This is for the machete-holding bunny.

The droning began. Oh heck.

Immediately I sprang into action, ok so I'd had some time off, but this was all still pretty mechanic to me, the only new thing was ensuring Sarah was safe on my front, there was no way I was taking my eyes off her.

"Up and away?" Fang suggested, not looking too hopeful.

There were hundreds of them, we had no hope against this many, but I wasn't about to give that away to my flock, they may be older now, but I wasn't about to admit that we weren't going to make it. We had to do this for Nudge. And for Gazzy.

"No," I answered, "there's too many, we can't fly out… battle from the ground guys, Iggy, ten o clock in about 5 seconds, everyone else, make sure all heck breaks loose ok?"

With that the first of these erasers hit us, but as a metal hand hit me around the head, making even me see starts, realisation hit me.

"It's the eraser-bots guys, hit them round the head, they have loose necks." Trying to keep calm and stay in battle mode was baffling and harder than ever, as I turned around to face yet another Ari, killing your own brother once was hard enough, befriending him and them watching him expire was harder, being faced with an army of his evil self was the worst yet. The only good news was that they hadn't fixed the neck joints, so maybe the recorded message wasn't right.

The recorded message, I counted back about 9 seconds since I'd killed the first bot.

"UP AND AWAY!" I yelled, hightailing it out of there just as first one, then two, and more started "Self-destructing". Heck, so they'd gotten rid of the recorded message to trick us.

Turning in midair to count heads I shouted "report", starting to realise what a good revelation this meant, so the new bots self destructed after 10 seconds, all we had to do was kill one and fly away…

"Here," Fang grinned, as realisation hit him too.

"Here," Angel grinned too.

"Uh, what's going on?" Iggy managed.

"Here," Nudge beamed, right by my face.

Wait….WHAT? "Nudge!" I yelled, forgetting Sarah, or the fact that I was in midair, and throwing my arms round her neck.

"Wow, Max. I'm falling, seriously, like let go," She laughed. Then, I caught myself as we were nearing the ground and let go.

"Oh, my God, you guys are like alive, have you been alive all this time? I left, but I never expected to find anything, I was only flying for what, half an hour. Like, wow, omg, you have a baby Max? Please tell me it's yours. Is Fang the father? Like that's so…" I shoved my hand over her mouth in an attempt to silence her, laughing.

"Slow down Nudge," I said, just as Angel flew over and catapulted herself at Nudge, and the two managed to jump excitedly in mid-air, holding onto each others arms. I'm not even kidding, I don't know how you manage to jump in mid-air.

Fang flew over to my side, after having filled Iggy in on the Ari-bots. "Did you see her sneak up on us?" I asked him suspiciously. He shook his head. We stood watching in silence for a few minutes, chuckling, and letting them excite themselves out, I couldn't even catch glimpses of words, they were just talking so fast.

A little hand reached up to my face, silently asking me in her eyes who Nudge was, by looking between us. I smiled at her softly, "she's family". Then she looked at me again, and looked down at the burning remains of the eraser-bots or ari-bots, and I shook my head, "they're mean and nasty." She giggled at this, and I frowned, did I have a masochistic child, she seemed excited that they were burning down there. Oh well, prepares her for the worst I guess.

When the excited squeal of jarbled nonsense stopped between Nudge and Angel, which despite itself made me happy, Nudge turned round to me. "I really missed you guys, like really, so much…" she was about to ramble on again, but I shot her a look and she stopped herself.

"How did you appear?" I asked, still confused at the point of the 10 second battle where she had appeared, obviously, I'd been slightly distracted, so hadn't noticed if someone else had been fighting with us.

"Well, I was in LA, and like, it was amazing Max, there were like girls with actual fashion sense, I mean not that you guys don't or anything, but I mean it was like pink heaven, and I went to school, and it was amazing, I went shopping like all the time, and my friends all loved it like as much as me…and I had a family, well, not a real family, and not like you guys, but I really wanted to start school, and the principal said he like needed to know my home address, and didn't believe that I didn't have one because it was like LA, hello. So….. I may have abused the rules just a teeeensy bit, and hacked a computer or two to find families that like wanted kids and stuff…" wait, she did just say what I thought right? I looked at Fang alarmed and he shrugged. "…and like there was one that sounded perfect, so I asked them to keep me." I wasn't going to ask. "They were nice and all though, I mean, they let me go to school, and have my friends round and go to parties, and gave me money to shop and stuff…" She trailed off at this point. For Nudge to be speechless seemed odd. I mean I was so glad Nudge had had the childhood she wanted at last, even if she got it the wrong way, but why did she leave?

"And what Nudge? Weren't you happy honey?" I asked.

"I missed you is all." She looked up at me, a sad look in her eyes. "And like, it didn't seem right not kicking eraser butt all the time, so I figured, even if you guys were… well if you weren't around anymore, I couldn't stay, I was like wasting my wings or something, so I figured it was time to stretch out my wings again, I bought like presents for all of you, just in case I found you, and like I didn't expect anything, I didn't even know where I was going, like, I was just flying for a bit, but I saw the eraser things all flying towards something, and I figured that even though I was on my own, they must be attacking something right? And whoever it was, I wanted to join them, I mean any enemy of them is a friend of mine, and when I flew close enough, they were already on the ground and I could see it was you, and I was about to join you, but you flew up towards me, and I thought you'd seen me, so I was about to fly towards you, but then I saw them explode, so I kinda stayed put, and then thought I'd surprise you instead," she grinned.

Wow, that was the longest speech I'd ever let Nudge give me, but I had to know what was going on…huh, seemed believable.

"So you uh….bought us gifts?" I asked, smiling.

"Yes like oh my god, you'll so love it Max, I got you like a really cute outfit, its like so you, it's like, well its just so cute." She pulled a pink top and black skirt out of her bag and I rolled my eyes.

"Urm, skirts aren't so good for flying," I muttered, catching the smirk on Fang's face, and silencing it with a scowl, or at least trying to.

"Come on, lets hit a hotel or something guys," I mumbled, before she offloaded the contents of her bag in mid-air so she wouldn't drop everything. Something still lingered in my mind, the eraser bots were getting better at finding us, and Gazzy was still at the biggest threat, so Hawaii wasn't going to take too long from here, but some crazy thought told me it just might be a bit more difficult, things were way too easy here, it just wasn't right.