A/N: I'm so sorry. I feel really bad. I've just been so caught up in the last few weeks of school that I haven't had much of a chance to write. Then, when I did get a chance, I lost my book! So I couldn't write at all. But now here I am. So enjoy!
Disclaimer: Me No Own.
(P.S. Any Bleach watchers out there, doesn't Fang remind you kind of of a cross between Uryuu and Chad?)
Once we've left the hawk's cave far behind, Max starts talking. But instead of tuning her out, I listen eagerly. Surprisingly, I missed her voice a lot more in the last three days than I thought I had.
"Okay. How about some quick reports?" Max calls out to everyone. I tense. No, Nudge, please –
"I tried to find my mom," Nudge blurts.
Max's eyes widen dramatically. I breathe a sigh of relief. "Whaaat?" Max exclaims. "Your mom?"
Nudge shrugs, her caramel-colored wings sweeping up and down with the movement. "I made Fang go down to Tipisco while we were waiting for you. We found the right address. I saw a woman, and she was my kind of color, but I wasn't sure. Then the Erasers, including that dirtbag Ari, showed up, so we kicked butt and left."
More like they kicked butt. I wince and touch my nose.
Max is silent, thinking. "So, you didn't talk to her? Umm –" she struggles for a second "- your mom?"
"No." Nudge doesn't meet Max's eyes. But her gaze flicks to me.
"Did she look nice?" Max asks. I growl a little under my breath. Drop it, Max!
"I'll tell you about it later," Nudge says offhandedly. I tuck the end of the bandage back into the wrapping, because it keeps flying free. Come on, Max! Let it go! Luckily, she does. Unluckily, she decides to start a new conversation.
She glares at Ig and the Gasman. "We know what you've been up to," she accuses. Gazzy just smiles blithely.
"I think I have a tracer chip implanted in me," Max says conversationally. "I'm not positive, but it showed up on an X-ray, and that's what it looked like."
An X-ray? Tracer chip? My jaw drops. My heart actually stops beating for a second, and my wings freeze. I drop about two feet before I regain control and snap my mouth shut furiously.
"You had an X-ray?" I hiss.
She nods. "Details later. If I do have this chip, it explains all the Erasers everywhere - but not why it's taken them four years to track them down. And I don't know if any of you have one," she adds, answering the unspoken question.
Okay. So she goes missing and shows up 50 hours after she's supposed to – ne explanations, no excuses, no nothing. Then she drops this bomb on us and expects us to wait for details later?
"M-max?" the Gasman stammers after a moment of tense silence. "Do you think there's still a chance?" His whole body is shaking.
"I don't know. I hope so," Max answers, an unguarded expression on her face. "I know I've delayed us by two days. I'm really sorry about that. I just did what I felt I had to do. But we've come this far - there's no turning back. We're going after Angel - no matter what."
As soon as Max looks away, the Gasman slips his soft hand into mine, his wings beating in sync just below mine, small enough that they can fit between our bodies. I squeeze and pretend not to notice the tear trickling down his cheek.
After the last hawk has peeled away from out loose formation after about two hours of flying west-northwest, I notice Max staring thoughtfully after them. "We learned some stuff from the hawks," I say, gesturing. "Some banking moves, how they communicate, stuff like that."
"They're really cool," Nudge adds, sidling closer to Max. "They, like, use the tips of their feathers to help aim them, and we tried it, and it was amazing. A little thing like that makes such a difference. Like, I practically didn't even know I could move those feathers." (A/N: Mary Sue! Mary Sue!)
"Could you teach us what you learned?" Max asks curiously.
"Yeah, sure," I tell her. Then I fly closer. "Only if you give me a granola bar."
Max laughs and tosses the granola bars out to everyone. I struggle with the wrapper. My fingers are shaking, and my arm throbs with every movement. If it had been my left hand that had been cut, I don't know what I would have done. Luckily, Iggy notices my struggles and rips the wrapper open for me. I stuff the plastic in my back pocket and take a huge bite.
OWWW. My jaw hurts so bad when I bite down on the granola, I feel like i just got my spacers in or something. I chew slowly, not letting a single sound escape through my lips.
Max gives me five minutes after everyone else has finished to ask me why I've only eaten half of my bar. "Fang?" she asks, dropping back a bit with me. "You OK?"
"Yeah," I say, spewing chewed up granola all over her face. She makes an "eew" expression and wipes it off. I chew slowly and then swallow. "Just dandy."
"You're not," she says, studying me. A barest hint of color rises to my cheeks under her scrutiny. "You got in a fight, Fang. Who did it?"
"What are you talking about?" I scoff. "I am Fang, the Great and Terrible. None dare approach me."
She chuckles humorlessly. It lasts about one second before her expression changes to extreme concentration and she slips her hand past my wing to yank up my T-shirt. Her eyes fall on the huge, mottled purple bruise.
I yank away from her. "Hey!" I shout. "That was uncalled for!" I want to swear so bad, but a tiny part of my brain is still reeling. She saw...!
"Fang-"
"Go get Nudge to show you some moves," I say brusquely, still panting a little. "I'm sure she can help." I wave my granola bar in her face.
"Fang..."
I shoot to the head of the formation before she can finish.
We fly over desert, mountains, rivers, plains, and more desert. My empty stomach is growling loudly and I feel like it's filled with a hundred heavy rocks.
I can hear the flock laughing and shouting behind me, and even the occasional shriek from Nudge, but I don't look back. My eyes are narrowed against the buffeting wind, and I'm searching for our markers. My hands are shaking like mad now from lack of sugar. Finally we see something and dive down as one.
We land in the middle of some woods. Crouching down low, we make sure no one saw us before we start discussing stuff.
"Okay, we need food," Max says, stating the obvious. "And a street map wouldn't be the worst idea in the world."
I roll my shoulders and stretch. "The School isn't going to show up on any street map," I inform her.
"I know. But we know pretty much where it is - there'll be a blank space on the map, but it would still help us to find roads to get there," she informs me.
"Touché," I mutter. "Well, let's get going then."
I turn and trudge off in the general direction of the little strip mall I saw from the air. Fifteen minutes of hiking brings us up to the back of it. It's pretty small - a dollar store, dry cleaner, and beauty salon make up the building part, and a gas station and freestanding ATM loom up out of the parking lot.
"Need to get your hair done?" I mutter, and a minute later, Max's elbow connects with my bruise. I wheeze.
"Well, what now?" Gaz asks.
"Let me think," Max says, glancing up at the mall. After a minute, she says reluctantly, "Okay. Looks like we'll have to-"
She's interrupted by a horrific squealing of tires on the cracked and grimy pavement. We melt back into the shadows at the side of the building. A fancy car pulls up next to the ATM, throbbing with music.
The window rolls down, and suddenly, we're also throbbing with the music. Iggy winces and covers his ears. A greasy looking man leans out of the window, his cell phone pressed so tightly to his ear that the fingers holding it there have turned white.
"Shut up, you idiot!" he yells into the phone. "If you hadn't lost your card, I wouldn't have needed cash!"
Iggy perks up and uncovers his ears. The man wedges his phone between his chin and his shoulder and punches in his code, then waits. "That's what I get for trusting you with anything!" he snaps. "You can't handle getting dressed in the morning!"
His phone drops from his shoulder onto the pavement, and the back cracks open, the battery bouncing out onto the pavement. He swears and climbs out of the truck, scrambling to get the pieces back together. Then he grabs the money from the slot, clambers back into the car, and starts counting.
"Jerk," Nudge mutters.
A huge black pickup roars into the lot, barely missing the fender of the gray car. The rear tires spin and spit gravel at the gray car, hitting it in a miniature hailstorm.
We back up even more. ERASERS?
"He's going to go ballistic," I whisper.
The greasy man leans out of his car, his eyes bugged, face red, veins popping. He screams about ten different swear words at the black truck, which in turn responds by rolling down the window. We all take a little breath.
"What'd you say, dipstick?" Ari asks with a creepy little grin.
Review please. I want 10. Thanks ever so much.
By the way, D-G-R, thank you sooo much. Hope you find this satisfactory. I guess it worked!