The X-Project

Who: Scott Summers, Jubilation Lee
When: Backdated to May 5th Time: Midday
What Happens: Jubilee heads down to the Situation Room to help Scott with some data.



"I've got police reports up on that screen over there," Scott said, waving at the terminal in question as Jubilee walked into the Situation Room. "If you wanted to summarize them into a single briefing document, that would be helpful."

Jubilee nodded and sat down at the screen, flipping through and starting to correlate. She'd been doing much the same in her training at the academy so it was actually somewhat soothing. "Shouldn't be a problem. Did you want them in any particular order, maybe by the dates the kids went missing?"

Scott stared a bit blankly at the screen in front of him. Did he want it in any particular order... He twitched, telling himself to shake it off and focus. "Whatever you think is most useful. Dates, or geographical locations... maybe both."

"I can do that." Jubilee replied, having noticed the pause, and focussing on Scott a little more. "Dude, you doin' okay there? You're...a little twitchy."

"Fine. Just fine." They worked in silence for a few minutes. "Did you hear that Jean was back?" he asked finally.

Well, that was a surprise. "Nooo." Jubilee replied, pulling up a couple more cases and dropping dates and names into the spreadsheet she was compiling. She added another line for approximate ages of the children while she was at it. "So, should I go break her arms?"

She thought perhaps a blaise approach to the news would be best, considering how edgy Scott seemed to be at the moment. He'd come out of the 'I'm fine, never better, nothing to see here' shell soon enough if he was having issues he wanted to talk about and she was patient.

Scott gave a weak little laugh. "I'd prefer you didn't. She's not in such great shape, Jubilee. She was... ill, that was the problem."

"Oh? Jubilee turned around and gave Scott her full attention, making sure to save the file she'd been working on. "I see I've missed a bunch being in New York. Ill how, exactly?"

Scott looked around at her. "An alternate personality," he said quietly. "The person she thought she was while she had amnesia and was in Canada."

Jubilee pondered that for a second and then gave Scott a questioning look. "So, how is it she's back here then, and how did you guys find out about the personality change? Other then, you know, her being complete psycho bitch at you that time you told me about. By the way, I'm totally never going to Canada. Canada turns people crazy. I'm figurin' it's all that snow."

"We went and got her. She was the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club," Scott said, then wished he hadn't, given Jubilee's experience with the last Black Queen...

"The Black Queen? Jean was the Black Queen..." Jubilee responded, her eyes wide as she remembered the last time she was in the hellfire club. "But it's all right now, right? She's all sane again and not trying to wear weird black lingerie and....stuff."

"She's... herself again. And no... no lingering thing for black lingerie." Scott mustered up another faint smile. "She just needs some time, Jubilee. To recover."

"Think she'd like to see a familiar face? I could go talk to her, if you think it'd help. Been on the receiving end of much weirdness in the past, so even if I don't know exactly how she feels, I can understand it." Jubilee replied, "But, real question is, how are you doing? Can't have been easy for you, either."

Scott shrugged uneasily. "If you wanted to go see her... she's been kind of antisocial, but I think it would do her a lot of good to see a friendly face." He managed another weak smile. "You can be a surprisingly good listener at times, you know. No idea where or when you picked that up..."

"All the lectures they've been giving me at the Academy." Jubilee replied, turning back to her list and adding a few more details. "You'd be surprised how good you get at listening when you realise the instructors don't give a damn about you and will fail you in a second if you stuff up. It was a bit of a shock, coming from here. Think I'll go see her though, I'm fairly good at talking to people being anti-social. You'd be surprised how absolutely annoying 'bright and cheerful' can be, enough to get people talkin', most of the time."

"Not sure I'd be surprised as all that," Scott murmured, focusing on his screen, a weary flicker of amusement surfacing despite anything. That had sounded almost like a warning.

Jubilee continued with the file for a few minutes before flicking a glance back over her shoulder. "So, how annoying do you think I'd have to be for you to tell me what's eating you right now? I figure, Jean being back, it might have to do with her, or possibly something else. I'm all about not making the assumptions these days though."

"Well, let's see." Sometimes you could put Jubilee off with total honesty, he'd noticed. Usually when it was enough to shock her into silence. "There's the situation with Jean. Then, there's the fact that I ordered Lorna to let someone die this week. Oh, also, I have an ulcer. Did I mention that?"

Well, that was certainly enough to make anyone look tired, Jubilee reasoned, smiling at the understatement. She pulled up four more records and started pulling the information from each. Only when she's let the silence stretch for a time did she reply.

"I'm not surprised about the ulcer, you know. You always could worry yourself into ill health. So, why did you order Lorna to let someone die?" she asked softly, keeping her tone even and calm.

"The mutant in FoH headquarters. We were there, by the way," Scott said, not looking at her. "Helping with the evac. But he was destabilizing the building, and it was coming down. Lorna wasn't able to hold it, and I told her to get herself out, even though it meant leaving him in there. There was no way to get him out," Scott went on, his hands moving over the keyboard. "No way to find him. It was complicated."

"So, let me get this right. You took care of the people under your command and didn't allow for sentimentality to cloud your judgement and get Lorna killed as well as this other person. And for doing that, you're giving yourself hell." Jubilee replied, fixing Scott with a look. "Dude, stop being so damn tough on yourself. You did what any leader would've done in the same situation."

"Oh, I made the right choice. I know that. But that doesn't change the fact that I made the choice. Someone is dead because of me," Scott said, still not meeting her eyes. "I let a mutant... someone who was confused and angry die, because I got too caught up in the evac and the fact that half the team had gotten sucked into some sort of void to pay attention to everything that needed to be done."

Jubilee continued to watch him for a second before answering. "I still think you're taking too much responsibility for it. The mutant would've died had you been there or not. Your choice really didn't change a thing. What it did do, was save Lorna's life. Scott, no matter how much you train, you can't plan for everything. You know that. You do the very best you can, and that's all you can do."

Why was he talking about this to Jubilee, of all people? Right. Freakishly good listener. Scott raised a slightly unsteady hand, rubbing for a moment at the scars on the side of his face. "I'm probably obsessing too much about it, you're right." It was very self-absorbed of him. Move along, Summers...

"Not really. You're a good leader, Scott. You're always going to take more responsibility for how things go then you probably should. But, it's who you are. S'why you have us here, to make you eat and stop worrying so much when you go off on a bout of it." Jubilee replied, grinning suddenly.

A sad little quirk of his lips was the only response Jubilee got for a moment, but then Scott looked at her, wondering if it would be so bad to just... relax and believe that. Bobby had been an anomaly, right?

Wrong.

But at least Jubilee was disagreeing that he was obsessing. And not making any sudden moves towards his coffee cup with sedatives. That was good, wasn't it?

"So, when did you find out about the ulcer?" Jubilee asked, changing the subject a bit. She knew Scott was going to worry, no matter what she said. But hopefully the others would catch him at it before it got too bad.

Scott stopped, trying to think about it. "A couple of weeks ago? I collapsed... I was ignoring it, because I thought it was just stress. Kind of obvious when I started throwing up blood that wasn't the case. But," he said more briskly, telling himself to focus on the matter at hand as he looked back at his screens, "Amelia had me in the hospital within a couple of days and all fixed up."

"Scott, dude. The blinding pain didn't clue you off before that? Only you could think that was stress induced." Jubilee replied, somewhat amused. "So, how much chewing out from everyone did you get on that little drama?"

"Surprisingly little." Scott raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. "Well. All of four people or so knew, so..."

"Well, consider yourself hen pecked then. You need to take better care of yourself. Being the leader, doesn't mean working yourself into the ground, no matter what you might think." Jubilee replied, grinning as she finished up with her screen. "Anyway, back to business. I've got a list here going back for the last five months of all missing kids, that also had mention of comotose victims or victims showing signs of drugging at the scene. Sorted by date of kidnapping and the surname of the child."

"Good. Now see what else you can dig up on each missing kid," Scott said. "We need a target profile." He raised an eyebrow at himself. Jumping the gun a little, aren't you? But he had a feeling.

Jubilee focussed on the records, silent for a moment as she turned her full attention to the task at hand. Getting data together didn't require a lot of brain power but actually doing indepth analysis did. "Hmm, no common age group, except that they're all young, no common socio-economic background or shared schools. I'm not seeing a lot to link the kids here except the way the adults around them were found and the fact that they're young."

Scott looked sideways at her. "Are they mutants?" he asked quietly, having chased the vague thought down finally.

Jubilee looked back through the records - doing a quick search for the word 'mutant' in the case files. Most of them matched, at least where the officer had made a note of it. "I'd say that's a yes." Jubilee replied.

"I ought to just learn to go with the bad feeling right from the get-go," Scott murmured. "Usually turns out to be right."