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.

23. Want To Go On A Bug Hunt?

I don't own marvel (ugh) or Harry Potter.

Sorry this story isn't coming out as often guys and gals, my Wild Wolf muse refuses to let go of its grip on my mind.

A few readers have made comments about how in the real world other minority groups would have recognized the fact that the mutant issue can be seen to equate to racism, and would have banded together to help. I will say for the record that I have taken the stance on this not happening yet because in the original Marvel universe this did not happen for a very long time. In fact there were several instances where African Americans and Native Americans did not see the problem, or were actively anti-mutant.

Kitty dealt with several such moments I remember with a few friends and possibly with her dance instructor, an African American woman, in her early years. There are several pictures in the comics showing anti-mutant rallies with crowds of people of all different shades taking the same stance. For the longest time the only organized pro-mutant rallies were those organized by mutants, Xavier in particular. Religion also was never touched on in marvel unless connected to hate groups or a made up subset. Well, outside of a few comics that dealt with Sabra, a Jewish hero working for the government in Israel and a few other examples. Sorry if this offends anyone, but please look up the comics themselves. If you can find examples of purely normal human groups aiding mutants in an organized manner at this point historically, tell me and I'll include them in the background sometime.

Oh, and sorry everyone, but no nega-bands or whatever. Looked at them, their history and where they came from, just too dumb- if the Supreme Intelligence could make them, why not create a Praetorian guard for himself that could fight Ronan's forces using them? So yeah, no.

Would like to thank my beta readers, JoeLawyer and Kathryn518 for their help on this chapter, without them it would not be nearly as well written, nor would a few of the characters be in character. Would also like to thank Mordreek. He helped me flesh out the Asgardian portions and my own knowledge of the Astaru religion via discussion and sending me websites, which I used here and will continue to use in the future.

Summary of the last chapter: The Business side of things proceeded apace while Dani joins the team, with several new toys added to their arsenal by Jean after their battle with Mojo's forces. The Asgardian Enchantress arrives on Earth, but takes a soft approach on her mission to bring back Thor, enamored of Earth foods and fashion. Back in Asgard, Odin decides to agree to a formal non-aggression pact with Harry's faction, along with the start of a trade agreement thanks to his wife Frigg's advice, hoping for a lot more than just trade goods. Emma interviews Firestar for a position in her security team, but run into medical complications, which Ororo has agreed to handle soon with the spells taught to her by Gaia, something that has proceeded apace. This is shown when she used it to protect a US embassy and the three mutants within, bringing two with her as new students with the third's father, the ambassador, agrees to let Doug join them in the future, though not like a boarding school.

Betsy is cleared to rejoin her brother in the UK, and is immediately grabbed up by the government for a job. Tony is healed by Harry with much difficulty because he is a paranoid asshole, but his promise of an AI core makes Harry happy. Harry, members of his team, Reed, Susan and Ben are up in High Note when a Kree ship arrives, firing a Sentry down to do something. Harry leads one team to take the ship while Ben and Ororo lead another to destroy the Sentry, considering this a act of aggression or even war by the Kree against Earth. The Sentry is destroyed with no loss of life thanks to Ororo's magical abilities, and the team's teamwork. The ship is taken, but the captain activates an explosive under the bridge, destroying it while at the same time opening the ship up to base. Despite this thanks to Harry playing macho man and his magical ability they take prisoners in the medical bay.

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Chapter 23 Want To Go On a Bug Hunt?

Paris Lourdes sighed, stretching luxuriantly as her limo went on its way down the street. A good day's work was just what the doctor ordered to get over my current issues with Edward. She frowned as that thought brought those issues to mind yet again. The two of them were supposed to be married next month, but Edward had moved back the date of the wedding itself again, resulting in a row between them that had gotten so bad she had left his mansion in a huff.

The cause of this was reports of something or other that his agents had reported, one of which was something about an ambassador friend of his. Suddenly that man was no longer a friend and Edward was in a bad mood. That added to several other reports that had been coming in, all of them about the 'mutant threat'.

While Paris agreed in an existential way with Edward that mutants were a concern that needed to be addressed, she didn't understand nor did she agree with how violently anti-mutant Edward was. Why, it was positively uncouth of him to be so bent out of shape over it.

Edward knew that, and it had become one of those topics that they decided never to discuss in one another's presence if they could help it. Yet these days, it seemed as if it was starting to dominate all of Edward's thoughts, which wasn't good. Edward was a shrewd businessman, an excellent judge of character, a witty and urbane man, but all of that disappeared when he got this bug up his ass about mutants.

He then became someone Paris didn't want to know, and that was saying something. He was still driven, but it wasn't a controlled sort of drive, and she wondered what had ever occurred between him and a mutant in his past to make him so rabid about it. Paris was beginning to actually be concerned about what was going on there, and worse where this could lead him. For all that she was a businesswoman, and could be ruthless at times, Paris considered herself a good woman deep down, and there were some things that she would not condone. She was becoming increasingly worried that Buckman might not have anything he wouldn't do to address the 'mutant problem'.

Paris' thoughts came to a halt as she spotted a woman walking along the walkway. Of course this wasn't exactly unusual, but Paris was a connoisseur of male and female flesh, not in a sexual manner, but in an artistic sense. She had built her empire from a very humble beginning as a fashion model. Paris knew precisely what to look for in attitude, looks and deportment to see a budding star in the making: a person who could make her living in that realm or any other where the lights were on her.

The woman was blonde but the word didn't seem to do her hair justice. It was lustrous, falling down her back in a wave that looked natural, and for some reason Paris decided it was, rather than a carefully cultivated look. Her figure was excellent, and she had a commanding presence that Paris could see even from here. She was almost otherworldly in her beauty, and Paris was not the only one to have noticed, men and women all around the woman stopped and stared for a second. Indeed, if Paris was even a little bit less self-assured, she would've been incredibly jealous of the other woman's perfect proportions.

"Pull over, find a parking space nearby." she said to the driver.

The man nodded not asking questions and soon enough Paris exited her limo, her bodyguard moving with her. She entered the store that the gorgeous blonde had entered previously, smiling as the manager hurried towards her, evidently recognizing her immediately. Paris was after all a very public figure. She waved him off and said simply, "I might need your services in a moment but for now be about your business."

The man bowed his head obsequiously, obviously in awe of her which was faintly amusing, but not what Paris was interested in right now.

She moved deeper into the boutique, and found the magnificent blonde at the back. For some reason she was not surprised to find the woman, staring into the mirror straight at her. Paris smirked a little, cocking her head to one side with one eyebrow raised. The woman, who Thor would have recognized as Amora, after a moment raised an eyebrow in return then nodded slightly, one very beautiful woman to another, before asking. "Is there some reason you're looking for me?"

Paris moved to her side, looking at the dress the other woman was looking at, shaking her head in dismissal of it. The woman nodded and indicated with a finger that she had been looking at the color in regards to her pale skin rather than the actual cut of the dress, to which Paris simply nodded. "How would you…" she said looking at the dress and then over at two more on a nearby rack, grabbing them up quickly to hold up in front of her fellow blonde's body. "Like to work for me? My name is Paris Lourdes, and I think…"

OOOOOOO

Jean allowed her Phoenix aura to fade, looking around the bridge which had been utterly trashed. There was not a single computer that hadn't been demolished, probably beyond even Harry's ability to magically repair. "Of course, that bastard knew precisely what he was doing, and those explosives must've been part of the design of the ship. Odd, I wonder what Harry will think of that one." That matched up well with what she had already seen of the ship's design: that the ship was designed to repel boarders from the ground up. That was interesting, pointing to the Kree routinely having to fight boarders. "It will be interesting to see what they're offensive weapons are like" she said aloud, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"Now should I start taking the ship apart here, or head down to find Harry and rip him a new one? All that talk about not becoming arrogant or putting too much trust in our armor, and then he goes off in some kind of machismo-based fugue to fight an alien one on one?"

She smirked evilly, then thought to herself, Heh, I'm a telepath, I can do both. But first… With that thought she reached out to connect with Ororo down on Earth.

Unlike Jean's connection to Harry, which had to be on all the time to go 'underneath' his mental defenses, this one had to be redone each time she wanted to speak mind to mind with her African lover.

Ororo replied promptly. "Jean? Are you well, firebird? We're done down here, and are already back at the Baxter Building. We even cleaned up. None of us are injured, and we left Ben to deal with the authorities."

"Excellent." Jean replied, imagining a picture of her holding up two thumbs up down the telepathic connection with Ororo. It was difficult getting the image across, not because of the distance, which was a surprise, but because of Ororo's natural mental defense, that static charge that always surrounded her mind. Even Jean could only connect to Ororo's outer mind, much like the professor could, and the connection was tenuous enough that images were tougher to send down it.

Though if she ever compared notes with the man she would've found that her connection was much easier, the love and level of trust between them making it so. "If you all are still good to go, we could use you up here. The fighting is over, but we need to make certain that there's no dead man's switch anywhere else on the ship. I don't think there is, not with us controlling engineering or the bridge, but the bridge has been utterly destroyed, it was a last gasp act of the captain."

"I would have thought that couldn't occur with both you and Harry on the attack," Ororo mused. "We'll be up on High Note soon. I have Cory here to teleport us all, and then we will make our way over to the ship."

"Ask Cory if he could teleport straight here, he might be able to considering we've taken the ship. And as for the destruction of the bridge, Harry wasn't here."

"Excuse me?" Ororo asked and Jean could almost picture the woman cocking her head to one side, her eyes narrowing, something she had seen several times. "And exactly why was that?" Even through the mental connection Ororo had felt Jean's irritation at that.

"He went off to fight some other guy hand-to-hand, no magic or anything," Jean said rather angrily now. "I'm going to start ripping him a new one soon, if you want to join in feel free."

"Oh I most certainly will stupid, moronic, self-destructive male," Ororo said irritably and now Jean could almost picture the crackling of plasma motes over Ororo's fingertips. "See you soon."

Jean nodded, reluctantly letting the connection go. There was something truly pleasurable in having her mind connected to her loved ones, even Emma for all her control. She then reached through to the connection with Harry. "I take it that the air coming back was your doing, Harry?"

"Hey love!" Harry replied, almost sounding happy. "Yes, that was me. Damn difficult moving it through the ship like that, but worth it. We have some POWs, and a few who have actually surrendered. Oh, and I covered the ship with a Notice-me-Not, figured that might help keep us from getting any visitors from below."

"I see." Jean sent back calmly, she didn't want to give the game away just yet after all. "And your personal issue?"

"That one didn't surrender, in fact he tried to kill me while I was concentrating on the air issue. Earth spikes to the chest stopped that however."

Screw calmly, Jean thought to herself then let Harry have it. "That's good you Hot headed moron!" Through the connection she could feel Harry's confusion, which infuriated her all the more. "You, you man! You do not go off in a fight to have a one-on-one dick beating contest in the middle of a battle!"

Normally that language wouldn't occur to Jean, despite her tomboy attitude at times, but at the moment it simply fit. "After all that stuff you said about not becoming overconfident, about being a team, about not being immortal, and you charge off to pursue a hand-to-hand contest? My God, I've heard of male stupidity, but that takes the cake."

At that moment Ororo and the others appeared in the air next to her, with Cory hopping from one foot to the other, always happy to 'pop' someplace new. He looked around and frowned, then began to clean up. He couldn't repair anything, the house elves couldn't repair electronics, they just didn't understand how to put them together, but the mess in the room and the dead bodies slowly began to disappear, possibly chucked outside.

Jean reached out with a thought, connecting Ororo into the conversation and continued to let Harry have it for several minutes with Ororo adding her own thoughts to it while Jean led the way through the ship unerringly towards her target. They both kept on hammering Harry for his 'testosterone moment', for his complete lack of forethought, and for forgetting the overall mission.

Throughout it Harry simply kept silent for the most part, simply saying, "But I", "Yes dear", and "Well, no," before being cut off by Jean's diatribe.

Finally Jean paused, as they came in sight of where Harry was. It looked like some kind of medical bay, which was made obvious when they went through the doorway to find several beds already occupied by wounded. Harry was moving around them, even as he listened to Jean rip him a new one.

He was helping a woman with light brown hair wearing a white uniform who was moving around freely, healing them, but Harry was also tying them down one by one. A few others were already up and about, and they were free to move around though they were looking at Harry with fear and awe. Jean noticed all the ones moving around were the pale-skinned sort of Kree, rather than the blue skinned ones.

Harry looked up, moving forward to pull Jean into a hug nuzzling into her neck. "You're right, I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have let myself be pulled away from concentrating on the main battle. But in my defense they didn't seem to have anything that could break through my magical defenses, and I'd hoped to make the man surrender. Didn't realize at the time that he was a fanatic, but..." he shrugged. "And in the end it worked out. I wouldn't have been near enough to the medical bay here to save the injured if I hadn't been fighting him."

Jean growled, pushing him away slightly to let her think more clearly, trying to figure out if she should give him a telekinetic punch of reality readjustment to the crotch. Luckily for him Ororo was there, and she moved forward to pull Harry into a hug. "The next time you do this, you idiotic man, not only will you be sleeping on the couch, even if I have to transfigure one for you personally, but I will join the prank war against you, and will figure out a number of humiliating ways to make you pay for it!"

She pulled back glaring into his eyes but she couldn't hold it for long as he simply stared back at her with amusement and love. She frowned pushing away slightly then looked around at the woman who was coming towards them, bowing respectfully.

Harry waved one hand at her. "This is the Hellion's, that's the name of this ship, chief medical officer, Una. She surrendered to me after the air began to escape and I brought it back. The others around her also have surrendered, and have even asked for asylum."

At that point they were joined by Reed, Susan and Paige. Paige was still limping, but at Ororo's nod, she exited the room to peel out of her metal skin. Harry absentmindedly transfigured a few clothing items for her, tossing them through the doorway after Paige. One of the Kree men near the door chanced a look out, and got the shredded bits of clothing from the strange human female in his face for his troubles. He chuckled, moving away from the doorway as she reentered, glaring at him a little but it faded when he simply shrugged his shoulders, cocking his head in an amused manner at her. This showed that in many ways the Kree were similar to humans, not just in appearance but in certain thought processes.

Harry looked at the others nodding approval at seeing them all there. "Good thinking calling in the others Jean. Reed, the ship's ours. Were there any problems with the engine room after what happened in the bridge?"

Jean explained what happened, and Reed nodded. "That makes sense, there was a spike in power and output, but I caught the execution program that would've caused the engines to go critical. The engines are a fascinating system, not as tight as I would prefer, but robust."

"I'll be interested in looking at your notes about it," Harry replied earnestly. "Jean, Reed, why don't you two head down to the engine room, then look at the weapons on the ship, I want to know everything you can tell me about it."

Jean nodded eagerly while Harry went on. "Let's get Emma up here and have her start questioning this lot. Colossus, you stay here and guard the prisoners. Paige, Dani start making a map of the ship for us would you?" The two girls nodded, exiting without another word and Harry looked up into the air. "Cory, you'll probably have to go get Emma, but could you ask one of the other good poppers to come up and clear out the bodies? Oh, and bring up a vial of Veritaserum."

"Yes master, Cory will do." A disembodied voice responded, causing all the Kree currently conscious in the room to jump a little, looking around wildly. Ororo and Jean looked a little askance at that but Harry shrugged it off. So long as the bodies weren't their masters or other house elves, they weren't bothered by much.

After that, Harry looked over at Una. "Now, you were saying something about being here to find a Mar'vell, a spy? Why don't you and I go find him now." That last sentence was worded like a question, but the tone gave that the lie.

The nurse gulped a little but nodded. "I, I know the channel we can use to contact him, if we get close enough anyway. He's, he's not supposed to break cover, but we can still contact him. I even know the city he was last transmitting from. Mar'vell won't be a problem, not after he hears that he's wanted for treason and that Yon'rogg was willing to write us all off." Harry nodded, then they waited for Emma to arrive.

She was able to join them almost immediately. Having a day off she had decided to get some sun, and had been lounging by the pool of her mansion. Cordelia and Angelica were both out for the day getting the girl a whole new wardrobe. Cordelia had been appalled that all the girl had brought was sweats and other comfortable clothing, so had decided to treat Angelica with her own allowance. So Emma had the pool to herself, a state of affairs that she enjoyed until Jean got in touch there.

The idea that Harry and company had taken out an alien ship, capturing it intact, was more than enough incentive for Emma to agree immediately to be popped up. She took a few moments to speak to the others and be hit by the translation spell, before shooing them out on their own tasks.

Harry smirked at that, before gesturing for Una to take his hand. Una gulped but Harry ignored her trepidation, looking at the others. "We'll be back boys and girls, just tying up the last loose end."

"I trust I don't have to tell you not underestimate this fellow?" Jean said sweetly, her eyes locked on Harry like jade lasers.

"Of course not, Jean, I've learned my lesson." Harry smirked at her, and Jean huffed irritably while Ororo chuckled. A moment later he disappeared, popping down to the Baxter Building, from which he would make his way to wherever Una directed him.

Emma had Cory pop in a simple desk and two chairs, which she set up in the corner of the room, before sitting down in the chair, steepling her fingers on the table. Next to her hands on the desk was the vial of Veritaserum. With Colossus looming in the doorway, she looked over at the Kree who were free to walk around. "May I have the most experienced or highest ranking person come up here please."

For some reason the blonde human woman intimidated the life out of all the Kree in the room, but after a few muttered comments one of them was pushed forward by his fellows. Emma nodded him into the chair on the other side of the desk.

"First, let's start with your name and your job aboard this ship," she began pleasantly. At the same time her powers touching his mind lightly, just enough to know if he lied. Going by Jean's report some Kree had natural mental defenses, and Emma was leery of how she would be able to navigate a truly alien mind in any event. "Then, why this ship is here over Earth. After that, we'll go into what you can tell me about any other operations that might impinge on Earth, and your society as a whole…"

OOOOOOO

While Emma began to conduct her interviews/interrogations of the prisoners, Harry and Una had teleported down to the Baxter building, its defenses down for now thanks to Reed calling ahead. Johnny and Wyatt hadn't returned just yet, which was good because Harry didn't want to waste time explaining what had happened to them. "Do you know the name of the city where this spy person is supposed to be?"

"His name is Mar'vell," Una said somewhat shakily. The odd mode of teleportation had caused her stomach to roil as if it was about to burst. "And yes I do. He's supposed to be in Cape Canaveral Florida, if that means anything. I believe it's on that odd peninsula where the Sentry touched down."

"It is indeed, and that helps a lot actually." Harry looked over at her, waiting until she was recovered to grab her shoulder. "We'll teleport someplace else and then fly down from there, it'll be faster that way."

Una groaned but didn't try to argue. Frankly this strange human male's powers scared her. He called it magic, but that couldn't be right, mysticism like that wasn't real after all. Still whatever it was, it scared her more than any of the higher-ups, even Ronan the Accuser ever had. More than they had even before she had begun to question their decisions, and the Kree way of life.

They appeared in what looked like a large house of some kind. The architecture of the humans was somewhat like the Kree, only without the technology that they possessed, which was interesting. Or would have been if Una wasn't trying to not throw up at present as her world and most particularly her stomach's place in it fought a war against one another.

"Question," Harry said, asking now to take her mind off things. "Would this spy person be able to have sensed the Sentry's arrival?"

"His name is Mar'vell," Una said again, her irritation at the human male's, Guardian she recalled, continued use of 'this spy person' instead of Mar'vell's name irritating her. Mar'vell was a hero, not just to her people but to her personally, as well as her lover. "No, he wouldn't be able to. Though he would be watching for anything unusual as a matter of course, so if it was reported on the local intelligence feeds I believe you call them news? Things told to civilians to make them more pliable or warn them of something dangerous? If you have that, he will be watching it constantly, as part of his intelligence gathering duties."

In all honesty Una didn't know what Mar'vell would be doing as a spy. He had never been trained for that, he was an infantry officer with a recon specialty and a damn good one. Perhaps that could carry over to actual spy work, but she didn't really know.

That caused Harry to frown and he thought quickly looking around. Luckily the X-men seemed to be out for the day, and the professor was nowhere to be seen.

Charles was out at that moment with the two Vietnamese women, getting them some clothing and slowly acclimating Xian to being around men again. It wasn't going well, but Harry had no way of knowing that, and would still have left it in Charles' hands if he had anyway. He was the psychologist after all.

At present however it worked in Harry's favor because it definitely seemed as if he wouldn't have time to explain things. "If so he might try to go to ground or change position or something wouldn't he? He would recognize the Sentry if someone was giving a description of it?"

"So long as they were reasonably accurate yes," Una said finally straightening up as her stomach settled down.

Harry left her to it holding up his hand for a moment. A second later Hedwig was there, simply popping into existence in midair, alighting on his shoulder. "What was his name again?"

OOOOOOO

Captain Mar'vell 2,104th Recon Battalion, hero of the Absalom Sector, paced in the small house that he had commandeered as his own trying to think of what he should do. On the TV screen in the room one of the strange 'civilian' reporters, and that had been a shock when he first arrived, that information was in the hands of the civilian sector rather than the military, interviewed a security guard for the nearby spaceport. Apparently a Sentry had landed and fought some of the defenders of this world. Worrisome, a fact made even more so because of the fact it had lost.

He was also worrying about why a Sentry had been sent. The best explanation he could come up with was that the locals were onto him, and it had been sent to reinforce him. That made sense to Mar'vell, a Sentry could get here quickly even if it came alone though they rarely did these days. Sentry's were so expensive that they normally worked with at least a company of regular troops. If so they might still be in orbit, but why?

His thoughts were going round and round, and Mar'vell, stuck in an unknown situation on a type of mission he had never been trained for, was wondering if he should try to escape, if somehow he had given himself away? If so he had seen no sign of it, and Mar'vell was reluctant to leave the persona he had taken over. It was simply too good for his purposes. His cover identity was a scientist at NASA which allowed Mar'vell access to a lot of the information that the Kree were most interested in. Specifically the technological level of Earth, and its space-based ambitions, which was almost nonexistent, something that would make his superiors happy.

And I need to keep them happy, he thought sardonically shaking his head at the odd and all-too-familiar thoughts. The blue skinned Kree feared Mar'vell because he had become a symbol of equality between the pale skinned half Kree and the purebloods thanks to his heroic actions against the Brood. He knew for certain that Ronan the Accuser, at the very least, saw him as a threat, and possibly others in the hierarchy, though the Supreme Intelligence didn't.

The Supreme Intelligence was supposed to be the one in charge of the Kree race, yet on a day-to-day basis that didn't matter much. It was the bureaucracy that ran things, and the bureaucracy wanted to keep the status quo. Mar'vell was a sign that said status quo needed to change, putting them on a collision course, despite the fact he wanted to remain a simple soldier, fighting the enemies of his people face to face rather than deal with this political crap.

Coming to a decision Mar'vell turned quickly walking toward the door and the keys there for the human car. He rather liked driving it, cars were fun in a very low-tech sort of way, and he sighed, realizing that if someone was on to him he would have to ditch this particular vehicle quickly. He stopped suddenly when he noticed a local animal, an avian of some kind, sitting outside one of the windows looking in at him. On one leg for some reason was… "A letter? I know these humans are primitive, but I know they don't send letter by trained avian."

Mar'vell jumped back in shock as two people suddenly materialized as if teleported into the center of the sitting room. Before the two of them could look around and before he could take in the fact that one of them was his girlfriend Una, Mar'vell charged.

Harry grunted as a haymaker slammed into his shoulder, but having taken Jean's warning to heart Harry had his crysis suit on, along with his Magia Erebea at low power. So his attacker stumbled backwards when his blow rebounded, wincing as his hand throbbed.

Even as he wondered about the other man's odd durability Mar'vell's other hand came up. The metal arm guards that he always wore even under his civilian clothing flashed, blasting a laser at the other man.

Harry's hastily conjured "Protego" took the blast but dissipated immediately after and Harry shook his head. "Bugger this for a game of soldiers."

He suddenly teleported, causing Mar'vell to look around wildly before he let out an "OOMPH!" as a fist buried itself in his stomach, and another one slammed into the side of his head sending him down to the ground. Harry hit the man with an Incarcerous scowling irritably. "That could've gone better, but I suppose it could've gone worse too. He was making his way out the door when we arrived."

Una finally gasped aloud, pushing herself up for where she had collapsed on her knees. Contrary to Harry's previous experience with teleporting other humans, Una certainly wasn't getting over the teleportation response, in fact it got worse every time. That was interesting to know, and Harry made a note of it in the back of his mind but right now he had his mind on something else.

He leaned down, grabbing Mar'vell by the hair and pulling him upright, then turned him to where he could look at Una. "Now you stupid arse, if you had taken the time to actually look at the two of us you would've noticed that your girlfriend, according to her anyway, is here with me. Not only that but she isn't in chains or handcuffs or whatever it is you Kree use on prisoners. Now, I'm going to keep your arms tied up, and I'm going to take those odd laser band thingies of yours. Then, I'm going to let Una here explain your new reality to you, do you understand?"

Mar'vell nodded his head, still groggy from the blows he had taken. He was much stronger than most normal Kree, having been modified for this mission by the Supreme Intelligence, but that last blow had nearly taken his head off. Given their disparate strengths it was best to go along with things for now and listen to what Una had to say.

As for Harry taking his laser bands, that was fine. It wasn't as if they were a huge secret or anything, they were simply laser bands, not even as powerful as a CSW in a light infantry company, let alone a heavy. They were no doubt superior to any weapon the humans regularly used, but they were standard fare for spies because they were able to be hidden underneath clothing or even a skin graft. They made for a good surprise weapon, and their power core could be used to create a temporary protective shield around their wearer, but that was all. There had been rumors that the Supreme Intelligence had taken an interest in them a few years ago and was tinkering with them almost constantly with some of its processing power. But nothing had come up the line for normal people just yet.

He waited until Una recovered from whatever kind of transportation had caused her such distress then asked, "What in the world is going on, why are you cooperating with this human?"

"Because he saved my life when captain Yon'Rogg tried to scuttle the ship. We…" Una hesitated knowing that despite the hatred the blue skinned ones had for him Mar'vell considered himself a patriot but he had to be told. "And because we were told you had betrayed the Kree people. We were here to bring you in for treason. I was on the mission because Yon'Rogg wanted to rub your status in my face, you know he has, well had designs on me."

"What!" Mar'vell gasped. "Why!? I've done nothing wrong, I've simply been following orders, keeping my head down and gathering intelligence."

Una explained, not exactly happy her beau had ignored the bit about Yon'Rogg but willing to overlook it for now. At the same time Harry looked around searching for said intelligence or anything that looked unusual. He found it in a few odd looking pieces of crystal, with small rings of what looked like circuitry of some kind on their bottom. Interesting, wonder what Reed and Jean would think of these? With a thought he transported them up to High Note, where they would appear in the master bedroom on the bed. He figured that would amuse Jean.

By the time he was finished with that, the two aliens had finished talking, and Mar'vell was looking extremely disconsolate. "I, I can't understand, why? Just because I'm not pure Kree? Why?"

"I don't know," said Una as Harry walked toward them. "But it's true. Frankly, I think we're better off in human hands at present. This one, he leads their group and they've agreed not to kill any of us unless we try to escape, which is better than our own people would do. Plus who knows, maybe after they're done questioning us, we might be able to settle here somehow."

"That will be tough, but doable," Harry said nodding his head as he moved forward. "For now however, you are our prisoners. We won't torture you or anything like that, but we will be restricting your movements to the ship."

"I'll agree to come quietly," Mar'vell said looking at them human warily. Those punches had hurt, and it was only because he wore his military uniform on under his normal clothing that he hadn't cracked a few ribs from that first blow. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Guardian," Harry said amused at how wary the man was. Evidently the Kree had no equivalent to magic and their culture, and his powers and strength worried the man greatly. Good, that might make him more pliable when Emma began to question him. Being sucker punched had not given Harry the best impression of the Kree spy.

Una however, he actually liked. She was conscientious, seemed to have a caring nature and was a very good nurse judging from the lives she had saved among the crew of her ship. Maybe after the questioning session was over I'll offer her a job he thought to himself amusedly. I'd really like to switch Dr. Druid over to runes entirely now that the potions division has begun to run without him, but he's always taking care of the kid's scrapes and bruises. I know that's his line, and he's done a magnificent job with the two that Ororo saved, but still runes is a major bottleneck, and one only myself and Kitty can really address at this point.

"Gather around you two, and I'll be taking you up." He looked over at Una. "I'm sorry, humans normally get over their reaction to teleporting quickly, you Kree don't seem to do so unfortunately. Would you like me to knock you out for the trip?"

The woman nodded frantically, her stomach was still paining her a little. Mar'vell looked at Una in shock, wondering how bad the teleportation experience had to be to force Una to trust an enemy to wake her up again without doing anything to her. A moment later he found out, but unlike Una, Mar'vell actually threw up when they arrived.

Waking Una up with a wave Harry banished the detritus with his other hand, shaking his head. "Big bad Kree hero huh? Right."

OOOOOOO

In a secure computer room deep within the Helicarrier Carol Danvers frowned, nibbling on the pen stuck between her teeth as she stared into her computers glowing screen trying womanfully to prepare the after-action report from her latest op. It had been a successful raid on a Magia meeting place, much like the one that they had run over in Istanbul which turned out so horrifically, but this one was successful. Carol hadn't lost a single man, which she was very proud of. They had intercepted a shipment of cocaine and possibly broken a budding agreement between the drug cartels and the Magia.

That would've been a nightmare, she reflected, her eyes going distant. Those bastards down in South America are psychopaths pure and simple, they don't just kill someone who was in their way, they kill his entire family in as public a manner as possible. Even the Magia isn't that bad, if only because they knew what would happen if they drew too much police attention to themselves. Of course that was part of the problem in Mexico, the police were a joke, and the cartels were gaining more and more power every year.

But at least this way they won't be getting Mafia help, or their high-tech weapons, wherever the hell the Magia is coming up with them in the first place! Those weapons were a major point of interest for SHIELD and every other intelligence apparatus dealing with the Magia and others too at the moment. With Stark out of the game SHIELD didn't have a supplier that could match the weapons they were routinely meeting in the field, and that showed in their casualties at times.

She'd heard rumors, which normally weren't worth much, but this one came from one of the men up on the communications room, that the Big Three terrorist groups were now SHIELD's primary targets, primarily because AIM could be the source of those weapons. Two teams had been lost to a man recently in an op up in Canada, and it seemed they had walked into an AIM task group, and weapons similar to the ones used by the Magia that Carol had reported were spotted in that debacle.

Carol wished that if she couldn't put her knowledge of space to work she could at least transfer over to the teams working on the Big three, AIM, HYDRA and the Red Skull's as yet unnamed group. The idea the Red Skull was still alive and operating somewhere in the world was a terrifying one for any student of history, and HYDRA's manifesto was worse than their Nazi predecessors. AIM too was bad news to anyone who thought about what a group of amoral geniuses could do if they put their minds to it.

The Magia on the other hand were dangerous, slippery, but small potatoes. They weren't interested in trying to change the status quo of the world, overthrow governments or even simple acts of terrorism, let alone greater acts of terrorism such as that bombing that occurred in China a few days ago. An entire munitions complex taken over, stripped to the ground, and then laid with traps for the pursuers. An entire battalion of the Red Army had been sent in, and died to a man from those traps. SHIELD wasn't in that loop of course, but there was very little that went on in the world that didn't eventually reach them in any event.

No, taking on the BIG Three was where the action was, even if it wasn't the action that Carol wanted to be a part of.

She shook those thoughts off and was about to return to her work when a knock on her cubicle interrupted her. She turned to see one of the communications officers there. "You don't have your pager on!" she said angrily.

"No?" Carol said looking over at it and then cursed, seeing it was out of power. "Sorry, I didn't know. What's up?"

"You're needed immediately in the OTC, there's been a development."

Carol's eyes widened, but she shrugged and stood up hurrying after the other woman through the corridors up to the carriers bridge. She found Fury and a few analysts staring at a video feed that showed Ben Grimm talking to someone. In the background Carol noticed a scene she recognized easily. "What's the Thing doing in Cape Canaveral?" She asked, moving forward.

"Glad you could finally join us," Fury growled tapping one finger on the display device in front of them. "We don't know, the action was already all over by the time we heard about it, damn NASA."

"NASA?" Carol said now taking a real interest. "How did those morons screw up now?"

The chief censor analyst for the Helicarrier scowled angrily. "We're supposed to be getting live feeds from their space radars and telescopes, no if's and's or but's. They are supposed to be sending us all of their telemetry data on anything entering atmosphere, not just the stuff over America but anything their satellites pick up or anything else. But no, damn bureaucrats decided to sit on this until it was too late, the 'object of interest' slammed into the runway at Cape Canaveral, and then something went down there, which ended before they deigned to contact us!"

"That's enough," Fury said calmly, but his one eye was glittering angrily. "NASA screwed the pooch, but I might be able to use this to take control of some of their satellites for us, though I doubt it. The bureaucracies too damn strong for that. We could at least get their liaison with us fired, and replace him with someone who actually knows how to find his ass without a map."

"But that's irrelevant in right now." He went on turning to Carol. "Get your team together, I want you down there ASAP. Question Ben closely, he's evidently staying to answer questions so you shouldn't have many problems."

Carol smiled at that, nodding. The FF were very good people as far as she was concerned, and it was nice to know that her boss didn't view them in the same way as their employers apparently did. Don't look at that too closely Carol, you might not be happy about what you see.

That was an errant thought, quickly subsumed by her excitement. Carol saluted, before racing off to meet up with her team, seven new men and the two survivors from the Greece debacle. She wasn't certain she liked some of the new men, in particular Agent Matthews who had come over from NSA, but she couldn't put her finger on why. They all came highly recommended, and two of them were ex-Navy SEALs, which spoke highly of their skills. But it bothered her how she couldn't shake her paranoia about the former NSA man, when there was nothing on the surface to show anything that could explain it away.

She informed them of the mission as they raced into the hangar bay, where they commandeered one of the newest toys of the SHIELD armada, a small incredibly fast troop transport of the type code-named Eagles. They were built by Stark Enterprises, a sign that he wasn't against building things for the military, just weapons for anyone. She had seen some of the new designs for land based troop transports, and they were impressive to say the least, much like this baby, a perfect mix of armor, speed, and stealth. The moment they exited the Helicarrier the stealth screen activated, and they disappeared from any radar system save that of SHIELD.

Thankfully the Helicarrier had been over Georgia, so getting to Cape Canaveral, only took thirty minutes. After a moment of 'my badge is bigger than yours' with the locals, Carol and her team were ushered onto the base and quickly made their way toward where Ben Grimm loomed over the locals.

Carol barked out orders for her men to spread out. One of them turned aside to interview the local civilians, one went to interview the security guards, while two more moved to reinforce the gate and keep out the news vans that she could already see piling up on the other side of the fence. The others started spreading out searching the battle field for anything of unusual origin. She doubted that SHIELD would be able to keep the news of whatever had happened here from spreading this time, this place was after all a tourist attraction just as much as it was the center of NASA, but she could do her best to put an 'official' spin on it.

"Ben!" she said, smiling as moved up to him. "How's it hanging?"

The Thing turned to her smiling and reaching out with one of his rocky hands to grasp her own. "Danvers, you still in the spy game or transferred back to NASA?"

That was where they had met. When Reed had tried to get NASA interested in his project to investigate the Cosmic Rays Carol had been working with NASA in the hopes of getting into space herself. She had left a few years later, disgusted by the bureaucracy and the sheer idiocy of NASA.

"Unfortunately it's the only game in town that even looks like it's going to start caring about what's up in space." Carol replied, shaking her head. Well, there's Harry of course and his dreams for the future, but I still haven't decided if I'm willing to work for a private group rather than an agency that is at least nominally connected to the powers that be. "Can you tell me what happened here?"

The Thing grimaced. Waving her closer he moved off, ignoring the squawk of outrage from the local who had been questioning him. Carol nodded at one of her men, who sighed in a put upon manner before intercepting him, moving him backwards to let Carol interview Ben alone. She scanned the area, whistling as she noticed the damage getting worse as they moved down the runway. "What did you tangle with?"

Ben laughed grimly. "We're not certain what it was here for, but it was one of those Kree Sentry bots, tough fuckers. You read the reports we passed on about the Kree?"

"Oh yes," Carol said grimly. "That and my readings on the Skrull make up a lot of my nightmares. I'm not certain which group is scarier."

"Join the club," Ben grumbled, moving forward to stand where the Sentry had first appeared.

He pointed downward and she frowned looking at the blast radius. Something must have let off its jets here, to slow it down maybe?

Ben went on. "Like I said it was one of their Sentry's, big ass robots bastards. We tangled with one about a year or so ago, you know that one?"

"Yes," Carol growled shaking her head as she turned back to face Ben. "Was it just you though? I would've thought Reed would've stayed around to answer questions rather than you Ben, no offense."

"None taken," Ben laughed quietly. "Naw, it wasn't just me, I was with a few of our friends when we saw it. Reed, Sue and the others were all busy with other projects, or out of com range, so we handled it."

Even though Ben liked Carol, he wasn't about to tell her about the ship in orbit, that was a prize that Harry was adamant would stay in his hands, not one he was willing to share with anyone he didn't have to. Reed had agreed wholeheartedly with that idea, not trusting any world government, or any military not to take advantage of the ship and what it contained for their own ends. He trusted America's government more than anyone else's of course, but when your starting point was zero that really didn't matter much.

Carol frowned. "Don't suppose you could fill me on who these friends of yours were?"

"Sorry no can do, not without their permission." Ben shrugged, then began to walk her through the battle as far as he could without giving Ororo or the other's identities away. He figured their powers wouldn't matter, not having heard that Carol had run into Harry and his group before, so what Ben told her was actually much more than he had hoped.

Still, Carol wasn't unhappy about this news, or rather not unhappy about hearing from this group again, the news of the Sentry worried her a lot. So it looks as if Harry is already in position to do something about space borne threats, she thought to herself. Again, how the hell do I resign?

OOOOOOO

Later that evening, the younger members of the two groups bedded down in the Baxter Building with a desire to hit the beaches the next day, along with Ben and Susan, neither of whom had much insight in the scientific or strategic issues at hand. This included Johnny and Wyatt, who had returned from their day out a little dismayed at having missed the action. Harry and the others however were still up to discuss recent events.

Harry strode in nodding to them all as he entered the Kree ship's conference room. "I've placed wards on the rooms where our asylum seekers and prisoners are being kept at present. They can't escape even if they wanted to, though the fact most don't want to is interesting, something I hope you can tell us the reason for Em. I understand that you also put up an anti-radio field Reed?"

The older man nodded at that while Harry pulled up a chair beside Jean who was sitting along one edge of the table with Ororo on her other side. "In that case, Emma, you have the floor."

Emma frowned, tapping her fingers on the table. "To start off I should say two things: For one, the Kree are a closed, controlled society, so much I've never seen the like. They don't have news agencies or anything of that nature that is not under the control of the government. They have civilian and military jobs, but both are controlled by the government, the only difference is that one group goes into battle, the other doesn't."

Hearing this Harry shook his head tiredly. "This sounds like an all too familiar refrain." Reed and the others nodded, seeing the connection between the magical world where Harry had come from and what Emma had said. "Let me guess, they're racists too? Closed societies almost always look down on those not part of the chosen elite.

"I'll get to that in a moment Harry, but yes." Emma went on ignoring his loud groan. "Anyway, the next point is that none of the people who've decided to surrender to us are officers. Those two points combined mean none of the prisoners know anything about the overall strategic situation or anything like that, though they know small scale rumors in abundance. Despite this, they were able to tell me about some of the other races out there."

"Interesting but what we need to know now is should we expect further incursions any time soon?" Harry asked intently.

"Not quickly," Emma replied shrugging her shoulders. "Hellion wasn't able to get off one of their communication beacons, which I understand is how they communicate from one solar system to another."

Reed, Harry and Jean all nodded, thinking that that made sense. It was also a good thing if the Kree had faster than light communication then this battle might well have started all-out war between the Kree and Earth. A war that even with Harry's involvement Earth might not win if the Kree were able to throw an entire fleet against Earth or something of that nature.

"Moreover, the scuttlebutt among them is that this mission was off the books. When I questioned them after the others, Mar'vell and Una were very forthcoming about their opinions on the whole mission." She smirked a little looking at Harry who had a butter would not melt in his mouth expression.

"Una in particular seemed very willing to share information. I didn't even have to threaten either of them with mental probing." She ignored Jean's sudden chuckle. "Or the truth serum. The others were not in the main nearly as forthcoming. In particular I had to dose the blue skinned ones with Veritaserum to get anything out of them. I'll come back to them later."

"Captain Mar'vell was chosen to infiltrate Earth, discover the level of technology here, discover the level of the heroes here and determine if they were or could in time become a threat to the Kree. Apparently the first Sentry the Fantastic Four dealt with was able to send out some information, and Mar'vell said that the Kree had had dealings with a group of some sort here before, though he wasn't given any information about them. How much of that is distorted information and how much is true I can't tell you."

Harry did not miss the contemplative look in Reed's face, but he decided to ignore it. If Reed was keeping secrets there was no doubt a reason behind it, and Harry trusted that Reed wouldn't keep a secret that would impact the security of Earth.

Next to him Jean spoke up. "You think this other group could be the source of your data worms?"

"I don't know," Emma replied contemplatively. "We'll have to bring in a programmer to look at the programs aboard the ship and compare them, I have one or two I might be able to bring in, though I would recommend that we erase their memories later. It's not that I don't trust them, it's that I don't trust their discretion."

Harry nodded thoughtfully, then waved for her to continue, while at the same time Cory popped in with some fruits and beverages for them all. While everyone, even Reed, fell on the food. "Well, most of the crewmen we've captured seem to think that the mission was bogus, a put on by someone in the Kree government. The Kree are ruled by something called the Supreme Intelligence, but there are still factions in their government, and Mar'vell is a hero to the pale skinned ones, and a source of anger for the blue-skinned elites."

Plucking a few grapes up, Emma swallowed them before going on. "The pale skinned ones are not 100% Kree, the Kree have apparently been able to breed with other humanoid races, bringing in new DNA for some reason because the Supreme Intelligence told them to and they did so. But now the pale-skinned members almost outnumber the 'True Kree' and are treated like second class citizens. It's worse of course if you're not part of their military, which dominates their entire culture."

"Why am I getting the impression of Spartans in space here?" Harry murmured.

"That would not be too far off From what I know from our previous interaction with them." Reed said shaking his head.

"An excellent analogy on many levels Harry!" Emma exclaimed. "Apart from looking down on non-Kree, from what bits of the culture I've discovered so far the Kree are inherently warlike. If you are not part of their military or their government, you're second-class at best. And yes, the blue skinned Kree would be the true Spartans in that analogy, and while men of course can breed outside of that group with the helots, if a woman does it well…" She shrugged. "I don't have to paint you a picture do I?"

"No you do not," Ororo said shaking her head, while Harry began to bang his head on the table. "Bigotry and racism among the stars? That is… depressing, really, to think an empire could exist in space yet still have such, such foolish problems."

"Prepared to be depressed further," Emma replied dryly. "Diplomacy in space amounts to if you've got guns enough to make someone else back off, you can be listened to, if you don't, you're not worth consideration."

Ororo sighed sadly and Jean put her arm around her friend while Harry reached over the redhead to take Ororo's hand.

Emma shrugged being much more of a pessimist than the others, and went on. "Mind you this is from the Kree themselves, so I don't know how much of that is fact or fiction, but the Kree have conquered several different races, as has one of the other big players in the area, the Shi'ar, who a few of the Kree call 'birdies' for some reason."

She frowned. "From what I can gather, the Shi'ar society might be a little more open than the Kree, I got impressions of some kind of Praetorian guard for their Emperor that is composed of representatives of dozens of different races, and nothing to hint that the other races are treated as second class. The Kree are contemptuous of both those facts, but the pale-skinned ones were also intrigued by it.

"The Kree have a condescending but neutral attitude towards the 'birdies', which essentially means no open warfare along their shared borders, though there have been some flare-ups of course. One or two actually became general knowledge, and Una, the now deceased captain and Mar'vell was actually a part of one of those flare ups."

That got everyone to sit forward, and Jean smiled faintly. "Una impressed me with her dedication to her job, but what in the world could she have done to be involved in something like that?"

"Apparently there is a new race in the area, an extrasolar one from the impression I got from Captain Mar'vell…"

"A race from outside the Milky Way?" Reed said quickly, sitting forward. "That's impressive and rather disturbing frankly."

"It gets worse. I presume everyone here has seen that movie Alien?" Emma asked with a grimace.

"Oh God," Jean groaned, shaking her head. "You're not serious are you?"

"Deadly. Apparently the captain of this ship, Mar'vell and Una were the only survivors of an expedition sent in to rescue a general and his forces who had been supposed to look into why one of the colonies on the border between the Shi'ar and Kree had gone silent. Their group was almost wiped out by this new race, which is called the Brood. And they apparently propagate by injecting some form of… disease, or seed into other races and taking them over, though thankfully the brood don't then burst out of your chest. Mar'vell's a hero to his people because of how he dealt with that."

"Fantastic." Harry muttered, rubbing his face irritably. "And let me guess, talking to them isn't possible?"

"Apparently not, but the Kree aren't exactly good at talking themselves so I don't know."

"Were you able to get astronomical data of where that planet was?" Reed asked.

"No, I couldn't get any astronomical or science based knowledge. Should I tell you about the third and fourth groups?" Emma asked archly. "First the Badoon is the third really powerful race out there but they don't share a border with the Kree, so outside of their name our prisoners don't know anything about them. But then there are the Skrull, who you've run into before Mr. Richards. The Kree are at war with them. In fact the ship had just finished a tour of duty against the Skrull."

"This isn't a Cold War sort of thing, this is a very warm war that flares up into major confrontations every few months." Emma shook her head. "I got the impression of massive armies on all sides, not in the billions but in the trillions in the…we don't have a number for it, but entire star systems changing hands or being scoured of life."

Emma was actually very worried about the sheer size of the empires she had gotten an impression of from the prisoners. As if each trooper or ship was just a single grain of sand in a desert. "That's about all I've got in terms of concrete information."

As Jean and Ororo began to question her about the Skrull and the other races as well as the Kree themselves, Harry leaned back thinking hard.

"Exactly how loyal all are these people we have to the Kree Empire?" Jean asked. "I got the impression there was a lot of underlying anger on both sides."

"You're right about that, and in terms of loyalty, the blue skinned ones are extremely loyal, the pale skinned ones not so much. It would be different if we were, well not human to put it bluntly, close enough in looks to seem like the same species, but we are and I think this group respects us thanks to this show of force."

"So if we help them to build lives on earth, do you think we can trust them not to make trouble?" Ororo asked.

"Eventually for the pale-skinned ones. They're not spies, not even captain Mar'vell is. He should never have been sent on this mission, he only was because someone set him up, that's clear from the orders Yon'Rogg, the captain of this ship, was given. These people don't have the first idea about how to be spies. I think we should still keep them sequestered for now, however. There's still a lot of information we could learn by pumping their brains, but for more you'll need a sociologist of some sort. I can't get anything out of the blue skinned ones without Veritaserum, they all have mental defenses that can at least tell them I'm trying to get in, and it makes anything they say suspect."

"I know a socialist we could bring in, he's a bit of a peacenik where it comes to humanity, but he's a family friend, and knows full well about the alien races we've run into before." Reed said excitedly. The prisoners and the ship itself were a major source of information. "I'd also think hard on bringing in a third questioner, a trained spy. I would propose to bring in Nick Fury or someone he recommends, if they could keep it off the books."

Ororo raised an eyebrow at that and Reed shrugged. "I've recently had to deal with several attempts to bug my incoming and outgoing calls, and another attempt to try to figure out our power usage for some reason. It's clear someone doesn't trust my family and I, and if they don't trust me, why should I trust them in turn?"

"For now we can wait on that, I might be able to bring in another man to do it," Harry said coming out of his thoughts and thinking about getting Banshee to do it, the man was a trained Interpol operative after all so should be able to direct the questions to get what they wanted out of their prisoners.

Unfortunately, this idea wouldn't work out. Banshee put off joining up with Harry's team for another month wishing to hunt down his brother before turning to anything else. So Emma would remain the best interrogator they had for a time.

"In any event we're going to need to bring in a lot more people to work on other things so Jean can concentrate up here. I'll work up some more lie-detecting arrays to emplace in Magical Minds corporate headquarters, and Jean and I can start bringing in more engineers and programmers on the arc reactors and other projects. But we'll also have to bring in Dr. Doom on this," Harry said, looking over at Reed.

Reed's teeth clenched, but he didn't react otherwise. Harry had already told him a few weeks ago about the deal he had made with Doom, and frankly it sounded like a good one to Reed. For his part he did not hate Doom, he was wary of the man, and certainly counted him as a rival and enemy, but didn't loathe him as much as he hated Namor. At least Doom had never tried to steal his wife, other than using Sue as a hostage of course. Moreover, the man hadn't made any moves against the FF since regaining his mother, and it was to be hoped that the woman a calming influence on him.

"I could wish we didn't have to, but we can't seem to break the agreement with Victor. If it ever came to light later on that we did, any goodwill you have with him would disappear, and he would believe himself not bound by it either. At least in that we can trust him, his word is his law if you can actually get him personally to agree to anything." Reed said sourly.

"Jean," Harry went on turning to turning to the redhead. "I want you to expedite your work on the arc reactors. I want the design ready to be handed off to an engineering team to place it into production within a week, after that you'll work with Doom and Reed on this ship".

"The mass production design's already done." Jean shrugged. "I'm just waiting for us to have enough Orihalcum to build one, and we don't actually have production capacity yet." the initial design had been in place in the castle for over a week now, with no problems.

"I'll be buying that capacity soon, don't worry about that. As soon as you're certain that the design works I'll want you working on this ship 24/7. Hopefully by that point I'll be able to join you, and we can go over it all together." Jean cocked an eyebrow at him and he smiled thinly. "I'm not interested right now in how well it's built, or anything new we can learn from it Jean, I'm interested in what it can tell us about the Kree's war capacity, how they fight, how they think. What's their battle doctrine like, their ship classes, anything and everything! Beams, missiles, what kind of weapon systems dominate their strategic planning, and most importantly, where are the cracks, where can we take advantage of their current thinking."

Read look at Harry with wide eyes, then nodded with respect clear on his face. Harry was evidently thinking very long term indeed, and in a way Reed would never have thought of.

Jean frowned, not liking the idea of quitting work on her current projects despite the fascination she had for this ship and what it represented. "Can I have two days to finish up some other projects?"

"That's fine. Our potions are supposed to finish their observation time the day after tomorrow anyway, that'll give us the cash we need to do anything we want. You can start hiring immediately the day after. I want to start building up an order of battle for the Kree as soon as possible." Harry then turned to Emma and Reed. "Emma, when you question the prisoners, I'd like to know anything about outdated ships. What happens to them? Are they decommissioned, destroyed, kept going until they are destroyed in battle, what? Reed, see if you can get more of the computers going outside engineering for now. Anything more will have to wait until Doom can join us."

The others nodded, and the meeting broke up from there.

Emma paused as she was leaving the room, linking her arm with Harry. "This won't take your attention away from our more terrestrial enemies will it? I think we have possibly a month before the Hellfire Club situation boils to the surface."

Harry frowned, but nodded. "You can call if you need me, but for now I want to continue to let that simmer. I'm not happy about it, but we just don't have enough people to put out all the fires that we've got going. In terms of defense however, what's happening on the Sandman front, or, what's her name, Firestar?"

"Ororo will be by this weekend to see to Firestar, though it will only fix the cancer, not the fact she isn't immune to her powers. As for Sandman, I've found out what's been going on. Norman Osborn of Ozcorp is blocking my attempts to get Sandman out. Osborn tends to try to play both sides as it were, on the surface he's a simple businessman, but underneath he might be as dirty as Shaw or that old bastard Hammer. Not certain what he's up to, but he might be thinking to break Sandman out and a few others to build his own crew of super-powered individuals, loyal to him because of their escape and other handles. I told Sandman that the last time I was over there, and I should have him out and working for me in another two weeks max."

"Good." Harry smiled thinly. "I like the idea of you having a powerful bodyguard beside you if things go south with the Hellfire club, after all I might not be able to get to you right away."

"I find it very comforting as well," Emma remarked dryly then moved over to where Cory was waiting to pop her back down to her mansion in New York.

With that Emma walked off to talk to Jean and Harry hurried over to Reed, speaking to him in a low voice for a moment. The older man grimaced, but nodded, seeing the point to Harry's request, which was to do an autopsy on some of the Kree dead. While not his main line, Reed could analyze a dead body as well as he could a robot, thought the former was of course much more disgusting.

This would allow them later to figure out the Kree would have issues with Earth's atmosphere, as well as finding out why the Kree were so much stronger than human norm. But In other ways it would give Harry even more questions to ask. But that was for later.

Several hours later, Harry stood alone in the docking area of the ship, looking around him before moving on to look at one of the main weapons of the ship. Like he had said to Jean and Reed, he wasn't really concerned about the fact that there seemed to be a few problems with the designs of the weapons, or that the engine was very dependent on fuel for its output however massive that was, though that was of strategic importance to him. No, he was already thinking in terms of what this ship said about the Kree military.

One of the questions he had asked was could humans build this ship with their current tech level, and the question had been answered in an ambivalent manner by Reed. If he, Tony or one of the other true geniuses in the world was involved with the construction then yes, but if he was asking if one of the superpowers of the world could do it, the answer was no.

The ship was made of a type of metal that could only be created in zero-g environments, it was tougher and stronger than any terrestrial steel barring adamantium or Harry's Orihalcum, which would never be available in large enough amounts to create a ship, not for years anyway. Some of the systems were far beyond current tech. The weapons in particular were something that Reed would fight tooth and nail to see kept out of circulation. Harry agreed with that, which mollified the man tremendously.

This ship represented a major breakthrough, and Harry was determined to start building up the tech base necessary to take advantage of it. Harry was thinking long term: of making Earth a force to be reckoned with, not just some backwater planet but something that the Kree, Shi'ar and Skrull would not wish to tangle with, at least not as cavalierly as was previously the case. If he could give them pause, that might be enough. It would take time, but Harry was already planning for it. Not just as a defensive measure for Earth, but to give humanity a shining example to live up to, to force them to forget all the petty rivalries and rise to the stars.

OOOOOOO

That evening, while Harry was working on creating more than a dozen lie detecting arrays to hasten the hiring process, the others bedded down in various guest rooms in the Baxter Building eager for tomorrow and their day at the beach to come. Dani and Paige slept in the room next to Mistress Harkness'. That was a very formidable old woman one that Dani immediately knew was someone she didn't want to cross, one who, if she had been born a Cherokee would have been worthy of the codename Dani had taken. Her eyes had also worried Dani, for some reason she knew that Mistress Harkness could see more in Dani than she was comfortable with, and it had been a relief when the woman went to bed.

For her part, Dani fell asleep quickly she was so exhausted from the fight against the Sentry. Yet instead of her normal dreams about time with her grandfather or on the track team or acting out various parts in movies, Dani found herself in a remarkably lucid dream. She stood on an endless plain of snow, mountains in the distance that she had never seen before, either in real life or pictures. In the distance there was what looked like a massive forest.

In one hand Dani held not the spear that was her normal mental representation of her power, but a staff nearly as tall as she was. At her feet there was something Dani was more familiar with however, the tracks of an animal. Concentrating briefly on the staff, she forced it to change to a spear for now, then leaned down, touching the ground slightly while she stared at the tracks in the snow. Some kind of deer, a large one, perhaps a reindeer, or a moose? she thought. She had never hunted either, they weren't exactly normal to see in Utah where she had grown up, but the tracks were similar enough to deer that she could tell they were at least related.

She frowned tapping her staff thoughtfully on the ground then stared at it in surprise, not having noticed that it had changed back into the staff form. She concentrated again on it, and it changed into a bow and a single arrow, and Dani smiled faintly. "This is one of the more interesting dreams I've ever had." She murmured, then crouched down low to the ground, trying to detect if there was any kind of scent to the trail that she could use. There wasn't, but that didn't bother her.

A moment later Dani was moving over the snow lightly, trying her best not to leave footprints of her own. Something told Dani that would be a very bad idea.

Time seemed immaterial here as she moved across the snow-covered landscape, though it was obvious that she was making progress. Those distant clumps of trees had grown significantly larger, much larger than they should have if Danielle was honest with herself, as if she was crossing the land between them too quickly. She didn't care about that at the moment, simply putting it down to a facet of the dream.

She stopped at the outskirts of the woods by a small, yet very deep looking pool of deep, cold looking water. The animal she was tracking had stopped here, and once again Dani knelt to examine the tracks. She didn't bother looking at the pool itself. If she had, Dani would have been astonished by what she saw there, for she would not have seen her own reflection there. Instead of Danielle Moonstar, a young, extremely fit and leggy Native American girl with black hair done in a braid down her back, feather's tied into her hair, there was another woman.

She was older this woman, possibly in her mid-thirties, though there was something ageless about her soft, attractive features, a face lined with smile and frown lines both. She was blonde haired, though her hair was slightly too dark to be called a true blonde. It was tied up in an intricate braid under a small bit of linen cloth of some kind, which Dani would later learn was called the hustrulinet, a white cloth covering used to symbolize that a woman was married. Nor was this the only piece of clothing that was different in this image.

Instead of jeans and a tight, green and black t-shirt, this woman wore a long skirt of white tied around her waist by a green and white braided rope and a cloak of red over her shoulders. Both looked like that which a well to do peasant in the Dark ages would wear, if not for how clean and extremely well-made they looked, like the finest examples of a dressmakers craft for all their simple design.

Yet for all that she looked somewhat like a village maid, there was more to her. For one, not only did she have a staff in one hand, she also wore a sword, plain and unadorned but with a well-worn grip, belted at her side. Her light blue eyes too held a tested strength and will that no mere maid would ever have had.

One moment the apparition was shown in the water of the pool, the next, as Dani stood up, it was gone, replaced by her own image as if nothing had been amiss. Dani, not having noticed anything, moved on into the woods moving through them quietly, though she now had to be more careful about making noise given the amount of pine needles on the snow covered forest floor.

It reminded Dani of a few movies she had seen use this kind of landscaping before, Christmas movies for the most part. If Santa or someone wearing an elf costume shows up I'm going to shoot them, she thought to herself. Danielle was not a fan of the whole Christmas scene to put it mildly, far too commercialistic for her tastes.

A few moments later she frowned, kneeling down to observe the prints on the ground again. Here they crisscrossed several others, visible only because of the snow. One of them was obviously a rabbit of some kind, another looked like either a badger or some other burrower, hard to tell. Probably a badger she decided from the size of them, but those weren't the paw prints that were bothering her. No, that was the paw print that looked like a wolf's, only much bigger than it should have been. It was obviously a wolf print, but one that was as large as a grizzly bear.

"That's a little worrisome," she murmured, shaking her head. "Still, a Wolf wouldn't bother a human even if they were that large, not unless it was really hungry so long as I stay away from it anyway." It had nothing to do with them being noble animals or anything of that nature, it was simply that humans would be tougher prey than other animals, and wolves were smart about that kind of thing. They always went for the easy prey, simply because that allowed them more energy for other things.

Looking down at the tracks Dani noticed another one, this one looking like a large mountain lynx, and she nodded. "That'll do." Hunting a predator was much more interesting than hunting a prey animal regardless of what kind. Besides, those look much fresher than the reindeer I've been stalking.

With that in mind Dani began to follow the lynx tracks, moving through the woods as silently as before, letting the natural sounds of the woodlands cover every move she made.

She didn't know how long it took before she caught her first glimpse of her prey, but Dani found the lynx, a male, sunning itself with eyes closed on a tower of rock that jutted out from the rest of the Woodlands around it, seemingly oblivious to the world save for its ears moving. She very carefully moved around the small clearing that the stand of rock was jutting out from, trying to find the best angle for a bow shot, then when she found it went still. For several moments Dani let the flow of the woodlands come back, erasing what little presence had been created by her trek through it.

Then she slowly raised her bow, sighting down the arrow at her target. The large lynx hadn't even known she was there, a mark of pride for any hunter, before the arrow hit it right in the neck killing him instantly.

Danielle stood up, moving forward towards her kill shaking her head. "Strange, I would've thought it would've been warier around here given the size of those paw prints I found." Regardless, she went about the brutal business of stripping and carving up her kill quickly, then gathering wood for fire. There was a trick to making a fire in the woods so that it didn't create any smoke, one Dani knew of thanks to her grandfather.

It was as she came back with the firewood that Danielle realized that she was being watched. No, she thought to herself calmly laying down the wood and reaching for her bow. Not watched, stalked, but by human or animal?

"If you wish to partake of my food come ahead," she said aloud causing a silence through the woodlands. No, she realized the woods had already been silent, not a good sign. Now she was really wondering about this dream.

Could I have dream walked without realizing it? She thought to herself, or has someone else entered my dream? There were signs going both ways, her transforming staff weapon pointed to this all happening in her head, but everything else said otherwise. Besides, I've dealt with most of my fears thanks to Jean's training, and not a one of them would be stalking me through the woods like this. I'm the hunter, not the other way around!

"You are very brave for a mortal far from home," said a snarling sort of male voice. Somehow she knew the voice wasn't actually speaking English, but this dream or whatever was translating, which was good enough. "These are my woods, only I may hunt here and no man may come here nor woman either." The voice added after seemingly moving upwind of her.

"I did not know it was yours, and I apologize." Dani said staring around her but now her bow and arrow (another one having appeared on her bow after she fired the first) was ready. "Other than that, I'll simply say I don't know where I am. I thought this was all a dream. Even if this is your land, the rules of the hunt are clear. Again, if you wish to share my kill, show yourself."

"Hah." The voice said now with you sharp sort of humor in its voice. "I think not. I could gobble that whole and still be hungry. And I am always hungry, no I think I'd rather…!"

At that moment a massive wolf, possibly the same one whose tracks she had found, so large he seemed almost the size of a bear, barreled out of the woods to Danielle's right. His jaws were open, reaching for her but Dani had been ready. Turning around quickly she loosed her arrow which smacked harmlessly off his fur. She scrambled to the side but still felt the wolf's claws raking one of her legs as she did so.

Danielle knew better than to stay still. She dodged, her mind reaching out to her weapon transforming it into a long dagger. She then pushed off with her good leg, going into a roll across the ground to dodge another lunge from the wolf. Her hand came up holding the dagger, trying to stab it into the wolf's side, but its fur was like armor, and Dani's blade skidded off. She whirled around as it tried to jump at her again, her fist out and hammering its nose causing it to whine in pain for a moment.

Realizing she had no real chance against this massive beast Danielle took the break this gave her to run off through the woods, trying to ignore the agony of her leg. The Wolf came after her, none of the natural wolfish grace in its movements, now enraged by her punch to the nose. It burst through two trees and was on Dani before she could put any real distance between them. With a thought her weapon changed again to a spear, and she tried to slam it home into the wolf's side, but again it's dense fur acted like armor, and she merely pushed the wolf off its line of attack slightly.

Again the thing wheeled unnaturally quick trying to bite her, but Dani dodged aside, putting her back against a tree for a moment. The thing laughed. "HAHAHA…. nowhere to go little rabbit!" he taunted then lunged again.

Dani jumped upwards, clearing the thing's jaws by a bare inch. Her weapon transformed again at her thought back into a bow and arrow and Dani quickly pulled back on the string, landing on the wolf's long snout and with the arrow point a bare inch away from its eyeball. "This… game… of yours is about to turn deadly," she said gasping in air. "I, I might not be able to stop you from eventually killing me, but I can cost you an eye right now. So, since you, you seem to actually have a mind in there somewhere, let's call it quits shall we?"

With its mouth open as it was, it's front teeth had sunk into the wood of the tree behind Dani and with Dani actually sitting on its snout the wolf could only glare at her. "Besides," she said shaking her head. "Are you so incompetent a hunter that you have to kill me? Surely someone as big and capable as you could get its own meat?"

"I haven't tasted human before." The wolf murmured, his voice nearly unintelligible stood thanks to having its jaws stuck open. "I thought it would be interesting. You're certainly quick on your feet little human, though you are very far from home."

"That's nice, now do we have a deal or not? I don't take your eye and you stop trying to kill me?"

The beast growled, licking the air, the smell of the girl's blood almost driving him into a frenzy. But the wolf liked having two eyes, he didn't want to only have the one or else someone was going to make a comment about him trying to emulate Old One-Eye, and that just wouldn't do. Especially since I'm not about to get wisdom out of the trade, the wolf thought to itself chuckling harshly. "Very well little human, we have a deal. Remove your arrow, and I'll remove my fangs."

"Your oath on it." Dani said grimly, not showing any of the pain her leg was in, made worse by the way she was sitting on it at present.

"I sweat on my name of Fenrir that I will not try to eat you."

"Or just kill me," Dani prompted.

"Or kill you," Fenrir muttered looking a little irritated.

Danielle sighed letting the bowstring slacken, removing the arrow from the string and jumping down from her perch on Fenrir's snout, crying out when her wounded leg took her weight. "Fuck!" The weapon in her hand once more changed to a staff, this time on purpose so that Dani could hobble along. "L-let's get back to my kill, I don't want some scavenger to have taking it while we were busy."

"You still offer me food even after I try to kill you?" Fenrir asked, now calmly moving along her side. One eyebrow was raised in a rather human gesture.

Dani shrugged. "I'm not about to eat that entire thing, why let it go to waste?"

"You are an interesting human," Fenrir said shaking his head.

Dani however was frowning looking at Fenrir. Now that its voice was under control and it wasn't trying to sound nasty, she could tell it was young. The voice was that of a barely teen boy, deeper and stronger than normal of course given the wolf's size but there was something about it that said that this wolf wasn't actually all that old. "How old are you?" she asked bluntly as they came into the clearing.

The Wolf growled a little moving over to her killed and grabbing a haunch off it. "10 summers." it mumbled.

"That would make you rather old for a wolf, but not for a hu…" she paused as the beast began to growl. "Supernatural being." Dani said quickly having quickly changed what she was going to say.

Fenrir laughed, sounding even younger for a moment. "You have no idea where you are, do you? This is the land of Ásgarð, I am Fenrir, son of Loki!" He spat that name as if it tasted bad, but it was enough to give Danielle the clue.

"How in the hell have I dream walked to Ásgarð!?" she groaned aloud, sitting down with relief sticking out her wounded leg. The gash on it was long but not deep and was still bleeding, prompting her to rip off some of her shirt to use as a makeshift bandage.

"How should I know?" Fenrir asked, shrugging his shoulders eloquently. "I am not a Seiðr. How am I supposed to tell you how to use your magics?"

"I'm a what?" Danielle asked.

"That's what that weapon of yours means. Or at least I think so." Fenrir said nodding her head at it where Danielle had set it down next to her, now looking a little confused. "It isn't as if I've met many of you before. Actually I haven't met many people at all before, except for my siblings, and the occasional crazy Æsir. The Vanir at least are smart enough to stay away from me. There was my friend Tyr but…" he snarled a little, looking away, and for just a moment there seemed to be grief and loneliness there.

Dani frowned at that, not happy that someone apparently this Loki person had allowed his son to roam the forests without supervision, regardless of his shape, and whoever this Tyr person was also to blame. She didn't know anything about Asgard except a vague memory of some kind of class she had that covered Viking raiders, though she thought that Balder, who Mr. Potter had informed them he had met with was supposed to be from there.

Still, there was no way Fenrir was the one to bring her here, and there was something else bothering her now that she could see the wolf up close. He was just on the edge of sliding from healthy to too thin for his frame. So instead she asked, "So who taught you how to hunt?"

"No one taught me to hunt!" Fenrir stated, looked a little affronted at the very idea. "I'm a wolf, such things come naturally to me!"

"Hah, wrong answer wolfie." Dani said, chuckling and lightly pushing at the large wolfs shoulder. "You might have the physical skills, but how to use them any mammal needs to be taught. Cubs learn from their elders in any pack." Dani deliberately did not use the word parent there, since it seemed a touchy subject.

"And if you don't have a pack that leaves trial and error, never a good idea. Especially with someone your size, and you're a magnificent specimen." She added hastily, lest Fenrir take offense. "But I don't think you could sneak up on most normal prey could you?"

Despite her diplomatic words Fenrir still looked like he was going to take offense, but then he laughed. "Hah, yes, especially since foxes and other small game wouldn't fill me up. I can't sneak up on reindeer or moose anyway. Mountain cats don't seem to know what to make of my scent, and bears try to fight back, but they make good eating."

Dani laughed as well. "Hah! Well, I can give you some tips to get rid of your scent and moving quietly if you want."

Turning his head from his food Fenrir looked at Danielle closely. This reminded him of better times, when he was younger and when Tyr, an Æsir who was a master of dogs and hunting, spent time with him. He had tried to teach Fenrir how to hunt, but it hadn't taken much. Fenrir knew that was because he couldn't concentrate too well, despite his size he hadn't grown up mentally to match, and at times he would simply become so angry at even the slightest insult, playful or otherwise. Yet that was before that, that blasted prophecy of Ragnarök had been made.

He hesitated, studying the human girl closely then nodded. There was something about Dani that made Fenrir want to trust her, not her magic, something about her presence. "I, I guess I could hear what you think you know about hunting and correct you. Just to help your own skills of course human."

Dani chuckled, shaking her head, but didn't call Fenrir on his attempt at prevarication. Instead she began to go into some ideas that Fenrir should have learned already, how to move quietly, how to not leave so many tracks or spore around, and other things. That conversation went on until the lynx, which Dani had been skinning as she talked, was done. Once she was certain Fenrir had a better grasp of his abilities, Dani looked around, frowning slightly as her wound pained her. "How do I get home anyway, how did I even arrive here in the first place, do you know?"

"That would be because of me." A new voice stated, causing both Fenrir and Danielle to turn and stare as a woman suddenly shimmered into existence in the clearing. "Though why you appeared here is a question. I had hoped to summon you to my own realm of Hel, but for some reason you found yourself here. A mystery to be sure, but one that is best dealt with at a later date."

The woman bent down in front of Danielle, placing a hand on her thigh for a moment. Her wound began to slowly heal as Fenrir shook itself glaring at the woman. "Sister Hela, what are you doing here? You never leave Hel, not willingly."

"I do if something demands it of me," Hela replied, shaking her head. "As I said I tried to summon this one to me, I wish to speak to her on a matter that does not concern you brother, but for some reason my spell went awry."

That was the honest truth too. Hela had been astonished, almost worried when her attempt to pull Moonstar's psyche into her realm failed to deliver her. It had left Midgard but had not arrived in Hel, instead going up to Asgard rather than down to Hela's own realm. The directions of course were unimportant to the reality, the spell was simply shaped by how The Vanir and Æsir viewed the world.

What was making it confusing was also that her previous assumptions about the girl were not only wrong, but frankly idiotic when Hela thought further about it. The Valkyrjawere choosers of the slain that was all. Why Hela had thought Dani might have been descended from them, or why that would even matter, was beyond her. It was almost as if… That thought faded away the moment she tried to concentrate on it, and Hela turned her attention back to Dani.

No, it was obvious the girl had some of the völvaor seiðkonur in her, given her ability to actually control the astral projection of her mind despite having not been the one to set it forth, and her obvious abilities with Fenrir. Fenrir was not known to be very talkative or welcoming of anyone, especially since the prophecy of Ragnarök, and his place in it had become known but here he was sitting peaceably by her after only a little violence.

And since he was not a mortal animal that could not be explained by her 'mutant' powers (Hela thought of them as blood gifts) since an empathic ability would not get through the mental defenses Fenrir, like all the children of Loki regardless of their outer shape, possessed. Or perhaps some of the landvættir survived in Midgard and have blessed the girl, giving her some measure of protection to go along with her blood gifts?

But is that the only reason my spell failed to bring her to me? There was something else there, something… deep, hidden inside this mortal girl, but Hela could not see what.

"Why exactly did you want to speak to me, goddess?" Dani asked respectfully. She wasn't a religious person normally, but you only had to be in the presence of Hela to tell she was far more than the woman she seemed, much like Gaea.

Hela smiled. "A simple matter for you, young one. I wish to speak to your jarl, Harry Potter." Dani frowned a little at the 'jarl' statement vaguely recognizing it as meaning leader in Norse or some other ancient culture. But upon further reflection decided it actually made sense on several levels, so let it go while Hela continued.

"Yet not only do those wards of his keep me out, but I cannot appear on Midgard, or Earth as you call it, without Lord Odin's approval for he controls the Bifrost."

To one side Fenrir growled, his lips peeling back to show the teeth that had very nearly ripped Dani apart scant moments ago. Hela smirked at her much younger brother. But her eyes, hidden behind her half-mask flashed with some hidden emotion of her own. "Needless to say we by-blows of Loki have as little to do with dear 'Grandfather' as we can."

Hela had long loathed the way she was pushed aside and relegated to Hel, the land of death given over to those who die outside of battle or in dishonor. The leavings in other words. Odin himself took those who died honorably or notably into the Einherjar via the Valkyrja. It was a cold land, a harsh and snow-filled land of harsh storms and mists, totally unlike Asgard, and she had lived there since she was young and first given the task of being their god.

In retrospect, the job itself was fine, after all if she had never been given it she would never have met her Lady, and it was true that the job did require a certain set of thought she found easy, no Æsir or Vanir would be able to. She often wondered if that was why Loki slept with her mother, a giantess, in the first place. But it was the fact she had been pushed aside, forced to live there, almost banished from Asgard that had always bothered her.

And her brothers were seen more as beasts than godlings. Jormungundar had stopped caring quickly, but she knew it had bothered him before he became so large he couldn't remain in Asgard (the land, not the city) at all. Fenrir too was mostly ostracized save for Tyr, and even he had turned his back on the youngest of Loki's children when the prophecy of Ragnarök became known.

"I see…" Dani said, now keeping a wary eye on Fenrir, ignoring a slight sense of wrongness that had hit her mind at the word grandfather. "But why me?"

"I do not know." Hela turned back to Dani, her head cocked to one side as she examined the mortal girl. "There is something about you, some kind of magic or power that calls out to me, a touch of the Seiðr which interferes with my power in some fashion, but not enough to overcome it."

Fenrir too looked at Dani, then the wolf nodded it's head slightly. "That is true… I sense some scent, something oddly familiar…" He shook his head, and turned back to his meal, as if he had lost his interest in the conversation.

"Sooo…. You just want me to tell my jarl, I mean Mr. Potter to sleep outside his wards?" Dani asked.

"No, I wouldn't be able to call forth his psyche as I did yours. Instead you will tell him I wish to speak to him, then you will give him this." Hela gestured and suddenly her hand held a small quartz crystal, which she handed to Moonstar. "Tell him to break it, and then he will be transported to where we may talk."

"But, um, forgive me, but if this is a dream walk, how am I supposed to bring that back with me?"

Hela chuckled, her dark purple lips twisting into a smirk. "Child I am a goddess, spirits and souls are my domain and dream walking as you put it is nowhere near as limited as you think. If I say you are able to carry something back, then you will do so." So saying she raised her hand which flashed green and blue for a moment.

The next instant Dani was being woken up rather rudely by Paige smacking her in the head with a pillow. "Get up girl, it's pushing noon and I'm not missing any more tanning time! Huh, where'd you get that cool cloak?"

Dani growled a little, pushing the pillow away opening her eyes only with great reluctance, running one hand through her hair, which she had let loose from her braid when she went to bed. "What cool cloak?"

She stared down at the fur of the lynx from her dream lying on top of her in place of the blanket, which she must have kicked off during the night. As she sat up, Dani dislodged a small quartz crystal from where it had been laying in her other hand. "Um... yeah, I think the beach might have to wait for a while yet…"

OOOOOOO

When informed of the Asgardian goddess Hela wishing to speak to him, Harry first took Dani back to Hogwarts to run a full medical on her, magic and scientific. Discussing the dream, he found no hint yet at her growing a magical core, but it had only been a few weeks since she had moved in, so that didn't mean anything. Still, he promised to look into Asgardian magic, though he doubted he would find anything. Norse runes didn't exist in this dimension, or at least the Asgardians hadn't left anything behind for humans to study. Until then, Dani could start to learn some more advanced occlumency techniques with Jean, that might be able to help her if she did develop magical abilities.

Surprisingly Dani was fine with that, and also declined to have her new scar healed further. She called it a badge of honor, much like others she had taken on hunts with her grandfather, and wished to keep it. The lynx skin went on her wall in the castle.

They went over the rest of the meeting, and Harry agreed with Dani that there was something wrong about how Fenrir was treated, if he really had the blood of an Asgardian in him. What was even more disturbing to Harry, he had looked extensively through the library here in Hogwarts and not found even a hint of Norse runes, their magic or anything else about the Asgardians or how they retreated. There should have been something, but there wasn't and that worried him, it was too complete to be natural. He had asked Stephen to look into it, but the Sorcerer Supreme was busy as well at present.

In regards to meeting with Hela, Harry reluctantly decided to put it off for a time, there was just too much else he had to concentrate on right now, and he really, really did not want to get further involved with the Asgardians without doing a lot more research into them than he had been able to do up to this point, something Jean and the others agreed with. With that decided, they all delved into their various duties.

Two days of hard work later, Harry, Jean, Emma and Ororo were all in the dining hall early-morning local time to watch the business report for the day on the hard light screen. The old, balding man on the screen droned on in a voice fit to put an ADD child to sleep, but his words were important enough they could overlook that. "And now the news that everyone in the medical community has been waiting for: The new medicines coming from the rather 'amusingly' named UK based company Magical Minds has been cleared for sale to the general public. Reports indicate that millions of pounds worth of orders have already been flooding in, and the owner of the company has pledged that he will be able to meet the first round of orders from already prepared stock. For those who do not know…"

"And we're in business, real business!" Emma laughed, her eyes alight with eagerness. Of course all of the previous agreements for sale of Harry's 'potions' were made contingent on delivery. Now that the hospitals who ordered them could actually take them, that would sky rocket Harry from one of many in the Hellfire Club London Branch to the king of said branch in a matter of hours.

Emma grabbed up a bottle of champagne popping the cork expertly before pouring it into four small crystal goblets that Harry had donated for this purpose, handing them around after they were full. "Cheers." She laughed again, throwing her blonde hair back as they all drank the champagne. "So now that we have money to burn, what are we going to be doing with it?"

"Several things," Harry said shaking his head. "Jean is going to start putting together a team to work on the arc reactors, and we're going to need to buy some manufacturing ability to start creating them. I've got a meeting in a few days with the king about that already set up. Thanks to Hedwig we've already exchanged a few letters, and he's all for switching over from traditional generators. Provided that we can ensure that they can't be turned into giant bloody bombs like an atomic reactor."

"The Orihalcum that they're made of should keep that at a minimum, but Kitty's already working on a sort of emergency recall thing in case of damage, and Reed has a teleporter function that can activate if someone tries to remove it," Jean replied.

Reed had been a massive influence on Jean since first introduced to her engineering skills. He seemed take delight in guiding her being that very rare bird of genius, able to identify genius in others and cultivate it without feeling threatened himself.

"Then I'll want to put together a think tank to look at the Kree, but it'll have to be people we trust. If you three agree, I think we'll stick Banshee on that once he joins up with your input Emma, as well as Reed's acquaintance." The man had gotten back to them, and had already presented the college he worked at with his notice, but wouldn't be free until the current summer classes let out.

"We don't need another field operative at this point, though he'll be able to join us for said at need. Right now we need someone who is able to look at that society and figure out how the Kree are going to react to Earth suddenly, not becoming a superpower, but at least able to defend itself."

Harry was certain that they could beat off any task force even if the Kree sent their special forces, but his team couldn't cover the entire planet. If they sent in multiple forces with the simple order of slagging Earth down to the bedrock, Harry and his people could delay the inevitable but they couldn't stop it. Not at least without public support of all the various heroes and villains out there, and even given their deal with Dr. Doom that wasn't going to happen.

After that with about forty minutes to kill before their next appointments, Harry took Emma and began to show her around the castle, showing her the areas she hadn't seen yet. He started with the training area, which won an appreciative 'hmm' of approval from her but no more. Emma wasn't a frontline combatant after all, and had no desire to become such.

"And what is this room?" She asked, moving down the hallway quickly.

"That is the Room of Requirement," Harry replied, smiling faintly. "One of my pride and joys actually, the work of four lifetimes to initially create, and for me several weeks' worth of runic work to recreate here."

"Another training area?" she said disparagingly.

"No, it's what the label says on the box, the Room of Requirement. Any room I need, this room can provide, or at least a magical facsimile."

"Truly?" Emma murmured. "And how does that work?" Her eyes were alight with interest and she was staring avidly at the door.

Harry shrugged, and moved forward walking the prerequisite three times in front of the doorway thinking of his treasure room. Not the actual Vault, that was a different section altogether. It only held a few items, the gem they had taken from Selene's last cache for one and two other things, one an item from Selene's final cache, and the other from Dr. Strange.

It wasn't a horcrux, but what it was eluded Stephen and he had wanted it to be kept in a safe spot, while Harry was unwilling to see what would happen if he tried to drain it. It was called the Crystal Skull of the Ghost Rider. Harry hadn't asked what it was, and frankly wasn't at all interested in finding out.

The regular treasure room would be more than enough for what he wanted right now. He had heard about Emma's reaction to Jean showing her the second cache Jean had sacked, and was interested to see what would happen now.

Her moan at what was revealed when they walked in was quite erotic, more than he had actually expected. She stood still in the doorway gazing at the art pieces lining the wall, the jewels and gold laid out here and there, all the figurines and other knickknacks lining the walls. Their magic had been drained, adding some more knowledge to Harry's store as their power added to his own, so right now, all of them were simply pretty baubles, good as emergency cash reserves.

He watched with a faint smile as Emma moved around the room, dragging him with her, occasionally turning to give him a smoldering kiss as she found a particularly expensive piece of art or something that was simply fantastically expensive looking.

They soon came upon the rose that Harry had created so many months ago, and she stared at it. "Did this come from Selene's cache as well? It's magnificent."

"No actually, I created that one, conjured it up as a test of my magical power. I didn't remember it was in here, huh." Harry mused, staring at the intricate rose, made of gold, several dozen types of jewels and precious stones.

He watched as Emma's eyes widened, until they looked fit to fall out of her face before she turned and kissed him ardently on the lips. She pulled back after a moment, gasping. "Why in the hell are you screwing around with potions then?!"

Harry shook his head, trying to clear it of the cobwebs her kiss had caused before answering. "There's actually a magical law called law of monetary conservation. What it boils down to is that while I can create something like that, I couldn't use it as a form of payment or place it in the bank for that reason without severe magical consequences. I'm not certain if those consequences would be to my magic itself, or to me in the form of simply horrible, horrible luck until I removed it, but the precedent was clear in my own universe, and Stephen informed me that it was much the same here."

She leaned down looking at the magnificent, giant rose that Harry had created, shaking her head slowly. "That doesn't make any sense to me, but I'll take your word for it."

They moved on, with Harry showing her the classrooms, the other additions in areas where she'd not been before, as well as Jean's workroom "What is this?" Emma asked, looking at the hover boot prototype.

"A hover boot, Jean designed it from our last team action. We told you about having to rescue Betsy? Well Jean played scavenger as she should afterward, and those were what she came up with."

Emma froze again, looking at Harry intently. "Hover technology? How good is it?"

"Very good, though you'd have to ask Jean for the particulars."

"The boots run on batteries, which have to be replaced every few hours, anything larger would need a larger energy source." Jean replied, poking her head up from where she had been working on finishing up another design, this one was for the team helmets. She didn't want to hand anything to do with their team over to anyone else, but she desperately wanted to get started with reverse-engineering the Hellion to the nth degree

"Doesn't matter," Emma said shaking her head. No, I was thinking of simply hover cars in general. That would be magnificent technology."

"Really?" Harry said shrugging. He hadn't looked at it from a commercial perspective before, but it made sense he supposed.

"Definitely." Emma replied firmly. "I don't think they would ever be as big as your potions, but it would definitely be a very healthy chunk of cash."

"Interesting, though I wouldn't sell the hovertech itself…" Harry mused, tapping her hands gently with his as they walked on. "Did I read correctly that the car company Saab is up for sale by the way?"

"It might be going on the sale block soon yes, why?" Emma asked.

"Well that would solve that issue and get us a ready pool of engineers and mechanics for Arc Technologies, and we could use their design people to create a whole new line of emergency vehicles. After all, hover cars could get to the scene of an accident or emergency much faster. And Saab is already known for designing very tough, safe cars."

Emma laughed quietly. "An excellent idea, why didn't you think of that earlier?"

"Hey, I'm still feeling my way in this whole business thing, at least I'm not offering you a commission for pointing me in the right direction." The two of them laughed, and continued on their way to a luncheon where Harry cooked the two of them the meal before teleporting Emma back to her mansion where she immediately began to go through her companies' programmers, looking for a few she could reassign to a new project elsewhere without people asking too many questions.

OOOOOOO

The next day, Jean began interviewing new engineers for Arc Technologies using the Magical Minds headquarters and the lie detecting arrays. At the same time, Harry's money crunchers worked on purchasing a few factories that could be repurposed to create their arc reactors and his lawyers were busy buying Saab, which was indeed on sale. While this was going on, Harry had a meeting with Scott in New York. This was something they had set up during their guy's day and he couldn't get out of it at the moment since everything was in a holding pattern concerning the ship in in orbit, and he had yet to do any research into the Asgardians.

Even Doom was unavailable at present. He had replied quickly to Harry's letter via Hedwig, but he had to clear up his schedule before getting back to them with an appropriate time for him to come up and help investigate the ship. He was however interested in working with them on the ship and gleaning what he could from it, even up to agreeing not to engage in more than verbal battle with Reed.

That was a real shocker, but it matched what international news said about Doom having mellowed recently. No-one would make the mistake of ever calling Doom one of the good guys, except possibly in his own country, and he certainly had some imperialistic tendencies in relation to his neighbors. But Dr. Doom hadn't tried any world domination scheme or attacked the Fantastic Four since they had gotten his mother back, which was a plus. Who would've thought Victor Von Doom, one of the most dangerous men on the planet, was a momma's boy?

The meeting was in New York, and Scott wanted Harry's help with two things. For one, it was his and Rogue's first monthly anniversary after becoming an official couple, and Scott wanted Harry's advice to how good a gift he should get for her. Was a rose or a dozen roses or something of that nature appropriate, could it be a gag gift, or some small item of apparel? Scott was really at sea about these things, not that Harry was any real help other than telling him that he should stay away from clothing, his taste in that was abysmal. And definitely NOT a gag gift. Harry could sense Kurt's suggestion at work there and cut it off at the pass.

The other thing Scott wanted Harry's input on however was much more serious, and he broached that subject while the two sat in a pizza joint, their conversation covered by one of Harry's subtle Notice-Me-Not spells. "We have the new teammates moving into the mansion in two weeks, the professor wants them to get acclimated to life in the mansion before school starts. I'm just wondering how to treat them. A few have already stated they have no interest in joining the team, though they do want to learn how to control their powers. And a few others I need advice on how to go about integrating for one reason or another."

"I'm going to need a little more information than that." Harry murmured, biting into his pizza. He frowned, wondering why the heck New York style pizza was supposed to be so good. He much preferred the Chicago variety.

Scott nodded, pushing across a thin folder he had been carrying in his backpack. Harry opened it up, looking at the picture of a blond haired girl who was blowing up a large piece of bubblegum as the picture was taken, either deliberately or by accident was uncertain. "Tabitha? Hmm…I can see why you might be worried about her but…"

"Oops, sorry, didn't realize that profile was still in there. She just agreed a few days ago to come to the mansion, and I must have forgotten to remove it." Scott waved his hand. "I'm not worried about whether or not Tabitha will fall back into her old ways, I think that was mostly her father, and we have a restraining order out for him. Frankly if I see the man I'm going to zap first and ask questions later. Professor X might be a little more diplomatic about it, but I'm not the professor. No, it was the next two in there I wanted your opinion on."

"Warren Worthington, oh the third, I note." Harry shivered. "Ugh, what a horrible thing to do to your child!"

Scott laughed. "Yeah, the rich do that kind of thing for some reason. Warren might be as rich as Emma. He's at least in that same sort of social circle, you know, old money? Anyway, I'm wondering specifically if I should let him get settled in before knocking that chip off his shoulder, or knock it off right away."

"You're assuming he has a chip on his shoulder?"

"Professor X is very thorough about these things." Scott said simply, smiling faintly. "Trust me, if the professor says he's an egotistical prat, to use the British idiom, he is."

"I would tailor it to his powers of course, and yes right away for that sort of thing. You can't let that kind of entitled attitude stay for long once he gets to the mansion, it'll eat away at team unity and cause friction with the current team members in particular, since they have proven themselves and earned their places in no uncertain terms. I doubt Spyke or Rogue for example would put up with it, and Kurt would probably prank him so badly he might run away."

"Both of them are looking forward to the opportunity to be my tools for said reality readjustment, yes." Scott replied dryly.

Scott had decided to share the new student profiles with the rest of his team, wanting to get their feedback on them. Kitty had bowed out, not having the time to look at them, but Spyke, Rogue and Kurt had all given him decent input. But most of it was for how to incorporate the newcomers into their ranks and what kind of exercises they could do to learn about their powers.

"So right away it is. The next one though I'm not certain how to handle at all. You see Thunderbird is coming to us already a blooded warrior of the Apache."

"That must be his codename…" Harry murmured flipping pages until he found the relevant picture. He remained silent for a few minutes as he read the report. "I see. Apache, a follower of the old ways, and it says a blooded warrior. It actually says that, how strange. So you're thinking he's not going to be happy to simply be learning about his powers?"

"I'm afraid he's going to be arrogant in the way that Warren isn't, as in having an actual reason to be. His younger brother isn't so big a deal, he's not experienced. When I first read their profiles, I was thinking of making John team lead for the new group, but then I met Sam, and he's impressed me since."

"Ahh," Harry said nodding his head. "You want my help to figure out what you should do between them."

"If I'm going for someone who I like and trust, it would be Sam all the way," Scott said with a nod. "But he's a little too self-effacing, and his first instinct in even combat scenarios we've run in the Danger Room is to ask for orders or follow the group. I want the team leader to be able to act independently and generate said orders. Sam could do it, he's got a good tactical mind and he's personable and intelligent, and I think he'll be a big hit with the newcomers just as he has been with the rest of my team, but he doesn't put himself forward."

"And you're worried that Thunderbirds attitude will not mesh well with the rest of the newcomers. Arrogant, used to acting on his own, intelligent yet opinionated." Harry murmured having finished reading, impressed and concerned in turns with what he saw.

To give himself time to think he changed the subject for a moment. "Incidentally, are the renovations on the mansion worked out? I've only been back for a few minutes at a pop, and I haven't been in the basement at all. I wish I could've convinced Charles to move to where the mansion'd be over a ley line so that I could add my own defenses, but that didn't happen."

Scott smirked a little. "I actually stuck Kurt on the problem, he's got a devious little mind, emphasis on the devious part. I don't think it's infallible, no defense security could be, but it's a lot better now than before."

Harry nodded, and turned back to the conversation. "I would set up a competition between Sam and John. Pull John aside with Sam on the first day, set them both down and tell them what you're thinking. Be honest about each of their shortcomings, see what they think about it, then see how they do in command situations."

"Even asking that question could be a test. Can they take criticism?" Scott said nodding his head. "Do they both think they can become team leaders? Or if I decide that Thunderbird can't and Sam should, will John be able to back down and be a team player? But if both do well, who do I choose?"

"Well that's why you're wearing the big hat Scott. Give it time, I trust you'll make the best choice when it comes time for it," Harry said shrugging. He became more serious after a moment. "How are things, mission wise I mean?"

Scott shrugged. "The team's kept in shape, despite not having had the Danger Room to practice in for so many weeks. Logan's long gone, which is a good thing, there was a certain amount of tension between him and I after the fights against those ninjas in Vietnam. We're all looking forward to the newcomers, and to the transfers from your school. Xian and her mother are fitting in well enough, though Kurt is still having issues with what he saw when he and the professor rescued them. Xian is still afraid of her own power, but the professor is handling that."

"In terms of missions, we've had more than a few, anti-mutant sentiment is definitely on the rise, but other than the Friends of Humanity it thankfully isn't very organized. A lot of it is more violent than I could wish, but not as much as it could be. There hasn't been any sign of Magneto lately, which is good in the short term but..."

The two men shared a telling glance, and Harry nodded. Magneto should've never gotten away. If those planes hadn't been there attacking the asteroid base and if the asteroid base hadn't represented such a huge resource, I'd have chased him down then and finished him off. But Magneto was a threat they would have to deal with if they wanted to maintain peace between mutants and non-mutants. "And no one else's stepped into the void to organize mutants against humanity? What do you do on these missions anyway?"

"I let loose Kurt for the most part if we arrive as the mob is forming or attacking a mutant." Scott smiled grimly. "Beating them up would only prove their point, humiliating them and showing that we could have done a lot worse however sends a different message. We make the Friends of Humanity a laughingstock for now, though that might bite us in the ass in the long term for some of those thugs. Still we're ready for it if it happens, I just wish we weren't seemingly missing so many mutants. With Jean having left with you that only leaves the professor at the moment able to get the most out of Cerebro and he can't use it 24/7 with his own work and with the extra work he's doing with Xian. Alone, Cerebro is a major resource, but it isn't perfect."

"Tell me about it." Harry groaned rolling his eyes, then went into the issues the Big Book of Students had.

Nearby a well-dressed middle-aged businessman sat, with his hat on his head seemingly to keep the sunlight off his face, which looked as if it had been badly sunburned recently. He also wore sunglasses, which covered the fact that his eyes were not eyes at all, but recording devices locked on Scott Summers and the person he was meeting with.

Elsewhere in the city Mr. Sinister leaned back in his comfortable apartment, tapping his fingers together as he looked at the recording. Even through his cyborg's eyes, the picture of the man meeting with Subject Summers was indistinct. Worse, the information he was getting by the audio receptors on his cyborg could pick up from where it sat was fragmented and not very interesting except for the one sentence that said Subject Grey had left with the man. It was interesting and rather telling that despite his best efforts to implant a subconscious infatuation for Subject Grey in Subject Summers the youth didn't seem to have a problem with Grey being away from him.

What was worse, he could tell that this man was using a magical spell to create the effect surrounding him that made his image so indistinct rather than a scientific one thanks to the energy readings from his cyborg pet. "Not good," Sinister murmured, stroking his small goatee for a moment. "Not good at all, there can be no doubt of it now, it's not just Munroe having new powers, what I had discovered previously of her lineage that was understandable, but this is something new entirely."

Sinister was running out of time and he knew it, he had hoped to have the baby of the perfect mutant, the mutant supreme to raise as his weapon against his 'benefactor', but that didn't seem to be happening anytime soon. Not unless he removed this man, and Sinister doubted that would be very easy. Magic was an area he had never delved into because he lacked the talent for it himself, and those who did guarded it jealously.

"I'm afraid it really is time to call-in an old favor. One must use a sorceress to fight a sorcerer after all, and Morgan La Fey owes me." With that he typed in orders to his cyborg and turned away, determined to get on the next flight out of New York to Europe. Finding Morgan would be difficult, but he knew where her haunts used to be, hopefully that would be enough.

Back at the meeting Scott and Harry had finished up, with Harry helping Scott to hammer out the details of the kinds of competition he should foster between Sam and John. Now they were heading back to the car park where Harry had parked his Huayra. He smiled, looking forward to the trip back since he only rarely got to drive his car these days. He wanted to make time at least once a week for it, but there were so many demands on his time that it just wasn't happening.

He said so and Scott commiserated. But as they were walking they were interrupted by a loud crash and screams down the street. They both looked at one another, sighed, and moved in that direction. As they walked on Harry clapped a hand on Scott, covering them both with modified Remember and Notice-Me-Not charms. They exited the side street they had been on onto a main street, where a bank was in the process of being robbed apparently. Spotting the action they both stopped, staring.

There stood a giant of a man almost as tall as Colossus, wearing a rhino outfit of all things. It seemed to augment his strength almost as much as Colossus' metal form did him, since the man had just blasted out of the side of the bank seemingly with ease. On its shoulders it was carrying several tied together bundles of cash or something from the bank's vaults.

Fighting him was the Spiderman that Harry had been told about a few times. He was dressed in a blue and red suit marked with what looked like webs all over it in black. He was also talking as he dodged around his larger opponent. "Come on Rhino, you know it's after hours, banks don't do business after four, it's a rule. You're just going to have to wait in line like everyone else!"

"Buzz off spider!" The man shouted, trying to grab the smaller, much more agile man in his huge hands. "We've done this dance before, you know you can't stop me!"

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again that's the Boy Scout motto. Or at least one of them, I was never a scout actually so I don't know. It still sounds appropriate. Besides I've proven I don't have to stop you to… stop you, okay I'll admit that was lame but you have to come back at night to get my best stuff." The Spiderman responded, ducking under the blow grabbing the arm and flinging himself into the air like the world's best gymnast as his hands flashed.

Something came out of his palms, or was it his wrists? Whatever the case, what came out was small bits of sticky webbing. These impacted the Rhino's cheeks as he turned his head quickly to avoid getting them in his eyes. The rhino growled, grabbing at a street lamp pulling it out with a crackling fizz of electricity when it broke out of its stand, swinging it wildly at Spiderman.

By this time most of the bystanders had run away, and after throwing up a few invisible Protego type shields here and there to protect the few that hadn't run Harry turned to Scott who was watching the action with a jaundiced eye. "So, does Charles think Spider-boy's a mutant or what?"

"As far as we know he isn't." Scott said. "He's an idiot bantering like that while he should be taking Rhino down hard though. What about the bystanders? Spider-man's 'make Rhino mad' plan seems to be working, but what if someone gets in the way? He's being way too arrogant of his own abilities."

"Good point," Harry replied. "Shall we?"

Covered by Harry's Notice-Me-Not the two moved forward following the action as it moved down the street until Scott had a clear shot at Rhino's back. Instantly Scott flipped up his sunglasses, his energy beams lancing out to slam into Rhino's back at about forty percent power. The man yowled falling forward and rolling with the impact, his suit charred slightly as he looked around wildly. "Where the hell did that come from?!"

"I don't know." Spiderman said, suddenly appearing on his back with his hands full of webbing which he stuck over the man's head before quickly wrapping him up, his hands stuck to his face with extra adhesive webbing. "But I'm not about to go around looking gift horses in the mouth. This spider isn't a fool. Sorry Rhino."

"And now can you actually get him out of that suit?" a voice said from nowhere.

Spiderman looked around wildly. His Spider-sense hadn't gone off, which was a good thing he supposed but his sense of hearing should have at least been able to tell him someone was around.

The voice asked impatiently. "I asked you a question lad, can you get his suit off?"

"Er well, not really." Spiderman looked around. "Um, it's kind of bonded to his skin or something. What's going on here? How are you invisible, mystery voice?" He smirked, visible even through his mask. "That must make you a hell of a lot of fun at parties."

"You'd be surprised." The voice said dryly no closer than it had been.

By this point Rhino had surged to his feet and was trying desperately to pull his hands away from his face where they were stuck with Spiderman's webbing. He wasn't having much luck yet, but he was slowly gaining headway.

Harry, who had covered the entire area with a Muffilatio to keep his voice from being overheard by the bystanders that were still around (New Yorkers, in Harry's opinion, had the survival instincts of concussed lemmings) raised a hand lightly tapping the larger man's chest causing him to flinch back and try to kick him but Harry dodged the blow almost negligently. "Huh, he's right, the man's suit is bonded to his skin. Ah well, an example it is."

Hitting the man with a Petrificus Totalus, Harry backed away slightly. "Ahem, Mr. Rhino, you can hear me correct?" He weakened the spell just slightly over the oddly dressed robber's head so the man could speak through clenched teeth.

Curses in Russian answered him for a second, but the Rhino then switched back to English. "When I break whatever this is holding me, I'm gonna…"

"You're going to do nothing." Harry cut in grimly, his tone cold. "What you are going to do is turn yourself into the police, do your time in jail and try to live an upstanding life from now on. Truth be told Mr. Rhino, you're not really on my radar at all. You're no threat to me and mine, if you were you would already be dead. You're little crimes here don't really matter much to me, the only reason I stepped in was because I was in the neighborhood and you and Spider-boy…"

"OY! It's Spider-man, mystery voice!" Spiderman said, now staring straight at where Harry was speaking from. "I get enough flak about my costume as it is without weird invisible people joining in!"

Harry shrugged, calling up his Magia Erebea at five percent just in case, then finished what he was saying. "You and Spider-boy seemed to be a little too evenly matched for this to end quickly and without civilian casualties. If such had happened before I intervened, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

His voice became colder with each word, until Rhino was beginning to have flashbacks to when he dealt with the Russian mob and met an ex-Spetsnaz. "You would be dead. Which is precisely what will happen if you don't cooperate with the authorities and ever cross my path again, understand?" Harry was willing to let the justice system do its job, but if it couldn't or if someone subverted it, well, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. He smirked. "If you do, just say argh…"

The Rhino scowled, but something in that voice told him the man speaking to him was perfectly willing to kill him if the need arose, so feeling stupid he responded in the affirmative. "Argh…"

"Good. Have a nice day, I'm certain we won't have occasion to speak again." In the distance Sirens could now be heard. "Wow their reaction time sucks." Harry murmured and Scott grunted agreement, already moving off.

Harry followed him, leaving Rhino under the effects of the Petrificus Totalus, which would wear off in a few hours. Probably.

"Hold on Mr. Mystery Voice. I don't know who you are, but that threat wasn't exactly the act of someone who plays nice with others. Just so you know, if you try to do that, I'll take you down too." Spiderman said, trying to track where the voice was, and having very little luck.

"Really?" Harry said groaning a little. "You really think that you could, when you can't even find me right now? Besides, how many times have you thrown Mr. Rhino back there into jail? How many others have you done the same thing for, only to see them back on the street months or even weeks later?"

Harry turned back, facing Spiderman squarely, his voice intent. "Sometimes lad, having the power to do something means making the hard decisions, and that means the decision to take a life so you can save others, to step outside the law to preserve those it is truly meant to defend. When you are faced with that choice, to take a life to save another, I hope you have the courage to do so. And if you don't and if your enemies know that, you become an enabler, part of the problem. I hope you realize that. You're not perfect, you can't protect everyone by wearing kids gloves."

With that Harry walked away joining Scott and leaving behind a suddenly much less certain spider.

OOOOOOO

Later that day Harry had another meeting, one he had been looking forward to for a few weeks now. He smiled as Ororo popped in. She smiled in turn, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek before the two of them moved down the stairs and into the sitting area. She too had been looking forward to this for a while. Kitty met them there, bouncing from one foot to the other eager to be off. Charles had been waiting with her, chuckling at the girl's eagerness to be off to see her parents.

Harry smiled happily, as Ororo moved over to rub the young girl's head affectionately. "Got the directions?"

Kitty nodded eagerly, hugging Ororo for a second. "My parents're expecting us in a few hours. Normally the trip would take most of the day, but…" she grinned evilly, looking at Harry.

"Heh, challenge accepted," Harry said laughing. Saying their farewells to Charles the three of them moved into the garage where Harry got back in the Huayra, followed by Kitty scrambling into the expanded back seat, where she lounged sideways, then Ororo.

The three of them talked for most of the trip, covering what was going on at Hogwarts, as well as what happened with the Kree ship. Kitty was ready to move on to her next project, the protective emergency portkey type runic array for the arc reactors they were going to be selling shortly. They had to be good enough to teleport the things away if someone tried to damage them, but they also had to be energy efficient since there was no telling if the generators would be placed on ley lines, so Harry would have to go and recharge them occasionally. That could of course be covered as maintenance tests, but they still had to be pretty energy efficient since Harry couldn't be stopping in every day to all of them.

It was going to be a tough job for her, but Harry was confident Kitty would be able to do it, she had met every challenge, including what Kitty thought was the reason they were going to her parent's house. In the boot of the Huayra (which had of course been magically enlarged) was the runic doorway for her parent's house, which she had finally finished after helping Harry create more lie detecting wards. It wasn't activated yet, but the security measures on the doorway were ready to go as soon as her parents were keyed in.

About two hours after setting off Harry pulled off the highway and about twenty minutes later they were driving into a small community, drawing some attention from the locals who were out and about on their business. The Huayra was after all a striking car, but the people inside it would not be remembered afterward. This had nothing to do with Harry having hit them with Remember-me-not charms, it was just that they seemed to fade into the background in comparison to the car they were driving, something that amused Harry.

They drove up and parked in the driveway of Kitty's house, and she clambered out over Ororo in her haste to get out and ring the doorbell. Ororo and Harry laughed, following her and were greeted by her parents at the doorway. Terry whistled appreciatively at the car, while his wife and daughter shared a hug whose strength reminded Harry of the many he had seen Hermione and her mother share in his old life. "That's a lovely car, I've never seen one like that before, what's it's called?"

Harry greeted him warmly smiling and shaking the man's hand. "It's Pagani Huayra, extremely expensive and extremely fast and extremely high tech, all of which I like."

Kathleen rolled her eyes. "Boys with their toys, I bet you have to stop every fifteen minutes for gas in that thing."

"You'd be surprised." Harry said laughing with Kitty and Ororo.

Moments later they were setting up the runic doorway in a small, empty closet on the first floor. For all that it was unused however it was in a central location in the house, even if it's placement under the stairs recalled to Harry some of his worst childhood memories. Still, Harry approved of the location thanks to its centrality to the rest the house, a two-story house that was extremely well cared for, clean but not overly so, and with dozens of little family touches all over. There was warmth to the house, one he attributed to the family's closeness.

Once the stone arch was set up Harry handed over the presentation to Kitty, who walked her parents through the activation of it rather professionally, pointing to the places where it would need a drop of their blood, just a drop to key them in, and explaining what it did.

"It has two verbal passwords once it's activated, you just need to shout them out. The emergency one is just that, an emergency activation, that one can be activated from anywhere within ten feet. But you'll have to run through within seconds after you say it or else it'll shut down and won't pull any more power from its other end until one of us comes to reactivate it." Kitty said, directing her father's finger as it smeared his blood on a specific rune.

"To activate normally you'll have to stand in front of it and touch this rune." she said tapping a rune on top of the arch with a finger. "Now, let's put in your password."

"For the Pryde!" her father said laughing, shaking his head in amazement of his daughter's magical creation, and magic in general.

Everyone laughed while the runic doorway activated. Now instead of seeing the back of the cupboard through the archway, what looked like shimmering silvery water filled it. "Would you mind going through for a test run?" Harry asked.

"I want to make sure that it doesn't cause either of you any ill effects, then key you in on the other side so you can come back."

Kitty's parents nodded, their faces awed. After a moment's hesitation, the two of them walked through the runic doorway, followed by Harry.

Ororo stayed behind with Kitty, and they moved into the kitchen to prepare some tea. "So besides your runic activities what have you been up to? I understand you and Lance broke up?"

"We did." Kitty shrugged. "Frankly we were just moving in two different directions with our lives, so it made sense. And he wasn't, like, the love of my life or anything not like you and Harry." She elbowed the older woman's side with a grin but then Kitty went on more seriously. "I've been putting in most of my free time in studying ahead. Come fall I'll be skipping a grade and heading right into my senior year. I want to start working on more projects for Harry and for myself as soon as I can."

Ororo refrained from hugging the girl for the moment. The fact she was proud of that statement, proud of the way that Kitty wanted to shine so brightly however came through in her face and Kitty blushed a little looking away. "I presume your parents are okay with this?"

Kitty nodded. "Yep they understand, and are happy for me. They've been following the Magical Minds potion stuff ever since I told them Harry was behind it. Don't worry, I didn't tell them what they were or anything like that, just that Harry was connected to it, and they understand that if those are just the tip of the iceberg it's a major deal to be at all connected to it."

Ororo frowned a little at that but shrugged. She doubted that anyone would target Kitty's parents to get to Harry. Their thoughts were probably safe, especially if Kitty had been so vague about what the potions were. So long as the magical aspect of their work came out when they wished, that would be enough.

By this point they had finished gathering up the tea things and putting them on a table, and could hear the others coming back. Ororo smiled, and looked at Kitty. "You may be working with us much more closely than you think."

She licked her lips, suddenly nervous for some reason, but then went on quickly. "You see, Harry has been running some tests on the people in the Castle, including you, myself and many of the others. You know how Illyana is a magical?"

Kitty nodded, wondering where this was going.

"Well it turns out that humans in this dimension have a fundamental difference in comparison to his old home. There you were either magical or not, here some people have latent magical abilities that can be 'ignited' as it were through being close to either a high source of magic, or by first calling on magical sources of power for a time. Hogwarts and Harry are both high sources of magical power. When he looked at you a few weeks ago, we found that you, Kitty, have a magical core."

For a moment it didn't register, then Kitty began to vibrate in her seat with delight, her grin so wide it looked as if it was going to split her face.

At the same time Kitty's parents came in with Harry, their eyes wide at what they had just overheard while Harry simply smiled.

"But there is more," Ororo said hesitantly. "You see, well while you could take classes at school with Illyana, there is possibly, possibly another avenue open to you. You see, you and I have always gotten along very well, and there are such things as master and apprentice bonds in magic, which carries over into how those individuals act toward one another before they even, even make that relationship formal. Now, I am not quite done with my own magical apprenticeship, but…"

She was interrupted when a blubbering Kitty hit her, throwing her arms around the older woman and shouting happily, "yes!" into her chest. Ororo sighed happily, as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders, while her arms went around the young girl.

Harry shook his head. "As if there had been any doubt."

"Is this real?" Kathleen muttered. "This… I mean, does my daughter really have magic Mr. Potter?"

"Oh yes, I don't know how powerful she'll be just yet, but it's definitely there. Does that bother you?" Harry asked, looking at her in concern.

"Not at all." The older bushy-haired woman shook her head, Terry nodding beside her. "We're not exactly religious, and even if we were if this was what our daughter wanted, well, we would back her as much as we could."

Harry smiled. He dearly wished more parents responded that way to things like this, especially mutant parents, but at this point that was a pipe dream. Shoving that thought aside, Harry moved over to the table, looking away from the emotional Kitty to allow her time to get control of herself. "So, tea anyone?"

OOOOOOO

Betsy frowned, raising her head from the face of the brunette lying on the bed frowning angrily, feeling more powerless than she had ever felt save in the hands of the madman who took her eyes. "All I can tell after days at this is that she's in there," Betsy murmured to herself shaking her head. "There's something inside buried deep that is keeping her awake, keeping her body functioning at just barely the level to get by. How the hell did she do it? All the other people that Selene used lost everything that made them, well, them, even the other people who she had to let have some kind of personality to run their companies."

She stretched, looking around the room that had been handed over to Emma Steed on the Braddock estate. Her brother Brian hadn't been happy about that, but Betsy had insisted that a hospital was not the correct environment for this. The room had been done up in the way that Steed had her own room set up in her own mansion to make it seem more friendly, though to Betsy's eyes there were a little too many ostentatious shows of wealth around. The large Grecian statue of some male or other in one corner took the cake.

Betsy looked to one side staring through the outer wall of the mansion, feeling a familiar fiery aura at the outer edge of her awareness. Sending out a small tendril to it, she was greeted by a tendril coming out of the 'belsham-trees', something she was very happy about. Those trees her fellow telepath used as defense scared Betsy something fierce. "Jean, you're early!"

"Sorry, I needed a break desperately from my own job. Interviewing other engineers isn't nearly as fun as getting my own hands dirty. Still, I was able to find a project manager, and hopefully he'll be able to put together a good team moving forward to mass produce the arc reactor design. And once he proves trustworthy long term, I have a lot of little projects I need to hand off to them." Jeans telepathic voice came back, bright and clear, with a vibrant edge to it that Betsy had never heard in anyone else's mental voice, not even when she and her boyfriend had linked mind to mind.

"Whatever, I'm just happy to see you." Betsy said smiling. "I can't thank you all enough for rescuing me, or Reed for clearing my eyes of that damn feedback program."

"No worries Bets we're friends, and friends do things like that for one another."

Moments later Betsy opened the window allowing Jean to fly through. "I wonder if my own telekinetic ability will ever be that strong." She said thoughtfully and concentrated for a moment, her TK blade appearing around her fist before letting it dissipate.

"Don't know, I'll gladly tell you how to strengthen it, but as to your upper limit, your best guess is as good as mine." Jean said shrugging, before turning to look at the comatose woman on the bed. "Is this Miss Steed?"

"The vegetable formally known as, yes," Betsy said shaking her head. "That's a little cruel I know, but it's accurate at the moment. I don't know how she did it, but Steed buried some small bit of her mind deep enough that even Selene's powers couldn't get to it. Yet I can't bring it to the fore, that's why I called you in. Even if I don't agree with the government wanting to prosecute Steed, it's beyond cruel to leave her like this."

"Which is why you need my help," Jean said frowning thoughtfully. "Well let's see what we can do." She leaned over the other woman, putting her hands on either side of her face. A moment was all it took to send her astral projection into the other woman's mind delving deeper and deeper into the darkness there. She could tell there was something there, something deep but with the darkness all around her, she couldn't find any kind of trail to follow.

Betsy joined her a second later, and the two of them forged downwards. After about two minutes however they hadn't found anything, and the darkness creeping around them from the other woman's mind was becoming oppressive. Forty minutes went past, and still they forged downwards.

Eventually Betsy's astral projection, a physical version of her body that looked as if she had been painted purple, with small striations of white and red here and there, shook her head. "This is where I normally have to stop. If we keep going, we start to run into her primal fears. I don't know how, but her psyche is beyond that. It should be impossible, but Steed somehow did it. The problem is, I can't get through them."

Beside her Jean's astral projection frowned. Like her friend, her projection looked pretty much like her physical body, but whereas Betsy's was purple, Jean's was a blazing white, with motes of red moving along its surface. Oh, and she also had wings, they were kind of hard to miss. "Hmm, I don't know of any way to get around them, we could try to mask our presence somehow, hide from her mental senses, but I don't know how well that would work."

From her projection's fingers Jean shot out a small telepathic tendril deeper into the darkness of Steed's mind, frowning heavily when the two of them began to hear the noises of things moving in the dark. "Shit, nighttime terrors, childhood fears, and a lot of other crap in there. Not good, those kinds of things are as powerful as the person who believes in them thinks they are, double crap in this environment."

Betsy nodded, looking around them worriedly as the blackness seemed to be pressing in on them. "Like I said, this is as far as I can go. We could try to brute force our way through, that was my initial thought when I called you, but…"

"But what would that do to her mind when she comes to? Would her psyche simply retreat further under that assault?" Jean finished, nodding her head. "I'm afraid this is beyond me, Bets." Jean sighed, cancelling her probe, shaking her head. Let's get out of here, then I need to get you in contact with my old teacher, if anyone can help Emma Steed find herself, it'll be him."

Turning, the two women began to make their way back out of the comatose woman's mind. After a few silent moments passed, Betsy smirked. "So, you, Ororo and Harry? How does that work exactly?"

OOOOOOO

It was nearly full dark out as a young woman followed a small foot path up to a small rundown hovel. It was not quite a shanty house but almost, with nothing to distinguish it from any of the other houses around the small village one of many such in the troubled territory of India called Nagaland. And much like the house, the woman's appearance didn't cause any interest from the villagers going about their business all around her. This was a small village but this war-torn area they were used to groups of people coming and going. It was also quite off the beaten path even for India, which alas made it easy for a warlord to set himself up as the modern equivalent of a feudal lord.

The fact that the current 'feudal lord' didn't use armed troops or guns to do so was beside the point. In fact, this place had been ravaged so often that simply having a gang of murderous thugs wouldn't have been enough, every man in the village went around armed. The ethnic conflicts that had raged here since only a little while after WW2 saw to that. No, the current warlord used… other means to enforce his rule.

She entered the house where her mother was, then proceeded to move around the house, getting out bowls and plates for the meal the older woman was cooking. While she was doing this she talked quietly, not as if she was afraid of being overheard, but merely as if she was too tired to raise her voice further. "Well I got the job, we'll be fine, for a while at least." The quaver in her voice was almost unnoticeable on the last few words.

You would've had to be looking for it to hear it, which the tiny watcher that had been set on her was indeed doing. It continued to listen as the two newcomers to the village under the control of his master continued to talk normally. The tiny bat didn't hear anything that made it question the story the young woman had told the majordomo of the small keep that overlooked the town.

The young woman, Nalini, had run away with her stepmother when her father was going to turn the woman out on her own due to her blindness. This plus his plans to marry Nalini off to a man three times her age had been enough to make both women run away.

That of course happened a lot in India, arranged marriages and the father controlling the daughter's ability to marry was ancient tradition here. Girls however had become uppity in the past ten years or so. The fact that many of the colleges in India already offered classes to women had helped that along, and runaways like this were common enough, even those who didn't have any higher education or any education at all in this case.

Though as a foreigner himself, the master of the town didn't care one way or another. All it cared about was making certain that no exterior force knew of its little fiefdom. So the small bat continued to watch well into the night, then finally satisfied that the two newcomers were exactly who they seemed to be the bat flew off into the night.

As it left its position up in the tree tops nearby the old woman gave a slight nod of her head. Mystique sighed, nodding her head in turn but they still retained their low voices. "I was shown around the first floor of the keep while the majordomo interviewed me for the maid job. Apparently the second and third levels are only open to the 'special' servants, those who have been with the 'Milord' for a few years. I saw a few of them so I'll be able to pull off their likeness. I even heard a few of them speaking enough to get a handle on their accents and some understanding of their temperament."

Mystique was a shape shifter, but that really didn't tell the entire story. When Mystique shapeshifted she changed on the cellular level, literally becoming the other person in every physical sense of the word. That didn't instill her with all the other person's knowledge of course. For example, she could transform herself into Charles Xavier, but she wouldn't have been able to use his telepathy without understanding how he did. This extended of course to less important areas, such as mannerisms, accents and even the way someone moved.

However, that lack of knowledge could be solved easily enough by observation. Mystique had a near eidetic memory of faces and accents, and was an excellent mimic at them and physical movement. Within hours of seeing someone she could easily pass for a man or woman to any casual acquaintance, even friends sometimes. Raven had also become a good code breaker, was an incredibly adept sneak-thief, and had dozens of other skills including hacker to go with her physical abilities. It was why practically every spy organization in the world feared her, it wasn't paranoia, it was simply an understanding of her abilities and what she could do with them.

"I don't know his name, but I think 'Milord' really is a vampire. He's got at least four people up on the second floor, I heard their movements, all of them moving around like zombies, that particular tread of someone not quite in control of their own body. Possibly also that one young boy you warned me about. Give me another day, maybe two to study the layout of the mansion, then I'll be ready to move. Will that do?"

The mutant known to most as Destiny frowned thoughtfully, her mind looking through the possibilities of the future with all the skill and consummate artistry of a master pianist playing his craft. "Yes," she said finally. "We're no longer being pursued, though once we move to our next objective that will quickly change. As I said, a choice looms there, something about an upcoming rally of some kind in America, and a debate? That part is not set in stone as of yet, but it clearly has something to do with Senator Kelly."

"The mutant hater from Texas?" Mystique asked.

"Yes, but I cannot say which decision of yours will lead to what future, not yet." Irene replied, shaking your head and coming back to the here and now. "It will be up to you to make that choice or allow us to continue to wait until the wings of the owl can shadow us."

Mystique shrugged. "Back to the matter at hand now that we're closer can you tell me anything about this book that's in there?"

"Its power is immense, dark and ancient, all I can see is that it has something to do with magic. That is all, what I see depends on who falls for its blandishments. Luckily we arrived in time before the vampire could realize it was hidden in the statue. The sculpture itself is that of a man in a cape his arms spread wide, as if declaiming in front of a crowd. The book is hidden in an alcove in the foot of the statue, there is a small indentation right where the legs start to merge into the stone along the rear of the man. Press it in, and the alcove will open for a short amount of time."

Irene held up a bag lined with silk. "Take this with you and place the book directly inside." She ordered, looking at her lover with concern. "I have seen the futures where you hold onto it for too long Raven, you become much less than the woman I fell in love with. Whatever it tries to say to you, do not listen!"

Surprised at her friend's vehemence Mystique nodded, leaning down to kiss the older woman's cheek reassuringly. "I promise I'll be quick." Naturally of course Irene would not be going in with her. Irene had been an incredibly dangerous hand-to-hand combatant when she was younger, able to see her opponents moves before they made them, but Mystique would in no way endanger her friend by asking her to do that now. Besides, it wasn't as if Mystique hadn't fought vampires before, she knew what to expect and had prepared accordingly.

Over the next few days, Mystique took her time ingratiating herself to the keep's staff in various ways and even met the lord of the manor once. He was a tall middle-aged man with stern but not ugly features. He had a small goatee, dark black eyes, and slightly lighter than most around here, broad shoulders, and wore old-fashioned clothing yet with a certain panache that allowed him to get away with it without seeming to be a character in a movie.

His voice was deep, melodious, and if Mystique hadn't known what he was, she might actually have fallen for the power of that voice. That voice, and his piercing, powerful gaze was what had allowed him to hold sway so easily here.

But she did, and her mental defenses were such that the vampire couldn't get through. If Charles Xavier, the most powerful telepath the world had yet seen, couldn't get into her mind without Raven knowing a vampire certainly wouldn't get through. She pushed her exterior persona of a young maid in trouble to the forefront of her mind whenever she felt his attention heading her way. This allowed him to see precisely what he wanted to see, nothing more.

The evening she had decided to move soon came. It unfortunately had to be evening since Raven didn't want to fight the guards who were much more active during the day. Most of them were dupes, their wills crushed by the vampires. While she would have no qualms about killing any guard that got in her way, she wasn't willing to kill more than necessary.

Taking the guise of one of the guards she slipped inside the keep the moment that guard's shift ended as normal, nodding her head to two acquaintances of the face she was now wearing. Guards were not encouraged to talk while on duty, so her reticence raised no eyebrows. A moment spent in a bathroom allowed Raven to shift into the guise of one of the male servants, one of those who the vampire actually trusted somewhat. With her new disguise in place she then ascended the stairs.

Once on the second floor Raven debated which of her targets to go for first, but really there was no choice. The boy might have to be carried out, and that would be much tougher than getting the book.

With that in mind Mystique moved through the second floor of the keep towards the room she guessed was the treasure room. Three times she shifted her guise as she moved through the shadows of the keep, each time becoming someone higher up in the rank of the vampire's servants. Such was Raven's skills that not one of the other servants she passed even gave her a second glance. Thus unchallenged she quickly found the treasure room, picking the lock with the ease of long practice.

Inside in pride of place was the statue Irene had described to her in such exacting detail. It was but the work of a moment to find the switch she had described, but after that, things became strange. Sliding into Mystiques mind came not words but images, images of Raven wielding power.

Magneto's corpse laid out in front of her. Nightcrawler's father being tortured by dark energy of some kind for her amusement. Slaves of both genders bowing before her as she sat on a throne made of gold and jewels. Armies slaughtered by the power Raven suddenly wielded while behind her Irene and her children were safe and protected. Irene was shown dressed in silks, as she lounged on a beach somewhere next to Raven, her body young again. All she had to do was wield the power of the book, take it into her hands, open it and use the magic within…

With a start Raven shook her (currently his) head wildly, before quickly opening up her silk lined backpack, ignoring the images pressing into her mind. Gingerly she reached into the concealed alcove set into the statue lifting the book out quickly. For the bare second she held it before dropping into the prepared bag Raven realized with horror that the book was not covered by leather as she thought, but skin, and etched into it was the sign of an eight pointed star.

As soon as the book was in the silk bag however the images stopped, and Raven breathed a sigh of relief. "If I thought it would work I would kill you with fire right now, evil fucking thing."

Raven took a moment to gather herself, before exiting the room quickly, hoping that the vampire hadn't sensed the books power before she had stuffed it into the bag. Walking briskly down the corridor she went in search of the boy.

The boy Irene had described more than once was kept with the other people that the vampire was currently feeding on, all of whom had that barely there, mindless appearance of the mentally dominated. He was young, around eight or nine, but his mutation was already evident in the light purple of his skin, crisscrossed by white lines here and there. It might also be seen in the fact that he looked much more lucid than the other thralls around him, three young women all of them beautiful. Of course they're young and beautiful Mystique thought, shaking her head. Vampires, lotharios the lot of them.

When she entered still wearing the guise of one of the servants the boy tensed, looking as if he was ready to bolt. In response Mystique allowed one of her fingers to transform into its normal blue while she raised it to her lips. She pointed to the boy then herself and then indicated that they were getting out of there with a wave of her fingers as if they were running away through the air. The boy had first looked dubious, and Mystique allowed her entire hand to become blue. In response he looked down at his own skin then up at her again and then down again before he finally nodded, hope now gleaming in his eyes.

Mystique looked down at the manacles on his hands, then down at where they were tied to the floor before undoing that and pulling them up right whispering in his ear quickly in the local dialect. "Follow along as if I'm leading you to the vampire, struggle a little but not enough to break my grip, then if I tell you, run. The boy nodded gulping.

Moments later she was leading him out of the room and down to the first floor. They hadn't run into any servants yet but on the first floor that luck failed. Two guards were coming in just as they reached the front hall and Mystique cursed, wondering why they had changed from their normal pattern. In response she let the boy's manacles drop from her hand as she raced forward, her body shifting back to her base form as she went.

In response the two guards pulled their rifles off of their shoulders, mouths open to shout. They never got the chance. Mystique was in front of them, her hands flashing out to chop with lethal force into their jugular's crushing their larynx is and stopping them from shouting, allowing only a gurgle of sound to escape. She then morphed into a huge man, nearly the size of The Blob. Reaching forward she grabbed both of them in her arms squishing them and their rifles together so that they couldn't fall to the ground.

Raven looked around quickly before she moved toward a small sitting room nearby. Once inside she slowly allowed the bodies to fall onto the chairs within. Behind her the boy had followed her, eyes agape at her sudden transformation both into her normal form as she jumped forward towards guards and then into the larger form. Raven wordlessly urged him on and the two raced out of the keep quickly.

Once outside Raven pointed the boy out over the scrubland toward the meeting point with Irene, a small culvert along the road into this town that was a decent hidey-hole at night. Indeed the guard whose form Mystique had worn initially had come from there.

Suddenly a slew of bats appeared in the air above them before coalescing on the ground into the vampire's body. "I know not who you are stranger but did you honestly think I would let you get away? Such a fascinating power, you will be a magnificent thrall, even more useful than the purple skinned boy whose blood is so empowering."

Mystique could feel the little boy shaking against her and she shook her head. "Villains, they always have to be so dramatic." Without another word she threw a small dart of wood at the man, who caught it almost negligently.

By that time however Mystique had shifted into her own body, it's heightened strength and speed a necessity when fighting a vampire. "Keep going!" She shouted to the boy as she moved forward, her leg up and kicking. "I'll join you soon!"

The boy nodded, running around the vampire who was engaged with Mystique now trading blows. His face, which had been amused, now became more respectful. "Interesting heightened reflexes and strength well beyond human norm, though not up to the level of a specialist in that nature. Fascinating." His words were interrupted by a grunt of pain as Mystique brought her knee up into his chest, then her forearm around into his own blocking his return blow before pummeling his face with a hard right.

"Fight or talk!" Mystique growled, then ducked under a sudden lunge, grabbing his arm and throwing him over her back to slam into the ground, her other hand flashing to her waist pulling out another small wooden needle from a pouch at her side.

The man moved to block the blow but was too slow, and took the needle in his eye. He cried out in agony, smashing her away with a blow to the stomach that sent Mystique flying through the air.

Mystique however was much tougher than she looked, with the ability to control her physical body to the degree she did she could easily make her body tougher than a normal human body. It hurt, but it didn't take her out of the action and she rolled with it, coming back up onto her feet and rushing forward again.

The vampire growled pulling the bit of wood out of his eye, the wound already healing thanks to his vampire-given powers, but still blinding him in that eye for the moment which Mystique took advantage of, quickly circling to that side and pressing in. She flashed her hand in one direction, causing him to move in that way and opening him up to a kick that he didn't even see coming slamming into his shoulder sending him rolling.

As it rolled back upright the vampire's nails elongated as did its fangs. "I have had enough of this!" He growled charging forward.

Mystique met him morphing suddenly into one of the most dangerous hand-to-hand combatants she had ever met, one whose abilities all relied on his body: Sabertooth. Rather than overwhelming her with brute force, the vampire found himself matched and then exceeded, Mystique/Sabertooth clawing and ripping at him after catching one of his arms, forcing the vampire to remain in close.

Being a vampire meant he had insane regenerative abilities, but it didn't mean he was immune to pain, and it had been a long time since this particular vampire had fought anyone able to match him. He tried to get away, and that was the moment he made his mistake. The vampire tried to glare into her eyes to dominate her and Mystique faked faltering for just a second. The vampire seemed to have forgotten that his domination abilities hadn't worked on her previously, and allowed his guard to fall as he leaned in toward her neck eagerly.

Mystique/Sabertooth's hand came up between their bodies cradling another, larger bit of wood. Before the vampire could guard himself, she had slammed it into his chest right over his heart. The man screamed, then from the head down began decaying into dust.

Looking at the small pile of dust that had been her enemy Mystique shook her head, shifting back into her base form. "At least vampires make for neat enemies." She chuckled darkly then raced off, soon coming to the meeting point where she found Destiny and the boy talking in the native dialect. She smiled, then asked her friend, "Well, that worked out well, now where to?"

Irene smiled, pulling her arm from around where she had been hugging the young boy to her side. She then pulled Mystique into a hug, startling her friend with its strength. "Oh well done Raven! To throw off the books influence like that, to stay yourself, I am so proud of you, my love!"

It wasn't often that Ravene Alegamoria Callisa Darkeholme found herself fighting back tears of joy these days. Now, hearing the pride, the love in her friend's voice, and knowing how very few years remained for them, she did. Her own arms went around her friend as she shook her head, and when she spoke it was in a deliberately upbeat voice. "That thing showed me a lot of interesting things, but it never showed me the cost, and I've learned to be wary of salesmen who refuse to show me the bill until I've signed up."

For a moment the two of them stood there, holding one another, but eventually Irene moved back, addressing her friend's previous question. "Now, we go to Ansari Nagar in New Delhi, specifically someplace near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. We will need to wait for a time, but that is where the eyes of the wizard will find us easiest."

Raven nodded, and gently took the gaping boy's shoulder, turning him down the road to where she had hidden the Tuk-Tuk.

OOOOOOO

Sebastian Shaw frowned, looking over the newest business section and the notes therein. Harry Potter, the sole controller of Magical Minds, the UK-based rising star in medicine had bought several small-scale construction factories, all of which specialized in the energy sector. Then he had bought one of the problem children of the automotive industry, Saab.

It was a very eclectic purchasing list, and did not match with his seeming area of expertise. What was worse, Shaw now felt he knew why Emma had taken so long to investigate the London branch, it was certain that she was at least a business partner of this new rising star, and what that could mean long-term he didn't know. Shaw himself didn't have much in the way of assets in the UK, but what ones he did have he had already ordered into position to try to figure out that connection, and what they reported was odd to say the least.

Emma and Potter seemed to simply have a business arrangement. They didn't look to be even friendly with one another in public going by what his agents reported. But then how did Emma figure out that Potter was going to be such a big name before his new medicines hit the news? Could she have had an agent somewhere and observed that first field test, the one that happened right after the terrorist attack on London was foiled?

"That's the only explanation, unless, unless Emma has found an ally that she thinks can be of more use than is immediately apparent…" he mused aloud. "I know for a fact that Emma can be subtle, but how good is she at long-term planning? That Potter will quickly become the King of the London branch is no secret, though he would only be a mere bishop to any true branch of the hellfire club for now. Still, where did his new medicines come from?"

He knew Pierce was going crazy about that, something that amused him, and made his own moves against the man all the easier. Pierce had many holdings in the medical industry, unlike Shaw who had only a vague knowledge of that area. And of course Leyland didn't have anything in Britain, not even a few agents in the London branch. No, Shaw was on his own when it came to figuring out what sort of asset Potter really was to Emma, or what he could become in the future.

If he's allied with Frost he's certainly not an ally of mine, though if their public persona is fact, I might be able to drive a wedge between them. Doing that would be a win all around for him. It would break up a business relationship for Emma weakening her and it would get him in with Magical Minds, which was already growing beyond anything the medical world had ever seen before. Plus it would get him an ally in Britain.

I wonder if Emma sought him out to prepare for a move against me, or is she merely arranging her own attack against Buckman and Pierce? Despite how he had directed his intelligence apparatus to concentrate on finding Pierce's bolt holes and anything else about the other man's dealings that he could, Shaw was still aware of Buckman and something going on there. He knew it would be anti-mutant much like Pierce, but probably much more intelligently thought through, rather than the rabid animal that Pierce hid under his normal exterior.

a weapon useful against them could be turned against me, I'm not happy about that. Regardless of any overtures towards Harry Potter, I think I need to step up my own preparations to take Emma out of the equation. He frowned then smiled, remembering something one of his agents had reported about a few maintenance personnel on the Frost estate payroll. Little cracks, little cracks in her armor but only one was enough, something Emma had proven in her dealings with her father and older sister.

With that thought warming his soul Shaw turned back to Pierce's activities, and smiled thinly. It would take a few weeks to shut off all his bolt holes, but eventually Pierce would be left with nowhere to run, and his team would be ready to bring the hammer down on him personally. All of his teams, and he would make certain that Emma was involved as well, the better to weld her to his faction. After that, there would be time to turn his attention to Emma's erstwhile ally, and Buckman too.

OOOOOOO

Dr. Doom smiled behind his mask, always amused by the way Potter's owl watched him like, well, a hawk, though he felt certain that the owl would be offended by that observation. His mother tapped Doom's armored shoulder with a finger, shaking her head in slight amusement at her son's odd sense of humor. "Remember what we want out of this…" she murmured. "We can ill afford to anger Potter through discourtesy to his familiar."

"Yes mother." Doom said letting a little bit of the 'put upon little boy' voice enter his tone for just a moment. He was rewarded with a brief uptick of Cynthia's lips into a smile, which was what he had wanted. Having his mother back in his life had been most pleasant, fully worth the agreement he and Potter had reached for Potter's aid in rescuing her.

But what Cynthia said was true in any event, he did want something from Harry and he was willing to extend their treaty to get it. It was time once more to show the enemies of his nation that Doom ruled all, and that if any of his people died it was only at his command. Not to feed the ambitions of others.

Hedwig glared up at the metal clad man, still not having forgiven him for his attempts to figure out her mode of transportation, which even her Harry didn't do. Alas Doom had no eyes that she could get to easily, and she knew that attacking him would not be good for herself or for her Harry. Still, she wasn't about to trust him, and was happy that Harry didn't either. The portkey she carried was for the ship in orbit, which had been moved entirely around the planet from the hidden nest.

Harry trusted in all of the magical enchantments on High Note to keep it invisible, but there was no point in tempting fate, and he was not about to underestimate someone of Doom's intelligence. If there was any way to scientifically create a device that could see through a full strength Fidelius, Doom would be the one to find it.

She dropped the large piece of stone in her claws then backed away slightly.

"Interesting," Cynthia said crisply. Leaning over the stone her eyes flickered with all the colors of a rainbow for just a moment as she activated her mage sight. "Some kind of transportation spell which activates when we touch it, then acts as a sort of bridge or rather rope pulling us from one end of the spell to the other. Very interesting magic, I'll have to experiment with it."

Doom bowed his head in acknowledgment of that, though inwardly he knew that this was not the kind of teleportation that Hedwig used, which was simply much cleaner, neater and with fewer restrictions than any magical or scientific one he had seen. Still, he would leave his mother to look into this new magic. He personally was more interested in magical defenses at present, though even that was only half of his current interest. "Shall we go?"

"Oh yes, it's perfectly safe, there's no hidden trap built into the magic." At that Doom nodded, then reached over with one gauntleted hand to touch the stone gently as Cynthia did the same. Seconds later they were gone from his castle, only to reappear in what looked like a conference room of some kind.

There was nothing about it to indicate that it was on a ship, even a normal naval ship rather than a spaceship. Until that is you turned your head to view what must have been the exterior side of the ship from this conference room. There you would see that someone had used a spell to make it transparent so that anyone could view space from looking out the side of it.

Doom looked out over the vista and nodded in approval. "Magnificent." He commented then looked over at Harry who had risen from his seat as well as Phoenix and Storm. His eyes narrowed behind his metal mask as he noticed that Reed had also risen, not liking the fact that his old adversary was here. But given their agreements, and the fact that the Fantastic Four had apparently helped take the ship he couldn't argue that their presence was unnecessary.

"We like it." Harry said coming around the table with a faint smile on his face, handing Dr. Doom a glass of whiskey. Doom sniffed it then sipped appreciatively through his mask and nodded his head at his mother. She lifted one hand in a grand gesture and Harry realizing what she wanted bowed at the waist kissing the back of it before lifting up to look at them both. "Lord Doom, milady, welcome to the captured Kree vessel Hellion."

The two Dooms exchanged a glance, and Victor could tell that Cynthia was both amused and somewhat surprised that Harry was addressing them as if they were royalty. Very few people in the world outside Latveria truly understood that they were indeed its royalty. Doom had made Latveria the country it was today, and if anyone could claim its crown, it was him. It was one of the things that soothed Doom's ego when dealing with Harry.

Cynthia took a glass of her own and nodded politely as Harry moved back gesturing them into seats. "We have a bit of a presentation to go over, then we'll go into particulars and areas of control."

Doom nodded, biding his time for now. He would open up discussions on what he wanted from Harry after this.

With his guest's permission Harry went into what they had done to take the ship as well as the Sentry which had been destroyed. He then went on to describe what they had discovered upon the initial questioning of the prisoners, as well as the details they had discovered since.

"Essentially the Kree Captain's actions created a cascade effect in the programming of the ship. All the computers outside engineering were wiped entirely, we can't get anything out of them. The computers in the engineering room have lost nearly all their astronomical data, and never had anything history or society related, though it did have some information on their military. The ship can move thanks to the computers in engineering, but that's all. It couldn't even fire its weapons any longer."

The 'nearly' bit there might prove important later on, but Harry wasn't ready to share that idea just yet. Not until he knew he could pull it off.

"Interesting," Doom murmured tapping one finger on his glass which rang like crystal. He noticed that there were several bottles of the fire whiskey Harry had promised for their next meeting at the end of the table and smiled internally at that touch. Dealing with Harry was very gratifying, the man respected him, didn't seem to think that his kingly status was an issue, and acted cordially to him though obviously did not trust him entirely which was of course smart.

While Doom's ambitions might have been humbled somewhat of late, he could admit that to himself though if anyone else pointed it out he would destroy them, he was still Doom and thus a force to be reckoned with. "Have you worked up an order of battle, what classification of ship would this be in human terms? I assume you've already done a preliminary assessment of its weaponry."

Those questions he directed at Reed and Jean, who he'd gotten the impression was the chief engineer of Harry's faction. Reed responded, going into a technical spiel about the engines, in particular the gravitic field that allowed them all to walk in the ship as if they were on the ground, before handing it over to Jean to describe the weapons.

Essentially they were plasma weapons, short range, very powerful, grazers in sci-fi parlance, with the ship designed to get in unnoticed do its damage and get out. "I think we could do better in the design of the weapons, but the material they are made of, no chance. The collators in particular, which is some kind of artificial gem, used to actually fire the beam out of the weapons system is extremely tough and has amazingly high heat dissipation. In fact the rest of the system is what forces the time between blasts. It can't handle the heat as well. We could easily do better there."

"There are other examples of that. The stealth technology on this ship is centuries ahead of anything humanity can normally produce, though it's somewhat below what you or I could do for a one off design, but the materials it's made of are excellent." Reed said, not trying to butter Doom up simply stating a fact. He went on to describe the wavelength frequencies and many other things that went straight over Harry's head, with Doom supplying some questions.

Regardless of their personal feelings towards one another, Doom truly saw Reed as his only true intellectual equal. Or at least did until Harry came along. Not equal in scientific-based intellect, he thought taking a glance at where Harry was punching in some buttons to show something up on the screen, but in other areas, certainly.

After Reed finished, Doom turned back to Harry. "So the Kree's order of battle would be what exactly? What are we likely to see now that we have this ship?"

"Frigates like this would be used as commerce raiders essentially, and in close combat. Odd because I don't think I would use it that way. The armor on it is good, but even its own crew thinks that they aren't armored enough to survive in that type of fight."

"That actually could be because of how little individual lives matter to the Kree." Ororo replied. "I've spoken with our questioner and we've gotten the impression that the Kree military doesn't really care about their people. I will be very interested in what your sociologist friend makes of them Reed."

It had been agreed to omit Emma's name from any discussion with anyone not fully onboard with Harry's agenda. They were all certain that her involvement in the negotiations with the United Kingdom's government would come out, but she had been covered with so many spells at that point that her identity would remain a mystery even to someone like Doom. They wanted to keep it that way. To anyone who looked Harry and Emma had a business relationship and while somewhat cordial on the surface anyone who looked at the two of them could tell that they also disliked one another.

"Not even individual ships matter, unless they are home to elite forces. We've gotten hints of such, but none of the people we've been questioning, and we've used a magical truth serum as well to see if we could break the purebloods down, know anything about their elite troops except the names of a few units."

Doom and Reed both nodded then turned back to Harry who continued. "Like I said, it's a frigate, not even a light cruiser." He finished fiddling with the computer, and some images popped up. "I worked with a few of the prisoners, Mar'vell and a few of the other pale skinned ones were helpful at least. We had to use 3-D imagery to get this, but…" he shrugged "this is as close to a real ship type size comparison we can get at present."

On the screen appeared the Hellion. As they watched the view of the screen panned away from it and soon what had to be the next ship class showed up next to it, showing the size differences. "Two of them had worked on a ship like this, they called them Light Fists. I would call them light cruisers, and the makeup of their weapons, according to one of our prisoners who was a gunnery officer on board, matches. The problem is that the only difference between that ship and this one is the range their grazers can fire, and the type of armor, as well as very large particle projection cannons."

"So direct energy weapons dominate their weaponry?" Doom was skeptical of that. "Surely their military uses missiles, drones and carriers at least, and has weapons to protect their ships from said."

"None of the ones we've talked to know what a carrier is." Harry replied smirking. First weakness, he thought to himself. "Essentially, their scanning equipment is excellent, their lock on systems not so much. I've talked to all of them who have been involved with actual space battles against the Skrull."

That was actually the entire crew because this frigate had been involved with a campaign against them just recently. "Essentially, all their battles involve what we would think of as point blank duels after a battle of maneuver and position."

Harry shrugged. "I would've thought that war in space would be more like sub-warfare, stay hidden while you try to find the enemy as the enemy tries to find you, killing any you can and then move on to your next objective. But that's apparently not the way that it works."

"The Kree's scanning equipment is the reason for that." Reed replied, shrugging in turn. "While a ships scanning equipment can't reach very far, it is extremely good in the area it can cover, and the processing ability of their computers is phenomenal. I would assume that their computers simply kept on getting better and better, and missiles began to become simply a waste of resources given computer driven point defense. Then, once missiles stopped being used by anyone, they removed the point defense weapons but their systems remain far too good to be caught out. These races have been in space for longer than humanity has been around, for longer than even Cro-Magnon before us. I have no doubt they have reached that point."

"But that gives us opportunities, and I'll be working with Jean on thinking up ways to take advantage of them." Harry already had one way in his mind. He called it the Ravenspire, and the Ravens would pack one hell of a punch if Jean and he could actually design the things. That was at least a month in the future, but it would happen.

Doom did as well. "Mines would not be an issue, they would detect those but missiles might if the ships aren't maneuverable enough to evade them."

"Frigates and light cruisers might be able to avoid a few, but anything heavier wouldn't." Harry said tapping the controls again. "Mar'vell served on one of these, which we would call battlecruisers. They don't seem to have a class between battlecruiser and light cruiser. Battlecruisers appeared to be the heavy lifters of their fleet, they do all the jobs that light cruisers and frigates can't handle but which aren't important enough to designate ships of the line to. I imagine if they realize that the Hellion was taken we'll see a few of these come calling. Mar'vell couldn't tell me much about their armament, he is an infantryman so he didn't really care, but he knew it had at least a rail gun system, and seems to have changed up all the grazers for PPCs of far larger size, which is something. The size comparison is accurate at least. Anything larger, which they all acknowledge they do have, we only have names for: Dreadnaught, Doombringer, and Planet Crusher. Not pleasing names, especially considering their warp drives let them warp in so close to the planetary gravity well."

Doom nodded thoughtfully, already making plans. "You realize that to fight such as that, we will either have to have at least enough teams to assign personnel to each ship as they come in to take it out, or ships of our own to match them? That would mean an industrial sector in space to create those ships."

Harry nodded grimly. "For the first wave we'll have to deal with them just with our own resources, hopefully the scanning devices we've been working on lately plus the ones we've taken from this ship will be up to the task of finding their ships and then we can get our teams on board quickly. I will say they have nothing that a telekinetic or magic user couldn't handle if they were strong enough. My team could handle two maybe three of these in small groups."

Of course, that is with me at least going off on my own. Harry thought. And I haven't tried any long range magical attacks in space, I'm uncertain what could happen there. Still, if pushed I could transfigure a portion of the hull into glass or something, let the ship tear itself apart. But I would rather see if we could take over the ships, Earth is going to need them. Even with Harry's magic putting together a space based industrial complex would take time, and at present Harry had too much else on his plate to concentrate solely on that.

"The Fantastic Four could handle two possibly, though I will add a caveat." Reed said cautiously. "I've spoken to Ben, and the Sentry was obviously prepared for him. If that is true for the rest of their military they might have ways to combat us." Ben had reported that odd white beam that had hit him and hurt like all get out, despite his stone body. If they had a way to neutralize Ben's durability they probably had come up with ways to neutralize Johnny and Reed. Susan, going by how well her powers had worked during the battle to take the ship might be an exception, but not one Reed was willing to bet on.

"In the future however," Harry went on. "I'll be building up an industrial force in space. Eventually I'll want humanity to have our own fleet to match against any intrusion, but that will take months to develop even for me."

The problem was the drives of the ship and what it allowed the Kree and others out there to do, that is get right outside a planetary gravity well and then move in quickly. That limited what kind of defense they could come up with and what would actually work. A defense fleet would be ideal, but the intricacies of designing then building ships for that fleet were well beyond their abilities in the near future. Stationary fortresses and small, unmanned fighters that they might be able to do.

"I have developed robotics to a level that has surprised my opponents numerous times." Doom said leaning forward intently. "I would be willing to share the secrets of some of my robot designs with you, so long as you agreed that they would not be used against me and would only be used in space. Drones which can almost think for themselves and are able to do multiple tasks in zero gravity without issue, would help your ambitions in this area."

"And what would you want to return?" Reed asked sharply. Doom didn't even glance at him, his eyes behind his mask locked on Harry.

Harry stared back, his mind awhirl. Robots like those would indeed help tremendously. They could start creating that industrial sector immediately with such as that, or at least after he had built up a sufficient number of them, and Harry already had some industrial capacity. It would be relatively easy to switch his new factories over to robotics. That would shave off months of time, maybe even a year or two. But they weren't covered by the agreement between him and Doom, Doom having agreed to share any information he had with Harry in terms of space technology after all, and this certainly couldn't be said to be space tech alone regardless of Doom's caveat. "Would this be covered by our agreement?"

"That could be open to interpretation." Doom replied, not looking away from Harry's green eyes. "I could indeed offer them, and I will do so, so long as you listen to a proposal."

Reed made to say something but Harry held up a hand, not looking away from Doom. After a moment he nodded. "I'm listening"

Doom smiled. Harry was pragmatic to a certain degree, something Doom could respect. "Do you follow the news coming out of the former Eastern Bloc?"

Harry shook his head but Jean spoke up. "I noticed something on the morning brief from our spymaster. It was about a new terrorist group now operating openly in one of the countries there?"

"They call themselves the Fourth Reich, as if the third wasn't enough. It is apparently led by a certain individual from the past, or someone using his face." Cynthia interjected, scowling angrily.

"Regardless of if the Rote Schädel has truly returned or not, he has angered me." Doom said, his hands clenching around the crystal goblet which obviously wasn't crystal since it hadn't shattered under his grip. "Some of his terrorists have acted in my kingdom's borders, and I will respond in kind." That he had also sent a thief in to steal from Doom himself was also a consideration, but not one he was going to share.

"So you want us to turn a blind eye to this?" Reed asked calming down slightly. That he could agree to. None of the countries around Latveria were democratic or even had representatives on the United Nations Council. They were recovering countries from the fall of Communist Russia, and even though Reed didn't want to admit it, Doom would actually be a better alternative than the warmongers that controlled them now. Say what you would about his being a totalitarian dictator, the normal people on the streets of Victor's nation had a higher level of living that was the case before he took over.

"In part. I also want a trade agreement with you Potter, with your potions in mind." Doom added.

"So long as this Red Skull character is crushed, I'll agree to that," Harry said seriously. He had made time after first arriving in this world to do a brief overview on the history of this new world, and the name the Red Skull featured prominently in any book about WW2. The words 'atrocity', 'massacre', and 'horror' were always used in conjunction with those tales. "I don't doubt that other agencies in the world will be trying to do the same thing, but I can trust you to be more thorough than them, yes?"

"Of that you may be certain." Doom chuckled dryly, the noise sepulchral given his mask, as he nodded his head. Harry and Reed didn't realize it at that moment, but they had just handed all of the Eastern Bloc over to Doom to conquer as he rooted out the Red Skull and his terrorist group. That would cause problems down the line, but not right now. "With that agreed to, what exactly are you interested in in terms of the ship?"

"The various materials it's made of." Jean said promptly taking over the conversation. "As I said its weapons are interesting, but I bet we can do better, I know for a fact that we could easily exceed this ship's weapons range with gauss weaponry of some sort, and I've already thought of a few ways to create what they call PPCs, which a frigate like this doesn't carry. The shields are good, if down at present, and I'd also like to look into their space suits, which are light-years ahead of anything I've seen produced on Earth, almost up to the unstable molecule suits that the Fantastic Four use. Its engines too are extremely good, we'll want to look at them closely."

"That should be our first task then." Doom said thoughtfully. "I'll start with that."

"I brought up a computer system and a wireless router. We'll use these to input notes, and we can all look at them in real-time." Reed said, opening a small box that had been sitting on the floor next to him and handing out small PDAs. "If you have anything you need to share immediately, you can share it with everyone that way."

"Be careful though." Harry warned his face set seriously. "I have plans for this ship that include its engine actually continuing to work, so don't take it apart unless you can put it back together."

Jean flushed, knowing precisely what plans Harry had in mind, but her eyes also glinted eagerly. Storm too chuckled, tapping her friend's hand lightly.

"Is it just the three of us?" Doom asked his tone making it clear that was a good idea and that he would protest anyone else being brought in.

Harry and Jean exchanged a smile and a nod. "Yes it's just the three of you. Reed and Jean argued me out of the idea of bringing in other people for this just yet. I'll want to eventually bring in some actual ship designers, see what they can think up but for now that's not necessary. When I have my space based industry up and running I'll have to bring in other people to handle the design and abuse ships, but for now it's not necessary."

Alone, Jean couldn't possibly handle all the work on this ship in anything less than half a year. But with Doom and Reed also pitching in it wouldn't take them more than a few weeks to dissect everything aboard.

"Excellent." Doom said standing up. "In that case, I can begin immediately."

"If you do not mind, I would like to interview these prisoners of yours." Cynthia said standing up herself. "There are a few questions I have for them about how these Kree think and how that is different from how we humans do so, which you did not cover in your briefing Mr. Potter."

Her light tone of censure almost made Harry wince but he smiled nonetheless. Cynthia Von Doom was an interesting character, and he could tell where Victor got his attitude. "I will show you to them madam, we've kept them up here for now. We brought in food and other things of course, but we've had to deal with only a few issues there. The blue skinned ones have magical runic arrays on them to keep them from acting up now. None of them are willing to give their parole like the so-called half breeds."

"Interesting," Cynthia murmured, and then began to question him closely about his knowledge of runic arrays, as well as what language he used. With that the meeting broke up, though Doom made a point of remembering to come back later. Fire whiskey really was good stuff.

OOOOOOO

Over the next week, Jean worked with Doom and Reed to wring every bit of information they could from the Hellion. Harry, with some help from Jean and the Human Torch, took another asteroid, hollowing it out to create a second artificial habitat. Needless to say, it too went under several dozen spells designed to turn aside interest in it, not a full Fidelius, not yet, but enough to erase it from the minds of every astrologist even remotely interested in that particular asteroid. Several of them had conniptions about a mistake in their computers, blaming a glitch rather than their own senses, but Harry couldn't care less about that.

Creating the habitat in the asteroid hadn't been easy, but with their powers working in conjunction it had only taken a single day of (figuratively) back breaking work to create the bare habitat. Luckily the asteroids nearest earth were mostly composed of light silicate based rocks so it was relatively quick with Harry's magic, still hollowing it out had given Harry some ideas about mining for the future. After that, Reed provided some atmosphere renewers while Harry provided air, soil and everything else to make it livable. Once that was done, a project that took two solid days, the prisoners were moved into their temporary home.

All of them seemed to like it, the trees and nature being new and interesting to all of them, though the blue-skinned prisoners were still unwilling to give them any information freely. The others, with Harry having come up with a written agreement for them to emigrate to Earth after they had finished questioning them, were now much happier with their lot. On her twice daily visits Emma was now getting more and more information on the Kree society as a whole, and their history that she would pass on to Reed's friend as background.

The history was made of bits and pieces here and there, as if their history wasn't routinely taught, or, she reported after thinking about it, as if many of the details were being changed continually. Defeats and setbacks for example could be subtly changed to become 'tactical losses, but strategic victories' with ease. That kind of thing had happened in certain human regimes, it would easily be within the power of a military oligarchy like the Kree government.

Una and Mar'vell in particular were becoming more and more helpful and were not painting a pretty picture of Kree society. It was Mar'vell who finally revealed that the Supreme Intelligence was a supercomputer based around, or possibly even built of, the greatest brains of the Kree people, welded together into some kind of gestalt mind. It was a disturbing thought, one that worried Harry and Reed both immensely. For one thing, such a mind would be a dangerous opponent, but for another, it followed the lack of individual rights that seemed to be built into the society.

At the moment however, Harry couldn't spend too much time worrying about that, forced to spend quite a bit of time on the business side of things. Saab was now firmly under his control, and thanks to Harry and Jean conducting interviews via the new lie detecting arrays in Magical Minds headquarters (Harry had created illusions while the two of them interviewed dozens at once, none of them realizing they were speaking to an illusion) most of their design team had stayed on.

They were engineers pretty much in the mold that Jean and Harry were looking for, apolitical eggheads who couldn't care less about color, creed or whether a person had irritating or unusual powers or appearance. None of them complained about his policy towards hiring mutants, and forty mutants who had various physical deformities had cleared their screening of them and had the learning to join either the design team or Magical Minds in some capacity, sales for the most part.

All of the engineers salivated at the large-scale model of the hover tech that Harry was prepared to put into production. He had to squash a few of the Saab engineers hard at first to keep them from going off on tangents, but his goal of wanting a new ambulance that could cover distances quickly in the air, thus avoiding traffic and other obstacles, had ignited their imaginations, though most of them didn't seem to understand why he wasn't willing to sell the actual tech.

But that was all right, part and parcel of their shared worldview. None of these men would have been in their seats if they weren't trustworthy, but thanks to Jean's work on the hover tech and its battery, they also had a failsafe to keep someone from trying to figure it out. Several series of small explosive devices would destroy the hover engine if someone tried to remove it from the ambulance once it was installed. Other than that though, he left that project to the engineers, and moved on to other things.

Harry met with the King once more to hammer out an agreement with him and his Prime Minister for updating their current energy grid. The deal hammered out, with Emma coaching Harry via their mental link, was a damn good one for both sides. Britain would buy the generator for the price of four of the old units but get the new generators installed free of charge and Harry's new company would get two years free of any taxation. This would become three if they could start installation on a test area, the city of Devonshire, within the next month. That city's generators were due for an upgrade anyway.

The wizard estimated that once they actually began to bring the pieces together it would only take a few days to put the generators together and then emplace them, so a month was being very generous. Missus Thatcher just didn't seem to understand quite yet the implications of Harry's use of magic. With magic doing two-thirds of the job, only the last minute construction occurred in anything she would recognize as a normal fashion, the work for each of the generators would go through quite quickly.

After discussing it with Emma, they decided not to patent the actual arc itself, only their design for the generator. That way, Tony would be able to create his own though Harry doubted it would be nearly as efficient as theirs since Stark wouldn't have access to Orihalcum. That would probably irritate Tony, but Harry already had his response to that in place. "Then you should have patented it yourself you arrogant sod."

Setting up the distribution for the Orihalcum parts for the generators was tougher than anything else, but thanks to Jean's previous aid in enlarging the magical metal factory and his work on the prisoners temporary domicile (which Harry had plans for) he had known how to do it again. Now that area of the asteroid was almost half again the size of the rest of High Note. After that Harry just had to enlarge a bit more of its interior devices, allowing them to create more of the magically-infused metal at larger sizes and of course reinforce the protections on the area. He still didn't want anyone else in there. Even when the runic array was inactive Fiendfyre was not anything anyone in their right mind wanted to mess with.

After five 24-hour days Harry was finally able to slow down again. The first day of his slow period Harry joined Melody, Illyana and the other children for breakfast for the first time that week. Melody greeted him with a hug and a wide smile, but Harry grimaced a little internally when he returned the hug. He had hoped not to become some kind of absentee parent, but the past few days there'd just been so many things going on. Harry resolved to spend as much time as he could with all the kids for the next few days, since the only things he had planned was to take Ororo out on a date, speak to Gaea, and speak to this goddess that had contacted Dani. He was not looking forward to the meeting for many reasons, but he had agreed to it and would go through with it.

With that in mind he moved over to Ms. Brown and asked her if the kids could be let out of lessons for the next few days. The older woman frowned but eventually nodded. "I suppose so, that'll let me look over some of the CVs of the new teachers that might be joining us in the next few weeks." There was still a month and a half to go before the start of the official school year and while they had already begun to bring in students, they hadn't found more staff just yet. It was certainly necessary, the names in the book were piling up, and Harry wanted to start bringing in more kids who might be in danger in the future.

One of the new students was Douglas Ramsey. His father had switched jobs, becoming the new American ambassador to the UK, and he was the first student to actually have no family issues as well as the first commuting student. He tested out at the junior high-school level, which was rather irritating considering that there was no more room for Douglas over at the mansion.

Testing on Douglas' powers was still going ahead, with Dr. Druid taking over that project for now. His magical powers had finally started to return to him after the horrific injuries he had taken plus the strain of creating his magical hand after his battle with Selene.

"Excellent." Harry said smiling. "In that case, I think we're going to have a little pickup football game." For most of the rest of the day Harry spent time with the kids, along with Piotr and a few of the other team members. When he had heard that the youngsters had been given the days off of learning, Shiang Chi had decided to allow the same for the team.

That was why in the midafternoon Harry found himself standing neck deep in the water of the lake, while the rest of the teams began to fire conjured water pistols at him. The kids seemed to enjoy them, but Harry preferred using his hands to send waves of water at them.

Of course in that area Piotr had the advantage. He proved this by suddenly somersaulting through the air above Harry, then changing into his metal form before impacting the water sending water everywhere and almost drowning a few of the kids with the waves.

Harry laughed, then pulled Piotr under the water with a spell before flinging him out of the waves to land on the shoreline with an 'oof' of displaced air. "No powers we said, but since you broke the accord first…" With that Harry began to point at the kids one after another, shooting out little water jets at them from his fingers.

The shrieks continued for some time, but eventually they became a little too cold when the sun began to set. Harry hit them all with warming charms, then ushered them out of the water and up to the castle.

He carefully did not note that Amara and Piotr along with Dani for some reason stayed out, and began to walk around the edge of the lake away from the Castle. Whatever was going on there was none of his business whatsoever. So long as all of them were happy and it didn't affect the team's ability to work together, he would continue to maintain his ignorance.

Amara and Piotr had decided to try dating, while Dani was simply asking them some questions about relationships in general from a more normal perspective. The fact that she was interested in Piotr was slightly obvious to Amara, but Danielle wasn't the kind of girl who would try to poach, so she was happy enough with her becoming closer to both of them, since she knew that the pickings here were rather low. Nikolai wasn't the type of boy to have an actual relationship with, a one night stand sure, but not a relationship. Illyich was a little too much of a horny cat, and the nickname that Paige had given the other Russian teen 'Emo MC-Broody' was descriptive.

The other teens, the ones Ororo had rescued were already pretty much a pair. While Shiang Chi was within the range of dateable age, there was no chance of him dating any of his students. Paige had found that out a few days ago when she had tried to flirt with him after one of their exercises, and had not only been ignored but talked to later about the inappropriateness of it. Douglas Ramsay seemed a nice boy, but a little too much of a boy for Dani's taste.

Harry followed the kids inside, and after seeing them safely to their own bath, something he and the house-elves had installed several weeks ago in the student's tower, he went to see Ororo and Gaea up in the headmaster's tower. When he walked in Ororo was in a trance, her hands outstretched, a conjuration of some kind growing between them. It flickered in and out, as if Ororo was trying to design it as she created it out of thin air, each flicker showing a more intricate version of some kind of sculpture. It showed her control and her awareness, which Harry was happy to see.

Gaea looked up as he entered, smiling faintly. "She's nearly done for the day. Tomorrow we'll start to concentrate on building her concentration in combat situations. The spells I've taught her will only be useful if Ororo is able to use them in combat. She can't always rely on her teammates to protect her or draw the enemies' attention away in battle."

Harry nodded agreement, looking at the goddess thoughtfully. She appeared as always to be in her mid-thirties, with a full, luscious figure, wearing homespun clothing that wouldn't be out of place in the Middle Ages on a well off farmwife, the entirety looking like a perfect example of motherhood, which made a lot of sense since she was the original mother in many ways. She always did, though her features, hair color and ethnicity changes on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Harry hoped she agreed to his and Stephen's proposal. "When you're done training Ororo for the day, can you stay around, I want to speak to you about something?"

"Certainly," Gaea replied, cocking her head as she looked at him thoughtfully wondering what Harry wanted from her.

After Ororo finished her last Harry ushered both of them down to the Room of Requirement, where he did the usual three paces before entering, showing Ororo a room she hadn't seen before. Laid out on the floor was a massive mathematical equation, laid out like a spiral. In the center of the spiral was what looked like some kind of ward scheme. It wasn't complex by any means, but it was immensely powerful looking, and even from the moment they walked in both Ororo and Gaea could tell its purpose.

"Anti-demonic?" Gaea asked moving over to the wards, looking at them critically. "There are some bits here I haven't seen before, but the general gist is clear enough."

"Stephen and I have been working on this for a while." Harry began, walking forward ushering Ororo inside. He had hoped that Jean would be here for this as well, but had decided that this wasn't something that would particularly interest her. Yes Jean hated demons, yes she would see the point, but she wasn't a magical, and wouldn't have anything to contribute to the discussion. What was more, he didn't want to take her away from her work up on Hellion.

As the two women studied the equations laid out everywhere as well as the warding scheme itself Harry began his sales pitch. "Much of my original power was taken from others, those I had defeated in magical combat and then cast a specific spell on, draining them of their magic when magic itself determined the rightness of my cause."

That was what Pridea Belica to basically boiled down to, asking magic itself for her ruling. Or at least that was how it worked in his old dimension. Here his mutant powers allowed him to take magic from others, it became his. "Magic that is conquered and taken can be used, changed in a fashion made more malleable."

"I know that." Gaea said looking up at him after reading a few of the lines of mathematical formula, getting a glimpse of where this conversation was going. "I well remember what happened after you drained the yellow one, you thrust your magic into me."

Somehow the way she said that made Harry flush and Ororo chuckle. Gaea went on, a small smirk on her face. "I can still feel your magic swirling around me, it's so amazingly potent, much more potent than my own."

Harry coughed uncomfortably. "Yes well, this is the arithmantic work showing a spell to summon up that magic then bind it into this ward scheme, which will cover the entire world."

Gaea simply nodded, having already deduced that while Ororo gasped looking over at him in shock. She had long wondered what he and Stephen were working on but this was beyond what she had expected. "What would the point of this be?"

"This runic array will keep out anyone trying to appear on Earth from the lower dimensions regardless of their powers. In fact the harder you hit it, the more power you give it. That was a bitch to add in, but Stephen was able to figure it out." Harry shook his head in admiration. He had never really been good at formal arithmency, he was much more of a 'seat of your pants' kind of spell caster, and that was before learning how to use pure magic without the molding effect of spells. Stephen however was very much more in the Hermione mold. Not only had he thought up that added bit, he had worked out how to improve it.

"How many dimensions are we talking about here?" Gaea asked intently.

"The lowest dimensions up to basically the middle ground. I wouldn't be able to stop the Asgardians say or possibly an Elder God unless one had a more demonic portfolio than normal, but Demon Lords and anything similar it would stop cold."

"How long would it take to activate, would it activate all at once or over time? And why are you showing this to me in the first place? That magic is yours still even if it is now in me."

Again Harry flushed a little at her tone, and Ororo giggled, a lovely sound to his ears every time he heard it. "Yes, well in any event, we need your cooperation and approval to make this work. After all that magic might be mine, but I can't access it while it is in the ley lines. You'll have to push it out to where I can call upon it, while Stephen and I will be writing out the arrays on the ground above them where the ley lines come closest to the surface." That would be a trial, since some of those places would be within cities under buildings and other things, but it was still doable.

Gaea frowned, thinking hard. Some of these equations she understood, some of them she didn't and she didn't like that. This was after all her body they were talking about. It could be as simple as covering her with some armor, but what if it was chains instead? Gaea trusted Harry, and she of course trusted Ororo's judgment of him, but what if someone else could turn this to other purposes? She said so aloud.

Harry reassured her that that was impossible, it was based off the magic he had taken from the yellow one, no one else could use that.

But Gaea was still uncertain. "I cannot give you an answer yes or no at this point, I simply don't know enough about the magic in use here." Runes had never been an area she delved into, nor wards and she had certainly never dealt with magic taken in battle on this large a scale.

Having anticipated that Harry simply nodded. He sent one of the house elves to grab some books, as well as several dozen sheets of paper covered with notes handing them over to Gaea to look through.

Smiling at his thoughtfulness Gaea nodded. "I will look over these and get back to you." Despite being a goddess, her ability to take in new knowledge wasn't actually that much faster than a mortals. Learning and the ability to continue to evolve in new and interesting ways was one of the things that set humans and other mortals apart from gods. A god could be in two places at once, concentrate on hundreds of things at once in different places but actually taking in new knowledge wouldn't be that much quicker than a human's regardless.

Harry nodded again, and Gaea slowly disappeared, taking the books and notes with her. He turned to Ororo smiling faintly. "So, I was hoping to spend time with the kids later tonight maybe watch a movie, but tomorrow night, would you like to go on a date with me?"

Ororo laughed, shaking her head in amusement. "Do you really have to ask, Harry?"

OOOOOOO

Harry was woken up rather rudely the next morning, when Melody and Illyana entered the room and tossed paint filled balloons on him and his bedmates. The evening before, all four of them had been able to get free from their various duties to spend the night together, yet were now facing an unexpected consequence of that. Emma gasped in anger as the first volley of balloons smacked into them, but by the time the second was in the air Harry had formed a shield over the bed.

"I'm wondering if we should get that gargoyle you mentioned a time or two Harry, could certainly keep out the pranksters." Jean said laughing and looking down at herself. She had been splattered by one of the paint bombs, and now looked rather patriotic with her red hair, white negligee and the blue of the paint splashed all over her.

Emma growled, fighting with herself not to reach out with her telepathy to send some pain thoughts to the little monsters. "This is why I don't like kids." she growled.

Beside her Harry laughed, watching the kids all race away seeing that he had already put up a shield against them. "Now, now," he said, flicking his hand over all three of them.

Ororo had been looking down in amusement at the green all over her naked body, and Harry had to fight himself from offering to lick it off. The paint suddenly flew into the air from their bodies, coagulating into a single ball above his head. With another thought he sent it racing after the kids. Then he added an engorgement charm to it before it was out of sight down the stairwell.

Emma was still grumpy, not being really able to wake up without her coffee, though the manner of this wake-up was such that even with coffee she wouldn't have been willing to face it. Still, she took a moment to kiss each of them languidly, enjoying the jolt of passion she felt as her hands trailed down Ororo's bare back to her magnificent rear. And when Jean and her breasts pressed together in such a manner that Harry, waiting his turn, had to rearrange himself a bit. Yet, she most enjoyed grinding against his waist before finally standing up, grinning wickedly at the erection she had just given him. "I have to go, I might be able to stop in tomorrow for a time, but I don't know just yet."

"Will you be free next weekend?" Harry asked. He looked over at Jean. "I was thinking the four of us could spend time together before the two of us take our little cruise?"

"That's fine." Jean said smiling, which caused Harry to smile at her, kissing her on a cheek while the other ladies answered in the affirmative. While Jean wanted Harry's attention on her their first time going all the way she had no problem spending time with the others before that. Frankly, all that she felt was irritation at how long it had taken. She'd been ready for this weeks ago, she desperately wanted to feel what Ororo felt, what gave her that small smile of hers all the time, that sense of walking on air. Jean wanted very, very much to take that final step with Harry.

Ororo must've sensed that because the moment Emma left to have a shower she turned to Jean. "Jean, if you don't wish to put it off until everything is perfect, then you can tell Harry that you know."

"Yeah I know, but this is going to be fantastic in any event, and if he wants to put the two of us going all the way off until next week, I can deal with it. I do after all want my first time to be romantic and his plan to take the Hellion out into space is about the most romantic and amazingly interesting thing I can think of."

"If you're sure?" Ororo said pulling her into a hug and kissing her on the cheek.

"I'm sure," Jean replied. "Besides, by that time I might be able to take a break from my work up on the Hellion. Doom and Reed are helping out as much as they can, but Reed wants to return to his own projects, and he's been called away twice since we began on this by 'Fantastic Four issues'." She held up her hands to make quotation marks there, shaking her head. "I have to say I'm beginning to be a firm believer in the spandex dilemma."

"And Doom has been called away practically every day. I'm not certain why, something about the issues building on his country's borders. One of them I know was completely unconnected with the Red Skull though, one of the local bully boys was getting big headed, and tried to take out a shipment of something to one of the towns on his country's borders."

"I saw that on the news the other morning." Ororo replied. "He annexed a bit of Uzbekistan didn't he?"

"Something like that, though I don't know if it'll stick. There've already been mutterings on the international scene, but if the Fantastic Four isn't interested enough to go in against Doom, the UN's ability to combat him is very limited."

She had shared that with Harry, and he was beginning to realize that the new agreement with Doom was quite a bit broader in scope than the first, and not nearly so well worded. So long as Doom was acting against the Red Skull and confined his actions to the nations around his own, Harry and the FF couldn't act against him whatever his methods without breaking that agreement. Since Harry had only just taken the first consignment of five construction bots from Doom he knew exactly how important that deal was for his space-borne ambitions.

Naturally of course, Doom was going to take advantage of this carte blanche, but so long as he didn't murder whole villages wholesale to prove he could, Harry wouldn't move against him. That probably meant Latveria was going to grow to three or four times its current size in the next few months, but, well, there were dictators and then there were dictators. The citizens under Victor's rule actually had a far better life than those under any of the other local 'governments'.

Ororo suspected she knew the reason why Doom was playing so nice of late, and it had everything to do with Cynthia, Victor's mother. It was very easy for people to fall into roles in life, especially when you only had yourself to answer to. But Cynthia did not see her son as a villain or a dictator, no she saw him as more, not quite as a hero, but most definitely as a just king. Ororo felt that Victor Von Doom had found he wanted to live up to those expectations. This of course would not change his ambitions, but perhaps the way he went about them would.

Ororo nodded, and the two of them stretched in bed before getting out to join Emma in the shower. And if that took somewhat longer than Emma had expected it to, she certainly wasn't going to be complaining.

OOOOOOO

That evening Harry and Ororo left the castle flying into the evening sky. They flew on at supersonic speeds, playing a game of tag occasionally, but other times simply taking in the magnificent vista below them, until they landed in Athens. Harry had booked them a reservation in one of the local five star restaurants.

They talked on and off during the meal about both work and plans for the future, both personal and non-. It surprised Harry how far along Ororo was in her education with Gaea, and Ororo nodded eagerly at the idea of taking lessons from him at the end of that, but cautioned Harry that she would want to spend time with Kitty teaching her as well. "I realize that in many ways she's been my apprentice almost since the day we met, but I would like to give her some magical knowledge of her own, if for no other reason than self-defense."

Harry nodded grimly at that. There had been three attacks on mutants in the states yesterday, all of them going off at the same time which showed a dismaying amount of organization. One of them was pure Friends of Humanity, and Scott and the other X-Men had hammered that one, but the other two while smaller had been bloodier. One of the mutants threatened had been lynched in the South, and the demonstration in New Orleans had run into the local thieves guild, whose members included a few mutants. That had turned violent on both sides, though luckily it hadn't evolved into any deaths.

Worse, there'd been several such riots in China, one in Japan, and more than a few in the Middle East. Africa and Europe however, seemed to be following the UK's stance thankfully, clamping down hard on any violence. They were desperate for Harry's potions, and more than a few hospitals were now pressuring their governments to agree to whatever concessions Harry wanted in that area.

On the one hand it was good to see humans standing up for mutants, even if they were part of the thieves guild, but on the other hand the level of violence was wrong. It had come out of nowhere, and it almost pointed to someone else stirring things up on both sides. Harry was concerned about that possibility, and broached that thought now and Ororo nodded slightly. "I'd wondered something along those lines myself. I'd hoped I was simply jumping at shadows. Still if you see a pattern there, there might be something actually to see in the first place."

"It wasn't me who came up with it actually. Dennis reported spotting signs of something along those lines a few weeks ago, though when he hunted his leads down it was a false alarm. I'm beginning to think that it wasn't though, and I've asked him to follow it up." Harry murmured, leaning back in sipping at his Merlot thoughtfully.

"I intend to use Betsy to start sifting through the information with Dennis once she joins us. Her work on Miss Steed isn't going very well, Jean is thinking of asking Charles to lend his aid with her once he's satisfied with the young Vietnamese girl's progress."

His mouth tightened dangerously, and magic flickered in his eyes for a moment. "He's told me that even in public she still flinches whenever a man is within a few feet of her, and has woken up several times with nightmares despite Charles doing his best to dampen them out."

Ororo nodded, then changed the subject. From there she took command of the night, and they flew down to Cairo from Athens. She showed Harry some of where her childhood had been, going into more details then she had shared previously. Harry responded in the same manner, going into detail on his first few adventures with magic, and his issues with Snape.

From there Ororo moved out into the savanna with Harry following, flying almost nape of the earth as they went, with Ororo telling him about this or that spot, though she steered clear of the area where she had previously been worshiped by the tribesmen living there.

From the savanna they entered a jungle, with Ororo still leading the way. Harry wondered where they were going, and was about to voice the question when they arrived. The jungle canopy below them changed, becoming dotted with large stone collations, a city buried under the jungle's growth. Ororo touched down, looking around. Harry joined her, surreptitiously casting a spell on both of them to keep away flies and other bugs. "Where exactly are we?"

"The goddess mentioned this place to me, it was apparently the capital city of my people's kingdom, the kingdom my ancestors ruled as sorceress queens. I wanted to see it, both because it is part of my heritage, and because it would remind me of the immutability of the passing of time."

"Ah, a 'you too are human' sort of thing?" Harry said linking his arm with hers as they continued to walk down what had been a street in the distant past.

"Yes," she responded nodding her head, leaning against him for a moment. "I'd like to think that what we are doing, that what we are in the process of building will last forever, but nothing lasts forever. This place is proof of that."

"I wouldn't say that." Harry murmured shaking his head, seeing this as the perfect moment to bring up a topic he had wanted to broach for some time. "Wizards can live for a very long time. Depending on how powerful they are, and whatever your ancestors might have been, your magical core is now part of you like that of a wizard or witch. Sorcerers and others, those who have initially no magical potential but later grow it might not be as connected to their magic as wizards are, but even they live for a long time. And I really doubt that the Phoenix will allow her avatar to die of old age at any point in the near future."

Ororo looked at him in surprise. "How long do you think you would live? How long do you think I might live?"

"I don't know, your magical core is still growing. Mine is stable for now, but I could still take in more magic slowly if I wanted to. In my old dimension it was not unheard of for a wizard or witch to live to be 260 or so. It was one of the reasons why their society was so slow to change. Dumbledore was an old man by the time I knew him, pushing 215, but he still had as much energy as a 40-year-old despite his best efforts to hide it. I am many, many times more powerful than he was and by this point so are you."

"I see." Ororo murmured, shaking her head at the sheer enormity of the bombshell that Harry had just let drop. There were implications there she wanted to think about, but right now she simply nodded taking it in and moving on.

Their attention was arrested by the image of someone's face in the carved stonework of the wall they were passing. Harry held his magical light closer, whistling silently. "The hair looks quite a bit like yours, and I guess the blue eyes are a family thing."

Ororo nodded, reaching out a gentle hand to touch the face of the other woman. Her face was much more angular than Ororo's, and the jewelry shown on it was something that she would never wear, far too ostentatious, as were the large blue glass balls set into the eyes. Still, it was obviously the face of one of her ancestors. "If you say anything about this idea of my face being preserved for all time or anything of that nature Harry I will smack you." She said, turning away.

"The only way I would put your face in stone would be as some kind of prank. A painting maybe, of all of us together might be a nice idea, but not anything more."

Ororo sighed faintly looking around. "I would rather like to come back here and explore, but during the day. For now, I'm done here."

Harry nodded, gathering Ororo into his arms and kissing her tenderly. They both closed their eyes reveling in the kiss and when Ororo opened her eyes they were back in Hogwarts in the headmaster's quarters. She smiled, leaning away from Harry just slightly to nuzzle his neck while Harry's hands began to work at the buttons holding her dress closed.

A moment later she stood back, stepping out of her dress to stand there in all her naked glory, and Harry breathed in faintly, staring at her in awed wonder. "You are so beautiful," he said in a throaty sort of voice leaning in to kiss her again. "So beautiful, inside and out."

Ororo smiled, even as her body began to respond. "As are you my love." She stepped back to the bed laying down on it while pulling Harry on top of her.

If they had stayed a moment longer in the city of Ororo's ancestors, they would have noticed the blue eyes of the carving they had been looking at suddenly lighting up for a moment before fading back to blue. Elsewhere in the city similar lights began to appear in other faces carved in the stone wall of the largest house, before they too faded.

OOOOOOO

The next morning Ororo slept in. Emma and Jean spent time together at Emma's mansion, it being so early the two teens weren't up and about. Harry however woke up early, disengaged himself from Ororo with quite a lot of regret, then dressed. Yesterday had been a necessary battery recharging day, but now he had one more issue he had to deal with before the next crisis fell on them.

After calling ahead, Harry teleported into that pocket dimension waiting room of Stephen Strange. Soon Clea had opened the door, greeting him warmly. "Harry, how are you doing?"

"Oh the usual, too busy by half with far too many projects to concentrate on. And yourself?" Harry asked, moving through the door into the much more normal seeming house of the Sorcerer Supreme.

"We are well, Wanda's education is proceeding apace in magic, and Stephen and I have agreed she will be ready to go to school this coming year. Her magical and emotional control have improved enough that we are willing to let her interact with the rest of the world. I understand Stephen has already discussed this with Charles and she is enrolled in Bayville High, odd names humans use sometimes. Having someone else around with similar issues may be an aid."

Harry nodded, not having heard that before, but frankly much more interested in what he had come here to ask Stephen about. Charles and the X-men had proven to be a decent support before, he would trust them to do the same for Wanda. Moments later, Clea showed him into Stephen's library, or rather one of them, the one that normal visitors were allowed to see.

"Ah, Harry, right on time." Stephen looked up at him, his eyes serious for a moment. "Unfortunately, I have nothing to report about that research project you gave me."

"Nothing?" Harry asked sharply.

"Nothing I could trust about their magic or even the Asgardians, the Vanir or the Æsir who were apparently two distinct groups before a war occurred between them, themselves." Stephen replied sadly, but a certain set in his brow warned Harry he didn't like the sharpness of Harry's tone.

In response Harry nodded conciliatorily and Stephen went on with a nod. "Here we are running into the concerted effort of the Christian missionaries to erase all signs of the original religion of the area, they saw it as simple paganism. I've found some examples of faith based magic being used, though nothing about even the effect they created, and some bits and pieces. Most of those pieces however are seen as mere myths and legends rather than fact."

"And this research includes going into the tomes left by your predecessors?"

"There is some talk of a battle between pantheons decades before the coming of Christianity to that area of the world, but that is all. Nothing about the magics of the Asgardians, nor their runes." Harry could tell Stephen was not happy about what he said.

Harry for his part was not happy at all. Going to meet a self-purported goddess, and Harry had yet to see anything that indicated the Asgardians were not the gods from the Norse faith, with so little known about her abilities or attitude was not pleasant. But worse was… "This is beginning to look a little too deliberate to me, though I didn't get any impression about that from Balder."

Stephen shrugged. "I would concur, but none of my research has shown anything. I could use the Eye of Agamotto to scry out information, but that won't give me any background about the Asgardians as a whole, which is what you want."

"No need for that I suppose. Can I look at the notes you've compiled?" Stephen nodded, and handed Harry a few pages worth of notes that the man had compiled researching into the Asgardians. Most of it, as he had said was conjecture and myth, but it was better than nothing.

When he left Harry was slightly more informed on the Asgardians, but not nearly as much as he had hoped, and nothing whatsoever about their type of magic. Still, he could no longer put off this meeting. Apparating back to Hogwarts he then moved outside the castles wards. Looking at the small quartz crystal that Danielle has given him from Hel, he broke it in half as instructed.

A second later Harry felt a magical tug on his body then Harry was standing in what looked like an ancient hall of some kind. It was quite large and well lit by several torches but the shadows seemed deeper than they should be given the lighting. There were also several windows but the sky outside was misty and extremely cold looking. There were no tapestries or wall hangings, and some of the stone of the walls and ceiling looked… odd, too white to be natural. For some reason there was a small well set into the floor in one corner. For some reason Harry was wary of the water, its color and the slowness of its movements bothering him.

He continued to look around for a moment then a voice interrupted his perusal. "I am not used to being kept waiting, most particularly by a mortal, Harry Potter."

Harry looked towards the voice, and saw a raised dais at the end of the hall, seemingly formed out of an extrusion from the floor. The throne sitting on it was carved from the same rock, but it had been embedded with several different colors of jewels, red, black and orange gems flickering in the light of the nearest torches, flickering in the wind. Harry wondered idly where the wind was coming from since the windows seemed to all have glass in them keeping out the breeze, but he shook off his curiosity to look at the woman who had spoken.

She was very definitely a woman, every square inch of her was devoted to this simple statement. The red armor she was wearing didn't so much cover her form as accent it, and it looked about as useful in actual combat as a paper shield. Her hair was a lustrous black that seemed to glow slightly in the light of the cavern, and what could be seen of her face was gorgeous, with a mask covering her eyes and upper face. Her lips were twisted into a scowl at the moment, but they looked sensual and full, with a black lipstick covering them.

"I am unused to being called for meetings with ancient gods or goddesses myself." Harry replied blandly, stepping towards her. "You are not as I pictured you, going from the legends about you at any rate."

"Every girl is required to have at least one makeover in their lives Mr. Potter." The woman laughed throatily staring down at him. Despite having been rather angry with him at first, being in Harry's presence was rather… intoxicating. Mostly because of the magic he was putting off in waves, he was a rather handsome fellow but that wouldn't be enough on its own, there was something else. Something not magical or even inherent in Harrys physical body, but a sense of something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Potential perhaps? She didn't know what it was, but she liked it.

With a wave of her fingers through the air her form suddenly shifted, becoming still gorgeous on one half of her body, but dead and decaying on the other. "Perhaps I should look like this you think?" Hela said then banished it with a snarl. "You could do that too you know, change your physical being like that. You could've been a god, but you turned it down. How much did that tempt you?"

"How do you know about that?" Harry said suddenly worried.

Hela laughed, a melodic sound but there seemed to be something inside it, some kind of echo or timbre that set Harry's hackles to rising. "I've watched you Mr. Potter, those magnificent wards might keep out my physical form and even all direct magics but I can still use my scrying bowl to see through them. I saw the physical manifestation of your mental battle with the yellow one, and saw you feed the excess power into Gaea. Answer me, how tempted were you?"

"Not so much tempted as terrified." Harry replied honestly. "I never wanted that much power, I never wanted to be a god, and that was before meeting Death for the first time or even the second time and figuring out how much paperwork I'd have to deal with. As a mortal, I am much more free to act than any god would be."

"Too true." Hela said grinding her teeth a little at the amount of limitations that she faced acting at all outside Hel. She crossed her legs, smiling internally as Harry's eyes flicked downwards for a millisecond to catch the movement before flicking back up to her face. "Still, with the power you have, you have many of the advantages of godhood, including long life. Have you considered what that might mean for your own entanglements?"

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Get to the point my lady, you did not ask me to come here to merely bandy words with me."

"I did not ask to speak to you." Hela shot back, her tone suddenly frosty. "If you were any other mortal I would strip your soul from your body for that bit of cheek. I do not ask to speak to anyone, I summon and they obey. I am the Queen of Hel, the Vanir goddess of death. This is my realm you are in Mr. Potter, I would ask you to curb your insolence, lest I decide to keep you here and teach you some manners."

Harry's eyebrow rose, and the magical miasma pouring off him began to be a flood as he tensed ready and waiting for action. After a moment however Hela smiled. "Yet even now you show no fear. Such courage would have served you well as a Viking, though of course none of them would be so stupid as to not fear me in my own realm."

"I am not a Viking." Harry said simply, staring up at her. "While I am more than willing to talk to you Hela, I will talk to you as an equal not as some kind of worshiper or supplicant."

Hela's eyes flashed, but whether with anger or some other emotion Harry couldn't say. She then began to laugh, and this time it sounded much more real. After a moment she shook her head. "It has been a long time since any but dear 'Grandfather' Odin," She nearly spat that word. "would speak to me like that. You truly are a man from a different world Harry Potter, but very well. I was simply asking because it fascinated me that you might have been a god, and that you love two mortal women despite knowing you will outlive them, that is all."

Harry smiled internally. It seemed Hela hadn't made the connection between magic and long lifespans just yet. Yet inwardly he also made a note, seeing as according to the myths, Odin should have been her uncle rather than grandfather. A small, inconsequential change, but one more added to the small yet growing pile of inconsistencies. "I might not be together with them forever, but our time with one another will be sweet nonetheless. However long I can expect to live, I still think like a human, day by day and week by week."

"Well answered." Hela said nodding. "And there is something to be said for your mortal lives. It gives you such urgency to get things done. Speaking of which before we get to the main reason why I wished to speak to you, the young girl I asked to hand you that stone, Danielle. There is something odd about her, something of the Æsir, something I can't see."

Hela's tone made it clear how much she didn't like that. "I would ask you to watch her closely, I cannot say why but something about her tells me that Moonstar will be important."

Harry's eyebrows rose once more, wondering what the heck that was about. Dani hadn't shown signs of magic just yet, though since she hadn't been with them for a month yet that might not mean much. Kitty didn't start to show signs of magical potential until just a few weeks ago after all, while at the other end of the spectrum Illyana showed magical potential before she even arrived in Hogwarts. "I can agree to that. Now, the real reason why you wished to talk to me?"

"I am not pleased with being a messenger for anyone else, but my lady Death is such that I do this gladly." Hela replied, a slight note of veneration in her tone. She waved a hand, and out from the stalagmites behind her throne came a large globe of Earth. It was made out of different precious metals, and on its surface glowed several points like small rubies.

"Because of her position Lady Death cannot act on her own no matter what she might wish. But there are some that infuriate her. Any being that takes souls from her falls under that heading, and the Demon Lord Mephisto was one such, bargaining with lives and souls that Death should have returned to the wheel. As such, she decided to reward you with this." One well-manicured nail tapped the globe as it hovered in the air next to her. "She noticed that you dislike demons, and their uses in the past have angered her enough for her to wish to give assistance to you."

"And this is?" Harry asked looking at the globe closely stepping forward. Hela surreptitiously moved the globe back slightly, causing Harry to move forward almost within touching distance. With that, she moved it into his arms while she answered his question.

"It is supposed to show you demonic influence in the world." she said nodding her head at the globe. "It will update itself, so long as it has a ready supply of magic nearby."

"Very interesting." Harry said, looking at the globe now with interest. In particular he looked at Japan, which was the headquarters of the Hand, and noticed a red icon there indicating that, or something similar. "Very interesting indeed." While on the surface Harry was still calm in inside he was doing cartwheels and dancing around a jig. He loathed demons, and killing every single one of the things would please him no end.

"Take it with my blessing," Hela said, reaching forward to stroke his chin and turn his eyes up towards her. "But do remember what I said, your girlfriends will fade away and die long before you do. Perhaps you should look elsewhere for more permanent and equal companions."

"I will bear that in mind." Harry said, stepping back slightly from where she'd touched him. "Am I free to go?"

Hela was tempted to say no and see what would happen, it wasn't often that someone entered her realm and was allowed to leave it at all, let alone someone who had been insolent to her. She wasn't like that Grecian moron Hades, those souls who entered her realm, never left it.

Yet Hela knew that Harry might well be able to break through anything she put up in any event. Best not to waste the resources, time or goodwill she might have earned.

With a wave of her hand Harry was once more banished back to where he had been standing when he broke the quartz crystal, leaving Hela alone for a moment.

Harry Potter was even more fascinating in person, but after mature reflection Hela decided to take a wait-and-see attitude for a time. He intrigued her yet in the end, she was a goddess. She could not simply set aside her pride to share a man's affections with another woman, whatever her idle thoughts on the matter. She was not that slut Aphrodite, nor was she Greek. She was of the Vanir and she would not share. Yet for all the strength she tried to put into that thought, Hela could not totally banish the idea, nor the other emotion that came with it: jealousy.

OOOOOOO

Harry immediately moved under the Hogwarts wards again, then went in search for Ororo. By this point she had woken up and was once more learning from Gaea, which suited Harry very well. "Ladies." he said, coming into the headmaster's quarters.

"If you're here to ask whether or not I've made a decision Mr. Potter, the answer is no not yet." said the goddess. "I am not very mathematically inclined in the first place, and it will take me some time to go over the information you gave me." Moreover, she wished to get a third opinion, but was uncertain who to speak to about it.

Harry shook his head. "I'm not here to ask you about that, I'm here about this." With that he placed the large globe down in front of the two of them. "This is apparently a gift passed on to me from death, by lady Hela which shows where demonic influence is occurring."

Gaea's eyes narrowed at the mention of Hela. She knew what was going on with the Asgardians, but she had no wish to tangle with Those Who Watch From Above in Shadow. Still, Hela was one of the three Asgardians who could see the prison they were in if she could start to see the bars in the first place. "If Hela said that this came from Death, then it was the truth. Of all the aspects of death, Hela is most definitely the most certain and devoted. She cannot be bought, gamed, stayed, coerced or tricked. If Death says to her to pass something on she will do it. Nor will she try to impose any tricks or anything of that nature. She takes her duties very seriously."

"That was the impression I got between, well her coming on to me and her haughty, arrogant nature." Harry scratched his chin bemusedly. "Still if this is what it appears to be, it's a major boon to us. One I think we need to act upon as soon as possible. So love, want to go on a bug hunt?"

"Certainly." Ororo said that her eyes narrowed. "Right after you tell me how this Hela woman was flirting with you."

Harry gulped a little but answered gamely. After all, it wasn't his fault was it?

OOOOOOO

Because the biggest concentration of demonic activity was centered in Japan Harry took a few days to plan it out. During that time Jean thankfully finished most of the work she could do on the Hellion, except for a few bits here and there that she was going to work on more leisurely. She slept most of a day after finishing, something, Jean confided to Harry, that Reed and Doom were both doing at the same time. Besides what they had shared via the network, what Doom got out of it she didn't know, though he spent a lot of time investigating the different metals that made up the ship. Doom had surprisingly entered the spirit of cooperation and he and Reed were actually civil to one another, wonder of wonders.

Nonetheless, that meant that the entire team was present including the newest addition, Psylocke. Betsy had finally decided to throw in the towel, not being able to break Emma Steed out of her coma. That would take a much more subtle, much more powerful telepath than her, since even with Jean's help they could barely find out that her psyche was still in there somewhere.

Betsy had since proven to Shiang-Chi's satisfaction that she was a capable hand to hand combatant, thanks to previous training from her brother, then even more after Mojo had kidnapped her. After that, she had been fitted out with a suit, a skintight dark purple and black suit of unstable molecules much like the one Amara wore, with a chest plate of Orihalcum.

Right now they were all listening as Dennis gave them an overview of Japan. "Japan is a very strange place for those who do not understand the Japanese way of thinking. It is all about the community, all about seeming, getting along in public. I personally never worked in Japan, but I know a lot about the Orient and about how they think. We can't just go in there guns blazing, because even if we do find demonic influence and expose it in as wide a manner as possible we'll still be seen as outsiders and just as much an enemy."

"To that end and with Harry's approval I already opened up dialogue with my contact there. We have a meeting with an Imperial representative, and if we can convince them to let us in, we'll be able to enter Japan and hunt down the Hand. We may need to make some concessions. If the Hand is there, then they've been there for a while, and the country is still running."

"So even if we prove there's demonic influence there they'll be like yes, but everything is still working, they seem to know not to make waves or something?" Betsy asked incredulously. She hadn't met any demons yet, but Jean, Harry and even Ororo were all open about what they were like and she wanted nothing to do with them, discounting her Church of England upbringing.

"Pretty much yes. Essentially even if we do get the go-ahead, we'll have to tread lightly and make certain that there isn't too much public disturbance."

"I don't like that, most particularly since we don't know what exactly we're dealing with here in terms of numbers or anything else." Harry muttered shaking his head. "Still, to take out the Hand I'll deal with my irritation. When is this meeting?"

"Tomorrow morning early local time in Tokyo. I was able to convey enough urgency to get us a quick meeting, but again that might mean we'll need to make more concessions."

"We'll see." Harry said grimly. If they try to railroad me however, I am perfectly capable of simply saying sod off to their entire government, and then going in just by ourselves. I'll deal with them as an equal or not at all."

The spymaster winced at that, but nodded.

The next day, all of them transferred up to High Note first, then situated High Note over Japan before flying down, with Jean taking control of the descent. Covered with a Notice-Me-Not the group made their way down easily enough, landing in a parking lot in Tokyo which was currently empty of people, it being quite early in the morning. After that, they walked the rest of the way to their meeting place, a large mansion on the outskirts of the massive city.

As they walked, Harry hit them all with the translation spell, then Ororo began to quiz him on some do's and don'ts in Japanese, most of which Harry discarded. He wasn't about to let one of the others speak for him after all, even if that was the Japanese way, using intermediaries or lower-level functionaries to talk. Nor was he willing to spend time on small talk either. Tea, being British, he could of course get behind.

At around seven A.M. local time Harry and company stood in front of a large Japanese style mansion. It looked like something out of a historical documentary save for the addition of a doorbell to one side, and what looked like a security camera set into the roof. When Harry rang it they were answered quickly, and the group was ushered in.

The interior was equally old-fashioned. Several Japanese paintings were here and there, and the interior walls were all of paper. There was no sign of anything European or American inside, and all the furniture was very old style Japanese.

They were shown into a waiting room, dominated by a low-slung table. A maid dressed in a kimono stood in one corner, and she moved forward, quickly placing down some small snacks and tea. "Your men can wait here." said the man who had led them inside. "Guardian may follow me."

Harry and Jean exchanged glances and Jean gently tapped her forehead as if she was moving hair out of her face. Harry nodded, and she opened the connection between them, then back to Emma who was back in America of course. He smiled, sending a wave of love down the link to Jean for a moment. "I might need your coaching on this Emma and you Ororo."

He got three affirmative answers as he continued on his way.

The servant led Harry into another sitting room, though this one was not dominated by anything except the man sitting on his knees it at the far end. He was youngish, around Harry's age if he was any judge, thin, but with a well-muscled frame, hair done in the traditional bowl cut, dark eyes and a haughty expression.

In front of him was a small pillow, and the majordomo gestured Harry imperiously down onto it. For just a moment Harry wondered if he should break this Japanese mold right now by conjuring up a proper chair, but he sighed when Jean telepathically smacked him upside the head and sat down in the same position as his greeter.

"We will have tea first of course." the man said briskly. He clapped his hands twice, and another woman came in wearing a slightly better looking kimono than the one serving the others, with an extremely intricate hairpin tying up her hair. She sat perfectly equidistant to one side of them, and then began to brew tea.

At the same time Harry took his seat, Jean was seeing the man through his eyes, and Jean passed on his description to Dennis in a low tone. He, still in Hogwarts looked up the information then nodded and eventually the information got back to Harry. "Shiro Yoshida, codename Sunfire, Japanese mutant and one of if not the most powerful of said, connected to an old-time samurai family, who are very much part of the Traditionalist party."

The traditionalist party controlled a large block in the government, but was not actually in power at present. The Yoshida clan also had connections with the Emperor so technically they were a power to be reckoned with socially if not economically or lawfully at least.

"Dennis says it's a good sign we're talking to someone who considers himself a samurai, that means they won't try to force concessions from us. Though, he might demand to go along as a government representative." Jean added after a few moments, to which Harry sent back an affirmative reply.

After about fourteen minutes of silence the tea was finally prepared. Upon Ororo's passed on instructions Harry rotated his cup, looking at it carefully before sipping the tea. It was bitter, very green very bitter tea, not his thing at all. For completely destroying the Hand and the demon backing them Harry was willing to put up with a lot.

After both men sat sipping tea and making small talk for another half hour, with Harry getting more and more irritated, Shiro finally got to the reason Harry was here. "One has heard that you wish to operate your band of so-called superheroes in one's nation. Something about demonic influence? To say that Japan has any truck with such is almost to offer insult."

"To say such is also fact." Harry said shrugging his shoulders. "We dealt with this group in Vietnam recently, smashed their main hold there but I have certain gifts in magic, and they pointed to Japan being the center of this pestilence. This is fact, not supposition."

The man's eyes narrowed as Harry simply sidestepped the fact that it being insult, and then shrugged. "Nonetheless, we certainly have not had any such sightings, if you can provide us with proof that is one thing, but until you can, this is simply supposition."

"You actually have had such sightings," Harry said then rattled off several assassinations of various political figures that had occurred in the past few years. He could've gone further back than that but he decided to stick to present-day things. "Those were all murders, not suicides as they were purported to be, and one of them was quite blatant. The Hand knows or at least believes that it can act with impunity in your nation, is that something you're willing to put up with? I'm surprised, I thought the Japanese people more honorable than that, to let snakes fester so in their own backyard."

In his head Emma winced, as did Ororo when Jean relayed that to them, but she simply smirked. She wanted to get on with things, not waste time here.

Across from Harry Shiro's eyes narrowed dangerously, and flame flickered around his fingers for a moment. Harry wasn't worried, he could simply encapsulate the boy in a shield and then suck all the air out of it to stop him from using his powers , or hit himself with a flame freezing charm, making him immune to his fire. "Have a care who you challenge foreigner." Shiro growled. "My honor and that of my Emperor is beyond question."

"Then you will work with me to wipe out the Hand? After all, doing so will certainly be a boon to Japan as a whole in the future." Harry's tone was factual, not confrontational

Sunfire growled but nodded. "Prove their existence, tell us where they are, and you will have our help. I of course will go with you, no foreign power could act on Japanese soil without Japanese oversight."

"Observers certainly but oversight I think not." Harry held up a hand as Shiro seemed about to explode. "We will agree to a ROE after we survey the area, doing so before that would be premature at best, arrogant at worst. I'm fully cognizant of the need to handle this discreetly," he said throwing the man a bone. "But I want it handled."

With that he reached into his pocket, and pulled out the small globe he'd shrunk before leaving the castle, now enlarging it quickly to its original size between him and Shiro.

Sunfire's eyes widened at this sign of magic then narrowed as he stared at the red dots showing on the amazingly made globe. Tapping the one set into Japan he asked, "And these are?"

"They indicate demonic influence. The deepness of the red equals the strength. As you can see Japan is one of the top three. I think I even know why. The Hand, their assassins are dead inside, their life force given to the demon they worship. Only a select few seem to be more than mindless, lifeless husks. Regardless, nearly every assassin is connected to the demon that they worship, which is our primary target."

The Hand was indeed one of two high profile targets that would be hit in the next few weeks. The others however Harry was perfectly happy to hand over to Dr. Strange and his two aides to handle. If they needed further help Stephen would call Harry in, but until then Harry would take out the two biggest, the other being one in Africa.

It would take some diplomatic finagling to do if they didn't want to simply go in and smash it without any local aid. He and Ororo were still debating that point. There was another major concentration of demonic power in Uzbekistan, but Stephen had decided to assault that one with Clea and Wanda. Harry was uncertain why, but he was willing to let the Sorcerer Supreme earn his pay check.

Harry touched one end of the Japanese archipelago and the other with his fingers, slowly enlarging it while the size of the globe remained the same allowing them to zoom in. Across from him Shiro sat forward looking at it eagerly. "The Ishikari mountain range, up in Hokkaido." His eyes narrowed in thought now rather than suspicion and he eventually nodded. 'Very well, you have proof that something could be there I suppose. What do you suggest?"

"Myself and one of my companions will go in to scout the area, ascertain the level of force and the exact location of their activity. Once that is done, we will call in the rest of the team, create a plan, and wipe them out."

Sunfire frowned, but slowly almost against his will he nodded, each word coming out as if it had to be winched out of his throat. "I believe we may be able to lead you there."

OOOOOOO

Soon enough they were in the nearest city to the Ishikari Mountains, and from there made their way towards their target under disillusion charms. Soon they left most visible signs of habitation behind, delving into what was known to be part of a national preserve. In actuality it had been left undeveloped because of fear of the volcanoes that made up the mountains in this range.

It was night as they made their approach, which was good for them since it made it somewhat easier for them to move through the night, since Harry was uncertain if the Hand could come up with some way to see through his magic, the same reason for them to be hiking rather than flying. All of the team members had night vision goggles, even Sunfire was given a set. With Harry leading the way, his magical senses on full in an effort to discern any kind of sign of where the Hand's headquarters was truly located in this range, they moved through the mountains slowly.

It took them all night and through half the next day for them to finally find what they were here searching for. A very faint tingle hit Ororo and Harry as they stepped forward, through an area of mountains that seemed just as normal as all the rest they had passed through already. They looked at each other, then Harry beckoned the team close. "Alright, we're finally getting somewhere. Ororo and I will continue on, the rest of you wait here, rest if you can but remember to keep watch."

Jean nodded, reached forward and hugged both of them before letting them go. She knew intellectually that the Hand were really no threat to the three big guns as it were, herself and the two of them, but still all it would take would be one knife to make a wizards day go horribly wrong.

The others simply nodded, save Sunfire who scowled irritably then demanded to go with them. "As my Emperor's representative I must!"

Harry growled but nodded. The man had a point, but he demanded that Sunfire promise not to attack without his say so. "This is just a recon, not our full attack."

"I will act as my honor dictates," Shiro scowled. "Remember you are here on sufferance Guardian, you have no real power to command in my country."

Harry was about to respond angrily to that, but Jean's voice entered his mind quickly. "Go along with it Harry, I'm getting no sense of subterfuge here, he really thinks it's his beholden duty to continue with you. And he's not nearly as hotheaded as he wants us to think. There's quite a bit of calculation behind that face of his."

"Your empathy coming through?" Harry said, calming down a little.

"Yes, he's worried that this is all some kind of plot to undermine his family or his Emperor, but he also knows that the Hand really might be a threat. He's broadcasting both of those thoughts so strongly I couldn't ignore it. Trust me, I've been trying." Jean still didn't like reading other people's thoughts without their permission, but sometimes she couldn't help it.

Thankfully the team was not broadcasting nearly as much as Shiro, and her connection with Harry had allowed her some kind of buffer as well. But Shiro's thoughts came through more than a little bit, and she hadn't liked the misogynist bent of many of them.

"Alright," he said with a sigh. "Hold still a moment." Harry waved one of his hands, covering Sunfire with the same amount of spells to hide him from detection as Harry and his team wore, minus Ororo. Her spells were slightly different, Ororo would appear as if she was simply a rock or a tree in the environment if anyone happened to look in her direction, rather than simply not there or forcing the viewer's eyes away.

It was almost like chameleon's camouflage, and it would allow her a higher level of activity before failing than his own, but she couldn't cast it on anyone else with 100% accuracy. Harry was looking forward more and more to the two of them sitting down and comparing magical notes after she finished her training, but for now best to go with what worked.

It was a risk using magic this close to the Hand, but worth it. The ward they had passed hadn't had the taint that it would if it was supposed to detect magic. If anything Harry thought it felt like a very odd muggle repelling ward.

The three of them moved forward through the woods, now moving much more cautiously than before. Soon enough they came to an overlook, a bit of mountain which allowed them to look down into a large crag cut out of the rock of the mountain. It was cut out too, not a natural phenomenon. That was easy to see by the large demon mask cut into the rock, and the hundreds of ninjas exercising in silence below them.

Sunfire hissed at the sight, and Ororo and Harry both grabbed him by the shoulder pushing him down while they crouched down as well. "No sense in taking chances." Harry said to the man, who looked furious at being manhandled.

Leaving the man to fume for a moment Harry turned his attention back downwards. The mask looked like one of those from Japanese plays. The one playing the demon or ogre would wear one, but whereas most of those looked a little comedic, this one was anything but. It glowed a vile black to his magical senses. Unwilling sacrifice had been practiced here, above and beyond the demonic taint.

Sacrificial magic was powerful, very powerful but using the Ministry of Magic's terminology it could be light or dark. His mother's willing sacrifice to defend a loved one was possibly the 'lightest' magic known, giving of her blood, soul and life to defend another. At the opposite end of the spectrum was unwilling sacrifice, when the essence of a person was torn from them. This could be a slow or fast process, the magic twisted so that the more pain and anguish and fear the sacrifice felt, the more desperate he or she was to live, the more power the practitioner could gain. He explained this to Sunfire and Ororo, his eyes still locked down below.

He did not see Shiro's look of sheer horror then rising fury, or Ororo's own fury and grief. Her training with Gaea had let her feel the same things magically that Harry could, but even more so. Harry could feel the magic that had been done here. She was getting their feelings of despair, pain, and above all fear, and it horrified her. "This place must burn!" Shiro growled, his hand almost beginning to crackle with fire.

"I agree." Harry replied grimly. "But we need to make certain that we get them all and the demon inside." Even from here he could sense it, either a connection to a demon dimension was open, or a demon of extreme power was manifest in this realm. Not nearly as powerful as Mephisto, but certainly more powerful than the ones he and Jean had fought with the Fantastic Four.

Rather than a demon king a demon baron perhaps, he thought almost whimsically, though there was nothing whimsical about his emerald eyes. "Wait here." he ordered. "I need to figure out what kind of defenses we're dealing with."

Shiro didn't argue this time. It was all he could do to keep control of himself after learning what had happened here on the sacred land of Japan for who knew how long.

Harry floated down silently, landing behind a random boulder several hundred yards from the demon mask, every spell he knew hiding him from detection. It was as well he had, since the defenses here were not merely mortal. Like in Vietnam, there were several demon dogs outside posing as statues but they moved occasionally when a few of the Hand ninja came or went. This happened several times as Harry watched, trying to figure out if there was a pattern. Deciding there wasn't, he slipped through, entering the inside of the massive structure, floating just an inch off the ground to avoid any pressure plates or magical traps set into the floor.

He paused once inside the entrance, cursing inside his head as he looked at the ramp leading downward. There was chanting going on somewhere deep down, and the entrance was the topmost level. That did not please him, close in combat in an underground base would be deadly.

Still, he continued on building a mental map in his mind of this fortress. On the first level there was nothing but a few barracks full of meditating soldiers of the Hand, still and motionless in their repose. Harry frowned seeing them, wondering about something he had thought a time or two since the battle in Vietnam; that maybe most of the Hand ninjas were no longer human, but physical constructs of some kind controlled from afar. But here in their headquarters, would these ninja be the real ones, or more constructs? He couldn't answer that until the fight actually began.

There were four such barracks, each of them containing 100 ninja, not a good number. It got worse, because the next three levels down where the same. Then it got even worse again, because the next two levels were a maze, a defense for what was further down. The two-story maze had a single passage through that would lead you further into the massive underground fortress.

The next level was a prisoner barracks complete with prisoners, about 70 men and women held there. They didn't look as if they had been mistreated, but they also didn't look as if they had been fed well either. When he continued on through the prison to the far end Harry found what was no doubt a ritual chamber. At the moment it wasn't in use, but the altar had been used in the near past, the smell of blood was heavy in the air, and it had not been washed clean if it ever was. The site of that blood drenched altar nearly made Harry lose his cool, but he kept control of himself for now.

Harry continued on, turning away from that sight and back to the stairs which again lead down. This level however was much smaller than the previous ones, and was entirely devoted to a single thing, a large temple that bore a striking resemblance to the one where the demonic hand Jean had fried had been. As before, there were dozens of ninjas supplicating themselves before the altar, with twelve of them wearing different colors on either side of the central altar. It was only then that Harry realized that quite a few of the ninjas that he had seen both on this level and on the first few had similar colors as the ones who could teleport through shadows back in Vietnam. That wasn't a good thought.

What also wasn't a good thought was the fact that there was indeed an open gate to the demonic realm here, centered above the altar. Harry wondered idly why if there was an altar down here was there a sacrificial chamber up on the next level, but then shrugged that thought off. Maybe they were used for different things, one used for the sacrificial magic which gave the demon its power, and that other one for something else, something connected to their recruitment maybe? It didn't matter it was all going to be destroyed anyway.

He did not enter the temple, fearing that the demon on the other end of that portal would be able to sense him somehow. Harry retraced his steps, and was almost out of the temple when Ororo contacted him through Jean. "Harry, Ororo says there is something going on, she asked us all to move up. Apparently there are some prisoners arriving."

OOOOOOO

Ichiki Hisako was not having a good week. First, she had to deal with the bullying at school simply because she wasn't part of the 'in' crowd. Her parents wouldn't help her, she was much too independent and forward thinking for their traditional views. The woman's place was in the home, not wanting to go to college to study high-end computer programming, or politics, or current events, except of course to make intelligent discourse with their husband if prompted.

And of course when prompted the wife would have to agree with everything the husband said. Ichiki Hisako wanted nothing to do with that kind of crap. She had hopes and dreams for the future, and they certainly did not center around marriage or children in the distant future.

This of course was made worse when during one particular altercation with the bullies things got physical. Two of the girl-bullies had called in their boyfriends to rough her up after she out did them not only in class but also on the track field. The oh-so pretty (and petty) girls couldn't deal with that, and before she knew it she was cornered by several large senior boys. Between one punch and the next however things had changed dramatically.

Armor made of some kind of energy had appeared all around her, keeping their punches from landing. Then when she struck back wildly it added to her power tremendously, flinging the boy she struck away like he weighed nothing. The other boys ran off, leaving Hisako alone. Only problem was, she couldn't turn it off before the girls ran off, indeed it only turned off on its own after several hours. This ousted her as a mutant of course, and her parents promptly tossed her out on her own, wanting nothing to do with her. The last thing Hisako had seen of them was the two blaming one another for her bad genes.

With no other choice Hisako had debated joining a gang, hopefully a real yakuza group rather than the more violent, less predictable punk gangs. Anything was better than sleeping on the street or whoring herself out, which was something she had heard was another choice for girls that had nothing else going for them. So she had willingly gone with what she thought was a yakuza recruiter, it was only after she had been hustled onto some kind of silent hydrofoil thing that she realized it might be more than that.

And it was only when she saw the first few men dressed as freakin' ninjas (honestly she felt real ninjas would laugh at the very idea of wearing what amounted to poufy pajamas) that she realized maybe, just maybe she had bitten off more than she could chew. By that point it was too late, Hisako was completely surrounded by other would-be-recruited, and it really looked as if she was going to be part of some kind of ninja cult whether she wanted to or not. Hisako was tempted to turn on her powers, if she could figure out how without being in mortal danger, but she didn't want to attack them and simply hope her powers activated to save her again.

This feeling of helplessness got worse when Hisako was pushed out of the large hydrofoil (but it was silent, how the hell were they doing that) with all the others, and saw the giant, extremely evil looking hanya mask carved into the mountain face, with an entrance where the chin should be. And, yes, those demon dog statues were moving as she watched. "Oh this just keeps getting better and better," She muttered, shaking her head.

OOOOOOO

Harry had rushed out of the building almost bumping into several ninja as he moved, but thankfully had been able to dodge them. When he was back on the first floor he saw what Jean and Ororo had reported to him. A bunch of young teens and adults being herded by the ninja, who were armed both with swords and modern weaponry, into the temple.

He skirted around them then flew through the air up to where Shiro was, finding the rest of the team already assembled there. He looked around and immediately launched into the planning session. "All right, I've got a layout of the place, and a plan." Harry quickly filled them in on what was inside, all of their faces getting grimmer as the bad news piled up. The news of there being that many Hand shadow jumpers in there bothered the hell out of Jean, who knew how tough those things were to nail down, but they continued the briefing.

"All right, here's what we're going to do. Team three will be myself, Paige and Magma. And Paige, seriously, figure out your damn codename before the next mission, or I'll force you to sit it out." Paige winced at the threat, but nodded and Guardian went on. "Team three will try to ignore most of the fighting once it starts, our job will be to take out the demon and the elites down in the main temple by heading straight down to get past the maze. We don't want to fight in the maze, it's too dangerous, too large, and might even be able to change if the Hand will it somehow. That's why I'll be taking Magma with me; if push comes to shove she can just make us a hole while Paige and I protect her. I'll take out the demon if I can, we'll see what happens, but I don't know how quick any response to its death will be."

"Nor do I want the prisoners to remain unguarded, since I have no idea what the Hand will do once they realize they are under attack. Guarding them will be team two, consisting of Storm, Psyclocke, Colossus and Ghigau."

Colossus cracked his knuckles grimly. "For certain, we will not let any harm come to the prisoners, tovarishch."

"What about the rest of us?" asked Vanguard.

"You're going to be the assault team, but you'll have to lead their attention away at first to let the other two groups in. Coyote, Vanguard, far assault, start the party rolling immediately. Sunfire, Phoenix, you take the fight to them, keep to the air as much as possible though, that way the shadow jumpers won't be able to get at you easily."

Sunfire growled, not happy with being relegated to what he saw as a mission of secondary importance. Still, he had to admit it was a good plan. And part of his powers was flight, which would be negated underground to a large degree. "I will burn away those demons outside the doorway quickly, that should bring the rest of their defenses running to engage us."

Harry nodded. "Wait until we tell you though, I want teams two and three and inside already before they start responding to your assault."

The others all nodded, and Coyote and Vanguard got into position, waiting for the signal. Phoenix and Shiro simply waited where they were, both of them united in a desire to burn the demon worshippers to ash.

Harry and his team went down first, sneaking in easily enough covered with his concealing spells, then waiting on the second level of the maze. Magma had the thought that maybe they could cut off this section from the rest of the fortress, cutting into the amount of enemies the rest of the teams had to face, since the shadow jumpers, according to what had happened in the fight in Vietnam, had a limit to how far they could jump. Harry had decided that was a good idea, and so they waited there for team one to start their assault.

Ororo and her team took longer to get into position, the ninja stationed around the prisoners were dealing with trouble already, making getting into position much harder. The prisoners were now causing a ruckus, or one of them in particular at least. A young girl covered with what looked like red energy of some kind formed into armor was fighting hard to not go into the holding pens, and had already slain several ninja. She was under fire now from several ninjas using modern machine guns, and several were also trying in vain to get through her armor with their blades.

Seeing the armor around the valiant girl beginning to flicker, Storm relayed through Jean that they were about to start the party. Jean immediately got in touch with the others outside, and she and Sunfire immediately flew into the air above the fortress, raining down fire without further ado.

Sunfire was true to his word; his first attack was a massive fireball that exploded right in front of the underground fortress' entrance, immolating the demons there with howls of anguish. The several dozen groups of ninja outside exercising and practicing turned as one, those with modern weapons bringing them to bear on the flyers while the few shadow jumpers began to jump about, trying to figure out a way up to them. One of those died, shot through the head as he waited just a little too long in the open.

At the other end of the little valley Vanguard went to rapid fire on his gauss rifle, zipping rounds downrange impacting several dozen ninja in as many seconds, blowing them to pieces which quickly dissipated in the late afternoon air.

"Interesting." he said aloud, then had to dodge as one of the shadow jumpers appeared directly above him, his sword coming down quickly. Without even missing a beat Vanguard pulled out his pistol and shot the man dead, turning around to continue firing down range then moved on to another spot when he came under fire, his shield taking some hits but nothing it couldn't handle.

Coyote used a different style altogether. He jumped around using his built-in teleporter, making it seem as if his rifle was coming from several dozen snipers rather than one, never still for more time then it took to get off a single shot.

This was necessary, because almost as soon as the attack began more defenses became apparent, camouflage doors sliding away to reveal automatic guns rising out of the ground. A few antiair turrets of modern design began to fire into the air at the flyers, while several anti-infantry SAWs began to fire downrange at the snipers.

Then over a dozen more demon dogs poured out of the eye sockets of the mask carved into the valley's wall at the same time hundreds more ninjas poured out from the entrance. A few demons, looking like the imps depicted in catholic frescoes followed the demon dogs, flying into the air to battle Sunfire and Phoenix.

"Change of target!" Jean shouted, her voice going through the communication device built into her mask now that they didn't have to worry about the radio waves being overheard. "Vanguard fire at the winged demons, give us cover fire. I'll take out those antiair turrets. Sunfire you're on crowd control, hit any large group you can, but try to take out the demons if they look to be heading toward the snipers. Coyote, try to concentrate on taking out the shadow jumpers as they appear. Otherwise targets of opportunity!"

All of them answered in the affirmative save for Shiro who growled angrily at being ordered around by a woman. But he could see the sense in her orders, and he followed them despite his irritation, frying several large groups of ninjas, before concentrating on the demon dogs, forcing them to scatter.

Phoenix ducked down, avoiding antiair fire to land on the ground, her hands flashing out with telekinetic force blasting aside the demons around her, while her Phoenix aura was on full, burning any got close. She reached out with a thought, grasping the guns and ripping them into pieces, then flung the pieces into the ninja all around her, slaughtering them as if they had been hit by a massive shrapnel burst. "Team 1 Lead to team 2 Lead, we're under heavy assault out here, hope we're taking the fire off you as much as we can!"

OOOOOOO

Inside Ororo had immediately sent a dozen lightning bolts at the men trying to fight the energy armor girl. They all burst into moats of darkness, and she and her team raced forward. "Remain in your cells for now!" she shouted. "This is a rescue, but this place is massive, we need to clear it before trying to get any of you out!"

There were some shouts of bewilderment at their sudden appearance, and one or two protests that they needed to escape immediately. But the young girl with the armor simply nodded her head, moving forward to stand with them.

"What's your name young lady?" Ororo said smiling at her in approval.

"I guess you can call me Armor." she said tapping it. "I'm not trained or anything, but I think this evens the score a little doesn't it?"

Colossus shook his head gently pushing her backwards. "If the ninja get past us guard the prisoners, but otherwise leave the fighting to us. This is not a mark against you for your feminine nature but your youth."

The girl scowled slightly, but nodded moving backwards. Danielle laughed at the girl's attitude, taking a position behind Colossus already firing at the ninjas as they appeared at the entrance to the cells, while Psylocke jumped around here and there, taking out the ninjas who attempted to shadow jump in behind them. Betsy's telepathy, worked like radar, it was on all the time low key, and this gave Betsy a slight tingle every time right before they finished porting in. Ororo, with the three of them guarding her back moved through the area, blasting any ninja that appeared most of which were shadow jumpers, alerted to this second assault. There were a lot of them, but with her powers both magical and mutant, they couldn't get through her defenses.

Ghigau had a much harder time of it, having to use her skates a few times to get away from sudden assaults coming out of shadows around her. But the Hand didn't have anything that could break through Colossus' armor, or Dani's armor which covered most of her body. Her eyes and her face were still at risk though and they began to target this unerringly with each assault, cutting her face several times when they could get around Colossus' close in defense, while she continued to fire her bow at the ninja trying to enter the cell area the old fashioned way.

OOOOOOO

The moment the attack began Amara summoned up her powers. Here underground her powers were even more deadly than normal and suddenly gushes of molten magma came out of the walls filling the entire area then quickly the entirety of the maze. Seconds later, it hardened in place, cutting off the upper area of the fortress from the lower entirely.

Harry nodded grimly. "Good work, now let's go talk to the Hand."

"Oh that was just wrong!" Paige said, though she cracked her knuckles eagerly.

With Harry leading the way the trio marched down the stairs and into the temple. Thanks to Magma's quick action, all of them were still here, and most of them turned, racing toward them or popping away to attack the trio of intruders from the shadows.

Six of them however were clustered around the portal, opening it wider with some kind of chant based magic in a language that Harry couldn't recognize even with the translation spell still on. That was a first, but not something he was concerned overmuch with. As they entered, the demon portal opened to its widest position and huge demonic hands appeared, reaching forward to grasp the altar.

"None of that now!" Harry said. "Fulgir!" He tossed a spear of lightning and light magic straight into the portal. There was a scream of anguish as the demon on the other side was blasted back into its dimension.

The six high-level ninjas turned as one, teleporting into the shadows and then attacking quickly along with their fellows. Magma gasped as one of their swords went straight through her shoulder, but in energy form it couldn't really hurt her. It startled the hell out of her, but it wasn't painful. In reply she grabbed the man's hand, and began to burn him alive. He simply grabbed up a knife from his belt and began to stab at her face, but her energy form protected her while her powers melted the ninja, who unlike most had an actual body. The ninja didn't even make a sound as she immolated him.

Magma shuddered at her first real kill, but then turned to help Paige, who was surrounded by ninja. The ninjas were flitting in and out trying desperately to fight all three of them, but they were overmatched badly. Page was again clad in steel, none of their weapons could pierce her hide, Magma had her own powers, and Harry…

Harry was a whirling, spinning dervish of destruction, spells of lightning and light flashing out, slaughtering ninja left and right, his hands and feet smashing others aside as he made his way through the room towards the portal. Fully half the ninja died before he reached it. Once there Harry cast a few spells, holding the portal open before he turned, now casting area of effect spells to clear out the remaining ninja. The last died to a blow from Paige that smashed in the man's head.

Harry nodded grimly. "Alright, neither of you has anything that'll really bother a high level demon. Stay here and guard my back while I… deal with this." Paige and Amara both scowled slightly, but nodded. Paige took up position staring around them, while Amara stood staring into the portal ready to aid him if needed. Harry jumped through.

The realm of the other side wasn't large. The area was a simple throne room, beyond which pure chaos could be seen. This demon evidently had created its own little pocket dimension, and had been enlarging it slowly over the millennia rather than try to gain one through conquest. It was an intelligent creature then, but lacked power.

Suddenly the demon was on him from out of the shadows, bearing Harry to the ground of the room, rending and clawing at his back. But it couldn't break through his Magia Erebea or his crysis suit, strengthened by forty percent of his magical core just in case.

Harry quickly pushed off the ground, raising one hand above his head and flashing up a light spell at the thing's face. It screamed letting him go and moving back allowing Harry to turn and finally look at the thing.

It was a misshapen hulk, a small head dominated by a fanged maw, kept open due to misshapen fangs under large yellow eyes. It had a large hump on its back, with massive shoulders and arms, dominated further by even larger hands, the fingers each having five knuckles and large claws. In comparison its lower body was almost atrophied, small hooves like a satyr's, but evidently able to support its weight easily enough.

"Damn your ugly!" Harry said then slammed his hands together and intoned a lightning spell. "Latinium Malleus!" The lightning Hammer slammed into the demon throwing it away screaming. Now faced with a prepared opponent, and worse recognizing The Sword of Light, the demon tried to escape, fading away, but Harry hastily threw up a cage around the demon then skewered it with a light spear.

For a moment the thing just screamed, its life force fighting against his spell, power pouring to this place from through the portal, dozens of ninja fighting Harry's team disappearing as the energy that made them flowing back to the demon. Harry growled, but a blaze of pure magic cut off that source of magic quickly.

OOOOOOO

Outside the battle had suddenly taken a turn for the better when dozens of ninja simply collapsed into nothingness, their robes hitting the ground with nothing inside them. The demons were still around, but now the outcome of the battle was certain. The team's ability to coordinate their movements and their own individual abilities had offset the numbers of the Hand, and now the tide turned quickly.

The same was true of the battle going on inside the base. Only a few of the ninja were still around after their demonic deity had retaken the energy that made them. One moment Dani, Betsy and Piotr were hard-pressed, the next there were only a few opponents left alive, and then all of them were struck by lightning from behind. The two younger members of the team turned to Ororo who was striding forward towards them, her hair flying behind her and her eyes crackling with power. "I believe that Guardian has done his job, let's start getting the prisoners out of here."

Nodding dumbly, somewhat shocked by the sudden secession of hostilities, the three of them nodded, and began to usher the prisoners out of the holding area and up through that various levels of the underground fortress. Dani took the time to move over to the mutant girl. "So, what is your name and how exactly did you come to be here?"

OOOOOOO

The demon finally ceased trying to run away, and charged Harry, bellowing wordless rage and fear. It disappeared, and Harry had to duck aside as its massive hands appeared out of the air behind him grasping for his head. The demon snarled again before teleporting again, then sending blades of cutting force that greatly resembled one of Selene's spells after Harry.

Harry threw up a Protego several yards in front of him, then grimaced as the spells actually bent around the shield, obviously under the demon's control. In response Harry teleported away himself, then threw thousands of Drills of Light at where the demon was. None of them hit, but Harry kept on strafing the spell all around him, and one drill caught the demon as it came out of its apparition.

It howled as the drill of light took off one of its feet, but its hands disappeared. One appeared to Harry's right, slashing into his side, while the other tried to grab his head.

Harry grimaced, but his crysis suit and Magia Erebea allowed him to take the blow to his side, and he stepped back quickly, his hand flashing up to grab the demon's forearm before it could disappear again. The thing screamed as Harry's mutant power automatically began to take its power, but Harry sent a spell threw his hand, a Fulgir that sent lightning through its arm. The arm first sizzled creating a smell of cooked meat before Harry let it go to aim at the demon's body.

The demon was still screaming at the pain in its arm when Harry's Drill of Light was in the air, thousands of them. The Demon tried desperately to teleport away, but it couldn't before the spell hit, gouging into its overly muscled upper body. The thing screamed again, the spell it had been attempting dissipating, and it tried to throw an attack that looked like raw magic at Harry.

Instead of trying to block it, Harry simply dodged, creating a dozen illusions of himself dodging in different directions to cover the move as he rolled on the ground to his right. He sent a cutting spell of his own at the demon, his illusions throwing their own illusory spells. The demon couldn't seem to figure out which was which at first, and his cutting spell impacted doing little damage. The railgun however caught the knee on its as yet uninjured leg.

Figuring out from the direction of that which Harry was real and now desperate, the demons remaining uninjured hand enlarged dramatically, slamming into Harry then trying to grab him, having forgotten what Harry had done moments before.

Harry however teleported away, switching with a golem he called up, which grabbed several of the fingers of the enlarged hand. With the golem thus holding its hand in place, its legs crippled and its other hand fried, the demon was defenseless to Harry's next spell. "Sol occidit interfectos diripiet: Dæmonium lamina! The demon specific penetrating spell caught the demon in the side of the head, blowing apart its head in a welter of gore and brains.

The demon fell to the floor of it dimension, flopping around, its hand held by Harry's golem going limp at the same time. But Harry wasn't going to let anything to chance. He spat out several dozen more light based attack spells, all of which hammered the demons body and body parts, cremating it.

He kept them up until there was naught but a stain on the ground, then reactivated his mage sight before going to work on the spell that had created this dimension, being careful to not take in any of its actual magic, which practically dripped with demonic power. He sent his magic into it, cutting and slicing the magical network that had created this small pocket dimension out of nothing.

After it was almost entirely unraveled Harry made his way back to the portal, doing the same to the magic holding it open save for his own, before stepping back through it. A final thought sent back, and the pocket dimension of the demon the Hand had worshipped for so long simply ceased to be, becoming one once more with the chaos between dimensions.

Behind him Paige and Magma had dealt with a few remaining shadow jumpers who had appeared while Harry was busy, and both of them grinned as he turned to them. "That ladies, is how you deal with demons, lightning, lightning and more lightning."

The two of them laughed, then gathered round as he teleported them out of the fortress. Moments later the prisoners joined them, with Colossus in the lead. Ororo used a spell to make certain that there was no one left alive down there, prisoner or ninja, then nodded to Harry, who then turned to Magma. "Destroy it."

Amara grinned, then leaned down to touch the ground, her eyes closed for a moment. There was a rumble and then the ground under them began to shake then she looked up. "I would suggest moving away from the doorway."

This proved a prophetic statement, as suddenly the doorway filled with magma flowing out filling up the little area around it. She looked up frowning at the mask, and suddenly magma also spouted out of it, breaking it in half and adding to the river that quickly began to fill the area hissing and steaming in the air.

At the looks sent her way Amara shrugged. "There was a fault line here, we're over part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, I just… got rid of some of the pressure. It'll continue to flow slowly for a time, probably fill up this entire valley before stopping."

Sunfire shook his head. "I'll have to think of something the government can say about this, but I know nothing about mineralogy or earthquakes. Still, this was well done Guardian."

He turned to Harry his manner stiff but warmer than it had been. "My Emperor and my nation thank you for this. I will provide transportation for these," he went on, gesturing at the prisoners. "They will need to be told what they can and cannot say, but I believe we are done."

Ororo nodded over at the young girl whose power had yet to turn off. "We'll be taking her with us. Young Hisako was apparently kicked out of her home when her powers manifested. Will that be a problem?"

Sunfire scowled but nodded. "What is your rank girl, what is your family's station?"

"Not samurai." she answered promptly. "Commoners if you're going by that old fashioned crap, merchants if you want to be nice about it I suppose."

Sunfire scowled again not liking the idea of commoners able to activate powers like that, they should be left to the samurai who would obviously make better use of it for their nation and Emperor. Still he couldn't argue, she was not just of common stock but also female. "Very well, take her."

As Guardian and the others began to lift into the air to head up to High Note, once more covered by Disillusion charms, Sunfire began to organize the former prisoners, while calling in transportation for them. Most of his thoughts however were on the team of foreigners who had proven so efficient, and if his country and emperor would be served in further dealing with them.

As he flew through the air up to High Note, Harry brought out the globe Hela had passed on to him. Over a dozen smaller red dots had disappeared, and he smiled grimly. It looked as if the Hand had operations elsewhere, but they were all tied to the same demon. With its death they too had died.

Indeed throughout the world there were people suddenly collapsing into nothingness, and over a dozen hidden bases suddenly became nearly empty as well, the lesser demons and conjured ninja all having been drained by the unnamed demon before it had begun to drain the warriors in its main temple. There were still a few shadow jumpers around, but without the demon to give them their abilities, they would be simple men once more, powerless, and almost brainless.

And so the Hand, an ancient order of deadly assassins was destroyed, not with a bang but with a whimper, completely overwhelmed by Guardian and his team.

OOOOOOO

Over the next few days Hisako fit in well with the rest of the teens. She was definitely not willing to sign up for the combat squad just yet, though she lapped up anything she could get her hands on in terms of classes and training in how to turn her power on and off. After a day she could do it after a few moments of concentration, after two she could do it quickly. She got along best with the other new students, including Douglas Ramsey with whom she shared an interest in computers. It turned out his power to understand languages extended to programming languages as well.

With the success of their first anti-demon attack, Harry was content to let the team have a few days break. None of them had anything to add to their gear, the Hand having been so overwhelmed by their abilities and organization they hadn't really been a good measure of their gear other than their coms.

A few days after that battle Una agreed to start working for him, though Harry was adamant that Mar'vell would not be allowed into Hogwarts. Despite apparently being betrayed by his superiors the man still had a little too much loyalty to the Kree, as a race if not a nation, for Harry to want him anywhere near his projects, much like the purebloods. The blue-skinned ones, Harry was slowly, unwillingly coming to believe that they would never be willing to be anything but unwilling prisoners. Several of them had tried to escape, but the wards on their prison had kept them from getting far.

The same couldn't be said for most of the other prisoners, the light skinned Kree were quickly coming to embrace the idea of being allowed to live on Earth, so long as their health was assured. That would be weeks, maybe months in the future, since they had so much to learn, and Harry wasn't willing to simply let them go, not without some way to make certain they didn't try to spy or get in touch somehow with their people.

He was uncertain what he would do there, but handing them over to Doom for him to watch in Latveria might be an idea. None of them had any more technical knowledge that Doom could use to add to his knowledge that he hadn't already gleaned from the ship. And Latveria, while a nice place to live, certainly wasn't an 'open society'.

Una on the other hand was much more pragmatic about such things and already had a lot of the knowledge the others would need to learn. Her loyalty was to Mar'vell, and herself. She was also eager to use her knowledge of medicine, and so it made sense for her to work with Harry in this capacity.

While Una began to get used to working in the castle (she loved working with the children, and had a very caring manner that all of them ate up) and Emma began the process of acclimating the prisoners to becoming nationalized earthers, Harry once more buckled down on the business side of things with Ororo stepping up her game in preparing the castle for more students. Four more teachers were hired and vetted ,while the team went out bringing back kids of various ages, mostly young, adding them to the school.

At the end of that week, Harry, Emma, Jean and Ororo met up for their group date. Ororo and Jean cooked them all dinner, while Harry teleported all of them up to Mount Everest, because Jean hadn't stopped raving about the view from their first date. The same runic array as previously allowed them to breathe easily, and Emma and Ororo's reaction was all Harry could wish for.

After a few hours however Emma had to excuse herself to head back to America, and Ororo smiled kissing both Harry and Jean on the cheeks. "Have fun you two." she whispered, before capturing Jean's lips with her own then moving onto Harry, deepening the kiss ardently for a moment before moving back. She gazed at them with smiles on her face, then turned teleporting away under her own power.

Now that it came to it Jean was rather nervous but just as eager as she had been for weeks. She reached out and grabbed Harry's hand. "Sh-shall we go?"

Harry nodded, not commenting on her stutter, then teleported the two of them up onto the bridge of the Hellion. Doom and Reed had finished their examination, and neither had gainsaid Harry keeping control of it. He had plans for it, both as a training center for the team to learn close quarter combat on enemy territory, and as a midway point for other space-based industries. Thanks to the three engineers, the bridge had been repaired if not completely fixed. All of the controls worked, but the exterior damage was still visible. Harry had taken this a step further, hitting the exterior with a spell that made them able to see through it like they could the observation room in High Note.

"Where to first?" Harry said looking at Jean with a grin.

Jean laughed. "Take me to Saturn first. I want to see the rings up close."

"Saturn it is." he laughed, sitting down in the captain's chair. This wasn't the first time they had moved the ship around, and both of them knew how to use it. Jean sat in his lap, leaning back against his chest, his head against hers as she used her telekinetic powers to run a few of the other stations while Harry punched in the destination point. Moments later the frigate started to move, pulling away from Earth's gravity and out into space. Once out of Earth's gravity well, they micro-jumped away.

Moments later Jean decided that Saturn's rings were as magnificent as she hoped they would be. Bands of color, as they neared they seemed solid then as you came closer they quickly became separate, different motes and pieces of ice and rock, an entire field ringing the planet. Even up close, they were still magnificent, as was the planet itself. Striations of color moved slowly across the surface.

Harry leaned his chin on Jean's shoulder while they stared down at the planet, then after twenty minutes of silence kissed her neck lightly. "Where to next?"

"Surprise me Harry." Jean laughed, leaning back, licking her lips as she turned her head.

The two of them kissed for a time then Harry punched in another code. This one took them to Neptune, where they looked at the much brighter, incredibly beautiful blue planet. They spent some time there, first lost in the view then lost in one another. Jean and Harry kissed ardently, breaking off only occasionally to kiss one another's necks, Jean leaving a few hickeys on Harry's neck while Harry did the same to her, moving down her collarbone to suck at her skin right above her dress.

Jean ground her rear against Harry's rising erection, pulling away from a kiss. "Take me to Olympus Mons Harry." she said softly, leaning her forehead against his and staring into his eyes with all the passion she could muster. "Take me to bed."

Lemon Start:

Harry did so quickly, and about an hour later he set the ship into Mars orbit directly over the mountain before teleporting them down. It took him a few moments to set up an area where the atmosphere was breathable and to keep the dust from blowing around, then he conjured up a bed setting it down on the ground.

Turning he was surprised when Jean leaned quickly into him, kissing him ardently on the lips before turning slowly pushing him backwards towards the bed he'd just conjured. Though surprised by her eagerness Harry gave as good as he got, their tongues dueling first in his mouth then hers, once or twice in the open air between them before they once more deepened the kiss, hands roaming up and down backs. Harry hit the side of the bed first, with Jean leaning over him, kissing him still while her hands fumbled at his pants. With a single telekinetically powered rip both his pants and her own dress were gone, fluttering away through the air.

Underneath she wore a set of negligée that Harry had never seen on her before. The crotch-less panties were a surprise, as were the bra, which didn't so much as cover her breasts as lift and present them for his attention, complete with little slits that allowed her long bright pink nipples to be seen. This item and the body underneath it nearly took his breath away. "My God you are beautiful! You, Ororo and had Emma, all of you so… What did I ever do to…"

"That's enough of that Harry." Jean laughed quietly leaning down to kiss him ardently. Harry needed no second urging, his hands rising to her breasts, tweaking her already hard nipples between his fingers and kneading her breasts. Jean moaned, breaking off the kiss which allowed Harry to lean down taking one of her nipples into his mouth. He lightly sucked it first, tenderly lathering at her nipple with his tongue before sucking harder nipping it at with his teeth.

Jean squealed aloud when she felt his teeth on her nipple, grinding her barely covered crotch against his erection. One of his hands trailed down her stomach, feeling the musculature underneath her skin. She didn't have full definition there but it was obvious that she worked out. Slowly his hand wended its way down to her crotch, finding it already drenched, the fine red hair there above her pussy shaped surprisingly like a little bonfire.

For a moment, Harry held Jean still, simply lightly exploring her most private area with his fingers, never penetrating her, just lightly stroking. First down one edge, then up the other, then around before lightly running his fingers over her trimmed bush, tracing the little tuft of hair with a smile. By this point he had moved away from her nipple, letting his head rest between her breasts as he looked down her body while directing his fingers' intimate exploration.

When he spoke, his voice was husky with desire, yet at the same time also amused. "I take it Ororo helped you with this? I recognize her work." Harry had always thought Ororo's little lightning bolt was sexy as hell, that splash of white against her chocolate colored skin. This was no different; the contrast between Jean's white skin and the shocking red of the little bonfire sitting like a crown on top of her bare pussy was erotic in the extreme.

"Mhhh, ye, yeah, she, ummm, she helped me with it last nighhhh!" Jean moaned, unable to form a full sentence, her body thrumming with desire while Harry played her like a violin, his fingers so soft, so gentle it felt amazing. Harry then lightly fingered her clit, and she moaned again humping against him harder and almost going over the edge already.

But this was the opening act, Jean wanted the real thing. With that in mind Jean reached down, grasping his cock in her hand. Lightly removing Harry's hand from her crotch, Jean lined up his large member with her glistening slit.

Raising her hips slightly, Jean then plunged them down impaling herself on his cock before Harry could stop her. She first moaned then yelped aloud as her barrier broke. Small and barely there given all of her activity first as a cheerleader then as an X-Men and beyond, it was still there and it still hurt breaking it like that. "All right." she muttered through clenched teeth. "Maybe thinking it would be best to get it over with quick was a bad idea."

Harry shook his head, stilling her hips where they were, simply holding Jean, kissing her neck, shoulders and breasts letting Jean get used to him. "I could have told you that Jean, but live and learn I suppose." he murmured between kisses, one hand briefly lighting up with a spell as it rested on her stomach, before moving down to his own touching his balls lightly with the same spell.

"And I want to learn soooo much…" she murmured, kissing him between each word. The two of them held one another tenderly while Jean got used to the feel of him inside her and the pain receded. Harry spent the time kissing jean on the neck and the upper slopes of her breasts, his hands now feeling up her breasts with the same tender touch he had previously used on her pussy.

Jean reciprocated by kissing Harry's face and neck, then nibbling on his ears. She found they were one of Harry's weak points, and he almost thrust up into her when she first nibbled at his ear, licking it. She pulled back for a moment, moving to rest her forehead against Harry's then. The two of them stared into one another's eyes, tilting this way and that occasionally to kiss one another, their eyes always staring into one another, jade and emerald.

Then Jean began to move, gingerly at first then with more purpose as the last bit of pain receded.

After allowing Jean to set the tempo for a few moments Harry began to thrust up into her slowly in time with her own movements as they began the oldest dance in the known universe. The sensations that were currently hitting her were too new for Jean to continue for long. After about ten minutes Jean gasped bucking hard down against Harry as she came with a scream that was astonishing in how loud it was, almost like her battle cry but with a very different tone to it.

Throughout Jean's orgasm Harry kept thrusting up into her. She went limp against him then Harry turned them around laying Jean down on the bed continuing to piston in and out of her first as she lay on her side then moving Jean to lie on her back with him between her legs. "Love you!" he murmured against her lips. "Love you!" he murmured into her ear, biting it ardently as she did the same to him on the side of his neck.

Jean's hands, now that she had recovered, moved down his back grabbing his rear and urging him on as she murmured. "Deeper, deeper! Love you love you, oh god deeper!"

Despite being much more experienced than Jean, Harry was now having trouble keeping from erupting inside of his redheaded lover. She was just so tight, so tight wet and warm! Tighter even then Ororo, and warmer than Ororo as well, very warm. He thrust deeper every time now, and Jean wailed as she came again, thrusting up hard against him. Harry finally let go, cum churning out of his dick deep into her waiting, pulsing pussy.

That drove Jean over the edge for a third time and she also came with a wail of, "Harry!" her eyes suddenly blazing with Phoenix fire, so powerful was her feelings at that moment that she couldn't stop herself from reaching out automatically to his mind. Their minds connected as one as they each felt the other's passion, their feelings caught in an endless loop of an orgasm. Jean's Phoenix aura flared out from around her, great wings of power spreading out for miles around as she came, feeling her lovers seed splash her insides.

It couldn't last. Jean didn't have the strength nor the concentration at the moment to keep that connection open for long, and after a few moments the Phoenix fire faded from her eyes, her aura going out from all around them. She collapsed almost boneless to the bed, her eyes wide and staring at nothing, a smile so wide and joyous it was a sight to behold on her face. Harry collapsed on top of her for a few moments, simply murmuring her name along with exclamations of love into her ear, which she responded to in like manner kissing him lightly on the neck and ear as they recovered.

Eventually Harry pulled out of her reluctantly.

End Lemon

Then he looked around before quickly recasting the spell keeping the air breathable around them, the original spell having been almost broken by the Phoenix manifestation. The spell keeping the dust out also had to be redone. Despite that Harry laughed, looking down at Jean. "You know if that was visible from orbit, years from now some people back on Earth might be wondering what the hell that was."

Jean smirked, reaching for him. "Then let's give them something to really talk about."

Harry laughed then happily obliged her.

End chapter

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Whoever gave me the idea of the name Ravenspire, I'm sorry, but I might have accidentally deleted our conversation, or just can't find it, so wasn't able to give you credit for it. I seriously need to organize my PM's, but deleting them one by one is so tedious, does anyone know how to delete more than one at a time?

There are many reasons why dimensional travel from demon realms has now been curtailed. For one thing, it made a lot of sense given what happened, the nature of magic, and Harry's own attitude. The second most important reason is that the marvel universe is getting on top of me. I don't like admitting that, but the marvel universe is so huge, and I just can't put in all the things I want to, I am but one man. Thus I need to cut down on the elements I need to include.

To that end, this was one of the last two times you will see the X-men until the events of the Avengers movie (sorry, no Ultron guys, going to nix that right now). Their adventures in America will continue and sometimes be mentioned in passing, but the characters will only come back into focus when they take part in Harry's adventures. I will also not bring in Spiderman as I was planning. He again will still have his adventures, but I can barely give the characters I have enough screen time, adding more permanently is just impossible. The students don't count, since they again will only be appearing in brief scenes.

In the next chapter Harry give a public interview, then moves forward with one plan regards space. the Hellfire Club segues into the first campaign as it were, Betsy and Paige realize that going to Ireland to shop is a little over the top, and a certain oddly ignored suitor shows up… heh. Till next time guys and gals, and as always please review.