Prologue-
The night seemed to sweep in unnoticeably that evening in early September. The young girl, a new resident a Bayville, had barely noticed it darken herself. Not that it bothered her, she was a night dweller anyway. But what did bother her is that she was being followed. She knew the man, she knew his scent, though it was hard to get a definite lock on it in the hazy weather with out any breeze blowing towards her. But she knew his style, he was a stalker, it was his genetic impulse to follow and observe anything and everything closely be fore he made a move. But this night she was in no mood for his antics, whatever he wanted from her she was going to find out now. She turned down a smaller residential street, and continued to walk in the middle of the road for a while before she came to a sudden stop. Dropping her book bag down, for having baggage wouldn't put her in any advantage if she were going to have to defend herself, she walked up the street slowly, her eyes shifting from side to side as she searched out the perpetrator.
"What do you want!" She yelled out into the darkness. She sniffed again but she couldn't catch any scent at all. Rhodie whipped back around to see him, standing where she had dropped her bag. A man of reasonable height with a lean, but muscular build stood, dangling Rhodie's book bag by its strap. 'Dante…' His usually fair colored skin appeared pale and his emerald green eyes, beady, underneath the neon street lamp.
"What have you got in this thing, bricks?" he said.
"Books." She replied. Dante chuckled.
"Quaint little town, I can see why the doctor choose to stash his little pet here." He sneered. Rhodie growled underneath her breath. Dante continued,
"But I hope you aren't as naïve as to think you really have sanctuary here. Genyx bit off more than they could chew when they created us and now they're trying to rein us all back in under their control. When Genyx is finished tying up lose ends with the rest of the strays, they'll come for you, and there's nothing that Decatur can do to convince them other wise, you'll live a slave or die a rebel like the rest of us." Young she was, Rhodie fully understood the perils that her kind was going through, but she wasn't in the mood for Dante's talk.
"What do you want."
"Shelvie and Desha sent me to check up on you." he replied with a smirk. Rhodie didn't appreciate him using the cover of her older sisters to shoddily mask his ulterior motives.
"If they actually cared how I was doing, they'd come and see for them selves." She said growing increasingly annoyed, "I'll ask you one more time. What the hell do you want?"
"Only to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime."
"Another one?"
"More like the lead up to the final one." he replied. It often worked like this, one job led to another, which led to another. It was hard to get out of the crime loop once one of Lorenzo's men had pulled you into it.
"I'm suppose to be in hiding, and going on a chain of grand thefts isn't exactly keeping a low profile now is it?" she replied.
"Hey, even rebellions need funding, and we need the right materials to beat them. And you have access to a free resource that even Genyx has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce." he said.
Rhodie was starting to get annoyed; Dante always spoke in riddles. She wondered how a gangster like Lorenzo could've kept a fruitcake like him on for so long.
"And that is?" she said rolling her eyes.
"Recruits my dear, fresh talent, am I wrong to assume that the Xavier institute is a boarding house for young mutants?" he said.
"Now you guys want the X-men on your case?" she said flatly.
"Come now Rhodie, with your charm and looks, you can turn anyone of those kids in any direction you want. Why not send one our way?" Rhodie sighed. Dante's very presence here put her life in danger. She wasn't masquerading as a sophomore in high school for nothing. She was supposed to be in hiding really. Rhodie had at first doubted Dr. Decatur's decision to send her to a city with a mutant institute, but he wasn't sure it was so safe to send her off on her own without any body like her around. She was to stay in Bayville and keep a low profile until everything died down. She wasn't to relate with any old contacts of hers. Which happened to be what she was doing right now. Rhodie walked towards Dante, stopping no more than three feet from him and took her book bag back from him. She backed away steadily, she wanted to get away from him but she didn't want to turn her back on him all the way. Dante crossed his arms over his chest.
"Perhaps you'd be more willing to bargain if Lorenzo himself came to visit…" He said. A much more audible growl sounded from Rhodie, as her eyes flashed an unnatural yellow. From her reaction, Dante could see she took this as a challenge, and if he knew one thing about Rhodie, she always rose to meet any challenger. Dante opted to change his tune very quickly.
"Ten grand, just for hooking us up with a good power for a one time job, and I'm sure Lorenzo will give enough money to the sap you send us to keep them from making any trouble." Hooking anything up with these gangsters was still a bad idea, but who could refuse ten thousand dollars? Dante smiled he could tell she was going to give in. "It's not like your sending a kid to their death or anything, they come down to the city, they meet up with 'Renzo they pull a job, they get some money, they go the fuck home. How can anyone resist something as easy as that?" he said.
"I don't want any more of you guys popping in for social calls, after I get my money." She replied.
"Get us something good then, highly destructive, but not too traceable so everybody knows who did it," He said, "and I promise you won't see any of us again 'till you come looking."
"I'll see what I can do." She said as she turned around and continued on her path home.
He lay stretched out on the bleachers, watching the activities in the playing fields below. Or at least he had been watching the field. Lance looked the girl coming towards him up and down with his dark eyes. Her black, wavy hair rested a little below her shoulders, she had a round nose and full lips, and her eyes were a honey brown that sparkled in the sunlight. She looked like one of those girls from a rap music video with her tan high knee boots and slightly darker tan skirt with splits on either side up to her thighs she wore. She had on a half shirt tank top with only one strap on one shoulder and a diamond studded border. Though she wasn't preppy, but she was hot, which lead Lance to wonder what she would want with someone as totally trashed in this school as he was. He watched her pull out her cigarette the shuffle around her small fashionable purse for what he assumed something to light it with. He had never been much of a smoker himself besides joining in with other smokers around the school grounds from time to time if someone would give him one, but he carried a lighter around just the same. The girl he was watching had been searching around in her purse for a while but her efforts appeared to be in vain. Deciding not to waste what had to be a god given opportunity to talk to an attractive girl, he pulled out his manners from where ever they were hibernating and went up to her.
Rhodie looked up to see Lance approaching her, lighter in hand. Being a damsel in need of a light was a little cliché but it worked.
"Need a light, uh… Rhodie is it?" Offered Lance.
She smiled smugly before replying,
"Yeah."
Rhodie sat half listening to Lance describe the social structure of the school, and half pondering her own thoughts.
"So this is the school loser?" Thought Rhodie. In her minds eye they couldn't have chosen a handsomer boy to be an outcast, with his tan skin, light hair, dark eyes and well build. Though his friends didn't exactly have the looks, except for maybe the silver haired one, she was sure that with a little polishing… But she was waiting. He had yet to mention anything to her about him being a mutant, but she was sure he was and a mutant with awesome powers at that. Because of her keen insight and intuition it hadn't taken her long to pick out who the abnormal ones in the school were, but this kid had stood out like a sore thumb. He didn't seem to be to so secretive of his powers, unlike the other kids who desperately tried to hide the fact that they were mutants, but she could tell he wasn't going to tell her what she wanted to know without a little nudge.
"You've been in there?" she had interrupted his dialogue about who knows what, but she had been sure she had heard him mention something of relevance to her.
"Wha?" said Lance.
"Professor Xavier's institute." She replied. Lance looked at her, a hint of surprise shown on his face. She couldn't be…a mutant? He figured, there's no way a normal girl as gorgeous as her would come and talk a guy like him for no reason at all. Well… maybe, he did consider himself to be a pretty sexy guy after all. Lance finally responded, "Yeah, I joined up with them a while back, but I didn't stay."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Guess it just wasn't for me." He replied, "Don't tell me your another one of Xavier's recruits?"
"No, I'm not, I have enough trouble with mutant organizations as is, I don't need to go joining any more." She said taking in another breath of smoke.
"Really? Why is that?" he asked.
She smiled,
"I'll tell you my story, if you tell me yours."
"But I asked first." He said.
"What's the matter, where your powers to corny for them to keep you on?" Rhodie teased.
"You kidding? Watch this!" said Lance. The ground began to rumble as a pathway of up turned land began to form, as if a giant rabbit was digging a tunnel underneath it, speedily pushing it's way to the target, a nearby tree, which was violently pushed up partially from the ground. Lance smirked. That had been almost too easy to do, not like when he had first started out. He didn't even have to stamp his foot or move in any obvious manner to do it. He looked back over at Rhodie, feeling thoroughly pleased with himself for the show he had just put on.
"Not bad, if you can sink actual built structures, rather than just the wood they're made out of."
"Oh I can take out this whole high school, and then some, trust me on that."
"Then why don't you?" she said.
Lance lowered his eyes as he muttered, "One word: X-men." Rhodie looked at him inquisitively. "I'm not kidding!" He said. "They got this one wolf-dude up there-"
"Wolverine,"
"Uh, yeah, you know him?"
"Not personally, but I think my one sisters know him…personally."
"O…Kay…then." Said Lance, shuddering at the idea. "That's something I could have gone with out hearing today…"
"Well you're a little, how should I put this, 'rugged', yourself." Said Rhodie to Lance.
"Well pardon me! But unlike those geeks at the institute livin' in a mansion, with allowances and crap, my buddies and I are out here on our own without nobody else supportin' us! And without jobs too, were broke most of the time."
Young, stupid and strapped for cash. 'It can't get any better than this.'
"Yeah, I could tell." She said, "You need money, I can hook you up with a very good employer."
'So this is what it's about, recruiting new mutants to their group.' He thought. Noticing the doubtful look on his face she assured him.
"Look, I know a guy who'd be more than willing to let you on and pay you well up in the thousands. All you have to do is give him a little taste of your powers and he'll find something for you to do. And you don't have to join up with him permanently or nothing, you just do the job, get the money and get out." Lance eyed her cynically.
"He pays up in the thousands you say?" he said to her.
"You say you'd have no problem sinking a building even bigger than this entire high school?" she asked.
"Yeah, you bet." He replied, blowing a final puff of smoke out of his lungs before he put the cigarette out.
Rhodie looked him strait in they eye,
"And the people inside the building with it?"
There was a still pause in the conversation. He seemed for a moment at a loss of words, looking back into Rhodie's honey-brown eyes. He then snapped out of the lull. 'Fuck it.'
"Yeah, I'd sink every last one of 'em." He replied. Rhodie smiled slyly, as she stood up to stretch, raising her arms far above her head, flicking her burnt out cigarette butt off into the distance.
"Five, maybe ten grand." She said, looking back down on his relaxed form. Lance eyed the voluptuous curves of her body while she stretched. Suddenly, Rhodie felt the ground move harshly beneath her and she found herself stumbling into Lance's lap, and arms. While catching her he chuckled lightly.
'I couldn't help myself.' Growling, she immediately shoved off Lance's arms from around her hand grasped his throat tightly. He choked on a gasp, while staring strait into Rhodie's transformed eyes, her fangs openly visible in her snarl.
"You won't try anything like that ever again, unless you want me to show you an example of my powers!" She snapped at him, her sharp talons barely piercing the thin skin of his neck as she pulled her hand off of him violently. Her fierce transformation had been quite the shock to Lance, but once he had saw she wasn't going to hurt him, (at least this time she wasn't going to) he calmed down a little. Standing up she breathed in deeply.
"Now you've got me all riled up!" she said yelling at him. But he figured he had learned his lesson, about this girl, 'I have to let her make the first move.' Lance smiled broadly, watching Rhodie try to calm herself down, to the point where her features didn't show so much, and she couldn't help but smirk back.
Authors Note: Surgeon General says, SMOKING'S BAD FOR YOU. I really hate to promote of in my story, but it's there to more show the character of Rhodie, not to make it look like it's a cool thing that rebels do. Anyway Rhodie's a bad girl, she's there getting lance hooked up with mutant criminals and stuff, I don't want to give my plot away just yet, but don't follow her example she's bad news.
