Surprise Visitors [Chapter 3]
Fandom: Storm Hawks/ Kingdom Hearts II
Summary: Three people appear on the Condor out of nowhere. Right after, the Storm Hawks are attacked by things made out of shadows. Coincidence?
Rating: K+
Notes: Not sure about Stork's dialogue in some places.
:) Thanks, as always, to cyber09 for beta-ing this.
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Word count: 2,587
Total word count: 7,827
Status: Work in Progress
Prompt: 006 - Hours
Two days later, after finally managing to get enough money together for the converter coils, Aerrow found Stork reading a thin weathered book on the bridge.
"What are you reading, Stork?" he asked before approaching. It was habit that made him speak before going near Stork and his reading material - discovering from first-hand experience just what some of his books could do once was enough. Aerrow was sure that everyone else was in bed after working constantly over the last couple of days. They had actually been able to make some surplus from all the jobs they'd done. The sun had set a while ago so the only light was coming from the Condor.
Stork waved the cover at him but all Aerrow could see was some sort of gold design on faded red; there wasn't any writing on it that he could see. "It's an old book that I've been trying to find," mumbled Stork as he leafed through the pages. "I know I've heard of heartless before but where-" He stopped and started at something on the page in front of him. "I knew I'd heard of them somewhere!" he crowed triumphantly.
Coming up beside him, Aerrow peered at the book over Stork's shoulder. Drawn in a corner with the text weaving around it was a picture of the smaller, humanoid heartless they'd fought. Aerrow's eyes slid to the title of the page. "The Keyblade Master and the Heartless," he said out loud. He skim-read the first three paragraphs before looking at Stork in confusion. "Is this a fairytale?"
Stork nodded. "That's why I couldn't find the heartless in any of my other books - I think I've only read this story once and haven't found it anywhere else." He turned over the page and Aerrow left him to it after saying goodnight. Stork would tell them about it in the morning.
xOx
Aerrow rolled his shoulders to get some of the feeling back in them as he walked into the bridge - at some point in the night, his arm had ended up above his head for much too long and he'd woken up with a very tingly arm. Not the best way to wake up, but other than that, he'd gotten a good night's sleep. Radarr wasn't exactly helping by sitting on his shoulder either.
"Morning," Piper greeted from the table with a smile. Only Sora, Donald and Goofy were there and they nodded to him when they saw him; Finn and Junko liked to sleep in when they could and Stork didn't usually get a lot of sleep - he'd either be reading a book for most of the night or watching everything in his room from his bed. It would depend on the day if he left his room early or not. Breakfast was sizzling on a variety of plates and the smell made Aerrow feel even hungrier.
"Morning," he replied as he sat down and grabbed a plate. Radarr jumped off and started stuffing his face instantly.
They talked about general stuff before the others wandered in, rubbing their eyes and yawning in Finn and Junko's case, or warily checking everything in the room in Stork's case. The red book was still under his arm.
After sitting down and sifting through his breakfast to make sure that there weren't any filsa parasites hidden in there, he looked at Sora and his friends from the corner of his eyes. "Have you heard of someone called a 'Keyblade Master'?"
Sora choked on whatever he was eating and had to thump himself of the chest to get it back up. He shook his head and swallowed all the drink in his cup. "No." But after seeing Sora and the others so surprised by Stork's question, Aerrow didn't believe him. "Where did you hear that name?" His voice was still a little hoarse.
"It's from old folklore," Stork said, eyes drawn to the book he'd placed on the table. "There's no other mention of heartless or the Keyblade Master anywhere else." He opened the book. "Maybe they were destroyed to hide that they ever existed."
"Was the person who wrote that called Ansem?" Donald asked, standing on his chair to get a better look.
Stork shook his head. "Magpie. He'd researched legends over four-hundred years ago that were thought to be lost back then, wrote 'One-Hundred Different Ways to Survive in a Booby-Trapped Temple' and also-"
"Stork," Aerrow interrupted, holding up a hand. "What did you find out about the heartless and the Keyblade Master?" he said, steering the topic back on track. In his peripheral vision, Aerrow could see Sora, Donald and Goofy fidgeting slightly. What were they hiding and why? Okay, he knew that they were hiding knowing about that 'Keyblade Master' and that they hadn't told everything they knew connected with the heartless, but why had they done that? Was it because it would take too long to explain or for another reason?
"Right. There wasn't anything about the heartless except that when they got too close to a person, that person disappeared and a heartless appeared in their place." Stork thumbed through the pages before he found what he was looking for. "That's how the story starts," he explained, voice lowering. "The heartless were growing in number day by day," he said slowly, "and the people were getting terrified - who knew who would be-"
"We get the picture," Finn cut in. "What happened after that?"
Unperturbed by another interruption, Stork continued and turned the page. "That's when the Keyblade Master arrived. Ordinary weapons didn't work against the heartless but hers did."
"Wha-?" Sora started, nearly dropping his fork. "Hers?"
"Hers," Stork confirmed. "The Keyblade Master was finally able to drive the heartless away after months of fighting," he said, easily settling back into the story telling, used to being interrupted. "But there was someone behind the heartless. There's no explanation for how the person was controlling them," he muttered, frowning, "but he was. At the end, the controller was overwhelmed by 'the darkness in his heart' and he became insane - before the Keyblade Master killed him." A pause. "Probably a nasty way to go," he added.
Silence.
"Hey, do you think someone's controlling the heartless now?" Finn asked around the spoon and food in his mouth.
It was only a story though - there would be parts that never happened, or exaggerated to make the story more interesting, Aerrow thought doubtfully. But the base elements of the story -the heartless, Keyblade Master, and the controller- maybe did exist - they had solid proof that the heartless did and Sora, Donald and Goofy knew at least something about the Keyblade Master, so why shouldn't a controller exist?
"There might be," Stork agreed, closing the book, "but all the fairytale says is that the controller had 'welcomed darkness and shadows into his heart and it granted him power over the heartless.'"
A few people popped into Aerrow's mind who could do that, all of them Cyclonians. Master Cyclonis was, obviously, at the top of the list while Dark Ace came a very close second. Cyclonian activity had been pretty quiet recently but Aerrow had been hoping that they weren't doing anything; if either of them was a controller, then maybe they'd been laying low to plan what they were going to do with the heartless.
"All right, hands up if you think Master Cyclonis is the controller here," Finn said, raising his hand. Five other hands rose in the air to join his straight away.
Stork pushed the food around on his plate and sighed. "Which means we'll be going into Cyclonian territory, facing unspeakable terrors even before we get into Cyclonia where we'll probably be caught and who knows what they would do to us then."
Now they had the problem of figuring out how to actually sneak into Cyclonia without being found. "Do you think we should use the Condor like we did last time?" Aerrow asked around the table.
Junko shook his head. "I dunno - they'll know what the Condor looks like now and it's pretty hard to hide her."
Stork heaved a sigh of relief.
"That means we'll have to go in by skimmer," Piper said worriedly. "If we leave from terra... Avalon and go from terra to terra, buying Fuel Crystals at each one, we could possibly sneak in that way." She chewed on the inside of her lip. "Still, we'll need a lot of Nitro Crystals so it doesn't take too long, change our clothes and our skimmers so we won't be recognised," she stated, counting off her fingers.
"We can get the Crystals and clothes at Avalon," Aerrow told her. "We've got enough money to spare. We can modify our skimmers before we get there."
"Can we come?" Goofy asked them, speaking up.
Aerrow gazed at him a little doubtfully. There were good fighters, that was for sure, and the Storm Hawks would need as much help as they could get, but they had helped quite a bit already when they didn't really have to. Didn't they want to go home? They hadn't talked about their home terra the entire time they'd been with them and hadn't seemed that worried either. Maybe they were enjoying seeing something other than their own terra to be.
If the Storm Hawks took them with them, they'd be slowed down because of the extra weight, but not by much. One part of him worried that they hadn't fought Cyclonians before but the other part argued that they'd be okay. It would be harder to sneak into Cyclonia with more people but not impossible, and if Master Cyclonis was controlling the heartless, she'd be even harder to beat.
"Are you sure you wanna come?" he asked him. "We don't even know if Master Cyclonis is controlling the heartless."
Donald nodded resolutely. "Yup. We have to make sure."
Aerrow could see a few questioning looks being shot towards the trio but he didn't call Donald on it. He glanced at Stork, who'd finished eating breakfast and was discretely looking at everyone's plates to check that there wasn't anything that wasn't supposed to be there. "Stork," he said, trying to get his attention, "when you're done, head for terra Avalon." They couldn't drop them off at a terra while they tried to get into Cyclonia and it really was for the best. Stork mumbled distractedly and nodded.
xOx
Half a day later, the Condor landed on terra Avalon. By then, the Storm Hawks' skimmers had been modified so that they weren't displaying the Storm Hawks symbol and their engines tweaked so that they could handle carrying some more weight better. Piper had also plotted out the fastest route that they could take by skimmer: they would need to land on three terras on the way there and then four on the way back. They would have an hour on each terra to rest after an average of four hours of flying on the skimmers - that should give them enough time to grab something to eat, buy extra Crystals, and stretch their limbs after the long flight. After reaching terra Tartarus, they'd rest for the night before leaving in the morning to head for Cyclonia.
The biggest problem of this was, of course, it would leave them without backup for the entire trip there and back. It would have to be a stealth mission all the way through. Aerrow marginally hoped that Master Cyclonis was controlling the heartless because if she wasn't, they'd have risked their lives and three days for nothing.
Sora, Donald and Goofy had gotten a crash course in how to drive the skimmers and had been able to get a few hours practice as they travelled to Avalon. They'd learned quickly (though Donald had had a few problems with his height - he'd eventually given up and was happy to just watch) and then someone had started a game of keep away and the only reason why they'd cut it short was because of a heavy fog had rolled in, bringing a mini monsoon with it. It was after that that Aerrow realised another good thing about them coming - it would stop them from becoming too tired if they could rotate drivers at every terra. Still, it was going to be cramped on the skimmers to say the least.
Aerrow eyed the sun when he walked out. It was late afternoon now but what they wanted to get were easy to find and relatively cheap so it wouldn't take too long. They'd have to be a bit careful though, since this was right on the edge of Cyclonian territory. Then they'd go back to the Condor to sleep before the mission started properly.
xOx
Aerrow shook his leg, his foot feeling weird with the new shoes. In general, he felt weird not wearing his traditional uniform and from the constant pats and prods he was seeing, he wasn't the only one. They were mostly clothes in dull reds and browns, and the clothes weren't as form-fitting as what he was used to. Stork was in his regular clothes but he wasn't going to be leaving the Condor anyway.
There was a shudder and Aerrow braced himself as the Condor took off. They'd fly for half-an-hour, skirting Cyclonian territory, just in case they were being watched by someone (or multiple people) on Avalon, and then Stork would drop them off and fly back into Atmosian sky.
He took a calming breath, watching the clouds move. Half-an-hour to go.
xOx
Aerrow fell onto the bed, making it creak dangerously but it didn't break, thankfully. Even if it had, he'd have just lain there, not caring. The pillow smelt of smoke, he thought, a little dazed, smoke and... mint, he decided.
Someone flopped into the bed next to his and he heard a groan of happiness. "I am not leaving this." Finn's voice was muffled by the pillow. "I don't care if we're attacked during the night, I'm getting a good night's sleep." Sora had already fallen asleep on top of the covers, a content smile on his lips.
His arms felt stiff and he was grateful they'd bought the thick woollen jumpers or else they would have been frozen too. Aerrow forced himself to move and take off his shoes. Then he crawled under the covers and fell asleep straight away.
Waking up the next morning was painful. It was a little disorientating to see red light filtering in through the window instead of sunlight and for a second, he had no idea where he was.
He hadn't been flying constantly for that long before, even if there were breaks in between. His arms felt worse than when he went to sleep but not as bad as he thought it would be. Aerrow dragged himself out of bed, Radarr growling at the loss of the blanket, and moved to the shower. The shower soothed a little of the aches in his arms and legs and helped him to wake up by the time it had finished. Now all he had to do was wake up the snoring lumps on the other beds, check on the others and continue with travelling to Cyclonia. Easy. As if knowing what he was thinking, Finn curled up into a ball. Aerrow snorted and started to fill a glass that the inn had left in the room with cold water, grinning to himself.
The resulting yell probably woke up all the people in the building.
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Summary: Three people appear on the Condor out of nowhere. Right after, the Storm Hawks are attacked by things made out of shadows. Coincidence?
Rating: K+
Notes: Not sure about Stork's dialogue in some places.
:) Thanks, as always, to cyber09 for beta-ing this.
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Word count: 2,587
Total word count: 7,827
Status: Work in Progress
Prompt: 006 - Hours
Two days later, after finally managing to get enough money together for the converter coils, Aerrow found Stork reading a thin weathered book on the bridge.
"What are you reading, Stork?" he asked before approaching. It was habit that made him speak before going near Stork and his reading material - discovering from first-hand experience just what some of his books could do once was enough. Aerrow was sure that everyone else was in bed after working constantly over the last couple of days. They had actually been able to make some surplus from all the jobs they'd done. The sun had set a while ago so the only light was coming from the Condor.
Stork waved the cover at him but all Aerrow could see was some sort of gold design on faded red; there wasn't any writing on it that he could see. "It's an old book that I've been trying to find," mumbled Stork as he leafed through the pages. "I know I've heard of heartless before but where-" He stopped and started at something on the page in front of him. "I knew I'd heard of them somewhere!" he crowed triumphantly.
Coming up beside him, Aerrow peered at the book over Stork's shoulder. Drawn in a corner with the text weaving around it was a picture of the smaller, humanoid heartless they'd fought. Aerrow's eyes slid to the title of the page. "The Keyblade Master and the Heartless," he said out loud. He skim-read the first three paragraphs before looking at Stork in confusion. "Is this a fairytale?"
Stork nodded. "That's why I couldn't find the heartless in any of my other books - I think I've only read this story once and haven't found it anywhere else." He turned over the page and Aerrow left him to it after saying goodnight. Stork would tell them about it in the morning.
xOx
Aerrow rolled his shoulders to get some of the feeling back in them as he walked into the bridge - at some point in the night, his arm had ended up above his head for much too long and he'd woken up with a very tingly arm. Not the best way to wake up, but other than that, he'd gotten a good night's sleep. Radarr wasn't exactly helping by sitting on his shoulder either.
"Morning," Piper greeted from the table with a smile. Only Sora, Donald and Goofy were there and they nodded to him when they saw him; Finn and Junko liked to sleep in when they could and Stork didn't usually get a lot of sleep - he'd either be reading a book for most of the night or watching everything in his room from his bed. It would depend on the day if he left his room early or not. Breakfast was sizzling on a variety of plates and the smell made Aerrow feel even hungrier.
"Morning," he replied as he sat down and grabbed a plate. Radarr jumped off and started stuffing his face instantly.
They talked about general stuff before the others wandered in, rubbing their eyes and yawning in Finn and Junko's case, or warily checking everything in the room in Stork's case. The red book was still under his arm.
After sitting down and sifting through his breakfast to make sure that there weren't any filsa parasites hidden in there, he looked at Sora and his friends from the corner of his eyes. "Have you heard of someone called a 'Keyblade Master'?"
Sora choked on whatever he was eating and had to thump himself of the chest to get it back up. He shook his head and swallowed all the drink in his cup. "No." But after seeing Sora and the others so surprised by Stork's question, Aerrow didn't believe him. "Where did you hear that name?" His voice was still a little hoarse.
"It's from old folklore," Stork said, eyes drawn to the book he'd placed on the table. "There's no other mention of heartless or the Keyblade Master anywhere else." He opened the book. "Maybe they were destroyed to hide that they ever existed."
"Was the person who wrote that called Ansem?" Donald asked, standing on his chair to get a better look.
Stork shook his head. "Magpie. He'd researched legends over four-hundred years ago that were thought to be lost back then, wrote 'One-Hundred Different Ways to Survive in a Booby-Trapped Temple' and also-"
"Stork," Aerrow interrupted, holding up a hand. "What did you find out about the heartless and the Keyblade Master?" he said, steering the topic back on track. In his peripheral vision, Aerrow could see Sora, Donald and Goofy fidgeting slightly. What were they hiding and why? Okay, he knew that they were hiding knowing about that 'Keyblade Master' and that they hadn't told everything they knew connected with the heartless, but why had they done that? Was it because it would take too long to explain or for another reason?
"Right. There wasn't anything about the heartless except that when they got too close to a person, that person disappeared and a heartless appeared in their place." Stork thumbed through the pages before he found what he was looking for. "That's how the story starts," he explained, voice lowering. "The heartless were growing in number day by day," he said slowly, "and the people were getting terrified - who knew who would be-"
"We get the picture," Finn cut in. "What happened after that?"
Unperturbed by another interruption, Stork continued and turned the page. "That's when the Keyblade Master arrived. Ordinary weapons didn't work against the heartless but hers did."
"Wha-?" Sora started, nearly dropping his fork. "Hers?"
"Hers," Stork confirmed. "The Keyblade Master was finally able to drive the heartless away after months of fighting," he said, easily settling back into the story telling, used to being interrupted. "But there was someone behind the heartless. There's no explanation for how the person was controlling them," he muttered, frowning, "but he was. At the end, the controller was overwhelmed by 'the darkness in his heart' and he became insane - before the Keyblade Master killed him." A pause. "Probably a nasty way to go," he added.
Silence.
"Hey, do you think someone's controlling the heartless now?" Finn asked around the spoon and food in his mouth.
It was only a story though - there would be parts that never happened, or exaggerated to make the story more interesting, Aerrow thought doubtfully. But the base elements of the story -the heartless, Keyblade Master, and the controller- maybe did exist - they had solid proof that the heartless did and Sora, Donald and Goofy knew at least something about the Keyblade Master, so why shouldn't a controller exist?
"There might be," Stork agreed, closing the book, "but all the fairytale says is that the controller had 'welcomed darkness and shadows into his heart and it granted him power over the heartless.'"
A few people popped into Aerrow's mind who could do that, all of them Cyclonians. Master Cyclonis was, obviously, at the top of the list while Dark Ace came a very close second. Cyclonian activity had been pretty quiet recently but Aerrow had been hoping that they weren't doing anything; if either of them was a controller, then maybe they'd been laying low to plan what they were going to do with the heartless.
"All right, hands up if you think Master Cyclonis is the controller here," Finn said, raising his hand. Five other hands rose in the air to join his straight away.
Stork pushed the food around on his plate and sighed. "Which means we'll be going into Cyclonian territory, facing unspeakable terrors even before we get into Cyclonia where we'll probably be caught and who knows what they would do to us then."
Now they had the problem of figuring out how to actually sneak into Cyclonia without being found. "Do you think we should use the Condor like we did last time?" Aerrow asked around the table.
Junko shook his head. "I dunno - they'll know what the Condor looks like now and it's pretty hard to hide her."
Stork heaved a sigh of relief.
"That means we'll have to go in by skimmer," Piper said worriedly. "If we leave from terra... Avalon and go from terra to terra, buying Fuel Crystals at each one, we could possibly sneak in that way." She chewed on the inside of her lip. "Still, we'll need a lot of Nitro Crystals so it doesn't take too long, change our clothes and our skimmers so we won't be recognised," she stated, counting off her fingers.
"We can get the Crystals and clothes at Avalon," Aerrow told her. "We've got enough money to spare. We can modify our skimmers before we get there."
"Can we come?" Goofy asked them, speaking up.
Aerrow gazed at him a little doubtfully. There were good fighters, that was for sure, and the Storm Hawks would need as much help as they could get, but they had helped quite a bit already when they didn't really have to. Didn't they want to go home? They hadn't talked about their home terra the entire time they'd been with them and hadn't seemed that worried either. Maybe they were enjoying seeing something other than their own terra to be.
If the Storm Hawks took them with them, they'd be slowed down because of the extra weight, but not by much. One part of him worried that they hadn't fought Cyclonians before but the other part argued that they'd be okay. It would be harder to sneak into Cyclonia with more people but not impossible, and if Master Cyclonis was controlling the heartless, she'd be even harder to beat.
"Are you sure you wanna come?" he asked him. "We don't even know if Master Cyclonis is controlling the heartless."
Donald nodded resolutely. "Yup. We have to make sure."
Aerrow could see a few questioning looks being shot towards the trio but he didn't call Donald on it. He glanced at Stork, who'd finished eating breakfast and was discretely looking at everyone's plates to check that there wasn't anything that wasn't supposed to be there. "Stork," he said, trying to get his attention, "when you're done, head for terra Avalon." They couldn't drop them off at a terra while they tried to get into Cyclonia and it really was for the best. Stork mumbled distractedly and nodded.
xOx
Half a day later, the Condor landed on terra Avalon. By then, the Storm Hawks' skimmers had been modified so that they weren't displaying the Storm Hawks symbol and their engines tweaked so that they could handle carrying some more weight better. Piper had also plotted out the fastest route that they could take by skimmer: they would need to land on three terras on the way there and then four on the way back. They would have an hour on each terra to rest after an average of four hours of flying on the skimmers - that should give them enough time to grab something to eat, buy extra Crystals, and stretch their limbs after the long flight. After reaching terra Tartarus, they'd rest for the night before leaving in the morning to head for Cyclonia.
The biggest problem of this was, of course, it would leave them without backup for the entire trip there and back. It would have to be a stealth mission all the way through. Aerrow marginally hoped that Master Cyclonis was controlling the heartless because if she wasn't, they'd have risked their lives and three days for nothing.
Sora, Donald and Goofy had gotten a crash course in how to drive the skimmers and had been able to get a few hours practice as they travelled to Avalon. They'd learned quickly (though Donald had had a few problems with his height - he'd eventually given up and was happy to just watch) and then someone had started a game of keep away and the only reason why they'd cut it short was because of a heavy fog had rolled in, bringing a mini monsoon with it. It was after that that Aerrow realised another good thing about them coming - it would stop them from becoming too tired if they could rotate drivers at every terra. Still, it was going to be cramped on the skimmers to say the least.
Aerrow eyed the sun when he walked out. It was late afternoon now but what they wanted to get were easy to find and relatively cheap so it wouldn't take too long. They'd have to be a bit careful though, since this was right on the edge of Cyclonian territory. Then they'd go back to the Condor to sleep before the mission started properly.
xOx
Aerrow shook his leg, his foot feeling weird with the new shoes. In general, he felt weird not wearing his traditional uniform and from the constant pats and prods he was seeing, he wasn't the only one. They were mostly clothes in dull reds and browns, and the clothes weren't as form-fitting as what he was used to. Stork was in his regular clothes but he wasn't going to be leaving the Condor anyway.
There was a shudder and Aerrow braced himself as the Condor took off. They'd fly for half-an-hour, skirting Cyclonian territory, just in case they were being watched by someone (or multiple people) on Avalon, and then Stork would drop them off and fly back into Atmosian sky.
He took a calming breath, watching the clouds move. Half-an-hour to go.
xOx
Aerrow fell onto the bed, making it creak dangerously but it didn't break, thankfully. Even if it had, he'd have just lain there, not caring. The pillow smelt of smoke, he thought, a little dazed, smoke and... mint, he decided.
Someone flopped into the bed next to his and he heard a groan of happiness. "I am not leaving this." Finn's voice was muffled by the pillow. "I don't care if we're attacked during the night, I'm getting a good night's sleep." Sora had already fallen asleep on top of the covers, a content smile on his lips.
His arms felt stiff and he was grateful they'd bought the thick woollen jumpers or else they would have been frozen too. Aerrow forced himself to move and take off his shoes. Then he crawled under the covers and fell asleep straight away.
Waking up the next morning was painful. It was a little disorientating to see red light filtering in through the window instead of sunlight and for a second, he had no idea where he was.
He hadn't been flying constantly for that long before, even if there were breaks in between. His arms felt worse than when he went to sleep but not as bad as he thought it would be. Aerrow dragged himself out of bed, Radarr growling at the loss of the blanket, and moved to the shower. The shower soothed a little of the aches in his arms and legs and helped him to wake up by the time it had finished. Now all he had to do was wake up the snoring lumps on the other beds, check on the others and continue with travelling to Cyclonia. Easy. As if knowing what he was thinking, Finn curled up into a ball. Aerrow snorted and started to fill a glass that the inn had left in the room with cold water, grinning to himself.
The resulting yell probably woke up all the people in the building.
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