Rattle 5.0

Chapter 2

Flame's POV
So, yeah. It may seem kind of unlikely that the five of us (me, Rascal, Emerald, Thea, and Bob) would become friends, so let me explain how it got that way. Basically, if you're the last of your kind then it's best to work together then... To not work together. I think there's a saying, but I can't remember what it is right now. So I'll make up my own.

If you are the last of your kind and you have superpowers then work together and be friends or you will die and the end of the world will ensue. That's pretty much it. I mean, we have disagreements sometimes, but we've had to learn to work together.

There used to be six of us. Now we are five. We don't talk about the sixth snake, the dead one. We just forget, purge them from our memory, and move on. Their death taught us what happens if we don't work together. I think that's enough explanation. Back to the present.

Warm, bright sunlight floods our tiny den, immediately waking us. It reflects brightly off of Bob's purple scales, hurting my eyes.

"Come on, wake up." Bob tells us, nudging us each. "Time to keep running! Another fun day of hiding!"

"Seriously? They have bases like, everywhere! For all we know we're running away from one trap right into another!" Thea says. Bob gives the diamondback a sharp look, then responds,

"Do you have a better idea? We need to run. It's what we always do." She silently shakes her head that no, she doesn't have a better idea. There's a reason Bob is leader. A few reasons, actually.

One, he's smart and always does what's best for our group. Two, he's a natural leader, even though Rascal thinks that he would be a better leader. Three, he has the most power out of all of us. I'm the only one who doesn't have powers yet. Emerald got her powers like a week ago. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get my powers.

      On the run again. How it always is. It wears you down sometimes, I'll admit. We've never really had a place to call home. Honestly, the longest I can recall us ever staying in the same place is 6 days, and they caught us. No where is safe for us.

      We race across the forest floor, Bob slightly in the lead, but staying at our pace like the kind leader he is. The blanket of dead pine needles that covers the forest floor tickles the soft scales of my underbelly as I glide over the rich earth. I spot a single crow overhead, flying across the dreary and cloudless sky. And then I hear the dreaded noise, something that stops us all in our tracks like it does every time.

     "WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WE NEED TO STOP!" Rascal shouts. "MY HAT FELL OFF AGAIN!!!!!" We manage to all sigh at the exact same time.

      "Again? Rascal, we need to get away from that Hunter base, you can't make us stop every time your stupid hat falls off." Bob says, clearly exasperated. That actually goes unsaid, but blocking makes it sound better. Rascal turns murderous eyes on Bob.

      "What did you say?" He asks in a deadly calm voice.

     "I. Said. To. Stop. Complaining. About. Your. Stupid. Hat." Bob shoots back, punctuating each word with a period to further prove his point.

      "I will give you one chance to take
back calling my beautiful hat stupid." Rascal says. I should probably intervene before things get ugly and say something about how stupid it is to be fighting about a hat, but this is just too damn entertaining. Apparently everyone else agrees, because no one is saying anything.

      "I'm not taking back anything. You need to forget about that stupid hat. Our lives are more important, don't you think?" Bob emphasizes the word stupid. I wince. Yeah, at this point I just don't want to risk getting in between them. About time they sorted out the hat issue anyways.

      "HOW DARE YOU!" Rascal roars, growing to twice his original size. "MY HAT IS MORE MAGNIFICENT AND BEAUTIFUL THAN YOU COULD EVER DREAM TO BE, BOB! JUST ACCEPT THE AMAZINGNESS OF MY HAT AND NOBODY NEEDS TO GET HURT."   Bob turns bright red, but does take some calming breaths because he's supposed to be the responsible one. He fails this time.

        "You have problems man. You can bear to part with your fricking hat! It has nearly gotten us killed on multiple occasions!" Rascal looks truly hurt by this, but his confidence and anger quickly returns.

        " My hat is who I am! We need to find it!" He seems desperate now. Before Bob can speak, Emerald breaks in.

       "Please stop arguing. It's wasting time, and we all know that Bob can go grab Rascal's hat and be back in the blink of an eye. And don't give me that look Bob, we both know how important that hat is to Rascal. It represents him." 

    He just sighs, fades back to his normal bright purple skin, and zooms of, returning a second later with Rascal's hat.

   "There now, was that so hard?" Rascal asks Bob, smirking mockingly as he slips on his tiny cowboy hat that was to small for his head. Not saying he had a big head or anything... Oh, who am I kidding he has like the biggest head in the history of all heads in the known universe. I can see it now, the big-headed alien competitors strutting on in expecting to win the big head competition, and then they see Rascal's head and turn tail and run.

     Bob frowns, but remains silent. Peace is a delicate thing, and no doubt he doesn't want to risk starting a true War of the Hats. Thea rolls her eyes.

      "Can we get going now? Cuz that killed so much of our time and, in case you might've forgotten, we probably have Hunters on our trail right now!"

      "Yeah, we should probably pay attention to that..." I mutter, deciding to tune in to the conversation and actually pay attention. The word tune sounds a lot like the word tuna... 

        And then we're off again. Speeding away from the Hunter base, a journey we would probably be on for many days before we felt safe enough to rest for more than a day. Sadly, we spend many days on the run like this. It was just life. It had its good moments, it had its bad ones, and there wasn't anything we could to about it. We just had to except that whatever the Hunters threw at us, we could find a way to pull through. We always did. We always had to.

So that wasn't exactly 1,000 words, actually over a hundred more, so that shattered my dreams of making every chapter have to perfect amount of words... So yeah. I still have zero reads, which in a way makes me kinda sad but it's fine. However I need to end on an even number of words it'll be 1200 so yeah ready... And... Almost...

-Georgia