Another? I think so.

This is inspired by the song Teenagers by My Chemical Romance. Hope you enjoy!

Bold means song lyrics.

Italics means thoughts.

-One-shot!-

I heard a door slam, loudly, from the kitchen, and went out to inspect the scene of the crime and who the culprit was.

Nudge stood there, her hair frizzy and wildly undone, her backpack thrown on the floor, and her eyes out for blood. She looked at me and said four simple words.

"Max? I hate her."

She then proceeded to run up the stairs and slam her own bedroom door as hard as she could, making the whole house shake and the windows rattle. It was eerily quiet after that.

Fang wandered out of the family room at about that moment, bewildered. Gazzy and Iggy followed, and Angel shambled in from the backyard, clinging to Celeste. Total came out of the basement, his nails clicking so loudly against the linoleum floor in the silence that they seemed like nuclear explosions.

Fang and I shared a look, and then he began walking up the stairs calmly and quietly, braced for impact as if Nudge might come out with a bomb or some gasoline and a lighter and threaten to light the place up. I padded softly after him, looking back as if to say, "We'll handle this."

The kids and dog dispersed.

As Fang and I reached her door, we both seemed unsure of how to proceed. We had had far from normal experiences growing up. None of us were prepared for what Nudge was going through, what with her decision to enroll in a normal high school after we settled down.

Being chased by mutants and scientists who would stop at nothing to either a) kill you or b) clone + do much worse things to you didn't exactly prepare one to tell their pseudo-daughter how to handle a Mean Girl cutting off her braid or stealing her boyfriend.

But what is a winged-mutant gonna do?

I motioned for Fang to step out of the way, and he did so almost gladly-I guess that being a boy as well as never having had any normal human experiences is worse than just the latter when in this situation.

Quietly, gingerly and gently, I pushed open the door and peeked in.

Nudge lay, sniffling, on her stomach, staring out the window that was just above the headboard of her bed. She'd let her wings out of the slits that were cut in the back of her favorite top, and they were settled, very ruffled from the events of today I guessed, on the floor of either side of her bed.

I braced myself for the second apocalypse-we'd already fended off the first one, right?-and knocked on the door.

"Come in guys. Sorry I slammed the doors." She sniffled again. She dropped her face to her pillow.

I looked back at Fang and he nodded. We stepped in, shut the door, and sat on the end of her bed, one of us next to either of her wings.

She pushed herself up, pulled in her wings and turned to us. "Why are you here?" She asked, her big brown eyes watery and her nose red and raw.

"Because we want to know what's wrong, and we want to help," I said, smoothing out her hair with one hand. Fang nodded in agreement with me.

"It's no big deal... I'm okay." She sighed heavily and pushed my hand away tiredly, looking as though she had the weight of the world on her small fifteen year-old shoulders, almost.

And yes, I know exactly what that looks like.

"Well you're not chatting our ears off, and you're crying... Somehow, I doubt you're okay," I said, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Who do I need to beat up?" Fang said, seriously, though there was a glint of humor in his pitch black eyes.

She cracked a smile. "No one."

"Well then what happened?" She was less tense now, and she rolled her shoulders, letting her wings out again. She began to smooth them out.

"It was nothing, really. I just... I just thought that something was true... And it turned out not to be. He turned out not to be," she sighed again and fell back down on the mountain of pink she called her pillows.

I was about to try and offer comfort in some way, though I had no idea how, when the Nudge Channel seemed to recover it's director, producer and writer, and was just airing it's latest episode.

"I've liked this boy for a little while, named Beck, and we sit next to each other in Biology... And things were going well, and it seemed like he liked me back. I thought so, anyway, and so did Melinda, my friend from P.E.," Nudge clarified, seeing Fang's lost look. "But today I skipped into the cafeteria, I had just finished my English report and I was really happy so I was skipping, because I knew it would be an 'A' and oh wait, right, Beck. Anyway, I came in, and there was Alyssa, sitting next to him and making him laugh. And she grabbed his hand. And he let her. And then she looked me right in the eyes as if she'd won, and I'd lost," her voice got wobbly and her face crumpled up. "Max... I think I know how you felt about the Red Haired Wonder, and Brigid, and Max II, now."

I glanced at Fang and he looked like he wanted to punch himself in the face, very ashamed, and hurt on behalf of and for Nudge.

That's just about the most emotion I've ever seen on his face at once.

I looked back at Nudge and saw a tear falling down her face as her bottom lip trembled.

"Shhh, Nudge, I know it hurts. But you'll be okay, okay? It may seem like the end of the world, but you're a beautiful girl. One day, you'll find your Prince Charming. And he'll be so much better than Beck, and no one, not even girls like Alyssa, will ever take him from you." I took her into my arms and hugged her, hard.

She broke down into tears, however, but I thought I knew she just needed a hug. I motioned with my head to Fang, telling him to join in, but he'd left already. I grumbled inwardly, but continued hugging her until all of her tears were cried out, and she fell asleep.

Laying her down gently, I closed the door soundlessly and walked downstairs to find out where Nudge's near-father had gone that was more important than comforting her.

I ran smack into the sulking black-hoodied figure I'd been glaring about at the bottom of the stairs, and just as I started to indignantly shriek, quietly so as not to wake Nudge, "WHERE did you go?" he put a finger to my lips, and dragged me with his other hand to the back yard.

I found three bird kids and a dog. The kids were holding loaded water guns, and the dog had a squeaky-toy filled with water, as well. "Oh...'kay?"

"I think this might make her feel better," and then Fang pointed to a life-sized Justin Bieber cardboard cut-out, with the face of a boy with black hair and green eyes, labeled "Beck Hardwicke," taped to the head.

And so later that afternoon, Gazzy and Angel went to wake Nudge with ice-cold water, eliciting an amazingly loud shriek from her, and then she chased them down the stairs, threatening them all kinds of bodily-harm. And as she reached the sliding glass door to the back yard, Iggy handed her a water gun, and she saw the object that was to be used for target practice.

Let me just say two things:

1) Teenagers scare the living crap out of me,

and 2) The Flock hasn't had that much fun in years.

-End of one-shot!-

So that wasn't as DEPRESSING, and it was longer. But it wasn't all the way happy until the end, either.

Review if you liked it, and thanks for reading, and if you didn't like it, thanks for reading anyway!

Have a great day, fellow minions!