Molly and Jubilee: Saturday Afternoon (Backdated)

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Jubilee shows Molly her powers and teaches her the stealthier side of being a gymnast.


Jubilee paused on the edge of the mat, listening for the beat of the music to start. It wasn't often she got to just do some floor work. She was used to working on the more useful of her skills, always with an eye to keeping herself at peak performance for her job.

It was good to take a break sometimes, and with Kurt busy elsewhere for the moment, and no job related tasks needing her attention till tomorrow she got to spend some time doing something she loved.

Molly had her own music on. She had been visiting the gym a lot lately, trying to lift weights so she could make her muscles bigger but she wasn't having much luck since the weights most people used were too light. She thought about lifting a car but people might get mad if she accidentally dropped it. So she stayed in the gym. "And the girl in the corner said boy I'm gonna warn ya it'll turn into a ballroom blitz...ballroom blitz...." she sang as she entered, then piped down as she saw a new person inside. She looked young but not as young as the other students. "Oh! Sorry."

"No sweat, shortstuff," Jubilee paused her music, stepping back off the mat. She'd heard Molly coming, but hadn't known if it would be someone just looking for a place to workout, or someone who'd want a chat to start. "You looking to get in a little work time before the weekend?"

Molly tilted her head, at first thinking she meant work as in going to work but then realizing she meant working in the gym.

"Um....yeah. But on the weights, and stuff. Not the mats. I don't know how to do that. I learned a little at my old school but then I had to go away," she said. The teachers taught them a little how to defend themselves, but not gymnastics. "Do you...is that what you're gonna do?"

"Yeah, figured I'd do some old routines, see how much I remember from those days. You like any of what they showed you?" Jubilee started stretching, not that she wasn't already limber but if she was going to stand here talking, she might as well keep stretching.

"I...don't remember most of it," Molly admitted sheepishly. It'd been awhile ago, and it was around the time her mom and dad were using their powers a lot. She did remember that she'd done it, but that was about it. Old fake her learned a little too but Ms. Frost the second made sure she didn't remember a lot about that either. "I bet it was fun, though. It looks fun on the TV," she said. She was small enough, so she was hoping she'd be really good at it.

"Most fun you can have that doesn't involve adult things which you're like, way too young to be doing yet." Jubilee eyed the younger girl, raising an eyebrow. "You're not like, eighty years old or something and have a mutation for lookin' like a twelve year old, right? Cause dude, if so I'm totally bummed for you. I mean, the Wadester didn't mention knowing any eighty year old, twelve year old lookin' ladies and I know you two are totes tight but you can never tell these days "

Molly curled her nose at the mention of 'adult things,' then shook her head.

"Nope. I'm 15," she said, then straightened up proudly with a broad grin. "I'll be 16 in July." After a moment she tilted her head, her eyes widening excitedly. "Wait, you know Wademan? Do you work with Mary Angie and Ms. Frost the 2nd and Amanda and Wanda and Nico and red eyed man?" she said.

"Red eyed man? Either you're talkin' about Remy or like, Doug when he's pulled a couple of all nighters in a row but yeah, I work with all of them. Note however that none of them are as cool as I, except perhaps Wade and that's only because he's like a total kid himself half the time and who's gonna be able to fight that?"

Jubilee settled onto the ground and stretched out her legs before gesturing for Molly to join her on the mat.

"Sixteen hey? They gonna throw you a sweet sixteen party and all that? Cause like, you should totally hit people up for one of those, it's not like an age that comes around again."

"Hmmm...I dunno. I hope so!" Molly said, clasping her hands together dramatically as she plopped down beside Jubilee.

"That would be so neat! And everyone could dress up like superheroes! Well, we are already...but like....y'know...Batman and Woman Woman and stuff."

She nodded. "I think it was Remy. Me and him and Wanda and a buncha other people went to the future. Except it wasn't the future but like....a madeup place that this one guy made so he could get Rachel to bring back his son. He was dead," she said, frowning.

"It was confusing. So what do you do with your powers? Do you make cold things like Mr. Bobby?"

She said she was cool but maybe she meant cool awesome.

Jubilee raised a hand and let out a mini fireworks show, coloured sparkles popping in little waterfall bursts before extinguishing abruptly just short of her palm.

"I'm a total firecracker."

Molly let out a shriek of delight, then quickly covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes were still filled with glee, though.

"Orrrmuhgrr!" she said, yanking her hands away to clap excitedly.

"Holy crap! That was SO COOL!" She leaned in with a hushed whisper.

"Do it again!"

"Sure, kid."

Jubilee launched a few small colored balls at the roof, letting them explode into sparklers as they reached halfway, a certain degree of tension releasing as she watched the colored lights fade above them. She forgot sometimes how important it was to find balance in the job she did. Kurt was part of it, keeping her focused on the important things, and reminding her just with his presence what she was doing it all for but this was part of it to. If someone like Molly was kept a little safer from the dark things in life just through what she did, then she'd call anything she needed to do worth it, and gladly.

"So, you want me to show you some stuff? I was only muckin' around, so not like you'd be interrupting or anything."

"Oooh. Yes please!" Molly said with a quick nod. She wanted to ask before but they didn't know each other that well so she didn't want to bother her. But since she offered then it totally worked out. Maybe if she learned enough she could swing around like Robin. He was circus performer before. Hmmm, maybe she could ask Matt too. There were so many helpful people! This was going to be great!

"Do you use gymnastics when you fight bad guys?"

"Sort of, it's more that I use the flexibility that studying gymnastics afforded me to give me an advantage against people who are slower and more bulky."

Jubilee held her hands out to Molly, gesturing for her to place her feet against Jubilee's own.

"When you're small and slim like I am, you've got to use every advantage you can find, and when that's not enough, you gotta be twice as sneaky and smart as any bad guy could be. You got an advantage with being so strong, especially cause people are gonna disregard you as tiny and young. Any bad guy ever tries to corner you, you use that against them."

Climbing to her feet, Molly listened intently, scooting over and making her feet so that they looked like Jubilee's. She nodded.

"I did that before with a couple of people but I wanna get better at it, y'know? Cause I wanna be fast. Like a....spider monkey. Except...y'know, strong." The time with evil Marius didn't count. She just got lucky. And with Korvus....well, that was pretty cool but she didn't know if she could do it again, since he was a student too and not an older bad guy.

"Smarter then the average bear," Jubilee said, gesturing for Molly to take hold of her hands. "I'm going to show you some stretches first, if you do them every day you'll start to be a little more flexible. It's what makes all the flipping and crazy bendy stuff so easy."

Smarter. It was different coming from a stranger and not her teachers, who Molly thought probably said it just to make her feel better.

She took Jubilee's hands, trying to make sure she did it right. "Like a pretzel," she said. She added quietly, after a moment.

"You really think I'm smart?"

"Just like a pretzel, or you know, like some other tasty bread product. Like, donuts or something."

Jubilee frowned at the young girl as she heard her soft comment, loosing the stretch before pulling her forward again to see how flexible her muscles were already. They weren't bad, it wouldn't take all that much work to get Molly onto a good workout routine that should help give her an edge over tougher opponents.

"Someone been telling you, you ain't?"

Molly shrugged, bending over to touch her toes so she had something to do so she wouldn't feel all awkward and stuff.

"Before, they did. Cause...I don't remember things very well. And some people said some mean things but they said they were sorry. I'm getting better at it...like...remembering...but...it takes me awhile to figure things out sometimes."

"Kiddo, people suck."

Jubilee tapped Molly under the jaw lightly to get the girl to look at her.

"Not everyone is gonna be good, and even sometimes the people that are like, good can be totally rotten depending on what time of the day it is. It's like this, memory is just storage, it ain't got nothing to do with how smart you are. As to taking time to figure things out, that happens to everyone. Anyone who tries to sell you on some idea that there's a way to be perfect at everything just doesn't want you to see how scared they are that they ain't."

Molly glanced up at her, biting her lip a moment before she looked away. "I don't wanna be perfect. I just...wanna be good enough to be an X-Person. And you gotta remember stuff. Like...training. And...strategy? That's the right word, right?" She wasn't sure entirely what that meant but she heard people use it when they talked about Mr. Summers and he was like...the entirely X-Personist X-Person that ever X-Personed.

"Depends on the type of X-man you want to be. Strategy is a lot like gut feeling, and a lot like knowing who you're dealing with. You can do a lot of reading, and that's like, important but you also gotta trust what your gut is telling you too. The training is designed to give you muscle memory, and that stuff just means turning up every day and doing what they tell you. But, I gotta ask, why do you wanna be an X-man?"

"I wanna help people," Molly said. "Like Superman. And the X-People help people all the time, like when they saved me from Nanny and the Robot. My parents...they used their powers for bad. I think...I got these powers so I could help. Like...I gotta make up for it?"

If Jubilee ever met Molly's parents she'd gladly show them what the assassins guild had taught her, or better yet, she'd give them to Marie-Ange to deal with.

"Molls, you got nothin' to make up for. People make their own choices, and if they fu...dge it up, that's on them. You wanna be an X-man, I can help you get there, but don't ever think you need to prove a da...rn thing to anyone."

Molly thought about what Jubilee said for a few moments, pulling herself up to stand. "I think I gotta prove it to me," she said, making a face.

"They're my parents and...they were in the Brotherhood. What if it's like...in my genes? Since my parents are bad, I could be bad too. So I gotta do good stuff, to show I won't be bad. If I keep doing good then I won't ever get a chance to be bad." She hoped that made sense.

"Talk to the Docs about that, Doc Jean especially but I gotta tell ya, kid. Ain't no such thing as an evil gene. It's like, your parents made a bad choice, but you made a different one. If it were really genetics, you'd not have even, like, contemplated doin' anything different."

Molly pulled off her shoes to match Jubilee's bare feet. She wiggled her toes. She wondered if it was like being a mutant, though, and you start off normal and it just comes later, but she didn't say that. Sometimes she asked too many questions, and the adults didn't know what to say. So she kept that thought to herself.

Jubilee stood as well and gestured to the side for Molly to stand out of the way before she lined herself up for a series of flips.

"Good that you're doing it for you, just remember that when things get tough and you'll be fine."

She took off after that, getting steadily faster before executing a perfect flip combination, sticking the landing with a big grin.

"Also, don't ever let them tell you it can't be fun, from time to time"

Molly's wide eyes from witnessing the absolute coolness that was Jubilee flipping blossomed into a matching, tiny grin. "It's totally fun. Well, mostly. Except when the good guys turn evil," she said, curling her nose."--but punching the real bad guys is totally awesome. I fought some giant stone scorpions once!"

"Giant stone scorpions, hey? How about you tell me all about them while we go get something to eat? Unless you want to spend some more time in here? I'm told there's some awesome icecream in the main kitchen fridge though."

"They were magic...or something? I dunno. I just fight the stuff. Oh! And ghosts. I met some ghosts once. But we helped them, we didn't fight them," she said, then paused and gulped.

"I think we weren't supposed to tell adults that. Oops." Biting her lip, she quickly changed the subject.

"They do have awesome ice cream! There's like a bajillion flavors. And fudge. And whipped cream. And a cherry, of course. But...I'd maybe...still like to learn acrobat stuff. Cause...I wanna be fast and twisty, like Batman."

"I promise not to tell anyone you told me."

Jubilee's tone was very serious but she couldn't keep an entirely straight face, the edges of her mouth twitching upwards in amusement. Molly was seriously a delight to be around, and she could see why Wade chose to stay at the mansion whenever possible. It would be hard to lose faith in humanity with such people around.

"And you can definitely learn more acrobat stuff, I'll even talk to Kurt and see if he can show you some of his circus moves. He's very, very good at them."

Molly grinned excitedly. "That would be AWESOME!" She was gonna talk to him but if someone else could then she could be sneaky about her plan to learn all the stuff on how to be a superhero.

"Can we come back and do flips when we're done?"

"We can totally come back here and do flips when we're done. Like, I'll even show you how to be super sneaky quiet when you're doing them too."

Jubilee ruffled Molly's hair, because who could resist, really? She was definitely going to be telling Wade that he better watch out or she'd totally steal his sidekick.

Molly's beaming grin was like a burst of sunshine as she shot past her, sprinting out of the room. "So let's eat fast then!"

Cause she definitely wanted to know that.