Characters: Jubilee Setting: The Mansion, Westchester Content: Intrigue and Jubilee's past Summary: Jubilee receives a package from someone she knows who has been deceased for nearly a year. What is it, and what significance does it have? Jubilee groaned as she walked in the door of the Mansion, her backpack still heavy. Class was just getting out, and she couldn't find Paige anywhere. Jubilee had just turned in the paper which her friend had helped her to write, and for once, she was fairly certain she would get an A. Walking into the foyer, she headed straight to her mailbox. It was about the time of the month that she got her Gamer Inside Info magazine and sometimes makeup samples. To her surprise, however, inside her box was a small, padded envelope. It was addressed to "Miss Jubilation Lee", and the return address was...
...
...
...
...What? Jubilee's brain refused to process what she read. Her eyes skimmed the words three times before she could take it in, and she mouthed the words, breathing a little more sound into each iteration. "Hope...Lee. Beverly Hills. Hope Lee. HOPE. LEE." There was no way Jubilee could believe this. She had been there that day, almost a year ago, when her aunt's luxurious but modestly-appointed home was blown sky-high in an attempt to keep the mob hitmen from going after Jubilee and her other X-friends who were present at the time. Aunt Hope was inside when the explosion happened. She wasn't a mutant like Jubilee, she couldn't have survived. But here was a package with Aunt Hope's name as the sender.
Hands shaking, Jubilee grabbed the envelope out of her box. Looking around to make sure she was alone, she darted towards the staircase, heading to her single dorm room. As a longtime team member, she was entitled to a private room. First- and second-year students had to share.
Once inside the bedroom, with the door firmly shut and latched behind her, Jubilee sank onto her bed, examining the envelope. Carefully she tore open the seal and squeezed it to open it. Inside was a small plastic case. She shook it out into her hand. It was an SD memory card, the kind digital cameras often use to store photos.
This was confusing. Jubilee didn't own a digital camera. But--she pulled her laptop out of her backpack, opened it, and plugged the card into the built-in card reader. "These files...they're encrypted," Jubilee mumbled to herself, and bit her lip. Maybe one of her friends who was better with computers could crack them. Then again, they might be something Aunt Hope didn't want cracked. Maybe Jubilee was supposed to just hang onto the card. Wait, no, she stopped herself mid-thought. Who knew what was in these files? Better safe than sorry, she told herself, and resolved to have someone crack the files as soon as she figured out who among her friends was most computer-savvy and simultaneously most discreet.
~~~*~~~The next morning~~~*~~~
"Shit, shit, shit!" Jubilee hissed under her breath, trying to brush her hair and teeth both at the same time. "Late, late, laaaate late-late-lateeeee," she sing-songed, pulling on her signature yellow trenchcoat and grabbing her backpack off her bed. Pausing a moment in her frenetic activity, she checked her jeans pocket for the plastic case containing the SD card. It was still there, right where she'd carefully stashed it as soon as she got dressed.
"Good," she mumbled, and ran for the kitchen. If she didn't hurry, she'd not only not have time to make coffee, she would also be actually late for class. As in walk in after the teacher had started the lesson. As in major embarrassment. Ugh. So, coffee. Coffeeeeeeecoffeeeeecoffeeeeeee. Jubilee ran down the stairs towards the kitchen, unaware that she was being watched.
~~~*~~~Later that day, after class~~~*~~~
Jubilee yanked open her door to find her entire room a shambles. Clothing was tossed every which-a-ways, boots, shoes, sandals, and flip-flops were piled in the corner. Her closet stood wide open and most of the clothing was on the floor. Her desk drawers had been dumped onto the floor and the desktop ransacked.
"What...the hell?!" she exclaimed aloud. It didn't take her long to figure out what the intruder or intruders had been looking for. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the SD card. "Damnit!" This was bad. She needed to report the break-in--the Mansion was not without defenses or security, so whomever broke in must have either known the system, or been a mutant with a power able to bypass it. The rest of the X-Men had to know what was going on, and Jubilee needed to get out of there, stat. She didn't want to risk someone getting hurt.
But, she wondered to herself, who would be that interested in this card? And how did Aunt Hope send it to me? Is she really dead?
Hopefully she could find the answers to these questions soon, before anyone worse happened.