Here's Chapter 2 of X-Men: Dark Transformations. Thank you for the reviews you have left. The number of views that your fics get aren't as satisfying as reading about what others think of your writings.

Chapter 2: Attack

"I'm not a snack," retorted Jubilee angrily. She yanked out her stun gun out of her bag with her free hand. "I'm your worst nightmare," she added. Several weeks before mutants were exposed, some of the Institute girls, namely Jean, Rogue, Kitty, and Amara, as well as Tabitha (who was with the Brotherhood at that point) had made their own vigilante team, the Bayville Sirens. Their climatic finale was when they had busted up a chop shop. That whole incident was a legend amongst the Institute girls. When Jubilee had heard about it, she'd been pretty mad that she hadn't been let in on it. Right now she was really wishing she had, because a little experience in real combat in a dark warehouse would be extremely helpful right now.

"Oh," the youth grinned, "you'll find that we are your worst nightmare come to life." He snapped his fingers and figures appeared out of the gloom into her flashlight beam. There was about six of them total. Their looks were varied, but all held the same message: Gang. Raggedy cloths and tattoos abounded, though they seemed to lack the normal weapons that a gang would wield. To Jubilee's surprise there were a couple of girls among them. They all moved through the gloom with a grace and confidence that seemed predatory in nature. Jubilee suddenly got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Look," she said, trying to keep her nerves from coming out in her voice. "I just want to go home. You do anything to me, and my parents will know something went wrong when I don't show up." She wondered briefly if the Xavier/Summers method of rational diplomacy before violence would work with these creeps.

One of the girls, a goth, smiled. For a moment Jubilee thought the girl's eyes flashed red in the light. "Oh, you might show up, or you might not. It just depends."

"Depends on what?"

A black kid with a Mohawk grinned. "On how hungry we are, cutie." His teeth suddenly sharpened themselves into horrific fangs.

"What the…!" Jubilee started. She was caught off guard when two of them jumped her. She avoided them both, and yanking out her stun gun, zapped the smaller of the two in the neck. He hollered and then backhanded her. His strength belied his size as Jubilee went flying into a support pillar.

She fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of her and the flashlight knocked out of her hand. Gasping for breath, Jubilee looked up at her attackers. They were coming at her…at a slow walk. They were so assured of themselves, it was sickening. The flashlight quit rolling and came to a stop, allowing her to get a better look at them. Their eyes were red and their canine teeth were poking out of their mouths. Their skin had also paled to an unnatural pallor.

They, they, they can't be vampires. They don't exist. They must be some kind of mutant. A really, nasty mutation…that's the same across six individuals.

She grabbed the mace can from her bag beside her and stood up. Her fear had given way to anger and thanks to the daily events of the last two months to this day, she had a lot of anger already built up. "Back off now!" she yelled. They stopped, and then with one accord, three of them jumped at her, moving very fast.

The first one, a girl with several piercings all over her face, got a dose of mace to the face and went down shrieking. The second guy received the stun gun right in his gut. Jubilee saw the black boy with the Mohawk coming. She jumped in the air, brought her feet onto the support beam to gain altitude, and then pushed off towards Mohawk. The spin kick that impacted his jaw sent him stumbling to the side.

Jubilee landed nimbly and took stock of her opponents. To her horror, the three she had just taken down recovered far more quickly than they should have. Piercings got up, wiping mace out of her eyes and snarling. Gut Shot was on his feet already and Mohawk looked barely fazed by the hit to the head. The others, Leader, Goth, and the little guy, Shorty, all looked ticked off. Jubilee decided she had had it.

"The gloves are off," she growled, dropping the stun gun and the can to the ground. Ignoring their looks of surprise, she held up both hands and allowed a glow to form around them. "You creeps aren't the only mutants here." She took up a fighting stance and increased the glow. "Now for the last time, back off."

The Leader frowned in frustration and then regained his cool. "You're the only mutant here. Despite what how we look, we're not mutants. It's so convenient, being mistaken for one of you. Really throws them off from the truth."

"Than what are you?" Jubilee asked in a low voice, attempting desperately to hold back the wave of fear that swept through her at the mere mental suggestion of what these people really were.

The Leader's eyes glowed a malevolent red as he opened his mouth and allowed his fangs to reach their greatest and most frightening length. Somehow, he said, "We're vampires, and you're our first mutant victim." With that, he charged.

Jubilee shrieked in absolute terror and shot off a blast of yellow and purple energy at the Leader's head. The sudden burst of sparkling lights and shriek of a firework made them all jump back with a cry. It took Jubilee's eyes a moment to adjust from the sudden flash, but when she did, she was confronted with a horrifying sight.

The Leader's body stood there, with a wisp of smoke rising from the stump of his neck. Slowly, she realized what had just happened. She had just blown his head off with her powers. What happened next was almost as repulsive. The rest of his body disintegrated into black ash, leaving a little pile there on the ground. Goth crumbled to her knees and stared at the little pile. She picked up some of it in her hands and watched it sift through her fingers. She clenched her fists and Jubilee could hear her start to sob.

Any small of amount of sympathy that Jubilee felt abruptly left when Goth suddenly looked up, the insane rage in her red eyes making her resemble a demon straight from Hell. "KILL THE LITTLE FREAK," she bellowed, pointing at Jubilee. The other "vampires" snapped out of the stupors caused by the sight of their Leader's death and charged towards Jubilee as one.

Without thinking, Jubilee raised her hands and let off two blasts of her fireworks. Gut Shot and Piercings, being the closest, each caught a blast right in the chest. They only had a fraction of a second to register the gaping holes in themselves before they too crumbled into ash. As Jubilee watched their blackened skeletons dissolve into dust, something clicked in her and the anger returned. Any horror at her actions evaporated in the face of her own self-preservation instincts. Her transformed anger turned into outright rage as she looked up towards the retreating forms of Mohawk and Shorty. The fireworks she sent at them took out Mohawk first and then Shorty.

As their instantly cremated bodies floated away on air currents, she looked to where Goth had been kneeling by Leader's ashes. All there was was the pile of ashes. Jubilee looked around in the darkness, her eyes trying to adjust thanks to her power usage. She heard quick footsteps behind her and turning around, fired a blast in their direction. She started shooting in random directions, trying to hit Goth as she circled around Jubilee. Crap, this girl is fast. Quicksilver would have his hands full with her. Finally, she stopped shooting and simply waited.

Her patience paid off a minute later. "You think you're something, mutie? You think that you can just walk into our turf and not suffer the consequences?" Jubilee couldn't pinpoint the voice's origin thanks to its echoes.

"You don't own this warehouse or the land it's built on," argued Jubilee. "I'm sorry about your boyfriend, but his overbite probably would have killed him in the long run anyway." She tended to have a big mouth when she got mad.

"You're going to pay for killing Percy, you arrogant, little…."

"Whoa, Percy? I thought for sure his name would be Count Dracula II."

The only sound was an intake of breath, then silence. Jubilee remembered her training and listened hard for the slightest sound. One minute. Two minutes. Two and a half.

Slowly, she gathered her mace can, stun gun, and flashlight, all the while listening for anything at all. At three minutes, nothing happened. Goth must have decided it wasn't worth it. Jubilee allowed herself to relax.

That's when the attack came from above. Goth slammed onto Jubilee from her perch on the ceiling, where she had probably been the whole time. Before Jubilee could get up or blast her, Goth slugged her in the head. Stars exploded in Jubilee's head and she came close to going unconscious. She barely felt Goth's hands bringing her arm up to her mouth.

What she did feel, and what also woke her back up, was the massive explosion of pain in her right wrist. She screamed and snapped her head around to view the cause. The sight of Goth biting down into her wrist and the blood dripping from the girl's lips nearly brought up her lunch. Still screaming, Jubilee raised her left arm and shot a firework directly into Goth's eyes. She felt the pressure from the girl's teeth vanish as Goth turned to ash.

She stared at the massive wound pumping out blood and suddenly felt dizzy. She didn't know if the adrenaline was wearing off, if she was losing too much blood, if it was her nerves, or if it was all three at once. Holding onto her wrist to stop the bleeding, she lay down on the ground and felt the world slip away. The last thing she was aware of was someone calling her name.

XMDT-XMDT-XMDT

"Jubilee, wake up! What happened?"

The voice of her father rang through her ears like a sonic boom, making her head ache. Jubilee groaned and opened her eyes, instantly regretting it. The light in her eyes felt like she was looking directly into the sun. The stimuli from her ears and eyes only the splitting headache she had even worse.

"Dad," she groaned, "the light's hurting my eyes real bad."

Hurriedly the light was put off to one side and Jubilee could see her father leaning over her, worried.

"Jubes, what happened to you?" That's when he looked down at her wrist. "Holy…you're bleeding all over the place," he practically yelled. Jubilee looked down and saw the huge amount of blood drying on her arm and wrist. She could feel more of it behind the hand that she was using to hold it back.

"Jubes, we need to get you to a hospital now," Mr. Lee said as he yanked out his cell phone and started to dial.

"Dad, if they learn I'm a mutant they'll likely kick me right out." Jubilee remembered what had happened with her fireworks. "The gang that attacked me…I killed them."

Her father stared at her. "You…what?"

"I didn't mean to, I swear," she cried. "I shot one guy and he just disintegrated. The others came at me and I just kept shooting. And that last girl bit me on the wrist. If the school hears about this, they'll expel me in two seconds."

Her dad regained his composure and nodded grimly. "That may not be a problem. Let's get you home. We all need to talk." Jubilee nodded and then tore a strip of cloth from her yellow jacket (which was pretty torn from the fight) and wrapped it around her wrist. It would keep the wound closed against any new bleeding, at least temporarily.

Her dad helped her to her feet and out the door. Jubilee looked back at the small piles of ash as they exited the warehouse. This was going to be a strange tale to tell.

"I started looking for you about ten minutes after you didn't show up," her father explained. "Thankfully, you described the places where you practice very well."

"Thank goodness for that," groaned Jubilee as they started the walk to the car. She checked her watch. 5:24. She had been out for about 6-7 minutes. At least that had allowed time for the blood to clot behind her hand.

The ride home was quiet but hurried. Jubilee could feel her father's gaze upon her and her wound every few minutes. She hoped it wasn't serious; she hadn't taken a good look at the bite marks since she didn't want to bleed to death. She had only gotten a short look just before she passed out.

They arrived at the Lee residence shortly and they hurried inside quickly. They passed by the kitchen where her mother had started to remove the spaghetti from the oven. "Where have you two been? Supper is getting cold." She looked up at them and nearly dropped the pan when she caught sight of the make-shift bandage on Jubilee's wrist. "Oh my…what happened? Is that from school?"

"I'll explain in the bathroom. I need real bandages," Jubilee replied. Her mother set the pan on a hot pad and hurried after them. In the bathroom, she took her jacket and her wrapping off. They all couldn't help but grimace. On the top and bottom of her wrist were the imprints of a human jawline, except they seemed to be made by sharper teeth. The blood had congealed, but moving the bandage had loosened it, allowing fresh drops to escape.

"I was heading to the pick-up point when they cornered me in that warehouse you found me in," Jubilee explained while her mother grabbed a first aid kit. "They closed all the doors and obstructed the windows so I couldn't escape or see. There were six of them. If I didn't know about mutants, I'd say they were vampires. They had the eyes, the teeth, and the stamina for it."

Her mother ripped some large bandages from the kit and began applying hydrogen peroxide to the wound. Jubilee gasped out loud. Her mother winced apologetically while her father held her reassuringly. "Jubes," he said quietly, "what's this about you killing them?" Her mother froze.

"When my 'normal' fighting didn't work and their leader came at me with his mouth of super-sharp teeth, I zapped him. It blew his head off and the rest of him just disintegrated into ash." She drew in her breath as the wrappings were applied to her arm. "When his girlfriend sicced the rest of them on me, I just kept shooting at them. They all disintegrated when I hit them. His girlfriend, or 'girlfiend' I should say, managed to bite my wrist before I got her." She paused as her mother finished wrapping her wrist. "I was only defending myself. I didn't know my fireworks could kill and I was already angry. I'm sorry, but I didn't want to die," she said in a defensive tone.

"We're not upset with you, Jubes" her father reassured her. "It's just that, no parent ever wants to hear their child say they killed someone, even in self-defense."

"We love you, Jubilation Lee, and nothing's going to change that," her mother added, hugging her. Her father hugged her as well, and Jubilee let her emotions out as she hugged back. She sobbed softly as tears poured down her face. If they had just left her alone, she wouldn't have had to shoot, wouldn't have snapped, and wouldn't have lost her innocence. She now knew what it was like to take a life, and there was no going back.

They stayed like for a few moments and then broke apart. "Just," her mother added, "just be careful where you aim, okay?"

Jubilee nodded. "That bit may be easier to deal with," her father said. "We'll explain over dinner."

It's interesting how a good cry and a good meal seems to bring some light back into the world. Jubilee felt much better after eating her mother's spaghetti and meatballs. A career woman and a good cook were a winning combination. As she put down her fork and napkin, Jubilee wondered if she could get her mother to teach Kitty a few things about cooking. When she first came to the Institute, she had attempted to eat one of Kitty's famous muffins. The result was that she had nearly cracked a tooth and almost destroyed the garbage disposal. The look on Logan's face when he had pried the muffin from the disposal's blunted blades had been priceless.

Jubilee stifled a giggle, and at her parents' questioning looks, she told them the story. When they finished laughing, her father wiped his eyes and then cleared his throat. He usually did that before making a life-changing announcement. "Jubilation, we've been thinking and talking. Ever since we made you come back from Xavier's, things have gone downhill for you in school. We didn't think that things would get as bad as they have. When your mother and I were in school, we got teased because we were new to the country." Her parents were Chinese immigrants who had managed to leave the People's Republic of China at an early age.

"Unlike you," her mother continued, "the incidents was few and far between, and those who did it were looked down on as bullies and racists. We thought, at first, that it would be the same for you, but we were wrong. And we're so sorry."

"If we had known it would get this bad, we never would have withdrawn you from the Institute. We're so sorry, and we've decided to send you back. Can you ever forgive us?" Mr. Lee finished.

In one second, Jubilee was off her chair and trying to hug her parents at the same time. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she squealed. She then drew herself up and gave them a mock glare. "And yes, I forgive you."

Her parents smiled and together they cleaned up the dining room. As Jubilee was finishing up with the dishes, she suddenly felt light-headed and nauseous. Her sense of balance went off and she nearly crashed into the counter. "Jubes," her father said as he steadied her, "are you okay?"

Jubilee groaned. "I'm not feeling so hot all of a sudden. I'll finish my homework and go to bed." She couldn't help but notice that she could literally feel her father's pulse through his hand, and hear his heartbeat. She could also her mother's heartbeat pick up in worry from across the room. For some strange reason, Jubilee felt a thrill, almost primal in nature, race through her body. She shook it off. "I'll tell you if it gets worse."

Her father helped her to her room and gave her a worried look as he left. Jubilee struggled to make her body and brain cooperate as she finished her algebra and biology homework. The feeling slowly got worse, and as she finished the last problem, and got up to undress, it struck her with the force of a blow. "Dad, Mom," she croaked as she stumbled to the door. The vertigo struck again, and as she crumbled to the ground, she thought that her room was brighter than it was a moment ago. I thought my lamp was the only light on. Then darkness claimed her.

The plot thickens. I have a couple of questions for my readers.

1. What should Jubilee's parents' names be? I'm using the Earth-616 version where they are Chinese immigrants, and I'm not too good with names from that culture. Any suggestions?

2. Should I change the title? Instead of "Dark Transformations," I've thought the moniker "Light within Darkness" might be better for this fic. Which do you prefer? Any suggestions?

Either leave your suggestions in a review or PM me. I'll let you know what I think. Hope you enjoyed it!