Chapter 9 Gambit's Adventure
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except Krull, which belongs to Columbia-Tristar
Nighttime:
Gambit whistled as he walked up to the base. He needed to find a side entrance, or something. It was fortunate that he, as a thief, knew just how to do this. He took out a special pair of binoculars and began exploring the countryside. Hmm... heat emissions from a location near a large tree. Gambit walked over to the tree. Although he never told anyone about it, he had excellent night vision. He suspected that this might be another of his secondary mutant powers, related to his strange eye color [A/N I just made this up about his night vision. I have no idea whether this is true in any canonical X-Men universe]. This did not, however, enable him to see heat, but he had a special pair of binoculars that did that for him, part of his ever-growing arsenal of thief-ware.
Gambit looked around slowly and then pulled out his bo-staff. A few knocks on the ground revealed that there was something metal and hollow directly underneath Gambit. Presumably a doorway. Looking around the tree, Gambit spotted a hole, which appeared to be the nest of some rodent or something. Reaching in, he discovered a panel of some sort.
Next, Gambit took out a small electronic device from his belt and placed it in the tree. IT went to work trying to short-out the panel. Surely enough, in less than a minute there was smoke coming form the tree. Hopefully, it looked like a normal malfunction.
Gambit hid behind the tree, and a few minutes later the ground over the door opened and out came Slab and Ramrod. Ramrod held out his hand and the hole in the tree opened wider, allowing him to look inside. It was the last thing he did before Gambit knocked him unconscious with his staff. Gambit then threw a few cards at Slab, knocking him backwards, and jumped down the hole in the ground.
Once inside, Gambit quickly noted where the sensors were and began destroying them, not by using projectiles, but by charging them just enough to fry them. He covered as much ground as he could as quickly as he could, for he realized that it was the only way top keep his location secret. If only sensors in one particular area were destroyed, it would be obvious that that is where he was, and if he destroyed sensors only as he needed to, then any time a set of sensors went down, it would be obvious that he was in that area. But of course leaving the sensors alone would cause the sensors to track his location. so the best bet was to black out as much of the base as possible, and then he could hide anywhere where he had previously destroyed the sensors.
After about ten minutes, he had cleared a sizeable area, even though he had constantly back-tracked so that he would only appear sporadically as he cleared another few feet of hallway, but then he ran into Hairbag. At first he attempted to fight using hand-to-hand combat, but the feral mutant breathed something similar to acid at him, and Gambit barely got away without his face being severely scarred. So he charged a bunch of cards and threw them at Hairbag until he backed off. Then Gambit sprinted away, putting as much distance between himself and his last known location as was possible.
After a few more minutes of destroying sensors and back-tracking, he saw the large, semi-liquid form of Gorgeous George in front of him. With a laugh, the apparently Australian mutant picked Gambit up and drew him to himself.
Gambit's one major weakness was that it was difficult for him to charge objects that were not solid, or did not have a regular structure. In effect, animals were nearly impossible to charge. So Gambit couldn't charge Gorgeous George to blow him up. However, he could charge almost anything else. He managed to explode one of his cards in Gorgeous's left wrist (on Gambit's right, as he was facing Gorgeous). He quickly freed his right hand and began throwing card after card at the tar man.
At first Gorgeous just kept reforming, but finally he grew tired and let go. Gambit took off in the other direction and then ran into Slab again. Gambit was beginning to run out of cards, and his right hand was beginning to hurt from all of the charging of his cards.
"Surely, mon ami, you don't want to beat up lil' ol' me." He dodged suddenly as Slab made it clear that he did want to beat up little old Gambit.
"Leave him to me," said a cold, calculating voice. Gambit turned around to see Ms. Dexter staring at him. "He will be useful in the coming age. Father has used him before. Unfortunately, we didn't ever get a genetic sample. But we will do so now. If he's nice, he might even give me another child after I have Juggernaut Jr." She raised her hand and a green bolt of energy flashed out and hit Gambit.
"My powers are like Dad's, only - varied due to the duplication of his X chromosome and the lack of the Y chromosome. Just like Slayer's powers are different from her 'daddy's.' You know, green instead of red, emerald quartz instead of ruby." The green bolt froze Gambit to the spot, and slowly she lifted him off the ground. "I had to tire you before confronting you, otherwise, you might have been able to attack me. I didn't want to take a chance of injuring the baby before his or her powers manifest themselves." She smiled and showed her teeth, all of them apparently fangs.
"Gambit'll never let you have his baby!" spluttered Remy.
"If Juggernaut couldn't resist my charms, how can you?" Suddenly she began to laugh. "Don't worry. It's nothing personal. Just having children, you see; romance, love, emotion doesn't come into it. So don't feel too bad. You won't be the one carrying it for nine months."
Then Gambit passed out.