The Six Guns - 23 Chapter Twenty Three

The next day, The Six Guns crew were sitting in the room at the hospital once again by Mikoto’s bedside. Mikoto still hasn’t woke up from her coma, and the crew still waited every day by her side for her. The television was on and the local news station was playing through the TV. Satomi seemed fixated on the TV, but everyone else had a hard time keeping up with what was going on, due to the news being spoken in Japanese and none of them being able to understand it. One thing was clear to them though, riots and protests were slowly breaking out more and more over the past week that they’ve spent at the hospital. As of now, it seemed that most of Tokyo was in protest.

“What are they talking about?” Siran asks Satomi.

Still fixated on the TV, Satomi replies “Apparently, there’s a lot of protesting and rioting going on. Most of it is in Shibuya, close to The Ly’Lum base”.

Seeming to cheer up a very little bit, Rose asks “So did our plan work out after all?”.

“They definitely seem to be protesting The Ly’Lum” Satomi replies, “especially since they’ve already initiated martial law during that attack. They don’t even have jurisdiction in this country yet and they’re already trying to control the citizens aggressively”.

Fixing her glasses and pulling her laptop back out, Holly says “And what is Japan’s government doing about this?”.

Crossing his arms, only getting more irritated with the news, Alex says “Probably doing nothing but giving excuses”.

Holly suddenly stops tapping away at her laptop and says “Hold on and shut up, this is important”.

“What is it?” Siran asks.

While reading from her laptop screen, Holly says “Japan’s government is calling for complete compliance. It’s almost like they’re being blackmailed, or threatened. What is going on between Japan and Omnia right now?”.

Satomi, still focused on the news on the TV, says “Well one thing is for sure. The people don’t want any of this, so what ever is going on between our two countries can’t be good for any of us”.

“It sure seems that way” Siran says softly.

After a short silence, Rose says calmly “I hope Mikoto wakes up soon”.

“I do too” Satomi says, still fixated on the TV, “but I don’t want her to wake up in this cruel world being all mixed up like this. Knowing her, she’ll feel obligated to do something about it immediately, and I can’t let her do that right after coming back from a coma”.

Siran, with guilt showing through his facial expression, asks “Got any plans?”.

“I have one” Satomi says, crossing her arms as she watches the news. “Whether or not what we did stirred up this much action from the citizens here, I feel like since we tried to start this, then it’s only fair to finish what we started”.

Turning to Satomi, Alex asks “How should we start?”.

“Well” Satomi replies, “we can direct the protests and riots straight to their front door. Right up to the gates of The Ly’Lum base. It’s about time we brought the fight back to them”.

As the afternoon of that day was coming to a close and evening was starting to stretch its embrace across the sky, the crew left the hospital and left Rose by Mikoto’s side. As they start leaving towards Shibuya, Satomi stops by a mask shop and gets fox masks for the entire group. As Satomi handed over some of the masks to Siran, she says “We’ll need some sort of disguise to make it hard for The Ly’Lum to recognize us. Otherwise, we’ll likely be shot down on sight”.

“Good thinking” Finn says as he starts putting on his mask. “But how do you suppose we orchestrate this riot? Won’t it be a little hard to try and direct these people?”.

“Leave that part to me” Satomi says, through her mask. She then puts on a hooded jacket and flips the hood over her head and says “I’m a performer after all”.

As the team eventually arrives at Shibuya, they could see The Ly’Lum were all over the town. Citizens were outside, arguing and rioting about the newly placed curfew times. The team had quietly snuck through most of the town as Satomi picks her preferred spot. She stands up on a stage where a volumetric display used to be, grabs a microphone and turns it on. This time, instead of singing in Japanese, she spoke in English, as if to taunt The Ly’Lum.

“People of Shibuya!” Satomi shouted into the microphone, “I know you’re all tired of The Ly’Lum in our country! Of these home invasions, these curfews, and this violence!”. By this time, Satomi had the attention of everyone around. All eyes were on her as she continues. “It’s frustrating and unfair, isn’t it!? But you know what they say… That’s life! Get over it, this is how the real world works! That’s it! All there is too it! Don’t like it!? Tough!”. A majority of people’s head began to hang low in guilt. However, Satomi didn’t stop her speech. “The world is fair, because it’s unfair to everyone… but somehow, it still just doesn’t seem right, does it?”. The crowd of people look back up, with a mixture of guilt, sadness and confusion in the air. “It’s not right, is it? That we have to compensate in suffering for someone else’s gain? What kind of life is that? If you don’t like it, then you don’t have to let people walk all over you! The least productive way of changing life is just accepting that life is just like that and that we should simply deal with it! If you want to lead a better life, you must first become the better person! Lead your new lives for your friends, your family, your children… your siblings. We don’t have to let them walk all over us! WHO’S WITH ME!?”.

The crowd starts loudly cheering, as The Ly’Lum start getting their distance from people slowly. A few soldiers ready their guns, only for other soldiers to push their guns back down. “We can’t harm the civilians” the soldiers would say. As the crowd’s cheering grew louder, their fists raising in the air, Satomi raises her own fist into the air and shouts “LET’S GO CHANGE THE WORLD!!”.

The crowd cheered louder and louder as everyone began to follow behind Satomi. The crew followed the crowd to blend in as they marched all the way up to The Ly’Lum base, south of Shibuya. As they march, Rose still sat by Mikoto’s side in her wheelchair. The entire speech was caught live on the news. As Rose sat in the room, listening, she began to clench her fists as a single tear starts to fall from behind her bandages. “Don’t worry” Rose says as if speaking to Mikoto, “we’ll make things right. They won’t get away with hurting anymore of my friends”.

As the crowd of people approach the base, The Ly’Lum had setup soldiers around the outside of the fence of the base. The gate that Siran shot open was still broken, but they sealed the gate closed with wood, nails and barbed wire. As the crowd of people get close to the soldiers, the yells of several people ring throughout the night’s sky. Siran and the rest make their way up to the front with Satomi. Before the soldiers had any time to inquire who these people were and why they’re wearing masks, Siran starts demanding “We want answers from your official in charge! We demand answers from Amelia Reese!”.

The soldiers were shocked by the name. Surprised to hear that these people already knew who were running this operation, they had troubles finding the correct words to respond. Before anyone could respond, the crowd gradually fell silent as the figure of a woman slowly approaches the scene. Amelia Reese. As she got close, Siran says “The whole world knows your face by now, being one of The Mages. You’ll have no choice but to answer!”.

Amelia finally stopped walking after she got within only a couple meters away from Siran. “I figured the world would know your face by now too, even from behind that silly mask, Siran of The Six Guns”.

The crowd and soldiers all fell completely silent, as did Siran. That same red glow of the eyes that the crew had seen when Siran saved Mikoto at the hospital could once again be seen from behind Siran’s mask. It pierced through the dark holes of the mask’s eyes, as if it were a weak light. Amelia raises one fist as if getting ready to throw a punch as she says “Take off that silly thing”. When she punches the air, a subsonic burst slammed against Siran’s mask. The mask cracked and fell off of his face, but Siran did not budge. Instead, his glowing red eyes only became more visible to Amelia as he takes his sunglasses out of his pocket, and slowly puts them back over his eyes. Most of the crowd backed up, farther away from the fence and gate, leaving The Six Guns crew standing ahead of the rest.

“There are still six of you, I see” Amelia says in disappointment. “It seems I failed to finish one of you off, unless there is a new one”.

“That’s where you’re wrong” Siran says. “Today, there are hundreds of us!”. As Siran says this, the crowd cheers for a few seconds.

Amelia’s face grew into a sour expression. “Open the gate” she says to the soldiers next to her.

“But sir, the gates don’t-” a soldier begins to say before being interrupted by being shot in the knee by Amelia. Amelia then points the gun at another soldier and repeats “Open the gate”.

The soldier salutes as he says “R-right away!”. The soldier then raises his gun and starts shooting the boards holding the broken down gate closed. Holly shielding whatever magic that passed through the wood, preventing it from hitting them or the civilians behind them. After the gate finally starts to slowly open, Amelia walks right up to Siran, who was in a fighting stance. Amelia gestures with her finger, to tell Siran that she wants to whisper something into his ear. Siran lets her get close as she leans in to Siran’s ear and whispers “Clench your teeth”.

Immediately, Amelia thrusts her knee into Siran’s jaw, and sends him flying backwards a few meters. The rest of The Six Guns crew raises their guns, except for Satomi who doesn’t have a gun, and takes off their masks. Amelia smiles and then says “You better be prepared to fight if you’re going to pull out a weapon”. The crew all fire at her, but all the fire is stopped by a wide digital shield. Amelia goes to kick Alex, but Zia grabs her leg and stops her kick. Zia, countering with another kick, sends Amelia backwards with a huge and powerful gust of wind.

“You’re all mine” Zia says as she stares Amelia directly in the eyes. All of the soldiers surrounding them point their guns, but all of the civilians are grabbing them, preventing them from shooting anyone. Alex, Satomi, Finn and Holly help hold the soldiers back and protect the civilians. Siran gets back up, with a small stream of blood coming from his mouth. He wipes off the blood from his face and begins walking towards Amelia. Zia, who was locked in combat with Amelia, tries to throw a punch with her fist coated in bright flames. Amelia grabs Zia’s fist, the flames disappearing immediately as she touched it. Amelia squeezed Zia’s fist, and Zia screams in pain as you could hear a popping sound coming from Zia’s hand. However, Siran came flying in from above Zia, grabbing Amelia’s forehead. Siran pushes her head into the asphalt ground beneath them, and dragged her head against the road. No blood came out, although the asphalt shattered from the impact. Amelia laid still for a short second before she began to smile. Amelia uses both legs to kick Siran off of herself, and jumps back to her feet. “It’s going to take more than that to take down a mage” she says.

“Damn buff magic” Siran says as he clenches his fists.

Zia walks past Siran and pulls out her dagger as she says “This wouldn’t be so interesting if it were that easy”. Zia and Siran were trading blows with Amelia, just as Satomi walks up to the fight. More soldiers were coming from the base as backup. Zia once again gets her distance and Siran gets out of the way of another one of Amelia’s punches. Satomi and Siran stared at the incoming soldiers as Zia remained fixated on Amelia.

Satomi wielded a metal bat as she looks at Siran and says “We’ll need to take care of this, wanna give me a hand?”. Her face was calm and collected.

“Are you going to be alright?” Siran asks.

Zia, not taking her gaze off of Amelia, says “Go ahead, I’ve got this. You guys handle the interruptions”.

“Pretty big talk for dead girl” Amelia says.

Zia readies her dagger once more and replies “Pretty haughty talk for a cunt”.

As the soldiers get close, Satomi and Siran charge at them. Satomi’s bat starts glowing a bright light blue color as she swings her bat at the first soldier she approaches. The impact kicks a cloud of dust off of the ground, and the soldier flies onto his back, as well as several soldiers behind him. Armament magic. The impact sent a shockwave through several of the soldiers, knocking most of them out, killing a few of them in one swing.

“Keep it going!” Siran shouts at Satomi as he flies into a large group of soldiers. His hand was clenched like a claw, and upon entering the fray, a tunnel of fire engulfed Siran and the soldiers around him.

Looking over at Siran, Satomi shouts “Not bad! Maybe next time I’ll have you give me some lessons!”.

Siran pointed his gun in Satomi’s direction and shot right over her shoulder, hitting a soldier right behind her. “If you don’t focus, there won’t be a next time!” he says. Satomi nods and picks up her bat again.

Zia and Amelia seemed to be locked in a stalemate as they moved around, almost too fast to keep up with human eyes. Every time they clashed, sparks, fire, dust clouds and various other things always flew out from between them. The crowd still struggled with the soldiers outside. Amelia gained her distance from Zia this time as she prepares a giant fire ball that would not only hit Zia, but kill all of the citizens behind her. As Amelia threw the fire ball at her, Zia raised both of her arms to prepare to stop it. Using the same trick Siran uses to control magic, Zia stops the fireball before it touches anything. While Zia was busy with the fireball, Amelia slides under Zia from between her legs and gets behind her. “Too slow” Amelia says, then she grabs Zia by the neck and throws her into the air. As Zia flew, she used her magic to rip the fireball apart and used the fire from it as a jet propulsion. She threw all the fire behind her and used it to thrust herself forward at Amelia at a high speed. Amelia prepares herself for an attack and says “I win” with a big, sinister smile. Just as Zia gets close, she seems to almost vanish in black smoke and appear behind Amelia. An illusion spell, shadow step. Zia grabs Amelia by the neck of her shirt and uses the force from her flight to throw Amelia over her shoulder at Siran. As Amelia flies, Zia yells “Siran!”.

Siran looks over and see Amelia flying at him from several meters away and shouts at Satomi. “Satomi! Bat, now!”,

Satomi nods and throws her bat at Siran, who catches it perfectly. This time Siran uses the armament magic and makes the bat glow a bright white color. Amelia creates a digital shield around herself as Siran swings the bat, however, the bat shatters the shield and goes through it like butter. The bat hits Amelia on the top of her head, but instead of flying, her body spun 180 degrees as she smacked into the asphalt with a heavy impact. Her body, no longer moving, with a large splatter of blood strewn across the ground.

Siran takes a step up to Amelia’s lifeless body and lightly kicks her as if to make sure she’s dead. He then crouches over her body and checks for vital signs. “Tch, so much for the no-kill rule” Siran says. The soldiers froze in shock as Zia walks up to Amelia’s lifeless body and says “Looks like I’ve won”.

The crowd behind them have stripped the soldiers of all but their clothes by this time and charged into the base, pointing the soldier’s guns back at them, seizing the victory. The soldiers dropped their guns one by one, and put their hands up. Satomi turns around to face the crowd of civilians and says “Everyone, the first victory is ours!”.

A loud “Huzzah!” was heard throughout the crowd as people started to rejoice. Finn, Alex and Holly walk up to the rest of the group as Finn complains “That was MY move! Did Zia steal my techniques? When did she learn to do that!?”. The night grew darker as it got later. The crew head back to the hospital and discovered Rose who was panicking in her wheelchair at the front door. She seemed happy and excited, which was surprising to the rest because of how depressed Rose has been lately with her condition. She kept trying to say something to the rest of the crew as they arrived but she only seemed to jumble all of her words in an intelligible mess.

“Calm down” Finn says as he approaches close to Rose, “What’s up? What are you so worked up about?”.

Rose takes a deep breath and starts talking, although she seemed too excited and still a stuttered a lot. This time however, she could be understood, as she said “M-M-Mikoto! It’s Mikoto!”.

Suddenly panicking and expecting the worst news, Satomi jumps up the rest of the stairs and leans really close to Rose. “What about Mikoto!?” She asks.

“She… s-she’s” Rose says, “She’s AWAKE!”.

“WHAT!?” Satomi says as she looks up at the hospital doors, then runs inside.

The rest of the team follows behind her. When they get to the room, they’re met with a confused and drowsy looking Mikoto, who’s trying her best to smile as she hugs Satomi and Satomi who’s crying uncontrollably. As this display goes on for several minutes, Rose asks Siran “What do you want to do from here? I’ve heard about what happened on the TV from Mikoto, so I assume the job here is done?”.

“I’m not sure if the job is done for sure” Siran replies, “we might have to stick around for a little bit longer”.

“That’s fine with me” Rose says. Rose then thinks to herself and raises her head back up and says “I’ve decided”.

Looking over at Rose, Siran asks “Decided what?”.

“That even though I’m blind” Rose replies, “and that no matter how bad it’ll get in the future, that I’m going to stick with the team”.

Siran was surprised. “Are you sure?” He asks. “You could easily be in danger and might have troubles with your lack of sight”.

Rose shakes her head and says “I’m sure. You guys are my family now. Besides, you made me a promise, didn’t you? You said you would get me my eyesight back. I’m not sure how you plan on doing that, but you still made a promise”.

Siran looks down at his feet and says “Yeah… you’re right. I will find a way, I promise”.

Rose holds up one pinky finger and asks “Pinky promise?”.

Siran laughs and says “Sure” as they shake with their pinkies like some young children.
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