Log: Remy & Jubilee

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Backdated to 13th October

Jubilee catches Remy as he's about to leave the office, and they visit some contacts in the city.



Jubilee finished the call she was on and pushed the mic on her cordless headset upward as she watched Remy walk by. "Headed anywhere interesting?" she asked, noting the healing bruises on his neck and face.

She'd taken reception duty for the morning shift, mostly due to the fact that it was the quietest of the shifts and the least likely to have to deal with crazy people. Those usually came in the afternoon, right after lunch.

"My definition of interesting or you definition of interesting?" Remy said, tapping the elevator button with his knuckle.

"I have a feeling your definition of interesting involves ancient Chinese curses," Jubilee noted, and then grinned. "So yeah, your definition of interesting."

"Non, nothing dat interesting. Need to meet wit' a gentleman dat provides us wit' our access to most of our European documentation, re-negotiate de price. Dere will be some threats, couple of guns waved around. De usual."

"Want company?" Jubilee asked, taking off her headset and placing it on the little stand beside the phone panel. "I could get one of the others to cover reception here."

"If you want to get youself felt up by Moroccan gunmen while I argue wit' a tattooed and likely drunk pistol waving Gallican, be my guest, petite."

"Be still my beating heart," Jubilee replied, holding a hand to her chest dramatically.

She shot off a quick e-mail to the group for someone to come out and cover, and then stood and grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair.

"So, like, what sort of tattoos?" Jubilee asked after a moment as the elevator dinged its arrival at their floor.

"Smuggling gangs and tributes to de Virgin Mary. Southern Spain, Gibralter and North Africa are old, old criminal cultures, Jubilee. You know where de term 'Barbarian' comes from?" Remy stepped into the elevator, leaning against the back easily.

"Well, they were like calling tribes Barbarians in Roman times, yeah?" Jubilee asked, stepping in and pushing the button for the ground floor. "So, Italy?"

"Greek. Originally meant something like 'not Greek', as a way to separate from de other seafaring cultures. Persians, Pheonecians, Egyptians... funny thing is dat dere descendents ended up settling in North Africa and Southern Spain. At one point, dey called it de Barbary Coast. Pirates operated for more den eight hundred years from dere until de American Navy essentially broke de whole place up." Remy's eyes were focused on the door, staring ahead as he spoke. "De point is dat dese people are from a criminal culture dats about five times older den dis country. De traditions go very deep."

"So, what you're saying is that if we do business with them, we gotta respect that?" Jubilee asked, hands settling in the pockets of her jacket as the numbers counted down. "Or that we can use that against them? Or both?"

"Both. Dey might look and sound like thugs and hicks at times, at least, de help will. But dey've got a lot of experience, and dey keep dere heads in case of surprises. When dey act, dey won't hesitate wit' anything dat dey have to do. So no bravado, petite. It won't scare or impress dem. If you need to do something, do it and be ready to back it up immediately."

Jubilee filed that away, shoulders tensing slightly at the thought that she might once again have to do violence to another person. That was the job though, sometimes there just wasn't any other choice, and you did what needed to be done.

"You expecting trouble then?" she asked, just to make sure of what her attitude going in should be. Careful she always was, but expecting violence was an entirely other level to cautious, at least as far as she was concerned.

"Non, but in my experience, trouble going to find me whether Remy expect it or not."

***

The basement club was quiet, and the gaming tables mostly empty at this time of day. Only a bored looking bartender was behind the bar, chatting softly with an equally bored bouncer. They knew when their jobs required them to direct their attention elsewhere. At one of the green baize tables sat an older man, with dirty blonde hair brushing his collar and the image of a saint tattooed on his right forearm, almost covering it.

The table was being used like an office desk, with stacks of files and a grey steel lockbox. Around him stood a few men, all Latin in colouring, equally tattooed and well armed. Remy was sitting across from the man, an unimpressed expression on his face as they spoke in Spanish back and forth.

True to his warning, Jubilee found herself grouped in with the other bodyguards, and the one that could have passed for a younger, rougher brother of Johnny Depp was taking the opportunity to explore her ass as he muttered a selection of obscene propositions in her ear.

"I totally don't think that's physically possible," Jubilee noted, disengaging the man's hand from her ass before going back to watching Remy.

She was keeping his warning firmly in mind but it was entirely tempting to slap the bodyguards around her silly. Not that he wasn't good looking, and in other circumstances she might not have minded terribly, but there was such a thing as respect. She could wish that her Spanish was stronger, but as with most of the other languages, she'd only been studying them since she joined the Snow Valley team, and it took more then a few months to develop a fluency for anything.

Meanwhile, the conversation at the table had grown heated, and the Gallican slammed his hand down on the table for emphasis. LeBeau didn't even twitch, making his point clearly, an edge of menace in his voice, which he punctuated by tapped his index figure on the stack of envelopes sitting there. The blonde man leaned forward, face reddening from indignation, and he all but spat the words at Remy.

Behind her, the bodyguards shuffled nervously, hands on their weapons, and the man that had been propositioning Jubilee turned to the others. "Looks like un hijo de su pinche madre has upset Don Santiago. I get to fuck his woman first." They all laughed, dark and ugly.

Jubilee didn't even twitch at the words, her eyes on Remy at the table, she would wait for a signal from him before she did anything that would be regarded as 'hasty'. She moved ever so slightly though, trying to get her back pointed toward a wall. If things went south, the less ways they could come at her, the better.

Remy's stony silence filled the room, as if they were caught on a half breath, waiting for a response to begin the firefight. Finally, the Cajun half turned in his chair, casually, like he might pivot in a cafe to order another coffee from a waitress. "~Jubilee," he said, in accented but passible Mandarin. "~Break one of their noses. I don't care which.~"

"~My pleasure, Boss.~" Jubilee said, her own Mandarin a bit less accented from her time in China and Madripoor, but still with the Calfornian twang she'd never quite been able to banish. She casually turned to the man who'd been groping her ass and grabbed him around the neck, bringing his head downward into the line of her palm which she used on the bridge of his nose with a quick snapping gesture, before releasing him and jumping backwards out of retaliation distance. If she hadn't had surprise on her side, she probably wouldn't have been able to do it, but they weren't expecting her to be quite that fast, or that strong.

There was a garbled scream from the blow, and now three weapons were pointing at Jubilee, waiting for the order to fire. Remy hadn't moved, nor had the Galician. Instead his eyes flickered from LeBeau to the standoff to Jubilee again.

"Why?" He said, in English this time.

"Because you pissing me off. If dis is going to turn into a bloodbath, let's get it over wit' now. Remy got plans later." LeBeau leaned forward. "Otherwise, stop wit' de posturing and get to de fucking point. I don't have time for you to pretend dat you some master power broker and you boys playing grabass wit' my associate as some kind of show of power."

"One word, and she's dead."

"One word, and dose three, plus dis entire building, go up in a very colourful explosion, Santiago. We done measuring dicks now?"

The man finally sat down, and laughed, waving absently at Remy. "Si, yes... yes. You take all the fun out of a negotiation. I remember suppling Imin, and each transaction required at least one bodyguard dead before it got to terms."

"I don't have dat kind of time, Santiego. It also bores me. I'm not paying for more den a seven percent increase."

"Throw in your partner and I'll give you five."

"Homme, agreed. As long as you don't mind being de one to tell her."

Santiago looked from his face to Jubilee's and back. "I think not. Ramone, stop bleeding on the carpet! Get a cloth or something!"

Jubilee watched the guns pointed at her, and then grinned widely at the three men as she watched Ramone move off to look for a cloth. It would be even odds as to whether she could fry the three men in front of her before they could blow her head off, but she trusted Remy with her life, and if he was going to sell their lives, it would be for something much better then this.

"~We okay?~" she asked Remy in Mandarin, not turning her gaze from the men for a second, hands tense at her sides.

She thanked Xavier and whatever Gods were watching that she'd long since mastered her powers to the extent that she didn't leak fireworks when she was nervous anymore.

Ramone returned, a cloth pressed to his broken nose and a sullen, angry look in his eyes. Yeah, that one was not happy with her, might even be stupid enough to try hunting her down later on. She really hoped so, she could see if Betsy would like to make him think he was a chicken, or possibly some form of water fowl.

"~Alright, LeBeau. Seven percent. I'll have the new documents to you through the usual channels.~"

Remy nodded and started towards the door, motioning for Jubilee to follow. The guns had been put up, and only the black looks from Ramone threatened them as they walked out into the cool New York autumn.

***

" That was interesting," Jubilee noted after awhile, she'd been silent for most of the walk back to the office, concentrating on controlling the slight shake to her fingers the sudden release of adrenalin had caused. You would think she'd have gotten used to having guns pointed at her by now, but each time felt almost the same as the first. At least she no longer froze, or started crying afterwards. "They normally do business like that? Or were we a special case?"

"If dey think they can get an edge, sure. Lots of people who think dey hardcases tend to change quick wit' a gun on dem." Remy said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with his finger. "Dat was good back dere. If you'd pushed it wit'out my say so, we'd have had to take de whole place down, and dat would mean finding new contacts."

"You warned me not to try and play the hard case," Jubilee reminded him, eyeing the cigerette and pondering trying to bum one off of him. Her own pack was back at the office in her desk. "I figured you wouldn't have warned me if it wasn't important, so I waited for your lead. They seemed like a bunch of macho sleezes, least his guards anyhow. I figured that type is gonna be all about the chain of command."

"Too many assumptions on not enough information, petite. Observe, don't assume. Keeps you alive longer. Also, doing what Remy tells you has de same effect."

"I figured you'd say something like that," Jubilee noted dryly, but then grinned at him. "So, you got one of those you can spare?"

"You get a paycheck. Dere's plenty of stores 'long de way." Remy shook his head. "'sides, dese things 'll kill you."