Author's Note- This is only the first chapter. If you want more chapters please review (5 reviews isn't too much. Pretty please with Iggy on top? Iggy: Hey! Me: If it works….). R&R! For you non-members out there, that means read and review. You don't even have to log in! All of my stories have anonymous reviews enabled.

Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride or any characters in the said series. I do own the O/C though.

Chapter 1

Flying is, without a doubt, the most amazing sensation in the world. I was soaring hundreds of feet above my isolated forest home. It was so beautiful and quiet…and my cell phone's annoying ring tone ruined it.

I checked the text message my dad had sent me, then wheeled back toward the house. Dad was coming home soon, and he didn't know some important things about me. Like that I had wings for example.

I raced home. Thanks to a random genetic quirk, if I held them still, my wings could turn invisible. That had kept them a secret. They were a shiny black with white patches on the long bottom feathers. I turned the TV to one of my favorite shows, and plopped down as though I had been there for a while.

My dad opened the door. "What's up kiddo?" he asked when he put his bag down. I wondered about my dad's "part-time job" as he put it. He sometimes left for indefinable amounts of time and came home battered. He had a web page designing job that he ran out of our home but these "side jobs" brought him home looking like he'd been put in a blender set on "chop." Just like today.

"Dad, come into the kitchen, I'll see to those cuts."

He looked at me with an indefinable expression in the black eyes that so perfectly matched mine, but followed me without a word.

I gathered the first aid supplies, and sat on the counter. I was pretty tall for my 15 years, but I had to sit on the counter to reach my dad's face over six feet in the air.

As I was fixing my dad's face, he said something that would be the beginning of the end of any normalcy in my life, "There are some things we need to talk about, Ava. Things you've asked me about before but it wasn't time yet."

I froze. "You mean, about Mom?" My dad's eyes held a barely contained wellspring of pain.

"Yea about your mom. You see, my name isn't Nick Riderson. It's Fang."

With that beginning, my dad began to weave a tale so far fetched, I almost didn't believe it. He grew up in a dog crate for crying out loud!

He told of scientists and their creations, enemies and betrayals, he also told of family.

He came from a flock of six, then seven, then eight. He told me their names: Angel, the Gasman or Gazzy, Iggy, Nudge, Total, Dylan, and Max. He'd fallen in love with Max, but there had been complications and he had forced himself to leave. (A/N-For full summary of Fang's story see Maximum Ride series by James Patterson)

Brokenhearted, Dad went to Dr. Gunther-Hagen and made a deal. There were four elements to the deal. First, he would have nothing to do with his old flock. Second, replace Iggy's blind eyes with ones that work. Third, take Max's DNA and his own to create a child for him to take care of. Fourth, the deal would end in 19 years, giving him time to meet Max, who I now knew as my mom. To finish, he showed me his wings. 20 feet of pitch black glory.

To my surprise, and his, I began to cry.

"So I'm not adopted?" I sobbed.

"Adopted?" I almost laughed at the look on his face. So surprised. "You thought you were adopted?"

"Yes!" I sobbed.

"Why the heck did you think that? We look so much alike!"

"Here's why!" and with that I showed him my wings. Again, I almost laughed at the shocked expression on his face.

"Y-you have wings? But how is that possible?"

"I have this quirk thing. If I hold my wings still, they turn invisible."

"Just like me." he mumbled under his breath.

As he had explained about the flock's mutations, I wasn't as confused as I could've been.

"Can you fly?" he asked, jolting me out of my reverie.

"What did you say?"

"Can you fly?" he repeated.

"Yea, I taught myself."

"Would you like to practice? I have some tricks that I could show you. Then we should rest up. It's a long flight to Arizona."

"You mean…."

"Yep. You are going to meet your mom."

I was floored. I was going to meet my mom! Then the worries began. Would she like me? I have wings. I was created by a scientist. Maybe she doesn't want a daughter!

"It'll be fine," he told me, displaying an Angel-like tendency to know what I was thinking. Again.

"Whatever you say. Now, about those flying lessons…."

One of Dad's rare grins lit up his face. "I thought you'd never ask."

Then we opened up a window an flew off into the night.