Saturday Oct 18, morning to noon. - First, Do No Harm

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Both Kyle and Laurie have homework assignments and interest in some of the exhibits at one of the museums in New York City.



Laurie handed over her money to the man behind the counter and got her ticket to the museum before stepping back so that Kyle could get his. He wasn't exactly the person she'd have chosen to come to this place with, but they'd both been heading here and it would've looked rude to simply go off by herself.

Kyle was considering this a test of his willingness to be a good team member and also a tolerant and nice person. That he'd resorted to cheerful chatter about pretty much nothing intelligent at all was a sign to anyone paying attention that he was -trying- to be nice, as opposed to actually being nice. And if Laurie turned into a psycho hose beast again, he'd just go find the men's room and stay there until she got bored and went away. Or he would go out the window. Or he could calm down enough not to want to plan how best to tape her mouth shut.

The irony of Kyle wanting to tape someone else's mouth shut was not, in fact, lost on him. He took his ticket and the guidebook from the cashier and flipped through the booklet as they went into the museum. "Old shi... stuff, old stuff, old dusty stuff, old cool dusty stuff..." He said, half to himself. "Less old dusty cool stuff..."

"Less old dusty cool stuff?" Laurie asked curiously, following along behind him. She'd been looking through her own booklet and marking off things with a pen that she'd like to see.

"Couple of hundred instead of like, a thousand. There's a whole like, art of war thing. Like art people made during wars, not like, how to make war. So some stuff from like, really ancient Roman wars, but some not as old stuff from like, the Civil War too." Kyle shrugged and dog-eared the page on the booklet to mark it for later. Might be interesting to cruise through. "There's a whole old dead guys making laws thing I should look at. My history prof's got a mad on for how government's are setup."

"There's a history of modern medicine thing I'd like to go see, and there's meant to be this 'jewelry through the ages' thing starting today as well, although that'll probably have lots of people wandering around in it. I figure we could check out one of yours, then one of mine, then one of yours and go like that?" Laurie noted, lengthening her stride to keep up with Kyle's longer ones.

She wasn't exactly short but Kyle still towered over her, and it was easier for her to speed up then to ask him to slow down.

"Works for me." Kyle said, with a halfhearted shrug. Jewelry was kind of boring, but he might get a good idea for something to get Jan for a birthday later or something. "Unless the medicine thing has like, dead crap in jars. I don't want any part of dead crap in jars." He could go look at things that made other things blow up if there were gonna be dead things in jars. "If we're gonna go look at the jewelry thing, we should do it around lunchtime, when everyone else is off buying fifteen dollar burgers and nine dollar coffee at the cafeteria."

"It's called 'specimens', Kyle." Laurie replied with an amused tone. "They're useful in the diagnosis of things. Although, there might be some medical curiosities as well. Don't you want to see a harlequin baby preserved in formaldehyde?"

She wasn't being serious, of course. She'd have been extremely surprised if a reputable exhibition would have such specimens in it. That didn't mean she couldn't try and gross Kyle out for fun though.

Kyle shrugged. "I dunno, how much do you wanna see what I had for breakfast?"



Laurie is fascinated by jewelry, Kyle is bored and trying to be funny, and they are noticed by a stranger.



It was an open plan room, but the museum had gone to great trouble to make sure that security was tight with guards by every entrance and alarmed columns on which the displays rested. It would have to be an ingenious thief indeed who could get past all these precautions.

People milled about, backing up around some of the larger pieces as they all jostled to get a closer look. The star attraction was a large sapphire and diamond necklace, rumoured to have belonged to Marie-Antoinette herself.

Formerly-Dr. Karl Lykos rubbed his palms together and licked at dry lips, his eyes darting around the room under the brim of a Mets cap pulled low to shield his face slightly from the closed-circuit cameras covering every inch of the room. He'd sipped lightly from each of the guards as he walked past, and he was practically giddy with anticipation.

Perhaps it wouldn't take an ingenious thief. Just a crazy one.

Kyle was -bored-. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored. Laurie was being a girl and gaping at jewelry and shiny things and it was stupid. It wasn't interesting, there weren't any good interesting stories about the pieces, they were just shiny polished rocks worth more than he'd ever see in his life. And he really couldn't' even complain because Laurie had put up with forty minutes of him and 'old dusty dead guy crap' without (much) complaining or trying to imply that his interests were stupid.

Laurie for her part, appeared to be in her element, moving between displays with an expression of fascination on her face. She paused briefly beside a display of Jade jewelry, Incan in origin from what the little plaque said. "Kyle! Come and look at this. It says these were found in Peru."

Kyle approached the display with a look of slight disbelief. "They're... green... rock.. ninja stars?" He looked at the plaque and corrected himself. "Jadeninja stars. Okay... The Incans had ninjas? Cool." If she tried to correct him, he was just going to start making growly noises. Like he really thought the Incans had ninjas. But Laurie's ability to detect when he was kidding had apparently been left somewhere ... probably in Japan.

Laurie simply rolled her eyes at him and went back to reading the plaque. "Kyle, you're a heathen, you know that right?"

Lykos shifted impatiently as he stared intently at the Incan artifacts the two teenagers were gaping at. He tapped one foot and growled under his breath. He was never quite so distractable and impatient as when he had just sipped. For that matter, in an ironic twist, he was never so hungry for the life force of others as when he had just sipped, and the pair stood out like a beacon to whatever sixth sense he had developed that allowed him to detect the energy of other people. Then, as he stalked toward the exhibit, the writing on the boy's jacket became clear. Xavier's. Of course. They were mutants, that was why they stood out so strongly to him. His brow furrowed for a moment. But why were they here, and standing like lumps in front of the very thing he wanted to steal? They must have been onto him, he concluded in a flash. They were here to stop him! They would have to be dealt with before he could get this done.

Kyle grinned widely, flashing his fangs at Laurie. "Agnostic. I can't be a heathen, I don't know if I believe in any gods at all, much less any funny pagan ones." When in doubt, take her literally. It was sort of fun to mess with Laurie and play dumb sometimes. "I mean, okay, I don't know there isn't one, so I can't be atheistic, but I don't know there is either. I think Amanda Sefton's a heathen, if you want someone with funny gods. Don't you have to be one to be all presto hocus pocus?"

"I can't say I'd know." Laurie said, glaring at Kyle in irritation. "Are you ever serious?"

Kyle held up a finger as if to indicate that Laurie should give him a moment to think, and then made an obviously, at least to him, expression of concentration. ".. ... yeah, there was that one time with the guy and the thing, but otherwise, nah." If she was honestly going to ask him that, he was going to play along. There was just no way she could really believe he was never serious, was there? Not after seeing him in Kosovo trying to rescue Yvette and Angel.

"You know...No, so not doing this. We're meant to be trying that getting along with each other thing." Laurie noted, with a huff of annoyance. "You know, that thing where we don't get pissy with each other and yell?"

Kyle raised his eyebrows far enough that they disappeared into the ragged hair that fell over his forehead. "Don't hear me yelling, do you?" He shrugged with the shoulder that wasn't holding his book bag and shook himself a little to release some of the built up tension. "Dude, it's cool. You know I take stuff seriously, I mean, if nothing else, you've seen me hafta fight."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, I've just been uptight lately. College is so much harder then high school to get a good grip on, especially when you want to do well." Laurie noted, allowing her own shoulders to relax slightly.

The jade could wait. Lykos was hungry -now-, and these kids were following him. He flexed his fingers and began walking across the room towards the teenagers. Halfway there, he stopped short. No, it wouldn't do to take them in public. He'd have to wait. There were plenty of dark alleyways and nooks outside the museum, after all, where nobody would disturb him.

"Okay, I'm twitchy and bored, you're twitchy and ... twitchy, and we both need food before we gotta get back to the bus." He really needed to start taking the bike into the city more. It wasn't that he didn't dig the bus, but it'd be nice not to be stuck on the same time schedule as everyone else, and be able to leave if the city started making his nose miserable. Kyle pointed with his thumb towards the exit. "Jade ninja stars can wait. My stomach can't."