i went to the park today with my friend and both our dogs. it was decided they have a special relationship like that of Dr. Cox and J.D. from scrubs. i mean, they're both good-tempered canines, but they're also both alphas, so they both kept trying to walk in front of the other. . .

the dogs, i mean. not J.D. and Dr. Cox.

(by the way, my dog is the Dr. Cox in the analogy. he's too old for newbie shenanigans.)

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

10. science!

It's because of her that Sy is who he is, and because of who he is, that's who I am. What did that even mean? I knew Sy did his best to not be like Dylan. . .was that it? Was everything opposite? Like yin and yang, light and dark?

It took me a second to remember that I'd be expected downstairs. I had been sent to retrieve Dylan, after all, and besides, I needed to know what the next move was. Was Marein going to whisk him off to some secret laboratory to run a bunch of psychological tests? Or just stay here and run a bunch of psychological tests? I'd have to know. So, blinking away my new theory, I left Con's room and followed Dylan and Total downstairs. I caught up with them at the entrance to the living room, but neither asked what I'd been doing. They were too preoccupied with the scene we'd walked in on.

The room's population had changed: Frankie and the twins had gone, with Max, Fang, and Iggy taking their place. The kids had all grouped together around the couch nearest me, Dylan, and Total, their backs to us; Marein was distastefully running her finger over the top of the TV, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

"Isn't there a place here that's sterile?" Marein asked, looking disapprovingly at her dusty finger.

"Wouldn't you know?" Max retorted, raising an eyebrow. "It's your house, after all."

"Well, with the lot of you living in it, I can't be sure of anything anymore," she replied haughtily. "Normally-" Here she turned on her heel, comically large purse swinging from her elbow, and walked over to the other room, leaving the rest of us to follow in her wake. "-I would conduct examinations here, where I have equal access to the outdoors and the kitchen." She gestured to the large dining table and the windows.

"Of course," I agreed. Max and some of the others started and looked around, just noticing I'd returned. Marein's eyes narrowed. "That makes total sense. That way you can watch the kiddies playing in the back while making a delicious dinner and cutting open the imbecile who tried to back-talk you."

She glared at me. "So I can keep an eye on possible other tests I'm doing outside while keeping my instruments in a sterile environment," she corrected through clenched teeth.

I nodded in understanding. "Right." My reason was more plausible.

"Well, I don't see why you can't carry out your original plan," Con stated. "Just clean the table and get a sheet or something." He looked to Blaze, who nodded and left, brushing past me in order to get to the upstairs and the linen closet. While she did that, Kyla slipped over to the kitchen and grabbed the Windex and a wad of paper towels to wipe down the table with.

Marein watched Kyla work with distaste. Actually, it seemed that everything we were doing was distasteful to her, so from now on, just assume she's got this haughty-bitch look on her face.

"Something wrong?" I asked innocently. She glared at me again.

"I shouldn't have to work like this," Marein grumbled.

"Oh, I'm sorry, would you prefer to not have to examine your only child for genetic defects?" Max asked. "Because you're a little bit late to that one, all right, by about seventeen years."

Ker-snap. Talk about guilt-tripping. Points to Max, dude. I almost wanted to give her a high five.

A while later - after Blaze had come back with a clean sheet and Marein was finally satisfied with the room's cleanliness - she plopped her purse on the table and started unpacking various doctor's tool. She cleaned them next, which only made them look more menacing. At last, everything was set up, and Dylan was reluctantly pushed forward so he could sit on the table.

"So what all are you going to do?" Blaze asked as Marein took out a clipboard and pen.

"Just a simple check-up, that's all," she replied somewhat absently. Since none of us had made any remarks about her tools, she'd seemed to have calmed down some. Or at least, she wasn't entirely openly hostile anymore. "Then I'll draw some blood and run some other tests."

"What'll that tell you?" I prompted.

"On its own, not much." She scribbled some preliminary notes on her clipboard, then strung her stethoscope around her neck. Like a real doctor. "That's why I'll be taking samples from Subjects Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Eleven, and Twelve as well."

"They have names," Max said indignantly. "Why don't you try using them for once?"

"Why should I?" Marein replied flippantly. "That would only build unnecessary bonds." Marein's hand, holding the scope part of the stethoscope, darted up Dylan's shirt to listen to his heart. Her other hand reached around and landed lightly on Dylan's spine. "Sit up straight, dear."

"Wait. So you call the others by their subject names, but have no problem bestowing pet names to your precious son," Iggy said.

"A mother's love works in mysterious ways." Marein's hands switched places, the stethoscope now on Dylan's back, her other hand flicking his chest every now and then. (Don't ask me why, I've got no idea.)

Dylan scoffed. "Yeah, right. So that just explains away everything you ever did?" he demanded, watching Marein with contempt as she hung the scope back around her neck and picked up a popsicle stick and a flashlight. "Motherly love?"

"I have no idea what you mean." She poked his chin. "Say 'ah.' "

And so the exam carried on.

"I don't get it," Max said quietly to me. "Was she really that bad to him as a kid?"

"I dunno," I admitted with a shrug. "I never asked, he never said."

"Oh, she was bad," Kyla whispered. "Whenever the rest of us weren't testing, we could just hang out or whatever. But not Sy. She always took him back for 'special training.' " She raised her hands to demonstrate air quotes.

". . .Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going," Iggy said awkwardly.

"What? Ew, no." Wave frowned at him and said, "Marein's just a pampered little bitch of a princess and wanted Sy to be the same way."

"You mean a princess?" I said.

"That would explain a lot," Con mused, and I punched his arm.

"She means she wanted Sy to be an upper-crust snob like she is," Kyla explained. "Nice clothes, nice watches, perfect manners, perfect insults. It was like she trained him to be this jackass pretty boy."

"Well mission accomplished," Con said. "He's a jerk."

"Only to people he doesn't like," I retorted. "Like you."

Before he could snap back, Marein's voice overrode him, bringing our attention back to the examination. "Now, what sort of exercise regimen have you been following?" she asked Dylan, hitting his knee with a little hammer. His foot twitched.

"Hell if I know," Dylan said sullenly. "I just got here."

Annoyed, Marein turned on the rest of us, eyebrows raised expectantly. We all just looked at each other.

"What do you mean by exercise regimen?" I finally asked.

"How does he exercise?" she said, sounding irritated. "Running, swimming, sports?"

"Oh." I smirked. "Yeah, it's sports. We play bocce ball every Wednesday. And lawn darts on Tuesday."

"Not to mention Extreme Archery Thursdays," Kyla chipped in.

"And Friday Fencing tournaments," Wave laughed.

"And. . .uh. . .Monster-Hunt Mondays?" Unable to think of another ridiculous sport, I shrugged and added, "But on Sunday we rest. It is the Lord's day, after all."

Marein scowled, unamused by my antics. "I am trying to help you here," she said impatiently. "In order to do that, I need. To know. Everything."

"We're kids," Max said plainly. "What d'you expect we've been doing?"

Marein's eyes narrowed skeptically.

"We laze around here all day," Con said flippantly. "We sometimes have Nerf wars or play other games, but we don't make a habit of anything. None of us do."

"That's not true. We have habits."

A good number of us gave a start, turning to look at the newly-opened basement door. The twins had returned - inevitable, I suppose. They liked to know what was going on.

"We take swims every once in a while," Aqua said. "Us fish hybrids."

"And we have our suspicions about the others," Arthur added vaguely.

"Suspicions?" Fang echoed. The twins grinned wickedly.

"We're fourteen, not stupid," Aqua told him.

"Or deaf, for that matter," said Arthur.

"However, I feel as if I should mention that Duke Devlin is currently the only gold medalist in bedroom gymnastics. You're up against some serious competition there."

"Guess that explains all the practice."

The room went silent. Marein just blinked at the twins while the rest of us stood there, staring in disbelief/horror/embarrassment/whatever.

Me? Even I was blushing. Especially since it was Marein, who was Sy's mom. It was totally embarrassing as hell.

. . .But also kinda funny considering I wasn't the only one with cherry cheeks. I mean, most of us knew about Con and the neighbors, and sometimes Blaze and Iggy were just plain sickening to watch, but what was this, with Kyla and Wave? And, oh, gasp, even Max was looking uncomfortable! Did that mean she finally got over herself and hooked up with Fang? Dammit, I had to find out - I had money going on them.

Eventually, Marein broke the silence with a disapproving sniff. "Hmph."

Dylan, probably the only one without a guilty conscience, looked down at where she was fussing with her tools. "Something wrong, Mommy dear?"

"Please." Her own face beginning to turn pink, she scribbled furiously on her clipboard. "As if you weren't screwed up enough already, all this cross-breeding you're obviously doing is against everything we prepared for."

Another dead silence.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice sounding strangled. "What now?"

"Did she say 'cross-breeding'?" Iggy muttered.

"Why else do you think we created equal numbers of males and females in the major test groups?" Marein demanded. "That way when you got older you could reproduce and provide us with free new test subjects."

"That's sick on a number of different levels," Max said, fuming.

"That's science." All of a sudden Marein lost the blush, and continued on in a regular, almost matter-of-fact tone. "Though I suppose it won't matter. If the cocktail of attributes we put in your DNA didn't sterilize you, any offspring you produce will be. Not that I'd expect them to survive past a year or so anyway. Oh, I'm not talking about you," she added conversationally, glancing at Blaze and Iggy while she picked up a needle and dug a vial out of her bag. She took Dylan's arm and pushed up the sleeve, swabbing it clean before stabbing him with the needle.

"Ow."

Marein ignored him, still speaking to Blaze and Iggy. "Your children will be beautiful. The male's eye problems weren't genetic, and as I recall you've both got DNA from a similar family of avians. Perfect. . .specimens." She pulled the needle out and held the vial of Dylan's blood up to her face for closer examination.

Marein then busied herself with labeling the bottle while Dylan irritably tugged down his shirt sleeve. Meanwhile, the rest of us tried to digest what Marein had said, and just stood there.

So. Very. Awkwardly.

Sure, we had our moments where we made dirty jokes at others' expense, but really? We try to steer away from the more private matters of the in-house relationships. Mostly to preserve what innocence the younger ones had left.

I wondered, idly, how she'd pegged them as a couple. Standing next to each other? Maybe something had transpired while I'd been upstairs, to hint her off? I dunno.

"I'm done with you." Marein tried to touch Dylan's shoulder, but he jumped down from the table before she had a chance. She blinked, but then smoothed over the surprise with the scientific work ethic. She pointed at Kyla and Wave. "One of you now. Come."

The girls looked at each other, but Kyla was the one to walk forward. "You know, you seemed nicer at the Lab," she remarked.

"At the Lab I wasn't being forced to research with no pay," Dr. Westerfield replied grimly. "Sit."

We were all quiet a while as Marein began repeating Dylan's exam on Kyla, but then Wave spoke up. "Hang on a minute. There are so not an equal number of males and females."

"Overseas plants had dozens more of you waiting," Marein said, writing something down on her papers. "We only focused our efforts on those of you here because I was the first to create you. The Salt Lake Lab benefited immensely from my skills."

"Yeah, you're a real genius," Aqua said sarcastically.

"All that effort, and yet none of us can even win at Mancala," Arthur said with an overdramatic sigh.

"Be quiet, you two," Marein said, not looking at them but frowning anyway. "You know what happens when you mouth off."

"What, nothing?" Arthur said.

"Yeah, you can't control us anymore," Aqua said tauntingly.

"We'll see about that," Marein mumbled, only slightly threateningly. If anything, she sounded more ticked than murderous. "I'll be checking you two next."

"Why?" both twins demanded in unison.

"Really. You should know by now the only thing you're good for," Marein said. She took a second to look at them and smile. "A boy and a girl, but still twins with almost exact reactions. The perfect controls."

Arthur scowled, and Aqua's face reddened indignantly.

Once Marein had concluded her examinations of all the fish kids in the house - some had had to be convinced more than others to do the check-up - she packed up everything in her purse, vials of blood and all. Each one was carefully labeled, and they clinked as Marein hitched her purse to her shoulder.

I'd wondered, momentarily, if asking for her help would have meant having her staying in the house with us, but apparently that wasn't the case. Besides, she didn't have the machines needed to run her blood tests with her; they were at some hotel in the city, with the rest of her luggage. So it was with much relief (on everyone's part, not just mine) that Max and I watched Marein leave. Even if it meant she'd only return tomorrow with results.

"Well," I said with a sigh as Max locked the door behind Sy's mom. "Now that that crap's over, I have some tests that I'd like to conduct."

"What?"

I explained to Max what I'd heard Dylan say upstairs, and how it'd led me to the yin-yang theory of the two of them being opposite, psychologically. I didn't know what it would mean yet, if I was right, but hey, it'd be something. Just like Marein's blood tests - they may not mean anything yet, but at least they'd be some kind of results.

We walked back to the living room, where people were beginning to disperse. I caught Dylan before he could retreat to the basement and dragged him back to the still-sheet-covered dining table.

"What are you doing?" he asked tiredly as I made him sit in a chair. I went and sat across from him, ignoring the various stragglers who were coming in to stand with Max and watch me.

"Some tests," I said. He quirked an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. "Just fundamental stuff. See how different you two really are." I raised my hand and held it before him. "High five."

Dylan eyed me warily, then slowly complied. I noted that he used his left hand. As a secondary test, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pen; I got up and grabbed a notepad from the kitchen, then offered them both to Dylan.

"Write your name."

"What's the point of this?" he asked, but he took the pen and pad anyway. Pen with his left hand, pad with his right.

"I'm just testing you. Now write." I watched as he put down the paper and scrawled his name upon it. "Now make an S." He did so.

"Spark, what are you doing?" Blaze asked, sounding perplexed. I guess Max hadn't filled anybody in during the wait.

"This is weird. . ." I mumbled, taking my pen back. Then, louder, I added, "Sy's right-handed, but Dylan's using his left hand. Also, he writes S's like a normal person, whereas Sy is stupid and writes his backwards."

"Backwards?" Con said disbelievingly.

"He goes from bottom up instead of top down and oh, my God, it's annoying as hell."

For a second I just got weird stares, and finally Fang asked, ". . .Why does that even matter?"

"Well, Marein's tests are fine and whatever, but they'll only make any sense to her," I explained. "I thought it might help to do some stuff that we would understand, too. And now I know that they're opposites. Mentally."

"Why, because he wrote is name with the other hand?" Iggy said.

"Yeah. And he was cooking yesterday, and he didn't even destroy anything." At that I seemed to get some supporters, and I smiled. Then I blinked. "Ooh, I thought of another one." I turned to Dylan again, who'd just been sitting at the table in quiet bewilderment. "Stick out your tongue."

"What?"

"Just do it." He did. "Now go like this." I stuck out my own tongue and curled it so it looked like a taco.

Dylan mirrored it. I felt myself gasp a little more than I'd originally intended.

He frowned at me. "What?"

"Sy can't do that," I muttered, mostly to myself. "This is weirder than I thought."

Because if there are some physical changes too, then. . .what would that mean?

"These are the last of them, sir."

Joseph Stevens nodded, and his assistant placed the files on his desk. He waited until the man left, then pulled the folder towards him and flipped it open.

Inside were the copies of the files that they'd given to Leander, when he'd been alive. The files that the boy had obsessed over. Read over again and again. Smiled at. Laughed at.

A couple of pictures were paperclipped to the inside cover of the folder. The one on top showed a girl, mid-teens, blond hair, bright, golden-brown eyes. She was smiling, sending a crinkle through the scar beneath her right eye. Behind the head shot were other pictures, documenting the girl's other identifying marks: the black brands along her arms and shoulders, the scar on her left knuckle, the silver swirl under her left ribs. The faint scratch across her stomach, the tattoo on her hip, the four jagged marks down her left calf.

The wings.

Stevens hadn't been able to understand Leander's fascination with Spark. He admitted she was pretty, and yes, the tapes of her interrogation sessions were good for a laugh, but in the grand scheme of things she was less than nothing.

Stevens' mouth twitched in a frown. That wasn't quite true anymore, actually. Spark should have been less than nothing, but that had changed. Yes, she had caused a thousand problems for Itex in the past couple of months, but that was before Stevens had bought the corporation and renamed it. Now it was his project, and he had done everything in his power to reform it to his own vision. Keeping only the very best of the experiments - only a few, really - and destroying everything else. Channeling the research on recombinant DNA into the reorganization of human genes. Making everything absolutely perfect.

And it had worked.

Until Spark had killed Leander.

Stevens closed the file and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to steady himself. The boy had been so cute, so endearing as he pleaded for time with Spark. And, like an utter fool, Stevens had let him go. Off to capture her, off to spend some time with her, off to play before he killed her.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Somehow, he'd managed to overestimate and underestimate Spark all at the same time. He'd originally overestimated her, knowing that if she tried, she could change Leander and do what she wanted with him. But after Leander's report, after seeing her broken, he'd underestimated. No one could come back from that, could they?

"Sir?" The assistant had returned. Stevens opened his eyes and the man said, "Sir, a loose end has turned up."

"Oh?" Stevens raised an eyebrow. Apart from Spark's group, he'd assumed there were no other loose ends. He'd made sure of it.

"Yes, sir," the assistant confirmed. "Doctor Marein Westerfield, the head of Hybrid Group Three. She was hiding out in Canada, it seemed."

"Where is she now?" Stevens asked.

"With Spark. Our informants say she entered the house early this afternoon, and left a few hours later."

"I see." Stevens pondered the implications of this new information. If the children had stooped so low as to reach out to one of their hated creators, then something must be direly wrong. The fact that they'd even found her was hardly surprising - half the kids in that house had been specifically trained in locating wanted persons. But to contact her, convince her to come to them, and spend a significant span of time with them. . .

"We will have to set things in motion very soon," he mused. "Before their problem is solved." Looking up to his assistant, he ordered, "Tell the strike team to be ready. I expect to send them out within the week."

The man nodded. "Yes, sir."

After he left, Stevens turned to the files again. He opened the cover and picked out the top picture, the one she was smiling in.

She would have to pay for her crimes, this girl. And not just for killing Leander. Not just for killing his favorite child.

She would have to pay for destroying the world.

dun-dun-dunnnnn. . .

there are times when i put in scenes that are all foreboding and cryptic and whatnot and i ultimately end up never coming back to them. like spark's whole destroy-the-world thing, which has been mentioned before but never explored. it's sorta like the voice in the actual books, or a bunch of other crap JP has never really explained. i like to think that he's not like me in the sense that he actually knows where he's going when he says his characters are made to save the world or whatever.

i, on the other hand, wing it and fly off like a retarded kiwi in hopes that my comedic appearance is enough to keep you satisfied.

i should really figure out what i'm even doing with this story.