Ch. 3
The teams met up one last time at the gate to make sure where they were headed.
"Van, Irvine and Fiona are going to the Wind Colony to see if they've heard anything, Raven and Daniel are headed towards the town Raven and Reese came from, and Clare and I are headed south," Wolf said through a com link to all the Zoids.
"That's right, now move out before we lose our day light," Irvine nearly shouted.
"He's just upset little Daniel isn't riding with him, ignore the big goof's angry tone," Van said, this maid the radios crack with laughter.
About three days later Van, Fiona, and Irvine along with little Daniel arrived in the Wind Colony.
"Van, welcome home," Maria said as she opened the door to her brother.
"Aunt Maria," the blonde haired little boy shouted as he ran towards his aunt.
"Hey there little man, and how are you?" Maria asked adopting an almost motherly tone.
"I'm sleepy we've been traveling all day," Daniel said with a yawn as he stepped into the house.
"Maria, would you mind looking after him for a while, Irvine and I are going to talk to a few people," Van said as if asking to look after him for good.
"Sure, Fiona will you be staying as well?" Maria smiled when she saw Fiona nodding rather enthusiastically.
Irvine went to speak to a group they had seen coming in to town, while Van went to speak with anyone he could find that might know something.
On another path headed toward the village Raven and Reese had come from, Daniel and Raven were swapping stories of when they were in battle and how many Zoids they'd both been through, and stories of how each Zoid came to an end, and why they chose the next one.
Meanwhile, Clare and Wolf were setting up camp outside a small town they had come across. Wolf was starting the fire while Clare got everything ready to cook dinner.
"So Wolf, what did Fiona say to you before we left the base?" the blue haired girl asked not noticing the tension that Wolf had been feeling since they had left.
"Just to be careful and to be wary of my choices," the black haired man calmly stated as he finally got the fire going.
"Let me guess, she had a feeling I might go nuts because you were the one commanding the unit when my father died," Clare said bluntly.
"Yeah that was the basic idea of it," Wolf said as he let a chuckle slip.
"Well while I do hold you to some responsibility, I know that my father disobeyed his orders to stay out of it," Clare paused for a moment. Wolf was about to say something when she continued.
"Me and my father were on speaking terms and we got along well enough, but we did have our arguments, I won't say I hated him, and I do truly miss him, but you've got nothing to worry about," the blue haired girl seemed close to tears when she finished.
Wolf literally jumped over the fire and wrapped his arms around her in a comforting way, and let her cry into his chest.
"You tell anyone I did this and I'll deny it," the grey eyed girl said as she got her emotions back in check.
"Same goes to you," Wolf smiled when she laughed. 'Why did I do that? Why can I feel concerned for her?' he thought as Clare moved away from him.
Clare got busy cooking their meal and went back to her usual cheery attitude, while Wolf stood guard in the Konig's cockpit, Blaze and Polaris seemed to be having a rather interesting conversation.
"Hey Wolf, dinner's ready," Clare called after about an hour of cooking.
When Wolf jumped from his cockpit, she was taken aback by how stable he seemed to be when he landed.
"How can you jump from such a height and still land so easy?" the blue haired girl asked when he came over.
"I guess when you jump out of the same Zoid at least once a day since you were seven years old, you get strong legs," Wolf said scratching the back of his head, chuckling a bit.
"Yeah I guess that would help," Clare said with a huge grin.
The two ate their dinner swapping stories and the like while they ate, Wolf did most of the talking, even bringing up some of the experiences he'd shared with Clare's father. About two hours went by before either of the decided to hit the hay.
"Captain, where are you headed, Sir?" Clare asked when she saw Wolf climbing the Konig.
"I should have warned you that I sleep in my Zoid when I'm not on base, if you want you can sleep in yours too," Wolf said as he got into the cockpit.
"Why don't I just sleep in there with you?" Clare asked realizing how that sounded half a second too late; she turned red as a pepperoni.
"Up to you, it's not all that comfortable but there is a back seat," Wolf said choosing not to pick on her about what she said.
Without fully realizing it Clare climbed the Konig's leg and got into the back seat of the cockpit and went to sleep before Wolf could get the canopy closed. Blaze and Polaris stayed on alert, Polaris especially. The next day Clare woke up slightly panicked before she remembered where she was. She looked around seeing the canopy of the Konig Wolf was closed and dark and Wolf wasn't in the front seat. She found the radio switch.
"Captain Novis where are you?" Clare waited a few minutes, after not receiving a response so she popped the canopy and jumped out.
She started looking around to see what was up, the fire was going with a coffee pot on it, Blaze was gone too, and Polaris was sleeping under her Blade Liger.
"Okay so where are those two?" she asked no one in particular.
Meanwhile, The Wind Colony was buzzing with the news of the man seeking information and that they should contact the Guardian Force if they heard anything. Van, Irvine and Fiona were walking through town after two days of searching, trying to figure out what to do next when a tall figure ran into Van, knocking him down.
"Hey, you okay?" The man asked as he helped Van to his feet.
"Yeah, you should really look up when your walking, you could hurt someone next time," Van said casually as he dusted himself off.
"I'm sorry, well I'll be on my way then," The fellow said with an almost sinister grin as he started to walk away.
"I didn't like that guy," Fiona said taking hold of Van's arm.
"Well we may not see him again so let's just forget it and move on, we need to move out soon," Irvine said with a wave of his hand.
A little over ten minutes later the Zoids were prepped and ready to leave.
"Daniel will stay with Maria while we go on this hunt of ours, that way we don't have to worry about stopping to take care of him," Van said to a sad looking Fiona.
"I know, but I'm his mother, maybe I should stay here with Maria," Fiona said as she looked towards her son waving good bye to her.
"Hey Fiona think of it this way, Maria practically raised Van over there, I'm sure she can handle his rug rat of a kid," Irvine said with a chuckle while Van pouted like a five year old.
About an hour later they left the Wind Colony and headed for another village they had heard Vailen had been at.
Daniel and Raven arrived at the town where Raven and Reese had found the latest information they had on this Vailen character.
"Okay we were in that tavern over there when we heard a few fellas talking about some guy that had been asking for information, We asked them about it but they couldn't give us much more then the guys' height and voice," Raven said headed for the tavern he had pointed out.
"Okay I'll head for that hotel see if they may have seen or heard anything else," Daniel called as he walked towards a hotel on the other side of the road.
After hunting all day they had come up with pretty much the same information about Vailen as they had when they came into town. Feeling rather annoyed by all this Daniel had the brilliant idea of holding a little sparing match between them to vent their frustrations.
"Maybe you can teach me a few things Raven," Daniel stated as he stood in a fight stance with Raven facing him looking rather bored with the idea.
They fought each other with Shadow watching with an amused chuckle at how many times Daniel ended up on his butt because of poor timing or bad form. By the end of the "lesson" Daniel had actually managed to land a few blows, but still got his butt handed to him by Raven. Neither of them wanted to admit to it, but they had a bit of fun fighting each other, even though Daniel was doing most of the learning. They packed up and headed back towards the base the next day to pick up Reese who had informed them that Specular had brought forth a Psycho Genosaurer and they were ready to deploy.
Meanwhile, Clare was sitting next to the fire still trying to figure out where Wolf and Blaze went they had been gone for almost two days that she knew about. She also figured they probably had returned during the night since Wolf said that he slept in his Zoid.
"Ugh, where the hell are those two," Clare screamed at the starry sky in frustration.
"Where are who?" Wolf asked in a tone just above a whisper right in her ear.
This act earned him a right hook to his jaw and his butt on the ground, while Blaze and Polaris laughed at him.
"What was that for?" the black haired man asked with a chuckle holding his jaw while lying on the ground propped up on one elbow.
"YOU SNUCK UP ON ME AND EXPECTED NOT TO GET HIT," the blue haired girl screamed with a look in her eye that made Blaze visibly flinch.
"Well I guess I did deserve that then," Wolf said while getting off the ground and dusting himself off.
Clare launched swing after swing of failed punches trying to hit the man who snuck up on her. Wolf had enough of the attempts and was about to grab the next one when he saw a flash of silver just before he felt a blade dragged across his left forearm.
Seeing the blood running down Wolf's arm seemed to snap Clare out of her berserker frame of mind. Her hands immediately dropped her knife and covered her mouth while Wolf just stood there staring at the fresh wound.
"Clare, are you okay now?" the black haired man asked so calmly the blue haired woman felt a slight chill run up her spine.
Hearing Wolf's voice so calm and steady with no hint of worry for his own body seemed to snap Clare out of her reverie.
"I'm okay I'll go get the first aid kit, and get you patched up Sir," the stone grey eyed girl said turning on her heels to walk to her Blade Liger, leaving her father's knife on the ground where it landed.
Wolf reached up and grabbed her arm and spun her on a dime.
"Hey I'm fine, I've had worse from Blaze's tail blade," Wolf said with a slight chuckle seeing Clare's bewildered look, "Are you really that worried about me?" the blue eyed man asked with a curious smile.
"I just attacked a superior officer, I could go up for court marshal, I have a right to be concerned," Clare said with a tone so serious Wolf couldn't help but laugh.
"Well I'm not pressing charges seeing as I deserved it, and I think that I like you even more now that I see you're more like me than either of us thought," Wolf said sitting down and pulling a rag out of his boot and tying it around his arm using his teeth and his free hand, Clare was still in a state of shock over what Wolf had said.
"Where have you two been the past couple of days?" Clare asked finally snapping out of the shock.
"We went looking for intel," Wolf paused for a second, "When I got back last night and found you asleep in the cockpit of the Konig, I was a little taken aback but I have to admit to something," He paused again. "You were kinda cute sitting in there asleep," the black haired man laughed when he saw a flash of joy on her face before it was replaced by false shock.
"Well what I wanna know is how you got in and out without me hearing you," Clare, now feeling more joy then she should have at Wolf's complement.
"Easy enough, the Konig has two ways to open the canopy, auto open which uses the motor at the hinge in the nose or manually which uses the switch by the left ear, this eliminates the noise but requires a little more muscle due to the weight of the canopy," Wolf said sounding as casually as he could as he stirred the fire back to life.
After two more days of pretty much flirting back and forth Wolf and Clare had decided that they would try and have a romantic relationship to Clare's immense joy, and even though Wolf had promised himself to forget about that kind of thing after certain events of his life, he was happy.
'Oh well I enjoy her company too much to not try and make something of it,' Wolf thought as they prepared to leave for the next village,
'What am I getting myself into, he's my commanding officer and we could get into serious trouble, maybe this was a bad idea,' Clare thought before opening a com link to the Konig Wolf standing in front of her.
"Wolf, maybe we shouldn't tell anyone about this, just till we know where it's going," Clare's voice trailed off when she saw the disappointment in his eyes.
"It's up to you Clare either way right now we focus on the mission, on duty I'm still your CO, off duty we are a couple," Wolf said in a slightly colder tone then he meant to, seeing her flinch ever so slightly confirmed that for him.
He wanted to apologize but he couldn't bring himself to look at her sad eyes long enough to so he closed the link to voice only.
"I'm sorry for being so cold," Wolf said just above a whisper, 'What the hell is wrong with me, I can't stand a look that hasn't even made me flinch in years.'
The blue haired girl nearly bounced out of her seat with excitement even though she barely heard him say anything at all.