Maximum Ride – X-men Evolution Crossover
Let's Race
Summary: After the events in Angel, The Fang Gang need a place to hang, so they take a visit to good old Bayville. How were they supposed to know that the resident speedster would fall in love with Star?
Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride or X-Men Evolution.
Warnings: Uh… well, XME is finished (sobs) but Maximum Ride still is going. So some things in this might not relate to the next book. To anyone reading this in the year 2015 or whenever, I wrote this in 2011. Angel has been published but the rest of the books haven't.
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Chapter One
"Okay Fang, where are we going to now?" Maya asked as they soared above the sky. Below them Star ran leisurely along the empty road, keeping pace with the car Ratchet was driving Kate and Hoyden in.
"I'm not sure." He said. The Doomsday group had really taken it out of him. "Somewhere quiet, but has lots of people. We want to blend in."
Maya smirked. "Fat chance of that happening."
Star looked up and waved, as the car cruised into a parking spot. The two bird kids – or, well, teenagers – swooped down and landed nearby.
"Ratchet says that he can see something." Kate shrugged as she got out. "And I'm going to stretch. It's okay for you three, but my legs are cramping."
Star grinned. "Ha-ha." She said, looking perfect. You'd never guess that she had been running at around 90km/phr for the better part of eight hours. "Poor little strong girl has to sit in the car."
"I was waiting for it to start raining." Ratchet groaned. "Please tell me that soon it will start raining and Star will stop… you know. Being Star."
Maya grinned. "Definitely. If it stars raining I am getting in the car with you. So what can you see?"
Ratchet pointed. "There's a big town over there. I'd say we could hang out there for a while." Fang glanced over but couldn't see anything. Still, in the two weeks since they had left Paris and the Flock behind, he'd learned to never doubt when Ratchet said he saw something that seemed vaguely reasonable.
He'd also learnt not to believe him when he was gasping and looking shocked about fairies.
"Sounds like a plan to me." Fang nodded. "How far?"
"Well, if we keep going at this speed, about an hour and a half."
Fang glanced at the sky. They had two hours of light left, easy. "Okay. But let's take a little break here. I don't know about Maya, but I'm exhausted."
Lance was smiling slightly as he stepped into the house. Pietro looked up at the older boy. "So your date went well?" He asked almost scathingly. "You know, the one with the x-geek?"
"Don't call her that." Lance sighed, and then reached for a bottle or water from out of the fridge. "But yeah, it did." A flicker of a smile crossed his face as he sat down on the chair.
"Sure it did." Fred shrugged. "Hey, it's your life. You wanna stay with an x-geek, knock yourself out."
"Thanks. I think."
Pietro tutted as the other Brotherhood members watched the T.V. "Still don't get why you chose an x-geek of all the other beautiful babes in Bayville."
"Two reasons. One, every human in the place hates our guts. Though to be fair so do most of the x-geeks. And two, I didn't choose one day to fall in love with Kitty. It just kinda happened. No-one chooses who they fall in love with."
"Or who falls in love with them." Wanda said as Toad tried to crawl up to her. "Believe me, if I could choose one boy in Bayville to fall hopelessly in love with me, I wouldn't pick Toad."
"Yeah. But you could choose not to fall in love at all." Pietro shrugged, flipping the channel over on the television.
Toad smirked. "It's not that easy, yo. Before I first met sweetums here, I was planning on being a lone wolf forever. But then my crimson cutie stole my heart."
"Toad, what was that we talked about when it came to pet names?"
"Okay sweetums – uh, Wanda."
Pietro smirked as he changed the channel again. "Too bad. Cause I really doubt that the girl of my dreams is gonna turn up any time soon."
"So, Fang," Star said as she stopped running. Maya and Fang landed and they parked the car as they walked into the small city/big town called Bayville.
"What next?"
Fang thought for a moment. They needed a place to sleep. They didn't have much money, and he didn't want to use it on a hotel unless absolutely necessary. Maybe a library… they normally were pretty comfortable to sleep in overnight.
"We'll find a library or something that is really secure to sleep in." Fang decided. "You know, like a library is built with places to curl up and read a book. We'll break in easy, and sleep the night away. We can find something a bit more permanent in the morning."
"Yeah." Ratchet nodded. "If we need to, we'll break Hoyden's arms until he has to go to the emergency room, and then absolutely insist on staying the night with him."
"Hey!"
By now the sun was beginning to set. It was around six thirty at night, and the library was, of course, closed. "Anyone in there, Ratch?" Star grinned.
"I hate it when you call me that." Ratchet muttered.
"That's why I do it."
"Well, there's no-one in there." Ratchet said to Fang, who nodded. "Okay, Star? Could you get the door open?"
A minute later they were all tucking into a place to stay the night. Star and Kate were sleeping next to each other for warmth, and something about comfort, Maya curled up on the carpet in an aisle with vague privacy, Hoyden called the children's mat as it was the most comfortable, and both Ratchet and Fang found beanbags.
"Goodnight." Star said softly.
"Night." Kate replied to her best friend, looking up at the ceiling.
"Goodnight." Maya's voice (so like Max's, but so different…) came from somewhere to Fang's left.
"Sleep tight." Hoyden added.
"Yeah. Night." Fang said.
"Uh-huh. Ditto, nightie-night and all that." Ratchet finished.
Everyone was silent. Star lay down, but wasn't sleepy. She hadn't actually done anything. Yeah, she'd been running all day, but she didn't even know if her amazing stamina had a limit. She hadn't hit it if she did.
Star hadn't told anyone in their new team (Kate had known, of course, but didn't mention it), but about two weeks before she had run away, she had broken up with her boyfriend.
He just wasn't right for her. At first he'd thought it was cool that she had super-speed, but eventually he turned bitter that he couldn't keep up with her when they ran. He mentioned the word 'freak' once or twice. He had kept the secret (cause Star would kick his butt without powers) but was resentful. Eventually Star had to break up with him.
But who cared? She had been upset, but after Paris – she'd seen death. The little seven year old girl had vanished. If nothing else, she'd seen how Fang looked at Max. Even when they had split up, she could see the two of them had something that ran far deeper then what she and James had.
No, she was lucky. She wasn't going to be dating again for a while, anyway. Not until after they had definitely saved the world.
Across the town, another super-speedy teenager was thinking about love. And how pathetic it was.
"What are you kids doing here?" Someone demanded.
Maya opened her eyes. Star and Kate sat up, Hoyden rubbed his eyes, Fang tried to sit up in the beanbag but failed and Ratchet's eyes flashed open but he didn't move.
"Alright, answer up! What are you doing here?" The police officer growled. He had a moustache under his nose and a scowl under his officer cap.
"I dunno." Maya stood up, shakily. She rubbed her head. "Man, I have a killer hang-over. I have gotta stop drinking."
Fang was the first to catch on. "Yeah, I know. My head is killing me so bad." He rubbed his temples.
"I can't remember anything after our fourth shot." Ratchet joined in. "What the… are we in a library? What the frick are we doing in a library?"
"You're drunk." The officer said, raising an eyebrow. Behind him a woman stood, her hair giving the impression she was the librarian.
"Not anymore. These stupid hang-overs sober ya." Star stood up and did a good impression of being wobbly. "How did we get here?"
"I don't know." Hoyden shook his head. "I vaguely remember something about dancing at that guy's place, gatecrashing a party, and was there something about hamsters?"
"Those were hamburgers." Maya shook her head.
The officer looked over at Hoyden and blinked. "Wait. Just how old are you? You can't be old enough to drink."
"I'm nineteen." Hoyden said. "I just look really young."
The officer kept scowling. "Okay, fine. I'm sixteen, happy?" Of course he wasn't sixteen, but then again if they knew how old he was, he might get put into foster care, Maya mused.
How old was he, anyway?
"And the rest of you? How many are legally old enough to drink?"
Maya ran her eyes over the Fang Gang. The two bird teens were tall and skinny – they could pass for their twenties, easy. Ratchet could also go in for nineteen or older. Kate and Star could maybe both pass for eighteen if they had i.d's, which, unfortunately, they didn't.
"All of us." She lied. "Except John over there."
'John' shrugged sheepishly.
"I want to see some identification." The police officer growled.
"Sure thing, officer." Ratchet said, patting down his pockets. "What the… my wallet's gone! And so's all my cash, and my license. Damn."
"Same here." Star grimaced.
"Man, what did we do last night?" Kate groaned.
"I'm not sure. But did you really have to tell that waiter you loved him?" Star said, looking directly at Ratchet. "Come on Eric, that wasn't necessary."
"Hey," Hoyden smirked, "he had to say something after a kiss like that."
Ratchet scowled. "I don't remember that."
"You don't remember anything from last night." Kate reminded him.
"That's it." The officer growled. "I'm taking you all in until your parents come pick you up." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. How they fit in there, Maya had no idea.
"Yes officer." Ratchet groaned. "Just as long as it's quiet. Huge hangover, remember?"
The Fang Gang walked with the officer to the police car. They all squished up in the back as the librarian started fussing around, trying to fix her workplace up.
"So, how long exactly are we going to be locked up?" Kate asked curiously.
The officer growled. "Until your parents come." He parked the car and got out. "Now come in."
"We gonna follow the rules or ours?" Star whispered to Fang. "I could have him handcuffed to the lamp-post over there before Ratchet finishes hotwiring the car. Then we'd be outta here."
Fang thought for a moment. "No. We don't want to cause any more attention then we have to."
"So they won't notice that Kate bends open the bars when we leave?" Ratchet asked as they stepped reluctantly into a cell.
"She'll bend them back."
Ratchet sat in the cell and looked gloomily up at the ceiling. They'd only been there for ten minutes and already it was killing him.
Anyone who had been inhumanely captured, held in dog-crates and injected with needles was sure to have bad memories of being held in a small confined place. Any moment now someone was going to walk in with a needle and they'd all lose it.
"How long do we have to stay here?" Ratchet asked.
"Just give it another ten minutes, tops." Fang glanced at the clock. "Everyone think they can hold out that long?" He asked the group.
"I guess." Kate said.
Maya bit her lip. She was pacing the cell. "I think so." She said slowly. "But if anyone comes in wearing a lab coat, I will lose it.
"Sure." Hoyden shrugged. "They don't come near me with a knife and I think I'll keep it together pretty okay."
Star was fidgeting. "Ten minutes? I can wait ten minutes. But once I'm out, I'm going to take a long, fast run. Okay?"
"Sure." Fang shrugged as the clock kept ticking.
Pietro opened the early morning door. It was only around 9 am, but it felt like early morning. Lance, Fred and Toad were sleeping in. The only one awake was Wanda, and as one might expect, she wasn't a morning person.
Pietro decided it would be safer to let her have some time to wake up.
So… where too? First he went to a café, and ate some food. Magneto had given his two kids a small allowance, and so Pietro didn't even have to steal it.
He slowly sipped his drink, thinking about Lance's obsession with Kitty. The strange thing was, half the time Lance was miserable but the other half he was more happy then Pietro had ever seen him.
And of course, Toad risked his life to flirt with Wanda. What was so amazing about love, anyway? Pietro had never fallen in love. Flirtation, attraction, even a small infatuation was all something he'd felt, but never love. Was he missing something?
Nah. Love just made everything more complicated. Hello, Lance was constantly having moral dilemmas about dating an X-Geek. And Toad got beaten up more by his love-interest then all the jocks at Bayville High put together.
Anyway, no-one would be able to keep up with him. Lance was right about one thing: all the humans in this town hated the mutants – well, most of them anyway – which left the X-men and the Morlocks. The X-Men got disqualified instantly, and the Morlocks lived in the sewer. Ew.
Any girl Pietro fell in love with, Pietro mused to himself as he bit into a donut, would have to be a type of mutant, but definitely not one from around here.
Pietro suddenly found himself imagining what his dream girl would be like. What was with him now? Pietro shrugged it off. Who cared?
Well, she'd couldn't be human, that was for sure. And she also had to not mind the fact that her boyfriend was better then her at everything. Actually, she should enjoy that.
Pretty, definitely. No, gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous. Fast, sure, but not as fast as him. Not clingy but absolutely adored him. No, she'd worship the very dirt he walked on.
He glanced around the café just in case that girl was anywhere inside it. Then he almost laughed. The place was crowded and yet no-one had even asked if they could sit with him although there was plenty of room in his booth. Of course, they were all scared of the mutant…
"You mind if I sit with you?" A girl asked, flipping her blonde hair back. She was about his age – fifteen – and had a slightly arrogant attitude. "Everywhere else is full."
Pietro smirked. "Sure, if you don't mind sitting next to a mutant." He emphasised the word, sure that she'd leave instantly.
"You're a mutant?" The girl slid down across the table from him. "And actually, why would I care?"
Pietro blinked. She wasn't grossed out or anything. Huh.
"I'm Pietro." Pietro said.
"Star."
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