MY BRAIN WAS ABDUCTED BY ALIENS AND DISECTED AND THEN FED TO CREEPY ALIEN DOGS! …so I enlisted someone to help me with this story! Say hi to The Rose Angel!

TRA: call me chancey…and I thought you said you were paying me!

Dylan: HA! BURNED!

Me: just ignore him… uh, you can be the first to kill Dylan in the new 'ways to kill Dylan' bonus chapter?

Chancey: DEAL! :D

Me: aaaanywhooo! On with the Chapter!

MAX_

Okay… Possibly one of the weirdest things that has ever happened. It happened a week ago, and I still can't get over it. The flock couldn't believe it either, but they got over it quickly. But they weren't there. She had genuine concern in her cold eyes. The reunion with the flock was certainly eventful:

My wings hurt slightly, the barbed wire had scraped against the thin membrane of skin beneath the feathers. I had figured out that even though our flock telepathy didn't work across the length of America (as they were on one coast and I was on the other), I could still locate them. Once I got in range, I was bombarded with thoughts.

'MAX! Maxmaxmaxmax MAX! Where were you? What happened? We were so worried! Are you injured? How far away are you-'

'Let her breathe, Nudge. Max, Fang has been doing a good job leading us for the past week, but I convinced him to stay.'

'Thanks, Angie. Wait- week?'

'Yeah, you've been missing for a week! I- I mean we, were so worried about you!'

'Gee, thanks, Dylan,' I thought dryly. 'So were you all good for Fang?'

'Stop talking to us like we're little kids!'

'You ARE a little kid, Iggy. Emphasis on "little."'

'FANG! There are not so innocent kids listening!'

I could almost feel him smirking from here. 'Sorry. So how did you escape? The badass way, or were you just lucky like normal?'

'Uh… I guess you could call it luck.' I was a bit hesitant to tell them that our enemy helped me escape. It was different to how Ari saved us, because we knew the innocent little kid before the monster. As for Reaper, we only know the monster.

'Tell us Max! Maaaaaaax? Tell me! We want to know! Pretty please? With sprinkles and dead Reaper on top!' I winced at Nudge's last words.

'Uh… Reaper saved me.'

'WHAT!' seven different voices yelled.

'Oh, hello Total. And yes, you heard right. The heartless killer saved the helpless birdie.' Nudge's thoughts dropped off for a second as Nudge fainted. I could hear Fang..er…swearing his head off, Dylan was confused and trying to think of ways to protect me from the big bad bat, Iggy and Gazzy accidently slipped up in the bomb they were making and it exploded in their face, causing Nudge to wake up and laugh at them. Angel was… being Angel. She didn't seem at all worried or shocked, which concerned me a little.

'Max, show the memory to us, maybe that'll help them to understand better,' Angel thought.

I showed them the memory, once I was finished they were all shocked silent. Well… except for Angel. But as I said: Angel is… Angel.

'I'm about an hour's flight away from you guys, I'll talk then. Stay put and behave!'

When I got to the flock I was literally suffocated with hugs. It took Iggy and Fang to get them off before I could breathe again. Dylan actually had the nerve to kiss me on the lips. I made sure he wasn't able to have kids anytime soon, and as far as I could tell, he was still knocked out.

As you can see…it was hectic. We were moving towards the branch of Britt Maxicom that I was held captive. You know, I'm still flattered that they named their company after me. But all that aside, they are EVIL. With a capitol E! Okay, I'm exaggerating now. Great, I'm turning into Nudge.

We landed for the night after a couple more hours of flying. Why couldn't the rest of the flock have super-speed? I got out my bow and shot down a few birds for dinner…we were eating like kings tonight!

"CANABILISM!" Gazzy yelled, his eyes wide with fake fear. I rolled my eyes at his childishness.

"When you gotta eat, you gotta eat. Unless you don't want any…" I trailed off. He shut up quickly. But then Iggy decided to pick up where Gazzy left off.

He held up a bird that we hadn't plucked and prepared yet. It's head flopped onto his shoulder, and he had one arm around it's body and one arm holding it's wing like you would a hand. "But Max! This could've been my brother!" He whined. "How could you?"

I glared at him –which obviously didn't work. So I decided a different tact. I used my flame power to burn off all the feathers on the bird and turned it into a small crispy chicken. He dropped in surprise, but then screwed up his face. "NOOOOOO! Don't worry, Bro, I'll avenge your death!"

Then Gazzy used his ventriloquism and made his voice raspy. "Do not fret, my dear brother. Next time she gets another Mickey Mouse Alarm clock, you can blow it up like you did the others…"

My eyes widened and Iggy hissed at him. "IDIOT! She didn't expect us!"

Gazzy decided his shoes looked very interesting. "Oops," he squeaked.

I growled at them both. "You better run," I hissed at them, and they were off.

They immediately hid behind Fang, hoping I would take mercy on them if they used Fang as a barrier. I wouldn't. He raised an eyebrow at me. His way of asking 'what the hell?'

"Save us, oh mighty F-Nick! Save us from the scary dragon, known as Maaaaaaaaaaax! Oh, and don't forget to make the Maaaaaaaaaax nice and long." Iggy whispered to him, clutching at his hand.

Fang yanked his hand out of his grip and glared at Iggy and Gazzy. "You know how wrong that sounds, right? And go use someone else as a shield, I quit."

Gazzy scowled at him and used a big-boss sort of voice. "YOU DIDN'T! I FIRED YOU!" He shouted. Nudge and Angel, who were watching the proceedings, giggled behind their hands.

This would have been a wonderful flock moment…if we weren't just ambushed. These…things came out of the bushes. They looked like something out of a horror/sci-fi movie…actually, they looked like those big metal suits that the humans control in AVATAR, only these ones didn't have humans controlling them.

"Battle positions!" I yelled to the flock. It was our not-so-code word for 'kick the crap out of these guys!' There were only three of them, but they were massive. I didn't know how we didn't see them earlier! I teamed up with Fang, and we started flying around one, looking for weaknesses. I shot arrows into the spaces between armour, but they seemed to have no effect. I then used flaming arrows, but that made no difference either.

Fang was kicking and stabbing around the 'ankles', looking for weaknesses there. I looked over and saw Gazzy and Iggy trying to blow up one, but once the smoke cleared, there wasn't a scratch. The machine things were trying to grab at us, not wanting to kill us for some reason. So it was capture and not kill? I could handle that.

"Max!" Angel yelled. "I can't control them! And Nudge can't mess with them 'cause they have some sort of block on the magnetic particles!" Crap.

I was about to call retreat, but then I spotted something. It was a small hatch, under one of the 'arms.' It was probably used for fixing up the internals or something. I had a plan. "Gazzy! Chuck me a small bomb!" I yelled. He looked at me like I was crazy, but chucked me one anyway. "Fang, try and keep this arm up and out of the way!" I yelled, pointing to the arm that was currently trying to grab me.

Fang kicked at one of the fingers, and seeing my chance, I struck. I used my super-speed to fly under the arm and kick open the hatch. I set the detonator and threw it in. I then flew up as fast as I could, grabbing Fang along the way. There was a muffled 'BOOM', and the big machine just…collapsed.

We quickly went to work on the other ones, helping the flock out. Within ten minutes, all that was left was a pile of scrap metal.

"Report," I said, breathing hard as adrenaline still coursed through my veins.

"A gash on my arm, but it'll heal quickly," said Angel. She looked like she had before the fight, other than the big gash on her arm. I raised my eyebrow at her and I resolved to get Iggy to look after it.

"Er, I'm low on bombs, but that's about it." Iggy said. Gazzy nodded in agreement.

Nudge was lying on the ground, her chest heaving melodramatically. "I'm good… just a little out of shape…" she sighed.

"I'm fine." Three guess at who that was, but I think you'd only need one. Fang turned to me and raised his eyebrow. 'What about you?' he thought.

'I'm fine. Just a little tired, and I didn't want to use the flock's powers, because let's face it, I probably wouldn't be able to use them properly in a fight and in this particular on I don't want to be caught unaware,' I sent to him. I saw him drop his head slightly, his version of a nod.

The bushes ruffled to the left of us, and we all turned to face it in fighting stance. Fang and Iggy were on my flanks, and the others were covering us from behind. Out of the bushes stepped a fit looking man in combat boots, camo pants and an army shirt. He had a massive gun over his shoulder. He looked fit, like super-soldier fit.

"So..." he said. "The plan was to capture only the girl, but you destroyed my units-" at this he nodded at the piles of scraps "-and so now I'll take revenge on all of you. I'm sure boss would understand." We all started backing away slowly, but apparently not slowly enough, because he saw us. "Say bye-bye kiddies!" He yelled with glee in his eyes and loaded the rocket launcher. We had no hope of getting out of there before he fired.

But then another weird thing happened: just as he was about to pull the trigger, he stumbled forward and landed on his face. On his back was a spreading patch of red. I looked up to the direction the shot should've come from, and for a second I saw a flash of brown hair.

"Whoa…he was assassinated!" Gazzy breathed. "Best. Luck. EVER!"

"Gazzy, don't you think?" snapped Nudge, extremely out of character. "Maybe the reason he was assassinated was because he was going to kill us! More specifically Max! And didn't you hear him? They want her alive. They don't care about the rest of us!"

"And we all agree that it's a good thing they're only after me. It means you shouldn't be in as much dang- hey, where's Dylan?" I asked suddenly, noticing his missing presence. The others shrugged, but Fang had a hopeful glint in his eye. I didn't have to be a mind reader to tell what he was thinking, so I slapped the back of his head. He shouldn't be think murderous thoughts about a flock member…even annoying flock members who just don't know when to stop.

Again, the bushes rustled, but this time Dylan stumbled out.

"Where were you?" I said dangerously calm.

Dylan began to shift slightly and blushed. "Uh, nature called."

I tried reading his mind, but his thoughts all seemed like a jumbled mess that no one could makes sense of. I looked over at Angel and I could tell she was having the same problem. I turned back to him and snarled.

"Oh that's nice. You and nature must be very good friends after all that time…" I growled. Hmm, growling and snarling. I must be turning into a type of big cat or something. He just looked at me, confusion in those horribly alluring eyes. I grumbled under my breath, but Fang and Iggy heard me as they were close, and laughed at some of the more creative names I called Dylan.

"We'll head further into the forest until we find another clearing, from which we'll take off. We'll stop at the next town to eat, I promise," I ordered them. The flock grumbled a bit but they knew the risks of staying here. We packed away our stuff in record time and headed off quickly.

During our night-time trek in the forest, I saw something. It was a tattered journal, the same type that the white-coats back at the school used for writing their notes about experiments in. I picked it up and flipped through the pages quickly, not reading it. Most of it was full, with a few pages toward the back empty. In the back cover, I noticed a little not in an untidy scrawl: property of Belladonna Shrine. I closed it and put it in my pack, promising myself that I would read it later. It looked like it contained valuable information.

Me: valuable information, you say? We'll see about that!

Chancey: What are you planning?

Me: I'm planning on making a toasted ham and cheese sandwich once I'm done with this. I'm also changing this story from Mystery/hurt/comfort to adventure/action/humour. 'Cause lets face it. I can't write mystery and drama to save my life, and my humorous side always slips through…

Dylan: I think she meant with the chapters…

Me: *grins evilly at Dylan* you'll see, young grasshopper! But I will tell you that the next chapter will be Reaper centric, but this will NOT be a Reaper centric fic. She's more of a side character that helps the story along. If it wasn't for her, I'd be stuck on the first line of the first chapter. :)

Chancey: *in announcer voice* So who is Belladonna Shrine? And What will Reaper do next? And who was that obvious person who saved Max in a cliché moment? Tune in next time for the answers to all those questions!

Me: *claps* well done! Oh yeah, don't forget to review! I'm not going to bribe you with virtual anything, because lets face it, in the end we get virtual nothing :( so just review because you want to! Love ya all! Good bye from the wonderful land of AUS! (heh, I like WICKED, gimme a break).