Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I making any money from, the X-Men
characters. Thank you to Corrinth for the loan of Ilehana Xavier. Blaze is,
always has been, and forever will be mine, so there!
A/N: Don't forget to review!
Scene 14
"I know you guys didn't sign up for fighting, but how do you feel about helping me stop those guys?" Bobby whispered to his two student friends as they lay on the roof of a warehouse looking down on Pyro, Quicksilver and Avalanche loading a van with crates of ace. Well, at least they could see Pyro and Avalanche lifting heavy boxes as though they were pillows. Quicksilver they couldn't see at all, only the trail of disturbed rubbish and dust that blew around in the streetlights after his speedy passing. The ace the three mutants had taken was taking effect; their powers were accelerating. Bobby didn't know what he would do if Boom-Boom and Havoc refused to help.
"You can always count on us, Iceman." Havoc answered in a low whisper himself. Bobby had explained what the Professor had shown him via Cerebro, and who were he and Tabitha to refuse to help. Tabitha only nodded her agreement, but she was sure they could do this.
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Blaze found Tabitha's room again easily, benefits of a photographic memory. Putting a finger to the door handle she melted the lock, before shoulder barging the door open. Door closed again, hastily Blaze stripped off the X- Men uniform and changed into a pair of the student's white trainers, blue jeans and white sleeveless top. A small slip of paper she'd carried concealed against her skin inside the suit was now put in the jeans' pocket. She left the uniform on the girl's bed, it was Halloween soon after all, and maybe Tabitha could get some use out of it. Certainly it was too distinctive for Blaze's use anymore.
Damn Xavier! How dare he reach out telepathically to her now! And like a disobedient child with a naughty secret she had reacting to his questing by owning up to a truth she had been denying to herself for weeks! And the good Professor had even been shocked! Was he that naive? Well, she had made her decision; with Jacobi back again to haunt her she must leave Remy and the X-Men to look after themselves. Rem thought he was good at running away? He hadn't seen anything yet...
She forcefully pushed all thoughts of the Cajun out of her head, closing the door to Tabitha's room with a tug and drawing the heat out of the melted door metal until it was solid again and the door locked. She did it less for Tabitha's security, more to regain the energy for herself. The X- Men may tease her for the amount she ate each day, but it had been too long since she had eaten anything substantial and been able to keep it down. Downside of her high metabolism was that she couldn't last long at all without food, especially not if she was expending her power. Blaze rubbed the palms of her hands against the stolen jeans, rueing the energy she had spent on torturing the information out of Shrew. If she used her powers much more anytime soon, it would be her own body tissue that she burnt. She pushed that idea from her mind too; there were too many practical things she needed to consider without scaring herself even more...
So it was Jacobi who had started the sale of ace, even as Magneto and Mystique ripped their claws into the program now. It had to be Jacobi who yet again was trying to have her and Gambit assassinated, no one else was so persistent in trying to have her shot. And if Jacobi were so involved in everything these days, Blaze wouldn't put it past her arch-nemesis to have chubby fingers in the FoH cake as well. Still, she had faith in her friends that the X-Men could stop all this. All she had to do was not get dead.
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Ilehana took command of the X-Men almost fluidically as they prepared for the mission, the fight of a lifetime. Scott was confined to bed in the infirmary, sedated to keep him resting until his injuries were healed. Xavier Senior kept one finger of thought always on his wounded foster-son, as he himself sat prepared in Cerebro. He knew it was there he was of the most use, but something had changed in all the X-Men since Tsunami's murder, and for once Charles Xavier wished he could join his team and help hurt the ones who had killed such an innocent just because she was a mutant...
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When the truck was almost fully loaded, Bobby and his friends made their move. His last orders to them, as they so easily accepted his leadership, were that whatever happened the truck and its cargo must be destroyed.
"Hey Speedy Gonzales!" Tabitha cried out as she dropped to land on her feet from their perch by the van. "Try runnin' on this!" And with that she aimed fistful after fistful of exploding marbles at the trail of dust where Quicksilver had been running. At the same time, Havoc extended his palms and blasted Avalanche three foot into the air with a red laser beam. Iceman didn't have time to consider obvious familiarities as his old friend John faced him.
"Give it up, Pyro!" Bobby challenged him. "You never could beat me!"
"Maybe, once!" John spat back as Tabitha screamed, pummelled by the darting Quicksilver. The ground rumbled and the truck shook as Avalanche brought masonry down from the buildings around hem, near burying the slower-moving Havoc. "But that was before I used ace! Now not even that friend of yours Blaze could match me!"
With that comment, Pyro began to change. His entire body developed a shimmering coat of fire, his eyes became translucent and orange, his expression one of hot anger. Fire, his own fire, not from some crummy lighter, danced around him, begging to be used to toast Iceman and his new friends. Pyro revelled in the feeling of power, everything Mystique and Magneto had told him was true, he was a God, and nothing could hold him back now!
There was a blast of yellow light as the van exploded. Despite Quicksilver's best efforts, the white-haired young mutant now stood aghast after Boom-Boom had gotten one charge in through the open doors. Ace, it seemed, was easily flammable. Using the Pyro's distraction as his chance, Iceman tackled his friend to the ground, ignoring the searing pain as John's fire tried to eat Bobby up. In a brave show of his power, Bobby encased them both in hard ice, cooling the flames even as Pyro tried to melt the casing. They rolled together locked in combat, for every new breath of flame Pyro tried to release, Bobby drained all his reserves of power to prove that even without the mutation accelerator drug he could still beat John. Finally, with a crack the ice shattered, and both mutants gasped for air. John's eyes glazed over sullenly and Bobby let his friend drop against the ground.
"Okay, what just happened?" Tabitha asked, pulling Bobby away from the still body of Pyro.
"The ace lets mutants expand their powers, but doesn't give them the stamina or whatever to use them properly." Bobby gasped, pushing his hair back for his brow as he watched John's slow breathing. "Put them under enough of the right kind of stress for long enough and they'll wear themselves out."
"Wow, wish I'd gone to your school," Tabitha commented, "That's clever stuff Iceman!"
"Where's everyone else?" Bobby asked, looking round a little dazed.
"Legged it when you beat Pyro." Tabitha put her head on one side. "Quicksilver and Avalanche anyway. I don't know where Havoc's got to."
A slow blast of red light creeping through a pile of old bricks and mortar alerted Bobby to Havoc's plight. With a burst of energy he hadn't known he'd had in reserve, Iceman started pulling the bricks and rubble off his friend. Tabitha helped; putting more effort in than a small ox she grimly dragged Havoc out of the pile. Then, hearing sirens in the distance she looked up, eyes hopeful.
"The police! Hey, over here!" She began waving her arms above her head to attract their attention.
"Tabitha no! Don't you get it? If they are humans, they'll see us as dangerous. If any one of them is a mutant they will see us as traitors. We have to get out of here!" Bobby tugged Havoc's arm over his shoulder, a shocked looking Tabitha hooked the now unconscious mutant's other arm over hers. With Boom-Boom bearing most of Havoc's weight the three friends disappeared into the night, leaving the truckload of ace burning and Pyro unconscious on the ground.
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Their long-disused meeting place hadn't changed one bit. Dawn was creeping over the horizon as Remy made his way through the graveyard, the only place that had ever been safe enough for a thief and an assassin to conduct their forbidden love affair. The air was still, like it waited with bated breath for something to happen. The trees around rustled as though whispering to each other in some forgotten tongue. It was as though he walked alone at the end of the world...
She was waiting for him, like everything else unchanged by the passing of time. Standing to greet him, she swung a multitude of small, long golden plaits back over her slender shoulders. Wearing brown boots and trousers, her off-the-shoulder sleeveless top was dark green. But it was Belladonna's eyes that had always captured Gambit, tireless blue eyes that asked more questions of him than he could ever have answers.
"You came." Her voice was colder than death itself, cracked by years of bearing a broken heart.
"You good at your job, Belle. It don't do a man no good to run from you. May as well come find you as anythin'." He stopped walking several feet away from her still and met her eyes.
"I'se not got a contract kill you, Remy." She lied though gritted teeth, but he seemed to latch onto her words like a last hope. "I only track you down to talk to you."
"Why now? Why after all dis time, Belle? Seven years..."
"Seven years without absolution, Remy." Her voice turned aggressive and she walked towards him, closing the distance to centimetres with purposeful strides. "Seven years of not knowin' why you did what you did. Why you left me on our wedding day!"
"Belle you know why! I killed..." Remy tried to explain, but she cut him off.
"I know what y'did! But you could've taken me with you!"
"Chere, no! We were so young, an' the guilds wouldn't have let us live!" She turned away from him at that, her hand slipping in her tight trouser pocket. Gambit hesitated before reaching out to put a gloved hand on her shoulder, emotions boiling over.
"That not it, Remy and you know it. We could've escaped the guilds, it been done before. It was you, too scared to make a commitment, even to the woman you said you loved!"
"I did love you, Belle..." Why did his words seem so pointless, so hollow even to him. "But seventeen no age to be marryin'..." He didn't add that as far as he was concerned, no age was a good one to be making that kind of commitment without strong reason, but he knew he didn't have to.
Belladonna pulled her hand back out of her pocket, clutching something small in her fingers.
"I think I heard enough." She muttered, brushing a tear away from her cheek with the back of her clenched hand. "Maybe you do me the honour of takin' dis off me? It always belonged to you..." Turning she held out a gold ring, a plain wedding band. She'd kept it all these years? Hesitantly Gambit took the ring out of her fingers, feeling more than just the physical weight of it. He didn't know why he did what he did next, not putting it in his pocket as he'd thought to, but putting the ring on his finger where once he'd thought it might belong. It looked odd, slid on over his glove. He'd have to move it later. Looking up his eyes met Belladonna's and he instantly knew the trick she'd pulled! How could he be so stupid! Pain overwhelmed him, sent him crashing to his knees and Belladonna wreaked her revenge on him. Her mutant power, working through the ring that now he couldn't get off his finger, setting all his nerves on fire, making his red- on-black eyes ache and his muscles spasm.
"Jacobi?" Belladonna spoke into a palmtop computer, one hand extended in Gambit's direction as she kept him in pain no where near as bad as that which she had borne all these years since he left her. "I got le Beau. We settin' off for the 'copter now."
A/N: Don't forget to review!
Scene 14
"I know you guys didn't sign up for fighting, but how do you feel about helping me stop those guys?" Bobby whispered to his two student friends as they lay on the roof of a warehouse looking down on Pyro, Quicksilver and Avalanche loading a van with crates of ace. Well, at least they could see Pyro and Avalanche lifting heavy boxes as though they were pillows. Quicksilver they couldn't see at all, only the trail of disturbed rubbish and dust that blew around in the streetlights after his speedy passing. The ace the three mutants had taken was taking effect; their powers were accelerating. Bobby didn't know what he would do if Boom-Boom and Havoc refused to help.
"You can always count on us, Iceman." Havoc answered in a low whisper himself. Bobby had explained what the Professor had shown him via Cerebro, and who were he and Tabitha to refuse to help. Tabitha only nodded her agreement, but she was sure they could do this.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Blaze found Tabitha's room again easily, benefits of a photographic memory. Putting a finger to the door handle she melted the lock, before shoulder barging the door open. Door closed again, hastily Blaze stripped off the X- Men uniform and changed into a pair of the student's white trainers, blue jeans and white sleeveless top. A small slip of paper she'd carried concealed against her skin inside the suit was now put in the jeans' pocket. She left the uniform on the girl's bed, it was Halloween soon after all, and maybe Tabitha could get some use out of it. Certainly it was too distinctive for Blaze's use anymore.
Damn Xavier! How dare he reach out telepathically to her now! And like a disobedient child with a naughty secret she had reacting to his questing by owning up to a truth she had been denying to herself for weeks! And the good Professor had even been shocked! Was he that naive? Well, she had made her decision; with Jacobi back again to haunt her she must leave Remy and the X-Men to look after themselves. Rem thought he was good at running away? He hadn't seen anything yet...
She forcefully pushed all thoughts of the Cajun out of her head, closing the door to Tabitha's room with a tug and drawing the heat out of the melted door metal until it was solid again and the door locked. She did it less for Tabitha's security, more to regain the energy for herself. The X- Men may tease her for the amount she ate each day, but it had been too long since she had eaten anything substantial and been able to keep it down. Downside of her high metabolism was that she couldn't last long at all without food, especially not if she was expending her power. Blaze rubbed the palms of her hands against the stolen jeans, rueing the energy she had spent on torturing the information out of Shrew. If she used her powers much more anytime soon, it would be her own body tissue that she burnt. She pushed that idea from her mind too; there were too many practical things she needed to consider without scaring herself even more...
So it was Jacobi who had started the sale of ace, even as Magneto and Mystique ripped their claws into the program now. It had to be Jacobi who yet again was trying to have her and Gambit assassinated, no one else was so persistent in trying to have her shot. And if Jacobi were so involved in everything these days, Blaze wouldn't put it past her arch-nemesis to have chubby fingers in the FoH cake as well. Still, she had faith in her friends that the X-Men could stop all this. All she had to do was not get dead.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ilehana took command of the X-Men almost fluidically as they prepared for the mission, the fight of a lifetime. Scott was confined to bed in the infirmary, sedated to keep him resting until his injuries were healed. Xavier Senior kept one finger of thought always on his wounded foster-son, as he himself sat prepared in Cerebro. He knew it was there he was of the most use, but something had changed in all the X-Men since Tsunami's murder, and for once Charles Xavier wished he could join his team and help hurt the ones who had killed such an innocent just because she was a mutant...
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
When the truck was almost fully loaded, Bobby and his friends made their move. His last orders to them, as they so easily accepted his leadership, were that whatever happened the truck and its cargo must be destroyed.
"Hey Speedy Gonzales!" Tabitha cried out as she dropped to land on her feet from their perch by the van. "Try runnin' on this!" And with that she aimed fistful after fistful of exploding marbles at the trail of dust where Quicksilver had been running. At the same time, Havoc extended his palms and blasted Avalanche three foot into the air with a red laser beam. Iceman didn't have time to consider obvious familiarities as his old friend John faced him.
"Give it up, Pyro!" Bobby challenged him. "You never could beat me!"
"Maybe, once!" John spat back as Tabitha screamed, pummelled by the darting Quicksilver. The ground rumbled and the truck shook as Avalanche brought masonry down from the buildings around hem, near burying the slower-moving Havoc. "But that was before I used ace! Now not even that friend of yours Blaze could match me!"
With that comment, Pyro began to change. His entire body developed a shimmering coat of fire, his eyes became translucent and orange, his expression one of hot anger. Fire, his own fire, not from some crummy lighter, danced around him, begging to be used to toast Iceman and his new friends. Pyro revelled in the feeling of power, everything Mystique and Magneto had told him was true, he was a God, and nothing could hold him back now!
There was a blast of yellow light as the van exploded. Despite Quicksilver's best efforts, the white-haired young mutant now stood aghast after Boom-Boom had gotten one charge in through the open doors. Ace, it seemed, was easily flammable. Using the Pyro's distraction as his chance, Iceman tackled his friend to the ground, ignoring the searing pain as John's fire tried to eat Bobby up. In a brave show of his power, Bobby encased them both in hard ice, cooling the flames even as Pyro tried to melt the casing. They rolled together locked in combat, for every new breath of flame Pyro tried to release, Bobby drained all his reserves of power to prove that even without the mutation accelerator drug he could still beat John. Finally, with a crack the ice shattered, and both mutants gasped for air. John's eyes glazed over sullenly and Bobby let his friend drop against the ground.
"Okay, what just happened?" Tabitha asked, pulling Bobby away from the still body of Pyro.
"The ace lets mutants expand their powers, but doesn't give them the stamina or whatever to use them properly." Bobby gasped, pushing his hair back for his brow as he watched John's slow breathing. "Put them under enough of the right kind of stress for long enough and they'll wear themselves out."
"Wow, wish I'd gone to your school," Tabitha commented, "That's clever stuff Iceman!"
"Where's everyone else?" Bobby asked, looking round a little dazed.
"Legged it when you beat Pyro." Tabitha put her head on one side. "Quicksilver and Avalanche anyway. I don't know where Havoc's got to."
A slow blast of red light creeping through a pile of old bricks and mortar alerted Bobby to Havoc's plight. With a burst of energy he hadn't known he'd had in reserve, Iceman started pulling the bricks and rubble off his friend. Tabitha helped; putting more effort in than a small ox she grimly dragged Havoc out of the pile. Then, hearing sirens in the distance she looked up, eyes hopeful.
"The police! Hey, over here!" She began waving her arms above her head to attract their attention.
"Tabitha no! Don't you get it? If they are humans, they'll see us as dangerous. If any one of them is a mutant they will see us as traitors. We have to get out of here!" Bobby tugged Havoc's arm over his shoulder, a shocked looking Tabitha hooked the now unconscious mutant's other arm over hers. With Boom-Boom bearing most of Havoc's weight the three friends disappeared into the night, leaving the truckload of ace burning and Pyro unconscious on the ground.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Their long-disused meeting place hadn't changed one bit. Dawn was creeping over the horizon as Remy made his way through the graveyard, the only place that had ever been safe enough for a thief and an assassin to conduct their forbidden love affair. The air was still, like it waited with bated breath for something to happen. The trees around rustled as though whispering to each other in some forgotten tongue. It was as though he walked alone at the end of the world...
She was waiting for him, like everything else unchanged by the passing of time. Standing to greet him, she swung a multitude of small, long golden plaits back over her slender shoulders. Wearing brown boots and trousers, her off-the-shoulder sleeveless top was dark green. But it was Belladonna's eyes that had always captured Gambit, tireless blue eyes that asked more questions of him than he could ever have answers.
"You came." Her voice was colder than death itself, cracked by years of bearing a broken heart.
"You good at your job, Belle. It don't do a man no good to run from you. May as well come find you as anythin'." He stopped walking several feet away from her still and met her eyes.
"I'se not got a contract kill you, Remy." She lied though gritted teeth, but he seemed to latch onto her words like a last hope. "I only track you down to talk to you."
"Why now? Why after all dis time, Belle? Seven years..."
"Seven years without absolution, Remy." Her voice turned aggressive and she walked towards him, closing the distance to centimetres with purposeful strides. "Seven years of not knowin' why you did what you did. Why you left me on our wedding day!"
"Belle you know why! I killed..." Remy tried to explain, but she cut him off.
"I know what y'did! But you could've taken me with you!"
"Chere, no! We were so young, an' the guilds wouldn't have let us live!" She turned away from him at that, her hand slipping in her tight trouser pocket. Gambit hesitated before reaching out to put a gloved hand on her shoulder, emotions boiling over.
"That not it, Remy and you know it. We could've escaped the guilds, it been done before. It was you, too scared to make a commitment, even to the woman you said you loved!"
"I did love you, Belle..." Why did his words seem so pointless, so hollow even to him. "But seventeen no age to be marryin'..." He didn't add that as far as he was concerned, no age was a good one to be making that kind of commitment without strong reason, but he knew he didn't have to.
Belladonna pulled her hand back out of her pocket, clutching something small in her fingers.
"I think I heard enough." She muttered, brushing a tear away from her cheek with the back of her clenched hand. "Maybe you do me the honour of takin' dis off me? It always belonged to you..." Turning she held out a gold ring, a plain wedding band. She'd kept it all these years? Hesitantly Gambit took the ring out of her fingers, feeling more than just the physical weight of it. He didn't know why he did what he did next, not putting it in his pocket as he'd thought to, but putting the ring on his finger where once he'd thought it might belong. It looked odd, slid on over his glove. He'd have to move it later. Looking up his eyes met Belladonna's and he instantly knew the trick she'd pulled! How could he be so stupid! Pain overwhelmed him, sent him crashing to his knees and Belladonna wreaked her revenge on him. Her mutant power, working through the ring that now he couldn't get off his finger, setting all his nerves on fire, making his red- on-black eyes ache and his muscles spasm.
"Jacobi?" Belladonna spoke into a palmtop computer, one hand extended in Gambit's direction as she kept him in pain no where near as bad as that which she had borne all these years since he left her. "I got le Beau. We settin' off for the 'copter now."