Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to Marvel. I'm just dipping a toe in their figurative fiction lake.
Dr Mattias Holgersson and the rest of the Columbia Science Department are mine and will be whipped repeatedly if they misbehave or turn even a bit Mary Sue. (Except for Donna, who can be saved with a good spanking.)
Timeline Housekeeping: I'm setting this about a year or so before Battle of the Atom, but the schism is in effect and Jubes has been home with Shogo for a few months. Only the first part of the Arkea adjectiveless 'X-Men' arch has happened and the wee lad's adoption has been finalised. (Oh, and Marvel: shelve Sho after Woodsey leaves and we riot!)
Minor Character Housekeeping: Paige never had her moulting/Toad drama.
Warren has all his memories and his fluffy wings, but is still blue. (Yip, sucks for him, but he's super rich - kinda makes it better.)
Banshee is alive and is a senior combat instructor. Rogue, unfortunately, is still dead. I adore the southern belle, but I also want to explore Marjorie Liu's idea of Gambit and Cecelia as an odd couple for a bit. I might resurrect her at some point.
Many thanks to my very special beta reader. I love you Snugglebunny.
Questions? Leave a comment after the beep…...BEEP!
Enjoy! :o)
Prologue
It was pure dumb luck. One quick Google search and there he was. No long hours spent weeding through stuffy mathematics journals or picking Hank's brain at ungodly hours. She didn't even have to bribe Kitty with promises of expensive dark chocolate and indentured servitude.
Nope, Dr Mattias Holgersson was as easy to find as an coked-up supermodel at a Tony Stark party.
And that was just plain wrong.
Life had never flowed that smoothly for Jubilation Lee. As other young girls were hanging off Jungle Gyms and wondering why boys were so dumb, Jubes was already spending most of her free time perfecting aerial cartwheels and piked saltos. Later, as her peers were entering their final year of junior high, she was running around Madripoor with a hallucinating Canadian and a British body-switched ninja.
So when that computational fluid dynamicist just landed in her lap, it left the former firecracker feeling a bit miffed. He was a junior lecturer at Columbia where she was just about to start as a freshman in a month. How simple was that?
If only the gods had blessed her with similar good luck on M-Day.
The only obstacle would be finding a way to get her average BA undergrad butt a spot among the handful of physics and maths grads accepted each year.