Chapter 21/Interlude: Zach Miller and Magenta Walker

Zach

It started out with all eight of us at the meeting. Lash wanted to talk us into going with him to that place Royal Pain put her SuperVillain Academy. Everyone had an excuse not to. Will's dad and mom were taking him to China or someplace weird like that to train him for something or other. Ethan was working on a very important science project. Warren had someone to beat up or something. Layla was saving trees. Ana Lucia was visiting the Superhero Hospital to join the healers working on fixing up a hero I had never heard of before. So in the end it was just me, Magenta, and Lash. But hey, at least we got cool walkie-talkies (Magenta's dad's a cop).

Lash drove us out to where Penny had marked the spot. Magenta said that Penny might have been lying about the location, and I mentioned I was hungry. And I was! But all I got was "the Look." According to the map, the entrance to the "secret lair" was in the middle of the second half of Maxville's city park (a street runs down the middle of it). We fanned out once we started into the trees, looking for anything that looked like a secret lair place . . . thing. That's what the walkie-talkies were for. They were fun.

"Hey Maj, what do you get when an elephant crosses a skunk? Over." I snickered.

The walkie-talkie crackled and Maj's voice came over, sounding somewhat annoyed.

"What do you get, Zach?"

"You forgot to say over. Over."

"What do you get, Zach? Over." I could almost hear her roll her eyes. She was so cute when she rolled her eyes.

"A big stinker! Over."

I heard someone stifling a laugh from way over to my left . . . or was that my right? I checked my arms. It was my left (I wore my black cuff on my left arm).

"Nice, Zach," she said dryly and the walkie-talkie crackled. "Did you hear about the one with the walking, talking, annoying light bulb? Over."

I knew she'd think it was funny. Lash however, didn't. I was about to ask about the walking, talking, annoying light bulb, but Lash interrupted me.

"Shut up, you two. We're supposed to be looking for the Academy." His voice came out in an angry hiss that reminded me of Ethan's pet snake. Well, before I accidentally left it outside the day after Christmas and it froze to death. Poor Susie.

"You forgot to say over," I reminded Lash. "Over."

He growled. "This conversation is over. Besides, we're supposed to be on comm. silence unless we find something, remember?"

"Oh yeah right, I forgot. Sorry! Over."

"My bad," Maj said very sarcastically.

I whispered into the walkie-talkie: "you forgot the over. Over."

"Over."

"Shut up!"

We continued searching with no one talking. Things were going okay, a bit boring but I guess that kinda goes with a search. It took a while for us to find anything but I was the one who did. Well, really I ran into it.

"Ow! Hey, guys, check it out! A metal tree!"

The two came over and stared at the tree in front of me. I rubbed my forehead where an egg was forming as we looked at the seemingly harmless tree. Magenta stepped forward and ran her hand over the surface. Her hand seemed to disappear for a second before she quickly pulled back.

"It's a hologram!" she said, surprised.

"Wicked awesome!" I cried, reaching over to feel for myself. "Feel's like an elevator door." I commented.

Lash snorted. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he said.

Maj pushed me away and felt for herself again. "No, it does," she said, surprised again. I grinned.

"Ha! In your face!" I leaned over Lash menacingly in triumph. He just looked up at me and blinked.

"You really don't want to do that," he told me in a low voice. I backed down quickly.

"Right, sorry dude."

Magenta kept running her hand up and down the tree, looking for a door knob I guess. There was a series of sharp clicks that seemed to come from the tree and I frowned in confusion as she drew her hand back quickly.

"Did you guys hear that?" I asked.

"No," Lash said with a frown. "I didn't hear anything."

"I think I might have tripped something," Maj said, her brown eyes wide.

I looked down at her feet but could not see anything she might have tripped. Then we heard the growling. Swallowing hard, I turned and suddenly screamed. A large bear was barreling toward us. Maj paled and Lash pointed to the tree.

"Quick, climb!" he shouted, stretching so that his hands grabbed a branch way up high, pulling his body up. Show off.

I quickly scrambled up the tree as fast as I could. Magenta was right behind me. Now that I think of it, I should have let her go first, but I was too scared to think much. I'm also embarrassed to say that I kept screaming like a little girl too. I was almost to the third branch when I heard a different scream. Looking behind me, I saw that the bear had reached the tree and had grabbed Maj's leg. Thankfully she was wearing her combat boots, but his nails were still sharp enough to pull her back down to the ground.

She hit the ground with a grunt and lay very still. Panic squeezed my guts painfully.

"Maj!" I screamed, scrambling to go back down. A hand grabbing my shirt stopped me. I looked up to see Lash way up high above me, keeping a firm grip on my shirt.

"No," he said in a quiet, urgent voice. "Don't go down there. It'll only attack you too. Look, it's not hurting her."

I looked down and sure enough, the bear was sniffing at Magenta's still body with little interest. Finally it seemed to sneeze and, with a glance up at us, lumbered away without another word. I waited until it was gone before scrambling down the tree to make sure my girlfriend was still alive.

Lash dropped down next to me as I knelt beside her and took her shoulders in my hands, shaking her.

"Magenta? Magenta wake up!"

Lash pushed me away and put his fingers underneath her jawline. I watched, frowning, as he closed his eyes briefly and then opened them.

"She's alive," he said.

"What the heck?" Maj mumbled as she started to move slowly. I pulled her to me in a bone-crushing hug that had her soon gasping for breath. "Let me go you lump of a boyfriend!" she cried. "I can't breathe!" I dropped her abruptly which made her groan and me wince.

"Sorry."

Lash held out a hand to her and pulled her to her feet. "You okay?" he asked with what looked like concern. She nodded absently and pushed her dark hair out of her eyes.

"I'm fine," she said, rubbing the back of her head. "Let's not do that again, okay?"

I nodded readily. It took Lash a moment but then he nodded too. "It was probably rigged anyway," he said, running a hand through his hair. "We should try to recruit a technopath or two to come and look at this thing." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the tree.

"Meanwhile I'm going home," Maj said with a groan. I stepped up next to her.

"Want me to take you?" I asked, forgetting that we had all come in Lash's car anyway.

"Lash can drop me off, thanks," she said, smiling slightly. Her smile made me feel better.

We all trooped back to the car and handed back our walkie-talkies. I wanted to keep mine so we could talk to each other during the night without waking people up with phones, but Magenta pointed out that she needed to give them back to her dad because he actually used it for his job. I handed mine over.

The trip back was boring but we weren't ambushed again so that was good. Magenta only let me kiss her cheek when we got to her house but I think that's just because Lash was in the car too.

Maj

When I dragged my aching body up my driveway and into my house I knew a couple of aspirin was not going to get rid of my headache. From the moment I closed the door I could hear the shouting and yelling. That meant my dad was home with another lousy paycheck. Sighing, I dropped the walkie-talkies on the kitchen table and went to the fridge to get some orange juice. Lilac looked up from her homework and saw the radios.

"Ooh, Dad's gonna be mad when he finds out you took his radios," she said in that airily superior voice that makes me want to kick something. I turned to her with a glare.

"No he won't cuz he's not gonna find out," I told her and narrowed my eyes. "Got it?"

She shrugged. "Fine. If you want to end up a criminal like Violet go ahead." She suddenly brightened. "Can I have your room when you go to jail?"

I gave a muffled scream of frustration and stormed out of the kitchen. I had been attacked by a bear, fallen on my head, and now my ankle was hurting like crazy. Looking down and inspecting my boot I saw that the bear's claws had gone through the leather and had given me a couple of nice looking scratches. I winced when I pulled the Doc Marten off my foot and inspected the bleeding cuts. Limping into the bathroom, I washed them as best I could while wearing a miniskirt and then plastered them with band aids.

When I came out of the bathroom and went downstairs, I found myself caught in the middle of my parent's argument.

"Where have you been?" My mom wanted to know. "You were supposed to be home from school two hours ago!"

"I was hanging out with Zach," I stated truthfully, crossing my arms and frowning.

"What happened to your foot?" my dad asked.

I looked down at my feet and then up at them. I shrugged. "Rose bush."

"What were you doing in a rose bush?" Mom raised an eyebrow. I scowled.

"None of your business," I snapped, just because I knew if I acted all irritable and secretive about it they would take that as the truth. Dad turned to mom.

"If she gets knocked up by that gigantic boyfriend of hers, don't say I didn't tell you," he said, going so far as to shake his finger at her. I rolled my eyes.

"Dad, we weren't—"

"Oh so it's all my fault that our daughter is a rebellious teenager!" Mom shot back angrily. "Might I point out that her problem could be that your never home?!"

I grimaced as my dad's face turned a color somewhere between red and purple. "Well excuse me for wanting to provide for my family!"

"Your constant absence is 'providing' for us?" Mom scoffed. She then went on in a blur of Chinese that made me raise my eyebrows in surprise at her veiled profanity and made my dad grow even angrier (he hated it when she spoke Chinese to him especially since he could not understand her). Finally she tapered down to English once more.

"Why don't you just say what this is really about huh?" she demanded. "You're too afraid to admit that your negligence is what drove Violet away!"

Finally I had had enough. Clamping my hands over my ears, I screamed at the top of my lungs: "WILL YOU PLEASE STOP ARUGING FOR ONE MINUTE?!"

That caused them to stop and look at me in shock. I did not wait for a reprimand. Instead I pushed past them and fled out the back door, heading for a place I knew they would never find me.

However one person did. It took him a good fifteen minutes, but soon enough I saw his scruffy head pop up over the top of the rope ladder that led to the treehouse that sat in the huge oak tree behind our house. I was scrunched up in a corner in the back with my knees pulled up and my face hidden in them. However when I heard his strugglings I looked up and my mouth twitched slightly when he finally appeared.

"You know someone could break their neck climbing up that thing," he informed me as he pulled his lanky body over the side of the trapdoor and then closed it behind him after he pulled up the rope. I grinned slightly.

"Vi could leap up here in one bound, we never really needed the stupid thing," I told him, suddenly frowning as I was reminded with a familiar pang of how much I missed my older sister. Indigo noticed the frown and walked over to sit beside me, putting his arm over my shoulder. I leaned against him and sighed.

"Are Mom and Dad still fighting?" I wondered aloud.

"Naw, I think you scared them out of it," Indigo said, resting his chin on my hair and rubbing my shoulder. It was nice having a big brother who was older than you enough to baby you. Sure he was a big pain a lot of times, but times like this made me very thankful for him.

"Hmph, good," I said flatly, glad my breakdown had some positive effect on someone.

"You okay?" he asked after a moment of silence. I shrugged noncommittally. "You know they just worry about you." I didn't say anything. He finally sighed and gave up.

"You're prickly bush sometimes, Magenta, you know that?" he said, digging his fingers into my side in an attempt to tickle me. I pushed him off.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, frowning up at him.

"I mean you don't let anyone get close enough to help you. Have you even told your friends at Sky High about Mom and Dad?" He frowned down at me and I found I couldn't hold his gaze. I looked away.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's none of their business!"

He sighed. "But they could help you, you know. Help you deal with it. You hold it all up inside and then you explode like you just did with Mom and Dad." I ground my jaw back and forth as I listened, trying my best not to pay attention to his words yet feeling them pound into my skull whether I wanted them to or not.

"You got to let someone in sometime, Maj. Or you're going to end up bitter and resentful like Violet."

I laughed harshly. "Oh I'm already there, trust me." He frowned again but this time it was sad.

"Then I'm really sorry to hear that," he said softly. Pulling me close he pressed his lips against my forehead in a firm kiss. "I know you can take care of yourself, little sis," he told me as he pulled away and opened the trapdoor to let the rope ladder fall to the ground. "But you can't always save yourself. Sometimes you need a hero."

Giving me a sly wink to accompany his cryptic words, he disappeared down the ladder. I gave a frustrated growl and slapped the trap door shut after him. Then I retreated to my corner and brooded over his words for the rest of the day.

So I've been brewing up another Sky High story to write after this one that follows the same storyline with the characters. This chapter hints at some of the stuff that will be covered in that story. Keep an eye out for it; it'll be called "Wildfire." I had a lot of fun writing this chapter with Zach's POV along with Magenta's. Review and tell me what you think! :-D