Nip a nettle hard, and it will not sting you. i.e. Strong and decided measures prevail best with troublesome persons.
-The vocabulary of East Anglia, Robert Forby, 1830
"Your eye-gear looks like it hasn't been updated in awhile," the thief was telling her. He reached towards the yellow lenses she was wearing over her eyes.
Polaris smacked the man's hand away. "Can we focus, please?"
"Focus! Like with glasses. Ha ha, good one. You should really maintain the proper updates, though, or you leave yourself open to security vulnerabilities, malware attacks," the know-it-all said knowingly. "Now if we could just-."
"Nevermind about my damn eyepiece!" Polaris shouted.
The thief gave her a petulant frown and folded his arms across his chest, one that was annoyingly overexposed due to his shirt being inappropriately unbuttoned down to nearly his navel. In Polaris' opinion, it seemed like the thief was modeling himself after someone else, only choosing the very worst aspects of his idol's personality. She had the unfortunate opportunity of meeting Nil before, on Thief Island or whatever it was called, when he'd kidnapped and brainwashed her gal-pal, the sentient AI android known as Danger.
"Tell me more about these assassination attempts," Polaris continued, hoping to convey a more civil tone of voice. "Can you describe the assailants?"
"I was only there for the last one," Nil said. "And I drew you a picture."
Polaris glanced down at the sketch Nil had drawn with the methodical precision of a dot-matrix printer. It was female in shape, and it was a tossup between Nil's lecherousness or his commitment to mechanical exactitude whether or not the curves were overemphasized. The woman appeared to be nude, though her form was solidly obscured by a covering of sharp barbs from crown to ankle rendering her completely untouchable. Polaris used her lenses to scan the image for her files.
"What do you know about the others?" Polaris continued.
Nil considered. "I believe there was one in New York, a shooter. Expert marksman, or woman. I think he said it was a woman. And another in Madripoor, a shapeshifter. Tried to strangle him. And the water elemental in Nigeria. Attempted to drown Gambit. I mean, I don't blame any of them, really."
Polaris squinted at Nil for a moment, faring him with a deadly look. She used the opportunity to snap a mugshot of the man. Polaris noted the information he'd relayed to her on her tablet. From Kate's report of several months ago, she had the water elemental's description, such as it was. At the time, they were unaware the attack was part of a pattern. Mostly to herself she asked: "And they were all mutants? How is it we were unaware of them?"
Nil shrugged, a languid roll of his shoulders. "I only heard about it second-hand. Oh, and also by hacking into Gambit's communications with his dad. There's a lot to unpack there, let me tell you. So, there were those three, until Porcu-pu-."
"Do not say that name again," Polaris interrupted. It was bad enough that he'd written it in block letters under the police sketch he'd drawn of the prickly mutant. "You don't seem overly concerned about your king's welfare."
Nil's expression was bored/neutral. "Well, I admit, I tried to have him killed myself. It kinda worked. He was dead for at least a half minute until the Doctor Knight turned his skull inside out. Turns out, Gambit has more lives than..." Nil seemed at a loss for words, his eyes searching the air for an end to that sentence.
Polaris' eyes flicked to the top of Nil's turban. A black cat had appeared there. Her green eyes squinted at the cat. She knew this cat. This cat knew her. Polaris and this cat were not friends.
"More lives than a cat?" Polaris finished.
Nil said: "English is not my first language. I mean, it wasn't, until those filthy British conquerors took over my country. I don't profess to know all the various idiotic idioms."
"Where did that cat come from?" she pointed her stylus at the black cat.
"Ajna insisted I bring him. She thought that Gambit could use a friend," Nil looked mildly disgusted about this. "Like an emotional support animal."
Polaris had set up a temporary interrogation room in the supply closet adjacent to the Healing Gardens, where the mutant being discussed was recuperating from his injuries. They were surrounded by wooden shelves full of various glass jars of potions and flowers. Nil pulled the cat from his head, its claws pricking at the fabric of his turban. He glared at the animal. It licked its nose and glared back.
Polaris was about to pose a follow-up when the door behind her opened. "We're not done in here," she began.
Xavier and Magneto stood in the open doorway. "We will take over questioning the thief," Magneto said.
Lorna opened her mouth to protest.
"The thief prefers the company of the Princess of Power. She has many attractive qualities," Nil stated, eyebrows waggling. "That was in reference to electromagnetic attraction. If you didn't catch it."
"Nil, this is Magneto. And Xavier," Polaris interrupted.
"Quite aware of who they are," Nil said, now taking interest in the cat as if it were his main priority. He removed a blue collar from his pocket and fastened it around the cat's neck.
"Were you also aware that it is a punishable offense to infiltrate Cerebro and interrupt a delicately balanced system intended to preserve and protect our entire race?" Xavier asked.
Nil leaned back in his chair, his arm behind him on the backrest, one of his legs crossed over the other. "First of all, you took my genetic sample without my say-so. And I only took what belonged to Gambit. His memories. His thoughts. They don't belong to you. Do you want to argue IP law? Maybe you can speak with his lawyer. A Ms. Lincoln, I believe."
"Human laws are not our laws. Not when our species is at stake," Magneto said.
"We retain his memories prior to his absence. You only severed the backups from this prior year," Xavier said.
"Are you saying I should have been more thorough?" Nil asked in false politeness. "You're wrong. I left whatever it was your people valued of him. Which amounts to not much at all. What makes him, him...stays with the Guild." He waved a dismissive hand. "If he dies and you restore his memories…? Well, you get what you get. Your faithful fool, the romantic stooge. The leftovers."
"You will stand before our judgement circle," Magneto declared.
Nil snorted with derision. "I'm not under your jurisdiction. I'm not a part of...whatever it is you have going on here."
"If you wish to remain, you will be subject to our edicts," Xavier stated.
"Stay here?" Nil said, aghast, his expression one of mock horror. "I was sent here. This is not my bag, baby. Consider me here on a...diplomatic mission. Yeah, that's the ticket! I like the word 'diplomatic' as it goes along with the word 'immunity.'"
Magneto and Xavier seemed to share a look though it was hard to tell given their respective headgear.
Nil pressed the cat into Polaris' possession despite her resistance (and the cat's). Brushed his hands off against one another. "Well, good talk, kids. Now begins my quest to win the hand of the enigmatic enchantress of engineering known as Sage."
"You are not going anywhere," Magneto told him.
"Pardon the interruption, friends," Beast said, still damp from his recent rebirth in the Hatchery. He ambled down the hallway holding something in his hands. "But I would like to share with you my findings."
The two men turned to follow. Polaris trailed behind, then Nil. Except when Polaris turned to request Nil remain close, she found that the infuriating man had vanished. Polaris regarded the cat. It was not, at least at this moment, trying to maim her. It offered a warning growl. She lightly touched the earstem to her eyepiece. Using her powers, she gently extracted the small camera from the right stem. She regarded the collar around the cat's neck. A small silver disk hung from the collar. The inscription on it read simply: Gambit's Cat. Polaris reformed the disk into a bell and fixed the tiny camera inside. Now the vision through her lenses was split between Lorna Lens and Cat's Eye View.
Beast proceeded into the main hospital area, an open atrium where flora and technology coexisted within a greenhouse like-space. The floor was smooth slate, cracked along natural fissures, the walls were concealed behind a tangle of various plants and vines. Doorways and supporting arches formed from the trunks of trees. It was slightly humid, pleasantly scented with earth and the growth of living things. All along the edges of the circular space were sarcophagi, many sealed with a glass barrier to conceal the mutants healing within. Beast approached a table in the center of the space, placed the item he carried onto the tabletop.
They were not alone in the hospital. Besides Beast, Magneto, and Xavier, Doctor Cecelia Reyes stood at the bedside of her patient. Two figures stood at the foot of the healing pod. Polaris approached the small group of women.
"How is he doing?" Polaris asked.
Cecelia had the pod open, revealing the patient inside. "Still in critical condition," Cecelia answered, glancing up at Polaris. "He might have healed from the wounds by now, if not for the poison. It's fortunate the quills passed through his face and neck. That the one in his torso was pulled out immediately."
Polaris regarded Gambit's still face, pallid and sickly in the greenish glow of the Healing Garden. His right eye was concealed beneath a bandage, the left side of his face stitched. When Cecelia removed the bandage at his throat, she could see the wounds were still seeping. The doctor replaced the bandages with fresh coverings. Polaris noted that Cece's hands were gentle. When she checked Remy's vital signs, her fingertips rested on his bare chest with tenderness.
"Are you and Gambit close?" Polaris asked.
Cecelia looked up at her, then glanced at the pair standing at the foot of the pod. "Ah. We're friends. Just friends."
"Uh-huh," Polaris said disbelievingly. She turned to the two women. "Do you mind giving us a moment?"
Mystique regarded her coldly, but at Rogue's prompting, they both stepped away to join the men at the center table.
Polaris raised her brows at Cecelia, as if to signal 'do go on.' "Do you mind if I put this cat down in here?"
"I suppose it won't hurt." Cece responded. Polaris released the cat and it curled up in the space beside Remy's neck and shoulder. It regarded them both with hostile suspicion. Cece's mouth crimped into a rueful smile. "Remy and I...dated. Casually. A while ago."
Polaris' gaze moved from Gambit to Cecelia. "Really? No offense, but...you don't seem like one another's-type."
Cece shrugged a shoulder. "He might've tried to romance me, like in a seductive way. I suppose I wasn't very receptive. No one ever...treated me like that before." Her eyes flicked to Beast then back to Polaris. Her voice was slightly lower. "Like I was, I don't know-desirable, sexy. It was kind of embarrassing. Not to say-I mean, I didn't hate it."
Seeing Cecelia's neck and cheeks flush, Polaris looked down at her notes and smiled to herself. "Any thoughts about his attacker?"
"I can speak from a medical standpoint about his injuries, if that's what you're interested in," Cece said, then added: "Only it seems like more than a-what's the word? A hit. This was malicious, this attack. Targeting his family."
Polaris absorbed this information, keyed in additional notes on her tablet. Cece resealed the healing pod, closing both man and cat inside. "Will that cat be okay in there?"
"They'll both sleep," Cece responded. "Besides, I don't clean litter boxes."
The doctor and investigator approached the table where the others had gathered. The object Beast had been studying was a long barbed quill. It hovered in the center of the table, spinning slowly in space within a beam of light.
"-Techno-organic in nature," Beast was saying.
"Infected by the TO virus?" Magneto asked.
Beast shook his head. "No, it is not a virus, exactly. The tech portion is behaving more like a viral antibody, protecting each living cell. The attacker would not have had any regenerative abilities, or the ability to reform as a Phalanx construct. The non-organic component acts as any living tissue. I have not seen this symbiotic relationship before, and I am not fully understanding what the benefit between the two could be."
"Perhaps it is alien?" Xavier suggested.
Beast's eyes lit up, seeming to have a surprise in mind. "I do not believe so."
Cece gave an impatient huff, recognizing Beast's tendency to delay for dramatic effect. She was not impressed in the least. "Care to elaborate?"
Polaris' powers reached out to gently touch the quill, calling the technological components of the barb to her. The quill slowly floated towards her and she plucked it from the air. She studied it, regarding the information relayed within her eyepiece from the corner of her eye. The barb was nearly a foot long, hollow, and a chestnut brown striped with white.
"You see, I mapped the DNA from the quill and it resulted in a match. A near perfect genetic match, save for the X-gene," Beast said.
"Then the attacker was, in fact, a mutant," Magneto confirmed. "With the quill, we can regenerate her. But not her memories."
Beast shook his head. "No. We won't want to do that. This mutant in question is most likely a clone."
"A clone of...?" Cece was looking extremely grumpy now.
Beast had been waiting for this moment. "Of our own Mississippi Mauler, Rogue!"
Rogue's green eyes went wide and she gasped. Polaris nearly dropped the quill. With a slightly less-than-steady hand she raised the quill. It matched Rogue's hair color.
"But-!" Rogue said, her eyes darting from Beast to the quill. "Someone cloned me? Why?"
Polaris and Cecelia shared a look. Malicious attack, indeed. "Someone who really wants to hurt Gambit," Polaris said. She used her lenses to take a digital image of the quill and stored the file with her case notes with an eyeblink. "Cause him pain, and not just physically." She captured a second photo, this one of Rogue.
Polaris' father drew in a tired breath and rubbed his forehead in an exasperated way.
"What's eatin' you, sugar?" Rogue asked him.
"I'm going to need a stiff drink," Magneto replied. Xavier smiled at the other man's discomfort. "Before, and then most likely, after."
"Before what?" Polaris asked.
"Before speaking with Mister Sinister. As there are malicious clones involved," Xavier said and beckoned to Magneto. "We'll need some liquid courage. Come. I have Scotch."
Next time: Running Cerebro's backup system, the first installment of many.
Events referenced in this chapter come from All New X-Factor (of Serval Industries re: Danger/Thief Island), and final issues of the second Gambit run by James Asmus (re: Doctor Knight, Nil's attempt to kill Gambit).
I kinda wondered if there was room in the fandom anymore for Gambit-sans-Rogue stories...but apparently not. Oh, well. If there's any Gambit fans left, holla at ya girl.