The following morning the senior staff, Alpha team, was settling down to breakfast at the head table while Beta team quietly sat across the room at their own corner, bookending the crowd of 40+ students between them. Beta team preferred to sit on the other side of the room from Alpha team in the mornings to discuss training and briefings without constant annoying tips from Scott and gruff criticism from Logan. Today, they were even happier to be as far away as possible to eliminate possible detection of tired faces, slight bags under bloodshot eyes, and twitches at the corners of their lips. Jubilee sat with her back to the Alpha team, her head down, focusing intently on her cereal but only stirring it listlessly while she creased her forehead in concentration at the seeming puzzle of soggy marshmallow stars, clovers, and red balloons.
“You’re a trooper, Jubes,” Rogue said, massaging her friend’s shoulder lightly. Kitty hovered on her other side, holding Jubilee’s hand gently.
“I didn’t know this was going to be so hard,” the yellow clad sparkler whispered. “You know I practically have ADD.”
“Trust me, you’re the only one I could count on for this stage. You’re doing great, only 5 more hours to go then Bobby will spell you at noon. You kept us from being detected last night. My right hand man.” She slapped Jubilee gently on the back in a comradely fashion.
“Ok,” Jubilee sighed and massaged her temples, shutting her eyes to focus harder.
Jean Grey swept into the cafeteria humming, grabbed a bowl of fruit salad and a glass of OJ, and nodded politely to Bobb,y who courteously stepped to allow the senior X-man to pass. He lingered near the senior staff table, examining his breakfast choices from the buffet and eavesdropping.
Jean dropped into her seat and continued to hum as she meticulously rearranged the fruit in her bowl to her satisfaction.
“Good night last night?” Ororo cocked an eyebrow at Jean’s unusual good mood. Usually the telepath was a bit dour first thing in the morning.
“Oh no,” Jean said absently, shaking her head slightly, “You know how sometimes you get a tune in your head that you can’t stop playing over and over?” Ro nodded. “Well, I had the strangest dream last night about birds and I swear I’ve been stuck on ‘Rockin’ Robin” ever since I woke up. I love that song, but I haven’t heard it in forever.” And she went back to humming between bites of melon and berries.
Bobby ran his left hand over the back of his head, the signal to a watching John at the Beta table. John leaned over and whispered to Jubilee, “Confirmation.”
She nodded and continued to frown into her cereal. “I fucking hate that song. The thing I do for you guys.”
“That’s my trooper,” Rogue said, rubbing her friend’s neck once more.
Logan stomped into cafeteria more loudly than usual, causing a few heads to turn. He was wearing a green t-shirt that said “Kiss me, I’m Irish” in gold lettering. When Hank opened his mouth Logan snarled what sounded very much like a death threat and the furry doctor’s lip zipped.
Logan slammed down his cup of black coffee and glowered into it, as though it were the reason all his other t-shirts smelled like shit. “Laundry service messed up my clothes, put fabric softener in. All my shirts stink except this one,” he grunted at Ro’s curious look.
She nodded, well aware that Logan was extremely particular that his clothes be washed only in unscented pure soap with no additives at any point in the washing. Most common detergents irritated his nose and sensitive skin in the extreme.
Remy reached over to tap Kitty’s hand consoling Jubilee’s torment and nodded knowingly over her shoulder. “Confirmation.” She smiled tightly but did not look around to see her handwork. She was extremely relieved Logan had not detected her presence in his room when he returned to the mansion close to dawn. Rogue knew it was fight night at his favorite bar, which factored quite neatly into their plan. His fresh laundry has been placed on his bed by the mansion service earlier that evening and Shadowcat had sprayed all his black and white t-shirts lightly with Febreeze. She remained in her phased form for 5 minutes before entering his room, during the mission, and 5 minutes after she exited and returned to her own wing, remembering several years ago he’d said she was nearly impossible to scent in her impermeable state.
“Too bad he didn’t have a pink shirt,” she muttered quietly, all too aware of Logan’s enhanced hearing.
“Nothing doing, sugah,” Rogue whispered. “The only reason he has that is I made him wear it for St. Paddy’s Day last year. Surprised he still has it.”
Scott walked in near the end of breakfast, an extremely harried look on his face. He grabbed a coffee and bagel and slid into the seat next to his wife, dropping a perfunctory kiss on his wife’s cheek while she hummed aimlessly into her OJ. Logan quirked an eyebrow as Scott’s choice of eye wear that morning, his ruby quartz swim goggles. Without his sunglasses or visor covering up most of his upper face, Scott was able to shoot a raised eyebrow of his own at Logan’s horrendous and several weeks out of style t-shirt in return. Logan had the good grace to admit he had no room to rib the fearless leader that morning and only grunted.
“Couldn’t find my glasses this morning. Jean, did you put them somewhere? Jean?” Cyclops nudged her. “Hello, honey?” He snapped his fingers in front of his wife’s face, and she seemed to snap to herself and out of the song she was engrossed in.
“What honey?” She looked at him abstractedly. “What’s with the goggles?”
Scott huffed, “That’s what I was going to ask you. Did you put my glasses somewhere? I couldn’t find them.”
“No, I didn’t,” she replied tersely and went back to making abstract formations with her uneaten fruit salad and humming Rockin’ Robin.
“I couldn’t find my spare set either,” Scott groused, shooting a look at Hank. “If someone would finish with the upgrade to my visor I wouldn’t have to wear these.”
“I’m sorry my friend, I would have had it ready for you this morning but something appears to have gone wrong overnight with the chemical coating I applied to the interior of the quartz,” Hank said, a frown creasing his furry forehead as he considered the problem that was puzzling him. “I was attempting to refract incoming light with a new silicone based polymer to increase your night vision capability. But for some unknown reason during the evening an unexpected reaction occurred and the compound turned opaque.”
“English doc,” grunted Logan, still glaring into his coffee and plucking morosely at his shirt.
Hanks fur ruffled slightly in annoyance. “It means he can’t see through his visor until I remove the compound, so it’s either the goggles or nothing until at least tomorrow.” That made Logan’s day a bit brighter. He could throw his jacket on to hide this butt ugly shirt but Scooter would be stuck looking like a dork for the rest of the day.
“Confirmed,” Rogue said to Gambit and he nodded seriously, only the corners of his red on black eyes crinkling to indicate his satisfaction at the perfect heist. Rogue nodded back, pleased with her decision to use the professional thief for this particular phase. Only Remy had the stealth to not only steal right from under the nose of the Alpha couple while they slept but also to evade tripping any of the motion detectors in the med lab and contaminate Beasts’ experiment without detection. Shadowcat was excellent at sneaking in and out of places, but Gambit’s innate stealth was practically a mutation of its own.
And without Jubilee’s constant, endless projection of Rockin’ Robin Jean might sense the tension and subterfuge that was surely bubbling on the top of Beta teams’ minds. The good doctor wasn’t nearly as ethical as the Professor (who was thankfully at a conference in France) when it came to poking in people’s heads. At the least she might have detected Gambit’s sinister presence in her room last night. Jubilee’s and later Iceman’s projection marathon of the most annoying song Rogue could think of was crucial to escaping detection from the snoopy telepath for the duration of the mission.
So far, phase one was going exactly according to plan. But the last operation in this phase of the mission was going to be the trickiest yet. And if she slipped up in her implementation she’d be the one left behind by her teammates, just as she’d ordered. No time to worry about that, she thought as she checked her watch, time for her to implement her own strike.
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Chapter End Notes:
Writing the third chapter. Will be posted this evening. All others will be posted tomorrow evening.