Housekeeping: No major essays this week .*Audible sigh of relief from all readers*

Just the important bits - I totally agree with Verthril on Emma. As a reader you got a real sense that she was building herself back up. She wasn't the teacher you wanted, but the teacher you deserved...or something like...Thanks V for the review.

Also shoutout (I can use kewl words) to PredatoryQuill for the Fav and Follow. Love the profile pic. Thanks!

Have fun!:o)

Chapter Eight: Inner Logic

'I just can't. Logan!' snapped Jubilee at her mentor, weary of their circular argument.

'Why not, darlin'?' the cigar-chomper countered, rubbing his eyes. 'Kid's keepin' the whole house up at night.'

He couldn't help feeling discussion would've gone better if he wasn't so damn tired. Yet here they were, having spent the best part of the morning in his office, arguing back and forth.

And it was the little one at the heart of their disagreement who was the reason Logan couldn't get any shut-eye. Not even the comfort of Ororo's soft curves could lull the wildman to sleep.

The whole situation put the Wolverine on edge. The infant's constant nightly wailing was grinding on his nerves, and sabotaging any hope he had of convincing Jubilee to go see her son.

The firecracker may not have been a Howlett, but she sure as hell inherited his family line's stubborn streak. Logan had learned long ago that arguing with Jubes was like trying to navigate a mental maze; just when you thought you had it all figured out, there was another dead end. The young woman had an aptitude for argument that would have made Socrates pee his toga in frustration.

'He's miserable without ya, y'know?' he emphasised, realising he was now stooping to emotional blackmail.

Jubilee took another swig from the small flask in her hand. The syntho-blood, while not as potent the real deal, was slowly healing the injuries she'd sustained at the hands of the Jersey Stalker. Just one more bone left to knit before hand would give her the all-clear: after a final, quick X-ray, he'd insisted on placing her left arm in a soft brace, and no amount of whining or puppy dog eyes could dissuade him. She'd have to endure the brace till her arm was fully healed, or otherwise Hank threatened to tie her to a med-lab bed for the foreseeable future.

Pretty darn kinky, Jubilee had thought.

But for the annoyance factor of the brace, her arm thankfully didn't hurt all that much. That was a good thing, since you needed to be sharp when you went up against the Wolverine. The old man was a sly one, not unwilling to figuratively – and sometimes literally – hit below the belt.

Watching the loner run a rough hand over his face, Jubilee felt a pang of guilt. Not only had her separation from the boy contributed to Logan's ragged appearance, but also that week she'd had three more secret psychic counselling sessions with Emma Frost – a woman Logan neither like nor trusted.

The thinky part of Jubilee's mind urged that Logan was right to distrust the blond telepath. Underestimating the White Queen was never a good idea, but Jubes had found in Emma an unlikely confidante, acquiring a new appreciation for the older woman's bluntness.

After their first session, Jubilee had indeed decided to 'slap on a smile' and venture out of her cell. She'd even turned over the stake she'd hidden under her bed to a shocked and furious Raizo. She didn't envy the lecture Visigoth was in for when the Forgiven departed.

The night before, Emma had declared Jubliee sufficiently rehabilitated for their sessions to end, but before she vanished the White Queen had left her with the number of a secure landline, just in case she or any other former members of Gen-X needed some tough love. Emma was just one more secret to add to growing list of lies and deceptions, along with Asteria.

Jubilee was snapped from her guilty thoughts by an irritated Logan clearing his throat.

'What, Wolvie? I'm just not ready to see him, OK? Maybe in a few days. Cecelia's totally fine with him. Shogo just needs time to adjust. '

Logan fought the urge to pop a claw. With his patience running at an all-time low, the Wolverine decided he was done debating and asking nicely.

'Kid doesn't needa adjust to a thing! Cecelia ain't his mother. You made a promise to that kid and ya can't just turn tail and run. So get your vampire ass out of my office and go see your son!'

Standing in the doorway of the school's bustling cafeteria, Jubilee fidgeted with the wooden cross around her neck.

Before he'd shoved her out of the office, Logan had handed the symbol back to her, and she could have sworn her mentor nearly sighed in relief when the cross did nothing to her vampire skin.

The cross, like the syntho-blood, was a reassuring reminder that she was the one in control, not the thing lurking in her soul.

Still, Jubilee would've preferred her reunion with Shogo to have taken place somewhere away from prying eyes. The cafeteria at lunch was a precautionary measure; if something did go wrong and Shogo was put in jeopardy, it was packed with enough omegas, aliens, healers and X-Men who could take her down.

Taking a deep breath, and letting it out slowly, she made her way to the teacher's table.

Lunch hour in full effect, but the large table at the back of the hall was suspciously deserted. The only residents who seemed hungry today where Remy and Cecelia; the latter trying to coax the obstinate bundle in the stroller next to her into eating his lunch. From the frustrated expression that stained the doctor's face, Jubilee assumed it wasn't going well. So invested where the couple in their battle that neither notice Jubilee next to them till she spoke.

'Ah… Hi, guys.'

'Oh, thank God!' blurted Cecelia with relief

'Bonjour, petite,' greeted Remy with a touch more grace, giving Jubilee a hug and a peck on both cheeks. 'Welcome back ta da land o' the livin'.'

'Shogo, there's someone here to see you,' cooed Cecelia to the boy as she turned his stroller to face Jubilee and stepped back into Remy's embrace, giving mom some room.

Jubilee's breath hitched as she laid eyes on her son. For two weeks Logan had been insisting that Shogo wasn't taking their separation well, but she'd steadfastly refused to believe him, reasoning that there was no safer place for the boy than in the care of school's latina doctor and the ragin' Cajun.

It only occurred to her now, staring down at her son's red and angry little face, that Shogo might've needed more than just someone to protect him, to shield him from the raving vampire girl downstairs. Jubilee had never imagined that as young as he was, Shogo would even miss her if she wasn't around.

The infant was considerably thinner than the last time she'd seen him. His usually relaxed appearance was gone, leaving a boy who furtively glanced around him, as if hoping to spot something, while chewing gummily on a tiny fist.

'Hi, little guy,' Jubilee squeaked as she crouched unevenly before the stroller, too frightened to pick up her son. Instead she gently pulled the clammy fist from his mouth and risked laying a soothing hand on his slight tummy.

At the familiarity of her touch and voice, Shogo instinctively raised his arms up to be held. When nothing happened, the boy was puzzled. The soft, warm one had always picked him up before. He let out a worried whimper.

'Don't cry, little guy, I'm here,' Jubilee whispered, giving his small hand a soft squeeze.

Noting the uncomfortable interaction, Cecelia moved to intervene, but Remy held her back. Perplexed, she peeked up at the lanky man who responded with a slight shake of his auburn mane. This was between mother and son.

Again, Shogo held out his arms to his mother and whined a little louder this time, struggling against the safety straps of his stroller. Attempting to console her unhappy son, Jubilee picked up Bamf, Shogo's favourite toy, and offered it to him. The gesture was fake and unnatural, and the baby could sense it. He'd had enough. Why wasn't he being picked up? Where was the love and warmth he'd had grown to depend on the last few months?

He let out an anguished scream that shocked the cafeteria to a standstill.

People turned and stared, but to Jubilee the onlookers could've been on the other side of the planet – the only thing that mattered in that moment was the distress of her son.

Before Shogo could let loose a second wail, his mom was already undoing his safety straps. The only thing she knew was that Shogo needed her, and it was only after she'd successfully wrestled the unhappy infant from his stroller and had him settled on her shoulder that she realised what had happened.

That scream had awakened a primal Pavlovian response, bypassing all of Jubilee well-honed defences. That scared, lonely look was the same one as all those months before, when she'd spotted him among the rubble of the orphanage. His big brown eyes staring straight through her. She had to pick him up, protect him, love him – it was what nature demanded of any good mother.

Feeling the love and safety of his mommy's soothing embrace and soft words, Shogo's cries died down to mere hiccups in an instant.

'I love you ' Jubilee whispered as she rested her cheek on his fluffy head and rubbed his back in small, soothing circles. 'I will never leave you again.'

As the world around them came back into focus, Quentin Quire's biting voiced cut through the air.

'Thank fuck! I thought the brat was never gonna to shut up.'

Later that night, a freshly scrubbed Shogo, clad in his favourite Thing-themed onesie, contentedly dozed in his mother's arms, soothed by the steady rhythmic beating of her heart.

Eventually, Jubilee knew she'd have to place him in his crib, but for now it just felt right holding him like this.

Another late night. His third one this week. He could easily imagine his overworked brain slowly dripping from his ears with each new equation.

Did I really sign up for this? Mattias pondered gloomily as he scratched a 2 next to (ρv + p) on the blackboard. At least his hand wasn't hurting for once. Maybe Dr Welker's latest batch of wonder pills were actually working.

Feeling trapped by his office's grey walls, Mattias had decamped to one of the Pupin building's lower seminar halls. The university tended frown on professors using classrooms as their own personal after-hours labs, but the doctor figured it wasn't as if they'd demote him – he was already serving hard time in academic hell. And anyway, Garu wouldn't fire him; the department couldn't even order pizza on the pittance they paid him, never mind attract another similarly qualified physicist to the job.

Mattias furiously scribbled down a new sequence, only to wipe it off a second later, would (u2+p) be better? Maybe… Why the hell not? He was throwing everything at it but the kitchen sink.

The only downside to working in the seminar hall was that he couldn't take the blackboard with him at the end of the night. His parents had bought him some newfangled tablet contraption the previous Christmas to help him at work, but while he appreciated the gift, for him physics always calculated best when written in crumbling chalk. Did Dr Barcia Marbosa tap out her water dynamics theory on some flashy screen? Nope; she had served her time, tirelessly working for hours, her clothes and fingers covered in chalk dust. That was how real science got done.

Before Mattias called it a night he'd have to meticulously copy it all down by hand, but he considered that a small price to pay for authentic work.

Halfway through a third round of re-calculations on his base fractal pairs, there was a knock at the door, the sharp sound echoing through the empty space of the hall.

'Don't worry, Mr Byers,' Mattias answered without looking up from his equations, 'I promise I'll be out before closing time. There just one more vector to go.'

He was lying, of course. Every scientist knew there were always more vectors.

"Mr Byers" let out a very feminine giggle before answering back: 'Weird, Hank always says if he had a Twinkie for every un-calculated vector, we'd have to airlift him out of the lab.'

Mattias whipped around to find one Jubilation Lee standing by the hall door, with a Weathergreen's grocery bag slung across her braced left arm and her sleeping son in his carrier by her right.

As flabbergasted as he was with her sudden reappearance in his life after her two-and-a-half-week sabbatical, he couldn't deny the sense of relief that washed over him at seeing her again.

'Hey,' she greeted the stunned doctor with a small wave. 'Sorry, I totally didn't mean to interrupt. Mr Byers said I'd find you here, but you're obviously busy, so…'

'No, no, Miss Lee, you're not interrupting,' Mattias broke in, fearing for a second that she'd disappear on him again. 'I was just in the middle of… You know what? It doesn't really matter. What can I do for you?'

'You sure?'

'Yes, I was just finishing off some stuff, nothing important. You know, dotting my "I"s, amalgamating my "pi"s' – he smirked stupidly at his own rhyme, then hastily pulled back into his practiced semi-frown – 'You know physicists: machines of efficiency and timeliness.'

Mattias waved for Jubliee to come in and she made a beeline for the the small blow heater he'd set up near the blackboard. While the university's lecture halls had indoor heating, most of the warmth seemed to evaporate in the deserted rooms at night.

Jubilee smirked back. 'Strange, from my experience scientists tend to be pretty absent-minded.'

'How dare you slander my profession!' Mattias countered with mock indignation, giving her his best stern professor look. It a good one: the one he'd practiced for hours in front of the mirror when he was still am insecure rookie academic.

Holding in a snigger at the strange contortions the doctor's Nordic features were doing, Jubilee coyly replied: 'Oh don't blame me, blame Dr Henry P McCoy.'

'Well, I guess he would know…'

Mattias shrugged defeatedly. Who was he to question the great Dr McCoy, world renowned geneticist, physicist and superhero? The genius was practically perfect in every way, and Mattias had to admit, begrudgingly as it was, he impressed with the company Miss Lee kept.

'…Still, he shouldn't be divulging all our secrets to you peasants.'

Forgetting herself for a moment, Jubilee nearly stuck out her tongue at her professor, something she often did when sparring with Bobby.

'Oh, he didn't have to tell us,' she shot back with a wicked grin. 'We kinda had it sussed when we found him snoring in his alphabetti spaghetti.'

A brief silence followed as Mattias tried to come to terms with a universe in which Hank McCoy slurped or snored in cheap canned pasta.

Letting the doctor have his moment, Jubilee settled Shogo by the small heater, making sure the blast of warmth wouldn't make him uncomfortable. It was all going well till Jubilee tried balance the weight of the bag on her braced arm and got her other hand tangled up in Shogo's baby blankets.

Seeing her get all twisted up, Mattias stepped in, taking the Weathergreen's bag from her braced arm so she could untangle herself from the python-like swaddling. The Swede, for his part, felt like kicking himself for not helping sooner.

'How is everything, by the way,' he asked, trying to make up for it, as he pointing to her braced limb. 'The note in your file said you fell?'

'Checking up on me?' she teased as she righted herself.

The doctor's fair cheeks lit up like the 4th of July.

'Well, er… you missed some classes and… er… well… it's my duty as your professor to, er… stay abreast' – he stuttered, glowing redder – 'I mean to...'

'It's OK, I was just teasing,' said Jubilee, saving Mattias from himself. Why make the guy feel like an idiot when he was the only lecturer who'd bothered to check up on her? None of her psych professors had even noticed she was gone.

'It was nothing,' a relieved Mattias assured her. 'Just didn't want you falling behind.'

Hopefully she didn't assume he was some kind of creepy stalker who followed young ladies home after class.

'So, your arm?' he asked again, reminding her that she'd never answered his question.

'Oh, this?'

Jubilee had to roll her eyes at the braced arm and Hank's irrational need to pad out the whole school in cotton wool. But she couldn't tell Mattias the truth. Instead, she followed standard X-practice and played it down.

'It's not that bad… Really, it totally looks way worse than it is. Just clumsy ol' Jubes.'

From the graceful way she naturally moved, Mattias severely doubted the girl had a clumsy bone in her lithe little body. Something just didn't add up. Yet he wasn't about to push the issue.

'I'm just glad you're OK,' he said. But from now on he was going to keep a real close eye on Miss Lee. The city could be a dangerous place for a pretty young single mother.

Unaware that the doc was on to her, Jubilee rambled nervously. 'Yeah, but it's a pain catching up. Lots of burning the ol' midnight oil and stuff.'

She mentally slapped herself. Was she thirteen again or something?

Then she noticed Mattias was holding the Weathergreen's bag, and she remembered why she'd sought him out that evening in the first place.

'That's for you, by the way,' she said, indicating to the bag. 'I never properly thanked you for the ride home.'

'You really didn't have to,' he insisted as he peeked inside the bag, seeing a pale blue cardboard cake box. This had very pleasant possibilities.

'But I wanted to,' she beamed as Mattias settled himself on the edge of the desk to open the box. Jubilee plunked herself upon the long row of desks opposite, her short legs cheerfully swinging off the edge.

Watching Dr Holgersson take out the box, Jubilee couldn't help but feel slightly giddy with anticipation. She'd spent days mulling over the perfect present. So many things were just too personal to get someone who was your college lecturer and other things, like gift tokens, were too cold and impersonal. The proud Swede didn't strike her as a wino, so one of Warren's older-than-dirt bottles of vino was out. Hank had suggested a book, maybe something physics-related and leather-bound, but the prices had made her queasy – far too ambitious for a single mother and college student. She was on the verge of maxing out her institute plastic as it was.

'I didn't know Weathergreen's had a bakery section,' said Mattias as he worked on unknotting the twine that held the cake box lid shut.

'Oh they don't, I just needed something to carry it in. The school's cook whipped it up.'

She watched the doctor closely to see how he took the news that his treat was possibly prepared by mutant hands. When he didn't seem to care, Jubilee continued.

'Cook is an amazing baker. She can basically whip up anything you want, as long as you beg at just the right frequency.'

Which Jubilee knew from experience was just below that of a dog whistle.

'Well, you can tell her I said thanks,' he said, as he continued to struggled with the twine single-handedly.

Jubes was suddenly mortified. She shouldn't have let Cook tie the damn box down like it was being sent to the front lines! But she knew better than to interfere; years of living with the Professor taught her that most people hated being coddled.

It took another minute, but Mattias finally got the hang of it and successfully removed the knotted twine from the box before folding the lid open. Then a look of pure amazement and delight washed away his customary semi-frown, and for the first time since she'd joined his class the good doctor truly smiled. Not a smirk or a grin, but a 100% genuine human smile. Jubilee knew she'd struck gift gold.

'No… way…' was about all he could utter as he stared at the box's contents.

'Cook looked up the recipe, so it should be pretty close.'

Jubilee wasn't sure the doctor could even hear her, so transfixed was he on the sweet delights held in that box. Mattias picked up one of the tiny paper cups, eyed it with a reverence that border on the sacrilicious, and popped the gooey toffee within right into his mouth. Jubes was remind of Hank and his first Twinkie after Hostess reopened. What was it with scientists and sugary things?

'Oh God, this is soooo good,' Mattias sighed in sweet ecstasy, and Jubilee wondered whether he'd prefer some time alone.

'You said you wouldn't be able to get any this Christmas so I thought, ya know…'

Jubilee's voice drifted off when it became clear the man wasn't listening to a word she was saying. Not that she minded, really. To see the normally curmudgeonly doctor so blissfully happy made the kitchen duty shifts she'd swapped in return for the knäck totally worth it.

Years seemed to fall from his face as the Swede munched his way through the top layer of toffees, and Jubilee had to admit, with the right lightning, he might be considered cute – in a academic Viking meets garden gnome sorta way.

Snapping out of his sweet, sweet revery, Mattias offered some knäck his student, scooching up a bit on his busy desk so Jubilee could sit beside him.

Then he reached for a piece from the second layer, and his face returned to a frown.

'Miss Lee, is there jelly beans in this knäck?'

He held it up to the light to inspect it in much the same way a radiologist would inspect an X-ray for signs of cancer. Yes, those were definitely jelly beans.

'Why are there jelly beans in my knäck?'

Now it was Jubilee's turn to blush deep red. Her original plan was to be out of the building by the time he unearthed that second layer. Damn Paige and her adorable yet extremely evil fourth-graders!

'First off, in my defence I had nothing to do with this,' she blurted, hoping the doc would understand she was a just as much a victim here as his precious knäck. 'Some of the fourth-graders might've wanted to help out, and some of those same incredibly dangerous ten-year-olds may have mentioned that almonds were like totally too boring.'

Mattias eyebrows rose at the prospect.

'Hey, not my words! Outta the mouths of babes, ya know?' – she held up her hands in defence – 'I totally liked the first batch, but then the kids got into Bobby's candy stash and everything kinda got out of hand. I swear there woulda been a tween riot if we didn't let 'em have their way – and you do not say no to a tween who can combust every atom in your body with a single thought.'

The doctor simply shook his head. 'Did you bother telling those little philistines that knäck is a sacred Swedish delicacy? It's perfect, and you don't mess with perfection, Miss Lee.'

Jubes had to a smother a treacherous laugh behind her hand at the doctor's mock-serious tone, trying to appear repentant for the part she played in "Candygate".

Not completely convinced by his student's solemn expression, Mattias doubtfully eyed the offending piece of toffee once more, then chanced taking a bite, chewed it over like a judge about to pass sentence.

'You know what?' he mumbled as he popped the remainder in his mouth. 'Bugger tradition – these are awesome!'

Half an hour and a whole box of jelly bean, peanut and M&M-laden knäck later, Jubilee had regaled Mattias with the epic tale that was "cooking with hyper fourth-graders". Now both were wired on ridiculous amounts of sugar, and neither was in the mood to move about. Instead, Jubliee's attention wandered to the equation scrawled on the blackboard.

'That?' The physicist sighed, shaking his head, and gestured at it wildly with a sticky finger. 'That is nothing.'

'Doesn't look like nothing.'

Jubilee jumped off the desk to take a closer look at the chalk scribbles. She didn't even know where one might begin to decipher the complex algorithms. Seeing her trying to unravel the mess of numbers, Mattias wanted save the girl from wasting her time.

'Don't even bother…'

'I know, I know,' Jubilee interjected, sweet sacrasm dripping from her voice, 'the BA undergrad should mind her own business.'

'Oh God no, you misunderstand' – he fumbled, embarrassed that his words came out wrong – 'it's not because you're a BA grad. Most physicist would have trouble with that.'

His shoulders slumped with a heavy sigh.

'It's for my fractal chaos paper. It's complete garbage. I might as well wipe it and start over.'

'What's wrong with it?' she asked, trying to find anything in the chalk symbols that looked familiar. 'It's just fluid fractal mechanics right? Only your model uses people instead of a molecules.'

Jubilee immensely enjoyed the way Mattias' jaw dropped.

'What's wrong?' she teased with an innocent smile.

'How did you know that?'

The SoCal mallrat took over: 'Oh they like totally allow us lowly BAs on the internet these days – ya know, as long as we promise not to get our cooties on anything.'

Having had her fun, she switching to a matter-of-fact tone: 'I read up on you, Dr Holgersson. This should be part of your behavioural fractal dynamics algorithm.'

'Yeah, that's right,' he stuttered. The physicist felt his world tilt ever so slightly on its axis. When was the last time anyone had shown any interest in his obscure work? 'Most of this is all new stuff though. '

'So what's the problem?'

'It's just not clicking. The math is all right, but the sequences just aren't working.'

He moved to joined her at the board, squinting at the misbehaving equations.

'I just can't seem to make all the pieces fit right.'

Disheartened, he stuffed his hands into pockets of his khakis. Jubilee chose to ignore that obvious sign of defeat.

'OK, so talk me through it.'

'Talk you through it?' he echoed back, not quite following her.

'Yes, start at point A and talk me through the theory.'

The doctor was about to object when she beat him punch: And don't tell me I won't understand.'

'But this is highly advanced math…'

'Well duh!' she drawled. 'Of course it all math, but all math has some basic logical bone structure, right?'

He seemed sceptical.

'Look,' she continued, 'Hank always says that to understand the equation you need to understand the logic behind the numbers and symbols. It sounds to me like that's where your problem is. And as an added bonus, you don't have to worry about me stealing your work – can't do the math, remember?'

'It's gonna bore you,' he warned. Unperturbed, she retook her seat on the other side of the desk, pulling Shogo closer so she could keep him in the corner of her eye.

'We've got an hour or so to kill, and my schedule is wide open' – she waved him to the board – 'so, Teach… teach!'

What followed would be the template for many nights to follow.

But this evening, for more than an hour, closer to two, Mattias slowly – but never condescendingly – talked Jubilee, and ultimately himself, through the problem at hand, pausing occasionally to reorganise steps and equations as things became clearer.

To his surprise, he found Miss Lee to be an attentive listener and assistant. It was clear that the calculations were beyond her, but her grasp of the underlying ideas was astounding. He felt like she knew what he was about to say before he did, and for the first time since his Berkeley days, Mattias felt as if someone was willing to embrace his ideas, no matter how wacky or improbable they sounded.

Fractal behavioural fluid dynamics was not an easy subject to understand. The cognitive leap necessary to think of people not as individuals with free will but as nothing more than parts of a distinct pattern, following a path of least resistance through life, made most people queasy. Then once you'd calculated the expected route a behavioural pattern would take, that's when the real fun began, as rogue elements get introduced into the flow. It was the science of introducing chaos into order.

The seminar hall had grown steadily colder as they worked, but neither noticed. Mr Byers came around at some point to chuck them out but they fobbed him off with lame excuses. They only took a brief brake once so that Jubilee could rock an awakened Shogo back to sleep.

It was an intellectual meeting of minds, and much to Mattias' delight, instead of looking for the nearest exit, his student was completely engaged. Indeed, her ability to stump him with hard questions reawakened part of his disillusioned mind he had feared lost forever. The queries came thick and fast: If all genes were selfish by nature, could you predict the actions of one truly good soul? In a world that preached conformity, how do the actions of an anarchist force change in the patterns around him? With seven billion individuals all going about their daily lives, how do the actions of a few extraordinary super beings affect the flow?

By midnight, when Mr Byers threatened to lock them in if they didn't leave, Mattias had a much better understanding of his life's work – and of the curious young woman who was much more than just another random vector.

Next Week: High drama as we take a seven year step backwards in time. Join Remy, Rogue, Bobby and a cranky thirteen- (and a half) year-old Firecracker as they face the most daunting of challenges - surviving a trip to the Museum of Modern Art….Wait...What? Huh?!