FicWad

1 – Brooding

Gambit was brooding on the roof of Xavier’s School for Gifted Children. When he first got back from Antarctica, the other members of the X-Men had avoided him as often as he tried to avoid them. Now that he had healed up enough to start going on missions, X-Men approved or independent, he’d found that they were almost forcibly cheery around him as if to try and prove to themselves that the past was just that, the past.

It was sometimes difficult to say who had more guilt and righteous anger; the X-Men were in a rage over the Morlocks while he was swamped with guilt about the massacre. On the other hand, he was furious over being left to die in the frozen wasteland of the south, while they felt terribly guilty over it. The whole mess was made even more poignant when it was pointed out by those who weren’t there for the trial that Gambit had never been given the chance to tell his side of the story, nor did they have all the facts. As it stood, easily half the X-Men still thought that he was guilty enough to deserve death or banishment despite being forced to make nice by the others.

Being totally honest with himself, Gambit had to admit that the mansion the X-Men made their base of operations no longer felt like a home to him. And it had before, as surprising as that had been to the lonely young thief banished from his home town. What had started out as a quest to help a sweet young thief return to her family had turned into finding a new place to call home for himself.

Antarctica ruined that. He no longer felt that sense of close kinship. The mansion was now simply a place to sleep and the X-Men were just some people he knew and worked with on occasion. That was saddening.

To make a tense situation worse, Rogue was blowing hot and cold. One moment she seemed as if she wanted to pick up their relationship where it had left off and the next she was guilt ridden and pushed him away. Added to that was his own confusion and guilt over Jake Gavin Jr getting turned into a woman by Sinister. Jake had been there to help him and he hadn’t protected Jake from Sinister even though he knew how dangerous the madman could be. Now Jake was stuck in a female body and going by the name Jackie. How do you apologize for that? So sorry your dick fell off, have this nice set of tits as a consolation prize…non, not good enough.

Part of him wanted to encourage Rouge to take him back and try to regain the closeness he once shared with the X-Men. Part of him wanted to go find Jake and promise to take care of him…her, whatever, now that his world had been turned upside down on Gambit’s behalf. One tiny part of him wanted to strike out on his own. He knew that he was at a crossroad in his life, but which option would lead to the best future?

With a snort he muttered, “Gambit sometimes wish a hole would open up and drop him in it. That way he don’ have t’ deal wit’ any of this crap.”

In a flash of heat, a young woman with a deformed face appeared before him. With an oddly harsh and grating voice she intoned, “Wish granted.” At that point, a large swirling vortex of light and sound sprung into being beneath his feet and Gambit tumbled into the hole in reality.

2 – Down the Rabbit Hole

Gravity turned inside out and then attempted to do the same to Gambit. Flashes of light nearly blinded him as it shifted from the normal human visual spectrum and into the ultraviolet. He could still see due to his mutation, but the UV light frequencies made his eyes throb. A blast of inferno heat, a wash of artic cold and then gravity vomited all over him and his body was tossed about like a ship caught in a whirlpool. Not even Vertigo, the bitch, had ever made him feel so dizzy and nauseous.

Just as Gambit didn’t think he could take this hellish ride through the middle of the universe anymore, it got worse. With a bone jarring thud and a yelp of pain, he slammed into another being. It was a giant black cat with one eye…non, a man wearing an eye patch. Wait…it really was a cat. One the size of a tiger, only all black.

He had half a second to worry if the panic stricken animal was going to bite him or claw him to pieces when it did the unexpected. The cat wrapped its forelegs around Gambit’s neck, braced its hind legs against his hips and then shredded his psi-shields. In an instant, his shaky control over his very minor telepathy, his wild empathy and his finely honed spatial awareness bled out of his head and splashed across multiple Astral Planes.

Then the cat’s mind was in his mind, a link forged between them with a power that Gambit didn’t recognize or understand. Foreign thoughts, emotions and memories poured into his mind. It was very confusing since none of the things swirling into him from the cat’s mind were organized. Instead, panic and chaos seemed to twist it all up into a big mess, leaving Gambit even more disoriented and fighting off the beginning of a huge migraine.

He grabbed hold of the cat by reflex, but whether to clutch it tightly or to push it away he wasn’t sure and would never get to find out. Before Gambit could do anything the cat was flung out of his mind by his mutant psi abilities, no matter how poorly trained they might be. The link was still there though, even if the true melding of minds had ended and Gambit could feel the cat’s shock and its thoughts slowly coming into order.

They were human thoughts!

Twin red on black eyes blinked in surprise at one deep chocolate eye even as Gambit desperately tried to understand the concept of a giant black cat with human thoughts. He didn’t get to figure it out when his psi-shields suddenly reestablished themselves and slammed back into place. Gambit groaned at the mental pain of having his freed abilities once again locked up in such an abrupt manner and shuddered in the cat’s embrace, his fingers tightening in the black fur under his hands.

He had just enough time to realize his shields hadn’t severed the mental link between them when they fell out of the black hole they were tumbling through and slammed into some poor shit sitting on his couch and watching a Manchester United game.

3 – The Standoff

Gambit felt a bit like Alice, especially since he had just fallen through a mystical rabbit hole that took him from the rooftop at Xavier’s School for Gifted Children to some crazy guy’s apartment half-way across the world. So, there he stood in his full Guild Colors and his armor with his telescopic bo staff fully extended in one hand and three uncharged poker cards in the other. The crazy man he’d landed on when he fell out of said rabbit hole was barefoot in a pair of worn denim jeans, an oversized ratty sweater and was glaring at him over an Ivan Hoe broadsword with a live edge on the blade.

Just to add to the whole surreal feeling of his horribly bad day, the giant black cat that he’d slammed into in the middle of the rabbit hole was pacing back and forth between them growling and snarling. Out loud. That didn’t stop Gambit from hearing him curse, swear and rant in English inside his head with telepathy.

=Stupid crazy witches! Stupid crazy demons! Stupid Hellmouth!=

The cat snarled and swiped out with one huge paw, long retractable claws fully extended. An innocent lamp died as it flew off the end table and crashed against the wall.

=Why me!? Why! It’s always me. Demon magnet. Comic relief boy. The Zeppo!=

Gambit couldn’t help it. He could have kicked his own ass as soon as the words left his mouth, but he just could not help himself.

“Zeppo? Demon magnet? What de hell, homme?”

=Hell is right! I am sooo very sick and tired of…= The cat stopped pacing and turned to look at Gambit, a look of shock on it’s furry face. =You can understand me?=

Gambit blinked. “Oui. Can understand y’, least…think I do? Y’ a telepath, oui?”

The guy with the broadsword blinked and looked at him like he was insane. “What? Who are you? Where did you come from?”

=I’m not a telepath! Willow can do the telepathy thing, not me. Okay, so she had the spell up and running when I fell through the portal, but still… You can hear me? Really?=

Gambit glanced from one to the other. “Um… De cat talkin’ t’ Gambit in his head wit’ telepathy. We both just met in de portal thing.” He shrugged and waved the hand holding the poker cards at the ceiling. “Gambit was on de roof and a hole opened up under his feet and then he fall in and hit de cat. Then Gambit and de cat fall out of de portal thing and, bam, we in your living room.”

The man reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose with the hand that wasn’t holding the sword. “Wait a minute.”

He pointed. “You’re Gambit?”

Gambit nodded.

The man pointed at the cat. “This…panther is talking to you in your head with telepathy.”

Gambit nodded again.

The man pinched the bridge of his nose again and spoke with a tone of voice that suggested he thought Gambit was insane and that he was an inch away from doing massive violence.

“And you got here in my home by way of a magic portal that opened up under your feet?”

Gambit tilted his head slightly and nodded a third time. “Oui. An’ before y’ ask, it sounds just as crazy t’ Gambit as it does t’ you. Try livin’ it from my perspective, heh?”

4 - Truce

“I need a beer.”

Gambit blinked, considered everything that had happened to him so far that day and noted that the day was not even close to being over, nodded and agreed.

“Oui. Beer’d be bien. Bourbon be even better, heh?”

The man with the sword snorted and nodded his head.

=Yeah, easy for you to say. How the hell would I even be able to drink a beer? I’ve been turned into a freakin’ cat!=

Gambit’s eyes widened a bit and he tilted his head slightly to look at the pissed off feline that seemed to be an inch away from fluffing up its fur and spitting a hissy-fit.

“Wha?... Turned into a cat? Ain’t y’ always been a cat, homme?”

The man with the sword gasped, then shook his head. “Make that lots of beer,” he muttered.

=Um…no. I’m supposed to be a twenty-seven year old one-eyed ex-carpenter. I got caught in the crossfire of some nasty black-arts witches trying to raise a minor demon outta hell while my girls tried to banish it. Next thing I know, a spell splashes all over me, the world turns inside out and I’m a big black cat falling through a hole in the dimensional barriers and slamming into you.=

Gambit stared a minute. The surreal atmosphere took a turn and he wasn’t sure if it was tragic or hilarious, but he was pretty sure that they were all victims of fate and not each other’s enemies. Of course, this all made him realize that he should’ve just gone to see Jake and tried to apologize for the unforgivable.

“Truce?” His eyes shifted from the swordsman to the telepathic cat and back. “You don’ slice anyone up, de cat don’ chew anyone up and Gambit won’ blow us all t’ kingdom come. Instead, de three of us get a beer and figure this craziness out. Sounds good, heh?”

The man and the cat looked over at him for a long minute.

=Sure. Sounds fine to me. Especially since I’m positive that neither of you’ll taste any good.=

Gambit grinned. “An’ y’ just go on thinkin’ that, mon chat noir.”

The swordsman in the tatty sweater narrowed his eyes. “Thinking what, exactly?”

“That you and Gambit pro’lly taste bad.”

A smirk flickered across his face swiftly before fading. “Blow us all to kingdom come? How?”

This time it was Gambit that smirked. He held out the hand with the poker cards and charged them lightly. A soft pink glow lit the room and he flipped one of them into the air. It exploded with a soft POP and the ashes drifted down to the ground. Then, he slowly pulled the charge on the other two cards back into himself.

“Gambit charge de cards, throw de cards and then de cards go boom.” He grinned a wicked sort of grin. “Bang! You dead.”

The man stared for a long moment and then nodded. “Fine. Truce, then.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and swung the big broadsword up onto his shoulder. “I still need a beer.”

5 - Introductions

Gambit sat on a comfortable leather covered chair with his collapsed bo staff in one hand and a beer in the other. The man who owned the condo they were in sat on what was left of his couch with his sword across his lap and a bottle of beer as well. The big black cat lay on the floor off to the side, a large ceramic bowl filled with beer sitting between his two huge front paws. He was making a mess trying to figure out how to actually drink it.

Gambit tilted his head listening to the rambling words pouring into his mind.

“De chat noir say his name be Alexander Harris, but everyone calls him Xander fo’ short. He really a man that was cursed by some evil witches t’ be a cat.” He quirked an eyebrow and grinned at the man. “Apparently, de magic go ‘wonky’ around him, so instead of a ten pound housecat, he be a two-hun’red an’ twenty pound housecat de size of a tiger.”

Gambit took a long sip of his beer and tilted his head again as more babble was sent to him via telepathy. It was a lot like listening to Jubilee talk, so he didn’t have as much trouble translating the California slang and rapid-fire words as he would have otherwise.

“Seems that he was workin’ wit’ some good witches tryin’ t’ stop de evil ones. One of them had a spell t’ link them all up wit’ telepathy. When he be turned into a cat, he fell into de portal they try t’ banish de demon through and de telepathy spell was still active. Xander thinks that de spell latched onto Gambit since he be de only one that can support a mental link without magic.”

The man finished his beer, tossed the empty bottle aside and cracked open a new one. He downed half of it in one go before taking a deep breath and pinching the bridge of his nose again. “Not enough beer in the world for this…”

Gambit chuckled and took a big gulp of his own beer.

“And you? What’s your story? The cat, Xander, is a cursed man from a world with magic, witches, and demons. What about you, ‘cause I can tell you right now that we don’t have people with glowing red eyes and the ability to explode things with a simple touch.”

Gambit nodded and grew grim. He didn’t like talking about himself, but he knew that he had to. At least the basics, just like Xander had. He knew that there was a whole lot about his world and himself that Xander had left out, but now wasn’t the time. This was just the bare facts needed to know who and what each other was.

“Gambit be a mutant.” At the raised eyebrows from the man and the wash of interest/confusion from the cat, he continued. “In de world Gambit from, there be a bunch’a folks born wit’ what’s called a ‘mutated genetic sequence’. It’s different for each of us like that, but it can make y’ look different, like Gambit’s eyes. Or it can give y’ a skill or ability like how Gambit can tap into de kinetic potential of inanimate objects an’ then excite those atoms until de whole thing goes boom.”

The man nodded thoughtfully and sat for a long minute thinking over what Gambit had said while the cat, Xander, bombarded Gambit with memories of comic-books. He caught the names Batman, Superman, Justice League and the concept of meta-humans which Xander seemed to equate mutants to. There was none of the fear and hatred that Gambit had come to expect from normal flatscans when confronted with mutants, but then again Xander came from a world with witches and demons so people with strange powers wasn’t odd for him.

“And your name?”

Gambit looked over at the man who had just cracked open another beer. The man was looking back at him with shrewd knowing eyes and the hint of a grin. Gambit grinned back and saluted him with his own beer.

“Remy Lebeau, Master T’ief and mutant freedom fighter, at y’ service. Most folks just call him Gambit, though.”

The man smirked and nodded, before growing serious and sighing softly.

“On this world, we don’t have mutants, nor powerful witches and demons. Oh, we have a few people with the odd talent or two, but nothing like you both mention. The ones with the power on this world are the immortals. Men and women who die a violent death and then revive; never aging, never dying, just moving through time and battling each other in an effort to reach some elusive and unknowable prize.”

Gambit tilted his head, in what was fast becoming a tell for when Xander spoke to him telepathically. “Good point, mon ami.” He focused back on the man and said, “So…how old you be, homme?”

A flash of humor streaked across the man’s face. “I’m the oldest. My name is Methos, although in this time and place I go by Adam Pierson.”

6 - Musings

Gambit finished off his beer and thought about everything that Methos had told them about immortals and The Game. It seemed like a hard and lonely way to spend eternity to him, but the brutality and ruthlessness didn’t bother him as much as it probably should have.

He had spent his preschool years as a slave in a collection of mutant children owned by a corrupt sorcerer, his childhood years living homeless on the streets of the Big Easy, and his teen years in a war zone between the Thieves and Assassins Guilds. After that, he was banished from his home, lost control of his mutant powers, got tangled up with a mad scientist who liked to hover somewhere between genocide and forced eugenics and after all that he found himself a member of a mutant terrorist group and fighting for his life on a regular basis.

No, he was no stranger to brutality or ruthlessness.

He was fairly certain that both Methos and Xander could match his stories with ones of their own. Neither of them had lived easy lives, even if the length of Methos’ life was beyond ridiculous. Still, despite all of their individual and collective experience with the strange and the difficult, each of them found something about this whole mess that just plucked at their nerves.

Methos seemed to be alternately fascinated and offended by the concept of multiple dimensions. It was something he’d never really considered in his long life and the proof of their existence landing on his couch after falling out of a magic portal into his living room had seriously twisted his sense of reality. Understandable, after five-thousand years, the man was a little old to be having an existential crisis.

Xander, on the other hand, seemed to be fairing the worst. Alternate dimensions, head-hunting immortals, powerful mutants, newfound telepathy, none of it fazed him in the least. Being turned into a cat? Well, that was a whole other story. To be blunt, he didn’t know how to be a cat. If he was distracted completely, then he tended to get by on instinct and will-power, but if he had to actually think about what he was doing than his confusion and self-doubt messed him up. He didn’t know how to eat or drink or walk or jump or anything really. He had to learn how to live in his new body and it was driving him batty.

For himself, Gambit was just trying to deal with having a telepathic link into head. Not that Xander meant to do it. They both had figured that the spell had sensed his psi abilities and latched on to him by reflex. Gambit was half tempted to sever it, but he didn’t for two reasons. One, the link had been forged by magic and he didn’t know enough about it to feel safe doing so. He didn’t want to accidentally strip both of their minds of the ability to think. And two, without the link, Xander would have no way to communicate at all. He just couldn’t bring himself to do that to the guy.

That didn’t help him with the fact that he had a psi-link in his head. His own telepathy was so minor as to be almost non-existent. He had just enough talent to maintain the link and hold up psi-shields. He didn’t think he’d even be able to establish a link on his own. His empathy was stronger, but he had little to no control. It was either on, or off. When it was on, he could feel the emotions of others and when it was off, he couldn’t. What little control he had came across as ‘charm’. The only thing he could do with that was induce a mild mix of lust, affection and tractability in his target. It was not easy to do and it wasn’t in any way predictable.

With the link stable, it didn’t really affect his control or ability too much. That wasn’t the problem. What made a psi-link so difficult for Gambit were the memories. It was with a psi-link that the Antiquary had fed from his collection of children, soaking up their energy and lifeforce to fuel his own. None of that was Xander’s fault, however, nor was it his fault that Gambit’s shields grated against the link.

Somehow, he’d just have to learn to live with it or he’d have to find a way to transfer the link to another person.

7 – Minor Crisis

=Gambit!=

“Heh?” Gambit’s head jerked up straight, the bubbling pot of seafood gumbo on the stove in front of him forgotten. “Xander?”

=Gambit! Help!=

Methos looked up from the living room where he was unpacking the clothes and supplies he had just bought at the store for his mutant houseguest. “What’s up?”

“Don’ know, mon ami. Xander be calling fo’ help.” Gambit set down the spoon and tilted his head slightly, his glowing red eyes going unfocused. “Where are y’, homme?”

=Outside. In the big oak tree.=

Gambit blinked once and turned to Methos. “Y’ got an oak tree around here?”

Methos stared at him for a brief moment and then dropped what he was holding and dashed through a doorway into his bedroom. Gambit followed hurriedly. The two men rushed to the window. Methos flung it open and they both stuck their heads out to look at the big oak tree growing in the small patch of yard behind the condo.

About halfway up, hidden deep in the leaf covered branches was a giant black cat. All four sets of Xander’s claws were extended and gripping the rough branch tightly. His tail whipped back and forth in agitation and whining mewling noises came from deep in his chest even as he turned his head to look over at them with one panic stricken eye.

=I climbed up here after a bird, and now I don’t know how to get back down!=

Gambit felt a wash of embarrassment flow over the psi-link and smirked even as relief flooded through him. Between the three of them, he’d been expecting evil immortals, sentinel robots or even the odd demon or two. This was much more funny than deadly.

“De silly furball done tree’d hisself an’ now he can’ figure out how t’ get back down.”

Methos and Gambit looked at each other and smirked. Then one of them snorted. An eye twitched, followed by a lip. Before they knew it, both of them were hanging out the window and laughing like fools.

=Not funny. Oh, so very not funny. Just get me down from here!=

Methos got himself under control first, and grinning like a loon, elbowed Gambit and nodded towards Xander. “So…just how do we get a two-hundred pound cat out of a tree. I don’t think the fire department does this sort of thing.”

Grinning himself, Gambit just shrugged. “No idea, homme. Should be interestin’ though.”

8 – Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod

Gambit cracked open the shell of another crawdad and dug out the spicy meat in one easy movement born of practice and enhanced hand-eye-coordination. Xander lay stretched out on the couch next to him, drooling like a sieve and purring like a V-8 engine. He shoveled half of it into his own mouth and then handed off the rest to the man-turned-cat. The purring kicked up a notch even as telepathic babble singing his praises as a cook swirled through his mind.

His sense of the kinetic picked up broad sweeps of movement outside the door seconds before he heard the key turning in the lock and then the door opening. Footsteps shuffled about in the hallway. Xander looked up and over, but didn’t seem worried or upset and nothing was ringing any alarm bells in his own mind, so he simply reached for another crawdad off of the plate and cracked it open.

“Methos, that y’, homme?” he called out. “Come on in here an’ watch de Saint’s game wit’ us. Bring some beer wit’ y’, heh?”

=Ooo, and more of the spicy demon lobsters too!=

Gambit snorted a laugh. “And more of de crawdads! Xander eats like de Wolverine.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The voice was muffled, but definitely Methos’. Gambit listened as the footsteps swung through the kitchen. The refrigerator door was opened and shut, the pots and pans on the stovetop were rattled a bit and then Methos appeared in the doorway to the living room.

Behind him came a man wearing a trench coat and with his long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Gambit turned to look up at them and he watched as the stranger’s jaw dropped and he stumbled to a halt. Methos kept coming, passed a few beers over and set down another plate of steaming crawdads.

“Holy shit Methos!” The man pointed at Gambit and Xander, “You really do have a mutant Cajun and a giant black cat staying in your house!”

9 – Sparring

Gambit wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not, but by this point he didn’t really care. After years of Cyclops’ crazy scheduling of Danger Room sessions on practically a daily basis, uncountable hours of gymnastics training, endless repetitions in the weight room and the occasional sparring session with Wolverine, Gambit needed to workout regularly just to feel normal. It had been two weeks since he’d fallen through the portal and into this reality. Two weeks. If he didn’t beat up someone soon, he was gonna lose it.

He stood in the middle of a fairly large gym in his full body armor, his telescopic bo staff swirling around him in a deadly gleaming arc of silver. In front of him, dressed in loose cotton drawstring pants, MacLeod twisted around a smooth wooden quarterstaff, his movements elegant and flowing.

“Y’ sure ‘bout this, homme?” He tilted his head and grinned. “Gambit not gonna hold back if we spar. He won’t charge anythin’, promised that already, me. That still leaves a whole lotta ragin’ Cajun t’ cut loose on y’.”

MacLeod smirked. “I’m sure. You don’t blow me to smithereens, and I won’t cut off your head. Anything else goes. I’m up for it.”

Gambit’s grin morphed into a full blown blinding smile. Then he leapt into the air, twisted around four-hundred and fifty degrees before landing silently behind the immortal and hit him with the bo staff twice before leaping away into the air again.

For ten minutes the gym resounded with a series of clacks, clicks, bangs and thumps from the two staffs bashing against each other. This was interspersed with Gambit jumping, flipping, diving, rolling and leaping. He didn’t even bother pretending to stay on the mats. He was up and down off the benches, flipping over weight equipment, running halfway up the walls to somersault in midair over MacLeod’s head. He twisted, he dipped, he lunged. His sparring style was half savate fighting and half acrobatics. And through it all the immortal warrior chased him from one side of the gym to the other and back again.

Finally, Duncan had had enough.

“HOLD!”

With infinite grace, Gambit landed silently on his feet, his bo staff swinging softly to a halt, his trench coat and hair fluttering around him. The large face splitting grin he wore slowly shifting to an expression of confusion and concern.

“Eh? S’wrong, mon ami?”

MacLeod graced him with a frustrated glare. “Do you always jump around like a demented kangaroo on crack when you fight?”

Off in the corner, Xander started up that half purring growl that was his laugh even as Methos cackled with glee.


10 – Joe and Amanda

Gambit was just coming out of the bathroom on MacLeod’s barge when he heard a man’s smokey voice rumble out, “Oh, man. That’s got to be the most scarred up, horse-faced cat I have ever seen in my life.”

=Hey!= The force of Xander’s shouted telepathic voice made him sway on his feet. =Watch who you’re calling ugly you, you, you…Mr. Meany-pants, you!=

Mr. Meany-pants? Gambit was really going to have to work with Xander on his cursing and swearing skills because that effort was just sad.

He walked through the short hallway into the main room on the barge in time to see Methos and MacLeod smirking at an older man with graying hair and a cane. A young woman with short black hair frowned at all three of them and lightly smacked the older man on the arm, “Joe!”

Then, she turned to face an indignant Xander. With a smile, she leaned forward to give him an excellent view of her lovely cleavage, reached out with both hands to rub his cheeks and scratch his ears even as she babbled baby talk at him about how he was a pretty cat. Xander, not being a fool or dead, leaned into her touch and purred loudly, his one eye glazing over with pleasure and happiness.

=Hear that Remy? I’m a pretty cat. Amanda said so.=

“Y’ ain’t a pretty cat, homme. Y’ a fur sheddin’, dog chasin’, food stealin’, tree climbin’, poop machine.”

Methos and MacLeod snorted in amusement, even as the strange man and woman looked at him as if he was insane. Gambit was getting used to that look, so he ignored it.

=Am not!=

“Y’ are too! An’ Gambit should know. It’s his clothes y’ shed on, his food y’ steal, and him that has t’ carry y’ heavy butt down outta de trees. An’ if one more neighbor lady come t’ yell at Gambit ‘cause y’ chased their dog down de street an’ into a bout of hysterics, he gonna hide y’ cat-nip.”

That sparked a burst of laughter out of Methos.

“Xander here made himself the hero of all the cats that live near the condo by chasing the big brown German Shepard that lives down the street. He’s a mean and vicious dog that’s spent years terrorizing everyone’s pets, but apparently he doesn’t enjoy being chased by a huge two-hundred-plus pound cat.”

Gambit smirked. “Not surprising really. Xander be twice as big as de dog, an’ almost as smart.”

=Hey! I’m plenty smart!=

And since Xander had somehow wound up leaning against Amanda’s body with his big furry head pillowed on her breasts while she scratched under his chin with one hand and ran the other down the length of his body in smooth strokes, Gambit had to agree.

The man, Joe, just looked resigned and confused. “Do I even want to know how you two idiots managed to smuggle a black panther into downtown Paris?”

Both Methos and MacLeod pivoted and pointed at Gambit, twin cries of, “He did it!” echoing off the ceiling.