Chapter 17
Issues
Kitty was in her element. The high-speed cable modem was humming as the teenager surfed the World Wide Web in search of entertainment. Amanda was busy today so there was no chance to hit the malls, hang out, or catch a movie. If she'd been paired with any other adult she might've considered going out with Lance, but with Logan around it wasn't worth the risk. It was better to wait to see Lance at the club than to have him dismembered. So without the possibility of going out and doing something she then had considered watching television. But about two seconds or so later, she nixed that idea. It was mid-way between morning and noon on a Monday, there would be nothing on. The only option left had been her souped up laptop and the internet.
A few keystrokes later, however, Kitty was forced to admit it. She was still bored. She had done everything that she could think of and her boredom remained. First, she visited her E-mail accounts and found nothing but junk. Then, she tried messing with her instant messenger, but no one was on. She visited all of her favorite websites and found only a few worthwhile updates. And finally, she'd taken to random web searches. After searching movies, hot actors, music, butterflies, kittens, puppies, candy bars, and video games she tried looking up Anime. Kitty recalled how Jubilee and Bobby would always sit together to watch that stuff. She'd always ignored it, but now boredom and curiosity drove her to investigate it further. So she typed 'Anime' into the text field, clicked the 'search now' button, and waited for the results. What she found was not terribly encouraging.
The first page or two of results turned out to be either porn sites or X-rated cartoons. With a sigh of frustration, she added '-porn' to her search request and tried again. This thinned the ranks of dirty sites though a few were bound to slip through some way or another. She then spent a good hour picking her way through innumerable fan sites trying to gain information on the foreign cartoons. Some of the things she found actually turned out to be quite fascinating and she made notes to look up those particular series for later. But the rest was either too explicit, too graphic, too violent, too complex, or too weird for her. Now she'd had enough of it all and was completely bored again.
Kitty felt a pair of eyes watching her and had to suppress the urge to spin her chair around and snap at the watcher. Ever since Friday night, Kurt had been in the doghouse with her. He'd left without any word or warning which had left her almost sick with worry. Then he'd reappeared out of nowhere and scared the crap out of her. And after all of that he had yet to give her any sort of excuse or explanation for his bizarre, uncharacteristic actions. So from Friday on she had given him the Silent Treatment with a healthy dose of the Cold Shoulder. Until he apologized to her, explained himself, or Logan made her would she relent. So she remained focused on her policy of silence and restrained herself from paying the blue furball any attention. Kitty glared at her screen before she brought up the solitaire program to occupy herself for a while.
"Kitty?" Kurt hesitantly whimpered.
Kitty halted her electronic card game. She kept forgetting how child-like and innocent he could sound. When she'd first met him his voice had always been flat and emotionless. At some point it had changed so that occasionally he would sound a bit more like a normal human being. After the shock of his childish plea faded she resumed playing. She wouldn't give in until she was satisfied.
"Kitty, whatever it was that I did, I'm sorry." Kurt meekly apologized.
Finally! It only took him three whole days! She thought sarcastically. She spun her chair around and silently marched up to where the blue fuzzy German lazed on his bed. Now she was going to give him a piece of her mind and maybe inform him of exactly what he'd done wrong at the same time. As she flopped down in front of him he started in surprise and cracked his head against the ceiling. The fuzzy demon then spent a minute or two clutching his bruised head and cussing. Well, at least she guessed he was cussing since he was speaking in German so she couldn't understand a word he said. When he finished, she started.
"How ignorant are you? How can you not know what you did? You ditch me, make me worry, scare me half to death, you fail to explain why, and you don't know what you did to piss me off?" Kitty snapped in her best evil, pissed off tone of voice. With every word she spat his eyes grew wider and the rest of him seemed to get smaller. Now that she was finished he looked tiny and rather silly. "Now do me a favor and explain yourself." Kitty commanded. She stiffly crossed her arms and waited.
"E-explain what?" Kurt stammered, trying his best to sound calm. Kitty glared venomously at him.
"You know what I mean." She growled.
"No I don't." Kurt replied.
"Yes you do." Kitty snapped.
"No I don't." He denied.
"Fine, I'll ask you again. Why did you leave the Blue Lotus club without telling me anything?" Kitty impatiently asked.
Kurt's mouth snapped shut and he looked away. Kitty glared daggers at him, but he seemed unaffected. Kitty frowned and shifted so that she was sitting right in front of his face. He looked back the other way. Kitty narrowed her eyes and started to poke him. The fuzzy Mutant flinched the first few times before he became numb to it. She growled a little in frustration before an idea formed in her mind. Kitty crawled behind the blue fuzzball and pounced on him. She pinned his arms to his sides and clung to his back like a human leech. Immediately Kurt froze, no matter how many times she touched him he still couldn't seem to cope with it. Kitty smirked victoriously, she had him now.
"Please answer me." Kitty cutely begged.
Apparently Kurt wasn't able to handle it because in the next second there was a BAMF sound combined with a small explosion of foul sulfuric smoke. Kurt vanished and the abruptness startled her so much that she fell through his bed and crash-landed on hers. For a couple minutes she just laid there and let her brain process what just occurred. After that was accomplished she sat up with the intention to hunt down her wayward elf. As she stood up she became aware of some sort of material in her hands. Kitty raised the object to eye-level and looked puzzled for a second. Then it clicked and she burst out laughing. Kurt must really been rattled. When he teleported away he'd left his shirt behind!
Kitty wasn't exactly sure how long she laughed, but it took her a few minutes to calm down and catch her breath. As she recovered from her laughing fit she surveyed the room. The solitaire game still was glowing on her laptop so she shut it down before leaving on her little elf hunt. She peeked in Logan's room and found it dark and empty. She took a few more steps and checked the bathroom, but no German elf was to be found. Kitty walked out into the kitchen that she found to be spotless and elf-free. Then when she peered around the corner into the living room she spotted a blue fuzzy tail swishing back and forth as it hung over the arm of the couch. Once again she smirked in victory. Gotcha!
Kurt lay stretched out flat on the couch facing the television set. The blank black screen reflected his glowing yellowish eyes back at him and he shivered. Monster. The word rose unbidden from some dark corner of his mind and echoed menacingly through his skull. Demon. A nameless, faceless voice hissed the word, which blended together with the first. Devil. A third voice snarled adding a third word to the noise swirling between his ears. Beast. A fourth voice sang out in hateful glee. Animal. A fifth voice spat with bitterness and spite. Freak. A final voice muttered in a tone laced with biting venom. All six voices and their words warped into a dark cruel song that cut and slashed at him. He clenched his eyes shut against the mental noise as his tail twitched jerkily in agitation. The voices wouldn't stop.
With his eyes closed and his mind turned inward he failed to notice that he wasn't alone. So he jerked in surprise when the couch shifted beneath him and a solid weight settled against his stomach. He opened his eyes slowly, unsure of what he would see. The his heart sank and his mental turmoil receded into the background a bit. Kitty, the last person he wanted to see right now, was perched on the edge of the couch and smiling evilly at him. He wanted to move away from her, but what happened several minutes previously and the distracting buzz inside his brain made it not worth the effort. For what must've ten minutes she sat there grinning wickedly at him and not saying a word. The slightly muted buzz of voices was starting to give him a headache when he decided to face whatever doom she was itching to release upon him.
"What?" Kurt growled in irritation.
"Aren't you missing something?" Kitty asked him oh-so-sweetly.
"What?" He asked again feeling confused and a bit suspicious.
"Well, you certainly left in a hurry before. Are you sure you didn't leave anything behind?" She asked innocently.
"No, I didn't." He replied with a frown. She only smiled wider, if that was possible.
"Oh I think you did." She teased wickedly.
"I did not!" Kurt growled darkly. The voices were growing louder again.
"Yes you did." She firmly stated and poked her index finger into his chest.
Kurt looked down to glare at the offending finger as the voices sounded like they were screaming at him. Then something began slowly registering in his mind. He saw the finger with its well-manicured, brightly painted nail pressing into his blue-furred chest. A bare blue-furred chest that showed no sign of the green T-shirt that was supposed to be covering it. The instant he realized that his shirt was missing his face grew hot and he fled. He made a mad dash back to the bedroom and frantically hunted for the missing article of clothing.
As he was about to tear the room apart a sound, a real non-imagined sound, reached his ears. Kitty was laughing at him. Kurt turned to see her almost doubled over and laughing her head off. The panic began to fade some and the stupid voices quieted down a bit, but both things still remained. His face felt like it was on fire now and he wondered if the fur on his face would spontaneously combust soon. He looked down thoroughly embarrassed and gratefully noticed that at least he still had his pants on. His tail lashed nervously before he forced it to coil around his leg. He was beginning to squirm now and still her laughter showed no signs of ending.
"S-stop. Stop it." He managed to choke out weakly.
"Sorry," she giggled. "It's just the look on your face was so funny and then you went flying out of the room faster than I've ever seen you move! If only I'd had a camera!" She cried between fits of laughter. Then she managed to calm herself down to continue. "You really didn't have to worry about it. If you'd have waited a bit I would've given you your shirt you silly boy." Kitty said teasingly and tossed the missing green shirt at him. He only just barely caught it and quickly pulled it on over his head. His shame and embarrassment only grew and mixed with anger, annoyance, confusion, and those stupid voices that churned through his mind uttering hateful words that he knew were all too true.
"Hey, are you okay?" Kitty asked suddenly right in front of him and very serious. He realized that he was almost gasping from breath, which he corrected before answering.
"Leave me alone. Haven't you done enough for today?" Kurt growled threateningly.
"You didn't answer my question." Kitty stiffly replied.
"I'm fine!" He snapped even though he knew he wasn't. He really just needed to be left alone for a while.
"You're not a very good spy, you suck at lying." Kitty declared.
"Just leave me alone!" Kurt snarled. The roar in his head was getting worse and it made his head pound. Why won't she leave!?
"Why should I? This is my room too. Now just relax." Kitty grumbled and dragged him by the arm to her bed. "Now sit, calm down, and tell me what is up with you." She commanded. He looked away from her and struggled to shove the voices away, but that only seemed to make things worse. He tried pinching the bridge of his nose hoping that physical pain would help him focus.
"Do you have a headache?" She asked. He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. "Wait here, I'll be right back." She muttered before departing. When she came back she had a glass of water and two pills. "Here, have some Tylenol." She said quietly handing him the glass and pressing the two pills into his fuzzy palm. Reluctantly he downed the pills and set the empty glass on a nearby dresser. Then Kitty slipped an arm around his shoulders and pulled his head down to rest on her shoulder.
"W-was?!" Kurt stammered suddenly very nervous about such familiar contact.
"Relax, being stressed out only makes it worse." Kitty sighed.
"E-easier s-said than done." He muttered miserably.
"Just try, okay?" She groaned.
Kurt kept his mouth shut. It wasn't worth the effort to protest anymore, there was no escape for him. With a deep, shaky sigh of resignation he set himself to relaxing. For a while he managed only partial success. When he got some of his muscles to loosen, Kitty would twitch or shift and remind him of her presence and they would lock up again. This went on for what seemed like hours until Kitty tried something different. He felt her arm move against his back and the now quite familiar sensation of panic bubbled up in his chest. What was she going to do to him now? Then he felt her fingertips rub a certain spot on his neck just behind his ear.
In about one minute he felt more relaxed than he had in years. He felt so good right now that he must be dreaming. There was no way he could be awake and feeling this way. Only Mama and Papa knew how to do what Kitty was doing right now. Only they knew his special spots, places where just the right touch could make him feel like a million bucks. There was only one way he knew of to properly express his gratitude for what she was doing. He purred. He purred and melted into a boneless heap on top of her lap. This action must've caught her off-guard because she stopped, but he didn't really mind. The good feeling didn't really fade that much and he realized that these horrible voices and their dark whispered words had completely vanished. He felt so good he could almost smile. There is nothing on earth that can ruin my mood now.
"Can I have my explanation now?" Kitty asked quietly. Kurt flinched and was flooded with shame. I spoke too soon.
"I don't know what happened." Kurt reluctantly admitted.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Kitty asked half-irritated, half-curious.
"One minute I was fine and the next I wasn't." He replied.
"Explain the not being fine part please." She quietly commanded.
"All of a sudden I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think straight and everything was closing in on me. I had to get out of there, I had to get away. I-I was so afraid." He whispered in shame. He closed his eyes and waited for her anger to crush him.
"Oh, so that's it. Why didn't you tell me this before?" Kitty wondered.
"I was afraid." Kurt mumbled with his eyes still closed.
"Silly boy. Never be afraid to tell me anything, okay?" She scolded.
"Okay." Kurt muttered.
"Good." Kitty replied, satisfied by his answer.
Kurt felt like some invisible weight that he hadn't known was there had been removed. She wasn't all that angry with him and he felt forgiven. Distantly he was aware of her talking about some people she'd met at the club, but he didn't really pay attention. He knew that none of these people she spoke of were important. Neither of them had any solid leads so that meant these people were just her friends. As she babbled on she began to stroke that special spot again, which swiftly sent him off into La-La Land. This time he actually did smile a little before he slept.