A/N: Tons of inspiration for this one! And it's really long, too!

Well. Read and review!

It was the freaking apocalypse.

"IGGY!" Gazzy's indignant voice rang out.

"GAZZY!" he replied, equally loudly.

"QUIT BLAMING ME!" they both screamed in unison. It was coming from Iggy and the Gasman's room. I ran towards the loud noise and found that the shelf they had on the wall had actually fallen off. Ig and Gazzy were running around, trying to conceal suspicious pieces of wiring before Mom saw it.

I helped them stuff everything on the ground into a box as quickly as I could. Right then, Nudge came in.

"YOU TOOK MY NAIL POLISH!" she shrieked.

"It was flammable," Gazzy argued, busy trying to lift the shelf while Iggy ran around looking for the fallen screws.

"Nudge, I'll buy you more tomorrow and they'll get in trouble, but now is not the moment…"

"WHO TOOK MY LAPTOP?" This time it was Fang. He ran into the room, wild-eyed, and Nudge was looking pretty guilty. This definitely qualifies as an apocalypse. But let me back up to this morning to when it all started.

I was eating breakfast calmly, with no kind of crazy, weird thing to fix or do, or no angry bird kids running around. The whole flock was just sitting around the table, tired, munching on random stuff Iggy had cooked.

Ella was there too, since it was Saturday. She was complimenting Iggy's omelet when Mom burst in. Seven pairs of sleepy eyes turned to her. She was holding a broom and looking unusually happy. Strangest of all, she was dressed on a Saturday morning.

"Spring-cleaning, everyone!" she sang. Gazzy reacted first. He made a face.

"What's that?" the Gasman asked.

"I saw it on TV once," Iggy muttered. "It's forced labor normal people do every spring."

"Can't we, like, get chocolate and eggs instead?" Nudge moaned.

"Maybe after you clean," Mom said.

"But we're not even dressed yet," I said, motioning to Gazzy's airplane pajamas and Fang's ratty old Green Day shirt. Nudge's had so many sparkles, flowers and pink things it would hurt my eyes to describe them again.

"There are rules," Mom said. She actually made rules, like this was some kind of game. Can you believe that, people?

"When breakfast is over, you have ten minutes to get dressed. Then, you each clean your own room. When you're done your room, come down to the living room and I'll go check your room and check you off the list. If you don't finish by lunchtime, you get to help me with the rest of the house all afternoon."

She practically uttered a death sentence. We were terrible at cleaning, and no one wanted to spend all afternoon with Mom in neat-freak mode.

"Breakfast ends now. Ten minutes." I raced upstairs, jumping into my room and closing the door. I had a room to myself, and so did Fang. Iggy had to share with Gazzy, and Nudge with Angel. There are some privileges to being the oldest two.

I threw on a random shirt. It advertised some concert. It was probably Ella's. My shorts I slept in seemed good enough.

I burst through my door and there was Fang.

"You got dressed fast," I said, knowing that for the flock ten minutes was more than enough time to get dressed. Nudge would probably be having trouble, but she could deal.

Fang looked down at his watch. "We still have seven minutes," she said. I turned around and opened the door to my room, shutting it lightly after me. I crashed on my bed, still tired.

I guess I should tell you why I was so tired. Well, I have to go back to last night.

I woke up, tears streaming down my face. What was that dream? I remembered fire, the world exploding. There was a new world, full of light and greenery. I saw next to me Angel and Fang, and some other guy I didn't know. He was saying my name like I did, though.

I couldn't find the rest of my flock. But worst of all—I didn't care about them. It was like I'd just forgotten.

I clutched at my hair, tugging experimentally to see if I would feel better. The horrible feeling never left me.

Walking out of my room, I sped downstairs to get a glass of water. I heard the sound of the TV on. Fang was in front of the couch, half watching the movie and half blogging on his laptop.

"Hey," he said, looking up at me.

"Hey," I answered softly, sitting down next to him. "What are you watching?"

"Um," he said, looking up. "Soap-opera, apparently." He looked at me with worried eyes. "Why are you up so late?"

"Bad dream," I answered, trying to remember it but not really grasping at anything except the feeling of fear.

"You should go to bed," he said, pulling me closer so I could snuggle into his chest.

"Then why are you holding on to me?" I laughed.

"Good point," he answered.

"Let's watch a movie," I said.

"Sure." I went up to the shelf and picked out a movie. I put it in the TV, and it started playing. Half an hour into the movie, Iggy came down with Ella.

"We heard some noise," Iggy said.

"We?" I asked. Iggy blushed a little.

"You keep quiet, and I will," he said, referring to—oh, never mind, you don't need to hear that one. I need to get my hands on his camera and delete that picture before anyone gets the wrong idea of Fang and I.

The two lovebirds (the other two lovebirds) got into the other couch together. Ten minutes later, Nudge and Angel came down wordlessly and sat at my feet, eyes trained on the movie. Gazzy had been woken up when Iggy left their room, so he finally came down after giving up on sleeping.

After that, the movie finished and we realized it was morning. Iggy quickly made breakfast so it would look like we got up early. That pretty much caught us up.

So I was lying down on my bed, dead tired, of course with Fang right next to me, and seven minutes to kill. Well.

I snuggled into Fang's warmth, trying to maybe sleep. He was twirling a strand of my hair softly as I drifted off. He gently placed a kiss on my forehead, and I was just about to go to sleep in heaven, when Mom-turned-bootcamp yanked the door open.

"Ten minutes are u—" she stopped when she saw us on the bed. "MAX!"

"Sorry, sorry," I grumbled. "But the rules only said you had to be dressed. I'm dressed."

I didn't even bother to move, but Fang had sat up, ramrod straight, on the edge of the bed. Mom shot us a last glare and left.

"I have to go clean my room," Fang said. I smiled at him.

"Will you come over to help when you're done?" I asked. He nodded and left. I looked at my room. I had a desk overflowing with papers; pencils, and things, dirty clothes were strewn around the floor. I spotted somebody's sneaker (Gazzy), a mascara wand (Nudge), and a tangle of covers on my bed.

I yanked the covers all off in a random burst of fury. Great job, Max, now there's even more of a mess. On the bed, I saw a small scrap of sewn-up cloth. I picked it up carefully and saw it was Fang's puppet. I smiled at its nondescript features and placed it gently on a chair. I surveyed the room. No way I would ever be able to clean all of this before lunch, at noon, when it was in three hours.

I spotted the closet I never used. I used my other closet for clothes sometimes. I gathered all of the dirty clothes and flung them in there. I turned to the non-clothes closet. I'd opened it once and seen Ella's old stuff. I opened the creaky door. It had plenty of room on the floor.

I grabbed an armful of desk junk and dropped it into the closet. Clean. I kicked everything on the floor towards there. The closet was now full of stuff, but my room was clean. Mission accomplished.

I closed the closet door and went to find Fang. He was in his room, listening to music. He paused when he saw me.

"Done already?" he asked me.

"I should ask you the same thing," I said. His room was impeccable. Fang smirked.

"I have to see this," he said, closing his computer and taking out his earphones. I opened his door and we walked together to my room, ignoring the shouting and crashing around the house.

His face registered surprise when he saw my clean (albeit empty) room. He scanned all of it and his eyes fell on his puppet, sitting on a made-ish bed (meaning I dropped the covers back on in no particular order).

After a quick, amused glanced at me, he walked towards the closet. He knew me so well.

"No! Don't!" I said, wondering if the stuff would stay in.

"Why?" he asked. I caught up to him and inched closer, opening my eyes wide.

"Please?" I said, an inch away from his face. He almost faltered, his eyes staring deep into mine. He yanked the door open and papers; clothes, pens, pencils and old bowls fell out. Jerk. I glared at Fang.

"Look what you did!" I huffed. "Now help me clean up," I said, stuffing it all back in. Just then, a box fell out, whacking me on the head.

I almost fell over. "Ow," I muttered.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Oh, now you care?" I snarled. "Help me clean."

Fang sighed and decided to actually be helpful for once. He helped me pick up the box and shove it into the top shelf, when another one fell down.

"It's like whack-a-mole," he commented, putting the box of old pictures back into its place. An old trophy of Ella's fell down, knocking down Gazzy's baseball bat.

I was about to ask someone why there were things that didn't belong to me in my closet when I heard a loud crash. It practically rocked the house.

Back to the apocalypse.

"IGGY!"

"GAZZY!"

"QUIT BLAMING ME!"

It was coming from Iggy and the Gasman's room. I ran towards the loud noise and found that the shelf they had on the wall had actually fallen off. Ig and Gazzy were running around, trying to conceal suspicious pieces of wiring before Mom saw it.

I helped them stuff everything on the ground into a box as quickly as I could. Right then, Nudge came in.

"YOU TOOK MY NAIL POLISH!" she shrieked.

"It was flammable," Gazzy argued, busy trying to lift the shelf while Iggy ran around looking for the fallen screws.

"Nudge, I'll buy you more tomorrow and they'll get in trouble, but now is not the moment…"

"WHO TOOK MY LAPTOP?" Fang ran in.

"It was on your bed before," I said, putting in the screws while the two boys held up the shelf.

"Nudge," I sighed. Her eyes widened.

"I just wanted to watch Pretty Little Liars!" she argued. "It's in my room, Fang."

Nudge left and I asked Gazzy for scissors. He handed me a pair of little kid ones.

"I need the dangerous kind," I said to Gazzy. "Or a screwdriver." The kid handed me a shiny screwdriver that looked like it had murdered many missing household appliances.

In Iggy and Gazzy's room, you're more likely to find a screwdriver than scissors. Fact of life.

I screwed the shelf back on. "Hide the box," I told them. They nodded, accepting the useful advice. I went back to my room, and saw the explosion of boxes and things.

"FANG!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. Like magic, he appeared.

"What's wrong?" he asked, looking around, panicked.

"Help me clean," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I'm your girlfriend," I said, getting closer. "Because I'm amazing." Closer. "Because you love me this much," I told him, spreading out my arms. He actually smiled and agreed, planting a quick kiss on my lips.

"Okay, let's do this thing!" I said. We both shoved the papers back in, put the boxes back, and shut the door before anything else could fall.

"I'm gonna go get approved downstairs," he said.

"I'll do that after I help the girls," I answered. Fang left the room quietly, the same way he does everything else.

I picked the Fang puppet up and walked over to his room. The Max puppet was on his bed too. I put the Fang puppet right next to it, putting its floppy hand on the Max puppet's hand.

I left his room and went to check on the girls' room. Angel was putting a stuffed animal in place at the end of a neat row and Nudge was hanging jewelry on hooks that were all around her big mirror. She had one of those movie star mirrors with light bulbs all around it, and I swear she spent an unhealthy amount of time in front of it.

I left quickly, seeing that they didn't need any help. I passed Mom on the way to my room.

"I saw your room. You passed," she told me, obviously in a hurry. I still had ten minutes before lunch, judging by Iggy's absence and the smell of cooking quesadillas.

I opened my door and my gaze fell onto my bed. There was the Fang puppet again. This time, it was holding a tiny paper heart. I remembered it was from that time when Nudge had thrown confetti all over the house—not a good day.

But this was beyond sweet. Before I could go see Fang, I heard Iggy call that lunch was ready. A smile on my face, I flew (yes, flew, I felt like it, don't judge me) downstairs. The whole flock, plus Ella, was waiting at the table. Hey, we'd done something as a family and survived. Now to spend the rest of the afternoon doing nothing with Fang…

A/N: Review! Do it! Make me update faster!