Masquerade: Parts 3-4

by Dyce

Pebbs is just the niftiest critter... :) Be it cold, be it late at night, if I mention that I'm sad because I've not gotten any feedback, then feedback I get, and at once.

This section is for Pebbs and for Kitty, who both sent me such nice feedback.

Part 3

A cheeseburger didn't really seem right with the new clothes he'd bought her.

Cain watched... Jubilee? Jubilation? It was harder to tell when they weren't talking or looking at him. Either way, he watched the girl eating her McPlastic meal quickly, neatly. The red shirt and black jeans suited her, strong colours that emphasized her black hair and bright eyes.

She was so *small*. He'd picked her up again to bring her in here, before he bought her the crutches that now leaned against the table, and she'd all but vanished into his arms. It was like holding a baby, he guessed, although he'd never held a baby. There was something about holding something very warm and tiny in his arms that reached down past all his defenses to tug at instincts he'd never known he had.

She licked a trace of ketchup off one slim finger and gave him an inquiring look. "Are you gonna finish those fries?"

"You have 'em." He pushed them across the table. He hated fast food anyway. Meat and potatoes, bread and beer. That was real food.

"Thanks." She dove daintily into the half-eaten cardboard container of fries. "So what do we do now?"

"Well, you finish eatin', and I take you back to the hotel and tell Tom we're gonna keep you. Then he's gonna go nuts." Cain shrugged philosophically. "Don't pay too much attention to him. He's upset 'cause Terry ran off with the X-Men."

"She's the redhead?" A fry disappeared into her contemplative expression. "Why'd she change sides?"

"I dunno." Cain knew he looked grim. The girl didn't seem intimidated, though. "Something about 'doing the right thing', or some shit like that. Tom raised that girl from a baby, after her mom died and her dad took off. She shouldn'ta just run off like that."

The girl nodded gravely. "It's not right to just run out on someone who's been taking care of you," she said quietly. "I should call the X-Men. Tell them I'm okay, at least."

Hell. He'd walked right into that one. "Yeah, I guess. Just don't tell 'em where we are, keep the call short, and use a payphone."

She nodded, polishing off the last few fries. "I'll do that now." She grinned impishly. "I'll ask how Terry's doing, too. If she's miserable and unpopular at her new school, maybe Black Tom'll feel better."

Cain brightened a little. "He probably would. You ask."

* * *

"Hello, Xavier School for the Gifted, please wait while I get a teacher," Bobby rattled off, looking around frantically for the aforementioned teacher. There weren't any in sight.

"Bobby? It's me."

He dropped the phone, then cursed and scrabbled on the floor for it, grabbing it and jerking it up to his ear so fast that the mouthpiece smacked him in the jaw. He ignored the incipient bruise, stammering eagerly into the phone. "Jubilee? Is that you?"

"The one and only," she said with an oddly ironic note in her voice. "Miss me?"

"Miss... Jubes, we all thought you were DEAD!" Bobby almost wailed, clutching the phone as if it was a lifeline. "Where ARE you? Are you okay?"

"I got knocked around a bit, but I'll be fine. Is the redhead there? The Irish one?"

"Yeah, she came back with us. She mostly just cries a lot, but she'll probably stop once she finds out she didn't kill you, and we aren't supposed to hold knocking the cabin down against her, and..." He trailed off and frowned. "Jubes, how did you know she was here?"

"The Juggernaut told me." Jubilee's voice sounded... different. Cooler. Less vibrant. "He found me and took me to a hospital."

"The JUGGERNAUT found y... okay, forget it, that's not important." Bobby held onto the last fading shreds of reason with both emotional hands. "Just tell me where you are, and I'll go find someone, and we'll come and get you, okay?"

There was a soft, faint sigh on the other end of the line. "I can't do that, Bobby. Look, when you see Xavier, could you tell him that I'm sorry about this, but it just wasn't working out?" Her voice softened a fraction. "I'll miss you, Bobster. I really will. I just... need some me time. I'll see you and the guys around."

A firm click told him that she'd hung up.

He dropped the phone again and raced down the hall towards the Professor's office. *Pleaselethimbetherepleaselethimbetherepleaselethimbethere...*

Xavier was there, in the middle of one of his physics classes. Bobby didn't even notice the students. "Professor!" he gasped, knowing that his hands were shaking and that he probably looked like he'd seen a ghost. "Professor, Jubilee's alive! And she called, and she's not coming back!"

The Professor blinked.

Other than that, he showed no sign of peturbation. He dismissed the students, summoned the other teachers, and made Bobby sit down and drink a cup of strong tea while the teachers were filled in.

When Bobby had told his story twice, the second time repeating his conversation with Jubilee almost verbatim under a barrage of questions, he made his escape.

He didn't know what to think. The black, heavy grief of Jubilee's death was gone, just like that, but not quite. She wasn't coming back. It had all happened so fast, and he wasn't quite sure how he felt about it all yet.

He did know that nobody had told Theresa about Jubilee yet. The Irish girl had been tearing herself up over causing Jubilee's death by collapsing the house while Jubilee was still inside it. The shock of killing someone, even accidentally, had been what caused her split with the other two. Nobody really trusted her yet.

He knocked on the door of the room she'd been assigned. "Theresa?" he called quietly.

"What?" The word cracked a little. Oh, hell, she was crying again.

"There's something you should know." He leaned against the door, trying to sound reassuring. "You didn't kill anyone, Theresa, okay? Jubilee's alive."

The door opened so fast that he nearly fell through it and into her arms. "She is?" Theresa demanded, big green eyes appealingly damp, red hair ruffled around her face.

Bobby nodded, smiling a little. Maybe having Theresa around wouldn't be so bad. She sure wasn't hard to look at. "She's not coming back to school, at least not for a while, but she's fine."

A surprisingly pretty smile bloomed amid the tearstains on her face. "Thank ye for telling me," she said softly. "Thinking that I'd... ye know..."

"Yeah." Bobby put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "But it's okay now."

She smiled at him again, and he started to feel a lot better.

* * *

Jubilation looked at the phone for a long moment, a little regretfully.

Then she reached down inside herself, in a way she'd discovered a long time ago. Last time, she'd used the technique to resurrect Jubilee. Now she used it to slide her other self carefully back where she'd come from. Jubilee didn't resist as she was reintegrated back into the core personality. If anything, she seemed a little relieved. It was hard for an incomplete persona to get through the day, and they really did belong together, after all.

It took a few minutes of leaning against the wall to reintegrate herself properly. They'd been apart for so long that there were a lot of incongruencies to reconcile.

When she was done, she opened her eyes again and smiled a little ruefully. Then she went to find Cain.

He was standing in front of a bookshop, staring moodily into the window. He looked around when she came up again, his rather coarse face brightening a little when he saw her. She smiled a little in return, liking the pleased look on his face when he saw her. It was nice to be appreciated.

And not appreciated like *that*, either. She'd gotten enough of those looks to recognize them, and this wasn't like that.

Then he frowned a little. "Which one're you? Jubilation?"

"Both. I... sort of put myself back into one personality again." She smiled at him a little shyly. He wasn't a nice man at all, that was blindingly obvious... but she was starting to like him. "Like you said, you know? Living a lie, and all that." She shrugged, holding her arms out and doing a little pirouette. "This is who I am. And if people don't like it, screw them."

He nodded approvingly. "That's right," he agreed. "Are you done? Can we go?"

"Yup." She nodded. "I called, I talked to Bobby, I made it sound like I was striking out on my own again. The Prof's probably firing up Cerebro as we speak to look for me."

Cain looked a little worried. "Tom told me about that thing. He said it makes Charlie even more powerful at brain-poking than he usually is. We should get going."

She balanced on her crutches and patted one ham-like hand reassuringly, without even thinking how odd it must look. "Don't worry, he's not going to find me."

The big forehead furrowed in rather charming puzzlement. "Why not?"

"Because he's looking for Jubilee," she explained. "And Jubilee doesn't exist anymore. I'm quite different... from Jubilee and Jubilation both, actually. The two combined make a third personality that has a lot in common with both of them, but isn't the same."

"Oh." Cain nodded in pleased understanding. "I get it." He looked down at her. "So what should I call you, if you're not Jubilee or Jubilation?"

"Uh..." She frowned, as they headed out of the mall, Cain carefully slowing his pace to match hers. She couldn't go too fast on the crutches yet. "I don't know. I hadn't thought about that."

"I could keep calling you Jubilation. Or Jubilee." He shrugged. "That IS your name, right?"

"Yeah, I guess..." She thought about it, and shrugged. "Jubilee, I guess. That what I got called when I was a kid."

He gave her a measuring look as they ambled through the parking lot. "If the X-Geeks are looking for ya, giving you a new name'd probably be a good idea, though," he pointed out. "I'll call ya Jubilee, if that's what you like, but you're gonna need ID in a different name. Something they can't trace."

Jubilee blinked, and considered this. "Well, my family name can be spelled with an i instead of two e's," she said thoughtfully. "And... hmm... oh, I know." She smiled. "My parents were gonna name me Zhi-bao, before they thought of Jubilation. How's that?"

He pondered it for a moment, and nodded. "It doesn't sound anything like yer real name. Li Zhi-Bao it is."

An alias. A False Name. That was just so... neat. And she was rather impressed that The Muscle That Walked Like A Man knew enough about Chinese names to put the family name first, as well as pronouncing it properly. "Works for me," she agreed. "Let's go introduce me to your partner."

"He's not gonna like it," Cain predicted as he lifted her into the jeep.

He didn't like it.

He informed them both, at great length, of just how much he didn't like it. He cursed, he blasphemed, he criticized their intellectual capabilities, their ancestry, and their personal hygiene.

Jubilee took her cue from Cain, who sat on the largest chair in the hotel room and watched Tom as he paced. The larger man's face drew gradually into a hurt expression, and he interspersed little comments like 'Awwww, Tom...' and 'That ain't nice' into Black Tom's diatribe.

Eventually, the Irishman calmed down a bit and scowled assessingly at their new recruit. "She's too small to be any use," he complained, having worked his way through all the more serious complaints about untrustworthiness and ignorance.

"Short'll be useful," Cain said placidly, relaxing a bit. He seemed to think the storm had passed. "Remember before Terry got too tall and... you know..." He actually blushed a little, waving his hands vaguely in front of his chest. "It's handy having someone little who can wiggle in through windows and chimneys and stuff."

"I suppose so," Tom grumbled, clearly not sold yet. "But she probably doesn't know anything useful. We'd have to train her right from the beginning."

"I can pick pockets pretty good," Jubilee spoke up, frowning a little. She wasn't *useless*. "And I'm a good acrobat, and a convincing liar, and my powers are pretty useful sometimes."

The Irishman gave her a critical look. "What can ye do with your powers, then?"

"I could incinerate your head right from where I'm sitting, if you like," she said sweetly. He gave her a surprised look, and she lifted a hand, summoning a cluster of pink and blue plasmoids to hover around her fingers. With a flick of her index finger, she sent one to burn a neat hole in the carpet between Tom's feet. "They explode, too, but I won't demonstrate that one in here. It gets a bit... loud." She banished them with a snap of her fingers. "They're as bit or as small as I want them to be, they go where I tell them to, and they vanish when I want them to go."

For the first time, Tom's frown smoothed out and he looked... not pleased, exactly, but interested. "Now that *would* be useful," he conceded. "I can think of quite a few situations where a little flying explosion that we can put anywhere we like would be very handy indeed."

"Me too," Cain agreed, giving Jubilee an approving look. "Do you know how big an explosion you can make, kid?"

She shook her head. "I never really got a chance to practice," she explained. "When I was living on the street I didn't want to call that much attention to myself, and after the X-Men took me in, they were focusing on teaching me to 'control' my plasmoids. Sending 'em through hoops, stuff like that." She snorted. "Between Cyke and Storm, the X-Men have a lot of issues around Being In Control and Not Letting Your Powers Get Away From You." She summoned up another plasmoid, and let it dance around and between her fingertips. "I've always been able to control them... well, after the first few times. That's always tough. But I've had full control for over a year now. They do what I want, when I want it. But no, I don't know just how much they can do, yet."

"That's okay." Cain gave her another approving smile. "I'll take you out to an abandoned warehouse or something, and you can see how much damage you can do."

Jubilee returned the smile. "I'd like that," she said, with sincere gratitude. She'd been a little worried about not knowing the limits of her powers - she might have needed them for something someday, and found out at the last minute that they weren't strong enough.

Tom looked at her with narrowed eyes, and then he nodded. "She's got potential," he conceded. "And since the X-Men have helped themselves to my student, it's only far enough that I take one of theirs in return, don't ye think?"

Cain and Jubilee both nodded, but when he turned away they exchanged an oddly meaningful look. Whatever Tom might think, Jubilee hadn't joined him. She'd joined the Juggernaut. They had both had a lot of trouble being accepted for who and what they were, and it had made them very lonely, and although they both had friends now, the idea of having someone around who really understood them was a very appealing one.

* * *

"I can't find her," Xavier said quietly, meeting Jean's eyes with sad blue ones.

Jean blinked, feeling downright bewildered. "Professor... I don't understand. Jubilee isn't a telepath, and she can't be walking around in a helmet like Magneto's. Where would she *get* one?"

"I don't know how it happened," Xavier said, shaking his head and turning his chair to gaze out of the window of his study. It was raining outside. Storm was very unhappy today. "But even with Cerebro's help, I simply cannot find Jubilee. It is as if she had ceased to exist." Jean felt herself go pale in horror, and Xavier turned immediately, reaching out to pat her hand gently and give her a reassuring little smile. "Don't worry, Jean. I would have felt her death. She is simply... gone. I can't explain it - but she is alive."

Jean relaxed a little, and managed a lopsided smile. "That does make me feel better, Professor... but I hate to lose her. She's the first student who's ever voluntarily left the school... well, except Annie and Marie, but I can understand that. They wanted to be part of a family for a while."

"Maybe that is Jubilee's reason as well," Xavier said thoughtfully. "We know that her parents have died, but whether or not she has any other relatives never really came up."

"Maybe." Neither of them really believed that, but the idea of little Jubilee out in the world all on her own was a terrible one. "At least she's alive. She said the Juggernaut rescued her, of all people."

"I know." Xavier smiled a little, looking pleased. "Every now and then my brother does do something almost selfless, despite his outward display of villainy. It gives me hope that one day the two of us will be able to move on from our troubled past, and become friends."

Jean frowned. From what she'd seen of the Juggernaut while he ripped apart their cabin, she didn't have many hopes in that direction. Still, at least he didn't seem too inclined to actually *hurt* the students, just frighten them. "Maybe," she agreed a little dubiously. Then she brightened. "Theresa is settling in well."

"Good." The Professor nodded approvingly. "She'll be an excellent addition to the team, when she's a little older."

"I agree." Jean smiled, and stood up. "And I should get to class, Professor. I'll talk to you later."

He nodded, and he was looking out the window again when she left the office. He looked sad, she thought, for all his efforts to keep her spirits up. It... hurt... to lose one.

* * * They'd left the hotel that afternoon, and were on a plane headed for Great Britain. Tom liked England, so they spent a lot of time there. He could stomp around a lot and sneer at the English people, which was one of his favourite things to do.

They were flying first class, of course, which they always did, and Tom was across the aisle, staring a bit moodily out of the darkening window. There wasn't anyone sitting next to him, and his grumbles had frightened the flight attendant away.

Cain didn't care. Right now, he was feeling very, very happy.

He looked down, a rather silly smile creeping onto his face again. Jubilee was asleep, wrapped in a pale blue airline blanket, and although she'd started off leaning against the window, now she was cuddled against his arm, head on his massive shoulder. Her weight wasn't really all that noticeable, but she was very warm, and she made an occasional little sighing noise in her sleep that was absolutely adorable. Adorable wasn't a word that was usually in Cain Marko's vocabulary, but there just wasn't any other word for it.

It had never occurred to him before that it was possible to fall in love in a non-relationship way. And this was definitely a non-sexual thing. Even if Jubilee hadn't been far too tiny for that sort of thing to be physically feasible, she was only a little girl, and Cain's vices had never included *that* sort of thing. And yet he was absolutely besotted with her. Everything she did was either clever or cute, or both. She herself was absolutely adorable. He had to keep fighting the urge to carry her everywhere and talk baby-talk at her, even though she was much too old for that. She was just so little and cute and smart... much smarter than he was. But that was okay. So was Tom, and he liked Tom fine.

Not as much as he liked Jubilee, though. He was definitely having that fake ID made out to identify him as her next of kin. Her adoptive father, maybe. Yeah... he really liked the sound of that. He'd never wanted kids before, but now the idea was growing on him. Maybe, if things worked out... he drifted into happy daydreams of raising Jubilee as his own, of the two of them becoming an unbeatable team, of getting her a little costume in red and brown, like his, and sitting on her on his shoulder when they went on jobs....

Across the aisle, Tom sighed and glanced across at his friend.

Cain wasn't very clever or particularly nice, but he was loyal, and a good friend. They'd been partners for years. Cain had not, however, particularly liked Terry. They'd never gotten along, which had annoyed Tom a bit. If there was going to be bickering, he would be the one doing it.

Now he suspected he understood it a bit better. He didn't like Jubilee, either. Technically, she was probably better suited to a life on the wrong side of the law than Terry had been. Terry had had a distressing tendency towards ethical conventionality, whereas Jubilee so far seemed blithely indifferent to legality and convention.

But she wasn't *his*. He'd loved Terry as much as if she was his own daughter, and she'd heartlessly abandoned him. Less than two days later, Cain had turned up with another, younger girl who he was clearly besotted by - which Tom could understand, yes, Jubilee was very small and very cute and ideally suited for a life of relatively non-violent crime. The kind of foster-daughter every career villain dreamed of, one who would love you and follow in your gigantic footsteps and take care of you in your old age instead of killing you and stealing your criminal empire.

She was perfect. And she wasn't Terry, and he hated her and he wished she'd go away.

An hour or two later, Jubilee drifted back into wakefulness. The lights were down now, and pretty much everyone seemed to be asleep.

Her head was on the Juggernaut's shoulder, and she was surprisingly comfortable. The blanket wrapped around her was soft and cosy. The big shoulder under her temple was warm and solid. The long, steady breaths coming from somewhere above her head were soothing. And there was just something... nice... about being snuggled into a cosy little nook between a nice thick window and a not too nice and rather thick but apparently semi-reliable adult.

Experimentally, she sighed, as if she was still asleep, and snuggled a little closer.

There was a soft grumbling noise from well above her head, and a big hand came around from his other side to hitch her blanket closer around her, giving her hair a clumsy little pat before it went away.

She smiled a little and let her eyes close again, cuddling against Cain's massive arm and dozing off contentedly. She didn't need anyone to make her feel safe - she hadn't been afraid of anything for a long time. But here, now, she felt... cared about. Understood. And it had been a long time since she'd felt that, too.

Part 4

Cain was discovering some of the drawbacks to having a kid around.

When they got into a new city, there had always been a routine. They found a nice hotel, booked a two-bedroom suite (for him and Tom) and a single room for Terry. That evening, Tom went out to look for work, Terry retired to her room to do... girl stuff, he supposed. Whatever that was. And Cain himself would order dinner, and then... well... there were some nice escort agencies in London who'd send as many girls as you liked right to your door. And he always saved a couple for Tom when he got back, which Tom always appreciated.

But while Jubilee did have her own room, he couldn't just leave her there all evening. She had a broken leg. She might... fall down, or something, and hurt herself. Besides, he hadn't had a chance yet to buy her any books or nail polish or whatever it was girls amused themselves with. So she was going to have to spend the evening with him in the small sitting-room that joined his and Tom's bedrooms.

But what the hell did you DO with a kid all evening?

He ordered dinner early, and stretched it out as long as he could. She did seem to enjoy getting room-service, and the lobster kept her busy for a while, since neither of them had any idea how to get the thing open. He didn't let her have any alcohol, because he'd heard it made kids stunted, or something, and she was a titchy little thing already, but he did let her order as much soda as she wanted.

That proved to be a mistake.

By seven, she was all but vibrating in her chair, instead of being decently sleepy. She'd been so cute on the plane, all little and snuggly and *quiet*...

"Okay... uh... what do you wanna do now?" he hazarded after a long silence, in which Jubes - that alleviated the problem with calling a mostly Jubilation personality by Jubilee's name - managed to nearly poke one of her crutches up his nose while seeing if she could reach the air-conditioning button.

"Are there any board-games or anything around?" she asked, still waving the crutch around experimentally. "Or cards?"

Cain brightened. "We got cards. And chips. You know how to play poker?"

She smiled a sweet, innocent smile that would have charmed a statue. "Kinda. I've played a few times."

"I'll give ya twenty bucks to start off with. Dollar ante," he said generously.

Two hours later, he owed her five hundred and seventy-three dollars US, and the little brat was betting high enough that she had to have at least two pair. "We can stop playing if you're bored," she said solicitously as he scowled at his cards.

Bored? That got a reluctant grin out of him. "You sharked me," he accused, calling her bet. "You're better at this than Tom, even."

"Being small and innocent-looking does make it easy to play dumb," she agreed, giving him another one of those sweet, probably fraudulent little smiles. Oh, she was a charmer. Another few years, and she'd have guys lining up at the door.

"You try it on Tom, next time," Cain suggested, grinning in anticipation. Tom was much better at poker than Cain was, and he tended to take advantage of it a bit. It would be fun to see Tom lose for a change. He dealt out the last cards, and looked at his hand. Two pair, nines high. Not bad. "Ten bucks."

"I'll see the ten, and raise you fifteen." She pushed the chips to the middle of the table. "I'll try it... but won't he get mad? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who likes to lose money, especially to a kid."

"Oh, he'll definitely get mad. He always does." Cain shrugged. "You'll get used to it."

She frowned at her cards as he pushed the added fifteen... and another five... into the middle of the table. "He seems awfully cranky," she said a bit dubiously. "Why do you put up with it? You're a lot bigger than him, you know."

Cain blinked at her, rather shocked at the suggestion. "Tom's my friend!" he said reprovingly. "I wouldn't do that to him!"

She gave him a long, appraising look, then reached over to pat his hand gently. "I guess you wouldn't," she agreed, giving him a genuine smile this time. "For someone who's supposed to be such a badass, you're pretty nice sometimes."

Cain felt himself blushing, and looked sheepishly at the table. "Yeah, well..." he mumbled. "That's different. You gonna play or what?"

"I'll call the five and raise another twenty," she decided, tossing in the relevant chips. "Tom does kinda push you around sometimes, though."

"I know." Cain shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't bother him. "Tom's a lot smarter than I am. Sometimes he gets impatient when I don't keep up with his plans and stuff." He called her bet, and sat back, waiting to see what she had in her hand.

She put down her cards. Two pair. Eights high. He put his down too. She looked at the nines. "Damn!"

"I won!" he said smugly, beaming and reaching for the chips.

Instead of getting mad or sulking like Tom did, she grinned at him. "You still owe me five hundred and twelve bucks," she reminded him. Then she hobbled around the table and gave him a totally unexpected kiss on the cheek. "I had fun. Thanks."

Cain blinked. A peculiar warm, mushy feeling was occurring in the depths of his massive chest cavity. "You're welcome," he managed, giving her a rather startled look.

"I mean it," she said seriously. "You're good company, and you don't talk down to me just because I'm a kid."

Emotional honesty was not a new concept for the Juggernaut... in fact, he hadn't lied about his feelings since he was in his teens, believing firmly that it was better to let it all hang out. He didn't usually have positive feelings to talk about, though. "You're a kid, but you're a real smart one," he admitted. "Probably smarter than me. But you don't talk down to me, either, or try to make me feel dumb. So you're pretty good company too."

"Thanks." She kissed him on the cheek again, and reached for her crutches. "I'm gonna go get some shut-eye. I need to go shopping tomorrow, though, to get a few changes of clothes and stuff. Will you take me?"

"Sure," he agreed, feeling a bit dazed. He could not, offhand, remember if anyone had *ever* kissed him without immediately wanting something in return. It felt very nice. "Just come back here when you wake up, okay? Only not before nine-thirty, 'cause Tom and I might be up late."

"Okay." She pocketed the twenty he'd given her, and grinned. "If I get bored, I'll wander around the hotel a bit. If you can't find me, don't worry - I'll be in the hotel someplace, okay?"

"Okay." Cain nodded, and ruffled her short hair gently. "Goodnight, kid."

"G'night." She hobbled off.

It was barely nine-twelve, but Cain didn't feel like ordering in any company. Those encounters, while they were fun at the time, tended to be a little unfulfilling in the long run. He was feeling quite happy and content right now, and he hadn't had to pay any money for it.

* * *

"We need to see what she can do," Tom said decisively over breakfast the next morning.

Jubilation... Jubilee, she had to remember she was calling herself Jubilee again... didn't like being talked about as if she wasn't there. She could tell, though, that Black Tom still resented her presence a bit, and was trying to reassert his authority as leader of their little group. Under the circumstances, it was probably best not to challenge him for a while, so she kept her attention on her breakfast. The breakfast did require a lot of attention, since Cain seemed to be under the impression that she was a 'growing kid' and needed to eat like a horse... that is, if horses ate mountains of scrambled eggs tumbled over rolling plains of bacon, fenced in with hills of sausage, garnished with fried tomato, and enhanced with hot crumpets, milk, juice, and half a pale green melon drizzled with honey.

He was eating the same thing, only about twice as much of it, as he nodded at Tom. "Definitely," he agreed through a mouthful of bacon. "You know any good places?"

"There's a couple down by the waterfront." Tom sipped his coffee. "I might have something for us, if she works out." He gave her a thoughtful look. "Don't stuff yourself too much," he advised. "We're going out t' test-drive your powers right after breakfast."

"No we ain't," Cain said, with unusual firmness. "We're going shopping first. She's only got one other change of clothes besides those ones, and she's definitely gonna need something to change into afterwards."

Tom looked annoyed at that, but really couldn't argue with Cain's logic. "Okay, okay," he grumbled. "Right after lunch, then. I've got a few things to take care of anyway." He pushed his chair away from the small table, and stood up. "I'll meet both o' ye back here for lunch. One o'clock. Don't be late."

"We won't," Cain and Jubilee chorused meekly - and accidentally. Tom seemed to take it personally, though, and stomped off muttering.

"He's upset 'causa Terry," Cain said softly. "Don't let him get to ya. It's not that he doesn't like you, it's just... he's hurt 'cause she left, and he misses her."

"I guess." Jubilee shrugged. Tom's constant bad mood was starting to grate on her nerves a little.

"He'll get over it," Cain said comfortingly, and looked at her plate, still covered with food despite her best attempts. "Are you gonna finish that?"

Shopping with the Juggernaut wasn't as deadly as she'd expected. He forked over her poker winnings without argument, then he waited quite patiently for her to make her selections. He was also very useful for carrying bags, since she couldn't operate her crutches without both hands free.

Out of consideration for him, she kept it quick and mostly focused on basics (a few changes of clothes, a couple of pairs of shoes, underwear, and toiletries), although she did stop to gaze wistfully at a black leather coat that was just calling her name. She didn't have enough money for it, though, and she didn't want to start asking for more so soon, so she didn't let Cain see her mooning over it.

* * *

"What's yuir pleasure?" Black Tom inquired, swinging the long stick he carried around all the time. "Blowing things up, setting them afire?" His Irish accent was more pronounced than it had been before - maybe because he seemed to be in a better mood.

"I'm better at explosions," Jubilee admitted, looking around. She was inside a big, dirty, very old warehouse full of... well, of junk. Chunks of concrete, bits of metal, what looked like most of a rusted-out car-body, old cardboard boxes, stacks of Just Junk... "What is this place, anyway?"

"There's places like this here and there, if ye look. It's for just what we're here for, lass," Tom explained, looking around admiringly at the mess. "Well, usually it's more for demonstrations than for experimentation, but basically there's just a lot of junk f'r demonstrating various kinds of powers on. Or swordwork or an ability to split a concrete block with yuir head, only there's not so much call for that these days, with so many useful new powers comin' on the market."

"Oh." Well, that kinda made sense. If she was going to hire someone for their mutant powers, she'd want to see them in action first too. "What do you want me to do?"

Tom shrugged, sitting down on an elderly park bench marked with mud and mold. "Impress me."

She shrugged, and set her feet. "Fine."

She started with some of the cardboard, then the bits of broken board, just to demonstrate that if something was flammable she *could* flammate it. Then she moved on to the bigger stuff.

It felt good to let loose, and she let herself get into it, playing with it a bit, bouncing things around and making the plasmoids fly in formation before blowing up. When she made her first effort at blasting the concrete, Tom visibly straightened up, paying close attention. She didn't do very well on the first attempt... just dust and a few chips. She powered up the plasmoids a bit for the second try, and by the fourth attempt had some pretty nice blasting going.

"Not bad," Tom said, sounding a little annoyed about it. "Can ye focus the blasts, lass?" He tapped one of the blocks of concrete. "Enough to, say, bore a hole through the middle o' this block without cracking it?"

"I dunno. I'll try." She frowned a little, focusing on the middle of the concrete. She'd have to sort of angle the plasmoids in on themselves...focus the blast...

The first try blew a shallow crater in the surface of the concrete. Tom looked pleased, but Jubilee frowned. Her plasmoids had more concussive power than that, she knew they did. She just had to focus it right, getting it all pointing the same way instead of scattering energy all around the exploding plasmoid.

She tightened her grasp on the plasmoids for the second try, sort of squeezing them all in together instead of letting them spread out, aiming them all right at the middle of the block. "Blast," she whispered under her breath. "*Blast*."

For a split-second, she thought she had it.

Then the unfamiliar grasp slipped, and there was too-bright light and a too-loud roar and the block didn't just shatter, it *exploded*....

* * *

Cain was enjoying a rare, peaceful afternoon without any company at all. He didn't like being alone all the time - he'd had too much of that - but when you spent most of your time with someone as chatty as Tom, and now Jubes as well, it was nice to have some peace and quiet now and then.

Tom had found them a job... a nice, quiet bank-job, he said. He'd also said, and Cain had agreed, that if they wanted to introduce Jubilee to a life of crime, they should start out on the relatively nice, harmless ones. Like robbing banks and pinching jewels. Things that didn't really hurt anybody, except maybe the banks and insurers. Cain thought Jubilee could handle that. And she'd get a share of the take, and be able to buy herself... whatever nice things girls liked buying themselves... and she'd get to know how much fun a life of crime could be. Then she'd stay. Terry had never really taken to the whole life-of-crime thing. But Jubes had told him about the days before the X-Men had found her, when she'd made a living picking pockets and shoplifting, and he thought she might like it better.

Besides, surely she wouldn't whine as much as Terry. Terry had never stopped whining, even in the middle of a heist. It had been fucking annoying, even if Tom did insist that she was just learning.

There was an impatient knock on the door just as he reached that point in his musings, and he sighed. They were back, just when he'd been having a nice, uninterrupted think. Tom's knock was unmistakeable, and Cain ambled over to the door and unlocked it. "How did - what the hell happened to you?!"

"A wee accident with the lass's powers," Tom said, sounding oddly pleased. He was covered from head to foot in grey dust, he had scratches all over him, and he was half-carrying Jubilee under one arm. She looked badly shaken. "No major damage, just a few scrapes and bruises."

Cain nodded, but he wasn't convinced. Jubes didn't look good, sort of dazed and upset, and he took her from Tom's arm, feeling her head gently for bumps. "You okay, kid?" he asked as gently as he could. For the first time, he realized that even when he was trying to be nice, he still didn't *sound* very nice.

"I..." Jubes gave him a dazed look. "We're fine."

Tom looked puzzled. Cain frowned. "We?"

"Yeah..." she said a little hazily, leaning into his supporting arm. He picked her up, and she snuggled absently against him, resting her head on his shoulder. "The blast, and the power going all over the place, an' we weren't properly integrated yet... 'm Jubilee and Jubilation again..."

"Oh." Cain gave Tom a worried look over the dusty black head on his shoulder. "Uh... Tom, can you get her some tea or something?" Belatedly, he realized that Tom probably didn't know what was going on. Jubes hadn't told him about her little split-personality thing, and since it seemed to have gone away, Cain hadn't mentioned it either. "Jubes has... uh... a problem. She split up her personality into a cute innocent one and a tough mean one to kind of trick Charlie, and she put them back together again when I convinced her to join us instead but I think they just got unstuck again."

Tom blinked twice and then nodded. "Right," he said, and headed for the small counter and the electric kettle.

Cain hoped the tea helped. He was pretty sure that was what you were supposed to give people who'd had a shock... well, the non-alcoholic thing. She was probably too young for brandy. Until the tea was ready, he sat down on the big armchair near the window and held her on his lap, rubbing her small back gently with one hand.

Jubilee... or Jubilation, he wasn't sure... sighed and snuggled a little. "It feels weird, being separate again," she murmured. "I thought... I thought I could just put myself back together, no harm done, but the first big shock and I split again..."

He didn't know what to tell her, didn't know the first thing about what Charlie called the Science of the Mind... so he just kept rubbing her back and letting her rest her head on his shoulder. "It'll be okay," he said softly. "You'll figure it out."

"I hope so," she said quietly. "Although now that I think about it, self-induced psychosis might not have been my best option."

Yep, this was Jubilation. He recognized the voice. "Well, you didn't have a whole lot of time to think about it, right?"

"Not really." She sighed a little, straightening up, but she didn't get off his lap. He was kind of pleased about that. There was a definite charm to having the kid perched on his knee, gazing up at him with that serious little expression. "I guess I... we... will just have to learn to live with it."

"Maybe if you just keep putting yourself together again, it'll stick," he said optimistically.

Tom appeared with a steaming mug, for once keeping his mouth shut, and Jubilation took it, sipping slowly. "Maybe," she said, not very optimistically. "I think I'll stay split up until I get the hang of this blasting thing, though. Getting shocked apart like that isn't a lot of fun."

"I guess so." Cain paused and frowned. "What blasting thing?"

"Concrete," Tom explained. "See, when you punch through concrete, it has a way of going all to pieces. If the lass can get a hole through a slab *without* cracking it, though... that bank-job is going to be even easier than I thought."

* * *

Jubilation curled up in her bed, listening to the hiss and roar of traffic going by outside, the soft patter of rain starting to fall.

It was strange. Jubilee's slightly silly presence in her mind felt kind of nice. She'd felt... lonely... being one person again. Well, that wasn't quite right - they WERE still one person. They remembered each other's actions, were fully aware of each other... the original had just polarised her personality into its lighter and darker parts, giving them separate names for convenience. It was like... Jubilation pondered, watching the bands of light from car-headlights gliding up the wall opposite the window, over and over. It was like... she was the personality's right hand, while Jubilee was its left. She was marginally dominant, but they were both part of the same mind.

And... she turned on her back and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. Cain liked Jubilation. Nobody had ever liked Jubilation before. The few people who'd ever seen this part of her personality had just been scared. Cain seemed to think Jubilation was strong and self-determining, instead of a weird, scary little thug. Jubilation would be the first to admit that she did have certain weird, scary qualities. But she wasn't a *complete* psycho.

It had been a comfort to both of her to discover that all the worst parts of her psyche weren't really all that bad.

She would stay separated for now. Just for a while. Until she was sure she'd gotten the hang of using her powers at their fullest extent. Xavier probably wasn't looking anymore... and she'd reintegrate soon.

Soon.

But not yet.

Jubilation snuggled down again and let herself drift off to sleep, comforted by the gentle presence of her better self.

(end)

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