t know whether to be touched by this gentle protectiveness or to nurse a headache over the belated “parental supervision.” Heaven only knew how many years she’d been an adult, and yet here she was, hearing about a nighttime curfew all over again.
“Logan, you’re really bringing back the terror of having my parents control every minute of my day, way back when.”
Logan didn’t take it as sarcasm or criticism in the slightest; instead he laughed out loud.
“That must’ve been a wonderful time.”
Logan’s joy was too genuine to miss, and Angela soon understood what he was laughing about.
So she laughed too.
“Yeah… Ordinary, steady, repetitive days, where your biggest worry was a bad exam score or a scolding from your parents. It really was a wonderful time.”
Compared with studying with everything you had, fighting with everything on the line, mission after mission after mission.
What beautiful years those had been.
A child doesn’t fear a bomb falling out of the sky; a student doesn’t have to agonize over how to bring back someone whose every bone is broken while still preserving most of their bodily functions.
“Oh, you could relive those old days now—if you wanted to.”
Logan smiled and raised an eyebrow.
“Will you?”
Wolverine didn’t mean he’d discipline Angela the way her parents had, of course—he meant he’d bring back that peaceful, steady, sheltered life she’d once had.
This time Angela thought it over for a moment, giving the promise—and the man who made it—its due respect before she answered.
“Logan, thank you.
But I’m not a child anymore.
I won’t smoke or drink in front of you, fine—but a curfew?
No.
Absolutely not.
Picture it: one day I tell a date, ‘Sorry, I have to head home, my big brother says it’s past my curfew.’ That image is just too awful.”
The words “big brother” drew a smile out of Logan, and he picked the thread up, half joking, half serious.
“And then the poor bastard gets a warning from me for trying to kiss you—’Boy, if you don’t want your nose broken, you’ll let go of my little sister.'”
To sell the threat, he even put on a deliberately ferocious expression.
Angela finally lost it, clutching her stomach and laughing until the tears nearly came.
“No, don’t, Logan. I’m afraid if you do that, I’ll never land a single boyfriend.”
Logan shook his head, his tone weighty.
“No—a boy backs off; a man doesn’t. This story is hosted at g.com.
If he truly loves you, he won’t be scared off by a little test like that.”
Wiping her eyes with one hand, Angela said, “You call that a little test?
Don’t tell me the next step is the two of you brawling so you can show him what happens if he dares get handsy with me.”
“I’ll take it under consideration,” Logan said, dead serious.
Angela laughed until her sides ached.
“If you’re really planning on that, you’ll at least have to show me what you can do—after all, talking big and then losing the fight would be far too embarrassing. I’d want to spare you from ever ending up in that spot.”
This time Logan’s expression turned genuinely a little fierce.
“Then let’s warm up a bit first.”
Angela blinked before responding.
“Us?
You and me?
Sure, why not.
Somewhere suitable for it?
Fair warning—I’m more used to a gun.”
“No problem, go ahead and use it.” Logan raised his right hand; sharp metal claws tore through the skin and sprang free as he bared his teeth in a grin.
“I’ll use these.”
Only then did Angela understand where Logan’s nickname came from.
“Wolverine… don’t tell me your whole skeleton is like that—completely metal?”
Logan arched a brow.
“And if I said ‘yes’?”
Angela blinked.
“Then you probably can’t beat Magneto.”
Logan—whose power was hard-countered by exactly that—twitched at the corner of his mouth and blurted out, “That man’s out of the question.
You are absolutely not dating him!”
Caught between laughing and crying, Angela said, “I’ve no hobby of wrecking other people’s families—and besides, Magneto isn’t my type.”
A sudden sense of crisis rose in Logan’s chest.
“Then what is your type?”
Angela gave a crisp answer.
“I lean more toward the slim, refined type. He has to be good-looking, at the very least.”
That answer was, you could say, the polar opposite of Logan’s own style.
He gave a soft laugh.
“Then these boys had better watch themselves. Come on, to the training room—sparring out here’ll just earn me an earful from Charles.”
Angela glanced at the claws on Logan’s hand.
“Mm, I imagine nobody wants you cutting loose on their turf. Those look far too sharp—slicing through rebar wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”
Logan nodded.
“Relax. I’ll hold back.”
“So will I.”
The X-Men’s training required dedicated space and equipment, and the training room Logan meant was right over there.
No one was using it at the moment, so he and Angela had the spacious underground hall comfortably to themselves.
As if by unspoken agreement, both first showed off the power of the weapon in their hands.
Wolverine sheared clean through a thumb-thick steel bar with a single swipe of his claws.
Angela, for her part, fired six shots in a row at a nearby target—and there was only one hole in it.
Not, of course, because the other five had gone wide: the second target, lined up directly behind the first, had been punched through as well.
“These aren’t live rounds, so don’t worry about needing surgery to dig a bullet out of you if my aim happens to slip.”
Angela recharged the Blaster’s energy.
“The Blaster’s rounds are made of pure energy. It recharges and reloads itself through—well, through a mechanism I don’t fully understand either.”
Heaven knew why everyone in Overwatch had unlimited ammo.
Reaper was even worse—the man didn’t reload at all; when he ran a gun dry, he just pulled out a new one.
Where those guns came from was another of Overwatch’s unsolved mysteries.
There’s not much more to say after that: the two of them simply went at it.
Honestly, compared with the X-Men’s usual training, this spar didn’t make much of a commotion.
Angela had no skill that fired optic blasts from her eyes or loosed fire and lightning with a lift of the hand, and Wolverine’s fighting was just as plain.
But a fight built purely on physical conditioning, technique, and experience is the harder kind to deal with.
He’d repeated battles like this countless times; his movements, hammered out over endless repetition, had been stripped of every unnecessary flourish, leaving nothing but pure killing technique.
Angela could tell Logan was trying very hard to “hold back”—otherwise his claws could easily have struck far more dangerous spots.
She was making the same effort, turning a barrel she usually aimed at people’s heads toward shoulders, wrists, and ankles instead—non-lethal places—using the impact of the energy rounds to break his momentum.
It was a grueling fight.