Disclaimer: Don't own Gambit; do own pretty much everyone else.
A/N: Please read and review?
05
The drug knocked Blaze for six, lying on her back in Cape Town's botanical gardens under a spectacular monkey-puzzle tree. Then as her hypermetabolism burned the drug off quicker than normal, she hit a fast food joint to quench a desire for greasy meat. She decided that it just wasn't for her, not liking the gaps in her usually formidable memory where this afternoon should have been. I'll stick to getting pissed, she thought, and there's no time like the present.
Blaze hit the bars and clubs of Cape Town several hours after she'd left the apartment. A few more hours passed, fuelled by the more familiar attributes of alcohol and dancing, even flirting when someone caught her eye. Her feet were sore and blistered, her stomach protesting, and she knew it would be time to call it a night soon. Blaze was heading to the rest room with a bottle of water in her hand to purge her stomach before she even dared going near a taxi, when a man stepped across her path.
"Gimme your purse," he threatened, his features obscured by the flashing nightclub lights. Blaze weighed him up as he backed her into a tight corner. He was much bigger than she was. Then again so were most people. Calmly she placed her bottle of water on a convenient ledge and pulled her purse out of her hot pants' pocket. What type of idiot mugs someone at the end of the night when the money's all spent, she thought, sensing her moment.
"Here you go," she held out the purse eagerly, watching her attacker's eyes fall on the item and not stay on her. With a grunt and a flick of her wrist she lobbed the purse skyward ferociously. The distraction worked as the thug looked up and Blaze leapt in to snap-kick him under the jaw with her right foot. She finished him off with a roundhouse kick below the belt, and then picked up her bottle of water. As she looked round for her purse the attacker slumped to the floor and lay still.
"I think this is yours," Blaze accepted her purse back from the speaker with a dazzling smile of thanks. He was a little older than her and a little taller. His jaw was square-set in a slightly angular face, accentuating a pleasantly muscled body. His surfer dude spiky and sun-bleached blond hair, tanned skin and surfer-chic clothes indicated an athletic but laid-back individual. Blaze still probably wouldn't have looked twice at him if it hadn't been for his eyes. Though clear and blue, they were not innocent. His eyes weighed her up just as she examined him, considering her with a darkness few people had. Darkness that attracted Blaze like a moth to a candle and made Cape Town suddenly a more interesting place to be.
"I thought I might have to come to your rescue," he started, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. "Looks like I was wrong."
"I can take care of myself," Blaze replied not quite sharply.
"You're not from round here are you?"
"What was your first clue?" Blaze chuckled in her English accent, making him smile too. "I'm a student," she lied casually, "Just taking some time out to travel."
"You should be careful," he warned her sincerely. "Cape Town can be dangerous for a woman on her own."
"Name me a city that isn't," Blaze shrugged. "Thank you for the warning, its good to know there are decent folk here too."
"Look," he said carefully, producing an old receipt and a stubby pencil from one of his combat pants' many pockets. "This is gonna sound really lame, but my name's Lance and this is my number. You get stuck for anything while you're in town, gimme a call okay?"
"Uh-huh," Blaze agreed sceptically, but with a sweet smile anyway. "Thanks."
Lance gulped as the feisty redhead brushed his fingers with hers as she took his number. As she walked past him his eyes followed her until he lost her in the crowded room. Only then did he swear profusely, eyes rolling back in his skull, "Hell!"
"What's up lover boy?" his partner Gus laughed in his deep baritone. The big black man shook his dread locked head as he saw the thug on the floor.
"Damn, I didn't even get her name," Lance cursed, grinning at his friend.
"You're supposed to be working," laughed Gus, steering Lance away by the shoulder. "Just 'cause we're under cover doesn't mean we get to chat up the laydees, Officer Hozack."