A/N - Once again, this isn't the end of the story. I appreciate all the reviews and all the people who have been following the story, I decided to make this a little longer. The story was supposed to be ten chapters, but I needed more ^^ Leave a review!

Memories of You

Chapter 11

Angel POV

After everything that had been happening the last few days, it really made you think of how lucky you were. Who would've thought that in the end, Nudge's memory would have been what saved her? We were all happy to have her in our lives again.

Maybe I should have been worrying about more important things, considering that we still had a lot of work to do to pull our lives back together, but for some reason, all I was really preoccupied with was carrying out my plan to make Ella's life a living hell. Oh, you thought it was finished? True, she was now covered in huge red itchy spots thanks to my itching powder. True, her mother had gotten her to see a therapist even though there was nothing –besides being a bitch- psychologically wrong with her. But it just wasn't enough.

There were certain things that I had to take care of. It was for sure that we wouldn't be seeing Ella any time soon, despite loving Dr. Martinez like a mom, more than anything. So I might as well have a little fun with this. For the last time, I opened Fang's laptop to her bedroom cam, because those weren't the end of my tricks.

You see, Ella had made an appointment to get her hair cut right after we left. It had been delayed a little because of our crisis, but she had just gotten it cut yesterday. What she didn't know was that I paid the hair stylist to do certain specific things with her hair.

It was clear from the moment she walked into her room that she was as pissed as hell. She was turned away from the camera for a moment, but that was enough for me to see her haircut. Half of it was normal, but the other half was cropped as short as Iggy's, much to her disapproval. But how was she to realize that when he was cutting her hair?

What no one knew about Ella was that it took a lot of work to make her the beautiful, cute girl she was on the outside. Every few months, she went into a special salon –the one the paid hair stylist worked at- to get her eyebrow and lip waxed.

When she turned around, not noticing the camera, I almost doubled over. One eyebrow had been completely ripped off –this was the last thing to do, because she could feel it, I'm guessing the stylist ran- and the other had been waxed so that it was in an ugly zigzag pattern over her left eye.

And no one would have guessed that before the lip waxing went on, Ella was hiding the ugliest lip fuzz you ever saw. Because she was Hispanic, she had dark, course hairs. The lip waxer was careful to wax around them. So, I had taken what meant the most to her – her appearance. Try growing back that eyebrow, Ella.

Gazzy looked over my shoulder, and he was ready to die. After watching the girl strip and getting it into his head that she was as good as a model, all his sick little fantasies were shattered. Of course, that didn't stop him from snapping a quick picture on his phone, which he emailed to fifty people in his school. It would reach the high school in a few hours.

No one had the heart to tell Iggy of course, but it wasn't as if he would have cared. Finally, after the whole Ella mess, he had figured out that he had the best girl in the world right there next to him. It had taken him a while, and the road had been bumpy, but he had finally gotten there.

I shut the laptop with a grin. There wouldn't be any more messing with Ella, I'd had enough of that for one lifetime.

Nudge POV

A while down the road, we stopped at a gas station to grab food for the road. My eyes widened as I remembered it, even though I rightfully shouldn't have. None of the flock had been here, just me. This was the gas station that I'd stopped at when the reporters had found me. I grinned as I walked inside. The cashier seemed genuinely surprised to see me.

Max walked down the aisles trying to find high-calorie stuff that was cheap. We filled a bag with chips and bought lots of poptarts and things like that. Max bought a huge can of Red Bull for Fang, because he was the one driving us home for hours.

I went to the register with a twenty dollar bill and handed it to the cashier, an Asian guy in his twenties, who gave it back just as quickly. "You're one from earlier," he beamed at me. "Really cool, really cool. Flying kids, yes? On the house." I smiled at him. It was like seeing an old friend.

I grabbed the stuff off the counter and followed the flock back out to the car. "Dang," Fang complained. "If we'd known it was gonna be on the house, we could've gotten a lot more." Yup, that was definetly Fang. Always looking for a way to save a quick buck.

"Alright," Max said once we were in the car. "We're in California, and we're going to Arizona. I figure we'll get some stuff from our house and then try to get an apartment somewhere."

"Why can't we just live there?" Gazzy asked.

"Because the press already knows where we live. The fact that we got that document signed doesn't change that. We have to find another place, one where no one knows us. I'm sorry, guys, but that means we have to completely start over. I know you have lives and friends, but that's the way it is."

And I felt guilty. I knew that this would take another effort to make new friends, only to have the flock broken apart. Iggy and I would probably be going off on our own, leaving Gazzy and Angel with Max and Fang. Gazzy and Angel would be the ones with a sacrifice to make.

"That's fine," Gazzy said, which surprised me. "It's a lot easier than some of the things we've been through, so I don't exactly mind moving. All that matters is that we have everything pretty much back to normal with our family whole again."

"Dude. That was deep," Iggy said flatly, and I elbowed him.

The next half hour or so was really peaceful. We were still in California, looking out the window and enjoying the sights. Max was starting to fall asleep, and my head was on Iggy's shoulder as he wrapped his arms protectively around me. The only noise was the clicking of Gazzy's thumbs on his Nintendo.

In a few minutes, Max was asleep and Fang was starting to doze off. He reached for his Red Bull and took a large gulp. Iggy was asleep under me, breathing peacefully. I was starting to nod off myself, right when everything exploded.

Max POV

I was jerked awake by a huge noise on the roof of the car, and I wiped some drool from the corner of my mouth as I examined the dent in the ceiling. I heard Nudge scream as a machete sliced through the roof of the car. Everyone ducked except for Fang, who was desperately trying to keep an eye on the road.

There was definetly someone up there who wanted to kill us. Even though I just woke up, I immediately went into protect-my-life mode, and I rolled down the window all the way. "What are you doing?" Fang shouted, but I ignored him over the roar of the wind and crawled through the window. I motioned for Nudge to follow me. Angel started to come, too, but I shook my head no.

Fang was driving and Iggy was blind, and Gazzy was too young. I would take Angel, but the top of the car was small enough, and it'd certainly be hard enough to stay up there with me, Nudge and our attacker. It was a really good thing that we were driving a minivan.

I pulled myself out the window and looked up. In front of us was a person of some sort, cloaked entirely in black ninja clothes and a machete in one hand. It was only one person, I grinned. This wouldn't take any time at all.

"I've been sent to exterminate you," he or she said, I couldn't really tell, and I knew it was from Nudge's agent's stepfather. He held his machete high, which was mistake number one.

"You're really bad at this," I grunted as I swung my legs over the edge and kicked the ninja's shins in, causing him or her to stumble and almost fall off the car. They were obviously already struggling to stay on top of the car. "Ninjas don't really talk, now do they?"

Nudge opened her own window and flipped nimbly out, kicking the ninja hard in the chest and sending it flying off. It quickly shot a rope from an extension on its sleeve, and pulled itself back onto the car. Nudge and I were fighting with our inhuman strength to stay on top of the moving car.

Nudge looked at me and nodded, and I nodded back. She jumped up and flipped so that her hands were on my shoulders with me standing up. She swung herself forward and kicked the ninja hard in the face, catching him or her off guard and sending them spiraling onto the side of the road. We watched as they vanished into the distance.

Just as we were leaving, another ninja dropped from the sky. That was when we looked up and noticed the helicopter that had been hovering above us the whole time. The new ninja was a woman this time, and she was quicker, and more agile.

She dropped on her hands and knees and swung her leg around quickly, almost hitting Nudge, but Nudge had better ideas. She jumped off the fan and launched herself into the air. I knew what she was doing. She was taking out the helicopter full of ninjas.

I pulled the old ninja's machete out of the car, not really sure how to use it but getting a pretty good idea. I swished it around and almost sliced the ninja in half, then grinned as I advanced on her. Big mistake.

I swung the machete through the air again, and the ninja launched herself off the roof and over my head. She stood behind me and kicked my feet out from under me. The machete landed somewhere on the side of the road. I bit back a groan of pain as I fell to my knees.

Suddenly, the ninja flung herself off the car and into the car behind us, hitting it with a dull thud and then rolling off to rest on the side of the road with the machete. She rubbed her back, and when she tried to get back up, she couldn't. That might've broken her leg.

I glanced around, wondering why she did that, then my eyes narrowed skeptically as I smiled at Angel, trying to crawl out of the car window. I offered her my hand and pulled her up. We were almost ready to fly up to help Nudge when another ninja dropped in front of me. Nudge was doing her best to hold them off, but there were around ten in the helicopter.

Angel glared at it and concentrated, got that look in her eye like she was about to control the ninja's mind. Then, out of nowhere, another ninja dropped out of the sky. This was good…and bad. The ninja landed on the other ninja, both of them unconscious now. But the ninja's boot had hit Angel's head, and she, too, was unconscious.

I groaned to myself and shoved Angel back inside the car hastily. Then I shoved the other two ninjas off the side of the car and onto the grass. I glanced up at Nudge, so concerned with fighting that she hadn't even realized she had kicked a ninja onto Angel.

I got on my knees and swung my head upside down in the car window to see how everyone was doing. Iggy was looking around nervously and Gazzy was holding his phone onto the roof, snapping pictures wildly. Fang smiled when he saw my face. But I had just made mistake number two.

I heard the fourth ninja land on the roof, but I wasn't quick enough in swinging around. The ninja kicked me in the back with cleats, sending me spiraling off the edge, holding on to the car with a single hand. The ninja squatted and started to peel back my fingers…one…by…one.

It was almost over when I only had my index finger left. I clawed at the minivan and finally joisted my feet back over the edge, rolling onto the hood and crawling up the windshield. Fang swerved suddenly because I was in his wan, and I was thrown onto the neighboring car. The driver didn't look too happy.

I jumped quickly back to our minivan, tackling the ninja to the ground and punching it –well, him, I discovered- in the face. Blood erupted from his nose and I tossed him off the car. Gazzy came up and crawled through the window, and shooed me off to help Nudge while another ninja dropped. Gazzy grinned evilly before tackling it and shoving a fake bomb down its shirt just to make it panic.

I jumped off the fan and flew up to the helicopter that was following it closely. I saw Nudge inside the opening where she could have fallen off at any time but instead was on the floor punching a ninja's face in. I flew in and swung my legs out to face me, plowing into one of the ninjas and sending them spiraling downwards a good fifty feet. Well, that one was dead.

I saw Gazzy on the ground fighting with the ninja, but Gazzy had grown some in the last five years. He had enough power now to take down things much more powerful than some ninja-thing.

Nudge grabbed one of them and just plain threw him out of the helicopter. There were only a few left now, and I was fighting to the death. And by death, I meant their death. Another one jumped down to deal with Gazzy after he took out the first one, and he promptly ran to another car.

The ninja jumped with him, but Gazzy snapped his leg out and pushed it back. It rolled over to the side of the road, doubling over in pain. Gazzy crouched on the top of the other car, waiting for another one to come down.

I didn't want to kill them anymore, but we needed to get them off. I grabbed the one flying the helicopter and yanked it off, leaving him or her for Nudge to deal with. I guided the helicopter down as best I could, and turned it swiftly. Nudge was hovering in midair, but all the ninjas fell out. But thanks to us being closer to the ground, at least they didn't die.

I waved down to Gazzy, who gave me a thumbs up as he kicked the last unconscious ninja off the car. Nudge sat down next to me in the copilot's seat as she followed the minivan. Gazzy climbed back into the car and rolled up the windows, and we were flying –well, in a helicopter- back home.

"Looks like we forgot to put 'don't send killer ninjas after us' in the document," Nudge mused.

Back in California

The old man looked up from where he was sitting to stare over at his stepdaughter. What a worthless waste of space. Ever since her mother died, he had no need for her, but he had truly loved the woman. When she had told him to watch over her daughter, did he really have a choice? He had given her a job, taken her in, and now she betrayed him? Oh, he was going to have his revenge now that those meddling children were gone.

She was still struggling in the chair across from him, even though it had been four hours already. The ropes that bound her to the chair weren't even beginning to come loose, and the piece of duct tape and cotton in her mouth weren't allowing her to speak, yet she was still squirming impatiently.

He knew that by respects, what he was doing was illegal. If anyone found out, he could go to prison, but he didn't care. This woman was the one who had stood up for that young girl and her friends and cost him the opportunity of making a fortune by selling them to a foreign country as weapons, studying them to give the public more information.

Now he just had to figure out what to do with her. She was going to face the disappointment he had suffered, one way or another.

Two guards were standing at the door behind him, but he shut it all the same. He stalked over to his stepdaughter, but she didn't even look up at him. Keeping a straight face and staring at the wall in front of her, she drove him up the wall. He circled her chair for a few moments before slapping her straight in the face. She gave a muffled "mmmmf!" and stared up at him, shock and outrage stamped on her face.

"They got away because of you," he snarled. "Yes, I signed the document, but it was your little heathen friend who almost dropped me off the side of the building! They would have done it, too!" His face was red and he was shouting at the top of his lungs.

He continued. "Do you know what I had to do? I sent my best team of trained professionals after them! But now I'm confident, because they'll get those little winged brats! You brought this on yourself! By now, they're all dead. I'll be receiving news any minute."

He smiled triumphantly. "What do you have to say for yourself now, huh? What's that, I'm finally better than you? I've outdone you, and you never could save those children from me? What do you have to say now?" he bellowed.

She rolled her eyes and glanced at the duct tape covering her mouth. I can't exactly talk, now can I? she thought bitterly. I'll be fired by the end of the day anyway. This lunatic's going to jail. Oh, God, but Nudge and her friends…after all that, now it's over?

The door opened suddenly, and she breathed a sigh of relief as his attention was taken from her for a moment. One of the secretaries walked in, with a slip of paper. "The assassins were sent out as you asked sir," she began. He beamed.

"Excellent," he said smugly, and turned back to his stepdaughter.

"Uh, sir," she continued, "that's not all. They were all…defeated by the bird children, and they've taken the helicopter. We sent out a search part, and all of the assassins were found lying on the side of the road, each a few miles apart. None were missing."

He turned pale, and clenched his fists. He had lost to them again. His damned stepdaughter had been right. "How many dead," he asked tensely. She fumbled around in the stack of papers to find the information. "I asked you how many were dead!" he barked. "Maybe I'll replace you with someone more competent to tell me!"

"I, um, six dead, sir…I'm so sorry, sir…"

"Get out!" he bellowed. "Get out, and don't come back! I can't have an incompetent running my office!"

"But sir, I've been working here for twenty years…"

"Why are you still here?"

"Sir, my husband has leukemia!"

"I told you to get out!" he screamed at her, grabbed his glass of iced tea and threw it on her. She gasped as he stepped closer and grabbed her shirt collar. "If you tell anyone about this your husband's going to die or something much worse than leukemia, I'll tell you that!"

It was then that the secretary noticed his stepdaughter, tied to a chair with duct tape over her mouth. She didn't care how much money or power he had, that was illegal. If she didn't have this job to pay for her husband's chemotherapy, this bastard was going to hell.

"I'm not afraid of you," she hissed. "You're done, asshole." And she fled the building, leaving him cursing alone in the small room. No, the flock would pay. He ordered five more troops to come into the room. When they got there, he addressed them formally.

"You know where the flock's house is located. Well, I want you to go there. Go there, and burn everything, every last inch of it, to the ground."

His stepdaughter's last thought was, I'm so glad I saw this coming.

Nudge POV

In a few hours, we drove into the driveway of our house. We didn't pay much attention to the house as we scrambled to figure out how to land the helicopter. We ended up crashing it on the lawn, and Max and I had to jump out at the last minute. The helicopter immediately burst into flames. Tendrils of smoke rose from its remains.

Fang, Gazzy, and Nudge were all just staring at the house, with Iggy sitting back, confused as ever as to why no one was talking. We followed their gaze, and my eyes widened in horror. Where the house used to be, there was only the base of the house and a heap of ashes. Smoke was rising from it, and it looked as if the house had just disappeared, if it wasn't for all the ashes.

"No!" Max screamed. "No, no, no! We could've sold it, we needed things inside it, we just lost everything! We can't afford a new house, or new furniture, or all the stuff we lost! That bastard destroyed our house, and now we have nothing!" She sank to her knees and buried her head in her hands.

Fang walked over and squatted next to her, patting the spot in between her wings to soothe her, but nothing would calm her down. She was in hysterics, because she and she alone was the only one in the family that was responsible for all the money.

The rest of the flock and I went back to the car to unload our things, and we sat on the front lawn and glanced at the remainder of our things. I had next to nothing, other than a few outfits. Angel and Gazzy had even less, and Iggy hadn't brought anything with him at all. And I couldn't shake the feeling that it was all my fault.

Then I noticed the envelope sticking out of my backpack. My name was scrawled on the front of it, and I recognized it as the one my agent had given me back in California. I opened it slowly, wondering if a letter or an apology would be inside. I actually kind of missed her, knowing I would never see her again.

I was confused when I pulled a slip of paper out of it. It was a note that my agent had put in. The only thing written was: I really hope this helps.

I reached inside the envelope again and pulled out another piece of paper, a crisper piece of paper that was rectangular. I gasped aloud as I saw that it was a check for $400,000, money to buy back all that we had lost; a house, new furniture, new clothes. How much had this taken away from my agent? I screamed.

The others looked up, and even Max managed to crawl over to my side. I hid the check in my hands. "What is it?" Max asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. I grinned up at her, handing her the check.

Her eyes got round and a smile grew on her face as she glanced at it. "Where'd you get this?"

"A very good friend," I answered simply.

D: Stepdad's a bitch, huh. Anyone but me happy that there's gonna be more than ten chapters? As always, review!

~Rachel