A/N: IT LIVES! You can thank Hideout Writer and his encouragement (read: nagging) for this chapter. Hopefully, you'll like it.

Chapter 6

"Can we do that again?" Gazzy asked for the fiftieth time.

MacGyver sighed. "No, I only did that because we were being chased," he explained. "And besides, we're almost at the Phoenix Foundation."

"Awww!" Gazzy complained.

"Gazzy, listen to the walking mullet," Max said irritably.

MacGyver had the sudden urge to bang his head on the steering wheel. It appeared that he'd been demoted from "eighties throwback."

"Ooh, is that it?" Nudge ask, pointing out of the window.

"Yep," Angel said. "It's exactly the same as the way it looks in MacGyver's head."

He wondered if the cherubic six-year old realized how creepy what she'd just said was.

"Max and the others don't think it's creepy!" Angel said indignantly.

"Um, actually…" Iggy started teasingly.

"Iggy!" Max and Angel scolded in unison.

MacGyver just sighed and said, "We're here."

He caught the stares that the other Phoenix employees gave him as he walked through the lobby with six noisy kids in tow. But as they continued in, he realized what he had first taken as disorganization was actually a careful disguise—as they chattered loudly, they changed position constantly, so that any attacker would have trouble picking out a single bird-kid to focus on. At any given moment, one of them was facing in each direction, so that there was no chance of anyone sneaking up on them.

And as they boarded the elevator that would take them up to Pete's office, MacGyver found himself wondering exactly what kind of lives these kids had lived up until this point, that they felt it necessary to be so cautious.

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An elevator. Joy, I thought as I walked into the little rectangular death trap. The preferred transportation method of everyone who grew up in a cage.

The flock filed in behind me, as hesitant as I was to spend an extended amount of time in an enclosed space.

My hands gripped the railing on the wall behind me tightly enough that I heard the metal groan. Fang shot me a look and I relaxed my grip. A little.

"Don't like elevators?" MacGyver asked casually.

"Not really," I managed, feeling my heartbeat speed up—and considering how fast it is usually, with the bird genes and all, that's not a good thing. I swore I could feel the elevator get smaller with every second that passed. Not to mention that the little dinging sound it made every time it hit a floor was making me want to punch something. Hard.

The rest of the Flock wasn't exactly living it up, either. Nudge was tapping her fingers on the wall impatiently as Iggy practiced some deep breathing exercises he'd seen on a TV show. Fang's normal stoic expression had deepened into a scowl, and his arms were crossed more tightly than usual. Angel had a good grip on my jacket, and Gazzy was as close to the doors as physically possible without actually blocking them.

MacGyver seemed to have noticed all of this, too, and he glanced at me, raising an eyebrow.

I suddenly became intensely interested in the elevator's carpeting. It was actually a nice shade of blue, and, more importantly, it wasn't about to ask me any questions I didn't want to answer.

When the doors finally opened, I let out a breath I didn't even know I'd been holding in and practically flew out of the elevator. The only reason that I didn't actually fly was that the elevator was smaller than my wingspan.

The rest of the Flock was close behind me as I ran over to the windows that the elevator faced and looked out over the city and the open blue sky above it. I sighed, imagining the wind in my hair, and wondered why the heck I had agreed to any of this.

The world is depending on you, Max, The Voice reminded me, ever-so-helpfully.

Well, if it's depending on me to get back in that elevator, it's out of luck, I snapped.

You have to face your fears, Max, the Voice said.

It's not a fear, it's an intense dislike, I thought, crossing my arms.

"Max, are you coming?" MacGyver called. I looked around, surprised, and saw that he and the Flock were several feet away, down a hallway lined with offices.

"Sorry!" I said, running to catch up.

Fang fell into step beside me as we walked through the hallway. "The Voice again?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah. Some crap about facing my fears," I said dismissively.

"It has a point," Fang pointed out.

"Whose side are you on?" I huffed.

"I'm just saying that if you're going to save the world, you shouldn't let a little elevator slow you down," Fang said, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards slightly.

"Okay, so maybe you have a point, but still…" I started.

"MacGyver!" an unfamiliar voice shouted. "You said you were going to be here twenty minutes ago!"

"We ran into a little trouble," MacGyver said calmly. "Did you take those blood pressure medications?"

"Yes, I did," the voice grumbled. "Now how about you get in here and explain exactly what happened."

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Pete wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, exactly, when Mac had told him about the avian-human hybrids. But it sure as heck wasn't this.

The oldest of them was blonde and tall, with clear brown eyes and a stance that practically exuded leadership. At her side stood a black-haired, dark-eyed boy with a slight scowl on his face. His stance was that of a bodyguard. A strawberry blond boy in with unfocused eyes stood at her other side, holding the hand of a much smaller boy with wide blue eyes and fuzzy blonde hair. Both were tense, waiting for something. At her other side was a girl with chocolate-brown skin and eyes, and long black hair, her hand resting lightly on the shoulder of a young girl with blonde curls and blue eyes that seemed strangely deep for a girl so young. They, too, were standing at the ready, though for what, Pete couldn't tell.

Pete had the sudden feeling that this was a test. The look in the blonde girl's eyes was suspicious. She was waiting to see if he was a threat, and if she decided he was, the whole group of them would be gone before he could say "Stop!"

"My name is Pete Thorton," Pete said, getting up from behind his desk. "I work with MacGyver here at the Phoenix Foundation. You must be Max."

"That's right," the tall blonde said warily.

"There are two reasons that I wanted to talk to you," Pete said. "First, I'd like to find out more about what Itex has been doing, and you seem to know about it."

The suspicion in Max's eyes deepened. She whispered something, and the group closed in on itself, the older ones shifting into attack positions as the younger ones moved behind them.

"Secondly, I would like to know how exactly you managed to annoy Mac so much," Pete continued, watching surprise fill the kid's eyes. "I haven't seen him this upset over an assignment in years."

Another whisper from Max, and the kids relaxed visibly.

"Really?" the blond boy asked. "I thought maybe he was always this grumpy."

MacGyver, who was leaning against the wall at the back of the office, made a choking sound as Pete burst out laughing.

"Pete, aren't you the one who's always telling me to take things seriously?" MacGvyer demanded. "What the—"

"Max doesn't like it when you say that," the smaller blonde girl interrupted.

"…heck?" MacGyver finished lamely.

Max, meanwhile, was laughing loudly. "Angel, honey, it's all right if he says it; it's just that I don't want you to, okay?" she said, wiping tears of laughter out of her eyes.

"Okay," Angel said cheerily. She glanced at Max. "Mr. Pete is a nice person, Max. We can trust him."

And, oddly enough, this seemed to be enough for Max.

"We'll tell you about Itex," she said. "And about annoying 'the walking mullet.'"

MacGyver turned bright red as Pete burst out laughing again.

After he had calmed down, he said, "I know Max's name, but not everyone else's. Would you mind introducing yourselves?"

The black-haired girl raised her hand. "I'm Nudge! I'm the second oldest girl and I like fashion and singing but not eating meat because if you've ever seen hawks eat, it's really disgusting, so now I'm a vegetarian and also—"

"That's enough, Nudge," Max interrupted. She gave the black-haired boy a pointed look.

"I'm Fang," he said, his expression flat.

"My name is Angel," the blonde-haired girl said, looking up at Pete with wide blue eyes.

"I'm Iggy," the strawberry-blonde boy said. "Nice to meet you."

"Yeah, and I'm Gazzy!" the smaller blonde added.

"…Gazzy?" Pete asked.

"It's short for "The Gasman"!" Gazzy proclaimed.

"'Cuz his digestion doesn't always work right," Iggy clarified, holding his nose. The rest of the kids grimaced, as if remembering a particularly unpleasant experience.

"Your parents named you that?" Pete asked incredulously.

Deafening silence ensued.

"We…um…named ourselves," Max said, her tone suggesting a change of subject.

"So, do you have any other nicknames for MacGyver?" Pete asked, filing the odd reaction away for further examination later.

MacGyver groaned.

"Eighties throwback," Fang said, a slight smile on his face.

"Dead weight," Max said with a wicked grin.

"Does 'The Best Driver in the History of Everything' count as a nickname?" Gazzy asked.

Iggy turned slightly green. "Please, don't remind me of that."

Pete glanced at MacGyver.

"We were being tailed," MacGyver said evenly. His smile turned slightly dangerous. "I shook them off."

"Was that the 'trouble' you mentioned?" Pete asked.

"Pretty much," Mac said, in the tone he used when he was telling the truth, but not all of it.

"What is it?" Pete asked, staring at his friend.

Gazzy, meanwhile was scowling. "He left out Big Boy."

"It just proves that there's no hope for some people," Iggy said loftily.

"Big Boy?" Pete asked, turning his stare to the two kids.

"Our bomb," Iggy said in an oddly nostalgic voice.

"Oh, your…wait, YOUR WHAT?" Pete demanded.

He was going to need more of that heart medication.

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Max: I was beginning to think she was never going to finish this chapter.

MacGyver: Tell me about it.

Max: I mean, she started this fic way before that other one she works on all the time.

NinthFeather: Give me a break. I really like that one! Besides, I have a lot of homework and the Plot Bunny of Doom keeps getting longer.

MacGyver: The what of what?

NinthFeather: The Plot Bunny of Doom. It started as a one-shot and got a little…out of control.

Max: And by out of control, you mean…?

NinthFeather: It's twenty-eight and a half pages long now.

*silence*

NinthFeather: I know I have a problem. Moving on…Once again, thank you to Hideout Writer for more-or-less forcing me to write this…oddly enough, I don't really mind. He's also updated his story Maximum MacGyver, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who is enjoying this.

HideoutWriter: Hey guys!

NinthFeather: Speak of the devil…What are you doing here again?

HideoutWriter: I'm the reason you're not trapped in this story…well, actually, you kind of are anyway, but I'm sure you'll get out eventually…

Max: (picks up a large stick)

MacGyver: (grabs duct tape)

NinthFeather: (grabs the Plot Bunny of Doom)

(everyone looks threanteningly at Hideout Writer)

HideoutWriter: I...think I'll be going now... (backs out)

NinthFeather: O-kay then. Anyway… if you liked the chapter, please review. I will write another one…I'm sure of it… sometime…I think…honestly, don't kill me if I forget to update for a while, please, I have lots of homework and stupid Plot Bunnies of Doom and…

Max: Your excuses are really pathetic.

NinthFeather: I know. But at least I'm entertaining.

MacGyver: You keep on telling yourself that.

(Special A/N: Today's author's note was co-written with Hideout Writer. As to who wrote what, I'll give you a hint…all the pathetic excuses? Those are mine.)