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.