Jean-Phillipe and Yvette

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A brief vignette during the evacuation to the shelters early this morning. Jean-Phillipe decides Yvette needs distracting.



The evacuation had been orderly, which Jean-Phillipe supposed said something about the state of things for the young mutants in the mansion. On the one hand, it was nice to know the school had plans in place for such eventualities, but on the other it was sad that such plans were necessary in the first place. His fingers twitched slightly. He'd been roused straight from his bed by the alarm, and hadn't had his usual morning cigarette. He could hardly smoke in the shelter, though, even if he'd thought to bring his cigarettes, which he hadn't. He had brought something else to pass the time, though. Spotting Yvette's distinctive red skin, he walked over and sat down next to her. "Bonjour, petite rouge."

"Hello, Jean-Phillipe." She gave him a small, nervous smile. Being woken in the middle of the night and ordered into the shelters was unnerving, to say the least, but she was determined to show she was able to cope. Even if she'd had to retreat to a corner where no-one could accidentally brush against the back of her head, given she was sporting the spiky look. "What is the nice boy like you doing in the place like this?" As a joke, it was pretty lame, but considering this was Yvette...

"Whoever told you I was a nice boy?" he asked with a grin. "Certainly not my cousin, I am sure." He leaned back against the wall, carefully sitting close enough to Yvette to be reassuring, yet far enough to give the girl her personal space. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a deck of cards. "Luckily, I thought ahead a bit. Would you like to play a card game?" She looked like she could use some distraction from fretting.

"Ah, but I do not speak to your cousin, so I have the, how you say, the personal perspective?" She leaned forward a little, glowing eyes fixed on the cards. "And yes, I would like that. It is the good focus for me, to be thinking of other things."

Jean-Phillipe made a pensive noise as he pulled the cards out and shuffled them. "What sort of game shall we play?" He thought. He had learned many different games working in the warehouse and then on his trip to America. "I think perhaps not poker or blackjack. I should not want to be accused of teaching you bad habits like gambling," he joked. "We do not have a board, or I would teach you to play cribbage." He thought some more, then brightened. Setting the deck down, he pulled out a second deck, which he had brought in case others wanted to use it. "We can play canasta," he said, shuffling the two decks together.

Yvette tilted her head at him. "Canasta... this is like the gin rummy, yes? Only with the more cards?" Her mother had taught her card games during the time after her powers had been discovered, since she hadn't been allowed to go to school.

"Just so," Jean-Phillipe said with a nod as he dealt the cards. Distraction would be good for both of them.