(...continued from Chapter Six...)

Chapter Thirteen

Scott, Toad, and Wolverine popped into existence at the craggy edge of a ruined wall. Wolverine appeared in mid-roar, his face coated in a thick glob of Toad's slime. Taking advantage of his captor's momentary blindness, Toad bit down hard on Wolverine's hand, wriggling for all he was worth. Wolverine roared even louder and loosed his hold on Toad's leg, using both hands to tear the rapidly crusting Toad booger from his eyes. Once he could see, Wolverine extended his metal claws with a fierce SNIKT and pounced on the hapless Toad, pinning him to the uneven ground, the tips of his sharp, gleaming claws pressing against the teen's neck. The terrified Toad didn't even dare to swallow.

" Logan , no! Don't…huh?" Scott interrupted his own warning, looking around at their new surroundings in surprise. "What— Where the heck are we? And what are those…things?"

Wolverine growled low, glaring his fiercest glare at the cringing Toad, then retracted his claws and looked around. Toad whimpered and slid his back up against what remained of the wall.

They seemed to have appeared in the remains of what had once been a pretty high-tech alien-looking lab. Fancy equipment was scattered to the four corners, and the whole place was crawling with hundreds of lanky little blue creatures with leathery, bat-like wings. They were bouncing on the ruined consoles and flapping around the room, pulling wires and pipes from the walls and ceilings and laughing at the sparks. Every few seconds, another blue creature would pop out of what appeared to be a large mirror hanging on the wall and join the others in their madcap dance of destruction.

"Never seen nothin' like this before," Wolverine grunted.

"Wh-wh-where are we, yo?" Toad stammered, using the wall to slide himself to his feet. "What did you fools do?"

"Hey, watch who you're calling a fool," Scott said, bringing a hand to his ruby quartz shades.

Before Toad could respond, a strange crackling noise met their ears. The disoriented group turned their heads just in time to see the empty space some seven feet away rip wide open and three tall figures come dashing through: two men and a woman. The tear glowed bright violet for a moment, then snapped closed with a strange, sizzling, electrical sound. SHAZZP!

"What the—" Toad started, but Scott shushed him. Wolverine ground his teeth and crouched low, observing the newcomers like a wolf observes a deer. The newcomers, for their part, were too preoccupied with their own problems to notice them.

"7.86 seconds exactly," one of the men said, staring down at the blinking device in his hand. The woman and the man who had spoken both had copper skin and black hair. The remaining man was hard to see. He seemed to fade into the shadows. Wolverine squinted and focused in on him, not quite believing what his senses were telling him.

"So, where are Marti and Suzie?" the woman asked nervously. "And where are we?"

The man who'd spoken before waved a boxy-looking device around. "I'm scanning for them now," he said. "It'll be easier to find them if Marta's activated her power here. Like I said before, that dimension she and your husband teleport through is a known constant. But even if she hasn't 'ported I should still be able to trace them by their dimensional signature."

"How long, Forge?" the other man demanded, stepping out of the shadows. Scott and Todd both gasped in surprise when they recognized his German accent and long, spaded tail.

"But that's—" Scott started.

"Yo, what's happened to Fuzzboy?" Todd spoke over him. "The dude like disappears for a few hours an' suddenly he's all grown up? That ain't right, yo." He frowned suddenly as a disturbing thought occurred to him. "Hey, that's not gonna happen to us, is it? I'm not ready for adult court!"

Wolverine growled at the sallow-faced teen, then stood up and strode over to the newcomers. The man who looked like their missing friend noticed him first, and his golden eyes widened with surprise.

" Logan !" he exclaimed. "But what are you doing here, mein Freund? Or is it you?"

"Yeah, 's me," Wolverine grunted. "But what about you? Scent's right, but the look's all wrong."

"What do you mean?" the German asked.

"The Crawler I know's just a kid," he said. "Forge too." He turned his flinty eyes on the tall inventor, then shifted them to the woman. "But I don't know you."

" Alice," she said impatiently, taking her husband's hand. "Alice Wagner."

Wolverine raised his eyebrows and shot Nightcrawler a little smile. "Not bad, Elf."

Scott marched over to them, Todd hopping close behind. "Excuse me," he said, "but can any one of you explain to me just what exactly is going on here?"

Forge stared. "Scott? Scott Summers? No way! You look just like you did when I first met you, like thirty years ago!"

"Thirty years?" Scott started, but Forge was walking around him in a full circle, his little ITD device flashing orange and yellow.

"This is fantastic!" the inventor said. "You guys—all of you—you're all from another dimension too! That is, a dimension separate from this one and the one that we come from. Here, stand still for a second and let me get a few readings—"

"Forge!" Alice practically screamed. "We don't have time for this!"

Forge jumped a little, but had the good grace to look sheepish. "Oh, right, sorry. Um, resuming scan for Marta's dimensional signature."

Wolverine frowned. "So, who's this Marta you're searchin' for?"

"Marta is our daughter," Nightcrawler told him. "We are actually searching for our two daughters, Marta and Suzie. They, along with an alien woman we rescued from a crash, were kidnapped and pulled into this dimension by a shark-like creature."

"We're missin' someone too," Wolverine told him. "Our 'Crawler vanished earlier this morning. Abducted through some orange portal. Think the same creature coulda pulled both jobs?"

"Anything is possible. But I am curious. How did you come to be here, in this dimension?"

"Not a clue, bub," Wolverine grunted.

Todd, who'd been crouching by the wall, now stood up and said, "It was totally weird, yo! Like, one minute we're all in ol'Baldy's study an' this psychopath's comin' down on me like I'm some fresh piece of meat for, like, no reason, yo."

Wolverine growled. Toad cringed.

"Well, you were!" he said. "An' next thing we know, pop! Here we are. Stuck in this crater with all them weird bat things."

"Bat things?" Alice frowned, looking beyond their small group and noticing the swarms of dark blue Boggies flapping and jumping around the room behind them. As she watched, three more Boggies emerged from the mirror and immediately joined in the fracas, helping the others to tear the room apart. "What in the world…!" she gasped.

"What are they?" Kurt asked curiously, moving to stand beside his wife.

One of the nearest creatures looked up at him and hissed. "What," he repeated mockingly. "What are they, the Phoneyboggie says! Not who. No, no! Boggies are a 'what'!"

"They can talk!" Alice exclaimed. The Boggie shot her a seething glare.

Kurt blinked in surprise. "I apologize," he told the Boggie. "I didn't mean to offend you."

"And yet, offense is taken, yes!" the Boggie hissed. Then, his expression turned sly. "But, perhaps, Phonieboggie could make it up to us, yes? Perhaps, he could tell us of the Fieryboggie! If she has yet pummeled the nasty Pirateses?"

Quite a crowd of Boggies had gathered around them by this point, and more were joining them every second. Alice and Kurt moved a little closer together, trying to avoid all the flapping wings.

"Fieryboggie! Yes!" the Boggies cheered. "Fieryboggie beat old Sharpytooth. Took him away on the Pirateses ship! Set the Boggies free! Free! Free! Free! Free!"

"Er, Forge," Kurt said, trying to back himself and Alice away from the thick of the crowd. "Have you gotten a reading on Marti yet?"

One of the Boggies paused his flapping and hopping and squinted up at Kurt. "Phoneyboggie knows the blue girlie?" he asked.

"Girlie Phoneyboggie!" another, younger Boggie cried. "Girlie Phoneyboggie fights Sharky. Hid in the mirror-place. Helps the Fieryboggie!"

The other Boggies cheered. Alice looked up at Kurt, her eyes wide with hope. "They must mean Marti!" she said. "I just hope she and Suzie are together. Please," she addressed the Boggies, "do you know where the blue girlie is right now? Can you take us to her?"

"Left with the Pirateses, yes!" a Boggie to their right said. "On their way to the cloud mines. Many Boggies there, working all the time for no food, for no drink. It is a bad place, yes, yes!"

"Fieryboggie will not work for miner men and Pirateses," another Boggie said loyally. "Fieryboggie will smash the Pirateses. Free the worker-Boggies, yes!"

"Can you take us to see this Fieryboggie, then?" Kurt asked. "Please, it's very important."

"Why?" a particularly wizened old Boggie demanded. "Why should Boggies aid a Phoneyboggie?"

"Because we could help your Fieryboggie free your people," Kurt said.

"And Boggies should believe you, why?"

"Well," Kurt glanced at Alice . "Because where we come from, it's our job to help those who are suffering—like your people."

"That's right," Alice said. "But we'll only help if you take us to Marti. The blue girlie."

The Boggies began to hiss and whisper, and for a moment Kurt and Alice were afraid they would refuse. But then the flapping swarm began to rise into the air, circling the room like bats until they were all out the window and in the open sky.

"Phoneyboggie follow!" they shouted down.

"But how?" Kurt asked. "Is there a ship we could use, or—"

"Phoneyboggies use the fastpoof power! Follow Boggies, quickly!"

"Fastpoof power?" Alice questioned. "Does…could he mean teleportation?"

"Kurt, Alice !" Forge exclaimed, rushing over to them with his eyes alight. "I've locked on to Marti's signature. I have her coordinates right here!"

The Wagners breathed a sigh of relief. "Very good," Kurt said. "Can that device display a map to show us where Marta is?"

Forge winced. "Not as such. But I can tell you the approximate distance and direction. With your special perception, it should be enough."

Nightcrawler shot him a look. "We'll have to hope so," he said dryly. "Or we may find ourselves plummeting through the sky, or materialized inside a rock!"

"Hurry, hurry!" the Boggies shouted. "Phoneyboggie too slow!"

"I cannot teleport everyone," Kurt said. "So I will take Forge and Logan —if that is acceptable to you."

Logan grunted. Alice bit her lip as if she wanted to protest, but she nodded her understanding. "Right, then," she said. "I'll stay here with the boys."

"Hey, I ain't no boy, yo," Toad said, slicking his hair back in a way he probably thought was attractive. Scott rolled his eyes behind his ruby quartz shades.

"Be careful, Schatz," Kurt said, and kissed the top of her head.

"Yeah," she said, squeezing his thick fingers. "You too, love. Go find our girls."

Clasping Forge and Wolverine on the shoulders, he called to the Boggies, "We're ready. Show us the way!"

The circling swarm straightened out and aimed themselves toward a distant island floating in the sky.

"That's the right direction," Forge confirmed, his eyes fixed on his ITD. "Looks like those Boggie things are going to lead us right to her."

"Hold tight, then," Nightcrawler said. "This is going to be a rough trip."

BAMF!

To Be Continued...

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