Ok, guys. So, I didn't write this chapter. The actual IRL Lily- though, that's not her real name- wrote it. So if you have complaints, Take it up with her. I, personally, don't think she did too bad. But we all have our opinions.

L POV-

Did you know that starfish can change from male to female or vise versa during their lifetime? Well I didn't either until that wonderful experience at Walmart. There were weirder people there than we are, which is saying something. It's a meeting place for earth's freaks. Some dude was by the girls' undergarments section shouting random facts at passersby. I bet you also didn't know that wearing a hat can keep your feet warm. And personally, I couldn't care less about "fun facts". But that's just me.

Kam got a pocket knife out of who knows where when were going to the back of the store and cut the backs of our /brand new shirts/ so we could spread our wings and take off in case of emergency. I dunno how it's supposed to feel, but "normal" clothes feel weird compared to the dress things we had to wear at the Institute. Shoes felt especially strange. Now, though, as we were soaring in the open air towards the park, the new clothes felt amazing.

I was flying in the back next to my brother, a few meters to his left. Krystal and Isabelle were in front of us, with Sparrow and Kam so far behind that we got to the park way before them. Instead of wondering what was taking so long for them, when we landed, I was busy wondering why this so called park was void of all heterotrophic lifeforms. (Vocab lesson: that means nothing was there except plants.) Big words, I know. I love big complicated words. But really, there weren't any people or animals or anything. Weird. And I was kinda lookin' forward to seein' actual wild animals. None of those at the 'Tute.

I could go into so much detail about life at the Institute that you'd know it like your left wing–ah, hand. /But/, I don't dwell on the past. It's happened already and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. In theory of course; time travel is completely possible in my opinion. Imagine the possibilities! The paradoxes would resolve themselves surely.

I'm sorry, I was babbling. I tend to do that a lot. Wait, did I even introduce myself? Sorry, this is Lily here, though you could've guessed. The others sorta picked their names themselves, but I didn't. I don't know where my name came from. Introductions are over, I expect a 7 page essay on why I'm better than the others on my desk tomorrow morning. I'm kidding, gosh, don't all rush to your laptops at once.

Anyway, me and the others–Krystal, Ash, and Isabelle–were waiting for the oldsters to get there, and it was incredibly boring to be honest. None of us really knew what to do, since we'd never had free time outside before. Nobody really wanted to break the silence; it was the quietest we'd ever "heard." In the Institute, screams and bleeps from machines filled the air. I decided to say something, because it was getting awkward just standing there. I started wondering where Kam and Sparrow were now, anyway.

"Where're they, Kam said they'd be here," I moaned, sitting down on the cracked, mossy sidewalk. I put my face in my hands.

"Quit complaining, Lily," Krystal said, sitting down beside me. "Besides, I think I can hear them now."

She was right, the sound of flapping wings getting closer filled my ears. I picked my head up from my hands, stood up, and brushed myself off. "Why are you so /slow/?" I yelled at them letting out the word 'slow' in a mocking tone.

Kam and Sparrow were either too far away to hear me or they just didn't care. I annoy them a lot like that and they usually just elect to ignore it. They both landed at the same time, more graceful than I'd ever been. I've never landed without falling; Kam says it's because I don't bother to slow down enough, but I think it's just bad luck.

"Okay," Kam said, smirking a bit, "who'd you kill?"

"No one!" Ash said, a little too quickly for my taste. I'd have to teach him about answering shady questions later.

"Are you sure?" Kam joked.

Probably bored of the conversation already, Isabelle spoke up before Ash could answer. "Are we going to sleep here tonight?" she asked, looking around. "It's getting late." She was right. The sun was halfway to the horizon already.

Sparrow walked forward, "Yeah," he said, "We're setting up camp here. Kam was nice enough to get you guys blankets at that martwal place." He tossed a backpack in our direction. "There's food and blankets in there. We'll eat tomorrow morning." And with that, he turned and walked over to a tree, sitting underneath it. "I'll sleep here," he said, turning over and closing his eyes.

I picked up the backpack. It was heavier than I thought it would be, but I carried it over to the soft patch of grass beside the sidewalk. The others–save Sparrow and Kam, who went to do I don't know behind the tree opposite Sparrow's–came over, too, and I opened the backpack. Ash helped me get all the blankets out and it turns out there were only four.

"Wait, Kam and Sparrow aren't gonna use blankets?" Krystal said, picking a purple one for herself.

"I guess not," Isabelle answered. "Look." She pointed to the tree Kam had gone to. She'd laid down under it just as Sparrow had, without a blanket.

"Hmm," Ash and I said in unison. Yeah, we're twins. It happens a lot. A little too often for my liking.

We both grabbed two blue and green blankets and sat down on the soft grass. Isabelle got the yellow blanket and walked over where Krystal was; they both sat down about ten meters from Ash and me. The sun was an orange semicircle on the horizon, sunlight blotting the purple-pink sky.

"Are we just gonna keep taking things from stores for the rest of our lives?" Ash asked, more to himself than to me, but I answered.

"Probably for a while. But we'll find a place to live someday, where we won't have to steal. I just know it."

"I hope so," my brother said. "I wonder if we could get jobs? Not now, when we're old enough. Then we could make money."

"I dunno," I narrowed my eyes in thought. "What jobs?"

He shrugged. "I dunno, but you're pretty good at building things, and I'm sure there're jobs for that."

"Hmm," I said, "You're could be a firefighter when you get old enough."

He laughed. "Yeah, I could, huh?"

I laughed, too. We both laughed, at everything. There wasn't much to laugh at back then. The sound of soft snoring came into play about ten minutes later.

We both looked toward Krystal and Isabelle, who looked like they were asleep already. It was pretty dark out.

We looked back at each other and laughed quietly some more. We talked about just about everything possible: the benefits of a deaging gun, fire, the future, our fears, the TV shows and movies we watched on the phones back at the labs. We even made up our own stories for the characters and picked who from our group would be which character. It was the most fun I'd had in years.

We'd figured that, in one movie, called The Avengers, Ash would be Thor, Krystal would be Bruce Banner, Kam could be Natasha, Sparrow'd be Clint, Isabelle would be Tony Stark, and I'd be Loki. We had much debate on whether I'd be Loki or not, but all signs pointed to yes. It wasn't until we were "casting" the television show Doctor Who that we realized we left out Steve Rogers. We decided to keep it that way. (Sorry, Cap. I do like you.)

Anyway, at the time, it seemed life was at its peak for me and Ash. We both couldn't stop smiling. I guess it was about 2 a.m. when we decided to go to sleep. We both laid down on the grass and covered up with the blankets Kam had gotten for us at Walmart.

Ash fell asleep really fast that night. All that talking and laughing tired him out. I took longer, laying there thinking about if we'd survive to see next week, trying to convince myself that I wouldn't be waking up back in a cage tomorrow.

I hoped I wouldn't have any dreams that night, and my wish came true. I'd always had dreams. But these dreams were the stuff of nightmares. Or as I like to call them: "Life." Also unlike any other night before, I didn't have any weird out-of-body-experiences. I don't know the exact reason, but it could have been the sudden change in atmosphere.

I slowly drifted into sleep to the sound of the wind and light snores from all around me. Maybe this new life would be fun.