A/N: fact of life: I love hearing people talk on the phone. Seriously. Its so fun making up the other side of the convo… its quite entertaining. For example, when my brother was on the phone the other day: (he's the quotes, my imagination is the italics)
"Hey, yeah, wassup?"
I lost my girlfriend.
"yeah, why are you calling me?"
She dumped me! For another guy! He has a HUGE mole.
"Um... wait, when?"
Last week. She is such a player its not even cool.
"Dude! I wanna play!"
WTF? Yeah, she's hot and all but if she comes back I am not letting her dude. She is such a witch.
"Zombies? No. I've played Wolfenstein, but I beat it like way too many times."
Yeah, she looks like a zombie too. You wanna come over and hang? I got the new COD and you haven't been over to play.
"yeah, I was… busy."
Doing what, seeing a girl? Or girls? Woo woo…. Come on dude, tell me!
"fine, okay I was."
How did you snag more than one? What happened?
"it was sweet dude. I like knifed em, it was soo sweet. The blood, it was everywhere. Hang on, I'm going upstairs, my sis is giving me a weird look…"
Ah… that's my life. :)
Shoutouts: thank you for all the author/story alerts! I was so happy! I never thought y'all could be so sweet… +tears of joy+
ALERT: I am in need of a beta. If you are interested, PLEASE PM ME! Thanx.
Disclaimer: what would happen if I said I DID own Maximum Ride? Would like guys in suits come knocking on my door tomorrow? Hm, life HAS gotten kind of boring lately…
Chappie Three
Max's POV
"Soooo, Max," Nudge called to me, "where are we going anyway? You have a plan, right? I mean, right now, we're just kinda flying into nowhere, you know? Like, we are practically over a DESERT. There is like NOTHING. So like where should we go? Ooh, how about California? Disney World!"
For a split second I forgot to flap, and dropped down a couple feet before regaining my composure. No one seemed to notice but Fang, who shot me an indecipherable glance. Nudge continued talking. Had she even stopped?
"I mean, of course you know, you always have a plan-" everyone turned to stare at me.
"Yes, Nudge," I said in my Leader voice, "of course I have a plan. I'm just… fine tuning it a bit."
Fang smirked, shooting me a yeah, right glance.
I shot him Max's Glare of Doom.
"-because you know, we've already been to France and England and stuff, and I was wondering what South America would be like. OMG! Imagine all the cute dresses! It would be awesome!"
"And this is supposed to convince me how?" I muttered to Fang, who had flown up beside me.
"Food!" Iggy cried, "don't forget the awesome food! Mm, all those spices…. And the girls… Spi-cy!" His blank eyes seemed to gleam.
"What about that huge river?" Gazzy interrupted, "snakes and spiders and bugs and-"
"Its called the Amazon, Gaz," Angel piped up, "and what about the beaches? Come on, Max, please? Please please please?" she swooped up in front of me.
Shoot. Bambi eyes alert. Don't look, Max, just don't look… Only you see, the thing is, its kinda hard to fly with your eyes shut, and I ended up crashing right into Fang.
"What did Max do now?" Iggy demanded.
"Shut up, Ig," I grumbled, trying to smooth my crumpled feathers and fly at the same time.
"Nothing interesting just flew into Fang," Gazzy said.
Now that I was back to my normal, composed self Angel resumed her begging.
"Pretty please Max? PLEASE?" she lowered her voice to a whisper, "I'll tell Fang what you were dreaming last night…"
I flushed. Darn that adorable evil 7 year old!
It wasn't like I was having a bad dream last night, just… embarrassing. I had dreamed that me and Fang were flying, side by side – kind of like we were now, I thought with a blush – and we came upon a cloud. It was giant, and the whole thing was pure silver. It gleamed so brightly it almost hurt to look at. Fang nodded toward it and we flew to the top, where we sat so close we were almost touching, and in the dream I remember being hyper-aware of how close we were. And then so subtly I almost didn't notice Fang scooted nearer so that our shoulders were brushing against each other. We sat like that for a few minutes, and my entire arm was tingling the whole time. And then I reached over and took Fang's hand. And we sat on that bright silver cloud, watching the moon, holding hands, until I woke up.
Nudge's voice jerked me back to reality.
"Max? Max? What is up with you lately? You keep zoning out, I swear, its not like you! You're not sick are you? That would be like NOT good. But… we don't GET sick. So-"
I tuned her out and concentrated on Angel. "Don't you dare." I hissed.
"Yay!" she cried out happily, "we're going to South America!"
I was stunned. "What-? Angel! Excuse me, but I make the decisions around here!" the Flock's cheering died down. Gazzy looked downright miserable.
"So… we're not going to South America?" he said quietly. My heart, despite my scolds at it to be strong!, melted.
Go to South America, Max. The enemy is someplace else, but first you need to gather some very important information there.
Like what? I demanded, how to make plantain pie? There was no answer. Typical.
"Don't worry Gaz," I said, "we're going. But no snakes on my pillow, okay? And Iggy, cut with the sexism."
They erupted into cheers again.
"Pillows?" Fang muttered in my ear (or as close to my ear as he could get while flying above me – wait, when had he moved from beside me?). "You're planning on staying someplace we'll have pillows?"
"I was being metaphoric, Fang," I grumbled.
He just smirked.
We had been flying for about 2 minutes when Iggy piped up. "Um, Max? Not to insult our great leader or anything, but… isn't South America in the other direction?"
Now, I have no idea how Iggy knew this, all I know is that I got very grumpy and did an abrupt about-face. "We were warming up. Got it?" I shot him Max's Glare of Doom.
"She's glaring at you, Ig," I heard Gazzy whisper.
Iggy muttered back "yeah, I can tell. Its like a laser or something…"
I just gave him the Bird. The idiots I have to put up with, honestly!
Fang's POV
We were going to South America. Huh. Max, being Max, acted as though she had planned to go south all along, but I saw how startled she was when Nudge asked her about it. That, and the fact that we had been flying in the wrong direction were clear indicators that Max was using the famous Max method – wing it.
Behind me, I heard Gazzy and Iggy muttering about 'Max's Glare of Doom' and rolled my eyes. It wasn't that bad when Max glared at you. …oh, who am I kidding. It's like being faced with the Incredible Hulk on steroids and flying straight into the sun – at once. Yeah, it's that bad.
I looked down at the giver of the above glare, to see that her face was all scrunched up in a look of annoyance. Man, she looked adorable like that. I wanted to swoop down and kiss her frown away… and I did not just think that.
"So," I said quietly, so the rest of the Flock wouldn't hear, "anything new from your Voice?"
She sighed and tipped her head back to look at me. "Nah, nothing important, just some cryptic message about "the enemy" and "information" we need to gather down there."
I nodded slowly.
"We'll figure it out when we get there," I said.
She smiled, irrationally causing my heart to stutter.
Her hair rippling back, her face, not crumpled anymore but light and happy… She looked so… what's the word I'm looking for, free. We hadn't been flying in so long, I didn't blame her. And now that we had a goal, of sorts, she didn't have much to worry about, the whole 'saving the world and destroying the guys who want to take it over and revolutionize it," thing aside.
I wanted to kiss her so bad.
…Sorry. Blame the hormones.
Behind us, I heard a mild explosion. My whole body automatically tensed. I felt Max slow, and then whip around.
"What was that?" she demanded.
Turning around, I was surprised how far ahead Max and I had flown. However, with our bird vision, we could clearly make out Gazzy and Iggy's guilty expressions.
It looked as though Angel and Nudge were flying as far away from them as they could without straying out of sight.
"What was that?" Max repeated, this time sounding a bit more annoyed and a bit less alarmed. Which I couldn't help think was silly – Gaz and Ig looking nervous was far scarier in my opinion than, say, 20 or 30 Flyboys. Because you can kill Flyboys.
"Max!" Nudge screeched, her voice faint, "they are testing their bombs! While we are FLYING! In MIDAIR! We could DIE! Me and Angel were RIGHT THERE! It almost HIT US!"
Max sighed, something she seemed to be doing a lot lately. She held up her forearms in an X shape.
Stop.
Everyone halted. She yanked my arm and we sped back toward the rest of the Flock. As we got closer, I felt something tickle my nostrils. Was that…? If we were on ground, we would have screeched to a stop, but what with us being in the air and all, we just sort of made a whooshing noise.
Nudge and Angel flew forward as Max narrowed her eyes at the two other boys.
"Why do I," she hissed, "smell smoke?" I saw Gazzy swallow visibly.
"Well…." Iggy began, "we were kinda, you know, testing a bomb?"
Max was clearly holding herself back from jumping on the two and strangling the answers out of them. "Alright, I think I got that part. Keep going, and maybe explain WHY you were doing this while you're at it!"
Iggy licked his lips. "Well, you see, since your mom is a vet, me and Gazzy have been… borrowing some of her supplies that have potent chemicals for pyro techniques." He paused and glanced nervously at Max.
Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded for him to continue.
"So anyway, we looked online and found that there were these kind of bombs you could make called altitude bombs. They use them on like airplanes and stuff. And well, since we're in the air a lot, Gazz and me, we figured why not?
"So we got the ingredients, and made some in the Pit, but they're kinda hard to test. Cause the way altitude bombs work, they don't go off till you reach a certain height. Hence the name 'altitude bombs'.
"Well, we were gonna test them, you know, fly way above the woods and chuck 'em and see what happened-" Max's glare stopped Iggy's explanation.
Uh oh, I thought.
"And what," she demanded, "were you going to do if someone saw? Or if they hit someone?"
Iggy fidgeted. "Well, that's the thing. The first one me and Gazzy made, we quartered the ingredients, so the initial explosion wouldn't be as big." He was starting, I noticed, to go into pyro mode – waving his hands and using big words no one understood.
"But when me and Gazzy brought it out to test it, above the woods Max, so no one would get hurt, it was too small. Turns out you need a certain amount C4 and nitroglycerin to activate the explosive mechanism, otherwise the chemicals just neutralize each other."
Angel and Nudge had started to aimlessly drift away, and Max's eyes were glazed over.
"So instead, we only halved the initial ingredients, and tried it then. But it still didn't work. The chemical compound backfired and it exploded in our face. So we decided to just make the bomb using the full ingredients, only we figured it would be too big to test above the woods."
I was beginning to wonder if the smoke was only from the bomb trial, or something else. I glanced down at where the smoke was coming from. Wait – was that fire? I always knew Iggy was hot headed, but… Okay, that was lame.
Max had started talking. "So, lemme guess, you decided to test it on your next long flight, which happened to be this one."
Gazzy nodded guiltily; Iggy just shrugged.
"And you almost blew off Angel and mine's wings too!" Nudge, who had realized Iggy was done, had flown back over. "And Max, just so you know, there's like a huge fire down there. Probably because of Iggy's and Gazzy's dumb bomb. They are SO stupid. I mean really, I don't know why Ella-" she clapped her hand to her mouth.
"Ella what?" Iggy said interestedly. "What were you going to say, Nudge?"
Real smooth, Nudge. I thought, not obvious at all. But apparently, for Iggy, it wasn't.
"Ella what, Nudge? Come on, tell me!"
I sighed. "Iggy, shut up, you sound like a two year old."
He gave me a pitiful look.
"Whatever," I muttered.
If I were you, I'd go with Max. I flinched as Angel sent her thoughts to me. Looking around, I saw she was right – Max was shooting down toward the now obvious flames.
Thanks, Ang. Now get out of my head please.
"No problem!" She said cheerfully, this time aloud.
"I dunno about you guys," I said, "but I'm going after Max."
Tucking my wings tightly against my back, I faced the ground and sped down.
What would we have done without Newton?
Max must have heard me approaching, because she turned around, her hair whipping in her face, and screamed "There are people in there!"
My eyes darted toward the blaze; it had now completely engulfed a building.
Angel, I thought with all my might, if you are listening right now, please tell Iggy and Gazzy that they die tomorrow. Tomorrow, because today I would be too tired. Saving people from fires tends to do that to a body.
We were fast approaching ground, so me and Max unfurled our wings and drew to a sudden stop before dropping the last few feet.
The house, I noticed, was huge.
Hope they got insurance on that… the thought popped into my head.
"What should we do?" I demanded, trying to come up with a plan that would prevent Max from doing something stupid like running right into the fire.
"Run in and grab them!" she screamed, pointing. Rolling my eyes, I looked at the burning house. There, on the balcony, was a girl, looking to be around seven or eight. Now, I'm not the most emotional person, not aloud anyway, but when I saw her my heart went out to her.
She was clutching the railing of the balcony, and her face was tear-streaked and sooty. I'm sure she was screaming, because her mouth was open, but I couldn't hear anything over the roaring of the flames. She was tiny, probably up to my waist, but what stood out about her most was her hair. It was white. Pure, shining white, and right now, with the fire burning bright all around her, she looked like an angel. There was no way around it.
But angels, I imagine, can fly, and for some reason I highly doubted this girl had wings sprouting out of her back. I mean, who would come up with something like that? Who would graft bird DNA into a tiny little helpless baby? Who could be that evil?
"FANG, are you listening to me?" Max punched me in the arm. "I said, I'm going up to get her! Unless you have a better idea?"
I admit, I didn't.
I could feel the heat coming off in great swells, drenching me with sweat. I couldn't imagine how the girl felt.
Max took one look at me, and seeing I couldn't come up with a plan, began sprinting toward the house.
The terrace was now almost swallowed up by fire. How much longer could it stand before collapsing? And then I saw it – way, way down at the bottom of a pillar, the fire almost completely eaten through wood. Another minute and the whole thing would fall.
"Max!" I screamed, trying to get her attention, "Max!" she had to fly, there was no way around it, she had to fly right now if she wanted to get there in time to save the girl.
But she wasn't. She was keeping her wings tight against her back until the last possible moment when she would have to leap up and grab the girl.
Our wings, while admittedly made to stand higher temperatures (what with us being closer to the sun while flying) could not, could absolutely not, abide direct heat. From, for instance, fire. Our feathers fall out at an incredible rate, and we lose energy faster than if we were fighting ten Erasers at once with our hands behind our back.
That was a horrible analogy – Erasers would be too easy.
I was already dashing across the lawn, a battle raging inside me: Max or the girl?
The girl – if she was wasn't rescued, and soon, then she would be swallowed up completely. And if Max flew up to get her, the balcony would collapse before she reached it, and she would have to go back down and start looking for the girl in the ruins. I don't want to think about how much energy she would lose.
I knew that if I took off right then, I would be able to make it to the girl and carry her to safety before I collapsed. I wouldn't lose any energy getting there, and wouldn't have to use up any extra by taking off, like Max would. And we were always faster in air than on the ground.
But…if I got the girl, Max wouldn't be able to tell – the flames were so bright I could hardly make out the balcony. Max, being Max, would think that the girl had disappeared under the rubble of the collapsed balcony – and Max, being Max, would look for her. In the fire.
Because that's who Max is – a crazy, stupid, reckless, beautiful headstrong girl who would risk her life for someone else in a second.
Of course, there was always option B: to simply grab Max before she got to the girl, therefore ensuring Max's safety at the least.
The girl would have absolutely no chance of survival if I chose B.
If Max survived and the girl didn't, she would be heartbroken.
But if I chose A, Max might… die. And Max could not, could NOT, die. Max, who I loved, had loved since I was in a crate next to hers at the School, when she was beaten up and bruised and would still look at me and smile….
All of this ran through my head in a matter of seconds, as I ran through the grass towards the mansion.
I had to make a choice, and quickly: Max or the girl?
End of Chappie 3
Sorry for the profuse amount of clichés in there…. But I LOVE CLICHES! I am a sucker for stories where the princess is trapped by an evil witch and her prince comes to save her, a clichéd story if there ever was one. Let me know if it's getting too bad, okay?