Author's Foreword:
I've been tossing around this idea for a while now. Anyone who's familiar with the 'Operation: Zero Tolerance' storyline would have to admit that Marvel has left gaps in their accounting of the events. For those who are new to X-Men fandom, you may not have seen the comic version of this, so this might help you get more involved with the X-Men and their world as well as provide a reference for any other Jubilee fanfics that may refer to her role during Operation: Zero Tolerance.
I've adapted the entire storyline for prose, leaning heavily on the comics as a guide, and writing in my own version of what happened in between the pages of the comic books. I don't mean to infringe on any copyrights; the X-Men and Bastion and all the characters in it belong to Marvel. My thanks go out to Scott Lobdell for a good storyline featuring my favorite character. He wrote it, not me. I'm just trying to improve an un-improvably good story! Enjoy, and comments are appreciated! Issue notes and credits appear at the end of each chapter.Jaenelle Angelline
Chapter 1: Taken
The setting sun cast long dark shadows over the cold, sere landscape. High overhead, a private, heavily-armored plane cruised, its engines whining as the craft lost altitude. It curved downward on a steady decline toward a cluster of buildings set deeply into an icy glacier face. Its windows were brightly lit from within as the occupants and technicians worked inside.
A set of large doors opened toward the base of the complex of buildings, and the aircraft glided in and hovered above the floor as its landing gear extended, finally settling to the floor on its wheels. As it did so, a group of men raced toward the craft from one side of the hangar bay.
On the other side of the hangar bay, a short, grizzled man with the name 'Dr. Harper' embossed on the pen in the breast pocket of his lab coat watched the cruiser with a scowl. Bastion's private transport? Never a cause for celebration. Nevertheless, he settled his expression into one of bland politeness and started crossing the hangar deck to the aircraft.
This base, and several others across the globe, were part of an international task force with resources pooled from governments all over the world, all aimed at finding the 'final solution' to the 'mutant problem'. Their leader, Bastion, had never been known by any other name. He considered himself humanity's last hope, the last line of defense for humans against the growing numbers of mutants. In all fairness, he was firmly convinced that he was indeed the only one who could save the human race from being overcome and eventually enslaved by mutants.
Hitler was firmly convinced that the Jews needed to be eradicated, too. It didn't make him any more right than Bastion.
As Harper cleared the prow of the personal craft, a hatch opened downward from the side of the cruiser and steps extended to the hangar bay floor. A tall, spare figure, his face currently shadowed by the craft's exterior trappings, emerged from the rectangle of light at the top of the steps and started down, glancing once off to the side to see the shorter man waiting for him. "Instruct processing to work quickly, Harper. I want to be airborne with this hot cargo within the hour." His voice was deep, and deceptively smooth. When he spoke at higher volumes, that smoothness cracked, like ice over a frozen pond, to reveal his harsh, turbulent true voice, symbolic of the roiling emotions of the man called Bastion.
Harper was surprised. 'Cargo' was what they had taken to calling the mutants (live mutants were 'hot', the dead were 'cold') channeled through the other holding facilities to become permanent, lifelong residents of Bastion's 'internment camps' for mutants. Glorified prisons, actually, run by people who had no particular love of mutants, people Bastion had hand-picked himself for their sometimes violent anti-mutant sentiment. Just as Hitler had chosen his elite from those who felt the same way, Bastion's hatred for mutants was reflected in his chosen. The four men who were offloading the long, glass stasis tube from Bastion's personal craft were handling it with just enough carelessness to display their disdain for the occupant of the tube but not carelessly enough to provoke Bastion's wrath.
Harper raised his eyebrow. "'Hot cargo', Sir? You're saying you have a live one?" This was surprising. With all Bastion's vaunted disdain for mutants, why would he be bringing one here, to his personal base, in his personal craft? Bastion had said on more than one occasion that the only good mutant was a dead one.
"For the moment, Harper, for the moment." He stopped the men offloading the stasis tube, and Harper looked into it. Floating serenely in the liquid oxygen within the tube, asleep from whatever drug Bastion had given her, oblivious to her surroundings and everything else, was a young Chinese girl, maybe her early or mid-teens, dressed in a long yellow trench coat.
Bastion placed a proprietary hand on the glass top of the coffin-like tube. "Her name is Jubilation Lee. I came across her while investigating Emma Frost's connection to Charles Xavier's mutant underground. After she's processed, I'll be taking her to the lab."
Harper stared at the silent form inside the tube. She looked so young, so innocent…how could she possibly be of use to Bastion? Bastion hated children only slightly less than he hated mutants. And with this one being both…Bastion would normally have had the mutant child disposed of as quickly as possible, as he had already done. Unless he had a special use for her. Harper felt a sudden irrational surge of pity for the young girl, who would shortly be waking up disoriented, in Processing, to become one of Bastion's mutant captives, and to end her life as his prisoner. And when Bastion had gotten what he needed from her, she'd be channeled to the mutant holding cells, there to become a plaything for the guards. She was pretty, and young. It wouldn't take long…Harper shuddered, and said softly, "And may heaven help her."
Bastion looked narrowly at the shorter man, staring at the girl in the stasis tube. Sometimes he felt that Harper was perhaps not as dedicated as he was to the cause of human salvation from the mutant disease sweeping the planet…especially when the mutant problem came packaged as attractively as this one. His guards would be waiting to pounce on her as soon as Bastion gave her to them as a 'reward' for faithful service. What did Bastion care? She was less than human, a lab rat to be used and disposed of. He spoke sharply. "I have it on the highest authority, old man, that if Heaven wanted anything to do with her, they would never have made her a mutant." He stepped back, waving the men carrying the tube away, and they proceeded down the hallway toward the section of medical wing called 'Processing'.
"Boy, for a little thing, she's heavy," grunted one of the men, the one carrying the front of the tube.
The man carrying the bottom of the tube snapped, "Who cares? She's a filthy mutie, just like the rest of them. Just get her to processing, the sooner she's out of my sight the better." The four men paused and waited for a set of automatic doors to open, and carried the tube into a white-tiled medical lab. "Hey, Doc, we got a hot one here," the second man said. "The Big Man wants this one ready to go in an hour to another lab. Put a rush on it, okay?" he hefted the tube on an empty table and waited for the white-coated doctor to approach.
"So what do we have here?" the doctor hmm'ed as he attached drainage hoses to the stasis tube and waited for the liquid oxygen-and-sleeping-agent to drain from the tube so he could open it. "My. Young, and pretty. What's the Big Man going to do with this one?"
The second man shrugged. "Dunno. He just said he wanted to have her back at the other labs in an hour. The sooner we finish with this one the better. He goes away and we get left alone again."
The hoses sucked out the last of the narcotic-laced liquid oxygen from the tube and the glass lid retracted. The doctor, with a careless speed borne of long practice, swept up a pair of sharp surgical scissors and began to cut the voluminous wet folds of the yellow coat off. Shortly thereafter, the remains of the deep red uniform she wore came off, the same way (the material had been torn in some fight with something apparently much bigger than herself, and she had a gash on her right calf, as well as one shoe missing) and stripped her down to her underclothing. Then he lifted her out of the tube, dropping her on top of one of the tables, as the men removed the stasis tube, and picked up a barber's electric shears. With practiced strokes, he ran the shears over her head, trimming the hair off close to her scalp, leaving only stubble behind, in a buzz cut reminiscent of the hairstyles affected by those in a military camp.
Or a concentration camp.
Next to go was her underclothing. The sight of her nudity didn't bother him, or the second man, but the first man and the two others who had carried the tube were visibly affected. The doctor gave them a withering look before returning to his work. "She's a mutant. Not worth our time except to make sure she don't spread her contagion among the rest of us." He did a quick but thorough physical examination, marking things down on a chart, then indicated the two men. "All right. Take her to the showers and make sure she gets a chemical bath. No telling what kind of lice or filth she might have on her skin." He held out a syringe and a thin green plastic surgical dress. "After you're done, wake her with this, give her the drape and bring her back here. We'll get her in the tube and she'll be ready to go."
They wheeled the table out of the white tiled laboratory and down a short hallway to another tiled room, this time with showerheads protruding from the wall in small, narrow shower cubicles. They dumped her onto the floor in this room, under one of those showerheads, and left, closing the door. Once outside, they pressed a button, and the somnolent figure in the middle of the room was temporarily obscured by a light mist. Not of water; those showerheads were connected to massive tanks of chemicals, which would 'sterilize' the person being bathed, removing all bacteria and organisms from the skin. Once the mist had ceased, they opened the door and went back in. The first man jabbed the needle carelessly into the girl's arm, and depressed the plunger. "Come on, now, wake up."
Consciousness returned almost instantly, almost as fast as it had fled. Jubilee felt something cold under her, cold and hard; her next realization was that she was nude, and that there was someone behind her. She sprang up off the floor, her reflexes honed by her experiences with the X-Men, and particularly with Logan; shoot first, ask questions later. And since she was a living weapon…
Her paffs caught the two men by surprise. The concussive force behind her pyrotechnics knocked the two of them back into the flimsy shower partition behind them, taking that out as well as their consciousness. With no obstruction between her and the open door, she felt acutely the draft of cooler air that made her shiver, and almost as an afterthought Jubilee grabbed the green plastic dress and shrugged it on. It was way too short, and she could feel the air wafting up under the dress…but she ignored it and stepped cautiously out into the hallway.
Pounding footsteps caught her attention, and she saw coming up on one side, two heavily-armored men carrying guns. Big guns. Not as big as Bishop's, but certainly close! She reacted, flinging paffs their way, blasting them backwards. "Three words, chump: 'back' and 'off'!"
The armor they were wearing had to be really heavy, because the force of her blasts combined with their weight blasted them all through another set of walls. Jubilee thought about the quality of a place where the walls were that easy to break…and then realized that this was in her favor. Easier to break out of. "This can't be good," she told herself as she climbed bare-footed over the rubble and approached the two still bodies. "One minute I'm runnin' away from Mondo—or what passes for Mondo—and I bump into somebody called Bastion, and the next I wake up here. Wherever here is. And don't get me started on the buzz cut!" she yelled behind her at the first two men she'd taken out. She liked her hair the way it had been; it had taken her a while to grow her hair out to that length. And now it was gone, and she probably looked like a boy!
Well. Enough with the feminine vanity. She'd figure out how to get out first, get back to the Academy…and then figure out what to do with her appearance. This had to be a bad dream. Maybe she would wake up soon. Or not. "I could use my way-cool pyrotechnic powers to fight my way out, but there's no way to know how many of these guys are here." She bent, picked up one of the guns, and inspected it. "As much as I hate to give Emma credit for anything, she's always drilled into our heads to make do with what's on hand. Which means since you guys ain't usin' these weapons…" she inspected it, finding the readout that gave the charge status of the energy gun (guns she was thankfully familiar with, given her history with the X-Men) and slipped her finger in the trigger. Then she looked around. Man oh man, look at this place, she mused. I just woke up and freaked out and that's always when my powers do the greatest damage. She sighed. I mean, it's not like I care. A low moan from one of the armored men caught her ear, and she looked at him, feeling slightly guilty. Much. "Don't try and make me feel bad…"
"…it wasn't my idea to be kidnapped!"
In the control room, Bastion watched the events unfolding. He had expected his guards to be able to take her out; instead, with what looked like a minimum of effort, she had taken them out, picked up the gun, hefted it and checked it with what seemed like a long familiarity with the things, and was now hesitating by the body of the fallen soldier. He revised his plans for her slightly; he would have to keep her confined, isolated, off-balance; the minute she even had an inkling of where she was, she would take that knowledge and run with it. Watching her also confirmed what he had only guessed at until now; she was, had to be, one of the X-Men, or at least one in training. A mutant child-terrorist-in-training. He had a sudden terrible vision of her walking into a school full of normal humans, opening that long yellow trenchcoat and revealing a bomb, and setting it off in the middle of the school. Grimly thankful that she wasn't going to be able to escape (reinforcements were on the way) he continued to watch her on the monitor. She turned and started to walk away, saying disdainfully, "Next time, get a job at the mall." The fallen soldier behind her gave a weak, gasping cough, and his breath rattled in his chest once before going silent. Bastion watched dispassionately. Possibly a concussion, perhaps he'd hit the wall hard enough to kill him. Bastion didn't care. He was just another soldier, another casualty of the war between human and mutants.
What did catch his attention was the girl. She sighed, turned back, and actually put the purloined gun down as she placed her hands on the unbreathing soldier's chest. "Who am I kidding?" she muttered to herself as she started giving the soldier CPR. Bastion leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers before his face, contemplating the scene unfolding on the screen. "Fascinating," he said to himself as he watched.
Jubilee pumped the man's chest a few times. "C'mon, c'mon, I'm on the clock here," she muttered. "Breathe already! Look…" she leaned in, held his nose, and breathed into his lungs. "You wanna…" one breath, "…go around…" another breath, "…killin' people…" breath, "That's your choice." She sat back on her heels and started compressing his chest again, thanking God that she had muscles developed by training in the Danger Room; that red-and-purple armor weighed a lot. "…but don't think for a fraction of a second…" more compressions, "…that you're gonna make a murderer outta me!"
Bastion's eyebrows were climbing into his hairline. "She has to know that by staying there she's exposing herself to capture by reinforcements. Yet…she remains?" He pondered that as the events continued to unfold on his monitor screen.
The soldier woke abruptly, consciousness returning with his first breath. "Wha…?" he mumbled, shaking his head…and then he saw the female face looking down at him. He scrambled backward, frantically scrabbling for his gun with one hand while trying to wipe the feel of her lips against his. "Filthy mutant," he snarled, "What did you do to me?"
The girl sighed and sat back on her heels. "Saved your life, dude," she said, her face twisting in an expression of disgust at his blatant ingratitude. "And you're welcome."
Behind her, a voice yelled, "Halt!"
Jubilee jumped. Had she really spent all that much time trying to revive this soldier? She turned, feigning calmness as her eyes darted around the hallway, looking for a possible exit. "As in 'stop'?"
The soldier standing there was dressed in the same red and purple armor that the first one had been wearing (and what was it with red and purple? Were these jokers taking a page out of Magneto's book?) and had determination written all over him. "Step down, mutant. We have standing orders to execute all escaping detainees." They wouldn't actually execute her; Bastion had made it clear when he dispatched them that he wanted this one alive. But hopefully this one wouldn't know that. The soldier didn't think she was going to be a real threat; she was, after all, only a young girl. As soon as she saw that she was outnumbered, she would give up.
Jubilee's eyes settled on a round hatch on the wall not far from where she was. Hadn't there been something like that on the Death Star, in the first Star Wars movie? Except in that movie it had led to a garbage repository. Well, a garbage pit couldn't be any worse than where she was now. "Well, I ain't one of those!" she retorted as she whipped around, the soldier's gun in her hand. "I'm a leave-ee!" She aimed the gun at the hatch and fired as she ran toward it. With a metallic clang, the hatch popped off, and she dove into it. The gunfire splattered into the walls around the chute…too little, too late.
Bastion wasn't worried. The chute was a vent shaft that led outside. And there was nothing out there but freezing cold. If she didn't come back on her own, she'd freeze to death out there. He might not get what he wanted…but he could always go back and get another one where she came from. Of more concern was his guess about her actions. She had done exactly what he hadn't expected her to do. "Am I to believe that she risked her own life simply to save the life of my operative? A man who, given the chance, would surely extinguish her life?" he stared at the screen, letting the pieces fall into place, letting what he had seen settle in his mind. His one overwhelming question now was, "But…why?"
The chute was serpentine, taking so many twists and turns that all Jubilee could do was hang onto her weapon. It got steadily colder as she slid along, until suddenly her body impacted against a metal hatch at the end of the chute, and the hatch popped open, spilling her out into bone-chilling, horrific cold. She'd trained in the danger room for this, and for other surprises, and as she fell down through the cold air, she forced herself to go limp, so that when she hit the first bank of hard-packed snow she didn't break anything. Instead, she rolled, covering her suddenly goosebumped skin with clinging clumps of icy, wet snow. She tried to focus past the icy, cold air flooding her lungs, lungs that hadn't been able to fully expel the breathable liquid she'd been suspended in. That liquid chilled her lungs, and the resulting pain started to turn her vision black. Barely seconds later, she struck a particularly hard snowpack, and it was as if she had collided with a rock. For all her experience, she wasn't an X-Man. Not yet. She was still young, still a child. And the child retreated into darkness, unable to push past the cold, unable to think past the sudden cruel shock to her body.
Jubilee never heard the cavernous hangar bay doors open long enough to allow the tall figure wearing a heavy furred, hooded coat to slip out into the arctic cold. She never saw the man kneel beside her, never felt him slide an arm under her knees and across her back, never felt him carry her across the threshold back into the base. She never heard the heavy steel door clang shut behind her, sealing her away from the harsh environment outside…and away from freedom for a very long time. She never felt herself being returned to the tube, never felt the tiny prick of the needle in her arm that sent her into a deep, dreamless sleep; never felt the liquid oxygen fill the tube and pump into her lungs. She didn't feel the stasis tube being carried out to Bastion's waiting personal craft; she didn't feel the craft take off, taking her to an unknown and uncertain future.
End notes:
Dialogue and imagery for this chapter came from X-Men #343 (Lobdell/ Madureira/ Townsend/ Buccellato) and Generation X #26 (Lobdell/ Bennett/ Pimentel/ Harras)
Jubilee's perspective, and some of Bastion's thoughts, came from my own head. If you think I got anything wrong, or see something you'd like me to expand on, please inform me! This is the first time I've tried an adaptation from 'canon', so I'll need lots of feedback!Jaenelle
