Justin slipped a packet of potato chips inside his jacket, eyeing up the shelves of the store. He was shoplifting again.
I rolled my eyes. "Jus-tin, you're gonna get us thrown out. Stop it."
"I was going to get you a present but now... I don't think I will," he hissed at me.
My eyes gleamed catlike. "I'm always up for presents. What did you have in mind?"
"Chocolate."
"One bigger."
"A CD?"
"You're getting warm." I picked up a bag of hair clips and examined them. I was fifteen and liked to play with my hair- I teased it and put it up in interesting knots. I'd even hacked Steel's waist-length river of beautiful hair into a much 'cooler', scruffy bob that I'd seen in a pre-Pulse magazine. She liked it, but Mom had had a fit.
"You want hair clips? You could take this stuff yourself, you know. Why do I have to get in trouble?"
"I have a clean record and I'd like to keep it that way," I said, replacing the tacky clips. "'Sides, I don't want hair clips, these ones suck. How about a-"
"You two! Just what do you think you're doing?" cried a woman at the counter. I turned around fearfully. She stormed over to us and I gave Justin an apologetic look before pouncing on him.
"Hey, you punk kid!" I barked in military tones, attracting stares from other customers. "What d'you think you were doing, huh, shoplifting?"
Making fists, I began pummelling him like I'd seen boxers do on television. He shoved me. I threw him to the floor. Justin threw me an absolutely venomous look.
"Sorry, man!" he moaned, rubbing at his neck. "I just- I just-"
"You come back here, kid, you'll have me to deal with, aiight? Beat it!"
Justin jumped to his feet and ran off. I feigned unhappiness.
"Oh, ma'am, I'm so sorry, I didn't get your stock back..."
She stared at me thoughtfully. "You fight well. What's your name?"
Twenty minutes later I swanned out of there smiling. Justin ran to catch up with me from an alley where he'd been waiting for me.
"What the hell was that for?" he moaned. "'Cause Free, I hate to admit it but that shit you pulled on me HURT."
"Better I beat you up and you run off with your chips than we both get in deep trouble. Besides... I got a job."
Justin raised his eyebrows. "A job? You? Doing what?"
"I'm a security guard. I take out shoplifters. They've been having a problem with that lately."
Justin laughed. "That'd be my friends. Wait... you're a SECURITY GUARD? You?"
"What?" I asked, annoyed.
"It's just... you're a fifteen-year-old girl. My kid sister."
"And you're a seventeen-year-old guy who just had his ass kicked by his kid sister, Justin. I make just enough money per shift to get some new clothes in the week. Cool, huh?"
Things were relatively normal in the Xavier household. Steel had been inconspicuously dating Deon on and off since the year before. I came into the kitchen to find the two of them playing Bottlecap Chess on the counter.
"Who's winning?" I asked, pulling up a chair.
"She is," said Deon, his eyes desperately roving the board. The chessboard was originally part of a Cornflakes packet that Justin had carefully ruled lines across and coloured in black squares. He'd then sat Steel and I down, taught us to play, and the three of us had been AWOL from school in a three-day Battle Royale of Bottlecap Chess. Game after game after game.
Since we didn't have proper pieces, there were blue bottlecaps pitted against red bottlecaps. Since all of a player's pieces looked exactly the same, we'd used to carve letters into them to help us remember- P for Pawn, K for Knight, etc. Now, as we were older, we decided we were too mature for visual aids and challenged ourselves into remembering which piece was which.
"That I am," smiled Steel. "Checkmate."
"WHAT?" asked Deon. "You cheated. You checked my knight, Steel."
"No, I got your knight before. See? Over there. I got your king, Deon. Don't lie." She gave him an innocent smile.
"I have to go, Steel. See you. It was a good game... for you."
He grabbed his jacket and left. Hmmph. That was the advantage of having a transgenic boyfriend over an Ordinary one, I told her. I mean, sure he was cute and funny, but how many Ordinaries can remember ALL the pieces in a game of Bottlecap Chess?
"Very funny," said Steel sarcastically, getting us both a drink of water.
"I guess I shouldn't criticise. Good date?"
"Excellent. We broke up again, but what are you gonna do?"
"Well, what happened BEFORE you broke up? Again."
"I tried teaching him sparring, but he's too slow. So we talked about music, went to the park downtown, visited his dad at work and came back here to play Bottlecap Chess."
I sipped water. "When exactly did he break up with you?"
"When we'd finished talking about music. And I broke up with HIM."
"Why?"
"Baseball's coming on TV soon. What time he won't be spending watching will be spent talking with his friends about the games."
"Whatever."
I started at my job. Many didn't recognise me as a transgenic and scoffed at the idea of a petite, innocent-looking schoolgirl being a security guard. I leaned against the wall rolling three pieces of bubble gum around my mouth with my tongue.
A boy looked furtively around him and reached down to grab something off a shelf, to add it to the collection already growing inside his jacket.
I cracked my gum so loudly that he jumped. "Don't even think about it. Unless, of course, you consider girls who tie you in a knot and dump you down a storm drain alluring."
He gave my white t-shirt, which I'd written SECURITY on in marker pen, an unimpressed look. "You're transgenic?"
"We're not here to discuss my heritage. Fork out twelve dollars and I'll forget giving you a cranium crack."
The boy stood up. I saw a flash of silver in his mouth- a tongue piercing. Ooh. Scary.
"Got a barcode?" He reached to turn me around and look at the back of my neck, but I blocked his hand easily.
"Get out."
Saturdays were my day off. I went into the City to meet up with my friends- other transgenic girls. The youngest ones were about Steel's age, the oldest had graduated from high school already. The plan was to sit around for a few hours gambling and gossipping. Nobody could stop us- this was our sanctuary.
"I'm starting to despise shoplifters," I said, during sparring with a second-generation mixed series girl named Aya. Her father was X5; her mother was one of the oldest X6s. She was the oldest out of five children, and the only girl. This meant she experienced some weird side effects due to the mixing of classes- dog, cat and human DNA splicing. She seemed to communicate on a higher level with her dog, which followed her everywhere.
I liked Aya a lot. I was hoping that she might consider letting me be her best friend.
We were casually chatting with each other and with the other assembled girls. One was showing off her stitches from a car accident the week before, another had rigged up a punching bag and was letting her anger out on it. Steel was there, and had brought our Bottlecap Chessboard with her. She was running a Masterclass for five bucks a lesson and was making a killing.
Her fist flew out. I caught it and got her in a hold from behind. "How come?"
"They're all such bastards."
"You didn't say that," called Steel, "when Justin got you those boots for your birthday, Free!"
Aya bit my arms, which were choking her. I yelped and let go, so she elbowed me in the stomach and smashed one of her killer heels into my ankle. "You're scary, Free Xavier," she giggled, watching me check my wounds.
"Hey, Nina!" I called to a doggish sixteen-year-old in the corner. She looked up from a physics book she was reading. Nina wanted to go to college and get a degree, so while we goofed off, she studied. She was more like a babysitter than anything. "Aya's teeth drew blood. I need a bandage- stat!"
Nina tossed me a box of Band-Aids and went back to her reading.
"She sure is scary. Explains why her little sister has a boyfriend and she doesn't," said someone nastily.
I gave her the Glare, a look that was mine and mine alone. I only ever used it to shut people up. Do I really scare people, I thought. Damn...
Sunday, and I'm back at work wearing my SECURITY shirt and reading a magazine. I look up from my magazine to find a boy about Justin's age staring at me.
"Can I help you?"
"I saw you the other day beating up that guy. You're a transgenic, aren't you?"
Good God, I thought.
"No talking with the security guards, kid. Move."
"Nah, I just thought..." He turned around and pulled down the collar of his jacket, revealing a barcode. "I'm one of you."
"You're not transgenic," I observed coolly. "You're too young to be X-series, and you can't be anomaly either 'cause you look human to me."
Not to mention pretty hot, admired a voice in my head that I automatically hushed. Security guards did not flirt with customers.
"I'm second-generation X5. Breeding programme. I'm guessing you are too. You look old enough."
"My parents were happily married for two years by the time I was born, thank you. What's with the barcode?"
"I got it to show respect."
I had to say, I was impressed. "Who are your parents? Maybe they were in my mom's unit."
"Tyson and Lesa Locke- 600 and 657."
"Zack Thompson and Tinga Smith's X5 twins? Those are famous faces. My mom is Eva Guevara's twin."
He came to stand beside me at the doorway. "You know, I never understood why they gave the Eva kid Max Guevara's surname in news articles and shit. I've seen Manticore mugshots in those same articles, and she doesn't look like a Guevara."
"Do any of her family? 'Spect they gave her the name to make her more of a family member. Lots of her group took the surname Guevara so people would know who they were."
"True." He looked at me. "You know, I'd like to talk Manticore some more with you. You free tonight?"
No way! God... who says I can't get a boyfriend? I thought in delight.
"Where do you plan on going?"
"The waterfront."
"Sure... yeah. I'm free. Well. That's my name. Free Xavier. What's yours?"
"Damon Locke."
We looked at each other for a second. "So, are you gonna BUY anything? 'Cause if you aren't, get out."
"Bye, Free."
He said my NAME, I thought. Wow.
"See you," I said. I think I am in love, I thought.
By Tuesday it was all through the Terminal City teen grapevine that Free Xavier had a boyfriend. After her little sister, but a boyfriend nonetheless.
Damon was a bit too cool, even for me. I wondered about him... but he seemed as smitten as I was with him. I spurned sparring with Aya or Steel to ink his initials up my arm.
In this newest apartment, Steel and I shared a room. She watched me from her bed admiring a whole row of DL love token tattoos. "You're going to give yourself blood poisoning if you keep doing that."
"That's just a myth. Besides, for the first time ever your scary big sister has a boyfriend and YOU don't," I gloated.
"As of tonight that will be an ugly rumour. Baseball is over, and Deon and I are gonna go watch a screening of this pre-Pulse movie and its sequels to celebrate."
"What movie?"
"I've never heard of it, but Deon loves it. It's called 'Men In Slacks' one through four or something."
"'Men In Black', I think."
"Yeah, whatever."
On my lunch break the next day I went looking for Damon, who said he'd wait around the corner for me.
There he was. I ducked into a doorway. I heard him and his friends. I heard the word Free and melted.
I love him, I thought, and listened.
"... this raid's gonna be a piece of cake, right, Damon?"
"Yeah, I told you a million times, man," said Damon in annoyance. "The security guard's a fifteen-year-old chick."
"Yeah, but transgenic. She'll kick our asses," said a boy who had just arrived.
Damon laughed. "Listen, and listen good. This is the best time of my life for the following reasons- one, tomorrow, I'll have a share in a couple of hundred dollars from that store. Two, the security guard is too into me to try and stop me and Three, I'm dating her on the side."
I crept back into the store feeling awful. "Um, I think I'm gonna need to take a personal day," I muttered to my boss, Brenda.
"Something wrong, Xavier? Hate to see you off duty early, you're my best security guard."
"Brenda, I'm the only security guard," I corrected her. "I really don't feel so good."
"OK. Leave through the back, though, I don't want people to see that this place is unguarded."
I nodded dejectedly and slunk through the back door.
I lay around at home for a few hours until Steel came in singing some rap song with an enraptured look on her face. She saw me watching her sullenly and stopped in mid-giggle.
"Is there something wrong?" she asked.
I considered this. I felt so cheap and betrayed I didn't know where to begin.
I readied myself. "I'm expecting a raid on the store tomorrow. I'm gunna need backup and someone to get it for me while I do some recon."
Steel seemed to understand instantly. "Got your back," she said, and went to phone our friends.
The next day, I was quietly fuming as I rallied Justin, Aya, Nina, Justin's friend Lewis and Steel inside the store.
"This is how it's going to work," I told them. "We come in from the sides and throw them onto the sidewalk. The one with the barcode on his neck- let ME deal with him."
Everyone knew I had a bone to pick with Damon Locke. They didn't question my request.
And yet... I was hoping this was some kind of misunderstanding.
It happened so fast it felt like a blur. "Everyone down on the floor!" yelled Damon to customers queuing to pay for groceries. A gunshot was fired into the ceiling.
I stiffened and closed my eyes suddenly. A gun. Guns were bad. Guns killed my dad and my mom's twin. Guns kill a lot of us.
My mind whirled.
And a gentle, insistent, childlike voice spoke in my mind. This voice was not my own.
Help your friends, Free.
I shot forward to help the others, who had gone before me. Lewis wrenched a handgun with T. LOCKE engraved on the handle from Damon's hand and threw it to Steel, who began to back them up toward Justin, Aya and Nina, who put sleeper holds on three boys. They collapsed to the floor.
I marched over to Damon and stood in front of him. He tried to hit out at me but I caught his fist easily.
"Damon, it's been really nice fawning over you. Don't call me and I'm definitely not calling you."
I punched him between the eyes. Dazed, he fell back onto Nina, who hastily dropped him on the floor.
We hung around until the police arrived with two people I knew must be Damon's parents. A beautiful but harassed-looking woman shot ahead of the officers easily and shook Damon, snapping at him. He shoved her away and went with them.
She stood there a second looking weary. A tall man with blonde hair came and put his arm around her, and they climbed into a squad car.
That was the last time I ever saw Damon Locke. I heard through the Terminal City teen transgenic grapevine that he was in a detention centre- that being the latest in a string of offences.
I've talked with Mom about his parents, Tyson and Lesa. She knew them only by designations, but she knew them all right, having shared quarters with them until she was twelve and also having a private room between the two of them.
"Oh, I idolised 657 right up until I left Manticore," she reminisced that night. "I thought she was the strongest, best, most beautiful X5 I'd ever known. I would have done anything to be like her. Everyone knew that she and 600 were involved since they were teenagers. I used to always hear them sneaking into each other's rooms late at night." She laughed.
So where did they go wrong with Damon?
Even now, I feel pangs of a twisted affection for Damon. They are far and few. But I'm Free Xavier, I told myself. I'm scary and I'm single and I don't let anyone push me around.
* * *
NOTE: Wow. *GOGGLES AT SELF* That was obsolete crap. This fic just seems to be deteriorating further... and further... into puke-inducing oblivion. I want to finish it! *WAILS* I like these original characters more than any of my original characters and I want to know what happens to them! My brain isn't keen on giving me the goss, but I'm going to try my militant hardest to finish this fic!
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron, and 'Men In Black' belongs to some movie studio. Not me. So don't sue.
I rolled my eyes. "Jus-tin, you're gonna get us thrown out. Stop it."
"I was going to get you a present but now... I don't think I will," he hissed at me.
My eyes gleamed catlike. "I'm always up for presents. What did you have in mind?"
"Chocolate."
"One bigger."
"A CD?"
"You're getting warm." I picked up a bag of hair clips and examined them. I was fifteen and liked to play with my hair- I teased it and put it up in interesting knots. I'd even hacked Steel's waist-length river of beautiful hair into a much 'cooler', scruffy bob that I'd seen in a pre-Pulse magazine. She liked it, but Mom had had a fit.
"You want hair clips? You could take this stuff yourself, you know. Why do I have to get in trouble?"
"I have a clean record and I'd like to keep it that way," I said, replacing the tacky clips. "'Sides, I don't want hair clips, these ones suck. How about a-"
"You two! Just what do you think you're doing?" cried a woman at the counter. I turned around fearfully. She stormed over to us and I gave Justin an apologetic look before pouncing on him.
"Hey, you punk kid!" I barked in military tones, attracting stares from other customers. "What d'you think you were doing, huh, shoplifting?"
Making fists, I began pummelling him like I'd seen boxers do on television. He shoved me. I threw him to the floor. Justin threw me an absolutely venomous look.
"Sorry, man!" he moaned, rubbing at his neck. "I just- I just-"
"You come back here, kid, you'll have me to deal with, aiight? Beat it!"
Justin jumped to his feet and ran off. I feigned unhappiness.
"Oh, ma'am, I'm so sorry, I didn't get your stock back..."
She stared at me thoughtfully. "You fight well. What's your name?"
Twenty minutes later I swanned out of there smiling. Justin ran to catch up with me from an alley where he'd been waiting for me.
"What the hell was that for?" he moaned. "'Cause Free, I hate to admit it but that shit you pulled on me HURT."
"Better I beat you up and you run off with your chips than we both get in deep trouble. Besides... I got a job."
Justin raised his eyebrows. "A job? You? Doing what?"
"I'm a security guard. I take out shoplifters. They've been having a problem with that lately."
Justin laughed. "That'd be my friends. Wait... you're a SECURITY GUARD? You?"
"What?" I asked, annoyed.
"It's just... you're a fifteen-year-old girl. My kid sister."
"And you're a seventeen-year-old guy who just had his ass kicked by his kid sister, Justin. I make just enough money per shift to get some new clothes in the week. Cool, huh?"
Things were relatively normal in the Xavier household. Steel had been inconspicuously dating Deon on and off since the year before. I came into the kitchen to find the two of them playing Bottlecap Chess on the counter.
"Who's winning?" I asked, pulling up a chair.
"She is," said Deon, his eyes desperately roving the board. The chessboard was originally part of a Cornflakes packet that Justin had carefully ruled lines across and coloured in black squares. He'd then sat Steel and I down, taught us to play, and the three of us had been AWOL from school in a three-day Battle Royale of Bottlecap Chess. Game after game after game.
Since we didn't have proper pieces, there were blue bottlecaps pitted against red bottlecaps. Since all of a player's pieces looked exactly the same, we'd used to carve letters into them to help us remember- P for Pawn, K for Knight, etc. Now, as we were older, we decided we were too mature for visual aids and challenged ourselves into remembering which piece was which.
"That I am," smiled Steel. "Checkmate."
"WHAT?" asked Deon. "You cheated. You checked my knight, Steel."
"No, I got your knight before. See? Over there. I got your king, Deon. Don't lie." She gave him an innocent smile.
"I have to go, Steel. See you. It was a good game... for you."
He grabbed his jacket and left. Hmmph. That was the advantage of having a transgenic boyfriend over an Ordinary one, I told her. I mean, sure he was cute and funny, but how many Ordinaries can remember ALL the pieces in a game of Bottlecap Chess?
"Very funny," said Steel sarcastically, getting us both a drink of water.
"I guess I shouldn't criticise. Good date?"
"Excellent. We broke up again, but what are you gonna do?"
"Well, what happened BEFORE you broke up? Again."
"I tried teaching him sparring, but he's too slow. So we talked about music, went to the park downtown, visited his dad at work and came back here to play Bottlecap Chess."
I sipped water. "When exactly did he break up with you?"
"When we'd finished talking about music. And I broke up with HIM."
"Why?"
"Baseball's coming on TV soon. What time he won't be spending watching will be spent talking with his friends about the games."
"Whatever."
I started at my job. Many didn't recognise me as a transgenic and scoffed at the idea of a petite, innocent-looking schoolgirl being a security guard. I leaned against the wall rolling three pieces of bubble gum around my mouth with my tongue.
A boy looked furtively around him and reached down to grab something off a shelf, to add it to the collection already growing inside his jacket.
I cracked my gum so loudly that he jumped. "Don't even think about it. Unless, of course, you consider girls who tie you in a knot and dump you down a storm drain alluring."
He gave my white t-shirt, which I'd written SECURITY on in marker pen, an unimpressed look. "You're transgenic?"
"We're not here to discuss my heritage. Fork out twelve dollars and I'll forget giving you a cranium crack."
The boy stood up. I saw a flash of silver in his mouth- a tongue piercing. Ooh. Scary.
"Got a barcode?" He reached to turn me around and look at the back of my neck, but I blocked his hand easily.
"Get out."
Saturdays were my day off. I went into the City to meet up with my friends- other transgenic girls. The youngest ones were about Steel's age, the oldest had graduated from high school already. The plan was to sit around for a few hours gambling and gossipping. Nobody could stop us- this was our sanctuary.
"I'm starting to despise shoplifters," I said, during sparring with a second-generation mixed series girl named Aya. Her father was X5; her mother was one of the oldest X6s. She was the oldest out of five children, and the only girl. This meant she experienced some weird side effects due to the mixing of classes- dog, cat and human DNA splicing. She seemed to communicate on a higher level with her dog, which followed her everywhere.
I liked Aya a lot. I was hoping that she might consider letting me be her best friend.
We were casually chatting with each other and with the other assembled girls. One was showing off her stitches from a car accident the week before, another had rigged up a punching bag and was letting her anger out on it. Steel was there, and had brought our Bottlecap Chessboard with her. She was running a Masterclass for five bucks a lesson and was making a killing.
Her fist flew out. I caught it and got her in a hold from behind. "How come?"
"They're all such bastards."
"You didn't say that," called Steel, "when Justin got you those boots for your birthday, Free!"
Aya bit my arms, which were choking her. I yelped and let go, so she elbowed me in the stomach and smashed one of her killer heels into my ankle. "You're scary, Free Xavier," she giggled, watching me check my wounds.
"Hey, Nina!" I called to a doggish sixteen-year-old in the corner. She looked up from a physics book she was reading. Nina wanted to go to college and get a degree, so while we goofed off, she studied. She was more like a babysitter than anything. "Aya's teeth drew blood. I need a bandage- stat!"
Nina tossed me a box of Band-Aids and went back to her reading.
"She sure is scary. Explains why her little sister has a boyfriend and she doesn't," said someone nastily.
I gave her the Glare, a look that was mine and mine alone. I only ever used it to shut people up. Do I really scare people, I thought. Damn...
Sunday, and I'm back at work wearing my SECURITY shirt and reading a magazine. I look up from my magazine to find a boy about Justin's age staring at me.
"Can I help you?"
"I saw you the other day beating up that guy. You're a transgenic, aren't you?"
Good God, I thought.
"No talking with the security guards, kid. Move."
"Nah, I just thought..." He turned around and pulled down the collar of his jacket, revealing a barcode. "I'm one of you."
"You're not transgenic," I observed coolly. "You're too young to be X-series, and you can't be anomaly either 'cause you look human to me."
Not to mention pretty hot, admired a voice in my head that I automatically hushed. Security guards did not flirt with customers.
"I'm second-generation X5. Breeding programme. I'm guessing you are too. You look old enough."
"My parents were happily married for two years by the time I was born, thank you. What's with the barcode?"
"I got it to show respect."
I had to say, I was impressed. "Who are your parents? Maybe they were in my mom's unit."
"Tyson and Lesa Locke- 600 and 657."
"Zack Thompson and Tinga Smith's X5 twins? Those are famous faces. My mom is Eva Guevara's twin."
He came to stand beside me at the doorway. "You know, I never understood why they gave the Eva kid Max Guevara's surname in news articles and shit. I've seen Manticore mugshots in those same articles, and she doesn't look like a Guevara."
"Do any of her family? 'Spect they gave her the name to make her more of a family member. Lots of her group took the surname Guevara so people would know who they were."
"True." He looked at me. "You know, I'd like to talk Manticore some more with you. You free tonight?"
No way! God... who says I can't get a boyfriend? I thought in delight.
"Where do you plan on going?"
"The waterfront."
"Sure... yeah. I'm free. Well. That's my name. Free Xavier. What's yours?"
"Damon Locke."
We looked at each other for a second. "So, are you gonna BUY anything? 'Cause if you aren't, get out."
"Bye, Free."
He said my NAME, I thought. Wow.
"See you," I said. I think I am in love, I thought.
By Tuesday it was all through the Terminal City teen grapevine that Free Xavier had a boyfriend. After her little sister, but a boyfriend nonetheless.
Damon was a bit too cool, even for me. I wondered about him... but he seemed as smitten as I was with him. I spurned sparring with Aya or Steel to ink his initials up my arm.
In this newest apartment, Steel and I shared a room. She watched me from her bed admiring a whole row of DL love token tattoos. "You're going to give yourself blood poisoning if you keep doing that."
"That's just a myth. Besides, for the first time ever your scary big sister has a boyfriend and YOU don't," I gloated.
"As of tonight that will be an ugly rumour. Baseball is over, and Deon and I are gonna go watch a screening of this pre-Pulse movie and its sequels to celebrate."
"What movie?"
"I've never heard of it, but Deon loves it. It's called 'Men In Slacks' one through four or something."
"'Men In Black', I think."
"Yeah, whatever."
On my lunch break the next day I went looking for Damon, who said he'd wait around the corner for me.
There he was. I ducked into a doorway. I heard him and his friends. I heard the word Free and melted.
I love him, I thought, and listened.
"... this raid's gonna be a piece of cake, right, Damon?"
"Yeah, I told you a million times, man," said Damon in annoyance. "The security guard's a fifteen-year-old chick."
"Yeah, but transgenic. She'll kick our asses," said a boy who had just arrived.
Damon laughed. "Listen, and listen good. This is the best time of my life for the following reasons- one, tomorrow, I'll have a share in a couple of hundred dollars from that store. Two, the security guard is too into me to try and stop me and Three, I'm dating her on the side."
I crept back into the store feeling awful. "Um, I think I'm gonna need to take a personal day," I muttered to my boss, Brenda.
"Something wrong, Xavier? Hate to see you off duty early, you're my best security guard."
"Brenda, I'm the only security guard," I corrected her. "I really don't feel so good."
"OK. Leave through the back, though, I don't want people to see that this place is unguarded."
I nodded dejectedly and slunk through the back door.
I lay around at home for a few hours until Steel came in singing some rap song with an enraptured look on her face. She saw me watching her sullenly and stopped in mid-giggle.
"Is there something wrong?" she asked.
I considered this. I felt so cheap and betrayed I didn't know where to begin.
I readied myself. "I'm expecting a raid on the store tomorrow. I'm gunna need backup and someone to get it for me while I do some recon."
Steel seemed to understand instantly. "Got your back," she said, and went to phone our friends.
The next day, I was quietly fuming as I rallied Justin, Aya, Nina, Justin's friend Lewis and Steel inside the store.
"This is how it's going to work," I told them. "We come in from the sides and throw them onto the sidewalk. The one with the barcode on his neck- let ME deal with him."
Everyone knew I had a bone to pick with Damon Locke. They didn't question my request.
And yet... I was hoping this was some kind of misunderstanding.
It happened so fast it felt like a blur. "Everyone down on the floor!" yelled Damon to customers queuing to pay for groceries. A gunshot was fired into the ceiling.
I stiffened and closed my eyes suddenly. A gun. Guns were bad. Guns killed my dad and my mom's twin. Guns kill a lot of us.
My mind whirled.
And a gentle, insistent, childlike voice spoke in my mind. This voice was not my own.
Help your friends, Free.
I shot forward to help the others, who had gone before me. Lewis wrenched a handgun with T. LOCKE engraved on the handle from Damon's hand and threw it to Steel, who began to back them up toward Justin, Aya and Nina, who put sleeper holds on three boys. They collapsed to the floor.
I marched over to Damon and stood in front of him. He tried to hit out at me but I caught his fist easily.
"Damon, it's been really nice fawning over you. Don't call me and I'm definitely not calling you."
I punched him between the eyes. Dazed, he fell back onto Nina, who hastily dropped him on the floor.
We hung around until the police arrived with two people I knew must be Damon's parents. A beautiful but harassed-looking woman shot ahead of the officers easily and shook Damon, snapping at him. He shoved her away and went with them.
She stood there a second looking weary. A tall man with blonde hair came and put his arm around her, and they climbed into a squad car.
That was the last time I ever saw Damon Locke. I heard through the Terminal City teen transgenic grapevine that he was in a detention centre- that being the latest in a string of offences.
I've talked with Mom about his parents, Tyson and Lesa. She knew them only by designations, but she knew them all right, having shared quarters with them until she was twelve and also having a private room between the two of them.
"Oh, I idolised 657 right up until I left Manticore," she reminisced that night. "I thought she was the strongest, best, most beautiful X5 I'd ever known. I would have done anything to be like her. Everyone knew that she and 600 were involved since they were teenagers. I used to always hear them sneaking into each other's rooms late at night." She laughed.
So where did they go wrong with Damon?
Even now, I feel pangs of a twisted affection for Damon. They are far and few. But I'm Free Xavier, I told myself. I'm scary and I'm single and I don't let anyone push me around.
* * *
NOTE: Wow. *GOGGLES AT SELF* That was obsolete crap. This fic just seems to be deteriorating further... and further... into puke-inducing oblivion. I want to finish it! *WAILS* I like these original characters more than any of my original characters and I want to know what happens to them! My brain isn't keen on giving me the goss, but I'm going to try my militant hardest to finish this fic!
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron, and 'Men In Black' belongs to some movie studio. Not me. So don't sue.