<div class="floatleft">(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_x0qA5RDeTuU/TC8AuWK5sSI/AAAAAAAAAX8/EZFU5m85GKA/s1600/2009_Undisputed_3_18.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Alexei Mikhalev (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=250173.msg12408256#msg12408256)<br/><strong>City | Date | Time:</strong>Baltimore / August 13th, 2017 / 9:00 PM<br/><strong>Tagging | Mentioning:</strong>Jacqueline 'Jackie' Fawkes (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=250173.msg12386147#msg12386147), Closed<br/><strong>Content:</strong>Music Festival!<br/><hr/>There was a trick to being a successful escape artist. The thing was, nobody actually believed in the supernatural, and unless someone had actually encountered one of the Evolved, they never really let the idea that someone with 'superpowers' could exist. Sure, they saw it on the news and they knew it was happening, but like everything else that was big and scary in the world, it was too far away for them to give any more than a damn and maybe a quick discussion over dinner or, more likely, a rant on some internet forum or another. The fact remained that, so long as it didn't strike close to home, people just didn't give a shit.<br/><br/>Just like when they watched a man slip his hand out of a pair of cuffs, get himself out of a locked safe or whatever it was that his act called for, folks just didn't give a crap. Sure, they would watch, gasp and make appropriate noises and then at the end toss a moderate to small amount of money his way and then move on with their life, their mind trying to figure out just how it happened for precisely five minutes, and then, giving up, went on with their oppressively boring little lives. They didn't care if it had taken a man thirty years to get that good, or if his hand simply... moved through the restraints. All they knew was that he could do it, and it was nice.<br/><br/>And Alexei didn't really mind at all. It was the reason why he was still employed. And not found, caught and extradited back to his country of origin where he was still wanted for, among other things, killing a man and escaping from prison. The killing had been an accident, a complete fluke, but did anyone care to ask? No. So why should he?<br/><br/>Such were the thoughts going through his mind as he stepped up to the stage. Lights were flashing and flickering, people were shouting, just at the start of what was starting to look like it was going to be a kickass music festival. Most of his team had stayed in San Francisco, but when the offer came in for one of their acts to be the starter of the festival, it was the kind of exposure, not to mention cash, that they just couldn't pass up. He was Yuri, the Silent Czar. He didn't pick the name, but it worked. He never spoke in his shows, and all that he had to do was look menacing, show off his tattoos and muscles and get out of stuff. Sure, there was a bit more showmanship to it than that, but that was about it. He was good at it. He could have been the best, but being the best meant a bit more exposure than he was willing to endure. His team knew that he was an escaped convict from outside the country, and even managed to look past that, trusting him and accepting him into their little family of misfits and extraordinaires.<br/><br/>How would they treat him if they found out that he was one of those Evolved, though? He raised an eyebrow as a spotlight slammed right into him, blinding him for a few seconds. He knew what to do then. He raised his hands and, even though he couldn't see it, the swell of music from the massive sound system was overwhelmed by the cheers from the crowd. He was the opening act. He wasn't what everyone was here to see, but he was one of the attractions. He was wearing a white tank top and a pair of loose fitting jeans, bottomed out by a pair of dark sneakers. It fit with his character. The two that had joined him for the trip to Baltimore, Chris and Gina, stepped on stage behind him, having agreed to be his assistants. Chris was wearing clothes matching his, and so was Gina, except her tank top was a great deal shorter than both of her comrades, and a great deal tighter.<br/><br/>"Ladies and gentlemen!" Chris started, his voice booming over the sound system as Alexei tried to stand in the background, looking as menacing as possible," Welcome to Baltimore's greatest Music Festival yet. To start us off, I'm proud to present the last of the line of Czars from Russia, Yuri Mihailovichi!" Every kid who half-assed their way through school knew that every last one of of the Russian imperial family had been murdered in one way or another by the Bolsheviks, but people around here like to live in imaginative fantasy. Maintaining his stoic expression, he raised a closed fist, silently greeting the chorus of cheers that came from his name being announced. He wondered if any of these people had heard of him before today.<br/><br/>"Tonight, he will be performing his most impressive - and most dangerous - feat of escapology yet. Everybody's heard of Houdini's Chinese Water Torture Cell. For those of you who haven't, take a good look," The setup was impressive, he had to admit. This was their first time on a national scale event. It had to be.<br/><br/>"First, our good Czar will be chained by his hands and feet. Ten people from the audience will be picked at random to make sure that everything is genuinely unbreakable. No illusions here, folks," Ten were selected at random from the crowd, their names presented and the crowd egged them on. Most had never heard of the Chinese Water Torture Cell, but it was an exciting name.<br/><br/>"Gina," Chris turned to his female companion," Will you truss the Czar up please?"<br/><br/>"It'll be my pleasure, Chris!" Gina said with enthusiasm, pulling a selection of chains and manacles from a nearby chest. Alexei pulled his shirt off and handed it to one of the contestants, a young woman who had been eyeing him ever since she had stepped on stage. She looked almost giddy. Girls these days just loved themselves a bad boy. His hands were manacled and held up tight to his chest, held in place by chains connected to a brace that went around his waist, and also connected to manacles for his feet, keeping him from moving them more than a couple inches forward or backwards. The people on stage were called in to make sure that the chains themselves were real, the locks were operational and had no hidden jimmies and, last but not least, that he was carrying no keys or anything that could be used to get himself out. The aforementioned young woman was particularly thorough, and he rewarded that with a wry and subtle smile that was shown on the big screen of the stage.<br/><br/>"Next, he'll be connected to a stock, lifting him up by his feet," The stock was connected, and a small crane worked and lifted Alexei straight up off the ground, upside down. Pure porn to the bondage fetishists, he supposed. You had to hit as many niches as you could in this business. The people were called in again to check the integrity, before he was moved to the other side of the stage.<br/><br/>"And he'll be lowered, head first, into a tank full of water. The great Houdini needed 2 whole minutes to get himself free. Our Czar here tonight claims that he can do it in THIRTY SECONDS!" The crowd applauded that. The tank itself was made of glass and the people checked it was well, along with the locks that would be used to hold him in place once lowered it.<br/><br/>"Once he's down, a curtain will come down to close over it. Gina here will be looking inside the curtain to make sure that nothing's wrong. If anything does go wrong, I'll be here with a sledgehammer," He picked up the item," To break him out. No illusions here, folks. You ready Czar?"<br/><br/>Alexei gave him an upside-down thumbs up.<br/><br/>"Okay, Baltimore, ARE YOU READY?"<br/><br/>"YES!"<br/><br/>"Count with me! ONE... TWO... THREE!"<br/><br/>And down he went, soaked in half a second submerged in the freezing water. Gina had done her part in this a million times and she was done fastening the locks and bolts to everyone's satisfaction, making it very visible and obvious what she was doing, in under ten seconds, which resulted in him having just over twenty seconds from when the curtain came down, to get out.<br/><br/>Piece of cake.<br/><br/>It came down, and his mind was already loose. His body felt like it was sensing a million different static shocks a second as his feet slipped through the stock. The chains slipped through his body and he then slipped through them, and the ground of the tank and the stage itself in less than a second, so that by the time that Gina looked under the curtain, he was already gone, his secret safe. Down underneath the stage he went, flipping through the air to land on his hands and knees. Without a second to lose, literally, he jumped up from the ground and ran as fast as he could to the outside of the stage, his body now letting every kind of light through. He slipped through the walls of the stage, all but invisible in the murky lighting, and even if he wasn't, all eyes were glued on the stage and the fallen curtain, as the crowd watched with baited breath, expecting him to get out, and only the smallest of hopes that he would fail. It would make for a more entertaining show, Alexei had to concede. It was why people were so fascinated with this kind of performance.<br/><br/>He jogged to the middle of the crowd where a huge pillar was holding the spotlights. He jumped up and climbed as quickly as he could, as he could already hear Chris counting down, and finally, when the stopwatch on the big screen hit 30, the curtain dropped, to reveal, to the open shock of everyone watching, an empty tank, with the chains and manacles coiled up at the bottom like a snake made of steel.<br/><br/>Alexei picked up a wireless microphone that had been planted about fifteen feet up on the pillar and flicked it on, putting it over his ear and adjusting the mic so that it was over his mouth as people were beginning to wonder where the Czar had gone.<br/><br/>"Dis is Bullshit!" His deep voice boomed over the sound system, and, on cue, the spotlight spun around the crowd for a few seconds before finding him," Who in de hell would watch something like thees?" The crowd looked up at him in a daze for a second or two before erupting in a thunderous applause. The stoic Russian didn't smile, but he raised a fist to the crowd. It was a good trick, he thought.<br/><br/>"Our Czar, ladies and Gentlemen," Chris said over from the stage," Welcome to the Festival!"<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Their part in the festival all but finished, the team was beginning to pack up the gear for the Chinese Water Torture Cell. Sure, they were expected to stick around and entertain the folks with some of their lesser tricks. Gina was an escape artist of some skill herself, and Chris was a great illusionist and something of a mentalist too, which was well complimented by his easy stage manner. And the stoic Russian would be seen getting out of a few chains and locks. But for the most part, the people had come to see music and dancing, and dammit, music and dancing would be what they saw.<br/><br/>The heavy lifting done, Alexei sat down on an empty crate and took a long sip from a beer that he was pretty sure he had been overcharged on. It was almost tepid, flat and he could have sworn that it was less than the 3.2 proof that it said on the bottle, but it sure as hell better than the tepid water that he had been chugging before. He had a nice bottle of proper Russian Vodka in his overnight bag, but that was going to be broken out later, and hopefully, with someone to share it with. Gina and Chris were in a relationship, and even though it was open, neither Gina nor Alexei had much interest in each other outside of wanting to learn secrets of the trade. Chris had come forward about some fun, but, try as he might have, Alexei never could... bend that way.<br/><br/>He tipped the last of the bottle into his mouth and placed it on the gravel ground beside his seat. Gina and Chris joined him, sitting on similar seats and passed him a thankfully cooler beer, and started talking about their upcoming gigs. Their performing Illusionist, Alison, was waiting for Chris to come back before she stepped up as a side attraction for a big fair in upstate Cali, and Alexei would be going back to San Fran where he was booked for a couple of performances with Gina and Beatrice, their fortune teller. Everyone helped out however they could. They were as close to family as any of them had.<br/><br/>Suddenly, one of the dancers from a troupe came over. Pretty in a spunky sort of way, she had the lithe, toned body of a dancer, short cropped hair and dazzling eyes that all seemed to be complemented by her British accent. Or at least Alexei thought it sounded like a British accent.<br/><br/>Chris was first on his feet to greet the newcomer," Hi, I'm Chris, this is Gina," Who raised an unenthusiastic hand in passing," And Ale... Yuri. The... you know, the Czar. Star of our show. Say hi Yuri," Trained to read the smallest indications in a human body, Chris knew that the Jackie, as she had introduced herself, had in fact come over to meet Alexei. He rose to his feet and offered his hand.<br/><br/>"A pleasure to meet you," He said, his heavy Russian accent making an appearance.