Part 9.1: Survival of the Fittest, POV: Zack

"Xeno! Sage! Can either of you check for any remaining soldiers on the ground!?" I called out.

"It seems that we've whittled the Zankoku down to mere singular digits if any even remain!" Xeno exclaimed back, "the current objective should be shifted to destroying the ship!" he stared up to the sky at the humongous spaceship that's approximately fifty-seven point eight-four-six feet above us.

Behind me I heard Andrew's grapplers land and zip towards me, "I think it's possible for me to shoot the engine from here." 

Sage ran out from the woods to meet up with us too, "I haven't seen any soldiers. I think we finally cleared all of them." We all took glances at the mountains of bodies, corpses, blood and flames spread across the field. "Is all this killing even worth it?" I asked myself, "It is to protect everyone in New York and more though…" 

"Is it a good idea to try and shoot down the ship?" Sage asked, "I don't know how you're gonna do that hotshot," she hit Andrew's arm, "That looks hella strong though." 

"I can give it a shot but there's no guarantees." Andrew offered. 

I thought about our situation, the most optimal plan to destroy the ship, and the most efficient way to save as many lives as possible… "I HAVE AN IDEA!" I shouted out, "Xeno, can you fly us up using wind or something?"

"That is manageable, yes." Xeno confirmed with me. 

"Then I have a plan…" I started to ramble, "Xeno! Use wind spells to carry you, Sage and I up into the ship while Andrew uses his grapplers. We'll blast an entrance into the ship and take control of it ourselves and attempt to peacefully and the ship so we won't have to combat the aftermath of yet another crash."

"That… actually seems more reasonable," Andrew commented, "I'm willing to cooperate… rarely, on this operative. It seems Sam and you do indeed share a common power of thinking of plans, good work Purple Guy." He patted my shoulder. 

"The name's Zack damn it!" I scoffed. 

"I would marvelously enjoy  executing thy plan for you Zack," Xeno stated, "Though the tide of this battle may change," he pointed at the hull of the ship. A small door had opened up and a circle of light was created. It started to descend onto the land. A stronger sense of magic power was coming down, it felt about as equal as Xeno's power. 

Sage questioned, "Who is that?"

"The head of the ship, the lieutenant of this operative." Xeno stated. 

It was a male, his physique was slim but pretty tall, about as tall as Andrew, "Greetings Earthlings! It seems our advance parties hath judged thou a bit too harshly. Now it seems that I, a personal lieutenant of the great Mael, must step down to the surface and pass judgment!" 

"What the fuck did he even say? He sounded like the representative of a Nerd Emoji." Sage commented. 

"He basically said that he's the lieutenant of some dude named Mael, and he's here to kill us." I answered, "Xeno, do you know of this Mael?" 

Xeno heaved while stating, "Hahh, unfortunately, I do." He kept taking deep breaths. I think he's fought too many for too long, "Hahhh, Though I'd prefer if we speak of this matter during the debriefing… but we first have a menace in front of us to take care of." He put his spear in front of him again and started to slowly pace forward and make a wind spell. 

"Xeno's right about that." Andrew reloaded his rifle, "We need to eliminate him first." 

"GO AHEAD AND TRY!" He shouted from all of us, "RUE THE DAY THAT LIEUTENANT NIALL SHATTER YOUR SPIRITS TO THE CORE OF YOUR LOWLY PLANET!" This alien looked almost humanoid. He had light purple skin with light silver markings on his face. His hair was pure white but the main difference was that he was wearing a mouthpiece that looked necessary for breathing oxygen. 

He created three balls of light and set each of them behind him. He faced us and the balls started shooting out tiny spritzes of light creating massive volleys heading to us. 

Xeno leaped in front of all of us and spun his spear at a high speed, "Gale Shield!" he exclaimed. The volleys of light bounced off of the spinning spear and landed onto the trees and ground instantly drying and killing anything it hits, "Mental Note: DO NOT get hit by any of those." 

At this moment, I created a magic circle to send a blast of lightning right at him, "HAH!" I shouted as the lightning shot only a solid stream of light, "Damn it! I must've messed up somewhere in the making of the spell! That wasn't what I wanted!" 

The spell still went directly at him and then Niall instantly formed a white magic circle which absorbed the entire lightning blast and dissipated, "Your ranged attacks are no match for my shields!" he shouted. 

"SO WHAT OF CLOSE RANGE!?" Andrew yelled from above and behind him. He had grappled into the trees and now jumped Niall! He shot a bullet from his sniper and Niall turned around to dodge it cleanly, he grabbed all three of the balls of light that kept moving to stay behind him, he formed it into one mass and used it to graze Andrew's sniper against the barrel, instantly disintegrating the part of the barrel that was grazed revealing the inner workings of the Barrett M99 sniper rifle. 

"What the fuck!? Are you kidding me!?" He cried out before being elegantly kicked away. 

"Your weaponry is not enough to be considered a challenge to me. I have to say, I'm decently enraged that thou thought a surprise attack would best me." He plainly said. 

Andrew retaliated with shooting both grapples from the ground up. Niall caught it and wrapped each wire around his arms, "You need to shoot with more force and magic power!" he taunted before he quickly turned to the side and casted the wires pushing Andrew away. 

"Impressive, you managed to hurt me… a whole zero times." He kept taunting. 

Suddenly Xeno pushed forward to him and thrusted his spear out. He caught it with another magic shield. They both started clashing with each other, in that time I called out to, "Sage! We're gonna need another one of those disintegrating range light spell things!"

She was way in the way back from us, about ten point eight five feet behind me who was thirty-three point seven four feet from Xeno and Andrew, "I don't have much energy left, I'm terrified it'll kill me." Sage responded.

"It's worth the risk," I called out to her, "It's either you die, or potentially all of us. Look if you're REALLY that tired, try to aim right at the guy and then just expand the field just enough to catch him in your net." 

She nodded and said, "Gotcha." while jokingly saluted me. Sage then started to draw back her bow and form another arrow, "Go up there and join them, buy time for me." 

"Will do." I said while staring back at the two fighting Niall. Xeno was holding up Niall from doing any big flashy spells while all Andrew could do was sometimes trying to land a grapple but usually never landing. I started to form a large spell of lightning and dashed to the both of them while explaining that, "Sage is making another one of those spells that disintegrates anything inside the range and whatever connects to it. When she says she's ready, back off and let her fire the arrow at Niall." I stated in the voice chat.

"Understood." Andrew plainly said before carrying on his fight. In the meantime I kept trying to form the really big lightning spell to cast just as a contingency. I saved the spell for another time and raised my axe. 

Swinging down on Niall, he leaped to his right, he conjured a light spell. "Die fool!" he shouted. I leaned way far back, almost arcing my body as he shot the spell so I could dodge it. I charged a small shot of lightning and fired.

Niall used his left arm to block and absorb the crackling lightning, "AGH!" he writhed. He lept back and then cracked the joints on his arm, "A little shock to wake up my bones I guess." 

Andrew swept behind him and kicked him to the ground,"Gotcha NOW!" He retaliated from just a moment ago. 

Niall gracefully and elegantly planted his arms on the ground and pushed himself into the air, over Andrew. Xeno leaped into the air and butted the back of his spear to knock Niall back to the ground. 

Niall jumped back up and both of them traded punches and jabs for a little bit. I decided to third-party them and once Xeno got a solid punch on Niall knocking him back I swept in with a charge of lightning from my axe. I slit his back, "ARGH!" Niall groaned. He pushed himself away from everyone and started to take a defensive stance, "Fighting all three of you at once is a tiny bit harder than anticipated. Still should be no matter for me after a short recalibration." He cracked his knuckles and joints. 

"I'm ready with that spell now." Sage told us in the voice chat. 

I commented, "Good timing."

The world almost felt like slow-motion at that point, I could clearly see Andrew and Xeno tapering –as well as I–  off from Niall. I turned my head to see Sage let go of the string on her bow. The arrow gleaming of light spearheading its way right at Niall…

The arrow hit the ground right at Niall's feet and Sage expanded it JUST BARELY enough to get him within the radius, "Victory." Sage announced in the voice chat. 

The disintegration started to spread along Niall's right leg but right before it could reach his whole body. He made a fan out of light and amputated his whole leg, "I won't die that easily!" he dramatically exclaimed. Niall then immediately created a fan out of light and amputated his own leg off. Everything from his right hip down was cut cleanly off. He casted a magic circle to hold his body up where his leg should be. 

Xeno shouted in the voice chat, "Zack! Andrew! He's become vulnerable to fast moving close-range attacks!" 

"We know." I told him. I charged my axe up with lightning and started sprinting at him, "I'll finish this." I was dashing right at the center of Niall, Xeno was attempting to push him aside to make him fall over yet somehow Niall never fell over. 

That didn't matter nor needed to be factored or fit into the equation anymore, "Step aside Xeno," I raised the axe and he leaped backwards, "I got this!" And I swung. 

I striked right into the center of Niall's body. Blood gushed and spilled from the chest, some landed on my own body, and even my own mask… 

"Zack! MOVE!" Xeno shouted while grabbing my shoulder and tossing me away from him. Xeno tried his best to make a shield with his spear but-

[BAM!]

Both of us were blasted from something… unknown. 

My mask was partially blown away, my left eye and part of my face in that region was exposed. "What the hell was that!?" I pestered Xeno while covering the blown apart spot of my mask. 

  Xeno thrusted his spear right into Niall knocking him onto the then grass but now burnt ground from Sam. Xeno drove his boot right into the chest of Niall and just stared into his eyes. He started to explain,  "A blood spell. He casted a spell on him before where if too much blood was ever spilled from him, it would explode." 

"How do you know that was gonna happen?" Andrew asked over the voice chat. 

"I could sense it," Xeno drove his boot into Niall harder, forcing him to groan in pain, "Practice enough magic and you'll sense when spells are about to or do occur." Xeno stared into his eyes, "relieved that his spell was simplistic enough for me to sense it."

Niall scoffed from the ground, "Art thou thy master of sorts? Huh!? Thou art not deserving of thy position as master!" 

Xeno drove his spear into him harder, "YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO LIVE! Heed my words and understand that with a singular spell, your life would be forfeit!!! What's your statement to claim for thy own survival!? hng?" 

Andrew zipped up beside me and a bit behind Xeno, "You mean his last words?" he asked. 

"Precisely." Xeno declared. He turned back to Niall, "Now. Do tell." 

Niall heaved and coughed up blood right into Xeno's chest, "More shall come. You all shall not stand much longer…" he coughed another spat of blood onto Xeno's boot this time, "For the glory of the Empire!" He exclaimed before ultimately… dying. 

This experience is well-more than traumatic. Having my own face be almost blown up through someone's blood and ultimately watching them die with a spear from your own teacher… in their chest. I looked at Sage and she was gasping from what she saw with her own eyes whilst Xeno and Andrew acted like this wasn't a horrible experience.

Xeno pulled his spear out of Niall's corpse and coldly stated, "Now there's only the ship left to take care of." 

"How…" I stumbled to ask, "How," I wanted to know… "How could you so cleanly say that with no backlash for what you have just done!? I know I would've been FUCKING HORRIFIED if I had to kill him like that! How could you so easily take his life!?"

"You've already taken tens of lives Zack." Xeno stammered at me, "You probably didn't understand what you were doing because they were masked, covering themselves to look more like a statistic than people. There is no humanity left to be shown outwardly." 

I was taken aback… "You're… right, yet I didn't consider me taking lives… only them to take mine." 

"That's right," Andrew chimed in, "You're more likely to forget what you're doing in the face of your own life or your belongings being challenged. You were more focused on protecting your own life than the protection and taking of others. Here you were watching Xeno take his life and not worrying about yours." 

"I mean… I guess but," I was still in a questioning state, "still… like how could you treat this as normal." 

Xeno's helmet opened up, revealing that his eyes looked gray and lifeless, "Because these devils hath taken the lives of almost everyone I've ever respected, loved and cared for." He stated while wiping down his spear, "I'm sorry for what I just said, right now we must focus on the mission and traverse up on board that ship. We'll continue with your plan though." 

"I disagree," Andrew flailed his trench coat into the air grabbing new wires and shards of metal from his utility belt, "We need to keep either Zack or Sage on the ground just in case any stragglers like that try to leave the ship again. It's unlikely they'll face someone that strong again because he was the lieutenant and therefore captain of the ship." He explained. 

Sage started to say that, "I think Zack should-"

"I'll go." I cut her off, "I need to do this. I'm terrified of having to kill with that much force, but the mission MUST carry on nonetheless. The priority here isn't my own mental health… it's for the safety of everyone else." 

"That… doesn't seem healthy but go off I guess." Sage didn't stop my offer. 

"Fine." Andrew scoffed, "It doesn't matter. Xeno, conjure up those wind spells." 

Xeno created one big wind spell circle and when he activated it, two small tornados popped up from the ground and hovered just about a foot above. He nodded at it, "Go on. Step on if you really want to do this." 

I hesitated but ultimately… I planted both my feet on the tornado and Xeno did the same, the tornado started to ascend up to the ship and I took a deep breath.