More cars seemed to be out than what I figured for a small town just before midnight. I perched on a tall lamp post and watched a few of the vehicles pass by. Three black vans, they all took the next left. I watched their lights between a few of the houses, they took another left.

I took off in the direction that they were driving away from.

I flew in a lazy lap around the town, just a few feet above the telephone wires.

I saw a group of night runners a block away.

Not trusting which direction they'd take, I calmly perched on a thick branch in a tree with bushy leaves. They ran underneath, glancing at their watches occasionally.

I turned as I watched them run down the street, they turned left at the crosswalk. Another black van drove by them, it didn't turn down the street I was on, but a block over judging on the engine's hum. I took off behind the van, trying to leave while I had access to their blind spot.

I perched in another tree, seeing a white company truck with a generic logo on the side. It swayed as if the truck was loaded with not a small weight. It turned left around a baseball field.

I watched them as they took another left, going up a slight hill on the other side of the baseball diamond.

A car alarm began to blare off to the right, breaking my attention of the white truck.

I sat for a few moments, not daring to move just in case there were suddenly many eyes looking out of their windows.

Something thunked into the tree truck near my chest.

Metal glinted with the light of a distant lamp, stuck into the wood.

I looked in the direction of where it had to have come from.

The company truck had stopped, its back open.

Men wearing black were facing in this direction, a line behind standing, a line in front kneeling.

More things started to thunk into the wood.

They knew I was here!

I propelled myself upward in an effort to evade whatever was being shot at me. The air whistled a few times.

I pushed myself towards the nearest edge of town, hoping the lack of roads, and the abundance of darkness would aid in my escape.

Red white and blue sirens began to flash around the town.

They knew I had been here for a while.

They had been waiting.

I pushed myself faster as I felt my adrenaline truly start to kick in.

I didn't know if any more military units had sight on me, so I prioritized going faster than they expected, betting that they took the first opportunity to open fire despite being in a potentially sub par position.

Even more things began to buzz around in the whipping wind.

This was why I hated gambling.

But I was already almost to the closet edge of true darkness.

I had took a gamble, and it was too late to not follow through with the consequences.

A spider web of white nylon blossomed from the darkness.

"Oof!" I grunted as one of the net's weights clipped the tip of my wing.

Gravity began to make the ground grow in my vision. I flapped a few times, but I couldn't get the hit wing to work quite right. A few things whistled behind me as I began to fall faster than the snipers could anticipate.

Finally, the hurt wing began to pull its weight again, and I started to jerkily arrest my fall, although I had no control of where I was going.

I must've gotten out of sight of my ambushers as the whistles of air all but ceased. But that wasn't a great comfort as the ground felt like it was close enough to reach out and touch.

There was no saving this flight, I was going to hit the ground.

I stiffened my wings, and started to pump my legs, hoping to redirect my momentum so I hit the ground running, from there I could bleed off speed safely.

I felt myself jerk as my back hooves hit the ground first, I began to tip forward dangerously, but I was able to not tumble and readjusted my airborn gait to actually run on the ground. I felt myself zoom past bushes and flowers, going faster than what my legs could naturally could achieve.

My speed grew notably slowed as I used the boost to run in the opposite direction of where I suspected the federal agents to be.

Who else could muster multiple units to apprehend a potential alien monster?

My gait began to normalize, just as I ran into a darker portion of the town. The ring of police sirens began to finally echo in my ears, initially drowned out by adrenaline and panic. I slowed to a canter, now finally back in control of my speed.

I glanced around, looking for head lights and the shadows of people. I had landed deeper into the town. Except the "darkest" portion I had seen from the air was still reasonably bright. I kept to the shadows as much as I could, but the truest shadows were deep in patches of wild trees and underbrush. Disturbing the brush and stepping on a stick would ring out far too loudly to hide. So I was forced to scurry across pools of lamp light in an effort to get out of this neighborhood as soon as I could. I considered trying to fly again, but the hurt wing twitched just thinking about it. A company truck with the same logo as the first one drove by on a straight road a block away. They didn't act like they knew where I was so I continued on my way.

I saw a deep pool of darkness ahead. A park? The river? Didn't matter.

I turned from the sidewalk into someone's front yard, walking back into an unfenced back yard. It was big enough to walk around the upcoming street lamp. I took the risk that there wasn't a dog because of the open unprotected yard.

I took a moment to pause as a black van passed by the front yard. I waited for them to turn out of sight to dash across the street into the next decent shadow. From there, there were two back yards that were shaded, the second one had a outline of hedges.

I ducked behind one of them as another black van passed by on the street.

The feeling of a tightening noose told me they were closing in.

And here... We... Go.

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