Oh wow. You guys are absolutely amazing! Eleven reviews just for that last chapter, and it hasn't been that long since I posted it. (I even got a death threat thrown in, ABSOLUTELY FREE! Sorry. I'm starting to miss Billy Mays. Commercials just aren't the same.) So, here's the next one!
Mack's POV
The stolen Escalade fell over the edge of the cliff, and I felt that drop in my stomach, like I'd gotten on a roller coaster. It plunged a good ten feet before it crunched against the steep ground. Sky was earth and earth was sky as it rolled over and over and over down the mountainside.
I heard the kids cry out, and glass shattering, and metal shrieking; Iggy yelped beside me.
No one- not even bird kids- would be able to survive this bad of a car accident.
I flashed back to the one that had killed my mother. This one was worse. Sickening fear enveloped me as her last screams echoed through my mind.
Make it stop! Please, just make it stop! I thought desperately. Then I realized I was screaming it over the sounds of the ripping, twisting vehicle and the flock's terrified noises. "Make it stop now, make it all just stop!"
We fell over another cliff.
The impact knocked the breath out of me as I landed on the dashboard on my back, hard. It was like someone had put me inside the most painful washing machine in the world. My horrified brain barely registered all the pain that zinged along my wings and spine.
I just felt too much. The flock's awful vibes and screeches, the sick feeling in my stomach, the pain, the flashbacks to my mother's death. And underneath it all, a deep energy in the earth and the environment all around us. Generations worth of Japanese farmers and walking soldiers and hikers and everything else that had ever been on this mountain.
Too much. All too much. It. Had. To. Stop.
I don't know how or even why I did it, but I flung my hands up, pressing them against the crumpled ceiling of the car. All that energy flowed through me and I felt power. It coursed through me, sucking at my battered body's energy. A sort of bluish light enveloped the car, and after what felt like an eternity of rolling and pain and screaming, we slowed to a complete halt. I could distantly hear the flock's moans and groans, sounds of pain and surprise.
But my entire being was focused on the energy; the energy that was slowly sucking everything in me dry. I felt like I was nothing but an energy channel. I was the gold string, only instead of trapping souls, I had condensed the energy to something so compact it was physical, providing intense friction and heat.
"…safe…how…." drifted through my consciousness.
I did it, I thought, I made it stop.
Then I let my hands fall and collapsed into the deepest black I'd ever known.
Switch to Iggy's POV!
My whole body was tense, and sore. I'd squeezed my eyes shut on impulse, and had my wings and arms wrapped around Mack's torso. My first and only instinct when we'd hit that goddamn Roid was to grab her and not let go.
I waited, sure we were about to start rolling again. Sure the pain, the chaos, wasn't over yet.
Mack's body was rigid next to me, and I felt the strongest fear I'd ever felt come with the thought that she might have died, or could be badly injured even now.
Why aren't we moving? It's not over, it can't be. We were going way too hard and too fast to stop. I thought.
Vaguely I heard Angel whimpering and I opened my eyes a bit, forgetting in my panic that that wouldn't help anything.
I heard Max's heavy, heavy breathing, and absolutely no sound from Fang, but I could sense he was there.
Gasman and Nudge, however, weren't in this car. I could feel it.
"Is it safe? Oh, my God, how did we stop?" I choked, feeling my whole body begin to tremble and shake as I slowly loosened up. But I didn't loosen my hold on Mack. Suddenly, her body went totally limp in my arms. I'm talking dead weight.
"Mack!" I yelped.
I heard Max sit up in the row behind me, though she was several feet from her original position. She gasped a couple times, then said weakly, "Report."
Then, not three seconds later, she screamed. Max never screams. "Nudge! Gasman! Where are you?"
She scrambled out of the car, climbing through one of the broken windows. I heard her scurry a few feet away.
"Max! Max!" I heard the two missing flock members call from pretty far away.
"Oh thank God." Max moaned. Vaguely, I heard her hugging them and kissing them and basically being her maternal self. Angel had shook herself off, and seemed pretty calm, to have almost died.
"She's okay, Iggy." She said, knowing I was obsessing over Mack.
"Yeah?" I asked and my voice cracked.
"Yeah." Angel confirmed.
"She's what stopped us." Fang said.
Max had come back, helping everyone out of the totaled vehicle. "What?"
"Mack stopped us with some kind of force field thing." I sensed Fang shrug as he got out, the door just simply falling off as he opened it.
Then he was crushing Max to him, kissing her wildly.
"There are children present." I reminded them after awhile. They broke apart.
"It was so scary, Max! Me and Gasman rolled right out of the car the first couple of times it rolled over. Then all we could do was watch as you guys and listen to you screaming! It was so awful!" Nudge babbled hysterically.
"We're okay, Nudge." Max promised. "Any broken bones?"
I skimmed my fingers over Mack. There were a few tiny bones broken in her wings, at the top, where I hadn't been able to cover her. Her right knee seemed badly swollen, and there was a nasty gash under her right eye. Her back was bruised horribly from the impact of falling.
I fixed the broken bones tenderly, but she was literally out. She didn't move at all, gave no sign of feeling anything as I snapped the bones back into place.
I fixed every one else, trying to be gentle. But my fingers shook and Fang hissed when I popped his shoulder back into place a little too hard.
"Good thing Mack stopped us when she did. Those other cliffs were small ones. Two more feet and we would've gone over one at least 200 ft tall." Fang said flatly, walking forward a few steps.
Max sucked in a sharp breath. "How-"
"I don't know. Let's let her explain. We need to get back to the hotel." I interrupted impatiently. My soul mate was dead to the world and everyone was just standing around reveling in the feeling of being alive.
It took awhile to fly painfully back to Tokyo, scope the place out for any lingering Erasers, and then tend to the poor receptionist who had gotten dragged into this mess. We made some lame excuse as to why those guys had been after us, then returned to our room.
"Itex knows we're staying here, then, don't they?" Max sighed, obviously stressed as I laid Mack down on the bed she and Max shared.
"No. They don't, actually. The Roids were talking about it. They were the only ones that witnessed us taking the files, and the only ones that knew we were staying here. All the whitecoats were at a meeting when we went and broke in. No one can recognize us, or find us, now that the Roids are dead." Gasman assured everyone.
Max sighed in relief.
Time Lapse! Switch to Mack's POV! (That part in Iggy's POV was free handed, I felt there needed to be something there. Sorry if it sucked.)
Every cell in my body felt heavy. My limbs felt like lead. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to lay here on this surprisingly soft surface. It hurt to be.
Huh. Maybe I had been wrong when I thought I'd stopped the wreck. Maybe we'd died. Maybe Riley and I had both been wrong in assuming there wasn't a hell, because it'd be just my luck to end up there after death.
"Mack…" Said a soft, timid voice that sounded like Gasman.
I managed a very, very small noise.
"She can hear us." Angel whispered.
"Ugghffgssh." I managed.
"Mack… what hurts?" Max asked uncertainly.
Everything, I thought. Oh, God. I've never hurt like this before. Not even when my DNA was spliced.
"She says everything hurts. Means it too." Angel informed everyone.
"Mack…" Iggy breathed.
Iggy.
Even in the pathetic state I was in, I managed to feel comforted by his presence.
"Take the past life side effects and multiply them by infinity." I croaked finally, wincing. Shit, my throat hurt. Must have been all that screaming.
I wondered vaguely how long I'd been out. I felt exhausted enough to sleep for another ten years.
"Well, it's eleven at night now. So about thirteen hours." Angel answered. Shocked a little, I blinked my eyes open.
"If you didn't heal super fast like all decent Avian Americans, you'd have been out for days. That was some serious mumbo jumbo you pulled." Max commented.
"You stopped it just in time. Two more feet and we'd have fell off a 200 ft cliff." Fang said flatly.
I was laying in mine and Max's bed; my head was in Fang's lap, with my wings spread out. He stroked my hair gently.
Coming from Fang- who never, ever, showed any sort of emotion, especially affection- that was the equivalent of clutching me to him and sobbing while declaring I was the best little sister on the whole planet and he just couldn't imagine life without me.
Max was holding both Gazzy and Angel on her lap on my left. Nudge sat right beside Iggy on my right.
Igs looked like a nervous wreck. He was chewing his bottom lip raw, and his hair was ruffled. His cloudy eyes were worried, and a little scared.
Nudge smiled hesitantly at me. Max observed me with a mother hen expression, while Angel and Gasman stared blatantly with wide eyes.
"You guys act like you're crowding around my death bed. It's creeping me out." I said, slowly becoming more and more alert.
"We were scared it might have been. We couldn't get you to respond to anything." Iggy admitted.
I reached out and took his hand weakly, kissing his palm. He smiled.
His vibes of extreme love and relief and concern were soothing, but then I felt Fang's pushing in; protective, concerned, raw. The poor boy was flipping out on the inside, though his exterior remained stony and unreadable.
"Well I did stop the biggest car accident since Princess Diana. Not to be rude or insensitive to her or anything, because she was awesome." I babbled. Ugh. I couldn't think past this exhaustion or soreness.
"Mack…how did you stop it? Everyone's thoughts were so loud and hectic and crazy I couldn't really hear much of anything. Plus, it was kinda hard to concentrate when I felt like I'd been put into a blender." Angel inquired.
"I-" I began, then hesitated. How had I stopped it? Everything was very hazy. I'd never known my abilities could be that strong.
"I just remember wanting it to stop. I just kept thinking make it stop. And then I thought of the car crash that killed Mom, and the vibes you all were putting out were awful. Plus, there was the energy from the mountain itself. I was just so overwhelmed. I think I created a force field of pure energy." I explained.
Max frowned. "Energy? But it doesn't exist physically… does it?"
I thought for a moment. "It can. You know some people claim ghosts have scratched them so hard they bled? It could be like that, except, a billion times stronger."
Max whistled. "You're as much of an ability jackpot as Angel."
"It's all part of one big ability- being psychic. I'm not really all that talented." I protested.
Then I moaned. My head was throbbing and spinning from this conversation. I was so tired…physically, psychic-ly, and emotionally drained.
"Shhh…" Fang soothed, rubbing my wings, and mine and Max's eyes met in shock.
"Since when are you outwardly concerned about anything?" Max rose an eyebrow.
He gave her his copyrighted Fang's Glare of Death.
She smirked.
"Everyone's okay?" I asked after a moment.
Max smiled. "Yeah. Well, I mean, we all had some broken bones, but Iggy fixed those. And we're sore and bruised and cut up, but you know. We're alive."
"Good." I sighed happily.
"You should eat something. I convinced Iggy to take me grocery shopping to get his mind off of obsessively worrying about you. He's been comfort-cooking all day." Nudge said.
"Okay." I agreed reluctantly.
I sat up with some trouble and stretched. I hissed in pain, but only under my breath. I was no wimp. I crawled out of bed and stood up, everyone else doing the same. The kids skipped ahead into the kitchen.
I took a few steps and my knees wobbled, the finally buckled.
"What the hell?" I asked irritably.
Iggy snickered as Fang watched with dark eyes. He bent over and picked me up tenderly, bridal style.
"You stopped a car wreck physically with your psychic abilities. I'd be more worried if your legs didn't give out." Max comforted.
"Still," I grumbled, but cuddled into Iggy's warm chest anyway.
So, there's that. I know, I know. This whole psychic thing is probably going way over board. Just stick with me, I have my reasons. :D
It's really not as huge and complex as it seems.
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