Chapter 2

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Mutt exited the principals office feeling a bit abandoned and without direction. He shrugged the strap of his backpack a little higher on his shoulder, and started to head for the door. The bell rang, freeing students of their classes for the day, making his journey a bit slower, having to weave through the instant crowd.

"Hey, Williams!" he heard a familiar voice call. Mutt already knew who it was, and didn't bother to look or even stop walking.

"Hey, Williams, I'm talking to you!"

Kevin McDowell reached out one of his thick hands and turned Mutt around to face him.

"We have unfinished business, son."

Mutt twitched his mouth, not very interested in talking, especially to someone he deemed not worth his time anyway. Mutt flung a finger laxly, pointing at Kevin's black eye.

"I think I finished it all over your face, son."

Kevin immediately grabbed Mutt by the shirt, pulling him up toward his face.

"You want to run that by me again?"

"Why, your little brain didn't catch it the first time?"

"This is coming from the kid who says Nazis killed his great legendary father. The brave, fearless teacher in the bow tie."

"Nazis!" a few of his friends standing around laughed. "Get real!"

"There ain't no more Nazis, Williams," Kevin spoke slowly, leaning close to Mutt's face. "So, I think you're talking out your ass."

Mutt felt his fist closing, clenching, shaking in its tight grip.

"McDowell!" called the firm voice of an older woman. "To the principal's office."

Mutt let his fist relax, as Kevin gave him a final passing glare. This fight was over. Or perhaps just postponed.

Mutt continued on his trek out the front door of the school, pulling out the keys to his motorcycle. He was almost free of this godforsaken place. Maybe he'd volunteer his time at the machine shop, even if he wasn't scheduled to work today. It beat going home to his equally depressed mother. Mutt now knew from experience, forget what people said, misery doesn't like company. It likes to be left the hell alone.

He was so close to his bike he could smell the oil, only to be intercepted by some other kid clouding his perfectly horrible day. Some geek Asian in a tan trenchcoat and glasses that stood between Mutt and his prized bike. His spiky black hair was tousled and askew, like he hadn't showered in a good few days. His brow was up, his eyes dancing intensely in excitement. He appeared to be around Mutt's age, maybe older.

"Mi-ter Wir-yiams!"

"How many times I gotta tell people? It's Jones."

The Asian nodded and smiled broadly in understanding.

"Of course," he agreed, then extended a hand. "Name is Short Round, Mi-ter Jones, sir. It is honor. Reary, reary big honor."

Mutt took his hand back as his own, and put a leg over his bike.

"Your old lady named you Short? Were you a planned baby?"

"How should I know? I wasn't there."

"That's a great story, but I don't have time to endure it, so if you'll excuse me."

Mutt kicked on his engine, but this kid was nothing if not determined. He grabbed on the handlebar of the bike and held tight.

"Hey, where going?"

"Away," Mutt replied, prying his offending fingers off one by one.

"I need to talk to you!"

"That's nice."

"I hear about your father. Very sad, I sorry to hear. He was good man."

Mutt looked up at the kid for the first time in their entire exchange of words.

"How would you know?"

"I work with him few times, long while ago."

Mutt kicked off the engine, and dismounted the motorcycle.

"Alright, Shorty. Let's talk."

Out of the corner of his eye, Mutt saw a woman coming closer, a woman he knew all too well. That confident strut, that 'know-it-all' arch of the eyebrow, that haughty upturned nose, that I'm-too-good-for-you flick of her black hair… Roux Belloq, daughter of René Belloq, his father's old archaeological rival since his schoolyard days. The same glory hounding René Belloq that bamboozled his father out of countless artifacts, some by the point of a gun. She was living up to her father's name, making Mutt's life miserable in any way she knew how. Evil embodied in a woman.

"Uh, but let's talk somewhere else, huh?" Mutt encouraged Shorty along.

"Huh, why?"

"If we're going to be friends, you're going to have to not ask questions, just go. Go!"

"Hey, there's a lady coming! Oh, she pretty, Mi-ter Jones! Is she belong to you?"

Mutt gave Short a firm shove out of the way of his bike.

"Just move, kid!"

"Ah, look who's weaseling his way out of the rigors of education… again."

Mutt groaned deep within his chest, his shoulders falling, and his teeth grinding in frustration. Too late for escape now.

"Mister… Jones, is it now?" Roux cooed in her annoying way, swaggering her hips with great accentuation. Her words dripped with her French accent. "Henry-Mutt, Williams-Jones…you change your name so many times it does get hard to keep up."

Mutt wasn't so easily put down. Not by her. With Roux, insults came so naturally between them it was very easily put aside.

"Maybe I'm trying to make it harder for you to track me down, ever think of that?" Mutt snapped back. Short's brow shot up, his mouth rounded and he let out an 'ooo' at this.

"Lady, I just meet him, I'm not on his side," Short assured Roux quickly. "I not wanting to be mean to you, in fact, I like you, you very pretty lady and we could be good friends, maybe even more than friends if you--"

Mutt slapped a hand over Short's mouth.

"Don't talk," he ordered firmly. "You have no idea how crazy she is."

Roux pursed her lips in that prissy way she did, turning her nose up and looking down upon Mutt.

"Zat artifact you came home with is peanuts compared to the mother-load I'm after," she bragged openly. "Just got a big lead in China zat'll put my family down in the history books. Too bad your father died before he could discover ze really important finds."

Mutt's mouth was shooting out retorts faster than his brain could process them.

"Too bad your father died before he could even begin his career. 'Obliterated', I believe, was the term my father used to describe how he went…?"

Short took quick glances back and forth between the two rivals, trying to figure out what to make of them. Roux glared laser beams, boring into the spited boy with all her might. Having nothing more to respond, she gave out an 'humph!', turned on her heel and left both boys behind.

Mutt frowned maliciously as Short perked up again. His Asian stalker pointed at himself excitedly.

"Pretty lady say China! That why I'm here!"

Mutt looked at him with a quirked eyebrow to encourage him to explain properly.

"Big lead near where I live," Short went on. "Some big shot send me to get you father but I only find you. He like you father, I think if you ask real nice he tell you instead."

"Tell me what?" Mutt asked curiously.

"I try to tell you. Some really old spear--"

"What, like the Spear of Destiny?"

"No, it more like a sword…"

"You mean Excalibur?"

Shorty sighed in frustration, his shoulder's falling.

"Boy, you really don't know anything, do you, Mi-ter Jones?"

-

Please review.
Signed,
--RedRogue
PS. Roux = Ro, as in rhyming with Joe. Because I'm such a Tomb Raider fan, Roux is much like Lara Croft in appearance, though French in ancestry. Just think of her as a great, great grandmother…