When you get down to it, New York is expensive. Especially for teenage girls on salaries of less than ten dollars a day. Busking was fun, of course, but somedays people were much less willing to spend money than others. That was one of those days.

Astrid turned over her cello case, trying to shake out the loose change that she may have missed when going through it before. A nickle fell out. The girl's shoulder's slumped a little. The extra five cents brought her total up to $2.78. Not even enough for a hotdog at the stand.

Her black eyes scanned the crowd angrily, trying to see if there was someone passing by that would be easy to pick-pocket.

Who was she kidding? With her wings, she was about as out of sight as a fog horn. There was no way she could go undetected enough to steal a wallet. Perhaps if she just picked someone up and shook them really hard... She shook her head, knowing she needed another plan.

Then, her eyes fell on something lying on the ground near a garbage can. She only seen something like it once before, and even then it had only been at a distance. She stood up and put her cello away, looking around before walking towards the object. 

Astrid picked up the little rectangle and held it in her hand. It was what she thought it was. A pack of tarot cards. She went through it, eyeing the ratty bunch of paper. She had no idea if it was complete or not, or even what to do with them, but a lot of tourists would believe almost anything. Especially if you sold it right.

She grimaced and fished around carefully for a piece of cardboard to use, and eventually found one. She sat down on the ground, fluffing out her skirt in a circle. Her cello rested next to her, along with the money she had made that day.

On the sign, she wrote: Tarot Card Reeder: Get To Nowing You Fuchur. $15. 

Then, she pulled some feathers from her wings and used them to weave her hair into an intricate braid. For added effect, she pulled off some crystals and set them around her to look professional. The tarot card reader that she had seen before had some kind of crystals with her when Astrid went.

The girl smile, rather pleased with the overall effect of it. The sign looked good, too, she noted. Definitely no spelling mistakes in there. She was getting much better.

She got out the cards and set the sign in front of her, watching the people that glanced at it. All that was left for her to do was wait for customers.

"—still? Yeah. Yeah, I got it. No. You too, man." Jude hesitated before hanging up his cell. Alistair knew what he wanted even before he'd asked.

"You want to visit, don't you?"

"Well, I mean... would you mind?"

Eros was still gone. All the kids who'd worked at the Fortune teller's shop had been emotionally manipulated, yeah, but that didn't mean he didn't still miss them sometimes. And, for Jude, the powers they all held. The ability to see the future was addictive in its own right.

"Maybe... it might be better to... not."

Jude huffed.

"Sorry."

Jude kicked a blobby, moist cigarette box out of his path on the sidewalk. It skipped once across the concrete, barely missed another pedestrian's shoe and then splatted into the back of a beggar girl's sign. The cardboard flopped forward onto its face.

"Ugh. I have to go anyway." He mashed the hang up button before Alistair could object. Not that he was going to.

Time to face the piper. Or pay him. Or however the colloquialism went.

Jude cleared his throat and bent to pick up the sign he'd hit. "Sorry about that."

No takers.

Astrid say for what felt like forever, simply waiting for someone to try their luck. But time passed, and so did the people. Every once and a while, someone would glance at her, and occasionally laugh, which irritated the girl to no end. She was about to abandon hope when he sign moved.

Her eyes trailed from the soggy cigarette butt to the young boy standing near her. Her ears vaguely registered that he was apologizing.

Astrid gritted her teeth, fed up with the dehumanizing reality of living on the streets. She was about to chew him out before she remembered that she was supposed to be selling to him.

So, instead of getting angry, she forced herself to smile at him. It felt like her lips were being stretched beyond their normal limit.

"This is alright," she voice sounded foreign as a sweet, I'm-just-a-helpless-street-girl quality took over. She coughed once and tapped the definitely-correct sign at her feet with a pale finger, hoping to stretch his empathy enough to make him pay.

His lips had already formed to ask if the sign was a joke, but the girl spoke up. With an accent. A French accent.

He looked at her, as if he might know any and all French speakers. Black eyes. Black wings. Black attitude. Meh. Didn't immediately ring a bell. Especially if the "Fuchur" sight was part of her mutant package.

<Do you speak?> The French was implied considering the boy's language swap. <Or is the accent just another way to shill?>

Jude looked at the ground in front of her sad little box and considered plopping himself down for a reading. But. Ground. Ew.

The junior X-man flipped the sign over in his hands so that the paper-icked side of the sign was down and the words were up. He placed the cardboard carefully and then took his seat on top of that. The words were just as intelligible under his bum as they were when on display. He'd tell her so if she objected.

<I don't have fifteen dollars.> Jude admitted frankly, which was true. He rarely carried cash. But he did have his wallet on his person. The Frenchman fished out a dinosaur velcro wallet that was awesome no matter what everyone else said. Clearly it was awesome because so many people had tried to steal it over the years.

He dug around in the change pocket until he could slap two teensy little rectangles of paper on top of her box. <But I have two free Big Macs from the Monopoly game at McMonald's.> That had to be worth something, right?

<And, I'll translate your sign properly so you don't look like a dunce any more.> Because he was a nice guy. Jude smiled. Such a winning smile. There was no way she could actually tell his fortune... right?

Astrid's lips parted for a second, about to say something in reply, before the boy began to speak again. That time, she didn't have to struggle to understand him at all. In fact, the words that tumbled from his mouth were in her native French language.

She paused for a moment, her mouth slightly parted as she studied him. He took her sign and sat on it, which she would have said something about, but she was still in shock from his words.

<I speak,> she replied in perfect French after a moment. <Your French is too good for you to be a slobbering American. Where are you from?>

He took out a wallet; velcro with dinosaurs. Astrid scoffed at him. Of course the only French person she would meet would carry something so childish. It could be overlooked, of course, because she could actually speak to him.

Cautiously, she took his offer of the coupons. She held the little slips of paper in her hand, studying them. It was better than nothing, especially since there wasn't exactly a line up of people waiting behind him. Although, she had heard nothing but poor things about the MacDonald's in America compared to the ones in France. She didn't really have that many other options, though.

The boy offered to fix her sign in exchange for her services, even finishing the offer with a huge smile. Astrid cocked an eyebrow at him. She had thought her sign was pretty good, but that would explain why no one was speaking to her. That and her convenient location of the ground.

<Fine.> She nodded to him. <But no palm readings, then. Those cost the full price.> She took out the pack of cards and shuffled them in front of him. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing, but her poker face was pretty good.

She splayed the deck out in front of him so that he could see all of the cards face down. <Chose three.>

A thrill ran up his spine when he heard her speak eloquently, if not sarcastically, in his mother tongue. There was nothing like a proper accent. Had it really been so long since he'd had a proper conversation?

<Saint-Fargeau. Kind of. I've been here a few years now so maybe I'm from New York now.> That made the boy wrinkle his nose. Nah. He would always be a Frenchman. Some things lived in your blood and your bones and your heart, never to be erased or overwritten.

His grin widened a hair as she accepted the burgers. She looked like she could use a proper American meal or five, and there was practically no way he would ever touch the stuff. He'd won the vouchers in the Mansion's unsanctioned student poker game. The prize pool always varied, but was usually made of some kind of food.

No palm readings? <I don't usually have to pay to hold a sweet lady's hand.> Then again, this was no sweet lady and he preferred not touching so that he wouldn't accidentally catch her power.

Jude chose his 3 cards, intrigued. He'd never really paid attention to tarot stuff even if they'd sold some at Future Sight. Seemed like gypsy stuff and no one's power worked through the cards as far as he understood.

<These.> He laid them out. There was one with some horses. One with serious water damage. And that one was upside down. Jude went to fix it.

The boy was a bit of a smart aleck. Astrid rolled her eyes at him, trying her best to ignore his comments. Usually, she would have put up much more of a fight, but she figured it wasn't smart to punch a (sort of) paying customer.

He chose his three cards and laid them down in front of him. One was backwards, so he extended a hand to fix it. Instincively, Astrid slapped it away before he could.

<Don't touch,> she warned hastily. <This is dangerous magic that you're messing with. You do want to find out your future, don't you?> God, she was trying hard to sell this. She shook her head, letting a feather float to the ground for extra effect.

Astrid bit her lip, trying to think of something to say about the cards that would sound like she had any idea what she was doing. There was one card with horses on it, one card with something that looked like a jester, and one with a sun. They all had English words underneath them, but that wasn't a lot of help to her.

After a second, she let her instincts take over, and began to run her mouth. <This means that you're going to go on a trip, soon.> Astrid began, <and while there you're going to have a good time, but you will run into trouble along the way. There will be something that you expect to go well, but will go very poorly instead. The sun signifies that you have a long, bright future, but it will take some time for any of your endeavours to go well. For the time being, you should enjoy life and not try to hard. Otherwise you will die.>

She finished her last sentence very quickly, looking back up at the boy expectantly. <Tips are more than welcome.>

She slapped his hand. Like. Actually slapped him. Jude took his hand back and put it into his other hand. Not that it'd hurt or anything. It did trigger DocProfs power in him, though. A small shock of cold accompanied the vision of a few minor things that could use healing.

Astrid scraped against a brick wall in order to squeeze somewhere. Those scrapes were now mending. A bruise here. A minor cut there. Nothing that took much of his time in vision and probably nothing that would give her more than a couple goosebumps. She might not even notice.

<Do you believe in magic?> Was she going to sit there with her wings and black eyes and sell him on magic? Really? Still, he kept out of her way and watched her face as she strained. It was actually really difficult to see where she was looking since her eyes were all the same color. Jude had never noticed before that eyeballs weren't actually round. Not perfectly, anyway.

Was she accessing her mutation? His power didn't really tell him anything beyond the obvious 'There's a mutant in front of you!'

Oh! A trip? Jude peered down at the cards like they might be showing new information now that she'd spoken. They did not. Just the horses and the blobby water damage. He could believe that he would take a trip. And trouble? Pfft. That was a give-in. He rolled his eyes, naturally skeptical. Yet, he wanted to believe. So...

<Wow. Very much worth $15.> Sarcasm alert. He didn't even pay the fifteen dollars and still, he somehow managed to feel cheated. <You're gonna get yourself beat up if you run your racket like this. I don't think your mutation covers prophecy. Sorry, hun.>

It was a shame that Alistair hadn't let him copy his future sight power. He would have loved to show her what the real thing looked like.

A small tingle spread across Astrid's skin after she slapped the boy's hand. It was a slightly strange feeling, but she didn't really think much of it. It was likely just the excitement from using French again.

She shrugged at his question. She didn't, really, but she wanted him to, so lying seemed like the best option. <I suppose I do. Is having wings not magic in some ways? Magic is just perception, and reality is within the eye of the beholder.> What a load of trash.

The boy was rolling his eyes at her. She had been warned about American teens and the attitude they had. Of course, he was really a Frenchman, but it was difficult to tell from his mannerisms. She rolled her lips into a snarl and furrowed her brow at him, angered by his response.

<You hardly let me finish,> Astrid hissed at him, <there are many more cards in the deck, and you haven't even asked any questions yet. But I suppose that's your trouble, now, you low life cheapskate. Good luck when you're left bleeding on the streets with no hint to your future.> She was still trying her darnedest to bait him, which meant getting defensive. Of course, that wasn't all that difficult for her.


She stood up in a huff, her wings puffed out in fury. She had completely forgotten that she was still meant to be selling to other people, and that where the boy was sitting was her spot. And her sign.

<Oh I'm sorry. I thought you asked for tips. I was giving you a few. For free.> Which was hardly fair considering the fact that he had a roof over his head and food coupons to spare. Still. She was only making a fool of herself, here.

Bleeding on the streets. Never see his future? Oh. That was good. She just kept digging. Jude couldn't help but chuckle. <I have seen many of my futures and, considering that I am a healer> —for now, he mentally amended— <bleeding out on the street isn't really an option either.> He motioned with his hand to her knee which had been previously scraped and gave her his most placid and indulgent smile.

Even as a child in France, he'd already seen one of futures. Back then, he wouldn't shut up about it. Now, at least, he knew better how much a future could change.

People on the street started giving the winged girl a wide berth, but otherwise continued to pretend that neither of the Frenchies existed. Mutants weren't unheard of. Foreign languages were plentiful. The worst that the general population had to worry about was ending up as collateral damage.

The boy was infuriating. From his smug expression to his pompous voice, everything about him set Astrid on edge. Her wings bristled, causing her feathers to stand on edge. If he wasn't careful, she wouldn't be able to stop them from changing form.

He pointed to her knee, making Astrid look down. There had been a cut there earlier, but it was gone. It had stung when it was there, but it had also looked rather cool, she thought. God, there was no end to the grating nature of him. She ground her teeth, trying to stop what was about to come out of her mouth.

But... Why was she trying to stop it? It was her goal to try and be evil, and attacking a rude teenage boy on the streets was pretty evil. A twisted smile formed on her lips as she let curses fly at him. Even the English people walking by them turned their heads to look at them as she spoke. <Being French doesn't save you from a terrible personality,> she shouted afterwards.

Her wings changed form instantly as she did, and she gave him one more moment. She wanted him to say something else in response to make her even angrier. It was easier to shoot the crystals when her shoulders were tense.

She did not appear to be happy about her scraped knee healing. In fact, it only seemed to fuel her already building inner fire. Sheesh! Some people just couldn't be happy with a gift. Because he was definitely a gift to the wider world when he walked around as a healer. And most other times as well.

And, boy, did she tell him differently. His placid smile slipped from smug to awkward to just downright disbelief. Somewhere in her tired Jude had also taken to his feet. He was no longer the boy who let girls beat him up and break him down. He also wasn't the boy who would let words drive him to actions he would regret taking place in full public view.

<I'm sorry that you feel that way—> He plastered a taut smile on his face and did not swing a fist or kick or even break out into a breakdance fight despite the fact that she was clearly enjoying this. Her almost-painful-to-look-at smile was edging quickly toward a creepy murder smile. Was that what he looked like right now? No. Certainly not. He'd bathed this century. <—but the feeling is mutual.>

Jude had some experience with the ladies.

He knew things were going well when he first meet a ladyfriend and she tried to change her appearance for him. Playing with the hair, maybe unbuttoning a button, wings changing from soft and feathery to OMG RAZOR BLADES.

He dove behind a parked car just in case things really were going as well as it seemed.

<Are you CRAZY?> Oh damn. Was that his stegosaurus wallet laying back there on the sidewalk?

>><Are you CRAZY?>

Well the intimidation tactic had obviously been successful. Astrid smirked as she let the bottom row of crystals fly. They embedded in the car with a horrible sound that echoed down the streets of the park. People turned to look, a few of them letting off a shocked gasp. <Maybe a little,> she informed him, her voice eerily calm.

She stepped forward shakily, the crystals on her wings weighing her down considerably. Her eyes scanned the park, looking for her target. She knew full well that he was behind a parked car, but she didn't him to know that. There was no way that she would be able to get a good shot in if he didn't move, so she needed him to feel secure enough to move from behind the obstacle.

She needed... Something to coax him out. Her black eyes moved across the pavement to... Was that? It was. The stupid little velcro wallet that the boy had been carrying was lying on the ground, just waiting for Astrid to come pick it up.

She moved awkwardly toward it and bent down to pick it up, thrown slightly off balance by the weight on her back. She turned back to the boy, her smile having somehow widened. <This is yours?> It was more of a statement than a question. The velcro sounded loudly as she pried it open, <let's see what's inside, shall we?>

With the thunk, thunk, thunk of impaled car metal, Jude wasn't the only person diving dramatically out of the way. It was sad that people were alert enough to react to scary sounds now, but in a way it made Jude's life easier. He didn't have to rescue as many people when they took the time to rescue themselves.

Of course, for every person that was hiding, there was probably now a cell phone video recording their exchange. Jude squared his shoulders and tried to think of the most heroic thing he could do. You know. For posterity's sake.

Thankfully, she was pretty loud. Despite traffic screeching to a halt and whimpers and shouts, every step the girl took was heavy and her razor wings heralded her approach with a merry little jingle.

He could tackle her. That might look bad, though. Even if she was rampaging, hormonal teenager he was still a boy and she was still a girl. A thin, tiny thing. Jude was no brute. He'd only just started training in hand-to-hand anyway. That option was probably out. For now.

> <This is yours?>

Ahhhh, dangit! She'd found it. It was obvious (and awesome). Still, he'd been hoping that it was less interesting now that she had murder in her heart.

> <let's see what's inside, shall we?>

Jude went into a panicked review of what was inside too. Blockbuster card? Buss pass? Credit card? Mansion ID card? X-MEN COM!? She could summon the X-men down on their location. That might actually be good. So, naturally, the best way to convince her to mess with it was to make her think he didn't want her to.

Time for a gambit.

<Whoa, whoa, whoa.> Jude skidded out from behind his car and held his hands up in full surrender. <Let's not get too personal about things. Can't we work things out?>

Astrid gave the boy a malicious smirk. He had taken the bait. Obvious, everything was going exactly as Astrid had planned and there would be absolutely no hiccups now. She had him in the palm of her hand.

She turned the wallet upside down, frowning as she felt the cheap fabric. The boy really needed to be taught what was cool and what was most definitely not cool in any way. She turned her attention back as things began to tumble out from the wallet and onto the ground.

Astrid crouched down as she examined the her new plunder. There were a few rectangular slips of paper with his name on them, a few with a picture. So, his name was Jude. It was a nice name, not that she would ever let that sentence fall on human ears.

As she was going through the items, something caught her eye. It was all shiny. Not shiny laminated, but a different kind of shiny. Astrid picked it up and examinated it carefully, even taking a seat  on the ground so she could study it better. 

Someone tried to approach her slowly from behind, but she absently threw a crystal in their direction to warn them not to step closer. She missed completely, but it did the trick. The crystal ended up grazing a bystander on the arm and then struck a nearby car. 

<What's this?> Astrid asked Jude curiously, having completely forgotten about her purpose of fear and torture. Instead, she was completely absorbed with curious thoughts. 

She held the little thing up to her ear and shook it, trying to figure out what it did. Perhaps it was one of those cell phone things that she had never bothered to look into.