NIGHTCRAWLER Skins

Sam Chamberlain stood atop the roof of his apartment building, looking out over the Manhattan skyline. There in the distance, he saw Avengers Tower and the Baxter Building — beacons of hope that had guided him and all the other citizens of New York through some of the city’s darkest days. Manhattan had somehow managed to survive everything that had been thrown at it, from super hero civil wars to alien invasions. But every battle leaves behind scars, and some are just too deep to heal.

“Hey, Sharon… It’s me… one last time,” Sam said into his phone, his voice choking back the tears. “I know you’re not coming back… and even if by some miracle you did, it wouldn’t be you anymore. Not really…”

Sam’s fiancée Sharon had gone missing months ago, shortly after the city had unexpectedly been overrun by vampire hordes once again. At first, no one really knew what was happening. New Yorkers did their best to stay strong through those strange days. But by the time they learned the truth — that Dracula was back and had begun to rebuild his once-fallen Empire — it was already too late.

Sharon had ventured out on her own to check on a missing friend, but she never came back. Sam searched for her for weeks, but there were no signs of her anywhere. His calls went unreturned. She never showed up at any local emergency shelters. Eventually, Sam had to face the truth. Either Sharon had been turned into one of Dracula’s undead legion… or she had fallen victim to their hunger. Sam honestly didn’t know which fate would be worse. And he couldn’t bear the notion of finding out. Despite his best efforts to keep soldiering on without her, the grief was just too much to carry.

“I want you to know you were everything to me,” Sam continued. “The life we had together… the life we could’ve had… that’s what kept me going when things got hard. And when I lost you, I —”

Sam paused and took a deep breath.

“Wherever you are, I hope you’re not hurting. And I hope we see each other again soon. Because I miss you, Sharon. And I love you. Always will.”

Sam hung up his phone and took one final look out over the city. Yet he couldn’t muster up the strength to look down toward the street forty stories below. Instead, he just closed his eyes tight and started to take a step off the ledge.

“I would not do that if I were you, mein Freund,” a voice with a German accent said from next to Sam. “If I learned one thing from my time in the circus, it is to always look before you leap!”

Sam’s eyelids shot open at the sound of the voice, only to see a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring back at him through a haze of magenta smoke. Startled, Sam began to lose his balance and teetered toward the edge of the rooftop, but before he could fall, a hand grabbed tightly ahold of his own. He was shocked to see that the stranger’s hand only had three fingers on it.

“Who… who are you…?” Sam asked, astonished and a bit afraid.

“Just a humble Mutant doing my best to save the lost souls inhabiting this metropolis,” the man replied. “But you can call me Kurt.”

Sam took a deep breath, his nostrils filling with the strong stench of the clearing smoke. He was surprised by what he saw in front of him — a man with sharp fangs, a pointed tail, and skin covered in short blue fur that caused him to blend into the night. Sam had never seen anyone like him before… but whoever he was, he certainly didn’t look like a friend.

“No need to be afraid,” Kurt said, placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “There are many in this city who would gladly bite… but I am not one of them.”

“I sorta wish you were.” Sam said, hanging his head.

“That is not an end I would wish upon anyone,” Kurt said. “Nor is the one that you were about to embrace. Tell me, why would you take such an irreversible path?”

“I… I didn’t know any other way…” Sam admitted. “I just couldn’t keep going on alone…”

“You are not alone,” Kurt said. “None of us are. God is always with us.”

“God?” Sam asked. “You believe in God?”

“Of course,” Kurt replied. “After all, I would be a terrible priest if I did not.”

“You’re… a priest?” Sam asked, clearly confused. “But you look —”

“Like the other guy?” Kurt asked, flashing a playful smile. “I get that a lot. But appearances can be deceiving. And after all I have experienced, I would be foolish to deny the divine hand that has guided me here.”

“If God brought you here…” Sam said, “…you must’ve done some pretty awful things along the way. Because I’m pretty sure we’re in Hell…”

“Nein,” Kurt replied. “This city has seen great misfortune, but I am certain that this is merely a test. It is far from the first one I have faced… and it most assuredly will not be the last.”

“Yeah… but at least you don’t have to face it on your own…” Sam said. “I mean, I heard you Mutants have your own island nation now…”

“We did…” Kurt said solemnly, “…but it was taken far away from this world, and all my fellow X-Men were taken along with it.”

“Why weren’t you with them when they went away?” Sam wondered.

“I have asked myself that same question more times than you can imagine…” Kurt said wistfully.

As he stood on the rooftop overlooking New York City, Kurt Wagner — the X-Man known as Nightcrawler — thought back on how he had gotten there.

Some time ago, his fellow Mutants began settling on a living island called Krakoa. They had gone there to find a new way of living, and they soon discovered a means to do so without end. The Resurrection Protocols that were put in place offered Mutantkind a form of eternal life… but as a devout believer in the afterlife, Kurt saw the manipulation of mortality as a direct affront to everything he held sacred. He feared that Mutants would lose respect for death, and with it, their reverence for life. And he wanted no part in such a thing.

And so, while his people were migrating en masse to their private paradise, Kurt chose to stay behind. He returned to Westchester, New York, where he and his fellow X-Men had spent so many of their younger days. There, he dedicated himself to the search for clues that might lead him toward the whereabouts of the Mutants’ missing mentor, Charles Xavier. But before Kurt could make any progress in his efforts, the universe was shaken to its very core.

The Timestream Entanglement cascaded across the Chronoverse, leaving untold damage in its wake. One of the casualties was Krakoa, which became caught in a timestorm that sent the entire island hurtling into another era. When the event occurred, Kurt raced from the Xavier Estate in Westchester to the X-Mansion that had been built in Manhattan. He had prayed he would be able to reach his fellow Mutants and offer his aid, but they were already long gone. The Krakoan Gateway inside the mansion had closed, and Kurt’s calls were left unanswered.

Eventually, Kurt received a telepathic call from Magneto, who had used Cerebro to summon all Mutants scattered across time and space back to the time-displaced Krakoa. Though Kurt was glad to learn that his friends were safe in the year 2099, he decided to remain at the X-Mansion instead. Realizing he was perhaps the only X-Man left in the modern world, he took it upon himself to carry on the legacy of his Mutant brothers and sisters, protecting innocent civilians from danger. And there had never been more danger in New York City, as it had fallen into darkness and disarray under Dracula’s rule.

Still, even in the face of such horrors, Kurt did not lose his hope. The more lost souls he gathered, the stronger his resolve grew. And he took great solace in knowing that other heroes — from Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four — were busy protecting the city as well. He considered joining their coalition for a time but ultimately felt that he could accomplish more quietly from the shadows. And since he sought no credit for his deeds, only those who he’d saved realized how much good he had truly done.

But Kurt couldn’t shake the feeling that he was destined to do more… and he knew of only one person who could help him see what his future might hold: his mother, the precognitive Mutant known as Destiny. She may have been long gone, but Kurt had run across one of Destiny’s old diaries when he was sorting through Xavier’s belongings in Westchester. And so, he traveled back to the Xavier Estate, completely unaware that the journey would cause him to narrowly miss the brief return of his fellow X-Men to their original timeline. When Kurt learned that he had missed a potential reunion with his long-lost friends, his heart sunk… but he had faith that their paths would cross again when the time was right…

Once Destiny’s diary was in his possession, Kurt spent day and night poring over the cryptic prophecies contained within, hoping that cracking them would eventually lead him to find his true purpose — or, at the very least, to find Charles Xavier and any other Mutants who were still missing. Unfortunately, Kurt’s knack for deciphering his mother’s riddles was nowhere near as keen as his gift for interpreting scripture. Though many of the passages seemed to suggest he might play a key role in the battles to come, what that role was exactly…remained vague. The last page of the diary contained a passage that Kurt could never quite comprehend, but one that had not left his mind since the day he first read it:

<Kai>“The son of the demon shall stand guard upon the shattered earth. When the gates of Hell pour forth a sea of brimstone, hope is the blade that will heal the wound.”</>

He had no idea why his mother had written those words, nor what they could mean… but he knew deep in his soul that they were about him.

“Are you alright?” Sam asked, concerned. “You got really quiet there for a bit…”

“I was merely reflecting on my journey,” Kurt mused, “and how glad I am it brought me to you.”

“Yeah…” Sam said, smiling for the first time he could remember. “I’m glad it did, too.”

“As much as I adore this view of the city, however,” Kurt continued, “perhaps we should get you down from here… in a slightly safer manner than you originally intended…”

“Okay… sure…” Sam agreed. “But where would I go?”

“Forward,” Kurt replied earnestly. “That is all that any of us can do. But if you seek purpose, I may be able to offer you some. I have started a sanctuary in an old church. I am helping as many people as I can… but I could always use assistance…”

“I… yeah,” Sam said. “I think that’s a good idea. I could use something positive to focus on…”

“In these dark times,” Kurt responded, “a little light goes a long way.”

Just then, almost as if on cue, the sky erupted in a blinding glow and the entire building began to tremble violently. Kurt and Sam glanced into the distance, only to see what seemed like a strange reflection of New York crashing into their own city.

“W-what’s happening?” Sam asked, panicked.

“I do not know,” Kurt replied, shielding his eyes from the harsh light. “But we must not wait here to find out. Quickly! Grab ahold of me… and do not let go!”

Sam wrapped his arms around Kurt’s body and held tight. And as the building lurched and shook, Kurt gracefully jumped off the rooftop.

“I thought you were supposed to look before you leapt!” Sam yelled.

“This is not the circus, mein Freund,” Kurt responded. “And sometimes, life requires us to take a different kind of leap —”

And with that, Kurt and Sam disappeared into a cloud of smoke and brimstone.

“— a leap of faith,” Kurt said as he and Sam reappeared on a distant rooftop, just in time to see the first tsunami washing over Manhattan, toppling the building that they had just been standing upon.

At that moment, as the present and future collided, Kurt Wagner knew what he had to do. He still wasn’t certain how one lonely Mutant could possibly heal a world this broken, like his mother had foreseen. But the X-Man known as Nightcrawler wasn’t about to stop trying…

…even if he had to save the world one soul at a time…