The Six Guns - 27 Chapter Twenty Seven

The week passed by as the team avoided going back to Shark City. In order to avoid more conflict while also waiting for Rose and Demetri to finish whatever strange project it is that Demetri has been working on, they stayed in Therio. If anyone had been looking for them, they were definitely looking in all the wrong places. No one from Wolf Pack or The Ly’Lum had come to them or started any trouble yet. When the weekend arrived, the crew went back to Demetri’s place in hopes of the project being finished. When they arrived, they found Rose with what looked like a small machine wrapped around her head, with wires coming out of the back of the head.

“Hey guys!” Rose says excitedly when they come inside the house. Rose seemed very cheerful, which was a good change of the atmosphere.

Siran walked around Rose, inspecting the machine. “Is it working?” He asks.

“If you consider someone else having the ability to turn vision on and off like light switch ‘working’, then yes” Demetri says as he’s holding onto the wires and thinking.

“What still needs to be done?” Siran asks.

“Well” Demetri replies, “I have sensors attached to brain from back of eye socket, which can act as way to send signals to brain. Only problem, I don’t have definite power source that could even be considered remotely portable. It needs a charge to send signal to brain. No charge, no signal, no vision”. After speaking, Demetri flips a switch that shuts down the power to the small machine attached to Rose.

Rose begins to puff up her cheeks and pout. “Aw man…” she complains.

Holly looks up at Demetri and asks “Wouldn’t magic work as a source of power? Not only would it be portable, but it won’t require her to charge an external power source just to see”.

Demetri rubs his eyes and asks “That would take immense amount of magic. Also, I don’t know what magic would work as power source. I don’t even possess capability of magic”.

“I’m pretty sure that digital magic would work fine” Holly says. “It has weightless properties, but can react differently with physical matter. It shouldn’t be too hard for her to find a way to use that as a form of electricity. Just combine that with the knowledge of some basic elemental magic to gain an effect similar to electricity, but without the overheating and shocking effects and it should suffice”.

“Yes, but next problem is” Demetri replies, “where would you find such large amount of magic to keep digital magic running forever? It would take at least three people to-“.

Holly interrupts Demetri as she turns to Rose and says “Go ahead and give it a shot. Won’t know until you try”.

Rose nods and focuses for a few seconds. Before long, she looks back up and says “It’s working! Holly, you big dumb nerd, you’re a genius!”.

Holly laughs and says “That’s an oxymoron, Rose”.

“I didn’t know Rose could use digital magic” Finn says.

“I taught her a long time ago” Holly says.

Rose shakes her head in agreement and says “I’m not good at it though. I can’t make shields and stuff, but I can at least understand the basics of it”.

“Learn something new everyday” Alex adds.

Demetri scratches his head and walks over to Rose. “Who are you people?” He asks. Demetri then begins to disassemble the part of the machine on the back of Rose’s head, leaving the mechanical visor attached to her face.

“We’re The Six Guns!” Rose says with a gleeful cheer. “And we’re back in business!”.

Demetri freezes in place, still not finished taking apart the machine attached to the back of Rose’s head. “This must be joke” Demetri says.

“Ooh, wasn’t supposed to say that, was I?” Rose says with one finger on her chin, regretting her recent statement.

“You people have caused lot of trouble” Demetri says. “Your heads must be worth a lot”.

Siran, slowly reaching towards his gun, replies “What are you getting at?”.

“So you don’t deny it?” Demetri asks. Siran stares back at Demetri, watching his every move. Demetri slowly reaches back at Rose and grips the machine that’s still attached to her. One loud click was heard as the machine fell to the floor with a loud thump. Immediately, the entire crew had their guns drawn and pointed at Demetri. Demetri didn’t seem to pay any attention to this though, as he stood up with his hands on his hips and stretching his back. Everything attached to Rose was now on the floor, with the exception of a visor. The visor looked like a small screen that stretched across Rose’s face. Some light in the visors turn on, as what appears to be an 8-bit pattern making a drawing of eyes appear where Rose’s eyes were previously. Rose stands up quickly, turns around to Demetri and bows her head slightly.

“Thanks, Doc” Rose says.

“You must be thinking about payment by now” Demetri says as he turns to the rest of the crew. The crew still had their guns drawn as Demetri continues to talk. “Your heads are worth so much” he says. “You must be good at escaping trouble. That must be why your bounty is so high. So instead of money, I want you to find me way out of here safely”.

“Excuse me?” Siran asks.

“I want to go back to surface” Demetri says. “This place isn’t comfortable for me. If you can take me to place where I won’t be troubled for cybernetics without anyone knowing, then consider our debt settled”.

The crew lowers their guns and puts them away. Siran slowly walks up to Demetri, and holds out his hand. “You have yourself a deal” he says as he shakes Demetri’s hand. “Under a few circumstances though”.

“And that is?” Demetri asks.

“Well, for one” Siran says, “I don’t want to go before letting Rose see Shark City at least once”. The rest of the crew takes one step back.

“H-hold on, Syr!” Zia says.

Siran holds up a finger as if to say wait. “Second” he continues, “I want to know if you have any information on the Wolf Pack there in Shark City”.

“You have business?” Demetri asks.

“More like unfinished business” Siran replies. “They attacked one of my people, so I have a score to settle”.

“Well, I don’t know anything about where they operate” Demetri says. “All I know is they have vice grip on Marina, or as you call it, Shark City. Anything they say, goes. That’s about all I know”.

“In that case” Siran says, “just wait here for now. Give us a couple days and we’ll have you out of here, no problem”.

“That is acceptable” Demetri agrees.

“By the way” Finn asks, “what was that machine attached to Rose that you took apart?”.

“That was power source and performance monitor” Demetri replies. “I use it to test and diagnose cybernetics efficiency”.

The team leaves Demetri and his place and go back to the hotel on the other side of Therio.

As they walk, Rose looks at Siran and asks “What’s up? You said something about trouble?”.

“Yeah, why go back and look for trouble?” Finn asks. “We can just bail and never come back!”.

“Because this place could be a valuable resource” Siran replies. “This place and Seeira seem to be the only two places that aren’t looking for The Six Guns, so they make a good place to retreat to. Now think about it, after a while, don’t you think The Ly’Lum will eventually catch on to us using Seeira as a retreat? They’ve already found us there once and have had their outposts there destroyed by us. It’s only a matter of time before they try to tighten their grip around Seeira. If and when the time comes, we might need a place to fall back”.

By now, the team has already gotten close to the hotel as Finn asks “That makes sense when you put it that way, but I think we already blew our chance-“.

“Hey guys” Tanya interrupts with her sudden appearance. “Looks like the thing with Rose went well”. Rose waves happily in response.

“This is bad timing” Alex mumbles.

“Hey Tanya, I have an important question” Siran says.

“Hold on a second there!” Finn says, “are you out of your mind!?”.

“I need to know” Siran says. “You were a part of Wolf Pack, so do you by any chance know where their boss might be? I have something important I need to discuss”.

“Umm…” Tanya replies, “I know where a few places he might frequent. Why? Is something wrong?”.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” Siran replies.

“I don’t like the way that sounds” Tanya says, “and they probably won’t take kindly to people they don’t know showing up on their doorstep… but I guess if you’re adamant on the idea, then I’ll try to take you”.

“Trust me” Siran says “they’ll know who we are”.

“Okay” Rose jumps in, “I’m very lost here”.

Tanya leads the crew to a few places. As they walked, Zia asked Rose “So how do the new eyes feel?”.

“Well” Rose replies “my field of vision feels… wider. Which is nice. But while the visor is pretty light, it still feels weird having extra weight on the front of my face”.

The crew walked and talked for a while. A few places they went to didn’t seem to have anyone there anymore, and so they kept moving on to a few other places with Tanya being the guide. Eventually, they came up to this metal door in an alleyway, with a slide at eye level. When they approached the door, suddenly more people seemed to creep up from behind the crew and circle around them. Each of them with a familiar wolf patch on their clothes. One of the men pulled out a gun, pointed it at Siran and said “Knock on the door”.

Siran looked over at the man, and his eyes shifted to the door as he nods his head. Siran slowly raises his hand, and knocks on the hard metal door three times. The slide on the door opens up as a man peeks through the slot. The slide then closes and the door opens. The man from behind the door then guided them to another room as the rest of the gangsters followed behind them, keeping the crew hostage. As they entered the room, a man sitting in a chair, giving off the impression of ‘I’ve been expecting you’ suddenly shifted to a face of surprise.

“Tanya!?” The man asks.

“Hey! Don!” Tanya says as she walks up to the man and hugs him.

Don grabs Tanya gently by the face and says “You haven’t aged a day!”.

“We all know you’re lying about that” Tanya gleefully says, “You dumb, chubby, silver tongued jackass!”.

The two began laughing loudly. Don then says to Tanya “You still have a way with words! You still raising the kid with that one guy? What’s his name again?”.

“No” Tanya says. “That good for nothing bastard couldn’t handle having a child. He left before she was born”.

Don then looks over Tanya’s shoulder, at The Six Guns crew and asks “You’re not with these people, are you?”.

“Okay” Rose says, “now I’m VERY lost! Can someone fill me in?”.

Don walks around Tanya, and gets close to Siran. “So you’re the people who gravely injured five of my men?”.

“Wait, what!?” Tanya yells.

“You’re men attacked one of mine” Siran says to Don, directly to his face.

“You forgot to address me” Don says. “You’ll be addressing me as Sir”.

“Yeah, that’s not happening, buddy” Siran says. “I came all the way here because I thought that maybe we can settle this with words. You know, like adults?”.

Don laughs, then everyone else besides Tanya and the crew laughs. “Yes” he says “words. You know, you’re lucky we were able to save our men from death. Otherwise, posters of you would’ve been placed all over town, and you would’ve been hunted down like dogs. What makes you think an apology will have any merit here?”.

“I never mentioned an apology” Siran says. “I’m here to warn you. I will overthrow your reign here, unless you come to the understanding that you now work for me”.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Alex asks.

“And why should I take you seriously?” Don asks.

“Because” Siran replies, “if only one of my people can take down a group of your men for starting a bar fight, what do you think I’ll do to you if you decline?”.

Don snaps his fingers, and all the men surrounding them pull out a gun. At that moment, Holly uses her digital art skill, Dokkaebi. A giant digital shield in the shape of a goblin surrounds the crew, completely protecting them. Each of Don’s men fire at them, but none of them managed to even put a scratch on Holly’s shield.

“You’re out of your league here, Don” Siran says. “Now, do you want to talk, or do you want to fight?”.

“Who are you people, really?” Don asks.

“No one ever told you?” Siran asks. “We’re The Six Guns, and we’ll be needing your assistance in the future”.

Don crosses his fingers and folds his hands as he thinks. “I’m listening” he says.

“What’s your opinion on The Ly’Lum?” Siran asks.

“Of course, they’re enemies of ours as well” Don replies calmly.

“And you probably know this by now” Siran says, “but we’re currently their greatest enemy”. Don nods as Siran continues to talk, “and we’ll need places to hide as we form plans and armies against them. So I want to make a deal. We’ll not only never attack one of your men again, but we’ll even protect them from here on out. In return, we want you to secure a hideout for us. One that we can use as a base of operations”.

“And you think that settles the score between us?” Don asks.

“If you want to take a swing at me” Siran replies, “then by all means, take a swing”.

Don laughs and says “then in that case, I have something in mind! A game, of sorts. I need to know if you’re strong enough to keep your word as well as strong enough to hold your own ground. Since you’ve given me the choice to ‘take a swing’ then allow me to upgrade this to my little… game and we have a deal”.

“Wait a minute, Syr” Zia says, “I don’t think-“

“Then we have a deal” Siran says.

Don smiles and says “Good. Then this is my little game”.

The crew was taken to this small colosseum, and Siran was taken to the center as the rest were taken hostage as an audience. Several men walk into the colosseum with Siran and surround him. Suddenly, a microphone is turned on and Don’s voice could be heard over a set of speakers that surround the colosseum. “Remember the rules, Siran” Don says. “If you kill or hurt any of my men, the deal is off. As well as, for every one of my men killed, we will kill one of yours. You survive the constant assault for one hour, and you’re the winner. If, and that’s only if you win, will I accept this deal”.

Siran slowly takes his hat that has been hanging on his back from the lace around his neck, and slowly puts it on top of his head. A bell is heard and the men charge at Siran. The men swung at him with daggers, bats, knives and crowbars but Siran dodged every attack with ease. The men were fast, but Siran was much faster. He moved so quick, each of his movements were like a blur. Siran kept one hand on his hat, and wore a big smile as if to taunt them. Over and over, the men attacked and Siran always got away. Eventually, the men started pulling out guns. At first, the men thought they had Siran trapped. But every time it seemed like they almost had Siran, he always managed to move somewhere else, using things like illusion magic to avoid every hit. One by one, the men started to pass out. After the last man collapsed, Siran walks up to the nearest gangster that lay still on the ground. He checks his pulse with his fingers and then stands up. “Looks like they used too much magic and it took a toll on them” he says. Siran then looks at Don and says “looks like they’ve all passed out! What do you say to ending this game early?”.

Don clenches his fists in anger. “That’s impossible! How are you still standing? I won’t let you have your way so easily!” Don shouts. “I swear, I’ll-“

“Wait!” Tanya shouts as she stands in front of Don. “These are good people. I understand what they did, but you’ve gotta trust me on this. You know I’ve always had a good eye for discerning what kind of people anyone is or could be. Give them a chance, I know you’ll work well together”.

Don slowly turns his head back towards Siran and asks “So our men can take care of our business freely, and you guys will keep the government and their militaries off of us, right?”.

Siran nods and says “You have my word”.

After debating with himself, Don snaps his fingers and the gates for the colosseum open again. All the men surrounding the rest of the crew put away their weapons, and everyone gathers at the center where Siran is. Don finally meets with the crew once more and says “I’ll show you to a place we can set up as a hideout”. Don then whistles and his men follow behind him as well as the crew. Some of his men pick up and carry those who passed out and bring them with. Eventually, they come across an empty and abandoned bar that’s ironically across the street from the bar that they got into a fight at, Ace of Spades. As they get inside, the place was dirty and hollow. There were no tables or chairs, cobwebs and dust was everywhere, this place was a complete and empty mess.

“This place will be perfect” Don suggests. “I can have some people fix this place up and make it into a fully functional bar. However, the bar will only serve as a front. There’s areas in the back that lead to a basement. From there, you should be able to carry out and discuss plans without being overheard. Don’t make me regret my decision, or else”. Don then walks away, leaving his men there. His men start cleaning and a few of them leave. After a while, some more men come back with tables and chairs. Eventually, trucks start coming in, with all sorts of different liquors. The team stayed to help clean the place out. At the end of the day, it looked like the bar was almost ready to open. There was still a lot of work to be done, but it wouldn’t be long until the place would be full my operational. The team goes back to the hotel to sleep and Tanya had went with them for the time being.

“I can’t believe you guys picked a fight with Wolf Pack!” Tanya exclaims.

“We didn’t pick a fight… they did” Zia says.

“You guys are the craziest people I’ve ever met!” Tanya says. “And I was married once! You somehow managed to surpass the craziness of my ex-husband!”.

“Don’t worry” Siran says, “I’m not going to boss them around and stuff, I just need a place to fall back to”.

“That doesn’t help at all!” Tanya says.

“Anyways” Siran says, “thanks for sticking up for us back there. You mentioned before that you appreciated that we stick up for ourselves and fight back against The Ly’Lum, right?”.

“Yeah, why?” Tanya asks.

“Well, I’d like you to help us stand up against The Ly’Lum” Siran says as he hands a silvery card over to Tanya with the number 3 on it. “You can be both a mother and a hero for your daughter, if you’re worried about her being raised under the reign of The Mages. What do you say?”.

“What am I supposed to say?” Tanya asks. “This seems like too much responsibility to handle. You know I’m a mother first”.

“And that’s perfectly fine” Siran says.

“I guess I’ll consider it for now” Tanya says as she puts the card down on the floor of the hotel and lays down.

After a while of everyone laying down and failing to find sleep again, Rose eventually asks amidst all the confusion from the day they just had. “Did we just become mob bosses?” She asks.

“Uhh… yeah, I think we did” Finn replies.

“Oh” Rose replies, still very confused about what happened.

“Anyways, get some rest” Alex says.

“Yeah” Siran agrees, “tomorrow we’ve got to finish up our new hideout and then we have to take Demetri out of Vega”.

“Yeah” Finn adds “because, y’know, handling a crazy yet somehow slightly friendly mob boss and a crazy Russian known for making both cybernetics and explosives, in the same week isn’t at all disheartening”.

“Enough” Holly says, “you’re acting like we haven’t been through worse”.

“But…” Finn asks, “have we been through worse?”.

After a while of arguing, everyone finally finds sleep. The night slowly came to an end. The crew slept peacefully as slowly, but surely, the next day began.
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