Chapter Sixty-One:


"Mebbe wit' a li'l luck, we can get t' de highway b'fo' dey catch up t' us," Remy yelled over the roaring of the motorcycle engines.

Looking over her shoulder, Rogue shook her head. "Ain't gonna happen, swamp rat," she warned, as the Sentinels started to gain on them.

"How far back are de toy soldiers?" her husband asked her, his voice tense as he cut a sharp corner, Lucas mimicking the maneuver perfectly beside them on the other bike.

Rogue lifted a gloved hand to push up the visor of her black helmet so she could see better, and she spotted the three camouflaged jeeps as they screeched down the road behind them. "Not far," she replied grimly. "We're gonna hafta make a stand, Remy. If we keep runnin', they're likely t' just blast the bikes out from under us. While that ain't likely t' hurt me much, it'll get the rest o' ya'll killed."

Make for the bridge, Tessa's voice advised, suddenly filling her head. We need to draw them away from the city, to minimize damage to our surroundings.

Glancing over at the other bike, Rogue meet the telepath's gaze and nodded, then leaned in closer to Remy, relaying the instructions. Before she'd even finished, he veered off on one of the side roads, heading for the bridge that loomed in the distance.

But the Sentinels were quickly catching up, and the military jeeps were gunning their engines to keep up as they raced towards the bridge. It was going to be close, Rogue knew, maybe too close.

Tess, she thought to her dark-haired friend. As soon as we get on the bridge, can ya hit 'em wit' an illusion? Make it look like part o' the bridge fell away or somethin'?

I shall see what I can work up, Tessa replied calmly.

Rogue held her breath as first Lucas, then Remy, flew onto the ramp leading to the bridge. She turned her head to watch as Tessa set to work, and, sure enough, a moment later it looked as if the ramp had vanished.

The jeeps skidded to a halt, and she could faintly make out the startled curses coming from the soldiers driving them. The illusion might hold them off for a while, but sooner of later she knew that at least some of them would get brave enough to test it, and once they realized the ground was, in fact, still there, they would resume their pursuit.

But for now Tessa had just bought them a little bit of time.

And that meant they needed to deal with the Sentinels now, while the soldiers couldn't shoot them in the back.

"Be right back, swamp rat," she said in Remy's ear, and then disentangled her arms from his was as she lifted off from the back of his bike. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him spare a glance at his side mirror to see what she was up to, but to his credit he didn't slam on the breaks.

Tell the boys t' load up some energy, she called to Tessa, tugging off her helmet and hooking it on the side of the bridge. Ah reckon Ah can take one out by mah lonesome, an' if they hit the ot'er wit' their combined powers, it should do the trick.

There was no verbal reply, but a moment later Rogue heard the sounds of the bikes coming to a halt below.

"Alpha mutant," the lead Sentinel announced, and a shiver went down her spine at the cold, mechanical voice that she remembered from so long ago. "Surrender now, to avoid painful apprehension procedures."

Raising an eyebrow, Rogue clenched both hands into fists as her sides. "Well, since ya'll asked so nicely..." she drawled, and then lowered her head, diving through the sky like a missile. Her lithe little body slammed into the Sentinel's shoulder, driving him into the ground with enough force to cause the pavement to groan, dust raining down on the Mississippi below.

The sounds of explosions echoed behind her, and she didn't need to turn to know that Remy and Lucas had engaged the other Sentinel.

Grinning, she kept on the Sentinel she'd knocked over, swooping down to pummel his metal body with her fists, punching holes in his metal skeleton. The Sentinel began to lift is guns, but Rogue was having none of it, and wrenched off his plasma cannon violently.

Which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake, since it put her back to the Sentinel's other arm, which connected sharply with the back of her head, sending her tumbling across the pavement. She rolled to her feet, brushing off her clothes. She'd had the sense of mind to exchange her pajamas for a pair of black jeans and a hunter green top before leaving the LeBeau estate, and she was not pleased to see that her clothes were getting scuffed up.

"Stupid robot," she muttered under her breath.

A familiar beeping sound caught her attention and she looked up to see the Sentinel had gotten to his feet again, and was coming towards her, with a very unpleasant gun aimed in her direction.

Aww hell, Rogue thought with a scowl. There ain't no way Ah'm gonna get stuck in that green stone this time!

"Remy!" she shouted down to her husband. "Blast the gun!"

She didn't need to specify which gun she meant, Remy, she knew, remembered that gun from their last skirmish with the Sentinels, back on Magneto's island.

"Comin' right up, p'tite," Remy called, and he hurled a trio of glowing cards through the air to smack into the Sentinel's gun arm. Seconds later, it exploded into a shower of flame and shrapnel. She grinned to herself as he immediately whirled to target the gun on the other Sentinel, destroying that one, too.

Satisfied that the boys were doing okay on their own, Rogue turned her attention back to the lead Sentinel, which was quickly recovering from having one arm blown off. To be honest, she could have gotten ride of both Sentinels easily enough, all she had to do was tap into Kitty's powers and phase through their hard-drives, but that would have left her completely exhausted. And if she lost consciousness, which she usually did after using one of her reserve powers, it would make it harder for the others to escape

Besides, she was plenty riled up over all the anti-mutant business lately, and a fight was likely to help her vent some of that anger she'd been keeping pent up inside of her.

It's like Logan always said, she thought with a faint grin. Ya gotta have some way o' workin' out yo' aggressions.

There was a small flicker of phantom anguish at the thought of her mentor, but it was no longer crippling the way it had been a few years ago. She would probably never know for sure what happened to Logan, but in her heart she knew that he would have preferred death over living as one of Trask's lab-rats.

And the way she saw it, every Sentinel she destroyed was another blow to Trask, another victory in the X-men's memory.

Plasma fire streaked past her on either side, and Rogue gave a silent thanks to Carol Danvers for the powers she inherited from the other woman. In the part of her mind that was still connected to the comatose mutant, she felt a stirring, a kind of mental inquiry from Carol.

Ducking under the Sentinel's arm as it swung towards her, she sent back a brief, wordless reassurance, conveying that she couldn't afford to be distracted at the moment. Over the years, she and Carol had formed quite a powerful rapport, and as it was they no longer needed words to get things across to one another. They could communicate with bursts of thoughts, feelings, images, and she knew that when Carol withdrew back into herself, that the other girl understood what was going on.

The lead Sentinel reached for her, but Rogue swatted his arm aside with a severe backhand, then plowed her other fist into the robot's shoulder, causing it to spin around unsteadily. Not waiting for it to recover its balance, she drove her fist into its knee, bringing its legs out from under it with an earth-quaking crash.

Before she could move in further, a glowing card shot past to hit the fallen Sentinel with a powerful blast. When the smoke cleared, the robot was struggling to try and get back on its feet, with little success. "Dat was what Remy call a nice explosion, hahn?"

Shaking her head at the grin on her husband's face, she was about to reply when she felt Tessa's touch on her mind. The soldiers are coming, Tessa's terse warning captured her attention.

Rogue looked back towards the other end of the bridge, and sure enough the jeeps were on the move again. Apparently the soldiers had figured out that what they were seeing wasn't real, and now they were more determined than ever.

"Ah'll handle these boys," Rogue yelled down to her friends, flying towards the second Sentinel the others had been fighting. "Ya'll take care o' them soldiers, will ya?"

"Whatever y' say, chere," she heard Remy call as he and Lucas trotted off in the other direction, leaving her to deal with the Sentinel as it started to turn to face her. It was looking more than a little battered, with wires hanging exposed and pieces of its frame blown off. Remy and Lucas had done a good job wearing it down, it wouldn't take her long to finish it.

"Hiya, big fella," she smirked, slamming her fist into the Sentinel's head and snapping it around with a screech of protesting metal. "Ya know, Trask, ya jus' don' make 'em like ya used t'. This is almost too easy fo' me."

The Sentinel faltered backwards, and Rogue pressed forward, ripping his remaining arm off and using it like a baseball bat to sever the head from the body. The headless Sentinel staggered for a moment, but she had no intention of waiting to see what would happen, and drove the jagged end of the mechanical arm straight through the robot's chest, short-circuiting the hard-drive.

"Huh," she mused to herself as the robot crashed to the ground like a rag doll. "Who knew that those games o' mutantball back at the Institute would actually pay off one day."

Below, she heard tires skidding across the pavement, as small explosions peppered the ground around the jeeps. Remy and Lucas were keeping their power levels low, she knew, so as not to cause any fatalities. Neither man had a clean past, but there was no sense in repeating past mistakes, despite the fact that the soldiers would just as soon kill them if they got the chance.

And, sure enough, gunshots began to sound a moment later. It was all Rogue could do not to look, not to be sure that Remy and the others were unhurt, but she had to trust in them and their abilities.

Besides, she had others things to worry about at the moment.

"Come on, big boy, it's yo' turn now," she called, turning back to find the lead Sentinel was struggling to its feet. "Oh, this is gonna be fun," she said with a wicked smirk, diving towards the robot with her right fist extended.

She slammed her fist into the Sentinel's chestplate, ducking her head as she drove her way deeper into the heart of the robot, ignoring the shriek of twisting metal and the scream of short-circuiting wires around her until she smashed her way out on the other side.

Turning around to admire her handiwork, Rogue nodded in grim satisfaction as the dying Sentinel looked at her with something akin to surprise on its face. Can a robot feel surprise? she wondered, then shrugged, deciding it didn't really matter one way or the other.

The glowing red eyes in front of her dimmed, fading to a lifeless black, and then the Sentinel fell back over the side of the bridge, crashing into the Mississippi and sending a splash of water up into the air before the river swallowed up the robot's skeleton.

"Ya know," Rogue muttered to herself. "Sometimes it amazes me how crazy mah life is, that Ah don' find battlin' giant mutant-hunting robots bent on exterminatin' the entire mutant race at all strange."

Then again, her life had never really been what one would call 'normal', had it? She was a mutant, with a power so outrageously dangerous that she'd had to keep her skin covered at all times for most of her adolescent years until Magneto had developed the power negating bracelet for her. She'd lived at the Institute, a school for mutants run by a rich and powerful telepath, where her family had consisted of a ragtag team of kids with powers as diverse as their personalities. She'd been fighting battles and doing daily battle simulations since she was fifteen. And then it had all been taken away, and she'd built a new life in New Orleans with Remy, as a member of the Thieves Guild.

No, her life was definitely a far cry from 'normal'.

Swooping down to give the others a hand, she found that they didn't need much help. Most of the soldiers were unconscious on the ground, and the two that weren't seemed to be under Tessa's influence, as they picked up their comrades and piled them in the jeeps. As Rogue touched down on the pavement, the telepath gave her a small nod of acknowledgment, never taking her eyes off of the soldiers in front of her.

Remy and Lucas stood off to the side, watching with impressed expressions. Rogue moved over to join them, and Remy took one arm off his bo-staff, which he was leaning on, to drape his arm over her shoulders. "Y' okay, p'tite?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied curtly. "Looks like ya boys did a real good job wit' them soldiers."

"Oui," Remy nodded. "Some o' dem not gon' be wakin' up fo' some time, dat's fo' sure."

"What's Tess doin' t' 'em?" Rogue asked curiously.

"As soon as you disposed of the remaining Sentinel," Lucas answered gruffly. "She threw up another illusion, this time of you swooping down to carry the three of us off. They don't have any idea that we're still here."

For a moment Rogue wondered why Tessa hadn't just done that to begin with and saved them the trouble of a fight, but then she realized that it would have been suspicious if the Sentinels started to get torn apart by thin-air. "Good thinkin'," she said with a yawn. "What time is it, swamp rat?"

"Nearly half after quatre," Remy replied. "We need t' get goin'. It won' take long fo' dem t' call fo' back up. By sunup, de city will be crawlin' wit' Trask's men. Lucas, come wit' me t' get de bikes. Marie, chere, stay here in case Tessa needs y' fo' anyt'ing."

"Right," Rogue said, turning to watch her friend as the last of the soldiers was loaded into the jeeps. A few minutes later, the engines started, and the jeeps began to drive off in the direction they'd come from. Another minute after that, Tessa let out a relieved sigh and walked towards Rogue, who flashed her a smile. "Nice work, Tess."

"Thank you," Tessa said evenly. "I was impressed with your performance, as well."

"Please," Rogue said with a laugh. "Ya'll get t' do the sneaky stuff, Ah'm jus' here fo' the brute strength."

"Strength that we would not prevail without," Tessa replied with a small smile as Remy and Lucas walked the bikes over to them.

"Goin' my way, belle?" Remy asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively as he swung his leg over the side of his bike.

"Ya wish, swamp rat," Rogue said with a smirk, but she climbed onto the back of his bike anyway, wrapping her arms around his waist and luxuriating in his familiar spicy scent.

"Where t', chere?" Remy asked, looking back at her.

"Charleston," Rogue answered after a moment of thought. "Ah reckon we might find a safe place t' lay low fo' a few days at that mutant safehouse we heard 'bout, an' Ah wanna make sure that Matt got up there okay."

"Dat sound good t' de rest o' y'?" Remy looked over at Tessa and Lucas.

"It is adequate enough," Tessa agreed, and Lucas nodded his approval.

"Dat's settled den," Remy nodded, tugging his helmet back onto his head and handing Rogue hers. "Looks like we goin' t' South Carolina, mes amis. Tessa, what route do we take t' make de best time?"

The telepath moved her hands out in front of her, and a pale green hologram flickered to life at her fingertips, an illusion created by her powers. "We should travel the highway through Mississippi until we reach I-59," she explained, highlighting the path on the map she'd created. "From there we will take 1-459 to Atlanta, and then 1-26 towards Columbia. From there we just continue southeast until we reach Charleston."

"Y' get t' play navigator den," Remy told her. "Jus' make sure dat we don' miss any o' dose exits."

"Of course," Tessa nodded, extinguishing her illusion and settling down on the back of Lucas' bike. "It would probably be best if Lucas drives in front, since you have a poor sense of direction, Remy."

Rogue stifled a giggle at the exasperated look on her husband's face. "Jus' because dat one time-"

"Jus' let 'em lead the way, Remy," she cut him off. "It'll be nice not t' hafta worry 'bout directions an' all. Ah reckon Ah could even point out some landmarks t' ya while we cross through Mississippi."

"M' gonna hold y' t' dat, chere," Remy replied as he started the motorcycle. "Lead on, mon ami," he called over to Lucas, who nodded under his helmet, then started off across the bridge. "Hol' on back dere, p'tite."

Tightening her hold on his waist, Rogue snuggled closer to her husband, smiling to herself.

That was an order she had absolutely no problem taking.


Translations:

quatre- four
mes amis- my friends
hahn?- huh?

A/N: Sorry this chapter is a little short, guys, I've been swamped with school this week, so I haven't had much time to write. I'll try to make the next one longer :)