“We’re being watched?” Natsu asked, his eyes becoming narrower in seriousness.

“Aren’t you just too self-conscious, Martin?” Bolten asked, smiling as little as he found the hero’s words to be silly. He glanced around and said, “I mean, ever since our arrival, we had attracted quite a bit of attention after all.”

True to his words, the people around them were steeling glances at them occasionally from their work. It was a curious look to see who the strangers that were together with the two royal siblings were. There was no ill intent in their intentions as they continued carrying on with their duties despite them suddenly appearing to be there.

Martin shook his head and suddenly looked fearful, his face becoming pale with anxiety as he said, “No, prince. It’s definitely not these people, but I can feel it… A strong glare… filled with ill intentions…!”

Bolten remained silent, opting to open his eyes slightly in surprise because he did not expect this. He believed the overly nervous hero was just overreacting due to suddenly being on the receiving end of a lot of attention. However, it looked like that was not the case because Martin looked as if he was going to cry from the fear he was feeling.

“From which direction are you feeling it, Maritn?” Natsu asked, while everyone else looked at them in seriousness.

“Um… Over there,” replied Martin, turning and pointing his hand towards a faraway horizon. “I can sense them watching us from there.”

They shaded their eyes and focused in the direction that Martin pointed to, but they could not find anyone, nor a shadow to see.

“Hey…? Who’re they…?” William asked suddenly, sounding cautious. When asked what he was seeing, he pointed towards the top of the horizon, where there was a rising hill, and responded with, “I saw someone, just for a moment, but they broke cover to come up and spy on us! Yeah…! They’re wearing some sort of… uh… animal mask on his face? Can’t really tell the details.”

“What?!” Natsu and the others exclaimed all at once in both surprise and shock.

Lakshman turned his attention towards the horizon and muttered, “Zooming Force.”

In an instant, his vision zoomed forward, and he focused his attention to make his sight move towards the hill. Sure enough, when his zoomed sight focused on the place that William pointed at, he found a figure crouching behind the hill. Like William had described, the man wearing a full body cloak that seemed to blend into the environment and was wearing an animal mask that he did not recognize, a clear indication that the man was up to no good.

“Elemental Sight!”

With that mutter, his eyesight changed to gray and showed that the same masked and cloaked person was filled with red color. Red meant enemy, which meant that this person had hostility towards them.

“Yeah. There’s someone there alright, and he’s cloaked while wearing a mask,” he informed the others, who turned to look at him in surprise. “I can also tell that guy’s an enemy, but— oh no!”

He broke away in mid-sentence as he saw the enemy pull something hidden inside his cloak and produced it, which he did not recognize. It had a long barrel as if it was some kind of miniature mobile cannon that they carry in their pockets. He watched in amazement as the masked assailant seemed to load something into the miniature mobile cannon and took aim at them before seemingly pulling some kind of trigger located underneath the weapon.

“Look out!” Lakshman exclaimed in a loud voice.

At the same time, something was released from the miniature mobile cannon and as it flew towards them, they heard the whistling sound gradually increasing. Then, it smashed into the ground near them and caused a mighty explosion of wind that lifted the dust into the air and blasted them off their feet. They flew through the air for several seconds before crash landing, with the dust falling on top of them.

Timed appeared to momentarily stop as everyone lay in a daze, unsure of what just happened when another explosion occurred, followed soon by a violent blast of dust and wind. This time, it was aimed at the other officers, and they were mercilessly throw into the air before they too crashed several meters away.

“W-What just… happened…?” Bolten asked, slowly rising to his feet while sporting a few bruises from the crash.

He was not the only one injured, every one of them were sporting bruises and cuts in various places from the fall. While they came to terms with their sudden situation, another explosion occurred followed by another wave of wind that blasted them further away. The impact of it all was causing them to have difficulty breathing while serious damage to their bodies.

“D-Damn that person!” William exclaimed, who was the first to get up this time and summon his Hero Weapon, the Bow and a pack of arrows.

“Going to take a snipping position on us, will they? Well, I don’t agree with it!” Maxwell said, summoning long weapon that is called a Sniper riffle.

William focused his sight on the position that person was at, knocked an arrow to the bow, pulled the string back and released it. The arrow soared away at high speed and soared straight towards the person, who quickly got out of the way at the last second upon discovering that he had been seen. Thinking of escaping, he turned but Maxwell did not give him the chance.

Unable to locate where the enemy was despite using the professional telescopic lens of his snipper riffle, Maxwell watched William knock his arrow and fire it in a direction. Deciding to use it as a pin pointing mechanism, he followed the arrow through the telescopic lens and watched it land at a certain spot, which allowed him to see the movement that the enemy made in trying to escape the arrow.

“I have you now!” Maxwell said in a deadly voice, and he pressed the trigger while aiming for the man’s right shoulder.

There was a bang from his gun as a bullet was unleashed with incredible force, which flew through the air at an incredible speed and pierced into the person’s right back shoulder. The assailant let out a scream in fear from the intense pain he had never felt before and quickly fell down, fearing that more of those would be aimed at him. He was right because Maxwell continued to unleash a barrage of bullets at the relative spot the man was crouching under.

“Alright! My turn!” Vikram said excitedly.

He was already wearing his Hero Weapon, which were the running shoes, and he summoned the headphones before putting them over his ears. Then, he charged towards the enemy at super speed, almost the speed at which he was able to travel together with the bullets that Maxwell was firing from his gun.

“This is awesomeness on a whole new level!” The Sonic Hero exclaimed, brimming with excitement as he ran towards the enemy.

Their assailant, who had seemingly sensed rather than heard something, moved to the side and glanced over the hill. To his shock, he saw one of the heroes charging towards him at a speed that made it inhumane to achieve. Fearing for his life, the man decided to throw caution to the wind and jumped to his feat before aiming two of his weapons at them.

“Die, invaders of our planet!” The man shouted and began firing his barrage of explosive bullets at them.

“Take cover!” Maxwell shouted, ducking down while everyone else also tried taking shelter behind vehicles or what little cover that was offered, but there was not much in the open space that they were at as the explosive bullets rained on them.

That was when Martin activated his Hero Weapon, a gauntlet and took aim at the incoming bullets and activated his powers. He had followed Natsu’s advice of how their powers are related to the name of their heroic titles and the effective weapon given to each of them. Considering his was a gauntlet, he realized he was able to control and manipulate metal to some extent, and he now focused on doing exactly that in an attempt to stop the shower of bullets.

The bullets slowed down considerably, but they still continued flying towards them while carrying with them an intense force of power. Martin gritted his teeth and exerted his strength, trying his hardest to make them stop, but his nervousness was also working against him. With his concentration wavering, he could not completely achieve what he had set out to do but it did give Natsh to act.

Aiming his hand at the slowing down bullets, the Zeklock Hero and visualized their disappearance. As he did, a powerful surge of power was unleashed from him and it soared forward, consuming the bullets and making them vanish on the spot.

With his success, he breathed a sigh and said to Martin, “That was an excellent effort, Martin!”

Martin, who was breathing a little quickly, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sorry. I should’ve done more, but—!”

“Don’t treat it as a failure!” Natsu said sharply, startling Maritn into going silent and looking at him in awe. “You managed to use your powers without problem and even managed to slow them down! If you hadn’t been able to do even that, we would’ve been in serious trouble! So, thank you, Martin, for saving us!”

“Yeah! Thanks, Martin!” Maxwell said, getting to his feet.

“True that! Thank you, Martin!” Fred said with a smile on his face.

“Yes. That’s an excellent show of powers, Martin,” commented Lakshman with a smile.

With each of them thanking him, Martin blushed a little in embarrassment and said, “I-It was nothing.” Then he remembered that the enemy was still there and said, “It’s still not over,” and they all turned to watch Vikram racing towards their enemy.

“Whoa?!” Vikram exclaimed, coming to a forceful stop and leaping to the side as the bullets smashed near him and released a violent blast of wind and energy. “This guy’s gone insane, but he’s stupid to think this’ll stop me!”

He began diverting his steps each and every time a blast was headed his way, causing the assailant to become confused. On top of that, Vikram began shouting his gloating in an audible voice so that the attacker could hear him.

“Dodged it! Dodged it! Woah! Dodged that one too! Haha! Can’t hit me! Can’t touch me if you suck! Fail! You fail! Coward! Loser! L-O-S-E-R!!”

He was practically calling the assailant names in such a gloating way, it made the attacker become very mad. Because of losing his focus on escaping, the attacker stood his positioned and became determined to take down this man from another world that was taunting him and looking down on him.

“Damn you! Die!” The man shouted, firing his bullets wherever the enemy appeared with the inhumane speed that he was moving at.

It took Vikram several seconds to make his way to the attacker while successfully dodging the bullets and evading the blasts. As he reached him, Vikram dodged him and kicked the guns from out of his hands, sending them flying away. This startled the assailant, but he had nerves of steel because he coolly brought out another weapon hidden inside his cloak and aimed it directly at Vikram, who had lowered himself to punch him in the face.

Time seemed to momentarily stop as Vikram, an expression of wild excitement on his face, faced off against the barrel of a gun pointing straight at his face. Then it came all resumed as the man pulled the trigger and unleashed it directly at the Sonic Hero’s face, who was seemingly hit by the blast that released a powerful explosion of wind and dust that sent the assailant flying backwards.

A few seconds later, the man picked himself off the ground while muttering, “Damn. Firing at that close range, I could’ve been killed!” Then he saw the destruction he had caused and smiled in triumph while saying, “Oh well! It was worth it to beat that arrogant mongrel!”

“Who’re you calling an arrogant mongrel? Ah?!” Asked a voice from out of the smoke.

The dust slowly parted way to show a man standing firmly towards them, and the assailant was shocked to see that it was Vikram. There was blood dripping from the top of his forehead where he was bleeding from, however, he appeared to be quite fine considering he had taken the full brunt of the explosive force of the assailant’s bullets with his face.

“H-H-How did you…? How the heck did you… survive that?!” The assailant exclaimed, widening his eyes in shock at the man standing before him when he should have been dead. “That was right in your face! Just… Just how?!”

“How, you ask?” Vikram asked back, his eyes flashing dangerously and caused the man to withdraw in fear. Then the Sonic Hero jabbed himself with his finger and said, “Because I’m a man, you goddamn fool!”

His voice contained both strength and arrogance, but it also was filled with a dead threat for his enemy. Recognizing the threat before him, the assailant aimed his gun at Vikram, but the Sonic Hero did not give him another opportunity to fire it. Using his incredible power of speed, Vikram charged at the man and unleashed his fist directly against the gun, smashing it in the process and punching the man squarely in the chest.

The impact knocked the man out cold even before he was sent flying away for several meters before coming to a crashing stop. Seeing the result and being satisfied with it, Vikram straightened up while letting out a deep sigh.

“When I’m the kind of enemy you’re up against, you better make sure you don’t miss!” Vikram said, rubbing his hand through his hair with a cool smile on his face.

***

“Nice work, Vikram,” said Bolten, smiling serenely at the Sonic Hero, who had hurried back to them with the enemy.

“Heh. Part of the job,” replied Vikram, dropping the unconscious assailant on the ground non-too gently. “How’re the rest of you?”

“We’re fine thanks to Lakshman’s healing,” replied the prince, gesturing towards where the Solaris Hero was applying the healing magic spell known as Restoration. “You better get healed as well considering that wound on your head.”

“On it!” Vikram replied, smiling and leaving towards Lakshman.

Upon arriving and seeing Lakshman being busy with healing the heroes, the women, and the officers, he took notice that Ward was sitting to the side and flitting through his Hero Weapon, the Magic Book.

“Hey, Ward!” Vikram said in greeting, but Ward did not look up or appear as if he heard him. Confused, Vikram tentatively asked, “Um… Hello? Ward?”

“What is it?” Ward asked telepathically, still not looking at him as he riffled through the pages of his book.

“Um… What are you doing?”

“I am in the process of searching for the magic spell that Lakshman is currently using to heal our injuries,” replied Ward telepathically.

“What?” Vikram asked, raising an eyebrow in puzzlement. “Why?”

“My book contains details on all known spells, their background, their history, and their uses, so I was hoping to know mode details about it if it exists in the book.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Vikram exclaimed, shocked at what he was hearing. “Who cares about any of that? Ha?! Who?! Most people just straight up use the spells instead of thinking too much about it!”

“That’s thoughtless of them!” Ward replied telepathically in a sharp voice. “They become careless and are incapable of using spells to their fullest!”

Vikram was astounded, but he kept his silence because he realized that no matter what he said would convince the Walmeky Hero. Instead, he sighed and turned just as Lakshman beckoned him, and he moved off to be healed. While they were busily being healed by the Solaris Hero, Bolten, and Bernard were searching though the clothes of their unconscious attacker for any information regarding who he was, or what organization he belonged to.

“Oh!” Bernard said in triumph, and he moved the attacker’s arm slightly to reveal a tattoo embellished on the man’s skin. “Well, well, well…! It’s them again, prince.”

“Yes,” muttered Bolten in reply, eying the unconscious man with a cold look on his face. “The Raven’s Guild.”