When It All Goes Wrong Again - The Museum

[x-rictor.livejournal.com]

Several of the students and a few of the staff take a field trip. While nothing seemingly out of the ordinary happens, the Xavier's Field Trip curse exists for a reason.



All Thomas Glorian really wanted was a quick dollar and no questions asked. He and Marco were working outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, all licensed and everything. It was a legitimate performance, so Glorian didn't have any worries about that. No FOH in the crowd, that was the absolute last time he let Marco pick their spot. Glorian winced at the memory. No, today was a good day he decided. Decent crowd, who were receptive for the most part. That was what was important, the receptive part. Marco was already in the crowd, pretending to be one of the onlookers. Just in case they needed a little push.

"All right Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm going to tell you a story," he shuffled a well-worn deck of cards expertly, his long-fingered hands flowing gracefully. He spread the deck out on the patchy velvet-covered card table he had set up in front of him. He gestured to show he had nothing up his sleeves, and then returned to shuffling the deck, removing the face cards as he did so. "Now, once upon a time, the Ace," he held up the Ace up clubs and set it down, piling the other Aces around it so all four cards faced up, "Invited the King," he put the King of clubs down on the ace of clubs, "Queen," Queen of diamonds, she went on the ace of diamonds, "and Jack," Jack of spades, onto the Ace, "To a party." He continued shuffling, placing all the face cards into the piles of four, with a king, queen, jack and ace. "Big lavish party, lotsa food, lotsa dancing, lotsa pretty girls. Jack hisself was quite happy with the pretty girls. Except for the Jack o' hearts, he didn't exactly play that side of the fence, if ya get my drift," he winked and some of the crowd laughed. "Now, they're dancing, all together," he scooped up the cards into one pile, and seemingly cut the deck. "Except, alla the sudden, the lights go out! And everybody runs to the side of the room," he split the deck back into piles of four. "They all huddle together," he turned over the first pile and spread out four Kings, "because these royals," the second pile, four Queens, third pile, four Jacks, "they all like to stick together," fourth pile, four aces. The crowd laughed and applauded.

Angel peeked out behind a few of the people at the front of the crowd, easing her way to the front. The museum was the main attraction but she loved performances like this. It wasn't something she could do at all and she was enthralled with anyone who could do things like this. She bit her lip, hands behind her back as she watched with wide eyes. "That's awesome," she breathed, applauding enthusiastically with the rest, bouncing on her toes.

"He's pretty good," Amanda admitted, standing close behind her. She was watching his hands intently, trying to pick the movements. "Cards're tricky - never could get the hang of 'em. Coins and handkerchiefs and the like were more my thing. I leave the card tricks to Remy these days." Watching the busker was making her a little nostalgic for her Brighton days.

Forge frowned, watching the cards seemingly fly around the table. "Damn," he muttered. "Okay, I know there's a trick to this but I can't quite catch it. Betcha Doug could break the scam in like, ten seconds though."

Tommy just stayed back behind the others, on the look for FOH himself. "He's a street magician, like so many around the city. What's so great about it?" He muttered to himself.

Julio had to resist the urge to give the boy an elbow to the ribs. "You do not have to watch, you know," he said irritably. They were all waiting on Mr. Haller and Ms. Dane to come back with their day passes into the museum. The busker was one of the ways the students were distracting themselves, and Julio thought the man was pretty good, himself. He slipped up closer to get a better look, coming up next to Angel.

"Alrighty, thank you, thank you. No applause please, just throw money," Glorian indicated the beaten up trunk that he carried the card table in. It already had a few wadded bills in it, plus an assortment of change. The crowd laughed good-naturedly. "Now, I shall need a lovely assistant to help me with this next one. Does anyone want to be my lovely assistant?" Glorian looked at his spectators, there were an awful lot of kids in the crowd, and they wouldn't do. Still, he had all day, a couple of kids wouldn't hurt.

Kyle grinned, and shoved a little bit at Forge. "Dude. You totally should." He whispered. He was ignoring the crabby-pants, even if he was secretly a little glad that Tommy had gotten himself a set of balls and finally left the mansion for the day. Yvette would be pleased, if nothing else, and a happy Yvette was a good thing.

Shiro sat closer to Tommy's camp than to everyone else's. He had an assignment to complete for winterterm at the museum and had agreed to tag along with the kids. But he wanted to get the work done as quickly as possible so he could spend the rest of the afternoon at the Asian art exhibit. So he sighed with just a tad of frustration, and tapped his foot impatiently, willing Haller and the evil one to return with their passes so they could abandon this scam already.

So the natives were getting restless, and since Lorna and Haller were elsewhere, she was apparently the Adult In Charge. Amanda rolled her eyes slightly at Shiro's obvious impatience, and nudged Crystal, standing next to her. "No-one ever volunteers for this shite. Wait and see, he'll end up dragging some poor bastard out of the crowd."

Crystal tensed imperceptibly at Amanda's nudge, then realized who had done the nudging. She knew the older girl didn't mean anything harmful by it and couldn't know that Crystal was on high alert for even the slightest touch in the crowd. Crystal didn't like being in crowds like this and she didn't feel safe right now. "He cannot force someone to do something that they do not wish to do," Crystal told Amanda.

Laurie looked around at the rest of the group, noticing that no one was volunteering and attempted to place herself in line with Amanda so she wouldn't be seen. She'd never really been good at the whole 'crowd participation' thing. However, luck was not on her side today, and her attempts to not be noticed seemed to be the very thing that got her noticed.

"What about you, young lady?" Glorian gestured to the blonde hanging shyly back. "Come on now, don't be shy. No? No? Aw, that's okay, anybody else? You sir, how about you?"

"Um, sorry?" Jim said, blinking away from the group he'd been shouldering toward. 'Hey, Xavier's kids!' would have been a little disruptive, and with his head as high as it was above most of the crowd it wasn't as if identifying the clot of students and almost-peer-chaperones was a challenge. He'd only been planning on grabbing the kids to distribute passes. Now he found himself the subject of attention for two sharp eyes.

"Yes, you!" The tall guy was perfect. Nice, unassuming, and decently-dressed. Glorian gestured for the man to come up front. "Don't be shy, I don't bite."

Amanda snickered. The only thing better would have been Lorna being grabbed. Besides, it took the heat off Laurie, which was only a good thing. Contact and Laurie's powers weren't a good combination. "Go on, Dave," she said with a grin. "Be a sport."

From previous experience Jim was pretty sure what this man actually had in mind was a shill, but that was all right. Given any trip made for educational purposes was guaranteed to end with a good chunk of the participants standing around counting the seconds before they could leave two additional minutes of open air probably wasn't going to hurt anyone. "Okay, okay," the counselor said, surrendering to the inevitable. He gave the witch a wry half-smile of consent and stepped forward.

"Excellent, I have my lovely assistant." Glorian gestured for Haller to stand beside him by the card table. He swept the cards off the table and palmed them, producing another deck, identical to the last one. "Now, lovely assistant," he fanned the deck for Haller, "Pick a card, any card. Show it to the audience, but not to me. There ya go, and stick it back into the deck. Thank you very much sir." He had Haller place his card on top of the deck, and then quickly cut the deck. He then cut it again, and began to flip cards face-up onto the table.

Ace of clubs, eight of spades, eight of clubs, nine of diamonds, and ace of spades. "Now," Glorian said, pausing and looking back up at Haller, "The next card I turn over will be yours."

There was a snort from the back of the crowd as someone saw the nine of diamonds Jim had drawn laid on the table. Wordlessly the counselor flicked his mismatched eyes to the cards and back up to Glorian, his only expression the slight raise of an eyebrow.

Grinning, Glorian reached down and flipped the nine of diamonds face down. The crowd laughed and applauded, and Glorian gave a little half bow. "Yes, thank you, how about a hand for my lovely assistant!" The crowd cheered louder. Glorian clapped a hand on Haller's back, and in that moment, contact.

Nothing more than a pinprick, small and usually unobserved, Glorian crept into Haller's mind and touched...chaos.

Across from him Jim saw the man's eye twitch just as something triggered his mind's natural defenses. The telepath stepped out Glorian's grasp, breaking the contact.

Lorna had been amused when her fellow teacher had been pulled as a lovely assistant but there was just something...off. She saw Jim's smooth withdraw from the street performer and frowned, just a little bit, sliding herself between the kids and the two men at the front, blocking the students just a bit. She knew to trust those instincts by now. She also knew to trust Jim. So...

The applause was dying as people lost interest and began to wander away. Some of them tossed money into the open trunk in front of Glorian's table. Jim tried to think around the brief moment of disorientation. For a moment there he thought he'd felt a flash of something, something familiar, but -- no. No damage done. The brush of power had felt similar to Dani's, but there was no projective element. Touch-activated and read-only: mildly invasive, but essentially harmless to anyone but the doer. Had the man even known what was happening? Jim glanced back at the group of students. His presence wasn't hugely required with this many other chaperones, but trying to question a man he'd never met before about untutored mutant powers in public was a problem. Exposure to negative public sentiment was the last thing this trip needed.

Jim fished out his wallet and drew out a bill and one of his business cards for Xavier's. Unobtrusively, he folded the crisp paper around the card and held both out to Glorian.

"I work at a school," Jim said quietly. "Give us a call and we can help you with your act."

Glorian palmed both the bill and the card, careful to not make contact with the taller man a second time. Only years of training kept his expression perfectly smooth. "Of course, of course, my act can use all the help it can get, eh?" he chuckled dryly. He waited until Haller had begun to round up the other kids before he took a peek at the card.

"Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters, eh?" He muttered to himself, before quickly crumpling the card and tossing it into the trunk. "Pfft." His expression turned sour as he fixed his sharp eyes on Haller, and gave him a small salute. No, my friend, it's you I shall be seeing again. Even without the twisted chaos that was the tall man's mind, Glorian would easily find him later. He turned his head from side to side, cracking his neck to ease the tension. "Alrighty folks, hows about I tell you a story about four burglars?"

The look on Jim's face was...just as strange as his reaction had been. Notable more for its lack than its presence. Lorna figured she knew her best friend pretty well and when he was that shut down... "Jim?" she said barely audible as she stepped closer. Her hand slid into his and squeezed gently, "We should go inside or we're going to have the only field trip ever to be totally uneducational without the interference of a supervillain."

"Oh. Right." The light touch brought him back. Jim gave his head a brisk shake. Since to his mind the amount of 'good and comfortable idea' involved in using his power to facilitate conversation with a stranger still ranked a universe below using it on Lorna deep explanation could wait for somewhere less public. The telepath pinched the bridge of his nose and added, "Just so you know, I'm quitting if we lose someone to evil."

Angel yawned, glancing at the front of the museum. "Mr. Haller, Ms. Dane?" she asked, sounding hopeful. "Is there a place to buy food in there? I mean, no letting the students starve on the trip, right?" She beamed. "Education is awesome, but food and education together rock my neon green socks."

Kyle straightened, looking over his classmates. Even on crutches, he was head, and in some cases, shoulders over them. "Dude. Yes. Food please before the thing in my stomach gets out." He frowned, and leaned against one of the crutches. "I don't need any more hunger zombie episodes. Those suck beyond all suckiness."

"Yes, art is for looking at, not for eating." Julio said, reaching down and taking Angel's warm hand. He didn't know why people were making such a big deal out of the field trip earlier, it was just another boring day.