Chapter 23: Bad Program
Logan raised an eyebrow when he saw Jubilee's bed was empty. Hmm. Had she gotten up already, and he missed seeing her on the way out? He retraced his steps outside and waited for her on the snow-dusted back lawn.
Five minutes. He suppressed a growl as he stalked back into the house. She wasn't in her room, she wasn't out here for the morning run…there was only one other place she could be. Especially after last night.
He flung open the door to Remy's room, grimly pleased that he'd been right. Jubilee was snuggled up next Remy on his queen-sized bed. Both she and Remy were sleeping soundly, snoring slightly.
He was mildly pleased with the sight. She was a healthy, happy, beautiful twenty-three year old, and yet in the time since she'd come back, she'd never gone on a date. Nor had she ever even hinted at one while she was in college. Apparently last night she had taken his advice and gone out with Remy and the others. From where he stood, by the door, he could smell the faint odor of alcohol on her breath.
And Paige had gone with them, hadn't she? Warren and Paige's names were among the ones Jubilee had mentioned in the group of people going on last night's outing. So after this he was going to have to go roust Paige out too.
He tiptoed into the room, reached out to grab a handful of the covers and pull them back…and froze when he heard Jubilee's voice, muffled by the pillow but still audible. "Don't even think about it, Wolvie."
He crossed his arms. "Then get outta bed."
Her rumpled, tousled head came lazily up out of the pillow. "Come on, Wolvie, it's like, forty degrees out there. I'm not running around out there in the snow and cold." The dark head burrowed back into the pillow. "I'll do some extra time on the treadmill later."
"I don't think so," Logan growled, and reached for the blankets again.
"You don't want to do that," Jubilee's head came out of the pillow again. "Really."
Just them, Remy groaned and rolled over, rubbing his eyes. "Where's t'emergency, Jubes?" he slurred.
"No emergency, Rems." Jubilee covered her mouth as she yawned. "Just Logan."
'Just Logan'? Logan was offended. He reached out, grabbed the end of the blanket, and whisked it off the sleepy couple in the bed.
And immediately wished he hadn't. Red-faced and embarrassed, he turned around, desperately trying to squeeze the sight out of his head.
Jubilee giggled. "See, I told you you didn't want to do that," she pointed out with malicious sweetness.
Remy, the damn ass, sat back against the headboard of the bed and grinned insouciantly at the back of Logan's head. "Like what you see, mon ami?"
"Get some clothes on, both of you. Jubes, I want ya out there in ten minutes!" He fled the room, hearing the whisper of Jubilee's laughter and Remy's amused chuckle follow him down the hall as he went to Paige and Warren's room.
He tapped on the door, loud enough to wake the occupants of the room. He heard rustling sheets, Paige's hissed, "It's Logan! Stay there or he's gonna see—" And he flushed again. Seconds later, Paige, wearing another one of Warren's t-shirts, opened the room door. "I know, I know, I'm late, I'll be out there in ten minutes." The door slammed in his face.
Must have been a very interesting night last night, came a telepathic voice in Logan's head. He turned…and saw Jono coming out of his room on the other side of the hall, dressed in cold-weather running clothes. Is Jubes up yet?
Logan flushed even pinker. "Yeah, she's up." He stumped back down the hall and down the stairs, through the mansion to the kitchen and out the back door.
After the heat inside, it really did seem colder out here. Even for him. He and Jono started with kata, using the familiar movements to keep themselves warm, and waited for Jubilee and Paige.
Just as he was about to head back in and get them again, they came out, tittering behind their hands and looking suspiciously happy for two people who'd just been roused from sleep. They did some brief stretching exercises, then set off on their morning run around the perimeter of the estate. And as they ran, Logan had to fight not to lose his temper as he caught snatches of conversation and giggles about his accidental view of what was under Remy's covers.
They finished their run in record time, the girls actually making it to the 'finish line'—the patch of lawn in front of the back door, ahead of Logan and Jono. They hardly even waited for the two men to pull up behind them before they were opening the door to the kitchen to go in.
"Jubes," Logan said. Paige looked at Jubilee. Jubilee looked at Paige. Paige went in without a word, tugging Jono with her, and Jubilee turned to Logan. "I did warn you," she said, still slightly amused.
"Yeah, I know," Logan grumped, stamping in a circle to keep warm. "I was the damn fool who didn't think that you and Remy might…well…"
"Nothing happened, Logan," Jubilee said quietly, but still amused. "You might not have noticed, you turned around too fast…but I was still dressed. Well, sort of." She flushed at the memory of the pink underclothing she'd been wearing. "Not that I wasn't okay with anything happening…but Remy said there's time for everything, and he said he wanted to wait for a time when I wasn't drunk. I was…sort of plastered when we got home last night, and the last thing I remember is Remy putting me down in bed, undressing and getting in himself, and then we fell asleep."
Logan smiled at her, reluctantly. Remy wasn't the one he'd have picked for Jubilee…but then again, he didn't know anyone he would have picked for her; everyone he could think of in the mansion came up rather short in his ideal of 'suitable for Jubilee'. However, he wasn't her father, he wasn't her brother, he was in no way related to her, and if he tried to tell her who she could or couldn't hang around with, he would be no better than Scott was. And she was already upset with Scott; he didn't want her mad at him.
"Just be careful, okay?" he said, ruffling her hair. "I don't wanna have ta interrupt yer trainin' fer…complications."
Jubilee smoothed her hair back down with an indignant expression. "I know about that," she said. "Jean and Ororo had…The Talk…with me a long time ago." She laughed at Logan's comical expression. "I'll be sure, Logan. After all, I don't want complications either." She laughed again and whisked herself into the mansion before the swat he aimed at her could connect.
He admired the sass behind the remark, even if he was a little uncomfortable with the topic. He didn't want to think of his kid having kids. "Damn, I feel old," he groaned as he opened the door and stepped back into the kitchen.
As good as the mansion's heating systems were, they still couldn't combat the underground chill.
Logan was rather glad of it, in a way. He'd been working intensively with Jubilee the last few weeks, training her to ignore distractions and concentrate on what she was doing. Singlemindedness—or more accurately, stubbornness—was one of her traits, so he simply used that to his advantage.
She still did plenty of looking, but that was for the best. Like now, as her eyes flicked toward one of the combat robots, mounted on an antigravity platform zooming randomly around the room, alternately shooting at her, at the wall, ceiling, and floor. Her eyes picked up Robot Two's position, firing speed, projected path, assessed it's threat level, and dismissed it. Logan could almost hear her thinking, That one isn't going to reach me before the one I'm looking at will, so I'll deal with this one first before I take that one out. Deed followed thought, and he watched her paff Robot One, with which she was currently dealing before turning toward the robot Logan had been watching. Since the robot was firing weakly, she used an equal (not greater) amount of energy in her paff.
Robot Three came up behind her, and she flung herself out of the way as the laser light hissed through the space she'd just vacated. This one was firing with a greater percentage of energy than the other one had: Jubilee met it with a bigger paff than she had just used on Robot Two. Then Robot One came 'back to life' and started firing at her again, and she switched effortlessly, almost unthinkingly, from big paffs to smaller ones. They had done this so many times that for her this was becoming instinct. Logan nodded approvingly, even as he heard the door to the observation room open. His sensitive nostrils picked up the scent of mechanic's oil, metal gears, Old Spice aftershave, and Earl Grey tea. There was only one person in the entire mansion who combined all of those scents. "Hey, Chuck," he said, not even bothering to turn around. "Came ta see how the trainin' was goin'?"
Xavier guided his hoverchair over to where Logan was standing at the window and watching Jubilee. He didn't respond immediately, his attention captured by the girl in the room below. "Interesting costume," he said finally.
Logan grinned. "Isn't it?" He remembered saying much the same thing when he'd first seen it. Jubilee had shown up in the Danger Room one morning wearing a black body suit with bold red patches of color in random spots all over her body and two narrow but long red stripes running from the ends of her collarbones to her ankles. Logan had looked askance at her costume…and she had shrugged. "The vertical lines make me look slimmer," she said.
It wasn't until he saw her in action that he realized her purpose. The black made her blend with the shadows, and the red patches looked like targets; but when he focused the robot's lasers at those red patches, reasoning that that was where an enemy would focus an attack, he'd discovered that those seemingly random patches were placed at strategically defensible parts of her body and left the vulnerable parts of her in shadow. When one of the lasers had grazed a bright patch on her arm, he had tried to shut the simulation down hurriedly…only to find she had 'killed' the thing, with her wounded arm, just before he turned it off.
"It draws fire away from the vulnerable parts o' her body, the parts that might be seriously injured or permanently crippled, an' focuses an attacker's attention on places that ain't as vital. It was a neat little trick I hadn't thought of. Aside from usin' the black stripes on my costume to break up my outline, I never thought 'bout doing that. An' Jubilee has another one for use in high-light situations, a sort o' neutral beige color that'll work well in say, desert conditions."
Xavier looked impressed. "And when she moves the contrast between the red and the black are strong enough that it makes it difficult for an enemy to focus," he said. "I find my eye so distracted by the color I find it hard to focus on any one part."
Logan looked at Jubilee, taking out another round of combat robots. "I hadn't noticed that," he said. "But yeah, I see what ya mean. It does." He went over to the controls, touching one here and there, and the robots stopped moving and retracted into the walls. "Phase two," he said. That was all the warning Jubilee got.
Several members of the Brotherhood sprang into existence around her, and so did the image of a darkened alley. She went into motion as they started to reach for her. Darting, weaving, in and out between the opponents and various items in the alley, hiding and paffing them from behind trashcans. The darting black and red blur seemed difficult for them to hit, and it wasn't long before they were all gone.
And things went berserk.
Several things happened at once. The entire room went dark; the only sign of enemies came from vague outlines in the darkness. And then a barrage of lasers came out of the darkness, aiming for Jubilee. The brief bursts of light illuminated the small black and red figure, who was now in a flat-out run around the room, trying to avoid the attacks of enemies she couldn't see.
"Logan…" Xavier said warningly.
Logan flung himself down in the chair, frantically pressing switches and buttons. "I dunno what's wrong, Chuck…it won't turn off!" He gasped. "Dammit…need to see what's happening… the blasted computer's not respondin'!"
"Observation window: infrared," Xavier snapped, and the window immediately switched to an infrared view. Logan and Xavier could see her zig-zagging, somehow incredulously managing to stay clear of the indistinct figures scattered around the room. Her frenetic running seemed to be random, but Logan's mind suddenly identified the pattern. She was crossing the room, from one wall to the other, getting a fix on where her various enemies were, paffing them when she could. Then, apparently giving up on that, seeing that it was wearing her down, she came to a stop in the middle of the room, and sent up a shower of sparks. These didn't explode in the air, as they normally did; they hung there, like suspended fireflies. They didn't light the whole room up, but the light was enough for her to identify the closest wall. She went to it, put her back up against it, and prepared herself for a fight. And as she did, she yelled, "Logan!"
"I dunno what's wrong! It went off on its own!" Logan called into the intercom. "Hang on, Chuck's here and he's trying to figure out what's going on!"
Jubilee nodded grimly. Already tired from the workout, she couldn't afford to fight offensively. All she could do was wait for Xavier and Logan to halt the program.
The program, however, wasn't going to give her that option, The tactile holograms suddenly shifted, and she found herself standing in the middle of an empty space. And the figures were closing in around her.
For one wild, irrational minute she thought she was somehow back at the Hulkster base, feeling small and helpless as the cruel guards closed in around her… And she had to fight the panic that welled up in her. The Danger Room, she told herself firmly. I'm in the Danger Room. They can't hurt me unless I let them. So she started firing plasmoids at the hulking figures. One went down with a crash…then another…and another…and another.
Xavier hit a final sequence of buttons, typing a last set of orders into the Danger Room's computer…and everything stopped. The lights inside came on, and Jubilee released her hold on the plasmoids, allowing them to explode as they willed now. And as the lights came on, she slid limply to the ground, too tired to laugh.
The 'laser weapons' being held by the 'enemies' were laser pointers, and each 'enemy' was actually a holographic representation of the various X-Men, each wearing a ridiculous birthday hat (even Emma). And a banner across the back of the room said 'Happy Birthday Bobby!'
At just that moment, the door opened, and Hank and Paige rushed inside…and saw Jubilee in the Danger Room, amid the shambles of the hologram. "Jubilee? My stars and garters,what on Earth happened?"
"What happened?" Paige echoed. "It wasn't set to go off until Bobby came in an hour from now!"
Between them, they got it worked out. It was Bobby's birthday; Hank and Paige had set up the simulation to scare Bobby when he entered the Danger Room for his practice session. It had gone off an hour early, due to the time change (someone had forgotten to reset the Danger Room clock for Daylight Savings time) and Jubilee had been caught in it. She had never been in danger; but she reacted like she had been, and acted accordingly. They shut the Danger Room down so Hank and Paige could reset the simulation, and Jubilee leaned wearily against Logan's shoulders as they followed Xavier back to the kitchen.
She dropped wearily into a chair, gulping a bottle of water, as Xavier looked at her thoughtfully. "You've come a long way since you started training this fall with Logan," he said thoughtfully. "I don't like admitting that I was wrong about my approach to Jubilee's training, but I think I would have to now. And I think it's time that Jubilee took a place on one of the teams as a full member. Do you have a specific team in mind, Jubilee, or would you prefer I assign you to one?"
"Really?" Jubilee's eyes popped. "Cool. Um…I don't really care who else is on my team as long as Wolvie's on it too."
Xavier laughed heartily. "I'm not going to argue with you on that point. You'll be on Scott's Blue Team. Will that be all right?"
"Yes!" Jubilee gave Xavier a huge grin.