"Please, Phoenix, don't let them hurt me," the young Angel begged. "You know how they're monsters."
I took her hand, and together we slowly landed. The wind started to pick up, and she gave me her jacket.
"No, please, you look like you need it," I said, stroking her wet wings. "Who's going to hurt you?"
The look of terror on the young Angel's face made me wish I hadn't asked. "Whitecoats."
The air seemed to get colder around us as I heard that. "Whitecoats?" I whispered.
I'd always thought Whitecoats were monsters Uncle Gazzy and Iggy made up to scare me. I never knew they were real.
The young Angel nodded fiercely. "Yes. Do you know anywhere to hide?" she asked me.
I looked around and spotted the caves where Uncle Gazzy brought me to play. "Over there," I said, pointing to the dark shapes in the mountain a maybe fifty meters away.
We trudge through the thickening rain, the water like needles on my exposed skin.
"Are you sure you don't want my jacket?" young Angel asked again.
I shook my head. "Let's get you out of this rain.
We reached the biggest cave just as a streak of lightning flashed, followed almost immediately by the boom of thunder. "What are you going to do now?" I ask the young Angel.
"As soon as I can, I'm going to rescue the one they call Maximum," she said firmly. "I only captured her so they'd let me go, but only after did I know that she's really nice."
My mind spun. Mommy had been captured, like by Whitecoats? "Wait, what? How's that possible? Bring me with you," I shouted at her.
"Slow down," she advised. "First, my name is Angie IV. Second, we can't fly out there in the rain. I'd kill us with the leftover acid and radiation." She said it so matter-of-factly that I didn't know what to say.
"Let's just rest, since you're coming with me," Angie IV decided. "You might want to tell Fang where you're going, so he doesn't have a heart attack."
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