"Kill her!"

In her room, Lark turned away from the figure half-hidden in the shadows.

"No!"

"She is a Storm Hawk!"

"She is mine!"

"She is lying to you! Manipulating you!"

"She is mine! She gave herself to me!"

"KILL HER!"

Lark fell back as the figure advanced, pulling the shadows forwards. It loomed above her, growing in size, even as Lark shrunk, her voice growing small and childish.

"NO!"

"Foolish child!"

Lark's grandmother lashed out and grabbed the child-Lark by the throat, lifting her to eye level.

"This is what you were created for! This is why I gave you my power! And now the Storm Hawks sleep in Cyclonian beds and you do NOTHING!"

In her grandmother's grip, Lark gasped for breath as too-long fingers dug into her neck.

In her bed, Lark stirred in her sleep and half-opened her eyes. When she spoke, the words were harsh and distorted.

"Must I do everything myself?"

Lark began to rise, but a sudden spasm pushed her back into the mattress. She flailed, shouting nonsense, until the movements sent her off the edge to fall to the floor. Lark lay there only a moment before pushing herself up. She began to crawl back into bed, but stopped, turning and searching the room before settling her gaze on a full-length mirror. She stood shakily, and staggered across the room towards it. Standing in front of her reflection, sweat-soaked and wobbling, Lark stared into its surface.

"She. Is. Mine."

In the depths of her reflection's shadow, a dark shape howled in fury. Lark stood strong until it receded, until there was nothing left in the mirror but her.

After pulling herself together, the clock on the mantle told Lark that there was still an hour before sunrise. Good. She could use the time to clean and compose herself. She couldn't be seen like this. She couldn't…

Lark looked at the door, and thought of the unlocked room just across the hall where'd she'd spent more than one sleepless night.

She shouldn't.

Lark's shoulders slumped in defeat, and she headed for the bathroom.

She may not be a Cyclonian, but Piper knew the value of punctuality. Her eyes opened seconds after the clock chimed, but hesitated at the feeling of a bed that was so much larger and more comfortable than her cot in the Condor.

This wasn't her bed…but it could be.

The room was nice too. Roomy. It didn't rattle when the engines went over seventy percent thrust. The bolts didn't squeak in a storm. There wasn't any snoring heard through paper-thin walls.

Piper shoved the thoughts aside and hurried towards the bathroom. A private bathroom with real, honest hot water in the shower. And thick fluffy towers that Piper glared at as she used them to dry off. An obvious ploy on Lark's part to make her want to stay.

Very clever, Lark.

Piper slipped into her pilot's leathers. It seemed like the only outfit she ever wore. She never had the time or money for causal clothes. Just once, she'd like to go to a party wearing an actual dress.

Piper slumped against the door and let herself take it all in. She wanted this. It was selfish and impossible and she wanted it.

She wanted…

Piper opened the door to see Lark standing in the hallway, looking absolutely miserable. She barely had time to look up before Lark slammed into her, holding her tight and burying her face in Piper's neck.

"Ah…"

Piper relaxed as the outburst of violence she'd expected didn't materialize. Lark had her in a grip Piper could only call 'desperate.' Their bodies were pressed so tightly together that Piper could feel Lark's heart hammering in her chest, and the breath on her neck was hot.

Piper raised her arms and returned the gesture, feeling Lark slowly begin to relax. Away from the violence, the posturing, the high Cyclonian halls or endless ranks of troops, Piper realized just how small and thin the body within her embrace really was.

Piper tightened her grip, lowering her head to rest on Lark's shoulder. It was every bit as inviting as the bed had been, and the fronds of Lark's hood tickled her ear. Pale skin filled her field of view, and Piper realized something else…

There were Cyclonian boots making a ruckus down the hall. She peeked around the curve of Lark's neck to see a pair of talons desperately backpedaling out of sight.

Piper laughed, and savored what would be the last few moments of the embrace. She felt Lark lift her head, skin brushing skin, and met her eyes.

"Duty calls…"

Lark tilted her head in puzzlement, and Piper nodded towards the end of the hall where the talons were half-hidden around the corner. Lark suddenly became very self-conscious, pulling her arms back and adjusting her robes. Piper smiled at the sight and pulled away slowly, not missing the furtive look from Lark as Piper's hand trailed across her lower back.

As they rounded the corner, the talons were waiting for them. Ramrod straight and at attention, neither of them so much as twitched at Lark turned to address them.

"Report!"

"Master! The drill team reported breaching the designated tunnel and confirming that it was artificial. All contact with the team was lost shortly afterwards."

"Have any attempts been made to re-establish communications?"

"A maintenance team was sent down after them, but they went silent as well. A force is assembled and awaiting your orders, master. Per your instructions, the Storm Hawks have been awakened and ordered to be ready!"

Her usual imperious self once again, Lark moved on and the Talons fell in behind her.

It was a long walk to the hanger where the expedition was assembling. The trip was punctuated by two short tremors, and Piper was relieved to find her friends unharmed, if a little groggy. The Dark Ace was smirking in response to the scowl that Aerrow was sending his way, and the Cyclonians snapped to attention as Lark entered.

As Lark addressed her troops, Piper was wracked by a sudden bout of paranoia, and tried not to be obvious about it as she tried to look at the assembled talons' rank insignia. If there was a battle waiting for them, there was a squadron of Sky Knights ready to take the blame for any 'accidents' that might occur. When Lark was done speaking and her squadron called her over, Ace passed her on his way to Lark's side.

He pointedly glanced at her, flicked his eyes towards the troops, and gave her a nod. He took the relief on her face for the reply it was and continued without breaking his stride.

Aerrow wasn't done scowling as Piper rejoined her friends. It looked like he hadn't been getting much sleep, but that was no surprise.

"Piper, are you finally going to tell us what's going on?"

"Well, we think someone or something is artificially inducing earthquakes under Cyclonia. If we can't stop what's happening, then everyone on Cyclonia will probably be dead in the next few days."

"Um, Piper?" Caught mid-yawn, Finn turned away from his own scowling contest with Ravess. "Did you just say…"

"Unless we stop what's happening, everyone is going to die."

"That's what Cyclonis kidnapped you for? To save Terra Cyclonia? Why didn't you just tell us?"

"I didn't tell you because…it was a conversation I really didn't want to have."

"Why? Did you think that I'd just take you back and fly off? We're Sky Knights. That's not how we do things."

Hearing the honesty in those words, seeing her squadron stand beside Aerrow as said them…it made Piper feel terrible for doubting him. Also relieved. But still mostly terrible.

"So what's the plan?"

Her squad stood out in the Cyclonian transport as a splash of blue among a sea of red. They descended the sides of Cyclonia's central spire, past the cloud layer and into the wastelands. There were structures set into the rock face here, ancient and crumbled, their styles having a vague resemblance to modern Cyclonian architecture.

On any other day, she would have loved to stop and poke around in them, but that would have to wait until she'd joined…until they'd stopped whoever was behind the quakes. It was a question that would be answered shortly, but it still nagged her. This kind of crystal manipulation was unprecedented. How many things were there in all of Atmos that could be responsible? Before Lark had shown her some samples of the altered crystals, she'd likely have said 'none.'

Lark was standing among her troops, too many bodies and too much distance between them for Piper to approach. Even before they'd been seen…together…rumors were likely already spreading. She couldn't begin to guess how Lark planned to deal with that. And if word got back to the Council…It would give her an excuse to stay in Cyclonia permanently.

Piper shoved the traitorous thought aside and focused on what was outside. The transport was settling outside of a structure so old most of it had been worn down to dust. An ancient road, paved with some kind of dark and pitted material led up to a collapsed entrance that past visitors had re-sealed against the elements. Stepping outside, the normal fury of the wasteland was subdued here – the satellite spires that made up Cyclonia offered a measure of protection and stability the closer one was to the central peak.

As the talons spread out and secured the area, Piper bent down and brushed her fingers over a fallen slab in front of the entrance, and her glove came away red. It was steel, not stone, and so old that it crumbled like sand at her touch. It was also massive. Before decay set in it must have originally been almost a meter thick and at least five meters square. Piper doubted that even Cyclonian facilities could fabricate something like that. That the people of the past had such impressive engineering skills to build a mere door was astonishing.

The wonder lasted until Piper considered what they must have needed such a door to protect.

Even ancient and ruined, the structure was a marvel. There were no seams or chisel marks that Piper could see, as if the corridor had been perfectly bored out of solid rock. Faded colored lines ran along the floor and branched off into side passages, marked with old-world script.

"This says…repair? And this is…rulership?"

"Maintenance and Administration."

Lark walked slowly, her talons spreading out to check every nook and cranny she approached.

"I shouldn't be surprised you can read this."

"Most Cyclonians technicians can. It's required to operate the few intact technologies we recover from these ruins."

Piper poked her head into a side room. It was all so strangely…mundane. Chairs and desks, shelves and…she guessed those were lamps?

"What are those? They're everywhere."

Piper gestured to dark glass sheets set into slabs of unidentifiable material. Some were on desks, others were mounted high on the wall. Lark shrugged as Piper picked up a tiny example from the floor, smaller than her hand.

"Records say that they're some kind of control mechanism for the other devices, but we're never managed to get any of them to work."

Piper reluctantly set the tiny slab down and hurried to catch up. She could spend a lifetime studying these ruins, but…

"Wait…why isn't there a Cyclonian presence already here? Shouldn't you have dug up and mapped all this up already?

"Beyond copying the simpler machines, so much knowledge has been lost that there's little we can comprehend here. And…after the war, resources were needed elsewhere. There's little reason to return to digging up the past."

"You really should."

Lark gave Piper a sidelong grin.

"We're entering here because the drilling team's path intersected one of the passages known to connect to this part of the complex."

"This part?"

"This is just one tiny sector of a complex that runs for tens of kilometres through Cyclonia's central spire. The rock is honeycombed with enough chambers to house thousands of people, but many areas were sealed by past cave-ins, or later walled off."

"Why?"

"Some form of energy cycles erratically through several different sections, strong enough to kill any exposed to it. No sense has ever been made of it, so the affected areas are simply sealed."

Piper shuddered and moved a little closer to Lark. They kept close as the group moved through the ruins, following faint footsteps in the dust left by the first Cyclonians to explore here. Ancient doors were cut away, debris was cleared, and shafts were traversed by rope and Lark's powers. After being hurt by them so many times, Piper was surprised how gentle Lark could be, floating the two of them down a shaft where the stairs had collapsed. It wasn't necessary to hold onto each other on the way down, but Piper felt better for it.

It took longer than expected to reach the intersection of ancient corridor and new passage, where the drill had broken through a small chamber in one of the complex's outlying passages. As the talons cleared the rubble, Piper boggled as a perfectly mundane mop and bucket were tossed out with the rest of the debris, and she was paralyzed in a momentary fit of giggles at the thought of an ancient janitor's closet being the site of an archaeological dig.

The group moved into the passage left by the drill machine and followed it downwards. That passage intersected another, and the smell of sulphur and wasteland gasses had people reaching for respirators. Lark sent a small group to chase the second passage, and hopefully discover whatever breach in Cyclonia's security the invaders had snuck through. The rest continued onward, the two passages becoming one once the Cyclonian drill turned to follow the foreign machine that had gone ahead of it.

It wasn't long before a scout returned, warning that light had been spotted. Cyclonians and Sky Knights alike prepared, and they moved forwards in silence. Talons fanned out as the tunnel broke into another ancient passage, this one lit by chemical lamps of modern make. The cyclonian drill machine sat abandoned next to a more ramshackle model in a large storage room, and Piper joined Lark as she tucked herself behind a column and pulled a small binder from a pouch.

"This is deeper into the spire complex than any Cyclonian survey team has reached before. It only shows up on the very limit of what seismic scans can resolve. I have no idea what might be down here."

The two girls rejoined the group behind a wall of wary talons, following the trail of disturbed dust. Footsteps preceded scorch marks, broken fixtures, and spatters of dried blood. Wide swathes of cleared dust and red smears showed that several bodies had been dragged down the corridor, and the group carefully followed the trail until the corridor opened into a massive passage, some kind of layered tracks suggesting an underground tram system on a scale unseen anywhere else in Atmos.

Across the tracks and below them, two bodies in Cyclonian uniforms lay slumped against the far wall. A gesture from Ace sent a pair of talons down onto the tracks to make their way over. Ace stepped out of the doorway after them and paused, reaching for his blade.

"This isn't right."

He began to shout a warning just as a talon reached out to examine the bodies.

An explosion knocked the group off their feet, the scouts and diggers vanishing in a fireball. The first talon to make it back on his feet caught a red blast to the chest that blew open his armor and threw him onto the tracks. From behind rubble, from catwalks and doorways around them, figures leaned out and fired upon the Cyclonians and Sky Knights caught in the open.

Soldiers scattered and men died. Lark snarled and threw up a dome of glowing energy that dissipated incoming fire, giving Ace the reprieve he needed to restore a semblance of order. Under his directions, the talons swiftly took up positions and began returning fire. Next to Lark, Piper saw her friends make a mad dash to the opposite side of the tram, sliding into cover behind a fallen pillar.

She resisted the urge to run after them and drew her staff, taking only a moment to choose which crystal to fix into place. She moved as far from Lark's shield as she dared and fired at those positions flanking them, filling doors with expanding blobs of goo before ducking back under Lark's protection.

"Slimer and eruption Crystals?"

"It turns out that combination was good for something after all."

With their sides secure for the moment, Ace leapt out of cover, scaling the wall and creeping up to a doorway spewing red bolts at the Cyclonians below. He dashed inside, and a man in green robes flew out, landing heavily on the tracks and getting bayoneted as he tried to rise.

Lark's glow intensified, and she floated into view, immediately drawing fire. The sheer amount of energy directed at her would have punctured a carrier's hull, but she was left unharmed, if trembling from the exertion. But she had no intention of going on the offensive. She was just a big, glowing distraction.

One of Finn's arrows knocked out the shooter manning a heavy cannon, and other figures scattered as Junko threw a train car at them. The talons surged ahead as the balance shifted, reacting with speed and skill that Piper hadn't seen in those she'd previously fought against. She hated that Ace was right about that, even if it was saving their lives right now.

Lark took a breath behind cover, allowing her shield to fall and tearing the robe away from the fallen invader with a flick of her fingers. She observed it for only a moment before throwing the bloodstained robe to Piper's location, and she lifted it with the tip of her staff.

The image of a burning tree stitched into the fabric make her stomach turn, and screams of rage met by Ace's own battle-cry rose above the din as she let it drop.

At least now they knew who was responsible for Cyclonia's impending demise.

The signing of the Treaty of Lost Green infuriated many League citizens who had lost homes and loved ones in the war. The most vocal and violent of these individuals were those few citizens of Terra Arcadia that had been evacuated just before its destruction. They would go on to form the core of an anti-Cyclonian terrorist group calling itself the 'Alvar' and attacked traders, politicians, and anyone appearing even remotely sympathetic towards the Empire they blamed for the loss of their home.