The lights right above the stage turned on with a loud enough click to startle the whole theater into silence. The show clearly began, but the Magician was not on stage. Before the public was an empty tall chair and a glass of water on the ground beside it. The scene set by the previous act as the Magician's ideal environment.

"There are as many types of magic in my land of work as there are trees in our utopia world," Marion's voice narrated from somewhere to the right of the theater. Everyone looked that way, but their charismatic Magician was nowhere in sight. "This second act is dedicated to one of my favorite branches. Mentalism," her voice's sound moved to the left, but once again, she wasn't there either.

"When mere magic is making it seem like you are capable of doing the impossible, mentalism takes it a step further by actually doing the least probable of things," the Magician's voice sounded much clearer now, from right above the audience. A general gasp passed as everyone leant their heads back and realized a flying carpet was waving in the air, and on it, the Magician sat, cross legged, speaking to them. Timely, the camera moved upwards and one light above the crowd switched on to properly reveal Marion.

Stephen didn't gasp, he simply smiled. For however long this show lasted, he was ready to let his guard down and pretend he couldn't guess any of the tricks before they happened.

"When it comes to magic, the audience always asks how something was done, but a mentalist gets asked instead how they knew something," the Magician spoke calmly when all of a sudden, she snapped her fingers -left hand- and the carpet disappeared into a swarm of soap bubbles. She fell through and the crowds' gasp almost panicked everyone into getting up, until they realized the woman was not falling at all, she landed, soundlessly on air and walked on it without a single worry.

The air turned to unseen steps and she climbed down carefully the first one, continuing her speech as if she wasn't performing some spectacular miracle.

"Cards, numbers, your deepest darkest secret... Now don't get me wrong, I am not Professor X," she earned the giggles of her audience, "but mentalism is scarcely about true mind reading. The mentalism you will see tonight will be a trip into your own imagination, a challenge to your creativity and a large display of misdirection, psychological subtleties and hypnosis, by the end of which, it will appear that anyone can do anything as long as their mind is in the right place. Even walk on air."

The Magician walked down the invisible stairs until she floated right above the front row. Then, she prepared herself with a sharp inhale and jumped on the stage, turning around promptly to finish her speech and bow in the greeting applause.

"Welcome back to the greatest magic show of all time and as always I am your humble host, The Magician," she opened her arms wide embracing the warm welcome of her audience. Stephen was one of the claps in the crowd.

"Can you believe it's been a week already since our first act? I can't. Honestly didn't even have the time to get used to the idea of this thing being a success, far less answer the interview calls I've been getting. So I hope none of you mind that I've decided to invite these very determined reporters who were about to freeze themselves and their cameras in the rain, which will start outside during our show, all to get their scoops."

The Magician's gesture and mention of the reporters had one theater white light plastered on them briefly, before it faded away again. Her own lights on the stage danced in a fade from coldness to warmth, from white to yellow.

"But because tonight is special, it is only normal that I am also especially generous with allowing us to have some truly remarkable guests amongst us. So apart from our little crew of camera people in the corner, I would like to thank this show's silent benefactor, Ms. Emma Frost." In a round of applause induced by the Magician herself, the theater lights shone down on Emma, seated about ten chairs away from Stephen, on the first row.

She flashed a purely white smile, raised from her seat and waved briefly, bowing back towards the crowd behind her. As she sat back down, the Magician took a deep enough inhale to bring the attention back to herself, promptly.

"Ms. Frost's wonderful mutant ability has been the subject of a gamble between us. She thinks it's highly unlikely that a human, such as myself, would be able to read minds as quickly as her, to what I can only repeat what I told her that day," the Magician placed a dramatic pause, widening her enthusiastic grin to the public, "my job is making the impossible, possible. And how else can I convince my mind of such a thing if not by studying the true magic users of this world?"

"My dear ladies, distinguished gentlemen and formidable mysteries, for your consideration and to my deepest honor," dramatic pauses helped the Magician look rather distinguished in her black and white costume, "it is my pleasure to announce that amongst us tonight stands the greatest sorcerer, the protector of your dimension, none other than the formidable Dr. Strange!"

Light shone above Stephen, blinding him for a moment, while the thunderous applause fitted the reverence the Magician took towards his seat. He waved awkwardly to this unexpectedly warm welcome; he surely had been rather stupid for allowing himself to forget that the world still saw him as a hero most of the time. To them, at least, he was someone of valor.

The light turned off and the Magician straightened up, grinning, "It must already be obvious that tonight is special. This time, it won't be about me showing off my tricks. You already know what I am capable of and I don't have to make a stark first impression anymore. No, tonight is about you." When that characteristic click of lights being turned on sounded again, bright white light fell over the entirety of the theather's audience.

Stephen watched as the Magician's eyes focused on each and every face there, systematically fast, trying to glimpse at as many people as she could in a very short time. Staggered by a sudden weakness in her knees, she took a shaking step back, which fortunately, in the eyes of the masses, she covered up rather fast with a magic trick: her right hand reached down and the water from the glass raised until it formed the "wand" everyone knew she used.

Stephen eyed the staff from a different perspective though. While he had no idea what Marion really was, he knew for certain that staff was an authentic mystical item.

"Because what is a mentalist without an audience?" The Magician clicked her staff on the ground of the stage and all eyes were back on her while the lights above her public slowly faded away, to restore the darkness.

"Magic is all about diverting attention and mentalism especially is about controlling it." Stephen leant back in seat, to listen to her words. Debunking her own tricks before performing, he noted. She's bold.

Her moment of marcid presence was overshadowed by her glamorous showrunning. "How will I be reading your minds tonight, you may wonder? I will be needing volunteers throughout all the basic mentalism tricks I will be exemplifying for your entertainment on stage. And obviously, for the observant eyes of our dear reporters present, my selection will be as random as it gets."

Establishing as false what she will do, Stephen analyzed silently. This is going to be amusing.

"Though I am absolutely blind up here while the lights above you are out, I will be covering my eyes such," she lifted her left hand and covered her closed eyes with it. "Then with my impossibility to predict where my cards will land, I will throw as many as the number of volunteers I need for each trick towards you." The Magician moved her hand aside and smiled, "Whoever the card lands on, consider yourself picked. As easy as that. But!"

Her tone abruptly rose, and just as abruptly returned to her amusing enthusiasm, "Before we dive into our homage to mentalism, everyone please reach under your seats where you will find a pen and a paper. On that paper, right now, I need each and every one of you to write one single capital letter. Any letter. Just make sure it is from the English Alphabet." The Magician waited for a moment, hearing several papers being grabbed.

Stephen took his own pen and paper as well. He thought for just about a second before he noted down his own initial as the capital letter.

"Once you are done, fold the paper and keep it. We'll be needing them for our final trick tonight, when we all would have guessed the future," the Magician grinned knowingly. "Now," her tone raised again, "for our first trick..."

The Magician kicked the chair a bit further beside her with her wand and it turned, right there and then, into a pile of playing cards, collapsing onto the floor. However, just as fast, Marion circled the end of her cane gently around the empty glass. The glass stuck to the side of the wand and slid up until, without bending forward, she grabbed it. Pulling it with her left hand away from the pile of cards made all of them follow, as if attached with a string.

At that point, the Magician had released her wand -the cane remained standing all on its own, perpendicular to the ground. Her right hand, now free, followed the cards as they ordered themselves into piling on top of the glass and she gave them a push. The right hand clapped over the left without a single sound of breaking glass, without any form of blockage between her hands, flatly pressed.

The glass and the cards seemed to have disappeared and watching that, Stephen's scarf tickled his chin, excited as well.

The Magician never stopped smiling and after a short moment of suspense, she opened her hands and soap bubbles burst out of her palms, towards the laughing and clapping public. She laughed along, took the cane back in her right hand and dug her left into the inner pocket of her black jacket. From there, she took out the full deck of cards.

"What did I tell you about attention diversion...?" she teased, gaining a few more chuckles before she flicked her wrist and spread the cards in a fan.

"Alright, for the first trick I will need two people up for playing a little game of cards," as she spoke, two cards stood out of her deck. She kicked them out with a flick and as they flew before her, she pocketed the rest of the deck and caught the two cards back in her just-freed left hand, showing them off to the public so they could see those were the two jokers.

The Magician threw the two jokers towards the crowd with the flare of spinning, even though the entire strength and speed of her throw was from her wrist. Closing her eyes was a jest made for effect. Each time she threw a card, her cane hit the floor of the stage. Noise came from the audience, being signals that the cards did manage to land somewhere: one in an old lady's hair, the other in a little boy's lap.

"Can the two chosen darlings stand up, please? The ushers will help you reach the stage. Now please, let's give them an encouraging round of applause, I promise, the first trick is the easiest one, no need to be nervous," the Magician encouraged them with a jolly laugh before she even saw them. She started the round of applause and carried it until the ushers helped the two on stage.

First to run towards her was the child and the Magician did not hesitate a second to remove her hat and bow before the boy. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance..."

"Alfie Patel," he introduced himself.

"How old are you, young master Patel?"

"I'm eight," Alfie answered proudly. "Can I keep the card?"

"Of course," the Magician winked. "I have like a thousand decks of cards anyway." Straightening up didn't last, because she bowed with respect towards the old woman as well.

"My name is Aimee Burke and I am sixty-three years old."

"A glorious age, madame," the Magician smiled and walked to stand between the two, facing the public. "Please, let's cheer for Alfie and Aimee, the icebreakers of tonight's show."

The applause broke out and just when it started fading again, Alfie looked up and pulled on the Magician's sleeve, "What are we supposed to do?"

"Good question, young master Patel," the Magician smiled and walked around the boy. She clicked her cane around three times before she stopped, reached her left hand into her right inner jacket pocket and pulled out a black scarf, which, once thrown, put between her stage guests a table.

"Oh, my," Aimee's hand went over her heart as she took an amused step back in the thunderous encouraging applause of the public.

The table was unfortunately too tall for Alfie to reach it and too low for Aimee to use it without gaining back pain. To that, the Magician frowned, "My, my, what an irresponsible host I am. I forgot the chairs. But unfortunately, much like my stairs, I have managed to make the majority of these seats invisible before the show, hence the little delay. But, if you would trust me..." She nodded towards Aimee, "You can sit down, the chair is right behind you."

The Magician also extended her hand to Alfie, "You can jump and climb right onto the chair next to you as well." At this point, her encouragement has been spoken under the blue hue of the lights on the stage. "Let's do this at one," she started a countdown, seeing as neither of her guests were too certain about this invisible thing, "two... three."

Aimee sat down, Alfie jumped up and neither of them got hurt because Aimee sat comfortably on what felt like a solid surface -though it looked invisible to everyone else- and Alife landed with his knees on that promised invisible chair.

Sighs of relief riddled amongst the applause.

"Settle down, settle down," the Magician laughed, gesturing towards the audience with her left hand, after it let go of Alfie. "The true trick didn't even start. Because you see, what you are about to witness is me, telepathically transmitting selectively a game of 'guess my card'. Complicated words, right? Well, let me put it simpler then..."

The Magician took out her pocketed deck of cards. "I will divide this deck on the table. One half for Alfie and one half for Aimee. They will be allowed to shuffle their own cards, without looking at them however, not until they've both picked one card from their half. That card, they will be allowed to look at before placing it face down on the table. Their task is to guess the card the other has just seen. It's a one in fifty-one chance, no big deal, right?"

Several people in the audience joined her laughter. "But the odds will change once I place my left hand on their head. Then, that person will be mentally connected to my abilities and should be able to guess the cards with ease. Let's do a round without my intervention."

With an intricate dexterity, the Magician split her deck in half, placing the smaller piles in front of her guests. Both of them chose to shuffle their cards before putting them back down and picking up the first from their piles. Alfie looked at his quickly then put it down, next to the bigger pile, Aimee looked at hers and did the same.

"Ladies first," Alfie called and the Magician smiled at Aimee.

"9 Clubs?" Aimee said, filled with uncertainty after a short moment of thinking.

"I will ask that you lift up the card and show it to the public after a guess, no matter if the answer is correct or not," the Magician blurted in some directions. "And for those in the back rows, we have a screen above the stage which will also be showing the cards up-close. Alfie, please..."

Sadly, Alfie lifted his card and showed it to the public. Without seeing it, the Magician narrated exactly what the audience saw: "Queen of Hearts"

Alfie didn't guess Aimee's card either on his turn. Now, they both picked up another card, looked at it, and placed it next to the other. "It is time to prove that mentalism can be transmitted," the Magician narrated, stepping behind Aimee's invisible chair and placing her left hand on top of her head, gently. The Magician locked eyes with Alfie.

"Do you feel anything, Aimee?" The Magician asked.

"I feel nothing."

"Are you thinking of a card then, other than your own?"

"Yes..."

"Which card is that?"

"3 of Spades," Aimee answered, more confidently, and Alfie immediately showed his card to the public, cheering at the correct guess.

"One correct guess could just be luck," the Magician reminded them with a smile. But the game continued and each time she touched one of the player's heads, they knew exactly the card of the other, each time she did not, no correct guesses happened.

This trick may have lasted just five minutes, but it ended in tumultuous applause while the ushers guided the guests back to their seats. It was when the silence settled again that under the violet light of the stage, the Magician started delineating again, "What we see and what we hear make up our reality. In the spirit of 'we are what we eat' I propose a different, more universal phrase... We are what we consume."

Her cane hit the table and it turned to smoke which she stepped through. "Our minds react naturally to our environments and are sensitive to subtext and suggestions. If a mind hears long enough that they are worthless, they will unfortunately start believing it, but if someone tells themselves in the mirror every morning that they got this, well, the mind will believe it too. So what if I told you all that you could fly?"

The pause laid confusion over her public, but the Magician's smile only grew. She was getting cocky. 

"How many times would your mind need to hear that you can fly, before it truly registers that you do have the ability to fly? It is very easy to fly, that's why you can definitely do it, so please, stand up right now." The Magician snapped her fingers and one light turned on above the public so they could see each other and she could see them.

"Stand up and that will make you fly because you can fly and it is easy to do so," she repeated almost the same thing until people started getting up. The first person to stand immediately floated off the ground, one meter above their seat, where their shout turned to panic.

One by one, everyone in the theater stood up and everyone started floating, flying above their chairs, even Stephen Strange. That feeling of imponderability took him off guard. He felt no magic whatsoever, nor did he struggle to understand how exactly Marion was doing this. 

For a brief moment, they locked eyes and she almost seemed bashful to see just how impressed her truly special guest was by this rather easy trick.

"This is just how easy minds can bend to the right suggestion." The Magician smacked the ground twice with her wand: the first hit shut all the lights and the second turned on a truly dim one so the reporters could see that everyone, confused as they were, got seated back. No one was floating anymore when even the dim light faded and the single illumination source was that of the stage's dark purple.

The show continued in this manner: a mentalism classic trick explained and performed, followed by a break. The Magician presented the guessing of numbers, the hypnosis, even the book test. By the end of these tricks bringing homage to the concept of mentalism, she had brought to that stage 25 people.

"Remember the letters I made you write at the beginning of this show?" The Magician asked, grabbing out of thin air a new deck of cards. "It is time to make use of them and reveal the greatest trick a mentalist can put on stage," a dramatic pause ensued, "predicting the future."

"We won't predict too far into the future though," she quickly reassured her enthusiastic public. "We'll only predict what will happen in about two hours, how is that? And to pull this off, I will need a whole deck of you," the Magician lifted her neck. "Fifty four people. Fifty four random letters. When you get your cards, I will need you all to come to the stage from the last line of the theater, in the descending order of your seat numbers."

After making sure the directions were clear, the dim light lit over the public again, just as the Magician threw the deck at them. Cards broke apart from it and fell all over the place, chaotically.

"In all chaos there is calculation," her ghost-like mumble sounded while people claimed their cards. In almost no time, fifty-four people were lining up, entering the stage one by one, Stephen was one of them, the very last one in the line, while Ward Meachum was the first.

"Show us your cards!" The Magician called from the side and all fifty four people showed their playcards first.

Gasps from the remaining audience were imminent because they've all been sorted to stand in ascending order, by symbol and by color, with jokers at each end.

"Now, your letters please...," the Magician didn't bathe too much in the ovations, because this was it. This was the part she was giddy for, looking forward to since the very beginning of her show... No, rather since the beginning of her stay in this world. 

One by one, not in order, the papers unfolded. Words started forming... words formed a sentence and the eyes of the reporters, as well as the public, widened, while they read out:

"CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT DANNY RAND AND SIERRA HARSS"

"What?!" Ward Meachum exclaimed first.

author's note:    you know the drillllll here

What's your rating of this Act of the Magician's show?? You can be as descriptive as you want to, just rateee

also, stuff is moving fastt 👀👀👀
what are the theories so far?
cause i dropped so many hints and clues with this one gosh