"Go to Duncan Matthews' party?" Scott asked in response to Jean's question. "Eh, I don't think so."

The X-Men were currently at their table outside during a break between classes.

"You gonna finish that moo juice?" Evan asked Scott.

"You can have mine." Jean gave her milk to Evan before returning her attention to Scott. "Come on. It might be fun."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Jean, Duncan Matthews, and fun are two things that cannot possibly exist in the same place. It's been scientifically proven."

"Danny's right." Rogue agreed. "Matthews is a jerk."

"No, he's not." Kitty said. "I'd go."

"No freshman allowed." Danny told her, making her cross her arms.

"Oh, Matthews is a jerk." She snarled.

"Good." Danny nodded his head in approval. "You're learning."

"Half of the school will be there." Scott reminded Jean. "Suppose somebody gets too close to Kurt. That holo-projector won't stop them from feeling his fur."

"Hey!" Kurt protested. "Chicks dig the fuzzy dude!" He turned to Kitty. "Right?"

Kitty had enough of Kurt's advances for one day. "I am, like, so out of here." She got up and walked away. "Later!"

"Oh, yeah." Kurt said to himself. "She can't resist."

"I'm trying to be serious here." Scott said. "I just think that it may be too risky."

"Scott's right." Danny backed up his friend. "Suppose if we do go to that party, Fred or Speedy over there," He pointed to Fred and Pietro, who were walking around, "will try and start something. And you know they will start something. They can't stop themselves from wrecking shit."

"Danny, language." Jean scolded. Honestly, he really needed some soap in his mouth. "And come on. What's wrong with a little socializing?"

"Why would I want to socialize when I just hate about every person here?" Danny reasoned, getting a nod of agreement from Rogue. "Why can't we just all go out to a movie? I'd find that more fun than hearing about Duncan bragging about catching the damn football for the forty-ninth time."

"I'd like to see a movie." Rogue admitted as she subtly moved herself a bit closer to Danny.

"Danny makes a good point." Scott acknowledged. "We can just go to a movie. It's much safer than running the risk of exposing ourselves in front of a number of people."

"Dude, it's just a party!" Kurt said, trying to get Scott to lighten up. "Time to shake that tail!" Kurt got on top of the table and started dancing. "Wahoo! Party! Party! Party!"

From his pants, Kurt's tail started waving around as Scott looked around to make sure no one saw it.

"Hey, watch the tail!" Scott pulled it, but when he did, it came off as blood started gushing out of Kurt's bottom as he started to spasm in pain on the table.

"AHH!" Kurt cried as he started rolling around in his own blood as the rest of the X-Men shot to their feet, their eyes wide in fear and shock.

"OH MY GOD!" Jean cried.

"KURT!" Danny shouted in worry for his friend.

"What do we do?" Rogue started to panic as all the other students ran away in fear.

"Holy shit, that's a lot of blood!" Evan said numbly.

"Kurt!" Scott went up to his side. "Kurt! Speak to me!"

"I don't know if I'll make it." Kurt choked out.

"No, no." Scott told him. "You're gonna make it, Kurt! You're gonna make it!"

However, it seemed that Scott was wrong, as Kurt looked like he was getting weaker. As he started to gasp for air, he put a hand on Scott's face and looked into the shades of his friend.

"Scott, I want you to know that I don't blame you." Kurt said before his eyes closed and his body went limp.

"Kurt?" Scott tried to shake him, but he got no response. "Kurt! Kurt! Wake up! Kurt!" Guilt overwhelming him, Scott could only let out a cry of utter pain.

"NOOOOOOO!" He shouted to the heavens. He got Kurt killed. It was all his fault. Xavier assigned him the leadership role of the X-Men because he saw that the young man had the potential to bring out the best in the others. But he was wrong. He just got one of his teammates and friends killed. All because of one mistake.

As Scott began to sob with the rest of the X-Men, he felt something tickle his nose. Opening his eyes, Scott saw that it was Kurt's tail. Still attached to his body.

Looking down, Scott was greeted by a smirking Kurt.

"Gotcha!" He cried, making the X-Men look at him in shock, which turned to disbelief and finally anger.

"What the fuck?" Scott cried as he pushed Kurt off the table.

Danny picked up the supposed tail that was ripped off and saw that it was simply a tube. "It's a tube he painted blue."

"Are you serious?" Rogue glared daggers at the blue-furred mutant.

"What?" Evan said in shock.

"It's just a joke?" Jean exclaimed in anger.

"Damn it, Kurt!" Scott scolded. "I'm sick of your jokes. You've gone too far this time."

The X-Men stormed off, leaving Kurt alone.

"Oh, come on, guys." Kurt tried to plead with his friends. "It was just a prank." They weren't having it as they continued walking. Kurt shook his head. "Maybe I went too far." He decided to teleport away, but as he reappeared in some kind of storage closet. Before he could register where he was, he fell down into a pile of boxes.

Kurt groaned. "I have got to work on my re-entries." He looked down to see that his watch was damaged by the fall, rendering it useless and preventing him from disguising his true form. He looked around his surroundings in curiosity. He had never seen this part of the school before. In front of him were double doors with a sign that said Stay Out written on it.

Wondering what was behind it, he teleported past the doors and found himself in a dusty room, making him cough. "Man, somebody should fire the custodian." In front of him were several monitors. As Kurt got closer to them, he tripped an infrared laser with his foot. This caused the monitors to turn on, showing a young Native-American teenager.

"January 22, 1978." The guy said. "Hi there. If you're hearing this, you've got ten seconds before this lab self-destructs. Have a nice day. What's left of it."

The monitors then showed a countdown that started at 10, which began to make its way down.

"Uh-oh!" Kurt said in alarm. Taking action, he made his way to the keyboard as he tried to think of something to do. "I should have paid attention in computer lab!" He then got an idea. "Ooh, I know. I'll try Control, Alt, delete. That should work."

Meanwhile, Danny and Rogue were walking past where the lab was when they heard an explosion go off.

"What the hell was that?" Danny questioned.

Rogue pointed down some stairs that led into a building that was separated from the rest of the school. "It came from in there."

The two raced down to find Nightcrawler passed out in the room.

"Kurt, are you okay?" Danny made his way to the mutant's side as he tried to find a pulse.

Rogue, however, wasn't buying it, thinking Kurt was trying to pull another prank. "I swear if this is another of your jokes."

"No, I don't think it is." Danny told her. He knew that Kurt couldn't fake an explosion. He tried to shake his friend awake. "Kurt, what happened?"

"Lab." He moaned. "Booby-trapped."

"Lab?" Rogue walked into the unmarked room and found all the monitors wrecked as they sparked with electricity. "Whatever this stuff was, it's thrashed now." She then saw a spherical object with two handles on it sitting undamaged on a podium. "Except for this."

Danny was still looking over Kurt as he held up two fingers. "Okay, Kurt, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Fifty-two." Kurt said as his vision returned slowly.

Danny looked at his fingers and shook his head. "Well, you got the two part right."

"Hey, Danny!" Rogue came out with the device. "Look what I found."

"Uh, Rogue, I'd put that down if I were you." Danny warned her. "For all we know, that could be a bomb."

"What?" Rogue said absentmindedly as she squeezed the handle, and the device shot out a ray that hit both Danny and Kurt as they were surrounded by a glowing sphere before they vanished, leaving no trace that they were even there.

Rogue dropped the object as she made her way over to where Danny and Kurt previously were. "Danny! Kurt! Oh, God!" She cried as she hoped that she didn't kill them. "Please be okay! I got to get help!" She ran out to go get the rest of the X-Men.

The two X-Men found themselves in the middle of the school hall, but something was off. It was more blurry than usual, almost as if they were glimpsing everything through a fog.

"What the hell?" Danny looked around. "Where are we? The Twilight Zone?"

"Ne ne ne ne ne." Kurt joked, imitating the theme of the show.

"Kurt, focus!" Danny snapped. "We got to find out where we are."

They saw images of their fellow students appear and disappear as if they were ghosts.

"Wow, I can't believe Kurt would pull something like that." Came Kitty's voice, making the two turn around to see an image of her and Evan talking.

"Yeah, you should've seen how ticked off Scott was." Evan said.

"Kitty? Kitty!" Kurt tried to reach for her, but his hand only passed through her.

"Guys! It's us!" Danny shouted, but they didn't respond. "They can't hear us. It's like we're ghosts." He then smacked himself on the head. "I can't believe I made that comparison."


A bug was crawling on the ground as Toad, who was on all fours, grinned at it, happy that he had found his lunch for the day. "Hey!"

A car honked at him as Toad was currently standing in the middle of a parking spot.

"Out of the way!" Darkholme shouted at him from her car, making Toad move as he looked down to see that the bug was gone.

"Aw. My lunch." He bemoaned in sadness.

Darkholme got out of her car and glared at Toad. "You are to stay away from this area, Mr. Tolansky. If I see one drop of slime on my new car, it's detention for life. Are we clear?"

Toad nodded as she walked off. "Oh, yes. We're very clear." He spat his tongue at her as he started to look around for something to eat, when he came across the same place that Danny and Kurt vanished from.

He hopped down the stairs and was greeted by the destroyed room before noticing the gadget that started it all.

"Ooh, what's that?" He grabbed it as the device shot out a beam that made some of the boxes disappear.

Toad blinked once before letting out a cheer. "Whoa, this is some cool gizmo." He grabbed it and left the room. Oh, he was going to have some fun with this baby.


Scott and Jean were walking down the halls as they were still talking about Kurt's latest stunt.

"I can't believe Kurt would do something like that." Scott shook his head, angry at Kurt for making him think he had died.

"Oh, lighten up, Scott." Jean said. She had gotten over her anger at Kurt pretty quickly. "It's a joke, a joke in bad taste, mind you, but no one was hurt, and now it's over."

"Still, you gotta admit he jerks around way too much." Scott replied.

Jean sighed. "Ok, I'll admit that. But Kurt knows when it's time to joke and when it's time to be serious. You gotta have faith in your teammates, Scott."

Suddenly, two students ran out of the bathroom.

"A ghost! We just saw a ghost!" One cried.

"Yeah!" The other shouted. "A blue-haired demon and some guy with white hair!"

"I'm out of here!" The first one yelled.

"I warned him! And now he's dragging Danny along on another one of his pranks!" Scott stormed into the bathroom. "Kurt? Danny?" No one was there, making him rub his head in confusion as he left.

"Not there?" Jean asked.

"No." Scott answered. "You better contact them. Tell them to knock it off."

Jean closed her eyes and placed her hands on her forehead as she tried to look for any sign of Kurt but couldn't get a read on him anywhere. "Scott, I can't pick up a trace of Kurt anywhere. It's like he doesn't exist."

"Well, what about Danny?" Scott asked.

Jean shook her head. "He's immune to my senses." It was very interesting for her and Xavier to discover that Danny was immune to their telepathy when he first came to them.

"Try again." Scott told her. "Kurt and Danny have to be around here somewhere."

"Scott! Jean!" Rogue ran up to them, looking terrified.

"Rogue, what is it?" Scott asked in concern, seeing how scared Rogue looked.

"Danny and Kurt are gone!" She cried. "There was this gizmo that we found, and it zapped them, and now they're gone!"

"Whoa, whoa! Slow down, Rogue." Scott said. "Now where is this gizmo?"

"I'll show you. Follow me." She ran down the halls, with Scott and Jean following her.

They arrived in the room where Rogue left the device, but it was gone.

"But it was right here." Rogue said in frustration. "I dropped it there. Where could it be?"

Scott looked over at a green puddle on the floor. "Judging by this puddle of slime, I bet Toad has it. Come on, let's go find them."

The three went back to the school to look for Toad when they came across Lance and Fred instead.

"What are you looking at, Summers?" Lance sneered at him.

"Where's Toad?" Scott demanded.

Fred crossed his arms. "Yeah, like we'd tell you!"

Not in the mood for their attitude, Scott pushed Lance up against the lockers.

"Scott, no!" Jean cried, not wanting him to get in trouble or start any pointless fights.

"Hey!" Lance protested the rough treatment.

"I said, Where is he?" Scott asked again.

"Get off of me!" Lance ordered him.

"Tell us where that little fly muncher is, and I promise I won't drain you dry." Rogue threatened as she took off one of her gloves.

"Get lost, goth girl." Fred pushed her to the ground before lifting Scott up by his shirt.

"Put him down!" Jean commanded.

Lance got in front of her. "Back off, red, or I'll rock you!" He made a small earthquake that made the lockers shake a bit.

The other students noticed the commotion and decided to watch.

"Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" They chanted.

"What is going on here?"

The crowd parted to see Darkholme glaring at the X-Men and the Brotherhood.

Rogue got off the floor and pointed at the Brotherhood. "Ask the loser's club."

"We weren't doing nothing." Fred said, putting Scott down.

"Yeah!" Lance added. "Summers here just went ballistic on us for no reason!"

"Oh, I got a reason." Scott said as he got into a fighting stance.

"Scott." Jean tried to stop him from making any more rash decisions.

"Quiet!" Darkholme commanded. She pointed at the X-Men. "You three, in my office now."

The X-Men begrudgingly followed Darkholme, passing by Lance, who made an L on his forehead and smirked.

"Shut it, creep." Rogue elbowed him.


Kurt reappeared next to Danny. He thought he could teleport back home but wasn't able to.

"Okay." He said to Danny. "Wherever this is, I can't teleport out! This is just way too freaky!"

"I know." Danny agreed before seeing a desk appear above them. "Watch out!" He pushed Kurt out of the way.

"It's raining furniture." Kurt said.

Danny looked at the ruined desk. "Wait, isn't that from Principal Darkholme's office? I would know I'd been sent there multiple times."

Danny was right, as Toad was currently in his Brotherhood uniform, zapping stuff in Darkholme's office with the gizmo.

"See the desk. Don't see the desk." He said to himself as he aimed the device at a chair. "See the chair." He fired at it. "Don't see the chair. So, Miss Big Shot, let's see how you like my new clean office policy."

"Inside, all of you." Came Darkholme's voice, causing Toad to hop out the window to avoid detection.

"I don't care what influence Xavier has with the school board." Darkholme said as she led the three into her office. "I am going to get..." She stopped when she saw that her furniture was gone. "What? What happened here? Who took my furniture?" She then realized who could've done this. "Fenton! He's the only one who'd pull this kind of stunt." She turned to the X-Men. "Where is he?" Not getting an answer, she stormed off in a rage. "I swear when I find him!"

The three X-Men looked out the window to see Toad zap Darkholme's new car.

"Looks like we found our Toad." Scott said.

As the two X-Men were exploring this new dimension, they saw Darkholme's car appear above them, making Kurt grab Danny and teleport the two out of the way. As they did this, they briefly passed through Darkholme's office.

"Scott, Rogue, look!" Jean pointed to the apparitions of Kurt and Danny that appeared briefly before disappearing.

"It's Danny and Kurt!" Rogue said, happy to see that they were okay. "Or their ghosts."

"No." Jean shook her head. "I got a brief mental reading from Kurt. It's like they're trapped somewhere."

Rogue had a look of concern on her face. "I hope they're all right." Especially Danny, as he was the one that she felt the most comfortable around. She felt like she could be herself around the guy. He was so kind and funny to his friends. And he had the protectiveness that made you know that he always had your back in a fight or a tough situation.

"They will be, Rogue." Scott reassured her. "In the meantime, I think we better have a talk with the Toad."


Kurt and Danny found themselves on the basketball court when they heard footsteps coming. Acting on instinct, Kurt grabbed Danny and teleported away from the door as a third figure showed up and started to cough on the smoke that was left from Kurt's teleportation.

"Whoa!" A familiar voice coughed. "Where'd you come from?"

The two X-Men dropped down behind the guy, making him turn around as he gasped in fright at Kurt's appearance.

"Relax." Kurt held out his hands in a calming motion.

"What are you, man?" The guy asked.

"Who are you?" Danny asked in return.

"Don't let my looks fool you." Kurt reassured the newcomer. "I'm a harmless blue fuzz ball. Really." He then got a closer look at the guy and realized he was the same guy that appeared on the monitors in the lab. "Hey, I know you. You're the one I saw on the computer screen just before it blew."

"Why would you put a bomb in the lab?" Danny asked.

"So no one would go snooping where they shouldn't." The guy explained. "The name's Forge. You found my lab, huh? What's with the Halloween get-up?"

"No, costume." Kurt told him. "I'm human. But I'm a mutant. I know I look strange, but there are some fringe benefits." He teleported behind Forge.

"Yeah, like a small attention span." Danny muttered.

"Trippy." Forge said. "I thought I was the only one." He held out his hand as it turned into some kind of mechanical device.

At this, Danny was imagining his friend Tucker geeking out and wishing he had a mechanical arm like that.


"There he goes!" Scott cried as he and the rest of the X-Men were chasing down Toad in their uniforms. Scott fired an optic blast, but it missed as Toad fired a beam at the X-Men.

"Take that!" He cried.

"Shadowcat, down!" Jean ordered as the beam came toward Kitty. The Valley girl phased through the ground as the ray hit a fountain instead, causing water to erupt from where it used to be."

The fountain then appeared next to Danny and Kurt as they watched Forge work on something.

"Man! Somebody's really giving that gizmo of yours a workout." Kurt commented.

Back in the real world, the X-Men were still chasing Toad.

"Get him!" Scott ordered the team as they kept their pursuit.

"That gizmo is a trans-dimensional projector." Forge said. "My science fair project. And when I fired it up, it created this pocket dimension that I call Middleverse. I got caught in the ray myself, and I've been here ever since."

"Couldn't you just stick with a baking soda volcano?" Danny asked before another question came to him. "By the way, how long have you been trapped in here?"

"A couple of hours?" Forge asked.

"But your message said 1978." Kurt pointed out.

"Yeah, the current year." Forge replied.

Danny and Kurt looked at each other before Danny decided to break the news to Forge. "Forge, it's been at least three decades since you were trapped here."

"What?" Forge exclaimed in shock as he looked around the dimension. "But it only felt like a couple of hours. And I still look the same." For three decades, he had been trapped here. He thought of his parents. "Mom. Dad. Oh, God. Are they still alive?" He asked frantically. "Oh, they must be worried sick. We got to get out of here!"

"We will. But how?" Danny asked.

"We'll need help from the other side." Forge said. He then looked at Kurt. "And I'm thinking that you may be able to help out on that."

Kurt then noticed the images of two girls walking past him.

"You are so lucky." One girl said.

"Oh, isn't he so cute?" The other asked.

"Totally!" The first girl answered.

The girls kept giggling before entering the women's locker room.

"So just how far does this Middleverse extend?" Kurt asked Forge, getting a smack from Danny in response. "Oww!"

"Focus, Kurt!" Danny scolded.

"Done!" Forge presented his new invention to the two. It looked like some kind of harness.

"What is it?" Kurt asked.

"This little baby will alter the phase-shift frequency of your teleport power." Forge explained.

"Can you say that to us as if we've never been to a physics class before?" Danny asked politely, not understanding the science jargon.

"Kurt can teleport to the real world." Forge clarified.

"Good!" Danny cheered.

"But only for a sec." Forge said.

Danny shook his head. "There's always a catch."

Forge held out some batteries. "These batteries don't have much power. Still, with luck, you can tell somebody how to reset the projector to get us back."

"Oh, I just hope they don't think I'm joking." Kurt moaned, getting Forge to send him a look of confusion.

"He faked his death earlier." Danny revealed.

Forge narrowed his eyes at Kurt. "What's wrong with you?"


Toad was currently in a tree, trying to evade the X-Men. "Get lost! I'm warning you!"

Scott shot down the branch he was standing on, making Toad fall as Jean caught the device in midair with her telekinesis.

"Got it!" She cheered.

"That's it! I'm out of here!" Toad hopped away, with the X-Men letting him go since they got what they wanted.

"Come on, let's go back to the scene of the crime." Scott said to the others. "Maybe we'll find something that can tell us what exactly this gadget is."

The X-Men went to the lab as Jean said the obvious.

"Well, it's all wrecked."

Scott shook his head. "There goes that plan."

Danny, Kurt, and Forge were also in the lab in their dimension as well.

"Looks like they got your invention back, Forge." Danny said as they watched the X-Men.

"Yo, guys!" Kitty got their attention as she and Evan were looking over Forge's invention. "We've been running a diagnostic on this thing."

"Can you believe it?" Evan added. "It uses CP/M! I mean, talk about retro, man."

"It's putting out some kind of, like, steady low-power pulse wave that just seems to disappear into thin air." Kitty explained.

"And that means what exactly?" Scott asked, wondering what the point was.

"We figure that the pulse has trapped the crawler and the phantom in some other dimension." Evan spelled out.

"Is there a way to bring them back?" Rogue asked.

"Maybe if we trash it, they'll come back." Scott guessed.

"No, no!" Forge shouted. "They've got it all wrong! If they destroy the projector, we'll be trapped here forever!"

Danny and Kurt were now as fearful as Forge as they realized their one shot at getting out of here was going to be destroyed.

"Everyone stand back." Scott warned the others. "I'm gonna use full power. This could get messy."

"You know, I could just, like, phase through the gizmo and, like, quietly short it out." Kitty suggested.

"That works too." Scott said.

"Forge, hurry!" Kurt cried as Forge was putting the harness on him. "They're gonna destroy it!"

"Done!" Forge announced. "I think it'll make you visible for a couple seconds. There's also a glitch that I need to fix."

"What does Kurt have to do?" Danny asked as they were working on getting the glitch out.

"Push that button and teleport." Forge said as Kurt did just that, vanishing. "No, I didn't finish." Forge said in frustration.

Kurt appeared back in front of the X-Men.

"Kurt!" They cried as he was about to say something when he was pulled back into the Middleverse.

"You idiot!" Forge scolded.

"You said to teleport." Kurt said.

"You didn't let me finish." Forge pointed out. "Now we're stuck here."

"Wait, Forge, look!" Danny pointed to the power gauge. "There's still enough power for one more trip."

"Looks like that glitch was what interrupted him." Forge did a little bit of work on the suit as he got rid of the glitch. "Okay. When you teleport back, tell them not to destroy the machine. They have to reset it instead. But you got one second before it runs out of power and you're pulled back here."

"Right! I'm gone!" Kurt teleported back to the real world.

"What the?" Scott said as Kurt appeared in front of the machine. He was about to say something when he sneezed and was returned to the Middleverse.

"What just happened?" Evan asked.

Back in the Middleverse, Forge was currently strangling Kurt. "You idiot! We're stuck in here forever! I'll never see my parents again! Who knows if they're still alive!"

"Forge!" Danny pulled him off Nightcrawler and slapped him in the face. "Pull it together, man! We're gonna get out of here. You're gonna see your parents again. We just got to think of something."

Rogue was looking over the device when she saw a reset switch. "Hey, guys, there's a reset switch. What if pressing that brings them back?"

"Yes!" Forge cried in joy.

"Rogue, I could kiss you right now!" Danny said.

Scott shrugged. "Worth a shot."

Rogue nodded as she looked over the machine. "Intensity settings, power regulators, beam width, restart!" She pressed the button as the gizmo shot out a beam that left a sphere that contained Forge, Kurt, and Danny.

"Come on!" Scott encouraged. "Teleport through."

"Hang on!" Kurt said to his friends. "Let's go!"

"We can't." Forge reminded him. "The battery's tapped out. We need more juice to get us home."

Danny smiled. "And I know just where to find it."

"Where?" Kurt asked.

The hybrid smirked. "Take us to Darkholme's car."

"What's the matter?" Scott shouted. "Let's go!"

They saw the three teleport away.

"What are they doing?" Evan asked.

"I don't know." Scott answered. "But I hope they hustle."

"There they are!" Came Toads' voice. The X-Men turned around to see that Toad was there, along with Blob and Avalanche. "And they still got that vape-ray I was telling you about."

"Fork it over, losers." Lance demanded. "Or this place is gonna rock."

"The projector stays with us." Scott said. "X-Men, keep that portal open!"

"Your call." Avalanche made a small earthquake before charging at the X-Men, with Toad and Blob following his lead.

Back in the Middleverse, Kurt teleported himself and his friends to Darkholme's car.

"There it is." Danny showed the car to Forge.

"Far out, man!" Forge went up to the car.

"I swear, that homey's lingo is so wack!" Kurt said to Danny.

"It's the seventies, Kurt." Danny deadpanned. "What do you expect?"

In the real world, Cyclops was currently facing down Blob.

"Come on!" Blob challenged. "Hit me with your best shot, Slim!"

Cyclops fired an optic blast that blasted Blob back only a couple of inches.

"Takes more than that to stop the Blob!" Blob boasted.

"Thanks for the tip." Scott thanked him before looking at Jean. "Jean!"

Jean nodded as Scott fired at the ground underneath Blob, shattering it and allowing Jean to use her telekinesis to pull it from under Blob's feet, tripping the huge mutant.

Shadowcat was backing up as Avalanche was inching his way closer to her.

"You and me got a date, pretty Kitty. How about a ride on the concrete coaster?" He made the floor rumble as Kitty was pushed through a wall that she phased through before somersaulting back in.

"Lousy ride, loser!" Kitty insulted.

Toad was hopping around Spyke. "Come on! Come on! What you got?" He taunted. "You ain't got nothing! That's right! You ain't got nothing!" He hopped past Evan and toward the device, making Spyke shoot some spikes in front of the invention, causing Toad to crash into them.

"You call that nothing, you slimy superball?" Spyke quipped.

Then Quicksilver appeared. "Yo guys, I'm back from lunch. What's going on?" Before he could assess the situation, Rogue kicked him in the back of the head, knocking him out.

While the fighting was going on, the trio in the Middleverse were in Darkholme's car.

"You sure this will work?" Danny asked Forge.

"No." Forge answered honestly.

"Great." Danny said to himself. "Let's hit it!"

Kurt stomped on the gas as the car roared through the hallways and teleported away.

Back in the real world, the Brotherhood was cornering the X-Men.

"Okay, enough of the warm-ups." Blob said. "Time for some serious smashing!"

They then heard honking as they all looked at the car about to come through the portal.

"Look out!" Scott cried as the X-Men dove for cover.

Darkholme's car entered the real world as it ran over the device and crashed into Blob, making the vehicle stop in its tracks.

"Whoa." Blob said in relief. "Good thing I'm the Blob."

"Yeah, you can say that again." Toad agreed.

Lance looked over to see that the device was smashed. "Come on, guys. This party's over."

The Brotherhood then left, with Blob throwing the unconscious Quicksilver over his back.

"What the heck are these?" Forge asked as he looked over the airbags.

"What, they didn't have airbags in the seventies?" Danny asked as he got out of the car.

"Danny, you're all right!" Rogue hugged him tightly, glad to have him back.

Danny smiled as he returned the hug. "I missed you too, Rogue."


The X-Men were watching from Forge's front yard as their new friend was hugging his mother and father.

"Well, good to know that it worked out well with Forge." Danny said as the X-Men went to leave. They got in Scott's car as Scott looked at Kurt through his rearview mirror.

"You're gonna have to duck until we get a new holo-watch." Scott said.

"So it's true!" Kurt joked. "You really are ashamed of me!" Everyone laughed before Kurt decided to get serious. "But for real, Scott, about what happened before, my bad."

"Yeah, well, maybe I take things too seriously." Scott admitted. "I need to lighten up some."

"Who are you, and what did you do with the real Scott?" Danny joked.

"Oh, Scott, not you." Jean said in mock concern.

"Check his temperature." Kitty urged in jest. "Mr. Military's going soft."

"Yeah. And I could probably dial down the goofing a little." Kurt said.

"More like a lot." Danny murmured, making Rogue giggle.

"Welcome back." Scott fist bumped Kurt. "Okay. So now what do you say we head home, gear up, and run a level-three training sim in the Danger Room?"

"On second thought, Duncan's party sounds pretty good right now." Danny replied.

"Give us a break." Evan added.

"Oh, man!" Kurt rubbed a hand through his hair in irritation. "See? That's what I'm talking about. Always serious."

Scott then smiled. "Psych!"

"You got us." Jean laughed.

"Very nice." Kurt said in approval. "There's hope for you yet."

"That was a more cruel joke than the one Kurt pulled today." Danny said to Scott, making everyone laugh again.

"Yeah, well, tell me about it on the way to Duncan Matthews' party." Scott said.

"Whoa, Scott, I was just kidding about going." Danny said. "Let's go to the movies."

"Yeah, it'll be fun." Rogue agreed.

"Alright then, to the movies then." Scott said as he drove the car to their destination.

"It's good to have you back, Danny." Rogue said, blushing.

"Thanks, Rogue." Danny replied as he also blushed.