Seriously people, please R and R! I need to know if I'm doing something stupid or idiotic! Without your reviews, I'm nothing. . .
"Hey! There's someone over here", a small voice shouted, it sounded a few feet from me. My eyes snapped open and looked over to the source of the yell. The youngest boy was standing in between the two trees I had hid behind the previous night, his blond hair standing straight up, and he was looking at me with cautious eyes. I looked behind him and saw that the Flock's attention had been brought to him by his yell. Now they were looking at each other, probably debating on whether or not to come and see what he was yelling about.
I looked back at him and he stepped towards me a little. I was on my feet in an instant. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth for another yell. I panicked and held up my hands to stop him, pleading him not to yell. He backed up, his mouth ready to yell, and I waited for him to alert the rest of the Flock to my presence.
"Who are you?", he asked in a small voice. I backed up even more, putting us at separate ends of the clearing. I looked him over and saw that he was around five and a half feet tall, though his face made me think he was around nine. Clear blue eyes were looking me over too, and judging by my appearance, he was going to think I was a hobo or something.
"907", I answered. His face twisted in a frown.
"That's not a name", he told me, "Like mine's Gasman, but everyone calls me Gazzy. What's your name?". I shook my head, I didn't have one.
"I don't have one, I was always 907", I replied. He cocked his head, but left the subject where it was. Instead he changed to a new topic.
"What are you doing here?", he questioned me. I held a battle in my head over that one. Should I tell him what I wanted? Would he believe me? Then again, I could just show him my wings. But how would the rest of them take it?
In the end, I just decided to go with it, and accept failure if it didn't work.
"I want to join the Flock, if that's alright with you guys", I waited his response. His eye-brows flew to his hairline at that as he digested my request.
"I think you're going to have to talk to Max if you want to do that", he told me. I nodded and stepped towards him in an attempt to get him going. He saw where I was going and ran ahead to lead me.
"You do know that we're mutants right?", he looked behind at me. I nodded.
"I know, I'm a mutant too", I smiled. He once again wore a look of surprise as he walked along. He slid out his wings, and I my grin faded in amazement. Back in the old days, he had little chicken-like wings from what I had seen. Now those wings had a good nine foot wing-span, white with brown speckles running down the middle of them. He looked back at me.
"Could you maybe show me your thing, I don't think Max would like it if I showed the Flock to a regular human", he told me with a air of superiority, like he was proud of the fact that he had bird-wings. I smirked at him and let my own feather-less wings come out of the slits in my hoodie. While his own wing-span was impressive, mine was a little larger, being around fourteen feet wide. I stretched them to their length and reveled in his amazement.
"Wow", he breathed, his voice barely a whisper.
"Is this mutant enough for ya?", I asked, still smirking. He nodded with a smile breaking out on his features.
"I think you can join, you have my vote anyway", he smiled at me and we made our way back, tucking our wings back in so we wouldn't hit them on the trees. As we approached them, they looked up and saw me. I saw the two older boys go in front of the two younger girls. Max herself walked forward to meet us.
"Who's this Gazzy?", she asked, her voice business-like. He frowned as the problem of my name came back into his mind.
"Um, she said that her name was 907", he said, his voice a little confused. He looked back to me for help and I shrugged.
"And what does she want?", Max asked looking me up and down.
"She wants to join us", he told her, cautiously. Max's eyes widened and she looked me over again.
"Why would you want to do that?", she asked me directly, forgetting Gazzy was even there, "You do realize that we have people chasing us right?". I nodded.
"I know, I have Erasers chasing me too", all of their eyes widened at the mention of the Erasers. The white one walked up to side with Max.
"You mean, you've been in the School too?", he demanded, I saw that his eyes weren't looking at me directly. He must have been the blind one.
"Yeah, and you could say that it wasn't a paradise", I muttered, I was playing a poker game, and my face showed no emotion as I said this. The little blond girl came up from behind the dark guy.
"She's telling the truth", she told Max in a little voice, "She was at the School with us, she remembers us when I was still a baby". Wow, the director wasn't kidding when she said that the little one could read minds. I covered my thought and the little girl looked at me strangely. Max must not have seen, but she looked at me sharply.
"And what part of the experiments were you?", she asked, challenging me to answer her.
"The chiropterian one, the unsuccessful one", I said softly. She froze.
"Impossible, none of them lived beyond a few weeks", she said, a final note in her voice. I shook my head.
"Most of them did die, except me", I smiled, "I was lucky enough to have the most human related genes put into me, and I've been able to live for fourteen years in that hell-hole". I grimaced at all the experiments, and long hours of just running through the mazes and on the cardio machines, nearly till I fell over from exhaustion, that I'd gone through.
Max's eyes were angry, apparently she didn't want me to join and she threw one last challenge at me, "Prove it", she told me.
I smirked, like I had with Gazzy. He looked at me with a smile at Max's order. I took a deep breath and showed them my wings. I stretched them like before, except now I had the dark-skinned girl coming toward me with her hand out to touch them. I twitched slightly, I didn't like people touching them, but I still let her come closer.
"Wow, they're so cool", she whispered, and she slowly stroked my left wing. Her touch tickled at little and I fought to keep still. The others watched her and waited for her to give her response.
"They're real alright", she smiled back at them, "And really warm, almost like skin, but tougher, and there are little bones coming out at the edge". She was touching the small piece of bone that came out at the edges of the skin. They were like the ends of fingers, but instead of finger nails, they were bones. And at the top corner there was practically a saber attached to it, it was the bone that attached my wings to my spine. The girl backed up again, but she was rubbing her fingers.
Max looked me over again and stepped toward me until she was in my face. We were about the same height, so she could hardly scare me, but I stood still as she ranted at me.
"I'm going to let them decide, but remember, if you even think of betraying us, I'm not afraid to rip off those things you call wings alright", she looked for my response, and I nodded in acknowledgement. She looked back at the Flock and waited their vote.
Gazzy came first, "I vote she stays", Max looked at him like she couldn't believe him. But he stood steady and left his vote stand unaffected.
The dark-skinned one came next, "I go with Gazzy, she stays", she announced proudly. I smiled at both of them. The little blond girl was the next one in line.
"I think she's telling the truth and should stay with us", she smiled sweetly at me. My grin grew, it was working, they were letting me in!
Next was the almost white-haired guy, "I don't really know you, but if you're from the School, you have my vote to stay". I nodded in thanks, though he didn't see me.
Finally the dark-haired one came up, he smirked at me, "I thought I saw something last night", he waited for me to respond. I smiled sheepishly.
"Yeah that was me, I was just watching you guys", I shrugged. His smile faded.
"I'm going with both sides, she can stay, just watch yourself", he warned me, and I nodded again, getting the message. Then we all turned to Max for her take on the problem.
She sighed, "Fine, the Flock wants you, so you can stay for now", she told me. I found myself being hugged by three little people. I raised my wings up so I didn't club them in the head. Gazzy, the blond girl, and the dark-skinned one was hugging me like a family member. I waited for them to detach themselves, feeling a little weird as they did.
"Now we can introduce ourselves, I'm Nudge", the dark-skinned girl announced, "She's Angel", she pointed to the little blonde girl, and it was a perfect name for her in my mind, "He's Gazzy", he smiled at me, "He's Iggy, "the white-haired dude lifted a finger in a 'hey', "He's Fang", the dark-haired guy ignored her and went on doing whatever he was doing, "and she's Max", she pointed to her and Max raised her eyebrows sarcastically.
Then she turned to me, "What did you say your name is?". I frowned, here it was again, were names really that important?
"907", I said lowly. Nudge frowned. The other little ones frowned along with her.
"We have to give you a better name than that", I looked over at the other older ones for a rain-check to see if this was normal. Max just waved for me to go along with it.
"How about Eliza?", she asked, her face beaming. I cringed, Eliza sounded like a jungle somewhere. Angel pulled her away.
"I don't think she likes that", she smiled back at me and I thanked her in my mind.
Max's POV
I didn't like the look of this girl. She was tall like me, Iggy, and Fang, with dark hair that was short in a boys cut. She was as skinny as us, but seemed to have more muscle in her arms and legs. And her wings were cool too, they looked like Fang's just made out of leather instead of feathers. But there was something about her that I didn't like.
She was too quiet, and looked like she had a trouble that she was dealing with. Then again, she was from the School, she could have had serious trauma. And what high-pedestal was I on to tell her that she couldn't join. After all, where else was she going to go?
Besides the others seemed to like her. Angel, Gazzy, and Nudge were trying to figure out a name for her, 907 must have been the experiemnt number the white-coats had given her. Fang and Iggy were watching the scene, laying down next to me. We had to get to New York from what Angel had said about our files from the School. We were trying to find an Institute of some kind. Maybe this girl could help us along the way.
Now they still hadn't figured out a name for her, and one popped into my head.
"How about Onyx, for the color of your wings?", I asked her. Her eyes were a dark hazel I could see and they looked like they needed a few nights of sleep to make up for her tiredness. But they brightened at the name I offered.
"I like it", she smiled. The little kids looked up at me and smiled also at me solving the problem. I had enough trouble dealing with six other people in the Flock, did I have enough mental capacity to deal with another person? I guess I was going to have to try it.