"So if your teleporting works how I think it does, I should be able to alter the frequency of the teleport, and, provided someone on the other side figures out how my transdimensional projector works, we might be able to open a pathway you can teleport through."

"I'm… not really sure vhat you just said," Kurt said uncertainly, "but I trust that you know vhat you're doing."

Forge smiled that easy smile, never bothered in the least by the fact that a good deal of what he said went right over the German's head.

"It probably won't become an issue anyway. I mean, I was in here for twenty years before someone found my lab. Who knows how long it will take to happen again?"

"Not too long, I zhink," Kurt said slyly. "Ve kind of blew the door down vhen ve made it self-destruct."

Forge gave a low whistle. "Well done. That might move things along a little faster. Provided my projector doesn't get sent away with the trash."

Kurt wilted, and Forge laid a comforting metal arm on his shoulderblade.

"Sorry to be a downer, man. I just don't want to get your hopes up."

Kurt nodded. He had practice being trapped. This cage, at least, was big. And he had someone to share it with.

The two of them had been hanging out steadily since school got out. Now, the windows out of the Middleverse school were darkened by nightfall, meaning that the boys had been talking for hours. Kurt had learned quite a bit about American life in the seventies, while Forge had learned what little Kurt remembered about living in rural Germany. Forge had elaborated passionately about his many different inventions, and it became obvious pretty quickly that Forge was no mere prodigy.

He was a mutant, too. His power? Invention.

"Yeah," Forge had said. "I've always figured there was something weird about me. I mean, I could build a decent block tower as a kid, but then puberty hit and wham, I was building particle accelerators and opening trans-dimensional vortexes. I actually once came pretty close to an honest-to-goodness time machine. Can you believe it?" He'd laughed.

"I vish I had a mutation like zhat," Kurt had said, while hanging upside-down from a ceiling panel. "Instead, I look like zhis, and everyvun hates me. All I vant is to be normal."

"Normal, huh?" Forge had grinned playfully up at him. "I'm afraid I wouldn't know about that… but if it helps, I don't think many people do."

"Vhat do you mean?"

"'Normal' is all relative, man. The squares are normal to the squares. The burn-outs are normal to the burn-outs. The freaks are normal to the freaks. And on and on like that. I bet you think I'm normal, right?"

"Vell, ja."

"Nope. Most of my classmates thought I was a total weirdo."

"You don't seem zhat veird to me."

"Really? Nothing weird about having a secret lab under the school that had a device in it that trapped you in a pocket dimension with the inventor of said device?"

"Erm… you may have a point."

Forge had just grinned, leaving Kurt to think about that for a while.

Now, they were both surprised when they heard the ghostly echo of footsteps and voices, well after school hours.

"…seen a mutant more difficult tah keep track of than this guy," a girl was saying in an American southern accent.

"Yeah… like, why are we trying so hard?" said a familiar voice. Kitty. "He's, like, a demon thing. It's totally creepy."

"I think it's cool," said Evan's voice. "Totally hard-core, man. Nothing strikes terror in the face of evil like a guy that looks like a demon."

"Except Nightcrawler may turn out to be one of the evils we're trying to strike terror into," said Summers.

Forge and Kurt followed the voices into the hallway, keeping curiously after the ghostly forms.

"Friends of yours?" Forge asked.

"Not really," Kurt replied. "Kind of the opposite, actually."

"Oh. Bummer."

"Ja."

"You picking anything up, Jean?" asked Summers.

"Nothing," replied the red-head. "But this is the last place anyone saw him, so there's got to be a clue somewhere."

"I can't believe the professor thinks we can still recruit that creep," Kitty grumbled.

"Hey," said Summers, jerking a thumb toward the stripe-haired girl. "It worked for Rogue."

"Yeah, well at least Ah didn't keep runnin' off an' disappearin' every five seconds. Seriously, this guy is a case a' bad press just waitin' ta happen."

Kurt felt himself wilt a little as the two of them continued following the X-men through the school. "Zhey're kind of right."

Forge slanted him a curious look. "Do stuff like this a lot, huh?"

"Ja. I try to learn more about zhe vorld, and I end up vith murderous mobs after me."

"Burn, man."

"Ja."

The group passed through a door into the darkened cafeteria… a door that was closed in the Middleverse. No matter…. Kurt grabbed Forge's shoulder and teleported them both into the cafeteria after them, only stumbling a little on the landing.

"Trippy ride, man," Forge said, also staggering a bit.

But that was drowned out by Jean's cry of, "Wait! I felt him!"

Forge and Kurt both froze and watched as Jean turned around and peered at the exact spot where they stood.

"Where?" Summers demanded.

"He… he's gone. But he was definitely here just a second ago… Kind of muffled. Like hearing an echo or something."

"Far out!" Forge said. "She totally locked in on you when you ported!"

Kurt blinked, excited hope overriding any doubts he had about the presence of the X-men. "She's psychic. She can hear zhoughts."

"So if you're projecting the right thoughts when you port, you can totally communicate with her!"

Kurt and Forge shared an excited grin, but then Kurt's faded. "No, vait. Zhese people do not mean vhat is best for me. I…. ve can't trust zhem."

"Kurt, my man… I don't think we have much choice."

Kurt was still eyeing the team with trepidation when another choice made itself known. Loudly.

Something that Forge and Kurt couldn't see crashed, and a familiar voice said, "I-thought-I-told-you-losers-to-stay-out-of-our-business."

Kurt spun and took a couple steps, and the Brotherhood appeared from the ether, dressed for battle. Even better was the object grasped in Todd's large hands.

"They have the projector! Rock on!" Forge was grinning like a maniac. "Man, we have someone who can communicate with us and the projector. This is our chance!"

"Ja, it vould be, except for vun thing."

"What?'

"Zhey hate eachozher."

An echoing voice cried, "Well, we're making it our business!" And then the pair watched as the two teams engaged in battle.

Kurt flinched as he watched the blows flying around, particularly when Evan knocked the projector out of Todd's hands. He was still unsure how to take Todd, after that weird moment back in the storage room, but it couldn't be too bad, or else Todd wouldn't have come back for him again. It was just like every other problem the Brotherhood handled… bad stuff happened, but when everything was said and done, they were still a team.

Kurt turned, and noticed that Forge was no longer right beside him. In fact, Forge was sitting on a table, ignoring the battle altogether as he took apart what Kurt had assumed was a real leg. Perhaps not as real as he'd thought.

"Vhat are you doing, Forge?"

"I'm repurposing my leg into something we can use to port us out of here, just in case. Because if we get a window, it's gonna be short."

Kurt walked closer to him, the sounds of battle getting tinny as he moved away from it. "I didn't know your leg vas…"

"Mechanical? Yeah, it surprised my parents when they found out, too."

Kurt fidgeted as Forge pulled out what looked like a circuit board out of his suddenly metallic leg and started welding bits of wire to it. "So… how did you…?" Kurt faded out, wondering how to put the question without sounding nosy and insensitive.

"Let's put it this way… have you ever heard the phrase 'I'd give an arm and a leg to ace astronomical physics'?"

"Erm… not zhose exact vords, no."

Forge tossed him a grin, then sawed through the entire leg, cutting the metal object off at the shin and using it to encase… whatever he'd been doing. "Well, let's just say I took it a bit more literally than most. Man, were my parents steamed."

Kurt smiled back. "Ja, not somezhing you vant to break to zhem out of zhe blue, huh?"

Forge nodded and sat up, apparently finished. The result looked kind of like an exploded remote control with wires sticking out of it and a little metal foot on the end. "Okay. I'm going to stick these wires onto various nexuses around your body, okay?"

"You're zhe smart inventor guy."

"Hey, you can only call me smart after I get us out of this. Then, I'll have earned it. Deal?"

"Deal."

They returned to the battle, Kurt supporting a now-one-legged Forge while the inventor struggled to attach little electrode things to his temples, throat, and sides.

They stepped back into the battle in time to see that the Brotherhood had once again been bested. Pietro was a twitching pile off the one side, while Fred was stuck to the wall by a number of spikes. Lance and Todd had somehow been tied to a support column by a fire hose, the projector on the ground about twenty feet away.

The X-men were moving around, picking up in the same post-fight manner Kurt had caught them in before. Kitty walked over to the projector and picked it up.

"Whoa. Like, what is this thing, a 70s throwback?"

Forge smirked. "Nah, that's genuine 70s, bunny."

Kurt nudged Forge. "Vhat do ve do?"

"Okay. I need you to teleport, and tell them to press the projector reset button in order to reestablish the connection between the anchor dimension and this one, thus allowing us to pass through from this side."

"Zhat's… razher vordy for a split-second teleport."

"Just get out what you can."

Kurt nodded and set Forge on the ground. Then, he focused his mind, trying to think of one simple word: reset.

Bamf.

He reappeared a foot away from where he'd been, and stooped down to pick Forge up again, just as Jean spun and said, "There he was again!"

Summers stopped glaring at Lance long enough to turn quizzically on the girl. "Same thing? He disappeared?"

"Yeah, but before he did…his thoughts were really focused on something."

Kurt and Forge exchange excited looks.

"Did you catch what?"

"I… I think he said 'Reset.'"

Forge and Kurt whooped and high-fived.

Summers furrowed his brows. "'Reset'? What's that supposed to mean?"

Jean shook her head in confusion. But before Kurt's heart could begin to sink, a green tongue arced across the room, snatching the projector from Kitty's grasp and returning it to Todd's. During the distraction, it seemed, Lance and Todd had been able to free themselves (a process that apparently involved quite a bit of slime, judging by how slimy both of them were).

Todd handled the projector like a well-known toy, immediately zeroing in on the correct button and pressing it. And sure enough, a pink globe of light—not unlike the one that had trapped Kurt in the first place—burst out.

"Come on!" Forge cried, tugging Kurt toward the globe.

Kurt obediently ran over to the globe, as fast as he could while supporting Forge. Forge did something to the… thing… he'd attached to Kurt, and the blue mutant started to feel an odd thrumming through the wires.

Then, they were in the beam, and everyone was pointing at them.

"Teleport us out, now!" Forge cried.

He didn't need to be told twice.

Bamf.

The pair of them appeared outside the beam, and the projector whirred to a stop a moment later. Kurt stumbled with the force of the teleport, feeling like he had just landed roughly on the ground after several hours in the air.

"FUZZY!"

A moment later, Kurt was tackled to the ground by a weeping Todd Tolansky. The pale boy sobbed out various apologies and "oh god, I thought I killed you"s. Kurt just sat there, stunned and patting Todd's back in surprise.

Everything was forgiven and forgotten, it seemed.

The X-men stared at the scene openly, looking a little taken aback. This allowed the Brotherhood to pick up the pieces of their own team and close in around their two smallest members.

"Well?" Pietro snapped at the X-men. "You-obviously-failed-to-stop-our-nefarious-plot-to-find-a-missing-team-member… so-go-lick-your-wounds-or-something."

"This isn't over," said Summers.

"Uh, yeah. It is," said Lance. "I don't know what you losers want with the furball, but I think it's time you stop. He's Brotherhood, whether you goody-goodies like it or not."

Kurt couldn't help but beam up at his team leader. For all his faults, Lance knew how to make a guy feel like part of something.

"You don't understand what you're doing," said Jean. "With you guys, he's never going to fit in… but Professor Xavier can help him with that."

A couple hours ago, Kurt might have been tempted by that. And he could tell by the hesitant glances he got from Lance and Pietro that they expected him to bite the bait.

Instead, Kurt shook his head at Lance and Pietro, and both looked pleased (albeit reluctantly, in Pietro's case). "I shouldn't have to hide vhat I am. None of us should. But if being normal requires I leave my team, zhen no zhank you. I vould much razher be a Brozherhood freak zhan a normal X-man."

Summers looked mildly insulted, but Jean's hand on his shoulder stopped them from pursuing that conversation. Instead, he bowed his head. "I'll be sure to tell the Professor your decision."

"You do that, Summers," Lance sneered as the X-men filed out. "Until next time, losers."

There was a thick silence in the air after they left… part victory, part thought. Then, it was broken by a whirring sound, followed by several crunches and clanks. The Brotherhood all looked curiously toward the noise.

Forge had hopped over to the projector and picked it up, one-legged. He had then switched his mechanical arm to drill mode and was currently plunging it into the projector.

"Aw man," Todd said with a hysterical giggle into Kurt's fur, reminding Kurt that they were still locked in that close embrace. "An' I spent all day fixin' that."

"Trust me," Kurt responded to his friend with a grin. "It's better off broken."

"So-uh-out-of-curiosity… who-the-hell-is-this?"

"Everybody, zhis is Forge. Forge, everybody."

Forge waved his mechanical arm. "Hello." At their continued staring, he genially explained, "It was my transdimensional projector that entrapped Kurt in the pocket dimension in the first place."

All three standing Brothers exchanged confused looks. Eventually, Lance said, "If you say so, man."

Kurt sniggered, glad he wasn't the only one who had difficulty understanding Forge.

"Hey, Kurt," Forge said, settling down on a cafeteria table. "Think I can have my leg back?"

"Oh, ja." Kurt tried to pry himself away from Todd's deathhold, both of them laughing as he clung on harder just to be obnoxious. Eventually, he got Todd turned around to cling to his back, and detached the odd thing that used to be a mechanical leg. "Here… going to re-repurpose it?"

"More like de-repurpose it: I gotta get home somehow. I think being twenty years late for curfew would be bad enough without losing one of my limbs."

Kurt chuckled as Forge started tearing apart the leg (again) and re-rebuilding it.

At that point, Fred finally stepped forward and pulled both Kurt and Todd into a bear hug. Todd made hilarious squealing sounds, which only made Kurt laugh harder. Both boys wriggled out of Freddy's thick grip, climbing up to perch on opposite shoulders, like birds on a scarecrow. Fred just grinned at them, proud to play the part of their perch.

While that was happening, Lance asked Forge thoughtfully, "So you're some sort of super-genius?"

"Yeah," Forge said, activating a welding gun in his arm. "A mutant, actually. At least if what Kurt told me about them is true."

Lance's face broke into a grin. "You're a mutant? Ever considered joining a team like ours?"

Kurt glanced back and forth between them, hopeful. But then Forge shook his head while welding the leg back onto the end of his limb. "Sorry. I'm probably going to have a lot of stuff to deal with for a while. Confused family, things left unfinished twenty years ago… it's not gonna be pretty."

Lance shrugged. "Well, if you ever change your mind…"

"No doubt." Forge finished with his leg and put weight on it to test it out. Then, he stood and looked over at Kurt. "Oh, but Kurt… there is one thing I might be able to do… to thank you for freeing me."

Kurt's tail twitched against Fred's back. "Vas?"

Forge grinned and paused, as if for emphasis. "Have I ever told you about the trippy hologram I rigged up for Halloween in '76?"

"Nein."

"Well, to be brief… I invented a hologram projector that made me look like King Kong. Completely psyched out my date, but that's another story. I'm thinking I could design something for you… just, you know, the opposite."

"You mean you could make me look like a normal person?"

"As normal as people get, man."

Various impressed and excited noises came from the other members of the Brotherhood. Kurt, however, sat very still on Fred's shoulder, still trying to get that thought to sink in.

"You-mean-the-furball-could-follow-us-around-in-public-too?"

Fred beamed at him. "You could come to school with us!"

"Yeah, without having to sneak around behind our backs," Lance added dryly. "Which we really need to talk about, by the way."

Kurt smiled at Lance in a way that he hoped was charming, but which probably came out looking more guilty than anything.

Lance just shook his head, Pietro smirked, and Todd snickered, probably enjoying having Lance's vengeance off him for a while. Through it all, Fred just smiled and gave Forge a hearty pat on the back that sent the inventor reeling.

All things considered, maybe he wasn't quite as isolated as he'd thought.

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

That night, Todd couldn't sleep. His mind was too busy bombarding him with all the awful what-ifs of that day. What if he hadn't put the dimensional shifter thingy back together right? What if the X-men—specifically, Jean Grey—hadn't been there? What if Kurt and him had simply been incinerated by that lab explosion? What kind of psycho sets his lab to explode on people, anyway?

Hugging his knees to his chest, Todd looked over at the blue shape curled up on the bedding in the corner. The furball had zonked out as soon as he'd collapsed into his pile of pillows, and he was now curled up in a tight ball, occasionally twitching and mumbling in his sleep.

Todd sighed, toes curling into his own bedspread. His mind spun dizzily with a dozen different worries, and even seeing Fuzzy back, safe, sound, and definitely not incinerated into a fine blue powder… it didn't help much. Because it had been close, and shit had that scared the green boy.

Way more than it should've.

Todd gulped, his eyes going back to the sleeping furball. The idea of losing Kurt had shaken him more than anything ever before… and that was saying a lot, since he wasn't known for having a stiff spine. Because, while Lance's threats and Mystique's temper were definitely scary in a this-is-gonna-hurt way, Kurt's disappearance was scary in an I-don't-want-to-be-alone-again way.

Todd hadn't even known he could be scared of that. He was a survivor; being alone was just a state that simply came with that. Being shoved around by those stronger than him also came with surviving; Todd could handle being pushed around—he was used to it. Being the Brotherhood's butt-monkey still meant that he had a roof over his head and someone to watch his back when things got rough.

But that was all it used to be about: survival of the fittest… and any toad-boys who happened to be licking the fittest's boots. Todd had been okay with that: he'd accepted his place. He hadn't given a shit about anyone, so long as he was in a reasonably stable place, and the people he was with didn't hate him so much that they killed him or kicked him out.

And then Kurt had come along, with his big gold eyes; and his enthusiasm for the weirdest little things, like going to school; and his ability to bring out the best in people despite all the crap he'd obviously been through. He'd made the Brotherhood work together, all for the sake of friendship or whatever, and that was amazing. Everyone Kurt met was better for it, because who could deny the need to protect something so pure and gentle? Todd couldn't, even though he wasn't in any place to protect anyone. Todd had never thought about anyone's survival besides his own, until Kurt came along.

The boy stared at the other boy in the room, his yellow eyes wide and conflicted. It was painfully obvious he wouldn't be able to sleep at all that night.

Kurt made Todd give a shit.

And that scared the hell out of him.

End Episode 2