Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip. Blaze owns me

Scene 11

"Et voila," Gambit announced. "One volt."

"Will you do the honours?" Blaze giggled, batting her eyelashes at her tall friend.

"Lets see," mused the Cajun, taking a long time to examine the keypad locking mechanism by the side of the vault's reinforced metal door. "Dis should do it." Gambit brought his fist down ion top of the box, hard. There was a hiss, the door shuddered, and then it started to open. Like a blast door from Star Wars, the door opened from the centre outwards, sliding into the walls. Gambit looked at Blaze and grinned.

"Smooth," Blaze admitted grudgingly. "Too smooth."

"Ain't no such t'ing as too smooth," argued the Cajun. The X-Men stepped through the vault doorway and Gambit closed the door from the other side. They walked down a long aisle, suspended over a pool of crystal clear and absolutely still water, to a pedestal in the centre of the room. It was so cold n the brightly lit room that their breath frosted the air in front of them. On the pedestal sat two gems of Ciccorak, like massive glowing ruby shards.

"Do you think that they are radioactive?" asked Blaze.

"Don't know," shrugged Remy. "But if Shrew is even half right, takin' these gonna slow their whole operation right down."

"Sounds like a plan to me," replied Blaze, stretching out a hand towards the rocks.

"Wait!" demanded Gambit, "What's that noise?"

"What noise?" asked Blaze, as she felt the hairs on the back of her neck start to tingle. Something was wrong here. Gambit didn't answer, mostly because at that moment there was a peal of Aussie laughter right outside the door. "Pyro and Sabretooth," hissed Blaze, looking back over her shoulder at the closed door.

"Shush," Gambit urged her. "They might not come in here." Then again they just might, the Cajun thought, but he didn't say anything aloud. Outside in the corridor, Pyro and Sabretooth had just been walking past, until something caught Sabretooth's attention, a twinkling in the corner of his eye. He pulled his lips back over his teeth in a snarl, turning to look at the lock on the vault door.

The little lock-box, abused by Remy, was now spitting sparks and hissing. Sabretooth listened intently, suspicious of what might be n the other side of the door. Pyro had halted in his tracks as soon as he noticed Sabretooth had ground to a stop. The second Acolyte raised an eyebrow in a quizzical expression. Sabretooth reached out a hand, and ripped the locking mechanism out of the wall. With a hiss, the door opened.

The first thing that Pyro did when he saw the two figures stood by the pedestal was laugh manically. He hooted, cackled and had to put his hands on his knees to brace himself to breathe he was laughing so hard. Sabretooth just growled, having a void where his sense of humour should have been. Visibly affronted, 'Vertigo' stormed down the aisle and pushed her way through the pair of them, mumbling something about no privacy anywhere.

'Ruckus' scowled aggressively at the retreating girl's back, and then at Sabretooth and Pyro. Gambit-as-Ruckus then followed Blaze from the vault, pushing past the Acolytes briskly. Pyro and Sabretooth were both spun round on the spot by the force the Cajun put into his shove. Sabretooth gave Remy a push in the back in retaliation, as the vault door hissed closed again behind them all.

That night, Shrew collected the pair of undercover X-Men from Vertigo and Ruckus' private rooms, and brought them back to the main chamber of Sinister's base where they had arrived. Blink was once again perched on a stool to the side of a glowing portal, whilst Sinister stood at the back of the room with one of the Splices. At a nudge from Shrew, the X-Men collected DNA treatment equipment from the cloner, and then turned to face the portal. They stepped through it together, and an elongated head-rush later they were back at Warren's house.

In no time at all, the real Vertigo and Ruckus had their minds' wiped by the Professor, and were bundled back through the portal. The Professor had furnished them with some vague alibi that Blaze had no been where she should have been. Half an hour later, Wolverine brought Blaze and Gambit and all Beast's equipment back to the Institute. Something's happened, Logan thought, something big. There was no banter or flirting between the two thieves, indeed they barely spoke at all. Whatever had changed in the space of a day, Logan couldn't put his finger on it. He hoped that the debriefing would clear up whatever was wrong, mostly because he didn't like to have competition in being the Institute's grouchiest inhabitant.

By the time they returned to the mansion, the Professor had gotten Storm, Beast and Angel out of bed. Rogue and Tabby had been awake anyway and refused to be left out. Wolverine, Gambit and Blaze were the last ones to arrive. Blaze persevered with a stony silence, letting Gambit explain everything that had happened during the mission. The tension between them was thrumming and uncomfortable. Gambit explained about their arrival through the portal and their subsequent explorations. He elaborated about Shrew and Splice and all they had learned about the alliance between Magneto and Sinister. When he got to the part about being discovered in the vault, he hesitated. Blaze didn't need an invitation.

"You messed up Gambit, face it. If you'd handled the vault's lock with just a little more finesse, we never would have been discovered. We wouldn't have had to lay low for the rest of the day in case we aroused suspicion," the pyrokenetic criticised hotly.

"Like you could have done any better, Cherie," Gambit spat back, red-on-black eyes flashing dangerously.

"Of course I could," Blaze half-laughed, but it was a heartless sound. "I earned my stripes as a thief, by myself. I didn't just follow Daddy into the family business like some people."

Outraged, Remy reached inside his trench coat. The gathered X-Men recoiled instinctively, thinking he was about to attack Blaze. Instead he pulled out a glowing ruby shard; one of the gems of Ciccorak. "If I such an amateur," Gambit retorted, slamming the gem down on the table top in front of the Professor. "How come I swiped this wit'out no one noticing?"

"Anything you can do," Blaze returned, pulling a shard out of the back pocket of her skinny jeans and twirling it in her fingers. She placed it next to the other gem in defiance. "I can do better," she finished, glaring at Gambit across the room.

"Ah-hem," the Professor cleared his throat to diffuse the situation. "Beast, how did your experiments and transponders react to the portal?"

"The tracking devices shorted out as soon as they went through the portal," Beast admitted. "The readings from the equipment probing the portal from this side may prove more conclusive, but I will need time to study them. One thing I am sure of though, you were not transported anywhere inside the United States."

"Very well," the Professor decided. "Blaze, Gambit, all in all I think that this has been an excellent days work for you both. Angel, it seems that now Sinister has what he was trying to take from you, it is safe for you to return home. Indeed with the gems of Ciccorak in our possession, we may have even halted their project altogether."