Hiyo :D I'm back! I meant to update this on Thursday, but I've been a tad under the weather (happens every summer, meh) and we went on some impromptu-ish trip to the Cape and then I had stuff and stuff and stuff. But it's here now, and extra long for you guys! I wasn't feeling well, but I listened to some Imagine Dragons, watched some Olympic Beach Volleyball, wrote the remainder of the chapter and I felt better. Just remember to review! Oh, and if you didn't, go check out my new MR one-shot. Lovles and stuffles.

This is a heavy chapter. Things are picking up now, gosh...

MAX

We all had pretty much mastered at that point the art of dealing with Iggy episodes. The normal ones, anyway. Oh, ew, that sounds weird and horribly grosstastic.

This...this was not normal.

Iggy was scratching at his eyes. Check. He was squirming around like a worm and a waterless fish's hybrid child. Check. He was screaming. Check. He wouldn't let any of us touch him, even kicking me in the gut (which would not go unpunished) when I tried to console him. Uh...not check. That was bad.

"Iggy, Iggy, it's okay, I'm here." Nudge soothed, attempting to grab his flailing hand. Once she got a good grip on his palm he seemed to tone the freak out down a notch, breathing really heavily and looking close to sobbing, but not trying to kill himself and others. Nudge ran a thumb over his lifeline, silent tears coming out of her eyes. Gasman had Angel gathered up on his lap, holding her tightly and protectively. "It's alright, it's going to be all right, Iggy. I'm here, and Max is here, and Gazzy, and Angel. We're here, nothing's gonna hurt you. We're fine, and you're fine, okay?"

I had to say, Nudge was good at this comforting thing. She was officially on comfort duty.

"N-No," Iggy sobbed, his voice breaking. "D-dead."

"We're not dead, Iggy." I whispered. "We're right here, alive, we're okay."

I reached out and took his other hand, placing it gingerly onto my jawline. Iggy stiffened, and then relaxed, sinking into Nudge. But then he tensed and shook his head, muttering under his breath. Nudge and I leaned forward, trying to decipher his mumblings.

"No, no, no." Iggy moaned. "Alive, they're alive, dead, no, here, abandoned me, here, no, gone, left me for Bob, no, no, no, heard them, heard them, heard them. Messing with my head again, getoutgetoutgetout..."

Nudge and I shared a terrified look for a split second before I heard Angel moaning again. Dear God, what else could go wrong?

Ugh, I didn't want to answer that.

"Angel, what's wrong now, hun?" I asked, turning toward her.

"He-he's sending me a message again." Angel groaned. "Through Iggy."

I whipped back around to Ig, biting my lip seeing him rock back and forth, hugging his legs and squeezing his eyes shut as he muttered to himself. "Who, Bob? I thought that that was a one-time deal!"

Angel shook her head. "Ugh. N-no, there's...something in Iggy's...head, he can...mess it up. False memories, that's what's happening, Max. He thinks something else happened at the hospital. He thinks we left him there to have Bob take his memories away."

"What?" Nudge snarled, gathering Iggy in her arms and trying to get him to stop...whatever he was doing. Iggy would have none of it, clocked out from all of us as he tried to sort things out in his mind. Angel groaned again, and I crawled forward to her. Total poked his head up under her arm and licked her in his own little attempt to make her feel better.

"Are you okay, Ange?" Gazzy asked.

Angel nodded stiffly. "Y-yeah, hurts less than Iggy's memories. Short. He just...oh."

"Iggy remembers everything now?" I wondered. "Is that why-" I trailed off, my question answering itself with one quick look at my pseudo brother. I felt so informed, but so behind. Everything was happening too fast, and I wasn't a mind reader. I was out of the loop.

I didn't like that.

Suddenly Iggy stopped all of his muttering, becoming silent as he rocked back and forth. Angel flew her head up, little blue eyes alarmed.

"He gave me an address." She rasped. "In Detroit. He says...he says that if you, M-Max, if you want F-Fang back, to b-bring Iggy to him, and he'll...trade."

"What?" Gazzy cried. "Is he stupid? Trade?"

"He says that if we don't trade, he'll just take Iggy and kill Fang." Angel gulped. "But he wants you to know...he intends to give Iggy back. He doesn't want anyone to die. But we have to...cooperate, or there will be consequences. He calls it...incentive."

"I'll shove his incentive right up his ass." I whispered, clenching my fists.

Angel closed her eyes tightly. "He says...ta ta for now." She opened her eyes and looked at me. "I think this man is insane."

"Iggy?" Nudge muttered. "Iggy, can you hear me? Open your eyes, Ig."

We all stopped where we were and stared at Nudge try to rouse Iggy, who had seemed to have fallen unconscious in her arms. Gazzy inches sideways and tucked Angel into his shoulder, putting his little arm around her little shoulder. Happy for the shelter, it seemed, Angel buried her head into her brother, staring at Iggy like the rest of us. I crawled forward very slowly on my hands and knees, uneasy at the sense of impending doom we all felt in the air. Nudge shook Iggy gently, her hair obscuring my view of Iggy's face.

"Iggy." Nudge stressed, her voice hushed. "Iggy, it's Nudge. I need you to wake up, okay? We need to get out of here, we're gonna get you some help."

Nudge's definition if help was pretty different than mine. Mine consisted of duct tape, ice cream, and Reynolds Wrap.

Everything was silent for the longest time. It felt like like hours, though it only could have been a few seconds. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. It was utterly, completely silent.

Until it wasn't.

Noise exploded all around me as suddenly Iggy's eyes flashed open, his hand flew up, and Nudge cried out, hand to her face. Nudge was falling to the ground, Iggy was jackknifing up into the air, a crazed look in his eyes. Total ran under Otis, tail beneath his legs, yelping. Gazzy fell back on his butt, and Angel screamed, not in pain this time, but in warning, fear...

I was on top of Iggy before I even realized it, pocketknife that had been inside my boot suddenly open and hovering above his neck as I pinned him down. Iggy looked as if he was either about to start laughing or crying, or both. Nudge, clutching the right side of her face, crawled away desperately to where Gasman and Angel sat, terrified. Angel was leaning forward, but Gasman was holding her back. He held out another arm out for Nudge as she crawled over to them, and she gratefully wrapped her arms around the two of them. My arm shook above Iggy as I stared down at him, expression hard. He had just hit Nudge.

He. Had hit. Nudge.

"Max, don't hurt him!" Angel cried, her breaths coming out like sobs. I was pretty sure she was crying, but I wasn't going to risk looking back at her. Not with Iggy here. Just in a split few moments, Iggy had suddenly gone from 'friend' to 'threat'. "It's not his fault, Max, it's not him! Don't hurt him!" Her voice broke. "Don't hurt him, please!"

I blinked rapidly, sweat beginning to blossom on my face as I looked back at Iggy's face. His blind eyes showed all emotion, but they were changing way to fast for me to read. Anger, defeat, denial, loss, frustration, confusion, fear, so much fear...

"Well?" Iggy's voice croaked. "You gonna do it?"

I was shocked for a moment, and I stared at him, my grip slackening just a little before I hardened it again. "What?"

"You gonna kill me or what?" Iggy asked, voice leaking dare. Challenge. "I know, it would be so easy. Everything they want, gone. All the pieces to the puzzle thrown in the trash can. So do it." He tilted his head up at me and whispered it. "Do it."

I gulped, blinking again. I tried to deliberate what to do, but the challenge in Iggy's eyes suddenly flashed to a look of despair, and he was talking again, manipulating the both of us, and I was powerless against it. "Please, Max. Do it, please. Do it now!"

"NO!" I screamed at him, hair falling in his face, sweat dripping onto his freckles. "Snap out of it, Iggy!"

"Just leave!" He screamed back, eyes flashing, emotions changing, I couldn't keep track. "Leave me like before! Leave me for the dogs Max, show me what you really are!"

"I didn't leave you!" I roared, arms shaking. Iggy flinched back at that, head hitting the ground. "I didn't leave you, Iggy, you know it." My voice lowered seriously. "You know it."

Iggy gulped now, his expression so lost that it wanted to make me just break down. He glued his sightless eyes on my face, his lips moving soundlessly until he managed to break words out in a coarse rasp. "It's so real." He ground out. "It's so real, Max. The feelings, the memories, oh God, they're all there..." He started to tremble. I didn't dare move a muscle. "Help me, Max, please, make them go away, make him go away, please."

"I will, Iggy." I said back, my voice seemingly so much louder than his. "I promise, we're going to find him. And I'm going to kill him."

Iggy nodded, turning his head to the side and panting into the grass. "I feel...normal." He breathed. "But it's there, it's there, and...I can't trust myself, Max. I can't trust it."

"I know." I hung my head. "I know. We'll make it right."

We stayed like that for a while. I don't know how long it was, really, but it felt like years, and when Iggy's eyes didn't change, his emotions and memories didn't flare, I finally decided I could let him go. Cautiously. "I'm gonna let you up now." I told him. "Make a move, I end you."

Iggy let out a rough laugh. "I know that's a promise."

And then I was laughing, too, a weird laugh that I don't think I'd ever laughed before. We both cracked ourselves up as the kids and the dog looked at us like we were completely insane. Our lives were insane, the villain to our story was insane, the whole thing was insane. Why couldn't we be a little crazy too?

After we killed Bob, I'd take us all to a shrink. Something told me we'd need it.

Iggy didn't suddenly go from happy pyro ginger to axe murderer in a split second, but he was far from normal. Even without-memories-of-the-last-fourteen-years normal. He walked around, paced, like he was itching to run, and when he wasn't pacing, he was sitting on the bed of the motel room I rented out of desperateness, eyeing us all distrustfully. He'd laugh at Gazzy's farts, apologize profusely to Nudge, crack a joke, but he was straining, and he knew it. It wasn't completely his fault, I knew that. Mess with a guy's memories of everything he once believed in and he was bound to be climbing the walls a little bit, but that didn't mean I didn't have my eye on him. He spoke quietly with Angel on the bed so none of us could hear them while I packed some supplies we had gotten from the nearby Seven-Eleven. Nudge insisted in helping in some way, even though her eye was blackening and I wanted her to rest. I gave her the job of trying to find some information on Itex and Bob, whatever she could, and where the place of the address Bob gave us was located. What it looked like. Where the vantage points were so I could perch up there and wait for Bob to emerge so I could descend on him and stick my pocketknife into his flailing-

Ahem.

Gasman felt pretty useless, standing around in the motel room. Nudge's eye was throbbing, but I didn't exactly have the right supplies for that, so I gave him some Reynolds Wrap and told him to go run and get some ice from the soda machine in the McDonalds across the street, no stopping. Happy for a job, he was back in record time, and Nudge had something to rest on her bruised face. I would have given her a raw steak, or whatever people give people with black eyes to make it heal lickedy-split, but I was preoccupied and out of rib-eyes, so she'd have to deal. Until I gave her the opportunity to return the favor to Iggy, that is. It would come.

"Max?" Iggy asked, his voice small. I turned my head toward him, but his face was tilted toward the floor. He wasn't doing anything now that Angel had stopped their conversation and had gone over to Gasman on the floor to play Jenga. Jenga was about the only game we carried on us because you could shove all the pieces in one box, it didn't matter how many you lost, and in extreme cases, they made cute little throwing knives when you sharpened them.

"Yeah?" I grunted in response, tucking away an extra sweater for Angel into a pack. I opened my pack to find my clothes blocked by one of Fang's sweatshirts, and I held back a choke of air by holding my breath and then exhaling calmly before cramming the thing into the nearest bag I could find and out of sight. "What do you need?"

"C'mere." Iggy moaned, tucking his legs up and putting his head in his hands. I turned around, stopping what I was doing. When Iggy didn't move, I started towards him.

"That a good idea, Ig?" I tried for a smile. "Don't want you to go all Hawkeye on us."

"We just saw the movie, and you're making bad puns." Iggy groaned.

I shrugged, sitting cautiously across from him on the other bed. "It's what I do."

Iggy shook his head, but underneath the mop of orange hair I could see a smirk, and that in itself was a victory for me. It was gone as soon as it came, though, and Iggy sat still for a while before speaking in a hushed tone. "Nudge is mad at me."

"We're all mad at you." I replied, and he snapped his head up. I cuffed him on the shoulder, smirking. "We're mad at you, but we don't blame you, Ig. Sure, you went bat shit crazy out in the middle of nowhere while you were making pancakes and Nudge got hit in the eye. So what? As far as I'm concerned, none of that is your fault."

"I attacked Nudge." Iggy muttered. "I...I thought you guys abandoned me. I thought you were monsters, that I couldn't trust you, and that you were gonna hurt me. I still think it, even though I know you wouldn't. But you did. I don't know what to think."

"I think that you should think whatever we tell you to think." I crossed my arms. "I mean seriously, would you ever take us to do that?"

"Yes." Iggy mumbled. "No." He threw up his arms, agitated. "I don't know."

"The answer is no." I replied. "You failed the test. Well, I'll give you a C, because of the whole memory manipulation thing. I'll let it slide this one time."

"I just want it to stop." Iggy bit his lip, kneading his head with his knuckles. "Angel said that she saw the memories, too, but that the...events at the hospital didn't happen. I believe her, but I don't. I'm scared. I don't want to second-guess myself, and I don't want to hurt any of you."

"You won't." I deadpanned.

"You don't know that." Iggy looked up at me. "How can you know that?"

"Because I know everything, and I'm always right." I told him. "Look, you don't really have a grip on the situation right now, so it's my job to do that for you, and make sure you remember who're the good guys here. Who are the good guys?"

"You are." Iggy barked out, a smile on his face, and this time, I could see it in his eyes.

"And who are the bad guys?"

"People who make the little plastic things on the ends of shoelaces."

"And?"

"Bob, the magical wizard of child abuse." Iggy's teeth showed in his smirk. I stood and clapped him on the shoulder again, turning and biffing him on the head for good measure.

"And don't you forget it." I growled good-naturedly, turning back toward my packs. "Don't make me regret saving your life, mister. I've only done so like three times this week."

"Who was it that beat the evil clone, huh?" Iggy put up his hands.

"I seem to remember you getting thrown off a cliff and getting a concussion." I shot back. "If it wasn't for our healing you'd probably have permanent brain damage by now, Bird Brain."

"Taking out the bird puns. That's low, Max, that's low."

"Low? I'll show you low. Do you want to go back to Canada?"

"If you are finished," Nudge snapped from the kitchenette table, eyes (well, eye, the other was kinda swollen shut, nice going, Igster) urgent as she held up the screen of the laptop we 'borrowed' from that library back in Arkansas. "Max, I found where we're looking for. I found Fang."

FANG

"Fang, my dear boy, would you like a beverage?" The voice I decided I hated the most in the world asked me, the tone so sickly innocent that I wanted to puke. I thought about doing so, too, just to spite him. It would have been funny. Bob turned around from the waiter who had brought food and drinks into the first-class douchecanoe section of the Itex brand jet, which was flying me to who-knows-the-hell-where. I was kind of hoping that it would crash, so I could fly away, but I doubted my chances with that. I was just thankful that the evil scientist in the room was blocking my view of the waiter's head. Small graces. Bob took a step toward me, so I glowered at the floor. "An appetizer? Cheese? Crackers?"

"Can I have a knife with that?" I growled, not looking up. Suddenly my jaw was wrenched upwards so that I was forced to look into Bob's eyes. His fugly little beetle eyes.

Bob's face was contorted with anger, his own jaw clenched as he held mine in a vice grip. "What did I tell you?" He snarled. "You look at me when I'm talking to you, experiment. Or else the only place you'll find a knife is in your girlfriend's pretty little neck."

I glared at him for a good thirty seconds, which was a decent record. He tried to keep up, I knew he was testing me, but he broke away before he blinked and submitted, tearing his face away and stomping across the room.

"Did that feel intimate to you?" I asked innocently, mocking him. "'Cause I think it kinda did."

He ignored me. "If you refuse to accept my offers then you will not eat at all."

I rolled my eyes. "The whole 'hands tied to the chair' things here isn't really helping."

"Would you like to be cut free?"

"Yes."

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Bob smirked at me, and I felt my scowl go even deeper into my face.

"I didn't know you had a sense of humor." I bit back.

"I don't."

"So, what are you, a robot?" I asked.

"I'm a scientific genius with hopes to bring the world a better future." Bob turned and glared at me with the deepest loathing, venom spewing from his words. "You are a prototype that has long since been obsolete and keeps getting in my way."

"What can I say?" I shrugged my restrained shoulders. "It's kind of what I do."

"It's infuriating."

"I excel in that, too."

Bob walked away and to the doorway leading toward the pilot's area, whispering something into the servant's ear and then watching he walked out of our section of the plane and away from us, leaving me alone with him. I gulped down the rugby ball lodged in my throat. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"Detroit."

"Any particular reason why? Are you a car lover? I once saw this wicked '67 Chevy–"

"Shut up." Bob snarled. "I hate the city. I plan on blowing it to pieces as soon as I'm finished with it."

"Then why bring me there?" I demanded. "And lure my family, when you don't even need us anymore?"

Bob bore his eyes into me, and I felt a chill run down my spine. "Like I said. I plan on blowing it to pieces as soon as I'm finished with it."

There was a pause.

Then the rugby ball made a reappearance.

I nearly puked all over his shiny floor and goddammit, he was smiling and turning around and leaving through the door, hey, wait a minute, douchebag, where do you think you're going I have to kill you!

"Don't touch them!" I roared, thrashing in my holds. "DON'T YOU TOUCH THEM!" I'm pretty sure I started foaming at the mouth, I was so angry. I wasn't about to let him kill my family after everything he'd done to us. He'd kidnapped my brother and best friend, tortured him, traumatized him, shot him, wiped his memory, forced us to flee, blew up our house, and taken me from Max and Iggy right when they needed me. He couldn't end the fight like this. He couldn't. I wouldn't allow him to.

When my bonds didn't budge, I sunk forward in a sweaty defeat, hanging my head before whipping it up again. I had to get out of this. I had to find a way out of my shackles, out of the room, out of the plane, back to Max. To warn her not to come, not to fall for it, not to die...

The holds didn't move. I let out an agonized, frustrated shout. I rocked around, but all of the chairs were nailed to the floors.

Please let the plane crash. I begged in my head. Please let it crash. Crash, crash, CRASH!

I looked up, ripped my vision frantically around the room in a panic. And then it clicked.

"Hey!" I snapped. "Hey, you!"

He didn't move.

"Come on, help me out here." I hissed. "I need you to help me. It's life or death."

"No." The servant's voice was a deadpan.

"Don't you understand life or death?" I growled now. I was annoyed. I had to get out. "I'm not asking you to do anything, okay? Just...kick over a pair of scissors or a knife or something. A bobby pin. Anything with an edge, I'll get myself out. I'll knock you out and everything, if it helps."

"That wouldn't matter." He replied, and he chuckled without any glint in his eye. "You wouldn't be able to knock me out anyway. I'm stronger than you."

"Is that why you're here, a lousy slave, being held like an animal? Face it, you're just like me."

Now he rounded on me, his arm out before I could take anything back and hitting my face with a force I'd only been subject to once before. I cursed as my neck snapped with the hit, and I rolled it back flexing my jaw. The servant was in front of me now, an anger I understood shown directly on his face. "I am nothing like you!" He spat. "You...you're a prisoner. A prototype. A mistake. We aren't alike in any way."

I spat a globule of blood onto the floor and smirked at him, raising my eyes to his face. "I have a birthmark on my ear that begs to differ."

I stared into my own eyes, threatening the copy of myself with a look in my irises that he attempted to imitate, and succeeded. He bared his teeth, loathing in his eyes, but I relaxed my face, tried to throw one last line into the water.

"Come on." I rasped. "Help a brother out. Bird kid to bird kid."

The clone stared at me for a little while longer with an extreme intensity, but then he visibly flinched and turned around. Without a word he walked away from me, and I watched the back of my own head grow farther and farther away. My only hope, myself, had failed me. To add a cherry to the little self-hating sundae we had going on, the clone stopped at the doorway.

He spoke without looking back. "I hope she screams."

And I was alone.

flYegurl, I hope you're happy.

I apologize. Only New Englanders use the term 'wicked' as an acceptable adjective. Actually, I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry for my lexicon. I'll stay here and pa'k my ass he'e with my tonic while it pours buckets and I take somefin for a wicked bi'in banger. XD If someone deciphers that, I'll love you forever.

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