"And that is how Vain became indebted to me for the rest of his life," Alex concluded, the same way normal people say and they all lived happily ever after.

I stared.

And stared.

Yet, no matter how hard I looked at it, the hallucination just wasn't going away.

I knew not eating for hours was going to have devastating side effects. NanoTech healing or not, my mind was the one that couldn't cope.

.... Where had Alan managed to find a full set of finger puppets that looked like us anyway...

Then again, he probably made them himself...

"That is not how I remember it... " a staticy voice grumbled in my ear.

"You were under the influence, Alex." Alan cut his brother off with a wave of his finger puppet adorned hand. "Your testimony is invalid."

"Pretty sure I'd remember smoking a cigar and talking like a Mafia boss Alan...."

"Just fly the helicopter, Alex."

Yea Alex.

Concentrate on flying the freaking helicopter.

The one we all sitting in right now...

Ha. ha. Ha ha. Hahahaaaaaa.

I want to die.

The moment we landed the catapult jump of almost certain death, Alan finally put Vain down and proceeded to celebrate...

Like a literal, solid minute of him just dancing and laughing about how his descendants were going to remember this day for generations to come... poor little buggers.

In fact, he hadn't stopped until Alex came jumping through the hole our escape had made, taken one long look at his idiot counterpart, and promptly dragged him by the ear across the roof.

Vain had followed as Alex silently dragged his whimpering brother to the parked helicopter, still caught up in whatever it is that makes him go all creepy ninja when the Nanotechnology reacts to Alan's pain.

The lack of actual words didn't seem to stop Alan from interpreting Alex's lecturing silence.

...it wasn't exactly hard, even for the people who don't share a brain with him.

By the time Havoc made it to the roof to stop us, we were taking off in the conveniently parked helicopter.

Alan made sure to wave goodbye.

Now, my head ached with the air pressure and the sheer sound of the propellers thrumming, despite wearing the shrunken helicopter helmet/radio thingy Alan just happened to have laying around.

Gee, it's almost like he planned for this to happen...

As sexy as the helmet and ball-gown combo was, I didn't really appreciate having Alan's voice chattering in my ear for the last half an hour.

The only sign that maybe God really does have a merciful bone in his body is the fact that the helicopter.... the one Alan and Alex were trained to fly and had stashed on the roof of the Mc'Valium mansion, on the off chance that they would need to catapult themselves out of the building and make a quick getaway.... was a six-seater.

That meant that I got my own seat.

Not that I took up even a small fraction of the available space.... and it wasn't even remotely comfortable as it vibrated with the movement of the helicopter.... but it was the first chance I've had to sit on a piece of actual furniture in hours, so it was going to take more than one of Vain's worrisome scowls to talk me out of it.

Vain himself sat in the seat next to mine, glaring out the window in his stoic determination not to react to Alan's retelling of the events of nine years ago.

Across from us, Alan had the seats facing us to himself. Sprawled across the available space, he had been performing a finger puppet show to go along with his likely exaggerated and heavily embellished story.

Alex, lucky helicopter flying jerk that he was sat up front in the pilot seat, his back to us all.

Which gave him a perfect reason not to look at me when it was revealed that he had saved my life nine years ago.

And he had just kept that little piece of information to himself.

In fact, all of them hadn't felt any overpowering need to let poor Maddison in on the fact that we had apparently met in the past.

"Anyway, after Alex brought you back to your cabin, I had Olly there waiting, so he worked his doctor magic on you and confirmed that you weren't going to die, which was good news, to say the least."

The mystery of why my supervisor, Oliver Green, seemed oddly familiar to me from the first day we met was finally solved.

Shame I didn't consider the possibility of some stranger I vaguely remember meeting nearly a decade ago is actually near immortal.

"While Olly was checking you out, I sat with Vain here, poor guy was as white as a ghost..."

...When is he not?

"... And I gave him back his butterfly jar and said 'go get the girl kid', and he gave me a sincere look and said 'Go die in a hole you creep' and then he went all red and thanked Alex for saving you and apologise for making him cry, and Alex went all red and said 'It's'a okay. Forgeht about it."

"Enough with the crappy Italian accent Alan."

"Ma Fratello....!

"Don't make me crash this thing into the earth just to get away from you."

"... But I got you this helicopter for your birthday..."

"No. You stole it. For your Birthday. "

"Nonsense Alexander. I don't have Birthdays. I'm eighteen. Forever. "

"Keep telling yourself that, old geezer."

"Anywho...." Alan's smile was a little forced as he changed the subject. "After that, we didn't see you guys for ages, and then by pure coincidence, you were both offered a scholarship at the school. Vain declined his immediately, but enrolled later as a normal student when you took yours."

The shock registered, but I did little more than blink at the news that Vain had also qualified as a scholarship student.

"You were there at the time, so you probably remember the mortified look on Vain's face when we met again."

Well, yes, his eyes did widen slightly, and that's pretty much full-blown shock as far as Vain is concerned.

"Of course, he recognised me, and the fact that I hadn't changed in nearly seven years, so I had to drag him off and bully him a little." Alan smiled fondly at the memory. "I made him join the student council too just so I could keep an eye on him and such. Unfortunately, this caught Mother's attention... "

He added a new finger puppet to his hand, one that was half Rachel, half Cassandra.

Yep, he totally made these puppets himself. Just sat there, doing his mastermind planning stuff, and sowed finger puppet replicas of his friends and family.

"She took a liking to him and decided to sponsor him....oh, and she reeeeallly hated you." He had the finger puppet Cassandra wiggling angrily at the finger puppet me. "So she sort of threatened you to... Motivate Vain. And Vain, being the awesome judge of character that he is, came to me."

Finger puppet Vain bobbed over to finger puppet Alan.

"He told me 'You think I can't see that you're a scheming psychopath, who has orchestrated all of this from the beginning? I don't know what you're planning, but leave Maddison out of it."

"And I said 'Frankly Vainarino, my brother saved her life. As far as I am concerned, she should return the favour. And by that, I mean that she is useful and I'm going to use her to get what I want and not feel bad about it so ha. "

His voice, even though he still mimicked with finger puppets, lost all its playfulness.

"And that's when I thought Vain was going to try and threaten me and I was ready to laugh in his face, but he just glared at me and said 'Once you get what do you want, you will consider her debt to you paid?"

Alan made his puppet self fall over.

"I was quite shocked, so I found myself being quite honest and I asked. Sure. Are you offering to help?"

"It depends on what it is you want.' Vain snapped at me. "

Even now, Alan smiled cunningly as he gave his answer.

"I want to graduate."

Graduate.

Ha, sounds easy enough.

Except graduating for Alan and Alex meant defying the Underground and worse, their Mother.

Alan continued to play with his puppets, going into detail about how an angry Vain had tried to kill him with the glare of death or something stupid like that, and I soon found myself ignoring him.

Instead, I stared down at my hands, folded in my lap, not trembling or clenched like I thought they would be.

It was pretty clear now.

Alan had only gotten me involved with the Hill... To hold me under his thumb pretty much.

I was a useful ally, and willing to help, but having me on his side also meant having Vain.

Dr Floid had also wanted to groom Vain to join the Underground and was using me to make him cooperate.

To test him, she had him defeat the Hill.

And Vain did so.

With Alan pulling the strings the entire time.

From the first move, Alan had this game figured out.

All he had to do.

Was have me shrunk by the Shrink Program.

Alan knew that the only way he was going to stand a chance against his Mother was to get the Shrink Program and their rival technology involved.

And he ensured that they would be, by having Vain betray me.

Even if Vain didn't, Alan would have predicted my reaction. Predicted that I would tear my own card to pieces, get myself expelled... And sent to the Shrink program.

And Nigel, who had been forced to fight at the hospital, would soon follow.

Which would make three of us taken by the Shrink program.

Something The Underground wouldn't tolerate.

Which meant having Cassandra hack into their system, and sending Jack to recover what had been stolen from them.

Alan and Alex, connected to their Mother's system, were the logical choice to send on the mission.

And the Underground would have come out triumphant.

If Alan hadn't created a way for the Shrink Program to track us.

And while the Shrink Program retaliated and shut down Dr Floid system, a small window of opportunity had been opened.

We could attack and defeat Cassandra while she was down.

And throughout all this, Alan only had to do one thing himself.

Act Completely. Freaking. Innocent.

Probably because he knew that his entire plan could lethally backfire the moment his Mother or the Underground suspected that he was involved in this.

But as far as I was concerned...

They'd just have to get in line.

"Maddison?"

The word was spoken hesitantly enough that it nearly didn't catch my attention.

Frowning slightly, I looked up to see Alan staring at me.

The way he shifted under my gaze... it was almost like he was nervous.

"Are you... okay?"

He said the words carefully as if they felt as foreign on his tongue as they sounded coming from his lips.

I nodded, not sure what had brought on the strange behaviour. "Yea. Why?"

"You haven't... Threatened to kill me yet... "

...No.

Looking around, I finally noticed the silent tension in the helicopter. Like everyone was waiting for the explosion... that just never came.

I wasn't threatening to kill anybody. Or yelling, or growling abuse or dealing out sassy remarks... In fact, I hadn't said anything at all since Alan started telling his story.

Which would have been okay, if a little unusual, if my silence had been me sulking.

But that wasn't it either.

"You must be angry. " Alan reasoned, straightening up so that he sat properly in his chair. "... I know that you don't have a lot of reason to trust any of us recently..."

Funnily enough, I hadn't really thought about the fact that I was trapped alone in a small space with the three people who had brutally betrayed me...or pretended to betray me... Which didn't really make me feel any less betrayed at the time...

"... But surely you know that none of us would actually... Hurt you... Right?" He smiled a cheerful smile that for once didn't look even a little bit convincing. "It's not like you to be afraid to speak your mind, especially not when we deserve every scathing word of it."

I felt my heart sink a little. Alan knew me well enough to know that being scared had never managed to shut me up before.

So this was probably him trying to provoke a reaction out of me, because me not throwing a tantrum was the most unnerving thing that could possibly happen.

I was angry.

And I was hurt

I just didn't... Have the energy to chuck a hissy to cover up how hurt and angry I was feeling.

Which was starting to freak even me out, so I decided to change the subject.

"You should apologise to Apollo when we see him," I remarked softly, knowing that the radio helmet would carry my voice to everyone's ears. "You manipulated him into doing all your dirty work, and hid the fact that by attacking the Ace, he was hurting Robin."

"Ah... Okay." Alan agreed, obviously not expecting the demand. Not looking at him, I continued.

"Apologise to Robin while you're at it. She wouldn't have gotten involved if you hadn't put Apollo in danger. And Artemis too, for manipulating and hurting his family while he wasn't around. "

"... Oka-"

"And all three of you are going to get on your knees and beg for forgiveness from to my entire family, especially Devin. The amount of stress you put him through is just inhumane."

"Maddison... "

"And you have to apologise to Reece and Garmen and Havoc and Peri and Winkle and Mr Folics and Oliver Green and all the other supervisors at the Shrink Program. They had to babysit me for a week because of you."

Which is quite possibly the worst crime of all...

"... Anyone else I ought to apologise to?" He asked, and if this wasn't Alan, I would say that his voice was gentle.

"...Nigel, too I suppose..." I added grudgingly. "... the stupid monkey was technically there after all...."

Alan sighed, disappointed with my obtuseness, but not willing to push the issue.

That was when Alex finally spoke up.

"What about the idiot that was shrunken to a fraction of her original size and used as bait." He growled, not looking away from what he was doing with the helicopter. "Don't you think we should apologise to her as well?"

I would have given almost anything to be able to jump out of this flying contraption right now.

"That's probably the last thing a tough and super manly delinquent such as her would care about," I grumbled back. "If they had bothered to ask her to do it, I highly doubt she would have hesitated to help, even if that did involve getting shrunk and being at the mercy of everyone around her."

I crossed my arms with a sigh.

"But it's probably for the best, seeing as she is notoriously stupid, and a terrible actress. She probably would have blown it if they had trusted her in the first place. "

Alan's foot, folded on his knee, actually twitched.

Not letting his unrestrained show of emotion stop me, I added.

"Besides I don't think she has any room to criticise others for doing stupid things that will likely get them hurt while pushing away and deceiving the people who want to help them because they want to protect them..... For obvious reasons. And even if you did try to apologise to her, she's way too proud to accept it, so she'd probably just be embarrassed. Even more so since she's spent the last minute speaking about herself in the third person."

God. How is it physically possible to be this lame?

"That being said, If you really do insist on apologising to me for the sake of closure or something stupid like that, I demand that all remorse come in the form of chocolate." I crossed my arms seriously.

"Giant. Chocolate. I don't care if I'm five inches or five foot at the time, I want my damn chocolate big enough to live inside. "

Even if I couldn't eat it all, it'd be awesome to one-up Apollo with a chocolate mansion... And a pool made out of vanilla custard... Jeeze, I better stop this train of thought before we hit drool station.

While I was envisioning my chocolate covered triumph over everyone who ever mocked me, Alan had been grinning at Vain, who ignored him.

"Wanna trade?"

"No." The sullen boy refused flatly.

"I'll give you my helicopter."

"Still, no. "

"... I'll throw Alex in for free?"

"Go get your own."

I swear I could hear Vain gritting his teeth.

"All the good ones think I'm creepy." Alan sulked, sitting back in his chair.

"Get a puppy then." Vain snapped irritably.

Alan gave him a hurt look.

"I like to think that I'm not so unromantic that I would settle for a puppy. " He pulled a tragic face. "Besides, I'm pretty sure Alex would end up throwing it out the window of a moving vehicle given half a chance."

He held up a hand to his mouth and stage whispered. "He gets jealous."

Alex grumbled indignantly, threatening to turn the helicopter around if Alan didn't shut up, and I found myself staring at Vain.

He hasn't looked at me, or really even spoken since we got on the helicopter... A blur that was faintly human shot across the space between the seats, arriving back in his own seat in time to look innocent as Vain gave a yelp of surprise.

"What are you doing?" The Albino hissed, clutching his ribs.

Alan just grinned like the evil, manipulative jerk that he is.

With his head turned towards Alan, I was able to see the bright blush staining Vain cheeks.

The realisation that he had been hiding his embarrassment this time made me blush.

Which made Alan smile all the wider.