A/N: So I know I have, like , five or six of you faithful readers (only about two of which review, which I LOVE), so here's my question: Which chapter is your favorite? Winner (picked randomly) gets their first name as a character in the next oneshot.
Note: This is a continuation of the chapter "Escape - Intro" please read that first. It's really small, but really needed to grasp this chapter.
Max
A small headache erupted at my temples. Fighting of the pain as it grew into an audible, intense whine, I opened my wings and flew upwards. Dylan followed. We flew up for what seemed like a lifetime, our lungs burning from lack of air.
Finally, we broke the musky surface. Sapphire blue sky shined; below us loomed a pitch black coating.
"Max, what was that about? You didn't even wait."
I winced, ignoring him. A poof in the black sheet in the sky alerted me to another bomb. More lives lost. Innocent people. I was about to steer Dylan clear of the area, when another explosive broke the surface of the foglike smoke. Except this one was one I had come to love. A purple M exploded next to us, trailing tiny lavender streaks down into the real world, a place in chaos.
Iggy. Gazzy. Nudge. – heck, even Fang.
They were alive.
A sudden detox of clear, pure relief flooded my cells. Dylan tensed beside me.
"Let's go!" I urged. Dylan's blue eyes sharpened.
"What do you think you'll find there? They don't care about you. Or me. They kicked us out, Max!" his voice was harsh and growling.
"Yeah? Well, they're still family. That's something I'll never betray." I said. Dylan yelled some kind of further argument after me, but my wings were already tucked in. I was barreling a thousand miles an hour towards chaos, destruction, and tyranny. But it didn't matter. Wouldn't matter. Because through it all, we'd be together.
And that mattered more than anything.
When I reached the ground towards where I estimated the origin of the bomb to be, I was instantly shocked. A full battle was going on. Nudge's hair was half-singed off, she was screaming as an Eraser, fully grown, was pulling her wing at odd angles, angles they should never go in. Iggy's leg was half blown off by some unknown explosion. He was trying to stop the bleeding amoungst the chaos with his shirt. Sticky red blood was flowing everywhere. Gazzy was rapidly holding his own, screaming Angel's name every once and a while, his own form of battle cry. And there. In the midst of battle, was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Surrounded by black, dirty smoke, fighting off at least twenty Erasers, Flyboys, and M-geeks was a black warrior. I caught glimpses of silky black feathers. As more baddies flew backwards, Fang seemed only to fight harder.
My chest throbbed with something I'd never felt before, something achey and wanting. Forget I said that.
I rushed forward to Nudge first, landing a solid blow to her captor's chest. He rocketed backwards. With a solid thunk, he hit a rock. He didn't move again. Nudge screamed again, a frayed cry of not just pain- but anguish. Unbridled despair spiked and laced with something no eleven year old should never face, a feeling that cut deep, to the marrow of our bones.
That feeling didn't have a word.
Iggy yelled for me – a weak shout. I rushed over to him. Nudge limped behind me, still fighting and having my back. His leg was gone below the knee. I shirked back. This injury was more horrid than any I'd ever seen before. Strips of flesh and skin hung below his knee.
"How…" I trailed off. I met his cloudy blue eyes. He was crying. Iggy never cried.
"M-maya. She's not….with…" his irises rolled back into his head. His body went slack. Abruptly, a creepy, crawly feeling on my neck made me spin to face the one person I swore I never wanted to see from that moment on.
A/N: Cliffie! Mwahahaha.
Constructive criticism asked.