"[color=orange]Oh god, oh god, oh god[/color]..."

Tori crashed through the undergrowth, gasping in pain. One of her wings hung limp by her side, thick streaks of blooding marring the feathers. Each rapid beat of her heart was accelerating the loss. She breathed hysterically, hyperventilating madly. She didn't know if anybody else had made it out of the facility, but she didn't want to take any chances. She'd always been kept isolated; on the rare occasion she'd seen anybody else like her, it had been a quick, elusive glance of somebody, nothing to react to with anything more than a vain longing for socialization. She stumbled on a rock, dizzied by losing blood through her wing's gaping bullet wound. 

When the containment breach had occured, she hadn't been able to contain herself. She'd darted out of her cell, running as fast as she could into the open. The sky had been so bright...

She [i]knew[/i] damn well that it had been ill-advised, but she'd been unable to stop herself. She was like a thing possessed, flicking her wings out and taking to the sky that she'd never been able to dwell within. The desire, the [i]need[/i], to take off was overpowering. She'd always been meant to fly, she knew. But not once in her eighteen years had she ever had the opportunity outside of a wind tunnel or tiny indoor room more akin to a cage more than anything. For the brief time that she'd been airborne, it had been like being divine.

Then...[i][b]Bang[/b][/i]! She'd felt an intense, immediate pain in her wing and had plummeted uncontrollably to the forest beneath. She'd not been high enough for any kind of real injury, but she had half a dozen minor scrapes and contusions. She'd pulled her wing in as much as she could, but it still caught painfully on the underbrush around her.

So that was her current situation. From up ahead, she heard a commotion. The sound of a scuffle. Then...silence. She peeked out through some shrubbery, teeth chattering, at the hateful scientists retreating into their hell of a compound. From off to the side, she barely caught the flicker of wings and feathers too big to be a bird. She stood tongue-tied, torn between calling out to the other escapees and remaining silent so as to escape notice. In that instance, her eyes hardened and, grimacing, she pulled in the wing fully, taking back into the forest. Her face was set in an angry snarl. She didn't need them.

---

Some time into the trees, she heard something from up ahead. Again. Voices, it sounded like. A long way off. Still bleeding a little despite the pressure she'd applied to the wound, she stumbled into a small clearing and looked around.

Then up.

She swore mightily. [i]EXCESSIVELY[/i]. Before her was a massive wall of stone. If she could've flown, she'd be up in a heartbeat. But now...

She swore again, then spat on her hands and rubbed them together. "[color=orange]This[/color]," she hissed, "[color=orange]is going to suck[/color]."