Hey, all. Back with the next story. Again it's set in the same AU as my other stories. I'd like to apologise in advance if my posting isn't always regular. I will do my best, but I have a lot of college work on at the moment.

Also, there may be points in this story, where racism is indicated towards. I'd just like to say I do not condone any type of racism or bullying, it's just the way the story may write itself.

The K+ rating is based on the inclusion of some mild coarse language.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Thunderbirds (they belong to someone who is not me, I don't actually know who it is now) and I am not making any money from this story. None of the characters are intended to portray any living or dead person and any similarities are entirely coincidental.

This disclaimer applies to all chapters posted for this story.

1. Rebellion

Tilly Green looked up, wiping the back of her green-paint splattered hand across her eyes. Golden, rainbowed sunlight was just beginning to flood into the room, catching the vivid blue streaks in her otherwise dark hair, and highlighting the silver lines vinyled down the black walls of her bedroom behind her.

Dark rings had begun to circle her deep brown eyes, adding to the eyeliner layered around the lower lashes, and she stood up, sparing a glance for what she had spent all night working on, down on the floor, before heading to the mirror, roughly screwed against one of doors to her wardrobe. A small grimace at her appearance confirmed that she needed to wash before the real start of the events to come, but she was interrupted by the entry of her mother.

The thirty-one year old took one glance around the room and sighed.

"Matilda Green, have you been up all night painting that poster?"

The fifteen year old shrugged. "Have you still not learnt to knock?" She retaliated, but her mother ignored her, a skill borne of a lot of practice.

"You know I don't approve of all of this mumbo-jumbo crap you go in for, and you know that you're grounded. You're not going out today."

"Sure I'm not." Tilly attempted to edge past her mother.

"Stop right there, young lady."

"I'm just going to wash. It's not like I'm going to go out without the posters, and stuff, is it?"

"Fine. Go and shower and then you can clear up this mess." Tilly barely spared her mother a fleeting glance. "I mean it. Then you can come with me to the store."

Pushing past the figure blocking her doorway, Tilly made her way to the bathroom, and firmly closed and locked the pine door behind her, before leaning back on it and sighing, blowing her long fringe out of her eyes. It flopped quietly back on the right hand side of her face, stubbornly obscuring her view. In the pocket of her sapphire jeans, something vibrated ferociously, desperately wanting attention.

Slipping down the doorframe, the fifteen year old sat on the floor; legs stretched out before her, and pulled her phone from her pocket. The screen flashed as she keyed a few buttons.

'U still cming 2day? Alx.'

Tilly smiled and entered in her reply.

"Sure I am, Alex. Grounding doesn't stop Tilly Green!" She whispered out loud to no one in particular, imagining herself for a brief moment, super-hero pose, and all.

Then she stood, turning on the scalding shower water, and stripping off her clothes. Stepping beneath the pounding water, she washed thoroughly, scrubbing away the fatigue and at the same time just some of the anger slipped away.

Her mother was just looking out for her; she could almost empathise with her if she tried really hard, and Alex and the others could appear slightly unsavoury at times. Still, she'd been mollycoddled since her father had died six years ago, her mother had wanted to protect her, and that was when things had started to change.

Tilly had stopped allowing people to call her Matilda when she had gone up to middle school. The change had provided her with a chance to transform her life, starting with the name she hated. Her mother had told her a new label, did not make the thing inside different, just, as a new name wouldn't change who it was that she was, but Tilly was determined.

Then she had met Alex Haddon. Tall with dyed black hair and a mischievous streak, she was immediately drawn to him, and the strange ash-blonde girl who seemed to have no friends (whether it was because she had never had any, or whether it was because she had pushed them all away, he never found out) and a strange past that teachers were very aware of, in turn had attracted him.

The first her mother had known about her daughter's developing rebellious streak was when she had come back from one her new friend's houses with dark hair. To begin with Marisa Green was all for marching the ill-behaved girl straight to the hairdressers, but had reminded herself that she needed to give Tilly space. After all, things were very different from a few years ago; the death had affected them both in varying ways.

It had got worse though, those damned blue streaks had appeared in her hair, sometimes with complimenting red, purple or green highlights as well. By then Marisa had lost control though; her daughter began coming home in the early hours of the night having been round a friends, she joined up to some society that frequently held protests and more recently, had starting drinking when out with her new friends. Unfortunately the cogs were already in motion, and it was going to take a large effort to stop Tilly completely falling into this 'new' way of life.

The shower switched off, leaving a strange silence in its place, and Tilly rubbed herself dry, before wrapping the towel about her body and leaving the bathroom. Back in her room, she carefully navigated around the mess on her floor, empty paint pots and water tubs stood around the finished poster, which was surrounded by miniature mountains of dirty clothes, lightly sprinkled with clean garments on top, but she ignored it all heading towards the mirror again.

Beneath it was her hairdryer and brush, with which she carefully dried her hair; taking care to make sure it was straight when finished, with the blue running vertically in the correct, strategic places. Her hair needed dying again, she mused. Then she sat on the floor, using just the bottom section of the reflective glass to apply thick black make-up around her eyes again. Finished she stood, towel still wrapped around her body, and searched through the piles of clothes on her floor for a clean pair of jeans and a top.

Dressed and content with her appearance, Tilly collected up some of the discarded pots on her floor and placed them in a neat pile on her cluttered desk, before testing the paint of her latest poster with her finger. Scanning the digit for wet acrylic and finding none, she rolled the A2 sized paper up and twisted a rubber band around it's middle, securing it in a tight cylinder ready for transportation. Despite her mother forbidding Tilly to go out, she was planning on directly disobeying her.

Mobile phone, money and keys were thrust into her jeans' pocket and the rolled up poster secured under one arm, then the fifteen-year-old protester opened her plastic framed bedroom window and proceed to climb down the green, ivy-laced lattice that ran down, next to her make-shift exit. Her mother didn't hear her leave her leave the house, nor did she notice the figure hugging the wall as she ran past the kitchen window.

And then Tilly Green was away.

Smiling to herself, she pulled out her phone again.

A soft vibrating as the phone was slipped back into her pocket, confirmed that the message had been received.

The Mobridge Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery had lost much of it's momentum when North America had abandoned the ways of having servants, but the society had stood strong, instead turning to battle more modern issues, like the under-paid, African-immigrant workers in the Hans J. De Marco Factory, in downtown Glenham, a neighbouring town.

That was the purpose of the protest today. The society was to gather together and hold up traffic, in a plea to get their message across to members of the public.

Tilly Green walked briskly, following signs to Lake Oahe, where she was set to meet Alex and the other members of the group. Her mother would probably be just discovering her escape now, and would be furiously slamming doors behind her, she grinned at the thought.

Almost twenty minutes into her journey, Tilly stopped by an old tourist guide to consult a crudely drawn, artist's impression map of Mobridge. It was a bigger town than people realised, and that included Tilly. She'd never walked to the lake by herself before, her father had always taken her, and since he died she'd never been back. Her eyebrows drew together in a frown as she studied the map, and she bit her lower lip in thought.

Okay, so maybe she should have planned ahead, and thought about how she was going to get to the gathering, but the best protestors did things on a whim, right? Sighing, she trudged down the paved road towards the bus stop, from where she got on a battered, old transport vehicle to Lake Oahe.

Pulling up at the side of the toll system to get on the bridge that went for miles over the expanse of water, the driver turned to Tilly.

"Last stop, Miss. I don't go no further; else I've got to pay. Get the other side of those tolls though, and you'll find another bus."

"Thanks."

Tilly jumped down from the bus on to the hot road beneath, and headed towards the pedestrian access gate, a large, heavy, black iron structure that required all of her strength to push open and slip through. Clearly, the government didn't want people to walk through the tolls, she thought.

On the other side, the gathered members from the society met her. All jumbled up people, wearing mis-matching tops, many with large, blaring letters, demanding equal pay and fair treatment, stood together, signs in hand, getting in the way of the traffic trying to pass through to the other side.

Tilly acknowledged greetings from a couple of the people she knew, but continued searching for one person in particular. After all, there were many there that she had never even met before, and she didn't want to be landed with a group of strangers, with whom she had very little in common.

"He's over there, honey." Tilly spun round to see Jude Hollands pointing over her shoulder. She was a well-built woman, with a ferocious attitude to life, and a determination to get her own way. Tilly had always liked Jude, just over ten years her senior, she'd never treated the rebellious teenager like a kid, but as the adult she almost was, and in return had received respect and trust.

"Thanks, Jude." She smiled back, genuinely meaning it, and the fifteen year old headed in the direction shown to her.

And there he was. Standing with his back to her, he was shouting at cars passing in front of him, brandishing his banner as though it would make all the difference in the world.

"Alex." She called out to him. "Alex."

Alex Haddon heard his name over the sound of the traffic and turned to look for whom it was who needed him, annoyed that his latest rant had been interrupted. He'd just been getting in to it too. His anger vanished in a second though, when he saw the dark haired girl who had shouted for him.

"Hey, Til."

The girl sidled over to him.

"Hey. I got the poster done. I was up all last night, my mum had a fit."

He pulled her close to him. "Never mind, at least you're here. So, let's see the work of art then."

Tilly Green unravelled the poster from beneath her arm where she'd been carrying it, and held it up proudly for her friend to see.

"I like it."

"Really?"

"Uh huh. Of course I do, Til. Who else would come up with slogans like you do?"

Tilly giggled, flushing with delight at his words, desperate to impress.

"Come on. There's a great spot just over here." He pointed to their right, towards the edge of the bridge. "No one's there, and all the drivers can't miss us."

He dragged the girl off behind him, where together they stood and protested their own anger at the factory to the passing travellers, from their spot on the zig-zagging yellow lines.