A/N: Yeah, yeah. I know, I know - I had another one named Premonitions that I deleted. This sounded better and what I had then sounded more like a sequel than anything else. Again, don't worry, I won't forget about The Cure. I'll update that soon. Promise. (Check it out if you haven't already.) I also just wanted to start with a fight scene. Just for the heck of it.
Disclaimer: I don't own the flock or any ideas from Maximum Ride. I do own Zach and Kat, based off two best friends.
---------- Chapter 1 ----------
A Flyboy tried to swipe me upside the head with a furry mitt. That would have hurt. I ducked in time and took a quick look around in what little time I had.
Fang and Zach were fighting ten of them together, both with the same looks of determination on their faces. Gazzy and Iggy were blowing these guys sky-high with the bombs they still had. I still didn't know where they stashed 'em. The younger two girls were doing great against five. Kat kept confusing the Flyboys, and the stupid robots were trying to shoot any animal they saw.
I took all this in during that one-second peroid where I was trying to keep my head attached. I stood back up and kicked a Flyboy in the chest. It hurt my leg, but I managed. It was kind of a good thing that particular Flyboy was close to the end of its life (in a sense) since I'd beaten the crap out if before the kick. It fell back and there was a short domino-effect as it hit another, which almost fell on Fang and Zach. They jumped out of the way in time. Note to self: Laugh later.
A roar came from somewhere behind me. I turned, startled, and got smacked in the face by a Flyboy's fist for my troubles. I think it broke my nose. There was a grunt and a grizzly appeared from the trees and slammed the Flyboy to the ground. The lights blinked off in its eyes. A shot rang out and the bear roared. Next second, the bear turned into a mouse and scurried away. So much for that, though I guess Kat could always be depended on to take out her fair share of Flyboys. And man, had she taken out a lot so far.
Zach killed the last one, panting. Now there were about fifty Flyboys littering the ground. I looked at each of the flock, minus Total. "Report," I said, sounding stuffed-up. I wiped blood from my nose and winced. Yeah, definitely broken.
"I'm fine," Iggy said. Fang and Zach just nodded.
"Got hit in the face, but I'm okay," Nudge said. She sported a black eye.
"I'm okay," Angel said.
"I got a scratch on my arm," Gazzy said. It went from his shoulder to his elbow. We had to fix that before we left. "Where's Kat?" he asked suddenly, ignoring his bloody arm.
"Here," she said the second she suddenly appeared in front of us and man did that make me jump. "Got shot." I glanced at her right pant leg and blanched. There was a hole below her knee and the leg was covered in blood.
"Sit," Zach ordered, pushing her to the ground. "What did you go and get shot for?" he asked, crouching down and putting a hand on her wound. That was a supid question. Kat seemed to think so too since she glared at him like he was stupid.
"Thought it would be fun," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Ouch!" She suddenly jumped and Zach stood.
"Sorry - I could only cover the hole. I couldn't fix inner damage," he said. Kat pulled up her pant leg and touched where she had gotten shot, getting blood all over her hand. There wasn't a wound there anymore, though, so it had naturally quit bleeding. "But you'll have one major bruise."
"Whoa," Kat muttered before getting up, practically ignoring Zach. But, hey, we had a natural healer with us! Sweet!
Oh, yeah, everyone's probably wondering where Zach and Kat came from and where Total is. First off, we left Total at my mom's house after a couple days of his yapping and also so he wouldn't be in the way. We met Zach and Kat about a week ago, running from a lab. Don't ask why they hadn't been retired yet - I don't know. Haven't had time to ask. Maybe tonight... Anyway, they had kind of invited themselves in.
Zach was like us, and Avian-American. But he was so much like Fang it wasn't funny - dark hair and eyes, only wearing black, and black wings. Most emotions also didn't show on his face, except for a very very few. He was more like a younger version of Fang, since he was nine, though he looked way older. By like, seven years. He said that apparently he and Kat had "accelerated childhoods," whatever that meant. All I know is that while they look as old as me, Fang, and Iggy, they have a much younger mentality.
Kat was a feline-hybrid, or part cat, which I assume is how she got her name. She had cat ears, a tail, and paws, complete with no opposable thumbs. Other than that (and her braces) she was a younger copy of me. She was seven (also looking seven years older than her age), five foot eight, had brown hair, was leader-like...
Both of them also had more than one power. Zach showed off the fact that he can make and manipulate fire daily, and now he apparently had minor healing abilities. Kat could make ice, shape-shift, and claims to be able to predict the future. We haven't proven that one true, though.
"We'd better go," I said as Zach healed Gazzy's arm. The kid looked awed. Pretty much everyone was nodding in agreement to my suggestion, except Kat who seemed to have zoned out. What a great time to daydream!
"And fast," she put in, snapping out of it. "More of these guys are coming - they'll be here in...sixty seconds and counting." I nodded once. Okay, either she could predict the future or her hearing was better than Iggy's with those cat ears.
"Let's go," I ordered before spreading my wings and taking off. The others followed. Kat was last, in the shape of a peregrine falcon, the fastest bird in the world, though it only went a max of 63 mph. Before we left I glanced down. There were in fact more Flyboys headed to where we had just defeated their buddies. I led my flock away and looked over at Kat.
"How did you know?" Fang asked her before I did.
Kat just looked at him. While she was in her animal forms, she couldn't use human speech, unfortunately, which was one draw back. The other was the fact she couldn't shift into people or inanimate objects - only animals. She just looked downright annoyed - either by that or the question - and didn't bother with her normal screech. She glanced down then back up quickly before looking at me pointedly, accompained with a small screech to go with it. I understood her intentions - make sure she didn't look down. She had falcon instincts and probably didn't want to kill another pidgeon for lunch.
"That was really cool, Zach. How'd you do that? When did you find out you could heal people? Can you only do little injuries? It would be cool if you could fix, like, Iggy's sight or Max's nose, but it's still cool that you can do some healing stuff." Guess who. Yeah, Nudge. She still wouldn't shut up. When she mentioned my broken nose I wiped a bit more blood from it, trying not to wince from the pain. When she didn't say more I looked back, seeing Zach's hand over her mouth.
Kat screeched, sounding as relieved as a hawk can. Zach grinned in reply. Told you he showed some emotions.
Three hours of flying later, I had three young bird kids complaining, occasionally Iggy but not as much, and a bird (in its own language), about hunger. Zach and Fang were the only ones not trying to get me to stop. "Max. We. Need. To. Land," Gazzy said slowly as if I was deaf. "Kat looks tired anyway." She was trailing along behind now, trying to keep up her maximum speed still.
"Fine. We'll land in five minutes," I said. The complaning stopped and normal talking resumed. Normal talking was Iggy, Gazzy, and Zach talking about explosives and fire, Kat listening in (great, now we have four pyros!), Nudge and Angel chatting continually about who-knows-what, then Fang and I staying silent ahead. There wasn't anything for me to talk about, and as you well know, Fang wasn't really the talking kind of guy. More like the I-speak-like-a-caveman kind of guy. "Going down," I announced five minutes later, like I promised, before leading the dive. For all of about two seconds.
Kat zipped by at over two hundred fifty miles per hour towards the ground. For being a slow horizonal flier, she was fast at dives! When we landed, she was standing there, looking impatient, in her normal form. She had gloves over her paws, her tail down a pant leg, and a hat to cover her ears. "It's cold," she said simply.
"Why didn't you start a fire?" Zach teased.
"Shut up, fire boy," Kat snarled.
"Guys, not again," complained Iggy - I had to agree. They were at each other's throats at least twice a day.
"He started it," Kat said, pointing to him the same second Zach pointed her her and said, "She started it." I groaned.
"I don't care who started it," I growled. Kat just gave her normal evil grin. "Just leave it be until tomorrow, okay? Gazzy, Angel, go and find some fire wood - Zach, start a small fire and keep it under control!" Zach pouted but did as I told him to. "Iggy, go ahead and get stuff for dinner out. Nudge, Kat, go and find somewhere to fill the water bottles." Iggy tossed them our empty water bottles and Nudge caught them all - Kat couldn't. They took off the opposite direction of Gazzy and Angel in search for water, Kat turning into a wolf before going out of sight.
"Having problems with those two?" Fang asked, meaning Zach and Kat. I looked at him like he was stupid.
"I wasn't expecting to look after seven kids suddenly," I pointed out.
"Six," he corrected. I shrugged. Hey, he was part of the flock, wasn't he? I could include him, too. "But I see where you're going with it." I smiled and went to sit near Zach, who looked bored keeping the fire in one small place. He kept putting twigs in there and then taking them out again. I'll never understand how he's fire-proof. Fang sat down too and took out his laptop to get onto his blog.
Only a minute later, Gazzy and Angel came back with the wood, which they dumped on the fire. Fang and I moved backwards, since it had gotten extremely hot. Zach grinned and toned it down a bit before seemingly letting it go on its own - he went off with Gazzy to do something involving bombs. I didn't trust them together but didn't say anything. I'd be really worried if they blew something up without meaning to. (Though they would probably mean to, actually - so, without good reason, to rephrase that).
"What do we still have to eat?" Angel asked.
"Uh...hot dogs. Bread. Granola bars. Pop tarts," Iggy said. "We need more food." He looked in my direction - it's always weird whenever he does that since he's freaking blind!
"Yummy." I refrained from jumping this time as Kat and Nudge came from the trees. Kat was back to her normal self, a few water bottles in her arms, which she dropped by one of the backpacks. "Better than scrounging for food," she said, smirking at me. I forgot to mention that she seemed to know everything about us, before she even met us. So she knew about us eating desert rat and stuff like that when we had to. Iggy stabbed a hot dog and put it over the fire. Nudge speared one and handed the stick to Kat, who held it awkwardly, but didn't drop it this time. You try holding a stick with a hot dog cooking on it without using your thumbs. It's hard - I tried out of sheer curiousity. (Or just try lasting a day without thumbs!)
Zach and Gazzy came back, looking mischeivous. The Gasman said something quietly to Iggy and Ig's eyes seemed to light up. Great... For a while there was just the sound of us eating, or laughing at the contest Kat, Iggy, and Gazzy seemed to be having. It was like all their food was going to grow legs and run away. Before Kat, I never thought I'd seen more disgusting eaters that Gazzy and Ig. She was right there with them, though.
Eventually, we ran out of food. It was hard to feed eight hybrids, all of whom like to eat about three or four times the normal amount of a human. "I'll take first watch," I said after telling everyone to get to sleep. Kat put out most of the fire from a jet of ice, leaving just a small bit of embers that Zach kept burning. The rest of the flock lay down on the ground and I sat against a tree trunk.
I didn't know how I'd manage to take care of seven kids - despite what Fang says. I sometimes had more than enough trouble with five, and Kat and Zach seemed even worse. Like each was two kids - they also occasionally seemed to have the mentality of normal three-year-olds, which didn't help. I made sure not to just start thinking and zone out, keeping an eye out for any movements in the surrounding trees. After us destroying those Flyboys earlier, I doubted they would come again today. They had a tendancy to show up once, and that was it.
I glanced at the flock briefly. Nudge, Kat, and Angel were curled up together, Kat in the shape of Total to comfort Angel. I smiled. She had turned into Total once before and Gazzy had supplied the voice. They had the entire thing down until Gazzy said something unexpected and Kat slipped up. Total didn't seem to be very pleased, though, since we were at my mom's house for the day to drop him off. Gazzy was sprawled out next to the fire, his mouth open. Iggy was right next to the dead fire, and I feared that if he was one to move in his sleep, he would roll right onto the burning embers. Zach and Fang were both shrouded in shadows, outside the firelight ring.
I passed the watch onto Fang around midnight, and when I woke up Kat was sitting under a tree, again in wolf form. Fang was asleep again next to his laptop, like he almost fell asleep working on his blog. I yawned and stood, walking over to Kat. She tensed, but then relaxed when she recognized my steps. She was as good as Iggy at that. Too bad she didn't listen often. When she knew I wouldn't be any trouble, she looked back at the sunrise.
"I think you're supposed to watch the trees for danger, not the sunrise," I said, sitting next to her. The wolf looked at me, annoyed, and went to surveying the trees. Kat had been looking around earlier probably and just got caught up in another daydream. "Hey, I've been wondering something." She turned back to herself, sitting cross-legged with her ears twitching. She needed to talk, right?
"Shoot," Kat said simply.
"Why weren't you and Zach retired?" She glanced at me then away again, looking uncomfortable.
"They were trying to make another army. One that didn't have an 'off switch' like the Flyboys. They thought of making a group of bird kids to counter you guys to start with - Zach got his DNA first. When the other kids they were hoping to make for his flock died because of really weird mutations, they moved to me - feline-hybrids. They figured that if they got the right combination, all feline-hybrids would be able to run really fast like you can fly." Kat paused.
"They didn't expect me to be so...rebellious. What else could I be? I didn't want to serve stinking whitecoats. Then they that learned me and Zach wouldn't help them, they started talking about retiring us. It started out as just a rumor then became immenint. We managed an escape that we'd done once before, so they weren't expecting it. You know the rest," she finished, looking at me again. Man, two months into this and she already had a lot on her shoulders. I knew how she felt.
A/N: Hope you like it. I could have droned on and on, but wanted to get this out tonight and my mom's kicking me off the computer. R&R. Check out The Cure, too, while you're at it!
And I'd like to thank mergirl007 for her help. She helped me to change this chapter around a bit so that it made more sense. Thanks, mergirl007!
And yes, I do know that Kat is the most common name for a feline hybrid. Why I wrote it though was this: one of my friend's names is Kat (nickname at least) and I asked her and my friend Zach what animal DNA they would want if they could have it - Kat said cat and Zach said bird. So blame them, not me. (I also asked them about the powers, too.)
- Maximus