I don't own MR.

Chapter 20

Welcome Home

Previously: (I cannot wait until I only have to quote one or two POVs each time. This is ridiculous.)

"You have a plan?"…

"Yeah," I lie.

***

"Incoming, boss."…

"When he arrives, alert me and treat his injuries as best you can. Show him hospitality. Friend until proven foe."

***

…where I was headed, apparently, was Home.

***

I do not know who Max is.

But I miss her.

***

There is pain, but even that is blocked out by weakness. I am losing hope…Darkness is always by my side, reaching out to place its shady hand on my shoulder and pull me down.

MPOV (Yay! Finally.)

My eyes open blearily, vision filling up with a chocolate brown ceiling. It's rock, smooth and yet bumpy. Am I in a cave? Why is it that I'm always waking up from near death experiences in random, unidentifiable places?

I force myself into a half-sitting position, taking inventory of the room, although 'room' is not really the correct term for where I find myself.

There are rather modern looking medical supplies, and another cot like mine to my right. It's very hospital-like. The modern appliances feel out of place in this cave-lie place.

The whole space is like some kind of cavern. It is dimly lit by light streaming in from a very small opening somewhere up the high, curved walls. I can't see where the walls peak together in a ceiling because it is in shadow. What I had earlier mistaken as the ceiling is just the curving walls.

The room is very narrow, extending to my right in a shallow curve. The whole of the structure is made up of red-brown stone that appears somewhat naturally formed.

Around me there are slumped forms that I think are my Flock. A smile touches my lips.

"Iggy," I whisper-shout. "Iggy." He stirs in his chair that sits in the corner of the room in front of me and to the right, near an archway that appears to lead into another room. Next to him sits Nudge, leaning partially against the chair and partially against the wall. Her lips are open and I can hear her deep breathing from here.

Angel is laying on Nudges legs, her feet sticking out through the arch in front of me. Through it, I can just make out a walkway that runs parallel to this room. I can't see what's beyond the walkway, perhaps a drop-off. Angel's feet stick out onto the walkway, into the shadows. Gazzy is slumped across the other cot in the other corner created by the dividing arch-wall and the wall that my headboard is against.

But where is Fang?

"Iggy," I whisper-shout a bit louder.

"Ungh," he grunts, but finally seems to be awake. "Max?" He slips over to kneel next to my bed.

"Where's Fang?" My voice is slightly hysterical.

"I have to get the nurse," he murmurs sleepily, running a hand through his hair which causes it to stick up all over the place.

"Iggy, wait!" But he's already disappeared through the arch on the right.

A few minutes later a girl hurries in. She has white-blonde hair that's pulled back into a pony tail. When she looks at me, I feel pierced right through by her grey-blue eyes. She doesn't look like any doctor I've ever seen, but I guess that's a good thing.

Iggy hovers nervously in the corner. As this doctor-girl checks me out, I continue with my unsuccessful attempts to get someone to answer a question, but everyone seems to be in a state of exhausted excitement, except, of course, for my Flock who all appear to be deep in slumber. I doubt even an earthquake could wake them right now. They must've had a hard time of it.

"I pronounce you officially better. Best take it easy though, " she smiles. "I'll get Mira. She'll tell you everything." And then she's gone.

"Iggy, I swear I will get out of this bed and strangle you myself if you don't tell me-"

"He's in another room. You can go see him once Mira says it's okay." I continue to glare at him. "He's alive," Iggy hurriedly adds. I let out a sigh of relief.

"How bad is he?"

"Bad. We all thought…He hasn't woken up yet." I feel chills curl up my spine. I can't lose him.

"Why is he in another room? And who's Mira?"

"Mira's in charge around here. She'll explain everything."

"Um, Ig? Where exactly is 'here'?"

"Home," he grins. I have a momentary flashback to my little chat with Omega. I guess we found his little sanctuary after all.

"So will you at least tell me how you found us?" Iggy sighs, and sits on the end of my cot. I sit up to listen.

"When you two disappeared into nowhere this crazy snake-lady showed up."

"Snake lady?"

"It's hard to explain, okay? If you ever meet her, and I hope you don't, you'll get it. Anyway, she had with her this guy who was controlling the storm and some kid who amplified our emotions-That's why I blew up at you, and Fang blew up at me. Oh, guess you don't know about that." Iggy continues on to explain what happened before Fang flew off, and then about their confrontation with the snake lady.

"After that, we flew for ages, thought we'd never find you. And when we did…you were bad. We carried you around, trying to find a hospital or something, but we were in the middle of the freaking desert.

Then Gazzy says that something's heading at us in the sky. Of course, I freaked out. How were we going to fight someone off while carrying the two of you? But it was just Gryffin and Hawthorne-you'll probably meet them soon enough. Anyway, Angel read their minds and said they were cool, so we let them bring us back here. Just wait until you see this place; it's incredible."

While I was taking all that in, a tall, familiar-looking girl came hurrying in through the archway in front of me.

"Hey, Mira," Iggy grinned at her. She smiled at him distractedly, flicking her straight brown hair over her shoulder, but quickly turned to me.

"It's so good to see you awake." Looking into her dark eyes, I get this weird sense of de ja vu.

"Um, thanks. "

"I guess you're pretty confused."

"You could say that."

"I'll explain everything, promise. Wyn tells me you're healthy enough to take a tour, so how about I show you around while I explain?" I practically leap out of bed. It feels like I've been lying there forever, and I'm on edge.

"Who's Wyn?"

"The head Med. She's in charge of our hospital wing. I think you just met her. She checked you out when you woke up?"

"Oh yeah." Mira laughs a little.

"Come on." She leads me through the arch near where Iggy was sleeping.

"We'll be here when you get back," he laughs, seeing my hesitation. I follow Mira through the arch. It turns out that this archway leads to another room just like mine. The hospital wing is made up of a chain of these little rooms that lead to another big room where all the Meds are hanging out. Mira doesn't bother to introduce me to them. I'm beginning to notice that she's one of those quiet people, kind of like Fang. Her 'quiet' seems calmer though, settled, comfortable.

As we leave the hospital wing, we walk out onto a walkway. In front of me, there are stairs smoothly cut into the brown stone. They curl around the stone wall, so I can't see where they go.

"Those lead to my room," Mira tells me. We turn left, and I'm wondering when Mira's going to start explaining but then my train of thought is cut off as I realize what I'm seeing.

We're at the end of a ginormous cave. It's like an entire city. We're at middle height in the basin. A walkway runs to my left about three quarters of the way to the other side. The wall at the other end has a huge crack from top to bottom that serves as another door.

At our end, there's only a smallish opening in the middle of the huge cavern wall that makes up one end of the cavern. The hole's about the size of a small house and appears to be an entrance. A couple of people fly through the hole and land on a stone platform in the middle of the basin. The landing pad is a rock platform that thins as it reaches down to the ground level. It sits in the very center of the cave on a level slightly below mine.

"That's Gryffin and Hawthorne," Mira says, pointing at the two flyers. For second, I'm stuck on the shock of seeing other flying people, but I recover.

"Who are Gryffin and Hawthorne? Iggy mentioned them to me."

"They're sort of the second in command, I guess. Gryffin usually runs search parties and supply missions. Hawthorne generally runs defense and training and those types of things." The two figures are hard to make out from here, and I'm hoping I'll get to meet them in person.

"Wait a second. How many flying people are there a round here?" Mira laughs.

"Not counting your Flock or Gryffin and Hawthorne, there's me and my Flock, Omega and Max 2 and that's about it."

"You have wings? You have a Flock?" I'm beginning to feel really slow, like these are things I should already know.

She laughs, turning to face me in the darkness of this level.

"You really don't remember me, do you? I'm the girl you rescued from the Institute." I'm speechless.

"What-How?"

"After you saved me, I didn't know what to do. I had my Flock; myself, Binx, Pepper, and Rider.-You can meet them later-But I was still pretty much alone. Eventually, I found the twins-Gryffin and Hawthorne. Then we found this place; it was only a little cave back then. But Pepper has the ability to shift rock, so we hollowed it out bit by bit as we needed it.

Then Max 2 and Omega showed. They came up with the idea for this place, but neither of them wanted the responsibility. They're sort of wanderers. Anyway, we started rescuing people. Our techs are really good at finding mutants that need our help."

"Those are our tech rooms," Mira explains, pointing to two rooms at the very top of the cave that seem to grow down from the ceiling. Through windows cut in the wall I can see blinking computer lights. There is one on each side of the wall opposite me. "Faris is our head tech. I can take you to meet him when you want."

"Um, techs?" I manage to form a semi-coherent statement.

"They do research and run the utilities or this place. They help me organize people and missions and things."

"Oh. Um, continue," I prompt her, wanting to hear the rest of the story.

"Pretty soon, we had a whole city of mutants right here below ground.

We're in a canyon by the way. That crevice door leads out to a thin fault in a canyon that we can slip through because we can fly or have other special powers; no one could climb it. The other opening is our flight opening. It opens out onto a wider canyon, but it's almost invisible from the outside."

"And those are living quarters." She points to each corner under the tech rooms. There appears to be towers connected to the corners made of levels of walkways that are edged with columns that form arches. The levels sort of remind me of the way the Coliseum in Rome is supposed to look, with the rock arches. The living quarters extend from the ground level far below me almost all the way up to the tech rooms but not quite. They almost touch in the center of the room, but there is a small empty space between the two, perhaps a wing span across.

We start to walk along the walkway that runs next to the hospital wing. I glance in at the Flock as we pass my room.

When our walkway is beginning to curve to merge with the wall, we turn right onto a bridge-like walkway. It connects to another platform that stretches out in an oval shape toward each of the openings in the cave. The two bridge-like walkways extend from the other sides of the oval to the sides of the cave. One reaches the very end of the hospital wing walkways and the other reaches the living quarter tower closest to the crevice door.

There is also a walkway that curves down to ground level from this platform to the crevice door. The platform is topped by a huge arch that reaches almost all the way to the ceiling and is parallel with the crevice door. People scurry this all around us, nodding greetings to Mira and openly staring at me.

"This big arch platform is sort of the hub of everything around here. The landing pad is just extra space."

"Like you need more space, "I snort.

We turn right down the walkway that heads toward the crevice door. From ground level, this place seems even bigger. I'm so astounded by this huge city of a place that I hardly listen to what she's telling me. From this level, I can see that the ground ends at the empty space between the two towers, dropping off into another level.

I turn around before descending to see the whole cave from down here. I notice that the hospital wing isn't a tower structure tucked in the corner like the living quarters; it's more just a few levels of walkways curving out of the wall. None of the levels of the wing are connected to the ground or ceiling, but I can see that Mira's stairs disappear into the wall, so I guess her room is its own special cave.

Mira and I drop down, using our wings to slow our fall. I find myself standing in front of a very large tank.

This whole floor is under the ground level, and the tank is under one of the living columns, the one closest to the crevice door. It's like in an aquarium, except the edges are made of stone where in an aquarium they would be made of some man-made material. There's another difference: when I look through the glass, there aren't fish. There are mutants, fish people. They wave at me. I wave back.

Mira's already dragging me away.

"We call this the Basement," she grins. And I can see why. The ground level forms the ceiling and effectively blocks out all light. It's very dark. The only light comes from inside the tanks. Wait, there's also another light source.

Under the other living tower there's a small cave-room. It has two large archway-doors that are spilling out flickering light.

"That's Harley's workshop," Mira explains. "Harley's in charge of all machines, vehicles, mechanical stuff, etc." She drags me past it, so I don't get to look inside. I can't help but wonder what kind of trouble Gazzy and Iggy will get into if they find their way down here.

We walk on, around a large pillar that I can only assume is that bottom of the arch platform. Mira falls silent as we approach what I assume is our destination. In the far corner, under the part of the cave that holds the hospital wing and Mira's room, there's a small cave-room that's on an even lower level. It also has two doorways, but it's almost completely dark. I can see a light violet glow from within.

We head inside. As I stand in one of the huge archways, I can see that room is lit by purple stones set in the walls. It contains only a single stone table/platform. And on the table, still as the stone itself, lies Fang.

I had to fit so much explanation into that! I hope I did a good job. I know my description of Home was probably really confusing so I uploaded a map-type thing for you to look at if you want.

http://i183 (dot) photobucket (dot) com/albums/x110/vintagerose112/Home (dot) jpg

It's really crappy and imperfect, but at least it's something.

Anyway, tell me what you thought. Review.