Chereads / The Six Guns: The Library / Chapter 32 - Chapter Thirty-Two: The Day Of Black Skies

Chapter 32 - Chapter Thirty-Two: The Day Of Black Skies

Two days pass as the crew, alongside Loki, Thor, Meili, Yngvi and Athena, wait in Seeira. "It feels like it's been a week" Finn complains. "I'm just not comfortable with waiting for the enemy to come to us!".

"It's been two days, Finn" Vivi replies.

"Yeah, but it feels like a week" Finn says. "It's unnerving. What if this is going to be worse than Naris?".

"Wait... you fought Naris?" Athena asks.

"Yeah... we kinda all did" Finn says.

"If I remember right" Alex says, "you and Blake got yours asses kicked and passed out before he showed up".

"Those possessed and freaky mages count!" Finn protests.

"They were possessed by Naris, after all" Siran agrees.

"We won't let it get as bad as the fight with Naris" Zia affirms.

"And here I honestly thought Siran was enough to take Naris down alone" Loki says in an uneasy voice.

"I tried to" Siran says. "But I failed... twice".

"Oh... good" Loki says. "Then... none of you are actually strong to take on Naris?".

"By ourselves?" Rose asks. "Are you crazy? Have you seen how big he was?".

"... We are so totally screwed" Loki says.

"Don't get so down, brother" Thor says. "Things will work out. You will see".

"I sure hope so" Loki says in a low voice.

Athena slaps Loki over the top of the head and says "Don't be such a downer, you wuss. Man up. I didn't think someone like you would be such a coward".

"We're putting a lot on the line right now" Loki says. "What do you think will happen if we fail?".

Suddenly, a shock went through the spines of Loki, Meili, Yngvi, Thor and Athena. "Did you feel that?" Meili asks.

"What happened?" Siran asks.

"Get ready" Athena says as she picks up her shield. "They're coming".

The team rushes outside and notices a blackness overtaking the skies. The endo filling up the world was rapidly becoming more noticeable from the naked eye, and was slowly closing up the skies with black clouds of Endoindustria. From the distance, thunder could be heard. The team quickly runs out of the town to get as far away from any civilians they could, dashing into the forest on the far side of town. "How will we know when he sees us!?" Rose asks in a panic as they run.

"Just keep running!" Alex yells back. "Don't let them start a fight anywhere near the town!".

"Uh, guys?" Rose asks in a worried tone.

"Ugh, what now?" Alex asks.

Rose points upwards, and the team stops to look. Over the treetops, they could see a giant face with a full head of white and curly hair, with a white beard, glowing blue eyes and a crown made of gold. "I think he sees us!".

"Shit, starting things out in his Titan form!?" Athena asks.

"You may wanna duck" a familiar voice calls out with a laughing tone. When the team looks, it was Ares, wielding a sword made of fire. With a single stroke, he cut down all of the trees anywhere near them. From deep inside the forest, the town could be seen in the distance, from how empty this space now was. The team barely managed to lay on the ground before also being cut, and climbed off of the ground and stood on their feet. When they get up, there was Ares, Dolos, and Eris; in front of a giant figure, Zeus in his Titan form.

"Prepare to fire!" Siran calls out to the crew as they raise their guns. "Fire!" He yells as they all shoot at them. However, Ares and the others merely slapped the magic shot out of their guns with their bare hands, receiving no damage or strain from the blasts.

"This all you got?" Ares asks.

"Enough games" Zeus's voice echoes down as he kneels to bring his face close to the ground and look at the crew. "Athena" he says, "alongside with some Norse gods... how... grotesque".

"Long time no see" Athena says as she grinds her teeth in anger.

"And you" Zeus says as his eyes shift to Siran. "Yes, I can see now. That rude pet of Gaia's, whom disturbed my fight against Chronos. This must be fate".

"I don't believe in fate" Siran says as he created a reactive endo spear.

"Then so be it" Zeus says as he creates a lighting trident that shines with the glow of reactive endo.

"He can use reactive endo" Loki says. "He's already ascended to the power of a primeval god".

"No, I am far greater than that" Zeus says as he pulls back his spear. "Do not think of us on the same level". Zeus slams his spear into the ground, and the force from the reactive endo causes the ground underneath them to explode. When the smoke and dirt clears, the crew was unharmed and covered in seven digital shields. A shield from Holly, Haru, Zia, Blake, Tanya, Robin, and Ying. All of their shields severely cracked, with Athena at the front using her shield to reduce the blow. As soon as the shields dropped, Siran threw his spear and it pierced right through Zeus's shoulder.

"Thanks for making yourself so big and easy to hit" Siran says with a smile. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall".

"Yes!" Loki cheers. "We can do this!".

"How dare you attack father!" Eris yells as she prepares to attack. She's stopped by Zia and Meili before she could land a hit on Siran.

"New plan of attack" Siran says. "Split up and pick your targets. Make sure not to focus too much on any one target".

Meili, Zia, Finn, Rose and Ying attack Eris. Demetri, Thor, Vivi, Alex and Robin attack Ares. Blake, Tanya, Holly, Haru and Yngvi attack Dolos. While Siran, Mikoto, Satomi, Athena and Loki attack Zeus. As Blake charges at Dolos, Yngvi appears behind Dolos and blocks his path. Dolos punches through Blake's blade, but was caught off-guard while defending against Blake's attack, and got punched in the stomach with a strong distortion spell by Tanya. Holly uses the strange technique Siran had once tried to teach, and creates digital bullets at her finger tips and shoots them at Dolos. They weren't strong at all, but it did knock him off-balance. Just then, Haru charged up beside him and smacked him on the side of the face with the butt of her pistol. As Dolos lie on the ground, she opened fire on his face five times at point-blank, slamming him in the face over and over again with magic bursts. Dolos gasps for air, but then throws a wall of darkness with illusion magic. By the time the magic cleared, Dolos was gone.

Zia did most of the work with keeping Eris at bay. With lighting fast reflexes, she chased Eris until she were pushed back into the forest. Meili hid behind one of the trees and pinned her against the tree when she tried to keep her distance with Zia. Just as she was pinned though, Finn and Rose tried to attack Eris. Rose threw a knife at Eris, only for her to catch it. This time, however, she didn't even look where the blade was coming from, and had her eyes closed. The flash from the knife had no effect, and Eris then stuck her foot out for Finn, who got caught in midair by her foot right in his stomach. As soon as Finn was on the ground, Ying slashes as Eris with her old police baton, covered in lightning magic. Eris narrowly dodged the baton and tripped Ying with her foot, chopping Ying in the back of the neck with the side of her hand to force her to the ground. Zia, however, was fast enough to catch Eris unguarded. Zia kicked at Eris's head, and Eris barely managed to move her head out of the way. However, Zia's foot lightly taps on the tree as she had already planned to use the tree to close in with her attack. Zia jumps off the tree, with electricity surrounding her foot and lands a clean hit on Eris's left cheek. The impact caused her to slide backwards, skidding on her feet in the grass. Eris charges at Zia and Zia creates a reactive endo dagger, in the same shape as the dagger she used to have a long time ago that once belonged to her brother. But, as Eris charged at her, Zia also had activated clairvoyance magic and saw Eris adjusting her stance in order to prepare to dodge the blade. Eris went for a left hook punch with distortion magic, but Zia dodged. As Zia dodged, she grabbed Eris's hand in a flash like movement. With immense speed, pulled Eris's face down to her knee and kicked up at her with her knee at the same time. Zia landed another clean hit, sending Eris flying backwards. As Eris flies from the impact, Zia dashes alongside her flying body, slashing with the dagger over and over. Eris tried to block as much as she could, but still took several serious blows that glowed with the aftermath of reactive endo. As Eris's body hits the ground, Zia stabs the reactive endo dagger into her stomach and slams her against the ground. With a fluid like kick, Zia uses elemental magic to kick with a massive blow of wind to knock Eris into the air again. Eris desperately tried to pull the dagger out of herself, but while she were suspended in the air, Zia kicked the dagger and sent Eris flying with another wind spell. While in midair, the reactive endo finally overloaded in Eris's body and caused her to explode in a blast of white fire. "Damn" Rose says. "I'll try to never piss you off".

"One down" Finn says as he lays a hand on Zia's shoulder.

"Three to go" Zia says in an exasperated voice. Zia tries to walk back out of the forest to meet with the rest, but she collapses. "Heh..." Zia says without much wind to her voice. "Heh heh heh... I guess I overdid it a little".

"Just a little" Meili says as he lowers a hand to help Zia up. "Come on, let's get you to safety first so you can recover. Don't overdue it so much so early".

The fight with Ares was raging on. Thor, Robin, Demetri, Vivi and Alex were trying their best to close the gap between them and Ares, but couldn't get anywhere near him and his sword. Robin kept Ares from getting too close while Ares had his sword out to keep everyone from being cut down, using his sniper rifle to minimize Ares's movements. "Well, should we call this a stalemate? A draw?" Ares asks with a smile on his face.

"Hardly" Vivi replies as she pulls a wire under her jacket and exposes an entire arsenal of guns.

"Please, you humans and your lowly form of ballistic magic won't hurt me" Ares says.

"Then all we need is thing that is more magical" Demetri says as he reaches inside his trench coat.

"Hm?" Ares asks, suddenly his smile turning to a frown of concern.

Demetri pulls out several small explosives and tosses them around Ares. A chain of explosions all around Ares go off, and with the smoke covering their movements, Thor and Alex close in on Ares but staying out of the way of Vivi, who is firing off a volley of magic blasts from her arsenal of guns. "How's that for magic!?" Vivi yells as Alex throws a heavy punch packed with distortion magic. The punch lands on Ares's left cheek, the air around Alex's fist cracking from the spell, sending Ares flying backwards out of the smoke. Thor dashes behind Ares as he flies and brings his hammer down on top of Ares, pinning him to the ground.

Ares struggles to pull the hammer off of him, but could not lift the hammer even a little. "Damn... Mjolnir" Ares says softly, finding it hard to breathe under the hammer.

"You can not lift it. I wouldn't struggle too much" Thor says. "Just give up peacefully".

"Dammit, this is all Zeus's fault" Ares says. "The rest of us are only this weak because he was selfish enough to demand every single shard of Chronos. We get left with nothing, while he's living the dream".

"Blaming others the moment you have found that you've failed your mission?" Thor asks. "Such a man deserves no pity".

"My mission?" Ares asks with a smile. "No, I have not failed. In fact, it's about time I started the next phase of my real plan". Ares starts laughing, then shouts "Dolos, now!". Suddenly, Dolos shows up again out of nowhere, grabs Ares's arm, and vanished again with Ares.

"Shit!" Alex says. "How'd they get away!?".

"No..." Thor says. "No no no no no! This can't be happening!".

"I didn't think they could teleport like that" Vivi says in a tired voice.

"They normally can't!" Thor says. "He must've lied about him not possessing a shard! He must've said it to make me drop my guard!".

"You let him get away?..." Robin asks in a condescending voice.

"I... apologize" Thor says as he falls to his knees. "This is my doing".

"Don't let it get to ya so much" Vivi says. "If we take down Zeus, they'll have nowhere to run to".

"Yes" Thor says as he stands back up, his hammer in his hand. "That, I am sure you're right of. We can not fail twice".

"That's the spirit" Vivi says.

Meanwhile, Loki, Athena, Siran, Satomi and Mikoto were hard at work trying to fight Zeus. The fight was mostly blow for blow between Zeus and Siran, as Athena was in her Titan form trying to hold back Zeus and create an opening for Siran. Meanwhile, Loki tried to distract him. Unfortunately, Zeus saw right through Loki's tricks, and Athena; even in her Titan form; was only half the size of Zeus. Satomi and Mikoto couldn't get near Zeus, though the we're still able to help get Siran out of the way of attacks. Athena would strike at any open area on Zeus with her shield, but Zeus would not budge. However, it seemed that the reactive endo from Siran was doing some damage. Albeit, Zeus seemed to be able to take all of it without falling to his knees. The sky continued to only grow darker as the rest of the crew showed up. Many of the members that still had any energy left charged up reactive endo, as Zeus charged up another trident. However, before Zeus threw his trident, Athena hit him again in the side, this time with most of her power conjured into a buff spell to deal as much damage as possible. Zeus flinched and hesitated, as he gasped for air for a moment. Just then, everyone threw their endo at Zeus and his him all over the top half of his body. Zeus fell to his knees for the first time, finally. Yelling in pain, followed by an explosion due to the overload of reactive endo. Zeus held himself up with his hands and he sat on his knees, though, his head still towered over the treetops, if there had been any trees left here.

"I told you" Siran says. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall".

Zeus looks around at Siran's team, then finally says "So be it". Zeus shifts his size and shape to that of a normal man, and walks up to the crew from off in the distance. As he approaches, they could see all the wounds they dealt to him, healing, with burn marks around the wounds. He brushed it off and kept walking as if none of the wounds hurt anymore. He stood in front of the team and looked around once more. Finally, points to Siran and says "You have disgraced me more than once now. This has become personal".

"How do you plan on stopping all of us at once?" Loki asks. "Give it up, Zeus. It's over!".

Zeus, without turning towards Loki, says "Begone" and a blast of distortion magic send everyone to the right of Siran flying backwards. Then again to the left. Soon enough, it was just Zeus and Siran standing. The rest of the team wasn't hurt bad, but as soon as they stood up, Zeus sends a wave of lightning through the ground. Everyone had to use most of their endo left from the fighting to block it, even Siran. Siran starts to wobble as tiredness starts to take over him. Suddenly, Zeus moves in the blink of an eye, punching Siran in the stomach so hard that it would've sent him flying high into the sky. But, instead, caught Siran with his elbow to Siran's back, slamming him back into the ground. The last of Siran's strength was drained into a stability buff spell, narrowly saving his life, but leaving him completely drained. Zia ran to Siran's aide, but Zeus grabbed the air with a distortion spell, pulled and caused the air between them to crack, and then released, sending a powerful force at Zia and shoving her against a tree. Loki and Athena tried to save Siran, only for both of them to be struck by lightning. They were able to barely hold onto life, but their bodies were now in too much shock to move.

"Just... a little... more" Loki groans. "We're so close to draining him... I have... no doubt... the damage he's taken... is getting to him".

Thor begins to walk up to Zeus but is stopped by Athena grabbing his ankle. "Lay low until we can move again" Athena says. "We will save him. We can still pull this off".

Zeus picks Siran up by the neck and starts to slowly squeeze. "You've made a mockery of me, Ishmael" he says. "And you will pay the ultimate price".

"You can't possibly still hold a grudge against him!" Loki yells, while on the ground. "He's just a human now! I know because I've investigated him myself! Leave him out of this! Ishmael is gone!".

"Just a human, huh?" Zeus asks as he looks Siran in the eyes.

Siran coughs up a little bit of blood, then says "I don't know who this Ishmael guy is, and I don't think I care at this point. But I think I do get why he would have troubles getting along with someone like you. You... gods... you're all a bunch of fakes. Self righteous and terrible. You're a dick, and if you so give me the chance... if you let me go now... I'll make you regret it".

Zeus gets furious. "You dare defy me!?" He yells. "Me!? Zeus!? I am the most powerful god now!". Zeus throws Siran against a tree and Siran hears a loud thump sound before he passes out. Zeus creates one more lightning trident, but, just at that moment, Thor slams his hammer into Zeus's face and causes Zeus to back flip. Zeus lands on his stomach, only to be pinned down by Thor's hammer. Zeus changes back into his Titan form to escape, but to no avail. The hammer still kept him held down.

"Now!" Loki says as they open a gate. Through the gate, another Titan sized god with black curly hair and a leather crown, a full grown black beard and leather armor steps onto the world. What looked like the opposite of Zeus, Odin.

Odin kneels beside Zeus and places a hand on his shoulder. "It's time for this to end, my old enemy" Odin says in a deep and echoing voice. "This world does not belong to us".

"We did it..." Athena says in disbelief.

"We actually pulled it off" Loki agrees.

"Good work" Ares says as he and Dolos reappear from a portal. The team got ready for another fight as Ares walks beside Zeus and looks at Zeus with a discontent face. "Tch tch tch... you sad old man" Ares says. "To think you'd fall to your knees before a human. Even after all we gave you, you have failed to live up to my expectations".

"What is this treachery!?" Zeus bellows.

"Zeus, don't be like that" Ares says. "I've never betrayed what I was ever really working for. I've told you, I was with you because I wanted war. And you... you didn't even think about what war is, did you?".

"Stand down, Ares, Olympian god" Odin says.

Ares ignores Odin and continues to say "The art of war. War never changes, no matter how long or how much you try to give or take. It's always just... war. And I love it. You should always be prepared for the worst. Even someone as powerful, naive and senile as you should know that". Ares raises one hand and brings it down swiftly. Suddenly, a flash of flames as Zeus's head is cut from his shoulders.

"No!" Athena yells.

"What did you do!?" Thor yells.

"Ares, stop this instant" Odin says as he tries to grab Ares.

Ares starts to walk backwards, his body slowly disappearing as he moves slowly. "I sway for no man" Ares says. "I only want that which I long for and love. War. If you won't provide me, then I'll just have to bring it to you". All of the thousands of shards of Chronos leave Zeus's dead body and follow after Ares as he fully vanishes. Odin tried to grab him before he left, but only scooped up a giant handful of earth and nothing more.

"Dammit!" Loki shouts.

"What the hell just happened?" Alex asks in confusion.

"We've been fooled" Yngvi says. "Ares was a double agent. He killed Zeus and took the shards for himself. Now he and Dolos have them and are gone".

"Gone where!?" Vivi asks.

"I don't know..." Athena says.

"What do you mean you don't know!?" Vivi demands.

"I don't know!" Athena yells. A long pause of silence passes until eventually, Athena says "Dolos and Ares have the shards, Zeus and Eris are dead... now those two have an immense power and can hide themselves even from us. On top of all of that, we couldn't arrest any of them and figure out how to stop all those streams spewing ungodly amounts of endo into your world. I'm afraid... we've lost this fight".

"But we can't stop now!" Satomi says. "We have to do something, or everyone is gonna-".

"I know!" Athena says, then pauses. "... I know. Alright, that's enough sulking. We need to gather everyone and talk about a plan. Sorry to drag you out here for nothing, Odin".

"Nay, for blame shall fall on my shoulders as well" Odin says. "I'll be in Valhalla. I assume some of you may want to come home by now. The mission has changed. I want all of you gods; including you, Athena; to join me, to assess the situation".

"Right then" Athena says. Athena turns to The Six Guns and says "We'll be back, I promise. Don't worry, we'll make sure we can fix this" but then suddenly notices Zia holding Siran in her arms. "Oh..." she says softly.

"Zia?" Finn asks.

"He's..." Zia tries to say behind her tears. "He's not... waking... up".

Demetri rushes to Siran's aide, and immediately checks his pulse. "He's alive, but barely" Demetri says. "We need to get him to safe place fast".

The crew rushes Siran to the town but Zia finds it hard to stand. Athena walks slowly to her side and gently puts a hand on her shoulder. "I'm... so sorry. We'll make this right, I promise". However Athena tried to comfort Zia though, Zia couldn't not reply. She simply didn't have the strength to speak. "I'll go now... I'm sorry" Athena says as she and the rest of the gods walk into another portal. As the gods left, Zia was left alone in a field of tree stumps and craters with scorch marks and burns on the trees, sobbing quietly to herself. Even though it was only noon, the day appeared as though it were night due to the Endoindustria covering the skies. Zia looked up at the black skies and screamed in pain, feeling lost and defeated.