EPILOGUE

AN: Here it is! THE FINAL CHAPTER! AHHH! Finishing this is my own little birthday present to myself. I'll meet you at the bottom!

Max's POV

"And your name is?"

"Belle"

"All right, Belle. What can you do?"

"I can yell, really loud," answered the four foot kid in front of me. She was probably eleven years old, but incredibly small.

See, as hard as this is to believe, life went on. Just because all of the drama with Jamison was over didn't mean that all of our problems were solved. Unfortunately, the world still needed to be saved.

So here we were, continuing Fang's mutant search. I figure, if we're going to save the world, we're going to need numbers to do it. Keeping us all together would be hard, and maybe we'd have to break into smaller groups at times, but it was do-able. We'd done it before.

We were in my Mom's back yard, now, holding the…er…auditions. Belle was our first recruit.

"Want to demonstrate?" I asked. She glanced around nervously, and I smiled encouragingly.

She screamed. The weird thing was that it didn't make a sound at all. But within seconds, everybody fainted. Even Dory. Even me.

I woke up about a minute later to singing. Belle was singing a wordless melody, all in 'ahh's, and it reminded me vaguely of the Little Mermaid. The ability to knock out and revive people on command? That was chill.

"You're in," I said once my head-ache had cleared.

Speaking of head-aches, there had been nobody in my head except for me lately. Even with Jamison dead, there was the possibility that someone could take his machine, but it hadn't happened. Yet.

"What was that?" A voice wondered. I looked toward the house, and smiled.

Ella Martinez came rolling down the back porch ramp.

Yep, she'd survived, all though just barely. My sister was now paralyzed from the waist down. Her spinal cord had snapped near the bottom. One of the vertebrae on her neck was cracked, which left her with a neck brace for some time, but she could still use her arms, once they were recovered from being broken in two spots each. She had a concussion and a shattered collar bone…but she was alive.

It had been three weeks since the whole lab fiasco, and Ella had been released from the hospital yesterday. She still had to attend physical therapy every other day, and take two separate pills twice a day. The doctor said it would get better with time, though. Once her broken bones were healed, the PT could be more beneficial, and there was a possibility of her walking again one day. I mean, those scientists can graft DNA, and who knows what else. Repairing a broken back should be child's play by now.

"Our latest recruit," Iggy answered Ella. "Ella, meet Belle." Iggy was lounging in the grass, his arm around the Dory's waist.

Dory had been shaken up since I killed Jamison, but she'd been slowly returning to her old self. I could see where she was coming from, though. She hated Jamison, seriously hated. She wished he wasn't her father, and there was no forgiving the evils he'd done to her. However, wanting someone dead and actually having them dead are two totally different things.

The Voice told me once that I couldn't kill someone, that I wasn't capable of it. I have a feeling it was Jeb that time, since I had just heard him be the Voice at that castle in Germany, but still. Up until three weeks ago, I had believed that was true. And you know, even today I feel this ugly, rotten guilt deep in my stomach every time every so often. I wasn't a killer then, I'm still not, and I never will be. Heck, I'm not even a vigilante. I'm a leader, and sometimes, I have to do what I have to do, like it or not.

So, Dory and I were both coping. Overall, though, it was the right choice to make. That's what was getting us through. Dory and I were a lot closer after all of this, too. I guess there's an unspoken bond between two mutants who play a hand in killing a malicious enemy.

Plus, we were cousins. It's funny to think that after all this, we really were blood related. She called Mom Aunt Val now, which I found pretty cute. It seems like my family was broadening around every corner. True, it was more people to look after, but I had a feeling that Dory and the Pack were pretty good at looking after themselves.

When we first met the Pack, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I decided to let them in mainly based on Iggy's premonition. Then, we stuck with them out of sheer curiosity, even amazement. They were supposedly our alter-egos, after all.

But as I got to know them, I stopped seeing them as our doubles. Nellie was just Nellie, not the Other Nudge. They were similar to us in more than one way, but they were incredibly unique. AJ was more like a sister than a clone.

And so here we were. The Flock and the Pack, mostly intact at this point. My mom was okay, and my sister was going to be. Iggy and Dory were together, along with AJ and Damian, and me and Fang. Things were going to be different, that was for sure. No more Voice, or evil uncle, or insane Brutes.

Whatever came next, we could handle. We were all alive and together, and growing in numbers. We were a force to be reckoned with. We were content.

Now all we had to do was save the world—no small feat.

Bring it on.

AN: All right. Final Author's Note. You ready?

First off, I just want to sincerely thank everybody who has reviewed, favorited, or alerted this story, EVER. You guys will never know how amazing I feel every time I get an email from Fanfiction. I never asked for reviews, or put up an ultimatum (i.e. If I don't get 203 reviews by tomorrow morning, I'm discontinuing!) because I don't want to force you to do something you don't want to do. When it boils down to it, I write simply for the sake of writing. But those reviews, they make me sooooooo happy. I can't help but smile at every single one. My motto at the start of this was, if one person reads this, I've done my job. I'm overjoyed with the responses I ended up getting.

Next, I'd like to shamelessly self-promote for a second. If you like my writing style, or just want some more Iggy/OC action, you can check out my story, Exception. Just hop on over to my profile if you want to read it—it's going to be my primary area of focus now. Then there's my Maximum Ride/The Host crossover, Barely Human, although that one is sort of slow-going. There are also a few Max Ride one-shots up there.

Finally, I will include the one thing that I forgot from the beginning:

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Maximum Ride or the characters associated, I just own The Pack and all my OCs.

Thanks again, and I'll miss updating this story.

Peace,

Sarah