So I hope you enjoyed the last chapter. This one is my favourite so far.. sorta paints Stork in a different light.
Anyway, I hope you like it too. Tell me about it whether you do or not!!
Chapter 4: Stork: Not So Doomed
Stork began to stir after a really bad dream. One of the worst he'd had, actually, and just between you and me, that was saying something. But after a while, as he awoke more, the memories flooded back, and he began to realise that it wasn't a dream. It was his worst nightmare, and it was real.
He remembered the impossible Cyclonian attack coming towards them, and continuing on as far as the eye could see. He remembered watching the others take off from the hangar bay (most likely for the last time) and begin to defend the Terra below them. He had tried as hard as he could to help them in as many ways possible, (he had even avoided the opportunity to kill a rare and deadly mosquito that must have come aboard at Terra Amazonia and started to breed), by shooting down as many Cyclonians as feasible from the Condor. They had been doing pretty well, for a while. No one had fallen except Radarr, and the others were diminishing the talons at a constant rate. So all was good. Or as good as it could get at times like these. That was until Cyclonis got Aerrow. Then everything started to go wrong. Well, firstly, Cyclonis had Aerrow. And that was bad. When Aerrow was defeated they were all doomed. Not that they weren't already doomed anyway. Secondly, Terra Atmosia was taken by the Cyclonians, which was also bad, because their mission had been to protect it. When that had happened, Aerrow told everyone to leave, and go into hiding.
Well, Stork didn't have to be told twice. He went to turn the Condor and leave as quickly as possible, but the Cyclonians had broken the engine, and the Condor would not budge. He watched as the others flew off in different directions, and Aerrow was taken away unconscious. Then things went from worse to very much worse. For some reason, the Cyclonians must have seen the Condor as a symbol of the Storm Hawks and decided to get rid of it (as if they hadn't had enough victory for one day). Well, Stork wasn't going to leave his pride and joy, and definitely wasn't going to let some Cyclonians take it down. But… nothing was working. All his defences had been switched off, leaving him, and the Condor powerless. The last thing he remembered was the roof crashing down on top of him, and then nothing.
After a while, Stork got up, pushing some parts of the roof off him, and went to the window. As he looked outside, he realised two things.
1. He was alive.
2. Maybe they weren't so doomed after all.
Of course he had realised the first beforehand, but when he looked out the window into the wastelands, he realised how fortunate he was that the Condor had landed on a sort of island in the middle of burning hot lava, and that he was near the back of the ship at the time of the crash, and so didn't get killed in the impact, and that the pieces of roof that fell on him were pretty light compared with the rest of the roof that had fallen in other parts of the Condor. So that fact that he was alive was a miracle in the first place.
The second thing he realised, that they weren't actually so doomed, was because he figured that they were in the worst possible situation anyway, so unless they were all dead (which was probable), things had to get better from here. He figured this because of 7 reasons:
1. The Condor was in tatters
2. It would take him ages to fix it because he didn't exactly have any way of getting the materials to repair it
3. Aerrow was, in all probability, dead, or was getting there
4. Finn had probably taken the opportunity to run off with a cute girl and never return
5. Junko had doubtless eaten so much that he had blown up like a balloon and was too fat to move at all
6. Radarr had probably worked himself into a frenzy without Aerrow and had jumped off the cliff to try to get to him
7. And he (Stork) had a huge bump on his head that was probably fatal or infected with deadly mosquito larvae that had taken the chance to breed in there, so he most likely only had a few days to live.
(You will notice that Piper was not mentioned here. This was because Stork rationalised that Piper would be most interested in getting the team back together and would do anything she could to make this happen (which included not hurting herself).)
So seeing as he could do no wrong, Stork set about tiding up the Condor and looking for things that he could use to repair it with. He figured that if he was going to die in 2 days anyway, he might as well try to do something and not sit around waiting for it to happen. As he was walking around the Condor, assessing the damage done and wondering how he could fix it, he actually started whistling (which, for your information, he had never done, except when it was dark and scary and he was by himself in a room, but he didn't want anyone to know that), and it made him feel hopeful that maybe he could get the Condor up and running and save the others from their horrible fates.
He found the emergency toolbox, including the extra food that he had put in there for a time exactly like this, in a protective safe which was in a cupboard at the back of the engine room under most of the machinery they had in there, so it took him a good few hours to get it out. However, when he did, he found that he had most of the materials he needed to fix the Condor with, and even to give it a complete makeover so that the Cyclonians wouldn't recognise it. He was quite proud of his achievements for one day, and so lay down on his bed to sleep, just in case his head was going to explode from the combination of a critical injury and all the work he had done.
The next few days he set to work rebuilding the Condor. Using the tools from the emergency kit, and sometimes even venturing outside into the wastelands to retrieve a special sort of rock that he needed (these were always very short visits, because he still hadn't forgotten all of the horrible creatures that lived down there), he managed to get the Condor looking ok, and the engine running. He had even added more defence systems so that if the Cyclonians ever did… whatever they did again, he would be able to protect himself. It definitely wouldn't work as well as before, especially given the limited materials he had, and it was most likely it would get off the ground for a few seconds and then crash down into the larva he had avoided the first time, but there was the smallest chance that he would be able to get to the Skyside Shanty and repair the ship before setting off again to find his team mates. He even liked the new look of it, and decided that no one would identify them with the Storm Hawks were they to see the ship.
He had liked the feeling of being not so doomed for a while, but since two of the seven things were crossed off his list, he figured that they were partially doomed now, especially since he was long past his death day, and so was very likely to drop dead at any moment.
So... what did you think? Tell me, review!!
P-) (pirate smiley - review or he will be sad)
