Chapter 1
Cold should be banned from the world. In fact, cold should be illegal. No one should have to suffer cold. And, yeah, I do have reason to be thinking this many times over again, as well as 'stupid freaking cold' and 'Fang I will wring your neck'. Fang has forced me - pleasured the kids - but yes, forced me to go with the Flock to the zoo. The one place we go after regaining freedom from Erasers, the School and crates is the freaking zoo? Where everything is in cages?
I reluctantly pulled out my wings and followed Fang into the open sky, with the kids trailing behind me.
"Do you even know where this place is?" I asked Fang, hoping he would be clueless as to where to go and we would have to turn back. But sadly, he pulled out a slip of paper and simply handed it to me. Crap. He Google Map'ed it.
I groaned inwardly. Let the torture begin.
So apparently the Central Park Zoo isn't that hard to find. Cause it's like, freaking huge.
*Side note: Yes, we are living in New York. Once again I was out voted. I wanted to live in a small Arizona town, while the others wanted to live in the city. And guess where we ended up. Yeah. Since when did I stop being leader?*
We entered the zoo gates, which had a pretty long line, then paid a whopping 62 bucks, since sadly Nudge had, like, grown up over the past however-many-years, so we had to pay a whole extra 5 bucks cause now apparently she's an adult. Pft.
"So," I started, preparing myself for the chorus of answers that would follow my question. "Where do you all want to go first-ONEATATIMEPLEASE!"
Gazzy very cutely and politely raised his small chubby hand. What a gentleman.
"Max, I reaaaaally wanna see the lizards, PLEASE?"
"We'll see about that Gaz, thanks for the input."
He threw his hands into the air and let them fall, with a look on his face that said 'WHAT? That's all I get for expressing my opinion?' ..Sort of.
Suddenly Nudge blurted out, ".GOSH. I just had the greatest idea EVER! I WANNA SEE THE DOLPHINS! PLEASEMAXPLEASEPLEASE!"
"Um, sure. Fang, why don't you go with Nudge and the Gasman to see dolphins while me, Iggy and Angel go see… something warm?"
"Well, can I go by myself to see the lizards?" said Gaz unexpectedly.
"No."
"Well why not? Don't think I can handle it? Max, I've, like, killed things with my own two fists before. I'm 9, and I really think I can handle it."
"No, Gaz, I don't want you walking around in this huge place by yourself."
"I'm not a baby Max!"
"Well – you're whining, and, acting like one. So just go with Fang. Fang?"
And Fang was just like, "Sure." Not much emotion there. Not like that's much of a change anyway.
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Gazzy
"Alright. I behold to you – a dolphin," said Fang.
Nudge practically squealed. "OMG its sooo cute! Gaz, isn't it cute?"
"Yeah. Adorable."
"Fang, do you think it does tricks? Do you think they'd let me keep it if I had like a big aquarium or something?" said Nudge.
"I think you'd need a pretty big aquarium, Nudge," said Fang.
"Well…." Nudge and Fang ranted on and on. I rolled my eyes. This is so stupid. Dolphins are so girly. I wanna go see the lizards. And Max wouldn't even let me see them. She doesn't think I'm grown up enough. Well, she'd see I was grown up if I went by myself and didn't die, wouldn't she? Fine. And if I do, it'll still be her own stupid fault.
Fang and Nudge were so distracted talking about how much a giant aquarium and a dolphin would cost to upkeep, they didn't even notice when I headed towards the desert area.
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Max
Somewhere warm…. Desert?
"How do you guys feel about going to the desert section?"
"Too hot," muttered Angel.
"Too hot? It's freaking freezing Ange!"
"Not when you're forced to be bundled up in, like 10 zillion coats. And scarves. And hats."
"Please, Ange? For me?"
"But Ma-ax…"
Eventually we all agreed to go to Deserts, with a tweensy persuasion from me, slash promising of double stuf Oreos and hot chocolate when we got home. However, by the time we get to the Desert exhibit I'm going to be frozen. Like, seriously. To the core.
But as we started to pile in, we noticed something sort of… bad. So we scurried out, not too fast, though, because me and Fang agreed a meeting place if things went wrong. I went there, obviously out of the zoo, and called his cell.
"Get out of there. Now," I said quickly, and hung up.
Gasman
When I got to the Desert section, I had this, like, high feeling from both being able to see the coolest lizards ever, and of course, rebelling. I was looking at the awesome-est one, the Komodo Dragon, mesmerized, and almost a little scared at the same time, when I noticed it had grown quieter. When I looked around me casually, I noticed most people were gone, apart from some pretty good looking too-tourist-y guys walking around, almost – I winced – closing in on me.
I tried to walk casually closer to the exit and start running as fast as I could. But, I couldn't. Because one grabbed my arm and pulled hard back on it, and I fell to the floor. Hard. That was the problem with trying to escape by yourself. Because with at least Fang and Nudge here we would've gotten out of this.
'Why does Max always have to be right…', I muttered as I got up and tried to run. But that was when another – confirmed – Eraser 4.0 slammed my head against the rail, and everything went pitch black. Almost instantly.