I have not abandoned you, chickadees, I promise. I had theatre until 10 every night and I don’t love you all that much to type into the wee hours of the night, even if I had already written it down in my notebook. This contains some serious badassery. You have been warned.
Also, if you are just as psyched as I am for the new Heroes of Olympus book, The Mark of Athena, check out my three-shot on my profile page. I have posted the first chapter today (containing the very juicy reunion scene) and will follow up with more chapters tomorrow and Tuesday, the day the book comes out!
So sit back, relax, and enjoy…
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Last time on Wither Wings.
“This isn’t real,” Max attempted to stay strong, but her bottom tip was trembling.
“But we are real, Max,” Gazzy and Iggy said in unison, an almost robotic tinge painting the edges of their voices.
“Shut UP!” She covered her ears as they continued to talk. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”
---
A flake of fluffy, white, and most decidedly fake snow drifted down and settled on the nose of one Maximum Ride as she window-shopped in not a very convincing manner with Steve on a cold December day in downtown Manhattan.
“Christmas…” Steve breathed out in awe, making a full circle underneath the twinkling lights and soap-spewing music horn of the latest department store that was playing track three of twenty nine, a tinny version of ‘Jingle Bell Rock’
Max just rolled her eyes and pawed at her nose with mitten-clad hands. “Whatever you say, Cap. Let’s just get the groceries and zoom out of here.”
“What?” Steve stopped mid-step, his over coat swishing about his legs. “You don’t like Christmas?”
Max shrugged. “I’ve never been one for the holidays, considering the fact that I’ve never celebrated them.” She raised an eyebrow as Steve’s expression of utter horror before bursting out laughing.
“Never celebrated the holidays?” Steve paused for one second before grabbing her hand and pulling her down the street. “Then we have a lot of decorating to do!”
---
“Graah!” Thor did a practice swing to the left with both of his arms out straight, his fingers wrapped around Mjölnir’s handle. “Ngyaaah!” he grunted, pulling the hammer over his head in an arc.
“Shblaah!” Another swing.
“Agraaah!” Another.
“Mra – Oh hello Steven,” Thor stopped mid-swing as the elevator doors opened, setting Mjolnir down on the carpet. “Maximum.”
“Thor,” Max gritted her teeth as she struggled to pull the abnormally large Christmas tree through the silver elevator doors.
“Ah, I always thought this living space required a bit of shrubbery,” Thor watched Max grapple with the breadth of the branches. “Did son of Howard finally give in to my requests?”
“Haha, no,” Steve chuckled, two bags of ornaments clinking together in his left hand, a box of silver tinsel in his right. “It’s Christmas.”
Max put the tree up in the corner of the room next to the balcony, showering herself with pine needles. “It’s a religious thing.” She snorted like a horse, shaking the needles out of her hair and brushing them off of her jacket.
Steve set the ornaments and tinsel down on the coffee table and took his leather gloves off. “Hey Thor,” he looked from Mjölnir as it lay on the floor to the burly blonde godling. “What were you doing when we came in?”
“Oh, Clinton was helping me find what I believe is called a ‘signature tennis grunt.’” Thor flashed a grin and picked up Mjölnir, demonstrating one of the different tennis grunts that he was trying out earlier. “He told me that it was essential to Midgardian warriors, so when he left I continued to practice.”
Steve looked at Max, Max looked at Steve, and they both burst out laughing.
“Don’t take advice from Barton anymore.” Max ripped open the cardboard box of the tree skirt and smiled at Thor who had a trite expression on his face before picking up Mjölnir and exiting the room. She held the tree skirt up like an alien contraption, rotating it to observe it from all sides. “Help,” she said simply. “This strange thing that you brought makes no sense in my culturally deprived mind.”
“Oh,” Steve lit up when he saw it. “That’s a tree skirt,” he took it from Max and set it down at the base of the fir, the pure white fabric making a perfect circle around the trunk. “You put it at the bottom of the tree to catch the pine needles that fall,” Steve smoothed it out before standing back up. “My mother used to make ours out of red velvet before I left for the army.” He said it so nonchalantly, inspecting ornaments and setting them down on the coffee table, just whipping out his dead mother like it was nothing.
“Does it get easier? Talking about them, I mean.” Max crossed her legs on the carpet and helped to unpack the glass balls and rocking horses.
“With time,” Steve blew some Styrofoam pieces off of a crystal Santa and put it in line with the others. “It helps when you remember something happy, like Christmas.”
Max sighed, pulling her sweater over her hands to polish a bright red ball. “Nudge always wanted a Christmas, but we were always in the wrong place. Caves, dumpsters, a psychopathic scientific genetic research facility.”
“See,” Steve smiled. “You’re doing it already. Tell me more.”
“Well” Max pulled the end of a tree branch through the loop of an ornament and positioned it carefully before answering. “She liked pink. A lot of it. She would always steal the frilliest jackets, the most silly looking shoes. Every time Fang and I would–” She stopped abruptly and paused, her hands freezing mid-decoration. “N-never mind.” She abandoned the ornaments and picked up a handful of tinsel, trying to wrap it around a section of the tree.
“No, no…I want to hear it.” Steve said softly, untangling the piece of tinsel that Max was holding.
Max took a breath and let it out slowly before speaking. “They liked to dress me up, her and Angel. Nudge was the real enthusiast, she loved fashion to death. Whenever Fang would ask to go out somewhere, Nudge would take hours picking out my outfit and everything. I hated it,” She resumed ornament hanging, her legs crossed underneath her on the carpet. “I shouldn’t have.”
“And who was Fang again?” Steve asked off-handedly as he rearranged some branches.
“Enough of this sappy, sad crap,” Max said. “Can you help me figure out what the heck I’m supposed to do with this tinsel?”
---
Natasha jumped down from the ladder next to the tree and joined the pool of Christmas decorators at its base. As the day wore on, the tenants of Avengers Tower all eventually joined in on the effort and thus before them stood a tree that looked to be decorated by a group of people that had obviously not celebrated Christmas in a very long time.
“I like it,” Tasha said, head cocked to the right.
“It sure is…interesting,” Banner added, the entire group of heroes mimicking Natasha as they peered at the tree with a critical eye.
“The angel statue is creeping me out,” Max said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Its eyes seem to follow me wherever I go,” Clint took two slow steps to the left, squinting at the tree topper.
Tony walked in from the staircase, the door slamming closed behind him. “Eugh!” He froze mid-step and flinched, pulling a face at the angel. “Kill it before it lays eggs.”
He walked back towards the elevator and picked up his and Max’s coats from the closet. Throwing Max’s coat to her, Tony pushed the down button on the elevator. “Get your shoes on, kid. We’re going somewhere.”
“But I was going to whup Thor’s ass in cookie baking,” Max replied, irritated, as she plucked her coat from the air.
“I completely guarantee that where we’re going is ten times better than Thor’s mediocre baking skills,” Tony wrapped a grey-blue scarf around his neck and puffed the collar of the black wool great coat.
“And where might that be?” Max shrugged on the hand-me-down pea coat and shoved her feet into a worn pair of Chuck Taylors.
The elevator doors opened and Tony stepped inside with a roguish grin. “Ice skating.”
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It was Rockefeller Plaza, she just knew it. It wasn’t like she was psychic or anything, everyone knew the place, birdkid or not. The sheet of ice spread out before her, a bright, blinding white nicked here and there by tiny skaters twirling on the frigid surface.
“Here you go,” Tony handed her a pair of white skates that Max was pretty sure he hadn’t rented from the kiosk in the south corner.
“You bought me new skates?” she asked doubtfully.
“And make you were communal? No way, that’s how losers do things and we, for one, are not losers.” Tony tightened his laces with a thwack.
Max shrugged and took the skates, loosened them, and slipped her foot inside, her street shoes lying within a canvas tote bag. They were slightly too tight, but she didn’t mind.
Minutes later they were on the ice. Now taking into account that Max had never ice skated before in her life and didn’t have particularly excellent balance in the first place, her first incredibly death-defying trick was to fall flat on her face.
“Ice skating sucks,” she said as she pushed herself up onto her knees and scraped ice shavings from her face with a pair of woolen gloves.
“Up you go,” Ton grabbed her elbow and heaved Max back up into a standing position. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” he wagged a finger at her and pulled her out of the path or other skaters. “Unless it involves hair bands and large amounts of banana whipped cream, that’s how I got my first tattoo and believe it or not, Billy Idol’s face does not age well. Okay, so put your right skate in front of your left one.” Tony glided right next to her as she stumbled her way one lap around the rink.
“Woah!” Max took a tumble onto the ice. She laid there for several seconds before getting back up. “I think the ice likes me too much.”
“Just dig the toe of the blade down,” Ton said, demonstrating. Max gave him a skeptical look but tried it anyway, the ice crunching underneath the skate as she slid forwards, successfully coming to a stop.
“I did it!” she jumped up and down in glee. “Take that, ice skating, I own your ass!” She jumped one more time before slipping and falling on her butt with a small shriek.
Tony laughed, holding his stomach as he gasped for breath. “Your face…” He managed to say.
Max glared at him and crossed her arms, gathering her legs underneath her and began to stand up when a large crack sounded across the rink.
“Shit.” They swore in unison and exchanged a glance that said one thing.
Run.
They sprinted towards the edge of the rink, but not fast enough. The ice cracked; a loud, side-splitting sound that rippled through the ground like earthquake tremors and threw Max and Tony off their feet. An even louder crack split the air as something enormous rocketed up from the middle of the rink, spraying large shards of ice in several directions.
Max ducked down, covering her head with her hands as she heard ice fall around her. A moan of pain followed and she jumped up to see Tony pinned underneath a particularly large shard, his left leg at an unnatural angle.
“Tony!” Max grabbed the edges of the ice, shoving it off of him with minimal effort and flinging it against the plastic siding of the rink’s edge.
Tony hissed in pain and clutched his leg at the knee where it was twisted. “Shit,” he swore again. “What was that thing?”
Max turned back to the jagged hole in the ice to see it emerge with a roar. It was the worm serpent mutant monster from the sewer tunnels. “That’s just peachy,” Max grumbled as she lifted Tony up. “But first things first, we have to get you out of here.”
“Uh, yeah, not happening,” Tony said as his leg bucked out from underneath him. The worm let out a roar as it began to slither towards screaming figures that were fighting to get off the ice. He pulled himself to the edge of the rink. “Go.”
“What? I can’t leave you here!” Max looked frantically from the looming monster to Tony’s broken leg.
“I can defend myself,” He mimed shooting a gun with his left hand. “Go save the world.”
Tony’s words echoed in her ears. They were so familiar. Did her destiny as world savior still apply even if she didn’t have her Flock? And if it did, what could she do about it? She didn’t bother mulling over it but sat down and took one of her skates off along with her jacket and cut two long, parallel slashed down the back.
“What’s that for?” Tony asked.
“Well, if I’m going to fight this thing,” Max said with a crooked grin. “I might as well do it flying.”
Ton grinned back as Max slipped the newly-tattered shirts back on and took a running start, leaping into the air and shooting her wings out in all of their majestic glory.
“Hey!” She shouted to the worm over the roar of the winter wind. “Hey you!” She managed to get its attention and it thrashed its head towards her in response, rearing up. Max flew around it, pulling it away from the civilians below. “What are you doing ice skating without any skates?”
It let out a grunt of some sort that was probably funnier inside its head rather than out and lunged towards Max, who easily dodged the attack.
“That the best you can do?” Max shouted her arms open. “Come at me bro!”
The worm took the taunt and launched another attack, but Max was busy launching her own. She ducked underneath the head and landed a few punches, but those proved ineffective due to the worm’s large size, but she still had the skates on her feet, so each kick packed an extra punch. It was like stabbing the ling over and over again. The white leather quickly became black with blood.
The creature howled in irritation and tried to shake her off. Max was flung outwards but caught herself, her wings buffeting the air like helicopter propellers. She shot straight as an arrow back towards the worm, attacking it from a different angle, the mouth.
At first, she tried to find a pair of eyes but she was startled to find none, just a gaping maw that she couldn’t see the end of, but had to constantly dodge. One of the worm’s teeth snagged on her shirt and she was pulled back, dangling over its gullet. It bit into her back and she gasped, black spots popping in front of her eyes as hot blood flowed down her back.
Max twisted around, the tooth digging in deeper. She used her hands to claw at the gums surrounding it and uprooted it from the worm’s mouth, allowing her to be free but with the cost of one worm tooth embedded into her back.
She flew around it again, landing a few slashes on its head and around its mouth before digging her heel and the blade of the skate deeply into the spot above where its mouth opened, creating a huge gash. The creature wailed as Max grunted and pushed further, almost her entire leg going in before she hit the skull. The sensation was strange, the flesh of the worm as slippery as an oil slick, and her leg slid out with ease as the worm disappeared back down into the hole it burst forth from with a whimpering cry.
But she knew it wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.
---
The door to the lab burst open and Banner was startled off his stool and dropped the beaker he was working with. Max came in, her wings slightly extended and a somewhat unconscious Tony in her arms. She hurried towards the lab table and set Tony down.
Banner stood up from the floor in shock. “Uh, may I ask what happened?”
Max shook her head. “I’d rather you didn’t. But Tony has a broken leg. I’m fine.”
Banner looked her over once and raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you’re exposing your wings? Because you’re ‘fine’?”
Max was guarded and spoke tersely. “It’s only a scratch, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Oh really?” Banner chuckled and shook his head as ripped off the leg of Tony’s pants and set the break. “What does?”
Her lips were set in a stern line as she placed both hands on the edge of the table. “I’m back in the fight.”
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MAX IS BACK. Lyk omigosh.
And the question of the day is…
What do you think can kill the worm monster?
Review with your answer or send me a PM!
Also, don’t forget, my Mark of Athena celebration three-shot is up on my page and you should totally go and check it out!
Lots of love,
-Acca
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Next time on Wither Wings.
“We’re going to need a battle plan,” Max spread the map of the sewer tunnels over the conference table. “We need to back it into a corner before we do anything else.”
“And then what?”
“We kill it.”