You guys are too nice, saying my last work was good. Maybe I was a expecting a little much of myself, but that was not my best, and I always push for my best. It's what has gotten me on every soccer team I've tried out for and won numerous awards in art and writing contests, but it also makes me a little hard on myself when I don't meet my ribbon standards (except with horses. If you're hard on your mistakes with horses, you'll get very discouraged.) But you're right, I'm not perfect and I never will be.

I have closed the poll, although I have not yet checked the results. I'll take a look after I'm done writing this.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Storm Hawks.


Chapter 6: Discovery

"Aerrow, Radarr, and I did exactly what Aerrow and Radarr were doing all along," Piper told the others. "We traveled from Terra to Terra having all kinds of adventures. Although we were a lot better off with the money I stowed away. The first Terra we went to . . ."

"High points," Finn grunted.

Piper glared at him before she thought of something the others probably wanted to know. "Oh, and you remember those blue raw crystal I found in the cliff? Well, I refined them! They had the perfect composition for striker crystals." She smiled. "Blue striker crystals! Very rare. And on Aerrow's thirteenth birthday, I used some of the money I earned to buy him twin blades and loaded them with the crystals. I figured twin blades would be perfect for him since he's ambidextrous."

"Ambi-what now?" Finn asked.

"Ambidextrous. It means that he does not have one dominant hand," Piper answered patiently.

Finn and Junko still looked confused. "She means he's not right-handed or left-handed," Stork answered for them. "He uses both hands."

"Oh," Junko said. "Now I get it!"

"That birthday was pretty funny!" Piper continued. "I'd been keeping track of the dates in my calendar, but Aerrow had no idea what day it was. He didn't even know it was his birthday!" She smiled at the memory. "I guess the next high point is really when we stopped on Terra Lyn."

"And met us!" Finn said with a proud grin, leaning to put his arm around Junko's shoulder.

"Yeah, I remember," Junko said. "My Aunt Unis had taken me to Terra Lyn to pick up some stuff and said I could go play with the boys at the orphanage. And I met Finn!"

"Yeah," Finn agreed, "only my orphanage was nothing like Aerrow's. Terra Lyn's Home for Orphaned Boys was a pretty nice place to live."

"Home for Orphaned Boys," Stork repeated. "Your lack of exposure to females must be the reason you act so strangely around them."

"I think that's just hormones," Piper said.

"Or mindworms," Stork offered.

Piper was leering at the sharpshooter now. "Or just Finn being Finn."

"Is that an insult?" Finn asked. "Because if it is, I'm insulted!"

"Anyway," Junko said, "I also met, Aerrow, Piper, and Radarr. Being around all you guys was fun. For once I didn't feel different. So of course I had to come back and visit a lot."

"If I recall correctly," Stork said, "the four of you somehow found the Condor by yourselves."

"Yeah," Finn answered. "One day, Aerrow wanted to go for a ride, so he, Piper, and Radarr took his Skimmer, and Junko and I took his aunt's Skimmer. It was me who spotted something down in the Wastelands! You were already there."

"I had found it not long before you did," Stork said. "And how could I not stop and try to fix her up? She was like finding a goldmine!" He stroked the Condor's controls lovingly.

"Then Aerrow said he that he was the son of the Sky Knight of the Storm Hawks. The Condor was technically his ship. But he was starting up the team again and he asked you to be the pilot and take care of the ship for him," Finn rambled on. "And he asked all of us if we wanted to join, too. And we all thought it sounded like fun!"

"Hmm," Piper agreed. "It was while Aerrow was training to be a Sky Knight that I started to look at his manuals and learn the technique for Sky Fu. I thought it would come in handy. I think I learned the technique better than Aerrow, although he tends to be more resourceful and quick-thinking with it than I am. I also made the uniforms!" Piper added with pride.

"But I thought Aerrow didn't know his parents," Junko commented, looking at Piper. "Did he lie so he could start the Storm Hawks?"

"Of course not!" Piper answered. Her memory was already turning back to the day they had found the Condor.


After having met Stork (and having to be examined by him so he could be sure they wouldn't contaminate the ship) the group decided to explore the Condor. Finn and Junko went one way, Aerrow, Piper, and Radarr went the other.

Aerrow was leading them along, running his had over the walls of the ruined ship. Every now and then he'd stop to just examine every inch of the ship around him. Piper smiled. "It's strange walking where the Storm Hawks once walked, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Aerrow answered absentmindedly. Piper could see that wasn't the only thing bothering him about the place.

At one point, they came upon a chamber. Aerrow peered inside of the bent door. "It's a bed chamber," he told Piper and Radarr. He slipped inside with Radarr on his shoulder. Piper followed close behind.

Once inside, Aerrow stopped and stared. Piper didn't know what was so awing about it, other than being on the Storm Hawks' ship. It looked like an ordinary bed chamber. Aerrow shook his head. "Déjà vu," he said as he started looking around. Piper shrugged.

"Hey, look at this," Aerrow called to her. Piper saw him peering at something under the bed.

She got down on her knees beside him. "It's a safe," she said. The lid looked cracked. She pulled at it. It opened with ease. "A damaged safe," she added.

Aerrow peered into the safe. "It's a piece of paper."


"And why would someone hide a piece of paper in a safe?" Finn grumbled. "Of all the things you could put in a safe, this guy put in a piece of paper!"

Piper scowled at Finn. "This happened to be a very important piece of paper!" she retorted.


Piper pulled the paper out of the safe and began to read. "It belongs to Martin, the Sky Knight of the Storm Hawks!" she exclaimed. "It looks like a pedigree."

Aerrow looked confused. "A what?"

"Well, you know," Piper said. "A family tree." She began to read. "Get this. He had a wife! That wasn't in the biography we read." Her eyes widened in shock. "Aerrow," she gasped, "you better take a look at this."

Aerrow took the paper from her. The tree was complicated with all its ancestors, but Aerrow's eyes went down toward the bottom. He could see Martin paired with a woman named Sierra. Then his face paled and he dropped the paper like it was on fire. Coming off the line linking Martin and Sierra was another line that led to a familiar-looking picture of a red-haired, green-eyed toddler with a name and birth date at the bottom of the page: "Aerrow, June 23".


"That must have been a shocker," Finn said.

"No kidding," Piper agreed. "But after we got over that, we realized it meant that Aerrow was the heir to all of this." She held her hands up to the Condor. "He decided that he wanted to rebuild the team and take up where his father left off. And since he was the heir and had proof, he was allowed to do that officially."

"If they had registered us officially," Finn grumbled.

"I don't mean to interrupt," said Stork. "But . . ."

Piper looked out the window and immediately recognized the Cyclonian border. Lots of other Sky Knight carriers were there as well.

Aerrow appeared in the doorway with Radarr on his shoulder, clad in armor. "We're here," he finished for Stork.


Haven't you ever noticed the uniforms look a little, ah, patched together? I figured they must be homemade. And something else I noticed: In the pilot episode, Aerrow reaches to sign his name with his right hand. In episode 4, "The Code", Aerrow eats the soup with his right hand also. But in episode 13, "Storm Warning", Aerrow tries to eat the dinner Junko made with his left hand. And more often than not, it's the left blade he'll hold toward an enemy's throat. (Yeah, I notice these things.) So I figured he must be ambidextrous. Either that or the animators just don't care what hand he uses. And Junko's Aunt Unis exists. She was mentioned in episode 5, "Tranquility Now". It is also true when Piper says the blue striker crystals are rare. It's in Aerrow's Twin Energy Blades' description on the website. Just in case you didn't know all that. They are little details.

And of course I had to explain how Piper became a Sky Fu master. I couldn't leave that in the dark. And Martin was not a random name for Aerrow's father; I was actually thinking of the bird. And since we have mountaintop kingdoms in this TV show, I named Aerrow's mother Sierra, a word adapted into English from Spanish, meaning mountain range.

Yup, they're at Cyclonia at last! Almost time for this story to come to a close. I just need to write what happens in the present now. I'm going to miss writing Piper's story, though. It was fun putting in all those humorous interruptions!

I don't think this chapter was bad, but it wasn't so good, either. But cleaning up the next two years in one chapter was hard. If you know how I could have done better, review. If you don't, or if you actually think this was pretty good, review anyway!

Whoa, did I write all those author's notes? I talk too much.