The Six Guns - 40 Chapter Forty

When the crew finally arrives at Vega, they mask Ruby as they take her to their hideout. They took her to the basement to keep her hidden. Shortly after arriving, one of Don’s henchmen arrive to tell the crew that Don wants to speak to them. Not long after that, Don comes to their hideout instead of the crew going to see Don.

“It’s time to hold your end of the bargain” Don says. “We made a deal, remember? I gave you transportation, now you owe me a favor”.

“What do you have in mind?” Zia asks.

“There was a deal?” Siran asks.

“Yeah, in exchange for the motorcycles” Zia says.

“So that’s where they came from…” Siran says to himself.

“Are you guys done flirting?” Don asks. “Look, I don’t know if you’ve learned about this yet, you might’ve overlooked it but The Ly’Lum have correction camps”.

“Correction camps?” Siran asks.

“They’re camps that are used to ‘correct’ peoples’ misled mindset” Don says. “In case you’re having troubles imagining how bad it is, they’re the equivalent of a concentration camp. Now, I can’t believe this sort of thing happened, but currently the camp is used to correct supporters… of a certain type… namely, your supporters”.

“Our… what?” Siran asks.

“You have supporters” Don says, “some people actually applaud what you do to The Ly’Lum, believe it or not”.

“I don’t believe it, actually” Siran says.

“Regardless” Don says, “people do”.

“I mean, I was a supporter before I became one of you” Robin says.

“Yeah” Satomi says, “Japan is filled with supporters”.

“And so is Seeira and Omnia” Don says. “The most unbelievable part about this is, not only have a few of my men already forgiven you, but some of my men support you. Can you believe that? MY MEN! It’s crazy! But nonetheless, I organize their business, not tell them who to praise. So it can’t be helped”.

“And you need us to go rescue them?” Siran asks.

Don makes a gun shape with his hand and says “You guessed it!”.

“Do you have their location?” Alex asks.

“Not a precise location” Don says, “but I know they’re somewhere between Omnium Guild and Forehold”.

“That’s pretty far” Zia says. “How’d they get that far?”.

“There’s business outside of Vega, you know?” Don says. “They get taken in with civilians, there’s not a lot they can do. They can’t draw attention to Vega, because it’s our only safe haven. As well as, the people they get taken away with are also Six Guns Sympathizers or whatever they call them. They’ll likely not want to hurt people that share similar ideas and beliefs. On another note, who’s the one with a bag over their head?”.

“A captive” Siran says. “Whatever you do, don’t kill them, even if they ask for you to do it”.

“You’re a buzzkill” Ruby says, muffled by the sack covering her head.

“That’s… something” Don says, “I didn’t know you were into kidnapping”.

“It’s not a personal interest” Siran says, “but this is a VIP. We’ll need a few people to watch them while we’re gone”.

“As long as you come back quickly with my men” Don says, “we’ll keep them safe”.

“Thanks” Siran says, “but how are we supposed to get there quickly? That’s a lot of distance to cover”.

“Why do you think I gave you the bikes to begin with?” Don asks. “I had previously planned on having you make a contraband run for me against your knowledge, but this takes priority”.

“So that’s why you didn’t fight much over the bikes…” Zia says.

“Yes, now shoo!” Don says as he tries to push the crew outside. “Go! Get moving!”.

As the crew leaves, Siran says to himself “So we have supporters… maybe it won’t be such a bad idea after all to let the world know who I am”.

“Look” Vivi says, “you’re obviously not going to listen to me when I say don’t be so reckless. But whatever you do, don’t give the enemy the opportunity to take advantage of what little information the world may know. The world’s idea of you is kind of split in two. Some believe the story of you had a sad ending and you were wrongfully accused, the rest believe it really was all your fault. You have a 50% chance of gaining support, but 50% chance of losing your support… roughly speaking, of course”.

“I know” Siran says. “By the way, shouldn’t he had given us more bikes? We have eight bikes, but there’s twelve of us…”.

“Beggars can’t be choosers” Alex says. “We were given support from an outside source, that’s what matters”.

“Does Wolf Pack count as an outside source at this point?” Tanya asks.

“Maybe we can mark them down as more supporters” Rose says.

“Maybe” Siran says. “Guess we’ll find out about all this supporter stuff when we get to the correction camp. That is, if there really is one”.

“Do you think Don would honestly set up a trap like this for you?” Tanya asks.

“I don’t know” Siran says. “That’s something we’ll have to find out. I’m not sure I can trust the modern day mafia”.

Night arrives by the time the crew makes it up to Forehold. It looked like it was about to rain. It was too dark to see the clouds, but lightning overhead was visible throughout the night sky. They drove around the city of Forehold, since they’ve already attacked there and it would be dangerous to risk going through the city again. It was nearly midnight before they finally found what they assumed to be the camp they were looking for. It wasn’t too hard to spot. There were a lot of lights, and a really tall fence with barbed wire around the top of the fence. There were several shelters inside the fence, and a lot of people dressed in dark green jumpsuits. The people dressed in jumpsuits were constantly at work, and soldiers were everywhere watching them with guns in their hands. It looked more like a prison.

“Is this the place?” Rose asks.

“Looks like it could be it” Alex says. “If we can get closer and quietly ask one of the men in jumpsuits what’s going on, that should clear up whether this is the camp we’re looking for”.

“I think Don exaggerated when he said this was like a concentration camp” Siran says. “Sure, it looks bad, but I’m pretty sure concentration camps were a lot worse”.

“How should we get close to them?” Finn asks. “Should I go, since I’m good with illusion magic?”.

“I can go” Rose suggests. “I can move quickly, in and out”.

“It’d be dangerous to send two people at once” Siran says. “They’d likely discover you if you both went. So we can probably use Finn’s magic to create a trail with low visibility. If you can decrease the amount of light without making it obvious that there’s magic in play, then Rose can move in and ask the people at work”.

“I can handle that” Finn says.

“Then I leave it up to you two” Siran says.

Finn focuses on blocking some of the light in areas that were already dark. The route Rose took was restricted, and there weren’t many places she could move through to get close to the gate. Because of that, the area of the gate she moved to didn’t have anyone near it. The only choice she had was to wait for someone to come to her. After a long wait, a tall man wearing a green jumpsuit while holding a shovel walked up to the gate while complaining.

“Can’t even have a smoke in here” the man complains.

“Psst!” Rose makes a sound to get the man’s attention. “Over here!”.

“Wassup?” The man says in confusion as he looks around.

Rose slowly creeps a little bit into the light and asks “What is this place?”.

“Who in blazing hell are you?” The man asks.

“My name is Rose” Rose says. “What is this place?”.

“This is a correctional facility” the man says.

“Like a prison?” Rose asks.

“Yeah, just like a prison” the man says. “Only difference is, we aren’t put here for a crime. Were put here because we morally supported unorthodox people”.

“Supported?” Rose asks. “Supported who?”.

“The Six Guns” The man replies.

“What if The Six Guns were to break you out?” Rose asks. “Would you still support them?”.

“Shit” the man says, “if they broke me out, I’d be happy to support them. Even if they previously had a scuffle with some idiots from my gang”.

“Gang?” Rose asks. “Then you’re from Wolf Pack?”.

“How’d you know that?” The man asks.

“I’m Rose Atiyeh” Rose says, “from The Six Guns. We’re here to get you out”.

The man dropped his shovel in surprise. “This has gotta be some sorta joke” he says, “this can’t be true!”.

“I’m not joking” Rose says. “Do me a favor, and act natural for now. I’m going to rendezvous with my team. Give us a little bit of time and we’ll get all of you out”.

“Well, I’ll be damned” the man says. “How can I act so natural when I’m this excited?”.

“Just… try harder” Rose says as she creeps away from the gate. As Rose makes her way to the crew, she says to herself “What a weirdo”.

After Rose makes it back to the rest of the crew, Siran asks “So how’d it go?”.

“This is the place” Rose says, “there are Wolf Pack here, we do have supporters and that guy is very happy. That’s about everything I learned”.

“Why would we care if he’s happy?” Vivi asks.

“Anyways” Siran says, “now we need a plan. I would suggest going in quietly and sneaking them out carefully, but they’d likely notice us before long and that would jeopardize the lives of the people here. However, we also can’t go in guns blazing, because they’ll likely take the prisoners as hostages. We’ll need some espionage here. How many guards do you think are in there?”.

“So far that I’ve counted” Holly says, “I’ve seen 34 guards outside, 17 different guards going inside and 17 others coming out during a shift change. The remaining amount inside is still questionable. I’d say in total, it’d probably be safer to assume that there’s at least three times the amount of guards that you can see outside. Maybe more… so probably about 102 guards at a minimum”.

“Wow… that’s impressive work, Holly” Siran says.

“I was bored” Holly replies.

“What in the exact hell do you do when you’re bored?” Alex asks, to which Holly replies by shrugging her shoulders.

“Man… 102” Siran says. “This will be harder than I thought. We’ll need a distraction as a backup plan. We’ll try taking out the guards outside quietly, and if we get discovered, we need something that will really grab everyone’s attention to move in quickly before the guards inside have time to respond”.

“You know what distracts many people?” Demetri asks. “Explosives”.

“That’s terrible, I like it!” Siran says. “Explosions are loud and destructive, so there’s no doubt they’ll want to respond to that threat immediately”.

“Then I’ll need the thief to aid me” Demetri says. “He keeps me covered and I’ll take care of explosives”.

“Fine” Finn says. “Let’s go. Wait for us to give you a signal. We’ll push in from the other side of the camp while you guys push this side”.

“Good idea” Siran says. “If we all take different angles, the attention will be separated”.

“What will the signal be?” Zia asks.

“I’ll create a small fire as a signal” Finn says.

“That’s too easy for them to see” Mikoto says. “I’ll go with you and use my phone to contact Satomi. Once I send the text, we’ll all spread out and take the camp from different sides”.

“Sounds good” Siran says.

Mikoto, Finn and Demetri move around the camp. Demetri places explosives far enough away from the camp to not cause harm to anyone inside, but close enough to shake everyone up. Meanwhile, Vivi says to the rest of the group “Remind me to find a way for all of us to stay in active contact during these missions. Like an earpiece or something. We need a better way to communicate”.

“I’ll be honest” Satomi says, “I’m surprised you haven’t already done that”.

Siran laughs nervously in response, for he didn’t have a proper excuse as to why they haven’t already taken care of that. Not long after, Mikoto sends Satomi the message and Satomi looks over at Siran and says “It’s time”.

Siran nods and the crew spreads out to different parts of the fence. Mikoto, Finn and Demetri entered the camp through the same part of the fence. Demetri had taken wire cutters that also worked on the fence. From there, the three of them were easily able to make it inside. This area wasn’t very busy. They entered from behind one of the many shelter buildings, and the only guard there was taking a pee behind the shelter. Poor guy didn’t expect to be gagged by a Russian explosives expert. After observing the outside of the shelter for a few seconds, Demetri takes out these small pads and unfolds them on the walls of the shelter. Each pad was placed were over screws, indicating where support beams were behind the metal walls.

“What’s that?” Finn asks. “What are you doing?”.

“Plan B” Demetri says.

“The explosives were our Plan B” Finn argues.

“Then it is Plan C” Demetri says. “This is exothermic charge”.

“Exo… What?” Finn asks.

“It’s thermite” Demetri clarifies, “it melts metal. All I have to do is set alternating frequency here. When I activate this thermite, it’ll melt the metal”. Demetri then places small bricks of C4 on the ground below each pad of thermite. “Then when metal melts, I set a timer like this on the device, and it will send a second signal. That signal will cause other explosives to go boom”. Demetri then sets a timer on the thermite pads, and sets a second frequency for the pads to trigger the second set of bombs. When the trigger for the thermite is pulled, it’ll go through a timer and then send another frequency for the bombs after the metal melts.

“Why are we doing this?” Finn asks.

“Because” Demetri says, “even if we start to fail, this will destroy all buildings. They won’t have place to put prisoners when we’re done”.

“Oh” Finn says, “that’s actually not bad. But why the thermite? Can’t you just… blow it up?”.

Demetri shakes his head and says “Plastic explosives won’t destroy metal buildings alone. It can cause metal to expand, but not break. Thermite will melt it, so when it goes boom, it falls apart”.

“Why are you saying go boom?” Mikoto asks.

“Because I like saying go boom” Demetri says. “It’s for dumb people to understand easier”.

As the three of them move in, they check each shelter for guards. Each shelter only had about six guards. So they slowly start going into each shelter, one at a time, working on evacuating each prisoner. As they went through each shelter, Demetri had put more thermite inside on the support beams to cut through the entire beam instead of just one side. Meanwhile, the area Siran was entering through has a barracks nearby full of soldiers. Zia was near Siran, so they entered the barracks on opposite sides. However, it didn’t take long before some guards started to find them. One by one, Zia and Siran had to quickly take down guards before they alerted the rest. Siran resorted to using buff magic and armament magic to pack a real punch with his fists. Using only a single swing to knock out each guard, they didn’t have much time to alert anybody. However, Zia resorted to a quicker yet more brutal approach. To prevent any guards from getting away or reporting them, she either snapped their necks or hit them in the throat, breaking their trachea and preventing them from breathing. This bought them time to keep moving.

Satomi and Rose created escape routes on the opposite side of the camp from Demetri, Finn and Mikoto. They had people escape one by one as quietly as possible, while Vivi and Holly took out nearby guards. Holly used digital magic to create a digital sound barrier. The digital sound barrier prevented sounds from outside being heard inside, as well as the sounds inside escaping outside of the spell. During this time, Vivi had all the opportunity she needed to kill guards however she wanted. Whether it was a gun fight or a fist fight, Vivi always came out on top. When it was a magic fight, Holly defended her.

Tanya, Robin And Alex searched through the shelters on another section of the camp. Tanya was quick to knock people out, and Alex’s size was intimidating to most of the other soldiers so it wasn’t hard for him to overpower most of them. However, Robin covered the exits, shooting down anyone who came near. He wasn’t good enough to bend or control magic easily like Siran could, but he could distort the direction of his shots using distortion magic to curve his shots. When a soldier would try to dodge or take cover to report what’s happening, they’d get shot anyways. It was a good idea, but what Robin didn’t realize is that his gun was loud enough to hear from outside of the shelter. The alarm suddenly started to go off, and without missing a beat, Demetri triggers the first set of explosives to distract everyone. Those who weren’t prepared for the explosion and were close to the edge of the camp easily suffered a concussion from the sound of the blast alone. It was now time for everyone to move quickly. By this time, most of the shelters were fully evacuated. The only ones left were about six other shelters that Alex, Tanya and Robin had to go through. However, it was a lot easier now to run trough them because most of the guards ran outside to inspect the sudden explosion. Robin couldn’t shoot anymore, for he used up most of his magic already, so it was up to Alex and Tanya. Combining Alex’s distortion magic and Tanya’s hand to hand combat, they were able to take out wave after wave of soldiers. However, the amount of soldiers from another barracks were never ending. There was another barracks that none of them had touched yet, and they just kept coming after the crew. Once the alarms went off, Siran and Zia left the barracks they were in. The soldiers were now outnumbering them and they didn’t want to spend the time fighting all of them. Once they left, Siran had raised the ground to block any exits he could think of. Walls of dirt and rock blocked the windows and doors on the first floor. However, Siran didn’t block all of the doors. The soldiers had to go to the other side of the building to escape now, but that’s what Siran had wanted. It wasn’t to trap them, it was to buy them some time.

Alex’s group had met with Finn’s group and they kept shielding themselves from attacks as the prisoners ran for the exit. The prisoners made it to Rose’s group and got outside of the camp. Once the soldiers started to surround The Six Guns, Demetri triggered the second set of explosives. The back of the camp lit up with lots of bright flashes of light from the sparks of thermite cutting metal, and the thermite cut through the support beams of the shelters. Everyone but Finn, Demetri and Mikoto was confused. A second explosion went off and all of the shelters on the southern half of the camp collapsed. Most of the soldiers were caught off guard from the second explosion, and a few got caught in the explosion itself. With this commotion, the rest of the crew made their escape. However, once they got outside, they ran into a new problem.

“How are we going to get all these people out of here now?” Finn asks. “I don’t suppose you expect me to hijack multiple military vehicles now, do you?”.

“Excuse me” the man Rose had spoke with earlier asks Finn, “but do you have a smoke?”.

“You’re asking for a cigarette now?” Finn asks in disbelief. The man shrugs and Finn sighs in irritation. Finn then hands him a cigarette out of his pack, and says “you’re lucky I smoke”.

“Thanks” he says, “as for transportation, do any of you have a phone?”.

Satomi hides her phone in her back pocket as Mikoto says “I… guess you can use mine?”.

“Sweet, thanks!” He says.

“Look” Siran says, “we’re kind of busy holding off soldiers! Please make your call quick and worthwhile”.

Before long, the man hands the phone back to Mikoto as the rest keep the soldiers at bay with a barrage of gunfire and spells. “Don is bringing multiple vehicles to export us out of here. If you keep us covered until then, Don can take all of us out of here. There will be a lot of big vehicles, so they should be able to carry everyone here”.

“ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!?” Siran shouts. “That’ll take HOURS before he arrives!”.

“Actually, he-” the man starts to say but is interrupted by Siran.

“Why would he expect us to just casually hold back an entire freaking army for a couple hours!? Does he think we are enjoying ourselves!? I sure hope one of you brought some god damn tea! Put the pot on the fire, we’ll be here all freaking night! Everyone gather! It’s a god damn party!”.

“Look, he’ll be here soon, if you just chill then-” The man starts to say.

“Chill!?” Siran shouts, “My goodness, what an idea! Why haven’t I thought about that!? Maybe the freaking military that’s trying to KILL US wants to chill also! Why don’t we ask them!?”.

“Dude, calm down” the man says.

“OH HELL NO!” Siran shouts as he releases his shapeshift spell again. Siran changes back into his monstrous form again, and in his anger, he creates a large ball of reactive endo in his hand. The endo takes the shape of a large spear and Siran throws it with all his might at the army before them. The spear hits the ground and a large discharge of endo creates a shockwave that split the ground between them and then created a high powered shock across the ground. The shock, drawing in electricity at a high voltage, instantly killed many of the soldiers. Just when the soldiers thought the worst was over, the electricity drawn in from the endo had sunken into the ground. The electricity then created a heavy positive charge in the ground and attracted a lightning bolt from the clouds above. The lightning created another pulse of electricity in the ground, and burned anything that was near it. The Ly’Lum was absolutely stunned, as were the prisoners and the rest of The Six Guns.

“W-What the hell!?” The man asks.

The Ly’Lum kept their distance from Siran for now. They were too afraid to approach him now. As a large group of very large armored vehicles approached them from behind, Finn asks in a panic “What the hell was that!?”.

“Another spell I had made” Siran says, “I call it Gungnir”.

“That doesn’t make it any less terrifying” Finn says. “Warn us next time!”.

“I’d also like to know what the hell is going on here” Don says as he approaches from the armored vehicles. “What the hell is this… this monster?”.

“I’m Siran” Siran says. “This is what I really look like without magic covering my appearance”.

“What is going on here?” Don asks.

“What I want to know is” Siran asks, “how the hell did you get here so fast?”.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you” the man says. “Don was already on his way. When I called him, he said they had already left and were waiting for one of us to contact him so they could approach”.

“Oh” Siran says, feeling rather dumb for his outburst. “I guess you still need my explanation?”.

“What do you think?” Don asks sarcastically.

“He’s actually the one who fought Naris” Zia speaks up in place of Siran. “He’s the one from those stories who defeated Naris, then suddenly disappeared”.

“That’s not possible” Don says, “that was almost two centuries ago. How could he possibly still be alive?”.

“Because” Siran says, “I’m not a human, let’s leave it at that”.

“This is some kind of joke, right?” The man asks.

The whole Six Guns crew looked at him and Don with a serious expression. The look on their face said it all. Siran was the real deal, and they knew about it… or at least, the knew about it as of recently. “I guess that explains a lot about what just happened” Don says. “But this raises more questions, so we need to talk. Like for instance, if you’re the ‘hero’ as they called it, then why wasn’t your name ever mentioned in the stories?”.

“Because the ones who knew my name didn’t pass the story on” Siran says, “with the exception of the Mahina clan. What the story was based on was what was documented during the time I spent trying to teach the world magic. They never wrote down my name in those documents, they only wrote down ‘entity’ as my callsign. There were those who spread the story about what happened, when the news of Naris being defeated spread around. Those people never even heard of my name before. Those who did know my name hunted me, and those who did not talked about me. That is, except for the Mahina clan. They knew all about me and passed that story amongst themselves. This is my true form that you see now. Pretty bad, isn’t it?”.

“We need to get moving before more Ly’Lum show up” Don says. “So hold onto that thought, we’ll continue talking when we get back to Vega”.
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