Gambling: Chapter III: Improbable
Scott waited impatiently for Rogue to return. After another glance at the clock on the bedside table he decided to give her another ten minutes before finding her himself and forcing her to retire for the evening. He wasn't known for his over-active imagination, but he did have a very practical mentality when it came to his finances. "Screw this, she's been gone long enough." He picked up his jacket intent on searching for her. His hand was on the door knob when it opened on its own.
An uncharacteristic snort escaped him when he noticed the young woman, so recently dressed in a sophisticated fashion now resembled a drowned rat. "Did you go for a late night swim?" he asked, all anxiety vanished from his countenance.
Rogue smoothed her bangs out of her eyes so she could see her team leader with a clear view. "I had a little trouble is all." She stepped inside the room and shut the door, heading straight for the twin bed that she claimed earlier that evening. Her progress was stopped when Scott grabbed hold of the thief's dress coat.
"Does this trouble have a Cajun accent?" Cyclops inquired, all joking aside.
"He's more trouble than a little," Rogue disagreed. She turned to meet Scott's interrogating gaze. "He's a mutant."
"Not all mutants are good, you know that, Marie. Take Magneto for example or Mystique, they hardly represent examples we want regular humans to generalize us all with," Scott explained.
Rogue shrugged. "He's not really X-men material anyway. He seems more like a womanizing thief to me."
Scott watched as Rogue opened the suitcase propped on the end of her mattress and pulled out a pair of pajamas. She then went into the bathroom to dry herself off and dress down for the evening.
He locked the door to their cabin. There wasn't any point to waiting up now. Rogue was obviously safe and that the would-be Cassanova wasn't coming around that night. He heard his communicator/watch beeping on the dresser so went to check whatever message was left from the mansion.
The message Storm had for him was a bit alarming. The door to the bath opened, but Scott paid Rogue no heed until she touched his shoulder, drawing him out of his distraction. "What's wrong?"
"Hellfire," Scott answered, no other words coming to mind. Storm's message replayed in his mind like a broken record.
"Okay…" Rogue didn't quite translate what Scott was concerned over but noticed the wrist communicator disguised as a regular watch in his clenched fist. Gently, she pried it out of his grasp and replayed the last message. She felt her jaw slacken as she registered the meaning behind the words. "Oh."
"We're going back to New York first thing in the morning," Scott told her, regaining some of his verbal skills. "It's important that we both try and get plenty of sleep so that we'll be able to handle this situation when we return to what's left of the mansion."
Rogue agreed with a mute nod. She didn't understand how it would be possible for Storm's message to be true, but she also knew that Xavier's sources were vast and she would never understand them all. "The riverboat makes one trip to harbor early in the morning for tourists. We can get off then."
Scott turned his back on her and threw back the covers to his bed. A million thoughts raced through his mind then. Surely, Storm must have been mistaken. But the mere possibility was enough to send his heart slamming against his ribs.
Rogue watched with concern as Scott went to sleep without saying another word. There was no way she could fall asleep now. The whole purpose of this trip was to help Scott get over his loss of Jean Grey. Now she feared that if this information Storm had gathered was incorrect that he would be shattered beyond all repair. If it was true, well then, that was a whole other can of worms.
She could only pray that Logan would return before that happened. If the team was to survive it would need the strength of all the members. She shuddered at the thought that came to mind. That would include Bobby. Marie wasn't sure she could handle seeing him at the moment; their breakup and the loss of their mutual friend John was still too close to her heart.
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Gambit was feeling pretty good about life that fine Saturday morning. His caper last night went flawlessly, as expected. When he woke up that morning it was to the knock of room service at his door. The chere had his coat laundered and returned to his room.
His mission was a success so he had more time on his hands to figure out what to do about his engagement. The cherry on top was the fact that he now had the time to meet the beauty from the night before at a more leisurely pace. And given the paper trail she'd have had to left to return his coat it would make that task easier.
The only kink in his perfect morning was that he had been searching for nearly three hours for Rogue and had seen neither hide nor tail of her or her dorky companion, Scooter. They would be leaving the harbor soon. It would be wise if he left the scene of his crime while time was still on his side.
But he did want to at least say goodbye to the young woman. He did spend the best part of his night with her, even if half that time was really in the privacy of his own mind when he had retired to his personal quarters. He grinned as he thought back upon that particularly wild dream. He really needed to thank her for that starring performance.
He continued to walk along the alleyway looking at all the paintings aligned for the tourists. There were always starving artists trying to catch the right eye. He felt pity for the anxious look that was just shy of desperation in their eyes. It was a look he was painfully familiar with himself.
Growing up a thief meant he knew what it was like to live on the streets and fight to survive. Fate happened to hand him a sweet deal when he picked the pocket of his current adopted father, Jean-Luc LeBeau. At least that was the story he was told. He couldn't really remember much before the age of ten.
Sometimes Remy wondered exactly who his parents were. What had they thought when the son they brought into the world had demon eyes? Were they afraid? Or were they killed for giving birth to Le Diable Blanc?
That was one of the questions to which he would never know the answer and he had resigned himself to that fate. There was no use in pondering over something that would never be discovered. He stopped in front of a particularly gruesome painting of an angel pinned to a brick wall, wings torn, and blood everywhere.
The memory of his most recent mistake haunted him. Two years ago he had tried to leave his thieving roots. His powers were becoming unmanageable and he needed help that his adopted father simply could not provide.
Le Diable Blanc had made a deal with the devil that day. He tapped his finger to his temple, a salute to the minor surgery Mr. Sinister performed to contain his kinetic powers. The surgery was necessary; he could have blown up the entire planet with the sort of powers he was generating. The price—the consequences—of that deal would forever haunt him.
Gambit glanced back down at his watch and frowned. The riverboat would be leaving the harbor now and he still had not found the woman of his three hour search. He walked away from the painting, not noticing the cold look in the dark eyes of the artist who painted it.
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Wolverine was not happy to have cut his trip short before he could discover any satisfactory answers to the questions that seemed to simply lead to more questions. So far all he had figured out was that he most certainly was not the age that he looked. How old was he really though?
The message Storm sent him was urgent. She wouldn't go into many details other than the situation was delicate. Apparently there was a woman who recently joined the Hellfire Club with unexplainable powers.
He pulled his motorcycle up in the driveway of the X-mansion. The construction work was going quickly and the infrastructure looked nice at least. Amazingly, the East wing of the mansion had escaped most of the damage and was now converted into headquarters for the X-men.
Logan felt his lip curl at the idea of being an official member of the X-men. Who would have thought that he would have agreed to such dorky thing? A loner by nature, he thought he would have stayed that way until his memory returned. But then again, he wasn't even sure of how long he had been wandering around without a memory. Maybe before he lost his memory he had been a member of some other dorky group of heroes. He laughed aloud at that particular idea. How stupid would he have looked fighting alongside Captain America?
He parked his bike beside the entrance door. Since there wasn't a garage, he didn't see a good reason why he couldn't park there. Besides, he enjoyed annoying Cyclops by not following the rules. Maybe pointdexter would focus on Logan's rule breaking instead on obsessing about Jean.
Logan's heart lurched in his chest at the memory of the heroic, passionate red-haired doctor. He walked through the silent halls, sensing dread in the pit of his stomach. He could smell his friends. It would seem the whole team was present and it wasn't even Christmas.
He found them all waiting for him in the conference room, with Professor X at the head of the table, fingers steepled together under his chin. "Sorry I'm late," Logan called, taking the seat beside Rogue that he had claimed the last time he was in the room. He felt some satisfaction that no one had dared to sit in his chair. It may have been childish of him to engrave the giant "W" on the back of it with his claws when Nightcrawler had last argued that his name wasn't on it.
"Welcome Logan," Professor X greeted as he relaxed his hands and placed them on the table with his palms flat. "It has come under recent attention that a woman who seems to look like Jean Grey has been working with the Hellfire Club."
"But that's not possible, we saw her drown," Cyclops rose from his seat. "If she was alive I would know." He pointed his thumb to his heart. "I would know in here."
"I'm sorry this hurts you Scott," Professor X interjected calmly. "But there is a woman whose physical appearance is that of Jean. She is using the guise of The Phoenix."
"Exactly what's this Hellfire and where do I put my claws?" Wolverine demanded cracking his Adamantium laced knuckles for emphasis. He could feel himself growing more and more enraged. If he wasn't given something productive to do soon he would quickly go berserk.
The presence of Rogue's gloved fingers on his forearm calmed him a little and he leaned back in his chair. He needed to remember that to other people he could be a little scary when he went berserk. A glance around the table reminded him that everyone was worried enough without an enraged wolverine on their hands.
"Hellfire is a group of mutants who believe themselves to be elite. They run a gambling and entertainment business to cover the operating costs of their activities," Storm answered for the professor, reading verbatim from the file sitting on the table in front of her.
"And these operating costs, what would they be?" Kurt asked, carefully enunciating each word so that his German accent wouldn't confuse his question. His tail twitched spasmodically when Storm turned her gaze towards him and offered an encouraging smile for his question.
"That is the question we would all like the answer to Kurt," Storm answered.
"I'll infiltrate their system and find out myself," Scott decided, rising from his chair and turning toward the door. The sooner he left and got to the bottom of this, the better.
"Hold on there hero, if this is Jean we're talking about I'm going too," Logan called as he intercepted Cyclops' progress to the door.
"I think that we all would like to find out the meaning of this," Nightcrawler calmly spoke up, breaking the testosterone-driven contest between the two older men.
"Kurt is right," Professor Xavier agreed. "Please, Scott, Logan, sit down." Professor X turned on the holographic projector he had recently installed to the make-shift conference room. "This is the blueprint of the layout for the Hellfire Club's house."
"My daddy never built me a clubhouse like that," Bobby muttered, earning him a swift kick in the shin from Rogue, who sat across from him. He responded by sticking his tongue out at her in a very dignified manner.
"I will need to send in a two-person tactical team to infiltrate the base. They will need to be successful at gambling and most importantly; their identities need to be obscure enough that the Hellfire members won't recognize them," Professor Xavier explained to his team, ignoring the various glares being shared between different members. Ever since Jean's courageous act the tension level amongst his X-men had grown to an all-time high.
"They'll know ole One Eye for sure," Wolverine spoke up. He then turned to face the professor. "I'm pretty good at gambling, send me and the kid in." He pointed his thumb toward Rogue. "We've worked together before."
"No way, this is Jean we're talking about. If anyone will be infiltrating that group it should be me," Cyclops argued, raising his fingers to his visor, sorely tempted to give the Canadian a good blast.
"It would not be good to blast the Wolverine, Cyclops," Colossus spoke up. This was the first time Piotr had been involved in an official X-meeting. He didn't think bloodshed was how he wanted to initiate that first conference.
"Calm down X-men," Professor X ordered before any more emotional levels could be peaked on the sensitive subject. "I have already decided on the two who will infiltrate. Many of you would be recognized by Hellfire Club members. So Scott, Logan, and Ororo you are all too easily recognizable. They would have lengthy profiles on the three of you."
"Kurt, Piotr, your English is coming along nicely, but I feel the pressure of putting on a front will be too much for either of you at this time. I will certainly utilize you in other aspects, but not at the forefront of this mission." Professor X looked at the two remaining team members and noted the uncomfortable look they shot one another. That was at least one tension he could erase.
"Bobby, I'm afraid your lack of experience and young age would make you a poor candidate." All eyes landed on Rogue.
"Why y'all looking at me? I'm recognizable. Magneto did chain me to the Statue of Liberty for his plan of destroying humans." She raised up her gloved hands to make a point. "I'm not exactly inconspicuous with my clothes either."
"On the contrary," Professor Xavier smiled paternally at her. "Your clothing will help you fit into their society. If you believe yourself to be an elitist among the mutants, you wouldn't want to soil yourself by touching common humans or even common mutants."
"Fine, but ask Scott. My gambling is not exactly something to brag about," Rogue continued.
"The gambling will not be your responsibility. That is what the second part of this meeting revolves around." The professor changed to the next phase of the holographic display to reveal a profile on a young man. "I'd like to discuss recruiting a young man by the name of Remy LeBeau."
"No way in Hell!" Rogue and Cyclops echoed in unison, rising to their feet at the same time.
"I thought you might have met," Professor Xavier sighed. This part would be harder than he thought.
"There is no way I can work with that swamp rat!" Rogue shouted, growing a heated flush to her cheeks. Wolverine tugged her not-so-gently on the wrist, causing her to fall back in her seat.
"Calm down, darlin' the professor ain't done yet." Wolverine kept a firm grip on Rogue's wrist, amusing himself by the fact that he was the one calming her down instead of the reverse.
"Professor, I don't think you understand. That--," Scott paused searching for the right word, "Cajun is nothing but a thieving womanizer. You can't possibly expect him to work with us unless it was to benefit him somehow."
"According to Cerebro and from your and Rogue's reactions Remy LeBeau is the perfect man for the job. His abrasive personality will fit right in with this class of mutants," Xavier contradicted.
"It would be easier to convince Magneto to help us," Rogue grumbled, giving the image of the man, otherwise known at Gambit, a loathsome glare.
"Scott, Kurt, Piotr, and Bobby you will be here at the mansion, as it were, helping to develop a strategy for this mission. Ororo, Logan, Rogue your mission will be to convince this 'swamp rat' to join in our cause," Xavier instructed.
"What about the others?" Cyclops demanded after shooting Rogue a concerned look that she was too busy being annoyed at her task to notice. "What about the other X-men team members?"
"Dr. McCoy and Warren have other responsibilities they must contend with at the moment. They will be available should we require their aid later," Xavier explained. He spread his arms wide, gesturing to those assembled around him. "Welcome back my X-men."
A/N: Revised 6/3/2008