AN: Ok, so. This was never actually supposed to happen. This fic was just a little plot bunny that wandered in, and after it had, it just took over everything. It's a bit weird, I know, but I hope you guys still like it! This is part one, and part two should be coming soon! :D Also, I apologize for the grammar mistakes. I didn't edit this- too busy playing Pokemon Moon and actually watching Xena. Still, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Xena.

Freshman year:

Xena starts school, and it's pretty chill. She's one of those kids who's kind of a loner, but can fit in anywhere she wants for a short period of time. People like her, but they don't go out of their way to ask her to join them- the invitation's just kind of there, and if she does decide to hang with a particular group, they just kind of accept her. Which suites her perfectly. Like I said, she's a loner, and she has other focuses. Her father was one of those guys who trained other people how to fight with different weapons, and after he died, she decided to take up the family business. So she spends her days at school studying so she can maintain her good grades, and then goes home after school (with all of her homework done because she did it at lunch and on the bus and stuff like that) to train with her brothers.

Toris is probably the worst of them all- he never had much of an interest, but since he's going to the community college nearby to get his gen eds done before moving to another university to save money, he's generally the one who's home while Cyrene's at work. So, he picked up fighting to entertain Xena and Lyceus. Lyceus can fight, but he's not that good. He just doesn't have the knack for it that Xena does.

And, of course, Xena's amazing. She can use a wide variety of weapons in the most interesting ways, and so yeah. She's a great fighter, she really is. And she's smart too. She gets good grades, is probably taking at least one AP/Dual Enrollment class, and when she isn't training, studying, or hanging with the friends she does have, she's actively learning more about the world around her.

So, freshman year is chill.

Sophomore year:

Xena hits her growth spurt here, and suddenly she's six feet of muscle, smarts, and beauty. There's no more standing in the background for her- she steals a room just by being in it. So, she gains a lot of attention from the student population. Everyone wants to date her or be her friend, and while she's not big on the attention, she accepts some of it. She starts making closer friends, creating her friend group (people like Marcus, Borias and his then girlfriend, some of the Amazons, basically take some of the people from Xena's past and tentatively put them in this group).

Now, this is a group of normal teenagers. They make mistakes, they do good things, at this point in their lives they either over think things or don't think at all, but they're not bad people. They're really not. They're teenagers just trying to get through school. At least, that's what they are at this point.

So, Xena creates her little friend group, but she is picky. She's not going to become friends with the first person who walks up and says hi. That's not her style. Nor is she one to date random people who just ask her out. At this point in her life, while she has casual flirtations with different members of her group (Borias, Marcus, M'Lila, a couple of the Amazons, etc), she's more focused on her studies and her training to really date.

But then she rejects Cortese. And while all the other people she rejected just kind of shrugged and moved on, Cortese decides to get some revenge for her being "such a stuck up bitch." And he does this by going after Lyceus.

Because Lyceus is a freshman by now. He's loving his first semester of high school, has a ton of friends, is even thinking about joining the football team, stuff like that. He's loving it, and he doesn't think twice when Cortese invites him to a party.

Where Cortese gets him flat out drunk. Like, absolutely wasted levels of drunk, that boy can barely stand. And then Cortese, knowing that Lyceus would do anything to impress him and the others at the party, gives him the keys to a car.

He was expecting Lyceus to be pulled over by a cop, to be written up for a DUI and giving with only a permit by himself and be arrested. He wasn't expecting Lyceus to go off the side of a bridge.

He's already gone by the time the police get there, already dead by the time the divers pull him out, still buckled into the car because he couldn't figure out how to get it undone in his panicked, drunken state. He died, scared and alone, in that dark water, because of what Cortese did.

And Xena snaps. She starts to terrorize the school; again, she's over six feet of muscle and ten years of training, and she's smart too, a dangerous combination. She only lashes out at those involved first, catching them off guard and leaving them badly injured when no one could ever see, and when they try to press charges against her, her friends step in and lie. A lot of them don't like it, but they lie for her, saying that she was with them, studying or playing video games or whatever, so she couldn't have done it. And when it's ten different alibis that all pretty much match up against a single accusation, and no physical evidence that it was, in fact, Xena? The charges drop.

But by the end of the second semester, those who were responsible move away. Their parents transfer them to other schools, and there's no one left.

M'Lila, who's by this time Xena's steady girlfriend, and has been for a couple of months now, tries to get her to let go. Tries to get her to calm down, to grieve but not let the grief take over any longer. She tries to help Xena the only way she knows how, by trying to help her heal.

It works, for those few weeks of summer, and Xena and her friends are just wandering around, free from school and worried and just enjoying themselves. She lets go of some of her anger, lets herself grieve in healthy ways, and tries to let go.

Only then M'Lila goes on vacation with her family, Xena meets Caesar- who goes to a different school- is highly attracted to him, and, making a horrible decision, agrees to meet up with him, thinking that they're friends and sleeping with him will only be a one-time thing. She talks to M'Lila, and it's actually M'Lila who brings up the two of them taking a break, at least while she's away, so they aren't bogged down while trying to have fun (remember, they're like, sixteen here). They agree, and Xena goes to the meet up with Caesar.

Only it's a set up, and the people Xena drove out of school, Cortese and his friends and their friends, everyone who was at the party, are there. Xena fights well, but she's badly outnumbered, and goes down.

They don't kill her, no. But they do hurt her, badly, leaving her legs and her spirit broken. But just for a moment, until Caesar leans down and whispers to her "You lose."

And then she begins to rage against the world as a whole. She has to spend the rest of the summer in the hospital, being visited by her mother and her friends (Toris left for college right after Lyceus died, throwing himself for one last semester into his gen eds to finish them and leave right as summer started. He does blame Xena, a little bit), but that entire time she cultivates her anger. Cultivates her hatred and her disgust and her rage, and when she finally gets out of the hospital, after the surgeries to reset her bones, when she leaves walking on her own but with a staff (she refused a cane) to lean on, she's new.

She's ready to watch the world burn, ready to see it be destroyed, and that desire is only edged on by the physical therapist she has to see three times a week, Alti. Alti, who spends their sessions whispering in her ear that she'll do great things, that she'll get her revenge on the ones who did this to her, actively fanning the flames within Xena so that every painful step is fueled by rage and hate and the desire to see those who killed her brother dead, not just punished.

She enters junior year like this, ready to see everything destroyed.

Junior year:

Only, she doesn't descend as much as she would have, because the school hires a new guidance counselor and tells Xena that, if she wants to graduate, she'll meet up with her at lunch every day and try to figure this out.

Lao Ma is a blessing. She looks at Xena, sees the anger and the pain, and offers the words needed to heal it. She dispels everything Alti says to her, tries to get Xena to see the light, tells her that her brother wouldn't want this, that Xena has such a bright future ahead of her, that to continue into this madness would do nothing but hurt herself. Lao Ma tries to get Xena back, tries to convince her that she could do so much good in the world, that she's smart and brave and strong and could help those who aren't, and Lao Ma almost gets through to her.

Only, a month into school, Lao Ma has to leave. Her son is gravely ill, and while she and her husband can pay for the medicine, the doctor he needs to see is on the other side of the country. So they leave, leaving Xena alone.

Because M'Lila didn't come back from vacation, stopped contacting Xena, had turned up dead in an alley with some strange girl she had met while away, so Lao Ma leaving took away the last good influence Xena had. Leaving only Alti.

Xena breaks up Borias and his girlfriend, seducing him into being with her instead. Because of the guys in her group, he was the best to be by her side to start a gang.

They- Xena, Borias, their friends that followed them into the madness, the other kids they picked up along the way- start to skip school, start fights, gaining territory around the school and the neighborhoods and the city. Whenever anyone challenges them, they disappear; Xena never had trouble with blood, and when the first was brought to her? When the first member of one of the rival gangs was brought before her, beaten and broken, caught trying to spy on her and her people?

She slits his throat without a thought, because why should she care?

Everyone died sometime, and if she was to bring about this death, then the God of Death could thank her for it, and expect some more.

They're almost two hundred strong by the end of the year, this strange group of teenagers and young adults somehow so well organized, falling into the ranks under Xena's command. At seventeen she's one of the most powerful people in the city, but completely unknown. All anyone else knows is that there's a new gang, a new, powerful, terrifying gang in the city, and any who crosses them turns up dead somewhere with an 'X' carved over their heart.

Nothing ever gets traced back to her. And while her underlings run the gang, while she leaves her people to get a revenue flow started and boarders figured out (she's not strong enough to control the whole city, not yet, but soon), she continues to go to school.

Not often. She skips more than she doesn't, but she's there for tests and exams, she turns in her essays when they're due, and she keeps good grades. Because she's smart, and if she can say that she was in the middle of class, where her teachers and her classmates were watching her give a presentation on the cellular structure of a pine tree, how could she ever have been involved with a robbery that was taking place on the other side of town?

She still goes to see Alti. Her legs have healed nicely, and she only keeps the staff because she's used to its weight in her hands, but still she goes. Goes and listens to what Alti has to say, continues to fall into her path of darkness, because at least the darkness makes sense in comparison to the blinding of the light.

But then she ends up pregnant, and a few months later Borias dies in a turf war, shot through the eye when someone brought a gun to a knife fight, leaving her alone.

She ends junior year with great grades, but the likelihood of her graduating small since she missed so many days. Seven months pregnant when the semester ends (not that anyone knew. No, she kept it a secret, only her closest friends knowing, only them helping. Not even Cyrene knew, because she stopped going home a long while ago), she gives birth over the summer. She refuses to go to a hospital, instead giving birth in her rooms at the gang's headquarters, an old building she bought after the gang had enough money. It was a place they could talk, plan, hide out if the flames got a little too high, and it became the place she gave birth to her son, only the failed out nursing student Satrina by her side to help.

She holds him for an hour. For a single hour, she holds him and nurses him, trying to think of a way she could maybe make this work. A single mother, seventeen and head of the strongest gang in the city, in way too deep with the water over her head, but still she tried to think of a way, someway, that she could make it work.

The second hour of his life, Xena finds herself on the steps of a church. She hurts, physically and mentally, as she knocked on the door. The priest who answers is gruff, missing an eye, but his face softens as he sees her. She refuses to come in when he offers (who is she, to enter any kind of holy place, of any religion, dedicated to any god, after everything she's done?), instead only holding out her son for him to take.

When he asks what the boy's name is, all Xena says is "Solan" before leaving him behind.

She rests for a week, claiming the flu had taken her down, while she recovers from giving birth and her heartache. While she regains her strength, regains her flame (a bit smaller now, not quite as hot, but still enough to drive her), and gets back on her feet.

As she gets ready to continue her takeover of the city.