The second night came around with a proper dinner that this time that we didn't skip, although for some reason Hannah wasn't hungry. Mind you, we don't really know because she never showed up.
Bitch.
Anyway, we had a more edible dinner of pancakes with purple duraberries. I could sense a pattern, despite having only done two meals: we were gonna be eating sugary stuff while on the Condor. Unless someone pulled out pasta or something similar to it.
Afterwards, we all turned in. I was out of it before Hannah got back to our bunk-room.
Lucky.
What?
At least you slept well for the most part.
On the bridge, I sat up trying not to scream, and in the process I ended up head-butting the person sitting on the sofa next to me. As I rubbed my forehead with a grimace, I realised the victim was Aerrow. Shiiitshitshitshit.
"Okay, ow."
"Oh Aerrow, I'm sorry. Wait, why are you sitting on the sofa when I'm trying to sleep anyway?"
"I was in the kitchen, and you sounded like you were having a bad dream, so I came to check on you and then the whole head-butting thing happened…"
There was silence for a moment, before a lamp flicked on beside me. Aerrow was now crouched down in front me, wearing a frown of concern. He brushed a stray piece of hair off my face before asking, "What happened?"
"It was dark, but there was a red haze. I was standing on a hill. I looked down and saw the worlds on fire, all of them. I saw Hannah and Sam, fighting side by side. I saw you guys, I watched you burn. I watched everything burn, and then I could feel it, it felt so real. I watched as you guys, both dead and alive turned towards me, and slowly set me on fire…I was killed by the one thing I thought I'd never have to worry about I felt the smoke in my lungs begin to suffocate me", I explained, no expression in my voice. Every time I blinked, I could see flashes from the nightmare I'd had, and they sent cold shivers up my spine.
Aerrow had moved once again to sit beside me, he pulled me into him and we sat there for a while before he said,"Stand up for a second."
I stood up and he crawled onto the sofa, taking my hand and pulling me back. I pulled the blanket over the both of us and turned towards him.
"Thank you." I kissed him on the cheek before snuggling up to him and falling back into a nightmare-free sleep, safe and warm.
And you're upset about that?!
Creepy dreams, man! And I kinda headbutted him. In the face. His perfect, gorgeous face.
Ah. That's…nice, sweetie.
Things were showing no sign of settling down once day four swung around. Day three had been a hassle of training, Charlotte firing flame loops and pulling off loop-de-loop on fire (so, same thing really). She'd also tried to imitate Aerrow's electric blue-corkscrew-of-death, but that doesn't really work with one driver on a skimmer, especially in mid-air. Junko caught her and I caught her skimmer. I meanwhile tried to pull of the 'Lightning Claw', despite the difference in choice of weapons. It was…mildly successful? I brought down a good lightning strike from miniature storm clouds, but at the same time the recoil knocked me back down into my skimmer.
We were getting trained in the more casual fighting style of the Storm Hawks, which showed real difference from the regimental training of Cyclonia. For one, we actually got to sleep in. I was getting better crystal training from Piper, who showed similar curiousity to crystal combinations. She had the kit to stop stuff from blowing up too much; a great benefit to all.
Charlotte was getting more training with Aerrow (at least that's what they said they were doing SAM!) seeing as their fighting styles were surprisingly similar: get in peoples faces and kick butt a.k.a. short range hand-to-hand. This was if you left out Charlotte's archery. She preferred flaming up her hands and bringing out the punches, much like Aerrow's dual short-swords.
In group training, we learnt how to play keep-away. Well, we learnt how to play keep-away several miles in the air. It's kinda like quidditch but without the snitch or bludgers (unless you counted Junko). I was terrible to start off with (my hand-eye co-ordination is pretty much none-existent) but by the end I was doing just as well as everyone else and even adding tricks on my skimmer to confuse the others (which resulted in me becoming very dizzy). For a while, Charlotte wasn't doing very well either as she couldn't keep her eyes off a certain someone but, after the third time of being hit in the head, her competitive streak kicked in and she kicked butt. The funny thing was, Aerrow was exactly the same. At one point, Finn dropped the crystal target ball thingy and both Aerrow and Charlotte careened for it. Everyone seemed to wince, sensing an impact, but it never happened. Instead, they both appeared to high-five, clasping their hands around the ball. As their skimmers began circling around the spot, I could see them arguing, "You let go." "No, you let go."
Couples.
And then suddenly Charlotte had broken off, with Aerrow holding the ball over his head with a triumphant grin. Laughing, he leaned across and kissed her cheek, to which she smiled and punched his shoulder gently. As I cruised down, I asked, "Dude, what happened?"
"He winked."
That pretty much explained everything.
When people weren't training, they tended to be finding something to do. Charlotte and I still got roped into pipe fixing whenever possible; not that it was a bad thing. Charlotte was improving her manipulation of metals with every practise, and I was getting better with air manipulation as well. And when I found myself with nothing at all to do, I'd be up on the bridge.
See, circa midway day three, Stork finally caved from my questions and let me try flying the Condor. With great reluctance, and constant hovering around behind me. After which, if I had a moment's peace, I'd fill it with learning more about flying the airship under Stork's tutoring.
It was during one of these 'lessons' when something went wheeeeeeeeee and CRASH, sending an almight shudder through the Condor.
The moment everything started shaking, I panicked, knuckles going white as I kept the Condor steady. Stork didn't trust me, possibly with some reason, and he outright fell on top of me, grabbing the steering handles and turning the Condor out of the death-dive. Yanking my hands out from underneath his, I darted to the side and brought up a spy-scope, whilst behind me Piper raced onto the bridge. Finn had been napping on the sofa and the jolt had knocked him clean off.
"What's going on?", Piper asked, bringing up the second spy-scope. I was already looking about, scouring the sky for our attackers. I found them circling around below.
"Raptors." Oh great, like we'd wanted to see those faces again. They only seemed to be mooks, led by Hork. The main guy was nowhere in sight. Which made things a lot more worrying.
Grabbing a comms-microphone off the wall, Piper snapped down it, "We have Raptors attacking from below the Condor. No signs of much heavy artillery."
"They have a cannon!", I snapped over to her.
"…Okay, they have some heavy artillery. Junko, we need you up here to arm the blaster. Aerrow, Charlotte-"
"We're already in the hangar bay!", Aerrow's voice interrupted her, accompanied by the sound of engines revving. Folding away the spy-scope, I thought hurriedly about going down and joining Aerrow and Charlotte in shooting down some Raptor mooks. But decided against it. This was Aerrow and Charlotte I was thinking about. It would be a better idea to stay out of range and watch the fireworks (literally).
I couldn't help but grin widely as I readied my skimmer. Finally, some proper action to get the fire burning, with an accompaniment of mook-punchbags.
"Ladies first", Aerrow called over to me, Radarr chirruping with a thumbs-up.
"You're too kind", I replied, revving the engine before roaring out with a whoop, one that was echoed by Aerrow as he rocketed off behind me. Out the hangar bay, onto the platform, then straight up into the sky. Looping backwards, I dived down, spotting my prey- I mean, the mooks - circling below.
"How many are there?", I heard Piper ask.
"Couple dozen. Shouldn't be a problem", I commented casually. I wheeled down on one side of the group, with Aerrow dropping down on the other side. The comms crackled, and I heard his voice: "You take the twelve on the left, I'll take the twelve on the right."
"Deal."
As soon as we'd appeared, flying down from the Condor, the Raptors had begun to scatter, some turning and flying away with others shooting around to fire crystal shots from behind. I barrel-rolled to avoid a small barrage, the shots ending up with taking down the Raptor in front of me. Braking hard and moving upward, I let the mook behind me overshoot, before dropping down behind him and speeding up. Once our skimmers were level, I pushed up on my seat and sideways scissor-kicked his head, knocking him off. My own skimmer wobbled nervously, but I regained control. These moves were harder for a one-person skimmer. Aerrow and Radarr were pulling all sorts of teamwork stunts, with the co-pilot bringing the skimmer around in a circular movement with the main pilot balanced on a wing-tip, swords blazing blue as they cut through the wings of mooks skimmers.
Ah, so romantic.
Fireballing two mooks' engines so they crashed together, I flew over towards Aerrow as he finished the whirlwind.
"I got four so far!", I called over.
"Really? I'm already on seven."
Fuck. Competitive nature roaring, I laughed and brought out my bow. Nocking on an arrow, I shot down one, two, three mooks swiftly, including one that almost knocked into Aerrow from behind. As he glanced back to see a disappearing parachute, I added, "Now we're even."
With five each (technically) left to go, plus a mini-boss as Hork, I decided to go straight for Hork. Bonus points, right? He ducked underneath my first charge attack, then the second. Getting annoyed, I flamed up, then spread the fire over the wings of my skimmer. It was a short-time measure, since I didn't want my baby to get badly scorched, but my God did it look badass while on fire.
"BANZAI!", I shrieked, going third-time lucky and charging Hork again. This time the flames dropped and caught on his skimmer – don't ask me how metal catches fire, I only made sure the fire got onto the skimmer. He panicked, trying to swat the fire, and started shouting over his comms, "Distraction team out! Distraction team out!"
SMACK
The punch took him clean in the head, and he swayed for a second before his skimmer began to plummet. Shooting down a final mook, I comm-ed Aerrow:
"Did you hear Hork?"
"What did he say?"
"That these guys were just distraction. But what for?"
-crackle-
Huh, it seemed like the guys from the bridge were trying to contact us. Flicking it on, I "WE NEED YOU GUYS BACK HERE LIKE RIGHT NOW OTHERWISE WE'RE TOAST."
"Holy-" I righted my skimmer after that loud screech. Opposite, I could see Radarr hugging his ears with a dismal glare at the comms.
"Finn, what the hell is going on back there?", Aerrow demanded, wheeling around and aiming back for the Condor, with me right on his tail.
We only properly realised the mob was a distraction a couple of minutes before Charlotte and Aerrow did. That was when Repton ripped a small hole in the ceiling of the bridge and dropped through.
"NO!", Stork shrieked. "Not the Condor!"
"Your ship will be the last of your worries once-" Mid evil rant, Repton spotted me staring in mild shock. With the attention turned to me, I waved slowly with a nervous smile. "YOU!"
"Yes, me, hello", I said. Okay, wait, why? Stop talking, me. Stop talking. "How's your dignity doing after that time me and my friends beat you up?" I THOUGHT I SAID STOP TALKING! MERLIN DANGIT!
Repton hissed angrily, striding over toward me with energy boomerang crackling menacingly. In response, I grabbed a breeze and threw it at his feet, simultaniously stamping up a spot of metal floor. The result: possible concussion. Stork was clutching his head and whining by now, so I quickly returned the floor to normal.
"You've fought Repton before?", Piper asked, sounding slightly confused. "I mean, yeah, we understand the wiping the floor with him, of course. But when did you guys-?"
"About two hours after getting into Atmos", I replied. "Not bad for newbies, eh, Repty?"
Snarling, Repton stood back up, rubbing his jaw. "You shall not mock me with…pet-names."
"Oh, that sounded wrong in so many ways", I muttered, prepping a palm of fire. Either side of me, I heard Piper bring out her crystal staff and Finn preparing a bolt on his crossbow. Repton scowled, his glare skimming over the three of us. Before a disconcerning leer spread across his face. Bringing out a crystal orb, he slotted it into a place on his chest armour, which, now that I looked properly, seemed to have more wires than normal.
The crystal pulsed once, then twice, as yellow glows shot down the wires. Repton seemed to grow before us, muscles doubling in size with scales getting spikier and spikes growing down his spine and over his face. His tail got longer too, the tip becoming something akin to a spiked mace. With a final roar of rage, he slammed his fists down on the floor of the Condor, making twin dents in the metal.
Thunk. That was Stork fainting.
"I'm getting Aerrow and Charlotte like NOW!", Finn shrieked, his pitch increasing sharply
at the end of his sentence as Repton made a swipe at him. Piper drove him back with a
smack of her staff. Dropping the fire orb, I decided to do the same, summong my staff and
equipping it with a Furnace crystal. Repton kept lunging out every now and again, baring
jagged fangs, but Piper and I kept him on the spot. At one point he almost bit my leg and I
automatically swung down on his head. Again. And again, and again, until Piper shouted,
"I think he's had enough."
I paused, only to give him an final whack. Behind us Finn was babbling "There was Repton, and he
did this thing, which turned him into a thing kinda like himself but worse, and-"
Nabbing the comms-microphone off him, I summarised, "Repton Hulked out using a crystal
machine."
"That's not Hulking out, that's going Bane", Charlotte replied.
"Either way, he's wrecked the bridge…and not staying down." Repton glowered down at me. I froze.
Then something went broiiing and he was gone. A furious Stork stood at the helm, a hand on a lever that had been pushed down.
"No-one messes with my ship!", he screeched, mostly to himself I think because Repton was gone.
The doors to the bridge opened, and Junko popped his head in.
"Did I miss something?"