The Six Guns

Chapter Thirty-One: Search Party

As Alex, Zia, Finn, Rose, Holly, Satomi and Mikoto return to Vivi's house, they explain what happened to Vivi and the rest. No one knew what to make of this situation. No one, except for Zia. "We need to look for him" she says, "we can't just turn our backs to him like that!".
"But what about the whole... you know" Finn says, "that... monster thing? He's still our captain, so I don't want to just leave him hangin' like that, but... I dunno".
"Exactly!" Zia says, "he IS still our captain! He must've struggled for so long with nobody to be there with him, the least we could do is try to help him... I mean, how long ago was The Naris Catastrophe?".
"Almost 170 years ago" Alex says.
"Right!" Zia says, "and when have you ever heard of a man named Siran anywhere? Over the past nearly two centuries, he hasn't shown up in any textbooks or anything, so chances are we are probably the first people to actually stick around him after so long. If he had other people like us to be around him before, don't you think we would've heard about him from somewhere?".
The rest of the crew fell silent. Everyone felt guilty. Even though Siran always refrained from telling them about his past, they felt they now knew a lot about his past. Siran was talkative and obsessive, but they now knew it was because he was so lonely.
"So" Zia says, "... no answers? If no one else agrees, I'll go look for him alone".
"Hang on" Vivi says as she stands up from her desk, "I'll go. The idiot pisses me off, but he's still like family to me. I'm going".
"I can't stand losing more people that are close to me" Rose says, "I'll go".
"He IS our cap'n after all" Finn says as he stands up.
"He saved Mikoto's life" Satomi says, "so I owe him".
"I'll go too" Mikoto says.
"He still owes me" Holly says, "he promised me knowledge".
"You're still on about that?" Finn asks as the rest of the crew that's standing looks and sees Alex, Demetri, Tanya and Robin still sitting on the couches in Vivi's house.
"What about you, Alex?" Zia asks, "I know you were never sure about Siran, but do you honestly think he was ever plotting anything that didn't have our best interests in mind?".
Alex thinks to himself for a moment, with anxiety filling his mind. "Alright" he says, "I'll go".
"I'll come too" Robin says.
"No, we can't bring the kid this time" Alex says. "You stay here with Demetri".
Demetri shrugs his shoulder as if he didn't generally care about what he should do. "I'll have to stay behind" Tanya says, "I don't know how long the search will take, but I still have a daughter to raise, so...".
"It's fine, we understand" Alex says.
"Sorry..." Tanya replies.

The crew of Vivi, Alex, Zia, Finn, Rose, Holly, Satomi and Mikoto searched periodically for two weeks with no luck. After two weeks, the search party was interrupted when looking through Balphor, the country north of Seeira. They were passing through the area where they last fought James Markwood, the last place they saw Siran. However, when passing through, they ran into the MTRU (Magitech Tactical Recon Unit). Six of them, all standing in their way. The familiar Ly'Lum soldiers that they had already ran into once at the large base south of Cairo, with the face masks and all black uniforms. This time, they seemed to have some sort of metal backpacks on.
"These guys again" Zia says.
"The men in the weird uniforms" Finn says, "I totally forgot about them. Last time we saw them was close to The Pyramid of Djoser, wasn't it?".
"Yeah, looks like they're still on the move" Rose says.
"What exactly are they after?" Alex asks.
"If I had to take a guess" Zia says, "I'd say they're after us".
"I've never seen any of these uniforms before" Vivi says.
"You must be The Six Guns" one of the soldiers call out. "Something must be wrong with the intel, there's more than six of you".
"Sucks to suck, doesn't it?" Vivi says as she crosses her arms and buries her hands under the armpits of her jacket.
"Surrender peacefully or-" one of the other soldiers start to say before they're interrupted by Zia jumping at him and trying to spin kick him. The soldier grabs her leg and stops her, then lets go and she falls to the ground. Suddenly, Zia feels an intense fatigue, as if all of her energy had been sapped from her. The soldier's backpack starts filling with a smoke-like black substance.
"As I was saying" the soldier continues, "surrender peacefully or we'll have to use force".
  "What did he do to her?" Finn asks.
  As Zia struggles to get back up, the solider says "We've heard that The Six Guns have a high capacity for magic".
  "So to combat this" Vivi says, "they developed technology that saps away magic".
  "They can do that?" Rose asks.
  "Seems that way" Alex says.
  The soldier begins to reach down to grab Zia, but Vivi shouts "Don't even think about it!". The soldier looks over as Vivi continues to say "Leave them be, or else".
  "Or else what?" The soldier asks, "you really think your threats scare me?".
  Vivi whispers to Alex, asking "You guys all have that magic boost thingy that Siran gave you, right?".
  "Yeah" Alex whispers back.
  "How long does it take for your magic to recover enough for you to no longer feel tired?" Vivi asks.
  "For us, it'll only take about five minutes" Alex says, "in comparison to the usual twelve hours".
  "Good" Vivi says, "then we're going to hold them off until Zia can pick herself up".
  "You talk too much" the soldier says as he raises his foot above Zia's head. Before he could stomp on her head, a knife flew at the soldier, and the soldier barely managed to block it. As he looks up, Rose is standing across from the soldier with several more knives prepared to be thrown.
  "Hey!" Vivi calls out, "your fight is with me now".
  "Oh-ho-ho!" The soldier says as he walks towards Vivi. "And what do you suppose you're going to do?".
  "Not much" Vivi says as she pulls her hands out from under her armpits, pulling a thin metal wire. As she pulls the wire, her jacket flies open again, and an array of guns unfold from inside the jacket and point at the soldier. "Just enough to get the job done".
  "That's overkill" Alex says, "but if it works, I'm not complaining".
  Vivi shoots all of the guns at once and the soldier uses a digital shield to block it. The blast from Vivi's guns were smaller and a lot less powerful than the guns that she made for the others, but the combined force of all the guns made a strong enough impact to shatter the soldier's shield. The soldier flinched and by the time he had looked up again, Vivi had already prepared a wrench to smack him with. She hit him so hard that the glass lenses on his mask had shattered. The soldier tumbled a bit, but he managed to stay on his feet. As he stood up straight, Vivi had put her fingers through the holes of his masks, from where the lenses had shattered and grabbed the soldier's face masks. She pulled his face to the ground, but brought her knee to his face before he could hit the ground. As he started falling backwards from the impact of Vivi's knee, Vivi then spun around and stretched out her right leg, kicking the soldier in the throat. The soldier had made some gagging sounds as he hit the ground, but then stopped moving. Only five more soldiers remained.
  As Vivi looks up to see why the other soldiers haven't stopped her, she sees the rest of the crew are already fighting the other soldiers. Rose had charged at one of the soldiers, wielding a knife in each hand. The two of them were fighting hand to hand. Rose would swing at the soldier, and the soldier would dodge and deflect her attacks. Then the soldier would attack Rose, but she would always dodge or deflect as she got even closer to the soldier. The soldier had grabbed Rose's goggles that she uses as her new set of eyes, and in panic, Rose swung a knife at the soldier. Her knife hit the soldier's other hand and the soldier let go of Rose's face. The soldier looks at his hand as sparks flew from under his glove. It seemed as if something was short circuiting from under his glove. Rose had gotten an idea. She slashed at the soldier's other hand and that hand shot out sparks as well. The soldier immediately tried to keep his distance from Rose, and had no longer tried to grab her. She charged up to him and swung her knives at the soldier some more, until she got way too close to the soldier. Immediately, she grabs his hands, and bends the soldier's fingers backwards until you hear all of his finger make a loud popping sound. However, even though the soldier should've been able to drain her the same way they drained Zia, Rose didn't feel any of her magic drain.
  "Guys!" Rose calls out to the rest, "It's in their hands! The device that drains magic is in their hands! If you can break it, they can't drain you!". Rose then pulls out her gun and puts the soldier, who is screaming in agony, out of his misery. Four more remained.
  "I hope we can fry it!" Alex says as he throws an enormous fireball at a different soldier. The soldier raises one hand and absorbed the magic into his glove. "Tch" Alex says, "guess not".
  Holly fires from her sniper rifle, from behind Alex, destroying digital shield after digital shield, depleting their defenses. Finn grabs the soldier that Alex attacked by the wrists and head-butts him while using a stability spell to keep himself from hurting himself. The soldier got dazed as Alex comes up from behind and punches him hard enough in the gut to make the soldier lift off of the ground and lay flat without moving. Finn then jumps on the soldier as he lays on the ground, wielding one of the knives that Rose had thrown, planting the knife directly into the soldier's neck. Three more remained.
  Satomi and Mikoto were attacking another one of the soldiers as Holly continued with taking out their defenses. Mikoto would trip the soldier as Satomi pulls out her baseball bat again and hits the soldier across the head with it.
  "Where'd you get the baseball bat?" Finn asks.
  "We used to play baseball all the time" Satomi says.
  "Yes, but where did you get it?" Finn asks.
  Satomi turns around and points at her backpack.
  "Why bring a baseball bat of all things!?" Finn asks.
  "Heads up!" Mikoto says as the soldier gets back up.
  The soldier stands up, but then suddenly a leg shoots up from underneath the soldier, hitting him in the jaw, sending him flying higher in the air than most people can jump. The soldier's neck snaps from the sudden impact. As the crew looks down, Zia was laying there with her leg still stretched up, panting and breathing heavily from exhaustion. Only two soldiers remained.
  "I hope" Zia says between breaths, "he clenched his teeth".
  "Are you okay?" Mikoto says as she helps Zia up.
  "I'm fine" Zia replies, "just a little tired".
  The last two soldiers approached them, but suddenly, a white flash of light followed by a bright white beam flew through the air. This beam penetrated one soldier and ran through the other, hitting the ground with a strong enough impact to send dirt flying high into the air and creating a small crater. Both of the soldiers died, although, death was the most simple way to describe their condition. Their bodies had taken such a heavy impact, that their torsos would no longer hold together. Their bodies fell apart, and none of their extremities were attached any longer. The crew looked at where the beam came from, and there they saw a man sitting in a tree covered head to toe in black robes, wearing a mechanical face mask to hide his identity. He held an enormous sniper rifle, and what looked like a large blue scarf wrapped around his neck and hanging down his back. The scarf was wide and thin, like a short cape that hung down his back.
  "Who are you?" Alex asks.
  Without much hesitation, the mysterious sniper disappears.
  "That's strange" Vivi says.
  "You're telling me" Alex adds.
  "They have a weapon that seemed similar to my design" Vivi says, "but I don't remember ever making a weapon like that one".
  "This journey is getting more and more strange" Alex replies.
  "Where could they have gotten such a weapon?" Vivi asks herself.
  "Maybe another arms developer?" Rose asks.
  "I doubt it" Vivi says, "I'm not saying I'm the best or that no other developer makes guns as good as mine, but the custom weapons we make are all unique to our style. Our weapons are like our fingerprints. No two developers make their weapons the same way".
  "We need to get back to searching for Siran" Finn says, "can you still walk, Zia?".
  Zia still struggles to catch her breath. "I'm fine" she says, "I think".
  "Maybe we need to head back for now" Vivi says, "you may need some time to recover. We haven't seen someone get sapped entirely of magic before, so we don't know how long the effects will last".
  Zia nods and says "Alright".

  The crew heads back to Vivi's house. Everyone was beginning to relax, and Zia seems to have recovered by now. However, it had grown late, and midnight had already passed. The crew was tired and exhausted from searching. They still had no luck in finding Siran, but now they were all questioning themselves about this mysterious marksman that they had met. The date was now December 22nd, 2191 and each day only grew colder than the last. They desperately wanted to find Siran, the MTRU are on the move, Markwood is still alive, and now there's this sniper which no one knows who's side they're really on.
  The sun rises as everyone wakes up to see that Zia had already gotten up before everyone else. Zia has already gotten prepared to leave, and even had packed supplies and other things.
  "Planning on leaving so soon?" Vivi asks in a tired voice.
  "Where ya heading?" Finn asks.
  "I'm going to Pilloa" Zia says, "I want to leave early so I have more time to search".
  "You're searching for Siran" Alex asks, "in Pilloa?".
  Zia nods and says "A thought occurred to me. He's the man from that story... the hero who was labeled a war criminal, and his story has been passed down for generations in the Mahina clan. So maybe there can be some sort of clue there on where he might be".
  "A clue in the ruins of your village?" Alex asks. "You mean that you're just hoping he's there? What clues do you think would be in Pilloa?".
  "We won't know until we go look" Zia replies. "I'm not waiting for long, so if any of you are coming, you better hurry up and get ready".