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.

38. A Whirlwind, Reaped

I don't own Marvel and I ain't a British schoolmarm. The plot though, that's mine.

Here is the next chapter of ATP! In my large story poll over on patty Ron it won first place with a vote of 1,154 to Horse for the Force at 1,135 and Magic of the Force 922.

And for those wondering why this was the only story updated this month, there was Making Waves over there, and my HP/Baldur's Gate/Gamer fic, so far another patty on only fic, won first place in the small story poll. I also tried desperately to get AGGC up, but it isn't ready yet. RL kicked my ass in various ways this month.

I also have to state that this has not been edited by Michael just yet! If small mistakes bother you, please wait until this message disappears! Due to unforeseen RL complications I could not finish this chapter in time to send it to him.

---

Chapter 38: A Whirlwind, Reaped

Danielle Moonstar walked through the entrance to Camelot with a sigh, eager to get some food before she started to see what else had been going on. Of course she had been aware of the war the instant it had broken out – thanks to the international communications and the dozens of news networks out there- but she wasn't certain where Harry would be sending her, and wanted at least a few hours to herself to unpack mentally. This hunt had not been fun at all, even though she had once more learned a valuable lesson: that humans could be as much animals as any crazed dog.

"I take it your hunt was successful then?" Dani looked up as the large form of Garm came out of the shadows, moving with all of the cold grace and silent footwork of a true hunter for all of his size.

"It was indeed. You'll probably, well you won't be because I know you couldn't care less about most human news, but Dennis will be hearing about it on the news at some point, and I don't think I made any friends with how… fatally I took down the individual who ordered the hit on the family of Magical Minds workers. There was a local hero, Daredevil was his name, and he seemed to be of the opinion that everyone should be handed over to the police regardless of whether or not they would actually be committed for their crimes. I followed my jarl's orders however, which was to remove the individual who ordered that ordered that atrocity with extreme prejudice."

"And in this case extreme prejudice would be?" Garm asked, his tongue lolling as he huffed in amusement.

"An incendiary explosive set underneath his bed, and me on a nearby rooftop with a bow and arrow. The device actually didn't do as much damage to the Kingpin as I hoped, the man had good survival instincts," she admitted grudgingly. "But even he couldn't survive being shot through the forehead with an arrow from Sigyn's Gift."

And my aim wasn't nearly as spoiled as daredevil had hoped with that darned nun-chuck of his trying to take my head off, she mused to herself, shaking her head in bemusement at Daredevil's attempt to capture her. That hadn't worked as well as he had hoped and it had been her who had left unconscious on the rooftop. The man had been tough, and very darn good at martial arts, but he hadn't been able to deal with her suit.

"It does sound as if you had an amusing time," the giant wolf said, then smirked, his fangs flashing from under his gums. "But I think your timing is excellent. I believe the tide is turning. I can scent it in the air."

"Garm's rather prescient in his statement on that score Dani." Said a new voice, and she turned, bowing her heard towards Harry and Hela. Harry went on, smiling wanly at her. "Dani, I'd like you to check in with Sage. I've got a few questions to pass on. Have one of the house elves help you to get up to High Note as soon as possible."

Her empathic senses blaring a danger signal to her, Dani just nodded, watching silently as Harry stalked past her. Ooh, boy, I've never felt the jarl being so angry before. I'd pity whoever he's angry at if I didn't have a good idea that they probably deserve whatever he's going do to them.

As he moved through the castle, there was actually little to tell from looking at Harry physically that he was indeed, enraged. His anger had gone through the hot stage more than a week into this assault on earth, if that was really what it was. After all, Harry still didn't know the full motivations of the Russians for launching this war. Surely not all of the Russian generals or leaders had been replaced by aliens? Regardless, Harry was in full control of his anger as he gathered up Danielle, Garm, and Hela before heading up to High Note. Be cold, calculating, and when you strike, make sure it is crippling. Never do your enemy a small injury.

His anger congealed into something even worse when he found Jean before disappearing utterly, swamped by worry. The young redheaded woman looked utterly exhausted, the bags under her eyes said that she hadn't been sleeping well and the twitching in her limbs were honestly worrying. Harry knew that she had been using her powers in fits and starts since this conflict began, active around the world mostly to help direct the hover ambulances and other medical personnel forward or back. On top of that there had been several more attempts by scattered Russian submarines to launch ICBMs at various American targets rightly assuming that America was the logistical linchpin of their enemies or perhaps just for hatred's sake. Certainly Alaska, the target of two of those attempts had nothing to really off the war effort at the moment.

So she had been doing her part telekinetically, as well as providing leadership. She and Emma had between them even stepped into a communications role twice in various fronts when the Russians brought out massive jamming equipment of a new and unusual type. It was only because of the two telepath's and that the Azerbaijan front hadn't completely evaporated at one point. Even the first time Dr. Doom had brought up his own forces and retreated to do some needed repairs on his suit, the Latverian army had been saved from being cut into pieces unable to communicate with one another by the two of them.

Yet as she turned towards Harry, her eyes seemed too glimmered with tears and it was clear to Harry that whatever she had been doing, Jean didn't think it had been enough. "I could've gone on the offensive myself you know," she said almost calmly, despite the fact that her arms were twitching spasmodically, one hand clutching her distended belly, the other gripping the side of her chair, like a bird of prey gripping an animal.

"I could've wiped out whole armies with Phoenix Fire from orbit." She laughed then, and it was a high-pitched almost manic sound that made Harry wince, not in fear of course, but in sadness at what his lady had been going through. "I could've done it."

"But you didn't love," Harry said in reply, moving over and rushing a finger down the side of her face, one of her eyes closing and bless at the touch. "You didn't because you're a better person than that. You don't want the blood of all those millions on your hands."

"Not that," she murmured. "It would just be so easy! I did it once before you know. When we were bringing back the derelict ships, I wiped out an entire fleet of Kree, burned their ships to ashes and the crews within, tore their atoms to shreds. Two things stopped me." She tapped her stomach, indicating the twins within. "These two, and the lack of my self-control my being pregnant has forced me to endure. The last time I had to move ambulances from the front, it took all I could concentrate on just to move them one at a time. For some reason grabbing missiles is easier," she mused.

Jean couldn't have even used her telekinesis to create a shield to separate the two sides. Mostly they were too badly intermingled most the time, for that kind of action to work. And at this point she couldn't separate her regular telekinesis from the Phoenix Fire. That was why she had to keep using the ambulances, metal doesn't melt nearly as quickly as humans.

"I think it's a difference between grabbing a stone and an eggshell Jean," Harry said lightly. "You can grab a stone as hard as you want, you don't really care if it gets crushed or not, but the egg, the egg is precious."

She laughed at that, and now it sounded a little saner and Harry breathed an internal sigh of relief as he asked, "and what was your second reason?"

"The Phoenix Force," she said simply. "I am its avatar, and while that gives me leave to use a fraction of its power as I want, it also tells me what the Phoenix force is about. Death and rebirth, but more rebirth than death. I didn't want to sully it I suppose you could say, by taking the lives of so many people." Her smile shifted somewhat, becoming almost winsome. "So the next time some general asks me why I'm not using my powers to attack, I want you to understand why I am going to have to reach out and rip his spine out through his skull."

"You won't get any argument from me," Harry said with a chuckle. "I fully agree with your choices. Better to save lives than to take them. Of course, is not exactly going to be an option for me. Nor to be Frank, Emma in the right mind to care one way or the.

"for now, you need to Let go love," Harry went on calmly, his fingers rubbing at either side of her temple, his thumbs running down either side of her jaw. "Let go. I'm here, Hela's here, Ororo is on her way. You did it, you did your part. Now you have to let us take the burden."

That seemed to get through to her, and she looked at Harry quizzically. "How exactly are you even walking around anyway, I would've thought all the magic you've been expelling you would be like the walking dead."

"Pepper up potions are wonderful thing, and I figure I can rest myself in a bit." Harry said with a faint smile, putting his arms around her. "Now come on love, up you get."

Jean almost fought him, but the look of love and caring in Harry's eyes completely unmanned her, and she began to sob quietly, leaning up into his chest as he gently, very gently pulled the mother of his children forward into his arms before slipping one arm underneath her, and lifting her into the air.

Hela smiled at the two of them than turned, moving ahead of them to open doors. She had been quiet as Harry helped the avatar of the Phoenix, but now she began to sing softly, almost crooning a lullaby as she helped Harry put Jean down on the bed, gently touching her for head. The two of them stood by the now unconscious woman, for several minutes, simply touching her hands and forehead before reluctantly turning away.

By the time they returned to the asteroid's control center Emma was there, and she grabbed Harry by the lapels and pulled him down into a searing kiss. This kiss went on for a while until Hela coughed into her fist, gaining their attention. "As much as I would dislike poking my nose into your business, I believe that presently we do have more to do than fulfill your need for flirtation."

Emma gave her the finger, which caused Hela to growl irritably, but as Harry pulled away, she did the same albeit very reluctantly. "Say rather my need for fornication rather than flirtation. I'm almost tempted to take you away for a bit and have my wicked ways with you," she said, shaking her head. "It's been a nightmare these past weeks and not just because of lack of sleep or cuddle time."

The blonde telepath didn't look quite as bad as Jean had, but even Emma was showing the strain, her face marked by sleeplessness, her hair unkempt in such a way that she would have never allowed had she been sleeping regularly. More telling her nails looked as if they had been nibbled on to the point of nonexistence.

"I'm actually surprised you're not trying to convince me about the recovery powers of that quickie you just mentioned then," Harry said, leaning down and giving her a far gentler kiss before moving around her.

"The thought crossed my mind, but then I saw your face," she said tartly. "Sex should be dirty, but not that guilt inducing. I take it Jean is down, finally resting. I tried to convince her to rest but I couldn't get her to leave the command center."

"She is down, and I've placed wards all around her room. No one enters that room without my say so. I don't even want you to reach out to her telekinetically for a bit. She looks as if she should sleep for a week or two herself right now."

Emma nodded, sighing deeply. "I've been splitting my attention over the last four, five days? I don't honestly know when it began, and it's been a full twenty-four-hour thing, trying to keep her psyche from fraying from the burden she took on. Her connection to you was a godsend Harry, if she'd had to deal with her telepathic abilities, on top of her fraying control of her telekinetic power…" she shook her head. "It would've been ugly. And I don't think just for her. After all, she can project thoughts just as easily as she can take them in."

"So what do we do now?" she asked, shaking yourself and waving off Harry's concern. "You can pamper me later after all of this is over, let's concentrate now."

"I can pamper all of you equally," Harry said calmly. "You, Jean, Hela and Ororo and myself to admittedly. It is not been an easy time for any of us."

Emma scoffed. "You say it like it's going to be any easier from now on."

"Not any easier, but certainly more active rather than reactive. Harry shrugged. "For now though, Pinoptes, First, show me the state of, well everything. I want to know what the satellites over Russia are telling me, what the satellites over the various front lines are able to tell me, I want to know the position of forces, how are the logistics going, everything that Jean couldn't pass on to me in any detail before this. Right now, I need information to plan where we're going to attack and how."

As Pinoptes replied in the affirmative, Harry noted that even the AI sounded relieved to have Harry back and Jean resting. Yeah, while I was learning delegation out of necessity, she never did. We're going to have to rectify that going forward. Putting the thought of delegation into action, he had Hela start helping him reading out the information about the various forces involved in each front, and asked Emma to go through regular channels to get the leaders of the Custodes groups up here as well as the various Field Marshals. For his part, Harry was more concerned just then with where the Russian Aerospace Force bases were. The war was about to take a turn in a major way, and he wanted their blows to land as heavily as possible. Never do your enemy a small injury.

The map of Russia was filled in quickly by the satellites using data they had retained from before the war began, marking out his targets, while Hela worked on her portion of the task and also talking to Dr. Strange. He was the only other magic user who was in any shape to do much of anything, although he was still connected to the coven spell along with his girlfriend, and Wanda for now. The energy they were pouring into it was slowly decreasing though, as more of the sun's heat funneled into the earth's ley lines, controlled by Gaia.

Getting Doom away from the front took all of Emma's potent diplomatic skill, as he had been in the process of pushing the Russian army completely out of the Ukraine comment despite the fact that they had brought in what looked like some kind of mobile fortress command center, complete with heavy artillery guns that would have made the Big Berthas from World War II fame look small in comparison. But soon enough, all of the Custodes commanders were present in person aboard High Note and the various military men had joined in a video conference. Dr. Doom had his own side, as befit Harry's first political ally, and the man's military power. Various other generals shared the other wall, while one the room's third side, there were two rows of elevated seats for the rest of the Custodes Mundi commanders. Steve was there with Sam, Scott and John, Piotr and Amora.

The Neo-Grecian girl took one look at Danielle, and leaped towards her, grabbing the girl in a fierce hug which was returned equally as Piotr waited for his own hug. "Girl, you've missed sooo much! Where the hell have you been?"

"I know," the Native American girl said grimly even as she smiled at her friends, looping an arm around Amora's shoulders. "You can fill me in after this. But I'm back now, my jobs done, and I think it's time that we all remind our enemies not to screw with us."

Even Reed Richards was there, coming in late, and looking rather frayed around the edges himself although in his case rather than simple tiredness it looked as if he had strayed too close to one of his experiments, and it had exploded in his face. Of all of Harry's friends and allies and commanders, only Steve looked chipper, his face still clean-shaven unlike Scott's, going around shaking hands, and nodding seriously to Harry as he entered.

"Gentlemen, ladies, welcome all. As I'm certain that you all can tell already from my near presence here, things have begun to change on the magical front. I won't go into details, because you probably won't understand them, and or might be terrified by them, but suffice to say that I am now free to act offensively. And that the cold front that the Russians somehow created is going to be snapping soon. But right now, I would like an overview of the war your perspectives, please."

"That's a sentiment I think we can all get behind," said an Indian general said in response to Dani's comment, getting many a 'hear, hear' from the rest of the military men. He was one of the newest members of this group and Emma filled Harry in on him quickly as the emerald-eyed wizard moved into the center of the room. He was in charge of a large Indian Army Group that was even then disembarking into Georgia from the Black Sea, transported there by Indian and British naval units, to bolster the forces already available. That front was the most ramshackle, having lost its last two commanding officers, and not having a very good local force to build upon. Not that Azerbaijan was any better unfortunately. Still, they would get into that eventually, now they needed to talk about the overall war effort.

The American generals, four of them, started to speak first. The industrial might of America had quickly begun to churn out winter gear on a large-scale for the armies at the front, for their own troops, and anyone else you wanted to ask. Getting their troops trained up on winter warfare was far slower too, but between America's sheer industrial power, and Tony Stark streamlining the process, supplies were flowing across the Pacific in huge lots. Tony had even helped to create entirely new rail lines, using his own robots to carry the goods from various ports deeper into Europe straight through Germany, and into Poland.

Getting goods into the Ukraine was a little more difficult, but there Dr. Doom now pledged help to help the process. He was not happy about this. Dr. Doom was a prideful person and had long ordered the other allies away from the Ukrainian front disdaining all aid and dealing with the Russians on his own. But while his own military force was well-equipped for winter warfare, and could switch gears as was now being intimated they would have to easily, the Ukrainian armies had been simply demolished by the better trained and better equipped, even better motivated and led, Russians. Rebuilding them would take far too many resources in terms of food, and simple metal let alone actual guns that Doom could not provide.

The British general, Demontebanks, was one of the two Brits in the video conference. The other man was Philip, the crown prince of the British Empire. The older man spoke up now explaining the British were sending SAS into Georgia, to help the Marines and the American army groups on the way to bolster the forces already there in... various underhanded and dastardly ways. Political claptrap held the Army up with the Georgian and Azerbaijan governments essentially collapsed, and there was an almost civil war between the few government officials who were willing to stay on, and the generals at the front lines. "And one of their own had also basically tried to declare himself dictator a few days ago. Luckily that seems to have stopped recently, the man turning himself in and in a very interesting way too. The report I got said he was found outside of his command post hopping up and down screaming about how he was a chicken…" the old general smirked. "I don't suppose whoever had a hand in that could be found in this room, now could they?"

"Yes, well…" Harry said looking over towards Emma and Betsy. The two telepaths, smiled back at him, not even trying to look innocent. "Regardless of what occurred there, that issue at least was apparently headed off at the pass gentlemen. Anything else on your end?"

"The first admiral has gathered his fleets together again, after dispersing them for repair and maintenance." Philip said seriously. "We want to push into the Barents Kara Sea down from there to the Russian Border with the instant the ice starts to un-melt around there enough for us to move forward."

That had been a shock, which had stopped any move in that direction before this. While it was normal for the Kara Sea to be frozen most of the year, the Barents Sea was relatively warmer in comparison. Yet it had frozen nearly from one end to the other, the very ice and cold of winter creating a shield for Russia's western ports and their attacks on Norway and the eastern border of Finland. Considering that many of Russia's strategic targets, its factories and industry, resided within cannon range or missile range from that sea, it was no small exaggeration to say that that move had saved Russia's war efforts.

Frowning Harry shook his head. "Gentlemen, I don't want any kind of strategic bombardment or bombing. I've read enough history books, precisely one in fact, to know that strategic bombing is more about destroying morale than anything else. Yes, they force the enemy to waste resources dispersing its factories or what have you but it isn't enough of a difference when you consider how much it would bolster the hatred the Russian people might feel for any invasion force. We'll have enough issues later on when we invade. Military targets only."

A few of the generals grumbled and one of them even shouted out that Harry was in no position to give them orders, but he simply smiled back thinly. "So you would want me to pull my forces back then, recall all the weapons I've loaned out?" As they all contemplated not having anything that could stop the special-power units among the Russians he waited until the man had looked away. We will fight this war as cleanly as possible gentlemen, that is all."

The German general who was his country's representative on this council had been silent for most of the meeting, only commenting on the railroads the Tony Stark had been making, as well as his government's wish to buy the German section away from him after the war. Now he spoke up though, looking at Harry thoughtfully. "You mentioned that this winter weather would be breaking, can you elaborate please?"

Harry nodded graciously and did so, outlining how the winter weather would be broken, like a string snapping. "The tensions already building up," he said smiling lightly. "I would bet a lot of weather people the world over are once more tearing their hairs out as they notice the overall temperature increasing worldwide."

"That's all well and good," the German general, Von Kranst, said slowly, "but you have to realize that there are dozens of feet of snow on the ground now, no matter how badly churned up. If it all melts, it's going to create mud. Say what you will about my country's past actions in World War II, but we learned the hard way that trying to move an army through mud is almost as hard as moving it through snow. Frozen or not, the deep, glutinous mud were talking about here will snarl up tracks, jeeps, trucks, tanks you name it. And of course our own feet won't be able to make much headway in that kind of environment."

The French general, Paul Disswaier nodded, almost glaring at his German counterpart. "Indeed. I can remember my father saying much the same in World War I, when he was stuck fighting the Bosch at the front. The mud became so bad, if you fell into it, you couldn't get yourself back out. Many a man died because his friends couldn't pull him to safety out of that kind muck."

The German simply glared back. "Well, if we're going to talk about that kind of ancient history, why ever did the French ever…"

"Gentlemen," Harry said holding up his hands while Emma grimaced, kneading her forehead slightly. "This is not a forum to rehash old arguments or misdeeds."

He shared a glance with Prince Philip, who was looking a little smug, and he said blandly, "I doubt any country here could survive that kind of scrutiny after all."

The prince had the grace to look a bit abashed at that, while now it was the American's turn to look smug, until Danielle coughed into her fist, a very odd, obviously contrived act given the fact she was wearing her Ghigau suit, complete with helmet. "Native American genocide." She looked up to find several of the Americans both around her and on the screen looking at her darkly, but she merely cocked her helmeted head to one side quizzically. "I'm sorry what?"

Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing, while a few of the others barked laughter, with Jon even going so far as to reach out and slap the other Native American on the shoulder.

"To get back on topic, our German compatriot has a point. The only way over that kind of morass is hover technology."

"And I suppose that means you'll be looking to me," Tony said with a sigh and a put-upon look. "Honestly, as if controlling and moving so money moving parts for the trains and logistics aspect – all those darn robots I had to design and build - isn't enough, you want me to upgrade all of your tanks and trucks?"

"I'm curious as to why you haven't been doing so actually," Harry said blandly.

"As if I want hover technology to become that widespread. This war is going to end one way or the other and we've already released far too many genies for my liking, I don't want to add another." Tony replied.

Harry's tone was dust dry as he spoke up again. "While you might have a point, I think we need to win the war first before we can worry about what happens after. Will you at least help the locals set up centers for that refit to be done? I'll order the engineers over at Saab to release their toy box and they'll do the retrofitting themselves. Of course it won't be that easy, I doubt they have half the people they'll need for that kind of huge job, but I also have no doubt that all of your armies have inbuilt engineering corps?"

"The 22nd armored division and the 33rd infantry division is due to arrive in Port Calais in two days," one of the American generals said. Troops that would need retraining before this weren't sent to the front through the runic doorways, instead travelling the old-fashioned way and doing some training on the way. "I can order them to leave the majority of their support personnel, those mechanic who work on their jeeps and such, and the 22nd's armored engineers there. We can start retrofitting as quickly as possible then."

"That'll do for a start, but I'll want someplace closer to the front." Harry replied.

The polish General thought for a moment, then named a Polish city. While not a logistical depot for their efforts to bring more troops to the front, it was one of the closest ones to that front, and moreover was home to one of the few homebuilt tank assembly line centers in Poland. That made it ideal for this.

Harry nodded firmly, and Emma turned away, writing out that order to Saab's mechanical division on a tablet for after this meeting was ended. They might balk at being uprooted like this, but given that no one knew where the Russians wanted their offense to end, they would probably see the point.

"I think we'll also need to get that kind center down on the Caucasus Front soonest," Philip said, looking over at the Indian general and the others who dealt with that theater. "The SAS infiltrators we've been able to get behind enemy lines passed on a report that the Russians are building up more of their forces down south then we might be able to tell from satellites or what limited other intelligence we have."

"They're still using those fucking underground tunnels," groused more than one military representative, scowling angrily. The fact those had been created and on such a scale, with no one the wiser and with underground trains added into the mix, made all of them rather furious. Harry was amused by that, since the minute he heard about the Mole Man being allied with the Russians he had figured out how that had happened, and knew they would have to worry about that in the future.

"Actually, they haven't only been building up forces like that on the southern front," Scott said holding up a hand. Unlike the rest of you, no offense meant, but I have actually gone over the line a few times, and not only are they building up forces in Finland again to push deeper, but they've also begun to mine something. I was wondering if any of you have any insight to why they would already be mining the area despite fighting still going on nearby."

"What?" Said more than one voice.

Scott shrugged, and started to tell his tale.

Flashback:

"I don't know why they're doing it but I swear those idiotic Russians are setting up a mine, a mine right there barely a day from our battle lines in Inari!"

Blinking, Scott moved in that direction. "Are we talking about some kind of tunnel operation? Building another tunnel like the type they used to bring their armies forward so fast?" He asked the three arguing locals.

The local fins nodded, although though they also looked a bit dubious about what he was wearing. The X-Men uniform gave them a new tremendous degree of protection against the environment, in this case the cold, although they ate just as much as any two normal people needing to build up their calories. They were also gaudy in the extreme, relying on a series of illusions to blend into the ground. Rolling his eyes at their expression he asked, "You were saying something?"

The man who had been speaking nodded. "My name's Georg," he said, holding out his hand to the younger man. Scott shook it firmly and then stepped back, actually taking up a parade rest position as he did, looking at the man questioningly,

"I'm part of the force recon, and we've been involved almost from the get-go, my squad I mean. I've lost four good men," he said with grim look, "and got only three to replace them. The Russians fight like nobody's business! And they're not making the same mistakes as they did against us during the winter war, more's the pity. Anyway, we were out past the front line, we'd spotted a series of those small, really mobile troop carriers they have, the ones with hover technology?"

Scott nodded indicating he knew what those were and indeed agreed with the man's assertion that they were expensive. Not as much as the tanks the Russians were no longer trying to bring against the Finns, but still very expensive.

They were near to the front line up there for a time, near that little bump at the main fortress up in Inari, the one called the Antler. So we went after them wondering what they were being used for. It turns out that they were carrying some kind of mining team. They threw up a small mining operation, used these large weapons that near about shook the rock apart in segments. Then they started to mine in earnest. We were going to attack and wipe them all out just because it was so mysterious, but we spotted a larger force of infantry moving into the area. And while it was close the front lines, it wasn't close to any forces we could ask to help us, so we retreated quickly at that point. We made it back here, I gave my report, and we haven't heard anything from the higher ups about it since."

"What could they be mining up there?" All the locals shrugged and Scott frowned, shaking his head as he remembered some of Jean's orders to them all was to look for anything unusual going on with the Russian forces, anything that could point to the aliens being involved. That was especially true here in Finland, where the locals really didn't have anything in terms of natural resources to offer that Russia didn't already have. The attack on them was completely nonsensical, unless, like many of the Finns Scott had talked to thought, it was simply finishing the job Russia had done on them after Finland had foolishly joined the Nazis in attacking Russia in order to regain their lost land. But perhaps this is a clue in that direction.

"Do you think you could lead me and my X-men there?" He asked aloud.

Moments later, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, the locals and Rogue were skimming just over the forests in the back of a truck flatbed minus the actual truck portion. Rogue was both steering and propulsion at this point ,pushing them along as quickly as she could towards the fortress Antler nearest where Georg and his men had spotted the mine while Thunderbird had been left in command of the other X-men for now. There they switched to foot, and for more than half a day Georg and his team led the three X-men moving through the forest and avoiding confrontation with the Russian forces in the area, which included large mortar batteries being brought up to try and break the fortress. They made a note of them, but kept going for now. "We'll hit them on the way back," Cyclops promised.

Soon enough they were downhill hidden among a series of tall, deep snowdrifts as they stared through sniper scopes at the mine. For that was what it was, the Russians were busy excavating or mining something. "I need to see what it is damn it," Cyclops muttered, looking around the woods and the Russians who were on watch. There weren't many of them but they were certainly on guard, and they were scattered throughout the woods. Still, given this terrain it is still possible… "Georg, can you get me a little closer?"

The Finnish lieutenant nodded, and then gestured Cyclops to follow him. It took some time, a lot of slow, controlled, timed movements, before they were in a position to actually see what was going on directly around the head of the new mine. Once there, Cyclops looked again and saw a few men carrying large crystals of some kind, orange in color, the color caught by the light as they exited the mine so as to be visible. It was kind of pretty, but that was all Cyclops could say. It certainly wasn't something obviously valuable or rare, but he doubted he'd be able to spot anything but gold or silver as valuable metals in any event. Damn, should have thought about that ahead of time.

Shaking his head, Cyclops palmed a small recorder into the back of the sniper scope. These were routinely used in either practice or to scout out enemy positions and it was used as such here. He kept recording as night fell and then, with the added help of the darkness around them, he and Georg exfiltrated back to the others. 'So, where did we spot those mortars again?"

For an hour the group moved across the forest in the direction Georg and his men felt the mortars were going to take. But before they could try to hunt them down, they had to turn aside as a in-the-clear message rang out in their ears. "Mayday, mayday, this is Fortress Antler we have been infiltrated, they are, they are…agghhh…"
Cyclops looked over at Rogue then turned and without a word blasted apart a nearby tree, toppling it into the snow. "Everyone hop on, Rogue do your thing!"

Rogue nodded and the others got on, even Georg and his men, who all looked a little leery at the idea. But the tree was large enough for them all to basically hang on one after another on the trunk like so many koalas. Then they were in the air, with Rogue disdaining subtlety for speed, rising into the air until she could barely see, then zooming towards the fortress, following a map that Cyclops could see on his HUD.

Despite their quick reaction however, by the time they made it back to the fortress, it was all over bar the shouting. The fortress's cannon mounts had been opened like someone had taken a series of whips to the guns and stonework on either side, cutting through them then heading inside. Nearby further Russian forces were moving towards the fortress, intent on investing it.

And when Nightcrawler bamfed inside, he saw bodies. The bodies of the defenders left where they fell, contorted, crushed some of them utter husks, their lives drained out of them somehow. He continued on, bamfing further and further into the fortress, but he couldn't find a single person alive within. Returning to the others, he could just shake his head.

Cyclops, Rogue and the Finns had begun to take fire from and fire in tur non the Russian troops moving forward. They had halted in disarray, shocked when Cyclops's beam had hit them just as they broke out into the bit of open ground around the foot of the fortress, but were quickly coming on now despite his continued fire and Rogue throwing large chunks of the disabled cannon at them. "No one is here mine freunds, they have all been slain, butchered."

Cursing Cyclops and Georg exchanged a glance, and the local shook his head gesturing to the west. Cyclops sighed and nodded. "Rogue let's get out of here. There's nothing more than we can do here."

End Flashback

Harry leaned back in a chair he'd conjured halfway through Scott's story, tapping his fingers together, looking over to Dr. Doom's image and where Reed sat listening. "Let's set aside the news the Russians might have brought forth a separate team of superpowered individuals into Finland, ones whose powers don't match any we've seen so far. It's obvious that by their being there to attack the nearest Finn strong point, this mine sight is very important, possibly to the war effort as a whole. "Doctors, could you shed some light on this?"

Doom and Reed Richards exchanged a glance, then shook their heads. "This is an entirely new mineral to us, it sounds as if it should be quartz, or at least is formed in the same geologic manner. But if it was simple quartz there is no reason for the Russians to be in such a hurry to excavate it."

"We've all been wondering all along why the Russians were so idiotic as to launch all of these different attacks and heck, why they started the war in the first place," Amora said, dragging attention to her. "The assault on the Chinese was a spoiling raid done large, we can understand that at least. And historically speaking, the attacks down south into Azerbaijan Georgia and then through into Turkey also makes sense."

The Turkish officer, not a general but a colonel for some reason, nodded glumly. "Russia has long wanted to have access to the warmer seas."

Harry nodded in his direction and then Philip spoke up again, voicing a question that everyone in Britain had been askin since hostilities began. "Bloody hell, why open a naval war at all? No offense to my peers in the Admiralty, but our fleets certainly weren't a danger to them, not like the Americans with their fighters and bombers. And with this cold already working against those, they had no need to launch such raids. So why open up the war on the sea like that unless they were after something. The First Lord of the Admiralty felt they were trying to create a smokescreen for this submarines, but that didn't make any sense to my father or I."

The American admiral, a man named Patraus, snorted. "If they thought they were going to get more than they did out of their submarines, then me and mine were quite happy to disabuse them of the notion."

Harry nodded, saying nothing for a moment. The submarine warfare against the Russians had been deadly and dangerous, a thing of knives in the dark, ambushes and counter-ambushes scattered across the world deep under its oceans. Even now there were still reports coming in of a few surviving Russian submarines, and despite what the American admiral said, they were doing a very good job of hiding themselves. But they weren't nearly as good at it as the Americans. Their Los Angeles class were kind of scary in how stealthy they were in the water.

Moreover, all of the underwater warfare had the day before finally roused Prince Namor from his people's civil war. A civil war Namor had thought stamped out months ago had again reared its ugly head at around the time that Harry had revealed himself to the UN. Now Namor was also hunting Russian sobs, and Harry knew it was but a matter of time before the king of all the oceans dealt with them all. Of course later, I will probably have to deal with him diplomatically I'm not looking forward to that. But that is for the future.

"Agreed," Harry said, then went on voicing his thoughts aloud. "It's the same trouble with their attack into the Ukraine, Into Poland? Finland of all places? Those never made sense to me or mine. Why, after they sliced off chunks of Finland during World War II, would Russia want more? What could be worth the hard knocks they'd gain infighting such an opponent on their own ground? Make no mistake I know they would win if they were just facing Finland, but the finish military is…"

"Bleeding well scary determined to use a British phrase," Scott said, eliciting laughter all around as well as many a nod from the Finnish representative and those who had trained alongside the Finns at some point in the past. "But if this mineral is somehow important to their new technology…"

Once more Harry nodded. "Agreed. I think Scott, I'll be joining your front soon enough. Once I do, that mine is going to be our main target."

"It might not be the Russians at all," Reed interjected. "Remember that we know that they have alien… if not allies, then instigators among them up, it was the aliens who created this abnormal weather after all. Perhaps it's important to them?"

Many of the generals scoffed at that, looking away, while others just looked grim. None of them were at home with the idea of extraterrestrial threats being involved in this warm, though thankfully none of them were in the still active 'it's all fake' crowd. Harry was thankful though that at least a few of them seemed to be noncommittal about it rather than dismissive it.

"It still brings up the question of why the Naval war?"

"They could've swarmed across to Alaska," Philip decried shaking his head. "It would've bloody well cost them, but they could've landed troops there. Or they could have, until those two stupid submarines launched missiles at Alaska and Phoenix put her foot down."

Even locked in with the magical battle Harry had heard of that from the woman herself. Warned by Pinoptes Jean had basically grabbed the missiles almost as soon as they exploded out of the water and hurling him up into space with all the telekinetic subtlety of a hammer. And then she had reached out and directed several destroyers to find the subs who had launched them by using large, flaming arrows in the sky directly over the ocean to point the way for them.

Steve frowned faintly. "We're going to have to talk about her later," he said looking at Harry speculatively. "It's not a big issue right now, just something we'll need to keep in mind the future going forward."

Harry raised an eyebrow at that, but shrugged his shoulders and nodded acquiescence. "I don't see a Chinese gentleman here," he said aloud, just having noticed that lack and going off topic for a second. "Is there reason for that? I know their army was proven to be a bit of a paper tiger, but surely…"

"You have to understand," Emma said holding up her hand before anyone else could speak. "The People's Army is just that, the People's Army of Communist China. They aren't a national army as most of us would understand the term. They are dedicated to the perseverance of the Communist Party in China. They'll cheerfully throw their troops into the Russian units within their borders, soak up far more damage than any of us want to see, but they're not going to send troops abroad whatever they might have tried to convince Jean about."

Harry's eyes narrowed, and then he asked very mildly, "Then why are they still allied with us and the earth defense force?"

"Because the aliens out there represent a clear and present danger to China," Emma said promptly. "They do not believe that Russia represents a threat which would force them to fight against them in foreign countries. In fact I was told clandestinely that they refuse to be used like Vietnam or other subsidiary countries had been in a new Cold War.

Harry growled. "Do you think my talking to them personally would help?"

"…Maybe," Emma equivocated, waving one hand in front of her from side to side. "I'll admit that they were also giving me very serious vibes of angered misogynists, but I just don't know."

"Furthermore, it isn't as if their gear is all that good anyway," Amara said shaking her head. "And I'm not talking about their tanks. They've got this one kind of tank that was actually pretty decent. And some of their commanders are quite good. But their logistics is crap, they can't move forces at all quickly from one theater command to another. Their troops aren't nearly as well-trained as they should be, their guns aren't very good and certainly aren't up to date. Even their individual Army logistics isn't anything to write home about."

"That bad?" Harry asked, looking at her sadly.

'Sorry Harry, but it's the truth, paper tiger, remember? We could probably talk them into giving us a few of their mechanized units, but since most of those are old-fashioned tanks rather than their new Flame Tongue, I don't know how much good that would actually do."

"Not very good at all actually," Philip said with a shake of his head. At the moment, what we need in the southern front is coordinated leadership. A single organized response, especially from someone who the locals can respect and who has enough clout to smack them upside the head and force them to play along like good little kiddies rather than going their own way."

"Our marine units were mauled in a series of engagements there, and were far too often left in the lurch by the locals," one of the American generals said with a scowl. "Even the Turkish army groups don't really seem interested in working together with anyone else." He gestured to the Turkish colonel, who just nodded agreement, making no effort to defend his fellow Turks from the allegation.

Harry looked over at Sam. "Comments, Sam?"

The Falcon shrugged. "I've been trying to do my part boss and I think we've organized as well as we can away from the front, the marines and the Turks at the front to work together decently, the other units we've brought in are working together well, acting professionally and all that. But unless I start replacing officers willy-nilly, I'm not going to get the locals to toe the line as a combined force. I could probably get away with that in Georgia, but not Azerbaijan, not after that general tried to make a play for dictatorship."

"All right. Emma, I want you to concentrate on that aspect. Take Translator, and head down there personally." Translator was Douglas Ramsay's rather unimaginative codename. "Coyote will serve you two as bodyguard. We'll wait on offensive action with the Custodes Mundi until we have that front more settled."

"Do you have a set timetable for when the, the spell that's created this winter will break?" One of the logistics officer asked hesitantly, not looking at home with the idea of magic being real." "You can hold off for the break of winter so that we're prepared for it?"

"I'm afraid that's not entirely up to me." Harry replied ruefully. "I would say twenty-four to twenty-eight hours. I can request that the lady in question waits for a bit, but if she feels that the damage to the earth by our enemies is too great, she'll act on her own, and I'm not about to argue with her. No, it won't last longer than that which means we need to have whatever forces we can ready to go."

Harry deliberately did not use Ororo's name, or Gaia's. The knowledge he had Hela as an ally and what she was had spread since the incident which had birthed E, but most simply believed she was a mutant or alien of some kind, not a figure of myth and faith. And for all of Hela's power, Gaia, being the original mother Goddess of every pantheon on Earth, had a far larger following of prospective believers, and could be nothing but what she claimed to be. This would of course result in existential religious questions and conflicts, which Harry had no interest in sparking.

"And what does that entail?" the Frenchman asked cautiously.

"Two things. One, it means that our Air Force is going to be getting into the action as soon as we can possibly contrive it, in as large a force as we can possibly contrive as well. "And second," Harry sighed faintly his eyes and indeed his whole expression becoming cold and grim. "Second, it means that I will be taking direct action. In this case, that means destroying every known Russian Air Force base or runway I can possibly find within Russian borders. All of them. You will rule the skies uncontested gentlemen, and we will finally go on the offensive."

There were some uneasy glances at that, many of the people here understanding without needing to be told the number of people Harry was going to be, essentially, slaughtering without giving them a chance to fight back, but none of them said anything. It needed to be done, and it was better for the dead to be Russian military personnel than their own after all.

Soon after that most of the generals signed off, a few of them staying behind for a few seconds to wish Harry well, or ask specific questions that hadn't been important enough to interrupt the flow of the meeting. As they were finishing, the atmosphere of the meeting room changed, becoming much more laidback, with everyone leaning back in their chairs or putting up their feet or turning their attention to other things for a bit. Ghigau and the others with helmets also removed them, many of them grateful for the ability to do so for the first time in days.

As this was going on the image of the Black Panther enlarged to take their place. He had been silent throughout the meeting up to this point and now he nodded his head towards Harry, before looking at Dr. Doom and the others. "Mr. Potter, I take it now that you have essentially begun to organize your offense against Russia, it is time to talk about my own albeit much smaller war?"

"It might be smaller, but it is almost as important to me on a personal level," Harry said. "If not for the amount of people dying then for the involvement of a particular thorn in my side: Mr. Sinister."

"I agree with your priorities Harry." T'challa said, waving that concern to one side. "The aliens at the very least needs to be discovered, and the ball rolling on the offensive into Russia before you can turn your attention to helping me."

"It's not that bad on my end," Harry said, shaking his head. "I'll be pulling back most of the Custodes Mundi itself, leaving Steve and his force to one front and the X-Men to the other for now so I can guarantee you some reinforcements soon, but how bad is it on the ground? Jeans reports on your progress weren't as well detailed as I would've liked."

"…I am afraid I have to say it is not going well," the Black Panther said reluctantly. "My troops are well-trained and well-armed, but we've never actually trained in the city landscape before this, all of our fights before this have been in the mountains, hills or planes around and within our nation. This is an entirely new type of warfare to us, and it is taking a toll. Despite that I control most of the port city now, but even so, the Press Gang units and Mutant Liberation Front terrorists are taking a harsh toll on the populace. They are also costing my people lives," he said slowly, his voice pained.

"I understand how that goes," Harry said with a sigh and a nod. "If you need help after this to set up some kind of widow and orphan's fund, I'll full freely pitch in half again as much money as you put in."

"For the future that is well and good. But for the now, I need more help. I need super-powered type help, that can help me counter the Mutant Liberation Front. At the moment I am the only one who can really fight them on even footing, and even then, it's quite difficult."

"All right," Harry said after a few moments turning to look at Steve. "Scott, can you spare Havok and Thunderbird?"

Scott tried not to seem too eager to get rid of his brother, but the man's general entitled attitude had been causing a lot of the other issues. He looked over at Thunderbird, who nodded once, before turning his attention back to Harry. "I can, and I think Thunderbird is ready for a larger role. Who else do you think?"

"Cortez, Havok, Banshee, Wyatt and you Thunderbird in command," Harry said slowly, looking at the large Native American. "Do you think you can handle this?"

"I think I can sir, but does that mean you've got another job for Mystique?" John asked. "I'd like to talk with her for a bit, get a feel for the MLF and the real dangers among them."

"Mystique returned with her team a few days back, and she hasn't left Irene's side since. You'll find them both in Camelot," Harry replied, having been told that by Emma while he and Pinoptes were picking out targets. He was touched as he always was by the devotion Raven, who could possibly be immortal thanks to the ever-renewing nature of her cells, showed to Irene.

John nodded, then asked if he could be excused to go and talk to the skin changer. Getting a nod from both Harry and Scott, he existed the room, asking for Cory or another teleporting house-elf to take him back to Camelot.

Watching his second-in command go, Scott was torn. On the one hand, I think John's ready for it. On the other hand… "A part of the problem with my brother is that he feels he should be at least one of the lieutenants, and this is going to put him under John's command. That could cause issues."

Which I am certain that T'challa and John can handle with professional aplomb," Harry said drolly before turning to look at the Wakandan King. "They'll join you within the hour."

"But what will happen to Genosha after we have beaten the uprising, if that is what it truly is, back. I have been getting many a question along those lines from various governmental officials." Emma interjected.

"That isn't a decision that I alone can make," Harry said with a scowl. "Obviously I think a peacekeeping force will be necessary, and I intend to move any willing mutant, who hasn't taken part in the violence willingly to Avalon myself. Beyond that who knows. Perhaps if no one else is willing to step in or the locals can't rebuild their government I would be interested in doing more. A more public segment of Avalon could be useful in many ways."

Avalon was the name Harry had come up with for his country. He wasn't certain it would stick. He still wanted to hold an election to choose the permanent name, but it was one that he felt was appropriate, and which he could remember, not a small consideration.

"I will tell them that. It will relieve some and annoy others I predict." Emma said with a sigh

"Isn't that always the way with politics?" Harry asked dryly, causing laughter from all around him. With Harry back and the prospect of offensive action in the near future, morale was high respite the obvious tiredness Harry could see all around him and he grinned. "For now though, let's go over our own plans going forward.

Of course, even with the generals on board, there remained two problems. First, was finding the epicenter of the spell and thus the aliens who were somehow powering it. That problem though would be solved the instant the cold spell was reversed. Shattering a spell like that, as Those Who Watch Above in Shadow had found, was an incredibly painful feeling. And it would leave a residue that Dr. Strange, Hela and Harry could use to find where the spell had originated. "At that point, I want a spy type mission ready to go."

"A spy type mission," Hela drawled, looking up from where she had been plaiting Dani's hair, with the help of Betsy. The two of them surprisingly got on quite well, since Betsy more often than not identified herself as a wiccan, a member of another ancient religious group that was built upon personal connection to spirits and nature rather than organized religions. "Would that be why you requested Sam bring along Betsy for this discussion?"

"It would indeed," Harry said with a grand bow towards his fellow Brit, who giggled and tried to look haughty despite the fact she was currently plaiting the younger girl's hair. Why in the world are they doing that anyway? Is that some odd girl way of dealing with anxiety or something?

Setting that thought aside, he went on, his tone His tone going from whimsical to grim quickly. "I don't want the aliens, whatever their name is, to be able to restart the spell, turn their energies to other mischief, or even retreat," Harry said grimly. "Russia is too damn large, and these shapeshifters too damn good at hiding even from magical means, for me to want them to get away once we go on the attack. I'll what you down on the ground somewhere, near Moscow I predict. Once you confirm that they are there, lady Gaia, will release the full power of the sun."

"HA!" the voice of Gaia said, an image of the Mother goddess appearing in front of them as if Harry's use of her name had summoned her into being. Since they were not in point of fact standing upon the surface of Earth, it was only a projection, and a vague, translucent one at that. For all her power on Earth, Gaia had next to none away from the planet which bore her name.

As Hela and the others bowed towards her or scrambled to their feet in automatic respect (even Sam, a staunch Catholic) she laughed, sending a wink toward Harry. "While I was not pleased with your near demand that I wait on breaking this spell assault upon my person, you have the right of it. If they could attack me nicely once, the necessary they could do so again. But I will not wait longer than twenty-four hours." The goddess glared at Harry, and he nodded, understanding she wasn't going to budge on that point. At his nod her glare disappeared and she smiled around at them all. Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to go and see my chosen champion. Good luck in your future battles, oh Champion of Life and companions."

For a moment after the goddess had disappeared, the meeting room was silent, then Sam grunted and seemed to shake himself. "That um... that was, that couldn't really have been a goddess, right?"

The Falcon looked around but none of the others attempted to reassure him, while Hela cocked a fist on her hip flinging her hair back with her other hand. "I believe the phrase, and what am I, chopped liver, is quite appropriate here."

Sam opened his mouth then closed it, shaking his head. "You know what, there is literally no way for me to reply to that right now without sounding insulting or worse, so I'll just shut up now."

"Smart man," Steve and Harry murmured as one, while laughter broke the moment of stasis Gaia's arrival and abrupt disappearance had caused.

After the laughter ended Hela asked, "And who will I be leading on this mission?"

"You will, we need a magic user and a heavy hitter, and you're both. You can bring Betsy, Carol, and Garm of course, considering I really don't want to start another fight right now by trying to get him to leave your side."

"Hmmmpf, then you too are wise, Harry Potter, to know a lost cause when you hear of one," Garm said, panting in good humor at his mistress's future mate. Why the heck they hadn't finalized the deal was something he only vaguely understood, but it was quite obvious that it would be occurring in the near future as his lady dictated.

"And Morph too I think," Harry added after a moment. "I don't think now that it's come to open warfare and we've removed all but the most physical means he could use to leave the island that we need to use Morph against Mr. Sinister. Kitty has also volunteered to join you for this."

"Truly?" Hela asked, cocking her head quizzically. "I thought she had decided to no longer participate in combat missions."

"Yes, but this is a full-bore combat mission. In fact, if you can find this place and then simply signal me to come in, I think that would be the best outcome."

"Why ever would we need you?" Hela said, putting some a great deal of disdain in her voice, as she cocked her hands on her hips. Her entire manner screamed out that if this was some kind of man thing where he thought she would need rescuing, they would have more than words.

Harry laughed at that, reaching out and gently putting a finger to her lips, pulling away when she made to bite it while Garm covered his face with his paws humans flirting and the others all chuckled. "It's nothing like that. It's just, I have a hunch about how these aliens are doing this and why they're so interested in that rock. If they have created an item that they send power through, not only would the spells on it be fascinating to learn for our own use, but the power that they have put into it could be most useful.

"Ah, now that is a most recent plan, one I can get behind my seidr man," Hela said with a chuckle, leaning in to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

"All of that though was only one problem. What is the second one problem Harry?" Emma asked, somewhat amused by the two flirting like that in a somewhat public setting, despite it being so very low-key."

"We need to pin down the Winter Guard and this Grigori team, pin down and annihilate them. The Titanium and Red Guardian suits we can only destroy as they appear, but the rest of the Soviet super-soldiers need to be dealt with."

"Annihilate, mmm I just love that word," Emma said smiling almost beatifically. "It sounds so permanent."

Harry chuckled, nodding at the same time. "At this point, I don't care about the reasoning behind this war, I don't care if the Russians are doing this of their own volition or have been tricked into it. There are far too many of them for all of them to be such dupes. After this war, I think that the mapmakers are going to be very busy rewriting the borders. And that means dealing a killing blow to Russia's ability to make both conventional and unconventional warfare."

"And how do we do that? You said it yourself, Russia is far too big to search effectively." Scott protested.

"We set out some bait, and watch the mine you found," Harry said simply. "I'd like to think this crystal the aliens may or may not be after is most important to them, but if the Russians are either being used or were simply with the aliens, then they won't want to concentrate their Super-powered troops on only one front. If they are going for something that they have always desired, that'll be the southern front and a target juicy enough to bring their Super-troopers out can be found there. If it's these mines, they'll head to Finland. Whichever, I'll have the majority of the Custodes ready and willing to be drop onto them like a ton of rectangular building things."

"Actually," Steve said, scratching at the back of his head sheepishly. "I think they've already begun to think about a target they can eliminate in order to break the morale of the allies," he said pointing at himself self-consciously. "Like it or not, the uniform kind of draws attention you know? So I think we'll see the Winter Guard in Poland."

"True that," Sam laughed at that, slapping the captain on his shoulder.

"All right," Harry said with a nod. "So we pull back our troops, including the Custodes Mundi and add your group into Steve's, Sam. We keep the rest in orbit, and bring than been down like a hammer when the Winter Guard show themselves wherever that might be. No letting them retreat, no letting them regroup. We finish them."

After the meeting broke up, Steve approached Harry. Harry nodded at him, but then gestured at Steve to walk beside him as he moved down High Note's corridor to check in on Jean. They had placed her in the room that they all shared up here, the one that overlooked the atrium, open to the sky and the birdsong of the jungle beneath. As they entered Steve's face had been somewhat confused and worried, but it tapered off as he spotted Jean sleeping on the bed. He took her and the view out the open balcony before turning a smile on Harry. "It's nice to know Jean still needs sleep," he quipped in a low voice.

Harry blinked, then raised an eyebrow, "And you're going to explain that comment as, what, exactly?"

Steve shrugged awkwardly, looking away. "This is kind of embarrassing to say but there is a new, well, a new religion popping up recently among the soldiers I've interacted with. A new religion that says that the Phoenix is the second coming of Jesus, or the first coming of the Savior or whatever. The stories of what she is vary, but all of it has distinct religious overtones."

He held up a hand as Harry made to speak, and when he went on, his voice had taken on a singsong edge, obviously repeating something he had heard all too often. "A god of fire and flame, first it showed the fire, burning the enemies of humanity in the skies over Florida in America." He smirked. "As an aside a lot of the Poles just call it the land of the Mouse." Then he went on resuming the singsong voice. "Now it shows the mercy, destroying the weapons with which we would make war upon ourselves and upon the innocent, bringing aid to the wounded, succoring them at need and transporting them to where they can be best treated."

"So you see they see her as some kind of goddess of fire and mercy, Steve finished. as Harry simply gaped at him, his voice returning to normal. And given her sheer power, I suppose you could say they even have a point." Harry continued to gape, and Steve started to laugh at his expression shaking his. "Is it so hard to believe?"

"I… intellectually, I suppose not," Harry said after a few minutes. "After all, Ororo was known as a goddess, Hela is a goddess, and Jean is the avatar of one of the fundamental powers of the universe that makes most goddesses and gods look like street corner bullies. So yes, I can understand. That doesn't make it any easier to hear that your pregnant girlfriend/soon-to-be-wife is slowly becoming the center of some kooky new age religion." He fell silent, thinking then shrugged. "We heard a bit of the same rumors after the events in Florida, it slowly went away. Hopefully it will do the same now, but we will need to nip that in the bud as soon as possible."

"Good thinking," Steve said with a smile, then waiting a tick before asking, "how?"

"You're having fun with this aren't you?" Harry grumped.

"Somewhat yes," Steve said with a laugh. "Your reaction was hilarious, and honestly speaking matched my own. Then again, I've come to know Jean, and of all the ladies you're involved with, she is the least likely to ever be comfortable with that kind of adoration."

"I'm afraid that will probably be the only way to fight this kind of thing." When Steve made an interrogative noise, Harry gestured to Jean. "We'll need to show Jean as being simply human, possibly up to opening up about or relationship and maybe even her identity." His eyes hardened. "But we'll of course have to wait until after the kids are born, and our marriage. That is nonnegotiable. It if lets this new religion grow, we'll deal with it later."

"I'm not going to argue with that one," Steve said drolly. "Frankly, I'm a little worried what you're going to be doing to Mr. Sinister given his attempts to kidnap her."

"Then it's funny that you should mention that my girlfriend has become the center of this new religion then. Because I am going to be positively Biblical with what I do to that particular pimple on the face of the universe." Harry tone and words were light, but his eyes were such a hard emerald, that even Steve could only nod grimly.

OOOOOOO

it was something of an open secret, something that a lot of people knew, but which really wasn't talked about or really affected anything on a day-to-day basis, but in World War II, some of the fastest ships afloat had actually been the Iowa class of battleships, and to this day the larger ships of any fleet were aster in a straight line than the smaller ships. It was somewhat nonsensical to non-Navy personnel, but it was true. Now however this became a very important fact.

Orders were cut, captains alerted, question asked, answered, and orders repeated. And then, 12 carriers and four super carriers, the might of the American Navy which had gathered in the Gulf of Mexico praying for just this sort of thing, broke off from the rest of their fleets, making straight across the Pacific towards the Mediterranean and then the Black Sea. At full speed. A speed that none of their fellows could sustain, a speed that left the heavy cruisers, the destroyers and frigates of their flotillas gasping behind them.

But the captains of those carriers, though they were zigzagging all over the place in order to throw off any attempt by a submarine, to ambush them, didn't particularly care. The news that they had received was that momentous: Head to the black sea, merge into a single fleet under the command of the admiral on station. Then, upon the signal of special operative, Custodes Mundi member Storm, you will launch fighters on a ground assault mission. Every captain of those ships had been hoping, praying that something could break through this weather, could overcome whatever was going on and get them into the war. And now, they had written and verbal communication that said that moment was coming soon. To the men and women of the United States Navy, and most particularly the carriers, that moment could not come soon enough.

Needless to say, this caused some consternation among a few Russian submarines, those very few that still survived in the Atlantic. They had been ordered to shadow the might of the American Navy, more because their masters back in Russia just wanted to know where the hell they were more than anything else. But none of these submariners had ever believed the rumors about the speed with which the American carriers could move. Now their subs were gasping, trying to keep up desperately only to fall further and further behind as the hours went on. It was galling, infuriating, and very, very worrying. Something was going on, something their masters needed to know.

Unfortunately, the three submarines in question were so busy attempting to follow the carriers, that they forgot to watch their own sonar emissions. In response to this gross debacle in submarine warfare, two hunting Los Angeles class submarines came upon them, sinking them quickly.

OOOOOOO

"You Wanted to speak to me?" Harry asked Polaris as he looked over his Guardian's suit, making certain it was ready for what was to come.

"I did," Polaris said, moving forward to sit across from him on Jean's bed, looking at the pregnant woman and absently patting her leg. "And here I thought I had a hard time of it these past two weeks."

"She, Sage, and Emma had to do not just their own jobs in a time of great turmoil, but a lot of other people," Harry said with a sigh. "But I doubt that's what you wanted to say."

"No," Polaris sighed. "No it isn't. Harry, I'm out. I don't... I can't… Those weeks I spent in Poland, and then down south, I..."

It is a horrible thing to realize how easy it is for those of us with power to take a life," Harry said after a silence moment of contemplation of the green haired girl, moving over to lay a hand on her shoulder. "And how sometimes we have to out of necessity take a single life in order to protect dozens, or in your case, take hundreds to protect thousands."

He sighed then, ruffling her hair like she was a little girl rather than a young woman. "You did your part," he said simply. "You held the line until the allies could get into position and I released Steve and his team. If you don't want to be involved in more combat that's your right. But, can I ask you to take over the movement of the hover ambulances and other medical equipment to and from one of the fronts?"

Polaris nodded. "that I can do." She looked at Jean thoughtfully, then shook her head. "I thought at first, when I heard about what Jean was doing, that was a copout, that she just didn't want to be part of the actual fighting, even if she could from on high like this. But then I heard about what she'd done to those Kree fleets, and I thought I understood."

Harry nodded silently, not saying anything. After all, his moment of mass destruction was coming up, and he honestly didn't have as much of a problem with it as the two women did. Yes, he regretted the necessity, yes, he wasn't happy and would never really want to do this if he thought it wouldn't save more lives in the long run, and it wasn't a card he wanted to play very often. But there was indeed a place for overwhelming power, and the fear it could cause. And this is going to be one such. "Tell Pinoptes which front you wish to take over, but do it quickly. The ball goes up tomorrow."

OOOOOOO

Later that same day Harry found himself overlooking the mine that Scott and the locals had found, having come forward with them to do this very thing. They were hidden among the forest and rocks nearby, blending in so naturally thanks to the attentive teaching of the locals that Harry had almost felt as if they didn't need any dissolution spells to further hide them. Not that that it stopped him from using them.

Ahead of them through the various trees they could indeed see that the Russians were quickly setting up a full mining operation. there were dozens of California construction workers and miners at work, and a truck nearby already loaded with the crystals that Scott had seen earlier.

"It's a bigger operation than it was before," Scott murmured into the pickup from one side of where Harry was hiding. Around them, the rest of the X-Men gathered, with Rogue high in one of the trees, hanging out there with Laynia next to her and Nightcrawler further back, and the rest of the group scattered here and there.

"And those guards weren't here either mine friend," said Nightcrawler, hanging from a nearby tree limb by his tail as he stared through the trees towards their target. "They look very different from the normal trooper do they not?"

The group in question were a foursome, three of whom were clustered at a certain distance from the mine. They were each dressed in formfitting red suits, over which silver armor had been laid. One of them was a woman, the other three men. Two of them had a distinct familial resemblance, with chalk white skin, while the woman had short-cropped black hair to her brother's blonde. The last one looked inhuman. he had a human body, but no face. And beyond a blue glass bubble his brain could be seen.

They seemed to be in charge of the other soldiers around them, and there was another one similarly dressed to one side of that foursome. he was larger and broader in shoulders. He also had nearly orange skin and darker blonde hair in comparison to the other blonde. He was also emplacing a large infantry weapon of some kind, a thing of six or seven barrels it was hard to tell with the soldiers in the way something like a Gatling gun only the size of a tank cannon.

There were four more groups of soldiers at work around the perimeter. Lines of barbed wire were going up, and the troops were digging in hard in different areas, including overlooking the mine itself on the small hill that it was set into. Almost none of that had been here before, hence Scott's observation.

"It does look a little more dangerous than it did the other day that's for certain," Warpath said as he moved up to one side. "And those four, they have to be some kind of super-powered team, don't they? All dressed like that?"

"I think Laura mentioned running into someone colored like them anyway, before she went off with her dad." Rogue said from where she was observing further back with her binoculars. "What do you think Darkstar?"

Darkstar took the binoculars from her friend, and reflected that that was indeed what the two of them had become over the last few days. Being the sole flyers in their group now and both women, they had become surprisingly close in the past week since Rogue had rejoined the rest of the X-Men. Before that, even though Darkstar had been going through the mansion to take lessons at one of the American colleges, she hadn't actually hung out with any of the X-men. But thrust into the furnace of this war, the two of them had become friends through long talks on patrols, sharing a room together, and astonishingly enough similar interests outside of training in combat.

She looked through the binoculars towards the camp, then hissed. "That uniform, I've seen it somewhere before. I was younger, right after my brother and I were brought into the super soldier program, some other super soldier, I think. I can remember he was a mutant too, not someone wearing a powered outfit or something, nor given a super soldier serum. At least I don't think so."

Where is Wolverine and his daughter anyway?" Harry asked, looking over at Scott.

"They split off several days ago, but that isn't exactly unusual. I decided it wasn't really worth the effort to try and corral them. I figured they would be doing all they could to harm the Russians anyway, and this kind of training is kind of terrain Is practically made for the two of them." Scott replied.

"They can move so quietly through the woods and forests that even I would be hard-pressed to find them," Warpath said with a nod. With cannonball busy packing up the world guard before, and now seconded to them for the next battle down in Poland, and his brother having taken command of another group sent down to the small island, Warpath it stepped into the role of Lieutenant for Scott, although this was the first time they had done so in the field since that reorganization occurred. "Still, I think he mentioned someone like that too, Laura anyway. she Muttered something about men meeting someone from her father's past."

"Since ways back then," Harry quipped, then all of them fell silent as someone shouted nearby in Russian.

They all turned in that direction, and watched in shock as another individual like the four in the camp marched through the woods towards the mine. He was taller looking than the others wider in the shoulders too, with massively built-up arms, a middle-aged man perhaps to their younger-seeming appearances.

More importantly he was currently dragging behind him Wolverine and Laura. Both of them blood he and tied up in long prehensile tentacles, which sprouted from his forearms. the tentacles gleamed like metal, for which Harry was oddly grateful. And the must have been very strong, since neither Wolverine nor his daughter could break free. they also both looked very weak, somewhere between unconscious and in pain.

The newcomer shouted out something in Russian and Harry quickly cast a translation spell on himself, and then all of the other visible X-Men around him, which were only Warpath and Scott at the moment. But behind them, Darkstar translated for Rogue leaving Spyke and Nightcrawler out in the dark.

"Our current employers were very generous for sending us up here, not only are we getting paid very well to fight for Mother Russia once more, but I was able to settle an old debt. Or I will soon enough, once I figure out a way to get through their healing powers more permanently. Her first," he said laughingly, pulling Laura up in front of him and dangling her from the prehensile tentacle, which looped like an arch in front of him. "then him."

Warpath began to rumble, but Scott held up a hand, looking ahead of them. "Look!"

Harry nodded having seen much the same. The regular humans among the Russians down below were quickly backing away from the man, and one or two of them were grabbing up gas masks of some kind, slapping them on before they the man to get to close. "He must be emitting something Some kind of invisible gas perhaps?"

"We have gas masks," Scott said reluctantly. "And what did he say just then, something about using them as batteries?"

Maybe he's not immune to his own poison? Warpath murmured. "he could have a healing factor to offset it but which needs the life force of other people to sustain it? Maybe a kind of vampirism."

"wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've run into," Harry murmured.

"I hate to jog your elbow fearless leaders, but aren't we going to be doing something?"

Harry nodded. "Yes I think we are Spyke."

"Gas masks on people," Scott ordered. "Warpath, straight up the middle. Get their attention. Nightcrawler, around the back towards that one who just arrived, get our friends free. Darkstar, long-range support, take those guns out. Rogue follow up as soon as we know what were really dealing with here. You and Spike will be our reserve."

With that, Scott fired his eye beams moving out from behind cover to do it. The eye beam slammed into one of the four super troopers that were already there, the largest one with the orange skin and hair, hurling him backwards with a cry of shock.

Instantly the others all turned in his direction, and most of the humans did the same, turning their guns towards him. But Cyclops had already ducked behind a rock, and Warpath roared forward, his hands holding the giant cleavers that he had become quite attached to since arriving here in Finland.

Seeing the bullets bounce off the large mutant, the first blonde young man stepped forward. "I have this one, beware further attacks! we will make them realize the folly of facing the Omega Clan."

From his wrists came large tentacles of the same type that the other man who just arrived were using. Indeed, now that they were preparing for battle, Harry could see all four of the ones who had been in the camp had similar tentacles growing out of their forearms. The woman had a few growing out of her chest, which Harry thought was one of the grossest things he'd seen recently.

Nonetheless Harry ignored the rest of the fight, moving forward through the others, and heading towards the loaded truck, sending a brief spike of magic into it, as he did so before stepping out into the open. The engine died, and Harry leaped up onto the back of the truck, pulling open one of the crates inside to reveal the crystal. He pulled it out and looked at it quizzically, trying to discern what could be so special about it. It wasn't radiating magically to his senses, it wasn't very pretty looking, although he supposed in the proper light the orangish color to it could be quite fetching. But Harry still couldn't discern what the heck they were supposed to be.

Shrugging his shoulders, he dumped several of them into his expanded pouch for later research, then hopped out of the truck, to find that the fight had suddenly started to turn against the X-Men. Warpath was down, with one of the omega clan choking the life out of him, with his prehensile tentacle, his body having shifted into some kind of gaseous form, his tentacles having shifted into an energy form. This seemed to have flummoxed Warpath's durability and the man was using Warpath's body as a shield against Cyclops and Darkstar.

Well we can have that can we?" He mused, pointing a finger at the man and sending a spell into him. "gwaywffon mellt."The comparatively small spear of lightning lashed out, flashing into his target's immaterial body and the man screamed, his phantasm form unable to block such an attack. He released Warpath, and then Harry grabbed him and hurled him into the sky with another spell, where Darkstar peppered him with her energy attacks, so much so that his phantasm form wavered.

By the time he came down, Warpath had recovered. He hurled one of his hatchets up, cleaving the man's head clean off.

This however left him open for one of the others who roared out in anger. "No, brother!"

This one didn't bother with trying to choke or otherwise incapacitate Warpath with his more solid tentacles. Instead, he thrust them forward like spears. And Warpath had still been badly weakened by his brush with the other one. They penetrated Warpath's chest in several places, overcoming his weakened state almost as if they were something like Wolverine's claws. The large powerful mutant gasped, going to one knee, and grabbing at the tentacles as they protruded from his chest, before spasming further.

"Warpath's healing factor isn't working on them! Stay away from those tentacles," Scott shouted as he kept his distance, and eye blast slamming into Warpath's attacker and knocking him loose of the large man, who collapsed face first into the snow. He disappeared an instant later. Whatever was going on in his body, was enough to activate the emergency portkey that all of the world guard and X-Men had on their uniforms.

"Rogue keep your distance," Cyclops ordered, 0long-range artillery!"

With that, Rogue dropped out of the sky grabbing up several bits of rock that were larger than her and began to hurl them forward. One of them slammed into the woman as she made to raced forward towards where Cyclops was firing at them from the woods. She was knocked Ass over kettle and then Harry was on her, a cutting spell sent into her throat ending her life.

All of this activity had forced the one who had returned from the woods with Wolverine and Laura as his captives to release them, and charge into the fray. instantly Nightcrawler was there stabbing forward with a short sword made of the same reddish metal as Orichalcum. Then he disappeared behind him, grabbing Laura up in his arms and teleporting away.

The sword was a momentary distraction, the man smacking it out of the air before it could impact, as he roared out "you cannot defeat Omega red! I have absorbed their life force and I will soon do the same to you."

"I doubt it," Harry said dryly, casting another spell. This one was a Bombarda spell straight at the man's head. It hit, and the man's head exploded in a thoroughly gratifying manner. "Just as I thought. Sometimes durability doesn't give you magical immunity."

The last two Omega clan men had broken through into the woods, closing with the X-Men despite spike and the others trying to keep your distance. seeing what Harry had done, they had no desire to face a magic user. Shrugging at that, Harry just turned his attention to the few Russian soldiers still trying to fight back.

Now knowing what they were facing, the X-Men led the two of them a merry chase, keeping their distance and hurling boulders of trees and other things at them. Spyke though was unlucky. he caught a random bullet from one of the Russians and stumbled letting one of the men grab him around the throat, whereupon Spyke gasped, his vitality slowly leaving him. But this opened him up to a blast in the face by Darkstar. The next second a ten-ton rock dropped on his head and he joined his fellows in death.

Shaking his head, Scott scowled. "Warpath and Spyke both of them injured in the same battle. I suppose I've still got a lot to learn."

"Considering we didn't know anything about their powers before the fight Scott, I would count this as a victory," Harry said, shaking his head.

"It was only a victory because you were here," Scott said shaking his head. "It would have cost us a lot more if you weren't here to help even the odds.

"Don't beat yourself up over it, sugar," Rogue said, hugging Scott from one side and leaning her head on his shoulder. "The emergency portkeys works, and our friends will be up and about far faster than anyone has a right to expect."

"Ja mine freund, and whatever they were doing here, we stopped it from occurring. Right?" Nightcrawler asked, looking over at Harry.

Harry nodded, gesturing to the truck and the mines. "As soon as those are dealt with."

Without a word Scott blasted a hole along the mine shaft's uppermost lip, collapsing it. "Right, now let's get back. I want to check in on our friends," he said grimly.

Returning to Camelot for the night, Harry was stopped as he was about to enter the medical wing of the castle in order to grab some medicine for Jean - just some vitamin pills and pain medicine - who remained laid out up in high note. With Emma in Azerbaijan, Harry intended to go and spend a few hours with Emma, then he and Hela would meet there to check on Jean before coming down to see Storm. But this schedule was interrupted by Cory popping into existence in front of Harry and bowing. "Master, the mistress is awake. She is not moving yet, but she ate enough for five for lunches and seems well. She wishes to speak to you.

"Storm," Harry said her name like a prayer almost, a soft smile banishing his grim look. "Thank goodness for that. Thank you, Cory, I'll go see her now. If you could assign one of the house elves assigned to High Note to watch Jean for me though, that would be lovely. I forgot to do it earlier."

"Of course master. In fact, Cory will watch over her personally until you assign me other duties," the little house elf said proudly, smacking his chest and causing his large ears to flop around.

Harry smiled at the little creature and ruffled its head then went to find storm in the headmaster's quarters. She was indeed sitting up in bed, staring out through the transfigured stone of the room and out into the snow-covered forest beyond. She turned and gave him a brilliant smile as he entered, holding out her hands to him. Harry moved forward, laying his palms down in hers, and then leaning down lightly to kiss her tenderly, before pulling back. "Are you well love?"

She laughed quietly. "You and Hela both asked the same thing, she was here earlier. Now Hela is off with Danielle and the rest of the team you assigned her getting to know more about the two she did not know before. But she said she would meet us up in high note for dinner in a few moments, and was in fact going to be preparing it herself, so I would not try to bow out of it were I you Harry." Her face sobered slightly. "But right now, I too would like transportation up to the asteroid. I feel I am still a half day at the least away from being able to exert myself in such a fashion.

Harry smiled at that. "Now that should be a treat. And as for transportation, your wish is my command." He then gently lifted her into his arms, smirking as she made a protest, smacking his chest with her hand.

"I'm not such an invalid as all that, my heart," she teased, feeling the hand under her rump becoming a little firmer than was actually needed.

"Never said you were Ororo," Harry replied with a chuckle, and once more the way he said her name was almost like prayer, a breath of pure emotion that caused Ororo to blush in pleasure. "Never said you were. But, is it any wonder I would like to have you in my arms as often as possible?"

"Smooth Harry," storm said with a laugh leaning up to kiss him ardently, a flush still visible on her cheeks. When he started to shift her his grip on her however in order to push her back down the bed, she twisted, wriggling out of his grip to stand in front of him, taking his hands in hers. "None of that now. Let us go up to Jean."

To Harry's surprise they found Hela and Emma there already, setting up a small table next to the bed where Jean slept, the noise of their moving around having no effect on the exhausted woman. "She is still sleeping?" Storm asked.

"I have my Pepper-up potions, and the fact that my magic recovers so quickly and in turn bolsters my physical abilities. You have the lady Gaia and her aid in your recovery. Hela is a goddess, with a rate of recovery almost equal to my own.

Almost Hela said haughtily, but then chuckled to take any sting out of her comment before taking up the tale as she gently touched the Phoenix Avatar's forehead. "Whereas Jean, has had none of those things, has her pregnancy sapping her physical and mental strength and has nearly as much of a sleepless time of it as we have. Is it any wonder that she is so out of it at the moment?"

"Enough," Emma said sharply. "Tomorrow is going to be a very hectic day for all of us, but for right now, let's all set business aside, all right? This is a moment for us to have some alone time, let's not waste it."

Harry nodded wordlessly, and Cory appeared beside him, carrying a bottle of wine from Camelot's stores, having retrieved it without even needing to be told. Harry took it graciously thanked him, and moved over to the table, looking over at Jean for a moment then back to the others. "I think given what tomorrow will bring that we can set aside the promise we made Jean about not drinking during her pregnancy just for tonight. And in the interest of talking about things not related to the war, Emma, tell me what your sister Cordelia's up to these days. I haven't seen her in person for months now. Is she still pining for your chief of security?"

OOOOOOO

At the same time Harry held his meeting, the Thing led his girlfriend Thundra and the human torch against the Mole Man. Their job really wasn't to fight it out now, though. Their job was instead to get close enough to see the Mole Man. There was something off about the Mole Man, Ben reflected. Every time they'd fought the little guy, before this he'd retreated into the ground after losing a few companies worth of troops. While most of his troops didn't seem to care so much about their own losses, the Mole Man had, instilling a bit of discipline and order in them. That seemed to have gone by the wayside in his invasion of Kazakhstan.

So, the big brain had devised a scheme, and a device. The reasoning behind it was kind of grim, Ben Grim thought with a bit of morbid humor, yet the suspicion was there. So the three members of the FF currently in the field were sneaking around the area of Kazakhstan conquered by the Mole Man's forces. This included Ben's alternate dimensional girlfriend who had been a stand in for Susan for months now, since Mrs. Richards was most decidedly not an active member at the moment thanks to her pregnancy.

Of course, none of us were actually built for sneaking, including Thundra. Why the hell didn't Reed think about asking for help? Ben groused. Was it ego, or just a lack of common sense. He paused, thinking about that, his orange stone skin actually letting him blend into the rocky background all around them better than most would believe possible, then shrugged. Meh, doesn't matter, I'll just have to make fun of them for both.

Above him on the slop of the mountainside they were currently treking over, Johnny signaled them to stop, and then down, before pointing at his eyes. He was not in his flame form at the moment, having instead done what Ben should have: raided Reed's lab without asking permission and coming away with a sort of chameleon field generator which fit on his belt. It wasn't really ready for the field, and it created a lot of heat, but Johnny could use his powers over flame to become his own heat sink basically, and could use it for a few minutes without trouble. That, and the fact he was the only one of them that had any experience in mountain climbing.

At Johnny's instructions Ben and Thundra crouched down, crawling up next to the smaller man, who moved forward quickly up over a lip in the mountainside where they could peer down into a flat area set between two mountains. Below them by several dozen feet of nastily slanted slope was a group of ten Subterraneans, most of them the normal-sized type, with two of the larger bruiser types. They were setting up what looked like some kind of large gun, as well as putting in defenses around it. Below them was a far larger group setting up what Ben could tell were some kind of solar power farm or something.

There was a large entrance to some kind of cave, which no doubt led into the ever-expanding tunnels of the Mole Man and his forces here in Kazakhstan. There were a lot of heavy cables leading out of it and down towards the larger group, but not hooked up to anything just yet.

For a moment, the sight of all that industry caused Ben to scowl. Huh, I know a lot of the logistics folk were wondering about where the Russians had gotten so many advanced tanks. I know one of 'em said it was like every tank model older than three years had been replaced, with no one the wiser. But if the Mole Man had created enough of an industry for his own forces and then opened that bag of goodies up to the Ruskies along with those underground trams they used to get the drop on everyone, then it makes a lot of sense. His scowl deepened. Fuck, I wonder exactly how bad it will be when we go on the offensive. Those tunnels, the Mole Man and his forces, that's going to be a damn nightmare.

Thundra jogged Ben's elbow lightly, moving a hand infinitesimally to point down to another cave entrance, one that Ben and Johnny had missed. "Look there. Is that not the deformed dwarf we are looking for?"

Wincing at Thundra's blunt speech Ben nodded, staring at the Mole Man. He was standing in the entrance to the second cave, talking to two of the normal-sized Subterraneans, who wore what had to be officers' garb: pants, shirt and a wide series of gold epaulets on their shoulders. Since most Subterraneans didn't wear much in the way of clothing (they seemed almost genderless so it wasn't an issue) these two stood out even more.

The Thing quickly handed the Human Torch the goggles that Reed Richards had created for this purpose and Johnny crawled forward, activating his obfuscation field as he slid up the side of the rock to one side, getting a higher vantage point to stare into the cave in question.

He flipped through a few controls on the goggles, staring through it at their target then gasped, nearly dropping them. Scrambling to catch them, Johnny lost his footing, sending a cascading series of rocks down towards the Subterraneans below.

The Subterraneans all looked up, and the Thing slapped one craggy hand over his face. "That's torn it." With a growl he pushed himself to his feet then leaped forward, smashing bodily into the large artillery gun the Subterraneans were setting up, destroying it in an instant.

Behind him, Thundra took a brief second to look at the Human Torch as he carefully set the goggles aside before flaring into his fire form. "I take it you saw something amiss?"

"Oh yeah, you might say that," The Torch said as the flames started to lick at his face, covering it as it already had the rest of his body. "It's certain now, the Mole Man is a shape changing alien. Not a Skrull though, I still thought we were dealing with some of those bastards whatever Harry said. Odd to think there are two races out there like that."

"Leave that shit for later! Right now, it's clobbering time!" Ben roared, leaping towards the Mole Man's position. That worthy was already retreating, but that was fine by Ben Grimm.

Pulling that rat out of his hole could wait, right now he just wanted to smash this place apart, whatever it was for and then get the info back to the big brains. They could determine what to do with it after that. Although, he thought irritably, with everything else we're all dealing with, I doubt the Mole Man will register for a bit. Not unless the shape changing ass who's replaced him decides to get involved elsewhere.

OOOOOOO

This was in fact the case. The Mole Man and his forces had yet to appear anywhere else in any strength, being concentrated on Kazakhstan. Since that was the case, that theater of conflict was deemed a low priority for most. Everyone was on the lookout though for the Mole Man aiding the Russians once the allies launched their assault. For now though, the Mole Man seemed content to slowly conquer Kazakhstan, and his forces weren't massacring civilians or even moving all that fast despite their advantages in underground travel. So they could be left to the Fantastic Four for now.

Genosha on the other hand was about to become an even more violent front than it had been already.

The Black Panther had not been telling Harry and the others the whole truth about his situation in Genosha. While it was true he had made tremendous gains, and he personally had dealt with several Mutant Liberation Front members and a few of the local government super soldiers, it was also true that he hadn't managed to break out of the port city with the majority of his troops. Ion the kind of close confines, small unit tactics a city called for his men were not nearly as well-trained or simply tough and prepared as the locals. Added to this was the fact that the Mutant Liberation Front seemed to be able to take advantage of Press Gang attacks, never being in the vicinity but able to capitalize on the movement of troops to that threat from elsewhere.

But later that same day as the meeting with Harry had been held, Mr. Sinister started to take direct control. Mr. Sinister might not be a general, or any kind of soldier. However, he did know quite a bit about warfare, and about chess. And while there was a lot the game got wrong about warfare, depending on the army it did get one thing right: It was all about removing the King. And when that army is led by someone like the Black Panther, someone who is known to lead from the front, that makes it all the easier.

The Black Panther looked up as one of his communications operators informed him of a new break-in along their outer cordon.
How bad is it?"

"It's bad she said simply. "It's being led by a new Mutant Liberation Front member, one we've not seen before. She is apparently super-strong, because she just smashed an entire building down on some of our troopers. And she's moving towards one of the civilian shelters." Those shelters were a holdover from when Genosha had been a young, aggressively militant nation, but they still served the people of the port for now.

"Which means, that I am needed at the front again," the Black Panther said with a barely concealed smile.

He stretched, cracking his neck and shoulders. It would ever do for him to admit it, but T'challa was certainly feeling the last few weeks of near constant combat. Pulling himself back from the front had not just been to answer the summons from Harry and the other high commanders, and it hadn't just been because his chief advisors had almost literally sat on him that he had stopped trying to get back to the front before getting some sleep after the meeting. Still, with a full four hours' worth of sleep and rest. The king of Wakanda felt up to getting back to what he felt he did best. This was not, despite what anyone else would tell T'challa, ruling. No, T'challa believed he was best utilized to kick ass and take names.

He cracked his knuckles, then watched as the Black Panther's claws slowly enlarged on his hands, the metal fiber extending quickly. He touched his necklace around his neck and the helmet elongated too, merging with his mask. While the Black Panther's uniform might look as if it was simple spandex or something simple similar, it was not. It was in fact nano-fiber, a vibranium variant of the kind of uniform that Harry had created for the Custodes Mundi and X-Men. It gave him quite a lot of protection from blunt objects, guns of all sorts, and even most cutting type of assaults. So far it had also proven effective against anything short of a true laser weapons, though of course T'challa preferred to dodge as best he could.

"Direct me to this new enemy, the Black Panther is on the hunt!" he said as he leaped out of his command bunker, which looked almost like an African tent, but the inside was most decidedly more high-tech than that.

The communications officer quickly directed him through the city, connecting him directly to a few of the forces at the front. Staring at their positions on a map which appeared on the inside of his mask's protective lens, he began to bark out orders. "Tcau, Da'fey, fall back two blocks. There is a small subway station there, it has heavier walls, and you can use it as a defensive positions. Rally your troops there but be prepared to fall back. Do not, repeat do not allow yourself to get caught in close quarters combat with these people. We have lost too many brothers as it is to them."

Flicking that line off, he connected to Thunderbird, who he knew had arrived in the country while he was sleeping. "Thunderbird are you and your team ready to go?"

"Roger that Panther, we were moving toward another incursion but we can finish that and get to you in ten, keep some distance between you and the MLF and we're golden," Thunderbird said, leading the way out from where he and his makeshift team had landed.

Havok, Coyote, get up high, move to flank out line of advance and prepare to bring down a building on our enemies, we'll need to move fast and we can't get bogged down," Thunderbird commanded as he clicked off his discussion with the Black Panther, smiling eagerly. This was his chance to make certain that Scott and Harry both realized that they had made the right decision to put him in command. He would not waste the opportunity. "Keep an eye out, remember that we have friendlies in the area, as well as enemies. I don't want any friendly fire moments gentlemen. Banshee stay in the sky for now, and aim for any large groups you can see. Five minutes only people, hammer them and then we got to move on."

Ahead of them, Thunderbird and Cortez, who he had kept with him, could see the force of a full Press Gang moving into the system to the city. The Press Gang were Genosha's top tier governmental enforcers, a group that had access to a lot more high-end technology than the world at large had realized until the civil war erupted. They consisted of highly trained men and women who wore extremely effective body armor on the one part, and others who utilized large robots, almost as large as the Hulk while sitting in a little control seat high up their back, protected by fire and blast resistant glass of some kind.

Thunderbird thought about all this as he charged forward towards the group, which consisted of fifty of the regular troops, and fourteen of the robots. "I have eyes on a Press Gang," he said into his communicator even as he charged forward, ignoring the blaster bolts from the robots and men ahead of them as they slammed into him. While normally he wouldn't be able to take heavy caliber laser weapons, like all of the other super-strong men of the Custodes Mundi and its subsidiaries, he wore a modified suit of armor that only vaguely looked like his personal Apache heritage inspired uniform, and was instead very effective body armor.

The only place that was truly vulnerable now was his face, and he was fast enough to duck and dodge enough to keep his head protected somewhat. Hell I'm even wearing a cup of the damn metal he thought, a snort of humor on his face as he barreled into the first of the large robots, picking it up and hurling it into his fellow to one side while the others retreated in order to bring their heavy cannons to bear again. One of them didn't, and a punch to his check slammed Thunderbird's head sideways and made him stumble back, but then he pulled out from his pouch, a heavy Orichalcum machete. A quick slash cut off the hand of that robot before he could pull back, and then Thunderbird's free fist slammed into the robot's chest head, smashing deep into its control circuitry.

He turned then, grabbing the robot that had just been attacking him and using it as a shield against more fire from the Press Gang. At the same time, he saw Banshee flying down from above to divebomb the Press Gang, hitting the back for their skirmish formation, pushing them out of several defensive positions and Cortez further down the street hidden in a burned out building and firing her energy blasts down the street, corralling those who had been trying to get around Thunderbird.

That left only two to account for. "Havok, Coyote, are you both in position?"

"Ready/yeah we're ready," said the two voices, one professional, one surly.

Shaking his head at Havok's ongoing attitude, Thunderbird, ducked down to one knee, and pulled the remains of the robot over his head. He ignored its controller leaping clear and sprinting away down a nearby alleyway, shouting, "Do it!"

The two shooters opened up, and not with rifles. Coyote was now sporting to armloads of small rocket launchers attached to his bracers, tiny rockets about the size of two fingers put together. He could fire 12 of the things at once, from both of his exo-suit's arms, and was doing so into two buildings on one side of the fight going on below.

At the same time Havok used his energy-based blasts to carve a larger building on the other side of the fight into chunks, which now began falling down onto Press Gang members hither and yon.

Banshee moved in quickly, now targeting the few remaining larger groups of enemies from on high discombobulating the Press Gang troopers with a low-pitched, barely heard whine that immediately began to hit their balance. He couldn't fly very high without losing all sense of visibility much like all of the other flyers and jet and planes, but he was both more experienced than the other Custodes flyers (bar Ororo), and just a little bit faster. That was why Harry had chosen him to fight with Thunderbird here in Genosha.

In moments, the sixty-four-man group of the Press Gang in front of them were beaten, the few survivors retreating in disarray. Thunderbird nodded grimly and turned aside, moving to heft Cortez up on his back as Banshee did the same with Havok. "Good job team, now let's get a move on!"

Alex frowned at him, from where Banshee had just picked him up like a little child in his arms. He hated flying like this with anyone but Polaris, and Why are we retreating?"

Thunderbird twitched, angry at the accusation. "Because it's not our job to hold the ground, our job is to blunt assaults, or head them, let the Wakandan troops hold the ground we take. Besides, right now we have to hurry and meet up with the Black Panther."

Havok looked like he wanted to argue, but Thunderbird had already turned away, racing faster than a speeding horse down the street. A second later Havok squawked as Banshee took off after them, with Coyote using his suit's teleporter to keep up with some difficulty.

Four blocks later there was a sudden bussing noise, and Thunderbird pulled his headset away from his head glaring at it. "What the hell!?"

Then he winced as a voice sounded off in his head like a clarion call. "Thunderbird get a fucking move on. T'challa wasn't dealing with a probing attack! The Black Panthers all alone facing, well I can't tell what he's facing, they've got some telepath over there blocking all of my probes. According to his commander his communicator isn't responding either, and I… damn it, I can't get through to him!" Emma's telepathic voice almost shrieked.

Thunderbird winced at that, knowing that was trouble. Either the enemy telepath is strong enough to block Emma entirely or… "Is he still alive at least?" He asked over the link Emma was now sustaining between them for a moment.

"I can sense he's still active, but I can't reach him. It looks as if my opposing number has some strength to her. Odd, it's almost like… but that would be impossible…" Emma's mental voice trailed off for a moment before giving the impression she had just shaken her head. "Nevermind, that's my problem. Just get in there Thunderbird, we can't let T'challa die!"

Thunderbird didn't bother to reply mentally as he felt her cut the link between them. "Cortez, hang on tight," He growled, then bunched his legs and leapt up onto the nearest building even as he began to tell his team about what he had just been told.

OOOOOOO

No sooner had the Black Panther arrived on the scene, physically ordering his troops away, and dragging more than one off through the streets himself, then four more of the so-called Marauders had appeared, closing in from all sides along with the woman he had been here to fight in the first place. The one called Blockbuster closed in first, racing forward to grapple with the Black Panther from out of the middle of a wrecked building.

But the Black Panther was a master martial artist and he simply ducked underneath the large white skinned bald man's reach, lashing out with his claws. They didn't penetrate Blockbuster's skin, but the dust that T'challa's other hand threw into the man's eye did the trick. He stumbled back, unable to see for a moment. The Black Panther then flipped himself forward, kicking off the man's upper chest, to dodge incoming fire from several others.

Riptide hurled his small metal daggers, so fast they could barely be seen by normal people, spinning quickly and quickly and quicker still, to impart that speed to them. One of them penetrated the Black Panther's shoulder, cutting through his armor with an ease that was a little scary. Note to self, don't close with that one. With the number of daggers he's tossing out, it would be like being close to a paper shredder.

A few of his men had pulled back just enough to open the range so that they could use their energy guns, raising them to their shoulders and firing quickly they save T'challa from further immediate damage. But Riptide ducked behind one of the other Marauders, the one that had been reported to be in the area.

She was a tallish woman with short cropped brown hair tinted here and there with purple, who wore formfitting armor that left one arm and shoulder bare while covering everything else in silvery metal.

Arclight slammed her hands down on the ground, creating a shockwave that advanced towards the locals. Two of his men were able to jump out of the way in time, but the other one was picked up by the shockwave, and hurled back into a building at a very bad angle, his neck snapping.

"SHAAAA!" Hissing a wordless battle cry, the Black Panther leaped away from the building he had been clinging to, lashing out with his claws at Arclight, going for her eyes. He had discovered that most superstrong individuals were still vulnerable in the eyes and the throat to a certain degree.

But Arclight grabbed his hands, and hurled him to one side, though he was quick enough to roll with it and avoid further injury. Super-strong and super-fast, and trained in the martial arts. Not good.

There was a loud buzzing noise to one side, and the Black Panther turned to see the remains of an electronic store's front suddenly shifting into a large cannon as large as his body, firing at him from near point-blank range. He leaped away just in time, but the heat of the blasts passage still cooked his legs a bit as he did so. Not having had time to see where he was jumping T'challa smashed into a window, not noticing how much damage to the city that blast had done, or the fact that it had immolated more than a few of his troops at the nearby subway station he had ordered them to regroup at.

He was then cutting into the top of the electronic store dropping down so swiftly that the man who had created that cannon barely had a second to turn, before a blow from the Black Panther nearly laid him out. He rolled with it though, coming up with his hands crossed in front of his chest, and a proper boxing stance. When he tried to punch forward though, the Black Panther simply ducked underneath, his foot catching the man in the side of the leg, shattering the bone. Before the man could cry out, or finish falling to the ground, the Black Panther had pushed himself off into a body check that threw an elbow straight into the man's throat, crushing it and hurling his body backwards.

"No!" Shouted a voice nearby. Then Arclight smashed her way into the building, crashing into him before he could leap back up out of the hole he had created. "You'll pay for that!"

With a growl, she grabbed T'challa by the throat, and slammed him back first into the wall, before holding him there with one hand, and bringing back a fist. He kicked at her but she didn't move, and he pulled his legs tight and finally flipped himself upwards, kicking her in the face several times before she could finish throwing her punch. The woman stumbled back from that, but didn't releases her grip on him before twisting around and hurling him to the ground where he landed, smashing his already wounded shoulder.

He grunted in pain, but then slammed his hand down onto her foot right above her ankles, which was bare. "Flash Stinger!" His hand fizzled with electricity from his suit and the jolt of it made the woman let him go, though he doubted it actually hurt. Rolling away, he then leaped up back into the hole he created earlier, out and away flipping himself back upwards to land on the roof.

T'challa moved his shoulder gingerly one way or the other, hissing a little but otherwise was unharmed. Really, Riptide is more dangerous than that woman was to me, so long as I can keep her from pinning me in place.

That was the last thought he had before a blast of energy took him in the back, hurling him off the roof and searing away his armor there. It was only his suit that kept T'challa alive though as he fell through the air, flipping himself to land on the ground, and staring back the way he had fallen.

He watched as a new individual appeared there. This man was tall, extremely well-muscled, but not overly muscular, wearing a black and purple body suit, and a black cape. He had white skin, white like chalk rather than the pale pink complexion that was normally meant by the term. In the center of his forehead he had a diamond shaped mark, and his hands were smoldering with purple and black energy of some kind. "If you want an experiment to go right, you must remove the impurities personally," the man said, leaping down towards the Black Panther.

The Black Panther met him halfway, lashing out quickly, but the man shrugged off his attacks, grabbed his foot when he raised it for a kick, and crushed it in his grip. T'challa bit back a scream of pain, then was hurled to one side, as another energy blast was sent after him.

"Force field!" he shouted, touching one of the controls on his neck. The energy attack slammed into his shield, which held for a brief second, while he regained his feet, the nano-fibers of his suit hardening around his injured foot as it had earlier to his shoulder creating a makeshift splint that was as hard as steel, allowing him to move unaided. But T'challa knew that this fight was beyond him. He touched another one of the claws on his neck, shouting, "Camouflage!" Then the king of Wakanda ducked to one side just as his shield gave way. He rolled quickly then pushed himself back into the shadows, where he disappeared even deeper under camouflage, his suit shifting like the skin of a chameleon. It couldn't sustain that for very long without roasting him alive in his suit, but it would keep for now.

"That will not save you!" the man said, and Arclight and Blockbuster went to work, smashing the buildings to either side of where the Black Panther disappeared to the ground. He wasn't caught in either demolition, but this act kicked up a lot of dust and dirt, which T'challa's attackers were waiting for. Riptide noticed his movements through the dust and quickly turned sending thousands of tiny needles into the area where he had just seen movement. The Black Panther gasped as his suit was inundated, sliced here and there, and then he was smashed off of his feet by a blow from behind again.

Where this one came from he didn't know, because when he looked, no one was there. Then he found felt himself being lifted as it by some force or energy, and then felt his body stretched, including his wounded shoulder and leg. "Excellent, Madeline," Mr. Sinister said, smirking slightly. "So much for the idea a mere human could ever be able to fight against Homo Superior. Perhaps this will teach you and yours a lesson."

"What, that villains talk too much?" said a the voice from one side, and then a third building came down, as a shout of "Cry havoc!" was heard.

Then Thunderbird and his team were there. They didn't try to stick around though, instead Thunderbird ordered them to grab T'challa and get out of there. The Black Panther was far too wounded looking for them to want him to be anywhere near the fight to come. To that end, Havok attacked first, then Coyote, shooting gas grenades and flash bombs down from a nearby ceiling.

But as he did so, Coyote ran into an attack of his own, a nearby MLF member having been moving to support his fellows instead attacked him. The armor-clad Wyatt stumbled, as up became down, his sense of smell disappearing, his sense of sight being badly diminished. "What, what is this!" Quickly he activated his suits teleporter, which allowed him to get away from his attacker.

His senses soon came back as he put distance between himself and a seedy, thin looking mutant with sallow features and mismatched eyes. He did this just in time to duck under a blast of heat and energy that cut through the building behind him, and out towards a few of his troopers who were trying to fight back against some of the other mutants nearby. The man's attack had disrupted Coyote's own so that what should have ben an overwhelming attack of flash bombs and tear gas had been barely enough to disturb the Marauders and their leader.

It still threw off the telekinetic long enough for T'challa to lash out with his own attack, a tiny stun grenade from his belt hurled at the redhead's feet. She encased it in a TK grip, but her lack of experience shown through here as she released T'challa from her powers, letting him fall to the road beneath.

Nearby, several of the Wakandans were caught out in the open, riddled with holes from the blasts of plasma. yet in return two of the mutants, the thin looking one and one other went down to the Wakandan's fire. But then as Thunderbird reached T'challa, the survivors were ambushed from above by one of the marauders. Blockbuster, the same man to the Black Panther had dealt with at the start of the fight, leaped down into their midst.

He crashed in among the regular troopers. Though they bravely stood and fought, their bayonets flicking up on top of their rifles and charging or grabbing at machetes at their sides, Blockbuster was highly durable and laughed at their efforts, tossing all of them around, breaking bones with every blow.

Making a decision to not try to save all of them, Thunderbird acted, turning from where he had bodily smashed into Arclight, smashing her to the ground before he turned in the other Native American's direction, grabbing up and hurling T'challa free of the ambush. "Havok, Cortez, Banshee covering fire, Coyote, catch!"

This did not save Thunderbird. Sinister had already been preparing a blast of energy to kill T'challa. Now he simply shifted focus and amped up the power. At the same time, the telekinetic struck too, her blast of TK power smashing Thunderbird from the other side.

The damage these two attacks did should have been fatal. Instead, the damage, and Thunderbird's heart stopping for a moment, activated his suit's emergency portkey system. And their concentration on him allowed Coyote to get clean away, with the others covering his retreat.

But they too didn't escape unscathed. Riptide once more proved his murderous ability, sending thousands of tiny glass and metal needles up at the flying Banshee as he did one last dive bomb on Blockbuster, trying to cover the retreat of the last to surviving Wakandans of the two companies which had been caught in this ambush. His attack saved them, but Riptide's assault nearly tore him to shreds, activating his emergency portkey in turn.

Sinister scowled as the heavily injured Thunderbird suddenly disappeared along with the Banshee, his eyes narrowing. "Magic. Damn it. It would appear whatever was done to block my own teleportation technology has no effect on magic. Always it comes back to magic with Potter and through him his forces. Blast you Morgan Le Fay, if you had only had the spine to stand with me."

He frowned mentally going through the individuals he had just seen, matching them up to his database. On top of that it looked as if the Black Panther is no longer my only worry. If he will continue to be at all. Whatever else, he has lost the use of his arm and leg, and his back was badly burned as well. With those injuries it will be a miracle if he lives through the day.

Scowling Sinister reminded himself however there was once more magic to consider. Dammit. I might have to do this all again tomorrow. Mr. Sinister frowned angrily. The idea of breaking out and fighting his way through the American naval forces was looking better and better. Yet he couldn't do it.

All or nothing he thought, this was an all or nothing roll of the dice. I have to stick it out until I at least have to entrap Potter and force Subject Grey to act in order to save him. It is the only way forward. That, or a blood sample from Potter to merge with the clone.

With that in mind, he turned to his deputy, Arclight, who was groggily shaking her head, still a little out of it from having her head used as a bouncy ball. When she was focusing on him, Sinister jerked his head around to indicate the city around them. "Press them hard, use the Press Gang and the MLF forces. Don't let them have a moment to recover from the loss of command the Black Panther's injuries will force upon them."

Even as Arclight nodded, Sinister was already turning to the genetic experiment who he had given the name of Madelyn Pryor to. "Madelyn, it is time, you must do your part to expel these enemies of freedom and mutant rights. Release your powers upon them."

The redhead smiled at him, her eyes gleaming with eagerness. "Of course, my love."

OOOOOOO

Emma had been basically observing everything she could of the fight occurring. She felt Thunderbird's pain, felt him dying and then disappearing. She had a brief moment to breath a sigh of relief before she felt it, a vast telepathic assault launched not as an attack on a single person, but as an attack on the minds of the Wakandan forces.

It was a brute force thing, simply creating and projecting out an aura of fear and terror into the minds of their enemies. In this case, the aura came with illusions of gremlins and other such creatures. To those effected by the attack they came out of the nearest shadow, attacking and cackling as they tore into the flesh of the Wakandans and even the retreating group of mutants. And those who took wounds from them felt the pain, their own brains tricked into believing the illusions were real.

Dozens of men died from their own pain induced brains convincing them they were dead before Emma could react. That reaction came in the form of a blast of telepathic power of her own, sent slamming down into the mind of the telepath who had finally revealed herself, and, as her attack was blocked by something, some kind of scientific device, she was then forced to throw up a kind of mental wall, a wall of diamond around the minds she could feel in the Genosha's port city.

But there were so many minds, and defending another person's mind was far tougher than attacking, putting Emma on the back foot. Her walls of diamond instantly began to show cracks, but she crushed every gremlin or demon that tried to appear behind it, using her far greater experience and control to good effect. Still, stuck on the defensive like this and this far removed, Emma was soon being pushed to the limit in a way she had very rarely been before.

"Pinoptes!" Emma grunted as she tried to turn the tide of the telepathic battle. "Get Charles on the line, I need Xavier's help damn it! And tell, tell Harry that whatever happens in Russia, Sinister's forces just got big reinforcement! Then prepare a shuttle or something to get me down to Genosha, I need to be closer to fight this person on an even footing."

OOOOOOO

Harry was determined to show not only turn the tide of the war in as quick and abrupt a manner as possible, but to also show everyone that the Russians did not have a monopoly on the strategy of shock and awe and, beyond that to force the Russian people as a whole to realize they had bitten off more than they could chew. To that end, once he had memorized where most of the largest Aerospace Force bases were, he and Pinoptes and Dennis made certain there weren't any secret bases the satellites had missed.

Oddly enough, there weren't. Dennis supposed, and Harry agreed with him, that the Russians and the Mole Man's forces had known that the magically induced insane degree of cold and had decided not to waste any time on the airborne forces. The rocket launchers and other ground-based weaponry that had initially been under the command of the Aerospace's organization had been seconded to the various army groups. Indeed, there was every indication that a lot of the Air Force's personnel had also been reassigned. That, though he didn't show it, was something Harry was very thankful for. It meant he wouldn't have to kill as many people as he had feared.

After that, he sent an ultimatum through diplomatic channels, an odd experience considering that Harry had never tried to actually talk to his enemies like this, not formally anyway. Still his ultimatum was simplicity itself to get across. The Russians would start to talk peace within three hours of their receipt of this warning, or the allies would go on the offensive.

Thanks to his asking lady Gaia to hold off on breaking the cold spell, not even the aliens working with the Russians had any clue that yes, the allies were really serious about that. Given the fact that the Russians were seemingly pulling more and more troops up from their more in land bases towards the front and would still have a numerical superiority by a wide margin, and further if the allies did go on the attack, would be fighting a defensive battle on their own turf, this was seen as mere hyperbole. Not a single Russian general or political leader believed that he was telling the simple truth.

Russia had never been successfully invaded, not once. Every time, the enemy would gain ground, but the sheer vastness of Russia would work against them. With the air forces of the world completely useless thanks to the cold and the lack of visibility from the magically enhanced and expanded winter, plus their ally the Mole Man, they had no reason to believe that this time will be any different.

"Harry Potter lacks the understanding, to realize how foolish his ultimatum is!" The Russian ambassador to the UN shouted, slamming his hand down on the podium. Why the man had been allowed to remain within the United Nations was one of those political bullshit things that Harry had long decided were just so much idiocy. "You will never invade Mother Russia, you will never take our lands! You lack the will, you lack the numbers, you lack the technology. General Winter will do away with you until we have regained what is rightfully ours! No false accusation of alien involvement, no gross lie to cover your own imperialistic tendencies, will change that basic fact!"

And on the rhetoric went. Staring into the TV screen at a live recording of the UN, Harry shook his head, looking over to Ororo. The two of them were in their room in High note with Jean, who was still sleeping, snoring at the moment actually. Her snores were quite cute in Harry's opinion, these little warbling notes. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to tease her outrageously about it later. In fact, he actually set up a recording device just so he could make fun of her even more. "well, that's it then."

Hela walked in as Harry muted the TV, and she took one look at it and snorted derisively. "Politicians," she scoffed. "If they were real leaders, they would be called something else. Statesman perhaps. But as it is, I have no patience for the breed, and I am most thankful that I do not need to listen to that one's particular bombastic nature at the moment, thank you Harry."

"You're most welcome. But on a more serious note, Is your team ready?" Harry asked.

Hela nodded and gestured behind her. "Both them and everyone else. It is time Harry." Her lips twitched under her half-mask. "Besides that, I doubt Hela would be willing to hold off for very much longer."

"true enough, and I'm certainly not going to argue with her on it," Harry said, to a chorus of chuckles from the two ladies currently awake in the room with him.

Heading out and down into the atrium, Harry found that the Custodes Mundi had gathered, split into two teams, one which would go with Garm and Hela, and one which would be backup for Steve and the Winter Guard.

Thunderbird's team had, since the events in Genosha, already been reinforced by Iceman, Hawkeye and, at a request by Harry, Sunspot. Harry and Ororo had of course also healed Banshee and Thunderbird within minutes of their arriving back in Camelot, during which time Una had kept them alive until the two magicals could get there. Harry had even gone to Genosha and healed the Black Panther.

The events down in Genosha were also why Emma was not there with them, though. Sinister's telepath was nearly as powerful as her, and her ability to inflict mental illusions on her enemies was an attack it was taking all of Emma's mental abilities to counter. The initial assault though had hurled the Black Panther and his men onto the defensive. And the Press Gang was taking advantage of it, trying to push the so-called 'opportunistic invaders out of the port city T'challa had been using as his beachhead. Still, the situation there was stabilized for now. The snake in the grass could wait until the attacking bear was dealt with.

He nodded at them all, clasping hands with Magma, who was still team leader despite Danielle returning. Danielle would be her second-in-command taking the place of Colossus, who would slip into his far more natural supporting role. "You all know what to do," he said grimly. "The Russians have another hour to start talking peace talks, and then we launch Operation Whirlwind."

Ororo smiled, as everyone looked at her, but she shook her head. "Don't look at me, for once Harry has come up with a good name for something. She teased, causing laughter all around.

All of them nodded at that and Harry smiled at them all. "Good luck," he said simply. And with that, he turned away, shouting over his shoulder, "And let's make sure that we're all still alive after this too. I've invested a lot of time and effort in all of your training and gear, I'd hate to see it go to waste."

For a moment, the others stared after him, then chuckled dryly as Betsy quipped, "And there it is ladies and gentlemen. I knew that British stiff upper lip and general all along all-around stiff shirt-ness would eventually come out in some fashion."

About five minutes later, Harry exited High Note from its position over Poland. With Pinoptes directing him with a small computerized map that was displaying on his wrist, he flew around the globe until he was directly over one of the largest Air Force bases in Russia. Then he flew down, through the atmosphere and the turbulent weather, through the near blind conditions that made flying at anything but nape of the earth impossible, and even that difficult. Once Pinoptes informed him he should be close to fifty stories above the ground, he halted, even though he still couldn't see more than a few yards around him.

Closing his eyes, he began to cast a spell, sending down his senses towards the Air Force Base, feeling out where it began, and where the nearby town ended. This is going to be one of the trickier ones. With the others, he wouldn't have to worry much since they were far enough away from civilian settlements. But this one was so close that he did have to worry, which was kind of irritating. But Harry wasn't about to let that stop him from doing what he had bluntly told the Russians he was going to do. You make a threat, you have to be willing to follow through with it

With that in mind when Pinoptes informed him the deadline he'd given the Russians had expired Harry cast another spell. "Sciath na BhFéadfadh." The spell, which he hadn't had to use in a while, created a shield around him, which he could manipulate and sue against magical attacks, though it was utterly useless against nonmagical attacks and was highly energy intensive. To wizards back in his old world. Harry could use it now, despite note quite being above more than half his normal strength, with ease.

Gesturing downwards through the atmosphere, he enlarged the shield until it surrounded the base as he descended towards it. He was about 400, perhaps 500 feet above the base's control tower now, and with another spell on his eyes to give him the eyes of a hawk he could see everything around it, all of its edges. With that, he created the shields, tying the spell off as it were. Below he could now see dozens, hundreds of Russian soldiers racing for the jet fighters parked in long rows or to a series of missile launchers set here and there as anti-air. There weren't nearly as many people as there should have been for a base of this scale, and for that, Harry was very, very grateful. But their scrambling around would not save them from what was about to happen. Once before I brought the thunder to Russia. Now I do it again. I can only hope they learn from it this time.

With a scowl of his face and a fervent wish that he hoped the souls of the dead would be going to a better place Harry put a hand against the shield, and intoned grimly "Solus Perditio."

It'd been a while since he'd used this particular spell, and Harry had gotten far stronger since so the speed with which the spell appeared and began to grow didn't surprise his all that much. The spell created a flame so hot it seared everything within the shield to ash. Concrete bobbled and disintegrated, metal melted, before simply turning into gas and dissipating. Humans, died in their hundreds, so fast they barely had time to feel pain before they died. A mercy, almost. Within a brief thirty, perhaps forty seconds, one of the strongest Aerospace force bases in Russia was just…gone, excised out of the landscape, with the nearby city unharmed, including the off-base quarters for officers. It would be a toss up as to which was more frightening: the totality of the damage, or the control exhibited.

Harry stared down at the destruction he had wrought and shook his head sadly. He hated the necessity of this, but that was just it, this was a necessity. He had to show not only power but a certain level of ruthlessness, or else the Russians, dupes of the aliens or no, would keep fighting. People would keep dying. And in that case, it was better the enemy die then his people or those of his allies.

He'd actually talked about this with Garnoff, Colossus, and the other Russians. Garnoff had been saddened by the necessity but understood. Colossus had been horrified and sad, as were most of the others. Nikolai thought Harry was being too soft, and would have to do something even more ruthless in order to force the Russians to the diplomatic table. His sister, Laynia had issues with her former country, and had actually cheered at the idea.

Her hatred of her mother country had risen to new heights ever since they had escaped, possibly because she had been able to almost immediately find a spot in a ballet school in America, where she had not been able to make the cut in Russia even prior to her finding her mutant power and a lifetime of hardship and training that would be considered inhumane by most. Or perhaps, unlike her brother, she had far fewer good memories of their life in Russia. Whatever the case, Scott had had been forced to remonstrate with her most forcefully several times when she almost crossed the line in terms of necessary force along the finish front.

Regardless, with their understanding if not blessing, Harry was going to bring the war to Russia in no uncertain terms. But he would commit no atrocity against civilians. Military targets only. I may be a horribly powerful wizard, but I am not a monster, I am not a god to reap innocent and soldier alike.

Harry's attack on the Air Force Base happened so quickly, that no one within had time to even get a warning off. Of course the destruction was seen from the nearby city, but the cause of it wasn't. Harry had time to fly of, and then come down over a second Air Force Base twenty minutes later, incinerating it in similar fashion before the Russians could understand what was going on and far easier since this one wasn't right next to a large suburban sprawl as the first had been. A third base, then a fourth fell in like manner, and suddenly the defense of mother Russia didn't seem so certain.

OOOOOOO

"Why is he doing this!" growled Doctor Volkh, scowling and tapping tobacco into his pipe irritably. "The Air Force doesn't matter, indeed, we've repurposed most of it's support staff and officers for other tasks. Why is he targeting of them, when he could just as easily be taught targeting other things?"

"I don't know!" Said Samantha, scowling at the man. "Why in the hall are you even here asking me these questions?"

"Because he is a magic user like you," Volkh said, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "Don't bother denying it, I know that this crystal has nothing to do with science, it is all your power, all magical. Does he know something we do not? Are those bases somehow important to you? Or, or is it that he is in a position to break your spell. With that Afrikaner mutant freak Storm on his side, perhaps he could dissipate the cloud cover quickly enough to get the allies air power into play?"

"That is an idea perhaps, but he has shown no sign of being able to break our spell before this. Indeed, I thought the reason we had been not been seeing him in the field was because he was leading the opposition." Samantha replied, shocked at how bluntly the Russian equivalent of Reed Richards had spoken to prevaricate overmuch in her own response. I've worried about what he knows about us for a while now, is this the sign he knows even more than I fear?

"And it didn't occur to you to warn us! That you felt him pulling back from…"

"Magic doesn't work like that," Samantha growled, shaking her head as she interrupted Volkh's building accusation. "I can't feel when a specific opponent is removing himself from the battle like that, as if it was a physical battle, one wrestler trying to pull away from another perhaps. All I can tell you is the amount of pressure we are exerting against one another. That hasn't diminished, so either he has coerced another magic user to step in and help them, one of equal power, or something else is changed."

The idea of another magic user equal to Harry's power taking his place like that was quite frightening to Samantha. It was only because of their ability to work together, to send power through the crystal that allowed her race to battle on an even footing with the human mages. One such as Harry Potter could have defeated thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of her people alone, but he was facing billions, all of them tied into this spell. That was how important the Ocetite they had discovered here on earth was to their race.

With an entirely new source of Ocetite, they could renew their own resources, maybe even discover enough such crystals that they would be able to start to think about taking back their ancestral home from the Skrull. They would soon learn that magic always triumph over science in the end then, she thought grimly, almost losing herself in that pleasant fantasy and not for the first time.

She came back to the hear and now with a shake of her head. "If something else has occurred, I'm afraid I can't tell you what it could be. The magic, that is the magic system used here on earth is entirely different from my own at anything but the most basic level. Our attack spells are somewhat similar, but in this kind of contest, it's more about mental strength and ingenuity, and I'm afraid to say that Harry Potter has both of those in abundance."

Volkh grunted knowledge of that point, thinking furiously. "We will act on the assumption that he has such a means," he said at last. "Forewarned is forearmed after all."

Unfortunately for the Russians coming to that conclusion and then organizing a dispersal of their remaining Air Force assets were two very different things. The first took little to no time at all, the second required several hours of transmitted orders, and far more time to organize and get moving. Entire bases simply could not up and split into smaller units that easily, there was a lot of logistical minutiae to work over, what units would go where, transportation of the jets, would they be able to fly at all? Indeed, did they even have the assets available to do any of this.

It was an oft forgotten or overlooked aspect of warfare, but transportation and logistics it was a vastly important one. The Germans had neglected their logistics to their cost numerous times in both World War I and World War II. Tactically, they had magnificent commanders, but as more than one American General had put it, the Germans could not find their ass with both hands and a map in terms of logistics. Even Rommel, for all his vaunted tactical skill and personal charisma, was not good at all at logistics.

And the Russians, while better at it, did not have the resources that the Americans had. For all its size, the Russian economy was not nearly as flexible or as abundant in nature as the American, or even the British for that matter. For all of its small size, Britain actually had one of the best economies in the world, thanks in no small part to its extremely good relations with its former colonies, and the fact that it's empire in all but name still consisted of multiple well-placed islands the world over, something which, given the fact that the Falklands and Malta sent between them a hundred and sixty representatives to the House of Commons and ten to the House of Lords, the islands were somewhat happy about that, and well represented. In comparison Russia was a sprawling moribund monster.

So Harry was able to destroy another five Air Force bases, before the Russians just started to order their evacuation. And it was no coincidence that these two bases were two of the closest to the Caucuses front. That wasn't to say he didn't run into opposition of course. This opposition came mostly in the form of rockets and fighters, but on the fifth base that changed, somewhat.

Of the two mecha-robot units Russia could field, the Crimson Dynamo was the only one who could truly be said to be airworthy. The Titanium Man could travel in the air, but he was too ungainly and slow to really fight in the air. So it was a sole Crimson Dynamo who responded to the third attack Harry launched, this time attacking an air force base near the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

As he was finishing the shield spell around the base Harry blinked as rockets flared past them. They were tiny little things, but he had seen such before. Turning in the direction they'd come from, he spotted a Crimson Dynamo flying up through the air towards them, rockets flaring out from his shoulders even as he put his hands together and began to fire out beams of power, beams which somewhat resembled Havoc's mutant power in form if not in color.

In response Harry conjured up a shield, blocking them, then allowed the Crimson Dynamo to close, even as large fins appeared on its legs, spinning rapidly as they were ejected from the armor. These flashed towards Harry like remote-controlled frisbees.

Hitting one of them with a cutting spell Harry was not surprised to see they exploded. He then gestured with his other hand, using a simple Accio to grab control of them pulling them towards him first, then reversing the spell.

They flashed back towards the Crimson Dynamo who dodged wildly, even as his eyes opened up with energy beams, forcing Harry to block them again. "You will die wizard, die for mother Russia." the man shouted, his voice coming out like a blare of sound from his mouthpiece.

"Someone is going to die for Russia today, that is certain. Though whether your deaths serve your country or simply some faction within is up for debate." Harry shook his head, unwilling to bandy words further with this man. Between one second and the next disappeared from where he had been flying. Before the Crimson Dynamo could even realize he was there, Harry had touched his suit from behind.

A simple lightning spell, Fulgur, lashed out point blank, overloading the armor's systems, and sending him crashing to the earth. The man within the suit was almost able to flip the circuit breakers, which would've shunted the electricity into his weapons, but Harry shot a Bombarda at the man's back, and unable to dodge spell struck the man in the chest. His suit exploded, finishing the man off easily.

Harry watched as the Crimson Dynamo crashed to the ground, then actually saluted the man. It had been stupid to challenge Harry alone like that, but brave too. It served to remind Harry that whatever he might think, or even his allies, the Russian people at least believed in their cause just as much as the allies did and there are own, whatever the reason behind it.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really change what I am going to have to do to end this war. With that grim thought Harry turned back to his work. Within seconds another air force base was seared to ash, and he moved on, glancing back at the Crimson Dynamo, who had crashed just to one side of the base. "How in the world did they build so many of those anyway?" Harry mused aloud, before jetting upwards. Could the Mole Man be supplying them with that kind of thing? Or could the aliens? If they are able to aid the Russians materially, that's something we need to figure out quickly and how to stop it, if it doesn't stop on its own after we shatter their spell.

Speaking of which he thought as he broke atmosphere, heading towards High Note as he cast a bubbleheaded charm over himself. Activating his communicator he spoke into it asking, "Ororo, are you in position my love?"

OOOOOOO

Storm smiled as she too flew down through the gray and near impenetrable exceedingly cold fog that was the norm these days the world over above three hundred feet. She wondered idly if the Russians understood how badly transportation had been affected by this, not so much goods, since most goods still traveled in bulk by ship, but of people. Doctors, sick patients, the elderly. I suppose though we could put that down to the unintended consequence, rather than an intended consequence. With a shake of her head, she dispelled such thoughts, and smiled. "I'm nearly there now, Harry. Give me fifteen minutes, and I will contact Gaia directly."

Moments later, Storm came out of the fog at just above sea level, and tapped her communicator. "Ahoy US ass Ulysses, this is Custodes Mundi members Storm, come in please."

"Who is this? How did you get on this frequency!?" Shouted a young, shocked voice on the other end.

"I repeat Storm," said with a faint smile, now hovering above the ship, unseen by any below. "This is Storm of the Custodes Mundi. I am here to take part in Operation Whirlwind."

"God damn it, this is a secure…"

That voice was quickly interrupted by another voice, who though calm, went on to fillet the first man for being far too by the book and tone deaf as Storm listened in, somewhat amused by the lack of curse words in use at present.

"We were told that Storm would be joining us, you young idiot," that voice said, before calmly informing Storm she would be transferred over to the captain in a moment, with the admiral in attendance."

This was proven true a bare second later as a new, older sounding voice intoned, "This is the captain of Ulysses, Ms. Storm. I'm afraid we don't have visual on you."

"Make certain that no one is about to shoot me once you do then, and I will reveal myself." She replied.

"And that isn't supposed to be scary at all," the man muttered, shaking his head. "Wait one miss." Not three minutes later, the man was back. "All right, I have warned the deck monkeys to expect you, just don't get within arms' reach of any of them and then appear like a ghost or something similar, and we'll be fine."

"Perish the thought." Storm said with a faint smile. "If you want pranks of that nature, you would be best served talking to Guardian, not myself."

With that, she canceled her magical cloaking screen, and slowly descended through the gray cloudy sky until she alighted on the front of the super carrier. Several work crew had been hard at work making certain that no ice had built up on the fighters, which while not a big issue here in the Mediterranean Sea, should never have even been a consideration this close to the equator. Truly, the aliens have much to answer for. Their disdain for the natural order and this distortion of Earth's weather system is an affront to both the natural forces and my own sensibilities Storm thought to herself, as more and more men turned to star at her as she strolled along the main thoroughfare of the ship.

She was met by a junior lieutenant about fifty feet after she landed who ran up to him, saluting crisply even with his face showing the exertion of having run to meet her. That, and the fact he wasn't dressed nearly as warmly as he should be was also a clue. "Ma'am, the captain sent me to meet you. If you'll come with me, I'll escort you to the flag bridge."

Nodding acquiescence, Storm followed the younger man, although part of her noted that he wasn't actually all that young. I'm only twenty-seven now, but he seems so much younger to me. I suppose it is true what they say, is not the age but the mileage.

She was soon brought into the flag room of the super carrier, where an elderly gentleman turned, crisply nodded towards her, and gestured down at the large map on the computer screen that made up the top of the table in the center of the room. This was the USS Ulysses, a super carrier designed from the hull out as a fleet flagship. No expense had been spared in making certain that it would perform that activity as well as it possibly could. "Ma'am, I am Adm. Rothwell, I take it you're the young mutant that is going to do something about this blasted weather?" He asked drolly, as if there was anyone in the world by this point that had access to a television or radio that would not know who this regal a black woman was. Beyond that, there was the sheer regal aura that she gave off, even just walking through his ship Ororo had turned heads, and more than one man had found himself tipping his hat or saluting to her as if she was a superior officer.

"I am yes," Storm said with a faint smile acknowledging the unspoken words without bringing any attention to them. "Might I ask admiral, how long will it take you to ready your planes for launch?"

Rothwell turned to a few of his aides, who went into a huddle quickly, calling up various ship captains, among the carriers and three super carriers that had been brought together here. "About 45 minutes across the fleet, the Admiral finally replied as one of his men relayed that data to him. "Will that suffice?" Since they'd been busy preparing for this for three hours, that wasn't too shabby, though he was still unhappy about the amount of time it had taken to connect all the dots as it were.

Ororo smiled a little wider at that and nodded again. "In that case I will be out on your deck by the prow of the ship. When the skies clear, I expect that you'll know what to do."

The Admiral flashed a grin at her, but there was nothing humorous about the expression. It was more like the grin a shark would have when told yes, you can eat that Caribou that wandered stupidly into the water. "Ma'am, I have enough airpower here to wipe out whole militaries or even entire cities, you're darn tooting I'll know what to do with it."

Storm nodded her head for a third time, then left without another word, stalking back through the ship until she was by where she had sent down. There, she closed her eyes, and raised her hands as if in benediction to the sky. "Great mother, I believe now would be the time to release your fury."

"You know you don't have to be so formal when you pray my child?" said the mother Goddess in her mind, the image of her appearing there, a warm smile on her face.

"As Hela would say, some forms of respect should be maintained at all times," Storm replied drolly, as she sent out her power into the air around her. At the same time, she felt more than saw the mother Goddess unleashing the heat and power that she had been slowly accumulating sent through the runic doorway from the sun. And while the aliens might have somehow been able to fight Harry and the other earthborn magic users, whatever spell they were powering with could not stand up against the heat of the sun suddenly unleashed through the veins of the earth. Storm's magical senses jangled, as the aliens spell was stretched like a web suddenly trying to hold back several dozen watermelons where before it had been supporting a bare few. Then it shattered, unable to sustain itself.

Here in the Mediterranean, the effect was felt about 10 minutes later. The cold in the air slowly dissipated, replaced by the area's normal temperature just as slowly as Storm adroitly controlled the powers unleashed, making certain that there was no further damage one way or the other. Moments later, she watched out of the corner of her eye as more and more people raced towards their fighters.

A few minutes after the sky had begun to clear, a man ran up to her. He was middle-aged, seemingly of Hispanic origin, although he spoke in a crisp Mideast accent, with a hint of New Yorker added in for good measure. "Ma'am, I am the commander air group for this fleet, the name is Mattix."

"Commander? Is that the correct term to use or do I call you CAG?"

"Either is good ma'am," he replied with a smile although he was looking at her oddly almost disdainfully, and she sighed internally.

Another man who believes that a women has no place in the Butterfield, or someone who doesn't like mutants? Looking at his face, she couldn't quite determine which was going on here, but honestly it didn't matter.

"Are you going to be able to do anything with the crosswinds?" The man asked brusquely. "And how far does this visibility go?"

"I am leaving much of the overcast sky where it is for the moment. Once we cross the front lines between the Russian forces and the allied units, then I will dissipate it entirely. Until then consider it a smokescreen. She looked at the man closely putting on an air of worried concern. "I trust after that point you won't have to have your hand held?" He stiffened noticeably, and she smirked back at him, telling him without actually bringing attention to it that she had seen his attitude.

"No ma'am," he said through gritted teeth. "At that point, I believe that me in mind will do our duty."

"Very good. Now if you'll excuse me, this does actually take some concentration." Turning aside slightly, she once more reached out with her mutant power into the weather around her, her eyes going white, and then beginning to crackle with energy as she did. The sight unnerved the man quite a bit, and he backed away rapidly.

Not 15 minutes later, right on time the weather around the entire fleet was good enough to launch fighters, and she rose in the air, streaking upward then around coming back in with the wind behind her. "Launch fighters," she said calmly. "It is time."

She zoomed over the fleet, and as she hit the upper air in front of them heading towards the shores of Georgia the American fighters behind her launched, entire squadrons flashing into the air one after another. It took many of the fighter pilots aback when they saw that Storm was ahead of them as they raced towards Azerbaijan and Georgia, spreading out to the point where they could barely see each other's squadrons, despite the fact that the good weather went with them, the clouds ahead of them slowly being becoming distorted as Storm led the way, her call the front of weather coming with her.

With her headdress's built in communications gear she was able to not only connect to the CAG, but to every squadron commander in turn, and slowly began to outline what the front had looked like the day before from the Falcon's perspective. Since he was a military man he described it in those terms, for which all of the fighter pilots were grateful, and the CAG quickly put his animosity towards Storm to one side, taking in what she was telling him about the various targets, assigning squadrons, and making certain that the attack helicopters that they had also launched were following up behind them to give more directed air support.

The fighter pilots had a few different goals: first the scattered bunkers that had been emplaced by the Russians as command centers and defense for their artillery rockets, second the logistics depots nearest the front lines. These places would have ammunition, parts and gasoline for the various tanks and mechanized infantry units. Third would be any anti-air units. Since the Russians hadn't actually needed those very much on this front, they were scattered badly across the entire front line mostly reprogrammed as best they could be, to take on people like Polaris or the Falcon who could fly nape of the earth style. None of them would be pointed upwards as they had to be to target fighters on the prowl. But they would have to be taken out quickly, before follow-up attacks could be assigned. Given the sheer number of fighters racing behind Storm, even the fighter's fourth priority was going to get a pasting today.

And of course, there would be the tank parks. Even here in the Caucuses, it was the Russian tanks, not only their quality, but the quantity of them that had been making a lot of trouble for the defenders. There just weren't enough tanks in Azerbaijan, Georgia or even all of Turkey (a large portion of which were still struggling to get to the front lines) to stem the tide of the tanks for very long, except by using the terrain against them. Doing more than that had become the main job of those Custodes Mundi who had been sent in there.

But those same tanks would now become just so many targets. The tank brigades and resting areas would be targeted by the fighters, and then would come of the attack helicopters, the natural enemy of tanks. The American naval forces had four frigates that were dedicated to launching helicopters, but they had been held in reserve up to this point, not because they couldn't fly low enough to be of use, but because no one had wanted to send them out alone unaided. But now those attack helicopters were being joined by Turkish forces, who had finally agreed to send them forward, and what few attack helicopters existed in Georgia or Azerbaijan and the first few Indian helicopters to reach the front.

They would hit a bare two hours after the fighters had broken off their own attack, but they would be deadly for all of that.

Soon enough Storm could see the front ahead of them, and she smirked, imagining the consternation and the growing fear as the clouds suddenly began to dissipate, along with the weather slowly returning to normal. Casting a spell on her eyes for a moment, she could even see ahead of them as troops on the allied front tore off their winter clothing shouting and joy from behind their various defensive positions. In contrast the Russians were dismayed, and only reluctantly did the same.

But then she was over the front, streaking past well above where the enemies anti-air weapons, mostly the Tesla variety rather than the more traditional rockets, could currently reach. As she did, she opened communications to all of the fighters behind her. "I know it's rather cliché and all too dramatic, but someone has to say it. Ladies and gentlemen of the Mediterranean Fleet, bring down the sky!"

With that, she too lashed out downwards, flinging bolts of lightning the size of buildings, tornado winds condensed into the size of spears which ripped and shredded into their targets. And then she was away, screaming her joy to the sky as behind her, the fighters of nearly the entire US Navy roared in, bringing the thunder with them. And it was indeed as if the sky was falling for the Russians.

OOOOOOO

The power of winter over Eastern Europe and the Caucuses ended with a near physical wrench, or so it seemed on the immaterial plane of magic. The spell broke as it was overcome, despite the over four billion Dire Wraiths powering the spell from back on their home world. No matter how powerful the spell, no matter how many minds it took to have created the spell in the first place in order to bring about the death of a planet's weather system and its inherent magical personification the enchantment just couldn't withstand the heat of the sun released against the spell.

And the stronger the enchantment, the worse it was for those who were empowering it when it was broken. For those Dire Wraiths connected to the spell it was like having a red-hot poker slammed into your brain, and they couldn't break away, their minds were too broken to create the effort needed to disconnect themselves from the coven spell that bound them through thousands of corresponding stones scattered around their planet to the primary stone on earth.

"I have them," Dr. Strange said almost instantly as the spell shattered. He looked up at the screen facing the magic users and the infiltration team, placing his fingers above and around the eye on his broach clasping his cloak around his neck. "Let the All-seeing Eye of Agamoto burn through the fog blinding it at last and find our enemies!" At his words a thin beam lanced out from the eye up into the image.

About 10 minutes later, Hela was on the ground, with her team moving into the center of the town where the epicenter of this magical assault on Earth had begun. It was a town near Stalingrad dominated by soldiers and intellectuals in turns. There were signs everywhere for different research institutes, different training centers, and of course, numerous bars and brothels for off-duty soldiers.

Even though they were currently wearing the guise of civilian if not for the fact that Hela was cloaking them all from the interest of those around them, they would be standing out like sore thumbs. "First things first," she said crisply as she led them down a street, staring all around them. "Morph, I believe a regular trooper for now will do. One who is very visibly off-duty. Psylocke, you will help find a more appropriate target to give us another avenue for our inquiries. Garm, shrink to the size of a regular dog and go with him. Your nose should discern one who has been near the aliens we are hunting. Young Kitty and I and Neophyte will search for a hiding place for ourselves"

Garm whimpered. "Mistress, have I offended you in some way of late? To stick me with the odious mouthy one is a little cruel, is it not?"

"Be about it my wolf, and none of your lip," Hela said, stroking the giant wolf's jaw line tenderly. "Go. And remember what we are hunting here, the souls of a most foul species to bring such evil magics to this planet, our chosen home."

"I will find them mistress," Garm replied, all business now as he let his fangs show.

"Can't you see where to go magically?" Betsy asked as she looked around, wondering where to start her own search. "I thought Dr. Strange's spell would be able to pinpoint our target better than that."

"No, there is a separate obfuscation spell around the entire area, blocking magical insight. It's a wonder that Strange was able to narrow it down to this town in the first place. That Eye of Agamoto is a most puissant item." Hela replied ruefully having indeed hoped that would be the case and rather irritated to have to rely on the senses of others for this part of their mission.

"There don't seem to be many women around, that's odd," Kitty muttered, a comment that was answered by nods of agreement even as Morph and Garm broke off, the morphing man heading for the nearest bar disguised as a random trooper underneath Hela's spell as Garm padded beside him.

"I think we're in the wrong part of town for the scientists, and as far as I know there's only what, one woman for every few thousand men in military service?" Betsy asked. "Not certain about the exact numbers. Now come on, let's find ourselves a hotel room or something to hide out in. I presume Garm will be able to lead Morph back to us Lady Hela?"

"Of course," Hela said with a snort. "My wolf's nose is many times stronger than any mortal dog's. If I believe he won't be fooled by this alien shapeshifters, why do you think he would be unable to find me, his mistress? And I do believe I spot a sign there saying apartment for rent. That will do us nicely I think."

Using her telepathy, Betsy was able to discover which apartment was empty at the moment. It turned out to be a tiny thing, barely five yards by five yards including the kitchen area, but it would do for now. They were there for about forty minutes before Betsy, who had been searching for interesting thoughts or minds among the populace around them, blinked staring off to the side. "I think I found an officer, he's very worried, broadcasting his thoughts, I can feel them from here without even concentrating on them."

Hela nodded, and told her to get in touch with Morph and direct him to the man in question. Soon Morph entered the apartment along with Garm, shifted through the walls by Neophyte and Kitty. Morph looked like an off-duty sergeant, while behind him Neophyte came along, pulling the man's victim through the walls.

"Do we have time to be gentle about this?" Betsy asked staring at the man. "If we don't wake him, I'll have to brute force it rather than use subtlety."

"That's easily solved and a rather silly concern Betsy," Hela said tartly. With that she leaned down slapping the man hard across the face. He jerked awake, and then Betsy was on him, grabbing his head with both of her hands and staring into his eyes.

The man didn't even have time to cry in pain before he stiffened as Betsy grabbed control of his mind, rifling through his memories. She slowly pulled out information to give morph enough of a background to play the man, as well as a direction to go. "It's called the Institute of parallel thought, although that's not exactly a good translation, essentially it means to be thinking outside the box, I guess. Or off-the-cuff solutions maybe? I'm missing some of the nuance there. But I've got enough for us to work on I think."

She looked over at the others. "The woman we want is named Samantha Orlanova. She is the head of what is called Project General Winter."

"These Russians seem to be obsessed with the idea that winter is on their side," Hela groused. "Still, that does sound like the project we're here to discover."

Neophyte nodded, and then with Kitty beside him, disappeared down into the ground for a moment, reappearing in the sewer system, where they moved forward, Betsy's voice in their heads directing them forward while the others waited. But when they neared their target to their surprise they had to stop. Ahead of them was what looked like a cage of electrical currents set into the ground around the target Institute.

Returning to the others they shook their heads. "Someone seems to have figured out phasing power," Kitty reported sourly. "We can't get through."

"Morph, it's up to you now then." Hela said, turning to the mouthy one.

Morph saluted. "Yes ma'am," he said in his best Russian accent, causing everyone around them to wince.

Betsy quickly stripped off the bracelet she had been wearing, which allowed her to translate Russian into English, tossing it to the man. "Use that, put it underneath your clothing, and remember don't ham it up too much."

"I'm wounded you would think there was even a possibility I would do such a thing," morph said with a chuckle, looking over to Neophyte, who he knew better than Kitty. At the same time, his body began to shift into the body of the man now currently tied up and mumbling to himself in the corner. "Get me to someplace near the Institute, I'll do the rest."

And I'll be riding your mind all the way," Betsy said both aloud and telepathically straight into Morph's mind.

"No, that's not creepy at all, freaking telepaths," the shape changer muttered, shaking his head.

As the two men moved off, Hela looked over to Betsy. "Did you get anything more about the security we're dealing with?"

Quite a bit, I'll be able to direct him once he's inside easily. But I think we're not going to have an easy time of it. This Samantha woman, she's devised a lot of additions to the security of the place that sound kind of like wards to me. There's also a super-powered group called the Bogyatiri or something that the man's interacted with. He doesn't know all their powers, but they are definitely a super-powered team."

Hela smiled grimly. "And here I was worried this might be boring." She touched the hilt of a sword that Betsy hadn't noticed she'd been wearing at her waist before this. "I have much to teach these fools, yes indeed."

The group moved forward, with Kitty scouting around, they were able to find a small, out of the way rooftop set directly near the Institute. It was within sight of several snipers on the roof to the complex they were targeting, but it was beyond the security of the wards Hela could sense woven around the place. With Hela's spells still around each of them they waited while morph infiltrated the place.

For his part Morph moved up to the troopers on guard duty, crumbling somewhat in irritation while exchanging a few words with the man on duty, as Betsy closed her eyes, giving morph as much as she could in terms of aid, like names and other things as well as how the man should act after coming back from what should have been a conjugal visit with his mistress, which had not come off due to feminine issues. After bitching about it for a bit he saluted the two men on duty, then moved inside out of sight of those on the roof.

"He's in," Betsy said unnecessarily. "Moving up to the second story, heading towards the security rooms."

Inside the Institute, morph saluted several higher ranked officers as he passed them by, fighting the urge to actually click his heels together. Wait was that a Russian thing or German thing? Hmm, German I think, at least that's what it was in the movies. Heh, then I suppose performing the full goose-stepping Hail Hitler move would give the game away for certain. Although, given the age of that last officer maybe I could've killed him with a heart attack. That'd be funny at least.

He was soon inside the security room of the institute. This was a large complex, about 30 feet to aside lined with different consoles and twenty other men on duty. Perhaps we didn't think this through so well. He exchanged a salute with one officer in command of several other men, his cover's habitual position, and then moved over to salute another man, saying in Russian, "I relieve you."

The man nodded, saluted back. "I stand relieved."

As he sat down, morph leaned over to one of the others. "What happened while I was off duty? They're all running around outside like seals from an orca."

The man glanced over at him, then back to the officer in charge of the room who sat on a small dais in the center behind them. Then he leaned in, whispering "something seems to have gone wrong with the Crystal of Ever Winter. Dr. Samantha and more than a few of the others who were observing it seem to have been afflicted by some kind of fit, even a few of the soldiers down there, both on duty and off! No one knows what it was, they're too busy screaming to tell us. Volkh is down there with them trying to get something out of them, but you couldn't pay me to go down there for love or money. It sounds like they were being tortured or something."

"Maybe that thing really is radioactive then, and it's effected their minds," morph said slowly, as Betsy fed him the line. Apparently, it was as a concern of many of the lower ranked soldiers that made up the security team here. "I think you're right, I'll do my best to stay up here from now on yes? And so should everyone else".

"Oh, I think you can take it as a given that will be obeying that particular order even more than before."

Morph chuckled and nodded. "See that you do."

About an hour passed as morph looked around him, taking in the activity, as well as monitoring his own workstation, where he was ostensibly watching over nearby radio traffic, looking for any anomalies that could indicate something was wrong in the area. He was looking around for the controls to the security grid that was blocking out the two shifters, when Betsy got in contact with him.

"Don't bother. Harry just showed up, it looks as if the idea of going in quietly at first is out the window. I told them that the aliens were still all down with the screams, and he seems to think that that means we can brute force it now." she said mentally. "Just get ready, because we're coming in."

OOOOOOO

That was indeed what Harry and Hela both thought. With the aliens, the only magic users ostensibly on the Russian side, down for the count, that left magic to get them all in, and once Harry removed the wards they did so easily and with far less fanfare than Betsy had supposed. The Dire Wraiths were, after all, keeping the fact they were magical secret from most of the Russians around them, and hadn't, as far as the officer Betsy had interrogated knew, linked their wards into the non-magical defenses, if they even could. Mixing technology and magic was a very difficult thing after all. the fact they didn't trust the Russians with knowledge of their magic was also a deciding factor.

Once the wards were down between Harry and Hela it was the work of but a few seconds to cover the small group with spells enough to bamboozle even most magicals. And then they were moving forward, walking straight up to the front gate of the Institute and inside without anyone the wiser or even trying to stop them.

Are we going to play like this all the way?" Betsy asked, somewhat amused by the experience. Yeah, we really shouldn't point out how easy magic makes sneaking around. There're too many professional paranoiacs out there who hate the boss and us as it is.

"Doubtful," Harry said grimly. "We underestimated the time it would take to actually pinpoint this place once the spell was broken, and I doubt we have more much more time before the Dire Wraiths recover. When that happens, I'll want us in as advantageous a position as possible. Garm, if I can convince you to leave Lady Hela's side for a brief moment, I think that morph could use your help in the security center. Neophyte, go with them, you'll be their emergency out, unless you think you can do what kitty can and stick people into things?"

"Probably not," Neophyte admitted. "That sounds a little too permanent to me if I'm honest."

"You're telling me," kitty muttered. "Still, right now I'd do it to the lot of them for what the winter cold did to people. Do you know how many people have died from exposure the world over from that? it's not just the military that suffered, that's for sure, despite Jean's efforts."

"Lady Hela, Betsy, Kitty, with me please, the lab we're after is in the basement, and I think we need to get a move on," Harry urged, actually breaking out into a light jog, endangering the spells keeping everyone around them from seeing him, but thankfully they were able to get to and into the elevator that would take them down to the super-secret laboratory. Opening that elevator was but the work of a moment for Kitty, who just phased through the door and opened the elevator from the other side.

The elevator came out into the middle of a small, semi-circular room with security guards stationed behind glass, but with the rest of the lab abutting directly into the security section. The lab spread out from there, almost as wide as a track field, with large banks of computers, dozens of scattered glass containers and other smaller lab stations scattered around.

But the main attraction was the central-most dais, visible from the elevator through the four guards stationed behind their glass shield. Set onto that dais was a large crystal of a deep, dark blue color, which seemed to pulse with a chill inner light. feeding into and out of the dais were dozens of large cables set along the floor, and the crystal itself was hooked up to monitoring devices.

Harry however doubted those computers were actually reporting on the crystal itself because he, Kitty and Hela instantly knew the truth of what they were seeing here. This thing, this crystal, was a creation of magic, not science. It practically blazed to their senses, a frozen bonfire. And there was no way these unprotected computers could be telling anyone anything about it.

The group had just all made it out of the elevator when their good luck ended: the group of alien scientists had finally begun to recover from the shock of their enchantment breaking. One of them looked blearily out past the guard position toward the elevator, and spotted Hela and Harry coming somehow through their spells. The man's eyes widened and he shouted, "Alarm! Intruders. It's the potter and someone else. They wreak of magic!"

The fact that the man who shouted this was a regular military officer, who should've had no business knowing about magic was immaterial at present, as was Harry's castigating himself for not remembering that the alien which had been the one to spot him and Piotr skulking around the Russian Super-soldier base. All of the people within the lab turned in the direction of the two magic users, and putting his self-recrimination aside, Harry shrugged while Shadowcat faded back into the wall of the elevator and Hela and Psylocke spread out, rushing towards the guards around the security wall. "It looks as if the jig is up!"

"Then it behooves us to get a move on." With that, Hela lashed out with one hand, sending a blast of black and green energy at the door separating the area around the elevator from the rest of the laboratory. The laboratory door didn't so much explode as simply disappear under the impact, which continued into the area, blasting apart two guards, and forcing others, including one man who stretched to get out of the way almost like Reed Richards, into dodging away wildly.

Four others however spread further to the side of her assault remained in position. They opened fire instantly, but Harry blocked them with two shields to either side, letting Psylocke follow on Hela's heels. Kitty just ignored their fire, moving through the wall and into their faces, flashing through them and then once behind turning solid just long enough to drop a shock rune at the feet of two of the guard's feet. then she was gone, racing further into the lab to cause chaos.

Then Harry was in among the survivors of the guard detail with Betsy and Hela following.

Disdaining their disguises, the aliens among the scientists and soldiers showed themselves by quickly bringing their hands up, and started to shoot out spells towards Harry and Hela. These seemed a mix of explosive and cutting type spells, but they were little to no threat to the main two attackers.

Hela dodged this way and that, lashing out with her own magics, with beams of destruction that disintegrated everything they touched, lashings of fire that set people alight. Harry did much the same, although his spells were cutting spells, and he didn't concentrate on the aliens. Rather he turned his attention on to the Mr. fantastic look-alike first. "And you would be?"

"I am Dr. Volkh, the leader of the Bogatyri. And you will never leave here alive Harry Potter!"

"Like I haven't heard that one before," Harry quipped, conjuring up another magical shield to block a blast of power from a tall leggy looking blonde woman. She wore a uniform that really looked more like it should be a bathing suit in his opinion but to his surprise she was a real threat. This was proven when her blast pierced through his magical shield and slammed into him like a kick from the Hulk.

It lifted him off the floor and flung him backwards to crash into the wall behind him, but otherwise didn't hurt thanks to his Magia Erebea and crysis suit. He lifted himself up out of the rubble his fall had created, grabbing some of it with his magic and one hand tossing it in the air, hurling it forward at the woman.

She dodged and ducked, moving almost as lightly on her feet as Black Widow, like a ballet dancer mixed with an assassin. It was almost pretty, if not for the fact that she was trying to kill Harry with photokinetic blasts of energy. The woman turned around, sending out a smaller blast towards Hela, who met it with her sword, cutting through it, but the sword was nearly pushed back into Hela's face, forcing her to back away quickly even as Harry was pinned in place for a brief second.

This created an opening for one of the aliens, who started to cast a spell that entrapped Hela in the ground. Hela however responded with her own spell, sending a blast of kinetic force through her feet which shattered the ground underneath her, letting her fly out of the hole towards the enemy spellcaster.

At that point Harry had no more time to waste on watching Hela's aspect of the fight. Instead, a man wearing a purple and dark blue suit with a large metal protected neck area attacked him from one side along with a dozen troopers. From his head came arcs of dark red energy, flashing out to grab at Harry and throw him away.

Telekinesis, Harry thought with a nod, before simply breaking the attack with a magical assault of his own. He then leaped up, bouncing off of the ceiling and sending a cutting spell down with one hand, while he started to concentrate on another spell directing it with his other hand.

This was an advanced version of the Animagus revealing spell from his home dimension, a more powerful enchantment geared towards forcing transformed individuals back into their base form. It was something that Dr. Strange and Harry had come up with while talking during the battle against the alien's ever-winter spell.

This was the first time Harry would be using it but if it worked, well he would have to see how wide an area the spell could affect quickly. "veritas reveletur (Truth be revealed)!"

The spell was a white and gray mist almost though the mist didn't act like gas should, flaring out faster than it would have under the impact of a hurricane force wind. And it spread out from Harry's house stretched hand to fill the room from one side to the other within seconds. The mist-like quality was odd to Harry and he wondered if he would in fact be able to use it outside at all given that. But regardless of its odd physical component, it certainly worked. Where before there had been seventy Russians in the large laboratory, with about thirty of them sending spells towards Harry and Hela, now were revealed fifty-two alien creatures, outnumbering the humans there.

The aliens were stocky, almost obese creatures with red or brown skin that looked like some mix of skin and scale, neither one nor the other with thick, short tails. Their arms were broad, and had what looked like vestigial wings growing out of them, but hands that more closely resembled pincers and tentacles combined. They had large pupil-less eyes over small beaks out of which a long drill like tongue flicked, the end barbed and opening revealing a funnel within.

the aliens' sheer ugliness took many a Russian nearby aback as the majority of the Russians backed away from the monsters revealed in their midst. The only ones who continued to move were the telekinetic and Volkh. Even the woman who had been blasting away at Harry with her photokinetic beams of power was now looking around her in horror. "W, what did he do to you all?"

Fire from the humans faltered, as they turned their guns on these strange creatures among them in fear, but the aliens too were slow to react. Many of them were simply shocked they had been so revealed, and stared down at their real bodies with horror, and more than one of them shouted "he has revealed us to the humans!"

If they had been smarter, they could've gone with the photo-kinetic user's interpretation. maybe make the others think that it was a spell from Harry that caused it. But there were too many cries like that for Samantha and her fellows to try to pull the wool over the surviving guards' eyes.

Hela took immediate advantage of the distraction, racing forward and stabbing her sword straight through one of the aliens. Her blow lifted it up off of its feet like a bug before she twisted around and tossing the alien aside, bringing her sword around again to cut the head off of another. She then blocking a series of spells with one hand almost negligently, the spells dissipating to reveal she had conjured up a tiny shield to cover her hand, using it to slash through the alien spells.

While she was doing that, Harry was dealing with the two humans in the room who were still intent on fighting him. "So I take it that this revelation was no surprised to the two of you?" he said dryly as he dodged a large rubber fist as it flew by him.

"I do not care what allies we were forced to work with, what they get out of this alliance is immaterial. Russia will prosper, will grow and conquer! The glorious Communist Party will return, with me at its head! Like Stalin and Lenin before me I will remake the world!"

"The truth is revealed once again," Harry said, sending a cutting spell into the man's outstretched fist as he tried to again punch Harry, cutting it from the knuckle of his middle finger down to about the elbow. Rubber was a great thing to have against electrical attacks, or exploding type spells, but cutting spells were another matter entirely.

The man fell back with a cry of agony, and then blinked as most of the Russians around them turned their guns on him. "Traitor!" shouted more than a few of them.

Those men died as the aliens turned their magics on them. Before Harry could intercede four of them were dead, but then the woman with the photo kinetic powers got involved, blasting one of the aliens to ash, before turning her powers on her own fellows shouting, "you knew! You sold us out to the alien! That is no better than making mother Russia a slave, a circus break doing its master's bidding."

Smiling grimly Harry pushed deeper into the lab after Kitty and Psylocke who had kept moving trying to keep to the shadows, with an astonishing amount of success in the British woman's case. As he went harry lashed out with further cutting spells and lightning type spells, because sadly most of the Russians were still firing on him and his team. They also fired on the aliens causing further chaos. At the same time two of the more powerful seeming magic using aliens in the room dueled with Hela, and the telekinetic turned his attention away from Harry since Harry had left him behind dodging through the laboratory join that battle.

this was a mistake since even with a dozen yards and several large computers between them Harry saw this and took advantage of it. He lashed out with a few Bombarda spells, shattering what little defenses the defenders had left, sending both the explosion of those spells and the large amount of debris into the most organized groups of soldiers and scientists he saw, slamming them down and backwards, or simply cutting them to ribbons.

Once the last organized resistance against the four attackers was broken, Harry began laying about him with stupefy and Immobulus spells, seeing no reason to kill the remaining humans among the workers here, despite their being so few in number. "I want one prisoner at least among the aliens!" he shouted in a loud voice.

At the same instant the photokinetic user went down from a punch from the rubber man, and Hela found herself basically enveloped in, as he squeezed.

"Really," she drawled, staring at him in amusement "Really? How droll." Her eyes lighting up with fire, she intoned a single word, "Sjelbran! (Soul fire)"

Instantly the man screamed, releasing her quickly and falling to the ground nearby, shivering and rolling on the floor as he tried to put out the flames. Rubber was somewhat inflammable, but not from fire like that, which burned on the astral level as well as the physical. The next second, her booted foot slammed into his chest, pinning him to into the ground.

Elsewhere alarms were blaring, and Harry could hear the sound of booted feet racing towards the laboratory. But before he could do anything Kitty was by the elevator doors. She had been using her magic to take out scientists here and there, targeting those who seemed to be reaching for communicators or controls of any kind and doing a bang-up job of it too. Now she gestured with both of her hands, conjuring a wall of metal that stretched across the lab's elevator sealing them in.

Of course, with Kitty, me and Hela all here that isn't exactly an issue for us, Harry mused. With the battle now practically over bar a few aliens Betsy was dealing with at that moment and their backs secure, Harry moved over to the unconscious photo-kinetic user, placing his fingers against her throat and sighing sadly as he felt no pulse there. Whatever her offensive powers, it was clear the woman hadn't benefited from any added durability. "Dammit! She could have been an important witness to everything that was going on here behind the scenes of this war."

"This one killed her then?" Hela said, gesturing to her prisoner as she threatened to slice into his throat with her sword. An immobilization spell held him still. Without any other enemy magic user to release him, he was now as stuck as a bug on a pin. The man's utter rage and fury at being so easily handled showed through clearly, which brought a smile to Harry's face.

He moved over to the other down humans, casting similar spells on them. There are perhaps seven other human survivors of the battle, and of them Harry knew that at least two had been among those who turned their weapons on the aliens. Those two, he picked out, and used a few healing spells on before reviving them from their stunned state.

When they reached for their weapons, he held up a hand, his tone so firm and commanding that it halted them in place with no magic needed. "Stop. It is time I believe that we get to the truth of what is been going on here. The young lady over there was correct I think, your mother Russia has been used in this war to serve the ends of the aliens, and I think you at least deserve to know why."

This was the start of a plan that Harry hoped to use to both stop the war sooner than it would otherwise be and also to bring Russia onboard with the EDF. There was a reason after all why invading Russia was such a bad idea: size. The nation was huge, and unless they used the Russian army's hidden tunnels, they would be faced with the massive issue of moving armies over fast amounts of territory with only scattered roads, let alone everything else needed to move a modern army. And even with the alien spell snapped, it was still winter. The winter wouldn't be so very bad any longer, but it would still have to be allowed for.

So if the Russians could somehow be convinced they had been duped, then they might sue for peace. If they at the same time asked for help from the EDF to reveal the aliens in their midst, no one could then deny it, and Harry would gain the gigantic nation's aid in the defense of Earth. In this manner Harry would be saving lives on both sides. It was a long game, and one that might not work until the Russians in command of the country at the moment were removed, but it was worth a shot.

The two security guards looked at one another, then realizing how helpless they were at the moment, nodded. They removed their hands from their weapons, which Harry indicated they could keep to show how little a threat they were to them or Hela. Even Betsy was somewhat bullet proof thanks to her Custodes uniform being lined with tiny Orichalcum scales underneath the exterior lining.

Looking around he spotted Kitty now kneeling by the crystal incubator system, frowning as she felt the magical power of the thing, using a few magical diagnoses spells . "Harry this is it for certain," she reported. "This is the thing they were using the power that Cold spell. But... there's something else here, I think it's connected to others, like those statues you had me look at almost. There's a lot of magic still coming into even now.

Harry nodded her at it, then looked over to the doctor and the other downed aliens, the telekinetic having been ripped to pieces by one of his earlier spells. Before turning to the two security guards. "I will be using a truth potion on that one," he said pointing at the Volkh. "Ask him any questions you wish. He will respond, but be specific as possible and make certain you believe the fact the truth potion is real quickly before moving on to more important questions."

Harry wanted this done by the Russians primarily because that way when they left, these two would be able to spread the story as honestly as possible. To that end, he looked at Hela. "Ask only a few questions yourself please lady, let these two do most of the questioning. But keep an eye on that one, and the alien prisoners." There were four still breathing aliens scattered throughout the room, but they were trussed up in conjured nets, and Betsy was in the process of dragging them together.

"And what will you be doing?" Hela asked.

Gesturing to the ceiling above them through which they could hear the sounds of violence above them, Harry smiled grimly. "That spell I used to reveal the alien worked as advertised. So I'm going to see if I can use it on a wider scale."

With that, Harry teleported back to the meeting area where they had all gathered outside of the Institute, before flying up out and above it. With security on high he was seen, but that didn't matter as he covered himself with a shield against the heavy flak cannons, which pushed themselves out of the ground here and there throughout the area. So protected, he spread out his hands to encompass the Institute from one end to another. Then Harry intoned the same spell he'd used earlier. A brief second later there were cries and screams from below as the aliens were revealed.

Yet again, if they had reacted appropriately and shouted something like 'what has happened to us', or attempted to put the blame on the sudden aerial intruder and his obvious attack they could have turned the battle around, though it probably would not have held up for long. But, none of them thought of that idea quickly enough, and more than a few of them turned on their former fellows shouting, "We've been revealed, we must eliminate the witnesses!"

The battle within had begun when alarms from the basement had gone off and Garm and Morph had attacked in the security room. But another superpower individual, this one being a pure power type, had broken into the room, engaging Garm in a wrestling match to the death, forcing Morph to face the rest of the now-aware security forces alone. He had retreated into the security room with Neophyte pulling him out into a separate room from where he attacked the security forces as best he could. Since most of them were trying desperately to stop Garm from tearing the strong guy. whose name was Svyatogor, apart, the two of them did this maneuver several dozen times.

now, with Harry's spell in action, the battle soon became general. The Russians and the aliens now fought one another as much as the invaders, magic on the one side, weaponry and a few more in terms of numbers on the other. Observing this as he moved around the place and saw the chaos ever escalating, Harry nodded. "I Think my job is done here." With that he teleported himself back to the underground laboratory.

There Hela holding back the two security guards by the back of their shirts literally holding them up off the ground as they attempted to attack the doctor who had apparently betrayed not only his country, but humanity as a whole in a mad delusion of power. Even as she did so, Hela asked "If you understood the goals of the Dire Wraiths as you call them, how are they at all compatible with your dream of becoming a dictator of a new communist Russia. And be as detailed as possible if you please."

"The aliens have a weakness," the man said calmly. "One I do not know if they even know about. They are highly sugar dependent. They need the equivalent of four times a human's sugar intake with every meal or they get the shakes and are unable to perform any cognitive functions. Cut them off from that, or poison them through their sugar intake, and they are easily enough to handle. I had plans already in place. Further, each of the aliens in this Institute were fitted with so-called security cards, much like my countrymen. But since I had long discovered a scientific means of detecting them, I was able to place within their security cards small explosive devices. I also had contacted many of our generals, who agreed with my scheme."

That shut the two Russian security guards up, and they hung limply in Hela's hands until she set them down. "I want to be clear on this," one of them said. "This war was not a battle against the imperialism of the West, or to regain our lost glory. It was simply a war of conquest? One made in relation with the Dire Wraith's goals of this new mineral?"

"Yes," the doctor said simply. "We would make Russia great again."

"We were already great!" shouted the other guard.

"Incorrect," said calmly, and Harry frowned looking over at Hela quizzically but holding up a hand when she made to open her mouth. "Emma, I know you're monitoring us, pass over to Hela that the Veritaserum is affecting the doctor oddly, but in the way I've seen before. This is something he wants to get on off his chest, he wants to share his accomplishments."

"Like most megalomaniacs, he does seem to like the sound of his voice," Emma said in reply while she used Harry's senses to listen in at the same time she passed on that information to Hela.

The three of them listened as the doctor began to explain about how the economy of Russia was slowly becoming stagnant, that they just didn't have enough infrastructure to grow their economy as much as they should. That despite the size of the country, their economy actually wasn't very good producer-type economy. They needed their satellite countries back in order to pump both resources and food into their economy. The only exceptions were Finland and Kazakhstan which have nothing to offer anyone he said dryly. "But the Mole Man and the Dire Wraiths wanted them, and it a small price to pay for their aid."

"How many of your generals do you know for a fact are aliens in disguise?" One of the soldiers asked.

"Very few," the man replied honestly. But he also stopped a little too quickly.

So warned Harry asked the next obvious question, that of how many officers throughout the military did he know were Dire Wraiths.

"Very few," Volkh said again.

"How many do you have suspicions about being Dire Wraiths? How many do you have evidence that might point to that?" Hela asked irritably.

The man stayed silent, fighting the impulse to reply, but eventually he was forced to speak. "We believe two out of every six colonels, one out of every 15 majors. Much of the Russian central command structure, the Field Marshalls, are inundated with possible Dire Wraith infiltrators."

"What about on the other side of things? How many politicians and political leaders?" one of the Russians asked in growing horror.

Again the man tried to fight it. Deep down underneath the truth serum Volkh knew that he personally had lost. In all honesty he was now trying to fight a scorched earth campaign in order to force Harry and the others to fight for every question they asked.

It didn't work. Volkh wasn't a magical, and while he was very disciplined individual, he had no defense against the potion's effects. He could possibly have fought off a telepath, given the large metal neckline of his suit which was no doubt lined with some kind of technological defense, but not the power of the potion. Eventually, they got out that the Russian president, four of the security council, and several dozen federation council members along with hundreds of state duma representatives were aliens. At the lower town and city-level their infiltration efforts began to subside, except around areas like the one the Institute was currently in, where they had interests.

Shaking his head, Harry doused the man with another two drops of Veritaserum and turned him entirely over to the two security guards. "Just don't kill them, you'll need him as a witness."

With that done, Hela and Harry turned their attention to the unconscious Dire Wraiths. Unfortunately, all of their prisoners turned out to be low-level functionaries, a security guard for the true scientists in the room, none of whom had survived their assault alive, or even whole. That irritated Harry, but they were at least able to tell him the name of the species they were dealing with, and the fact that the vast majority of their species had been donating much of their magical energies to the spell, several billion of them in point of fact. This was the vast majority of their planet's population, and the Dire Wraiths only had the one planet before this. They had drained several dozen other planets, but feared to stand out for fear of discovery by the Skrull.

Harry question them closely on that aspect, and it turned out that the Skrull and Dire Wraiths had once been the same species. But there had become a war between the female led magic users and the male-led scientist caste, which shattered their race's unity. the tech side won out, wiping out most of the Dire Wraiths and forcing the remainder to flee with an experimental hyper drive unit which deposited them in a then-distant part of space. Since the Skrull had expanded after that, so much, that was no longer the case however.

Given that the prisoner thought the Skrull saw the Dire Wraiths as primordial bogeymen who should be killed on sight, Harry couldn't argue with the fact they did have genuine legitimate reasons to hide themselves. After all, when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon decided earth wasn't big enough for both of them, well, we know what happened there.

But they are all still connected to this crystal?" Harry asked, smiling somewhat evilly now as he moved over the past Kitty.

She had been quickly scrawling down some notes and on the runic sigils visible on the crystal. They looked utterly fascinating but without a dictionary, trying to figure out which did what could only be done by a process of elimination. She was about to speak up and ask if they could keep the crystal around, but Harry held up a hand. "Yes, we'll take the crystal with us, but before that, I think the Dire Wraiths, as a race, need to be taught to leave Earth alone."

With that, he put a hand on the crystal, and within an instant could feel his mutant power activating, draining the magical energy of the crystal.

Back on their home world, the Dire Wraiths there were still fumbling around, trying to work through the fugue of their spell having been shattered. Unlike those directly around the crystal on earth, that snapping of the spell hadn't knocked them out of the coven array: they were still tied to it, still pouring power into the crystal, despite the spell upon it creating a cold front having snapped. Now their inability to pull back from that cost them.

Harry's mutant power started to drain the crystal, and through it, nearly the entirety of the Dire Wraith race connected into it. Dire Wraiths began to fall unconscious, their magic drained utterly out of them, one after another, the speed of which depended on the strength that each individual had in the realm of magic. Dozens fell, then hundreds, the cascade growing with each successive second.

Back on earth, Harry gasped, grinning evilly. There was even more power here than he had taken during his battle with Cyttorak although not quite as much as when he had taken control of the other gem from the same pantheon, the one belonging to Balthakk. It filled him to brimming, his skin beginning to crackle with the lights of every color of the rainbow and some that even the rainbow wouldn't have recognized as his body, which had honestly speaking been running on willpower and Pepper-Up potions despite a day's rest, began to shimmer with magic. He could feel his body changing, shifting, ascending. And he rejected it.

I'll take the long life, I'll take the power. But I am no God, I'm not going to cross that line. I don't want to be worshiped, I don't want to be tied down by the rules gods need to follow. I want a family, I want to love, I want to lead as a man would. I in me, Harry Potter, take it or leave it.

With a will forged of steel, Harry shunted a goodly portion of the magic into the Ley lines, further aiding Gaia and storm in undoing the damage to the weather patterns of the earth. But it still left him practically sizzling with power. And I know just how to use it Harry thought coldly.

He looked over at Hela, smirking at her. "Hela, if you could contact the others, I think it's time for all of you to fade out. I," he said gesturing down at his vary-colored hands, "I am going to use this power of mine."

"Is the change in power a permanent one do you think?" Hela asked, biting her lip to keep from licking them as she stared avidly at Harry, feeling the power within him. He had been strong before, but now, now he was mighty indeed. Might enough to challenge even Old One eye on the field of battle, if not enough to challenge him in his hall of power.

Harry nodded. "To a certain extent. I certainly felt my magical reserves expand," he said dryly looking her in the eye.

Hela looked back, then, reached forward tenderly and took his hand, bringing it up to her lips and kissing his palm. "I know the decision you were once faced with Harry Potter. I do not feel think any less of you for to aside from the path to godhood," she said, in a small voice so it did not carry. "Now go, and end the threat to our Firebird once and for all."

Harry nodded, and disappeared once again, teleporting back to the place they had all gathered initially, before once again flying into the sky. Then he was south and west, heading towards the distant Genosha. As he did, he relayed orders to Emma. Emma, tell Mr. Richards that the aliens have been revealed. He is good to go with his idea to re-purpose Ravens with his scanning device. But we'll need to still wait for Russia to actually ask for our help before the EDF can really come in to hammer them.

Before leaving Russia behind Harry made a brief stopover at the Russian strategic command Center, hovering above it and hovered there, once more disdaining the heavy antiaircraft fire. he even ignored a lone pair of jet fighters that came in from one side, unleashing their rockets towards him, before closing with the Gatling gun mounted in their noses. The constant tremor caused by the Gatling gun was more annoying than anything else, and didn't stop Harry from once more using his alien revealing spell on the building below.

From this high up he couldn't hear the sounds of consternation, shock or fear, but he knew they were there. With that any ability for the Russians to try to organize their various fronts goes out the door. It won't have much of an impact right away on the front lines, but if the war continues after today or perhaps tomorrow, then it surely will have a major impact on how the Russians dealt with being pressed on the defensive on all fronts.

And now for Sinister Harry thought, with a certain amount of vicious anticipation.

OOOOOOO

While Harry was dealing out chaos and death in unequal measure deeper into Russia, the forces of the allies had gone on a major offensive down south. They had left the borders of Georgia and Azerbaijan behind, pressing forward into Russia, with the constant hammering over flies of squadrons of jet fighters, capturing the shattered remains of a forward tank depot, where the engineers quickly went to work, pulling the tank carcasses aside or out of the way so that incoming helicopters could land and refuel there. The SAS and other Special Forces groups had been dumped deeper into Russia in various ways, and were now targeting bridges, fuel depots and other strategic targets, including communications grids.

It wasn't a quick operation obviously given the jumbled makeup of the forces involved let alone the terrain, which was equally nasty. It would have been slow in normal conditions, now it was quickly becoming muddy given the conditions. But the Russians were now completely on the ropes on that front, entire divisions, even an army group, scattered to the winds, fighting in small division sized or even smaller redoubts here and there. These would be slowly marked out, encircled and then destroyed, but the doing would be tough and slow. Still, the outcome there was no longer in doubt, with none of the Special Powered units having been assigned to that front.

But further away from the southern front the various Russian army groups had time to prepare their anti-air defenses. And those armies were huge, with quite a lot of anti-air defenses built-in. So when the fighters of Germany, France, Greece, and the United Kingdom started to get in on the act, they immediately ran into massive resistance. This in turn, allowed those Russian forces to retreat in good order. But they did retreat in most theaters. With Dr. Doom and his army having been fully converted (somehow, Tony and Reed were both flummoxed about How) to hover technology, the allies started to assault the Russian armies still in the Ukraine with a speed and strength the Russians couldn't face any longer, causing them to fall back in disarray.

The forces facing Finland also started to fall back, but they had strong defensive positions deeper into Russian territory around the city of Stalingrad to the south. Although to the northeast, that was not the case and that was where the counter-attack concentrated on that front. Then again, that territory had been taken from Finland in the Winter War, and its resumption several years later. So it's loss really did not matter overmuch to the Russians, considering how denuded of human life it was.. Further, they well knew that the Finnish people were not an offensive force. They had no desire whatsoever to conquer territory, as they simply wanted to remain free, and even with the X-Men there, there was only so much headway the Finnish people could make against a numerically superior opponent dug in defensively.

In Poland and the smaller fronts between Poland and Finland there was at first no big offensive. Those fronts lacked the hover technology in enough amounts, and lacked the truly overwhelming air superiority America's Navy had brought to bare in the south. Finland did as well, but there the Finns were already as mobile as they could be in that kind of terrain, and had the X-men available for an extremely mobile but quite heavy hammer.

So in most theaters the retreat of the Russians would quickly become a thing of weeks, slow slogging through the mud and rain that had within hours replaced winter. Both sides would have to retool themselves to a certain extent to fight in a normal winter rather than the debilitating horrifyingly cold version that they had been facing. The American Canadian and European forces however no longer had to be so highly retrained to fight in this weather, and more and more of them would come forward along with Australian and South American forces for the southern front.

Yet all that was in the future, a future in which the EDF would also get involved once the Russian military realized how badly subverted their officer corps was with alien infiltrators. But the day that would be called Winter's End, there was one chance in Poland for the Russians to break the momentum of the allies. Because that day, as Steve and Harry had supposed, the Russians decided that the best way to break the morale of the allies was to kill the man who had become a symbol for all of them, the star-spangled Captain America.

Steve was leading from the front that day as was his usual. He was waiting for the weather to break like everyone else all around, staring up at the sky and wondering which would get there first, the Polish helicopters, which were based only about 7 miles behind him but which didn't have any warning that they would be needed, or the German fighters from Germany and the Polish fighters which had been removed from the front and transported further west which did. Bit of a tossup really, although honestly speaking I hope it's the Poles. They've held the line so bravely and fought back so hard I think they deserve the first punch in so to speak.

Speaking his thoughts aloud, he turned to Nikolai, or rather Vanguard considering he was uniform, cocking an eyebrow. "What do you think?"

Vanguard smiled slightly. "I think, personally that I've should be the polls as well Steve, although I think it will be the helicopters who do it not their fighters. I've looked at the Polish jet fighters and they are rather old and clunky in comparison to modern equipment. Their helicopters on the other hand are ultra-modern American loaned helicopters, very good tank killers and fire support platforms."

Steve nodded, turning his attention back to over the front lines, to where he could see the large makeshift position that the Russians facing him here had created in the past few days. With the number of hover tanks that he and his team had taken out in the past few weeks, the war of maneuver that the Russians and allies had been fighting had slowly ground to a halt, the snow hampering the movement of the heavier vehicles.

And that's going to get worse before it gets better, he thought, this breath fogging in the air in front of him. It'll be an infantry fight for the most part, and a nasty one too. Still, we'll have the advantage of surprise at least when the ball drops, and aerial support, whereas what support they'll get will be sporadic at best.

He was about to say something else aloud to the young Russian man who he had bonded with over the past few weeks when to one side E looked up abruptly from where he had been communing with several satellites, via his built-in wireless. "It's begun," the android said crisply. "The temperature has risen around us by an appreciable amount in the last hour."

"Are you sure?" Steve asked in before nodding to Nikolai quickly got on his controller, contacting the rest of Steve's team here in Poland. If it was indeed happening, Steve wanted his own air assets ready to go, and the Custodes warned too.

"I am," E answered. "In fact, the rise of heat is exponential. I predict within a few hours, we will be back into normal winter temperatures, rather than the near South Pole temperatures we've had to deal with."

"Excellent," Steve said with a nod and then the world exploded around them.

A beam of coruscating energy lashed out from nowhere, slamming into the readout to one side, and nearly bisected Enterprise as well as several dozen Polish troopers behind him and the foxholes they had created. Enterprise was able to duck away, grabbing one of the nearby men and hurling himself forward. But the others were immolated by the blast, which was followed quickly by several more concussive energy blasts, something of the sort of Cyclops or Havoc's attacks, only somewhat wider, and a little less powerful in their diffuse form.

From out from behind some kind of cloaking technology or power came a massive assault that hadn't been there an instant before. Most of it was composed of Russian infantry who moved rapidly into the breach of the allied line, moving with all the skill and coordination of experienced, very well-trained soldiers, laying down a blistering hail of fire with sub machine guns, and scattered energy weapons. Those weapons were not as strong as the plasma rifles that Harry and Magical Minds had loaned out to the various military forces, but they were strong enough.

The other attackers were a very much mixed bag, all of them having the appearance of superheroes and super villains.

There were two Crimson Dynamos among them, both of their suits looking like more highly advanced versions of the type that Captain America and his fellows had seen before this. It was much more streamlined, the shoulders smaller, the bracers on the forearms a little bulkier, and the legs thinner, but with the same overall design and of course paint scheme. They were both flying, shifting to either side as they flew over the sides of the blasted-out hole in the line, laying down fire and killing dozens of men. This fire consisted of electric and laser blasters from one hand, smaller versions of the Tesla cannons that many of the Russian tanks had been showing. Their other hand had two small rotary cannons, Gatling guns in point of fact, shooting down extremely small bullets, but at an incredibly high rate of speed chewing up anyone and anything they hit.

Another two armored forms stood behind the assault, but these were different like night and day. One of them had on a large bulky suit that looked as if it was made of lead, larger and wider than either of the Crimson Dynamo's, or the Titanium Man standing to one side. It was also very simplistic, looking more like rad suit than a mechanized uniform. It even had the mark of a radioactive device on its chest, and a slit visor that glowed with the same green energy that had blasted apart the allied position. Its head was small, almost squished on top of its wide shoulder, with a large built up neck area.

Next to him was another Titanium Man, much like the ones that the world guard had faced in the spoiling attack on China. This one's suit was a little smaller in terms of height, but just as wide, and had odd small apertures going down its chest in a row, along with an underslung massive Gatling gun on one arm and a heavily built up forearm on his other.

Among the others charging forward was a figure that both Nikolai and Steve knew very well: a Red Guardian, although his uniform wasn't entirely red with the Soviet mark on his chest as would've been the case in years past. It was still mostly red of course, but the mark on its chest had been replaced by the Russian flag, and his shield was a little smaller, whereas in his other arm, he wore a massive gauntlet, easily as large as one of the titanium man's armored forearms.

There was also someone in the sky above, the look of which made to Nikolai's jaw clench, even as he ducked aside from a blast of rifle fire. "They dare!?"

"Dare what?" Steve shouted over the tumult of the battle, the gunfire and screams of the wounded. He used his shield to block several bullets, ducking under and around the fire from energy rifle equipped soldiers. All around them the allies started to fire back at their attackers, but the damage had already been done and the enemy tanks had taken out numerous anti-tank and tank positions along their lines and were now rumbling forward.

"They replaced my sister! That's her old uniform. It's like they tried to erase us!" Nikolai scoffed killing two men quickly then lining up a shot with his gauss rifle on an enemy tank, killing it even as he kept up his diatribe. "Or were we just two of many such they were training? How in the world were they able to find someone else with anything near to Darkstar's powers in the first place?"

"Probably more of the second than the first there, given how many Crimson Dynamos and Titanium Men we've seen or heard about," Steve said, even as Falcon flashed across from one side, followed by Cannonball coming in from the other side. The Falcon fired at one of the Crimson Dynamo's, large strobe flares going off from one of his own semi-armored forearms.

Then he twisted away and flew straight upwards, showing a responsiveness that the Crimson Dynamo couldn't track as he tried to turn his fire towards the African American paratrooper. Let's hear it for the Vulture's design Sam thought, as he twisted and moved around in the air, far more adroitly than he'd ever been able to do before this.

He then banked away suddenly, coming almost to a complete stop then flipping himself around and firing down at the Crimson Dynamo who had attempted to come up his tail. But as he did so, Sam was able to spot something else coming out from behind whatever cloaking device or whatever had been used to get the enemy troops this close. With an odd jaw movement he activated his mask's built in communicator and began to shout into it, splitting his attention from the aerial duel he was currently engaged in. "We have incoming! The Russians are pushing forward from their own lines to reinforce this attack all across the front! And there's something else there, something..."

A blast of white and blue light lashed out from the area previously covered by the rapidly disappearing illusion, and Sam barely dodged to one side. In doing so Sam was nicked from below by one of the Crimson Dynamo's electric blasts, causing him to fall through the sky with a cry of pain. He barely righted himself before he could crash and wouldn't have without his specialized jet pack, flaring his wings out at the last instant to skim across the ground firing as he came barreling through a series of Russian troopers.

Behind him as the last of the illusion faded a large figure rose out from where it had been crouching, or perhaps even going along on all fours with the rest of this forward attack echelon. It was twice as large as even the Titanium Man and the other armored figure, and just as wide. It looked almost something like a devil, with wide bat like wings flaring out from its shoulders, a horned head, and massive black armor covering it from head to toe. On the chest of its armor, it had what looked like another face, the eyes and mouth of which glowed red, matching the visage of the thing's actual head. On its forearms, which looked almost unarmored, as if the armor of the creature molded seamlessly with its black flesh. it wore heavy gold bands there, and along its back were what looks like test tubes stabbed into its back here and there, feeding some kind of black fluid into it, or perhaps draining it out.

Yet even as that being whatever it was, lashed out with a blue and white that seemed to suck the life out of several soldiers both Russian and allies, Steve remained calm. He remained calm even as the Red Guardian launched himself forward, slamming his shield into Steve's. They strained against one another, and the Russian looked at Captain America grimly, his face heavily armored and lip curling to reveal pointed teeth. It was evident that whatever Super Soldier serum the man had been given was not perfect. "For the good of mother Russia you will die this day Captain America. The honor of my nation demands it." the man shouted, his voice slurred but understandable for all of that.

The honor of a conqueror, who launched an on warranted war across the world? I don't think we're reading from the same dictionary," Steve said simply, before dodging to one side, his fist lashing out faster than most would've followed. The other man boat, smacking it aside with his shield and then twisting around to bring his foot up in a kick.

Steve blocked it with his own shield and then Nikolai was there, slamming his own shield into the man's side and hurling him backwards. "I'll take him captain," the younger Russian said coldly.

"The traitor!" The Russian said as he hopped to his feet. "It will be a delight to it remove such a blight on the honor of mother Russia.

"Good grief, we really have gone back to the time of the USSR, haven't we? Thank god my sister isn't here, that would not be fun for anyone," Nikolai groused, even as the other man swung at him. Nikolai didn't activate his power yet though, dodging around the blow, and returning with his own. Soon the two of them were embroiled in their own personal war, going back and forth across the rapidly melting and churned up snow behind the ally's foxholes as around them the rest of the battle continued, barely impinging on their own fight such was the skill of those involved.

That left Steve able to raise a hand to is side of his mask, clicking on the communications device there. It didn't work, and he grimaced before thinking hard, trying to almost project the thought out though of course since he wasn't a telepath that was nearly impossible. "To whoever's out there listening, the attacks begun! We need the Custodes down here now!"

Emma's voice responded, cool and almost soothing. "Don't worry Steve, I was monitoring the communications on the front lines, watching for something like this. The world guard are dropping now."

"I hope they get here soon, because were being overrun!" Steve shouted mentally through the link Emma had just so easily forged, before dodging through several rockets fired from one of the Crimson Dynamos above.

Emma's response came in someone shouting Russian from above, as Colossus fell rapidly towards the large black creature at the back of the attackers. at the same time Magma's voice rang out over the battlefield. "World guard, in and at them!"

Magma landed nearby Steve, lashing out with both hands and sending bolts of tectonic energy straight through several dozen troopers in front of her who had accidentally bunched up as they tried to clear one of the makeshift berms of the ally's defensive formation. nearby Captain Britain slammed bodily into one of the Crimson Dynamo hurling him down into the ground, before grunting and taking a shot full bore on the chest from one of the other armor-clad fellows which sent him staggering in the air.

Elsewhere, Ghigau went to work. Danielle's mobility along the rapidly disappearing footing underneath them proved to be incredibly effective against the regular troops and she zoomed around making them all look slow and stupid. Then she reached out with her powers of empathic illusion, and suddenly the battlefield changed.

Danielle Moonstar's ability to communicate with animals was based around an empathic telepathic skill, but that was more of an offshoot than her main power. That was the ability to and to create three-dimensional images pulled from the minds around her and the empathic sense of a place. She could then replay events in an area if those events had left behind a significant enough psi-sense. But she could also create a full illusion, pulling the fears of those around her out into the open in a similar manner.

This she did now, reaching into the minds of the Russian soldiers. And, perhaps not so surprising given the giant demonic creature they had allied with, those fears were far more primal than most would have assumed from soldiers in combat. A wave of power washed out from her, and then there were creatures of dark myth and horror there seemingly tearing into the Russian assault. Massive red and horned bears, wolves with two heads, crows with the heads of men and dozens of other images that even Dani would have been hard pressed to recognize from Russian mythology.

Faced with these creatures from the past the Russian soldiers balked, fear overcoming their training. many turned and ran, a few even throwing their weapons down as they did. A few though stood and fired at the images, and began to notice their bullets going right through them, and that allowed them to get a handle on their fears long enough to start rallying the other troops around them. Then the creature and the two Dynamos took the beasts under fire, turning from their own fights to do so. The blasts of blue-white power from the creature dissipating the illusions and forcing Ghigau to retreat, skating into the cover of a foxhole.

But it actually didn't matter that her illusions had been dissipated. That brief moment of confusion had been enough for Steve and Amara to start rallying the troops.

Paige had actually been sleeping farther back from the front when the attack began. She had been on patrol half the night, responding to reports of someone else out there with a metallic appearance being seen by some of the guards on patrol. Now she rushed toward the fight tearing at her skin to reveal the metal under layer, battering through several of the attacking Russians who had pushed deep into the allied defenses, while the Black Widow, who had also been sleeping off a long night, raced along the lines away from her, rallying the allies.

In particular Natasha started to shout out orders for the tanks, which were also a little further back from the front, to not fire into the mass directly in front of the defensive line but at the attacking Russian army behind it. "We don't want any blue on blue, right!" She shouted.

For her part Husk was almost to the fight when she looked up as Polaris flew by overhead, having done her job of dropping off the world guard considering no one else had been in a position to do it. "Polaris!"

Polaris stopped, and Husk held up her hands and shouted, "Throw me!"

With an eye roll Polaris reached down with her metallic powers lifting Paige into the air. "Where am I aiming you?" The green haired girl asked dryly. While she really didn't want to take part in a more fighting, transportation could be stretched to include this kind of moment. As Husk flew Polaris saluted, then flew out of the combat zone , her part in the combat done.

A second later from his position well out from where the rest of the fighting was occurring, Colossus blinked as Paige slammed into the large demonic looking creature he had been exchanging blows with backing away rapidly to get out of her way as she slammed into the creature like an out of the way cannonball. She pounded the beast even as they tumbled through the snow and churned up mind, raising her fist and punching it hard in the face.

It rolled with the blow though, grabbing her around one metal arm and then slamming a fist into her own metal face, the blow so strong it stunned her. Seeing that, Colossus quickly shook off his own surprise, and grabbed the things arm, pulling it backwards. But they were both being overwhelmed by the thing's share strength. "I thought," Paige growled, "that guardian did something to block demons from appearing on earth any longer!"

"Fool girl!" The thing shouted. Grabbing still with her in its paragraph as it tightened, the metal of Paige's form slowly beginning to buckle. "I am no demon, I am the God Chernobog, bringer of night and chaos!"

"That sounds more demonic than godly to me," Colossus said, his tone dry. "Of course, my faith has spent centuries stamping out the faith you seem to come from, so you will forgive me for my differing viewpoint."

The thing twisted its head to stare at him, scowling angrily. "You are Russian? Why would a Russian, even one of the weak Christian faith, you fight against your nation?!"

"I fight for what I believe is right," Colossus said, before pulling back his head, then headbutting the creature as hard as he could ending the so-called conversation for a moment.

Taking a brief moment to pop up onto one of the berms, Magma looked all around her, taking in the fight in trying to figure out what she could do to fully turn the tide. The Black Widow had also appeared, rushing over from another defensive position further to the north. the older woman was rapidly taking command of the regular troops, pulling them back to a secondary defensive position, while leaving a few troopers in position on either side of the assault from the winter guard. Those individuals were now calling down artillery fire from much further back, and the Greek girl could see where those blasts were landing in among the advancing Russian army.

But the main danger was from Chernobog, and the unknown armored person, who she had correctly identified as the source of the massive beam of power that cut through a large portion of the front line. It seemed to need some kind of recharge time. Or so she thought until it opened up on her. She ducked underneath the berm, then rolled away quickly, using her tectonic powers to encase herself in earth for a second as the berm around her and the ground beyond disintegrated. Some kind of disintegration beam? Or something related to why it's wearing a radioactive symbol on its chest?

Nearby, Steve had seen the same thing, and broke off his assault on one of the Crimson Dynamo's which Sam and knocked to the ground. This let the armored Russian get back into the air, but Steve had greater things to worry about considering that Cannonball was also up there, zooming around and smashing into the Crimson Dynamos the instant they tried to lay down fire. E can you get a reading on that energy beam?"

E had been crouched behind another makeshift defensive position, taking fire from several Russian infantrymen, along with a few dozen Allied troopers while using his nanites to create shields for them while he concentrated on aiding one of the wounded, ironically a medical corpsman who had lost his leg. But at Steve's question, enterprise quickly began to analyze things, frowning as he did so. "That was a beam of condensed radioactive energy, some kind of odd isotope that disintegrates matter."

Steve frowned, thinking hard for a moment, finding a brief respite from being under fire to poke his head out, staring across the battlefield from his position as he watched the two steel clad figures of the world guard fighting it out with the black clad demon creature. Above, the sound of whirring helicopters was soon heard, as the skies began to clear enough for helicopters to take to the air, racing forward. Almost Steve could imagine the roar of fighter engines from further behind though of course that was impossible just yet.

Quickly contacting the helicopters, Stephen ordered them to do what they did best, take out the incoming enemy tanks, letting loose the artillery on the larger infantry groups within their range, a few of them made to wait to engage any rocket launchers or other artillery pieces they saw.

But anti-air cannons immediately also began to open up on the other side. They hadn't been attacking cannonball or the Falcon for this, simply because they were hard to aim at human sized targets, but helicopters and jet fighters were their normal opponents. Soon helicopters started to be knocked out the sky, but they were knocking out tanks and anti-air batteries in turn, and there were more on the way.

A beam nearly grazed Steve's head, and he ducked aside with a wince as one of the Crimson Dynamos and the titanium man landed nearby, having leaped forward. At the same time, the other armor clad being blasted out another wave of power, disintegrating a large portion of the allies remaining defensive works and several hundred infantrymen who had been firing into the side of the original angle of the winter guard's attack. They died so quickly very few of them had time to even scream before they were literally disintegrated.

Magma stared in shock, then looked around thinking furiously. "Vanguard, do you think you could block that?"

Vanguard rolled over, kicking upwards and sending his opponent flying over his head as he flipped himself to his feet. Before he could move into a sweep kick that would have taken the man in the head, he was forced to bring up his shield to block several bullets the man fired from a small handgun that the Red Guardian suddenly pulled out from behind him at the small of his back. "I am a little busy right now."

a second later Carol appeared next to Vanguard, her rifle up and firing. The red guardian barely got his own shield up in time to block, but didn't block the spinning hell kick that took the shield out of position, or the next kick that went low, taking his feet out from under him. He did dodge the next blow which would've caved in his head, rolling away desperately, even as he shouted imprecations. "Now you're not," Carol said grimly. "Keep your eyes on the bigger battle."

Magma nodded, slamming her hands down to the ground creating a fissure in the ground reaching towards where Colossus and Paige were fighting. They leaped away at the appropriate time, and Chernobog fell into it, only to grab at the sides and try he himself upwards. "Richter! Do you think..."

Nearby avalanche, nodded, and then his own earthquake powers into the mix, dumping several thousand scattered Russians, before rushing forward. He caught the titanium man by surprise, one of his fists lashing out and catching the man in the armored side of his knee. With the armor he was currently wearing, which heightened his vibration-based energies, Richter's blow shattered the armor there, dumping the titanium man onto his side.

at the same time the titanium man fired rockets from his chest, and various control bands lashed out from one arm, snagging The Black Widow and falcon, who had been flying directly above him. Both of them screamed as electrical currents flashed through them, their armor no defense against the power of it, dumping the falcon once more out of the sky, crashing to the ground while the black widow cried out in agony, collapsing onto her face, her body spasming.

Nikolai raced forward, leaping over the remains of one of Richter's makeshift walls, landing in among a series of Russian troopers. He smashed them to either side with hands fists and shield before he was out in the clear, racing towards the squat armored form 200 yards distant.

That worthy turned to him and as Nikolai had hoped his attack flared out, its central radioactive sign glowing brighter before the energy beam lashed out. He quickly raised his shield and pulled forth his mutant power, creating the shield that would protect him from any impact. The beam blasted into him and around him, disintegrating several yards of ground to either side, but most of the energy was reflected back into the armored man. he screamed, and then seemed to implode on itself, the armor, which might have been some kind of container field for the energy within, overloaded exploding. this sent a green tinged shock wave in every direction.

There was a lull in the battle that, but Sam interrupted it, pulling himself up off of the ground pushing his small plasma pistols into the downed titanium man's face, blasting it into slag.

Elsewhere cannonball had finished demolishing one of the Crimson Dynamos. None of its weaponry had been able to get through his shield. As long as he was moving, cannonball was practically invulnerable, much like Nikolai only he had no apparent upper limit. Nikolai did and was down now, his body seared from top to bottom from the radiation of the attack. A second later he disappeared, his suits emergency portkey system activating due to the severity of his wounds.

Magma grimaced in pain at that. But she had no time to waste on worrying about her friend's well-being. "Danielle go!"

Danielle raced across the battlefield, having been trying to keep away from the snarl of infantry combat that had almost overwhelmed the front line as she tried to get close to the armored form that Nikolai had just taken out at the expense of taking himself out. Now she changed targets, moving towards the one greatest remaining threat on the battlefield, Chernobog. Steve too had recognized that the fight was turning against the winter guard now, even as the one remaining Crimson Dynamo and the red guardian attempted to finish off the black widow and Carol. He sent E to help them, as he too raced forward pushing through the shell-shocked and scattered remains of the rest of the Russian attack. Ahead of them, the Russian army began to retreat, pulling back from his assault positions, while its anti-air cannons sent up a welter of fire against the first wave of allied fighters.

Roaring out, "Their metal might protect them from my wrath human, but you have no such defense. Chernobog turned towards Steve, lashing out with his odd blue and white power beam.

Steve however raised his shield in front of him, taking the blast full on and held his ground, plowing through it as he raced forward towards the creature.

This astonished Chernobog and he shouted, "how! How can you do this."

Having my shield enchanted against the magic seems to have been a damn good idea Steve muttered to himself, making a mental note to thank Harry for that later on. Right now though, he had an apparent dark God to banish. He closed quickly, as did Danielle, even as Chernobog turned its head in her direction. From his eyes and mouth up both eyes and mouth, came a scream accompanied by another blue white beam.

She stopped twisted to one side, and underneath the beam, the beam itself blocking Dani from the creature's view as she lined up a shot with her bow and arrow. The arrow was an energy arrow, created by her own limited TK powers, something like Betsy's telekinetic blades. It was a relatively new addition to our arsenal, and it did absolutely nothing to the demon thing, even though her shot impacted into one of its mouth's. But by the time the creature actually realized she was still alive, she was close in, Sigyn's Gift changing into a blade in her hand, and slicing into its side.

Before this, nothing the two armor clad world guard had been able to do against this creature had actually injured it. Even getting stuck in the earth thanks to magma hadn't. But Dani's shapeshifting weapon was a gift from a goddess, who while not as physically powerful as this Russian deity of chaos and night, should not be underestimated because of that.

Chernobog squawked and outrage in shock as one huge hand went to its side, where its armor, or hide it was still tough to tell which, had been pierced. "You hurt me!"

"I wanted to do a lot more than that," Danielle replied, as she zoomed past. She was nearly hit in the helmet by one of the things large wings as it whipped out, and it did take her in the shoulder, hurling her away.

By that point, Steve was on it, and slamming his shield into it side, then bouncing up onto its arm, and kicking out hard at its head.

Chernobog rocked with the hit, but didn't seem phased, grabbing at him, but Steve ducked underneath, bringing his shield around and down again on to his arm, then into its face. "Annoying that! Die!"

Before it could try to down Steve again, Colossus rammed into its back, and lifting it up in a bearhug from behind. He held the larger Chernobog in the air for a second before suplexing Chernobog into the ground.

Magma followed up on her boyfriend's attack, getting right in the thing's face, and hurling out large tectonic energy balls, which slammed into the God's chest. Paige soon joined them, grabbing one of the things hands and pinning it to the ground, while the others all closed in. The only one that was down for the count was a black widow, who had teleported away due to her injuries,

Having just finished binding the Red Guardian in unbreakable wire, E now reluctantly sent out his Nanites to attack the large creature directly only to stop and stare as they seemingly could not find anything that they could consume. "Magic, of course, so illogical," E muttered. "The hard way it is then." With that, E flew towards the self-professed deity.

Ducking under a blow that would've taken her head off, magma winced as Danielle took it full bore on the side, her armor caving in along with some of her ribs no doubt, before she grunted. "In that case, perhaps we should call in our own magic users?'"

Chernobog laughed. "Do so child, and I will their souls. No magic can work on me."

"Ah," said a voice from above them. "I believe the appropriate response to that would be, challenge accepted."

A vast cage of energy was suddenly crashing down over Chernobog, orange and green it grabbed at the man, holding him still.

Colossus took the moment to grab at the things horns and bent it back, while E and Paige got underneath it, twisting it the other way. The thing tried to open its mouth to send out beams of energy, but found its mouth clamped around by the two steel clad users, "None of that thank you," Paige grumbled, as she clung to the thing's chest, blocking its chest beam with her body.

"Fascinating," Dr. Strange said as he came to a light nearby. He looked around him sadly shaking his head. "So much death and destruction."

"You're telling us," Steve grumbled, wincing as his shoulder ached. Three of his people had been forced to retire via the emergency port keys, and everyone left was battered and bleeding in numerous places, and they still hadn't been able to put Chernobog down.

"Can you help us here?" he asked, gesturing to towards the straining forms of Colossus and Paige, both of whom were looking as if they were going to be overwhelmed soon by the demigods sheer brute strength. E too wasn't having much luck. His blows mattered not at all, and he was currently trying to create a weapon which could hurt the behemoth via his nanites

"It isn't actually a living God, as Lady Hela is. Say rather, that this is the astral form of God, summoned into a person. I can banish it," though it will not be easy," Stephen began. "Simply hold him still for a few moments and let my magic do the rest."

"No, no! You will not banish me, I will not go back to my realm of darkness without the thousands souls promised me."

"Did you get a receipt,' Sam quipped, landing on top of the thing, and opening fire with his twin guns into the things face.

It didn't do any damage, but it certainly infuriated the creature. With a roar it tore Paige off of his chest and hurled her way, kicking out back hard and sending Colossus rolling before charging forward without pause towards Stephen strange.

Without a word between them, magma, Danielle, and Steve all charged forward. Danielle Her gift not as a blade or I air of this time, but as a staff, tripping Chernobog up before he could get up too much steam. Then magma was on him, grabbing at the thing, and sending geothermal energy in the form of heat, a vast amount of heat that was akin to feeling the edge of a volcano perhaps.

The heat was so intense, that even the armored form of Chernobog began to melt under her Tonks, and she hung on grimly. "Let go, curse you" he shouted, blasting her from his chest face, but magma still clung to one of its shoulders with one hand, before bringing her other up to his face, the touch of her searing into his cheek. "Grahhh, let go!"

Steve interposed his shield between the blast from his face and magma, then slammed his shield forward into its face, again and again and again, before twisting upwards, and jabbing the gift which Danielle I just hurled him into the eye of the face set into the thing's chest. It roared in pain and agony, and hurled both of its tormentors away. Too late.

"Be banished and be gone, by the power of two gods of magic. I do abjure and banish thee!" Dr. Strange shouted, the cage around the creature enveloping it from one end to the other.

Chernobog screamed, but with the spell complete couldn't do anything, one moment it was raging and tossing them all around, the next, it was gone, diminishing into the body of a regular human man, who stared around him. "Damn you! Damn you all! You will not succeed. Soon, soon I will redo the ritual all bring him back, and mother Russia will..."

at that point Danielle smashed him one sending him unconscious to the ground. The others looked at her askance and she shrugged her shoulders "what? we don't always have to listen to the villains' diatribes you know."

"Righteous," Sam said with a grin and a thumbs up, before looking around them at the battle still raging in the distance. The Russian army was now in full retreat from its own defensive formations, it's anti-air firepower unable to withstand the sheer number of jets that were now pounding it into submission.

Steve groaned, then cracked his neck this way and that, before picking up his shield from where he had dropped it, strapping it to his arm and flipping the gift over before handing it thankfully to Danielle. Magma nodded at him, and he nodded back before looking around at the others. "Dr. Strange, can you take our prisoner here with you?"

"Certainly, it is my purview to make certain that such as this cannot occur. I have to believe that I would've felt it if I was not connected to the spell keeping the cold at bay."

"Understood," magma said, having a brief grin from Stephen as she gestured around her to the remaining world guard, then towards where the rest of the Allied army were beginning to move forward, under the cover of the still attacking jet fighters and more and more helicopters appearing in the distant behind them. " I just want to make certain that that guy doesn't go through with his threats."

"I will remove whatever he was able to use to summon up Chernobog, although I will admit that I had not thought about dark gods like this being able to transfer to earth from their own small dimensions. Technically speaking those are after all holy dimensions, or what would be termed upper band dimensions in comparison to the lower band dimensions such as which would be used by devil. But however they were able to summon him, I can deal with it."

"Good," Steve said as she moved forward, gratefully hearing his comm bead still operational. "For the rest of us, we've still got work to do."

The war wasn't over, not be a long shot. But perhaps, this was the beginning of the end.

End Chapter

---

I realize that leaving Sinister out of this chapter is a wrench, but I felt, looking over what I wrote, that I was not giving him the justice due. So his confrontation with Harry will occur in the next chapter. Remember to vote when the poll is up on my profile page, or if you want a larger say in what I write, join my patty ron page.