Iggy: A Maximum Ride Novel
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise. Maximum Ride belongs to James Patterson. Nuff said.
James Patterson said that the next and final book, Nevermore, is set to be released in August 2012. I can't be bothered to wait for August 2012 so I'm going to try and write up my own novel and see if I can get it finished before August 2012. I'm sticking to canon (so far) and this is my own version of the unreleased eighth book.
Why don't Iggy, Gazzy and Nudge get a book named after themselves?An evil Plotbunny attacked me one day and screamed, "Write a novel about Iggy!" I said, "Why not?"
Since each book is approximately 50 000 words long, that's how I long intend my fanfic to be. Each chapter will be 2 000 words long and there will be 25 chapters all together. So that all means that each week, I'll post one chapter, then I'll be on a safe schedule.
This is the continuation of the current Maximum Ride series. Sets at the end of Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel where Max goes to find Ella and Fang goes to "kill the plant [One Light] at its roots.
~Wolfmilk~
A worried and nervous looking man dressed in a business suit sprinted along the streets of Shanghai, up to his stern faced boss.
"What news do you have?" A strong metallic voice enquired.
The business man straightened his tie and gulped inaudibly to the ordinary human ear. Small beads of sweat were being to appear on his forehead and it was clear that he did not wish to be in his boss's presence.
"The subjects has been released," he declared with a hint of discomfort. "But there were some… complications…," his voice faltered.
His boss raised a jet black eyebrow which clearly meant "go-on."
"One of the subjects broke their constraints and one of the staff was attacked and injured," the man continued stiffly.
"I was misled, it seems," the boss wondered out loud, his head slightly cocked to the side and supposedly deep in thought.
The messenger relaxed an inch.
"…that my staffs were in complete control of the trainees," the boss continued, amusement showing on his face as he watched the other man shiver.
"Tell the institute that I will be waiting."
"Yes sir!" The envoy saluted and walked back in the direction he came from, relieved to get away from the other man.
It was just another ordinary day. My flock and I were flying across the Altantic Ocean. We've been flying for two hours straight and my flock was getting tired.
"Max! How can you be sure that Ella is at the School?" Nudge suddenly said out loud. "I mean, we've told her all about what they did to us there? Why would she go to the School?"
I sighed and ran my fingers through my brown hair which was whipping around because of the wind. "Nudge, we've gone through this many times. For some wacky reason, Ella wants wings and–"
"Well, of course she wants wings! Ella has seen us fly. She has seen how cool it is. Who wouldn't be jealous of having wings?" Nudge argued.
"Nudge, you've just answered your own question. Ella wants her own pair of wings. That's why she went to the School. I think that she wants them grafted on to her," Gazzy spoke up.
"Yeah but why would she want wings grafted on to her? That's just disgusting. And plus she–"
"Ella's just a bit confused," I spoke up, hoping that Nudge will be quiet. I don't want to think about what the whitecoats would do to my half-sister. "Let's just find Ella and then find my mum and Jeb."
"And then Angel," Total murmured quietly.
"What's that, Total?" I said sharply, turning to towards him and looking him straight into the eye.
I half-expected Total to laugh and pass off his comment as a joke but instead he returned my stare with determined eyes. Total regarded me coldly and spoke to the whole flock.
"You guys are forgetting about Angel. You think that Ella, Dr. Valencia Martinez and Jeb was more important than Angel don't you?" Total said with a steely voice.
I frowned. What was wrong with Total? He had never acted this way before. Sure he'd been annoying but never this... serious. Of all the time I had spent with the talkative dog, never had I heard him serious. In fact, "Total" was an acronym of "serious".
"What are you talking about?" Gazzy said.
Total glared at Gazzy, "Instead of finding Angel, you all want to find Ella and others who aren't even part of the flock."
"Total. Angel is-"
"Dead?" Total asked, mockingly. I scowled at his tone, something was wrong with Total.
"On the contrary to what you may think, I know that Angel is not dead. Why won't you guys believe me?"
"Total! Stop talking nonsense. How would you know, anyway? It's not like you can predict the future, dog," I spat harshly. I knew that I shouldn't be so hard on Total since Angel was a sensitive topic for us. How dare he bring it up and talk some trash about Angel? Right now, all of us we trying to forget about the fact that Angel was... dead. Now Total was talking about her as if he was arguing about what the weather would be like tomorrow.
"Shut up the both of you!" Gazzy yelled at Total and I.
I resumed my flying, as if I had never had this conversation with Total. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Total did the same. He didn't look at all hurt, but I could tell that I had ruffled his feathers. And I wasn't sorry at all.
All I have to do is focus on finding Ella.
Max, you're making a big mistake. Oh brilliant, my good ol' friend, Voice, is back. Your sister is not part of the bigger picture. I don't care about your stupid "bigger picture". I yelled mentally. I can't just leave her at the School. You didn't leave her there. She went of her own accord. Yeah, like I needed to be reminded of that. I still had the piece of paper which she left for me back at the desert. "I was meant to have wings," was what she wrote in her neat cursive handwriting. My hand curled into a fist. If you're so smart, Voice, why would you just tell me what to do? I thought back. As usual, the Voice became silent at my question.
"Oi Max, I'm hungry," Iggy said, "do you see any restaurants anywhere?" I groaned.
"Ig, we're in the middle of the ocean. I don't think that there would be any floating restaurants passing by any time soon."
"Actually, Max. I can see something," Dylan said smoothly, as if he was waiting for that precise moment to tell me.
"Oh?"
"There's a really posh cruise ship over there," Dylan pointed at two o'clock.
"I don't see anything," I frowned even with my raptor vision.
"Neither do I," Iggy moaned.
"I'm rolling my eyes, Iggy."
"Guys, there's food on that ship. It looks like the passengers are celebrating something." Dylan said. "There's a party going on there."
"Are you sure it's a normal cruise ship, not one which has snipers secretly hidden somewhere?"
"I don't see anything suspicious," Dylan frowned, knitting his perfect black eyebrows together.
"Can we just crash the party then?" Gazzy pleaded with me, giving his best sweet smile. I almost chuckled. Gazzy was clearly trying to copy his sister, Angel, with her angelic smiles.
"Let vote on it then," I announced, trying to be democratic. "Those who want to go to a random ship possibly infested with whitecoats and evil mutant but has lots of food which may possibly be poisoned, say aye."
Nudge, Gazzy, Total and Iggy all said, "aye." Iggy added, "Gee, since when did you get all politician-like?"
"Dylan?" I asked, "I thought that you would have wanted to go too."
"What would you choose, Max? I'll agree with whatever you pick," he smiled, flashing his clean white teeth at me. I wish that he wouldn't suck up to me.
"Just pick a choice!" I insisted. Leave it to Mr. Perfect to be indecisive. "Frankly, I'll just go with whatever my flock picks." I said, emphasising the fact that Dylan was not part of my flock.
"Ma-ax!" Nudge said with an annoying sing-song voice. "Can we just go? It's already voted that we go, four out of six." With a start, I realised that she was right. Way to go Max, I scolded myself.
"Let's go then. Um, Dylan? Can you lead the way?" I asked uncomfortably. I hated handing the leadership to anyone, let alone someone NOT part of the flock. But I had no choice.
"Sure Max." Dylan confidently slightly tilted to the right and flapped his wings steadily, as if he had been flying for his whole life, which he hasn't, mind you. As much as I tried to hate him, I couldn't help feeling a tiny bit proud of his flying skills, which were taught by yours featherly.
He flew towards the front of the flock and led the group. "It's about... 10 km away." Like migrating ducks, we flew in a V-shape, with Dylan in the front and half of each flock on either side.
I tried not to concentrate on the fact that Mr. Perfect was wearing a smug smile at the prospect of leading our little group. It felt strange handing the leadership of my flock to someone else willingly-with an emphasis on willingly. Normally I'd feel uneasy about giving someone, not even part of my flock, the responsibility, even for a few minutes and yet I felt... relaxed.
Within a few minutes, we have reached the ship. By the time we have gotten there, saliva was drooling from Gazzy's lips. I couldn't blame him. It had been so long since I have had a hearty meal. A meal which was fit for a bird kid mutant.
"Let's crash the party‼" Gazzy shouted and landed onto the deck. The posh little humans stopped smiling and chatting. Everybody on the cruise ship was staring at Gazzy as if he was an angel who had fallen from heaven-which his technically had, seeing as he had wings and all. Remind me to lecture him later on about the fact that we needed to keep a low profile.
"C'mon Iggy, let's take all the food!" Gazzy grabbed Iggy's pale arm and dragged him to a table filled with food, completely ignoring the dumbstruck people who were still staring at him.
"Gazzy! You idiot!" I half shouted at him as I dropped to the deck of the ship. Now half of the passengers were staring at me. This was not what I had in mind when I allowed my flock to go to the ship. I was planning to sneak up on the ship, shove food into our mouths and steal some food maybe. Definitely NOT barge in like this.
"Relax Max, these people think that we're angels," Dylan's perfect voice whispered to me. He clasped his hand onto my tense shoulder but I shook him off.
"Look at what they're doing."
I tore my furious gaze off Gazzy and Iggy who were now stuffing their faces with some cake they found and scanned the crowd. Some of them were kneeling down while others' palms were held together and they were muttering some sort of prayer. They really did think we were angels despite our behaviour.
"Sweet," I whispered back to Dylan and relaxed a tiny bit.
A/N: I apologise if I have made any errors because I don't have a Beta reader.
Wow, it's hard to write and capture Max's cocky attitude.
Anyway, this chapter hasn't got Fang in it but he will be focused on in the next chapter, along with his "Flock"!
Please read and review!