"Operation SAS begins now!"
And with that, the entire company split into 3 groups. One that was responsible for the explosion, one that would be responsible for the dispersion and the last one that will be responsible for looting. Vinay himself was part of no group, and was responsible for overseeing everything.
The first group consisted of the ancient mages who were responsible for setting off a few explosions around the base camp of the rebels. Or what they called the base camp. In reality, it was just a cave system that the rebels found and had turned it into their resting area. They didn't make any buildings of any sort because well, they didn't want to expose themselves. What they didn't realise was that they were already exposed and that all it took to find their trails were a few satellite scans around Base Smaio. Now, the first group then spread around the entrance of the cave, making sure not to come out of the treeline and expose themselves. Then, once everyone was in their places, Vinay signalled the start of the attack. As soon as he did,
*BOOM* *BAM* *SLNKBAM*
A series of small but very loud explosions hit the rebel hideout from all sides, causing it to slowly start caving in. Seeing this, Vinay showed a slight smile and then said,
"Vishal, get ready. It's your turn now. Remember, don't blind us, blind them."
"I know, I know. I won't make that mistake again," came Vishal's voice, who was standing in line with the entrance of the cave, waiting for the rebels to come out so that he could blind them using his light magic, making it easier for the others to separate them and capture them.
And yet.. Even after waiting for an entire ten minutes, nobody came out of the cave. Seeing this, Vishal asked,
"Um Vinay, are you sure there are rebels inside? Cause it doesn't seem like there are any here."
"Shh. They might just be biding their time and waiting for us to leave."
"But you do realise that the cave is nearly fully collapsed now? How would they even survive tha-"
And before he could finish, the entrance of the cave came crashing down, completely closing the entrance to the rebel hideout. Seeing this, the various other soldiers also started muttering, confused as to why the rebels did not come out. Suddenly, a swishing sound came from behind Vinay, who immediately turned around and pointed his gun towards the sound.
"Woah woah Captain, don't point the only gun in our company at me please. I'm not the enemy here."
"Major Alaukik! Why.. Why are you here? Didn't you say you wouldn't interfere? Also.. why are you hanging upside down in the air.. No actually, how are you doing it??"
"I know I said that, but like, I couldn't stop myself from wanting to help you guys solve this dilemma you're having you know. To be honest, I am trying really hard to not.. not laugh right now," Alaukik replied, with a smile threatening to break his poker face. Continuing, he said
"You see, the reason the rebels are not coming out from this entrance.. is that, umm, how do I say this.. There are other exits also. You know, like, emergency exits," and saying this, Alaukik burst out laughing, so much so that he became unbalanced and nearly fell to the ground.
"Major.." looking at the Alaukik who was laughing his balance off, Vishal said,
"MAJOR! Shouldn't you have informed us of this earlier?!! What if the rebels manage to escape? We'll have failed our very first mission! Stop acting like a ch-"
"Now now soldier, do mind your words. I did say that this was all you didn't I? If I covered up for everything you did, then that wouldn't really help the company grow as a team would it? And there's no need to worry about them escaping, instead, you should worry about how you're gonna catch them, and if you don't.. You know what's coming for you," said Alaukik, with a cold smile on his face. Then, Alaukik looked around the company and announced,
"Well, you guys have the day to capture them, any later than that I'll personally capture them... but that won't turn out good for you," and with that, he teleported away from there.
[Vinay POV]
'Oh sh*t.'
[Vishal POV]
'I'm in deep sh*t'
[Company soldiers POV]
'Well, we're in deep sh*t'
[Vinay POV]
'How could I be so stupid. Any normal human would have two or three exits from their hideout, and yet, I didn't even think of that possibility. Was I too overconfident about this? Even though I was the one who went around making sure everything was ready? Was that just my hypocrisy? No. I don't have time for this. I need to come up with a new plan now. We can't let the rebels run further.'
"We need to capture them before the day ends. But how? HOW?"
And as Vinay was going to drown in his own thoughts, someone's voice cut in.
"Um, I have an idea," said a soldier standing all the way in the back of the group.
"You do? How?!" came Vinay's almost frantic reply.
"Umm, so, I can wield Vayu ancient magic.. And I can kind of ask the spirits to spread around the area and search for any traces or even the people themselves. You see, I have the ability to share my vision with the spirits, but the thing is.. 3 spirits is my limit. Um, any more and my brain just gets overloaded with too much information. So basically, um, it will take time to find them.. If I can."
"That's not a problem. What would you like us to do?"
"Uhh, just wait I guess?"
Hearing this, Vinay scrunched up his face and opened his mouth to say something but before he could,
"Or or, could you protect me while I do it? After all, when I'm sharing my vision, I can't really move around properly in the real world."
"Very well. Then, everyone split into two groups. One protects uh,"
"Parth.. Parth Patel."
"Yes. One half will protect Parth here, and the other's will spread out and look for the other exits around the hideout of the rebels. Then soldiers, let's begin!"
{About one hour later}
Spread out all around with Parth as the centre, the soldiers were all lazi- looking around with their maximum attention and making sure that not even a fly could enter their encirclement. Sitting beside Parth, Vinay spoke,
"Any updates Parth?"
A few seconds later, as if he was lagging, Parth replied,
"I don't know captain.. It's very hard to make out trails in this mode, so I don't kno- Wait! I think I see someone, it... it's a boot! This, this is definitely not one of our boots captain!"
(A/N)( You thought you saw the enemy, but it was me, DIO! / insert gif)
"That means.. It's the rebels. Yes! Very good Parth. Let's go now, we need to hurry and capture those rebels before they get farther away. Where exactly did you see the boot?"
"Uhh, approximately.. 20 kms north of here captain. However, I can't see any people around there."
"That doesn't matter. At least we have a clue now. Very well. Let's do this, Asim," Vinay said, pointing to a soldier near him, "Inform the other's about this. Ask them to start searching in that area. Half of us will also head there, and the rest will stay here and continue protecting Parth. Parth, I would like you to continue searching for their trails. This might be a fake, we don't know.. So continue to look for any other trails and keep us updated through the comms."
'As much as I hate to accept it, these rebels are definitely better than us at this. We don't have much experience in this type of mission apart from the basic scouting we were taught back in the training,' thought Vinay, as he started to make his way towards the boot they found.
{Another hour of jogging/magic walking later}
[Vishal's POV]
'We're finally here huh. This is supposed to be where Parth found the boot. So basically, the rebels should have passed from here. Now.. if I were the rebels, where would I go? Towards Smaio? As some kind of reverse psychology? No no, there are plenty of us in that direction, if they passed through there, we would know. Then where? The east? Crossing the mountain peaks? No, that wouldn't be possible without proper equipment.. And I doubt scouts could carry that much equipment with them. So west? But that wouldn't make sense either.. It's all flat plains in that direction, they would be easily spotted by anything that flies by. So that leaves.. North. They would try to return to their country. They must have realised that their cover was blown and thus would probably decide to abandon the mission. I mean, that makes the most sense.. So north it is then.'
And with that, Vishal started walking northwards, not forgetting to group up the other scattered soldiers towards him. And as he moved forward, he started finding more and more clues of people. Drops of blood, footsteps and various other clues. He became more and more confident of his guess, until finally, as he climbed up a small hill, he saw a group of people camping in the shade of the hill, seemingly taking a break. Most of them were bandaged quite a bit, most likely having been hurt during the collapse of the cave, while the others looked extremely tired. Seeing this, Vishal quickly went back down to where a few other soldiers were and then whispered to them,
"The rebels are on the other side of the hill. There are about 30 of them. All of them look very tired and most of them are also injured to some degree. I think this is the best time to capture them. What do you think?"
The rest of the soldiers looked at each other, and they could see the agreement in each other's eyes. However, one of them stood up and said,
"Shouldn't we wait for Captain Vinay and the other's to group up with us and then launch an attack with full force?"
"Oh come on. Let's see, right now, we have 5 Agni magicians, one Prithvi magician, one normal magician, and me, a surya magician. I'm pretty sure we can handle them. And if we wait, they might recover and we might lose this chance to win. So I vote we attack right now and capture them. The agni users can launch some fireballs at them, and then I will use my light magic to blind them for a while, during which the prithvi magician can capture them. What do you think?"
"I agree," said the prithvi magician.
"So do I."
"Me too"...
And with this, the plan of action was decided.
-------
{Present time}
(A/N)(I changed the beginning of the previous chapter.. You might wanna check it out. For those who are reading after 1/12/22, just continue on)
[Rebel leader POV]
With fireballs raining down on them and no clear way to escape, most of the rebels just gave up on escaping. They had been running from the men of the Federation for a while now, and all of them were very very tired. They were simply relaxing in their hideout when suddenly a bunch of explosions rang out around them, and then the cave started to collapse on top of them. This alarmed them and thus they immediately started to evacuate the base. They cleared all the important information and then immediately left the base from their emergency exit. And they immediately started executing their plan in case they were found out, which was to start moving towards the north with extreme haste. They were supposed to build enough distance between the soldiers that they would be unable to tail them,
'And yet, yet, they somehow found us! Who would have known that the one's chasing them were not normal soldiers but mages! Who sends mages to eliminate a scouting unit?! Did they want to show off their power? Well, none of that matters anyway,' the leader thought with a defeated look on his face. ' We cannot win against a group of mages. I guess.. It's time to say goodbye to this world.'
"Huuu, It was nice while it lasted, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to say goodbye guys," he whispered, before biting the back of his teeth to break open the poison pill they had just for situations like this. And yet, before he could, a bright light flashed before his eyes, completely disorienting him and making his head dizzy, and before he knew it, he felt something hit him behind his head and then he fainted altogether.
------
[Vishal POV]
Tying up the last unconscious rebel, Vishal looked around the area, which was completely unrecognisable. With puddles of water slowly freezing over scorched earth, where the fireballs landed, and various outcroppings of rock that were used to knock out the rebels, the hill now looked like somebody set fire to it, then beat the ground badly.
"Well, the damage doesn't matter. What matters is that we caught the rebels,' thought Vishal.
"We caught them before the day ended. That means we're not gonna be punished by Major now. That's a good thing isn't it?.. Is what you're thinking, aren't you, Vishal?" came a certain someone's voice from behind Vishal.
Turning around slowly, Vishal gazed at the person who suddenly appeared behind him, and as he looked at the Major's face, Alaukik smiled and said,
"Well, that's completely right my dear soldier! Congratulations to you and the entire company! You have successfully completed your first task!" Alaukik said while clapping his hands together,
"Now, why don't we discuss it more back at base?" he finished, with a happy smile on his face. And yet, seeing this, Vishal replied tremblingly,
"Ye-e-e-e-yes sir."