Origin

Once upon a time, in the tall green mountains of Bavaria — a land in Germany where the forests are ancient and the air smells of pine and cold stone — a child was born who was unlike anyone the world had ever seen.

His name was Kurt Wagner.

Kurt had skin the color of the deep evening sky, right after the sun goes down but before the stars appear — that beautiful, mysterious shade of blue-indigo. He had three fingers on each hand and two toes on each foot, pointed ears that twitched when he heard something interesting, and eyes that glowed a soft, warm yellow, like candles behind amber glass. Behind him, curling and swishing with his every mood, was a long, graceful tail.

And Kurt could do something else — something no one could explain. If he closed his eyes and wished it, he would vanish in a puff of purple-grey smoke with a sharp cracking sound — BAMF — and then reappear somewhere else entirely. He could teleport.

The villagers were frightened by what they did not understand. His mother, a shape-shifting mutant named Mystique, made a very hard choice and left tiny Kurt at the edge of the forest, hoping someone gentle would find him.

And someone did.

Her name was Margali Szardos. She traveled the German countryside with a circus — a real, rumbling, laughing circus with acrobats and jugglers. Margali found little Kurt, and she did not feel afraid. She felt love. She brought him home to her wagon, tucked him in among the quilts and lantern-light, and introduced him to her children: Amanda and Stefan. They grew up together on the open road, setting up circus tents in meadows, falling asleep to the sound of the wind.

Kurt was a natural performer. He flipped and tumbled in ways that seemed impossible, and his tail could grip a trapeze bar as well as any hand. High above the circus ring, he would swing and leap and somersault in the air, landing without a sound. The audiences would gasp and then cheer, and Kurt would bow — low and sweeping, because he was a showman.

They called him the Incredible Nightcrawler.

For many years, Kurt was happy. But then came a night that was not happy.

In a town near Stuttgart, as Kurt walked home from the performance, a crowd gathered. They had not come to cheer. They pointed at his blue skin and his tail and called him a monster, and they pressed closer and closer, and Kurt backed against a cobblestone wall and stood very still, and did not know what to do.

And then a voice rose above all the others — clear, and calm, and warm as firelight.

"He is not a monster. He is a gift."

A man in a wheelchair rolled through the crowd, and the crowd parted, because his presence was the kind that made people stop and listen. He had kind eyes and a gentle face, and he had come all the way from Westchester, New York — because he could reach out with his mind and feel the shape of someone's loneliness from very far away. He had felt Kurt's loneliness across the Atlantic Ocean.

His name was Professor Charles Xavier.

"I have a school," Xavier said to Kurt softly. "A place where people with extraordinary gifts can learn and grow and belong. I would very much like you to come."

Kurt looked at the man. He looked at the crowd behind him. He felt the familiar brimstone tingle in his fingertips.

And he said yes.

At Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in Salem Center, New York, Kurt trained alongside Wolverine — loyal as an old oak — and Storm, who could call lightning from a clear sky, and Colossus, whose skin turned to bright steel in battle. In the Danger Room, where walls moved and every challenge made them stronger, Kurt became one of the school's finest fighters.

He took the name Nightcrawler. He wore a blue uniform and carried himself with circus grace. He read poetry in the library. He practiced swordsmanship with a silver rapier in the courtyard on quiet mornings. He led prayers in the small chapel at the end of the east-wing corridor, grateful in his heart for everything he had been given.

Every day he smiled — that wide, warm smile that said: I am exactly where I belong.

Once upon a time, a boy the world tried to push away found people who chose him. And from that place of love, Nightcrawler leapt into the world to protect it.

BAMF. Every single time.