Hello! It's Elliot with a Maximum Ride story! Now, we've all seen these sorts of stories and if you are actually taking the time out of your precious Fanfictioning life to read this, then I am greatly appreciative of you! :9 Now for an amazing disclaimer.

This fanfiction author is a 13 year old girl named Elliot with a crappy Profile, not a middle aged man named James Patterson who wrote Maximum Ride and other books. So, if my math is correct, I do not own Maximum Ride and I do not profit from making this other than the fact of people actually reading it. Enjoy!

Max POV

I swear, waking up each morning was becoming harder and harder. I could barely find the strength to lift me up onto my feet and then continue on for the rest of the day. Every night, when I left, I left feeling crappy, and every morning, when I got back, I came feeling worse than before. Yes. I, Maximum Ride, leader of the flock and soon to be savior of the world, was creeping out in the middle of the night to go to the school. The horrid treacherous building was like a second home to me, even though the first one was a run down shack where we kept a few garbage can ransacked items.

Really, they just ran tests on me. Tests upon test upon test. All in exchange for the freedom of my flock. To leave them alone and take me instead, if you please it in that context. Still, even though they said they would never capture any of them, they never said anything about not attacking. Even though Erasers attacked constantly now I still went back every night for yet another test to be run on me. And when the Erasers did attack, I could never help the flock fight them off. Hell, I could barley help myself. It took all day just to regain half of the strength I had the previous day, and months of doing so led me down to a being that barely was.

There was another attack going on and I was doing absolutely nothing, I knew the Erasers wouldn't attack me anyways. I was part of their little experiment, even if it wasn't really theirs. Anyways, I was too weak to fight, I'd probably just make a fool out of myself. And with each defeat or victory the flock took, they seemed to be more torn, shattered, and crumpled than before. They knew I was 'sick' so to speak. It would be more appropriate to say they thought I was sick and let me sit out of the battles. Whenever they tried to make me feel better or heal me I would always push them away. The chemicals were always very pungent on my clothes and even when I took a quick splash in the lake a few miles away everyone would be able to smell them even three feet away from me.

At the present moment I was sitting in my little corner of the run down shack, a torn wool blanket draped over my legs as I tried to sleep. It felt like I had a fever. I was sweating and I had bags under my eyes which had darkened a shade. My hair was tangled and etched with dirt and some blood. It had lost its sheen and shine and now was just a lump of grayish brown that sat upon my head. In my hands I had a small mug of hot chocolate that Nudge got from Starbucks that was just in the town a few miles away. I wasn't really doing anything, just staring off into space. That was until I heard a throat cleared to the right of me.

I shook my head and jerked myself back into attention, sliding my eyes into focus on the flock which stood before me, about nine feet away from me.

"Oh, hi guys." I said, readjusting myself so I was not slouched. I winced slightly as I scrapped my large scar that arched down my back from days ago rubbed against a rough patch of wood.

"Max." Angel sneered. She was standing at the front of all five of them, Total resting in her arms. To her left were Gazzy and Nudge and to her right were Iggy and Fang. They were all glaring at me.

"Yes." I tried to throw some moxie and sass into my voice but instead it sounded grizzly, as if I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.

"We want you out Max, we know what you've been doing." Gazzy spit out at me. His voice was filled with acid and hate.

"Listen, it was for your own good!" I said, trying to stand. I stumbled and almost fell on my face but caught myself with my hand by jamming it into the wall. I sucked in a breathe as my hand hit a bit of wood sticking out of the wall. I'd take care of that later.

"Max! Just don't. We want you gone, no matter what you say." Nudge said, tears coming out of her eyes and snot running out of her nose. She turned away to wipe the snot on her black shirt arm.

"Guys! Hear me out! I'm begging you." I cried to them. Tears pricked my eyes but I didn't wipe them away.

"No Max. You come back early in the morning with a smell of chemicals and lake water on you. If you think we're dumb enough to not know what's going on than you really aren't our flock leader." Iggy said, his blind eyes hitting me with a precisely aimed glare.

"I did it for your safety. I did it for you guys." I was one tier away from bawling like a baby.

"It didn't seem like those Erasers weren't attacking us." Was Gazzy's answer, it was colder than ice, the way he said it.

I blinked rapidly to make the tears fade back into my eyes. It hardly helped. "F-fine. I'll leave than. But I'm not going back there, even if it's for your safety. I'm not part of their silly situation, I'm not part of yours. Don't blame me when your back at the School. Blame yourself." I said this all between clenched teeth with tears leaking out of the corner of my eyes.

"Give us the Max-Card." Fang sounded out from his little part at the end of their arrow. He held out his hand as if expecting I would give it to him.

"No." I snapped at him. He seemed taken aback but quickly regained his composure and glared at me.

"Give. Us. The. Max-Card." He said again, more firmly this time.

"No." I said before starting my little rant. "And you wanna know why? Do you Mister Silent-With-No-Personality? Well I'll tell you why. Because every night for the past month or so I've been sneaking out of this shack that we call home, to go to my worst nightmare so that this flock doesn't get kidnapped and sent to the School. I've endured pain and torture all so you guys don't get effing taken away to the hell hole. I have more scars that you don't want to know how I got than you have hairs on your dainty little head. And if I'm going off by myself because my perfect little Flock can't take the pressure of living a life without the School I deserve this Max-Card. I need it while as you've got the the mind reader, the mimic-er, the perfect chef, the hacker, and the dog. You can just go steal it yourself. But I'm. Taking. The Max-Card!" I nearly screamed the last part, getting angrier and angrier each time I poked Fang in the chest, sending him back a foot or two.

"You had your rant. Now it's my turn." Fang mumbled, almost to himself, even though everyone caught it. "Listen up here Max. You have been a traitor to us. You have been betraying us, all for our 'freedom'. If we have 'freedom' then why are we still being attacked by Erasers? Huh? If we have 'freedom' then why do you still sneak out? Couldn't you have gone once and gotten it over with? Or are they just better company than us? We don't even have any proof that you're 'saving' us. For all we know you could just be spoon feeding them information about the Flock. You could be telling them where we are, what we like to do. You think we didn't notice that none of the Erasers laid a paw on you, even though you were the weakest of the pack. They could have easily destroyed you and right now I'm taking a liking to that idea. So run along Max. Join your little School friends. That's where you always go. Cause guess what Max? You aren't welcome here. We don't love you. I don't love you. I never loved you!"

I froze at the last statement. Fang had also shoved me up against a wall as I did to him. While I did believe that neither the flock nor he loved me anymore, I did find it unbelievable that he never loved me. I searched his face with my eyes. It was still hot with fury but slowly melting back and reliving what he had said. Still, no sign of regret at what he said. Was it true he never loved me? Were all the stolen kisses and hugs just one big game to him? A game called 'Let's Tool With Max's Heart™'? Then regret started to spread on his face, but I had already made up my decision.

"Max… I'm sorry." Fang stuttered. The rest of the Flock was looking at him in surprise. Obviously this was not part of their plan.

"No." I said, my face set and my voice cold. "You've made your decision. I'll respect that. But you must respect my decisions even if they are rash." And with that I sucker punched Fang, not enough to knock him out, and flew upwards, even though my wings could barley take my weight and it felt like I was going to fall any second now.

I crashed through the roof, raining down rotting wood on the Flock. Oops. I glared down at them and they gazed up in awe and horror at me.

"M-Max." Angel squeaked. I looked at myself. I was glowing. Not in a happy 'Oh! This is an amazing day for Max!' way, but in a literal way. Surrounding me was a thin layer of what seemed to be golden dust and I felt suddenly stronger than before.

"Goodbye." I said quietly, my voice sounded different, before going into hyper-speed and blasting off and away from the little shack. I was going faster than I had ever gone and soon was out of that state. I didn't know where I was going or what I would do, I only knew one thing. Fly away, get as far away from here as possible.

Sooooooo…did you like it? Did you dislike it? Did you like some part and dislike the other part? I know that the flock probably wouldn't go so cold on Max for trying to keep them free and they would probably want to help her out by going with her to the School at night as well but for the sake of this story, just play along. Read, review, follow/favorite. Whatever you want to do! A review would be appreciated! Loves and kisses from my Hedgehog Derpy! Also, to be clear when I said 'golden dust' I mean sort of like what a time lord has when he first starts regenerating.

️ ️ ️ ️Elliot The Queen Of Hearts ️ ️ ️ ️