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Lance stood just outside the school just as the rush had cleared away. He hadn’t seen Rogue anywhere. Or John for that matter, although Todd wasn’t pestering him to apologize to the Aussie.

He turned to leave, but was stopped by a boney arm.

“Oh no, you’re not,” Lance glared at Todd, “You are staying right here until Rogue comes out and then you two are going to apologize to one another.”

“What for? She was the one who betrayed us, not the other way around,” Lance snarled.

Todd just shook his head. Lance and Rogue were going to tear everything he had worked so hard for apart with their arguing. These people were his only friends; he couldn’t take it if they disbanded over something as stupid as this. He knew that Fred felt the same way, which was why Todd had sent him to reason with Rogue.

He saw the large boy walking around the corner shaking his head. There was a distinct lack of Gothic girls in his wake so Todd knew that Fred had failed.

“If she doesn’t show up in five minutes,” Lance said, sitting down on the stair railing.

“She’s not going to show, foo’” Todd said angrily.

He wished that Rogue was here so that he could take both her and Lance’s empty heads and bash them together. Fred looked disconsolate.

“What!?” Lance yelled, “First you drag me out here to make an apology to someone who I don’t want to apologize to. Then that person bails on this!” he clenched his fists.

“Hey, calm down Alvers. You’re scaring birds,” Fred pointed to where a group of sparrows had taken off in panic at the noise.

Todd looked at the ground. Lance and Rogue were fighting. Pietro had run off somewhere. The new member of their gang was the cause of the fighting, although Todd still didn’t understand what John had done. All that would be left were him and Fred, and Fred actually had other friends outside of this little circle. Todd didn’t.

“Who needs this,” Lance stated angrily.

Lance got up from the rail and began walking in a random direction. His parents wouldn’t be expecting him home until nine, if they were even expecting him, which he rather doubted. Actually he had to go to the bar at six, so scratch the idea of getting home tonight.

That still left the problem of what he should do in those three hours between when he was expected and now. He could go off and look for Pietro or do something useful like that. Not that finding Pietro would be much fun. They were best friends, but if Pietro was skipping then he was probably looking for someone to pick a fight with and Lance had reached his limits on fights for that day.

Maybe he might just walk past the Academy, and possibly see if John was hanging around there with Marie, again. It wouldn’t be like he was looking for the two of them. It would just be that he happened to run into both of them, and maybe he owed Marie a tiny apology. Maybe.

Todd kicked a pebble. He heard the duct tape on his shoe rip slightly. Drat it, now he would need to get some more to hold his shoes together. It had been hard enough trying to get his father to part with the three inches that he had begrudged Todd in the first place.

“Why are Lance and Rogue arguing anyway?” Fred asked quietly.

“Who knows, yo,” Todd shrugged, “And who cares why they were arguing. They were arguing. It doesn’t matter why.”

“But, if we knew, then we could help them,” Fred tried to get Todd to look more cheerful.

“Help them what? Argue the school down?” the pebble took another flying lesson.

Fred shook his head and went to go catch up with Lance. Todd tried to give the pebble a few more flying lessons, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Yo Fred, wait up!”

Fred smiled as he heard Todd coming along. Now he had the back up that he needed.

The pair caught up with Lance about two blocks from the school, where he had started his own Flying for Pebbles class. Lance had his hands in his pockets, a sure sign that he had been thinking and was now feeling very defensive, and probably in the wrong. Fred and Todd knew that this was a subject that they would have to approach delicately and with diplomacy.

“So, what did Rogue do to piss you off?” Todd wasn’t adept at either diplomacy or delicacy.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We can’t back you up unless we know what your point is,” Fred pointed out.

“Skip it,” Lance snarled.

“We aren’t leaving until you tell us what’s wrong, yo,” Todd and Fred were obviously taking it in turn to argue Lance down.

Lance felt a little better. These people were his best friends after all, they would probably agree with him. Or at least sympathize. Even if they didn’t, together they could devise a plan to get Rogue back from the clutches of Johnny, and by extension, the X-Kids.

“Let’s go to The Backs,” Lance said and the three ducked into an alley way.

The Backs was an abandoned building in between the docks and what served Bayville as a park. There was quite a lot of glass around the place, as well as old tires, other junk and a jungle of weeds.

In fact, The Backs was a lot more run down than it should have been. Todd had come across it one day when he was out wandering and made it into a second home. In order to discourage other people he had made it less livable than even Nature had intended.

As each member of the gang had become his friend they had added their own special touch. Most of the glass around the place had been donated by Rogue. Fred had given at least ten of the various tires littering up the yard. Pietro had done almost all of the graffiti that was scrawled up and down the walls of the building. Lance’s contribution had been the old rusting Jeep out front. It was his endless project to try and make it road worthy again.

The reason that the dilapidated ruin was known as The Backs was because the only way to get to it was using just about every back alley that Bayville had to offer. It was just off a network of dead end alleys that could be only accessed by a street just three blocks away from school. Each alley ran into each other and eventually arrived at the front yard of the place.

Eventually the three boys arrived there, too, and Todd immediately hopped up onto the hood of the Jeep and sat down. Fred contented himself with several tires that he had arranged to take his weight. Lance glared at Todd, daring him to scratch the new black paint that the Jeep had received two weeks ago, and leaned back on the decaying picket fence that ran around the tiny yard.

“You both know I got a job, right?” Lance started in a soon as they were all settled, “Well, that job was at this really old bar. You know, The Wolverine. I thought that it was a pretty good deal because it is right by here and the pay isn’t that bad. Well, guess who is the owner, and guess the manager,” Lance paused here allowing for any guesses to be voiced.

“I dunno, yo. Marie and John?” Todd hazarded.

“Yeah Lance, how are we supposed tuh know?” Fred rubbed the back of his head in confusion.

Lance sighed at the lack of imagination in his compatriots, “I walk into the bar. There’s smoke everywhere. All hanging in blue coils or however smoke is described. I can see four shapes at the table, and then one of them comes up to me. She’s this short dark girl, got this really tough look going. I mean she looks sorta like a fairy, but one that could eat through teak.

“She yells at me for a moment, but then she figures out that I must be the new employee. She invites me in with ‘you will be doing this and don’t depart from it’ talk. Then one of the other people at the table yells ‘You!’ It was Marie. Johnny boy was with her. There was also the boss and owner of the place with them.

“He’s another short guy, but not quite so dark, black hair, but other than that he’s pretty pale. Again, tough enough to eat through teak. He doesn’t look like a fairy, though. Not someone any of us would want to tangle with.

“He’s Marie’s father. The girl was Marie’s sister,” Lance looked around expectantly.

“So what? It’s not like it matters yo,” Todd said as he watched a beetle intently.

“I don’t get it,” Fred had a perplexed look on his face as he tried to figure out what was going on.

“What he means is that Marie let John into her life before she let us,” a familiar malicious voice said from the gate.

The boys all started and whipped around to see Pietro standing in the open gate. He looked like he had been running, his chest was heaving and there was a thick layer of sweat on his face. Odd for Pietro, because normally he could run a mile in about four minutes without breaking a sweat.

“Whoa, what have you been doing?” Todd looked askance at the taller boy.

“Therapy running,” Pietro answered shortly, “What happened Lance? Rogue’s not here, so may I guess that one of you idiots pissed her off again?”

“Yeah, Lance set into her before school for letting John come to the place where he was working,” Fred explained, he was still trying to figure that bit out.

“I heard most of the story,” Pietro cut the Texan short, “That’s not the reason. It’s not Rogue’s fault,” he addressed Lance, “We need to have a little talk with Johnny boy.”

Todd shivered at the venom in Pietro’s voice. Todd could see what was going on, Pietro was feeling put upon and up against a wall for some reason and he needed to lash out at someone. The last time he had lashed out he had earned the enmity of the entire skateboarding group, and their leader in particular, Evan Daniels.

Not that it mattered to Pietro whom he angered. He would take on the universe if he had to when he was feeling annoyed at someone. Pietro out for revenge was not someone who should be crossed.

Of course there were some people that by common consent you didn’t cross. Rogue was one of them. They had never seen her when she had been pushed to the breaking point, and they never wanted to. The occasional outbursts were enough for them.

“No,” Lance looked at the ground, “He’s not the one we should be pushing around. We shouldn’t really be messing with Rogue, either.”

“What’s with you?” Pietro shouted angrily, “Rogue lets this new guy who she said she doesn’t even trust into her life. She lets him find out who her family is, and you just stand here and look at the ground without even trying to do anything about it!”

“Well, what can we do?” Fred pointed out.

This seemed to deflate Pietro a little, “Nothing, I guess. But we should try to do something. I mean, Rogue’s our friend, not his. We just can’t let her leave like that.”

“Like you left today, you mean?”

Todd found himself pressed up against the wall of the building. Pietro’s face was black with rage.

“You have something to say, Bugcatcher?” Pietro sneered.

Todd cringed. He hated it when people called him Bugcatcher, but when the person calling you that has you pressed against the side of a house with one arm then you tend to go along with what they say.

“No, of course not. Just making a general statement about the weather,” Todd knew that he was stuttering.

Fred watched this display and wondered what was wrong with it. Sometimes Pietro did get like this if you said the wrong things to him, but by now someone had usually put their hand on his shoulder and told him to either sit down or face someone his size. Oh, right, Rogue wasn’t here now. Fred took it upon himself to do this.

“Hey, Pietro,” he carefully laid a gigantic hand on the thin shoulder, “Why don’t you put Todd down?”

Pietro felt the weight increase slightly, “Yeah, whatever.”

Although the reply was sullen he let Todd down and slouched back to the fence as if nothing had happened.

“What was up today that you had to skip school today? Ms. Monroe was looking for you even,” Lance put the bait on the hook.

“Yeah, well, I got the message,” Pietro jammed his hands into his pockets.

“I never said anything about a message,” Lance gleefully reeled in.

“Whatever,” for once the speedster was feeling taciturn.

“Tell us what happened,” Lance was tired of playing the diplomat and tried for directness instead.

“Look, I don’t mess with your private affairs, so you don’t mess in mine. I hang out with you guys to forget this shit. I’m gonna get enough flak as it is from my parents,” Pietro ground out a dandelion with his sneaker.
They were all silent for a minute.

“Two years,” Lance finally snorted, “It’s been two years, and all of a sudden we’re finding out about this stuff. We used to have things that we did not talk about. Things we didn’t get into because we didn’t want to have to care. Now look at us, we’re arguing about those things,” his smile was cynical.

“There are a couple lines in the sand. Big deal,” Pietro shrugged, “Simple point is that we don’t cross them, right?”

“Hey, I’m cool with that. The first one has got to be that families stay at home,” Todd shivered, there were plenty of reasons why this place was his second home.

“Yeah,” Fred agreed slowly.

Fred didn’t think that this was going to solve anything. The reason they were having all of these problems now was because they hadn’t crossed those lines in the sand when they had first met. So, wasn’t this just delaying the inevitable?

They all fell silent again. It was different without Rogue. There weren’t as many drawn out pauses for one thing. For another, they always steered clear of any fights long before they came up. This was the first time that Pietro had actually gotten as far as he did with Todd. Inside every one of them was scared.

“This is a nice place you have here.”

They all swung around.

Ms. Monroe was leaning on the dead pieces of wood that they called a fence. She wasn’t wearing her usual white shirt and batik skirt combo that she wore at school. This Ms. Monroe wore denim and leather and looked like she ought to be riding a motorcycle into the sunset rather than teaching people how to project their voices on stage.

The boys goggled at her. Not only was this sudden transformation impressive, but this was the second time that day that someone had snuck up on them. They all drew together for protection against this unknown menace.

“Ms. Monroe?” Todd managed incredulously.

“Yes. I’m here for Pietro, I believe his parents are very worried,” she looked him squarely in the eye and Pietro looked down at the ground and mumbled something.

“How did you find this place?” Lance asked.

“I saw Pietro duck into an alley and I followed him. Not an easy job. I had forgotten that back here was so maze like,” she gazed at the surrounding buildings wistfully.

The boys all shared a glance that said ‘what did she mean, forgotten?’

“It’s five thirty already. Your parents are going to be quite a bit more than worried if you aren’t home by dark,” Ms. Monroe pointedly gestured at Pietro.

He went, his eyes fixed on the concrete. Lance, Fred and Todd all heard her say quietly as they rounded a corner, “Don’t worry, I’ll think up an excuse. But next time, be more careful.”
Eyebrows were raised all around the circle. Yet another significant look was passed around, ‘Why was Ms. Monroe covering for Pietro?’

Lance straightened up and looked at his watch, “Shit, I’ve got to get to work. See you,” he hoisted his back pack and ran off.

Fred heaved himself up from his seat and waved good bye as well.

Todd sat alone in the abandoned yard watching the sunset, putting off going home by a few more minutes. With a sigh he gathered his legs under him and leaped the fence.