Golden POV
I hate school buses. Oh yeah, they're more environmentally friendly and whatever, but honestly, people, who wants to be stuck in an overcrowded, smelly, horrifically loud yellow box of doom. Well, maybe I'm over exaggerating, but school buses are not the best option for an overly claustrophobic mutant kid. Yep, I'm a mutant kid. Yep, I take the school bus. I'm in 7th grade at a normal middle school. Nope, nobody knows that I'm a mutant bird-human hybrid. I'm pretty good at going incognito. Every night I sneak out my window and fly around for a few hours. I normally get about 3 hours of sleep a night, and that's fine with me.
Today the school bus seemed even more annoying than usual. When it finally pulled up at the last stop, I almost jumped off it. I can't tell you how happy I was to get out of that tiny hellhole and feel the wind blowing my reddish-blonde hair into my face. I was just walking, listening to my little purple iPod, minding my own business. I even started humming along quietly with Hayley Williams' voice (yes, I love paramore). I was really happy, blissfully happy, like i very rarely am. But of course, right then, I felt a sharp pain in the crown of my head, and blacked out.
I woke up and blinked a few times, expecting to be in my bedroom. Instead what I saw were rows and rows of metal dog crates, like the ones I'd been kept in when I was little. A little too much like the ones from when I was little. I touched the back of my head. I felt the bump, and the swelling went down right away. I'm usually pretty good at keeping my cool, but my brain went into full panic mode. I started hyperventilating and my brain started short circuiting, just like our old TV that I "experimented" on. Let's just say I don't get to watch TV anymore. I tried to slow down my breathing. I thought about happy stuff, about snickerdoodle cookies and Canadian vampires, about live rock concerts and my gold tinted wings. I calmed down. Okay, now it's "put everything into perspective time." I am most likely back at the happiest place of my existence (note sarcasm), the school. Total hell. Not where anyone wants to be. At least I was still me. I was still wearing my chicly tattered skinny jeans and my All Time Low shirt (another favorite band). But of course, I was there. I was in the school. I swore under my breath.
"Hello!" a young, angelic voice said. "I'm Angel. Do you have a name?" I looked up at the cage next to me. A little girl of about six with little white wings and blonde curls was sitting there. I was taken aback. I guessed that she had been sleeping and I just hadn't noticed her. In the next cage was a tall, dirty blonde girl. She was asleep, like the African American girl in the cage behind me. Next to the tall blonde one was a dark, emo-looking boy. He was awake, but totally silent. On my other side were a really tall strawberry blonde boy who slept peacefully and another sleeping boy who looked a lot like the one who called herself Angel.
"Err…hi?" I said. I was still kind of surprised. "Umm, I'm Golden."
"That's a pretty name. These are Max, Fang, Nudge, Iggy, and Gazzy. Gazzy's my brother." I was still pretty confused. Were they bird kids too? Why were they here? Or were they a trap?
"No, we're just like you. See my wings? I'm here, er, we're here because the whitecoats here want to sample our brains and stuff. They're the ones who send the erasers and stuff. They're the bad guys." Okay, if this chick could read minds, I was really freaked.
Just then, I saw the dirty blonde girl wake up.
Max POV
Okay. When I wake up in a small enclosed space, my first reaction isn't exactly to jump for joy. I'm a little more than a little claustrophobic. I looked around. Iggy, Gazzy and Nudge were still asleep. Fang was being all silent like he does, and Angel was talking to a girl. The girl looked about 12 or 13, with reddish blonde hair about the color of Iggy's and greenish-brown eyes .she looked nice enough, albeit a little confuse. Judging by her body structure, she could be one of us. Actually, I could see some red gold feathers in her cage. She'd probably tried to escape or something. It actually didn't seem like the worst idea right now.
"Oh, hi Max! This is Golden! She's like us too!" geez, she was cheerful. Iggy must have heard Angel too; since he blinked open his unseeing eyes.
"Ugh. Where are we?" he asked.
"Let's see. In cages, in a dark, antiseptic smelling building. We all feel like shit. We're covered in bumps and bruises. We're in the school. Where else?" That was Fang, confirming exactly what we all knew but weren't admitting to ourselves.
"Who's the new girl?" Iggy questioned groggily. Out of habit he started fiddling with the padlock on his cage.
"This is, erm, Golden. She was captured too." I was a little perplexed by all this. You know, being in the school again, the new bird kid, the huge bruise on my skull that I just realized I had.
"Um, hi," said Golden. She seemed just as confused as us, and a bit shell shocked.
"Ha! Got it!" Iggy crowed. He sprang out of his cage and started undoing the others. He game to Golden's last and she looked at him curiously.
"Introductions later. We get out now," I commanded. I loved the fearless leader thing.
"Wait! Your bruise!" she called. She came up and touched the huge purple spot on my forehead. The bruise immediately disappeared.
"Whoa! What happened?" Gazzy asked, mesmerized.
"OMG can you like, heal stuff?" Nudge said. Uh-oh. "Like how do you do that? You know I can like draw metal to me and hack computers and Gazzy can mimic voices and Fang can disappear and Iggy can feel colors and Max has this voice in her head and can fly super fast but that is like, OMG awesome and mmmmfff" I covered her mouth with my hand. Damn, that girl can talk.
"Come on! Let's get out of here!" Yeah, like it would ever be that easy. Of course they all followed me, but what if I didn't know what to do?
Golden POV
Well, this isn't overwhelming or strange at all! (Note sarcasm) Waking up to a bunch of other mutant bird kids who have this whole "flock" idea, a mind reading six year old, and a freakin' dog cage aren't exactly what anyone with a good view on life would consider right. Well, they seemed nice enough, and accepting enough. They'd been close like this for years, since they had been sprung from the school in the first place. Max was the leader. Fang and Max had a budding relationship, and Iggy and Gazzy were best friends, Angel was the baby, and Nudge was just that middle sister who didn't have an obvious role in everything but was clearly important. Damn it, how did I know this? I just met them for god's sake! I shouldn't know! But Angel had told me about how they were mutating themselves, developing powers. Could it be? I already knew that I could heal various wounds, but that's enough freakishness.
"Come on! Let's get out of here!" Max commanded. I wasn't sure how much I liked her. I was all for being led, but this wasn't exactly a democracy. It was more of a dictatorship, maybe a maxocracy. Haha…I'm such a joker. I just really hated people who were full of themselves. I did agree with her. I couldn't stand being in this place for much longer. And so, against my will, I followed her.
We didn't get too far, though, before we were assaulted by a band of erasers. I supposed they'd kept the old prototype to guard the school and let the m-geeks do the real stuff. I figured Max would want to get the leader so immediately I launched myself at the flanks. They were mean. Probably slightly improved since the last time I'd run into them. But I was pretty damn good. When I was younger and it was acceptable to do so, I'd spent a lot of time wrestling with the boys, and we got pretty brutal for 2nd graders. I still would fight occasionally, and a lot of the guys at my school were more than a little scared of me. Erasers were, however surprisingly, tougher than 7th grade boys. They hadn't bothered me much lately and I was a little out of practice.
When we'd finally gotten through the bunch, Max surveyed the flock and I. there weren't any serious injuries, only black eyes and bloody noses.
"Golden? Would you?" Max asked politely. I smirked. Yup, I can do it better than Max. I walked around quickly, healing bruises and cuts until we looked just about good as new.
"There you go, your majesty," I said cheerily. I noticed Iggy and Nudge break slight grins. Gazzy giggled.
"Let's go!" Max said, ignoring my comment. We left quickly. Max seemed to know her way around pretty well, and I wondered why. Oh well. I shouldn't be worrying about that. We were going to get out of there, and kick some eraser ass in the process.
We were winding through corridors, ducking away from various men in white coats. This place just made me feel like crap. It brought back some not so pleasant memories of when I was younger, before I lived in a normal town in a normal place; before I lived as a hidden entity. So far my life had pretty much sucked. I'd lived in the school, being experimented on, until I was about six. Then someone had let me out, and given me to a foster home in Colorado. I'd lived a pretty private life, and I'd kind of liked it that way. I kept my wings hidden all day and every night, once my foster parents were asleep, I would fly for a few hours. The hawks and ravens were my very good friends. I'd had a few good human friends, but most of them were a little messed up. At school, I'd always been very smart but shy and cynical, never a teacher's pet. So as I walked through the extremely sterile hallways of the school, I was wondering if I could possibly find a better life with the flock. They seemed nice, even if Max was a little stuck up.
"Maximum. I have not seen you in a long time," a deep male voice said.
"Jeb. We meet again," Max said, seeming less than happy about this encounter. The guy was tall, about 6'6", with a big, caterpillar-like mustache and a evilly paternal expression on his face.