"And what kind of help were you talking about?"
The voice suddenly ringing out behind him made the mutant flinch.
And not just him, behind the girl, who jumped in place, stood his smiling passenger as if nothing had happened.
When he had managed to appear there in under a second without squeaking a door or crunching the snow was completely incomprehensible.
"I'm not running a taxi service," Logan deemed it necessary to warn, realizing where this was going.
"And yet," his new acquaintance smirked right in the face of the girl frozen before him, a snake-like quality to his smile, "someone wasn't afraid of two scary guys with abilities, but climbed in to hitch a ride with them. Should I go on, darling, or will you answer yourself?" The guy tilted his head to the side and winked slyly.
"I… yes. I have an ability too," the girl mumbled fearfully, then swallowed. "You… you're mutants, right? Can you help me?"
"Maybe," the unwanted passenger number one raised his green eyes to Logan's face. "We can't just leave a teenage girl alone in the cold Canadian winter forest." The guy's lips twisted into a new smile that made Wolverine's teeth ache.
"You want to walk?" the man snapped irritably.
"I can easily ride in the back; there's more than enough room," the brazen whippersnapper shrugged cheerfully.
Logan's fists itched badly, but… the guy was right. He couldn't leave this idiot in the woods. Given her clothes and the local weather, she'd be frozen stiff in half an hour to an hour, and the traffic here wasn't exactly heavy.
The mutant regenerator, who physically couldn't feel pain for more than a few seconds, felt a migraine rolling in and getting stronger.
"Fine…" he sighed. "Get in."
He turned and headed back to the truck… where he saw the dandy still sitting in his seat.
"Um?" The girl was surprised too, since said dandy had just been behind her, and now he was climbing into the back of the camper. "But weren't you just?.." She turned around and saw an exact copy of the man behind her.
"Illusion." The guy snapped his fingers, and his copy vanished in a shimmer of yellow-green light.
"But she was talking…" the girl stammered, lost.
"True," came the satisfied confirmation, followed by the creak of the bed from inside the van, as if someone had sat on it.
"I didn't say you could sit on my bed," the older mutant grimaced in annoyance as he climbed into the driver's seat.
"Don't worry, I lay down… And my coat is cleaner than this bed anyway," the embodiment of arrogance replied unperturbed, clearly getting comfortable judging by the rustling sounds.
Logan pondered again whether tossing random hitchhikers out into the cold was really that bad. Especially when you really want to.
His musings were interrupted by the passenger.
"Do you have anything to eat?" the girl asked shyly, settling into the passenger seat.
"Here," the "dandy" said, abruptly getting up from the bed. He stepped into the aisle and, once there, made a tricky gesture with his hands.
From a kaleidoscope-like jumble of what looked like glass shards or something else entirely, the very plate of sandwiches he had swiped from the diner appeared in his hands.
"Uh…" was all the girl could manage.
"Pocket dimension," the guy explained, handing the plate to her. "Very convenient for carrying personal items."
"Thanks," the girl nodded, then pulled off her thin gloves, completely unsuited for this weather, and greedily bit into a cheese sandwich.
….
"I'm Rogue," the girl introduced herself after satisfying her initial hunger, glancing sideways at Wolverine. And froze in anticipation.
From my spot on the bed, I had a great view. It folded out from the wall right into the center of the van so conveniently, as if it were designed for a noble patrician to recline on featherbeds while contemplating the work of the driver and his neighbor.
Wolverine, however, was in no hurry to make contact. His entire demeanor screamed that he was fed up with passengers and would hasten to get rid of us at the first opportunity.
And if we behaved badly, the "get rid of" method might switch from "dump them somewhere" to something much more… rough.
How did he manage to convey all that with just one sidelong glance? Talent! Unfortunately for him, I didn't care, and Rogue wasn't skilled in physiognomy and didn't parse such complex messages.
Oh well, let's keep the conversation going. We are polite gods, aren't we?
"Loki," I introduced myself.
"Uh… What?" Rogue turned around.
"Hn…" the brutal driver grunted and even smirked slightly, apparently acknowledging that such a name fit a charming rogue like me quite well!
Hmm, am I acting too weird? Although… nah, everything's fine. I just (and by Asgardian standards, barely a moment ago) escaped a massive clusterfuck, mentally accepted the impending local Exterminatus, and decided to bail further, so why not have a little fun "on vacation"?
"My name is Loki. And no, it's not a joke. Not a surname. Not a nickname. Not an abbreviation. And not even the code name for a top-secret government project."
At that last point, Logan fell into a bit of a stupor.
Did I trigger some associations? Hmm, actually… maybe. I highly doubt this universe has the same idiocy where an adamantium bullet from a regular revolver could pierce an adamantium skull and scramble the gray matter, formatting the mutant's brain to zero or close to it.
But amnesia caused by body fluids boiling while his bones were being infused with molten metal is quite plausible.
Wolverine's regeneration is beastly, sure, but that kind of ordeal could damage neurons enough to cause amnesia.
But I digress. Meanwhile, silence had settled in the truck again.
The older mutant refused to respond on principle, though he seemed itching to say something about my parents' sense of humor or the size of the cockroaches in my head.
Rogue probably wouldn't have minded speaking up either, but she didn't dare to be pushy; from her perspective, she'd already crossed the line of acceptable impudence long ago.