The Shadow of Inkdeath

[Dark Raven]

Prologue

There is the one that they use black birds to call out to...The one that guards the town and its inhabitants...The one that will risk everything for another...The one that will let her own blood run not to see yours...

What's her name? Everyone calls her: Dark Raven

Rumour has it that there is a girl called the Ink Keeper, a friend of the Fang King, and is a lone Storm Rider that will risk her own life to save another's. The only team member of Dark Haven left alive, she lives to protect those in place of the team mates she couldn’t.

Life isn’t easy, but when things get really rough, who does she call out to?

Find out what happens when your past comes back to haunt you, old wounds are opened, your enemies want to kill you at every chance, your present isn’t pretty and the only one you really cared about is…partially gay?

Please R&R

[silverwingedneko]

i read this and pictured it being a commercial or a trailer to some movie xp

[Dark Raven]

Air Gear Fanfic: The Shadow of Inkdeath
Chapter 1: The Raven’s Wings

*Warning – This context contains suicidal ideas and foul language
*I do not own Air Gear or any of its characters! Air Gear is copyright to Oh!Great
* This story follows aspects of the anime series (E.g. the colour of Spitfire’s hair being red, unlike the manga which states he is blonde)
*Please note that my story doesn’t not contain any Japanese phrases or honorifics

“…” Speech
‘…’ Thoughts
~…~ Narration

*******************

Our story begins on a summer’s night, on a rooftop above the sleeping region of Japan. The first person you are to meet is a young, fourteen year old girl. Her name is unknown, but for now, you can call her Dark Raven. She sits on a rooftop of a neighbouring house to the Noyamano residence, gazing over the many rooftops as far as the eye could see.

Dark Raven’s POV

The night air was relatively warm. After all, it was summer. The God of the Wind was being gracious tonight, though he could easily change his mind. My jet-black hair with its odd, white-tipped ends looked messier than usual, especially the long bangs that hid most of my face and the ice-coloured eyes that struck on-lookers down. A thin draw-string held my jacket on to my shoulders, its extra long sleeves drifted in the wind. The bandages around my arms and legs loosened as the wind tugged playfully at them. I looked down at my torn up jeans and saw my skin tone stick out all over it. As feint as moonlight was, it was enough to bathe the spikes and blades at the ends of the bands around my legs in a thin sheen of light.

Oh, I’m sorry. Now that you’re here, I guess I should give myself a proper introduction. Everyone of this region and many others call me Dark Raven. I’m a Storm Rider, you know, one of those people that use Air Trecks, or ATs as we call them? Yeah, that’s me. Don’t get used to me talking to you like this; I’m not all that friendly with strangers. Some of you might be wondering: why the hell am I talking to a lone girl that I don’t even know?! In that case, let me fill you in with a bit of my background. Time for a trip down memory lane…

Flashback: 6yrs ago

“Mommy, do I finally get to meet Daddy today?” asked a little girl, bouncing up and down and tugging at her mother’s sleeve.

Her eyes were bright blue and full of life, not the lifeless, ice colour they were to become. She was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans with a feather printed on the right thigh area. Her charcoal hair whipped everywhere as she jumped. She looked so excited. The platinum-haired woman that walked next to the little girl smiled at her. She looked no older than her mid-twenties. My mother wasn’t fancy. She wore a simple long-sleeved top and jeans complete with her favourite lace-up boots.

“Now, Rei. Don’t go getting too excited now, okay? I don’t want to give your father the impression that I constantly feed you sugar throughout the day,” she laughed.

“Okay, okay! No problem, Mommy!” exclaimed the little girl called Rei.

~Yeah, my true name is Rei. Later, when I found out my father decided on the name, I changed it. I was so carefree back then. I thought that everything was going to be okay now that I was to have a father figure in my life…but I was wrong…~

The doorbell’s familiar sound rang through the house. My mother hurried to it, almost as if the best thing in the entire universe awaited her behind it. The usual creek sounded off when the door was opened. Little Rei stood in the door frame of her bedroom. Before anyone could say anything at all, my mother was flung across the hallway. The distance wasn’t that long, so she slammed right into the stone wall. I was frozen in total shock of what had happened. What did you expect? I was only eight years old at the time! The man in the doorway was tall with dark hair that was in much need of a cut. He had the same blue eyes as me and twisted, evil expression on his face completed his appearance of a deranged madman.

“You…” he said, quickly crossing the hallway and holding my mother up against the wall by her neck.

I could hear her once rhythmic breathing knot into a choke.

“You left me there to rot in that f**king prison! Why didn’t you get me out?! You promised to get me the f**k out!” he screamed.

“Let my mommy go!” I cried, breaking free of my shocked state, running into him and hitting him with what little strength I had against him.

The man looked at me, half filled with anger and the other half filled with sorrow. With his free hand, he picked me up at the collar of my t-shirt and threw me head first into the opposite wall. When I looked up, my vision was badly blurred, but I could clearly see the silver gun my father held against my mother’s head before my world went black.

~To this day, it still pisses me off that I look more like my father than my mother. Anyway, I don’t know what occurred after that, nor did I wish to know. But it would all find its way to me, one way or another. Nonetheless, I would have to come back into the real world some time or other~

Two days later, I finally opened my eyes. I was lying in a bed with soft, pastel-blue sheets with a white duvet decorated with sequenced blue flowers. The room had clean, white walls and was illuminated by the sunlight that came through an open window. A little wind-chime, with the centre charm of a bird, tinkled in a melodious, almost comforting way. With feint memories of what happened before, I sat upright, my head in my right hand. A young woman entered the room. You could say she looked about the same age as my mother. She had crimson, layered, waist-long hair with dragon-green eyes to compliment the colour. Her short, white dress almost blended in with her fair skin and a white jacket rested on her shoulders.

“I didn’t think you would be awake yet. You went through quite a rough time” she said, her voice soft and sweet.

“Sa…Sakurei!” I said, surprised to see her. “Where am I? Where’s my mom?”

Sakurei had a sorrowful look in her eyes. She crossed the room and sat beside me on the bed. I sensed something was not right, but what?

“You’re at my house. But that’s not important. Now, what I have to say will shock you but…I’m sorry, child, your mother is no longer in this world. Neither is your father,” she said, tears swimming in her eyes.

I felt like I was pulled out from a pit of nightmares, only to be flung into Hell. My emotions went completely dead.

“No…No! You’re lying! You’re lying to me!” I burst out crying.

The tears wouldn’t stop, no matter how hard I tried to keep them in. They just forced their way out. Sakurei took me into her arms.

“Shh. It will all be alright. In time, you will see everything will turn out ok” she whispered, swaying me from side to side. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep from crying.

~I was an emotional kid back then. Soppy, huh? That was the day I saw the world for what it truly was: cruel. My hatred for my father grew, even though he was already in his grave. It was a while later before Sakurei told me that my mother was shot in the head several times and my father committed suicide~

End of flashback

That was a bit of insight to what my life was like before I became a Storm Rider. I never really knew my mother’s side of the family and I highly doubt I would want to meet my father’s. The only person I had now was Sakurei. She took me in and stood as the mother figure in my life. She even home-schooled me! To tell you the truth, I’ve never been to a public school. I guess my mother protected me from the outside world like that. I recovered quickly from the past traumas. The only thing is what if my wounds were opened again...?

Flashback: 4yrs ago

“Oh my gosh! Are these really for me?!” a 10-year old me exclaimed in excitement as I stared at a brand new pair of ATs. “Weren’t these really expensive?”

Sakurei just smiled at me.

“Welcome to a new world where you have wings child, you’ve earned them” she said, messing up my hair.

That was Sakurei for you: carefree and flying with the wind. The ATs she gave me were typical starter ones in terms of design. They were mainly black with a few silver pieces.

“Sakurei, does this mean I can join Dark Haven?” I asked, enthusiastically.

Dark Haven was the team that Sakurei had formed with a few other experienced Storm Riders. They rose to the top quite quickly, defeating any team that dared to cross their path. Everyone called her the Storm Wing Blade, on account that she could cut through the wind at breathtaking speeds, as well as her enemies.

“With training you will be able to join Dark Haven, lots of training,” Sakurei said, ending with her usual smile.

~I remember how excited I was, so excited that I started training from day one. It was just about four months after I received my ATs before I joined Dark Haven, with as much power and skill as any of the other Riders. You could say I’m a fast learner. The other members of the team put me through some really tough sessions that I barely even made out of. But hey, I’m still here, right? Back then, I was the youngest of the team. Yeah, sure they picked on me a bit, but it didn’t really bother me. We were really close, all of us. The other members included Raito, a platinum-haired boy called the Dark Light; Satoshi, the wise one known as Dark Reason; Daisuke, you could hear his signals all the way from across town, the Dark Wolf; Risa, the sigil of night, Dark Moon and Mei, the perfectly pretty and proper girl named Dark Flower. Each of Dark Haven’s members had their own special name, all beginning with the word ‘dark’. As I was the seventh member, I had to train for seven months in order to receive my ‘name’. Within the next three months, not did I decide to call myself Dark Raven because of my raven-black hair and keen eyes, but I was also second to Sakurei. This brings us to our next part of the story. Like they say: ‘If you want to be at the top, take out the ones on top’~

I raced on my ATs, catching up with Sakurei and the rest of my team who were practically riding for their lives. We were being chased, but not your friendly kind of chase that happens between girls and guys in high school. All kinds of teams rode behind us, each wanting to shred us to bits. They wanted us, and they wanted us dead.

“Sakurei, they’re gaining on us!” I called to my captain, glancing back now and again.

“Everyone split!” Sakurei ordered, heading towards Dark Haven’s main territory down town.

Raito and Risa took a turn down a dark alleyway while Satoshi headed into the busier parts of town. Mei and Daisuke rode up the walls to make an escape on to the rooftops. I took off through zigzag route until I reached my main hideout: an abandoned warehouse. We all had our escape routes, and I just hoped everyone made it to their end okay. Everything echoed in here, from your footsteps to your breathing. I looked around frantically, hearing that someone was here. A few old, empty boxes fell over from the top level. I tried to keep as quite as I could. The lights switched on and I heard the familiar sound of Air Trecks amongst the boxes.

“Who’s there?” I shouted, starting to get the feeling of panic, like an animal being trapped and targeted.

Before I could blink or gasp a breath, rain fell down upon me, a rain of spikes and blades. I knew for a fact that the team called Hell’s Torture had taken me to hunt. They were infamous for torturing their victims, not the law of the AT world. I screamed as they instruments of pain pierced through my body. One particular blade had happened to be aimed at my face and it slashed my left eye on contact. My crimson life spilled out of me, making my body grow weak from its loss. I was literally stained red. I never thought that even staying here could be this dangerous. I sped up on my ATs, picking out what had caused my injuries as I rode, trying to get as far away as possible from those that attacked me. Five Storm Riders were on my tail. I knew one place I could get rid of them, even if it meant killing them all. I went down a dead-end alleyway, looking at the bricks that covered the ground. They came for me, looking at me with blood-thirsty expressions like those of monstrous beasts. Now let me tell you, one of my special tricks on ATs was reaching great heights by means of a single jumped as well as flying long distances from a single jump, despite my small figure. They came closer…closer…closer…until I gathered enough strength in my legs to make the jump. I was high enough to make an easy escape, but I wanted to finish them for good. I landed at the entrance to the alleyway. You see, what I liked about this particular alleyway is that it was my own personal boogie-trap. The bricks were laid in such a way that if a certain one was pushed it, the entire floor wound collapse and who ever was standing on it would fall into a concrete pit filled with petrol. What was better is that the petrol was mixed with a sticky substance that clogged up the insides of ATs and ignited easily. I stood on the ‘trigger brick’ and pushed it in, making the floor give in. I watched as team Hell’s Torture fell in, struggling to move in the liquid they had landed in. Searching my pockets, I found a box of matches. Lighting about ten, I threw them into the pit and started skating towards DHH or Dark Haven Headquarters. The agonising screams stayed with me as I rode on. Ignoring it, only one questions tormented me: were the rest of my team okay?

~It was the first time I had to do something like that, but there wasn’t another choice. I wasn’t about to sit back and let them kill me! ~

As I rode down town, the sun was starting to sink beneath the horizon, waving goodbye with its last transparent rays. Dark Haven’s main territory was compiled of most of down town and almost no one had the guts to enter. Our usual meeting place was an underground base, having a concealed entrance. When I arrived, I saw that the entrance had been broken down. Thoughts of what could have possibly happened swirled in a drunken mess inside of my head. I shook them off. Maybe Sakurei and the others were safe and awaiting me with open arms inside the base, right? Yeah, that was it. Slowly, with utmost caution, I entered. It was dark at first, until the familiar light of the common room seeped through. The feeling of death took over my frail body. Blood stained everything, from the walls to the floor and the bodies that lay there. I spotted Sakurei’s figure lying in a separate pool of her own crimson life force.

“Sa…Sa…SAKUREI!” I cried as I skated over to her, kneeling by her side.

I laid her head in my lap, trying to give some sort of support.

“Raven, my child…” she managed to utter, coughing up blood.

“D-Don’t speak, Sakurei. Are you going to be okay? Please say yes. Please say yes so we can go back to how it was before,” I pleaded, tears streaming down my scarred face.

“Here, Raven-child. Take this…” Sakurei trailed off as she reached into her jacket.

She pulled out a piece of metal that looked like a badge. It was then I recognised it. What Sakurei had given me was the emblem of Dark Haven.

“Take it, my child, in memory of me,” she said, placing it in my hand.

I held on to it tightly.

“You’re not going to leave me too, are you? I can’t bear losing you too!” I cried, the tears flowing as if they were rivers.

“Sorry…I’m so sorry…” Sakurei whispered before closing her eyes…forever.

“Sakurei? Sakurei?” I said, shaking her limp body.

~It wasn’t before long that I become completely exhausted from crying and blood loss and had just fallen asleep on the floor. I had no one now…or that’s what I thought~

I opened my eyes, surrounded by warmth, not the coldness of the floor. It took me a few seconds before I realised I was held by a young man. He was on ATs and had fiery-red, messy hair. I almost jumped out of his arms.

“My apologies, Raven. I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. “My name is Spitfire.”

“Spitfire? How did you know about Dark Haven’s headquarters? How did you know I was here?” I asked him.

“I knew Sakurei very well, a good friend of mine. She asked me to help you out if anything was to happen to her. I’m a guardian for you now,” Spitfire said, riding out. “You’ll be staying with me from now onwards were I can keep you out of harm’s way. Now, let’s go and get you cleaned up.”

~It was from that moment that I clung to Spitfire. He was a great guy, even at that young age. He was and is like an older brother to me. AT wise, Spitfire was the best Storm Rider I had ever seen! I stayed with him for about two years. I owe Spitfire my life and promised I would pay him back some day. After all, he took me in when no one else would~

End of flashback

That was just a bit of my past. The main thing is that my wings were created from all the anger and hatred. These wings were fuelled by every kind of emotion that coursed through my body. Sites of blood were nothing to me. I thirsted for it, and it grew. To all those who suffered, I wanted to make their tormentor pay in blood and agonising screams. That’s another reason I am what I am: people call out to me for help. The birds, they can understand me and I can understand them. That is how people call out to me. Wherever I go, birds follow, most commonly black birds like crows and ravens. I can easily tell if the cry for help is genuine or fake. If it is really needed, I’ll go forth, if not, let’s just say you’ll receive a greeting from my flock. These birds are also the only ones I talk to. They understand me better than humans. I’ve been waiting for the day I could be reunited with two very close friends of mine. They’ve been there for me and were my only friends when being trapped in a cage. Uh oh, here comes Shadow, my main messenger. Time to go…

[Licorice]

Awsome Story ;D