Kurt stumbled, half-awake, out of bed, almost zombie-like. Little else was going through his brain in the middle of the night except a continuing insistence from his bladder that he empty it.

     Rubbing some of the crust from the corners of his eyes, Kurt yawned and teleported, instantly vanishing from his room and appearing outside the men’s restroom. Knocking, Kurt waited sleepily for a few moments before entering the bathroom and closing the door, locking it behind him to make sure he wasn’t disturbed. Turning around and passing the hole in the wall, Kurt lifted up the toilet seat and—

     Wait…

     Kurt did a double take, his mind suddenly fully alert and wide awake. A hole was indeed in the wall of the restroom, and through it one could see a full view of the Mansion grounds, the bay next to the Mansion that had given the town its name, and a distant view of downtown Bayville itself on the opposite side of the body of water.

     Kurt peered through the hole, and suddenly the relatively minor damage to the Mansion was the last thing in his mind.

     From what he could see, the entirety of Bayville was wrecked. Only a few of the downtown buildings stood standing, and nearly all of the suburbs surrounding it had been utterly destroyed.

     What had allowed Kurt to see all of this wreckage in the middle of the night, however, was an absolutely massive building rising out of the middle of the town.

     A pyramid-shaped building with very familiar light blue markings all across it.

     Before Kurt could fully process what his eyes were telling him, he heard someone cry his name faintly from down in the middle of the Mansion grounds.

     Instantly Kurt leapt from out of the hole in the Mansion’s wall, running on all fours down the side wall and onto the grass.

     Some unexplained damage to the Mansion, Bayville destroyed, a giant futuristic pyramid in the middle of Bayville…. None of that mattered now.

     Rogue lay on the ground in front of him, coughing blood, her body twisted into an unnatural position from the burnt tree that had fallen on her, crushing her midsection under its weight.

     His adopted sister was dying.

     Hello, Death.

     Xavier instinctively recoiled from the sound of that voice. It couldn’t be…. and yet it was.

     Is… is this a dream?

     The figure he was addressing suddenly smirked, a bemused look on his face. He had only seen that look once before—and it hadn’t led to anything good.

     I suppose you don’t know why you’re here either, do you?

     What do you want from me, Apocalypse? Moreover, how can you be here?

     I take it from your questions that you did not attempt to contact me, then. As for answers, I can provide none. Only that here we are.

     “Here” is rather objective, being that we are communicating on the mental plane.

     You always did have a penchant for stating the obvious before I made you mine, Death.

     Do NOT call me that. You enslaved me—I did not join you, and I never would have by choice.

     And yet part of Death still resides within you. Hence why you are able to contact me—through our telepathic connection ever since I implanted that mind control technology in you and my three other Horsemen.

     This… this doesn’t make any sense, though. We assumed you were lost in time, along with the Eye of Ages. How… how can you still be alive?

     I was the first Mutant, Death. I will be the last. To peruse a quote from your Holy Writ, I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. Nothing—NOTHING—can destroy me.

     Xavier bolted upright, panting, sweat running off his brow.

     He was not talking to Apocalypse—mentally or otherwise--but was in fact in his room at the Mansion, in his bed.

     It had been a dream. Just a dream…

     Or had it?

     “Hey, Rogue, are you going outside?”

     Rogue stopped near the Mansion’s main entry doors in the foyer and turned towards Kitty, confused. “Uh… yeah, duh. It’s about time to get to school. Why, what did you want?”

     “Just saying, you might wanna put on a little sunscreen today, especially with your complexion,” Kitty said, slinging her own backpack over her shoulder.

     “Huh? Why? I’m not going to be walking very far, I’m catching a ride in Ray’s car,” Rogue replied as Cessily walked by with her backpack, then stopped and turned around, curious to hear where the conversation was going.

     “Well, yeah, but you can’t be too careful today, what with the solar flare and everything.”

     “What the heck are you talking about?”

     Kitty sighed. “Rogue, don’t you EVER watch the news?! It’s only been the top story for the past week.”

     “Not usually,” Rogue said, a look of disgust spreading on her face. “Almost all of it’s depressing or shallow stories with reporters who wouldn’t know—“

     “Okay, point made,” Kitty said, rolling her eyes ever-so-slightly. “Well, since you don’t know, the Sun is at its highest peak of solar activity right now in almost eighty years. There was HUGE flare last night, went almost past the orbit of Mercury.”

     “That s-sounds serious,” Cessily said nervously.

     “Obviously it’s not or we’d all be dead right now,” Rogue said impatiently, tapping her foot. “Skip to the point, Kitty, or Ray’s going to take off without us.”

     “Okay, okay, fine,” Kitty said. “Point is, no, Cessily, you don’t have anything to worry about, as this far away the effects aren’t too bad. Any solar flare will probably just malfunction and offline a few satellites as far as damage goes, but the UV rays today are going to be higher than normal as a result. So, sunscreen.”

     “Look, I’m just going to be out in the sun for a few minutes, tops,” Rogue said, brushing it off and walking out the door. “I’ll be fine.”

     “Sh-should I get some sunscreen?” Cessily asked.

     “No, Cess, you should be fine,” Kitty smiled, putting a hand on Cessily’s shoulder. “Your skin isn’t really anywhere near the same makeup as ours, I really don’t think you have to worry about getting a sunburn… ever.”

     Just as they were both about to walk out the doors and to school, Kitty felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around to find Bobby.

     “Hey, Kitty, have you seen Kurt? We were supposed to carpool to class today and I can’t find him anywhere.”

     It hurt Kurt’s brain to even think about the world around him.

     None of this made any sense. How could Apocalypse have come back?! And furthermore, how could all of this have happened overnight? The Mansion—and Bayville, from the looks of it—were in utter ruins, and if there had been some huge battle late last night, despite it destroying about a third of the Mansion it apparently hadn’t been enough to wake him up.

     Kurt sighed as he finished shoveling the last clump of dirt on the fresh grave he had dug.

     It was now morning, and Kurt had spent the rest of the night holding the slowly dying form of Rogue in his arms. Those easily counted as the worst moments of his life, seeing his sister die, incredibly slowly, and he being completely powerless to stop it. As far as he could tell, she had been half-hallucinating through the extreme pain, mumbling things that didn’t make sense. Apocalypse had succeeded in turning the whole world to Mutants!? Of course not, the X-Men and the Brotherhood had stopped him—just in the nick of time, but they had still stopped him! Kurt’s constant questioning of Rogue’s assertions had done no good—she could only manage to talk in spurts, and seemed to slip into bouts of unconsciousness frequently before she had finally died about an hour ago. Afterwards, Kurt had carefully managed to gather a few tools lying around the debris on the Mansion grounds and roll the tree off of her—he had attempted to do so earlier, but Rogue had insisted that trying to move it would have instantly killed her by breaking what few bones she still had intact in her midsection. Slowly dragging her mangled body towards the side Mansion, he had dug a fresh grave for his sister, said a few prayers, and had just now finished refilling the unmarked grave.

     None of the other X-Men seemed to be anywhere nearby. Rogue had insisted they all had died—that he had died—earlier, either in the recent attack on the Mansion or months ago back when they had assaulted Apocalypse’s pyramids.

     Normally he would have assumed Rogue’s half-conscious utterances were merely the product of some delirium brought on by the pain, but seeing the sudden change in the world around him… he wasn’t so sure.

     Kurt leaned on the shovel stuck in the ground for a few minutes, weeping, until he suddenly perked up.

     Perhaps… perhaps not all of the X-Men were dead like Rogue had said! She had been stuck here on the surface, after all. Perhaps some were still buried under the rubble, and were alive but trapped on some of the lower levels!

     With a newfound sense of determination, Kurt teleported out of sight, mentally aiming for the lower levels of the Mansion’s sub-basement.

     “We’ve combed the Mansion, Charles. Wherever Kurt is, he’s not here.”

     Xavier winced before turning around in his wheelchair to face Hank, who had just entered his office. “I unfortunately figured as much. He’s not showing up on Cerebro’s scanners, either.”

     “Do you think he could have been captured by H.Y.D.R.A. as well?” Hank asked, walking up to and sitting in the chair immediately opposite Xavier’s desk.

     “It’s possible, I suppose… but highly unlikely,” Xavier replied, steepling his fingers, his expression narrowed. “Kurt had been one of the students Deadpool had rendered unconscious with an electrical stun disk. They would have had ample opportunity to grab him and take him along with the Jamies if they had so desired.”

     “Well, if he’s not showing up on Cerebro and he’s not captured by H.Y.D.R.A., who else? We haven’t seen Magneto and his Acolytes for some time, could they be behind it?”

     “I think… something happened last night, Hank. And I think Kurt’s disappearance may, somehow, have something to do with it. I don’t believe in coincidences like this.”

     “What? What happened?” Hank asked, raising an eyebrow.

     “I must ask again that you refrain from telling anyone else about this,” Xavier said, “Because I am still not quite sure what I think happened actually happened. But I… I think I saw Apocalypse—“

     Hank immediately stood up from his chair. “Apocalypse!? Charles, this is hardly something to keep secret from us!”

     “No, Hank, you don’t understand,” Xavier replied, motioning for Hank to sit back down, which he reluctantly did. “I saw him… in my dreams last night. We conversed for a short while, and then I woke up. I could have just been a dream, but… it seemed unusually ‘real’. Additionally, I remember all the details of it, whereas obviously with most dreams we forget all but the most general details shortly after we wake up. Still, I don’t want to get anyone else worried over nothing if this is just a coincidence and it was all a dream.”

     “What did he say?”

     “He didn’t seem to know why he was conversing with me any more than I knew why I was conversing with him. He mentioned whatever he could to annoy and goad me into anger, but our talk was cut short as I suddenly woke up.”

     “Charles, this could be mean something bad is happening. If he really is able to talk with you—something really bad.”

     “I know, Hank. I’m just not sure what I can do about it.”

     Hank thought for a few moments before answering. “Why don’t you take a few sleeping pills, lie down, and try to fall asleep again, but in the medlab bed this time? Let’s see if you’re able to contact Apocalypse again—if not, than perhaps it was just an unusually vivid dream.”

     “I suppose that makes sense, Hank, but—why in the medlab?”

     “Because,” Hank replied, slowly getting up from the chair again, “I think a few tests monitoring your brainwave patterns are in order while you’re sleeping, just in case you are able to contact Apocalypse again. And if you are—than it means he’s somehow contacting you through time. And I know a certain super-genius who’s dabbled in the time stream recently that I’m going to call.”

     “Forge,” Xavier nodded in understanding.

     Kurt teleported right into the middle of one of the hallways in the sub-basement—and ran smack-dab into someone else.

     “Hey!” a girl yelled, pushing Kurt lightly away and taking a few steps back. “Watch where you’re ‘porting…. Kurt!?”

     The girl standing in front of Kurt looked a bit odd to him. About average height for a girl in her late teens, she had blue eyes and two long brown ponytails, and she was wearing a yellow-and-blue X-Men uniform that widened a bit near the feet, making it look almost like she was wearing bellbottoms.

     That wasn’t what was throwing him off, though. Her proportions seemed a little… different that what he was used to. Still, in a way she seemed oddly familiar…

     “What the…? Who are you!?” Kurt spat out, flabbergasted.

     “Wait a minute, you’re not Kurt!” the girl said, taking a few steps back. “You’re way too young. Still, you look like… are you Kurt’s son or something? He never told me he had a son…”

     “What? No, I am Kurt! Vhat are you talking about!? How do you know my name?”

     They were both interrupted as a somewhat tall, muscular, blond-haired teenager ran up the metal-paneled hallway behind the mysteriously familiar girl.

     “Kitty, I heard you yelling, is everything—who the heck is that?”

     “He just appeared right in front of me—he says he’s Kurt,” Kitty said, “But obviously he must be confused or something. Go and get Hank, Bobby.”

     “Wait, Hank? Bobby? Kitty!? What happened to you?”

     Kitty raised an eyebrow. “Nothing happened to us. What happened to you?”

     “I—“ Kurt interrupted himself, covering his face with his hands and taking in a deep breath before continuing. This was really getting to be too much. “I was outside, where the Mansion was ruined… I watched Rogue die… and now I teleport inside here to look for survivors, and you’re all acting like nothing’s wrong, only you’re wrong! You look all wrong! Where’s the real Kitty? Where’s the real Bobby!?”

     “Yeah, this dude’s definitely out of it,” Bobby said, scratching his head.

     “Look, uh… Kurt….” Kitty said hesitantly, cautiously putting her hand on Kurt’s shoulder and slowly leading him down the hallway in the direction Bobby had come from. “I’m not sure what you think happened, but the Mansion explosion happened two years ago. It’s been repaired for months now. Rogue is fine… she was with the Brotherhood for a short period of time, but she’s back on our side now… and, uh… I haven’t changed my appearance for quite some time now. Neither has Bobby.”

     “No…. no, no, no… this is all impossible!” Kurt said, shrugging off Kitty’s hand. “This can’t… wait a minute. Take me to the Professor! I’m sure he can read my mind and we can figure out what’s going on!”

     Kitty and Bobby exchanged uncertain glances before Bobby replied. “Uh… Professor X has been in a coma for months now. From what Logan’s told us, he won’t awaken from it for twenty years or something. We can get Miss Frost to scan your mind instead, though, if you--”

     “Ze Professor… in a coma?” Kurt said, in disbelief. Glancing rapidly back and forth, he continued to himself, “And Logan alive? No… no, this is all wrong! I shouldn’t be here! This isn’t real!”

     “Hold on! Get a hold of yourself!” Kitty said. “Just let us take you to Hank and Miss Frost and we’ll figure out why—“

     “No! Everything is different, everything feels wrong!” Kurt said, panicking, backing up a few steps before turning around and breaking out into a full four-legged run down the hallway. “I’ve got to get out of here!”

     Not having the mental wherewithal to even really focus on where he was going, Kurt teleported out of the hallway.

     “And you’re sure you’ve done nothing?” Hank said.

     “Not a thing!” Forge insisted as he and Hank entered the Mansion’s medlab. “I’ve been focusing on theoretical stuff lately, maybe searching for a patent on some of the stuff I’ve got in mind. But definitely no testing of any inventions since Kurt and I wrecked my time machine. Heck, I still need to clean up after that…”

     “Well, Charles has said he’s been having unusually vivid dreams… conversing with Apocalypse,” Hank said, gesturing towards Xavier, sound asleep in the medlab bed with several brainwave measurement wires stuck to the appropriate areas of his head.

     “…Woah.”

     “And since Apocalypse is trapped in the time stream…”

     “Okay, I get why you wanted to see me now, but I’m telling you, I haven’t done anything. Although…”

     “What? What?”

     “Well, this is some pretty deep stuff, so I’ll spare you the specifics, but… there’s some high-level theoreticians that think that events like today’s unusually strong solar flare weaken the walls that separate dimensions in the near vicinity—the ‘near vicinity’ in this case being the inner portion of our solar system. Given how similar in structure the core components of my dimensional gateway projector and my time machine were, I submitted a paper about a month ago detailing how I think it may weaken the walls that separate different periods of time within the same dimension as well.”

     Beast’s brows furrowed. “We aren’t going to have to re-close any of the dimensional gates those red dinosaur-like creatures came through, are we?”

     “Oh, no no no,” Forge said, waving the premise away. “This stuff is all purely theoretical at this point. The bonds would be weakened, yes, but not anywhere near enough for any dimensions or times to actually bleed into each other. Otherwise Earth definitely would have run into far greater problems besides just a few malfunctioning satellites during past solar flare events.”

     “So do you think Apocalypse is able to communicate with Charles through, what, some temporary weakening of the time stream?” Hank asked.

     “That’s what I’m guessing, yeah. I assume all this stuff is hooked up to the Prof to measure any unusual brainwave spikes?”

     “That’s the general idea, yes.”

     “Well, let’s monitor them, then. If we get some unusual waves, we’ll just have to ask Professor X about it when he wakes up.”

     Death.

     Xavier knew the mental presence. Even having been exposed to it less than a day earlier, there was still something about it—even going beyond the unusual situation—that filled him with a sense of utter dread.

     Still, can’t show it…Don’t want him to think that I’m—

     You still continue to underestimate me, Death. I can read your thoughts far easier than you can read mine.

     Xavier concentrated on Apocalypse’s mind, prodding it, trying to see if there was any useful information he could extract from it.

     It might as well have been a brick wall he was trying to get information from.

     Oh, I’m sorry. It doesn’t work both ways, even for a psychic as powerful as you. My mind is far more powerful than yours, as you yourself have said.

     Well, then. Xavier thought, mentally sighing. Here we are again.

     Yes. Here we are.

     Why are you here? Why can I contact you, and visa versa?

     Why do you continue to ask questions to which I have already told you the answer? I do not know.

     Your intentions, through our knowledge of your dealings with Mesmero, have been a mixture of half-truths and outright lies, Apocalypse. For some reason I doubt your sincerity on this.

     I am sure you see me as some sort of villainous scourge, Death. Rest assured my goals are only the betterment of the human race.

     Nearly every dictator in history has uttered those words at some point.

     You doubt my intentions? Fine. I will allow you to probe my mind, albeit a very small portion of it. See for yourself that I do not know how we are able to speak.

     ……

     Well?

     Xavier mentally sighed again. I see.

     Good. Now, clearly you must have gone to sleep again so quickly  for another reason. What is it you really want?

     Where is Kurt Wagner? He suddenly turned up missing the same morning you and I contacted each other. I’m not treating it as a coincidence.

     Ah, a wise move. I know I made the right choice making you my Horseman, Death. This is all starting to make sense, now. From the knowledge I absorbed from the Eye of Ages, I know that on rare occasions various phenomena occur which can affect—to a limited extent—either the barrier between dimensions or the passage of time. Often both. And your blue-furred student… he has the power to teleport by moving, I assume, between dimensions. Correct?

     Xavier quickly realized where Apocalypse was going. So whatever is causing us to be able to communicate has probably interfered with Kurt’s teleportation abilities! He may have even crossed over into another dimension…

     Correct. Now, I suggest we make the most of our…. time… together. What happened in the five thousand years I had been stuck in that infernal coffin? An abbreviated version, if you will.

     Xavier paused for a moment before replying. Wait a minute. I saw the future via our connection…you are trapped in time… how can you not already know?

     Xavier was immediately pulled out of his trance as he felt someone’s hand shaking his shoulders roughly.

     “Charles! Charles, wake up!”

     Xavier opened his eyes and slowly got up, shaking his head. “Hank, what… why did you awaken me? The whole point of this was to talk to Apocalypse again.”

     “Did you?”

     “I… yes, but you awoke me at a rather odd part of the conversation…”

     “I’m sorry, Charles, but your heartbeat and brain waves were getting dangerously faint. You just continued to slip further and further into a deeper sleep. I had to wake you up before it was too late.”

     “I… see, Hank. Thank you.”

     “What was it you and Apocalypse were discussing?”

     “He apparently had no better idea of why we’re communicating than I did. However, after discussing Kurt’s disappearance, he came to the conclusion that whatever’s causing us to be able communicate may also being interfering with Kurt’s ability to teleport properly, given that he passes through another dimension when he uses his ability.”

     “Of course!” Forge said, smacking his forehead. “Why the heck didn’t I think of that. Well, I guess the good news is, my thesis is correct. Bad news is… well, Kurt may be stuck in a different dimension.”

     “Can you try to pinpoint his location and get him out of there, Forge?” Xavier asked.

     “Well, getting him out of there, yeah, that’s easy. It’ll just take some slight modifications to my dimensional projector. Pinpointing where he is… well, there’s a nearly infinite number of dimensions, theoretically. That would take a lot of time. Unless…. Having someone from one dimension stuck in another definitely has to send out some kind of anomalous radiation… Hrrm…”

     Forge began to gather a few wires and pieces of medical equipment lying around, his mind clearly elsewhere.

     “I’ll help you,” Hank replied.

     “Hank, wait—there’s one more thing…” Xavier said.

     “What?”

     “Apocalypse also seems to know little about the history of the world since he was entombed, which makes no sense given the knowledge he absorbed earlier from the Eye of Ages, a device made millennia in the future… This doesn’t quite add up.”

     Kurt materialized into existence in the middle of downtown Bayville… or rather, he thought it was Bayville. A few of the buildings he recognized, though many looked completely different. In addition, the architecture had a very mid-20th-century look and feel to it.

     And from the look of the people coming to a stop around him, the architecture wasn’t the only thing that looked like it was stuck in the past.

     “EEEK!” screamed a woman nearby Kurt, with a typical ’60s-style haircut and dress. “It’s another one of those Mutants! Run!”

     Everyone in the immediate vicinity took off in opposite directions, sprinting away from Kurt.

     Kurt sighed and activated his holo-watch. He should have been used to this….

     A distant explosion sounded from a few blocks ahead, followed by more screaming.

     Kurt instinctively readied himself to teleport to the scene of the action, but thought better of it.

     Wait… the last few times I’ve teleported, everything seems to change all of sudden…maybe I’d better stop teleporting for now…

     Instead, Kurt ran towards the explosion, pushing himself past the mass of people running in the opposite direction until he reached the wall of a building, which he quickly climbed up.

     Now with a much clearer vision of the action taking place a few blocks away, Kurt saw a figure he instantly recognized, even though he seemed more heavily muscled than Kurt ever remembered.

     “Magneto…”

     “Power amplifier,” Forge said, holding out his hand.

     “Power amplifier…..” Hank said, uncertainly putting in Forge’s hand the device he had requested.

     “Okay.... let’s see, that should be it,” Forge said, closing the top of a mechanical device he had assembled in the Danger Room in less than an hour. “Fire it up, Mr. McCoy.”

     Hank glanced nervously towards Xavier, who sighed.

     “I’m as concerned as you are, Hank, but if this thing that Forge has built allows us to find Kurt and bring him home, it’s worth it.”

     “Oh, I have no doubt it’ll find Kurt,” Hank said, flipping the required switch, “It’s the… ‘aftereffects’ I’m worried about.”

     “Hey, I’m right here!” Forge protested.

     “I’m sorry, Forge, but you have to admit you don’t have the best track record when it comes to experiments involving Kurt’s abilities.”

     “Yeah, but…. Uh… I’ve completed dozens of other inventions without any negative consequences whatsoever! You guys just focus on the two that did—and don’t forget that my time machine didn’t do anything bad to the time stream or have any weird consequences like that.”

     As far as we know… Xavier thought to himself, remembering that some of the images of the future he had taken from Apocalypse’s mind those months ago were now oddly muddled.

     “No, it just almost killed Kurt,” Hank replied, smirking darkly as the steady hums and whines of the device grew higher and higher as it booted up.

     “Yeah, but that wasn’t because of the time machine…” Forge said, trailing off as his focus shifted to the screens in front of him. “Okay, system’s fully booted up. Everything seems to be operating at full capacity.”

     “So how does this device find Kurt out of the likely near-infinite number of dimensions?” Xavier asked.

     Forge then proceeded to give a very lengthy explanation that went into so much detail regarding theoretical and quantum physics that even Professor Xavier and Hank could only grasp a few of the most basic concepts.

     “Er, um… alright,” Xavier said, shaking his head after the explanation finally ended. “So how long do you think it will take to find Kurt?”

     “Were you even listening?! I already mentioned that,” Forge said. “Could be a few minutes, could be days. This device operates on the principle that dimensions split off of each other when certain decisions made by individuals lead the two different timelines on an irreconcilable track, whether those decisions are major or minor. Dimensions that differ from ours only via minor decisions, or major decisions that have occurred relatively recently, are theoretically considered ‘closer’ to us in dimensional space than dimensions where major decisions or events happened in the relatively distant past. My device will rapidly scan for Kurt’s dimensional anomaly in the ‘closest’ dimensions first before moving onto ‘farther’ dimensions. However…”

     “However, what?” Hank said.

     “However, the ‘farther’ from our own dimension Kurt is, the harder it will be to ‘reel’ him back into our own, so to speak. Heck, even this device can only detect dimensions so ‘far’ out—there’s far too many for it to even begin to catalogue. So the longer it takes to find Kurt, the harder it will be to get him back.”

     Kurt was starting to find out what was going on as he saw the battle unfold on the city streets before him.

     Five very muscular Mutants in their late teens, clothed in yellow-and-blue spandex—no doubt they were X-Men—were in the middle of a mid-town brawl with Magneto, who was hovering above them all and using the mostly metal surroundings to his advantage.

     This Magneto, however, was different from the one Kurt knew. Like the X-Men, he was considerably more muscular, and seemed a bit younger as well. He still wore a helmet and a somewhat similar getup, but sounded different, had a different air about him… in short, he was a Magneto, but not ‘Kurt’s’ Magneto.

     Just like the Shadowcat and the Iceman Kurt had seen before he had last teleported.

     Indeed, all the X-Men battling Magneto Kurt recognized, to some extent. The red-headed female using telekinesis was Jean Grey, though the other X-Men referred to her as “Marvel Girl” for some reason. This Cyclops looked rather similar in getup to the Cyclops Kurt knew, though his blue uniform covered the top of his head as well. Angel was a part of the group as well, and his uniform was an X-Men uniform just like the others’. A snowman-like Bobby Drake was making soft ice bridges all over the place and had very few distinguishable features given his snow-like body, but the others had referred to him as Iceman, so Iceman he apparently was. The last X-Man had stumped him for a while, until one of this dimension’s X-Men had called him “Beast”. Oddly, though, this Beast was not only roughly the same age as the other X-Men—and thus was much younger than the Beast Kurt knew—but instead of being blue and furry, he looked like a normal human, just with fairly large hands and feet. He also had very good acrobatic skills, from what Kurt could tell, just like the Beast he knew.

     “Give it up, Magneto!” Cyclops was saying as he fired an optic beam at Magneto, who merely hovered out of the way. “The X-Men aren’t going to let you go through with your plans this time!”

     “I’m afraid you have little choice, Cyclops!” Magneto said. “I will kidnap Senator Kelly, and he will see what he gets when he crosses the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!”

     While Cyclops and Magneto were exchanging verbal blows, Jean had levitated Beast behind and now above Magneto, with considerable effort.

     “Pardon me, Magneto, while I get the drop on you!” Beast said as Jean let go of him and he fell down towards Magneto. The floating Mutant had quicker reflexes than the X-Men had taken into account, however, and before Kurt could react, Magneto wrenched the rooftop air conditioning unit that Kurt had been perched on and hurled it in front of him to deflect Beast’s incoming bulk. Kurt nearly teleported away instinctively, but managed to stop himself at the last moment.

     “What the!?” Beast managed to blurt out before he collided with Kurt and the air conditioning unit, and all three plummeted to the ground.

     “Don’t worry, I’ve got you!” Angel said, swooping down and grabbing both Beast and Kurt by the clothes (or spandex) on their upper backs and setting them down safely on the other side of the street.

     “Many thanks, Angel!” Beast said. “But it would appear that this innocent civilian appeared a little too close to the action! We need to get him to safety before the nefarious Magneto can harm him!”

     “I’m not a civilian, I—“ Kurt started, but stopped himself, not wanting to bother with another confusing question-and-answer session in the middle of a battle. “—Nevermind, I’ll get to safety myself.”

     Before Kurt could move, though, he heard a familiar yet muffled voice coming from his holowatch’s communicator.

     *Kurt! Kurt, are you there!? Kurt!*

     Even though he tried to hide it, Kurt’s joy was apparent even to Beast and Angel, who were confused by his sudden elation.

     “Forge!” The REAL Forge! “Forge, I hear you! But… how are we talking?”

     *A device I cooked up. Long story. Are you okay?*

     “Physically, yes, though I have to admit I’m rather confused. What’s going on?”

     *In short—you’re hopping between dimensions, but you’re not coming back, probably because of the solar flare event going on right now in our dimension. I’ll give you the long story later.*

     “Who are you talking to?” Angel said, confused.

     “Beast, I need assistance out here!” Cyclops yelled, dodging an incoming barrage of metal courtesy of Magneto.

     “Go!” Angel said. “I’ll see what’s bothering our civilian friend here.”

     Beast merely took another glance at Kurt and nodded, than ran off back towards the action.

     “I’m uh… I’m just talking to my friend through a comlink,” Kurt mumbled in explanation.

     “Okay…” Angel said uncertainly, glancing around. “I’m not sure if this is the best place to engage in such conversation, however!”

     “Just… give me a minute,” Kurt said impatiently.

     *Kurt, this is important! The longer you’re gone, the harder it will be to take you back. Already your anomaly signal is rather faint.*

     “No, no, not you, Forge—the, er… people I’m with.”

     *Oh… okay. Listen, Kurt, I’ve got a fix on the dimension you’re in, but it’ll take a few minutes to zero in on you and reel you back in to our dimension. Can you hang tight for a minute?*

     “Uh… maybe.”

     *Look, it’s VERY important that you don’t move around too much—and whatever you do, do NOT teleport! In case you haven’t figured it out by now, your usual manner of teleporting is being all screwed up by the solar flare event, which should also be occurring in any dimension that has our solar system in it—which would be pretty much any dimension that’s near us in dimensional space. Instead of quickly moving through that same hellish dimension every time you teleport, you’re instead teleporting through planes of existence that happen to be ‘closer’ to ours in dimensional space and staying there after you teleport. If my hypothesis is correct, the more you teleport, the further you’re going to get from us in dimensional space. I imagine you’ve teleported a few times already to get as far from us as you have.*

     “Yeah, three times, actu---AHH!”

     Kurt interrupted his conversation with Forge as he and Angel dove to the side right before a car slammed into the side of the building where they had been a moment ago, bursting into flames.

     “We really need to get you out of here!” Angel yelled, shielding Kurt from the flames with his body and wings. “X-Men, civilians—Magneto and his Evil Brotherhood make no distinction! They’ll kill anyone who stands in the way of their sinister goals!”

     “Forge, you better get going with… whatever you’re using to contact me!” Kurt said hurriedly as he looked up to see an oil tanker truck hovering over them.

     “This is the day I finally put an end to you all, X-Men!” Magneto yelled.

     *The machine can’t work any faster, Kurt! You’re at least thirty seconds out from being retrieved. You’ve got to take cover!*

     Kurt quickly looked around. “There’s no cover to take from a tanker truck!”

     “We’ve just got to keep moving, then!” Angel said, thinking Kurt’s comment was directed at him. “Grab onto my back, I’ll get you out of here!”

     “No time for that!” Kurt said, pointing at the tanker truck that was already being flung at them.

     Crud crud crud CRUD…. Kurt winced inwardly as, without any other options left, he teleported.

     “Oh, great,” Forge said, cursing inwardly and tearing off his headset. “Kurt teleported. I’ve lost him.”

     “Well, from the sound of his voice,” Hank said, motioning towards the speaker on Forge’s transdimensional device, “It didn’t seem like he was particularly safe—he likely didn’t have much of a choice.”

     “I know, I know,” Forge said, forcing himself to calm down as he instructed the machine to start searching again. “I just hope he hasn’t teleported out of the reach of this thing… so much of this stuff is still theoretical, I’m not sure I’d be able to cobble together anything more effective than what we have right here in front of us….”

     Kurt sat at the edge of a small fire, waiting as an impaled squirrel he had recently caught and killed cooked itself over the flames. He looked out over the bay from which Bayville had gotten its name.

     Well, the Bayville in his dimension, that is. He recognized the landscape—the outline of the bay, the elevation of the land, everything looked familiar—but there was nobody here. Just endless, thick forest. He had searched around for hours after arriving here, but he hadn’t heard back from a soul.

     Did no one live on Long Island in this dimension for some reason? There had to be an explanation why no one lived here, yet the rest of the natural surroundings looked untouched. Kurt worried inwardly whether he might be exposing himself to some kind of contaminant that only affected humans.

     What if no one had ever lived here? What if humans didn’t even exist in this dimension?! It scared Kurt to even think about it. And what with it being over two days since he had arrived in this dimension, he was starting to lose hope Forge would ever find him again.

     So close, and yet so far….

     However, what occupied Kurt’s mind more than his situation-- scary as it was—was seeing his sister die. He knew it wasn’t “really” Rogue—at least not the Rogue he knew—but he must have been in a dimension that only differed from his in a few respects, as that Rogue looked identical to “his” Rogue.  Still… he didn’t think he’d ever forget the look on her dead face, having to bury her near a ruined mansion. It literally was a nightmare come to life. Alternate versions of Kitty, Jean, the rest of the X-Men? It was weird, jarring, made your own world seem smaller and less consequential, but it wasn’t something he was unable to deal with. During his life he’d dealt with plenty of weird stuff, and he was sure this wouldn’t be his last unusual experience. But burying your sister… well, it had made him realize just what was possibly in store for him, in his own dimension, in the future. Oh, he had obviously known Sam and Logan well, and he truly mourned their loss, but there was something inherently different about losing your sister. Especially a friend you had fairly recently just found was your sister. Like she had died before they had really gotten a chance to take advantage of their newfound relationship.

     He just hoped—prayed, fervently—that the same thing never happened in his own dimension. He just didn’t know what he’d do, if he’d be able to handle it.

     Kurt was interrupted from his musings as he heard a soft rustling in some nearby bushes. Silently activating his holo-watch—just in case—and taking cover behind a tree, he peeked back out to find out what or who was entering his makeshift campsite.

     A group of American Indians slowly stepped out into the small clearing, their eyes alert and focused, spears ready. They looked, as far as Kurt could tell, like they were from a millennium ago—at least in his dimension.

     Could Europeans never have discovered the Americas in this dimension?! Is that what’s different?

     *Kurt! Come in, Kurt, are you there! Hey Mr. McCoy, I think I’ve found him again!*

     Kurt had never felt so conflicted in his life. He was elated that finally, at long last, Forge had managed to home in on whatever dimension he was in for a second time. But of course, the noise that was coming out of his holowatch immediately alerted the Indians searching around his campsite.

     “Uh, yeah,” Kurt said, bolting out from behind the tree and running as fast as his four legs could carry him away from the campsite. “But you’ve caught me at an awfully bad time!” He heard some confused conversing back at the campsite in a language he couldn’t understand, than a yell—probably some order to capture him. Or cut his head off.

     He sure hoped it was the former.

     *You’re in trouble AGAIN!? What is it this time?*

     “Well, I wasn’t—until you just alerted a bunch of your other-dimensional ancestors to my presence! I was hiding!”

     Kurt winced as a spear struck the ground where he had been a second ago.

     *Ancestors? What, you mean other Mutants?*

     “No, I mean Native Americans! I’ve got a bunch of them on my tail right now, and zey’re trying to…. well, I’m not sure what zey’re trying to do, but it’s going to be hazardous to my health!”

     *What did you do!?*

     “Nothing! But I imagine my clothes and the way I’m speaking into my talking watch is freaking them out a bit! I’m in some universe where America was never settled, I think! These guys look like they’re straight from the eleventh century!”

     *Whoa… freaky. Well look Kurt, I’ve got the device locked onto you, but it’s going to take a few minutes to fully yank you back. You may feel a bit of tingle in about a minute or so, but that’s just it beginning the process. And this time, don’t teleport NO MATTER WHAT. You’re just barely within the range of this thing’s scanners. If you teleport further away from us dimensionally, it’s likely I’ll never be able to reach you again.*

     “Easier said than done,” Kurt yelped as another spear thudded into a tree trunk right ahead of him. He immediately back-tracked a few steps and headed in a slightly different direction, hoping to throw his pursuers off the trail.

     It worked—for about twenty seconds. Soon enough he heard yelling and running footsteps behind him again—only this time, it was accompanied by a stretching sound as bows were drawn taut.

     Kurt continued to scamper, darting in a zigzag pattern as the occasional arrow or spear thudded right next to him. Shortly afterwards, just as he started to feel a bit odd, he skidded to a halt.

     He had just run out of forest to dart through.

     Below him was a long rocky drop to the bay far below—in fact, given the landscape, it looked like it was the same area where he had almost fallen to his death a while back in his own dimension when Boom Boom had gotten too rowdy during a training exercise.

     Déjà vu. Great.

     Kurt desperately looked around for somewhere else to hide, but the natives were coming up behind him from pretty much all sides—apparently more had been summoned by the yelling leader after they had found Kurt. Several notched their bows as they slowly strode towards Kurt.

     The chief yelled something, but Kurt didn’t wait to find out what the order was. He quickly jumped off the side of the cliff, using his wall-clinging abilities to hang onto the rock wall, and scampered under an arc-like outcropping, hoping to fool them into thinking he had jumped to his watery grave.

     After about fifteen seconds of waiting—as well as feeling increasingly dizzy—Kurt almost thought he had gotten away with it, until he felt a sharp twinge in his shoulder. Looking towards it, he had to stifle a cry of pain as he saw an arrow buried there, blood quickly oozing out of the deep wound.

     More yells and war cries sounded from the top of the cliffside, but Kurt wasn’t paying attention anymore. Forge had mentioned feeling tingly, but nothing about the nausea. It was almost overpowering. That, combined with the shock of having an arrow shot through his shoulder, caused Kurt to lose grip on the rock outcropping despite himself.

     He felt himself falling, picking up speed, towards the sea below…

     Correction: Towards the rather… transparent-looking sea below…

     Correction: Towards the Danger Room floor below…

     Everyone gathered in the Danger Room looked up expectantly as Kurt literally fell out of nowhere, abruptly appearing in the middle of the Danger Room and falling to the ground, groaning.

     “Oh god, he’s got an arrow in him!” Rogue said, rushing to Kurt’s side.

     “Is he going to be okay!?” Kitty said as she, Forge, Hank, and Xavier all rushed to where Kurt lay on the floor.

     Hank hurriedly examined Kurt’s wound. “He should be fine, as long as we get that arrow out of him before he bleeds too much. Kitty, quickly, run to the medlab and get some gauze, tweezers, bandages, and iodine.”

     “You got it!” a relieved Kitty answered, immediately running towards the Danger Room entry door and phasing through it.

     “I made it back… I MADE IT—Owowowowow…” Kurt said, trying to sit up in his elation but then quickly laying back down on the floor as the pain got too severe.

     “Please, just lie still, Kurt. We’ll have you fixed up in no time,” Xavier said, smiling.

     “You really had us scared there, ‘Crawler,” Rogue said. “Luckily this whole ‘solar flare’ thing is about over, so as long as you wait a few more days before ‘porting again you should be fine.”

     “I’m waiting at least a week, after what I’ve been through,” Kurt said between breaths, clearly exhausted.

     “Man, you’re lucky I was able to find you,” Forge said. “My device over there had just about gotten to the end of the reachable dimensions when it found you.”

     “Forge… thanks, man. You saved my life,” Kurt said, giving a thumbs up with the arm that didn’t have an arrow in it.

     “Hey, no prob,” Forge said, waving it away. “Without you, I’d still be stuck in Middleverse. So… let’s just say we’re even now.”

     “Rogue, are you… doing anything tomorrow?” Kurt said.

     “Well, tomorrow’s Saturday, so… beyond watching my show at ten o’ clock at night and the usual training exercises, I’ve got nothing. Why?”

     “No….erg…. particular reason. Just saw some stuff during my dimensional travels and, well…. came to appreciate what I have in this dimension a lot more. Particularly the fact that I have a sister.”

     Rogue just smiled in response.

     “Well, looks like this has been taken care of,” Hank said to Xavier.

     “Indeed,” Xavier nodded. “And last night, for the first time since the solar flare incident began I never dreamt of conversing with Apocalypse once. I believe that with this unusual incident behind us, we won’t have anything more to worry about from him.”

     It was interesting just how much one was able to get away with in the psychic realm.

     The mental image he had projected was of Apocalypse as the X-Men had last seen him, fully fused with advanced nanites and nearly all-powerful.

     In reality, En Sabah Nur was currently a mess.

     Interestingly enough, as long as he was lost in the cracks of time, time had no meaning. He didn’t know whether it had been five minutes, five years, or five millennia since he had been trapped in that accursed plane by Wolverine and Rogue. Oddly, it felt like all three at the same time.

     As soon as he had regained enough strength, he had re-opened the Eye of Ages and left that technological coffin behind that had trapped him not just once, but twice now.

     In retrospect, that was a mistake.

     The ravages of existing in pure time would have instantly killed most mortals, but Apocalypse was not most mortals. However, it had—over time (however long that period of time was)—degraded the nanites he had fused with. His arms and roughly a third of his chest were still light blue and infused with the advanced nanites, but they had dissipated from the rest of his body.

     And with the nanites had gone most of the knowledge he had accumulated instantly when he had bonded with them. His knowledge of the future, of the past after he had been entombed, of the world’s myriads, cultures—he still held onto a few precious fragments, but most of it had been forgotten, gone from his mind as the nanites deactivated.

     Speaking with Xavier telepathically, however, had revealed to him that something was amiss. They should not have been speaking, it went against everything he—or rather, his nanites—knew about dimensions and the plane of time. He had poked, prodded, tested the limits of the plane, and found a weakness. A slight abnormality in time. Pushing with all of his might, he had fallen back into normal time and space—his own dimension, from what little knowledge he retained from his nanites.

     Now he stood in an enclosed room with a doorway, kneeling on the ground, smoking from the effort of passing back into this dimension. Pieces and parts of all different kinds of machines lay around him, and thick books lined almost all of the walls. Having only retained the ability to speak and think English, he was unable to read them, but he guessed they were very in-depth, academic works.

     Walking up to the lone desk in the room, Apocalypse looked at its contents. Papers, papers, more papers… a picture of an individual he didn’t know. Tanned skin, but he wasn’t Egyptian. One of the pictures, though, was a picture of the individual and… a Mutant.

     The blue one. Nightcrawler.

     Apocalypse smirked. So whoever lived here knew at least one of the X-Men. This could come in handy…

     Leaving through the doorway, Apocalypse silently made his way up the staircase until he was in a fairly large entry room. Apparently he had appeared in some below-ground floor, as now he was at ground level. Not large by pharaoh standards, to be sure, but much larger than any Egyptian peasant’s filthy abode.

     It was fully dark in the home—no torches or candles lit, no lights of any kind. Whoever lived here must be gone at the moment.

     Searching around, Apocalypse eventually found a doorway that led to an incredibly small room full of modern clothes. Quickly dressing himself in a modern, rather tight-fitting black shirt and pants that looked formal, Apocalypse then took a hat and a trenchcoat and put them on to cover any visible traces on his skin that would show he was anything other than an average ordinary individual.

     As he exited through the front door, Apocalypse lowered the hat over his eyes. It was going to be odd trying to fit in with these… humans, but it was needed. Even with his great powers, he was at a significant disadvantage, having lost almost all knowledge of the world, as well as any language besides ancient Egyptian. Clearly he had some work to do, plans to make.

     But that was acceptable. After all, he was En Sabah Nur. The First One. He was here for the beginning of Mutantkind, and he would be here for the end. The Alpha and the Omega, indeed.

     And he had all the time in the world.

The End
 

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