EDIT, August 2011: Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.
Chapter the 10th; tenth anniversary and Christmas celebration!
Technically, since it's past midnight, it's actually January 13th, and it's 1:01 AM ...Kabuto POV
This was amazing. This was something I'd never seen in my life before. I sat watching and re-watching the scene that Zetsu's collar-camera had recorded. I'm so glad I came up with that idea and installed that in the collars of Zetsu and Kisame. In two other screens, both the experiments' camera-collars are recording in present-time but what either of them is doing now (wandering in the woods, it seems) is nothing compared to what Zetsu did not too long ago.
"Hey, Kabuto, did you see that?" Genma came into my office and cried out to me. "The recording just finished up in the auditorium. The four of them looked like they had a plan to catch her. And they, they caught her and held her down, and God, you'd think they were talking to her! That's fucking out-there, ain't it?"
"Certainly is. I know what happened, though. I'm watching it on my computer. And I was the one who put the camera data in the projector so you guys could watch it there, so I should know."
Genma waved his hands excitedly. "Us down in the auditorium saw every last gigantic detail of the fight! Everyone's screaming about the males now and re-looking over their old tests and everything. Hey, did the Director watch it?"
"Of course he did." I chuckled. I do wonder what he thinks about it..."
Genma came to the other side of my desk. He saw me re-watching the fight on one laptop, the larger one, while the other laptop scrolled downs dozens and dozens of graphs and charts, details from the male experiments last few tests and trials.
"You know the camera is still rolling, don't you?" I told him as I began typing once more.
Genma appeared perplexed, then jumped and gasped, "Then, I have to get down there and watch the rest! Wait, you mean there's more video footage we didn't see? It stopped playing after Sakura pulled away from Zetsu and ran into the trees…no wait, it stopped just after Zetsu ran into the woods after her! Karin and Anko were out there, telling them which directions to search and…ah, this means Karin and Anko still have to watch the footage when they get done searching and come back! They will be goddamn amazed."
"They will be surprised, but the recording didn't stop, Genma. It's still going in real-time. Here." I clicked away the recording of The Encounter (it deserves capital letters, I think) and let him see the points of view of Zetsu and Kisame as they lumbered through the woods in the dark. "But right now, we have more important things to be doing than watching where Zetsu's going." I said to him amiably. The amicability was, naturally, fake. Like Karin, I am not fond of Genma and his general stupidity, and harbor suspicions that he cheated his way through the exams of the prestigious university he claims to have graduated from.
"The little circle at the left of the screen will indicate any problems with his collar. If it ever goes black, I'll know his collar is malfunctioning. It so whatever Zetsu is facing, the camera will see. Even now, wherever he is, his camera is recording and watching. If this little light at the bottom of my computer screen ever goes black, I'll know one of the experiments' collars is malfunctioning. Very simple."
"But you won't know if it's Zetsu's or another experiment's that has a problem?" Genma questioned, poking around my office.
Inwardly I cringed at this thoughtless criticism, the product of not having enough time to design the collars. "No, I didn't have enough time to make the mechanism that complex. If it ever goes black, God forbid, we'll have to call them all back here, or perhaps half of them first and the other half later, so some can always be out searching. And they know, from training in their most recent Stealth and Tracking Courses, that getting a shock from their collars means they need to come back here, anyway. But still, it would mean the search would be called off for however long it would take to fix a collar. And we have no time to waste."
"Have you found anything that might have screwed up the sensors on the male experiments' collars, like Sakura's electricity fucked up hers?"
I shook my head. "No. Not that we have a great history of looking for things like that, a Sakura's story can tell you. On the other hand, Sakura's collar was malfunctioning all the time because of a constant flow of electricity inside her. Electricity fries mechanical and computer systems. Kisame's telekinetic control of water, and Itachi's vision, for example are not forces that can cause circuits to fry." Genma raised a hand like a school child who wanted the teacher to call on him. Well, to humor him, I pointed at him to give my permission.
"Thanks, teach. I know it makes sense that only Sakura's got what it takes to mess up the readings on a collar, but really, who's to say Kisame's telekinesis and the abilities of all the other experiments can't do the same? Even years after birthing these creatures, we don't know everything about them. Maybe Naruto's really a genuis, too, and can speak perfect English and cuss us out and knows the Pythagorean Theorem and such."
This thought was horrifying. Terrible. A destroyer of entire worlds. It couldn't be true. "That's nonsense, Genma. We do know nearly everything about our experiments. Sakura was a very special case. We were always more sure of the males' intelligence, anyhow. I have no doubt that they are exactly what they seem, and thier thoughts are no more complex that my pet dog's."
I left it at that, and began tapping idly at my smaller laptop. I scrolled down on a month-old Number 4, 145 Degree Iron Resistance Trial Sheet. Which told, in Genma's elementary terms, how many times Zetsu was hit with a bunch of red-hot iron sticks of varying temperatures before he was seriously injured. On the fourth hit, Zetsu caved. He yelled to high heaven, and closed his plant-limb over his head, collapsing into shivers and fright. Zetsu had always been one of the more sensitive creations. On the seventh hit, his hand caught fire—the creature is half plant, you know—and was put out immediately.
Apparently disliking the new silence, Genma piped up with, "You know, Kisame almost died when Sakura ran into him and the power box fell on them."
He must not be aware that I was the one that performed open-heart surgery on him to cauterize the wounds that the electricity had managed to open there. I sent him a look of false sympathy, but also with genuine intrigue. He spent some time with all the experiments, caring for their physical and medicinal needs, but he'd never shown any special attachment to Kisame.
"In my opinion, he needed a little more training, more specialized training that would work around his injuries, before he was released with the others." Genma continued. "If I had my way, he'd be kept back for another several days to heal up, and get used to stress again that could hurt his heart or spine."
How cute. He wanted to give Kisame a handicap since he'd been hurt. "Well, Kisame was never an individual to be kept down by most anything. When we let him go out with the others to look for Sakura, we considered his health along with his endurance. If you're so concerned about him getting hurt, then be aware that he was back to normal in less than a day after the surgery. Not three hours into the new training."
"Yeah, well..." Genma started, and did not elaborate. He started a new thread, or rather picked up an old one. "I suggest getting someone to run over old tests and make sure no experiment's ability impeded on the test results. Just wanna make sure the others aren't taking after Sakura and planning escape, too. God, that'd suck, huh?"
It would indeed. But I could not share this fear with Genma, or even the Director.
"They certainly acted like hunting dogs just now, didn't they?" I said, gesturing to the still replaying screen of The Encounter. "As you said, it seemed like they were talking to each other. Neji pinned Sakura down, and I suspected he would give her a blow to knock her unconscious, or cause her pain. But he waited until the other three came over, and they sat around her and seemed to…talk about something."
"Is there a way to find out what they were saying to each other?"
"Not unless I can invent a way to talk to animals and translate growling."
"It was something Sakura sure as hell didn't enjoy." Genma observed. On my larger laptop, we watched The Encounter on mute. At the present angle, Zetsu was only a foot or so above the ground, the rest of him submerged with the earth. With so little distance between Sakura and himself, her facial expressions were clear.
Neji had just pinned Sakura to the ground; it was the beginning of the, shall I say, Very Interesting Scene. I could hear a voice that I was sure was Neji's, calmly and contentedly growling something while Sakura lay stone-still with eyes that looked like they'd seen a ghost. That was the hypothesis, anyhow. Sakura's mouth moved slowly, and she did not speak. At least, not in English, like she had when she escaped days ago and cussed us all out. Just about ten seconds before in the video, Sakura had said, in perfect English, "If I'm going to die now, I want to die with some scrap of dignity!"
But then Neji had said something in his purring tongue, and out of nowhere, Sakura was now longer speaking English. Her mouth and tongue moved slightly, but her voice wasn't made of words anymore. It was a somewhat feminine growling-purring sound, soft and quiet, likely with disbelief. If I had my eyes closed, I would have believed I was listening to some kind of wildcat kitten. And if her expression was anything to go by, she didn't even know that she was doing it. But what were they all saying? I'd give anything to know what Sakura's expressions here are all about.
At some point, Genma walked back over to the door and said, "See ya soon, Kabuto. I'll be in the first floor Chemicals Lab. Well, I guess as security manager, you'll see me on your monitors, won't you? Ciao."
And with a self-amused chuckle, Genma opened and closed the door and left. I sneered at the closed door. There'd have to be a hell of a crisis at this facility before I spent time actively hunting my monitors for Genma.
Back to the video. I skipped a little of it and watched the section where Deidara moved his finger up and down on Sakura's neck. She appeared too preoccupied with another male's growl-talk to notice to gesture. 'How dare that brainless parrot…touching something so valuable like that!' I skipped more content of the video, coming towards the end, where a few white specks dotted the edge of the camera. It was snowing. I skipped some more, to a point where Sakura was standing up and moving about again. She and Zetsu's hands were laced together and they were struggling to push each other down. They spoke to each other, Zetsu in his schizophrenic tones—one that sounded definitely evil and one not quite so evil—and Sakura snarling back. I had a suspicion that he was threatening her, threatening something terrible.
The experiments have always had bloodlust for Sakura. Even when they're in an innocently playful mood, they'd tried to attack her. Every chance they were given, they made a beeline right for our fine little bird, claws and fangs and all weapons available at the ready. They desired her death, and delighted in the hunt for it.
Or so I'd thought.
Seeing this recording once, just once, gave me the idea that somehow the near-decade we'd spent watching Sakura run away from the male experiments, all the data we'd collected from seeing it happen, was wrong.
After watching this, I even more worried and confused. Deidara's little gesture, that looked rather like petting a cat to me, and Kakashi's soft expressions and the way he regarded her, all suggested some sort of...affection. Or lust. Kakashi had leaned down and whispered close to her ear. Zetsu's normally coarse growling voice had gone somewhat softer for portions of the conversation. And the suggestive position in which Neji held her down in needed no words, except perhaps "where did he learn that?"
And their facial expressions, too. So soft. Not mindlessly gleeful enough. Not joyous that they would get a quick chance to beat her half to death before bringing her back here. I'd expected that, actually: despite the training they'd been given which specified that she be no more hurt than was required to subdue her, Sakura would be brought back bleeding and broken. But no. There was no beating, but a bit of petting? What was going on with them?
God, if only I could somehow translate the males' language! I had tried numerous times in the past years, and all attempts came out as failures, or spending their lives as glorified boomboxes. But, oh, to understand just this single conversation, it would yield so many answers! Why they acted the way they did towards her, what Kakashi had secretly whispered to her, what Zetsu had threatened her with...
And what made it even worse was that no one but me, according to Genma, had noticed any of this! The only thing people seemed to be screaming about was the fact that the male experiments were smart enough to create a plan to do this at all. This would show that they're nearly three times as intelligent as we first pegged them. Brain of a hunting dog, my ass. What fucking idiots.
But unlike the idiotic staff, I'd dig deeper and deeper until I hit the center of the earth. I would have to try to create another machine that could translate animal sounds to English. I had tried to make such a machine a dozen times before, and all had failed. Nothing wrong with trying again, right? Right.
'What else do I have to do?' I thought to myself. 'What am I going to need to do now…?' Well, number one, I had an obligation to study Zetsu some more. Of my attemps to create a translating machine, my two closest ones were the two that I modeled after the body of Zetsu.
It's a tediously complex thing to explain circuits or the circulatory system, or how the two are similar, so I'll skip that part. Only let it be known that Zetsu, with the camera on his new collar, might help me gain more research results. Zetsu is a creature of two minds. His black half is more aggressive, and his white is...not quite so bad. But this difference goes beneath the surface. The halves breathe at different times and even pump their half of the heart on two separate schedules. I've always had a theory that by studying his independent body halves I could model a translating machine the same way: sifting through English at one end and Animal at the other, not in sync at all, but still in harmony with each other, their differences obvious but not harmful at all. So we think.
Twelve years we've had Zetsu, and we still don't know.
Once more I skipped a portion of the video to re-watch certain scenes. I needed to listen to Zetsu's tones, watch his actions more thoroughly than before. The strange thing that interested me was the last forty seconds or so of the video. It appeared that most people who watched it, all the staff in fact, dismissed Zetsu's last action as an accident.
To the average eye, it looked as though Sakura pulled away from Zetsu and zipped backward into the forest with a massive ruffle of leaves, branches and brush that made me think of a terrified escapee juggernauting thier way fearfully into the woods. And it also seemed that Zetsu was waiting for a command to go after her, which Karin and Anko came in and gave him about fifteen seconds later.
But...this may not be so.
I had watched the footage again and again, looking at the smallest details that my fellow employees are too excited and riled up to notice. It looked to me that Zetsu pushed Sakura into the trees, even pushed her in the manner that disturbed and ruffled the leaves and bushes to make it look like she was running away and pushing branches out of her way in a desperate attempt to escape, when actually none of that was true. It looked to me like…like Zetsu had let her get away.
Why? Why would he do that? So he could experience the thrill of the chase again when he caught up with her? What was his motive? Even if the experiments were no smarter than hunting dogs, I had no doubt in my mind that they, too, had a motive. Perhaps it was the same as ours and they were simply that loyal, being, well, hunting dogs. But I could not know. I didn't know their language, and, as recent events have proven, I don't know the minds of my creations as well as I used to think.
But I would keep all of this to myself. If my new translator somehow did work, I could hear the experiments talking, via Zetsu or Kisame's hidden collar-camera, and I could at last know what their plans were—because, apparently, they were smart enough to make those. Then I'd make a move by myself, without the Director or Karin or anyone else.
I would take control of the experiments. I would take control of Chambers. All of it.
January 13th, 3:00-in-the-morning-ish? Well, it's very late at night, so, whatever. ...Sakura POV
If the situation weren't like this, I'd be happy to be flying like I was now. I was up in the air, alone, free, in the cold wind, concealing clouds, and the quiet, falling snow. I would have done a hundred mid-air loops for the joy of it, because this was almost exactly how I pictured my freedom to look like. This was exactly what I'd dreamed about. Peace. Privacy. Space to romp around. My own personal limbo.
Except for that one little detail that I was flying towards what was more than likely my doom. And that, more or less (no, wait, more) destroyed the perfect scene.
Let's not forget that I don't know where Buffalo Jump is. "It's in Canada" is of no help at all. Did Zetsu expect me to mosey on up to some Canadian person and ask where it is? And if I didn't know where it was, how in the world did Zetsu know? Since when did he have time to study the topography and tourist destinations of Canada? Does he know what Google is? He didn't seriously use Google, did he?
I stifled a yelp as a white-feathered bird zipped past my face, screeching. I smiled as it's little form disappeared into the dark, snowy clouds.
That's gonna be me one day.
That optimistic thought had come out of nowhere, and it disappeared without my being able to grasp and dissect it. Now that I thought about it, for the last few hours, I'd thought about nothing but doom and death and Buffalo Jump and getting my bones broken by the males. (I have the goddamn right, okay?) Freedom and fighting and all that had kind of…gone away. Except for when I think about how I don't have those things now. I feel chained. I have a leash pulling me towards this meeting place of theirs. And once upon a time, I had decked one of these suckers and slammed him into a tree. That memory was awesome. Suddenly my leash felt looser.
That first punch, that time Neji had been tossed away and made skid marks in the dirt, was one of the shining moments of my life. So much hope and adrenaline was built up in me after that, so much confidence, power, success. Deidara's new eye device is proof of my work. I had injured him that day. My electricity was powerful enough to wound them. Perhaps...if I aimed a strike at the heart, or at the brain, it could also kill?
Well, hell, I burned up an entire forest clearing with one strike when I was trying to hit Kakashi. Something that can burn trees and grass to ash could surely kill a half-human animal! As more snow fell around me in my safe cloud haven, my adrenaline began slightly…pumping.
Maybe I could…make that work this time. When I'd escaped, I'd had them all attacking me, and I had come out pretty much all right. I could do it again. With the right combination of determination, caution, and good old violence, I could fight them all off, leave some broken bones to remember me by, perhaps shock their brains into a convenient and permanent vegetative state, and then take off flying to somewhere else. Alaska, maybe? Or the east coast, a very populated area where they'd never guess I'd go to? Maybe Europe! Maybe I'd live in France and wear striped shirts and call "Oh ho ho~" to the unsuspecting tourists. Except I had friends I had to care for who couldn't realistically just fly to France with me whenever I wanted. Who needed my protection.
That's right. That's right! I unconsciously began flapping harder, pumping up higher in he clouds. This was for my friends. My two precious friends. For them, I had flown straight down to half the experiments with a war cry, because they were that important. For them. For them only. It was only because of them that I was now thinking of using my electric ability to strike a fatal blow. I had mastered control of it by now, and understood the mental commands that would bring that energy to life, running down my arms and then centering and growing inside my hands.
I clenched my fists and tried to fight a smile. With my usual thinking, something that could sometimes make hours pass like minutes, I had gotten some of my spirit back. 'Fight. Fight like you always have.' I told myself. 'Keep to the sky, hit hard with electricity. Find Buffalo Jump.' Oh. I still had to find out where Buffalo Jump was.
You know what? I still had to find out if I was still in America. I had to find out if I had crossed the Canadian border!
I guess now was as good a time as any. None of the experiments could possibly run as fast as I can fly, so they wouldn't be anywhere near wherever I was going to land. And the scientists had no idea where I was. They wouldn't be searching as far as Canada for me, would they? Actually, it would make sense if they would. They know I realistically could fly as far as...well, France. Or farther.
I had just left Portland…which was in Oregon…which is the very top-left state, according to my mental map. It only made sense that they would search across the border, too, so near as it was. And Chambers was a worldwide company, with the most advanced technology in the world at the palms of their hands. I didn't have to tell myself twice that they were going to use that evil technology to try to take me back. Oh, did I mention a worldwide company has worldwide members? As in, people all around the world looking for me?
If the ones from my American lab sent their hellhounds after me, who's the say they haven't spread the word of my escape, so that a lab in nearby Canada would be watching for me, too?
For all I know there are Chambers people, in China and Iceland and South Africa who know about me escaping. They could be preparing ridiculously remote places like the island of fucking Midway for all I know! I had to be more careful than I thought. Maybe I should go up a little higher just to be safe.
Wait, what was I thinking before this? I have problems with taking a five-second thought and turning it into a five-hour discussion and presentation with myself. Unfortunately I find this a fascinating way to pass time when stuck in a dog crate and bleeding carelessly out of various orifices, and the habit's stuck, even when I'm actually supposed to be doing something. Know what? Whatever. If I do too much thinking there's a chance I'll fly past Buffalo Jump altogether. And like hell I'm flying back in the direction I came from, towards the most sickening birthplace on earth. I'll just land and get myself orientated. Find my location. Find out the location of Buffalo Jump. Somehow.
I had to land now, before my brain took off again, before the other experiments got too near. Now. For Kakuzu and Hidan. I was feeling pretty chipper when a pointed dart whizzed past my right wingtip, and I blinked in silent surprise, realizing that in my little brainstorm I'd slowly drifted lower and lower in the sky. Low enough to be seen by a person with exceptional eyesight.
I watched as as a silver feather of mine was wind-blown down toward the ground, down towards two men and their green car, standing in the woods, apparently in the middle of nowhere.
You know, I have an idea.
January 13th, my fine friends! 3:55 in the morning and my father's just shot the biggest bald eagle on the continent! ...Rock Lee POV
"Haha! Lee, come quick with the tranquilizer darts! I'll need more cc's than this to take down this baby! I've never seen an eagle so big! We'll get props for this one, oh, yeah!"
My father and I were standing just outside of our jeep that cold January night, which was loaded with all kinds of equipment from hiking boots to tranquilizer drugs to snake anti-venom to spreading-nets. My father had just spotted a tiny speck of a bird—a jumbo-size, he joked, that dashingly funny man!—and aimed a tranquilizer gun at it with his extraordinary aim. He shot it with Rompun, a very safe animal tranquilizer that he hoped would calm the animal, so that when it landed we could take it to a safe facility and tag it.
My father was a lover of wildlife, and I, his son, am delighted to be his perfect copy! I'm Rock Lee, only son of Maito Guy, a dedicated wildlife conservationist. Once I am out of high school, I, too, shall join him in his never-ending quest to love and help Mother Nature. And here we were on another of our missions, tagging wild birds, for their own safety, mind you, and setting them free in protected area. We were tucked in the forested, mountainous edge of British Columbia, a most delightful province of Canada, and by George, there's a lot of wildlife in this particular spot!
"How many cc's, father? And of which drug?" I set down my half-eaten bag of Cheetos and asked him with a salute. "Shall I use Rompun, the safest tranquilizer we have? That's what you just shot with now, wasn't it? The eagle may fall out of the sky if we give him enough cc's! And we can catch him safely in this spreading-net that Tenten gave us—"
"No, son, unfortunately, it hurts me to say, we can't just let this big fellow have Rompun." My father said boldly, putting down his rifle and holding out the tranquilizing gun to the heavens. "Lee, it's my job as an officer of the Manitoba Forestry Association to capture these eagles, tag them, and return them safely to the wild! This eagle is sure to be sought by hunters, so he must be tagged by our biggest and baddest weapon, my son, quick as lightning, hurry up, now!" Of course Manitoba province was quite far away, but my father did all he could for the wildlife everywhere in the world. He would tag this eagle for its own safety, if it was the last thing he ever did! And I, as his son, must help and support him and this gorgeous eagl—huh?
Hmm. A silver feather has fallen from the sky and landed on my nose. Peculiar! I'm quite sure bald eagles aren't silver-colored. "Father! Look here, quick!"
My father did so, and stared at the feather in my hand. "Well, my God! I could have sworn that was a bald eagle! But with primary feathers so large…grey feathers…Must be an overgrown gyrfalcon!"
"But don't they usually stay farther up north of Canada? Or even the Arctic?" I queried. From my father, I knew much about wildlife. (And self-defense, if I do say so myself!) "Well, while you find me some darts, Lee, think about the biggest types of birds you know—with grey feathers! This question is worth fifteen points!"
It may seem strange to everyone, especially my friend Tenten, but my father and I have a "points system." He will assign points of various tasks and questions he gives me. I can transfer in my points for special prizes, such as the privilege to rent a movie, invite a friend to our home, or even or even help him teach his tae-kwon-do class! Even now, I was forty points away from being able to join him for his next class!
"I believe the secretary bird is large and grey, father!" I said enthusiastically, searching the dart box for the strongest tranquilizer.
"True, son! I'll give you the points, even though the secretary bird is native only to Africa, and I rather doubt that that's what we've got right here. Now, where's that tranquilizer?" I searched faster and faster, picking up little bottles and reading the small, fine print on each one as frantically and efficiently as I could. "Forgive me, I've forgotten the name of the strongest one!"
"Not a problem, Lee!" My father said buoyantly, still pointing his gun at the large speck of a bird in the sky. "It's the Charge 350, you know, that wondrously bright-blue bottle from the Chambers store. Now, Lee, a standard elephant needs almost two hundred cc's of Charge 350 to be put to sleep, and they weigh about five thousand pounds. The average gyrfalcon is, hmm…about three and a half pounds, perhaps four. This baby must we twice that size, seven pounds, I'd say! How many cc's do you think we need? Five points!"
I wasn't usually quick as math, but if it involves my dearest animals, I could always do it! Using my best mental calculator, I came up with several answers, and I couldn't choose one, for fear that this eagle being unusually large might mess up the math problem. I said after a long pause, "I think about five and a half cc's…or twenty-eight…or two and eight-tenths of a cc, or—"
"We'll go with fifteen, then! Good enough! No points will be awarded or taken away this time." I quickly stuck a needle into the bottom of the Charge 350 bottle, and watched as the needle's chamber filled with blue liquid. "There!" Just as I said it, my father thanked me and stuck the needle into the gun's barrel. "This is for your own good, eagle!"
BAM! The needle blasted away into the sky, straight towards the dark speck that was the gyrfalcon—or whatever bird it was. I saw the shape tilt slightly, as though the impact of the dart had surprised it or shoved it back a little. "Prepare another needle, Lee! We'll try twenty-eight cc's this time. It doesn't look like it's been affected. Strange, since Charge is supposed to have effect right on contact—GYOHH!"
FWINGGG
The needle had flown down back towards us, double the speed, and glanced off my father's tranquilizer gun before burying itself deep into the metal hide of our jeep's passenger door. My father and I stared at that needle for a few moments before we turned our heads up to the sky and saw the great bird had begun circling us, and if I'm not mistaken, had come a little lower in the sky.
"Father. I do believe the bird just attempted to give the needle back."
He stared up at the feathered animal while it continued to circle us. After about a half dozen circles or so, I realized that, yes, not only was the bird circling us, it was coming closer to us. It seemed as though the bird was clever enough to inspect us! It may think we're a few clever mice and it may want to hunt us! Good! I'll get a good look at the beautiful thing. "Another needle, father?" I asked slowly, trying to hide my excitement.
Even though he said nothing, I began filling another syringe, preparing it for my father to stick inside the gun's barrel. "Father, here you are. I put twenty-eight cc's in it this time…er, Father?" My father was staring up at the circling bird, and I looked too, then realized it was much bigger than we thought at first glance. Much bigger than a gyrfalcon.
'It's…it's huge! That wingspan has to be ten feet!' I thought, almost dropping the needle. It was only our great vision that told us this; the bird was still very high up, and a person with average eyes would only be able to tell it was grey, and somewhat large. Our eyes, though, told us "grey and absolutely monstrous."
"Lee…" My father whispered. "Find another needle and put a hundred cc's in it. Then get the net ready." I stuttered and gasped. "W-what? But...half an elephant's dose? Are you sure?"
He nodded and kept his eyes up on the bird. Years of life under this man's tutelage and love told me to trust him and do as he said. I began feeling around in the case for a larger needle. I found one. He stuck it into the gun when I gave it to him, slowly and not-provokingly as possible, while I moved the spreading-net into my arms. It was a product of the loyal and wonderful Chambers Inc, a special device for fowl hunters that even the Bass Pro Shop down the road didn't carry.
It was a small, soft square, not much bigger than a small dog, perhaps. If I held down a small button on the end for three seconds, two dozen soft, pillow-like structures would inflate across an amazing twenty-five-foot-wide surface. I could throw it onto the ground, and a bird falling from seven hundred feet in the air could land on the spreading-net safe and comfortable, could land as buoyantly as a child on a moonbounce, I daresay!
There is also the useful fact that when something lands on the net, a hundred nylon fibers jump out of edges of the massive square, triggered by motion and impact, and snare the thing that landed? So you see, the spreading-net is an excellent tool not only for catching downed birds, but snaring them!
"I'm ready to open the net any minute." I told him. "Are you ready, father?" He nodded, and I could barely catch that confident gleam of his teeth that told me he was ready to jump the River Styx if he had to. He grinned up at the bird, which was getting bigger by the minute. It was a very…very long bird, indeed. Unusually long and very straight tail feathers, and it's head was—what?
I dropped the net. "Father." I gaped. "That bird's head is pink."
His teeth gleam had disappeared, and he was frowning. The gun seemed to have gone a little slack in his hands. "Don't let the wind mess around with your eyes, Lee. Pick up that net, now." His tone was flat. Sort of similar to mine, actually.
Then the bird suddenly folded its wings inward and it dove toward us. My father let it get close enough for us to see. Its incredible diving speed blurred its exact shape from my eyes, but I could tell it was nearly as big as me, minus its wings. Standing up, that bird must be five feet tall! It must be a record! It must! Then I heard the awaited BAM as my father shot the dart up at the eagle. I held the button on the capture net, preparing to throw it any second now for the bird to land on.
There was a grunting sound that was suspiciously like "Ow!" and the eagle's speed slowed from the tranquilizer dart's impact. Its head was pink, and there was enough of it to be a whole mane, no, a head of a person's hair. But still, even through the dart shot, which should have made it drop straight out of the sky, the bird was diving. And didn't stop until it came at us.
I tossed the capture net out and away, and in the span of perhaps three seconds, it had inflated to ten times its size, a gigantic red pillow. Out of nowhere, I saw a bright yet thin flash of something blue, and my father yelled out in pain and tossed the gun onto the net in surprise. No sooner had that happened, the bird came down with all it had. Its wingspan was even bigger than I'd thought, more than ten feet for sure. It landed on the top of our jeep for a split second, rocking it, and then bounced off. It used its—suspiciously hand-like—feet to shove my father onto the spreading-net.
Uncountable, finger-thick fibers jumped out from the edges of the spreading-net and leaped to opposite sides, creating a true net on the surface. My father was pinned and stuck underneath the many green, powerful strings, and he wasn't moving, either.
It came for me next. I raised a fist and couldn't help but instinctively throw out a punch to the place where I assumed the collarbone would be, but it dodged. The speed of its movement was so great that for a moment I was scared, and then in the next moment, it had kicked me onto the giant net. For a few moments I was flying in the air over to the big red pillow of the capture net, crying out in pain of the bird's harsh strike. I landed and bounced on the huge surface before more of the net fibers jumped out and flew over me. They hooked onto the other side of the net over and over again until I, too, was caught under countless green strings.
I looked through a gap, panting and holding my shoulder in pain of the bird's kick. Through that, I swear to God himself, that I saw one of his angels. It looked like a girl who had dyed her hair pink. Her wings were large and silver, and with my wonderful judgment of animals, I'm guessing her wingspan was, eh, eleven feet. Proportionately, they were barely big enough to let her fly. She was impossible. Yet she was abiding to a scientific proportion.
And she was standing, her back facing me, looking at the items in our jeep. I could hear her hands moving the various bags and boxes around, and she was making curious, almost childish sounds as she did so. The tee and shorts she wore did no justice to my previous "angel" thought. Eventually she went up to the front of the car, moved other things around, then stopped. I tried to move under the tight fibers, and could barely see through them. Now, she was holding…my bag of Cheetos?
CRNCH-MM-CCRCCHH
What? 'Is…' I struggled to hook together two very unlike thoughts. 'Is that angel eating my Cheetos?'
Apparently…she was. That bag of Cheetos was my midnight snack, and the only other food we had with us was two bags of trail mix that had been sealed in a bear-proof jar. If she'd tried to open the jar without typing in something on its special keypad, it would have beeped three times and sprayed a slightly noxious gas that would send any bear in the woods running and screaming with disgust at the smell. I'm quite sure I would have noticed that, so she must have had my Cheetos right now.
No-oooo-ooo! Not my Cheetos! Those cost me forty-four points and almost two weeks of strenuous training! I mustn't lose such a valuable prize. It would do dishonors to both my stomach and my father. I had to voice this thought or…or…nameless horrors would come about! Prepare to face my righteous wrath, angel!
"O nameless, lovely creature of heaven!" (What a clergy I could make!) "I implore thee, please leave my snack foods be!"
The crunching stopped. The fibers were so strong and heavy that I nearly couldn't sit up underneath them, but with my great endurance my father gave me, I held strong and still. I tried to find another gap to see through. Was she looking at me? Or had she used some telekinetic, heavenly power to disappear without warning?
It took a few seconds, but I managed to move my body around to a tiny slot between thick fibers and see most of the angel's body, and our jeep and the dark woods behind her. I would have seen her face, too, if her darned wing could just move to the side a smidge! But then again, it is almost four in the morning, so I'm not sure if my vision would be good enough to see more than her brightly-colored hair. Either way, I couldn't see the girl's face. Darn, I say!
"I...I would very much like to eat those myself, miss!" I went on, but then suddenly another worry came over me—the worry that perhaps this angel-girl would steal my father's hunting equipment. Imagine the points I would lose! But then I felt silly for it, as no angel in their right mind would commit such a sin as stealing…but then again, surely this angel did just commit some sort of smallish sin by knock out my father and snaring us down on our own trap, the spreading-net. And she threw our needle at us, which had come dangerously close to striking my father. So perhaps I should worry.
There were more rustlings and banging around, so she must have ignored me and continued to go through our possessions. I heard her say, "Sorry, sir," in an apologetic voice, and then out of nowhere her wings seemed to explode into my vision as she spread them and prepared to fly away.
She turned around, and if she hadn't been so fast I would have glimpsed her face. But then she'd gotten a running start, jumped up and taken off. Within seconds, through the spreading-net fibers I was watching her fly away into the sky again.
I stared up at the sky, for a few minutes oblivious to everything but a few confused thoughts. Eventually, my father stirred and found that the combination of his size, weight and exhaustion kept him from moving underneath the huge fibers of the capture net. I dimly heard him trying to adjust his position, turn his body toward me with great effort. These fibers were tight, you know. Tight enough to hold down my father, the great Gai!
"Ohh…what…Lee? Lee, are you allright? Were you able to shoot the bird?" His voice was tired. Nearly too tired to be the always-enthusiastic character my father always was. The winged girl must have kicked him in his brain. His brain is surely hurt in some way, shape or form to not remind him that he must perform all actions with zest!
"No, she was too fast." I replied, still staring upwards. "She kicked me on the net right after she kicked you, and I heard her rustling around in our jeep. She flew away."
My father accepted my explanation, I suppose, but then, a few moments and a few more struggles to move around later, he chuckled, "Ah, so you were skillful enough to see that it was a female?"
"But of course, father! I am you son, after all! I take after all your analyzing abilities!" I cried with the enthusiasm I'd been hoping would return to us. I used this cheerful enthusiasm to distract me from the lie I was about to tell. "Unfortunately, I wasn't even able to guess what species she was. I can still only guess she's an overgrown gyrfalcon. She took off and flew northeast…more east than north, actually."
It hurt to lie to my father. It hurt so deep inside, in every part of myself that I thought I would burst from this lie and tell my father that I'd encountered a Cheeto-stealing angel. But then if I did, it would become his main project to capture this angel and protect it from hunters and the horrible people of this world who wouldn't hesitate to shoot her. Are angels bulletproof? What if a simple shotgun blast could kill her? Would my father be damned to eternal hell for attempting to tranquilize what he believes is a vulnerable creature for its safety?
My father would trail this creature if he knew what I'd really seen and possibly even forget about donating three thousand dollars to help support the Indian Tigers Welfare Society. Surely she didn't need two swashbuckling forest boys like us hanging around her when she was likely doing some godly mission to benefit Heaven and the Lord.
It would simply be best if I didn't tell my father about this, and that I try to discourage him from continuing the job of trailing her, however much it hurt.
"Well, then, we'll have to wait…" he murmured, giving up his attempts to sit up under the tight strings. "This net is programmed to undo its fibers after four minutes have passed since the first fiber came out. Then it will be time to drive home and—" Even as he spoke, we could hear the fibers and the locks that made them so tight and powerful clicking and undoing themselves. The fibers retracted back into the pillow-like surface, and the pillow-like surface itself began deflating. I could feel myself getting closer and closer to the ground.
"Father, are you hurt? I will drive home, if you'd like me to." He shook his head and we crawled off the net together. The net by now was more like a gigantic, deflating air mattress, and we began folding it up. "No, no." He said over and over again. "Ten points for offering, though, son. It's a weekend, so we may have some extra sleep. I'll allow you till 1:30 in the afternoon—that's about nine hours and then it will be time for our Tae Kwon Do lessons at 2:00."
I nodded the whole way through his instructions, folding up the pillow and helping him load up our guns and bottles and cases of tranquilizer liquids. We didn't exactly bother to look at our equipment or see how the angel had messed around with it, so exhausted we'd suddenly become.
Our home was a comfortable one-story house on the outer edge of Abbotsford, and the drive onto the highway, away from the forest and mountains, and back near town would take a bit more than a half hour. (My, my, we didn't go very far this night, did we? Usually on our weekend wildlife trips we go dozens and dozens more miles away than this!)
"Oh, Lee, that bird's flown off with one of our maps! It's ever smarter than I thought it was! Smarter than when it threw my dart back at me, even." Suddenly he burst out laughing and slapped the steering wheel, and the jeep moved shakily on the road. "Lee, that bird's a clever one! Look, it's, it's…it's taken your Cheetos!"
Lee's flowery speech makes me lawl. I wanted to keep it, for the most part, even though it would be even MORE out of place in mid-2000s America.
End for now. This chapter ended up being a grand total of forty-three pages long, and here we've stopped at page eighteen. Will this be a two-for-one or a three-for-one chapter? I'll know in a few minutes when I post it and so will you!