-1This story is set in my own universe, Earth-719. This chapter was written in August 2006, revised in January 2007. I don't own Marvel, Jubilee, or... Actually, I think that's it so far. Well, X-Men and mutants, I don't own them either. But I own Earth-719... even though it's not much yet.
linebreak
Shang Zhe (Victim)
linebreak
The Dartes Household - Midnight
The full-figured Dr. Nicholette Dartes woke up with a start in her plushy bedroom. She rolled over and shook her snoring husband.
"Manny, wake up." When the small man snorted, but did not wake up, she shook him more vigorously. "I said wake up."
"... Nmff," mumbled Manuel, waking up now that his wife was nearly shoving him out the bed. "What do you want?" he asked, rubbing his face blearily.
"I heard something downstairs. Go check it out." She pulled the satiny sheets up to her full breasts, and implored her husband with her patented little-girl "pretty please" face.
Manuel mumbled something in Spanish while climbing out of the bed, slipping his feet into some ratty old plaid slippers and walked to the stairs.
At the head of the stairs, he heard BANG BANG BANG on the front door, followed by some breathless cries. His wife turned on the hall light, saying, "Well, get it. And if it's some psychopath, you best not let him in the house." Manuel looked back at his wife who weighed a good twenty pounds more than him. Ignoring his wife, he quickly descended the stairs, opening the solid wooden door to reveal his daughter's best friend in tears and wrapped up in a trench coat.
linebreak
Police Department - Later that morning...
"The girl's pretty torn up. She actually saw the guy shoot her mother through the throat. Almost ran herself to death on her way to her friend's house," a tall, balding cop said to a squat silver-haired officer. The two were looking at Jubilation Lee who had been brought in a few hours ago by her friend's parents after witnessing the death of her parents.
She sat alone in a white room, staring at a white styrofoam cup filled with microwaveable hot chocolate. She had a blanket draped over her shoulders, and a hollow look on her face.
"Poor girl, what is she, twelve?" asked the squat officer, standing up.
"I think she's thirteen. We haven't had any luck finding any family, she said she had grandparents in China, but she doesn't know either of them."
Jubes jumped when a pleasant-looking social worker came into the room. The woman was wearing a brown skirt and jacket with a yellow blouse underneath that matched the colour of her hair that was pulled into a simple ponytail.
"Hi, Jubilation. I'm Dana Larson. They tell me you've just lost your parents. How are you feeling?" said the social worker, mispronouncing Jubilation's name.
"You can call me Jubilee." She turned her eyes up to Ms. Larson's plain face. "And I feel like roses," she replied sarcastically. "How would you feel after you watched your parents die?"
Ms. Larson blinked rapidly, unsure of how to respond at first. "Well, I'm very sorry for your loss. I can understand how it feels to lose people close to you. And I'm sorry to say that we haven't been able to find any of your family."
Jubilee looked at the fake-wood table. "I figured. What's gonna happen to me? They gonna put me in a foster home?"
Ms. Larson frowned slightly. "No; actually, Mr. and Mrs. Dartes have offered to take care of you, until someone in your family can be contacted."
"Oh," she replied simply. "When do I get to leave?"
"They're here to take you home."
"To their home, you mean. What's going to happen to my house?"
"Well..." replied Ms. Larson uneasily. "The police need it to investigate your parents murder, then you'll be able to claim your possesions, and then it'll be auctioned off, unless an adult related to you or your parents claims it."
"Oh," she replied more hollowly. She closed her eyes against some tears while Ms. Larson led her back to Mrs. Dartes who had just finished filling out some paperwork.
The Dartes Household - Around noon...
Manuel, Nicholette, and Destinee Dartes sat in an uncomfortable silence in the comfortable living room of their pleasant home. Manuel looked at his wife who was staring at the white carpet in the corner of the room. Her dark skin contrasted with the whites of the room, and she held the equally dark hand of their daughter, Destinee. The only visable connection between Manuel and Destinee was that of their body structure. While Nicholette was quite buxom, Manuel and his daughter were almost painfully skinny.
Nicholette looked up, thinking out loud, "It's gonna be strange not to see him at the office any more." Over the years, Nicholette and Felix Lee, Jubilee's father, had developed a close working relationship at the practice where they both worked. "And Jia was always so sweet." Chuckling softly, she said, "The way she talked though, it was like she was reading the words straight from a dictionary."
Manuel smiled and thought about his experiences with the couple. Destinee looked nervously between her parents, unsure if it was okay to be happy when her best friend's parents had been killed. Instead she said quietly, "I'm gonna go check on Jubes. I think she's asleep by now, but I want to make sure."
Nicholette nodded, and Manuel looked at hs daughter and said, "You're a good girl, Dessie, be strong for her, she needs you. Okay?"
Destinee looked solemnly at her father and nodded. She left the room, and quietly climbed the stairs. Silently, she opened the door to her very messy and cluttered room, and saw Jubilee laying on the bed, clutching a stuffed animal, staring at the ceiling.
"Jubes... " Don't you dare say, "how are you?" her parents just died... "You... hangin' in there?" she asked uncomfortably.
Jubes turned to her friend numbly, tears welling up in her eyes. Destinee ran to Jubilee's side and clutched her in a hug tight enough to make diamonds. "I saw him," Jubes whispered, "I almost shot him."
Destinee released her from the death-grip, and stared at her downcast eyes. "What?"
Jubes told Destinee what she told the police about seeing the man shoot her mother and running from the house. Then she proceeded to tell her what she hadn't told the police.
"I was hiding in an alley, and he came up... I was so scared, I thought I was gonna die. Then he... he... smiled and said, 'baby want some?' and he started to take off his pants. His voice, it was so scary. It sounded... like a little boy's voice. That's when my hands exploded."
Destinee looked at Jubes incredulously. "Your hands exploded? What are you talking about?"
Looking at her hands, she replied, "It was like fireworks shot out of them. They hit him in the stomach and he fell down, and he was burning, and screaming. He dropped his gun, and I picked it up..."
"Omigod. What'd you do?"
"I didn't shoot him. I couldn't. I dropped the gun, and I ran away." She started crying again, and clutched Destinee's wiry frame to her.
"Sh..." Destinee murmered and crooned comfortingly to Jubes. "It's okay, Jubes. It's okay."
Destinee sat with Jubes' head in her lap, contemplating silently. She's a mutant. She almost killed a man. She's my friend. She's broken. What am I going to do? Destinee closed her eyes, having decided to protect her friend.
linebreak
Lee Family Plot...
The double funeral for FuQi "Felix" Lee and Jia Chen Lee was quiet and dignified, and like that of their son, was held on a pleasant summer day. Jubilee stood between their graves saying the Taoist prayers that she had reseached and memorised for her parents' funeral. Destinee watched her pray while her parents thanked the Li's friends and co-workers for coming.
After Jubilation finished the prayers for her parents, she looked at her brother's gravestone. Quietly, she said, "I know we never really met, but I want you to take care of our parents like they took care of me." Turning back to her parents' graves, she said, "I love you guys, and I'll never forget you. I'm gonna make you guys proud of me."
Jubilee walked slowly to her surrogate family to go to a home that wasn't hers, and sleep in a bed that wasn't made by her mother.
linebreak
The Local Park - A few weeks later...
Destinee and Jubes sat in the park on a hot, sticky, boring day. The two had exhausted every conversation that they could and were sitting, Destinee chewing on a piece of grass while Jubes looked at the clouds, thinking about her parensts wistfully.
"Hey, Jubes."
"Yeah?"
"Have you done the fireworks thing since that night?"
Jubes looked at Destinee. "No."
"Do you think you could?"
"I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."
"You wanna try?"
Jubes leaned against her arms, craning her neck to see the blue patches of sky. "Yeah. But not here."
The two girls clambered up and starte back to Destinee's house, which was only a few blocks away.
"Your dad's not home today, is he?"
"Nah, he's teaching summer courses."
"Oh."
The girls entered the house and jogged up the stairs to Destinee's room. When they got in the room, Destinee looked at Jubes expectantly, wondering what exactly was gonna happen.
Jubilee looked at her hands and realised she really didn't know how to make the fireworks appear. "Hey, Des. I don't know how to make it happen."
Destinee frowned, thoughtfully, and said, "Maybe if you try thinking about something that makes you angry."
Jubilee's thoughts immediatly turned to the red-haired man with the creepy smile, and the voice that made her skin crawl. Instantly, her hands tingled, no longer burning, and blue and green sparks began to crackle between her fingers. At this point, Destinee's eyes got very wide. Xue-Bai blindly lifted her hands and a paffing sound filled the room.
"Wow..." whispered Destinee in awe.
This unfortunately distracted Jubilee, and she turned toward Destinee just as her fireworks started cracking and popping with a small explosive force. As though in slow motion, Jubes saw a single red globule of light fly toward Destinee and explode on her left shoulder.
Destinee screamed and Jubilee panicked, causing the paffs to increase in quantity, size, and frequency. She screamed and backed away from her friend violently, tripping over a pair of shoes. She hit her head on a shelf and fell the floor bleeding from the back of her head.
"Destinee..." she moaned before blacking out, the fireworks dissipating quickly.
linebreak
When Jubilee woke up, the yellow sunlight was slanting through the open window and the room smelled faintly of sweat and fireworks. She rubbed the back of her head, feeling the sticky blood that had oozed out of a cut from the shelf's sharp edge. She sat up, and her vision swam, when it came into focus, she saw Destinee's still form laying on the floor next to her, singe marks on the floor and bed behind her.
"Oh, my god, Destinee." She crawled over to Destinee and saw that she was breathing, but her shirt around the shoulder had been burnt through and the skin underneath was red and bloody. Panicking slightly, Jubilee shuffled through the mess in the room, searching desperately for a phone. Finally she found a cell phone underneath Destinee's bed.
She dialed 911 and said she needed an ambulance because her friend was unconcious. The operator asked for the address, and asked how her friend had been knocked unconcious. Jubilee lied and said she didn't know, after that, she asked the operator to stay on the line until the ambulance got there. She agreed, and asked if Jubilee was okay, trying to calm her down. She explained that she had hit her head on a shelf and that now her head was pounding. The operator said she probably had a concussion and should go in the ambulance with her friend.
A minute later, a siren approached from the street. Jubilee hung up the phone and stumbled out of the room. Clutching the banister, she went down the stairs and opened the door just as the paramedics reached it.
"Are you okay?"
Jubilee's vision was swimming again, and she couldn't connect the voice to the person who said it.
"Upstairs, Destinee... my friend, upstairs..." groaned Jubes before pitching to the side, one of the paramedics catching her as the other darted up the stairs to find Destinee.
Jubes hobbled to the ambulance with the support of the paramedic, and he strapped her into a bench seat.
"Try to stay awake, okay?"
Jubilee nodded woozily, and he pulled the stretcher from the ambulance, retreating back to the house to assist with Destinee.
When Destinee had been carried into the ambulance, the male paramedic got into the cab and started driving to the nearest hospital. The female paramedic inspected Destinee saying some things that Jubilee couldn't catch, and asking Jubes questions that sounded quite fuzzy at first.
When they arrived at the hospital, Jubilee was more lucid, and she was able to answer some of the nurse's questions as he wheeled her in behind the paramedics who wheeled in Destinee.
linebreak
Hunter Memorial Hospital - That evening...
After many doctors and nurses and a few tests on her eyes and ears, and whatever else that Jubilation had to endure, Mrs. Dartes entered the room.
"Jubes..." Mrs. Dartes said tentatively. "Destinee hasn't regained conciousness yet, and the doctors can't tell me how she sustained her injuries. I took a look at her, and I couldn't tell either. Baby, what happened?"
Jubilation looked at Mrs. Dartes' impressive figure, not quite meeting her eyes. And quietly she said, "I lost control of the paffs, and they exploded by her. I didn't mean to, it was an accident."
Mrs. Dartes sat down, not sure what Jubilation was saying. "Paffs?"
"They're like little fireworks that I shoot out of my hands."
Mrs. Dartes stood up, backing away from Jubilation. "You're one of those freaks, and you used your powers on my baby?"
"No! I didn't mean to! It was an accident!" Jubilation began crying and a nurse entered the room, asking what was going on.
"Nothing. I don't know this... freak." Mrs. Dartes sneered at Jubilation coldly and left the room.
The nurse patted Jubilation's shoulder and offered her some tissues. She accepted the tissues, and fell into fitful sleep, seeing Destinee burnt and bleeding while smiling a crooked smile.
linebreak
Hunter Memorial Hospital - The following morning...
Jubilation woke up, and Ms. Dana Larson was sitting in the chair beside her bed, leafing through some files on her lap.
"What are you doing here?"
"I've recieved your case file. The Dartes' have made you a ward of the state; I'll be helping you find a new home." She looked at Jubilation and smiled sadly, remembering her from the month prior.
"Where's Destinee?"
"She's been transferred to another hospital. She woke up about an hour after Dr. Dartes transferred guardianship to the state."
"Oh."
Before Jubilation could ask more questions, she said, "We need to get you dressed, and out of here." She left the room to give her some privacy while dressing.
Ms. Larson's car - Still that morning...
"Are you taking me to an orphanage or something?"
"No, we actually already have a family for you."
"How?"
"Well, there are only a few families who are willing to foster... er... children of your genetic persuasion." Ms. Larson looked uncomfortably at Jubilation, and said, "The file on the floor, by your feet, that's the family who'll foster you. They're a very nice couple who have fostered kids like you in the past, and recently, they lost one of their foster children to car accident. I've worked with them before, and I'm sure you'll do very well there."
Jubilation flipped through the file, looking at some photos of a very plain looking man and his very plain looking wife. "Their name is Prayre? What kind of name is Prayre?"
"Yes, and I don't know. English, I guess."
Jubilation tossed the file back on the ground and watched the scenery change while listening to Ms. Larson's staticky radio.