Alright everyone! Chapter one! (right after the prologue) Enjoy!
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Love, TheModernChromatic.
"Max, I'm hungry!" Came Nudge's tired whine. I sigh and continue flying, trying not to think aout the fact that I was hungry too.
"Maybe we should eat Total," Iggy suggests.
Angel's face lights up with fear and she rushes to her small dog and grabs him tightly. "No, no, no, no, no, no!" She cries and pulls on my sleeve. "Max! Please don't let Iggy eat Total!"
"Hey!" cries Total, "Don't I get a say in this too? Hello! Talking dog! I don't want to be eaten!"
"I need to rest! Max, I'm tired!" Gazzy starts to float down towards the ground.
"Get back here!" Fang growls angrily as he zooms after Gazzy.
"Max! I'm hungry!"
"Max! Make Iggy stop!"
"Max! I'm tired!"
"Max-"
"Everyone just shut up!" I yell at the top of my lungs. "I know we're all hungry and tired and irritable, but I can't do anything more about it than you can! Just shut up! We are in the middle of a desert! I'm doing everything I can!" The noise stops, except for the steady beating of wings.
"Max?" Nudge asks, softly.
"Yes?" I growl, a bit too harshly.
"There's a restaurant down there." She points to the ground at a glowing light, neon and flashy.
"I smell food!" Total rejoices and he leaps from Angel's arms.
"Puppy!" Angel dives after him, his little wings working tenfold hers.
The rest of my flock follows suit and I trail along after them, still fed up.
"Whoa, Iggy!" Gazzy cries, "This looks like something from Star Wars you gotta see-" Gazzy stops abruptly and hangs his head. Iggy bursts out laughing.
Tempted by the smell of food, we file inside.
"Well hi hon!" Says a waitress as we walk through the door. I'm not sure who this is directed at, but it makes me slightly uncomfortable. She looks us up and down with her heavily-lidded eyes, eggerated even more by an excess of mascara. I shudder a little.
"What can I get for you folks?" She asks in a deep southern drawl, seating us at a booth and passing out menus.
"Oh, give us a moment to decide," says Nudge, enthralled with the pictures of steaming food on the menu, "We usually take a little while."
"Take all the time y'all need. Jus' give me a holler when you're ready." And she dismisses herself.
Fang sits in the corner of the booth, looking over a menu non-chalantly, making sure not to sit too still for fear of disappearing. Gazzy reads off menu items to Iggy while Angel tries to sneak sugar packets, and Nudge, foiling her plans, sets the sugar where she can no longer reach it. I recline in my seat and smile at my little family of misfits. Home really is where the heart is.
From the kitchen, there is a sudden clatter of pans, the sound of a knife hitting the floor, and exasperated yelling amongst the din. All six of us jump up, prepared for the worst, and ready for a fight. If there's one thing we could be sure of, it was our ability to attract trouble.
The waitress who greeted us disappears into the kitchen, where the cook is trying to clean up a mess and put out a fire. I can just barely make out some of the dialogue.
"Hey, who are you? If you want service, you gotta go through the front."
"Get out of my way! If you want to serve me, move, wench!" Answers a hurried female voice sharply.
"Janice!" Crys the cook, "We have a fire to put out!"
There's a sudden loud series of taps on the kitchen door that leads to the outside, and a clatter of metal.
"What in the name of-" But the cook is cut off by whatever enters his kitchen. We look at each other solemnly and hold our ground.
"What have you done? Don't you see what you've brought here? You've gotta leave now, miss." The waitress sounds scared and desperate now, like she was pleading with whoever was back there, "Hey! Let go of me!" She screams loudly, and the kitchen doors burst open. A menacing flyboy has got her by the ankle, "Help me!" She cries, and is dragged back into the room. The flames are now consuming the kitchen, and the place is about over-run with flyboys.
"We've got to help her!" I say, and charge off towards the kitchen. Fang's rough hand grips my arm.
"There's nothing we can do for her, Max. And it sounds like there might be something much worse than just flyboys in there." He turns and runs for the door. Against my better judgement, I follow, and so does the rest of my pack. We had to stay alive, even if it meant a few people couldn't. Lives were lives, but the less of them lost, the better, and a lot of them depended on us.
We took to the skies eagerly, stretching out our wings and trying to ignore the fact that we still hadn't eaten anything in a really long time.
"Doesn't this mean we won't be eating?" Angel asks, rubbing her stomach hungrily.
"No, sweetie, we'll find some place to-" something grabs ahold of my foot and pulls me down, cutting off my words.
"Max!" Cries Gazzy, and they all dive after me. I flap my wings harder, trying to break free and kick at the air, hoping to get lucky enough to hit something. Nothing works; I just keep going down and down.
My ankle is gripped by none other than a flyboy, who has managed to get away from the fiasco at the diner. It sounds an alarm as I kick it in the head and more of them swarm out from the flames. Total bites the claw it has around my ankle forcefully, and it comes free, the claw now disembodied and stuck to me.
"Guys! Fly!" I shout, and grab Total as I take off as fast as I can before the swarm is upon us. We rush off into the sky, all going as fast as our wings will allow, but we're met with another dozen flyboys blocking our path.
"Okay," I instruct, as we back into a circle, "We're going to have to fight our way out of this one, so watch each other's backs, and don't let them hit you," I say, not taking my eyes off our opponents. The fight begins.
I'm lost to the rest of the world, caring only about my flock and about my own skin, in that order. The flyboys come at me, all directions, all ways, and I charge them right back. They gradually fall victim to my sharp kicks and well-placed blows, but I know that we're far too out numbered to get out of this unscathed. We break up and regroup outside the fight. They swarm at us, determined, and then suddenly slow a little. A great, dark silouhette looms over them and dives right in the middle, the robots parting to allow it passage.
Fang cusses and Gazzy quietly relates to Iggy what's just happened. We let it sink in that they're going to terminate us this time.
