Rusty Wings

1

"Shiz!" I yelled as I fell through the trees. I could feel the trees ripping out feathers as I fell. I thunked hard on the ground after a few more seconds of going through a natural cheese grater.

"Ugh," Lupe groaned as he pushed himself off the ground next to me. He sat up and spat blood onto the leaves and shook out his gold-colored wings, trying to align the feathers.

"You ok, Kem?" he whispered. I opened my eyes more to get a better look of him. He looked like crap; then again, I probably didn't look any better.

"Feel… like… crap…. Feathers… ripped out…. In… pain," I ground out. I sat up and tried to listen harder for the unnatural buzzing of those metal, wolf things.

"Suck it up," he told me. His hair (which happened to be the same color as his wings) was full of twigs, leaves, and other assorted types of crap.

"Come on, I think I hear civilization," I said standing. He stood up, cracked his neck, and opened his mouth to expose the canines of a wolf. He yawned.

We started walking in the direction of the squeals and the sounds of water splashing. After a few minutes, Lupe struck up a conversation.

"Shouldn't you look, oh, I don't know, different?" he asked. His wings were pulled in tight against his back as were mine.

"Red hair this time?" I asked, my mouth pulling into a half-smile.

He screwed up his face in a look of intense concentration then shook his head. "Naw, you look too naturey. I was thinking like looking a little bit more like me." We were twins and completely un-identical. His hair was gold and his eyes were green, while my hair was brown and my eyes were too.

"Twinsy," I said. I forced my hair to go gold and my eyes to look green. Then, in synchronization, we pulled very large hoodies over our wings to hide them.

After about an hour of walking maddeningly slow, we pushed our way through a clump of bushes and came face-to-face with a guy with strawberry hair and a vacant look in his eyes.

Eight more pairs of curious eyes and two dogs' were staring us down no doubt taking in the scratches on our faces. Lupe kept his mouth shut, tight.

"Hi," I said uncertainly as we approached the group of people warily. Oh, little tidbit of info for you. Lupe and I are experiments. We had avian DNA grafted into our stem cells when we were babies. Plus, along with that DNA, I got some chameleon and Lupe got a little wolf. The scientists wanted to see what happened when they grafted two species' DNA into one being.

Now, back to the present situation.

2

We all turned as the bushes started to shake and two people roughly around my age stepped out of the forest next to Mom's house.

Iggy was facing the two people but obviously not looking at them. Everyone else was looking with curiosity at the two new arrivals.

"Hi," a girl with blond hair and green eyes said, stepping forward. Who were these kids? They were tall, taller than me. The girl look roughly two inches taller than me and the boy looked about the same height as Iggy. The two looked exactly alike.

"Hello," Angel said in her sweet little-girl voice. I looked over at her to see if she could get anything on them.

"My name is Kem, and this is my brother, Lupe," she said gesturing to the boy at her left.

"What do they look like?" Iggy muttered to Fang. Fang leaned closer and started to describe them. Iggy nodded his head slightly as Fang rattled off details.

The girl directed her attention to Angel. "And who are you?" she asked warmly.

"Angel," Angel said, smiling. She was telling two complete strangers her name!?

I sent Angel a thought, hoping she would pick it up.

They aren't a threat, Max, Angel thought to me. I think they're hybrids. I can't get a very clear read on the boy, but the girl is crystal clear.

I got a jolt from that one. They were hybrids, too? But I thought all the Schools were shutting down all they're recombinant life forms. I quickly waved Fang over.

"What," he whispered, barely audible. I shot a quick glance over at the two kids by the forest. Everyone was staring at either them or Angel.

"Angel says they're hybrids," I whispered. I was starting to panic, what were we going to do? Would we have to fight them? The girl didn't look all that dangerous, but the boy had yet to move.

Fang's eyes widened a fraction of an inch and I knew he was blown away.

"My name's Nudge," I heard Nudge say. Fang and I exchanged glances and we both shook our heads. We would probably have to suck it up and see what happened.

"My name is Max. This is Iggy, Gazzy, Total, Dr. Martinez, Jeb, Akila, Magnolia, and this is… Fang," I sighed over Fang's name because they would probably realize who we were when they heard his due to his blog. They just looked at each other and the boy walked into the clearing more, his jaw looking like a vice was pushing it together. There was something faintly Eraserish about him. My delightful paranoia swept over me.

Just then the girl rotated her shoulders and a rust-colored feather drifted out from under her big hoodie. We all zeroed in on it like lasers. The girl just looked confused as to why we were all staring at her like she had just sprouted wings. You have no idea how appropriate that phrase was.

Angel stepped over to the feather and picked it up. She held it up to show to the girl. Kem (I think that was her name) pinched it between her fingers and apparently lost her cool. She didn't flip out, but her hair suddenly turned a dark brown and her eyes went brown, too. They were mutants.

My paranoia went on red alert. Fang and I exchanged looks that said, This is very, very bad. I nodded and we both sprang forward to grab them.

3

The little blonde haired girl bent over and picked something up off the ground next me. She looked up at me and held it up. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger. It was one of my feathers. I lost it and an ice cube of dread slid into my stomach. I felt my hair and eyes turn back to their natural color.

I heard a whooshing sound and turned to see the girl named Max and the boy named Fang leap up and pounce on me and Lupe. The girl landed on top of me and all hell broke loose. There was yelling, flapping noises, and more pouncing.

I kneed the girl in the stomach and I heard the air rush out of her. A little black girl was kicking and punching me and the little blonde boy was on top of the dark boy who was on top of Lupe. Oh, shiz.

I heard a gut-wrenching growl erupt and I kicked the little girl's legs out from under her so she fell over. I flipped over to Lupe's side and I pulled the blonde kid off of the guy who was appropriately named Fang.

Lupe growled again.

The yard seemed to freeze when he growled and bared his fangs. He had canines like a wolf and the rest were normal, human teeth. The two people who'd been thrown off of him stayed on the ground, obviously blown out of the water.

"Eraser," I heard the girl who was named Angel say very softly. I looked quizzically at her, completely ignoring my self-preservation instincts. What the heck was an Eraser?

Lupe was still there, his teeth bared and his fingers curled into claws. Since it seemed that the fight had momentarily ceased, I put my hand on his shoulder and he relaxed a small amount.

I looked over at the red-haired boy and say that he was obviously disoriented. Everyone's face, except for the dark boy with the hate-filled eyes and the red-haired boy, was a mask of complete astonishment and fear. Even one of the dogs'.

Suddenly the Indian boy-Fang-did a spinning kick and kicked the legs out from under Lupe and myself.

"Fang!" Max yelled. Or at least, I think her name was Max. The boy didn't listen and proceeded to beat the crap out of Lupe. I jumped onto his back and grabbed his head. I pulled it to the side. I heard a faint cracking noise and the boy stuttered from me cracking his neck. He grabbed my hair and tried to pull me off. The others were rushing over and trying to pry me off him. They succeeded in pinning my arms and legs to ground, crushing my wings uncomfortably in the process. The boy was punching Lupe's lights out.

Lupe bit his arm and hung on while kneeing him in the stomach. The boy oofed and punched Lupe in the ear.

"Lupe!" I was yelling repeatedly until a hand was clamped over my mouth. The oldest-looking girl wrenched Lupe off him and restrained the other kid. He kicked him in the head before Lupe could get up and knocked him out cold.

I was thrashing around and was being pressed down.

"She's not a threat! She won't hurt us!" the girl named Angel was yelling at everyone. Finally someone with some sense in them.

"He's an Eraser!" the boy named Fang yelled. He was being restrained and looked like he was going to blow a gasket.

"All the Erasers are dead," I heard the girl restraining him murmur. He was breathing heavily and looked disgusted at Lupe. I was panting through my nose and I was trying not to cry. Were we going to die? I asked myself. Was Lupe dead? Oh, God, no….

"He's obviously not dead," the dark boy snarled. The black girl was looking at Lupe, a look of complete amazement on her face.

"Come here Fang, you're bleeding." A dark-haired woman came over and led Fang into the house. Max bent over and pressed tow fingers against Lupe's neck. She stood up and walked over to where I was lying in the dirt.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

4

After Fang was led inside by Mom, I walked over to the boy lying knocked out on the ground and checked to see if he was still alive. I felt a pulse that beat in sync with the flock's.

Amazing.

I walked over to the mutant being pinned down by Iggy, the Gasman, and Nudge.

"Where are you from?" I asked, burning with curiosity. I put my hands on my hips and looked down at her. was it too much to believe she had wings like us…?

Gazzy took his hand off her mouth so she could speak.

"Is Lupe ok?" Was the first thing out of her mouth. She looked genuinely frightened. He was her brother, was that what she'd said?

"He's alive. Now tell us who you are and where you're from unless you want him to die," I said in a steely voice. I didn't want to be mean to her, but my flock came first.

She looked so relived that she relaxed and looked like she was going to faint from it.

"A place called the School. They did experiments on us and we escaped before they could retire us," she said carefully. The School…. I had a short flashback of antiseptic smells and white lab coats.

"Let her up, guys," I said to everyone pining me down. She jumped up and ran over to the boy.

"Lupe," she whispered. She put her ear against his chest and looked like she was going to pass out from relief again. She opened his eye and found him unconscious. Angel knelt down next to her.

"He'll be ok," she said all blue-eyes and blond hair. The girl was looking very pale and shaken.

"Thanks," she muttered. It was a one-in-a-million chance that we'd met up with this girl. She didn't look like she was about to attack us so I walked over to her.

"Come inside and bring… Lupe, was it?" I said softly, my hand on her shoulder. She nodded and picked him up, not looking like the weight bothered her much.

She walked inside with the rest of us trailing behind her. Fang turned his head and looked like he'd have gladly ripped the boy to shreds. Fang had a worse grudge against Erasers than all of us. But this boy didn't seem to be anything like the Erasers, or Flyboys, or any combination of Eraser and avian. It was like he was a mistake. A viable mistake.

Fang's eye was black and he had a bandage around the arm that was bitten. He had a few scratches on him and his stomach was probably bruised. He was sitting in a chair around the dining room table.

"Mom, we, uh, have a problem," I said gesturing to the boy in the new mutant's arms. Her gaze locked on the boy and she nodded.

"Lay him on the table," she said gesturing to the table Fang was seated at. Fang got up and stalked off, moving to go stand in front of the wall that had shadows thrown over it and dissolving into them. Fang was going to give me heck about letting him into the house.

The girl lay him down and hovered protectively around him.

"What's his name?" Mom asked the girl. The girl, Kem, looked like she'd rather be anywhere else if he wasn't hurt. I sooo totally connected.

"Lupe," she said, looking him the face. Jeb and my mom were examining him and the girl looked like she was wound tenser than a bunji cord.

"Lupe. Can we take off his jacket to see if anything's broken?" Mom asked. She was going to get a surprise when she did that.

The girl looked like she was going to snap in two any second now. She gave a quick, stiff nod.

"They're not mean, Max," Angel said looking up at me. I looked down at her. Nudge was looking curiously at the boy, Iggy was over by Fang, talking to him, Total was by Akila and they were both on the chairs around the table. Angel and I were peering at the boy and girl.

Everyone gasped including me, except Fang, the girl, and Iggy, when they took off the windbreaker. I had expected something like wings from the girl, but….

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Iggy asked, annoyed. He was standing over by the wall with his arms crossed over his chest in frustration. I couldn't see Fang but I could feel him looking daggers at me.

The girl-Kem-looked up when Iggy spoke. She threw a glance that would have melted his spine if he could see it.

"My brother has wings," she said icily. Iggy's face looked like it was going to come apart at the seems. He walked over to the table.

The girl stiffened and tensed as if ready to fight. I couldn't say I could blame her, considering we'd practically tried to tear them apart earlier.

"Small world," Iggy said.

The girl gave a bitter laugh. "It would seem that way," she said looking at all of us oddly. Did she know? Did Angel tell her? it was at times like this I wished the Voice would actually answer a question instead of all this fortune-cookie crap.

Max, you truly didn't believe you seven were the last of the hybrids? The Voice said. It chooses a perfect time to show up; I could have used it before we'd up and tackled these guys!

"Yeah, actually I did," I snidely replied out loud. Everyone looked at me like I'd just grown a third head.

"Actually did what, Max," Nudge asked, ripping her gaze away from the boy with wings on the table.

"Nothin'," I muttered. I turned away from the table and walked over to stand by Fang.

Don't be so naïve, Maximum, the Voice answered in the annoying way it had that made me feel like I was three.

I'm not being naïve, I'm being practical.

5

"Small world," the boy with strawberry hair said. He had his hand hovering lightly over Lupe's leg. Small world…? Did they have wings, too? Then again, I new they were mutants; only a mutant could have held Lupe and me down.

I laughed harshly. "It would seem that way." I looked at all of them as if I could see what they were blended with. Now that I looked, they're clothes did seem to bulge in odd ways. I guess they did.

The doctor was looking at his head and the saline/acidic smell of rubbing alcohol was enough to make me wound tighter than an electrical cable.

"Yeah, Actually I did," the girl who'd restrained the dark boy earlier said a little louder than necessary. Everyone looked in synchronization when she'd spoken so suddenly like that.

"Actually did what, Max?" the little black girl asked. She looked concerned and a little used to hearing her speak so suddenly like that.

"Nothin'," she murmured and went to go stand next to the book shelf at he far end of the room. I directed my attention back to Lupe.

"He's actually just unconscious, not in any life-threatening danger. Well, he has a slightly cracked skull, some bruises, many scratches, and a cracked rib. I'd need an x-ray to be sure, but it's softer in some places," the dark-haired woman said. She started cleaning out the cuts he'd acquired after his extreme fall through the forest. I turned away in relief and saw the little blonde girl looking at me.

"You have wings too, right?" she asked me. She looked up at me with innocent eyes. I nodded slightly.

"He'll be fine in about a day," the doctor said, looking over at me with a face full of mixed emotions.

"Good. I mean thanks." They all looked at me like they thought I would have been planning on staying longer.

"How did you get here?" the little black girl-Nudge?-asked. I wasn't about to spill the past month to them.

But, they did help Lupe, even if one of them had put him in this situation.

"We were attacked. And we can't stay long because of tracking." I lifted up the cuff of my pants to show them the little tracking bracelet there. It beeped in sync with the little green light. I have no idea how they'd failed to realize that was there before. They all looked at me, appalled. I lifted up the bottom of Lupe's pants too.

"They won't come off, and they're water-proof…." I trailed off. All of a sudden the little blonde girl had brown eyes and hair.

"No way!" I yelled, way too excited. I was the only other mutant at the School who could change my appearance what-so-ever. I made my hair blonde and my eyes blue.

The little girl giggled, and went back into looking like a little angel.

By now everyone was staring at the both of us like we'd gone crazy.

"We can get those things off the both of you if you can tell us how you got here," the boy, Fang, asked, seeming to dissolve out of the shadows. His face was impassive, but his bearing was tense, coiled as if ready to fight at a moments notice.

I felt my face lighten with the hope of being to be able to stay in one place for more that 24 hours.

"Do it. I'll tell you anything, just do it!" I was practically yelling at the top of my lungs. It took all of my self-control not to run over there and grab him by the shirt and shake him till he took the stupid bracelet off.

Max stepped out of the shadow of the bookcase and stood by him looking like she could relate to how I was feeling. Maybe she could.

"So, just to clarify the situation, you people have… differences, too?" I asked, my bliss bursting like an over-loaded balloon.

"Yup!" Nudge said. She shrugged off her jacket and shook out her wings. They were a good camouflage color. They were the same shade as a deer's fur. Max and Fang just looked faintly annoyed with her.

"Oh, sorry, Max…. What do yours look like? I mean, yeah, what do they look like? Are they the same color as the feather that fell out of your jacket before, or are they different colors? Are they, like, big like Fang, Max, and Iggy's?" she asked, talking at the speed of light, which, I take it, is very fast.

"Yeah, um, I mean no, or-wait-yes?" I asked, confused. I didn't know if she was asking one big question or a bunch of little questions. Just to answer her so I wouldn't get a migraine, I pulled off my hoodie and untucked my wings, letting them fan out slightly.

Everyone's eyes took in my large thirteen-and-a-half-foot long wings. Well, almost everyone's. Iggy, I was pretty sure that was it, was looking annoyed, like he was about to blow his top off.

"Will someone please clue me in as to what's going on!?" he yelled out. I looked over at him. Was he bli-… oh. He was blind.

"Oh, sorry Ig," the little blonde boy said. He leaned in closer to him and starting whispering to him.

"They're a rusty red color. Wait!" He looked like he'd just had the most brilliant idea in the entire world. Li'l' kids were so cute.

The little boy looked at me. "Can he touch your wings?" he asked, positively bouncing up and down with barely suppressed excitement.

I couldn't see what that had to do with anything, but okay. "Okay," I said. I stretched them out a little further until they were about halfway unfolded.

Iggy walked forward and put his hand on my wing. Just like always, whenever someone's touching me, I can feel their emotions. He felt… sad and happy at the same time, closed-in, and very lost.

It made me feel that way, too.

"A deserty-slash-rusty red color. Solid and flecked with some gold. Very nice wings." He looked at me with approval. Then he moved his hand to my arm. Um… freaked out didn't begin to cover it. I thought he was blind?

"Huh. I can't really tell. Well, I guess you're… pale," he finished lamely. Not that pale.

"Right back atcha, Whitie," I snapped. Then I turned orange. "How about now?"

"Orange."

"Now?"

He was starting to look a little freaked out. "Green?" he asked hesitantly.

"Right."

"Whoa!" Nudge burst out. She was practically vibrating.

"What?" I asked. Never seen a color-changing mutant before?

"You just turned a different color!" she exclaimed. Just then a slight groaning sound us all whirl around and me flash to Lupe's side.

"Lupe?" I whispered.

AUTHOR'S NOTE!!!
Super-sorry if it sucked. it's just something i've had stuck in my head for a while and thought i was going to go crazy. so please tell me if it sucked, or if it was good, or if was just Uh. Thanks!!