Paradigm Shift

PARADIGM SHIFT CHAPTER FIVE (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), did Dodo ever turn back up? The mermaid left the box long ago... InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are loverly for archiving. :) ProPhile gets lots of glittery shiny muse kibble for sending along the plotbunny for this story! And the armadillos have built a minishrine to him...they recall him as the one who sent them southwards. *sigh * Armadillos everywhere down here.. Readers/Reviewers: The ducks are migrating. They said it's too damned hot to wear feathers here right now. I think they went to Nebraska. Don't ask me why I think that...they just did.

"Damn it! That man is never here, is he?" Kitty snapped, mostly to herself. "Where is he now?" This last was directed at Jean, who was appraising the brunette with a raised, incredulous eyebrow.
"He went with Banshee and Forge to the city. A shopping trip of sorts." Jean peered closely at Kurt. "You don't look quite right...you change your hair or something?"
Kurt opened his mouth to answer but found himself stricken mute. Kitty had taken his hand in an unconscious gesture of nervous need, her thumb stroking the back of his hand and squeezing at random intervals. He finally managed to squeak out, "Just woke up."
"It's half past one..."
"I wore him out," Kitty giggled, obviously affected to Kurt's hearing but Jean snorted and colored slightly.
"Thanks for that mental picture. On that note, I'm going to find Scott. We're going to the movies and I want to get there before the fanboys. Always happens when a movie is based on a comic book...the fanboys get there and ruin it for everyone!"1
Kitty gritted her teeth as Kurt extricated his hand from her grasp. "Why are you so twitchy?"
"Kitty...Katzchen...I don't know what the Hell is going on here! Jean and Scott are going to the movies? Since when have they hung out together?"
"Uh, like, since a long while ago? They're married and all so...duh!" Unknowingly, she had reverted to her old speech patterns, a comfort device to mask her concern and confusion
"They're _what? _"
Kitty rolled her eyes. "Like, duh! You were there, remember? Big secret? Only the two of us know?" She sighed. "Look, I was scared spitless at first but know I'm just getting really irked. Not at you," she added hastily. "Just...at this. What's going on, sweetie? What happened?"
"What do you mean?" Kurt bit his lip, unsure how to react to Kitty's proximity. She had taken his hand in hers again and was gently pulling him down the hall, away from the library where she had been sure she would find the Professor but instead found Jean. They were heading, he noticed, towards the laundry room. "Kitty..."
"It's quiet in here. No one's gonna bother us and I think we need to talk alone, okay?"
He did not argue as she phased them through the closed door, flipping on the light without a backwards glance as she entered the narrow room. "Why are you being so...so affectionate towards me, Kitty?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked, her eyes shining with unshed, frustrated tears. "We've been together for a little more than a year, we love each other...We're soulmates and all that. Netzach, remember?"
"Netzach?" he repeated, then shook himself as if to clear his mind. "Look, Kitty, all I know is that everyone is acting weird since I woke up..."
"Since you woke up," she said quickly. "What happened _before _ ? What knocked you out?"
Kurt licked his lips, Kitty suddenly very close to him and peering into his eyes intently, her breath brushing the fur on his neck and tickling him, distracting him from his line of thought. He closed his eyes and sighed, forcing his thoughts to remain focused as he responded, "I woke up early because I knew you would be coming home tomorrow...you are supposed to be in Chicago, visiting your parents. I wanted to get you something, a homecoming present you could say. I...I don't have to say why, do I?" He chanced a glance at her and she was shaking her head ever so slightly. Feeling a little more confident, he pressed on, "I was a little worried, though...Iw Law Lance was going to get you something, too, and I didn't want it to see as if I were one-upping him."
Kitty quirked a smile. "Lance was never good at gifts," she said, then frowned. _What am I saying? Like this happened or something? _
Kurt nodded in agreement and said a little more loudly, losing his nervous whisper, "I was going to go to one of the shops in town...I saw something there that reminded me of you, something I thought you might like. I was...I was afraid you'd giggle or give it back or worse, but I wanted you to have it. I went downstairs and ate breakfast...no one else was awake...and I took the Jeep and left." He frowned slightly and shook his head. "Everything was fine until I came back. arkearked in the garage and I was heading into the house when my holo shocked me. I realized I had forgotten to turn it off when I pulled through the gate but when I tried to shut it off, it shocked me again. It must have startled me or something because I felt a sudden urge to port and I think I may have...next thing I know, I'm in the infirmary and all this," he made an all-encompassing gesture with one tridactyl hand, "is going on."
Kitty felt like fainting. _I am the de facto daughter of Wolverine. I will not faint. De facto daughters of Wolverine do not faint. Or vomit all over their amnesiac boyfriends. _ "That's...a lot different than what happened."
"How so?" Kurt swayed slightly as Kitty licked her lips and looked up at him earnestly, placing her hands gently on his shoulders as if to anchor him in place and assure that he would not disappear. "Katzchen, what do _you _ remember happening this morning?"
Slowly and carefully, making sure he understood, she related the events of the morning, all the way until he came to her room almost an hour before. "Kurt, something is very, very wrong here."
He sighed roughly and passed a hand through his hair, cursing under his breath in German. He noticed her stare and snapped, not quite meaning to do so, "Was?"
"Your holo... Damn it!" she exploded. "I _knew _ something would go all pear shaped! Shit!" She kicked the washing machine and yelped at painpain that shot through her toes. "Shit!"
"Katzchen!" Kurt was at once fascinated and shocked. _Kitty never swears like that! She never...oh...she never shows this much high emotion about anything, especially anything involving me! _
"I knew it! Oh, talk about karma! Maybe it's not karma...maybe it's one of those coincidences that God throws us just so we remember that we're not all powerful!" She froze, her mouth falling open. "Or m it' it's physics!2"
"Pardon?"
"Come on! My room!" She grabbed his arm and dragged him, making him stagger as she tried to run and he would not cooperate.
Kurt dug in his heels and pulled her back towards him. "Let me," he sighed. In a moment, they were in her room.
Kitty opened tightly clenched eyes and hit him on the chest. "No porting until we figure out what's going on!" Seeing the mutinous look on his face, she added, "Don't argue!"
"Jawohl, Katzchen," he said sulkily. "What are you thinking is going on?"
Kitty winced slightly. _His syntax just went all to Hell. He must be stressed. He never talks like that unless it's math finals day. _ "You gave me some books for my birthday and they seem oddly appropriate at the moment..."
"They didn't then?" he asked, not being able to help the tiny surge of lust at the sight of Kitty bent over a lower shelf of her book case.
"I love them. I can't put them down..." She pulled a stack of what looked to be text books from her book case and dropped them on the bed, gathering several books of newer make from her desk. "All of these books are about physics and space and time and stuff, kay?"
"Sure."
"There's this theory...several, actually...that a whole bunch of dimensions exist all at the same time. One of the theories I just read last night talks about a fifth dimension that would allow for teleporting, which is where I think you go when you port."
Kurt blinked rapidly, trying to comprehend. "I don't _see _ or _feel _ anything other than porting...I'm here then I'm there!"
"That's not what I'm saying! When you port, if this theory is true, you cross this fifth dimension, the first four being 3 the usual..." She flipperougrough the thickest of the books, one that looked heavy enough to drop Logan should it be thrown at him, before stopping on a page full of tiny print. "Here...read it!"
Kurt took the book from her, grunting slightly at it's heft, and scanned the paragraph her finger pointed to. "Katzchen, I have no idea what any of this means...you're the smart one here."
She cuffed his shoulder. "Don't you _dare _ start that again! You haven't been down on yourself since you dated Tabby "I "I dated _Tabby? _" Kurt shuddered. "What was I thinking?"
Kitty snorted. "Look, this is crazy as all Hell, but...I think you're you but not you. You're you from another when."
"I'm who from a what?"
"You're Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler and generally wonderful fuzzy blue elf, but you're not my Kurt Wagner..." She sniffed dangerously and the first tears began to trickle. "I _told _ you not to try that damn device, damn it!" she sobbed suddenly, hitting him hard on his upper arm. "Damn it, Kurt! Why didn't you listen to me?"
He winced as her blows fell heavier and faster, sobs wracking her body. "Kitty!" he finally cried, seizing her wrist and holding them clasped together against his chest. "If you're not going around the twist here and what I think you're saying is true, you're mad at the wrong person."
"I know," she cried, her voice thick with tears. "What are we going to do?"
"Who did you say gave me this...device that I am supposed to have used?"
"Forge." She looked at him hopefully, her face falling when she realized that he had no idea who Forge was. "He's new here. He's good with weapons and machines and stuff... Maybe he'll know what to do."
"Maybe," Kurt sighed. Somehow, though, he doubted it.

Forge sighed happily. He loved his new workroom, the smell of grease faint but present, the tang of warm metal as he built whatever he desired. He was purposefully putting off working on his newest and most exciting project, the device for Kurt, out of a sense of delayed gratification, instead working on a simple lock for the Danger Room and some ridiculously easy oarlocks for the row boat since the original set was melted in a fit of ire by Amara earlier in the week. Finally, though, the lock box taunted him one too many times. He shut off the drill and put it away, putting the oarlocks to one side as he reached for the metal box. A moment later, his bellow of sise ise and anger echoed through the basement as he threw the box down onto the table and vaulted over the wooden surface, striding towards the door and reaching to throw it open, only to have it flung open in his own face. "You," he growled at Kurt, making a grab for his shirt.
Kitty flung herself between them, her pointed chin jerked upwards in defiance. "He messed up royally, we know. We've got bigger problems than that, though..."
"_He _'s got bigger problems," Forge corrected, trying to push Kitty aside only to meet with the disturbing feeling of his fleshed hand passing through her body, olectlectrical tingles shooting through his arm. "Kurt, give me the device!"
"I can't," he said in a tiny voice, somewhat cowed by the large, angry man.
"He's not Kurt. Well, not the Kurt we know!"
Forge growled again, his hands braced against the doorframe as he glowered down at the teenagers. "Kitty, I thought you were a smart girl...stop talking nonsense and let me...talk...to Kurt!"
Kurt blurted out suddenly, "I'm from another dimension!"
After a long, tense pause, Forge sighed. "Come to the Institute, he says. You'll like it here, he says. The kids are great and hardly any trouble he says... Remind me to thank Xavier for introducing me to one of the more surreal phases of my life, would you4?"

A/N It only SEEMS to be moving fast...this is just exposition, children. *g * Next chapter...Oooooh! S Bu But who? LOL...
1 On behalf of fanboys everywhere, nuts to Jean, lol.
2Okay, I'll put these in now all at once. Here's some links on some basic info pertaining to physics, multidimensional realities, folds in the space time contiuum and the string theory. See? Fanfic CAN be educational! http://www.dhushara.com/book/upd/sciamf/univdim/unsdim.htm , http://hcs.harvard.edu/~hsr/pdfswinter2002/57_60_winter2002.pdf , http://www.angelfire.com/mt/montalk/physicsfinal.html (I like this one best personally), http://www.deoxy.org/hs_phys.htm (No, this one, lol. Both are VERY good), http://www.hg29hh.freeserve.co.uk/reality.htm (good diagrams)
3 http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/7931/4DSpace.htm (one more! Couldn't help myself!)
4 Vague riff on Bruce Willis in the first DIE HARD.