Unit Seventeen

Unit Seventeen 1 Regrouping

"Clip!" shouted Sari Blake as her rifle cycled empty.

"Last one!" replied Donavan Shinagawa as he tossed her the clip and wove a rune that fired a bolt of energy from his hands down the street.

Blake dropped the empty clip from her rifle, jammed the new one in place, and pulled the charging handle. It was times like this, she thought, that she envied Shinagawa's ability to do magic. She popped around the side of the K-Rail she was using for cover and fired a burst at the advancing earth elemental. The cold iron slugs slammed into the hide of the rhino-like elemental and caused it to stagger for a moment as they pierced its hide and caused magma-like fluids to pour from the wounds.

Blake, Shinagawa, and three others had been dispatched by the Birmingham Special Response Team, Magic Police Division, to deal with the eruption of elementals in the wake of the giant creature that was laying waste to the northern city. That was three days ago, and they were the only two remaining as their squad mates had been killed by elementals and she felt that very soon she and Shinagawa would join them in death.

That's when the shadow of another elemental the size of a mountain came out of a nearby stadium and advanced on the monster. "Great, another one!" The rhino-like elemental slammed into the K-Rail and spasmed as Shinagawa finished it off with a stroke of lightning.

"No! This one's different!" he said as the new creature began attacking the first monster. It grabbed the monster and ripped it in two, but instead of two halves of a creature, there were two independent beings Slightly smaller but still enormous. There was a great rumbling in the air as the now three creatures spoke in elemental speech.

"What are they saying, Shiny?" she asked as she swept the area for potential threats. The elementals in the area were suddenly spasming and splitting in half, forming two where there was one. As they split there was a momentary pause and then they disappeared into thin air as they returned to the elemental planes.

"I can't make out most of it. Something about undoing or separating something, the mountain is ordering the others to go away or return somewhere, and the others are signaling compliance. My elemental sucks." He spoke as he peered around the edge of the wrecked vehicle, he had been taking cover behind.

As they watched the street cleared of elementals, first one, and then another, and then in twos and threes, until the area was empty of hostile spirits and all that was left were the smoking remains of the battle.

A burst of static played across Blake's radio, "Roebuck to all units, secure your positions and radio in your status."

Units began checking in on their separate frequencies, "Seventeen, this is Officer Blake, we've lost Sergeant Burkhart, and Officers Murphy, and Collins. Officer Shinagawa and I are dug in on Thirty-fourth Avenue, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets, the elementals are disappearing."

A minute passed, "Dispatch to seventeen, secure transport, and return to SRT headquarters for resupply and debriefing."

"Roger that, out." She said into the radio. "Shiny, will that car drive?" she said pointing to the vehicle he was behind.

He opened the driver's side door and turned the ignition key and the car sputtered and cranked but finally roared to life, "We're good to go!" he said.

They jumped in the car and drove slowly through the streets littered with broken concrete, burning cars, and dead bodies. It took them over an hour to cover the three miles to headquarters. When they finally arrived, there was a motley assembly of barely running vehicles and a group of battered police officers in torn and stained uniforms. Others continued to trickle in after them by ones and twos. By the time all the SRT had assembled they were nineteen members short, they were either out of contact, missing, or presumed dead.