Author's notes:
Hey I know this is really OC based and I know that that's hella tacky, hear me out for a second here. This is part of a personal writing challenge that I hold myself too whenever I get into a new story. I have to take Cinder (a character with a somewhat unusual and out of place design) and find a way to believably write her into the story, or at least as believably as I can. It's not everybody's cup of tea but hey, I have a good time trying to do all these logistical back-bends, it keeps me limber. So yeah, keep reading if you like, at least take solace in the fact that there will be no OC x Canon Character shipping here, I have a little pride. Also, my apologies for the fact that none of the canon characters come in until the third chapter, it's honestly just because I wrote so much in the beginning that I realized it could fit its own chapter and they had some decently clean endings so it fit. They will come in very son, I am just a wordy birdy who writes way too much.
Asthmatic lungs worked reluctanly against the smog-filled air they were given. Their owner coughed and raised a tattered wing to their mouth in a futile attempt to protect them from the debris. Unlike many of the other residents who called this barren, crumbling wasteland home, she had no interest in inflicting pain upon herself. There were plenty of other things out here that would be more than happy to do that for her. Images of these indeviduols bubbled forth in the creature's mind, making her fur bristle as her talons shifted uncomfortably on her stone perch. Far bellow her, several black and white shapes mulled around aimlessly. Their round, teddy-bear like bodies seemed harmless, almost huggable, but their observer knew better, in fact only having to glance a bit further up the street at a distinct smear of electeic pink to see their handiwork. Speaking of up the street, with the bears having made their way back towards her, it was now clear, and thus the smog-shrouded beast had no hesitation about leaping from her perch. She could feel dust and tiny bits of debris hit her bare feet as she unfurled her feathered wings, giving them a few uneven flaps before relaxing into a familiar rithym. The worst of the smog was left anove when she dipped in her altitude, but it was never really gone from the air. She had gotten used to that. What she imagined she would never get used to however, was the quiet.
Opressive and distinct, it held the landscape in a vice grip and echoed like a gunshot. The furry, pointed ears of the flyer swiveled and twitched, as if searching for the familiar dull roar that used to prevay back when this dessert was a city. Rushing cars, talking people, the flapping wings of pigeons instead of mutant rejects. She chuckled at the last one. She remembered always wanting to see pigeons when she was younger. Friends and family who lived in big cities always told her how annoying and dirty they were but she never really believed them. She always just thought of the videos of people feeding big flocks of them until they started landing on them and it always looked like fun. In hindsight it was probobly a good thing she never got to try and live out that little fantacy, it would have been a little embarassing to be disappointed like that in public. Still, it was a little upsetting for that asshole to draw all the pigeons out of the city, she could have at least tried to maybe hunt them for food. A muted grumble escaped her lips. Why did all of her thoughts have to end like that. She was begining to notice a pattern of 'oh yeah this was cool' or 'I wish I could have done this' inevitabily punctuated by 'too bad so-and-so did such-and-such.' Perhaps she would be a little less one sided if she still had folks to talk to. Thankfully, before her brain got the chance to dig into that particular can of worms, her attention was drawn up to the towering forms of some of the city's few remaining upright buildings. Their silhouettes stood out against the setting sun like low-polly trees and she managed to bring a smile to her own face by making a little show out of swooping a swerving between them. Nearly this entire district of the city was left standing, save for a few of the tallest skyscrapers and the unfortunate casualties that had been crushed benieth their wieght on their way down. Perhaps it stood as a beacon of hope amidst the wreckage, or some empty monument of despair. Her face habitually scrunched up in disgust at the words. She had heard "hope" and "despair" thrown around so much in her recent memory, she might as well have some sort of PTSD from it. Her ears drooped and she pulled out of another one of her playful loops, cutting the fun short. She shouldn't really make fun of it like that, pretty much everyone she knew had it now. Actuolly, maybe now that it was about as common as getting a cold it was okay? An audible "hmmm" broke the silence as she puzzled over the little moral delema, once again cut short by the sight of a building.
This time the recess lasted a bit longer though, as rather than veering around this structure, she fluffered up to a clumsy but familiar landing in a broken window. Her wings shifted behind her as she stepped down out of the window frame, shaking out of her hoodie and chucking it off to the side to land on some haphazard mound of junk. Had her circumstances been different she might have tried to find a nice clean spot for it, considering it was her favorite, but a clean hoodie on a tragically filthy mutant did very little good to anyone. Her footsteps echoed across the empty floor as the soft silence of her paw pads was cut ubruptly short by the click of her talons on the tile. She rolled her eyes, dropping backwards into an old rolling desk chair from when this place presumably used to be an office. Sometimes she wondered what the folks who worked on her where thinking when they made the adjustment. "Soft feline paw pads for stealth!" "Ooh ooh but wait! Also big ass falcon talons!" "Wait won't those sort of cancel eachother out?" Her mouth shut abruptly, having realized that she had in fact been carrying on this entire three-sided conversation outloud to herself. She let out a sigh, pushing her hips into the air to make it easier to fish down into her pockets. She plopped back down with a grunt, sending herself rolling a few feet across the dust tiled floor with her loot in her hands. She held most in one palm, carefully lifting and examining each piece indeviduolly with two talons of her other. To most folks, it was nothing to write home about. There was a little rodent skull (slightly crushed from the bumpy ride in her pocket), two pocket knives (she was practically Edward Scissor Hands herself over here but hey, it couldn't hurt), and an tiny rectangular box filled with miniscule grey rods. The first three items were deposited absent-mindedly nearby in a pile of similar artifacts, but the little box was kept in hand as the nomad stood and made her way across her makeshift home. It wasn't much, just some blankets, coocking suplies, canned goods, and some trinkets she'd found, but as she sat down on a dusty old matress and pulled some surprisingly prestine books out from under it, she figured it was all she needed. She set the books down beside her and after a few more seconds of feverishly digging around under the matress and practically overturning the thing in a mounting panic, she managed to retrieve a mechanical pensil. Those long vicious badger claws of hers came in handy for once as she easily plucked the eraser out of the end of the pensil and popped open today's new little box. Careful not to break a single piece, she poured the pensil led into the instrument, capping it with the eraser again with the same sergion-like focus. With a smile, and the exhale of a breath she hadn't been aware of holding, she slipped the pensil into the spiral spine of one of the books and slid them back under her matress.
The slivers of golden light that had so beautifully framed the buildings not too long ago was already fading into the grey light of the dieing evening and the vagabond made the decision to crack open a quick can of whatever she grabbed first and call it a night.
As the last light faded and her wings shifted around her like a second blanket, she partook of the nightly ritual of trying to shut up her buzzing mind, and eventuolly faded off into an exhausted sleep. Her last thoughts being that of the days events, wether or not she may be going crazy from isolation, and wondering if the bionic bears that stalked the streets bellow ever slept.