(no subject)

[apocalypsos]

Title: 'Cause Islands Are a Girl's Best Friend
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Pirates/X-Men
Pairing: Jubilee/Elizabeth Swann, written for Round Six of The Pairing List That Ate Fandom
Parts:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Summary: Let's just say that Elizabeth had ended up on that island with someone else. And then let's say there was femslash.
Disclaimer: "Dear trollprincess's teacher, please excuse her from gym class, as she has borrowed my characters, mythology and universe for her own storytelling purposes. And also, because today is volleyball day and she's universally acknowledged to be absolute crap at it. Love and other indoor sports, the real owners of said characters."

'Cause Islands Are A Girl's Best Friend

Part Four

Jubilee woke up in the middle of a growing case of a sunburn on her nose, Elizabeth's third exploding cask of rum, and a dream in which Wolvie was teaching munchkins to Electric Slide while wearing a bunny costume.

Truth be told, she couldn't figure out which of the three was more unsettling.

Well, it certainly wasn't the sunburn, she thought, as she rubbed at the sore spot with a wince. And it sure as hell wasn't being awakened by explosions. Jeez, considering how often the mansion got attacked, Jubilee would have set up her alarm clock to wake up with a loud "BOOM!" if she'd actually thought it would work. Of course, Elizabeth's first two casks that had blown up when flung into the fire hadn't elicited so much as a flinch out of Jubilee, who'd mumbled something that sounded like "Give Mags ten bucks and tell him to come back in an hour," before rolling over and going back to blissful sleep.

Well, now she was awake, and she was pretty damn confused.

Okay, more confused than usual.

Stumbling to her feet as the rise in temperature and the sting of smoke in the air suddenly hit her, Jubilee jogged over to where Elizabeth stood next to a stack of provisions from the rum cellar, stared in annoyance at the fire engulfing the palm trees on this end of the island, and asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

Elizabeth flung another bottle of rum onto the fire, then raced away as the bottle shattered from the heat. "I am destroying that foul stash of drink, not to mention creating a beacon the ships that are bound to be looking for me can't possibly miss. That is what I am doing."

With a frown, Jubilee glanced at the fire, then at her own hands, then back at Elizabeth. The fact that Elizabeth had gone back to being so very desperate to leave wasn't a good thing. And that she'd known full well what Jubilee could do and decided that setting the island on fire was a better option ... yeah, that didn't imply many good things, either.

Waving at Elizabeth and offering her what she hoped was an apologetic smile, Jubilee said, "Uh, McFly? Remember me, the walking fireworks dispenser?" She wiggled her fingers in the air, and showers of sparks cascaded from her hands.

Elizabeth's only response to that was to walk over to the pile of provisions next to the fire and pitch in another cask.

"Stop making the rum go away!" Jubilee blurted out. Not like she had suddenly decided to become an alcoholic or anything, it was just ... well, fire and alcohol meant explosions. And jeez, she could do that. Why waste perfectly good alcohol on a signal fire during an era with no legal drinking age when one of you is practically a flare gun?

"I most certainly will not," Elizabeth said as she surveyed the fire in satisfaction.

"Why not?"

Elizabeth spun on her, her eyes ablaze with barely restrained anger, and she bit out, "One, because it is a vile drink which turns even the most level-headed of persons into complete libertines --"

"I'm guessing now would be a bad time to make a crack about using the rum for body shots," Jubilee muttered under her breath before she could stop herself.

"-- and two, that signal is over a thousand feet high --"

Jubilee scowled as if she'd been mortally offended. "Hey, I'll handle the thousand-foot-high discharges here," she yelled, then paled as her eyes widened and she realized what she'd said and how it had sounded. "Oh, my God, this island has a gutter, and my brain is in it."

Something in Elizabeth's brown eyes clouded, giving her a somewhat haunted look, and Jubilee had to resist the urge to give her a great big hug. "I am not going to just lie about this godforsaken island with you forever, no matter what you might desire," she said softly.

"Oh, come on! Nobody on this island is desiring anybody else on this island, okay? We're just casually chatting and eating the last of my junk food and then there was that one time I nearly stuck my tongue in your mouth --" Elizabeth flinched and started back towards the remains of their bonfire, and Jubilee winced before calling out in her own defense, "That sentence stopped way earlier in my head."

Ignoring the other girl, Elizabeth plopped down in the sand and settled her skirt around her as she focused her all-too-serious gaze on the horizon. "Give it an hour, maybe two, and I assure you we'll be seeing sails on the horizon."

"Elizabeth ..."

The British girl didn't acknowledge her at all this time, and Jubilee sighed. "All right, so maybe I don't meet the height requirement."

"What?"

"Nothing," Jubilee snapped, then walked away before she said something she regretted.

Stomping off down the beach away from the conflagration currently taking over the island's sparse growth of palm trees, Jubilee clenched and unclenched her fists as she tried in vain to remember why the hell she'd ever thought Elizabeth was the least bit attractive. Because, yeah, she was beautiful, and spirited, and smart and funny and a much better kisser than you'd think --

Jubilee rolled her eyes. Maybe she'd get lucky and this was like a cold that was going around. Yeah, that was it. A twenty-four-hour homosexuality bug. "The doctor wants me to take two female cast members of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and call him in the morning with details. Lots and lots of details."

Oh, she was trying to reason this whole thing out waaaay too much.

Arms swinging, she stalked off away from Elizabeth, grumbling, "Could shoot off a thousand feet high in my sleep. Hell, I have shot off a thousand feet high in my sleep. That's why I have a skylight now --" She stopped walking all of a sudden, right about at the very spot where the original portal had spat her out onto the sand, and groaned loudly before she yelled to the sky. "For Pete's sake, this island doesn't even have a Sheetz store. Why does it have a freakin' gutter for my brain to hang out in?"

Now, most major deities, upon hearing such a inquiry, would have merely been amused and left it at that. The minor deities, whose sense of humor had never been up to par with the kind of work it took to manage extensive universe changes, would have answered in such a literal way that it probably would have resulted in a rather incoherent Jubilee chasing her brain down a magically appearing gutter as her misplaced internal organ bobbed its way towards the sea. This sort of random confusion and stupifying behavior out of the gods was why most of the minor deities were in charge of deciding which network TV shows stayed on the air.

As it was, the X-Men were lucky enough to have their own minor deity in charge of their affairs. And at times like this, he could be a real bastard.

Which was evidenced by the fact that the precise moment Jubilee called out to the sky, the dimensional portal opened back up and spat Bobby Drake at her like an oddly cold pumpkin seed.

The both of them yelped as Bobby fell onto her, slamming the two of them into the sand in an awkward heap. Further down the beach, Elizabeth leapt to her feet and raced towards the fissure in the fabric of reality, only to find Jubilee lying prone on the shore with a young man dressed in a uniform vaguely like hers sprawled on top of her.

"Jubilee," she said anxiously, reaching out and grabbing onto Jubilee's shoulder.

Elizabeth watched as Jubilee's eyes opened just a tad, looked up at Elizabeth, then slammed shut. "Oh, yeah, she said with a hint of resignation. "This isn't embarrassing at all."

The man lying on top of Jubilee groaned and struggled to take some of his weight off of the girl's light frame. "Jeez, Jubes, you want to eat a few more sandwiches every once in a while? Your bony elbows aren't exactly a lot of fun to land on."

Disregarding Elizabeth as the British girl dragged her gaze away from the pair to stare at the swirling vortex above them, Jubilee glared up at Bobby and wriggled underneath him, trying to push him off of her. "Yeah, well, you're not a lot of fun to catch, you know," she said, giving him a good shove and making him roll over onto the sand.

The two of them went silent for a long moment, Jubilee sitting up and rubbing at the back of her neck and Bobby taking in their tropical (albeit partly burning) surroundings. Then their gazes connected once again, and identical grins crossed their faces.

"Hey, Jubilee."

"Hey, Bobby. Took you long enough."

"Don't look at me," he said, holding up his hands in surrender. "I was just hanging back waiting for the big blue lug to get that sucker open while the others fought off the guards. Hank's the one who was taking forever to MacGyver that dimensional transport doohickey back together again."

Jubilee's brow furrowed. "You didn't actually call it a doohickey in front of him, did you?"

"Are you kidding? He'd make me leave the fight and go find a thesaurus."

"Good Lord. You really were telling the truth, weren't you?"

Both of them looked up at Elizabeth, whose wide-eyed gaze was fixed on the wondrous, curious sight above her. She nearly reached out to touch it, one hand raising slightly before she seemed to think better of it and let it drop to her side. Bobby took her in appreciatively from head to toe, clearly impressed with Elizabeth's graceful beauty, and Jubilee fought a wave of jealousy that she didn't feel like acknowledging right now. And even if she were worried about competition ... well, no offense to Bobby, but if he'd landed on this island instead of her and it'd been Elizabeth's hottie blacksmith stuck on this island with him, they'd probably already be married in a civil union and adopting one of the coconuts by now.

Something in Elizabeth's stunned demeanor -- even after all of the things she'd already seen and heard -- rubbed against Jubilee's last nerve, and she got to her feet bfore saying, "Well, I was going to use a more believable story, but that 'cursed undead pirates' bit was already taken."

A muscle in Elizabeth's jaw flickered as she gave Jubilee a look that would have fried an egg in the shell, and she glanced briefly at Bobby before asking, "Won't you introduce me to your ... friend?"

Frowning, Jubilee waved her hands between the two of them. If there was one thing she sucked at, it was introductions. "Elizabeth, this is Bobby Drake. Bobby, this is Cleopatra, Queen of Denial."

Elizabeth scowled at her, and she took her cues from Jubilee's behavior upon their meeting -- proper young ladies in this day and age did not shake hands, but she supposed those from Jubilee's time did it all the time, and twice on Sundays -- and stuck out her arm to Bobby for a handshake. "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Drake," she said, sounding haughtier than Jubilee had heard her sound since the moment they'd met the day before. Up until this point, she'd almost been casual, and suddenly a man showed up and she slapped back on her I'm-a-governor's-daughter airs. Typical, Jubilee thought as she crossed her arms. Wait a sec. Typical?! Oh, I so need some cookie dough ice cream and a Tom Cruise movie, stat. Mmm-hmm.

Bobby shook Elizabeth's hand with enthusiasm, gifting her with his patented goofy grin. "It's a pleasure to meet your breasts," Bobby said, then blushed furiously when both girls glared daggers at him. "You! I meant you. And also your breasts, because, you know, they come attached."

"That verbal diarrhea of yours getting any better?" Jubilee asked.

"Not lately," Bobby answered with regret, then pointed to a slowly growing speck on the horizon. "Is that a ship?"

Elizabeth spun around to look, and sure enough, an all-too-familiar ship of the king's navy moved closer with every passing second. She beamed at the sight of it, and her smile lit a spark in her eyes that made Jubilee shiver. "See? I told you! I knew my father and the commodore would see to my safe return. We're saved!"

"Correction," Bobby said, standing up and grabbing Jubilee's wrist. "You're saved. Jubilee's off with me on the next portal out of --"

In the grand tradition of all things with exceptional timing, the portal chose that precise moment to implode.

The edges sucked inward, as if a huge vacuum cleaner nozzle were cleaning up this particular nuisance in an entirely different dimension, and the second it winked out of existence for the second time in as many days, a ripple of energy flowed outwards and hit the nearby trio, flinging them backwards onto the beach.

The three of them lie there on the sand for what felt like an eternity, flat on their backs staring up at the spot where an interdimensional portal had been only a moment before. And, with the trio in that rather embarrasing arrangement, Bobby chose that precise moment to say, "-- here," finishing off his sentence with a resignated sigh.

Jubilee resisted the urge to beat him to death with a shovel. The lack of a shovel helped.

Elizabeth eased herself up, then asked, "Was that supposed to happen?"

After exchanging a worried look, both X-Men looked up at the space which had just been occupied by their ticket home, sighed simultaneously, and said in perfect unison, "Oh, that's not good."

Comments

[illmantrim.livejournal.com]

Yesssssssss


I love it! Cant wait for the next part!

[penmage.livejournal.com]

well, no offense to Bobby, but if he'd landed on this island instead of her and it'd been Elizabeth's hottie blacksmith stuck on this island with him, they'd probably already be married in a civil union and adopting one of the coconuts by now.

Need I say it again? You rock.

[milkshake-b.livejournal.com]

I love that sentence. That sentence killed me. In fact, I had to be raised as a zombie in order to leave this feedback. So I hate that sentence, too. It is a wonderfully terribly evil sentence and I can't stop snerking over it.

[chilledglove.livejournal.com]

hello, I just added you (you're funnny)

[ampersand.livejournal.com]

*cackles loud and long* May I just say here that I love you? The disclaimer killed me first, but the story killed me ever so completely. XD

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

Bobby arrives, and I have a sudden terror that the story is about to end. And then it doesn't, and the world is instantly a much happier place. And I remain intrigued.

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

*zombified* MUST... HAVE... MORE!!

My roommate thinks I'm a complete nutter because I've been giggling uncontrollably for the last five minutes. Thanks!

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

i love this. love love love love love. <3333 also, i think someone needs to make shirts with a height line that say "you must be this tall to ride the lesbian"

[runcible.livejournal.com]

There are no words to describe how much I love this fic and how much in love with your Jubilee I am.