Crossroads and Crash Landings, a Storm Hawks fanfic

Yep, I still own Greison, Bobby, and Torch. Still don’t own Storm Hawks though, which is probably a good thing seeing as that would make the cause of the blatant lack of new episodes my lazy bumness instead of Cartoon Network’s blatant stupidity.

Lack of cartoonage makes me cranky. On with Teh Story-O!!

I didn’t mean to let him take me anywhere far, I can sense Torch close by and I knew he must have had something in mind, but my body was so starved for movement and my mind was so starved for energy that I couldn’t think straight for long enough to refuse. Not that I really could’ve done anything if he had decided to take me anyway, I’m too weak to resist him. And I’m just so tired…

The floor pretends to buckle under me as my knees threaten to give out again. I accidentally lean into Dark Ace when I stumble, and both of us freeze momentarily while I wait for him to shove me away, but he doesn’t. He just adjusts to my sudden shift and we keep going. I vaguely wonder where we’re headed, but I don’t have enough readily available brainpower to take it any further than that. We lurch around a corner into another strangely deserted hallway with a single closed door on the far side. I guess that’s where we’re going… I finally decide that it’s not worth the pain to walk any farther, even with Dark Ace’s help. My legs try to collapse again and I let them, my arm sliding off his shoulders, and the rest of me falling forward and hitting the floor with a dull thud that I hear but don’t actually feel. The nerves on that side of my body must still be regenerating. I see Torch fly halfway out of a crevasse in the ceiling, hesitate, and fly back.

Dark Ace leans over and checks to make sure I haven’t just died on him. I blink at him and he half stands, nervously scanning the hall for possible onlookers. “There’s no on here y’know, you scared them all off.” I mean to sound sarcastic, but my voice comes out so soft and gravelly I’m surprised he even hears me at all.

He looks down at me and, with one more furtive glace everywhere but up, crouches down and scoops me up into his arms. Something seems to surprise him. “You’re light.”

“I’m short.”

“You’re light for being short.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Deal with it, there’s nothing I can do to change my height.”

“How tall you are isn’t why you’re light.”

“Shut up.” He kicks open the door and carries me into a circular room lined with thick metal cables connecting to a raised platform in the center. In a glass prism on the platform, a floating blue stone glows slightly. I recognize this place instantly. “…Memoria.”

Dark Ace sets me down with my back against the platform and kneels in front of me so I have to meet his eyes. “You are doing a very good job of driving me insane, you know that, right?” I nod. There’s really nothing I can say to that. “Good. I…” What I can hear of his voice trails off as my head droops to one side. He keeps one hand on my shoulder to support my neck but the other one goes up to brush the white hair out of my eyes. I never really thought about how strange I must look, but leaning against the black of his gloves, I realize how weird it is that I’m a seventeen-year-old girl who looks like a gray old lady.

I let out my breath, trying to focus on the quiet words floating in the air around me. I’m losing my ability to concentrate, which is really bad in here. I don’t think he knows what this place does, but I still don’t want him seeing the very dangerous things that go on in my head. I cut off whatever he’s saying. I can see his lips moving and I know he must be saying something important from his expression, but I need to stay conscious and I don’t know how much longer I can… “How old are you?”

He stops talking, obviously frustrated. “Were you listening to me at all?”

“Trying… I can’t… It’s getting harder to hear things… What did you say?”

He opens his mouth to say something, then seems to think better of it and says something else. “I’m twenty-nine.” That’s the last thing I hear. The last thing I see is him gently lowering my head to the floor so I don’t crack it open on one of the raised metal chords.

How she could just suddenly lose her hearing when I was saying something like that…

I shake my head. It makes sense really. She’s still recovering from the latest shock to her system and she’s just done the most movement of any kind that she’s had to in the past, what, three weeks? It seems like longer.

A fluttering noise from above the doorway catches my attention, but before I can locate the source of the noise a different one distracts me. The crystal in its glass chamber begins to hum, turning slowly at first but picking up speed. Rings of blue light shoot out from the center in increasing frequencies until there’s nothing left to see but an all-encompassing blue mist.

Then there’s a sudden flash of white, and the mist is gone.

Grass sways slightly in the light breeze that sweeps over the hillside. Two kids, one Merb and one a smaller version, if that was possible, of the girl who lays at my feet, are hoverboarding a little ways up a nearby hill. I look down, and Grei’s not there. I can only see the bare outline of my legs and arms, but the rest of me is see-through.
“Grei!” I look up. The Merb is the one speaking. “You’re going too high!”
“Am not! I can still see that your fly is undone!” He quickly looks down to check and see if she’s toying with him, and in the split second of his distraction she swings her board around and rockets down the hill, passing just an inch from where I would be standing if I were actually there.
The ground shifts to keep up with her speed and I’m pulled along a few feet behind her. And then it all stops. Her board pitches forward and she falls to the ground with a small yelp of surprise. I look around to see what she hit, but there’s nothing there. Her ears perk up and I hear the sound of muffled giggles from a bush a few feet away. “Freak!”
Grei sighs, picks up her board, and starts walking back up the hillside, calling back over her shoulder before she’s out of earshot. “Nice shot with the Gravity Stone, Henrick.”
“Thanks sis!”
This can’t be happening.

I hate this. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate having this guy inside my sister’s head looking at my sister’s memories with nothing I can do to stop him without giving myself away. I hate this. Dropping out of my hiding spot, careful to avoid coming in contact with any of the cables that would launch me into her mind, I fly over to Greison. She doesn’t respond to my touch. I curse inside my head. If I were bigger I could carry her out of here. Dark Ace has already scared away every Talon who might have been able to stop me, and if I were big enough to carry her I could just walk out to the Condor and take her away. Damn it. I flick the communicator on my belt and whisper into it. “Bobby?”

His voice crackles over the airwaves. “Torch? What are you doing?! I thought that for once in your life you would be able to remember the plan, and then you go off into the middle of Cyclonia without telling anyone! What the heck happened!?”

“No no! I remembered the plan!”

“Then I repeat myself. Here, Stork wants to talk to you.”

There’s a staticky shuffling noise as the receiver changes hands. “Explanation please.”

“I was about to go tell her the plan when Dark Ace showed up and took her to Memoria!” Silence. “For reals!”

Piper’s voice comes next. I guess they decided to put me on the overhead sound system. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Memoria with her, I think she’s unconscious. So far I haven’t been sucked in, but it’s only a matter of time before I run into something important! Please come!”

“Alright…”

“Torch?” Finn this time. “We have you on the tracker… thing, but you’re right in the middle of Cyclonia! There’s no way we could get in and out of there without getting busted!”

“Yes there is, just pop out of the grate in the floor we passed around the corner and walk right to the door.”

“Uh, Torch?”

“Dark Ace scared everyone else off. I don’t think he wanted any Talons following him.”

There’s a pause. “Whhhhy?”

“Dunno. He was saying something to her before he got pulled into her memories, but I wasn’t close enough to hear what it was.”

There’s shuffling and some mumbling in the background, and then Aerrow comes on. “Torch? We’re coming. Stork is gonna stay here in case something happens, then he can go get help.”

“And Torch, Grei is way better at resisting the memory tap than you are.” Bobby. He’s the only one other than Stork who knows what the heck I’m talking about. “So even though she should be more vulnerable since she’s out cold, but we can’t risk Dark Ace finding out you’re there before we can get you guys out. So Don’t. Touch. Anything. Got it?”

“Got it.” The air goes dead as they cut off their end of the signal. I glance up at Dark Ace, standing a short ways where I’m hovering. He’s staring into the crystal, glassy-eyed, with his mouth slightly open. Even when he’s totally out of touch with reality he’s ready to fight, his fingertips just an inch from the handle of his blade. I really do not want to wake him up. Grei shifts a little in her sleep, drawing my attention from the impending doom above me. Her eyes are partway open, glowing green under her hooded lids. I wave one hand in front of her face to see if she’ll notice, and just as my arm is on the downswing she moves again, causing me to overbalance and fall onto one of the metal cables next to her head. “Oh. Not good.”

Junko punches through the grate in the ceiling as effortlessly as if it were made of paper. Bobby winces slightly as it clanks to the floor a few feet away. “Well let’s hope Torch was right about no one being here, because if there is that sure gave us away.” Junko shrugs sheepishly and the two of them start helping the rest of us up. Junko reluctantly crawls through the hole in the floor, and it takes both me and Finn to get him steady once we’re all out, but Bobby manages to jump up and out and land on the floor without making a sound. Junko and Finn stare at him, openmouthed. He shrugs uncomfortably. “What?”

I shake my head and punch Finn on the shoulder. “Nothing. Come on, Torch said it’d be just around the corner.”

We tiptoe around the bend in the hallway and I see a single door along the far wall with a pale blue glow seeping out from under the edge. I glance at Bobby and he nods. Aerrow catches the gesture and opens the door. Just as he’s about to step through the giant lizard hooks two fingers through the back of his belt and jerks him backwards. Aerrow looks up, surprised, as he lets go. “What was that for?!”

“That.” He points into the room and we look in. Greison is lying on her side next to a raised half-pillar in the center of the room, surrounded by what look like metal molehills coming up out of the ground. The Dark Ace is standing a few feet away from her, staring at the pulsating blue Memory Stone hovering in front of him. “This is Memoria. It’s a chamber that, when synced with the Memory Stone, transports whoever is inside it into the memories of one of its occupants. This one doesn’t look like it’s finished yet; there aren’t any harmonizing structures, so as long as no one touches the chords on the floor we should be fine.” My gaze shifts to the molehills on the floor and I notice something everyone else seems to have overlooked. “But since it doesn’t have any way of selecting a specific person whose memories to tap, if anyone touches the chords it’ll automatically shift to the most present memory of the last person to come in contact with it. And if it does that he’s gonna notice.”

Oh dear.
“It depends on the memory, but as long as a new one isn’t added, Memoria is programmed to shut off as soon as the memory ends. If we can get Grei out without knocking anyone inside we should have about a minute to get out before Memoria runs out of collected material and shuts down.”
“What if someone else did get knocked in?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t build it, just let Grei kick the idea around me while she designed it originally.”
Finn shrugs. “Okay then, just don’t let Junko or me near it and we should be fine as far as no one else getting sucked in goes.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
The boys look at me quizzically and I point to the small figure laying at an odd angle next to Grei, wings folded partway back and sticking into the air. Bobby smacks a hand over his eyes. “Torch.”
“Uh, Bobby? How long does the memory tap usually last? Like, how long until the people inside it can move again?”

The scene changes as the grass melts away and the open sky dulls to slate gray rock. I stand on the same rock, sanded tile-smooth, behind a dashboard covered in various knobs, levers, and switches. A kid, who can’t be any older than five, stands on a metal chair beside me, watching eagerly as the crystal beams and sparks of pure energy he’s controlling through the board weave together and begin to solidify. His hand hovers above a blue switch and the thing he’s making begins to glow green through the layer of heavy-duty bomber glass it’s behind, reflecting strangely in the multi-faceted red goggles he’s wearing.

Just as the light becomes absolutely blinding and I’m not sure how the kid can still be looking straight at it a door behind us opens and Greison walks in. The slight noise startles him and his hand jumps down to the blue key. “NO!” He gives a short cry as green object flickers out and sinks suddenly before bursting out in a supernova effect that shatters the glass and sends it rocketing outwards.

Grei jumps forward and knocks him down behind the dashboard as the shards fly over their heads through my translucent body and impale themselves deep in the rock walls. Grei sits up, the boy cradled in her lap, and smacks him upside his spiky, brown-haired head. “What the heck are you doin’, Torch?! Most people’s suicide attempts are a little less destructive!”

“I wasn’t… doing that. I just wanted to try something, and I wasn’t being as… careful as I should.”

“Not careful my foot! Come on Torch, you’re not even wearing your helmet! You don’t hardly leave the tunnels without that on, and you’re telling me you just forgot it in your

“…If I said yes, would you believe me?”

“No.”

“Dang it.”

“What were you making anyway?”

“Concussion bullets. If you do them right, they’re supposed explode once on contact, then re-solidify whatever matter’s directly surrounding them, then explode again.”

“Cool.”

“Yep. And see, I had everything right, I made sure!” The kid, Torch I guess, extends a pair of freakin’

Her stolid frown falters and she bursts into a crazed laugh as she practically tackles him into a hug. “I hear ya Torch, sorry I freaked out. I just worry about you guys when I’m gone, and enough of it is completely pointless that I don’t need you trying to kill yourself on top of everything else. Just, please be careful, okay?”

“Okay.” Comes the strangled reply from in her arms. She smiles and lets him go, where he falls to the stone floor in a heap, gasping for breath.

Suicide? I know she’s exaggerating, but for some reason it bothers me to hear her say it. “I know you don’t like having me gone all the time, but I need you to take care of Bobby for me!”explosives lab?!”wings and zips over to one side of the room, to a chalkboard that, like everything else in the room, is covered in bits of three-inch-thick glass. “See?” He sounds almost desperate for her approval, and hopeful that she’ll quit staring at him like he just got caught doing something really dirty. “Please?” His voice comes out as no more than a squeak and his hover drops about a foot so he can see eye to eye with her.

Dark Ace shifts and the blue glow of the Memory Stone fades slightly, the mist that filled the room before dissipating into thin air. He blinks and on the ground Torch sits up, rubbing his forehead like he just got smacked across the face with a two-by-four. Grei stirs from her position on the floor without opening her eyes, drawing Dark Ace’s attention, and the first thing he notices is the bug-boy sitting next to his captive. Surprise races over his features, closely followed by anger, his hand jumping to his sword and releasing it from its sheath in an instant. “You.” He snarls. Uh oh. Not good. My hands fly to my crossbow, but Bobby’s even faster, a length of chain whipping past my head and curling around Torches legs before anyone can even blink. Then several things happen at once.

Dark Ace takes one step forward, the toe of his shoe scuffing the metal chord Torch and Greison are on and setting off a shower of blue sparks. Torch tries to jerk up and fly away at the same moment Bobby pulls back to reel him in, and the conflicting motions cause the chain to grate against the chord before the blue raptor’s superior strength takes effect and he flies toward the door. The sparks dance up the chain and Bobby overbalances slightly, Piper reaching out to steady him. The next second the Memory Stone is glowing again and all three of them are in a heap on the floor, tangled in the chain, with tiny bits of blue lightning racing all over their skin and-or scales and-or wings.

The room is filled with blue mist again and Dark Ace is frozen, his face impassive once more. “Uh…” I glance up at Aerrow and Junko, who both look just as confused as I feel. “What just happened?”

I look down at my hands, or rather, where my hands should be, and when I don’t see anything but their bare outline I know exactly where I am.

I’m standing on the deck of the Condor, but it looks newer, with less of the patch jobs Junko throws together when we don’t have the correct parts, and when I look up there’s a blue-haired human driving it instead of my Stork. I smile for a moment, holding the thought close.

He’s wearing a blue Storm Hawks uniform and has black hair and violently red eyes. Violently red, but not… violent. He can’t be more than fifteen years old. He’s smiling happily, but when a red-haired Storm Hawk comes up and claps him on the back he stops waving and his smile falters. “You ready to fight, Ecklan?” Ecklan nods, his smile vanishing completely as the older man’s grows. “This is it, the final battle. Master Cyclonis himself has been defeated, and all that left is to clean up some loose ends.” He gestures out to the sky in front of the Condor to the Cyclonian fleet awaiting its final stand.

The two of them turn and head into the hanger bay, my non-body sliding effortlessly after them. There are other Storm Hawks there, and I almost recognize them, but then the memory speeds up. Things are happening too fast for me to understand them all. I see skimmers and crusers falling and I can’t tell whose side they’re from. The only thing constant is the boy, riding on the red-haired man’s skimmer, taking over whenever he jumps off and scooting to the side as soon as he lands again. Then the memory slows back to realtime and I’m surrounded by smoke.

The boy is driving this time, and an older boy, in a Cyclonian uniform and with spiked dark purple hair, lands on the nose of the skimmer. He’s probably nineteen. He hisses out a message, barely audible over the sounds of the surrounding fight. “Do it. You need to kill the Sky Knight soon, or the tide won’t turn and it won’t matter who dies.”

Ecklan solidly meets his gaze. “I know. I have to, and I know. But if I can’t-”

“

“Yes sir, Snipe.” With a satisfied nod, young Snipe jumps off the ride and onto a waiting heliscooter, diving away before anyone sees the two of them together. Ecklan banks to the side and catches the red haired Sky Knight in the pilot’s seat. The Knight laughs at the smoking skimmer he just cut down and glances over his shoulder at his young companion.

“Why so glum Ecklan? Not getting as many scumbags as you want today?”

Ecklan angrily mutters something under his breath that I can only hear because he can. “Actually, I only want

I squeeze my eyes shut, but from the rushing in my ears I know the memory is picking up speed again.

“Why did you do it?” Peeking through my fingers I see that I’m in a dark, red-stone room, and Ecklan is being interrogated by a familiar looking black-haired violet-eyed four-year-old. He shrugs, staring out the window into the Cyclonian sky. “Tell me!” She demands, not royally but still expecting to be answered.

“I had to. It was the only way to get him back, make him pay for what he had done. The Atmosian High Council never would have done anything, no matter how many times I brought it before them, and he had to suffer the consequences for what he did to my family.”

“What did he do?”

“He destroyed my Terra, thinking it was a Cyclonian outpost, without even finding out who was on it, never thinking that he might be wrong, that there might be a few neutral Terras left in this war. He killed my family, my friends, everyone I knew and cared about. I was lucky to get out alive. I wouldn’t have, except my dad forced me to go on without them.”

The girl starts messing with his sleeve and he tugs it gently from her grasp without looking at her. She frowns at him. “Is that how you hurt your arm?”

“Yes. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it now without Jei to help me out.”

“Jei?”

“He was the Storm Hawks pilot. They were my friends. They cared that I was still alive.”

The young Master Cyclonis looks confused. “They’re dead too you know.”

“Yes. I know. I killed their Sky Knight, they had to fall in turn.”

“Was it worth it?”

Ecklan gets up and walks out of the room past me, and I can see his left arm hanging limply by his side. “No.” He says, more to himself than her. “It never was. I never expected it to be.” And he leaves, my head spinning as the world dissolves around me.

Memoria. “The sparks must have traveled up the chain and into my mind when I touched Bobby, and I’m experiencing the temporary effects of the machine! Then, according to Bobby, I’ll be transported out of here as soon as the memory is over.” I say it to no one in particular, and when I realize I’m talking to myself I shake my head and decide to try to figure out whose head I’m in.My Stork. The pilot waves and for a startled moment I think he’s waving at me. Until the boy standing next to me waves back.You have to.” Comes the snarled response. “You’re the only one close enough. Just remember what he did.”one.” And with that he jumps out of the copilot’s seat and unsheathes the giant butcher-knife long sword from his back. It glows a sickly blue against the red clouds above him, both reflected in the Sky Knight’s shocked gaze. An almost happy grimace curls onto his face as he exhales his reason. “For my family.”

Sorry it took me so long to update y’all! Friggin’ wisdom tooth surgery snuck up and bit me on the rear. Plus I finished the sci fi story I’ve been working on and I’m going to search the worldwideweb for a publisher as soon as I’m done getting my friends to edit the stupid thing. And you guys probably don’t care.

Right.

So yeah. Dark Ace. For reals. I named him Ecklan pronounced ‘eh klahn’, after the French word “éclat” pronounced ‘ay klaá ’, which means “success” in English, but literally translates out to “splinter” or “fragment.” It seemed fitting. And the French version showed up in the options for my spell check when I typed ‘ace’ in backwards. I do things like that sometimes for name ideas, and what’d’ya know, it works!

Love you all, --Dot.

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