a/n: This idea hit me like a bolt of lightning. It came so fast that I could do nothing else but write it down before it escaped.
My ideas about the origin of Master Cyclonis are not that original, at least in my opinion, but thats not what this is about. :)
I dont own Storm Hawks. Enjoy.
He didn't used to be allowed in there, especially at night.
Her father had forbid it; he said that she needed uninterrupted rest when the scientists weren't doing their jobs, with their fingers clicking away at their screens and keyboards, monitoring what needed to be surveyed and regulating the temperature of the water.
The Dark Ace's bloody scarlet eyes stared at the sphere filled with liquid, the ethereal goddess it contained.
Inside the liquidated glass chamber floated a young girl in her early teens. Her skin was as pale as the moon and delicate as a spider's web. A body so perfect and feminine hugged itself like a baby still in the womb. What would later be a face of quiet fury and harsh creases was now a beautiful expression of pure peaceful slumber. Hair of black and dark violet occasionally caressed her cheek before the recycling current of water inside the pod pushed it elsewhere once again.
Master Cyclonis's wife had been unable to bear a child. They tried and tried, sometimes to the point of exhaustion and even injury. But his wife remained barren.
Or he remained sterile.
Either way, he rid himself of the woman by plunging his staff with a convenient oblivion crystal attached right through her heart so he wouldn't have to stare at her face, always reminding him of how heirless he was.
Such a primitive and ancient world we live in, Dark Ace often thought to himself. So much technology, so many advances, machinery to deal with everything that humans were tired of dealing with on their own.
Yet we still slice off our wives' heads if they don't give us a child.
"I am growing old, Dark Ace." Master Cyclonis said.
Dark Ace stared blankly at this man who he had been forced physically and mentally to serve, as well as his regime. This man had taken Dark Ace's life and remolded it with his bare ugly old wrinkled hands, turned it into something hideous and fully of suffering.
But despite the grisly process of how he came to Cyclonia, somehow Dark Ace was no robot.
"What do you mean, sire?" He replied.
"I'm going to die soon, I can feel it in my old bones."
Dark Ace gazed, wondering what the old man was getting at.
"But fear not, my boy." His master said. "I will have an heir soon, very soon."
"An heir?" Dark Ace repeated lamely, careful not to show any amount of emotion in his voice. Master Cyclonis had worked hard to try and break his spirit, and there was no way that Dark Ace could reveal to him that he had done no such thing. Just follow his orders, and he could keep his persona in tact.
No matter how much darkness they pushed upon him, he would never truly surrender.
The building started. The construction of Project Lark started slowly, but the closer to death Master Cyclonis came, the more screeches could be heard from him yelling at his scientists to work faster. From a single sperm and artificially induced meiosis, a life was created. In what seemed like no time, the chamber was filled with water, and was already beginning to materialize flesh and bone. For the first few weeks, nothing but a lifeless skeleton floated in the turquoise water of the sphere. Then came the veins; blue and red, decorating the calcium like ornaments of bad taste. The muscles; bloody and thin, pasted against the bones.
It was only when the skin began to form that Dark Ace went out of his way to look into the room in which this creature was being spawned. It now resembled a person, and attachment could be made, no matter how small. The Dark Ace tried to pay no mind to his master's project, and could describe the idea as nothing more or less than a perverse abomination against nature. But when that face, that impiously beautiful face made its home upon the unidentifiable bone and muscle, Dark Ace looked upon it and felt the tempest of rage and suppressed sadism inside of him cease.
He felt peace. But it was a hurtful peace. A peace brought upon him that he knew he could only obtain half of it, never the whole of it.
Soon after his daughter's completion, his aging master laid in his bed, breathing his last few breaths. Unsurprisingly, Dark Ace was one of the subjects who were by his side.
"Dark Ace, my boy…" Master Cyclonis said, his voice disgusting and raspy.
"Yes, my liege?" Dark Ace said coldly. He was not sorry for this day. He truly wasn't.
"Take care of my heir…she will be born soon."
His master brought a hand up to his mouth and coughed noisily.
"If only…if only I could live to see her emerge…"
Moments later the life left his master's pale eyes. Dressing him in his best robes and placing him on a smooth platform, Dark Ace watched as his master's servants put him into a cremation hollow and let the flames envelope his body. The smoke rose up into the heavens, but Dark Ace was sure that his master's soul was burning in Hell.
He was now free to stare at the girl all he wanted. It would be any day, any hour, any moment when the girl would burst free from her synthetic amniotic sack and she would not be a floating dream any longer.
Tonight, the leader of the Talons moved his crimson eyes up and down the girl's body for the umpteenth time, lighted by the aquamarine glow of her watery sanctuary. Her body was thin, almost childlike if it weren't for the soft curve of developing breasts gently brought forth.
As much of a little girl as she looked, she had experienced no childhood. She had been grown as a young teenager, looking no more than fourteen.
Bringing his hand forward to touch the smooth untainted glass, Dark Ace pressed his forehead against it, staring longingly at the fallen angel inside. His hate for this place, his forced assimilation, and his profession had dwindled. He accepted all; that he was now the antagonist and he was finally going to start enjoying it. His master was dead, and although this girl inside the sphere would become his new master, he welcomed it. He didn't care that she was so many years younger than him. She offered him nothing, and took nothing from him. He was in love, in love with a virtual infant.
Dark Ace pressed his lips upon the glass, trying his hardest to transfer his feelings to the child through the thick barrier of water, trying to make her feel his kiss. He would've died inside if it weren't for her, this porcelain seraph that would bring peril upon Atmos once she had hatched. He would've been consumed by all the factors in this place that he thought was ruining his existence. Later he would realize that those factors will make him nearly unbeatable in every sense. Once his new Master Cyclonis hatched, he would be there to hold her cold shivering naked form as she took her first breath. When that would be, he didn't know. He prayed that it was soon, but he didn't know. But he could wait.
Oh how he could wait.