A/N: Yes, folks! Yet ANOTHER foray into the Storm Hawks universe that has to do with Cyclonis being awesome. But I just got the slash bug in my veins… And the Cyclonis bug. I swear to god, I love pairing her up with everybody so they can resist her long enough to realize she's irresistible. Biased? Who, me? Surely you must be mistaken. Cyclonis and Piper are the fansluts of the show; they can and have been paired with just about everyone else, including each other. Which is of course one of my favorite pairings.

This is entirely inspired by Insaneiac The Maniac's lemon, "A Friendly Wager". Hence the villain/hero seme/uke relationship, if something as twisted as this can be called a relationship. And hence the title of this story.

Does this make me awful? I'm not sure. All I know is this is also a loose sequel to "At Any Cost" which is also a reply to another fanfiction writer, miss PhaerynTao, and her story "Iron Maiden." This required no thought process. This is sheer for the lulz, as are most of my Cyclonis pairings. And no, despite my initial wants, this will not be M-rated at any point. Desu desu desu desu. Maybe.

Also I'm gonna try and keep it to five chapters only, not like Shades (which is almost done anyways).

So yeah! Enjoy!

OoOoOo

I pick up a bust from where it lies, innocent, on my bedside table. It's Charles Darwin, the only naturalist among my collection of philosophers. I test it in my hands, feel the weight and solidity of it, feel the smooth and sharp angles beneath my roaming fingertips, and deciding that this would do nicely I take the bust and I hurl it towards the apparition in my room, screaming obscenities at her. It flies at her, and her visage cracks into a thousand shards of silver glass that fall to the floor.

...

Perhaps I should rewind a little.

It all started exactly two months ago today. Or actually, it all really started when the Aurora Stone was stolen and the Storm Hawks had to prove their worth by getting it back from the clutches of Master Cyclonis herself. Either way, Cyclonis was dead now, as dead as a dead person can death. Aerrow killed her, I saw it myself. So what's the problem with that? She deserved to die- I can say that now with more vehemence than I did at her short, short trial. See, back then I still felt pity for her. Back then I didn't realize she was an evil witch and she was just... just fucking psycho, and awful.

So she's dead now, thank God. So what's the problem?

The problem now is that for the last two months she's been showing up in my bedroom mirror. Not anymore, though, 'cause I have effing had it, and as you can plainly see I broke the mirror. No more mirror, no more Cyclonis.

Problem solved.

"I love how simple your mind can be sometimes," Cyclonis purrs from behind me, and I lurch forward, the glass crunching under my bare feet, the sharp pain causing tears to spring to my eyes. There she is- only no longer was she confined to the mirror. She stands larger than life in front of me, neither in her regal cloak nor the pink get up she wore as Lark, but nondescript black clothing. Maybe silk. Maybe linen. Either way, it's her face that of course draws all my attention, the smirk on her long, thin lips.

"Doesn't that hurt?" she wants to know now, looking pointedly at my feet, which were bleeding freely onto the floor. I don't say anything, just stand there, staring at her, hoping against hope that she would vanish in a puff of smoke, disintegrate and filter into the air ducts directly above her. But then I would be breathing her... breathing her atoms...

Four heavy thunders sound against my door- Aerrow's fist, knocking. "Piper!" he says. "Are you OK? Piper?"

"You know they're going to ask what happened," Cyclonis says as I gingerly tip toe over to the door, sliding it open and staring now at Aerrow with the blankest possible face I could manage. "Oh my, how ever are you going to explain this one, Piper?"

The doors swing open a little more. If Aerrow sees Cyclonis standing behind me, he gives no notice. "Are you OK?" he asks again.

"Yep. Perfectly fine. Little lab accident- nothing to worry about."

Not believing me, he peers into the room, and I turn around to see Cyclonis directly behind us. She waves at me, and Aerrow sees nothing. "Is that-" he says, almost choking on the words, his eyes growing large. My heart leaps into my throat. Does he see her? Could we take her together and knock her out? "Jesus Piper, is that blood?"

"What?" I gaze at the shattered mirror where I had stepped, my bloody footprints, my messy feet. "…That mess over there? Nah- just some chemicals. You know. Polishing acids. Distillates. The whole chemistry kit. Now if you don't mind, I'm busy."

I shut the door and turn my back to it, leaning against the cold steel frame as my mind whirls. The last thing I need Aerrow to know is that I'm seeing ghosts- or that I might possibly be losing my mind. Do people just... lose it? Do people just go crazy like this? I watch Cyclonis, transparent and solid, perch herself on the edge of my bed and cross her legs at the knee, waiting patiently for me to do something. The throb of my feet reminds me I need to get off of them soon.

"Get off the bed," I finally tell her, and she complies with a graceful shrug. I limp over to the bed and collapse, the pain in my feet now more important than even a dead dictator in my room. Once my vision clears and my breathing is under control again, I sit up and examine my feet to learn the extent of the damage.

It's bad.

"Hey... you," I say to her, and she looks up, expression polite. It instantly makes me suspicious. "Are you corporeal? Real?"

"Certainly."

"Then open up that drawer and take out the tweezers. Bring them to me."

"Psh. Why should I?"

"Because my feet are full of glass splinters and it hurts to walk, Your Highness!" I snap at her. In response, she laughs. To say this makes me mad would have to be the understatement of the year. In fact the only thing that keeps me from snapping again is that Aerrow would definitely know something is up if I did that and that there's nothing handy and heavy nearby to throw at her. "Listen, you! If you're not going to be a helpful poltergeist, I swear I'll get this place exorcised. Even if it means everyone looking at me like I'm a cracked vase!"

"You are a cracked vase. And that's why I'm laughing, because you're trying to prove you're not- trying to prove I'm real- by forcing me to do something to affect this world. It's such a Piper thing to do- experiment with her ghost."

"You're not my ghost. You're Cyclonis's ghost."

"As you say." The tweezers appear in my hand and I hold them tightly, heart hammering as I try not to look up at her, standing right in front of me. The drawer is open. She had opened it, picked up the tweezers, and brought them to me.

But that didn't mean she was real.

I ignore her, plucking out loose shards from my feet. Or at least I try to ignore her.

"Anything else, Piper?"

"Yeah. Leave me alone."

"I think you know by now I'm not going to do that."

"Then why are you here?" I shout at her, throwing down the tweezers in agitation, my hands gripping at the sheets to my bed until my knuckles turn white. "Can you at least tell me that?" My breathing comes fast and I clench my eyes shut, hoping against hope that when I open them she'll be gone. I only open them when I feel a feather-soft pressure on my lap- of the tweezers, miraculously there again.

Then another pressure, a dip in the mattress as she sits down next to me, hands on her lap and eyes on my face. She doesn't say anything, just sits there- or my hallucination sits there, my hallucination tells my brain that since she's sitting there I should feel the other weight on my mattress and my fake surroundings responded to that- and stays silent. That's one thing that's different about this Cyclonis than- (I'm tempted to say "the real Cyclonis" but that would mean this isn't the real Cyclonis... and that would mean I'm crazy.) than the Cyclonis I had known in life. She doesn't talk as much, doesn't shoot off her mouth at every opportunity. Her few remarks are either cutting, disturbing, completely untrue, or absolutely meaningless.

"What do you want?" I find myself whispering, not to her, but to the floor. My hands cover my face like blinders on a horse so that I can see nothing but what's ahead of me, but that doesn't stop me from feeling her there. "What do you want with me? Why haunt me? I'm not the one who killed you, Lark."

"Are you saying I should haunt Aerrow instead? Drive him nuts? Is that what you want?"

"No!" I say at once, shocked into sitting up straight and looking at her, eyes wide with horror. "Don't you dare!"

Her voice is mild. "OK. I'll stay right here then, if you don't mind."

I glower at her. She smiles, and says nothing. "Still.." I say.

"Yes?"

"Why me?"

Cyclonis doesn't answer, just shrugs. I'm not about to accept that. "Then why can I see you completely now, and before you used to stay in the mirror?"

"Well, you broke the mirror, so there was no other way to see you than to be here."

I'm not sure that logic is very sound. But then, nothing about this encounter is sound, in any way. I turn aside from her, picking at my poor, bleeding feet and wondering how on earth I was going to explain this to Aerrow- the broken mirror and my limping gait weren't going to magically vanish. Finally, Cyclonis lets out a long sigh, rolling her eyes towards heaven. I glare at her, sitting next to me, and I would punch her if I wasn't scared that I might actually feel her- a ghost no one could see- or even worse if I couldn't feel her, which would only be one more argument against her being real and for me being stark raving mad.

"If you have no reason for staying here, then leave," I tell her. "Or is that it? You're just trying to drive me nuts, for no good reason? Man, you ghosts must have a lot of time on your hands."

"I was hoping we could talk," Cyclonis says at last- finally, a straight answer! One that makes sense!

But still I keep my guard up. "About what?"

"About you. About why you're still here. You ask me- why am I here? when in reality it is yourself you should be asking that question to."

"I know why I'm here. That's why I'm asking you, because all you do all day is... is... hang about my mirror. And now you apparently hang about my room. I have a job to do, and I'm happy to do it."

"If you did, I wouldn't be here. I could leave right now, but you would have to push me away. You keep saying you want me to leave but you don't really mean it- not any more than you mean it when you pass someone in the hallway and say 'good morning'. There's no substance."

"No substance!" I say, feeling a bubble of psychotic laughter build in my throat. "This coming from a frickin ghost? No substance! You're the one who-"

What happens next makes me gasp, my very breath caught in my throat. I had raised my hands- both of them, palms towards her. I was going to strike at her, push her, hit her somehow. I don't know exactly. All I know is that my anger peaked at that moment, my rage, and I wanted to hurt her. It was a violent need, an urge, and I knew I would feel no release until I had abused her somehow the way I felt abused, scared her, cowed her, and so I lifted my arms.

But she catches me by the wrists, pulling out my arms so that they're stretched to the limit, reaching over her shoulders as she looks at me with quiet, patient benevolence. As if she knew this was going to happen and she had been preparing for it. For right now.

I can feel her.

Encircling my wrists.

She's real.

And then the expression on her face changes. It's subtle, and it's not harsh, or scary, but it's definitely there. I have no idea what to call it, except curiosity. She's looking at me like I'm a crystal- not a rare crystal in any sense, but definitely quirky, like flint and steel to the imagination. And then her grip tightens on my wrists and she pushes on them in a way they were not meant to go. Slowly. And I, frightened into silence and into immobility, do nothing as the pressure increases on my wrists as she tries to bend them backwards.

I know what she's doing.

She's experimenting on me, to see my boundaries. What I can do. Where I can go. What doesn't work.

Like I'm a crystal in her lab.

And the pain is slowly but undeniably growing. "Lark, stop- stop-!" I flail, pulling away from her, trying to wrench myself free. She holds fast, but the experimentation has stopped for now as she tries to simply keep her grip on me. "You're hurting me! You-"

I made the mistake of trying to kick at her, and a chunk of glass I had neglected to pull out wedges itself deeper into me. It's as effective to my anger as a bucket full of cold water. I whimper, hunching forward in a spasm of pain until my face bumps against her chest, warm and pillow soft. Her grip loosens on my wrists but only to slide up along my gooseflesh-ridden arms to rest on my shoulders, holding me there. I'm confused, to say the least, and scared that she'll hurt me again.

And hurt me again she does.

Without warning one hand grabs my hair and yanks on it, forcing my head back and leaning over me so that I looked up at her and directly into her cool, disconnected eyes. I can feel her fingers massaging my scalp where it still stung from my hair almost getting ripped out and her other hand- her other hand touches my face. It's her fingertips only, probing, curious, seeking for their senses to be fulfilled. Can she sense? Is she real? Am I here alone, and if Aerrow walks in would he see me looking only at the ceiling? Her fingers hold my face in place while her thumb strokes my cheek until they sink downwards to pinch together just beneath my chin to keep my head in place.

"May I continue?"

The sheer cordial tone of her voice is perhaps more shocking than the words themselves, more shocking than the tender caress of her hands and the sudden, intense violence of her mood swings, her experimentation on me. I shake my head no, quickly.

"I promise I won't hurt you again," she says, and it might be my imagination but I swear there's a wheedling tone in her voice.

"Wh-why do you want to?" I ask her, inching away as inconspicuously as I could manage. With the realization that I am, in fact, sitting here with the ghost of Cyclonis, or at least with some sort of apparition that could do me harm, comes an unnamable fear. I can't control this. I can't get help. No one could help me, because no one could feel this or see this-

-except me.

"Why do I want to hurt you?" Cyclonis repeats slowly, tasting the words, taking them into careful consideration. I'm on the verge of telling her that's not what I meant when she answers the question I didn't ask:

"Mmm.. Well… Because I derive sexual pleasure from it, I suppose."

I clamp down on my tongue, heart keening with terror. "So..." I manage to wrestle with my vocabulary- "So why... why do you want to touch me, then?"

"I would venture that it's for the same reason. Only milder."

Overwhelming emotion fills me. Timidity, fear... and outrage. "Christ," I say.

"He has nothing to do with this."

"You're a ghost."

"And you're a sentimental fool." Don't change the subject! I try to say, but her fingers press over my lips and my throat constricts with the sudden urge to open my mouth and lip at her fingers, tease at the edge of the nails with my teeth..."Love's cheap for you, Piper," she says, her voice breaking through my trance as she scoots closer, and in response I scoot further away, and on an on this game plays across the bed until I'm pressed up against the headboard, my face turned away from her. "Can't you see it, even now? You'd love a ghost. Right here, not a few dozen feet from your friends."

"You... You..." I say, but I can't seem to get past that one monosyllable, my mind still roiling with the unwelcome way I reacted to her hands on my mouth.

Her face moves closer to mine, her breath against my cheek and ear, sending ripples right down the length of that side of my body. "Aren't you supposed to contradict me now?" she whispers, and then something hot and wet languorously slides along my cheek to the shell of my ear. The sensation of her tongue- of being violated this way- makes me snap back to my senses and I shove her away from me, hard.

"You little freak," I finally manage to hiss, bracing myself against the headboard, tensing for a fight.

She grins at me, crouching on all fours a little further down the bed- the bed smeared with the blood from my feet, which I realize a little too late are in her convenient range of grasp. She pulls on one of my feet, sitting back so that it rests in her lap, and rips out a chunk of mirror. I let out a shout, a cry of pain, but the noise is cut short as she lunges at me, tackles me down, and pushes her hand against my mouth to smother it. I bite her and her hand recoils at once, blood dripping onto the already soiled mattress.

I open my mouth to shout again when I feel a particularly large chunk of glass pressed against my throat, and Cyclonis hissing at me... "Not another sound."

I shallow my breathing at once, keeping as still as possible.

"Now…" Cyclonis says, her voice mellowing again from that strangled hiss. "Think carefully, Piper, because I'm going to ask you a question. What." She pulls the glass shard down so that it rests against my collarbone, letting me breathe easier. "Are." Then she sits back, and I, stunned, don't know what she's doing until- "You." -she pulls out the tweezers, rests my foot on her lap again, and tenderly starts to care for my wounds. "Doing." She plucks out a minute sliver and holds it up to me, purple eyes intense. "Here? And don't you dare say it's because you want to," she warns, shaking the sliver at me.

I think seriously on the question, because like it or not it had been clouding my mind lately. Maybe this apparition- this haunting- was a result of my own insecurities. If I put everything to rest, would Cyclonis leave me alone? So I tell her the truth. "I'm here because I have to take care of them."

"Ah." Cyclonis smiles thinly, as if I were only verifying a conclusion she had come to on her own. "And you can't hire a nanny?"

"It's more than tha- ow!" I shrink backwards as she ruthlessly digs inside my wounds to extract the glass shards. "Careful!"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"S…shut up."

"Certainly, Your Highness."

"They're my friends!" I say to her, wondering if Aerrow had his ear pressed to the door, wondering if he could hear everything or just a one-sided conversation with me and my ghost. "And friends take care of each other."

"Seems a little… one-sided if you ask me," Cyclonis says, reaching over the side of the bed to rummage around for the wound salve. I'm about to argue with her when I freeze, a sudden thought ramming into me like a shot from Finn's crossbow. That word… one-sided. Why did she put so much emphasis on that word? Was it coincidence that I had thought that very same word an instant before she said it? I watch her carefully as she straightens herself, having found the balm and was now applying it to my sore feet. But despite the casual nature of her actions, the sneaky little grin on her face only grew larger and larger and…And then there was that first comment she had made to me, crashing all my relief at having finally broken the mirror…I love how simple your mind can be…

No.

No.

That's…

"Go on," she prompts me, eyes flashing up towards me for a brief moment. "Say it."

Oh, shit.

"Yep, that about sums it up."

"You can't," I say, voice shaking. "That's impossible."

"I can't what? Go on, I want to hear you say it out loud."

I shake my head.

"Go on!" she urges, grinning. "Say- You're reading my mind! It's going to be so cute when your voice goes all high pitched and scared and squeaky."

"You are not- you can't be-"

She laughs in delight, rocking backwards and throwing her head back. "See?" she says gleefully. "There you go!"

"This is not happening," I say firmly, but I recoil in shock as I realize she had said the words at the exact time I did. "Don't do that!" we snap at each other. "Stop it!" she says, in time with me. I clam my mouth shut, and so does she.

"You see?" I say shakily, and this time she doesn't echo me. "This is just another proof that you're not real. Mind reading is impossible, like ghosts, and if you're a figment of my imagination of course you can see what's in my mind, because my mind is where you came from!"

Cyclonis frowns, shaking her head. "You're stubborn as always," she sighs. "OK, if I was a figment of your imagination, why would I do this?" and she- damn her- she digs her nails into my feet again, but this time I'm prepared. I slap her hands away, grabbing her and pushing her again. But she does something I didn't expect- she doesn't fight back. Instead she falls back with the motion of the shove and pulls me back with her. There's a moment when I'm on top of her and she looks up at me with wide, innocent purple eyes, but in the next second she had me pinned down again.

"Hey now," she says slyly, cocking her head to the side like a curious puppy. "You seemed to like it when you were on top… You might be- 'Let me go'!" she shouts at the same time I do, and then laughs at me. "Come on, Piper. We're stuck together for a while, so we might as well make use of the time we have… right?"

I strain against her, terrified to find that she was even stronger as a ghost than she had been in real life. "Why do you keep doing this?" I finally ask in desperation.

"Doing what?" she asks, blinking.

"Keep-" I start to explain, but then I cut myself short. "Well if you can read my mind, why are you asking, huh?!"

"Because I like the sound of your voice. You see? There you go again," she says in time with me, but this time I'm not going to stay silent. Let her play along if she wants to.

"You keep on… I don't know what's the word for it- flirting with me! Pinning me down! Making all theses passes on me!" we accuse each other. "Will you stop mimicking me already?"

"Piper, mimicking would be me saying the same thing you do after you say it." Cyclonis tightens her grip on my arms, shifting so that she straddles me instead of kneeling on me. I wasn't sure if this was a good development, because now instead of crushing me she's… well she's in a very awkward position.

"It's not awkward," Cyclonis says. "It's sensual. Now, take pity on a sad, lonely little ghost, and lie still. I'm going to kiss you now."

I stiffen. "The hell you are!"

"You don't want me to?"

"Of course I don't!"

"That's not what you're thinking."

"Well, you know what?" I say, and I put special emphasis on each word. "I am not a bitch in heat." Her face darkens in anger but I don't let that stop me. "I'm a human being. And I can control myself. So get the fuck off."

Cyclonis doesn't say anything. The silence stretches on after my words and I feel myself break out into a cold sweat, wondering what she would do next, and whether or not I was safe in a white padded cell at this very moment, banging my head against the wall while inside my own mind I was in the hands of this woman.

"Well," she says at last."Well…" she says again, her voice breaking through the confused cloud that enshrouds my brain right now. Then an idea strikes her and her eyes visibly light up with mischief. "Don't think about what you would do if you were in my position right now," she orders me. It takes me a moment to realize what she means and then it hits me- and of course when you're told not to think about something your mind is already thinking about it. Her laughter floats around me and I burn with shame, knowing that she could see my every thought.

"I… I don't want to do anything!" I stammer, and even I can hear the lies in my voice. Yeah I was a little… bent… but I didn't want anything to do with Cyclonis. Maybe once upon a time, but not anymore. Definitely not anymore.

"Nothing at all?" she asks. "No kissing? No touching?"

"Maybe you didn't understand the first time I said it. You're dead."

"Well, it's not like being dead is a lot of fun," Cyclonis defends herself. "And I'd always wanted something like this while I was alive, so… Not like I have anything to lose by making you miserable." Maybe seeing that my thoughts are still rebellious, she frowns and lets me go, slowly sitting up with the air of one rejected.

"OK.. So… what?" I ask her, also sitting up but not running away this time because at this point I think I've crossed some sort of threshold. No longer is this weird. I'm just going with the flow now. "Wait. Is this like those weird ghost stories where the protagonist has to save the ghost, and the ghost is only around because of some lingering regret in the real world, like catching its murderer, or finding its long lost treasure? Only in your case it's just that you want to have sex with me?"

Cyclonis grins. "It could very well be that. And if that's the case, are you just going to sit there and let me suffer?"

"Hardy har-har," I sneer. "I could get rid of you just as easily if that's the case. All I need is a holy man and a bottle of water."

"But my way, you get the ride of your afterlife."

"You did not just make a stupid ghost pun. Tell me you didn't."

"I'm afraid I did."

I groan. This is worse than being stuck with Finn. At least Finn didn't try to seduce me with weird sadomasochistic sex. I bet for her this is some sort of foreplay. And I bet she's reading this right now. Aren't you?

"Yes. And trust me, I haven't even started foreplay yet."

Shit! How am I supposed to get out of this one if she'll see every move before I make it?

"You don't."

Stop that! I shake my head, banging my palm against my brow for a few moments. "I mean, stop that!" I say out loud, refusing to continue this one-sided telepathy. "Listen. This is ridiculous. You can't seriously say you came back from the dead to try and seduce me."

Cyclonis is still pouting, one leg dangling from the edge of the bed to swing lightly in the air. "I don't know why I came back," she says at last. "Two months ago I was bleeding my life out in front of the crowd. And now I find myself on board the Condor with my inhibitions alarmingly nonexistent. So I was trying, Piper, to have a conversation with you when my head went out the window."

That was the change in her face that I saw…

"I guess it must have been. This is right before I started hurting you, right?"

"Stop. Reading. Mymind."

"I can't help it!"

"Then leave me alone if you can't help yourself."

She pauses again, lips pursed in thought. "No," she says after careful deliberation. At my growl of frustration she shushes me, one finger in the air. "But!" she says, "I have an idea. I can still sense that you have doubts about my existence, so I propose we strike a deal."

Despite myself, I'm curious. "What kind of deal?"

"You get to experiment on me as much as you want," Cyclonis says. "For a set amount of time. If at the end of that time you still don't believe me to be real- and I'll know if you do- I get to do whatever I want with you. And before you say 'no', this only works if you're one hundred percent, absolutely, positively, beyond-a-doubt certain that I am not a figment of your imagination. If you still have any doubts at all, the deal is off."

I don't say anything.

"If by the end of the time you still have doubts, I'll leave. Forever. What's more, I'll wipe all traces of me from the last two months out of your mind. You'll be completely rid of me, and you'll never see me again for as long as you live." She shrugs. "And when you die, well, we'll make a new deal depending on your point of view then."

"You're awfully laid back," I notice. "Cyclonis wasn't like that. Cyclonis was all, If-I-Can't-Have-You-No-One-Can. About everything."

"Infinity changes one's perspective on certain things."

"And yet you still want to get in my pants." That sure hasn't changed…

"Don't be so crude, dear. I simply want to express strong emotions. And feel good. That's pretty much the life of a ghost- the good and the bad and nothing in between."

"Pretty much the same as the life of a Storm Hawk. And you, my friend, were most definitely bad."

"I'm still bad. And I revel in my badness while you stand on your soapbox and tell the masses how they should be good like you while on the inside you really want the same things they do. To hurt the people you don't like. And to have the people you do like please you. Humans are perverse, selfish creatures, and you are a fine example of one." She lowers her head to grin up at me, sadistic and sinister. "Just like me."

I raise my hands for silence, having had enough of her and her break from ghostly silence. This was more like the Cyclonis I had known- always running her mouth. In that respect she wasn't unlike Finn. They both loved to hear themselves talk. "Give me a week," I tell her. She perks up at this.

"You agree to the deal?" she says.

"Only if you promise you'll leave me alone. Oh yeah- and during the week, if I say I need silence, I mean it. Leave me in silence. I can't work otherwise."

"Deal." She stretches out her hand, and I shake it, wondering if by the end of the week I would look back and marvel at how I was able to shake hands with thin air and vivid imagination.