Previously
They stood there, in silence, before finally the boys had run forward to give him a tight hug. They were being sent off on the train they were about to board, and it was the last time they would see their father until the Holiday break. It was a very touching sight on the platform of 9 ¾ at King's Cross Station. Enough so that the Bloody Press had decided to take a picture of the scene.
John absently wondered at what type of angle the reporter would do before he finished the moment with his sons, and sent them off on their second year, his "nephew" among them for his first year.
Chapter 1
It was a long trip to the Old Castle, but John was a very patient person. It also meant that he could mingle with his fellow firsties. Or, at least, make introductions.
There was a very good reason why mature children rarely get along with children. This reason was either that the mature one couldn't stand the immature, the immature couldn't stand the mature, or both. Now, being what John was, he was quite capable of acting as a staple. But normally that acting stemmed from the experiences of others, as well as mimicking the makeup of their physiology.
This was a problem for John, as he had never consumed a child, or an immature person, so he didn't really have the proper experience to back up his acting like he normally would have. He had the physiology down, as he knew scientifically how the mind worked, and more so how a human mind developed. Really, it was the experiences that he took from that bolstered his acting skills, and experiences taken from adults that experienced being a child long ago didn't count.
Mainly because they had forgotten, or that they hadn't been able to fully empathise with being a naive or immature kid because that stage of their life was over.
Again, back to the problem at hand; John couldn't really connect with his fellow classmates-to-be. Sure, he could play a convincing child as far as an adult was concerned, but a child would be able to see through the disguise with ease. It was basic social mechanics.
It might be a mystery how one would know that the other is not one of them, when they put up a very good act, but it still happened nonetheless.
It didn't help that the Purebloods - what passed for upperclassmen in the Wizarding World - thought his as a "mudblood". They thought this because they didn't recognise the name "Mercer". He would have to change the way the name "Mercer" was perceived if he wanted to get anywhere with it; he knew that the Wizarding World was based off of the sole idea of Nepotism. Unless he wanted to consume a lot more people, he would have to work up the name of Mercer.
He already had enough people consumed that he could get some credence to his name, he just needed to set his already-made plan into motion.
With these thoughts on the backburner, like how an expert chef would mind a certain part of the dish while it cooked, John's Avatar named Juno Mercer made his way from compartment to compartment. John didn't really know what he was looking for when he looked through the options available to him. Finally giving up on looking for an entirely new compartment, John decided to go for the closest one to Juno.
After he knocked on the door of said compartment, he wasn't surprised when a voice offered itself up from inside, "Come in." Unsurprisingly, it was a young voice, but it was also unmistakably feminine; he did as the voice told him to.
Inside the train compartment were two girls, not much older than his sons, by John's estimation. They were both blonde, with blue eyes. One had a Slytherin crest on her Hogwarts robe, which said plenty of what had type of person she was. The fact that both girls had a robe on so early in their trip to Hogwarts meant that they were both most likely eager mundane-born students, or that they were both wizard born. He doubted the first, as the already sorted one had been through the process before. It was unlikely that they would keep the "first year awe" that would urge such a decision.
Wizard raised, then.
The two were very alike aesthetically, which made John think them as cousins at the least and more than likely to be siblings. That was the least of what their looks suggested though, as he could easily pegg them as the Greengrass siblings. He greeted them as such, and their eyes widened when he had done so within the proper Pureblood custom that demanded of him.
"You know our names, but I am at a loss as to what yours is, Mr.?" She had a faint smile on her lips, which was a good sign. Normally, if a Pure-Blooded child did not recognise your name, or your face, then you were dismissed out of hand. It was a mistake on their part, as that lead to them not knowing of a potential ally or enemy. Apparently the older of the Greengrass sisters knew this, or she had not the prejudiced that ran rampant in the Wizarding World.
"Mercer, Juno Mercer," Juno introduced the Avatar's name.
The sisters both raised their eyebrows, but again it was the older of the two that acted as spokeswomen, "I do not recognise the name Mercer for being an Ancient house, or a Most Noble house." It was said in light confusion, that which disclosed to John that the girl knew how to at least moderately control her own emotions.
Juno grinned, and opened his mouth again to speak again to Daphne and Astoria Greengrass.
John had had a few accidents when his attentions were diverted from places when they shouldn't have been. One such accident lead him to meeting an older man by the name of Professor Xavier.
Another led him to the situation he was in. It was in a Sector adjacent to the one he had found Professor Xavier's world. In fact, because of the general self-imposed policy of finding where "Earth" was supposed to be, he had crash-landed on another Earth. If his geography was to be trusted, it was in the place where New York City was supposed to be.
He was ever-so surprised when New York was, in fact, there. But what was more surprising was that there were a few - somethings - that were attempting to slow him down, and help him regain control. He couldn't use the frameshift fields that his ship was equipped with, as they hadn't been properly calibrated to work in this atmosphere yet. John was slightly frustrated by his lack of attention that led to the crash of one of his vessels already. He really didn't want to lose this one as well.
Thankfully, the sublight engines that he had the foresight to install on his ship in the first design was still there. They were normally not used too often, but they were there for emergencies like this, or for maneuvering into a position when he couldn't use the standard - albeit extremely advanced compared to the original designed - frame-shift technology.
He just had to get them online, which was hard considering his position. Again, John was thankful that he had the foresight to look into something of this possibility. After-all, he did think Murphy a genius. It only took thirty seconds to get them fully functional, and gave him thrust. With the way his ship was designed, this thrust gave him some lift. Essentially, he was able to pull up from his steep dive with some skillful flying.
He had just missed the top of a tower that proudly claimed its name to be Stark, in capital red letters. It was only the third time that he didn't need to take the local language out of a sapient mind, in order to understand it. It was a rare thing. It wasn't too rare that he didn't not notice the red human-shaped missile following him. John assumed that it wasn't actually a missile, but a platform. It wouldn't be the first time that there were digital life forms that had followed him in such a fashion. It was still creepy that it was human-shaped, though.
Whatever it was, he doubted it could follow him, where he was going.
John increased his engines' output substantially, and in but a few moments, he was in a geosynchronous orbit around the ball of green and blue. He decided to hang around, as he reasoned that if the populace of the planet had amassed that much technical prowess so as to create something like he had seen, he figured that it wouldn't be long before they reached the space age. Then again, he was speaking "not long" in his own sense of passing time, which didn't really give a standard sense of "not long" to a lowly mortal being.
It wasn't long before he had found an anomaly on the planet. He had, earlier in the year - according to the planet's timeline -, switched out the vessel from the standard exploration class, to a nice science vessel.
Unlike the smaller fighter-sized version, the science class had enough room to have a comfortable sized lab, a full bridge, and enough shielding to withhold the force of three of his dedicated fighters with a Reaper from the Eezo using Sector as backup. Despite this, fighting wasn't its main focus. It was more big on defence, so that in the event that he had to enter the vessel into a self-destruct scenario, it would be possible to transfer the data stored on the ship off in time. In order to have the data there, though, it had to come from somewhere. Basically, the main purpose wasn't to get into a fight or to explore, but for science; hence the lab, and flight not fight response of the vessel.
Back to the anomaly.
Sense he was positioned in a geosynchronous orbit above the tower he originally almost clipped, he was in the ideal place to see it. It looked like a beam of light headed towards his ship, which immediately had John take evasive maneuvers as he had assumed it was meant to harm him. Or, alternately, there was an accident and this was a harmful byproduct of that accident.
He doubted it was that last option.
He was wrong in to assume it was headed to him, as not long afterward there was a large… wormhole that opened up in the higher atmosphere. The reason for his hesitation for his pegging it a wormhole was that it wasn't a sphere. What's widely known about wormholes was that they were effectively a tear in space-time leading from one place in said position to another. What most overlooked, however, was that space-time was three dimensional, not two dimensional. So, a wormhole wouldn't appear to be a two dimensional "hole", but instead a spherical hole. It was an area in which there was not really any area.
It was a common misconception, as it was incredibly hard for three dimensional beings to imagine such a thing, or even the four dimensions required to make such an event possible. The only reason why John didn't have problems with it was that he was a hiveminded "individual" that existed outside of multiple Sectors.
He decided to investigate this anomaly. Quickly, a few Avatars had shifted their biomass into a battle-ready form, mainly one he had developed a very long time ago being that of a very effective form. It would be a perfect opportunity to have a live test of the armored forms with the added Em in the bodies.
Each of the armored Avatars were covered with a very hard, densely packed black armor. The armor had spikes and ridges protruding from them, while there were scarce few smooth places. In fact, the only spot in which there wasn't a place where a fleshy being wouldn't puncture themselves on was the face and top of the head. Even then the head was slicked back to where the back of the head had ridges of their own. Unseen were their insides, where normally John had had skin underneath the hard carapace now was an improved version of a kevlar-like skin. Beneath that were extremely efficient muscles, dense bone, and in the very centre of the Avatar was a core of Em. It was everywhere, and replaced where veins and major organs would be for a normal human. Now, for where the digestive tract was supposed to be, he had a very high density energy storage. In a way, John supposed, it was digestion for him.
The only real thing that separated the Avatars from each other were what their arms were made of. One, designation Alfa had a sword that replaced his right arm, and his left was replaced by a shield. Another had both arms replaced by a versatile long-range weapon. On the right was a design based around the original Whipfist that his creator had evolved, but heavily modified to be generally better. The left was a projectile weapon to shoot out infected spikes, about as big as a railroad spike, and programmed to turn its victim into biomass. Any Avatar would be able to use it for their own purpose later on, to charge their batteries or for other purposes. The last two were for very up-front assaulters, with both "hands" having been replaced by either massive fists to smash things with, or claws to tear things apart.
The ranged one was designated Bravo, the heavy fisted one was designated Charlie, and the last was Delta. Alfa's goal was to add backup to Bravo while Charlie and Delta went ahead for close assault.
Each four were fired out of the ship to the planet for an orbital drop; unlike the last time John had plummeted to a planet in a similar way, these avatars were prepared for entering an atmosphere at near terminal velocity. In hindsight, though, having them land in a highly populated area was not really a good idea. Thankfully he hadn't landed on anyone, but he was quite close to it.
On an angle, all four Avatars had landed atop of the building emitting the blue beam of light. Above them, the strange portal let through a variable army that immediately began invading the city. The various militaristic personalities in John recognized the tactics as those that terrorist would use. They were scare tactics, meant to instill disarray and dishearten the defending force, with the added "benefit" of keeping the defenders disorganized.
It was distasteful, and quite cowardly for them to do this method, as it resulted in a lot of civilian deaths. In fact, the civilians were actively targeted using that method. John had morals, however dulled they were, and decided to interfere with the invader's plans.
He had hoped that he wouldn't have to use the weapons he had, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Seeing as he wasn't part of the invader's team, and that he was quite close to what amounted to as a strategic point in their attempt of invasion, he was also attacked. Any that got close enough to do so, though, was efficiently taken down. Bravo was especially useful in the environment that they were in.
John had piloted the two other avatars Charlie and Delta off of the building to be useful elsewhere. That was before a rag-tag team of people had joined in on the frey. Charlie and Delta were briefly mistaken as part of the invaders, and so were shot at by the team.
John was amused, as if they could actually do anything effective against him. One, a blonde in "ye olde" armor had taken a hammer to the sky, only to have lightning come down on Delta. The Avatar had stood there and took it, channeling the electric energy through himself; he had half go to charge its battery, a quarter was transferred into usable Em, and the rest went to getting back used biomass. Delta nodded in thanks for the unintentional recharge to the male blonde.
Then, to show off, Delta concentrated enough charge into each of its claws, leapt into a flight path of a literal beast of a dropship before stabbing the charged blades into the beast. The electric discharge was enough to fry the insides of the beast, and then he lept off out-of-sight from the rag-tag team.
Charlie, however, was shot at from the red human-shaped robot with an energy bolt. The bolt made a small hole in the center of Charlie's "head", which immediately regenerated, and Charlie then went off to smash a few of the invader's around them, before moving off. That was only after it had "looked" at the Red One with its eyeless face, tilted its head, and then shook its head in a way that had reminded the group of what one would do if they sighed.
Back on the Stark tower - as the name on the side proclaimed it to be, Alfa took care of the ones that got too close for a while, before Bravo had started up with the ones at range. Eventually they were kept at bay, so Alfa got busy with a shielded thing that was projecting the blue beam of light. There was a cube of blue inside, and as Alfa had shifted its shape to a better form for what John had in mind, John inspected the device. John used all the sensors he knew of, and then created a few on-the-spot to best assess what was in front of Alfa.
Eventually, John knew what the cube was, and roughly how it worked with his examination. He had then knew how to get pass the shield made entirely of energy. Alfa shrouded his arm in Em, then reached into the machine to take out the cube to disconnect it as the power source. He succeeded, and with it the portal had started to collapse in on itself.
Absently, John noted that the Red One had flown into one of the large flying worms and had pulled a Greek God on the thing. What really had his attentions, though, was the crystalline structure in Alfa's three-fingered hands. Upon closer inspection, John determined the blue cube to be a crystallized version of Em with the center of liquid crystal.
It was strange, considering that it would take some type of dedication to crystallize Em, as it wouldn't appear that way naturally. At least, it wouldn't appear that way in Sector Zero, as far as he knew. He knew how to do it, it was just a matter of determining why he would want to grow a crystal version of Em. Furthermore a cube of crystal Em with the center as liquid crystal.
As of that moment, he had no use for a crystal version, but it would be a useful research project for his science bases off in Sectors Z1 through 3. After the observations were made and John's musings thought, he then had fully liquified it, and Alfa had brought the liquid Em into the Avatar's body.
John didn't know that it was stolen from someone else for the invaders to use, and he had not known that they would be upset at the fact that he had effectively stolen it from them as well. John had thought he was stealing it from his enemies, not his potential allies.
He would probably be able to talk his way out of any trouble were it to arise. John's avatars had then made their way to properly introduce themselves to whomever was in charge. He had a strange feeling that one of them was the owner of the building he was on.
But that was not to be, as there was a nuke incoming on his location. John's avatars did the equivalent of a sigh in their form to signify John's opinion of the situation. Reluctantly, but in necessity, John's nearby science ship had maneuvered itself to intercept with the nuke, and it made it to the nuke just seconds before the Red One had made it there. He had no idea what the robot would do with it, once he had it.
The science vessel quickly secured the moving missile inside of itself, and then had left the atmosphere and moved a safe enough distance away from the planet before it was dismantled. It was a very delicate process, disarming a nuclear missile while technically "in flight". Thankfully, John had the know-how to do so safely, and had fully dismantled the bomb without it going off.
A/N: Hopefully you all like the first Chapter of the second in the series. The goal of this "book" will be the end of Harry and Kevin's second summer holiday off from school, like the last one.
Please review, as I love reading your thoughts on what I wrote, whether it be good or bad. That, and I love it when people give me ideas for what to write, as it helps to stimulate my mind. (The only downside to my mind being stimulated would be that it would be harder to sleep... for various reasons.)