"What the hell did you tell her!?" Felicia asks as she, her husband Henry, Thor and Athena run towards this dilapidated military base. They ran after Zia but lost sight of her after a while when Zia sped up.
"Nothing that I didn't think I wasn't allowed to say!" Thor replies.
"Well, she suddenly ran ahead of all of us," Henry adds, "and now we hear gunshots and explosions in this direction."
"I only told her we were close!" Thor said as they approach the building. "We were close to where we saw them take the kids! I thought it would be important information! She came here for her son, after all!"
"Yeah, well" Felicia protests. "She's diving headfirst into what we can only assume to be a trap, alone, straight into an army of special forces! Maybe you should have said 'follow me' instead of 'we're close', you know!?"
"I didn't think she'd be so crazy!" Thor argues as they get close enough now to finally see a large hole in the side of this concrete wall, with a dim light from inside feeding into the perpetual night. "This way!"
"See!" Felicia argues as she gets more annoyed. "That's exactly what I'm talking about! Why couldn't you have done that with Zia before!?"
"Shh!" Athena says as she suddenly stops everyone as they run inside through the hole in the wall. "Wait a second! Where is everyone?" The group looks around and sees dim lights on the walls surrounding the room, dead bodies littering the floor. Suddenly, they hear a yell followed by what sounds like someone's warcry, followed by another explosion. "Over there!" Athena then points to the back of a room where an entrance underground was mostly covered by rubble from the walls around them collapsing. "Help me move all of this! We need to get in there!"
"What is Zia to you two anyways?" Felicia asks as she helps move large chunks of concrete out of the way.
"Me?" Athena asks. "What about you two? You two look just like the lot that snagged those children. What were you doing with Zia this whole time she's been missing?"
"Zia hasn't even remembered that she is Zia until recently!" Felicia hisses as they continue to lift rubble. "She suffered a massive injury. Severe head trauma. Got a massive case of amnesia. Yet, you two show up out of nowhere, and suddenly she went all momma bear! What the hell has been going on?"
"There's a lot of people looking for Zia!" Athena replies. "Some of those people are not so good!"
"We're aware." Henry adds. "We know why the FBI would want their hands on Zia and Siran, but what about you two? Neither of you two look familiar. We've seen all there is pertaining to The Six Guns and the war. Neither of you two, nor your faces, show up anywhere. Who are you?"
"We!" Athena says, getting visibly angrier. "Are her friends! We came here with her kids, to protect them! Yet we!... We managed to get chased off by these SWAT forces... we failed our friend."
The air felt still as they all kept moving the rubble as the atmosphere felt thicker. "Look" Thor says, "we really appreciate that you guys saved Zia's life. We're happy to see she's alive. For now, we need to make up for mistakes that we've made. From here on out, the course is clear. No more running, and we may not make it back out of this tunnel once we enter. I suggest staying behind, but the choice is yours."
After Thor finishes speaking, they moved the last of the rubble out of the way and cleared the entrance to the underground base. "I have some personal investment into this matter." Felicia says as she looks at Thor. "There's still more I need to learn about this whole situation behind The Six Guns. Besides, it's about time we stopped running. I have personal things in my life I want to take care of before I'm too old, things Zia was right about. I have to do this. We're coming with you."
"Don't weigh us down then." Athena says as she turns towards the entrance.
Xiaobai kept trying to send his men to attack as a team against Chao, but Siran and the others managed to keep the rest of the Chinese forces held back. "It's just you and me, Xiaobai!" Chao calls out, looking weary and exhausted, but still on his feet and ready to fight. "Nobody else is going to come stop me for you! Face me like a man!"
"Only a fool comes to battle expecting the fight to be honor-bound." Xiaobai says as he pulls out a small curved dagger with a charm etched into the blade as he grips his gun tighter in his other hand. "You won't be leaving my palace alive, Chao. This is the final time you defy me like this." Xiaobai runs towards Chao with his knife in hand. He fires a blast from his gun and forces Chao to dodge. As soon as Chao dodges and seems to be caught off-guard, Xiaobai covers his knife in armament magic and swings it at Chao. Chao bends at the hip and ducks under the blade, narrowly escaping Xiaobai's attack. Xiaobai gets irritated and swings again and again and again.
Chao dodges each swing, narrowly, and uses elemental magic to force rock from beneath their feet to shoot up like a piston and hit the bottom of Xiaobai's hand as Xiaobai tried to swing downwards. The rock hits Xiaobai's hand and causes the blade to fly up and get stuck in the ceiling. The force from the stone also injured Xiaobai's hand, breaking his bottom two fingers. "Open your eyes, Xiaobai!" Chao yells as Xiaobai grips his hand and winces in pain. "You've already lost this war! You bit off more than you can chew! Now all of the people whos' fingers you've stepped on are coming back to haunt you! Just give it up!"
"Never... Never!" Xiaobai hisses. "You have no idea how hard I've fought, how much I had to carry to get here, to guide these people! I've united all of China! It was me! I did all the work! You people need someone like me, and you just don't see it, do you!?"
"You're delusional, Xiaobai!" Chao argues. "You don't bring unity by making the lackthereof illegal! You didn't help anyone but yourself! Don't try to delude yourself into thinking this was about helping anyone but yourself! You know it's time you give up! Before you go too far again!"
"Go to hell!" Xiaobai yells as he unbuttons his shirt and shows several glowing charms that grew brighter and brighter as endo began to pump into them.
"Xiaobai, you fool!" Chao yells. Chao uses a buff spell to move at incredible speeds, removing each of the glowing charms off of Xiaobai, and then threw them at the rest of the Chinese forces in the back of this large palace room. the charms all explode, killing many, and causing part of the palace to collapse in on itself. Xiaobai stood still, shocked. "You want to die so badly?" Chao asks as the rest of The Six Guns crew stood beside Chao and raised their weapons, aiming at Xiaobai. "Die like a man, with honor, in battle."
"I never liked any of you." Xiaobai hisses. "I hope fate comes down on you all hard. Especially you two, Siran and Chao. You want me to die like a real man in battle. Fine then..." Suddenly, he throws two small throwing knives at Chao and Siran, with a charm tied to the handles. The charms go off with a flash illusion spell. At the moment the flash spell went off, Xiaobai tried to attack with an armament spell on another knife in his hand and with his gun at the same time. However, Chao managed to grab both the knife and gun. When Xiaobai looked, in shock, he saw Siran holding the papers that used to be the flash spell. Siran grabbed them with his hand and blocked most of the flash, stopping it from affecting anyone not looking directly at the charm. As for Siran, he slowly opened his eyes, as he had his eyes closed, and revealed his eyes were red and showing a reflective light in the irises from clairvoyance magic.
"No more tricks, Xiaobai." Chao says calmly. Chao then prepares a buff spell and punches Xiaobai right in the sternum. Xiaobai falls to his back as Chao stands above him, grabs Xiaobai by the collar of his shirt, prepares a distortion punch, and then punches Xiaobai in the nose.
After the punch, Xiaobai's body goes limp. A few long seconds pass as Chao still held onto the lifeless body of his brother, still in shock that it's finally over. Chao lets out an elongated sigh and then finally drops the body. "We did it..." Haru adds.
"The soldiers stopped coming from outside the palace too..." Holly says. "What happened out there?" When the crew steps outside onto the steps of the now burning palace, they can see a Japanese carrier ship by the northern shore of Taipei. "No way..."
"They found us!" Satomi cheers.
Suddenly, Haru takes out her cell phone and scrolls through a list of unregistered burner numbers. She clicks one, the says "I knew you'd pull through for us. How'd you find out we were here?"
"Old habits die hard, Captain Nakamura!" a familiar voice, Suzuki says over the speaker. "We figured you were on a hot trail! Can't let the captain go down without them feeling the full might of our team!"
"Suzuki, you idiot." Haru says with a laugh. "You're the captain now. You know I can't come back to the SAT."
"Hey! We don't know that for sure!" Another voice, Watanabe says over the speaker. "But, if you can't come back after you clear your name, my brother Haruki still might be able to get you work at his company!"
"What about the fighting in Japan?" Haru asks.
"It died down significantly" Suzuki replies. "Most occupying forces have fled. We've fully set up comm networks and established stable base to base networks. I think we can safely say that Japan has won this fight."
"But damn, you really went for overkill, Captain Nakamura!" Yamada says over the speaker. "Trying to build up karma or something from pushing Chinese forces out of Hong Kong and Taiwan too?"
"... Something like that" Hary replies.
"Good luck, Captain Nakamura!" Kobayashi adds. "We've got things covered from here! We'll clean up and shuttle our people back home. Don't take too long coming back home. We missed you!"
"Someone's popular." Blake says.
"Well, my old squad and I were really close." Haru says. "They were my contacts inside of Japan, after all, since the start of my being hunted down because of Ares."
"Can we get out of here before the fire spreads?" Tanya asks, sounding exhausted.
"Yeah... just as soon as I get feeling in my legs again..." Holly adds.
"I'm exhausted too." Tanya adds. "I think we pushed it too far this time."
Chao was the first to sit down and take a deep breath as the other slowly joined him. Everyone was trying to regain their stamina before moving again, except for Siran and Chao. Siran still almost only thought about Zia and where she is. Chao, however, was coming to terms with his fight with his brother and finally winning the war his family has been wrapped up in for so long. There was one thing on his mind though that gave him motivation to keep pushing forward. He could finally see his daughter again.
"Mom!" Silas yells as he hears Zia running and fighting throughout the tunnels. "Mom! Down here!"
"Silas!" Zia yells as she pushes the last of the soldiers out of the way. Zia rushes deeper into the tunnels and sees the three kids, one armed with a gun, all healthy and not injured. "Oh my God! Are you okay!?" Zia runs up and hugs Silas tightly, picking him up off of the ground even though Silas is taller than she is now.
"We're fine! Relax!" Silas says, embarrassed. Zia finally puts Silas down, and he says "Look, mom... I met Gaia."
"You did?" Zia asks.
"She told me about a lot of things." Silas says. "Like Ishmael, Inari... and about me, being a laibah."
"A laibah?" Zia panics. "She said that?"
"Apparently it's true." Silas says, looking down. "I can even shapeshift like one... I recently turned into a fox too..."
"He also recently turned into a jackass too." Dana adds.
"Oh, Silas..." Zia says as she hugs Silas again. "I know it must all be confusing, and we'll have a long talk about this later to clear up everything. I'm still in a hard place right now too. But, no matter what, you're still my son. Don't let your feelings get too mixed, okay?"
Silas nods his head, then a voice from behind calls out "Why don't we talk about that now, actually?" When Zia turns around, she sees Felicia and Henry with Thor and Athena. "I told you before that to help you, we have to know what's going on. We need to close this case. Help us help you."
"I also want to know why you've been missing this whole time." Athena adds. "So I want the grumpy former agent lady to explain some more things too."
"Guys, please not right now." Zia says.
"Let's get out of here first?" Dana suggests. "Any minute now, McNamara could be on his way back, potentially with much more firepower and backup. The clock is ticking, let's go!"
"Okay, run first, then we talk. Deal?" Felicia asks.
"Felicia..." Zia says disappointed.
"It's the least you can do." Felicia adds.
"Fine... deal." Zia agrees. "I'll try to piece together everything that I can. Don't expect all of the answers though. My memories aren't all quite in the right places still."