I wished I could've spread my wings and just flew for it. But no, I couldn't do that. If anyone, especially jerks like the bullying boys, saw my wings, I could only imagine the huge trouble I would be in. Most people didn't exactly like giant mutant weirdos like myself, to put it gently. So instead of taking off into the sky, I took off for the woods.

With my unnatural, experiment-given speed, it only took me a moment to make it into the woods, but as soon as I was in, I had to slow down. The scrubby underbrush made running difficult, and so did the numerous branches poking out into my path. I ran as best I could, but I had no clue whether it would be fast enough. I could only hope so. After all, the jerks behind me had to deal with the treacherous terrain too, and they didn't have the benefit of superhuman speed. I would be able to get away from them.

I shouldn't have tempted fate. As soon as I thought that I would be able to escape, a loud crack rang out and a tree beside me sprayed bark. The tree had been shot. Those jerks still had the gun.

As I tried to increase my speed as my fear levels rocketed, I realized this all felt way too familiar to me. It was like déjà vu, except I really had lived it before. Well, at least dreamed it before. What did it mean, living through something so like my dream? I'd have to ponder the philosophical implications later, once I was done running for my life.

That's when another crack filled the air, and at nearly the same time, pure pain radiated through my left shoulder. Jerking my head back and to the side, I saw blood already beginning to soak through my hoodie. One of the jerks had actually managed to get me with the gun!

Distracted by the pain and the anger, I didn't look closely enough at where I was going. My foot caught on a raised tree root and I tripped, slipped, slid and scraped my way along the ground, right over the edge of a ravine. I grabbed for a branch, a root, a large rock, anything to stop my fall, but my left hand wasn't doing anything I told it to and my right hand couldn't get a grip on anything.

After what felt like forever of falling but what was maybe three seconds total, I skidded to a stop at the bottom of the ravine. Heaving heavy breaths of pain, I looked up at the sky only to find there was no sky to be seen. Vines and branches and various overgrown bushes covered the top of the ravine, shielding the sky from me and, I realized a moment later, shielding me from the jerks. After all, my hoodie was the green of the plants and my pants were the gray of the rocks. I blended right in.

I held still, very very still, trying to calm my breathing, slow it down so it wouldn't give me away. From far away, I could hear the jerk boys screeching and shooting. The sounds got louder and closer, then quieter and farther, and then finally they faded out of existence. The bullies had run right past me and kept on going until I couldn't even hear them anymore. Okay, so that much was good.

Pretty much nothing else was good, though. I was all scraped up from my fall, not to mention the glaring fact that I'd literally been shot. I sat up slowly, trying to stretch my wings in preparation to take off and get out of there as fast as possible, but a stabbing wave of pain informed me that not only had my shoulder been hit but my wing had been hit too. The blood was still pouring out, and I awkwardly folded my wing back in and clamped my right hand over the wounds. To put the terrible cherry on top of the awful sundae, I recognized the plants I was sitting in as poison ivy. How lovely.

I stood as well as I could manage, grunting and moaning in pain. I began to walk through the ravine, finding a less-steep slope and beginning to climb it slowly. I had to get on my way somehow. Jay and Nya were waiting for me, likely worried and confused by how long I'd already been gone. Zane was waiting for me, if he was even still alive to wait. Oh, I was the worst.

I grimaced in pain and anger, not sure if I was most angry at the jerks of the world, the situation, or myself. I just always had to fight for the underdog. Jeb Garmadon had told me that would really get me in trouble one day.

Jeb Garmadon had probably had no idea how right he would be.