Hi, I just wanted to run this by you people. I'm just wondering if anybody else loves Maximum Ride and its characters quite as much as I do. Here's how I know that I love them dearly: I own all five books (there's still just five, right?) and sometimes I'll snatch one of them off the bookshelf and open it up, and no matter what page in the entire series I open to, I start weeping. Anybody else feel that strongly about them? I just get very emotional at every single thing that happens to these kids. They're people I genuinely care about.

Chapter 12

Keegan scanned the skies through the skylight of the central chamber.

"Looking for aliens?" Niles said cheerfully.

"Just trying to look at the future," Keegan said. "No one can really know the future, you understand. There are a lot of things I have to break through to have any idea at all of what's going on. Right now, for example, we're going to be confronted by two douche bags."

"Lang and Shey?"

"That's right."

Lang and Shey, ranked fifth and sixth respectively, were the resident bullies of Jewel's court. They had been known to respond to the violent death of a comrade with nothing but guffaws.

"Heya, Coogan," Shey said. "Keep up the cloud-gazing, sport."

"Keegan," Niles said.

"Hmm?"

"Her name is Keegan," Niles snapped.

Shey looked Niles up and down. "And you are?"

"I'm her boyfriend," Niles said.

"Really?" Shey said, circling Niles. "She's awful plain, isn't she?"

"What's a couple of kids like you doing in this organization, anyway?" Lang demanded. "You're not valuable."

"She's got more value than you two losers," Niles hissed.

Shey wrapped her arms around Niles. "Oh, we can't have infighting, not here, not now," she said in a sultry voice. "That invariably leads to murder…"

Jewel dropped from the ceiling suddenly. "Keegan, you've got to help me," he said.

"Um, okay," she said. "But I don't know what I can do that you can't."

"Keegan, there are things in your power that I can't even imagine," Jewel said.

Keegan gasped. How could he know? Once someone learned of her power, there was no way to counteract that. It was one of her few limitations.

Niles braced himself.

"Keegan, I've never known anyone with more insight than you," Jewel said. "Lao Hu is avoiding me. There's talk that she's trying to get rid of the antibodies that will protect her from the Spider Virus. There must be a way you can get her back onto the team."

Keegan sighed. He didn't know. He only meant… her humanity, perhaps she could call it.

"I don't know, Master," she said.

"Lao Hu wants to die?" Lang said.

"I can't let that happen," Jewel said. "Is there no way to change someone's mind when that happens?"

"Sure there is," Shey said. "Just hang out under the balcony going 'I can't lose you, Lao Hu! I love you!'"

Lang choked out laughter. "Oh, man, does the robot overlord have a little crush?"

Jewel grabbed Lang and Shey by their throats and held them over his head. "Lao Hu is a valuable soldier," he said. "That is her place, and she is forgetting that, which I cannot allow. And the two of you had best not forget your place." He dropped them. They were unconscious.

"This is just about station, then?" Niles said warily.

"I can't lose Lao Hu," Jewel snarled. "I just can't."

Niles and Keegan caught the double meaning.

Jewel promptly hauled himself up the wall, meeting Lao Hu on a walkway high above.

"How many more times must I apologize to you?" he demanded.

"You broke my arms, Master Jewel," she replied coldly. "There's no apologizing for that."

"I broke your arms while professing my love for you," Jewel cried. "That must hold some weight."

Lao Hu stared. "Absolutely not." She brushed past him.

"Now, wait just one minute," Jewel said. "You've been my colonel for three years. You know what happens to people who are openly defiant."

"Yes, but I've witnessed people being shot out of cannons at the bottom of the sea," Lao Hu said. "That makes what you do look pretty."

"Well, I do like being pretty, but that's not my point," Jewel said. "You're defying me. You know that always results in a quick death. But I think you understand that there are some people I would never choose to harm, and you, Lao Hu Cho, are one of them. I would never hurt you."

She turned to glare at him.

"Am I right?" Jewel pestered.

"It's Cho Lao Hu," she finally said.

"What?"

"I'm Chinese. My name is Cho Lao Hu. Surname comes first."

"Of course."

"And to your theory, perhaps I didn't know that," she said. "Perhaps I thought that you would kill me and I simply did not care."

"Be my queen, Lao Hu," Jewel said.

"What?!"

"Be my queen. The other night, you and I fell in love, plain as day. You can't let something like broken arms stand in the way of that."

"You didn't love me," Lao Hu said. "You were only trying to figure out the mechanics of it."

"That's my function," Jewel said. "I was meant to be logical. But you know what else I was meant to be? As human as possible. I want to love you, Lao Hu. Let me try. Please."

She stepped up to him and caressed his face. "You have a beautiful soul," she whispered.

"And it's all yours," Jewel said. He pulled the tiny gray canister from some part of his body. "When the time comes, I want you, my queen, to open the Spider Virus."

Lao Hu smiled wickedly. "Gladly and absolutely," she hissed.

This one was hard to write! I wanted to convey that Jewel and Lao Hu are in love, but still evil. Do you think I pulled it off?