2012-11-06 Guidelines

{{RPLog
 * Title=Guidelines
 * What=Jubilee breaks student curfew to bring her favourite elusive kunoichi a midnight snack, and gets a little more than she bargained for in return. The life of a hero is never easy, but sometimes it can be pleasant for a few precious moments. {CONTENT WARNING: General adorableness, and flares in 2012.)
 * Who=Jubilee, Psylocke
 * Where=Betsy's Room - The Xavier Institute
 * When=Past Bedtime
 * Tone=Angsty, Romantic, Social}}

As apart from the world as it is, the Xavier Institute still answers to the march of time, and it's pretty late right now. Still, there's no statute of limitations on the practice of compassion, or so Jubilation Lee'd like to think.

And that's exactly what has her slipping down the hall of the staff area of the school, a covered pan in her hands, blue eyes alert for the danger of wandering instructors. But it looks as if she's chosen her time well, for no one's about just now. Which is good, because she's wearing pajamas. They're decently covering, but still, there's not much fashionable about her black, flare-leg pants with their prominent pink waistband and drawstring, and that cropped faux-sports jersey with the number 13 dominating it. Still, they're comfortable. Who says she never thinks about stuff like that?

The Chinese-American teen pauses at the door marked 'Betsy Braddock' and flattens herself against the wall, as if she's sneaking through some top-secret facility. Not that it helps much, as she's still cradling that pan. "Please be home, Bets... I'd hate to have risked detention for nothing!"

Whether the day is early, late, or entirely departed before the night... time is still short. A precious thing ever slipping through one's fingers, as too much thought occurs and too many events unfold; a hero's work is never done. Least of all the work of a hero not afraid to sink deep into the shady corners of the world. All but drowning in the concerns of the world, Psylocke has been oft-absent from the Institute these past weeks, her attendance today seeing her retreat swiftly to her room after a long - some would say too long - training session.

Right now, she's pacing between her antique oak-framed bed and the matching dresser situated across the room. Drawers sit open in the dim light afforded by a corner lamp, notably empty but for a meagre few remaining articles of clothing. A large case sits similarly bared at the foot of the bed; though it's far from empty, and ready to receive the final article. Atop the neatly folded clothes, the telepath lies her familiar scanty costume and accompanying sash, before reaching to zip shut the bulky case. She pauses at the sound of a voice, frowning slightly.

Though she keeps her gifts somewhat suppressed to avoid constant eavesdropping on her friends and fellows, Betsy is usually at least peripherally aware of the general comings and goings. It pays to be on guard, after all, even when sharing a living space with Jean and the Professor. That she hears someone, but doesn't /sense/ them, narrows the list of subjects considerably...

An unhurried step carries her to the heavy door, and she hesitates momentarily before reaching for the handle. She's hardly dressed for 'company' herself; much like Jubilee, she's thoroughly dressed down in her sleepwear, preparing to spend one last night, it seems, before departing. Unlike Jubilee, she's a bit more... graceful in her choice of attire. Namely a simple, but likely quite expensive, pair of black cotton boyshorts, and a loose, strappy top of purple silk. No prizes for guessing either X-Woman's favourite colour, then.

When she swings open the door, there's just a soft blink as she sees the young Chinese girl, before a smile tugs at her lips. It's warm enough, but also carries a hint of the wry and an accompaying glimmer of indulgent mischief, as she leans out and glances up the corridor meaningfully before arching a brow at Jubilee and flicking her forehead inside.

"I should warn you," she murmurs, "It's been a while since I had a sleepover in my room."

Jubilee, hearing the doorknob in action, swivels away from the wall to stand politely in front of the door, giving Betsy her best Avon Lady smile. "Hi!" she says, softly but brightly.

Then she sees just what kind of smile that is, and her own expression gains some of the impish. "I can tell," she replies, trying not to giggle. "You're totally making me feel overdressed!" She stretches up to hug the tall ninja-'path anyway. "I was worried when I heard you'd been busy lately," she whispers, referring to recent action. "Are you okay? You don't /look/ injured." At least, not anyplace that she can see right now. That doesn't leave many others!

Cool and confident the X-Men's resident kunoichi may generally seem - be, even - but being teased by the flare-adorned teenager brings a mild blush to her cheeks. She doesn't try to hide it though, enjoying the very human sensation as she returns the hug with a bit of a fond squeeze about the lower back. "Worried?" She returns, disengaging with a frown. "About me?" One of the downsides of being a stern, fearless ninja warrior; it's easy to forget that other people remember how breakable you really are. "I suppose I could have been a little more careful..."

Bashfully shrugging, she steps into the room and beckons Jubilee in before detailing the extent of her injuries, pointing out each healing bullet wound with a finger. Most are conveniently covered even by what little she's wearing-- she couldn't have planned it much better, really.

"Ribs. Stomach. Thigh. Hip. Hm..." She taps at her lip, before her mouth falls open with a faint 'ah!' and the finger flicks over to her left shoulder, nudging aside the strap - while keeping it carefully from slipping down and setting off anything inappropriate - to better show an ugly, jagged line running to her upper back. "There, and I think one came close to my spine. That should be all of them. I have to confess, it hurt a lot more than I'd like to admit."

Jubilation's not above enjoying a good hug, and Betsy's are surprisingly good, especially considering that she is, indeed, a stern ninja warrior prone to forgetting that others do worry about her. She follows her friend into the room, careful to close the door behind her, and watches as the tall kunoichi displays her injuries. "Maybe a /little/ more careful," she agrees softly. "They do look painful."

She proffers the pan she's been carrying so carefully, pulling aside the plastic wrap. "I know it's not much, but my Home Ec project from today turned out a little better than I expected... better than the teacher expected, too," she adds, a little sourly. Jubilation's culinary efforts are enthusiastic, but often rushed or done with her usual scant attention to detail. "Brownie? Might make you feel better..."

"Well, since you insist," Psylocke notes with a faux-prim pursing lips and a nod of mock solemnity as she rejigs her shifted strap and steps toward the bed, ready to shift the case aside; since there's only one other seat in the room. "I'll try not to get shot so much next time." Brow archly curving, violet eyes fixed over her shoulder on the girl, she's just reaching to zip the opened case shut when that pan is offered forth. "Oh?"

Despite her later career as a model, and the fashions she's tended to adopt since, Betsy was... something of a tomboy as a girl, and in spirit at least she keeps that sensibility alive. She may be good at hair and makeup, but cooking isn't *her* strong suit either. Even if it were, she's British damn it, and certainly wouldn't let a rushed brownie get in the way of politas. Abandoning her task, she steps over to peek at the baked goods with a small, pleased grin.

"We'll make a proper housewife of you yet, Jubilation," she teases gently, reaching for one of the cakes and taking a cursory sniff and a nibble, displaying excellent table manners without even sitting at a table. Well-trained, for a former tomboy. "Not bad at all," she judges once she's swallowed, before making a light 'mm' and balancing the treat in her palm, going back to her task to quickly shift the case from the bed and kick it underneath the heavy frame.

This does leave the small matter of the hundredfold katana lying just alongside it, which she snatches up by the hilt - now balancing a brownie and a sword in a perfect representation of how downright /odd/ live in the X-Mansion really is - and takes it over to the bedside where, in place of the expected bedside table, she has a Japanese sword chest.

"Please, sit down. I was just um..."

Packing. She doesn't say it, tailing off with a rather awkward shrug. Great, now there's a gorilla in the room.

Jubilation turns aside to stick her finger down her throat, or at least pretend to, with a convicingly gross gagging sound. "Housewife? As if!" she ripostes, through giggles. "I might get better at baking, but I'll do it from a ready room." Young as she is, the teener's quite set on a life of making the world better, one crime at a time. She sets the pan on the dresser once Psylocke's claimed her brownie, taking a seat on the bed.

She'd sensed something rushed in the room, and that suitcase was quite the giveaway in its own right. "Packing," she finishes softly. "Will it be a round trip?" Which is a polite way of asking if her favorite purple-haired ninja is leaving.

"I..."

Because a hesitant 'I' is always a good thing. Psylocke doesn't mean it to sound as terrible as it does, and it's with a self-effacing eyeroll and headshake that she tries to recall it. Setting her weapon down atop the rather beautiful chest, she turns and drops to her knees, her height bringing them about level. The look in those violet eyes is serious, but more wilful and determined than melancholy. In the end, she settles for being honest.

"I don't know. All this internment camp business, it's like a personal blow to me, and there's a lot happening around that... it's complicated, and I don't want to bore you, but-- part of me doesn't feel welcome here any more. Like I'm growing apart from what it means to be one of you. One of the X-Men." That's not an amendment so much as an acknowledgement - Jubilee is young, but Betsy considers her as much a part of the team as she. She's proven herself. "There are things I've done, and things I still might do, that force me to keep hiding, and that's not fair. Not to the others, not to the Professor, and not to you. If you want to ask me anything, Jubilee..."

She pauses, glancing down at the brownie now cradled in her lap, and smiles before looking up.

"Go ahead. But I *do* mean to come back, if the mansion remains open to me."

Jubilation winces in sympathy. She's seen the moods of the norms firsthand, when a guy was passing out flyers and got attacked by some goons. "It's crazy! I mean, they're talking about the lives of human beings like they can just be revoked on a whim. I thought this was America," she says, angry at first, and slowly sliding down to muted indignation.

She looks up at Betsy, meeting those violet eyes, and leans forward a little. "What is it, Betsy? What's bothering you? 'Cuz I want to help... I don't want you to go..." Did her voice just crack, ever so slightly?

Telepathy isn't an easy burden to bear, for all the use it has, and in this moment Psylocke is very grateful for the difficulties that Jubilee presents her 'gift'. Not being able to read her mind means processing the tremor in her voice on a far less painful scale; as it is, she has to blink back the sudden onset of moisture. And people call her cold.

"You help by caring," she soothes, reaching up with her free hand to gently muss that short, dark hair, her fingers slipping downward to rest near the nape of the girl's neck. "If you did anything more, I'd just be worrying about you instead. There are men, and women, out there who don't care what you've done, or how good a person you might be, only what you *are*. That's what's bothering me, and..." She pauses to draw breath, a flicker of a haunting in her gaze. "And I've seen it all happen before. I've *been* in one of those camps, Jubilee."

There's not much time to let that sink in, as the kunoichi pushes on with a quick sigh.

"People are the same all over the world as they were then, in England. Scared, confused, just waiting for the wrong fool to turn that into something perilous. History repeats itself constantly. It's just human nature. Not something we should hate anyone for. But I don't believe we should do nothing either. We've done our best, here, and the Professor has helped so many young people come to terms with what they are, but..." Her voice lowers, "It's not enough."

"Doing more means doing things we can't be proud of. Sometimes horrible, unforgivable things. Things that the X-Men don't believe in, and I'd never want you to do; I know you find the rules stuffy, Jubilee," She smiles at that, a crooked gesture that so almost becomes a grin, but for the otherwise solemnity of her mood. She appreciates the tearaway scamp in ways she'd probably never admit outloud. "But they're good rules. Everything the Professor teaches here is worth knowing, and abiding by. Remember that, and you'll be stronger in the future than I could ever be. That's the future I want to fight for, and that's why I need to leave."

Jubilation's tough grip on her emotions slips, and she catches herself blinking back tears at Betsy's gentle touch, hugging the tall woman fiercely. "You were in a /camp/, Bets? Oh, fudge... they talk like only bad people get locked away, but /you/? They're still talking that way, but anybody might get put someplace like that, just from how they're born!" The girl trembles as her feelings roil and churn, but doesn't let go. Betsy's the only steady person nearby now.

She sighs softly. "I think I know how you feel, a little. But if the Professor's teachings are so good, and if you want to fight for the future, why are you leaving? Isn't that what we're doing, here? The X-Men?" She does loosen her grip then, drawing back enough to meet the British woman's eyes.

A part of Betsy's heart aches at subjecting this girl to the revelation she just did. But it's a reality of the world, now, a possibility they're all facing-- and she's an X-Man, no matter what else she might be. She also makes a very fine point.

"True," Psylocke murmurs softly, eyes closing for a moment before they open askance. "We do that, tackling foes when they present themselves. We've... done well, so far." It's an ominous note to end on, but she doesn't end there, gaze fixating back upon Jubilee.

"I met a girl... a mutant, calling herself 'Blink'. She's from another world, a possible future where the only survivors are a handful of enslaved men and women, and-- the X-Men." The frown upon her brow indicates there's something more to this, and more troubling, before she actually continues that thought aloud. "Led not by the Professor, but by *Magneto*. Whatever happened in Blink's world, Jubilee, we didn't survive it as we are now. We do so much good, but there was something we never saw coming; and some of the best of us paid for that. I think..."

A single shake of her head punctuates the correction, her tone steely-confident.

"I *know*, that by fighting this threat before it comes, we stand to change that future. But it's going to mean making decisions that are hard, and cruel; decisions I can't expect everybody here to agree with." It's hard to explain, especially succinctly, and she's about to falter when she reaches the perfect, apt summary of her intentions: "Decisions like Logan makes."

Wolverine disappears all the time; at least annually, in the long-term, the details of his involvement in outside concerns left hazy at best. Often outright secretive even to those closest to him. And she's sure that includes Jubilee.

"The last thing I-- either of us-- want, is to drag you into that life."

Jubilation's eyes widen as Betsy explains. "The X-Men..? Led by /Magneto/?" She opens her mouth, as if to go on, but falls silent, her blue eyes growing thoughtfully distant. Jubilee's no straight-A student, but she's far from stupid, and just how possible that strange future could be is evidently going through her head now.

It's a long moment before she comes back from wherever her thoughts took her. "I guess I shouldn't ask if I can come with you," she says at last, sighing softly. "Even though I want to. But I hope you'll come back. You're the only grown-up here who doesn't treat me like I'm in diapers and made out of glass, too."

If she was pushed on the subject, Psylocke would note there's a big difference between intelligence and wisdom. She's not exactly a prize-winning intellectual herself - but she's experienced, and listens to the lessons life teaches her, for good or for ill. Their backgrounds differ vastly, but the young mallrat has the same outlook... and the same sort of ill-advised confidence that Betsy once had, and not-so-secretly still does. Hence the bulletholes.

"How about I go one better..."

Leaning in with a conspiratorial squint, the kunoichi shares just the sliver of a smile.

"And promise if there's anything at all you can help with, I'll get in touch with you here? You're important to me, too, you know." Her expression softens with that, as she leans back, drawing and releasing a breath. "I just don't want you involved with the wrong people, or..." Or worse. Rather than finish that sentence, she brings her shoulders up in a quick shrug. "If the worst comes, you'll be needed in the mansion, or on missions with the others. Remember, Jubilee, that if they treat you like a child... that just gives you an advantage. What have I told you about stealth and deception?" There's a grin as that hangs there, a flash of the inner adrenaline junkie surfacing in Psylocke's violet eyes. "Let them underestimate you, then show them exactly why they shouldn't. Work on that while I'm gone, since..."

Leaning back, she lifts up the brownie and flourishes it, not far from her mouth.

"Since you've already mastered the art of baking."

Chomp.

Jubilee's eyes widen, and she begins to smile again. "I can work with that," she says, obviously containing her enthusiasm well. "You should totally not hesitate to call me!"

She giggles as Betsy finishes the brownie, and leans over to hug her again. "I don't think my Home Ec teacher would agree, but I'm sure the opinion of a teacher rates below that of a ninja telepath. Even one who's eating brownies in her underwear," she teases.

"Pwoba--"

Betsy's eyes widen in alarm as she begins to respond with her mouth still full of gooey dough, a hand flying up to cover her mouth while she swallows. The drilled habits of an aristocrat's daughter die surprisingly hard in someone who used to play juvenile wargames.

"Probably," she finishes with a sheepish grin, licking off a couple of fingers before lowering her hands to her knees and moving to stand. Stretching out legs still tired from a four-hour workout in the process. "Now, since it's awfully late and you really shouldn't be running about in the mansion, young lady..." She really can't sell that as anything more than the blatant tease it is, coming just short of giggling herself. It would be the first time in a long time anybody had heard *that* from the stern kunoichi. "I have a spare cover if you want to stay."

There's only one bed but... well, it's a big bed.

"Besides, there's all those brownies to finish. Be a shame to make you eat them all yourself."

Jubilation stifles giggles as she sees that look on Betsy's face, and leans back so the woman can stand up without knocking both their noggins. "It /is/ late, and there /are/ more brownies," she agrees, claiming the pan from the dresser. She sets it instead on top of the sword chest, within easy reach of Psylocke's side of the single (but big) bed. "And I don't know if I could sneak all the way back to the dorm without getting caught. So I guess I should stay here. It's the best thing for everybody, right?" Who else does she know who would not only tell her to break the rules, but to do it for the benefit of others?

She kicks up her legs and pushes with her arms to shift positions, rolling easily across the bed to the other side, ending up in the same sitting position, but facing the other way. "I just hope you don't kick in your sleep, Bets. I kinda like waking up with no more bruises than I had when I went to bed!"

Rules are really more like guidelines, anyway.

But seriously, there's a time and a place for discipline; in the classroom, Psylocke's a firm believer in knuckling down and doing the best you can. On a mission she's all business but for the occasional, foe-niggling quip, and often lurks entirely silent and - indeed - cold in the shadows. All of which makes downtime all the more necessary. They all spend enough time being serious and steady, debating the morals and the meaning behind their evolved genotype...

"*Kick* the mighty Jubilee?" Betsy exhales as she gracefully seats herself crosslegged beside the plucky Chinese-American, puffing out her cheeks as she gives her head a quick shake to and fro. "I wouldn't dare. I've seen what happens when you get cross. I'd be seeing catherine wheels for a week."

Time has to be made to just *be*, and enjoy each other's company.

These are the times she's going to miss most.