"Val you can't be serious." Max listened from her tucked away perch to the two arguing adults.

"Yes, I am." Her mother intoned. "We can't just leave him to his own doings."

"He has parents, doesn't he?" Her husband cried, particularly distressed. "This is their business. Not ours. Let them handle the situation. He's a runaway isn't he?"

"Absolutely not!" A remarkably angry tone it was that Max's mom took on. "Do you understand what they have done to that poor child, Robert?"
"Val. It's no business of ours how someone chooses to raise their children."

"Bullshit!" Max's eyes widened comically at her mother's exclamation. She whistles softly her surprise. Had she ever hear her mother curse before? Robert was in for it. "I'll enroll him in the school if you so insist. But I refuse to force that poor boy back into a home like that."

The boy in question listened from his perch in the kitchen. Perhaps her mother had forgotten, or maybe she simply didn't realize it was a skill that extended to all birdkiddom but neither Max nor Iggy had any difficulty eavesdropping on their conversation.

Then again, Max did have a penchant for getting closer than she needed. When her mother was chewing someone out it was always amusing to see the look of defeat when the person realized the sweetest lady they knew was a monster when their integrity was under question.

It was a truly beautiful thing.

The terror would be real, however, if her mother caught her so blatantly eavesdropping on a 'discussion between adults', so she extracted herself from her spot and headed back into the kitchen.

"Sounds like you're going to be staying here for a while."

"Are they always like this?" Iggy looked an amusing cross between embarrassed and sick. She imagined he didn't fancy the notion of putting up with her and two constantly squabbling adults. She chuckled as she swung herself into the seat beside him.

"Nah." She snatched an apple from the center dish and threw a second at Iggy. She marveled slightly when he caught it with ease. "Newly weds. This is probably their first legit squabble. Way to go, birdkid." His embarrassment grew.

"Geez, way to make a guy feel welcome." He mumbled into his apple before taking a large bite from the red surface. Juice dripped down his face and, the total boy that he was, he whipped his face with a bare arm before shrugging the mess onto his pants. Max glowered.

"That's gross dude."

"What? I'm blind!" Iggy pretended to take offense. "I can't help if you give me messy foods."

"That was totally on purpose! Don't even lie." Max tutted, finishing off her own apple in a display of birdkid speed. Iggy, hungry or simply the same as she, finished soon after.

"So did you go to school?" She asked absentmindedly as she looked over the kitchen. It was bigger than the one in their last house. Max certainly couldn't complain there. An open entryway next to the fridge led to the dining room. The brunette scowled. She had a sneaking suspicion, spying its eight chairs and set table top, that it wasn't just for show. Food time was no longer tv time, it seemed.

"What do you take me for," He turned toward her looking as though he really were insulted this time. "I'm a bird kid, not an idiot." Max held her hands up in defense.

"Hey, hey. No need to bite my head off over simple questions." She berated, "I mean you could've been home schooled. Considering our 'condition' my mom home schooled me my first couple years, y'know." He relaxed slightly and it was rather surprising that he seemed to have gotten so worked up over the notion she might really think him dumb. They were kinda in the same shoes, so he really shouldn't analyze everything quite so harshly.

Then again, she mused, he had grown up in a pretty backward environment. She imagined he got a lot of people who thought because he had wings he was somehow inferior. Somehow not the same as everyone else. It was a stigma she faced, even when people didn't realize she was the same. Once again Max found good reason to grumble over the injustices of school. Kids were evil- the older they got the worse they got, she'd come to learn. In high school, if you didn't do everything just right they'd bloody well eat you alive.

Max knew this from personal experience, seeing as she was quite fond of rule breaking. Be they ethical, moral, or social.

"What grade then?" She inquired as she padded over to the fridge, hoping beyond hope that she might find something to her liking. "Score!" She whisper-yelled to herself as she pulled out the ham, cheese, mayo, and bread. It wasn't the best of foods, but it was one she could make. The kitchen was a little too new to have her going and trying anything so silly as cooking anytime soon. Plus, Max wasn't sure her mom had lifted the no-electronics-but-the-toaster ban. She wasn't allowed to go near the microwave since that last tinfoil incident. Who knew?

"Junior," Iggy replied as he adopted a bored expression and looked her way. "And really? That excited over ham and cheese?" Max stopped and looked in his direction with suspicion. She glanced down at her accumulated supplies and thought over her last few comments.

"How the hell do you know what I pulled out of the fridge?" She demanded.

"Maximum, language." She heard her mother call from the other room. The girl in question winced, berating herself forgetting her mother had ears almost as sharp as hers when it came to profanity.

"Sorry, mom!" The noise picked up in the other room as though it had never stopped. Listening idly for a moment she realized the two were almost done. All that was left was debating how long Iggy would be here and how to go about his enrollment. Dismissing the still arguing adults she returned her attention to the matter at hand. She stared at Iggy several long seconds before, quick as a whip, she chucked the bag of bread at his head.

"Ow," Iggy snarled as he quickly stood and his chair scraped along the hardwood floor. "What the hell was that for?"

"Language, young man." Again her mother's voice sounded from the other room before just as quickly as last time picking up where she had left off in her discussion with Robert. Iggy mumbled an apology Max wasn't sure her mother's profanity detectors would be able to pick up.

"That was a bit uncalled for, wouldn't you say?" He inquired as he launched the bread back at her with impressive accuracy. Her suspicions grew.

"You're not blind, are you?" She demanded, stepping forward and waving her hand in front of his face. He didn't blink but took a step back. Blind or not, he sure knew how to roll his eyes like a champ.

"What on earth do you think I'd fake being blind for?" He grumbled, slumping back into his chair and began fiddling with the core of his apple. Max snatched it away and threw it into the garbage before he could make any more of a mess on the table. It wouldn't be him cleaning it up later on.

"I haven't the faintest idea, but you seem awfully perceptive for someone who should be able to see anything." Max dug. "So tell me." Again with the eye rolling. She sure hopes his eyes got stuck like that- she was beginning to see why her mother was so put off when she did it.

"Are you seriously going to make a big deal of this?" Iggy scowled and crossed his arms defensively as he sat back in his chair.

"What is there to make a big deal out of it you really are blind?" Iggy gave a heavy sigh and turned toward her with a look of great consternation.

"I knew what you pulled out of the fridge," he explained slowly, as though explaining to a child. "Because that garbage stinks to high heaven." He leaned forward as though to tell her a secret. "And I could hear when you threw the blasted apple at me. So I caught it."

"And the bread."

"It's not my fault." Iggy sniffed distastefully, "That one bird kid decided to go and pick on the blind guy." Max chewed her lip, thinking over his admission. She supposed it made sense. Didn't they say that the other senses grew stronger when one was absent? Max couldn't remember where she had heard it from, but it sounded pretty legit. Still..

"You knew when I was waving my hand in your face." She reminded him grandly, pointing a finger from said hand in his face. His lip turned down and he grumbled something she didn't quite catch.

"I could feel it, you idiot." He scoffed, "Not to mention anyone could hear your elephant stomping. Honestly, it sounds like something escaped from the zoo and came parading through your mother's house." At this Max socked him in the shoulder hard enough to eject him from his chair. He landed with a painful thud against the floor and she allowed herself a satisfied grin.

"Maximum Ride!" The color drained from her face.

*twiddles thumbs and pretends I haven't been missing for 3 years*