Chapter 6


Harry was a perfectionist. Well, he was a mild perfectionist in his own opinion, as he did not go to the lengths of which he would neglect other responsibilities in favour of others, no matter how much he might loath one of those responsibilities. Such was the problem of growing up way too quickly: Harry was unable to have the same experience of being able to skive off any. If he were to neglect any aspect of his life, it could result in someone's death, serious injury, or even incarceration.

Take his newest charge for an example. Hunter was his to protect and to look after. His mother had hired Harry to make sure that her heir lived on unharmed both physically as well as mentally. After all, it would be the height of irresponsibility to name an unstable person as an heir.

It was also why Harry had personally inspected the plane they were going to take from where they were vacationing in Holland to Switzerland, though he did it in such a way that it was disguised as something that looked like a child that was very interested in jets. He double checked to make sure that the pilots were both sober and competent by asking many questions and seemingly forgetting the concept of personal space until he was satisfied. He had ran background checks on them beforehand, of course, but it was always a good idea to double check. That wasn't even mentioning the poor flight attendants.

He hated flying when he wasn't the pilot; he much preferred his own private jet, as that was at least bearable despite still not being in the pilot's seat.


They had visited the campus beforehand, but it was still a very trying endeavour in trying to find where their dorms were, and everything else. They were met by plenty of stares as they made their way around, which Harry thought made sense considering that they were supposedly a ten year old and an eleven year old, with Harry taking the spot of eleven; Harry was actually eight at the time, but the identity he was using was eleven.

They were both very grateful that they both knew the local language, in fact they were both minoring in linguistics, but they still did not seek the help of the students milling about. It took a good half an hour to find their dorms, and another fifteen minutes to find their, thankfully, shared room.

Due to their jet lag, they were rather sluggishly tiered, and Hunter had opted to just shower then sleep. Harry had instead insisted he set up some basic security systems connected to a team in Harry's employ that had already gotten to Switzerland and over their jet lag. Honestly, Harry would more likely offer the person a job if they even managed to get past him, as it took some exceptional talent and skill to get past a master thief and occasional bounty hunter.

He may have been a thief in the name of restoring an object into the possession of the rightful owner, but he was still a thief; he may take the odd bounty pro bono but he was still a bounty hunter.

Only after Harry was finished unpacking, setting up, and checked in with the campus that both he and his brother had arrived and were in their proper rooms, did he allow himself to sleep.

Thankfully, their first class started in the afternoon the next day and not the morning, which left plenty of time from their midday arrival to reset their biological clockwork.


It was their first class together, in a class of a surprisingly low one-hundred, that the professor had stared at them curiously. He had started the class with, "You must be the Edwardson brothers, am I right?" Hunter nodded his head easily, while Harry maintained a cool, collected expression.

"Is there a problem, Professor?" Harry asked.

The professor nodded sincerely and said in brutal honesty, "I might trip over you two." The class chuckled at how true the statement was, as the man looked like a giant, and the lecture started up again.


Just a month into the school year, there was an attempt to kidnap Harry and Hunter. Thankfully, no harm came to them as Harry was able to "pull a spy" and had easily gotten them out of the situation. He himself didn't feel like dealing with the kidnappers directly, and instead contacted the local Law Enforcement Officers to do it. It had the benefit of keeping his giuse up more easily than if he hadn't called the LEOs like a normal scared child civvie.

He followed up to make sure they were properly dealt with, of course, but he didn't directly deal with them.

Some of the other seniors had found out about the attempt, and with them having become something of "the little brothers" of the entire graduating year, they had reacted in such a way that they seamlessly reflected that fact.

Harry was getting frustrated with the fact that all of these people kept hugging him and his brother; he couldn't effectively protect him if people kept getting so close. Shouldn't they know that it generally wasn'ty a good idea to try to touch a child prodigy, anyway?

To add to the already compromised security by way of infatuated college seniors, and despite Harry et al's best efforts, information had been leaked to the press regarding Harry and Hunter. It was aggravating to say the least, but Harry had known that it would eventually happen.


Because of what Harry was, he sometimes had certain urges that he felt the need to give in to. One such urge manifested itself in the form of a nice side mission he had undertaken.

There existed a certain bulletin-board like system that distinguished some odd-jobs that certain people would like to be completed. Harry, himself, utilised such a board before, as he had requested certain items to be acquired he felt he himself shouldn't accomplish. He had also utilised it in the opposite stream where he would take on certain jobs, for a price.

Despite Harry's chosen profession of thievery, he had a strict moral code he imposed upon himself. Not that he was morally conscious or a generally good person, mind, but because he felt life would be worth more and more exciting if he were to limit certain aspects of himself through morals. Thus, Harry would never steal an item from its rightful owner nor would he bring undue harm upon another.

That went so far as to never knowingly work with rapists, slavers, pedephiles, abusers, or the honorless.

In fact, if Harry noted a price on someone's head from being one of them, Harry would make it a point to assassinate them without charge.

It also happened to be one of Harry's insatiable urges: action in the form of assassination.

That was why Harry was looking through the sights attached to a compound bow, aimed at a target named William von Rattackan. His target was a forty-seven year old pedophile that kept a slave girl locked within an underground "playroom" on private property. He was approximately one-hundred kilograms of white male calmly presenting to a board of directors supposedly oblivious to the man's true actions. Save for one: the man's best friend since childhood.

Her name was Adeline Williams, a forty-four year old English woman that held an imperceptible strained look upon her face. She was not, surprisingly, one of Harry's targets. Instead, she was the one to offer up the bounty on William's head, and thus gained Harry's approval for her sense of morals overcoming what she knew of as her childhood friend's charms.

Harry exhaled, and on the exhale, let the arrow fly.

One William von Rattackan was reduced from a fit two-hundred-twenty pound man to an almost useless corpse upon the boardroom floor via a custom arrow with a message attached stating: "Payment Need Not Apply."

Now, Harry had made a promise to a young lady named "Pretty Bird."


It did not take long for Harry to find the underground room again. He had two of his crew following silently behind him, spectres as they were removed from all that was around them, and two more that followed them each. They made no noise as they walked past the hopeless-looking marked and degraded humans around them, heading to where a slight whimper was coming from "centre stage".

Harry absently noted that his spectres detached themselves from the formation they held while they walked into the room, and had begun to sweep the room for anymore threats. It was only after the room was deemed safe and two more joined the guards outside that the spectres started to tend to the abused slaves around the room. Harry himself was occupied by the centrepiece of the room.

Within a wire-cage sat a young,achingly thin, girl with hair so dirty and shaggy that the original colour was indiscernible, and littered with minute red cuts about her nude body. The domed wire-cage itself was barely tall enough for the young girl to stand at a crouch, made of what appeared to be silver, and upon the base of it written in what Harry assumed to be the girl's blood was a name tag, "Pretty Bird."

"My dear," Harry called, garnering the girl's startled attention, "I have come to set you free. The bad man has died." By the end of Harry's short explanation of his presence, he had already opened the cage door, and was about to step into the cage before stopping himself. He looked up to see a jug of precariously placed, to what his senses could find, lemon juice. That would be hell if it fell onto the poor girl, Harry knew from experience, and he also could tell that the juice would fall if there was any added weight onto the cage.

"You came!" The girl exclaimed in tortured delight, with a noticeable scratch to her voice.

"I never break a promise," Harry said. He noted that she did not move, not an inch, and he wondered if it was because of the sensitivity of the pressure sensor the cage was placed on, or if it was from the inability to do so. Harry decided to ask as such, "I am able to move, I think," was the girl's answer.

Harry nodded, and then went about climbing a support beam intent on removing the threat of lemon juice, after he had removed some of his more heavy equipment.

He reached the top of the climb, took the jug off of the trigger-plate, and told the girl that it was alright for her to move again. He heard her hiss as she started to move slowly out of the gilded prison made for her, and he winced in sympathy at the feeling of pulling skin from the slowly healing cuts. Harry dropped off of the ledge he had used for removing the citrus acids, and had silently landed in front of the abused girl. He picked up his coat from where he had left it to climb, and, ignoring the girl's nakedness, he draped it around the girl's shivering shoulders.

"Is this real?" Harry heard the same tortured voice whisper near him, and seamlessly Harry replied.

"Yes," he said simply, "This is really happening." Thankfully the girl's salty tears streamed down an untouched face. "Now, let's get those wounds of yours treated, shall we?" Harry noticed the girl wobble on her feet, probably too tired from all that she endured or not used to standing to make it far walking. So, Harry picked the girl up bridal style, and carried her out of the building.


Ranger Left Tennant Wildbore watched the proceedings in slight awe as a group of black-clad figures had stormed a building that was on the watch of the Rangers for a while, and had only then gained enough indication to permit a raid. Their data indicated that the building was a depot for a slave trade, headed by one William von Rattackan, and a strike had been ordered on William and a raid of all of his properties, but when the Left Tennant had made to engage the man they only found a dead body. Now, when they made it to the required area they were beaten again. At least they got a chance to see those responsible in action.

He watched as the force storm the building and heard the distinct sound of muffled gunfire with the sight of flashes that indicated hostility in the building. He watched as the action died down, and then as a significantly smaller black-clad form appeared in the edge of his vision and approach the scene. It was accosted with two more men following behind them, and Left Tennant Wildbore made the correct connection that they were in a position of authority over the black-clad men.

He watched the new grouping enter into the building, and not long after, he witnessed that same figure now maskless and coatless carrying another figure in their arms. The other figure was wrapped in the coat, and Wildbore made the connection that the now identifiable figure as a boy was there for benign purposes. The boy carrying the figure wrapped in his coat was preceded by more black-clad figures carrying their own loads of liberated slaves.

The boy's head suddenly snapped to Wildbore's position, and Wildbore's eyes widened and he high-tailed it out of there, intent on getting back to Ranger HQ so as to report the new development.


A/N: I know this chapter is a little late, plus a little light in size, but I didn't think I could fit anything else within the chapter.

As a side note, I don't plan on any sort of pairings for this story, sorry. That, and the Rangers are borrowed from "You Cannot Save the World" by Lady Celestial Star. I suggest you read that story, seeing as I really enjoyed it, despite it not being complete yet. The story ID is 10655211

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I implore all of you to both review and take care.

I'll see you all next time!