Bab 29: Chapter Twenty-Nine: Mad Cat
The Six Guns left and searched through many cities on the east side of Omnia. For three nights, they went from city to city, split into two groups of six. Siran, Zia, Alex, Finn, Rose and Vivi searched towards the northern half of the east side of Omnia, while Blake, Satomi, Mikoto, Ying, Haru and Robin searched the south. Gathering cargo trucks and transporting people by the dozens at a time, then crew eventually reunited in Pilloa at their new base of operations. Altogether, they retrieved a total of 73 refugees. Only 11 of the refugees were children, and 6 of them were former Ly'Lum soldiers. After three nights, they finally decided to rest at Pilloa and wait for word from Loki and Athena on what to do next. However, the next morning, they didn't meet someone they were expecting. They were expecting to meet Athena or Loki now that they were back in Pilloa, but instead, on their way out towards the forest to get some answers, they were met by a single figure of a woman with a ripped and dirty cloak over her head and shoulders. The cloak she wore was like a brown blanket. It was long and dangled all the way down to her ankles. However, it didn't cover her chest. Under the cloak, they could see a refurbished and newer model of some MTRU's Endo Syphon backpack. A metal backpack with tubes full of black smoke, and thin tubes that ran down her arms towards this glove with tiny metal plates over the fingers. "You made looking for you much easier" she says with a smile. "I thought it'd be harder, but then you guys had to go and add some pizazz to a ruined country by roaming around and picking up helpless people. Word gets around, y'know".
"Are you hunters?" Siran asks as he slowly reaches for his gun.
"Of sorts" she replies. "The name's Shelby. Shelby Maddox. They call us the X-Hunters, but we've never really decided on a name for ourselves".
"New group then?" Alex asks.
"That doesn't matter" Shelby says. "What matters is, you have something I want".
"Sorry" Siran says as he quickly takes out his gun and fires a large blast directly into her chest. "But you aren't taking our lives today".
There was a stillness for a moment, before Shelby's voice spoke up again from somewhere else. "Lives?" She asks. "But I only want the one life, you see".
Siran looks over at the body he shot at earlier, but it was gone. "She's using illusion magic!" Siran warns.
Suddenly, another figure emerges from the forest and into the middle of the path leading into the forest behind them. "Bring me Demetri" Shelby says. "That's all I really want".
"Why Demetri?" Siran asks. "Who are you?".
Shelby stands in the middle of the path and reaches for the shoulder of her torn cloak. "I've told you" she says as she throws her cloak off her shoulders, "I'm Shelby Maddox. And I will have my revenge". When the cloak falls to the ground, and Shelby takes one more step forward and stands in the light beaming through the tree tops, they could see it. Cybernetic enhancements all over her body, with a couple particular note worthy enhancements that seemed less necessary but more frightening. She had mechanical pointy ears on her head, similar to a pair of cat ears, and a long and very thin mechanical tail with a razor sharp edge on the top of the tail. She had brightly colored pink hair with yellow highlights in her hair, and green eyes. Her pale skin had metal wrapped around her back that was visible on her sides, and prepared for battle as her group of hunters emerged from the forest. The group prepared for a big fight, but the hunters put down their guns and gestured towards Shelby and laughed amongst themselves. It became obvious they weren't here for a fight. Her group was here for a show.
"Demetri!" Siran calls out. "Explanation, please!?".
"I have never met girl in my life!" Demetri panics. "I do not know her!".
"Well, she knows you!" Blake shouts.
Shelby charges past Siran in an instant, and Siran freezes in surprise as he sees a blur of pink slip right past him. Rose narrowly gets in the way on time and stops Shelby by blocking her claws with a metal brace around her whole forearms that was hidden under her clothes. "I kinda owe Demetri for helping me out long ago" Rose says, her goggles locked onto Shelby's eyes. "So I can't exactly sit aside and let you kill the doctor".
"Stand aside" Shelby snarls, "I'm not here for you".
"Make me..." Rose replies.
Shelby tries to bring her knee up to Rose to kick her in the stomach, but Rose blocks her with the side of her leg and then extends her foot into Shelby's own stomach.
Shelby jumps backwards, holding onto her stomach in pain. Suddenly, she hears "Mess with the doc, mess with the rest of us!" coming from Blake from above. Blake jumped at her, with a sword made of ice in hand, coming down fast. However, Shelby blocked it with her tail, shattering the sword. In a split moment, grabbed Blake by the neck and squeezed tight as she syphoned the endo right out of his body with the glove. Suddenly, Rose charges at her again. Shelby threw Blake onto the ground really hard, and stunned him with a shock of pain, as she spun around and kicked at Rose as she dashed at her. Rose blocked the kick with her foot and spun around to kick with her other foot. Shelby caught Rose's other foot. Rose, while trying to free her foot, threw a throwing knife at Shelby's face, only for her to catch that too. However, the knife flashed a bright light, blinding Shelby. Shelby dropped Rose and stepped back to rub her eyes. As she was blinded, Blake ran up towards Shelby to punch her in the face. Shelby's mechanical ears twitched slightly and Blake was immediately tripped by her tail swinging across the ground. As Shelby took another step back to rub her eyes, Blake got up. Siran and the others began to draw their weapons and point them at Shelby.
"Explain, now" Siran demands.
"Heh" Shelby laughs. She eventually slowly opens one eye, though it was still in immense pain from the flash spell from Rose. "I can get why the girl would owe a favor or two to Demetri. But what does the sword user have to do with the man?".
"Other than the fact that he's a friend" Blake says as he raises his shirt to expose a metal plate in his chest. "He's saved my life too. Artificial lung, artificial stomach, and the lack thereof for a giant hole in my midsection is also a good plus. He's even given Finn over there a new arm too".
"To think that bastard would save somebody" Shelby spits in anger.
"What do you have against me?" Demetri asks in confusion. "What did I do to you? I didn't do that to your body".
"It's not about me" Shelby growls. "It's about Sergei Mikhailov". Demetri froze in shock at the simple sound of the name. "You remember Sergei, right?".
"Sergei... who's Sergei?" Siran asks.
"My old partner..." Demetri says. "He was doctor in cybernetics like me".
"So... a colleague?" Alex asks.
"Not colleague" Demetri says. "Partner".
Shelby begins to laugh and says "You actually think this man was a simple doctor? A doctor, who just... makes bombs as a hobby?".
"Come to think of it..." Siran says. "What did you do to get kicked out of Russia?".
"Sergei was my partner in Chechen" Demetri replies slowly.
"Chechen..." Haru says. "So you're from the Russian mafia!?".
"Demetri?" Rose asks. "No way! He's too nice".
"I take offense to that..." Tanya says.
"It's true" Demetri says. "Sergei and I have history with medical science. We even graduated a prestigious college. But we were dumb kids. Mess around with wrong people and got caught in some trouble. We were bailed out of trouble by rival gang".
"The mafia..." Tanya says. "So, you had to work for them to pay them back?".
"Making bombs wasn't so... bad" Demetri says. "Was simple science. However, we were quickly seen as assets for our medical ability. That is, of course, until...".
"Until they perfected cybernetics" Shelby interrupts. "They tested their science on dead bodies but eventually moved to live ones. Some of those men didn't survive the procedure and died, but Sergei perfected it".
"Da" Demetri says sadly. "It was Sergei who mastered it. I who learned from the best".
"So... what happened?" Siran asks.
"There was rat" Demetri says. "KGB agent on the inside of our gang. Our men got killed by dozens and our gang that once lead an entire province fell in single night. They discovered our... experiments, and saw the bodies. Assumed our science was inhumane and declared it unlawful. We had to escape mother Russia before we fell like rest. Our names disgraced, our homeland no longer welcoming us... it was too risky to stick together. We had to go separate ways".
"Then... the Chechen is how you learned of Vega's existence" Tanya says.
"It was only safe place I could think of" Demetri says. "I regretted every day I spent away from Sergei. He was kind man. I had always worried about what happened to him... is he well?".
Shelby was silent for a moment, then says "I'll tell you what. I'll take you to where he's buried, and let you say your goodbyes before I spill your blood all over his grave".
"Please" Demetri says, "you have to tell me what happened to Sergei".
"He escaped to Romania" Shelby says. "When I was a little girl. He lived in our neighborhood, next door to my parent's house. He never said anything to anybody, bothered anybody, hell he probably never even really left his house. Until one day, there was an incident. There were gang wars all over Romania when I was growing up, but eventually, they reached my neighborhood. A few cars drove by, and the simple sight between rival gangs was all it took for gunfire and car wrecks to happen. I tried to run, but one of the cars got pushed off the road. The driver was already dead and the acceleration was still being pushed from his limp body. It kept going and going... until it hit me in the back and rammed me into a wall. Many kids died that day, but somehow I was spared. If you can call it that. All I could do was cry and scream. My legs no longer worked. My spine was shattered. I was as good as dead. But that man left his house that day, to take me in. He gave me a new spine. Almost my entire back is metal now, but I can walk. It was all thanks to that man. He took care of me for a couple years. But one day, his past caught up to him. He hid me as he confronted from men in these strange uniforms. Some hunters or something. I heard two gunshots, then silence. When I thought it was finally safe, I came out to find his dead body". There was a long pause of silence before Shelby continued to say "He told me all about his past before he died. He told me about you, about the mafia, and everything when he was taking care of me. If you hadn't selfishly decided that you guys should split up, he wouldn't have been in this mess! If it weren't for you, Demetri" Shelby then covers her tail with armament magic, "we wouldn't have lost Sergei".
Demetri's head hung low in defeat as Shelby charged at him with the full intent to end his life in one swoop. However, Siran stopped Shelby with a single punch to the gut with a strong distortion spell. A shockwave came out of Shelby's back as she came to a grinding halt in mid air, and was sent flying onto her back. She grunted and gasped for air for a few seconds before finally passing out on the dirt. Her group, however, drew their guns and pointed them at The Six Guns. The rest of the crew pointed their guns at the hunters in response, except for Siran, who placed his gun against Shelby's forehead. "One wrong move, and your captain is worm food" Siran says calmly. "Look, this was a touching blast from the past, but I'm getting the feeling you aren't real hunters, nor are you here under orders for our assassination. That would also mean you're not necessarily our enemies. This can go one of two ways. Please be sensible and take the easy way".
"You pull that trigger" one of the hunters say, "if you kill Shelby, you're all dead".
"That's not a very wise choice of actions" a familiar voice calls out from behind the group of hunters. Athena appears from behind the group, with Loki and his brothers by his side. "You didn't count of whether or not there were more of us around, did you?".
"W-who the hell are you people?" One of the hunters asks.
"You haven't given us your answer" Athena says as endo swirls around her feet and begin to rise in a black smoke. "Are you going to take the easy way, or the hard way?".
There was a long hesitation until finally, the hunters put away their guns and put their hands up in surrender. The Six Guns did the same, and picked up Shelby's unconscious body and took them all to the castle.
As they were all making their way to the castle, Siran asks Athena "We were looking for you guys. What the hell is going on out there?".
"There's been a bit of an issue" Athena says. "There's too many streams open, and all traces left of Zeus and the others seem to vanish at the site of a stream recently opened in Brazil. We fear they've already opened their last stream, and we can't find them anywhere".
"What does this mean?" Zia asks.
"It means" Athena says, "that we may have to prepare for the worst soon. This world is still here and hasn't been destroyed yet. So it's safe to say their work isn't yet done. However, when they come back, assume they have only came back because they have what they need to finish the job. I want you guys to prepare as well as you can for a fight. It's not going to be an easy one either".
"Any plans for that fight?" Siran asks.
"Our group has one left" Loki says. "If he's gone, he's likely obtaining power to ascend to a primeval god from Chronos's shards. When he comes back, it'll be a real handful. We need to weaken him with whatever we can. Remain on the defensive though, try to run his power thin. When the time is right, we'll have our backup plan in full swing".
"Backup plan?" Athena asks. "You didn't tell me about that one".
"Because we weren't supposed to wait around until we can use it" Loki says. "It's supposed to be a last resort".
"Father will come at the right time to apprehend Zeus" Thor says. "With the help of what little power Gaia has left, he'll be momentarily taken to this world to apprehend him, and immediately taken back to Valhalla".
"That's the plan?" Athena asks. "If Odin has to get involved, it can't be good".
"And it isn't" Loki says. "It's very not good. We must make sure this goes exactly as planned. If this fails, we're out of options. So no screw ups from any of you".
"It's not often we see you nervous, brother" Meili says.
"Yeah, well" Loki says, "just make sure you're ready and I'll be less nervous".
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone