AN: Morning folks. I say morning because most of the writing I do is after 12 and before 3 in the morning. Originally, I was gonna skip over the Middleverse episode since it's so Kurt oriented and just do the Brotherhood. But I'm putting that one more chapter back. I hope to get Luke more involved in the X-men team dynamics, so this chapter should help with that. And maybe I didn't make a big deal about it in my other chapters, but I sure as hell tried to remind everyone with all the mentions last chapter, but Luke needs a codename. I set up the poll a while back. Only one vote so far. Come on guys!
Chapter 11
The Middle
Days had passed since Evan's arrival at the mansion, with the bleach blonde haired boy settling in nicely. The X-men had welcomed him to their fold warmly and continued to do so at their lunch table. Everyone had gathered around during their lunch break, mostly to hear Scott's decision as team leader on the most important topic in school. Duncan Mathew's party. Evan scooped up the unopened milk cartons lying on the table while Jean flipped here hair over her shoulder and batted her eyes, dropping all the subtleties that girls drop when they want something from a guy.
"So what do you say, Scott?"
"No, I don't think so. That guys a jerk anyways." Apparently the senior didn't pick up on those subtleties. That, or he had something equivalent to an Omega class mutation that allowed him to resist the allures of girls.
Kitty piped up from her end of the table sitting between Jean and Luke, "He is not a jerk. I would totally go to his party."
"No freshman allowed." Luke said glumly beside her, his face downcast. Even if he hated Duncan, a party was a party and it was an excuse not to run more sessions with Logan.
"He is a jerk. Never mind."
"And what if someone got too close to Kurt? The holowatch doesn't stop people from feeling his fur." Scott pitched in, trying to drive home points on why they shouldn't party.
"Chicks dig the fuzzy dude!" It was perfect synchronization between Luke and Kurt, followed by a high-five. Kurt then raised his eyebrows and leaned across the table at Kitty. "Right?"
"I gotta go. I'll see you guys later." With that, the brunette walked off, giving Kurt a cold shoulder.
"Yikes man. You're gonna have to step up your game if she's acting like that to you." Luke nudged his favorite teammate on the shoulder.
"I'm trying to be serious here guys." Scott said, pushing up on his sunglasses.
"Must be real hard for someone who does it all the time. When aren't you serious? I didn't think you had that switch on you, Mr. Robot." Everyone else chuckled at the table while Scott just glared at Luke. "If we go to Mathew's party, then what if Dukes or Maximoff start something. It's not like we're the only mutants in town. And the last time some of us went partying, you got kidnapped."
"That wasn't my fault. I had money on my head and a conniving shape shifter trying to collect. And it's not like every party has to go horribly wrong. Plus, I wouldn't go. No freshmen."
"That's not the point. It's just too risky for us to go."
"It's just a party, dude, not a meeting with the President. We need to go and shake that tail! Whoohoo!" Kurt was now on the table, giving everyone a display of just how terrible his dancing was. Not that Luke would judge, because he couldn't dance either.
Everyone at the table noticed when Kurt's tail came out from hiding due to his wild dancing, causing Scott to jerk him down into a seat before anyone else noticed. by said exposed appendage.
"Dude, don't pull my tail. What's wrong with you?" Kurt said accusingly, looking more than a little upset. His tail was a very personal part of his body.
"This is exactly what I'm talking about. Grow up Kurt and quit goofing around so much."
"Lighten up man. You're really killing my style!"
"Listen up-"
"No, you listen. There's a sound I want you to here and it's…" Bamf. Kurt was gone in his signature puff of smoke. Everyone at the table tried to play it off when everyone else turned to look. As soon as the heat died down, Luke turned to Scott and said "I'll clean up your mess this time, Summers. I'm gonna go find Kurt before he wrecks something. But the next time you want to go dictator, make sure that you do it over something important. You'll lose fewer friends that way."
Leaving the table, Luke began walking towards the trees that outlined the school. Surely if Kurt had any sense in his head, he wouldn't port near populated places. Luke trotted off rounding a few of the buildings and hitting the tree lines, looking every which way for his disguised teammate. Instead, he saw Rouge heading towards one of the old labs around the back of the school. Weird.
'Why would anyone go back there? There's nothing there. Kurt must've known that and ported there and she heard him.'
Luke began to ease forward, moving slowly and remaining undetected. He wasn't going to get involved with Rouge in any way, shape, fashion, or form. She freaked him out. And her powers were way scary too. He would just wait until she came out, and then go check on his buddy. Minimal exposure. Kurt didn't mind her that much, after all. Let him deal with her.
That was Luke's plan until he heard an explosion coming out of the underground lab in front of him.
"What the hell?" Luke questioned, peering down at the open door. He heard voices and recognized both Kurt's and Rouge's. If Kurt was fine enough to talk, then Luke wasn't risking going down there to find out what happened. A few minutes passed by and finally, Rouge came out. She looked torn up about something, ready to cry even, but Luke wasn't gonna say anything to her. She was a girl, a teenage one at that. Tears were usually involved. The more important thing was the funny little device in her hands.
What is that? The way she's carrying it, you'd think it just killed someone. Oh crap! Where's Kurt?'
Rushing into the still smoky underground lab, Luke began to fan out the room with his gravitational pushes, rubbing his now sore arms while he scanned the room. "Kurt? Kurt, are you in here, man? Come on out, we gotta get to class. Or if we're gonna skip, let's go hit up a burger joint or something."
Nothing. The place was empty. Maybe Nightcrawler teleported somewhere else? But what was Rouge doing and what about that explosion? This place reeked of Kurt's involvement, both figuratively and literally. And man did sulfur stink.
Heading outside, he heard the bell rang and decided to go to class. Kurt would pop back up sometime soon enough, right? He wasn't the type to go AWOL without reason.
Sadly, when Luke roamed the halls after his class was over, he didn't see hide nor hair of Kurt Wagner. The guy had vanished off of the school grounds. Maybe he had gone back to the mansion or something? Luke found Scott and Jean, who apparently were looking for Kurt too.
"I haven't seen Kurt anywhere. Can't you find him Jean?" Luke questioned the female telepath, hoping for a good answer. Now he was worried about the blue guy.
"No, I can't sense him anywhere."
"Try again." Scott didn't sound like a jerk at all when he gave that order.
"I am. It's like he doesn't exist."
"Or someone's done something to him." Turning to follow Scott's gaze, Luke saw Lance, Terrence, and Fred coming down the hallway. Before Luke could get a grip on what was happening, Scott had already run forward and grabbed Lance by the collar and shoved him against the locker.
"Where's Kurt?" Scott had continued his notorious streak of giving out orders and demands, even to the Brotherhood goons. Swell.
Fed reached over and grabbed Scott's shoulder, but Luke sprang forward and knocked the unprepared Blob back a few steps. Luke squared up and began to think about how to take the big guy down when he suddenly found himself in a master lock hold. Terrence had gotten behind him and was now leaving him quite open to an angry Blob fist.
A crowd of students had gathered at this point chanting fight, so Luke couldn't use his powers to stop it. Thinking fast, Luke tucked his foot behind Terrence's and fell backwards, weighing himself down as best he could while falling. The two hit the ground, Terrence letting out an audible wheeze as the air left him. Fred had missed his punch entirely and stumbled into the locker, caving it in. Luke used the time he to turn and pin Springload, ready to start nailing him in the face a few times, only for an iron grip to wrap around his wrist, ready to snap it.
"What is going on here?" Principle Darkholme had arrived.
Terrence pushed Luke off of him roughly before getting up and dusting off his shoes. Lance piped up and started complaining "Summers and Hensley went ballistic. We weren't doin' nothing and they just attacked us!"
Jerking Luke around by his arm, she icily ordered "To my office. Now!" Then she let him go and stormed off.
Luke rubbed his wrist before turning back to his fellow X-men. Wordlessly, they all walked off and followed Principle Darkholme while the Brotherhood jeered.
While they were walking, Scott caught Luke by the shoulder and pulled him back a little, muttering "Thanks for trying to help me out there."
Luke just grinned back and said "I got your back man. No way I could let you get jumped three to one. Plus, we've still gotta find Kurt, so we might as well work together. Teamwork and all that."
When the three Xavier students arrived at the office, the principle was just turning the door and opening it for them all to go inside. The room was for some reason empty of all furniture and the window was open. Principle Darkholme started to freak immediately and ran off, cursing away under her breath. The three just looked around at the empty room and then checked out the window. Toad was in the parking lot with the same thing Rouge had in her hands earlier. Then, all of a sudden a red beam shot out from it and swallowed up a car from the lot, vanishing without a trace. The mutants shared a look as Cyclops said "Bet I know what happened to Kurt."
The three turned to leave the room, only to see a faint image of Kurt leap across the room in front of them. Then the image faded out of sight, like a ghost.
"Was that? That was Kurt but what was going on? I could see through him or something." Luke asked, hoping the more experienced X-men would know what was going on.
"I got a brief mental reading on him. It's like he's trapped somewhere."
Scott turned and looked back out the window at Toad hopping off. "I think we need to have a little talk with the Toad."
"Definitely."
The team had been rounded up, minus Kurt and they were all chasing Toad, who still had the zapping gizmo from earlier. The little runt was faster jumping around like a frog then they were running. Cyclops was in the lead and fired a beam that landed close to Toad's foot. In response, Toad hopped backwards and fired the beam at the X-men chasing him.
"Shadowcat, down!" Jean ordered as she and Luke ducked out of the way. They knew what that thing could do. Kitty heard the warning and phased through the ground, causing the beam to hit a bird bath instead, vanishing it as well.
"I would just trip him up, but that thing could go off again. Why does this slime ball have to be so quick?" Luke questioned between pants. Eventually, they hounded Toad up a tree, where he sat on a high branch and clutched on to his weapon. He opened his mouth to make a threat, only for Scott to blast the branch he was sitting on and leave him to fall to the hard ground. Jean caught the machine out of the air with her mind, lowering it gently to her hands.
Todd began to see how things were turning out for him, so he decided to scram, only for Spike to pin him to the tree with a few spikes. Scott crouched down beside him and held his hand on the button for his visor.
"Tell us what you did to Kurt."
The little guy began to squirm, pleading "I didn't do anything, I swear."
"He didn't do it. I did. And if you want to find you're blue guy, you better let him go."
Rouge made her demand while leaned up on a tree. Luke put his foot forward, stepping up and getting angry.
"Who do you think you are making demands of us? You're gonna tell us what you did to Kurt or I will personally drag it out of you myself, regardless of how you or anyone else feels about it."
Scott put his hand on Luke's shoulder and reigned him back in. "I know you're mad, but you've got to calm down. We need her help and making her mad won't get us anywhere. We'll just let Toad go, he doesn't matter anymore anyways."
Luke sighed and shoved his hands in the uniform's pockets. "Fine. But if we don't like what she shows us, can I crack her head a little?"
Normally, Luke would've been jumping over bridges to get away from Rouge. But she was holding them back from getting Kurt, who was locked away in some dimension by that stupid machine. He was worried for the blue guy. What if that dimension was full of scary monsters, or there were non-stop lectures from Mrs. Barnes? The horror his friend could be going through was killing Luke inside. Then again, Kurt could be trapped in a dimension full of girls in bikinis.
Rouge didn't remark any after Luke's challenge, but she stayed away from him while she led the X-men to the underground lab that Luke had seen earlier. Rouge stopped and gestured to the room.
"This is where it happened."
"If you've hurt him, I'm gonna…" Scott warned, standing at full height in order to intimidate the power-stealing mutant
"You start threatening me, and you'll never get him back."
"If you don't bring him back, I'll do more than threaten you, sister. I will break every damn bone in your body starting from your toes and going up. It starts to hurt a little around the third rib, but we'll see if you can handle it." Again, Luke was mad when he said this. The girl, regardless of how potentially powerful, was holding them back from helping Kurt and it was irritating. He had the tendency to get snappy when he got concerned about something and someone had to muck it all up.
"I don't know how to bring him back. But if you touch me, it'll be the last thing you do."
"I don't have to touch you to hurt you. Remember that."
Jean stepped in and tried to calm everyone down, but that wasn't gonna happen. Luckily Kitty and Spyke startled talking about the little machine thing, telling about pulses and how it was keeping Nightcrawler in another dimension. It was all gibberish to Luke, but he got the idea.
"So if we break that thing, the pulses stop and Kurt can come back, right?"
"Let's trash this thing." Scott placed the machine on a table and took a few steps back, ready to unleash his red beams on the hunk of junk. For some reason, Rouge was still around watching what happened. Kitty made the suggestion of her shorting it out quietly, making all of the guys stop and look at her.
"Are you serious? Scott's just gonna toast that sucker and be done with it. No sense in putting you at risk if it explodes with more dimension pulse things, right?" Luke tried to play it off, but the girls could still tell he was just eager to see the thing blow up.
"Should've known better than to try and talk guys out of blowing something up."
The guys shrugged off the weak insult and Scott focused back on the machine, ready to nuke it. Just as he was going to fire, Kurt appeared in a burst of light and shouted "Reset, don't de…" before fading back out into nothing.
Scott turned to his team and asked "You guys all saw that right?"
Everyone nodded and then began to discus what he said. Evan said some backwards thing about "Don't reset, he wants you to blow it up."
Luke slapped the back of Evan's head lightly. "Why would he port to us and say that if he wanted us to destroy it? We were going to destroy it, so why would he port and tell us to if we already were? He was warning us not to destroy it and he wants us to reset it. And we should try it anyways too before the thing gets wrecked." The team agreed, leaving Scott to fiddle with the buttons. Cyclops poked one and set the machine down. It started to rattle on the table and shot out a yellow beam in an orb shape that blinded everyone in the room. Nightcrawler and some other person emerged from the light, but were still trapped inside of the energy bubble.
"Port out of there, Kurt. Come on!" Luke hollered over the projector machine. The man beside Kurt answered "We can't. The batteries are fried, we need more juice."
Kurt then said something and the two vanished once again.
"What're they doing?" Evan asked, obviously confused.
"I don't know, but they better hustle." Scott said worriedly.
"There they are." The X-men turned around to see the Brotherhood in their combat gear all piling into the room. Toad muttered something about his 'vapor ray' under his breath while the others spread out and tried to look menacing. Lance called out to the odd woman out, Rouge and said "Mystique sent us looking for you. So are you with us, or them?"
Rouge looked between the two groups of mutants and walked away. "I don't care what you guys do. This ain't my fight. Just make sure you teach that loud-mouth over there some manners." She was, of course, looking at Luke when she said this. After she left, Blob decided to discuss peace treaty.
"Fork over the ray thing, losers!"
"Or this place is gonna rock!" Lance finished for him, stomping his foot down and shaking the room.
Luke stepped up, ready to fight. "That's the best thing you can come up with Rocky? Maybe you should go home and think up more threatening line to scare us with. And while you're at it, give your goldfish his bowl back."
Terrence slid out from behind the Blob and lined up across from Luke. "Leave the poor guy alone, Luke. He can't help it his IQ is lower than your age. But if you really want to throw down, well come get it. What happened in the hallway was a slip-up and you're going down this time."
"If I'm going down, I'll take lessons from your mom. She can teach me first hand."
Them were some fightin' words if anything was, and both teams jumped into action. The other X-men got in their own fights while Luke and Terrence circled each other, waiting for an opening. Luke got tired of waiting and ran in to deck Terrence across the face one time, only for the teen to bend over backwards in a sickening angle. Before Luke could draw his hand back from the failed attack, Terrence straightened up like a board and head butted Luke's fist, causing it to fold up and make a sickening crack. Luke hissed as his eyes started to tear up from the pain as his wrist figuratively lit on fire. Terrence was about throw his own punch, but Luke spun it aside, letting it graze his ear as he kicked out and hooked his foot behind Terrence's knee and drew it back, making Terrence's leg give way. Dropped to one knee on the concrete floor, Terrence looked up to catch a vicious elbow to the nose, followed by a second hit to the jaw.
Terrence wasn't done by any means, so he waited a moment while his muscle powers charged, and then doubled Luke over his fist as he buried it in his stomach, knocking the breath out of him. While Luke was gasping for breath doubled over, Terrence charged back his arm and chopped Luke in the back of the neck, making him hit the ground face first.
Adrenaline only dulled so much of the pain Luke felt from hitting the ground. Part of him just wanted to stay down there. But the other cried out for him to smear Terrence's head on the wall. Luke rolled out of the way of a stomp aimed for his back, lashing out with his foot and catching the back of Terrence's knee again, sending him to the ground. Luke looked around a saw a loose concrete slab from Avalanche's earlier power usage. He picked it up and began adding weight to it before breaking it over Terrence's head as he tried to get up. Terrence slumped over, out like a light, now sporting a cut on his forehead that was bleeding.
Luke turned from his downed adversary and saw the other Brotherhood goons regrouping and ready to start round 2. As they advanced, a bright light and the sound of Kurt's port filled the room before a car flew out of nowhere and crashed into Blob. The airbags deployed and the passengers looked fine. Blob was hardly bothered, but when they saw that Kurt was fine, the Brotherhood decided to bail. Toad scooped up Terrence and began to drag him out as best he could, before Blob picked him up and set him on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. As they left, they muttered about how they would wipe the floor with them next time or something.
Kurt and the stranger got out of the car and started to tell what all had happened, making a great story out of it. It was night by the time they all got out of the lab and they started walking towards the vehicles of Luke's bike and Scott's car. Scott offered the strange guy a place at Xavier's because apparently he was a technopath mutant who had been trapped in 1978. Luke was still a little confused by the whole story. It was all so weird.
But the mutant, Forge, declined and said he was going home for his 20 year late curfew. Scott even offered to drive him, but the young looking old man declined, stating it was only a few blocks. Scott proved persistent with his sales pitch and gave Forge the mansions number for emergencies. The man laughed and waved them goodbye, leaving them all around Scott's car.
Luke got on his own bike and decided to drive himself on home, leaving his team in order to go find his bed. His hand was hurting and he certainly needed the rest. Maybe it would be healed up by morning.
Luke drove off hearing the others all laughing, so he guessed that Scott and Kurt had made up and were cool again. That was good. After today, it looked like Luke had gotten on Scott's good side too. Maybe he was winning his team around after all?
When Luke made it home, he immediately made for his room, but along the way, he felt the familiar sensation of someone using telepathy.
'Luke? Could I get you to stop by my office? I would like to discuss some things with you.'
'Sure thing Professor.'
Luke detoured off his path and made tracks for Xavier's office, hoping to get whatever needed to be done out of the way. He knocked on the study doors, but found them already open. Peering inside, he saw the instructors all waiting inside as well as the big man himself.
"Come in Luke. We've got some things to discuss before you go to bed. Recently, I've been doing a little digging with Cerebro and going through news files and I found a few things I want to bring to light. Do you remember hearing about that children's hospital in Guatemala that was burned down a few years back? How there were no casualties, but not a bit of medical information was saved? There are two more incidents like that that I've connected. There was also a rice paddy farm in Japan burned down and all the workers were released. These are all connected in the fact that every time this would happen, one person that was involved would go missing. Children from the hospitals vanished and one worker from the paddy farm disappeared. I have reason to believe that this is the work of this Network faction you spoke of that tries to free mutants from oppression."
Luke nodded his head, a curious look on his face. "Yeah, that sounds like them, but what about it? What's that matter to us?"
Xavier crossed his hands from behind his desk as he began to explain. "Mutant kind has already been discovered somewhat, mostly reigned in and kept in check by governments. They are trying to withhold this information in order to give us more time to prepare for the upheaval the news will bring. This Network and this faction in particular are the most active group of mutant kind. I've been asked to try and gather information on them to see what their intentions are. I was hoping to see if you could shed any more light on things or maybe help me connect a few more dots."
Luke frowned at the Professor's question and glanced at the two teachers who were standing there silently. "Nope. I didn't really get involved in the Network's programs or faction. I just did jobs. There are so many loonies in the Network it's safer to do things alone unless you can really trust the people you're around. But if I may Professor, who's doing the asking? Tell them that they don't want to get their noses in on something like this. It is certainly too big for them."
Xavier's eyes flickered for a moment, before he nodded. Wolverine took that as a signal that the conversation was over and noted "What's up with your hand? It looks broken."
"It might be. The Brotherhood tried to stop us from rescuing Kurt, so me and Terrence had a little fight. I'm thinking my hand will be fine by morning."
The man snorted. "I could care less. You're still running the morning session with everyone else. Now go get some sleep."
Luke left the room, throwing over his shoulder "Love you too, Logan!"
Xavier chuckled as Wolverine bristled. "Luke has certainly come a long way today. It's surprising how much loyalty he showed to Kurt and to Scott in today's events. He may be trying to be part of the team."
"I hope so. I'm tired of Summers moping about Luke disrupting his team authority. It's throwing off his A-game in the sessions."
Storm spoke up and commented "Now that he's starting to come around to our way of doing things, do you think he's ready to become an actual part of the X-men?"
Xavier's hands once against folded up as he thought out loud.
"Give him a little more time. I think we have a shinning star in Luke just waiting to be polished."
AN: Good grief, I'm tired. I can only pray that spell check catches some of the mistakes I know I made. Sorry this is so short, but I couldn't stretch it any longer without adding Kurt's point of view. But I hope you enjoyed and I hope to see you guys voting at the poll. Please. It's only a few clicks away on my profile.
Gonna go rafting tomorrow and test my luck and amazing skill with an oar against the wild. I'm gonna come back with two bear pelts and a fish hook through my hand. I might bring back the Titanic on my truck.
Title goes to Jimmy Eat World and their hit 'The Middle'. Props to HMMaster for helping me out at midnight. He's been a real huge help and you should check his stories out. It's been a great inspiration to me and a fascinating read. I bid you all a good whatever time it is when you read this. Big Willis, out!