-1Adri smiled as she walked into her art class. She had arrived early so she could try to get a seat next to Lance. Her plan had worked perfectly. The seat next to Lance was still empty.

"Hi, can I sit here?" she asked looking at Lance. He was definitely cuter than the picture Kitty kept of him under her pillow.

"Sure," Lance replied not looking up as Adri sat down and tossed her books on the floor. The second part of her little plan was the hardest. Somehow, she had to either convince Lance to help her or manipulate him so he didn't have a choice. The sound of the door opening pulled Adri from her plotting.

"Stupid teacher," she muttered as the teacher started talking about the next assignment, which was to be an abstract painting depicting an emotion. Adri listened for a moment and then smiled when she realized she could do this project without too much work.

"What are you gonna do?" she asked Lance taking a huge chance in talking to him. Lance turned and looked at the new girl. She was young, probably a freshman, although how a freshman could've been transferred into a senior class was beyond him.

"Dunno," Lance answered as Adri started to pick out a couple paints and pulled a brush from her back pack. "What about you?"

"Helplessness," Adri answered hiding her smile as Lance played straight into her waiting hands.

"Weird," he muttered.

"Not really. It's where I'm at right now. The governments blocked me completely out just because I wanna know the truth," Adri said softly knowing exactly what she was doing. Reading Kitty's stupid pink diary had been more than a little useful. Lance looked at Adri again. Maybe there's more to this than it appears, he thought.

"Government?" he asked already interested despite himself.

"Yeah, I mean, I'm just an innocent little mutant trying to find the truth about my father," Adri whispered her answer as fake tears started swelling in her Green-gray eyes.

"Mutant," Lance stated. Adri could see the rage in Lance's eyes. She had hit the right button this time. She didn't need to mention that even a human would have the same problems as her, it wouldn't get Lance all in defense about how mutants need to do their own thing and how the humans were holding them back.

"You want some help kid? I know my way about government sites, I could find you something," Lance offered.

"I guess, you don't have to help me. You could get in trouble," Adri said softly as the teacher started walking around the room to make sure the students were working on the project and not just painting dirty pictures as usual.

"I want to help you. No one has the right to keep us mutants apart, especially families. What's your father's name?"

"Nick Slate. He supposedly dead, but I don't think he is. I think the government's lying. I've seen pictures, recent ones, and he's in the background."

"Do you have any of these pictures?" Adri nodded and opening a yellow folder covered in stickers. The entire folder was filled with computer print outs, newspaper and magazine clippings, and several other bits of paper.

"This is the most recent one. It's from last year." Adri handed Lance a magazine article with a thick red circle around one of the men in the picture. The article itself wasn't important, but the picture made Lance pause. The man looked nothing like the girl sitting next to him.

"You look like your mother?"

"No, I don't look like either of them. What's that gotta do with my father?"

"Nothing," Lance muttered even more curious about the strange girl. Before he could ask another question the bell rang.

"Here's my cell number. Call me if you find anything," Adri said quietly closing the folder and tossing Lance a piece of paper before she disappeared into the wall to wall mass of students in the hall way. Lance looked at the piece of paper and decided to skip class and head to the computer lab.