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In jail on a recluse Terra, at an indefinite time...
She cried. Sobbed. Broke in tears.
Up and down, up and down the shoulders moved, shaking from the strain of not letting any sound out. The guards would hear her. They would come and taunt her. Or worse, they would hoot injurious comments. Tearing her to shreds. She was used to it by now. You had to be. Cut out the sound...
Truth was, she had never gotten into the habit of doing that.
"Hey! Sweetums! You in there darling? Someone sounds mighty sad around here..."
Oh no. It was impossible not to recognize his voice, the hated, smooth, cruel, threatening, acursed.
He was teasing at her again, poking at her wounded pride. Salted water streamed down, and she wiped it clumsily.
"What's wrong, doll? Tired of the big, bad sky knights?"
She sniffled now, and was practicing muting his conversation. His voice became fainter and fainter...
She lied down on the dirty floor of her cell. She heard scuttling... probably rats.
She was getting distracted, and the guard's words were back to full volume.
Concentrate. Concentrate.
She had been in this jail for twenty years, two months and seven days.
She had been born on a small Terra.
She loved a man who was probably dead.
Her name was Dove. But now she was known as 0421.
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Present Time...
"04:21? In the morning? She could have called at another hour...", muttered Canem.
He rose from the couch on which he had been napping and walked to the ringing message engine. He grabbed the receiver and readied himself for a full-scale apology, with much tears and endearing phrases involved.
"Squadron Night Crows? Your position is..."
Sick at heart, he hung up. The voice had been low, stressed and tired.
It was not Miriam.
He went back to the couch and collapsed on it, intenty staring at the transmission machine.
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Present time...
Lyo stared intently at the transmission machine.
"He just hung up...!"
He furiously coded the number again, and waited for the crystal to pick up the frequency.
"Miriam! Look, I..."
The voice, coming straight from The Raven, was not unknown to Lyo. He smirked and spoke into the receiver.
"I am, unfortunately, not Miriam. Now, about your position..."
Canem hung up on him again. Lyo, as if struck by lightening, glared at his receiver.
"I can't believe...!"
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A couple months ago...
"I can't believe you're doing this, Lyo.", declared Jillian.
"Look, we each help however we can. My talents lie in ordering people to their assignments, and plotting the grand scheme of things.", joked Lyo.
None of them were smiling.
"You're leaving us. How can you...?!", whispered Miriam.
Lyo felt a pang to his heart when he looked into her dark purple eyes, surrounded by black shadows,sporting a haunted expression.
"I got to. You guys don't understand. We're not some kind of happy little family, sticking together forever or all that mush.. We each need to go where we have to go!", argued the navigator.
"So, where are we going to find a new navigator?", questionned Canem.
At that point, he was still in charge of the Night Crows while Miriam recovered. The group came first, even before his personal opinion of the matter.
"Three is enough to mind the ship. We defeated the Emperor's son! Everything after that should be a piece of cake!", advocated the red-headed man.
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Present time...
"Piece of cake anyone?"
"I'll pass."
"No thanks."
"I'm good, but thank you..."
Overjoyed, he grabbed the last of of the remnant chocolate pastry and gulped it down ferociously.
"Jeez, Egret, would you mind doing that with a little less disgusting mess?", criticized Lark.
Hawk, sitting next to him, didn't seem to mind Egret's eating habits. He giggled in his corner.
"So you don't think he's a dirty Wallop? How about you, Wren?"
She turned to face him. He was day-dreaming again, from his vacant expression. She rolled her eyes.
"So, you think I'm dirty?", challenged Egret after digesting his large portion.
"I do.", she agreed superciliously.
"Well, watch this..."
He poured all the dark brown crumbs on himself, and licked his brawny arms. Lark squealed.
"You cyclonian! Stop being so..."
"Why do you say that?", cut Wren.
All three of them stared at him.
"Why do say he's a cyclonian?", he precised.
"Because that's what he is!", joked Hawk.
"Yeah! He really is!", emphasized Lark.
She felt the tension in the air before the two. It was not a light question.
"What did the cyclonians do to us?", he asked aloud.
They all shared a look, wondering if half of his brain had been removed.
"They're beasts. Inferior beings. They stole our land for centuries and massacred our people. It is our glorious duty and burden to protect the citizen of the Sky Knight Kindom and destroy those pests.", recited the trio.
The exact passage he had expected, straight from their old history books.
"What do we know? I mean, what if...", he still kept nagging.
"They killed Jay."
That suddenly stopped the discussion short.
"Yeah! And they'll pay for that!", assured Egret, perharps a little too fast.
"But Jay was attacking them... We all knew him, he wasn't exactly...", argued Wren, knowing full well that his teamates had been as fond of Jay as he had been- not very much.
Egret, Lark, and Hawk froze at once. They looked straight ahead, their lips slightly shaking.
"What the..."
Wren turned around, and came face to face with two members of the Sky Order Special Squad.
"What is your opinion of our beloved Emperor's... may Atmos bless his godly name... son?"
Wren almost snorted. May Atmos bless his godly name? Those Special Squads were supposed to enforce morale and spread propaganda, but they were laying it down a little too thick.
After all, Wren knew for a fact that a few weeks ago, Emperor Aerrow, in a crazy action unexpected by everyone, assaulted the members of the Sky Knight Council while they were in a meeting concerning the year's crops. What had happened to him was pretty unsure, but Wren was sure he hadn't been treated as if his "godly" self should be blessed. He had always been but an efficient puppet anyway.
Of course, those thoughts were hardly loyal to the Order, he had better keep them to himself for now. For now, just lie to those goons about Jay.
"He was a great commander. The perfect sky knight.", he answered.
The fib hurt, but it was better than nothing. The sky knights passed him by, and his three teammates stared at him with fearful expressions, scooting slightly away from his, as if he had caught a rare disease.
He sighed. What was wrong with him? From where did all these rebellious ideas come from?
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Some weeks earlier...
"Where do all your ideas come from?"
"They just... come to me I guess!"
The red-headed man was beaming. It was hard to show humility when Colonel Ace was praising him.
"You'll go far, that I see clearly! With your help, we'll beat those beastly sky knights out of their mamas' skirts!"
"Yeah! Cyclonia!"
"Whoooo!"
"Three cheers for the greatest of them all!"
"Hip hip..."
"Hooray!"
"Hip hip..."
"Hooray!"
The cheers and leers continued for a while after that. Lyo stood in the middle of the room, positively radiating. Things were going his way! Things were happening, lots of things, and they were about to win. For they would win. With his help... It was a sure thing.
"All right boys, so with Lyo's new system, let's see if we can...", started the commander.
Suddenly, a screech interrupted him. It was an agonizing cry, a plea for help, a yelp of defeat...
The soldiers looked at each other and two of them ran out, going to inspect the source of the noise. After five minutes they came back, supporting between the two of them an old woman, who seemed to be in hysterics.
"They took Terra Confido! They took it back!", she shouted, trembling so much she was about to collapse.
Silence. Dead silence.
"They took Confido! They killed..."
The elderly lady started wailing again. Her family had probably lived on this Terra.
"How do you know this?!", interrogated Colonel Ace.
She suddenly garbbed her long skirt and started digging into its long pockets. With frail fingers, she held up a little metal machine. A transmitter.
"It's recorded.", she croaked., "I recorded it when she was talking"
Lyo came over and gently took the object from the grandma. He turned a knob and a thin, childish voice rang out. It was such a high-quality engine that the little girl seemed to be in the room with them, whispering her dark secrets, her last words...
"Grandma! The sky knights are coming! Mommy told me to call, she was sad... She said they're coming. They're coming grandma."
There was a sound in the backround. A powerful, machine-like sound. Skimmers.
Then started the screams. The horrible, excruciating yells. Pain, death, misery... hatred.
The child's voice screamed something that froze all the soldiers present. Her insubstantial and innocent voice was a clamor, a distress call, a single word that would haunt all here for the rest of their existance.
The transmission stopped at that moment, as if the old woman didn't have the mental strength to listen to anymore of it.
Lyo still had chills when he heard the small, feeble voice scream her mother's name.
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Some days earlier, in an unassuming office...
"My mother's name!That's what I'm asking you!"
"It's classified information, soldier Wren."
"And I'm a silver level, meaning..."
"Only a gold level can access that information."
"That's crazy, the only gold level is the Emperor..."
"In that case, come back to me when you're Emperor, soldier Wren."
The tone was mocking, sardonic. The clerk had no idea that it would influence the young man so much.
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A month earlier, in the Cyclonian headquarters...
"You influenced me so much. You were my hero."
She sobbed, biting her lips as hard as she could. Drops of blood trickled down her mouth.
"You were only a fake. A horrible, lying, thieving fake!"
"Canary, listen, I have no idea what..."
"You were one of them. One of the Dark Stealers."
Lyo froze. So she knew.
"How did you...?"
"You betrayed me! Lied!"
"You're misunderstanding the whole situation, I was..."
"Were you a Dark Stealer or not?"
"Yes."
Begrudging reply. Raging answer.
"You foul beast! You... despicable, horrible..."
"Calm down! That was years ago! I've changed! I've changed Canary!"
"They're the ones who attacked Terra Confido! How do I know you're not a bloody traitor?! How do I know you didn't sell them information?"
"I didn't. Please... You have to trust me! I have nothing to do with any of them..."
"Lies! Lies! You're with them! And since you're with them, you're with the cyclonians! You're an enemy!"
"Canary, now listen, this is going way too far..."
"Yes. You're an enemy. You have to be destroyed."
Her eyes glinted a dangerous color. Her raven hair was like a halo. She was an angel. An avenging angel.
She grabbed her dagger.
"Canary! Get back or..."
"A bloody murderer..."
He grabbed his staff. If the girl was going mad, he sure as heck wasn't getting hurt in the process.
She lunged. After that things escalated rapidly. Lyo still had no idea how exactly it had happened. It seemed the whole battle was a blurr in his memory. Perharps it was better that way.
If there was one thing he remembered, it was the funeral. She looked serene. Peaceful at last.
Everyone believed she had died in a crystal explosion. Let people believe what they wanted to.
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