I tumbled over the edge - very gracefully, of course - free-falling almost 300 feet before I managed to right myself and spreading my wings. I swept into a low, shallow arc, keeping close to the rock face. I flipped around, and began to swoop upward. My upward progress was stopped by Nudge hurtling past me, screaming. Without thinking, I caught her, cutting her cry off short.
"What is it? What's happening?" I demanded as she opened her wings shakily.
"The.. girl." She gasped. "From… from the…. video."
"What?" I released Nudge, letting her catch the air under her wings and flapped, propelling myself upward. I rose up over the edge just in time to duck as a bot went soaring.
I landed awkwardly, stumbling a little, just managing to not fall off again.
The girl, long blonde hair floating around her face, slammed her foot into the underside of the thing's head, snapping it back. She pivoted, rotating her hips to slam a powerful rear-handed punch dead center on another thing's chest, fracturing the glowy thing. Its eyes fizzled, then went dark. She parried the next one's attack, then brought her knee up into its abdomen, folding it in half. She brought her elbow down hard on the back of its head, nearly breaking it clean off.
It shuddered and sparked for a moment, then fell limply onto its side.
She straightened up, dragging the back of her hand over her mouth. She wasn't breathing hard at all.
The bots all lay in motionless heaps all around her. The rest of the flock were pressed back against the canyon wall, Fang placing himself between the girl and the younger children.
"That was AWESOME!" Gazzy said, ducking under Fang's arm. He approached the girl, still limping slightly, but beaming at the same time. "How'd you do that?"
The girl turned and just sort of gave him this look that seriously questioned his mental stability.
She didn't respond, simply leveling her cool green gaze on me. "You should leave." She said evenly. "There'll be more soon, and it'll be better for everyone if no one is here when they arrive."
"So that's how it's going to be?" I demanded. "You pop up out of nowhere, rescue us, then tell us to get lost?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Well, that's crap!" I growled. "You can't just walk off! What if they catch up to you again?"
"First of all, I'd be flying, not walking." She said, totally serious. "Second, they'll never stop chasing me. Sooner or later, of course they'll catch up to me."
"All the more reason to stick with us!" Gazzy exclaimed. "We can help!"
She leveled the Gasman with her cool green gaze. "I doubt that."
She turned her head back to me, then nodded once. 'See you around. Maybe."
As the girl turned to leap off the cliff top, I noticed something. "Wait!"
She tensed. "What?" She asked tersely.
"Your shoulder!"
"Yes?"
"Well, look at it!'
She blinked. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"It's been dislocated!"
"Oh." She studied it expressionlessly. "So it has."
She turned back. "Okay. Thanks for telling me. 'Bye."
"Do you want me to… Oh, I dunno, put that back into place for you?" Iggy said dryly, if a little anxiously.
She looked at her displaced shoulder, the way someone looks at the mess their child made with its mashed potatoes - for the upteenth time. "Nah, it'll be fine. It'll go back where it's supposed to be eventually, like it has before."
We stared at her in open-mouth horror.
"...What?" She asked, shifting a little uncomfortably.
"Oh, yeah." Angel said thoughtfully. "That's right. You can't feel pain-"
The girl's green eyes narrowed to cat-like slits, and she dropped into a deep, powerful stance. "How do you know that?" She demanded, pupils flitting between me and Angel. "I never told you that. Did they send you after me? Did they?!"
I raised my hands, surprised at the change in her demeanor. Indignance rose in my throat, forcing out words before I really had a chance to think about what they meant. "Yeah, well, that's your fault, isn't it?" I said testily. "You posted that video on the website, then expect people not to actually pay attention to what you said."
She went perfectly still, her eyes hard and aggressive. "What video?"