| Jubilee | |
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| Portrayed By | Yui Aragaki |
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| Gender | Female |
| Date of Birth | Feb. 8, 1987 |
| Age | 22 |
| Zodiac Sign | Rabbit |
| Aliases | Jubilee/Jubes |
| Place of Birth | Beverly Hills, CA |
| Current Location | New York City/Westchester |
| Occupation | Student/Tutor/Hero |
| Known Relatives | None living |
| Significant Other | No time for love! |
| Identity | Mostly Public |
| Known Abilities | Pyrokinetics, Invisible to Sentinels |
| First Appearance | Feb. 8, 1987. See above |
Everyone favorite human firecracker!
History
Jubilation Lee's first name is not merely a cruel joke on her parents part. It was a rather earnest expression of the excitement and joy the Lee family felt upon immigrating from Communist China to not just America, but Beverly Hills, California. Furthermore, they had a beautiful little girl to ring in their new life, and thus the name. Unfortunately for the Lee family, it would be the bane of young Jubilation's life; very quickly she adopted the nickname Jubilee, and woe to anyone who decides to call actually call her by her real first name.
Like so many Beverly Hills kids before, Jubilee had a bad habit of getting bored. Real bored. When she wasn't being forced to practice her gymnastics, she would spend many hours at various malls and shopping centers, taking in the rich and famous along with her equally latch-key friends. It didn't take long before they would become a pint-sized gang of troublemakers, causing chronic headaches among more than one mostly innocent group of mall security. Of course, any time she got into serious hot water, her parents were able to rescue here, upon the understanding that this would never happen. Wash, rinse, repeat and repeat.
While Jubilee's parents had always tried to keep their noses clean, there were a few times that they needed to borrow some extra money. Being immigrants, that could be difficult on occasion, and just once they had to resort to rather shady brokers. Of course, when the interest turned out to be far more than initially indicated, the Lee's refused to pay. However, these were men that made a habit of always settling their debts; in the Lee's case, they settled it with their lives.
When her parents were killed, Jubilee was away, causing more mischief. When she returned home, to find her murdered parents, she knew everything was going to change. She moved into a local state orphanage, where she quickly drew into herself. She was 12 at this point, far too old for most likely parents to be interested in adopting her. She started to act out even more than before, sneaking out far after curfew and talking back without remorse. She got bounced around from orphanage to orphanage throughout the state, each unable to contain her rebellious streak.
Jubilee first discovered she was a mutant when she was 14, having been born with the ability to make small firework like bursts of plasma energy. Which were neat when she was running away from mall security after stealing a decent meal from the food court; less cool when it completely fried her favorite video game. Still, it made her a much bigger headache than she already was, as she now had a weapon constantly at he disposal. Getting fed-up with dealing with what they assumed was just another spoiled teenager, the security called in some back-up, namely the M-Squad, a group of "scientists" who had a taste for using high-tech devices for kidnapping mutants for further experimentation.
The M-Squad hunted Jubilee down in her natural habitat, the Hollywood Square Mall. It seemed that the young punkish mutant had finally met her match, and her parents weren't going to save her this time. Thankfully, a group of X-Women (Psylocke, Storm, Dazzler and Rogue) were at the mall the same day and were able to fend off the attempts of the M-Group. After saving the day, the superheroines used a magical teleportation device to return to there base of operations; little did they know that a curious teen would be tagging along.
In an instant, Jubilee found herself on the other side of the world, in the X-Men's temporary Australian headquarters. Afraid they wouldn't take kindly to her more or less breaking in, she created a make-shift hideout within the base. She would occasionally sneak out, using her skills she had established in the malls of California to great effect. Eventually, when the majority of the X-Men were away, an attack by Donald Pierce and his team of evil Reavers would make the X-Men very grateful for Jubilee's decision to sneak in. The X-Man Wolverine was crucified and left for dead by the Reavers, only to be rescued and fed back to health by Jubilee. It would be the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
After Jubilee had nursed Wolverine back to health, the pair defeated the Reavers. Jubilee again played a vital roll, pinning their leader Pierce under rubble she created using her pyrotechnics. The experience surprised and frightened the young girl, and convinced her that she needed to learn how to control her powers. She stuck with Wolverine, who left Australia after becoming convinced it wasn't safe. The two relocated to Madripoor, where Jubilee inserted herself into the roll of "plucky teen sidekick". Together, they experienced several adventures, and Jubilee learned that ins and outs of superheroing from one of the masters.
Eventually, Jubilee returned to the United States. After much forceful demanding, she was instated as an official X-Man, serving on a team with Storm, Forge, Psylocke, Banshee, Gambit and of course Wolverine. However, she was rarely allowed to participate in the especially dangerous missions. Which, knowing the X-Men, is just about all of them. Still, she slowly began to prove herself and was given more responsibility. She finally found herself a new life as a superhero. Things were starting to work out.
Of course, a string of tragedies were soon to follow. The death of Illyana Rasputin, whom Jubilee had not known for very long but had become very close to was the first. Then Wolverine, having his skeleton ripped out by Magneto, took some time away from the X-Men, causing Jubilee to feel abandoned by a second parental figure. And the most traumatic at all, when the psychopathic Sabretooth came to the mansion as Charles Xavier attempted to "cure" him of his sickness. Sabretooth comp Jubilee, and taunted her mercilessly. Eventually, Sabretooth got loose and did serious damage to several members of the X-Men; Jubilee had to eventually be the one to take him down using a neauralizer pistol, enhanced slightly with her mutant ability.
After all of this, Jubilee was in a rough place. She was still a teenager, after all, and deserved to have some rest from all of the trauma. Eventually, a solution was suggested to her by her former teammate and part-time mentor Banshee. After years of silence, a new school was going to be opened, under the guidance of Charles Xavier and with the leadership of Banshee himself and former advisory, Emma Frost. Initially hesitant, Jubilee eventually was convinced to join the Massachusetts Academy. The charter members eventually came to call themselves "Generation X."
Jubilee slowly became closer to most of her classmates (her constant reminders that she used to be an X-Man, you know, didn't help anything), and especially became close friends with Everett Thomas, also known as Synch. Eventually, Jubilee discovered that she had developed romantic feelings for Synch, though she never told him. (Meanwhile, their other classmate Skin developed a pretty serious crush on Jubilee. Drama-much?) Eventually, the students found themselves having to play the roles of superheroes, especially when it came to the mysterious and evil Emplate.
As positive an experience as the Massachutes Academy was, it eventually ended rather dramatically and tragically. Synch was killed by a bomb planted by Emma Frost's sister Adrienne. The dramatic loss of a studnet, financial troubles and the death of Moira MacTaggart causing Banshee to turn to suicidal levels of alcoholism all contributed to a general assessment of the school being an abysmal failure. The Academy was closed and the Generation members disbanded, with Jubilee and Skin moving out to LA. Jubilee attempted to try to her hand at being an actor, only to discover the skeezy underbelly of Hollywood was not for her.
Concerned for his safety, Jubilee along with fellow Gen-Xers Husk and M joined Banshee's radical X-Corps terrorist group (not to be confused with Xavier's organization by the same name.) It quickly became clear that Banshee was dangerously unstable, and eventually a confrontation with fellow terrorist Mystique led to him having his throat slit. The experience was enough for Jubilee to realize she had had enough of superheroing for a while.
After the X-Corps incident, Jubilee moved back to LA with Skin. Eventually, he admitted his feelings for her. Before she could respond, Jubilee and Skin were both kidnapped by the Church of Humanity and crucified on the front lawn of the Xavier Institute (which had since started accepting students again, but that is neither here not there. Also, what is it with bad guys and crucifixitions? Heavy-handed much?) Jubilee was saved at the last moment; Skin was less lucky.
Once again, Jubilee found herself at the end of a long line of trauma and tragedy. Unsure what to do, she eventually decided it was best to attempt to A) get away from the world of the X-Men and B) finish high school. She moved in with her Aunt Hope (who'd she'd never heard of before) and went back to school, slightly older than he fellow students. She buckled down and took care of her schooling, unaware of her Aunt's strange extracurricular activities. That is until she came home, to find Wolverine and her Aunt having a claw-to-gun fight. It was at this point she realized that running away from her identity wasn't going to work out, so she might as well embrace it. She wrapped up her school work, got her GED and returned to New York.
Timeline
- Currently, Jubilee is attending her first semester at ESU, with an undeclared major. She is also working part time as a tutor at the school, which is a prospect that frankly frightens her. She is also slowly getting in the groove of once again being a member of the Uncanny X-Men.
Powers
Pyrotechnics: Jubilee is able to create traces of colorful plasma energy from her hands, as well as control their direction and set them off to explode. Often these energies resemble small firecrackers, dancing innocently until set off in the air, though they can also be wisps of light or other shapes. They range from the size of about a dime up to equal to the size of a baseball. The actual effect of the explosion can also differ, from being a simple concussive force to actually causing a localized heat explosion, with a max radius of about five feet. When concussive, the pifs range from knocking a target back or down, to able to take down most blockades save for the most heavy-duty metals in one solid blast. Likewise, the explosion can cause heat that can cause a severe flash damage, capable of low-level third degree, though naturally flame-retardant materials are less vulnerable. Jubilee has trained herself to have fine control of these bursts, though when she's exceptionally emotional or scared, they can also occur as a reflex as well. She can have more or less pin-point accuracy to about twenty feet, though her control drops exponentially after that range. A "pif" (as she calls them due to the small popping sound that occurs when she creates them) can got unexploded for about 45-seconds before they pop on their own; as a rule of thumb, the more sizeable the pif, the more impact the final blast will have. She can also reabsorb her pifs back into her body as needed. Extended use of her ability can tire Jubilee out fairly quickly, causing her to pass out or become extremely exhausted. If she is unconcious before exploding a pif, they will fizzle out rather than explode on their own.
Sentinel Blindness: For some reason, Sentinels and other robots and security systems with similar programming don't detect Jubilee as a mutant/threat. This isn't fully understood, as it could be a side product of the nature of her ability scrambling the readings of the machine, or a completely unrelated seconary mutation. Whatever the reason, this obscure and strange ability can come in handy when tin-cans come knocking.
Gallery
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