A/N: Hey hey. Nobody likes excuses.

Thanks so much to my four reviewers: MPHknows, Tastethegothynerd, bluegreypurple, and an unknown reviewer. You guys really got me up off my butt. :)

Thanks also to the 5 story alerts and 2 favorites. You're awesome. :)

MPOV

"I am going to decapitate him, use his head as a mount for our television and proceed to shove the rest of his body in a vat of acid so strong that even Lily, who lives in the next neighborhood down, will have her dinner smell of the chemicals emitting from the edible substances." I growled, my fingers tightly gripping the table in front of me.

Alex, her brown spiky hair sticking up as if it had been electrocuted (which was muy cool by the way), was the ever serious one, not knowing when I was sarcastic or dramatic (heh, all the time).

So it was no surprise when she answered oh so practically by saying, "But you'll end up in jail Max!"

And it was no shock when I rolled my eyes and slunk down in my cheap funded school chair.

It was fifth freaking period and he still didn't send me a single note or, what is now modern, a text.

This called for extreme measures.

I was going Secret Agent Max mode.

"Excuse me teacher!" I sang in a falsely sweet voice, waving my hand back and forth like the idiot that sat next to me in first period. Just the effort to produce such a girly voice to my lips was nauseating.

"Yes?" She spoke sharply, turning to face me, looking quite irritated that I had disrupted her interesting lecture about how to identify animals from their feces.

What that had to do with balancing chemical equations I didn't know.

"I, um," I began, twirling my hair like those flirtatious girls always do in the movies. Apparently Secret Agent Max wanted to be a Barbie Girl today.

I needed to have a serious talk…with myself?

"Um, yeah, I was just wondering if, I could, like, use, like, the restroom?" I was about to chew on my gum for a certain emphasis, and realized I didn't have any. Darn.

The teacher sighed as if I was just making her life even more miserable and demeaning by asking a question that I was entitled to ask.

"Yes, yes. Just hurry back. After all I could never continue this lecture without you."

Whoa. My teacher's got some snark.

"Uh, yeah, like thanks." I uttered with just a hint of an "OMG-I can't- believe-I-talked-to-you" tone.

I then scurried down the hallway, running and ducking behind gum-filled columns and filthy, overflowing garbage cans.

After five minutes of overly exaggerated spy-moves and dozens of weird looks from couples making out, I reached the high, pointed, intimidating fence.

No one had ever dared to ditch school and hop the fence for doing so was equivalent of hopping the border or stealing a baby's lollipop.

Cutting class also resulted in a phone call home to your parents and a detention.

My parents were the type to bury me alive if I ever got into trouble at school. Although, being buried alive could save me a lot of stress…

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and tried desperately to jam my toes inside the little holes that fences so conveniently create. With great effort and almost fifteen minutes of whining and cursing, I was, wait for it, a grand total of 2-inches off the ground.

With a despairing wail, I tried even harder to use my body strength to pull myself further up, but the pointy tips hurt my hands.

And if you're sitting there laughing at my predicament, you've obviously never felt the pricks of metal on your palms.

They leave indentations.

Just as I was about to give up, I heard loud, amused laughter coming behind me.

"Need some help Max?" Iggy asked, no doubt swishing his blonde, surfer-looking hair to cover his smile.

Ah Iggy. Such an surfer-looking, troubled kid. I remember when Fang and I decided to let him join our group of tomfooleries. He was quite helpful in many areas of expertise, and learned from Fang, Alex, and I quickly.

Which also meant that the former two taught him how to annoy the pudding out of me. (And I eat a lot of pudding.)

"Do I need help? Do I need HELP? Have you no knowledge of what I have accomplished knave? I climbed the Great Wall of China with one hand, I went over the Niagara Falls in a bucket fit for SpongeBob, and I fought alongside the ponies when we took over our righteous land of the rainbows." I ranted, all the while losing grip on the edge, and scared that I was going to fall the two inches down to the concrete pavement.

"So you need help?" Iggy asked, his voice suppressing the sigh that usually followed after one of my fits.

"Yes, please." I whispered.

Now he really did sigh, and I heard him walking over to where I was hanging on, and he used his surprisingly strong upper body strength (psh, I wasn't jealous, no..) to lift me up just high enough so I could swing my leg over one side of the fence.

Then he let go.

"AGGGHHH, ZOMG, ZOMG. WHAT DO I DO, WHAT DO I DO?"I shrieked like a banshee, terrified at being so high up without anyone to break my fall.

Looking down I saw Iggy roll his eyes and calmly respond, "Jump idiot, jump."

I almost fainted at such a prospect, but if I was to discover what was going on with my progressively weirder best friend, I had no choice.

I closed my eyes, gripped the fence tighter, counted to three, and jumped.

"WHOA." I exclaimed as I dropped the few feet down to the pavement, and felt the vibrations echo in my long legs.

Looking around I caught Iggy's bright blue eyes and I grinned like a retard at my newly acquired skill. I voiced this development out loud.

"Iggy! I can climb fences now! Now I can climb Angel's fence and t.p her house, even though she's done nothing to me, and I can climb the mall's fence and play in the fountain after hours!" With this I gave a final whoop and pumped my arms and ran down the street in pursuit of my black-haired,black-eyed, idiot.

In the background I heard low laughter and Iggy's voice saying, "There goes the face of crazy."

'Tis true, 'tis true.

FPOV

"But sir!" I exclaimed, ready to pull out my hair in frustration.

"No but's. You find this key, or all is lost." Captain Larose stated, looking to me with a glare that screamed seriousness.

"Fang has a point sir." A voice of a newcomer dared to utter.

"Hmm? And what might this point be?" the Captain asked, feigning interest.

"Someone's gonna die." Jake, one of the seniors of the group, sing-songed in a whisper. The rest of the group sniggered quietly, waiting patiently for the show to unfold.

"Well," the rookie began, his eyes ignorantly lighting up at the Captain's supposed leniency, " If we steal the keys now, then there's no way of securing the definitive members of the opposite group. Also a battle right now would exhaust our supplies and leave us insuitable for the upcoming war. Finally, we don't even have sturdy evidence that the keys actually reside in such an area." The rookie gleamed upon delivering his well- delivered speech.

Shame that it was his last one.

Captain Larose rubbed his fingers on his chin; contemplating. Then, continuing with the expert act, he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed, "You! You were the idealist for this point. What say you? Bare or paint?"

I rolled my eyes, ignoring the sick feeling rising in my stomach. Jake whispered in my ear, " If you don't choose paint man, I will paint you."

I smirked at the empty threat and holding up the charade replied nonchalantly, " Why not bare Larose? It was time to test his strength anyway."

Grinning , the captain answered, " Very well, proceed."

The rookie looked on with confusion. Hesitantly raising a hand he asked, "Are we talking about interior decoration?"

The group was in an uproar.

Forcing my mouth into a menacing grin which turned my whole body sick with self-disappointment, I was the only one who remained tranquil enough to act.

Pouncing like a panther across the diagonal distance of the table, I brought out my hands arranged in fists and pounded them across every inch of his body. He attempted to fight back, and slightly grazed my chin with his "honorary" ring, but he was soon beaten up by my bare fists.

Within a minute he was dead.

Brushing off the dirt from the ground and the wood from the splintered chair, I calmly made my way back to the seat.

"Well done. Though perhaps a bit sooner next time, hmm? Anyhow, the plan will continue as planned. Jimmy will be brought alive, and whoever captures him first will have the honor of torturing him, understand? Civilians may be harmed, they just stand in the way anyway. Hopefully, we'll be one step closer to locating the queen's heart. Then we can finally destroy it." The captain drifted off into space as he finished.

His gaze refocused onto me and I immediately sat a little straighter. No need to die so soon.

"Dismissed." He hissed, obviously angered at something I had done.

As we left the dusty house I sighed and complained to Derek, one of the saner people in this recruitment. "What now?"

Derek pounded my back reassuringly. " He just zones out like that dude. Don't worry. Everyone knows this mission wouldn't be possible without you. And then way you took out that big-mouth kid? Genius. Took me four years to fight like that." His voice had changed into that of awe.

"Yeah?"I began, running my hand tiredly through my hair, and dreading the call I'd have to make to Max right now to explain my absence, "It took me sixteen."

And then we fell backwards, blown away by a powerful presence and cloudy smoke filling the congested hall.

A/N I know it's shorter, but I wanted to get the plot moving. Sorry for the long space between updates.

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