After a grueling battle against the Cyclonian forces, Master Cyclonis makes her escape through the door to the Far Side. The Storm Hawks, tasked with protecting the Atmos and ending this war once and for all, leave their home behind and follow Cyclonis through the door to an unknown world.
Incandescent green light filled the sky around the Condor as the Storm Hawks stood on the deck, marveling at the world before them. The air was heavy with humidity, green-gray clouds swirling above them signaling the potential for a storm. The sound of birds cawing echoed in their ears. Down below the Condor, a river cut through massive, almost circular stalagmites rising from the ground. Dotted in the rock formations were little lights, and as they got closer, they realized that those were buildings. A tower stood over the land, rising up from the center of what seemed like a city. The very top was shrouded in churning clouds, so far up that Aerrow had to crane his neck to look at it.
This was it. This was the Far Side. No Atmosian had ever come this far before. Aerrow could hardly stand the excitement of it all, and when he finally tore his eyes away from the scenery to look at his team, he could tell from the looks on their faces that they were feeling the same elation they were. Even Stork, way up at the helm, was staring with his eyes wide.
"This is gonna be fun," Aerrow finally said. He could hardly wait to get down there and start exploring all this unknown territory, but a nagging thought stopped him from telling Stork to land the ship. They weren't the first Atmosians there. Cyclonis was there already, and as he thought of her, the reminder of their mission snapped him back to reality.
"Um, Aerrow?" They heard Stork call over the intercom, his voice echoing all around them. "None of my navigation instruments are working anymore! We lost the Timepulse!" As he spoke, a loud crack of thunder nearly sent all of them jumping out of their skin. Aerrow had been right – there was a storm coming.
"Let's get inside," Junko suggested. Raindrops began pattering the metal deck as they jogged to the skimmer bay and closed the door behind them. Just as the hydraulics hissed and the door closed, a flash of lightning lit up the sky, and Aerrow braced himself for the thunder. Though he was ready, it still rocked the skimmer bay and made him jump. Maybe he was just on edge after the battle.
"Dude! This is so sick!" Finn proclaimed as they began walking up toward the bridge. "Did you see those bird things? They're huge! And those rocks on the ground, the huge ones that are all sharp and everything – "
"They're called stalagmites, Finn," Piper interrupted, earning a sneer from Finn.
"They're called stalagmites," he mimicked in a high-pitched voice. Piper rolled her eyes, but Finn continued on. "Whatever. They're awesome! I can't believe it – it's a whole city. There are people here, people that don't even know Atmos exists!"
"Maybe they do know Atmos exists, and they just don't like us," Junko pondered as he followed Aerrow up the ladder. "But why wouldn't they like us? We're pretty nice."
"Oh, I don't know," Stork chimed in from a few feet away as they finally entered the hall that led to the bridge. "Maybe because we had a psychopathic dictator destroying terras, and they just didn't want to get involved with all that."
"That would make sense," Finn said. Thunder rocked the Condor once again, sending them careening slightly sideways.
"Or maybe it has something to do with the multitudes of communicable diseases, crazy weather, mind worms, sky sharks, leviathans… need I go on?"
"You know, you're particularly chipper today." Finn rolled his eyes at Stork as Piper went to go look at the Timepulse globe and, sure enough, it wasn't moving. They must have lost the Timepulse when they went through the portal to the Far Side. Navigating was going to be much more difficult, especially since they had no idea what the Far Side was like.
"Let's remember why we're here in the first place," Aerrow reminded Finn. He was excited too, but as the team's leader, it was his job to keep them on track. "We need to find Cyclonis and bring her to justice." The rain was getting heavier now, and they could hear gusts of wind blowing against the ship.
"And, uh… how exactly are we gonna do that?" Junko asked. "She got those crazy crystals that the Night Crawlers were wearing from here."
"And don't forget that crystal prison!" Stork added. "Who knows what else this place has?"
"Let's not forget, I figured out how to beat those crystals," Finn said. "They're allergic to Radarr." With an annoyed chirp from Radarr and a condescending glare from Stork, Finn cleared his throat and continued. "I mean… we figured out how to beat those crystals."
"And without the Dark Ace, she can't use the Binding anymore," Piper added. Aerrow internally winced as he remembered what had happened in the final moments of the battle against Cyclonis. She had transferred so much power to the Dark Ace that she had caused some sort of power overload and destroyed him. It was hard to believe that he was gone, really gone, but how could anyone come back from that? He was out of the picture, and though that was one less threat they would have to deal with, it still didn't leave Aerrow with a good feeling.
Another bolt of lightning lit up the bridge, followed immediately by a huge crack of thunder that violently shook the ship. Rain was now pouring down, and wind had begun blowing the Condor around from side to side.
"Grab onto something!" Stork yelled as he gripped the helm and tried to steady the ship. Everyone found something to hang onto while Stork tried to navigate through the storm, but it was nearly impossible to see out the windows. Aerrow winced as Radarr chose Aerrow's hair to hold.
"We need to land!" Stork yelled to them, and Aerrow nodded to him. Whatever they were going to do, whatever plans they had to make, could wait until they were safely on the ground. It was rough going, being battered by the winds and nearly struck by lightning a few times, but they made it to the ground near one huge stalagmite, rising ominously well above the height of the Condor. Stork deployed the docking cables to anchor them to the ground around them as the storm raged on, then huffed a sigh of relief and leaned against the railing.
"Well, at least we made an entrance," Finn joked, earning a chuckle from Junko.
"We should be careful," Piper said. "We don't know what the people are like here. They might not trust strangers – especially since Cyclonis took crystals from them the last time she was here. Who knows what else she did?"
"Like I was saying, we need a plan to find Cyclonis," Aerrow said to the team. "I don't think laying low is our best option. We should ask around, try to find where she is – or at least if anyone's seen her."
"But how?" Junko asked. "We don't know anything about the Far Side. She could be anywhere. How do we figure out how to find her in a world we don't know?"
They all thought for a long second before turning to Piper. She stared at them for a second before proclaiming, "Let me grab my pens," and jogging off down the hall to her bedroom.
Ten minutes later, Piper had a color-coded list stuck to the wall on a large sheet of paper. On one side read everything they already knew, and there was only one entry: 'Cyclonis is somewhere on the Far Side.' The other side of the list, titled 'What We Need to Figure Out,' was much, much longer. Aerrow wanted to just put his head down on the table and stop thinking, but that wasn't what he needed to do. That wasn't what his team needed him to do. They were all looking to him for leadership.
"Right," he said, reading over the list one more time. "As soon as the storm clears, we're going to head into the city and start figuring out what this place is all about."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Stork asked. "Remember what happened to me on Terra Tropica?"
"I don't think that's going to happen again, Stork," Junko assured him, though Stork didn't seem entirely convinced.
"Well, even if it doesn't, who knows what kind of diseases are out there? What kind of animals – monsters – might be waiting to tear us limb from limb?"
"Stork, do you want to stay in the Condor?" Aerrow asked. Stork immediately relaxed and nodded, which was exactly what Aerrow had expected him to do. Part of him was disappointed that Stork wouldn't be with them to experience the new world, but he didn't fight him on it.
"It doesn't look like the storm will let up anytime soon," Piper said as she gazed out the windows. "Maybe we should all take it easy for a little while, try to get some rest. We did just fight a war, after all."
"Good idea." Aerrow glanced to the window and the storm outside one more time. The rain was still coming down hard, and the wind would make any flight with their skimmers nearly impossible. And Piper had a point – he hadn't realized it until she had said something, but he was exhausted. They all needed to rest and recharge before they took on this new adventure.
While Stork stayed on the bridge to keep an eye on the storm, the rest of them retreated to their rooms. Junko's and Finn's doors hissed closed behind them. As Piper stood in front of her bedroom door, she looked back at Aerrow, who had been walking just behind. Though the surge of power from achieving perfect attunement with the Binding had brought her back from the edge of death, the energy had worn off, leaving her tired and in desperate need of sleep. Aerrow had stopped next to her door, and he was watching her with some concern in his eyes.
"Are you okay? I mean, are you feeling okay, after… you know, everything that happened?" he asked.
She considered the question. Physically, she was fine – just tired. The energy from the Binding had healed her completely. But after what they had just been through, it was hard to be fine. That battle had been the culmination of a decades-long war against the Cyclonians, and it had been brutal. Part of Piper – a part of her she didn't like to think about – had genuinely thought that Cyclonis would beat them and they would be thrown in the crystal prison with the rest of the Sky Knights. Part of her had thought they wouldn't make it out alive – or, at least, she wouldn't. But Aerrow had come through for her, just like he always did. She had no words to tell him how grateful she was that he had caught her when she fell.
"I'm okay," she replied. "After everything, it kind of feels like I'm still in shock, you know?"
"Yeah, I know." He nodded, casting his gaze down at the ground before looking back to her. "That was pretty scary for a minute there. I almost thought – " He stopped himself just short of finishing the sentence.
"Me too," she said, and he felt a relief in his chest that she understood what he was trying to say. "We won the battle, but the war isn't over yet. Let's get some sleep and start planning when the storm passes."
With that, she opened the door to her bedroom. Aerrow nodded to Piper with a small smile and watched her for a moment as she walked away, then moved as the hissing of her door closing sounded behind him. She was right, as usual. He was so glad she was still with them. Her sickness from the Binding had terrified him, and he had almost lost her out there, in that final battle with Cyclonis and the Dark Ace. They had gotten lucky.
As he walked to his own room next to Piper's, he began to feel the exhaustion from the battle finally catching up with him. Radarr came through the door just as it began to close and made himself comfortable on Aerrow's pillow. Aerrow sighed and sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the wind hurl rain against his window. He was so glad his team was okay, and while he was excited to be on this new adventure in the Far Side, he was also nervous. Who knew what lay ahead of them, especially if they were facing Master Cyclonis again? He and Piper still had to work to perfect the Binding now that it flowed both ways. And they knew nothing about the Far Side, either. They could be walking into something really dangerous. But hey – it wasn't like they'd never done that before. It was kind of their trademark.
Aerrow laid back, the fur of Radarr's tail tickling slightly on his forehead, and closed his eyes. Whatever was coming, he knew he had his team by his side. They would be ready for anything.
A loud crash pulled Finn from sleep, and he had a moment of panic when he woke, looking around for signs of an intruder. Nothing. Heart pounding, he leapt out of bed, nearly tripping over his guitar as he stumbled to the door. The storm was still raging outside, and he glanced at the clock on his bedside table. Only an hour had passed since they had arrived on the Far Side. He tried to open the door, and it started to move, but jerked to a stop halfway through. At the same time, the lights in the hall flickered and went out. Great. The storm had knocked out the power.
He squeezed himself through the gap between the door and the wall, silently hoping that the power didn't suddenly kick back on and squish him as the door closed. He made it into the hallway in one piece and saw Piper pulling her own door to the side. Junko was already out in the hall and helping Aerrow and Radarr out of their room, and Finn helped Piper push hers open.
"What was that noise?" Junko asked them as Radarr leapt up onto Aerrow's shoulders. Aerrow looked a little disoriented – Finn figured he had been pretty fast asleep.
"I have no idea," Aerrow replied, "but we'd better check on Stork. I think it was coming from the bridge." Without hesitation, the five of them ran toward the bridge and Junko forced that door open as well. They ran in, then came to a full stop.
The bridge was empty, and Stork was nowhere to be seen. The trap door in the ceiling had been cut through, and rain was pouring in. A perfect circle of metal from the ceiling sat on the ground directly below it. Someone had cut through the metal and broken in from above.
"Search the ship," Aerrow ordered to the rest of his team. "Junko, stay here and try to call Stork on the intercom and his radio. Wait for us – or him – to come back. Everyone else, split up."
"On it," Junko said as the rest of the team ran out the door. He grabbed the intercom and began broadcasting over the entire ship. "Stork? Are you on the Condor? If you're on the Condor, say something! Or just – you can come to the bridge, too! There's a hole in the ceiling!"
He took his finger off the button and waited, but the only sounds he heard were the rain pattering on the metal floor and static from the intercom. He felt a pit in his stomach – Stork wasn't on the Condor anymore. So where had he gone? Junko moved across the bridge to the helm and pressed a button that would call Stork's radio.
"Stork? Are you there, buddy? Where are you? We heard a crash, and you're gone! If you can hear me, come back to the Condor. Or say you can hear me, that would work too." Just as he took his finger off the button to listen for Stork's response, he heard footsteps behind him. "Stork! Oh, man, we thought you were missing!" he said as he turned around. Then he realized that it wasn't Stork who was standing behind him.
"Anything?" Aerrow's voice echoed through Finn's radio. He heard Piper's frustrated response of "He's not in the cargo hold or the engine room!" and groaned. He'd been searching the skimmer bay for the past ten minutes, but Stork was nowhere to be found. He was really good at hiding, but this wasn't the time!
"He's not in the skimmer bay either," Finn said to the others. "Junko, any luck calling him?"
Nothing but static radioed back to him, and Finn got a sinking feeling in his stomach. Aerrow's voice called out next.
"Junko? Are you there?" he said, but still there was no response. "Finn, Piper, you can hear me, right?"
"Loud and clear, buddy," Finn responded. "Maybe his radio is out."
"I'll go check on him, just to be sure," Piper said. Thunder shook the Condor once again, and somehow, the storm seemed to be getting worse instead of better the longer it went on.
"Man, I have a bad feeling about this," Finn said to Aerrow. "What if someone took Stork? What if they're still on the ship?"
"Just keep looking," Aerrow replied. "I'm sure we'll find him – he's probably hiding somewhere."
Well, he definitely wasn't in the skimmer bay. Finn jogged back out to the hall and began heading for the kitchen to search there when Piper's voice crackled over the radio.
"Guys – someone on – ship!" Her voice was intermixed with static that made it hard to understand her. "Junko – wait – stop –" the sound of a crash filled the hall Finn had stopped dead in. The radio clicked off. There was still someone on the ship. He took off running in the opposite direction of the kitchen, toward the bridge to find Junko and Piper. As he scrambled up a ladder, he met with Aerrow, on his way to investigate Piper's radio call. Before they were even on the bridge, Aerrow had his blades out and lit up with blue crystal light, and Finn pulled his crossbow off the holster on his back and aimed it at… nothing.
There was no one there. A metal pipe had fallen off the wall and lay in the middle of the floor. Junko and Piper were gone. Aerrow bent down and picked up a small black device off the floor – a radio from one of their uniforms.
"Dude, this is freaking me out!" Finn exclaimed, looking to Aerrow. "Where are they? Who took them?"
As if on cue, a thunk met Finn's ears, and he turned to see Aerrow dropping his weapons and crumpling to the floor. A person, dressed in all black with a mask covering their face, stood behind him, holding a staff. Finn aimed and shot a bolt from his crossbow at them, but they moved the staff so quickly that it blurred in front of him. The bolt was deflected and bounced off the staff and through one of the windows, making a small hole in the glass.
"Oh, Stork is gonna kill me!" he whimpered as the person advanced on him. He tried to put another bolt into his crossbow, but he wasn't fast enough. Two more people entered the bridge and grabbed Aerrow, hauling him up as the person's staff touched the side of Finn's neck. He felt a sting, and before he could react, every muscle in his body seized up and he couldn't move. He dropped like a sack of Merb cabbage, his crossbow sliding across the floor. He saw Aerrow's eyes were still open, but he was paralyzed, too.
As he was hauled up by the stranger and dragged out of the bridge, unable to move or fight back, he saw where they were going. A vehicle was sitting on the ground outside of the Condor. He could see another of the ninjas (he assumed they were ninjas because of the all-black clothes and everything) carrying Radarr from the back engine where he had been searching to the vehicle. Stork, Junko and Piper were already there, lying on the floor. He could hear their panicked breathing as he was placed inside next to Aerrow and the doors were closed behind them. He met eyes with Stork, but none of them could talk. The engine rumbled to a start and the vehicle began to move, leaving the Condor behind and taking them into the unknown.