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The sudden crackling of a speaker jerked him awake and to his feet, across the room he saw Toad blinking sleepily, slower to rise. It took a moment to work out exactly what the deep bassed voice was saying, or where the sound was even coming from, but the words began to filter through as sense.
"... to the Hellfire Club gentlemen, I do hope your wait has been comfortable. You have been handpicked to take part in The Gauntlet. Regrettably there can be only one winner. That winner, however, will take their place as an acolyte of the Inner Circle. The loser ... will not. The door will open shortly, I wish you the best of luck."
They stared at each, then as one turned their eyes to the door. It slowly swung inwards, a pale arc of light from their room lit the floor beyond for a foot and then all was dark.
"Huh ... think they'd be upset if we just sat down again?"
Without looking back to the tortured creaking of metal scraping on metal behind them, Evan nodded. "Yeah, and I don't think we get the option."
"In that case, sorry man, but I wanna win."
With a springing leap Toad bounded into the darkness beyond the door leaving Spyke in the dust, the back wall steadily moving towards him.
"So, dey can't be found by th' best telepat' on the planet …"
Without waiting for a reponse, Gambit held up the black file holder that had been returned to him, a little more abused now than when he had been given it at the start of the job.
"Way I figure it is dis, the bag is some kinda teleportation t'ing. I put de files in, dey gone to whoever it is wants them so bad. Ain't no way big enough t' fit a body, but if y' got a tracker, mebee it drop right t' where th' files are, neh?"
Gambit looked up from the bag to sight that was less than confidence inspiring. Everyone was gathered in the small motel room, having taken a seat where one could be found. Kurt was sat on the floor, leaning against the wall and snoring lightly. Kitty was beside him, head having fallen on his shoulder when she too succumbed to exhaustion. Scott and Jean sat on the edge of the bed; both were awake though the red head's eyes were drooping and her gaze was unfocussed. Even Storm had an edge of fatigue to her expression, greyness around the eyes from worry and tiredness.
Only himself, Rogue and Wolverine were still fully awake. Rogue he suspected of being as much of a night owl as himself, the man on the other hand was clearly an inhuman freak. Not that he was bitter or anything. Rogue spoke softly, trying not to awaken the sleepers.
"We could use a communicator and ask the Professor to track it with Cerebro."
Storm nodded after a moment, watching the thief sat cross-legged on the floor before the bed. He had made no effort to escape, and had been nothing but courteous and polite, even if his expression darkened sullenly when Logan spoke directly to him. She could a dash of the child she had played with so long ago in the twinkle in his eye, the irresistible smile. But then would come the blank professionalism, as it was now. Oh, he was still studiously courteous, but the veneer of the Guild smothered the charm and hid the southern warmth. With a start, she realised she was being stared at expectantly by those not currently 'resting their eyes'.
"I'm sorry, I think I was drifting. What did you say?"
Logan's gravelly near whisper came from where he had been smoking by the window. "I said it might work, but we don't know for sure it won't just tell them we're gunning for them if someone's watching for anything that comes through the bag"
Now Rogue spoke from the chair she had been in and out of for the last hour, pacing to the window and back whenever it was unoccupied, as though the skyline might give them some answers. "Do we have a choice, ah can't think of any other way." She looked down to Remy, faltering to see his unnatural eyes on her. She was nearly getting used to them, fascinating but far too easy to be drawn to and caught staring at. "Unless you changed your mind about finding who it was from your fixer?"
The hint of accusation in her tone she didn't try and hide. She couldn't believe he had refused to do the simplest thing, ask the go between who the contractor had been.
"I tol' y' chere, I not goin' t' get him involved in dis. It's not … it's … etiquette."
Remy shot a pleading glance at Storm, she had been the only one to understand why he wouldn't back track his employer through his fixer, perhaps she could explain it better than he was able. The girl's anger and frustration was beginning to bother him, there very few people he didn't like to disappoint, and for the life of him he couldn't understand why she had joined those ranks.
"If he does that, he is effectively betraying a fixer. A fixer becomes unemployable as once their reputation for anonymous dealing has been broken. Doubtless we could ask him to talk, we might even be able to make him talk, but we would be taking a living from him. And quite possibly his life with it if his employers discovered he had given their details to a fourth party."
"What happens to a thief who breaks a deal with his employers?"
Remy flashed her a disarming grin, cutting quickly across the reply that Storm had been about to make. "Den th' t'ief better have him a real good reason t' be doin' it. So, anyone got a communicator dey willin' t' sacrifice to a good cause?"
His hand snapped up and caught the badge Logan threw from behind him, he didn't take his eyes off the bag, ignoring Rogue's frown as he effectively avoided her question. "Merci".
Scott gently touched Jeans shoulder, her heavy eyes opened slowly as she came awake. "Oh! I'm sorry …"
"No, it's fine, we just need you for a moment. Can you call the Professor? Tell him we're using Wolverine's Com Badge as a tracker to find Evan and probably Todd and we need it traced to where it goes?"
She nodded once and placed her fingertips at her temples as she closed her eyes, the sensation of placing her mind for the moment on the astral plane enjoyable as it left the bone tired body behind it. Even so, she spoke aloud to aid her concentration, something that her teacher had been attempting to drill out of her in her recent lessons.
"Professor?"
A moment later she felt his solid presence meet her questing line of telepathy, sealing it against any eavesdroppers and bolstering her strength.
"Yes, Jean, have you more news?"
"There may be a way to find out where Spyke and Toad are, we're using Logan's Com Badge as a tracker. Can you use Cerebro to see where it goes once we send it?"
"Of course, contact me once the Com Badge has been sent."
Jean severed the connection and opened her eyes on the room, smiling to Remy with the same friendliness she showed all. He was quite touched, if slightly mystified, how she could remain friendly after what he had done to her and her friends.
"The Professor will track it."
He dropped the badge into the bag and closed it, feeling it lighten almost immediately. "It's gone."
Once again Jean sent her thoughts away, only this time a familiarly cold mental wall blocked her, she opened her eyes to see it in the hazy psychic plane. It was solid, surrounding the room, and far stronger than she could hope to break. Distantly she felt an almost physical sensation of vibration as someone, most likely the Professor, attempted to break through from the other side. She came back to herself in a rush, suddenly entirely awake as fear and adrenaline began to surge once more.
"Someone's found us! They're blocking me from the Professor!"
Even as she melded her shield over the door, it blew in as splinters when two metal arms punched straight through the thin and already bowed wood. The force of the strike reverberated off her defences hard enough to drive her to her knees.
And then she felt the invading psyche began to tighten around her mind, inexorably driving her back into her subconscious. With a shock that lent her strength to fight, she realised whoever this was had every intention of leaving her mind crippled, if not comatose. Faintly Logan's words came through to her.
"Let the barrier down Red, we can't fight them through it."
Eyes still tightly shut; she released her hold on the wall and concentrated on the chilled attacker. She didn't want to fight them on the astral plane; it was a dangerous place she had barely any experience with. But it was the only way. With a soft sigh, she felt her body slump to the floor, just registering the sensation of someone standing above her. Whether it was a friendly someone, or a less than friendly someone, she couldn't tell, but it was too late to worry. When her eyes reopened, the battle raging was a ghostly thing, the cord that tied her to her body the most colourful object she could see. The wall around the room was cracked in places as the unrelenting pounding upon it from Xavier slowly began to bring it down. But it wouldn't be quick enough; she was lending her hands to help from the inside when she heard a woman laugh.
Scott stood over Jean as she collapsed, guessing what she had done and determined nothing would disturb her while she fought on her own field. It had taken a moment to replace his glasses with his visor, a precious few seconds that had lost him the chance to stop people entering the room by blasting them as they tried to come through the doorway. It was too close quarters for Storm to start flinging lightening; instead to his side he saw her spin into a roundhouse kick at the one man who had so far made it past Wolverine.
Aside from the one appearance of metal arms, there was nothing to suggest their other attackers were mutants, but they were all armed with what looked like shock guns and it seemed there was no end of them pouring through the door. A black uniformed stream that was rapidly beginning to overwhelm them, even Logan was letting more and more past as he tried not to actually kill with claws that had been designed to do only that. And open cans the easy way.
Even if he had wanted to join the fight, he couldn't. The room was now to full to even consider blasting, he could just as easily hit Kitty or Kurt who seemed to be double teaming as one phased and the other teleported around the room, confusing their attackers into hitting each other with their tazers. Sulphurous smoke was obscuring his vision as he half picked Jean up, dragging her to the relative safety in front of the window, then crouched, ready to take on anything that came near.
It was with some disgust he realised he couldn't see the thief anywhere in the room. He must have found some way to slip out, probably half a block away by now and laughing at them all. An assailant stumbled out of the smoke, his uniform in shreds, and was immediately hurled back in as Cyclops hit him in the chest with a thin short shot that packed all the force of a rubber bullet. Normally he'd feel a little guilty using even that much of his powers on a person, but right now, he couldn't care less.
Rogue kept to the walls, trying to remain inconspicuous as she worked off one of her gloves, looking for a target to steal the consciousness from. She hated to do it, as much for herself as for her victim, but her chances of going hand to hand and helping rather than hindering either Storm or Wolverine were slim to none, and she knew it. So intent on the fight she stumbled into something that grunted lightly as she neared the corner. She turned fast, bringing her hand up to find any skin she could, still half covered with the glove. Her fingers hovered an inch from a face from which red eyes blazed with near amusement as Remy held his hands up in mock surrender. He gently took her hand, and raised the back to his lips, giving the lightest kiss on the material without looking away from her suddenly confused eyes with his still amused one. She felt the blush rising quickly, faster still when he released her and pointed to the fight behind her as if to remind her precisely who her attention should be on.
With a frown of irritation she spun and struck, taking down a man. Benjamin Rochester, single, whose dog was ill and he was worried about it. Who was wondering what to get his mother for Christmas. Who was scared by the resistance they had been told they wouldn't meet. Who looked at her with fading horror as his mind slipped away from him. Who knew exactly whom he worked for. She never felt Remy leave, but when she looked back, eager to tell him her news, he was gone.
Kurt was rapidly running out of steam, he had rested well enough, but it hadn't been the healing sleep he needed to shake off the effects of the blast. Every bamf he made it felt like he was struggling against more and more weight. As if the universe had suddenly noticed he was defying physics and had decided that most definitely would not do. A flitting image of a hand reaching from the heavens and hitting him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper amused him for a moment as he readied for another jump.
He had been following Kitty's lead, her pattern was simple enough, she was attempting to phase through as many of the shock guns as she could, rendering them useless. But she had to get close enough to do so, and there she ran the risk of being hit.
So he distracted for all he was worth, landing on top of their target, hanging briefly from the light upside down before them, anything to get the moment of hesitation that Shadowcat needed to slip in and strike. They must have done ten or more by now, and still it seemed they had done nothing as the electricity crackled.
From his brief perch on top of the closet, he saw a figure dive out of the door and hit the corridor rolling. It looked like the thief was making an escape, and he could do nothing about it.
In the corridor Gambit rolled to his feet and spun to meet the charge he felt coming. Metal arm boy. He wasn't dressed like the rip off Storm Troopers, rather in an Edwardian style that matched his curled blond hair fine, but didn't quite go with the cyborg look. Those nasty arms were held out before him as he charged, Remy grinned and snapped his Bo staff to it's fullest length, using it as a vault to flip up and over, landing to deliver a back kick to his opponents head. The man staggered, but he didn't go down, turning in fury just in time to face an angelic looking young man with demon's eyes and a wicked half smile, holding fanned playing cards that glowed a dazzling red before him.
"C'mon mon ami, pick a card. Any card."
The man hesitated, hearing the silence that was descending in the room they had attacked and the distant sound of the overworked police drawing closer. The last man able to report on what had occurred ran as Remy shook his head, allowing the charge to die and tucking away the cards into the pocket of his leather great coat as he sauntered back into the room still holding his staff.
As the smoke of Nightcrawler's teleportation fest began to clear he saw the X-Men huddled by the window, the only floor area free from groaning or unconscious men. He was about to ask what they found so fascinating when he realised he couldn't see Jean.
The laughter had stopped, now, probably because the woman hadn't found a whole lot of funny in being whipped with a psychic lash. From that opening strike, the fight had begun in earnest. Though it was nothing more than a creation of her mind, her astral from felt battered and bruised, her only consolation was the coldly beautiful, white dressed if you could call what little she wore dressed, woman looked equally as bad. If the other had not been dividing her attention between herself and the wall, Jean suspected she wouldn't have stood a chance. As it was, she was only just holding her own. It had become a stand off, both staggering behind mind shields; hers a flaming orange, the other telepath's an icy blue.
Then the sweetest sound she had ever heard drew her attention at last from its unblinking stare to the frozen mind wall. It was cracking and tumbling down, constricted by a massive band of force she saw as golden and recognised as the Professor. The wall screamed as it shattered into the shards of another's mind, and she smiled as she at last wearily followed the thread to her body and opened her eyes, blinking at the faces above her that blurred into focus.
"I know where the Com Badge is"
Rogue grinned as she aided Scott in carefully getting Jean to her feet. "And ah know who's there."
Remy leant in the near obliterated doorway, absently twirling a key over and over in his agile fingers. "And Gambit can get us in. Ain't dat nice. Group hug?"
He would never have believed a building could be so big. At least, he assumed he was still in a building, and not some weird nightmare dimension. Hey, it could happen. It seemed like he'd been walking forever, hearing nothing. At least he had a light, Toad had been in such a hurry he'd missed the torch left by the door. A low wattage, but just about enough to see by, showing him enough to know that staying as close to the wall of the corridor as he could was a good plan.
It hadn't taken him long to work out this was a maze, but it was living up to the Gauntlet title nicely. Every few feet was some nasty little surprise waiting, just for him. How special. An open pit filled with spikes, a pressured floor plate which released some wicked sharp darts that embedded themselves in the wall an inch above where he'd been before he'd flattened himself to the ground.
That he, Evan, was even complying at all was annoying enough. That Toad had decided it was every man for himself hadn't been a big surprise, so he wasn't angry about that. But he was furious at whoever had done this, he wasn't some rat to send after a piece of cheese. Several times he considered just stopping where he stood and seeing what happened, but then he'd think about what he was going to do to the people at the end and keep going. That and the wall had a bad tendency to start spitting fire if he stayed in one place too long.
The faith that he would be rescued wasn't diminished, but he was starting to re-evaluate an arrival time. Of course when the X-Men, or hell The Brotherhood, did arrive, there'd be the devil to pay. That bought a grin to his face that lasted until he found his first checkpoint. A small room, walls hidden by the shadows cast from a low light on the ceiling. What was it with these people? Couldn't afford the electric bill or something?
On a table was one plate, holding a piece of cheese. With a snort he took it and began to eat. Ha. Ha. They were lucky he was hungry enough to eat it, not throw it at them when he escaped. It was hard enough to do some damage, not to mention the smell. He sniffed, putting the cheese down. That wasn't dairy smell, that was Toad smell.
"Tolensky?"
From the shadows a voice grudgingly replied. "Yeah."
He tried to look into the darkness and place a form to the voice, but it was impossible. "Why're you still here ... why is the cheese still here?"
"Hey, can't a guy do a nice thing yo? I felt bad 'bout leaving you and I figured you'd be hungry."
Evan nibbled on the cheese thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged. "In other words, you figured out you'd been dumb and decided to wait here hoping the cheese'd make up for it?"
A slightly scorched looking Toad with a bloody furrow along one cheek at last stepped into the puddle of light, scowling. "Did it?"
Spyke threw him the rest of the cheese. "Yeah."
A low, rhythmic staccato sound in the distance took a moment to place, both their heads tilted as they considered. Gunfire. It was followed by the unmistakable crack of lightening, Todd felt his scars itching in sympathy with whoever had been struck. A rumbling was next, the walls beginning to shake in torment, fissures appearing at the base.
They both grinned, Toad put the cheese carefully back on the plate and spoke almost conversationally. "Lance is gonna be pissed at the headache he's gonna get from doing that."
"Yeah, and Aunty 'ro really hates being shot at."
After a moment of reflective silence they began to chuckle, then laugh with a high five as the sounds of the fight got closer and closer.
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Notes
Wheee, that was long ... hope it wasn't too long! I kinda got on a roll ...
