Sinister Intentions
A X-Men: MovieVerse Fanfiction
Written by RogueMoon
Chapter Four
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Wolverine snuck down one side of a large pile of storage containers. Iceman and Colossus behind him, trying not to make a sound. Storm, Beast and Nightcrawler were on the other side of the room, mirroring the movements of the first three. At least, Wolverine hoped they were. They were supposed to be.
Shadowcat and Jubilee were running through the storage containers to the far end of the complex, where a security door stood, for all appearances, unguarded. That was a lie though. It only looked unguarded Wolverine could smell them. Only three of them. Mutants for sure. And they knew they weren't alone.
Almost three full weeks of back alley talks and greasing palms and inquiries to people better left unnamed had led the X-Men to this facility. An underground warehouse for the storage of plastic forks of all things, owned by one Arnold Bocklin. Supposedly the man had ties to Doctor Essex. An informant or at least a go between for prospective business associates and clients. That was all Logan could get, but it was more than the dead end further investigation into 'Gambit' had proven to be.
They still had little more on him than what SHEILD had been able to provide, despite the calling cards he had been leaving every few days. Accompanied by more pictures. A pattern had emerged from within it. The Devil Man seemed to have been assigning each of his photo victims a different card in the deck. Rogue was the Queen of Hearts; Ororo, the Queen of Spades. Logan had somehow gotten assigned the Jack of Spades while Bobby was given the King of Clubs. Kitty was associated with the Ten of Hearts. The reasoning behind the assignments was unclear, but it was consistent.
Twice he had pictures of Rogue and Ororo delivered to their respective recipients, and twice the same card had been included with the pictures. Queen of Hearts to Rogue and Queen of Spades to Ororo.
The Devil Man was beginning to be an urban myth around the school. Enough of the children, all Morlocks unsurprisingly, had seen him and been asked to deliver the enigmatic envelopes that the rest of the student body had begun Devil Man hunts akin to snipe hunting.
It would have been funny to the staff if it hadn't been so disturbing that the man could seemingly come and go as he pleased.
Wolverine paused, sniffing the air. The scent of one of the guards had gotten stronger. Moved closer. It was strange scent. Reminiscent of the icy tundra just as spring began. A woman's scent.
Then a sound. A low humming. A woman's voice. Moving closer.
The feral mutant signaled the two behind him. Their first target just around the approaching corner. They moved slowly, silently forward. Wolverine sliding his claws out slowly to avoid the tale-tell sign of them being unsheathed.
He could feel Iceboy and the Russian tensing up. The adrenaline beginning to circulate into their system.
Wolverine stopped just before the end of the row, keeping himself flat against the containers. Listening, smelling, waiting for the woman to get just a little bit closer. The humming continued and Logan found himself feeling a bit woozy.
He shook his head to try and clear it, but that only made it worse. The humming grew louder. He blinked away tears that had formed for some reason, his head spinning. He tried to focus on Drake and Rasputin but couldn't tell up from down as he stumbled away from the container. He thought he fell to the floor, but it could have been the ceiling or the wall. A groan escaped him as his body lost its balance, its sense of reality and in moments he finally succumbed to the blessed darkness of a vertigo induced blackout.
She leaned against the container, arms crossed and humming a happy tune as the three men fell before her. Though her nose did crinkle a bit in disgust when the one that looked like ice emptied his stomach. But the humming didn't stop.
Once certain that they weren't faking it, she moved through them, bending down and placing a collar on each body, satisfied that the devices were working properly when the metal man and the ice man both reverted to plain flatline forms.
Only then did the humming stop and she pressed a button on her belt, giving the single that she had completed her part. Leaning against the container once more, she waited for the others to report in.
::: :::
Storm, Beast and Nightcrawler moved slowly, silently. Nightcrawler in the rafters above, invisible in the shadows as he followed the other two, eyes watching the warehouse floor for any guards His vantage point allowed him to spot a green-haired woman in a garish outfit of green and white walk from the far corner of the warehouse and begin what looked like a basic inspection of the room. The kind that any cop-for-hire might do in a shopping mall. When she disappeared into a row of crates near where Wolverine and his team were supposed to be, he dismissed her as a threat. The German had full confidence in his fellows.
His eyes coming back to the two below him, he scanned for any other guards There had to be more than just one green haired woman. And a moment later, he was proven right as a man in the uniform of a security guard emerged from that same dark corner and walked a different route through the warehouse, Tucking his shirt in and straightening his sloppy tie. Nightcrawler allowed himself a moment of disgust at the obvious implications behind such actions with the woman having left just moments before. Muttering a prayer, the German kept his eyes on the man, whose pattern would soon bring him into contact with Storm and Beast.
Kurt could see his teammates slow down. They were aware of the man as he casually made his way down an adjacent isle, walking past their position to the middle of the warehouse and then turning and making his way up the isle that Storm and Beast had been in a moment before.
He was fiddling with his keys when Ororo stepped out in front of him, grabbing him by his shirt. Nightcrawler's belief that it would be an easy shot at the keys was cut short by Storm's strangled cry of pain before dropping the man and falling to the floor unconscious. The man scooted on his backside away from her, only to run into Beast. Again he was grabbed and again he did something to make his attacker pass out with a cry of pain.
Standing up and casually dusting himself off, he pulled two thin, metal rings from under his jacket and popped them around Storm and Beast's neck. Kurt watched in morbid fascination as Hank's blue fur disappeared, leaving him in in the state he had been prior to his mutation. That was not a good sign.
Nightcrawler debated heavily with himself over joining the fight or waiting and decided on waiting. He didn't know what the man had done to his teammates to knock them unconscious. He would wait for now. Bamfing himself across the room so he could be above section that Wolverine's team was scouting, he found the three also passed out with collars around their necks. The green-haired woman leaning against a container.
Not good.
He bamfed across the room once more, staying in the rafters, appearing directly above the security door. Kurt arrived just in time to see Kitty and Jubilee peek out cautiously from the stack of crates directly in front of the door. It was clear. They made a dash for it and phased through the metal.
Nightcrawler considered his options. It was clear the guards were waiting for something, having made no effort to move the X-Men from where they fell. Kurt could easily get them out. Well, probably. Teleporting in and moving them to the blackbird one or two at a time. It would tax him, and give away that he was there. But it would keep them from being taken prisoner, which was likely what would occur.
"If de road ta hell is paved wit' good intentions, den does dat mean de road ta heaven is paved wit' bad ones?" a voice drawled from a few feet away, startling the German. Two glowing red pinpricks stared at him from the shadows. The form of a man crouching on rafter beams near him barely visible, even to Kurt's night vision.
"Devil Man," the German breathed out without thinking.
The figure's head tilted to the left, "We be two of a kind, den. If'n I be a Devil Man an' you be a demon."
"I am a priest," Kurt replied, surprising himself. He should have already teleported away.
"Don't dat beat all. De demon be a priest," the Devil Man brought something to his lips and a moment later it sparked, emitting a soft glow as it was pulled away. Smoke whispering out of the man's lungs. "Why you call me de Devil Man?"
Nightcrawler really should be teleporting away. He shouldn't be keeping his eyes locked onto those eerie red pinpricks. He shouldn't keep talking to the man, "Zat iz what the children call you."
"Dat so? Well, I ain't no Devil Man, me. No, I may be de Devil's own, but I ain't no Devil man. I just work for him."
"Who are you zen? If not the Devil Man, zen who?"
He grinned and stood. Hopped casually across the rafters to crouch directly in front of Nightcrawler. He looked exactly like the picture they had gotten from SHEILD. Save for the eyes.
"De name is Gambit. Now why don't you tell me what you doin' here, oui?" the voice, smooth like honey.
Kurt knew he shouldn't be talking to this man. But he couldn't figure out why. He just shouldn't.
"Come, mon ami, you can trust ol' Gambit. I not doing not'ing but sittin' here havin' a smoke. You want one?" A warm voice, one he could trust.
Nightcrawler smiled and shook his head. Why shouldn't he have a chat with the man. He was supposed to be doing something else, but he couldn't remember what it was. Must not have been to terribly important, "No thank you, my friend. I do not smoke."
"Can't all be perfect."
Kurt laughed, sharing his smile with the man.
"Now what you and your friends be doing here?"
"Looking for information on you," the German answered happily, thinking nothing of it, his accent becoming less prominent. "After ze Morlock children told us about you, we started investigating your role in ze massacre. It didn't look like you did any of ze killing, but you were obviously involved somehow. After some questioning in places it iz better I not think about, we were given ze name 'Gambit'. Logan spoke with his friends at SHIELD and zey provided us with a file on a man we presume iz your father. As ze man in ze file is at least twice your age by now and has different eyes. Ze only other lead in ze file was his connection to a Doctor Essex. It took some more digging but we found out that Arnold Bocklin has some sort of affiliation to ze man. Bocklin has only this warehouse listed as an asset. It is a bit suspicious, even when not looking hard at it, so we decided to come and investigate. Hoping to gain access to Bocklin himself, information on how to contact Essex or more in depth information on either of them."
Gambit grinned and patted the German's shoulder like an old friend, "So how'd you know dere would be guards and you should come in force?"
"We didn't, actually. After landing and getting close, Logan was able to pick up ze scent of three people. Since he didn't mention one of them being yours, I expect there's a fourth person hanging about."
"Oui, dat's true," the Cajun nodded and pulled a thin metal collar out of his coat and then handed it to Kurt, "Do me a favor, mon ami, put dat pretty little bauble on around your neck and twist de closure ta make sure it locks in place, si vous plait."
Grinning like a child getting a fancy new toy, the German took the collar and did as asked. As soon as it was locked, he felt woozy and off balance. His eye sight blurred a bit and when it cleared he found himself being held by the strong arms of Gambit. His head started to clear and his eyes widened as he realized what had just happened. What he had just done and said.
'Obscenely charming'.
"You hypnotized me," he gasped out.
"And you fell for it so easily, too," the other laughed back with no remorse. "Time ta say bon nuit, mon ami."
A sharp pain flared across the back of Kurt's neck before he, too, joined his teammates in unconsciousness.
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End Chapter