Author's Note: This is my first Storm Hawks fic (I don't think I need to tell you that.) and I think I'll do okay on it.
Disclaimer: Storm Hawks and all characters belong to Nerd Corps Studios and Cartoon Network. I own the main character, and my friends own the main character's friends.
Part One: Mammalia
Chapter Eight
Laying among the scratchy sheets of his bed in the dark, Spitz rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. His eyes searched the shadowy ceiling as he breathed in the scent of the clean dawn air drifting beneath the door of his cramped living quarters. He shifted and sighed at the comforting smell of dew and fresh foliage. The cool breeze wafted over his bare chest and made him shiver deliciously. He hadn't been able to sleep at all last night; he had stayed awake wondering why that young female human had been so kind to him, why he hadn't done what his oldest brother, Repton, had instructed him to do if he spotted anybody other than him and his brothers in the cave, and most importantly why his heart had been pounding in his chest from the moment she found him to the moment he saw his brothers coming to their Skimmers from the edge of the cliff. Also, he couldn't stop himself from replaying every word she had said in his mind, closing his eyes and seeing her round, sweet eyes looking admiringly at him from behind her candy-pink bangs, her soft smile on her soft-looking lips, and her strangely alluring figure swaying in front of him.
Spitz was not as naïve as he had been a few years ago. In the recent past, he had been subjected to being exposed to females of his own kind to see if he would show any interest and take a lifemate. Unfortunately none of the females had any qualities that he desired. Repton hadn't been frustrated with him, which was surprising, but only because he and his other two brothers hadn't found lifemates either. On that particular day, Repton had acted very friendly and sentimental, throwing an arm around Spitz's shoulders and explaining to him that the gods would give them a sign when they revealed who their true lifemate would be. A lifemate was a very random thing; it happened when you least expected it. Oddly enough, Repton had chosen that moment to not push the issue. Apparently, he knew that there was no sense in trying to force something that wasn't likely to happen any time soon.
Spitz knew that that girl's attributes stirred his interest greatly, but, remembering the females of his kind, he wondered if Raptors and humans could mate. He hadn't been taught otherwise, so he assumed they could. But whatth the point in thinking about that one girl? She and I will probably never meet again, right? He chewed his bottom lip with his sharp teeth, tasting the flesh there inquisitively. But thothe voithes I heard…they were awfully familiar. Where have I heard them before? She thaid they were her friendth. What doeth that mean?
A hand hammering on his rickety door snapped him out of his thoughts. Before he could say anything, it flew open and his older brother Hoerk stepped inside. Soft light shone into the room. "Time to get up. Repton's not in a very good mood." His thick, deep voice bubbled up from his throat, reminding Spitz of tar in the hot sun. Hoerk's eyes glared out at him in a hostile way, but Spitz knew that it was just his default expression, a result of the strain of simple thinking. Out of his siblings, it was well known that Hoerk had the smallest amount of brains.
"Why?" Spitz pushed himself up on his thin mattress, a very probable answer to his own question forming in his head.
"I don't know, but it's got something to do with that shadow crystal we went looking for." Immediately, Spitz felt a little guilty for being stuck in the cave. If he'd been more careful, he wouldn't have made trouble for his brothers.
"Okay. I'll be there in a minute." Hoerk left and closed the door behind him, cloaking Spitz in darkness again. Stretching and rolling his shoulders, Spitz yawned and let his long tongue loll out of his mouth. Then he reached down off the edge of his bed and pawed around for his bulky armor and thin jacket, which had been lazily shed last night in the hurry to get comfortable. Once he dressed himself in the dark, he sat on his bed for a few moments, letting his heart become accustomed to waking up. Usually, his heartbeat was slow and measured, pumping the cool blood in his veins at a leisurely pace. But when I met Ibith…His heart sped up a fraction as the memory of her foreign, scale-less skin brushed against his fingers. Then a spark erupted in his veins and his blood warmed a bit, which was a surprising sensation. I only get that feeling when I'm in the thun. Suddenly, he heard shouting coming from the hallway outside his room and he decided to put his thoughts aside for the moment as he stood and pulled the door open wide.
He joined his two brothers Hoerk and Leugey in front of Repton's throne, awaiting the worst, as Repton looked furious. Repton, large and muscular, was pacing and his long, spiked tail was lashing back and forth behind him. A low snarling rumbled out of his throat and his eyes were narrowed menacingly. He rounded on his younger kin and the snarling increased in volume and pitch as his eyes snapped to each brother. "I'm embarrassed to come from the same brood as you lowlifes!" His voice shifted from high and slippery to low and growling. Spitz, Leugey, and Hoerk reflexively flinched away from their eldest brother's rage. "We were assigned that retrieval mission by Master Cyclonis because we are supposed to earn her respect! And now we've disappointed her by returning to her with empty hands. We were supposed to find that shadow crystal before anyone else did. If we hadn't been so slow, we wouldn't have lost it to those reeking Storm Hawks!" Spitz paused in his shameful cowering at the name. Now he recalled the voice from Ibis's radio the night before…
"You slimy creeps remember what she threatened us with before; she'll destroy Bogaton if we don't do as she says. And you know what that means," he continued in a soft voice, "That means that we would have to return to our old home if she did indeed carry out her threats…" He turned away from them and rubbed his eyes with two fingers. "But we can't do that…" Repton growled in his throat at the hardly forgotten memory of their home Terra. He was silent for a moment, which allowed his brothers to remember the night that they—
"So what do you propose we do, hm?" Repton swiveled around and searched his siblings' eyes for an answer, his actions not without a threatening air. He clearly implied that he thought it to be their fault that they failed.
Spitz felt the lizards beside him hang their heads in remorse, their long cranial spikes drooping sadly. But Spitz held his head high, an idea unbidden by his own consciousness forming into words on his tongue.
"Find the Thtorm Hawkth and take the crythtal from them."
Ibis methodically dried the dish she was holding with a soft rag, her mind elsewhere. It was strange how she could put herself on autopilot as easily as Stork could put the Condor on it. She often did it to escape the world around her when it became to under-stimulating for her to focus all her attention on it. Today had been pretty boring already, and she was sure that only half the ship was awake now. But there was one thing that she found unusual about her morning. She had woken up early despite falling asleep so late and had toured the great metal behemoth by herself. She just wandered, her thoughts not really concentrated on any particular thing. It was as if she was in a trance…so when she had "come to", she was standing in the hanger bay, the hatch closed and the Skimmers locked into place as if they were prisoners. She felt pity for them, even if being on one scared her to no end; they were made to fly free in the skies, not to be chained up. Without thinking, she had placed a hand on the nearest one, perceiving the dry, rough metal under her fingertips. She slid onto its cracked leather seat, feeling at once like she was too small to be sitting there. The craft moved slightly at the sudden new weight, but its kickstand held. When she ran her fingers over the small dashboard, she felt a tingle and breathed in the scent of crystal energy, as familiar as the eyes she looked at in the mirror every day. Then she felt the impulsive urge to turn on the airbike and rip out of the hanger into the predawn sky, to search for the young Raptor that she had met not twenty-four hours ago. Her heart had thundered at the thought of him…
She was still puzzling over that spontaneous desire when Xandra and Piper walked into the galley, arguing. Xandra looked like she was winning this particular fight, as she was grinning and laughing. Piper looked furious, blushing deeply and moving as far from Xandra as she could while she fixed her breakfast. Ibis raised a quizzical eyebrow at Xandra, who giggled back at her. "What's going on?"
Xandra sneaked a glance at Piper. "Oh, nothing. I just couldn't help noticing how…hot…Piper was today." Ibis watched for a few more seconds as Piper's back stiffened and she turned a deeper shade of red. Xandra licked her lips and swept Piper's frame with her eyes. She made a contented noise in her throat, causing the older girl to turn with curiosity at the sound. Piper, though seemingly repulsed by the suggestiveness of Xandra's provocative body language, could not move her eyes away. Then she shuddered and twisted back around, finally having enough of it. Xandra stopped her intimidation and chuckled.
Ibis rolled her eyes. "I thought I told you to watch that kind of behavior." She smiled as she said it; actually, Ibis liked having a friend who was bisexual. It was refreshing, to say the least, and it was certainly entertaining now when Piper was so uncomfortable with it. She probably never grew up with anybody like Xandra. Ibis counted herself lucky that she had Xandra. "Aerrow won't like you stirring people up with your 'freakish' habits." She said the last part sarcastically, throwing her friend a mock glare with a smile on her face that Piper couldn't see. Xandra noted her facial cues and nodded.
She walked up behind Piper silently and whispered in her ear seductively, "Oh, I can be really freaky when I want to be. Wanna figure out just how freaky I can get?" Piper shrieked in surprise and shrank against the counter away from Xandra. Xandra and Ibis both began cackling with mirth at her reaction and had to hold each other up after a few minutes of continuous laughter. Finn walked into the galley with Junko and stopped immediately at the strange picture of the two of them bent in half laughing.
"What's goin' on?" He gave the friends a sidelong look as he asked Piper.
Piper shuddered before she answered, "Xandra's a lesbian." That statement made Ibis and Xandra pause in their merriment before they cracked up anew at both the fact that she was only half right and the stricken look on Finn's face.
"Wha…is…is that really true, babe?" Finn moved forward and pleaded with Xandra. From what Xandra had told Ibis, the two of them had gotten as far as making out and maybe a little feeling around, which would explain the fact that sometimes Xandra wouldn't come back to their room until Ibis was asleep. But, she reminded herself, that probably meant that she was extremely into Finn. She usually wasn't like this with other boyfriends.
Xandra wiped an eye and her giggles petered out as she laid a hand on Finn's chest and caught her breath. "A little bit." His jaw dropped. She smiled and added quickly, "But I love guys just as much as girls. I'm a jack-of-all-trades." She batted her lashes at him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Meanwhile, Junko had moved to Ibis's side. He leaned down and whispered to her.
"Are you like that too?" She pondered that question for a moment.
"What if I am?" she whispered back without looking at him.
"That's fine with me. That's actually pretty hot." She stared at him from the corner of her eye for a long moment.
"Well, I'm not. I like boys, and even then I draw the line somewhere." She smiled and winked at him. He returned her grin and, while her eyes weren't on him and he presumed that she wasn't paying attention, he slipped his hand over the small of her back. It was a simple, gentle gesture, but it made her flush with shame and apprehension. She had noticed that her feelings for Junko were diminishing to a brotherly level. It wasn't fair to him that she should feel this way; he'd done nothing but be kind and supportive and sweet to her. She felt that, after that, she had to repay him somehow, but it was easier said than done. She couldn't help feeling that the darkness of the cave had changed her…or, more accurately, the discovery she made in the darkness. Just what had made her change her mind? Usually she wasn't this impulsive.
Deciding not to lead him on and make him think that it was okay to put his hands on her, she twisted out of his reach and busied herself with putting the dry and clean dishes back into the cupboards. She kept her mind, hands, and eyes on the task at hand, if only to block out the slight disappointment radiating off Junko's person.
Over the next week or so, Ibis kept herself occupied, making it seem like she was extremely busy so she didn't have the energy or time to insinuate herself deeper into what Junko perceived as a possible relationship. She was friendly but casual. She still felt very guilty most of the time, her thoughts wandering between whether she should follow her manners and the logical part of her brain and stick with Junko even when she was smitten with someone she would probably never meet again, or follow her instincts and her heart and try to find that Raptor again. She also tried to tell herself that she didn't really have feelings for Spitz; it was just that he awoke some deep-seated curiosity in her that wouldn't leave her alone. But she couldn't explain why, when Junko managed to sneak in a goodnight kiss every night, her mind flew back in time to that cave, the daylight streaming through the entrance into the shadows, the soft pink glow of her cybernetics highlighting Spitz's features, and the gentle press of his scaled lips on her cheekbone.
What bugged her more than anything else, though, was the fact that she could feel Stork's yellow eyes on her, following her every move. Even though he was also engaged in something that needed his personal attention, she knew it was him, and it freaked her out. When she confronted him with it, he would turn back to his work or walk away, but as soon as she returned to what she was doing his eyes went back to burning holes in her head.
One evening as Stork was preparing to land the Condor, Ibis finished cleaning the bridge and walked to the very front to stand next to him and stare out the windshield at the wispy clouds fluttering past. She felt him tense up, as if he had been startled by her unannounced arrival, but she noticed that he didn't relax once he confirmed who it was. With all the mental stress she had been under, she had become a little snippy with everyone, carrying out her duties with mechanical ease, one after the other. Xandra had tried to figure out what was bothering her, but Ibis remembered with more guilt that she had been silenced by a smoldering, blue-eyed glare from her roommate. She assumed Xandra had brushed it off as PMS, and it most likely was. Now, standing next to the nervous pilot, Ibis didn't let go of her frustration with him. She opened her mouth and asked, "Why have you been watching me?" But the words barely left her mouth before a thundering blow rocked the Condor from side to side. Every crewmember lurched with the ship, but Xandra and Ibis remained unfazed, their Ex-Mag boots automatically magnetizing to the metal floor.
Stork forgot his fear for the moment as he reached up and grasped the periscope, pulling it down and gazing through. He swiveled it around for a few seconds before he yelped and pushed the periscope back up. He about-faced and gripped the steering controls of the ship for stability for himself and for the Condor, which continued to pitch around. Ibis kept her eyes on the world outside, feeling it was her duty now to make sure the great pontoon-like vessel stayed on course while its driver was distressed. She saw a dark green shape zoom across her vision but her brain couldn't process what it was yet. Stork took a shuddering breath and answered the question that was on everyone's mind just as a spark of recognition flared in Ibis's memory.
"Raptors!"
