So this story is officially off hiatus! *cheers* I apologize for those that followed/faved this story for the long delay. Your long wait is over!
I'm sorry if this chapter seems a bit rushed. I'm trying to keep this one a much more action-oriented fic in hopes that I can make it interesting without the angsty depression that AODWLC.
Thank you FallenAngelWolf113 and thewingedcolonel for the favs!
I do not own RvB. Red vs Blue belongs to RoosterTeeth.
I do not own Maximum Ride. MR belongs to James Patterson.
David was having a pretty peaceful sleep when he felt an icy hand wrap around his mouth. He was shocked to wakefulness by the sheer chill of the fingers and palm, but, as he finally regained full alertness, he suddenly registered that he was in possible danger. Acting on a residual instinct, he stiffened and his wings spread slightly in surprise but he did not fight the probable attacker.
When he saw dark woods in front of him, he remembered where he was –anywhere but that evil lab. The blonde also remembered whom he was with. She looked at him with hard, brown eyes.
"They've found us again," Connie whispered angrily. There was a tinge of obligatory fear. It was well justified.
David pried the small brunette's hand from his face so he could breathe properly and listened for the sound of approaching wolf-demons.
"Um…I don't hear anything," he said, but she glared at him to keep silent.
David complied.
They waited and waited….and waited. There was no sign or hint of anyone else in the woods but them –not even a suspicious snap of a twig or an ominous bird call.
He'd never had a reason to doubt Connie. She seemed to have a sixth sense about things, but his ears were the best scientists could cook up. They were like two mini sonar dishes that stuck out the top of his blonde head except they were triangular, like cat ears. At first he thought he must have been some sort of messed-up bird-wolf-human hybrid, but he'd seen Eraser ears. They were much different. His were definitely cat ears. And for all their feline worth, his ears didn't hear anything.
David could feel his eyelids growing heavy again as he longed for sleep, but the moment he lost consciousness, a large mass fell out of the sky and collided with the ground right in front of them.
Both the teens were frozen with shock and fear. They didn't scream, and they barely flinched. They were trained over years of pain and torture not to react that way to things that scared them.
The thing rose to its feet even though it crashed down at a speed that should have broken bones on impact. Like a zombie from the grave it stood and drew itself to full height –all eight feet of it. It had a jaw full of razor-sharp teeth protruding from its muzzle and two true wolf ears shot up from the top of his head. The thing that made him different from Erasers, what made them hesitate a moment longer, were the two, enormous wings that erupted off its back.
"What is this thing?" David asked himself, but deep down he knew the answer.
It was an experiment just like him. The Erasers were the products of Project Freelancer's experiments too, but they were used as guards, trackers, and torturers. The impression he got was that they were a finished experiment –that they were bred perfectly to suit their simple purposes. There was no need to experiment on them anymore in the scientists' eyes. Yet the blonde wouldn't put a creating a new version just for kicks and giggles past those horrible people. He, himself, was evidence to that.
The two bird kids stood still. They were waiting for the beast to make its move, but it just stood there hunched over and breathing heavily through its nostrils. That's when they noticed the blood. The beast was holding its arm with its clawed hand and red squeezed between his fingers.
"Let's get out of here! While it's injured!" The brunette tugged at David's arm when the haunting hum of a chopper struck fear into their hearts.
They took off into the air with their genetically engineered wings, one set brown and one set grey, but the black chopper was faster. They were stuck on the ground when a helicopter was in the air. The rotors could chop them to shreds. It was hovering just above them when they heard the branches above them crack and shatter. Regular Erasers dropped in a perfect circle around the two armed with rods that generated harsh electric shocks.
Wielding those things, it was clear this group of Erasers hadn't seen David or Connie before. They must be a new batch.
Surprisingly, the winged Eraser was backed into the circle with them. Were they gonna make them fight him? Was he rogue? What was going on?
"Connie! Get out of here!" David said, as the circle became tighter and tighter.
Surprisingly, the injured, winged Eraser didn't make a move, and Connie wasn't going to wait for a signed invitation.
She took a deep breath and leaped at the nearest wolf-man in the circle and kicked him in the gut. The Eraser grunted and grabbed her arm only to watch as she disappeared and reappeared below him. The dumbfounded Eraser was too slow to react and Connie dodged away and sped off into the woods.
Angered, the others lunged on David. Spinning their rods that hissed with electricity, a few shoved the rods into David's side. David's eyes grew wide as his body was electrified. His hair stood on end and his wings shot out. After a few seconds, they released him and he collapsed to the ground.
The Erasers wondered if they had killed him, if they let their anger in the spur of the moment kill a target they were ordered to capture back if they ever came across it. There was almost a sigh of relief when David groaned, proving he was, indeed, alive.
The wolf mutants circled around him and growled happily, tauntingly, when the winged teen suddenly slapped his hand on the ground and the dirt erupted with an electric pulse. It wasn't that powerful because earth is a very poor conductor, but, with the amount of electricity he absorbed from being tased, it was enough to knock the breaths out of the attackers and throw them to the ground.
Although his body screamed in pain, he forced his legs to move. He managed to push himself around one Eraser and escape the circle. He didn't get far though before one recovered. This Eraser must have been standing the farthest away and so received a smaller amount of the shock. He was able to catch up the quickest.
Shutting off the taser element of the rod, he simply knocked David on the side of the head with it like a billy club. David fell against the side of a tree to catch his balance. He braced for his inevitable capture until he heard a deep growl and a cry of pain.
Looking back behind him, he saw the injured, winged Eraser that crashed earlier standing over the now-dead Eraser that hit him, his clawed hand smeared with a fellow Eraser's deep red blood.
David, still trying to squint through the haze that was forming in his vision because of his hit to the head earlier, slowly backed away from him, but he was curious. Why did this Eraser kill another Eraser? Why did this one have wings? Why was he injured?
He didn't have any more time to wonder. He had to get out of there. It didn't matter what this one looked like or did. The other Erasers were recovering, and he needed to move!
He spun around on his heels and started to run. He weaved through the trees. His sensitive ears were waiting until he judged the chopper was a distance away that he dared an air escape.
When he saw a big enough clearing in the trees (and he could see straight again), he shook out his grey wings and flapped. Take-offs were always the worst part. His back groaned and arched from the strain, but he was airborne. As he rose higher above the trees, he looked for the chopper. He spotted it in the distance, but it didn't seem to be pursuing. He instinctively dipped his grey feathers down so that he was flying as low and fast to the tops of the trees as he dared.
He kept his sharp eyes peeled for Connie. Who knows where she was now, but, somehow, she always found him.
"Connie! Conieee!" he shouted, straining to be heard over the wind.
He quickly weaved out of the way of a particularly tall tree that he almost didn't see because he was looking for his partner. He decided that because of the slight cat DNA he was grafted with that was the reason he wasn't that great at flying. Connie made it look like artwork the way she nimbly banked and turned, but David couldn't hardly angle his wings without sending himself into a spiral of doom.
"Coooonniieeee! Conn-!"
"David! Look out!" A familiar voice called from above him.
He barely had time to look up and see the winged girl he was looking for before a rocket launched right in front of him. The thing blurred past his face and he had no time to react wisely. He twisted himself out of the way of crashing into it, but he just couldn't get his bearings fast enough to avoid crashing down into the trees again.
He flapped his wings desperately before pulling them in in surrender. He didn't want his wings ripped off on impact. Thankfully, he missed the trees because of a fortunately placed pond. He broke the surface and had a little trouble swimming because of his awkward, waterproof wings, but he squished himself through the mud and to the bank eventually.
Connie fluttered to the ground like an angel. She couldn't keep the smirk off her face as he must have looked like a drowned rat.
"You, David, are officially the most uncoordinated being I've ever met."
His ears angled down in shy embarrassment, and he wrung out his clothes with his hands.
"What was that thing?"
"I don't know. I didn't have time to investigate before you decided to fail all over the place and crash into a pond. Aren't you glad I make you preen your wings so much now?"
"Yeah. I think they're flyable still. I just want to get all the water out of my clothes."
"No time. That chopper's gonna be looking for us and so are those Erasers. We gotta get out of here."
She opened her chocolate wings to the air.
"But what about that thing that almost hit me?"
"Obviously some sort of new thing Project Freelancer's cooked up. I mean, you saw that one Eraser, right? It had wings. We're obviously not safe in the air anymore. Not that we were to begin with."
"Connie, I think that that Eraser thing might have…um, tried to help me."
He shuffled, embarrassed and unsure.
"What? That's impossible."
"Yeah, but, when I was trying to get away, he killed the Eraser that came after me. And he didn't try to stop me either. So, I don't know, maybe…."
"Maybe what? We can't trust anyone, David. You know this. It must be some sort of trap or trick. Now, come on. We need to find food and shelter."
She wasn't going to debate with him anymore. For Connie, the clock was always ticking.
She leapt into the sky with hardly a running start and shot into the sky. David needed a little more time and effort, but he caught up soon.
David followed after her lead, trying to stay close and catch the same wind currents. His stomach killed and his headache was still going strong, but he had to deal with the pain. It's just what he had to do if he planned to stay out of a lab.
Still, he wondered about what just happened. He wondered if Connie was thinking about the same thing. David found he did lots of wondering.
Sorry that was so short. I just had to get a chapter out so people wouldn't think I was done with RvB stuff.
It was a sort of last minute decision for Wash to have cat ears as well as wings. I just couldn't help myself. (Now I promise I won't make Carolina half woman half shark with the shark half 1/4 jaguar no matter how tempting it may be.) XD
I tried to incorporate Wash's EMP equipement and CT's hologram equipment into this as their own sort of powers. I hope that wasn't too obscure. I also couldn't help myself by making Wash really bad at flying. (He just doesn't want to end up like Georgia, right?)
Anyway, I can't say when I'll update next because school is starting to avalanche really hard right now so it might not be until I finish this semester that I update. After that, I should have much, much more time. Updates would theoretically be about the same consistency as AODWLC was. I will certainly aim for longer chapters next time, don't worry.
Anyway, I hope that you stick with this. I look forward to bringing you more Freelancer AU.
(For the Guest (I would PM you if you weren't anonymous) that commented on my last RvB story regarding how I limited myself in the AU, thank you. I really appreciate the feedback. It was truly, honestly constructive criticsm that I will definitely keep in mind while writing this. I'm going to attempt to keep this an alternate universe instead of a parallel universe, the latter is certainly what I would describe AODWLC as. Thank you so much. I hope that, if you're reading this story, that it will show my growth as a writer. :) )
Also, bad title is bad. If anyone has suggestions for the title, please review and let me know.
Review and fav if you so desire!
Looking forward to it~