Even if Baron was outnumbered and outgunned more than ten to one, it was not the end of the road for him. This, he could be absolutely certain about. The training that he had undergone for the past few decades would not go to waste as Baron had trained specifically for unfavorable situations the most. As the pilots from both sides were engaged with each other, Baron was busy in his own plane concocting a plan for his army to come out victorious. The first thing that needed to be done was to make the situation that they were in became favorable to them and not to the enemy.

That’s why Baron had all of his front-line pilots to disengage with the enemies for the time being and split up into 4 different groups each heading towards a cardinal direction. Baron would be with the group that headed North, towards Guan Yu and Yue Fei. He also made it painfully clear to his enemies that he was in this group as his ship, which was the biggest out of his squadrons, led the front.

There were a few actions that their enemies could take in order to continue their mission. The first would be to split up their squads to hunt down the pilots who turned tail and flew away. Another way would be to take the entire force to pursue Baron and him only. Lastly, they could choose to do any combination in between. They chose to split up into four and pursue all groups that fled. This was exactly what Baron had wished his opponents would do.

Baron looked up into the sky from his aircraft and figured out that it would be a few hours until the rain would come down hard. In fact, it was lightly drizzling already, but to get it to the force that Baron hoped for would be a while. The squad that turned to the North was not heading this direction aimlessly as the others had been, rather, it was so that he could assist Guan Yu. He had received a distress signal from Guan Yu while his pilots were still engaged with the enemy before they split.

Therefore, Baron made haste and got to Guan Yu’s position within the hour and flanked the enemy squads and dealt some serious damage in just a few minutes. They were able to achieve this as the enemy was completely oblivious as to their close proximity and realized too late. However, the group that Baron had brought with him was fast on his tail and caught up with him in no time flat. Just before Baron’s squad was about to be in firing range of the enemy chasing them, the other squads under Baron showed up one by one and dealt with both enemies quite swiftly and devastatingly in the next few hours.

This was ultimately one of Baron’s genius plans that he had developed for this exact situation. First, he would give his enemies the impression that he was retreating with haste and thus lure the enemy into thinking that they were running away with no plan whatsoever. Their foes would take this as an opportunity to wipe out all of his forces in one go and would, therefore, split up their pilots accordingly and give chase to all 4 groups. While Baron would go and assist an ally, the other 3 groups would ditch their pursuers and circle around to get back to Baron’s position as fast as they could. The simulations for this maneuver were quite successful, but would really only work once on any one enemy.

That being said, this particular plan hinged on a few factors that would mean failure and the deaths of many were they to not come to fruition. First, the planes in Baron’s arsenal needed to be able to be much, much faster than anything their foes would have so that they would be able to ditch them in the first place. Second, it would require that the pilots in command of the different squads have impeccable timing so that they would all show up around the same time and flank the enemy and deal massive amounts of damage. Too slow and the enemy would be ready for them, too fast and the pursuers would be able to catch up with them via help from distress signals or something similar that would forfeit their position to their opponents.

It was a nail-biting experience for sure as neither Baron nor any of the other squad captains would be able to contact each other for fear of the enemy being able to intercept their messages. It was certainly an unlikely possibility considering the capabilities of their foes, but it was better to be careful. Anyhow, the plan worked and now Guan Yu was free to do as he like. As for Baron, he had to go and deal with the other 3 groups for fear of them heading straight to the capital base and ruin the surprise earlier than he would have liked. Guan Yu went to go back up Yue Fei while Baron left in the South direction to clean up the others.

There was one thing that Baron did not consider. It was that within the group of pursuers that followed him to the North, it did not seem as if there was anyone really capable of commanding the troops. Of course, there was that one that was already there taking on Guan Yu, but there should have been at least one capable leader within the army that Baron went to go intercept. Did that mean that the strategist that he fought with briefly was not someone of high caliber as he had originally thought? No that couldn’t be it. It must be something that he missed. Where could this person be?

Baron took his squads and had them scan a couple of areas where it was possible for them to hide, but that did not work and Baron was starting to get paranoid as to what it was exactly they were planning, and where they were.