A lone gustav drove through the desert sands driving towards the east. It had only one passenger. It was an elderly woman who had a look like she finally got to see her life long dream come true.
She had always wanted to live long enough to see one of her grandchildren get married and live even longer to see great-grandchildren. She got to see both of those within the past few days. She now had an adorable great-granddaughter, and a lovely new addition to her family since Van and Fiona had gotten married.
She knew very well that Fiona was just the type of person that Van needed in his life. The two of them went together better than anyone she had ever seen before. Each complemented the others abilities. They made two halves of a whole.
The way that Van and Fiona loved each other reminded her of her own daughter. She too was too deeply in love with the man of her dreams. Dan was to her what Van was to Fiona. It would be impossible to keep the two of them apart for too long. They each had such a great love for their children as well.
'Children,' she thought with a sigh as she laid back within the seat of the gustav while still watching the area ahead of her for any sort of sign of danger. She once believed that it would be impossible to have a child of her own. Then came Van's mother Lily into her life. There were secrets sounding Van's mother. One's that she was sure Van never learned of since he never knew his mother and his father had always planned to keep it from him.
There were also secrets surrounding Van's own birth that she was determined to keep from him. That secret was the reason that he didn't have a mother all of his life. That secret is what is keeping him from realizing a major part of himself that he didn't know about.
Mary came to a quick stop when she realized that there was a zoid standing right in her path. There was no way for her to get around it because she was driving through a narrow canyon. "Can you please move?" she asked but it didn't.
The zoid didn't move and instead, the pilot of the zoid was seen hopping out of it. The annoyed Mary and she opened up the cockpit and stepped out so that she could yell at him if he didn't decide to move. There were some important things that she needed to do and with him in her way then she wouldn't be able to do them. "Hey! Why won't you move?" She asked when he didn't even turn around.
"You may not be connected to what the Flyheight family has done in the past but you are still useful. I should warn you though. He is on the rampage right now. Planning to hunt those that were involved in his loss," the stranger said. A light wind picked up and blew his unique silver hair off the side a bit. He never once turned to face towards her but instead stared off into the horizon.
Mary looked into the direction that the man was looking only to seeing the setting sun in the distance. She looked back and was surprised when the man that was standing there a few moments before had vanished completely with his zoid. She rubbed her eyes before she walked towards the gustav. 'It must have been my imagination. Why would he be here anyways?' she asked herself before getting in the gustav and driving away.
She drove on forgetting about the small incident from before. The night had long since came and she was driving in the complete darkness lit only by the small light of the two moons within the sky.
She came to a stop once again when her gustav was shaken seriously. It she tried to go faster but the shots kept up with her and next thing that she knew, the gustav was flipped onto its side and she flew out of the cockpit when the canopy flew open.
She groaned when she got up. 'This old body of mine is not meant for such things,' she thought holding her arm because she was pretty sure that it was broken. She was happy that the gunfire stopped since she was unable to hear any noises.
"You shouldn't have interfered old lady!" a voice yelled off to the side and noticed a young man with cold violet eyes and medium length black hair that fell loosely around him. She didn't have to be told to know who the man that was standing before her was. "So you are the Zack I have heard so much about. Stay the hell away from my family," she growled out at the man.
Zack just laughed at the woman. "What exactly are you going to do if I do something? You are old, and weak. So I don't think that you have any power to stop me from taking Fiona back from that worthless grandson of yours if he could even be called that by someone like you," he said with a smirk on his face and a gun in his hand.
Mary noticed the gun in his hand, yet she wasn't the least bit afraid. "So what do you plan to do, kill me?" she asked and received a nod from the man. "Go right ahead, I have lived a full life and I will have no regrets about dying now. Van won't let you get away with it though," she said with a smile.
Zack snarled at her comment. He hated it when they did this to him. When they weren't afraid of what he could do to them. "Shut the hell up old woman! I am the one in charge here," he said lifting the gun up towards the elderly woman. "Don't worry though, the rest of your family will be joining you soon. The Flyheight family will end now," he said pulling the trigger. He smiled when he heard the thump of her body hitting the ground. He turned around then and walked away with a smirk on his face, already knowing his next target.
Van just laid there in their hotel room with Fiona curled up by his side sleeping peacefully. After all of their activities that night, he thought he would be tired like Fiona but he just couldn't seem to get to sleep no matter how much he wanted to. He just had this bad feeling that something had happened and his bad feeling were usually right.
"Go to sleep Van," Fiona mumbled tiredly. She tightened her grip around his waist so that he wouldn't be able to go anywhere right then and would have to stay right by her side.
Van also tightened his embrace around her but it didn't stop his thoughts from wondering. He was finally married to Fiona. He was the happiest he had ever been in his life. Just as much, if not more than when he found out he was a father to such a wonderful little girl.
Van pushed all of his thoughts off to the side for that moment and closed his eyes in an attempt to join Fiona in sleep. He was lucky because he slowly found himself drifting off and soon was fast asleep with Fiona right by him.
No matter where he went, Van seemed to find himself being given looks of sympathy from everyone around him. Him and Fiona were back from the wedding night and ready to go after Zack but Van was more curious about what was going on.
"hey Irvine, why is everyone looking at me funny and giving me these weird looks whenever I pass them?" Van asked with a small smile on his face. He then saw that Irvine's look was similar to everyone else's. "What's happened Irvine?" Van asked having a bad feeling like the night before.
"Something has happened. Van it is hard for me to tell you this but…" he said taking a breath as if it were hard for him to say what he had to, which it was. "You're grandmother is dead Van. She was attacked by Zack on her way home," Irvine said to the shocked Van holding out a note that was left behind.
'No!' Van thought. 'I just saw her yesterday, she can't just be dead,' Van told himself refusing to face the truth of the matter. He reached out a shaking hand for the note and looked it over. 'This is only the start. All that are involved will suffer the same fate,' he read and his eyes widened.
"Van," Fiona said next to him in a worried and saddened voice because she knew exactly what it meant. He was planning to target anyone that was at their wedding to make him suffer for taking Fiona away from him.
Van knew that all but two were safe because they were in a military base but Maria and Kristi weren't they were wide open for an attack at any moment. "We have to go Fiona! We need to hurry!" Van yelled grabbing her hand before heading back to the hanger that they had just come out of.
They both hopped into the blade liger quickly and took off without a word to anyone. The same thought was on both of their minds. It was a hope. 'Please be ok by the time we get there. No one there can handle someone like him!'
Maria was staring to wonder how Van and Fiona could handle Kristi. The child was a handful and she was only looking after her. She was glad that most of the rest of the village was giving her the help that she needed when she needed it.
Currently she was sitting in a chair resting after Kristi had lain down for the night. Kristi seemed to make friends so easily with the other kids of the village. That made it worse because sometimes she was looking after more than one child at a time because of this. She was happy though.
A knock was heard on the door to her childhood home. She tiredly stood up from her chair and walked to the door. Opening it up, she came face to face with an elderly looking woman. She looked a little like Fiona except that she looked much older than her.
"Hello," Maria said monotonously since she knew who it was that was standing in front of her. Her time with Fiona was spent mainly talking and Fiona's mother was one of the conversations that came up. Maria immediately didn't like the woman that was standing before her.
"I take it that by the way you are talking you know who I am," Fiona's mother said without even a smile. She merely saw a small nod from Maria. "I guess that that will make things easier. Whether you believe me or not, I am not here to do any harm. For once, I am actually trying to help your family.
If Maria didn't know better, she would have said that the woman before her almost sounded sincere when she was saying that. "What is it that you can possibly do to help us after all the harm you have tried to do?" she asked at least willing to listen.
Amber knew that things wouldn't be easy if she tried to talk to them. She knew what she had to say was important. "I have come to warn you that Zack is after your family. He has no loyalties to anyone, he even turned on me. As much as I hate how my daughter is now married to a human, I would rather not see Zack win after what he did," she said speaking as sincerely as she could.
"Why is it that you hate humans or more precisely my family so much? What have we ever done to you?" Maria asked trying to find some information to know if she can trust what the woman before her said.
"You want me to be truthful?" Amber asked and received a nod from Maria. "It is your families fault that I lost my daughter, it is your families fault that the rest of my family turned against me, it is your families fault that I lost my best friend. I am only helping you after all of that because I love this planet. I want to regain it for the zoidian race, Zack is trying to conquer it for himself and turn everyone into slaves," she said looking towards the ground.
Maria sighed knowing that the woman was being truthful in her words. She moved out of the way of the door and reluctantly let the woman into her home. "Come in, there is something that I think you need to know," Maria said walking towards a table with Amber following after her.
The two of them were silent for a while before Maria finally decided to speak up. "From what I heard, our family never intended to do that to your family and friends. We only did it because we knew your race was dying out. We were friends with many of them and didn't want to see them die. My father told me this when I was young, just like how he was told by his father. We knew we would have numerous zoidian enemies because of that," Maria said trying to remember everything that her father had told her before he died.
"I fear that I have only realized that too late because I know that my end is near. I want to make up for what I have done though. I need to warn you that Zack is already on his way here. He is hunting both you and my grandchild," Amber said but was stopped from talking when Kristi walked into the room holding the bear her father gave her.
"Go back to sleep Kristi," Maria said but Amber got up and walked towards the girl kneeling down before her. "That would be Fiona's daughter, your grandchild," Maria said feeling like she could actually trust the woman now.
Amber stared at the girl with inquisitive eyes. It made Kristi kind of nervous by the way she was looking at her. 'This child looks to have great potential in her as a zoidian. Not enough to beat Zack though. Why would he be afraid of this half-breed then?' Amber asked herself but there was a look in the child's eye that she couldn't place.
Amber was jumped from his thoughts when she heard explosions close to the house and a familiar presence in the air. "We need to get this child out of here," she said quickly but it was too late when the house was hit and it went up in flames.
The blade liger was approaching the wind colony very quickly. The two occupants didn't have any time to lose because they knew Van's home village was in great danger.
It came up to a hill where they knew that the wind colony was on the other side of. Night had long since fallen but they could see lights in the distance and went faster if it was even possible.
They reached the top of the hill and the blade liger came to a stop. Both Van and Fiona were scared out of their mind when they saw the entire wind colony up in flames. They couldn't see a single person in the distance trying to get out of it and that made them feel worse.
The blade liger ran full speed until it came into the village and both Van and Fiona jumped out of it and ran around looking for any survivors. There were so many bodies littering the ground.
"Is anyone here?" Van yelled out hoping for a reply. It was so late at night however that he knew that everyone was asleep during the attack. Van yelled even louder as he raced towards his home. "Hello! Is there any survivors?" Van yelled but still received no reply as he came upon more and more corpses. All of them were people that Van had known all of his life.
They came upon Van's place only to see it in the same shape as the rest of the village. Ignoring the fire, Van rushed into his old home. "Maria! Kristi! Are either of you here?" Van yelled having a growing panic in him more and more by the second. He could already here Fiona crying and he was on the verge of it as well.
Van saw something and kneeled down picking it out of the burning rubble. It was what was left of the bear that he had given to Kristi before he left. He looked around more frantically hoping that she had only dropped it. His eyes then laid upon a corpse laying amongst the debris of his home. It was one of an adult, 'Maria!' van thought collapsing to his knees knowing that he had just lost the last of his family.
"No, no, no, no, no, no!" Fiona chanted out upon seeing the same thing that Van saw. 'Our daughter, Maria, Van's grandmother, the entire village, everyone is gone!' Fiona thought frantically before she passed out from the shock of seeing it all.