18932/Fall Village People

Fall Village People
Date of Scene:	27 August 2024
Location:	Fall People Village
Synopsis:	Rogue and Jubilee chat about the weirdness of the Savage Land. Rogue secretly loves it.
Cast of Characters:	Jubilation Lee, Rogue

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Jubilation Lee has posed:
It's been a few hours since the X-Men cleared out the mysterious lab in the Savage Lands, returning to the Fall People Village as heroes. Still, there's more work to do and it remains uncertain if these people will ever be truly safe. For now, there's time to rest and recover and, as it happens, that's exactly what Jubilation Lee is doing. If she were to visit a doctor, they would tell her that she suffered a compound fracture of her shin bone, but doctors who can be trusted with matters related to the undead are far and few between. Typically, she can just heal up without thought. Sometimes, more serious injuries just require a full belly and a day in the coffin, but this isn't healing as easily for some reason...

Jubilation reclines near a fresh campfire, leaned back against a horizontal log. Her good leg is bent at the knee while her broken leg remains extended along the ground. She's idly swiping across photos in her phone, bored out of her mind. And, perhaps, a little worried.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue had to do a bit of recovering herself. She may be super durable, but that laser blast to her back gave her a fairly wicked sunburn style rash. She'd been in a hut within the villagee, with Jean taking a look at it, but was now stepping back out in to the darkness. Six months of darkness in this place, and they were about a month and a half in to it, or maybe three'ish? She wasn't sure.

All the same, with her suit unzipped, but pulled up ovr her shoulders, Rogue walked on bare fet, her tall boots held in a hand beside her, along with a cleaning brush, and a bit of water in a bottle.

She found a place to sit down near Jubilee, and prepared to clean her boots up.

"How ya feelin?" She asked the pale skinned one, glancing at her injured leg. "You enjoyin' these missions more, or less?" She further asked with a small grin.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
Jubilation's eyes shift as she catches the sound of leaves crunching under feet. The sound belongs to Rogue, she figures. She's had a lot of time to get used to her vampire senses and, by now, is pretty good at recognizing each person's smells and sounds. The question causes her mouth to curl upwards into a sarcastic smile. "Oh, never better..." she tells Rogue, now forming a real smile as she continues to swipe through pictures of Shogo on her phone. "I gotta admit. If I knew one of us was gonna somehow get a sunburn in all this darkness, I wouldn't have guessed it would be /you/..."

Jubilee smirks and finally looks up from her phone. "Less. Way, way, way, way less," Jubes answers without hesitation. She hesitates before turning her phone screen so Rogue can see her son, revealing what's really on her mind. "...I didn't think we'd be out here this long."

Rogue has posed:
Rogue found a place, settled in, and set her boots down beside her, the rest was laid in her lap. She glanced over at Jubilee, smirked at her joke about the burn, and shrugged her shoulders. "I got a salve on it now, should have it fine by the mornin. If this place even had a mornin...." She drew in a soft brath, and let it out slowly, before she looked toward the phone's screen.

She stared at the picture of the kid, smiled at it, and adjusted her stare to regard Jubilee again. "You miss him that much already, huh?" She asked, her smoky voice sounding tired.

"He's a cutie pie, so I don't blame you. I'm sure he is happy and havin' fun back home though, and we shouldn't be here too much longer."

She sat about preparing to clean her boots off, after that muddy trek to get out to that lab.

"you did a good thing back there, though. Saved someone else's little Shogo... So that is somethin' to take ta heart, right?"

Jubilation Lee has posed:
Jubilation hesitates, searches her brain for some piece of trivia, and gives up. "...What /is/ salve, anyway?" she asks. Her tone suggests that she's not really interested in hearing an answer.

Rogue's question about her feelings surrounding being away from Shogo deflate Jubilee a little bit. She slumps forward, face pointed at the dirt, before tilting her head back and staring up at the dark sky. "/Yes/...." she answers, deepening her voice a little, as though mocking the question for how obvious it should be. "...This is the longest I've gone without changing a diaper. Like, seriously, it's weird." Still, not even Jubilee's 'new mom' malaise' can completely extinguish that little fire cracker. She looks over at Rogue with a devious smirk. "Guess who I got to watch him?" she begins, only giving Rogue a short pause to guess. "...Ruth!" She laughs about this until Rogue brings up the little girl from the mission.

Jubilation shrugs. "I didn't even know she was in there," she admits, deflecting Rogue's praise a little bit. "Plus, it's not like Scott's gonna see it that way." She rolls her eyes and deepens her voice a little to do a proper impression of Cyclops. "...'Jubilee, you didn't check your left flank!'.... she says, rolling her eyes a second time. "I'll bet you ten bucks that I'm gonna get kicked off this team before we leave." Jubilation rolls her eyes about that. It's unclear if she believes it.

"Besides, you guys saved, like, a baker's dozen of people."

Rogue has posed:
Rogue had to give Jubilee a dismissive wave of her hand, and a smirk, as she laid her right long boot across her lap. "You're bein' modest. If anythin' else, it was a good team effort. That place was goin' straight ta hell, especially with those little scavenger dinosaurs comin' in to clean everything up. I mean, i wish we coulda saved all the kidnapped people, but we're doin' our damndest here under some pretty ridiculous circumstances. These folks, thy're all gettin' treated worse, now that the world knows they exist..."

She started scrubbing at the yellow material of her boot, the normally sunshiny material now caked in that dark earthen shade.

"you miss cleaning his diapers?" She asked, showing the other a soft smirk. "That seems a bit off ta me, Missy..." Rogue added, leaned over the boot to scrub it good and proper like.

"Ruth Aldine?" Rogue asked, just to confirm. "Blindfold?" She glanced back to the other, seemingly unsure of this choice of babysitter. "I could've had my dad and sister watch him. You remember her, right?" Rogue's little clone from the Mojoverse. She is... angry, kinda mean. Very Goth.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
"Yeah, like, I don't /get/ this place. Dinosaurs? Loincloths?" Jubilee admits. She gestures up at the sky. "...Plus, like, it's always night. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about /that/..." This is a vampire's paradise. If she wasn't so committed to being 'not evil' she could do some real carnage here, unencumbered by the stupid good-for-nothing sun.

"Plus, uh, these people..." Jubilee begins, stumbling on the words needed to explain this to someone who doesn't drink blood. "...They're, like, organic..." She laughs a little at that, hoping it's enough to get Rogue to understand. Savage Land people just hit different.

The mention of Rogue's quote-unquote sister is a more serious topic.

"Yeah, I remember her," Jubilee answers, totally unimpressed by that suggestion. "Rogue, no offense, but if it was anyone else's baby, I'd pay money to watch her take care of them. But, like, not Shogo. Besides, Ruth's doing okay. A couple of the guys broughg me to the Blackbird so I could FaceTime before."

Abruptly, Jubilee changes the subject. "Rogue, what the hecky is going on here?"

Rogue has posed:
Rogue was a scrubbin'.

She stopped, though, when Jubilee seemed to get a serious undertone about this place. She had made a dent on the dirt caked on one side of her boot, and used a bit of water to clear it away, the material quite stain resistent, by design. "This place?" She asked, glancing around, but knowing that the Vampire BFF had meant more than that. "Uh, I mean. it is going to be sunlight for six months straight in like late December?" She asked, thought was stating it.

"That is just a part of Antarctica. WE're on the bottom of the world, Jubilee. Things are weird down here, and in the Savage Lands, well? This place is like a millions, upon millions, old experiment. As far as we can tell, some aliens came to Earth. Set this thing up, and bailed on it, at some point. There are Atlantean ruins, mixed in with all these othr strange species, and obviously... every Dinosaur you have ever heard of, and a lot that nobody has ever heard of. This place is a literal video game adventure zone, is how I heard one'a the geeks describe it. But, for real, ya know? No extra lives...."

She drew in a breath, and adjusted the boot on her lap, to get at another dirty side. "Not all the tribes are friendly to us, either. We have run inta some pretty nasty ones, that want nothin' to do with us too..."

Jubilation Lee has posed:
"Yeah, well, I'm gonna be /long/ /gone/ way before then," Jubes promises. She has no intention on sticking around to see what the world's longest sunrise looks like.

Jubilation looks completely non-plussed by Rogue's story about ancient alien experiments involving dinosaurs and Atlantean ruins. There's one main gripe that just doesn't sit well with Jubes.

"Yeah, yeah, super advanced aliens, huh? They didn't even think to put in a wifi router," she complains. "Like, seriously."

The point about there being friendly and unfriendly tribes inspires Jubilee to look down at her broken leg. Kazar's people were kind enough to do what they could to secure her leg, given what little technology they have, and even looked the other way when it was obvious she didn't have a pulse.

"Yeah, they're cool," she decides. "Still, I don't understand why it's taking so long for me to walk this off. Kinda weird."

"I'm gonna see if I can get some of the boys to bring me back to the Blackbird. I wanna see the little man's face one more time before I get carried off by a pterodactyl or whatever," Jubilation tells Rogue before raising her hand high into the air to get the attention of some of the nearby villagers.

"Hey, little help!"

Rogue has posed:
So much scrubbing. Rogue's boot was looking pretty good now, though, at least.

She paused again, ringing out the cloth she was using to wipe the boot off, and regarded Jubilation once again. She smirked toward her gently, when the wifi comment was made.

"I mean, I could take a guess at that." She stated, nodding toward the injured leg. "They do have a wifi field around this place, but it isn't for internet. It's for... power levels. When we first got here, we were reduced to base Human levels, and had t'fight like... ya know, a damn normie." She smirked again, as she washed the cloth rag off with a pouring of fresh water.

"I think that was an intentional design of this place. Get everyone within it, basically on the same strength and ability level... then 'See what happens.'"

She drew in a breath, and slowly let it out. "We managed to shunt that field off, and it is a lot better now, but... Seems like it is still effectin' you. It's kinda weird, like that. It seems to effect Mutants different from someone like Captain America, or how Wanda was strugglin to detect life. Her abilities are way different from yours, or mine, ya know? We haven't fine tuned the thing, cause the things are over there..."

Rogue motioned to the north, where the fiery volcanos could be seen on the horizon, an ominous glow like a Lord of the Rings film.

"The guy guardin' those wifi emitters was a Dinosaur dude named Sauron... Well, his real name was like, Toby, or somethin, I forget. But he wanted everyone to call him Sauron. ya know, like the Lord of the Rings movies? Guy was a nerd, who got turned inta a Dinosaur, and moved here..."

Rogue sighed heavily, and shook her head from right to left. "Look. This place is just fuckin' weird, okay? That is the real skinny on it. It is just, fuckin, weird..."

She went back to scrubbing her boot, her head down, and her knees together. "And Pteradactyls are the size of parrots. Pteranadons are the ones that would carry your lil butt off. I learned that, the hard way..."

Jubilation Lee has posed:
"Really?" Jubilee asks, sounding skeptical about it. Her supernatural healing comes from something else, something darker and more magical than simple mutant powers. She glances down at her leg and frowns. "I got another idea, but it might just be superstition or, like, folklore or whatever. I never know what's real at first. I might need dirt from back home."

It's hard for Jubilee to know what's real or fake when it comes to vampire lore.

"...Who got turned into a dinosaur..." Jubilee repeats, sounding the words out slowly. "....Right. I mean, like, why not? It's not even that far-fetched anymore."

One thing that's easy to agree with is Rogue's point about the Savage Land being weird.

"Yeah, well, if there's one thing we do best... it's weird," Jubilee reminds Rogue. Her smile widens as a pair of young men from the village come by to help her up and carry her off to the Blackbird.

"Good luck with your boots," Jubes adds as she's lifted into the air. "See ya!"

Rogue has posed:
With the one boot in pretty good shape now, Rogue set it aside, and reached for the other. "You need Westchester dirt?" She asked, a confused look on her face, as she watched Jubilee get picked up by the burly armed men. A big smirk crossed her lips, as she started to let out a lyrical laugh, and how often does Rogue ever even laugh? Not very often!

"you're gonna have to explain that one to me later!" She shouted after the woman, as they walked off. "Don't drop her, or give her to any'a the flyin' dinosaurs! She's got a baby waitin' for her back home!"

Her second boot was draped over her lap next, and with it, she let out a heavy sigh.

"I really dislike this place." She said, as she started scrubbing again.

It wasn't true, though. She loved it here.