Scene Ten

"What the heck?" Scott asked of the darkness, noting the scorch marks and soot on the walls and ground before answering his own question, "Pyro."

"But who was he fighting?" Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler, asked the X-Men team leader. Kurt teleported to wrap a prehensile tail around a piece of guttering, swinging over a burning garbage can. "There's a lot of damage here for one fire mutant."

"Colossus has been here too," Jean Grey pointed out the chunks missing from the brick walls, "and Gambit."

"Three outta four ain't bad," Rogue commented, referring to the absence of Logan's old foe Sabretooth. "But why?"

"I think we'll have to satisfy ourselves with the fact that Magneto's cronies are gone now. There don't appear to be any casualties, so we will just have to wait to find out what they are planning." Storm was the eternal voice of reason. Much as the X-Men hated to admit it, they had been too late this time.

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"Ah, welcome Blaze," Magneto greeted the young woman as the orbs that carried her and Magneto's men opened. They were in a broad and empty room, the far wall of which curved upwards and over like the inside of a soup bowl. Blaze shivered and wrapped her arms around herself as she climbed out of the orb. It was cold here, wherever here was, and she did not like the cold. "I must congratulate you on defeating Pyro and Colossus," the Master of Magnetism's eyes conveyed that he would be having serious words with his men about getting so trounced.

"Thank you," Blaze offered politely, instantly disliking Gambit's boss. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all. "What is all this in aid of?"

"It's simple really," Magneto opened up a palm and beckoned Blaze to him. In well-drilled efficiency Gambit, Pyro and Colossus joined Sabretooth standing to attention, the smug look on Gambit's face only rivalled by Sabretooth's cruel smirk. As Blaze reached Magneto's side she gasped to see tendrils of metal streaking out from the wall of the dome. Even as Gambit stepped forward to object they snaked around Blaze's slender form, trapping her wrists and ankles and binding her tiny waist. The seeping metal dragged her back against the wall, slamming her body to be pinned a few inches off the floor. "You are a tool my dear. With you I can draw the daughter of my enemy up here to her doom, weakening him beyond all recognition. Sabretooth, deliver the message."

Sabretooth growled his acceptance and left. Colossus placed a solid hand on Gambit's shoulder as the Cajun's red-on-black eyes narrowed and he pulled a playing card from his pocket. Magneto ignored his man, talking still to Blaze.

"You can feel it, can't you? You must know metal is the greatest conductor. It carries electricity, heat, and cold. Every ounce of your body heat, of your power is being dragged out of you right now through the very nature of the binds that hold you. This huge metal dome is preventing you from focusing your powers enough to melt yourself free." He took Blaze's chin in his hand and forced her to meet his eyes as he watched her shiver. "More than that, you are weak to cold. Outside there is snow thick on the ground; the air at this altitude is icy and bitter no matter the season. The metal of this dome is feeding that cold into you, chilling the marrow of your bones, making you as feeble as a kitten."

"Dis wasn't part of the deal, Magneto!" Gambit snapped, pulling away from Colossus' grip.

"No?" Magneto turned his back on Blaze to speak to his man. "What then did you expect? You have fulfilled your orders, Gambit. If in a few days this girl can command such loyalty from a lowly thief, then you have proven that Ilehana Xavier will most certainly come running at her call for help."

"Then you'll let her go?"

"Of course not," Magneto stated as he walked towards the door, "so I suggest you say your goodbyes."

Pyro laughed heartily as he followed Magneto and Colossus from the room. Blaze swallowed hard, eyes sharp and cruel as she met Gambit's gaze.

"Here I was," she began with malice in her voice, "thinking we were playing our games from the same rule book. Who'd have thought I'd be such a fool? I've used your practiced lines, I should've seen through you in seconds."

"He's stabbed me in the back, Cherie," Gambit began, "I never meant for dis to happen."

"Ha!" Blaze laughed heartlessly, glaring at him. "But you'll do nothing about it, will you? You're afraid of him. You're pathetic. Tell me, are you being paid well for betraying your friends? Telling some psycho their every little weakness? Or is it just chance that he knew I'm vulnerable to cold?"

Gambit turned and walked away then. What could he say? Sorry you're about to die? Sorry I've got your friend killed too? Sorry I was too much of an idiot to realise Magneto was playing me as much as I was playing you? It all sounded so… pathetic.

Blaze shivered with a combination of anger and cold as he left. Her teeth chattered. She tried again to melt the metal that bound her, but the heat was dissipating into the dome as fast as she could muster it. Still she had to keep trying, too long strung up like this and she'd not even be able to maintain her own body temperature. She'd freeze to death even before Sabretooth's message reached Ilehana.