drawing a wild card (Felicity)

Felicity subtly moved her head back and forth, dodging both. She looked back at the cards, then plucked the one in the cabinet out. He could at least throw them well, though it was inherently not a very useful talent in the scheme of things. The card was laminated, and while professional poker players might use something like this, it didn't seem right for card tricks. At least, in her experience, people distrusted decks that weren't new. An unsealed deck could have been tampered with in any number of ways, so it was much easier to convince people that you were just that good with a sealed deck. She usually kept both on her. Bicycle, of course. One red, one blue.

She looked at it back and forth, then tucked it under her sweater, into her bra. Not an uncommon place, since it was pretty easy to palm cards from her shirt. "Most card magicians take out the wild cards for tricks, since some of the math-oriented ones require there to only be fifty-two cards. There's only a handful of tricks I know that use the jokers, actually.. er." she started to ramble, though she stopped herself. She had a different question to ask.

"Anyway, my question was whether you had any ideas on how to make my class more interesting. Now, mind you, there still has to be learning involved. I have enough card tricks to last the entire year, but if the rest of the staff asks how much you learned about Sense and Sensibility and you can only make suits change via telepathy, that doesn't help anyone and especially not myself. So the goal is keep the class engaging while also learning boring literature things. Any initial ideas?"

Felicity plucked the other card out of the wall, then shoved in in her shirt as well, then made little exploding gestures with her hands. At some point, in fact, she had transported the cards from her person to his back pockets. But how was a secret. It's magic.

"Check your back pocket."

Content, she thought over what he said. First of all, it wasn't sudoku, it was seppuku, and that sentence didn't even make any sense to her. She didn't mind rap, but she couldn't sing and could definitely not rap herself. She had no idea what a meme was in this context(it was a Dawkins thing, wasn't it?), and probably didn't want to ask. She had only spent a small amount of time on the internet, and it wasn't really her thing. At all. In fact, she avoided it. The internet was this way to, like.. track someone, in a way that would bypass her talents as an appearance shifter. She didn't like it, and didn't trust it much. Beyond minor email and other information uses, she preferred just taking out books to read.

"I suppose there are a few things I can try. It's somewhat of a challenge to make Shakespeare relatable, though it may be a lot easier since the general population of this school is.." she searched desperately for the right word. "exceptional. A lot of the things he describes could actually be reality here. I might be able to define it all in more fun to understand terms like," she prepares herself for this, thinking of the best section to summarize.

"then Ariel was like, 'dude, you said if I did everything you asked, you'll let me go early. Is that still a thing?' and Prospero replied, 'why don't you just shut the fuck up already you stupid magical fairy slave?'. Also, please don't tell anyone I keep cursing in front of you, I'll probably get in trouble."

"It takes a little rapport to make it in some places. If everyone doesn't instantly love you, then you get things like.." Felicity pointed towards where the gunk was. "that."

She nodded at his last comment. "Unfortunately, I don't think it would fly with administration, as much as I would love to. There's also the matter of the dryer parts that can't really be boiled down like that. Sans cursing, it might work for some things, but I'll have to come up with a more permanent solution eventually."

Their conversation had gone on for a while, and the cleaning had also taken an abnormally long amount of time. He must have been really bad at this. That meant it was a perfect punishment. If he tried again, he would have to do something a lot better than that. Felicity was still considering unscrewing all the bolts in his desk and chair to the absolute minimum they could be held together, so that when he came in the next morning they would all fall apart as soon as he touched them, but she figured that would be extremely unprofessional. She still didn't have tenure.

The hour mark was signaled, announcing release of class. The rest of the class had already gone, so it was just Joker who needed to leave. Although there were probably still a few more steps before it would be completely clean, he'd still spent probably half an hour poorly cleaning. He would know to pick someone else to try and prank.

"Go ahead, you have your next class to get to. I'll get this looking semi decent before my next class arrives. They'll have to suffer the smell, but it will keep them awake, at the very least." With that, Felicity stood up, gathering the papers on her desk again in a neat pile. She hadn't prepared at all, and this next class was a different grade. "If you need anything- advice or otherwise, I'll be around. Probably forever, if I can figure out immortality in the next 70 years. Although I can't really imagine what your life must have been like, I can empathize with being a troublemaker. Have a nice rest of your day."

Felicity laughed in spite of herself, then took on a far more serious persona for only the next line.

"I am not interested in underaged boys by any means."

Then, she clapped her hands together and smiled. "I can certainly tutor you, though. I don't know how ethical it would be to hang out with students, so I may not go that far, but based on your first couple of quiz grades, perhaps you need a little one on one time." The most ingenious way to improve test scores, perhaps. Some boys certainly focused better with a chest in front of them, but the point was to convey the information in such a way that it makes them more learned and cultured.

He may not understand it now, but assuming he lasts.. Joker will be better off with every culture class he takes. Learning more about different parts of the world always made one a more rounded person. Maybe he'd come to appreciate it in time, and maybe she could help.

"Now go on. I've got to cover this up before my next class gets here. I can talk with you more tomorrow."