The Martial Unity

"When are they coming?" Nel groaned impatiently.

Rui sighed. "They should be here soon."

"You said that three minutes ago!" Nel retorted.

"Then stop asking every three minutes!" Rui glared at him. "Listen here young ma-"

Rui suddenly froze as he turned around, narrowing his eyes. "They're coming. Everyone scram. Fae, do the honours."

Fae immediately rushed to two large, tall trees.

BAM BAM!

With two powerful blows, the trees collapsed, blocking the usual path the shipment convoy would usually travel through.

They all immediately scattered to the sides as they hid some distance away.

Two minutes later, a few loaded carriages arrived at that spot, stopping at the collapsed broken tree trunks blocking their path.

Soon, the men emerged from the carriages, talking exasperatedly and loudly in vinfranese and sanskrit.

BAM BAM BAM BAM!

Four large Tempestuous Ripple attacks crashed onto almost all of them men, killing all those it touched.

Only four survived.

THUD

Rui landed heavily on his feet from the sky, sighing at the corpses. Killing was a dirty sensation, but it was one he endured. He could, at the very least, take solace in the fact that they didn't suffer. He launched a solid, heavy attack that killed them the very instant it crashed on their heads.

He turned to the only four men he had spared. "You're going to take us to the secret research facility. You will cooperate with us. Is that clear?"

They simply stared at his masked face in shock, their legs had long given in, and they were shivering in fear.

They furiously nodded. Rui had heard them speak Sanskrit so he wasn't too concerned that they didn't understand him.

The plan he had come up with had worked just fine. He wanted to draw them all out of the carriage and away from it so that the carriage would not even need to be forced into in a way that could damage it. He also killed them extremely quickly in a way that wouldn't agitate the horses too much. Both carriages and horses were perfectly fine and the entire hijacking took only ten seconds in total.

This was much better than conventionally attacking them, forcing their way in and damaging the carriage, losing the horses that would get far too agitated with all the screaming that would inevitably ensue. It was too messy and lowered the probability of success of the mission, which Rui wanted to avoid at all costs.

Soon the Martial Apprentices gathered and quickly boarded the convoy after they cleared the trees out of the way. Fortunately, because Rui finished the job that quickly, they would still be quite on schedule for the scheduled shipment.

That along with the fact that that there no visual elements that would give away that the convoy had been hijacked by them, Rui did not see any way they could possibly be given away.

An hour later, they reached the secret entrance of the research facility. All of them tensed, yet maintained their calm and composure. They did not want to give their presence away because of a failure to keep their composure.

The hatch opened.

Like clockwork, the Martial Artists and the armed men emerged from within and approached the leading carriage.

The man immediately gave him the documents without saying a word, exactly as Rui had instructed him to. The Martial Apprentices skimmed through the document briefly, nodded, heading to the back.

Just as he reached;

BAM!

"AAARGH!"

A loud sound and screech from within the security floor startled the two Apprentices just as they were about open the door to the storage convoys.

Yet, before they could even move.

BAM BAM!

The doors of the two carriages they were close exploded open as Rui and Fae launched themselves at the two Martial Apprentices with ferocious speeds

Had the two Martial Apprentices been alert, focused and prepared, they might have been able to react optimally.

But they weren't.

And so, they didn't.

PEW

BAM!!!

The Stinger and the Whirlpool landed on them hard as the two attacks inflicted critical injuries. Rui didn't have time to aim, precision and accuracy usually came at the cost of speed and haste, and in this scenario the latter two were more important. As long as the Stinger landed somewhere, that was satisfactory.

"Argh!" The two Martial Apprentices grimaced as they leaped backwards in shock and pain.

Rui turned in the opposite direction towards the guards while Nel and Hever ran towards the wounded Martial Apprentices.

The reason for this was simple, it was a matter of compatibility. Hever was strongest in a one-on-one scenario; thus, he joined Hever. Rui was better at dealing with numbers than Nel thanks to Tempestuous Ripple, thus he let Nel take on the Martial Apprentice while he launched Tempestuous Ripples that killed the men who fired at them.

When he turned around to inspect the progress of his friends, he was impressed. It was overwhelming.

Hever and Nel had killed their Martial Apprentice before he had even realized while Fae was almost done.

WHOOSH

She pulled her hand back, and suddenly her opponent fell forward towards her as if being pulled by an invisible force.

BAM!

His skull cracked under the force of Fae's powerful blow, killing him.

('She created a vacuum between her opponent and herself with a combination of movements and breathing.') Rui's eyes lit up in interest. The vacuum pulled her opponents to her, increasing the probability of her landing her ferocious offense. Rui recognized it because it had mechanics similar to Tempestuous Ripple, just the opposite at its core.

He turned to the corpse Hever and Nel were standing over. The head was almost completely flattened, and its body was bruised gravel.

('Their lethality has increased.')

"They've grown stronger." Rui murmured as he turned back to the security floor. Primordial Instinct and Seismic mapping told him all but one was dead.

"You've grown stronger too Kane." He said to nobody visible. "You're getting harder to sense."

"And yet you sensed me anyway." Kane grumbled, appearing out of thin air.

Rui chuckled as he inspected the scene, nodding. The first phase was a crushing success.