Note: The "fruit loops" line is paraphrased from a comment made by Iceman to Legion in XM #41 - one of the very first issues I ever bought. Yes, nothing like jumping on in the middle of a crossover event... (sigh).
And in all the excitement, I forgot to note that you pronounce "Gris-Gris" as "gree-gree." I don't know if that sounds more or less silly than pronouncing it the way it's spelled.
The Acolytes weren't so sure about having a girl around. They were doubly unsure about having a former X-Man around, even if she had been a former member of the Brotherhood first.
But Questa was running the clock and had no time to ease herself into the tightly-knit circle.
Candra's orders had been very clear: if Questa couldn't get to Gambit within a few hours, she had to bail out. Singer couldn't hold up the telepathic end of the mission any longer than that.
Questa never failed. She'd been studying Rogue since the moment Candra had become aware of the X-Man's existence. She also knew Gambit - a lot better than Belladonna thought she did - and she felt confident that she could make the deadline with time to spare.
"You gonna talk to me or should I just ignore you, too?" she asked him, leaning against the doorframe of the briefing room, where Gambit had remained during her introductory tour of the place.
"You really serious about joinin' the Acolytes?" he fired back, unruffled. He was playing with a deck of cards. Questa found herself suppressing an exasperated sigh; could he be any more of a caricature?
"I wouldn't be here otherwise, would I."
"Guess not." He waved his hand and the deck of cards vanished, like a magician's trick, then flashed her an easy smile. "It will be nice to have some better-lookin' company."
This time, Questa was ready and moved right past the urge to roll her eyes and into a smile of her own. Rogue was no experienced player at this kind of game, so she made sure that the smile was slightly hesitant, slightly uncertain, underneath the brashness. "Could say the same. Do you really think Magneto's gonna win? I mean, without destroying the X-Men."
Gambit tilted his head. "Not willin' to see them killed? Maybe you shouldn't be here after all."
"Hey, they were my friends," Questa shot back, straightening and letting a little bit of Rogue's temper flare. "Maybe we didn't always get along, especially me and- some of the others, but you know, that's gotta count for somethin'... right?"
Gambit shrugged and said, "Sometimes. Doesn't always work both ways, though."
And he ought to know, given his history; she found a delicious irony in the current situation. Here she was, with Candra and Belladonna behind her, and he didn't even suspect. Questa moved further into the room, dropping down to sit in one of the empty chairs. "That's what I'm afraid of, I guess. Bein' on the battlefield and pullin' my punches 'cause they used to be my friends, and them treatin' me just like anyone else."
"It happens." He moved closer to her. Questa held her breath and waited for the perfect moment. Had to be perfect. Discreetly, invisible even to his thief's eyes, she slipped her hand into the hidden pocket of Rogue's uniform. And waited.
Singer's blindfold was back on, and Candra was on the phone.
"-give me that, you worthless piece of garbage," she was snarling at the moment, balling out some hapless soul on the other end of the line. "I arranged that deal personally! I know exactly what the contract says."
Belladonna was conferring with Gris-Gris in the far corner about something.
No one was paying full attention to Rogue. And that was just fine with her, because she was trying to escape.
The armchair's legs had gold encrusted all over them; somewhere in between Questa's acceptance of Acolyte status and the start of Candra's phone call, Rogue had noticed that the metal on one leg stuck out a little. It wasn't a particularly sharp fragment, but it was the only thing she had, so she'd started carefully rubbing her taped ankles against it.
"If the general wants to renegotiate, tell him-" Candra broke off, visibly incensed as whoever it was talked fast. "WHAT?"
Rogue felt the tape loosen, just as little. She resisted the urge to struggle free; no point giving it away.
With quick, vicious gestures, Candra snapped, "Fine. I'll deal with this myself," and turned off the phone. "Those idiots pick the worst times."
"Somethin' we can help with?" Belladonna asked.
"Only marginally. This happens to be a legitimate business deal." Candra gestured. "Belle, take our guest into the library while the negotiator is here. Gris-Gris, keep watch over Singer."
"With pleasure, Benefactress," Belladonna said, bowing at the waist in a stiffly formal and old-fashioned manner. Gris-Gris also bowed and took up a position next to Singer's motionless form.
Belle grabbed Rogue by her bound wrists and dragged her out of the chair none too gently. "Get up, girl."
Rogue managed to climb to her feet, balancing precariously, only to be met with Candra's predatory smile from close range.
"I hate it when the pawns grow spines," Candra mused, running a fingernail along Rogue's jaw; Rogue twitched away and was rewarded with a rough shove from Belle. Candra's smile narrowed. "Try and remember that, darling."
"Whatever," Rogue said, with as much contempt as she could muster - which was rather a lot, given her current mood.
Candra waved them away, turning and heading for the other end of the room herself. "Go."
Belle shoved her again, this time forward, and Rogue barely avoided falling flat on her face. Belle half-dragged her out of the room and a cavernous hallway almost as big and just as ornately decorated.
"So what's your deal?" Rogue asked her as they passed by one humongous painting after another. "Goin' after that supervillain-lackey discount?"
"My family works for Candra. But I'd do this for free," the other girl answered. Belle pushed her through an open doorway, hard, and this time Rogue did fall to the floor. Her head smacked into the hardwood floor, covered only by what looked like a really nice Persian rug, and she saw stars for a minute.
Struggling to pick herself back up, Rogue lifted her head in time to see Belle lock the door and toss the key over her shoulder. The blonde cracked her knuckles. "It's just you an' me now, 'cherie'."
A fog of shock and despair had settled over the grounds of the Xavier Institute. Literally.
Storm was taking Rogue's abrupt betrayal just as hard as any of them - for betrayal it was - and the weather reflected her mood more than it usually did. A dark and sickening thing to experience, betrayal, and there were already some disturbing hints of anger and even hatred towards their former teammate. No one could quite accept her action, although more than a few of them understood the reasons behind it.
The X-Men had gone to class, eventually, leaving just the adults and the younger students behind. They ought to have been working on the reconstruction, but instead sat around the basement levels and moped. Professor X had retreated to the empty and half-finished Cerebro room to consider possible avenues for solutions.
There really weren't any.
Questa sighed and lifted a shoulder. "I guess I shouldn't care so much. What do you think?"
"It's your call, not mine," Gambit said, apparently indifferent. But he was close enough for Questa's purposes.
All of the monitors had been left on. She checked them, hoping furiously that none of the Acolytes - or worse, Magneto himself - were nearby. They weren't.
The clock was ticking. The opportunity was there. Questa made her move.
"True." She gave him a smile and closed her fingers around the tiny syringe, bringing it up and emptying its contents into his arm in one smooth motion. "But not in the way you think."
He was moving almost before she'd finished, jerking away with those hyper-fast reflexes of his, but the chemicals supplied by Candra worked faster, and he stumbled, collapsing against the metal wall. "What -?" he got out, in Cajun-tinted French.
Questa didn't drop her disguise - not here in the heart of Magneto's stronghold - but she did allow herself to engage in a very un-Rogue-like expression of smug triumph. "Oh, I think you know what, and why. There's someone got a score to settle with you."
Gambit's eyes widened, then closed. She watched the understanding dawn even as he was lost.
Rogue slammed into a bookshelf, sending books and paper raining down around her. One heavy volume clipped her shoulder and her whole arm went numb.
"Candra wants you in one piece," Belladonna said, crossing the floor. "Don' ask me why. She got some scheme to use you later or somethin'. Whatever. Bad news for you, 'cause you gonna be her guest for a while. Good news for you too, 'cause that means I can't rip your lungs out like I wanna."
"I'll thank her."
Belle grinned savagely and kicked her in the face, a swift, hard blow that sent Rogue to the floor again. She tasted blood and felt the side of her face bruising already.
"Trust me, girl, when I'm done, you'll wish Candra had ordered you dead." To prove her point, Belle kicked her in the stomach, and then kicked her a few more times.
Rogue took the punishment, working desperately to break the weakened tape on her ankles. Wolverine had told them once that it didn't matter if you had your hands free; you couldn't run on your hands. If you could run, you could worry about your hands later, but someone with their feet tied up couldn't do much of anything.
"You, wit' your little attitude," Belle was saying, punctuating every other word with a vicious kick. Her accent was getting thicker by the moment. "Think you can waltz in an' take him. I make you regret the day you ever saw him!"
"You kiddin'? I regret it already," Rogue spat, and Belle moved to kick her again. But this time, Rogue wrenched one leg free of the duct tape and countered with a badly-aimed kick of her own. Belle wasn't expecting it, though, and got knocked backwards a few steps. Not much of an opening, but Rogue took full advantage of it.
She got her hands in front of her and pushed off of the floor, on her feet at last and more than ready to fight. "Just you an' me an' a lot more even odds. Let's see how tough you are now."
Belle smiled and spread her hands. Yellow energy crackled into existence around her fingers. "Even odds? No fun there, I think."
Had to open your big mouth, didn't you, Rogue thought, kicking herself, as the fight began in earnest.
There was a delay of exactly two minutes as Singer relayed the information to Fifolet and Fifolet breached the perimeter.
Questa spent the time barring the door and watching the security monitors with ill-disguised anxiety. Any moment now, Magneto or one of the Acolytes could discover what was going on, and then they'd all be in big trouble.
Gambit had joined the group for a reason, and it wasn't because he agreed with the politics.
Finally, a familiar green light flared on the floor as Fifolet phased through it. He grabbed the unconscious thief, making the green spread to Gambit as well, then paused. "You comin' too?"
Questa shook her head. "I'll find my own way out."
"Suit yo'self," Fifolet said. "But get back fast. Candra's mad about somethin'."
And when Candra was mad, they both knew, it was best to cause as little fuss as possible.
The library's nice Persian carpet was gonna need a lot of dry-cleaning, and several shelves of books were scorched and splintered.
"What is going on in here?!" Candra's voice rang out. The fury was enough to make both Rogue and Belladonna freeze in mid-motion. That was fortunate for Rogue, because Belle had her cornered and was about to blast the tar out of her with a massive double-fisted shot of raw energy.
Belladonna lowered her hands, hastily dissipating the energy. "Nothin'."
" 'Nothing' my foot. I told you to keep her out of my hair for ten minutes, not start a firefight!" Candra flicked her fingers and Belle was suddenly dragged away from the corner - telekinesis if Rogue ever saw it. "Honestly, Belle. You're supposed to be a professional. Start acting like it!"
Belle, still caught in Candra's TK, ducked her head. "Sorry, Benefactress."
"I very much doubt it," Candra snapped. She gestured again and this time Rogue felt herself being pulled by telekinesis. "And with the imminent arrival of our second guest, I'm not inclined to take chances with either of you. It's time to power down, girls."
Gris-Gris, standing in the doorway behind Candra, looked alarmed. Even Singer, hovering out in the hallway with her head bowed, seemed to take note of the announcement.
"Candra, no," Belle said immediately, wide-eyed. "I'm not goin' to do anythin' to him. Or her."
"Of course you aren't. You'll forgive me for making sure." A pink glow blossomed around Candra's eyes and hands; she put one hand near Rogue's head and the other near Belle's. "It's much harder to take away powers than to give them, but let's see what I can do."
Rogue met this new development with open astonishment. "Take away...?"
"I giveth, and I taketh away." Candra favored Rogue with one of her more malicious smiles. "Did you think Belladonna and friends were born mutants? Hardly. Now be quiet. This takes some concentration."
There was a moment where nothing happened, and then a searing lance of pain shot down Rogue's spine and through every nerve. The pain faded almost immediately into a sort of numb tingling - like when her foot went to sleep and then the blood flow was restored, only over her whole body.
Other than that, she didn't feel any different, but Candra looked satisfied. "There we go. That should make everyone's lives easier for the next few hours. Gris-Gris, you're in charge of Rogue now. Belle, take Singer and go to the solarium. She needs to save her energy."
The first thing Gris-Gris did was put new tape around her ankles.
Faced with the usual hassles of being mutant teens in a world that hated and feared them, plus the worry over what Rogue was doing, plus the prospect of getting six tardy slips from Principal Kelly, who really hated them, the X-Men were not in the best of moods when they arrived at Bayville High School.
The Brotherhood's presence in the parking lot did not do anything to make them feel better.
"Hey," Pietro greeted them before they'd barely gotten out of the car, a smirk firmly set on his face. The other Brotherhood members formed a smug phalanx behind him. "Heard you lost someone."
Evan scowled. "How'd you like to lose something?"
"Ooo, touchy," Pietro said, backing up but not losing his grin. "Word is your ex-X-friend is having a great time with the Acolytes."
"Shove it, Maximoff," Scott told him, not so much pushing past the group as forcing them to give way. The other X-Men followed in their leader's wake.
Pietro darted around to stand in their path once again. "Aww, what'sthematter? Miss her that much already?"
"Get a life," Kitty said with her head held high, dismissing all of them, and with that, the X-Men went off to school, doing their best to ignore the sickening truth that one of them had turned.
They were back in the room with the armchairs and the fireplace. One of the windows was broken - smashed through, in fact, with a large, jagged hole in the center. A steady breeze blew in, ruffling the vast drapes, and with the wind came the incongruously cheerful sounds of birds chirping.
Rogue, unceremoniously dumped on the floor near an armchair, suspected the negotiator's meeting with Candra hadn't gone very well.
She also suspected that they were somewhere in the country. Otherwise, the birdsongs would've been accompanied by traffic noises and people's voices. Bayville wasn't a major city, but it wasn't in the country, either. She took advantage of the fresh air to see if she could smell anything like the ocean, feeling not a little ridiculous as she did (it wasn't like she was Wolverine or someone), but couldn't pick up anything more than the scent of some flower.
And then discovery time was over, because Fifolet and Questa entered, dragging Gambit between them, and Rogue was torn between gloating over the jerk's predicament and fearing for her life now that Candra had him. But then, Belle had said that Candra wanted her alive for later plans - the only problem with feeling reassured was that both Candra and Belle weren't exactly of sterling character.
"Put him over there," Candra ordered, and the two flunkies obediently hauled Gambit over to the chair closest to the still-cold fireplace and dropped him there.
From her position on the floor, Rogue had a good view of Gambit's interrogation.
"Wake up," Candra said, slapping him across the face.
Gambit opened one eye, apparently unsurprised to see where he was and in what company. "Candra. Still got the same charming manners, huh."
Candra was obviously in no mood to exchange pleasantries. She made a fist and Gambit was yanked upwards by an invisible hand, then slammed into the wall. "Where is it?"
Held a good four feet off the floor by an angry powerhouse, Gambit nonetheless managed to look calm. "Where's what?"
Candra must have pressed her telekinesis harder, because Gambit made a choking, strangling noise. "My heart. You took it. I want it back."
Gambit shook his head. "Never heard of it."
"The ruby you stole from my possession. WHERE IS IT?"
Gambit grinned - an astonishing expression, under the circumstances, and one that became even more inexplicable when he said, "Oh, that. I sold it."
Candra's fingers curved into talons, and an unseen force began tugging at the room's contents. Rogue recognized the hallmarks of a telekinetic rage - Jean did have a temper, however much she tried to pretend otherwise - and hunkered down further.
A vase went crashing into the wall, inches from Gambit's face, but everything else pretty much stayed put.
"You miserable, insignificant NOTHING!" Candra shouted at him, hair whipping around her head. "How DARE you sell - SELL - that gem! I should tear you APART!"
Gambit was turning a little blue and grabbing futilely at his throat.
Candra was too busy exacting revenge to notice Belladonna appear in the doorway and move towards her with a knife drawn, but she did notice when Gris-Gris fired up his mace and Fifolet's energy signature flared to life.
"What is this?" she hissed at them, openly scornful.
Belle held her ground, ready to go for Candra's jugular. "You kill him, Candra, I don't care who you are. Neither do they."
"Children!" Candra lashed out at them with one hand, and the three were flung backwards several feet, winding up on the floor. "Challenge me again and we'll see how well you three can fly." But she did let up on Gambit.
"Thanks, Belle," he said, voice decidedly strained. He didn't sound very happy anyway. "Almost makes up for you puttin' that knife in Lapin's shoulder."
"He had it comin'," Belladonna said, climbing to her feet with effortless grace.
"Family squabbles aside," Candra said, with a cross look at both of them. "I'd like to get back to the matter at hand." She refocused on Gambit. "The buyer's name."
"Anonymous."
"The date of sale."
"I forget."
Candra dropped him to the floor - literally: she let go of him and he fell, landing with a graceless thump. "Make sure he's not going anywhere," she told Gris-Gris, who produced a pair of shackles.
While Gris-Gris was cuffing Gambit, Candra walked over to Rogue and looked down at her, tapping the center of her chest with the toe of one red stiletto-heeled boot. "You know, if given the proper incentive, I can make it permanent."
Rogue forced herself to not feel the sudden, painful yearning in her heart. Candra was a liar and a killer, and she had no proof her powers were even gone temporarily. "Oh yeah? Watch me not care."
Candra smirked. "Suit yourself."
She and her flunkies moved to exit the room. Candra turned around with her hand on the doorknob. "Oh, and Gambit, dear?"
Gambit coughed and said, "Yeah?"
"You have five minutes to remember everything," Candra said, so sweetly that it was clear she was going to kill him. "After that... I'm turning you over to your girlfriend."
As the door closed, Belladonna smiled.
"Hey, where's Gambit?"
Colossus looked up from the sketchbook and shrugged. "I do not know."
Pyro ambled further into the room. "He's not anywhere here. That Rogue girl is gone too."
"Do you think they left somewhere together?" Colossus asked, putting down his pencil. Once Pyro started talking, there was no point in trying to ignore him or to do anything else.
"Maybe. Maybe she converted him and they're running to Xavier's."
Colossus considered it. "Maybe. It would not be a stretch."
"Yeah, he always did think with... his..." Pyro trailed off, and a moment later Colossus saw the reason why as Magneto swept past in the hallway. They waited for a moment until the master of magnetism had safely disappeared, and then Pyro murmured, "Think he knows?"
It was a foolish question with an obvious answer; if Magneto knew any of his Acolytes were missing, he would be doing a lot more than stalking the halls. "Not yet."
Pyro jerked his head in the direction of the door. "Should we tell him?"
"What is there to tell him? Only suspicions." Colossus picked up his pencil again. Drawing was perhaps an odd hobby for someone like himself, but he found it a good outlet for all those things the world would not permit him to say or do. "No. If there is another reason, we will be made sorry for it later."
"Oh yeah." Pyro abandoned the issue as quickly as he'd started it, turning and leaving the room without another word.
Colossus shook his head. One part of him hoped that Gambit had indeed escaped. The other hoped he hadn't, for it would make things that much more difficult when he himself sought to change sides.
He went back to drawing.
"Don't tell me you were actually crazy enough to steal something from her," Rogue said the second the door shut.
"I had my reasons," Gambit said. Something metallic flickered briefly in his hands, before he tossed it neatly in her direction. "Here."
It was a knife, Rogue saw - a switchblade. She was less astonished by the fact that he'd perfectly aimed the knife with his hands behind his back, than she was by the fact that he even had a knife. "What -?"
"It's too big to fit into the lock on these things," he said, rattling the shackles on his wrists. "Cut yourself free and find me something."
She didn't need to be told twice, grabbing the switchblade and sawing through the tape on her feet, then her wrists. Her gloves were ruined, so she took them off and dropped them on the floor; some of the tape stuck to her sleeves, but she didn't dare pull it off for fear of ripping the material. Instead she climbed to her feet and started walking for the window, figuring that she could maybe jump out. They couldn't be that far off the ground, could they?
"Hey," Gambit called out behind her, sounding alarmed.
She turned around and put her hands on her hips. "What?"
"You're gonna help me get outta here too, right?" he asked, looking at her with a shamelessly pleading expression that was spoiled only by the mischievous glint in his eyes.
"Help you? You are fruit loops!" she said, incredulous. "I hate you! You're the whole reason I'm in this mess."
"So what you gonna do? Leave me here?" He struggled to his knees. "Not something your professor would approve of, you know."
He was right about that, but Rogue was still tempted to do it anyway.
"Besides," Gambit went on, dropping his voice to a lower, more confidential tone, "you're not the kind of person that would do that. You're different. I knew that from the first second I saw you - remember? During th' fight, you found me, but you let me go. I know you'll help me again, Rogue. I know you want to."
He was right. She wanted to let him out of the shackles, to help him get out of Candra's lair, to do whatever he asked her to. The urge was so strong that she took a step toward him - toward the person she was just condemning as an object of hatred.
She wanted to help him. But she still hated him. And that set off every warning instinct she had.
"Stop it!" she said, pressing her hands over her ears.
"Stop what?" he asked, in that same low voice.
She pressed her hands tighter, willing herself to stay put and not follow the siren call. "Whatever it is you're doin'. I'm not fallin' for it!"
He shrugged. In a normal volume, he said, "Worth a try."
And just like that, the pervasive, insistent pressure to aid him vanished. She lifted her hands from her head, somewhat tentatively, and asked, "What was that?"
Gambit tilted his head, a half-grin on his face. "Charm, cherie. Charm."
More like a telepathic suggestion. Rogue did live with two telepaths; she knew most of the tricks they could pull. In fact, it was probably all of that training against psychic attacks that had clued her in to Gambit's manipulations.
She glared at him, eyes narrowed and arms crossed over her chest. He stared back, completely unrepentant. They stayed like that for a long moment, not so much locked in a battle of wills as they were evaluating each other.
"Oh, fine, I'll help," she said, heaving a sigh, and went to find something in the room that he could use to break out of the shackles.
"He's gonna escape," Belladonna said, fretting like the child she was.
"No, he's not," Candra told her. She was, truth to tell, more than a little sick and tired of the entire affair. She had infinitely better things to do than trying to pry information out of a shut- mouthed thief - who, for all she knew, could have genuinely sold the ruby to an anonymous buyer. She wouldn't put it past him. "He can't get out of those cuffs, and there's no one there to help him."
"Rogue," Belle pointed out, sour.
Candra laughed. "Your jealousy is blinding, Belle. Rogue can't stand him."
Belle looked down and away so that Candra wouldn't see the disbelief stamped across her face. It didn't work, but Candra chose to ignore it.
"Time?" she asked no one in particular. She never wore a watch, or kept clocks; the passing of time was a phenomenon that only entertained for so long, and she had reached her saturation level ages ago.
"Three minutes left," Fifolet replied.
Rogue estimated they had about two minutes left before Candra returned, and her search for something Gambit could use to escape wasn't looking good. "Couldn't you just, you know, blow up those things?" she asked over her shoulder as she went through a big desk.
"Sure, but I'm kind of attached to my hands, so I won't."
Rogue bit back a sarcastic comment of her own, because the last thing she wanted was for him to realize how much he annoyed her. Besides, she'd found something, maybe. "Would a letter opener work?"
"It should," he said. "Bring it over here."
"No, I was gonna throw it into the fireplace," she said, rolling her eyes. So much for holding back the sarcasm.
"Whatever you do, do it fast, huh?" Gambit still hadn't managed to get on his feet, but his mouth was obviously in good shape.
So she took her sweet time walking back across the room.
He gave her an unamused look that did her soul good.
"If I let you out," she said, dangling the blade a good foot away from him, "you have to promise to get me back to the Xavier Institute alive and in one piece."
"What makes you think I'd keep a promise?" he asked, then grinned at her expression and said, "I promise. Thief's honor."
"No kind of honor at all," Rogue muttered, but bent down anyway and put the letter-opener in his hand. His fingers brushed hers, and she jerked back, expecting a cascade of memories.
But nothing happened.
Oh my God, she thought, swallowing hard and feeling just a little light-headed. She really did it.
Gambit gave her a suspicious look, as if he knew something was wrong too, but didn't say anything. He had the shackles off in seconds and stood, stretching. "I know the layout of the house. We can get out if we're careful."
He was headed for the door. Rogue looked at him, pushing the euphoria of powerlessness to the back burner, then at the smashed glass of the window. "How about we just go through the window?"
"The lawn's rigged with traps."
"Of course it is," she said. "Why not? Crazy people inside, boobytraps outside..."
He motioned for silence, then opened the door a crack and peered out.
"Got Gris-Gris down the hall," he murmured. "Looks like he's the only one. Candra's gettin' overconfident in her old age."
Old age? Candra was twenty-five if she was a day. Rogue dismissed it as yet another stupid thing he'd said and decided to ask him something that'd been bothering her. "Gris-Gris - what's that mean, anyway?"
"It's a voodoo word," he said, not really paying attention to her. "A spell - a powerful one. Gris' family's been practicin' since before Marie Laveau. He didn't need Candra's power, if you ask me."
And on that reassuring note, he opened the door wider and nodded in the hallway's direction. "Go distract him."
"What?"
"Distract him," Gambit repeated, then propelled her out into the hall.
"You're so dead," she managed to hiss at him before Gris took notice of her.
"Well, well," he said, drawling the words and producing his mace as he walked toward her; that magenta glow enveloped it quickly. "Looks like you tryin' to leave the party early, girl. Can't have that."
Rogue brought her fists up, holding her ground. Powers or no powers, it didn't matter - it wasn't like she was used to fighting with super-strength or anything. She could clean Gris' clock just as easily now as she could before.
She hoped.
"Oh yeah? You gonna stop me?"
"I don't need to," he said, taking a swing at her torso. She flipped backwards easily, landing on her feet just like she always did in the Danger Room. "The spirits are on my side, not yours!"
"I ain't afraid of your voodoo magic," she retorted.
"You should be," Gris said. "You should be real afraid."
Whenever they started saying things like that, Rogue had learned, it was best to clear out, because there was something bad coming. But before she could put thought into action and get out of range, he flung a handful of powder into her face, making her eyes burn.
"Is that the only trick you've got?" she asked, swiping at her watering eyes. "Blow fairy dust in people's faces and make 'em cry?"
"Not fairy dust, girl," he said, sounding way too smug about something. "This powder, it does sting the eyes, but it stings the soul even more."
She opened her mouth to fire back another comment, but found herself suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation that she hadn't truly felt in a very long time.
Fear.
Her heart starting pounding - not from the normal adrenaline of a fight, but from pure, unwatered terror. It slowed her reaction time to a standstill and she barely dodged a blow from Gris' mace.
"It's hard to see through all that fear, ain't it?" Gris swung the mace again, this time smacking it into the wall right above Rogue's head; she ducked and cowered, desperate to get away and yet still moving underwater. Bits of plaster showered down on her. "Makes you easy prey."
Rogue wanted to get on her feet and run like hell, but she was paralyzed like a deer in headlights, trapped where the wall met the floor. Gris knew it, too, and lowered his mace, trapping her further by simply walking closer.
"Don't know why Belle was sweatin' you," he said. "Not so tough."
He made a kicking motion at her; Rogue flinched and cowered further, trying to hide behind her hands, trying to vanish into the wall.
Gris laughed - a short, mean sound that sent fresh shivers of panic down Rogue's spine. "Yeah, I think we'll have fun with you, me and Belle. And with Gambit, once Candra's done."
Gambit. The name burned through the fear like a fire through cobwebs, clearing her head and her heart in one swift moment. She hated that boy - she hated them all, and she was more than mad at all of them for dragging her into this. Her anger was stronger than the terror he'd thrown in her face, and, anchored again, the powder had no chance. Rogue pushed off of the floor and came up swinging. "I don't think so!"
Gris was understandably caught by surprise and fell back. He recovered fast, though, and swung the mace up again. The energy hummed to a deeper color, like fuschia, and he snarled, "Not afraid any more? You should be!"
"No," she said, not moving out of her stance, "you should!"
And, with perfect timing, Gambit brought what looked like a solid gold Cupid statuette down on the back of Gris' head.
"You are SO dead!" Rogue snapped, before Gris had even hit the floor.
Gambit looked at her like she was crazy. "For what?"
She didn't trust herself with words, so she just threw up her hands and made a noise of pure exasperation.
He shrugged and bent over Gris, taking something out of the unconscious flunky's pocket.
Footsteps and voices drifted down the hallway, around a corner but coming closer, and Rogue realized that all of their plans about getting out fast had just disappeared.