Assassin Crow Evolution

Chapter 6: First flight

For a crow, Jimmy was on the right side of the BMI measurements.

At thirty days old, he weighed half a kilo, or a bit over a pound. He was considered a bit overweight. He was big, and subconsciously, this was why he was nervous to drop from the nest. He feared for his life.

Nevertheless, the fear of falling to death didn’t stop him. He hopped out of the nest, and started flapping his wings aggressively!

"Don’t flap too much, just glide!" He could hear his mother shout behind him.

Jimmy bent his head to the right, a solid 180° to look behind him. He saw his mother flying after him, and she seemed concerned.

"Relax, my chubby warrior!" She exclaimed.

Jimmy was plummeting through the air like a rock, as if he didn’t have any wings at all. Much like a child who thrashed his arms against the density of the water in a pool, his wings pierced through the air, working against him, rather than with him. His aggressive, muscle-backed flapping failed to keep him afloat.

Panicking, and with the roof of the building being only a few meters below him now, his mother’s caws, her instructions, thundered through his mind at last.

"Glide..." he took a deep breath.

As a last effort to keep himself from becoming a pancake on a rooftop, he stretched his wings wide, and closed his eyes.

Five seconds passed.

"I didn’t d-die?" He stuttered, his voice mousy.

Then, he opened his eyes.

"Oh, fuck!" He screeched.

Another building, also made of rock, was in front of him, several meters away, and he was beaming towards it like a fighter jet.

Desperate for a quick solution, he pulled his wings close to his body, and plummeted again.

The time it would have taken him to hit the stone wall in front of him halved. He had a few seconds to experiment with his wings now, so as he sought a solution, he only stretched out his right wing, and in turn, his plummeting body made an 80° turn to the left.

It was enough not to hit the wall head-first, but he still slid across it. His right wing slid across the wall, and instinctually, he pulled his wing back, and spun across the air like an ice-skater who made a fatal mistake.

At some point, he twirled around enough that he actually ran across the vertical wall, and this was enough for him to regain his balance.

He jumped away from the wall, and opened his wings a few feet before he hit the ground.

At the end, he hit the ground with his chest.

Quickly after, he stood on his feet.

"Hell yeah!" He celebrated, "I did it!"

"The landing could’ve been smoother, but at least I didn’t fall through the roof... what am I saying? The roof was made out of stone, so I wouldn’t fall through it." he further grumbled.

[You’ve successfully completed task 6, good job! 67 system points have been added to your balance.]

[Total points = 567]

"Eh?" he shook his head. "I don’t care about that right now. Tell me when I’m close to 700 points."

Shortly after, his mother landed behind him.

Panicking, she hollered, "Are you okay?!"

"Yes," he nodded, "I couldn’t stick the landing, mother, but I’m good."

"Oh," she sighed in relief, "Glide next time."

Jimmy was a bit bruised, but he was otherwise okay. He could still flap his wings, and this was the most positive sign he could get out of that awful crash landing.

With that said, he got off the ground, and slowly flew above the building, and aimed to get back to his family nest.

His ascension towards the nest was clumsy. He kept swerving left and right, nearly hitting the walls of the alleyway around him a couple of times.

Other than that, he flew forward for a while to gain momentum, because otherwise he couldn’t fly high enough to get to his nest.

What helped him eventually was his wingspan.

Stretching at 90 cm (35 inches) from wing to wing, his slowly-gained momentum slowly turned into an admirable speed. He flew upwards slowly, yes, but once he got above the buildings, making any mistakes was hard, even for him. It was hard to crash against anything high up in the air.

Jimmy flew around for a few minutes, testing out what he was capable of.

His mother flew behind him. Later on, he also saw his father.

"Oh, lunch time!" He chirped.

After that, he finally headed towards the nest.

Once more, he crash landed. He flew into the nest too fast, and slid across it like a crashing commercial plane.

"Damn it!" He said, "I gotta learn how to land."

After that point, he and the siblings ate. His father brought them a rat bigger than anyone in the family.

Jimmy did not know how his father carried this fat rat. It had to weigh more than everyone in his family collectively!

Regardless, he enjoyed the fresh meat quite a bit. He could eat raw food himself as of recently. His parents didn’t have to soften it up for him, so it was a far more enjoyable meal.

They all ate until they were full, and afterwards, his father stood in front of him and his siblings with a stern look on his face.

"Today, you learned how to fly, my sons and daughters. It pains me to say this, but I cannot hunt for you anymore." He expressed, his feathered face unchanging, "It is best for all of you if you learn how to hunt for yourselves. You may have little ones of your own in the future, and I can’t be there to feed them for you. I’m getting old."

"Build nests, build connections with fellow crows." He further said, "Us crows must stick together, yes, but at the end of the day, we all need a nest of our own. That’s how my father treated me, and that’s how his father treated him, and so on, and so on. I only want what’s best for you. Go out there, and learn how to hunt."

Jimmy and his siblings nodded in union. Neither of them opposed anything their father said, and they loved him perhaps more than they did before.

After the talk, Jimmy and his siblings looked at each other, and seemingly shared the same idea.

Jimmy cleared the air, and asked them directly, "Do you guys want to go hunting with me later? I think we can kill a rat together."

Their siblings nodded. They laid the foundation of their plan, and they weren’t planning to go bug-hunting either. They craved meat, because as of today, they recognized it as the greatest delicacy there was out there!