"Oi," Iggy gripped as he tripped down several stairs, miraculously finding his footing each time. Honestly, Max was a little jealousy at how quick on his feet he was. "Give the blind guy a break, wh- slow down." When they hit the last step Max did just that and came to an abrupt halt. Iggy was left slightly disconcerted and slammed into Max's shoulder as she reached out and clamped a hand down on his arm.

"Angel, I'd like you to meet Iggy." Max beamed at the little girl whose head had popped over the back of the couch and was examining Iggy with wide eyed interest. The boy under scrutiny tensed at the introduction and mumbled an incoherent hello. Angel's grin was wider than anything.

"It's nice to meet you, Iggy!" The little girl bounced on the couch excitedly for several moments before vaulting over it in quite the impressive display. The kid, Max was starting to realize, was quite the quick foot. She would have probably given Max a run for her money had they been the same age. Iggy, realizing the Angel in question was in fact a small, seven year old girl had relaxed considerably and nodded in her general direction.

Angel ran up to him and stopped a few feet away, jumping on the balls of her heels as she peered up at him in curiosity. "You're blind." She finally chirped and took a few steps closer. "But you don't act like it." Max wondered how much of it was directly related to the whole avian genome and what could be passed off as typical blind-guy senses. It occurred to Max that a typical blind person may not have been able to fall down the stairs after her quite so gracefully as Iggy had managed. Whoops. It was a bit soon to be letting the bird out of the bag.

"I've had a lot of practice," he explained carefully and Angel nodded sagely.

"Have you always been blind?" She inquired and her step sister gaped at her.

"Angel!" Max stammered, "that's kind of rude, you know?" Apparently Iggy was more amused by Max's reaction than he was offended by Angel's comment. He chuckled lightly and gave a one armed shrug.

"As long as I remember." He said, "Apparently when I was really young I could see but my eyesight headed south pretty quick. I don't remember what it's like to see." Angel bowed her head thoughtfully. In fact, the little girl turned so introspective the three of them stood their for several seconds in a growing awkward silence. Max cleared her throat and led the conversation elsewhere.

"Hey, I'm starving," The snort she received on Iggy's behalf suggested he was quite unsurprised. She poked her tongue out at him and shoved him in the direction of the kitchen. "Don't give me that! I got kicked out of the kitchen before I could make my sandwich." Beside her Angel giggled and started after them as well.

"I'm hungry too," Angel said as she looked over at Max's mom hopefully, "were you in the middle of cooking something, Mrs. M?" Angel, smart kid that she was, couldn't for the life of her pronounced Martinez. So Max's mom had suggested Mrs. M until she found something she was more comfortable with. Max new her mom was hoping Angel would start to address her the same as Ella and she did, but it was a rocky transition. Or so she had told Max during quite a fretful tirade. The brunette was quite confident that, given a little time, the two would end up quite the close pair.

The door slammed open and a cheerful voice called through the house, "Mom, Max, I'm home!" Max plodded over to the entryway between the kitchen and the front hall, waving Ella in.

"How was school?" She inquired disinterestedly. She loved her sister, but such questions generally yielded romantic gossip and ever changing rivalries that interested Max little. Still, Ella enjoyed talking – perhaps more than she cared being listened to – and Max was happy to have her drone on while she tuned the noise out in favor of whatever their mom had cooked up.

"It was amazing!" Ella exclaimed as she pulled off her shoes in the entryway and set them next to Angel's. "There were a few snobs, sure, but most everyone was nice. I met this awesome girl named Erica- she invited me to her house this weeke–" The younger sibling stopped in her tracks as she entered the kitchen to find a, decently attractive, Max realized in retrospect, male sitting on a stool in the middle of their kitchen.

"M-Max," The brunette in question watched with amusement as her sister stammered over what she was quickly seeing was developing into a small time crush. Actually, wait. Max's brow furrowed as she turned and glanced with some disdain over at Iggy. Ella was crushing on Iggy. It was soon, heck yeah, but after sixteen years Max could read her sister. Seriously? A bad taste settled in the back of her throat. Ella was crushing on someone who was going to be living in their house?

Her eyes narrowed further and Iggy sent her a vaguely confused turn of the head, sensing her gaze. They were going to have a serious heart to heart when she managed to get him alone again. Turning back to her sister, who she swore was already staring way more than was publicly acceptable – even inside their own house – at the boy in question.

"Oh, yeah. This is Iggy," Max mumbled with growing distaste. "Met him on the way to school."

"Nice to meet you, Iggy." Ella walked closer and, like mother like daughter, stuck her hand out for Iggy to shake. Clearing her through delicately their mom interceded.

"Ah, Ella, sweety." Ella spared her mother a quick glance and distracted smile. "Iggy will be staying with us for a few days, and he's..." She seemed to be struggling with the 'delicate' bit.

"Blind as a bat he is." Max interrupted with all the subtlety of a stampeding elephant. "Well, I guess more so," she tapped her chin thoughtfully, "bat's can actually see, can't they?" Two panicked eyes turned her ways and it would have been comical if not for the thunder in her mother's eyes.

"Maximum!"

"Max!"

"Uh...me?" She smiled sheepishly and withered slightly under the oppressive waves of disappointment she was reading of her mom. A moment passed and the eldest of the bunch settled with a weary sigh as she turned away from her daughter and to their newest guest.

"Iggy, dear." She had already kicked on the maternal switch and, curiously, it seemed to be working rather well. "I'm sorry. I think you've noticed by now Max is," she searched for the right words, "a girl who speaks her mind." Max's mom glanced at her with a disapproving frown. "Even when others may not want to hear it." She rocked back on her heels and started edging for the door.

"Yup, that's me." She gave a what-can-you-do shrug, "no filter."

Ella, having abandoned her attempt at introductions seeing as they had more or less been given, sat in the stool next to Iggy's and turned to him eagerly, inquiring as to his day. Max grew more somber, if it was even possible, and started edging toward the living room all the faster. She knew where this one was headed. By the tilt of the male's lips, so did he.

"Quite the adventure, actually." He supplied as he accepted the drink mom placed in front of him. "I was minding my own business and this girl comes up to me, butts into my business, and then kidnaps me." Ella's carefully maintained smile slips and she glances at Max with an expression somewhere between horror and humiliation.

"Max," she whispers, "you didn't." The brunette frowns and gives a halfhearted shrug, freezing halfway as her mother turns back from the stove with a sharp look on her face. It's funny – or it would be, if she didn't feel like she were facing down her worst nightmare – how everyone assumes everything this kid says is true. Max grimaced as she realized he might take it into his head to start marking things up. Her gaze slid to the troublesome birdkid in question and she swallowed sharply at the Cheshire grin stretched across his face.

She was done for.