Author's Note: I know, it's not traditional, but I gave Pyro mad-hacking skills because someone on the team should have them seeing as this is probably late 90ish? and most computer geeks I know are pyromaniacs themselves so it seemed to fit.
Jesse Spencer as Saint-John Allderdyce (Pyro)
Tom Felton as Pietro Maximoff (QuickSilver)
Wentworth Miller as Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis (Avalanche)
Chapter Three
St. Petersburg – Three Weeks Later
This time of night, the twenty-four hour news was about the only show on worth watching when he got off the late shift. "And London Metropolitan Police are set to answer questions today how the body of the John Doe involved in a possible terrorist attack on London's Regent Park simply vanished shortly after arriving at secure facilities."
Vladislav scoffed, "Stupid English."
The lady behind the counter handed over his cold sandwich which would do for a late night snack. He thanked the woman and then set towards home. The night was cold, a northerly wind breezing down the thoroughfare. At least it was a straight shot to his apartment, then he'd be nice and warm.
A soft sounding voice rang off a few expletives just in front of him and he saw a woman on her knees next to a small car trying to gather the contents of her purse. She was lithe, not too skinny, from what he could tell of her jeans which fit her nicely formed rear end. A fur half-coat covered her top so he couldn't be sure of the rest of her. But what kind of woman would be out at that time of night on a weekday?
He had been warned about situations like this.
Still, her lipstick was stuck in a crevice behind her, she couldn't see it. Glancing around they were alone and there was no way he could be ambushed, it was the worst place for one. He'd see any approach for at least a kilometer.
Perhaps if he got to know this lady just a little, it wouldn't be so bad.
"Fräulein," he said as he picked up the lost item, she straightened and turned towards him.
"Da," she took his offered hand and he helped her to her feet, she frowned a little at his gloves, perhaps they were too rough on what looked like delicate skin. He then showed her the cosmetic and she smiled, "Oh, thank you, thought it got away," her accent was off, not a native of St. Petersburg, that was obvious.
Chuckling softly, he placed in her hand. "I rescued it for you."
She smiled and he realized she was very pretty, sharp features that accented high cheekbones and a dazzling smile. It was hard to tell in the light from the street lamps, but she had dark red hair, long and wavy with a white streak. Perhaps a punk rocker of some type.
"My hero," she laughed, slipping the lipstick into her bag. "Think you could help me with one more little thing before you disappear into the night?"
He glanced around again, still no one around, so, "Da."
"Excellent," she reached up to touch his face in a completely non-threatening manner, "don't think about your passwords."
That's the last thing he would remember until the next morning.
Never fails.
Rogue touched the guard's face and instantly absorbed his memories but she didn't want to have to wade through them. Surface thoughts always came more easily when her mutant ability kicked in and she started to drain the essence of whoever she touched.
She also didn't want to hold contact too long, the Russian wasn't a mutant and didn't have the buffer of powers to keep from sending the man into a coma. Pulling her hand away the guard began to slump backwards. In a flash another man in a silver racing-style jacket with hair to match appeared standing behind Vladislav.
"Easy, big fella," Pietro kept the man from falling and leaned him up against the car. "You get it, Rogue?"
Blinking a few times, Rogue sorted through the stolen memories, the worst part of her power, seeing and feeling things that she knew wasn't real to her… but they felt like they should be. Taking what she needed and planting it firm she pushed everything to the back of her mind where it couldn't bother her.
"Yah, they always think of their passwords when ya tell them not ta," she took a couple of deep breaths as she snatched her gloves from her pocket and slid them on. "Let's get him into the car."
She wasn't going to leave the poor man out in the cold all night, not after what she had done to him. Earlier she put a pillow and blanket in the stolen vehicle for this part of the job. Vladislav would look like someone catching a snooze, or the car thief. Either way, he'd be warm and out of their hair.
"How long you think he'll be out?" Pietro asked as Rogue tucked the blanket around the man.
"I dunno," she answered honestly, the effect, while generally the same for human versus mutant did vary marginally from person to person. "Long enough, I suppose." Tossing the bag and the impractical fur coat into the passenger's seat, Rogue grabbed the tight brown leather jacket she preferred from where she stashed it in the floorboard.
"Well, that'll have to do," the quick footed mutant locked the doors, threw the keys on the seat, and shut the door. "Your chariot awaits, madam."
Rogue sighed, zipping up her jacket, "That's really getting old."
"We're on a deadline," the silver haired man held out his arms with a grin and Rogue let herself be swept up heroine style into Pietro's arms. She hated it but the mutant could run faster than she could fly and the clock was indeed ticking. The mutants ability to run fast, a fact that earned him the nickname QuickSilver, got them across St. Petersburg in seconds and he stopped on a dime, or a ruble, whichever, not far from Catherine's Palace just outside a maintenance access point for a building across the street.
Slipping inside, a hole was cut into the ground, rope ladder hanging off the side. Pietro ran down and Rogue jumped, hovering and lowering herself the considerable distance. Her comrade swept her up again and they covered the quarter mile slope in mere seconds to meet up with the other two men who once made up the now defunct Brotherhood of Mutants.
"You get it?" Pyro asked, his Australian accent a bit worn from his time spent in the company of so many international people, just as Rogue's Southern Belle was turning into more of a Southern Handbell.
"All his passwords and login codes for today," she affirmed, "but he's only a level four tier."
"That's all I need," he grinned. Pyro was an easier name to roll off the tongue than Saint-John… and beside the man was hardly a saint, none of them were. "Dom's already made us a way in."
Pietro leaned up against the newly made wall, "Didn't set off the seismic alert systems this time, did you?"
"That was years ago," Dominikos grumbled, the man's gift laid in the ability to generate and control seismic waves hence his nickname of Avalanche.
"I still have the scar," the quick mutant muttered.
"Pietro," Rogue really didn't want to get into this, "let it go, deadline remember."
Dom laughed, then touched the rock face and the group watched as the stone and then the concrete block wall behind it practically disintegrated in front of them. "Seismic alert systems only track what don't belong, not the natural shifting of the Earth."
"Nice," Pyro nodded appreciatively, grabbing his duffle bag and ducking into the room.
"Nothing natural about that," Pietro almost pouted as he followed.
The small alcove was a security hub for the underground complex, placed against a barrier of solid rock. The designers probably figured by the time someone managed to tunnel that far they would be noticed… of course they probably didn't have mutants in mind at the time of construction which began centuries ago. However, Catherine's Vault had some of the most modern upgrades.
"Right," Pyro found an access computer and plugged his laptop into it. "Top notch security we have here."
"Can you crack it?" Pietro asked.
"With the codes Rogue took from the guard," Pyro played for a second then smiled, "easy."
The quick footed mutant nodded, snatching up a radio ear piece before heading to the door, "I'll get to position alpha."
"Watch out for wet floor signs," Dom grinned.
Pietro gave the man a dirty look then disappeared out of the door in the blink of an eye. The seismic mutant laughed and the other too had to smile as well. The group had been together for a long time in one way or another, from way back when her mother brought them together to learn how to control their powers. They were a Brotherhood, friends, even a family of a sort, and they got things done when they managed to 'put the band back together'.
"Alright, Rogue," Pyro tapped at the keys, "what's the tier four password?"
She rattled off four words in heavily accented Russian.
"Yeah," he stared at her, "you're going to have to spell that for me."
"It's in Cyrillic," she added.
He considered that for a moment then stepped aside, his hands doing their best Vana White impression towards the laptop.
Rogue tried not to laugh and moved to the access computer's keyboard, complete with Cyrillic characters. Taking a second she took a long deep breath and focused on the memories she had stolen and categorized moments ago. Had she been able to see her reflection clearly then she would have noticed that after she shut and open her eyes, their green color had turned the deep brown of Vladislav.
Fingers tapped away and followed the command codes that were so familiar… familiar to Vladislav, not Rogue, but they felt right as she pressed down on each key. It was a phantom emotion which took over her fingers and fell into an old routine.
There was a ping and Pyro moved back to his laptop to do more of his computer magic while Rogue followed the command prompts for passwords when they came. It was only seconds later when Pyro let out a little whoop, "And we are in, sorta, close enough."
Rogue shook her head, pushing away Vladislav's memories, cramming them into the back of the bus where everything else belonged. There was a little sharp pain in her temple, a not totally unusual occurrence and went unnoticed by her comrades. Her eyes resumed their normal color.
"Guards just finished their walk through and I put the alarm on a test run, we can set off all the laser grids we want and no one will notice," Pyro left the computer and went back to his duffle.
"And the cameras?" Dom asked, passing out radio ear pieces.
"Looped the last ten seconds," the pyromaniac pulled his compact flame thrower from the bag. Most designs had a cylinder full of a sticky, napalm like, substance used to control and direct the stream of the flame. Pyro didn't need to worry about such things and sacrificed the extra weight. It as a glorified jumbo pocket lighter, really.
"Yah think you'll need that, Pryo?" Rogue wasn't even sure why she bothered asking.
"You know me, Rogue," he slipped it on and clipped the clasps shut, "might come in handy."
"Yeah," she frowned, wrapping the ear piece around her ear.
…
The security system was compromised.
Distraction was in place.
One could just sneak in and out like a shadow on the wall.
That was kinda the idea.
…
"Okay," Pyro's voice came over the radio but Rogue could hear him clearly as he walked next to her, "remember, I only disabled the connection between the lasers and the alarm system. Some of the pressure sensitive cases are closed circuit. You trip them, the room shuts down."
"So don't bump into anything," Pietro replied via the radio, "got it."
"We have fifteen minutes until the guard's next rounds on this level," Pyro continued his on-the-go brief.
"Seems like a long time," Dom commented, "if the stuff in this Vault is as important as we're to be believed, security would be tighter."
"They don't expect anyone to make it down this far," Pyro admitted, "the guards are concentrated on the upper levels, the energy grids keeping the likes of Pietro out are there, you'd have to insane to try come in here top down."
"Don't expect someone to come from the side," Dom laughed, "not through a quarter mile of solid bedrock."
"Not in only a couple of hours," Pyro gestured to take another corridor and Rogue followed his cue even though the layout was still stuck in her head.
The ceilings were just a little shorter than average, the compound having been dug out centuries ago and later converted to hold much more merchandise. Some rooms had walls lined with moving document shelves like found in lawyer and doctor's offices. Others had precious items, books, and jewels in clear cases. It was a regular high security museum.
"You know," Pyro talked quietly as they went through several more shining metal passages, "back in World War II, the Nazi's took St. Petersburg, well, Leningrad as it was called then, just to get to this vault."
"I know, they ransacked the place," Rogue nodded, she had heard the story many times before, "carted away a whole room of Amber and promptly lost it."
"True, but they made up for what they lost," the two stepped into one final room tucked off to the side, not much bigger than the average public restroom, "with what they found," several metal crates emblazoned with Nazi symbols were stacked against the far wall, each coded with several digits and numbers, "and they stored it here."
"Where it was forgotten," Rogue continued the story, "passing into the hands of the original Vault Keepers who took back control once Germany surrendered."
"They sold or returned most of the Nazi's stolen art and artifacts," Pyro slipped a piece of paper from his pocket, double checking the numbers, "but the Keepers didn't know what to do with the rest, so they left it."
The Australian pointed to a metal locker in the middle of in the stack. Rogue grabbed the two on top and while they were heavy, thick metal, made back when these things were meant to last, she had no problems lifting the containers and moving them to the side. There was nothing but a standard heavy lock on the aforementioned case and instead of picking it, Rogue grabbed it and wrenched it off.
"Handy those powers never faded away," Pyro commented as he lugged open the lid, taking the mutant more effort to do so than it had for her to break the lock.
"Let's just hope Pietro and Dom are having an easy a time of it as we are," Rogue wanted to scowl at the man but he was right, the powers she had absorbed from Danvers had come in way too handy over the years. Her mother always theorized that a longer contact would lead to a permanent absorption of the mutant abilities, but Rogue never wanted to find out because she feared what it meant for the person she drained.
And she was right to fear.
"We'd hear about it by now if they weren't," the bright red headed mutant started to pick through the old paper files that were stacked neatly in the case, worn and yellow from age but relatively protected from the elements and therefore in fare condition.
"These files," Rogue glanced over them, catching a few words in German here and there, "completely forgotten to time, I wonder how Magneto found out they were here."
"Probably the same way he figures everything else out. Here we go." Pyro pulled out two files and slid them into a heavy plastic bag which he slipped inside his own heavy denim coat. "Shall we."
"Yeah," the Southern native dropped the lid then proceeded to stack the lockers back one onto another. The lock was broken but she tucked it back on and unless someone was paying attention, which by the layer of dusk in the room no one did, then their theft would go relatively unnoticed. Well, until they found the big gapping tunnel outside.
"Beta team cleared," Pyro called over the radio, both of the mutants heading out the door.
"Alpha team cleared," Pietro came back, "on our way back to the tunnel."
"Meet you there," the Aussie clicked the radio off and they rounded another corner, going through a larger room, one where several jewels stood on podiums.
There was a whistle of wind and a flash of movement that wasn't their friend and the mutants stopped in their tracks.
"What tha…?" Rogue barely got the words out of her mouth as she looked down at the podium between her and Pyro, an Ace of Clubs stuck in the base of the glass. Had either of them taken the time to really look at the card, they would have noticed a trace of purplish energy traveling down the edges of the large black club as if it was a fuse of some sort.
Instead, both mutants immediately looked to the source and saw a shadow detach from the wall… tall, dark and annoying. He tipped his hat, perfectly timed with the card exploding in only a small puff of kinetic energy but enough to trip the censors.
"Cajun!" Rogue ground out through clenched teeth as alarms began to blare and she shot off into flight mode down the length of the room.
The thief didn't move, just continued to grin at her as she raced to beat the dropping containment wall. Rogue managed to catch the edge before it drove through the ground because once it did she would have no hand holds to work with. This time she strained, leveraging against the floor to push the metal against the heavy pistons driving it down. She just had to hold out long… enough…
With a hiss and whine from the hydraulics she won the battle, pushing the wall up enough let Pyro and herself slip through.
"Where'd he go?" Pyro asked, checking every exit.
"Why's that snake thief here is a better question," she grumbled. The few times she'd ever met presumably the world's greatest thief he was causing the Brotherhood trouble in one way or another.
"Hey, guys," Pietro came over the radio, "what just happened?"
"Gambit happened," Pyro answered, his annoyance as deep as hers.
"That's not good," Pietro sometimes couldn't help but state the obvious.
Suddenly the lights dimmed into red emergency mode and more sirens set out through the complex.