I don't own Potter of Marvel.
Remember what I said about monster chapters, well, here's another one. the next one will be out in three weeks, but my marvel muse would just not let me be until i wrote this.
Some good reviews I would like to mention:
Narsil: Moral decisions are difficult to understand from once removed, but you are correct that at that time Xavier was correct, and I did that on purpose to showcase another difference between Harry and him, something that will be pointed out again in this chapter.
Preier: Harry was disappointed in his performance too.
SerialKiller: In that case you should like this chapter.
TJG: the T there stands for telepathy doesn't it? You'll notice I had some of the same ideas you had in this chapter, as well as a bit more, hope you like it.
For those familiar with the X-men Evolution episodes, I switched around the chronology of the two episodes Shadowed Past and Grim Reminder. Grim Reminder is first, to give the X-people something to do.
I have a bit of an announcement at the end of the chapter, but lets get this lengthy show on the road.
Chapter 6 Let's have a little race
Harry and Ororo took the three injured swiftly to the hospital wing and got to work on them. Fred, the only one of the brotherhood who had been injured walked away under his own power, and the four of them left swiftly after Harry went inside, with their still comatose leader being carried by Pietro (though not until after he took a bit of a feel before showing up with her, he didn't actually like the bitch all that much but he still thought she was hot).
As Harry laid Kurt on one of the beds he castigated himself fiercely about how he acted today, and the kids, for that was what they all were to him, just kids despite their powers, had paid for it.
The bed's medical scanner, a mix of MRI and x-ray that had initially been developed by Reed and a Henry Pym, and was now used worldwide in many of top tier hospitals, went to work and Harry raised a hand. Hedwig appeared at that moment, carrying a bottle of healing potion, which Harry took from her swiftly.
Kitty was surprisingly worse than she looked, on the outside she only looked a little singed but inside the damage was much worse. She was suffering from a severe system shock, as if whatever had hit her had just fried her nerves right under the skin. So she was fed the potion first, and then Harry began to cast several healing spells that were aimed to heal the nerves over her, thankful beyond words that Hermione had made him promise to learn them after he had been hit by the cruciatus at the end of fourth year.
Harry worked on Kitty like this for thirty minutes while Ororo looked over Kurt and Evan. Evan was merely knocked out, the first version of his bone armor having protected him from worse than a concussion. Kurt on the other hand had several cracked ribs, and was having trouble breathing.
Rogue too came in to be checked, but her shock after touching Cyttorak's shield was far less than Kitty's, more like an electrical jolt than some kind of torture that Kitty had suffered, probably because she had only tried to tag him with her hand not her full body like Shadowcat. Ororo swiftly turned her around after giving her a sip from Harry's healing potion, concentrating her work on Evan and Kurt, using some of the medical equipment to ease the blue-furred German boy's breathing. Luckily there was no permanent damage, and a few healing spells from Harry once he was done with Kitty would set him right.
About an hour later Harry had done all he could. All three of the injured would recover, but Kitty in particular would have to rest for the next few days. Once all three were sleeping peacefully after sharing a mild sleeping potion, Harry and Ororo left them there.
Harry was filled with self-loathing for his shortcomings but Ororo saw this and stopped him before he could walk away. "Stop." She said firmly. Harry turned to look at her, his face sorrowful and she continued. "This is not your fault Harry Potter, so don't even think it is. You weren't the one who broke that lunatic out, you weren't the one who hurt our charges, you weren't even the one who called the kids in, none of this is your fault."
"Yes it is!" Harry burst out angrily. "If I had taken Juggernaut as seriously as I should have from the start I could have ended it before the kids arrived. If I had, none of them would have been injured! But no, I heard he was Baldy's brother, and just saw it as a silly family spat despite their powers!"
"So that means you made a mistake, it does not mean you are at fault." Ororo answered calmly. "You cannot take responsibility for all that went wrong. Yes I'll admit you should have taken it more seriously, but you seemed to have started with that attack that caught Logan. And after that…"
"Yeah punk, it anyone should be blaming themselves it's me." Logan walked in, a morose, almost beaten look on his face and a beer in one hand. He had held it together to help Jean, Scott and Chuck return Cain to the Vault (and boy had Chuck had to talk quick to explain how they caught him and what had happened to him) and then returned with the intention of drinking away his problems. All those years devoted to mediation, all those sessions with Chuck and I still fall into a damn berserk state!
Hearing Harry, the guy who had taken Juggernaut down in the end blame himself had broken him out of his own depression, at least for a moment. He took a sip from his bear then pointed one finger at Harry. "You remind me a lot of guys I used to know during the war. The guys that were out in the woods, who were in the field, in danger for so long it became second nature to them. Once they realized they weren't in any danger they went all to pieces, they lost the edge and couldn't regain it. You were able to slip back into combat mode eventually punk and you did good. Not only beat Cain, but made it so he'll never be the threat he was before."
Ororo nodded firmly. "If you weren't here Logan would almost certainly have never been able to slow Juggernaut down, and Charles would be dead before I could have returned with the students, and that supposes they could have handled him without you. Do not blame yourself for this outcome." Logan nodded agreement. He knew his limitations. Logan would bet on himself against anyone he could actually injure, but that shield of Juggernaut had stymied him completely.
Harry looked at her fierce determined face and slowly nodded, then without warning leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. He pulled back quickly but he was smiling when he did, and so was she, despite her surprise at the act. "Thanks, Ororo." He then turned to Logan. "What was up with that anyway Hairy One? Why the bloody hell did you attack me like that?"
Logan grimaced as the trio made their way to the TV room. "I was raised by a pack of wolverines in the wilds of Canada kid, ain't got no idea who my parents were. Anyway I took on some of their attributes, including falling into a berserker rage if I'm in too much pain. It's sometimes been my greatest strength, most of the time my worst weakness. Your sound attack managed to just, to just smash through all my defenses and cause the inner animal to come out. And because you were the one that did it, I kept on targeting you rather than Cain." He sat down in one of the chairs and took a long pull from his beer before slamming it back down. "All that time I spent with Chuck working on getting better and when it matters the most I can't keep control!"
Harry shook his head. "If I'm not allowed to blame myself neither are you Logan, it was just damn dumb luck and me not realizing what could happen with my sound attack." Ororo nodded firmly, sitting down on the sofa next to him. The trio sat silent for a time, each lost in their own thoughts. Harry though back about it and, was thankful Charles had stopped him. He wouldn't have shed a tear if Cain had died in battle but executing him afterward in cold blood, no that wasn't something he would have done if he had been wholly rational.
Yet at the same time he knew Cain should be facing the death penalty at the very least for what he had done since gaining his powers, but probably wasn't. After all, he had been broken out once, who was to say the person who did it couldn't do it again anytime they wanted, just like back in his old dimension and Chez-Azkaban. If it was a choice between letting Cain live and possibly escape to misuse his powers again, or feeling guilty afterward, Harry knew what he would choose. But in the end Charles had stopped him, and he would be the one that would carry that burden.
At that point Jean and Scott came in having changed back to their normal clothing followed quickly by Rogue. Jean was the first to speak asking, "So, um, what will we be doing about the wilderness survival camp? I mean, we did leave rather suddenly."
"And Evan and the others won't be up for anything for a few days," Ororo mused. She looked speculatively at Logan and Harry.
"You do it." Harry said bluntly, pointing a finger at Logan. "I have projects to work on."
Including hunting down whoever it is that's been watching the house. Harry thought grimly. I want to make bloody certain that whoever is watching doesn't see a damn thing. They shouldn't have been able to see anything today, but I'm not going to leave that to chance. After that I'll spend some time in the Danger Room tonight, and then resume working on my projects tomorrow when Logan is training the X-men. Logan's right, I've been too complacent, I need to get my edge back. "The sooner I get my current projects done, the sooner I can figure out a way to create a suit that'll give the team more protection."
Logan grunted angrily, but agreed. Storm spoke up then. "I think I'll join in the training as well, it could be good for you all to fight another opponent. Though I trust all of you will be taking the training seriously from now on?" She stared sternly at all three of the students who all nodded firmly. Fighting Juggernaut and seeing Harry in action when he was serious had been a major wake up call. They all thought they were tough and getting stronger quickly, but that was before Cain took their best shots and kept on coming never treating them more than nuisances.
A short time after Jean and Ororo both left to spend time watching the wounded, and Rogue simply decided to go and listen to some music and wait to see how long it would take for her power up from draining Juggernaut would last.
Scott went up to his room to think about what they could have done better. He was a little resentful of Harry taking command like he had, but he realized that Harry had handled it as well as it could have been handled. Juggernaut was simply one hell of an opponent. But that didn't mean he didn't think he could have done better as a leader.
Harry's time was spent a bit more aggressively. First he went up to his room and grabbed his invisibility cloak. Then he went out and hunted down the watcher down the street. It turned out to be a man dressed almost exactly like the poster child for a spy, tie, good suit and all. He was blond, with short cropped hair and a stern jaw, who look incredibly bored as Harry found him. By this Harry deduced that the weak notice-me-not ward he had installed, designed to simply make it seem as if nothing interesting was going on in the mansion, had worked very well. Good, I was worried that Juggernaut had broken it when he shattered the intent-based defensive ward.
With a silent stupefy the man fell asleep at his post on the balcony of the house he was apparently living in. "That says something about the money and planning of whoever he works for," Harry muttered, checking the man's wallet. Inside he found a badge with a bird design on the back of it and the acronym SHIELD, as well as several different I.D.'s none of which he assumed was real. Harry didn't recognize the unit or group or whatever it was, certainly Reed and the others had never mentioned a group called that. Hmm, that means they are really secretive, don't trust the FF for some reason, or are new, ah well, it doesn't matter which really.
He worked quickly after that, placing a tracking charm on the man and a bit of a confundus spell that made him think he had spent the entire day stuck inside throwing up with food poisoning. He had no idea how this guy contacted his superiors, but he wanted him to have another reason for not having seen any of the action, regardless of whether he had checked in yet today or not. A bowel issue was embarrassing enough even a spy wouldn't include it in his report unless pressed. No way would the changes in Cain go unnoticed if this group is at all confident, so I need this guy to have an excuse to not have noticed. Something that can't be traced back to me or to Baldy the mind tweaker, at least not right away. I doubt anyone would think the straight-laced Chuck would use something like that after all.
After that he placed a tracking spell on the man then left, fighting the urge to leave some kind of prank that would activate if the man was brought in for questioning. But he didn't want to make more enemies right now, not until the issue between him and Charles stabilized one way or another.
With that Harry went back to the mansion and moved into the Danger Room. Everyone else save Charles had already gone to bed, exhausted from the battle, allowing Harry to have some privacy. I know what Ororo said, and I agree with her for the most part, but I could have done so much better even after I started taking Juggernaut seriously. I could have done so much more with indirect spells, but I never even thought of them, despite my using them and runes so often in my pranks. I have to get my edge back. Regardless of anything else, I know now there are people out there who can push me to use everything I've got, well, below my BI spells, at least I hope that there isn't anyone who can force me to use those.
What Harry called his BI or Bloody Insane spells, were spells he had developed in the Negative Zone. They were designed for one thing and one thing only: utter and complete annihilation. Several of them could in various ways destroy an entire planet. Harry had not been kidding when he said there were denizens that could wipe out humanity with a thought. Harry had fought a single member of one such, and had used two of the UI spells to finally kill him (or it, Harry was uncertain afterward if the bastard even had a gender) as well as the planetoid the fight had occurred on.
Still that was unimportant for now, and the Danger Room created a slightly smaller version of the Juggernaut, programmed with all the data he could tell the Danger Room of his abilities. After a moment it roared and charged Harry. "Let's dance," he whispered, green lightning sparking in his eyes.
Mystique woke up with a groan and a curse. The curse was not because of the pain, as a spy and a fighter she was used to pain. No, the groan came because of how stupid she had been to think that Cain Marko would be willing to work with her. "That's what I get for not reading his entire profile." She muttered. "Egotistical asshole."
Pietro's voice answered her from the side. "Yeah well, maybe if you had also, you know told us what the hell you were doing we would have been in a better position to help you."
Lances voice cut in sharply at that point. "Fuck that, that bastard was willing to take us all on and might have done us all in if that new X-guy Potter didn't beat him down."
Mystique sat up quickly looking at them all standing around a sofa she was laying on. She saw they were back at the small dorm house she had bought them and frowned ferociously. "All right, how long was I out, how the hell did I get back here, and what the hell happened?"
Todd Tolansky, the Toad, a small misshapen boy who looked very much like his powers had twisted his body to match them answered her. "Well, ya see, we were at the survival camp with the X-dorks when their plane showed up and took them away to help fight the big red. Then we went with them because that black MILF of theirs said that you were in trouble too." Elsewhere a certain Nubian goddess had a sudden desire to fry some toads and wondered why. "We show up and throw down with the big red and then well…"
Lance took up the tale. "We didn't do too hot to be honest, Toad couldn't do anything to him, Fred could barely match his strength for a few minutes and even at almost full power I couldn't do much either. And Pietro had left to look for you." And didn't come back like a fucking coward, but that's going to be 'discussed' between us later, no need to mention it now. "Potter, the new X-teacher, he took command of us and the X-men, tried to keep us all safe while hammering the big guy but it didn't work so well. Rogue and Kitty, I mean Shadowcat, they both went down when they touched the big guys shield and then Kurt went down and well, Potter went crazy."
"He got in close, Juggernaut somehow lost some of his power and then Rogue drained the rest and that was it. We were lucky Fred was only hurt a little, I don't think any of the three X-dudes that went down are going to be moving any time soon." He scowled a little. Lance was always trying to measure himself up to Scott as a leader and a fighter, and he felt they were pretty even. Maybe if he was honest Scott was a little more powerful and more, well more leader-ish, but Lance thought it was though, he was on a whole other level, and the battle as a whole showed Lance that he and the rest of the Brotherhood had a lot of work to do before they were ready to play with the adults.
Mystique scowled at the lost opportunity but at least it wasn't a total loss. "So you saw Potter's powers, what are they?"
The four teens all looked uncomfortable, scuffing their toes and glancing away not meeting her eyes. Toad spoke up then. "Um, well see, it, we, we don't know. We know he was fighting and that he took out the big guy at the end almost by himself, but other than that, none of us can remember for the life of us how he did it."
The spell Harry had activated on the four teens was a very targeted version of the 'Confoundus' charm that completely scrambled their memories of his powers. They would eventually be able to piece together what they had seen in a month or two, but for now none of them had any idea what his powers were. They didn't even remember Kitty using the word 'spell'.
Mystique stared at them, a deep scowl on her face. So Charles will go to such lengths to keep this punk's powers a secret? Or was it Potter himself somehow? Her thoughts were interrupted when Lance spoke up again. "But he was a weird one, he argued with the bald guy about how it would be better to kill big red rather then put him away, and then as we were leaving he told us he'd be in touch. He said he wants to 'hear your sales pitch' too."
"Hmmm." Mystique said, unable to figure out what the hell that meant. If he didn't believe in Xavier's cause, then why the hell was he living with them? "Well whatever, but you say you weren't doing too well? The answer for that is simple, training. And since you all left that survival camp, that means we have the rest of the week to train." She smiled evilly, and all four of the boys gulped worriedly.
Harry was incredibly sore the next day but was also pleased. After spending half the night training in the Danger Room he spent the rest of the night working on the thorniest part of creating a ward for a non-magical to use continually: power. By the end of the night he had figured out a power source, now he just had to figure out how to create a runic array that would feed off it. Bio-energy, the energy a living body gave off, could be used as a power source, and Harry thought that it would be strong enough to power something like the ward for Ororo, but not something like a flight array, and maybe not something for Rogue. That still eluded him, unless he could figure out a way to draw more bio-energy from the individual without actually harming them. It would of course mean the person had to take in more energy in terms of food, but that was ok.
When he walked into her arboretum he found Ororo already naked and sitting at the table waiting for him. She smiled in welcome and he smiled back despite how sore he was. After taking off his own clothes, making a point of not noticing how Ororo's eyes trailed over his muscles and new bruises (fairs' fair after all) he sat down across from her. "Well, how are you this morning milady?"
"Better than you obviously," Ororo said rather tartly. "I take it you decided to beat yourself up despite my admonishments that what occurred was not your fault?"
"I did indeed, but on the plus side I also found an energy source that could work on the ward I am designing for you. Could you spare sometime this week to make certain what I have so far works? Say a few minutes of our morning time together? I want to make certain it works before I start work on anything permanent."
Ororo's frown turned into a smile. She was looking forward to not watching her emotions, and could think of several fun ways the two of them could 'test' the ward designed to block her emotional connection to local weather. She frowned inside remembering some of the names her boyfriend in college had called her.
Of course her relationship, if that was even the word for a single night, back when she was living on the Serengeti plain wasn't even considered, there had been no emotional connection there, it was merely a physical thing. Though there had been that other boy from a foreign tribe when she was younger, but he left and anyway at that time she didn't know to watch her emotions.
No it was the boyfriend who she had when she went to college that she remembered most. A cold fish am I? Frigid, unresponsive am I? I wonder what he would say if he knew how much it took not to flay him to the bone every time he finished without taking any consideration for my needs! Hmph. Yes, Ororo Munroe had quite a bit of frustration to work off, not that she would push things that far too quickly. No, the connection that was growing between her was too much fun to rush like that.
That didn't mean they couldn't have some fun though…"That is wonderful new truly. I am looking forward to being able to show more of my emotions." The gleam in Harry's eyes told her he was looking forward to it too, and she went on hurriedly. "It will be nice to see if I can connect more with our students without it getting in the way."
"I'm sure it will," Harry said, in a tone that implied far more than the words. But then he sipped his tea and changed the subject, asking if Ororo knew of any other groups like the FF or any other adult mutants. The discussion lasted the rest of their morning together, and both of them walked out to face the rest of the day in much better moods than they had been.
The three teens able to move came down to see a high calorie breakfast waiting for them and Logan and the other adults already eating. Harry was fixing up three plates for the invalids and waved his hand at Jean. The redhead's eyebrow began to twitch violently at seeing all the sausages bacon and other fatty things on the table. Jean sat down, her eyebrow twitching even more violently as Harry walked off. She sat down at a place well down the table from where she normally sat and began to fix herself a very small plate of food, hoping that the change of place would save her from the trap Harry had no doubt laid down for her.
Logan smirked a little. "I wouldn't bother Grey, Potter's probably figured out a way to keep ya here until you eat as much as he wants ya to."
Ororo nodded, smiling a little as she had seen how Harry had set up this particular trick. "Indeed, and you should eat anyway. I realize you all had some leftover pasta last night, but you also all used your powers far more than normal yesterday, you need the energy if you're going to get through training today. You'll be working with me, and you too Rogue. We'll be working on power projection and hand to hand combat." Both girls looked at her in surprise and Ororo smiled. "There are some moves and techniques that a woman can teach that a man cannot and I have decided that I wish to involve myself in your physical training more."
Logan looked over at Scott. "You're with me Summers, we'll be working on hand to hand and physical endurance as well as some other things." Scott nodded, knowing he was in for a very painful time.
Charles smiled, happy that the others had organized things already. "I've already called the camp where you were all supposed to stay and gave them your excuses, so don't worry about that."
The conversation then split, with the adults talking about the consequences of yesterday's battle and the three teens discussing the same thing though on a more personal level.
Rogue had been astonished this morning when she went to turn off her alarm that she still had the super strength that taken from Cain yesterday. Rather than simply tap the darn thing she had crushed it with two fingers. In fact, while the memories he had gotten from him had already faded (a side effect of his being unconscious when she drained him, his memories were only of the short term and very quickly gone) his strength had stayed with her and showed no sign of leaving. She was due a short stop in the research lab because of that, to make certain that there wasn't any lasting harm done to her and to check and see if she still had her original powers. She hoped that was not the case; that draining Cain completely had broken her power leaving her with his super strength and durability instead, but she wasn't too hopeful.
Scott tried to get the two girls to talk about the fight in an attempt to go over what they could have done differently, but Jean headed him off, opening a three-way discussion about school and classes. While Rogue was in the grade below the other two she was taking some of the same classes they had and they shared some stories about teachers and classmates while the adults had their much more serious conversation, talking about the ramifications of what had occurred the day before.
Charles had to talk very quickly to explain how Cain had lost most of his powers, and the story he had come up with was probably not believed by the head warden of the prison. He well knew that mutant-kind wasn't ready to be forced into the spotlight just yet, and Harry's powers would cause consternation and fear in both hate groups and certain religious institutions. Charles was hopeful however that his fast talking had worked well enough for now to keep attention off them for a while longer.
It hadn't.
Nick Fury, the head of the new overarching intelligence institution name SHIELD was incensed. He was a man who wanted to know everything he could, the more he knew the better he could perform his duties, which put simply was the defense of the world and America in particular. Well, to be honest it was just America at the moment, none of the other nations that had been asked to join up had been willing to pony up the cash or trust an American chosen head just yet, but that was neither here nor there. And even when they did SHIELD would have no jurisdiction in China or Russia or India, and very little in Africa. Still that was neither here nor there.
Yesterday a super threat had escaped from the Vault, one of the most secure prisons on the planet. Today said super threat, someone on the order of the Hulk and some of the extraterrestrials the FF had faced (and the FF themselves, though that was a tightly guarded secret) could be barely classified as a threat. The Juggernaut, whose super strength was on par with the Hulk or The Thing, the strong man of the super hero team Fantastic Four, was now without said strength. He had also lost his mystical armor and his shield which protected him from nearly all damage. His strength, which even without mystical aid should have been near that of someone like that Spider-man fellow given their analysis, was now far, far less, barely above human norm. Something had happened to take his mystical and mutant powers away while he was free and Nick Fury had no idea what.
He knew when and where it had to have happened though. Xavier's school, it was the only explanation. After all it was Charles that had subdued Cain the first time, and he had returned his half-brother to the Vault this time. The man may have gotten the okay from someone in the government under the table to have a school for mutants, but Fury knew there was more going on than just teaching them how to control their powers, especially with his old friend Logan there. And whatever had happened to Cain Marko had happened there. Unfortunately despite this knowledge his man on sight was unable to tell him anything.
When asked by his supervisor Agent Barton had told the man that he hadn't seen anything, which was so out there Fury had contacted the man himself. When pressed Clint admitted to having spent practically the entire afternoon in the bathroom with bowel issues. Shit happens, if anyone knew that Fury did, but this was remarkably well timed shit. No, something was going on and if it didn't have something to do with this Potter kid that came out of nowhere and became friends with the Fantastic Four, Nick would eat his eye-patch. He decided to send a few more undercover agents into Bayville when he could. When that would be he didn't know yet, SHIELD had quite a few logs in the fire right now, but he was going to do it and find out what the hell Harry Potter was.
Kitty and the others were woken up by the delicious smells wafting from the large trays Harry was carrying as he came into the medical wing. Kitty opened her eyes and Kurt sat up quickly, while Evan kept his eyes closed but turned his head toward the smell. Light hurt his eyes right now, but he was certain if food was the first thing he saw the pain would go away.
"Hey guys" Harry said setting one tray down between Evan and Kitty, and the other one next to Kurt, whose appetite was very like a certain orange-haired Gryffindor, though Kurt had much better table manners. "How are you three feeling?"
"Crappy," Kurt said bluntly, grabbing up a fork. "Exhausted, like a punching bag or a piece of tenderized meat, take your pick, but ve'll live I think."
"Yeah what he said" Kitty said, already digging into her oatmeal (heavy on the sugar and cinnamon and with extra raisins, just like she liked it) with a spoon while she was already chewing on a sausage. She waited a moment to swallow before going on. "That big guy was tough but hey, we're all alive. Did you have to use some of your magic to heal us?"
"Yep. But even with that you all will be bedridden for at least two days. Still that doesn't mean we can't work on your thinking and tactical planning, so that's what we'll be doing in the mornings and a bit of the afternoon." Kurt and Evan groaned but still nodded agreement along with Kitty.
Kurt, who had already polished one plate of sausages and eggs asked. "As nice as breakfast in bed is, it's a pity that ve missed your normal war with Jean." They all laughed a little at that.
Jean had finished as much of breakfast as she wanted to eat, and was now searching around for the rune holding her in place. She first checked her back, not wanting to fall to the same trick twice. After a few minutes spent searching, she frowned, not having found anything. She looked at the table wondering and then at the others, none of whom, not even the professor had left. In fact Charles had a resigned expression on his face and had leaned back, reading a newspaper he had pulled out from behind his chair.
The others were still eating of course, but the professor still being there was very odd… After another moments thought Jean stuck her head underneath the table again, but this time concentrated on the carpet underneath the table. There, about as large as the table above it was a rune of some kind.
She didn't know what it was but it was a simple 'hold' rune, modified to hold them all in place. If she knew that she could have simply waited it out but...
She sat up and began to summon her power then frowned as her stomach rumbled a little, reminding her it was still hungry and at the same time she felt the professor's stern regard. Giving it up as a bad idea she sighed and began to eat her fill, and not two minutes later the rune dissipated, having consumed its power without Harry there to power it. Ororo noticed this and smiled inwardly at the little trick.
About an hour after breakfast had settled, Rogue and Jean met with Storm in the Danger Room. Jean had spent that time checking in with their friends and found them sitting up and having a leisurely breakfast with Harry while discussing new ways to use their powers. Rogue had spent that time in the research lab with the professor checking her over, and had found that her strength seemed to have become permanent! It was a shock to her, but she was happy as well as this made her a more powerful member of the team.
Ororo had converted half the room to a target range, with dozens of small moving targets at one end while the other half had been turned into a martial arts dojo. She stood in the target range section and motioned Jean and Rogue to join her. "Today we will be working on strength, target practice, and martial arts training." She twirled away suddenly and a lightning bolt shot out of her hand with a violent crack shooting downrange to destroy one of the smallest targets. "First, target practice. Jean stand over here, Rogue come over here and pick up this spear."
The spears were a suggestion of Harry's from their discussion that morning in her arboretum. Each spear was about seven feet long and made entirely of metal. The things were very heavy, but with Rogue's newfound strength they felt about as light as toothpicks. "We'll work on that for an hour or so, and then Jean you'll work on the strength exercises Harry had you doing while Rogue you will work on controlling your new strength and finding its limitations until lunchtime. Don't think I didn't see what you did to that chair arm or the knives and forks young lady." Rogue shrugged her shoulders, a little embarrassed, but not so much, still enjoying her newfound strength.
While Harry spent the day going over new ideas for weapons and ways to use their powers with Evan and the others, Storm worked Jean and Rogue to the bone. Rogue learned to control her powers, though it was hard, she had never felt as physically powerful before. Before today she was barely benching 60 pounds, but now it was more like 60 tons! Jean too was feeling stronger, though in her case it was if her powers had risen to the occasion yesterday and now that was their new norm.
Their target practice sessions however couldn't be more different. While Jean quickly got the hand of hitting even the smallest targets, it turned out Rogue had absolutely no eye for long range weapons. They had gone back to target practice after spending most of the morning on control and Ororo shrugged philosophically as Rogue missed one of the large targets yet again. "Well that is what training is for, though we might tell Harry not to build that taser gun he was planning for you until you can use it properly. On the other hand he did say the team needed a tank more than another long range specialist, so you are in a way a godsend Rogue."
Rogue smiled happily, setting the spear she was holding back into its holder. Ororo went on motioning the two girls to follow her. "Now let's do some stretches and then I will show you some martial arts katas." The stretches were vastly different and far better for the two girls than the ones Logan normally used. They were designed to limber them up rather than build muscles like the ones he used, Logan simply thought one exercise fits all. When they were done warming up Ororo showed them several holds and moves from Aikido to start with, a soft style that Logan didn't use. Jean took to it like a duck to water, but Rogue wanted something different to use with her strength. Ororo suggested boxing and kickboxing lessons, both of which Logan could help with. Grappling however did have its uses for Rogue, especially given her powers, and she learned several holds easily from Ororo, while she was careful to not actually touch the younger girl's skin.
Both girls learned that in this as in teaching languages Ororo was a truly gifted teacher. She was able to explain things simply, showed every move she wanted them to learn first, and corrected their mistakes easily. Both girls realized they enjoyed learning this way, and despite some misgivings about how important hand to hand skills truly was, put their hearts into it.
Scott was learning some of the same, but Logan also had him check to see if he was comfortable with some hand to hand weapons, and started training him on using a knife. He wasn't very at home with anything hand to hand, and only really went through the motions, something that Logan saw but didn't really know how to correct.
When they met up for dinner and she heard that Scott was learning knife work, Ororo's lips twitched very slightly, that was all. Perhaps later I can show him some of my own knife work, Ororo thought, remembering how she had learned to protect herself with a knife as a thief in Cairo and kept it up later. After all a young girl on her own needed a hidden secret to protect herself at times. None of the youngsters noticed her reaction and even if they had seen it all of them were too tired to wonder about it. That night, despite having left the endurance camp, every X-man went to bed exhausted. Harry however wasn't.
That night Harry spent his time coming to grips with his new magical strength in the Danger Room, something he had ignored last night with his eagerness to get some real practice in. He had belatedly realized he had fought far too directly against an opponent after he should have realized that tactic wasn't working and he took on Juggernaut with indirect spells, illusions, attacks on his senses, conjuration and transfiguration to hold him in place, and other tactics.
Now casting a spell on himself he whistled a little at the number that floated in the air like mist for a few seconds in yellow before dissipating. "400,000 wow, that's almost, that's about twice as strong as I was before, I think, never really checked myself when I was in the Negative Zone." I'll check back in a few days, but if that's permanent damn, just bloody damn. The spell was designed to test a magic user's power level using something called a UOM, or unit of magic. Hermione was the one who found it somehow in the library at school and she had tried to explain what a UOM was once in fourth year but Harry had been too busy trying to ignore how good she smelled sitting next to him to actually listen.
After a moment's thought he muttered "Magia Erebea," and began to go through some exercises. He quickly determined that the spell was now doing far more than before. Where before the spell would augment his speed and durability now his strength was also massively reinforced. It seemed the magic had, for want of a better word, a preference as to what it wanted to do. While he had no real way to tell, he thought he might be as strong as Ben, or maybe as strong as Rogue was now. His durability too had been greatly enhanced, so much so that his crisis suit was redundant. Not that he was going to stop wearing it of course. "I said it before but wow."
After that Harry went to bed, deciding not to pull an all-nighter again lest Ororo be irritated with him, she had been talking to Hedwig earlier for some reason, and he wouldn't put it past his familiar to decide to rat him out, for his own good of course.
The next day Jean woke up determined to speak to Ororo about flying, having had simply the most magnificent dream of doing so ever, and waking up early feeling great despite her exertions yesterday. She had dreamed about flying since she was a little girl, and she knew that she was strong enough telekinetically to do it now, all that remained was figuring out how, and Ororo was the only one who could possibly help her. She knew the older woman spent her mornings in her arboretum so she went there first.
What she didn't know was that Ororo and Harry spent their mornings together there. Nor did she know they spent those mornings naked in Ororo's case, and almost naked in Harry's. When she walked in she found the two of standing next to a table, touching a large stone with a series of very small runes on it. They turned slightly to look at her and Jean froze completely.
She had seen Harry in a similar state once before, but still this was just… Of course I've seen Duncan's chest and muscles when he takes his shirt off to try and impress me, and the other cheerleaders of course, as if I can't tell what he's thinking even without using my powers hmmf, but he's all heavy muscle and built for upper body power. Harry looked like a swimmer, wide shoulders, incredibly toned, a stomach you could use as a table and those abs looked just yummy to the redhead. His scars too were intriguing and she wondered where they all came from, she just knew there was a story behind every one of them, and she wondered if she would ever learn them.
Ororo too was enticing, a thought that surprised Jean greatly. She had always known the older woman was gorgeous of course, something that had made all three of the younger girls a little jealous from time to time, but seeing her like this was something else. Her dark chocolate nipples, her milk chocolate breasts and unblemished skin was incredibly something, making the younger girl question her preferences for a moment. And that didn't even mention her long legs or "Wow, I really didn't think you would shave down there, a lightning bolt, really?"
The two nominal adults looked at her for a moment contemplatively as her face grew as red as her hair in mortification when she realized she had said that out loud and what she was seeing. Then Harry shook his head and laughed a little and Ororo asked "Jean dear, since you're standing there could you check the weather outside for me?"
Jean looked out the glass wall of the arboretum by the door grateful for the distraction and was grateful when she heard the rustle of clothing as they dressed. Well Harry dressed, Ororo wasn't embarrassed or irritated so saw no need. "U-uh, um it's looking really windy, the wind was really picking up for a moment but it seems to have settled down."
"I see." Ororo said sadly, leaning away from the table. "I'm sorry Harry, but that one doesn't seem to work either. I was feeling quite amused there, in fact I was feeling the equivalent of falling down laughing at Jean's face, though it was much closer than the last one"
Harry nodded and made a note on a little notepad by his chair before turning to Jean. "You my dear need to work on knocking. Unless you're doing it on purpose of course, than please carry on."
Ororo giggled a little at that while outside the wind picked up once more for a few seconds before dying down, but Jean had recovered enough of her poise to shoot back sharply "Oh grow up Harry, you're not that good looking. And I was looking for Ororo anyway."
Harry paused buttoning up the last button on his shirt, staring off into the distance in silent contemplation. A lightning bolt slammed into him from out of nowhere knocking him out of it, and he shook himself. "Right sorry, next time be more careful about feeding my inner pervert like that. But anyway, back to the drawing board for me, I'll leave you two ladies alone."
Ororo mock scowled at him then he left bowing his way out grandly. Jean growled a little while Ororo merely chuckled, waving the other girl over to join her. Jean did so, still a little flustered despite her earlier bravado, and a little on edge given Ororo's continued state of undress. "So why did you wish to talk to me so early Jean? If you wanted to ask about help shaving you could have asked me for that later if neither of the other girls are up to it."
"No! Well I mean yes, that would be nice, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to ask you, well I wanted to ask you to help me learn to fly." Jean said. "I think I'm strong enough now to do it."
Ororo looked at her for a moment as outside the wind picked up again, building almost to a full storm as she smiled happily. Flying was easily the greatest thing that her powers gave her the ability to do, and helping someone learn sounded like incredible fun. "I'll be happy to my dear."
Instead of going back to his room Harry made his way to Xavier's office, deciding it was time to eat some crow. He found the man up and about frowning down at some kind of missive from someone at his desk but he looked up as Harry knocked on his door. His eyes narrowed and he tensed himself a little as Harry came in, and his voice echoed that wariness when he spoke. "Yes, Mr. Potter, what can I do this morning?"
Harry walked forward until he stood right before the older man's desk then said abruptly "You were right about not killing the Juggernaut." When Charles looked at him in surprise he went on. "At the time you interrupted me the battle was over, it would not have been a death in combat, but cold blooded murder, and that isn't something I want to be a part of. I would have shed no tears if I had killed him during the battle but not like that. I'm also not used to trusting the government to really do its job, and I'm too used to… doing things on my own. I have to get used to the fact that I don't have to take that kind of thing on my own shoulders any more, and you were right about that issue."
As Charles relaxed and nodded in understanding Harry went on sharply. "But you're not right about the issue with Jean! That girl is getting stronger all the time with her training, and I am getting more and more concerned how the mental block you put in her head will affect her, I've seen such things before in the dimension of my birth and such blocks can have lasting consequences beyond what their creator intended. You've had a week and a bit, and your time is running out to be the one to tell her."
Charles frowned staring hard at the other young man. "Mr. Potter, not only am I a telepath, I have several Masters Degrees in psychology. Suffice it to say I knew what I was doing when I placed that mental block in place to keep the entity that I found in her mind from influencing her. I realize you might have met others who suffered from the magical equivalent, but the ones I put in place are different and I know they will prove sufficient. I resent the implication that I would not do what is right for one of my students, and your insistence that I tell her now is not going to change my mind."
"So you refuse to even consider that my knowledge of these things might be greater than yours?" Harry asked, his own face going hard. "That you might be wrong about how they're affecting her? How many of these things have you done to people anyway?" Charles opened his mouth to answer but Harry went on inexorably. "It's only because she trusts you that I gave you the three weeks in the first place, and I reiterate old man, you have only a week and a bit before I do it for you." Charles frowned but said nothing in response preferring to simply stare stonily at the young man.
Harry glared right back for a few minutes then turned and walked to the door where he stopped looking back. "Sometimes even the best of us can be wrong Charles, I hope you realize that, because sometime in the future more than Jean's mind might rest on your ability to listen to others. Remember a week and a bit." With that he left the office, leaving a frowning Charles staring out his window in thought behind him.
The next two days followed fell into a new pattern. Harry and Ororo would test his runic arrays in the morning and then she would work with Jean on flying, switching out target practice and strength building exercises to make time for it. She wasn't quite able to by the time the three invalids were up and about (Kurt was the only one still sore by that point) but she was getting there.
Harry spent his mornings with the three X-men still stuck in the hospital wing, and his afternoons working with his newest toy: Juggernaut's armor. It hadn't disappeared when his magical enhancement had died, and Jean and Scott had taken it off him after he shrank out of it. Harry had thought at first that they might have magical properties, something he could either study or drain, but in fact it didn't. Instead it was an entirely new kind of metal, stronger than anything Harry had ever seen. After assuring himself there was no actual magic in the armor he had Logan try to slice it with his adamantium claws, and they weren't even able to score it, and the sword of Gryffindor had no more luck when Harry tried it. Next he'd had Cyclops try to damage it, but even at full power the one armband he tried to destroy was still in one piece after a five minute blast, scorched a little but that was it.
This discovery had Harry practically salivating at what it could mean, but he would have to wait to figure it out. He needed to figure out some way to actually work with the unnamed metal (Harry name of Harrytanium for the metal had been roundly rejected by everyone who heard it), so he could figure out what the hell it was and recreate it. He had asked for and gotten permission to renovate one of the unused rooms on the teacher's floor to a lab, but he needed a lot of other things, most of which he would have to create himself, to start to really analyze the metal. The science room didn't have any scanners that could do the job, so Harry was going to have to build some, or buy some but he wanted to analyze it both magically and scientifically. After all, once he understood what it really was, he might be able to transfigure some more for the others. For now, since the metal had no anti-magical property like the shield of Cyttorak had his shape changing spells and shrinking spells were able to change the main body and bracers to fit Rogue, who had asked him to change its color to black (to match her green and black uniform). She refused to use the helmet though, which gave Harry a piece to experiment on.
This finished making Rogue into the tank of the team, and Harry had immediately given them all new tactical exercises to reflect the new team dynamic. Scott was alas the only one who worked through them all. Again say what you would about his empathy, charisma and lack thereof, he was a hard worker and took his assumed role as field leader seriously.
This wasn't the only thing Harry was working on though. In two days Harry had finished creating a rune to pull energy off the wearer's bio-energy. It would be enough to power a minimal crisis suit that the X-men could wear for now, though he wanted to figure out a way to do the same thing with technology as well. This stripped out suit provided a shield much like his own crisis suit though nowhere near as powerful and was heavily antiballistic, about three times as much as a Kevlar vest. It didn't have any of the offensive aids, it wouldn't help their speed or reaction time as those took far more energy, but it was much better than nothing.
The more he got to know these kids the more he wanted to help them survive, regardless of his issues with Charles reminding him far too much of Dumb-as-a-door, and these suits would help them survive. Still he thought he could do better, and resolved to keep working on getting up to speed on the tech side of things so the next suit would be based off technology rather than magic.
"However," Harry muttered to himself later in the night he had finished the runic array to feed of bio-energy, "that isn't only one area I need to look into going forward." He looked up at Hedwig who was sitting on her perch looking at him intently. She actually didn't care for anything he was saying, and in fact the subject was a little beyond her, but she knew he just wanted someone to listen to his ideas, and she could provide that at least, especially when he stroked her feathers at the same time. "The question is, how can I make serious money? I don't mean thousands but billions at a minimum. Selling such crisis suits, once I figure out a way to create the same properties without magic but with science will hopefully take care of that, but to make them in numbers to sell I'll need even more money than my gold can give me, even if I figure out a way to use it all without, what was it, depreciating the value? I can't just dump two plus tons of gold without messing up the price, though I have no idea how much, and of course that doesn't even mention how no matter how I do it that much money will get me noticed sooner that I want to be.I want to be situated and have a firm position before I'm noticed by most of the powers that be.
If I want to make an impact, the crisis suits need to be just the beginning. Next there are the seeds I've got for potion ingredients. Veritaserum and healing potions would be a major source of revenue, but I need land for planting and people to care for it, a lot of both if I'm going to even try to meet the demand for them. I need to do more research in the economy of this world, and the history of the past twenty years or so. What little I've done already was too narrow in scope, just looking for evidence of the magical world isn't important anymore."
Hedwig made a sort of hiss, which was the owl equivalent of an interrogative noise. "Yes, that means we'll need to head to Switzerland at some point." Despite the differences between this universe and his, Switzerland was still one of the best and certainly the easiest place to set up a bank account with as little banking history as he had. And I'll need a bank account, Harry thought a little grimly, most of the things I'll be buying, they'll only take checks not straight up cash. I bet I could go to some third world country and hire workers and buy space, but then the money would mostly go to the local bully boys, so hell no. So I'll need to use that passport that Reed made me. I bet it'll pass muster. But getting there is going to be interesting. Hedwig can't go that far, and I can't teleport to a place I've never been, not with all my bits anyway. A picture just won't cut it over distances like that. I can always try…. Well, yeah that might work, I know it exists in this dimension, and I know it well enough to picture for a teleportation, but it might also kill me. Best to get a few of my other obligations done before I try that, that way if I do die I'll at least leave something good they'll remember me by. And maybe the flight array as well, just in case.
A few days after Juggernaut's assault, Steven Strange, Sorcerer Supreme returned from battling his most powerful foe yet, the Dread Lord Dormammu. He did not return alone, he in fact brought back a new girlfriend, whose name was Clea. Absolutely nothing about their courtship was normal or even easy to understand, as she was Dormammu's niece, former slave, and daughter of another of Strange's foes, the sorceress Umar. You would think he had beaten Dormammu to free her but you would be wrong.
He and Dormammu had been forced to work together to renew the barrier between their realms and the prison of the Mindless Ones, powerful yet utterly mindless and savage beasts whose origins were unknown, but who had threatened to utterly wipe out Dormammu's subjects. To say that the dread lord had been unhappy with having to rely on his foe for aid was an understatement, yet he had agreed to leave Clea and Earth alone. Steven knew that eventually the other dimensional being would find a loophole, but for now he was looking to some peace and quiet, some normality and maybe some nice, calm romance.
Wong greeted his master and his guest with a bow. "Welcome back master. I trust that your time abroad was interesting?" Wong was truly the world's reigning champion of understatement.
Steven sighed, taking in the soothing vista of his own magical laboratory. "Yes, quite interesting, a little too much so really. I am looking forward to some peace and quiet for a time."
Clea nodded. "I too would like to sample those concepts, they were sorely missing in the Dark dimension."
Wong nodded. "As you wish, I will screen all incoming calls and if anyone asks for you I will tell them you are still out. Madame Harkness however was in touch several days ago, asking to talk to you at your convenience, and a young magic user whose name I have never heard before, a Harry Potter stopped by and asked me to give you his regards and compliment you on the wards the household. If you wish to meet him he told me that he is staying upstate at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters."
Steven paused in removing his cloak. The ability to see wards like that is very rare, he thought. Perhaps I should go and meet this young man, it might be a very interesting conversation. Clea moved past him, swishing her hips as only women could and he thought, then again perhaps not. "Interesting but not important right now, perhaps you could prepare us a meal Wong, and after that I think we have earned a few days to ourselves." Wong bowed in answer and Steven followed his new girlfriend out of his lab.
The next day the invalids were back to 100%, and Jean and Harry 'welcomed' them back by having a battle royal at breakfast.
Jean looked around from her place at the table, smiling a little at something Rogue and Kitty were saying, but most of her attention was on finding the rune that was holding her in place. I've gained seven pounds since Harry moved in, no more! I swear to god I will win today! After about thirty minutes of searching every nook and cranny she could she gave up on looking and decided on threats. Everyone else save Kurt (who really was a bit of a bottomless stomach) had finished but they were all still there, waiting to see how Harry had trapped her this time, and they would not be disappointed. "Alright Potter, how the hell did you do it this time?! I've gained, well never mind how much I've gained, but I'm not giving up this time and nothing you can do is going to make me eat more than I already have!"
Harry looked up from a little homework assignment he'd given Kitty on runes, one eyebrow cocked in inquiry. "I'm sorry could you say that again?" Ororo groaned inwardly, yet part of her was wondering how this was going to turn out.
The others didn't have as good a grasp on Harry's mind yet, but Logan felt the hairs on the back of his head stand on end and he very carefully backed away from the table. Seeing this Charles made to speak up but Jean beat him to it. "I said nothing you can do is going to make me eat more!"
"That's what I thought you said." With a bare wave of a finger and an aimed silent leviosa a small donut hole from a plate on the table shot up and into Jean's astonished mouth. As she reflexively closed her mouth and began to chew, Harry smirked. "Challenge accepted. Now what else to feed you…."
Jean narrowed her eyes and when the next shot came she blocked it with her power. She retaliated by tossing a croissant at him. He blocked that and retaliated with a small piece of egg that she again blocked. Before anyone else could speak up suddenly they were flinging food at one another at an insane rate and everyone else ducked and ran from the sudden food fight.
Soon Jean upped the ante by blasting at Harry with her power and tossing plates at him. Harry responded by catching the plates and sending them through the door into the kitchen to land in the sink and tossing even more food her way. Some splattered Kurt, who was the only one who hadn't backed away from the table, and he retaliated by joining in. Soon all the kids, even Rogue and Scott had joined in and it took several mental shouts from Charles to get everyone to stop. ENOUGH, stop it, this sort of display is childish in the extreme, cease and desist!
The fight petered out, and everyone looked around a little sheepishly. Yet Harry merely waved his hand and used a massive scourgify to clean everything then he shrugged nonchalantly as the ruined food, strangely little from the amount that had been on the table (Kurt had eaten quite a lot before the battle really got going) formed in the air and shot off toward the trash, which Jean helpfully opened as the pile of food passed the kitchen doorway. "A bit of childishness is good for you from time to time Baldy. I think we all needed a bit of a release from the seriousness of the past few days anyway." Besides, we're going to ramp up the seriousness in our training tonight, so it evens out.
Jean frowned a little at that but nodded too. That was strangely exhilarating; who knew something so random could be so fun? And it was also tough keeping all those little things in the air at once. Still… "Alright, now that the food is ruined, how were you keeping me here this time?"
Harry looked at her, and for a moment there was something in his eyes she hadn't seen before, worry maybe but then it was gone and he grinned lopsidedly. "I didn't." Jean frowned and he laughed. "I didn't have time this morning, I had to spend some time getting a few things ready for later today, and I wanted to see how you'd react."
"You mean I could have left at any time!?" Jean exclaimed as the others began to chuckle a little, led by Ororo who had used a bit of wind power to keep all the thrown food away from her and Charles. And if she had used a bit to redirect some of the flying food toward Kurt or Evan no one would ever get the truth out of her… Just because she had to control her emotions all the time didn't mean that she couldn't have a little fun from time to time.
Harry nodded, then leaned forward seriously over the table towards Jean. "Yes you may have gained weight, but you haven't put on any pounds, you've simply gained muscles. Can you honestly say you are feeling any fatter or heavier than before? Because from where I'm sitting you're just as gorgeous now as you were when I first arrived." Ororo, who well knew that Jean's diet had been doing more damage than good, nodded firmly while the others simply nodded agreeing with him, though Scott frowned at the compliment paid to the redhead.
Jean looked away a very slight blush on her face. "I suppose not," she muttered. Stupid emerald eyes and handsome face, god those eyes should be illegal and anyway I've got a boyfriend. Huh, haven't really thought of him much lately have I? Still obviously my work as an X-woman comes first. "Alright, you win, I won't diet anymore."
Harry leaned back nodding. "Glad you finally see reason Red." He then turned to Kitty. "You ready to go apprentice?"
Kitty nodded eagerly and got up from where she had been using her phasing power to avoid the food being thrown around. "Sure teach, let's go!"
One of Charles' eyebrows quirked in inquiry, "What's this?"
"Curly-cat here came up with a new and interesting way to use a runic array to help her augment her power, as well as an idea to help all of you so I decided I might as well take her on formally as an apprentice in runes."
Charles turned to regard Kitty as the others looked at her in question save Evan and Kurt, who had heard of some of her ideas already. "Um, well, you know how we want to, like, um keep our identities secret? Well I thought about adding what is called a notice-me-not ward to just our faces and voices, so no one could recognize it." Charles blinked in surprise, but nodded firmly, that sounded like an excellent addition to their normal operation. "Like, I'll be working on studying runes from teach's books and figuring out the array for that and um, another idea for just me. We figured out a bit ago that I can do a lot of damage to something if I carry something else into it and push it along right?" Scott and the others winced having seen what she had left of the tree that one time. "But that takes a lot out of me for some reason, imparting momentum I mean. So I thought maybe if I started wearing a rune that could do the same thing." She wasn't certain yet how big it would be or wear to put it on her suit, but that would be later.
Harry grinned at the younger girl, amused by how enthused she was about learning the one aspect of magic she could use and manipulate. Well she could probably also be taught the local invocation stuff, but Harry would be damned before he relied on otherworldly beings for damn-all anything. Honestly the more time I'm around her the more she reminds me of Hermione. A far more naïve and less worldly Hermione, like the younger sister she never had. That had been one aspect of the death of the Grangers that bothered Harry almost as much as Hermione's death. Her mother had been two months pregnant when Snape used and then killed her and her unborn child.
If that child had lived, he could easily imagine the girl turning out like Kitty. Her mind was very sharp beneath that valley girl exterior and helping her inquisitive nature along was immensely rewarding. "While she's doing that I'll be working on a few of my own projects and trying to see if I can figure out a way to augment the power of the suits further, draw more bio-energy out without draining the wearer."
"All those sound worthwhile exercises," Charles said smiling. "I wish you luck on your exploration."
Harry said standing up and waving Kitty out of her chair and before him as he walked out of the dining area. As he walked out toward the main hall he called over his shoulder. "Remember Charles, one and a half weeks now." Charles stiffened but the two of them were gone before he could respond. The others looked on worriedly, wondering what that was about.
Harry led Kitty not up to his room as she had expected but to a room closer to the stairs but on the same floor. Inside what should have been a generic bedroom had been changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable. All the furniture was gone, replaced by a large table in one corner, a large hanger in another holding the Juggernaut's helmet, and in the center dominating the room was a runic tablet, a kind of sand box where someone could practice writing out the runes and then erase them easily. Only if someone could get the rune perfect on the sand would they be allowed to put a rune on something more permanent. In front of it was a large comfy looking bean bag, the same color and make of another one placed in front of the desk. On the walls was a massive drawn out runic array making its way all the way around the room in a spiral. Kitty recognized a few of the runes, mostly Grecian runes for defense, but the purpose of the rest eluded her, though she suspected it was meant to protect the people inside and out from magical accidents.
Harry gestured Kitty into the bean bag in front of the practice tablet and stood on the other side looking at her. "Runes are dangerous, deadly and among the most basic of magical skills, some even say that they are the basis of all magic, that a long time ago they were the first magic discovered. Regardless, venturing into creating your own runic arrays is dangerous, demanding and alas often tedious work. Before this we were only dabbling, from now on the true learning begins. Are you ready?"
Kitty nodded, and realizing that this was a serious moment she sat up straight, her face firming. "Yes sir."
Harry looked deep into her eyes for a moment then nodded firmly. "Alright, we're going to start you off on drawing several simple runes. This process was supposed to take a year to learn, but I know how smart you are, so I expect you to get a few of these down everyday and be able to use them, well once I empower them anyway. Understand?" Kitty nodded firmly. "Good. Now, this rune is the Grecian rune for 'Light'….
At around six that night the teens were called as a group into the Danger Room. They all looked at one another, having worked with their instructors most of the day, and were now wondering what they were going to do now. Scott thought it would be a team exercise, and was wondering if they would be asked to take on a Danger Room created version of Juggernaut. He had seen that programmed into the computer so thought it a good bet. The others were simply leery of anything their slave drivers could come up with.
This concern ratcheted higher when they saw the Danger Room configured into a simple plain flat clearing, with Harry standing in the middle. He met each of their eyes as they came closer, and Jean once more saw a flicker of something like worry or concern in Harry's face as he looked at her before it was gone again. Once the group of them stood around him in a loose half circle he began. "Okay you lot, this exercise is simple, use your powers, use teamwork and planning and fight me. Nothing else. You have five minutes to plan and then I'm coming for you."
Scott bit back a groan but nodded, seeing the point. If they could fight Harry, who had so many different skills and abilities, that would build their experience against other mutants and power users better than anything else, which made it a good exercise to mix up with the ones pitting them against trained normal troops, so they could cover both bases. The others had various reactions.
Rogue looked a little interested in seeing how her new strength and durability would stand up against Harry.
Kitty too looked interested anxious to see how something she personally created, a few small stones etched with a few simple runes such as hold, slow and other things, would work. Harry had been correct, she had indeed been able to reproduce some of the simplest runes, and engrave them into stones the size of her palm, which was actually incredible work for only five hours, as she had joined the others in some of their exercises throughout the day. Harry had praised her for her progress but also warned her that it would only become harder as they went on, especially when they got to full runic arrays rather than one rune effects.
Jean seemed resigned, though inside she felt a bit of excitement at the idea.
Kurt and Evan though both groaned. "We're going to get our butts kicked man!"
That might be, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!" Scott said forcefully. "Now, let's put together a game plan!"
Rogue led off charging forward in an attempt to pin Harry in place, with Kurt and Evan spreading out quickly to either side in an attempt to keep him boxed in. Cyclops fired over Rogues shoulder at full blast hoping to cover their charge as Jean did the same. Kitty was nowhere to be seen, though given her power that really didn't mean much.
Harry charged forward, ducking under Scott's beams and surprisingly closing the range between his starting point and Rogue. The southern belle jerked to a halt but her gauntlet covered fist lashed out in a roundhouse. Instead of pasting the wizard however it passed right through him. "An Illusion, crap!"
Evan and Kurt turned, but Harry was already by Kurt, a spell lashing out. "Rifela!" The spell caught Kurt right in the chest throwing him back with a cry of pain as to the others it seemed as if a bullet had drilled right through him.
The Danger Room blandly announced. "Nightcrawler, mission kill."
The others all stopped and stared as Kurt fell to the ground, then was held there by the tractor beams that were everywhere in the Danger Room. "Wh-what the?" Scott said in shock then he shouted "There's something wrong with the program! Abort session!"
Harry didn't stop, and suddenly the ground came alive beneath them all, forming spires fists and feet that attacked all the others. "There's nothing wrong with the program, we upped the realism as much as we could. Treat this as real people or you're all going down, and this time I won't use any of my healing potions on you!"
Evan and the others gulped looking at Kurt's body on the ground, then their faces firmed and they began to fight back in earnest.
Evan started to throw spears at Harry with one hand while Rogue backed him up while across from them Scott fired while Jean performed defense, both her and Rogue ripping apart the fists and tendrils coming out of the ground.
Harry conjured up other beasts and lions, as well as one massive metal wall, which took the brunt of the combined attacks. Harry threw another spell into the air and suddenly it exploded like the sun, blinding all the X-men. They kept firing blindly, But Harry was already moving. His next shot changed the ground back to normal then made it so slippery that none of them were able to keep their feet. A overpowered "Reducto" shot out, smashing Rogue into the air and a Leviosa kept her there to be neatly struck in the neck by a cutting curse. She shouted in pain as the spell struck but swiftly the pain knocked her out as the Danger Room covered her with the image of what the cutting curse could have done, removing her head in a geyser of gore, as despite her new endurance she had not gained any magical resistance. "Rogue, mission kill."
Again the others stopped and stared, but this time Kitty showed up, using one of her stones with the runes for a holding field to try and take Harry out. She was barely an inch away from placing it on him when he teleported away, appearing right behind her. "Nice try Curly-cat! Fulgur!" The blast of lightening smashed out and impacted her and once again Kitty went down due to a lightning attack.
She hadn't felt much pain due to Harry barely powering the spell, but her friends all saw her smoking corpse. The hologram technology of the danger room was truly advanced. "Shadowcat, mission kill."
Evan snarled and pulled out two blades from his hands then charged forward, trying to catch Harry before he could teleport away, but a simple tripping spell at his feet followed by a bombarda took him out of the fight as he had forgotten to cover himself in his bone armor, a egregious mistake that cost him dearly. "Spyke, mission kill."
Scott, who had felt the impact of the blinding attack more than the others, finally got his eyesight back in time to see Jean charge forward in a corona of telekinetic power. Harry shot out a protego maximo which took and refracted Scott's eyebeams back to him, but he simply absorbed the power and kept firing his beam more powerfully than before. Harry ducked and then set several dozen conjured beasts at him to keep him busy before turning his full attention on Jean.
He dodged her initial blasts and retaliated with several cutting curses, which she blocked or deflected away. She moved her head just enough to dodge one and finally landed a blast on Harry that caught him in the chest, smashing the air out of him and throwing him away as a thin cut appeared on her cheek.
Scott killed the last of the beasts and tried to immediately follow up firing after him but Harry recovered quickly, shooting out a spell based off of Fred and George's Peruvian Darkness Powder, making a massive amount of black smoke that blinded Scott and Jean. Before Jean could figure out how to push the darkness away Harry closed the distance, and a conjured knife slammed into Scott's chest. "Cyclops, mission kill."
The darkness dissipated and Jean hammered Harry away across the room with another tk blast. Harry shook his head and got up none the worse for wear thanks to his reinforced Magia Erebea. Jean smirked a little, excitement rising in her for some reason as she wiped away the bit of blood on her cheek with her finger, completely forgetting for a moment the sight of her downed comrades. "You know, out of that little food fight this morning I don't think the two of us have ever really fought one another, not since you first showed up."
Harry smirked a little, forgetting the purpose of this exercise, his eyes beginning to crackle with magical power. "You know what Red, I think you're right."
"Nor is that going to happen now." Charles said firmly. Jean frowned at that but Charles went on, a little leery about letting the powerful telekinetic and magic user fight, afraid Harry might blurt something out in the heat of the moment. "This exercise was not an excuse for you to simply beat on one another like children, but for you and the others to actually learn something Jean."
The grass and the rest of the simulation faded and the 'dead' began to rise, freed from the hold of the system's numerous tractor beams. Rogue found herself lowered to the ground easily and she shook her head, touching her neck right above her armor where the cutting curse had impacted. She muttered to Kurt, who had regained his feet as Harry brought her down out of the side of her mouth, "That was really disturbing sugah."
"Truly," he muttered back. "Seeing a large hole straight through your own body was…. Brrr."
"That was the point of the exercise," Harry informed them. "You all need to know that there is no do over, there is no retry in a real battle. Those corpses could well have been real." A shudder went through all the X-men, both at that idea and at Harry's far away eyes. "I don't want any of you to feel the pain of losing a comrade, this is a serious business, and if you're too far gone, even if I'm right there my potions and spells won't help. I wanted you all to see how bad it could get."
They all nodded seriously and he went on. "So I want you all to start thinking up new ways of using your powers, getting stronger and working as a team on your own time and this time every night we will have you all fight me or the simulations until you can win as a team. And every time I'm going to use different tactics and spells, to get you used to fighting different types of powers. And this program will be there every night to show you the price of failing. Understand?" They all looked at one another, but nodded. From then on the session became much more serious, but the X-men could feel themselves getting stronger.
That was how the next few days went before spring break ended. The X-men would work out with Logan (Scott, Evan and Kurt) Harry (Kitty) and Ororo (Rogue and Jean) during the day then would spend two hours with Harry. The first hour would be full on combat either against him or a large group of robots that would each use a random set of three of the spells he had so far shown. When they went down the same thing occurred to them that happened to the X-men when they did; the dead robot or team member was covered with a hologram showing their corpse. The second hour they would talk about ways to work better as a team, and Harry would help them correct the mistakes they made in the exercises.
Harry's project to figure out the properties of Juggernauts armor had hit a dead end, he just didn't have the sensors or magical items to analyze it. He had designed a few but for now he had to leave it. His other little projects though proceeded apace.
The strain between Harry and Charles became more and more pronounced every day that went by without Charles speaking to Jean. Nothing was said, but the tension would cause everyone else to leave swiftly whenever the two men were in the same room for long. The kids for the most part were still steering clear but Scott was beginning to push at Harry's authority during their sessions, feeling that whatever the issue was, the professor was in the right.
Jean took him to task about his attitude the Sunday evening before school was going to start as the two of them were walking up to their rooms. "Scott you need to stop pushing Harry, he's the one in charge of our training for a reason, and if he pushes back you won't like what happens."
Scott frowned at her. "You can't tell me you don't feel the tension between them? Potter's obviously done something, and the professor is just too decent to toss him out."
"If that was the case why in the world would he let him continue training us? And why do you think that it has to be something Harry's done? It could just be a difference of opinion about something, like how they argued about how to handle Juggernaut."
Scott frowned, that hadn't actually occurred to him but after a moment he dismissed it. "But still, the professor was right about that, and I think we should show solidarity and back him up. Harry's made no bones about how he will eventually move on after all."
"So what, does that change the fact he's helping us now? No it doesn't and whatever is going on between the professor and Harry is their own affair, not ours." She turned and kept walking toward the girl's wing, but a voice stopped her and she turned, seeing Ororo come out of the solarium, a book in one hand.
"That is a very mature and intelligent attitude to take Jean, and your argument was sound."
Jean shrugged. "It just makes sense to me that's all. I don't know why Scott is trying to make it into a big deal. I don't even know if he believes what he says of if he's just trying to strike back at Harry because he's sort of stolen Scott's thunder. Before Harry arrived Scott led us through a lot of our training exercises. He's also always very critical about Scott's leadership in the team drills."
Not without reason, she had to admit. Scott wasn't very flexible, and he couldn't really handle the chaos of a battlefield that was the natural occurrence when fighting someone like Harry, or dozens of enemies at once. More he clearly plays favorites, always keeping me at the back regardless of the situation. As if I can't tell why he's doing it, I suppose it could be called sweet but I just find it really annoying and rather presumptuous. It's kind of insulting really, as I know I've become one of the teams three big hitters at this point.
"Well I am glad of it nonetheless." Ororo looked at the younger girl, seeing her stare off into the distance with an introspective look on her face. "Is there something else wrong?" Jean sighed, only confirming Ororo's guess. "Would you like to come up to my room and talk about it?" Jean looked at the older woman for a moment then nodded her head.
The two went up to her room and entered Jean looking around with interest. None of the younger set had ever been in Ms. Munroe's room (in fact no one else had been in her room ever, not even Charles or her nephew) and she was very interested to see what it looked like. The room was dominated by a large circular futon instead of the normal bed, draped with several furs. Along one wall was a bookshelf filled with books, mostly language books and classics, made of dark wood next to a dresser of the same wood while on the other was a large painting of what Jean supposed was the Serengeti, and on either side was a picture of her family. Next to a picture of her and Evan were three diplomas, all bachelors of languages. The back of the room was a wall to wall window, wide open to let in as much of the air as possible, and a small tree sat in a pot right next to the door. On the floor was a very fine afghan rug. All in all the room gave the impression of both refined intelligence and a certain wild barbarity. Jean found this room told her more about Ms. Munroe than she had learned in the last year living with her, and she was a little humbled at being welcomed into it.
She sat on the floor and was surprised that the older woman sat on the floor as well instead of on the bed. This made them much more like equals though, something that flattered Jean quite a bit. After all, Ms. Munroe routinely beat both her and Rogue in their spars and she was a teacher and older to boot. "Now, why don't you tell me what's wrong. Unless you would like some tea, in which case I'd have to go over to my arboretum to retrieve my tea service." Ororo smirked a little. "I thought that it wouldn't be nearly as good as Harry's."
Jean shook her head in response, running one hand through her red hair as she thought of how to begin. "Have you ever, have you ever felt as if you were being pulled this way and that, stretched and yet at the same time as if you're being forced into a mold, something you are rapidly growing out of?"
Ororo smiled a little. "I wouldn't put it like that but I know what you mean. You have your duties as an X-man, your schoolwork, and your boyfriend all making demands on your time. And you are also growing as a person, but aren't certain where that growth is taking you, correct?" Jean gaped at her astonished and the black woman laughed for a moment, though a sudden peal of thunder made her stop and recompose herself. Jean frowned, feeling sorry for the other woman, hoping the Harry was making progress in his ward for her.
Storm went on. "Suffice to say I have felt like that a time or two. I felt pulled between a desire to leave and find myself, to see the world beyond the tribes that worshiped me, and to stay and continue to be seen as their weather goddess because it was the life i knew. And when my powers first awakened, let us say that I broke the mold I was in then. Being a thief and low on the totem pole of a gang and able to manipulate the weather just did not go together. And that doesn't consider the mold I was forced into when gaining full control of my powers or when I was at college. The question is why are you feeling this way now? I realize you've gotten far stronger in the use of your powers, but that can't be the only reason can it?"
Jean shook her head. "No, though my new control of my telepathy is part of it. I always had to be the best for my parents, but lately I've been wondering if that was ever for me as well, or simply what others expected of me. My being an X-man is important to me, but at the same time I, I don't want to be important just as Marvel Girl, but as Jean Grey, and I, I don't know if the others can see it. I just seem to be growing, not just in powers but in other ways, and I'm no longer certain what I want out of life, and I don't like the fact that there's this assumption that we'll always be here, that being an X-man will be the main thing in my life. It's important but…."
She realized she was rambling but that was sort of the point in and of itself really. She had been making headway in organizing her mind via occlumency, but while that had helped her keep other peoples thoughts out, it hadn't helped in controlling her own and she had found herself thinking about the future more and more, and wondering where the hell she was going to be when high school ended, and hating the fact that Scott, Charles and everyone else just assumed that they would all still be here, unchanging.
This was in fact a normal occurrence when organizing your mind via occlumency: you suddenly were able to think clearer, to notice things you have never noticed before, and in a way you come to understand yourself to a far better degree. Hermione found out she had been slowly moving away from her parents in their second year, and moved swiftly to stop this, and that a few of her friends in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor had simply been using her for her smarts rather than true friends. Harry too had discovered something about himself, that being he hadn't yet moved past his abandonment issues and other problems caused by his childhood with the Dursleys. Of course in this case it wasn't just Jean herself that was being effected, but she didn't know that, nor did anyone else.
Ororo looked at her for a moment, smiling internally. Ah, one of the little ones wants to spread her wings in more ways than one, lovely. She was always in favor of growth. "And going back to school tomorrow, with all of your obligations there, it brought it all to a head."
Jean sighed, leaning against the remarkably soft side of the bed behind her. "Yes. I'm part of the cheerleader squad, and I find the idea starting up practice again with them unappealing now." For more than one reason she thought grimly, remembering some of the thoughts, emotions and angst of the other girls. Even her best friend had some thoughts that disturbed her. "And after that I'll have my place as captain of the soccer team starting in a few weeks after the football season ends, and then there's my boyfriend."
Who I haven't thought of even calling despite being back in town this entire week, she thought rather morosely. It wasn't that Duncan was a bad person, he was just a typical male teen, with all that entailed, and she had begun to see his bad points far more, unable to hide from her own memories of his bullying attitude, his lack of empathy (something he shared with Scott she knew, and briefly thought of pointing that out to them both to see their reaction to sharing something) and his bigoted ways against anyone different from the norm.
If I'm nothing else, I am not normal, nor would I want to be. I want to be extraordinary! And I have no idea how he would react to that. "That's part of why I want so desperately to learn to fly under my own power, because it gives me a semblance of freedom and I can imagine travelling the world seeing new and interesting things." She suddenly shot a grin at the older woman, "Use some of those language lessons you've hammered into us."
"You could always quit both teams" Ororo suggested. "And perhaps we could figure out a trip over the summer, just to get away, see a bit of the world. That would be most fun and a learning experience for all of you I think. Jean smiled at the thought, snuggling happily against the side of Ororo's bed. I have got to get something like this for my room! "That would be lovely, though just talking about it has helped a little. Thanks for listening Ms. Munroe."
Ororo smiled. "I think you should start to call me Ororo outside of lessons. And that is what I am here for my dear, if you ever want to talk you know where to find me, just remember to knock hmm?" Jean laughed and the conversation turned to other things, and the two talked together for several more hours.
The next day was Monday, and the kids went back to school, some with irritation, some with anticipation and others with eagerness. Evan was looking forward to using his new mad skills to hammer any of the brotherhood that tried to start anything, even Scott was feeling a little grimly anticipatory at the idea. Kitty was happy to be seeing her non-X-ish friends. Rogue and Jean were both irritated for different reasons. Jean was leery about being around her boyfriend and other friends, wondering how she would react to them given her new thoughts and feelings about them. Rogue was worried about controlling her strength. It hadn't gone down at all, and judging from the tests Charles ran, it seemed to be permanent, something that made her happy, but also made her worried about controlling it.
The breakfast meal was dominated by Kurt, Evan, Kitty and Scott as usual, while Jean made small talk with Ororo and Charles and Logan talked about some kind of weapons package Logan wanted to add to the X-jet.
No one noticed that Harry hadn't sat down to eat with them until he suddenly popped up right behind Ororo's seat. "Hey Ororo, I have a present for you."
Ororo turned slightly then stilled as she felt his hands on her shoulders, a gentle touch that made her turn her head back forward. Harry began to gather and move her hair to the side to bare her neck a gesture that, while not sexual was certainly sensual and sent a shiver of pleasure through her. She closed her eyes into mere slits, trying to control herself and not effect the weather around her. It had been so long since she had allowed herself the touch of another person…
She was brought back to the here and now when Jean gasped from across from her and she felt a slight weight settle just below her neck. Ororo opened and looked down to see a golden necklace composed of small quarter inch gold links (made by melting galleons together) and centered on a large diamond (taken from some of his family's jewelry he had brought with him). It seemed to sparkle with an inner light and she turned to stare at Harry, her eyes filled with hope. "Ha-Harry, is this what I think it is?"
Harry's answering grin threatened to split his face, reminding a few of the kids of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. "Yep, I finished it last night. The trouble was to make the runes small enough to all fit on one item of jewelry, and to only block your subconscious connection not your powers entirely. That was a bit of an issue, and why I had you testing so many arrays the past few days. Still the final product is mmh…"
He was interrupted by the exuberant African woman jumping to her feet and kissing him fiercely on the lips. As the others looked on with various emotions ranging from happiness, shock and amusement to a gathering rage the kiss deepened for several moments, Harry's arms going around her waist as her own went around him.
It was about to involve tongues when Evan finally lost his temper and jumped to his feet, shooting a few bone knives out at Harry. "God-damnit stop necking with my aunt you perverted bastard!"
Harry broke the lip lock and simply waved his hand a 'Protego' knocking the knives away easily. Ororo however simply giggled and ran outside to see a clear day, no winds, no reaction at all from her emotional storm and she began to laugh aloud and shot into the air, a fierce joy filling her at finally being able to use her powers without worrying about even a momentary loss of control could do. She swooped into her room and changed into her X-man uniform. She grabbed a pair of headphones and some music then shot back out of the room, intending to enjoy her day to the fullest.
Harry smirked a little as laughter began around the table. "Huh I guess she likes it." He nodded to Rogue and she looked at him with hope in her eyes. "Your ward is next, though I won't say how long it will take, it'll be a little more difficult alas." Rogue nodded and the breakfast broke up as the students went their separate ways to prepare for school.
Lance and the others came to school for once eagerly, anxious to start something with the X-men to see how their week of training would stack up. "Now remember, don't start anything right away, see if we can isolate the Boy Scout or one of the others first, take them out piecemeal." Fred and Todd both nodded but Pietro merely rolled his eyes, yet Lance knew the punk wouldn't do anything to mess this up. Their little 'talk' about Pietro running off and not coming back to help against Juggernaut had gone as well as it could, and he was sufficiently cowed by the other three to go along with things. Lance knew it wouldn't last; Pietro had an ego way bigger than his powers could account for, but Lance would deal with that later if he had to.
Their chance came almost immediately and Lance sent off Todd and Fred to prepare. Evan and Kurt had as normal skateboarded to school and Lance smirked as they saw them coming in late past the gate. A little rumble of his power threw them both off their boards for a second and then Pietro zoomed in grabbing them both and dragging them to a distant part of the parking area with no witnesses.
Surprisingly the two X-men didn't fight this, simply going along with things while internally laughing aloud in glee. Fred and Todd both smirked at the x-dorks when Pietro let them go. "You know, we've been training for the past week, and we were hoping to see how well we do with a bit of a fight. You don't mind do you?" As soon as Lance finished saying this the Blob swung a huge ham sized hand forward at Evan then he howled in surprised pain as Evan went flying away, only to flip and land on his feet. His body was covered in armor right below his clothing, bulking him up a bit and his face, where Fred's punch had been aimed, was covered in small spikes for a moment before they receded back under his skin, which healed as they sank back in.
Kurt suddenly bamfed, appearing right behind the speedster, who turned as fast as his heightened nervous system could allow. His punch though was caught and they bamfed away, appearing in the air where Pietro's speed was negated. A few hard punches to the other German's stomach sent him down to the ground gasping for air, out of the fight for now. Kurt bamfed again, appearing next to Evan with the normal smell of brimstone and smoke. "Oh no mine fruend, we haf no problem at all vith that." With that both X-men charged forward.
Lance was able to hold his own against Evan, keeping his distance with judicious use of his power, and when Kurt tried to join in he found Lance had studied enough martial arts to counter him. Fred and Toad worked well together, but by the time the bell rang all three of the brotherhood were sweaty and sore while the two X-men both seemed they could go on for hours more. By mutual agreement the fight ended when the bell rang, leaving one side exhilarated and the other frustrated and a little scared. Lance thought grimly, their teamwork was the thing that killed us, not just their powers but their hand to hand skills. If the whole team was here we would have been schooled. Mystique is not going to like this. He was of course proven correct in this assumption later that day.
As it was a school night the team had only a few hours of practice but that was enough to tell them that Ororo with her emotions unbound was a very different person. For one thing, she was far more vocal, she was demanding, she laughed a lot and she cajoled them along with jokes at times and abrasive sarcastic comments at others.
Scott in particular received quite a few of these when she ordered him to attack her with only his knife work. Her comments on his skill, as she stood above him with his knife in one hand and twirling her own in the other, were utterly scathing. Scott determined to take that training more seriously from now on, if only in an attempt to not receive any more such comments. He still didn't see the point to them though. Evan too was brought to task on not taking the hand to hand lessons seriously enough and was heard to mutter he wanted the old Auntie O back.
Jean however enjoyed seeing this aspect of the older woman's personality, as did the others, especially after she pranked Kurt in return for a paint balloon aimed at her back during a break in their training. Kitty received the new nickname Kitten, which she liked as it was something her mother called her and Ororo like this seemed to be a great big sister type, and Kurt enjoyed her newfound sense of humor and Rogue the fact she played music in the background of their training sessions.
The next morning Ororo smirked as she remembered that, then her lips widened into a smile as Harry walked in, a smile on his own face. "I see that you're enjoying being able to show your emotions, I'm glad."
"As am I," Ororo purred, standing up and stalking, that was the only word for it, toward him. She greatly enjoyed his gulp and she watched with eagerness as his eyes lit up with a matching desire. She molded her body against his still clothed form, kissing him gently on the lips then nibbling her way to his ear as he did the same. Her skin felt like the finest satin under his touch, and she tasted like cardamom and some other spice he couldn't place. "So" she whispered in his ear, barely controlling a moan as Harry nipped at her neck, "When are you going to take me out on a date?" With that she pulled back and moved away to water her plants, keeping one eye on Harry to see his reaction to her teasing.
She was surprised when he simply shook his head and laughed, showing not a single sign of irritation at her teasing, nor any uncontrollable desire, oh there was desire there, quite a lot of it but it went away as he shook his head, now able to, not ignore nor overlook, just not react to her naked form and she put another large check mark next to his name. Harry seemed, much like her, to not just want a flash in the pants relationship, and was willing to play the game. "Well, I'm going to be leaving in about an hour or so on a trip that may or may not take a few days, so how about this weekend?"
She nodded, wondering what he was up to but supposing it had something to do with his ongoing research projects. She knew his inability to analyze what he still insisted on calling Harrytanium was bothering the heck out of him. "That will be fine. I trust you will be able to find a suitable restaurant on your own? You haven't exactly gone anywhere lately after all. And what do you want our Kitten to be working on while you're gone?" During the school week Logan and Ororo took over all of the student's exercises, as Harry's were bruising in the extreme, something the kids wouldn't be able to hide at school simply because of how they would move.
"I'll talk to Kitty before I go, she won't be working on anything new without me here, runes and magic can be very dangerous to tinker with even if she doesn't have a magical core of her own, hence why my runic workroom is warded as much as I can make it." Well without using one of my hearth stones anyway. "She'll be working on practicing drawing the runes she already knows smaller than she can now. That should keep her busy, and not tempt her to mess with some of the runes I've already powered without me here." Ororo nodded, and the conversation changed to what kind of food she liked when eating out, what she would like and hadn't had the opportunity to try and other things.
Kitty was one of the first to come down to breakfast and was surprised to see Logan there. Logan had not had a good night, haunted by a nightmare, possibly a memory. He was suspended in some kind of amniotic fluid in a tank, then he escapes, is attacked and runs away through the snow, in pain, angry and confused.
Kitty sat down across form him, her lips gripping a pen as she began to write a letter to her parents as she did every few weeks. She looked up as Logan rustled his newspaper, and he glanced at her. "Am I reading to loud or something Kitty?"
Kitty shook her head. "Nah, I just am enjoying the quiet, its so rare around here." Even as she said that the boys came in, talking excitedly to one another about some TV show they had all watched last night and she shook her head. "See what I mean?"
Rogue came in and sat down next to her, handing the younger girl a set of her big headphones. Kitty took them gratefully while Jean and Ororo came in talking about something about flying. They sat down and continued their discussion, with Ororo using her hands to illustrate some point to the redhead, who was nodding her head in understanding.
Harry walked in at that point not partaking of the meal. Teleportation over any kind of distance had a lot of the same issues apparition had, and using either magical method of transportation with food in your stomach was a very bad idea. "I'm going on a little trip" he announced, and everyone at the table looked at him. "I might be gone as long as two days, I don't know just yet."
Jean looked up in surprise, wondering what their most chaotic and unpredictable teacher was going to be doing. "Where are you going Harry?"
"Europe eventually, well, that is if the first part of this little trip doesn't kill me. That's a definite possibility really, should be fun anyway." With that he gathered his magical power, and focused all his thoughts on the image in his brain even as the others all gaped at him or choked on their food in surprise at his statement. He ignored their surprise and waved a hand jauntily. "Wish me luck."
Before any of them could do more than gape he disappeared, making a faint popping noise. A moment later, Hedwig who had perched on the back of Ororo's chair to look at her over her shoulder at the manga she was reading (yes Ah My Goddess was silly, but it was also funny and Ororo liked it), squawked angrily and flopped forward, barely catching herself before she landed on the table, precking irritably.
Ororo frowned. "I take it he ran into a bit of trouble?" Hedwig nodded her head fiercely, not stopping her irritated diatribe. Despite not being in any kind of human language the meaning of her precks came through quite clearly. Charles was almost tempted to say something about watching her language, but realized that in her present mood the owl might well rip his ear off. "Well in that case could you peck him a few times for me as well? He needs to get used to the fact that there are people who care for him now, and he can't just go and risk himself like this." Hedwig recovered herself, precked and nodded firm agreement with that statement then launched herself into the air. A moment later she too disappeared from sight.
Jean chuckled a little, saying "Never a dull moment around here, especially with Potter here." Everyone around the table nodded mute agreement.
The trick to teleportation was that you could only do it to a place you could picture accurately in your mind. If you couldn't do that you wouldn't be able to forge the connection between where you were to where you wanted to go. You could still try to push through of course that was what caused splinching more often than not. Harry had never been to any place in Europe, and he had only been to a few places in London, but he didn't know any of them well enough to teleport to, and when he tried to picture them, it didn't work. There was one place however, that when he tried to create a connection he succeeded. It was the most surprising of all, a place he tried to connect to only on a whim, with no real hope that it would be there, not after Madame Harkness had told him there was no Wizarding World, that magic users had never come together and retreated away from the non magical societies.
Yet Hogwarts existed here as it did in his own dimension. Hogwarts, a huge, massive castle still existed here, yet he found no mention of it on the internet, which made him believe that somehow it was still hidden to non-magical senses. So he tried to picture himself teleporting to land right before the main entrance, the place he could picture the most comprehensively yet still outside so the least likely to run into wards.
This hadn't worked. Instead of just the building being warded, a large area around it was too, and Harry bounced off the outer anti-apparition ward like a tennis ball off a wall, only with the ball in this case being alive to feel the pain and humiliation. "FUuuccckkkk!" He shouted, his mind and stomach assaulting him too much to let him react as he bounced off the wards and then off the water of the lake several times, before his momentum finally gave out about a mile from the shore. He groaned a little while beginning to tread water, thankful yet again that he routinely wore his crisis suit underneath his regular clothing. With a freezing spell he froze a large area of the water's surface, enough so he could pull himself up onto it and sort of lay there like a landed fish as he recovered, his stomach feeling like someone had tried to use it as a battlefield, his mind fogged with pain and his body a little sore, though thankfully not so much. He'd felt far worse, but his stomach and head were new and he had to rest there for a few minutes as the pain in both subsided.
Hedwig appeared overhead, her entire body screaming righteous indignation. After circling him to make certain her Harry was alright she landed on the ice next to his head, her claws sinking in, then she began to chew his ear off. And with an owl that was not a figure of speech.
For a few moments Harry just lay there, letting his body get back to normal. After he felt well enough to stand up he did so, pushing to his knees and after renewing his freezing spell he wobbled over to the edge of the piece of ice, leaned over and fed the fish for a bit. Hedwig turned away fastidiously as her Harry lost a few of his last meals, but hopped onto his shoulder and continued her assault on his ear as he stood up on still wobbly legs to look around.
Harry gave her a weak smile. "I know Hedwig, I was an idiot, I just thought, well I didn't really think this through huh? Guess my family's Gryffindor heritage overwhelmed my Ravenclaw common sense huh?" Hedwig gave the owl equivalent of a harrumph but stopped chewing on his ear after a final far more gentle nibble.
Despite what he said Harry had expected to run into some issues boldly trying to teleport to Hogwarts, but had thought that he would appear nearby, simply deposited elsewhere safely with nothing wrong save a upset stomach. Instead he had bounced off full power wards and nearly hit the other side of the lake from the castle. With a sigh he turned his attention to the distant castle, a smell repelling charm sending the ice over the lake. When he got closer both he stared as tears came to his eyes, remembering how he had first seen the castle and all of the things that had happened here.
The medieval castle sat there, unchanged since some distant past when it was first built. The towers, the turrets, the little overlook which hid the first year's entrance, it was all there. He remembered entering that way with Hermione, Padma and the others, and smiled a little sadly at the fact he would never see any of his old friends among the living ever again. He felt a niggling little tickle at the edge of his senses, and knew he was somehow under an anti-muggle ward of some kind. He then used his mage sight spell and his eyes widened in shock.
The wards of Hogwarts were the wonders of the world for hundreds of years, yet by the time Harry started school there, they were a bare shadow of what they could, indeed what they should have been. They were powered by three things; one, the students ambient magic, keeping magical accidents to a minimum.
The second power source was the teachers, who were supposed to give up a portion of their own magic to power them on a daily basis after they signed their contracts. Dumbledore as the headmaster should have not only given the largest portion of his own power to these wards, tying him into them, but he should have enforced this for all the teachers he hired in his tenure. He didn't do either, and thus by the time Harry arrived the wards were only sustained by the two teachers who he hadn't hired, Flitwick and McGonagall, which was why there were so many dangers able to get onto the grounds and fights inside the castle between students with the teacher none-the-wiser.
The third, and the one which gave the wards most of their power was the fact the castle sat on an intersection of two ley lines, but this option was only to be enacted during wartime on order of the headmaster. Never, not once, not even after McGonagall became headmistress, had Harry ever seen the wards of Hogwarts at anywhere near their full potential.
The wards before him were not only at their full potential, they were at what his world would have called a wartime footing, taking power from the ley lines below the castle. They were so powerful, so numerous and so well layered it was incredible. Harry counted at least fifteen anti-muggle wards, thirty full powered defense wards layered into the ground and the castle, and five anti-apparition wards. The others looked to be a mix of security, (wards to lock access) warning (wards to inform the headmaster or whoever of what was going on under them) and specific wards that seemed to block or dissipate specific spells. Other ones seemed to be things like anti-animal wards, though there were far more of them than he would have expected, and a few whose purpose he couldn't figure out, though they looked like they were versions of an unplottable, possibly much more powerful and tweaked to only block out non-magicals.
"Wow, just wow. That lot would take me weeks to decipher." He was tempted to do just that, but he had other obligations right now, whatever mystery Hogwarts hid would wait for now. He supposed he could just blast his way in, as strong as he was now, but only if he wanted to sink this part of Scotland into the sea, not something he was interested in doing whatever secrets the castles hid in its halls. Still I will be back, he vowed. Something about the castles was whispering to him that whatever was inside was important, that it held secrets he had to decipher, and that somehow the castle was waiting for him in some way. Yet it would have to wait a little longer.
He looked at Hedwig who smoothed out her feathers and jumped off his shoulder into the air, her destination Bern, Switzerland. From here it was in her flight range, and she would be back soon given her ability to 'go between' as she did. Harry still wasn't certain how the hell she did her little jumps, but simply put it down to how magnificent she was, which she of course agreed with.
Harry continued to make his way to shore (which seemed to be empty of squid alas, Chulhey had been a good friend, well he had after Luna introduced it to them all, and a major help in the second task of the Tournament in his fourth year), feeling more and more of the wards hit him and thankfully find him acceptable. The anti-apparition ward hadn't of course but most of these wards were developed to keep the castle hidden, not take out someone who already knew of its existence.
As he stepped onto the shore he remembered how he first became friends with Daphne and Tracy on the shore of the lake. It was at the beginning of their second year, and he and the twins had been spending time together, trying to come to an agreement on a group prank against the teachers when they heard the sound a commotion by the lake. It turned out to be a group of upper year Slytherins fighting two third year girls, whose bodies, much like Susan Bones in Hufflepuff, had already begun to mature. A group of six sixth years and two seventh years had followed them out to the lake and ambushed them there. Harry and the twins had leapt into the fight and with surprise on their side routed the lot of them. Unfortunately later on it was their word against the older Slytherins and as usual Dumbledore refused to hear anything against Snape or the little bigots.
Harry and his New Marauders would run into all eight of that group later, but they would be wearing black robes and masks then, and wouldn't be walking away from that second meeting.
The aftermath was that Daphne and Tracey practically moved into Ravenclaw tower, and Daphne and Hermione conspired to create a few spells to help protect the girls in the Slytherin quarters from their enemies. Hermione showed a certain level of viciousness in her spell creation that made every boy in their group flinch and cross their legs, but it cemented a friendship with the two pureblood girls and started a rivalry between her and Daphne that would last until Hermione was killed by Snape and Draco.
He spent his time waiting for his familiar walking around the grounds for two hours lost in his memories, but Hedwig's return dragged him back into the here and now, and soon, after viewing her memories of their destination, the two were off.
At around two in the afternoon local time a man walked into a bank in Bern the capital of Switzerland. He wore a tailored Armani suit in dark gray colors, a very nice white shirt underneath, but no tie. He was carrying a large backpack, but as the metal detectors at the door didn't ring in alarm, the security guards stationed on either side of the entrance didn't think it dangerous. They watched him, of course, and when he walked up to one of them it was a surprise to hear him speak in fluent Swiss. "Excuse me," he said, "could you direct me to where I need to go to open up a new account?" the guard thus addressed did so, still wondering what was in the bag but being too professional to ask.
Harry smirked a little. When he had mentioned his translation spells to Ororo, she had gotten very, very irritated. Even with her normal control before he gave her the necklace he created a storm had begun to develop outside the house, complete with lightning, thunder and rain. She thought that it was a cheat. That you learned more about a language and its people while actually learning the language than you ever could just by being given knowledge of the language in a few seconds of spell work, especially since that knowledge faded over time. Harry had agreed to only use it when he wasn't around her, but also refused to join the language classes as he had far more important things to do. Ororo hadn't liked that, but had acquiesced.
Harry was shown into a rather small office where a man in his 30s stood up and welcomed him with a bland noncommittal smile on his face. "I understand you wish to open up a new account with us, Mr…?"
Harry nodded. "Harry Potter, yes as I've recently moved out on my own so I really do need my own account. I have made some recent discoveries and I hope to start up my own business soon. I have the capital, some of the items that I'm looking to patent have done very well, but it's all been sort of under the table."
The man looked a little dubious, at that, but nodded. "Might we have your ID please?" Harry handed over the ID the Fantastic Four gave him, and as he had suspected it passed muster quite easily.
While they were waiting for the ID to come back the man talked about the minimal initial deposit requirement, as well as what kind of interest he could expect. Harry replied that he would be depositing quite a lot more than that, but he would allow the interest rate to remain at their set level, until he was proven to be a good investment.
The man frowned a little at that, wondering what the younger man in front of him was going to be doing, but shrugged as the ID came back clean. "So how much are you looking to entrust to us today, Mr. Potter?"
Perry reached into the bag and began to pull out large wads of cash, all of which of course was in the US dollar, but the presentation was all he could hope for. "About 2 and 3/4 of a million dollars US actually."
The man gaped at him and said softly "I think I'm going to have to go get my advisor." Harry frowned a little, but nodded anyway. He could have simply waved his hand and gotten the man to agree to create a bank account for him no questions asked but had decided against it. He didn't want anyone to accuse him of using his magic to influence other people like that when he eventually went public.
The discussion with the supervisor lasted about 45 minutes, but he was satisfied by Harry's tale of continually selling off items of gold that he had discovered in his grandfather's house, as well as selling certain scientific items. Mind you, the items that he described, a wrist mounted taser and a hand sized wide area dispersal pepper spray were ideas that he was going to run with eventually, but he didn't think they would be very big money makers in comparison to some of his other ideas. At the moment though they did well enough to convince the man that the money was real and that Harry was on the up and up. Of course, this being Switzerland they didn't really care what he was doing in America, so long as he didn't do it here. Once they were convinced of that fact it went much smoother.
The upshot was that an hour after walking into the bank Harry walked out with a brand-new bank account, as well as checks. He had asked the man if the checks would be usable immediately, and after another 5 minutes of wrangling, the man agreed and activated his account as fast as he could. He did this happily since Harry informed him that the money he had already deposited had only been a down payment, and that Harry expected to see a massive return in a few days. He refused to divulge where that return would be coming from, only that it wouldn't have anything illegal about it. After all, there's no law that says I can't take gold from one dimension into another is there? Harry smirked to himself.
His agenda today was to buy the various crystals and other items he would need to create a magical analysis to figure out what Juggernaut's armor was composed of, as well as certain scientific devices for the same purpose. The devices he would have to order specially, they weren't exactly going to be sold in stores, and much the same thing would have to happen for the crystals, because they had to be of perfect quality on the molecular level, but certain other items he could buy. "However," he said to himself as Hedwig zoomed down out of nowhere to perch on his shoulder. "I think I deserve a bit of a present, what do you think Hedwig?"
Hedwig seemed to think about this, then nodded affirmatively, and Harry made his way over to a map of the city at a bus stop, and then made his way over to a very specific automobile dealership. He had seen this car online while living with the Fantastic Four, and had immediately fallen in love with it. It wasn't exactly the most utilitarian car, but then again, he didn't care about that. All he wanted was something to have fun with that was fast, and this car would fit the bill nicely. After that he decided to get himself some tea and searched for a good café.
Emma Frost sat alone at a table in a little café off the main street of Bern, tapping the fingers of one hand rhythmically on the table as she read over a few notes from her bank manager. She sat alone because she wanted to, a young woman of her looks and grace would never want for companionship, but at the moment she wanted to be alone. She scowled irritably as she went over her bank notes, looking for some way out of the predicament she found herself in.
Emma was born into the Frost household, its third eldest child, and was expected to do her part to enrich the family. Frost pharmaceuticals, Frost perfume, Frost Industries, Frost import/export, and Frost Telecommunications were all big business, not quite as big as the biggest like Stark Enterprises or some of the other really big names, but easily multi-billionaires. They had become so by making few mistakes and taking care of any enemies with ruthless dispatch. Not that any of that could ever be traced back to them of course. And she was now expected to take her part in the family business, and that was surprisingly as its heir.
Her older brother, their firstborn child, was a lush. He spent his time and money on sex, alcohol and drugs, and anyway was gay, something that was almost as bad these days as being a known mutant. Her older sister was equally unsuitable, she was cruel and sadistic, and was horrible at hiding it. Her father approved of such things in moderation of course, but Adrienne refused to even think that the opinions of anyone outside the family should matter at all, and routinely abused the servants in various ways.
So Emma had been chosen to succeed her father as head of the business. The only problem was, she didn't want to be. She wanted to make a her own way in the world, succeed on her own merits. However, the family had refused to allow that, and Emma was here to see if she could in some way get enough of her money out of her bank account to start up somewhere on her own. Unfortunately, her parents had tangled up her bank account with numerous regulations, rules and expectations, and she was left with no way to get out any significant amount without their say-so. Well her father's say-so, her mother kept herself drugged to the gills so she didn't have to deal with her families issues.
Emma scowled angrily to herself, confident that her powers would keep anyone from actually noticing. It was those powers, the mutant power of telepathy that had awoken during her puberty that allowed her to sit alone in the very crowded café. Despite the fact that I would miss the higher things in life, I'm almost tempted to run off right now. I could convince someone to buy my car, and that would give me enough money to start with obviously. But no, I bet my father would send people after me, especially given certain agreements he's made concerning me! If it was only the fact that she was being forced to take over the family businesses in the future she would've easily born that up. The businesses weren't anything she was really interested in, but that could've changed over time. No it was the other aspect of being head of Frost industries that bothered the hell out of her.
Her father was part of a very old, very wealthy and very influential group called the Hellfire Club that had been around since the 1700s. This group specialized in backroom dealings, insider trading, and working together to profit from the rest of the world. She had no issues with any of that, what she did have an issue with was the fact that it was heavily gender biased and male-dominated. Despite her high birth, despite the money and influence she as the head of Frost Corp. would bring to the group, she as a woman was going to be subservient to a man, one of the so called Kings, which would control her as his Queen. The man in question was named Sebastian Shaw, a friend of her father who had been eyeing her for several years now. The idea of what that man would do once he had actual control over her did not bear thinking about. And unfortunately, he had such good telepathic blocks, developed despite not being a telepath himself that he would know immediately if she tried to influence him, with consequences she did not want to consider.
It wasn't as if she was entirely unused to the attentions of man of course, she had had several boyfriends despite her older sister's machinations. With her looks how could it be anything else? And in fact she had a very brief and extremely pleasant affair with one of her teachers, there was something to be said about experience over youthful ineptitude. No, it was the fact that she was still very technically a virgin. Much like the Middle East still did, and like the Hellfire Club had done since its inception, a woman was supposed to come to it unsullied and her father had basically told her from the very beginning of puberty that she was allowed to fool around in any way shape or form but that. If she did that, not only would she be thrown out of the house with nothing to her name, but he would see to it that she could never work at any level at any business in the world again save as a slut on the street.
Emma had long thought of getting out of it somehow, but had hoped to be able to find a better way forward. It hadn't worked. Calm down Emma, she thought coldly to herself, so you can't get out of it, figure out some angle, you want to influence him, figure out a way to do it, or just take the plunge and run off now. The odds of her successfully running off were slim, but possibly better than being controlled by that neanderthal Shaw.
Her thoughts were interrupted however, as someone sat across from her, something that should've been impossible given the fact that she was projecting a telekinetic field that would tell anyone with a brain that this table was not in fact here. Yet someone still had sat down with her.
She looked up and was caught by the most magnificent emerald eyes she had ever seen, snapping with barely concealed humor and hidden power. The face around those eyes was handsome, dominated by an expressive smile, white teeth, unkempt black hair and a strange fading scar on his forehead. "Sorry about this," he said as he sat down a cup of tea and a large scone, "but if the choice is between sitting with you or sitting with the fat Yank, I'll choose the beautiful blonde every time."
Emma looked around beyond startled and then noticed that he was in fact telling the truth. The only free space in the café was next to a very fat American who was talking loudly into some kind of cell phone. Probably a tourist, she thought scornfully then turned back to her new companion, looking at him in a strange kind of wonder. Pausing momentarily to think about it, she then sent a small fragment of her telepathic power forward to probe his mind wanting to make sure that this wasn't some stooge of her father or someone Shaw sent to look over his 'investment'.
Harry frowned a little as he felt a little nudge on the side of his mental invisibility cloak. It didn't seem to have any malice behind it or anything, and he realized almost immediately that it was coming from the young woman in front of him. Still, he thought to himself if I looked like her I would be a little worried about a complete stranger sitting with me too. He decided to have a bit of fun with her, and very stealthily stuck his mental avatar's hand out from under the invisibility cloak protecting his mind. That hand held a sign saying 'No Trespassing, violators will be pranked mercilessly', then a little animation started on it, featuring a Bugs Bunny like rabbit and a very large mallet coming down on its head several times.
On the outside edge Emma had continued to sip her tea as she sent her probe forward, only to nearly spit it out in surprised laughter at the response she eventually got, though the fact she didn't see anything else of the man's mind was fascinating. Setting down her tea she picked up her napkin and dabbed at her mouth for a moment before speaking. "All right, that was interesting."
Harry grinned at her. "Well, that'll teach you not to probe strange men's minds. I know why you did it, after all a young woman as good looking as you probably does need to be more careful than normal people, but it's still rather rude."
Emma leaned back, taking in more of the man's appearance. The suit was nice, well fitted and very good quality even if it only looked like an Armani, as a Frost of course she could spot a fake suit a mile away, but this one seemed decent enough. The boy, no young man in front of her had some bank information in front of him as well as a map showing the roads down to Italy. He didn't look up from looking at the map intently almost as if he wasn't paying her any attention now that she had stopped trying to probe his own mind.
That didn't feel like any kind of telepathic block, nor did it feel like a natural one. I wonder what it was. Emma smiled, this kind of mystery was precisely what she needed to take her mind off her current troubles. "So what was that little trick just now?"
Harry looked up from the map he was perusing. He had decided that he really wanted to try out his new car before going back to the X-Men mansion. And driving in the US was problematic with the stupidly low speed limits. "Just a little trick," he said blandly, not about to open up to a young woman he had only just met, no matter how good looking she was, not right away at least. "By the way, what is it with mutants and being beautiful? Is that part of the whole mutant thing, I mean really is it genetics?"
Emma smirked a little at the rather blatant attempt to change the subject, the compliment was flattering but oddly informative at the same time, though the man might not have meant it to be. "And have you met many of us mutants?" She had only met one, maybe two other mutants, though she had suspicions about several others, including Sebastian Shaw.
"Several" he said, not going into any detail, "And I've yet to meet a female one that wasn't gorgeous." Inside however, he was wondering how this woman had fallen through the cracks and been missed by Xavier. It would seem Cerebro isn't as accurate or all knowing as he wants me to believe. Or could it be that he doesn't know either? The first would be irritating, but the second would be much more worrisome, especially if it isn't missing because of faults in its detection net, but because of someone else being able to block it.
Regardless, this young woman had easily the most defined telepathic probe he had ever felt bar Xavier's own. Jean's in comparison was blunt with not a lot of force behind it and even the legelimencers of his former dimension like Bumblemore didn't compare. That spoke of a lot of drive, training and ability.
Emma frowned a little when the man went back to perusing his map. She was unused to being dismissed so easily, and wondered what other tricks the young man had that gave him such an air of competence and concealed power. "Come now" she said, leaning forward. "Can't you tell me a little bit about yourself? It's not often that I meet someone who can simply ignore my mental suggestions and probes."
Harry looked up and took in the view she was very consciously giving him then concentrated solely on her face, allowing her to see his appreciation there for a moment before saying blandly. "Now why would I tell a complete stranger anything about me?"
Emma cocked her head to one side letting her hair fall coquettishly down one shoulder. "My name is Emma Frost, there, we're not strangers anymore."
Harry laughed a little, then shook his head, as he leaned back in his chair. "The innocent seductress act doesn't really work for you, you know. My name's Harry Potter how do you do?"
Emma leaned back met again, smiling a little now that they had broken the ice. "I know, but sometimes it's the only card available. I might as well get used to it after all," she said the last bit a little tartly, and then blinked, not having wanted to say that aloud.
Harry frowned. The young woman didn't strike him as someone coming from a bad family or anything like that, but the frustration, anger and the little bit of fear in her words struck a chord in him. "So," he said thoughtfully "you've run into someone else who is immune to your mental powers, and who wants something you don't want to give?"
Emma sighed, she hadn't meant to let that out, after all she was interested in getting information from the young man not giving out her own. "It's a lot more complicated than that. Suffice to say however that I was here searching for a way out of it, and my father has rather neatly sewn them all up long before I got here. I've been debating with myself whether or not to simply run off, unfortunately I doubt it would work for very long. Frost Corp has a very long arm."
Harry frowned thoughtfully recognizing the name now. Frost Corp was a big name in perfumes, pharmaceuticals, and scientific instruments and had holdings in some other industries. They had literally thousands of patents to the company's name, including some of the scanners he wanted to buy. "Frost huh, I recognize the name. I don't suppose you'd be willing to barter a deal for some of your scientific scanners."
"Satisfy my curiosity and maybe," she said bluntly. She now knew with the kind of assurance that came from long trusting her instincts that the young man before her held some kind of power that could probably help her. All that remained was to convince him to do so.
Harry smirked a little, while looking at the time. It was now three in the afternoon, and that left them with four hours of sunlight, which was perfect for what he wanted to actually be doing with his day. Talking to Emma was interesting, and certainly kept him on his toes, but he wanted to be doing something a little more physical and fun. "Now if you actually had a good car, we could make a little game of this. After all I just bought a car, and the dealer said it was pretty fast. I like going fast and I'd like some time to get to know my car a little, see if he was telling the truth before heading back to the land of the ridiculous 60 mph limits."
"I have a Ferrari 458" she said laughing a little. "I could probably beat any dinky little car you have in any kind of race you could ask."
"Wow, a Ferrari 458, that's incredible. Precisely the kind of rich little girl car I thought you'd have." As Emma's eyebrows rose in amusement Harry smirked a little. "All right, let's have a little race and put your money where your mouth is. The winner gets to ask the loser for three favors or the answer to three questions, no arguments, no prevaricating, okay?"
Emma grinned, looking far less haughty and far more impish. If there was one thing she loved to do more than make money it was race. "Fine by me, I'm finished with my tea, so shall we start now?"
Harry smirked finished his own tea, stood up and led the way outside. In the little parking area right by the café Emma stopped and stared.
The car Harry was moving towards was emerald green like his eyes only a little deeper shade, it was obviously built for speed with very fine lines, little side mirrors, a very big engine at the back and it was absolutely gorgeous. "What," she said coldly, "is that?" She had the feeling she had just been duped and she didn't like it.
"That,is a Pagani Huayra," Harry answered, grinning a little.
"A Huayra, as in one of the newest, fastest cars in the world," she said softly, knowing now she had been tricked.
"Yep, isn't she pretty?"
Emma growled but went over to her own Ferrari 458. Suddenly her certain victory wasn't looking so certain.
On a nearby rooftop a man wearing a skull mask, blue spandex and an orange cloak was watching this with amusement. On his back he had a quiver of arrows, on one arm he wore a shield and at his waist rested a sword and a short bow. He spoke into a walkie-talkie saying, "Keep an eye on them for now; we'll have a much easier time taking her outside the city somewhere. Wait until they're far enough away and as alone as possible before we move in, understand?"
He received three affirmatives, and jumped off the building toward his own car. Of course, given how fast the two punk's cars were, he and his associates would have a devil of a time keeping up with them, but that didn't matter. They would have to stop eventually, and the tracker he had put on Emma Frost's car earlier that day would enable them to track them down easily.
Taskmaster was much more of an assassin and trainer than a kidnapper, but the money he would get from some of the Frost family's enemies would let him retire from active duty and open up his training school for criminals that he had been planning for a few years now. Much easier, safer and more profitable than actually being out in the field. What his three associates would do with their pay was something he didn't care about.
The two young people stopped at a gas station right outside of Bern off one of the countries highways to fill their tanks and mark out their route. Emma, who of course had been around here before marked down a route to take down into Italy the halfway point of which would be the city of Devos. "The hotels in Devos are magnificent, and have very secure parking areas which would be good for us in particular. After that the road from Devos down into Italy this way is one of the best in the world if we end up running into too much traffic between here and Devos to make it really a race." Emma was of course covering her bases here. While she might not like being a Frost, she still was one, and just like the rest of them she hated to lose.
Harry nodded. "I shall be guided in this by you fair lady, though the traffic should be a part of any race, after all that will make it more exciting. Are you ready to go?"
Emma nodded looking a little amused by the older boys bravado. "And what about any policemen that see us?"
Harry smirked a little. "I don't feel like dealing with them, so I think we'll just ignore them. I assume you can do your trick from the café for yourself, and I have my own equivalent so…" Emma laughed and nodded, and the two got back into their supercars. As soon as they pulled out onto the main road the race began
Almost immediately it was clear the Huayra had a far more powerful engine. The 458 had a V8, the Huayra had a v-12 turbo, and Harry began to pull ahead, but Emma had tweaked her own car by adding turbo and other things well enough that she was able to keep within shouting distance. She also made up some time on the curves and in traffic, though not nearly as much as she had expected. "I really need to learn the specs of that car, it's amazing!" She laughed, and gunned her Ferrari further, the air coming in from her open windows swirling her blond hair around her head.
Harry too was having a lot of fun. The two were dodging in and out of traffic, pulling further and further away from the city, and they hadn't even really been able to open up their engines due to the traffic. As soon as they hit a good speed, normally around 70 mph, they would hit traffic and had to slow down again, and even as he realized this it happened yet again, allowing Emma to stay on his tail.
In an attempt to put some distance between them he changed from one lane to another to avoid a truck, then swiftly ducked back in to his original lane to avoid another one, and sped on. "This is almost as fun as playing Quidditch, the only thing missing is people trying to bludgeon me to death!"
Emma followed him swiftly, showing her normal lack of concern for her own safety when driving her car. Her parents always castigated her severely about it, not because of concern for her own well being but because of the bad PR their daughter being in car accident would give their family. But she'd never been in an accident, and she wasn't going to be in one now.
This was a trick she had learned early on with her telepathic powers, the ability to pinpoint minds around her, and predict what the owner of those minds would be doing in the near future. This allowed her to prepare for the actions of the other drivers around her, which in turn allowed her to react to them far better than anyone else. More she could send out a sort of radar pulse to read the territory around them and predict changes in the road, turns and any problems ahead of her. It had never failed her yet, and it was the only reason she was able to keep up with Harry, who didn't have that ability.
She swerved around one truck dodged into the other lane, then back in front of the truck and then did the same thing again to several cars that were going far too slowly in her opinion, than was right behind Harry again.
The further and further they got away from the city, the less traffic there was, and the two super-cars were finally able to really open up about an hour into the race. Emma pulled even with Harry at that point, but that was the last time they were neck and neck. Harry's car was simply that much better than hers, and his reflexes were utterly insane, almost able to match the knowledge her powers could give her.
Still, she was having a hell of a lot of fun, and she hoped that that she could probably talk him into helping her anyway. The more she thought about it the more she became certain that the young man could help her, that his aura of confidence and power was the real thing. Sebastian Shaw gave off an aura like that, but in his case it was more an aura of cruel malice and ambition rather than simple power.
The race continued for several hours, but they were obliged to slow down as dusk came and they began to see signs for the city of Devos. Harry signaled they should pull into an abandoned viewing area that overlooked a magnificent view, though the edge of the area was a simple cliff with no protective fence. Emma responded by following him in.
Harry smiled as Emma got out of her car, flashing quite a bit of leg to a very appreciative audience. She smirked a little as she noticed his gaze, and then smirked even wider when he concentrated on her face as she came up to them. She could count on the digits of one hand the number of boys his age or younger that could look at her and not just see her as a sex object and it was very refreshing.
"I believe I won that," Harry said, raising one eyebrow in question.
Emma nodded. " So you did. That car is truly fantastic, and your own driving wasn't that horrible either."
"Yes well, I did learn from a former super-car test driver."
"Oh, who, was that?" she said.
"Johnny Storm actually." Harry answered flippantly, though he was looking around for some reason, his instincts were telling him something was wrong.
And that she thought gleefully, clinches it. He radiates power like a beacon, has money to burn that's obvious, knows Johnny Storm and probably the rest of the fantastic four! Even if he can't help me with my present situation, he would be a fantastic connection later on.
Their conversation was interrupted when a large truck pulled in ahead of them on the side of the road. Four men jumped out of the back, all dressed in various uniforms. One was dressed in a decent looking blue suit with green pants, though the suit looked a little too tight on him, and his tie looked like something from the late Victorian era. Another was dressed in blue spandex, a orange cape and death's mask. The third was a taller, massively ripped man with blue hair and a slight tan that wore form fitting red spandex. And the last was a man twirling a large boomerang around in his hand and wore purple spandex.
Harry just shook his head. "What is with people in this dimension and wearing spandex? Honestly, it's almost obscene."
Emma heard the 'this dimension' bit there, but decided not to comment on it just yet. "I have no idea." She said blandly, "Though if I wore it. I certainly would look better in it than these four don't you think?"
"But of course you would my dear," Harry replied, bowing grandly.
The four had by this time surrounded the two racers, and the one with the death mask on his face spoke up. "Emma Frost, you're coming with us. There's someone out there who wants quite a bit of money from your father and you are going to be the key to that. You kid, can get out of here."
"Hey now wait, a minute," said the man wearing red spandex in Italian accented English. "That car of his is fantastic, let's take that with us too. And don't you worry honey, we'll take goooood care of you." He leered at Emma who merely rolled her eyes.
The man in the suit nodded, looking her over and smiling lasciviously. "Indeed, after all, our employer wanted to cause the Frost family pain. Kidnapping is only one way to do that, humiliation is another, isn't that right Taskmaster?"
"Hey," the guy in purple said sharply, his voice carrying a distinct Aussie twang. "I didn't sign up for any shit like that, let's keep this clean."
"Boomerang's right," said taskmaster sharply. "Keep on task Unus, Swan, we're not here just to get your jollies off. Let's keep this professional and not make this any more difficult than it already has to be. Now get out of here punk, before we change our mind and just dump you body somewhere."
Emma frowned and looked at Harry, who raised an eyebrow at her, his whole body tense like a spring. She nodded, indicating she could take care of herself and Harry shook his head and suddenly was holding a sword. "Yeah, that's not happening" he said calmly. "In fact I don't think that anything about this is going to be easy for you lot."
He cast a speed enhancing spell on his legs and shot forward, already conjuring up lions and other beasts out of the thin air to attack the Italian Unus while he concentrated on the one he saw as most dangerous, the one who seemed to be in charge and who was even now firing arrows from a short bow at him, the one the others identified as Taskmaster.
The one carrying a boomerang shouted "what the hell!" as Harry closed in, but Emma didn't waste time looking astonished (though inside she certainly was, that was two different powers Harry just showed) she simply lashed out with her power. A bolt of telepathic force centered around the idea, the concept and mental signal for PAIN hammered into the l minds of two of the attackers. Boomerang went down screaming in pain, out of the fight for now.
Swan however simply shrugged it off and turned to look her with a sneer. "So you are a mutant as well." He said a little coldly as he brought out his sword. "I dislike violence against young ladies of your stature, but if you do not wish to come with this peacefully. Then I have no choice. After all it is not as if I would not make our liaison as pleasurable as possible for you if you do not resist."
Emma smirked a little as the man's own power tried to get past her defenses, but it was easily beaten back and she lashed out again with her telepathic power. This time her assault was not a brute force bludgeon but a subtle illusion, making it seem as if Harry had summoned more beasts to fight him. Hundreds of such images assaulted Swan, who suddenly was no longer sneering. He began to stab out wildly with his sword at a few of the beasts as his power made some of her other illusions disappear. Emma simply laughed, slowly leading him away from where they had parked and towards the edge of the cliff the rest stop overlooked.
Behind him Taskmaster and Unus engaged Harry, the Italian's fists doing numbers on Harry's conjured animals, while he laughed madly at the beasts attempts to bother him, yet his power, the ability to create a impenetrable shield around himself, protected him from all attacks. Taskmaster too dealt with them swiftly, far more swiftly than Harry had expected, but he was fine with that. After all, they had only been designed to test his enemy's abilities.
So the one has a shield of some kind, but obviously it doesn't keep out air or else he wouldn't be able to breathe. Harry used one of his prank spells to conjure up a cloud that smelled like a full power gas attack and sent it towards the would-be rapist, and soon enough he was down and gasping for air as his eyes began to tear up.
That left Harry to engage Taskmaster, who at this point, had finished off Harry's conjured beasts and closed the range striking out at Harry with his sword. Harry deflected the first blow and the second then barely dodged the third. This guy is good he thought, but if he thinks I've run out of tricks yet he's sadly mistaken.
A brief wave of his hand brought up several hundred hands reaching out from the ground, but Taskmaster simply moved through them exceptionally quick, slicing them to pieces and blasting away at Harry with a gun he had pulled from his back, out of arrows for his short bow having spent them on some of the more dangerous conjured beasts. A quick shield spell protected Harry, but Taskmaster was once again able to close the distance and moved around the visible shield to run Harry through. Or so he thought.
The illusion that Harry had created at the same time he created his shield dissipated as Taskmaster's sword pierced it and the man's sword arm was still outstretched when the real sword of Gryffindor sliced in from behind the image. Even taken by surprise the Taskmaster was able to dodge the blow, only taking a very minor nick on the outside of his sword arm.
Taskmaster adjusted himself and came forward again, this time a knife in one hand and his sword in the other. Harry however simply backed away and then turned away completely to face Unus who had recovered by this point. Taskmaster was just about to step forward enough to run him through from behind, wondering why the hell he had turned away but not looking a gift horse in the mouth, when his knees gave out. A sudden wracking pain jolted through him, and he sagged. "P-poison," he said in shock, "There, there was poison on that blade?"
Harry looked over his shoulder as he sent out yet another air based spell at the man with the shield, but he seemed to have learned his lesson and now the shield was blocking that is well. It didn't block the blinding 'Lumos' spell that went off right in front of his face however, and the man once again fell back screaming and clawing at his eyes in agony. "Basilisk venom," he said softly to Taskmaster. "I nearly died from it when I was twelve-ish, and the only cure was the tears of a Phoenix, I truly doubt you'll find one of those around here." Eight days later remembering this line would cause Harry to bang his head against a wall as hard as he possibly could.
"This blade might not be the most dangerous blade in the world, but it sure as hell is up there, you underestimated it, and you underestimated me. When you see Death, give her my regards." Harry had no patience whatsoever for kidnappers, rapists or murderers, especially murderers/kidnappers for higher.
He walked away as Taskmaster tried to get to his feet, only to fall again, his eyes dimming over as his body shuddered and quaked around him.
The first one that Emma had taken out was almost back to his feet, when the ground underneath him rose up and ensnared him like a living wave of earth. After a second he gasped as his clothing constricted him, and then changed color into a paisley kind of thing. Harry walked up then slapping him on the shoulder. "The only reason you're still alive," He said cheerfully "is because you said you wouldn't go along with the rape idea. I suggest you get a new line of work, because I am very much a strike one sort of person. The next time I see you, you will be out." And with that Harry used 'Stupefy' on the man, knocking him unconscious.
It would take a bit of work later, but he would eventually erase all knowledge of Harry's abilities from the man's mind, or at least, Emma would once the battle ended, and Harry would install a small runic array based on intent on the man's back, that would change his hair color and make the man crap uncontrollably every time he thought of something violent, draining the man's own bio-energy to power it. Humiliation after all, was oftentimes much better than any other form of punishment. This way the man couldn't even think of violence without being humiliated, much better than simply putting him in prison and expecting him to mend his ways on his own.
Unus was back by this point, but his eyes didn't seem to be working properly. Harry wondered what would happen if he cast his own 'Protego 'on the man to cover his own shield, and did so. He walked away, and the man fell to his knees, gasping for air. He tried to break out but Harry kept the shield moving around him until he fell to his knees, lack of air having finally taken his toll. Harry made certain the man was down by using another overpowered 'Lumos' and the man didn't even twitch. Harry conjured up several more shields to surround the man, then pushed on the outermost with a 'Repulso', sending the man's entombed corpse over the edge of the cliff to get rid of the body. He would later do the same to Taskmaster after ransacking his pockets and transfiguring him into a rock. Dead beings after all were much easier to transfigure.
By this time Emma had handled the so called Black Swan. His blade was passing through the air at imaginary enemies and she had easily tied him up in knots so much that he didn't even realize she had also cast a subtle illusion on his senses that had to deal with the ground, extending the edge of the cliff just slightly. A moment later he stepped forward to put his back against the edge and fell as the ground which to his mind looked so solid wasn't in fact there at all. He tried to scramble at the edge but a sudden telepathic blast of pain rocked into his shocked mind, and his defenses crumbled. He screamed aloud reflectively clutching his head and then fell to his death screaming.
She turned to see Harry coming up and looked behind him to see one enemy seemingly having been mostly eaten by the ground wearing the most ugly outfit she had ever seen, one other dead and the other had already past her on his way off the cliff. She nodded cordially to him. "Now, where were we?" she said calmly.
Harry smirked a little at how composed she was despite the violence of the last fifteen minutes or so, and decided to see what her reaction would be to a bit of the truth. "I was going to ask you some business related questions, and hopefully make a deal with you for a few of Frost Industries patented scanning equipment. More I have a lot of gold that I need to get out into the market and I need to know the best way to do that without bringing any attention to my doings."
Emma perked up visibly at the word gold. "Tell me more."
Harry did so, estimating how much gold he had, and her smile, which had still been a little cold after watching the man called Swan fall to his death turned very bright and eager. "You know Harry," she said looping one of his arms with her own as they made their way back to their cars, "this could be the start of a lovely friendship."
Harry smiled a little and said "you know what, I think so too."
End chapter
And there we have it. Emma frost has been introduced, a lot of other developments to make the X-men better, more tension between Charles and Harry, more romance between Harry and Ororo and some more development for Jean. Oh and three minor villains killed, well before they could become stronger. Before you ask, no Harry did not take them at all seriously, though he was very angry at the comments from Swan and Unus. And yes Harry is a little controlled by his hormones, but since he and Ororo haven't actually become a couple just yet, flirting with Emma a little bit is alright in his book.
Now my little announcement/rant/plea:
This is undoubtedly the most ambitious and difficult story I have ever tried. The size of the marvel universe is incredible! All the characters, all the villains and the arcs, it's just insane! And the mutants and how damn many of them switch sides! Oh my god! Juggernaut, Magneto, Mystique, Emma Frost, Havoc, Quicksilver, Jean Grey, the list goes on and on! I also don't have access to a lot of the source material. I have some of the collectors books for the Amazing X-men, and some of the arcs (X-tinction Agenda and a few others), so I know I will make mistakes.
If anyone knows a site that has a full list of the comic books that I can search easily or something like that I will happily name you here for your aid. The sites I have found haven't been very helpful to create a timeline or give me much of a background to the characters. If anyone considers him or herself an expert on the marvel universe please pm me, I have some specific questions about the universe and various characters going forward.
Then of course so many of the characters have had different writers that gave them their own twists. Don't get me started on the whole Cassandra Nova thing or that time period of the X-men. Whoever that drawer was should have been shot, he made them all fucking ugly! How the hell can you make the X-hotties ugly like that?
Speaking of drawing, any of my readers are also artists, could I ask you try to create a poster for this story? If anyone is interested, pm me and we can talk about some ideas.
Also, if anyone could recommend some good, lengthy marvel/x-men/harry/Harry Potter crossover I would appreciate it, I'd like to see how other people have played certain characters. I've read Arcane Supremacy and Rise of Arcane and a few others but I would love to hear I've missed a few good ones.
As always read and review