1. Default Chapter

A/N: When your favorite character is _supposed _to be Kurt, maybe it's a little odd to avoid writing with him as long as possible. Actually, I used to write with Kurt all the time. Only . . . what resulted was invariably crap! I just don't _write_ well with Kurt.

But here this is anyway. And if FSFF came from weird conversations with Morwen, this doubtless hails from Nai influence. After all, _she's_ writing a Kurt fic (very different from this one -- if nothing else, it makes more sense), but actually, looking over this draft again, it has a suspiciously "Simple Tension" ish sound. Brotherhood in the hospital? Er . . . 

But I promise I wasn't thinking about Simple Tensions! This is an old plotline that hails from some understandable misunderstandings about Kurt's mutations and some not-quite-so-old notes I made for a solely Brotherhood some time back. Since cannibalizing is fun, I put a whole bunch of stuff together and . . . 

A few notes on chapter five, which was cannibalized from a role-play -- Tabitha's actions are vaguely based on the actions of fellow role-players IXArachne and Vi Rath. 

Rated PG for general weirdness, Tabitha, arbitrary bathroom scenes, tails, and random acts of high-ness.

Kurt walked at a leisurely pace into the school yard, experimenting with the idea of striking out across Bayville on foot after school. He'd only been in the city for a month and he'd kept pretty much to a few blocks. Between the school and the House there wasn't much, but it was fairly safe and all within easy teleport. It had to be easy for Kurt to do it -- teleporting unsettled him too much for him to, say, risk flying from the cafeteria to that chintzy mansion place out on the edge of the subarbs. It'd probably kill him anyway, and Kurt wasn't altogether sure how much strain would be . . . strain, and how much would be . . . death.

So he played it safe. Might as well. He didn't have anywhere to go. He'd left his friends and foster parents in Germany and the only thing he had _here_ that passed for friends lived in the same place he did. Had there been _other_ friends, they probably wouldn't have appreciated him appearing in their living rooms. There you go.

Then again, his American friends were a little surly at the best of times and Kurt was ever-so-slightly prone to boredom, so striking out across Bayville might rank as "the most exciting thing he'd done in the past week." What with nothing to occupy him at the House save television and the occasional library book. Kurt liked television as a _concept_, but found that in _reality_, especially after a sitcom marathon of six hours, it wasn't all that entertaining and he couldn't spend _all_ his afternoons and weekends reading, especially when written English was still occasionally a little tricky for him. So, often far into the evening, he'd work on his gymnastics (and end up crashing into the wall as often as not) and, if there was one available and it was free, he'd take a karate course or so. Hurrah.

His other hobby had been _shopping_ for about a week -- seeing as the airport had lost _all_ his luggage. No clothes, paper, toenail clippers, anything. He couldn't just show up on the doorstop and _then _keep borrowing Lance's clothes (which were far too large for him) 'til his parents deigned to respond to _any_ of his letters, so, using the Brotherhood's very sparse funds, he had acquired a new wardrobe, albeit, not a large one by half. Kurt was always stingy with other people's money, especially when they didn't have any.

And then there was his costume. The Brotherhood has always been . . . creative with their gear. Poverty does that to you. Kurt's consisted of a green sweatshirt, with a slight darker used cloak/cape thing over the top. His pants were, well, kinda brown. The "combat boots" strongly resembles large white sneakers, and, yes, the entire get up was probably ripped from Salvation Army like everything else he wore, but he wasn't complaining. 

Thus had Kurt's month gone. Today, he just felt like wandering. 

He was also intensely uneasy. There was a feel in the air that reminded him of the first tingle of teleportation and while he was utterly alone fairly often, he felt particularly . . . vulnerable this time.

He had some reason. His uneasiness released itself into a groan as he recognized a large and hulkish figure coming around the side of the school -- that headed for him with all the crazed determination of a slighted rhino.

He ducked into one of the wall inlets of the school, trying to play out in his mind where the nearest entrances were, but none of them were so close that, although he was faster than the hulk, he could get there in time. No, better face out whatever it was.

And it was possible that the hulkish kid -- his name was Bob -- hadn't actually seen him at all.

Well, fate had never been terribly kind to Kurt. Bob looked like he was going to stride right past the inlet at first, then his dull eyes swiveled to land right on him, and his face creased into a sort of smile that showed all his teeth.

"Man, if it ain't the wussy kraut boy."

Kurt stared Bob directly in the face. "It ain't?" He tried to pull up a particularly _vicious_ comeback that would pin Bob to the nearest tree and he _could_ have if everyone spoke _German_, but . . .

"It is," Bob asserted, pulling a fist back. "And I hear that kraut boy was wandering our turf, yesterday."

"There are other kraut boys." Honest mistake. You take the wrong alley and it belongs to a gang. Happens all the time.

"No." And there goes the fist, a little _faster_ than Kurt expected, but still, normally, he'd just dodge it. In his current, more jittery state of mind, he teleported without thinking . . . 

. . . and snapped back on the other side of the school. This _should_ have been the point where he slammed his head against the wall for being _stupid_ enough to use his powers in front of someone, especially _Bob_, and then gone home and moped for the day (not telling _anyone_, of course, unless he had to), but that didn't happen. Kurt just stood there. Not frozen, but sick. It wasn't much of a 'port and he wasn't prone to what you'd call _motion _sickness, but it wasn't as though he felt nauseous. It was more like . . . all his pores had the itchy fire of being bitten by nasty insects and his eyes felt all suddenly tired and there were all these sharp jerks in his bones and stuff.

Nothing you'd want to sit through, let alone stand through. Kurt blacked out. His glasses slid down and off his face as he hit the ground with a muffled thud.


	2. Lounging in places

Lance sprawled across about half a bench at the McDonalds', arms folded, occasionally scowling at the empty ketchup-streaked burger paper in front of him. Blob was the only one still eating, as usual. The guy spent a fortune just for a lunch out. Nine ripped and masticated Big Mac containers were scattered in front of dear munching Fred. Slobbering was more like it. Toad picked at a small scrap of lettuce, looking like he'd rather be somewhere else. Pietro let out an exaggerated yawn and glared at Blob, whose elbow had just knocked a couple of empty styrofoam cups into his lap. Not quite empty. Pietro muttered something not particularly nice under his breath as he swiped styrofoam and flicks of Coke off his pants. But even Pietro didn't seem to have the energy to snap at Fred, as though Fred would _care_ anyway.

Silence for another stretch. Pietro started to fidget. But it wasn't much of a fidget. Lance was starting to feel really comfortable . . . sinking into the fake-leather of the seat. It was warm and although it was dead boring waiting for Fred to finish, it wasn't altogether unpleasant just to sit there. His thoughts went into kind of a haze and he started to doze. And then, something caught the corner of his eyes. Scott Summers had entered the restaurant.

Lance slowly sat upright, nudging Toad beside him. Toad shifted, startled, then followed Lance's gaze. Oh well, whatever. Toad had positively no interest in picking a fight with Scott, thank you very much. Pietro snickered a little in derision, obviously remembering a couple of fun encounters, but he wasn't particularly in the mood either. Fred, slow on the uptake, as usual, finally realized what was going on. Now, he was in the mood. You could tell the way by the dark, if dull, expression on his face and the fact that his fist was grinding the last burger into the table. 

Lance shook his head, lowering his voice, "Not now, Blob. Let's see what's up." And . . . as he might have expected, the rest of the X-men filed in, slowly, but most certainly. "See? They don't travel alone much. Besides, this ain't exactly an abandoned construction site." He wanted to watch what the X-men were doing, sure . . . (probably just eating), but, well, he was feeling pretty comfortable just where he was.

"So?" Fred didn't quite manage to keep his voice down. Pietro flinched in annoyance.

A quick glance in their direction from Jean. She saw them and her eyes narrowed. Lance smirked back at her and folded his arms casually behind his head. "Now you've done it," he muttered between his teeth. Fred's face clenched further. 

"Aw man, Fred, you're not serious. This is the Mickey D's. They gotta eat too. Even if not half as much as you. Just don't do nothing." Toad leaned his face on one hand, exasperated. Toad didn't really like Blob . . . he was so big and out of control. Being built smaller and slimmer than the average kid, he was more intensely aware of every move and threat Blob made than the others and thus, felt more edgy. He did not want Blob to stand up and start throwing things around. The very idea tightened his muscles and made him want to be somewhere else even more powerfully than before. He idly wished for Kurt's teleportation powers. Lucky kid hadn't even shown _up._

The X-Men were ordering now, every once in a while throwing looks back at the Brotherhood. Evan and Pietro made eye contact in their traditional manner, but for once, Pietro found something else to watch relatively quickly. "He's not worth it," he said to himself, trembling a little with pent up emotion . . . mainly resentment and old old anger, but he could handle it. 

Lance smiled a little. Blob was slowly quieting down and no one else seemed inclined to start something. Which was perfect, because he certainly didn't want to start anything. _I mean, you gotta keep up the appearance, but there are days to rumble and there are days to relax and this is one of the latter._

Despite all this terrific sullen nonchalance they were pulling off, Scott had already _finished_ ordering and was striding right toward them. Lance swore lazily and Pietro started to pull apart one of them paper straw-cover things. Well, at least Scott was alone and for the _moment_ that was a good thing.

Lance didn't move or change expression until Scott was right _there_ at the table. Then he yawned and gave Mr. X-Man as calculatedly bored a glance he could manage.

Scott didn't seem to notice. "Lance, I'm _sure_ Kurt is one of yours?"

"Eh?" Lance squinted, scratching his stomach. "Really?"

"Look, you ought to _know_ that he was picked up today. Ambulance."

That _was_ news, but Lance couldn't show it, and was annoyed at Blob and Toad for staring at Scott so hard he could practically grab hold of their gazes and yank them. "Oh. Why?"

"I don't know. I couldn't get close. But there _were_ stretches and sirens . . . and talk. Someone saw him teleport and you know that's not a good sign in and of itself. This might be _very_ serious."

A proper response might have been "Yeah? Why do you care?" but Lance knew very well that Scott cared about whether some transfer kid was kicking some anthill, let alone . . . You could _accuse_ the guy of being indifferent and it'd gall him all right, but there was, again, a time and a place for everything. "Might be. We'll have to drive up and check it out, I guess."

"If you need it, we'd help on this kind of thing. Come on, if he's sick or . . . "

"We'll handle it," Pietro snapped, flinging a scrap of paper at the table. 

"Thanks, though," Toad added.

Scott nodded and walked back to his people. Lance sighed and crashed his usually casual elbows into the table.

"Great."

"Rescue mission time?" Pietro sounded non-commital.

"Nah. We'll give it a week, unless something turns up. You know, haunt the hospital, figure what's up, but no move or nothing until we got info. He could really be sick. There's always that."

"He _would_ . . ." Toad prompted, "be _safer_ at the Institute."

"Safety ain't an issue unless we know it's bad, right? We hang too much with the X-Geeks and we'll _become_ X-Geeks, right? And Kurt ain't that fully one of _us_ yet as it is. We watch."

"_You_ watch." Pietro stood up, angling his body away from Blob with obvious distaste. "I've got . . . somewhere to go for a couple weeks. I'll pick up on the news when I get back."

"What are you _talking_ about, Pietro?" Lance growled, standing up himself. 

"Listen, I thought I _cleared_ this right off. You guys do your thing, but I've got my own 'special' assignments, remember? It shouldn't be _hard_, watching Kurt and making sure there aren't evil mutant haters trying to turn him into super-powered dog food anyway."

"_Maybe_ not, but the whole thing . . . "

"Yeah, it's fishy and sudden and that junk, but sometimes life is just because it wants to be." Pietro yawned. "Kurt's never been in the best of health anyway. Can't take the cold, you know? Maybe he got a whiff of a bug and you put that with a touch of hypothermia . . ."

"Maybe," Lance muttered.

"They might let him out tonight . . . " Toad mused uncomfortably.

"Of course they will! What could have happened? Fatal heart attack? He's, what, sixteen? There's nothing to worry about."

"Maybe."

"Oh, maybe, maybe." Pietro looked disgusted. "You guys mutant-sit and I'll see you around."

Blob was picking up the tray in an oddly fastidious manner by the time the door swung shut with Pietro outside. Lance grumbled to himself. So much for relaxing.


	3. Sleeping, mainly

Kurt woke up, but his eyes remained firmly shut. He felt the usual slow ache all over his body - not as bad as it had been the last few awakenings, but still there . . . always on the blade edge of his thoughts. The same dream snarled every time he dropped into unconsiousness -- a half nightmare of heat and reptilian demons where images were fleeting and if you tried to corner one . . . it vanished, but it was a nightmare all the same.

He'd essentially been drifting in and out of delerium and sleep for, well, he didn't know how long. And they still hadn't given him his glasses. The bright florescence overhead tried to beat through his eyelids. He dimly remembered even brighter light -- an operating table, maybe -- just before the anaesthetic had kicked in and knocked him out. He didn't know what was going on, things still hurt, and the incessant numb stab of the IV kept him from turning over to bury his eyes against the pillow. He hated needles . . . hated . . . hated . . .

His bed vibrated under him. Hard. He nearly opened his eyes. He groggily realized that hospital beds just weren't supposed to do that. The vibrations intensified . . . as if their source were coming closer. There was a heavy slam (a door being shoved open, probably) and the vibrations stopped. Two pairs of footsteps approached the bed. One normal . . . . one very very heavy . . . .

"Kurt." Familiar . . . ah yes, familiar. Lance. Kurt nodded weakly. "Kurt, we're takin' you outta here."

Well, what was he supposed to say to that. Hospital . . . that's where he was. Hospital was usually a decent place to be. Maybe being out of hospital was not such good idea. "Ughhh . . . " Well, so much for protest. It's hard to feel chipper and argumentative when you have enough drugs in you to kill several large rats.

"Freddy, pick him up." A pause. Then two large hands gripped his shoulders with all the force of a gorilla. A really big gorilla. Kurt gasped another unheard protest as the immense whatever ripped him from the bed (and snapped all those needles out of him in a very painful manner).

"Not like THAT. Oh well, no time. Carry him, we gotta run. Unless you can walk . . . " He seemed to be addressing Kurt again. Kurt did not feel well enough to answer. He was in the middle of deciding whether to throw up all over Freddy.

"Never mind. Let's go!" Every hurried step of the Blob shook him violently. He considered throwing up again . . . this time with more fervor. And when Freddy reached the stairs . . . Kurt switched from thinking about throwing up to thinking about teleporting himself _anywhere_ else. Difficult and risky, yes . . . but _comparitively_ painless. And no motion sickness either!

There was a lot of scrambled noise whooshing past his ears. Most of it didn't sound terribly happy. Occasionally, he would hear the screech of someone being shoved out of the way. 

Finally, the noise was replaced by that distinctive automatic door swing . . . and then replaced in turn by very loud and irritating sirens. Kurt wished they would just turn it all off and let him go back to sleep. Even if he would have that stupid dream again.

Actually, he did go to sleep. Despite all of Freddy's jostling, the medicine took hold again and transported him back into demon land. When he woke up yet again, he was lying on a bed that smelled funny. In other words, he wasn't in the hospital. 

"Okay . . . well, that was fun. With luck, they'll dismiss the whole thing to group hallucination and an earthquake. And a really really big guy. But we had to get you out, you know." Lance again. How fun. 

"You really ain't conscious, are ya? Look, just in case you hate me later for this, in any other case, we would've left you there. I don't know if you're goin' to get really sick or the like from our meddlin'. But they wouldn't let anyone see you at all. You were practically in a vault. It took us some serious work and brute strength just to get in. And we heard rumors . . . never mind. Why do you have to have those blasted yellow eyes anyway?" 

Kurt went back to sleep.


	4. Awakening and lots of screaming

The morning dawned wan and chill, because it was, after all, a morning in the fall-end-slipping-into-winter. Wan and chill was only appropriate. Lance slouched on an armchair (old, polyester, and falling apart) across from the window and watched the frost glisten on the glass with odd wistfulness. He considered just watching _that_ all morning and letting school and sick mutants move on as they would without him, until they sorted themselves out. Any other course required effort -- and _work_ was just not Lance's thing.

It was with great reluctance that he stretched, grunted, and got up. He stumbled up the stairs with numb feet, clinging to the bannister because it was easier. _Why do the bedrooms _have_ to be upstairs?_ Finally, he reached Kurt's room and zombied inside. Kurt was sprawled out on the bed, snoring. Lance considered taking the day off. _Hey, why not? Taking care of an invalid is _totally_ a reason for missin' school._

Bedsprings from the opposite room creaked in terror as Freddy let out a bellowing yawn. Lance whipped out of Kurt's room, hissing a warning to _keep it down._ Freddy sat up and blinked at him blearily.

"Wha?"

"Kurt's still snoozin'."

"Oh." Freddy collapsed on his bed and resumed _his_ personal brand of snoozing. Lance shrugged, half decided on catching up on sleep himself when the doorbell rang.

"Ggggggrrrrhhhgh," Lance growled as he clambered down the stairs and pulled open the door, expecting the dude on the doorstop to be a Principal Kelly predicting truancy . . . but it was just Toad.

"Augh, whatsit. To-o-o-oad, you could've just walked in . . . eh . . . "

Toad never classified as . . . clean, but he usually wasn't blatantly filthy. His clothes were caked with something grey and sticky speckled with thick white. He was missing one of his goth bracelet things and one knee-out had ripped to include most of his lower leg.

" . . . you're a mess."

Toad nodded and slipped in under Lance's arm. "Called spendin' the night in a dumpster, yo," he muttered as Lance slowly turned to face him.

"What did the dumpster have _in _it that you wanted so badly?" Lance asked, deliberately not understanding.

"It's not what was in the dumpster, it's what was hangin' around outside it. It's all wicked-cool to spy on gangs an' all, but gangs got knives and they ain't as slow as you claimed."

"Sorry . . . . I mean, you weren't 'urt or nothin'?"

"Nah. But I didn't learn anything either."

"They didn't say _anythin' _ about mutants?"

Toad scratched the front of his scalp. "No. Until _I_ showed up, no. They're just punks. Nothing else."

"Sure there weren't any obvious ties between them and the 'ospital?"

"Yeah. Bob's gang is just a . . . " Toad was either tired or exasperated. "Gang, y'know? Maybe Kurt's just sick. I don' think they did anything to him. I mean, has _he_ said anything to suggest . . . ?"

"Ah, he's been out. Hasn't said a thing." Lance glanced warily up the stairs. "He's just slept and . . . yeah, slept."

Toad shrugged. "Oh. Pietro's back in town."

"Eh? How's that?"

"Pretty sure I heard his voice when I was in the dumpster."

"Whadd'he say?"

Toad repeated it. Lance, who was not prone to blushing, colored a little and whistled. "Think 'e was mad, then?"

"Man, I probably dreamed it."

"You'd think 'e'd come back 'ere if 'e were back in town."

"Euh, I dunno. Pietro's kinda wired funny. And he was pretty ticked off, if that _was_ him I heard. So . . . maybe he's tryin' to cool off or something like that."

"Hmmm. Maybe 'e's wit' the 'ospital?'

Toad stared at him. 

"I weren't serious. But, Toad, they did 'ave Kurt in a vault, see . . . "

"What if he has _malaria_ or some new and really contagious disease?" Toad spread his hands for effect. "We don't _know. _They might not even think he's a mutant, think of that? I mean, I walk around as _me_ and my eyes are just as yellow (okay, yellow-green) as _his_ and I _hop. _Maybe we're jumpin' the gun."

"He was in a vault," Lance pressed stubbornly.

"_AAAAAAAAUGH! AAAAAUGH! WHERE'S THE . . . _(german) (german) _TYLENOL?!! AAAAUGH!_"

"And now he's awake," Toad sighed. "I don't know about this . . . "

Lance was already up the stairs. Toad sighed again and leaned against the bannister, waiting for something to happen.


	5. Pietro has a heart to heart and stuff

"Pick up, pick up," Pietro snapped into the reciever as it rang again and again and again on the other side. Daddy had a cell phone. Knowing Daddy, though, he probably had it on vibrate. It would surely stink should Daddy be mid-rampage or threatening recruiting and the ding-a-ling of call-waiting go off under his robes.

Pietro was not a patient man, but he could pace his hotel room as rapidly as he needed to -- keep those legs busy and mind wandering -- until Daddy picked up, take five or five hundred rings as it may.

Daddy picked up after ten.

"Lensher," the flat metallic voice muttered with great, dark irritation.

"Hey, Mister Lensher. It's your son, Pietro."

"Oh. Is this a casual call?" The tone implied that it had better not be.

"Not at all, Pops. You know the new kid, Kurt? German, red hair, yellow eyes?"

"I do have files . . . son. I already know he's in the hospital, or rather, is now out of the hospital."

Pietro did a double-take (or, sped up, perhaps a quadruple take). "Waaaaaaahaat? Lemme guess, those idiots flipped out and abducted him, ammI-right?" Pietro spoke a different language entirely when he was over-excited.

"You are correct. I'm surprised you didn't know that. My caller ID program quite accurately shows you are calling from Bayville."

"Yes, yes, but I haven't _talked_ to anyone yet. I was scoutin' round New York City on the lead you sent me. Hasto do with Kurt. 'Parently everything has to do with Kurt."

"Well, what did you find out."

"Well, guess what? Those manufacturers _were_ making something related to mutants. A suppressor of sorts, got that? Crazy, they had these chemicals that'll dampen powers or something, I'm not sure, but something like that. An', from what I hear, they only got one client, or only _had_ one client, and it was Wagner. Funny, huh?"

"Hilarious. But Kurt seems to function as a mutant."

"Oh, yes, yes, now he does. But I was listening in and taking files and stuff and turns out that's just a really really small part of the plant that's expensive to run. So they're shutting it down, 'cause their client disappeared and all that jazz and they were freaked that government would find 'em making the chemical and fine them or worse and stuff like that. I was looking at their old shipping bills and man, were they taking in a lot of dough from one client. Talking ten thousand a bottle of this stuff, and it's in pill form, probably ten pills for bottle. That's, like, a thousand dollars per pill!"

"I can do the math."

"Know you can, Pops. Anyway, Kurt sure wasn't paying for it. Shipping bills show that it was _sent_ to Germany, but it was paid for, whaddyaknow, right around here. But, what I heard was, the patron was still paying for the junk, but for the past two months, the shipments just came right back in the mail and finally, the patron stopped paying. Couldn't figure out who the patron was, though. Don't think they knew either."

"Hmmmm. I may have some idea on 'who.'"

"Xavier? No doubt he's got mega-bucks."

"Perhaps. Thank you for this information, Pietro."

"One more thing, Pops. We got some real gang problems around here. Nearly got jumped by a couple of thugs and I was just walking. Bayville's usually cleaner than Collosus after a wax on that front. Something's up."

"Perhaps. You'll have to excuse me if such an investigation is not terribly high on my priority list at the moment, though."

"Sure thing, Pops."

Click. Pietro slapped the phone shut and scowled at the opposite wall. There was something in the air . . . as if something was smouldering, like Pietro's sneakers after a particularly good run. Burnt rubber is a vaguely encouraging smell in that situation. In any other situation, when there's no logical reason for such a smell, it might just be cause for worry. And Pietro seldom worried.

"Something's up," he muttered again, and sped down the hotel stairs to check out.


	6. More screaming

It took about ten IBproufen and half an hour before Kurt stopped smacking Lance with a pillow in a rage of pain. The fact that Kurt subsided had little to do with feeling better and a whole lot more to do with being worn out. His straight yellow eyes glowered at whoever wandered within sight and his arms were tightly and sullenly folded around his chest.

Kurt had always been something short of social and friendly, but agony that was partially caused by the Brotherhood's hastiness gave him an almost menacing edge. Lance already regretted pulling him out in the first place.

"Er, Kurt, are you 'ungry in any way? We could get you food, y'know. Wouldn't be no trouble."

"Eef you gave me food, I'd (long stream of German) then puke it all over your stupeed black shirt."

Lance did not consider his black shirt stupid in the slightest, but stifled an angry rejoinder for the sake of being hospitable to the invalid. He could always pound Kurt later.

"Com'mon, Kurt. Ain't that bad. Can't be worse than the flu, right? I mean, not as though you was beat up or nothin'."

"It feels like I vas _crazy_ vrung through the dryer. A dryer full of _knives_."

"Well, we're _sorry_ you feel that way, but, man, they weren't gonna let you out."

"Maybe I haf someting contagious and you vill all die, ah hah." He leaned back against the pillow and smiled.

"Lance, maybe Kurt-boy needs some alone time, you think?" Toad hissed in an undertone.

"He's fine. He's just grouchy." And in a normal tone. "Why don' we move ya downstairs and you can watch TV, huh? We could wake Freddy up."

"I vill not be hauled downstairs by a _crazy_ sack auf . . ." he paused . . . "adipose teessue . . ." Lance didn't even know what that meant, but Kurt was in biology and had to pick up English somehow, he guessed. " . . . to vatch 'Fameely Ties' aur 'Bugs Bunny.' You can vatch ze screen, I vill stay here and slowly spread my germs until you all . . . ja, die."

Kurt was definitely not in a good mood, Lance concluded. "Well . . . all right. We'll go downstairs and leave you . . ."

The door banged open. "HELLO! HEY! ANYONE IN THE HOUSE? I'M BA-ACK!"

Kurt winced and pressed his hands over his ears. "Aaach, not Tabi-"

Boots were already clattering up the stairs and before Lance had time to turn around, Tabitha was leaning into the doorway, swinging a tiny shopping-bag-a-la-Claire's from her ring finger. "Didja miss me? I mean, not as though I've been gone for_ever_ but, whhooooa, what happened to you, Kurt?"

"I vas abducted," Kurt grated, his arms folding even tighter over his skinny chest. Lance didn't think that was possible.

"No ki-idding." Tabitha plopped on the foot of Kurt's bed, rocking back and forth on the springs. "And you're in Toad's bed, too! Where'd you sleep, Toad?"

"Dumpster," Toad muttered, trying to stay out of sight.

"Well, gee, as long as it was comfortable -- that is _totally_ a hospital band you got on your wrist, Kurt-boy." As if to illustrate, she'd already grabbed Kurt's arm, and was squinting at the black-print-on-yellowed paper while Kurt's expression became all pained tolerance.

__

Well, serves him right, thought Lance.

"What'd you do to yourself?"

"I vas teleportink accidentally and I fainted. Ees all I know. But I still hurt."

"Awww, poor Kurt." Tabitha bounced on the springs, already bored. "But you'll probably feel better tomorrow."

"It has been two veeks, actually."

"Tomorrow's a new day! Hey, wanna see what I bought?"

Kurt was frozen in obvious indecision on how rude it would be to frantically shake his head when Lance carefully sidled out, followed by Toad.

"I don' know what to do wi' 'im." Lance's voice was quiet and high with exasperation.

"No one's cheerful when they're wracked by inexplicable, endless pain," Toad explained. "Wouldn't you know it, yo."

Lance glanced carefully at the other mutant. "Er, no offense, man, but you've been . . . _talkin'_ differently lately. It's like your yo's don' make any sense with all the other stuff yer sayin'."

Toad shrugged. "Everyone's been a little under the weather."

"Not Tabitha. She ain't changed a bit. An' I'm still the same and I reckon Pietro's still the same, but some o' yer are gettin' real weird, no offense again."

"None taken. What are we going to do with Kurt?"

Lance pursed his lips. "I dunno. Never 'ad one of the Brotherhood 'urt terribly bad before and I still don' know what's _wrong_ wi' him, right?"

"I still think we oughtta take him to the Institute."

"No _way_. We don' 'ang with them preps, Toad. 'Ow many times I gotta say that?"

"The preps have money for drugs," Toad pointed out.

"They got money for everythin'. Soon as you know it, we'll start gettin' our bills paid by 'em and pools and Playstations and . . . clothes and then we'll _be_ preps an' . . . "

Lance's tirade was interrupted by yet another scream from Kurt. Only this one didn't seem to be a mere call for pain relievers.

Kurt had good reason to be snitty. Talking was an effort and he couldn't even do it with more than half of his brain or so, because the hurt was there and kept getting stronger and everyone kept trying to engage him with _inanities._ Kurt felt like he was burning. A slow, hungry roast like being held over flames until your skin singed into over-cooked meat and the peasants screamed "BACON, BACON!"

. . . Or not bacon. It was that general idea, right, of skin sizzling until it was half charred and crinkled and the fat was sizzling on the pan and okay, maybe he was a little hungry and horrifically sick at the same time.

The really odd thing was that the source of the greatest agony was at the base of his spine. It made him terribly uncomfortable to think about it, but it felt as if he had been mounted up on a pointed stick in a very comprimising position. And as Tabitha kept chattering on about some bauble that was just a blur in his light-fearing squint, the pain kept getting worse and worse until it exploded out his back end.

That was when he screeched and he could hear footsteps come running and even some particularly lumbering creaks as Blob finally extricated himself, and all that was nothing to the general oh dear me _ow_ of it all.

Kurt might have expected the general effect of the back-end explosion to resemble that of, if he may be indelicate, a really firm fart (one has no idea how much it pained him to think that), but, instead, the pain climbed up his spine and wrenched it, until his pointed nose collided with his knee, and his arms wrapped around those knees as if to secure some kind of stability. His hands seemed to get heavier even as they tightened and his thighs seemed to be boiling under the skin, like someone finally had set the bacon on fire with the intent to evaporate all extraneous things like fat and, well, fat. It was an odd sensation, and, yes, very unpleasant, no matter what one's views on dieting happen to be.

All thess stabs and scorchings began to run together in a loose muddle until the pain stopped. Abruptly, after two weeks, it was mostly gone, save for an almost bearable sizzling just on the surface of his epidermis. Slowly, he opened his eyes a slit and the light didn't seem quite so oppressive, but the presence of the entire Brotherhood staring gape-jawed at him was a little bit, yes.

"Augh," he managed.

"Oh . . . crap," Lance provided.

"I feel a leetle better," Kurt tried.

"That . . . won't last long." Lance seemed to be positively in shock.

"Vhy?"

"Augh," Toad belatedly echoed, just as Lance ran out the hall. A moment later came some very emphatic retching and flushing.

"Vhat?" Kurt blinked and raised his hand to scratch at a new and fierce itch at his shoulder. His hand was placed just so he could get a good, sidelong glance at it. And . . . then he screeched again. The next twenty minutes ended up fairly full of screeching in general until the Brotherhood left the poor creature alone to vent until he collapsed from exhaustion.


	7. Kurt goes off the deep endy thing

If your house is on fire, and maybe it's just starting to ignite, there's certainly smoke strangling itself on the ceiling and flickers of hungry red snapping from crevices and shadows, but there are _windows and the possibility of forcing a door or two, or if it's really bad, you can rip off some half-rotted pipe hanging from the wall and make potholes in the plaster until something gives._

Or, if you were Kurt, you could teleport out of the flames before you broke anything more than a sweat.

The Brotherhood house was not on fire.  Neither was Kurt, exactly -- he tried to keep matches away from his clothes if at all possible.  He had re-awoken.  The seering skin-pain-tingle had been subsiding pore by pore as blue fur crept over his limbs and face and whatever else and quenched it entirely.  A pale snake of a thing coiled up on the other end of the bed was gradually becoming less pale.  Kurt suspected he'd be terribly sick of blue before long, but since blue = cold = numb, so it was.

"Oh heck," Kurt spat, kicking his tail off the bed with an over large foot.  "Heck, heck, heck, _heck_."  There are better demi-curses and "heck" has such a funny sound to it that Kurt was giggling by the end of his one word rant.  That really didn't make him feel any better.

He had a sudden, stupid impulse to bite the end of that stupid tail and compensated by dragging a pillow over his head and screaming (again).

That didn't help either.

He threw the pillow at the ceiling, where it promptly hit a light fixture and plummeted right back on his face.

_Oh well._

He could take inventory.  Four fingers, two thumbs, four toes, two funky heel extensions, two ears, two eyes, one tail, nose . . . 

_What a great idea.  So . . . _

There was a knock at the door.  Kurt remained on the bed, pillow-blind, and didn't say anything.  The door creaked open.  Kurt stayed on the bed.  Lance ripped the pillow off his face and battered his chest with it, howling epithets, while Kurt made a point at staring off into space, just for spite.   Finally, Lance resorted to stomping on the pointy part of his tail and Kurt jerked stock-upright, screaming (euphamistic) epithets right back _at Lance until they bother realized that they hadn't a __clue what was going on._

Kurt petered out first.  "Geh . . . vhaddya vant?"  He'd pulled his tail around his ankles to protect it.

"I was just _checkin'_ on ya, but you looked all _suffocated_ and dead and stuff and you weren't moving.  You could, you know, _acknowledge_ a person . . . "

"I don't feel very social," Kurt growled, draping a long arm around a bed post and using the leverage to examine his fingers.  "Hmmm."

"There's a difference between bein' unsocial and fakin' a coma."

"Tired of all this _crazy excuse for sympathy, look.  I'm some _crazy_ uber mutating demon-whatnot and I'm a little __tiny bit depressed, so maybe we should let me mope for an epoch, if we wouldn't mind and . . . "  Oh yes, but it felt good to blather in German every once in a while._

"What?"

"I'm hungry," Kurt finished tersely (in English).

"Now?"

"Morphing into a . . ."  He gave up and continued in German.  "_Crazy denizen of the place of flames and apparently reptiles, judging from those crazy hallucinations . . . "  And English " . . . takes eet out of you."_

"Well, uh . . . I guess maybe Freddy hasn't eaten everything left in the refrigerator . . . "

"Vhatever.  Eet's not urgent."

Lance hitched his shoulder and scuffled back out the door.  Kurt abruptly (and _possibly rudely, as Lance was going to come back and find the room all deserted) wanted to be __out.  It seemed to be a day of odd impulses and physical shifts and junk.  Kurt whipped his tail straight, which smacked loudly against the wall and dropped to the bed, twitching._

"Vimp," he said, shaking his head.  He noticed, with a vicious scowl, that he was still wearing one of them flaccid blue hospital gowns.  And, wonder of wonders, there was a pair of pants half tucked under the bed.  Mmmm.  Kurt quickly snatched them up with a ravenous gesture and pulled them over his legs, up to his waist, and they were entirely too big.  Probably not Toad's then, weird.  Maybe Lance's.  Pants were pants, though.  He struggled out of the hospital gown and dropped it haphazardly on the floor.  

The band of the jeans kept trying to slip off his waist, but he had a hard time caring.

Before he knew why, he was on the bed again.  He splayed out too-long limbs to the four corners of the sheets, taking handfulls (and, er, footfulls?) of the fabric with a sort of baseless curiousity before teleporting . . . and ending up on the roof, hopelessly tangled in afore-mentioned sheets.

"Zat vas pretty dang incredibly smart."  His attempts at extracting himself only made the tangle a little more complicated -- his borrowed jeans got knotted into the sheets and the framework of thick and badly enmeshed cloth got wrapped around his tail and he was stuck sans pants in the _proper sense, instead tressed up in denim and bedding like a particularly stupid version of the wolf in that Peter opera/symphony whatever._

It looked like time to try out those canines he'd magically aquired earlier.  He was actually quite good with them -- they made great scissors . . . well, maybe pen knives was a more _accurate_ description, but within a matter of minutes (and with some attention to denim versus sheets), he'd transformed captivity into useful little strips of frayed color.  You could use them for tourniquets.

O-or, a belt!  Kurt hastily put the pants back _on_, strung a strip of sheet through the belt holes, and tightened it until he could tie a knot (clumsily, because his fingers were huge) and have some hope of his pants staying up from now on.  He then made a makeshift scrap-shirt from the rest, which had a lot of gaps in it and looked somewhat less stylish than the gear of all those semi-nude rock stars, but, if the scraps had been _black_ instead of Salvation Army paisley, it would have been nearly cool.

Having thus utilized all his ruined sheet material, Kurt crept to the point of the roof closest to the old TV antenna and poised like a gargoyle.  Standing like a person was supposed to was becoming more difficult by the moment.  Slouching was acceptable, running around on all fours was not.  Yet, Kurt had this gradual fancy about running on all fours and eating pizza.  Oh right, he was hungry.  

He leaned over, peering at the blades of grass shimmering in the half light, and dove right off the roof.

In a normal person, this would have either been a suicidal plunge or a really stupid attempt at flight and while he fell, Kurt wasn't quite sure whether he wasn't doing either/or/and.  But his body was smarter than he was.  A second before he would have smashed his brains on the concrete, his arms pulled his legs up to his chest in a cannonball spin and he teleported . . . 

. . . a good ten feet higher and several hundred feet in any direction from the House.  He came out of his barrel roll with his limbs spread out wide, and grinning madly.   It was no longer early and the streets were not bare of all onlookers.  Surely someone saw him falling none-too-slowly and cackling like being a demon was some kind of _game_ (these punk kids now-a-days), but he couldn't _care_.  He teleported again and again and his half-fall, half-flight across Bayville became more gradual and stately as the speed of his initial plunge wore away and he finally landed on a roof without much fear of breaking a leg on impact.

Not that he landed well.  He kind of cartwheeled across that roof until he slammed against a railing and fell over with a splat, but he didn't break anything.

"All tings considered," he gasped, when his lungs worked again.  "Zat vas not so bad."

The body image, he'd have to work on.  Definitely dye the scraps black, for one.  Perhaps his fur black, too.  Why the heck not?  He figured, while he was lying there, flicking at a bit of bird scat with a massive yellow fingernail, whatever had happened to him was probably not liable to go away.  Unless he was a were-demon or something.  But somehow, morphing painfully into a tailed menace in mid-morning just didn't have the right dramatic factor.  No, it was probably permenant.

And it might have something to do with those pills he stopped taking.  

Normally, Kurt was fairly conscientious about pills.  It was how he'd been raised.  He'd been taking those pills for as long as he'd remembered.  It didn't rank with brushing his teeth -- it ranked with going to sleep and eating at least one meal a day, it had become so unconscious.  He didn't even know what they were for.  He just knew his parents got them in the mail very regularly.

About, two, three months ago, Kurt had suddenly lost all interest in taking medication.  Maybe it was a belated and weak form of teenage rebellion, he didn't know.  Anyway, his parents certainly trusted him to take them on his own, since he'd done it forever, and he'd taken some steps to _look like he was taking them, surruptiously slipping them into the trash or the sink instead.  He'd felt he had some right to eschew the pills at the time.  After all, he'd never known _what_ they were for, despite all his curious inquiries as he grew out of taking everything his parents said for granted.  They didn't seem to know either and there was something funky about feeding your kid something that could be doing _anything_ to his body.  It was the equivelant of picking heroin needles off Danish beaches and sticking them in your skin just because they were there and convenient._

So, yes, now that he _thought_ about it, Kurt was _perfectly_ justified in liberating himself from those mysterious pills.  In a matter of two-days-missed, he was already out of the habit and releashing the two extra seconds it gave him every morning and evening to himself.  Hah hah, no pills to look in on your esophag--was it esophagus?  Yes, esophagus.  Not trachea, esophagus.  Anyway, it was nice, until, about four days into pure freedom, the whites of his eyes started to turn yellow.

His parents pronounced jaundice and the doctor pronounced, not likely, has no other symptoms, wait a week.  And the yellow grew until it was all his eyes _were and Kurt took to wearing sunglasses and avoiding his parents to the best of his ability, as they always nagged him about "checking his progress" and he knew that if they actually saw that progress, they'd freak._

About a week and a half into freedom, Kurt felt this odd tingling sensation in his gut.  This was at the dinner table, which he hadn't been able to avoid this certain day, and Mom was saying to please honey, take off the glasses, it's dinner family time and we'd like to see your eyes every once in a while and dear me whatever is that stench?

Kurt couldn't smell it himself, but Mom's nose was wrinking and Dad's nose was wrinkling and they were both staring firmly at him.

"What?" he'd asked.  And then.  "No-o, I didn't do that --"

And then the tingling had become unbearable and he'd teleported across the room, right next to the door, and about three feet from the ground.  He'd smashed into said door and accidentally teleported again and it was about two days before he was on the train to the Netherlands and on the first step to the Brotherhood.

Kurt was never sure how all the stuff in between had happened (he wasn't sure about the first parts either), but Mom had said something about that nice person from America who sent the pills . . . 

Oh yes, it had to do with the pills.  No doubt.  Kurt had even popped a couple after his eyes went weird to see if they'd regress, but he hadn't held out any hope and, if the person from America had called, (s)he apparently didn't either.

This was just part of it, then, and Kurt would just have to ride it out.  Besides, teleporting had apparently gotten a lot easier since the fur and tail had burst out of him.

The bird scat was really very cemented onto the roof.  Kurt scowled at it, but his thumbnail was sore, so he decided to leave it alone.  

He crawled over to the railing and hauled himself up along it, peering over the side into the alleyways below, cluttered with trash and the occasional cigarette smoking punk.  There _had_ been a lot of cigarette smoking punks, lately.  Kurt was surprised there hadn't been a city meeting about it yet.

A pigeon swooped and muttered overhead and Kurt looked up automatically.  There were quite a lot of pigeons as well, but that wasn't so unusual.  Kurt thought he remembered Toad occasionally snacking on one or two when they came down too low.  What was a little unusual, maybe, was the massive raptor-bird hovering above the pigeons, wheeling in concentric circles over Kurt's roof.  The head was lighter than the rest of the dark body and Kurt wasn't sure, but it resembled a picture in his biology book, ecosystems' chapter.  Food chain.  As he remembered, it was plants at the bottom, then bunnies, than big massive bird, what was it?  Oh yes, an eagle.  Fancy, an eagle in Bayville.  Hadn't the chart in his book been a _mountain ecosystem?  
  
_

Oh well.  Kurt felt like teleporting again.  He directed his attention back in front of him, not up or down, his elbows hooked loosely over the railing.  Not too far distance, probably in 'port range, was a massive house.  Ah yes, the Gifted Institute, hoity-toity.  It was largely alone and only one road went by it -- certainly no lower subdivision structures cramped its living spaces.

Kurt was suddenly and irrationally angry that the house, the mansion, existed at all.  What right did it have to exist, really?  What were Gifted kids anyway?

He actually had to strain to remember who lived there -- it shouldn't have been too hard, the other Brotherhood members didn't like them much and kept talking about them, although usually when they thought Kurt wasn't listening.  Erm.  Scott Summers.  He kinda remembered him.  Straight-backed chap, sunglasses.  Right, that was why he was interesting.  Sunglasses.

There'd been other kids, like, a red-head girl and . . . some blond dude and . . . no, pretty much escaped him at the moment.  They all lived at this Institute that the Brotherhood chuckled at and probably envied, there was always a sort of restrained holiness to their jibes, and it sat alone and unchallenged in its little grove of trees.

Of course, Kurt knew where he was going to teleport next.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do once he emerged.  Or rather, he had some ideas, and not a one of them was proper.  The one at the forefront of his mind involved doing a little urine damage to the bushes from the viewpoint of the roof and he squeamishly dismissed it only for the idea to rise again and again, insistently and wickedly, all in the period of time it took for him to travel from one roof-top to another.  His landing was comparitively graceful this time -- his splat resulted from a slight fall of half a foot.

One he regained what little bearings he had, he made an awkward attempt to balance on his too-large feet, which seemed to want to be bent practically in two, with all the weight on the front squishy part below his toes.  When he jerked his back out of its monkey-slouch, it only sent spikes of pain up and down his spine in protest, until he was forced into the comfortable and disturbingly inhuman position again.  

He waddled over to the railing a little slowly, his gait still unfamiliar.  The nasty prank kept chewing at his frontal lobe, demanding to be used, and Kurt feared if he _didn't do it, it'd latch onto his dreams and haunt him for at least the rest of his life.  The problem was it was a __stupid idea and the Institute kids were unlikely to notice it and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't secretly praise him for his ingenuinity and punky brilliance.  They'd write him off, quite understandibly, as a dirty, uncreative vandal and maybe press charges.  In his current state, charges were the last thing he needed pressed._

His mind was trying to turn that last sentence into a pun when he reached the railing and looked down . . . and someone was coming up.  Yes, coming _up and not in some expensive, useless stained glass elevator, no, coming up without aid of wires or platforms or __anything.  It was a black woman with long, flowing white hair and a blue cape Kurt couldn't fathom the use of, her white-gloved hands outstretched and she was looking directly at him and flying closer by the second._

Kurt backed hastily away from the railing, but two steps later, she was already hovering over the roof, she'd be facing him directly if she wasn't floating, and her eyes were cold.

"I believe you are trespassing."

She was right, but Kurt hadn't expected the denizens of the Institute to be able to fly.  "Ach, I vas just leavink, I am sorry."

If the woman had been about to answer, she was interrupted by a cacophonous burst of noise from behind Kurt, who whirled around, half panicked.  There was an elevator landing mid-roof and it was opening, pouring out quite a few kids in gaudy uniform, well, three, maybe.  One with a visor, a red-head, and a surly looking girl with pale skin.  A bald man in a wheelchair creaked out behind them.

Kurt felt surrounded and more than a little threatened.  Naturally, he didn't have any weapons or advantageous talents to deal with any of it, so he poised to teleport . . . and found that he couldn't.  The tingle was there, but so muted and worn that he'd apparently used his juice up for the moment.  Therefore, his only option was to stall for time.

Considering how everyone was staring at him, he possibly had some routes in that direction.

"Stay back!" he warned, flailing a thick finger at visor-boy, red-head, and black woman in turn.  "I am Balreialr-ting, the demon auf . . . eccoseeestem and ze first vun to moof vrong vill turn eento . . . alga--"

The bald man sighed.  "Your name is Kurt Wagner and you've suffered an acceleration of mutation.  You are not a demon."

Kurt blinked and grasped for the broken fragments of drama.  "Nein, I am a demon auf third order.  Ja, third order.  You aunly tink of me as mutant because demons are beyond your comprehension!  Ja, I sold my soul for zhis pover and --"

"You are also Catholic."

"I sold my soul very _recently . . . "  Kurt gave up.  "Who aure you?"_

"We're the X-Men," the visored-kid offered.   "Mutants.  You know us, sort of.  The Professor alerted us when you went jumping all over town, but you'd have seen us in street clothes.  I'm Scott Summers."

"Eet rings a bell.  A leetle bell, but a bell."  The red-head looked about to introduce herself too, but Kurt felt the spark of his power renewing itself and, wow, look at the time.  "Ach, I apologize again for intrudink, auf veidersein!"

He crouched into 'port position and . . . nothing happened.  A flash of very strong annoyance crossed his face.

"I vould like to leaf, if you don't mind," he accused, looking directly at the bald man because bald men are always behind these kind of things.  Everyone _knows bald men are psychic, because all that thought energy kills hair._

"Kurt, the . . . emergence of your power has caused some strange occurances.  We need you here a little longer."

Kurt said something he was not normally accustomed to saying and lunged at the red-head out of simple frustration, but with a little . . . persuasion from the cold, ungloved fingers of the sullen goth girl, he became quite lax and, if not _willing_ to descend to the X-Men's secret chambers, too unconscious to care anyway.

Besides, it was a good day to be unconscious.


	8. In which the Brotherhood is very worried...

Lance was frantic. The past two hours had been spent running up the stairs and down the stairs and up again, hands flailing on either side of his chest as if he were trying to fly. Every once in a while, he'd tilt back his head and yell, "Ku-uu-urt!" and when there was no answer, resume running up and down, up and down.

Todd, Freddy, and Tabitha were seated on the couch, watching the brown-haired delinquent instead of the television. Their expressions varied, respectively, from resigned concern, confusion, and out-right boredom. Not a one of them knew why their leader was doing this, as it seemed to have no use other than general exercise, but Tabitha and Freddy agreed that Todd's hypothesis was as close as anyone short of Xavier could manage.

Running up and down stairs was easier than dealing with the fact that there was no way to find Kurt if he didn't want to be found, other than resorting to asking Xavier, which Lance would rather bite his pinky off than do.

Still, everyone involved, likely Lance included, would have really appreciated the running to stop, if only because it started to give one a headache.

Thankfully, Pietro chose that moment to storm through the door.

"Where's Kurt?" he barked simultaneous with Lance halting so abruptly he somersaulted down to the entry way.

Todd shrugged. Lance moaned brokenly. Freddy shook his head.

Tabitha said, "Sorry, 'tro, not a clue. Kurt-boy teleported somewhere, guess he'll come back when he's hungry." She jumped up, clapping her hands. "He-ey, speaking of hungry, why don't we --"

Pietro zipped around the room and placed his hand firmly over Tabby's mouth. Her brow furrowed into an insulted glower, but he'd already forgotten her and was addressing the proper part of the Brotherhood. 

"WegottagetKurtbacknow," he snapped so rapidly that Freddy put his hand up to his head as if to stop his ears ringing. "You idiots," and it was apparently an effort to slow down, "have just messed everything up. Everything. I did some checkingup this morning and the hospital was feeding Kurt what he needed, you see? It was a front, it was all a front."

"What?" Lance whined, trying to sit up and having trouble.

"GuesswhowasrunningKurt's treatment, lamebrain?" Pietro had snapped around the room again to knock on Lance's forehead. Lance's eyes rolled up toward the speedster groggily. Pietro sniffed. "Guess, guess, anyone guess?"

"Magneto?" 

"Genius, Todd, genius. You'retotallyright. Which is reallyfunny because he told me he didn't have _nothin'_ to do withthis and his fingerprintsarealloverit, right?"

"Magneto changed Kurt?" Todd was apparently the only one following the train of conversation and he looked a little apprehensive. Pietro thought he knew why.

"What? What, you afraid he'll makemoreofafrog out of you? Don' worry about it, that's not what happened." Pietro was then leaning on the back of the couch, snapping his fingers and enjoying his speed despite everything. "What everyone's trying to do, looks like, is _keep_ Kurt from mutating more. And then you take 'im out of the hospital and whoop-di--"

"Magneto could have stopped the rescue if he'd wanted to," Todd pointed out.

"No! No no no no, that's where you're all wrong. Couldn'thave. I looked at the records and he wasn't in town and once you ripped out the IVs, Kurtty was done for."

"This's gonna kill him?" Lance had finally managed a sitting position and stared narrowly at Pietro, mouth tilted painfully to one side.

"Idunno. But something's up, I'm telling you. Magneto wanted me to find this, had to, but he lied to my face, or to my phone, doesn't matter, when I asked him. I dunno why. But I'm thinking he wants us to act or something and I'm no mind reader and I can't do anything until I find Kurt. What'shelikenow anyway?"

"Ever seen Legend?" Tabitha crooned.

Pietro flicked a glance at her. "Nowhy?"

"How about . . ." she paused. "Fantasia?"

"Mmmmmaybewhy?"

Tabitha stretched, her long painted fingers clasped neatly over her head. "Remember the last sequence, with the mountain that turned into . . . "  


"Adevil? Yeah, I remember that."

Tabitha smiled. "There you go."

Pietro opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, then turned suddenly thoughtful, one crooked finger propped against his chin. "How'd that work?"

Todd shrugged. "Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Just because mutation is a _genetic_ thing and there's no way on earth Kurt could genetically end up looking like a demon, I don't think. _And_ smell like fire and brimestone when he teleports."

Pietro noted quickly to himself that Todd's vocal tone was different than usual. _Whatever_. "Kindaweird."

Todd got up off the couch and hopped past Pietro until he was between him and the window. When everyone's attention landed warily on him, he spread his pale hands and smiled greenishly phospherescent. "Yo, my friends. Pietro is right. We have to find Kurt and soon. There's too many things bound up in him and _what_ he is for us not to."

"Todd?" Lance asked, his eyes wide with something like fear.

Todd bowed, took a few steps backward, and pulled the curtains away from the window.

Lining the streets and spilling onto the ragged lawn were filthy teenager after filthy teenager, most smoking, all lounging with all the casual comfort of kids that own each and every inch of land they walk on. A few were hanging in and on top of Lance's jeep. One was attempting to dismantle the engine from behind.

Lance made a strangled sound and made a clumsy and short-lived dash for the door. Vertigo claimed him before he got halfway and he was on the floor again, groaning.

Pietro paced the room a fast-ten-times, than glared out the window.

"Whatdoesthismean? What's goingon? Howd'youknowaboutit, then, huh?"

Todd let the curtains fall, his swamped over eyes brightening. "Magneto does not keep his secrets as close as I keep mine, but I will tell you as we walk. Let's take the back door, shall we?"


	9. In which Scott has low blood sugar

Once upon a time, an innocent young child watched Sesame Street in German. The mouths didn't move in time with the words and the polka music in the background was entirely anti-contemporary, but there was something that was very contemporary and _very important_ and . . . 

Kurt was suddenly awake, as abruptly as if someone stuck a finger in his eye, and groaned. He had hated waking up mid-dream since sixth grade, when he'd had a vision of the last episode of _Big Samurai in Lederhosen_ and, because of his alarm clock, never got to see the end.

It took a moment to get past his dream-less angst and put together the events previous to his nap.

"Oh."

He didn't know where he was. The room was very white, very sterile, and very large. It rather resembled a hospital.

"Oh."

And then, although he wasn't quite sure how he didn't notice it before, there was a heavily banged face with giant red glasses hovering over him.

"AAAAAAAAAUGH!" he cried in terror and swung up at the face, which promptly yelled back at him and vanished.

Kurt was on the other side of the bed and had his thick fingers positioned in the basic shape of a machine gun, waiting for the reappearance of the scary-glasses-demon, before you could mumble Sprecken-ze-doitze.

Slowly, a hand found its away onto the mattress and dragged a shoulder-connected-to-a-neck-connected-to-a-head-connected to _my goodness, glasses! _and Kurt lurched forward, one vicious finger (representing the business end of the gun, in case you weren't sure) heading straight for one of the lenses.

"AAAAAUGH!" Glasses-man shrieked and grabbed both the finger and a finger on the adjoining hand. "STOP THAT!"

Kurt bore his teeth and tried to tug free, but the glasses-man was too powerful. "I vill keeeelll you slowly vith my povers of darkness eef you do not let go." 

"I'm not going to let go until you stop trying to break my nose!" 

"Zhen you vill DIE!" Kurt screamed, his fangs white and glistening and vicious . . . but glasses didn't let him go, so he huffed and deflated. "Fine, I vill stop tryink to break your nose."

"Promise?" the glasses asked warily.

"No, vait, I don't promise!" Kurt recanted, remembering something. "I do not promise if zees is hospital, because last time I vas een hospital, I turn into zees and I fear that if I turn any more, I vill not be able to get driver's liscence, is zees clear?"

"This isn't a hospital," glasses said firmly. "It's the infirmary of the Xavier Institute. We haven't done anything to you, I promise."

"Xavier . . . ach, yes, you knocked me out, I see now. You feel responsible for my recovery, then?"

"Yes, actually." The glasses' expression was bemused. "I thought Rogue's action, knocking you out, that is, was a little over-kill. I honestly don't understand why the Professor wanted you in custody, for that matter. So you could say I feel responsible, which is why I was next to your bed."

"Oh, all right. In zat case, I vill not break your nose."

"Thanks." The glasses let him go. Kurt squatted, massaging his fingers. "My name's Scott, in case you forgot."

"Ach, I did. Hello. I am Kurt, eef you likevise forgot."

"I didn't.  


"You are talented." Kurt tried to stretch out of his squat, but his spine was still not co-operating. He sighed. "Zees is ze peeeets, no offense."

"None taken. So . . . " Scott leaned on the other side of the bed. "You just woke up like this?"

"No. I vas avake vhen zees happen."

"Painful."

"Ja, very. Like bacon."

"What?"

"You know, like bacon. Haf you ever vonder how a piece of bacon feel when it is dropped in pan?"

"Oh, I get it."

"Gut. Zat pain, however, ees nothink to pain of lookink in mirror."

"Oh, it's not that bad."

"You tink not?"

"At least you still have a face. That looks human. And I know a couple of girls who would probably be whole-heartedly for your look."

"Tink I could be rock star?"

"Maybe. Why not? People'd probably assume it was a costume. I mean, that's what they assumed about Orlando Bloom in Lord of the Rings."

"Zat vasn't a costume?"

"Nah, he's a mutant. Really useless power, so useless, I forgot what it was. But those naturally pointed ears came in handy. And, by the way, Elijah Wood really _is_ that short . . . "

Kurt's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You aure pullink my leg."

Scott paused, then nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."

"But you aure mutants."

"Yeah. If I took off my glasses," he tapped a lens, "I could blow a hole through the wall. No, I _would_ blow a hole through the wall. No control at all."

"I can see how zat vould be inconvenient."

"You have no idea. Try out for the football team? No way, man, I get tackled and there goes the field."

Kurt snickered and decided Scott was okay, even if he was a member of a fascist commune of anti-Kurts. "Who are ze others? Vhat do zhey do?"

"Jean's a telepath . . . like the Professor, but she's also telekinetic -- can move things with her mind. There's Rogue -- she sucks life force through skin contact. That pretty much translates to knocking people out. Oh yeah, and she gets powers -- she'd be able to teleport for a short while from touching you."

Kurt scowled. Teleportation was so his personal thing.

"Um, there's Kitty, and she can walk through walls and stuff. Storm controls the weather. Wolverine slices things and then Evan can shoot bones out of his body. That's about it."

"Shoot bones out of hees body? Vouldn't that hurt?"

"Well, between you and me, he does make these odd sounds when he's doing it. But it sounds more like, say, constipation than _pain_."

(A/N: Well, it _is_.)

Kurt stared, then considered. "Oh, I tink I know how he feel."

The intercom buzzed on and Kurt politely shut up.

"Scott. Is Kurt awake?" It was the bald man's voice.

"Yes, Professor."

"Excellent. If you could escort him to the library, I would appreciate it."

The intercom snapped off. Scott scratched his head and shrugged.

"I wonder if he's tired," he mumbled, then turned back to Kurt. "Feeling up to a little jaunt through the halls?"

"Vill you haf to blindfold me so I vill not reveal your position to my people?"

"I don't think that will be necessary. A good clean brain-washing will be quite sufficient. After you!" Scott stood, pointing his arm toward the door with a cheerful flourish. 

Kurt was making a valiant effort to stand on two feet when a girl ran right through the door, sobbing hysterically. This struck him as unusual and, from Scott's double-take, it _was_ unusual, even here.

"Kitty, what's . . . ?"

"Rogue's dead!" Kitty howled, collapsing from either grief or exhaustion or some suitable mix of the two to her knees. Scott's expression fell immediately from troubled bewilderment to waxy horror.

"No. Kitty, how is that . . ." His voice was strained, a little hollow, and Kurt wanted to run. 

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. It was horrible, she was all right, but she said she felt a little dizzy, so she sat down and then . . . I don't know what happened!"

"She can't just _die_," Scott asserted loudly. "Where is she? Has anyone called an ambulance? Called the Professor . . . " His face dropped a couple of notches paler. "No, the Professor should . . . "

Kitty was now crying too hard to talk. Scott waited. Kurt watched his ashen fingers tapping against his thigh with scared impatience. His stomach hurt. _I shouldn't be here . . . _

"She's in the TV room," Kitty finally gasped. "Jean called the ambulance and Evan went to tell the Professor."

"When did this happen?"

"Five minutes ago."

"Evan should have . . . " Something else was clicking in Scott's brain and his brows furrowed dangerously. "Something's up. We need to evacuate, now."

"And leave Ro--"

"If she's dead, there's nothing we can do. I'll follow you -- get Jean, get Evan, get everyone you can, and ru--"

Kurt, absolutely baffled, found a thread of something to grab on to. "I haf never tried, but maybe I could teleport Rogue or someone . . . "

He stopped, slowly realizing that Scott hadn't finished his sentence and Kurt's offer had been too belated to count as an interruption. Kitty was already gone, but Scott was still staring transfixed at the door, one hand carefully going up to his nose.

It was bleeding.

Kurt thought he understood (he was getting quicker, after all). "Ach, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make your . . ."

Scott fainted.


	10. The Brotherhood is in a constant state o...

"Whaddya mean 'e's contagious?" Lance growled at Toad, who was hopping ahead of him and the rest of the Brotherhood at a harried pace. Lance hated walking at more than a saunter and he particularly hated walking away from his Jeep when a bunch of nasties were dismantling it. He also hated Toad not making any sense.

"What Kurt has is _not_ a mutation," Toad said wearily. "It's a disease. He inherited it from his father."

"That'samutation, like Iinherited mind from _my_ father, what'sthedeal?"

"It is _not_ a mutation. Listen. Some people like to visit Las Vegas. Some have ambitions of visiting the moon. Kurt's father had the penchant and the talent to go wandering around into other dimensions. Have any of you seen War of the Worlds?"

Tabitha nodded. "Kinda lame, I thought, special effects were _so_ fifties and the girl was useless . . . "

"Yes, yes. Do you remember how the aliens died?"

"Sure! They caught the 'common cold' and died. Way to cheat us out of explosions."

"Let's just say that Kurt's father caught the equivelent of the common cold when he went wandering."

"Sohegotsomekind of alien disease?"

"Essentially, yes. Manifested in humans, it's a disease of fear."

"Fear?"

"We got nothin' to fear but fear itself! We can conquer the fear, we don' fear no fear!"

"Righton,man."

Toad sighed. "Not that kind of fear. It doesn't make you afraid. What it _does_ is feed off this communial fear or that of _everyone_ within a certain radius and turns you into it."

"Ooooh,oooh, Igetit!" Pietro snickered. "KurtgrewupCatholic in a Catholicplace, didn't he?"

"Yes, you are catching on."

"That'sareallyweirddisease."

"I bet the aliens in the War of the Worlds found the cold very bizarre as well."

Tabitha frowned. "What about all the delinquents . . . "

"It's a secondary-effect, I think. When Kurt's father had it, a good fourth of all the young women within ten miles took to wearing black leather and making vicious attacks on all the local mechanics."

"Was Kurt's father afraid of women in black leather?"

"Yes, actually."

"So it _is_ a disease of fear."

"We don' fear no fear!"  


"Yes, yes, you're very good at that. It's a secondary effect though -- temporary. I don't know why large amounts of seemingly uninfected people go act out the infectee's fears. Alien diseases are frankly beyond my comprehension."

"Allright,allright." Pietro was snapping his fingers in agitation. "That'sgreat, Todd, but sofar you could be making itallup, 'cause there's one problem. I'llaskagain. Howd'you know all this?"

"I'm Kurt's brother. And father, at the moment."

Everyone stopped walking. There was a stunned silence.

Then Tabitha snickered.

Lance did not. 

"WAIT A MINUTE, THAT'S NOT RIGHT!"

"You can't do that!" Freddy wheezed.

"Howcanyoubeanyone's father, you'retotallyfourteen, man!"

"HIS BROTHER?"

Toad waved his hands for silence. "No, no. Sorry, I launched into this wrong. Look. I'm sorta _possessing_ Toad at the moment. See? It's okay."

"THAT'S NOT OKAY!"

"Shhh, we have to keep walking!"

"NOT UNTIL YOU EXPLAIN YOURSELF, BUDDY!"

"Yeah! Stop possessing Toad!"

"I didn't have any choice in this instance."

"IF YOU WEREN'T IN TOAD'S BODY I WOULD BEAT YOU UP!"

"Yes, yes, I know! Now calm down. Toad's fine. He's right here."

"THEN LET HIM SAY YO!"

Toad's expression shifted to be somewhat less weird. He gave Lance an irritated glance. "Yo. There you go, yo, yo, yo! Is that all you ever wanna hear me say, man?"

Lance smiled, mollified. "It's you!"

"Yeah, yeah, it's me, man. So I'm gonna let Papa talk now. I mean, I had no idea I was _this_ messed-up. It's fascinating." Todd yawned and the expression turned weird again.

"There. Happy?"

"Sure.Sure. Howareyoupossessing Toad?"

"That's a long story. Let's walk."

Everyone grumbled, but resumed walking.

"We'll have to go back about seventeen years. I'd just come back from a particularly hostile dimension, infected. Of course, I had no idea I was infected at first. For about three months, I lived as normally as I usually did. My wife became pregnant during this time (this is important) and everything was swell. Then I, out of the blue, became very ill. I was frantic -- I had some extensive knowledge of medical practice and knew this wasn't anything the hospitals would know of, so I ran to my friend Hank McCoy for help.

"He was a bit of an esoteric doctor, most talented in the medicine of mutants (a group we both fit into, long before it was fashionable) and he did the best he could. Which was quite good -- the resulting medication halted the disease's progression. Unfortunately, my friend had become infected during the course of my care. His body became so horribly deformed that he couldn't so much as crawl across the kitchen to reach the phone, much less to his lab to retrieve the medication. He asphyxiated on the floor when his lungs started playing dodgeball with his liver and lost."

Lance winced. That didn't sound fun.  


"I was aghast. The disease, which had been horrible for me, but not fatal, could not only be gruesomely fatal, but, yes, I could pass it on to other people. Which meant, I had to realize, that my wife _had_ to be infected. I hadn't been very careful. Oh, I hadn't gone out in public at all, but I had gone _home_.

"She did have it, we found out (I had figured out Hank's methods and machines from his notes), but harmlessly. She was becoming slightly scaley, which ticked her off, but her disease was benign. Safe. 

"Because I was still taking medication, I was likewise safe, but my wife was prone to over-reaction. Upon learning she was contaminated, she immediately took matters into her own hands and killed me."

"Wow, and you're still talking, too," Tabitha said snidely. Toad ignored her.

"I somehow ended up in Hank's computer. My wife found me typing out my memoirs when she gave birth to Kurt and decided it might be a good idea to analyze him for the disease, just in case. I didn't harbor too much of a grudge, so I helped her. And, when it turned out he did indeed have it, I synthesized the medication for him.

"Only, we were short on money and the synthesis was expensive. My wife was close friends with Magneto and he agreed to fund the medication. A couple of years later, my wife tired of the whole thing, put Kurt up for adoption, and ran off with some guy called Cable. Toad was the result of that and he also had the disease, but, fortunately, it was the benign sort. Very fortunately, as I sat alone in the computer, synthesizing medication for one person only, and my wife never cared to check out that second child (who went up for adoption about a year after he was born)."

Lance idly noticed that Toad's fist was clenched, apparently independant from the dry voice coming out of his mouth. _Hey, he's got good reason. What a crummy mom_.

"Three months ago, Magneto essentially told me to 'bug off,' that he was going to make the medicine himself this time. Considering the fact he could smash me with a thought, I let him. Then he told me to stop synthesis. Permenantly. Or, yes, computer smash.

"I was naturally suspicious, but there wasn't much I could do about it. At the time of the month where I usually made the medicine, most of my power was cut off. See, I'd been moved to a back corner of the factory after my wife left and they'd apparently received orders that I was . . . 'storage material' and to supply me with my usual store of electricity would be a waste. I was a little peeved. So I did a little research on my remaining power and found out that Magneto had altered the chemical when I did his little self-service thing -- added a low level toxin which would pretty much ensure that Kurt would never want his medication again. Same way a dog won't touch chicken 'n' rice dogfood for life after one bowl's been laced with vinegar.

"This really ticked me off. In all my years inside a computer, I'd be terribly lax if I hadn't figured out astral projection. My power was always of a mostly mental nature anyway. So I went wandering around, gathering information -- I actually sat in the back of Kurt's mind first, since he was most attuned to me, being my son and all -- but after the disease really took, I found Toad. He's letting me 'possess' him, you know. I'm not so powerful to take anyone by force."

Lance thought that was quite enough of a headache for one day and was trying to figure out what all this was supposed to imply. Pietro was faster.

"Magneto didn't want Kurt to takehismedicine? Butwhy? Hewastaking care of him at the hospital . . . "

Lance caught up. "'E didn't tell us 'e was. If 'e would've, we wouldn't 'ave rescued 'im. Maybe 'e wanted us to."

Pietro thinned his lips. "Maybe, maybe. Maybe hedidn'twant Kurt going all publicwithhisdisease at the hospital. Whatif all the doctorscaughtit?"

"But 'e wants 'im to go public _now_?"

Pietro's expression turned nasty. "He's CONTAGIOUS!" He whirled on Toad. "We're allgonnacatch it if we . . . Lanceand'em might already beinfected, could they?"

"No," Toad said firmly. "No. I found one more thing on the computer. Magneto made something else. An antidote . . . a vaccine, more like it. Quite a brilliant piece of work. If I'm not mistaken, and I usually am not in these cases, you have all been ingesting the vaccine in your food and water for weeks now. You're immune. You won't catch it."

"Butyou're notabsolutelysure. Whatifwedo? What then?"

"There's three possibilities I know of. You catch it and it alters you, but you are not contagious. Or it alters you and you are. Or . . . it alters you so fast and hard you die."

Everyone stopped again. Toad didn't protest. Lance looked at Pietro and Tabitha in turn, then Freddy, whose face was vacant with fear.

"Let Toad talk," he said with more authority than he usually felt.

"'m here again," Toad's voice said weakly. Lance nodded and took a step back so he could see all four of the Brotherhood clearly.

"What do you think? We go find Kurt?"

"How'rewegonnafind Kurt? He could be anywhere."

"Does . . . _he_ know where Kurt is, Toad?"

Toad's eyes briefly disfocused and then he nodded. "Yeah, he does. He's got a bit of a, I dunno, spiritual tracking thing still in Kurt. He's at the Institute."

"TheInstitute?"

"The _INSTITUTE?_"

"Who's gonna bet they ain't immune?!"

"Who's gonna bet we are?"

"Magneto's trying to kill us all!"

"Or mebbe just them,there'salways that."

"What are we gonna do?"

"We could," Toad said slowly, "just leave it. Go back to the House and wait for it to go away. But if we've just heard the truth, I don't think it will."

"IfPopwantstokilluswith Kurt, hewill."

"I think I'm willing to bet," Tabitha raised her hand, "that we _are_ immune. We're not the targets. The X-Men are."

"Toad, ask the guy how the disease is passed on?"

Another disfocus. "He says that once the disease reaches the contagious stage -- and he says Kurt reached that when his tail came out -- it can be spread through extended being-in-the-same-room . . . and that's only more than ten minutes, guys! That's all! Or physical contact. That's it."

"We'd have it," Lance said numbly. 

"Uh huh."

"So we're immune."

"In that case . . . "

"Mightaswellgo, Iguess."

Lance propped his chin on the back of his hand, thinking. "But if we do . . . and Magneto's behind this . . . we'll be going against him."

"He'splayedusforfoolsandpawns. Who cares?"

"Where's Mystique?" Lance wondered suddenly.

Toad let out a snort. "Oh, wow, I think I'm going to let Pops come back out again." Disfocus, then weird focus. "I don't know where she is. But she _is_ your . . . ah, mentor, right?"

Lance nodded. "She's not around much, but yes."

"She's kept her friendship with Magneto as far as I know. No indication she wouldn't have. So I bet she's part of it. Considering you're supposed to be the X-Men's vicious opposites . . . "

"Whoa,wait. She'stotallyyourwife, isn't she?"

Lance admitted to himself that, abrupt as Pietro's thought was, it made some sense. Kurt was blue, Mystique was blue . . .

"Uh huh. This is true. She was. And she might find this kind of thing fun."

Lance growled. Surprisingly, the entire Brotherhood echoed him, almost in tandem.

"That's low," Tabitha hissed. "That's real low."

"Don't like the X-Men, but no," Freddy agreed.

"Reallyreally_really_don't like the X-Men, butthere'snothingintaking them down like this. It'sunderhanded,it's sneaky, andwe're totallyleftout of it. Theyjustwantedus to blunder into themess and makeitalllooklike an accident. Idon'tlikeit, Idon'ttrust it. But,but,but,Magneto didn'tcover his tracksrealwell,sowhatifusshowingupwill all be part of the plan?"

Another silence.

"What can we do?" Tabitha shrugged. "We can't just stand here, can we?"

Pietro exhaled. "No,nono, we can't. Wegottago."

"What kind of Brotherhood would we be if we let some bubonic plague eat the X-Men?"

"You can't _pound_ corpses."

"Exactly."

"Yeah."

A few rounds of nervous laughter. Then.

"We're still standing here."

"Then let's go," Toad said and resumed hopping down the street. The Brotherhood followed him, after a brief delay due to Lance excusing himself to throw up in a handy dumpster.

The earthshaker just wasn't good with this kind of stress, all things being true and honest.


	11. Scott is miserable

Scott's skin was burning. Like every normal, occasionally outdoorsy child-of-the-nineties, he got a sunburn every now and then. Once, heck, he'd even leaned his elbow against a lightbulb and raised a blister the size of his thumb. This wasn't like that. This was like being dropped into a Boy Scout firepit, with walls higher than Scott was tall, and left to slowly incinerate until his ashes would make a soft, grey bed for the next victim.

He felt himself thrashing with pain, but the thrashing was remote and he hurt too much to open his eyes. This seemed to go on interminably until some part of his brain became too used to the agony for it to be such a ferocious novelty any more and, oddly enough, a vague itching in his nose became more and more defined until it was maddening and demanded his attention.

Then, Scott opened his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was that his glasses were missing. The second thing he _should_ have noticed was a marked lack of roof and a whole lot of plaster raining down on his body. Instead, the second thing he noticed was that, instead of the usual spectrum of reds he usually saw, the spectrum was now entirely in grey.

He scratched his nose. According to his new vision, his fingers came away black and glistening.

He wanted to sneeze.

Instead, he swept his eyes sidelong and found someone. Kurt was crouched behind a chair, eyeing him as if he were a bomb about to expode and get all around very messy.

"It's all right," Scott gasped. "My powers don't seem to be working."

"I am sorry about your glasses," Kurt said, as if he hadn't heard. "I deed not remove zhem, but vhen you voke up, you broke zhem very vell. I vas quite impressed. Perhaps you remember," he finished at a feeble squeak.

Now that Kurt mentioned it, Scott did remember very briefly standing up, and then tossing himself down on his face, linking his arms over his head and kinda running along the ground with his forehead pressed to the floorboards until he ran into the wall. He didn't think ruby quartz was all that fragile, but perhaps he'd crushed the rims with his shenanigans. Smashing his face into the floor didn't seem terribly productive in retrospect, but the overall pain in his body had justified it at the time.

"Yeah, I remember. I think I'm still in a little, um, distress." And he sneezed. His nose only itched worse.

"I tink you haf part of ze floor embedded in your face."

"I haven't noticed yet. Too many other things in the way."

"You know, I am gettink zhees vague feelink zat zhees may be all my fault, somehow."

"Oh, hey, just probably coincidence. I'm betting on this all being a really nasty nightmare at the moment, if you don't mind."

"Not at all. I prefer ze nightmares, I tink."

Scott sneezed again. Grief for Rogue was gnawing at the back of his brain, but, selfish as it probably made him, his own torment was more pressing now. "Do you know if anyone got out?"

"I vatched ze vindow for a vhile. I must admit, I deed not see anyone, but zat means probably nothink. Zhere are many exits in zhees mansion, right?"

"Sure." He could have gone for a little confirmation, though. "Has anyone come in here?"

"No. No one."

"Huh."

"I deed tink I might teleport you out, but I vas frightened I vould kill you. I haf never done it before."

"It's all right. This is as good a place as any." Another sneeze. "Crap. I'm getting blood all over my shirt, I know it."

"I vill get another tissue. I vas tryink to stop the blood before you voke up."

"Don't bother. I suppose you've stayed here the whole time?"

"It vould not be very gentlemanly of me to leaf you here, vould eet?"

"I want to know what happened to Rogue. Can you go look for me? I'll be fine."

A nice lengthly hesistation. "I vill be right back."

Kurt loped off on all fours toward the door. It was somewhat unsettling to watch him and even more unsettling when he left and it was just Scott, lying on the floor, with his nose itching worse than before. He sneezed -- or almost did. This time, there was something blocking his nostrils and something like a small explosion echoed inside his sinuses. He moaned and turned onto his side, pushing a knuckle against his nose.The pressure only seemed to intensify.

"Oh _maaaan_," he wailed, muffled. The pressue kept rising and his head felt on the verge of bloody rupture and he was certain he was dying.

He sneezed a final time. Something splattered thickly just aft of his mouth, draining his head in a wet pop that left him dizzy and disoriented. 

His skull, although free of the sinus infection from the dark land of sadistic exaggeration, felt very heavy. As if his neck wouldn't be strong enough to support it should he have the strength to move. Instead, the body-wide pain, although no less than before, was beginning to wrap around him like a spiked comforter, lulling him . . . 

The door swung open.

Kurt was sobbing almost as bad as Kitty had been, although his blubbering was more tinged by terror than loss. "Scott, it's . . . "

He stopped and Scott heard a muffled thud. He blacked out himself a second later . . . for the second time. How annoying.


	12. This is not slashy at all

There were many ways to get into the mansion if one really wanted to. Pietro and Toad were perfectly capable of hopping over the gates and, if mass entrance was needed, Lance'n'Freddy'n'Boom-Boom always had a knack for sheer brute destruction. Toad's current Daddy occupant claimed proficiency at disabling mechanical systems. But, oddly enough, there was an X-Man already waiting at the gates.

It was only Pietro's luck the Man would be Evan.

Despite the probable situation at the X-Mansion, Pietro expected Evan to give him an antagonistic look and snarl "What are you doing here?" but he didn't. He looked at them with something approaching_ relief_. Pietro knew right off that things were, indeedy, very bad and it hadn't been some kind of imaginative hoax at all.

"We're here for Kurt," Lance said with a strange tentiveness.

"He's in the infirmary. I can open the gates if you want . . . but you really shouldn't go in," Evan said dully. 

"Why?" Tabitha asked, but, of course, they all knew the answer.

__

Or, Pietro amended, think_ we know._

"The Professor used mind control on me," Evan answered, his voice miserable. "He made me come out the back door and skirt around the gates to meet you here. Rogue's dead."

That . . . was news. Pietro did a quick lap around the Brotherhood before he got control of himself.

"Dead? Dead-dead?"

"I was trying to tell the Professor and he wouldn't let me talk. Sent me out here. Said he wanted me to bring you in."

"Iknewit!" Pietro shrilled. "Iknewit! It'sallpartofsomeplan. We'replannedtobe here!"

"What plan?" Evan grated, sounding like his old self for a moment.

"Youneedtogetout of here," Pietro said, pulling Evan up by his shoulders and pushing him toward the street. "Farfarfar away."

"I can't leave the X-Men!" But Evan didn't seem to be struggling. Only, once Pietro had shoved him into the gutter, he stopped, as if rooted, and all Pietro's efforts (of a level that wouldn't end up turning Evan into a grease stain, anyway) were futile.

Evan seemed as dumfounded as he was by it. "I think I'm still being controlled!"

Pietro swore. "Evan,hewantsyoudead! Orwhatever!"

"Who?"

"Magneto! Kurt's gottadiseaseandwe'reimmunetoit, but you're not and it could _kill_you."

"Then the X-Men!" Evan panicked, stomping past Pietro and back toward the gate. "They've been in there --"

"Long enough." Toad put a restraining hand on Evan's shoulder. "Long enough, Evan. If Xavier can _make_ the students contract the disease, force them to, he's already done it."

Evan stared at him, then shrugged off Toad's hand in disgust. "It doesn't matter! You said _Magneto_ wanted to kill us, not Xavier! Why would Xavier . . . that doesn't make any sense. And I can't _leave_ them."

"Well,apparentlyyoucan't. Hewon'tletyou. But maybe . . . " Pietro exchanged a glance with Lance, who, for once, seemed to be lighting up with recognition of a possibility at the same time Pietro did.

"Mesmero," they blurted out as one.

"Who?"

"He'sthisnut."

"Came to the House a couple of times to show off. Accompanied by Magneto."

"Whowasallpleased with his _new_ toy."

"Made Toad sing the entire soundtrack of Annie."

"Reallyembarressing."

"_And_ he looks kinda like Xavier."

"MakethatalotlikeXavier."

Lance smiled. "Score. We got it."

Evan looked somewhat less enthusiastic. "Do you know how to fight him, then?"

"Um. Notaclue. But it's better than it being Xavier, right?"

"Yeah. Rogue's dead," he repeated, Pietro thought, unnecessarily.

"Are you sure?" Tabitha pressed, standing on her toes. "Maybe she just _appeared_ . . . "

"Look, there's dead and there's dead," Evan snapped. "Jean didn't even _have_ to check for a pulse, all right? She did anyway, but she didn't _have_ to. It was like one moment she was fine, and the next, it was like something chewed her up and spat her out so fast we couldn't see it. Just what was _left_, and that was _her_, all right?"

Evan's complexion went to a sort of copper sickly as he talked and Pietro could feel his own wan blood draining from his face. No one had anything to say. Yes, that sounded quite real and quite dead, kinda hard to mistake that for a faint, yes, yes, yes.

"We have to go in now," Evan droned, his pallor oozing away suddenly. He turned and palmed the gates open, motioning the Brotherhood to follow.

Pietro swallowed hard.

But follow they did. 


	13. Neither is this I mean, really, it's no...

Scott dragged himself to consciousness by his fingernails. He was aided by a very insistent shake around his shoulderblades and a frightened voice creeling "VAKE UP, VAKE UP, DO NOT BE DEAD!" at the top of its lungs.

"Not dead," he muttered blearily, wishing he was. The pain was no longer quite so all-encompassing, there was at least that much relief. No, instead, it was centered in his bones and guts and skin and in slight and insignificant spots like his teeth and ears. He had absolutely no desire to open his eyes yet.

"Gut! Ooh, gut! I am very glad." The shaking stopped. "I vas very vorried."

"Thank you. I'm a-a-a-okay now."

"Ach, not really. But you are kind for pretendink."

Scott really wished that everyone could just _lose_ those hinting tremors in their voice and stick to monotones in a crisis. Of course, now he wanted to know.  


"I look horrible, don't I?"

"Do you really vant me to tell you?"

"Yes. Might as well."

"You look better zhan Rogue," he hedged.

"Oh? Rogue doesn't look so good? Looks dead?" Sarcasm was probably not helpful at the moment, but the temptation was too great.

"Very dead. Hamburger dead."

"That's very dead."

"Ja, very dead."

"I don't look very dead."

"No. You look very healthy in comparison."

"That's nice to know."

"Een fact, dear me, all ze floor you embedded een your face is back on the floor now."

"That's terrific."

"Sure you vant to hear any more?"

"Shoot. I'm game."

"You are a deer?"

"Kurt, you're being deliberately thick now."

"Sorry. Um. Eet is bad."

"All right. What kind of bad? I'll need bed rest bad, or I'll need plastic surgery bad?"

"Definitely plastic surgery."

"Oh, that kind of bad. Well, that's all right. Jean won't mind, will she? Anything else?"

"Maybe." There was a distinct hemming sound. "Um, ja."

"Can you give it to me in one straight sentense?"

"Ah . . . " Extended pause, broken sigh, and "Youaresomewhathorriblydisfiguredintoathingythereyougo."

Scott needed a moment to process that.

"What kind of thingy?"

"Ve can use Lord of the Rings terms?"

"All right. Let me guess, I resemble an orc."

"Somevhere between zhat and Aragorn's horse."

"Ouch."

"I expect it must hurt, ja."

"It hurts."

"I am sorry."

"No, it's all hunky-dory." Scott faintly wondered if the pain was subsiding. It was hard to tell. "You know what? No offense at _all_, man, but I am starting to wonder if this does have something to do with you."

He could hear Kurt's breathing suddenly become heavier. "I tink so. I tink zat ees right. I don't know vhy or how, but I tink zat ees right."

"Could you leave?" His voice was more plaintive than he wanted to admit. "I appreciate your loyalty, but I don't want to die, okay?"

"I vill leaf." There was a silence. "By ze door," he finally added, sounding rather shattered and a bit frustrated at the same time.

The door swung open a bit too early. Scott heard wheels creaking loudly on the floor. _Xavier. Only, probably not._

Kurt let out a stifled shriek and teleported. Waves of brimstone swept over his head and he scrunched up his face involuntarily.

Creak, creak, the wheels came closer. Xavier's breathing was quite audible now.

"How are you feeling, Scott?"

The old detatched kindness was horribly misplaced. Scott felt a rage well up inside him. He wanted to jump to his feet and hit the imposter, force him to admit what he was and what he'd done . . . must of done something. But he couldn't.

"If you can't tell, you're blinder than I am."

"You'll survive, Scott. Be glad of that, if nothing else. Although you are still in pain, your body is functioning far better than you think it is. I'm going to have to ask you to use it now."

"Drop dead," Scott said sweetly.

"I said I am going to have to ask you to use it now."

Scott's legs scrabbled against the floor completely independent of his mind. He could feel his toenails dangerously raking against the concrete, catching on every inconsistency, every dent or scratch, and twinging hard up his foot and into his ankle. His knees were throbbing as his thighs tried to swerve them against the ground and into a kneeling position, even while his hips just sat there, inert and thick and tired.

Scott gave up. He didn't care if that was the point, it just wasn't worth it to have half of your body under someone else's control and trying to break away from the rest of you. "I'm working on it," he gritted and his legs collapsed, his again. 

It was a slow process, standing. The muscles in his lower body were sore and torn from "Xavier's" abuse and they didn't feel _familiar. _There was that and the whole Scott still had his eyes tightly closed thing. He admitted to himself, reluctantly, that it was fear that kept them closed, now. He had enough of that wretched curiousity to want to find a mirror and suffer it all at once, but not in front of anyone, especially not _this_ creature.

When he'd found his knees and his hands in the same crawling position, he found something else. His body did not _want_ to stand. There was something chittering in the back of his mind that was extremely uncomfortable with an upright position and preferred a good-close-to-the-grass profile, driving forw . . .

Scott banished it and forced himself up.

His position was unsteady -- top-heavy with the shoulders dominating (instead of the nose, now, although the nose was still kinda oppressive in relation to its _usual_ role) and trying to drive his head and chest back down, but he could stand.

"Excellent. Now, follow me."

Still refusing to open his eyes, Scott staggered after the sound of the wheels, one hand splayed off to his right to warn him of any imminent chair or brick walls.

__

Attack him, a voice urged. _Do it now._

Now, why didn't I think of that? Scott responded belatedly, exhausted . . . and lunged.

He opened his eyes in frantic hope that something would happen. Nothing did. But the bald pate was facing him, and it was a clear shot. He formed his hand into a fist and . . . 

. . . stopped just before impact.

"No good, Scott. Are we irritable today?"

Scott, staring at his frozen fist, didn't answer.

"I'm going to have to babysit again, aren't I? Well, all right. I'll walk you."

The wheelchair started wheeling and Scott zombied along behind. His fist was still out, as if Xavier hadn't felt it worth the effort to lower it.

It was a dark fist. Its coloring was irrelevant -- Scott's color vision was still shorted out along with his power -- but it was dark and disproportionately large to his arm. It was also clawed. A rending sort of claw, appropriate to Jurassic Park, save the jaggedness of the outline of his arm had to be more due to fur than scale.

Fur, huh? Perhaps Kurt . . . 

. . . was practically right in front of him. Scott blinked. They were next to the library doors. Kurt was crouched, very still, like some sort of statuesque guardian, but he blinked a moment after Scott did and looked somewhat more aware.

"I'm going to park you two here for the time being . . . after, if you'd be so kind, Kurt, you open the door for me."

Kurt nodded listlessly and did so with an extended squeak. Scott tried to look around the wheelchair into the room, but felt a dismal boredom fall over him and stopped moving.

"I'll call for you momentarily . . . "

And the door shut.


End file.
