The Bamf

Once upon a time, in the briefing room of the Xavier Institute — a room with a long oval table and a chalkboard and tall windows looking out over the back lawn — a group of new trainees asked Kurt Wagner the question he had been asked many times before.

"Where do you actually go? When you disappear — where are you?"

Kurt set down his cup of tea and smiled. He picked up a piece of chalk. He walked to the board.

"When I teleport," he said, drawing a curved corridor between two circles — one labeled HERE, one labeled THERE — "I step through somewhere called the Brimstone Dimension." He tapped the corridor with the chalk. "Not this world, and not quite another world. A corridor between places. Very briefly — less than a single second — I step in, travel through, and step out somewhere different."

The room was quiet and attentive. Wolverine was leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed, eating an apple, having heard this explanation before. But even he was listening.

"The purple-grey smoke that appears wherever I arrive or depart," Kurt continued, "is residue from that dimension bleeding through. A small amount of the between following me out. And the cracking sound — the BAMF — is the air rushing back to fill the space where I was."

One trainee raised her hand. "What does it look like in there? In the Brimstone Dimension?"

Kurt thought honestly, as he always did about things that mattered. "Dark," he said. "Warm. Like a room after the fire has just gone out — still holding the warmth, but the light is gone. And there is a smell, like brimstone — a sharp, mineral smell. Old books call it sulfur." He smiled. "I am, apparently, a very old-fashioned sort of teleporter."

Someone laughed. Even Wolverine's expression shifted slightly.

He explained the distances: three kilometers per jump was comfortable, reliable, felt like nothing more effortful than a brisk walk. Beyond four kilometers required serious preparation and left him genuinely tired. He explained why he needed a clear picture of his destination — arriving safely depended on the target living vividly in his memory or being directly in sight. A vague image would not do. "I may be the only person in the world," he said, "for whom a good memory is literally a matter of survival."

He explained how he could carry passengers — one was manageable, two required rest afterward, three was something he had done only in genuine emergencies. He explained that after eight or ten rapid sequential jumps, he grew dizzy and needed to sit down. Not weakness, he said — just the honest price of the power, which like any power had its limits and its costs.

Then Kurt set down the chalk.

"Now I will tell you the part I do not put in diagrams."

The room was completely quiet.

"Every teleport is a leap of faith." His voice was careful and steady, the voice he used for things he meant completely. "I prepare as thoroughly as I can. I look. I remember. I measure the geometry in my mind. And then I jump. And between jumping and arriving, there is a fraction of a second in which I am in the between, and the between does not care about my preparation or my skill. It responds only to my commitment."

He paused.

"Doubt in the middle of a jump is the one thing that makes it go wrong. Fear is fine — you can be afraid and still jump, and I have done it many times. But doubt is different. Doubt is when your whole self pulls back at the last instant and refuses to fully commit. The Brimstone Dimension notices."

He let this settle.

"Professor Xavier once told me this is the best lesson my power teaches. We cannot always be certain. But commitment — that we can always offer. Pay attention, prepare carefully, and then leap with your whole heart."

The trainee who had asked about the Brimstone Dimension raised her hand again. "Does it still feel scary? Even now?"

Kurt thought about it.

"Yes," he said honestly. "Sometimes. Usually when the stakes are very high." He smiled — that wide, warm smile. "But that is exactly when it matters most to jump anyway."

He turned and drew one more figure on the board: a small silhouette, arms spread, mid-leap, between the two circles. HERE and THERE, and the person suspended in between — fully committed, fully in the air.

"That," he said, "is the whole story."

BAMF. He was gone before anyone could ask another question.

From the hallway, a moment later, they heard him laughing.