Hello, folks!

To my loyal RAfic readers, I know I've already written and posted this storyline… but I decided to rewrite it and make a modernfic. The difference is how the plot works out, the entire century in which it happens, dialogue, and even certain people's relationships to each other. Same old loveable but angry and much bitterer Rosabel, who will resume joking once she figures out her life (and wins Will from his dead girlfriend)!

For new readers I hope to attract, you'll have to bear with me (and Rose) until she reaches kick-butt modern Ranger status similar to her kick-butt canon-style Ranger status from my previous RA fic.

For any inconsistencies, I apologise, I am pushing together a non-fanfiction story about a spy named Rosabel and her group of spy friends, a modern fanfiction I began a while ago, new content, and the previous fanfiction. Trust me, I'm more confused than you are.

Also, my new favourite affectation as a writer is to lecture and tell a story chronologically, so get used to scrolling up to see what happened before.

The hardest part of life is finding your niche. If we were all the same, we'd still find ways to categorise ourselves somehow. And we're not all the same.

That's what high school is like, actually.

I mean, there are the good-looking ones that just burst with confidence. Maybe the way they shine is what makes them attractive or maybe they shine because they're attractive. Maybe it's a mixture of both.

Among the most stereotyped are the athletes. The majority of them seem to be jerks who travel in packs with great shape and that general lack of stress or acne, but it actually improves their personality to be so well-exercised.

Then there are the stuck up ones who claw their way to imaginary thrones just to call themselves fat or bisexual or ugly to get attention. And because of that, despite the fact that people pretend otherwise, they aren't attractive—not really.

Of course, those aren't the only social groups.

One of the best kind are the spazzes. They wear mismatched clothes and talk loudly and have talent and are always funny just because of their spontaneity. Shy just isn't in their vocabulary.

Perhaps the bottom of the food chain is the kind that stays close to their parents. They dress like their Mother still puts clothes out for them every night, their grades are impeccable due to no social life whatsoever, and they bring their own lunches. Half of these dedicated kiddos become millionaires, and the other half never leaves the nest. It's all about ambition.

Others with low social rankings are the loners. Maybe they're just outcasts, for behavioural or learning or physical disabilities, for reputation, for some long forgotten mistake, for having ideas detached from the mainstream. Sometimes they're independents, or they're too shy and skittish and soft spoken for other groups.

I'm shy and I have loud opinions that aren't mainstream, but the loners won't take me because I'm actually quite talkative once I get to know someone.

My improvisational skills are limited to "what to do in case of an emergency" and "what jokes to make while under pressure," and the spazzes are disappointed to find I've got very little potential otherwise.

My grades are good and I wear matching, out-of-style clothes, but everyone knows I'm not controlled by my mother.

The athletics department is yet another area where I'm good—I can hit a home run, throw a curveball, make a touchdown, put that spin on a football, win a race, run a marathon, ice skate, do lots of crazy stuff on uneven bars and springboards and high beams—but I'm not interested in organised instances of sporting activities.

I'm not the kind of girl to lie about myself just to get attention—hell, I don't even wear make-up. Nor am I the kind to push other people down and use them as stairs (unless there's a lifetime supply of sweet iced tea or chocolate covered coffee beans to be had at the top of said pile of people; then you wouldn't be able to stop me) or to let people push me down. The preps just avoid me.

Confident isn't something that describes me either. I don't walk into a room full of people by myself or in front of other people.

If my father had his way, I'd be self-assured and sporty—maybe dating a nice football player, walking to practice in a softball uniform and a blonde ponytail.

Mother, on the other hand, would've told me to do what I loved. It was good advice, except climbing trees and playing pranks and reading books wouldn't get me a social group.

I barely took two steps into the hallway we shared with the eleventh graders before half a bottle of Gatorade got dumped over my head.

"Welcome to Araluen High, loser." The eleventh grader holding the empty bottle sneered.

His friends were nodding and laughing like it was all one great big joke and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. My cousin, Gilan, had taught me how to fight when we were at the lake with Aunt Macy and Uncle David, but even the ability to throw a few good punches doesn't help much when the kids screwing with you are twice your size and move in packs of three or four.

The small-time bullies, like this particular bunch, never massed like the popular kids. They got along on size and fear, so they didn't hold sway over large groups like the charming ones could. But a redneck jerk and his two buds stuck together because it was a dog-eat-dog world.

The preppy ones, the cheerleaders and their jocks, were able to lie through their teeth with lip-gloss smiles and still sound sweet and innocent enough to convince you they were your friends.

But since it was my very first day, I had yet to individually distinguish the rednecks from the jocks from the nerds from the geeks. All I knew was what I'd learned about school life back at Phoenix.

They were still laughing. I, however, was not in the mood for laughing. We were out of Midol and I had just been transferred to a new school. "Get. Out. Of. My. Way."

"Ooh! We've got an uppity one here." The ringleader said. "Do we stand for that here in Araluen?"

But I beamed over his shoulder. A familiar figure materialised had behind them. "Morning, Uncle Halt!"

"Is there a problem here, Alda?" Halt asked quietly.

He wasn't really my uncle, but an old friend of Uncle David. Every family gathering—whenever Mum had decided to invite her brother over for brunch—had included Halt. He didn't have a family around, from what I could tell. Halt was a legend, even though his real adventures were top secret RC stuff. CNN had named him a national hero after a daring rescue on 9/11. He'd been working for some government agency (no one but us knew which) and he'd risen to the top. Well, almost the top: his best friend, Crowley, ran RC. Now he'd "retired" and became the world's scariest AP US Government teacher.

Alda & Company scattered. Halt looked at me for a moment as if he wanted to repeat his job offer, decided against it for some reason known only to him and his wife (who knows how to work him even better than his various friends), and then vanished into the crowd.

"Thanks!" I called.

He raised a hand halfway in acknowledgement.

I checked the slip of paper again. Locker 713.

Weaving quickly back and forth through the crowds—I'd had plenty of practice with that sort of thing in the past two months, while I kept my head down at the boarding school and tried to simply function without human interaction—I managed to reach the 700s. I quickly spotted my locker, but there was a mini-crowd blocking the lock.

A girl with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail was talking to a girl with shoulder length dark brown hair in front of lockers 711 and 712. The long-haired girl was wearing a t-shirt (Go Gators! It proclaimed) and jeans, but the other had a pleated grey-and-pink plaid skirt with a white short-sleeved dress shirt and a pink vest.

It was a foreign concept for me, but it appeared social groups here mixed.

That idea was squashed as I looked around. Clusters of giggling girls wearing neon and skinny jeans and Aeropostale carrying Prada bags, groups of guys in their team jackets, the geeks wearing gamer tees (LEEROY JENKINS!); no one else seemed to be mixing.

The pair moved over as I approached. "Hi." I said shyly, opening the locker.

"You're the new girl…" The pleated-skirt girl said. "I'm Bessie, but everyone insists on Beth or Elizabeth. Lizzy, however, is a no-no. Rosabel, right?"

I corrected her automatically. "Rahz-uh-bell."

There was one person in the whole world that didn't get this particular correction: Will Treaty, adopted son of the aforementioned Halt O' Carrick, was the only living person with permission to call me Rose, including my best-friend-for-life-and-maybe-then-some/long-time-foster-sister Marissa. I don't like being called Rose or Rosie or even my name pronounced like the flower. "It's not Rose-uh-bell, it's Rahz-uh-bell" was a constant refrain of mine.

But that doesn't stop people from mispronouncing it repeatedly. A distant great aunt didn't get the message in the past fifteen years, and every time Christmas or my birthday rolls around, I get something rose. Rose jewellery, rose perfume, rose incense, rose-patterned clothing and accessories, bouquets of the blasted things, and even a pot of yellow knockout roses. She was responsible for the rose-themed bedroom sets whenever I got a new bed, for the mauve bathroom stuff with rose shower curtains, and even for rose-patterned crib bedding. But back to the current time.

Her friend just nodded quietly, and then realised we were both looking at her. "Oh! I'm Adrianne." She said, smiling.

"I hate to interrupt, Beth," A familiar voice said, "But I believe I'm the student guide here. Hey there, Rose." Will was grinning, leaning against the locker marked 714.

The special privilege of calling me Rose was due to two things: one, I was totally in love with everything about him—brown eyes I can get lost in, a slight ironic smile that spoke of mischief and sarcastic humour, dark curly hair, and sun-browned skin. Two, he was among the few people who knew how I felt—what it was like to lose something that was such a huge part of you that you feel like the walking dead afterwards.

I guess the story behind all that starts with Will's painful past.

His father died in Afghanistan and his mother, who had always been sickly, passed shortly after he was born. He was put through the foster system before his first birthday and ended up with the family of an old army friend of his father's. A girl named Alyss, whose parents died in a car crash, and a boy named Horace, whose parents died in 9/11 when he was still pretty young, was placed in the same foster home. They were raised as siblings to the biological son, George.

When they were thirteen, something happened and they were all forced to find new homes. Two friends took the four in: George and Alyss went with one Pauline Sawyer while a man by the name of Halt Carrick took in Horace and Will. They weren't separated, though. Pauline and Halt were high school sweethearts and even thirty-odd years later they had feelings for each other. About three years ago, they got married and it seemed the six of them would live happily ever after—especially since Alyss and Will started going out.

But I'm forgetting something important, the part where I was thrown into the storyline. Gil, my Mother's kid brother who's actually just two years older than me, knew Will and the rest of the Carricks from school.

Halt was an intelligence officer in an elite group known as the RC (it's supposed to be a shortening of The Ranger Corps, but Gil was quick to call it the Random Cops) and they started training from a young age. Namely sixteen. Well, about two and a half years ago, Gil and Will were both recruited, along with Alyss and Horace. George was in too, but he was a techie.

That was when Mother and Father sat me and Marissa down and explained very carefully that Gil was now working for the government and we couldn't tell anyone.

Halt came to drop Gil off one day and he had the cute little orphan trio (that's Horace, Alyss, and Will) on the porch with them. There was a full-on rainstorm and they were all plastered with rain. Mother answered the door.

Next thing I knew, our family dinners on Sundays were always interrupted at some point by one of the RC members coming in and sitting down to eat. That included the entire family.

Even though it was hopelessly girly, I blushed. "Will! I didn't, um, expect to see you so soon." I stuttered finally, managing to escape those brown eyes under the pretence of opening my locker and carefully setting up my stuff. "So, you've already met them?"

"Yeah, I think everyone knows Elizabeth. Sorry I wasn't at the doors to greet you; your dad is too punctual for me. I'm sorry to see you've met our less… conventional… welcoming committee."

"I'm not." I said grimly. "I'll be here to welcome them one day, and it'll be something besides Gatorade that I dump on their heads."

"Try vinegar." Elizabeth said, equally grim.

"I was thinking blood—Stephen King style." I replied, grinning.

Someone tugged on my hair. The faint scent of heather nectar and the tiny fingers told me exactly who it was.

"MARISSA!"

She laughed as I spun around and hugged her. "I'm glad you're back."

I'd been away from home for years. Marissa had come to live with me five years ago while her grandparents travelled the world, and it hadn't taken long for her to start dating my freaking cousin, Gilan. Missy, as I nicknamed her, had always been my little sister. In fact, she's three months my elder and not at related to me.

I have a biological elder sister named Cassandra. She's beautiful—her blonde hair falls in a curtain of gold, her green eyes are truly green, her skin is perfectly clear, her style is pretty and feminine but functional and modest, she's graceful and knows etiquette like a good little Christian girl should, and she portrays her grief with quiet tears and a sudden need to volunteer to help others. She was junior prom queen and is currently dating Horace.

Horace was less interested in me and more interested in my perfect big sister Cassandra, but Marissa (that's the foster sister) and I were always close to Will and Alyss. George was usually tied up with work and when he did come, he sat between Will and Alyss and stayed quiet until he found an argument to get involved in.

Those were definitely my fondest memories. This whole big group of us were clumped around a table, laughing at Will and Halt argue or Gil's jokes while George and Mother and Pauline talked politics. Horace and Cassie would be flirting and Horace would answer Father's questions promptly, making him laugh most of the time. The light-hearted spirit was contagious.

And then the worst happened: the Rangers took down a higher-up in a huge criminal empire and the rest of them slipped away into the night. Mother got sick. The doctors were flummoxed, but Halt knew what was happening. It seems said criminal empire had scientists working on a neurotoxin that had only one cure, which only grew in one place. Alyss volunteered to get it.

It sounds like a daring spy adventure novel—right up until Alyss vanished. Last anyone heard of her was a phone call to Will, one she made near the Cliffs of Moher, in Ireland.

The cops said that a gust of wind combined with slippery ground caused the fall. They said she'd fallen, hit her head on a rock, and drowned. Their little rationalization was that it was an accident and they'd never find her body, so there was no point looking beyond a half-hearted boat trip to the area.

In the meantime, the coroner who examined my mother diagnosed her with a rare virus that affected the ability of her nerves.

Bullshit on all accounts.

It was now cropping up everywhere, and yes, everyone died eventually. Some medicines helped prolong the life expectancy, but in the end it was a deadly disease reaching the status of epidemic.

We had her funeral that summer. It rained. The memorial service for both Alyss and Mother was a small family affair, just the Carricks and the Stalons and Gil.

Will, George, and Gil had spent the next year or so trying to hunt the bastards down. I helped them, even though I was years too young at the time, until something snapped. I woke up from some revenge-fuelled daze and found myself at her grave in yet another rainstorm. Not Mother's, I'm still not ready to face that particular block of stone. The empty grave where Will had buried a photograph: Alyss's memorial.

We had a lovely chat, Alyss and I.

The result of my chat with my long-time crush's dead girlfriend was that I couldn't be consumed by revenge. Somehow I glued the remaining pieces back together and scraped a life together, and he'd transferred me to the same school as everyone else—I'd gone to a private school while I was recovering from my revenge spurt, on Father's orders: he wanted me to mix with other kids like me or something like that. More rich, over-privileged kids with attitude and no idea what the hell real pain was.

Her grandparents came back shortly after my nervous breakdown and took her back. Supposedly it was to keep her from grieving too much, but I think it was to keep her away from my bad influence. The irony was that she joined the Corps after I begged her not to do so.

But there was no time to dwell on all the matters I just filled you in on. If you're going to read my little tale, you're going to have to keep up.

"Me too. Well, I've got to go to Theatre. Don't suppose any of you…?"

"Chorus." Beth said, motioning to herself, Will, Adrianne, and Missy. "See you around?"

"Um, yeah…"

I watched them walk away and wondered about the fact that the girls all seemed to be from different social groups. Will was a bit of a recluse himself, only hanging out with his siblings, Gilan, and apparently Beth and Adrianne. Needless to say, I was suspicious.

X-x-x-x-X Several hours later X-x-x-x-X

"Will." I said, grinning tiredly as I swung my book-bag on and walked out towards the parking lot. "How's it going?"

"Good, you?"

"You know, the usual. All my friends are spies, I'm supposed to be a spy, and yet I'm not."

"How's Tony?"

"Anthony." I corrected. "He's fine, but he definitely isn't happy that you drive me home."

Will had dropped me off at my place after school one day—a Friday night (I came home from Norgate on weekends and he picked me up, since dad was…otherwise occupied/avoiding the house and his delinquent daughter) and I'd offered him a cup of coffee while he waited for Gil and Marissa to come home from their date. When Anthony showed up to pick me up for our date, he'd flipped out and demanded to know why Will was there.

"Where's Missy?"

His ears turned pink, but he didn't answer with anything but a "Trunk's unlocked, Rose" as he stepped into the black sedan, which had tinted windows that just so happened to be bulletproof. That was Will-speak for "she's in top secret RC training".

This is where my story really starts, so I guess it's my responsibility to welcome you to my life. Feel free to laugh at the stuff I get knee-deep in, but know this: I'll see you in hell.

Lots of love,

Rosabel Stalon