You kinda have to read the first to understand what happened/going to happen.
Dedicated to my favourite nefarious six-legged sea creature. For sticking with me since grade 3! Thanks for asking.
Ana, the eight year old daughter of the ruler of the entire Atmos (now just called Cyclonia) would not give up.
She crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the cold, metal-tiled wall behind her, and stared at the pictures on the ground in front of her.
The first was simple: a standard poster of her mother, several of her top commanders, and the Dark Ace (the unspoken 'the Second' following the title) standing in front of the Aurora Beacon Tower.
The next was more…alive. Six teens stood outside the very same tower (well, five teens and whatever that blue thing was), laughing, hugging, and seeming totally laid back.
Ana was staring at the painfully carefree smile on the Sky Knight's face. This was her friend, the one who talked to her and brought trinkets home for her: happy, in his element, with his family.
Her eyes flicked to the stoic expression on the older version standing behind her mother. This was the man her friend hid behind: cold, distant, angry.
Three days previously she would never have believed it. But the similarities were undeniable: the green eyes, the red hair (even if the elder's was darker), the figure…
And he'd explained. He had told her how it had happened, how he was 'to blame' for killing his own family.
"I don't believe it," she whispered forcefully, clenching her fists, "it was an accident!"
"What was an accident, child?" returned a faint voice, all too familiar.
Ana jumped in surprise to see that her mother was standing over her, the hood of her cape down but her face unreadable.
The little girl sputtered for a moment, looking from her mother to the photographs and back again worriedly.
"Ah, finally worked if out I see." A small, pained smile appeared on the woman's face.
"You're not mad?" Ana squeaked.
"What do you take me for," Cyclonis reached down to pick up her daughter, holding her against her hip, "I'm not a tyrant you know."
Ana smiled weakly as her mother carried her to the next room, the new throne room in the old Atmosian Council Hall, her hand glowing purple and the photos trailing after them.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Ana sniffed, plucking the old Storm Hawks photo out of the Binding beam, and looking over the Sky Knight again.
"I didn't know you cared."
"But the Dark Ace is my friend," she argued, "…and he used to be a Storm Hawk."
"Things change," Cyclonis set the girl down and turned to her crystal machine, stared pressing buttons.
"I know," Ana said as she plunked down on the step to the machine, "he told me."
Cyclonis froze, her expression looking both angry and pitying, (For her or…Aerrow, Ana didn't know) "That's not exactly a children's story."
Ana pouted, jumping to her feet, stretching to her full eight year old height, "I'm not a kid! And I made him tell me!"
Her mother stared at her until she mumbled, "Sorry for disrespecting you."
"But if he was a Sky Knight," Ana continued eventually, looking up at the poster on a shelf next to the crystal machine's keyboard, "how come he joined your side?"
Cyclonis sighed, turning her back on the machine. She came to sit beside her daughter, the girl's blue eyes burning into her purple ones. Cyclonis looked away first, staring at the far wall as if looking back in time.
"He…it wasn't exactly a voluntary decision. After the accident…"
(Cyclonis- Ten Years Ago)
If they thought it was over, they were seriously mistaken.
They may have captured her and forced the Talons and NightCrawlers back to Cyclonia, but it was far from over.
It took almost no time at all to escape, and even less time to re-mobilize her troops for another attack.
Atmos was still weak, the Sky Knights still fixing their Terras and finding rides and weapons and supplies. Her army was not.
The first half of the Atmos was taken smoothly and relatively quietly. Even after word got out that the Cyclonians were attacking again, the next few quadrants practically welcomed the total takeover.
Only one thing was missing.
The Storm Hawks were no where to be found. No one had heard from them since a week or two after they delivered Cyclonis to the Sky Knight Council. They weren't responding to any calls, distress, friendly, or otherwise. Either they were finally running scared or mounting a defense, the young ruler assumed.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she found when she went searching.
She took three NightCrawlers with her, since the sky was overcast enough to leave their armour intact.
She made educated guesses as to how far and in which direction they could have gone since their last reported location.
What they found…she wasn't exactly sure what they found.
A blip on the sonar, that was all. The party dove beneath the cloud layer into the Wastelands.
The sight that greeted them, when their eyes adjusted…was a crater mostly. Large chunks of metal shrapnel was centred in a small circle around a shallow pit, small plumes of acrid green smoke wafting up from small burning bits of wreckage.
Cyclonis was horrified, to say the least. She hoped- but no, there was the bright blue emblem painted on a now free standing circle of the ship's plating.
What had happened?
That someone had defeated the Storm Hawks and blown up the Condor was unthinkable! If one of her squadrons had-!
"Search the wreckage," she heard herself order as if from a distance.
Piper…?
Cyclonis herself landed where the bridge would once have stood. She slid off her skimmer with some trepidation, cautious, afraid to disturb anything, afraid she might come across a body.
She stared around in horror, her face frozen, her stomach doing unpleasant flips.
That was where the controls should be, there the table…
A noise.
She whipped around, drawing her staff and holding it defensively in front of her, wary of any Lava Serpents or, well, anything.
She hesitated; there it was again.
Cyclonis moved toward the source slowly, carefully. It sounded almost like…
There.
She rounded the last corner and froze, her legs giving out and sending her knees painfully into the hot Wastelands ground, tears springing unbidden from her eyes.
Aerrow.
The Sky Knight was huddled into a crevice between two splintered pieces of metal. He was lying on his side, curled in a ball, holding his hands in front of her face, staring at them like nothing else existed in the universe that he could see.
It wasn't what set her off.
His face was red and black.
Red from crying; black from the soot staining the Wasteland air.
Red from the blood that had dried as if gushed from a cut on his forehead; black from the massive bruises that covered his visage.
His expression was tortured, lost, scared…
Cyclonis was heartbroken, old enemy or not.
But it was worse when she realized he was talking. She leaned forward, reading his lips as much as hearing the words.
"All my fault…all…my fault…"
The words were whispered in wondering disbelief through cracked, blood-covered lips.
His eye twitched.
Cyclonis climbed unsteadily to her feet, swiping at the tears in her eyes before quietly summoning her NightCrawlers. They did not question her, two grabbing each of his wrists, the last his feet. He came kicking and screaming, the thrashing opening the gash on his forehead, sending blood cascading over his unfocused eyes.
She couldn't handle this. Cyclonis reached into her cloak, pulling out a violet crystal and focusing its power into putting him to sleep.
Back on Cyclonia she had Aerrow placed in her private quarters and chief medic called in. He set to work immediately, healing the various wounds inflicted from the crash into the Wastelands. When he declared he could do no more, she simply waited.
Her Talons continued her conquest of the Atmos while the queen herself sat on a fold-out chair by the sickbed of her greatest enemy.
When he woke up he seemed to know exactly where he was and what had happened.
"Why?" he'd demanded weakly.
"Why what, Aerrow?"
He flinched at the sound of name in her otherwise quiet return.
"Why didn't you leave me?
"Bec-" She didn't have a good answer for that.
Standing silently, she moved to the door. Pausing on the threshold she looked back at the physically healed Sky Knight. He stared blankly at the ceiling.
"Take as long as you need, Aerrow," she said, "I'll send someone with food for as many days as you want to stay. But no one will stop you leaving."
She was good to her promise, and he stayed.
She ordered no therapist for him. He was strong, she reasoned, and he never asked for one. She would not force anything on him now.
One day her just showed up, coming to stand beside her in her throne room as she worked on her crystal machine, wearing a uniform that seemed a cross between the Dark Ace's and his own.
He'd addressed her as 'Master,' she'd shushed him.
(Present Day)
"That's why you trust him," Ana breathed, eyes wide, "because he has nothing else."
"And no one else," he mother added with a nod.
The younger Cyclonis was silent for a moment.
Then she asked slowly, "Does that mean he's…?"
"No, he is not you father. But despite what he says or how he acts sometimes, he does love you as a daughter."
Ana smiled weakly, turning to stare at the large, double doors that were the front entrance to the throne room.
This was a bad news, good news, bad news situation.
The bad news: Aerrow's life sucked. He'd lost everything and everyone he'd ever cared for, partly at his own hands.
The good news: He really did care about her. Score one for Ana!
The other bad news: She still didn't know who her father was, not that it really mattered. Too bad, though, that Aerrow wasn't. He would've been a great dad, constantly depressed or not.
"I'm go to go…" Ana said, getting to her feet.
He mother smiled understandingly and nodded as the girl picked up both the Storm Hawks picture and the Talon poster and ran from the room.
Ana sprinted with all of her eight year old speed down the hallways, dodging Talons, her short, violet hair trailing behind her as she ran for his room.
She had to talk to him, had to see him, had to let him know she cared about him.
Skidding to a stop in front of his door, she took a deep breath to slow her breathing and knocked calmly on the thick metal panel.
The door slid up after a few moments, revealing the expressionless, yet almost angry face she knew so well.
"Hi," she said quietly, looking up through her bangs at him.
Wordlessly, he stood aside and let her in. Ana surveyed the room in equal silence.
It was empty, barren of any personal artifacts. A bed, a dresser, and a toolbox were all that marked this room as being inhabited.
She turned to find him looking at her.
"Ana, what are doing here?" He didn't sound angry or upset she was relieved to find, but he did sound…empty.
"D-" She froze. She didn't know what to call him: Dark Ace, as she grown up knowing him as, or Aerrow as she'd just learned his really name was? She tried again.
"I-" he voice cracked.
Her eyes were stinging, why were they stinging?
He was standing in front of her, and she suddenly flung herself across the few steps between them, wrapping her short arms around his waist.
"I'm sorry!" she wailed, burying her face in the cloth of his shirt.
He looked thoroughly confused, reaching out tentatively to put a hand on her back and rub it in soothing circles.
"I know what happened, and I'm sorry for it! It wasn't your fault! It wasn't!"
She whispered fiercely, "No matter what you think you did, I love you!"
He tensed and she sobbed harder, "I love you! I love you!"
Neither was aware when the young girl's hands began to glow as she took comfort in the fact that he wasn't pushing her away.
As it had in the past, the Binding glow spread, red travelling up her arms and his back until both were enclosed in a fluctuating ruby aura.
Aerrow gasped, not in fright or pain, but in surprise.
Stunned, an emotion that was not his flowing through him, he said, "I…believe you."
Both still glowing, he pulled her hands back from his waist and knelt in front of her. He placed both hands on the girl's shoulders and turned her until she looked she looked into his eyes.
"I…love you too, Ana Cyclonis," he admitted.
She smiled, overjoyed and triumphant. Then she blinked and her eyes scanned the rest of his face.
"You're glowing!"
Aerrow chuckled softly, "So are you."
"But-!"
"Don't worry. We can control this," he said reassuringly, "You're mother and I have been practicing, and I can teach you now."
Ana still looked worried, "Isn't this Perfect Attunement though? What about what happened with…?"
"Only if the Binding flows both ways. And as for what happened…neither of us knew exactly what the power was or how to really control it. Now I do. I won't let it happen again."
He hugged Ana to his chest, leaning his chin onto the top of her head.
"Thank you, Ana," he said quietly, "for a second chance."
I might continue this someday, if I ever get an idea.
But anyway, hope you liked it Squidy ;D
And you too whoever else reads this :)
I didn't know I could get that sappy though, on the last little bit. Meh, I like it.
And it's not creepy love, those of you who think that way, it's father/daughter...even thought he isn't her father...
Anyway,
Cheers!