Greetings, readermcjibberpeople.

I know this is a lame subsitute for an update to Taken Again, but I supposed that I might do something, laying here, being all sick and stuff. Gah, I hate being sick and stuff. Whatever. Anywho, I was feeling all gushy and sentimental today, I had the summary to this story sitting around in my "To-Do" document (I know, I have one of those, full of summaries, and it's five pages long, ugh), and I wasn't able to do anything that involved a lot of moving, so here we are.

I hope you enjoy my escapades of Iggy and babies. I had fun writing this. It takes place after the series, but sorta totally disregards "Nevermore" since it hasn't come out here yet. So according to this story, Nevermore goes like this: Angel lives. Bad guys die. The End. :D ALSO, this story is extremely canon, so that means Mylan, and slight mentions of Fax and Eggy. (Ugh, all the things I don't like). If you have time, please put a few words into that review box down there!

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not Iggy, not babies, not Maximum Ride by JP, nothin'.

Of course, this story starts with Iggy standing in the middle of a crater, holding a wailing baby. What fun.

Now all of you guys are going to go 'aww, a baby!', and there'll be people who'll say something like 'It's Iggy's baby, isn't it'. Then there'll be that one person who will have the guts to brave my wrath and say 'It's your baby too, right Max?'. And then I'll stand there, wondering not for the first time why I actually decided to actually share the story of my life with the world and whether I should respect or beat the crap out of the person who would think such a thing. I blame Fang.

I blame Fang for almost everything, when I'm not blaming Iggy. Iggy's usually the culprit for just about, well, everything.

I really shouldn't have even shared that whole 'apocalypse' mess we prevented, because now it seemed like every psycho in the world who could get his hands on a few guns or explosives was setting things on fire just to annoy me. I mean, letting people know about the wings and the Itex and the human and animal rights violations through Fang's blog had been beneficial at the time, but now it was annoying. We couldn't go anywhere without press snapping pictures at us (funny, how Iggy was the only one who wasn't bothered by the constant flashes. Lucky jerk). New evil douches across the globe were coming to light, taunting us with their evil plots and such. People kept waking me up from my 3 PM naps with literary contract offers and biography deals. I thought I had just done that myself. I guess I was a pretty good writer, I mean, besides eating cookies and flying, it was the one thing I actually kind of liked to do. Fang had his blog, which I guess was a thing, Dylan sang (which he was actually pretty good at), I wrote, Nudge shopped...I guess, and Iggy cooked, blew stuff up, and...saved babies from certain peril from time to time. He was a multitasker. I had stopped writing because the story was over now.

Psyche.

Back to the fact, that, yeah, Iggy had a baby in his hands. In the middle of a smoking crater. With ash completely covering the two of them, even in places I hope I'll never have to see. The baby was crying its eyes out, and when I ran to the edge of the gaping hole in the earth, I realized that Iggy pretty much looked the same way, a gash across his shoulder that had torn open his brand new shirt and blind, tear-rimmed eyes that looked like they would explode like the sicko's bomb had approximately six minutes before. I skidded down to where Iggy was, attempting to take in this really weird situation. It didn't work. I was just really happy that Dylan had decided not to come to town with us that day. He was like melted butter around babies. It was adorable.

No, Max. Noooo.

Iggy looked like a three-year-old who just watched someone kill his puppy's puppies and then thrust a baby into his hands. I didn't know whether to hug him or back away slowly from the inevitable time bomb of tears that was about to go off. He kept turning his head from the screaming baby, to me, and then back to the screaming baby that, oh my god, just would not shut up. His lip quivered, and it seemed like he was seriously considering joining the kid in its little symphony of wails. I couldn't let that happen.

"Hey, hey, Iggy, you alright?" I soothed the best I could, placing a hand on his arm. He turned his head to me again, mouth moving in silent little words he couldn't voice. I took the baby with one arm and brought it close to me. The effect on Iggy was instantaneous. It was as if I had just taken away his pacifier, or something.

It was awkward.

"N-No, Max," Iggy whimpered, taking a step forward but tumbling into the dust. I called out for Nudge so I could give this baby to someone, and knelt down beside Iggy as he fumbled for his balance. "No, the-the baby, I-"

"It's...alive." I deemed this by looking at the gaping mouth and the flailing limbs. Call it a hunch. "You saved it."

"I know," Iggy hissed, tears finally falling from his eyes. I could tell he didn't like this little fact. "B-But the baby, its, its mom-"

"Iggy!" Nudge cried, coming down into the little ditch we'd called home. "We heard the boom! We were so scared, I was so scared, because it wasn't your kind of boom, you know, it was more sinister and evil and agghhhh and Ella will be so relieved is that a baby?"

I was still working my way around the booms.

"Take it." I thrust the bundle of joy that was giving me a migraine into Nudge's arms. Unlike me, Nudge actually kind of knew what to do with small children that weren't Angel back when things kind of not really still made sense, so she took the kid and started rocking it, bouncing it on her hip and that kind of thing. She sent worried looks at Iggy as she murmured nothings to the little thing. I was happy now that it was just Iggy, Nudge and I on this little trip. I couldn't handle it if I had to keep Angel in check as well, and Dylan would distract me. Rawr. Oh, damn, wait-

"Where's Gazzy?" I asked Nudge, ripping up the bottom hem of my shirt with my teeth and peeling Iggy's shirt off of his torso. When he didn't make an innuendo, I knew some serious shiz was going down. I wrapped the strips I made around the cut on his shoulder, and with that spasmodic mother hen nature I'm sometimes known for, I wiped away Iggy's tears with the back of my hand. I smiled as he glared at me.

There was a reason I still let my sister crush on him, you know.

"He's coming." Nudge replied without looking at me, eyes still on the baby as she rocked him around. Or her. It. Whatever. "Helped a lady up, saw a candy store. The usual."

"Max." Iggy spoke suddenly, but I didn't pay attention, just finished wrapping up his shoulder and giving him a pat on the back for his valiant efforts of heroism before walking away. He knew that's all he'd get. What, was I supposed to bake him cookies or something? Yeah, right. Made me laugh, there.

"So, let's get a move on." I announced, standing up and dusting ash off of my jeans. "Lots to do, baby's mom to find, and it's taco night, chip chop."

"Max." Iggy spoke again, but I interrupted him again. Silly me.

"Of course, the question is what sort of mother leaves her kid in the middle of an explosion. I'm sure he-is it a 'he', Nudge? Can you check, I need this verified-will be scarred for life from this later. What a slumber party topic this'll be."

"Max!" Iggy nearly screamed at me, and I turned to him, seeing his eyes wet again. Whoa. Iggy didn't cry a bunch. I was kind of shocked for a moment, but then he resumed speaking. I guess he was waiting to see if I would continue on my word tirade again. "Max...the baby...its mom...she's dead."

Whoa. Heavy.

That was the wrong thought to think. I'm a terrible person.

"Dead?" Nudge squeaked.

"She shoved the baby into my arms and told me to save it. I took off, I tried to grab her, too, but-but-" Iggy sniffled and prevented himself from breaking down, wiping a sleeve across his face. He 'looked' (this kid makes writing so hard, the little jerk) around the crater like it had suddenly burst into flames and kicked the puppies the earlier explosion had killed, backing up and falling onto his butt. I reached forward and pulled him up, a bit gentler than I usually would have. I touched his arm with two of my fingers and tapped his elbow gently. Iggy sniffed and gave me a shaky smile before taking my hand and letting me lead him up and out of the hole in the pavement. Nudge followed us hastily, still bouncing that damn baby on her hip.

"Max, what're we gonna do now?" Nudge asked. "I mean, we have this baby, and if its mom is dead, what do we do? Does it have a daddy? Is it an orphan now, oh no, that'd be terrible! We can't give it to the orphanage, Max, we just can't!"

I buried my head in my hands. Sirens were roaring in the distance and were steadily coming closer. The police knew enough to just let us be for the most part now, but we still had to skedaddle before anything bad went down. I made a split decision. It was probably a bad one, but I made it, and I don't change my mind. Much.

"We'll take it back to the house," The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. "I'll give the Chief of Police a call when we get back, he can find the kid's dad and then we can get it off our hands. If it's an orphan, well, we'll go from there."

"Sounds like a plan." Iggy's voice wavered a bit, but he was still shook up. A good cup of single cup hot-cocoa would get his spirits up again. That one-cup coffee machine was the best investment I ever had my mom ever make.

"We should find Gazzy." Nudge spoke up, but I had already spotted the little bugger, running toward us. He was waving one hand and using the other to attempt the rapidly decreasing mass of candy against his chest. He ran up, dumped his pile of sweets into Iggy's backpack, and then grimaced, taking another small, wrapped package out of the pile and running off again. He stuck the thing into a large trash can and then walked calmly away from it, sticking his hands in his pockets and whistling as the trash can caught fire and spewed smoldering twinkie wrappers from its contents. Iggy had long since become less of a bother than his own protégé, seeing as Gasman was still in that I-must-be-as-annoying-as-mutant-bird-kid-ly-possible phase and Iggy was more into girls and Masterchef now ("If they're impressed by the blind girl now, just wait until I win!"). I couldn't keep up with the little nine-year-old. I'd send him to summer camp or something, but I had this irrational fear of a his face on the front of the national newspaper; 'Bird Child Complains about Cooking at Camp, Blows Up Boathouse.'

"Hey! Is that a baby?" Gazzy asked, coming up to us. "Can I touch it?"

"No."

"Aw, c'mon!" Gazzy whined, looking at the little bundle in Nudge's arms. "It's so cute...is he ours? Can we keep him?"

"I'll get you a dog later." I told him, putting my hand on his back and pushing him down the street, towards the nearest alley so we could take off. Gasman's face split into a grin.

"Really?"

I tapped Iggy twice on the back of his hand and nodded at Nudge. "No, not really."

"Aw, Max!"

We all took off to the skies, ignoring Gazzy's protests, claiming that he had rights and he should be able to have a dog of his own, since Total was technically Angel's and didn't like to play because he was all stuffy and married and crap. I wondered when Congress had added the Right For Small Children To Own Dogs to the Constitution. Gazzy got pouty after a while and took a Snickers out of Iggy's pack, drowning his sorrows in chocolate.

Hey, that was my job.

"I wonder if Angel can read baby's minds." Nudge wondered, gazing at the baby's now calm face and grinning. "I guess it'd just be a bunch of gibberish."

"Or it's secretly plotting to kill us all."

"Max, are we going to name it?" Nudge asked, either oblivious or very smart, ignoring Gasman. "I think it's a girl."

"No way, it's a boy!"

"We could name her Melody, or Tiara, or, Avia, or, or, or Shaniqua!"

"I think we should let Dylan name it." I dragged a hand over my face. "We've never been good with that kind of thing."

"Yeah, you're kinda bad at it." Gazzy stuck his tongue out. "Nice job naming me after flatulence."

"I only named Angel." I shrugged. "I called it."

"Who named me?" Nudge asked.

"I named you both." Iggy snarked, pride leaking into that smug little tone of his. "You thought it was so stupid all the time that Fang didn't talk to you that much since Max and I tested a lot in the School, so you'd nudge Fang and try to get him to talk until he exploded."

"Sounds cool." Gasman beamed. "And me?"

"Dude, your stench is nasty."

"I take offense."

"No, you don't." Iggy scoffed.

Gazzy pulled a face. "Stop being right. It's annoying."

"I'm always right, Gasser." Iggy boasted. I barked out a laugh.

"You're confusing us again, Ig. I keep telling you, we don't look that alike."

"Oh, shut up."

"Hey, Max?" Nudge asked. I looked over at her. "What do we do if we have to keep the baby? Like, how are we going to raise it? I don't want to give it to an orphanage. I've seen Annie and Oliver Twist and stuff, and I'm not letting that happen to this little baby. It's too cute to have its life ruined."

"It's life won't be ruined." I told her. "If it doesn't have a dad, there'll be couples falling at this little guy's tiny feet to adopt him. Him, it...I can't decide. We need to finalize this kid's gender."

"Ten bucks on boy." Gazzy piped up.

"I'll take that." Nudge grinned.

"I'm staying out of it," Iggy raised his hands up in mock defeat. "I'm nearly broke at it is, since someone stole my piggy bank, Max."

"We needed a new microwave." I shrugged. "And plus, it's your fault for actually having a piggy bank. It was too easy."

"You gave that to me for our tenth birthday!"

"When will you learn that my presents are terrible?"

"Shush, Max!" Nudge scolded. "You're making Shaniqua upset."

"Okay, we are not naming this thing Shaniqua."

"We're not going to name it anything until we know if it inherited the family jewels or not." I growled.

"Who's gonna be its parents if we keep it?" Gazzy inquired.

"Max'll be the mom." Nudge stated, as if it was obvious. Whoa, sister. "She's been a mom to us all, so it's natural. And Dylan will be the daddy."

"Why will Dylan be the dad?" Gazzy asked, frustrated. "Iggy's older."

"We don't know that." Nudge pointed out. "Dylan's a clone, he could be older."

"I'm oldest, so it doesn't matter, I choose." I ground out.

"Do you think Fang would come visit if we told him we had a baby?"

My heart clenched.

"Yeah, Fang loves babies, even though he won't admit it." Nudge smiled. "Maybe even Maya and the gang will come by! It'll be a reunion!"

"We're not gonna tell him." I was actually kind of shocked the words didn't come out of my mouth, I was so ready to say them. I looked over at Iggy's face, was was as blank as as cold as stone. My expression softened a bit. He and I kind of had the same feeling toward Fang nowadays, even though whenever I saw him I deliberated between kissing him and punching him. Iggy tended to skip straight to the punching, when I let him.

The conversation was over after that. The kids had come to respect Iggy more than they used to, think of him more as the dad in our flock. Dylan was a father figure of sorts, too, but while Dylan was the nice, professional dad that had a certain devotion toward the Mom of the flock (cough, me, cough) that tended to get annoying sometimes, Iggy was the fun dad, the one everyone went to with problems or plans to blow up the mailbox of the neighbor with the mean cat. However, they knew who would tolerate their bullshit (Dylan) and who wouldn't (The Evil Ginger).

After a few minutes we landed in front of our current house, folding in our wings the best we could and trying desperately not to make it known to the world we had taken a baby. It was very hard when the baby was fussing in Nudge's arms. Iggy walked forward and snatched the bundle from her arms, which earned him an outraged glare, but it worked. The baby calmed at his soothings and he handed the baby to me.

"They'll freak out less if you have him." Iggy told me, and I nodded, taking our new responsibility in my arms. We walked into the house, and Angel came bounding down the stairs, smiling. Dylan followed her, a bit slower. He came up to us, a grin on his face.

"You're home." He smiled, walking toward me. Then, he stopped, as I knew he would. "You have a baby. Why do you have a baby?"

"Don't worry, it's not what you think." Iggy broke in, smiling in that way he smiles when he's going to make something light on fire. Devious. "She wasn't hiding some weird bird-kid pregnancy on you, we just saved it from an explosion in town down on Brook Street."

And that, of course, explained everything.

It goes without saying that once Iggy names something, he can't get rid of it. Like his pet rock he had once, that bird he rescued back when we were nine, or Gasman. The baby was the same way. Which made the day he had to give it back to the world that much worse.

Turned out that the baby was a boy, and Gasman won the bet and became ten dollars richer (whoop). I didn't want to name it, because I told everyone that the Chief of Police said that we wouldn't get to keep it, even if there was no father. But my family would not be discouraged. Plus, Gasman nearly went insane just calling the kid "Baby". Nudge kept singing Justin Bieber, and Gazzy said that that would just not do. Dylan was going to name the baby, but Iggy beat him to it.

Iggy said that he was thinking about contributing the name 'Felix' to our name pool. Well, everyone else's name pool, which contained names like 'Freckles', 'Feathers', 'Icarus', and 'Hans'. I liked Felix best.

"It means 'lucky'." Iggy had said, smiling down at the baby. "I think he's pretty lucky."

Lucky or not, the kid really loved Iggy. I avoided holding him for too long, because he didn't like me all too much. I think he knew that I felt uncomfortable around him. Babies were creepy like that. He liked Gazzy, Nudge, Dylan, and Angel just fine when they wanted to cuddle with him, but he loved Iggy the best. Nudge could swoon, Gazzy could make fart 'noises', and Dylan could coochi-coo all he wanted, but the baby only wanted Iggy. Iggy connected with him. I mean, he had been the guy to rescue him from an early death. Iggy would put him in a seat in the kitchen and talk to him while he cooked. He'd sit with him on the couch and tell him jokes. The baby would laugh. That baby sure loved to laugh. It smiled and giggled and erupted with adorable little baby laughter whenever Iggy smiled at him or told him something funny like he actually could understand the joke. After a few days, Iggy wasn't calling the kid 'Felix'.

"Hi there, Jester." Iggy smiled down at the baby, plucking him from Nudge's outstretched hands and sitting with him on the couch. He pulled a face and the baby giggled, reaching out a little hand and boop-ing Iggy on the nose.

"Jester?" I asked skeptically, lounging in my chair. Iggy turned his head in my direction.

"Yeah, Jester." He replied. "Like Chester, but with a 'J'."

"...Why?" Gazzy asked from his position hanging upside down off his chair. Angel smiled from her perch on top of Gazzy's legs, which were still on the chair.

"Well, he's a little jokester." Iggy said, as if it was obvious. He turned Little J around and held him up for us to see. "Have you ever heard a baby laugh so much?"

Right on cue, the kid started to giggle. I was pretty sure it just liked hearing Iggy's voice.

Iggy's face broke into a smile and he hugged the baby to him, falling back and letting him sit on his chest and giggle. And giggle.

He never cried when Iggy was in the room.

"Iggy," Nudge bit her lip. "You do know that-"

I silenced her with a look and shook my head. There was no use ruining Iggy's fun. He could enjoy having the kid around while he still had the opportunity.

They found the dad of the kid. He was 28, and now a widower. He was forever grateful to us for saving his son. He would be coming in an hour to pick up his kid, because he thought his son was dead and couldn't bear one more hour without him, now that he knew where he was. He was grieving over the loss of his wife, but he was a great guy. He'd take care of the baby. He'd give him a future. We didn't need to worry anymore. They'd see us in an hour.

That's what the Chief of Police said on the phone. I was numb. I was horrified. What would I tell Iggy?

How could I tell Iggy?

We'd spent nearly a week with the kid. Six days. Even I had been getting kind of attached to the crying little bundle of giggles and dirty diapers. Iggy loved the kid. Jester. Little J.

That kid couldn't give a kid a normal name to save his life. We wouldn't have had it any other way.

I swallowed down my emotions and told everyone that the kid's dad was coming, his real dad, to take him home. That we couldn't keep him anymore. Iggy had rescued him, and he felt as if Little J was really his, I knew that. But we couldn't keep him, he wasn't ours. His dad missed him very much, and he needed Jester back.

Didn't normal families do this with rescued dogs?

Iggy took it like a man. He swallowed down his tears, and when the guy came for his son, he hugged Jester for all he was worth. He hugged the baby like it was really his, like he hadn't just sheltered it from the stray explosions that tended to follow us around like stalkers. Iggy hugged him like he loved him, and then he gave him away.

My heart shattered. I nearly cried. Nudge did. Gazzy sniffled a bit. Angel smiled sadly. Dylan held my hand. Iggy stayed strong. He shook the dad's hand, accepted his thanks, smiled when he said that he'd send pictures. Smiled wider when he said they hadn't given the baby-Benjamin-a middle name yet, and yes, his middle name would of course be Jester. Iggy stayed strong throughout the entire ordeal.

When the dad closed the door to his car and drove off with Benjamin, Little J, in the backseat, strapped into his car seat safe and sound, Iggy watched. And then he turned around, walked up the stairs, closed the door to his bedroom, and started sobbing. We didn't stop him. None of us made a move to do anything. We all knew Iggy would appreciate us more that way.

Things happened to us every week. It just so happened that that week, Iggy learned a whole lot about love, and about life. Cheesy lessons didn't come to us much. Most of the time it came to us in hot dogs to the face or peanut butter in our shoes.

Sure, this story started off funny, with Iggy and explosions, like most moments of our lives, and ended up sad. It didn't matter to us. Jokes were just a way to hide all that crazy shiz that plagues our lives. We learned lessons through the sad stuff, and the lesson that came with our little adventure that week, it was clear. When the time was right, and Iggy had a kid of his own, winged or otherwise, he was gonna be a great dad.

Obviously.

Awwww.

The review box/button/whatever it is now loves you, so give it some love in return. Make my sick days less boring. Please. I need to be entertained XD