PART EIGHT

The entire team had already gathered in the kitchen by the time Kurt appeared in the far corner, followed a split second later by Marta, Suzie and Edmund. Kurt's feet had barely impacted with the shining linoleum floor when the combined jolt from the near-simultaneous teleports shook the open cabinet door just above him, causing the open bag of cornstarch balanced precariously over its narrow top to fall, spilling its powdery contents all over Kurt's head and shoulders as well as the countertop and the floor.

Kurt jumped in alarm, sputtering and sneezing and beating at the slowly settling white powder that clung to his fur and hair and eyelashes. Unfortunately, all his attempts to brush the cornstarch off only served to spread it around, turning his fur and hair from a dark, shadowy indigo to a light powder blue.

His gathered team howled with laughter at the ridiculous sight.

"Who's the Fool now, huh Kurt?" Kitty called out, pulling off her cap and freeing her short, blonde hair. "Now you know what it feels like, maybe you'll think twice before messing with my conditioner!"

"And my coffee!" Moira added, her eyes sharp despite her laughter. "Though, I must say seeing you like that almost makes up for it. Almost."

"How the mighty has fallen," Brian chuckled with a dark smile. "Anything you'd like to say to us, Kurt? An apology, perhaps?"

Kurt just looked at them, his shoulders stooped and his expression doleful beneath his red-rimmed gold eyes.

Alistaire and Meggan shared a look of sudden concern at his uncharacteristic posture, but Kitty and the others refused to be softened.

"Kitty," Kurt said, his voice as somber as his powdered face, "Brian, Moira. I told you all, both yesterday and today, that I was not going to play any pranks. Despite all that has happened, up to this moment I have kept true to that statement. I know what it feels like to be a laughingstock. Before I joined the X-Men-"

"Oh no," Kitty interrupted quickly, taking a step forward. "You're not going to ruin my moment by playing that moldy old card. Your appearance may have made life hard for you as a child, but things are different now and you're not going to make me feel guilty for finally getting the best of you in a prank."

"She's right," Brian said, backing her up. "We got you fair and square. It's time for you to own up."

Kurt shook his head sadly.

"I had no idea you had so little faith in me. That you trust me so little as to believe I would do something like this. When have I ever pulled a prank that I have not admitted to? Have I not always been the first to step forward in the past?"

Moira seemed uncertain at that, but Kitty refused to be swayed.

"I can't believe you, Kurt," she said, curling her lip in disgust. "Even after all this, you're still trying to play that stupid mind game. We know your whole charade about being too tired or whatever to prank us was just a set-up. You wanted to take us by surprise. I can understand that. But it's getting really old now, so just drop it, OK? You lost, we won. Thus ends the ignoble reign of the Prankster King."

"Kätzchen," Kurt said, his red-rimmed eyes deep with hurt, "I assure you it is a title I willingly relinquish. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I believe I should take a shower before supper."

And with a BAMF of teleport smoke swirled with irradiated cornstarch, he was gone.

"What are you all staring at?" Kitty asked, frowning at the slightly shaken expressions she saw all around her. "We all know it was him, right?"

Moira, Meggan, and Alistaire shrugged.

The children shared intensely uncomfortable glances.

Alice shook her head with a sigh.

"I thought it was," Brian spoke up, but even he sounded a bit hesitant.

Kitty threw up her hands.

"Oh, forget it," she said. "I'm hungry. Let's eat before the food gets too cold."

Excalibur was well into their dinner by the time Kurt re-entered the kitchen. Far from his usual cheerful greetings, he sat at his place without a word, only glancing up when he asked Alice to pass the salt.

Kitty sucked in her cheeks and rolled her eyes, but opted not to comment.

After several moments of interminable awkwardness had stretched across the table, Samuel nudged Marta, shooting her a significant look.

"What?" she snapped, stabbing a potato with her fork.

"Come on, Marti," Samuel whispered, glancing around at the silent adults to make sure they weren't listening in. "Don't act dumb. It doesn't suit you."

Marta raised an eyebrow.

"Is that a compliment?"

Samuel glared.

"Don't get off the subject. You promised to tell them."

"Tell us what?" Kurt asked, still in that sad, strangely subdued voice.

Samuel kicked at the floor with his shoe, silently cursing Kurt's pointed ears. But at least the question was out in the open now. He turned expectantly back to Marta, who seemed to shrink at least five inches in her chair. But when she looked up at her father anything she might have said was lost in a shocked gasp.

"Dad!" she exclaimed. "Your hand!"

"Was?" Kurt asked in confusion, putting down his knife and fork and raising his hands to the level of his eyes.

"Oh my God, Kurt!" Alice gasped. "I can see your face through your hands!"

She spun on Kitty, Brian, and Moira, her copper face flushed and her dark eyes livid.

"What was in that cornstarch you dumped on him?" she demanded.

"Nothing!" Kitty exclaimed, completely flustered as she stared at Kurt's transparent fingers. "I swear it!"

"It was the sample package Miss Saltzman gave me at the chemical factory," Moira said, slipping automatically into 'doctor mode' as she rose from her chair and strode around the table to start a perfunctory examination of Kurt. "Pure irradiated cornstarch. It's perfectly safe."

"For humans, perhaps," Alice frowned, "but what about mutants?"

Moira frowned, peering into Kurt's eyes and squeezing his increasingly see-through hands. The transparency was already starting to spread up his arms.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Mutants are nothing if not unpredictable. But I have a very hard time believing that cornstarch could be responsible for something like this."

"But it's possible," Alice pressed, shooting a glare at Kitty and Brian.

"Anything's possible," Moira said curtly. "Probable, though…that's a different story."

She straightened with a clinical frown, looking down at the very anxious Kurt.

"I'd like you to accompany me to my lab," she said. "We've got to find out what's going on here, and quickly."

"Moira," Alice whispered, grasping the doctor's arm in her worry. "Do you think there's a chance he might…you know…disappear entirely?"

Edmund, who had been hovering nearby, burst into tears when he overheard his mother's softly spoken words, plowing into his father and latching his arms and tail tightly around him.

"No!" he shrieked, sniffling damply against his father's shirt. "I don't want you to disappear! I'm sorry Daddy!"

Kurt looked down at his sobbing son in confusion, gently smoothing his straight, black hair with a ghostly hand.

"Why are you sorry?" he asked. "This isn't your fault."

"Yes it is!" Marta exclaimed, barely able to speak through her own tears. "It's entirely our fault!"

"What are you talking about, loves?" Alice asked. "You didn't have anything to do with this."

Kitty hung her head at the sight of the sobbing children, her cheeks flushed and her eyes tight with guilt.

"They helped us set up the cornstarch," she said. "And they're the ones who lured Kurt here for the prank." She sighed. "Kids, I am so sorry I got you involved in this. I never should have-"

"Oh, shut-up!" Suzie cried, blinking back stinging tears she refused to shed.

Kitty straightened in surprise at the fierceness of her tone.

"I can't believe you still don't get it!" the blue-haired girl continued. "Dad's been telling the truth! He didn't pull any of those pranks this morning. We did!"

"You!" Brian exclaimed. "Why, you devious, conniving little -"

He cut himself off before his temper led him to say something he would later regret. Instead, he turned on his son.

"Did you have any part in all this?" he demanded.

"Only at the end," Samuel told him. "When I helped you with the cornstarch. But I knew what Marti and the others were up to."

"What about you?" he glared at Eliza.

"I swear I didn't know!" she squeaked, taking a few steps back. "I honestly thought Uncle Kurt was guilty!"

"But…why?" Kurt asked, looking to his children in hurt bewilderment. "Why would you set me up like this?"

Marti sniffed, her green eyes streaming into her fur as she admitted, "We wanted to get back at you. For skipping out on April Fools Day this year. We thought it would be the perfect prank-get everyone to believe you were fooling them, then tell you all it was us all along. We never intended for it to end up like this!"

"I'm sorry, Auntie Kitty," Suzie said sincerely, glancing up at her white-gold hair. "It was my idea to put that dye in your conditioner. But it should wash out no problem. I was sure to ask the chemist for the trial kind."

"And I'm sorry for the salt in your coffee, Dr. MacTaggert," Marti sniffled. "I smeared it on the filter the night before. I didn't realize you'd get so angry."

"I was the one who set up the water pistol in the sitting room."

Firmly suppressing her impulse to smirk, Suzie managed to look genuinely contrite as she said, "Sorry for making you wet your trousers, Uncle Brian."

"And the kipper in the control room was my idea." Marti admitted. "Sorry, everyone."

Edmund, with his face still pressed against his father's shirt, muffled something about roller skates that no one could understand. Marta and Suzie nodded, though.

"What about that horrible spider?" Eliza spoke up from the other side of the table. "Isn't one of you going to apologize for that?"

"Why?" Suzie asked. "I'm not sorry for that."

Eliza glared, rising several inches off the floor.

"One of these days you're going to get what's coming to you, Suzie Wagner. And I'm going to be the one to give it to you, just you wait!"

Suzie raised a patently unimpressed eyebrow, but before she could make a smart retort she was interrupted by her mother's sharp gasp, bringing her attention back to her rapidly fading father.

"Oh, Kurt," Alice said softly, tentatively pressing her palm against her husband's fuzzy cheek. Already, she could see her fingers through his face. "It's spreading so quickly. What are we going to do?"

"Daddy?" Edmund sniffled, looking up from the damp spot he'd made on his father's shirt. "Is Dr. MacTaggert going to be able to fix you?"

Kurt winced, looking to Moira for help.

Moira looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"I'm certainly going to try, Edmund," she assured him. "But I'm afraid I can't offer you any promises at the moment."

She straightened her posture and looked up at Kurt.

"Kurt, I am so sorry. I betrayed my profession today, jumping to conclusions instead of examining the facts. My behavior was shockingly unprofessional, and I apologize for not believing you."

"Moira, you don't have to…" Kurt started, but Kitty cut him off.

"No, she's right, Kurt," she said, quickly wiping away the moisture collecting in her own eyes. "We didn't even give you a chance. We just assumed it was you. Kurt…"

Alice stepped slightly to the side to make room as Kitty leaned over Edmund and buried her face in her friend's shoulder.

"Kurt, I am so sorry this is happening to you! And I'm sorry I didn't believe you before."

"Here we all were trying our best to make you look the fool," Brian said, almost to himself. "When all the time it was we who were the most foolish."

"Yeah," Marti sniffled.

"Definitely," Suzie agreed, unable to stop a warm tear from trickling down her cheek.

"Well," said Kurt, looking around at his team and his family through oddly transparent golden eyes. "I just want you all to know I accept your apologies. And I hope you children have learned your lesson."

"We have," Suzie and Marta chorused.

"We're so sorry, Daddy," Edmund added through his muffled sobs.

"That's good to hear," Kurt nodded, but the gesture was almost invisible by this time.

Maneuvering carefully, locked as he was in a three-way embrace, Kurt bent his knee until his right foot was at the level of his hand. Instantly, the air around him began to shimmer. A split-second later, to the gaping astonishment of everyone around him, Kurt Wagner was as opaque as ever.

"I'd hoped this would clear things up," he said, his broad grin threatening to split his face as he opened his palm to reveal the sleek holowatch that had been strapped to his ankle.

The crowded kitchen rang with silence. Time seemed to have frozen in place, catching everyone with their mouths open and their eyes wide with shock. Then, as if a paused video had suddenly resumed playing by itself, everyone started speaking at once.

"You knew about our plot all along!" Kitty exclaimed, staring at him in outraged disbelief.

"Ja," Kurt nodded proudly.

"You manipulated us!"

"Ja."

"You tricked us!"

"Ja."

"You scared us half to death!"

Kurt shrugged, apparently bashful.

Kitty glared, but after a moment, her glare softened into a broad grin. Rushing forward to hug him once again, she laughed.

"I knew you still had it!"

Edmund beamed, clapping joyfully as he jumped up and down in relief.

Marta had grabbed Samuel's hands and now danced him around the table in a giddy circle, laughing happily.

Suzie just shook her head, completely awed by the sheer depth of her father's devious cunning.

"Amazing," she muttered to herself. "He knew what we were doing the whole time. He used our own plans to his advantage!"

Kurt shared a delightedly amused look with Alice, thrilled at how well his trick had gone. Not only had he succeeded in clearing his name and seriously impressing his kids, he'd also pulled the one trick that had set all the others on their respective heads. It was a feeling he intended to savor as long as possible.

Unfortunately, his enjoyment was interrupted barely two minutes later by a sudden sharp beeping from his belt. When he saw who was calling, however, his faded smile returned with a vengeance.

"Quiet everyone," he called, raising both hands for attention. "We're getting a call from Inspector Thomas."

"Dai?" Brian said curiously.

"Is something up with the Mancour case?" Kitty asked.

"Let's find out," Kurt said, unhooking his holographic communicator from his belt and flicking it on. Instantly, a fist-sized hologram of Inspector Thomas's pouchy face appeared just above the small rectangular screen.

"Oh good," the gruff, middle-aged police inspector said, glancing around the room. "You're all there. I hope I haven't interrupted your dinner."

"No, we're good," Kitty assured him. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to tell you that analysis report Nightcrawler supplied this afternoon was just what we needed to crack the Mancour case. Our people closed in on them just half an hour ago, and we're still in the process of making arrests. Nigel Mancour and his brother Jim were two of the first we caught attempting to flee the scene."

"That's terrific!" Alice beamed. "Congratulations!"

Dai's hardened face actually cracked into a small smile.

"Yeah," he said. "It's a good feeling when the bad guys finally go down. But much of the congratulations really go to you. You're the ones who have been tracking the ring across the globe these past months. That's why I figured you ought to be here when we start questioning the Mancours and their associates."

"We'd be honored," Kurt said with a grin. "When do you want us there?"

"Let's see, it's seven now… Make it ten o'clock. I know it'll take you a while to drive down here and we've got a lot of processing to do."

"See you then," Kurt nodded, with a glance to his excited team. "Thanks, Dai. Excalibur out."

"Kurt," Kitty said as he clipped his communicator back in place. "I'm confused. When did you find time to send Dai an analysis report?"

"Back at the chemical factory. While Miss Saltzman was feeding you that fish tale about irradiated cornstarch, I called Inspector Thomas and told him of our findings."

Moira gaped.

"You mean, she knew about this?" she asked.

"Of course!" Alice grinned, enjoying the incredulous looks on her friends' faces. "Kurt called her this morning, just after we realized what the kids had been up to. Once she'd been filled in, she was more than willing to play along. In fact, the cornstarch was her idea, wasn't it love?"

"Ja," Kurt smiled. "And it worked very well, didn't it?"

Kitty stared at them.

"Oh God, this is just too much," she said flatly, the wrinkle of her nose just shy of disgusted. "All the trouble we went through… And you've been five steps ahead of us this whole time! I take it back, Kurt. You're not just the king of the pranksters. You're their freakin' emperor."

"Danke."

Kurt graced her with a showman's bow, then turned slightly to address the rest of his audience.

"As my first act as Emperor, I hereby decree that bedtime tonight will be no later than ten-thirty for all those present under the age of eighteen."

"Ten-thirty!" Suzie whined. "But Dad-"

"The Emperor will hear no arguments at this time," Kurt announced, causing Suzie to roll her eyes. "You children have caused a great deal of trouble today. If you want to prove yourselves to still be worthy of my trust after the stunts you pulled, the first step is to comply with these orders. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Dad," Marta, Suzie, and Edmund chorused glumly.

"Yes, Uncle Kurt," echoed Samuel and Eliza.

"Sehr gut," Kurt nodded firmly. "Now get upstairs. All of you."

The adults watched the contrite children file into the hallway, then turned their attention back to the business at hand.

"It's getting late," Kitty said. "We can be suited up in five minutes if you -"

She broke off, confused, when she noticed Kurt shaking his head.

"Oh no," he said. "Somebody has to stay here to clean the kitchen floor. And that somebody is you three."

He shot a pointed look at Kitty, Brian, and Moira.

"Wha-what?" Brian exclaimed angrily. "Kurt, you cannot be serious! Clean the floor-"

"Don't forget to polish the countertops as well," Alice added seriously. "We don't want that cornstarch to attract any ants."

"What about us?" Alistaire asked, referring to himself and Meggan. "Are we staying here or going with you?"

"Did you have any part in planning that cornstarch prank?" Kurt asked them.

Meggan and Alistaire looked at each other.

"No," they said.

"Did you assist the children with the pranks they pulled this morning?"

"No."

"Then you can come with me and Alice to London," he grinned, taking their hands and leading them to the door.

Alice followed, casting a wicked smile over her shoulders at the others as she said, "Have fun!"

"Oh, and Kätzchen," Kurt added, struggling hard to keep in his laughter at the looks of pure, fuming outrage burning on the faces of his teammates. "Before I forget…"

"What?" Kitty snapped, her eyes as hard as diamonds.

"April Fools!"

"Apri-what?" Kitty blinked in confusion. "Do you mean-"

Kurt laughed.

"That's right," he said. "Come on, everyone. And be quick, or else the last one in the van really will have to mop up the cornstarch!"

Wrapping his arms around his grinning wife, Kurt gave the rest of his speechless team a playful wave with his tail before triumphantly teleporting them both away in a theatrical BAMF of smoke.

The End

So, what did you think? :)