Disclaimer: opposite of claimer; meaning I own nothing.

Chapter Five: Meeting the Family

Zanna's POV

I walked out of Starbucks with Max, Fang, and Angel. My whole body felt numb. I could barely comprehend what was happening. This morning, I had woken up as a regular fifteen year old girl; going to school, hanging out with friends, watching TV, spending endless hours on the computer, getting grounded occasionally by my parents… But now I was none of that. All of that was a lie. My parents weren't even my parents. I was an experiment, something cooked up in a laboratory. Heck, I wasn't even completely human!

I followed Max, Fang, and Angel; not paying attention to where we were going. When we stopped, I realized that we were in the park. There were three other kids sitting on the benches, waiting. Waiting for us, I guessed.

"Okay, Zanna," Max began, "this is the rest of the Flock." Max gestured to the three other kids. My eyebrows rose slightly at the "Flock", but I decided it wasn't something worth asking about (at least not right now).

"I'm Zanna," I said politely to the group of kids in front of me.

"Zanna?" a young boy with blondish hair asked.

I smiled a small smile. My name always brought up questions. It was an odd name; not as odd as theirs, I'm guessing… but still odd.

"It's short for Susanna," I explained. "But I don't like that name at all. So all my friends call me Zanna."

"Cool," a tall guy that was probably around the same age as Max, Fang, and I said. I noticed that he had been sitting in Starbucks, in a table with a brown-skinned girl and the boy with the blondish hair.

"You guys were in Starbucks with us," I stated. Everybody looked surprised at that. What, was I supposed to not have known? I had a great memory, and had always been good with details. Probably part of the whole "perfect human" thing, I added sourly in my mind.

"You saw us?" the dark-skinned girl asked.

"Yeah," I said, shrugging. "I'm good at noticing things."

Max cleared her throat and everybody's attention snapped towards her. "Anyways, Zanna," she said, "you already know me and Angel and Fang." Then she gestured towards the tall boy with the reddish hair, "that's Iggy," Max said, "Nudge," Max pointed towards the other girl, "and Gazzy," gesturing towards the blonde haired boy.

Well, I guess I was right. Their names were odder than mine. I nodded and said, "Pleased to meet you." I was surprised at myself. My mother (my ex-mother, I reminded myself) had always pushed my manners. So under these strange circumstances I remembered all her lessons, but not at the teas she would arrange with all her friends from work (who were probably all scientists, know that I think of it).

I wasn't the only one surprised by my politeness, for Iggy said, "Wow. This one's got manners," with a low whistle. I glared at him.

Max must have noticed, because she said, "It's not worth it, Iggy's blind." I stopped glaring at Iggy, but I didn't apologize or anything. Why should I apologize to for glaring to a blind kid who had insulted me? Although Iggy might not have meant it as an insult, though.

"Do you have any cool superpowers?" the boy, Gazzy asked.

I wasn't really sure how to answer. "Uh, no," I said, confused. "Do you?" I asked. There must have been a reason why Gazzy had asked if I had 'superpowers'. One would be that he expected me to have some (which was possible, considering I was suppose to be a 'perfect human') or they had 'cool superpowers'.

"Aw," Gazzy said, clearly disappointed.

"I can sense emotions and am really good with computers and cars and am magnetic!" Nudge said super quickly, I was hardly able to keep up. I thought I heard Max groan. "And Fang can turn invisible and Gazzy can mimick noises and he and Iggy build bombs," I opened my mouth to say something about that one. I mean, bombs? But Nudge kept talking, "and Angel can read minds and sometimes control them and breathe under water and change her appearance and Max can fly super, super fast!" I swear Nudge said that all in one breath. It took a second to take in all that information. I was pretty sure that they were telling the truth. After everything I had seen today, I didn't think anything could surprise me now.

"Fly?" I finally asked.

"Uh, yeah," Max said, looking slightly uncomfortable. "We're avian-hybrids."

I blinked in surprise. They had said that they were experiments, too, but avian-hybrids? I mean they had bird DNA fused within their human DNA? I tried to think of the politest way possible to ask what effects the avian DNA had. Finally, I just asked, "Sorry to be so blunt, but what exactly can you do with the avian DNA? Nudge said that you could fly," I added the last part, thinking over what Nudge had said.

"Yeah, we can fly," Max said, with a hint of some emotion, but I couldn't quite tell.

"Wow," was all I had to say. I wasn't surprised (well I was, but not like 'oh my gosh! I can't believe it!' kind of surprised) since Max had kind of already given me hints about them.

There was silence for a moment, although it didn't last long. "What do we do next?" I asked. I really needed more time to digest all this information, but Max and her 'flock' wanted to look at the information stored on my ex-parents computer.

Max seemed to think it through for a moment, and then said, "Fang and I will go scout out your house-"

"Scout out my house?" I interrupted. It was rude of me, I know. But why did they want to scout out my house?

"Yes. Did you forget that you're living with a bunch of crazy scientists that pretended to be your parents your whole life and want to do experiments on you?" Max boldly asked.

"No," I snapped back. I felt bad for snapping at Max. For the most part, she has been pretty nice to me… I mean at least she told me about my parents. But it was just that I didn't needed to be reminded of the fact that my parents weren't my parents and so on. "Sorry," I apologized. "It's just a lot to take in, you know?" None of the Flock said anything, so I guess they didn't know. "But why do you need to scout out my house?"

"To make sure there aren't a bunch of Erasers and Flyboys swarming all over the place," Fang said as simply as possible.

"Erasers? Flyboys?" I asked. I felt so naive. I had no idea of the enemy I was facing.

"Erasers are human-lupine hybrids; they can morph into wolves," Max explained. "And flyboys are robots, but are still highly dangerous."

"Okay," I said, nodding and taking in the new information.

"Good," Max said. "Now how 'bout Angel, Fang and I go and scout out your house?"

There was a chorus of "I wanna come!"s from Gazzy, Nudge, and Iggy.

"No," Max said, in her leaderly tone. "I'm going 'cause I'm the leader, Fang because he the second best fighter" Fang gave Max a look I couldn't quite decipher at that, "and can turn invisible and Angel because she can sense their minds."

"If there's anybody there," I added.

"If there's anybody there," Max confirmed, but by the look on her face she expected someone, or something, to be there.

"What about me?!" a tiny voice piped from the bag Iggy was carring. This time I definitely heard Max groan. Angel ran towards Iggy, who took the bag off his back, and opened it. To my surprise, a black Scottie dog came out.

"Did he just…" I let my voice trail off.

"What about me?" the same voice repeated. I could have sworn it was coming from the dog. "I asked for a White Chocolate Mocha, and what do I get? Nothing. Not a thing. That's okay, I'm just the dog." I was pretty sure my lips were in a perfect O shape by now.

"Sorry, Total," I heard Angel say.

"Zanna, this is Total…" Max began, "Our talking dog."

Okay, I was wrong when I said nothing could surprise me now. A talking dog definitely surprised me. I was pretty sure if I let my jaw drop any lower, it'd hit the ground. Wow, flying bird kids, little mind-reading girls, talking dogs, evil robots… what would be next? I just hoped I would be able to handle whatever was coming. Because somehow I knew that if I didn't, it would be bad for everyone (as cliché as it sounds). Very bad.

Okay, I lied. This chapter doesn't have any action... but the next chapter will. That's only beause I am making my chapters shorter so I can update more often. Sorry for not updating in such a long time, but I've been working more on "Maxamorphosis". The deal on the last chapter still stands. After this chapter, if I don't get a decent amount of reviews with imput on my story, I'm gonna call this one quits. I don't really want to stop, but if nobody is reading this story, I don't see any reason to continue typing it (I can see it all play out in my mind). SO PLEASE REVIEW!!! And thanks to all those who have already reviewed. And thanks to those who are checking this story out because they read my other ones (and if this is the first story of mine you're reading, I have four other Maximum Ride fanfics out). I'm probably not going to update again super soon, since I'm going to work on updating my other stories. Anyways, thanks for reading! And please let me know what you think. PLEASE!!! [Angel and Nudge give you Babmi eyes]

Random Quotes/ Smiles of the Day :D

"I'd rather be a could-be

if I cannot be an are;

because a could-be

is a maybe who is reaching for a star.

I'd rather be a has-been

than a might-have-been,

by far;

for a might have-been

has never been,

but a has was

once an are." -Milton Berle