Chapter 26

Chasing the Wind

A ruckus had ensued where Lazeria was filled with bloodshed and hatred as the Alliance fought the Klausians in huge numbers along with members of the Quark. Members of both sides fell quickly from the gunfire and immense explosions. Other parts of Klaus had been taken in control by both Quark and the Klausian military, but Lazeria was tough to get a hold of, all the members of the Alliance were acting directly under Shin's orders.

The arrival at the train station in downtown Lazeria felt like a short ride from the space station all the way south considering how big of a city Lazeria was. The city was still a little lively surprisingly even with the Alliance causing ruckus all over the place. Downtown Lazeria was often a very busy place since it was the home of the Klausian government headquarters. There were many skyscrapers and large infrastructures just outside the train station.

Maria and Lieber with the rest of the squad left the train station just as the sun had begun to set and they already spotted a couple of dead bodies lying on the ground just near the station. Maria noticed that the one of them was taking his last few breaths before giving in as she stepped over towards him.

"Klausian soldiers... Looks like these two weren't killed too long ago." Maria mentioned as she inspected the dead bodies of the soldiers.

"It sure didn't take much to take them down." Lieber replied unhappily.

The sound of gunfire interrupted them suddenly when one of Quark's squad members went down instantly from the blow. The sound was very familiar, it was the same sound that come from disrupter weapons.

"Uggh!" the Quark member went down immediately.

"What's this! Another Klausian organization?" an Alliance brigadier shouted from behind. Along with him were about ten to fifteen other members who formed a brigade.

"Dammit, the Alliance!" Lieber shouted as he aimed towards them with his rifle.

While Quark did manage to take down their foes slowly, the squad members proved to be no match for their the Alliance's weapons. Lieber quickly took cover so he wouldn't suffer from the same occurence. However, he noticed Maria was wide in the open in a risky position and he panicked.

"Gravity Bullet!" a bullet covered with a large dark magnetic aura sped towards the group of enemies and sucked them into the void.

"Maria, look out!" Other troops of the Alliance began to step forward in an attempt to take down Maria who was concentrating on giving the enemy ahead of her a hard time getting past her. Just as they readied their disrupter guns, Maria noticed there was another group of enemies behind her so she turned as quick as possible, but it was too late. They had already begun to fire their guns and rifles towards their target.

"Maria!" Lieber got up from his covered position and quickly sped towards Maria and threw himself onto her hoping he could save her from the assault. He heard the sound of gunfire and closed his eyes praying that she wouldn't get hurt.

"Woah!" Both Lieber and Maria fell to the ground barely able to escape the shots just in time. Suddenly Lieber felt a bullet piercing right knee as he was falling down to the ground. As he barely got up back up, he tried to gather enough strength to lift his rifle and position himself quickly in front of the enemy while half limping...

"Flaming missile!" Lieber yelled as bullets from his rifle left a large trail of fire like a flamethrower. The flames caught nearly every opponent on fire as they howled in pain before going down, the area was then clear of enemies. Lieber fell back down as he grabbed his knee with both his hands from pain. Maria rushed towards his aid as she kneeled down before him.

"Lieber! Are you okay!" she shouted disappointingly, "What did you do that for? You knew I could have easily escaped that attack!"

Lieber simply smiled back pleasantly, "Yeah I know. Heh, don't worry... i'll live."

"Lieber..." Maria sighed as she dropped her eyelids shaking her head in sympathy. At that instant, she knew Lieber still cared for her... and still had affections for her.

"Maria, i'm sorry..." Lieber spoke delicately. He lifted himself slowly while brushing off the pain from his knee which was bleeding intensely. "I needed to get that off my chest. I don't think I ever got a chance to say that before..." He was of course, talking about his dilemma involving Maria four years ago before she left Diplo. They didn't part the way either of them would have liked to, but Lieber constantly blamed himself for that and ever since, wanted to apologize Maria for that. It was a moment he would never forget...

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The crew within the Diplo was quite excited to know where there new lives would lead them to. Now that Quark was being disbanded, everyone had to separate their ways and make a new life for themselves. Maria, who was glad she did not have to keep the burden of being the commander of Quark anymore, was relieved that she could finally live her normal life the way she always wanted to...

"At last, time to say goodbye to this ship. If you think about it, all the days of my struggle began and ended on this ship... Thinking back again, it wasn't such a long time, but there's still much that we have to remember." she said as her eyes fell on different objects while looking around the bridge of the Diplo. They each had some kind of connection to our past that she shared with the ship and it was something she would never forget.

One individual, Lieber, who stood in his place filled with jitteriness could not gather enough confidence to share a certain feeling of his to his captain. "This is the last chance..." With one small push, he was able to force himself to talk to Maria, "All right! I'm gonna do it! Ah! Um, captain!" I have something I want to talk to you about. Do you mind?"

Wondering what Lieber could have to say to her personally, Maria answered back... "Thank you for all your hard work. I never would have been able to make it this far without you. Thanks, Lieber. So, what did you want to talk about?

"Ah... captain. I mean, Maria! Um, that is, I mean..." Lieber at this point was thinking about dropping his concern and leaving things as they were. He worried if things didn't go the right way, whatever he shared with Maria might be gone as well.

"What is it? What are you so nervous about? If there's something I can help with, just say the word and i'll do it."

Lieber could feel his heart thump at this point, "I-I just wanted to ask... um, do you really have to leave?"

"Why? Do you not want me to?"

"Uh... n-no. Well, it's not that. I mean, Um... it's all up to you after all. Heh heh heh." Lieber threw out a fake laugh nervously trying to lighten up the mood a little.

"I understand how you and everyone else feel. And I suppose they pushed you into doing their job for them, huh?" Maria spoke with a delighted expression. "But... I have waited so long for this time. I'm sorry but I could not possibly turn back from this. This is the beginning of my new life, but you all have given me such a great time, i'll never forget this."

"Maria..." Lieber sulked for a second before another thought struck his mind, "What if I were to come with you! You don't have to stay here if you don't want to, but i'd like to accompany you in your new life. I want to be there beside you... always."

"Lieber?"

"I just couldn't imagine myself being here without you..."

Maria was taken aback by Lieber's sincere remarks. She definitely did not expect this, and she had never experienced a situation like this before. She didn't know what decision would be right at this point, or how to deal with it, but she chose to stick with her own personal beliefs.

"Lieber, i'm sorry. But I couldn't do that... my new life has to have no relations with my past life. If I were to drag a part of my life from the past and bring it into my new one, it couldn't possibly ever be a new life." Maria turned around the other way as her heart sank from the grief of having to refuse his kind offer.

"So you mean i'm..."

"Yeah. You're part of my past." Maria lowered her head from disappointment. Something inside her gave her a feeling that she wasn't confident with what she was doing.

Lieber felt terribly dejected. However, he had no choice but to accept her decision and respect it. He knew he had to snap out of his hopeless romantic state and mature a little bit, "Alright. Sorry for bringing up all of this. Well um, I guess you can go now then!" he spoke unnaturally.

"We have to think for ourselves now and live our own lives separately... to make new friends, new goals, and new jobs." Maria said as she began to leave the bridge of the ship.

Steeg and Marietta rushed towards Lieber to console him as he began to walk away as well. Lieber, however, could not hold his bottled up emotions for long. What he felt he was about to do was purely in impulsive act. He tried at every moment to keep everything inside him, but they just burst out immediately.

"Dammit I don't need your sympathy!" he yelled before turning towards Maria. "If you want to go, fine! I'm just part of the junk you call 'past', I don't care any longer! So good luck with your 'new life'!"

Maria who was walking towards the upper deck suddenly stopped from shock after hearing Lieber's words. She stood there and paused for a few moments, but never turned around. Then she ran away with sullen grief out of the bridge with tears streaming down from her eyes.

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Maria simply shook her head as she looked down at Lieber's bruised knee, "If you're talking about that time, then no it's fine. It didn't bother me all that much."

"Yeah, I guess I was the wrong one after all. It seems like you were right... if I were with you, you probably wouldn't have changed the way you are now." Lieber slowly managed to get back onto his feet, "You know... now that i've let that much out... I have no reason to stay away or be nervous around you anymore. It can be just like the good old times." he grinned gladly.

"Well, actually there is something I need to tell you as well..."

Before Maria could go on, a much larger brigade of Alliance troops came barging into the entrance to the train station. They stopped halfway as the Quark squad stepped into their path holding their rifles in position to counter their attack.

"Reinforcements!" Maria shouted as she whipped out her handgun once again.

"You two! Go on ahead!" one of Quark's squad member shouted into the distance towards Lieber and Maria. "We've got this pack, you guys move on ahead quickly!"

"By Shin's direct orders... attack!" yelled the Alliance trooper.

Maria and Lieber entrusted this task to the squad members before heading north to scout the other areas of downtown Lazeria as quickly as possible.

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"Laser beams!" Misty chanted a spell before shouting those words. The soldiers blocking Misty, Xeim, and Welch's paths were eliminated instantly from that spell. "That takes care of them. Let's move on quickly."

"Wow... it seems like we've been doing this forever! Just how many of these guys are here!" Welch shouted as she whacked one of the dead Alliance soldier with her glove stick to see if he was still alive.

"I guess most of the Alliance brigades were located in our area. Lazeria was in a pretty bad shape after all. The rest of our squad team have already gone ahead and scouted the other areas of this place, I guess we're almost done now." Misty remarked softly.

"Oh geez. We get the short end of the stick again! Just like last time, right Xeim!" Welch glanced at Xeim who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts as they kept moving forward.

"Oh... yeah..." he replied not paying any attention to what was being said.

"Hell-oooo!" Welch waved her short glove stick she loves carrying around in front of Xeim's face to snap him out. "What's with you! You've been acting really weird since we left that planet Vanguard, y'know?"

"It's nothing..." said Xeim turning the other way.

"I know what's bothering him..." Welch teased Xeim as she gave him a sly look. "He must be worried about his sweetheart!"

"Huh? Who are you talking about?" asked Xeim.

Welch gave a small chuckle and said, "Who else? Mirage, of course. And ever since Cliff's been with us, it seems like you have some tough competition... no wonder you look so troubled all the time! And the look on your face when Cliff said 'I'll go with you, Mirage' was priceless!"

Xeim simply shrugged and walked forward past both his companions, "Hmph. Why did I even bother to ask?"

"Oh c'mon, it's only natural. Fight for your love, become the chivalric knight, and save your heart from sinking to the bottomless depths of the abyss! Isn't that what living life is all about!" Welch exclaimed as she stood boldly slapping her hand on her chest with pride. By that time, however, Xeim had already gone... "Huh? H-Hey, wait for me!"

Misty stood in her place watching the scene with pleasure as she smiled graciously.

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The sun had just about finished setting on Klaus IV. It was growing darker and darker by each second just like the conditions of Trena. Once the darkness had swept over the planet, it was nighttime. The sea water that ran down across the crag flowed at a very steady rate across from Dan's grave. Mirage sat just a few feet across from the grave on the ground where she stared down at the grave peacefully. She was too quiet for words at this point, but her mind wasn't. It was filled with thoughts and memories of her father which she couldn't help but remember. But there were far too many of them, they all could not possibly flash before her eyes in just a single moment. She then remembered her father's dying words... it was about her mother, Lucia. Mirage had heard many stories about her, but the death of her father was what made her reminisce one special memory. It was her mother's dying words...

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"Dan... do you remember our promise?" Lucia asked as she lied down on the ground in the middle of the field filled with thickets and tall trees. Dan was unable to bear to see the condition of his wife but he knew he had to be there by her side while she was taking her last few breaths.

"Yeah I do. Don't worry, i'll make sure she stays safe with me." he said as he grasped her hand tightly while kneeling down beside her.

"That's a relief then... I wish I could stay with you longer..."

"Lucia, i'm sorry... it's my fault. I couldn't keep you safe even after all these years of training. I swear they'll pay for this!" he lamented as he looked down at Lucia's wounds.

Lucia smiled calmly and shook her head, "No... it's alright. Please don't do anything like that. I only want you to take care of Mirage and forget about the Uelians. It happens. This is war after all."

"How could I possibly forget about them? I can't just act like they've done nothing at all!" Dan clenched his fists trying to bury his anger and hatred towards the enemy.

"Be strong, Dan... just like my daughter..."

"sigh Alright, I promise... i'll only look after her."

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Suddenly, she was interrupted by Cliff who was concerned with her condition, "How are you holding out? And... whatcha thinking about?"

"I'm fine." Mirage shook her head. "After mother passed away during the Zeta war, father only had me with him. Even after doing all he could for mother, he just couldn't protect her from the Rezerbians during the war... and I suppose the same fear swept over him during my childhood as well."

"Yeah... He was so tough on the outside and in the inside as well. But he had that one soft spot inside him... which was you. Seeing him in action all these years, I never would have expected something like that." Cliff added.

"I used to despise him as a child. I used to think he hated me for always pushing me and treating me so badly, but as I got used to it... I realized that was just his way of showing how much he cared for me. Hey Cliff... do you remember what Shin said? Do you think if I had never left home, maybe father...?"

"No, it's no use thinking about what would have happened or what wouldn't have happened. No matter how different events were to turn out, the end result will always be the same."

"Thanks, Cliff... I'm sure he would have said the same thing. When you look at things from his way, I guess you really can't blame him. He did have to carry the burden of blaming himself for letting mother pass away, I suppose his method of dying in order to protect me was his way of repenting for that."

"By the way, sorry if this isn't a good time but i've just managed to contact the others. It looks like we've taken care of the Alliance here for now. We're supposed to meet at the down at the Lazeria station. What do you say? You coming?"

The gust blew Mirage's long blonde wavy hair as she got back onto her feet. She tried to brush them back with her fingers behind her ear fighting the wind's force as she turned her head towards Cliff and gave a gentle smile.

"Yeah, I can't stop now."