OHMYGODMAXRIDEONESHOT. Yes, it is true. I am once again playing the card of procrastination and writing random fanfic one shots instead of doing homework/original writing/etc. So, since I'm wasting time I don't have on this, you'd better all enjoy it.

James Patterson owns Maximum Ride and all characters in the story. I own nothing. All speech is also copyright to the author.

Constructive criticism is welcome. Flaming is not, but I really don't care. And if you want to accuse me of stealing your work and burn my ears with your time-wasting 'USUK,USHULDNEVERWRITEAGAIN' comments, please feel free to leave them here. Ais and I can get some good laughs out of it before we send you nasty replies, etc.

Bad things aside, I hope you guys enjoy this!

BLATANT STUPIDITY IS OVERRATED

One Shot by Aden Ameryn

Random Quote No.1

Sometimes we'll just follow the leader with no implications of what the results might be.

I know too many ways in which I could kill myself; overdose, drowning oneself, strangulation, jumping off of a cliff – with my wings tucked in. I know disappointment, suffering, torture and hardship better than pretty much anyone else. I know who I am, but that doesn't stop me hating myself. Sometimes disappointment is better. Sometimes we would all prefer not to know. The line is astoundingly thin. I'm lucky to have something that holds me together through everything – the flock, my family. Lucky that I have people who love me despite everything that I am and am not, no matter how many stupid things I do and have done.

Max had that look on her face again; that is, the one that made it obvious that she was either going to implode and scream or drop out of the sky. There were tears forming in her dark eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She hadn't noticed me watching her, concern plastered onto my face to cancel out the growing impatience in my mind. It took a long time for real anxiety to creep in my brain as I continued to watch her carefully and silently. I dropped down a few feet so as to be at her level in the sky, ready to scoop her up if she suddenly fell.

"Yo," I said, catching her attention immediately, "you okay? Is this a headache?"

If Max had been an ordinary 14-year-old girl, and me a regular teenage boy, then that conversation would have been fairly normal. Max might even have had a regular headache rather than a Voice in her head. Somehow I found myself doubting that – the pressure was getting to her, I could see.

"Yeah," she replied, her voice tense and angry, "a huge, freaking, unbearable headache!"

She shouted the last word, making me jump in surprised. Four other heads swivelled around to focus on us, eyes sharp with concern, welling impatience and a dash of fear. They all wanted nothing more than safety, a warm place to sleep and a steady and reliable flow of food, perhaps accompanied with a family's love. They wanted to find their parents, and I knew that they were all getting a little tired of the aimless wandering.

"I'll see you at the beach," she murmured to me, averting her gaze away from my eyes and hunching her shoulders in a protective way. I opened my mouth to stop her, but she either didn't hear or just decided to ignore me. I hoped the speed would wash away the desperate tension radiating from her skin.

Ah, Max. Despite her bout of jealous rage over Lissa and I (which I didn't understand, I might add. The joys of teenage females.) I continued to admire her. More than anything, it was for the way that she held all of us together. I think that if she wasn't there, I would have left long ago to live by myself, without a second thought towards the other. Of course, if she hadn't been there to keep us out of danger, we would be in cages right now. Or dead, thanks to the whitecoats. She might have her faults, but didn't we all. In fact, she may have had more faults than most people – but those faults could often be good things. The pride, the snap decisions, the strength; they were all good things which bordered on being bad things.

I guess I had thought that Max's reaction towards Lissa was weird and immature and ridiculous. And then, in an amazing display of her being a total hypocrite, she had gone out with that guy, Sam. In a way, I was glad that she was happy, for a brief time at least. In another way, I wished that I could beat the crap out of a guy who I was sure was not good enough for Maximum. Because, with all her faults, she was still Maximum. The ultimate.

I hadn't asked about the somewhat abrupt end to their relationship, because I had decided it didn't matter. I had also decided that I didn't want my head torn off or my features being rearranged. Because, you know, I sort of liked having my nose in the centre of my face. It didn't matter to me, at least, that she had knocked over this guy who she had once liked. Or that she had liked him in the first place. Not to me, at least. Mostly. Boys liked Max – she had this supermodel thing going on. Tall, blonde, muscled, pretty; no, not pretty, the word was transcendent.

Secretly I wondered how long we could have left. Max was going to save the world, one way or another, or she would at least save us. In the happy place in my mind – the other name for that being the delusional place – we would all grow up and be happy and have little bird children. Ugh – reality check. We were probably going to be dead by eighteen, or living in a post-apocalyptic world.

The air current I had been riding suddenly petered out, and I dropped down and lost my train of thought. The beach had come into view, a sickle moon of white-gold sand which reminded me of the last beach we had visited. We were obviously too stupid to realize that us and the sea was an unusually bad combination. Oops, there's that word again. No wonder I had known that something about this day was going to go wrong. I had been right, as usual. Maybe I was developing some precognitive power of something.

Somehow, I doubt that.

Flying in front of the others, I was the first one to catch sight of her with my sharp raptor vision. Kneeling in the sand, surrounded by a growing patch of crimson. My stomach flipped over once and my brain froze in mid-air. I think I swore aloud, because the others looked forward to me rather than downwards for a moment before zeroing in on Max below us, though it was more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything else. The four pairs of eyes which had been focussed on me turned downwards, and a short, sharp scream cut through the air Nudge. Then I was dropping, dropping like stone and disregarding height, speed and physical limitation. Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter at all.

I hit the ground clumsily, nearly falling flat on my face but miraculously managing to right myself at the last moment. I sprayed sand behind me as I ran the last few feet, the air around me feeling as thick as custard, or water, or something. The sand wasn't quite so white, but more of a pinky, squishy scarlet which clung to me as blood pulsed from Max's self inflicted wound. I swear, my heart missed a beat – several beats, in fact. I was unsure whether I was angry or afraid – it all felt the same at that point. My brain was running on adrenaline, not really processing any thoughts properly. However, common sense refused to shut up, as though it was somehow separate from my mind. It was screaming at me to stop her before she killed herself.

"What the hell are you doing?" I found myself shouting, sudden rage bristling within me at her stupidity, "are you crazy?"

I cracked her over the wrist sharply until she finally dropped the sharp of shell onto the bloody sand. I couldn't believe her, or myself – was she trying to take herself away from us? Had this really gone so far? It hit me before she spoke what she was actually trying to do – she wanted the chip out of her arm to protect her, and us. Mostly us, I think.

"Want the chip out," she stuttered to no one in particular, staring at the gaping wound on her arm as though it was detached from her body. Her eyes were like black holes, dark and totally void of emotion. Nothing seemed to reflect in them, as though they absorbed every trace of light.

"Look where you're cutting!" I snapped at her furiously, and was shocked when she subconsciously leant away from me, "you're going to bleed to death, you idiot!"

I pushed her hand away from where it was hovering over the wound and doused it in sharp-smelling antiseptic that bought with it memories of the School. She winced again and I found myself wondering who this person was and what the hell she had done with the real Max. Nudge was dropping to her knees next to the pair of us, moving as though arthritis had suddenly struck her. Her huge dark eyes looked about a hundred years old.

"Max," she said, her voice holding more shock and incredulity than she ever could have plastered onto her face, "what were you doing?"

"I wanted to get the chip out," she repeated with a little more conviction as sense began to flow back into her. I was angered by her single-minded tenacity – in anyone else it would have been called stupidity – and I snapped at her once more.

"Well, forget it!" I said angrily, wrapping a bandage evenly around her arm with skill that belied my age (one of the good points of being raised around scientists and doctors). "The chip stays in. You don't get off that easy! You die when we die!"

She looked up and met my gaze, and I could see the tidal wave of emotion building up in the ocean of her eyes. She could see perfectly well that she had frightened the others, and me. For ones, the roll of leader had been dropped on my shoulders and man, was it heavy. My face was pale and pinched and my teeth gritted. I hoped I was scaring her as much as she had frightened and shocked me.

And then she burst into tears.

Wow – that didn't fail to freak me out. It also succeeded in snapping me out of my state of fury. Crouched in the crimson sand, Max looked small and forlorn and pained. There was a long indecisive moment in which the of us – excluding Iggy – exchanged nervous glances over Max's shuddering shoulders as she sobbed into her pals.

Uncharacteristically, I made a smart decision. Without thinking very much, I sort of wound my arms around her back – awkward, thanks to her outspread wings – and pushed her head very gently into my shoulder as I avoided her injured arm. The others, still shaken, hovered around close and patted and murmured comforting nonsense words.

Funnily enough, as Max sobbed herself dry in my shoulder, I was super-conscious of her warmth and her humanity, her fragility. Compared to most humans, we were practically unbreakable. However, mentally we were eggshells waiting to be stepped on. With the added pressure of being mutants as well as teenagers and well as on the run.

It seemed to go on forever – long enough to give me pins and needles in both feet from placing my weight on them. My black shirt was totally soaked with salt water. Max looked so embarrassed – red cheeks and matching puffy eyes. She certainly couldn't meet my gaze, that was for sure. Stubborn pride flashed across her face, indicating to me that she was rapidly improving. I let her go, and she immediately swivelled swiftly to look at the others.

"Sorry, guys," she said, her voice sounding as if she had swallowed a bucket of rusty nails.

Even Total managed to look sympathetic, resting his head on Max's knee.

"We don't have to go to the beach," the Gasman said, his eyes frightened. Max managed a laugh which sounded like a tired car backfiring.

"It wasn't that, Gazzy. Just other stuff, getting to me," she answered.

"Like what?" Iggy asked, looking straight at Max with his funny accuracy. Max sighed fitfully, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of a grimy hand.

"Stuff. The Voice in my head. Everyone chasing us. School. Anne. Ari. Jeb. They keep telling me I'm supposed to save the world, but how, and from what, I don't even know."

Fair enough, I guess. I had enough trouble living my life looking after the others and staying alive without having to worry about saving the entire human race as well. From something that we knew nothing about – it could be illness, it could be an alien race, it could be from themselves.

"From, you know, after everything gets blown up and most of the people are gone. We'll be stronger, and able to fly, so we can leave the blown-up parts and find some nice land that isn't blown up or contan-contama-" Angel stuttered to a stop half through her animated explanation.

"Contaminated?" Iggy provided, a look of utter shock passing over his expressive features. I could totally relate.

"Yeah, that," she continued brightly, "then we can keep on living, even if there are no people left."

There was a long, loooooong silence after Angel fell silent. We all stared at her, while she fussed over a very grubby-looking Celeste.

"Uh…where did you hear that, sweetie?" Max asked, a strange expression all over her face.

"At the School. I wasn't supposed to hear it, but that's what they thought," she replied, playing around in the sand and beginning to dig what looked like a moat. I knew that she was hearing our thoughts in our minds. I tried to keep inwards swearing to a minimum.

"Who's going to blow up the world?" Gazzy asked.

"Lots of people can – they have big bombs. Countries and stuff. But the people at the School kept thinking that it would be just one company, a business company. They thinks it's going to blow up the world, mostly. Maybe even by accident."

Great. Fantastic. And maybe we would all fall out of the sky and be killed, or be hit by plane in midair, with our luck.

"And what company is that?" Max prompted hopefully, trying to appear as nonchalant as physically possible.

"Don't remember," Angel said with a small frown, averting her gaze, "like, the name of a deer or something. A gazelle. Can I go swim?"

"Uh, sure," Max said faintly, and the little girl set off immediately. Max dismissed the others with a nod of her head; they moved away, leaving the two of us to talk.

"So, huh?" Max said to me, previous embarrassment obviously forgotten.

"Yeah. Surprise," I replied, stuffing the remaining bandages into my pack.

"How long has seen been sitting on this? Why hasn't it come up before?"

"Because she's six and more concerned with her stuffed bear and her dog? I don't know. Plus, we don't even know if she understood what she heard. There's a chance she got it wrong," I said almost hopefully. We thought for a moment in silence.

"Even if the aspects are wrong, I don't see how she could misunderstand the whole blowing-up-the-world concept. And the fact that we were designed to outlast a catastrophe. It fits in with what Jeb keeps telling me."

"So what now?" I asked after letting out a long breath.

"I don't know. I need to think."

So think we did, in silence. Max's face was pale and pinched with pain from her wo0und, but her eyes were a little less bloodshot and a little more alive. I thought of hugging her as she cried, and decided to class it right up there with The Kiss. Soooo embarrassing.

"So what was that about?" I asked finally, seeing a flash of indecision crossing her features. She was obviously debating pretending she had no idea of what I was talking about, but my gaze made her give up the act fairly quickly.

"I'm just – really tired," she began awkwardly, "the Voice was ragging on at me about my destiny and how I have to get on the stick about saving the world. It just feels like too much sometimes."

I could see how much she hated revealing this weakness, even to me. Usually I just took up the slack when she had too much on her brain without even saying anything, and that was much easier. This time was too much – I wasn't about to tell the other kids that Max 'just had a little accident', or something like that. They weren't stupid. To max, it was as if being weak in some regards was something she could deny. I knew that she would never, ever, in a million years admit this to the others. She had to hold them up and support them, show them that she was invincible. I was glad that she let me in, trusting me to do that same to her.

"I've been running on adrenaline, without a master plan. Every day it's just keep the flock safe, keep us together. But now everything else has been dumped on me, all these bits and pieces that aren't adding up to a whole picture, and it's too much."

"Pieces like Ari and Jeb and Anne and the Voice?" I asked.

"Yeah. Everything. Everything that's happened to us since e left home. I don't know what to do, and it's so freaking hard even pretending that I do."

I need help – the words remained unspoken, but they hovered in the air between us like smoke. So, Max was down – but not down enough to lose her proud exterior armour. I wasn't so sure if she wouldn't ask if I didn't speak up sooner of later, and I certainly didn't want to pull her down even deeper. I voiced the first solution I could think of.

"Walk away from it. Let's find an island. Drop of the screen."

I may as well have said, "lets find a gun," to a suicidal person.

"That sounds really good," she replied slowly, thinking it over, "but we'd have to get the others on board. I'm pretty sure the younger kids still want to find their parents. And now I want to find out what this company is that Angel heard about. What if – you do research on an island possibility and I'll focus on the other stuff?"

I felt a little shaken – the weight of this had to be pressing her down, because this was the closest we had ever come to sharing the roll of leader and actually saying so aloud. Usually I just did whatever I had to, but this was different. I was outwardly reliable, but too flighty to ever do what Max did all the time on my own. Too headstrong, and not kind enough. However, I was all too happy to give Max a hand – I owed her several limbs, after all.

"Yeah, cool," I answered, not making to much of a big deal aloud in that slick way I have. We turned our attention to the others for a moment. Gazzy and Angel were playing in the shallow water, looking perfectly happy. Nudge and Iggy were walking down the beach, with Nudge placing all sorts of shells in the taller boy's hands. I loathed to think that this brief happiness would end – I wished I could pause time right at that moment. I could see by Max's face that she was thinking to same thing. And something else; maybe she was going to apologize for freaking us all out, or for nearly killing herself? I doubted that somehow. After all, this was Max, the stubborn proud one who hardly ever admitted mistakes or apologized for anything-

"Sorry. About before."

Well. Maybe we don't know one another so well after all. She had obviously swallowed down all aforementioned pride. She turned to look at me, and I shot her an inscrutable glance out of the corner of my eye, seeing her tense, apologetic face. I averted my gaze then, looking back out over the wide ocean, stretching all the way to the horizon. She followed my lead, not expecting a reply.

"You almost gave me a heart attack," I commented softly, "when I saw you and all that blood…"

I picked up a stone from the sand and threw it as hard as I could down that beach, not seeing it land.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't do it again," I said, my voice steely and leaving no room for argument or broken promises.

"I won't," she assured after a hard swallow. She looked sorry, but more normal and less agitated than she had in days. Though normal for Max, for all of us, is fairly variable. Something changed in the air between us – but I'm not sure what. The slightest of sensations washed over me, making me suddenly alert but comforted.

"Hey!" said Angel from the water, a grin lighting up her face. I was pretty sure there was a matching smile on my own, maybe more like the corners of my mouth twitching upwards, though it certainly wasn't caused by her. "I can talk to fish!"

I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. Pretty damn sure.

I know so many ways to kill myself – so many I'm not sure what to choose. I try harder and harder, but I just can't stop – I really don't want to die for you.

Playlist for Blatant Stupidity Is Overrated –

1. Mr Brightside – The Killers

2. By Myself – Linkin Park

3. A Place For My Head – Linkin Park

4. Runaways – Anberlin

5. I Bruise Easily – Natasha Bedingfield

6. Build God, Then We'll Talk – Panic! At The Disco

7. Wings Of A Butterfly – HIM

8. Right Here In My Arms – HIM

9. Perfect – Simple Plan

10. View From Heaven – Yellowcard

11. Breathing – Yellowcard

12. Can't Take It – The All-American Rejects

I hope you guys like my playlist - awesome bands and artists that everyone should worship! Thanks heaps for reading if you got this far, and please take the time to review. Even those little two word comments (hey, cool!) make me feelall warm and fuzzy inside!

-Aden