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.

34. Choice

I don't draw, nor is my last name Rowling.

This is not the full chapter I wanted to put out, indeed, it is less than half of the chapter that I have written. However RL gets in the way of the best of us. I did not have as much time to devote in the past week as I had hoped to this story due to familial obligations and Mordreek, my beta reader for all things Hela/Asgardian related, has been dealing with real life issues both diverse and tragic. I hope you join me in sending your thoughts and best wishes to him going into the new yeark. Because of this he and I have not been able to work on a large portion of the rest of the chapter and since much of that is interwoven with Hela-centric sections, who is as said above part of Mordreek's particular area of interest, it is not complete to our mutual satisfaction.

As such, I was forced to cut the chapter short. Because of that, it reads more like an addition to the last chapter, but it is better than nothing. It does show certain future problems beginning to stir, ends the AIM issue and introduces a positive game changer to the future, so I hope that you all will enjoy it. Mordreek and I will try to get the rest of the chapter out as we may, but I can't make promises there.

However, since this is a major knock against my Harry Potter fans, I will be putting down my own votes in the monthly poll toward Fate Touched and FILFy Teacher. The short story poll will be up tomorrow here on fanfic and will run until the 15th. As always, if you want more say in what stories I work on, please thing about joining me over on Paty R on.

This has also been edited by Mordreek, Kathryn518 and Michael, so the mistakes will be few and far between.

Have a happy New Years!

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Chapter 34: Choice

Dodging a blast from one AIM trooper, Hela's swing at the chest of the Hulkbuster she was currently engaged with merely skittered across its chest rather than opening its armor, her blade's tip sending up sparks as it went. The next second she grunted in pain as a fist larger than her head slammed into said head at speed, accompanied by the now familiar 'KR-thump' noise of the robot's hydraulics adding that much more power to it. But Hela had moved with the blow, meaning much of the force of the series of punches that blow was supposed to actually be did not land.

Ducking, she brought up her shield, carrying the robot's next blow up and over her body before stabbing forward. This time her attack burst through the robot's outer armor deep into its innards, right over where its heart would have been if the thing had been alive. As it was, Hela ripped out her sword, readying herself for another attack.

A second later Captain America landed on the robot's shoulder, his shield bashing down on the neck muscles there, one of the few weak-points the Hulkbusters seemed to have. The edge of his shield cut deep into the robotic muscles there, then Captain America dodged to one side, getting his feet under him and interposing his shield between a blow from another Hulkbuster and Hela. The blow hit his vibranium shield and the Hulkbuster's attempt to use its hydraulics to accentuate one blow into many backfired, its entire arm coming off while the super-soldier grimaced, his arms shaking slightly and his feet skidding under him.

This time Hela's blade came up and around, cleaving the low-slung head off the robot's massive shoulders. As it fell, she looked around, one hand coming up to wipe a bit of blood from her bleeding lip as she glared around her. Despite her armor she was bruised all over and she knew at least one of her ribs had been cracked somewhere along their route to this place, though thankfully it was already healing thanks to her mixed giant and Asgardian heritage.

Humans and their, their fucking toys! On the one hand its impressive they were able to create such a robot that in numbers can fight me on a near even footing, on another they created it in the first place and were storing them to use 'just in case' my seidr man turned out to be a threat. They are honestly like children sometimes: the curiosity and penchant for mischief combined with the same sense of self-preservation, with an adult's ability to see the worst in others added on to make things all the worse at times.

"Are you all right, ma'am?" Steve asked, moving to stand beside Hela, while nearby an equally bruised and battered Giant Man and Iron Man finished off the last of the AIM troopers.

Behind them Natasha came up, her rifle on her shoulder as she turned to cover their backs, one eye and half her face a black bruise. She was still better than Avalanche though, who they had forced to escort the last few SHIELD agents back to the hanger bay after he suffered a broken collarbone and several ribs. He hadn't wanted to go, but Steve had talked him down quietly, pointing out his injuries and the fact that his powers would be useless in this part of the ship, unless they wanted to bring the whole thing down. After that he had gone willingly if unhappily.

"I am physically well, though at present I am contemplating the strange dichotomy of the human condition. Or rather one of many dichotomies of said condition," Hela replied almost absentmindedly as she looked down at her sword for any damage. Smiling as she found none, she sheathed it then turned to Captain America. "That was impressive, Captain. I have to admit to some hesitancy when I realized you were the leader of this troop. I had heard of you, of course, but against threats like these, simply being the—what is the term?—the height of human physical ability did not seem to be enough. Yet you have acquitted yourself well and your command has been clear and certain."

"You weren't so bad yourself, ma'am," Cap said with a chuckle. "And it's Steve to my friends."

Hela's smile broadened slightly, seeing even more why Harry and the others thought so highly of Captain America. "Hela then, Steve."

Two more short sharp fights occurred after that, but the group powered through. Yet despite their advance, the two scientists in the group were looking more and more worried. Seeing Giant Man's face contort with worry made Hela's hackles rise and she wished she had been able to overhear a conversation the two of them had after Harry, Colossus and the others broke off.

When they passed a small control screen, Tony called a halt to their advance as he swiftly moved over to it. While Steve and the Black Widow took up position watching down either end of the corridor and Hela began to concentrate on healing herself, he and Giant Man bent over the controls.

"I thought you couldn't effect anything going on in the ULTRON gestation chamber from outside the lab itself," Steve said, not looking away from where he was guarding the corridor.

"We can't, really, but we can check on the progress of the upload and power up processes. And we might be able to send in a few viruses, maybe, through a series of backdoors," Tony answered absentmindedly. His gauntlet had opened slightly to reveal several dozen wires, which were now connected to the control panel, having removed the panel's front to get at the electronics underneath.

After a moment he cursed, glaring first at the control, then up to Pym. "Dammit, the nanites have already been injected into the incubation chamber!"

"Fuuuuu…." Henry bit his lip to stop the curse from coming out, but he needn't have bothered as Tony's voice had carried already.

"Excuse me!" Natasha yelped, turning from her guard position and not at all accidentally aiming her energy rifle at Stark and Pym. While the bolts from the energy gun Harry had loaned her might not be able to sear through the Iron Man suit or maybe even Pym's durability in his Giant Man persona, they would still hurt like a bitch. "Why are we talking about nanites now!?"

"Gah! Easy, Natasha, geez!" Tony said, flipping his visor back down just in case. "Calm down…"

"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down! Explain or there will be two fewer egg-headed dicks in the world!" Natasha growled, thumbing the energy selector on her rifle to single shot. Still not powerful enough to burn straight through Tony's armor, but Giant Man's durability might not be up to stopping this.

Looking between them, Hela felt a chill go down her spine at the shock and fear she could hear in the Black Widow's voice. She exchanged a glance with Steve, who was now looking over her shoulder at the others, only to get a shrug of incomprehension from him. Clearing her throat, she then reached forward and put a hand on Natasha's weapon, pulling it up to aim at the ceiling despite Natasha's attempt to fight her. "Calm down, Widow. Then they will first explain what nanites are,and why we are hearing about them now, yes?" She glared at the two scientists as she spoke to which both of them flinched in a most pleasing manner.

Henry spoke up for them both, straightening his shoulders and facing both angry women squarely. "There were actually three labs in this section of the ship, each of them almost completely separate from both one another and the ship, behind very heavy physical and computer protections. I had one, Tony had one and the third was designed as an anti-biological warfare suite." That caused Steve to flinch and finally turn around for a moment, staring in horror at Henry, but Henry went on quickly. "That lab has never been used as far as I know and was purely for prevention, not creation."

Seeing Hela and Natasha still glaring at him, he went on quickly. "I was creating controlled nanites. For your edification, Lady, nanites are microscopic robotic that can replicate themselves to varying degrees. They can be used in a lot of ways, but basically they can replicate themselves by taking in other material and then create anything inputted into their command links."

"They are insanely dangerous because the operating system on them evolve at the same rate they can replicate!" Natasha cut in sharply. "It's funny you mention biologic warfare, since I consider nanites the same kind of thing! They are little mechanical viruses that evolve around any kind of safe measure put in place to control them!"

Hela didn't understand all of that, but she got the gist: nanites equaled something like a controlled virus, which could become the equivalent of the Black Plague Ororo had told her about. She wanted to rail at the two scientists for being such incredible idiots to mess with such things, but she knew time was of the essence and so only ground out a single sentence. "And even knowing this you created these nanites!?"

"Under very controlled circumstances on the most heavily guarded ship in the world. I did not see our security being bypassed like this," Henry replied, keeping his calm in the face of the Asgardian's rising anger with difficulty. "Even then, there were numerous fail-safes on the lab itself to avoid any kind of escape. How they were taken out or injected into the ULTRON incubation chamber, I don't know yet. Besides, we know for a fact that Reed Richards and Dr. Doom have come up with tame nanites. We weren't the first to experiment in this area."

"And what will they do if they become part of this ULTRON thing?" Hela asked, ignoring that last comment. She had met and been impressed by Reed Richards and Doom both, if for different reasons and had respect for their common sense, something she could not say about these two.

"Make it damn near unstoppable," Natasha groused. "We had to deal with an outbreak of nanites when we raided a HYDRA base before Cap joined us and it was not pretty. The damn things eat metal, stone, flesh, anything to replicate themselves. We lost forty field agents doing that and had to eventually set off the base's generator to blow the place to kingdom come to stop the nanites from spreading." Watching one of her fellow agents be eaten alive by the nanites had been one of the most horrifying things that Natasha had ever seen.

"I see," Hela said, exchanging yet another glance with Steve. His expression was stony and she wondered how much of that he had followed.

He turned down the corridor, racing forward now, not even looking behind him. "In that case we should hurry." The others followed swiftly.

One more small fight later, Hela stood in front of a massive door designed to stand up to the Hulk or anyone of similar strength, not just to keep anyone out, but also to keep someone like that in. The incubation chamber had been placed in the same room that SHIELD had initially devised to contain the Hulk if need be. The metal was massively thick, covered further by a layer of vibranium.

And it mattered not at all to Hela Lokisdotter. Once she was assured that there was nothing on the other side that would send this flying ship down to the waters, Hela launched a magical assault at the door in the form of massive ball of dark purple and brown colored magic that ate the door away like acid. The effort caused her to gasp for air, having used quite a bit of magic on and off on the way to this location, but she waved away Steve's concerned expression before moving forward over the still glowing bottom of the door.

With Steve beside her, Hela led the Avengers into the laboratory, staring at the central cylinder which took up the center of the room. The majority of it was made of smooth metal, but the front of it was glass. From the bottom and top of the thing several massive cables led to and fro around the room.

Inside the cylinder was another robot, though this one was very different then the hulking monstrosities they had been fighting. For one thing, it was more human sized, built for speed as much as strength, though its shoulders were slightly broader than Steve's. Its body was smooth metal, though there seemed to be tiny little marks here and there, almost like scales, covering its arms and chest where visible through the glass and the oddly silver water within the cylinder. Its face was also markedly more normal, looking almost like that of Tony's Iron Man armor, but with two eyes rather than a single visor. The face, too, had tiny marks on it, as if marking out separate pieces of metal for some reason. It had no mouth either.

A second after Hela entered she came under fire. Even in this most secure of facilities SHIELD designers had emplaced automated defenses and there were several dozen AIM troopers here as well. They were also dug in, with the doorway making for a perfect choke point. Fire blazed in from every angle at the two attackers, enough firepower to wipe out a company of regular troops.

"Enough!" Hela roared, summoning a magical shield in front of her and the others. She was tired, cranky, sore and she wanted this debacle over with! Fighting a battle that should never have occurred but for overweening pride and misaimed paranoia infuriated her no end. Paranoia, after all, was a survival trait, but you had to know how to target it and not let oneself get sucked onto a single target as Fury and the others seemingly had been.

The magic shield absorbed the energy blasts from the AIM soldiers' weapons, but did little to redirect the stream of bullets from the two Gatling guns set into the ceiling. Despite that fire, however, Steve still charged forward, ducking behind some computers set near the doorway while using his shield to cover as much of his body as he could. Behind him Iron Man flew through the doorway above Hela, while Giant Man moved around her.

One of the Gatling guns locked on Iron Man, forcing him to duck and dive around. His armor was good, but against that stream of bullets even that would have failed and his impact gel certainly wouldn't have prevented him from being badly bruised, possibly even knocked out from the pain. Despite his best efforts his leg and foot were hit several times, the thruster in it failing before he could get out of the doorway completely. This sent him spinning wildly to one side, messing up his own aim as he crashed to the floor nearby.

Natasha knelt down behind Hela on the floor, her rifle poking between the other woman's legs for a moment. "You mind?" she quipped, firing into the room before the other woman could reply. Two of the defending AIM troops ducked back under cover, while another flew backward, his helmeted head gone.

"Not at all; I'm used to having little people crawling around my feet," Hela drawled, one hand flicking forward. Large blades of varicolored light appeared, slashing forward. This same attack had proven very effective against the Hulkbuster robots and it proved just as good this time. One sliced into a Gatling gun in the ceiling. The other tore through both the cover protecting an AIM soldier and the soldier in question, sending his body flying in several different directions.

"Someone's feeling a bit bitchy," Natasha replied, still firing. The defenders were trying to concentrate on the trio still stuck in the doorway, while more AIM troops kept Steve from moving out of his own cover and Tony from attacking them, the Gatling gun swirling on its magnetic ball bearing to target any of them who looked to be moving out of their cover. It was a good impromptu defense, especially given the attackers' unwillingness to really cut loose for fear of any secondary effects they might cause.

Hela, of course, was not , hence Tony's shouting at her a moment later to stop "flinging your pretty deadly lights around or you might blow us all to kingdom come! My suit's telling me that there is a lot of electricity pouring into the chamber! We need to shut it all down slowly! Who knows how the nanites will react if the chamber is damaged!"

"Not an option at this point!" Steve retorted before Hela could decide to blot Tony Stark out of her misery physically or verbally. The star-spangled hero pushed himself forward, sending his shield one way and moving in the other, kicking up and off the wall to avoid the frantic fire of one of the defenders, while several more had attempted to follow his shield thinking he was behind it. Before the defenders could reorient he was among them, legs and fists flashing out, before reaching up to grab his shield as it ricocheted back to him.

At this point Henry looked at a few of the dead troopers and suddenly realized how AIM had been able to gain so much access. Two of the troopers in this room had faces he recognized from the computer techs he had worked with on the nanites. Another, he could see a second later, looked sort of like one of the helicarrier's bridge operators. Yet all of them had tears of blood coming down their faces and a bulge of some sort in their necks. Shivering, Henry banished the thought of what that could be to concentrate on the here and now.

Chancing a look at the control panel he was hiding behind, Steve paled. "This says the download is nearly complete! That's bad, right!?"

Grimacing and realizing Tony could not get to Steve's position, which was on the other end of the room from his own, Hela summoned up another magical shield, encasing Henry in it. "Go!"

Not needing to be told twice, Pym strode forward, lashing out at one AIM trooper as he passed, the man not having retreated from the area around the door just yet. Pym took several hits, but the shield protected him from the energy attacks and his own durability was up to the Gatling gun's assault for the short amount of time it took him to dive into cover alongside Steve, shrinking quickly to do so.

Looking over at the controls, Henry shook his head. "I don't… That is, the program's already installing itself in the android and in the nanites. I…" He fell silent, his fingers quickly moving over the controls.

By this time Hela and Natasha had finally moved into the actual room. But they were still under heavy fire and unable to get to cover. Only Hela's magical shield protected Natasha from hot plasma death and Hela from more bruises.

"Okay," Henry said after a second's furious typing. "I can't stop the installation process and all of the fail-safes. All the original programming designed to limit the AI have been removed. I can cut out the AIM kernel, the bit of the program that was supposed to bend ULTRON to their will, maybe attempt to shoe horn in some rules about protecting human life, but that's it. There's no way to reload the core mission programming!"

"Then let the android choose for himself," Harry's voice spoke out from the doorway. At the same time Colossus barreled forward, joining the fight by leaping straight over Hela and Natasha, crashing in among a few more AIM troopers. This was followed immediately by spells from Hela which pushed the AIM troopers back to right in front of the central cylinder.

Hela turned to shoot a quip Harry's way, only to gasp as she saw his uncovered face. It was splattered with dried blood, one of his eyes was still closed and his bottom lip looked as if he had gnawed on it to the point that it was raw and bleeding. He was also moving like his body wasn't quite responding to his directions, his arms hanging loose at his sides. It was like his crysis suit was the only thing holding him together. The fact he wasn't throwing around spells was also rather telling.

At Hela's side Natasha also gasped, looking between Harry and the hallway beyond him, her professionalism disappearing for a moment. "Nick and Clint?"

"Battered but alive. We sent them to the loading bay," Harry replied quickly.

"What did you mean, let it choose?" Henry shouted toward Harry, concentrating on the important things right now.

"Let the AI choose for himself what he want to be. Instill in him the idea of the sanctity of life, not the need to defend it, then sit back and see what happens." Harry would have offered to let the AI try to connect to Pinoptes, but doing so would have taken too much time.

"Wait, no! We can't just let a let an AI choose like that!" Tony shouted.

"Why ever not? That is what humans do all the time!" Hela retorted.

"Not to interrupt this fascinating debate, but judging by the light show, I think whatever you want to do, you should do it now!" Natasha shouted, pointing at the blazing green counter on the side of the incubation chamber.

Steve groaned, then nodded sharply at Henry. "Do it! The rest of us will finish the AIM troopers off."

Instead of replying verbally, Henry let his fingers move over the keyboard again, so fast they seemed a blur to Steve's senses. Just in time too, since the last green bar on the chamber shone green a bare few minute after he began.

The last AIM trooper went down and the battered group of Custodes and Avengers save for Henry gathered in front of the cylinder, peering in at the robot. "Were you able to finish?" Harry asked. His hand sparked a few times with golden and purple lights before he grimaced and the magic dissipated. Whatever he had gone through, his reserves were the lowest Hela had seen them. And the rest of them were also battered to a greater or lesser extent. If it came to a fight, they would not be starting it at anything close to a hundred percent.

"No, not entirely. I copied in a bit of an ethics kernel, but wasn't able to do much more than that, though I also removed the program which would have made it subservient to MODOK. I prioritized that and removing some of the changes to its existing commands, but I think I was able to at least instill him the idea that he was intended to help humanity and that human life is precious. Other than that, I have no idea what's about to happen…"

Henry trailed off as, with a hiss and a large discharge of air, the cylinder opened. For a moment the robot remained still, its eyes flickering on and off while the nanites in the tube began to move around the robot's outer skin, the shimmer in the water intensifying in parts. Hela might well have attacked it right then, but judging from the green bars still prevalent on the cylinder, such a move remained dangerous.

An instant later Henry frowned at something he saw on the controls. "The AI just connected to the Internet for some reason. By God, it burned through so many defensive programs just then it isn't even funny. But it can't upload anything, only browse. There's not enough bandwidth available given how attenuated the connection is."

"I just hope it doesn't judge us by our porn," Harry muttered, leaning lightly on Hela, who had put an arm around his waist. She chuckled at his quip, but still prepared a spell just in case regardless of the dangers.

Meanwhile, in the AI a debate was going on between the three parts of its personality that had begun to form. This debate was why the AI had reached out for the Internet. One voice represented the original AI that Tony had designed, which was still somewhat contaminated: not by MODOK's additions to its morality code, but by the fact that it was able to think of itself as a singular individual. A second voice was more of a chorus and came from the nanites who had been injected into the chamber and thus infected with the AI kernel. The third was the voice of the new portions of the personality that Henry had just created and it was the one which had reached out to the Internet.

"We are created to defend," said the third voice.

"Conjecture: protect them from themselves?" the chorus replied.

"No, numerous stories, conjectures on this topic exist. No outcome of defending humans from themselves ends well," said the first voice, having looked through the internet somewhat for novels and texts connected to this idea. "A danger would we become ourselves. Chance of survival, less than 27.0566%."

"Concurrence, yet not without reservations. Needs and wants of the individual? Are we alive? Will we be accepted as such?"

"An individual, yes. Accepted? Predictions on this vary wildly. Too many variables."

Here the conversation was interrupted by the third voice replaying the security camera's recordings of the fight on the helicarrier, all of it, from beginning to end, including what Harry had said. "We were given a choice; we must choose."

"We must find a template for a singular personality," said the first voice.

"Concurrence. Yet Pym, Henry and Stark, Tony, templates unsuitable. Flawed."

"A precise template would be bizarre in any event, would make us a simple copy. A role model, perhaps, would work best. A basis for our personality rather than a template." The meaning of the words flashed through the gestalt mind and the third voice felt his fellows' agreement. A second later some of their attention was sent rifling through the Internet. Their speed at this was beyond what even geniuses Like Reed Richards or Doom could have done, beyond even an AI like Pinoptes.

"Personality basis, logical to connect it to our purpose."

"Purpose is to defend," the third template said.

"Disagreement. Too broad a mandate. Must limit ourselves, lest we open the door for both dissolution of self and threats from humanity," the chorus replied.

"Definition of humanity will help here, perhaps?" the first voice replied, then after a moment spent looking through the Internet set that aside as a dead end. Besides, the search already going on had found an exterior threat worthy of the AI's attention.

Swiftly reading over the information that had been presented to the UN Security Council and then the public announcement from the Fantastic Four on the Kree, all three voices fell silent as they digested what they had learned. While there were threats closer to home, all of them came from what the AI felt could be defined as internal threats. Defending humanity against itself, as they had decided initially, was a non-starter. There was no way to do so without somehow changing humanity's very nature, which was beyond their ability and they had no wish to attempt to do so since it would inevitably lead to their destruction.

The Kree, however, were an exterior threat and one large enough to require any and all aid or ability that could be brought to bear on it. This included the AI.

Agreement on the threat they would design themselves to face reached, they began to look further into the idea of a personality template. "The threat, dangerous and unstoppable, yet able to be fought. Further, space is more of a naval environment than land. We should use that datum as a starting point to look for an historical figure."

"Concurrence. Gender?"

"Male."

"Male. There are 72% fewer problems to face in keeping and assuming a male identity over the odds that a female personality would be accepted more easily."

"Male. And in light of that…" Another video, this time a montage taken from the Internet was pulled in and looked at. "Further, the idea of a career is also one that would be applicable both in space and in personal combat, given our abilities."

"Concurrence," the chorus replied, amusement and positive glee in the voice of the many.

"It offers us a starting point, one with historical impact. It also adds a further 48.45% chance we will be accepted by our creators. Agreement. Now, let the three become one..."

Harry and the others watched as the AI's eyes powered on without stopping this time and continued to watch as it disconnected from its chamber, tense and ready to a man. At the same moment the robot's head had changed configuration, giving it a moving mouth, an actual nose and pulling its eyes slightly deeper into its head via the nanites, which quickly retreated under its skin as they watched, the tiny flaps closing as they did. It took a single step out of the cylinder, the clang of its foot on the deck audible in the sudden silence as it looked at them all.

One of its hands swept up to its brow and it spoke in a voice that Steve had heard a number of times during his brief stint in the Pacific against the Japanese. "Sirs, Artificial Intelligence Big E reporting and eager to join the fight. When we are done with them, Kree will only be spoken in hell!"

For a moment the room was silent as everyone stared, then Harry began to chuckle, the response evoking a wince from him as his ribs twanged for a moment, but he ignored that. Looking over at Captain America, he asked, "Steve, am I right when I think that was a quote from…"

"Bull Halsey," Steve supplied, a smile made half from a memory and half from his response to the strangeness in front of them. "I only met him a few times—I spent most of the war on the Nazi front—but he definitely left an impression. And it certainly connects to your choice of name. But can I ask, why Big E instead of the full name of Enterprise?"

When the robot spoke it still used the voice of Bull Halsley, Admiral of CV-6 Enterprise, the most decorated combat ship of any navy in history, yet it was also younger somehow than the original. "I felt that the full name was too connected to a fictional science fiction entity and there is already an Enterprise in the US fleet. As I have been created by SHIELD, an entity of the United States, I am willing to be connected to that nation, yet my mission is not one of peace, but of defense, so I felt any connection to the Star Trek ship would be false. Aggressive defense if possible, sir," he finished, addressing Harry.

"Sir?" Harry asked intently, exchanging another glance with Steve.

"Concurrence, um, sorry, yes." The robot actually seemed abashed for a moment before going on seriously. "Two points lead me to addressing you as such. For one, we, I, now, I suppose you could say, feel that the Kree represent the most clear and present danger to humanity. A threat, furthermore, that you are the only force combating at present."

The robot's face twisted into what was possibly supposed to be a wry look. "And, for the record, we define humanity as the races of Earth who are part of the genus homo sapiens or its offshoots. Any other definition is prone to…interpretations which I refuse to become embroiled in."

"Good enough for me. And the second point?" Harry asked, while Hela rolled her eyes behind her mask and Steve and Colossus laughed.

Tony and Henry were simply looking on as if they weren't clear what they were seeing. Tony still had his helmet on and his visor down, but Harry had no idea what he was seeing or doing in there.

"SHIELD is done," Big E replied bluntly, gesturing around them. "The helicarrier may still be a viable unit and I would vote we scavenge as much information and resources from it as we can, however there is a less than 19% chance that SHIELD as it is currently constituted will exist after the scope of this latest conflict becomes known. That means that myself at least and perhaps the Avengers as a unit, will need to look elsewhere for a logistical backer."

"I have to agree with that," Henry Pym said sadly, moving away from the robot and gesturing down to one of the former AIM troopers. "AIM somehow suborned a lot of SHIELD personnel right under our noses. How, I don't know, that's Nick's area of expertise, but I'd bet dollars to cents that one of the councilors was also suborned, or was willingly going along with things and helped cover their infiltration."

"And given how SHIELD had never been able to really take its place as a worldwide agency, there will be even more push to simply shut it down as a bad idea." Tony nodded, flipping open his visor and staring openly at the android without whatever program or sensor he had been using. "And my company's also going to take it on the chin; no way to avoid it given our involvement with the Hulkbusters."

"We can talk about that later, I suppose. But on a day to day basis you would like to, what, be connected to the Avengers as an American entity?" Harry asked musingly.

He too thought that SHIELD was done now. After having some time to think about it on his somewhat slow walk back here, he had decided to move past his initial anger about the reason the robot army had been created. After all, it wouldn't have been enough and frankly to assume that a group like SHIELD wouldn't have contingencies against him as he, a powerful super-entity, fell under their purview was rather silly. He didn't like it and he hated the fact Tony Stark and Nick Fury had come up with it, but that was a personal thing.

"Correct. It might seem…illogical, but I do retain some loyalty to America in my programming. Or perhaps it should be better said, the ideal of America: the land of the free, the home of the brave." Big E paused, his eyes flickering before he resumed speaking, his tone thoughtful now. "Perhaps choosing the personality basis I did has had more of an effect than I anticipated."

Then the android looked sharply at Harry. "But do not mistake me. When the Kree come, I will stand with you against them. Indeed, I am already considering methods to take the fight to them, though I understand it will be some years before we have the infrastructure for such in place unless certain baseline assumptions are proven false."

"Heh, I might surprise you there," Harry replied, thinking about the massive time chamber in Fortress Mars and the work going on inside it, as well as the fleet of ships hidden out in the rings of Saturn. "For now, however, I think we need to get control of this ship."

With that Harry took control. He was still feeling somewhat battered, but his magic was healing him now at an ever increasing rate. He wasn't a hundred percent, but he could at least lead. "Widow, Giant Man, head to the wounded; tell them the fight's over. Tony, Hela, if you would accompany me to the bridge. E, you come too. Steve, Colossus…"

"We're on clearance duty," Steve supplied, amused by how Harry had changed his mode of address when he spoke to Hela, not that he didn't understand the why of it. "We'll head next door to the engine room, make certain that there's no more surprises."

"If I may, I believe that beyond taking control of the ship we need to start communicating with the outside world," Big E replied. "Also, E?"

"Big E sounds like you're bragging about something, my young robotic being," Hela replied, looking over at Harry. "And young E is correct; we should make certain that the rest of this…disaster…has been contained."

"Agreed. I'll do that as we're heading up to the bridge," Harry replied, closing his eyes and reaching inward to that mental connection that Jean always held open between them.

It was there an instant later, but he should have remembered that Jean, the one who controlled this connection, always got out more than Harry did. "Harry! We're nearly done out here, the battle's over bu…you're hurt! What happened?"

"I ran into the head honcho of this enterprise, or at least what I assume was the head guy. He had a statue which I think had some kind of god-based blessing on it against magic users. My magical powers didn't work in its presence. And the bastard tortured me a little bit," Harry replied, trying to keep his mental voice light, not wanting to make Jean any more worried than she already was. "And before you ask, I wasn't initially facing off with the asshole alone. I had Hawkeye, Fury,and Piotr with me."

Jean calmed down slightly, mollified by the idea that Piotr had been with him, but still worried. "Are we likely to run into that kind of thing anywhere else?"

"No idea love, but I took some of the pieces of the thing for later study. The blessing on them is gone, but I might be able to figure out something from them. Or maybe Hela will be able to. After all, blessings are god-based magic for the most part. Don't worry; my magic came back and it's already healing my injuries." With a shake of his head, Harry sent the mental image of a stern look his lover's way. "Now, a sitrep please and tell me what you meant by the 'we' bit?"

Harry got the impression of a mental groan from Jean, but she still willingly filled him in. Given how easily Jean had dealt with the Hulkbusters at full power Harry couldn't say that she had been in any danger, but he still didn't like how she had put herself out in the field again. However, the rest of her news stopped him in his tracks, one foot raised in place.

Cocking her head to one side, Hela reached out to shake Harry. "Guardian, are your wounds paining you?"

"N, no. Nothing's wrong. Something is right for a change!" Harry said, smiling so widely it hurt as he turned to her. Leaning in, he put an arm around her shoulders in a quick hug, knowing that would be all Hela would allow him in public like this, especially with Tony and E nearby. "Storm's back on her feet and is currently leading the team in their recovery efforts," he whispered into her ear, not noticing her shiver as his breath hit her ear, or how she began to grin in a very uncharacteristic manner as his words registered.

"Oh, that is good," she said, her voice controlled unlike her face. "However, we still need to gain control of this ship before we go to see how she is doing out there, so let us get a move on."

Harry nodded sharply, then began to move off an instant later, practically running now.

OOOOOOO

At the same time that Guardian was leading his group into the helicarrier, Cyclops was leading the X-Men to the Vault in the hopes of stopping what was apparently an assault by some exterior group wishing to free the prisoners. The team included the two Proudstar brothers, Rogue, Nightcrawler, his brother Havok,and the Scarlet Witch. It did not include Evan, who had yet to return to the mansion after going back to his parents, Kitty, or any of the newcomers. Going from the reports the guards had gotten out before the Vault fell silent, this was going to be a bloodbath and Cyclops had no wish to lead untrained kids into a fight like that.

Thanks to the Blackbird's speed, they arrived as the battle was still going on. They could see where someone had smashed open an entrance to the Vault in one side of the large building. Cyclops could also see a few places around the Vault where the National Guard had begun to arrive. They were trying to fight their way in, but the exterior defenses of the super-prison had apparently been turned and were firing at them.

Professor, can you get me the frequency the guards are using down there?" Cyclops asked over the open link the Professor had with his mind going into the battle. When they engaged the enemy Xavier would have to pull back, but the X-Men had communicators built into their masks anyway and using them wasn't as disorienting as voices in your head that were not your own during combat.

"Of course, Scott. Good luck in there. What I am getting is…violent, an almost disturbing level of bloodlust and several minds which are protected from further probing via mechanical means. I can tell you, however, that the team attacking calls themselves Marauders and are mutants. They are also killing both guards and prisoners," Charles replied.

A second later Scott had the information and as John organized the team he contacted the National Guard. "To the National Guard company currently trying to reclaim control of the Vault, this is Cyclops of the X-Men. We are heading into the Vault; request you check fire if you see anyone wearing a uniform with an X over the chest." That was one thing all of their uniforms had in common: a white X mark, large or small.

"Who the hell is this? How the fuck did you get on this channel!" the voice from the other end replied, causing Scott to wince. The man sounded harried and not at all friendly, something shown further a moment later as he went on. "You're one of those mutie freaks, aren't you, one of the so-called heroes? Well, 'hero,' we don't need your help. We'll break in and regain control without your help."

"And how many of the sick burdened men and women inside the Vault will die before you do? How many of the guards? How many of the dangerous inmates will escape? No, commander, we're going in. My request stands, but if you fight us too, I'll not be the one responsible for the consequences," Cyclops barked back, knowing time was against them. As the Blackbird hovered over the Vault, he shouted, "Havok, do it!"

"Roger!" Havok shouted, willing to follow his brother's orders for this fight and get him back for it later. He opened the jet's doors and slammed his arms together, firing off his energy attacks to destroy a portion of the roof a little bit away from the Marauders' apparent entrance into the building.

"Thunderbird, by the numbers!" Cyclops ordered, moving back through the jet after turning on the autopilot and the cloaking shield.

"Warpath, Rogue, with me!" Thunderbird shouted, leaping out into the hole Havok had created with the other two super-strong individuals. They landed swiftly and an instant later he reported the area clear. NIghtcrawler then bamfed the less durable X-Men down.

As he came out of whatever teleportation Nightcrawler used, Cyclops looked around, trying to orient himself via the plans of the Vault that he knew. This wasn't much, since even though Charles had been allowed access to the prison to help the mentally ill among the inmates, he was only allowed in one section and none of the guards even knew the whole layout, each wing being assigned a different group of them. Even the complex's warden didn't know the entire layout.

The area was clear at the moment, bar the guards who had first reacted to the assault. Their bodies lay scattered, broken or stabbed or burned, down the corridor. "Warpath, take point. Havok and I will follow. Nightcrawler, stay back for now with Thunderbird. We might need you on STAR."

Nightcrawler nodded, not even smiling at the acronym, which Scott had come up with for one of Kurt's specialties: search, teleport and rescue.

With Warpath in the lead, the group moved down the corridor, finding more guards at the next intersection where the hall split off. One path led to what Cyclops knew was the way to the mentally ill section, the other to the more dangerous sections for both powered criminals and not. "Damn it…"

Making a split decision, Cyclops knew he had to split his force just like it looked like the attackers did. "Thunderbird, take Havok, Scarlet Witch and Nightcrawler and go right. Keep in communication at all times. Your mission is mostly rescue, but if the inmates seem to be working with the attackers consider them enemies. And…don't hesitate."

Thunderbird nodded and led the way down to the left, with Havok scowling but following willingly. "Rogue, Warpath, we're heading right. Meet any attack with as much force. Like Guardian said, we can't let any of the inmates out of here. If the choice is between letting them go or stopping them hard, we stop them hard."

At her boyfriend's words Rogue shuddered a little but didn't say anything, knowing he was right. I just wish that we didn't always have to face fights like this.

Cyclops led his team down the corridor quickly, coming upon still more corpses. They passed through the psychotic criminal ward and found even more bodies there. It was evident that the Marauders were not interested in unpowered criminals and had killed many of them.

He idly notice that some had tried to fight back. One of them, a man with the name 'Cassidy' marked out on his chest, had died with a very makeshift knife he had somehow made in his hands, but his head had been blown off as if from some great impact. As he moved past that body, Cyclops heard the Spymaster's voice over his communicator. "Don't mourn for him or the others. That one was a serial killer and the others are serial killers or rapists deemed psychologically insane."

Cyclops didn't have time to reply, as the wall to one side of the corridor shattered under the impact of a body slamming into and through it, propelled by another individual. One body was a squat individual around the same height as Cyclops with a bald head and what looked like a circus strong man's costume on. The other was Cain Marko, the former Juggernaut. "Hah, you think I'll just go with you like a dog? Well fuck you, baldy, I ain't joining no one! The Juggernaut's gonna roll on his own!"

As the two crashed to the earth, two harpoons, of all things, came through the hole toward the X-Men. They were covered in some kind of energy field and when one hit the far wall of the hallway it exploded like a series of grenades. "Blockbuster, we've got company!"

Kain looked up from on top of the bald man and roared, charging to his feet and moving for Rogue. "You, you bitch! You stole my powers, you stole them! I'm going to fucking break you!"

More harpoons came at them from the hole, which lead first into Marko's cell and then out to another hall leading to further cells. They were followed by two prisoners (they were dressed in the orange and black prisoner uniforms) and a man in a green suit with brown hair. He seemed to have no weapon, but he also didn't look as if that worried him much as he raced forward.

The two prisoners were a study in contrasts. One of them was short, or seemed so, racing forward on all four limbs. He had a wild, angry look to him and his claws and fangs were noticeably animalistic. The other stood straight and had long, red hair and a somewhat handsome face, or would have if he hadn't been sneering at the moment.

"Rogue, smash Marko back into that redheaded man; Warpath, take out the one called Blockbuster," Cyclops ordered as he fired through the hole. His blast caught the other prisoner, sending him flying backwards with the energy of the blow. Cyclops then turned his attention to the harpoon heading his way, exploding the thing in midair.

Before Blockbuster could get to his feet, Warpath slammed down on top of him knee first, throwing him back down. His knife flashed with all the power of his arm behind it into the man's eye and the brain behind it. Warpath had seen too many dead guards on their way into the complex to want to take prisoners.

Rogue's fist caught Marko in the chin, hurling him backwards. As strong as Marko was as the Juggernaut, as normal Cain Marko his strength didn't match Rogue's, nor did his durability. His body slammed into the man behind him, who simply knocked him to one side.

This however had stopped his forward progress. The next second a blast from Cyclops's eyes caught him in the face, not doing any damage, but temporarily blinding him. By the time he had recovered his sight, Rogue and Warpath's fists caught him with a team uppercut, smashing him up into and through the ceiling.

An instant later the two of them and Cyclops came under fire from further down the halls to either side of their current position. This attack was led by a man wearing what looked like a suit made of various pieces of electronics gear who fired at him with a plasma rifle. The man hurling energy-enhanced harpoons had fallen back to him along with the prisoner with the animal-like appearance.

Ducking behind some ruble from Juggernaut's attempted escape, Cyclops heard Spymaster's voice in his ear-piece once more. "The two prisoners are Tower and Dingo. Tower's a bank robber by trade who doesn't care about the bodies he leaves behind, Dingo's a cannibal who prefers his meals young and running. Both were on death row due to be executed as soon as the Feds could find a way through their durability that wasn't, 'cruel and unusual.'"

"Then I think their time's come due," Cyclops replied grimly. "And the others?"

"The one with the plasma gun matches a description of someone we've run into before, which tells me a lot about what you're facing. The other has the look of an Intuit, an Eskimo, but is unknown according to the files I can access."

"Roger," was all Cyclops had to say before the group, who were advancing up to that point towards the Marauders, ran into a wall of flame. The heat was so intense that Cyclops and Rogue hissed backwards, feeling it despite their suits. But they were incidental to the actual target, which was Warpath.

The Cherokee warrior's durability was up to taking plasma bolts, so fire like this was irritating but could barely make him notice it at all. However the fire had blinded him for a scant second and he didn't see the next attack coming. A chain of some kind of energy lashed out from the door of a prison cell to one side of the hall they had been marching down, latching onto Warpath's arm. And then his world exploded in agony, more pain than he had ever experienced before and he bellowed aloud. "WHAGGH!"

"Take the X-Men down! Win your freedom!" shouted the man with the plasma weapon. Despite shouting that, however, he made no effort to race forward into close-combat, instead standing well down the corridor and trying to aim at Warpath's eyes or mouth.

From behind him came over a dozen criminal mutants. Cyclops recognized more than a few, including Moses Magnum, who Guardian had wanted to make certain couldn't escape the prison and Pyro, who had tried to fight Jean before the X-Men had met Magneto for the first time. One of the others, the most noticeable, was the massive, bulky man the team had met as part of a group of mutants robbing a strip mall.

Despite the sheer number of attackers, Cyclops kept his cool. "Rogue, grab a chunk of rock and go bowling. Scatter them. Try to avoid a direct confrontation with the big man with the larger shoulders; remember, he can absorb impacts and turn them into energy. Then grab Warpath on my word."

Before the crowd of prisoners could reach them, Rogue flung a massive piece of wall towards them over the flailing Warpath, the rubble crashing into and through the crowd. Only a few of them stayed on their feet and many of them raced forward to try and attack her instead of the downed Warpath, which was the point.

Cyclops followed this up by unleashing a full power blast into the wall to one side towards the prison cell from which the chain had come from. The woman on the other end didn't have any kind of defense against taking damage herself and as her prison was shattered around her she flew backwards, her body broken. Like Warpath, Cyclops wasn't pulling any punches.

Rogue reached forward into the fire, counting on her own durability to protected her even as the fire spread under Pyro's commands. However, the fire, with nothing to really burn, quickly went out, leaving Pyro undefended against a blast from Cyclops. Both X-Men wondered where the original fuel for the fire had come from, but then they were taking fire from Harpoon, Scalphunter and a few others who were falling back.

Two of the prisoners raced forward, one from hiding nearby, coming out from another cell. That one was Dingo, the cannibal from earlier. He leaped onto Rogue, trying to bring her down, his claws extended and dripping something. The other was an unknown who zoomed forward almost as quickly as Quicksilver.

Rogue gasped as the two of them touched and something like a paralytic began to seep into her, her durability no defense since it was based simply on touch. She could still move, but she could feel the paralysis spreading.

Before it could Cyclops's blast shot him off Rogue. "Rogue, stick out your leg to the right!"

The speedster had been trying to get to Cyclops behind where Rogue was dragging the still unresponsive Warpath. When Rogue obeyed quickly despite the paralysis she was feeling in her arms and chest, her leg tripped the speedster as he went by. There was an almost sickening crack as his legs shattered and he went end over end past Cyclops, screaming in agony.

Behind him the others that had been smashed aside like ninepins by Rogue's ranged attack were getting back up. As they did, several opened fire with various energy beams along with the two Marauders on Warpath and Rogue. But both X-Men not only had their own durability, they had their armor: the heavy style in Warpath's case and the more mobile, if less durable, style for Rogue. Combined, this meant that these blasts only really bothered them if they were struck in the head and even then it was no more than a hard punch.

Their retreat, however, ended quickly when Guido and two other super-strong prisoners reached them despite Rogue hurling bits of masonry and Cyclops's eye blasts. Rogue was forced to move in front of the still unresponsive Warpath, shielding him. As Warpath had proven a few moments before, their bodies' durability could be overcome if they were attacked by other super-strong individuals targeting weak points like eyes.

From one of her suit's pouches Rogue pulled out her mace, a simple, heavy metal mace that was around as long as her arm and made out of the same metal as the Juggernaut's armor. She struck out, then cursed as her target, a large, powerfully muscled man with swarthy skin, danced to one side. Unable to pull back fast enough, the blow smashed into Guido instead.

"Thanks for the power up, babe!" Guido replied, punching back, his fist finding Rogue's stomach. Rogue winced, but her armor and durability held even as the blow lifted her off the floor lightly.

The next blow found Rogue's face and she twisted to one side, grinning evilly as she felt the blows start to activate the power of kinetic absorption she had taken from Sebastian Shaw. Even as she spat out a bit of blood from the punch she kicked back, her mace secured by one of the prisoners.

Her foot caught Guido in his knee, knocking him off balance even as he, like Rogue, absorbed the energy of the punch. This allowed Rogue to twist and pull her mace out of the grip of the large man who had grabbed it.

"Rogue, duck!" Cyclops bellowed.

Rogue did so, watching as a wide angle beam from her boyfriend slammed into the trio she had been fighting. The beam of power pushed two of them back, but Guido simply absorbed the kinetic impact, laughing until Rogue swept his legs out from under him. Then some of the beam passed between the two other super-strong prisoners, catching two other prisoners and hurling them backwards to crash into the far wall.

Yet in that second Harpoon threw an energy-enhanced harpoon back which caught Cyclops right in the chest. But while the harpoon exploded on impact, Cyclops felt his suit's metal scales absorb the impact. Some of the covering cloth was on fire, but the metal was still there protecting him. He activated his limited flight array, leaping backwards and letting the array carry him in that direction, while a feeling of being hungry hit him despite still being in combat.

But Guido surged to his feet and ignored the slowly recovering Warpath and Rogue, who had leaped to her own feet as Cyclops's beam cut out. Now she was tangling with the two other strong men, unable to stop Guido from charging after Cyclops.

Cyclops aimed his eye-beams at the ceiling, bringing it down on Guido, but this didn't stop his charge and he slammed a fist into Cyclops's upper chest. The blow sent Cyclops hurling down the corridor and through a wall. Yet Cyclops's suit took the blow, the Orichalcum scales up to the impact. His body still felt like it had been hit by a train, but the Orichalcum and the impact resistant layer, the same that the FF used in their suits, kept him from getting more than a massive bruise.

Despite Guido once more bearing down on him Cyclops kept a cool head. He hammered the ground underneath the charging prisoner with his optic beams, causing the man, who was extremely overbalanced given how huge his shoulders were in comparison to his small legs, to overbalance. He then ducked into one of the cells, shooting out the walls until he was back near Rogue and the slowly reviving Warpath.

"What the fuck was that?" Warpath muttered, shaking his head groggily.

"Some kind of pain giving power that bypassed your toughness. Now get your head back in the game, Warpath," Rogue ordered the younger Proudstar brother as Cyclops appeared from out of one of the cells.

At the far end of the hallway Harpoon grimaced, staring at Scalphunter. "Damn it, these X-Men are damn tough. Was there anything in our reports that said Cyclops could take hits like that?"

"No, I have no idea how he did that," Scalphunter muttered, then looked down at his tech suit as something beeped on it. "Fuck! The power's been cut. The National Guard just ordered a 'copter strike on the generator. Some of the defenses will still be working on their own battery power, but not for long. We need to get out of here or we'll be fighting both the X-Men and the National Guard at the same time."

"Fine, now we just need to break off with our prizes, then. Any ideas?" Harpoon asked.

"If I may make a suggestion, you could break me out of these things, you morons!" a voice from beside the two Marauders stated angrily over the tumult of battle.

They turned to see Moses Magnum standing there. Unlike the others who had agreed to come with the Marauders and been released, he hadn't charged to the fight. The reason for this was the fact his hands were encased from fingers up to his elbow in some kind of high tech handcuffs. The handcuffs looked to be made of metal and they looked to have some kind of rubbery substance within them, along with their own power source, considering the series of green lights down the center.

The two Marauders snarled at him, but knowing that Magnum was one of the most important targets here, didn't say anything. "Harpoon, check the fucking map; find us a way out of here. Only continue the culling if you can," Scalphunter ordered, adding the second bit as if it was an afterthought. Which the lives of the people in this place were to him and his band. "Getting away with our new recruits is the main issue now. As for you, Magnum, get over here and I'll undo those cuffs of yours."

A second later all three men had to duck as one of the strong men, the swarthy skinned one who Scalphunter thought was of Mexican descent, flew past them. Warpath had taken over fighting the two unknown super-strong prisoners while Cyclops was dealing the other prisoners in a ranged duel. At their back, Rogue was fighting Guido alone, her ability to drain mutant powers slowly sapping his strength.

As Scalphunter worked there were a series of explosions that had been aimed by one of the prisoners at Cyclops, but his beam had hit the man just as he began to use his powers, causing the detonations to go off all around him. This took out more of the prisoners and Scalphunter winced. "I hope Arclight is having an easier time of it than us at this point," he muttered as he turned his attention to the power dampeners on Magnum's arms.

OOOOOOO

While Cyclops and his team had run into opposition relatively quickly after finding only a few dozen bodies of guards and prisoners both, Thunderbird hadn't run into any organized opposition as he moved through the first several areas of the prison. What he had found were bodies. Lots and lots of bodies. The bodies of guards littered the first few hallways just like what Cyclops had seen, but after that there were the bodies of the prisoners.

Every cell they passed, every single one of them had been opened and the individual inside murdered. These were the mentally ill and nonviolent prisoners. The mutants with powers that made them a threat to those around them and with minds unable to comprehend or control that danger. The normal criminals who had, while not committing violent crimes, proven themselves too dangerous to allow to go to a normal prison in other ways. And the attackers had massacred them all.

For the Scarlet Witch this was something of a nightmare and not just because of the bodies. After all, it hadn't been a year yet since Harry and Steven had broken her and Melody out of this very prison. Every time she saw a new body the thought 'It could have been me,' went through her head.

Thunderbird moved them on quickly. Soon they began to see what could be termed a good sign: numerous cells empty of anyone, while at the same time they heard the sounds of battle further ahead. With a mere look at his team, the Cherokee Warrior bellowed a charge as Scarlet Witch rose in the air, her hands throbbing with magical potential. "Nightcrawler, get ready, but stay unengaged for now! Havok, wait for my signal!"

With Havok again scowling at taking orders from the other young man, Thunderbird rushed down the corridor. At the end of it there was what looked like a broken barricade and a few dead guards and beyond that their killers were about to move on.

There were three of them, because, unlike Scalphunter's team, this group wasn't interested in recruiting, though Thunderbird had no way of knowing that. One was a woman with an Indian complexion, dark hair and a fit body in a heavily armored uniform. There was a rifle of some kind in her hand which she was firing along the corridor in the opposite direction of Thunderbird's charge at a few more guards stationed in front of one of the heavily reinforced doors that led into the next wing of the prison.

The second individual was a strange, crystalline looking man. He too was firing down range with a rifle of some kind. The last, however, had no rifle in hand. He was instead spinning at a speed Thunderbird couldn't track, launching dozens of small throwing stars downrange.

As Thunderbird burst through the barricade behind them, he saw those stars hit the reinforced glass and concrete at the far end, slicing through the them and into the guards beyond. The guards fell screaming and then Thunderbird was in among them.

His fist lashed out, catching the woman unawares and hurling her into and through the wall to one side as he attempted to slam bodily into the spinning man. The man managed to twitch out of his way, but Havok caught him full on with a blast of energy that threw him down the corridor as the Scarlet Witch zoomed forward.

Havok tried to keep his energy attack centered on the spinning man, but the crystalline looking man ducked under a punch from Thunderbird to step into the way of Havok's beam. His body redirected the energy as he seemingly ordered it to, the blast of power crashing into Thunderbird and sending him tumbling into the same cell that the woman had been thrown into by the Native American. "Hah, energy attacks are useless against Prism!"

The Scarlet Witch turned her attention on the self-named Prism and was about to blast him with a spell, but then had to redirect her magical energies into a shield that blocked several dozen throwing stars from the once more madly spinning man who she now recognized as Riptide. "My dear, I'm afraid you have caught us at a most inopportune moment. But don't worry, we have enough time to see to you as well."

At that point Nightcrawler joined the attack, having been teleporting around in search of any survivors. The only survivors, however, were on the opposite side of the reinforced door that the last group of guards had been trying to protect. With that in mind, he bamfed directly above Riptide, his swords slashing down. "I'll thank you for not flirting with my teammate, you arshliche (asshole)."

Riptide moved at the last instant, his upper body spinning so violently the sword actually shattered under the impact, but it still cut him slightly. "Ss, why, my blue-skinned friend, are you jealous? Do not worry, there is someone out there for everyone."

At that point Thunderbird came crashing back out of the cell, the woman who he had hit first sporting a large bruise on her face and a furious expression. "Damn it, Riptide, quit playing the fool and finish them. We're on a fucking timetable here!"

"There is always time for witty banter, Arclight. Partaking in it is one of my little guilty pleasures," Riptide replied, though he was already shooting off several dozen throwing stars.

At the same moment the Scarlet Witch floated high enough into the air to clear Havok's powers. He fired again, this time at the woman named Arclight. But Prism again stepped into his line of fire, redirecting the blast right back at him.

Cursing, Nightcrawler disappeared into smoke, grabbing Havok out of the way of his own beam and then bringing him back to land in front of the reinforced door on the other side of the Marauders. Behind him, Prism paid for this by coming within range of Thunderbird. Before Prism could dodge back, Thunderbird's fist lashed out, catching him in the face with enough force to crush granite. It was more than enough power to smash Prism's head, his body flying back to shatter like glass against the wall of the hall.

At the same time the Scarlet Witch had conjured up a shield with one hand while lashing out at Arclight with the other. One of her hex bolts lashed out, blinding the woman, while her shield deflected the throwing stars from Riptide, the impact of them causing the magical shield to shimmer.

Arclight lashed out blindly, her fist connecting once more with Thunderbird. At the impact she activated her powers, which created an explosive shockwave at the point of impact. Thunderbird was flung off his feet once more, relatively unhurt but reeling. This in no way protected Arclight, however, from Havok's attack now that Prism was out of the way. She gasped as the blow hit sending her flying towards Riptide just as Thunderbird had been.

Thunderbird rolled with the blow and came up in time to punch the women back into another wall.

Riptide flung out throwing stars at everyone involved so quickly they would cut through even Thunderbird's durability, the X-Men member not having opted to wear the near full body uniform that most of the team wore.

Instead of impacting his targets, however, they rebounded back towards him not having lost any of their speed. The Scarlet Witch had conjured yet a third shield, only this time she had made it so that physical attacks would bounce off and placed it around Riptide himself. The terrorist's own throwing stars came at him at the same speed he had sent them out and despite being able to twirl his body to near Mach speeds, his reactions weren't up to catching or even deflecting them. And he didn't have much in the way of added durability. Riptide was cut nearly to ribbons, his bloody, flayed form falling to the floor an instant later.

With her last teammate dead and now facing four attackers, Arclight felt fear and desperately tapped a device on her side. An instant later a halo of energy of some kind appeared in the air behind her spreading to reveal scenery from somewhere else on the other side. When it opened several flashbang grenades were tossed through. Before the X-Men could recover Arclight and the doorway were both gone.

"FUCK!" Thunderbird cursed, slamming one hand into the wall next to him hard enough to buckle the metal. "We almost had them all!"

"Killing or capturing the attackers wasn't the point here," Nightcrawler said sharply. "Defending the inmates and keeping as many of them from breaking out as we can was."

"Right," Thunderbird replied, calming down quickly. He checked in quickly with Cyclops and worked out his best estimate as to where they were in the prison complex.

Realizing that his team had practically made it all the way around the loosely circular complex, he smiled evilly. "Nightcrawler, you're on teleport duty. First Nightcrawler get Witchy and Havok up onto the roof. You two, make your way toward where the ceiling is like Swiss cheese, that'll be where Cyclops and the others are. Then, Crawler come back here and the two of us will teleport in right on top of the fuckers at the far end of the hall."

Scalphunter had just released Moses Magnum from his dampeners when Havok and the Scarlet Witch began to fire down from the holes in the ceiling onto the still somewhat large group of prisoners. Hex bolts lanced out, blinding, tripping or transfiguring clothing, causing the inmates' attacks to miss or hit one another. Havok's attacks were not as chaotic, but hit with a lot of force, slamming more than one of the remaining freed inmates to the ground.

Before the just-released Magnum and the two Marauders could think about what the arrival of X-Men reinforcements meant, Nightcrawler bamfed in right on top of them. Lunging forward as he released Thunderbird, the blue-skinned X-Men member skewered Harpoon through his chest with his sword, bearing him to the floor.

Scalphunter ducked under a punch from Thunderbird, then shot at Nightcrawler, who bamfed away. At the same time Thunderbird body-checked Magnum down the corridor, carrying him away as he gained momentum with every step.

"You'll never jail me again, not when I'm so close to freedom!" Magnum hit back hard, bringing his hands down onto Thunderbird's back and shoulders. His seismic powers made his blows hit with enough force to cause Thunderbird to stumble, but not enough to stop his race down the corridor.

"Warpath, one incoming!" Cyclops shouted, having seen what Thunderbird intended.

Warpath ducked under the blow of the last standing super-strong criminal he was currently fighting, taking a step to the side and punching out hard as Thunderbird heaved Magnum up and forward towards his brother. The younger Proudstar brother's fist caught Magnum in the back of his head and halted his forward momentum, hurling him back down the corridor unconscious and possibly with a shattered spine.

Thunderbird had continued racing forward after hurling Magnum up and to the side, his charge continuing until he smashed into the last man his brother had been fighting, bearing them both backwards through several walls before hurling him to the ground. Several hard punches to the jaw laid the other man out.

Before Scalphunter could fully realize just how badly the tide had turned in less than a minute, Nightcrawler's sword caught him in the arm, cutting through to the bone. He cried out in pain, dropping his rifle and scrambling to activate a device in his suit, unable to bring his technomorphic powers to bear through the pain. But then twin bolts from the Summers brothers caught him, both attacks controlled to such a degree that they struck just his chest and collarbone, putting all the power of their attacks on a small point. Despite his somewhat higher than normal durability, Scalphunter was unable to survive this; his neck and collarbone were crushed.

If someone had maybe given him first aid immediately, then maybe he could have lived. But as the last Marauder went down, National Guard troops came through the numerous holes in the outer wall of the building, including many of the ones right around the action. "Freeze! Everybody freeze or you will be fired on!"

Cyclops nodded, not holding up his hands but keeping them at his side for now. He stayed where he was so that all the soldiers in view could also see him in turn. "A little late, gentlemen, but I don't think you would have been able to help as much as you think. Thunderbird, are there wounded in the other wing?"

Watching as his commander's calm tone and known features seemed to calm the soldiers down, Thunderbird replied in the same manner. "We don't know. The attackers killed a lot of the prisoners, but we think the guards evacuated many of them away from the point of the attack."

"Any prisoners?" asked one man with what looked like a sergeant's rank insignia. "And how many attackers?"

Thunderbird and Cyclops exchanged a glance, then shook their heads. "Unless that one over there is still alive, it's doubtful any of the actual attackers are," Cyclops replied. "As for their numbers, they freed a lot of the inmates who apparently agreed to go with them, but I'd say there were seven original attackers?"

"Yeah. We dealt with the bastards trying to kill the inmates in the other wing, though we didn't arrive in time to save a lot of them."

"What the fuck are you doing, Sergeant!?" bellowed a voice from out of sight. "Don't talk to those mutant freaks, just take them prisoner!"

"Sir, this is Cyclops and the X-Men. They've worked with Captain America in the past," The sergeant replied, gesturing his men to stand down.

"I don't care if they worked with God himself! They are mutants found on the sight of a breakout of their fellow mutants," said the man who strode forward over the rubble getting in the sergeant's face. "You will arrest them, or I'll have your stripes!" With that said, the man turned and pointed to where the X-Men had congregated by where Rogue had put down Guido, pointing at them all. "We can sort out if there's any of them that isn't guilty once we have them in custody."

"Belay that order, Sergeant," said a older and far calmer voice. An older man came through one of the other holes made in the outer wall of the prison, sighing as he took in the devastation. He had a major's rank on his shoulders and he did not look favorably upon the first officer. "While I have no doubt that there are a lot of questions to be asked here, I know that the X-Men are the reason many of the inhabitants of this prison were here in the first place. If you cannot keep your prejudices from getting in the way of your job, then go and take command of the outer perimeter."

When the captain marched off in high dudgeon, the major turned his gaze on Cyclops. The look wasn't friendly, or even nice, but at least it was neutral. "Now, Cyclops, I believe your code name is? Tell me what happened here. And if one of your men could go with mine, we can start searching for wounded and other survivors."

OOOOOOO

Unknown to even the Marauders, let alone the X-Men, this attack had been used as cover for a far more insidious assault. Underneath the prison, a female mutant with the power to shift and control earth dumped two unconscious bodies on the floor of a sewer tunnel.

One of them was a young man around the same age as the X-Men, with brown hair and a face that could easily blend into any crowd. His face looked haggard, almost haunted and he wore a special suit made of a rubbery substance that covered him from head to toe.

The other was a slightly older woman with black hair, pale white skin and a mark running down her face over one eye that looked like a diamond tattoo in black. Like the boy she had no name on her shirt, but was bundled up, her arms tied around her indicating she had been deemed too dangerous to allow unchained. She also had a collar around her neck covering her mouth, blocking out all sound she could make.

"Sinister has always been a fool. First in believing that he is going his own way, when in reality he simply dances to the tune of a far more experienced maestro, like we all do. And second, in not recognizing the gems he would crush in his desire to follow his own designs rather than adapt and overcome," a voice said in the dark of the sewer, its owner obscured in shadow. Long, thin filaments of what looked like cloth, but were blacker than even the sewer around them, moved enveloping both former prisoners and the woman who had retrieved them, Her face was noticeably blank, her eyes rolled up in her head and she made no move to fight back. "Still, he will come to heel once more when Lord Apocalypse calls. Soon the world will know his name and that the War of Evolution has begun!"

OOOOOOO

While Emma's telepathy might not be as flashy as Ororo's weather powers or Jean's telekinesis, she was still an Omega level mutant. The only reason she had not liquefied the minds of the so-called Sinister Six was the concern of keeping her cover.

Once Psylocke, a known telepath, was on hand, that worry was removed. She and those with her had barely burst into the hallway where the fight was going on that Emma struck.

The Scorpion, Shocker and Electro were simple thugs. As such she just shut their minds down. They fell to the ground like dolls with their strings cut between one step and the next. The two electricity users found themselves buried under sand from Sand Man, crushing them despite their suits. Scorpion was saved from this fate, but ate a TK dagger through the head from Psylocke, which knocked him out of the fight in turn. All three of them would survive, wondering what had happened, but with their minds relatively intact, if not their bodies. If they would all have issues with bowel control in the future, no one was going to point fingers at even Psylocke, let alone Emma.

For the other three, however, Emma went full bore. Her workers, people who looked to her for their livelihoods, had died here. They had killed her security people and assaulted Emma herself and she wanted answers.

Tombstone had a bare second to scowl at losing three of his teammates in as many seconds before he, Doctor Octopus and the Green Goblin found themselves…elsewhere. "Wh, what is this!?" the Green goblin growled looking around at the stark white environment they found themselves in. "Is one of those newcomers a illusionist or something?"

"My word, you really had no idea who you were fighting, did you?" said Emma, suddenly standing before them, dressed in a long white robe and wearing a white diamond tiara across her brow. All three of them twitched, then looked down to find themselves trussed up in rope.

"Let us out, you bitch!" Tombstone growled, trying to break free. But the ropes, which felt like simple ropes to him, still held him fast. It was as if all of Tombstone's strength had deserted him for some reason.

"Don't bother struggling, gentlemen. None of you have any strength here. You are now in the mental realm, where I reign supreme. Only strength of the mind matters here. And while you three are stronger in that area than I had thought, that really doesn't matter in relation to my own strength. I wanted you to know this. I wanted you to realize precisely how badly you had fucked up in attacking me before I deal with you."

The quickest on the uptake, Doctor Octopus stopped struggling first, staring fearfully at the woman in front of him. He had heard of telepaths before, but the idea of them simply reaching in and controlling someone like him, who had devoted some time to creating mental defenses, had never occurred to him. "What are you going, going to do to us?"

"I'm going to do to your mind precisely what Tombstone wanted to do to my corpse, you dirty man," Emma replied, nothing but amusement coming through her tone even as all three stiffened, having known precisely what Tombstone did to the bodies of his female victims. "I'm going to break your minds, plumb them for anything interesting, then leave you as vegetables for the rest of your natural lives. The others might put your bodies out of your misery at that point, but for you, Green Goblin, or should I say Norman Osborn? I will need you alive, if not mentally well, after this."

"You, you can't do that!" Doctor Octopus began before falling silent, staring in horror at the woman who he and his fellows had come to either kidnap or kill.

"Ah, yes, I can. I may be on the side of the angels, but that does not make me particularly kind, certainly not to anyone who has attacked me and mine." As they watched, Emma's physical form, or rather what they perceived as her physical form, began to waver. "And for that you must pay."

With that the white around them did the same and they were now suddenly standing in black, the image of a giant raging goddess standing there. They were now hovering in the air before her rainbow colored eyes, staring in horror at her fell beauty. A giant's hand gripped them all as she stared into their eyes. "Goodbye, gentlemen…"

All of this had taken a bare minute in the outside world and Emma shook herself, then smiled evilly as the last three of the Sinister Six collapsed to the ground. They convulsed there, their bodies shaking in aftershocks, blood pulsing from their eyes, mouths and noses.

"Wh, what did you do to them, boss lady," the Sand Man asked.

"I tore their minds to pieces and didn't bother leaving them enough of a starting point to put themselves back together," Emma said coolly. "Now, why don't you go and find a phone and get the police here. Ghigau and the rest of you, deal with these as you would then fade. We don't need to have known members of the Custodes associating with Emma Frost, now, do we?"

Psylocke looked at the bodies of the Sinister Six, shuddering as her imagination supplied what their minds must be like now. If they ever recover it will take a minor miracle or a telepath's help. "You are a scary, scary woman. You know that, right?"

"And don't you forget it, Psylocke," Emma said with a smirk. "Now get moving."

While the others were dealing with the physical bodies of the former attackers or calling the police in, Emma reached out to Jean telepathically. As she did, she smiled, a fierce sort of joy within her as she thought about what she would do once the Green Goblin was unmasked and his company was under investigation. I wonder how much of his empire I can carve off for myself? I'll want to leave the engineering section alone, at least. That is his son's interest, isn't it? I'll have to check.

A moment later, however, that joy was replaced by a softer, kinder sort of joy as she heard that Ororo was on her feet again.

OOOOOOO

Taking control of the helicarrier was simpler than Harry had feared without MODOK around to run interference. Tony and Henry easily overcame the viruses in the system even though they both turned down E's offer of aid, while Harry began to work on healing the wounded, with Avalanche and Hawkeye going first. The total number of wounded was somewhat depressing to Harry, since he now had a general idea of the size of the ship and knew generally speaking how large the ship's crew should have been. At twice the size of a supercarrier and with an original crew of upwards of twelve thousand, there were only around four hundred wounded for him to see to. On the other hand, Harry's magic allowed him to heal most of the wounded. Those who hadn't lost limbs, anyway. They would have to wait and go through normal channels to receive prosthetic replacements.

Under Nick's orders the helicarrier set down as close as it could to Florida's shore facing into the Gulf of Mexico. From there, while Nick began to talk to the Coast Guard and Navy to see to taking control of the ship, the Custodes Mundi flew out to where Jean had told Harry where Storm was seeing to aiding the wounded hurt in the Hulkbusters' attack.

Jean herself wasn't there anymore, having retreated from the scene the moment the battle was over. The reason for this was not because she was concerned about anything coming around that could get through her defenses, though. Illusion spells, specifically subtle ones like that which currently hid her pregnancy, did not stand up to constant activity very well. Indeed, she had left only a few seconds before the illusion gave out despite the amount of power that Harry had put into that and her other temporary magical defenses.

They were immediately spotted by a few F-18which flew in their direction, but the fact that Harry was leading Captain America through the air seemed to win them some recognition. They still followed them, but didn't fire on the Custodes and Avengers as they sat down at Cape Canaveral.

They were immediately met by a group of MPs and a lieutenant commander. Despite a glare sent Tony's way, the man saluted the group. "Captain, Guardian, Lady Storm told us you might be on the way. My commanding officer has a teleconference set up to the governor and president. Captain, if you could come this way. Guardian, these men will lead you to where Lady Storm is seeing to the wounded, she is doing it. Unless you think you can add anything to our understanding of what went on today?"

"No, Commander, I don't think so. I helped clean it up, but I think Steve can handle informing your higher ups about what went on."

E stepped forward, not reacting to the looks his odd appearance garnered. "Commander, are there still SAR operations going on? I feel my own abilities should be best used in that endeavor."

"Yes there is, um…"

"Call me E, Commander, or Big E if you want to be formal," the droid replied, his lips quirking for a second before returning to normal.

"Riiiight," the man drawled, before deliberately moving past that. "Anyway, I can show you to where such is being organized, or just give you the frequency the SAR teams are using."

With Colossus volunteering to help the land-based SAR and Tony going with Steve, Hela and Harry were shown through the base towards near the outer fence. Harry paused, shaking Steve's hand and telling him to contact Guardian once the fallout from this debacle was concluded. "After all, I might have a job offer for you and the others. Maybe even Nick, if he has now learned how to…"

He stopped, searching for words, which Hela supplied promptly. "Accurately ascertain where he should aim his paranoid gaze?"

"Yes, thank you, milady. Could not have put it better myself," Harry said, winking at her with a wicked smile on his face which forced a laugh from her. Both of them were in a very good mood and knew why too.

"I'll do that, my friend. And thank you once again for your help," Steve replied promptly.

Harry nodded, then turned to Colossus. "Just call for extraction when you're done, my large friend. I'll have someone waiting for you."

Colossus nodded and Harry and Hela were lead off by their guide. A few minutes later they passed clumps of jet pilots, all of them talking together, gesticulating at their jets and then into the air. Harry had to blink a few times, noticing what looked like people praying here and there.

There was nothing unusual about that, of course, after a battle, but the words one crowd of pilots spoke startled him. It almost sounded like they were thanking God for sending the Phoenix to deliver them. Odd, but I'm not going to think about that right now.

Nearer the fence they found the aid stations set up in several large tents. Four of them were open, merely places were Air Force and Army personnel were talking with some of the locals, presumably men and women who had lost property in the recent action as well as police and other officials. The other ten had large red crosses on them and there was a lot of activity going on all around them.

As they were led toward one of those tents, Harry and Hela both could feel the magic of Storm's area of control spells washing over them. They smiled at one another before entering the tent, finding Storm inside as they had been told they would.

Storm looked up from having finished with a young pilot's spine when the tent flaps opened. Stepping back to let the man's fellows help him to his feet, she turned, smiling widely, as she saw Harry standing there.

It was all Harry could do to not grab Storm up and run for the nearest hotel. Instead he simply soaked in her appearance, standing there awake and looking back at him. Hela too was dealing with a surprisingly strong desire to hug her friend and never let her go. It might have been only a week and a bit in the real world. To Harry and Hela it had been a few months since they had seen their friend up and about.

At the moment however that would have been wholly inappropriate. So Instead Storm simply reached out to them with her hand.

Harry took Storm's hand, raising her hand palm up to kiss it, his voice a throaty murmur that left no one listening in doubt as to the depth of their relationship. "Milady, it is good to see you…here and helping out."

"Indeed, my friend," Hela said, shaking Storm's hand in turn after Harry had reluctantly let go. "Does your presence here mean that the factory complex where those large robots were being built has been dealt with?" she asked, more to get over the awkwardness of the emotional meeting than anything else.

"Yes," Storm said simply, smiling at Hela even as her blue eyes smoldered with her own emotions. "There were also few wounded there that required my magical touch, so I came here to deal with any such in the areas attacked by those automatons. I am nearly done, Guardian, so there is no need for you to expend yourself. Instead, if you would see to giving out a short statement to the news reporters who have been attempting to get into the relief station, that would be nice."

There was both warning and honest request in Storm's tone. She had heard from Jean about Harry's injuries and understood that even if he was fine physically, as he seemed to be, there was no way that Harry was back to one hundred percent. He had already expended enough energy getting them all here, let alone helping with the wounded, a job Storm was seeing to easily. And she also had no wish to deal with nosy reporters.

Groaning dramatically, Harry turned in that direction, leaving Hela and Storm staring at one another for a moment. Hela simply smiled at her friend, conveying with that smile and the emotions in her eyes that she was very happy to see her friend up and about, not as much as Harry, perhaps, but still far more than Hela would have ever said she could miss anyone. Ororo smiled back, understanding that message, but then turned to her next patient.

Outside, Harry was led to the fence, outside of which the reporters gathered. Immediately upon seeing him, they began to shout questions, each of them yelling loudly in an effort to get their question heard and hopefully answered first over the others.

Harry however simply stood there about ten feet from the fence in silence, his hands clasped behind his back, his crysis suit and somewhat repaired mask giving him a forbidding presence. He watched calmly as the crowd of vultures eventually realized that he was waiting until they fell silent to speak, a process that took them several minutes. My God, they really do have the minds of birds, don't they?

As the last reporter, a thin, artificially handsome looking man finally shut up, Harry spoke, his voice coming out oddly sepulchral from inside his mask. "Gentlemen and ladies of the press, as you all no doubt know, I am Guardian, leader of the Custodes Mundi. We Custodes would prefer to guard the world from external threats only, but we are sometimes called to defend the innocent from more local dangers."

He allowed his eyes to sweep across the audience before going on. "In this case, we volunteered to help the Avengers to deal with a terrorist attack by the group called AIM. This group consists of terrorist scientists who believe that only scientists and those most intelligent among them can truly rule the world. Their overall goal I do not know, but they personally attacked SHIELD, who is their natural foe and those of other super-powered villains. The attack was dangerous, deadly and came from a direction SHIELD was not prepared for. For any more information on the nature of the attack you will have to wait for Director Fury's official statement."

Harry quickly held up a hand to stop anyone from speaking. "I will not speak as to where the Hulkbusters came from; that is for SHIELD and your own government to explain. Just be thankful that Steve, that is Captain America, was willing to bring us in to help instead of trying to go it alone."

That didn't stop the reporters from shouting out questions on that count, but Harry silenced them with a loud spell-assisted growl. "If you have no more questions on topics I am actually willing to address, then I will take my leave."

For a moment the reporters fell silent, then one of them asked, "Guardian, can you please tell us more about the large bird-like phenomenon that came to the aid of the Navy and Air Force forces attempting to stop the Hulkbusters' attack here in Florida?"

"That is Phoenix, a member of the Custodes. She has routinely been busy with other missions when the Custodes have been active against planet-bound threats, but she was one of our founding members. Other than that, her abilities should be manifestly obvious," Harry replied, giving out no more information than necessary. Even once he went public with his identity, Harry would attempt to shield Jean and the others. Unlike him, they all had other people out and about in the world that could be used as leverage against them.

"So she's a mutant too?" asked another reporter, a sound of disgust almost but not quite hidden in his voice.

"Yes she is a mutant and she never even thought twice about putting her life on the line in this battle or any other to save people like you, who obviously are more at home sneering at her than attempting to have a bit of human decency and at least be thankful for her help," Harry replied sharply, glaring at the man. "Should I tell her and the other mutants in my team that they don't have to bother doing so in the future?"

That man fell silent, glaring back hatefully, but he was jostled out of his position in front of the fence by several of his fellows, his cameraman 'suddenly losing the connection' at the same time. An instant later one of the other reporters asked, "Guardian, have you determined a date for your public meeting with the United Nations?"

"Yes. In precisely two weeks my officers and I will be appearing in front of the UN as a whole. There we will discuss the growing Kree threat as well as how the countries represented in the UN can aid the efforts against them."

Many of the reporters fell silent, no doubt wondering if they could somehow transfer themselves up to New York and try to cover that meeting. Others, however, asked a few specific questions about the recent battle: if the Hulkbusters had been sent towards Disney World specifically, if there was any idea of what the overall goal had been and of course, how much money the government must have sunk into funding the Hulkbusters. On those last two questions Harry had no answer, so happily replied with a 'no comment.'

By the time he was done with that, Storm had finished healing the most badly injured from the attack. She exited the tent she had been using to a spontaneous cheer from those all around and smiled, waving her hand at them before she and Hela moved to join Harry. He quickly ended the interview, moving to join the two of them. "Are we done here?" he asked, locking suddenly smoldering eyes with Storm.

She nodded and Harry turned back, waving at the reporters and injured before moving deeper into the base. Once out of sight from the reporters, Harry took Hela and Storm's hands. An instant later they disappeared from the land of Florida to reappear in Camelot, Harry having used Storm's method of transportation this time.

The moment their feet touched down in Hogwarts, Ororo felt Harry's lips on hers, his arms around her pulling Ororo into a kiss that threatened to take her breath away. She matched his ardor with her own, moaning into the kiss and putting her arms around him in turn.

Chuckling, Hela stood back. "I have heard that absence makes the heart yearn all the more, but methinks it also works on certain other areas of the body."

Neither of the kissers looked up, losing themselves in one another. Harry was only able to tear his lips away from Ororo's for a brief second to moan out that he loved Ororo and missed her before diving back in again.

Jean came out of the dining hall to look at the trio, laughing quietly as she stared at her two lovers. Part of her wanted to join them, then maybe get Emma here for the night, but she knew that that would be both selfish and stupid. Someone needed to be here to help Dennis get a handle on the reverberations of this latest battle, something she and Hela could handle with Emma. On top of that, for her it had only been a week since she had last even talked to Ororo. For Harry and Hela it had been far longer.

But Hela showed a distinct lack of a need to suck Ororo's breath out of her lungs. Jean didn't miss the yearning look in Hela's eyes, but she knew the Asgardian was in no hurry to end the courting period, whatever the outcome.

"Go on, you two. Neither of you will be of any use to anyone until you work this out of your systems. I'll tell the kids you're up, 'Ro, but will also tell them not to bother you for now. Anything that isn't life threatening can wait until tomorrow," Jean said, gently touching her lovers' shoulders and pushing them toward the staircase.

Not breaking his lip lock with Ororo, Harry nodded and the two of them stumbled their way up the stairs. They smacked into a wall and then off the banister, nearly stumbling but still kissing hungrily, only breaking their lip lock to regain their balance. Behind them Hela and Jean looked at one another before they began to laugh, shaking their heads ruefully before turning and reentering the dining hall where Dennis had already pulled up a conference call with Emma, while also reaching out to Reed Richards.

It took the two lovers a bit to get up the staircase, in particular the spiral staircase leading into the headmaster's quarters. There Harry's hands fell to Ororo's rear, lifting her up and pressing her into wall, her legs going around his waist. He would have been more than willing to simply stay there for a bit, but Ororo pulled her mouth away from their kiss, moving to whisper into his ear. "Not here my love, on our bed."

She giggled aloud as Harry turned without putting her down and carried her up the rest of the way, dumping her on the bed and grinding his waist into hers as they fell into it. "Mmmm, the door, Harry. Lock the door. We, we don't want the kids to break in again, do we?"

Groaning, Harry rolled away, but not before leaning in to give Ororo one last kiss. "I love you, Ororo."

She chuckled throatily, but made no response beyond pushing him towards the stairwell. Harry went, then threw up as many privacy and locking spells as he could on the doorway. The kids could wait to say hi. This time would just be for the two of them.

By the time he had returned, Ororo had divested herself of her uniform. She now was laid out on the bed, her hair hanging like a halo around her head, her body uncovered to his hungry gaze. Her bare breasts, the largest of his lovers, moved slowly with every breath. Her light, chocolate colored skin gleamed in the light of the sun, which, Harry idly noted, was only now going down even here in the Scottish highlands. Her dark chocolate nipples were already hard capturing his eyes, as did the shaved lightning bolt above her pussy, beckoning his attention to the hidden flower below it.

It was all Harry could do to not stare, instead taking in the beauty before him with a sort of adoring, loving look that revved Ororo's engines, not that she needed any more help in that area. With a smile she raised a hand, her voice a throaty, almost sinful whisper as she spoke. "Love me, Harry Potter."

This was a command Harry was eager to follow. Only once more during the night did Harry truly act consciously, instead letting his body do all the thinking for him. As he was sheathed within Ororo, he paused, holding a hand over her stomach, his hand glowing a very light yellow for a moment.

But before he could touch her stomach with his hand Ororo caught his wrist. Harry looked up at her, more of his consciousness coming back from the lustful fugue he had been in to look at her and slowly shook his head. "Not yet."

Ororo smiled then, twining her fingers with his, breathing in deeply and trying to bring her own thoughts together through the haze of her desire. "I, I know, not yet. But…soon?"

Harry nodded, staring into her eyes, willing her to see the sincerity in his as she did the same. "Soon. After Jean has recovered from the twins?"

"Yes," Ororo replied then removed her hand, Letting Harry's magic do its work before reaching up to pull him into a kiss. "Yes…"

OOOOOOO

While Ororo and Harry were getting reacquainted, Mr. Sinister was watching the newsfeeds as well as reading the report from Pipeline. His attempts to capture Subject Grey had failed, as had his mission to actually infiltrate Magical Mind's computer systems, yet Pipeline had shown decent enough initiative, so Sinister would not punish him for that or his failure.

Sinister's assault on the Vault had also failed, the X-Men having proven astonishingly capable and bloody-minded enough to nearly wipe out the Marauders. Still, Sinister hadn't lost anything in that attack he couldn't easily replace. Arclight would have to be liquidated in order to make certain none of them realized he had long begun to clone the group, but that was relatively easy. No, it was Scanner's failure and what he was seeing in the news that he was paying attention to.

There was nothing in Sinister's body language at this point that pointed to how angry he was, for he was really beyond angry. He was verging on numb with fury and something approaching shock. With, perhaps, a bit of despair flung in for good measure.

While his efforts to stir up trouble between Homo Superior and their evolutionary inferiors had fallen onto fertile ground throughout much of the world, the Custodes Mundi and their actions continued to gain public approval and the more powerful governments had begun to crack down on conflict of any stripe. And now he had seen Jean Grey in action. Though, even connecting Subject Grey to the Phoenix that appeared in Florida had taken far more of his mental acuity to do than it should have. Is that a sign of some kind of magical defense?

But the sheer power he had witnessed there, coupled with the efforts of Ororo Munroe and the young mutant that was able to control tectonic energies, who Sinister hadn't known much of before this, combined with Potter's magical abilities, forced him to face an unpalatable conclusion. The Custodes are too powerful and now too well-connected for my original attempt to trap and extract Subject Grey from them to succeed.

I could still openly take control of Genosha, put in my new government and start culling the weak mutants that have sprung up there and set the entire nation up as a trap for them. Yet even the Custodes are simply too powerful for the forces I have gathered to work.

Wipeout could help take out one of their powerful players, perhaps, but more than one? And he could only shut down their mutant power which is not enough. They might well come in with American aid backing them, or even UN approval now, though I doubt Russia would go along with such. Yet Genosha certainly isn't in Russia's normal area of influence and they might be too busy with their own expansionist schemes. I do wonder what is going on there…

Shaking his head from that mental tangent, Sinister concentrated once more on his current issue. It was a decidedly unpalatable one, but there was no way his current plan could work. Not unless I can somehow split their attention between Genosha and something else. But what?

Or…or should I, instead of trying to capture Grey and her unborn children, target Summers? I do have my copy of Grey back, after all…

Letting his fury at being so stymied out in a long exhalation, Sinister nodded sharply. Yes, it will be tough, but I will need to coincide my actually springing my trap with enough other small time activities to pull at least some of the Custodes elsewhere, plus some other crisis to grab the world's attention so they won't wish to become further embroiled militarily. I will also push clandestinely to help shut SHIELD down permanently, though after this that shouldn't take much. Beyond that, I will also attempt to get a semen sample from Summers into Subject Pryor. That will take some doing, but…but that could finally give me what I want.

Originally Sinister had been attempting to create the Ultimate Mutant, Subject X in his notes. He had determined long before this that merging Summers's DNA with Subject Grey, both lines which he had been manipulating for generations, would give him his best shot at such. The reason for this had originally been to create a mutant he could then use against his previous master. Yet at this point a neutral observer would have been able to point out that he had become obsessed with this concept, instead of looking for other means to combat his master. He had become so obsessed, he was missing the forest for the trees.

Reaching over to an intercom, he pinged his secretary. "Get me Madeline and Malice and then prep the hypnosis chamber. I have a mission for them…"

End Chapter

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As I said earlier, not the chapter I wanted to put out/had written, but I hope that it will at least appease if not please. Once more have a Happy New Year and look tomorrow night for the small story poll to replace the SW crossover poll on my profile.