The Six Guns

"Definitely larger and more grandiose than expected if you ask me" Alex says.

"This is going to be harder than expected then" Finn says.

"Maybe we'll finally get a chance to actually test out our new abilities then" Zia says with confidence.

"Let's see if they can entertain us" Siran says with a sinister smile on his face.

"After observing for a while, right?" Holly says, barely paying attention and tapping away on her laptop.

"Y-yeah, of course!" Siran replies.

"Don't worry Syr, we know you didn't plan on running in blindly" Zia says.

Siran just laughs a little nervously and scratches the back of his head in response. "We'll need to get a little closer, but we'll need to watch from a distance for a little while" Siran says, "because we have no idea how many people there are, or what course of action to take yet".

Night falls upon the group and after a while of watching in silence, Rose breaks the silence by saying "I'm bored, have you gotten an idea of what to do yet?".

"Not yet" Holly responds, unenthusiastically.

Siran, now taking off his sunglasses finally, peers over Holly's shoulder and points in the direction of the base. "Over there" he says, "I keep seeing soldiers walking down toward a basement floor outside there".

"Yeah" Rose says, staring at the direction Siran is pointing, pressing her face alarmingly close to Siran's. "Kinda like my old rebel hideout. It goes underground, but what do The Ly'Lum need with a hideout in the middle of their own base?"

"It's obviously not a hideout" Holly says, now seeming uncomfortable and irritated with the close proximity of two other people, "it's a basement floor. But how big is their basement level, and how far exactly does it stretch?"

"If we could find that out, then we'd have a infiltration route that we can secure" Siran says. "If there's an alternate exit outside of the gates of the base, giving access to the basement floor, that'd definitely be favorable".

Right around then, the ground beneath them started to rumble and split open, like a door. The crew fell into the hole that was opened and looked up to discover an underground air hangar. There was a long, inclined passageway, exposing a run way spanning several meters in diameter. Large enough to let out one medium sized airplane at a time. As they got up, there were several other soldiers surrounding them, all dumbfounded, holding up glowing batons and radios to assist in an aircraft's takeoff.

"Uhh... hello" Siran says, waving awkwardly at the soldiers and giggling nervously. The soldiers all drop whatever they were holding and pull out their weaponized-magic guns and aim them at the crew. "Sorry for dropping in on you like that" Siran says, now scratching his head in addition to laughing nervously.

"Don't move!" Several more soldiers shout as more soldiers close in on Siran and the rest.

"You mean... like this?" Siran says as all of the Six Guns crew pulls out their large guns too and aim back at the soldiers. The soldiers fire one after another, but all of them stop once they see all of the firing was blocked by a bunch of digital shields. Siran and Holly were holding up their hands, Holly with her magic charm on her gloves and Siran both making an entire series of shields to stop their fire from hitting the rest. Once the air calmed a little bit, Siran calls out "Guns, go!" And in response, Alex, Zia and Rose all charge forward.

"Remember the no kill rule!" Siran shouts as Alex throws a giant fire ball out of his own fist, engulfing a large portion of the hangar.

"I'll keep that in mind, but no promises" Alex shouts back.

"Good enough I guess" Siran says as he looks back to Finn who is standing to his left. "You know what to do" Siran says to Finn. Finn nods back, and pulls up an illusion wall, making him seem to disappear. Zia does a low sweeping kick and a gust of wind rampages across the floor like a blade, sweeping everyone off their feet and bending the metal bars on the plane that holds the wheels, making the plane tip forward. Rose charges to the back of the hangar and throws a knife towards the people in the back. The knife emits an extremely bright light, blinding everyone in the back. By the time they all reopen their eyes, Finn has stolen all of their guns straight out of their hands.

"You won't be needing these, will ya?" Finn says to them, then sticks his tongue out and runs off. Siran charges towards all the action too, grabbing one of the soldiers in the back of the hangar and putting a gun to his head.

"Who's in charge here?" Siran demands.

The soldier hesitates for a moment, then picks up his radio immediately and shouts "Enemy infiltration in hangar 04, requesting immediate backup!".

"Tch, damn" Siran says as he hits him over the top of his head and knocks him out. "I was hoping this was going to go smoother".

"More are coming, don't relax yet!" Holly says, catching up with the rest. A large wave of soldiers come running through a large door and into the hangar. They all immediately take formation and point their guns at the crew.

"FIRE!" A soldier from the back shouts, and all of the soldiers fire at the same time. A large blast hits, kicking up a lot of dust, making visibility low in the hangar. As the smoke and debris clears, a large, glowing, transparent digital magic shield in the shape of a goblin wearing armor is covering The Six Guns.

"Digital art!" Holly shouts with a wide smile, "Dokkaebi!"

"We spent a long time laying low" Siran says to the large wave of soldiers, who are no longer shooting at them but still pointing their weapons. "But you don't think we'd spend that time doing nothing, do you? We honed in our skills and made our own specialties and signature spells".

As Siran says this, the goblin, Dokkaebi raises its hand and swipes away at the soldiers in the front of the group.

"B-but that's impossible!" A soldier shouts, "I've never seen someone MOVE a digital shield before, let alone make a beast out of one and animate it!"

"It's your fault for underestimating us" Siran says, "we are the impossible".

Zia jumps out of the shield and punches the air, but sending the soldiers flying back down the corridor they came from. The speed she moved was beyond human, and you could almost see smoke coming from her fists.

"A little too flashy if you ask me" Alex says, "I still don't like it".

"I never asked your opinion" Holly says, readjusting her glasses as the goblin disappears.

"Enough bickering, let's move it" Zia says. "We still need to find out who's in command here so we can find out what they're plans are in Cairo".

Before they leave the hangar, Siran moves all the unconscious people away from the plane, then fires one large laser like burst from his gun, and causing the plane to explode and catch fire. They quickly run down the corridor, and any wave of soldiers that try to stop them in this maze like place was taken care of nearly in an instant by either Zia or Alex. Checking every room they come by, the crew only gets more and more anxious with the problem of finding someone high enough in the chain of command to know what The Ly'Lum plans to do with Cairo, or at least a map of this place to find out where to go next.

"Of course we can't be lucky enough to find any sort of map of this place, but lucky enough to fall in here by accident" Siran says as they run.

"I feel like I jinxed it or something" Alex says.

"Well, try jinxing it again!" Rose shouts.

"If only we could somehow find a damn map of this stupid place!" Alex shouts.

"Halt!" Some soldiers shout, coming into the long corridor and circling the crew. This particular group of soldiers looked different. They weren't wearing the usual uniform, they were all dressed in a black uniform and wearing some sort of gas mask. Four letters, written in white, were on the front left side of their chest and on their backs, MTRU. Zia and Alex try pushing them away, only to be stopped by a digital shield.

"I didn't expect them to learn" Holly says in disappointment.

"We know who you are" one of the MTRU soldiers say, through their gas mask. "Put down your weapons and don't resist".

"Make us" Rose says, then fires several large bursts of laser like magic energy out of her gun at them.

"Wait!" Siran says. "The no kill rule!"

But when the smoke clears, none of them were harmed in the slightest.

"You won't be able to break a digital shield that easily" Holly says to Rose. "You either have to be good enough to hack digital magic, or be strong enough to deplete them of their magic, and even I'm not good enough to hack a digital shield".

"You can hack those?" Rose says.

"There has been a few people who could in the past" Holly says, "but no one alive now can do that".

"Then it's a game of attrition" Alex says. He then throws a flurry of punches at the shield, and at first it seemed only in vain, but then a crack forms in the shield. One of the soldiers pick his gun up and fire at Alex. As soon as the soldier picks his gun up, Siran shouts "Watch out!" and tries to shield him. The shield barely stops Alex from getting hit in time, but he's still knocked off of his feet. Alex quickly retreats back, holding onto his right shoulder which was giving off a very small amount of smoke. Alex rolls up his sleeve to reveal his charm, that was tattooed to his arm, was burning him.

"Guess I used it too much" Alex says, panting.

"I've warned you, use different charms!" Siran shouts.

The first digital shield that the enemy soldiers were using vanished and a new one appeared.

"Looks like in a game of attrition, you lose" one of the soldiers say to Alex. Alex's face stiffened up in anger.

"Disappointed?" The same soldier asks.

"If you really think I'm a one trick pony" Alex says as he stands back up, his other shoulder glowing with a different charm, "then you've got another thing coming". Alex punches the air, but no gust of wind came this time. This time, the air between them cracked.

"Distortion magic!?" The soldier panics.

Alex lets out a small smile and throws his fist further. The soldiers feel the impact even through the shield, and were sent flying backwards. When the soldiers stopped moving, Siran went to check them out. He took off their masks and blood was slowly coming out of their noses and mouths.

"Like I said" Alex says, holding onto his right shoulder again, "I can't promise not killing them, but I at least tried to hold back".

"Well, they're unconscious, but probably fine" Siran says. "Nice work!"

"Can't believe I had to resort to one of the forbidden magic styles for such crap" Alex says looking at the MTRU soldiers. "Who even are these people? I don't think I've ever seen soldiers like them before".

"Whoever they are, they seem pro-efficient in magic at least" Siran says, "so expect them to be harder on us next time".

"Let's hope there isn't a next time" Finn says.

"That's wishful thinking" Zia says.

"Hey guys! Look!" Rose says, coming out of another room, "a map of section 'FOXTROT' of the base".

"Oh... convenient" Siran says.

"I guess your jinxing actually worked, Alex" Zia says.

"What are the odds?" Alex responds.

"Foxtrot?" Siran asks. "Does it say anything about the base's HQ or anything like that?"

"It says report to section 'OSCAR' for a change of post" Rose says.

"Oscar huh?" Zia says.

"Oscar will be pretty far away" Alex responds. "If the front part we saw is Alpha, or the front of the base, and this is Foxtrot, then we could assume that the base splits in an intersection at Alpha. Since we didn't see any other way to go but here from the hangar, then it's likely that we took the first sector of the base".

"What does that mean?" Rose asks.

"It means, we're quite a ways away from the main part of the building, and Oscar will probably be on the opposite side, since it'll be in sector two and this is likely sector one. When these bases are made, they make one sector to the west, then one to the east. So we'll likely have even more to go through before we get there. Next section should be Echo, then Delta, then Charlie, then Bravo before we finally make it to Alpha. From there, we have to head east and go from Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November then Oscar".

"Wait, if there's that many other sections of the building, then wouldn't it make sense to have a sector three or four?" Zia asks.

"Maybe, but we don't know the layout yet" Siran says.

"It's possible" Alex says, "and if there are more sectors, then it'll actually be easier for us".

"Why do you say that?" Rose asks, still holding up the map.

"Because, that means there will be less sections of the building to go through before finding out if Oscar is even where we'll need to be. There's still a good chance that Oscar isn't even where we can find a commander of this base, so the less we have to travel, the better".

"At least we have a plan for now" Siran says.

"You better start working on a Plan B" Alex says to Siran, "just in case".