LOG: Manuel and Jubilee - Family is a Difficult Thing

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Who: Manuel de la Rocha, Jubilation Lee
Where: Manuel's Room
When: Tuesday mid-afternoon
What Happens: More talk. Their nascent friendship grows some. She gets nosey, he gets honest.




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Jubilee paused outside Manny's door, wondering if he'd be out of his class by now. She'd been wandering somewhat aimlessly when she remembered that Manny had said to come find him, and well, there'd been mention of music, which she was always up for. She knocked on the door, hoping he was in.

As it turns out, he was indeed in - he opened the door and looked at Jubilee with a small amount of surprise. "Hey. C'mon in." he said to her, then backed up to give the girl access to his room. It was a disaster - laundry strewn everywhere, CDs stacked in glittering heaps, and his Macintosh laptop open. He was apparently running some sort of music-composition software, and his pro-grade headphones were plugged into the laptop's back.

Jubilee walked past Manuel into his room, taking a curious glance around. "Wow, I so totally have to bring Kitty over here, once she sees this place she'll completely get off my back about my habits. I mean, it's organised chaos and the pyramid of soda is an artwork in progress but she just looks at me like I'm not foolin' anyone." She leaned over, looking at the laptop. "Dude, you have a Mac. Like, how do you deal with the non-right clicky mouse thing?"

Manuel smirked, and showed the Asian girl his five-button mouse. "I deal with it by acknowledging that this is no longer the Dark Ages, and MacOS X deals quite nicely with right-click." He looked at the mess, and then shrugged. "I got used to having domestics take care of it for me, or not owning enough to even begin to make this kind of a mess. I'll get disgusted soon enough and then put it all away, and begin the whole cycle all over again. Maybe a third of this stuff isn't mine anyway." He grinned, checking Jubilee out, and then made a vague motion towards a towering stack of CDs. "Music." he said with a grin.

Jubilee moved over to the CD rack, her fingers brushing over the titles. There were a few she didn't recognise but her eyes immediately alighted on the ones that looked home brewed. "Hey, how about you show me some of the stuff you've done yourself?" She smiled encouragingly, looking around for a place to sit.

Manuel shoved a pile of laundry off of the bed to give the girl a place to sit. "These are just some things I've been fooling around with. I went browsing through the school MP3 server, found some stuff other people seemed to like, took a listen, hated it, and decided that a remix was in order. Most of it's not very good, really. Work in progress, and all that." he said with a disarming shrug and a smile. He grabbed one off the pile and stuck it into the CD-ROM drive of his laptop. The music, once it started, was a very trance-heavy version of one of Clarice's David Bowie tracks. The first half of the track was remixed to be more to Manuel's liking, but the second half was straight-up classic Thin White Duke Bowie. "That one's not done yet." he apologized.

Jubilee laughed happily, her foot tapping along to the beat. "Dude, this is so wicked. I can't believe you re-mixed Bowie. Oh! You like cover tunes? I found a Rammstein version of Pet Cemetery the other day."

Jubilee listened to the music for a moment more, smiling softly. "'The Labyrinth' was so one of my favourite movies when I was a kid."

Manuel shrugged. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't go to the cinema." he said calmly, like he'd said it a thousand times before. And I've heard that cover - it amused me. Have a copy of it in iTunes somewhere." he said with a smile.

Jubilee shook her head. "Dude, don't you ever watch television? The Labyrinth is like, THE children's movie, well, that and Dark Crystal. Tell me you've seen Dark Crystal. Cause like, if you haven't, education will need to commence in the form of a movie night. Although, almost everything is an excuse for a movie night when you get right down to it."

Jubilee pulled her legs up and crossed them Indian style and grinned at Manny. "And like, seriously no excuses will get you out of this, unless you're like dying of an incurable infectious disease."

"No infectious diseases, but I can always claim emotional impairment, if not outright insanity. I am not entire sure my new shield can handle a group setting where feelings are running hot." he confessed with a sheepish grin. "And now that you mention it, no, I don't watch much television. The television when I was growing up was for political television, CNN and the like. When I was on the streets, I didn't have one readily available to me. And in the asylum, no outside contact was permitted." he explained. "Shinobi showed me a film - the Princess Bride. That was the first one I'd seen in about five years or so."

Jubilee nodded. "Princess Bride is another of the really cool movies, and movie nights don't have to be in a group. How 'bout just you and me this time? Least till you're sure of your shields and can handle more people."

She looked at him for a second, her gaze curious before she spoke again. "You don't talk that much on your journal about your family, except the honor stuff. Which, by the way, sounds so much like stuff my Great Grandfather and Grandmother keep trying to drill into me. When I first found out I still had family, I went to visit them in China. Gran was like, so horrified that I'd been left to grow up an American, without any links to my history. Not so much cause of the American part, I think, since my Dad was Chinese-American and his family had been here a long time. But, just that I had no knowledge of our family history. She took me to see my Great-Granddad soon after that. I swear, I've never seen anyone who was so concerned about family honor as he was."

"I'm not surprised." he said, leaning back in his chair. "Your people, especially the more traditional ones, believe very strongly that family is very, very important. The older the family, the more important that history and tradition is. My family, for example, stretches back two thousand years. At least. So history and tradition is very important for a de la Rocha. Yours, I'd be willing to guess, goes back that far, possibly longer. These Americans, they think that two generations, maybe three, is the sum total of their family history. We know better."

Jubilee shook her head. "It was hard, gettin' used to the fact that I had a family that had been around since the first Emperors of China. Least, that's what my Great Granddad said. He's got this shrine too, a place to honor our ancestors, he said. I mean, I was raised an American, my parents died when I was eight. Suddenly, I'm supposed to be responsible for the family honor and I don't even know what that means. The fact that he thought anyone who wasn't Chinese was a ghost didn't help much. Gran helped though, explained things a little better, after. I guess maybe cause she'd been the one to tell the family to let my mother have her way when she wanted to marry someone from America. She said it was a huge thing at the time, cause till then no one from her family had ever left China."

"Chinese ancestor-worship isn't exactly in my field of expertise." he shrugged. "All that I can suggest is that you _talk_ to your great-grandfather. Sit at his feet, hear the old stories. Don't let them die when he passes this world." he said vehemently. "You're a daughter, so that makes it a little easier - you're not the one who has to carry the family name to the next generation." he said wryly. "That's my burden." he said quietly.

Jubilee studied him, serious for a moment. "Why is it such a burden for you? Like, carrying on a name just means havin' kids, right? Seems to me when the time's right, that ain't such a hard thing to do."

Manuel smirked. "Because it's an awesome responsibility. You have to keep the line strong, find the right woman, raise the Heir to know the family's history and traditions. To do this well is the highest goodness. To do it poorly is to risk everything." He then laughed bitterly.

Jubilee heard the bitterness in Manuel's voice and thought about her own family, about what her remaining family expected of her. It wasn't easy, even being just a daughter, rather then a son. "Your Dad, did he ever tell you he was proud of you?"

Manuel smirked. "No, that's really not his style. I turned into a rather large disappointment, especially when I manifested and got a brainfull of his true feelings." he said casually. "I had the singular bad taste to be indiscreet about it. Apparently, I embarrassed him quite badly when I cut and run. I saw him again, while I was in Spain. He's still fairly angry about the entire thing, although time has cooled things somewhat."


Jubilee raised an eyebrow. "What did you say to him, that was indiscreet, I mean? That's like, if you don't mind me being nosey."

"It's a little late for that." he said with a teasing smirk. "I caught him having four simultaneous affairs at the same time, actually. And I let each of them know about the others. He was _furious_." he said. "I can certainly understand why." He then looked at Jubilee again, both physically and with his power. "You're very curious about me - why is that? If you don't mind me being nosey." he said, mimicking her phrasing almost exactly.


Jubilee smiled, amused. "Yeah, I guess it is a little late to be askin' if ya mind me bein' nosey, considering I've been asking totally personal questions for awhile now. But sometimes there's personal, and then there's personal, ya know? And I'm naturally curious most of the time, about pretty much everything."

She shook her head, thinking on the question some more before answering more seriously. "People though, pays to know something about them, probably the only thing my last set of foster parents taught me, along with how to duck a fist, anyhow. But why am I curious about you? Maybe just 'cause I've said several things that I'd consider seriously personal, yet you've told me anyhow. Makes me wonder what else I can ask. And, there's somethin' about you that makes me want to get to know you better. The fact that you keep flirtin' with me, like you're testin' me in some way, or maybe it's just 'cause men don't usually flirt with me. An' maybe it's just 'cause you seem to know what it's like to have family expectations and not know how the hell you're goin' to live up to everythin' they expect of you. And maybe, it's just cause I think we could be friends."


Manuel nodded. "You're pretty enough, it's probably the brainless crack-addled ferret act that drives the men away." he said completely straight, then laughed to soften the impact of his words. "And I know all about family expectations - I grew up with them. Got a pretty good deal out of it, I think, except for the end. Learned a lot, saw a lot, and acquired far more polish and class than this lot of monkeys around us," he said with a sneer. "But I don't lie, as a general rule. Empaths have a hard time with bending the truth.
So if you ask me, I'll answer. If I don't like the question, you won't want an answer. It's that simple." he said with another smirk.

Jubilee laughed suddenly, shaking her head. He was probably the most arrogant person she'd ever met, besides Monet. Why was it that she found herself contemplating friendship with these people? Maybe it was just because she had a thick enough skin and that no matter how arrogant they seemed, something inside told her they needed someone to care. "I don't think I've ever heard how I act described in exactly that way before. Still, it's cool. Anyway, I gotta go. But I'll see you later, kay?"

Manuel smirked as he nodded to Jubilee. "You know where to find me. I'm usually here, or out by the lake. The fewer people, especially of late, the better. But you, you can come find me anytime you want
to." he said with a rogueish charming smile. "And I was teasing - but you are a little flighty, and very, very American."

"I know, and feel free to tease me any time you like. And yeah, I'm seriously American, which drives my family absolutely nuts. Anyway, will definitely see you later. Stay loose, Dude."

Jubilee got up, paused for a second, smiled and then darted out the door.

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