Storm Hawks Fan 3rd Season

Episode 63 - Part 1

Episode 63 - A Dose of Love

Part 1 - A Little Jumpstart

The Condor was flying in the calm sky as the day was almost over, which was a nice change of pace from the rather harsh places, brutal battle, and exhausting training regimen the Storm Hawks had gone through. They could barely believe it had been a few years for them, but for the rest of the world, it had been a matter of hours. The Far Side certainly had its strange quirks, alright.

It was a little scary to think they had aged in such a short time, they couldn't imagine what kind of collateral effects that could have had on them, but they weren't too bothered by that (well, Stork was, he just didn't talk much about it anymore due to his argument having been dismissed quite a few times already, but he always would bring up the point if he had the chance), because their focus was to put their training and the changes they suffered in use the next time they faced Master Cyclonis. Yet, for the time being, they decided to take a quick break since it seemed like the Empress needed a good while to gather all the resources she had spent again, so they had a moment to recover and plan their next step way before then.

One would usually propose they should have taken advantage of the situation and struck at her before she regained any strength at all, but their grim defeat at the hands of the Dark Ace taught them to never underestimate her again: they might have known that she had used most of her assets in the revival of their enemy, but they still didn't know the full extent of what she and her forces were currently capable of, so they weren't about to risk it, instead, they decided to let their allies keep on trying to spy on her from a distance and merely waited for an update from them while the squadron rested.

Weirdly enough, their way of resting involved doing some maintenance, of all things. Well, after being exposed to the hazards of the Astral Training Grounds for a few years, making sure the Condor and their equipment were in perfect working order was as easy and relaxing as a walk in the park. It was really strange how something that had once been a chore became a refreshing hobby-like activity. Maybe extremely intense hard work had served them well, especially the sharpshooter, who was prone to being lazier.

Aerrow, Sinjin, Finn, and Radarr were in the hangar bay working on all the skyrides. The redhead and the blonde made adjustments and fixed things up, while the ghost flew around and materialized only his hands to quickly fetch and give them the tools they needed upon request. The mission specialist washed the floor using two sponges like they were roller-skates. He did so thoroughly, almost paranoid about keeping the floor impeccably clean, after all, the last time a certain someone had left a huge oil puddle on the ground, their sky knight broke every single bone in his body and became an annoyance for five whole days, with the others having to take on his chores, then Cyclonis took the chance to invade the ship in an attempt to finish him off forever while he was defenseless on top of all that! Yep, that hadn't been their most easy-going week...

Junko and Mr. Softy were in the engine room. The mascot was making a special kind of silk that worked perfectly as a thread seal tape, which the wallop used to screw some pipes together a little deeper in order to make the structure as a whole stronger and more stable. Once they were finished with that, they tested the reworked pipes system, and the strange faint noise they used to hear from the steam escaping the tiny gaps of the threads in the hollow metal tubes was finally gone, so they stared at each other and smiled proudly about their work, the flight engineer petting his friend's head, then they proceeded to their next task.

Stork was in the weapons room adjusting the response time of the activation of all the weapons from the team. He tested each one of them, the energy staff, crossbow, knuckle busters, and twin blades, then filled a sheet, noting that all of them were 0.17 seconds faster. While it seemed like it wasn't much, he looked very satisfied, since that could easily make the difference when milliseconds mattered, which was how it usually went in combat situations.