If you want to help me financially, you can do it on https://www.patreon.com/NeverluckySMILE
Once again Director Fury of SHIELD found himself doing the one aspect of his job that he most despised, dealing with idiots. The fact that this particular idiot wore the uniform of an Air Force general really did not help matters.
"Perhaps we have differences of opinion on what the word 'jurisdiction' means," he said bitingly, his tone scathing. "You were told over three months ago to cease and desist all attempts to follow, research, keep tabs on, or in any way have anything to do with the Big Guy. Now I find that not only have you kept trying to find Dr. Banner, but you nearly created an international incident!"
The man on the screen was an older gentleman with white hair kept in the military crew-cut, a white handlebar mustache and a very short clipped beard. Brigadier General 'Thunderbolt' Ross had cut his teeth in the Korean War as a colonel. He was well thought of in the American military, and he ran his command like a small fiefdom.
Despite this however, he was supposed to at least nominally be under the jurisdiction of the government and the Senate Military Oversight Committee. That Senate oversight committee had in point of fact ordered Ross to back off and let SHIELD handle the Big Guy from now on. Two of its members were in fact on the same shadowy committee that funded SHIELD.
Thunderbolt seemed to be completely impervious to this however. "That damn committee of politicos doesn't know anything! My men have the most training against it, we know the most about it, and it was our mishap in the first place that created it, so it's our damn duty to clean up after ourselves! You want to play jurisdictional games with something that can destroy a city as easily as that monster can!? Don't be a fucking idiot!"
Fury leaned forward a glaring with his one remaining into the pickup. "General, I'm not playing games. I am telling you the way the world is going to work from now on. From now on you will have no connection whatsoever to anything pertaining with the Big Guy. You haven't had any luck to indicate that you can handle it. And to be blunt your combative and confrontational attitude with the Big Guy merely adds to the issue. According to our reports Dr. Banner is just as keen on controlling himself and staying out of the way as you are to seemingly confront him. Not once has Dr. Banner transformed except in self-defense."
"On top of that there have been a lot of questions raised in certain circles about why exactly you are so keen on finding him. My agency is currently sitting on the news networks, but it's getting harder to keep them away from you and the very idea of trying to re-create the super soldier serum in today's political and social climate would see you at best publicly lambasted. At worst the government would be forced to dishonorably discharge you, possibly even arrest you."
"I won't be told my damned duty by some whippersnapper who thinks he's Nick Fury! I don't know how you fooled the others, but I'm not going to answer to some damn spook whose tried to take over his name!"
Fury shook his head. That issue had come up before. Ross refused to believe that Nick was who he said he was, and Fury he wasn't about to fight about it any longer. Especially since he thought that the general might be using it as an excuse. "General Ross you are a war hero, and as such I'm willing to cut you some slack. But I'm warning you, if you have anything further to do with the Big Guy or chasing him down, I will not hesitate to have you stopped, your entire unit disbanded, and your good name ruined." Unlike Thunderbolt's vitriol, Fury's voice was sharp and calculating like a scalpel.
Thunderbolt stared at him. This damn spook didn't understand, none of them did. The Hulk wasn't just one of the most dangerous monsters in the world; he represented the future of the American military. If they could figure out a way to give their soldiers the strength of the green behemoth, but keep them in control, then nothing would ever be able to threaten the American way of life ever again and they could do away with the need for independent superheroes like the Fantastic Four or the few others that had begun to make headlines lately. Hell with an army of super soldiers they wouldn't even have to fear the growing mutant menace. "You do what you have to sonny, and I'll continue to do my duty." With that Thunderbolt signed off.
Fury leaned back in his chair, growling angrily. It was times like these he missed being a regular field agent, or even the times back in World War II when he was with the Howling Commandoes no matter how dangerous it had been. Things were much simpler than, and there wasn't so much damn talking. And if a whippersnapper like Ross talked back to me I could have him put in solitary!
He looked over at another video playing on another screen, one hand on his forehead massaging his temples. On the screen was a long haired blond man battling it out with another creature that had some kind of scale armor covering it from head to toe, its head like a rectangular block, which seemed to glow yellow with an inner light. Of course this wasn't the first time Fury had seen video recordings of two super strong beings battling it out. The Thing and the Big Guy had had a few run-ins before Banner finally left the country, and the FF fights with their various foes had been recorded several times before. The fact they were duking it out right in the center of a town out in New Mexico, with people scrambling and running around in the background and police trying desperately to evacuate them, that was new.
Before this, the superpowered individuals in the world had been careful to keep the damage to civilians and the public at a bare minimum. The Fantastic Four went out of their way during their battles to make certain that they stayed out of cities if they could help it, and the few times that they couldn't, one battle with Dr. Doom for one, and with the Mole Man with for another, it was clearly not their fault, and they routinely offered resources and money to any repair effort after. Here however they had one at least nominally friendly individual fighting another completely unfriendly individual in the center of a town and laying waste to it entirely. The fact that the semi-friendly was a being out of Norse myth was just icing on the cake.
His agents in the area were doing their best, but it was obvious they were overmatched, yet there was nothing he could do about it from here. "First the Big Guy, now this and we're still getting up to speed, with nowhere near the coverage worldwide we need to really do the job SHIELD was created to do."
"Speaking of which," Fury looked up in one of his aides, a young woman with short cropped hair, who had been recommended to her position by the Black Widow who she had been training with after joining SHIELD. "What's going on in England?"
The young woman flipped through some papers he was holding, then found the right one and nodded. "No arrests have been made in the assault on STRIKE as yet, but the crown and MI5 seem to know who was behind it. They're waiting for something before taking action, but we don't know what."
Fury frowned. He had been heavily involved in Britain in World War II against the Nazi movement there, and had a lot of respect for William. The king was good people as far as he was concerned though his recent stance for pro-mutant rights had riled several other people including SHIELD's backers. To Fury however this was simply the king saying the rights of the individual should be respected, and at its heart that was what liberty truly meant to him. He knew William would be playing his cards close to his chest, but he wondered what resources were being brought to bear on this issue. "And we've offered to help them right? I know we're stretched thin, but we could at least send a few agents."
"We've offered, but we're in a holding pattern for now Sir. With STRIKE gone MI5 is the only agency we still have contact with, and their director doesn't particularly like foreign influences."
"What was his name again?"
"Jack Harper."
Fury paused going through his mental files, trying to figure out where he'd heard that name before and then nodded. "One of their Balkan agents during the Cold War, right? He's done well for himself then."
"Yes sir, as I said Harper's leery about foreign influences, but a staunch supporter of the crown as well. He seems to be a little over his head at the moment, but he's not asking for any aid."
Fury frowned. "Who do we have that's free?"
"We have Black Widow assigned to the Fantastic Four sir but they seem to have done one of their disappearing acts again. She's the most experienced agent technically free so we could reassign her but…"
"Do it, get her on the fastest jet over to England as you can. I want her there yesterday."
"Sir," his aide said hesitantly, "Natasha is still on the UK's most wanted list. Even if she is working for us now they remember her as a Russian spy during the Cold War."
Nick frowned but then shook his head. "Then tell her to be on her best behavior, I have a feeling something big is happening there, and we need eyes on the ground. Besides, as you said she's the best we've got available. Anything new on those kidnapped scientists?"
"No sir. We think we have a lead on one of them, a Brazilian who specialized in avionics, his family has asked the authorities to search for him, but they've no idea where to even start. Our agents in the government are on the case though."
Fury rubbed his eye-patch thoughtfully. While they now knew the name of the group kidnapping scientists, they had no idea about their goals, their base of operations or how they were choosing or even actually kidnapping their victims. Most of their targets were mid to high level scientists, none of whom were near the level of the big names but combined the total 'egghead index' was becoming somewhat scary. But without identifying some kind of pattern, SHIELD couldn't do anything about them, or even figure out where to assign guards to attempt to halt their next kidnapping.
On the other side of the scale, Hydra at least seemed to have quieted down from their initial rush of activity, but Nick was still worried about their agenda and how close it resembled the Nazis. He had left a few resources in place to keep an eye on them in the Middle East under Duggan. Duggan had nearly as good a nose for trouble as Fury did, and Nick trusted his old friend to sniff out any trouble there if it existed. The fact it also got the blunt spoken Duggan away from the councilors, who he had ticked off badly during the two weeks he had stood in for Fury while he was getting used to his new body, was just a bonus.
"Those missing scientists disturb me, something is going on there but I suppose we'll figure out what exactly when it starts to smell." He waved his aide away and went back to watching the video of the fight between Thor and the thing in armor shaking his head as the video showed an arrow coming out from nowhere to slam into the armored things head, before the video suddenly cut off, the building the camera had been in collapsing. "Too many damn irons in the fire, one of these days were going to get burned I just know it."
OOOOOOO
"'Hey kid, want to come with me to New Mexico,' you said, 'it's just guard duty, it'll give you an idea of how boring working for The Man can be', you said. I don't fucking recall anywhere in that discussion you mention taking on a fucking armored super-strong bastard intent on hunting down some long haired surfer guy who thinks he's a fucking warrior god!" Lance, or Avalanche as he was known with his party clothes on, shouted this as he slammed his hands against the ground, a class 6 earthquake shooting out in line toward the massive armored thing that was trading blows with the man who, until about a minute ago, had looked like, as Lance put it, a surfer dude who had let himself go to seed.
"Quit your bitching and keep hammering him!" Hawkeye shot another explosive arrow at the thing, but it was Lance's attack which actually made the combatants break off from pounding on one another. "Besides, chicks dig the heroes, man!"
Thor jumped away wiping blood from his nose, pushing it back into alignment as he did so. Destroyer, the mighty armor that Odin had created for some reason he refused to share with his children, wasn't fast enough and found itself engulfed in the fissure Lance's attack had created. It didn't last long, as when Thor moved in to finish the thing off it burst out of the ground, both its fists slamming into his chest and sending him flying back a few feet.
Lance and Hawkeye dodged away as the Destroyer's face beam slammed into the place they had been hiding, with Lance going one way and Hawkeye the other. The Destroyer's attack was interrupted as Sif and one of the Warriors Three (Lance had no idea what their names were, and didn't really care, the only reason he knew Sif's name was because she was fucking hot in that Red Sonja babe-in-armor sort of way) attacked it from two sides at once.
"Forsooth, I do applaud thy courage youngling," the fat one said as he and the other, weaker looking blond guy raced past where Lance had landed. "Yet it wouldst seem to be wise for mere mortals to desist in attempting to draw the notice of the Destroyer Armor, tis only gods like us who canst face it."
"Shut up and go on a diet fat man, I ain't going anywhere!" Lance growled, getting to his feet. The ground under him rippling like water as his anger and battle-fever reduced his self-control.
The weaker looking blond laughed and the two raced into the fight as the hot chick in armor got slammed to the side. But that allowed Thor to return, slamming his hammer into the Destroyer's head, sending it careening through a store behind it and out the other side.
"Hey kid," shouted Hawkeye, "those powers of yours, you think you can shake apart metal?"
"Only one way to find out!" Avalanche grinned and raced forward behind the tall taciturn looking guy that for some reason looked more like a Mongol warrior than a Viking.
"That is the spirit," the one who called himself Thor shouted, "together we canst destroy that which is too powerful for any one of us alone, twill be a tale to tell in the drinking halls hereafter!" At that they all followed up their momentary advantage, finding the Destroyer standing in the rubble of the store waiting for them.
Lance shook his head as he moved around the fight, waiting for his chance see if his seismic vibrations could work directly on the metal monster. "Kitty's never going to believe me when I tell her about this…"
OOOOOOO
Harry drove his Huayra along a rocky road, heading up a mountain pass in Wales frowning heavily despite another fantastic night spent with Ororo. While Ororo was spending time with Melody (and conducting vocabulary lessons for the house-elves), and Jean was busy catching up on her sleep back in New York, Harry wanted to see if he could talk to Dr. Druid. Harry's instincts were screaming at him that something was going to happen soon, and he needed to talk to Dr. Druid. He needed information, something to point him in the right direction, so that he and the others could at least know where to start looking for any trouble brewing.
After a moment he stopped at the address that Steven had given him, and got out of the car, shrinking it with a wave of his hand. In front of him was what appeared to be an old, dilapidated house, the kind that looked too dangerous to enter. He ignored that however, and stepped forward onto the property. A moment later he stepped through a low powered aversion Ward, and stopped then pulled the letter of introduction Steven wrote for him out of his pocket and sent it zooming forward with a whispered "Wingardium Leviosa."
He waited there about 20 minutes then the door of the house opened with no hand to guide it. A voice rang out from the dark interior. "Welcome friend, and enter."
Harry shook his head smiling faintly. "Someone has a flair for the dramatic." Despite this Harry moved forward, his magic ready and waiting just in case. Inside the house the appearance did not match with the exterior. Instead of the entrance hall of a rundown, almost collapsing farmstead, the interior was a circular room that looked like a cross between a laboratory and a garden. There were a few trees dotting the room randomly, with dozens of shelves made out of their branches everywhere, filled with glass, clay and even some metal jars as well as hanging plants of some kind. Some of the glass jars were filled with liquid that shone bright yellow like the sun, while the others had other things in them.
In the center of the room was a small cleared area with a pedestal in the center holding what had been some kind of viewing crystal Harry assumed. Yet now the crystal there was shattered, with bits of pieces still on the top of the pedestal, with more dotting the floor around it.
One tree next to this open space was short and squat, and had been molded into a chair, piled high with cushions at the moment, and a man sat there, smiling faintly in welcome. "Sometimes you cannot beat the classics. Welcome, I would get up but..."
Harry looked at him wincing visibly. The man was bald on top with his hair along the side of his head down sort of like Logan's, taller than Harry by an inch or so if he was standing and a little broader, and he possibly could've looked powerful and strong, but that was in the past. Now his body bore the wounds of magical combat, and it was obvious he would never be the same again. His leg was missing from about halfway up his thigh, replaced by a wooden construct. His right arm was gone too, replaced by a wooden stump. His face was crisscrossed with what looked like wounds caused by debris, and there was a bandage around his head. He wore no shirt, and his chest looked as if it had been hit by multiple 'Sectumsempras', the blood seeping through the wraps in several dozen small areas.
Harry immediately reached into a pocket and pulled out a potion. "Pain reliever," he said handing it over "you're free to check it if you wish, I also have another that can heal damaged nerves, and some burn cream on me that can heal those if you have any. I also have spells that can heal minor wounds if you wish."
The man looked at the potion askance for a moment then waved his remaining hand over it as Harry held it and smiled faintly as the jar holding the potion glowed green briefly. He took it and took a pull from it, and his smile widened slightly as the pain of his wounds ebbed dramatically. Then with a nod of gratitude, he slowly, pulled off the bandages covering his chest.
Harry went on, "I'm sorry, I don't know of any magic that can re-grow lost limbs. I seem to be saying that a lot lately," he muttered scowling angrily. With that he went to work, using the spell Episkey to close and heal the wounds on the other mans chest.
"Young Betsy?" asked Dr. Druid, sighing in relief as the wounds his own magic couldn't' close were overcome and healed by the younger man's odd magic, who ever heard of healing spells that worked this fast? "Yes, I've heard of what happened to her, a great and almost fatal loss. At any rate, Steven's message said that you were looking into what happened to STRIKE, can I ask how you became involved, and what your skills are that you think doing so is a good idea?"
Once he was done healing what wounds he could on the other man, Harry sat down on a conjured chair, something that made the man start in shock then explained about the deal he had worked out with the king, and gave a very brief rundown of his abilities, not wanting to take the time to go into detail about his past again. Dr. Druid looked interested at the idea of selling potions like that, though he had no idea how expensive or how much money they could make Harry.
After Harry was finished Dr. Druid nodded. "I can see how you got involved, and can guess you are here to ask me what I know about what is going on, yet in truth I can tell you little. I felt a disturbance in the ambient magic and psychic miasma of the United Kingdom centered on London, as it always is as the capital naturally, and went there to investigate."
Harry nodded to show he understood, though in reality he only had the vaguest idea of what the man was talking about, wizards didn't see magic the same way that druids did, so that made sense, and right now he wanted to get to the nitty-gritty rather than have a theoretical discussion about magic.
"I was attacked by two individuals not twenty minutes after I arrived, which I must admit was my own fault. I teleported to Big Ben as normal, and never even tried to mask my presence and the moment I left it I was attacked. One of my attackers was a man, the other a woman. The man was fast and powerful, moving like a vampire lord with their speed and strength. The other was a woman, her features and mind hidden through magic of a kind and strength I had never seen, and she wielded magic with far more skill than I. I could have handled the man, we were outside and he had no chance to pin me in place, but the woman overwhelmed me easily. I barely escaped with my life, and even that was touch and go. I went through all my prepared magical healing artifices when I arrived back here, and it drained me badly. It is only in the past day or so that I have regained some of my energy. Even now I cannot wield my magic as I once could. I'm afraid I have no choice but to retire from the active adventuring life."
"Beyond that, all I can tell you is whatever is going on is ritual based, I can feel the ripples in the ambient magic of the land from here. Something major is happening in London, and whatever it is of the darkest sort of magic."
Harry rubbed his face irritably. "Oh of course it is. My life wouldn't be complete without my weekly major crisis. Well, you've told me enough to get me started. In any event, since you have said you're pulling back from being a superhero, I wonder if I could interest you in a job…."
OOOOOOO
Emma looked over the table at Sebastian Shaw who had insisted on taking her out for an early dinner. He owned this restaurant, and the table they were in was well situated so that no one else could hear the conversation and he had a small white noise device on besides. This meant it was free to talk, or it would've been free to talk for Emma if Shaw himself wasn't there. She wasn't about to forget the fact that this man was, if not an enemy now at least a potential one for the future. That and the fact that Emma knew he had designs on her both before and after she had joined the Hellfire Club was enough to make Emma know she couldn't trust Shaw further than she could throw him. "So what are you going to do with the whistleblower?"
Shaw looked up from his stake and smiled faintly. "I'm afraid Mr. Thomas is going to find his health suddenly degrading badly. At the same time certain information is going to come out that it was under his auspices that the mining operation was allowed to cut so many corners and break so many federal regulations."
"A smear campaign as well as a physical attack?" Emma nodded. The fact that it somewhat resembled her plans for her father occurred to her, but there was a vast difference between the reasons behind it. Shaw was getting rid of the man simply because he was costing him money and making one of his company's look bad. Emma had to move against her father simply because if she didn't he would continue to try and control her until he realized that she was no longer his control, whereupon he would have her liquidated. Self-defense was a much better reason for murder than anger or money.
Inwardly Emma wondered when that particular issue was going to crop up. Part of the way she had set that particular plan up was that even she didn't know when it would occur, but she knew it would be happening in a few days at most.
She returned to the here and now when Shaw asked her if she had found anything else. "I haven't had any luck finding the other leak. I think we have to assume that the second leak isn't originating in your holdings in Milwaukee. There's no paper trail or computer trail here, and other then the manager who blew the whistle I haven't found anyone who had any particular guilt in their minds. There were a few small-scale peccadilloes, and the normal sort of dread of the boss coming in an unannounced, but nothing major."
The second leak was slightly more important than the first. The second leak had let loose several company secrets, and seemed to also be embezzling company funds, something Shaw would not allow.
Sebastian nodded. "It was a faint hope that you would find both leaks on your first stop. And remember even if you don't find the second one, you're still working for my company for the next month and a half. Those weapons factories I sold your corporations' weapons company were worth quite a bit more than I charged your father for."
"I am well aware of that," Emma said, letting her voice growing little sharper. "Don't worry, a deal is a deal."
"Good," said Sebastian leaning back and taking a sip from his red wine. "To that end, exactly how powerful is your telepathy? And pray don't try to lie to me, I know you've been underplaying them. And on this same vein, where did you find that amazing little device of yours that kills any sexual interest in you when anyone is in your presence. It's a little obvious, but obviously quite useful."
Emma allowed a faint smile to appear on her face. She had known for a while that the Kings at the very least would figure out what was going on. Leland and Pierce didn't have any clue about it, but they were not nearly as capable as Buckman or Shaw.
Yet she was determined to keep Harry's secret for as long as she could. Emma had come to the realization lately that there were just some things that she wouldn't do even to preserve herself, and selling out her friends, and Harry in particular seeing as he had helped her the most, was one of them. She owed him far more for his charms then she had been able to pay off so far, and keeping his secret was the least she could do.
Nor was she about to divulge exactly how powerful her telepathy was, nor what she could do with it. A hidden dagger once revealed was no longer very useful after all. "My powers are based off a small area around me, so long as I am in the presence of someone I can get into their brain relatively quickly. Mental defenses such as yours can keep me out for a time, and certainly would allow you to know if I was trying anything. I'm not powerful enough to just simply brush them aside if that's what you're asking, nor am I foolish enough to try to influence you against your will. I can only use my powers to sift for information, but as they are always on, it allows me insight into anyone I come into contact with."
Shaw nodded, looking into his wine glass contemplatively. That would be undeniably useful for certain little projects he had going on, but it wasn't a real game changer. While he could tell the woman was still holding something back, she seemed to be telling the truth about the limits to her ability to get past his mental defenses.
The faint smile on Emma's face grew slightly as she went on. "And let us just say my little trip to find the mutant Forge was much more profitable than even my acquisition of my Stark funds would indicate."
Sebastian looked up sharply at that. While Forge was nowhere near the level of Tony Stark or any of the other really big names in engineering and design, he was also young and hopefully malleable, if he was still the same age as he was when he disappeared a few years back, which the few sightings of him seemed to indicate. Forge would be a massive resource for his company and for his more clandestine operations and he said cautiously, "That, would be a secret I would be willing to pay for. Say shaving off a month from working for my company?"
Emma shook her head, smiling inside at how she had been able to deflect Shaw from following up further on her little 'devices'. But now it was time to redirect him. "The young man in question has some obligations that he needs to pay off, and no it's not to me or my family." When Shaw looked at her almost demanding that she elaborate she shook her head. "There are other powers at work here, not financial but societal, shall we say?"
That phrase made Sebastian's eyes narrow. As a mutant himself he was well aware of the anti-mutant sentiment that was steadily growing worldwide, not helped at all by a recent event in China where a young mutant lost control of his powers and destroyed ten city blocks and everything in it with a blast of energy that had the same composition as supernova. The mutant in question was killed afterward by the Chinese army but the damage was already done.
Shaw spent a moment contemplating where exactly Edward Buckman was sending all that money his agents had told him about, but he had already devoted as many resources as he could without warning the other king of his interest, and was determined to keep his interest in his fellow king a secret for as long as possible. He had his own plans going forward, and if he showed interest in Buckman's work in the other king would tried to devote more resources to finding out Shaw's own plans, which would turn their current low key cold war very hot indeed very quickly. "I take it he would not wish for aid?"
"He turned mine down," said Emma thoughtfully, now spinning the tale out further, giving just enough detail for the man across from her to paint his own picture. "If you can find him he might not turn yours down now, but I am unwilling to point you in that direction. It might lead to an open conflict with certain other players, and that is not something anyone wants right now."
That caused Sebastian to frown further but he nodded thoughtfully. He'd been getting whispers from his spy agencies of some mutant activist group that was already active worldwide led by a certain Germanic mutant, and if Forge had fallen in with that particular man, Sebastian wanted no part of it. He knew his own powers were formidable, but in relation to Magneto they may not be enough.
He frowned thoughtfully at the woman across the table. If he could have trusted her he was willing to bet that Emma Frost would be a massive resource for his plans for mutantkind going forward. He had already developed the structure, and was even now searching for members to fill it, and when he did his Hellions would be an assault team that he could wield against his enemies. But Emma was too much a blade that would probably turn in his hand at the moment. Perhaps down the line he would be able to get inside of her head and figure out how to turn her to his own interests, but right now, no.
Oh, she was physically under his power, and they both knew it. Indeed he was almost tempted to order her to shut off the device and force the issue, but as much control as he could have over her physical safety, her self-control and power were such that there was only so much he could do with mere physical threats. "Very well, we'll leave that for now. On another topic, have you seen the news out of Brazil this morning? An entire city-state of ex-Roman nationals hidden for so long in the depths of the Amazon and only found now? We live in strange and wondrous times."
You don't know how right you are Sebastian, Emma thought in amusement, even as she shook her head and the discussion moved on from there. Yet the two of them were not the only one's thinking about the future.
OOOOOOO
Leaving Canada was difficult, but the time aboard ship with Irene has more than made up for it, Mystique reflected as she leaned against the railing on the upper deck of the ship, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. Next to her, Irene softly turned the pages of a rather tawdry paperback in Braille. Agents of Essex, or possibly someone else, most of them were local rent-a-thugs, had pursued them, but hadn't the pull to figure out how they had escaped the city, and she had put down over a dozen false trails before they actually backtracked in brand new disguises to board a train to Montreal, where they ditched that disguise and put on another to board a cruise ship embarking on a 64 day world cruise. These two identities were among many Mystique had long prepared for her and her friend, and would pass scrutiny easily in every port.
Their time aboard the Rotterdam a Holland America ship, a cruise line that specialized in catering to more elderly clientele, had actually been among the best in Raven's recent memory. Not only was it peaceful, but the stops were relatively fun and she hadn't yet got the impression their pursuers had found their trail. It had also let the two lovers reconnect emotionally and physically, and she had treasured every moment with her friend, even if their cover identities wouldn't let her and Irene be very affectionate with one another in public.
Their cover at present was of a mother and daughter pair enjoying one last trip around the world while the mother's health would allow it. And, she thought sadly, not for the first time as she looked at her lover, there is a kernel of truth in that, curse it. The two of them met in 1903, when the teenage daughter of a well-to-do family hired Mystique to help her try to make certain the worst of her prophecies would never come true. As far as Raven knew, no one but the two of them knew how much good they had done for the future of the world, but that was a long time ago.
Raven's body only felt the ravages of time if she let the current persona she was wearing feel it. Her morphing ability almost completely cancelled out the effects of aging, and once she had realized this she had been quick to figure out a way to transfuse her blood into Irene to offset her friend's aging. Yet it was a project of limited return. Irene was now pushing 85, and while she looked closer to sixty without the aid of disguises, there was no denying the fact her friend was getting old, and Raven once more cursed her powers that ensured she would keep on living as her friend succumbed to time's decline.
"Don't." Irene's voice interrupted Raven's increasing depressing thoughts. She looked over and found Irene looking at her through her dark glasses. "I can tell what you are thinking my friend." Here in public neither was going to break cover by using more loving endearments. "I have lived a long, full life, and when my time comes I will meet it without fear."
Raven shuddered, shaking her head and reaching forward to grab the other woman's hand. "Don't talk like that! I, I can't, you've got many years left in the tank Irene, there's no need to talk about your time coming."
"Oh my friend, you and I both know that is not the case. If I have two more years to me it will be a minor miracle. As I said, I have lived a long, fulfilling life, made all the greater with you by my side. You are strong enough to go on without me, following our ideal of protecting mutantkind."
"I would trade everything I've done for that damn cause to have even one more year with you!" Raven said fiercely. Her grip on the older woman's hands tightened for a moment, while inside she shook her head. Raven didn't think she was nearly as strong as Irene thought her. There had been too many betrayals, too many friends turned enemies, too many times where her power had caused her to be seen as a dangerous tool to be used then discarded. In a world of paranoia, lies and false faces, Raven desperately clung to her friendship with Irene as the one pure thing in her life. Even her children, as precious as they were to Raven in her own way, did not come close to being that important a link. Raven feared that if she lost that lifeline, then she would spiral into a paranoid manic depression and become a danger to all around her.
She determinedly changed the subject, looking back out over the ocean. "So, is there any specific reason you wanted us to go to India?" In this instance specific reason was a codeword used to indicate Irene's clairvoyant powers.
Irene shook her head, smiling faintly as she replied, knowing why her lover had changed the subject. Yet Irene knew Raven was stronger than she thought, and would go on without Irene just fine. Still she went along with the subject change. "If we go to India we have the best chance of falling under the wings of the owl in time, where we will be in position to help the younger generation of mutants. We will also be given a chance to choose to turn the future back to one of two other courses, though which choice will force the future down which road I cannot say. My powers have become more and more imprecise since the third path to the future opened."
Raven frowned. She could easily see that the owl signified Harry Potter, but as impressive as he was, and despite how much he had helped Raven with her kids, she didn't trust him. Still Irene seemed to have seen something in her visions which made her think highly of the magic user, and Mystique trusted her friend enough to go along with the idea of working with Potter, for a time at least. The rest of what Irene said however bothered Raven a bit, and she wondered what choice Irene was talking about.
Still she knew if Irene had seen anything specific she would share them with Raven. "I won't say I'm completely happy with the idea of working with Potter, but he's probably better than any of the alternatives. Don't see how going to India will help us in contacting him again though."
Irene smiled. "You will see in time I think. Now," she stood up, stretching slightly and her smile turned decidedly wicked, an odd dichotomy with her normal saintly air. "I think it's time for us to retire for the evening. I feel a need for a… nap coming on."
Despite the words if anyone had been close enough to hear Irene's tone that single line would have blown their cover utterly. As there weren't Mystique didn't care and simply smiled eagerly. "That sounds like a lovely idea." For a while at least, the future could work itself out without the two of them.
OOOOOOO
Jean scowled irritably as she and Harry walked down the drenched nighttime streets of London. All around them people made their way indoors or walked on covered in rain jackets, or as in her and Harry's case umbrellas of various sizes. It was a particularly crappy night, and she was not pleased to be out and about in it. "Tell me again why Ororo said she couldn't do something about this? Honestly, this is damn horrible."
Harry chuckled, sticking his head outside the umbrella's arc, letting the rain splash into his face for a moment. "Oh come on Red, a little rain never hurt anyone. And Ororo won't do anything about it because it will let her use her powers later on much more easily if she can work with rather than overpower the local weather." He looked around, his eyes growing much harder and more serious for a moment. "Besides, on a night like this more people will be staying indoors, which may be important if we find anything."
Jean scowled, but didn't argue. It was pushing ten o'clock local time, and things were at last starting to shut down around them. The two of them had been walking around the city for about an hour so far. They were dressed in regular clothing, though Jean had her X-men uniform on underneath, and a mask that Harry had worked with a heavy obscuring charm in her pocket just in case. And of course Harry was wearing his crysis suit with the concealing charm on for now.
Thanks to a mild Notice-Me-Not field they had gone unmolested in some of the worse areas of the city as the two of them used their disparate talents to search for anything out of the ordinary. Harry had his mage sight on and was searching for anything magical anywhere, any runes, and active magic, anything. Jean was using her telepathy to do the same, gently skimming the outer edge of the minds around them with little success. She was getting worried that to find anything to help them she'd have to start randomly selecting people around them and delve deeper into their minds. But she wasn't quite ready to just start invading random minds to search for clues.
They weren't the only ones searching of course. Ororo was in the sky well above the city, with a Disillusion spell on her. Ororo also had a spell on her to give eyes the same properties as the owl, a spell Harry had actually gotten from Agatha. While it didn't have the staying power of the Disillusion spell, it would last for a good few hours before he had to renew it. If he cast it on her too often the spell would aggravate Ororo's eyes, but for now it was a necessary evil.
The two walked on for a time in silence, using their respective powers to search around before Harry broke the convivial silence. "So, looking forward to graduating from high school?"
Jean chuckled, shaking her head, her somewhat damp hair moving from side to side. Her finals were next week, and Jean knew without a doubt she was going to ace them, even her physics final. Thankfully she had spent so much time away from school the rumor mill no longer bothered her, but even with that… "Oh god yes, I am so looking forward to getting out of there. It will be interesting taking distance courses, but I'm looking forward to getting to work on the projects we've talked about. Speaking of which, what exactly are you going to be paying me Potter?"
Harry laughed, nudging his shoulder against hers. "And what exactly have you done so far to make me part with my hard earned gold hmm?"
Jean pushed back with her own shoulder, and the two laughed and walked on, walking closer together now despite not needing to, since the umbrella was large enough for three people. Yet neither was in any rush to move apart, simply enjoying one another's company. After a few more minutes spent looking around with his mage sight Harry looked over at the redhead again, noticing rather pleasantly that Jean was only about an inch shorter than him. "Have you told Charles and the others you're moving out?"
Jean frowned, looking over at him for a moment then away, her eyes tracking another pedestrian as the man walked across the road at light in front of them. They had moved out of the residential district, making their way in a somewhat stilted spiral pattern deeper into the city, and at the moment they were in a small shopping district. "It sort of came out with Xavier, I don't know if he shared it with the others."
"Trouble?"
Jean shook her head, and Harry shivered a little as her hair brushed against his shoulder and bare neck. "Not a lot, no. He tried to guilt me into staying, but he really didn't have any argument that could make me stay. I'm not looking forward to telling Scott and the others, but we all leave home at some point."
Harry nodded. "And you're parents?"
Jean again shook her head, her face scornful. "My mom contacted me this morning actually, and was not happy to find that I was still uninterested in going along with their plan for my college education. When she found out I had made my own plans she heaped scorn on the idea of a woman becoming an engineer, and I sort of hung up on her."
Harry put an arm around her shoulder giving her a friendly hug. "I can't understand why everyone wants to pick and choose what parts of you they want to see when the whole package is so amazing. I'm sorry to hear that your parents aren't going to support you, but if they can't see how magnificent you are, both in mind and soul, then it's their problem, not yours."
Jean smiled and reciprocated the gesture, putting her own arm around Harry's waist. When Harry removed his arm however she kept hers in place, and after a second his arm went around her again this time around the waist. "Thanks Harry." She frowned a little. "But, I'm not certain about the state of my soul these days."
Harry quirked an eyebrow before turning his eyes back to scanning the area around them, with Jean doing the same. "This isn't a religious thing is it?"
"No, nothing like that, just some… concerns I have." Jean replied.
"Ororo once said to me that sharing problems sometimes made them go away. You want to talk about it?"
Jean was silent for a moment, her eyes flicking around as her telepathy scanned the minds of passerby, who thankfully were getting less and less as the night and the rain went on. "The fight against those demons with the Fantastic Four and the others… I was enjoying it. I loved fighting the demons, using my powers on them."
Harry didn't answer for a moment, staring down a small road that was nearly completely dark, his view further exacerbated by the rain coming down in sheets all around them. After a second however the two kept moving and he answered her. "You're not the only one who enjoys fighting, and not just demons, who you know I have a history with. Sometimes putting down your enemy permanently can give you a certain sense of satisfaction. But let me ask you this, was it fighting to your utmost against the demons that you enjoyed, or was it causing them pain?"
Jean didn't even hesitate. "Using my powers to the utmost against them, I don't think the idea of causing them pain really entered into it."
Harry nodded. "Did I ever tell you the first time I had to kill someone?" Jean shook her head and he went on. "Her name was Bellatrix Black, she came from the same ancient family that my godfather came from. Unlike him he had believed the claptrap fed her about the whole Pureblood purity fiction, and she was one of Voldemort's most deadly, and insane followers, a skilled and powerful duelist. And while taking her and her husband out wasn't our first mission, but it was the first one where we went with the intent to kill rather than capture. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say it was a tough fight, and I ended up killing her with a Reducto to the head."
Jean nodded to indicate she was following her hair again moving against his shoulder. She had seen Harry fight often enough to know most of his mid-level spells.
Harry shook his head, eyes a thousand miles away. "All that training with the SAS, and one of the things they never trained us in was how to deal with killing someone. So after the adrenaline wore off I got the shakes pretty damn badly despite my own injuries. But in the end I got over the fact quickly, a little too quickly for my own state of mind. I kept killing the Death Eaters, not just because I had to, but because a small part of me enjoyed doing to them what they loved doing to others, and I feared that part of me. I never got desensitized to it, but I realized I didn't enjoy the fact I could deal death, it was simply the satisfaction of a job well done. They needed killing, just like those demons did because of what they were, what they would do if given any further chances."
"Red, everyone has a little darkness to them. Any soldier does, any hero does, we have to be willing to do what we can to protect other people, and some of us do enjoy it. What's that phrase, 'rough men do rough things so gentle people can sleep soundly in their beds' or something like that? Just because it's there doesn't mean you're a bad person. Just because you enjoy the fight, or even winning, doesn't mean you are in danger of losing a part of your soul."
Jean looked at him admiringly then shook her head. "Thanks Harry, that, it makes me feel better knowing that you feel the same way I do." The two walked on silently for another minute then she asked, "Why the hell do you keep calling me Red?"
Harry smiled faintly, then changed the subject. "So when do you think you'll be able to start on building a prototype to your arc generator?"
"I don't know really, hopefully soon after I join you and Ororo in the castle." She laughed, pumping her shoulder against his lightly again. "Have you thought of renaming it by the way? Hogwarts is an awful name, right up there with Harry-tanium."
Harry pouted. A part of him had actually thought of renaming it, but hadn't had much luck in thinking up names, which even he was coming to believe he was pants at. Another part of him wanted to retain the name for histories sake. After all, if it had been named Hogwarts in two different dimensions that had to count for something right?
He didn't know he had said that out loud until Jean laughed and replied, "Yes it means that wizards everywhere have no imagination when it comes to names. Honestly some of the names of your friends you've let drop. Longbottom, Weasley, Diggory, and who could forget Lovegood. She wasn't Asian by any chance was she?"
"Hah, no one could forget Luna no matter what, and no she wasn't Asian." The two of them dodged around a small crowd outside a pub, but didn't relinquish their sideways hug around one another. "And if you keep on making fun of my naming sense I won't give you your graduation present when the time comes."
Jean shook her head amused. Harry had been dropping hints about some big present he was going to share with her for the last few days, but hadn't given her any hints. "That's alright Potter, I've got other things I can tease you about, like for instance your missing the obvious solution sometimes."
Harry stopped for a moment looking over at her, emerald eyes meeting jade from a bare foot away. "Okay, what exactly is that supposed to mean?"
Jean grinned, her pearly teeth visible in the light of the lamppost above them. "Well, you know how you want to install a generator at the castle? Well, why wait to install an arc reactor when you could do something a lot simpler?"
"Like what?"
"Like using a few spells or runes, I don't know how, to continuously power a wind turbine and use that to power the generator?"
Harry looked at her blankly for a moment then walked over to the wall of the building they were passing by and started to bang his head against it. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"
Jean laughed. "It doesn't mean our arc generator design won't be useful, after all we don't want to sell anything that is built purely on magic after all. Still it's a way for us to get power at the castle right now." She reached out and rubbed Harry's back. "Don't worry Harry, when your little male mind fails, we'll be here to point these things out."
Harry stopped banging his head on the wall, looking up slightly to her face past the rise of her chest, seeing her jade eyes sparkling with humor in the slight shadow of their umbrella. He straightened up, one hand snaking back around Jean's waist and pulling her against him, his lips moving into a smirk as he stared into her eyes. "Would you like to know what my 'little male mind' is telling me to do right now, Red?"
Jean shivered a little as the atmosphere between the two changed, but kept staring back into his eyes, her tongue flicking out and moistening her lips. "I think I can guess Harry."
She watched as his eyes darkened slightly with desire and, yes love, and he made to lean in then very visibly got control of himself. For some reason the sight of that made Jean love him even more, to see how much he desired her, but wasn't willing to push things with her right now.
Harry made to pull away, but Jean's own arms went around his waist, keeping him in place. "You know Ororo and I talked a few days ago."
Harry looked at her, still visibly backing away from doing what Jean realized she wanted him to do with all her heart. "A-about what exactly?"
"My joining you two." Jean said simply, her arms tightening slightly as she felt him try and pull away, her voice dropping to a throaty, emotional whisper. "So I should probably be asking, what do you think about that? What do you think about me?"
Harry gulped. While he knew that Ororo had pretty much given her okay to Jean joining them, a part of him really thought that was some kind of boyfriend test despite the fact that he was sure that Ororo was not the type to do that. He had also been fighting his attraction and rising emotional connection to the redhead in front of him so much that it had become second nature. Even his rising attraction to Emma wasn't so bad, since the two of them hadn't been around one another very often. "I…"
Jean pulled away suddenly, looking into an alleyway. She had continued to use her powers even as the two talked (flirted really, something she was enjoying tremendously) but her telepathy hadn't found any strange minds or anything unusual until right now. "Hold that thought…" she murmured, concentrating her power on what she had sensed, then frowned suddenly. "There's someone in there who doesn't have a mind."
Harry breathed a sigh of mixed relief and regret.
Jean chuckled having heard his sigh but her mind was now on more serious things. "Don't get too comfy Harry, we'll be having that conversation sometime soon, right now though we've got other things to do."
Harry chuckled, leading the way toward the alleyway Jean indicated. "I'll look forward to it."
Inside the alleyway they saw a man who was hunched over the street of the alleyway using what looked like a long rod of some sort to do something to the ground underneath. The man moved almost like a puppet with too few strings, his free arm flopping at his side, his head lolling about. What little of his skin they could see looked pasty white, and his eyes were blank and unseeing. "Okay, yeah this looks suspicious." Harry muttered, his eyes narrowed.
The sound of his voice didn't make the man look up but another man came out of a hidden doorway, carrying what looked like some kind of high-tech rifle with something that was obviously a silencer on the end.
This man was large, pushing seven feet and wide in the shoulders with huge visible muscles on his arms and chest though it didn't look natural, almost like someone who had taken far too many steroids. His head was small, and had a white V painted on it, with the tip of the V being his chin and the lines running up his face over his eyes. He was far faster than his size implied, bringing his rifle around to point at the duo.
As fast as he was however Harry was faster. He swiftly lifted his free hand, still holding the umbrella in his other hand as he pointed a finger at the man intoning "Stupefy!" A sphere of red magical light shot out, impacting the man and throwing him backwards to collapse unconscious to the ground. "Well, that was interesting."
Jean nodded, but kept her eyes on the man still scratching out something on the ground. "I don't… I think this man is dead, or at least brain dead. His mind is there, but the only thing in it is a single overriding directive to write whatever he's writing on the ground." The man's mind was there in the astral plane, but it was filled end to end with the echo of a single female voice shouting out the command the thing was following. There was no native activity.
Harry frowned. "Sort of sounds like an Infreri, a sort of magical zombie. They were sometimes used to defend a place or as cannon fodder, but being able to carry out even a simple task like this, that is something new."
He reached forward, placing his hand on the man's neck and frowned when his mutant siphoning power didn't immediately begin to drain power from the man. Not that it would have been much, but the fact that whatever had made the man this way wasn't magical startled him.
Jean flinched slightly as the man seemed to wake up to their presence at Harry's touch and he turned throwing himself at Harry. Before Jean could do anything though Harry shot a Immobulous right at the man's face. He stiffened like a board, and Harry stepped back. "Some kind of defense mechanism? He moved a bit faster than infreri."
Jean frowned, trying to put into words what she had just felt. "No that was some kind of remaining animal instinct that overrode its orders when you touched him. Just a pure animal response, and I think considering the fangs on him we should call him a vampire of some kind." She looked over at the other man, and sent her mental probe into his head. After a moment she came out, shaking her head. "That one is a thug, one who enjoys violence, he almost, well, not to be too crude gets off on it. He was ordered by his employer, Vixen to guard that other man."
Harry frowned, reaching forward to squeeze her hand for a second. "I don't like that. And I really don't like this." He nodded down at the road where the man had been scratching out a symbol, and he knelt down to get a closer look.
"What is it?" Jean asked, taking the umbrella from Harry.
"A rune, a large ass one, as in the size of the written rune, not the actual symbol, and it's just one rune, not a complete array. It looks like ancient Cimmerian, but I haven't seen this one before, Cimmerian was never used in my home dimension, too clunky and unwieldy in comparison to Grecian." Harry stood up, shaking his head, one hand suddenly holding the sword of Gryffindor and he used the point to slash through the mark on the ground. His hand then shot out again, hitting the unconscious man with an Incarcerous, causing glowing bands of light to weave around the man, chaining him to the ground. "I think we need to take to the rooftops Red."
Jean shook her head, banging the umbrella's staff lightly against his head. "Seriously why do you call me Red?"
Harry chuckled but didn't answer again, simply activating his flight array and jumping up onto the rooftop. Jean shrugged and followed, still using the umbrella to cover herself, though Harry didn't seem to notice the continuing rain.
Harry waited for her on top of the roof. "You're the engineer here Red, if you were to lay out a circle over the city, with that rune on the outer shell of the circle, where would the center be?"
Jean frowned, playing with a bit of her damp hair with her free hand. "Well, this is the first we've seen of it, and we came from that direction moving inwards… I think that way?" She pointed off over a section of the city that looked like a mix between small businesses, bars and medium story apartment buildings.
Harry nodded wordlessly and took off skimming over the top of the rooftops, and Jean followed. Something about that rune had obviously worried Harry, and Jean began to ready herself for combat. And it was because of that heightened awareness that she spotted the mind ahead of them that was almost like a carbon copy of the mind of the man who had been guarding the zombie.
"There's another thug up ahead of us, about a block." The two halted and Harry waited as Jean sent her power forward. After a moment she shook her head. "He doesn't know anything either."
"Then we take him out like we did the last one." Jean nodded and the two raced on. Before the thug even knew they were there the two jumped down and Jean used her telekinetic power to slam the man against the far wall of the road. This one wasn't in an alley, but the street was deserted thanks to the rain and the fact it was pushing twelve at night (though mostly thanks to the pouring rain).
As Jean was taking care of the guard, Harry had just as quickly taken out the zombie rune writer. Once that was done he knelt down and looked at the rune, frowning heavily. "Okay, this rune is from the Aztec language, does something like one of the runes we use in the bio-energy array, but waaaay more powerful."
He frowned, looking at it and wondering what the hell the rune was used for, trying to remember where he had seen it then froze as he remembered. It was from a time when he was trying to figure out what rituals Voldemort had used to empower himself physically, and there was a book in the Black family library that covered foreign rituals designed to increase your magical and physical strength. The Blacks were never ones to turn their noses up at any way to gain power foreign or not after all. "Call Ororo down here now."
Jean almost flinched at the sudden grim tone in his voice then nodded and sent her astral projection straight up searching for the static cloud that was her friend's mind. After a moment she found it about three miles up. Thanks to her natural defense Jean couldn't enter her mind, but she could touch it and they could talk to one another. It was difficult at this range, and wouldn't have been something she could have done a few weeks ago, but she had been getting better at using her telepathy every day. "Ororo, Harry and I have found something. Harry wants you to join us down here. He seems worried."
Ororo responded quickly. "I will be there in a moment my friend." After a moment she went on, her mental voice coming along the momentary connection Jean had formed between them as rather slyly amused. "So how was your time with our Harry?"
Jean blushed a little but rolling her eyes. "I still haven't decided if I want to join you two you know." That was a lie and she knew it, in fact part of her wanted to just forget about the current crisis and get on with what could easily be called a date between her and Harry.
"But you're no longer saying you don't want to, are you?"
"Oh no, I'm no longer saying that." Jean said her mental voice rather wistful, part of her tracking her friends mind as it came toward them. "Turn left a bit, and start looking along the road for us in about two blocks. But Harry needs to tell me he wants me, he needs to tell me he wants me to join the two of you before I agree. I… I love you both, but I won't be second in his affections, I want to be your equal in this relationship."
Ororo's mental voice was soft and almost like a caress as she replied, flying down from their left to join the two on the ground. "I love you as well sister, and do not worry, he may be slow, but I'm certain he will tell you his feelings soon enough."
Jean sent back a wordless wave of affection while Ororo landed. Unlike the two who had been searching on the ground, she was already dressed for action. Her uniform consisted of skintight black spandex pants, a black spandex top that came up to over her breasts but left her shoulders bare, and a two gold loops around her wrists, both of which Harry had placed runes on to cut off her emotions from the weather. On her head she wore a small headdress to keep her hair out of her eyes, and Ororo's eyes, which were normally a crystal blue color, were pure white now, as they always were when using her powers. The rain water flowed over her body, matting her hair to her neck and back, but she seemed to not care.
Of course there was more to it. Harry had added tiny pieces of the metal he was now calling Orihalcum throughout her suit's top, which though thin would stop nearly any attack. Ororo's suit also had an anti-shock runic array on it along with a version of a Notice-Me-Not that Harry called a Remember-Me-Not. If the disillusioning spell Harry put on her wore off or if she became too active for it to cover her people would be able to see Ororo but the moment she was out of sight they would never remember what she looked like or sounded.
She looped one arm around Jean looking over at her lover. "I take it you two have found something?"
Harry nodded grimly, the sword of Gryffindor in his hand, its point slashing through the rune on the street. "Oh yes, we found something. We're standing inside a massive runic array that someone's set up across the city. I'm not certain how it's supposed to work, it uses Aztec and Cimmerian runes, neither of which I'm that familiar with. But I know enough to know the general gist of it: ritual sacrifice. Someone wants to suck the life out of everyone caught in the array. And if they're using Aztec runes, it isn't a little bit of energy from everyone, but all of it."
Ororo and Jean shared one shocked glance then Jean stepped away, stripping off her outer clothing, unmindful of the fact they were technically in public despite no one else being out and about on this street at this time of night. Her own uniform wasn't nearly as attractive or strong as Ororo's being the same one she had worn for years as part of the X-men. It was skintight everywhere covering her from neck to foot and wrist. Outside a large triangle going from her waist up to the top of her chest which was green, the rest of the uniform was dark blue. The last bit was the mask that Harry had placed a heavy Remember-Me-Not charm on, much like the headdress Ororo wore. It also kept her hair, now being plastered to her head by the rain, out of her eyes. Despite this she shook her head, vowing to herself to get a new uniform as soon as she could this one was far too bland.
Harry too was readying himself. The illusion of his clothing dropped away, and he muttered, "Magia Erebea," siphoning about a fifth of his magical reservoir to reinforcing his body's durability, speed and strength. Before draining the Juggernaut and through him Cyttorak of a bit of his power Harry wouldn't have been able to add to his strength. But now, with the amount of power he just put into it he would be able to go toe to toe with Rogue possibly more and still have most of his power available for other things.
Ororo frowned. "Do you think we should get in touch with our contact with Scotland Yard and MI5?"
Harry thought for a minute then shook his head. "Let's wait on that for now, we might be able to handle this on the sly."
That idea was quickly smacked over the head however when a snarling voice came from the rooftop on their left towards the center of the city. "So, the mistress was right… there was someone interfering with the laying of the array. I know not who you three are, nor why or how you are interfering but know I, Eliphas, will make your deaths swift."
The man this voice belonged to was a tall man with somewhat wide shoulders and the build of a boxer. He had black hair, and was wearing a decent business suit, and in one hand held an umbrella over his head to keep off the rain. If not for the fact he was standing on top of a roof like it was an everyday occurrence he would have looked like a normal business man. If not for the strange veins of green pulsing on half his face and the visible portion of his neck, or his dead black eyes, visible in a sudden crash of lightning, he might have been handsome. As it was, he simply looked wrong, sick in some fundamental manner that went far beyond the physical.
Harry and the two women shared a glance then he shrugged. "Yeah thanks for that, but how about not?"
The man didn't reply with words, jumping down towards them faster than a man of his size should have been able to move. Before anyone could react he was standing right in front of the trio. His hands with claws growing out of his fingers slashed forward in an attempt to gut Harry but instead simply smacking him in the side. The slash was powerful, but not powerful enough to slice into Harry's crisis suit. Yet his Magia Erebea hadn't made Harry any heavier, and the blow swatted him aside.
Harry cursed as he felt his feet leave the earth for a moment, but Jean responded with the swiftness of thought, blasting the man back with a telekinetic fist of power that slammed him away to smash into a wall.
The man snarled, and got up from the blow far faster than any normal man would have, but Jean, her powers flaring around her in a nimbus of flame, reached forward with one hand. A giant hand of flame slammed the thing that wore the skin of a man into the wall of the building behind him, pinning him there. He fought back, again showing much more strength then he should have had, but not enough to break out of the claw of telekinetic force that held him still.
This didn't seem to matter to Eliphas though and he snarled at Jean, his mouth filled with pointed fangs. "You will tire eventually mind witch, and when you do I will gut you!"
Harry scowled but before he could hit the man with any spells (and after that threat Harry wasn't at all certain what spell he would use) gunfire erupted from the rooftop the man had jumped down from, and several dozen zombie-vampire things charging towards them from both sides of the road. Many of them looked normal save for how they moved. Their clothing for the most part was poor and worn. Others looked like well off people their clothing decent enough. But all of them had fangs that gleamed in the light of the lamp posts along the road, and their faces were utterly devoid of anything but snarling fury.
"Fuck." Harry said mildly then twisted to one side, dodging a stream of bullets that would have slammed into him from the rooftop. While his crysis suit made him able to shrug off bullets, that didn't mean he was about to get hit when he didn't have to.
Ororo took to the sky, raining down slashes of air pressure, ice spears and lightning. The men on the roof, all big, bald men with white V's painted on their faces, scattered under her assault, trying to fire back but blinded by the rain and ice Ororo was throwing around like they were going out of style.
During her assault the wind rider noticed that the men seemed to ignore wounds that should have made them wince or cry out at the very least. She wondered if they were on some kind of drug or something, and then frowned as one ignored having his arm chopped off by a piece of metal her wind had torn from a roof. He fired back at her ignoring the fact he was missing an arm, and she sighed sadly, changing tactics. Now instead of trying to force them to retreat or knock them out, she went for the kill, and her lightning and ice spears rained down with lethal force. The air around the thugs began to become colder quickly, slowing their movements, and the winds picked up to hurricane force, hurling them around like they weighed next to nothing.
While his lady was dealing with the men up top Harry turned his attention to the zombies that were coming toward him. He frowned and began to send out spells to immobilize them, wondering if these things could be returned to normal, but he doubted it. The men firing at us however, they made their bed and will damn well sleep in it, my lady will see to that.
He frowned, noticing these men were far faster and seemed to have a bit of magical resistance, not enough to overcome a Incarcerous or Immobulous, but enough to ignore a Stupefy. They spread out trying to come at him from all sides, and he twisted and turned, trying to take out as many as he could before they closed.
Jean waved her free hand, slamming the other half of the zombie horde away. Unfortunately that moment of inattention was enough for the first man to break out of her telekinetic claw. He was far stronger than the zombie things, and charged forward even faster now, his façade of humanity falling away to reveal gray-green skin pulled taught over his skull. "Die mind witch!"
Harry however was ready and turned swiftly ignoring the zombie things now almost upon him, shouting, "Difindo!"
The spell sizzled out, a wide beam of yellow light in the rainy night, slicing into and through the main, cutting his legs out from under him. "ARGHGH!" Yet despite the shout of agony, the thing kept moving, crawling along on the ground toward where Jean was still standing in the center of the road.
Jean was not impressed and slammed another claw of telekinetic power onto the man.
Seeing that Harry turned his attention to the other half of the crowd of lesser vampires, if that was what they were. Seeing him as the greater threat all the vampire things concentrated on him, and he at last began to use area effect spells, immobilizing, stunning and tying them up in turn. When they came to close, he lashed out with the sword of Gryffindor or a Lacero driving them back until he could take them out with distance attack spells.
While Harry was taking care of the horde Jean sent her mind into her captives. She bludgeoned past Eliphas's mental defenses, which were surprisingly formidable but not enough to stop her. A moment later she reeled back, gagging and almost retching on the ground, her power flickering out. The undead thing began to crawl toward her again but Harry, having finished dealing with his own enemies moved up behind him and stabbed him through the chest into the ground, pinning him there like a butterfly on paper, then he almost casually used more 'Difindo's' to cut the monster's arms off. "Keep those claws to yourself mate. Phoenix, what did you find?"
Jean took a moment to regain control of herself and gratefully leaned on Harry's hand for support as she got to her feet, shaking her head. "Yeah I found out a lot, way more than I ever wanted to know to be honest. This guy is a trouble shooter for the bitch in charge of this. That one's named Selene Gallio, and she's some kind of mutant physic vampire. She can leech the life energy from anyone and add it to her own. On top of that she's a mage, and she's been around since at least the roman era using her ability to leech life from other people to extend her own."
The vampire/zombie thing at Harry's feet cackled. "CAHAHAH, fools, my mistress is immortal, your paltry powers are nothing to her!"
Harry glanced down at him, his emerald eyes beginning to crackle with power. "I've got a lot of experience killing people who think they are immortal. What is this Selene planning?"
Eliphas once more growled and tried to free himself from the sword of Gryffindor stuck through his chest into the road below, but without arms or legs it was a laughable attempt. "My mistress will succeed, she will ascend and your lives will become her power! There is nothing you can do to stop it!"
Jean went on. "She's created a magic ritual to suck out the life force of everyone living in London, there's a bit there about something called psychic signature I don't understand, but it will also somehow take power from everyone else in the UK, not as much but some. She intends to use it to become 'all powerful'" she held up her fingers quoting that part, shaking her head in disgust. "The ritual is supposed to take place in the 30 street Mary Axe. She supplied Vixen with the magic and the plan to take out STRIKE, knowing they would be the only group that could counteract her. Our being here has thrown a wrench in the gears, but at the time she sent this guy and the others out she still intended to do the ritual. We haven't destroyed enough of the array to stop it. We have until the clock strikes three, something about…"
"The stars being aligned," Harry nodded. "All Aztec rituals were designed to take advantage of the stars in relation to their land, so they would naturally have to calculate the difference. Fuck," he said mildly again, but his eyes told of his rage, his magic sparking in them like green lightning.
Ororo arrived back sometime in the middle of Jean's explanation having finished off the troop of ten mercs. Now she frowned, her own white eyes crackling with fury at the thought of so much senseless loss of life. "This ritual, how do we disrupt it?"
Despite addressing the question to Harry it was Jean who answered, gleaning the response from the information taken from Eliphas. "Destroy the runes that are part of the array, but even then she might be able to use the central part of it to drain the people nearby."
Ororo nodded looking around them. "I have another question. Why hasn't anyone come out to check on what all the noise was about?"
The trio now looked around them, and realized Ororo was right, no one had come out of the houses or apartments around them to see what was going on. Even in the worst neighborhood, which this wasn't that would have been unusual. But Harry and the two women also saw several apartments had lights on that hadn't before the battle began, yet there was no one moving around in them or on the street.
Harry frowned. "I thought I felt something magical happen halfway through that fight just now, but I didn't take much notice of it at the time. She must have used a sleep spell or something."
Not wanting to waste any time and believing him no longer a threat the trio left Eliphas there, hurrying away down the street. They soon realized that the entire city had been put to sleep. Several people lay in clumps around an entrance to a bar, asleep on the ground or each other while the rain continued to pour down on top of them, their umbrellas' forgotten. Several cars had crashed, their drivers having fallen asleep at the wheel, though the few the trio checked seemed to be breathing despite their near death experience. Nowhere was anyone awake and moving about.
Harry nodded grudging appreciation. "Whoever this is, she's powerful to do this so quickly to a city the size of London."
"I think we need to bring in some more help," Jean said, looking over at Harry.
Harry frowned, but nodded, and began to write down the runes to look out for. "Call it in Storm."