"Logan!" Kassandra threw her arms around her favorite self-appointed honorary crazy uncle, who saw fit to meet her at the Institute's hangar.
"It's good to have you back, Little Elf." Wolverine returned the embrace, then recoiled. "You're still using that stinky herbal hair oil?"
"Fair's fair, Logan," said Kassandra, as they headed toward the mansion. "You still smell like stinky cigars and cheap beer. Now does Kurt know I'm here?"
Logan's mouth twisted. "Yeah. He's very excited to meet you. How was your flight?"
"Don't ask."
"That good, huh? So, what more do you know, besides the hot weather Warren's talked about?"
Kassandra knew she could depend on Logan to understand CIA jargon for, to put it mildly, trouble. "Everything," she said grimly. "And the weather's going to get even hotter here."
And she knew all too well.
"Kassi," said Logan, "meet Stacy, Xavier's newest stinkbug."
"Stacy-"
"So, you're the cop who tried to shut us down!"
"Correction. I'm the fed who tried to shut you down. But let's not talk about that disaster. I wanted to thank you for saving Kurt the other day."
"Did somebody say my name?" Nightcrawler entered the foyer.
At the sound of his voice, a young vision looked up to him with hauntingly dark eyes awash with joy, grief, anger, and- and something else. He couldn't tell what. "Hallo, Kurt," she said. "Ich bin es. Dein' Zeitgeist."
Zeitgeist. A charming girl, with a reputation for brilliance, sweetness, fun, and occasionally kicking serious Arsch, according to what he'd heard about her.Who spoke fluent German with a rich accent he hadn't heard before. Or had he? And he'd heard a bit about her extratemporal powers. What an appropriate code name! How did she get it? Why did she refer to herself specifically as his Zeitgeist? How did she know his name? And he was usually quite at ease meeting pretty young mutant women. Just what was it about this girl that was different? An awkward smile played across his face. He took her hand in his. She had such perfect hands with smooth brown skin, graceful fingers, neatly trimmed nails, and a firm, muscular grip. She had to be a musician. Or a fencer. He swept into a deep reverénce and kissed her hand. He hadn't exactly felt like his old silly, overly chivalrous self lately, yet somehow, this felt strangely appropriate. "Meine Dame. Have we met?"
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Kurt Wagner was still a teenager when he, as the Incredible Nightcrawler, became a sensation as the Munich Circus' star aerialist. It was about an hour before showtime, and he felt a need to gather his thoughts at the nearest suitable retreat. But this time, he didn't have the sycamore tree to himself. Sitting on the same branch and leaning on the trunk was a dark-haired girl about fifteen, who didn't look like she was in any condition to be sitting up in the highest branches of any tree. Indeed, she looked quite faint and about ready to topple over.
He scrambled over to her, wrapped his tail around the branch, and put his arms around her to steady her.
"Bleib bei mir. Ich hab dich."
Her eyes rolled back, and she went completely inert.
"Gott im Himmel!" Kurt decided he needed to get this girl down and inside, immediately. But a look into her dark face, quite foreign-looking by most Bavarian standards, and an approaching clamor of voices convinced him that perhaps she was indeed safer where she was.
"Wo ist unser kleiner Mischling? Wo ist sie hin?"
"Away from you Schweinehunde," Feuer Langhagen bellowed after them. "And the next time you torment a member of my audience, I'll make you a part of the show!"
Kurt clutched the girl even tighter. For her to fall from that height would have been bad enough. For her to fall into that would be even worse. At last, the noise died down, and the girl began to stir.
"So, was ist los?"
Her eyes fluttered, and she looked up. "Nightcrawler?"
"Sag einfach Kurt zu mir. Warum bist du hier?"
"Rassistenschweine. My family went in to save seats for the main show, but I wanted to see more of the fire-eater's show, so I stayed behind. And then these people came up to me, and just asked what I was. They decided I was too pale and my hair wasn't coarse enough to be eine-" her face crumpled in disgust. "-you know, that N-word, and that I must be, begging your pardon, a 'filthy gypsy' or- oder eine Türkenschl-"
"Say no more." As if the slur about the Roma wasn't bad enough, they had to call her that? Kurt seethed, baring his fangs. "That sort of thing makes me ill, too."
"Ach, it gets even worse," she said, furious tears springing from her eyes. "Finally, they concluded that I must be something 'worse,' and started pushing me around and calling me eine Mischlingshündin! I said it was none of their business what I am, and reminded them that racism went out of style here with the toothbrush mustache."
Kurt almost laughed in spite of himself. That seemed just the sort of thing he'd want to say under those circumstances. "You know, that was a good one."
The girl dried her eyes. "For a moment, I thought we were mistaken in thinking that visiting my father's relatives in Germany would be safer than visiting my mother's in Soweto! But at least this behavior's illegal here, nicht wahr?"
Kurt nodded. "And if you didn't come here, I wouldn't have the privilege of sharing my tree with you. Anyway, how did you get away, and you being sick and all?"
"I don't know. I wanted so badly to put a stop to everything, it feels like that's what happened. Everything just seemed to stop. Then I found myself here. Kurt, how do you deal with stuff like this?"
"Well, actually, I'm not Rom. But Daj Margali always said it didn't matter, and would never tolerate anyone calling me 'gadje' or the old ladies shaking their skirts at me. Of course the racists don't bother about facts before they pick their targets. They only know what little they allow themselves to see, and I pity them. Just think about what they're missing. I get to sit in a tree with a cute girl like you, and they don't!"
The girl blushed slightly. "You have a point, but I wasn't just talking about your ethnicity. Or what they think it is. They tolerate you because they think you're just an acrobat in a blue demon costume, nicht wahr? Don't ask me how I know, but I do. That's not a costume, and you're no demon. You're just the person I needed to talk to, the one I somehow knew I'd find here. By the way, what are you doing up here, anyway?"
Kurt, already a bit self-conscious and more than a little mystified as to how this stranger could know so much about him- and not be bothered by it, looked away, embarrassed. "Well, I climbed up here for a reason far more mundane, I'm afraid, than to rescue ladies from falling out of trees. I was just contending with a bit of stage fright."
"Ach. That's perfectly okay. You'll do fine. Besides, my piano teacher once quoted Pavarotti as saying that if a performer doesn't get a little stage fright, that's when there's something wrong."
Kurt took one of the girl's hands into his own. Her hands were small, like the rest of her, but perfect musician's hands regardless. "So it seems you're also just the person I needed to talk to. What's your name, anyway?"
"Kassandra Altheim."
He gently brought her knuckles to his lips. If there was any girl who could possibly get his mind off Jimaine, it might be her. "Kassandra. Ein schöner Name für eine schöne Dame. Sehr erfreut Sie kennenzulernen," he said, with no small amount of exaggerated formality. "Ich heiße Kurt Wagner. Now it should be safe. Let's get down from here before the show starts. Are you feeling any better?"
"Ja, ein bißchen," she said.
"Gut. Hold on to your stomach."
He held her close and teleported them safely to the ground. The girl looked a bit peaked and staggered as her feet touched the ground, but she quickly regained her footing. As he helped her to big top, he said, "I'm impressed. You handled your first teleport quite well. By the way, you don't seem alarmed by my appearance."
"Nein," said Kassandra, still waving the noxious smoke away from her face. "I have another blue furry friend in New York who looks about twenty times as scary as you."
"Is that where you're from? New York?"
"Nein. My mother is South African. My father is a German Namibian. We live in Keetmanshoop."
"So that's where you got your charming accent!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kassandra responded to Nightcrawler's half-joking courtliness with a low curtsey of her own. "Well met," she replied, with a mournful smile.
And as they rose, Kurt noticed that her near-black curls smelled softly of jasmine. And a small silver pendant, almost the only jewelry she wore, caught his eye. It seemed everything about this girl was disconcertingly familiar.
"I like your St. Michael medal," he said. "It looks like one I used to have."
"Do you know what happened to it?"
"Come to think of it, I don't remember."
The girl surprised him by taking off the medal and pressing it into his three-fingered hand. "Es ist deins," she whispered. "Verzeihung."
And she swept out of the room.
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