Chapter 68: Chapter Sixty-Eight: Had To Be Done
Jassim enters deep into the command tower near the radio tower in the military base in Jerusalem. He hears voices inside a locked room panicking and talking about how people on the other side of the radio weren't responding to Defense Minister Zohar. Zohar then began to slam his fists on the desk and barking more orders as another soldier says the radio has been fully cut off now. Jassim forces the door open with an explosive blast of reactive endo. When soldiers look at the door, something thin and quiet flew through the air and all of the soldiers around Zohar fell in almost synchronicity. Zohar looked around and saw playing cards stuck in the chests and necks of all the now dead soldiers, each card with a sharp metal edge, giving off a feint glow of armament magic. "End of the line, Zohar." Jassim says.
"Who are you?" Zohar asks, frightened.
Jassim rips the army jacket off of himself and exposes his suit blazer with a Kevlar vest over it. "The name is Jassim Fyed Al-Sulaiti." Jassim says. "And I'm putting a stop to this conflict before it grows any bigger and kills us all." Jassim throws one more card into Zohar's forehead and walks out of the room, only to find soldiers rushing down the hallway towards him. Jassim raises one hand up to his ear piece to quickly call Siran. "It's done. Zohar is down."
"Great." Siran replies as the fighting rages on in Syria. "That's all three MVPs down. Make a retreat for our hideout. Get Chao on your way out, he can show you the location. This place isn't safe for now. We'll work on getting everyone out of here now."
"Where is Chao?" Jassim asks.
"I sent him your way." Siran replies. "He should be coming from the north-east." After hanging up, Siran looks over at Holly and nods his head. Together, they gather their scattered forces and pass the word along to the Syrian forces to retreat that it's time to retreat. At first it was hard to move their forces around the Israeli forces, but as news rapidly began to spread that the commanding forces for the invasion have all just been found dead, the fighting started to rapidly come to an end as many of the Israeli forces were being forced to pull out as well.
"Men!" Al-Aziz cheers. "We have victory! Today, Israel has suffered their first defeat since the invasions began!
"Now we have to return to Egypt and make sure to push Israel out of Egypt." Haru adds.
"Our work isn't done." Siran answers. "But at least the hard part is over for this battle. Getting their forces out of Egypt will be easy enough with all of that fight taken out of them." Siran presses a button on his headset and calls Rose. "Rose, we finished up here. Great work. We just need to get the Israeli forces out of Egypt."
"Let me handle that part." Rose answers. "I've worked here with their military, and I'm from here. I'm sure I'll be able to have a good chance at some understanding here. Do we have any transportation back home?"
"We have some armored vans." Siran answers. "We'll be right there to get you two in just a moment."
As the FBI agents shoot at Zia, Zia blocks all of the incoming shots with a digital shield. Athena and Thor get into a fighting stance, but Zia tells them "Back off! This one is mine. You watch the kids, I'll make sure McNamara doesn't live long enough to see the light of day again."
"Zia, we'd best retreat!" Athena argues. "You are underestimating those humans!"
The soldiers stop firing and Zia drops her shield for a fraction of a second. Immediately, the soldiers aim for the openings in her digital shield, using clairvoyance magic to speed their perception and move faster. However, Zia was faster. Zia took both of her pistols out and shot through the gaps in the shield as they appeared, powered by reactive endo. The soldiers all around McNamara fell, some exploded from an overload of energy, but McNamara stood his ground. As soon as Zia shot at McNamara, McNamara moved around the blast just in time with the help of illusion magic to mask his movements so that Zia wouldn't adjust her shots to hit him. As he shifted his feet, he used an elemental spell with his foot to cause the ground under Zia to shift upwards and slide out from under her. Zia fell to the ground but used more elemental magic to cause the ground under her hands to spring up, throwing her onto her feet. As she did this, she grabs the discs of rock that helped her up, coated them in reactive endo, and tossed them at McNamara. McNamara threw up a rock wall with his magic to block it and the discs hit the wall with an explosive impact. When the dust settled, there most of the rock wall was destroyed by the reactive endo. Zia at first expected McNamara to be dead, but then he came out from behind the wall, mostly unharmed. "If I were any wiser, I'd have to guess you were holding a grudge right about now." McNamara says, impressed.
"Why did you Americans send Garreth Hood to interlope with The Mages?" Zia asks.
"Garreth Hood..." McNamara says. "Now that's a name I haven't heard in decades."
"Answer the question!" Zia growls.
"Hey, what's going on?" Carl asks. "Did your mom learn something we don't know?"
"Shhh!" Silas says. "Don't drop your guard! What if more come out of nowhere?"
"Then throw down a debuff field, you dummies!" Dana hisses. "Keep track of when someone comes near with any magic activated!"
"Long ago, your President worked with a former president before him." Zia says. "He, Freeman and Hood set up an operation to infiltrate The Mages Guild and take over Omnia from the inside! All of this time, you wanted Omnia. Because you were too greedy and eager to be put on the big boy list again with the big dogs! You wanted people to think of America as one of the global military superpowers again. You wanted people to fear America! What made you people think that was a reasonable excuse for the immense pain you caused all of us!" Zia waited for an answer, but McNamara remained silent. "Answer me!" Zia says as she shoots at McNamara's feet.
McNamara remained standing where he was, without flinching. "You don't understand what it's like to grow up and live in a dying country, do you?" McNamara asks. Zia only got visibly angrier by this answer. "Every day, clawing and fighting for the bare minimum scraps our once great land can barely provide as it slowly rots from the infection of endo in our soil? We have people starving, children dying in their sleep, mothers killing themselves from grief, because our land is tainted, and we can't fix it regardless of all of our advances in endo tech. Do you have any idea what it's like to stare those people in the face and lie to them and tell them it'll be okay?"
"You people killed my whole clan!" Zia protests. "My whole family! Rose's whole family! You made Siran, an innocent man, a wanted criminal and hunted him like a dog to propagate your false heroism! You tried to make Japan forfeit their independence, stole families away from the Philippines to make your military tech! You call that worth it?"
"Omelets, Zia." McNamara answers without hesitation. "You need to break a few eggs to make an omelet. That's how it always was, and how it will always be."
"You!" Zia hisses, with tears in her eyes. "This is your fault!" Zia yells as she runs at McNamara with an endo dagger in her right hand. "We suffered because of you! We formed The Six Guns because of you! Then you tried to convince us that we were wrong for it! You told us we gave Markwood what he wanted! You made us feel like it was all our fault! I'm going to kill you!"
"Go ahead and do it then, Witch Mother!" McNamara teases as he dodges Zia's attack. "Your crew will never clear it's name!"
"Rrrrrraagh!!" Zia yells as she slashes at McNamara with her dagger. McNamara dodges and takes out an endo dagger of his own.
"You forget." McNamara teases. "Do you think the Mahina Clan is the only gifted race? Americans are born with a higher capacity for endo too. Do you really think some low-life outlaw can match up to the sharpened skills of a professional?"
McNamara stays at just enough distance for Zia to not be able to hit him. Suddenly, Zia leaps at him to close the gap between them, and McNamara uses her rage against her and brings his elbow down on the back of her neck. Zia slams, face first, into the ground. McNamara puts one foot on the back of her head and applies the whole weight of his body onto her head. "Get off of my mom!" Silas yells as he throws a magic missile spell. The missile was thrown far to the left as not to hit Dana or Carl, but curved with perfect accuracy to hit McNamara right in his last eye. McNamara turned to block it, but the spell stopped just an inch from his eye. A bare hand caught the missile, covered in blood. The hand flexes and crushes the missile right in McNamara's face. As McNamara turned to look, he could feel more and more fear swell up as he turned slowly. Standing up next to him was Zia, her left hand still by McNamara's head where the missile used to be. A trail of blood already drying, coming from the top of her head and trailing down the right side of her face. In her eyes, a burning sense of anger and revenge.
"You will stay out of Omnia." Zia growls. "Or so help me, God, I will end every last one of you." Zia punches McNamara in the stomach with a distortion punch and immediately follows up with an elemental spell before McNamara could hit the ground. A rock shot up like a piston, already breaking McNamara's spine as it sent him flying straight up in the air. As he flew, Zia threw her endo dagger into McNamara. The dagger sticks right in his torso and as Zia turns away, an explosion of white flames burst out, evaporating McNamara.
"Yikes..." Athena says nervously. "I sure hope I don't make her mad."
"Mom! You're bleeding!" Silas says as he runs up to her.
"I'm fine... I just-" Zia says, then collapses.
"Your head!" Silas panics. Silas lays Zia on her back and puts her head on his lap as he gently checks for additional injuries. Silas lets out a big sigh and says "Thank God, it's just a shallow wound above the forehead. I thought you reopened your wounds! Why did you stop me from hitting McNamara?"
"I'm not going to let you be involved with a man who was about to die." Zia says. "Maybe it's too late for me to not be a killer. But you, I'm not going to let that happen to you."
"Your hand!" Silas says as he rips off some of his shirt. Some of the skin on Zia's palm got burned open from the magic missile spell. Silas wraps her hand gently to keep it from being exposed to all the dirt around them. "We should head back now and get her checked up by Demetri."
"Agreed." Dana says. "We finished all we needed to do here. Hopefully soon, the sky can return to normal."
"We'll need to close a few more streams before that happens." Athena says. "But now that Silas knows how, that'll be a quick enough fix."
"Then let's get home." Silas says. "Looks like mom exhausted herself. She hasn't made a full recovery yet."
"That was a lot of baggage to unload onto just the one guy though." Dana adds. "Do you think she'll be alright?"
"She'll have to be." Silas says.
"So, we got Israel out of Egypt." Siran says as their crew, plus Jassim sat together in the hideout. "I guess our job here is done."
"My job as well." Jassim adds. "I still got my pay, even after a change in contracts. I must say, you guys aren't all bad, for being the famous demon and all."
"Where are people getting this nickname?" Siran asks. "It's rather uncreative."
"I think it's fitting." Jassim says. "Even after having met you. With that being said, I have no more business here. It was nice meeting you all."
"Where are you off to now?" Siran asks.
"Me?" Jassim asks with a smile. "Wherever the hell I want. I'm going to party. I just got paid, it's time for a celebration!"
"Aren't you at all worried about the conflict still going on in the Middle-East?" Siran asks. Jassim stops walking and keeps his hands in his pockets of his blazer. "Aren't you worried about your home?" Siran asks.
Jassim turns around and walks back to Siran. He takes a small card out of his pocket with his contact information on it and hands it over to Siran. "Use this if you need me any time, Six Guns." He says, then turns around and leaves without elaborating.
"Well, at least he didn't gaslight us." Finn says with relief.
"I guess we can always use more contacts." Holly says. "Make sure to keep all the connections we can get. Assuming the world still hates us by the time this is all over, we just may need the help."
"Oh, damn... that's a fun thought." Blake complains. "To think we're going through all of this so tirelessly and we're not even gonna get off the world's shit list!"
"It wasn't ever about being thanked." Siran argues. "It just simply needed to be done."
"Yeah yeah, I get ya." Blake complains. "Heroes and all that."
"I'm no hero." Siran argues.
"Look, Siran..." Tanya says as she gently walks up to Siran. "I understand there's a lot you're trying to work through, so understand I do this with the utmost care..." Tanya then winds her right arm back and slaps Siran really hard over the top of his head. "Focus up!" Tanya says. "We're not gonna get home acting all mopey, are we? Now, if I'm not mistaken, we got a flight to catch to Germany. Get your ass in gear and wait until you're in your own home before crying like a baby. If you're worried about all that other stuff, then take my advice and focus on what we have now in the present. Deal with your past later. Shit is moving right now as we speak. Got it?"
"Y-yeah... got it." Siran says as he rubs his head.
As the group leaves, Holly looks at Tanya and gives her a fist-bump. "I'm glad I didn't have to do it."
"Well, it simply had to be done." Tanya says. "I'm worried for him too, but I ain't gonna be nice about it."
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
-- Power
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