45 Chapter Forty-Five: Sense of Duty (2/2)

Siran wipes his face with his sleeve and says ”That's my line” with a smile on his face.

”Wow, they seem close” Ruby says. ”Are they like... that?”.

”Who knows?” Alex asks. ”Who cares?”.

”So why go through all the trouble to trying to inspire everyone to stand up for themselves?” Ruby asks. ”Not everyone has the strength to stand up against the rest of the world. You're just lucky that you do have that strength”.

”Not at all” Siran says, ”not everyone can stand up against the world, but it's not because they're weak. They're just scared is all”.

”I can't take you seriously when you cry” Ruby says. ”Seriously, it's unsightly. I've never imagined you crying”.

”You learn something new everyday” Finn says.

”That's rich coming from an idiot” Alex says.

”You wanna fight?” Finn asks.

Over the next few weeks, Siran tried to teach everyone else about using reactive endo. With the assistance of a slightly less insane person like Ruby, the learning process was coming along smoothly. ”Remember” Siran says, ”it's not about using a whole bunch of magic to overpower an enemy. It's about using your magic with a lot of focus, focusing on turning your endo itself into a control source that changes the properties of more endo or any object you want to focus on. With this, you can transmogrify the shape of a blade, change the element of a spell into pure force, or even create new mass using only endo itself. Observe”. Siran creates a ball of white light in his hand, and after a few seconds of focusing, it changed into a small curved knife. After about two weeks, most of the crew was able to create reactive endo but they couldn't control it well Demetri skipped all of these lessons though, because he couldn't use practically any magic to begin with.

After about two weeks, Ruby starts trying to teach them more about reactive endo. ”It's not a source of power in itself” she says, ”but think of it more as a resource that you can use to turn other things into power. Remember, you don't have to use all of your magic to do this. Even before getting a boost of magic, The Mages could do this”. It took a while before any of them became used to gaining any control over the reactive endo, but after another two weeks, the whole crew could use this new magic technique. Except for Demetri, of course.

It was January 28th, 2192 when the crew went to Daly Waters, Australia. The only ones who didn't come along were Demetri and Tanya. Demetri stayed to run the shop as a temporary replacement for Vivi, and Tanya stayed home with her daughter. Most of this place had dried up severely, and became very desert-like in the sense of being a near lifeless wasteland with little to no people at all. There was one body of water, though it was a lot smaller than it used to be. Near that small Daly Waters was a bar that was created as an oasis to travelers, traveling through the middle of nowhere. After The Naris Catastrophe, most of the climate in The Northern Territory of Australia became uninhabitable for most people. Food became scarce and water became thin. Due to this, not many people lived here anymore. The population went from over 120,000 people to only about 2,000 and the people were widely spread out. Originally, the crew came here under the premise of taking on another request. The request was to deal with this biker gang that came to Australia and made the Northern Territory their home. There were no specifics on where the bikers came from. However, more than just the biker gang came after The Six Guns crew.

The crew came to this bar because they were given a tip by a few travelers that the gang frequents this bar. The bar was really big, bigger than a bar should be. When they got inside, all eyes were on them. People wearing matching jackets sat at every table. At least twenty of these bikers filled most of this room. Nonetheless, the crew walks up to the bar, orders some drinks and waits for the right moment to strike so they can minimize possible casualties. The bartender wore a red scarf over his face and looked almost as intimidating as the bikers, but he didn't wear their jackets or share in their conversations. It was clear he wasn't one of the bikers. After the bartender served the first drinks to the crew, and a glass of water for Robin, a small group of bikers walks up to the bar.

”Get comfortable” one of the bikers say, ”because we're gonna be here for a while”.

Zia slowly reaches for one of her guns, and another biker says ”Whoa there, we just wanna talk. What's the rush? You eager to die or somethin'?”.

The moment the click of a gun being unholstered by one of the bikers was heard, Finn jumps over the counter to protect the bartender. Finn tackles the bartender to the ground to make him duck behind the counter. ”Stay down, this is about to get nasty” he says.

Holly stretches a shield behind the crew and gestures with her hands as if she were stringing a bow. The shield slowly bends backwards, and she looks at Zia and nods. Zia nods back and says ”I finally get the chance to show off my new technique”. Holly releases her hand, as if to fire off an arrow and the shield rebounds. The shield's rebound bends it back into its previous shape, causing it to create an impact that pushes the bikers off of their feet. Immediately, Zia jumps into action. As she unholsters both of her guns, she activated her clairvoyance magic but then adds a twist with her reactive endo. The magic symbol in her eyes glows white instead of its usual color of purple, and her pupils turns white as well. With a single swift and fluid motion, Zia spins and shoots at the same time. Each shot hitting their target perfectly. In a rapid succession, Zia nailed 12 different bikers in the chest. Her guns gave off smoke from burning the dust in the air as they cool down.

Without giving the bikers time to react, Vivi uses reactive endo and a fire spell. With one spell in each hand, she threw the fireball first, then the reactive endo. The fireball grew bigger in mid-flight as the reactive endo hit it, and shot more fireballs out in a circle, causing the bikers to take cover behind the tables.

Rose used reactive endo with her speed, strength, and stability buff spells to increase all of her movements and make them have more impact. She punched one of the tables in half, and exposed two of the bikers hiding. She grabbed one and threw him at the wall, causing the wall to crack. The other one stood up and tried to stab her with a knife. Rose punched him right under the elbow, causing him to lose feeling in his arm, then jumped up, kneeing him in the jaw. The biker bit down hard on his tongue, causing a lot of blood to spill from his mouth. She jumped up again, and planted one knee on each on his shoulders, causing him to lose balance and collapse. As Rose rode his body to the floor, she swings one fist at the ground to create a dent in the floor. Instead, she made a hole in the floor directly and used that as leverage to wrap her legs around the biker's neck and fling him out of the window. After the biker took his one way flight to hell, Rose looks down at the hole in the floor. ”Is that a basement?” She asks herself.

”Hey brat!” One of the bikers shout as they throw a fire bolt spell at Rose. The spell hits Rose directly on her goggles, and causes her to lose balance.

”Wah!” Rose yells as she falls backwards onto the ground. The biker throws another spell at Rose, but she flops onto her stomach quickly and uses her hands to push her into the air. She flips to the side to dodge the attack, and lands on her feet facing away from the biker. The biker throws another spell, but Rose catches it with her foot and a little bit of digital magic. In one quick motion as Rose catches the spell on her foot, she does a backflip and flings the spell right back into the biker's eyes.

A couple bikers charge at Alex, but Alex punches the air with a spacial distortion spell, and causes the air between them to crack. After that, a white light engulfs both of Alex's fists as he punches the cracked air again. As the bikers continue to charge at him, Alex gives off a smile. The cracks grow brighter for an instant and then vanishes, causing an enormous impact to knock the bikers off of their feet.

Satomi and Mikoto stuck together, knocking a couple bikers unconscious one after another. At last, the final one charges at the Ueda sisters, and Mikoto quickly slides under him, pulling his feet out from underneath him. As he falls, Satomi engulfs her baseball bat with a white light and hits the biker's face with a massive impact that sent the biker flying through the front door of the bar. The door broke off of its hinges and fell into two pieces. However, through the broken door, they could see even more bikers pulling up to the bar on their bikes.

”Oh crap, there's more of them” Vivi says.

”Hey!” Finn shouts from behind the counter, ”you guys done over there?”.

”No quite” Ruby says.

”Huh?” Finn asks as he looks over his shoulder. Finn leans up to peek over the counter and sees more bikers coming their way. ”Shit” Finn says as he continues to hold the bartender behind cover, without looking at the bartender. ”Don't worry sir, we'll protect you”.

”Those are fine last words” the bartender says. ”I'll make sure to write it on your gravestone”.

Confused, Finn looks back down at the bartender, only to see a gun pointed at his head. ”Uh... guys?” Finn says out loud.

A large number of clicking sounds from guns being prepared to be fired are heard from the back of the bar. The rest of the crew turns around and sees a bunch of people, each wearing a red scarf coming from the basement of the bar. Each of them with a gun in hand.

”Oh shit” Alex says.

”We've got Hunters” Ruby adds.