trans_9 | Free but at what cost? (Some language warning)

The beer stopped and she blinked, looking at him. "Wolverine? Well, if he hasn't had to steal one, because he blew it up again." She coughed. "Or ya know, Scott didn't steal it, then he rides a Harley V-Rod." A small smile. "Truth be told, I was kinda hoping to see it here." Jubilee shrugged. "I figure he'll show up sooner or later. Wolvie always does." A grin. "Me, Ice, and Jono? Get Logan here and it'll be a full team."

"You have a lot of people you know here?"

Dean nodded with approval, "Nice wheels there. And yeah sounds like you're lucky. I just got my brother and me here."

"Wolvie has the best taste in wheels." She affirmed.

Then she shrugged. "More that know me. Beyond Ice and Jono, there's a couple kids from the mansion. I didn't know them real well, when I got kic- when I left." Jubilee smiled crookedly. "Still not an X-Man team without the Wolverine." And she couldn't put him through a wall if he wasn't here.

"But you got a bro. Dude, one up on me." A wink and a grin. "I was the spoiled Beverly Hills only child." She looked up at the Jedi. "You got anyone here?"

He nodded. "My dad, two of my cousins, one of the Masters, three pilots, my dad's first teacher, and an obnoxious Sith. I guess the Daligig liked our dimension."

"Guess so, didn't seem to give a crap about mine mostly. Even with the damn Apocalypse going on."

Jubilee looked up at the guy. "But there's still people in the pods right?" She asked softly. "People that could come out and..." Her hands tightened on the bottle. She needed Angelo. Almost more than she needed Logan. Maybe Stacy could yank him before they were crucified on the lawn.

Then she blinked and looked up at the guy. "Apocalypse?" She asked. "Big dude, blue with weird lips?" Had he dimension hopped? Was he capable of that? Ugh. She didn't want to think about it.

"Lots of them," Ben confirmed. Their presences were almost imperceptible, overlapping into one vague sense of frozen life, but they were there, waiting. "But if your dimension had an apocalypse--" He wracked his brain, trying to think where he'd heard the word before -- "that's what people call an end of a world, right?"

Dean pointed to the kid, "He's got it. End of the world, the freaking book of Revelations."

He nodded, "Yeah, there's people still sleeping. Won't be enough. Never is."

"Ooooh." She said. "Actual apocalypse." Her brain automatically went to the blue guy with the weird face. She couldn't help it. "That had to suck." Not that her world was much better. Her fingers curled inward, hiding the scar.

"Doesn't mean we don't fight." She shrugged. "Sure, things will be hard, and friends are gonna die, but ya know..." Jubilee smiled crookedly. "Guess I've been doin' things like this for too long, because it sounds like a better prospect than what I had at home." She shrugged with a grin. "Guess I'm more like Wolvie than I'd like to admit."

"The ship has a knack for picking up people who're used to this stuff," he mused. Except Vestara, of course. "Or the Daligig, whichever."

"Yeah so I heard. Didn't have anything like the Ohm back home, though they're about as fugly as some of the things we've iced."

He wiped a hand over his face, "Also 100 times more powerful than anything we've dealt with."

Jubilee looked up the guy and wondered if she dared. Then she decided that hey, the worst he could do was jerk away and he wouldn't be the first. She reached up and put a hand on his forearm, squeezing gently. She took her hand back pretty quick.

"Then... we'll just have to get better, ya know?" She said softly. "Get better and hope that more people show up and that it'll be enough." Jubilee sighed. "Outer space, alternate dimension, universe in peril? Must be Thursday." Maybe, just maybe she was a tad jaded.

"Though," she said, philosophically, "we have a few advantages. Not only do we have the chance to learn from each other - something we shouldn't sneeze at - but we've got reason to hate, and reason to not hold back. And that is a very powerful weapon."

That was unsettling.

The other crew hadn't mentioned anything about hating the Ohm -- not even Cargn, who'd seen them. Their strangely relaxed attitudes about the Ohm had seemed strange when he was podpopped, but he'd attributed that to the ship's mind rub. And that had been less disturbing than the suggestion that they should fight on the strength of their hate. They're not Jedi, he told himself, but it still alarmed him. The non-Jedi members of the Guard who fought to settle personal scores were always the ones who performed a sloppy job, who got their companions in trouble. And if everyone else felt the same way, there wouldn't be a way to end the fighting short of xenocide.

"That's a dangerous way to talk," he said cautiously. "It sets us up to fight them until one side is gone -- and it sounds like, even if we win, it will be one long, ugly war. And that sort of thinking doesn't give us room to find out why they're so angry or scared and stop the fighting."

Good thing she moved her hand back, because Dean jerked at that, almost like he was about to fight. Part of him liked contact, but the thing was, he wasn't used to it. Certainly not from strangers.

"Dude, I saw the sons of bitches cutting through everything on my world like butter. They don't care about anything except taking apart everything else. They're worse than any demon or angel. I couldn't give a damn if daddy didn't love them enough or they didn't get the toy they wanted for Christmas. They're going down."

He added, gesturing to Jubilee, "So she's right on pooling our resources and focusing on them. If we don't, we're screwed, and the universe is completely boned."

Jubilee ignored his physical reaction. She was used to it. She almost mocked the Jedi with quotes from the movies 'hatred leads to the dark side' and all that, but she could almost feel the disapproving look Logan would give her at that. She might not like the guy's belief, but that didn't give her the right to mock him for it.

"Well, wouldn't be the first time." Jubilee muttered. She rolled the bottle between her hands. "War is always long and ugly." she pointed out. "No matter what happens, it is. It's one of the few truths that stretch across cultures, across dimensions, and across time." right, alcohol made her philosophical, even if she wasn't anywhere close to drunk. "And I have to agree with Dean. I've been hated, and almost killed, just because of what I am. And frankly, I'm a little tired of being shit on by the universe, just because someone dislikes the color yellow or whatever." she shrugged. "And, the hatred is the reason you have friends. An outside conscience that keeps you from slipping over that edge. Mine have done it for me before, just like I've done it for them."

Well, that and Wolverine. That long ago talk in LA still lingered in the back of her mind every time she even approached that line.

He shook his head. “I know they’re supposed to be brutal, that all they want to do is destroy other life forms -- but that just makes it more important to find out why they’re angry and set up some sort of peace agreement. If they’re really that xenocidal, the only other alternative is dragging everyone on this ship into a fight to the last being that might not have to happen at all. I mean,” he looked both of them in the eye, “you hate the Ohm because the ship says they destroyed our homes. What’s their reason for hating us? Did the Daligig kill one of their hive queens or vape their original dimension? If you decide to go on the attack without knowing why they’re fighting, you’re just going to get a load of innocent people hurt. At least,” he said, with a tight, rueful smile, “that’s what we learned last time we ran into a bunch of hateful killer extragalactic invaders.”

Dean stared at him, "They're freaking monsters plain and simple, and need to be taken out. Peace agreements aren't going to work here."

He sighed and then added to them both, tapping the side of his head, "It ain't just the ship saying it. I asked for them back. What happened when she grabbed me. I saw them, and I watched them murder thousands of innocents."

Jubilee shook her head. "You sound like Ororo." She said.

Sitting forward, she braced her forearms on her upraised knees. "Peace has its place. God knows, I would let almost anyone live and let live as long as they allowed me the same courtesy." She explained. "And I haven't gotten my memories back, because I'm not sure that those nightmares on top of the ones I already have are a good idea." Jubilee knew, very well, what her powers could do if they got out of control. "Mainly because I don't want to accidentally blow something up." She admitted.

"But, I've known several different alien races that wanted to take over my world." Jubilee shrugged. "Usually, just because they could and decided it'd be a good idea. But the one thing I know? No matter what their reason, it all boils down to this: They don't care how many they kill, and the only thing they listen to is violence back. Do I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, with Dean, with any of the people on board and watch them fall in war? Absolutely not. It sickens me that it'll come to that." Jubilee sighed. "But I'm prepared to do it. Because I cannot, will not allow another child, another mother, another friend, another brother to watch their world destroyed."

She stopped. "Oh god I sound like Cyclops." She groaned and buried her face into her hands.

"That's what people thought about the Yuuzhan Vong once," he frowned. "They crashed moons into planets, tried to wipe out the Jedi, and chopped up any machine they ran into, but it turned out plenty of them just wanted to sit down and farm on a planet in the middle of nowhere. Your parsecage may vary." He turned back to the fair-haired man. "What did the ship show you?"

Dean snorted at Jubilee's comment, and added, "I asked for them back since the way things were back home... I had to know for sure. One way or another." Granted he just added to his nightmares, but same shit, different day by his reasoning. Least he still got a good dream once in a while.

He added, "She showed me what happened when they showed up, and started tearing everything and everyone apart. Even the demons we usually take down were nothing to them. Almost had me before I got grabbed, and there was some table before they knocked me out. Guess they stuck me in one of the pods after that."

She wanted to get drunk. Rip roaring, falling on her face drunk. But she wouldn't. She'd behave. Mostly.

"I can understand that." Jubilee picked up the empty bottle to have something for her hands to do. She rolled it back and forth. "I hate to ask, Dean, but... anything else you can remember?" Jubilee looked up at him. "Weapons, fighting styles, vehicles, anything? Small details are usually the most important."

"Cohesiveness?" Ben added. "I heard they're a hive mind, but no one seems to know how complete the queen's control is. And did they communicate with anyone?"

"No weapons, just razor sharp claws. Mostly just saw their Grunts. The Ground forces."

Dean gave an overview of the battle (http://community.livejournal.com/trans_9/347541.html?thread=26487445#t26487445) he witnessed, and what he got from Stacy, leaving out the part of seeing his brother protecting him and getting cut down.

Jubilee leaned her head back against the wheel well. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine it. "They sound like some horrific cross between the Brood and Wolverine, when he was Death." She sighed, rubbing her eyes.

Which, didn't really give them much. "Ice was the most effective against the Brood, from what I remember. Better to ask him though." She murmured. "Wolverine... well, that was me, but somehow reasoning and reminding them of former feelings just doesn't seem the way to go." It made her want to go talk to Stacy and get her own memories.

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