Subsequent Fall Part 74: Sealed

The marble room was filled with chairs and food, drinks galore as the meeting was called by Seventeen. The room was filled outside of the chairs labeled with one and seventeen. One man stood up from his chair. "This meeting has been called as it does require attention for an event that happened moments ago." His chair read sixteen.

"And who put you in charge?" A lady in the chair across from him swashed around a bottle of wine as she took another sip.

"Seventeen's personal puppet he is, you expect different? I won't listen to you." Fourteen, a grizzled man waved the notion of the man away.

"Zero died to the hands of Astral and took down an entire galaxy in a singular moment of time." A blade shot down from above as Sixteen looked at the hand pinned to the table from Fourteen. A lot of the lower ranks stayed silent. "We are gathered here to eliminate the rest of Astral and his forces."

Seventeen stood in space as he looked at the milky way galaxy, it was moving around rapidly as he distorted the nearby galaxies. He raised his hand up as beams fired from all around him. They crashed onto an invisible barrier as the attack dissipated across the barrier.

Seventeen clenched his fist as the barrier showed stress then fired more beams. Trying to break the barrier and finish off all hopes Astral could have left if he were to ever return. The barrier did not fail as Seventeen threw everything he had at it. To no avail as it washed across the barrier.

Sixteen appeared next to him. "Well, we are waiting for you, your honor." Seventeen grabbed his throat as Sixteen went limp. They warped back to the marble room as the table was shocked.

"Sit." Seventeen spoke as he dropped Sixteen who crawled to his chair as Seventeen walked around the table and pulled the blade from Fourteen's hand. He moved back to his chair and sat down. "We will train and bide our time."

Everyone stayed silent as Two looked up the table. "Sir, if I may ask, while we are training, can't they as well?" Seventeen had a smile on his face as they spoke.

"Well, of course, but the problem is, they are so far depleted, by the time we face them, it won't matter and they won't stand a chance." Seventeen giggled as he thought to himself. "Do you remember Titan, all of you defeated him to get spots on the council." 

They nodded in agreement. "While I didn't watch the fights, all but Astral who fought him lost. And I will be honest with all of you, in his strongest moment, none of us could have stopped him." Gasps were taken from all of them as they were surprised he would say such a thing.

"Look, just because One lost to him and he beat Titan by himself doesn't mean he could have taken all of us." Eleven was doubting this.

Seventeen slid a device to the middle of the table as it played a short video of only a few frames. They all watched it over and over as it looped. "You notice how it goes from a full on warzone to an explosion?" They all marveled at the footage. "Time pause wouldn't affect me, but that, was not any time pause."

"Astral is missing for them however, so can't we fuck them up now?" Fourteen looked over to Seventeen as many of the others looked at the video, still amazed by the billions killed in a single instant.

"No, I hate to say that we should give them a chance to rebuild. But Astral is alive and he should be the priority. If we can't find him and stop him, then we have issues." Seventeen looked over to Sixteen as they kept their head down. "And the galaxy they retreated to, has a powerful barrier protecting it. Not even my breaker moves worked on it."

"So they have protection and can't be harmed if they don't go out into the open, meanwhile the only way to drop the barrier is by killing the caster." Twelve looked at the video and how the colors split apart. "I solved half of our problem. Those colors are parts of Astral." Others murmured to interject as Seventeen slammed his hand down.

"Finish your thesis."

"Well, we know he can create clones of himself, and that these clones are comparable in power to him. So wouldn't that make those colors just different pieces of him? Only returning to form once he gets all of them. So we select two or three to find and monitor. Once he reaches them, we jump him with two or three of us."

"And if he doesn't go around and gather these parts?" Fifteen looked at him as she finished the rest of the wine bottle.

"Then he won't be powerful enough to stop us." Twelve finished speaking as Seventeen nodded.

"For the record, we will create one duo to watch one emotion consisting of Ten and Four." Seventeen stood up. "From Eleven up will patrol the universe while taking turns training the rest of you, each of us will have a strict program to pass, no matter how long it takes you all will reach it." Seventeen looked at the seven of them that would be training. "Remember, One got killed by a magical spell he didn't defend against and Zero was out muscled. Stay back and alert either Sixteen if you find Astral."

Ten and Four nodded as they stood up and left the room. Heading to where the battle took place to learn which direction and to study it closer. "As for the first round of training. It will be taken care of by Sixteen, everyone else is dismissed, go start the patrol."

Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen stood up and bowed at Seventeen as they went to their regions of space to keep scouting for anything odd and keep order in line. Sixteen wrote a goal for the underlings to accomplish. Seventeen walked into a corridor. He needed to speak to the gods and see what needed to be done.