Piper (Storm Hawks)

Piper is a main character in Storm Hawks. She is a crystal specialist and the navigator of the Storm Hawks squadron. Biography Piper is the 14-year-old navigation and tactics specialist of the Storm Hawks. She's also a crystal specialist, capable of refining raw crystals into usable ones, an art considered difficult at best; "Crystal Mage" is the official term. Piper often devises elaborate plans for the team to follow, though more often than not they only manage to complete part of the plan before simply improvising, annoying her, but she consistently puts up with it because of their friendship. She is very opinionated, often to the displeasure of her teammates, and will freely speak her mind. Despite her more intelligence-oriented station, Piper is a capable fighter. She is a master of a unique style of martial arts called "Sky Fu" (the Storm Hawks' equivalent of kung fu) and her knowledge of crystals make her attacks in battle unpredictable, since her crystal-powered staff could potentially have one of any number of effects. She was able to maintain a steady battle against Master Cyclonis by herself, eventually forcing Cyclonis to retreat by breaking the crystal on her staff. She also fought Cyclonis in "The Masked Masher", successfully fending off her attack and remarking that Cyclonis "fights like a girl." Piper later discovers that she has a strange ability to imbue the power of a crystal within Aerrow, later referred to as "Binding." The untrained power weakens her considerably at first, but she is restored to health when she and Aerrow come into "perfect attunement," something even Cyclonis herself is not capable of. Appearance Piper is a tall teenage girl with dark skin, blue hair and hazel eyes. She usually wears an orange headband with an orange and dark blue outfit with matching gloves. She also wears a crystal necklace. Personality Piper is responsible and thinks before she acts. However, she is outspoken and highly opinionated, and obsesses over the tiniest details in her plans. Unfortunately, her male teammates often follow them halfway and then deviate to carry out their own ideas, a source of Piper's frustration. She usually gets along very well with the other members of the squadron with the exception of Finn, with whom she has a squabbling, almost brother-sister relationship. She is very close to Aerrow, and it is hinted that they may have feelings for each other. Equipment Ride Unlike her friends, who all pilot plane-like vehicles, Piper pilots a heliscooter, a combination helicopter/scooter she built for fuel economy. The main rotor extends from a compartment behind the seat, while the rear wheel provides the tail rotor. Unlike skimmers, Piper's heliscooter only has one booster, making it slower. In addition, it is much smaller and so has almost no armor protecting it. It is, however, much more maneuverable than a skimmer. Weapons Piper uses a crystal powered staff in combat but sometimes reverts to her mastered techniques of Sky Fu. As she demonstrates in Episode 4, "The Code," Piper can move fluently through the motions of Sky Fu with ease and grace, much to the amusement of Aerrow and disbelief of Finn who states, "Where'd she learn that?" Another prominent skill she has learned is Binding, which allows her to endow the power of crystals she holds into Aerrow, and after developing perfect attunement, herself as well. This is the most powerful and dark skill a crystal mage can learn. Abilities Crystal Master: Piper is extremely knowledgeable and skilled at using the mystical properties of various crystals. She is stated to be the only person to rival Master Cyclonis in skills of crystal mastery. By only reading Cyclonis's scroll on a regeneration crystal she gained the knowledge and understood how to create her own something that Cyclonis noted would require a certain amount of skills to create such a complex crystal. Some of the abilities Piper derived from crystals were: Flight/Levitation Force-Field Projection Energy Manipulation Matter Transmutation Power Disruption Portal Creation Crystal binding: Later in the show, Piper is shown to have an ability known as Binding, a difficult and dangerous art. Its full abilities and uses haven't exactly been explained but it seems to be that the user can temporarily control and even improve the one who is hit by the technique. Unfortunately, it has also shown to have a downside. The power is very dangerous, even if the user stops for a long period of time, it will still take a toll on the body and weaken it. Shortly after Piper uses this technique for the first time, Master Cyclonis mentions to Dark Ace that "it will destroy her before she can ever learn to control it," which hints that it can be controlled without the user succumbing to evil. Through the Binding, Piper is able use a multitude of abilities: Power Imbuing: Piper is able to empower Aerrow with various abilities, she has demonstrated proficient skill with this power after only recent discovery of it. Next to Master Cyclonis, Piper is the only other known Crystal mage to possess this power. Crystal Manipulation Flight/Levitation Enhanced Strength Lightning Manipulation Piper is shown to be severely sick after several weeks without using the technique. It is not until the final stand, when Piper became perfectly attuned with Aerrow, granting both of them the power of the crystals, that she recovers. Her complete mastery of the technique is still undetermined. Piper must have a crystal in hand in order to use this power. Pilot: Piper skilled at driving and piloting her heliscooter. Intelligence/Tactical analysis: Piper is a skilled tactician, able to quickly devise a plan in small amounts of time. Piper also has deductive skills as she was able to see through Master Cyclonis's disguise as Lark after noticing her suspicious behaviour. Piper has a vast knowledge on Atmos's history, philosophers, cartography, geography, geology, mathematics, and physics, marking her as one of the most intelligent members of the team. Acrobatics: Piper is capable of using acrobatics when fighting or evading her enemies. She was able to perform a head-scissor throw on Master Cyclonis. Hand-to-hand combatant: Piper is an adept unarmed combatant. During The Code, Piper demonstrated all the proper forms of Sky Fu perfectly, showing she is well versed in the martial art. In The Lesson, she caught Snipe by surprise with an uppercut that knocked him high into the sky. In The Masked Masher, she duelled hand-to-hand with Master Cyclonis herself. Piper proved to be the superior combatant of the two, swiftly taking Cyclonis down with a simple head-scissor throw and knocking her aside with a single punch. Expert stick-fighter: Piper is able to utilize a staff in combat which can shoot energy blasts. Piper was also skilled at utilizing it in battle when she duelled Master Cyclonis. Equipment Crystals: Much like Master Cyclonis, Piper is constantly armed with various crystal that cause multiple effects which she keeps hidden on her. Staff: Piper carriers an extendable staff that is powers by crystals akin to Master Cyclonis's staff. Piper's staff can shoot blasts that can knock people back and be used for defence or offence in battle. Trivia Piper's name either means a pipe player (a pipe being a type of flute) or is a reference to the sandpiper bird. Her name in the original concept was Oriole, which is also a bird. She is voiced by Chiara Zanni. She can speak five different languages and knows eight ways to make a grouchy Torka beast go to sleep.