Hi! This is S.S. Just a quick side note, somebody asked to see the ages of the flock and co. so I thought I'd post it here for all to see, read or ignore.
Max-21, Fang-21, Iggy-21, Nudge-19(I decided she had the earliest birthday), Gasman-15, Angel-13, Sparkler-19, Maxwell-23, Cannon-25, and Tiger's Eye-18.
And also my two cameo characters Silver-17 and Force-22. Kudos and virtual cookies to anyone who can guess my inspiration!
Anyway, enough of that, on with the show!
"I made one of my famous snap decisions, the kind that everyone remembers later for being either the stupidest dumb-butt thing they ever saw or else the miraculous saving of the day. I seemed to hear more of the first kind. That's gratitude for you." – Max, the Angel Experiment
Chapter Four: Second Guess
The lab was in chaos.
Putting on her super speed, Max had well beaten Angel and Team Fang to the lab-caves, what she found put the term 'ruffle her feathers' to a whole new meaning.
Heat, Glory, and Delta, hybrids from a sub-station of Angel's wing Max had set up after one too many singe limbs from assorted lab explosions, stood around in various stages of worry and helplessness.
Their presence wasn't reassuring.
The rest of the cave wasn't in much better shape. Smashed bits of metal and torn shreds of paper littered the lab. The lab didn't look like a tornado had hit it, it looked like a tsunami had flow through, along with a herd of a hundred stampeding zebra, followed by a Gasman who'd had beans for supper. It was beyond chaos. It was the very definition of chaos, something words couldn't describe.
And neither Fang nor Iggy were anywhere to be seen.
Max swore her heart stopped and for a minute. Nothing would process, she just stood there like a dumb animal waiting to be lead anyway from a panic-laden situation.
And then she snapped out of it. She wasn't a clueless brute, she was head of the most influential base in hybrid studies on the planet, she was perfectly capable of handling a crisis, and it was hardly her first time.
Desperately Max looked around for someone, anyone, to give her information. A girl with jet black hair and bright, frightened eyes was staring helplessly at the center of the room. "What happened?" Max demanded, trying to sound in charge and together and not like she was about to fall apart at the seams.
"I... I don't know." The girl said shakily. She looked to be about sixteen years old, her small pixie-like frame quivering in a mix of shock and fear. "One minute Mr. Walker and that dark, shady man were standing there and the next they just... they just…" The girl burst into hard, fast sobs clutching her chest, at which moment Max noticed she was holding, or rather strangling, the teleport device.
"Mr. Walk… Oh, you mean Iggy. And Fang. Crap." Max was practically babbling herself now, she tried to concentrate. "Calm down, It's OK." Max said, not sure if she was talking to the girl or herself. "Just take a deep breath and tell me what happened, OK?"
The girl nodded shakily, visibly growing still. "Yes.. Yes, Madam." Max bit her tongue, now was hardly the time for a reprimand. The girl took another breath. "Mr. … Mr. Walker gave me the warp accelerator to help run the testing becau… Because I had a passing familiarity with the design. I was created as a test subject for it, you see. But… but..." The girl closed her eyes tight to try and get control of herself.
"And then Iggy had you test it on him and Fang?" Max asked. This, unfortunately, was only mildly surprising. Iggy, of course, would want to test it and would probably convince Fang to get it on it. Idiots!
"N-No." The girl said shakily, her eyes slowly clearing as if waking from a nightmare. Max noticed her eyes were slatted like a cat's a finally took in the girl.
She was young certainly; around sixteen-seventeenish is appearance. She wore a light blue tank top that showed off her bare back, a rarity in a compound full of avian hybrids. Her nails had been replaced with claws and she had a certain gracefulness about her despite her obvious fear. It hit Max suddenly that this must have been the feline hybrid Fang had mention, Tiger's Eye right? She'd been at the compound for barely two weeks…
"Are you alright?" Max asked suddenly, interrupting whatever the girl had been going to say.
The girl seemed to finally be getting control of herself. "No, Madam. But I will be. Anyway, Mr. Walker instructed I just use it on the other guy… I don't know his name, Madam. But, please forgive me for saying so; Mr. Walker is the most completely frustrating, utterly humorless, horribly worthless flirt in the universe, Madam."
If it was anything less than Fang… and Iggy's life in the balance, Max probably would have found that really funny.
"But I didn't mean for this to happen! It was only a joke, I pointed it at him a ordered the device to send him across the room, I must have done something wrong, because the next thing I knew they both had just... disappeared! And there was a whirlwind in the lab, sent stuff flying everywhere. I'm so sorry, really I am, I…" Suddenly Tiger's Eye's eyes widened. "I... I won't have to leave the compound will I?" She was shaking again now, but obviously trying to hold it together, as if this would be the final nail in her coffin.
Max shook her absentmindedly. "No, of course not." If they sent away everybody who'd messed something up the compound would be very sparsely populated.
Max stared at the device, and was hit with a sudden wave of likely idiotic impulse.
Summing up every ounce of authority
she could muster, Max looked the girl square in the eyes. "Tiger's
Eye, whatever you did to them, do it to me."
Tiger's Eye
stared at her, uncomprehending. Max saw the utter stupidity of her
order reflected in those cat-like eyes. And she knew perfectly well
herself that she shouldn't be doing this. But she had felt the
beginnings of that wild desperation hit, the kind that warned her
Fang was leaving and… and he might not be coming back. She couldn't
go through that again. She wouldn't go through that again.
"Nudge, you're in charge." Max order through her radio, only waiting for the confusing demands for answers from the girl before returning her gaze to Tiger's Eye.
"Do it."
And probably because she was still too much in shock to think strait herself, Tiger's Eye obeyed.
