Hunter, Sydney, Ishani, Diana, Maxine, Ai, Aislinn, Luciana, and Sypha sat around a long table listening as Camille gave a quick brief on the mission.
"Our mission is pretty simple, These are the gems of infinity, they are forty in number." An image of a gem of infinity appeared on the screen behind her. "Our enemies want them so we're going to try and get them before they do. We've already confirmed the location of two."
Hunter felt drawn by the picture behind the nymph, he stared at the image unable to figure out why he felt weird about it. 'This gem looks awfully familiar,' he thought.
[Don't think about it too much.]
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•West Lionwell, United Republics.
Some random jewelry store.
(Semper Stones)
The sound of siren blares through the street as the cops surround the building. The store's security alarm had gone off when someone broke into the store through the front door.
A truck arrived at the scene and the task force unit jumped out through the back. "What am I looking at?" The leader of the task force asked.
"Seems to be a heist but the perpetrators just straight up broke in through the front door," one of the cops replied.
"Any hostages?"
"The security guards from that supermarket tried to help but haven't been heard from since they went in," he explained.
"How many were they?"
"Five."
"I see. What about the perpetrators?"
"Unknown."
The leader of the task force nodded and turned to address his unit. "This seems to be a heist turned hostage situation. Five hostages, most likely injured; perpetrator number is unknown."
"Got it!"
"Let's go!" The unit moved towards the store carefully, they were wearing tactical gear and equipped with long-barrel guns. The leader of the task force unit does a hand signal to his men and they split into three groups before they all rushed into the store.
They moved through the store in search of the perpetrators and hostages. The first group moved into the restroom area and returned shouting: "cleared!"
The second group moved to a different room and returned shouting the same word. The captain and his team found nothing out of the ordinary room in the main room too. When all three groups reunited, they began for the upper deck after receiving signals from their captain.
Their path to the upper deck was painted with blood and flesh, whomever it belonged to must have suffered a very gruesome death.
When they got to the top floor, they found that the rooms had no lights. The men put on their thermal glasses and tread lightly. The Captain noticed two bodies on the ground but it's the bright red not too far away that draws his attention.
He signals to his men and points at the spot so they start towards it. When they got there, their brains couldn't believe what their eyes were seeing.
In front of them was a very tall being. Not human. He had long horns like that of an addax, no jaws, and his mouth looked to extend well into his neck. His body looked like several bones tangled up with each other and in the middle was a bright red object that made his inside glow red. From his back were several spikes or thorns and his legs were long and resembled that of a canine forelimb. He also had a long wolf-like tail.
They didn't know who or what that was but it struck the fear of God into their hearts.
The being was Sephratis, unmistakable in nature or stature.
He turned towards them and in a state of panic, one member of the unit opened fire, the others soon followed suit. The captain didn't move, he remained in the same position paralyzed with fear.
The bullets did nothing but annoy the first conjurer and when he started towards them, they didn't breathe for much longer.
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Skylar and an agent of Alpha Sector, Wade Barnes, parked their car several blocks away from the scene before walking the remaining distance on foot.
When they got there, they found several men wearing combat gear and armed with either an XM7 rifle or an M4 carbine stationed at different spots on the scene. After a brief search, they found Olivia instructing some Laundry agents.
The two Alpha Sector agents approached the dark-blonde woman who dismissed the agents she was talking to and turned her full attention to the approaching duo. "How bad is it?" Skylar asked the Bureau's chief.
Olivia sighed. "Very. This is just damage control at this point," she stated.
"What happened?"
"There was a break-in and the first reports didn't mention anything weird about it so the first responders went in blind. Our satellite didn't pick up any unusual change in energy either so no Bureau agency reacted. The first responders were killed along with some security guards who came down to help, and the local police reported it as a hostage situation - again, no Bureau agency acted. Reinforcements arrived but the perp killed them too before jumping out through the window and massacring the local police here and even the bystanders. Our satellite still didn't pick up any anomaly in the area so the Republic's Regional Guard arrived at the scene first. To top it all, this is a densely populated area and some people were live streaming; there are numerous videos all over social media."
"That's bad."
"That's not all. The Regional Guard aren't cooperating. They've grabbed the body cam from the corpses and have refused to let anyone into the store. The Laundry are checking to see if there's anything the Regional Guard missed but I doubt they'll find anything; we were a good eight hours late."
"Damn!" Wade exclaimed. "How did the satellite miss something as huge as this?"
"The satellite only alerts us if there's a change in energy so that means the perp used no energy at all. The thing is even if we were notified about the crime we'll assume it's a non-mystic issue because energy didn't rise or drop significantly," she explained.
"I'm gonna try to see if I can convince the Guards to let me inside," Wade said as he made his way toward the store.
Skylar watched as the brown-haired man walked towards the store. When he was out of earshot, she turned to Olivia. "You'll have to fire a few Bureau agents or at least suspend them," said the aqua blue-eyed woman.
"I know. It's the same guy," the dark blonde woman said.
"What?"
"River Pot. This is the same guy."
"This isn't just bad then, it's catastrophic," said Skylar.
"I know this Collector guy was your case but I'd prefer if the Alpha Sector focused on the covert crises."
"If it's truly the same guy then I d --" Skylar went quiet when she heard footsteps approaching them. She turned to see Jade and Leah.
The pale-skinned woman gave the aqua-blue-haired woman a silent nod before turning to address the Drumalak. "We've asked several social networks to take down the videos so it'll be nonexistent by the turn of the hour. News websites and channels have been given an alternate report to publish on what happened here. As for the demon, we'll need to access the store to figure out what attracted him there and so we can track him down,"
"Thank you, Jade," Olivia sighs. "But I'm afraid the store is inaccessible, you'll have to --" Once again, a sentence is cut short as the group picks up on the sound of boots hitting the ground.
Turning around, they found an attractive, very light-skinned woman of average height. She had long gray hair that she wore in two knotted rings with ribbons entwined in them and squared bangs that had cheek-length locks on either side. Her eyes were blue and she had matching blue lipstick and blue painted nails. The attractive woman was wearing a black blazer and black trousers. "I assume you guys are with the Bureau," she said. "Care to explain what happened here?"
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