WARNING: SUPER LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE.
So, here's my first Maximum Ride story. It takes place in an alternate universe, meaning it's an all-human story. The main idea of this is that all of the bird-kids are sent into a "mental disabilities" location, which is actually an asylum for psychologically scarred kids-teens. None of them have been allowed to see the light outside, so the only people they're around are the others there, knowing nothing much about the real world as most of them have been sent there at a young age or did not have a regular childhood. *shrugs* Random idea.
Sorry if this is really OOC. I haven't read the books in a while and my hate for the whole love-ordeals that go on in Fang and Angel make me angry. Prepare for FAX! (And Iggel too, maybe.) Screw Fang/Maya and Max/Dylan! (Sorry if you support those pairings! If you do and hate Fax with all your guts, you shouldn't read this because it ends up that way.)
Ugh. I'm not James Patterson. If I was, I'd just leave the MAXR series at the end of Max. With Max/Fang.
As it was meant to be. -.-
Note: Probably not going to have major appearances of Dylan, Maya or anyone outside the main flock. (Unless it ends up that I need one of those annoying…)
Also, the last names of the main flock (except for Max) are references from some of my favorite anime and video games. See if you can figure out the references! (The last names don't really have much to do with their personalities in this story, in my opinion, except for Fang's.)
Lastly, Jeb is supposed to be the way he is. I know he's not like that in the book, but please let it go for this story or else I would've had to make a new character with his personality, which is something I don't like to do.
Disclaimer: Like I said, I'm not James Patterson. He makes me angry all of a sudden. Also, the "As it was meant to be" was referenced from MakoRain, an awesome Final Fantasy VII (and others, but I love her FF7 stories) author.
All books and characters belong to James Patterson. Last name references belong to their respective video game/anime.
SORRY FOR THE FRIGGIN' LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE. I promise it'll be a lot shorter next time.
Music Makes Me Lose Control
Chapter One: Welcome to Paradise City
(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)
Maybe dying wouldn't be so bad.
I'm already dying, aren't I?
My body being used in such a cruel manner. For pleasure. By my own father.
Despicable. Inhumane. Evil.
The word 'freedom' was locked up in one of the chambers of my heart. It was a word never to be used, a word that was taboo in my head. Freedom always teased me. It always mocked me, looked at me with those malicious eyes and whispered in my ear the joys and happiness I would never be able to experience before I died.
Death.
What is death?
Is it really a man in a black cloak who ventures the world with a scythe? Or it is just a figment of our imagination? Is there anything after death? Will all the pain really go away if I choose to die?
What is death?
And finally, music.
How does music end up intertwining with these two other ideas?
It doesn't.
Music makes him lose control.
(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)
Run faster, Max shouted to herself as her feet moved wildly through the bushes. Faster, faster, don't stop…
"Max!"
"Shit!" she muttered lowly under her breath. "Dammit, Jeb, can't you run any slower?" The seventeen-year-old girl looked ahead into the night, her head pounding from the cuts she received from running through the thick forest. Her eyes began to tear up as she caught a relatively large vine against her foot. She scrambled down and tore it off her just as the man behind her caught up.
"Max!" he exclaimed again, much closer to her.
She glanced behind her, but dashed off into the mass of evergreen and kept running as fast as she could. Please, if there's any kind of "God" out there, help me! Her hands and arms were torn up and cut and she was tired. Panting, she skidded to a stop as realization kicked in.
The only thing below her was a busy street intersection.
Once again, Max looked behind and saw the man that had caused her so much pain.
Then back again at the street.
She chose the street.
With a running start, Max leapt off the bluff and slid down the hill on her knees. The pain in her legs ached tenfold and she bit her lip to keep from screaming out loud. From behind, she heard the loud voice of Jeb, shouting for her to stop herself. But she didn't want to stop, as she preferred death over the torture of an abusive parent.
She rose up to a standing position and jumped over the stone that cut the hill off from the street. A smile lit her face as time seemed to slow when she jumped. Her arms swung out as if she was spreading wings. She imagined what it would be like if she could fly.
The world soon came crashing down.
Her eyes widened as the ground came spiraling towards her. She rolled onto her feet, but she wasn't fast enough to dodge the incoming car. As soon as she saw the lights of the car, she knew it was over. Like a deer in headlights, Max froze and felt her muscles tense.
The impact was hard, and Max fell to the ground with a hard thud. She couldn't feel anything and her head pounded with pain. The lights flashing through her peripheral vision were driving her crazy. And the shouting. That shouting. A look of disgust spread across her face as she realized who was yelling.
"Max?" Jeb.
All she could do in response was groan.
"I'm sorry…?"
Was that worry in his voice or was it sarcasm?
…Screw you, Jeb…
"I'll get you to the hospital. You'll be alright." Now that sounded like Jeb – evil, sadistic, evil, masochistic and evil. Oh, and evil, she added. "Then we can go home and talk about this."
Kill me, kill me, kill me, Max cried in her head as the darkness engulfed her.
(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)
"Are you awake?"
Her eyebrows scrunched in confusion. That didn't sound like Jeb at all. It was more of a young man's voice – maybe sixteen or seventeen – but not at all like an old, sexual criminal. The voice was low, but not annoyingly low. His tone of voice was genuine worry, a sound she hadn't heard in the longest time.
"Y-yeah…" she murmured quietly, her voice coming out with a croak. Her eyes opened slowly. "Hi. Uh…I'm Max. Maximum. Maximum Ride. Whichever." She looked around and realized she was in something like a hospital room.
The teen nodded, shuffling around in his seat. He had messy and short strawberry blonde hair and seemed to not realize where Max was sitting. His eyes were unfocused and a very pale hue of blue. "Maximum Ride, huh?" he repeated slowly, his face scrunching up in thought. She thought it was cute with the way his eyebrows knotted together as his eyes darted all around. "I'm James… Err, Iggy. Iggy Sparda." He wore a black and red Devil May Cry T-shirt and had on cut up denims.
"It's nice to meet you, Jiggy," she joked with a smile. The look on her face was pure relief.
Iggy made no remark to her facial expression. "Just Iggy, please. Or else I'll be forced to create innuendos upon your name." He sounded rather serious about his threat, but Max saw a gleaming hint of humor in his eyes.
"Uh. Like…what?" For a second, she was afraid to know.
"Trust me, you don't want to know." As if appearing out of the shadows, a man that looked around Iggy's age entered. He had shoulder-length black hair and dark sunglasses masking his eyes. A black leather jacket was worn over a black shirt/beater, and he had on a pair of black skinny jeans. When she looked down, she noticed shitkickers that were (you guessed it!) black. In contrast, his skin was a pale, almost sickly white. "Amused by me?" he muttered quietly in a husky voice that seemed as if it wasn't used often.
Max cocked her head to the side in confusion at him. "Wait, where am I?" For a second, Max imagined the guy wearing all the black with a red headband, a red trench-coat, a gauntlet and holding a three-barreled gun. "Way…too creepy," she muttered under her breath, thankful that he didn't have red eyes. If he did, she'd probably get nightmares every night.
Iggy sighed and signaled to the paler boy to continue.
In response, the pale one rolled his eyes. "Most know what they're getting into when they come here." He slid his glasses off and tucked it into one of his pants pockets and Max noticed his obsidian eyes glinting with hatred. "This is the place where us kids and teens with 'mental disabilities' –" –he air-quoted the words– "stay to get treatment and shit." A sigh left his lips. "In all honesty, this is just the place where they slam the younger people they don't feel like helping."
"M-mental disabilities?" Max repeated in shock. The authorities thought she had mental disabilities? "What? I don't have –"
"It's what they all say," the pale one cut in. "Calm down. You'll get used to it."
"But I don't belong –"
"I'll repeat myself." He strode closer and leaned in, mere inches away from Max's nose. "It's what they all say, so get used to it."
Max stared into his eyes for second longer than intended. In those few seconds, she realized that his eyes were not black, but a very dark brown. "But…" At least they weren't red, she repeated in her head.
He leaned back and sighed heavily. "Are we really going to have to argue about something this simple?" The man grabbed a chair from the side and flipped it around so that the back was against his chest as he sat down. He leaned his arms on the top of it and looked at Max again. "Fine. Ask away."
"Who are you?"
"Of course that's your first question."
"Fang!" Iggy grumbled, his voice threatening. Max had nearly forgotten that he was there. "You're never going to make any friends with that attitude!"
He sighed again. It seemed that it was all he wanted to do. "Like I want to make friends. If I didn't, those scientists, psychiatrists, therapists or whatever they are would throw me into the psycho hole like they did Nudge –"
"Fang!" Iggy scolded much louder. Obviously this 'Nudge' person was close to Iggy.
"Calm down, Iggy!" His head shook slowly and he looked back up at Max. "Nick Valentine. Everyone calls me Fang, though." He scooted closer in his chair and held his hand out to her.
"Maximum Ride. People call me Max." She leaned forward and winced, but still shook his hand. Noticing that his hands were so cold against her rather warm ones, she asked, "Why are you in here, Nick?"
Fang turned away and shrugged. "I've got a couple problems," –Iggy snickered at this– "but I guess my main one is…well…" He rolled up one of the sleeves of his jacket and shoved his wrist towards her face. "See for yourself."
Max looked down at the horribly deformed arm. There were crisscrosses of cuts and the skin had obviously not been able to heal properly. As he held it up, she noticed that his whole arm was shaking, as if he couldn't hold it up with much strength. "You…cut yourself?"
"Yeah."
"Ouch."
"Nah. Not really. It's not so bad… I mean, for a while, my parents actually cared about me for a while," he muttered quietly, pulling his arm away and averting his eyes from hers. "It was worth it."
"My parents never cared about me," she responded, her face betraying no emotion. "Especially my dad." She shivered at the memories of his abusive ways. "He was…really bad."
Iggy cleared his throat. "How about we leave sob stories for later?" he suggested. "I think Max would probably like some rest?" The sentence ended up as a question.
"No, it's okay. I think I've rested enough."
"Do you want a little tour of The School?" Iggy asked, still not looking at Max eye-to-eye.
Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "I thought this was a psycho ward. Or whatever."
Fang laughed lowly, the sound sarcastic. "We just call it 'The School.' It's actually called…" His voice trailed off. "I…don't remember what it's called. I've called it The School ever since I've been here and I just…" He went silent again. "Uh, anyway, I'll go ahead and help you around, then I guess, Max." A hand went up to sheepishly scratch the back of his head.
Max smiled to herself, thinking that was absolutely adorable. "That sounds good." Just as the words left her lips, her stomach rumbled like the sound of thunder.
"Someone's hungry," Fang teased, his voice still somewhat dull. "Come on. I'll show you around." He rose from his chair and slid it off to the side, standing beside the bed Max was lying in. Max looked up at him and wondered how tall he was, considering he looked tall from her point of view.
" 'Kay," Max finally agreed, shrugging and sitting up straighter. The discomfort in her stomach had fallen into a dull throb, but there was excruciating pain troubling her bruised head.
"Will you join us, Ig?" The low and quiet voice was suddenly somewhat worried as Fang noticed the pain on her face. Those dark eyes kept glancing back and forth from the blonde one to her.
Iggy shook his head. "Nah, I'm not hungry. I'll probably go check up on Nudge and the others later."
"Which means you'll spend a few hours with Nudge –"
"Fang!" Iggy grumbled.
Fang raised his hands up in a 'calm down' gesture. "I'm pulling your leg, Ig. Calm it down." Max sat up slowly and swung her legs over the bed, not wanting to interfere with the two of them. Noticing this, Fang gently took her hand and helped her across the room.
Iggy shot a glare towards Fang, which didn't seem to be doing much as Iggy faced the wrong wall. "No one ever knows when you're, ahem, 'pulling our leg.'"
"Seriously?" Fang rummaged in his pocket for something, but continued talking. "I'm like, the funniest one in our little flock."
The blonde one stood up and shuffled slowly towards the general area Max and Fang were standing in. "You listen here, Fang," Iggy started, poking his finger against the air where he wanted to poke Fang in the chest. Fang quickly grabbed Iggy's hand and pressed it against Max's chest. "Yeah, you listen here, Fang."
Max's eyes narrowed. "Wrong chest."
"…" Iggy lifted his hand up from hers and shifted his hand to the left. "You listen here, Fang," he said for the third time, "you make another wrong move and I'm going to… Well, let's just say you wouldn't want to end up in the middle of mine and Gasman's next experiment." All of a sudden, Max wondered what Iggy's 'problem' was.
Fang slowly swallowed. "Yeah…I probably don't want to," he replied carefully. His steely eyes met Max's, and he cocked his head toward the door. She nodded and quietly opened it, hoping to slide out unnoticed.
"Oh come on, don't leave me, bro," Iggy grumbled, lifting his hand up and winding it back into a fist. Max left with the room with lightning fast speed and shut it tightly behind her before Iggy could do any damage.
With fast reflexes, Fang snatched Iggy's hand and spun him around. Quickly, he opened the door and ran out the door. Before he could escape his fate, Fang bumped into Max, pushing her to the ground. He soon followed, but managed to hold out his hands before doing any damage to the girl. "Whoops."
"Nick?" she muttered quietly, a faint blush sweeping her face.
"Y-yeah, I know, sorry," he hastily said, avoiding eye contact with hers. "Err…" His hands were locked against hers above her head and his knees straddled her at the outside of her knees. Finally, Fang looked down at her. Those eyes were absolutely beautiful.
"Could you get off me?" Max quickly asked.
"Yeah, lovebirds, don't make a scene out there!" Iggy shouted from inside the infirmary-bedroom-thing.
His eyes widened, and he quickly scrambled off of her. "Sorry." He hopped to his feet and hauled her up carefully. "That probably didn't help any of your pains you got from that accident." He again scratched the back of his head and used his other hand to slam the infirmary door shut, obviously annoyed at Iggy.
As if on cue, the throb in Max's head soon exploded into a full-on migraine. "Ow…" she muttered, her face scrunching in pain. "Ow, ow, ow…" She started to rubbing her temples in tight circles.
"Sorry…"
Max looked at him curiously.
He returned the look with confusion.
"What?"
She rolled her eyes and gently punched his shoulder. "You say sorry too much."
"Do I?" A perfect eyebrow raised in interest. "Is that a bad thing?"
Max shrugged and patted her clothes down and realized that she wasn't wearing the clothes she considered rags when she ran away from Jeb. Instead, she wore a light blue tank top and brown khakis. "No, it's just kinda weird." Her eyes ventured from his face to her surroundings. Right now, they were standing in a dimly lit hallway with doors all around. She assumed that this was either the infirmary type place or a mix of an infirmary and bedrooms.
"Why?" Fang looked amused, if his pale face could show any real emotion. He turned around for a second to see what she was looking at, but returned his eyes to her. He was completely intrigued by this girl. So…different. But then again, Fang reminded himself, most people here are.
"You ask too many questions," she replied simply, sighing. "Come on, Nick, I'm getting hungry." Her stomach rumbled again.
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever. We'll get to the kitchen eventually."
"Eventually?"
"Eventually," he repeated, placing his hand on her shoulder and dragging her along. "I'll start with the garden, if you'd like."
Max blinked and froze. "A garden?"
"For fresh air." He said those three words as if it was the most obvious answer to her two-worded question. "It's probably the most serene place you'll find here." Fang gripped her shoulder tighter, bringing Max back into reality. "I think we'll see Angel there too."
His eyes seemed to light up, Max noticed. "Who's Angel?"
"You're full of questions today, aren't you?" he teased again, his voice finally making a change for the little joke.
Max hit him on the shoulder again. "I'm the new one here. Aren't I supposed to ask questions?" She strode toward the glass door Fang seemed to be walking to. "Here?"
"Yep." He ignored her first question and stepped in front of her, staring through the glass door. Fang pressed his cold palm against the cool glass and looked at the beautiful green shrubs and trees outside. The flowers were growing beautifully and against the trunk of a tree sat a young girl, who couldn't have been older than eight or nine. The sky was a perfect blue with small spots of clouds pressing white against a colorful background.
He sighed again and turned the doorknob. With a soft chuckle and a passing glance towards Max, he said, "Welcome to Paradise City, Maximum Ride."
(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)(X)
"Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Take me home…"
Paradise City – Guns 'n' Roses
(end of chapter one)
Hope you enjoyed it.
The next one will mostly take place in "Paradise City," which is the unofficial name of the garden. (It's what the flock calls it.) There, we will meet Angel and Gazzy and a few other key players. Nudge will be met in a different chapter, or at the very end of the next one, depending on chapter content and length.
Please review! Constructive criticism is always appreciated. If this is OOC to you, please forgive me because I've never written a Maximum Ride story before. If it is OOC and you mention it, don't forget to put how you think they should be and I'll make some changes according to your review if I think that it makes enough sense. If there are mistakes, please point them out~
You should also guess the two last names put into this chapter! (Iggy Sparda, Nick Valentine) :D There are little references throughout the chapter. These two are actually pretty obvious with the hints I put.
The rating might change because I know how much I love a lemon. Tell me how you feel about it as the story progresses!
Thanks! I'll try to update ASAP, if possible on my hectic schedule.
~anime-heroine
Edit: I've added a song quote and made some corrections. ^^