Future Pluperfect: Chapter 4

"We have a few ideas, but nothing that I'd like to base a mission on," Kurt Wagner said and shrugged at the video screen. "Piotr's off at the library looking up some things and we'll hopefully know more then."

"No hurry," the image of Cyclops seemed unperturbed. "We seem to have stumbled upon a few possible leads of our own. A contact of Gambit's has been most forthcoming and Remy's been able to work with what he has been given."

"Gambit? Kitty's going to be even more touchy to be around if she finds out that her technical expertise has been outmatched by a thief who once made a microwave explode," Nightcrawler chuckled. "What sort of information does he have?"

"A list of possible locations for future attacks. We're trying to find the common thread between them, as well as between those and the sites that were already hit. Speaking of, have you got anything new on the Slovenian village?"

"That's part of the reason Piotr's in Edinburgh at the university library, but as for the rest... Interpol hasn't come up with anything yet and the local authorities are just helpless. They're too busy trying to keep the neighboring villages both from looting and from starting rumors about vampires and werewolves. We're poking around on our own, but I don't know that we're going to come up with anything that Ororo, Logan, and Sam didn't spot while they were here working with us. Moira's running some tests and we'll let you know when they're done."

The conversation continued for a while longer, but with nothing more pertaining to the crisis at hand. At the outset, Cyclops had originally been surprised to see Nightcrawler as head of Excalibur, but in hindsight wondered why that was so. Perhaps it was the conversations he and Xavier had had back when Kurt had first become field leader of the X-Men. The Professor had described Kurt as able, if inexperienced and a little doubtful of his own tactical abilities. But both Scott and the Professor had always known that behind the swashbuckling lady's man (or was it lady's elf?) stood a man of utmost responsibility and devotion, so it should have been no shock to see Kurt put aside his lighthearted ways and accept the yoke of leadership.

And that's what it was - a yoke. Dancing around the topic with a lightness of step that could be entirely attributed to the agile Nightcrawler, the two lead oxen could compare miseries and even bounce ideas off each other. And although Scott was sure that Kurt would consider these theoretical pas-de-deux as advice seeking, he was similarly sure that he got as much - if not more - out of them than did his counterpart. It required someone in a similar position of authority to understand the skill involved in learning from mistakes while trying to minimize them.

Wolverine entered the monitor room as the two were comparing notes on who had a tougher job - Cyclops trying to re-integrate Gambit into the X-Men or Nightcrawler's attempts to reconcile Kitty (and Excalibur) with Colossus. It was a topic Wolverine could both understand and find ludicrous - both pariahed men had proved themselves enough times for him to be satisfied with their strength of character. But he wasn't most people.

"This an exclusive bitch session, or can anyone join in?" Wolverine asked as he flipped the cap off of his beer bottle and tossed another one to Cyclops. He had only come looking for Summers after Jean had implored him to get her husband off-duty one way or another. And anything Jeannie wanted, Jeannie got.

"Guten abend, Logan," Nightcrawler greeted him warmly, one side of his mouth quirking in a sly grin. "Long time, no see."

"I was already on your side of the pond, seemed as good a time as any," Logan said and shrugged as he put his boot-clad feet on the console, smiling inwardly as Cyclops frowned with disdain. Of course, he knew Scott was only upset because he liked to snack while on monitor duty and Logan was putting dirty boots on an otherwise prime eating surface.

"Ya, but since you are a friend, there is no need for you to break in. Next time, use the doorbell and I guarantee you'll get a warmer reception. Or cooler one, as the case may be."

"You broke in?" Scott asked, only half-surprised, as he lifted his glasses and blasted the cap off of his beer bottle. Jean hated it when he did that - macho crap, she called it - but he was proud of the skill required to get the cap without creating a jagged edge on the bottle. It was a talent honed early on in his X-Men days, before Jean had arrived and tried to civilize them all.

"Don't want my friends gettin' hurt 'cuz they're gettin' complacent," Logan replied casually. "Tell Lockheed the hair grew back already."

So it wasn't a new haircut Logan was sporting when he got back, Scott mused to himself with a chuckle and made a mental note to tell Jean about it later, although he could feel vague curiosity about his sudden amusement from her end of the psychic rapport.

"Will do, mein freund, will do," Kurt yawned. "It is quite late on this side and it's been a long day. I shall speak to you both soon, ya?"

Everyone made their goodbyes and the monitor went blank. Neither Cyclops nor Wolverine moved, though.

"You really going with the Cajun's story 'bout where he got that disk?"

Cyclops shrugged and sighed. "It's just plausible enough to be true and I don't want to get his hackles up by calling him a liar, especially if it's just a white one. I won't pretend I'm familiar enough with the... underworld... to know whether thieves would be friends with mercenaries."

"Mercs deal with both guilds. Cajun could just be protectin' his sources like he said. I don't think he's settin' us up, which would be the only reason to check out his story."

"You're right. I'm going to have Nathan look over the stuff on the disk, since my son also has such... ties," Scott paused momentarily before the last word, but Logan could smell the irony mixed with pride and disbelief that often colored Cyclops' feelings towards Cable. "But at this stage of the game, it's not like we've got anything else with which to work."

"Speakin' of work, yer wife has proclaimed you 'off duty'."

"I can't leave the monitor unattended," Cyclops explained. "I'm covering for Warren so he can get some dinner."

"That ain't what he's gettin'" Logan chuckled as he remembered watching Archangel head off towards Betsy's room. "I'll watch the screen until the bluebird gets back. Say goodnight to Jeannie for me."

Scott laughed gently, drained his beer, and stood up. "I will. Thanks."

Logan nodded, but said nothing.

***

"Gambit, wake up!"

"Huh? Que ce que fait ce passe? Askani?" He shook his head to clear the sleep from his eyes as he stopped reaching for the daggers he kept under his pillows. "What're you doing here?"

"The Harvesters are about to feed. Get dressed," Mirrin whispered as she searched the room for things he would need.

"Let me get Cyclops or Storm..." Gambit swung out of bed and towards his closet. He could see the clock's reflection in the mirror. Half past four.

"We don't have any time. Do you require arms?"

"You want to do this solo?" Gambit raised an eyebrow as he pushed his hair away from his face. "I got my cards and my staff. Anyt'ing else, I'll make do wit' what's around."

"That won't be sufficient for our task," Mirrin told him. "Finish readying yourself. I'll return presently."

Before Gambit could say anything, she disappeared. He debated going downstairs and getting Cyclops, or at least across the hall to get Wolverine, but before he could even finish pulling his cowl up over his jaw, Mirrin returned carrying a couple of rifles and a string of grenades.

"You look like Rambo," Gambit said, swallowing a laugh but then grinning broadly when Mirrin looked at him askance. "A movie character. Sort of like Cable, 'xcept fake."

Mirrin nodded cautiously, then frowned. "Are you ready? I'm not as familiar with contemporary weaponry as I should be for this mission, so this was all I felt comfortable bringing." She had been poking around the safe house for days looking for weapons, but had only limited success. Dayspring kept his toys immaculate and ready for use, but he was notoriously lazy about putting things away, so it had apparently been up to Blaquesmith to keep the place clean. *And I'll be a pregnant har-gelding before I figure out his filing system.*

"Stuff's kinda old, you know dat?" Gambit picked up one of the rifles. "It's automatic, but we can get some plasma rifles downstairs that'll be much more effective."

"No plasma rifles," Mirrin insisted. "Energy-based weapons would counteract what we're trying to do." Nathan's predilection for the newest and biggest guns had made the supply of low-tech weaponry very limited.

"You know, you never got around to telling me exactly what we are going to do," Gambit said as Mirrin reached out for his arm. "Or how you keep bein' able to get past the mansion's security system."

"Cut short the feeding season," she replied. "The other is, shall we say, a trade secret."

The room started to shimmer before Gambit could protest.

"Où sommes-nous?" He looked around. It was dark here, too, but whether it was the dark before the dawn or after dusk, he couldn't tell. It was cold, though, and the ground was rocky and bare.

"Does it matter?" Mirrin handed him one of the rifles, eyes searching the craggy horizon for signs of movement.

"Call it idle curiosity," Gambit replied dryly as he checked over the gun he had been handed. It had been quite a while since he had bothered with such conventional weapons. Growing up, guns were the province of the Assassins, not the Thieves, although his father had forced him to learn how to shoot. Once his abilities manifested, however, Gambit had decided that there was no use in a gun when a deck of cards would do just as well, if not better.

"Quebec," Mirrin whispered. "The nearest major population center is a place called Chibougamau."

"Least I speak the language 'ere," he mumbled to himself.

Mirrin stood next to him, eyes closed. The local population was still safe, although it would be easier if they stayed out of the fighting. A telepathic push to sleep should be sufficient. With almost everyone already unconscious, a slight nudge was all it took. Once they were taken care of, she scanned the area for others. Harvesters, unlike the Kurioon soldiers, were easy to spot. "There are about a dozen here," Mirrin said opened her eyes. "They have already spread out, so we shall have to split up. At least they have not yet begun to feed."

"Still haven't told me what I'm looking for," Gambit pointed out. "Will I even be able to tell a 'Harvester' from a civilian in the dark?"

Mirrin nodded and reached out for Gambit's arm. A moment later, they were next to a building. "There, that is one of our quarry."

Gambit looked. Across the street, a young man walked. He would have looked like an accountant on an off day except for the golden claw that was where his right hand should have been.

#You have to aim for the head,# Mirrin telepathically as she raised the rifle. #They are implanted with transmitters and will inform the others if they are attacked or impaired.#

One shot later, the Harvester lay on the ground, his head blown apart.

Mirrin turned to Gambit. "The Harvester tracking signals are sent out every ten minutes to collect data and update instructions. We have until the next such wave to improve our odds once we are discovered."

"Dis don't sound too good," Gambit told her.

"They are not very good fighters," Mirrin scoffed mildly. "But their stamina and durability are impressive. Close combat should be avoided at all costs - once that claw touches skin, there is no way to stop or reverse the damage."

"What does dat claw do?"

"It absorbs life force, converting it into storable energy. The Harvesters don't stop until their source is drained dry."

"Which is death."

"Precisely," Mirrin confirmed. "Your skills as a thief should serve well to surprise the remaining Harvesters. We shall keep in contact telepathically."

"Harvesters aren't psis, are they?"

"They are not even human. Their exterior is for aesthetics only, it neither feels nor acts as real skin. Should you get close enough, you'll see for yourself. Harvesters are early cyborg prototypes, robots really. They have relatively poor defense capabilities and do not process new information on their own. Their brains, so to speak, are low-grade processors. Enough to act, not enough to react.

"Once we are discovered, their plan of retaliation will not be a complex one, no matter who is controlling them - the Harvesters are not combat machines and cannot implement most tactical schemes. They are used at all only because the machinery is already existing and easy to store and assemble."

"But you found them wit' your telepathy," Gambit pointed out.

"It's a fault in their programming, one that was corrected by the time Haight's men created the Kurioon. The Harvesters transmit and receive information much in the same fashion a telepath would, except it is similar to a radio signal. A trained telepath can trace the signal as a homing beacon, but only a few could understand the message. I cannot." Mirrin said, then frowned. "We are wasting precious moments. I will satisfy your curiosity after we are returned safely to your quarters."

Gambit found himself wandering the streets of the tiny town, rifle at the ready. His own instincts and training kept him on the lookout for any movement - in a place like this, anyone out at this hour was doing something wrong. Not excluding himself and his mysterious partner.

He had taken down two with three shots before a voice in his head warned him that the next information wave had passed and the Harvesters would, at the very least, be aware that their number had been thinned.

Running across the street to the warehouse to better avoid the gusting wind, Gambit saw the glow of a golden claw in the starlight and brought the rifle up to get the Harvester in his sights. It was not until he was out of the whistle of the wind that he heard the steps behind him, just in time to see another claw inches from his shoulder.

Spinning away from his would-be assailant, instinct took over and two small knives were charged and thrown before Gambit remembered Mirrin's warning about energy-based weapons. The Harvester's eyes, a dull green glow, flashed bright emerald with the impact of the knives in its forehead and the Harvester seemed renewed instead of repelled.

The claw reached out once more, backing Gambit up against the warehouse wall, before it fell away with the sound of a firing gun. As the body fell, Gambit could see a non-plussed Mirrin checking the artillery supply.

"Oath! Is it your instinct in battle to always do that which will help you the least and harm you the most?" She hissed. "These Harvesters may lack the mental acuity of a kilap tree, but even they will not fail when presented with such a gift. Harvesters do not leave survivors, Gambit, and as you have seen, they do not let anyone escape."

Gambit only nodded. He knew she was correct. It had been too long since his last test beyond the Danger Room. Before Antarctica... And once again, he found himself chasing Rogue, or at least her brethren in powers. Right now, I don't think she'd be giving me any more mercy than these robots. "How many more left?"

"Four. None nearby, although... Ahhh!" Mirrin sank to her knees, eyes squeezed tight shut. A deep breath, then she looked up at the concerned Gambit. "They have begun to feed."

"Den it's time we stopped playin' hide-and-seek, hein?" He offered Mirrin a hand up and felt the air shimmer before she let go. They were on the other side of the small town, judging by the position of the tall buildings.

"The first house," Mirrin pointed. The two silently entered the open front door. "Upstairs." In the three bedrooms, parents, grandparents, and children lay dead.

"Dey look peaceful, like it was natural," Gambit mused aloud. "Yet how come the villages were so... brutalized?"

"Mutilation comes afterwards. Usually, it is a method of training the soldiers, not an effect of the Harvesters' thievery," she looked at the bodies impassively. "Although, truth be told, sometimes the baseness of ordinary man rivals the programmed cruelty of machines. Looters of all sorts come to feed after the Harvesters have quenched their thirst."

Finding the four remaining Harvesters, eyes already glowing bright green in sated glory, was easy enough. Like hunting overfed foxes. Gambit charged the bodies until they melted into unrecognizable lumps and Mirrin transported them to the junkyard away from the town center. Finally, as dawn broke over the horizon, the two disappeared and then reappeared in Gambit's room.

"I thank you, friend Gambit, for your aid," Mirrin said formally. "I pray that you still have time to rest before your day begins."

"A little while," he admitted, noticing that only an hour had passed according to the clock, although it had felt like much longer. He threw his duster on the back of the chair. "Guess I'll be seein' you around." It wasn't a question, more a statement of fact. Gambit knew his debt was not nearly paid.

"Bright Lady willing, in more pleasant circumstances," Mirrin agreed. "Dream peacefully, then."

Gambit was going to ask about the odd coincidence that not a single person in the town had awoken while they were shooting rifles and dragging metal carcasses down the streets, but Mirrin disappeared. Just as well, he thought he knew the answer anyway, just as he knew that Mirrin would be doing her best to avoid fulfilling her promise to answer questions.

As Gambit returned to bed in Westchester, Mirrin found her rest for the first time that long day in midtown, bunking down as she was in Nathan's safe house. It was an architectural and technological hurricane, but the component parts were almost all of the thirty-eighth century. As such, Mirrin felt more at home among the dissonant artifacts than she had anywhere else in this here-and-now.

As she had every night that she had stayed here, Mirrin stifled a giggle as she climbed into the massive bed. Nathan is a big boy, so he needs a big bed., she mused. That said, Tetherblood would have a lot to say about a luxury of this proportion were he to see it. Most of his commentary would probably involve a harem and cuffs on the bedposts, no doubt... The room, large bed notwithstanding, was actually more along the Spartan lines that Mirrin would associate with Nathan.

Mirrin found it perverse that she could rest so comfortably here. While the bed was a good deal more comfortable than any sleeping pallet the Clan Chosen might have - life on the run didn't come with accessories - the psionic aura of the room, of the whole living area in general, was unsettling. But it was unsettling in a way that Mirrin was accustomed to - Nathan's grief - and she tried not to focus on how easily she could apparently tune that out.

There were no photos here, so Mirrin didn't precisely know what Nathan looked like in this time. She knew that he had come back to this here-and-now from a much later point in the timestream than she had, so he would be much older than she was instead of only the little bit that 'should' have been.

Mirrin freely admitted to being curious about how Nathan looked in his middle years and whether time could possibly heal some of the myriad of soul-deep wounds he carried. Treasured, were either of them to be honest about it. She knew what his mission was in this time and place, knew of its costs and its necessity and wondered if the weight would prove crushing. Only the Mother Askani could ask the child who had slain Apocalypse for an encore.

***

"Betsy, look at these printouts," Jean Grey-Summers called out as she waved a collection of papers at Psylocke as she walked into the kitchen. "According to these, I've been missing an anomaly on the astral plane, but I watched as these graphs were being produced and I didn't feel a thing."

Psylocke put down her teacup. "I was going to ask you about something similar. The reports from overnight indicate some sort of action, but Cerebro not only couldn't identify the source, it also couldn't identify the type of activity. I was wondering whether the poor things needs a recalibration."

"Or maybe a vacation," Bobby Drake muttered as he sat down with his cereal. "That thing hasn't been used so much since Professor Xavier just had the five of us to worry about."

"Maybe you're right. I'll get Forge to do a remote diagnostic today," Jean agreed, giving Bobby cause to frown as she was obviously taking his sarcasm seriously. "Otherwise, I take it we escaped the night without any more disasters?"

"First one in a while," Betsy confirmed and then looked over Jean's shoulder. "Good morning, Remy. Pardon me for saying so, but you look like you didn't sleep too well last night."

Gambit shrugged as he combed his fingers through his hair to keep it back. "Strange dreams. T'ink I've been on monitor duty too long. I'm seein' attacks in my sleep."

"Well, I don't see why you can't get into the rotation like everyone else," Jean replied, having discussed just that with Scott last night. Then a thought struck. "What sort of battles were you seeing in your dreams?"

Uh-oh. "Dunno," Gambit tried to sound casual and shrugged artlessly, concentrating on shielding from the two telepaths. He knew he was not easy to scan, but now would not be a good time to rely on that bit of astral fortune. "We got that message from my source, plus the footage of the ruined villages... I t'ink I'm just creating possible scenarios out of nothing. Like when you watch horror movies before you go to bed."

"Could be, but if Forge can't find anything wrong with Cerebro, I'd like you to tell me about your dream, if you can," Jean said slowly. "We've got some strange readings from last night that we can't make heads or tails out of."

"D'accord," Gambit agreed, then moved towards the coffee maker.

The two telepaths exchanged a glance behind his back.

#You don't think maybe Gambit's dream was related to Cerebro's reports, do you?# Psylocke asked Phoenix.

#It could be. We're at a point where we really have to investigate all possibilities.#

#Including the one that says that maybe Gambit's not dreaming? He's hiding something from us, Jean, I can see that even though he's shielding. And this really shouldn't be a time when he starts hiding things from us again.#

Jean could see Betsy's thoughts colored by her emotions towards Warren, a lingering suspicion born out of the mental and physical scars Angel still bore from losing his wings and his stint as Death. #He's hiding something, that's for certain, but Remy's not obligated to tell us everything. We all have our secrets and our shames.#

"D'you want me to leave de room so you two can continue out loud?" Gambit asked. It wasn't hard to tell when a telepathic conversation was going on. "Or should Drake come wit' me?"

Both women flushed with embarrassment. "That won't be necessary, Remy," Betsy apologized. "Jean and I will mind our manners."

"You might as well talk out loud," Bobby sighed. "It's not like I'm doing too well understanding anything the female of the species says right now."

"Gambit, however, has no such problems," Jean replied with a smile. "I'm sorry, Remy."

Gambit nodded. "C'mon frère, I'll give you some translation lessons in the Danger Room."

***

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