Random art, also it'll be nice if yall voted with some power stones
Remy didn't see that surprised look he was hoping to see on Alex's face. Havok gave the most boring reaction he could've thought of. An utterly boring man Remy might call him.
Gambit turned and flashed Ororo a roguish grin. "Popped at the right time, didn't I?"
Ororo's eyes narrowed with skepticism. "Aren't you on the same side as him?"
"Used to be." Gambit swept the bo staff off his shoulders. "Mademoiselle, things change. From now on Sinister and Remy are enemies."
Mother Righteous did the curtsy gesture she always did when greeting strangers. "You must forgive dear Remy his sudden change of heart. A certain man has been haunting his conscience as of late." Her voice was silky and warm, yet filled with mystery at the same time. A voice that couldn't be trusted for even a moment. "Poor thing finds it far easier to betray his master than to face that man's wrath. A very sensible fear, I assure you."
Remy's eye twitched. Skullfire obviously played a part, but the bigger factor was his unwillingness to hurt innocents. Not to mention those were the people keeping New York safe from an abundance of threats.
Ororo's expression eased. "Are you talking about Dante?"
"That is indeed his name." The sorceress smiled in delight. "From the looks of it, you're very close with him."
"We're friends."
Havok, back on his feet, wiped a thread of blood from his lip and regarded Gambit with calm eyes. "You're not afraid of losing control?"
Gambit twirled the staff once and pointed it at Havok. "Nah. See, Remy knows a fella who'll put him down real quick if he loses control. A bit comforting when you think about it."
Havok's gaze shifted to Mother Righteous, Rebecca. "And who are you?"
She spread her arms and bowed low. "Mother Righteous is the name, child. Do commit it to the memory."
Havok slightly tilted his head. "I'm not familiar with you. Did you influence Gambit? Don't you know Essex planted a mental bomb in his brain?"
Rebecca gave a knowing smile. "It's been taken care of. Please don't take offense at my little intervention. Everything I do, I do for the greater good of this fragile world. You'll thank me. They always do in the end. That, you see, is the cycle of karma."
"'Greater good,'" Havok repeated under his breath, looking unconvinced. "Sounds like the ramblings of a madwoman."
"Alex Summers, if I'm insane, then no one in this world is sane."
Havok lifted his hand to start a comm link with Mister Sinister, but Gambit couldn't have that. He sent a quick card, cutting off the comm unit and Havok's ears in the middle. Blood dripped down on the floor. However, Havok showed no emotion; he just continued gazing at Gambit with a creepily calm gaze.
"Whatever Essex did to him fucked him up," Remy whispered. "Fortunely, I snapped out before going to the deep end."
Havok aimed a clenched fist at Gambit, the circuitry along his knuckles lighting up with a glow. "You're still under the limiter. There isn't a fight you can put up against me, Cajun."
"Ohh, this cher is more powerful than you can imagine." Gambit chuckled, oozing an air of confidence. "She's gonna stomp your ass all the way back to whatever lab Essex grew you in."
He glanced to the side and saw the white-robed sorceress drifting away from him. His bravado cracked. "Hey. Hey! Where you going?! Righteous! The fight's over here, woman!"
Mother Righteous didn't so much as glance at him and knelt where the blonde woman, Ghost Spider, lay on the ground. She put her hand on the girl's belly.
"Mm," she murmured. "This is a concerning situation."
Ororo tensed up at Rebecca's assessment. "Didn't her body give out after too much exertion? Is there something else?"
"Oh, child." Mother Righteous shook her head slowly. "Her problem is more complicated. Still, I believe he will be able to fix it."
"Who? Dante?"
"Yes."
Havok had wasted enough listening to their chatter; he released a plasma beam. Gambit yelped and threw himself sideways. The beam scorched the air where his head had been and blasted a hole into the wall behind him. Havok wasn't playing around—he wanted Remy erased.
Gambit reached into his coat in the middle of roll and fanned a spread of cards. They lit up magenta-pink, bursting to the brim with charged kinetic force. He shot them with a flick of his hand, targeting Alex's chest.
Havok detonated a plasma around his own body in response to the charged cards. The two forces clashed midair in a blinding flash, and the cards' momentum was killed instantly, their charges exploding harmlessly before they could touch Havok.
"This is what I was talking about," Havok said flatly, advancing through the smoke. "I'd classify you as a nuisance at best."
"Nuisance?" Gambit backpedaled and snapped another card off the deck. "Remy hasn't ever heard anyone describe him with that word."
Havok fired a quick plasma to the left, using the burst of momentum to reposition to Gambit's flank. With both hands, he fired a thick plasma beam. Gambit fired off three cards and moved to the right. They traded blows across the wrecked lobby.
Gambit was faster and craftier, always a moment away from being cooked alive. Havok was calm and disciplined yet explosive at times, trying to punish Gambit's frantic barrages of cards.
It seemed like an even dance between the two.
But the two mutants had very different limits. Havok's suit stored an immense amount of energy while Remy had to create his own. Which was how Havok's endless burst of plasma energy pushed Gambit into a corner.
Suddenly, the entrance of the building exploded as the Broodlings poured through. They came in chittering, their tentacles clawing over one another in a tide of insect horrors, simply many to count. Essex must have noticed a lack of communication from Havok and sent reinforcements.
Gambit's head whipped around as he desperately looked toward the only ally he could turn the tide. "Rebecca! Little help, please?!"
Mother Righteous and Ororo stayed on the side, conversing like they were at a tea party. At the first sight of the swarm, Righteous had taken Miles's unconscious body to her side and thrown up a mystical barrier around all of them, sealing them off from the chaos like glass around a diorama.
Ororo glanced at him in worry for a moment, but Rebecca pulled her back with a "he'll be fine. He has handled worse".
Gambit realized he was on his own. The sorceress who had promised him to help him had left him to deal with everything. Never trust a demon. His mother had told him that. His uncle had told him that.
'No time to sulk.'
He slapped a hand onto the lobby chair beside him and poured his energy way to the limit, then hurled it into the thick of the swarm. The explosion shook the building as concrete dust rained from the ceiling. Over a dozen Broodlings were vaporized in the blast, shrieking as they were torn apart in a wave of pink fire.
What he killed was just a drop in the ocean.
The gap he had blown open filled instantly, and the Broodlings fearlessly charged at him again.
"Motherf—this isn't gonna work."
Gambit laughed. The giddy laugh of a man who has stopped expecting to survive. He charged a chunk of shattered pillar and lobbed it at the Broodlings. Boom. Another chair ceiling tile. Boom. The last bits of cards in his deck. Boom, boom, boom. He threw everything around him as he backpedaled, painting the room with explosions. Broodlings kept swarming, coming closer inch by inch until he was backed into a corner.
Gambit spun his bo staff up and planted his feet with a defensive stance. If he was going out, he was going out with style.
"Alright." He charged his staff and smashed into the Broodlings reaching for him. The explosion sent it flying into the barrier around Mother Righteous. "You want the King of Hearts? Come on then. Remy always liked to save his best trick for the end of the show."
He kicked off the wall and performed a spinning dash through the swarm. The twirling staff crashed into Broodlings, sending them away with crispy explosions. He held his own for a while with the same maneuver, but there was a limit to his stamina and kinetic charge.
When both ran out, he found himself in the grip of a Broodling. Its terrifying teeth descended on him inch by inch, ready to tear his flesh apart.
From the corner of his eyes, Remy saw Rebecca finally move her hand.
'She was testing me?'
Before Rebecca made an attempt, a deep voice echoed through the lobby.
"Who gave you permission to destroy my property?"
For the first time in his life, Remy felt happy to hear a man's voice.
A portal opened in the air from which Skullfire drifted out. In one breath, the great swath of the Broodling horde scattered into ash—they were erased from existence.
The whole lobby fell silent.
***
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