Jubilee, Amanda - Thursday afternoon
Feb. 21st, 2008 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsFinding Jubilee still sleeping on Wanda's couch, Amanda decides to put the mall rat to use.
Jubilee turned over, burrowing her way deeper into the pillow as a beam of sunlight hit her shoulder from the slightly open blinds. Wanda had left hours ago but the girl on her sofa had barely stirred as the older woman left. She was not a morning person, or really an afternoon person if the truth be told and she'd been out till at least 4am yesterday at Silver.
Time, however, waited for no man, and neither did research. And Amanda needed reference materials - specifically, reference materials in Wanda's apartment. She knew the older woman wasn't home, but that was why her assistant had keys. There was a rattle at the door as she let herself in, dropping her bookbag on the floor as she headed for the spare room/library, humming along less-than-tunefully to her iPod.
Someone was humming, and the noise sunk into her brain and hit like a jackhammer. Jubilee opened bloodshot eyes, and winced as the dimness of the room was still way too bright. Whoever it was making that infernal noise needed to die...possibly in some elaborate and painful way.
Huh, one of the books she needed wasn't on the shelf. Knowing Wanda, however, it was probably in the living room, either part of the stacks on the coffee table, or spread on the table. Amanda came back into the living room, pausing to stuff the armful she had in her bag, before turning her attention to the coffee table. The lump curled up in the blankets on the couch she ignored, knowing Jubilee had been partying pretty hard the night before, until she realised that the corner of a book sticking out from under the older girl's butt was the one she wanted. Without ceremony, she grabbed it and yanked it out. "Afternoon, Sparky," she said, with a grin, tugging her headphones out of her ears. "You must be out of it, to have been sleeping on Religious Cults and Sects. Not a comfy book, usually, and I've slept on a few."
Jubilee flailed for a bit after having the book yanked out from under her, stopping herself from falling off the couch by dropping a leg over the edge to steady herself. She glared up at Amanda, originator of the humming and the entirely too bright and cheerful disposition. "Must you be so horrifically cheerful?"
"Only if it bugs you," came the unrepentant reply. "'Sides, it's past 1. Time you were up and joining the rest of the world. Earn your keep, all that sort of stuff. You can help me with this lot - I'm trying to find what sort of religious nutters might be crucifying people, 'specially mutants." She waved the book at Jubilee. "Fun stuff."
Jubilee pulled herself back up on the couch and turned over, burrowing into her pillow. She went through and quickly discarded any number of approaches she could use on Amanda, realising that the other girl would quickly see through some of her more obvious manipulations. She had absolutely no desire to help at this particular moment in time, especially not when she could be sleeping off the absolutely massive headache she was currently suffering from. "Can't you just, you know, magic it?"
"Which part? The research? The finding the religious nutters? The hangover you probably have after all those shots you did last night? Sorry, Jubes, I don't work like that any more." Amanda thumped the book down on the table a little louder than necessary, and folded her arms, looking down at the cocooned shape. "I actually, you know, work. And, if you're going to be camping out on Wanda's couch, you will too. If not the research, then maybe picking up after yourself once in a while."
Jubilee's immediate thought was to snap, possibly some comment about kettles and pots, or even a nicely sarcastic response about how Amanda wasn't the one in charge here. Neither would've gotten her what she wanted though, which was to be left alone to die. Which meant she had two choices, trying to prick the other girl's sympathy, or manning up and just getting on with whatever work Amanda wanted from her.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, turning back over and blinking. "I'm just...not used to this whole work thing. It's been awhile since I even had a couch to sleep on, you know? You just, get as much sleep as you can when you can, cause you're never sure when you'll be out on your ass."
Amanda's eyes narrowed slightly. "You know, that might have worked on me a couple of years ago. Maybe. But you know as well as I do that you're not going to be thrown out on your ass any time soon, so stow the bullshit. You might be getting a nice little holiday right now while Remy and Pete work out what the fuck to do with you, but the free ride only lasts so long. And Wanda's got more than enough on her plate without worrying about picking up after your lazy arse." Her tone softened minutely. "I get that whatever you've been up to for the past year hasn't been a bed of roses, not for you to wind up in Madripoor, but we've all got our issues and none of us uses them as an excuse. So, you're either going to get up, go have a shower and join the human race today, or you can try and sleep in without the blanket." And with that, she yanked the blanket off Jubilee with a brisk tug.
Jubilee swore, tumbling to the floor as the blanket she'd had wrapped around her was whipped away. She lay on the floor for a second, going over in her mind all the things she'd like to do at this point, and some of the things she'd like to say. None of them would be particularly useful and all of them would get her offside with Amanda. If there was anything she'd learnt over the last little while, it was that you didn't get people offside unless you didn't need anything from them.
"Guess I'm havin' a shower then." she said mildly, getting to her feet and walking to the bathroom. "What were you sayin' about some religious cult?"
"'S a prophecy." Amanda watched Jubilee head for the bathroom with an approving nod. "From these diaries that the X-Men got hold of. Pre-cog bullshite, lots of heavy religious imagery. I'm trying to track down suspects." She raised her voice as the water started. "You want coffee?"
"Do bears shit in the woods?" Jubilee called back, leaning her head against the tile of the shower and allowing the hot water to run down her back. Her head was still throbbing, and she pondered why she'd been so ready to get so drunk. Because she could seemed a really poor excuse for so much pain, but it had seemed like a good reason at the time. "And um...some aspirin?"
Amanda snickered - she'd been thinking that was going to be the case. "What's the magic word?" she called back, turning the coffee pot on and looking for clean mugs. Not always an easy task, if Wanda was busy, and they'd been insane over that Farouk business.
"Avada Kedavra?" Jubilee said, reaching for the soap.
"I was going for 'please'," Amanda retorted with an eyeroll. Then with a grin, she turned on the hot water at the kitchen sink, knowing Wanda's plumbing was on the dodgy side. Besides, she needed to wash mugs for coffee.
There was a scream from the bathroom and the sound of someone scrambling to get away in a rather confined space. After a minute, Jubilee poked her head around the door, hair still dripping. "Was that totally necessary?"
Amanda held up a soapy mug. "It was if you want coffee," she pointed out innocently. "But hey, you're awake right now, aren't you?"
"For certain degrees of awake, yes." Jubilee said, pulling a towel from the rack in the bathroom and tying it around herself.
She walked over to the box of clothes that was currently standing in for a closet and rifled through it for something to wear, picking out underwear on her way. It was mostly stuff she'd left at the mansion when she'd left, and thus was extremely out of touch with her current mood but it all fit, and it was clean.She'd have dropped the towel and just changed but she wasn't entirely sure how comfortable Amanda would be with that, so she made her way back into the bathroom to change.
"So, you were sayin' something about a prophecy?" she asked as she changed.
Amanda was unperturbed by towelled and then-vanishing-back-into-bathroom Jubes, continuing to clean mugs as the coffee maker burbled away. "Yeah," she said, raising her voice again to be heard. "Crucifixion imagery, a bit in there about heart's blood being spilled, skin stretched on the cross." Almost casually, although there was a slight note in her voice, she added. "Angelo thinks it's about him."
Jubilee paused as she stood in the doorway of the bathroom, a brush half pulled through her hair. There were a dozen things she could say, from trying to be comforting to noncommittal. "Why would he think that?" she asked.
"The 'skin stretched upon the cross' part. Skin's his X-Man codename, it's his power, and he's managed to convince himself that's how he's going to go. Angie tried to explain how precog works - or doesn't work - sometimes, but he's still not 100% convinced it could be wrong. So, I'm working on trying to figure out who might be a suspect, and then we're going to take them down. Hard." Rinsing out the mugs, Amanda left them on the rack to drain whilst she looked for milk in the fridge. Milk or inadvertent yoghurt, it was always a toss up. "That's the sort of thing we do."
"You'd think he'd realise that it's a little hard to kill someone with crucifixion when they can stretch their skin however they like." Jubilee murmured, pulling the brush through her hair again. "So, where should I start?"
Now that she was awake, she might as well start doing something. She'd never been able to sit still for long once she was actually lucid.
"Blood loss is blood loss, no matter what the skin's doing." Amanda bit her lip at the unwanted image, and then straightened from the fridge, milk in hand. "Well, first up, you can take those aspirin I left on the counter for you, and then you can help me sort through a bunch of dusty old books describing really horrible things. And after that, if you're lucky, you might get some dinner out of it."
"Food, the great motivator." Jubilee said, amused as she walked over and picked up the aspirin. "Just as long as it's not a gyro from the shop around the corner, we're good."
Jubilee turned over, burrowing her way deeper into the pillow as a beam of sunlight hit her shoulder from the slightly open blinds. Wanda had left hours ago but the girl on her sofa had barely stirred as the older woman left. She was not a morning person, or really an afternoon person if the truth be told and she'd been out till at least 4am yesterday at Silver.
Time, however, waited for no man, and neither did research. And Amanda needed reference materials - specifically, reference materials in Wanda's apartment. She knew the older woman wasn't home, but that was why her assistant had keys. There was a rattle at the door as she let herself in, dropping her bookbag on the floor as she headed for the spare room/library, humming along less-than-tunefully to her iPod.
Someone was humming, and the noise sunk into her brain and hit like a jackhammer. Jubilee opened bloodshot eyes, and winced as the dimness of the room was still way too bright. Whoever it was making that infernal noise needed to die...possibly in some elaborate and painful way.
Huh, one of the books she needed wasn't on the shelf. Knowing Wanda, however, it was probably in the living room, either part of the stacks on the coffee table, or spread on the table. Amanda came back into the living room, pausing to stuff the armful she had in her bag, before turning her attention to the coffee table. The lump curled up in the blankets on the couch she ignored, knowing Jubilee had been partying pretty hard the night before, until she realised that the corner of a book sticking out from under the older girl's butt was the one she wanted. Without ceremony, she grabbed it and yanked it out. "Afternoon, Sparky," she said, with a grin, tugging her headphones out of her ears. "You must be out of it, to have been sleeping on Religious Cults and Sects. Not a comfy book, usually, and I've slept on a few."
Jubilee flailed for a bit after having the book yanked out from under her, stopping herself from falling off the couch by dropping a leg over the edge to steady herself. She glared up at Amanda, originator of the humming and the entirely too bright and cheerful disposition. "Must you be so horrifically cheerful?"
"Only if it bugs you," came the unrepentant reply. "'Sides, it's past 1. Time you were up and joining the rest of the world. Earn your keep, all that sort of stuff. You can help me with this lot - I'm trying to find what sort of religious nutters might be crucifying people, 'specially mutants." She waved the book at Jubilee. "Fun stuff."
Jubilee pulled herself back up on the couch and turned over, burrowing into her pillow. She went through and quickly discarded any number of approaches she could use on Amanda, realising that the other girl would quickly see through some of her more obvious manipulations. She had absolutely no desire to help at this particular moment in time, especially not when she could be sleeping off the absolutely massive headache she was currently suffering from. "Can't you just, you know, magic it?"
"Which part? The research? The finding the religious nutters? The hangover you probably have after all those shots you did last night? Sorry, Jubes, I don't work like that any more." Amanda thumped the book down on the table a little louder than necessary, and folded her arms, looking down at the cocooned shape. "I actually, you know, work. And, if you're going to be camping out on Wanda's couch, you will too. If not the research, then maybe picking up after yourself once in a while."
Jubilee's immediate thought was to snap, possibly some comment about kettles and pots, or even a nicely sarcastic response about how Amanda wasn't the one in charge here. Neither would've gotten her what she wanted though, which was to be left alone to die. Which meant she had two choices, trying to prick the other girl's sympathy, or manning up and just getting on with whatever work Amanda wanted from her.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, turning back over and blinking. "I'm just...not used to this whole work thing. It's been awhile since I even had a couch to sleep on, you know? You just, get as much sleep as you can when you can, cause you're never sure when you'll be out on your ass."
Amanda's eyes narrowed slightly. "You know, that might have worked on me a couple of years ago. Maybe. But you know as well as I do that you're not going to be thrown out on your ass any time soon, so stow the bullshit. You might be getting a nice little holiday right now while Remy and Pete work out what the fuck to do with you, but the free ride only lasts so long. And Wanda's got more than enough on her plate without worrying about picking up after your lazy arse." Her tone softened minutely. "I get that whatever you've been up to for the past year hasn't been a bed of roses, not for you to wind up in Madripoor, but we've all got our issues and none of us uses them as an excuse. So, you're either going to get up, go have a shower and join the human race today, or you can try and sleep in without the blanket." And with that, she yanked the blanket off Jubilee with a brisk tug.
Jubilee swore, tumbling to the floor as the blanket she'd had wrapped around her was whipped away. She lay on the floor for a second, going over in her mind all the things she'd like to do at this point, and some of the things she'd like to say. None of them would be particularly useful and all of them would get her offside with Amanda. If there was anything she'd learnt over the last little while, it was that you didn't get people offside unless you didn't need anything from them.
"Guess I'm havin' a shower then." she said mildly, getting to her feet and walking to the bathroom. "What were you sayin' about some religious cult?"
"'S a prophecy." Amanda watched Jubilee head for the bathroom with an approving nod. "From these diaries that the X-Men got hold of. Pre-cog bullshite, lots of heavy religious imagery. I'm trying to track down suspects." She raised her voice as the water started. "You want coffee?"
"Do bears shit in the woods?" Jubilee called back, leaning her head against the tile of the shower and allowing the hot water to run down her back. Her head was still throbbing, and she pondered why she'd been so ready to get so drunk. Because she could seemed a really poor excuse for so much pain, but it had seemed like a good reason at the time. "And um...some aspirin?"
Amanda snickered - she'd been thinking that was going to be the case. "What's the magic word?" she called back, turning the coffee pot on and looking for clean mugs. Not always an easy task, if Wanda was busy, and they'd been insane over that Farouk business.
"Avada Kedavra?" Jubilee said, reaching for the soap.
"I was going for 'please'," Amanda retorted with an eyeroll. Then with a grin, she turned on the hot water at the kitchen sink, knowing Wanda's plumbing was on the dodgy side. Besides, she needed to wash mugs for coffee.
There was a scream from the bathroom and the sound of someone scrambling to get away in a rather confined space. After a minute, Jubilee poked her head around the door, hair still dripping. "Was that totally necessary?"
Amanda held up a soapy mug. "It was if you want coffee," she pointed out innocently. "But hey, you're awake right now, aren't you?"
"For certain degrees of awake, yes." Jubilee said, pulling a towel from the rack in the bathroom and tying it around herself.
She walked over to the box of clothes that was currently standing in for a closet and rifled through it for something to wear, picking out underwear on her way. It was mostly stuff she'd left at the mansion when she'd left, and thus was extremely out of touch with her current mood but it all fit, and it was clean.She'd have dropped the towel and just changed but she wasn't entirely sure how comfortable Amanda would be with that, so she made her way back into the bathroom to change.
"So, you were sayin' something about a prophecy?" she asked as she changed.
Amanda was unperturbed by towelled and then-vanishing-back-into-bathroom Jubes, continuing to clean mugs as the coffee maker burbled away. "Yeah," she said, raising her voice again to be heard. "Crucifixion imagery, a bit in there about heart's blood being spilled, skin stretched on the cross." Almost casually, although there was a slight note in her voice, she added. "Angelo thinks it's about him."
Jubilee paused as she stood in the doorway of the bathroom, a brush half pulled through her hair. There were a dozen things she could say, from trying to be comforting to noncommittal. "Why would he think that?" she asked.
"The 'skin stretched upon the cross' part. Skin's his X-Man codename, it's his power, and he's managed to convince himself that's how he's going to go. Angie tried to explain how precog works - or doesn't work - sometimes, but he's still not 100% convinced it could be wrong. So, I'm working on trying to figure out who might be a suspect, and then we're going to take them down. Hard." Rinsing out the mugs, Amanda left them on the rack to drain whilst she looked for milk in the fridge. Milk or inadvertent yoghurt, it was always a toss up. "That's the sort of thing we do."
"You'd think he'd realise that it's a little hard to kill someone with crucifixion when they can stretch their skin however they like." Jubilee murmured, pulling the brush through her hair again. "So, where should I start?"
Now that she was awake, she might as well start doing something. She'd never been able to sit still for long once she was actually lucid.
"Blood loss is blood loss, no matter what the skin's doing." Amanda bit her lip at the unwanted image, and then straightened from the fridge, milk in hand. "Well, first up, you can take those aspirin I left on the counter for you, and then you can help me sort through a bunch of dusty old books describing really horrible things. And after that, if you're lucky, you might get some dinner out of it."
"Food, the great motivator." Jubilee said, amused as she walked over and picked up the aspirin. "Just as long as it's not a gyro from the shop around the corner, we're good."
