The Job Gone Wrong
is a For Want Of A Nail X-Men fanfic by AhmoseInarus.
Tales of Weapon X relates the short story of a fifteen year old Gambit breaking into the facility to steal a diary, the same night that Weapon X escaped. He allowed for the feral mutant's leaving to cover his own... except that it could have not worked.
Still, Jean-Luc LeBeau isn't about to lose his adopted son.
Tropes:
- And I Must Scream: Remy is utterly panicked when he's put in a tube and drugged into unconsciousness, fearing he will never wake up again.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Even if his diary was destroyed, Essex still managed to get a hold of Remy's genetic material.
- Break the Haughty: Gambit's narration makes no mystery of the fact he tends to be a cocky little shit. Then he's scared out of his mind by a feral mutant, captured, brutally interrogated, pumped full of drugs making him sick and locked within a glass tank. When his papa comes to retrieve him and keeps him close, he kinda needs it.
- Cruel to Be Kind: When she sees how feverish Remy is, Mattie orders a cold bath for him. The teen does not appreciate.
- Electric Torture: The facility's director interrogates Gambit with a cattle prod. The kid quickly breaks.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- At least one researcher is startled when the director starts to torture Remy with a cattle prod.
- The Thieves are unanimously disgusted by Bio-Storage.
- Fan Disservice: No matter how much you squint, a terrified and sobbing fifteen-years-old teen being forcibly stripped naked to be prodded and shocked is not sexy. Even when it's Gambit.
- Human Popsicle: When he finally wakes up in safety, Remy frets about the possibility he spent months or years sleeping in his tank. Jean-Luc reassures him it was only two weeks.
- I Want My Mommy!: After being captured, drugged, put into a humiliating position and facing electrical torture, Remy loses any pretence to dignity and screams for his papa to save him. It took him a couple of weeks, but Jean-Luc came.
- Nobody Poops: Averted. Before putting Remy in a tube, the researchers take care of cleaning his bowels and bladder and fitting him with a urinary catheter.
- No Name Given: The researchers and any thief who's not a LeBeau.
- Not So Stoic: For all his smugness, Gambit is barely fifteen year old. When he's seriously roughed up, he crumbles and starts babbling and calling for help.
- Papa Wolf: Breaking into a top-secret facility to steal his kid back? Not a problem for Jean-Luc LeBeau.
- People Jars: What "Bio-Storage" is all about. Remy himself suffers this for two weeks.
- Pull the I.V.: Downplayed, but Remy is put on a respirator and IV lines when he goes into storage. When everything is pulled off, there's mention of blood and retching.
- Shameful Strip: Waking up naked does not help Remy feel safe.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: How Remy wakes up after being captured. This is in this position that he's interrogated and prepped for storage.
- Tears of Fear: Remy weeps a lot here, especially when threatened with a cattle prod and dunked into a glass tank.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By stumbling over Gambit, Weapon X made him lose enough time for the guards to find the kid and capture him.
