Kurt is still the same 'ol NC. And he's still in Bayville. (sigh)

It's past midnight. No one really knows what time it is. Kurt is sleeping rather noisily in his bed, dreaming of unpleasantries. Something he, on average, doesn't do.

There's a forest, dark with the night's casting light and the thick vegetation, enriched with the high canopy of the tall oak trees. A lone creature wanders the paths of leaves and needles. A creature, belonging to no class of animals alone. This creature doesn't even fit any class at the first glance. No. No mutant would. The creature is Nightcrawler, original name: Kurt Wagner.

For his entire life, he's been a loner, belonging not with the animals or the homo sapiens. Although he walks amongst them, accepted by some, feared by others.

He has made home with others like him, but unlike him. Other mutants who don't exactly obey the laws of modern science. Even among them, he stands out.

Apparently he has gotten on the nerves of his fellow comrades again. To give them time to blow off their steam in a safe way for him, he has left the mansion, and is now wandering the woods close by. No one dares to enter the wood, because of their insecurity with the wildlife. Ironically, it accepts him as one if their own.

Strolling on all fours rather comfortably, Nightcrawler scales a tree to see the sites from a canopy view. His rumbling stomach complains of its hunger, and his forgetfulness to feed it before bailing. Kurt shrugs off the whining, and hunts with his ever keen eyes for something to eat, preferably not alive.

In the not to distant horizon, an out of place pile of fruit catches his hungry eye. Despite the instant warning in the elf's mind, he scampers down the tree like a raccoon, head first, dives into the pile of fruit. Before the minute has past, most of the fruit is in his mouth.

A twig snaps and he is suddenly surrounded and trapped in a thick rope. His current position leaves him quite uncomfortable, and thus very irritable. "Great, now I'm a sitting goose," he mutters to himself as he attempts to teleport out of the situation and fails. A dark shadow peeks out from the nearby bushes, cautious and ever sly. Kurt watches it with full attention, instinctively knowing that the cause of the trap was the actions of the mysterious creature.

A sharp pain in the back of his head sends his mind realing, and then into infinite abyss. He is unconscious.

He awakens again to find himself in the mansion, in his room. He is still in uniform, though everything around him is unusual. His bed is five times bigger than him, and the distance from the surface of it to the floor seems to far to be normal. Looking around more, he discovers that everything is five to six times larger than its normal size. "Vas? I'm shrunk!"

In the distance beyond the door, he hears the voices of Jean and Kitty. "Hey, has Kurt returned from his bail yet?" Kitty askes. Astonishingly, she's lost the valley-girl accent.

"No. He's never been gone this long. I've done a psychic scan for him and I've picked up nothing."

"Do you think he went off somewhere further than your limits?"

"Possibly. I should have the professor use cerebro."

"Okay. Meanwhile, I'll tell Scott. He should have a plan." Footsteps shouting like thunder slowly calm as the two leave. Silence whispers on the winds blowing through the drapes of Kurts open windows.

Bamphing down to the floor, he wanders directionless on all fours, failing misserably at trying to figure out why he was only a foot tall. He doesn't get very far when his stomach complains again about not being fed. The obvious that no one, especially a hyperactive fuzzy elf, can't opperate at full capacity on an empty stomach, Kurt teleports to the kitchen, and ends up on the counter, conveniantly near a porcelin bottle labled "cookies".

"How much trouble can getting one cookie from a cookie jar be?" he asks himself as he leaps to the jar and unaturally clinging to its sides climbs up to the lid. Lifting it up with minor difficulty, he holds it up with one hand and his tail as he reaches for the large mass of chocolate and such. Fingers barely reaching the textured delite, he is suddenly startled by a rukus from Evan as he skateboards into the kitchen, circles around the table, and exits. Because of the shock of Evan, Kurt looses his grip on the lid, and knocks himself into the cookie jar, his tail helplessly caught between the lid and the jar itself.

"Help," he hoplessly cries as his tail throbs with aganizing pain with each passing second. He tries again to teleport, but unfortunately can't. With all his energy, he yells "HELP!" again. Any fool knows that it's hopless to yell for help when you're a foot tall and stuck in a cookie jar. But, how would they know that?

To divert his mind from the numbing pain in his tail, Kurt eats off of one of the cookies that got him into this mess in the first place. Half way through, he falls asleep from the overfullness of his stomach.

A different textured surface brushes up against him, awakening him instantly from his awkward slumber. The lid of the jar is missing, and his tail has instinctively fallen in with him. Someone's hand is accompaning him as well. Although whose, he can not decifer.

"Hey! Someone help me!" he feebly shouts into the mouth of the cookie jar. Deciding other wise, he grabs the hand and rides it out of the jar. Loud screaming can be heard as his ride suddenly shakes to rid itself of its rider. "H-h-h-h-h-h-e-e-e-e-e-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y!" he protests. Losing his grip on the hand, he finds himself flying across the room into the softness of the butter on the table. "Yueck. Butter in my fur." Kurt complains.

"Hey, has anyone found Kurt yet?" Evan asks. Kurt peers around the room to find Amara at the cookie jar, rubbing her hand as if it were bitten.

"No. I don't care about that peasant. Someone put something in the cookie jar, and it bit me." she complains.

"I did not bite you!" Kurt differs. Grabbing a heeping ball of butter, Kurt throws it as hard has he can manage at Evan, and misses. "Verdamnit." The table abruptly vibrates as Kitty sits down and places her hands on the surface. "Wunderbar!" Clumsily running/sliding over to her, he places his buttery hands onto one of hers and prays that she will notice him.

"What the..." Kitty looks down at what was touching her hand, and sees an extremely dwarfed Kurt sprawled out ontop of three of her fingers. "Uh, guys. Like, I found Kurt."

"Huh?" Evan asked.

"He's right here, on the table." Using her other hand, Kitty jestures to the tiny mutant.

"How'd he get so small?"

"I don't know. What I want to know is why is he covered in butter."

"We should tell the professor."

"Right." Carrying Kurt in her cupped hands, Kitty made her way to the professor. Kurt fell asleep in her hands, content that he'd be helped soon, for one, and that Kitty was holding him most of all.

The crying wail of the alarm clock shocks Kurt into reality. Scanning the room quickly, he rejoices silently at the normal appearance of all his furniture. Remembering his alarm he momentarily forgot, he pounds it into unquestionable silence. Sitting up, he mutters to himself, "That's the last time I eat cookies and butter before bed at Midnight."

The End.

Shadow Enigma