#and conjecture isn't necessary when you can like. look things up. and find out why or how or when or where or what.

[kaurwreck]

if you have a question, it is wholly okay and arguably important that you at least sometimes look up the answer. if you aren't sure about information you want to share on social media, you can also double check its veracity prior to sharing. if you still aren't sure after searching for more information yourself, then asking strangers on the internet is fine, but confirm any answers you receive prior to internalizing them. (which you can do by using key terms from others' answers in your subsequent search strings.)

this won't stop you from interacting with others on tumblr dot com. instead, it will deepen those interactions, improve your digital literacy, and prevent me from manifesting as your sleep paralysis demon.

[lit-works]

In the control center, I find it hard to sit still as I wonder what Wolverine and Rogue will discover outside. Just then, Jesse returns from escorting my teammates to the door of the mass wall. She looks somber.

"Is something wrong?" Micheal asks.

"No. What could be wrong?" Jesse says weakly.

Dr.Kraig glanced up from the monitors and harumphs derisively. "Even I can read the room and see that you aren't your usual bouyant self, Dr.Kirsch."

Jesse shrugs. "I may as well tell you. We found a Shuriken buried in the door. It could only have gotten there between the time I closed the door and raised the mass wall. That was all of five seconds. Wolverine said someone must be watching the building."

"Ninja's?!" Miche cheers. "Cool!"

I feel less enthusiastic than Micheal. "Why would Ninjas be here?" I wonder.

"That might explain the shadows that Micheal saw." Storm conjectures.

"Ninja's prefer working under the cover of darkness." I point out.

"Yes," Storm replies. "That's true. By day, the Centis function well, with their solar rechargers, while Ninja's prefer to operate at night. It is a curious coincident, is it not?"

"Ja." I agree.

"Dr.Laughlin," Storm asks. "Do you think someone could give Nightcrawler a tour of your facility?"

"Is it really necessary?" Dr.Laughlin asks. "Nothing personal, but most of our labs are top secret."

"I should see it," I tell him. "In case we need to play the shell game later."

"The shell game?" The director asks blankly.

"If your defenses are breached, you will be the pea and these rooms will be the shells. If I know the facility, I can teleport you and your associates from one place to another, making it more difficult for the intruder to find you."

"All of us? Won't that wear you out?" Jesse asks.

"Eventually," I admit. "But we can rely on Wolverine and Rogue to fight off the invaders."

"Why don't you let me handle the tour, Gerald?" Dr.Kirsch asks Dr.Laughlin.

"Can I come along?" Micheal asks eagerly.

"Isn't it past your bed time, young man?" I ask.

"It certainly is." His mother replies.

"But I don't wanna mis if anything happens." Micheal complains.

"I promise you, we will wake you when we need your help." Storm tells him.

Micheal seems to sense that Storm means what she said, and allows himself to be led from the room by his mother and Dr.Laughlin.

"Nightcrawler, report back to me within an hour." Storm orders. "I'll be right here, keeping an eye out for Wolverine and Rogue."

I follow Jesse from the control center, leaving Storm behind with Dr.Kraig.

Once we are out in the corridor, I give Jesse a flirtatious wink. "Alone at last!" I say jokingly.

The woman smiles back at me. "You know, Micheal really could have come with us. He's not that bad for a kid, and he knows his place better than I do."

"Perhaps," I reply. "But when I go for an evening stroll with a lovely lady, I do not like to share her company with younger men."

Jesse laughs. "I see. Well, maybe we'd better start at the top and work out way back down."

"How about starting at the door where we entered?" I suggest.

"Good idea. This way."

Jesse motions toward another corridor.

"Allow me." I reply, scooping Jesse up in my arms and teleporting the two of us to the doorway where we entered the complex.

We arrive with the usual bamf, sound and Jesse looks around, her eyes wide with astonishment. "Hey! That was terrific!"

She is so impressed by the experience that she does not even seem to notice the brimstone stench that always accompanies the use of my power. "Micheal will just die of jealousy!" She declares.

I put her down gently. "I take it Micheal is some sort of child genius?"

"Well, he might be. Leona, his mother, won't let them administer any I.Q. tests on him. She thinks the tests are wicked. But the things he can do with two wires and a battery make the people at Los Alamos nervous for their jobs."

Jesse begins leading me through the corridors of the ground level, which contains the offices and living quarters of the missing security personnel. As we walk, she continues to tell me more about Micheal. "Gerald–Dr.Laughlin–discovered Micheal at a state science fair and took him under his wing. The kid has gone to inner-city schools all his life, and Leona taught in them.

"When Gerald offered Micheal a job out in the country that paid three times his mother's annual salary, they both jumped at it. Gerald is a dear man, but he missed the point entirely." Jesse says with a sigh.

"And what point is that?" I ask.

"The miracle is that Micheal learned all about Cyber-neuronics. The miracle is that Leona taught him."

"So why isn't she the one that is making all that money?"

Jesse shrugs. "No one else seems to have figured out her role. She keeps real quiet. Leona doesn't seem terribly interested in research on her own, but once something has been explained to her, she can teach it to anyone–even Johnathan."

"You are not very friendly with Dr.Andrews, are you?" I note.

"Andrews hasn't had an original idea in his life. He's a planted snitch for the government. I've worked with him before on other jobs. He's got all the right degrees, but his real job is to squeal on all the dissidents and slackers."

"And that's why he went to report us to your security chief?" I ask.

"He went to report you to Henry. Henry's not really our security chief–just some government bigwig who came out here to perform an inspection and got trapped here with us. When our security team disappeared, Henry just appointed himself security chief. His only qualification as chief of security is his paranoia."

"And Dr.Kraig?" I ask, remembering the scientist who seemed to ignore everyone around him.

"Oh, Thomas is okay, I guess. At least he's very competent, But he has rather limited imagination. He's not very interested in tackling the impossible."

"But you always do five impossible things before breakfast." I tease.

"Hey, why settle for greatness when you can be totally cosmic?" Jesse jokes, gesturing wildly with her hands.

"Well, it's certainly helpful having the inside dirt on everyone." I say.

Jesse leads me down a staircase to the first underground level, which houses administrative offices, and then the second, which holds the laboratories. Finally I find myself once more on the third level, with the scientist's quarters and the control room.

"Everything was built deliberately to resemble a maze, in order to confuse intruders." Jesse tells me.

"It works." I reply, realizing that though I can teleport to anyplace in the complex I've seen, I would probably get lost if I tried to find it on my own. "Let's take a look in the basement." I suggest, peering down the last staircase.

"The basement is mostly used for storage," Jesse explains, "of course, there's the air-conditioning unit, the generator, and the mass-field equipment as well."

Jesse powers on the stairwell light, and I follow her into the bowels of the complex. This is the only part of the complex that does not remind me of a maze. One giant room, the size of a football field, contains a few piles of odds and ends plus three major pieces of equipment Jesse told me about.

I pause at the generator. It's like none I have ever seen before. Shaped like a duodecahedron about four feet across, it appears to be a dark shadow. Only the power lines snaking out from the sides reveal it's function. "What fuels it?" I ask.

"Dilithium crystals." Jesse answers.

"You're joking!" I reply, knowing such a power source is fictional.

"You're right, I am, but I'm not allowed to disclose the properties of the real fuel. It's strictly confidential and expiremental. This is the mass-field generator for the building," Jesse says, pointing to one of two metal pieces of equipment. "Creating the field requires a delicate balance of power, which is controlled by computer, but every now and then some bug in the programs turns up, and the computer stops feeding power to the field. Then I have to come down here and adjust the power intake manually. It's annoying. The power management program should run perfectly, I wrote it myself."

I peer around the dark room thoughtfully. The floor is made of concrete, and I spot a large crack a few feet over. I glance at Jesse questioningly.

"It's just a freeze-and-thaw crack." Jesse says, shrugging.

"This far underground? Put your hand over it." I direct her.

"There's air coming up! Warm air!" She exclaims.

"Ja. See how the cracks form a complete circle? This could be a door." With a long piece of wire, I discover there is a large space beginning a foot beneath my feet, but try as I might, I cannot pry up the huge cement block, not even with a crow bar Jesse digs out of a toolbox. I can't help, but wish Colossus were here.

"Shall we try a sledgehammer?" The scientist asks.

"No. For now, it's probably best to keep it covered. I can teleport down there easily enough." 

"You aren't going down there without me?" She asks indignantly.

"Ja, Fraulein. That is my job. Yours is up here."

"But shouldn't you tell Storm first?"

"I'm just doing a quick reconnaissance. Be back in a second."

Jesse stomps her foot angrily on the cement. "I don't think that's wise." She insists. "It could be dangerous." She looks and sounds so much like Storm that I reconsider my actions.

"I have nothing to tell Storm until I see what's on the other side," I explain, "and I won't be gone more than a few minutes. Don't worry."

Before Jesse can retort, I teleport beneath the floor. Once on the other side of the concrete door, I begin to fall downward. I must be in some sort of wide vertical shaft, for although I reach out frantically, I feel nothing to grab onto.

Reacting quickly, I manage to twist and contort my body so that I can see the floor coming up to meet me by the beam of Jesse's flashlight. I land gracefully on my feet like a cat.

The shaft above me appears to be about ten feet in diameter and raises up for about 30 feet. To one side lies a horizontal passage about the same size. I follow the passage carefully, searching the walls and floors for signs of anything that might be down here. the tunnel ends after 60 feet at a steel door, held shut by a rusting padlock.

Suddenly, from behind me, I hear the high-pitched whine of a Centi-bot! Spinning about, I catch sight of it in the beam of the flashlight. It seems to be moving more slowly than the others were. "Perhaps it's batteries are low." I think, remembering that the strange spheres are recharged by light, something at a premium in this dark corridor. Still, I have no idea what fiendish weapon it might have ready to use on me. Frantic, I begin to smash the padlock with the back of the flashlight, but this does more damage to the aluminum light than to the iron lock. When the Centi-bot is within 10 feet, it fires, using the same tiny blue light I saw earlier in the evening.

"I think I've learned enough!" I mutter and teleport away. In seconds, I am standing once again in front of Jesse.

"What happened?" She asks anxiously.

"I ran into a Centi. It was just one, but it shot those verdammen blue rays at me."

"Now you know how a kernel of microwave popcorn feels." Jesse says.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"The beam fries the blood in the capillaries close to the surface of your skin with radiation. The beam breaks up every few seconds, so it doesn't do too much damage. If you took a hit that lasted a minute or more, you'd be a thanksgiving turkey."

"That is fiendish! Did you invent this weapon?"

"I'm afraid so," Jesse replies. "Can I make it up to you by fixing you up with some ice packs?"

"Personally, I prefer the kiss-it-and-make-it-better method." I explain.

Jesse and I teleport back to the command center to tell Storm what we've found. Wolverine and Rogue have not returned yet, but Storm is no longer alone with Dr.Kraig. two other men hover over the X-Men team leader. One of them is Dr.Andrews, and the other, I realize, is the much discussed Henry. It is not just any Henry. It is a Henry I know.

"Gyrich!" I snarl, for the self-appointed security chief of Obar Island is none other than Henry Peter Gyrich. Gyrich is known to be a member of the national security council, a headache to superheroes everywhere, but especially an enemy to mutants. He is the man responsible for Storm's loss of her mutant powers. He had meant to take away Rogue's powers, but he has never displayed any regret that he hit Storm by accident. If he had his way, Mutants would be tagged with chips, even given radio collars like wild bears–all mutants, whether they had ever committed any crime or not.

Gyrich spins about, staring daggers at me. Storm acts completely unperturbed by Gyrich and Andrews' hostility. Dr.Kraig, as always, is glued to his monitors, remaining completely detached from scene around him. Gyrich chooses to address Jesse first, "Dr.Kirsch, you should consider yourself on report for disobeying my direct orders by lowering the mass-field and allowing someone inside this facility."

"If it weren't for me, the mass-field would have collapsed a long time ago." Jesse snaps back.

"I simply won't stand for insubordination, Dr.Kirsch. I'll see you never work again." Gyrich retorts.

"Fine! Why don't you just keep the mass field up?" Jesse removes a screwdriver and a pocket calculator from her pockets and holds them out to the security chief.

"You will continue in your present position, or I will have you court-martialed!"

"Gee, Henry," Jesse replies breathily, "why don't you just take out that big, shiny .45 bulging in your jacket and shoot me with it? Save us both the beauracracy."

Knowing Gyrich, I'm not surprised when he does pull out his gun, but he aims it at Storm and I, not Jesse. "You filthy mutants are under arrest for trespassing."

"Storm," I whisper, "I would really like to punch this guy."

"I do not recommend it, Kurt," Storm whispers back sternly, "I understand how you feel, however."

I move between Jesse and Gyrich. "If you are quite finished acting like an an unchivalrous baboon, Gyrich," I say, "We have a mysterious underground passage that requires our attention."

"I forbid you to view anymore of this base!" Gyrich huffs. "If you resist arrest, I'll add Espionage and sabotage to the charge of trespassing."

"I've listened to enough of this nonsense," I declare, "We came here to help you!"

"We don't want or need your kind of help, Mutant scum!" Gyrich spits.

Fighting to control my rage, I answer, "What you need, bigoted Gyrich, are better manners."

Then, before he can answer, I teleport myself, Storm, and Jesse to the basement.

"You said something about a mysterious underground passage," Storm says, glancing around the basement.

"Yes, it's directly beneath us."

"Beneath the basement?" Storm asks, her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

"Ja." I reply.

"But according to the map I saw earlier, it's supposed to be solid rock under here." Storm says.

"You must see it for yourself…unless you think we should wait for the others."

"No. We have no time to wait. Right now I am concerned about how Wolverine and Rogue will get back in if we are busy elsewhere."

"Leave that to me," Jesse says, "if I can't get past Henry or convince Gerald to Countermand his order, I'll pull the plug from down here."

"But won't that leave you unprotected?"

"Just leave it to me." Jesse insists.

"Very well," Storm says, nodding. "I shall rely on you."

"I haven't had chance to whip up another subsonic pistol for you." Jesse says.

"Don't worry about it. We will be fine. If we are in any danger, we will teleport back." I reassure her.

"All right, well," she paused for a second, then approaches me and plants a sweet kiss on my cheek. "For good luck." She explains, then hurries off towards the exiting stairs to the upper levels.

Storm raises an eyebrow but says nothing about Jesse's peculiar behavior. "Show me this mystery place. " She orders.