Paradigm Shift

PARADIGM SHIFT CHAPTER TEN (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), I now have Sertab's music running around in my head with the muses. *sigh * ;) InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink get lots of muse kibble for archiving. :) ProPhile gets an extra muse for the plotbunny as well. Readers/Reviewers: Platypi don't do well in Texas, it seems...they're trying to live in the refrigerator and bathtub. Ever try to get a wad of platypus fur out of the drain? Not pretty, let me tell ya...

Kitty was very quiet all the way to the ivalival, a nomadic affair that had been set up in a large, open field owned by a real estate development company. It was in town for a month and always crowded, according to Rogue. Kitty made noncommittal noises and stared out the window, wondering if Lance was going to be mad that she did not call him as soon as she got back and what she was going to have to do to keep his temper in check. Kurt's sudden laugh surprised her, making her turn to face the rest of the teenagers in the car. "What's so funny?" she asked, feeling left out.
"Nothing," Scott said with a sly sideways look at Kurt. "We're just...acting silly."
Kurt inclined his chin and smiled at Kitty. "Going to a carnival brings that out in people, ja?"
"I suppose," she said, some of her earlier bravadound und him gone. He had not said one word directly to her since getting into the Jeep, but she had seen him looking at her out of the corner of her eye, his face always turned from her when she would confront him. _He hasn't even tried to smell my hair like he usually does. Creepy, kind of, but I miss it... _ She bit her lower lit and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He had fallen silent as the rest of the teenagers around them chattered on, the Ferris wheel from the carnival looming over the trees and around a bend in the road. Kurt was fidgeting, little clumps of blue fur dotting the seat between them. _He's nervous...scared more like...I wonder what's wrong with him? _ "Kurt," she said quietly, "are you okay?"
He turned and looked at her gravely. "No. No, I'm not."
"We're here!" Jean said over the din, which became that much louder at the news. Kitty was pulled out with Jubilee, the Asian girl dragging her by her wrist. Kurt ended up with Scott, his holo masking his appearance, but blue fur still showed on his shirt where he had been shedding. "Okay," Jean said, her voice taking on a note of authority, "you know the drill. Rogue, did you make sure this was the right day?"
"Yep. Checked twice. We should be fine without passes."
"Passes?" Kurt asked St John. "We don't need tickets to get in today?"
"Not tickets, doof," Bobby said, overhearing them. Kurt could not get used to the idea of Bobby as a girl, flipping her bangs out of her eyes with a toss of her head as he stared at her. "_Passes! _ We can't go in usually without those white plastic dealies from the county office!"
Kurt nodded as if he understood and fell in beside Scott and Jamie as the group headed towards the makeshift gates. He felt briefly nostalgic for the circus and was glad there would be no acrobats or other performers here. He did not think he could bear another onslaught of memory for the life he had (hopefully) temporarily left behind. "Oh, great," he said softly. Amanda was standing outside the gates, looking at her watch and glancing out over the parking lot anxiously.
"Hey, Kurt...your woman's here," Evan said brightly.
Rogue stopped in her tracks and turned slowly to face the yellow-haired teenager. "Did you..."
"I did," Scott said, cutting in.
Rogue's fingers curled into fists and she growled at the two teenagers. "You are walking home!" she snarled before turning and stalking towards the gates.
"Kurt!" Amanda cried, running to meet the group. He stood stock still as she flung herself at him, only moving when she threw her arms around his neck. He grabbed her waist to keep them both from falling over as she said brightly, "I thought you were going to be busy all day but Scott had Jean call me and invite me along..."
Rogue's voice carried, "You're walking too, Red!"
Kurt sighed and gently pushed Amanda way. "Well, I'm...glad...you could come along."
Kitty's voice piped in from somewhere near his right shoulder. "Amanda...you were able to break away from the time consuming task of choosing eyeliner and come join us. I'm so happy to see you."
Kurt felt his brows shoot up somewhere around his hairline as Kitty walked ahead, her shoulders rigid. _That was...weird. Good weird, but weird... _ "Katzchen, wait up!" he called, dragging Amanda as he walked quickly to catch up to the rest of the group.
"Why do you always call her that?" Amanda complained, trotting to keep up. "What does it mean?"
"Kitty," he said shortly. He was finding that, while it was almost easy to act as if things were normal, it was the little differences that were killing him. He felt a distinct otherness, like he was in a dream that he could not wake up from, as he interacted with these people who were supposed to be his friends but were in fact odd doppelgangers. Amanda's presence more than irritated him but it did not quite anger him. He did not know for sure the extent of his relationship with her in this version of his life but he did not want it to exist, period.
"Why not call her Kitty, then?"
"Because she's Katzchen to me and always will be." Kurt felt a twinge of remorse when he saw Amanda's face crumple briefly before smoothing into a semblance of order. "You guys walk fast enough?" he said to the first person he saw, Jamie this time, as they reached the waiting group. _Please shut up Amanda... _
"We want to get in before they close the gates to us!" Jamie was bouncing on the balls of his feet, childlike enthusiasm obviously contagious because St John was fidgeting as well.
"Okay, stay together," Rogue said in a house-mother voice. "We don't want to get separated even if it's okay for us to be public today!"
Kurt frowned. "What the Hell is she talking about?" he asked to no one in particular.
Kitty turned and fixed him with a concerned, befuddled look. "Don't play dumb about it, Kurt...you know it's kind of a special occasion when we can go out without the passes."
"What passes?" he insisted. Amanda pulled away from him as they neared the gate, hanging back. He did not mind but found it strange that she suddenly decided to distance herself physically after clinging to him like a limpet since the parking lot. Kitty was still shooting strange glances his way as they walked through a narrow gate beside a set of much larger ones. "Kitty?"
"Passes," she hissed. "Don't make me explain this to you! You know!"
Kurt was nudged from behind and a rough voice said, "Hurry it up...we've only got till three!" He turned to apologize and felt his mouth fall open. A man with blindingly purple skin and obvious gills stood behind him, towering a good two feet about Kurt's head. He was accompanied by a woman with webbed fingers pushing a stroller with a gilled, purple baby inside it.
"Oh," Kurt breathed. "I'm so sorry..." He whirled around, expecting to see the same stunned looks on his friend's faces that he wore but they were trudging ahead in line. Kurt looked around, seeing if the purple man had been noticed. _How can he not be? Maybe he's a performer after all? Yes, that's it...a performer... _ A flicker of movement caught his eye and he carefully looked towards it, unwilling to look like he was gawking. A person of indeterminate gender seemed to be passing in and out of view, very unconcerned by the look on their face. "Katzchen?" he said hesitantly, forgetting about Amanda lingering behind him for a moment. "Kitty!"
"What? We're nextrt!"rt!" Kitty turned to face him and sighed. "Come on! You've seen him before at school. Don't get all twitchy." She took Kurt's wrist and pulled him forward in line.
Kurt's mind whirled and he surreptitiously pinched himself. Hard. _Okay. I'm either dead or asleep. If I'm asleep, I'm just dreaming but my dreams are never like this... If I'm dreaming, why isn't Kitty naked and where's the chocolate sauce? _ Kurt barely noticed as Kitty tugged him forward in line. She pressed first her thumb and then one of his fingers against a flat, silver screen attached to a black metal box that looked very incongruous next to the flimsy gate. "Was?"
"Come on, Kurt!" she said. "I'm sure Amanda's waiting by the other gate for you." She could not help the note of jealousy that crept into her voice and she wondered at it. _It's Kurt, not Brad Pitt or something. I mean, Kurt! For crying out loud, it's just Kurt. Why are you all fluttery over him? Stop it! You just missed Lance and you're transferring affection to the first available male. That's it. _ Kitty walked ahead, not waiting for Kurt who in fact had been spotted by Amanda and was trying to walk and unloop his arm from hers at the same time.
Kurt trailed Kitty miserably. He wanted his own world back where things made sense and Amanda was off with Paolo in Italy for the summer, visiting who knows what and not currently clinging to his arm as if he were a life preserver and she were drowning. He nearly sighed aloud with relief when Rogue forcibly tugged him from the girl's grasp and said, "I need to borrow him for a minute, kay?"
"Thank you!" he gasped as she pulled him to one side, away from the group busily debating which ride to go on first. "I thought I was going to loose feeling in my arm!"
Rogue sneered, her version of a smile. "Well, I'm not surprised she's clinging to you, not with the way you've been flirting with her all semester. But I'm trying to change that," she said mischievously, which scared Kurt not a little bit.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I think you know how I feel aboutty tty being with Lance and I'm pretty sure you agree with me, unless you've suddenly changed your mind about her!"
"Never," he said, wondering if this was really happening. Amanda was trying to get his attention and he turned his face away, trying to look as if he were interested in the cotton candy stand nearby.
"Good. Look, I'll keep Amanda away from you as much as possible but it's al you your shoulders to flirt with Kitty. I know you can do it!"
"To what?" Kurt stared at her in amusement. "You sound like you don't think I can flirt with my gir...the girl I love!"
Rogue raised her brow and crossed her arms over her chest. "Kurt, every time you're around her, you turn into this meek, mousey little shadow of yourself. You act like she's so far above you and you're some worthless toad. I've seen you flirt with girls before and you don't go all grovelly then. Now, this may be your one chance with Kitty. Take it and don't fuck up, got it?"
Kurt nodded, jumping up and down inside. He smiled and said, "I don't think that's going to be a problem..." A woman with a bony ridge rising from her skull walked behind Rogue and he frowned. "Rogue, seriously, no one will tell me anything...what's the deal with all the...um...not quite socially normal people here today?"
"Kurt, you dick, it's Mutant Day. We can come out without our government ID cards. Duh." Rogue cuffed him on the side of the head like it was all a big joke and went to rejoin the group. Kurt turned a slow circle, looking at the people around him, seeing now the plethora of visible mutations and enough people who looked nervous to realize there were even more mutants than those he could see easily, ones like Kitty and Jean and Rogue, ones who were only identified through some means he was not aware of. "Holy Hell," he breathed. "What am I in the middle of?"

Lance pushed himself away from the wall of the funhouse, flicking his cigarette butt to the ground in the process. "C'mon, Toad. You've been through three times. That's enough."
Toad frowned. "It's fun, though."
Lance rolled his eyes. "We've gotta get back before Mystique does. We could have had more time if someone wasn't such a freak!"
"Hey, it's not easy being green, yo," he sulked.1 "It's not my fault they picked me out as a mutant, ya know..." He had been blazingly embarrassed, yanked out of line by his collar and forced to go through the mutants-only entrance. Lance was force to follow, as was Pietro who had promptly ditched them once through the gates. Fred was left alone, whether it was because of his size or the fact he could pass for odd but normal, they did not know or care. Tabby was long gone, haring off after some guy she knew from school, leaving Lance and Todd alone to wander the carnival.
Lance sighed. "I'm bored as fuck. Let's go back the long way and tag the school or something."
Toad grudgingly agreed, adding, "Hey, ain't that Kitty?"
Lance followed his friend's finger to see Kitty standing with Kurt, Rogue, Evan and Amanda at a lemonade concession. "What the fuck! She didn't tell me she was back!" He narrowed his eyes as Kurt leaned over to pull an errant strand of hair away from her eyes. "Toad, we ain't leavin' yet. Things are about to get fun..."
1 "It's not easy being green," Kermit the Frog's little catch phrase for a while.