"Brimstone? You're sure?"

"Yeah, man. That's what Mr. McCoy said."

Scott's head swiveled around, his gaze landing inevitably on the Brotherhood table, where four of the five were messing around and making general nuisances of themselves. "I knew we hadn't heard the last of Nightcrawler… but what's he doing in the school?"

Jean rubbed her temples, feeling the onset of a headache. Her lunch was still over by Duncan, growing cold. Meanwhile, she stood over the X-men's lunch table. Scott had called her over after Evan had come running in with his information.

Jean was finding it difficult to concentrate. Something was riling up the nearby cooks, making their thoughts a pounding racket that Jean fought to block. All she could catch was something about rats—a fact she dearly hoped wasn't true, as cafeteria food was bad enough without blatant health code violations.

"It's probably nothing, Scott," Jean said, trying to contain herself. There was no reason to snap at anyone, just because a couple cafeteria workers were having a bad day. "The Brotherhood has made it very clear that they have no intention of revealing mutants any time soon, and I see no other reason Nightcrawler would be in the school."

"Yeah, but the same could be said about the incident at the mall," Scott argued.

"It was a chemistry lab," Rogue mumbled, glaring at her nachos. "There are all sorts of weird smells in chemistry labs."

"Yes, exactly," Jean said, glad for the help.

Evan leaned forward, his palms on the table. "But Mr. McCoy specifically said he smelled brimstone… and, y'know, I think I might've heard that teleporting sound once during class."

"Guys, there's no need to-"

"Actually," Kitty said, tilting her head, "I think I heard it once today, too. I hope that doesn't mean he's been, like, spying on us or something." She shivered. "Creepy."

Jean sighed. "Look, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but there's really no reason to think…" She trailed off a babble of panicked thoughts wafted across the room.

…oh god I killed him sorry Fuzzy oh god they're gonna kill me… what the hell was that thing, like vaporized him, yo! So sorry Kurt oh god oh god….

Jean turned quizzically and saw Toad walking into the room with forced nonchalance, looking very pale and shaky. He faked a smile as he reached the Brotherhood table. The telepath's brows furrowed… those thoughts were definitely coming from him.

"Jean?"

She turned back around, and saw her friends peering at her in concern.

"I'm fine… but, on second thought, maybe there is reason to think he was here."

Evan pumped a fist victoriously in the air. "Yes!"

Scott, however, frowned more deeply. He knew her better than the others. "What is it?"

Jean shook her head; this was one of those things that was probably better to figure out before she told the others. After all, Scott had a tendency to go overboard.

She doubted he'd take it well if she revealed that Toad had apparently killed Nightcrawler… she expected the police would get involved, and that was something the Institute didn't need.

And so, she returned to Duncan and ate her lunch with him while he talked about the next big party he was setting up. Occasionally, she telepathically eavesdropped on her friends—they were fixated on what sort of mischief Nightcrawler could do in the school… small surprise.

Mostly, though, she kept psychic tabs on Toad. The pale boy seemed to have some difficulty hiding the fear from his demeanor, which earned him some laughs and odd looks from the rest of the Brotherhood, but otherwise didn't draw any notice. Each time someone looked at him, though, Jean could sense a distinct jab of guilty fear stabbing through him, as if he was afraid that everyone knew and would call him on it.

The details of the event, however, eluded Jean, since Toad was avoiding that specific memory like the plague.

By the end of lunch, Toad had wound down a bit, and Jean was surprised by the way his mind began whirring like a machine booting up. More to her surprise was the methodical way he began reviewing the memory he had so recently been avoiding. Jean caught glimpses of a destroyed lab of some sort, and a machine that looked a little like a turtle. And a confused glimpse of Nightcrawler, hugging Toad close.

"What you thinkin' about, Jeanny?" Duncan's voice broke through her thoughts.

She shook the fog from her head and smiled up at her boyfriend. "Nothing."

"Well, then you'd better hurry up. Don't want a smart girl like you missing class." Duncan gave her his all-star smile, and Jean had to give in.

"Thanks, Duncan. I'll be along in a minute."

She picked up her lunch, turning her psychic attention back to the Brotherhood table. But they were picking up too, and one of their number had disappeared completely in the couple seconds she'd looked away.

Toad.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The first time someone had walked by—a pair of guys in letter jackets jostling around playfully, appearing as if from the ether—Kurt had scurried back around a corner. But the jocks disappeared a moment later, fading away from whence they'd come. A teacher walked by right behind him in his hiding place, and he jumped, startled, back into the hallway. Then, a trio of freshman girls walked right through him.

Right. Through. Him.

He shivered at the eerie feeling. He stood still as ethereal students filled the hallway around him, their voices echoing hollowly. It was like they were all ghosts.

Or he was.

He heard a familiar voice—Lance!—and turned to follow the sound.

"…know I didn't mean it like that, Pretty Kitty."

"Like, stop it with that nickname!" said the voice of Kitty, the X-man who'd screamed when she'd seen Kurt. "It is so lame."

Kurt found them near a locker, Lance looking more dejected than Kurt had ever seen the tough guy. Well, all the Brothers had their issues. Kitty, apparently, was one of Lance's.

"You said you thought it was cute."

"That was before I figured out what a loser you were." She gave him a glare.

"…this isn't about that comment I made about your hair last Thursday…is it?"

"Ergh! No, but, like, thanks for bringing that up!" Kitty slammed her locker shut. "You are such a… ARGH!" She whirled and stalked down the hall.

Lance watched for a moment, looking absolutely stunned. Then, he shook himself out of it, looked around to make sure no one was paying attention, and ran after her. "Kitty, wait!"

Kurt let them leave his immediate area, which meant they dissipated into nothingness like everyone else. Lance's eyes had gone right through Kurt, just like everyone else's. He was invisible… nobody stared, but simply went about their business with no care at all to his presence.

It was as close to normal as he had ever been.

So maybe he was a ghost or something. He was certainly scared, and wanted to figure out what had happened to him.

But on the other hand… he had never had a chance like this before. He was standing among the normal people, able to mingle with them. To pretend, at least for a time, that he was one of them.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Okay, this… and this… was this part of it? Aw, heck, put it in the pile and figure it out later.

Todd rifled through the lab that, a half hour ago, he had vowed never to return to. His backpack was open on the floor, and he was currently tossing anything that he thought might have been part of the device inside it. Fortunately, the general shell was still intact—the wires inside had kept it together. There were just a couple tiny bits that had fallen among the debris… unfortunately, those were the parts he had to find.

I don't even know what this is… better toss it in.

His hands and tongue were working nonstop to put part after part into the bag.

At some point between the beginning of lunch and the end, Todd had realized that he was alone on this one. Lance would kill him if he ever found out… if the X-men and the police didn't figure it out first. The best way to fix it, therefore, was to figure out exactly what he'd done and to somehow find a way to undo it.

After all, maybe the furball wasn't vaporized. Wouldn't there be some sort of blue fuzzy residue if he had been? And Fuzzy hadn't exactly screamed or anything… which meant no pain. So he had to be okay, right? Just… somewhere else.

Yeah, like a teleport! No way a teleport would hurt a teleporter!

…but then why hadn't Fuzzy teleported back?

Todd shoved back the strange twist in his gut with the same gusto he was stuffing his bag. Finally, convinced that he'd gathered everything he could, he zipped the bag up… it barely closed over the device's big round shell, but he got it to close with some effort.

Then, with a last look around—just in case there was some sort of fuzzy blue residue—he hopped out. He needed to shoplift some tinkering tools, and it'd be easier to do that while school was still in session.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"I'm telling you, there was a ghost! A blue, furry ghost!"

Scott's head snapped around like some sort of cyborg. Target identified. Locked. Firing in 3… 2… 1…

"Excuse me, did you say something about a ghost?"

Evan smirked at his own private joke. Classic. Leave it to Cyclops to make a school day feel like a mission.

The guy who had been talking to his friends turned around and stared at him. "Yeah… yeah. It was real, I swear!"

Scott held up his hands placatingly. "Hey, I believe you. Out of curiosity… where did you see it?"

"It was in Mrs. McGellen's room, just now!"

Scott sent Evan a Significant Look and the pair of them headed toward the indicated history classroom.

Things had been pretty quiet since lunch, but Scott was the first to point out that two class periods of peace didn't mean something wasn't brewing. They had one more period before school was out, and they still had not tracked down Nightcrawler. As Scott would (and did) say, time was running out.

Now, they had a lead.

They entered the classroom, which was currently filling with a couple nerds who didn't waste their entire passing period just so they didn't have to spend an extra minute in class… like, say, Evan did.

They entered, and Evan wasn't really surprised to see no hint of the Nightcrawler. But even more surprising…

"No brimstone," Scott said after discretely sniffing the air.

"Yeah. Weird. You think he left some other way?"

"I don't see how." Scott peered up at the vent, standing on a desk to tap at the screws holding the grating in. This earned him odd looks from the people already in the classroom.

Scott hopped off the desk, ignoring the nerds. "Something is really fishy here."

"Not me, dude. I had the chicken."

Scott made a motion that Evan assumed meant he was rolling his eyes. But he didn't say anything, and instead led the way back out.

The warning bell rang for final period. They were out of time.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The final bell of the day rang, like a distant knell through the fog of the strange world Kurt had found himself in. He watched the ghostly students filing out of the school, mourning the loss. He had spent the entire day sitting in on classes and following people through the halls. Sure, what he had done was probably a violation of privacy on many counts, but it satisfied part of that lonely longing inside him. And now, that feeling was back.

The illusion dropped, and he suddenly felt just how isolated he was. No one to talk to… he was trapped and alone. Trapped… caged.

He made his way to the entrance of the school, but couldn't pass through it. The odd netherworld he was in went no further than the school walls. He tried to teleport past it… but it was like hitting a wall head-first.

And to make matters worse, teleporting here felt… funny. Like he slipped every time he landed. Dropped a bit too far. Like a rollercoaster ride that went on a bit too long.

He wanted to get out. He tried teleporting in a couple different directions. Out to the parking lot… wall. Through the service exit out of the kitchen… wall. Up to the roof… more of a ceiling, but the same sensation. There was simply no place outside to port to.

He was trapped, and this time, there was no way out.

A howl bubbled up in his throat, but he bit it back with some effort. Instead, what came out was something between a sob and a whimper.

He sat down glumly on a desktop in an empty classroom, looking despondently out the window into the fuzzy whiteness beyond. When he heard the echo of footsteps in the corridor outside, he assumed it was someone getting out late, leaving a ghostly echo through the world he was trapped in.

He did not, however, expect a head to poke around the open doorframe, look directly at him, and give an enthusiastic "Far out!"

Kurt's head jerked up. The guy was not ghostly like the rest of them… he looked real. Moreover, he was looking right at Kurt.

Kurt reacted instinctively, leaping from the desk to the ceiling tile.

"What are you, man?" The guy stepped farther in, looking fascinated.

…fascinated? Not fearful?

"I'm… um… I'm a mutant."

The other boy walked below him, now just looking curious. "Mutant? As in, mutated genetics?"

"Ja… " Kurt let himself off the ceiling, dropping down onto the desk next to the guy. He crouched there nervously as the guy walked a circle around him.

"Groovy look, man. But how'd you get here?"

Kurt's tail twitched nervously, his head swiveling to follow the other boy's path. "A friend and I vere in a lab, and zhere vas zhis…" Kurt paused, the boy's face suddenly sprang into his memory. "Vait! It vas you! You vere on zhe computer screen!"

"So you found my old lab, huh?" The boy put a hand to his chin. "You musta gotten stuck here the same way I did."

Kurt was slowly starting to relax around this guy. He didn't seem to mind Kurt's appearance at all. "Vhere is 'here', exactly?"

"Middleverse. Well… I call it Middleverse. It's a pocket dimension I sort of accidentally created."

Kurt couldn't help but release a disbelieving laugh. "How do you accidentally create a pocket dimension?"

"Eh, you mess around with the time-space continuum enough, it's bound to happen eventually."

The guy gave Kurt an easy smile, as if talking like some sort of junior mad scientist was par for the course.

Kurt gave another laugh, a little more at ease. "I can't believe you're not afraid of me."

"You kidding? I'm relieved. I thought I was the only one."

With that, he held out his right arm, and it transformed with a mechanical whir, forming into some sort of all purpose power tool.

"Mein Gott."

"Trippy, huh?" He flexed it again, making the little metal arms coming off the side flex and spin. "I invented it myself. In fact, I invented a lot of things myself… it's kinda what I do. Name's Forge."

"I'm Kurt. All I really do is creep people out."

"If that's true, then this'll probably be one long vacation for you."

Kurt blinked, easing down to stand on the floor. "Vhat do you mean?"

"What it sounds like, man. There's no way out of here… not without help from the other side, anyway."

"You mean… ve're trapped here?"

"Yeah." Forge rubbed the back of his head. "And let me tell you, after twenty years in here, I'm glad for at least some company. It gets pretty lonely, having no one to talk to for years at a time."

Kurt looked down. "Ja, tell me about it."

Forge looked at him curiously, but Kurt just shook his head and smiled. This was a lot better than any illusion he had been indulging in earlier that day.

So, having nothing better to do than talk, they did.