It was the next morning before he could bring himself to confront Jubilee about what he had overheard. Her reaction was about what he had expected in a lot of ways. She was angry at him for listening to her conversation with Tessa but also relieved that she didn't have to keep it a secret from him anymore.

She told him everything she had not told Tessa. She told him about the attempts to get her to tell Bastian where the X-Men were, about the mind games he had played with her for a month. She went into more detail about the beatings and torture but refused to discuss the rapes. She admitted that she was raped but not what was done to her. She could see that her stories about the beatings were taking their toll on him. She didn't think he could handle the rest.

When she was done talking, he just held her. Had she been older, he would have helped her overcome the trauma by making love to her and proving that she is still a desirable woman, but he couldn't. She was only seventeen. The best he could do was to be there for her and let her talk. Eventually, she would come to terms with what happened and grow beyond it.

He sat on the bed with her cuddled in his arms, thinking. His first instinct was to take her and flee to Canada to protect her. It was almost overwhelming. He kept telling himself that the hurt was over and Bastian was dead but it didn't help much. He still had the urge to take her away from the pain.

"We can't leave, Wolvie." she told him quietly.

"How'd ya know that was what I was thinkin'?" he asked, surprised.

"I know you," she told him. "Your knee-jerk response when I'm hurt is to run either from me or with me. It won't help this time. The pain'll follow me this time."

"What do ya need me ta do?"

"Just be there for me." she told him. "I need to get over this on my own and you being there to chase away the demons will help."

"Ya need ta talk about it ta someone." he insisted.

"I talked to Emma last night. I haven't told her everything but it helped. I didn't have the nightmare last night."

Logan felt a wave a jealousy wash over him. She would talk to Emma but not to him. For most of her life, Jubilee could tell him anything. Now, she was keeping secrets from him and shutting him out of her life.

"Darlin', I wish you would talk ta me." he told her. "There's nothin' ya can say that'll make me think anythin' less of ya. Yer my best friend and my partner. Yer the most important person in my life. Please don't shut me out."

Jubilee's pain filled eyes met his. "I don't want ta shut you out, Wolvie." she told him quietly. "I can't say the words right now. With Emma, I don't have to. She looks into my mind and sees what happened. I love ya, Logan, but I need time ta deal with it in my head before I can tell you everything."

He brushed her hair away from her eyes with a gentle finger. "I'll be here when yer ready." he promised.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Tessa, phone." Bobby Drake yelled up the stairs.

Scott stopped suddenly in his tracks. He was hoping to get a cup of coffee before starting the day but that hope was dashed with Iceman's loud call to their visitor.

"What do you mean 'Tessa, phone'?" he asked Bobby. "Who knows she's here?"

"Some guy asking for Tessa Madison." Bobby told him with a shrug.

"Give me that phone," he snarled. He grabbed the receiver from Bobby and took a deep breath, exhaling loudly. He hit the hold button and spoke to the caller. "Scott Summers. May I help you?"

"May I speak to Tessa Madison?" the deep male voice asked.

"I'm sorry," Scott apologized, "there's no Tessa Madison here."

"Don't give me that bull," the man said angrily. "I know Logan took her there. I want to speak to my daughter, right now."

"Sir, there is no need to yell at me. Your daughter is not here." Scott became very formal as his anger rose.

"Listen, you mutie freak," Westerleigh yelled, "you put Tessa on the phone right now or I'll have your head."

"I am not going to listen to your insults." Scott snarled. He slammed the phone down and turned to Bobby. "She isn't here and I won't take any calls from him."

"What do you want me to do when he calls again?" Bobby asked.

"Send his calls to Sage's voice mail." Scott instructed. "She's been gone for over a year. We can afford to fill her mailbox with the garbage he's going to spew."

"What if she checks her messages?"

"She doesn't. She calls me to get updates. Next time she calls, I'll let her know why her mailbox is full."

Strangely enough, Senator Westerleigh didn't attempt to call back. That night, he arrived at the mansion with twenty-five FBI agents in tow.

"Battle dress, everyone." Scott ordered over the mansion intercom.

"What's going on?" Tessa asked Jubilee as the younger girl pulled on her Generation X uniform.

"Not sure." Jubilee told her. "Someone's at the gate with lots of guns. The mansion's been blown up a bunch of times and Cyke doesn't want it ta happen again."

She pulled her mask down and fluffed her hair over the strap.

"Try ta stay out of the line of fire." Jubilee instructed. "The safest place for ya is the control center. I'll drop ya off before I go out."

"You're going out there?" Tessa demanded.

"This is what I'm trained for. I'll be fine. Wolvie won't let me get hurt."

"Ya ready, darlin'?" Wolverine asked from the door. Tessa could see the glimmer of excitement in his eyes. He was actually anticipating this conflict.

"Just let me drop Tessa off at the War Room and I'll be right behind ya."

Jubilee guided Tessa through the maze of corridors to the lower level War Room presently being presided over by Bishop. The time traveling mutant was studying the ring of men surrounding the outer wall of the estate with a fierce frown. Every monitor in the room was active, showing a number of moving figures in the woods just beyond the walls.

A glance from him made Tessa seat herself as far from him as she could and still remain in the room. He was the first mutant she felt uncomfortable around. No, she had to be honest with herself: He was the first mutant that frightened her, and he didn't even speak to her.

"Don't worry about Bish." Jubilee told her. "He looks mean but..."

"I am mean." he announced in a rumbling bass.

"Well..., yeah." Jubilee agreed. "But he'll make sure ya stay safe. Don't leave until me or Wolvie comes and gets ya."

Tessa wasn't paying attention. Her eye was caught by the tall figure on the center monitor.

"Daddy?" she gasped.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jubilee ran through the halls of the mansion, trying to get to the action before it was over. She hoped Wolvie would be nice enough to leave at least one for her. She knew that these men were not responsible for her kidnapping. That crime was laying at the feet of Nick Fury but they may have been the ones who hurt Tessa and killed her friend. If there was one thing Jubilee couldn't tolerate was the pain of a friend, even if the pain occurred before that person was a friend. She was going to make sure Tessa's friend was avenged and the person responsible for her pain paid the price.

She skidded out of the front door to find the battle in full swing. She quickly found her partner in the middle of a pack of BDU clad forms, swinging for all he was worth. He had not yet popped his claws so no one had died as of yet. He had an unholy look of glee on his face.

She quickly paffed the soldier coming up behind him with a knife drawn. He winked at her and smiled hugely.

"Grab yerself one, Jubes." he yelled. "Been goin' easy on 'em so ya'd have one when ya got here."

"Thanks, Wolvie." she yelled as she threw herself into the fray. "Yer the best."

When she was younger, Jubilee was a top notch gymnast who's bright future had many coaches eager to train her. She had the best training money could buy until her parents died and the money suddenly disappeared along with the willing coaching. From then on, she taught herself.

Street life taught her many things. First and foremost was never pull your punches.

She took out her first victim with a mule kick to the groin followed by a hard fist to the kidney.

As she whirled to face her next target only to find Wolverine looking at her with respect.

"You don't take it easy on 'em, do ya?" The ground behind him was littered with moaning and unconscious men.

"Never." she confirmed. "Duck."

He dropped to the ground just as she paffed the woman emerging from the trees with a rifle. Her aim was so good that the only thing she hit was the gun. The woman dropped the suddenly red hot weapon quickly.

Jubilee heard Wolverine viciously swear behind her. She looked over her shoulder to find Tessa in her father's arms, his left arm wrapped around her waist pinning her arms down and a pistol pointed at her head in his right hand. He was staring straight at Cyclops. They ran over to the other mutants to listen to what Westerleigh was saying.

"I'm taking her now, dead or alive." the Senator was telling Cyclops.

"She's your daughter!" Cyclops argued. "Don't you even care about her?"

"Hardly." he scoffed. "If she hadn't distracted my Elizabeth, she would still be alive. I should have killed the brat then. She's been nothing but trouble since the day she was born."

A stunned silence fell over the group broken by Tessa's sob of pain.

Wolverine's head came up sharply as an unfamiliar scent reached him.

"Someone's comin'." he whispered to Emma.

"She took my wife from me." Westerleigh was ranting. "She's not taking the Presidency from me."

"He's crazy!" Jubilee murmured to Wolverine. "We hafta do something. He's gonna kill her."

He was not paying attention to her. His hard eyes were scanning the woods closely, his nose twitching. She recognized the posture. He had caught a scent that he didn't recognize.

There's someone out there, Emma told her in her mind. I can't get a fix on him. Every time I come close, he slips away.

Can you get to Cerebra? Jubilee asked.

Not without drawing his eye. Any movement at all could make him kill her. Dammit, I wish Sage was here.

A movement out of the corner of her eye almost made Jubilee turn. She remembered her training just in time. She broadened her senses and began to search. She felt the presence but it was not static. It kept flitting from place to place.

"Is Nightcrawler here?" she whispered to Wolverine.

"Nope." he replied in the same low whisper. "He's in England."

Just as he spoke, a cloud of white smoke appeared beside Westerleigh and resolved into a tall man. He knocked the gun out of the surprised Senator's hand and snatched Tessa from his arms. With another cloud and a pop, they disappeared.

Jubilee quickly paffed the stunned man, knocking him off his feet and blinding him.

"Go find her," she told her partner. "We'll take care of him."

He turned and sniffed. The stranger's scent was very different from Nightcrawler's. Kurt's teleportation was accompanied by the scent of sulfur and brimstone. This new teleporter left the scent of old red wine and dust. He was not that hard to track but he was hard to pin down. After three different moves, Wolverine was finally able to catch him and bring him to the mansion. Tessa obviously knew the man and was angry with him.

"You could have told me you were a mutant." she ranted at him. "I've known you for seven years. I dated you for three and you still didn't trust me enough to tell me."

"Come on, Tess," he argued. "I didn't know how you felt about mutants. We never talked about it."

"You could have said something when I found the uniform in your apartment."

"I didn't know about the uniform until two days before you were kidnapped. You never told me that you found it. Anyway, it obviously isn't mine."

"I know that now." she yelled.

They had made it back to the front of the mansion. The rest of the team were gathered around the blubbering Senator who was flinching every time one of them came near him.

"Someone want to explain what is going on?" Cyclops asked.

"The good Senator has been selling nucs to terrorists." Nick Fury said as he walked out of the trees.

Wolverine began to growl which was echoed by Cyclops. His vision went red as his conversation with the head of SHIELD echoed in his head. The last thing he remembered was leaping at the bigger man with his claws bared.

"That'll keep him down for about half an hour." Rogue said as she pulled her glove back on. "Y'all better explain quick. Ah got his memory of the phone call." The Logan in her head was desperate to get at Fury and kill him. She was having trouble controlling him. It did not help that her own personality wanted to kill the big man as well. The Logan presence didn't care that it was wrong. Fury had place his Jubilee in a dangerous situation and needed to pay. Rogue, on the other hand, knew it was wrong. That was the only thing keeping her from killing him.

"You bastard," Cyclops snarled. "You have some nerve coming here."

He took several steps toward Fury, rage clear on his face. He stopped when he felt Rogues hand on his arm.

"Don't make me touch you, too." she warned. "Ah'm havin' enough trouble controllin' Logan."

"Do you know what he did?" he yelled.

"Yeah, Ah know." she said. "Give him time ta explain. Then we'll kill him."

Scott turned to Fury. "Well?" he growled.

"Westerleigh has been selling nucs to Middle East terrorists for about five years." He began. "As far as we can tell, they bought about ten of them but we don't know who and we don't know where they are. Most of the information we could find only told half of the story. We needed all of it so we could get them back and punish him for the treasonist bastard he is. I found out that Ms. Madison was the lynch pin the morning she was kidnapped or I would have picked her up myself."

SHIELD agent swarmed over the grounds collecting Westerleigh and the rogue FBI agents. Most were unconscious or hurt too bad to resist.

"And what about me?" Jubilee demanded. "Why did you have me kidnapped?"

"What?" Bobby yelled.

"He had you kidnapped?" Alex demanded.

Angry shouts echoed across the grounds. Fury's voice rose above the noise.

"I didn't have a choice." he hollered. "The slavers were targeting women sixteen to twenty-one. I don't have anyone that fits the profile. I needed someone who could be a believable slave but could protect Ms. Madison at the same time. Jubilee was the logical choice. I'm sorry I didn't ask before hand but I didn't have much time."

"You looked at the data, Jubilee." Scott said. "How much of this is true?"

"About Westerleigh, all of it." she confirmed. "I know what he sold and who he sold it to. I also know about the bribes that he has been floating around. He's been a bad boy."

"And he was set up to become our next President." Fury told them.

"As to what he did to me, I can't tell you. I didn't have access to the internal memos."

"Then who hired the slavers?" Scott asked.

"I did." the strange mutant told him.

"Brad?" Tessa said. "What are you talking about?"

"This is your ex?" Jubilee asked.

"Yeah." Tessa said. "Why did you have them kidnap me?" she asked him.

"I had to get you out of the country." he explained. "Your father found out about the chip I had implanted and was going to have you killed and dissected to get it. He would have done anything to keep that information out of official hands."

"Why use me? You could have hidden the files anywhere."

"I had to put them in the last place he would look. He would have never suspected that his own daughter would be carrying the files around in her head."

"Why didn't you turn them over to SHIELD?" Fury asked.

"You have a mole." Brad told him. "Westerleigh knew the moment you decided to go after him. He would have covered his tracks."

"And you know this how?" Fury growled.

"I have spies in your organization as well." he admitted. "For an agency that lives on secrets, you have a lot of holes you need to plug."