Chapter 36: Plans

"Ember!" came Nudge's alarmed cry.

I turned around out of instinct, just to see what had happened. Instead of seeing Nudge's face, I was greeted with the uncomfortable feeling of something heavy falling on my shoulders, causing me to topple over and do a hard face-plant into the dirt.

I was not able to recover from that; the same heavy object was still on my back, stopping me from getting up and making it hard for me to breath. There were more sounds of things dropping to the ground, some struggling sounds coming from Fang, and Gazzy, Nudge and Total belting out words that I didn't even know was in their vocabulary. The sound of scuffling stopped when three sounds of metal crashed together.

"Put him in a bag. He might squeeze out if you don't," I heard the little girl say, and I was finally able to force my head up just in time to see a wriggling bag being thrown into a cage that a crumpled, barely moving Iggy was occupying. The object on my back got up, but grabbed my shirt collar and forced me to sit up on my knees before I could scramble out of its grasp.

I scanned my surroundings quickly, trying to blink away the dirt that still clung to my eyelashes. The clearing now felt extremely crowded; there must have been no more than 15 Erasers that had appeared at the scene and in front of me sat three cages that didn't seem as if it could hold an adult Labrador retriever. In them sat my friends in pairs; Iggy and Total, Nudge and Gazzy, and Fang. I looked away from them to rest my eyes on the little girl that shot me a triumphant smile as she walked towards me.

"You swore, you fucking swore that you wouldn't hurt them!" I spat, struggling against what I now saw as an ugly Eraser who was enjoying every second of this. As the little girl came closer, he placed one of his hands on my left shoulder blade and tightened his grip while using his other hand to hold my thin wrists behind my back. The little girl stood in front of me, and we were finally leveled so that she could look me straight in the eye without straining her neck.

"And they aren't hurt…yet. They're just caged up like the little freaks that they are," she said innocently. I cursed under my breath and looked toward the ground. The longer I looked at her, the more I wanted to rip out her tongue, and I could hear that 'thing' inside of me cooing in earnest, encouraging me to lose control again. I wasn't going to let that happen.

Not now, anyways.

"What, you have nothing to say? That's a shocker!" The girl giggled once more at my now silent demeanor, but I kept quiet and glared at the dirt beneath me.

"Hey, Maxi-" began the Eraser that was holding me hostage. The girl's giggles came to an abrupt stop, and her full attention went from me to him in an instant.

"Do NOT call me by that name! I don't care where I came from, I am nothing like that woman!" she shrieked, and I could feel the Eraser shudder under her glaring eyes.

I almost felt sympathy for him; being scolded by someone who was two times shorter than him must not feel pleasant for the self-esteem.

"Sorry. Alyssa. What do you want to do with her?" he asked meekly as he tightened his grip on my shoulder, making me double over in pain so that her attention was back to me. Still miffed, the look of childish innocence left her face and she now regarded me with a look of irritation and disgust.

"I can't torture her so put her in a cage and let's get going. I don't want him nagging me about the fact that we're late," she said simply and she turned on her heel and walked away through the trees. Still having a firm grip on both my shoulder and my wrists, the Eraser stood me up and walked me to where the cages were.

"Sucks how she treats you, doesn't it?" I asked, giving a last ditch effort that I knew would not work.

"Shut up," he said angrily, and he roughly opened the cage that Fang was in and tossed me into it, not caring that I had slammed my head into the bars on the way in.

"Ouch," I murmured, rubbing my head and shoulder while getting into a relatively comfortable sitting position. In moments, all of our cages were lifted from the ground onto three separate Home Depot styled trolleys, and we bumped right along the dirt path through the trees in silence.

We eventually reached another opening that was much farther away from the place where we had originally started and in that opening were two huge trucks, the kinds that you would see the police use to escort highly dangerous criminals to a high-state penitentiary.

Oh goody.

The Erasers that were "escorting" us had unceremoniously picked up our cages and tossed us into the back of one of the big black vans as if we were luggage. Our cages tumbled and rolled several times, giving me the pleasure of banging my head against the bars even more before we finally came to a stop with me sprawled on Fang's lap. I sat up slowly, rubbing my head again while glaring at the two Erasers who still stood at the opening, cackling like the disgusting hyenas that they were. I shot them the bird and they snickered once more before slamming the door shut, completely incasing us in semi-darkness. The van soon began to rumble, and I sent up a silent prayer to whoever was up there that we were being taken to where Angel and Melody were.

"Everyone ok?" I called out in a low voice, figuring it was ok to talk after 5 minutes of listening to nothing but the motor running under us.

"We're fine," called Gazzy in a hoarse voice, and I heard Total mutter something under his breath along the lines of "douche bags stuffing him in a bag".

God, I love that dog.

"Ember?" Iggy called out.

"Iggy?" I replied, my concern returning now that my brain had stopped drumming against my skull.

"I'm really sorry. I tried, I really did, but that girl is not normal, and there were two others with the exact same voice as her, and I couldn't fend her off when she had that friggin' harpoon gun with her, and-"

"Iggy! Relax! You're starting to sound like me!" jumped in Nudge. I chuckled because that's exactly what I had been thinking.

"It's okay, really. I'll kill you later after we save those two and get out of this, so no worries," I replied, trying to calm him down. It worked for the most part; Iggy noted my sarcasm and smiled in my direction, grateful to know that I didn't have any ill intentions toward him.

"So what's the game plan?" asked Gazzy.

"How about the moment they let us out, because you know someone will be stupid enough to, we burst out and go on a rampage?" suggested Nudge.

"I still have some hidden bombs in my pocket. They're small, but effective enough for a distraction," said Gazzy, thinking out loud while scratching his head and wincing at the bump that he had grazed.

"I say we lay low and just wait until the best opportunity; it would be wise to make our move after we know the whereabouts of Melody and Angel and if they are safe," I recommended.

"But…isn't that almost like giving up…?" Nudge asked, sounding almost shocked that I would even suggest such a thing. I smirked; I love how surrendering was never even once considered an option.

"No, not giving up. We're being smart and waiting for the right time to strike so that we can properly kick their asses." Gazzy pouted, but I guess the idea of kicking butt was too much of an irresistible plan to pass up because they all grudgingly agreed that it was the best choice that we had going for us at the moment.

Now all we had to do was play the waiting game. I bit the inside of my cheek in silent thought. By the way the Erasers were acting now and the plan they had used to capture us, I highly doubted that they would give us even the smallest opening, in case we did use it to escape. And even if we did have that chance, they would still have Melody and Angel as their captives; we would have no choice but to stay because there was no option of us leaving them behind.

On top of that, I didn't know how much freedom I would have. I mean, even though Jake, the conniving bastard, was obviously obsessed with me, he wasn't an idiot. I doubted that he would give me "special treatment" just because he wanted to keep me all to himself.

He really couldn't be that stupid… I began to think, before a hand shot out from behind me, grabbed my forehead and pulled me back in one swift motion. My head landed on Fang's shoulder and all too quickly, I could feel his cheek resting on the top of my hair.

"Relax. They'll be fine," he mumbled. I only managed to nod as I willed my accelerating heart to stop going off the charts.

I wasn't exactly thinking about them… was my initial thought before I realized that my body had leaned into Fang without my permission. Instead of fighting the uncalled action, I gave in while making myself excuses for doing so.

This cage is too small for denying him his urge to hold me, and there's no reason to make a scene in front of everyone, so I'll just bear with it for a little while…

Maybe I should move into Denial Town. I'm sure they have room for one more.

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