Yaay, new fic! I figured I had to write something, and I'm sorry I've been gone so long. Forgivenesses? Once I get the basic Ideas for this down, I'll do some stuff I've been wanting to do with Baby Wings, and then I might write another chapter. But I have to do it in that order, or the new chapter is gonna suck. Lov y'all!

This takes place after STWAOES, k? I didn't want to do one that was after MAX or TFW, because they interfered with my storyline. So enjoy (-Smiley Face)

This one'll be pretty short and boring, just because I needed to deal with all the basics. The next one should be longer and more colorful.

Lets just get straight out and say, I don't own Maximum Ride. If I did, Iggy would still be in my attic, and this would be the fourth book.

I didn't really get what the point of this was, but I was (I confess) pretty happy about it. And nervous. But I tried not to think about that as I rang the doorbell. Now, unless you can somehow read my mind through your computer screen, you're probably wondering what's going on. Well, I'll tell you.

After my last tearful goodbye with Mom, we'd flown across the country to some random town in Massachusetts. There we'd stayed for a while, doing something or another, before the voice came into my head and told me there's been a change of plans, Maximum. Go back to your mother. This surprised me so much I almost fell out of the tree I was in.

When I regained composure, I asked and what do I do there, O brilliant one? Live. Survive. Be safe. Enroll in school; try to lead a normal teenage life for a change. It paused, and, with a sound that might have been a chuckle, said try not to let it bore you to death. So we high tailed it back to mom's, much to everyone's excitement.

And, back in the present, the door opened. The usual, gushy happyfest ensued; I'll spare you the details. Finally, after what seemed like an hour of hugging and "I missed you" mom finally got around to asking me what we were doing here. When I told her, she just looked at me for a really long time. When she finally spoke, she said, "I guess we'll have to find you all a place to sleep, then." And walked out of the room.

As soon as she was gone, Ella ran up to me and started gushing. "Ohmigod! I can't believe I get to live with you! This is gonna be SO awesome! You are gonna LOVE FDR!" when we looked at her blankly, she said, "Franklin D. Roosevelt Public School." Then she put on a business like voice, "Incorporating age levels K-12, with beautiful grounds, kind caring teachers, and a newly painted school building! Which is Vice Principal speak for, 'squashing every grade into one building because we don't want to pay for three, a big green with trash everywhere for the kids to beat each other up on, teachers who will never admit to how much they torture their students, and a building that has so many swears spray painted on it that they finally had to paint over it.'"

She smiled at us. We looked at each other, not sure if she was joking or not. She sighed. "Come on up, guys, you need to know where you're sleeping." We followed her up, tired from our long flight. Mom was standing in the hallway, when we came into view, she waved and said, "I've only got three air mattresses, so in one of the guest bedrooms, two of you will share a bed." I tried to keep from laughing. To us, "you'll have to share a bed" was to some people like saying "I'm sorry, you'll have to share this ten thousand dollars, ok?"

Gazzy ran in and out of both rooms, yelling, "Boys claim the one with three mattresses!" before collapsing onto the bed in the beige colored room. His snores began instantly. I put my hands up in mock defeat and led Angel and Nudge into the peach room, pulling Angel into the bed with me. No way was either of us sharing a bed with Nudge; we'd both gotten enough bruises sharing dog crates with her.

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When I woke up, it took me a few seconds to remember where I was. The pillows were soft, the sheets smelled like laundry. Mom's. I opened my eyes. The room was empty. I panicked a little, before I heard the happy talk and laughter coming from downstairs. I slowly pulled myself out of bed, trying to run a hand through my hair and not succeeding.

I heard a small commotion downstairs, and rushed to the landing. Mom was brandishing a comb at Fang, who looked like a cat that someone had sprayed with water. I stifled a laugh. Fang's hair was his weak point. "Fang! Your hair is a mess! You practically have dreadlocks, for god's sake! You're going to have to let me do something about it if you ever want to leave the house again, I like my children to look presentable!" the way she said my children made my heart swell, like she had already accepted them as part of her family. Gosh, my mom was so cool.

Meanwhile, mom had caught Iggy snickering. "The same goes for you, young man! I don't know why all of you boys like you hair so long, but it gets to be a real rats nest! How long has it been since you brushed your hair?" Iggy shrugged. "A month, maybe?" mom let out a sigh of exasperation and turned back to her cooking.

As it turned out, Iggy and Angel had hair so fine that it hadn't really tangled that badly, and some detangler spray and my ferocious mother were able to get their locks sorted out. Gazzy's hair was so short it was impossible for it to tangle. Fang and I were not so lucky. After working Fang's hair with her comb, mom pronounced that it was so matted underneath that she was going to have to cut it.

Fang looked so pissed off none of us dared approach him while she snipped, huge hunks of hair falling to the floor in tangled mats. When she was done, Fang still had a surprising amount of hair, and it looked good, shaggier from where the big chunks had come off, and more out of his face. Then it was my turn. Mom took one look at my hair and brought out the scissors. My hair was ten times worse than Fangs, and I ended up with almost the same floaty cut I'd gotten the first time in New York. Mom even trimmed Total's fur, though he seemed to like it a lot more than we did.

When she pronounced us all acceptable, she basically threw us all into the shower, stuck all our clothing (which didn't amount to much) into the wash, and started trying to wash Total. We could hear him yelling about how undignified all of this was from the house.

Let me tell you, after a long time on the run, a hot shower is like a little slice of paradise. I stayed as long as I could, until Fang banged on the door and asked me what was taking so long. As I walked out, I said, "all yours, your highness, you can beautify yourself all you want," and smirked at his expression and Iggy's laughter.

After all this, it was still only noon, so mom announced that we all needed a shopping trip. The boys complained, and I started with them, but Angel and Nudge looked so excited at the prospect that I couldn't bear to rain on their parade. I figured, how bad could it be? Just call me miss softie. Two hours later I was realizing just how bad it could be. The mall was huge and crowded, with no escape routs. I felt Iggy's hand nudge into mine, and knew how hard this rolling mass of voices, sounds and objects must be for him.

At the stores, Angel and Nudge ran ahead, grabbing things off racks not just for themselves, but for everyone in our flock, holding slinky dresses and jeans so skinny they looked like you could barely move your legs in them up to me. In the end, I bought mostly my usual ensemble of loose jeans and t-shirts, prompted into a couple of pretty things by the girls.

When we finally walked out of the mall, I felt relief, that is, until Ella said, "you can wear your new things to school tomorrow!" now, my experience with the word school (and schools in general) hasn't been very good, so as you can imagine, that sort of made my relief balloon float away.

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How does you like it? If I read it again and think it sucks, I'll probably just edit it. I have a bunch of things on the waiting list, I know, but this was my experiment to see if I could write a fic without slipping into Elizabethan English.

R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R&R?