Time Passes

When I woke up in the morning it was with dread. Xavier told me and Bobby we would be going to school, which meant I had to waste a whole day in boredom.

I rode with everyone else to the school and was now standing in front of it. Looking at all the people milling about, all I could feel was annoyance.

'I could be spending my day doing literally anything else and instead, I'm doing this. Is there even anything I can get out of going to school?'

Trying to think of some kind of benefit I could get out of this, I remembered something.

'In X-Men Evolution, Forge was trapped in that other universe by his device. I'm pretty sure it would have already happened, but maybe this isn't exactly that universe and he's still there. It's worth checking out. The principal in that was Mystique too, so I could absorb her shapeshifting.'

"Casper come on, we have to go get our schedules," Bobby said.

"Let's get this over with."

Bobby and I went to the principal's office to get our schedules. I didn't really have a way to tell if it was Mystique, so I brushed her hand when she handed me mine and absorbed her. I suddenly felt in control of my body even more than I already was.

'Alright, maybe school wasn't a complete waste.' The paper in my hand suddenly fell to the ground as the fingers holding it phased through it.

"My bad dropped it on accident," I said while reaching down to pick it up. Putting it in my pocket, since I already had it memorized, I thought about what just happened.

'I need to get better at control if my power is activating at random.'

The next few hours passed by annoyingly slow as I went through my classes. I entertained myself by idly looking at what fragments of thoughts I could pick up from the people around me, but it was pretty much all either angst or stuff I didn't need a mental image of.

Eventually, it was time for lunch. Turning to Bobby I said "I've got to run to the restroom really quick. Just go on without me, I'll catch up with you."

"Alright man, I'll save you a spot."

Walking away from Bobby, once he was out of view I turned down a hall and looked for the school's basement. I found it and entered the lab inside. There were tables filled with different gadgets and a car battery sitting on one of them. Looking along the tables, I found a device I recognized from the show.

'Bingo.'

Picking it up, I flip the switch to reset and try to turn it on. A portal forms and on the other side I can see Forge trying to say something to me, but the sound wasn't traveling.

'Wait, in the show they needed a car battery to cross. I don't have a way to connect it to the device, so I guess I'll have to do it myself.'

Going over to the car battery, I grabbed onto it and began to absorb it. Energy flowed into me as I got a reserve of electricity in my body. Channeling that electricity into the device, I began to charge it as the portal solidified and Forge ran out of the Middleverse.

Draining the car battery dry, I still had a good amount of electricity in my body when I stopped charging the device.

"Thanks for getting me out of there dude," Forge said.

"Who are you and where did you come from?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

Forge explained to me about the Middleverse and how he had been there since the 70s.

"I missed curfew!" He yelled.

"You need some help getting anywhere. I know a guy who could help you out." I said.

"Nah, I can find my way home. If I need help I'll come back here to look for you." Forge said.

"Alright. You mind if I keep this?" I asked him.

"Feel free. You can have all the stuff in this lab, I made it all anyway."

"Cool, thanks, man," I said, holding my hand out.

"I should be thanking you. You freed me." He said taking my hand and shaking it.

"No problem," I said as I absorbed his power. The device in my hand made a lot more sense all of a sudden and I could understand how it worked.

'I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one.'

Forge left and I looked around the lab. There were a lot of devices, but for the moment I put the portal device in my backpack and grabbed whatever pieces of technology I could fit in there as well, ready to take them back to the institute so I could tinker with my newfound technopathy.

Leaving the basement, I headed to lunch with the rest of the X-Men. I never noticed that my skin tone had shifted to blue for a second before going back to normal.

----

A couple months passed as I fell into a routine in my time with the X-Men. I would go to school Monday through Friday and have Danger Room sessions on some days. School was a breeze with my perfect memory, so I didn't worry all that much about it even if I did care, and instead focused on improving my powers.

I trained with each different power to try to get it to the point where it was at least usable. I noticed that I was losing control of my power a lot, so I devoted as much time as possible to making sure I got as good with my powers as possible.

My density manipulation had gotten to the point that I could phase my entire body through something, but I couldn't stay in something phased for a long time and it had to be quick. I could also strengthen my body, making myself dense and more durable, along with stronger. I wasn't invulnerable like Kimura, but it was still a buff.

I continued to improve my widespread Cryokinesis. I became able to rapidly freeze the area around me, which led to a lot of frozen trees as I had to practice in the forest away from everyone else so they couldn't see.

Telepathy was a lot slower to improve. Even now, after a couple of months of training, I had to focus just to read one mind and I couldn't read more than one at once. It was the ability I had the most trouble with and was the slowest to progress at all.

Telekinesis, on the other hand, I got fairly good at it. I could lift up trees with relative ease at this point and could lift multiple with some strain. It was also the power I found the most useful with what had become one of my favorite powers by far, Technopathy.

Ever since encountering Forge, I had been devoting some time to tinkering with the technology in that lab, taking it back to my room in the institute where I would break down and build up all of it to create different things. Bobby was surprised when I started working on it, but I just told him I had spent a lot of time trying to make things on the street, so I had an aptitude for it. Telekinesis made it easy to move the smaller parts mentally, allowing me to develop a very fine control of telekinesis as well.

Energy absorption was one that I began to use frequently. I took every chance I could to absorb electricity from any source I could find, building up my reserves in case I needed them. I didn't have access to any other forms of energy at the moment that I could absorb, so for the time being it was just electricity.

The most convenient of the things I had managed to build was a storage device that would let me store items inside of a small cube. It couldn't hold anything obscenely large yet, but it could manage something the size of a bed just fine. I had taken to storing my gadgets inside of it so that no one could take them. I kept that storage device on my person at all times, so no one could take it.

Other than training my powers, I had also been working on my martial arts with Laura. With more and more experience I became able to pick up moves even faster, managing to catch up to Laura's skill in the first martial art she taught me and even learn some parts of another as well. This one was focused on using the opponent's strength against them, which would be helpful when I had to fight someone more physically strong than me.

Speaking of Laura, she had been slowly learning how to get more comfortable in a social setting. I think a large part of it had to do with the prank war we started with Kurt and Evan.

The others decided that the best way to get back at Laura for attacking them was to prank her. Kurt and Evan were sent to do the deed. While her clothes were in the wash they replaced all of them with shirts that said "I'm a little teapot."

It was amusing to me, but Laura was mad, so I suggested we get back at them.

----

Flashback

"You're mad about what they did right?" I asked Laura as we sat in her room. She was wearing said Little Teapot shirt and didn't look happy about it.

"Yes," She said as she popped her claws out.

"Alright, maybe put the claws away. Instead of gutting them, how about we beat them at their own game." I said with a smirk.

"How?" She asked, sheathing her claws.

----

We soon got them back. While Kurt was asleep, Laura used her stealth training to switch out his body wash with pink dye, causing his fur to turn bright pink. Meanwhile, I had gone to Evan's room and replaced his skateboard with a My Little Pony one.

----

Flashback

"Who did this!" Kurt said as he walked into the kitchen, still in a towel as his fur was bright pink.

"That's a good color on you Kurt," I said with a laugh.

Looking at Laura, I was surprised to see that she had a smile on her face. It was the first smile I had seen her have that wasn't because of something emotional happening.

At this point Evan ran in, carrying his new skateboard.

"What happened to my board man?" He said. Then he got a look at Kurt and started laughing.

"Ha, trying something new Kurt?" he asked.

"I'm sure this is funny, Mr. My Little Pony" Kurt snapped back. He then turned, looking at Laura and I, both of whom were smiling.

"This mean war" he declared with Evan nodding as well after he stopped laughing.

----

From then on a small prank war erupted, with everyone else getting caught in the crossfire. Clothes were changed, paint was dumped on heads, and everyone had some fun. It ended up letting Laura get close to the first people at the institute other than me and Logan. Evan and Kurt both got a lot more comfortable with her and interacted with her normally, comradery being formed in pranking.

Laura, for her part, was a lot happier as well. She seemed to mellow out, enjoying the experience of being a somewhat ordinary teenager as well.

Right now I was altering the device that sent Forge to the Middleverse in the first place. I was curious if I could change it to give me access to the rest of the Marvel Multiverse. If I could jump into another universe and take something before jumping back, I would be able to get stuff I couldn't normally get here.

It was almost done, but I hadn't made a way to target which universe I jumped to yet. As I was working on it, Kurt teleported into my room and grabbed the device from my hand.

"Catch me if you can my friend," he said before teleporting away again.

"Dammit Kurt," I said as I ran out of my room and searched for his mind, finding him in the entrance hall, hanging from the chandelier. Running into the room, I found the rest of the teens walking in as well.

"Kurt, give me that back, you don't know what it does," I said.

"Come and get me then," Kurt said, dangling upside down by his tail.

"Don't let him beat us Casper" Laura said sternly.

Running at the wall, I jumped and pushed off, bouncing off it to jump into the air and reach to grab for Kurt, but as soon as I got near him he disappeared in a puff of smoke and appeared on the ground next to everyone else.

"Score one for Team Kurt," Kurt said, dancing around.

"Now that was funny," Scott said with a smirk.

Kurt kept dancing and he accidentally pressed a button on the device, causing it to blink, and a portal formed on the ground, swallowing up the entire team right as Xavier, Logan, and Ororo came in, watching as our group disappeared, the portal closing behind us.