Chapter two is up and running. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this- and I figured out where this story is going (mostly).
"If you tell me you now have the power to launder money, I'm going to get kind of pissed." Also kind of excited. But mostly pissed.
"No, it's not like that. I used my power to get the money from someone," Iggy said. Now that his secret was out in the open, he seemed pretty excited about it.
"How, exactly?"
"He's like me!" Angel said, clapping her hands with excitement. She jumped forward and gave Iggy a hug.
"You can push thoughts into people's heads?" Gazzy asked. I could almost see the possibilities flickering through his mind as his smile grew wider.
"No. It's not like that. I can… well, I've only used it a couple of times, but from what I've seen so far, I can… seduce people."
I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing.
"It's not funny! It's actually really useful. And it's kind of like Angel's gift, since once I've seduced someone, they'll kind of do whatever I want."
"That's how you got the money?" Fang asked. I still found myself unable to contain my snorts of hilarity.
"Yeah. I was seducing all these chicks out of their money. There are a lot of rich girls around here. Hot too. At least from what I can tell," Iggy said, shrugging.
"Iggy, you've got to be kidding me. You're trying to tell us that your new power is seduction? That's got to be the most ridiculous superpower I've ever heard of. What are you, the Crimson Heartthrob?"
"I actually like that name, Max, and yes, it's real. I can use it right here if you want." He said, raising his eyebrow in a cocky, arrogant gesture. You want to try me?
I leaned forward. "Fine then. Let's have it," I said. I was ready for whatever he had to throw at me. If he thought he could penetrate my iron heart, then he was welcome to it.
"Wait, guys, hold up a second. Can you undo it afterwards?" Fang asked, the voice of reason as usual.
"Yeah, yeah, calm down lover boy, I'm not going to steal your girl. Just teach her a little lesson," Iggy said. Before I could react to Iggy's comment, he had grabbed my wrist. Suddenly, my field of vision narrowed to a pinprick, focused in on Iggy's face. All sound faded away, all my worries, everything, even the sensation of sitting here in the Martinez's living room. My mind had been emptied of everything but Iggy.
"Iggy…" I breathed. As the world around me expanded back to its normal size, Iggy still remained the first thing in my mind. How had I never noticed him like this before? He let go of my wrist, but I caught his hand, not wanting to let him go. I leaned forward and ran my fingers through his hair, unable to take my eyes off of his face. I was dimly aware of Nudge and Fang getting rather defensive around us, of the others laughing like crazy. I only had eyes for Iggy. My attention shifted to Iggy's lips, and I had the overwhelming urge to touch them. I released his hand to trace his lips with a fingertip.
"Iggy, turn her back to normal right now, or I swear to god…" Fang's voice was distant, barely registering with my brain. I didn't have time to think about him, not when Iggy was right here in front of me.
"Come on, Iggy, please, just quit it, will you?" In my peripheral vision I caught sight of Nudge's face, close to tears. But my gaze fixed back on Iggy in a second as I leaned forward, intent on exploring his lips with my own, knowing I wouldn't be satisfied until I could kiss him, knowing that beyond any shadow of a doubt I loved him, no one else, just Iggy….
And then it was gone. Iggy sighed as he released his hold on me.
"Sorry. That was just getting too weird for me Max. You're a nice girl and all, but you're not my type, and I wouldn't want to get your boyfriend any more pissed at me than he already is. Besides, I already have-"
He couldn't finish the sentence, because my fist had found its way into his face. Woops.
"You ever try and do that to me again, and I swear, I will make your life a living hell until the day you die. And then I'll follow you to the real hell and make you miserable there too."
He was grimacing and holding his nose. "If this isn't hell already, then what is?" he asked. He was bleeding, and I noticed Nudge run into the other room to grab some paper towels.
"How does castration sound?" I asked, lowering my voice. I moved away then, sitting back down in my chair as I watched the horror cross his face.
"You wouldn't-"
"Watch me."
Nudge helped him staunch the blood with the paper towels, looking torn.
"Umm, okay. Well, he definitely has this power. So that's kind of cool," Nudge said, trying to break the awkward silence. Fang was silently fuming, the anger radiating off him in palpable waves. Gazzy looked horrified by what he had just witnessed. Ella seemed torn between my side and Iggy's. And Angel…
"What's castration?"
An even more awkward silence followed.
"It's like… when you get your pets fixed," I said, hoping my explanation would satisfy her. Of course, there is no end to the curiosity of a seven year old. Sadly.
"Oh, so they don't have babies? Why don't you want Iggy to have babies?"
There were a million different answers to that question. Because I don't want him spreading his stupidity to the next generation. Because maybe if he didn't have hormones anymore he'd stop being such a stupid teenage boy. Because he just made me freaking fall in love with him and undid it in less than a minute and I'm angry that he got such a bizarre power that he could use against us.
"It was a joke honey. Never mind," I said.
"Oh," Angel said. I could tell by the look on her face, however, that she had read my mind and was mulling over those reasons in her head.
"Iggy, how long have you had this power? Why didn't you tell us about it?" Nudge asked, sounding heartbroken. She had been following him around a lot recently, no matter what she might try and say to the contrary. And he hadn't used his new power on her; she'd just fallen in love with him on her own.
"I just… I didn't know. I was kind of distracted by this girl since before then. So when this power showed up, I decided to use it to help get her to like me. And I figured you guys wouldn't approve," he said.
"Hell no. I don't approve of you making people into mindless love drones," I said. I shuddered at the memory of it. My mind had just turned to mush. Iggy flavored mush.
"I turn them back afterwards, I promise. I haven't left anyone like that. And Gloria, I'm not even going to use it on her. I just want to get close to her. That's why I've been going to those gamblers anonymous meetings."
If I wasn't so disgusted with Iggy's new power, I might have thought it sweet that he was going to woo this girl the old fashioned way. But I was. And I didn't. Besides, the pitiful face Nudge was pulling kind of made me want to punch Iggy again for loving someone else.
"You could have told us," Fang muttered. Well, hypocrite of the year award goes to the silent guy telling his friend to be more talkative.
"I know. I was gonna, eventually. But I kind of got caught up in it. It's pretty awesome to have that sort of power over someone. Sorry Max," he said, adding the last bit like an afterthought.
"Does it work on guys?" Nudge asked. I could tell she was trying to make conversation with Iggy, just to bring his attention back to her.
"I don't know. Haven't thought to try it out. Gazzy, Fang, you up for a little experiment?" he asked, grinning menacingly.
Gazzy bolted into the other room, and Fang just crossed his arms and inched slowly away.
"I'll take that as a no. But it should work on them. I don't see why it wouldn't," Iggy said.
And at that moment, my mom chose to come back into the house, arms full of groceries and an exhausted look on her face. Being the good daughter that I am (read: wanting to get out of the other conversation as badly as I could), I went to give her a hand. Gazzy joined us as well, and seemed unwilling to go near Iggy again, even tiptoeing when he had to go past him, as if Iggy couldn't hear every movement in the house like it was right next to him. Super hearing might not technically have been a power of his, but it sure seemed like it was.
"You alright?"
I almost jumped as Fang cornered me from behind.
"Jesus. You're lucky I didn't have something heavy or pointy in my hand," I said, waving a loaf of bread ineffectually at him.
He took it from me and shrugged. "This works just fine. I know that you loaf me," he said, smiling and hitting me playfully with it. To avoid the awkwardness of what he'd just said, I rolled my eyes and took it back from him.
"If you keep on using puns like this, you're going to replace Iggy as number one on my least-favorite-Flock-member list," I said.
"Which gets me back to my original question. You're feeling okay? No Iggy powers lingering around in your brain?"
I shook my head. "Nope. All clean. I'm creeped out as hell, but it's gone. Hopefully never to return."
"Cool. I got a little worried for a minute there," he said, chuckling quietly.
"What, jealous?" I asked teasingly.
"A little," he said. His honesty took me aback and I quickly turned away, examining a head of broccoli as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
"Well, I've got to go out. I'm going to meet Gloria at her cousin's house," Iggy said simply, pulling on his shoes. Ella looked ready to accompany him.
"We're just about to sit down and have dinner," my mom said, giving the two of them a disapproving look. Not surprised, though; had she known about Iggy's new girlfriend as well?
Were the five of us the only ones who had been out of the loop? Half of Mesa was probably gossiping about the two of them already, and here were the five of us bird kids, cooped (heh) up at home, doing… what exactly? Saving the world seemed to have been put on hold, or maybe just solved. Either the world had saved itself, or it was giving us some time to grow up before making us go back to the grind of crazy scientists and experiments and ass kicking. And so we'd spent the past year lazing around the house like a bunch of bums. We'd sure learned a lot about pop culture, and we'd done some productive stuff (Ella's required reading for school had become our required reading too), but what were we really accomplishing? Was this where we were going to spend the rest of our lives?
"I hope so," Angel said, coming up beside me, giving my hand a squeeze.
"Me too," I whispered to her. Was it the truth? I didn't really know yet.
"I'll be right back, I'm just going to take him to the bus stop, he knows the way from there," Ella said.
"And he's not going to be back, I take it. Family dinners aren't an option, though. You're not going to abandon everyone here for one girl you've known for all of a month," my mom replied. Her tone was no nonsense; she kind of sounded like me, actually. She could be so badass sometimes.
Iggy sighed but didn't argue, kicking off his shoes with maybe a bit too much gusto. Gazzy ducked as it whizzed by his ear.
Dinner at the Martinez's was something my mom had come up with to keep us all working functionally, given that there were now seven kids/teenagers packed into a small house, probably meant for four or five at most. She tried to make us communicate, something we'd all figured out was a necessity after our first few weeks of disastrous conflict. And having us do all of this touchy feely stuff during dinner kept us from all bolting the moment any uncomfortable topics were brought up. Food is like duck tape. It sticks people together (Disclaimer: do not tape your friends together. We did that one time with Gazzy and Fang. Worst. Idea. Ever.)
"So you finally told them about your girlfriend?" my mom asked as she put the food on the table, maneuvering around the rest of us as we laid out our plates and silverware.
"Yeah," Iggy said. He still seemed kind of irritated that he wouldn't be able to go see her, but sat down nonetheless. No doubt the tantalizing scents of the Italian food my mom had brought home were anchoring him to his chair. Iggy did prioritize food before girls, after all.
We chatted while we ate, which is how I learned about Angel's art experiments she'd been doing with chalk on the back lawn, about a chemical that Gazzy had ordered off the internet (Warning, highly explosive. Do not give to children under eighteen. Right), and way more than I had ever wanted to know about Dancing with the Stars, courtesy of Nudge.
Afterwards, we all helped clean up dinner and neatened things up. We all did chores around the house, since my mom had a job and Ella had school- we didn't really have too much to occupy our time. Chores were the least we could do.
It had begun to rain during dinner, the sort of intense rain that you only got very rarely in the desert, but when it happened, it was crazy- flash flood sort of crazy.
"Great," Ella mumbled, sitting by the window and watching our yard begin to fill with water.
"It's okay. The plants needed watering anyways," Angel said, perky and smiling. What a budding optimist she was. As much as I was a pessimist myself, I was happy for her. Optimism wasn't a luxury we'd been granted before this. For her to see the bright side of things meant that there had to be a bright side in the first place.
"Oh crap, I left my car windows down," my mom said, rushing out of the house in a blur.
"That sucks," Iggy muttered, then stretched. "Well, I guess I'm heading to bed, since none of you are going to make my evening interesting."
After he was gone, Nudge edged surreptitiously towards me.
"So what was it like? You were all over him," she said.
I rolled my eyes. "It wasn't fun." On a scale of one to ten, it was having your eyes eaten by hamsters.
"Really? I mean, you're not still feeling in love with him are you? Because if you are, maybe you should tell him, so he can take it out. I mean, he might have just accidentally left a bit of it in your head. It's nobody's fault, really, but you should get it seen to right away before it gets-"
I put a hand over her mouth. "It's gone. Believe me. I'm not going to try and jump his bones. He's all yours. Besides, I'm already…" I halted midway through my sentence. "I'm already busy with other stuff. I don't have time for a boy friend," I said, almost tripping over the words.
I mentally hit myself as I caught sight of Fang out of the corner of my eye. Why had I gone and said something stupid like that? Now he was going to think I was talking about him, telling him to back off or something. In reality, I had been about to say, "I already have Fang." But here I am, Max the chicken, too scared to say anything to him. I swear, give me a pack and a half of erasers over this emotion stuff any day.
I heard Angel giggle from nearby and made the executive decision not to strangle her. I was the bigger person here. That might have seemed glaringly obvious from the fact that she was a seven year old, but I still felt the need to justify it to myself.
My mom came back in, soaking wet, and grumpy.
"I hate the rain. That's why I live in the desert. So why am I still getting all this frigging rain?" she asked, irritation leaking into her voice.
Nudge had moved to the living room and was flipping through the channels, and seeing that my options for the evening were quickly narrowing down, I decided to get some rest. Right. Like I ever get to do that.
"Where's Iggy?"
Five minutes after I'd finally crawled under the covers, Gazzy burst into the girl's room and started looking under the bed, in the closet, everywhere that might conceivably hide a fifteen year old bird kid.
"Not in here," I said into my pillow.
"Max, we can't find him." Fang's voice was serious. I peered out from under the blanket, willing everyone to go away.
But they didn't. It was never that easy. I got up, threw on a coat and a pair of pants, and went out to find Iggy and his gambling addict of a girlfriend.
Isn't life grand?
End of chapter two. The next chapter is going to be in Fang's POV- I think I might switch back between him and Max every chapter or couple of chapters, maybe putting Iggy or one of the others in there occasionally. Any thoughts on this?