0613 April 8th, 2020 CE

0606 Sun 8th, 196 AE

Frontline

“Centurion 2-3. This is Centurion 2-1. Pull back. Centurion 2-4, move in front of Centurion 2-3. Out.”

“Copy that.”

“Wilco.”>>>

Destroyed tanks littered the four-way intersection that was ahead. A medium tank and a couple of light tanks were still shooting at the four Abrams. They had taken out waves upon waves of tanks but it seemed endless. After dispatching the remaining elf tanks, only the sound of the burning elf tanks remained. They waited a few seconds.

<<<“Is that the final wave?”

“That seems to be the final one.”

“Ok, Centurion 2, push forward!”>>>

As they went forward, they stopped when they came upon another four Abrams. They were shooting down the road.

<<<“This is Centurion 2-1. Please identify. We are currently behind you. Over”

“This is Centurion 1-1. What took you forever. We had to divert our attention because of you slow pokes.”

“Too many fucking tanks. Centurion 2-3 got their gun taken out by these fucking bastards.”

“I think we are mopping up the last of them. I don’t see any more tanks up ahead.”>>>

After a few minutes, Centurion 1’s shooting died down.

<<<“Why haven’t you sent Centurion 2-3 back?”

“They are safer with us. Who knows when these pesky elves will show up behind us.”

“Well, we will be going back to support our infantry squads now. Centurion 1 out.”

“Good luck out there.”>>>

Centurion 1 pulled out of their street.

A few streets away

“Enemy tank!”

An elven medium tank appeared on the road. A TOW missile flew out of the box that was attached on the left side of the Bradley’s turret. It impacted the elven tank.

Another elven medium tank appeared. It came to a stop and it’s turret started traversing toward the Bradley. The Bradley’s 25mm M242 Chain Gun opened up. Loaded with the M919 APFSDS-T, it easily knocked the elven tank out with a few hits.

A few minutes later

“Seems like they’re running.”

Issac peeked around the corner of a building. A few elves were covering the rest of the elves’ retreat. Their Bradley laid down lead on the elves. Suddenly, a massive explosion hit the poor elves' positions.

“Well, now they fucking show up.”

After the sounds of battle died down, Staff Sergeant James ran up to the forwardmost Abrams.

“Where the fuck were you guys when we needed you.”

The person who had his upper body out of the hatch on top of the Abrams yelled down.

“We had to deal with a horde of elf tanks, mind you. If we didn’t, you guys would have been cut off and overrun in no time.”

Captain John Rose listened to the reports from his subordinates.

“The elves are retreating on all fronts in the town.”

“Good work. Secure the rest of the town.”

Less than 30 minutes later

“Elven counterattack!”

“Shit! They’re back already?! Didn’t they just run away?”

“They got fresh troops, it seems.”

“Fucking hell. Who we fighting? The goddamn Soviet Union?”

“Seems like it son. Seems like it.”

“Where’s our goddamn air support?”

“The Navy should have gotten to their positions about an hour ago.”

“They skedaddled.”

“Whaddya mean Sarge?”

“Elves had too large of a fleet to deal with.”

0630 April 8th, 2020 CE

0615 Sun 8th, 196 AE

Ocean many miles south of the Magus Imperium

5 Virginia-class and 2 Los Angeles-class submarines of Submarine Squadron 1 were quietly moving deep in the sea.

“Seems like the entire elf fleet ran with their tail behind their back all the way to their home.”

The speed of the Virginia-class and Los Angeles-class submarines were much slower than surface ships when submerged so they had trailed behind the main fleet. Now that the main fleet turned back, they continued.

“Our goal is to sink as many of their ships as we can. The focus is on their aircraft carriers though. It shouldn’t be long before they come back. In the meantime, we can blow up a couple of their transport ships to get them out.”

“Let’s get them then!”

“We still have to be cautious. We are expecting their submarine fleet to number in the hundreds. Even with our stealth, if we accidentally run into their patrol net, there’s going to be a fight.

“Couldn’t we have deployed the entire submarine fleet to deal with them?”

“Even if we did, the ocean is huge. We have only around 50 attack submarines. We are gonna expect some casualties if we tried to deal with the elves head-on. I tell ya, one Los Angeles-class submarine is worth a few hundred of the elf’s submarines.”

“We have the technological edge. There is absolutely no way that the elves can sink one.”

“Don’t be too overconfident. When something goes wrong, we are going to lose one. Trust me, something always goes wrong. It would look shit in the press when it does. Think about it. World War Two submarine sinks America’s modern submarine. Someones gonna get sacked if that happens.”

0657 April 8th, 2020 CE

0629 Sun 8th, 196 AE

Frontline

The Centurion 1-3’s main gun went off. It took out the Elven Tiger tank that was approaching. A flood of elven infantry and tanks were coming towards the town.

<<<“It’s a massive counterattack on the entire front.”

“Seems like their reinforcements got here.”

“We have most of the front covered. The Magusians are plugging the holes but I don’t think they can hold.”>>>

Ocean many miles south of the Magus Imperium

Submarine Squadron 1 continued to silently swim through the water of the ocean. There were four groups of elf submarines nearby.

“We are passing right under one of the submarine squadrons.”

“Can’t we just shoot them out the ocean?”

“When we are on the route back. I already don’t have a good feeling about this. Once we sink a few of their large ships, their gonna have their entire submarine fleet looking for us.”

“Eh, we can swim under them.”

“Hopefully they don’t have any weird magic shit that lets them detect us.”

“Well, seeing that we are currently under one, I’m betting they don’t.”

30 minutes later

Frontline

The lines held against the elven counterattack. The Magusians fought bravely and with support from a couple of Abrams, their areas held.

“We are stopping our advance and holding this area. There are millions of elves and thousands of their tanks swarming a few miles from us. It will be a death trap if we charge in. Reinforcements will be arriving soon.”

1322 April 8th, 2020 CE

Washington D.C.

“Ok, so the deal with the Magusians went through. We will be giving them the blueprints for M4 Shermans and P-51 Mustangs. They will be supplying us with most of the products that we are not able to produce domestically or get from the Northern Frontier.”

Secretary of State Katerina Clifford still remembers the meeting she had with Emperor Arstant. The footage for the Shermans and Mustangs were perfect since they were shown defeating weapons that were similar to the ones that the elves had.

“That sounds perfect.”

“Now Mr. President, onto the issue of democratization that you wanted to talk about.”

“Yes. I’m not seeing any progress with the Bem Kingdom and Mach Imperium. Can you explain that?”

“We’re in a completely new world and from what we know, no country in this world has tried any form of democratic government. We don’t know if the people will even accept a democracy. We don’t want something like the Middle East happening again here. From my plan, we are going ahead with a different approach to democratization. We gave the Iraqis freedom too quickly. It didn’t take long for it to go to shit. This time I’m suggesting we take it slowly and don’t force it on them.”

“Yeah, but the problem in the Middle East was because there were religious differences there.”

“Look, Mr. President, we aren’t going to come into this world and flip everything upside down. We aren’t exactly ‘crusaders for democracy’. We know even less about the people of this world than we do about the Iraqis. And look how well we did with our efforts to promote democracy in Iraq. 16 years and trillions of dollars yet we still face seemingly never-ending insurgencies.”

“I understand that but some from the press have started to question the lack of democratization.”

“Mr. President, we made deals with authoritarian governments on a daily basis when we were on Earth. We even have a history of propping up and supporting authoritarian governments that were beneficial to us.The media didn’t care when we made deals with the Saudis. You should know well that people complain more about our wars against terror in the Middle East than they do about our deals with dictators.”

“Then what should we tell the press then?”

“We will tell the press we are taking steps. This is completely true. We are improving the infrastructure and technology in the countries we have occupied. In addition, we will emphasize that we are being extra careful not to repeat the mistakes that we made in the Middle East.”

4 days later

Naval Station Norfolk

James leaned on the fence. Directly behind him was the ocean.

“We just returned to restock our missiles.”

“I heard what happened. How did the elves beat you guys back.”

“They got crafty.”

He was talking to Seaman Jay Duncan. They had been best friends since high school. Both of them had joined the Navy at about the same time.

“Seems like my ship will be going with you guys for this.”

“Aren’t we already stretched extremely thin?”

“I don’t think there's anything for us to worry about, the only enemies we have now are these elves.”

Whilst talking, James stared back into the ocean at a white-colored ship. It was a Legend-class cutter (also known as the National Security Cutter), one of the largest active patrol cutters in the US Coast Guard. Even though it was a Coast Guard ship, it seemed like something that the Navy would have.”

“Say, why is the Coast Guard here?”

“I think there was an incident of some sorts with a fishing ship. They probably caught too big of a fish or something.”

James chuckled.

“Don’t laugh at that. I’m not kidding. There are some unique fish here. It’s a world of magic, I won’t be surprised if a kraken actually exists.”

“That big of a ship for a small fishing incident?”

“No, I think it was a factory ship. Ya know, those huge ass ships used for fishing. We are using more of them because of the fact we can’t import such large amounts of fish like we did on Earth.”

“Must be a serious incident if they called out that big of a Coast Guard ship.”

“I think I heard that it went down. They are going on search and rescue.”

“Hm.”