"Max," I said, shaking her a little bit to get her attention, "are you OK?"

"Oh I'm fiiiiine, my knight," she said, a dreamy quality still in her voice. She flicked the collar of my shirt, "my dark knight." She suddenly broke out giggling. "Oh my God," she exclaimed, "you're Batman! I'm in love with Batman!"

This was bad. Either invisible aliens had come down to earth and pumped her full of GABA inhibitors (I saw it on a TV show once) in the last hour, or she was on Valium, or some similar drug.

Guess which theory I went with.

"Gazzy, Iggy, into the kitchen, now!" I said the way Max does when she's about to drill something into one of our heads. "Nudge, stay with Max and make sure she doesn't do anything crazy or dangerous." She nodded.

Once all us boys were in the kitchen I got right down to business.

"Which one of you guys drugged Max?" I asked blunty leaning hard on the table. "You are the two most likely suspects, so one of you'd better fess up." I glared at Gazzy and added "And I'm not happy right now" for Iggy's benefit.

"I don't know why you think I did it. The way you hear Max talk about it, it's a wonder they even use it."

"So you have really don't know how it happened?" I asked incredulously.

"Of course not," he scoffed, "the only person even remotely devious enough to do this is..." He sudden stopped, his milky grey eyes taking on a look of supreme dread. I knew what he thinking because the exact same thought had just occured to me as well. With perfect synchronization, we both turned and galred directly at Gazzy.

He was looking extremely guilty.

"Gazzy..." I said slowly. He cracked imediately.

"I was mad, OK?"

"At who?" I pressed. "Max?"

"No, Iggy."

"ME?!" Iggy sounded shocked.

"Yeah. Remember earlier, when Fang made me go be lookout?"

"Of course I remeber, but the shouldn't you be mad at Fang from sticking you up there?"

"I am, but not as I am at you. You didn't even try to convince him to let me stay. In fact, you might as well have pushed me out yourself." I deal with this one later....

"Gazzy, as interesting as this is, why is Max acting like she's drugged?"

"I spiked the big brownie with Valium."

"Where on earth did you get your hands on Valium?" I said. Then I thought about it, "Never mind, I don't want to know. The question is, why did you do it?"

He looked confused when he saw we didn't understand his reasoning, "I thought Iggy was going to eat it."

"Gazzy," Iggy said, talking very slowly, "you knew that brownie was for Max, I only told you about a million times."

"I forgot."

"Gazzy!" I shouted. "How long is she going to be like this?" He winced.

"Maybe until morning?" He said uncertainly.

Good grief.

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I walked back into the living room to see how Max was doing when I was almost decapitated.

"Nudge," I asked Nudge, who was at the other end of the room, "why is Max spinning around like that?"

Nudge just shrugged.

"Silly Fangy," she said as she slumped into my arms, "it's because I'm a helicopter!"

"You're a helicopter?" I asked.

"I fly, don't I?" she asked, confused that I would even asked such a question. "And helicopters fly. So I must be a helicopter."

"Max," I said, straining to be patient with her in this state, "you're not a helicopter." She looked crestfallen, but perked up again almost immediately. "And you're not an airplane either," I said before she could say anything, "even though you do have wings."

"Get out! I have wings!?" Lord, give me strength....

"Yes, you do. In fact, we all have wings."

Experimentally, she unfolded her wings and looked behind her back.

"Wow, I really do have wings." She flapped them excitedly, knocking down a few pictures and one chair in doing so.

"Why don't you try that outside?" I said as I hurriedly ushering her towards the door.

"Ooooooh, really? That would be sooooo cool!"

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Once we were outside she again tried use her newly discovered wings.

"Fangy, watch this one!" she called. I had since deposited my sorry butt in one of the lawn chairs that were around the cabin, watching her attempt to fly. She actually lifted off the ground a few times, but she'd always been reacquainted with it a few seconds later.

"Max," I sighed, "why don't you give this up before you get hurt or something?"

"No!" she whined, stomping the ground for added effect. "I am going to fly, even if it kills me!"

"That's what I'm afraid of," I muttered, rubbing my temples.

She gave me puppy dog eyes. "Will you help me, please?" she asked in that way that Angel does when she's extorting us.

"With flying?"

"Yeah, I need you to toss me up in the air." OK, am I the only one who sees how stupid this is getting?

Apparently.

"I don't think so," I said incredulously.

"Pleeeeeeease!" she pleaded. "I'll be your best friend!"

"I said no. Besides, you already are my girlfriend." She got a sly glint in her eyes when she heard this.

"You'd help me if you really loved me."

"Oh-nay!" This was starting to get really old.

"Then I guess I'll have to do it by myself," she said, suddenly sprinting for the cliff.

Oh Crap.

"Max, wait!" I yelled as I chased after her. Why oh why did this house have to be next to a cliff.

I was about twenty-five feet away from her when she took a flying leap right off the edge of the cliff, idiotically tucking her wings in. I jumped over the cliff myself, opening my own wings and pushing as hard as could to close the distance between us.

I finally caught her and swooped upwards, narrowly missing the jagged rocks at the bottom. (Seriously, why do cliffs always have to have dangerous rocks at the bottom all the time?) On the way back up she just wrapped her arm around my neck and stared dreamily into my eyes.

"I knew you'd save me," she said in a little baby voice.

"And you should be incredibly grateful for that too," I said as I landed next to the house. I mean, what were you thinking?! You could have been bashed against the rocks on the way down, or you could have landed right on the rocks at the bottom and been skewered, or even--Ow!" I felt a sharp in my right wing, but it went away almost immediately.

I looked down at my to see if something had happened to it when dived after Maximum Acid Trip here. Nothing seem out of place, and it didn't hurt when I moved it, but I did notice a shining black feather twirling in her hands.

"Max, is that my feather?"

"Yes," she said resolutely, "and I'm keeping it." She stuck it in her hair above her left ear. "Don't I look gorgeous?" she asked in a prissy sounding voice and striking a pose. Actually, I should say "trying" to strike a pose, because all she did was fall out of my arms from all the squirming.

I never knew Valium could be so dangerous. (Flock PSA; Don't do drugs. You might end up jumping off a cliff, and you DON'T have wings to keep you from falling.)

"Isn't grass great?" she asked from the ground, opening and closing her arms again and again.

"Max, what on earth are you doing?" Oops, sorry about the pun.

"Makin' a snow angel."

"But there isn't any snow."

"HEADS UP!" I heard from the other side of the house. I quickly looked up to see a small, roundish object flying towards me from over the top of the house. Immediately I was in the air, well out of range of the probable grenade.

Max, on the other hand, wasn't.

It landed about a foot from her head, made five quick beeps, and then....

Psssssssssssssssssssh!

In seconds Max was enveloped in a sickly brown, yellow smoke. It lingered for about a minute before a slight wind picked up and blew it away. When the smoke cleared I saw that Max was lying on the ground, unmoving.
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Author's Note; Ooooooh, suspense! How will it all turn out? Tune into the final chapter, premiering soon!