Kurt Wagner

[Source]

"*This is my kind of neighborhood: Lots of shadows, and lots of things to climb on.*"
―Nightcrawler[src]
**Kurt Wagner** (also known as **Nightcrawler**) was a notable Human Mutant circus performer in Herr Getmann's Traveling Menagerie and later a frequent member of the X-Men.

## Biography

### Early life

Kurt Wagner was the product of an illicit affair between his mother Mystique and the mysterious demon Azazel. Azazel told Mystique to raise their child as if it were her husband. Christian did become suspicious as to the baby's paternity, but his sudden "accidental" death ensured no one else heard his suspicions. The baby was born visibly mutated with blue skin all over, pointed ears, and yellow eyes. Due to the shock and the strain of the boy’s difficult delivery, Mystique lost concentration and accidentally revealed her true form. Word spread of her and the baby's condition, and the mother and son were chased by the police. Mystique passed out and left young Kurt Wagner floating down a river during her escape.

Azazel would not allow his son to die, so he saved him and gave him to one of his other lovers (and servant) Margali Szardos to raise. Margali was a sorceress and gypsy queen, who became a fortuneteller at a local carnival as a "cover" for her activities as a sorceress. Margali took him in and raised him along with her real children Stefan and Jimaine at the Bavarian circus, though Wagner was never legally adopted by anyone. Wagner grew up in Max Getmann's Circus, and his two closest friends were his "adopted" brother and sister, Margali's natural children Stephan and Jimaine. Long before his teleportation power emerged, Wagner had tremendous natural agility and by his adolescence he had become the circus's star acrobat and aerial artist. Circus audiences assumed that he was a normal-looking human being wearing a demon-like costume. Kurt and Jimaine forged a romance as they grew older.

Over time, Kurt's abilities drew less and less of a crowd until one day, he accidentally knocked over a torch, igniting the circus. Getmann and his men chased Kurt through the forest, and were about to shoot him in the face when he teleported for the first time. Stephan knew that his magical heritage might lure him to evil one day so he had his adopted brother promise him a blood-oath that if he ever killed without reason, Kurt would kill him as well. When a millionaire circus owner from Texas approached them to join his circus, he planned to move the circus to America and demanded that Kurt be in the freak show. Kurt was appalled at this, so he quit the circus.

### Joining the X-Men

Two nights after leaving the circus, Wagner found Stephan and discovered that Stephan had gone mad brutally slaying several children and fought him hoping to stop his rampage. In the course of the struggle, Wagner unintentionally broke Stephan's neck.

After Stephen's death, the villagers of Winzeldorf assumed him to be responsible for the child killings and began looking for Wagner. Luckily because of his teleportation, whenever the townspeople would get close to apprehending him, Kurt was able to get away. A few days later, both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants came to Germany in hopes of recruiting him. The Brotherhood led by Mystique found Kurt first and revealed to him she was his mother. Though unsure what to believe, Kurt agreed to join the Brotherhood seeing it as a way to get out of his mess of a life. However, as they were about to leave, the X-Men finally tracked them down and in the heat of battle, Kurt ultimately chose to join the X-Men, believing them to be better people.

After joining, Kurt quickly became friends with

## Powers and Abilities

### Powers

**Teleportation**: Kurt has the ability to teleport himself, the clothes, he was wearing, and within limits a certain amount of additional mass which was in contact with him. He teleports by displacing himself into the Brimstone Dimension, traveling through it, and then returning to his own dimension at a certain distance from his point of departure. He consciously determines his point of return. The entire process occurs so quickly that Nightcrawler was unaware of being in the Brimstone Dimension at all. Nightcrawler guides himself through the brimstone dimension by an unconscious, natural direction-finding sense.

The longer the distance over which Nightcrawler teleports himself, the harder and more exhausting it was for him to make the teleportation "jump". It was easier for him to teleport between north and south (along Earth's magnetic field lines) than it was for him to teleport between east and west (against the magnetic lines). Under optimal conditions, teleporting only himself and his costume, Nightcrawler can displace himself a distance of about 2 miles east-to-west, and up to 3 miles north-to-south. Making a vertical teleportation upwards was difficult and dangerous. Nightcrawler has made a vertical teleportation "jump" of 2 miles by pushing himself to his physical limits.

* **Subconscious Spatial Awareness**: Nightcrawler has a very limited subconscious extrasensory ability that prevents him from teleporting himself so that his feet, for example, would materialize below the surface of the local ground. Because this ability was so limited, however, Nightcrawler will not teleport into any place that he cannot see or has not seen in the past. If Nightcrawler teleported himself into an unfamiliar area, he would run the risk of materializing partially or entirely within a solid object. If too much of his body materialized within a solid object, he would probably be killed.

* **Accelerated Healing Factor**: Nightcrawler seems to have inherited his mother's healing factor, which allows him to repair and regenerate himself from minor to near death injuries in a short span of time, much faster than an ordinary human.

* **Camouflage**: Kurt has limited abilities to blend into shadows, both as a result of his indigo fur and his connection to the light-bending attributes of the dimension through which he teleports. This was also the explanation for why he constantly appears in shadow, even in direct light.

* **Superhuman Agility**: Nightcrawler's agility, balance, and bodily coordination are enhanced to levels beyond the human body's natural limits.

* **Superhuman Reflexes**: Nightcrawler's natural reaction time was enhanced to a level beyond the human body's natural limits.

### Abilities

* **Master Acrobat**: Nightcrawler was an Olympic-class acrobat thanks to his flexible spine that allows him to perform contortionist-like feats and to go long periods in a semi-crouching position without injury.

* **Master Combatant**: He was a skilled hand-to-hand combatant, learning from Wolverine himself and was a master at fencing, which he could even perform with his tail, which was strong enough to support his entire body weight.

* **Aviator**: He has served as the team's pilot and, with Wolverine and Forge, has helped maintain the X-Men's Blackbird jet for a long time.

## Paraphernalia

### Equipment

* **Image Inducer**: Kurt used to always wears his image inducer in public because he was afraid of how people would treat him because of his mutation. However, after he lost a bet with Wolverine, he went out in public without his image inducer. Though it turned out to be a more pleasant reaction than he thought it would be, he still would use his image inducer in public on occasion.

## Appearances

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