Iggy Story, chappie 2!

I love you all for the feedsie-backs! Yay! The peeps here are a much better audience than those of, say, Quizilla or Mibba. So, yeah, you know the ol' policy. If you haven't read the first chapter, http://www.max-dan-wiz.com/forum/topics/so-i-wrote-this-iggy-story There ya go. Enjoyzzzz!!!!

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“Charlotte, are you okay?” asked Fang, concerned.

“Nngh… Sure, yeah, I’m—I’m totally cool. Just, like, freaked out of my mind and high off of adrenaline… Other than that, fine. Oy, this is so confusing… Uh, could you guys explain it from the very beginning?”
And so, they did. The explained that they were born like this, and they were 2% bird genes. How that allows Angel to read minds, I know not, but I guess it was just a random mutation. And then they told me about the School, the scientists—whitecoats—the Erasers, which sounded like awful, creepy, nasty things that were people who were born as werewolves due to the stupid whitecoats—ew, ew, EW, they made WEREWOLVES—and how they—the Flock—were living in Colorado in an “E”-shaped house on a cliff until these Erasers came and attacked them, and then they kidnapped Angel and experimented on her and then Max, Fang and Nudge went to go rescue her and the Gasman and Iggy stayed home, then they oil-slicked the Erasers’ Hummer—lousy gas-guzzlers—and then they got attacked from their secret hideout, then they flew up—they flew, I’m still not gonna get used to that just yet—and then bombed the Erasers and killed, like, two of them or something, and then they met up with Fang and Nudge at Lake Mead over by Death Valley, which was where the School was. In the meantime, Maximum was getting an X-ray from a vet and eating fresh chocolate-chip cookies, because she got shot by a guy because she saw a girl getting picked on and she decided to defend the weak, but it backfired a little bit because the people that were picking on her apparently had a gun, so they shot at Max, hit her on the shoulder, she couldn’t fly because it hit her wing, and then she ended up at the house of the girl who she saved—her name was Ella—and Ella’s mom was a vet, so she helped Max, and Max showed her that she had wings, and then, later, finally, she went to Lake Mead, met the others, and they went and saved Angel. They also learned a lot from the hawks who livd on the cliff overlooking Lake Mead, and these hawks came and saved them at the School by attacking the whitecoats and Erasers and helping the Flock escape.
“Ooh, wow… This is totally unbelievable. I’m totally in, though, so what do I gotta do?”
“You need to come with us. We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re getting out of this state,” Maximum said.
“What were our parents like?” Fang blurted out. Everyone stared at him because of the sudden outburst.
“Uh… Well, I don’t really remember them that well. My… ‘ex-brother’ told me about them, though. Uh, my dad was boring and mom was old and grouchy, so whatever, I guess my non-bro had to get it from somebody, right? Seriously, he’s so uptight. I knew I couldn’t be related to him.” I described.
“Huhn. How’d they die?” asked Fang.
“Plane accident, when I was six-ish, I think. I don’t remember, though, that was a while ago,” I mumbled.
“Okay. Thanks.” I nodded.
“So, uh, we’re on a mission to do who-knows-what, who-knows-where? That sounds like fun…” I said with just a trace of sarcasm. Because, of course, being found by your winged-brother and his band of merry recombinant lifeforms (well, okay, they were Max’s band of merry whatevers) and then going on a mystery whirlwind adventure would obviously sound fun.
“Yep, that’s the gist of it,” Iggy confirmed with a curt nod.
“Iggy, what’s ‘gist’ mean?” asked the Gasman.
“Uhhhh… I don’t really know. It’s just what you say, I think,” Iggy said thoughtfully. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” I told them quite scholarly, “the general meaning, or the long and short of it. So it’s the story with none of the details.”
“Ooooh,” the youngsters (and Iggy) cooed.
“But how do you spell it? Is it with a ‘j’?” asked Nudge.
“No, it’s—Actually, I don’t know positively… But I know where we can check!” I pulled out a dictionary, a big, heavy, red-covered book with text you could barely read that was about as thick as my upper arm times one-and-a-half. I opened up the dusty thing, which had been laying on the floor, under the couch, and flipped through the sections.
“Ah, here it is!” I said after about a minute of searching. “’Gist’. G-I-S-T. Well, there you go.”
“Oh, lemme look!” said Nudge, coming over to look in the dictionary.
“I wanna see, too!” said Iggy.
“Iggy, why do we always have to remind you that you’re blind?” said the Gasman.
Iggy grinned. “But has that ever stopped me before?”
“Wait, you’re blind? Uh, why didn’t anybody tell me about this?! That’s important information!” I whined.
“Whoops, sorry, must’ve slipped my mind,” said Iggy, shrugging. He smirked and high-fived the Gasman.
“Hey, that’s not fair! I miss high-fives! What the heck?” I whined some more.
“It’s a gift, I admit it. I’d be a certified prodigy, you know, if I was a certified United States citizen,” Iggy said.
“We’re not certifiably alive, Ig. We don’t exist, by any known records. I think ‘prodigy’ is asking for a little bit much,” said Max. “But enough of this. We need to work on this, preferably before her… uh, ‘brother’ gets home. You know, so we don’t have to explain why Shar let six strangers into her house who were picking the lock?”
“That’s really good reasoning, Max,” I observed. She nodded with a small smile.
“Um, so what do we need to do?” I asked.
“Leave. We need to leave,” said Fang. I nodded slowly.
“Anything we need to do before that?” I asked.
“Well, for your, uh—for that guy that you’re living with who isn’t your brother—” Max paused to make sure that was a reasonable statement. “—uh, for his sake, you should, like, write him a note or something, just to tell him that you’re gone, and safe, and he shouldn’t worry, or, like, send police to find you or anything. Please, because we really don’t need that.” I nodded. “Fang, back pack?” Fang tossed Max an empty-looking bag, which she caught easily. “Can I raid the fridge? It’s gonna be a loong trip, and we don’t know when we’ll be able to get food again.” I nodded. “Okay, everybody. Get ready to up an’ away at any time. Ig, the front door is about four feet away to your right.”
“Got it. Four feet,” Iggy confirmed.
“There’s a skylight in the kitchen,” Fang called.
“Great. There’s windows next to the door. Nudge, Gaz, Angel, can you pop those open in under… two seconds?” asked Max.
The three moved to the windows, which were stuck with paint, and the combined efforts of my brother and I had failed to open them. But these three kids—the oldest of which was Nudge, an eleven-year-old—pushed the glass, got one of the windows unstuck and threw it upward, opening it. I gawked.
“It’ll be faster since the paint’s not sticking it to the pane,” observed Nudge.
“Where were you guys last summer when it was a hundred degrees in here?!” I asked.
“Colorado!” said Iggy. Wow, duh.
“Right…” I mumbled. I sat down at the coffee table, picked up a notepad and a pencil, and began writing.
“New voicemail” announced the house phone monotonously and digitally. Why was the phone ringer on silent? I sighed, got up and picked up the phone, and clicked a few buttons to listen to the message.
“Hey, it’s me, Dave.” Dave was my brother’s name. “I have some… news for you.” Not liking the sound of this so far… “You know my girlfriend, Claire? This is about her. And me, and you, too. It’s about all of us, and it’s very important.” The message was quiet for a little while. Then Dave’s voice picked up again. “I’ve… asked Claire to move in with me.” I nearly dropped the phone right there, but realized that I should listen to the rest of the message right before my fingers slipped off the phone. “Don’t panic, it’s not as bad as it seems, okay? This is great. She’ll, of course, be sleeping in my room, so you don’t have to feel put out. And she cooks really well, too, remember? This is very important for us—for all of us. And—” His voice fell to a whisper and I pressed the phone closer to my ear. “—and I want to propose to her soon. I’m very excited. We both are. And I hope you are, too. She’ll be bringing her things over later on tonight—around eight or nine. I’ll see you soon. Bye.” Now, I did drop the phone.
I. Could not. Believe. He wanted. To do this! Oh my god. He was really going to try this? Bringing home his snob of a girlfriend to live with us? Yeah, well… I was one step ahead of him.
I slammed the phone down and stomped back to the coffee table. I ripped the note I'd written out of the notepad, tore it up, and threw it away. Clicked the pen and began scratching out words that were barely legible:

Hey, David. I’m leaving. Sorry. I don’t want you to worry, or report me missing, or anything stupid and irrational like that. I’m totally safe. Don’t come find me, I’m completely serious. I’m not being overdramatic or something. I’m doing what I have to do, and that involves leaving here to go with some people I met to—well, I can’t tell you where we’re going, of course, because you would probably try to find me. It’s not that I can’t trust you, it’s that they can’t risk anything. The fact of the matter is that I’m leaving, and taking the courtesy to tell you about it. This has nothing to do with you bringing Claire home. Well, that was kind of the clincher, but I had my mind made up to leave already. I’m going to be safe, so you really don’t need to worry. Love Yours truly Sincerely -Charlotte

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Nya~! Yeah, this one's pretty short. And I bothered to fix all the italics in it!!! ...Which means I better go back and fix the italics in the LAST one. Greeeeeat... Do you know what a PAIN that is?? Well? Do ya, punk?!?!?!?

Well, anyway, please enjoy!!! And reread the last chapter in a little bit, so that you can understand the intonation, and delivery, and emphasis, and stress, and all that better!!! (ie, so you can read the words in italics. I'm smart.)