A/N: In this chapter, our intrepid foursome of guys meet some of the locals.
After walking several blocks, they arrived at department store, where Jean-Paul supplied a credit card and waited impatiently for Piotr to buy clothes to replace the ones he had ruined during his transformation. The four them then had found a tourist kiosk, from which they had procured several tourist brochures and leaflets, then made their way to an upscale restaurant that Jean-Paul was familiar with.
When Jean-Paul was greeted, Piotr concluded that this must have been a close familiarity: the hostess saw him and brought the manager out from the office, so he could personally seat them. Piotr had never been in such luxurious (and exorbitant) establishment, and his aesthetic interest was piqued by the large indoor fountain and life-size states decorated the main room.
While sitting at a carved marble table, waiting for their overly-expensive meals, and then while they ate their lunch, the four of them glanced through the materials they had picked up at the tourist kiosk.
"Look at this," Bobby said, indicating an area of the brochure to Jean-Paul.
"'Joe Quesada's marriage annulment services,'" Jean-Paul read aloud. "'Marriage has aged you, but you don't want to set a bad example by divorcing? Just sell your marriage to the demon Mephisto!' You know, I'm flattered, Drake, but one, I'm not married, two, I'm Catholic and so it's probably against my religion to have direct dealings with a demon, and three, this 'Joe Quesada' sounds like a hack."
"I don't think anyone with an I.Q. of double digits would have direct dealings with a demon." Saint-John glanced up from his magazine.
"Not that, the other ad that's- oh hey, an ad for Baskin-Robbins. Me and my younger brother would always buy stuff from their ice cream trucks when we were kids."
"Ice cream trucks?" Jean-Paul echoed in disbelief.
"Yeah," Bobby replied. "Those trucks that goes around neighborhoods playing happy music and selling ice cream."
"There's no such thing," Jean-Paul declared scornfully.
"Yes, there is."
"You're lying."
Bobby rolled his eyes. "Look at this advertisement. It's for an arcade in Queens, right by some neighborhood called Forest Hills Gardens. It offers over fifty different games and bowling. It would be a good place to go and hang out."
"That's your brilliant idea? Go to an arcade?" Jean-Paul arched an eyebrow. Bobby had once observed to Piotr that when Jean-Paul did this, all he needed were dark eyes and pointy elf-ears and then he would look just like someone named Mr. Spock. Piotr did not know who this was, only that he was "logical."
"Do you have anything better to do?" Bobby challenged.
Jean-Paul folded his arms over his chest. "Fine. I'll pay for the cab, so long as there's no more ill-planned heroics."
"This is a surprisingly good idea, considering it came from Bobby," Saint-John said with a grin.
"I'll remember that." Bobby scowled. He turned to Piotr. "This plan okay with you?"
Piotr surveyed the faces at the table; Bobby looking hopeful, Saint-John with a thin but genuine smile, and Jean-Paul, who seemed bored and vaguely annoyed, a frown of distaste marring his handsome brow. "Someone has to keep you all out of trouble," he said wearily.
Upon finishing their meal (Jean-Paul footed the bill; apparently, his parents dined there so frequently they just kept a tab they paid off at the end of each month), they exited the restaurant and sauntered down the sidewalk, deciding that since the street was lined with parked cars that they would wait till they reached a corner before hailing a cab.
At first, no one really bothered them; Piotr assumed this was because their mutations had aged them, causing them to appear older and harder than their years and to complete this more adult appearance they had firm muscles from Mr. Logan's Danger Room training sessions.
Maybe he was paranoid, but Piotr wondered if the civilians passing by were able to somehow tell that they were different, could sense something uncanny about them.
But then, as they strolled down the street, glancing in shop windows as they put a few storefronts between them and the restaurant, Piotr glanced at Jean-Paul to see how he was enjoying the walk. He had noticed that his aloof classmate seemed somewhat more emotive without Manuel around, and was curious about this. He turned his attention to Jean-Paul a split second before a woman crashed into him.
Immediately, anger and impatience flashed across Jean-Paul's face, before his features went blank, then were overcome by a cold expression. "You should watch where you're going," he told the woman, his tone positively frigid.
"S-s-sorry," she giggled, her words slurred. She was as drunk as a sailor, so utterly plastered that the scent of liquor exuding off of her person was apparent to even Piotr, who was thankful to be standing several feet away from her. But other than her inebriated state, there was nothing noticeable about her appearance. Although young and girl-next-door pretty, the only remarkable feature she possessed was that she was so unremarkable. The woman was, frankly, utterly forgettable.
At this point, she had draped herself all over Jean-Paul, who wore an expression that suggested he was planning on killing someone in the near vicinity. "You're really hot." She laughed drunkenly. "You're the hottest guy I've ever seen. Do you think that I'm hot?"
"No," Jean-Paul replied flatly.
She didn't seem to hear him. "I don't think my boyfriend thinks I'm hot. He lied to me. He told me that- " she took a step back, letting Jean-Paul go and she tugged up her shirt, exposing her abdomen. On the right side of her lower abs, just above the waistline of her jeans, sat a tattoo of the Spider-Man mask.
The design was awful work, Piotr knew, even though he was far from an expert in body ink. It looked a Band-Aid or a sticker out of a Crackerjack box.
"See, isn't it awesome?" She asked with delight, oblivious to how pitiful it truly was.
"That looks infected!" Bobby exclaimed, his usual tactful self.
"I was going to get a tattoo of the Green Goblin," the woman informed them, as if it were something to be proud of.
"Why?" Jean-Paul demanded, sounding angry. This was the most emotion Piotr had ever seen him display. "He's a murderous terrorist! You'd have to be an idiot to- you know what, I don't care. Not my problem."
"Well- " the woman tried to walk, but she stumbled and pitched forward. Jean-Paul made no move to catch her, but somehow she found her way into his arms again. "He murdered my best friend, when she was in college. He threw her off a bridge." She blinked. "Gwen. Her name was Gwen Stacey. My boyfriend was Gwen's boyfriend when she died, so I thought the tattoo would make him mad. I wanted revenge," she explained, as if this were perfectly normal behavior, "because he lied to me."
The four of them were stunned into silence; Jean-Paul looked murderous that he had to deal with the drunk, Saint-John wore an expression of disgust, Bobby still seemed dumbfounded by the horrendous tattoo, and Piotr himself was simply rendered speechless with disbelief by the entire situation.
"Carlie!" A voice shouted and two women ran up to them. The first was tall and muscular, wearing jeans and a puffy down vest and the other was thin, dressed like a punk-rocker, and covered in tattoos. Luckily for Piotr, neither of them were drunk.
"Sorry about this, boys," the punk-rocker said as the well-muscled woman pried Carlie off of Jean-Paul. "She's trashed out of her mind."
"We noticed," Jean-Paul informed her caustically.
They watched as the two women wrapped their arms around Carlie's should to support her, holding her upright between them and walked off down the sidewalk, before they disappeared into the throng of people moving about on the pavement.
Saint-John broke the silence between them with a raucous laugh. "Oh my God!" He gasped. "Can you imagine telling someone about this? We were ditching a field trip in New York City when this drunk ditzy ginger came up to us- "
"She wasn't a ginger," Bobby interrupted. "She was blonde."
Saint-John shook his head. "No, I remember. She had long red hair, pure ginger without highlights or anything and she wore it really flat, like she used a straightening iron. She had freckles and these hideous glasses with wide, plastic, rectangular frames that were such an ugly shade of purple I can't imagine why anyone would even wear them."
"She was blonde," Bobby argued, "she wore her hair in a bun, so I don't know how long it was. But she had a pale complexion, not as pale as Rogue or Jean-Paul," he said, glancing at the latter, who rolled his eyes, "but fair-skinned. And she wore oval wire-rimmed glasses.
"I thought her hair was between shades of red and brown," Piotr put in. "It was very wavy, like a shampoo commercial. She had tanned skin, as if she had spent a week at the beach. And she wore glasses with thin, black, plastic rectangle frames."
They turned to look at Jean-Paul.
"I don't care," he told them. He then noticed their determined expressions and added with an exasperated sigh, "She had light brown hair with medium skin and rectangular wire-framed glasses."
"Geez, all of our descriptions sound totally different," Bobby noted. "But we can all agree that she had glasses, right?"
"Definitely glasses." Saint-John nodded.
"Da," Piotr confirmed.
Jean-Paul was bored. "Can we go now?"
A/N: Kudos to anyone who gets the joke in this chapter.
And Jean-Paul, WTH, man? You don't like video games or know what ice cream trucks are? What's wrong with you?
And, LOL, Bobby: "That looks infected!" Bobby exclaimed, his usual tactful self.