Chapter 5: Averted Disaster

She tumbled out of the hatch, gritting her teeth against the icy rain and hard hail that pounded her body and immediately soaked her clothes. It took a moment for her to pull her wits around her and freeze the molecules of water and air under her to form a hovering, secure platform. Once she did that, she pushed the wet hair from her eyes and looked for the plane.

It was already far below her, and she had only minutes before it plunged into the roiling, turbulent waters of the Atlantic below. She reached out with every ounce of power she had, concentrating so hard she was starting to glow. Her eyes were glowing like small blue suns as she 'grabbed' molecules of air and water below the plane, forming it into a hard layer under it. She nearly lost it when the plane crashed through the not-quite solid 'path' she was making for it in the air and continued on its headlong nosedive into the ocean. She swore, and grabbed the molecules again, this time making it substantially thicker, and creating an incline.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot stared in disbelief as a glittering blue 'slide' appeared directly below the plane. It was impossible; it couldn't be solid; they were going to plunge right through it like they did the last one, and fall into the freezing ocean below, but he couldn't help squeezing his eyes shut and praying.

There was a scream of metal on something solid, and then a thunk. After another moment he opened his eyes. There was a small, glowing blue figure standing in front of the plane.

Jubilee felt an immense rush of relief as the second path of frozen molecules held under the plane. She stood in front of it, freezing the molecules of air rushing through the plane's remaining engine, and reached out with her telepathy. It gave her a splitting headache, but she didn't have a choice; she had to get the pilots to turn off the engine. The engine was trying to propel the plane forward, straining against the molecular barrier around the fragile platform she had created for it. The plane had struck the incline and followed the slide down and then back up, much like a roller coaster track. Now, if she could reach the pilot…

The pilot jumped as he heard a woman's voice in his head. Turn off the engine!

"You hear that?" he blinked at the copilot. The other man shook his head.

He looked at the blue figure again, and this time it drew a finger across its throat in a slashing motion. Turn off the engine! came that insistent voice in his head again.

He got the message. He hit the switch that would turn off the engines.

Outside Jubilee blinked, and shook the rain out of her hair and eyes. The engines were off. She gave a sigh of relief and turned her attention to the hovering platform that supported the plane just about a thousand feet above the waves. She saw Logan and Xavier staring out of the window just forward of the broken wing, but she couldn't spare a minute to pay attention to them.

Way off to the left, she saw the glittering lights of the airport. Summoning all the reserves of strength she had, she began to pull the plane closer and closer to her, and moved backward, 'towing' it toward the lights of the airport.

Xavier stared out the window at the woman hovering outside. She had first used this airwalking power in the fight against Sabretooth, but he'd never dreamed that she could use it like this, on such a large scale! The power she was using must have been incredible. Dimly, in the middle of that small blue sun, he saw Jubilee's arms shaking from the effort of trying to freeze and control that many molecules of air all at once. She had dropped her hold on her platform, unable to maintain it. Now she was standing on the 'platform' that held the plane up in midair.

Logan stared. He'd known Jubilee was powerful; he'd never dreamed she could do this. He was worried; how was she holding up physically against the incredible strain?

Hank watched her too. He had seen her molecular manipulation in the isolated reaction chamber he'd made for her, had seen her freeze molecules to support different objects, ranging from a feather all the way up to a bucket full of water. But he'd never dreamed she'd take the lesson learned from those experiments and apply them on such a grand scale.

Jubilee closed her eyes, paused. Her arms were shaking, stiffly extended, gripping tightly onto the molecules of air and water. A huge section of the platform broke off as her attention wavered, and she cursed, tears leaking from her eyes. Logan was on that plane; she couldn't let him die. And Charles, and Hank, and all those other people. With a tremendous effort she pulled her attention back to the plane full of frightened people, and away from the spasms of agony shooting through her brain from the tightly knotted muscles of her arms, back, and shoulders.

She pulled them, step by agonizing step, toward the airport. It might have been faster if the engines had been on, but she wouldn't have been able to manipulate the molecules ahead of the plane fast enough to keep it in the air. Her body was screaming at her; she was screaming, too, but she barely noticed the sounds she was making, she was concentrating so absolutely on the plane and her objective.

The flaggers on the runway below stared in silence as they saw the crippled plane come in so slowly. Only as the flight came closer did they see the glowing blue figure guiding the plane. Astonishment caused all the airwave chatter to cease, as everyone watched, hearts in their mouths, as the plane came lower and lower, toward the surface of the runway. The reporters who had clustered, ready to report a disaster, were now speaking as quickly and as excitedly as they could, trying to describe the miracle they were witnessing.

And back in New York, in the rec room of the mansion, every resident of the mansion sat glued to the screen. It was pure luck that Ororo had been watching CNN at just that moment that they had broken off their talk about some politician or other to bring them 'breaking news' from London's airport. They didn't need the reporter to tell them that the captain of the flight said it was a passenger who was effecting this miracle. They had seen Jubilee's fight against Sabretooth, the new ability she'd demonstrated, and they knew without a doubt that it was Jubilee keeping that plane in the air.

Jubilee concentrated single-mindedly on the runway and the plane, afraid that if she allowed herself to think of anything else at that moment she would give in to the incredible pain. Every muscle in her body was shaking from the strain; her eyes felt like they were on fire; and her head was pounding with the worst headache she'd ever felt in her life. Come on, Jubes! She chided herself as darkness swam in her peripheral vision. Come on, it's just a little farther, you can do it, don't wimp out now! Then anger took over. You've seen Jean do this with her telekinesis and the Blackbird. You're going to say it can't be done when it can? The tiny spurt of anger gave her the will she needed to hold the molecular 'platform' for the last few feet. As she saw the tail end of the plane pass onto the end of the runway, she screamed in triumph and agony, and released her hold on the atoms, allowing them to go on their merry way. The plane dropped the remaining ten feet to the runway. She was unconscious before her own body struck the asphalt of the runway.

Logan didn't even register the flight attendant's exhortations for everyone to remain in their seats. When he saw Jubilee drop out of the air and lie crumpled on the runway, all he could think of was getting to her. From inside the plane he hadn't heard her terrible scream, but he'd seen her face contort in agony, and he knew only one thing: he had to get to her as fast as he could. The flight attendant tried to block his way to the same emergency escape hatch Jubilee had used to get outside the plane, but he brushed past her as if she wasn't there. One swipe of his claws sliced a hole in the door, and he ripped through the metal as if it wasn't even there. He jumped out of the hatch, not even blinking at the height he was off the ground, and landed hard on the runway. Ignoring the wrench he felt in his leg at the impact, he sprinted to the woman lying on the ground.

The rescue workers were just standing around, and although he cursed them for not doing anything as he ran up, he soon understood why. The air around Jubilee was superheated; until the heat went away, there was no way anyone could touch her.

"Jubilee!" He called to her, desperately willing her to open her eyes. From this distance, he couldn't see whether she was breathing or not, and all he could smell was the scent of superheated ozone and sweat. "Jubes, darlin', come on, open your eyes. You gotta get ridda all that heat 'fore we can come getcha!"

Jubilee sank gratefully into darkness when the plane touched down, but she didn't allow herself to surrender completely. There had been a lot of shaking around; she had to wait until she knew her friends had come through okay. Dimly she heard someone shouting her name, as if from a long distance away. Logan. "Jubilee!" he sounded urgent. She raised her head with an effort and looked at him.

"Jubes. You have to get rid of all that extra heat before we can come and get you,!" he said. "The firemen are bringing a hose, but it ain't gonna do much. You haveta let it go, Jubes!"

She moaned, sinking back onto the ground. She couldn't use her power again, she just couldn't! Everything in her body ached fiercely, and she was in so much agony. "Jubilee!" she heard Logan yell again.

What was it that he wanted? Oh yeah, that was it. The heat. She barely felt it, but if it was all that intense…she raised one arm weakly and waved it at the molecules in the air, stirring the air up and dissipating the heat. The air above the runway was going to be some degrees warmer than the air outside it until the molecules ran out of pent-up energy, but that was all right.

Logan ran forward as he felt the heat dissipate a bit, and fell to his knees beside her, scooping her limp body up in his arms. Her eyes were still glowing, but she was otherwise completely drained. Her eyelids fluttered weakly. "Did…did everyone…make it?" she gasped shallowly as he put her carefully down on the gurney one of the paramedics shoved in front of him.

"Yeah, Jubilee, darlin', everyone made it. No one got so much as a scratch; Chuck and Hank are fine. Ya saved us all, darlin'!" He kissed her gently and stepped back as the paramedic injected something into her arm.

"I'm…glad…" was all she managed before she slipped into welcoming, comforting, pain-free darkness.

* * *

Light. Bright, blinding light. It speared into her head through her eyes, and the terrible headache she'd passed out with awoke again. She squeezed her eyes shut, moaned in anguish. Someone said something in a low voice that nevertheless made her cry weakly in pain, and the lights dimmed. A cool hand touched her burning forehead, and a comforting presence entered her mind. She fuzzily recognized the presence as Xavier's. Abruptly, the pounding in her head eased, and a comforting voice spoke to her mentally. There, Jubilee. Is that better?

It hurt to even form thoughts. What she wanted most was to fall back into that velvety blackness and go back to sleep. But she stubbornly pushed that overwhelming desire aside and opened her eyes.

It was considerably dimmer now, and she could open her eyes, though they watered in pain. There were six fuzzy figures around her, and as she blinked the tears away, she recognized Xavier, Hank, Logan Professor Cohen, and Claudia. The last figure wore a white medical coat and she assumed he was a doctor. "Where am I?" she tried to ask, but her voice came out in an unintelligible croak, and her throat hurt from the effort. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Where am I?" This time she had better results, though she could still hardly recognize the voice as hers.

"You're in the Royal Academy of Medicine's hospital," Xavier said to her, his voice low and comforting. A hand touched hers; she tried to hold it, and couldn't even find enough energy to curl her fingers. The fingers gripped hers instead, and she knew it was Logan's. "The Queen herself insisted that you be brought here; you saved a lot of people's lives. Not just the lives of everyone on the plane, but everyone on the ground. Simulations showed that if you hadn't stopped the plane, it would have crashed into the center of the business district and cost a lot of lives. Professor Cohen has spoken to the Chairman of the seminar and you've been excused, as you're obviously in no condition to be moved. Hank and I will go to the summit and you'll stay here with Logan. We'll come back for you at the end of the week."

Jubilee sank back with a sigh. "I wasn't looking forward to the speech anyway," she whispered as she drifted back into sleep.

When she woke again, there was only Logan beside her bed. The lights were still dimmed, and he was half-asleep in his chair as Jubilee woke. She groaned and sat up. Her headache, thankfully, was mostly gone.

Logan straightened up as Jubilee sat up, and curled his arm around her shoulders. "Feelin' better, darlin?" he said. She nodded experimentally, and smiled as she realized the headache was gone.

"Much better now the headache's gone," she said. "Where's everybody?" Logan glanced upward at the clock over her bed.

"By now, probably in the middle of Chuck's speech," he said. Jubilee looked up in surprise. "Jubes, you been sleepin' fer almost three days," he said.

"Days?!" she yelped.

"Yeah," he said, handing her a cup of water. She drank it gratefully, sighing as it soothed her raw throat.

The door opened, and she watched a white-coated doctor walk in. "Well, it's nice to see you up and around, Miss Lee," he said courteously. "You are apparently in perfect health; you just need to recover from the effort you put into saving so many lives. You are free to leave whenever you like; though I don't think it would be a wise idea to go far. You are still quite weak."

Jubilee discovered that fact when she tried to slide out of bed. "I think you're right," she groaned. "Still, I'd like to get out of here. It doesn't seem likely, does it?"

The door opened again, this time to admit an extremely stiff man dressed in red, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. Jubilee blinked as he set it down on the edge of the bedside table and handed her a card. She opened the envelope, noting the expensive gold embossing on the thick stationary, and read the note aloud.

"'To Dr. Jubilation Lee, from her Royal Majesty the Queen:

My dear Dr. Lee,

You have done Us and Our kingdom a great service by saving all the lives on the plane and those on the ground as well. You are hereby invited to a Ball to be held in your honor two days from today, on Saturday. Please send your acceptance by the footman who brings the flowers.

Sincerely,

The Queen'."

Jubilee grinned as she penned a quick note on a sheet of plain paper that the doctor provided. "Want to rethink that tie, Logan?"

* * *

Logan was extremely thankful that he had worn the blasted tie when he and Jubilee walked into the Grand Ballroom. The room was full of expensively-dressed men and women, all dressed in perfect suits and dresses. Charles and Hank were circulating among the guests, greeting friends and acquaintances, and Jubilee was doing the same, with many blushes, to the group of scientists and doctors in the corner.

When Charles and Hank had returned, they had brought half the conference with them. Many of those there knew Jubilee; if not personally, then by reputation; and everyone had heard what had happened on the plane, as many of the passengers on the plane were actually lecturers and scientists on their way to the summit. While the news that she was a mutant may have shocked them, many of them counted it a blessing that she was, and had been on the plane. So there were a good deal more well-wishers than detractors.

There was, in fact only one person there who she heartily wished was not. Dr. Bruce Garrett was expounding now on the possibilities of her power on the world of physics, having taken her aside in order to do so. Jubilee disliked him immensely. He hadn't changed at all from the smart-ass kid in Professor Cohen's Advanced Particle Physics class; if anything, he had just gotten much more obnoxious. "Dr. Garrett," she finally interrupted him in mid-sentence, "Skip the hunt and tree the prey. What are you trying to get at?"

"I am saying, dear Dr. Lee, that I would appreciate your…cooperation…in the lab I am having built in Massachusetts," he said. "If I could observe your—abilities—in action in a controlled lab setting, I have no doubt that the papers I—we--could write will take the entire physical science community by storm!" And he was off again.

Jubilee grabbed his arm. "Wait. You mean you want to put me under a microscope, wire me up, and turn me into a lab rat?" she made a face. "I'm a human being, Mister Garrett, not a lab specimen, some kind of exotic specimen you can confine to a laboratory and observe! What you're suggesting is a complete violation of the moral and ethical considerations that govern the scientific profession."

"I agree," Professor Cohen snapped, coming up behind them with Claudia on his arm. "Bruce, that was the stupidest, most amoral thing I've ever heard you say. Get your head put on right, boy, or believe me, someone sometime is going to straighten it out for you." He took Jubilee's arm, guiding her back to the rest of the party, as Bruce hissed behind her, "Believe me, Dr. Lee, I will find someone! You think you can just keep all those powers to yourself, not share them with anyone, and write all those papers and expect to take credit for them! Well, you have an important ability, and you have a duty to share them, and the discoveries, with all of the scientific community! You're being selfish!"

"Ignore him, my dear," Professor Cohen said, guiding Jubilee back to the refreshment table, where Logan was waiting and looking lost. "He is a pompous fool. I didn't like him when he was in my class; I like him even less now." As Jubilee took Logan's arm, feeling a bit better, all the noise in the room hushed, as the Queen stood.

At her gesture, Jubilee mounted the dais she sat in state on and swept a low curtsey. It had taken her hours of practice in front of a mirror to perfect that, after Xavier had informed her dryly that such a gesture was expected before royalty. The Queen held out her hand, and Jubilee, from her semi-bent position, pressed her forehead to the large, heavy ring of state. 'We are much obliged to you for the services you have rendered," the Queen announced, her voice sounding clear over the hush in the ballroom. "Our Heir, the young Prince, was in the business district that would have been destroyed in the conflagration had the plane you stopped not been stopped when it did." She took Jubilee's hands and raised her up, turning her around to face the assembled crowd. "We hereby confer upon Our benefactress the title of Duchess, in recognition of the great service she has done for Us and Our people." Jubilee stood dazed as cheers and applause erupted from the people around her.