A Third Path to the Future

by Vimesenthusiast

Rescued from the Negative Zone by the Fantastic Four, Harry Potter discovers he is a mutant and decides to take up the cause of equality between mutants and humans (among other causes). How will a dimensionally displaced Harry Potter, one who is extremely intelligent, proactive and not afraid to get his hands dirty effect the marvel universe? Pairings: Harry/Jean/Ororo/others pos.

15. What's A Trip To The Orient Without

I don't own marvel, not enough actual progress in mutant rights, or Harry Potter, I'm against using children to solve problems I've helped to create.

Thank you everyone who pointed out mistakes (Baldur for Heimdall and others) I made in my last chapter, especially PotterrulztheUK (however I can't agree with your chosen name, that appellation goes to the Doctor) I am always happy to go back and correct things like that. I also want to give a shout out to swiftrabbit, who pointed out I jumped the gun in a certain area which will be pointed out in this chapter. I went back and corrected it, changing certain scenes to happen elsewhere. Jean at this point still does not know about High Note.

Again, I responded to a lot of the reviews via PM in an attempt to keep the clutter down but here are some other reviews I'd like to mention here:

one-village-idiot: Harry isn't the sort to go around hopping form one bed to another, and while Ororo and Jean might be willing to share him between themselves and eventually with Emma (and possibly others if they come to care for them as well) there is no way they would be alright with that. The idea that any woman would be okay with that kind of thing is what my ex-girlfriend called a fantasy of the male mind. (is it bad that I broke up with her because she didn't like me spending so much time on my fanfiction?...) And I don't see Hela as a joiner, she would want to be the center of her lover's attention. I was thinking of using her in a different way. I don't think magical batteries for the house-elves are in the cards, Harry doesn't have the time at the moment to analyze his bond with them enough to come up with something like that. Mystique/Irene will not be in this chapter, but will become more prominent either in the chapter after this or the chapter after that one depending on how the writing goes. The FF did meet the Atlanteans – Namor and co, but they don't have good relations with them, and Harry would not be interested in seeking out the so-called prince of all waters at this time.

Kuci94: If you think that, go write your own. And you're wrong about Tony's origins, trust me, I read a few of his first adventures in Tales of Suspense – my dad collected them. He does have social brains, or else he wouldn't be so good at wooing women, he just has very little empathy and doesn't think ahead very well, which isn't something he is alone in – Pym, Richards to a lesser extent, Doom, Mandarin, Banner, even Charles, they all have a lack of understanding of the common man. The chapter was 48,000 not 80,000 that was my last chapter and I warned you all that 'Fiddly Bits' was aptly advertised. And if you didn't like my use of the Evo ages, why the hell are you still reading after 400,000+ words?

Skelo: love the pic man, is that from a anime/manga or a game? Anyway, I was hoping for a more scientific reason, something that is quantifiable rather than purely magical/based on will power alone.

Cj1of4: Yes, Tony's reaction will be fun. I had Stane die the way he did two show two things: on a personal level he wasn't really a threat to Tony let alone Harry and co., and that the chaos of a battlefield can be as deadly as an actual attack that hits its mark. The second cap movie was very good, I agree, but no, HYDRA won't have Loki's staff. It did however remind me of another historically important character, who might make an appearance at some point.

Spawheel: Thank you. I think that soul bonds, unless part of a societal/racial imperative like with my Sekirei cross, are major copouts, taking away the need for the characters to actually spend time falling in love. And don't get me started on marriage contracts.

Slappy Meals: While I sort of quietly loath the phrase bromance, I do have a character in mind to become Harry's best male friend, but he won't appear in this chapter, sorry. The next one maybe. Right now he's friends with Ben Grimm, somewhat with Reed, and a bit with Logan (someone he can drink with).

Great Big Pidoya: I did indeed know about that and have plans for it, but decided to delete your review so as not to spoil a prominent portion of a subplot for anyone else who reads the stories reviews. Sorry, I know that is a crap move, but I want to keep it a secret.

Vicctorvicctor: Always nice to hear from my more distant fans! Harry does know the unforgivables, I mentioned in one chapter a while back that there were far darker spells than those, which could truly change a persons soul and aura. The trio of unforgivables was just far easier and in many cases faster to use. That being said outside of the Crucio Harry would never use them. For one, the Imperio needs the desire to dominate another person totally to power it, and Harry is unable to get up that sort of emotion. The AK on the hand he could cast, but refuses to for psychological reasons. His first memory after all is a blast of green light and his mother screaming and so using the spell strikes far too close to home. One of the worst things JKR did in the original was to ignore the idea of psychology in its entirety, which I find stupid beyond belief.

BlackRevenant: No, really? Hela speaks to you? Given your picture I would have *never* guessed. In any event Hela will probably not replace Sif in the harem, because I stated a while back that I was not going to have Sif in the harem any longer. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I have other plans for Hela. BTW, did anyone take you up on your challenge for the 'Power he knew Not'? Not that I could, far too busy with my own stories and RL, but it sounds interesting. And I hope my lemons since have made up for what you called a 'dick move' in your review of chapter 7. LOLOL. Always nice to hear from new reviewers.

Taxzombie: Thank you, I am trying to make Harry more than a superhero, certainly more than the X-men or anyone else ever tried to be. They were content with being role models and solving problems as they bit them on the ass, Harry is proactive, and is laying a foundation for a better future, not simply protecting the status quo. It was nice to hear from you again, and your chosen picture is still funny.

Narsil: I will go back and change that mistake, since you pointed it out that bothers me too. Your comment on a perky goth girl version of Death had me looking it up, and she is a little cutey true, but no, sorry no chance of her making an appearance in this story. Maybe if I ever do a DC/Harry cross, but don't hold your breath. Shaw is a person who prefers to use the hammer, and automatically tries to use it whenever he can. He can be subtle its just not his first choice. Shaw can however do so very well, as you will see in this chapter…

Another reviewer asked in a review for Destiny Vs. Chaos if I pre-write these chapters and post them. The answer is not any longer. When I first started posting my original 4, I did have a lot of each story already written, varied widely. For Warrior's Way and Chaotic Space I also had very complete outlines of where I wanted to take the story. That was never the case for Lion of Light or DvC or the stories I have written since. This story in particular has surprised me many times as I keep writing, going in very odd directions (Emma coming on the scene so fast, Selene's death, Magneto actually living, Scott's redemption) but meh. I use a voice to word recognition software, which helps me immensely. It takes me three hours to write some 10,000 words, and another hour to proofread the same, while it would take ten or twelve to create the same. I would urge would be writers, or writers having issues with the dreaded Block to try a similar program out.

Want to give a shout out to Narsil for clueing me in on two rather obscure characters who could fill in some very needed positions in Harry's growing faction. And of course want to thank Kathryn518 for her proofreading.

I will say again, for those of you who read the last chapter as soon as I posted it, Jean does not know about High Note just yet, that was a mistake on my part that I went back and corrected. With that said, on with the show (and the violence!)

Chapter 15 What's A Trip To The Orient Without Ninjas?

As today was going to be a long day, Ororo and Harry had spent the night in High Note, while Jean spent the night in the mansion with her fellow students for the last time. Ororo fell asleep first, her hair matted with sweat and a small, ecstatic smile on her face as she cuddled against her lover's chest, once more reveling in the feelings he could evoke in her. The two of them had gone on a date down in London and then come back up to High Note for several hours of languid, toe-curling lovemaking, and she had loved every minute of it.

Harry soon joined her in the land of dreams, but where her night passed uneventfully, his dreams that evening were not his own. His dreams these days either tended to be memory based and incredibly horrible for the most part, or about his two ladies and er…, or about the future which was rather more topsy-turvy. Those dreams could be good or bad, and were therefore surprisingly Harry's favorite dreams. He loved his ladies, and the dreams of their lives together were the best.

The fact that he sort of recognized where his astral projection stood was another clue. "We really have to stop meeting like this," he said not even looking over his shoulder, staring straight ahead and out the window a few feet down in the hallway he found himself, with rather familiar stone wall around him and an even more familiar view of a dead landscape outside.

After a few minutes of rather speaking silence Harry turned and was completely unsurprised to see Death, or at least the anthropomorphic personification of death standing a few feet behind him.

Harry was of two minds honestly about Wyatt introducing him to Terry Pratchett, on the one hand it was simply one of the most hilarious series he had ever read, and certainly the best mix of thought-provoking satire and pure comedy. On the other hand it had sprinkled his conversation with in-jokes, and the blank stares he sometimes got from his two ladies got to him occasionally.

Death stood there, still in the form of a woman, for which part of Harry was rather pleased. For the sake of his sanity however the rest of him refused to acknowledge that part and subsequently shattered its kneecaps and tossed it into the darkest pits of hell his mind could create.

Death's eyes were the same blue flames they had been the first time they met, colder than the depths of space, colder than anything could truly be in the natural universe, and her face was still a skull. To others she would have appeared intimidating beyond belief, but to Harry she held no terror. They stood staring at one another for a few minutes, or at least what felt like minutes until Death raised a finger pointing at Harry.

He suddenly had quite a lot of information in his head that he didn't remember putting there it was that quick and easy for Death to bypass his Occlumency. Vaults, account numbers, two buried secret caches in the mountains of the Middle East, another one in Greece, one more down in South America in some kind of desert whose name he wasn't even going to try to pronounce. "W-What," he muttered, shaking his head "what the hell was that?!"

Now Death spoke. "For tidying up my paperwork, Mr. Potter."

"You're going to have to explain that one to me," Harry groaned, still shaking his head. She slid that book into my mental library of memories so easily! That's not only disturbing, it's terrifying! After all if Death can do it maybe someone else could. Harry thought for a moment about that last sentence to himself and then shook his head. Okay so maybe it wasn't very likely, but it was still something he was going to have to think about. To say Harry was rattled was an understatement.

Death shrugged. "The universe runs on paperwork. For every death there must be paperwork. For every life there must be on ongoing paper stream. Those who become immortal through various means outside of being born such or the natural order of their mortal lives create paper havoc. Your killing of Selene Gallio, the alchemist and the dementors cleared up quite a lot of old paperwork, the dementors in particular."

Even Harry was not entirely immune to the effect of her gaze, which had been somewhat warm now turned incredibly cold, causing him to shiver. "Those beings were dead. Their souls given to me to cleanse until they were torn from my grasp and returned to the mortal coil in such a fashion that I could no longer touch them. Not until you came around."

Harry nodded, having taken the time that she was speaking to make certain that nothing else had been inserted into his mind. Luckily there hadn't been, and his invisibility cloak was still in place, so he suppose that he was safe enough. The idea of keeping out Death was obviously a fallacy and now that Harry had recovered his equilibrium he supposed it was okay she could get through his defenses. Of course he wasn't happy about it, but there was little he could do about it. She was Death.

"I can understand that," he said as he narrowed his eyes. "I don't suppose you could find it in your heart to tell me anything about the bastard who created them could you?"

Death seemed to pause for a moment, then nodded slightly. "They are called the Celestials, and they are powerful beyond nearly all others in existence. You ran into one of them in the Negative Zone. I know, but you did not kill it. You may have destroyed its body, but his soul was still there and it reconstituted itself after you retreated. The avatar of my opposite, she who you call Jean Grey could possibly become strong enough to take them on, as could you and the child of Gaea. But you are nowhere near the level needed to fight them now."

Death was certain that Harry at least could give any one of them a very rough way to go save for the one they called the Executioner, and possibly even escape while their bodies were being destroyed, as well as the planet he had fought them on, but that was all.

Harry nodded having already assumed that, mentally rifling through some of the information that Death had given him. Not a lot on the woman's business, apparently the British government had moved swiftly against all of the known holdings of the Hellfire Club and its members, and anyone they could not hunt down immediately had their assets seized. But there was a lot of information about buried treasures, magical and otherwise. He made a mental note to go through this at some point, though he would be busy for the next few days with other things. "If that's all, I'd actually rather like to get some sleep now."

He paused a moment before shrugging, "And you didn't have to thank me for doing anything like that, I have a people saving thing™ after all, and a mad on against dementors."

Death shrugged. "I wish to show my appreciation. Now that I have, farewell Mr. Potter, I hope that I do not meet you in my professional capacity in the near future." Harry nodded agreeably to that and his astral projection faded swiftly from her realm.

The avatar of the ultimate end turned again to the window, staring out at her dimension. She had been tempted to not only give Harry Potter a gift for what he had done, but also to give him some more knowledge of local soul containers since their destruction would make her paperwork that much easier. Yet in the end she had decided against it, since that would have been too much direct interference. A gift was one thing, using a mortal as her agent was quite another. All things came to Death eventually, she had no need of avatars.

And then there is the other matter. Death suddenly turned from her window, disappearing from her dimension for a moment.

She found herself floating in a endless sea of white, there was white everywhere, and walls further away than thought yet close enough to almost touch. This was the center of all realities, of all differences, and probabilities, the center of the Mk'raan Crystal.

Across from the avatar of Death appeared another woman at the same moment, yet the fact that they were both women was the only thing they had in common. While Death, even when she was happy, radiated a certain amount of cold, this woman was fire and heat. Her form was fire, the wings along her back were fire, the shape was feminine, but everything about it was a flame undying, of all colors of the rainbow, hot enough to make the brightest star, the hottest supernova seem cold in comparison.

This was the Phoenix, whose extra-dimensional properties was beyond the ken of understanding, so beyond any mortal or immortal to be inconceivable.. Even the highest dimensional beings, Celestials, and Watchers and even those few that were more powerful would be unable to fathom the full breadth and width of her power and majesty. For as varied as life could be so she was, for as varied as rebirth could be so she was. She was the life-fire, life and fiery rebirth and renewal all in one.

As such she was the exact opposite of Death and they had been around since the dawn of time. For as soon as life came into being, so too did death and the possibility of ending.

The two of them stared at one another for several silent minutes, while around them the universe turned and normal time went on in its normal fashion here slowed to a millisecond. After a moment they stepped back, nodded once to one another and disappeared.

OOOOOOO

Since the graduation ceremony was scheduled to take place around eleven local time neither Harry nor Ororo were willing to start any projects. So, since he knew all of Selene's secret caches were safe where they were for now, instead of moving on the information his 'dream' with Death gave him immediately they spent a few hours with Melody going over her homework with her.

After that while Ororo prepared for the day, Harry spent some time calling Emma on the mirror. She answered promptly, and from the background behind her Harry could see that she too was getting ready to head out somewhere. "Busy day?"

"Quite busy," Emma replied dryly. "My younger sister is finally coming home, after days of trying to get out of it. I had to send a few more bodyguards to drag her back here, and I'm picking her up from the airport in a few hours." She shook her head. "Little brat. But hopefully not," here she paused for a moment before going on, "not completely irredeemable."

Emma had already heard back from the doctor she had hired to live with and watch over her mother, and the prognosis was not good. It would be years if ever before her mother was able to kick all of her myriad habits, and her ability to interact with the world around her was limited at best.

"On top of that I have a public speech I'm giving to a new group of factory workers, and later today I'm scheduled to begin the first interviews to fill up the family security detail. We'll see what happens there." Emma had gutted the old security detail, getting rid of anyone who had any problems with the law, or any issues swept under the rug by her father both before and after he/she joined up, as well as any who had even questionable items anywhere in their pasts. Being competent and loyal was not enough, they also had to be trustworthy and worthy representatives of her and her businesses.

After saying that Emma turned away, deliberately, Harry thought, flashing a vision of her very pert rear as she bent over pulling up a pair of panties.

Harry shook his head at her exhibitionist streak. Since these calls began she had taken to teasing him like this. Yet when she found out Ororo merely laughed and whenever the blond vixen got too comfortable or too outgoing, she would simply make out with Harry and put on a little show for Emma in turn. The two seemed to be in some sort of competition, but what type alluded him, thought he had a good idea of the prize.

She turned back, deliberately enticing him with one arm covering her chest, while her other hand pulled up her skirt. Her face however had softened noticeably from the somewhat harried and irritated expression she had worn a moment ago. Harry enjoyed seeing her display so many emotions during these talks, it made her seem more approachable, warmer, and this moment was no exception. "Give Jean my regards would you? I wish I could be there to watch her walk, but I just don't have the time to get away today."

Harry nodded smiling gently. "I'll tell her you said so, it'll mean a lot to her." He knew that despite the fact that Jean had only once joined them for these conversations, being slightly too busy on her own and going to sleep well before the time when Emma could get free, that the two had dozens of discussions via e-mail the past few days. All of them had become even closer thanks to these daily talks, and Harry felt it was a pity that Emma would not be along for his little present to Jean and the others.

Emma nodded firmly, then asked, "Did you see my last e-mail that I sent to her? I told her to share it with you."

"The news you found out about that plane going down in the Atlantic being Obadiah's? Yes I saw it, do you think it's on the level?"

"Almost certainly, I have a radio report from a few US Air Force doctors who looked over the bodies there. Obadiah is dead, and Tony Stark has a new weapon, possibly based on a better design like the one he used to escape those terrorists. This Iron Man armor of his is very intriguing." Tony had made yet another rather grandiose public statement that morning, saying that he was Iron Man. She wondered how this affected his plans for Stark Industries, but had seen no change of his company's changeover from a military construction. And even if he did try to get back in the game, he would find it very hard to build up the work base at this point.

Harry nodded again. "Yes I'll be on the lookout for any newsbytes or other information about it, but I don't think we have to worry about Tony in particular. At least not if you're thinking about him being a direct threat to us; physically he's not. And I don't think he's ever said one way or another what his position on mutant kind is true, but I hope that the responsibility of this suit and what he can do with it centers him again. That man was suffering from PTSD so obviously at the party and at that press conference a few weeks ago that it's not even funny."

The blonde shook her head angrily. "Over the last few days I've delved into the numbers, and that little act of his put a lot of people out of work, and unfortunately I wasn't in charge of Cold Steel at the time. Of course," she smirked "it just means that I picked up the most intelligent and least inclined to jump at the first opportunity that came along, but we'll see if that translates into the cream of the crop." She sighed. "If only my father had jumped at the opportunity to hire them like our competitors."

Hedwig alighted on Harry's shoulder for a moment and Harry smiled at her. "Who's the smartest post-owl ever?" he cooed gently reaching up with his free hand to stroke her plumage. After a moment he turned back to Emma. "I'm going to send Hedwig over to you with a memory stick with several designs on it. Have your new people look at it, I think it might open up some new avenues for your weapons company. Of course if you find that they might be profitable I get 50%."

"20," Emma countered quickly though internally she was smiling. It seemed as if her messages about haggling and business seemed to have gotten through to Harry. "Our personal relationship is just that, personal, this is business."

"45. One of them is a stunner that is small enough to fit in a person's hand but with enough range to cover up to a full book city block." Of course it wasn't strong enough to get through even the uniforms of the Fantastic Four, let alone the uniforms he had planned for his group, or the ones that the X-Men would use, but police forces the world over would still love to have something like that.

"25, something like that is mostly civilian police oriented, and the police are even slower to adapt to new weapons then the military. There's no telling how long it would take them to catch on." She responded

"40. Federal agencies would also like him, and they're much faster to adopt new weapons." He countered.

"Thirty," said Emma firmly. "You may have come up with the designs, but my company is going to be the one actually creating them, and that costs money."

Harry nodded smiling faintly. "30. I'm almost beginning to pity Shaw and Buckman when you start moving against them, but you will still inform me of when anything momentous occurs there?"

Emma nodded, once again wondering if she should tell him about the Sentinel program. But all of her leads about it had come up dead ends, and he wouldn't be able to help her find out what the hell it was. On top of that Harry had enough issues on his plate as it was. "I will, again give Jean my love, and I'll talk to you Monday."

Harry nodded, and then handed the spell from his land, touching the mirror along side. With that done he turned his yes back to Hedwig. "You think you can get to Emma and back before the end of the graduation ceremony?"

Hedwig hooted arrogantly, pecking him lightly in on the forehead as if demanding why he would question her abilities like that.

"Oh ho," he said smirking, "you'll be back even before it starts? Well I trust you Hedwig… so if you think you can do it, do it." He reached out and picked up a little memory stick, then used a piece of wide string to wrap it around Hedwig's claw.

These were some of the weapons designs Harry had developed for the X-Men, and he was going to urge Charles to buy them from Cold Steel once the company began to make them since Charles had no other connections that could supply him with weapons. At the moment Harry didn't have the parts or the inclination to create them himself, but they were still viable designs. And he of course was still of the opinion that only relying on your mutant power was rather silly.

With the final head rub Hedwig leapt off his shoulder disappearing in midair. Left alone for the moment, Harry wondered once again how the hell his dear familiar did that. He had activated his mage sight which was getting so good that this time he had actually felt a brief flare while he watched it, but otherwise she was as sneaky as a thief and twice as hard to spot. Moreover she seems to have developed the ability to ignore or at least overcome the distances between High Note and the ground much more easily than she had previously.

Harry shrugged that mystery away once more then looked down at himself and after a moment's thought snapped his fingers. Where he had before been in his nightclothes of shorts and no shirt, inadvertently having given Emma something to look at as well, he now stood in a decent but not overly dressy suit. Good pants, a brown dress coat and a green undershirt that was just slightly different from his eye color. No tie however. Harry believed that ties were thought up by some demon of yesteryear much like whoever came up with high heels for women.

Maybe even the same one, Harry thought to himself sardonically, looking up when the door opened revealing Ororo. After all liking pain and bondage isn't that far from having an asphyxiation fetish is it?

Ororo was clad in a very nice but obviously utilitarian dress the kind that women could wear while being on the move all day. Harry had refused to tell her what he had planned as a gift for the kids, since this was basically a going away gift from then for both of them to the kids as well as a graduation gift for Scott and Jean. He had however told her that it might involve quite a bit of walking in the sun, and she had planned accordingly, as had the teens or so they hoped. "Are you ready to go my love?"

Harry moved over to her taking her hand in his and kissing it gently. "You look as lovely as ever love," he kissed her on the cheek. Ororo smiled faintly always enjoying the compliments Harry paid her as she knew they were both true and heartfelt. "Shall we go?"

Ororo took his hand in hers, and they moved through the asteroid station, saying farewell to Melody and asking one of the house-elves to watch her for them while they were gone for the day. Harry also took the time to grab a folder with several printed out papers in it, smiling faintly as he looked at it. Ororo too looked at it giggling a bit before kissing his neck. "Her reaction to that should be amusing my love, but I feel it is well deserved."

"I certainly believe so." The two shared a chuckle, and walked down into the teleportation room, where Harry opened the only hole in the wards that allowed apparition at this point, having closed off all the other points even to himself.

Even the house-elves could not port out of the asteroid base from any other point. It might have been paranoid, but after his battle with Selene he felt it was justified. Someone like Stephen could probably bust through them by force still, but that would send Harry a warning, and even he would have to take some time doing it. That, the other wards that protected it and the fact that it was under a Fidelius would be enough protection for the asteroid base.

A moment later the two found themselves standing in Harry's workshop in the mansion. Harry waited until Ororo got over the increasingly brief disorientation from the teleportation, then the two shared a glances as they heard shouts from down below.

Everyone from the mansion was going to the graduation ceremony, since for Scott in particular the people at the mansion were his family, and even Jean despite the distance that had grown between her and the other students were still friends with all of them. Of course they all wanted to be there, yet while Scott had no parents, Jean did and her parents arrived at the mansion in an attempt to talk to her before the ceremony began at the school.

It wasn't so much talking however as it was browbeating. At least that was what it looked like to Harry and Ororo as they came down the steps into the foyer of the mansion where everyone was ready to go, but had stopped getting ready to stare at the argument going on between Jean and her parents.

Jean's parents looked… normal, so normal it was slightly freaky. The man wore a nice, run of the mill suit, black with black tie and white shirt with a perfectly trimmed goatee. The woman wore a decent dress, but nothing about either of them stood out. It was like looking at two people who had taken the Dursley idea of normality to the utter extreme, and Harry shuddered a little at the thought, idly wondering where Jean had gotten her red hair, since neither of her parents were redheads.

"I don't care about your opinions about women in the hard sciences, mother," Jean almost snarled. "I told you this before, I am going to take as many classes in physics, engineering, chemistry, hell even astrophysics, and anything else I can think of. I've decided what I want to do with my life and frankly you need to butt out."

Her mother went puce with anger, being talked to in so rude a manner by her daughter in public no less!

Her father opened his mouth, but before he could say whatever he planned to say Scott stood up moving to stand beside Jean. "I have to say sir, ma'am, that from my own experience Jean is the sort to achieve whatever she sets her mind to, and she is truly brilliant at engineering. Besides in this day and age there's really no barrier to a woman in the hard sciences, its only society's impression of them that is holding them back."

Harry smiled faintly watching this and shared a smile with Ororo. Scott had come a long way since Harry had first arrived at the mansion, and it showed. Before Scott might not have the stomach to go up against Jean's parents, or even agreed with their point of view as he would've wanted Jean to stay with the X-Men and make that her priority, and going to ca nearby college would have helped toward that goal. Now he was willing to step away, retain his friendship with the redhead and support her while not smothering her.

Charles nodded as well. "Going by her grades in school I would assume that Jean could easily get into any of the Ivy League schools that offer her classes."

"And who is going to pay for these classes?" asked her father sternly now able to get a word in edgewise. "We warned you before Jean, we froze your account, the one that we had given to you as a stipend for your time here. If you don't want to go to the school that we have chosen for you, if you don't want to really better yourself in a way where a woman such as you can truly make her own way, then we refuse to pay for your foolishness!"

"That is not at all necessary," said Harry finally coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone had been so engrossed in the argument that only Logan had noticed the two newcomers, and he smiled faintly at them looking very uncomfortable in an admittedly very good suit. It must've been tailored to his height and width of shoulder, yet even with that Logan's wild nature seeped through.

"And who are you?" Jean's father asked angrily.

Harry smiled handing over the folder to Jean who took it opening it quizzically. "Starting tomorrow I'm her employer."

Jean flipped through a few pages and gasped at the numbers she was seen. Then she gasped again feeling faint at the final portion and looked up at Harry. "H=Harry, this is, it's too generous!"

"On the contrary," Harry replied, smiling faintly. "When the new Arc Technologies company opens up and we start selling the reactors you'll be the chief engineer of the company. That's actually the normal wage for such a position, trust me I asked around and did some research there."

"A-and the shares of that company? Er, and can I change that name later? Its focus is a little too narrow." Jean asked the last part almost sheepishly.

"Well I'm not about to open it up to anyone outside our circle am I, and yes you can bloody well change the name later." Harry groused then went on more seriously. "Our companies are never going to go on to the public trading block, but this way you have as much say in what we do in that portion of the company as I do." Indeed both of them would have 49% of the new Arc Technologies company, with Ororo having a 2% swing vote.

That way, if it came down to a point the two of them couldn't agree on (and Harry was not so naïve as to think that wouldn't happen) they could have Ororo arbitrate for them. Outsiders may think that this could in some way influence their relationship, but that was not the case. Both Jean and Harry had a healthy respect for Ororo's common sense, and she often posed problems and solutions that neither of them had seen.

Jean stared at Harry then over at Ororo who smiled broadly, her eyes alight with amusement and encouragement. "Take it Jean," she said softly, "I think you're well worth it."

"You're going to make my daughter, someone who has no background in this, no experience in the field, your chief engineer, what kind of put up job is this?!" said her father angrily. "Jean, how many years are you going to waste on a lash-up like that until you realize that the company itself is probably going to fail miserably, and that your talent lies elsewhere?"

Jean's eye narrowed angrily at that, disparagement on her skill but before she could say anything Charles spoke up, rubbing his forehead. "I think that's more than enough. Mr. and Mrs. Grey, you are in my home at my sufferance, shouting like this is discourteous in the extreme. Your daughter is a woman, of legal age to move on with her life regardless of your own opinions. Please accept that and move on."

"Where the hell do I sign?" asked Jean while flipping through the papers in the folder. She looked up at her parents her eyes growing cold again. "You two have never really cared all that much for me emotionally you know? Your attitude toward my dreams and desires for the future show that big time. You were standoffish when I was younger, standoffish throughout my entire life, you never even noticed when!..." she broke off angrily chopping that thought off not wanting to tell her parents about the entity that she had once held inside her head or what Charles had done to it.

"You two may be happy with your little lives, your little normality, but I think normal is overrated. I'm going to soar, and if you don't want to back me up, to be proud of me, then so be it. I don't need you in my life, I've made my own family," she said looking over at Ororo but keeping her eyes away from Harry for now, not wanting to hint to her parents what was going on between them, far too much hassle, then glanced around at the other X-Men. "I have other people who will support me regardless."

She looked up at the clock and shook her head. "We better go or we'll be late. Don't try to contact me again," she said after turning back to her parents. "You've shown what you think of me, and I don't want anything to do with you anymore."

Charles nodded firmly, mildly appalled by how the Grey's had responded to the idea of their daughters independence, it reminded him of his own response but they were far harsher in language and scope. "Logan please export these two out, and the rest of us I believe we have a date with a few vans."

Harry jangled his keys in the air. "We can fit one more in the back with Jean in my Huayra."

"Dibs!" Kitty shouted before anyone else.

Rogue snapped her fingers. She had never had a chance to drive in the supercar, and really wanted to before Harry could move out.

Harry saw this and smiled. "We can take you with us there Rogue, and on the way back I think we might wish to switch out with the kids who haven't had a chance to drive in my car yet. It is an experience I will tell you that."

Rogue and the others all smiled faintly, though Scott shrugged having his own car. It wasn't nearly as fast as the European supercar of course, but it was his which made it far better in Scott's opinion. Harry saw this to and smiled faintly nodding his head at the younger man.

"Let's go!" said Kurt actually rubbing his hands together in anticipation, while next to him Evan grinned in anticipation.

Harry noticed this and one eyebrow rose. "What have you got planned?"

Kurt cackled faux-maniacally, rubbing his hands together. "You vill just have to see my master. I would say however it vas not me alone that though this one up, but myself, my accomplice here, and a certain redhead who has just disappeared down the hallway."

Charles who was moving at a much more sedate pace than the others, groaned aloud, wondering what was going to happen here.

A moment later Hedwig arrived back, having dropped off her burden on Emma's pillow. Harry smiled, congratulated his owl for her good work ,then sent her to see Nessy about some bacon before following the others down into the garage.

OOOOOOO

Emma looked over at her scowling younger sister, smiling internally. On an older Frost (even Christian, though he rarely used it) such an expression would be most forbidding, but on Cordelia who was all of 16, it just didn't have that impact. "Stop that," Emma ordered, "or it might freeze that way. And wouldn't that be horrible?"

Of course the contrary teen continued to scowl at her. "I don't understand what I am doing here. And don't give me that line about caring for me as one of only two family members remaining to you, sister. I know there was no love lost between you, Adrienne and our father. I have to be honest, there was no love lost between those two and me either. So don't try to use familial feelings to manipulate me."

"The thought hadn't crossed my mind," Emma said dryly. "You're with me simply because I don't have time at the moment to drop you off at home. And before you ask, no, I wasn't going to send you home alone with the bodyguards." She smiled faintly as she noticed Cordelia's eyes going towards the man sitting next to Emma.

Patrick Welton was a good-looking young man in his 20s, fit and with a crew cut. He was former Force Recon, having left the Marines after a single tour and joining up with the security detail for the Frost family after his first few jobs fell through. If Emma was honest with herself she found him rather handsome, though nowhere near a Tony Stark let alone a Harry Potter. Cordelia however seemed to definitely find him appealing.

I wonder if she has a thing for older men or something, rather a disturbing thought given our late unlamented male role model. Emma mused. Still it looks like Patrick at least has no interest in Cordelia.

Patrick thankfully seemed to look at Cordelia as if she was a rambunctious child, which hopefully would keep any issues from popping up there since Emma had decided upon seeing the way her sister looked at the man to assign Patrick to her full-time. If Cordelia was too busy trying to figure out a way to talk her way into her bodyguard's pants then she wouldn't be in a position to undermine Emma. The Frost matriarch had decided that she rather liked the calm and safe home life, and she didn't want to have to deal with her younger sister's teenage angst or issues caused by said.

"Besides," she continued. "This might be educational. The workers I'm going to speak to are going to form the backbone of our Cold Steel company's resurgence into the weapons market."

Cordelia proved she was a Frost when her eyes narrowed and she concentrated on her older sister again. "You hired them after they were let go by Stark Industries? I still can't believe that they're getting out of the weapons business entirely."

"If by weapons business you mean offensive weapons that's most certainly the case," said Emma frowning faintly. "I don't know what Tony plans, but it's obvious that he doesn't want to sell any more weapons to the military or into the commercial district. They are still creating other military goods for now, but Stark may put a stop to that as well. That leaves a very large hole here in America as well as abroad, and since Hammer Industries is now having its own issues here in the states it puts us in a position to take advantage of it. I wasn't able to higher nearly as many ex-stark employees as I could've hoped this late, but I think I got quite a few of the best ones at the managerial level at least. I'll be meeting with them over the next few weeks, today is just for the blue-collar workers."

Cordelia began to sneer at that but Emma cut her off sharply. "Don't make the same mistake Tony did. Those people are the backbone of any company, make them happy and they will work for you 120%, giving you their ideas, their loyalty and their sweat. Do you know how many ideas for different types of armor or planes came from the managers of Stark industries various factories? Almost as much as much as from Tony. Granted he came up with more weapons, but it was the policy his company had to cosign the patent of any ideas to the workers who came up with anything workable that made Stark Industries as viable as it was in other areas of manufacture. The carapace armor that is even now being tested for the American army use for instance, several vehicle modifications, and their jet engines, all came from the minds of white collar workers."

That made Cordelia frown more thoughtfully and she nodded slowly. "I can see that, I guess. And I'll try not to look down on them, I know that was what Winston would do, and the less said about how Adrienne viewed the 'little people' she made air quotes in the air for a moment, "the better."

The two shared a look, both of them thinking about what would never be said. Adrienne had not been gentle to Cordelia either, though she had never been as bad towards her as she had towards Emma who she viewed as an actual threat. But Cordelia had been much more into gossip around the house, and she knew what kind of things Adrienne had been into.

And in the case of Winston Cordelia had only considered the man her father until she was around nine or 10, at which point she gave up on looking to him for any kind of familial affection instead turning her attentions to a few of the servants who had raised her. As the third daughter she had been mostly overlooked by Winston, and had gotten away with quite a lot more than Emma had especially after Christian's sexual orientation was discovered, which helped further distance her from Winston and his control.

The rest of the trip passed in silence, and Emma sat back her eyes closed as she reviewed what she was going to say to the crowd of factory workers. She wanted more out of this public speaking engagement than simply wowing the crowd or getting good workers to understand that she wasn't going to throw them out on their hearers like Tony did. She wanted to weld them to Cold Steel, get them to buy into the company fully as they had with Stark Industries before Tony showed that he didn't really care about the little man.

She wondered idly how Pepper had done it, as according to her sources there wasn't much actual hard feelings towards Tony prevalent in the workers. Oh, there was some of course, but most of them seemed to have little in the way of hard feelings towards the man who had cost them their livelihoods. There was a sense of 'well yeah he was a bit of an asshole laying us off like that, but at least he has style' to the report she was getting, a mix of almost bemused respect and a bit of irritation.

It was odd, but she put it down to Tony's charisma. Even as a playboy billionaire who barely interacted with the lower echelon workers Stark still had a certain flair that drew people to him. That flair was in 'stark' abeyance when he showed up at the gala, but I hope he will get back to normal quickly and start SI making me money again soon.

She smiled faintly, remembering the stocks that she had found. The worms her father had somehow acquired (and she still hadn't figured out where they came from originally, which was irritating her rather a lot) had been able to hunt down all of the secret hidden stocks that Obadiah had bought after Tony's announcement and hidden under fake bringing Emma's stocks almost up to Harry's level. Of course his was still split between two fake IDs, and she had swiftly moved the stocks that she had found to other made up identities, but she doubted that would last long.

It would be obvious to Tony once he began to look into things, especially if he used his own systems which were so much better than the federal ones it wasn't even funny, that she had picked them up. What he would think about that she didn't now, but she doubted he would make an issue of it. In point of fact she was uncertain what his long-term goals were, or if he even had one. That iron Man armor of his she thought to herself then shook her head. That thing represents an entirely new level of warfare, one that is on par with Dr. Doom's suit. If such suits become commonplace this world is going to get very dangerous very quickly. I hope at least that he has taken steps to ensure that that does not happen, but I have to wonder what he thinks he is going to be doing. Is he a new superhero on the scene like the Fantastic Four or that odd spider fellow in New York, or what?

She shook that train of thought out of her head, and went back to preparing herself for her speech.

OOOOOOO

While Emma was preparing herself for her speech, Jean and the others had just arrived at the school for the graduation, which was being held in the gym. It had already been set up for the purpose, with a three feet tall stage set up at the far end of the gym from the doors.

Once inside the group separated, with Scott and Jean moving toward where the seniors were sitting in the front two rows from the stage. Charles and the others as nonfamily members had to sit at the far back, though Harry and Ororo simply moved to one of the walls and leaned against them. They had actually arrived early enough to find a place near the front.

Ororo had been handed a booklet as she entered that told her about the order of the events, as well as quite a bit about the alumni that were going to give some speeches. Once she and Harry were leaning against the wall she began to idly flip through it. "It looks like your normal graduation, nothing special. Strange, I would have thought the acting principal would have tried to liven things up."

She informed Harry, though of course he wouldn't know what she was talking about. Harry had never graduated from high school, though he had taken more than enough classes to graduate, but normal education had always been too slow for him. And of course the Dursleys and Bumble-more (a nickname that despite its childishness Ororo actually approved of) would never have allowed him to taken regular courses. Hermione's parents helped immensely, but not enough to actually get him into a regular high school.

Realizing this, Ororo elaborated. "First will be a speech from the principal, then several from the alumni who are gathered here," she pointed that out a few of them, matching their faces with the pictures in the booklet. "Then they'll assign special awards, ending with Jean as valedictorian whereupon she will also give a speech. Then the students will be called up to take their diplomas, a final short speech from the principal again and that's it."

"The question becomes," Harry mused, "where in all of that will Kurt and Jean's prank occur?"

"I presume it will start during Jean's speech," said Ororo smiling faintly. "Possibly her speech is part of the prank."

"I think her speech will be a separate thing, and will carry its own entirely different message, than whatever prank the two have come up with," he said looking at her with one eyebrow raised. "Care to put a wager on what the prank will entail?"

Ororo cocked her head to one side, thinking then nodded. "Very well, I believe the prank will be something happening to the audience."

"I believe it will be something happening to disrupt the flow of the ceremony," Harry responded. "Not something to the audience but to either the people involved in the ceremony or to disrupt the ceremony itself."

"And the wager?" Ororo asked.

"To be determined at a later date," said Harry smiling faintly. He had a few ideas of what he wanted to try to get Ororo to agree to, and it involved certain… food products and the kitchen table, not the sort of thing Ororo would normally agree to but as the stakes in a wager, possibly?

Ororo frowned at that and then shrugged. "Nothing humiliating of course."

"Of course not," her lover replied, his tone sounding offended that she would even consider questioning his virtue A tone that was overdone enough that it made Ororo's eyes narrow suspiciously. Yet before she could respond the doors at the back of the gym closed, and the ceremony began.

Ororo was unfortunately correct, and an hour and a bit later Harry was near to falling asleep from all the boring, rather predictable, speeches from the principal and the alum when Ororo shook his shoulder gently. Harry woke up just enough time to hear "And now for a word from our valedictorian this year, Jean Grey."

Harry came fully awake and began to smile showing just a hint of teeth in his expression. "Here it comes," he muttered.

At the front of the audience Jean stood up gracefully from her rather uncomfortable chair. She strode forward, the kind of stride that seemed to challenge and grab the attention of everyone there without being sexual. Unlike the dresses, skirts and blouses of the girls around her, Jean wore a woman's business suit. Khaki pants, a good blouse over a shirt and tie looking altogether professional. Yet in contrast her hair was loose along her back, cascading down her neck and shoulders like a crimson wave. Despite the fact she had dressed like this, she was still incredibly attractive, and Harry and Ororo were not the only ones in audience watching the redhead avidly.

Looking at Jean now, Duncan growled under his breath, irritated beyond belief that he had never gotten far with her. She was truly gorgeous, even if her choice of clothing wasn't anywhere near what he liked to see women wear.

His voice was not the only one muttering, though generally speaking the parents and the rest of the audience were approving. Her peers, having long been swayed by Duncan's rumor-mongering which had never fully gone away looked at her with scant approval, but Scott at least clapped heartily with the rest of the audience.

Jean took her place at the podium looking across at the audience smiling blandly. She looked down at her speech for a moment then back up at them and began. "The world is full of contradictions. We're told by social media, commercials, and the world around us that standing out is a good thing, that it is the only way to be important. Yet the moment we start school that goes away, we have to 'go along to get along', both our teachers and our peers tell us this in various ways."

The principal frowned suddenly seeing where this was going but he didn't see any way to stop it, and on second thought he felt it might be a wake-up call for the community anyway about the bullying and other social issues going on inside the school.

"If you are not able to conform, if you go against the grain, go against the norm you are derided, mocked and ostracized. People make rumors about you, labeling you a slut, a lesbian, or a frigid bitch… though they seem to disagree which is worse. I have recently had all those thrown at me, and yet they did not matter to me at the time and they do not matter to me now because I know two truths that were beyond the grasp of most of my peers and fellow students."

"Conformity leads to complacency, and normality never changes the world. In our history classes we do not read about normal people who simply 'got along to get along', we read about people who challenge the status quo! Who change the world as we see it through their energy, their thoughts, and their dreams! Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Nellie Bly, Martin Luther King, Marie Curie. None of these men and women changed the world by going along with the status quo."

There was some muttering in the audience now, but most of them were nodding approvingly save for a few parents who had heard their children mention Jean in a negative light, those were merely looking confused, and wondering if this girl was the same they had heard about.

"Up to this point we, as students, could get by in life by simply doing as we were told, moving along with the flow and letting our parents dictate what we were doing. The moment those doors open," Jean said pointing out past the audience to the doors leading out of the gym, "That is no longer the case. Are you ready for the world as it comes at you, are you ready to make your mark if you so wish? What dreams will propel you, what heights will you reach?"

"Far too few students here," Jean went on, softer now looking out over the rows at the front filled with the other seniors. "Have yet to answer those questions. They have been too busy in their own little world here at school, not realizing that nothing here matters outside of these walls, only what you have worked for and what you can show matters."

Jean's voice rose as she went on. "I have a dream. It isn't exactly like Martin Luther King's or peace in this world, but I have a dream to change the world for the better, to make my mark on this world and make it a better place for future generations. That dream is so fierce so bright in me that it sustained me while I was mocked, cheated on because I wasn't a slut, made fun of, and ostracized here in the past few weeks. Now everyone who did that has to watch me soar! I urge my fellow graduates to think of what they want to do with their lives, to think beyond the here and now and into the realm of possibility that is the future, to grasp it with both hands and to make it their own, because in the end that is the only thing that matters!"

She put her speech down and backed away, and there was a moment of silence in the audience. After that moment however there was a large roar of applause, mostly from the adults, while the seniors themselves merely went through the motions, not really understanding what they wanted to say or think about the speech. On the one hand she had been almost contemptuous of them, calling them out on the way they had treated her, yet on the other hand she had urged them to rise above their pettiness, and to make their marks in the world.

Duncan and others of course were in no way ambivalent about their own feelings at being called out, but they were in the minority.

Of course Ororo and Harry were both clapping loudly for her, amused at the fact that she had been able to deride her mockers, get a last dig in on Duncan, and basically demand that all of them raise their game up as they moved forward. "So which of us called that one?" Ororo muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

"I believe if that had been part of the bet it would have been a tie love," said Harry wrapping one arm around her waist as the applause died down. Jean looked back at the two of them as she moved to her seat seeing both of them smiling approvingly. Harry surreptitiously gave her a thumbs up.

At the back of the crowd Charles and the other X-Men had also found the speech most illuminating, and all were smiling proudly at Jean. Come what may, despite her moving out they knew that the woman she had become was someone they were all proud to call a friend.

The principal moved forward, taking his place at the podium. "Thank you Ms. Grey, and with that we will now start handing out the diplomas. Alexis Abraham."

Almost as soon as Alexis, a rather dumpy girl who had clapped ferociously throughout the applause for Jean's speech having been bullied many a time stood up, the audience knew something was going on.

It was pretty obvious after all, what with the music suddenly blaring from unseen speakers all around. It sounded almost like a chorus going off, but with dozens of different songs coming from everywhere in the auditorium. Daphne paused for a moment then shrugged and moved on, not really caring.

The principal and the other teachers however were looking around wondering where the hell the music was coming from, and Alexis stomped up the small stairs to gain the acting principal's attention.

Jean had devised small wireless speakers that Kurt had hid in several places in the gymnasium, very carefully hidden in the rafters and in various other places. To get most of them down he would either have to have a ladder, or be able to teleport like Kurt. Jean had merely wished to prank or possibly disrupt the ceremony, but Kurt had added his own fillip to the prank, which would become clear soon enough, and he was even now gleefully fingering the remote for the radio which was feeding songs into the speakers.

The choice facing the school's faculty was either to stop the ceremony here, which would cause the principal and the teachers to be a laughingstock, or just get on with things as if nothing was going on, which, despite the fact they would take some heat for not stopping whatever was going on, would earn them some points for coolness under fire.

Kurt actually was impressed, as beside a slight twitching in the eyebrow area the acting principal showed no outward change of expression to the noise, and simply went on with the ceremony calling out the next names calmly.

Ms. Sarah Bulton was the first of the people who had propagated rumors about Jean to stand up. In point of fact she was one of the school bullies, not physically, but with words. She was a cheerleader who took great care of her body, and was one of the few people on campus who was actually better looking than Jean. Of course she had nothing else going for her, save for a control of the school's rumor system that was almost magical. It did not help her escape her upcoming humiliation.

The songs all ended suddenly only one playing now. "'Kylie won't kiss my friend Cassandra, Jessica won't play ball, Mandy won't share her friend Miranda, doesn't anybody live at all? Amanda won't leave me empty handed, got her number from the bathroom stall. Brandy just got way too much baggage and that shit just gets old. But I got a girl who can put on a show, the dollar decides how far you can go!'"

Kurt had decided that merely having songs in the background was not enough, there had to be a pointed message to the people who had so wronged his redheaded friend. So with the help of Nessy and Tipsy, who had taken to living in the mansion as long as one of the 'misses', Kurt had compiled a list of the worst detractors, putting them down for special songs. There was a list of other students too, just to add a lighter tone to the proceedings and make it less of an attack and more gentle teasing.

Sarah stopped and flushed angrily, looking around her with a glare that should've stopped everyone's hearts as people in the audience began to chuckle, save for her parents who were simply looking scandalized.

The principal however merely glared at her and made a gesture with one hand urging her to move on with things. She did so but her anger did not fade from her expression until the music went back to its cacophony of several different songs without lyrics the moment she took her diploma.

A few names later another woman stood up. Her name was Imira Beckum, and if Melody had ever met her she would've found in Becky a kindred soul. Not because she saw songs, but because she was a singer and wanted to pursue a singing and acting career, believing that music was the greatest and most pure expression of thought in the universe.

When her name was called it moved into a song that was part of a new show on broad-way that had opened a few months ago. The show was called Wicked, and it poked gentle fun at the Dorothy of Oz theme, portraying the Witch of the West as not so much wicked as a nonconformist. This song in particular carried that mention and it was called Defying Gravity. She smiled, wondering how whoever had set this up had figured out that this was one of her favorite songs. In actuality Evan had developed a bit of a crush on her after having heard her sing once in the music room, and he had helped Kurt with this prank.

Amused Imira began to sing along as she moved slowly toward the stage. "Something has changed within me, something is not the same. "I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game. Too late for second-guessing, too late to go back to sleep, it's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap!" In point of fact her singing would gain her the attention of a musical director in the audience, and eventually land her a job on Broadway. All because of a little crush, and a little prank.

There were a few other examples of people who actually enjoyed their songs, and one or two examples of people who didn't before Duncan stood up. As soon as his came on however everyone in the audience began to mutter and laugh, and his parents, who had initially been rather amused by this display began to shout angrily. Unfortunately they were stuck dead center in the audience, and no one on either side was willing to move. "'…Right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink 'cause she can't shoot whiskey. Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool stick, showing her how to shoot a combo...'"

Again the acting principal proved he wasn't someone to mess with as Duncan made to angrily turn away but a cough and a glare from the principal forced him to move on despite the rather humiliating song emasculating him in the background. "'Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats!'"

Soon enough it was Jean's, and her song, which Kurt had chosen with care, showed precisely what she thought about the name-calling as well as hinting at what she thought about the whole mutant rights issue. "'So shout if you're a freak like me don't apologize. They can't hold you down, you were born to rise
It's our time now, to come out!'"

There were a few more moments, both good and bad especially for the people they were involved. When it became his turn for example Scott and his song raised some eyebrows. 'Warriors of the World' was not the first combative sort of song that had been played, but most of the other students that had songs like that were known to be going into the military.

Yet for all that they still moved like civilians. When Scott stood up he moved like a soldier, marching in step towards his diploma, and then back to his seat with such precision and control that even the most insane drill sergeant would've been impressed.

Summers was near the end of the list of graduating names. The rest of the ceremony was anti-climatic in comparison, and the principal ended it on a higher note. The fact that he had managed to get through it and controlled the audience and the students despite the ongoing noise garnered him quite a lot of points in the community, and next year he would be back as the actual principal rather than the acting principal. The ceremony broke up after he spoke with the music dying out as he did, and the students and audience got up from their chairs, leaving slowly.

Duncan made a beeline towards Jean, along with her parents, who intercepted him. The mother in particular was furious, and took him to task rather sharply about what it was really going on at school, not liking the fact their family had been humiliated like this. The two of them had been filled in on what really happened between their boy and Jean by a few of the parents around them, and were not happy about having been lied to.

During this confusion Jean met up with Ororo and Harry, who exchanged hugs with her rather staid hugs here in public, then moved over to join Charles and the others, before they all left swiftly, avoiding the crowd. Jean crowded in with Ororo, Charles and Logan in the van, while Scott and Rogue took his car alone. Evan, Kurt and Kitty piled into Huayra.

While they were moving out into the road, Kitty picked up the folder that Jean had accidentally left there looking it over and whistling appreciatively. She looked up at Harry who was driving, shaking her head. "Geez Teach, if this is the salary we can expect if we start working for you, where do I sign up?"

"I've actually already got a contract ready for you once you graduate high school," said Harry blandly, the supercar moving swiftly through traffic and heading back towards the mansion at a far faster clip than the van despite the fact that Logan was tempted to try and keep up regardless of their different specs.

Kitty gaped at him, and Harry laughed. "Remember, I told you that you're my apprentice in runes. That means I have to look out for you in the future as well. I was serious when I mentioned that to your parents Kitten."

Kitty flushed. Since she had begun studying for her finals Kitty hadn't had much time to devote to her runic studies. She had however finished the work for the arrays for herself and for the other X-Men, and was just waiting to put them on their uniforms. Scott had asked that they be able to change the uniforms, letting the kids have some individuality and Charles had approved. When he heard about it however Harry had brokered a deal with the Fantastic Four for enough cloth made from their unstable molecules for suits for all the kids and another team of a similar size, though none of the kids knew it yet.

Before she could speak however Harry went on. "Take whatever classes you want, I'm not going to try and pigeonhole you or anything like that, I don't particularly see you as an engineer like Jean, but you have a flair for runes, and I'd like to see what you come up with eventually. In point of fact, if you have time over the summer I could offer you a job right away."

"Deal!" Kitty shouted gleefully. "Having some extra spending money will be great, and I can send some to my parents too!"

In point of fact Harry had so many tasks and jobs piling up for himself that having another person around that could do runic work would be a major help. He wouldn't throw her at the problems up in High Note, not the time dilation stuff yet, but she could easily do what he called the 'trust me, trust me not' array, so that they could start really interviewing people and clearing them in the future when they hired more people for his different companies. Kitty could also help around the castle with things Harry was doing there, start work on a communication array like the mirrors only better and with a wider range, lots of things.

About five minutes of frenetic, traffic defying driving later they were at the mansion. They pulled in and, after waiting for the other two cars to arrive Harry sent the kids off to pack. He told everyone to pack enough warm clothing for three days, including swimsuits and a good dress or clothing if they wanted. "After you're packed, we have some time to kill before we can check in where we're going, so I'd suggest grabbing a nap, because you'll need it."

Some of the kids took his advice, while Ororo and Jean decided to take over the solarium for some reading time. He, Scott and Logan talked a bit about the new kids that were going to arrive over the summer, and Charles went about packing his own clothing for the trip. The ceremony had taken four hours, so they had a little over five hours to kill thus.

Harry belatedly realized he could have used this time to hit up at least one of Selene's hidey holes, but decided against going off to do so now. If he red Selene right, the woman was definitely the type to provide defenses of her hidden treasures, and destroying said would probably take a while and simply enjoyed a bit of down time by himself, reading a fantasy novel from cover to cover after he finished talking to Scott and Logan.

A little after nine all the kids gathered again in the foyer with their bags over their shoulders or in their hands. After making certain they were all present Harry asked Tipsy to grab a hoola-hoop of all things, though this one had been greatly enlarged. It was wide enough for at least five people to stand inside the circle, and enough space along the circle for everyone at the mansion to grab on.

At that point Hedwig arrived, landing lightly on Harry's shoulder. "Hello beautiful one, is the area still clear?"

Hedwig hooted approvingly, nudging her head against his for a moment then flying over to Kitty to land on her shoulder and receive her head scratches. She liked the one who reminded her of her Masters previous mate, all those curls on her head were fun to play with.

"So where are we going?" Asked Evan, looking at the hoop questioningly, "And what's that for?"

"I'm going to create a portkey with it, it's generally speaking the best magical way to travel, and this way I can transport all of us at once. As to where were going, you'll see when we get there though I think most of you will have to use some translation spells. You'll protect me from your aunt won't you Evan?" Harry asked half jokingly, half seriously.

Evan raised his hands in an X in front of his face. "Not a chance man. You're on your own there." Kurt and Kitty both chuckled

Harry motioned everyone around, including Charles and Logan. "Grab onto the hoop guys, and prepare yourself for a bit of an experience."

Charles looked at the hoop skeptically. "This won't be like you're driving will it?"

"Not at all Professor," Harry said soothingly then ruined it when he went on to say, "At least I don't think so."

"That does not fill me with confidence" Charles replied dryly but reached up to grab onto the hoop all the same.

Once Harry was certain that everyone had a good grip he nodded. "Activate." A moment later the group disappeared from the mansion and New York State entirely

OOOOOOO

Emma stretched contentedly as the door beside her closed, then looked across at her sister who had gotten into the limo before her. "So what do you think?"

The younger girl frowned at her, once again not really putting enough cold emphasis on it for it to be a true Frost expression. "Is this some kind of test?"

"Not at all," Emma replied, leaning back into the blush leather seat contentedly. She had been on her feet for several hours after all, and it felt good to sit down. "Like it or not however, you are part of this family and we have certain responsibilities and duties. We wield a lot of power, and we need to know how to do it."

"Our father never spoke like that," Cordelia said, though there was no scorn or contempt in her face. Responsibility was for 'lesser people'." Emma noticed that Cordelia once more did that irritating air quote thing, and made a mental note to try and break her of the habit at some point, but didn't speak up, letting Cordelia have a moment to gather her thoughts. "I think that your speech went over well, they seemed to like what you're saying, but of course that's to be expected given the fact that you're paying them more than their former jobs, and giving them job security on top of that."

In point of fact Cordelia felt that Emma was giving away too much, but at the end of the speech she had given what was probably the whole point of the speech. An open door policy for anyone who could come up with a new or better design for weapons, armor or engines? And buying the patent of said weapon from them? Stark industries had done something similar for its manager level employees, but not for all of its employees, and Cordelia wondered what would come of it.

She didn't realize that she had spoken that last bit aloud until Emma replied. "Probably a lot of dross at first, but among that will be one or two gems that will make us quite a lot of money as well as the people who think them up. It's sort of like a lottery, a lot of people are going to try and get rich quick, but only a few will be able to win, yet that few will keep the dream alive. Couple that with the better pay, and I don't think we'll have much of a security issue at this level. There will be no headhunting or spying among that group."

In fact Emma was sure of it since she had taken the time during her speech to scan all the minds around her, not in an invasive manner, but simply to see what the general feeling was towards Cold Steel and her family, and if there was anyone there who had been planted there. Unlike in her previous meeting with the new managers she had hired there hadn't been. Four of the ten new factory managers had already taken payment to spy on her and sabotage their assigned factories, and she had let them walk out the door without a job. Luckily as president, CEO and exclusive stockholder she could do such a thing without giving any reason beyond personality incompatibility.

Cordelia frowned again but eventually nodded. "Loyalty and long term investments, you're playing a long game," she mused leaning back and crossing her legs. She sent a sideways glance at her new bodyguard, hoping that the man had taken the opportunity to look at her legs, but she was disappointed in this. While Cordelia did not take it to the extreme that Kitty was currently in, she was still in that coltish, rather ungainly phase of children in their teenage years. Despite her good looks, dominated by black hair (from their mother), a rather attractive angular face and pushing B-size breasts, there was no denying she was still a very young girl.

"Exactly so," Emma nodded approvingly. She looked up as she felt the car moving towards the security station outside the factory parking lot, and turned to Patrick. "Could you ride up front with the driver please, I think my younger sister and I need to have a private chat."

Cordelia's eyebrows flew up at that, and she wondered what this chat was going to be about, but Patrick merely nodded and exited the limo before getting back in at the front. A touch of a button in the center console next to her allowed Emma to raise the security screen which also blocked out all noise coming from the back. If her father had been fast enough he could have raised that to protect himself from the assassination Emma had planned, but he hadn't. Of course if he had, then the man who killed him would have used other means to do so, but that was neither here nor there.

As soon as the car started moving again Emma turned to her sister her expression a little colder than it had been. "All right, let's set some guidelines right now. I don't know if you are aware of this, but your boarding school has basically informed me that they would not like you to come back next year. Your grades are decent enough, but you've raised too much hell on campus for them to want to put up with you. And I'm not willing to bribe them to look the other way like our father did. Not because I can't you understand, but because that would be enabling your activities, and I don't care to do that. The question becomes, will you continue to act out and be an 'irritating, little rich bitch' I believe was with the way one teacher put it, now that our father is no longer around to act out against?"

The younger Frost flushed angrily. After a moment however she controlled herself and began to actually think about that question. Her acting out had indeed been against Winston and the total lack of familial feeling she got from him, her mother and indeed her two older sisters. Emma had never been mean or anything to her, but she had been rather distant, preoccupied as she was with her own issues. And Christian had been a little too old to be of any interest to Cordelia or have much to do with her.

Across from her Emma nodded approvingly as she watched Cordelia regain control of her first initial response. "Good, you have some self-control at least. I'm not asking you to be the perfect little girl either, just don't be a bitch or act out to simply act out. No drugs either," Emma went on, her voice growing colder. "No drugs and no drinking until you're 21. Other than that, if you keep up your grades at your new school and don't become too much of an irritant, you'll have no problems with me."

Cordelia frowned but then nodded. "And I don't have to do anything with the company?"

"You may have to appear with me at certain functions, charities and the like, but other than that nothing. I know you're not interested in business per se, have you decided what you are interested in yet?" Cordelia frowned and Emma shrugged. "That's fine too. You will of course have Patrick as your personal bodyguard, and he'll be putting together a team of three more. Have you thought of where you want to go to school?"

Her younger sister continued to frown. This conversation was going a lot easier than she had expected, but there was no denying Emma had steel underneath her velvet glove. She had almost been tempted to say that she wasn't interested in further schooling, but she could sense that that would be a bad idea. "If I ask for homeschooling would that be possible? If so could we cut down the number bodyguards to one or two when I'm not at home?"

Emma nodded thoughtfully. "We'd have to find a tutor for you that would be able to clear our security checks but that is possible. Now onto more serious matters." She leaned forward eyes locked on Cordelia. "You know Adrienne had a power, a mutant power. And I bet you have an idea that I do as well. No secrets here sister, do you have one?"

This was quite a bit more direct than Emma normally would be, but Cordelia was utterly under her control unless she wanted to run away and leave everything behind. She wasn't about to abuse that power of course still Emma had to know if Cordelia was a physical threat to her.

Cordelia couldn't look away from Emma, her own eyes locked with hers. "I haven't," she muttered at last looking away with relief. "I haven't had my power manifest yet, and I don't know what yours is," she said looking at Emma angrily. "Adrienne wasn't exactly subtle some of the time when she used her powers." She flushed angrily remembering one very embarrassing moment when Adrienne had found an electronic toothbrush that Cordelia had used for… other things, and had embarrassed the younger girl immensely spouting it out in a roundabout way in front of the staff.

Emma nodded. "Well in that case, I will leave my powers to your imagination, and if yours do manifest tell me the instant they do. I…"

She looked up suddenly, feeling a spike of aggression coming towards them along the road they were about to intersect. Like Betsy, Emma always had her telepathy on, acting like a low-key sonar that could home in and get her conscious attention if she found anything out of the ordinary. The sudden spike of aggression and focus on the limo did so and she delved further, feeling the minds of the seven people in a van coming towards them.

"Get down!" she ordered, and when Cordelia didn't immediately jump to obey she grabbed her and pushed her down into the bottom of the limo. Emma joined her, laying down next to her. "Brace yourself!"

Cordelia didn't know what was going on, didn't know what had grabbed her older sister's attention or why she had ordered this. Yet the sudden spike of adrenaline she felt at her words and Emma's serious expression convinced Cordelia this was something serious.

Not a second later just as Emma was about to shout at the driver to speed up or warn him, she wasn't certain which at the time, the van came across the intersection slamming into the limo's side, spinning it around to smash into a lamp post.

The moment the cars slid to a stop the sliding door along the van's side opened, and three masked men jumped out quickly.

The limo however had several modifications on it, making it even tougher than most limos made for the purpose of security, and even as the three began to fill the limo's side with lead the opposite passenger side door opened and Patrick dove out followed swiftly by a man named Ben Tobard, who had been the driver. Both of them disdained shooting over the car at first simply laying out on the road and shooting underneath at the men's legs.

Unfortunately the two bodyguards were only armed with their sidearms, while the three men who had poured out of the truck were armed with machine guns. They were also well trained, and one of them immediately dropped to the ground firing underneath forcing the two bodyguards to take cover behind the wheels, shooting back only as they could while one other circled around the car to take them from the side.

The two bodyguards were ready for this, and before he could get off more than a single clip fell dead shot several times in the chest and head. Both of them leaned out across the car taking potshots at their attackers who had taken cover around the van, one of them keeping the two bodyguards busy while the other continued to pound away at the side of the car with his machine gun.

They were soon joined by three more people coming out of the car, while screams and shouts began all around them the city bystanders running for cover.

Emma sat up, hitting a small button set into the center console of the back of the limo, and a panel opened up along the backside of the bottom of the chairs. Inside was a small single one handed machine gun, a Cold Steel design that was only 3 inches longer than a normal handgun but with two clips underneath feeding the bullets in as fast as they could go. Reloading it was easy as well, and it was one of the best-selling designs. In fact of this point was their only best-selling design, but that was going to be changing as the research and design team that they had taken over from Leyland, Harry's designs, and the workers previously from Stark Industries began to make up their own designs.

That didn't matter at the moment of course, what did matter was that they were here, in the compartment that she had added to her limo in response to what happened to her father. Or at least that was the line she fed the family's live in mechanic, and he bought it easily. Emma had also practiced with guns with the few remaining security men, and had proven herself a decent shot, with an icy control that was surprising in someone without actual combat experience.

Cordelia looked on aghast at her sister as she pulled out another similar gun. She opened the door away from the incoming fire tossing the first one out to Ben who was closest.

He grabbed it quickly, dropping his own handgun and began to fire madly at the group attacking him. One of them went down, but another one turned swiftly, and Ben fell backwards his arm, shoulder and chest hit by a spray of bullets. Patrick grimly grabbed up the gun and began to fire over around the side of the car from his end, but had to duck back as one of the attackers turned from attacking the car trying to get through its armor to pin him in place.

As that was going on Emma suddenly began to use her power, sending out pain bolts at everyone who was firing at them. Not enough to be obvious to any onlooker, she still wanted to keep her powers of secret after all, but enough to make their attention waiver for just a second. A second was all she needed to kick open the door, and began to fire out with her own gun. Three of the attackers fell back dead, and before the other could open fire on the now open door Patrick popped up and the attacker fell back, his body riddled with bullets.

Emma swiftly got out of the car, followed by a now trembling Cordelia. She had acted out several times, gone slumming, rock climbing without a harness, sky diving, even gotten into a few fights with other girls, and she considered herself a thrill seeker. But this, this was beyond anything she had ever thought to experience and it had been terrifying.

Emma however was cool and composed, this wasn't the first time she had been attacked like this after all. She was just grateful that none of these men had been superpowered like the group she and Harry had tangled with in Sweden.

She very carefully used her powers to see if anyone in their nearby area was watching with too much interest, or if there was anyone else harboring any kind of aggressive feelings towards her. She found one almost immediately, a sniper that was up on a rooftop about three blocks away even now zeroing in on her.

Before he could pulled the trigger however he collapsed to the side as Emma methodically began to lobotomize the man. At this distance it was very difficult, but still doable. She went to one knee, ostensibly searching the body of one of her attackers for an IP or something, while her mind was busy rampaging through the snipers mind pulling everything she could from it, and she was not gentle. The man's mouth opened in a silent scream, his vocal cords not answering the call of his brain while his body began to spasm.

After a moment she pulled back, ruthlessly doing enough damage that his mind would never function again, as if he had had a brain aneurysm.

Emma spared the would-be assassin no mind however sifting through the information she had gleaned from him. According to the sniper this had been a sort of going away present from Robert Hildebrandt before he had to leave the country. Evidently he had decided he knew who was behind the assault that had taken out Adrian, and wanted to reply in kind.

A rather stupid move on his part, reflectedEmma, standing up and away from the dead bodies shaking her head in an obvious sign that she hadn't found anything. Patrick finished off looking over the bodies making sure they were all dead and as he walked towards her sirens began in the distance coming closer. She sighed massaging her for head. There goes the rest of my day.

OOOOOOO

One moment they were standing altogether in a circle around the ring in the basement of the mansion, the next moment they were standing on a deserted beach somewhere. It was rather rocky, with several large rocks blocking the small alcove from view on either side of them and fog billowing off an unknown ocean in front of them, with the sun just coming up in the distance. Even though it was the morning it was decidedly warm, thought the sand underneath them was still cool. The waves lapped at Kurt and Logan's feet, who were the ones closest to the ocean when they popped in.

Of course not many of them had any attention to spare to their surroundings for a few moments after landing. Traveling by magic was always a chancy proposition, and the reaction of the human stomach to suddenly finding it X amount of kilometers distant from its starting point was always… interesting.

Charles groaned, grabbing his stomach and leaning over his legs in his wheelchair, closing his eyes as he tried to keep his gorge from rising. Rogue, Scott and Kitty were little better, swaying in place. Rogue let go of the ring and sat down heavily trying to keep herself from throwing up. Scott and Kitty merely leaned against one another their faces green for a moment.

Kurt had no reaction at all, merely looking around with interest as he let go of the ring, absentmindedly turning on his image modifier.

Logan's healing factor (and cast-iron stomach) allowed him to merely grunt in irritation before standing away from the hoop and looking around sniffing at the air, trying to figure out where the hell they were. Evan was the exact opposite, he simply collapsed from the knees down groaning as his body betrayed him.

Jean merely shook her head getting rid of a headache of some kind, while Ororo, who had somewhat gotten used to traveling by magic simply rubbed at her forehead.

After a moment however they all recovered, and amidst dire threats of what they would do to him if they ever traveled that way again they all looked around in puzzlement. Evan finally asked the question they were all feeling. "Where are we Harry?"

Harry smiled faintly, and cast a spell on them all one after another save for Logan, Ororo and Kitty. Ororo's eyebrow began twitching, connecting the dots from that spell to where they might be. "Harry," she said warningly, "was that the translation spell?"

Harry's smile widened. "Yep, you can punish me later mistress," he said obsequiously, "but I think the kids would prefer not to be around for that."

His lover's eyebrow twitched again, while the others save Evan all chuckled or laughed, while he merely stuck his fingers in his ears muttering "Lalalalal, I'm not listening!"

Kitty however was putting connecting her own dots, and began to grin. "Seeing as you didn't cast it on me Teach, does that mean were in a place where I already know the language?"

"Indeed it does," Harry replied grandly, and after casting another spell on Charles's wheelchair tires to let him get along easier in the sand, he led the way through the rocks. After walking through the rocks for about 4 minutes they came upon a small trail leading toward where they could all see what looked like a small cluster of houses about a mile away down the stretch of the beach. The beach was for the most part empty, and the buildings along its edge seemed to indicate that this was probably either private property or a very expensive hotel. Well it would be expensive in America. Here it wasn't nearly that expensive, but it was still an amazing hotel.

"May I present ladies and gentlemen, the Vietnam historical city of Hoi An. I've booked us into the hotel here for two nights. I've also put down credit for all of you to buy a suit for yourselves at a local place called the Silk Shop. I heard that you guys want to put together your own uniforms, and they'll work with you to create one out of the material I got from the Fantastic Four, as well as clothing to go over it for everyday use." In point of fact he had put a mild notice me not spell on the sheets of unstable molecule fabric, making the workers simply think he had brought in his own silk for them to use for some reason. Odd of course, but not enough to draw unwanted attention, not around here anyway.

As the others all muttered excitedly Ororo raised an eyebrow and leaned in. "Did you create enough Orihalcum to armor them all?"

Harry shook his head. "No, that's a very slow process at the moment, which is something I'm going to have to work on but honestly I've got so many other projects and my work on the Room of Requirement took precedent." Ororo nodded understandingly, knowing that to a magic user control was very important, and that Harry was worried about how his growing power was impacting that control as well as what he could do with it. "I've created enough to give a few of them some protection around the chest regions, but unless Rogue wants to volunteer the rest of the juggernaut armor for me to experiment with and manipulate, we don't have enough for everyone even for that."

Scott and Rogue had been walking behind them, and Rogue spoke up immediately. "You can have it sugah. Ah never much liked the look of it on me anyway, ah prefer something more formfitting."

Scott blushed slightly at the idea of the growing woman be next to him wearing something formfitting. While she was still growing, it had become very apparent that she was going to be at nearly as good looking as Jean if not more so when she finished.

Right now however Scott was concentrating on more serious things. "If it's a choice I would suggest giving armor to Kurt, Evan and Rogue in that order, Sir. For my part I'm more of a distance fighter anyway, and should try my best to keep my distance. I know Evan can make bone armor, but if he doesn't have to concentrate on defense that will help his endurance in terms of the amount and size of the bone constructs he can make. And even though Rogue has some of the Juggernaut's personal durability, the armor could help her a lot as well. Though I don't know how the weight issue would hinder Kurt's teleporting ability."

Ororo smiled faintly and tapped her stomach where underneath her everyday clothing she was in fact wearing her uniform. "Harry's not talking about heavy armor here. Think of it more as the lightest sort of chain mail or leather armor you can imagine. I will testify to its efficacy. During that business in London I took a high-speed rifle round to the stomach, and I walked away with only a faint bruising."

By this time they had reached the rest of the beach, and they noticed a few people out sunbathing or swimming, but not many. While this was a great vacation spot, it was too early for most people to be up and about just yet. The group soon arrived at the hotel, walking through it to the front where the concierge was. Harry quickly checked them in, ignoring his girlfriend's twitching eyebrow at his continued use of the translation spell.

He did not however have the ability to ignore her when Ororo leaned over and whispered in his ear, "You are going to pay for this, you won't know when, you won't know how, but you will pay for this." She wasn't just irritated at the fact that he used the spell, but that he used it in circumstances where she couldn't actually argue against it.

Harry thought about that, then thought about what he had wanted to use his forfeit for their bet that afternoon and sighed sadly. "How about if I use that forfeit from our bet during the ceremony to ask you to forgive me?"

Ororo growled a little but nodded. "That is fair I suppose"

As this was going on Kitty had quickly moved to the front of the group, and was excitedly chatting away with the girl who was standing beside the concierge, asking her what she would recommend that they do. The girl, who looked about 16 or 17 or so, was a nice looking young lady, who had at first looked at the group as just another bunch of obnoxious tourists she could help a few friends and acquaintances fleece for bothering her this early. That was business as usual of course, and on top of that they looked American which meant it was her civic duty to fleece them.

But Kitty's ebullient personality as well as her command of the Vietnamese language had completely won her over. Now the two were chatting away as if they were old friends, much to the amusement of both the concierge and the rest of the group behind Kitty. "And that happens tomorrow night?"

The girl nodded. They had been talking about the local sights as well as what kind of nightlife there was in Hoi An and the girl had just finished describing the festival of lights, where people would place little lights on floating stands with multicolored sides shaped they were flowers and send them down the river that had bisected the city as long as the city had been here. In fact the Thu Bon River and the harbor around it's mouth was the whole reason that the city was here in the first place, as a trading port and a lay-off spot for up river traffic. Nowadays of course river travel wasn't nearly as important as it had been, but the city was still here, and had become a world heritage site.

The festival was held on the 14 day of the lunar calendar, and luckily (it actually was luck, Harry had chosen this place because of its historical sites, not the festival or anything else) that was tomorrow night. "Yep, I definitely recommend it to all the groups that come in, though if you're looking for some real fun, there are are a few bars and nightclubs," the girl leaned in whispering, "and they don't check ID."

Kitty looked a little intrigued, sharing glances with the guys and Rogue behind her, who all seemed to think about it for a moment then shrugged and nodded. Logan groaned massaging his four head. He pictured a lot of irritation in his near future playing chaperone to this group.

After a moment Harry had finished checking them in, and they were shown to their rooms. These were actually a set of bungalows along the edge of the beachfront. The three girls had one, Logan and Charles had another, the guys were in the third and Ororo and Harry of course were sharing a fourth. This caused Evan to gnash his teeth a little, but it wasn't as if he hadn't had time to get used to the idea, he just didn't want to think about it.

After that the group left the hotel, making their way into the city proper. As they did, they were looked at first with suspicion. After all there were still a lot of people around that had lived through the Vietnam War, and they were not exactly friendly to Americans. The group however were not your typical Americans, and the fact that they all spoke Vietnamese was a point in their favor, as was the fact they were such an eclectic group.

The kids, even Scott, were having a lot of fun, just looking around at this new city, with all it interesting sights, sounds and people. They passed an outdoor market, where Kitty was a major hit. She was simply that type of person that drew other people to her, outgoing cheerful and friendly she drew like responses from everyone.

Evan, Kurt and Scott however found that they too were a hit as they were talking to the locals. After all it wasn't only men who enjoyed exotic things, and they were all good looking, fit and knew the local language.

They soon arrived at the local clothing store, where they were walked through the process of getting their own fitted clothing done in silk (the unstable molecules) in a single day. This sort of thing would cost a lot of money in America, but not here.

Harry smiled faintly. He was nearing the end of his ready cash, having expended quite a lot of the gold he had brought with him from his home dimension on various things (in retrospect his car was possibly not a necessary expense) but he would still be able to pay the people that they had hired recently and he had given a very good to their new personnel director. This whole trip wasn't even a drop in the bucket in comparison to the expenses that he had been paying recently for parts, supplies, material and the deals Ororo had made over the past few days.

He looked around, and noticed that even Charles and Logan were talking about getting some new clothing.

His smile widened as he felt a familiar presence behind him, and looked around noticing that none of the other kids were nearby or looking in his direction. A red head briefly laid against his own from one side as two feminine arms went around him. "While I think Hoi An and this whole trip is fascinating," said Jean breathing deeply of his sent and nuzzling into his neck for a moment. "And a great going away present for us all, I sort of expected something more personal for me."

"Did you think this was your graduation present my dear?" Harry leaned his own head against hers for a moment before she moved back slightly. He turned to face her, and noticed that her eyes were blinking with humor despite what could've come out as a complaint. "You said I had to wait until your finals were over, well they're over now, and we have two nights here…"

"And what exactly do you have planned for us Potter?" Jean asked, smirking.

"Well," he replied, waving at one particular worker who smiled and moved forward quickly, "why don't you let this lady help you with a new dress on top of the suit she'll also prepare for you, and then you'll have to wait and see. I think you'll like it quite a bit frankly, but at least let me keep a bit of a surprise."

Jean chuckled throatily, and leaned in to kiss him briefly on the lips before pulling away swiftly as Logan and the others began to look around for her. "I'll hold you to that."

Harry chuckled, looking over to where Ororo was talking animatedly with one of the managers, not discussing clothing at all actually, but the local economy. Ororo had not developed an interest in clothing or fashion, but she did care about people and getting to know them. My ladies may be very different, but they're both wonderful in their own ways.

Unfortunately for Harry and the others, there were those among their watchers who did not just see another group of tourists arriving early, but something far more important. One man in particular was watching from a store across the street, having followed after them on a diagonal, he knew better than to actually try and trail this particular quarry, and his eyes were now locked on Logan before switching around to those with him, seeing nothing unusual there.

After a moment the man moved back, leaving swiftly to rejoin the mob around the market square, letting its different smells and scents cover him just in case Logan had felt someone watching him. "You should never have come back to Asia, Logan," he muttered to himself as he moved through the crowd, "we have not forgotten you. The Hand never forget it's enemies."

OOOOOOO

William, King of Britain, pawed tiredly at his face as he leaned back in his comfortable leather chair. While this meeting had happened at a regular conference table with the regular uncomfortable seats William was old enough and wise enough to use that old age to his advantage and demand a proper comfortable seat for himself at the table. And everyone else around it was intelligent enough to not make an issue of it. "And that I think just about covers the foreign affairs, now onto the domestic front. How are our people reacting to the news story we concocted, and the reality of the attack?"

The government had released a statement saying that the attack on London had been planned by foreign terrorists with the involvement of local partisans who looked to create a new government in their own image once the current government was decapitated in the attack on London. The police held up Courtney, Selene and Emma along with several others as the local partisans in question, though in one case, guilt had yet to be determined. They refused to speculate on the nature of the 'gas' used in either part of the attack, merely stating it had been a two pronged assault and that it was only because of Buckingham Palace's air filtration systems and gas warfare protocols that allowed the Gurkhas to be awake after the initial attack. And of course afterwards they moved out into the city, clearing it of all the saboteurs and terrorists before they could set up the second phase.

While this in no way satisfied the pundits, they concentrated on the fact that the attack should never have happened, and were calling for a referendum on the intelligence agencies of Britain as well as the air force's preparedness, stating the time it took for the army to arrive after the initial 'gas' attack. The army was spared this do to the provable fact that it was a single army company that staved off disaster. MI5, the internal division was in fact being overhauled, and Ms. Betsy Braddock had been offered a job with them, though she had yet to say yes to it, and she was already working on something for the government in any event.

The PM shrugged her shoulders. "Well for one thing we're still getting a lot of criticism from former and current members of the Hellfire Club for our dismantling of the club and freezing of their accounts. It's one of the oldest gentlemen's clubs in the world after all, and it's section here in Britain is its oldest."

The Home Security Sir Jeffery Peel, the grandson of Robert Peel, father of the modern police force, scoffed, looking like he wanted to spit for a moment. "That place is a cesspool your highness, there might not be any actual threats to the government or the state in there, but I doubt anyone involved in that club is clean."

"I know that," said the PM firmly yet resolutely "But unless we want to shoot ourselves in the foot I doubt there is much we can do about it." Margaret Thatcher was called the Iron Lady and she was not exactly comfortable with the idea of old money and 'old boy' clubs like this, but she knew there wasn't much she could do about dismantling it unless they wanted to damage the economy of Britain and she said so. "History has proven that the idea of nationalizing companies doesn't work. We can keep them going for a time, but not for long. We're talking about 23% of our total economy, everything from food production to cars is represented in the companies we've seized. It just isn't possible for us to keep them all frozen for long without harming ourselves."

Margaret and her conservative party were deeply interested in the economy, wanting to make it as powerful as it had been in yesteryear, and solve the unemployment problem while also funneling more government funds into the upkeep of the roads and other public works. They had won the last round of elections on that basis, and she was not going to be a part to anything that went against the progress they had made in the last year and a half.

"And it's not like we found anything pointing to the fact that any of the others were involved in this business," she said finally, winding down. "We can keep Selene Gallio's import/export and construction companies frozen for longer, and the late Courtney Ross as well since the one was accused of aiding a terrorist attack, and the other had no provisions in place for what to do with her company if she passed away, but that is all."

William waved a hand placatingly. "We know that, Margaret. We'll release the other companies to independent bidders, let them take over that company and its workings, and I believe Ms Steed had made provisions for what was to happen to her company if she was incapacitated?" Margaret nodded.

Emma Steed remained the sole prisoner taken in the battle against Selene's forces, and she was still comatose. Her body was alive, and her mind was in there somewhere, but that was all modern medicine could tell them. Margaret was not comfortable (putting it mildly) with the idea that magic was real, she had enough issues with mutants and their odd powers without that added to the mix. Yet she couldn't help but hope that young Betsy would be able to help Emma Steed recover, if only so she could be asked several dozen pointed questions.

The king went on, "Yet that doesn't change the fact that the Hellfire Club is a problem. This whole mess has shown it in a very poor light, but it won't clean itself up without something new being added to the mix. I refuse to allow the idea that such a den of inequity will be allowed to continue on business as usual simply because its members are rich and influential. I fought the idea of the lords having that much power before, I refuse to even hint at the idea we will allow it now. I have thoughts in that direction, however" he mused smiling faintly, "so we can put that off for a few more weeks yet. What about the domestic reaction to the attack?"

He had been so busy lately dealing with the foreign element he hadn't been able to see the news lately, that and the PR director spoke up. "It's been remarkably positive your highness despite several news agencies trying to mash the conspiracy button. The fact that the first attack got through is causing problems abroad as you know, but our subjects don't seem to have the same mental block on the fact that it took us completely by surprise that other countries seem to have. The fact of the second portion of the 'gas attack' he said using air quotes causing most of the others to chuckle, "Didn't succeed is a far better mark in our favor."

"And the response among our military?" William asked, looking over at Lord Demontebanks, the secretary of defense.

The old general smiled faintly, "Overwhelmingly positive your highness." He looked at the door, on the other side of which stood two of the guards. They were not in formal wear but were in fact wearing full battle rattle, and went about their duties on a hair trigger. "We've seen a resurgence in morale across the board at how well the King's guard did, and our popularity in London and elsewhere has risen thanks to the quick reactions times and our disaster relief efforts. Moreover it's done a lot to mitigate some of the still remaining dislike for the Gurkhas among the rest of the armed forces, which is all to the good."

He coughed delicately. "However, while the Gurkhas have not talked, some aspects of how they were healed by mysterious potions has spread. The feeling is as soon as we can get it we should start using in the field, and I've been approached by several generals and not a few doctors on that score. There haven't been any side effects from the potions uses far as our army doctors can tell, and they and the foreign doctors are extremely interested in it."

That was a gross understatement. Even the civilian doctors who had been called in to monitor the previously injured soldiers for side effects realized how important Potter's potions could become.

William nodded. "I will be speaking to Mr. Wizard two weeks from the day of the attack to thank him. I will also hopefully convince him to base his potions company here in Britain, we shall see how it goes."

"Your highness," said Margaret Thatcher frowning noticeably. "He might make that prevalent on you agreeing to make the government stance on mutant rights crystal-clear. And if we take a side on that issue, we're going to take a lot of flak for it. This whole incident has been a shot in our arm in popularity, but mutants and their rights is such a hot-button issue my party may well be kicked out of power for doing so."

The PR director shook his head. "I think your overestimating the impact. Domestically I don't think we'll have an issue, we haven't had much in the way of violent mutant related crimes, not like Ireland which has had more than a few. We've had some riots against mutants, but nothing major. I think if we appeal to the humanity of it, make the connection from it to the civil rights movement, even the suffrage movement we'll get a lot of good publicity, and actually make people think for once, rather than mindlessly hate." The PR director was a staunch human rights activist, and had in fact been urging the government to take a stance on mutant rights for months now.

"Agreed," said William, nodding his head sharply. "I was willing to stand up for mutant rights as an individual before this, and I had wanted but did not have a big enough stick to beat the rest of you in line, but considering what a jolt Potter and his goods could be to our economy and the treasury in particular, that is no longer the case is it?"

He held Margaret's gaze and she flinched a little. She was in fact against mutant rights, she felt that they were dangerous individuals who should be monitored and possibly segregated not only for their own good but for everyone else's. She wasn't alone in this, and many of her party members felt the same way but it was one of the areas which seemed to cross party lines, and there were just as many for as against. "If you all agree, I'll toe the party line," she said. "I don't like it, I think that the mutant threat is real and will be real as long as there are those of them who think that their powers make them superior, but as long as that is a minority among them I think we can handle it, and I won't argue about the good having Mr. Potter and his potions based in our country will do for us."

William nodded. "Good, in that case we all will do my utmost to convince Mr. Potter that he should opened his company here in the UK." He smiled at Margaret. "I should also point out that with a man like Mr. Potter the potions are probably only the beginning. Trust me on this; that young man has quite a mind to him, and he dreams big. So what deal should we offer him to get the most out of it as long as we have him, yet to also be the most acceptable to Mr. Potter? I would warn you all however that while he does not seem to be a natural business man, he has access to them, and it would not surprise me if he turned up with a negotiator when he arrives in two weeks. Also recall we will have to outdo all the other countries whose doctors will have reported back to them the efficacy of his potions."

After that the discussion turned to the nitty-gritty of what they could offer in terms of subsidies and tax breaks and other matters, and he leaned back with a smile, noticing that not a one of them had realized that first part of what he had said as 'long as we have him'. Harry Potter was too intelligent to not see what could eventually be needed to ensure the rights of mutant kind, and William was a student of history. He'd lived through enough of it after all.

OOOOOOO

For the rest of the day Harry and the kids had a lot of fun simply seeing the sights while Logan went off to do his own thing trusting Harry, Charles and Ororo to look after the kids. In point of fact though he didn't show it Logan was very concerned. His instincts were playing up on him and he began to look into alleyways and dark places suspiciously

There was a reason why he had not been back to Asia in about ten years after all, and he shook his head remembering the last time he had been here. That time he had been in Japan, working with Nick fury and a few of his Howling Commandos on a not-so-little mission against a growing cult of death worshipping assassins called the Hand.

(They weren't actually Death worshippers per-se, but worshipping a demon from another plane and death were rather similar, so his confusion about that could be excused.)

Nick was trying to find out where their funding was coming from, but had never been able to figure it out, and the two of them had joined forces to attack one of their bases in an effort to find out more about them.

When they arrived they found that the Hand had kidnapped a young aspiring Russian spy named Natasha Romanov. Apparently she had been pushed through a series of experiments to get her strength and speed up almost to super-soldier level, but the Hand had kidnapped her before she could be fully indoctrinated into the Soviet. This was of course during the long slow collapse of communism, but she was still fiercely loyal to them. Nick and Logan had interrupted the indoctrination process that would've turned her into a perfect weapon for the Hand.

The Hand had not taken kindly to that, and Nick, his men and Logan had to fight their way through a veritable army of ninjas to free her, by which time all evidence of whoever was funding the group had been destroyed.

It wasn't like the dumb broad even thanked us for it, Logan groused. Natasha had swiftly gone back to the Russians escaping in the turmoil without even a thank you thrown her rescuer's way. Logan wasn't even certain she knew that Logan had been part of the escape attempt, which was in fact the case. Natasha did not know about his part in it, though she did know Nick Fury had been behind it, which was one of the reasons she had gone to work for him after defecting from Russia.

Of course that wasn't the only group Logan had pissed off in Asia in the past. There was the Chinese government, who probably remembered him, certain groups in Korea, and a few in Tibet as well, and several groups in Japan alone that would cheerfully laugh as they watched him die.

So to say that Logan had some enemies in Asia was putting it mildly. But then again you would be hard-pressed to find a place in the world where Logan didn't have enemies. He had been in this game for a long time after all, far longer in point of fact that even he knew anymore. Weapon X had done a number of things to him, and most of them had a very horrible effect on his long-term memory. Still he could remember a lot of things he did for them too, as well as during World War II and knew he had a lot of enemies out there.

"Still Vietnam should be all right," he muttered to himself. "I was only peripherally involved in the war here, and all the people who knew about that are dead anyway."

While he was right about not having any local groups after him, the belief he was safe here was wrong, dead wrong. And this was pointed out to Logan in no uncertain terms when, after spending a few hours exploring the city he had sat down at a bar with outdoor tables, his back against the wall. He sat there drinking some of the local beer. It was okay though he preferred European brews.

Not five minutes later Logan suddenly leaned forward, ducking underneath a tanto blade that had nearly taken his head off. Of course given his adamantine skeleton whether or not it could have done that was debatable, but he wasn't about to find out.

Logan turned swiftly, getting up out of the chair and moving into a crotch, one arm reaching back picking up his chair and throwing it at his attacker before he sprang forward, taking another attack in the throat and slamming him down to the ground. Suddenly the whole area was full of people dressed all in almost formfitting black outfits all of them carrying short swords of a Japanese design.

As one they charged him and he growled angrily. "The Hand, since when have the fucking Hand had a presence in Vietnam?"

Of course none of the ninjas responded, the Hand prided itself on the silence of its members during assassination attempts, and he scowled angrily as he popped out his claws with their distinct 'Snikt!' sound and got ready to rumble.

OOOOOOO

The Hand was an organization that believed in painting with a large brush, which was always a bad thing for anyone near one of their enemies. Logan's connection to Charles and the others was of course spotted by the spy who had first seen him, and he had their descriptions to his superiors.

The group in question had split up. Scott and Rogue had gone off alone, at a rather stammering Scott's appeal. Rogue agreed to it smiling. Scott was trying to work up the courage to ask her out, something he hadn't done before, and hoped that hanging out with her like this would give him the courage to do so. After all Taryn had asked him out not vice versa, and she hadn't been nearly as good looking or as interesting as Rogue.

Around five o'clock local time found the two of them down where the river met the ocean, where Scott was in the process of looking around for a place where they could rent a boat for the day, interested in seeing what they could see from the River.

Kurt and Evan had hooked up with a few of the locals, and were being shown around by them, or at least that was what they had said they were doing. Scott and Rogue both had doubts about that, seeing as the locals in question were three girls their age all of whom seemed to like Evan and Kurt's foreign looks.

"Of course," Scott mused whispering to Rogue as they walked on, trying to find a place to rent a boat, "Kurt's looks are a little more exotic than I think they imagine but that doesn't seem to slow him down much."

"He's become a bit of a horn dog yes," Rogue replied, chuckling. For some reason the trip with Harry out to prank Tony Stark had done wonders for Kurt's self-esteem, and the guy had become even more outgoing and confident since, especially around girls.

Evan on the other hand had always been confident around girls, and in fact had several girlfriends over this past year. Therefore it was no wonder that the two were a hit with the local crowd. Especially since they were not in point of fact normal tourists. They were here to look around certainly, but weren't exactly as interested in heritage sites, knickknacks, local history or anything like that as a few of the others were.

Harry and Charles for example had made a beeline for the museums, while Kitty, Ororo and Jean were going to go to something called the Silk Village later on.

Scott laughed and nodded. "This was one heck of it excellent idea from Harry, a great going away present I guess."

"Both for him and for Jean and Ororo too" said Rogue shaking her head. "That scene this morning with her parents was pretty bad, but his offer seems tah have nipped it in tha bud."

"True," said Scott, but not sharing what he thought about the trio. He had some suspicions that way, but he wasn't about to voice them to anyone else.

Their search for a boat rental place was interrupted at that point by someone coming up behind Rogue and attempting to stab her in the back.

Rogue however despite not having the Juggernaut armor on still had some of the Juggernaut's durability. Her skin was at least up to the task of stopping a normal person trying to stab her with a normal blade, and the sword went skittering along her side leaving a small welt but unable to penetrate.

Before the wannabe assassin could try again Rogue turned and clipped him upside the head with a smart roundhouse blow, sending him flying away. She hadn't pulled her punch at all since she was so surprised at the sudden attack, which meant the man's neck snapped under the strength of her blow.

Unfortunately Rogue didn't have time to contemplate how she had just become a killer, because all around them a dozen more ninjas suddenly appeared charging forward.

"Back to back!" Scott barked, pulling up his special ruby quartz glasses and sending out a beam of power that hit four ninjas one after another slicing through their bodies. He blanched briefly, then dodged to the side as one of other ninja tried to stab him, catching him lightly in the side as he dodged.

Before the ninja could pull the blade back to try again Scott's hand snaked out to grab his wrist and pull, before blocking a punch with an elbow. Scott twisted the man's sword out of his hand and use it to slice into the ninja's jugular before blasting away at another one as he came forward, wincing as another one sliced into one of his shoulders, but he again dodged enough of the blow to not let it slow him down.

Behind Scott, Rogue was proving a little too much for their attackers to handle her brute force and durability left only her eyes and possibly her ears as weak points and her punches and kicks were utterly brutal. The Hand had very rarely fought someone as purely powerful as Rogue was. In the future other chapters of the ninja cult would do so again and again yet at this point this group didn't have that experience.

Scott kicked out catching a ninja in his kneecap causing him to fall forward then reached forward grabbed the ninja's head bringing it down to meet his knee going up.

Once that ninja fell to the ground dead or unconscious Scott looked around seeing that it was the last one of this group. Around them the bystanders had either disappeared or were already in hiding and he fingered his two wounds wincing slightly.

He reached back, grabbing Rogue's hand and pulling her to her feet where she had gone to one knee, shaking slightly, the fact she had killed dawning on Rogue as her adrenaline left her. "Back to the hotel!"

As they raced back in the way they had come, Scott began to think very strongly, trying to send out his thoughts to get the professor's attention. "Professor, Professor, we've got trouble professor are you there?" While he did this Rogue noticed he was bleeding from the cut in his shoulder, and began to try and put a tourniquet on it while they raced on, a practice she was only marginally successful on.

Behind them, the bodies of the dead assassins began to dissolve, swiftly turning into a fine powder that blew away on the wind.

OOOOOOO

Evan and Kurt had gone off with a few of the local girls, having become quite a hit with them because of their exotic looks, their ability to speak the local language and their manners. Finding all three in a foreigner was almost impossible at the best of times, finding two such was an amazing thing.

For their part the three local girls, Hoai Mi, Chi and Kym were all decent looking. Not as good looking as the girls they had come with but more welcome to the two boy's flirtations, and were a lot of fun. Hoai Mi seemed to know wherever everything was so she was their guide. Chi had a down to earth, rather ribald sense of humor that both guys got a kick out of and Kym was extremely touchy-feely with both of the boys, which of course was a lot of fun in and of itself.

They had decided to go out onto the ocean rather than the river which Rogue and Scott had wanted to explore. The idea of sunning themselves on a boat and fishing with was pretty appealing to all of them of course. They had just rented a small boat for this purpose and helped the girls aboard when they too were attacked.

Eight ninjas suddenly appeared behind them rushing forward to come to grips with the two young boys, but they should've chosen their ambush points better. A five feet wide wharf was not a good place to try and bring numbers to bear.

The Hand had decided to go for simultaneous attacks and overwhelming numbers, not realizing that outside of Logan their opponents would be trouble. The fact that they were with Logan should've hinted at something, but even if it had they didn't have any information on their other opponents.

The moment the ninjas appeared Kurt teleported, his image inducer switching off as his tail whipped around. He appeared above the ninjas slamming down into a few of them and kicking them out into the water. While he did not have the superhuman strength of Rogue, Kurt was much stronger than he appeared, and his punches were able to knock out or smash the ninjas back a few feet.

Evan on the other hand had simply formed some bone bullets in his fingers and sent them at the ninjas, sending several of them flying back under the impact amid sprays of blood.

One ninja got close enough to use his blade and he tried to attack Evan, but he simply covered his hand in a thin bone plate, grabbed the blade and broke it before punching the man hard enough with a another bone encrusted fist to send him off the edge of the wharf and into the water with a shattered jaw.

As suddenly as the attack began it was over, most of the ninja down, unconscious from Kurt's blows or dead from Evan's bone bullet attacks.

Kurt teleported into the boat where the three girls had almost immediately begun to duck and cover. Kym only screamed once before being quickly muffled by Chi and Hoai Mi. This was not America where screaming could possibly bring help, this was Vietnam and if you saw someone fighting you hid and hoped that no one noticed you, something all the locals knew all too well.

To Kurt's surprise none other three girls seemed put out by his appearance when he appeared, though Chi wrinkled her nose at the smell of brimstone. He bowed grandly saying, "You will have to excuse us ladies, I think that our day out on the ocean has been canceled." He turned to Evan while the girls began to talk among themselves. "You think we can take this boat back to the hotel?"

His fellow X-man shrugged before Hoai Mi spoke up moving past Kurt to take the wheel. "If your hotel is along the beachfront, I can get us there." Hoai Mi worked part time as a tour aid, and beyond knowing whether everything to do or see was also knew where all the hotels were.

Evan got on the boat looking at the three girls who had not made any effort to run away. "You three sure you want to get involved with this? I'm not certain what's going on, but those guys were definitely trying to kill us. I don't like the thought of you three getting involved with anything that dangerous."

"Why not?" Hoai Mi asked, smiling slightly. "It looks interesting, and you two are fun anyway."

The girl whose mouth had been covered, Kym, nodded. "Besides, if they noticed us being with you is safer than trying to go off on our own. We got involved the moment those assassins appeared."

Kurt and Evan exchanged a glance then shrugged. Kurt suddenly shivered as Kym ran her hand up his the back of his neck. "It feels like velvet," she said wonderingly and then began to play with the fur along his neck.

Evan took one look at his friend's face and began to chuckle, while the girl at the wheel started the engine and began to power the boat away from the wharf.

In the waters behind them the dead bodies of their attackers began to dissolve immediately. The unconscious ones remained where they were for now, but would soon be joining their fellows in decomposing.

OOOOOOO

Kitty, Jean and Ororo had stayed at the silk shop while the others had broken off for a while. Kitty had been engrossed with several conversations with the girls working there, while Jean was busy designing her new uniform, something Rogue had done earlier.

Ororo stayed with them as a chaperone for Kitty, knowing that her parents wouldn't like her to be without an adult around in a foreign city like this. She had also stayed because she and the manager were deep into a discussion about the culture of Vietnam, how it differed from its neighbors and why.

So they left about three hours after everyone else did, and ran into trouble almost as soon as they were out of the doors. It was a normal crowded street one moment, then suddenly it was not so crowded and ninjas wearing red and black suits were in their faces.

Jean gasped as she took a sword thrust along one arm cutting her lightly but she dodged enough of it to retain use of her hand. Despite her surprise at the sudden assault she summoned up a telekinetic shield that smacked that ninja as well as four others away from her, then reached out with her telekinetic power to grab their legs slamming them face first down into the ground and throwing them away like broken rag dolls.

Kitty phased involuntarily, saving her life when a sword passed through the space that her neck had previously occupied. Suddenly she was very angry, and she grabbed at the man's legs as she moved down into the ground, sticking him there.

Her first attacker immobilized Kitty reached into the pouch that she always carried with her, pulling out a stone that started to grow to a slightly larger size (about the size of a Frisbee) than her normal pebbles before she threw it into the midst of a large group of ninjas. Written on it was a runic array for a paralysis trap, the kind that would normally be part of a ward section for a small doorway or something like that, and unlike her smaller stones which were one shots initially powered by Harry this one had a bio-energy siphoning function, and she gasped, feeling weak and woozy for a moment as it sucked her energy out of her right before she threw it.

"That isn't something I will want to do again anytime soon," Kitty muttered, "but it was certainly effective." And it was, as her runic trap had taken out over half of their attackers, immobilizing them.

Ororo was good with knives. Very good. You did not grow up on the streets of Cairo or on the Serengeti without becoming very good at surviving and using any weapons that came to hand and in Cairo it was a very foolish girl who did not have at least one knife on her at all times. Ororo was no exception, and carried a small hidden dagger in her belt buckle, made of ceramic at this point. The ceramic idea had come from Logan who warned her that people took women carrying knives like that poorly in America and there were many metal detectors around.

The first ninja that came upon her tried to attack Ororo from the side but she simply sidestepped it slipped out her own knife and jammed it into the man's throat. Ororo then pulled the ninja's sword out of his now dead hands and using both against another one while summoning a gust of wind to protect her back, throwing three more ninjas to the ground before they were paralyzed by Kitty's array.

With that their initial rush was over, and Ororo looked around dropping the blade she had taken from the ninja distastefully. It was a little long for her, and while she was not against killing in self-defense, who knew what this blade done before under its previous owner?

Jean nodded looking at the blade Ororo was still holding her hand. "I have got to get one of those."

"I'll ask Harry to make you one Jean," Ororo replied with a smile, leaning over and kissing the other woman lightly on the lips. Then she reached forward to help Kitty to her feet where she had gone to her knees gasping. The younger girl's stomach began to rumble, and Ororo chuckled. "I think you need to rethink that one my Kitten."

Kitty nodded, but had seen the kiss the two older women had shared out of the corner of her eye. She leaned against the t African woman, whose arms went around her as she guided the now almost exhausted Kitty down the streets. Kitty however did have enough energy to ask "So what exactly is going on between you two and Harry?"

Jean and Ororo shared a glance then Jean replied simply, "Something wonderful."

Kitty giggled, and began to press them for details of how and when Jean had joined the original duo. Her parents were not anywhere near as religious as Jean's parents pretended to be, and she saw no problem with a girl being with another girl. Her family was in fact very progressive in that area. The Idea of three people being together was a little strange, but as long as all of them were happy Kitty was fine with it. And she could tell that Harry was good for Jean and vice-versa, and of course the love he had built with Ororo over the last few months was so romantic.

While Jean regaled her with how she had officially joined Ororo and Harry during the dance at the gala in Los Angeles, Ororo kept her mind on more important matters, scanning their surroundings for more attackers while guiding the other two girls back the way they had come to the hotel. She also wondered if the others had been attacked, or if this was directed at her in some fashion. Since neither Jean nor Kitty had ever been abroad and didn't have the history to have made enemies she figured it would only be her.

"Jean can you get in touch with the Professor? I think we need to know if this was an isolated incident."

Kitty pouted at their conversation being interrupted, but Jean merely nodded and began to send her mind out questing for Xavier's.

OOOOOOO

The Professor already knew they were in trouble. For some reason the Hand ninjas were completely immune to his telepathy, he couldn't get a read on them at all, or else he would have warned his charges about them. As it was however he was also taken completely by surprise when. Charles was wheeling himself around a local museum in Hoi An's old city with Harry, both of them rather interested in the history of the area, when over a dozen ninjas suddenly appeared, coming out of hiding from places that in no way should've been able to hold human bodies.

A small corner of his mind wondered how that had been accomplished. He could've sworn one of the men actually came out from under a display case a medium sized dog would've had trouble laying down in. The rest of his mind however was concentrating on trying to get a handle on their minds, but they weren't there!

This wasn't like Harry's mind where you could feel that there was something there. The ninja's attacking them simply did not have minds. There was nothing there to tell him of their presence on the astral plane. He wondered how the hell they were hiding their minds, some kind of mystic thing, or something else?

Without a mind to latch onto Charles was unable to do much against them, if he couldn't get into their minds or even touch their minds he was left with no other options. Except for his martial arts of course, which he showed against the first ninja who tried to stab him. The ninja in question jumped down from an overhead light whose shadow should never have hidden even a small child's body, sword pointing down at his target.

Instead of the man stabbing him in the chest Charles wheeled aside swiftly, grabbed the man's hands as he came down with one hand passing through the space he had previously occupied locked his other hand underneath the ninja's mask covered chin and jerked, snapping his neck before pushing the body into the legs of another ninja coming at him.

Harry was not having the same issue. Whatever mental immunity the ninjas had in no way covered magical attacks, though the fact that they had been able to surprise him like this was astonishing in and of itself. A few Stupefy's shot out knocking the first few ninjas down, then he summoned his sword of Gryffindor, using it in one hand while his other hand formed the Lacero spell, conjuring a whip of fire. It was one of his favorite close combat spells, and it proved its worth here as well.

The whip cracked out, smashing into one would-be assassin's chest, slicing a burning branch into it and sending the ninja flying backwards, while Harry used his sword to slice one man's hand off having ducked under his sword blow before coming back and decapitating him. Moments later the basilisk venom, one of the most poisonous venoms in any universe overcame the ninja's own built up immunity to poison, and the man collapsed, frothing underneath his mask.

He whirled the whip above his head, taking another assassin in the face while Harry used the sword to blast out several more spells, area affect Stupefy's this point since the bystanders had already made a run for it, knocking down the rest of their attackers.

Once the last ninja fell to the floor Harry scowled. "Of course, what's a trip to the bloody orient without bloody pajama-wearing ninjas? Any reason why these guys were able to sneak up on us Charles?"

"The simple answer Mr. Potter is that they don't have minds." answered Charles reaching down from his wheelchair to pull the mask off one of the stunned assassins, and was unsurprised to see a almost completely blank face. The man had Asiatic features but that was about all he could discern about it, there was nothing else about it that looked interesting, this man could blend into a crowd anywhere in Asia without any kind of trouble at all.

He frowned, trying to find the man's mind again, then pulled his hand back frowning faintly. "There's nothing there," he muttered. "This man was able to move around, attack us and hide in some very odd places, but he doesn't have a mind! I've never run into anything like this. It's not like yours." He looked up at Harry, "Where I can tell that there is something around, there literally is nothing here."

The wizard frowned as well, reaching down to touch the man. He thought maybe they were constructs, magical golems of an advanced construction that he could not match, and he did feel a slight tingle as he touched the man but that was all. The man was fully human, for a given value of human anyway. "Try again, I just drained him of a bit of magic, maybe that was what was protecting his mind."

Charles tried again and again shook his head. "I'm afraid not Mr. Potter." They both stepped back hastily as the body began to dissolve, turning into dust before their eyes.

Harry grunted, looking around to see that the other dead bodies were doing the same, though the ones he had stupefied were not. "Now the question is, was this an attack on you and I, or on all of us?"

That thought made Charles' eyes widen, and he immediately reached out with his telepathy, his mind flowing out from him like a fog to cover the entire city as he searched for the minds of his students.

He found Scott and Rogue almost immediately, Scott sending out the thought as hard as he could in order to contact Charles. "Scott, we were attacked as well, are the two of you all right?"

On the other end Scott frowned in thought and then said "We're alright professor, some wounds, nothing serious. "Can you link me up with the others Professor, I don't know if you're going to all be able to get back to the hotel?"

Charles frowned, his concerns and worries about how he was unconsciously influencing his students coming back to him. Yet under the circumstances he couldn't argue with the idea of connecting to their minds, he would just have to be on guard to make certain nothing flowed between them that he did not intend. "Very well, I'll see what I can do."

A moment of concentration wove a small connection between himself and Scott, and from Scott to Rogue, then his conscious thoughts spread out again, swiftly finding the three girls, who were already moving towards the hotel, and farther out he found Logan and even further out Evan and Kurt.

After communicating this to him, Scott had a good grasp of where everyone was in relation to one another and the hotel. He directed Jean Ororo and Kitty to continue their trip back towards the hotel, to an intersection a few blocks away from their current position. They would wait there for Charles and Harry, who they were closest to at the moment along the route back to the hotel.

Kurt and Evan were already making their way back to the hotel by way of the water, and should be safe enough out there considering there was no way that the Hand could sneak up on them. Logan however was nearest to Scott and Rogue, and he was still in combat.

"That tells me that he was probably the main target here professor. Rogue and I are moving in to support."

"Be careful Scott," Charles warned. "These are real enemies, not like the robots or other dangers that you face in the danger room."

"That is understood Sir," Scott responded brusquely, after all this wasn't the first time he'd faced living enemies. That baptism under fire against the demons with the Fantastic Four had done wonders for his self-confidence in the press, and Rogue held up well enough. She was still shaky now that the action was over, but in his estimation she was still good to go. Later on there would be time to talk about what happened, right now getting to Logan and regrouping was the most important thing.

While this was going on Harry had turned on his mage sight, not being able to join the conversation given his mental defenses. With his mage sight he was able to see lines from all of the unconscious ninjas leading off into the distance. He muttered, "Well I think I'm going to make like Dorothy and follow the yellow brick road here."

With a wave of his hand he stupefied the downed ninjas again, making certain they would stay there by also having the mall with dozens of uses of theImmobulous spell.

Charles reported what was going on elsewhere and Harry nodded. "In that case I think you, Scott and Logan have this in hand. I'm going to drop you off with the girls, then I'm going to come back here and figure out where the heck these guys came from." When Charles sent him an interrogative look he explained what he could see with his mage sight

The bald telepath nodded. "I wondered why do you had left them alive," he said dryly. "While I am in no way unhappy that you did, it just seemed a little out of character."

"True," Harry nodded, not even bothering to debate the point with him. Harry would in fact have killed them all, but he wanted to figure out what was going on here first. Sometimes you can learn more from a live enemy, and this is one of those times.

He moved to push Charles along, moving along and out of the museum then through the crowded streets, both of them wondering where the heck the bystanders had gone. Yet once more this was Vietnam, and like the three girls in the boat the bystanders around them new when to get the hell out of there. Screaming only brought more attention to you and when faced with armed killers there was never a good thing.

About 10 minutes later they came to the intersection where they met up with Jean and the others. Harry instantly began to cast healing spells on Jean's arm while explaining what he was going to do, and Jean and Ororo shared a glance. Ororo said "I'll go with you Harry, you may need someone to watch your back."

Harry shrugged. The ninjas really weren't that much of a threat to him, after all he was wearing his crysis suit underneath clothing, and even with it deactivated that was more than enough to stand up against their knives.

The two of them found an empty alleyway and Ororo shucked off her clothing, once more brazenly changing clothing in public to her X-Men uniform, whose chest portion she had worn underneath her clothing. After moment she was ready and Harry had also canceled the conjured clothing he had worn over his crysis suit.

Harry gently tapped Ororo's forehead, and as she disappeared leaned in to kiss her. Since they were connected like this the spell he had just used on Ororo to make her invisible also worked on him, and allowed him to see her when they separated. He smirked slightly at her and said "ready to go?"

Ororo nodded with a smile, and the two of them took to the skies flying out of the alleyway and back towards where Harry had left the unconscious ninjas. Once there Harry again activated his mage sight, and was able to see the line of magic leading out into the distance. He wasn't certain what kind of spell this could be frankly, but it lead away from that bunch of ninjas clumping all together and moving away from the city. It ignored walls and distances, which was handy for them allowing them to follow it from the air with ease.

As they flew Harry said "It was a good idea of Scott's to use Charles to link up their minds like we had Betsy handle communications with the Gurkhas in London. He is growing all the time."

"Indeed," Ororo replied absent mindedly, luxuriating in once more being in the air. This past week she had not had time to go flying, or even the energy most days.

But this was glorious, and she leaned in, pulling Harry kissing him hard on the lips for a moment as the sheer joy of flight once more took her. She could see it affecting Harry as well, and they began to do loops and curly cues around one another while still following the faint line of magic that Harry could see.

A moment later Ororo recalled what they had been discussing and said, "Though I have to wonder if Logan will take to his orders well."

OOOOOOO

Logan and not been having as easy a time of it as the others because he was indeed the main target for the Hand's attack. Rather than eight or nine ninjas or even a dozen as had attacked Charles and Harry, he was faced with several dozen coming at him from all directions.

The Canadian born wild man was good, very good at what he did. Yet it was only because of his adamantium laced bones and healing factor that he was still on his feet and a going concern by the time Scott and Rogue arrived on the scene.

Rogue gaped at the sight of their teacher fighting as if he was completely uninjured despite several swords actually stuck through his body, a few through his chest and out the other side, one in the meat of an arm, another in the meat of his thigh. Yet for all of that he was still moving fast, roaring, yelling, his claws and feet and even at one point his head taking a bloody toll on the ninjas attacking him.

Scott on the other hand didn't bother looking at him, he well knew that Logan had a fantastic healing ability and wasn't surprised that he could still keep fighting despite looking like a pincushion. Instead he simply pulled off his sunglasses again and fired a full strength blast down the street, clearing the way of ninjas, throwing their bodies and parts of bodies away. This wide beam wasn't exactly a cutting or penetrating force, but it still had much the same ability especially on unarmored targets.

Rogue shook herself out of her stupor then charged forward, slamming into a few ninjas smashing them aside. She ignored their knives and swords, which cut it into her clothing but couldn't actually penetrate her skin.

Faced with the two newcomers joining forces with Logan, the few remaining ninjas began to fade into the background, retreating swiftly. Seeing this Logan moved forward, but stopped when Rogue grabbed his uninjured shoulder and Scott moved in front of him. "Don't, we need to regroup with the others."

Logan growled and made to pull away but Scott came up and ruthlessly began to pull the swords that were still stocking Logan out, the pain of it grabbing Logan's attention. "We need to know what's going on Wolverine" he said, pulling out another blade while around them the dead bodies of the ninjas began to turn to dust. "The others were attacked too."

That information was enough to shock Logan enters moving with them, despite the fact that he didn't really like taking orders from Scott. Still his point made sense, but he resolved to sit down with the kid and tell him that there were in point of fact severe limits on how much actual authority he had over Logan.

OOOOOOO

Ororo and Harry traveled through the air for several hours following the odd line of magic moving northwest of their starting point of Hoi An. As the sun went down they came upon what looked like a hidden monastery deep in the jungles of Vietnam along one side of a mountain which had been transformed into some kind of fortress. The two of them flew higher into the air, and Harry used the spell he had used on Ororo to give her owl site during the battle in London which allowed them to stare down at the fortress well beyond what anyone in the fortress could see them from.

"Interesting," said Harry looking down. They could see over six dozen ninjas practicing martial arts outside, while one ninja in a slightly different colored uniform moved around in front of them. The ninjas however were not what had grabbed his attention. What had was the helicopter on a pad next to them, as well as over a dozen heavily armed men moving around. They weren't soldiers they looked more like mafia enforcers or something like that.

"An organization that deals in assassination would obviously be connected to the local crime syndicate," Ororo answered frowning thoughtfully as she stood in the air looking down past her feet at the fortress. Harry had decided to lay down in the air and stare down that way, but she thought that looked rather ungainly which was possibly the point, Harry had a very odd sense of humor at times.

"I understand that, but look there," he said pointing, and she looked down at the helicopter, from which two prisoners were being pushed. One of them looked like a young man, well-built and with Asiatic features who wasn't wearing a shirt. But the other was clearly white and was wearing a very nice suit but both of them had been roughed up badly. "I wonder what that is about?"

"Should we attack them now?" Ororo asked, her eyes crackling with power.

Harry frowned faintly, then he looked up as they both heard the sound of several more helicopters coming towards them. "I don't think so, let's head back and find out what the bloody fuck is up with these guys attacking Logan and us, find out what he can tell us about them before we charging blindly. Hostage situations are never a good thing, and charging blindly plus that would be even worse." Ororo nodded, understanding that information would help them quite a bit in their assault.

As he said that the lines of magic that they had follow from the ninjas he had taken out back in Hoi An to whatever was in this fortress shattered, disappearing quickly. Maybe they had some way of killing their men from a distance just in case they were captured. It wasn't by magical means though, I would have seen it.

Harry could still see over a dozen large bands of magic made by tiny thin lines bunched together, probably heading out towards other hitting training grounds elsewhere. This place was definitely the headquarters, though Harry could see a very faint line heading out towards where he estimated it would cross the ocean. He wasn't certain what to make of that one, and it faded as he tried to concentrate on it.

With a sigh he shrugged. "Let's head back quickly. I think with those prisoners there we need to get in there as fast as possible." Ororo nodded and Harry turned, racing through the air back they way they had come, with Ororo speeding along after him.

OOOOOOO

Jean met them in the air above the hotel, hugging them both briefly. Harry let his hands linger on the outside of her thighs, looking at her arm. "Anymore injuries while we were gone? Is that hurting at all?"

The redhead shook her head smiling at both his concern and his touch, which even as light as it was set her heart to racing. "Of course it isn't Harry, you've cast that spell on me quite a few times since we met, admittedly mostly in the Danger Room but still and I've never had pain afterward. What did you two find?"

Harry motioned her down to the ground, saying "Nothing much, just a whole fortress full of these ninjas and a couple of the local organized crime members we think, and two hostages, or at least prisoners. Has Logan said anything about what these guys were after?"

"He refused to until you two got back, he was actually very angry that you went off alone." Jean chuckled a little bit.

Ororo shrugged as the three landed on the beach moving swiftly toward the bungalow that the X-Men were gathered in. "As long as they didn't have the equivalent of an Aegis anti-air platform I doubt there was much they could've done to us as long as we stayed in the air."

Logan had heard this from where he would had been pacing by the door and grunted a little. "Hadn't thought of that," he muttered than waved them inside.

Besides the X-Men the three local girls were there, with the three girls sticking close to Evan and Kurt.

Charles was rather amused at their insistence that they were safer with the group now that they had been so close to the Hand's assault. He had already talked it over with the two boys, and had convinced them that he would need to erase their identities from the girls mind, as he had done with the witnesses who had seen who had been attacked, which had been rather difficult in the case of Scott and Rogue whose assault had taken place on the other side of the city from his own along the river.

The two boys had refused to let Charles erase their identities from the trio of girls until he asked for permission to do so whereupon the trio had again surprised the boys in agreeing to let it happen after they left.

Kym however stuck to Kurt like glue, loving the feel of his fur, and doing quite a lot for Kurt's opinion of his own body.

Afterwards, Charles was rather disturbed. Before, the two teens would've agreed to his suggestion without even questioning it, he had after all used his powers to erase their activity in the minds of witnesses before, most particularly when they gathered in Kitty and Rogue as well as a few times when they had clashed with the Brotherhood in public.

Now however they had refused to go along with it, and that not only because they liked the girls, but because they felt it was unnecessary at this point and an invasion of privacy. Doing it to random bystanders who they could not ask to keep their identities a secret was one thing, since it was in fact in the bystanders' best interest too. That way they would be unable to identify the X-Men later to any enemies who might be looking for them. But doing it to people they had come to know and trust was quite another.

Charles was in fact becoming more introspective as time went on and he realized how much his 'trust-me' field had effected the people around him. He decided to think about that more later;, right now they had other things to think about.

"So," said Harry sitting down in a wicker chair. Jean moved over to the wall behind him leaning against it slightly, while Ororo sat on foot rest in front of him. "What exactly is going on here Logan?"

Logan very briefly and without going into much detail explained his previous run-in with the Hand, finishing by saying, "I didn't think that they operated this openly outside of Japan, but I guess they must have expanded their operations."

After the hairy one was done Harry and Ororo filled them in on what they found, as well as telling the group how far away it was.

Scott frowned. "I'm having trouble visualizing this place Harry, can you do a spell or something to show us what it look like?"

The wizard nodded and began to weave a spell that showed his memories of the place like it was a projection on a screen against the far wall. Scott moved forward quickly, as did Logan. The two of them looked at one another and the rest of the group could feel a little bit of tension building between the two, but didn't know where it was coming from. Cyclops however turned his attention back to the projection quickly. "Was there any kind of early warning system set out in the woods around this monastery place?"

"Not a magical one," Harry said promptly. "The only magic in the area is coming from the ninjas themselves tied into something deeper into the monastery." He frowned then shook his head "and then from that to something else possibly in Japan from what Logan said."

Logan frowned scratching at his chin thoughtfully. "There was talk about something in the Hand called the Beast, some kind of ceremony to tie them to the Beast they worshipped that protected them from some forms of detection; that is probably why you can't find their minds Chuck. I'm actually surprised you can get that much from them Harry."

The wizard frowned. "That's the difference between amateur work and professional work I suppose. Though the connection from here to Japan is so faint I doubt I could get a handle on it. That at least was more professional than the ones around here. What do you think about the prisoners?"

Logan shrugged. "The Hand are able to indoctrinate people into their philosophy, somehow overriding their minds and thoughts and imprint the ones the Hand want them to think. It varies from a fast to slow though normally it's reserved for people they think would be of help to them. This young guy you describe sounds like he might be a candidate for it, but the old guy, no. It might he went on be some kind of business arrangement with a local crime syndicate. The Hand isn't into gloating over its enemies, but there are crime bosses who would do that kind of thing. It seems almost be a prerequisite for the job."

"Villains everywhere have that issue, trust me on that," Harry responded dryly remembering his fourth year, when he was stuck in that graveyard and Tom Riddle was gloating about it. If he hadn't gloated and simply killed Harry right then and there, well he would've killed his horcrux that much quicker, but he would also have had his minions around him to finish the job before Harry could recover.

Scott had continued to look at the map, concentrating on the area around the old monastery and eventually he pointed at a spot uphill from the monastery. "This place looks to be a good landing point if it's clear, but I don't trust it." He turned back to Harry. "How confident are you that no one would be able to see you under that spell you and Ororo used?"

Harry shrugged. "It would depend on what I was doing. The more frenetic the activity the more likely it is to fade." That was true even with a spell he overpowered, that particular spell just didn't work that way. It bent light around you, and if you were moving that meant you would be bending light in very odd ways.

"Do you think you could sneak in and find a place for us to teleport then? Somehow find a place come back to us with that port key thing?" Scott asked.

"Actually," said Ororo thoughtfully "we could use some of the house elves couldn't we?"

"A house elf" said Harry shaking his head. "Unless you want me to go back and grabbed them, we're way too far out of most of their ranges. In fact I'm not even certain if Cory could reach us here."

"Cory can!" said a high-pitched voice right behind him as a pop was heard, "Master calls for Cory?"

Harry turned and looked at the teleporting expert who was bouncing up and down in delight. "Have you been practicing?"

"Yes master" said Cory smiling widely. "I's not able to pop to places I not know, but I's practice popping from the Califroni place and back to Hogwarts then up to High Note."

Ororo's eyebrows twitched at Cory's lack of grammar, but decided that that little fellow was too excited to have remembered her teachings so did not make an issue of it at the moment.

Harry nodded. "Well good for you then, we could use your help with this one." The Wizard turned back to the others. "With Cory here I think I can figure out a place for you guys to land. Is this going to be a quiet operation or what?"

Charles frowned faintly. Originally he had wanted to simply say that they could retreat back to New York, but the fact that this Hand group had taken prisoners negated that idea. "I hate to say this, but I think we should go for a full on attack. It's obvious that someone recognized Logan, and they called in the local chapter or whatever. This place is the headquarters of their organization in Vietnam; if we take it out and they shouldn't be able to be in a position to bother us, or even know what happened as long as we take out all the witnesses."

Rogue shivered a little, not really looking forward to fighting again after having killed for the first time, and Scott caught the movement. "No offense Professor but if you can't use her telepathy then in an unknown place like that you'd be just a sort of glorified communications device, so I don't think you should come with us, and we probably should leave behind a bodyguard just in case." He looked over at Rogue said softly "Rogue do you want to sit this one out?"

Rogue stared at the spectacled youth, searching for some sign that he was looking down on her or was being facetious or condescending in any way, but didn't see anything like that there. For some reason that stiffened her resolve, and she shook her head firmly. "There's no way ah'm sitting out this out sugah."

Kitty spoke up from where she had been sitting at the small dining table this bungalow boasted eating a full plate of the local food, mollusks with something that she didn't recognize and a lot of vegetables in a sauce. She was actually on her fourth plate, the runic arrays she had powered to take out the group of ninjas that were attacking her Jean and Ororo had taken a lot out of her. "I want to go too. I know I'm not exactly a field agent anymore, but I think I proved that I still have a bit of a punch to make. Besides… Wait here I've got something I want to show you all." She grabbed up her bag and raced into the bathroom, shutting the door quickly.

A moment later he returned, though at first no one could see her. It wasn't until the chair she had been using scraped back across the floor that they knew that she was there again, and Kitty blinked into existence already eating the food that she had left.

"What was that?" said Scott intently.

"Well you know how even in my ghost form I was visible right? Well I put a invisibility array on my suit. It covers my body a sort of chameleon effect."

Harry and Scott exchanged a glance and actually shivered a little. Kitty already was a master at infiltration given her mutant power, making herself invisible like that? That just made her scary. "Kiss your secrets goodbyes!" muttered Harry to himself shaking his head and grinning at his apprentice. "An excellent choice Kitten," he said reaching over and patting her on the head.

Kitty nodded. "I can go in while you guys are causing a ruckus and find the prisoners and release them if possible. Then we can call in Cory to teleport them out right?"

Cory nodded his head fiercely. "Cory can pop anyone out Miss, so long as he is called to a place by his master." He frowned and tried to explain. "This whole thingy, it not be just a room, but if it be's in any way the same place House elf magic be allowing me to figure out where everything is, though I still not popping until I be called."

Again Ororo's eyebrows twitched, but it was obvious that Cory was trying to explain a process out loud and he didn't really know how to do, so she let it go.

"In that case I think we got the makings of a plan," said Harry. "Anything we should be on the lookout in particular for Logan?"

Logan shrugged. "Don't know much, frankly I'm lucky I can remember that time in Japan at all given what the weapon X program did to me a year later, but other than their ability to blend in and go to ground, they have a few sorceries, mind control techniques I think, that ties into the indoctrination expect. But other than that I got nothing."

Harry nodded. "In that case I think everyone should get their gear on. I don't think Kitty completed any of your other arrays," he asked looking over at her who and she nodded, "but they would still be better defense than your regular clothing

The others all nodded, and Jean stood up purposefully. "I'm going to go back to that shop would past, and see if they are finished with my uniform."

Rogue stood up to. "I want to see the same thing sugah."

The others hadn't really decided on a uniform design yet, but these two had and had worked with the people at the shop far more than the others had. Rogue had gone first allowing her to head off with Scott later, while Jean went second.

They were all soon back, and the others looked at what Rogue and Jean had decided on his uniforms with approval and mixed feelings.

Rogue had decided on a green and yellow uniform, skintight across her body, with a background of green with yellow highlights at her in the form of a wide stripe down the front and legs as well as her collar and cuffs. The whole thing looked rather good, and showcased her still growing body for good effect which she was happy with given the way, Scott was now looking at her.

In stark contrast to the green and yellow of Rogue, Jean had settled on gold and flame red. Her main color was gold, but it had a flame red sash around the middle, and the image of a bird of fire on her chest in red. (Does that sound like a good description of their uniforms – not quite dark or regular phoenix, but almost the exact same as Rogue's original uniform?)

"Mm very nice" said Ororo appreciatively. "It certainly fits your personality my dear."

Jean dimpled at her while keeping her eyes on Harry was looking at her appreciatively with something else in his eyes. She flushed a little under that gaze, but also smiled back brightly when he smiled at her.

Kitty noticed this as did Logan, and while Logan frowned wondering what the hell was going on there, Kitty merely giggled.

Charles didn't notice anything, since he was with Scott complementing Rogue on her choice of color, and Evan and Kurt didn't notice anything as they were being teased about their uniform by the Chi and the other two.

Harry raised his voice getting everyone's attention. "I think we're ready to go. I'll head out now, and then call in Cory and then he can pop back to you all and bring you in as well."

The others all nodded and Ororo leaned in to kiss him briefly on the lips. "Stay safe my love."

"You know it," Harry replied grinning at her. With that he lifted off from the ground and flew out of the bungalow and up into the air.

About thirty minutes later Cory popped out briefly before popping back in. "I now know the places sirs and ladies. I be able to take you four a time please."

The group split into two groups and a moment later Charles was left alone with three local girls. After a moment of awkward silence Chi asked "should we get you anything sir?"

Charles waved her off and moved over to where his bag was picking out a book. If he was going to be left behind to worry he might as well get some reading in.

Kym, Chi and Hoai Ai took one look at this, then nodded to one another and decided to go out and grab themselves some food. However they would be back, no way were they going to let this interesting group out of their sight for long, it was just too much fun.

OOOOOOO

Harry flew back to the Hand's fortress as swiftly as his magic could let him which it turned out was very fast indeed. When he not ten minutes after leaving Hoi An he noticed there were now four helicopters in the training field to one side of the fortress/monastery thing, and half the ninjas who had been practicing were gone while the other half seemed to be meditating or something.

This made it much easier for him to land in the surrounding forest, and from there he moved forward into the environs of the monastery itself. Before he did so however Harry took a moment to pull on his invisibility cloak, trusting in it more than he disillusion spell to keep out any magical eyes that might be around. Logan might not have known of any such, but the Hand did delve into magic, and that was enough to warrant a bit more caution.

There wasn't nearly enough people around to give him trouble in that way, but when he stepped out into the training grounds he stepped on gravel and realized that it made crunching sounds underneath his feet. Crap!

There was a brief moment there right after he stepped on the gravel that he thought that some of the closest ninjas had sensed them, for they all turned in his direction, their eyes opening from their previous meditative pose. Thinking quickly Harry cast a modified Avis spell behind him, summoning a small bird, which squawked and moved out and way from him. The ninjas were paranoid however and continued to stare in his direction for a few moments before finally turning away.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief, and then cast a silencing spell on his feet. Just as a precaution he also cast a spell that got rid of any kind of smell, after all there was no reason to assume that there weren't dogs or anything like that around. This was proven to be a very good move when he moved towards the monasteries front entrance, which was in point of fact the only entrance it had.

On either side of the doorway were large statues or what he had thought were statues but were not in fact statues. As Harry moved closer he could see the they were breathing, and moving their heads slightly. One of the ninjas from outside stood up, and five others trooped inside within, though they all had to stop and be sniffed by the statues.

These were not regular dogs however. They were huge, standing as tall as a man sitting down on their haunches. Their features were a cross between a bull mastiff, a chow and some tentacle fiends from hell. What Harry had thought was a mane going down their backs was in fact small tentacles that rose with spikes on the end, moving under their own power. Their claws and fangs were huge and looked very sharp as well, and their skin looked like a rock covered with a kind of bronze or copper colored armor. Harry doubted that it was really bronze or copper however.

Yeah, let's not try my luck here. With that thought Harry moved around the wall of the monastery until he was directly below a window on the second story. He flew up to it which allowed him into the environs of the monastery, though he had to scoot around two ninjas who were meditating right by the window, then through a dozen more who were seated on straw mats all around the room.

The first two looked around, obviously able to feel his passing somehow, air displacement maybe, even if they couldn't see him. So to combat this Harry moved into the air again flying over their heads to the doorway. There he waited a moment, making certain none of the ninjas inside had realized he was there. After a moment the two by the window closed their eyes going back to meditating.

After that Harry started to move through the monastery fortress trying to find a place safe enough to do for a destination for Cory to bring the others. He was a little unnerved by the fact that there was literally no sound of voices or anything else at first. This faded as he found the staircase leading up and down. There was a murmur of voices coming from two directions, a weird odd droning cadence from downstairs and two one side, and the sound of at least one raised voice followed by a scream in another voice from the floor above. At the top of the stairs on the third floor stood four heavily armed gangsters, looking around themselves warily.

Harry's eyes glittered, knowing the sound of torture when he heard it, and he had to fight with himself for a second to stop from charging forward and starting something all by himself. It wasn't that he couldn't possibly have taken this whole place out by himself, but he was a teacher. This whole thing is a learning experience for the kids, and what kind of teacher would I be if I don't allow them to take the 'final test' so to speak?

He moved downward, finding an empty room at last on the first floor. It was right next to what looked like a storage room for food, but it was thankfully empty at the moment. He ducked inside, casting a low powered Notice Me Not on the open doorway, since it didn't have a actual door to keep anyone passing by to see inside. None of the rooms he had passed had one. With that done he moved to the center of the roof and said softly, "Cory?"

A second later the house-elf popped in his ears flapping exuberantly. "Master calls Cory? Is master wanting me to bring the exe-men and the missyies now?"

"Yes, get them here as quick as you can."

"Cory will do," the teleportation specialist responded quickly and popped off group. A moment later he returned with Ororo, Jean, Cyclops and Evan first.

Cyclops moved immediately to the door, one hand rising to dial down the setting of his visor. He looked over at Harry, while Ororo and Jean merely looked him over as if to make certain he was all right. Scott however looked over for a very different reason. "Did you find where the prisoners are sir?"

"Generally yes," Harry replied at while Cory popped in with the remaining three. "Rogue, you come with me. We'll get the prisoners free first of all. Nightcrawler, Shadow-Cat, head outside." So saying he hit them all with the dissolution spell, it wouldn't last long once the action began but it would make them unseen. "Just cause as much chaos as you can," he said looking at Kitty. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to but I want those helicopters out of commission."

"How many are there?" Cyclops asked, "Ninjas and helicopters I mean."

"There are about 15 gangsters I think, heavily armed from what Ororo and I saw, but that was all we saw, so take any force estimate with a grain of salt. Up to 200 ninjas maybe in a place this size? Four helicopters."

"Any kind of armory or any other target?"

Harry smiled again realizing that Cyclops had taken his lessons on tactics to heart. "Not that I saw, I think all the ninjas go around armed all the time, that would certainly fit their MO wouldn't it?"

Logan grunted. "Let's do this already," he said, extending his claws, the 'snikt' resounding in the room. "What do you want the rest of us to do?" Logan ignored Cyclops addressing the question to Harry like he was the team leader.

"Where do you want them?" Harry demurred, looking over at Cyclops. He was the team leader, and Harry had already given suggestions on the force dispersal, the rest Scott would have to come up with himself. He filled the group in on what else he had seen, as well as the noises he had heard.

The team leader frowned for a moment then said "I think we should get Storm outside to help in the open with Kurt, her powers are best used outside after all."

Ororo nodded thankfully at that, not having liked the idea of being inside in an enclosed space for long. This room was all right as it had a small window along one side, letting in a faint breeze and the door was open, but she was not naïve enough to assume that that would be the case everywhere, and the stone walls were not helping at all. The weather goddess cursed her claustrophobia again. For all the therapy Charles and put her through they had not made any headway on it. That memory of being buried underneath tons of rubble in the US Embassy in Cairo was the stuff of her worst nightmares, and it haunted her still.

"If Rogue is going with you to free the two prisoners then Phoenix and I should stay together to watch each other's back and move to the main congregation of ninjas. Wolverine and Spyke, work together to move through the rest of this place and clear it out one room at a time. Phoenix can also keep us connected like Professor Xavier did in the city, and once we're all in position we can attack from different directions, pulling their attention every which way."

"Sounds like a plan," said Harry nodding approvingly. So far Cyclops seemed to be passing this real world test, though that wasn't so surprising since it was his second real life battle (or third counting the action back in the city). Now they would see if the others could do the same.

Phoenix however frowned, not liking the idea of using her telepathy in such a manner, but after a moment she realized she didn't need to let anyone into her mind, she just had to open up her outer shell right behind the belsham trees. Jean experimented with it for a few seconds then opened up a path through her trees to the wider world of the astral plane. She reached out with thin tendrils of thought, connecting each mind to her own, and then sending a brief message along it to make sure that everyone was connected.

During this Harry made a decision, and concentrating briefly removed a portion of the invisibility cloak covering his mind. Jean felt that and looked at him in shock, knowing how much he valued the privacy of his own mind. Even that time he took her astral projection around his mind there had been defenses, and she could only see what he allowed her to.

Harry simply met her gaze levelly a small smile on his face and Jean flushed, realizing that for Harry this was a very intimate act, a sign of his trust in her. She gently reached out, forming a connection between the two of them, and responded by making that connection deeper, letting the tendril of their connection into the main portion of her mind rather than the outer area of her defenses.

"Everyone's connected," she said mentally, sending the thought out to everyone's mind even Logan whose mental defenses couldn't quite keep her from making this kind of connection.

Cyclops shook his head. "We seriously need to look into some kind of communicator built into our masks or something, this is a very odd way of using telepathy, it's like using a elephant guns to smash a fly.

"Agreed," said Phoenix crisply, "but that's neither here there. Let's get the show on the road."

Logan growled agreement, leading the way out of the room, with Evan hard on his heels. A moment later Phoenix and Cyclops moved out as well, turning tom ove down the hallway in another direction. Shadow-Cat took Storm and Nightcrawler by the hand, phasing them through the wall straight to the outside, a sensation that had Storm gripping the younger girl's hand almost tight enough to cut off circulation.

Harry and Rogue stayed put however and she looked at him quizzically. "Ahh thought we were going to go save the prisoners?"

"We are," Harry replied, pointing directly up. "But why take the route where they know people may be coming from."

Rogue looked up at the silent stone ceiling and grinned. Harry chuckled as well. "First rule of taking a building of any kind no matter the size or layout, never ever attack your enemies the way they want you to."

Outside Kitty had finished transferring Ororo and Kurt outside, and Ororo immediately took for the air, hovering over the area where the majority of the ninjas were located. Kurt was looking at the moving statues a little aghast. After she let them go Kitty rested for a few seconds, then moved over towards the helicopters.

Ororo motioned to Kurt to switch places with her seeing the monsters, and began to hover directly above them about 15 feet up. They began to move their heads around, as if they could almost sense her presence yet couldn't tell exactly where she was. "My loves," she sent telepathically to Jean and Harry. "I believe we are ready out here."

OOOOOOO

Inside Evan and Logan had taken to the hallways, and had found a room with seven ninjas in it already, now they were simply waiting outside to rush in and take them out before moving on. Spyke was a little shaky, knowing that they were going to be putting these ninjas down permanently which meant killing them and he wasn't really as sanguine about the idea as he had hoped.

Get it together kid, Logan thought to himself looking at the younger man who was visibly quaking. Thanks again to Harry having them all hold hands while he cast the dissolution spell Logan could see Evan, and he didn't like what he saw. The shaking was pretty obvious, and Logan wondered if maybe the kid was going to be a liability in this. Still, he hoped that once the adrenaline hit he would snap out of it.

OOOOOOO

Jean and Scott made their way straight towards the area where Harry had said there was some kind of mumbling or chanting going on, assuming that would be where the majority of the ninjas in the monastery would be.

They were proven correct when they came out of the first story hallway and into a three-story tall chapel of some kind, or whatever it was the locals called a chapel anyway. Neither of them were very interested in foreign religions after all. But they both guessed that whatever deity this place was dedicated to now was not the one it had been dedicated to when this monastery was built.

The demon statue made out of basalt or some similar black rock holding what looked like a stump of a real demon arm in outstretched arms that looked even more demonic than the statue itself sort of gave that away. There was no blood coming from it, but it was obviously still very much alive as they could see its fingers twitching in time with the chanting of the three dozen or so ninjas who are kneeling in front of it.

There were two of what looked like higher level ninjas at the front, and they were bowing in supplication to the hand of whatever it was. The regular Hand ninja's wore red or black ninja suits, these two both wore red and had silver lines on their sleeves and neckline, and wore two blades rather than one at their sides. Another one who looked even higher-level with golden lines around his sleeves and neckline was bowing directly in front of it. "Yes master your will be done. We know where the enemy Wolverine is, we'll he will be taken despite the losses our initial rush."

Jean frowned thoughtfully, realizing the demon arm (more of a forearm and hand really) was probably connected to those magical lines that Harry said connected all of the ninjas here and then from it to something else in Japan. Harry mentioned that it could possibly be used as a communication device, but I guess it doesn't matter if there's no one here after our attack for the other end of the line to speak to. Unless of course it could also open some kind of portal and have reinforcements come straight through.

She remembered that the demons she had fought with the Fantastic Four and the others had feared what they called the life-fire. If so then maybe whatever was on the other hand could be hurt enough to back off and let them take this place out without trying to interfere if it could. So saying she told Scott that she would take out the demon hand before joining him, to which he nodded and told her to pass it on to the others. "Harry, were in possession here."

"Your call Cyclops" said Harry looking up at the ceiling and readying a Bombarda to blow a hole he and Rouge could then fly thru.

Cyclops breathed in deeply, moving his hand up to ratchet his eye-beams up to wide area effect so that he would catch the ninjas who wre all kneeling in their backs, either slicing them apart or propelling them into their fellows at this range and level the actual effect was up in the air. "Now!" he shouted, sending the same response down their telepathic links. The shout echoing around the suddenly alert ninjas and his eye-beams blasted forward, catching the crowd as they turned as one towards the noise.

Jean took to the air immediately, her telekinetic aura of flame igniting as she sent a spear of phoenix fire to impact on the demon arm, burning it. There was a screaming sound that reverberated around the monastery, and every ninja in it suddenly knew that they were under attack.

OOOOOOO

It didn't help them much. Ororo immediately thrust down with both hands, summoning up sudden small, extremely focused whirlwinds, which incased the demon dogs and began to take them apart, ripping and tearing at them with the force of a category five hurricane.

Nearby Kurt teleported into the midst of the ninjas, and slashing out with a blade he had stolen from the group that had attacked him and Evan on the pier. He made certain to keep on the move, popping here and there causing chaos and confusion.

The ninjas reacted swiftly, and they very well-trained, yet they had never run into a teleporter before and they couldn't pin him down while he did precisely that to them.

Meanwhile Kitty had already begun to destroy the helicopters. Using a tiny pebble and placing it in the engine before simply letting it go after imparting just enough motion to it. This had the same effect on the front of the helicopter that it had originally done to that tree so long ago when Harry had suggested this maneuver, or two Sabertooth's arm like that time in Canada.. One after another the helicopters died like this, then she went to help Kurt.

Ororo swiftly finished off the demon dogs, and was now throwing wind blasts and lightning down at the ninjas to aid Kurt. Ororo also displayed a new application of her power, freezing the air around some of her targets, freezing their bodies to such levels that it looked as if they had been dipped in liquid nitrogen before they shattered to pieces.

OOOOOOO

Wolverine attacked with a snarl as soon as Cyclops gave the word, dashing in and killing four of the ninjas before they even knew he was there. One of them was swift enough to raise his blade and give Logan a cut on the shoulder, but the blade couldn't cut his adamantium covered bone, and he took the ninja in the throat with his own claws.

The last two were hit by a bone bullets from Evan, who began to hyperventilate a little. That room done Logan moved swiftly back to the doorway where Evan stood, smacking him on the face. "Get it together Spyke!" he ordered, "you can break down later."

The two rushed out into the corridor, and were immediately faced with dozens of ninjas flowing out of the rooms around them and charging them from all sides. Soon enough the adrenalin made Evan forget his hesitation, and he summoned up his bone armor and two swords before the ninjas could fall on them. Evan's entire body was now covered with bone armor protecting him everything but his eyes. He almost immediately took one knife to the back of the knee, but again he had reinforced his bones enough to deflect it, and in retaliation he concentrated for a moment. Another bone sword suddenly sprouted from that knee catching the ninja in the throat as he lifted the leg.

Behind him Wolverine went to town on the ninjas. They could only come at him from one direction and even to they could leap over one another to attack him from above with Evan guarding his back that wasn't enough to make a difference. His healing factor and adamantium covered bones made their blades almost useless, as long as he protected his eyes and throat.

The ninjas knew it too, and tried to concentrate on attacking his face and throat but Logan was good enough to avoid any outright killing shot. He was bleeding from over a dozen cuts and gashes on his face within a few minutes, and one eye was blinded by the blood coming from a cut above it. His mask actually began to come apart but he kept on going, the cut healing slowly giving what the ninjas coated their blades with, but swiftly enough.

OOOOOOO

Harry didn't actually have to say his spells anymore, not the mid level ones anyway, but there was such a thing as style. Therefore he shouted "Bombarda!" while he pointed a finger at up at the ceiling. The spell shattered the rocks there, causing three ninjas who had been in the room directly above them to fall inward. They and the debris from the explosion were caught by another spell, and thrown against the far wall with brutal force. Another spell picked Rogue up and the two of them zoomed up into the next room.

Rogue immediately ducked under one ninja who had tried to take her head off, and raised her hand swiftly to clip him under the chin throwing him back, his neck broken.

With that the two of them moved from that room up again to the third floor where the prisoners were being kept. They ran into only about seven or eight ninjas on that floor, but they ran into all of the gangsters who had swiftly reformed on their boss who was with the prisoner.

The gangsters were armed with guns and other more modern weaponry unlike the ninjas, who relied on stealth and hand-to-hand combat ability. Against Rogue however who was despite her protests wearing the Juggernaut armor that Harry had modified to fit her over her new uniform and Harry who had activated his Magia Erebea as well as crysis suit this did not avail them much. The two of them went at their enemies like rhinos in a China shop, throwing them aside in an effort to get in and save the prisoners before someone could decide to cut their throats.

Even so they barely succeeded. When they broke an old man, fat and unhealthy looking, as if his years were catching up to him was about to slice the throat of the younger prisoner, who was chained to one of the walls by several heavy chains. Oddly he was also holding a large bottle the held some odd liquid on the bottom underneath the younger man's throat. "I know not where you have gotten your would-be rescuers my son, but they will not be here in time. I need your blood for the Elixir Vitae. I do not need you to live through the process of me obtaining it."

"Not gonna happen!" Rogue shouted, charging forward. Rogue punch the man so hard his broken body crashed through the wall behind him and out into the courtyard below. "Dead wrong."

Harry moved swiftly to the older man who was a prisoner, casting several healing spells on him. Originally the man was probably good looking, possibly even dapper. He had gray hair, was thin and wearing a rather good suit yet the man had been badly beaten offsetting his original style. Thankfully there was nothing Harry's magic couldn't fix. Apparently the torture had begun with the younger man which was probably a good thing since given his physique the younger man had been able to take it while this guy could not have.

It was in fact surprise when the old man opened his eyes and said "I say, we seem to have been rescued. Rather surprising that, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sir Dennis Nayland Smith and you are?"

"Your rescuer," said Harry smiling faintly. "As to my name, Mr. Wizard will do for now, at your service."

Behind him Rogue groaned while she snapped the chains holding the young man to the wall, a part of her comparing his muscles, which were on display thanks to his shirtless state, to what she had seen of Scott, and found she liked them both equally well. "You aren't seriously usin' that call sign permanently Sah?

"Not really, but it works for now. Ororo and Phoenix will come up with a better one it eventually I suppose.

The man's eyes sharpened on him. "I heard a rumor about a Mr. Wizard being involved in a bit of a scuffle in London last week, was that you?"

"MI6?" Harry asked, looking the two men up and down. The younger of the two was now standing on his own, though he looked close to collapse, and Harry moved over to him, forcing some potions down his throat before going to work on his wounds.

"Not any more old chap, I stayed on here after I was discharged, unfinished business of a sort you could say. May I ask why you two are here rescuing us? Not that I'm ungrateful but…"

"We have a fellow among our group that has a history with the ninjas here, and after I saw you being brought in my saving people thing™ kicked in." Harry replied truthfully yet without giving any real information.

The old man chuckled wincing a little when Rogue released him from his bonds. "I know that disease all too well. My young compatriots and I have served that call for several months now and look where it got us, one dead, myself and young Shiang-Chi captured. We thought we had a chance to take that man in, but we were betrayed the last by Shiang-chi's sister no less. Familial feeling towards her father over her brother and the right thing, I suppose." He looked through the shattered wall at the dead body of the crime lord laying out on the ground below. "I wanted to take him in and try him, just for the sheer pleasure of watching him hang but this works as well as suppose."

The younger man, apparently named Shiang-Chi had regained some of his bearing by this point. The sounds of combat was everywhere around, yet here the ninjas had apparently decided to let the defense of the prisoners to the toughs who had brought them in. "Shouldn't we be going to help your fellows, wherever they are? The Hand are dangerous opponents no matter you numbers or skill."

Harry looked at the younger man shook his head. "I might have healed your wounds you're not going to be up for much now." Harry did not regularly bring Pepper-up potions with him, and he had already used a few potions on the kid already. "Corey?" he said to the empty air.

Daniel's eyes widened slightly as the little creature popped in, but Harry had more important things to do than try to explain house-elves to him. "Could you transport these two back to the hotel?"

"Cory will do," the young house-elf said reaching forward and pulling the older man forward to join the young man who was already wobbling on his feet.

The two popped out and Harry turned to Rogue. "Let's go help Spyke and Wolverine, they'll probably have run into trouble clearing this place."

OOOOOOO

In the main worship area Cyclops had fallen back, having taken a sword to the side from ninja who had been able to sneak up behind him, and he was leaning against the wall holding the wound but other than that the operation here gone off without a hitch.

Whatever was that connected to that demon arm had withdrawn its presence the moment Jean began to burn it, and the head priests or whatever they were seemed to feel a bit of a backlash there though the younger lesser brothers happened.

The one with gold embroidery along his sleeves however had proven to be a bit more of a fight than the others. First unlike the other two he was able to throw off the effect of the psychic backlash from the demon hands burning. On top of that he was actually able to blend into the shadows sinking into them and attacking from any of the shadows around them before fading away, hence the knife in Cyclops' side.

Scott leaned back trying to blast the man who was now the only living ninja in the room at the moment, but couldn't get a bead on him. He was too fast and there were too many shadows.

Jean however had turned her attention from the burning demonic arm thing to the ninja master himself and was now blasting out with telekinetic shots of pure fury. For a moment it didn't look as if she was going to be able to nail him, but then he made a mistake. The ninja tried to use her own shadow behind her to stab her from behind.

But Jean had kept up her telekinetic shield, and his blade got stuck there for just a second. Before he could retreat back into the shadow Jean whirled around grabbed him by the throat with a claw of flame that looks like a bird of prey, and the ninja began to burn immediately. Yet even now him he was completely silent even as the fires of the phoenix consumed him.

Jean let the smoldering corpse fall, and moved over swiftly to Cyclops putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling into his feet. "Come on oh mighty leader," she said smiling faintly. "I think we need to get out of here."

Cyclops nodded faintly then asked suddenly, the pain of his wound giving him a bit of courage, "So, you Storm and Harry? How exactly did that happen?"

Jean nearly stumbled almost bringing them both down and he chuckled weakly waving one hand while his other remained holding his wound. "Don't worry, I'm not jealous or anything like that, I'm just wondering how you two decided to share him."

Jean recovered her poise, chuckled and began to pull him along the corridor. "Why, are you asking for pointers or something?"

"Not in the getting two girls way, just wondering how to get a girl singular," he said shaking his head wearily.

At this point Evan, Logan, Rogue and Harry raced down the hallway towards them, with Logan's uniform cut to ribbons in places, and his mask having fallen off. Yet for all that the man was uninjured, thanks to his amazing healing factor.

Evan had gotten over his tremors, and was moving purposefully along Logan's other side, his eyes moving from side to side and his hands holding bone blades, the armor on his body looking for all the world like some kind of medieval night crossed with a football player. The spikes sticking out of his kneecaps and shoulders however were a rather unnecessary addition, and he did have a few cuts on his face and joints, though not many and none serious.

Harry moved toward Cyclops, already casting healing spells on Scott while Harry's hand reached into his pocket pulling out a potion from the space expansion charm there. "Blood replenishing potion" he said handing it over, while working on the wound. "It doesn't look life threatening a few mid-level healing spells will heal you right up, again." He'd be sore for a few days, but in Harry's opinion soreness was a learning experience all on its own. He didn't want Scott or any if the kids to get so cocky that he could heal all their wounds that they would become reckless, after all.

Harry took over one side of Scott while the other was taken by Evan, and Logan and Rogue took the lead while Jean followed up behind. They ran into no more ninjas, the ninjas here having expended themselves attacking them from the start. That and the fact that over half their number had been caught outside, and facing Ororo outside had been a losing proposition for them. it would have been a losing proposition for most people really.

Ororo led the way inside with the other two following, smiling faintly. "I believe this was a very successful operation, anything go wrong on your end?"

"Not on ours," said Harry. "The two prisoners were rescued and Cory transported them back to the hotel without much incident."

Rogue, shuddered slightly, remembering the number of times she had to kill today, but she was getting over it quickly, telling herself over and over that they had been coming at her with the intent to kill. It helped a bit, but not as much as she could have hoped, and she decided to talk to the professor about it tomorrow. Right now however, she just wanted to get out o here and get some sleep. Evan too was having issues with it, but other than praying over their bodies, Kurt seemed to be dealing with the realities of a life or death battle better than the two of them.

"We ran into something funky," said Jean shaking your head. "The ninjas in the main hallway were worshiping somehow this demon arm thing."

Logan frowned at that. "It could be a connection to that beast thing that they are supposed to worship, I didn't think it was real."

"Demons are real," said Harry Scott and Jean all together, and then laughed a little.

"In any event," Jean went on, "I burned it with my Phoenix fire, and the thing at the other end didn't seem to like that much, it screamed, there was some kind of backlash that a few of the ninjas felt, and that was it."

Harry frowned. "Storm, call Cory and have him teleport the rest of you guys back I'll join you after I'm done cleaning up and I want to check that out. Did you leave anything for me to look at?"

"Not at all," said Jean cheerfully. She really, really liked burning demons. That first higher level devil's attempt at getting into her mind had stuck with her, and every time she could get stuck in with similar beasts she would do so gleefully. "Sorry you can't satisfy your curiosity oh wise and powerful Mr. Wizard."

Harry surreptitiously slapped her on the ass causing her to squeak a little. The others looked at her quizzically while he muttered "Smart ass."

He turned and made his way back into the monastery while Jean rubbed her rear through her suit. She was also surprisingly turned on a little. Not a lot, and she imagined she should be the spanker not the spankee, but still. She didn't have much time to ponder that however because Cory quickly appeared at Ororo's softly spoken command, teleporting them all back swiftly.

Harry had noticed Cory's arrival, and smiled faintly. He was beginning to have some interesting suspicions about his lady, and the fact she was able to call a house elf to her when they were not actually in residence in one of his houses was another hint.

He put that aside for now and moved through the now deserted monastery, filled with nothing but dead Hand ninjas now. He swiftly found the worship area, and activated his mage sight. After only a moment however he frowned and deactivated it. All the threads from other areas in the country he had seen from before their attack were no longer leading to this place, and that thin thread that he had barely seen leading off towards Japan was gone as well. "A pity," he muttered, "I could easily have talked myself into going on a full scale ninja killing spree. Ahh well, now for the cleanup."

With that he exited the building, rising into the air until he was about sixty feet above the monasteries highest point. Harry knew the value of disinformation, of removing any and all evidence, and of the fear of the unknown. To that end Harry wanted there to be not a single bit of evidence of what happened here, he wanted this monastery to simply disappear, for the rest of the Hand to have only the vaguest idea of what actually happened here, to just suddenly have their Vietnam headquarters utterly gone.

To that end he summoned up a spell, the same he had used to cut Selene off from the rest of the city. "Sciath na BhFéadfadh!" This encased the area in a large protective shield, encompassing the monastery, its grounds including the helicopters and a few feet out into the jungle beyond.

Then he used mid to high level attack spell, the kind he couldn't use in a city or anywhere he was worried about collateral damage. "Novale Fragore!" What it was in essence was a massively more powerful Bombarda, or perhaps a better way to think of it was as several hundred such spells tied together. He had learned it from Neville Longbottom, it had been among the battle magics of the Longbottom grimoire, and the two of them had shared several spells from their family tomes during their guerilla war.

There was an almighty boom and crash, then a rolling thunder of explosions moving around and out from his initial target, the center of the monastery, the roiling blasts smashing everything inside the sphere of the protection spell to ruin. Then as Harry kept powering the spell it went further shattering the ruins to pebbles and scattering the pebbles and then going even further.

Eventually all that was left was a large flattened area with bits of charred ground and the areas of the ground that had originally been sand were now glass. The whole effect was sort of like someone had suddenly decided to launch small yield nuke and he smiled approvingly. "If the Hand can feel fear, I think this should do the trick."

With that he teleported himself back to the hotel.

Once there he told them what he had done, and yawned a little, stretching his arms above his head. "Now I'm kind of tired, I think I'll turn in for the night. My lady?" He said bowing Ororo.

Ororo smiled, linking her arm with his but Charles shook his head. "Are you honestly saying we should still stay here tonight?"

"Why not?" asked Harry. "The Hand no longer has any way of getting people to us, you took out the observers right?" Charles indeed had done so during their trip through the city to meet up with Ororo and the girls, and Charles nodded. "And I paid for two nights here. It wasn't much, but I definitely don't want to waste it."

This cheered the kids up immensely, who had not been looking forward to going back to the mansion after only a single night in this fascinating city. The group broke up, with Kurt and Evan quickly being surrounded by the local trio, leaving to see what kind of nightlife this city offered.

Kitty whispered something to Rogue, who grinned and the two of them moved to either side of Jean locking their arms around hers and dragging her off feebly protesting.

Charles shook his head wondering what that was about while Logan chuckled and left to get some beer, and maybe some 'companionship'. While Jean might not find him attractive, Logan and never had much trouble with the ladies and it had been a while for him anyway.

Scott however stayed a moment before leaving. "Our two guests are asleep in the sofas in your bungalow Harry," he said motioning over that way. "Both of them are sleeping now, and don't seem in any rush to leave." With that he moved to join Evan and Kurt, and the group of six teens swiftly left the hotel.

Charles sighed. "Well in that case, I will turn in now. It's been a long day for me, and I am not nearly as young as you all are."

Harry and Ororo nodded, and made their way back to their bed, neither of them really interested in anything more than cuddling but cuddling was enough for now.

Thus ended their first day in Hoi An, the next day would be very different, without ninjas.

OOOOOOO

The next day dawned bright and cheery. While the three boys dealt with their first hangovers, Rogue spoke to the professor, Jean, Ororo and Harry met up over a early breakfast with their two guests.

During the meal the two explained how they had come to be captured by the man they called Fu-Manchu, though neither could say if that was his real name or not. "He was a local crimelord, had his fat fingers in all the local pies," Dennis said, biting into his banh mi, which was a breakfast sandwich made of sausage (the meat of which Harry and Ororo carefully did not think about too closely) and various vegetables on hard French bread. Despite their concerns however the banh mi was actually good, as was the local soup called pho.

Shiang-Chi nodded, looking a little crestfallen. "He, Fu-Manchu I mean, he was my father. Most of my life was spent in his retreat in the north, learning the marital arts, my whole life dedicated to joining my father in his philanthropic pursuits, I thought he was a great and good man. I met Dennis on my first mission for him, and Dennis was able to convince me to search for the truth. It wasn't hard to see that my father was not all he said he was."

Denis nodded. "Fu-Manchu was my enemy for many years before he sent his son after me. I resigned from MI6 rather than be reassigned because I wanted to keep chasing him, feeling that he was a danger to the stability of this country that I had come to see as important as my own." What he did not share was the in one of his attacks against Denis, Fu-Manchu's men had succeeded in killing his fiancé. It wasn't just about justice for him.

"Shiang-Chi soon came back to me after learning the truth and he and I worked with a few others to shut down as many of Fu-Manchu's operations as we could. Then we developed what we thought was our first break on the man himself, a woman on the inside. It turned out to be a trap though. The dastard had laid a trap for us using his daughter, Shiang-Chi's sister to pass false information to us. He intended to make a serum called the Elixir Vitae, which could return his youth to him, but he needed a male heir's blood for it. He apparently got the serum from the Hand, and was intending to give them Shiang-Chi to indoctrinate after he had his blood. And that is where you lot came in."

Harry nodded, an idea percolating in his mind and he decided to act on it. "Do either of you have any idea what you're going to do now?"

"I, I don't know," Shiang Chi muttered, playing with his soup, looking down into the bowl. "It, it's just, all my life was dedicated to learning the martial arts to serve my father better, than after that I dedicated my life entirely to shutting him down. The martial arts are all I'm good at, but the idea of continuing to use them to fight, to kill, that doesn't appeal to me and I don't want to join up with the government or anything like that."

"Well," said Harry leaning back and smiling faintly as he studied the two of them, "I could offer both of you a job. You wouldn't have to be in the field any longer Shiang-Chi, and you could put your martial arts to good use as the personal trainer of the group I'm going to shortly start putting together. You'll know from the get go what I want to use them for, and I think you agree that it is a worthwhile cause?" Shiang-Chi nodded, Harry having briefly told them what he wanted his own group to be able to do eventually, protecting the world from extra-solar threats and protecting mutants from persecution or vice versa. "And you Sir, well if you want to get back into the spy game, I could do with a chief of security."

Shiang-Chi was an open book to Harry, and indeed he felt quite a bit of empathy to the younger man. After all if he hadn't been as smart as he was, maybe he would have been the weapon Dumbledore wanted to mold him into much like Shiang-Chi and his father.

Smith scratched chin thoughtfully, thinking of the bare bones Harry had shared with them about his long term plans and his dream of mutant/normal coexistence. was a worthwhile goal, and being head honcho certainly appealed to him more than going back home to Britain and becoming just one more cog in the machine again. Still it seemed naïve almost to the point of stupidity to offer two complete strangers jobs and places in his organization. "I suppose that sounds fair, but how do you know you can trust us, how can you ensure our loyalty?"

"If I have to ensure your loyalty it's not worth the effort," said Harry shaking his head. Harry was a very good judge of character, and he had a good feeling about these two. If they were the kind to be corruptible, then Shiang-Chi would still be working with his father, and the old man would never have begun his crusade against Fu-Manchu. The younger man would be loyal to Harry and his cause so long as he agreed with that cause. The older man was a little cagier and well past his field days, but he would do as a security chief. Of course, Harry had also hit the man with a spell that would have lit his body up blue in his mage sight if he lied, and he hadn't so far, which made him more trustworthy in Harry's eyes. Harry would still watch him for a while, maybe assign a house elf to do it, but for now he was willing to offer the man a place in his company.

"We can talk some other time about resources and all that some other time I suppose, but for now I'm interested." Dennis nodded.

"I as well," Shiang-Chi said enthusiastically, holding his hand out to shake when Harry finished shaking the older man's. "So long as this team you're putting together truly upholds the rights of the individual and fights for a better world, I will help them train."

"Happy to have you aboard gentlemen, now this is an off day, so why don't you get out there and have some fun."

"I have always wanted to see the museums in Hoi An," Denis responded, smiling faintly. With that he bowed and made it took his leave.

The young man for a moment looked a little lost and then Ororo said gently "why don't you head out and see if you Evan and Kurt are up yet, I'm certain that they can show you around with their local guides." The young man nodded, and walked out with the intent to accomplish that mission.

Ororo shook her head he left. "That young man is wound just a little too tightly. He definitely need some down time."

Harry shrugged. "I've been there, it's sometimes hard to remember what a normal life is. That's where you come in my dear," he said taking her hand and kissing it gently then moving up her arm to her neck and she giggled. "You and Jean keep me grounded."

The day passed well for everyone, with all the X-Men enjoying their time immensely in the city seeing the sights and just generally having fun. What surprised him slightly was that there was no official response toward the violence that had occurred in the city yesterday. There was a little thanks to Charles and Harry it wasn't connected back to them, since Charles had erased their images from the minds of all the witnesses except for the trio of girls, who had promised not to say anything until they left, whereupon Harry would obliviate them.

In point of fact Haoi MI was quite taken with Evan, and Evan's two nights in Hoi An would become some of his fondest memories. Evan would be faced with a lot of teasing in the days to come as he would sometimes stare off into the distance with a blush on his face, completely ruining his image as a 'player', but for the most part the X-Men would not bother him about it all that much.

Logan was not seen at all that day, but of all of them he was one the one who would be least likely to be taken quietly. With that in mind the kids decided not to wonder where he was for their own mental wellbeing.

Jean had spent the previous evening being questioned about her relationship with Harry and Ororo by Rogue and Kitty, and the two didn't let up the next day, insisting that she come with them to the beach where they partied around the surf and sand. Scott eventually joined them, and he and Rogue eventually went off on their own to once more see if they could find a boat to rent to explore the river.

Charles spent the day simply basking in the sunlight while reading a book, and Ororo joined Kitty and Jean while Harry teleported to High Note to spend the day with Melody. He came back later that evening however for his and Jean's first official date.

OOOOOOO

Harry had told Jean to dress up a little, and she had done so, a formfitting black and light blue dress that flared around below her knees. It was tight around her stomach and bust line, and had thick straps going over her shoulders, letting them and her arms bare, as well as a thin slit down the center of her chest to right above her belly button. Harry in turn was dressed in a very good suit, not a tuxedo like he had the night in LA, but still a very good suit. The brown overcoat was the same he had worn yesterday, since he decided he liked the color, but the undershirt was black, as were the pants.

Jean looked him over smiling approvingly but felt she had to ask "Is all that transfigured clothing or what?"

"Not at all my lady, only the jacket is conjured, the rest I actually bought myself." He took a moment to look at Jean in turn, his love for her shining in his eyes, before extending one arm. "And you look magnificent as always. Shall we?"

Ororo smiled, coming up with Kitty from the beach and seeing the two of them walk by. "Have fun you two and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"And that would be what exactly?" said both of her loves, with equally deadpan tones.

She laughed and shooed them off, then she Kitty and Charles once more went around seeing the museums, meeting up with Dennis who took the place of a tour guide for them. He had spent over 20 years in Vietnam after all, and had gotten to know the people and its history very, very well.

As they left Jean took a look back through the window of Harry and Ororo's cabana, and saw Hedwig on a brand-new perch chewing on something that looked decidedly like some kind of gummy rodents. She raised an eyebrow inquiringly at Harry "Did Hedwig do something special?"

"Oh Hedwig was invaluable for setting this trip and everything connected to it up," Harry said smiling faintly. "Trust me, you'll like what I have planned."

"I do," said Jean smiling happily and leaning into his shoulder. "I do trust you."

Harry and Jean left the hotel quickly, holding hands and walking along the street in convivial silence for a few moments before they came to the restaurant where Harry had booked a reservation. It had been recommended by some of the staff at the hotel, and unfortunately Harry would find that this was not always a good thing. It was a common misconception, but if someone recommended a place like this to tourists, it was because they were going to get a cut from the profits of the tourists visit. They could even be on the restaurants payroll to direct tourists to them. And just because a place had money to spend on something like that did not mean they had good food.

Yet that realization was an hour into the future, for now both of them were simply enjoying themselves. After one last sideways hug they sat down at the table the maître d' ushered them to, looking out over the view of the river where the festival of lights was about to begin. Little dots of varicolored candle light began to flow down the river one after another floating on their little paper stands, the colors of which lent the candles their own color, a truly beautiful sight.

They both watched silently for a few minutes, then the waiter returned and took her drinks order. Harry smiled faintly asking, "What, no alcohol?"

"Not in the mood," his date replied, "Besides, I didn't like the hangovers. The drunk part I could deal with, it was the hangovers there were irritating, even with your potions."

Harry nodded he didn't like most alcohol either. Certain whiskeys were okay he supposed, and there was one point where he had developed a taste back in his old dimension for peach schnapps but he could blame that on Sirius's bad influence. "I remember the first time I got drunk. Word of advice, never get drunk in a house with a not exactly reformed prankster. I woke up the next day dressed in, well I won't tell you what I was dressed in but it wasn't exactly flattering. I will say though," he said now grinning at her, "that I've been involved in a striptease like you and Emma did. Let me say that was incredibly hot."

Jean blushed only slightly, knowing Harry found her attractive wasn't exactly new, but the way she and Emma had acted was embarrassing. It also brought to mind the fact that she had enjoyed it, not nearly as much as she enjoyed kissing Harry or Ororo but still.

. Harry took pity on her and changed the subject. "So, we're nearly done with the rewiring, after all putting in the wires htemselve will be only a days work, maybe two.. So you want to start in on the arc reactor prototype right after?"

The redhead shook her head sending her red hair cascading to either side of her face for a moment before she pushed back. "We can't, remember the final design we made called for use of Orihalcum all the way through." She rattled off a few number about energy spooling and heat buildup. Harry nodded along, though he didn't quite follow the numbers he knew she was correct. "I could do some experiments of course, and would love to, but the miniaturization aspect definitely would require Orihalcum, and the parts and metals for it would cost a lot, more than we spent on the wiring we have for the castle."

"I should have thought about that, still, I should be able to buy enough for us to build one with normal materials. And I don't think we need them to be that much smaller than the original," Harry said waving his hands in a vague manner. "Make it too small, and people might try to steal it. I would say about half the size of the original arc reactor should be our goal, so long as we can keep the output high enough. We might want to come up with smaller designs for ourselves to use but I wouldn't be selling them. Energy generation is an excellent area to go into, but I don't want to open up Pandora's Box by offering the generators that are so small that say the military could use them, and/or maybe find ways of making them explode."

"Security is going to be an issue," said Jean nodding her head in agreement then they both stopped talking as the waiter came up with the house's special appetizers, as well as their main menus. The special was a bowl of tiny crabs of some kind that you ate whole. They were crunchy and rather tasty for some reason. The diners looked over the menu for a few moments silently before Jean went on. "I presume you've already thought about a way to secure the potions?"

"I've had several thoughts in that area. First they'll be sold in lots, and each crate will have a special runic array on it. It will act sort of like a delayed action portkey, but you can do other things with the same base runic formula." That formula was actually in one of the book he had brought along from his own dimension and hadn't gotten to read until last week, called Runic Security for the everyday Merchant.

"Anyway if you set it up correctly you can link the opening of the crate, the breaking of the array, to the place where it is supposed to be opened, XY kilometers from your starting point. If it is open in any other place the package will be emptied automatically back into a main holding area. It's a little difficult to set up, but it's one of the things that I think Kitten could handle and I'm going to throw her at it this summer once she gets her parent's okay to have a summer job."

"She'll like that," said Jean smiling happily. Jean and Kitty got along rather well, they weren't nearly as close as Kitty was to Ororo, but they liked one another well enough as housemates. She blushed faintly remembering some of the questions that Kitty had asked her, and wondered how far the younger girl had gotten with Lance. Some of the questions were rather more mature than she had expected, and they had startled Rogue as well.

"I agree," Harry replied, smiling and shaking his head at the idea of his runic apprentice. She had a flare and a drive to learn that he truly enjoyed cultivating, and her parents were basically poster children for the way he wanted every parent of a mutant to act. He hoped to get closer to them, maybe not employ them, but an interview with him on how they handled the idea of their daughter being a mutant might help other parents handle it equally well. A part of them hated the idea of using them like that, but he knew it was something that they would agree to.

"And the arc reactor can have the same basic set up?"

"For those I think I might have to assign a house elf to watch over each in turn if I can. We have time still to think of a way to really guard them, I don't think we're anywhere close to putting out of product for ourselves to use after all." He raised his eyebrows in question.

Jean nodded. "I would say were at least 4 to 5 months away from having a finished product we could put on the market. We do need to create a prototype, check it for stresses, check it under actual working conditions, take it apart to make sure that there was no degradation then put it back together again and see if it still works. Once I start maybe a month to make a prototype for ourselves with normal material, possibly less if we get enough Orihalcum, since I won't have to worry about it having stress related issues."

"The metal is going to be a bottleneck," Harry mused chewing one of the little crabs absently. "I need to think of a way to enlarge the workroom where I'm putting it together now, but there are security concerns there and I don't mean concerns from other people."

He briefly described the spell he was using to melt the metals together, and Jean actually shuddered a little at the very idea. "It's both the heat of the flame and the magical nature of it that enables the metal to be melted at all. But Fiendfyre wants to get out of control. You can't just have it out there without any protection, and I don't want it anywhere near where students or even our team mates will be around." In point of fact Harry placed runes on the doors to keep anyone else out, even Ororo. Melody of course knew better than to go in there since he pointed it out to her once but Harry wanted to make certain that no one could get in there.

"And this is set up at your oh so secret base you haven't told me about yet?" asked Jean archly raising one eyebrow.

"Soon enough my dear," Harry said smirking teasingly. "Soon enough." With that the conversation turned to other things, and they ordered their food when the waiter arrived before going back to their discussion touching on what Jean wanted to do with our current technologies in the future.

It might seem odd to other people that on their first date that the conversation wasn't exactly romantic, but in a way it was. A person cannot love someone unless they love what they are passionate about and Jean was passionate about three things if you excluded Harry and Ororo. She loved putting things together and figuring out how they worked, she had her own peoples saving thing™ and loved helping others, and she was passionate about the idea of space travel. So Harry let those topics control the conversation, and it was only when the food arrived that they turned to other things.

"Have you given any thought to how you're going to find other mutants?" Jean asked

Harry took single bite from his Tao Xao Ot, a rice dish with shrimp, onions and peppers and found that it was rather too ladled with spices and sauces for his tastes. He gamely took a bite of the shrimp that was part of it, and decided that despite the fact they were cooked very well the sauce just did not do anything for them. Harry turned his attention back to the little crabs which he found quite tasty, then looked over at Jean as he contemplated the question. "I've had a few moments here and there, to devote to that problem yes." he said

Jean chuckled, knowing that despite her own busy schedule over the past few days helping to design the wiring and electrical lines for Hogwarts and studying for her finals Harry had been even busier.

Harry went on "I'm not certain yet. The problem is there's just so many different… I mean there are how many thousands of genes that can be put together differently and they just have to have a bit of difference between it and the regular human genome to become a mutant? Assigning a computer with the capability of something like Stark's JARVIS has according to Emma's resources might be the only way to really find them all world-wide, but what systems to use, and even a computer with that capability might be overwhelmed by a target area that large."

Jean nodded since she had been the one to discover how badly Cerebro was screwing up. It just couldn't handle the literally thousands of parameters that could in some fashion mean a person was a mutant, and what it could do was just inadequate to the task. "Hacking into satellites and using them to scan the world searching for odd frequencies of energy might help in some cases," she mused. "But there are just too many damn variables for technology to cover them all."

The redhead began pulling at the end of her hair, something she always did when thinking hard. Harry reached over and took her hand in both of his, gently kissing each finger, causing a shiver to go down Jean's spine. "That was one area I wish to explore yet there needs to be a better solution."

"A magical one?" Jean shook off the feeling Harry had evoked so easily to ask the question.

"It honestly looks like it's going to have to be. The Book of Students is what I was going to use, and I can enlarged the search parameters its supposed use, to put it in techno-speak. And then when we start getting hits cutting it back down, but I'm not certain. I seriously need to get to grips with the air ley lines, as well as what my own magic can do." Harry shook his head. "That last is why I was so busy putting together the Room of Requirement."

Jean smiled, "It's an okay name Harry, but I think you might want to think of a better one, it just sounds so dull. But yes," she went on more seriously, "we need some other way. Unless we wish to turn to hacking security agencies the world over, which we could do I suppose. That's more like a secondary thing, the magic needs to be the primary."

"Agreed," said Harry shrugging. Then he smirked. "So, I noticed you blushing back at that fortress when I spanked you. Has the lovely redhead discovered a hidden side of herself?"

Jean flushed slightly, but couldn't help a bit of a giggle escaping her. "Not for me no, though I was imagining what it would be like to spank Emma or Ororo."

"Wouldn't recommend it for our lady of the storms, Jean" said Harry laughing. Trust me, she's not into that kind of thing. Emma now, I could see her being into that. The whole loss of control thing might be a big turn on for her."

"And it will get her back for that slave girl comment."

"True," Harry chuckled. "But is there anything you want to try?" he asked his eyes gleaming and one hand reaching for to take her own again stroking her palm gently.

Jean felt another shiver go down her spine at his touch, and she closed her eyes briefly reveling in it this time before opening them. "I think we should just take it slow and see where we go Harry."

Harry nodded and leaned across the table to kiss her very gently on the lips before pulling back. He looks down at his meal and then across at hers, both of which were barely touched. "I take it that you share my opinion of this place?"

Jean shrugged "Not that we should badmouth it or anything. The crabs were good, but yeah the main meal was bleh."

"Ah well, that's one of the highlights of traveling I guess, you find out what to do and don't like. In my opinion however this place just isn't very good."

"Well that," said Jean laughing "and I think we've been spoiled by the house sells. Everything they make is just so good."

Harry laughed too. "Did you hear that guys?" he said sotto voce. "Just in case you think we take you for granted or something. We all love your food."

In the shadow behind him where none of the other diners could see a house elves popped in briefly, Cory again since he was the only one that could pop here from High Note or from Hogwarts. "Cory will pass it on Sirs, but we have never felt as if you took us for granted."

In point of fact Cory had like a good house-elf been listening in on his Master and mistresses. Being the only one that could get them here he had been listening in even more than normal, and had heard the entire conversation. He didn't understand a lot of it, but his Master was trying to find out a way to find other 'mutant's', people with weird powers and thingies like those from the school, Miss Fire-hair, and the nice curly one? Possibly there was something there that the house elves could help them with, that was their duty after all, but he would have to talk it over with the older elves to see. A second later he popped out and Harry laughed and stood silently.

He waved over the waiter, and asked them to take away the food not commenting on the fact that the waiter didn't even ask their opinion or comment on the fact that both of their plates were still mostly full. He asked for the check, and the two of them walked out of the restaurant arm in arm moments later. They made their way slowly down the main river through the town, looking around at the sights and sounds of with the lights on the river flowing by them.

They routinely stopped to share a chaste kiss (they were in public after all), and it was altogether a fantastic evening for Jean, though she had expected something a little more, well magical considering the dates Harry had taken Ororo on.

Harry however was not done. "So," he said holding Jean tighter against him with one arm around her waist. "Are you ready for the next stop in our date?"

"You mean this wasn't all? she asked in surprise then nodded "I guess so, then?"

Harry smiled softly, and stopped pulling her into he the shadows of the doorway where there was no one to watch. He briefly concentrated on an image he had shared with Hedwig a few hours ago, and with a faint pop they were gone.

His date stumbled against him for a moment, then took her bearings and looked around gasping, which produced eight puff of visible air from her mouth. "Where are we?" Jean asked, gaping at the view in front of them.

All around them was a field of ice and snow, yet beyond that was a vast expanse laid out in front of them. Mountain Crags, rocky spires, jagged fangs reaching for the sky interspersed with bits of green jutted out of a field of white clouds. It was an awe-inspiring sight, with the sun slowly setting to their left side from where they had teleported in.

"We are actually standing on the top of Mount Everest," Harry said surreptitiously casting a warming spell on both of them. On Jean it was almost unnecessary. One of the things her Phoenix power had done to her was to make her almost entirely immune to changes in temperature. It's the highest points in the world, and I thought the view was frankly fantastic when Hedwig shared with me."

"I feel like that Princess from Aladdin" Jean said laughing softly, not wanting to break the silence of this place. "What was it, 'I can show you the world', or something like that?"

"Melody once said the same thing." Harry grinned concentrating for a moment and then muttered a few words before snapping his fingers. Around them the soft notes of a waltz began. Another brief spell and a large pale blonde globe of light appeared lighting up the mountain top. He held out his hand and asked "Would you care to dance my lady?"

"I would love to sir," Jean said taking his hand laughing slightly louder now. The two of them danced there on the top of Mount Everest for who knew how long, not even noticing the cold, not even feeling the crunch of the snow underneath their boots simply staring around them and at one another losing themselves in the moment.

OOO Warning Limish Content OOO

Harry leaned in kissing Jean softly at first then as his arms tightened around her slowly ramping up the pressure on her lips. Jean began to grind against him, no longer dancing a waltz or whatever it had been changing it to the aptly named dirty dancing. Her own hands moved in different directions, one getting tangled in Harry's wild hair (which again had not been effected by the assault of his comb) and the other grabbing at his shirt, pulling him against her as much as he could. With a slight sigh she opened her mouth, and their tongues began to swirl around one another in her mouth.

The kiss continued for some time, their hands roaming around one another's backs, and lower then Harry moved one hand from her rear towards her stomach. He moved it upwards to the small slit in her dress which went down the front of her dress, moving a few fingers inside of it and then waited for her response.

Jean didn't hesitate, simply reciprocating, her own hand pulling his shirt out of his pants and moving underneath it to feel his hard muscled chest. Harry would never be a massively powerful individual, but he had a limber, rangy power to him that was incredibly attractive to her, and his six-pack showed how in shape he was.

While one hand began to gently stroke Jeans stomach right below the rise of her breasts Harry released his grip on her rear with his other hand. With that hand he briefly pointed directly behind hit them, conjuring up a simple but comfortable looking bed.

Jean felt the displaced air from the conjuration, and broke off the kiss to open her eyes and look behind her. She raised an eyebrow at the sight of the bed and shook her head at Harry saying in a breathy whisper while Harry continued his ministrations on the underside of her breasts. "H-harry, I'm not ready to go that far just yet, after all we've only been officially going out for a week now. Though..mmmm…. you're making it really difficult not to."

"I won't push love," Harry said moving from her chin down to her neck and nuzzling licking and kissing her collarbone. He filed the information away that Jean wasn't nearly as sensitive in her neck area as Ororo was. For his weather goddess it was one of her erogenous zones, but for Jean it's just didn't seem to have that impact. Harry had determined that finding out each of his loves personal preferences and special zones was not only a good idea but a necessary one, not to mention enjoyable at the same time.

"Good," So saying Jean stepped back until her legs touched the side of the bed and sitting down on the side of the bed. "Then you won't take this the wrong way."

She pulled down her dress, showing that she had indeed not worn a bra underneath, letting it pull around her waist. With the warming charm on her Harry knew that the fact her nipples were distended as much as they were was not from the cold. "Just this and no more for now," she warned.

"I said I wouldn't push and I meant it," Harry said then allowed his eyes to rake down to her chest. Jean was not as big as Ororo was up top, Jean was mid C whereas the African woman was a high D. But whereas Ororo had very small areola around large nipples, Jean's was more what Harry would assume was normal size in that area. They were very bright pink, on their white background, and the nipples were long and hard already, sticking out a bit more than Ororo's but not as large around. A redhead indeed Jean also had freckles along her chest and breasts.

She seemed a little self-conscious as Harry stared at them. His whispered "beautiful…" however did more for her ego then anything she had ever heard before.

Harry reverently went to his knees in front of her, his knees impacting on the snow beneath them though he didn't notice. He leaned forward putting his arms around her and gently kissing her belly button. She giggled a little then sighed as Harry moved from their gently making his way upwards. He spent several minutes simply lavishing attention on her stomach and the Valley between her breasts before moving up one side of her left breast raining kisses on it while one hand move from behind her to start playing with the other breast.

Jeans breasts weren't as full as Ororo's either, but they were still a little more than a handful, just right for Harry to play with. Of course he would have liked them even if they were A-cups because they were Jean's which made them perfect to him. The fact they were also slightly more sensitive than Ororo's (outside of her nipples) also helped, and he nipped and licked at every inch of them, taking care to lavish attention on the redhead's freckles.

"OHHHH, yessss, Harry, aahhhh…." During this Jean moaned, losing what little hesitation she had. She suddenly grinned and with a burst of telekinetic force through her hands ripped his shirt and coat off, giving her access to his skin beneath much more easily.

Harry leaned back from his work on her breasts to look up at her with a smirk on his face. "Good grief milady, a little eager are we?"

"You have no idea!" Jean laughed throatily, her hands now working Harry's shoulders back and neck, then when Harry leaned back in Jean purposefully fell backwards onto the bed pulling Harry upright and then on top of her. She swiftly rolled them both, putting Harry on his back her on top, sitting in his lap. Once in place she ground her core against his crotch her skirt bunched up around her waist and she reveled in the hardness she felt there.

Jean reached down between them as Harry sat up to once again kiss and fondle her breasts, rearranging him so that he was standing straight up at attention and she began to grind even more against him.

Her pussy was completely drenched behind the scant protection provided by her panties not just because she had begun to grind against Harry, but because her breasts were very sensitive. She had been ready to pop almost from the moment she began to grind against him. Harry seemed to sense this however and used his teeth now, running his teeth around her breasts up to one of her pink nipples, and then nibbling gently before starting to suck at her nipple hard while his tongue played with it. A few minute later he tried a trick he had only tried once on Ororo before. "Cum my love, finish for me."

The sudden higher suction on her nipple and the feel of his tongue moving across her rightmost nipple had Jean almost over the edge, and when he began to use parceltongue on her that did the trick. "IEEE!" Jean screamed, far louder than Ororo had ever been, and she spasmed against him, crushing their pelvic bones against one another. For several moments she thrashed there, the first orgasm she had ever had caused by someone else's hands overriding her self-control.

It was some time later when Jean finally came back down to earth, and she slumped breathing heavily against Harry's shoulder.

The moment Jean had gone over the edge Harry had stopped his ministrations on her nipple, pulling away and moving up to her neck, licking and suckling there for a moment as Jean went through her spasms, enjoying the taste of her sweat on her skin.

He looked at Jean through half lidded eyes and she stared back at him, her hands tangled in his hair, her own eyes full of love drawing him in. Soon enough they were again kissing hungrily losing themselves in the moment.

Jean was a woman on a mission however, and she again began to grind against Harry, moving one hand around his body down to where his cock was making a very visible tent in his pants. She thrust her hands down his pants front, grasping his cock and pushing it harder against her own grinding panty-clad pussy. "This doesn't end until you do!" She half-growled half-moaned.

At this double sensation Harry hissed between his teeth, pulling back from the kiss and licking the underside of her tongue as it continued questing for his own outside of her mouth before moving down Jeans body again. This forced Jean to bend backwards slightly but then he latched onto her leftmost nipple and the sensation of that and his hands on her rear pushing her even harder against him made her moan again. "Ohh, Jesus Harrrrryyyyy! More, more!"

The dance continued for a time, both of them doing their utmost to bring their partner pleasure until Harry began to lose control, thrusting up off the bed against Jean's core his cock almost painful with his need for release.

Jean too was nearing her own second peak, and their movements became disjointed urgent and forceful. Suddenly the end came when Harry thrust up one more time, his pants and clad cock almost pushing aside Jean's panties to get at the waiting pussy underneath as he came, growling aloud. "RAAAHhhh Jeeeaaan!"

He accidentally hits down slightly, though not enough to hurt just enough to add to the continued stimulation of Jean's breasts, and that was enough to send Jean over the edge as well. "AHHHH!"

Jean collapsed onto Harry's chest a moment later, and Harry fell backwards onto the bed. Now that he was no longer moving he noticed he was getting slightly cold. Harry languidly redid the warming charms on them both, wondering why the heck it had given out in the first place, not realizing that they had been making out and kissing and dancing for hours. In fact they had been at it for so long the light playing on them was no longer from the floating light he had set up during their dance but from the rising of the sun over the mountains from the east.

OOO Limeish Content is over, repeat Limeish content is over OOO

Jean smiled languidly, pushing her sweaty hair out of her face and nuzzling into Harry's chest. She idly looked down their bodies, and smiled, rather proudly it must be admitted, at the sheer size of the wet spot Harry had made when he came in his pants. She looked at her own dress and laughed softly. "I think both of our clothes are ruined you know."

"It was for a good cause though," Harry replied, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her forehead gently. "One of the best."

Jean sighed again, looking over his body at the sunrise, not really registering what she was actually seeing, just enjoying the view, the feel of Harry under her, his arms around her warming her body and soul. So this is what storm was talking about the joy of woman, she mused to herself, God I could get used to this.

"I love you, you know," she said softly, rubbing her head against his chest. "I loved you before this, but God can you spoil a girl."

"You're worth the spoiling my love," Harry said one hand rising to play with her sweaty locks. "I love you, and it is the job of your loved ones to spoil you rotten. Speaking of which" he said smirking mischievously, "are you ready for your graduation present?

"You mean this wasn't my graduation present?" she said faintly, almost falling asleep were she lay.

"Oh no, this was just a date. This is your present." Harry leaned down slightly and whispered into her ear "Harry Potter owns the asteroid base called High Note."

End chapter

Now before any ninja fans tell me the Hand should have been a much harder adversary in both phrases of the conflict realize three things: One, this was not one of their main, ancient strongholds with a seemingly endless number of ninjas. They first badly underestimated their opponents, even the one they knew about and then were entirely on the defensive. And third, Jean, Ororo, and Harry are so far beyond their level it is like a nuke versus a rifle. If taken by surprise both Ororo and Jean could still have fallen to them, but as it was, no. Rogue was almost the same, and Evan's bond defenses protected him, while Kurt had Ororo's heavy duty firepower with him. I'm sorry, but as a group the Hand is not going to become dangerous at all, and I have plans to remove a few individuals in the future that could possibly change that state of affairs.

So I've introduced another two characters to Harry's group, who will fill important but not central roles, killed a bleep ton of ninjas, scared the living daylight out of the Beast, had the Jean finally graduate and deepened her relationship with Harry. A good chapter.

As always read and review, and I will see you all next time.