Starchild

Magic; The Science of the Unknown

—Hi, I'm Jubilee, —she smiles, —I like your hair. —

Then she steps in, making me softly imitate her smile. The brunette boy is next, nodding in my direction as a salute. The telepath also stops, with no worries, already knowing they are safe from the priest.

She extends her hand. —I'm Jean Grey. Nice to meet you. —

—Star. Pleasure. —I shake it.

Maximoff is the last one, not worried either, but for different reasons. He tries to closely inspect the borders of the portal, seemingly fascinated by its look. From the other side, his friends are unbothered by this, only waiting for him. He tries touching it, but apparently gets burned by the sparks.

I chuckle. —That's magic. —

—Yeah... —he looks at me, with an amazement you would not expect from someone who just got hurt by a portal, —Can you do this? —

—Not yet. —I make a grimace,

He shrugs. —Still, cool. —

Finally, the priest arrives in the room. He does not see anything, obviously, and Maximoff quickly notices. He scoffs, and with a jump, enters the portal.

Without anything else to do at the Vatican, I finally leave the place.

—Took you long enough. —

Even though we only took a few minutes to follow him to the Sanctum, Strange is already sitting on the main couch of the living room. Everyone else is standing up - except for the male Barton, Maximoff, and Jubilee - and they are not even considering sitting.

McCoy frowns, —What's the plan? —

Strange folds his hands on his lap. —Well, me and my guys will keep an eye on it. You can leave now, you know. Both teams. There's nothing else for you to do. —

I am starting to think Strange likes to bother people a little too much.

There would be no use in paying attention to the conversation that breaks out. It is a simple dialogue too close to becoming an argument; Strange, Barton, and McCoy's female partner leading the discussion.

Agent Barton, or Barney, as he told Strange ("You can call me Barney, sir, the Barton thing confuses my sister and I.") believes the case should include SHIELD and its agents, for it appears to be a danger to the people. He claims they can provide us contacts which would make things easier and keep us safe from the public eye, and adds that if we do not let them, he might report our 'unsafe' practices to his bosses since "nothing interesting happens around here, anyways".

Raven Darkholme, name the X-Men woman introduced herself with, has a similar vision; according to her, the X-Men could help us out detecting any anomalies (though she did not mention the magical aspect) and that they can use their variety of powers to aid us in an emergency. Prompted by McCoy, she also stated that even if it is not scientific, they would be interested, and warned that if we do not let them, they will not stop interfering, adding that their boss has "kind of a stalking tendency", and would follow us closely.

Both threats receive Strange's chuckles as an answer.

—I don't think it'd be smart. —Strange starts, —Dad would say "too many cooks in the kitchen", or something. The more people the bigger the chances for this to go wrong, go public, or become even more dangerous. This isn't some... Bank robbery or alien invasion or whatever it is you guys work on. Just one mistake will lead to bigger ones. Demon magick isn't to be played with. Right, Star? —

All eyes are on me, again. I just shrug. —I don't really care. The more people the less contact I would have with Hell, don't you think? Also, —I look at the teams. Victoire catches my eye; she is still rubbing her hand and is looking around in interest. —Some of them might want to learn magic. —