Dawn of a New Age

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Four

"Last one." Matthew said snipping the last stitch and carefully pulling the bits out.

"Thank you Mattie!" Aerrow said happily looking down at the almost healed cut. Radarr sniffed it lightly looking up at his friend.

"Do not rip it open again." Canada warned shaking the scissors in the teen's direction. "I will not be happy."

"I won't. I'm going to be a lot more careful." The red head said running a hand through his hair. "That sucked." The sky knight slipped off the bench slowly as Matthew cleaned the scissors and put them away. Radarr climbed carefully up on to Aerrow's shoulder. "Thank you so much for everything you've done. Without you, I would have died."

"It's no problem." Canada said with a smile. "After all you've done for me; it's the least I can do."

"Where did you learn this? It's amazing." Aerrow asked as they left the med bay.

"Way back when, my friend was a field doctor. I tagged along with him every once and a while, when I wasn't busy, to help and learn." Matthew explained. "This was quite a while ago and most of the techniques are a bit outdated, but they still work well enough."

"You always talk like you're older than you are." The Sky Knight pointed out. "You're only a couple years older than me?"

"Oh shit, I never told you guys did I?" Canada groaned face palming. The pair walked into the bridge and the door shut behind them. "I'm not human."

"What?" Piper asked looking up from her book. Finn, Junko and Stork were there too.

"I'm sorry; I completely forgot to tell you guys." Matthew said with a small nervous smile. He felt bad and almost like he had been lying the whole time. "I'm a nation. Which means I'm a lot older than I look."

"Nation?" Aerrow asked sitting down at the round table where the other Storm Hawks were. Matthew took a seat in between Piper and Finn. "How old are you?"

"I don't know, four, maybe five hundred years?" The nation said gauging the Storm Hawks reactions. They seemed shocked. Even Stork turned around to listen. "A nation is an 'immoral' being that is the personification of a country. A country is pretty much what a Terra is to you. We live as long as our nation does."

"Can you being here affect that?" Piper asked concerned.

"No, we are affected by our land. If it is hurt we are. Or if our people are sick, so are we." Matthew explained. "Our land and people aren't affected if we aren't there."

"Are your brother and father also nations?" Junko asked and the Canadian nodded.

"Yeah, Alfred is America and Arthur is England." The nation said. He knew the nation names would mean nothing to the teens. It had been over half a year since he had heard from either of his family.

"And you are?" Stork asked from the wheel.

"I represent Canada." Matthew said.

"So, should we be calling you Canada or Matthew?" Junko asked for clarification.

"Well, Canada is more of a professional, business name. Matthew is for friends and family." The nation explained. "So Matthew is better."

"You're old." Finn said poking his arm teasingly. "You're like, ancient dude."

"I'm actually one of the youngest nations." Canada said. Finn raised an eyebrow looking skeptical. "China or Yao is probably the oldest. He's at least four or five thousand years old!"

"Holy crap." Finn sputtered. "He's probably seen some shit."

"We all have." The nation said eyes growing distant. "We've all had our fair share of wars over the years. None of them have lasted as long as yours though."

"How did those wars end?" Piper asked intrigued.

"We were able to overpower the other side and get them to surrender." Matthew shrugged. "We made treaties and everything after."

"So you killed people then?"' Fin asked out of know where.

"Well, yes. It's next to impossible to win a war without killing anybody." The nation said sadly.

Finn looked at Aerrow and raised an eyebrow. Canada knew that Aerrow was against killing and Finn was for it. He knew that they would fight about it every once in a while. Finn thought that if the Sky Knight would kill Dark Ace it would end the war. The storm Hawks didn't kill any of the talons; they would even save them if their parachute failed, but Matthew knew that they would only end up stranded in the wastelands.

"We don't kill Finn. Sky Knights and their squadrons don't either; it's not how we work." Aerrow said carefully not wanting to start anything.

"I know. I've heard that speech enough times." The blond teen said leaning back in his chair. "But, we're not an actual squadron so we don't need to follow those rules."

Suddenly the Condor took a turn. "Sorry. Flying felina." Stork called turning slightly from the wheel. "Need to go anywhere today?"

"No, we still have the basics. Just stay around the edges of the Atmos." Piper said getting up from the table. "We're lucky that Cyclonians haven't found us yet."

"It's been like two months right? Not a peep from the Cyclonians." Junko said with a sigh. "It's quiet."

"Don't jinx it buddy." Finn said hopping up from the table. "I'm going to go have a nap."

"Dude, you just got up!" Junko said following him out of the bridge. Piper laughed and left as well.

-❄"You a professional asshole or?"❄-

Three more months had passed and Matthew had lost track of how long he had been in the Atmos. He hadn't heard from his brother at all in that time. He had texted with Prussia once in a while, but he couldn't get a hold of England or America. Canada was a little bit worried, but brushed it off.

Aerrow had fully healed and was back into top shape. They had been still staying away from the Cyclonians for the most part, only going in to steal supplies, but the Sky Knight was itching to get back to business. He got his wish by the Condor flying to close to a mining colony.

"On your left Finn!" Piper called through the coms. She had two Cyclonians on her tail as well. The young woman was shooting backwards at them with her crystal staff.

"See em!" Finn shouted back firing at the pair with his cross bow.

Matthew rolled to the left to avoid the blaster fire from a trio of talons. His skimmer was fairly damaged and hard to control at the moment. His controls were sluggish and took a while to respond, but his guns were fine. Canada pulled a large loop and flew in between another group of Cyclonian skimmers. They watched confused as he flew through the centre of the group. The talons that were tailing him weren't as lucky. They slammed into their comrades causing all of their skimmers to be wrecked.

Canada looked over his shoulder seeing the destruction behind him and laughed. He hadn't noticed that someone had gotten close to him until he felt a thump on his wing.

AN: Matthew has a terrible memory mostly because I have a terrible memory... Will be posting a short bonus fic thing for Dare Devil over on my Tumblr ( TallPoppy-Canada) later this week!