Gambling: X: The Savage Lands

"What do you mean you're leaving?" Cyclops demanded rising to his feet and slapping his hands on the table.

"Calm yourself, Scott," Professor Xavier said calmly and he sat back down. "Things will never be completely peaceful, but right now things are settled with the mutant community. President Kelly supports mutants' rights. There's been no word of Eric."

"You mean after he took off with Mystique and John?" Bobby interrupted.

"Be that as it may, pressing matters require my presence elsewhere."

"Right. In outer space," Wolverine said rolling his eyes.

"Logan, it's complicated. Ororo is fully capable of running the institute in my absence and…"

"And I'm not," Scott said. He looked over at Jean. "What about Jean? You're not going to work with her? Help her control her powers and—"

"There is not an issue with controlling my powers," Jean interjected. "The Phoenix is dormant."

"Is it? Then why is that my fiancé is sleeping in a different room than me?"

"Can we stick to business, please? Professor Xavier has obligations that cannot be ignored. We need to assemble a team to search for Rogue and Gambit." Ororo stood from her seat looking from one member of the X-men to another. "And there is at least three month's worth of construction before the school can be reopened for the fall semester."

"And there is also the work that my father is doing," Angel added. Everyone turned their attention to him and Storm reseated herself. "Worthington laboratories is using Leech's mutant DNA to produce a so called cure."

"Leech's real name is Jimmy, but that's the extent of our knowledge on him," Xavier added referencing the notes on the holographic computer screen he brought up before the team.

"Do you know who the head of research is?" Jean asked Warren.

He shrugged. "I think it's a geneticist by the name of Essex. My father has made reference to several journal articles by him as well as another man named Karl Lycos. I can't image he'd hire anyone less capable than the most capable of men." He looked at the professor. "What would you have us do?"

"There are eleven of us," Beast answered instead of the professor. "I'll oversea the construction of the mansion and help in whatever ways I can."

Xavier pushed back from the chair with an anxious expression. "I'm sorry I can't lead you in this. I have great confidence in you all and in your abilities. Ororo, I leave the institute in your capable hands." He then wheeled himself out of the meeting room.

Everyone watched in a state of muted shock.

Except for Bobby.

"Yeah, have fun with that Lilandra."

Xavier didn't acknowledge the comment and continued on his way.

Logan cleared his throat. "Well, that's…yeah." He looked across at Storm. "When do we leave to get Marie?"

"You're not assigned to Rogue and Gambit's rescue, Logan," Storm said calmly.

"What?" His claws slinked out of his knuckles. "I wasn't the one that lost her! And either you assign me to the team or by God I'm taking the jet myself."

"You're impossible, Logan," she said with a sigh. "Very well. I'm sending in a revised Blue team. Unfortunately, we can't spare an entire team for this mission. The team will consist of Cyclops, Colossus, Emma Frost, Iceman and Wolverine."

Bobby folded his arms smugly over his chest and grinned at Wolverine.

"Woah! What about me? You're like kicking me off my team!" Kitty shouted angrily.

Storm cringed. "I need you to work with Angel and Nightcrawler on infiltrating Worthington labs. And I also want you to contact Jubilee. We could use the man-power."

Wolverine shifted his eyes toward Jean. "What about Jean?"

The telepath in question looked away from him.

"She and I will remain at the institute coordinating everything," Storm answered.

Kitty rubbed her forehead. "This is like really confusing. Do you guys normally do this many missions at once while the professor leaves to travel across the universe?"

"You'd be surprised," Scott muttered glaring at his estranged wife. For a moment he felt his attention drawn to the silent Emma Frost. She smiled at him slowly, seductively and he quickly looked away.

Storm adjusted the settings of the meeting's hologram to zoom in on the frozen wasteland of the southpole. "So, your objective is to reach the Savage Lands of Antarctica." A patch of green appeared on the screen. "Here you will rendezvous with Lord Kevin Plunder, also known as Ka-Zar. He will be your best chance of discovering Rogue and Gambit's location."

"Ka-Zar?" Bobby asked with a laugh. "You're not serious. Is he part penguin or something?"

"He'll find you," Storm said ignoring Bobby's questions.

OOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOO

Rogue sat up abruptly in bed, her covers falling to her waist. Her breath came in painful gasps through her constricted chest. Her mind was in turmoil and she couldn't keep her own identity straight. Visions of barroom brawls involving Adamantium claws popping through her knuckles, of flying with long blond hair whipping past her face in a blue uniform emblazoned with a lightning bolt on the chest, and of shivering half-starved in a Nazi concentration camp cycled through her memories.

"Rogue!" There was a gentle shaking of her shoulders as two strong hands gripped her. "Rogue, look at me!" She blinked at the familiar voice curious why he'd call her such a silly name.

"Rogue?" Her name was Carol. Carol Danvers. She groaned and pushed back against a seemingly foreign mental voice. Rogue. That was her name. She was Rogue. She was Anna Marie.

"Mon Die, you scared me chéri." His arms circled her in a crushing embrace as her face was cushioned against his chest.

"Gambit," she croaked. "I can't breathe."

His arms loosened and he pulled back so that his black on red eyes met her green ones. "You been out cold over a day, chéri." His cool hand brushed her cheek and Rogue immediately craned her neck back away from his touch. He chuckled softly. "It's okay. You see that fancy bracelet on your wrist?" His hand slid down her arm and he lifted her wrist up and sure enough, there was a plain silver band there. "This turns off poison skin."

"How?" It couldn't be true. She was forever secluded from mankind. She'd never know the touch of another person without having to pay the ultimate consequence. 'Murderer,' Carol's voice rang hollowly throughout her mind. 'Your demise was a necessity,' Magneto's voice argued. 'Accident,' Wolverine growled.

"Unfortunately, it only temporary," Gambit told her sadly. He released her hand and gestured around the room. "It only work in this place."

She drew away from Gambit and wrapped her arms around herself as if chilled. "That's quite an effective bait." He frowned and looked down at his fingers and started to pick at his thumbnail. "What happened, Remy? Where's Carol? What happened to Carol?"

"Carol?" he asked confused. Realization seemed to dawn across his face. "Ah. The blonde femme. She be indisposed."

"What do you mean?"

He looked uncomfortable. "She not dead. She just not coming awake. Ever."

Both of Rogue's hands covered her mouth as she gasped sharply. "Not again. Just like Cody. No."

Gambit reached over for both her hands and pulled them down. "Look, Roguey, you had no choice, you hear Gambit?"

"What does he want?"

"Who?"

Carol's voice echoed in her head. 'Red eyes, red eyes, red eyes.' "The man with the red eyes."

"Ah. Him. He be a complex character." Gambit reached for her wrist and carefully held only the bracelet. He then pushed and turned a part of it and Rogue felt an infusion of strength throughout her body. He moved his chair back and watched. It was then that Rogue realized she was floating above her bed by six inches. "Push the side of the bracelet and it powers you down."

She did so and fell back to the bed. "What was that?"

"New powers," he muttered.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "What did you do, Remy? Have you betrayed the X-men?"

"Non." He reached for her hands and held them tightly. "I would never betray you, Rogue."

"Why not? You don't know me," she said yanking her hands out of his.

He sighed. "Maybe you understand one day," he said quietly leaning back in his chair. "We got a choice. We can either work with Sinister or we can watch him kill all our friends."

"Do you know him, Remy?"

He closed his eyes. "We met before, oui."

"I won't betray the X-men."

"Might not have to."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe Sinister not be so bad."

"He just had me kill a woman to steal her powers!" Rogue hissed.

"Technically, she just be in a catatonic state."

"What do you know about him?"

Gambit shrugged. "He works on his own agenda. Trust Remy to get us out of this, chéri."

"I won't work for that mad-man."

Gambit propped his booted feet on the side of her bed. "In that case, we have one more option." He stretched his arms lazily above his head. "As long as Gambit don't have to marry into the Assassins he don't much mind which side he on. But he prefers to be the good guy."

"You'll be on my side, swamp rat. Now tell me what the other option is."

He brought his feet down and propped his elbows on his knees leaning close toward her. "You learn to use those new powers and fly us out of here. Then we enjoy some long days of walking South America."

"Where are we exactly?"

"Antarctica."

"And you expect me to fly us that far? Over an ocean!"

"It just a little part of the ocean."

"If it was that easy to escape, don't you think Carol would have done so?"

"She not have Gambit on her side."

OOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOO

"It's not mandatory!" the speaker argued with the lady in the front row.

"Not now," Magneto said loudly, long cape billowing out from behind him as he and St. John approached the pulpit. The large gathering quieted at the sound of his authoritative voice. "We've seen these cleansings before. It's called genocide."

"It's not genocide," the speaker said scowling. "It's an opportunity to be normal!"

"It's an opportunity to lose that which makes us who we are." Magneto faced the assembly with St. John on his side. Mystique had been lost to him. Her beautiful blue skin and shape shifting abilities replaced with a blonde swimsuit model wanna-be due to an injection of a cure-laden bullet shot by law enforcement. It was quite tragic. "Will you join them? Or will you join us? Join the Brotherhood and embrace what you were born to be."

OOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOO

"I must say, had I known what horrible sense of teamwork existed amongst you I might have refrained from changing sides," Emma said releasing her seatbelt as the Blackbird landed atop a large mesa on the outskirt of the Savage Lands.

"You're welcome to return to them," Scott said pushing out of the pilot's seat.

"And be spoken down to by a muscle-bound buffoon and a man more cyborg than human? I think not." Emma flipped back her air arrogantly and followed after Scott as he left the cockpit.

Scott paused at the plane's threshold with his foot on the steps leading down. "Cyborg?" Xavier's research hadn't turned up that little tidbit.

"Not relevant," Emma said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"Would you two stop quarreling and hurry up already?" Wolverine asked impatiently. He sniffed the air experimentally. There were simply too many smells to sort through. And most of them the unpleasant stench of dinosaur dung. He did well to hide his disbelief of such a jungle-like land being part of Antarctica. He'd been skeptical during the meeting that such a place existed. But sure enough, he was sweating enough in the sweltering heat to completely forget that he was in such a cold place.

Piotr turned in a large circle before encasing his body in steel. "Why is there jungle in polar icecap? I thought hologram had glitch."

"It's a strange world we live in," Scott said cupping his hand over the young man's shoulder.

"And you are strangers here," a voice called out from the jungle.

Wolverine sniffed and could detect the scent of a man and what seemed to be a saber-tooth tiger? A half-naked blond-haired man stepped out from the foliage.

"Are you Lord Plunder?" Cyclops asked stepping forward as leader.

The man lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun. "You may call me Ka-Zar. Who are you?"

"We're the X-men. We've come in search of a couple of teammates that went missing," Cyclops answered.

Ka-Zar lowered his hand stroked it down the large saber-tooth tiger's neck. "They are long way from home."

"Do you know anything of them?" Logan asked.

The man nodded. "The red-eyed monster had them in his lair."

"And where is that?" Wolverine persisted.

Ka-Zar took a step back. "Come. I shall lead you to them."

"We follow the man with the tiger?" Colossus asked Bobby quietly.

Bobby shrugged. "Looks like." He turned his hand to ice and then reverted it back to flesh experimentally. "And I thought I'd have a major advantage here being that I can be made of ice." He sighed before grinning at his steel companion. "Maybe we'll see some dinosaurs."

Colossus glanced up at the sky as a shadow passed over them. "Look like you get what you wish."

Bobby looked up as well. "Do you think it was a dinosaur."

"I do not believe penguins can fly."

'Be quiet you two!' Emma's mental voice hissed in both Bobby and Piotr's minds. 'If we want to infiltrate this red-eyed man's lair we're already at a disadvantage. We don't need you to announce your presence by shouting.'

OOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOO

Sauron landed at the entrance to Sinister's laboratory. He found the strange mutant leaning back casually in a chair in front of his computer monitor. His attention seemed to be focused on the young man and woman that he'd captured earlier.

Sinister turned the chair so that he could see Sauron. "Do we have visitors?"

"Yes, sir. It won't be long before they arrive. Ka-Zar is leading them through the jungles and no one knows this land better than him and Zabu."

Sinister turned back to his monitor. "It won't be long. I believe our captives are about to flee. Once they are gone there is no need for us to linger."

"Flee? How can they possibly do so?"

"I will allow it. My objective has been met in this phase. Her bracelet will fail to suppress her powers in another half-hour regardless. Their incentive to stay is gone. I'm just curious whether they will leave before or after the fact."

"Is everything an experiment for you Nathaniel?"

Sinister turned back to him with a curious expression. "Isn't it for you, Karl?" He turned back to the monitor and tapped it with his finger. "It looks like they've decided to break loose."

"What of Danvers?"

"We'll leave her for the X-men. They should be rewarded with something for their efforts. It's not our problem." He pulled out a pocket-watch that was probably two centuries old. "We have an appointment to keep with Worthington."

Sauron frowned. "You're no longer interested in Summers and Gray?"

"Gray isn't present. And I have what I need of Summers for the time being." He stood and headed for the hanger where his jet was located with Sauron following close behind. "There will be other opportunities to deal with him."

"And Sean Cassidy?"

"Your hypnotic abilities are only temporary. I'm sure Banshee will wake up screaming once he realizes he played a role in the near-death of Ms. Marvel. The Avengers aren't soon to let him forget."

Sauron chuckled. "You are truly sinister."

"Those were my wife's dying words," Sinister said quietly.

A/N posted 6/17/2008