"Sir, it seems that the Bloodline group has purposely sent their absolute strongest fighters out individually to act as a series of heavy distractions, or perhaps to systematically stop us floor by floor," one of the towering men in the lab coats stated, his mechanical exoskeleton whirring as they left the ruined showroom behind.
It wasn’t just him, though; the rest of the elite guards had all clinically come to the exact same tactical conclusion. It was glaringly obvious. It was almost as if the regular defenders had been strictly told not to engage with the command group, deliberately leaving the path clear for these isolated, super-powered duels.
"I feel the exact same way," Ramon replied coldly, not even breaking his confident stride as he adjusted his cuffs. "But it honestly doesn’t matter. The end result is exactly the same either way. I will simply step over their corpses and drag that damned chairman out of his office myself."
Up in the security room, Vivian was brilliantly playing directly on their deeply ingrained Syndicate arrogance.
The brutal tactical truth was that if Ramon and his elite guards had actually swallowed their pride and stuck completely together to take on Na in the showroom, or teamed up against Stephen at the front barricades, their combined, overwhelming mechanical power would have easily been able to deal with the Rangers and quickly move on.
Yet, Ramon was arrogantly rushing things. He firmly believed that his individual exoskeleton operatives were fundamentally stronger than any Altered or martial artist the Bloodline had to offer. Which was exactly why he continued to carelessly leave his men behind in one-on-one duels so he could continue his direct ascent to the top.
Although Vivian had confidently set this trap, she had also meticulously come up with backup situations and worst-case scenarios to try and stop the command group if they did attempt to stick together and attack the Rangers all at once. She had pinpointed exactly where each of the Rangers should tactically try and engage from, and then provided secure fallback routes for them to reach the heavy fire doors and retreat before the others could surround them.
This contingency plan was exactly why the absolute last stop on Vivian’s defensive list was the training arena on the upper floors. Just in case things didn’t go exactly as planned and the Syndicate attacked as a unified front, eventually, it would all be forced to end up in one , apocalyptic clash in the arena: all of the Rangers standing together against Ramon, Darius, and the surviving heavy hitters.
However, things were currently going perfectly to her original plan. It looked like Ramon was most likely going to confidently continue dividing his forces exactly that way. Vivian’s read on his ego was flawlessly right.
When Ramon’s shrinking command group made it up to the next designated area, they aggressively entered the Fortis gaming and recreation room. And this was exactly where Darno was firmly holding the line.
"This is getting incredibly frustrating!" Darno yelled, his voice booming over the chaos of the room.
He lifted his heavy leg and delivered a devastating, blunt-force kick right to the neck of one charging Gilt Rat thug. The sheer impact sent the man flying horizontally into another armed intruder, toppling them both over into a pile of shattered arcade cabinets.
As another brave street fighter came charging blindly toward him with a brass-knuckled punch, Darno effortlessly swatted their hand away like a fly. Without missing a beat, Darno lunged forward and brutally headbutted the man square in the forehead. A sickening crunch echoed through the room, and a physical indentation could be seen in the thug’s skull as he dropped completely lifeless to the floor.
"Ah... another troublesome one," Ramon sighed, pausing at the entrance of the ruined rec room. He didn’t even look at the dead men on the floor; his eyes were solely fixed on the Ranger. "One of you stay behind and deal with him permanently. And when you’re completely done, meet us at the top floor. I imagine the vast majority of their remaining defenses will be heavily guarding the chairman’s suite."
This was yet another , fatal prediction that Ramon was making that was entirely wrong. It was to be expected, since it was the standard, logical reaction for a normal corporate security group to act this way—huddling all their best assets around the boss.
Yet, the elite fighters from the Billion Bloodline group were tactically and equally split across the middle floors, specifically designed to do as much catastrophic attrition damage to the invading army as physically possible before they ever reached Max.
Following Ramon’s orders, one of the towering lab coat members confidently stepped out from the group. Trusting absolutely in the hydraulic power of his state-of-the-art exoskeleton, he closed the distance. When he was intimately close to Darno, the mechanical servos whined loudly, and he threw out a devastating, steel-reinforced fist coming in hot from the side.
Darno simply planted his boots into the carpet. He lifted up his thick arms, holding them firmly in a cross-guard slightly above his head, and bent his knees to absorb the kinetic shock.
CLANG!
As the mechanical fist collided with Darno’s forearms, the heavy impact echoed like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil. But Darno’s arms stayed perfectly, immovably in place. He didn’t even slide an inch.
"What the heck...? Is my exoskeleton malfunctioning?!" the enforcer in the lab coat gasped, his eyes wide with absolute disbelief beneath his visor. He looked at his hydraulic fist, then back to the Ranger. "That punch should have cleanly snapped both of your arms in half!"
"I’m really sorry to break it to you, pal," Darno said, a bloody, exhausted grin crossing his face as he effortlessly flicked the heavy mechanical arm away. "But my bones are just a little bit denser than the others!"
Darno instantly went to launch a heavy counter-strike aimed at the man’s chest, but the lab coat, relying on the suit’s automated reflexes, managed to swat the strike away at the exact same time. The two titans locked into a brutal stalemate.
’Man, why isn’t it ever just easy?’ Darno thought to himself, trading heavy, bone-rattling blows with the machine. ’You know, I clearly remember the boring days back when I first joined the Fortis group. I was desperately wishing for some real action nearly every single day. And now that it finally comes to our front door... I’m honestly just wishing I could sit down and relax for a bit.’
As Ramon carelessly left his elite guard behind to fight Darno, he continued his relentless march up the stairs with Darius and the remaining lab coats. He was perfectly content shedding his men one by one as they inevitably met the rest of the Rangers waiting in the shadows.
"Let them bleed," Ramon said coldly, looking up the dark stairwell toward the executive floors. "I’m taking absolutely everything in this building for myself."