The Dark Ace and his Co-Pilot, The Wallop Wrestler, the Crystal Expert, the Carrier Pilot, the Sniper.

These are the titles announced to each of them individually as Aerrow (with Radarr on his shoulder), Junko, Nightingale, Ammi-Mano, and Finn filed in through the doors to the throne room.

Princess Peregrine flagrantly broke protocol, getting up from her seat, running to Aerrow and putting her arms around his neck in a fond hug when he and his famous squadron strolled into the throne room. "Hi, guys!" she said, her honey gold eyes, her dark skin, her voice temporarily sending Aerrow into a temporal vertigo.

"Um, hi Perry…" the Dark Ace said, peeling the girl off of him and setting her firmly down on the floor. "Good to see you too. Been a while, hasn't it?"

"How's the scholar we sent from Atmosia doing?" Finn wanted to know.

"When's dinner? I'm starved!" Three guesses as to who said that…

Mano stepped forward, putting his right hand over his chest and bowing elegantly to the princess. "Pleased to meet you, Princess Peregrine. I'm the new guy."

Perry stared at Mano and didn't even try to hide it, though that wasn't new for the Pan. He stood at six feet and eight inches, including the pair of curling goat horns and the equally curly hair that hadn't seen a razor in ten months. He grinned down at her, his simian tail undulating as it always did when he was pleased. Mano enjoyed the attention he got when venturing out of Terra Forge, the place he called home.

Perry immediately began to walk around him, holding his tail and stroking it, poking him every so often, and shooting off questions all the while. "Wow! I've never seen a Pan before! Is it true what Finn said and you're a professional racer? I thought Nightingale was the pilot? Is the Blizzarian girl with you? I want to meet her!"

Junko pulled the girl off of their pilot when she began to jump up and down in front of him, wanting to tug at his horns. "Per-ry! That's our pilot!"

"And I'm the wallflower.." Nightingale's voice seemed distant as her red eyes roamed around the room, white eyebrows lifted and mouth set permanently in an expression of lets get it over with already…

Perry straightened herself, patting her hair down after her brief moment of excitement. "Oh, sorry. You're Nightingale, right? I," she motioned to herself with a flurry of her hand, "Am Princess Peregrine, ruler of Klockstopia." Then she brightened. "But you can call me Perry!"

Nightingale stared her down.

Finn nudged her in the ribs.

"…You don't say," Nightingale finally drawled. "A princess. Wow. So if we're done with the pleasantries, can you tell us what you actually need us for?"

"Wel…" Princess Peregrine said, and an uncertain grin spread across her face. "You see, it's kind of like this…"

OoOoOo

Some things were different.

Some things were the same.

Some things would never change.

Welcome to A Rose.

Is A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose.

Is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Stork has been dead for five years and Piper is gone, having formed her own squadron after a falling-out with the other Storm Hawks. Now the Storm Hawks are on a mission for a peace treaty between two backwards Terras, but since when did things ever stay that simple?

Yes, this is what I've been doing instead of Flight Complex. SUE ME.

Nightingale is not an OC. She belongs to Nerd Corps.

Rave belongs to 7blackcat13.

Ammi-Mano belongs to me.

The Storm Hawks and all related ideas and locations belong to Nerd Corps, but I make them look good.

Enjoy.

And Review.

OoOoOo

Nightingale

Droplets of water, making the dark flesh slick under my fingertips.

We sit in Perry's private dining chamber, or rather, everyone but me sits. I slouch in my seat and cross my arms and look everywhere but the princess. The table is made to seat ten- Aerrow sits at her right, Finn at her left. I sit between Finn and Ammi-Mano, while Junko sits at Aerrow's right. The other end of the table remains bare except for Radarr, who weaves among wine glasses and platters of fruit like a cat, sniffing at everything and picking here and there at the choice bits. I give a sharp whistle and he skitters over to me, half-crouched on the table where I can stroke his head and long neck.

I only half listen to what's going on.

Perry speaks to the group, explaining the situation of Klockstopia. Before, relations with nearby terras were maintained through letters carried by messenger birds. As Klockstopia and other terras slowly began to lift the ban on crystals, they, aided by several Atmosian professors of crystallography, are beginning to develop flying machines and travel between the terras is now possible. But, as humans are an ungrateful, warmongering lot, this has now created tension between the two and a marriage of the royal families had been arranged to form a peace treaty.

"My younger cousin, heiress to the duchy of Canterbury, is to go to nearby Terra Lulliatus and marry the crown prince. I'd go myself but I'm already betrothed, unfortunately."

She says it so calmly.

Did I ever say it that calmly?

I rest my chin in the palm of my hand and look at her and try not to hate her just because of her face.

"See, the only problem is…" Perry fidgets in her seat, gloved hands wringing her napkin. "Now that we're on the maps, bigger terras with better technology don't want us to band together and become stronger. We're better targets this way, separate. So they're almost certain to try and sabotage our peace treaty."

"Bodyguards."

Everyone looks at me, and I pull Radarr onto my lap. He lets out a miffed grunt and wriggles in my arms so I let him go, where he runs to be perched on Aerrow's shoulder. Great. Now I'm alone.

I speak again. "You want us to be her bodyguard?"

Perry nods. "The plan is to have two decoys as well as the princess- three different ships, three different routes. I've already contracted two other mercenary groups to help with this. You, the Storm Hawks, will carry the duchess on the Condor for the first leg of the journey. There'll be a midway point where we then switch her for one of the decoys and continue, since…" here she has the decency to look embarrassed. "Any attempt on her life will probably be once we get close to our final destination."

Aerrow smiles. "And of course, everyone assumes the Storm Hawks will have the real duchess."

Perry bows her head. "I'm sorry. It's dangerous, I know, but there aren't many people Klockstopia can trust these days."

"Don't you worry about a thing!" Finn stands up, pushing his chair back with a squeal of legs against the marble floor. "Hah! Danger? Danger is my middle name, sweet cheeks!"

"Finn, sit down," the rest of us chorus. Finn meekly obeys, and I pat him on the shoulder.

Ammi-Mano reclines in his chair, cushioning his head with both of his large brown hands. "So who are the other mercenary groups?" he wants to know.

"Mm." Perry holds one finger up. "You're about to meet one of them. The Gladiators are actually the closest thing this region has to a Sky Knight Squadron, so they were naturally our first choice." She smiles at us beatifically, clasping her hands together. "Tonight you are all my guests, to better acquaint yourselves to one another."

"Gladiators, huh?" Ammi-Mano murmurs to me. "Never heard of 'em."

"I have," I say back. "They're pretty infamous, all right. Their leader was only beginning his training as a squire when he was booted from Sky Knight Academy and came over here to introduce the whole concept of aerial combat to the Klockstopians."

"I like this guy already."

"Who's the other squadron?" Finn asks, louder than us both and forcing me to pay attention to the matter at hand again.

"Ah." Perry pauses. "The…" Perry pauses again. "Glaive and the Renegades," she says at last. "I know you've worked with them before, so…"

There's an uncanny silence at the table, and I flick a grape into my mouth, hoping to get rid of the sour words that threatened to spill out.

"Perry, the Renegades and the Storm Hawks…" Aerrow tries to find delicate words to explain the situation, and comes up with, "…We have history."

And then it's my turn to burst out and break the silence again. Putting my hands flat on the table, I sit forward and fix Perry with my worst death glare. "Glaive is a chain-smoking alcoholic skirt-chasing rude obnoxious know-it-all and the last time we met I almost got killed."

Rusty red, blood on my tongue. Sharp, salty sweat…

I sit back in my chair and cross my arms again.

"So when do we start?"

OoOoOo

Rave awoke on the couch to find Piper sprawled on top of her, mouth slightly ajar and drooling on her bare shoulder. This wouldn't have been so terribly out of the ordinary if Piper's white, button-up shirt hadn't been unbuttoned and the both of them didn't reek of alcohol. Rave's throat constricted to hold back the rancid bile when Piper moved, putting more weight on Rave's stomach as she curled up on her side with her head tucked under Rave's chin. Rave fought it. She really did. But soon the world began to sparkle and spot with white stars, the colors became dull, and the lines between objects lost their contrast and Rave unceremoniously rolled Piper off of her and ran to the bathroom, almost not making it. The vomit filled her mouth as she reached the doorframe to the bathroom but thankfully she was able to spit it out before the next wave hit her and the girl's sickness could be heard throughout the small carrier ship.

"Oh, ouch," Piper said, rubbing her head and trying to walk but it was hard when her eyes were glued shut. She opened them to find everything covered in a cloudy haze that only slightly diminished when she blinked. Rubbing at her eyes, her fingers came away coated in the thickest fucking eye gunk she'd ever had the displeasure of knowing. Noticing for the first time her half-dressed state, she began to button herself up when a lump on her chest caught her attention.

In her breast pocket was a crumpled note, a kiss imprinted on it in pink lipstick and a note: "Happy 21st. Hope you had as much fun as I did. ;) see you soon!"

Piper read it a few times, trying to remember who had given it to her and why. "Rave?" She called out to her co-pilot. "Uahh..." though she wasn't as bad as the catgirl sitting on the floor, Piper was still disoriented and her words came out slurred. "W-we didn't have sex, did we?"

Rave, thankfully, was feeling better by then. She flushed the toilet, wiping the rim with a wet paper towel before resting her head against the blessed, cool walls of the bathroom. She groaned, turning her head to the side so her burning cheek could feel the chill. "Uhhh," she moaned. "Not with each other, I don't think…"

The rest was lost in a fresh, unexpected wave of roaring sickness.

"I'm never…doing this… again.."

Piper poked her head through the doorway, looking down at her friend. "This is where I say, 'that's what they all say.' "

Rave's baleful green eyes regarded Piper with full unadulterated hatred for a grand total of five seconds. "Why the hell aren't you throwing up?" she demanded at last, unsticking her tongue from the roof of her mouth. Piper's response was to disappear and then rematerialize a few moments later with a glass of water from the kitchen. Rave gargled half, spat it into the toilet, and downed the rest. "I hate you," she muttered, putting her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees. "I hate everything."

"Wow. Aren't you just a ray of butterfly-kissing sunshine this morning."

"I'm hungover!" Rave shouted, and then regretted it as the headache she forgot she had reared it's head. Apparently the part of her brain that received distress signals had been too preoccupied with her rebelling stomach, but now that that had been dealt with the other bodily complaints she had were able to manifest themselves. "And... And you're not!" She pointed now to Piper's collar, which was smeared with- suspicious, suspicious- pink lipstick. Neither of the two girls currently in the bathroom wore lipstick, at least not pink. "And what's that crap all over your shirt?"

Piper smiled thinly. Then she pulled a thin, flat, mirror-like crystal out of her back pocket and pointed it at Rave. There was a brief explosion of green light and a gangly hand formed from the pure energy radiating from the crystal, picking Rave up and dumping her in the shower where a single green finger- a finger as large as Rave herself- flicked on the cold water.

Rave literally yowled, her cat-ears flipping to press so tightly against her skull they almost disappeared into her striped hair. And the next few words out of her mouth were so heavily laden with expletives there isn't a need to repeat them in print.

And that was when Piper remembered where she got the note.

OoOoOo

Rave

Living high in the atmosphere as we do, the temperatures are naturally cold, but the closer we get to the equator the less that seems to make a difference. We save a lot of money on furnace crystals, sure, but when we get close to land I find myself missing the time when December meant snow. My old squadron, the Gogo Giants, hail from the scattered mountaintops of the Wallops and use it as their base of operations. My new life, here on the Mercury, living with Piper, we generally use my home town Terra Felidaex as our HQ. It's tropical jungle there as far as the eye can see, baby, and most of the kids there have never seen snow. And man, I really haven't gotten used to that yet.

And I always get mixed feelings when I see that lushly green landscape begin to sink in the distance.

"Where are we going again?" I ask Piper, arms crossed and eyes narrowed as my home Terra disappears into the clouds.

Piper's voice is soft and vague as she glances over at her charts, standing at the helm with the ship's controls under her hands. "Klockstopia."

"Eh?"

"It's a... kinda backwards kinda place. Home to my clone."

"...Eh?'

"You'll see."

I tilt my head to the side, right ear twitching once but otherwise I'm still as I consider what Piper just said. "So... what does Backwardstopia have to do with that note?"

"Mmph," Piper grunts.

"Cause that handwriting looks a lot like-"

"Mmmph," Piper says again, with the hint of a threat behind it this time.

"I'm just saying if we're going to be working with-"

"Would you drop it, Rave?" Piper says, frustrated, and I manage to squeeze out (my opening words overlapping Piper's closing ones): "I just don't want her to do what she did last time!" and Piper on the heels of that: "She might join us permanently so get used to it!"

A ragged silence.

"So… are we there yet?"

Piper rests her head against the controls and slouches, sighing loudly.

OoOoOo

Nightingale.

The Next Day.

Aerrow made me stay behind today, since they were meeting with Glaive and the Renegades, but I doubt they could still be working out the details of the journey. It's noon already. Walking down the ramp from the Condor to the docks, I make my way to the castle proper with my eight-year-old nephew's hand held tightly in mine. My dog, Bruno, trots a few paces behind us and covers our back the way he always does.

"Is the princess pretty?" Stern wants to know. We had arrived in Klockstopia late last night, and he had already been in bed with Bruno on the floor next to him as guardian. So Stern didn't get to see Perry.

I answer him with a question of my own. "Did Aerrow or I ever show you a picture of Piper?"

"No."

"There's your answer."

"But Finn said she was reeeeeeeaally pretty!" Stern says, tugging at my arm, swinging it slightly, his cheeks already red and flushed from the cold. "The most beautiful girl he'd ever seen."

Some small part of my brain twitched in anger to hear that, but I ignore it. "Princess Perry said we could enter her gardens whenever we wished," I tell him, unable to control the way my grip tightened on his hand but otherwise maintaining myself rather well. "Let's go take Bruno for a walk."

"Won't he poop?"

"Perry has five hundred servants who'd let her use their shirts to blow her nose with. Let them take care of it."

Maybe I'm not the best caretaker ever, but at least I'm honest.

Most of the time.

The gardens are a lovely place, and well built. My eyes don't miss the steady fortifications on the walls, the solid stone blocks that serve as benches- and could easily be ducked under. The fact that all the trees bear fruits or nuts is a plus, but right now they're all barren save for drifts of heavy snow. Silly princess or no, at least the castle was designed to withstand siege. I silently allotted brownie points to Klockstopia for having some common sense.

Bruno prances ahead of me, bushy tail erect and proud as he sniffs and huffs at the ground, pissing on a few of the fruit trees while he's at it. Stern lets go of my hand and runs after the dog, picking up a stick and tossing it for Bruno to fetch. The dog lumbers after it, returning the stick to my nephew and sitting on the floor with his tail beating the ground. Sitting as he is, Bruno's face comes up to Stern's shoulder, and Stern isn't as small as he used to be.

"Hi."

I turn around sharply, hand reaching to my shoulder to try and find a staff that wasn't there. Of course. Weapons were left stowed aboard the ship when docking in Klockstopia. Damnit.

There's a young man sitting on one of the lower branches of a fruit tree, his long legs dangling freely. Long dark hair, light eyes, light skin. Inconspicuous, really, but a voice deep inside me warns me that there's something off about him that isn't readily apparent to the naked eye.

"I'm Tern," he says, "For the time being, I'm one of the Renegades so we'll be working together, if that Storm Hawk logo on your back is anything to go by. Are you looking for Glaive?" he point off somewhere to his right, down one of the garden paths. "She's down there."

…Well.

I blow out a hot breath that turns into fog in the chilly winter air, examining him in silence. "Yeah," I say. "Sure." Then I raise my voice into a shout, "Stern! Stay here with Bruno for a minute, would you?"

OoOoOo

Snow flurries.

I find her sitting on one of the slabs of grey rock that serve as rough benches, enjoying a cigarette in the cool, crisp air. Black, gloved fingers hold the white cylinder between each other, the orange tip glowing unusually bright. I sit down next to her without a word, stretching my arms behind my back and letting out a small sound of content when I hear my back pop and crack. Then I relax, sit and look at the sky, and let my hands go numb with cold.

Glaive purses her lips, spits out a thin jet of smoke towards the ground. That's when I turn to her, a wry smile forcing its way onto my face. "Bet you think you look cool, smoking like that."

She turns to look at me but all I can see are the thick black lenses of her sunglasses. I reach up, hesitate, but then I grab them by the rim and pull them off her face when she doesn't show any sign of moving. Bloodshot golden eyes meet mine and she sighs, turning away from me again.

"…Hello, Lark," she says to me at last.

"Hello, Piper," I say back, and I sit facing forward again, her sunglasses resting on my lap and the falling snow collecting on my shoulders and the top of my head.