Chapter 4

Matters with Niel only went from bad to worse. Rogue wasn't sure if it was just her, or if Niel was just a misogynist. The animosity between them quickly grew to dangerous levels, and every race they were both in, Niel consistently tried to run her off the road. The rest of the time he would get insulting and grabby. On the one hand, Rogue's riding buddies were more than happy to stand by her, even knowing she was perfectly capable of defending herself. On the other hand, Niel had friends too.

The thing that worried Rogue most about Niel was how far he was willing to go. Some of the guys she hang out with had violent tendencies too, but they'd never actually tried to kill her. Likewise, as interested as Joss and a couple of the others were in her, they'd never tried to force her (although there were a couple she wouldn't put past putting something in her drink). There were a few near misses on the road too, and Rogue knew the only reason she survived was because of her new found ability to used the powers she imprinted from others at her whim.

However, the matter of her personal security became an even bigger concern the Saturday night she thought she was being followed home after the races. At first she thought she was just being paranoid, but as the road were quite empty in those wee hours of the morning , she became more and more convinced that there was definitely someone following her. In the end, she drove into an alley, phased herself through the back wall and continued driving the long way home. By the time she got back to her apartment, she thought she was clear, but she was too hyped up on nervous energy to get any sleep.

Logan's senses told her there was no one about as she pulled out her nights winnings. She opened up the tin where she kept her money from her racing and after counting, she added the cash. Rogue was about to put the tin back in the drawer when she hesitated. Anyone could open up a tin. There was a time where she thought about using a cash box instead of a tin, but thought that anything with a lock on it was just telling people where she stashed her cash. If there was just a way she could secure the tin without - oooh!

Rogue pulled out Magneto's psyche and used his powers to merge the lid and base into one. Experimentally, she used his powers to open the tin cube, checked her cash and then closed it up again and put his psyche away again. She'd have to watch out for coins, but it should do. She was about to put it back into the drawer, when she looked around the room and spotted her small set of shelves in one corner of the room. She moved the small vase she was using as a poor substitute for a book end with her money cube and then place the vase in front of it, making a mental note to get some flowers for it. Hidden in plain sight; she liked it.

Of course, securing her money wasn't quite the same as securing her person. Rogue was certain that if she was alert and awake she could handle anything he threw at her.

It was just a matter of making sure she was awake and alert.

...

"All right," said Rogue. "One big breakfast with pancakes..."

She announced the rest of the order as she places the plates on the table for the four customers. As she put down the final plate, her hand briefly brushed the hand of the woman closest to her.

"Is there anything else I can get you?" Rogue asked them, straightening up again.

"No, we're fine thanks."

"Okay, enjoy your meal."

Rogue went on with her work in the crowded diner. With everyone chatting around her, she didn't notice the new whisper in her head until her shift was over and she'd changed into her motorcycle gear for the trip home.

She frowned to herself just before she put her helmet on and looked around.

"Someone there?" she asked as she looked around, but saw no one.

There was no reply, but Rogue knew she could definitely hear someone. The voice was a low murmur; loud enough to know it was someone speaking, but too quiet to make out any words. She shrugged it off and put on her helmet.

Rogue had opted to have an indulgent day and she went to the cinema to see a movie she was interested in. She quiet enjoyed it, but the quieter moments of the movie were spoiled by someone talking. Rogue hated it when people talked during the movie.

By the time Rogue got home, she was well and truly frustrated. She could still hear that murmuring that had been plaguing her all day, with no clue as to what in the world it was. It couldn't be any of her voices; although they'd all returned to their normal volume, Rogue had figured out how to tuck them away so she could actually think and not be bothered by them. And her ability to acquire new voices hadn't come back yet so...

Oh.

Rogue swallowed hard, closed her eyes and searched her mind. Sure enough there was indeed a new psyche in her head. It was so small, it reminded her of what Logan's voice had been like when it first started to make an appearance. Who it was, Rogue couldn't make out, simply for lack of substance. Nevertheless, Rogue located the core, tucked the psyche into a box and stored it away.

Her hands shook as she sat down on the bed. This was it; the day she had been dreading since they'd announced the 'cure' was wearing off. She was going back to being untouchable.

Tears began to prick at her eyes and she wiped them away impatiently. She was not going to cry about this. She hated crying. Okay, so what if she wasn't entirely prepared for this? She still had time. Like her voices, reacquiring her ability to absorb people in the first place would probably take its time returning as well. She should work on maximising her money stash and start working out where she was going to go and what she was going to do. She'd have to stop being a waitress, obviously, and the guys were a little too touchy-feely, so she couldn't hang around and continue hanging out with them, even if she might still be able to race.

Maybe that's what she should do; become a professional motorcycle racer, or maybe a stuntwoman. That might be fun.

Rogue reached for her bear and hugged it close. At least she had succeeded in containing her voices. Her head didn't feel anywhere near as crowded as it did before she got the 'cure'.

"That's right," she said to herself. "It doesn't, does it?"

If she could control her voices, why couldn't she learn to control the rest of her powers as well?

"Well," Rogue said, lifting her teddy bear to eye level, "doesn't hurt to try, right?"


Rogue had no idea where to even start. First and foremost was the fact that she hadn't noticed absorbing the new psyche in the first place. If she didn't notice when she was absorbing anyone, how could she stop herself from doing it? She decided that the best bet for now was to play it by ear and try to work on her psyche awareness so that she'd know when she was absorbing someone.

A week passed before Rogue had another incident. Fortunately, there weren't so many other people around and she heard her new voice as soon as contact was broken. While Rogue was irritated she didn't notice immediately, she was glad she was able to box off the new voice straight away.

The third absorption happened only four days later. This time Rogue noticed immediately as she actually picked up the handshake from his perspective as well. However, she wasn't entirely certain if she shut the absorption off, or if her power shut itself off.

From that point onwards Rogue decided to become more proactive about this. She started paying extra special attention to every form of skin contact she had. To begin with it was more likely nothing would happen than her absorption would kick in, however as time went by the opposite became true. She started picking up more that their immediate thoughts too, and her subjects began having brief moments of disorientation and dizziness.

Before Rogue could begin feeling anxious about putting anyone into comas, however, she began to make progress. Little things at first that she didn't realise were successes until after the fact, like the time she absorbed her fellow waitress Kathy, but managed to shut it off even though contact was maintained. She also noticed that although Joss touched her a lot, she'd never absorbed him. Joss was probably on her list of last people she wanted to absorb and Rogue decided that this aversion was working in her favour.

By this point, Rogue was on her fourth notebook and she kept careful track of every single use of her power. Some months after the first incidence of absorption, Rogue realised that her incident rate was going down again. She hadn't even needed to resort to covering up again. This revelation made Rogue giddy with excitement and she celebrated her growing control with a trip to Six Flags and a lot of fairy floss.


It was 2:35am and he was the only customer in the diner. The cook on duty, Jared, was on his own in the kitchen, doing... whatever it was he did at this time of night. Rogue eyed the customer while she waited, feeling a little like a predator watching her prey. The fact of the matter was that she couldn't learn to control her power unless she had people to practice on, and there wasn't a more tempting target than customers who came in during the beginning of her shift. They were alone and no one would ever see her do anything. Any dizzy spells or comas (although no one had fallen into a coma yet) could be easily covered up.

The man noticed her watching him and she sauntered over under the guise of seeing if he wanted anything. Judging from the expression on his face, he'd interpreted her look as meaning something entirely different.

"Anything else I can getcha?" she asked, all the while wondering if she should actually go through with this; she hadn't deliberately tried to absorb someone yet.

"No, I'm right thanks," he replied. "So, uhh, do you get off soon?"

"'Fraid not, sugar," Rogue said. "My shift just started half an hour ago."

Inevitably, Rogue left the table again and came back a few moments later with the bill. She slid the little black tray onto the table and reached over to take the plate, deliberately grazing his hand in the process and allowing her power to kick in.

Her ability to absorb people must not have been quite back in full working order just yet, Rogue decided, for she wasn't getting flooded with thoughts and memories at the same rate as she remembered. The thoughts she did get amused her though; he was thinking about her, the food, paying and how he would have to get going. She grunted a little as she shut off her powers; he'd been a little too focused on her cleavage in her opinion, although in fairness she did have to concede that it had been a little in his face when she leaned over. The man shook his head, feeling disoriented and Rogue pretended not to notice.

After the man paid and left (Rogue was happy with the nice tip he'd left her), she contemplated the results of her experiment. She wished she had her notebook with her, but as it was still at home, she resorted to jotting down her thoughts on a piece of scrap paper intended for the phone.

Two thoughts in particular occurred to her. First, the slow absorption: Was absorption rate something she could control, or was it something that would be dictated to her? Second, what she picked up; again, was this something she could control, or would it be random?

It was then that Rogue realised that no lone customer would be safe on her shift. She thought she should probably feel guilty about using customers for guinea pigs, and she didn't know if she should be concerned that she didn't.


"Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Ro-ogue! Happy Birthday to you!"

Rogue laughed as all her friends at Tony's Bar sang completely out of tune.

"First round of drinks is on Rogue!" Gary declared.

"Thanks a lot," Rogue said, pulling a face at him.

"Hey, we've been buying you drinks for years. You're legal now; it's your turn."

"Any excuse! You just want a free beer."

"Guilty as charged."

Rogue laughed again, but was happy to buy the first round of drinks. At twenty-one, she was rather pleased with how things were going. Sure, she wasn't exactly where she would like to be in her life right now; she still considered her best friend to be her teddy bear, and she wasn't making nearly as much money as she wanted to; but she did still have people she enjoyed spending time with and her power was turning out to be a gift rather than a curse after all. Life was good.

In the midst of the celebration, however, one set of eyes glared at her from across the room: Niel. Rogue pretended not to notice, having no intention of letting him ruin her birthday. She'd have to do something about him sooner or later, but not today.


"All right," Rogue said, addressing her bear where it sat on the table and putting down her pen. "After thirty deliberate absorptions, I've learned the following. One, if I absorb someone fast, anything I get from them is random. The slower the absorption rate, the easier it is to pick and choose what I get from them. Two, the faster the rate of absorption, the more likely they are to end up in a coma."

Rogue took a moment to digest that. It wasn't like she wanted to put anyone in a coma, but fortunately the few comas she'd been responsible for had been short-lived. She was a lot more careful after that, not wanting to attract any attention to herself, but also honestly not wanting to put anyone into a coma.

"Of course," she went on. "I can also put someone into a coma at a slower rate of absorption, it just takes longer. Three, I'm more likely to get whatever they're thinking about first. Four, well, four is kinda inferred for the first three; if I go looking for specific information that isn't at the front of their mind, I need a way to cover up any dizziness or period of unconsciousness that follows."

Rogue considered for a moment and glanced over her notes.

"Five, it's possible to determine length of coma by the amount of life force absorbed. Six, there's been a distinct lack of mutant subjects. I will need to remedy this, given that I cam imprint powers, and plus I'm not sure if anything else is different. As far as baseline humans are concerned, I think I've pretty much covered everything. Oh, and six, if my power hasn't returned to full strength yet, it must be close."

She tapped her fingers on the table for a few moments, then stood and began to pace.

"I think," she said to herself, "that I need to... to... I think I need a project. A test. So far I've just been doing random experiments on random people with no goal other than exploration. Well, and learning control of course. Soooo nice to have control."

Impulsively she hugged her bear.

"And to think for a while there I was thinking I'd never get control, ever. I sure proved me wrong," she said and giggled to herself. "But yes, a project. I need something specific to accomplish, not just to prove I have control, but also to demonstrate that... that... that what? To demonstrate what I've learned, that it can be put to practical use, that I can... can... can absorb someone and get away with it."

Rogue scrunched up her face in her struggle to put into words what she was feeling about the matter.

"A project will... will show me not only what I've learned but also show me any areas where I may need work that I haven't realised in my experimentation," she said triumphantly. "Okay, so... what project?"

She got her answer the following Saturday night; Niel. She would rid herself of the problem that was Niel. When she arrived home from the races, there was no way she could sleep straight away. She was too busy figuring out how she was going to go about it. Not only how she was going to absorb him and cover it up, but also what she was going to be looking for in his head.


It was Friday night and normally Rogue would be at home sleeping at this hour, but she had arranged to have the morning off work. Thus, it was quite a pleasant surprise to the guys when she showed up at Tony's Bar.

"Don't you have work tomorrow?" asked Frank.

"Nah, I'm chucking a sickie," Rogue replied with a wave of her hand.

"I approve," said Joss.

"I don't doubt it."

Rogue chatted merrily with her riding buddies for a time. Eventually Niel arrived at the bar. Out of the corner of her eye she kept a close eye on him, noting how much he drank. After a couple of bottles, Rogue excused herself from her friends and bought a couple of bottles of beer from the bar. She then sauntered over to Niel.

"Beer?" she inquired, holding out the unopened bottle.

"Don't mind if I do," he replied, eyeing her sceptically as he took it.

"I figure it's time we let bygone be bygones," she said smoothly as she opened her own bottle. "Truce?"

Niel gave a non-committal grunt and Rogue didn't push it. Instead she began to flirt (and ignored Joss getting angrier and angrier at the other end of the room) and pretended to like it when Niel put his hands on her. At one point she went back to get more drinks and this was when things got interesting. In her pocket, Rogue was carrying a small dose of syrup of ipecac. It had been hard enough to obtain, and she was a little nervous about using it for all the reasons it was hard to obtain and the fact that she wasn't entirely certain that mixing it with alcohol was really a very good idea. Using Kitty's power, Rogue phased the dosage into the beer she planned on giving Niel and prayed that was she was doing wasn't going to kill him or anything. A thief she would admit to, but she had no intentions of becoming a murderer.

Rogue headed back to Niel and gave him the second beer. While he drank she gave all the signs of having drunk a little too much herself and succeeded in luring Niel into the mens. Evidentially Niel was thrilled at the prospect of getting to have his way with the young woman, however as soon as the door was locked behind them, Rogue's kiss became deadly.

Rogue figured that a man with his violent temper and tendencies would probably have something criminal in his past to atone for and Rogue was not disappointed. Once she got past all the nasty little sexual fantasies he had about her in the front of his mind, she found a series of violent and abusive acts. He'd abused all his girlfriends, beaten his wife to death, run other people who had angered him off the road and by the time Rogue pulled away she felt like her head was swimming with it all. She positioned Niel over the toilet in preparation for his expected bout of vomiting, fished his phone from his pocket and dialled the police.

"Hi," she said. "I understand there's a warrant out for the arrest of one Niel Smith for the murder of Rachel Smith? Yeah, I know where he lives."

After leaving her anonymous tip, Rogue hung up and put the phone back in her pocket. She then took out his wallet and liberated his cash before putting his wallet back. As if on cue, Niel threw up (Rogue was somewhat relieved about that) and she checked to make sure he wasn't going to choke on his own vomit (he was unconscious after all). Pleased that it had gone down all right, Rogue filed Niel neatly away in her mind, straightened her clothes and waltzed back out into the bar. She ignored Niel's friends and headed straight to her own.

"What the hell?" Joss demanded of her, pulling free of Owen's grip. "Rogue! You hate that guy!"

Rogue couldn't hide the smirk while Joss ranted on about how could she bang Niel, when she was always turning him down. Rogue silenced him by kissing him.

"Yep, just what I thought," she said as she pulled away. "You're definitely the better kisser. By the way, Niel? So can't hold his liquor."

Her smirk became wider as she sat back down at the table, leaned back on her chair and pulled out the notes she'd stolen from Niel.

"Whaddya say boys?" she asked. "Next round's on Niel."

"Are you whoring yourself out now, Rogue?" asked Carlos. "Because in that case -"

"Don't insult me," Rogue said, in far too good a mood to snap at him like she might have normally. "I just slipped a little something into his drink and took a little something to remember him by."

Owen started laughing. "And that's why you never get on Rogue's bad side."


AN: Just the epilogue to go... it's like a tradition, hahaha.