"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.

"Reallyreallyreallydon'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.