The last time I met this joker, he almost killed me.

That was a dark time for me though. I was doubtin' who I was, what I could do an' I had the desire to prove myself because I felt I had to and I got careless. Operation Zero Tolerance, the trashin' of Xaviers, the battle with McLeish, the fight with Marrow that nearly got me and her killed. I was a fool, doubtin' who I was because the adamantium made me stronger, and in some ways better, but I'd lived over half my life without it and that was something else. These days I know who I am, I know what I can do and I need some muscle on this caper.

Which is where he comes in. I got lucky last time I fought him and his partner, but that was then and this is now. His partner, according to the information provided by Wraith, is working for some crime lord named Tan. One of these days I'll have to find him and have a chat about what happened between him, the N'Agari and Belasco, because the last time I saw before he jumped me, he was being taken to another dimension.

Belasco escaped and eventually teamed with Apocalypse, but what happened to Bloodscream is another matter, and the N'Agari were deposed by the Ru'Tai. Must have escaped before all the Cairns exploded across the world and sealed the dimension forever. I'll make a note to ask him, once I'm done getting a team together and dealing with the Shadow King once and fer all.

My first two recruits, Tyger and Elena, are tryin' to find Maverick and let him know what happened to Isabel, because the two of them were friends and he needs to be told before he simply finds out, so I'm on my own for this one. My target's only known as Roughouse, but he lives up to the name. He once boasted that neither he nor Bloodscream could be killed by mortal steel, and Tyger told me that when he tried to get the armour off her, he referred to Ymir. His strength has always been inhuman, an' I always thought he might be part Asgardian. Maybe that's why his dad used to beat him, 'cause he was afraid of him, but Roughouse eventually grew strong and fought back and he enjoyed how it made him feel. He became a merc, hired by people General Coy and other crime lords and he liked what the power gave him, but his madness was cured by the healing touch of Sister Salvation.

I crossed his path last time when I went after some racketeers who seemed to be working for a crime boss called the Black Tarantula. Tyger called Landau, Luckman, Lake and LeQuare (Retired) and got the info I wanted. As far as they know Roughouse is still working for him and that's why I'm on an island off Argentina called Tierra del Feugo, thanks to the LLL&L warp chambers.

More specifically, thanks to the info Wraith gave me, I'm in a place called Rio Grande. It's a small town, almost sleepy, but on the outskirts of the town is a heavily guarded compound. Carlos LaMuerto owns it and Wraith say's he's also known as the Black Tarantula so that's where I want to be.

While I got no quarrel with him, I do have one with Roughouse. Last time I was in this part of the world, I was in Tierra Verde, and Roughouse had promised to help Sister Salvation and her son, and protect them both. Something changed, and I owe that lady. Never made time to find out what happened. I'm doing it now and I'll find out why Roughouse reverted to type. The compounds heavily guarded but then again I've gotten in to worse before now, and that was before I got my past back.

This should be a walk in the park, but then again I've heard those words before as well. Time to go to work.

"Where the hell am I?" Elektra demanded.

"You're in a protected facility," said John Wraith, backed by Zoe Culloden. "Welcome back, Miss Natchios."

"Back?" said Elektra, looking uncertain. She remembered very little about what had happened to her, she had awoken and found herself in a hospital bed, being looked after by doctors and nurses and she knew that she must have been injured badly, but there had been no sign of Logan and it had unnerved her, but she had been reassured by the medics and she had gone back to sleep. When she had awoken, Wraith and Culloden were there, and Elektra knew something was wrong here.

"You died, Elektra," said Zoë, looking at her. "Again, and this time it was a lot more... permanent than when Bullseye killed you."

"Then what went wrong?" said Elektra, taking a step back. "Why am I alive?"

"A combination of things," said Wraith. "Your corpse was resurrected and augmented by technology by Donald Pierce and you along with Silver Fox and Mariko Yashida were used as weapons to fight Wolverine."

"No," said Elektra, not remembering it but there was something familiar, as if she had seen it all happening in a dream.

"Yes, and Logan... got lucky. He regressed to a feral state because of the injuries he took and although he was almost dead he healed as quickly as he'd been wounded and he took you all out, except you looked at him in that state and somehow you reached each other."

"Logan," whispered Elektra, thinking back to the first time she had met him, after he had regressed to that state before, after his encounter with Genesis and the Dark Riders. She had been prepared to kill him if necessary, if they couldn't get him back on the Path. At one moment she had looked at him and he had looked back and there had been a connection, they had reached each other on a level beyond anything physical. Elektra had known it was the Path of the Chaste, that they had both been forged in the same fires and it bonded them. It was a power that surpassed death, and it had done so again. "How did I die?" she asked. "I remember the Destroyer, I remember the death of Nina..." she faltered, as the image of the sword slicing off her former friend's head.

"The Destroyer took over you, and Logan was forced to plunge the Sword of Life through your heart," said Wraith.

"I remember," said Elektra. "The Sword of Life, I used my soul to protect Logan from the Destroyer's evil."

"That explains a lot," said Zoë. "We wondered how he'd managed it."

"I transferred my soul in to Logan, combined it with his. It kept him alive."

"Without a soul, your body died," said Wraith. "Then Pierce brought you back."

"What about...?" asked Elektra. If she were alive, then would Silver Fox and Mariko be alive as well?

"No," said Zoe. "Mephisto, for whatever reason, put your soul back in your body and you were alive, but it's taken several weeks for you to wake up."

"Weeks?" asked Elektra. "And what about me, am I?"

"Part cybernetic," said Wraith. "Nothing that will make you super-human, but it will keep you alive a long time. You'll be able to match Logan for longevity."

"Where is he?" she asked, sitting down. "I need to see him." The two agents looked at each other.

"He's hunting," said Wraith. "He's going to take down the Shadow King."

"No," said Elektra, standing up, concern in her eyes for the man she loved. "He needs my help."

"He's getting a team together, he won't take him alone."

"Wraith," she said. "Logan can't take the Shadow King. He can't touch him on the levels the Shadow King can reach. I've seen the man's soul. I know."

"I think you're underestimating him," said Zoë. "He knows his limits and what was at stake. He wouldn't risk his child..."

"Child?" whispered Elektra, going pale.

"Viper gave birth to a son," said John, softly. "The Shadow King took the child as a host."

"She had his child," said Elektra, barely listening. She remembered the night the child had been conceived, and how it had almost ruined her relationship with Logan. Now it threatened to take him away from her again. "No, not again," she said. "Never again."

"What?" asked Wraith, unsure of what was being said.

"I'm going to help Logan, I'm going to find Viper and then I'm going to cut out her black heart," said Elektra. "The child will be our child. Viper's a dead woman."

"We can't let you leave," said Zoë. "The Destroyer..."

"Is gone," said Elektra.

"You're not leaving this facility," said Zoë.

"Fine," said Elektra. "Then get out. I need to sleep." Zoë was about to argue when her cell phone rang.

"Culloden... I see... On our way." She looked at North. "We've just heard from Hoan. She's spoken with North, and she's headed for Argentina. We'll deal with this later." Wraith nodded and he turned to Elektra as Zoë left.

"We'll let Logan know that you're awake," he said and left the room. Elektra waited a moment or so, then started to look for some clothes. She was leaving here, one way or another.

Carlos LaMuerto looked in disappointment at the photograph of his son Fabian. His first born son and rightful heir to the title of Black Tarantula, as he had been to his father, going back through the family for 700 years. He had promised to return for the boy, but there had been problems and he was not the power that he had once been and a return to New York any time soon was not on the cards, though he had heard that one of the main obstacles in his path was facing criminal charges. Once the Kingpin was out of the way, he would claim the boy once more, but until then he was content to control the crime on the island, as well as a significant part of the local drugs trafficking.

However he longed for a challenge, something more than what he had now. Ever since his battle with the hero Spider-Man, he had wanted to face another costumed vigilante and test his strength and skill against them. It was one of the reasons he kept Roughouse around, for good sparing partners were hard to come by. He was the Black Tarantula, his strength was incredible and he kept himself at the peak of human fitness. That along with his healing powers made him a force to be reckoned with and so far there had been nobody who had properly challenged him.

He had been tempted to go to New York anyway and challenge the Kingpin to a fight, however the last time he had gotten in to a gang war he had not come well from it. The Rose had been a clever and powerful opponent. He looked outside to where Roughouse was training some of his men. He remembered the day when he had come here, looking for help for the son of a missionary who was suffering a drug addiction. The powers of the Black Tarantula were known of and he had come to offer his services in exchange for helping the woman. He had done so, and Roughouse had been in his employ ever since. He had even brought in his old partner, but the demon Bloodscream had not been what LaMuerto wanted in his organisation and he had let him go.

There were standards to the kind of people he would employ.

Roughouse stayed because he knew that if LaMuerto wanted he could take the boy from his mother and restore the addiction to which he had been cured of. The tainted cocaine created by his father had left the child with a powerful addiction that could have been cured by his mother, if she had retained her healing powers. Alas she had not and so the Black Tarantula had been their only hope, but for a price and Roughouse was willing to pay it. All for the sake of a woman.

He smiled as he though of how his own private army was being created and he knew they would be in place in key positions around the world and with his enforcers in the major cities, the Black Tarantula would become a dominant force in the global underworld, challenging even the Thieves Guild as a criminal venture, though that organisation had lost much of it's former venom. Then an alarm sounded and he looked at the monitors. The guards at the west side of the compound had been taken out, but one had managed to trigger an alarm before they had lost consciousness. These were skilled fighters, trained by the Taskmaster himself at one of his various academies across the planet. Taskmaster only trained the best.

A challenge might have arrived, for he had evaded the main security measures and had taken out six guards quickly, quietly and efficiently while leaving them alive at the same time. He cancelled the alarm and knocked on the window. Roughouse looked up and the Black Tarantula signalled to him. Roughouse nodded and the men vanished. LaMuerto nodded and then reached for his mask. The Black Tarantula was on the prowl.

Roughouse is here, I can smell him but suddenly this place has gotten quiet. I'm guessing that I wasn't careful enough in what I did here, but never mind. I was just concerned that I didn't kill anyone, because that would just make this thing much more problematic. Tempting as it is to cut loose, that ain't what I do. I'll kill if there's a need and these guys ain't a need, but they were good. No guns, but they put up a fight I quite enjoyed but if the goons have gone away then there's only one game in town for me - Roughouse himself. I don't wanna fight him unless I have to. We were friends once and I want to know if we can put the incident in New York behind us. I need his help and the way I see it is he owes me for savin' his life in Tierra Verde.

An' me not killin' him in New York. If I could.

He's just standin' in the middle of the courtyard and before I approach him, I make sure he's alone. Much too handy a place for a trap, but his is the only scent there, though there were people there not too long ago.

"Roughouse!" I say as I appear before him and he looks at me in disbelief.

"Wolverine," he says and his eyes narrow. "Came a long way to pick a fight."

"Ain't here to fight, bub. I'm here to bury the hatchet. Like the last time we were down this way."

"We're not in Tierra Verde now, little man," Roughouse says. "That's the past."

"Then we have a problem, bub."

"More than you know," he says and I can see in his eyes there's something that wasn't there the last time I saw him. Sadness. Makes me wonder if when we fought he was doing it because of Bloodscream. "This time, you'll die."

"Getting' real tired of people tellin' me that," I answer as he strikes at me and I dodge. It's easier when I'm a good foot and more shorter than he is, because he has to reach to get to me and I can just move out of his way. He swings and I dodge and he lunges and I move and he can't lay a hand on me, because he can't predict my moves. When we fought before I was interested in hurting him, but I don't want that this time and the best defence his is a good offence and this is a style he's never seen and as he moves again, his shot is sloppy because he's angry and I hit a nerve cluster that brings him to his knees.

"You bastard," he says.

"Yer still alive, an it's fer a reason. I'd rather have you as an ally than an enemy, and there are greater evils out there than Spore or Carridad."

"And I am one of them." A new player and I turn to see a man standing there. Guessing from his outfit, he's the Black Tarantula, which makes me wish I was wearing my X-Men suit, but this is my business and not theirs. The suit's less a part of me than the adamantium, so it doesn't matter.

"Carlos LaMuerto."

"You are the X-Man called Wolverine," he answers. "Perhaps you are the challenge I have looked for."

"I'm here for Roughouse."

"He owes me a debt."

"I'll pay it for him."

"It's not that sort of debt."

"I know what kind of debt it is and if yer lucky, I'll let you live."

"Let us see, mutant." He assumes a fighting stance as do I and then he moves, throwing a punch. I grab his hand as it comes, but the power in the punch belies the strength of the man and I can feel something snap in my hand as he breaks bone and I'm surprised my wrist's still got a hand attached to it. I've already lost one hand in the last year, I really don't want to lose it again now I've got it back. He smiles as he sees what he's done to hurt me, so I pick it up a gear. He's a hell of a lot stronger than me, but I'm a better fighter and he strikes and I dodge, striking back, forcing him to block and from then on I'm on the attack.

He's quick but I'm faster than he is and my skill tells me everything I need to know. The guy's always relied on his strength before, using that to get out of situations. I've known beings who hit harder but not many and if he connects with me once I'm in trouble. My healing factor's good but I doubt I'll be able to survive many shots. As it is his blocks are causing chips in my bones as I strike so there's only one thing for it and I bring the claws out. I don't have time to mess about here. My kid's in trouble and I slash at his chest with one set, while striking his arm with the other and in a moment he's wounded.

"Forgot your claws," he said and I can see the wounds heal in front of my eyes. "Won't make that mistake again." Didn't realise the guy had a healing factor. I'm gonna kill Wraith.

"You won't get chance. I've taken down crime lords before. Shingen, Tsurayaba, Coy. Then there's the super villains. You don't want me for an enemy, La Muerto. You release Roughouse from his debt, I'll owe you a favour."

"What if the favour is not something that fits with your... heroic standing?"

"My word is my word."

"I see. I do not think it is worth my time. No deal."

"Okay, bub. Have it your way." I step up a gear and release the animal in me. Not exactly the berserker rage of old, but a controlled creature with the temper and cunning of a wild animal. He tries to fight me, but he's got to keep dodging my strikes and one hits home, as I plunge my claws through his oncoming fist and pull up. His enhanced strength is just that, strength. No natural armour or anything like that and the top of his hand tears away as easily as paper. He cries out in pain and I make another strike and plunge my claws in to his chest. Not a slash, a stab and he feels the piercing of his heart. "Fix that." I turn and see Roughouse standing there.

"You wanna go again?"

"Logan, I can't... Salvation..." He looks at the Tarantula. "He recovers, he'll go after her."

"He won't," I answer and I kneel down next to him. He's still alive, but only just. "If anything happens to her, I'll be back for you and when I'm done they'll be nothing left to heal." I think he gets the message. "I need yer help, bub," I say as I turn to Roughouse. "The past's the past, and I'm callin' in my debts."

"Alright," he says, after a moment, still unsure of what's going on and I can see he's wondering about Sister Salvation. "Where do we go now?"

"You go to the States. A place in New York called Landau, Luckman and Lake, though they may have added another name to it by now. Ask for Tyger Tiger, and tell her about Salvation, just in case. Soon as I'm done, I'll meet you there."

"Where are you goin'?"

"Japan."

There's only one more person I want for this caper. Yuriko Oyama - the former Reaver known as Lady Deathstrike.