Chapter Seven
The room was apparently empty when Kurt got back, and he set the folder that the Professor had given him on the shared desk in their room. Noah had apparently already unpacked, all of this things fitting easily into the dresser by his bed and a little in their shared closet, which worked out fine for Kurt as he kept nearly all of his things in the large wardrobe along the wall or in the closet. Noah was no where to be seen. His bed was neatly made, just as it had been when Kurt had woken up that morning, an old and rather battered pair of tennis shoes sitting neatly at the base of the bed. The only recent addition from last night was a stack of rather peculiar books sitting on the corner of the desk, all of them marked with the seal of the Xavier Institute Library. Some were literature books that he'd seen on his reading list for next year, another for physics, another for psychology, and a very old and beaten looking copy of a book that he vaguely recognized seeing in his sisters room. Picking up to book he was met with the dour faced picture of a man he thought he recognized from the first Mummy movie. But beneath that was a stack of books that Kurt couldn't even pronounce the titles of, let alone read.
"See anything you like?" Kurt spun around quickly to see Noah striding into the room in a clean pair of ripped jeans and a nicely fitted dark blue T-shirt, toweling off his chaotic dirty blond hair. "You can borrow them if you want man. Just don't loose 'em."
"Uh, ja. Danke," Kurt said awkwardly, eyes still torn between the strange collection of books and giving a wary glance to his new roommate. "I 'ave seen zis book before," Kurt said simply, holding up the beaten and stained copy of 'Activating Evolution' and opening the pages curiously. "Mien schwesters roommate, Allie, also has one. Und hers is in similar condition," Kurt teased lightly, shutting the book soundly only to receive a puff of dirt, sand and dust in his face. Noah smiled faintly and laughed.
"Yeah, well. Considering that the book has been out of publication for nearly twenty years and that my dad had to go through some… interesting things to keep his hands on one of those puppies, I'd say it's in pretty good shape."
As Kurt finally stopped coughing he returned his friends wry grin, setting down the ancient book before speaking again. "Some of us are going out to Burger Bomb for lunch und zen maybe ve'll catch a movie or somezing later?"
Noah had his back turned to Kurt as he was pulling out a long sleeved black dress shirt from the closet and sliding it over his broad shoulders, almost like he was looking for what to say. "I'm not so sure your friends would be comfortable with that man."
"Vhas? Vhy?" Kurt asked, thoroughly confused. He knew that Evan and Bobby had some serious reservations about their newest teammate, but Noah wouldn't know about that. They hadn't even met for more than five minutes and they all seemed to get along great last night.
"Well, aside from the fact that Bobby and Evan are currently convincing each other more and more by the minute that I'm secretly an evil alien spy sent by the Russians to determine all of your abilities and potential as human weapons," Kurt made to object at the sheer stupidity of the claim, but as he thought about it realized that it was just absurd enough for those two to believe. "Kitty has decided that she wants to jump me, while Rogue is sizing me up as a potential threat to her sweat innocent little brother," Noah pinched one of Kurt's cheeks playfully and the blue boy swatted his hand away with an annoyed smirk. "Oh, and need I mention the teachers, who have yet to decide if I'm worth keeping around, if I'm going to turn on them in favor of Magneto, OR if I'm simply too powerful all together and have to be put down."
That shot Kurt out of his playful revelry in a heartbeat. "Put down? As in…?"
"As in stripped of my powers or imprisoned for life in a chemically induced comma. And if neither of those work there's always drugging and beating me to death and leaving me to die somewhere in Canada," Noah looked up, totally unaffected by his proclamations of his own demise, to see Kurt's face aghast with horror. "Oh, don't worry. Logan's the only one pulling for death and he'll be far too distracted catching up with his brother to think of killing me for, oh, at least a month or two. And the other two options would hardly work even if they could pull them off. Trust me, I'm not one easily caught by surprise."
Noah smiled wryly, but Kurt was still too shocked to return the gesture. His addled mind still caught up on the implications however.
"Your ability?"
Noah nodded absently as he sorted through the stacks of books on the desk, sorting them out and arranging a few on the free standing shelf above. But Kurt's interest had been peaked.
"Vhat exactly is it zhat you do? It didn't even look like ju had a power in ze danger room session."
"It's complicated," Noah said simply, obviously hoping to end the conversation right then and there. Kurt wasn't as ready to let the matter drop.
"Vhat? I've seen a lot of stuff in ze last two years, and I'm a pretty smart guy, or at least I zink so. I'd bet I could probably figure it out if you explained it to me."
Noah turned and smirked at the persistence of his new friend. He knew that his new blue furred companion would not be easily distracted from their current topic of conversation. Resigning himself to a very long and complicated conversation, he sat himself down on his bed to that he and Kurt were sitting opposite from one another, Kurt's faintly glowing golden orbs riveted on his friends tired gaze.
"Like you, I was born with my abilities. I just didn't know what they were until I grew older," Noah paused, searching for the words to describe something that had been so intricately a part of him since as long as he could remember. "You ever heard of the Butterfly Effect?"
"Ze crappy Ashton Kutcher movie?" Kurt asked, confusion lacing his thick accent. Noah laughed.
"Uhm, yeah. Sort of. Did you see it then?" Noah asked, still amused. Kurt nodded dumbly. "Okay, well then, remember how each time he went back into the past and changed something seemingly insignificant it had vast repercussions on the future, changing things in ways no one could have predicted?" Kurt nodded again, obviously recalling the movie as he looked confusedly at Noah. "Well I can."
Kurt's expression had gone completely blank by now. "So… you see ze future?"
"No," Noah said, a hint of regret in his voice. "I see everything…"
The room was silent for another long moment as Kurt contemplated this seriously for a while before slumping his shoulders and wrinkling his face in a weird combination of confusion and dismay. "You've lost me."
Noah laughed a little and held his hand out patiently. "Just… stay with me for a moment here, okay?" Kurt nodded attentively, honestly trying to understand what his friend was attempting to communicate to him. So Noah tried again. "Technically, my ability is referred to as being a Truth Seer. I see the past, the present, and the future, but just as I would see them, but as they truly are." Noah could see that he'd lost Kurt again, so he slowed down and tried it again from a different angle. "You know how on those criminal law shows that even when they have three eyewitnesses seeing the exact same thing, they get three different accounts of what happened because everyone notices different things?" He got a nod. "Well we all do that, pretty much all the time. Based on our beliefs, our insights, and our life experiences we all see things in a different way. It's why two people with the same core values can disagree on something- they each see the situation in a different light." Kurt nodded slowly as a vague grasp of realization began to take hold. "Me? I see things in every light. The whole prism spectrum of colors combining to create one ray of white light, supplying different colors even where they're lacked in nature so that what I see, when my powers are on, which they pretty much always are, is the truth. And let me tell you man, the history books have got it wrong on a way lot of counts man."
Noah's smirk seemed to bring Kurt from his contemplative stupor, but the boy still wasn't satisfied.
"So… when you were in the danger room…?"
"I saw the truth of each situation as it was presented to me, my capabilities versus what the room was throwing at me, the cause and affect a chain reaction of movement would set off. The action and reaction of my own body and off the computerized programming to each one of my movements. Every possible permutation of scenarios based on solely MY action."
Silence reigned in the room again before… "Zat is quite possibly ze coolest ability I 'ave ever heard of! You rock man!" Kurt said excitedly jumping up on his bed as he babbled on about the potential implications of such an enormous gift. It wasn't long before a second realization hit him though and he dropped back down into sitting position. "But… you said… zat your ability… it is always on?" Noah nodded. "Zen… you vould know every zing zat I am going to say before I say it, Ja?"
"Not exactly," Noah said contentedly, leaning back against the headboard as he stretched out languidly. "I can't turn it off, but I can most definitely tune it down. Ninety percent of the time it's on what I've come to consider a level one out of ten. Just barely there, like a spidey sense warning me if there's going to be any serious emergency type danger. Or if something really bad is happening to someone I know and I would find out later, then it goes off again so that I can help them at the time. Like I said - complicated."
"Vat vould happen if you vere to keep your power at a ten?" Kurt asked curiously after a few moments. Noah's smile faded from his face, leaving an expression similar to the one that Logan would adopt when you asked him something about a past he couldn't quite remember.
"You don't want to know man, trust me," Noah said quietly. "I don't even remember anything that happens to me if I go above a six. The human mind wasn't meant to hold that kind of knowledge or power."
The room had gone silent again. But this time, instead of feeling contemplative, Nightcrawler just felt sad. He looked long and hard at the young man that he'd fast become friends with. The young man who had a power so great that, even though he had apparently perfect control, he would always have to be holding back.
"Come on," Kurt said finally, coming to a decision. When Noah just looked at him in confusion he prodded the other teen in the side a few times. "Get up. Ve are going to Burger Bomb. If ze ozers have a problem viz it zen zey can just suck it up and get over it. If you are going to be living here zen zey'll have to deal viz it eventually anyvays. Now come on, ve are going to be late."
"I just have one question," Noah said as he made to reluctantly follow the blue teen out of their room and down the hall to the staircase. "What's a Burger Bomb?"
Kurt froze halfway down the stairs, mouth agape in horror and quickly launched into a full, loud, and very astonished explanation as to why exactly burger bomb was the greatest thing that had ever happened to the world at large. Much to the amusement of most of the teens now collected at the foot of the stairs, despite Evan and Bobby's grumblings of Russian Alien spies and how very much this was all a very bad idea.
