Chapter 116: Shopping
He drove for 15 minutes and could not hear the voices of any of his companions. Well, that was what he thought until he saw Kurt react in the rearview mirror.
"How? When? What?" Kurt said, looking around in confusion, then looking at Jason with a wide smile. "YOU! How did you do that?!" Kurt’s shout was enough to wake the girls, who had a reaction almost identical to Kurt’s.
When he stopped at the red light, Jean grabbed his neck again and started shaking him back and forth, finally stopping and bringing him close to her face.
"Jason, that was incredible!"
"....We should kiss to break the tension," he said, after a brief silence that created an almost awkward atmosphere.
Upon hearing his comment, Jean let go of him and covered her face with her hands, an act that seemed strange to Kurt and Kitty. She then shrugged. Rogue had a mocking smile.
"That was.... incredible," Rogue said.
"Yes! It was just like, like...."
"Star Wars!" Kurt finished Kitty’s sentence.
"Yes! You looked like Qui-Gon Jinn," Kitty said.
That was another thing he found out. Apparently some films from his other world existed in this place, only with different actors. He was not happy about that at all. Star Wars was one of those films.
"How did you do it?" Rogue said, drawing everyone’s attention.
"What can I say. I am a Muta...businessman. Business runs in my veins," he said, quickly correcting the word he had almost used.
He burst out laughing and continued driving to the shopping center, which was only 10 minutes away, a time that passed like sand through his fingers.
Once they entered, they started exploring the place from store to store. Sometimes the girls bought clothes, which took a certain amount of time.
Once they had a lot of bags, they gave them to Kurt, who would go to a secluded place with them and teleport back to the mansion to drop them off, and then return.
When they went to the arcade, he discovered that Kurt was an expert dancer, and when he challenged him, Kurt ended up eating dust.
In the shooting games it goes without saying that everyone else ended up completely outmatched.
They had spent a good amount of time in the arcade discovering that in some games they each had a lot of aptitude: Kurt with dancing, Rogue with driving games, Kitty with fighting games, and Jean was very good at bowling.
At one point they had separated.
Walking along, he approached a certain machine that was hated and despised by many people. For a few seconds he looked at it and saw its prizes, which were very uninteresting.
"You had better go play another game. This one is not very nice, to say the least," Rogue appeared next to him and looked at the machine with pure hatred.
"No need. I have got it all under control. Pokémon magic is on my side. Tell me which one you want?"
She remained silent for a few seconds until she finally reacted and pointed to a certain plushie.
"Really? That one?"
"You asked and I answered."
Shrugging, he inserted a token and through the reflection of the machine, he saw that some people were staring at him.
"The Claw!"
That comment sent a shiver down his spine due to the incredible synchronization they achieved when pronouncing those words.
He moved the claw to the plushie and pressed the button, and with great luck he got it out on the first try, surprising everyone.
When he gave the plushie to Rogue and turned his head, Kitty was looking at him like a predator looks at its prey. They were so close that their noses were touching.
"I want one, give me one, I demand one."
"Which one do you want?" When he asked, without looking, she pointed toward the machine.
Seeing what she was pointing at, he saw it was the dragon from Legend of Spyro, which made him put on an expressionless face. ’It was to be expected that she wanted that one.’
Approaching the machine, he inserted another token and in a matter of seconds got the plushie.
Just as he was about to give it to her, the plushie was no longer in his hand. Looking ahead, he saw Kitty holding it and squeezing it against her chest with considerable enthusiasm.
He envied the plushie for a few seconds.
He felt someone touch his shoulder, and when he turned around, he saw Kurt giving him a look of hope and pleading.
Sighing, he walked over to the machine and waited for Kurt to tell him which one.
"I want you to bring me my greatest enemy. Him," Kurt said, approaching like a sergeant, touching the glass of the machine and speaking the last word in a deep voice, pointing toward a certain stuffed animal.
"Okay," he said, and repeating the same process he had used for Kitty, he gave the stuffed animal to Kurt.
"Finally, I have got you in the palm of my hand," Kurt said, holding the Sonic wolf plushie in his hand.
’It is good that it is a plush toy and not a mini-sun. I have to prevent it from getting together with Doc in the future.’
He felt someone grab his hand and when he looked in a certain direction he saw it was Jean giving him the Puss in Boots face. Unable to resist so much cuteness he gave in and went back to concentrating on the machine.
"Alter, how do you do it? How can you get the stuffed animals out on the first try?" Kurt asked.
When he heard the first word he felt a chill at how he had been called, but then he remembered that Alter meant Friend in German.
"I am the one they use as a guide to obtain a power they desire," he replied with a very good German accent, making everyone look at him strangely, but he ignored it.
’I sense a disturbance in the strength of the references,’ Jean thought, looking around and finding nothing, then shrugging and looking at a certain plush toy from a film she liked very much. She turned around and gave him the Puss in Boots eyes again.
"Okay, Jean, which one?" She pointed to a certain plushie that when he saw it, he had a soft smile upon recognizing it.
He repeated the same process but this time the claw got stuck for a few brief seconds before returning to normal and giving him the plushie, with an extra surprise. "Great, double prize!" He took out the plushies and gave them to Jean. "Here is your Fawkes and your extra plushie."
Jean took the Phoenix from the Harry Potter film and gave him a beautiful smile.
When she took the second plushie, she smiled again and then gave it to him, which he accepted with a smile.
Leaving the arcade, they went to a place to eat and spent the day laughing. But in a moment of carelessness on Rogue’s part, he took some of her DNA without either of them seeing him.
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