Snow Day - Snow Valley Offices
Jan. 28th, 2022 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsX-Force reacts to the news that they’re stuck in the office for the night.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it, Doc. If we need an emergency ride, we’ll let you all know. Stay warm up there.” Kevin said, hanging up his phone and pocketing it. He’d rounded up the ones working late, which was an awful lot of X-Force, and got them down into the conference room. They all looked up as he ended the call.
“So, we have a situation. The 684 and 22 are completely backed up due to multiple accidents and heavy snowfall is delaying their ability to clear it. Same snowfall has knocked out the trains going north as well. I just talked to the mansion. If anyone has a really important reason to get back, Sefton or Ferguson are willing to teleport you, but they are in the middle of the storm, so we don’t want to push them if we don’t have to.” He took a seat. “I called a couple of concierge contacts of mine. An awful lot of people are opting to stay in the city tonight and lots of hotels are already booked up.”
“Just what I always wanted, an excuse to drink during work hours,” Jubilee quipped with a grin as she nudged Artie beside her. “Garçon, time to break out the good booze.”
“You mean, ‘excusez-moi monsieur, s'il vous plaît donnez-moi le vin’, “ Artie replied, through his synthesiser, deliberately feeding the text input so it came out phonetically and very American. Excuse-eh mwah, monshure, sil voos plate donney-ez moy lee veen. “Get it yourself You know where it is,” he added, in ASL.
“So mean. How can you possibly be so mean to me, your biggest fan?” Jubilee dramatically placed a hand against her chest and squeezed out a tear in what had to be the best version of over acting she’d performed in years. “Shame! Shame on the house of Artie!”
“We have a couple of suites upstairs, partially furnished. There’s a few couches scattered around the offices and reception people can bed down on as well.” Kevin shrugged. “I called over to Sol’s and Zane is putting together a stack of platters and soups for me to pick up before he closes up and heads home to Brooklyn. If a couple of you could go down to Loisaida’s, stock up on drinks and additional snacks.”
"I can go.. It will get me away from whatever Artie just did to my ears." Marie-Ange waved a hand. "Start texting me requests, I need to change into something more weatherproof." She'd stashed boots and snow pants in her office earlier in the week. "The sofa in my office pulls out, but I do not have sheets for it, just the throw blanket."
“I’m calling dibs on that one right now,” Amanda said with a grin. “Extra bodies saving warmth and all that.”
"Raise your hand if you are surprised." Marie-Ange barely paused, and grinned at Amanda. "No hands. No surprises. If the New York plows could see fit to not put slush in my boots while I go get snacks and drinks, I will not put my cold feet on you later."
“I’ve got that cot in my office from when I was taking more regular naps,” Doug offered. “And a boatload of blankets. It might be able to sleep two people if they’re -very- chummy.”
“Dibs. But damn, I knew I should’ve driven in today,” Darcy sighed, pulling her phone out. “I keep a sleeping bag and extra blankets in my trunk, and that would be handy right now. Let me text Joe, see if they’re planning on opening Betty’s like usual tomorrow. If they are, I’ll give them a heads up to expect a crowd for breakfast, at least.”
Doug grinned. “Another case of raise your hand if you’re surprised.” He winked at Marie-Ange and then Darcy.
“Well nobody else is going to tolerate me leeching all of their warmth in my sleep,” Darcy agreed with a laugh. “But it shouldn’t be a surprise that I prefer a human blanket.”
“I can go with for more food. There’s emergency food stored in stashes around the building but it’s probably not what anyone wants to eat unless they absolutely have to.” Natasha already had a stockpile of water and her favorite snacks in her office along with a spare go bag with sleeping bags and blankets. Over prepared was her motto.
“Is this the time when the energy projector notes just how many calories she needs in a day?” Jubilee said, pondering if she could get by with the stash of energy bars she’d hidden in the office kitchen. “Although, Loisaida’s does make great food along with the snacks and drinks.”
“Betty’s will be open tomorrow, so that’s breakfast sorted. Yes, I ordered a box of cinnamon rolls to bring up after, Angie. And some of the ham and cheese scones.” Darcy slid her phone back into a pocket. “And there’s extra energy bars and those crackers you like in my desk, Jubes.”
“My hero! Remind me to get you something nice the next time I’m in Russia.” Jubilee jumped up and headed toward Darcy’s desk as though on a mission.
Topaz looked up from her tablet, sighed, and went back to work. She wasn’t going to fight anyone over beds or sleeping bags. It was easier to stay awake and get stuff done, anyway.
Artie raised a hand to draw attention. "The storeroom under the stairs has half a dozen camping cots and sleeping bags. We work overnight and in other timezones enough that it seemed worth getting them a few months ago," he signed.
“Well if that’s the case, I’m taking a bed, not a cot. Anyone sharing it must be ready to accept octopus-level clinging.” Darcy’s hands were signing at the same time, an amused “Your synth has better accent control than that” with an emphatic fingerspell of “D Y I N G” directed to Artie before she covered her face to laugh.
Artie runs into Amanda in the kitchen and gets his much-belated Secret Santa gift.
Artie had worked late hundreds of times. He'd slept overnight at the office more times than he should have, either in a guest room or the camp cot under his desk.
But this was different. It was only 7pm and he was more or less ready to die. Stupid snow. He felt marginally more sympathetic to Jubilee, who was also spending the evening rattling around the office. He pushed back his chair and stood with a sigh, heading towards the kitchenette.
As luck would have it, Amanda was there, making herself and Marie-Ange tea. "Hey, just the man I wanted to see," she said as he came in. "I have something for you."
Artie blinked curiously, eyebrows raised, miming "Oh?", letting a question mark hang in the air between them as he filled his water bottle.
She set the mugs down and dug around in the pocket of her jeans. "Ta-daa!" she exclaimed, holding up a plastic card. "One Secret Santa slash 'thank you for getting my shite together on moving day' gift. All you can eat at that place you like."
"Aww, Grand Seoul BBQ? Damn, thanks, Amanda."
"Sorry it's so late. There was..." She waved her hands in the air to indicate the past several months. "Stuff. But I'm back properly now and I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything hanging. Besides, everyone likes food, right?"
He nodded. "Next time there's ... stuff, remember that you have a goddamn team, okay?"
She grimaced a little. "I didn't forget. I couldn't get anyone else involved without endangering the whole job. It's not like I wanted to keep you all in the dark and spend months bouncing from country to country for info."
"I'm not talking about your martyr complex or the part where only you could apparently do this. I'm talking about the part where you ran a side op, kept us in the dark. What was plan b if you died during the ops we've run over the last six months? Sorry Captain Canada, we never extracted you because your one contact kept it on the DL until she was killed by crabs."
"Plan B was if I missed a drop point, he was going to make contact through one of Angie's drops and let her know he needed an out," Amanda replied mildly. "It wasn't about being a martyr, it was operational security. If Olivier had worked out what was going on, he would have gone through us all like a mincer. If it had been the Brotherhood, they would have killed Garrison and possibly gone after the X-Men for planting him there." She shrugged a little. "You might not agree, but that's what Gar and I agreed was best."
Artie shrugged. "Sure. Whatever." It was stupid, given the risks in their line of work but he wasn't going to argue with her right now. He'd said his piece.
"I'm going to go watch something at my desk. Later."
"Yeah, sure." Amanda turned back to her tea. "Later."
Emma finds Jubilee in North’s office and gets a guided tour of the wine fridge.
Jubilee had covered herself in various layers and was taking the time they had been forcibly confined in the office to do some of the paperwork she normally left till the very last minute most other days.
It was mostly reading reports from the others who had gone into the field and adding information to the various dossiers they kept on the world regions, potential threats and people and organizations of interest.
She’d feed it all into the Beast tomorrow but right now it was just getting it organized.
“I was,” Emma announced, walking into the office Jubilee was occupying, “in Paris, in a three star Michelin restaurant, drinking the finest cognac as my post-prandial liqueur of choice less than twenty-four hours ago. How does it go so terribly wrong within one solar revolution, that’s what I’d like to know.”
“Just blame it all on Shaw.” Jubilee commented as her eyes flicked upward from the current report she was reading. She watched with interest as Emma walked toward her.
There was always something particularly captivating in the way Emma commanded a room. Even if she hadn’t been attracted to women, the sheer presence of her would have drawn her eye. It wasn’t just the poise, or the fact she moved like the heels she was wearing were completely comfortable.
If Jubilee had to name it, she might have just called it ‘class’.
“I’m surprised they even landed your plane in all of this.”
Emma gave a nonchalant hand-wave. “We managed to sneak in just before they shut the runways. I may be able to do a rather spectacular diamond dismount if my plane skids to its doom, but the pilot isn’t; we would have turned back if needed. I know Xavier thinks crashing the Blackbird is almost a mandatory yearly exercise, but most pilots prefer not to do things like that. It’s like they think it’s rude or something.” She looks around her, a frown lightly creasing her brow. “I tried getting back to my apartment, but it was easier to get here. And since the office moved, I can’t work out where Kevin has hidden the good champagne.”
Jubilee held up a finger in a ‘just a mo’ gesture before she turned around to type on her laptop. It took a few seconds but then she let out a soft ahha! and stood, gesturing for Emma to follow her. Emma being a telepath could probably already tell where they were headed as Jubilee never protected her thoughts around her teammates when in the office.
At least, not unless asked. It was a small gesture of trust in the group, but she’d always felt it was important.
“We have a wine fridge! I think you paid for it, so it must be good.”
“Darling,” purred Emma, “I’ve paid for everything here. One of the absolutely delightful things about being me is that paying for all of it, including the very, very good wine fridges, is not much more than petty cash.” She rolled her eyes at Jubilee, conspiratorially. “The auditors at Frost Enterprises think of Snow Valley as ‘my little indulgence’. Whereas I think of a magnum of Krug as my little indulgence. So,” she looked around the room and then back at Jubilee. “Where exactly is this wine fridge you speak of?”
“In the breakout room.” Jubilee said as she excitedly led Emma out of the office she’d commandeered for the night, she thought it might have actually been North’s. She definitely needed to get him a plant…maybe a cactus, those didn’t usually need much attention.
“Did you know we had a breakout room? Because I didn’t and then I found it and we have a pinball machine. It’s like someone decided we needed real office décor. Which is probably you again, so you’re awesome.”
“It’s all about being an employer of choice,” said Emma, following Jubilee along dutifully. “Considering the things you’re asked to do as employees of this place, making sure the offices are attractive, well-decorated and contain all of the little luxe touches that make life worth living seems the least I could organise. Ah,” she said with a satisfied hum as Jubilee pointed at the wine fridge. Emma opened it and fished a bottle of Krug out of the racks. “What delightful foresight I had. Now, darling Jubilee, find us a couple of champagne flutes and I can tell you all about my last visits with Thierry Mugler, may his soul rest in peace. That was a man, I have to say, who had the most sumptuous taste in corsets.”
“I had been meaning to ask if you knew of anywhere good to get properly fitted ones,” Jubilee noted as she went to a cupboard craftily hidden in a wall beside the wine fridge to pull out Champagne flutes. “I liked the one I had to wear for that HFC business but it was definitely a rush job.”
Emma laughed. “Do I know where to get properly fitted corsets? I’m going to assume all the cold air has distracted you today, that you’d ask that question.” She leaned back, letting her gaze sweep up and down Jubilee, considering her. Then she smiled and filled the two flutes, lifting one in a toast to Jubilee, a smile on her face. “Trust me, I have all the contacts. The next time the situation arises, I’m going to make sure you are absolutely magnificent, darling.”
“Okay, we have the bubbly, you’ll send me contacts for banging corsets. Now, give me this story time about Thierry Mugler, Aunty Em. Enquiring minds definitely need to know.”
Jubilee grinned over her own flute of champagne, indicating that Emma should definitely start.
A restless Jubilee comes across a grumpy Artie in the reception area.
Jubilee had finished off all her paperwork, and also managed to cover work that wasn’t even needed yet so decided to take a break and join her fellow man in the age old practice of drinking booze and bitching about the weather.
She found Artie hanging out in reception and filched a beer from the six pack sitting beside him with an ‘aren’t I adorable, you love me, don’t lie’ grin as she dropped down to the floor in front of him.
“Found a place you want to sleep yet?”
Artie glared at her but let Jubilee keep the beer. The path of least resistance worked best around her. He'd stopped working a while ago and now had Netflix running on his laptop. He hit pause and nodded.
Artie projected a wire frame schematic of the building, showing the various meeting rooms and cubicles and private offices and magic stores, each with a little cartoon figure attached. His own was in his cubicle, where he'd already set up one of the spare cots and sleeping bags.
He gestured at her, eyebrows raised. Where?
“Wherever the wind blows me, my dude.”
Jubilee opened her beer with the bottle opener she kept on her keychain and took a long drink, sighing happily as she leaned her head back against the front of the reception desk. She’d noticed Artie’s glare but ignored it as usual. It was his thing, grumpy little dude that he was. She’d never sweated it.
“I’m feeling the insomnia tonight, so I’ll probably just bug everyone else for a while and then fall asleep somewhere comfy. Whatcha watchin’?”
Artie turned the laptop, so that she could see the screen and pointed at the title screen. Blown Away. "You're gonna do it like that, are you?" he asked. "Not try and sleep or relax?"
“Too much energy, I need to work it through before I can do either.” Jubilee took a deep gulp of the beer and watched the screen for a moment before getting to her feet. “Anyway, time to go see if Marie-Ange needs any help with that food, or if I can get Doug to give me some accent lessons. Enjoy the show.”
Artie rolled his eyes and waved her away. "Later."
Doug’s in the server room, of course. Jubilee gets some foreign accent practice.
It didn’t take a genius to know where Doug would be if trapped in an office for any amount of time, even if he wasn’t what you’d call a beast of habit, Jubilee still knew him well enough to be able to track him down to various places.
“Dougie! Entertain me.”
Doug was put in mind of the running joke in the Dragonlance novels that nothing is more dangerous than a bored kender. Well, kender didn't exist in the real world, but a bored Jubilee was the next best (or worst) thing. Mostly because of the potential of things blowing up. "Of course, Jubes, I exist but to provide amusement," he told her with a florid half-bow.
“So gallant!”
Jubilee wandered past him to slouch down on the cot that had been set up for sleeping and crossed her legs in front of her. Mostly she’d been thinking it was the perfect time to work on her accent for Russian.
“So, Spanish accent lessons? I can use Natasha for Russian and yeah, I know you’re fine for all of them but it’s like, a bonding exercise and all that. So, Russian lessons with Nat, Spanish with you because Gabe would probably try to stab me.”
Doug snorted. "That's Gabe for you. Talk to me about accents - posh Castilian, generic Central American...what are you aiming for?" He was definitely used to Jubilee's need for occupying her time and also her tendency to skip over several steps of internal stuff in conversation.
"Hmm. Well, I'm gonna be dealing with Eastern and Southern Europe mostly, so I'd go for posh Central American, even if I could get away with Castilian,” Jubilee theorized as she pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. It was a common posture for her, giving her something to hold onto but also something to lean against. "There's actually a pretty large Chinese population there so I could get away with trying to pass myself off as a local of sorts."
"Let's go centroamericana then, since you're never going to pass as any flavor of Latin, and the best cover stories lift an element of truth in with the lies." Besides, Doug could never take the lispiness of Castilian Spanish seriously, even before dealing with Manuel de la Rocha.
“So what’s first?” Jubilee replied, slipping into passable Spanish, but with what was a completely atrocious American lilt.
Back before all of this she honestly wouldn’t have cared, and even during the first few years of her training it had been easier to just use her Americanness as its own sort of cover. But that was then, and this was now. As much as she sometimes resented Kevin’s pushiness when it came to her place, she’d never once doubted he was right.
So, accent lessons, because it made her more useful and meant she could get them the assets they’d need so she could step back and work the areas they needed from a distance. While she might prefer being boots on the ground, it wasn’t where she was needed most.
Doug drew himself up into the posture that said 'Doug is about to be deeply nerdy about linguistics, so strap in'. "So. The major distinguishers of different dialects of Spanish fall into two categories. The first is variations of certain phonemes - whether the double-L is pronounced more like a Y or like sh, for example. The second is what they use for second person pronouns and verb conjugation - tu, vos, or usted."
“I’ve heard about that phonemes thing! Like, how, we all form them or something when we’re young, so like, when it comes to learning a new language later it’s hard because our mouths just don’t know how to shape the words.” Jubilee piped up excitedly.
She sat up straighter, her attitude going from slightly manic to more focused as she zero’d in on Doug’s information, packing it away slowly as she listened. Jubilee had actually always been a quick study, and as a student she was often focused and managed leaps of logic easily.
If it hadn’t been for her inability to sit still for longer than thirty minutes without some sort of fidget break, she’d be the ideal student.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it, Doc. If we need an emergency ride, we’ll let you all know. Stay warm up there.” Kevin said, hanging up his phone and pocketing it. He’d rounded up the ones working late, which was an awful lot of X-Force, and got them down into the conference room. They all looked up as he ended the call.
“So, we have a situation. The 684 and 22 are completely backed up due to multiple accidents and heavy snowfall is delaying their ability to clear it. Same snowfall has knocked out the trains going north as well. I just talked to the mansion. If anyone has a really important reason to get back, Sefton or Ferguson are willing to teleport you, but they are in the middle of the storm, so we don’t want to push them if we don’t have to.” He took a seat. “I called a couple of concierge contacts of mine. An awful lot of people are opting to stay in the city tonight and lots of hotels are already booked up.”
“Just what I always wanted, an excuse to drink during work hours,” Jubilee quipped with a grin as she nudged Artie beside her. “Garçon, time to break out the good booze.”
“You mean, ‘excusez-moi monsieur, s'il vous plaît donnez-moi le vin’, “ Artie replied, through his synthesiser, deliberately feeding the text input so it came out phonetically and very American. Excuse-eh mwah, monshure, sil voos plate donney-ez moy lee veen. “Get it yourself You know where it is,” he added, in ASL.
“So mean. How can you possibly be so mean to me, your biggest fan?” Jubilee dramatically placed a hand against her chest and squeezed out a tear in what had to be the best version of over acting she’d performed in years. “Shame! Shame on the house of Artie!”
“We have a couple of suites upstairs, partially furnished. There’s a few couches scattered around the offices and reception people can bed down on as well.” Kevin shrugged. “I called over to Sol’s and Zane is putting together a stack of platters and soups for me to pick up before he closes up and heads home to Brooklyn. If a couple of you could go down to Loisaida’s, stock up on drinks and additional snacks.”
"I can go.. It will get me away from whatever Artie just did to my ears." Marie-Ange waved a hand. "Start texting me requests, I need to change into something more weatherproof." She'd stashed boots and snow pants in her office earlier in the week. "The sofa in my office pulls out, but I do not have sheets for it, just the throw blanket."
“I’m calling dibs on that one right now,” Amanda said with a grin. “Extra bodies saving warmth and all that.”
"Raise your hand if you are surprised." Marie-Ange barely paused, and grinned at Amanda. "No hands. No surprises. If the New York plows could see fit to not put slush in my boots while I go get snacks and drinks, I will not put my cold feet on you later."
“I’ve got that cot in my office from when I was taking more regular naps,” Doug offered. “And a boatload of blankets. It might be able to sleep two people if they’re -very- chummy.”
“Dibs. But damn, I knew I should’ve driven in today,” Darcy sighed, pulling her phone out. “I keep a sleeping bag and extra blankets in my trunk, and that would be handy right now. Let me text Joe, see if they’re planning on opening Betty’s like usual tomorrow. If they are, I’ll give them a heads up to expect a crowd for breakfast, at least.”
Doug grinned. “Another case of raise your hand if you’re surprised.” He winked at Marie-Ange and then Darcy.
“Well nobody else is going to tolerate me leeching all of their warmth in my sleep,” Darcy agreed with a laugh. “But it shouldn’t be a surprise that I prefer a human blanket.”
“I can go with for more food. There’s emergency food stored in stashes around the building but it’s probably not what anyone wants to eat unless they absolutely have to.” Natasha already had a stockpile of water and her favorite snacks in her office along with a spare go bag with sleeping bags and blankets. Over prepared was her motto.
“Is this the time when the energy projector notes just how many calories she needs in a day?” Jubilee said, pondering if she could get by with the stash of energy bars she’d hidden in the office kitchen. “Although, Loisaida’s does make great food along with the snacks and drinks.”
“Betty’s will be open tomorrow, so that’s breakfast sorted. Yes, I ordered a box of cinnamon rolls to bring up after, Angie. And some of the ham and cheese scones.” Darcy slid her phone back into a pocket. “And there’s extra energy bars and those crackers you like in my desk, Jubes.”
“My hero! Remind me to get you something nice the next time I’m in Russia.” Jubilee jumped up and headed toward Darcy’s desk as though on a mission.
Topaz looked up from her tablet, sighed, and went back to work. She wasn’t going to fight anyone over beds or sleeping bags. It was easier to stay awake and get stuff done, anyway.
Artie raised a hand to draw attention. "The storeroom under the stairs has half a dozen camping cots and sleeping bags. We work overnight and in other timezones enough that it seemed worth getting them a few months ago," he signed.
“Well if that’s the case, I’m taking a bed, not a cot. Anyone sharing it must be ready to accept octopus-level clinging.” Darcy’s hands were signing at the same time, an amused “Your synth has better accent control than that” with an emphatic fingerspell of “D Y I N G” directed to Artie before she covered her face to laugh.
Artie runs into Amanda in the kitchen and gets his much-belated Secret Santa gift.
Artie had worked late hundreds of times. He'd slept overnight at the office more times than he should have, either in a guest room or the camp cot under his desk.
But this was different. It was only 7pm and he was more or less ready to die. Stupid snow. He felt marginally more sympathetic to Jubilee, who was also spending the evening rattling around the office. He pushed back his chair and stood with a sigh, heading towards the kitchenette.
As luck would have it, Amanda was there, making herself and Marie-Ange tea. "Hey, just the man I wanted to see," she said as he came in. "I have something for you."
Artie blinked curiously, eyebrows raised, miming "Oh?", letting a question mark hang in the air between them as he filled his water bottle.
She set the mugs down and dug around in the pocket of her jeans. "Ta-daa!" she exclaimed, holding up a plastic card. "One Secret Santa slash 'thank you for getting my shite together on moving day' gift. All you can eat at that place you like."
"Aww, Grand Seoul BBQ? Damn, thanks, Amanda."
"Sorry it's so late. There was..." She waved her hands in the air to indicate the past several months. "Stuff. But I'm back properly now and I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything hanging. Besides, everyone likes food, right?"
He nodded. "Next time there's ... stuff, remember that you have a goddamn team, okay?"
She grimaced a little. "I didn't forget. I couldn't get anyone else involved without endangering the whole job. It's not like I wanted to keep you all in the dark and spend months bouncing from country to country for info."
"I'm not talking about your martyr complex or the part where only you could apparently do this. I'm talking about the part where you ran a side op, kept us in the dark. What was plan b if you died during the ops we've run over the last six months? Sorry Captain Canada, we never extracted you because your one contact kept it on the DL until she was killed by crabs."
"Plan B was if I missed a drop point, he was going to make contact through one of Angie's drops and let her know he needed an out," Amanda replied mildly. "It wasn't about being a martyr, it was operational security. If Olivier had worked out what was going on, he would have gone through us all like a mincer. If it had been the Brotherhood, they would have killed Garrison and possibly gone after the X-Men for planting him there." She shrugged a little. "You might not agree, but that's what Gar and I agreed was best."
Artie shrugged. "Sure. Whatever." It was stupid, given the risks in their line of work but he wasn't going to argue with her right now. He'd said his piece.
"I'm going to go watch something at my desk. Later."
"Yeah, sure." Amanda turned back to her tea. "Later."
Emma finds Jubilee in North’s office and gets a guided tour of the wine fridge.
Jubilee had covered herself in various layers and was taking the time they had been forcibly confined in the office to do some of the paperwork she normally left till the very last minute most other days.
It was mostly reading reports from the others who had gone into the field and adding information to the various dossiers they kept on the world regions, potential threats and people and organizations of interest.
She’d feed it all into the Beast tomorrow but right now it was just getting it organized.
“I was,” Emma announced, walking into the office Jubilee was occupying, “in Paris, in a three star Michelin restaurant, drinking the finest cognac as my post-prandial liqueur of choice less than twenty-four hours ago. How does it go so terribly wrong within one solar revolution, that’s what I’d like to know.”
“Just blame it all on Shaw.” Jubilee commented as her eyes flicked upward from the current report she was reading. She watched with interest as Emma walked toward her.
There was always something particularly captivating in the way Emma commanded a room. Even if she hadn’t been attracted to women, the sheer presence of her would have drawn her eye. It wasn’t just the poise, or the fact she moved like the heels she was wearing were completely comfortable.
If Jubilee had to name it, she might have just called it ‘class’.
“I’m surprised they even landed your plane in all of this.”
Emma gave a nonchalant hand-wave. “We managed to sneak in just before they shut the runways. I may be able to do a rather spectacular diamond dismount if my plane skids to its doom, but the pilot isn’t; we would have turned back if needed. I know Xavier thinks crashing the Blackbird is almost a mandatory yearly exercise, but most pilots prefer not to do things like that. It’s like they think it’s rude or something.” She looks around her, a frown lightly creasing her brow. “I tried getting back to my apartment, but it was easier to get here. And since the office moved, I can’t work out where Kevin has hidden the good champagne.”
Jubilee held up a finger in a ‘just a mo’ gesture before she turned around to type on her laptop. It took a few seconds but then she let out a soft ahha! and stood, gesturing for Emma to follow her. Emma being a telepath could probably already tell where they were headed as Jubilee never protected her thoughts around her teammates when in the office.
At least, not unless asked. It was a small gesture of trust in the group, but she’d always felt it was important.
“We have a wine fridge! I think you paid for it, so it must be good.”
“Darling,” purred Emma, “I’ve paid for everything here. One of the absolutely delightful things about being me is that paying for all of it, including the very, very good wine fridges, is not much more than petty cash.” She rolled her eyes at Jubilee, conspiratorially. “The auditors at Frost Enterprises think of Snow Valley as ‘my little indulgence’. Whereas I think of a magnum of Krug as my little indulgence. So,” she looked around the room and then back at Jubilee. “Where exactly is this wine fridge you speak of?”
“In the breakout room.” Jubilee said as she excitedly led Emma out of the office she’d commandeered for the night, she thought it might have actually been North’s. She definitely needed to get him a plant…maybe a cactus, those didn’t usually need much attention.
“Did you know we had a breakout room? Because I didn’t and then I found it and we have a pinball machine. It’s like someone decided we needed real office décor. Which is probably you again, so you’re awesome.”
“It’s all about being an employer of choice,” said Emma, following Jubilee along dutifully. “Considering the things you’re asked to do as employees of this place, making sure the offices are attractive, well-decorated and contain all of the little luxe touches that make life worth living seems the least I could organise. Ah,” she said with a satisfied hum as Jubilee pointed at the wine fridge. Emma opened it and fished a bottle of Krug out of the racks. “What delightful foresight I had. Now, darling Jubilee, find us a couple of champagne flutes and I can tell you all about my last visits with Thierry Mugler, may his soul rest in peace. That was a man, I have to say, who had the most sumptuous taste in corsets.”
“I had been meaning to ask if you knew of anywhere good to get properly fitted ones,” Jubilee noted as she went to a cupboard craftily hidden in a wall beside the wine fridge to pull out Champagne flutes. “I liked the one I had to wear for that HFC business but it was definitely a rush job.”
Emma laughed. “Do I know where to get properly fitted corsets? I’m going to assume all the cold air has distracted you today, that you’d ask that question.” She leaned back, letting her gaze sweep up and down Jubilee, considering her. Then she smiled and filled the two flutes, lifting one in a toast to Jubilee, a smile on her face. “Trust me, I have all the contacts. The next time the situation arises, I’m going to make sure you are absolutely magnificent, darling.”
“Okay, we have the bubbly, you’ll send me contacts for banging corsets. Now, give me this story time about Thierry Mugler, Aunty Em. Enquiring minds definitely need to know.”
Jubilee grinned over her own flute of champagne, indicating that Emma should definitely start.
A restless Jubilee comes across a grumpy Artie in the reception area.
Jubilee had finished off all her paperwork, and also managed to cover work that wasn’t even needed yet so decided to take a break and join her fellow man in the age old practice of drinking booze and bitching about the weather.
She found Artie hanging out in reception and filched a beer from the six pack sitting beside him with an ‘aren’t I adorable, you love me, don’t lie’ grin as she dropped down to the floor in front of him.
“Found a place you want to sleep yet?”
Artie glared at her but let Jubilee keep the beer. The path of least resistance worked best around her. He'd stopped working a while ago and now had Netflix running on his laptop. He hit pause and nodded.
Artie projected a wire frame schematic of the building, showing the various meeting rooms and cubicles and private offices and magic stores, each with a little cartoon figure attached. His own was in his cubicle, where he'd already set up one of the spare cots and sleeping bags.
He gestured at her, eyebrows raised. Where?
“Wherever the wind blows me, my dude.”
Jubilee opened her beer with the bottle opener she kept on her keychain and took a long drink, sighing happily as she leaned her head back against the front of the reception desk. She’d noticed Artie’s glare but ignored it as usual. It was his thing, grumpy little dude that he was. She’d never sweated it.
“I’m feeling the insomnia tonight, so I’ll probably just bug everyone else for a while and then fall asleep somewhere comfy. Whatcha watchin’?”
Artie turned the laptop, so that she could see the screen and pointed at the title screen. Blown Away. "You're gonna do it like that, are you?" he asked. "Not try and sleep or relax?"
“Too much energy, I need to work it through before I can do either.” Jubilee took a deep gulp of the beer and watched the screen for a moment before getting to her feet. “Anyway, time to go see if Marie-Ange needs any help with that food, or if I can get Doug to give me some accent lessons. Enjoy the show.”
Artie rolled his eyes and waved her away. "Later."
Doug’s in the server room, of course. Jubilee gets some foreign accent practice.
It didn’t take a genius to know where Doug would be if trapped in an office for any amount of time, even if he wasn’t what you’d call a beast of habit, Jubilee still knew him well enough to be able to track him down to various places.
“Dougie! Entertain me.”
Doug was put in mind of the running joke in the Dragonlance novels that nothing is more dangerous than a bored kender. Well, kender didn't exist in the real world, but a bored Jubilee was the next best (or worst) thing. Mostly because of the potential of things blowing up. "Of course, Jubes, I exist but to provide amusement," he told her with a florid half-bow.
“So gallant!”
Jubilee wandered past him to slouch down on the cot that had been set up for sleeping and crossed her legs in front of her. Mostly she’d been thinking it was the perfect time to work on her accent for Russian.
“So, Spanish accent lessons? I can use Natasha for Russian and yeah, I know you’re fine for all of them but it’s like, a bonding exercise and all that. So, Russian lessons with Nat, Spanish with you because Gabe would probably try to stab me.”
Doug snorted. "That's Gabe for you. Talk to me about accents - posh Castilian, generic Central American...what are you aiming for?" He was definitely used to Jubilee's need for occupying her time and also her tendency to skip over several steps of internal stuff in conversation.
"Hmm. Well, I'm gonna be dealing with Eastern and Southern Europe mostly, so I'd go for posh Central American, even if I could get away with Castilian,” Jubilee theorized as she pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. It was a common posture for her, giving her something to hold onto but also something to lean against. "There's actually a pretty large Chinese population there so I could get away with trying to pass myself off as a local of sorts."
"Let's go centroamericana then, since you're never going to pass as any flavor of Latin, and the best cover stories lift an element of truth in with the lies." Besides, Doug could never take the lispiness of Castilian Spanish seriously, even before dealing with Manuel de la Rocha.
“So what’s first?” Jubilee replied, slipping into passable Spanish, but with what was a completely atrocious American lilt.
Back before all of this she honestly wouldn’t have cared, and even during the first few years of her training it had been easier to just use her Americanness as its own sort of cover. But that was then, and this was now. As much as she sometimes resented Kevin’s pushiness when it came to her place, she’d never once doubted he was right.
So, accent lessons, because it made her more useful and meant she could get them the assets they’d need so she could step back and work the areas they needed from a distance. While she might prefer being boots on the ground, it wasn’t where she was needed most.
Doug drew himself up into the posture that said 'Doug is about to be deeply nerdy about linguistics, so strap in'. "So. The major distinguishers of different dialects of Spanish fall into two categories. The first is variations of certain phonemes - whether the double-L is pronounced more like a Y or like sh, for example. The second is what they use for second person pronouns and verb conjugation - tu, vos, or usted."
“I’ve heard about that phonemes thing! Like, how, we all form them or something when we’re young, so like, when it comes to learning a new language later it’s hard because our mouths just don’t know how to shape the words.” Jubilee piped up excitedly.
She sat up straighter, her attitude going from slightly manic to more focused as she zero’d in on Doug’s information, packing it away slowly as she listened. Jubilee had actually always been a quick study, and as a student she was often focused and managed leaps of logic easily.
If it hadn’t been for her inability to sit still for longer than thirty minutes without some sort of fidget break, she’d be the ideal student.
