A/N So, I'm being just going to start another fic for the sake of having one that does not include harry Potter- my mind needs a break sometimes and this is a god way to do that. This fic is really only being written for me but, should someone stumble across this and actually enjoy it, that's incredible! If such is the case, I would like to clarify that I am going to have to age down Ichigo slightly so he can be he same age as Max, fang and Iggy, meaning the events happened earlier in his life. Also, yes there will be a fair bit of AU-ing done with the Maximum Ride. Without further ado, I shall disclaim and begin this fic! ~We'reAllABitOdd
I neither own nor claim to own any of the franchises used or referenced in this fanfiction - it is exactly that: fanfiction. Bleach and Maximum Ride are the intellectual property of Tite Kubo and James Patterson respectively.
Angel was hunched in her cage, watching as the days she observed melded together much like the myriad of thoughts that she allowed to fill her mind and overtake the dead silence that she would otherwise have to endure. Of course, that's not to say the things that she heard were pleasant. Kids cried, even in their minds, lamenting and yelling out in pain. They wished for death and prayed to their god(s) to save them from this hell, to no let them see another child die in front of their eyes, to let the whole thing be a dream. What was worse was the way that many begged for their families to come and save them because these children hadn't been born into the hell she and her flock had never known any alternative to, these children had lived normal childhoods with loving families and friends. They were once normal but had since become destined to die in the School - a place akin to the underworld so many had grown up dreading being damned to.
No one spoke, she didn't know if they actually could any longer. Instead, the only noise to be heard outside of the confines of her mind was heavy, laboured breathing, groans of pain and the occasional squeak of a cage should someone be able to muster up enough strength to move. It was a terrifyingly regular occurrence; watching what little light was left in one of the kid's eyes fade and their struggle to breathe abruptly given up on. There was a girl in the cage to the left of her own, slumped in the pose death had caused her to take, dark skin still tinted red where rows of stitches and scaring decorated it, the tail grafted roughly to her spin a bloody mess and her eyes, catlike and blank, suspended open, rimmed with red and bloodshot.
This is what the School did. They tampered with lives, they tore things apart: families, people. They were murderers, kidnappers, demons who escaped their own punishment and assigned it to those who were innocent – or, at least, more so than themselves.
Then the doors had opened, erasers stormed in, a half-conscious boy suspended between them, head bowed and unable to struggle due to his sedated state. One eraser broke away from the group and dragged the poor, deceased cat-girl from her cage, roughly throwing the boy in as there were no spare cages at all – the sheer number of times they had tried to play God was astounding and disgusting.
The boy was quite old, at least to have been part of the series of sick twisted experiments, and interesting even if she to overlook the alterations made by the School. She couldn't help but be reminded ever so slightly of Iggy, a member of the flock she hadn't seen n so long and could only hope she would see again, they didn't look particularly alike but they had the same build, lanky and clearly not built to be bundled in the cages both had found themselves in. Also, it appeared as though the two were a similar age.
She had stared at the boy, the movement of his torso, his traffic cone-orange hair, as he lay folded in on himself next to her. But something struck her as odd, beyond it, even.
She couldn't hear his thoughts; his mind was locked from the inside. He was alive still, the slightly unsteady rise and fall of his chest and subtle movement of his long legs every so often was enough to assure her of such. It just didn't make sense. She didn't know whether the boy was forcing her out, strong enough even at a time when he lacked consciousness to protect his mind from intruders he surely couldn't have known were there, or whether there was something wrong with his mind, or perhaps just different, that acted as a barrier at all times even if he didn't want it to.
He didn't look like the others, he didn't look like a failed experiment that had been kept alive only out of inhumane cruelty. He looked like he should have, a strong, healthy teenage boy. Of course, that was only if she overlooked one very major detail.
There were wings folded along his bare back, folded alongside his shoulder blades, hiding most of his body from her view. From what little she could see in the dim lighting, the wings were dark, grafted onto the boy's back so seamlessly she had a hard time believing he hadn't been born with them. But then there was the blood. He didn't appear injured, there wasn't a single cut or scratch in sight but there was blood painting his skin and becoming matted, barely visible due to their deep hue, into his feathers.
Eventually, as her eyes grew heavy, she fell asleep herself, pre-emptively dreading the next morning's routine body count. She was a child herself, nine years old and living a life she wasn't quite sure qualified as one.
The next morning came but the body count never did: Angel was distracted. The boy in the cage next to hers was awake before her, he had shaken off what she knew from prior experience was a large dosage of an incredibly powerful sedative as if it were nothing. He was sitting with his back to her, wings just touching the cold, steel bars, still folded on his back.
His orange hair was messier than it had been the night before and fell around his shoulders in uneven strands that suggested he hadn't had the chance to have it cut in a while. His long legs were tucked up to his chest, his elbows rested upon them and his chin sitting where his arms overlapped each other. His shins were pressed against the bars in front of them, his head, despite being hunched over, brushing the bars above it.
She could hear his breathing, distinctly even, settled, amongst a room where she had previously been the only one not fighting to inhale. He was watching just like she was, watching the children and teenagers that were laying on the floor of the cages they had been forcefully placed in, cramped in the small enclosures and either fighting for life or waiting until it escaped them.
They were beyond saving, they may as well have been dead already – at most they had a week or two left. She watched, intrigued by the way he appeared to know that as well as she did despite the fact that he was not used to the same things as she was.
He seemed to realise he was no longer the only one awake amidst the experiments in the room and, with a great struggle, he turned so he was facing her: the only other one in the room with whom he could hope to uphold an intelligible conversation. He wasn't unfamiliar with bad situations but he was still in need of answers. The little blonde girl with the wide, blue eyes and steady breath that at least indicted she wasn't nearly as close to either death or madness as the other poor children in the room.
To his surprise and her own, she was the first to speak "Do you have a name?" she could feel her ripping at her dry throat and hear just how hoarse the disuse had caused it to become. It was quiet and she wasn't quite sure why, whether it was the atmosphere or the simple fact that she couldn't raise it. "I'm Angel."
The boy prepared himself to sound even worse than the girl, Angel, had; he had just woken up from a drug-induced sleep he had no idea how long he had been trapped in and was preparing to use his voice for the first time since, not even in his own language. "Ichigo."
Angel observed Ichigo now that she could see him properly, though not before trying once again to invade his mind to assess whether he would be a threat to her and her flock. Once again, she was met with a solid wall of black energy that prevented her from venturing in. Scars littered his skin but they didn't seem to be the work of the School – each one of them appeared old and accidental, not like the new, surgical scars she would have found if the institute they had the misfortune of being trapped in had inflicted them. He was muscular and had clearly been strong long before the School took him in, however that offered no explanation as to how the experiment had succeeded and he had escaped with his life, sanity and will to live.
Looking at his face, her heart felt another pang. The expression he wore, the permanent scowl that had been maintained even in his groggy state of partial consciousness the night before, the eyes that were narrowed and untrusting (not to her specifically, however – it felt more like scepticism than anything) the way he held himself as if he were permanently ready to retaliate to an attack. He reminded her of Fang just enough to increase the degree to which she missed him, much as he had done with Iggy the night before.
Impatiently, he ran a hand through his tangled hair and focused his amber eyes on her. His other hand was nervously tucked into the pocket of his black jeans, appearing to be clasped around something. "Angel, just, where are we? Why do we have wings and why do these monsters seem to think that this," he waved a tan hand around the room to emphasise the things happening around them, the things very worthy of the disgust he treated them with "Is okay?"
She sighed slightly before giving Ichigo an answer. "We call this the School. They specialise in human/animal experiments in which they cross the DNA to create hybrids. They used to only do this before we were born, I was born with these wings, as was my flock, but recently they've started to kidnap people," Ichigo looked down, obviously already hyperaware of this as it had been what happened to him "They want to create more of us, more successful hybrids. I think, of those kidnapped, you've been their first and only success."
It was his turn to sigh. He did so heavily, accompanied by placing his thumb and index finger on either side of his noise, squeezing tight enough she was sure I would hurt. He shoved back his hair again. "Great. Monsters, more shitty monsters? I just don't get a break, do I?" He was mumbling to himself and Angel didn't question what he was mumbling about.
"Wait!" he exclaimed his epiphany, voice louder than before but still quiet and fairly flat, all things considered, and gravelly "You said something about a flock. Who are they?"
"Friends. They're the same as me. They're on the outside. Hopefully they'll come to save us – they should but the security has gotten better."
"You've escaped before."
"yeah but it'll be harder this time. We'll need outside help."
He hummed a soft response before lapsing into silence. She was left to ponder his words. The accent he had spoken in was interesting but not the most interesting thing she had been able to gather from the situation. He was too calm. He had lived outside of the School for most of his life. No normal person would take to such a situation so well, in all honestly, she was aware that no normal human would have survived as he did. Even if they did survive, and it would've had to have been on a sheer will not to die, they wouldn't be alive. They would have been like all the others: sitting on death's doorstep.
Just as she pondered her new acquaintance, as she realised just how scary he was – she could not see his thoughts and he seemed to be accustomed to dire situations, not to mention the very fact that he was alive – she heard a loud bang. Clearly, she wasn't the only one. Ichigo's head quickly snapped to face the direction of the explosion and he shut his eyes for a moment. Then he snapped them open. She watched his pupils dilate for a moment before he spoke "There are two people coming this way. They aren't erasers and I don't think that they're whit jackets, either."
I took all she had not to question relentlessly how he knew that. How ever he did, he had allowed her to know exactly what was happening. There were two people, the very number he had specified, that she associated very fondly with explosions. That bang very quickly proved itself to be just that and the people just who she expected when, with another tremendous bang and a loud clatter of falling rubble, the wall exploded.
The clatter was followed by footsteps and two boys came rushing in through the new hole in the wall. One was tall and skinny, with pale skin, light hair and a splattering of freckles accompanied by equally pale eyes, blue and glazed over, unseeing. The other was shorter and younger. In fact, he bore quite the resemblance to Angel herself. He had the same big, blue eyes and blonde hair – granted, his was far messier and generously coated in debris from the series of explosions that had reverberated through the very depths of the building.
"Angel!" the younger called, drawing his sister's attention easily.
"Gazzy! Iggy!" The older of the two turned to her as he heard his name, walking over to the source of the noise and fumbling for the lock of the cage. It took a minute but he found it and began to work on undoing it. "Gazzy, the boy in the cage next to mine – get him out. Please." At last, she stepped out of her own cage, leaning and twisting to stretch out her cramping muscles, listening to the popping of her bones that accompanied every movement she made.
He looked at his sister curiously as he did, small hands unlocking the door. Ichigo stepped out, long limbs creaking unpleasantly just like Angel's own. Gazzy took a minute to look at him as he aimed to stretch the soreness out of his muscles.
"Do you not own a shirt?" he deadpanned, watching the boy stretch, his myriad of scars rolling with his movements.
"Technically, yes. But I don't have one with me, the whitecoats tore the one that I was wearing when they grafted these," he turned and twitched one of the dark appendages "Onto my back. Anyway, shouldn't we be going? The erasers are coming!"
"He's right, I can hear them!" Iggy confirmed, stretching his enhanced hearing sense to its limit. What he didn't mention was the act that he could hardly hear them coming and his ears had become more sensitive due to the loss of his sight.
In a quick sprint that all four had taken to straight from being stationary despite the stiffness of two, they fled. The walls of the institute were industrial, made of thick, white stone that had been scattered all over the once sterile, white floor tiles. They ran through the great, gaping holes left by the boy's make-shift bombs. The blaring lights that filled some of the rooms were such a shift from the perpetual darkness of the one that they had grown used to that they were forced to squeeze their eyes shut to block them out. As such, they didn't get a chance to look at each other properly and had to rely on their hearing and Gazzy and Iggy's capability to communicate the needed direction to travel.
Finally, they breached the walls, escaping into the semi-light evening. The silver moon shone bright in the sky above and they all shot off towards it the second they stepped outside and into the cool breeze that soothed Ichigo and Angel's aches. Their wings all unfurled quickly and the three flock members stared at the boy they had saved as they could finally see him properly. Namely, his wings. His impressive wing span stretched across about 20 feet, bigger than any of those in their flock. Angel had been correct in saying that they were dark, at least for the most part. They were black at the base and continued that way up until about two feet from the end. Of that two feet, the first foot and a half was deep red and the remaining six inches stark white.
They soared in peaceful silence until it was broken by Gazzy. "So, what's with the orange hair?"
"It's natural!" Ichigo yelled in exasperation as they touched down at the assigned meeting place where they were to meet the rest of the flock. The first one they saw was Max who had been waiting outside in the anticipation of being reunited with her youngest flock member. She had run to them as soon as she heard them but she had not been ready to meet an entirely new person, standing there among three of her flock, her family.
Squeezing Angel's shoulder as a short reunion that she was certainly going to continue once she had cleared up the situation at hand, she approached the tall stranger, taking in his rather unique appearance. She tried to make herself seem taller and larger than what she actually was as she approached, staring him in the eyes.
"Who are you?"
"Ichigo Kurosaki. Yourself?"
"Why should I answer you?"
"Where I come from it's polite to introduce yourself before asking someone else to do the same. As you can tell, I've already let you past that one, but this at the very least is fair, no?"
She exhaled heavily, gritting her teeth and wishing that the boy didn't have a valid point and an air of insolence in which to explain it "Maximum Ride. Max." then she turned to her familiar flock members "What's happening?"
They began to brief her on the situation, well, as much of it as they were aware of. As she nodded along she was surprised to see Ichigo contribute information, even if the way he did so was short. Finally, their explanation ended.
"So," she began to summarise their rather long explanation, not that she would have been satisfied with anything but "You're telling me that the School ran out of willing donors so they began to kidnap kids of all different ages to experiment on instead?"
She was cut off by Ichigo "I suspect it was also for experiments sake. They wanted to see if they could successfully change the DNA of an already developed person to be like your own."
"Right. And you," she gestured to the orange-haired boy "Were kidnapped from Japan and experimented on, becoming their only success?"
"Exactly." Iggy confirmed. "Angel asked us to rescue him, he was the only one in that entire building who could have survived the escape."
"You want to return to Japan, I'm assuming?" max confirmed, growing slightly more comfortable with the stranger's presence, even if not entirely.
"Not really." He winced "The trouble that they had to go through to get me here, you'd have thought they'd just give up. My dad attacked them when he saw there were intruders but they managed to overpower and kill him along with my sisters. Even if I were to go back to japan, it's hardly as if I'd have a home to return to."
Ange looked up at Max with ocean eyes pleading "Max? Can he please stay with us?"
Max looked between her and Ichigo who was uncomfortably shoving his hair to one side of his head, looking even more surprised with the young girl's proposal than she was. "If you want to?"
Ichigo didn't take too long to answer and the answer itself was simple "Sure, thanks." But she could tell it actually meant a lot to him, behind the scowl and the sceptical eyes.
"Well, come on. The flock wants to see you, Angel. Ichigo, I'm sure Nudge can't wait to talk you ear off."
He groaned "Great, because I'm definitely the most talkative person in the world."
Angel laughed lightly as they walked back into the woods, going by foot rather than flying for fear of drawing attention to themselves, the problems associated with which only amplified by Ichigo's lack of shirt or jacket to hide his wings in. After all, they were escapees of an illegal organisation with an incredibly difficult situation to explain. Things may not be received well.