CHAPTER ONE

Max woke up with a pounding sensation in her head. Crap, she thought. What the heck is this? Then, her mind split off into two directions. The unselfish side went through her internal roster. Angel? She looked around and saw the beautiful blonde child crumpled on the dusty ground next to her older brother Gazzy. They were both conked out pretty deeply, if Max could make that assumption right away. Nudge? The cocoa-skinned tween was out cold on the other side of the dirt road. Her fashionable faded gray skinny jeans were beginning to look like cow skin: dark brown patches of mud splattered all over them. Iggy? The pale strawberry blonde teen was passed out, half engulfed in a thick bush on the other side of the road. Fang? Max felt an emptiness where the dark haired boy should have been. She didn't want to think of too many things at once. She was feeling lazy at that point in time. There was nothing wrong with saving alertness for battle, right?

The selfish part of her mind was complaining at the same time. Why is it always me? Why am I always such a disaster magnet? Did the danged headache signal The Dramatic Return Of The Voice?Or had she passed out during a battle with the Erasers? (How embarrassing.) Or possibly other miscellaneous Bad Dudes? (All the same, still embarrassing.)

"Guys!" Max said out loud, getting bored of the monotonous headache and silence. She needed to be constantly stimulated. Maybe that's why she was so equipped for battle? "Roll call! Everyone okay?"

"Max?" The brown haired girl turned towards the sound and saw Gazzy blink open his gorgeous blue eyes. He looked at her with a pained expression.

"How are you feeling there, trooper?" Max asked, trying not to sound too worried. She didn't want to seem overly worried over nothing. That is, she seriously hoped it was nothing.

"I feel awfu—", Gazzy began in a soft whine, then he stopped abruptly. "I mean…I'll be okay." He said in a normal, if not shaky, voice.

"Are you sure about that?" Max asked, feeling a pang of worry and pride mixed together. Little Gazzy, always the toughest one when you least expect it. And yet, he was still a little kid, it was okay to have older people looking after him. She didn't want to seem like she thought Gazzy was lying, but she just wanted to make sure. "Nothing serious?" Max checked.
"Any broken bones, sprains, etc.?"

"Nah, just the normal everyday growing pains."

Max was half-relieved to hear the clear, sarcastic tone of the Ig-ster. She turned to him and saw him feeling his way out of the bush.

"Be careful!" Max cried. Oh, crap. It had just slipped out. Max hoped that Iggy wouldn't go on the blind-not-helpless rampage.

"Thorn bush?" Iggy asked, appearing to be unfazed. "I would complement the prank if it wasn't on me!"

"Hey, we didn't do it!" Nudge was already sitting up and helping Iggy out. "My head hurts! A lot!"

"Guys, it Angel okay?" Gazzy asked, his voice getting high pitched in worry.

"She's not up yet?" Max asked, apprehension rising inside her. Gazzy shook his head.

Max stood up. "Let's scout out this place. Nudge, you come with me. Iggy, Gazzy, watch out for Angel. We'll be back soon."

"What are you looking for?" Iggy asked.

Max felt a spark of irritation. Iggy had a good, legit question, but Max had no answer.

"Help?" Nudge offered, obviously trying to fill in an answer.

Max tried not to grimace. Help was the 'h-word'. She hated to think that she couldn't take care of herself and her family. But seriously, who didn't?

"Sure," Max said gruffly, not wanting to waste time debating it. "Plus, we need to figure out where we are. Do you guys recognize this place?"

"Now that you mention it…" Nudge trailed off, as she looked around deliberately.

"Okay, it's settled," Max said, feeling the need to emphasize that is had been settled, even from the moment when she had first said it. "Be back in a Jif sandwich."

Nudge snorted and Max felt a nice warm feeling that someone had acknowledged her funny. She and Nudge walked further up the path, ears and eyes alert, and muscles ready to leap into action.

"What were we doing before this?" Nudge asked after a while, running her fingers through her long dark brown hair.

"I honestly have no clue," Max said with a sigh. She looked around. Unfortunately, this place was not getting any more familiar. That was not a good sign.

"Where are we?" Nudge asked.

"See above," Max said, feeling annoyed that she had to sound like a total idiot. She did know an awful lot about many things, but in this situation, she did not know the answers to any of the questions Nudge was asking. "Let's fly. This is way too slow."

"I was just going to ask that," Nudge smiled. Max grinned back, forgetting her irritation. They both started running, the trees going by in a hazy green blur, and they snapped out their wings and soared into the air. Max wanted to forget all her troubles and just keep flying till she lost track of time, but she knew that she couldn't. She was flying with a purpose this time.

She and Nudge had been scouting for a while longer. Max was just about to make a sarcastic remark about being in the middle of nowhere, when Nudge spoke up.

"Hey, look at that!"

"What?" Max asked, annoyed after a while, because she couldn't see anything but trees.

"I … thought I saw something," Nudge said, her dark eyes now extremely confused. "But…"

"Well, let's follow it," Max suggested. "Spontaneous is good. Besides, it's the first think we've seen in forever."

"True that!" Nudge said gratefully. Max angled her wings and she and Nudge began their dizzying spiral down, down, down to the ground. They skidded to a stop and looked around wearily.

"Now what?" Nudge asked.

"Well, I really don't like doubting your vision," Max said thoughtfully, getting ready to answer Nudge's question. If you couldn't trust the precision and accuracy of a hawk's eye view then what could you trust in this world? The phrase "watch like a hawk" took on a whole new meaning for them, anyway. "Let's fly a little lower now. We'll follow that path."

Nudge and Max took to the air again, but only a few feet above the ground, this time. Max noticed the path getting wider and wider, until suddenly they were in sight of a town. Max thought it was a town, because of the huge archway-gate thing that was in front. She couldn't tell how big the town was, but it couldn't be too small if it had its own monument.

"Yay!" Nudge cheered. "I'm starved."

And of course, as soon as Nudge said it, Max began feeling the pangs of hunger. They approached the town and there was a huge red gate. Max saw two men sitting at a desk on the "in" side of the gate.

"Do we have to check in, or something?" Nudge asked, obviously noticing the same things Max did.

"I dunno," Max said dubiously. "I'd really like dot get in and out as fast as possibly without talking to anyone."

"But how are we going to get help for Angel?" Nudge asked.

Crap. Good point. "Okay, well, let's just appear normal for as long as possible." Max said. "No need to scare them off when we kind of need them."

"Unless we have to scare them," Nudge added with a knowing grin.

Max smirked. "You got that right."

Max and Nudge landed again and walked the rest of the yards to the city. Max felt the wary gaze of the guards, or whatever they were, on her, and it set her on edge.

"Nudge, you're better at talking then me, aren't you?"

Nudge looked at Max in surprise. "Um, in what perspective?"

"Great," Max said. "Explain to those guys what's going down. I'm going back to get the others…"

Nudge looked at Max warily. "What if I get in trouble?"

"Fly outta there. We'll be in the air too, so just meet us. Then we'll all bail."

Nudge appeared to only be half-satisfied with that answer. "Okay…"

Max whirled around and sped down the path. She desperately wanted to fly back to her friends as fast as possible, but knew that she couldn't snap out her wings right in front of those guards. It would freak them out.

Max quickly got into the cover of the forest. She whipped out her wings and sped in the direction of her friends. Water almost came to her eyes but she saw a blur of unusual color and began skidding in midair. She swooped downward and landed off balance. She took a few giant steps to steady herself. A kick sailed her way, and she ducked quickly, setting herself more off balance.

"Watch it!" Max snarled. She saw Iggy crouched in a fighting stance. "Oh, hey, Ig."

"Wow, thanks," Iggy said sarcastically. Max knew that he was going to make some comment about how "that is the only greeting I get? Wow I'm so unpopular" or something along those lines.

"We found a town," Max said. "It seems pretty big. We didn't go in. There are guards at the gates. Nudge is talking to them. Come on."

"Whoa…Are you sure this is safe?" Gazzy asked, his blue eyes watery.

"If it's not, we fly outta there and take Angel with us," Max said, trying to sound reassuring. "Come on, it's the best chance we have!"

Gazzy still looked doubtful, but Iggy was already standing up, with Angel secured in his arms.

"Let's jet," he said, and Max scoffed inwardly at the funny.

Max took off into the air, knowing that her friends were following. She could almost feel the worry rolling off of Gazzy. It was almost infecting her, too. How good of an idea could this really be? Max shrugged to herself and sighed loudly. We'll just have to wait and see.