A/N: Hey everyone! Iggy V's back today! It's been awhile, Iggy V!

Iggy V: That's Iggy the Fifth, not Iggy Vee, in case you all were wondering.

Me: Err. Nifty, I know better than to ask anyone else to do the disclaimer, so would you like the honor?

Nifty: No, not today. I'm practicing.

Iggy V: Practicing what?

Nifty: Secret stuff. –leaves like the awesome bitch she is-

Me: Oh. So, Iggy V, would you like to do it?

Nifty: No, I want to.

Me: But you just said you didn't.

Nifty: Well I changed my mind. Disclaimer: Mr. Gartland does not own this story.

Me: What about me?

Nifty: I don't care about you. –leaves again-

Me: T_T

Max looks like crap when she wakes up that morning. After all she'd been through the night before, Ig and I decided to split the last watch and let her sleep instead. Still, even with the extra couple hours of sleep she looks like a zombie, complete with the bags under her eyes, ratty hair, and bad breath. I hate to have to wake her up, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

"Is it morning?" Angel yawns.

"I'm hungry," Nudge says before she even opens her eyes.

"Okay, we'll get you some chow," Max says. "Then it's off to find the Institute."

I don't want Max going off anywhere to find anything. She actually needs to sleep in a bed. For, like, an entire day. But I don't get to choose what Max does.

We trudge through the subways for a couple minutes before emerging back into the fresh air. Which isn't really that fresh once you think about it, but it's like if you have scurvy and you find a week-old orange. You're still grateful for the orange since you have scurvy. What I'm trying to say is that the fumes down in that tunnel were pretty horrible, and the fumes up here were slightly less than horrible.

"It's so bright," Gaz says, shielding his eyes. This he follows with an "Is that honey-roasted peanuts?"

Of course it is, because life is just that great. So we buy some and proceed to stuff our faces. Max appears to be trying to think, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say she was just focusing on keeping her eyes open. Suddenly she sees a phone book plus a booth and speeds up; but then returns to us and shakes her head wearily.

"What the he-eck are we supposed to do now?" she says, reining in her swearing with admirable ability.

I think. Well, the whitecoats aren't stupid. It isn't as though we can just stroll into any dinky little town and call up the number for a place like the School either. You're going to have to work to uncover something like that. They are very good at covering their tracks.

I'm sure she knows all of this, so instead of wasting time explaining, I offer her a peanut. She looks exasperated but accepts it. Of course she accepts it. The things are irresistible.

We keep walking. Ig finishes his peanuts in record time and so decides to mooch off of me. Well, that's okay. I share my peanuts and keep up a constant commentary about the streets so that he can know what there is to see.

"Smile, you're on Candid Camera." I point to a window, where a couple of TV screens were displaying pictures of the people walking past. Ig frowns and turns away from the lens, as do the rest of us, paranoid as always.

Max winces, and I glance at her sharply to see her staring in amazement at the TV screens. I whip around and see the words Good morning, Max, block out the pictures entirely and fill the entire screen. Looking around, I see that it's not just these screens – every single screen, all around us, is covered with these words.

"Jeez," I say, my feet suddenly lead. Way to stay anonymous. Ig stumbles into me, and I automatically catch him.

"What? What is it?" asks the blind boy, but no one can recover from their shock enough to tell him.

"Is that you?" Gaz asks. Fear fills his voice; he clasps my hand with shaking fingers. "How do they know you?"

I squeeze his hand reassuringly as Max halts, her hands gripping her skull. Her eyes are wide. Suddenly she shouts, "I don't want to have fun! I want some answers!"

Was it the Voice? The same one as the night before? Was she going to have another brain attack, right here? We have to get to cover. I tense, my body on red alert, as she grips her head even tighter, and then seems to come back to Earth. She blinks and remembers us, looking at the five of us helplessly.

"Max, are you okay?" Nudge asks, a crease between her eyebrows.

Max nods, even though she's obviously not. "I think we should get on the Madison Avenue bus," she says. I breathe a sigh of relief – looks like another brain attack is not in the near future.

"Why?" I ask her, my voice flat.

Her head turns toward me so that the younger three can't see her mouth when she mouths, The Voice.

I nod, frowning on the inside. Yeah, so we're going to trust a little voice that magically appeared inside your head? "But Max, what if this is all a trap?" I whisper, barely audible.

"I don't know!" Max says loudly. So much for not worrying the others. "But maybe we should do what it says for a while – to see."

"Do what what says?" Gaz demands, his hand tight in mine.

Max completely ignores him, walking to the corner bus stop. I swallow my irritation and explain to Gaz. "Max has been hearing a voice, inside her. We don't know what it is."

"Like her conscience?" Nudge asks. "Do the TVs have to do with it?"

"We don't know," I say evenly. "Right now it wants us to get on the Madison Avenue bus, apparently." I watch Max walking with Angel in front of us, and my eyes narrow. What is going on?

"Max has no conscience," Gaz says scornfully. "One time we were eating cake, and when I got up to go the bathroom, Max ate all of mine. Every single crumb. Her conscience withered on that day. Now it's a dead rat in her soul that makes her stink."

"Well," I say, not really knowing what else to say. I bite back a laugh. Max's conscience is a dead rat in her soul that makes her stink. I'd have to tell Max about that.

"Fang," says Ig. His hand is on Nudge's shoulder, following the girl. "I thought we weren't going to –"

"We have to," I say firmly. "We're a team. If Max is going schizoid, we all need to know."

The bus is a few blocks away. I watch Max push our fare money into the till with no small amount of regret. Well, there goes our next meal. If this Voice thing turns out to be a trap of some kind there would be hell to pay.

The bus was a ten on a one to ten scale of awfulness. There were about a bajillion people on there, so we had to stand in the aisle. Ig, Max and I hold onto the straps, but the other kids can't reach. For some reason all three of them decide that I'm the sturdiest one out of the three older ones and they all grab onto me for support. Max catches my gaze and rolls her eyes, holding in a laugh. I resist the urge to flip her the bird and then have to catch Angel when she almost totters over. When I look back at Max her hand was over her mouth. Angel reaches out and holds Max's hand, keeping her fingers in the pocket of my jeans.

Ig's hip bumps into me as the bus swayed over, and I apologize immediately.

Then he hits me again. I look up at him to see him looking innocently in the other direction. I narrow my eyes.

Then he hits me so hard I almost fall over on top of Gaz and Nudge. "Cut it out!" I say to him a little angrily.

He looks at me, confused. "Cut what out?" he asks.

I mutter under my breath and return to keeping an eye out for Erasers. His next bump is more like a shove. A few people mutter angrily.

"Ig-!" I was about to seriously chew him out when the driver's voice came over the PA system. Ig grins at me and I shoot him a death glare, which is wasted.

"Okay, people! Fifty-eighth Street! This is where the fun is!" says the bus driver, way too cheerfully. Max looks at me, startled – about what, I don't know. Maybe she forgot that she's the only one hearing voices. She then ushers us all off the bus quickly, and we all make it safely to the curb as the bus pulls away, making our noses crinkle in disgust. We're somewhere near Central Park.

"What –" Max says, then stops. She turns. We all turn around as well, and see a huge stone building with a large glass window. Inside the window is a teddy bear big enough to sleep on, a huge wooden soldier that is big enough to win a war all by itself, and a huge pink ballerina wearing enough tulle to make a ball gown.

The sign says AFO Schmidt.

The world's most amazing toy store.

So if you can imagine this. We'd never been in a toy store. Of any kind. Similar to the library, this place is huge. It's so amazingly over the top, a sensory overload. And it was the exact place that I would never be caught dead in. I can feel my stomach turn just at the thought of entering this kid world.

The door to this building is the size of me, Ig, and Gaz's room. That's how big I'm talking. When we enter, there's an immediate stuffed-animal-themed room that's the size of the E house.

Wow.

Gaz and Angel look like their personal heaven just arrived on their doorstep. Even Nudge looked a little awed of all the toys. I shifted away from a stuffed elephant that looked life-sized.

"Iggy," breathed Gaz, "there's a whole room of Lego and Bionicle."

"Go with them," Max tells me, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Anything to get away from the stuffed animals. "And let's keep an eye out for each other, okay?"

I nod and follow the boys into the Lego room. The very first thing I see, from between racks of Playmobil and action figures, is these two giant statues – a life-sized Darth Vader and Chewbacca made out of Legos. Completely and entirely from Legos. I can only stand there like an idiot, and Gaz looks like he just jumped inside a Star Wars movie.

"Holy cow," I say, half expecting the little boy next to me to reach for a lightsaber. "That's incredible."

"What?" Ig asks.

Gaz comes out of his trance. "Oh. My. God," he says, and grabs Ig's hand. "Come here. Right now." He drags the older boy over to the creations, describing them in an almost worshipful tone. I watch from a distance, just admiring those incredible things. There's even a white Lego on Chewie's nose to make it look like it's shiny.

What would truly impress me, though, would be a life-sized Millennium Falcon made from Legos. But that would probably be about the size of Central Park, so. It would still be awesome.

"Fang!"

I whirl and see Max's panicked face over by the game boards. I quickly collect Ig and Gaz and steer them over to where Max is standing with Nudge. Over our heads is a huge clock playing "It's A Small World" very loudly and obnoxiously.

"Let's get out of here," Max mutters. "An Ouija board just told me to save the world."

"Gosh, you're, like, famous," says Gaz.

As weird as it is, I have other concerns. "Where's Angel?"

Max starts. She frowns and races back to the stuffed animal section, the rest of us following on her heels. She stops in front of a hanging chimpanzee and stares in shock.

Angel is talking to an older woman, maybe about fifty or sixty years old. Okay, not an Eraser. Angel's expression is sad, and she holds out a bear dressed as an angel in her hands to the woman, who looks a little dazed.

"What's she up…" I begin, because what I think is happening cannot be happening. No way no how.

"Someone's buying something for Angel," Ig says quietly. How did he know? He's blind!

It's obvious that we are watching her. Angel knows it, but she ignores us on purpose, pretending she doesn't know who we are. We follow her to the checkout counter in shock as the woman takes out her wallet with a confused look in her eyes. As the saleslady rings up the bear, the woman hands her a bill with shaking hands. Angel takes the bear happily and thanks the woman profusely, bouncing up and down on her heels with happiness. Then the lady leaves the store, still looking very bemused.

We join Angel on the other side of the counter, crowding around her and bombarding her with questions.

"What was that about?" Max demands. "Why did that woman buy you that bear? That thing cost forty-nine dollars!"

I whistled.

"What did you say to her?" Ig asks eagerly. I know what he's thinking, but we can't haul around that Chewbacca. "No one's buying us stuff."

"Nothing," says Angel, clutching her bear to her chest. "I just asked that lady if she would buy me this bear, because I really, really wanted it and I didn't have enough money."

Max starts herding everyone out of the door quickly, before anyone else gets any ideas. Outside, it was clearly lunchtime. Too bad we used that money on the bus –and for what? This was just a waste of time. Nothing was accomplished, and the Institute was farther than ever now that our funds were down.

"So you just asked a stranger to buy you an expensive toy, and she did?" Max asks Angel skeptically.

Angel nods. Not meeting anyone's eyes, she smoothes down the bear's fur and arranges its dress. "Yeah. I just asked her to buy it for me. You know, with my mind."

So has anyone here actually been to FAO Schwartz, the toy store mentioned in this book? Clever name change there, JP. I have. The Darth Vader and Chewbacca things were there when I went, which was about 4 years ago. I still remember them. They were the coolest things. Honestly that's about the only thing I remember about that place. :D Review for Angel's insane creepiness! O.o