Chapter 2: Terra Gale
Piper had been right about the storms. The Storm Hawks hadn't been traveling long before a heavy thunderstorm picked up the Condor in its currents. Stork, however, still flew with ease. In fact, having been up all night, he was nearly falling asleep. He groaned quietly as the Condor continued her swaying in the storm, wishing he could lie down and go to bed.
Aerrow was keeping his watch as usual. The others were at the round table. Piper was looking over her charts. "We're passing over Terra Gale now," she told all of them. "It could get choppy."
Aerrow looked toward Stork. If it was going to get choppy, then he had better hope his pilot was in good shape. He walked up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, saying, "Stork." Stork jumped, startled. "How ya holdin' up?" Aerrow asked.
Stork turned back to the helm, looking annoyed. "How does it look like I'm doing?" he snarled back.
Suddenly red lights flashed as the Condor's alarm went off. Stork ran and grabbed one of the periscopes to view the threat. "Incoming!" he warned. "Closing fast! Oh man," he said, pulling away from the periscope and looking out the window, his eye twitching. "We're doomed!"
Aerrow followed his gaze out the window. Something big and white was hurling right toward the window where Stork was standing! And he wasn't moving! Aerrow jumped forward, grabbing Stork and pushing him to the ground and hearing a crash behind him as whatever-it-was shattered the window and landed where Stork had stood.
The object slid across the floor and stopped at Finn's feet. Aerrow was surprised to see the object was a toilet. Weird.
Finn seemed just as surprised as he was. He pointed to the toilet at his feet. "Exactly what kind of 'doomed' are we talkin' about here?" he asked Stork, or anyone else who was listening.
Aerrow wasn't waiting to find out. He called for Piper and Finn to come with him to check it out. Radarr was coming, too, of course. That was kind of a given.
As soon as they had grabbed their weapons and Aerrow and Finn had dressed in their armor, the four of them headed down to the hangar bay. Aerrow leapt onto his ride with Radarr hanging off his back. The Sky Knight was excited. Anything that resembled adventure, danger, and discovery always had his immediate attention. He turned and smiled at his friends, seeing if they were ready.
Piper was in her Heliscooter. She nodded and smiled to him, gunning her engine. Finn, on the other hand, was busy sitting on the seat of his Skimmer shining its windshield. He must have felt their gaze. He looked up and, seeing them waiting on him, gave them a smile that was half sheepish and half excited before sitting down, starting his engine, and heading for the open air. Aerrow smiled in amusement and followed with Piper bringing up the rear. They drove off the landing strip and into the storm.
As they flew, they couldn't see much due to the heavy clouds. Aerrow squinted, trying to see who on Terra Gale would shoot at them with a toilet. Piper seemed to read his mind. She stated, "This part of Gale is a wasteland. Nobody lives out here."
As soon as she said that, the clouds cleared and the sun came out, revealing a piece of terra with a little house with a propeller top at its highest point. "Whoa!" Piper shouted, swerving and doing a loop around the propeller to avoid hitting the house.
Both boys smiled and Finn shook his head. "You sure about that?" Aerrow asked Piper playfully.
Aerrow didn't get to see Piper's reaction to his taunting. His attention was drawn by a pulse of red energy that went shooting in between his ride and Finn's.
Then another red pulse from behind struck the wing of Finn's Skimmer. The Skimmer wavered in the air, and the wing began to smoke. "I'm hit!" Finn called anxiously. "I'm hit!"
Aerrow turned to look behind them. Three Talons were on their tail, shooting at them with their blasters.
The Condor appeared out of the clouds at that moment. Stork was looking through one of the periscopes, keeping an eye on his friends in case they were going to meet their doom—which or course they were. "I got two bogeys at ten o'clock," he told Junko, using the military term "bogey" for an unidentified flying object believed to be hostile.
Junko pulled down the other periscope to see for himself. What he was saw Finn's face, spinning. "SOP, ASAP!" he cried frantically. "Niner, niner, engage! Engage!"
Junko turned to Stork and told him, "I have no idea what he just said."
Stork knew what he was saying. "Standard operating procedure, as soon as possible! Emergency at nine o'clock! Engage in battle!" But he thought that was a little hard for the simple Wallop to understand, so he just said, "We're under attack."
They both heard Finn's scream and turned their periscopes to see him spinning toward the other end of the scopes at the bottom of the ship, his ride smoking and spinning out of control. Finn ran right into the periscope Junko was looking through and grabbed it, putting his leg over the bending part of it and watching his Skimmer fly off without him.
Stork watched a Talon fly off in one direction and Aerrow being chased by two other Talons in another direction. Beyond them, he saw Finn's Skimmer plummeting into the Wastelands, and he turned his periscope around frantically to find Finn. When he did, he focused it on the other periscope and came into view with a big, blue eye. "Hey," Finn's strained voice greeted him. "How's it goin'?"
Stork pulled away from his periscope in surprise. That was strange.
"Whoa!" Finn exclaimed as he began to slide down the periscope he sat on, and its end straightened out so that he was dangly off it. He gasped as the periscope broke off of the Condor, leaving Junko with nothing to see and Finn falling.
Finn cried fearfully as he began to fall, only to be feeling excruciating pain as something banged into him, first into his crotch and then his head. He found himself on the bow of Piper's Heliscooter. "Woo-uh," he groaned, his teeth clenched and his eyes rolling in their sockets as he lifted his head. That hurt!
"Need a lift?" Piper taunted him.
"Sure," Finn said in squeaky, pained voice. "Thanks."
Aerrow smiled at the situation Finn had gotten himself into—again—as he flew behind and past Piper with a Talon on his tail. He headed for the Condor, a plan in mind. Coming in from the bottom, he looped around one of the Condor's huge, pontoon-like engines. The Talon followed but didn't see Aerrow loop; he only saw him fly up from underneath it to the top of it, and after clearing the top and leveling off he continued flying on looking for the Sky Knight while Aerrow came up around the engine again behind him.
The Talon looked around angrily in confusion, his teeth clenched. Aerrow decided to have some fun. He turned his Skimmer upside down and flew just above the Talon, his head inches from his. Then he and Radarr let their plan into play.
The Vulcan turned and came up alongside the Talon right-side-up. The Talon stared in confusion when he saw Radarr driving it, waving to him. Where had the boy gone?
As though to answer his question, someone from behind him tapped his shoulder. He turned around to see the boy Sky Knight holding his blades above him, ready to strike. The Talon screamed and leapt off his Switchblade, deploying his parachute. Aerrow jumped, letting the Switchblade fall, and Radarr flew up underneath him to catch him. Aerrow smiled. One down, two to go.
Another Talon flew up behind Aerrow and pulled out a blue crystal. "This swarm crystal should keep you busy!" he said, drawing his arm back to throw it at the unsuspecting Sky Knight.
As always, Aerrow's squad had his back. Piper, now having Finn seated behind her, hovered above the Talon, and Finn reached out and grabbed the crystal out of the Talon's grasp. "Thanks," he said, "but you keep it!"
He threw the crystal back at the Talon. The Talon tried desperately to catch it, but the crystal bounced out of his hand each time and eventually landed in his crystal converter. The Talon's eyes widened apprehensively. "Oh, no."
The next instant, his ride dissolved, turning into a swarm of tiny bugs. The Talon fell and deployed his parachute before being attacked by the swarm. "Ah!" he cried. "Get 'em off of me!"
Finn and Piper watched him with amusement, but Aerrow was too preoccupied to even notice. The third Talon was chasing him. Not that Aerrow cared. He was feeling cocky, spinning and not going at his top speed.
The Talon watched him spin. "Hotshot, huh?" he grunted. He aimed his blasters, flipping the lid off his handles to reveal the buttons that activated them. "Well, you're about to get iced!" But just before he was about to press the buttons to blast him with icers, a large, soft, white object came and knocked him off his Switchblade.
Piper and Finn watched in surprise. "Was that a mattress?" Finn asked.
Aerrow stared after it. Yup, it was a mattress. No doubt about it.
Piper held up her binoculars, peering down at Terra Gale. "I don't believe it," she said. "Look!" She handed the binoculars to Finn.
Finn did look and was surprised to see a small old man with a pointed beard dressed in kitchen equipment bouncing joyfully and shaking his fists in the air. "Hah!" he said in a French accent. "Take that you Cyclonian dog!"
Finn lifted an eyebrow, his mouth slightly ajar. That had to be one of the weirdest things he had seen so far. He and Piper looked at Aerrow for direction.
Aerrow was curious. Although he couldn't see in great detail what was down there without binoculars, he knew that a guy jumping around and catapulting mattresses and toilets into the air was worth checking out. He held up two fingers and gestured, pointing them toward the terra. This hand signal was understood to be an order that meant, "Land and check it out," and that's exactly what Piper planned to do, being as she was the one driving.
Aerrow and Piper circled the terra and landed at full speed. Aerrow's Skimmer turned sideways and slide to a stop, but Piper tried to slow down before she tried that with her lighter Heliscooter. The ground was bumpy, and more than once the ride popped off the ground. A really rough one sent Finn high off the ride and flying through the air with a scream. Piper turned her ride sideways and slide to an abrupt halt to avoid running into him, and Finn landed in front of her in a pile of kitchen equipment. Oops, Piper thought. Finn glared at her from where he sat with his rear stuck in a bucket and a pot on his head. Piper could only smile apologetically.
Aerrow got out of his Vulcan and helped Finn to his feet with the bucket still stuck on him. The four of them looked around for the little old man, but Aerrow didn't see him. "Hello?" he heard Piper's call echo over the terra. No answer.
Aerrow saw a big pot sitting by the tree. It had holes in it just right for letting out arms and legs, and it looked a lot like the one the man had been wearing. He opened the lid and looked inside it, but it was too dark to see. It didn't look like he was in there, though. "Where do you think he went?" he asked his friends.
Finn pulled the bucket off his bottom and stood up straight. "Probably in the kitchen looking for more ammo," he answered. He threw the bucket behind him carelessly.
As soon as the bucket hit the ground, Aerrow felt something rise up under his feet. Before he knew what was happening, he, Radarr, Piper, and Finn were caught in a rope net hanging from the tree.
The little old man popped out of the pot. "I've got you now, Cyclonian swine!" he said defiantly in a French accent, holding up his fist to them. "Now," he continued, holding up an ax, "you will know what happens to enemies of the resistance."
With one swing of the ax, he cut the rope holding the net to the tree. The Storm Hawks all cried and gasped in surprise and fear as net traveled down a rope line and right into the cup of the catapult. Aerrow and the others looked over and around the machine to see what they would be fired at. Their eyes widened, and Aerrow's heart began to beat painfully in his chest.
"For you," the man said, gesturing beyond the catapult, "the Wasteland awaits."
Aerrow's pulse quickened as the man pushed the catapult closer to the edge of the terra. He and the others cried out to him, desperately trying to make him listen. But the man simply said, "Cries for mercy will go totally unanswered, Cyclonian swine!" He clenched his fist threateningly.
"We're not Cyclonians," Piper tried to explain.
The old man didn't believe her. He reached for the lever on the catapult.
Aerrow could see there was no reasoning with him so he went to plan B. Turning to his copilot, he ordered quietly, "Radarr, go!"
Obediently, Radarr slipped out of the rope net through one of the holes and got down by the old man's feet unnoticed. Grabbing hold of his leg in both paws, he bit down on it. Hard.
The old man's eyes widened. Then, in a delayed reaction, he howled in pain and hopped away from the catapult, holding his leg. Radarr took the opportunity to leap up onto the net and chew it open with his teeth.
The net burst open, and the Storm Hawks fell with gasps and a heavy thud. Aerrow lifted his head to see the old man dancing before him, beating his fists in the air. "So, you . . . you freed yourselves, eh?" he said as the Aerrow and his friends stood. "Well, then, we'll just have to tussle like good old-fashioned trench rats." He flexed his muscles with a laugh. "I should warn you, though," he continued to the confused teens as he did his battle dance, "I was pretty good scrapper back in the day."
Piper held out her hands desperately. "We're not Cyclonians!" she told him.
Aerrow grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back toward them. He wasn't sure what this crazy man would do, and he didn't want her hurt. So he took it up. "She's right," he said to the man. He put his hands over his heart. "We're the good guys." He gestured toward the others. "The Storm Hawks?"
The old man just looked confused.
"Come on, you've heard of us," Finn insisted, making Piper give him an irritated look as he struck a proud pose. "We're famous!"
"Chicken Hawks?" the old man said. He held his hands out in front of him. "Nope, never heard of you." He pointed to them. "Who is your commanding officer?"
"That would be me," Aerrow answered. Next thing he knew, the old man had gotten right up in his face, just inches away from him, and was studying him with a critical eye. Aerrow leaned away. That was way too close for comfort.
The man seemed satisfied in what he saw. He spit in his hand and held it out. "The name is Wren," he introduced himself, "leader of the resistance front." Much to Aerrow's disgust, he grabbed his hand and started shaking it. It was only then that Aerrow noticed that the pot Wren wore around his body had a large W on it, as did the lid he wore for a helmet. W for Wren, Aerrow guessed.
"Welcome," Wren said, holding out his arms, "to the last free piece of Terra Gale."
As soon as he said that, one of the propellers on the top of his house and his front door fell down, rusted and worn away. "Impressive," Finn said sarcastically, which cost him an elbow in the chest by Piper.
Aerrow raised his eyebrows in surprise. He couldn't wait to here this man's story.
Radarr was behind Piper's legs when he heard clucking and turned to see Wren's hen standing behind her owner. She fluttered her eyelashes at him lovingly. Radarr's eyes widened and he chirped, awestruck. Wow, she was pretty. Oh, not that he was interested or anything. She was only a chicken, after all. But still . . .
Aerrow had come to one conclusion about Wren very quickly; he was disciplined, fearless, driven, and absolutely 100% off his rocker. Those qualities were quite obvious. He learned a lot more about him, however, when Wren invited him, Piper, and Finn to stay and hear his tale. Radarr was to stay, too, of course, but Wren hadn't addressed the matter of the furry creature directly. In fact, Aerrow hadn't seen a lot of him since that chicken showed up. Odd . . .
Apparently, Wren was in fact an ex-Sky Knight who had decided to retire and spend his last days on his little farm with his granddaughter Dove and his chicken. Back then he needn't have worried about smog, either, for there were no smelters. The Storm Hawks also learned why there was a Terra Gale Resistance Army and Liberation Front.
"Terra Gale was once a marvelous kingdom," the story began. Night had settled on the terra by then, and Wren was sitting on a pot, poking at a fire to keep it going. Piper and Finn sat around the fire on overturned pots as well, while Aerrow remained standing behind Wren. "But that was before the Cyclonians came!" the old man continued.
Piper and Finn exchanged a glance, and Aerrow felt anxiety rising in his chest. Nothing was ever good when Cyclonians got involved.
The night was clear, and Aerrow could easily see the main part of the terra from where they stood. Most of it was covered in one large factory with many pipes that continued to expel black smog into the air. Wren gestured toward the main part of Terra Gale. "Now our people toil in their smelters," he said, clenching his fists desperately, "prisoners. Two weeks ago," he continued, pulling out a picture, "they took my precious Dove."
Aerrow stepped forward to see, and Wren sadly offered him the picture. The picture was of a girl about his age with beautiful fine black hair and vibrant blue eyes. Her smile was warm and kind. And to think the Cyclonians had taken this poor girl from her family and enslaved her! Aerrow's narrowed eyes lifted to look at the smelters on the main part of the terra, determined not to let that stand.
He hadn't even realized he was making a face until he heard Finn say, "Yep, there it is." The sharpshooter rolled his eyes and rested his head in his hand in exasperation. "That's the 'we're going on a dangerous mission' look."
"We'll get her back, Wren," Aerrow assured. He handed Finn the picture, knowing he would change his mind as soon as he looked at it.
And he was right. As soon as Finn saw the "hot" girl in the photo, his face brightened and he smiled coolly. "I'm in!"
Wren leaped to the other side of the fire in his excitement. "Fantastic!" he said, slamming his fist into his hand. "A rescue mission!" He addressed Aerrow. "Good thinking! Teach that Dark Ace a thing or two!"
Finn's expression went very quickly from dreamlike to fearful. "Wait a minute," he said, holding up a finger and stuttering anxiously. "Di-did you just say . . . ?" He turned to Aerrow frantically, pointing to Wren. "Did he just say 'Dark Ace'?"
Piper's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She turned to Aerrow. Of all people, they knew his reputation and just how good he was at upholding it. And the first time they ran into him, Aerrow almost . . .
But Aerrow wasn't deterred. The young Sky Knight slammed his fist into his hand and set his jaw. He'd beaten the Dark Ace once, and if he needed to, he'd do it again. He wouldn't allow anything to happen to his team unless something happened to him first. Besides, if Wren's granddaughter needed help, it was worth it.
Author's Notes: So, how do you think I did with Wren's character, huh? Let me know when you review! (hint, hint)