Author's note: This is just a one-shot on Dark Ace's time on the Condor when he has just joined the Storm Hawks. I'm making him be fourteen in this because I can just see him as an annoying teenager, driving Aerrow's dad around the bend….
"Rook! Rook! Where on Atmos are you?" a tall man with red hair shouted in exasperation while pacing the Condor. It had been only about two hours seen he had last seen the newcomer, who had been with them for a few months already, and so far he must admit that he liked the boy. He was stubborn and sarcastic but he seemed quick to learn and clever too. He was already better than Toran, the squadron's sharpshooter at flying, and was almost as good as Aron himself too and proved to be a bit of a daredevil.
He was also way too quick on his feet and good at hiding, which explained the current situation Aron was in. He dragged a hand through his hair as he shouted again.
"Rook! Where are you?"
The boy was playing some sort of hide and seek.
Aron sighed, fed up. This was beyond a joke now. He had been searching for nearly two hours now and no luck, but seriously, where could the kid be? This was the Condor, for Atmosia's sake! It only had three levels and eight rooms, six of which where bedrooms and the other two were wide, open spaces with no hidey holes. He had searched everywhere and there had been no sign whatsoever of the youngster.
"I give up…" Aron sighed. He ran a hand through his hair again, causing it to stand up like he had been electrocuted. He frowned.
"Rook, come out NOW! We haven't got all day to spend chasing you, kid!"
Aron was about to walk away from where he had just looked, which happened to be the hallway near his and Rook's bedrooms when suddenly he heard a noise.
It sounded like someone crying.
Aron backed up a little, until he was outside Rook's bedroom. It had been the first placed he had searched, and he hadn't seen Rook there at all. But then again that had been over two hours ago so… maybe Rook had sneaked in there when Aron had been searching over the ship. But if it was him, why was he crying?
The noise in question had stopped as soon as it had been made but Aron wasn't fooled. He knew that Rook was in there, and he decided to go in and find the kid. He walked up to the door and turned the handle but unsurprisingly it was locked.
"Rook, I know you're in there, and I want you to open this door. I've been looking for you for hours, kid. I want to know what's up with you. Look, I'm worried about you now, okay? Just open the door and let me in!" Aron said, his hand still on the handle. There was no answering reply; no noise to indicate that Rook was approaching the door. The leader of the Storm Hawks waited a moment, and was about to knock the door down when he heard the click of the lock turning. He could just make out the sound of someone scurrying away.
"Finally, we have a breakthrough…" the Squadron leader muttered to himself, a tired smile on his face. He opened the door and as he walked in, he couldn't help but think that this had better be good.
He didn't mean to do it. It had been an accident. You know, the type of accident where you try shooting a cross-bow, namely someone else's and acting all cool when it suddenly breaks… But it totally wasn't your fault.
Yeah. That.
It had been that type of accident.
He sighed, and fidgeted on the floor of his room, hissing slightly as the movement caused him to move his sore left arm.
"Crap…" Rook muttered, as the pain forced him to spare his arm a glance. He knew he had hurt it but he didn't think that he had injured it that badly. But apparently he had. He gingerly touched it, wincing again. Okay. So, not a good idea.
All he had done was taken Toran's cross-bow when he hadn't been looking, and played with it for a bit. He had scored several bulls-eyes and had been feeling pretty pleased with himself, when the blasted thing had exploded all of a sudden.
Okay, okay. Maybe he had caused it because he had put a crystal into the firing chamber that was probably too strong for the cross-bow to cope with.
But still, he was never aware of that, right? The crappy thing had then mucked up his arm, which now hurt. A lot. Rook bit his lip in an attempt to stop crying out as he shuffled around on the floor of his room.
He had then thrown the bits of what had been a cross-bow on the ground and ran. He had planned to hide in his room but he could hear Aron harping on about something there, so he quickly changed course and ended up running around the Condor until his leader had cleared off and left his room. Rook had then raced in, locked the door and hid behind the bed. He had remained in the same position for the past fifteen minutes.
Man, his ass was numb, and his legs were full of pins and needles.
"…Just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?" he muttered again to himself, resting his head against the wooden frame of the bed. He glanced up towards the large window on his wall. It was a bright and sunny day, and soon it would be time for practice with the others. He sighed suddenly, shaking his head. There would be no practice for him once he had been discovered. Aron was always telling him that he just couldn't take things without permission. He would certainly see this as a step too far over the line.
Rook swore violently at the thought, and was then trying to find a position that wouldn't cause any more pain for both his arm and legs when Aron had suddenly hammered at the bloody door and bellowed through it. Now he could add headache to his list of ailments.
And that's when he suddenly started to cry. And also when he discovered that he couldn't stop.
What was going to happen to him when both Toran and Rook found out about the cross-bow?
They were going to kill him. Seriously, they were.
Or, perhaps a bit more likely, kick him out of the Storm Hawks. And Rook didn't want that. He had only been in the squadron for three-odd months and he didn't want to leave. He liked it here; he felt that he could fit in and be accepted for who he was, even if he was of Cyclonian birth.
"I don't wanna leave!" he cried out through his veil of sobbing. Normally he would have been horrified at himself. Crying? He was fourteen, not a baby! Jeesh, he was pissed at himself. But he simply could not help it. The idea of being chucked out of the one place he could now call home was just terrifying.
He could vaguely hear what Aron was saying, something about opening the door. Rook sniffed, and tried to stop crying while he picked himself up from the floor and walked to the door. Awkwardly holding his injured arm to one side, he managed to unlock it, before scuttling back behind the bed. He wrapped his arms around his legs, trying to hold back his sobs and not even daring to breathe.
Then he heard a creak. His head jerked up at the sound and his heart began to race.
Aron had opened the door… and was coming in…
"Finally kid, what took you so long…" Aron trailed off mid sentence, taking in the scene before him. All he could see was the desk, bed and various other pieces of furniture that was in Rook's bedroom. There was also Rook's black electric guitar, propped up against a wall. Though he could play it rather well, he insisted on playing loudly and usually late in the evenings when everyone else was trying to get asleep.
But anyway, there was no sign of the guitar demon himself. Unless…
Aron quietly moved an inch to the left, and looked at the bed again.
Yup, there he was. Trying to hide, by the looks of it. And failing miserably.
Aron walked over to the bed and crouched down low, so that he was eye to eye with the shaking Rook, who appeared clutching his arm and sniffing.
"Rook? What's the matter? Are you hurt?" Aron was surprised at the amount of concern he felt for the little demon. He actually was felt like a father to him, but he wasn't that old… surely? Maybe, he thought with a slight shake of the head, maybe it was because he knew all the particulars of the kid's background. He had had a tough life, and Aron felt sorry for him. The war hadn't helped matters, either. Even Cyclonia had pretty much forced Rook out, Aron knew that the young boy loved, and missed, his home Terra. Hardly surprising, really, when you thought about it.
The kid looked up at him with his unusual red eyes which held the look of recent tears. He snuffled, held his left arm out, and winced.
"I…" hiccup, "I didn't…" hiccup, "Mean to…!" sniffle. Rook swallowed painfully and started again, blinking furiously. "It was an accident and I'm sorry and please don't throw me outta here because I like it and I don't wanna leave so please don't please-" more hiccups and sniffles.
"Hey, hey! Slow down. Now, rewind for me, yeah? What was an accident?" the leader spoke gently, placing a hand on Rook's shaking shoulders. "Just take a few deep breaths and calm yourself down, okay?" Aron soon found himself sitting on the floor beside the boy, trying to get a good look at the kid's arm which he seemed to have injured. "Where have you been all this time? I was worried about you!"
The kid rubbed his eyes with his good arm, and held his left one at his side. He cleared his throat and spoke, looking anywhere other than his leader's eyes.
"I… well… I…um…" he said, not knowing where to start. He could feel a lump in his throat as he swallowed yet again in an effort to refrain from crying. Focusing his attention on the window, Rook took a deep breath and decided to confess. "I broke Toran's bloody cross-bow and it messed up my arm in exchange for it dying right, and then I was all "Shit!" and I ran for it…" he mumbled, not looking at Aron. The pain in his left arm was building, he noticed, and tried to ignore it. "So… don't kill me. I am too young to bloody die!" Rook finished dramatically.
Aron looked at the boy, his face carefully blank. Secretly, he felt like laughing. But he knew that he had to act mad so that the kid would know that taking other people's processions without their permission was wrong. It was something that Rook just didn't seem to have the grasp of. He shook his head.
"Rook, firstly, your language is appalling. A kid at your age shouldn't swear like that, okay? Secondly, let me see your arm. Can you move it, or does it hurt too much?" he said, gesturing for Rook to show him his arm. Rook mumbled something like "You swear all the time yourself", but slowly handed his arm over to the leader, who carefully looked at it. He saw the shudder that ran through the boy's thin frame as he moved the injured limb. Clearly he was in a lot of pain.
"Don't touch it!" Rook said quickly when he saw Aron about to raise a hand.
"Kid, I know what I'm doing, okay? I think you've broken it, but there's a fair bit of blood there too. How did that happen?" he asked
"I told you, the damn-" Rook started, but on seeing Aron's face, decided to quickly change what he had been about to say. "The stupid cross-bow just exploded on me, and- OW!"
"Sorry! Sorry! Yes, you've broken it, but it'll heal nicely, it's only a clean break, okay?" Aron said apologetically, carefully setting Rook's arm down. He wondered what he was going to say next. It was time for the him to get Rook to understand his lesson. "Kid, that cross-bow did not belong to you. You had no right to take it! It is - sorry, was - Toran's and if you had wanted to use it you should have asked for it! How many times do I have to tell you this?" the older man said, trying to act angry. He watched the teenager for his reaction.
Rook's face fell.
Okay, so the acting angry part had worked a bit too well. Time for a change it tactics.
"Kid, its okay, I'm not that mad at you." Aron said softly, watching as Rook's thin shoulders began to shake. "I would certainly never chuck you off this squadron!" hearing a lone sob, Aron quickly realised what was really bothering the teenager. He was frightened about being kicked off the squad. He was clearly happy here; he probably felt safe and secure after all the chaos he had been through. So it was up to Aron to reinforce the fact that Rook wasn't going anywhere. "Hell, what would we do without you, you little demon!" he said, ruffling the kid's hair with a smile.
Rook's face registered surprised, and he turned his head to look at his leader. Aron could see several tears falling down the boy's face, and he noticed that Rook still wasn't looking him in the eyes.
"Really? But I thought… I broke Toran's cross-bow! Is that not bad? He'll kill me!" the boy said, looking fearful. He winced as the pain in his arm increased.
"Rook, look at me." Aron waited until the boy looked him in the eye.
Red connected with emerald.
"Him, kill you? We both know that you would totally whip his ass in a duel, right?" both laughed at this. "He will only be mad at you because you took something without his permission, but other than that you'll be okay, buddy!" Aron draped an arm over the teenager's shoulders, careful not to apply pressure to the boy's left arm.
"But… the cross-bow…" Rook whispered faintly.
"Kiddo, the cross-bow you broke is his old one. That's why you were able to get at it; his new and improved one is hidden in his room somewhere! You broke the one he doesn't need anymore, so you got lucky, yeah?" Aron said with a laugh, and the boy's red eyes lit up.
"That's great!" The kid suddenly stood up and hissed when he banged his arm off the bedpost.
"Shit! Umm... I mean… shoot?" He said hastily, as he rubbed a hand fiercely over his face to remove any evidence of his crying.
Aron laughed. He had decided to ignore that bout of swearing. He would get Rook to stop swearing quite so much eventually, but for now he would let it be.
"Come on kid, let's get that fixed. And we'll go and tell Toran about the cross-bow together, okay? Just say that you're sorry for taking it and he'll be fine. Come on!" He stood up and stretched, waiting for the boy to start walking. Rook made his way towards the door, and suddenly he vanished.
Aron sighed. Damn, the kid was fast.
Then before he could blink, the teenager had stuck his head around the door.
"Come on yourself, old man!" he called out with a wide smirk – the one that Aron's wife said would cause many a young girl to fall for the boy when he was older. And with that statement, he raced off again.
"ROOK!" Aron yelled, but chased after the boy anyway. He was soon outside the room, standing in the hallway. He peered about with a weary sigh. Rook was nowhere to be seen. "Here we go again! Bloody hell!" Aron cursed.
And with those eloquent words, he vanished out of the hallway.
Aww, wee Rook….
I started this and then I got carried away, I think. But I don't mind, he turned out so cute.
Aron is Aerrow's dad and I made up his name by taking the name "Aaron" and making it look a bit like Aerrow's name.
Toran is made up from the word "Tornado", because I thought that if "Cyclonia" and "Cyclonis" were from "Cyclone", why not make up more names from more weather phenomenons?
If you liked, please review! (Rook will promise not to swear anymore if you do!) Thanks!
xxxx