Disclaimer: The characters and environment depicted are the property of Marvel. This is a work of fiction set in the main Marvel universe (616) in May of 2012, before the events of Uncanny X-Force #24. The date and time elapse mentioned, as well as the details surrounding events are my own speculation, as they've not been stated in the MU.

The Bauers, the St. James family, Bianca Navarra, Karl Lange, and Jadzia were all created by me to fill in a few blanks and propel the story forward.

Chapter Three: Like Nails

Finally, Kurt's diligence in monitoring the news feeds had paid off. In his hand he held the coordinates for a probable sighting of Dark Beast, and it was only a few days old.

Teleporting from rooftop to rooftop, with the city bustling below him, Kurt was in his element. How he missed the days of being one of Eric's covert agents! Alone, he could move at his own pace and in his own unique manner. There was no need to pace himself to accommodate those slower than himself. The shadows and heights were part of his world; it needn't concern him that his stealth might be compromised by someone trying to help him. He didn't need help for such work. If a job was best done in secrecy, his own natural gifts made him the perfect one to execute it. Of course an all out skirmish with multiple foes was a different matter altogether, but that was hardly the scenario at the moment.

It wasn't that he disliked being a part of a team. His friends from back home had been dear to him; they were his adopted family. The X-Men of his world had been an incredibly skilled group that could work as a team with all the efficiency of a machine. No, he had loved being a valued part of that group. It was simply that he felt more himself like this, stalking an objective and meeting the challenge of survival only with his own skills. Eric had understood Kurt's need to work alone at times.

His current team leader, however, seemed to have some difficulty with it, though Kurt could not fathom why; the man himself certainly seemed to prefer doing things on his own much of the time.

Given the necessity of discretion where X-Force was concerned, Logan tried to keep close tabs on its various members. This was especially true for Kurt, whose presence in this dimension remained secret to the world at large, and would raise serious questions if it were known. It had been requested of him upon first arriving that he report to Logan if he had the need to wander too far afield. Kurt grudgingly obliged. Really, he surmised, if it wasn't directly related to X-Force, it was a "need to know" basis, and Wolverine didn't necessarily need to know every move he made. The two of them had a difference of opinion on this subject. The conversation from yesterday had been a prime example of that.

He'd rung Logan on the private cell number that all team members had been given.

"Yeah what? Teachin' a class here...," Logan brusquely answered.

"You've asked me to inform you if I was planning an absence from the base, Herr Anführer," he said in a light tone, "and I'm informing you."

Kurt winced and held the telephone away from his ear as the man yelled to someone on the other end of the line, "Hey! Put that shi-stuff down and get back to yer seat! I ain't gonna tell you again, Quire!" Returning his attention back to the phone, he asked, "Sorry 'bout that - kids, you know? So where'd you say you were goin' and for what?"

"I did not, I simply told you I would be away." Kurt's reply was met with momentary silence.

"Uh huh. You wanna give me an idea in case you need back up or somethin'?"

Kurt sighed. "I don't anticipate the need for back up. This is simply an information gathering excursion. You're aware I've been doing such work for many years now, correct?"

The background noise on Logan's side was diminished for a moment. Maybe he'd stepped out of the room. "Look, this ain't back home, okay? It's a different ball-game here." Logan's voice took on that lecturing tone that was especially irritating.

"Und your point is...?" Kurt answered, keeping his voice even. "Your world is a cake-walk compared to mine."

"Look Kurt...," The level of noise on Logan's end had increased again. "Dammit, Broo ain't no football, put 'im down!" The man bellowed to someone, causing Kurt to flinch.

Just wanting to be done with this now, Kurt answered, "Ja, ja, alright. I'll be in the Atlanta area following a lead. Is this satisfactory?"

"Yeah, okay." Logan said, "Look keep yer X-link on and if you get in trouble..." Kurt had clicked the cell phone closed on the man's voice.

He looked out over the city now, buffeted by a warm wind at his high elevation. He brooded to himself, what, am I a child to be treated in such a way? The imbecile Wade gets more respect! Eric knew my worth, and trusted my abilities. Ah well, Kurt was still new here. Perhaps his counterpart had been incompetent in such matters and that was the reason for his team leader's undue concern. Trust took time to build. Kurt had no doubt that he would eventually prove himself adequately to the people of this world. He caught the direction of his thoughts and shook his head. What do I care what they think? It was his lost friends back home that mattered. They were the ones who had become a family to him, and Eric, a trusted mentor, but it had not always been so.

To say that Kurt had been a challenging prospect when he had first joined the X-Men would be an understatement. His limited exposure to other people and environments during his early life had left him with poor social skills. He was withdrawn and suspicious. He also viewed everything as a competition and had worked especially hard to prove himself against the other X-Men - hardly an endearing method of making friends. In addition, he was a young man dealing with the realization of precisely how different he was, even from other mutants, for the first time.

He knew he looked different; he could see that for himself from the people in his life and the images from books and television. He just truly had not realized the reaction the rest of the world might have to his appearance until that last day. Until then, he had been protected from it. Kurt's mind automatically veered from that train of thought. He no longer even had to consciously make an effort to do so, it was so ingrained.

No, he had not been a natural fit with Eric's band of mutants. It was solely because of the man's patience and perseverance that Kurt found his place there.

Those first days, Kurt was still deeply traumatized and wounded from the events in Germany.

In an attempt to help him struggle from the silent cocoon of shock that had enveloped him, Eric brought in a young woman named Jean, to use her telepathy to try and calm the chaos.

"Kurt, this is Jean Grey. She has a special gift that may be able to help you through this difficult time."

A pretty red-haired girl, not much older than Kurt himself, stepped forward with a tentative smile.

"Hello. I promise this won't hurt. I just want to help." She held her hands out towards him.

Numb and silently indifferent to the things around him, Kurt didn't resist her gentle touch on his temples. That is, he didn't until the bright light of her mind brushed against his own and reawakened what he'd been trying so hard to forget.

"Get that verdammt Schlampe away from me! She picks through my brain like ein Geier!" Kurt screeched, hurling a lamp at the fast-retreating Jean.

But through the venom, Eric had remained steadfastly by his side with calm words of reassurance. Kurt could remember those gentle words even now.

"Kurt, I know you're in pain. The wounds of the flesh will heal, and whether you believe me now or not, the deeper wounds of the soul will heal as well, in time."

"What do you know of it?" Kurt spat in return. "Why do you talk to me of souls? You see what I am; you saw what they did! It was because of their god und his trade in men's souls!"

"No," he answered. "It may have been in the name of God that they did those things, but it was the darkness that lives in every man's heart, that thing which most struggle to keep in check, that prompted it."

"Und my mother? Did you see what she did? It would seem that same darkness lies in her, Herr Lehnsherr.

"I saw." Eric keep his gaze on the floor.

"what do you know of such darkness anyway?"

Eric shook his head. "Oh, my boy, I know darkness of the soul." He slid his hand down his face sadly and continued, "What a parent does when faced with seeing a beloved child in danger is not something that can be so easily explained. The mind-numbing fury that someone would dare to harm your flesh and blood, your family...perhaps when you're older, you will understand why she did what she did that day."

Kurt wasn't sure of the nature of the relationship Eric had with his mother, but it seemed obvious that the man was a loyal friend. Having lacked a father figure in his life, Kurt was drawn to the strength of that presence. He learned only later that the man had been dealing with the grief of his own daughter's death at the time, which made Eric's compassion towards a strange young German man all the more remarkable.

Pietro, as Eric's son, and the only other person, save Raven and Eric, to know exactly what had occurred in Germany, was the next X-Man Kurt learned to trust and call friend. He was outspoken, impulsive and could be temperamental, but all these things Kurt related well to at the time. Pietro became something of an elder brother figure, and slowly helped to curb his younger friend's more negative traits.

Kurt became accustomed to Ororo next, Pietro's lady, and though he found her to be somewhat proud and aloof, she was kind in her way. In his first faltering attempts towards fitting in, Kurt had been like a shadow to the couple, something they'd borne patiently.

Of the X-Men closer to his own age, he'd never really warmed to Piotr, although he respected the man in a fight; his gift was formidable. However, Kurt found him slow-witted and awkward to have a conversation with. They were far too different in personality to ever be friends. Then there was Shiro, who was a broken survivor like himself, but coldly rebuffed anyone's overtures of friendship.

The others all came to accept, and befriend him, with time, once he'd made the effort to let go of his natural tendency towards irascibility and suspicion. Even Jean, with their poor start, would later become one of his closest friends (after some profuse apologies on his part). He and Bobby had hit it off especially well; the man's irrepressible sense of humor kept so much of the hopelessness of life at bay over the years. Together, these X-Men forged for him an extended family he never realized he was missing. How he missed them now, along with the camaraderie! It seemed there had always been someone to talk to, to laugh with or, in some cases, cry with. He never felt cut off there, as he did here.

In those years, he learned to belong and feel like he was making a difference to better the world. He had also truly believed in Eric's dream.

Few could have been as happy as Kurt, himself, when Eric and Rogue married, and then welcomed the birth of their little son, Charles. Kurt had been a proud "uncle" and doted on the child, as did most of the other X-Men. He believed now that the boy had been a kind of living representation of their hope for the future, that there still could be one. The child was a joy, even in infancy.

"Lookit dis, he got his mama's smile," Remy leaned over little Charles and waggled his fingers.

"The lad could do far worse than to take after such a dashing rogue as myself," Kurt chimed in, grinning and letting the baby grab hold of his tail.

"But he'll have the discerning taste of a Lehnsherr, look how he stares down his nose at you, LeBeau," teased Pietro.

"Dat ain't lookin' down, he jus' got gas, see I pick him up and pat him on de back, he be fine." Remy lifted the little boy, and ended up wearing regurgitated milk, much to everyone else's amusement.

The years were not without grief, however. How could they be in such a war torn world?

The struggle with Apocalypse dominated everything in the beginning. That was a time of uncertainty and upheaval, death and destruction. So much had hung in the balance. In the midst of it, Kurt briefly reunited with his mother only to lose her again.

They believed Jean to be lost to them for a time. Others were lost in the fight over the years as well. There were so many - Morph, Clarice, Remy, Sean, and finally even Pietro and Ororo. Each loss had been like a nail in his heart.

Then there was Linda. With her, Kurt briefly found real happiness. Full of hope for a future together, it was all the more of a shock to have her so violently ripped away from him. He was left devastated and bereft, wrapped in a feeling of hollow helplessness.

He had learned to understand why his mother had reacted with such savagery to the villagers in Germany, just as Eric said he would. Ach, how he understood now. If it was the last thing Kurt ever did, the Blob would pay for what he'd done to Linda.

Eric's dream had died a hard death, as well. Kurt thought perhaps the heart had gone out of it when the man had been forced to watch his young son, the last of his children by then, tortured and killed before his eyes. None of them were ever the same after that. They continued the fight. It was not in them to do otherwise, but it often felt more out of habit or desperation, rather than because they actually believed it would make a difference. The man who held them together for so long had become a ghost of himself.

There had only been a handful of his friends remaining when the X-Men of this world had shown up, and, by then, Kurt had allowed Eric's dream to be replaced by anger and the all-consuming need for revenge in his own mind.

What more is there than vengeance for me? I have a dead family in a dead world, and I am one of the few left to know or care. Yet here, in this world, the dream still lives on. Kurt had seen parts of it brought to life since he'd been here. That's not surprising, since Eric's dream was that of his lost friend, Charles Xavier. In this world, Xavier survived and birthed a legacy. The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, Kurt felt, was an embodiment of that dream.

In the few hours since he'd arrived, Kurt was finding Atlanta a maze. It was sprawling, spanning over one hundred and thirty square miles in total and had a density of population comparable to any other large metropolitan city. After several references back to his digital map, he finally navigated to the portion of the city he wanted so he could obtain lodgings for the duration of his stay.

It was startling how quickly the landscape of the neighborhood changed. He'd come in from the north, an area of clean modern suburbs and high-end shopping centers, and within one jump, he found himself in an area almost as derelict as some of the slums from back home. The people here wear similar expressions as well, he thought, hopeless acceptance. Another jump landed him amidst industrial skyscrapers and teeming downtown traffic. He finally settled on a part of the city a few miles beyond the central business district, off Moreland Avenue. It seemed unusual, which actually suited him quite well. Unusual was good if one had the habit of sometimes appearing in a cloud of smoke, image inducer or no image inducer.

Kurt couldn't quite decide if this little section of the city should be considered historic or slums, but it was inhabited by those who seemed to embrace an alternative view of the world. People clad in tie-dyed garments walked alongside those in leather biker gear. Street performers fought for space with the homeless and a wall without graffiti was an exception rather than the norm. Children played here as well, though it didn't seem entirely the best place for it, to his way of thinking. All this was surrounded by Victorian style homes in various states of repair and, of interest to Kurt, was very near the part of Atlanta he wanted easy access to.

He found a suitable inn easily enough and acquired a room on the top floor. After changing and securing his few belongings, Kurt decided to explore. He wouldn't approach the place where Dark Beast had been sighted until after nightfall.

He wandered through the streets, simply enjoying the fact that he could do so without constantly having to be alert for patrolling sentinels or avoiding stacks of decomposing corpses. He passed beautifully remodeled historic homes next door to ones with boarded windows and crumbling porches. He was only chased once by a dog (apparently there was a leash law here) and that was taken care of by a quick snap of Kurt's invisible-to-the-public tail on the animal's nose.

Finding a restaurant that offered outdoor tables, he enjoyed a leisurely supper before browsing through some of the more interesting shops. He decided he had no need of body piercings, pink hair dye nor platform shoes so he moved on to relax on a bench and simply watch a world that was, well - normal, he supposed. He wasn't exactly on intimate terms with what normal was, but perhaps this was it.

German translations

ein Geier - "a vulture"

Schlampe – "bitch"

Anführer - "leader"