“So, that vanguard and the blonde girl were both your childhood friends from Tragula, huh?”, Corley inquired, arms crossed in seriousness.

  “Yeah, that’s true”, Lorian replied. “As I said, we were just old friends. After being separated for so long, I couldn’t just pass up the chance to talk to them”.

  “Right…”, Corley dragged her voice, still unconvinced.

  “Corley, do you still not trust me?”, Lorian agitated upon hearing her respond.

  Alaric backed Lorian up: “Hey Corley, believe me when I say that despite the girls’ effort to pull Lorian’s heart toward Tachyon, he remained completely firm. Like, when Catarina offered him a chance to leave this hard life with us in exchange for a comfortable life in Tachyon, he refused because of us! Silently, I was so touched by his inspiring words that I almost sobbed in my heart”.

  “Uh… Alaric, thanks for helping me here, but that’s probably a little too dramatic…”, Lorian quietly said to Alaric.

  “Kid, I’m trying to save your butt here… so try not be a choosing beggar, alright?”, Alaric whispered back.

  Lorian had been confronting Corley on the deck ever since he returned on board with Alaric. This came about after the robot-golem girl saw Lorian act amicably toward the three unknown girls as the airship descended. While Yuna, Catarina, and Miranda had all left the scene moments after the airship anchored, Corley’s suspicion toward them remained.

  After hearing what Alaric said, she asked Lorian: “Is that true, Lorian? Did you truly resist your childhood friend’s lure?”

  “Yes, I did!”, Lorian insisted. “Just because I’ve known her before, doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with everything she says”.

  He continued: “In fact, listening to what she and my other friend, who had become a vanguard, spoke, made me realise just how ignorant they were on the problem the world’s facing at large”.

  “What do you mean?”, Corley asked, this time with less tension in her voice.

  Lorian said: “While we have seen the two empires’ good and bad sides, they, on the other hand, see their empire only as the good, while the opposing empire only as the bad”.

  “Oh, so it’s nothing new then”, she eased out. “No surprise on that, since the empires actively work to ensure that their people agree with them all of the time”.

  “Well, that’s understandable to me…”, Lorian replied. “But what surprises me is how even non-native-born Tachyonians like Catarina, my friend who moved to Tachyon long ago, and Yuna, who had only been in Tachyon for less than a year, seem to have bought into everything that was told to them”.

  Alaric interjected: “Heh, the empires know their way in winning people’s hearts regardless of background. Had they not, the two empires would’ve fallen the moment they declared war on each other. Just remember that the war is not only fought on the field, but also in the minds and hearts of everybody”.

  “Not only on the field…”, Lorian repeated Alaric’s words in his heart.

  “Anyway”, Alaric changed the topic, “I wonder when Captain and Timbre are coming back…”

  “I believe it would take quite a while, perhaps a few more hours… no way releasing an inmate would be that easy”, Corley said.

  After their airship had anchored down, Captain Odya disembarked to meet up with Commander Brent to continue the negotiation on the release of Finley Delaney. She had brought Timbre along with her as she followed the escort soldiers to the city, while leaving the three of them waiting on the airship.

  “I wonder how it’ll go”, expressed Lorian as he rested his body on the bulwark. “While I’ve given them everything they need to know about the Prodigy and his use of the Heavenly Ray, I wonder if they suddenly have other demands too”.

  Corley asked: “So, you ended up just telling all the secrets Matina told us?”

  “Well, not all, for sure. But when it comes to the Prodigy, he had a lot of secrets that allowed him to work in the shadows. So, I was merely connecting all his previous actions that the Tachyonian investigators have known but failed to find connections to”, Lorian summarised.

  “Matina helped me sort them out”, he added as he looked at the Contact Bracelet on his wrist.

  “I must say, I was as surprised as that commander when you said he had gone by the alias of the Enigma Man”, Alaric commented.

  “Why, Alaric? You’ve heard of that name before?”, Corley asked him.

  “I do”, he said. “He was mostly an urban legend or conspiracy theory figure among Tachyonians, said to be a scientist who conducted secret experiments with mysterious science. People kept talking about how he had left his labs scattered in Tachyon, and inside exist superweapons that far surpass anything, including resolites”.

  He continued: “Some amateur thugs or lowlifes truly believe in the stories and try to find these labs. However, their ‘adventures’ mostly end in them getting scammed by a conman or arrested for trespassing on private properties, which had nothing to do with the Enigma Man”.

  “So, how true were the stories of the Enigma Man?”, Corley wondered.

  “Based on what Lorian said, almost all of it was wrong”, Alaric answered. “The real Enigma Man, which we now know is the Prodigy, acts more like a lone thief or an assassin, and does not carelessly leave behind labs for people to find”.

  “Still… I wondered what the guy truly looks like…”, he smugly expressed while staring out to the sky. “Must be quite the formidable foe to fight… hahaha…”

  “Well… haha, yeah, he must look terrifying…”, Lorian lightly said, pretending as if he didn’t know that the Prodigy is Marcus Gray.

  “Whatever… I’m going to rest in my room for now…”, he lazily said as he stretched out. “You two can stay up and wait for Captain to come back. Bye!”.

  “Alright, bye Alaric!”, Lorian and Corley replied together as they watched Alaric step down the spiral companionway toward the underdeck. The two then continued their conversation without him as they sat on the bulwark’s bench together.

  “Well, now that he’s gone, I can finally ask you about the more important stuff…”, Corley expressed as she turned back to look at Lorian.

  “Uh… what kind of serious stuff?”, Lorian replied.

  She continued: “Oh, it’s not a big thing. I just wanted to know whether you also told them about the Prodigy’s relation to me”.

  “That? Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them about that”, Lorian assured her. “However, I did learn of something else, actually…”

  He told her who Marcus Gray was to Alaric and his backstory before he left Nova. After Lorian told everything to Corley, she was left with the feeling of shock and sorrow over the fate of the people of Nova.

  “Oh my… now I see why Matina told me not to speak of his name to Alaric too”, she said.

  “Yeah, even I was wondering why initially. But now that we know, we'd better keep our mouths shut. After all, among the five of us in the Strife Striders, only the two of us know of the Prodigy’s real name”, Lorian commented.

  She continued: “Still, I wonder if the reason Alaric told you about him is that he saw him as a role model, or perhaps he saw something similar between you and his teacher”.

  “Hmm… now you’ve said it, it does make sense…”, Lorian expressed as he pondered upon it.

  The two ended up sitting together for hours waiting for their Captain to return as they kept each other company. They continued chatting about lighter topics before running out of things to say, which they then filled up by playing with cards Corley swiped from Captain Odya’s room. It was an uneventful evening all the way until the sky had been tinted with a yellowish glow, when Captain Odya finally returned with a sizable number of people following her.

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  “Hey, Lorian, wake up! Captain and Timbre are finally back!”, Corley shook Lorian’s shoulder as she looked out upon hearing commotions coming toward their airship.

  Lorian, who had fallen into a nap out of boredom on the bulwark bench, groggily rose up to see them for himself. Finished rubbing his eyes, he began to realise a large group was coming with his captain.

  “Huh…? Why are there so many Tachyonian Soldiers coming with her?”, he spoke.

  At the same time, Alaric also got onto the deck upon hearing the people coming, and he joined in to say: “Wait, those aren’t just the grunts. Even the commanding officers are following!”

  Down on the pier, Captain Odya and Timbre walked alongside Commander Brent and his peers of various ranks from the command centre as they were all escorted by a large group of soldiers. The Strife Striders’ captain smiled confidently as she entered through the door on the hull and rose onto the deck to bring forth the good news.

  “Heya~ Guess what? it all went smoothly!”, she happily announced to Lorian and the others.

  “Really? So, what actually happened?”, Corley eagerly asked.

  She said: “Well, for one, Finley Delaney is now set to be released from his prison in Netrino City!”.

  “Woohoo! That’s great! Looks like Lorian’s effort was not in vain at all!”, Corley celebrated.

  Odya continued: “Um… that’s the good news out of the way. The bad news is that his punishment was instead replaced with a banishment from the United Federations’ land. So, he’ll be transferred to Rustbed in a few more days, where he shall spend the rest of his life…”

  “Oh…”, Lorian expressed.

  Alaric commented: “Heh, compared to how tormenting those undersea prisons are, his banishment to Rustbed shall be like a peaceful retirement for him”.

  “Just how tormenting are we talking?”, Lorian asked.

  Odya answered: “A lot. Like, death felt more merciful than being locked in a metal box in the abyssal depths, so to speak”.

  Timbre finally came up from the companionway and joined in on the conversation. As he approached, he added: “When we had a live call with him, we saw Mr Delaney’s face hollow from any joy. He had lost a lot of weight and spoke with a shaky voice. Safe to say the prison has changed him for the worse”.

  “Oh no… will he recover from all of that?”, Corley worriedly asked.

  “Depends on the support he would receive in Rustbed”, Timbre replied. “Based on what’s told, Tachyon will not be providing him with any recovery care, so it'll be up to us to look after him”.

  Captain Odya spoke: “Speaking of support, you must’ve been wondering what’s with everyone coming with us, right?”

  “Well, other than freeing Mr Delaney, they had also agreed to let us pass through Everbloom safely to reach Rustbed. Since most of Everbloom is a warzone, they’ll be escorting our airship through a safe corridor until we reach a settlement on the Rustring named Kormin, where we will also receive Mr Delaney. From there, we shall be free to bring him to Machiaville”.

  “I see… so all these people shall be following us from their airships, right?”, Alaric asked as he looked out to see sleek military airships touch down on the piers while the soldiers and their commanders were busy preparing themselves.

  “Uh… about that…”, Odya hesitated.

  As she stalled the conversation, suddenly they heard someone calling their Captain’s name from below. Odya quickly reached for the bulwark and replied to the person:

  “Ah, Vanguard Yuna! Are you going to board with us already?”

  Lorian was shocked when he heard his captain casually call out his old friend's name. He couldn’t help but get to the bulwark and see her for himself.

  “Well… depends on whether you guys are ready to have me board”, Yuna amicably replied as she rested his knuckles on her waist.

  “Yuna?! What’s going on? Are you boarding our airship?”, Lorian interjected in their conversation.

  “Oh, Lorian. So, your captain hasn’t told you what’s going to happen yet?”, Yuna replied, unsurprised by his interjection.

  Lorian quickly looked to Captain Odya next to him and said, “Captain, what’s this?!”.

  “Calm down, Lorian. I’ll explain shortly”, Odya assuredly said. “But let her get on board first, alright?”

  Captain Odya looked back at Yuna and invited her over: “Alright, Vanguard Yuna, you can enter and get onto the deck now”.

  Alaric and Corley looked horrified as their captain casually invited a vanguard onto their airship. Both stared speechless as Yuna confidently climbed the companionway and set foot on the same deck they were standing on. Meanwhile, Lorian felt conflicted, torn between feeling alarmed and gladdened from having her onboard.

  “Whoa… what a comfy-looking airship, Captain”, Yuna expressed as she looked around.

  “Haha, glad you like it”, Captain Odya replied.

  The captain then quickly addressed her crew's concern by turning to them and saying: “Anyway, as per their safety and security concern, they’ll assign a vanguard on our airship to ensure that we’re not plotting anything behind their back while flying through their safe corridor”

  “Eurgh…”, Corley tiredly expressed as she disgustedly gazed at Yuna with crossed arms.

  “Hey… what’s with this robot’s attitude? Relax, I’m not here to cause any trouble. Besides, I’m a friend of Lorian, so as you are, so we’re naturally mutuals now, aren’t we?”, Yuna spoke to Corley.

  Corley refused to say anything and instead continued to frown at her. Inside, she spoke to herself: “I hate this girl already…”.

  Seeing how unhappy Corley had become, Alaric tried redirect Yuna’s attention to him: “So, uh, Vanguard Yuna… didn’t expect you’d be the one to board with us… haha…”

  “I know, right?”, she immediately replied. “I wasn’t expecting this either, but my commander said that it is for the best of everybody”.

  “Let me guess, is it because they know we’ve known each other?”, Lorian said to Yuna.

  She said: “Yup! You guessed it correctly. Plus, since I’m a vanguard, there’ll be no need for additional soldiers to join in and make this airship more crowded”.

  With the three of them finished talking to her, Captain Odya then told her: “Anyway, Vanguard Yuna, please be mindful that our rooms down below and the bridge room are off-limits for you. Those are only for the Strife Striders to use”.

  Timbre added: “Except if you need to use a toilet, in which case you can use the one in my room, since it is the only one without any secrets”.

  “Okay, I got it. I’ll also remember to stay mostly on the deck as we’ve agreed”, Yuna casually replied.

  With the uneasy ice breaking done, the Strife Striders moved out to prepare their airship for flight. It went as usual, with Corley and Odya heating the harmonicium tank up from the control panel, while the rest checked on all the wires and cables on the airship. Within minutes, the preparations were all done, and everyone chose a spot on the benches by the bulwark while Captain Odya stayed in the bridge room to pilot the airship.

  As Lorian sat in his favourite spot and watched the escorting airships perform their final preparations, Yuna suddenly came in and sat next to him unreservedly. He was startled by her presence, yet she acted all casual with him. As he looked over to her silently, Yuna nonchalantly spoke to him:

  “What’s wrong, Lorian? Why must you act so tense around me?”

  Lorian replied: “No, it’s just… you’re here because of your duty, yet you make it as if you’re our close ally”.

  “Am I not?”, Yuna quickly reciprocated.

  “Well—uh…”, Lorian hesitated, unsure how to proceed.

  Yuna continued: “Come on, Lorian. We’ve known for so long. I might bear the title of a Vanguard nowadays, but I’m still the same ol’ Yuna”.

  “Well, you might be for me. But for others, you’re Tachyon’s murder machine stationed right on our airship”, Lorian replied. “After all, the previous Vanguard we dealt with doesn’t leave us with the best of memories…”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve heard about that. Vanguard Jennifer was a persistent fighter, so it’s no wonder that she gave you nightmares… hehehe”, Yuna said like it was a joke.

  Lorian’s face showed slight discomfort hearing the way she phrased it, but Yuna was oblivious to his reaction as she spoke. Rather, she casually continued by lightly bumping her fist on Lorian’s arm while saying:

  “But hey, I’m no Jennifer, so perhaps I’ll give you guys a better experience. What do you say, Lorian?”

  “Well… I hope you stick to your words, then”, Lorian said as he rubbed where Yuna bumped.

  “Heh… will do…”, Yuna confidently said as she watched the escort airships slowly lift up with loud hums and hisses.

  With the escorts up in the air, it was time for the Strife Striders to rise into the air, too. The anchors rolled back with snapping clanks, and the harmonicium tank rumbled loudly as the airship slowly lifted itself out of the airport and hovered alongside the other airships.

  As they were hovering above Nova, Yuna suddenly felt a vibration from her smartphone in her chest pocket. She pulled it out in front of Lorian and answered the video call she received from below.

  “Hey, Yuna! Are you up there in one of those airships?”, Catarina spoke through the screen.

  “Yeah! I’m actually on Lorian’s airship right now. Here is he next to me”, Yuna said as she turned around to have Lorian in the camera too.

  Lorian looked surprised as he saw himself on the small corner of Yuna’s handheld device, while seeing Catarina’s and Miranda’s heads appear on the larger section in the middle of the screen.

  “Wait, what?!”, Miranda said. “How did you—ah, nevermind! Caty, quick, let’s say something to Yuna and Lorian before they leave”.

  Catarina said: “I—uh, I hope you guys have a safe journey!”

  Miranda then said: “Bye, Yuna! Bye, Lorian! See you soon! Especially you, Lorian, I hope you can come to see us again in Tachyon in the future!”

  Lorian felt a little shy after hearing Miranda say that out of the blue. He responded by saying: “Well, uh… I’ll see!”.

  “Also, Lorian”, Catarina added, “I’ll continue to leave up my offer to you… in case you ever need it in the future”.

  “Um… thanks for that too, Catarina!”, he replied with slight reserve.

  “Alright, guys, we’ll be leaving Nova airspace shortly. Hope your work in Nova goes smoothly!”, Yuna told them as their call began to be flooded with static noise from the signal weakening.

  “Okay!—*bzzzt*—Bye-bye!”, the two girls said simultaneously before their voices fully drowned out.

  Yuna ended the call and returned her phone to where it was in her chest pocket. As she did so, she casually said to Lorian: “Well, looks like we’re going to have a wonderful trip together. Am I right, Lorian?”

  “Lorian?”

  While she called out to him, Lorian's attention was fixated on Corley sitting on the opposite side of the airship. He was anxious, for he realised that Corley had been staring at him with a death glare all this time while he patiently spoke to Yuna and the girls on her phone. Secretly, he spoke in his mind and attempted to connect to Matina via the Contact Bracelet, pleading for their adjutor’s help:

  “Matina, please help me now… I’m in danger!”

  “Huh? Sorry, but I don’t see any danger coming to you right now…”