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.

35. Chapter 35

Ain't Stan Lee, nor am I from the UK.

Greetings after many months, LOL. I have been busy on a lot of other projects, and then, of course, there were issues with my Asgardian co-writer, Mordreek. Given that Hela is now an intrinsic character to the story, that meant there were a lot of scenes I couldn't post until he saw them. However, that has been accomplished now, and I hope that this will all be interesting, even if some of it is more setup for the next few chapters.

Once more, this has been edited by Mordreek in regards to the Hela scenes, and I think his touch made them far better than my own versions. And of course, Michael has also looked at this for the small mistakes.

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Chapter 35: Violence and Political Jabbering in Equal Measure

"Scott, Rogue, James, welcome to Camelot," Jean said, holding out a hand to first Scott, then Rogue and James, the other couple and the older Proudstar brother having just popped out of the door to the X-Mansion in the Hall of Doors. That door was one of several that Kitty had created over the past few months. Though this one saw near daily use, given the number of students who lived in Camelot but were preparing to go to school in Bayville or at the local college. They were led by Laynia, who had decided she wanted to become an archaeologist, of all things.

"Good to be here. It's been a while since my last visit," Scott replied, trying and failing miserably at not noticing that Jean was showing her pregnancy at this point.

"How far along are you, Jeanie?" Rogue asked, smiling widely at the redhead while gesturing down to her stomach. Jean wore a tasteful blouse over loose pants, but that only served to bring even more attention to her slightly bulging belly.

"About five months or so, and, despite all the…activity…I've been forced into over that time, Una and the other doctors agree that the twins are coming along nicely," Jean said, a fond smile on her face as one hand rested lightly on her stomach.

With her other hand she gestured for them to follow her out of the Hall of Doors. The runic array set on the door leading out into the rest of the castle flashed green, and the door opened on their approach. Both X-Men noticed that, but didn't comment. It wasn't the first time they'd witnessed it, after all.

"And um, are you… That is, are you and Harry going to have a wedding before the blessed event?" Rogue asked hesitantly. She was from the south, and, while out of wedlock pregnancies weren't unusual, in this case there didn't seem to be a reason to wait.

"Eventually, yes. We've sort of—that is, Emma, Ororo, and I—have decided to remove the planning for said event out of Harry's hands. We will be married before the due date, but everything else is still being organized. There are a lot of exterior and interior circumstances getting in the way," Jean replied, leading the way down the hallway towards the stairs and then down into the dining hall.

Both X-Men looked at their friend quizzically, but Jean didn't elaborate. While the X-Men knew how the three women were involved with Harry, she didn't think they had any idea that Hela might be joining them. And it really wasn't anyone's business but their own. But one thing Emma and Jean had discussed after Emma had reluctantly agreed that Hela was probably going to be joining them were weddings and firsts.

Ororo had been Harry's first lover. Jean would be the first to have children. That left Hela and Emma to claim a first, so to speak, even if Hela had yet to officially and completely join their relationship. Jean was pushing for Emma to be the first to officially tie the knot, but Emma was fighting back on it, saying any such wedding would have to be public. This would mean losing a lot of the advantages Emma and Harry had been manipulating particularly in the business world.

Neither of them had had the chance to talk about it with Ororo, who would have the deciding vote. That was not even mentioning how Hela would feel about it, though, given her reluctance to push forward and join them entirely, talking to her about it was possibly going to be the first thing they spoke about now that Ororo was back on her feet.

The two X-Men asked some questions about the castle as they walked, which Jean fielded until they entered the dining hall. There Piotr, Amara, and Dani were waiting with Hela and Dennis. The spymaster and Hela were talking to Emma and Sage, both of whom were taking part via video conference, something that had been set up between Magical Minds and Camelot weeks ago, though Emma's connection was much more recent.

Emma could possibly have gotten away and come in person, but, given the time difference and the fact that she had a series of meetings of her own to get to later that day, she had decided to opt out for now. The gleeful, almost bouncy air to Emma visible through the pickup told Jean and even Hela just how much she was looking forward to the day's events.

Piotr and the two girls both rose, shaking hands with the X-Men. "The gang's all here, then? Well, besides the big boss and Ororo," Amara quipped. "Good work on the Vault defense. We heard about it on the news last night, and I think everyone can say your team performed magnificently."

All three X-Men smiled at that. Too often, even in their own minds, the X-Men felt like the junior team in comparison to the Custodes, but yesterday they had proven themselves against both a team of villains that made the Sinister Six Emma had tangled with look like Boy Scouts and other high level threats. "Thank you for that," Scott said, shaking Amara's hand firmly. "It was hard as hell, but I think we did about as well as anyone could have asked."

"I'll second that sentiment, though Amara was wrong: Ororo and Harry aren't the only ones we're waiting for. Steve Rogers should be calling in to join the conversation as well," Jean said, her tone shifting to a grim one. "We are, after all, going to be possibly deciding the fate of the Avengers here among everything else we need to talk about."

"Since we have a full day ahead of us, it's best we get started, then," Harry's voice said from one of the other entrances into the dining hall. Turning, the others saw him and Ororo standing there. Harry wore a grin that would possibly need surgery to remove, while Ororo had a faint, smug, but tired smile of her own. Harry's arm was around Ororo's shoulder, one of her arms was around his waist, and both of them were practically glowing.

Jean and Hela broke off from their conversations immediately and moved toward them, while Emma smiled happily, her eyes locked on Ororo. While Jean was exchanging a hug with Harry, Ororo did the same with Hela, coupled with a very chaste kiss. "You have been dearly missed, sister, and not just by Harry," Hela said in a whisper after they broke off. "Pray, do not push yourself to that level again."

"I will try, but needs must when the devil drives," Ororo said, moving away from Harry to link arms with Hela as they led the way back to the table. She then looked up at Emma's screen, smiling at the blonde while manipulating the hard light system of the hall to pull the screen closer. "Emma, how are you doing?"

"Better now that you're up and about, love," Emma replied, holding up a hand to the screen as if to reach through it and touch Ororo's face. "Unfortunately, I have too much to do today along with an overprotective sister and security detail to get away to be there physically. Else I might just drag you back to bed for the rest of the day to show you how much I've missed you."

While nowhere near what anyone could call effusive with her emotions, Emma loved Ororo almost as much as she did Jean and Harry. And, like Harry, she had spent months in the time dilation chamber, so it had been months since she had seen Ororo. Suddenly the reasons for her not being there physically did not seem nearly so insurmountable, and Emma's predatory excitement for her day's work had just waned dramatically.

"Hmm, then perhaps we should plan a weekend getaway?" Ororo asked.

"I'd love that. But, as Shakespeare would put it, only after the hurly-burly is done," Emma replied.

Harry pulled out Jean's chair for her, and Jean smiled, sitting down to one side of him as Ororo took the other. The table was a slightly rectangular one, with the three of them sitting at the front of one of the shorter ends. They were joined by Hela, who smiled, her eyes lighting up with pride at sitting at what was obviously the head of the table. Under Jean's control, Emma's image too joined them, hovering over a spot to her other side from Harry.

The X-Men all sat down along one edge, joined by Sage's image. As they sat down, Scott nodded his head towards Harry. "I'm sorry the professor couldn't join us, but Emma Steed is going to wake up this morning, he says, and he wants to be there, just in case."

Harry nodded. "I'll ask Betsy to head over, then, to back him up. Heck, I might offer the woman a job: having another business person to shove issues off on would be good. And I think having spent months trapped in her own mind is punishment enough for whatever role she had in Selene's mad schemes."

While Emma made a quip about 'Emma B' possibly being useful, Jean telepathically passed that request on to Betsy, who was up in the Custodes tower, having a lie-in along with the rest of the team. Betsy replied in the affirmative, and Jean turned her attention back to the table.

Amara, Piotr, and Dani sat down facing the X-Men, with Dennis joining them on that side. The Fantastic Four had been invited to the meeting, but apparently had decided to have a few days of family time to get over what Reed called, "a diplomatic debacle of the highest order paired with the worst timing ever." Harry was interested in hearing what that was about, but was willing to wait for the story.

This left the side of the short rectangle facing the head of the table empty for a few minutes until Steve would call in at a time he and Jean had worked out early that morning. Harry opened his mouth, then stopped as carafes of drinks and plates of bagels and other breakfast meals appeared on the table. Smiling, he addressed the air, saying, "Thank you," to the house elves obviously in attendance, before turning his attention to the others. "All right, before Steve joins us, let's first go over everything he doesn't have an interest in about yesterday's battles. Emma, your day is the most constrained, so start us off"

Nodding, Emma gave a brief description of yesterday's fight with the Sinister Six. She mentioned the number of workers, scientists, and security men that the group had killed before the Custodes team sent to help her and Sandman had arrived. There she was interrupted by Ororo, who asked, "What about Starfire? Didn't she arrive to help too?"

"No, Cordelia and Starfire and Cordelia's guard had gone on a biking trip and were well away from any way to communicate with them, unfortunately. But it didn't really matter. Once Psylocke was on hand to explain away my assault, that was all she wrote." Emma's smile was so vindictive that more than one individual blanched, but Hela and Harry simply smiled grimly.

She went on from there, explaining what she had found in the attackers' minds and the identity of the Green Goblin, which took them all aback. Emma then explained what actions she would take against Ozcorp after this and how much of Ozcorp she would take over, and that the FBI would be moving against the company as well. This would bring her own businesses under some scrutiny, but she was prepared for that.

Harry listened silently through all of this, while Ororo and Sage asked several questions about the attackers and the business side of things respectively. When he did speak, it was to address Dennis. "Dennis, how long was the Green Goblin active for?"

"Going by the police reports we can access, he first appeared around two months ago," Dennis replied promptly, shaking his head. "Maybe add a month there before the police realized there really was a wanker going around in a Halloween costume on a ruddy hover board. Honestly, what is it about you superpowered types, hmm?"

"Hmm… I'm not happy about the fact no one had made the connection between Osborn and his alter ego. Could someone have covered it up?" Harry asked.

"Doubtful. We've traced back a lot of his activities, which involve numerous clashes with Spider-Man and very little real data besides that," Dennis replied before pausing in thought. "Hmm, far too little, actually. SHIELD, at the very least, should have been called in to investigate him as a super-powered criminal. But they weren't, so there might indeed have been some kind of cover-up, or perhaps negative assumptions…"

Harry nodded, making a note about Spider-Man. The young man hadn't yet reached out to them as Harry had hoped, but they would have to see there. "All right, but let's see if we can roll up even more of Ozcorp than you think, Emma. As the assaulted party who then subsequently found out Osborn's identity, can you officially call in Interpol on this?"

"Yes, though it would ruffle the FBI's feathers big time. Still, given Ozcorp is an international corporation, I could get away with it. Why?" Emma asked intently.

"Because Osborn's not the only business type enemy you've made. Hammer might also be linked to this so-called Sinister Six, and, like Dennis said, someone might also have been trying to keep the heat off Osborn's back. This Tombstone character, you said, is also involved with the Maggia, an international crime syndicate. Let's kill as many birds with one stone as we can, dear," Harry replied. "Remember, enriching yourself and your holdings is one thing, removing as many threats as possible at once is another."

Emma nodded, and Jean once more reached out telepathically, this time to Banshee. He was still working with the team following Mystique and Morph, but willingly gave the two telepaths some names they could contact in Interpol, which were in charge of anything connected to Maggia.

"Good. Now, Dennis, any reports from yesterday or anything else going on?" Harry asked.

"Sage will handle the initial report on the attacks on our personal holdings, but other than those and the attack by AIM, only two other items have made splashes on the world stage which we will need to watch closely, I think," Dennis said, frowning.

"The one that is most disturbing, but, unfortunately, one which we won't be able to do anything about in the short term, is that the Friends of Humanity has split. A splinter group has begun to act in America and Canada. They call themselves the Reclaimers for some reason and call for purging all mutants. They carried out an attack yesterday that saw a young mutant boy and his pregnant girlfriend both burned at the stake near Anchorage Alaska late last night."

There were more than a few blanched faces and growls of anger at that, but Dennis went on calmly despite his own inner fury. "The group is so new none of the government agencies I have access to have anything on them. When we do, we can move against them, not before."

"All right, we can't do anything without a target. Still, we'd best inform Wendy that her team could run into this group while on retrieval missions," Harry said, shaking his head sadly while looking over at Scott, who nodded. The X-Men too would be prepared. "And your second item?"

"First, Dr. Doom has killed the Red Skull," the older man said bluntly, causing a thin smile to appear on Harry's face while the others around the table reacted in various ways, all of which were positive. "The Ukraine has officially surrendered to him, and Doom has agreed to extend his various social services to include them. Russia is protesting but not moving yet. Still, the threat is there. If they wait too long, though, Doom and his troops will be in position to meet them as they cross the border. That would be a bloodbath."

"We will have to watch that and Russia closely given how the bear is flexing its muscles of late," Harry mused. "But we won't get involved unless war really breaks out, and even then only to try to keep the conflict from spilling onto the local civilians. I'm sorry, Piotr, but if your former country is the aggressor I won't lift a hand to help them."

The fact that Russia had mulishly rejected any of MM's demands for social reform yet continually pushed to be allowed access to his goods had something to do with that. The other was the simple fact that Russia looked to be going back to its old expansionist ways, which no one in their right mind wanted to see. Especially given Reed's, Doom's, and my own concerns about that one shape-shifting alien and what her presence might mean, Harry thought grimly. If it's not one thing, it's another.

Piotr nodded glumly. "I am resigned to that, tovarishch, but you might wish to speak to Father Garnoff and Nikolai. They might have stronger reactions." His lips twitched in bleak amusement. "Not Laynia, though. Her feelings on our motherland are dismissive at best, antagonistic at worst."

"I'll do that." Harry looked back at Dennis, who indicated that he was done, and Harry turned his attention to Sage. "Sage, what can you tell us about the attacks launched directly at Magical Minds?"

Before the image of Sage could respond, Hela broke in. "Before you get to that, is there any chance that the attacks on your holdings were part of the larger scale attack on SHIELD? Are we dealing with one mind able to control AIM from behind the scenes while also throwing its own forces into the field?"

"I've run an analysis, and there is only a 22 percent chance of collusion between the force behind the attacks on Magical Minds and the AIM forces which attacked SHIELD. While AIM was ready for the Custodes to get involved, they in turn were not part of the attacks on our other holdings," Sage replied promptly, looking over at Harry. "Further, the attack on Mary Jane and Paris was just what it looked like at first: a local terrorist group which tried to punch well above its weight class. We left Wyatt down there with the ladies just in case, though he has disguised himself as a regular security officer at present, his suit being in one of those magical pouches of yours."

Sage smiled at that, as did Jean, while Harry rolled his eyes, but when she continued Sage had become serious once more. "However, the attack on Magical Minds was targeted. The individual—we are assuming he was a mutant—who tried to come through the computer system and seemed to be made out of data was not there to simply get into our computer network. I have analyzed his behavior, and I believe that his main objective was either kidnapping or changed to kidnapping quickly."

Jean's eyes narrowed at that, while Harry simply frowned, as did the others around the table. "Your reasoning?"

"The individual was able to turn himself into data and move through the network with an ease that is terrifying. Only my own mutant power allowed me to fight him in the network and in the real world. His offensive technique in the real world seemed to rely wholly on grabbing his opponents. That is: touch. I would assume from that his mutant power would allow him to pull the individual he touched back into the network."

Sage licked her lips before continuing hesitantly. This was not going to go over well. "The instant Jean appeared on the scene the man turned his attention to her, despite that giving me time to press my advantage. He continually attempted to reach for her whenever she was close to a computer, ignoring me and my attempts with a single-minded devotion that tells me Jean was, in fact, his goal."

For a moment the hall was silent, then people noticed a sort of whine in the air as the stones of the castle began to vibrate along with the table and everything on it, even the chairs underneath them, as Harry's self-control slipped. "What?" Harry asked calmly.

Far, far too calmly. His eyes were now emerald stones, and his hands were tented in front of his face, giving him an almost fearsome appearance. Hela, Ororo, and Emma were not nearly as controlled in their responses. All of them simply looked utterly furious.

Sage was ever so thankful she had opted to take part in this meeting electronically, which allowed her to avoid the feel of their anger if not their glares. "That datum is solid. Further, my attempt to entrap the entity who attacked failed. Dennis and I have also definitively connected the Mutant Liberation Front with the attack on the Vault. Two of the dead Marauders were Scalphunter and Riptide, who introduced Mystique and Morph to the MLA. From the timing of the two assaults and the fact the individual was a mutant, we can, at least, infer that those two assaults were planned by the same mind."

Nodding slowly, Harry looked around at everyone around the table, regaining control of his magic with difficulty. "This Essex or Sinister—whatever his name is—has now made this personal," he said, his voice still calm, but it was the calm felt right before a supernova. "Dennis, find us a target, any target. Use as much of our resources as you possibly can to hunt him down. Get with Interpol, even contact the Mandarin. We'll find a way to access SHIELD files too; after the attack on the Vault we should be able to do that easily. Find him."

Dennis gulped, but nodded acquiescence. Ororo, Hela, and Emma all made noises of agreement, while Jean looked happy at their responses and worried at the same time.

"So, Sinister was the one who wanted to recruit from among the inmates at the Vault," Scott mused, trying to move the discussion along before Harry's control could really break. "Still, we hurt him badly if so. He lost nearly his entire team and didn't get anything out of it."

"None of the inmates escaped?" Harry asked.

"None, though not for lack of trying," Scott said grimly, as Rogue and James both nodded agreement. "We put down seven of the inmates trying to escape permanently, like Magnum, and knocked out several more. But not before the Marauders had massacred the unpowered prisoners entirely along with most of the Vault's guards and a large number of the inmates in the asylum portion."

Harry looked around at the others, but no one had any more information to give on Sinister's activities just yet. "All right, we will have to leave that for now. Until Dennis can find us a target, anyway. Next, Hela and Jean: What is the public reaction to everything that happened yesterday?"

Hela and Jean exchanged a glance around Harry and Ororo. Jean indicated that Hela should speak up first, which she did with a nod. "I have been watching the public reactions in particular, both in America and worldwide, as well as watching the American government, despite the fact that CSPAN should be considered a tool of torture. The general reaction is simple shock at this point. The examples of wyrm dung calling themselves Friends of Humanity have grasped onto Amara, Jean, and Ororo's actions as proof that mutants are too dangerous to live. However the public seem to have come down on the side of thanking their various deities for the fact that three Omega Level mutants seem to be on the side of the good guys, as many pundits put it."

Everyone smiled at that, and she went on. "The reaction of those in power is much the same in terms of their response to the Custodes. However, there are a lot of questions being asked about the origins of the Hulkbusters army. It seems as if the president is going to take the fall for this." She sneered at the mention of the so-called elected government official, having a certain level of contempt towards that institution. "The American House of Representatives has already begun impeachment procedures, citing this latest debacle as well as others which have occurred under his watch, many of which I understand you all had a hand in solving."

Hela's sneer became more pronounced as she went on, her contempt for the institution changing to a personal one. "The president has stated that he will not fight it. Worse, to my mind, his vice-president has also publicly stated that he has no wish to take his place. He believes himself not up to the job, a self-fulfilling opinion if there ever was one, though it is one the public seems to agree with. Regardless, I've no doubt that by the time we're meeting with the UN they'll both be out of power."

Here Hela looked over at Jean, who supplied the name of the third in line for president, and Hela continued. "We have also received unofficial thanks through our military contacts and, I am pleased to say, some requests for further discussion from the senators which were part of your last meeting. The next president, the House majority leader, may also be involved."

"Good. I'd love to see America join the EDF wholeheartedly after our meeting with the UN. This could be the start of that, though we'll see," Harry mused, then looked over at Jean, who checked the time. After seeing her nod, he turned his attention to the X-Men and the three Custodes. "All right. Steve should be checking in soon, but I'd like your impressions of how your teams worked together yesterday. Scott, I want your impressions in particular: How did your training help? What do you need to improve? Do you need anything more in terms of equipment?"

Scott nodded, and that discussion continued for about forty minutes before Steve called in. Captain America looked weary as he sat back in the chair of an office in the Pentagon on the other end, but still in one piece, at least. And he had been allowed access to the system, which a construction droid Reed had built had set up for him last night at Harry's direction, which was another good sign.

"Steve, glad you could join us. You look like you're in one piece still, which is a good sign. How are you and the rest of the Avengers doing?"

Steve smiled wanly. "We're all right physically, Harry. But the future of the team is very much in doubt as we feared. SHIELD is…is just gone. Utterly gone, shut down entirely, with every surviving individual in custody bar the surviving Avengers. We lost dozens of field agents. Entire teams walked into ambushes led there by their own suborned fellows. Maverick and Revenant are dead, killed by someone who looks like… Well, the footage is pointing to an old Russian super-soldier called Omega Red, but how AIM got control of that bastard, I don't know.

"SHIELD's funding has also officially been cut off," Steve went on, his voice calm despite the litany of disasters he was talking about. "Two of the councilors who held the purse strings for the agency were in on this attack. One of them, who might have been involved against their will, is dead, his brain exploded by whatever device AIM came up with to suborn SHIELD's personnel. The other died during his attempt to escape before he could be taken into custody. AIM might not have walked away, but they certainly won our little private war with this last roll of the dice."

"And the team itself?" Ororo asked.

"Avalanche has been asked to join the FBI already, so he'll land on his feet, at least. Hawkeye might retire entirely; he says he wants to look up an old girlfriend," Steve replied, allowing a real smile to appear on his drawn features before going on more seriously. "Tony and Pym are both facing charges. Tony has owned up to his part entirely, but with E as a positive example of what he was going for, I doubt the charges about developing an AI will stick. His part in the Hulkbusters army, however, will. He might be facing house arrest for a few years, but we'll see how good his lawyers are, I suppose."

"What did Pym do?" Harry asked quizzically. While he had been furious at Tony going along with Nick's paranoia, he hadn't heard that Pym had been involved in the project. He didn't particularly like the guy's general attitude, especially toward women, but he couldn't fault him for this last debacle.

"Pym was working on little mechanical creatures called nanites," Hela supplied, which Harry hadn't heard about before this. "I understand that Richards has developed some?"

Harry nodded, but looked at Steve for further information, who winced. "Actually, Henry isn't facing any issues to do with the attack, not even the nanites. Since E has them fully under control they aren't really an issue, at least not in the public eye. He is actually facing charges of harassment from several female scientists who worked for SHIELD and survived the battle. He wasn't actually, um…" Steve coughed, looking uncomfortable. "He wasn't actually trying to harass them, um, sexually, but he denigrated them and treated them very badly. Now that the secret of what they were working on is out they felt free to press charges. One of them, in particular, is saying he took credit for her work on the programming side of things."

"Yeah, Pym's a misogynist asshole," Jean supplied from her own admittedly limited experience with the man. "I'd have hated to have to work in the same building as him, let alone the same lab."

Rolling his eyes at the idiocy of some people, Harry made a throwing away gesture with one hand, distancing himself from both the man in question and that issue, while the women at the table all made angry noises with one another, and the other men tried to make themselves look small. "Moving on. How're you, Nick, and E getting on?"

"I am fine. I was just following the orders of a friend and already told everyone and their grandmother that I didn't have any idea about the existence of the Hulkbusters. Nick is going to be asked a lot of hard questions, and though he isn't under arrest, he is being kept under watch. I, I honestly have no idea what will happen to him. He screwed up by the numbers here, and, really, it was his own paranoia that caused about half the damage that occurred during his battle. However, he knows where far too many bodies are buried for anyone to want to put him away for good."

Steve sighed. He also wasn't totally certain what he felt about his old friend's recent actions either. Yes, Nick's paranoia had severed them very well a time or two, but his tunnel vision towards Harry as a threat had blinded him to the enemies already within SHIELD, turning a strength into a weakness.

After a second's silence he went on in a happier mood. "As for E, his work on the Search and Rescue team and his openness about his origin and the reasons why he's decided to mold himself after Bull Halsey have won him instant acclaim, if not acceptance."

Dennis snapped his fingers. "By the way, do you think he might be behind a very odd theft that came up on my system last night?" Steve and the others looked at the spymaster, and he chuckled. "The keel of the original Enterprise was stolen, replaced overnight with a massive spire of crystal decorated with the names of the ships that had been sunk in World War II on one side, and on the others the names of sailors who died in the Atlantic before war had officially been declared between Germany and America."

Harry burst out laughing, as did Steve. "Yeah, that's E, all right. He's definitely got a distinct personality already." He sobered some as he looked at Steve. "So, that means you and E, at least, are out of a job?"

"Oh yes. In fact, I've already talked to the President pro-tem. He wants to set up a meeting with you, but has agreed that the two of us can join the Custodes openly. I doubt we'll be 'allowed…'" Steve actually held up fingers to indicate quote marks there. "…to join the Custodes in actions that the American government can't be involved in, but we can at least serve against the Kree in the future. Until then, we're still cleaning up after this latest debacle."

Rubbing the scar on his forehead thoughtfully, Harry nodded. "Okay, let's roll with that, then. Steve, I'll send you a few dates where I'm free to meet with the pro-tem once that whole situation resolves itself. After that, I'd like to bring you in as a trainer for the Custodes, maybe as team lead in any disaster relief or anti-terrorist action that is large enough to grab our attention, as well as in any boarding actions we take against the Kree."

Steve nodded, and Harry continued. "E, however, is a resource I intend to throw at the Kree problem. I'll get him in touch with Carol, Reed, and my various engineering and science teams, see what they come up with. In fact… Pinoptes, you receiving?"

"Yes, sir. I am online," Pinoptes said, his voice coming from a nearby speaker. Since he had stepped up to help on the educational side of things, Pinoptes was routinely connected to Camelot's network even when he didn't need to be.

"Good. Send a message to your younger cousin, would you?" Harry asked. "Then organize the meetings I was just talking about. I'd like to know where E thinks he can be of most use, and I want him vetted by you and Reed, if you please."

"Understood, sir," Pinoptes said. "If I may, I would say that this E is exhibiting some eccentricities already, but nothing that is self-destructive or violent. Further interaction with humans of all types, however, will help him continue to develop his personality in a positive manner. I know that my own stability has been greatly helped by interacting with Melody, Douglas, and the others. In fact, I'd recommend Douglas be involved in the initial meeting between E, Reed, and the others in the first place."

"Do it," Harry ordered. "Steve, like I said, we'll be in touch unless you think there's anything we can do to help you right now?" When Steve shook his head, Harry nodded. "All right, then I'll let you go for now. Expect a shipment of Magical Minds medicines though: a straight donation from Harry Potter in recognition of the recent tragedy. And if any SHIELD agents have lost limbs or have been crippled, get me their contact information, and I'll have Magical Minds reach out to them."

Steve nodded, thanking Harry profusely for that, before signing off. When he was gone Harry ended the meeting, sending off the youngsters, Sage, and Emma, before looking over at Hela. "Have you found out anything more from those statue bits that I brought back yet?"

"The power in them was indeed a Blessing. Your surmise was correct there. Further, I can tell you they come from the Catholic faith," Hela replied, her pretty mouth twisted into an ugly snarl that bared quite a few teeth before she smoothed out her expression. "I know that my long term memories are not things I can truly trust, but I know the touch of that faith's anti-magic. Beyond that, I cannot tell you anything. Even now the pieces of it can cancel out my magics."

"All right. But would you say such things should be rare and prized today?" Harry asked intently, leaning forward towards the goddess.

"Yes!" Hela replied positively, a sharp nod reinforcing her point as she gave an expansive gesture with her right hand. "I would assume that few such objects still exist and would be guarded most zealously by the faithful. I can fault the Catholic faith for quite a lot, but they would not be frivolous with how they care for such gifts of their god."

"Then Dennis, I want you to see if you can find out how AIM got a hold of it. I'll look into how to somehow stop or work around the anti-magic effect tomorrow. My mutant power sure as hell didn't work, so we'll need to figure out something else. For the rest of the day, however, I think we've all earned a day off. Unless Emma calls us in for help with her mercantile assault on Ozcorp, we are done thinking deep thoughts for the day. It is time to play," Harry ordered, standing up before helping Jean to her feet as she and the others laughed.

OOOOOOO

After spending the rest of the morning with the kids, Ororo headed through to Emma's mansion to give her some support. Not in the area of business. However. Emma was well able to handle controlling the hostile takeover of what portions of Ozcorp she wanted to, moving on them while the rest of the company was being investigated.

The FBI would look at her companies, of course, while she was doing so, but actually the government would be happy to see the company under new management so quickly, since this would stop anything from impacting most of its employees, letting them retain their jobs with minimal disturbance. This would both help the employees and their investigation. That her own company's computer techs and cyber specialists would be available to help their investigation also was a point in Emma's favor.

But for all that she could handle that easily enough, Emma did like having someone nearby, a weakness that a year ago would have horrified her. The fact that she hadn't seen Ororo in months was also a salient point.

Jean came with Ororo, and the three of them had lunch together in Emma's mansion. As they sat down, Cordelia walked into the dining room and then immediately turned away, pushing the friend Angelica, in front of her. While she liked Ororo and Jean well enough, Cordelia found the African woman a tad intimidating. And, like her older sister, Cordelia found Jean's pregnancy off-putting for much the same reasons as Emma had originally.

This meant the three of them had the meal to themselves. After a round of kisses, Ororo leaned back, waiting for their food to arrive. "So, Harry has told me some of what's been going on, including the fact he and you spent several months in sped up time. Are you still suffering from headaches?"

"No, but I would not be willing to take part in that kind of thing again," Emma replied, shuddering. "The pain was getting worse the longer we were in there, and I know I wasn't the only one. I suppose you could handle it, but no nonmagical can handle being in that field, or whatever it is."

Nodding thoughtfully, Ororo paused, thinking. She wanted to ask Emma's opinion on what she and Harry had been working on. Some of what she had heard about how Harry was going about constructing his new country she was both interested in and impressed by. The amount of thought that seemed to have gone into a lot of the paperwork and the rights of the individuals she approved of. But there were aspects that she did not like at all and wanted to talk to Harry about.

That could wait until their date tonight, however. With that thought, Ororo turned her attention to something else. "Has Cordelia shown any sign of a mutant power?"

"No, not that I'm aware of. She isn't quite immune to my mental powers, though she has strong natural defenses. She is somewhat intimidated by you, by the way," Emma drawled, amused by her sister having run away a moment ago. "Not physically, of course, but Cordelia has a rather large ego, and she doesn't like how she feels rather plain while you are around."

"A big ego in a Frost; you shock me, truly," Jean drawled. "And I'd bet she has the same issues with being around me like this as you did," she quipped, gesturing down to her stomach. "Though at this point I suppose I can see your point. I haven't really started to have trouble getting around just yet, but I can see it coming all too soon. Ugh, I'm going to look like a blimp."

Chuckling as Emma raised a hand like a fencer signaling a point, Ororo reached over, gently laying her hand on Jean's stomach. She could not truly feel the lives within—neither her magical nor mutant powers could allow that, not without a spell, anyway—but she didn't need to. "You can't fool me, Jean. You're just as happy to be pregnant as I will be eventually."

"Ugh, not you too! Just look at what it does to your figure! And I hear it's painful as hell too, regardless of modern medicine," Emma said, rolling her eyes so hard it almost hurt.

"True, I'm not looking forward to that, I have to admit," Jean replied, laying a hand on top of Ororo's on her stomach. They both smiled at one another before Jean looked back over at Emma. "But there is this sense of having a little life, or, in this case, two little lives, growing within you, right beneath your heart. It's, it's an incredible feeling."

Looking over at Ororo, the redhead grinned. "I can't say your desire to have kids surprises me, Ororo, though I will warn you: If you are hankering for something, having a wizard for a beau can't be beat, but if you're just sending him out for some random food to prove his love for you or to just get him out of your hair, you need to find another way of doing it. Harry will just conjure whatever you're asking for, and it won't even have any calories to make you feel bad about it."

Ororo laughed, replying that she could very well do that herself, but then looked over to Emma. "Are you certain the idea of children doesn't interest you?"

"Very certain, yes. I hate the very idea of being pregnant, having a little parasite like that growing within me. I'm also not the most motherly of people. It's fine for some, and I know they are necessary, but I'm certainly not going to have kids of my own. Not even in vitro like the Kree apparently do when it's available." Emma shuddered, her hair swaying slightly as she shook her head decisively. "No, just no."

Exchanging a glance with Ororo, Jean said hesitantly. "Well then, you should be the first one to marry Harry, at least. They aren't entirely the same thing, of course, but at least that way… Well, we've talked about firsts before."

"And I've said before that marrying openly would force our connection into the open, would rob us of some of our advantages we've used to such good effect," Emma retorted steadily. "No, I'm happy with the idea of marrying him. In fact, I'd be ecstatic about it, but not right now."

Ororo smiled, reaching over to take Emma's hand. "You said openly. What about clandestinely? Myself, Garnoff, or even Hela could officiate a small ceremony. I was thinking about doing that for Jean and Harry too, just to make certain that the twins come into the world to a married couple. Or should that be thruple? What is the proper word for our relationship anyway?"

"Have you asked the doctors about their gender, by the way?" Emma asked in an effort to divert the conversation, her gaze going back to Jean's stomach.

"No. I want to be surprised. It doesn't matter to me either what gender they are so long as they are born healthy," Jean replied as a smile grew on her full lips. "And don't change the subject."

"Fine, but you mentioned Hela. What would her reaction be to me being the first to marry Harry? I would think that that would make her feel even more that she is coming into this relationship on the back foot. Or did we suddenly decide we didn't want her to join us?" Emma asked tartly, her lips creating a look of feminine displeasure, most certainly not a pout. "Which, while I admit to liking the woman, would be just fine by me."

Jean frowned, but Ororo chuckled, dispelling an argument before it could begin. "While I think she would be somewhat irritated, Hela has long known that she would not be the first to wed our man." Emma and Jean grinned at that, wondering if Ororo knew how smugly self-satisfied and possessive Ororo sounded when she said that. If she were a cat she could not have a more 'I just ate the canary' expression.

"She has found her own way forward, to make certain that she is bringing something to their relationship that the rest of us do not. Considering how long Hela is willing to spin out the courtship aspect of their relationship, that should come as no surprise. But on the current topic, I think Hela would be immensely touched if we asked her to officiate the wedding. It's certainly not something Hela has ever been called to do before in her place as the goddess of Niflheim."

"Really?" Emma asked, then fell silent, thinking over her interactions with the Asgardian goddess both in and out of the time chamber. "I… I can see that, at least." She huffed, glaring at her two lovers. "I'm not going to get out of this, am I?"

Jean fell silent, staring at her best friend and lover and feeling a moment of understanding wash over her. "It's not just the fact you'd be coming out into the open, is it? You're worried about the commitment. The fact that marrying Harry will make your relationship permanent, or you think that it will give him some control over you?"

Watching Emma's face close down as it rarely did these days around her lovers, Jean knew she was right. "You know that's not true Em. It's just a way of making certain that everyone around us knows that our relationship is there to stay. Yes, it'll be permanent, but if you fall out of love with Harry or us, do you really think we'd try to force you to stay? The only thing we'd do is try to figure out why and rectify things, not force you to remain with us against your will."

"And as for Harry controlling you, hah!" Ororo joined in, laughing gaily. "Outside the bedroom Harry is always willing to listen to advice and has never tried to control any of us as you seem to fear he would."

"But he isn't married to us now, is he?" Emma replied softly, looking away, hoping the food would arrive soon to give her a break from this overly emotional conversation.

"Do you think he doesn't think of us in that way already?" Jean asked just as softly, reaching over to grasp her friend's hand. "I know why you're worried about this, Emma, but you have to know that that kind of controlling thing, that's just not Harry. You can't let the memory of your parents' relationship, of how your father tried to control your entire family, make you afraid of this. Don't let Winston win this last little battle."

Emma stared at Jean, then over to Ororo who had taken her free hand in both of hers. She breathed in deeply, letting it out in a slow exhalation. "You, you're right. I'll, I'll talk to Hela about setting it up after the meeting with the UN." Sitting up straighter, she deliberately looked at the door, putting this conversation behind them. "But where is our food anyway? I have a full day ahead of me; I need my energy."

OOOOOOO

Floating in the void between dimensions got old rather quickly, Loki reflected, as he, yes, floated in a void of absolute nothingness. He had no way of telling time here, no light to see by, no target to move toward to get out of the void. Loki could control his body, move this way and that, but even his magical powers couldn't help him find a way out. Any magic that he tried simply disappeared, sucked away into the void. His voice, too, could not travel to anyone's ears. He was alone, trapped, and doomed to an eternity in endless nothing.

Loki had initially fallen into a depression, thinking that his current circumstances were what he deserved for his treachery, though he would be hard pressed to say whether he felt that way because of the treachery itself, or because said treachery hadn't worked. After he had gotten over that, Loki had tried everything he could to escape, only to be foiled at every turn. There was no escape from the void, not once you were within its environs.

Since falling into the void from the Bifrost Bridge, Loki had kept his mind sharp with difficulty. He set up a magical alarm in his own head, created his own measures of time based on his heartbeats, and rested and planned in turn. Not planned anything in particular, just planning, from pranks to a triumphant return to Asgard and everything in between.

This eternity ended abruptly when the void tore apart in a coruscation of yellow, green, and orange sparks in the form of an oval. The sudden light intruding into the darkness barely ten feet in front of Loki blinded him painfully, and he howled, reaching up and covering his eyes. By the time his eyes had recovered, a large fist had grabbed Loki by the throat, pulling him through the oval.

When he looked around again, Loki found himself in the hand of a purple-skinned alien creature, taller and broader than any Asgardian, who wore a dark blue body suit with yellow metal over it. What was visible of his body looked burned and gnarled from some old fire, most visible on his face and hands, while one arm was fitted with some kind of exoskeleton. Worse than the wounds, however, was the look in the alien's eyes, for madness sparkled there plain for anyone to see.

Yet for all of that, the being radiated power beyond anything Loki had ever felt, beyond even Odin. When he spoke, the words reverberated with power and hate in equal measure. "I have need of your service, godling."

OOOOOOO

Harry had spent the rest of the morning with Hela and the kids and the afternoon in the time chamber, researching blessings for the equivalent of a full day in two hours' worth of real time while the kids were in class. He didn't reach any conclusions about how to protect himself from further traps, and Hela didn't have any insights either. They had come up with a few ways to enhance the magic of his crysis suit, since the arrays in it seemed able to ignore the anti-magic effect, but that was all for now.

After that Jean and Ororo had both returned, leaving Emma to continue her hostile takeover of Ozcorp. The four of them spent time with the team and the other kids. Of course, Melody, Illyana, and Einzahl received a lot of their attention. Of all the kids, these were the three that seemed to have sort of been adopted, with Melody, of course, being the first and most official one, and Harry and Illyana's relationship growing out of her apprenticeship to him.

After that Ororo and Harry headed out for their date. Harry had booked them a table at a restaurant in Marseilles, France, and from there they would then fly down to Africa. This left Jean and Hela to their own devices, but they too had plans. Jean wanted to introduce Hela to science fiction and was going to take her out to a movie. Emma would join them later for drinks.

When Ororo and Harry walked into the restaurant, there was a brief susurration of noise as people noticed them, not because they were recognized but because of how they looked. Ororo was wearing a black dressing gown with a high neckline and no shoulders which hugged her figure with a long slash cut out of its left side starting from her ankle and moving up to mid-thigh. She wore her panja ring on one hand, as always, matching it now with a necklace of silver, which in turn accentuated the small silver highlights here and there on her dress. Her hair fell loosely down her back, two simple silver earrings catching the light as she turned.

Harry too wore a very good suit, one which Emma had picked out for him at one point. His cravat was red, set off against the black of his suit, and he had bronze cufflinks. But Harry had to admit he'd probably be able to fade into the background if he didn't have Ororo on his arm. "You seem to have stopped the room, Ororo. Not that I can't see it. Heh, you could make runway models run home weeping."

"Not weeping, that would spoil their makeup," Ororo said, squeezing his arm in thanks for his compliment. "And as long as they only look and gossip, I could not care less what people think."

Seconds later they were led to their table, where Harry pulled out Ororo's chair before sitting across from her. Soon they were left to their own devices, and the two made small talk for a time, while Harry threw up a series of subtle spells to keep anyone from understanding what they were talking about.

After the sommelier came around and was sent off, Ororo listened with half an ear as Harry described the latest incident in the low-key prank war between Hela and Illyana. The rest of her attention was going around in circles, trying to think up how to broach the issues she had with some of the things Harry had included, or not included, when beginning the process of creating his country.

Like any good husband-by-any-other-name, Harry spotted this and, after finishing his story, reached over to take Ororo's hand. "What's wrong, Ororo?"

Ororo smiled, shivering, not from the cold but from the tone Harry's voice took as he said her name. It was filled with such love and devotion it would make the sky weep. She had noticed that before when he spoke any of their names. Indeed, it boggled her mind at times that more people didn't realize the multiplicity of their relationship when they were in public just by how Harry said their names when they were all together. It did not occur to Ororo that she and Jean in particular were guilty of the same thing.

Shaking her head to clear it of such thoughts for now, she smiled wanly. "I do have some serious points I'd like to speak to you about, and they mostly revolve around the creation of this new nation. We've talked about the Israeli Initiative before this, and I fully agree that the idea of our own nation, particularly one geared from the get-go to be both open to mutants and humans equally and to stand as a shield against space-borne threats, makes sense."

"But you have some problems with what work we've already done on the project," Harry supplied, nodding before bringing her hand up to kiss. "Ororo, I know there's no way a single nation can make anyone happy. I knew even among my lovers that someone would be unhappy. Emma's irritated that I won't give her or even my own companies greater latitude. Hela was irritated by the idea that I wanted to bring in more companies to do the actual building and construction that had no personal loyalty to me or stake in the country other than their work."

He laughed. "Mind you, Jean didn't care one way or another; government and laws are not areas she's interested in. Still, I can't make everyone happy. I can only do what I think is right. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to change my mind, though as I've proven numerous times before. So have at it, Ororo."

Ororo laughed quietly, raising her hand to cup his face for a moment, before nodding and pulling her hand away. As nice as such touches were, they didn't match the discussion they needed to have. "First, and, in a way, the most easily solved. Why in the world did you put the right to bear arms in the initial bill of rights? I understand you also put in a requirement that every gun owner pass a safety test, but I would have thought that looking at the number of armed crimes that have occurred in America would prove that to be a bad idea."

"While I can see the point about the high number of gun-related crimes in America, I don't think that taking away the right to bear arms would be the way to solve that problem," Harry said mildly.

"Not the point, Harry," Ororo said, smacking his hand lightly for his deliberate obtuseness. "Why?"

"Two points. One, as Hela pointed out, the majority of my advisers are mutants, and powered mutants at that. While I know and you know that none of us are going to go around abusing our powers, that won't always be the case once more and more mutants are allowed into the country. Huh…" Harry paused, thinking. "We seriously need to sit down and come up with a name for it, don't we?"

Shaking his head, Harry went on before Ororo had to smack his hand again. "So the common man will need to at least believe that they have a way to protect themselves. I think that the safety instruction and the need to meet certain criteria for automatic weapons and such like will be enough in the main to keep people from abusing this right. And that is what it is, Ororo: a right, not a privilege. It can be taken away from the individual if they abuse it."

Ororo frowned. "I don't like it. I don't like the idea of owning guns being such a prominent part of the individual's rights in your new country. Still, I can understand your points. I simply want to make certain there are checks and balances on it."

From there she made a few suggestions that hadn't occurred to Harry or the others. The first was, while allowing people to bear arms, they would not allow individuals to bring in their own guns. If they did, they would be bought off the individual and then replaced with Cold Steel designed weapons of similar style. But these would be gene-locked to the individual and able to be tracked. This would keep them from being used in a crime in the future, or make hunting them down afterward easier.

Further, Ororo wanted to expand on the safety class, which Harry agreed to readily. Harry wanted everyone to know that guns could be deadly weapons. As he put it, "I came from a world where everyone was armed, Ororo, but only a very few out of the total population really understood that or knew how to use their wands properly."

"Really? If I were Emma or Hela I would be all over that line, Harry," Ororo replied, rather pleased with how easily this portion of the conversation had gone.

By the time they were finished talking about that the food had arrived, and they fell silent, enjoying their lamb and braised duck. After a few bites, though, Harry looked over at Ororo and sighed. "Okay, and now for the rest."

"You know me too well, my Harry," Ororo replied with a faint smile before becoming serious. "I have a major problem with your stance on there being no Dole, no provision for those who don't work. I understand where Hela's position came from and even Emma's: both of them are looking at it through the lenses of their own interests, in Emma's case, and society, in Hela's. But a good government, one which serves its constituents even if, as in this case, it is not wholly answerable to them, needs to make allowances for those who do not work. Not those who will not but those who cannot. You make allowances for people who are injured in the work place, but not enough for those who have existing issues or dependents beyond the college age."

Taking a bite from her duck, Ororo paused as she chewed, then began to give examples of people who would need government aid: people who were sick or had crippling diabetes or psychological issues, keeping them from the workplace. "Initially, I agree that those issues probably won't crop up save in the families of workers wishing to emigrate. But our magic cannot fix everything, and it is best to have the system in place before you need it."

Here they truly got into an argument. Harry did not like the idea of the government providing for such people. It went against his principle of keeping the government as small as possible. At least initially he would also be the largest employer. That gave him too much power in the day to day lives of his citizens already. He also didn't want to confuse the tax codes more than absolutely necessary. Harry understood that there would be people who needed help in terms of money, medicine, or other things eventually, but he did not want the government to be the one providing it.

Frowning, Ororo leaned back in her chair, looking at Harry closely. "There is more to your refusal than just a wish to keep the government as small as possible, or perhaps there is more to why you want to do so. I know why you left your old world behind, Harry, but what about its government has bothered you so much you don't want to have a welfare section for your own?Surely not how they villainized and lionized you in turn."

Harry finished his current bite for a moment, then held up his fork as if it was a wand, waving it in the air for a second before spearing another bit of lamb. "It sort of goes back to how I said I came from an armed society, but one which didn't actually acknowledge that. Every witch and wizard had a wand. Wvery witch and wizard could have defended themselves. Instead, only a bare handful tried. And it wasn't a lack of knowledge, not totally, but a lack of will."

Taking another bite, he chewed before swallowing and going on, his tone almost whimsical. "Nearly everyone believed the ministry was run badly; people in the pubs or on the streets were always complaining about it. But they never did anything about it, never took matters into their own hands. Here they were, armed with a deadly weapon, yet when trouble came up the first thought was to shout for the Aurors. When Voldemort came back and started his war again, no one believed me because the ministry told them I was wrong.

"The Ministry, as moribund and stupid as it was, dominated their lives so much! Transportation was looked after by the ministry in various ways. Every small skill in magic needed to be registered. Every family had someone working there, more often more than one. It was the largest employer by a monstrous margin, and the taxes were commensurately large. And whenever a new problem came up, it was always, 'regulate this,' 'mandate that,' 'create a new committee,' 'let the ministry handle it, that's what it's there for.' Don't do it yourself; don't look after your own family; let the ministry do it for you. Hell, let it do your thinking for you! Far too many damn people did just that."

Harry broke off before gulping his cup of wine down in a way that would have horrified any wine snob given the age of the wine in question. But Ororo was the only one able to notice thanks to his privacy spells, and she simply looked on compassionately, knowing that this was something Harry had to get off his chest.

"I look back on that, I look at the amount of power I could have over my citizens, and it worries me; it worries me a lot. I do not want to herd sheep. I want to lead men and women who can make their own way and look after their own affairs," Harry finished, his tone weary but determined.

The two of them continued to eat in silence, Ororo letting the silence linger and the emotion to drain out of the atmosphere before she spoke. "I think you are projecting, Harry, taking your concerns about having too much government too far. Is your government ever going to be in a position to control the news everyone sees?"

When Harry shook his head, she went on. "Is it ever going to regulate every problem away? Decide acts which are not actually permitted are wrong and, as your world put it, Dark?"

Again, Harry shook his head. "Are you ever liable to hire or allow any individual who would abuse their power to remain in power in your government?"

Harry's head moved in a negative manner for a third time, and Ororo reached over, taking his hands in hers, her panja ring jingling, catching his attention and bringing a smile to his face to match her own. "Then do not project your fears, your anger at the past onto the future. Do not let people suffer because you see only the problems of the past, rather than the now."

Staring down at their joined hands, Harry remained silent for a few moments before he sighed. "All right. I, I can't say I see the need to talk about a welfare system right now, and I still don't think it needs to be part of the government. But what if we put in place an entirely new company, a non-profit organization that can handle gathering money and sharing it out with those that need it? One that would be utterly separate from the government and my own companies?"

"That will do for now, but we will need to come back to this in the centuries to come," Ororo said, chuckling as she said the words, knowing this to be true. While she might not live as long as Harry, Hela, or Jean would, her own internal magical power would allow her to age very, very slowly. She also knew that this was as far as she was going to get on this issue with Harry right now, and had no wish to ruin their night by pressing matters.

Laughing in turn, Harry changed the subject, asking, "So, did Jean fill you in on what we've been doing out in space?"

After a very pleasant dinner, the two of them exited the restaurant, swiftly heading to where Harry had parked his Huayra. There were five local youths scattered in the shadows around it, victims of the Hauyra's magical defenses, but Ororo and Harry ignored them. They would recover in time.

For about two hours Harry drove them along the highways of France, then into Italy. Soon after that, they pulled off the road, and Harry shrunk his car, pocketing it quickly before looking at Ororo. "After you, milady."

Ororo laughed, then concentrated, waving her hand at her dress and transforming it into a replica of her normal Custodes suit, sans the magical and material defenses. Leaning forward, she captured Harry in searing kiss. Then, before he could deepen it, she leaped into the air, her laughter dopplering behind her.

Chuckling quietly, Harry leaped after her, the runes on his back activating automatically. The two of them zoomed through the air, invisible to all but one another, playing tag as if they were children for a time until they were deep into Africa. There they began to move towards the ruins they had found several months back which had the likenesses of Ororo's ancestors scattered here and there upon them.

What they found was not what they had left behind, however. Where before the city had been barely visible from the air, hidden amongst with the overgrowth and trees, there were now several areas which had been somehow cleared of plant life.

Sharing a glance, Ororo and Harry broke apart, moving above the ancient city, their magical and physical senses extended. Harry's eyes began to glow, both with mage sight and a spell which shifted his eyes into that of an owl, to better look for threats. Yet after a few moments their search came up negative, and Ororo had noticed something.

Gesturing for Harry to join her, she pointed down at one of the areas. "Look. Each of the cleared areas is around one of those small plinths. That looks to be the only connection between them…"

"I noticed another connection, actually. I think I found the center of whatever is going on," Harry replied, leading the way to the center. There they found one of the walls which they had found on their first sojourn here, the one which had a carving that looked like it had been done to venerate one of Ororo's ancestors.

Hovering over it, the two of them once more let their magical senses roam over the area. "There's some kind of slowly fading spell here, powered by a ley line," Ororo murmured. "I can't tell what it is for, however. Harry?"

"Hmmm. I can't find the ley line like you did, love. It must be a very weak one. As for the spell, part of it's a preservation spell, hence why the plants have been removed in some fashion. As for the rest, I think, maybe…some kind of memory spell? It feels almost like a pensieve but not quite."

"It's not harmful or dangerous, whatever it is," Ororo replied definitively. When Harry looked at her, she gestured around. "I've been feeling a sense of welcome since we arrived here. It is faint, but it is there. I think our last visit somehow activated the spell, and it is slowly clearing the city. There are many more of those plinths past the already cleared areas, after all."

"And, once they all reactivate, they'll slowly link up, and the preservation spell will remove the rest of the jungle growth. I can understand that. I'm just wondering, why?" Harry mused.

"There might not have been a goal or reason behind the preservation spell, love. Remember, this city was a capital of a magic-based society led by my ancestors. Surely the idea of the city having a spell to keep itself clean and livable isn't so bizarre?" Ororo asked, before frowning. "As for the pensieve, that is a puzzle."

With that she floated down to the ground, moving through the city, touching the stones here and there. Deciding to take Ororo at her word that they were safe, Harry followed her, putting his arm around her waist. The two of them walked on like that, exploring the city. They found several more plinths, but only that one central area had any carvings that looked like Ororo's face, which in both their minds was a good sign of the mental stability of her ancestors.

Eventually they came back, looking at the carving of Ororo's ancestor for a moment. "Would it be a good idea to add more power to the spell, you think?"

Frowning in thought, Harry looked around, once more activating his mage sight as he thought his way through her question. "No, I don't think so. Unless we want to throw a Fidelius up? Do you think this place is that important?"

Now it was Ororo's turn to take a moment to think before answering. Then she shook her head. "Personal, yes, this place could be that. Important, in terms of our lives or future, no. Still, throwing up a Fidelius over the area at least will help keep it hidden until we decide to let the world find it. I would like to come back, however, when the spell is done."

"Me too. The layout of the city is interesting. Maybe come back here every month or so to see how it's getting on and to renew the spell?"

"Agreed. For now, however, I promised we would join Emma and Jean in the tower tonight, so…" Winking at Harry, Ororo once more ascended into the sky. The two of them spent several moments setting the Fidelius up, with Ororo as the secret keeper, before flying away.

By the time they were back over Europe it was around ten at night, but Harry still inveigled Ororo to go driving with him for a bit. At night there wasn't nearly as much traffic on the highways, and Harry could really let his Huayra sing, blasting along at close to one hundred fifty miles per hour, with both of them enjoying the sense of speed, the windows down enough to let in some air.

They zoomed on until they were back in France, then once more pulled over, exited the car, and shrank it before once more taking to the sky. Flying as fast as a jet could, they soon found themselves passing through the area of protective magics that surrounded Camelot and its environs.

As they did Ororo giggled, a sound that made Harry grin in turn as he turned to her. "I just contrasted what coming home feels like to what I felt in that old city. I have to say I much prefer the feel of Camelot."

Harry nodded, making no move to ask how the two feelings differed. After all, he had a hard time describing in words the feel of Camelot these days too, and he was its headmaster. The spells and magic that thrummed through the air here were simply special; there was no other way to put it.

Heading down, the two of them moved to the headmaster's tower. At a wave of Harry's hand, the stones, the granite stones which Harry had transfigured to be clear, opened to let them through.

It was a cold night out, but not cold enough to make the two women sitting in small living area do more than mutter as Ororo and Harry entered. The reason for this, though, wasn't so much the lack of cold in the air, however, as they all had been in a seemingly heated discussion of some sort. A bottle of wine sat between them, and Emma's face was noticeably flushed.

Looking around, Harry spotted Jean asleep, and moved in that direction while Ororo moved to the two other ladies. "I thought we agreed to not drink alcohol as a sign of solidarity with Jean?"

"I wanted to celebrate my day's accomplishments. I was able to snatch up the medical sciences and agricultural sciences division of Ozcorp, and the FBI has already stopped looking at my hostile takeover askance. Why that is, I don't quite know just yet, but I will take it as a win. I also asked Jean if I could indulge before she went to bed. She was utterly exhausted by the time we finished talking with Betsy at dinner and had no problem with Hela and I having some wine."

At Ororo's interrogative look, Emma elaborated. "Ms. Steed is indeed up and about and properly repentant, and rather horrified, by what happened. Betsy recommended that she be left alone for a few weeks, though, before we approach her to offer her a job, and Charles agrees. He wants to have small follow up psychological sessions with her now, but he is raring to follow up on our suggestion that he start work on Banner."

"What tired her out?" Harry asked, before he was interrupted by Hela pointing a finger at him. There was a flare of magic, and Harry found himself sporting a beard for some reason. It wasn't a long one, only coming down to his pecs, or elaborate in coif, but it matched his hair for sheer wildness. "Um…why?"

"Hmm… Yes, much better," Hela purred, standing up and moving over to Harry while Ororo looked on, one eyebrow rising in surprise and amusement. Hela ran her fingers through Harry's beard, which, given it was a conjured item rather than a real part of him, Harry couldn't feel. "None of that boyish look to you now, Harry Potter. You look like a proper Jarl. No man should ever be found so clean-shaven, whatever modern humanity seems to think."

"Ehh, it does add a certain gravity to him, I'll admit. But the whole untamed thing does nothing for me. A nice, well cared-for beard, perhaps," Emma mused, looking at Harry thoughtfully, the wheels in her head blatantly turning as she contemplated the potential PR effects a new beard would cause. It would allow Harry to hide more of his expression for one, always a good thing in her opinion. "Oddly, it seems to bring out his eyes more. I have no idea why, but it does."

"Ahem, don't I get a vote on this?" Harry asked, somewhat amused even if he already knew the incoming answer.

"Why-ever would you?" Hela asked, sounding genuinely quizzical. But her eyes, those expressive violet orbs he had begun to truly adore, were glinting in amusement behind her half mask. Her dark green lips were also starting to twitch upwards into a smile.

Those lips looked imminently kissable, and Harry decided to follow up that thought. Leaning in, he moved to press his lips against Hela's. But she pulled back, putting a hand against his lips as she did, shaking her head and not quite glaring at him.

Harry knew she didn't like public displays of affection like that, but he hardly felt that the headmaster's tower, with only his other two lovers around, constituted being in public.

Hela, for her part, wasn't actually as irritated as she was trying to act. At this point she too wouldn't count being around Harry's other lovers as being in public. However, that didn't mean she wasn't enjoying playing hard to get or teasing him with it. Besides, it's probably good for him, she thought, mock-virtuously, and very, very fondly. He and Ororo hardly had any courtship time before becoming lovers, and Jean and Emma both also knew what they felt for him long before they took the plunge. No, my Seidr man, you might well have my heart already, but I, for certain, am going to make you work for my hand a little longer.

Before she could say anything, Ororo spoke up. "I believe that while Emma has a point about a beard oddly bringing out Harry's eyes for some reason, and I can understand where you are coming from culturally Hela dear, I have to throw up a veto on Harry having a beard right now."

Hela and Emma looked at her, and Ororo smiled. It was a slow, sensual, almost sinful thing, that smile, causing Emma to shiver and Hela, the somewhat flirtatious and very self-controlled goddess of Hel, to blush. "Oh, yes. You see, the problem with such things is they can chafe horribly during intimate moments. In particular, one whose ancient name you might recognize more than the modern euphemism, Hela. Do you know the meaning of the phrase, 'the lord's kiss?'"

Blushing now quite hotly, Hela looked over at Harry, who smiled back amiably, his emerald eyes lit up with delight. With Hela's hand still over his mouth, Harry decided to get in on the fun. Picturing a snake in his mind for a brief second, he activated his Parseltongue ability and hissed into her hand. "*It's one of my favorite bedroom activities; I love how the ladies taste.*

Hela shivered, a full body jolt going through her as the vibration touched her hand, and she realized what that could mean for more intimate moments. She pulled her hand back reluctantly, stammering slightly. "Ah, I, I see…" She moved backwards, flicking a finger at the conjured beard, which disappeared. "I knew there had to be some actual reason behind that rather than kowtowing to modern fashion."

"Mmmm. I had actually forgotten that point, Ororo," Emma murmured, staring at Harry through half-lidded eyes. "In fact, I think I might need a…refresher…on that topic."

Ororo chuckled throatily, but made no reply, instead moving forward to gently hug Hela, turning her away while Harry and Emma fell to flirting. "Are you going to spend the night, Hela?"

"You know I will not, sister," Hela replied, smiling at the invitation even so, her face slowly recovering from its earlier rush of blood. It meant a lot to her that now all three of the women already involved with Harry had asked that question at different points. Though the wording, of course, had been different, what the question meant had not changed, nor the underlying tone of welcome.

"I know," Ororo said simply, pulling the two of them to a halt by the bed. She moved one hand over Jean's brow, then down to her stomach, her hand glowing with a light blue color for a moment. Hela and Ororo both smiled as did the sleeping Jean. Then Ororo turned to back to Hela, her smile shifting slightly but still being one of warmth and welcome. "But it was important for me to let you know you were welcome to join us. And if you want to, Emma and I could hold off from…indulging, and we could all simply sleep."

"While the bed is, for certain, large enough for such a thing, I think that would be horribly rude of me to agree to," Hela drawled, having fully regained her balance by this point and her sense of propriety with it. "Don't put yourself out on my behalf, Ororo. I will simply return to my own bed. Besides, Illyana has attempted another magical trap on my door frame, and I would hate to disappoint the poor dear."

Laughing, Ororo led the way back to Emma and Harry, where Harry had somehow shifted from verbally flirting with Emma to tickling her foot as she tried to wriggle to escape. "Harry, Hela is going to leave us for the night."

Turning, Harry gently set Emma's leg back down on the sofa she had been laying out on before turning and cocking an arm towards Hela. "In that case, would the lady like sir to walk her to her chambers?"

"The lady certainly would," Hela replied with a laugh, linking her arm with his.

Emma might have objected to Harry leaving her like that before their game of flirtation and tickling could lead to where she wanted it to, but she then realized that this left her alone with Ororo. Ororo, who until that morning she hadn't seen awake and about for months, at least to her perspective. With that in mind, she leaped up off the sofa and, as Harry and Hela exited the headmaster's chamber, her lips were already pressing against Ororo's, aggressively pushing her back to the bed as their hands began to explore.

Neither Harry nor Hela noticed this at the moment, walking down the spiral staircase, arm in arm at first, then pulling one another closer, Harry's arms around Hela's shoulder and her arm around his waist. "You didn't have to leave, you know. You could have stayed. I promise we wouldn't have tried to do anything that would have made you uncomfortable."

"I know, Harry, but I am not quite ready to join you and your lovers in your bed," Hela replied, amused but also warmed to get the same invitation twice in one evening. "Besides, while you and Ororo might be able to control yourselves to that extent, I am not certain Emma would thank you for it. Besides, are you so eager to simply have me 'sleep' beside you?"

"If it would hasten the day I could call you my lady as well as milady, then yes," Harry said seriously, pulling them to a stop in front of the door leading out into the rest of the castle, his eyes locking on hers and his hands on Hela's shoulders.

That direct pronouncement hovered in the air between them, making the air thick with promise, and Hela replied by leaning in to kiss Harry. The kiss lasted for a while, and Hela felt Harry's hands move down her body to her skirt covered hips, resting there. They made no move to any other area, simply resting there, waiting, not clinging or keeping her, simply waiting with a certain amount of implication to their touch.

But Hela had a plan going forward, and she would stick with it. Even as she kissed back, refusing to deepen the kiss, but, making certain Harry could feel her desire too, she began to pull away, her hands falling from Harry's sides to his hands, pushing them away slightly. "No, my Seidr man. I can honestly say that I can see that time fast approaching, but even simply sleeping beside you is a step I will not take unless or until we are wed. If we eventually move from courting to marriage, I will walk down the aisle pure of mind and body."

She then chuckled, her lips quirking into a wry smile. "Or as pure as my mind can be, anyway, after spending so much time with Emma Frost. That woman's tongue and her flirtations are far more…direct and descriptive than I have ever heard before." Save perhaps my own mother, though thankfully she toned it down after she realized I was uncomfortable. Emma did no such thing, the shameless tart.

"As the lady desires. I won't ever push you to do anything you don't want to, Hela. You know that," Harry replied, and Hela could only nod, watching as he turned to open the door, leading them out into the corridor beyond.

OOOOOOO

The next day Harry, Ororo, and Jean were woken up, as had become almost normal, by a horde of kids led by the double teaming menaces of Illyana and Melody. Considering that Harry and Ororo were both still naked, however, the kids found their heads suddenly wrapped up in conjured cloth, which halted their progress towards the bed where the lovers were sleeping. Jean grumbled and groaned, her telekinetic powers getting away from her and lifting or pushing away at several bits of furniture as she rolled over, trying to go back to sleep.

Ororo, for her part, found one hand questing around in front of where she was laying on her side. She frowned as she realized that Emma wasn't there. "Emma?"

Behind her she felt Harry move from where he had been spooning with her from behind, one hand having just flashed up to conjure the wraps currently blocking the boys and girls from seeing things they weren't ready for. Well, a few of them might be ready for it, but I'm certainly not ready to allow them to, Harry thought before answering Ororo's question. "Emma had to leave early to get back to work. The time difference, remember?"

Groaning, Jean turned in their direction, almost glaring at her two lovers before she noticed both of them were naked. She then saw the kids gathered in a bumbling pile by the door and realized what must have happened. "I suppose I'll take care of the kids, though I think it's time to stop this whole morning attack thing they've got going on, Harry."

Jean paused as she tried to get out of bed, a somewhat laborious process given her stomach but nowhere near the task it would be in the months to come, a memory having struck her. "Oh, and Steve called us late last night. He and Dugan want to talk to you in person. Dugan apparently survived with a number of his people but not uninjured. I didn't get the impression that that was what they wanted to talk to you about, though."

Harry frowned at that as he cuddled into Ororo's naked body, watching Jean move around. A thrill of happiness went through him as he looked at her, seeing her belly and the happiness she seemed to radiate as one hand fell to her stomach. His thoughts, though, were more centered around what she had just said rather than watching her, as lovely a pastime as that was. "Hmm. I think I'll take Hela along to see what he wants, since I thankfully don't have any meetings this morning or afternoon. Steve and Hela got along well enough, and that will leave Ororo to spend time with the kids today as I did yesterday. What're you up to today?"

"Heading up to meet with Admiral Powers for a bit, then checking in with Polaris. Maybe take over from her some of the work she's been doing gathering resources for the robot factory in Fortress Mars. What are our priorities there, by the way?"

Sighing faintly, Harry extricated himself from around Ororo, who didn't seem to want to let him go just yet, mumbling and trying to reclaim control of his arms, but failing. "Ten percent of each batch to go to aiding in creating more, thirty percent to join the efforts to get the derelict fleet back online, ten percent to join Carol and her teams on our latest acquisitions, and ten percent to helping mine out the Ravenspires, though depending on Lorna's work that may not be necessary. The last twenty to be put to work on a project Reed is coming up with out in Jupiter's atmosphere."

"The hydrogen harvester. Yeah, I saw his designs for that. It should help us run the fleet we've already got, but we are still going to build arc reactors into our own ships, right?" Jean asked, moving over to gently but very firmly push the kids back out the door one after another, murmuring about how their timing was bad.

Once in the stairwell, with Ororo now covered by a blanket and Harry wearing pants if not a shirt, she pulled off the wraps over their heads, sending them on their way. She did note that Illyana was looking a little shifty as they went, however, and knew that Harry might have to watch out for a retaliatory prank at some point.

She also spotted that Illyana's hair was streaked with grey, and her eyebrows seemed to be missing. The grey in her hair was equally evident in her clothing.

"That's right. The arc reactors represent a major difference in power levels and will make our home-built ships far tougher than their Kree, Skrull, or Shi'ar counterparts. But the only ship in the current fleet we'll add one to will be the Doom Bringer, since it's lacking a main generator at the moment."

Nodding, Jean pushed the last kid out of the room to let Ororo and Jean get dressed. Below, at the entrance to the stairwell, she found Hela, looking pristine as always and rather amused as she looked at the children. "I warned you all, did I not? You need to choose when to launch these dawn attacks of yours more wisely, lest your targets no longer find them entertaining enough to indulge." Her voice was ripe with smug satisfaction at being able to say 'I told you so' so rightly.

"I'll get you…" Illyana promised, glowering slightly at the Asgardian, her Russian accent thicker than normal. "One of these days I will prank you. You won't know when, you won't know where, but one of these days."

"Hah! Child, I am a goddess, one with the blood of the trickster god Loki in my veins. You will never overcome me, no matter your enthusiasm. You are simply out of your league," Hela replied haughtily, more to egg the child on more than anything else. She truly enjoyed the fire in her Seidr man's little apprentice and thought that Illyana had a bright future ahead of her given how much control she already had over her magic.

"And on that note, I think I am definitely right in saying we need to separate the two of you lest the castle suffer for it. Hela, Jean said Steve called last night, and wants to talk to me about something. I'd like to have you along if that's all right?" Harry asked, stepping in before Illyana's eagerness to prank Hela got the best of her here and now.

Hela nodded agreement, wondering what Steve Rogers had found. The man had impressed her, and she doubted he would ask for aid unless he truly needed it.

Seeing her expression, Jean elaborated on what she had told Harry earlier. "Dugan was part of the conversation, and he said they had something they wanted someone with your unique skill set to help them hunt down."

Both Harry and Hela's eyes narrowed at that, and they glanced at one another, saying as one, "Magic, then."

Thinking about it, Jean had to agree. By this point Ororo had joined them, and all of them and the children moved down to the dining hall, joining a rather raucous breakfast, since most of the other castle's inhabitants were there, including the Custodes, all of them eating an energy-enhancing meal prior to resuming their training after yesterday's day off. Even Garm, hardly one of nature's early risers, was there, and he hurried over from where he had been speaking to Dani and Rahne to nudge his muzzle into his mistress's shoulder. "Mistress."

"Prepare for a bit of an outing, Garm. Harry and I might have need of your nose," Hela said, her lips twitching as she stroked her vassal's neck fur. "You'll have to leave off on teaching young Rahne for the day."

Garm's lips drew back into a truly wolfish smile. "Of course, mistress, and I do not even have to worry about the young puppy backsliding. Young Dani is going to take her out to teach her how to hunt in the human manner today. Coming at the same issue from both sides, as it were."

Behind the giant wolf, Rahne gave Dani the latest in what was no doubt a series of betrayed looks at her friend's complicity in her 'torture.'

"Sound thinking," Ororo said approvingly, moving around them and now leading the way to where the younger children were all sitting down. She would not be going with Harry today, instead heading to the Savage Land to meet with Shanna and Logan. She wanted to make certain that the original inhabitants of the Savage Land understood what would happen when Harry began to bring in groups of workers and settlers. The last thing they needed was a culture clash or argument over settlement zones turning bloody.

About forty minutes after eating, Hedwig returned to Harry's shoulder after having being sent to Steve to get the lay of the land. When Harry held out a hand to Hela, however, she shook her head resolutely. "Garm and I will teleport ourselves after you, thank you very much. Dealing with your apparition method once was more than enough!"

Garm nodded along with his mistress's declaration. A wolf's stomach was not meant to turn like a pup going down a hill as far as he was concerned.

Harry shrugged. He could have used Ororo's method of teleportation, he supposed, if Steve had been able to give them the name of the place or its exact location in terms of longitude and latitude. But he hadn't been able to. The name of the place was just Installation One, and that wasn't definitive enough even if Steve had been able to tell them what state of America the place was in. So, with a final smile, Harry went ahead, teleporting into a nearly bare office room somewhere.

It looked like the prototypical office cubicle, with the only thing sticking out of place being Steve clad in his Captain America garb. The two men shook hands, and, after telling Steve that Hela would be along in a moment, Harry asked if anything had changed in how SHIELD was being phased out.

"Not much, no. Nick is going to be kept on as a kind of special security advisor to the president, maybe even part of his official cabinet. He might have dropped the ball badly, but he knows where a lot of bodies are buried and is still heavily respected in the espionage world," Steve replied with a grimace, as he still had issues with what his old comrade had been up to. "But it's been decided to not even attempt to build up another agency like SHIELD. Not here in the US, anyway. I understand that the UN security council might be thinking about creating a similar agency, billing it as part of Interpol, to handle super-powered threats. But I haven't been brought into the loop on that, so it looks like me, E, and Natasha, at least, might be going to work for you once the dust settles."

As Steve finished speaking there was a blinding flash, and Hela and Garm appeared, the giant wolf having shrunk himself down by half in order to move around more easily. Steve looked at the scarred wolf, then shrugged his shoulders before bowing formally to Hela. "Lady Hela, I'm happy to see you again, though your companion might be a little off-putting to some of the workers here."

"Captain, you are looking well. I hope to see you working more closely with Guardian in the future now that your prior employers have fallen to the natural end to those who cannot contain their own hubris," Hela replied, smiling at the man.

While Harry sent her a rather wry look, Steve made a noncommittal noise to that, gesturing for them to follow him out the door. "I'm honestly looking forward to that too, though beyond using me as a trainer we haven't talked about my role in his organization. Still, we can have that discussion later. For now, follow me."

The two of them moved through a long simple metal corridor as Steve explained where they were. As Harry had known from Hedwig, they were now somewhere in New Mexico, way and hell away from anything. The whole installation was a secret base of SHIELD's.

"Are we talking some kind of Area 51 concept?" Harry asked suspiciously. "Phoenix has told me about the number of theories behind that name."

"Yes and no. Yes, it is sort of like what popular fiction says Area 51 is like, but it actually isn't all that impressive. Well, not in the main, anyway. SHIELD had a lot of items and things that came from various raids and encounters, but most of it has already been analyzed and taken apart. Nothing that is too different from what you've seen in the past or have access to, I have no doubt. The only thing that is different, the thing that I called you here for, is the exception to that rule, the thing this place was built to house in the first place."

As he spoke, Steve led the way out of the corridor onto a metal walkway that proved to be a gantry that circled around a large, almost empty, warehouse sized room. Harry immediately noticed the number of odd devices scattered throughout the room. Half of them looked like scanners; the other half he didn't recognize offhand.

Hawkeye met them at the stairs leading down to the floor, nodding at the newcomers and bowing, as Steve had told him to Hela, though he didn't quite know why. "Guardian, Lady Hela, um…, giant dog who I haven't been introduced to."

"The name is Garm, human. Call me dog again and I will get to see what your flesh tastes like," Garm growled, sniffing and moving around the room, his hackles rising and not entirely because of Hawkeye's unintended insult.

"It says something disturbing about my life that a talking giant wolf isn't the most unusual thing I've seen. Not even in just the past week. Thank God I'm retiring after this," Hawkeye muttered, shaking his head and gesturing for Hela and Guardian to follow him. "Okay, so this was basically a vault and a lab rolled into one. This place was kept so secret even Steve here didn't know where this installation was until after yesterday. I knew about it because Nick demanded my help in making certain the security on the place was up to stopping anything we could envision. Unfortunately, the work on said security wasn't finished before the ball went up on AIM's assault on us."

"Did AIM suborn someone here like they did on the helicarrier and elsewhere?" Harry asked, frowning and moving over to one of the devices he recognized as a scanner. "And what were you studying?"

Steve and Hawkeye exchanged a glance, and Steve replied. "We have no idea what its real name is, but we've been working under the assumption that it is either a magical device or an artifact from an alien presence left on Earth thousands of years ago. I first ran into it when the Red Skull attempted to use it to create a new form of weapon, including a flying fortress during World War II. The teams that found me also found it."

Now it was Hela and Harry's turn to exchange a look, while Garm continued to sniff around the room, zeroing in quickly on a large square indent on the floor below the series of scanners that Harry had been looking at. It looked as if something had sat there in the concrete and had been held there by iron clamps of some sort. "Okay, that tells me what you were looking into here. So, what did this thing look like?"

"It was a cube about as large as my hands put together to a side, and it glowed a deep blue, and we called it the Tesseract. It seemed to give off limitless energy all the time and was only quiescent when stuck in granite. Then the sides touching the rock would go dormant," Steve replied.

Steve was interrupted then as Garm spoke up. "Mistress, this smells of magic, right enough, but also with the stink of Lord Odin's work." While as ambivalent towards Old One Eye as his mistress, Garm never allowed that to enter his words when speaking about the King of Asgard.

Hela frowned in thought, moving over to join Garm and waving her hands in the air for a few seconds, her fingers flaring orange. "I know little enough about Odin's works beyond their efficacy. Still, let us see…" Long lines of power came from those orange fingers, cascading down into an intricate web as she tried to determine what had been kept here.

Harry knew that having too many sensor-type magics cast on the same area would muddy the issue, so he stayed back and let Hela work. That problem would have only been exacerbated since their magical schools were also very different. Instead he continued to talk to Steve and Hawkeye, getting a feel of the history of the thing and what had happened here.

The Red Skull, it turned out, had developed a way of siphoning off the energy to power the weapons of the first iteration of Hydra, coming up with crude energy weapons of all sizes. They hadn't actually been good enough to be much better than normal weapons, but his plot to create bombers able to reach America from Germany and to drop what Steve called plague bombs on their cities could well have forced America out of the war. Steve had put a stop to that at the expense of his own life, or so he had thought, falling into the far northern ocean and literally being frozen alive.

Hawkeye, however, maintained that the weapon concept was one SHIELD actually hadn't been interested in. They had numerous other ways to get weapons just like the ones HYDRA had created, after all, and many even better. No, it was the energy the cube gave off and the odd effects it could have that they were most interested in. For example, many of the scientists working on the project had discovered that if you passed the light from the object through a series of filters, you could produce different effects. Some of them were intensely interesting scientifically, though why sort of went over Harry's head. Other aspects of letting the energy of the cube out through similar controlled experiments, however, he understood easily.

From there Hawkeye explained what had happened here. According to him, the base had been attacked by someone matching the description of Mysterio, a super-powered villain who specialized in creating illusions and manipulating the senses. They had been aided by someone Hawkeye had recognized as a former SHIELD agent, who had been assigned to this base before he had begun to exhibit an almost manic interest in the Tesseract. He had been transferred and kept under watch, but apparently not close enough, or he had suborned his watchers. The man had shown up here dressed in an AIM uniform minus the helmet and leading the group of AIM soldiers.

The Avengers' sharpshooter shook his head irritably. "Even with MODOK gone, Aim must still have bases somewhere out there, and, in the confusion of yesterday, they got in, escaped with the Tesseract, and were gone before anyone knew it."

"Tell me more about this Mysterio character," Hela ordered, moving back towards the stair up to the gantry. "And do you have video recordings of the attack?"

"Yes, but it's not very helpful. Mysterio and the traitor somehow blocked the cameras from recording his progress through the facility, and none of the workers elsewhere in the facility saw anything," Hawkeye replied grumpily. "We only know what went on in this chamber because there were several carefully hidden cameras no one but Fury and I knew about."

Still, Hawkeye was able to give Harry a summary of Mysterio's powers and his history, though nothing in that indicated any connection to AIM. Harry wondered if MODOK had somehow suborned him like he had several SHIELD agents throughout the organization.

The three men retreated to a small corner of the hanger, and Hawkeye brought up the images from the security cameras. Harry watched in silence as Mysterio, a man of medium height and build dressed in a large opaque helmet, green tights, and a purple cape, walked into the room. There were a series of multi-colored flashes from his hands as the various technicians and scientists noticed his arrival.

The few guards in the actual hanger quickly brought up their weapons. There was no warning, no shout of halt, they simply opened fire. But not on him, but on each other, while the scientists and the others seemed to just be unable to see, holding their hands up to their eyes and crying aloud in distress as they went to their knees. Then the SHIELD traitor came in followed by a few more AIM troopers.

A second later Harry grit his teeth as the Aim troopers moved in, killing the few remaining guards. After that they proved they weren't interested in taking any prisoners or even creating converts. They systematically moved around the room, putting bullets in each of the technicians and scientists. "How many dead?"

"Everyone that was in the room at the time. They also removed the bodies and cleaned up after themselves. If not for the two hidden cameras we wouldn't have discovered anything was wrong until whoever the government decided would take over here arrived, since the exterior guards don't have any interaction with the techs once they are inside this room," Hawkeye replied, looking away. He had seen this recording more than enough times already; he didn't need to watch it again. "As it is, we found out about the attack far too late to trail them. All the research on the Tesseract itself is gone, both from the computers here and on the helicarrier."

Frowning, Harry pushed away from the table where the video had been playing, moving over to join Hela as he considered the idea that AIM would have tossed MODOK and who knows how much of their dwindling resources away as a diversion. Thinking that unlikely, he considered how they were going to find the Tesseract in question. Steve was right to call us in on this. If it's something magical and something connected to the Asgardians, then I sure as hell don't want to leave it in AIM's hands. But how to find the bloody thing is the question of the hour.

Looking around, Harry held out a hand in front of him so the others behind him couldn't see, conjuring a small needle. "Point me Tesseract." As Harry had expected, the spell didn't work, the needle simply going in circles. So, either magically protected, out of range, or the name alone isn't enough for me to use. Darn it. Wish there was a way to tell which it was, but there are other ways to go about this.

By the time Harry reached her, Hela had finished her work and looked like she was mad enough to spit nails. "Garm was right. There was an Asgardian and, more importantly, the Old One's magical signature on the object, whatever it was. Further, I think it is a container of some kind. I don't know what it contains, but it must contain an item of some power."

Looking around and seeing that only Steve and Hawkeye were close enough to overhear, Harry whispered, "Like the belt?"

Hela twitched, then slowly nodded as she canceled her magical spells, the orange web disappearing as she stepped back. "Something of that nature, though I think more powerful. Yet that is even more of a guess than the idea it contains something at all. Your turn, my Seidr man," she finished, bowing and waving her hand sardonically towards the area she had been examining.

Before he began his own magical investigation, however, Harry looked at Garm. "Anything you can tell us?"

"Would you like to know what everyone here had for their last meals?" Garm asked archly, lips curling back to reveal his fangs. "I can tell you how many people were here—I can pick out individual scents. I can tell how old they were, what they ate and drank, even their health in some cases. Yet I cannot tell you which scent is whose. The scent of the dead has permeated the other scents too much."

"Hela, if you could go with Garm and start looking around the facility, maybe he can find something to narrow it down?" As Garm nodded, Harry went on, his eyes lighting up with mage sight. "I'll meet you outside."

About ten minutes later Harry walked out of the complex, finding the sun almost directly above them by this point. Around the small complex was desert in every direction. Nothing else: no landmark, no road, no nothing. SHIELD had put the complex here to hide it and had brought in teams of workmen via helicopter to set it up, with none of them even knowing how long it would take them to get here, let alone having anything remotely like a starting point. Only the ten helicopter pilots had known where it was, so how the traitor had figured out how to find it again after being transferred away was a mystery for now.

Hela looked over at him from where she was standing beside the small, if heavily guarded, gate leading to the helicopter pad which should have been the only way in or out. "Any luck?"

Shaking his head, Harry moved over to her, once more whispering and covering them with a Muffilatio. "I found some overtones of earth magic when I used a spell Ororo taught me from Gaea, but nothing conclusive about what the Tesseract was. I saw some of what you talked about: the magical signature the Tesseract left behind does match some of what I saw in Thor's cave. I can tell you, though, that Mysterio, at least, didn't use magic. He used some kind of air-based assault to go with his light show. The light show was a feint to cover whatever agent he placed in the air circulation system. There was no other magical signature in there, and Hawkeye's people found a small canister hidden in the air ducts. But, regardless, I can't track him or the Tesseract. He's out of range of any spells I could use to do so."

Garm nosed his way into the conversation quite literally, placing his snout on his mistress's shoulder. "I can't make out any scents out here. Whoever it was somehow hid their smell after leaving the building. There is a scent of rubber leading off into the desert, but it too ends abruptly and then is replaced by the smell of steel and oil for a bit. One of your flying machines, I'd wager."

"Damn it…" Harry thought hard for a few minutes, then shook his head. "I can't think of any way to track them, not without some kind of starting point. If we had come in right after the attack, I think they'd still be in range of my spells, but point-me and other tracking spells can't cover a lot of terrain."

"Ghigau, perhaps?" Hela asked, using Dani's code name here in public, despite the spell covering them. Never hurt to be too careful, after all. "From what I understand her blood gifts could show us what occurred here easily. As for the Tesseract itself, I might be able to divine a ritual that could point me in the direction of the nearest Asgardian artifact, but it would take days, perhaps, to set up."

"Not if they left by the air… Ghigau could, perhaps, give us a direction, though." With that idea in mind, Harry called in the young Cheyenne. After arriving via house-elf express, she was indeed able to use her powers to replay what happened here, using the emotional imprint left by the attackers and replaying the image using her mutant powers like it was a 3-D video.

To no one's surprise, the helicopter seemed to head out over the border into Mexico. Assuming they wouldn't deviate from their nape of the earth escape path, the Custodes and the two Avengers took one of Harry's magic carpets after them, to the shock of even the jaundiced Hawkeye. He couldn't stop staring over the side of the carpet, shaking his head and muttering under his breath about 'physics getting a middle finger' to the others' amusement.

Every few minutes Harry and Hela would stop the carpet and recast any sensor spells they could, one after another, but it was the ones Harry had learned from Ororo which eventually began to get a response. "I've got something," he reported, several hours after they had left. They had passed through all of Mexico now and had moved into Venezuela and beyond, but Harry began to turn them away from the straight route they had been following. They eventually began to head out into the Pacific ocean, where, after another hour, he pointed them down to an innocuous oil tanker or some kind moving over the water away from South America.

"How are they not seeing us?" Hawkeye asked, scowling as he readied his bow.

"I've covered us with several spells to hide us from detection, and we haven't been moving fast enough to dispel them. Think of them as a 'somebody else's problem field' if you have good taste in books," Harry muttered, then looked over at the others. "I'll head down first and disable any lifeboats I see so they can't get away, but once we are all moving around and actually attacking them the spells I've covered us with will dissipate. Hawkeye, you stay up here and provide overhead cover."

As Hawkeye grunted in affirmation of his orders, Harry turned to the other members of the party. "Cap, Ghigau, you start from the front of the ship. Hela and Garm, if you could start at the back. Keep in mind, everyone, we need to watch out for Mysterio's powers. We don't know enough about them for me to prepare any protective spells, but I would recommend falling back and letting me or Hela deal with him just in case there is a magical or supernatural element to his repertoire."

Harry moved the carpet around the ship, letting off Steve and Dani at the front. Once they were hidden there, he moved to the back, where he, Hela, and Garm got off, before ordering the carpet to hover over the ship.

Almost immediately as he landed onto the ship, Garm took a deep sniff and nodded sharply. "Most of the smells of those who left the hanger-place are here, including one whose scent is very odd. It is an almost overpowering one, something like wolfsbane trying to warp my senses."

"That would be Mysterio. I think I will handle him. I would like to show him what true magic and trickery can do instead of his little toys," Hela said, sneering in disdain for her future foe's parlor tricks. Illusions were all well and good, but the sheer posturing the knave seemed to perform as he worked sat ill with her. Hmm… I wonder which parent I have to thank for my disdain for such?

"Only if you get to him first, milady," Harry rejoined, then quickly stole a kiss before moving deeper through the ship as Hela spluttered behind him, both from Harry's stolen kiss and the outright challenge.

Garm huffed in amusement at the continued mating ritual between his lady and the Seidr man, but stopped as she slapped him lightly on his side and gave him a not so insincere glare. "None of that, my wolf. I get enough of that from my friends to put up with it from you." In response Garm bowed his head for a moment in obedience, but his lips spread in an unrepentant lupine grin at seeing his normally poised mistress so flustered.

Leaving the others behind, Harry moved unseen along the deck to the four visible lifeboats, noting things that stood out of place in comparison to the rest. Most of the ship's deck and outer hull seemed as if it was meant to look like a normal tanker, but there were places that differed. The biggest being the fact that several doors leading into the tanker were out of place, and there weren't any crewmen out on deck. As he pushed forward toward the front, he spotted two men on the bridge, but neither were facing in his direction.

Once he had disabled the four lifeboats by simply using a cutting spell to gouge out their sides, Harry moved toward one of the doors, looking inside the round window at head height. Directly inside there was a large guard room, but there were only two men there, both of them helmetless but wearing the rest of a usual AIM trooper's uniform. They sat behind heavy weapons, facing the door, but that was no real threat to Harry. Still, he knew they were as ready as they could ever be, so he sent up a flare into the sky, letting the others know they could attack now.

At the front of the ship Captain America exploded into action so quickly Ghigau could only blink behind her mask in shock. He launched himself up, grabbing the edge of the bridge's view-ports. She came back online fast enough to shoot out the windows right before he smashed into them, thrusting through the glass and trusting to his shield and suit to protect himself from cuts.

Inside the bridge were not two people, as Harry had seen, but five. All of them were armed with pistols, but Steve dealt with two of them by throwing his shield so that it quickly ricocheted between them, then was in among the other three before they could bring up their weapons. By the time Ghigau had used her anti-grav boots to join him, Steve had put all five of them down and unconscious. "Damn…"

Steve ignored the young woman for the moment, moving over to the bodies. "None of these people have the electronics surgically inserted in them that our traitors did. These are either true believer AIM troops or mercenaries. Hopefully they will be able to help us with our inquiries."

"You're a Terry Pratchett fan?" Ghigau asked, now having thrown off her shock. She moved to the door, opening it carefully and then firing down the thin stairwell at a trio of men coming up at them. From that position they had no room to dodge and no cover, and so went down one after another to her plasma rifle with almost casual ease. Pulling out Sigyn's gift, she moved down the stairwell as Captain America fell in behind her.

"Who's Terry Pratchett?" the super-soldier asked quizzically, his eyes never straying from their task of sweeping the area for hostiles.

"Eh, tell you later," she replied before she went into a forward roll as two more men came out from a doorway halfway down the stairwell. Behind her Steve smashed into them shield first, taking them out within seconds while she speared a man coming up from further into the ship. Pulling the mystical spear out, she felt it morph in her hand into a bow and flipped up an arrow, firing into the larger hallway the stairwell had led to towards a new batch of foes.

At the back of the ship Garm and Hela had disdained looking for an entrance. Instead the dread wolf of Niflheim had simply torn open a section of the hull before leaping down into the deck below with his mistress following. They found themselves in the center of four slowly activating Hulkbusters, all of which looked badly damaged but still operational. Or they were until Garm and Hela finished them off with almost casual disdain.

Looking around, Hela frowned, one hand glowing orange for a moment before her frown turned into a smile of satisfaction. "I have it now. It is actually further back than our current position. Follow me."

Above them Harry had dealt with the two guards facing him, moving deeper into the ship while leaving the heavy weapons they had been holding on the ground with the bodies of their former wielders. Neither of them were of any interest to him, and he wanted to keep moving. Surprisingly, however, he didn't run into any more opposition until he found the doorway leading into the room where Ghigau and Cap had just dealt with the few remaining attackers.

Several men had tried to move through the emergency escape nearer the center of the ship, but Hawkeye had cut them down from on high using his bow and arrows. Despite that, for all but Hela and Garm the battle had been rather anti-climactic, and even then the latter pair would have argued that their part had been equally lackluster up to this point if asked. Yet, for the two of them, it became fraught rather quickly when they entered the hallway leading further back from the room with the four Hulkbusters.

Several steps into the hallway the lights in the ceiling went out, and smog began to seep up from air ducts set low on the walls. "Back, Garm!" Hela barked, knowing that his heightened senses would make him more susceptible to Mysterio's 'powers' then she was, even offset by his supernatural endurance. Garm obeyed instantly, leaping back only to stare in shock as the door they had just come through closed, separating them.

At the same time, however, Hela touched her mask lightly, and the mask, a thing which looked like simple cloth, flowed under her touch, transfiguring on her command. It covered her mouth and nose now, protecting them from whatever might be in the smog. Of course, it did this by not letting in anything, but as an Asgardian deity, Hela didn't actually have to breathe, so that hardly mattered.

A pompous voice came out of nowhere, hidden in the darkness of the hallway and the smog. "I am afraid I do not know your name, milady, yet it hardly matters. You are obviously one of the fools attacking my ship, and, as such, I will have to deal with you as an enemy. Take heart, however. At least it will be quick, and you will never see it coming."

Hela sneered, her fingers moving while she stepped soundlessly to one side. For those with eyes to see it, they might have noticed the brief flare of magic there as Hela wove a spell of illusion, but Mysterio had no such eyes. Ironic, rather, for one that depended on disrupting his opponents' senses so much.

A second later small glowing balls of energy of some kind Hela had not seen before passed through her former position. Hela frowned at that, wondering what they were. They hadn't looked very dangerous, but why take wounds one didn't have to?

"You seem to prefer illusions and mist shapes, 'Mysterio.' I must wonder though, will you like mine?" Hela said with a pensive tone, her voice muffled by her mask. As she spoke she also projected her voice so that it seemed to come from several different directions, filling the passage and further muddying her foe's ability to pinpoint her position by sound.

Mysterio was standing by the far end of the passage, but he immediately began to move back into the room he had just exited, surprisingly taking her threats seriously from the get go, which Hela hadn't been expecting from him. The illusionist launched several small devices into the air which began to emit loud disorienting sounds, barely discernible to a human's hearing range, but which would have made a normal human wince under the sensations of vertigo or migraine pains.

As if that wasn't enough of an onslaught, small vents in his suit began to disgorge more gas, this time containing a far more powerful hallucinogenic compound mixed in then what he'd previously used. It would have had any human who breathed it under the equivalent of an intense LSD trip within seconds of exposure. As a finale to his array of attacks, Mysterio fired off a series of flares designed to make flashbangs green with envy.

While the gas and much of the sound-based attacks were worthless against Hela, the strobing lights invading her vision after the dark of the passage were a bit more successful, blinding her for a few seconds. Fortunately for Hela, she was already hidden under a set of illusions, and so the disadvantage was countered before it had even existed. She let her spells cover her advance even as she tried to ignore her stomach's attempt to come up her mouth like she'd just smelled the breath of a man eating Troll.

But Mysterio quickly saw through the illusionary 'Hela,' said mirage not casting a shadow, and the villain leaped away in a rather amusingly impressive turn of speed. Again he activated several more auditory attacks while remotely starting a fog device, filling the now dark room with smoke that added to the still present gas to further block his enemy's line of sight. Sounds of footsteps echoed through the room, along with the actual attacks, and he used it all to cover his steps.

Circling through the chaos he had caused, Mysterio inched closer to the image of someone moving through the smoke until he was coming up from behind with a stinger of some kind coming out of his suit's wrist. With a sharp thrust it impacted the neck of the woman who was attempting to fight him, and he pulled back his arm as he watched her stagger to her knees.

Then he gasped as the woman suddenly dissipated into a thousand shrikes, flying every which way and blocking his view. "Wh, how!?"

Hands seemed to grab at him from below, and he quickly pulled back to get a better view of this new development. Looking down he nearly screamed in fear and utterly failed to resist a start of horror, because there, on the floor, was a body of a woman. But, unlike the rather elegant if deadly woman he had been fighting, this one looked like she had been dead for decades as her pale, nearly fleshless hands reached for him with jagged nails to scratch. "What is this!?" Mysterio shouted in panic while checking his helmet's integrity, fearing that he had been injected with something like his own concoction in turn.

Nothing answered him, but the undead woman at his feet wasn't alone for long. Backing away from her, Mysterio nearly stumbled into another. He lashed out, knocking the undead thing's head off, and shouted as more undead zombies came out of the smoke. "How are you doing this!?"

Soon there were too many zombies around him for Mysterio to move, and he found his hands and feet locked in grips of bone tipped iron. Mouths filled with yellowed and jagged teeth opened as Mysterio shouted and screamed, trying to beg for mercy, for the woman to call her creatures off, for anything to come and save him. Only silence answered him as the zombies began to bite through his suit.

Yet Mysterio did receive mercy of a sort. Just as the fact that he felt no pain from the bites began to register, a sword punched through his back and out of his chest in a spray of blood, killing him nearly instantly.

"Little fool. True magic can always overcome such cheap parlor tricks," Hela said scornfully, the slick sound of metal through flesh the only noise in the room as Hela pulled her blade from Mysterio's body.

With Mysterio dealt with, Hela used her magic to dissipate the smog filling the room and hall before she opened the door to let her vassal assure himself of her good health. Once that was done, the goddess ordered Garm to remain where he was for now and guard against potential ambush as she began to investigate the room Mysterio had been in. To one side she found a brace of beds with a dead body sprawled atop one of them, the hole in the corpse's head and the burned flesh around it evidence of a plasma pistol shot.

Looking at what remained of his face, Hela decided he must have been the traitor who had led AIM to the installation that had housed the Tesseract. A falling out amongst thieves, I suppose. A warrior dies once, but a traitor dies a thousand deaths, to use a phrase of old. Rather poetic considering the fraud I dealt with outside, Hela thought. She then moved on without further thought on the fate of either man's soul. As Emma was so fond of saying, 'It was not Hela's problem.'

In the far corner of the room there was a simple box made of cold iron about waist high. After casting a series of scanning spells to possibly ascertain the contents of the container, Hela concluded it was safe to open. As Hela pulled the lid up, she found the Tesseract before her and paused, staring down into the now exposed blue light of the strange object.

It was indeed a cube about as large on a side as her two hands held together and seemed to be made of some clear crystal, or would appear so to anyone but a magic user. To Hela, however, the thing practically thrummed with magic of several different types which had merged into one distinctly odd, bizarre mystical amalgamation.

"Very, very strange…" she murmured her, voice echoing loud in the room.

Suddenly an incredible urge to touch the object befell her, to hold it in her hands, to reach out with her magic, even. Acting on the impulse, Hela began to extend a hand forward, only to rear back, fury etching her features as a purple glow appeared around her outstretched hand. Hela had recognized the subtle touch on her mind there, the vile taint that even now attempted to reestablish their loathsome dominance over her mind and self. The Shadows! Is this some artifice of theirs? But then, what could it be!?

Behind her she could hear Garm and others enter, so she whirled around to face them with her eyes wild and her hand still encased in a purple light, spell ready to cast. "Hold!" she bellowed, her power echoing in her words and halting the party in its tracks. "Do not come any closer to this thing! It has some kind of compulsion on it. The spell was even strong enough to entice me. If I had not recognized the foul touch I might have succumbed."

Harry, who had just entered the room with Garm ahead of the others, frowned in concern for Hela, but he nodded to everyone to heed Hela's warning as he moved forward. As Harry stepped forward cautiously he didn't feel the compulsion Hela had warned them of, but he still stopped where she stood, placing a gentle hand on Hela's shoulder as she turned back to glare at the thing in question. "The Shadows again?"

"Aye. I recognized it, Harry! I felt their foul touch in my mind again, in my very mind!" Hela snapped, still looking very jittery on top of her understandable fury. The jittery, almost jumpy look was one he hadn't seen on her before, and one he didn't like to see there in the slightest, to put it mildly.

"I can't sense anything like that, which could be down to my unique method of defense combined with the fact that this is a magical spell rather than a sentient attack. But I will certainly take your word for it being there where you are concerned, milady," Harry said soothingly, letting his fingers gently stroke up her neck. It was a sign of how strong her distress was that Hela didn't object to this touch despite being in a somewhat public setting.

"Thank you," she murmured, leaning into the touch for a moment. "Before the trap sprung I could tell it was something like a container, and then there is what Garm said, that it had the smell of Odin's magic to it."

"This could be another example of something Odin left behind. Something he hid which the Shadows found later on and hid even further. But instead of defending it physically and magically in a very direct manner, they decided on subtlety this time."

"That, that makes sense," Hela replied decisively, then straightened her back, deliberately moving away from Harry's soothing of her neck. But even as she did so, Hela reached down to take his hand in hers, as much to retain his supportive contact as to negate the sting of her ending the moment. "I'm guessing it is a spell to force any Asgardian to touch it, but to what end, do you think?"

"A curse of some kind with a compulsion element, possibly," Harry said, activating his mage sight to more deeply examine the cube as he stared at the Tesseract. "The energy it's giving off seems to be a byproduct, I think, of several spells working together. And…I think that it is acting like a, a portable ley line, somehow? Or something in it is calling upon a portion of Gaea's magic."

"Something inside it, yes." Now fully recovered, Hela backed away, letting her own magic sight cover her physical senses. "And I can see numerous layers of runes there."

"Yes. The more I look at it, the more it resembles a puzzle box, a magical Rubik's cube, almost. You have to manipulate each layer of the magic in a set way to unlock them and get to the next plane, while still manipulating and controlling the first. And now that I know what to look for, I can see that there are a lot of what I call Shadow runes, though I hesitate to say it's a truly separate runic language from what you've been able to explain," Harry said, straining his mage sight to see the incredibly tiny runes worked into the Tesseract.

"Yes, and numerous twisted Blessings too, warped and skewed most maliciously. I think getting to the bottom of this is an issue we need to work on, Harry Potter," Hela said, her voice ringing with certainty. "Whatever is within that thing is something we absolutely must get a hold of."

"I…agree," Harry replied cautiously, meeting her piercing gaze evenly. "Though that doesn't mean we have to be hasty about it. I think we'll take it up to the time chamber and work on it, just the two of us, for as long as it takes to do it safely."

Hela nodded to that, and Harry cast a brief, silent spell, closing the cold iron container's lid down around the Tesseract, shutting off the eerie blue light and, no doubt, for Hela, the pull as well. Still hand in hand, they turned to the door, where Harry explained some of what they had discovered to the others for the parts where Hela and Harry had been speaking more softly. Steve and Hawkeye were both astonished that the energy the Tesseract gave off was a side-effect of its real purpose, and worried too about the compulsion effect, though they had seen that it did exist and affected those of weaker minds. The Asgardian version of that compulsion was far more insidious and powerful than the one targeted towards humans, and at least humans wouldn't dissolve like in a piece of metal in acid if they touched it.

After that Harry brought in Wyatt and Paige to add to the two former Avengers and Garm. He gave Steve a small vial of Veritaserum to use on the goons they had captured and ordered Dani and Garm to follow his lead on the cleanup of this attack. That done, he then sent a message to Ororo for her to meet Hela and himself up in Babylon and another message to Dr. Strange to join them. Stephen had to be brought in on the secret, of course, but Harry had no issues with that at present, since Dr. Strange had agreed to step up and help more in the future.

For about twenty hours straight the group worked on the puzzle that was the Tesseract, dissecting it layer upon layer. Outside only two hours had gone by, but all of them were beginning to feel it by the time they finished. The entire construct looked like an exploded 3-D hologram of hundreds of different layers in more directions than the 3.14 cabinet at the Unseen University, as Harry put it at one point. All throughout the rest of the spells were the black and foul, almost sickly, grey of the Shadow's magic and their runes, and numerous times they had to stop and counter a curse to continue. Hela, in particular, had issues, since many of the spells, the ones with the most debilitating attacks, were targeted towards Asgardians.

By the end of that time, all of them were covered in sweat and mentally, if not physically, exhausted. Dr. Strange, who had taken the lead on the project given his more varied knowledge of mixing magical schools and the works of godlike beings than Hela or Harry, sighed as he held his hands in the air while looking over at his fellow magic users. "Very well, I think we can begin to erase the layers of magic on the container. Are we prepared?"

That was indeed the bottom rung of magic: a small extended area spell to hold something slightly larger within it. By this point curiosity was rampant in all of them, and they nodded. "Harry, you first."

With each of them slowly working at it as the others looked on, they took turns plucking at first this spell then that enchantment until the layers finally began to unravel in a controlled manner rather than the explosive cascade which would otherwise have occurred. That took another several hours in displaced time, but eventually the last spell dissipated.

The blue glow disappeared from the Tesseract, and then the top of the square popped open. They all slowly fell back into their chairs, gasping in air as their minds and bodies dealt with the effort of having kept up so many different threads of magic. Even the three humans, who had dealt with similar magic before, were feeling it. And Hela, who had not and, further, was used to working magic in conjunction with her realm and her duties, was drained.

Harry looked over at Stephen, who nodded. "The spell intended to act like an alarm was safely diffused. The Shadows, as you call, them have no idea we unlocked this box and removed their favored protections.

Eventually Harry nodded to Hela. "Well, milady, as an Asgardian I think it should be you who sees what the Shadows tried so hard to hide."

Smiling at her Seidr man, Hela only stopped herself from leaning over and kissing him by reminding herself very strongly that Strange, a near stranger to her, was there. Standing up, she moved to look inside the box, but instead of reaching in to pick up the thing inside, she began to laugh gaily, shaking her head, which sent her black mane of hair in every direction. "Hehehe! Well, I can tell you why they hid it, I think, but I, for certain, will not attempt to pick it up, since I like my back just the way it is right now."

His eyebrows nearly disappearing in his hairline, Harry stood up and looked into the box as Ororo and Stephen did the same. While the two of them were still looking quizzical, Harry joined Hela in laughing, though his laughter had a bit of an edge to it as he had already begun to think of how exactly this tied into what they knew about the Shadows and what they had done to the Asgardians.

Inside the box was a hammer. It wouldn't win any prizes for beauty, and it was actually rather small: its shaft a bare hand and a half. The head of the hammer was stone, a simple cylinder about the same length as the shaft. Where the shaft and the head connected there were intricately etched runes as small as the ones which had been on the box itself, and there were other runes around the head of the hammer, the only sign that it was special at all.

Seeing the confusion on Ororo and Stephen's faces, Hela waved grandly with one hand toward the box. "You see before you Mjölnir. The real one, to my eyes. And, as such, only one hand may wield it: that of Þór. No other can even lift it, hence my amusement. We won't even be able to lift it out of the box, though we can, at least, move that."

And think about how exactly it's here in the first place and why Thor seems to have been a special target of the shadows, Harry thought, but kept that to himself. Right now they all needed a good laugh.

OOOOOOO

While the Custodes had some down time, for the X-Men, work reared its ugly head once more a bare few days after Harry and company had found Mjölnir.

Charles called the team together, sighing as he patted Ms. Steed's hand where she sat next to him. Emma Steed was a young woman in her late twenties, with short cropped black hair and a trim, athletic frame. She was currently wearing rather dumpy clothing for all of that, sweatpants and long-sleeved exercise shirt which had been loaned to her by Rogue, who Emma had surprisingly gotten along well with the few times they'd interacted since Ms. Steed, or Emma2 as some of the X-Men had come to refer to her, had joined the group.

But Charles wondered if that was part of the problem or part of the solution. Ms. Emma Steed should have been a somewhat arrogant, well-read, and aggressively competent businesswoman from a high class background. Instead the woman was a nervous, twitching, emotional wreck, wracked by nightmares of her own creating and the all too real memories of being suborned, her will overcome by Selene Gallio. She jumped at shadows and could not be left alone for very long at all for fear of her collapsing into a gibbering panic, despite Charles using his telepathy to cautiously sooth her.

Emma2's initial plan of hiding her psyche beneath the id of her mind, deep below its darkest fears and instincts, had helped Emma's personality and sense of self survive. But getting over those fears now that she was back in full control of her body was going to be somewhat time-consuming. Luckily, so long as someone was with her, Ms. Steed made progress on a daily basis, and Xi'an had stepped up to help the other telepath as often as she could. This in turn allowed Charles time to both work with Bruce Banner on his various mental issues and to keep in contact with Camelot and its Big Book of Students.

Father Garnoff had just passed on news that three names which had been in the bright green for weeks had suddenly changed to red. Since those names were all in it the general area in Illinois, it fell upon the X-Men to do something about it. That, and Wendy and the rest of the retrieval teams were already out in the field in the Middle East and Africa at the moment. I suppose we could bring in the Custodes on this, but that would be very silly, Charles thought with wintry amusement. Besides, it would go up against the agreement that Harry and I have that issues like this which occur in America would be ours to deal with.

"Gentlemen and ladies, we have a situation," Charles said, looking at both the current X-Men team and the barely-trained teenagers who might one day join that team.

Tabitha looked a little annoyed at having been pulled away from whatever she had been doing. Sitting next to the blonde girl, Jubilee, the youngest and perhaps the most teenage-acting out of all of the teenagers Charles had yet to deal with, blew a bubble from her gum as she stuck one of her headphones into her ear, listening to music while also listening to him. Bobby and Warren both looked askance, but somewhat eager, and it was Warren who spoke for them all. "Sir, if this is about something to do with the X-Men, why are we here?"

"Yeah," Tabitha said, grabbing a stick of bubble gum from Jubilee and tossing it into her mouth. "Mister tight britches over there has made it clear that none of us're to be out on our own, let alone doing 'field operations,'" she said, quoting the last two words as she leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs insolently as she propped them up on the table between them and Charles, flashing her legs at Scott, who stood to one side of the sofa. She had attempted to use flirting like this to get out of some of the harder exercises and restrictions the X-Men put on them, but it never worked.

"At the moment the X-Men are a combat heavy, frontal assault type team. This means we might need more in the way of scouts for this mission, especially against someone who may or may not have been able to figure out something about our powers. We're afraid that these three mutants have been captured and taken hostage in order to force the X-Men to respond. If that's the case, we need to combat them with some different powers that they might not expect."

"What could they really do against the likes of those three?" Jubilee scoffed, gesturing towards Rogue and the two Proudstar brothers. "Let alone you. And who are they anyway?"

"We assume it to be Reclaimers," Charles said. "I have mentally probed the area…" He paused as several of the teens chuckled or looked away with smiles on their faces, rolling his eyes. Teenagers. I think I've been spoiled by only having had to deal with Kurt's idea of a sense of humor. The fact that Kurt was also chuckling only accentuated his feelings on this point.

Glaring at the teens, Scott quickly made them all sit up and take notice. "There might be other young mutants dying here," he said coldly. "And you are trying to make jokes about the professor's admittedly poor word choice?"

While Cyclops's glare might not have the full power of the ancient Cyclops his call sign was based on, you wouldn't know it by his ability to silence a room. Eventually it was Warren, of all people, who took the opportunity to reply. "What do you want us to do?"

"Get suited up. You're coming with us, though I'm not going to ask you to fight. You're role in this is SAR, search and rescue," Scott replied grimly.

Soon the younger teens had joined the older teens in the Blackbird, where they discovered that Wanda Maximoff had returned from her time with Clea to join them on this mission. Though ostensibly still a member of the X-Men, Kitty was absent, as was Alex. Both of them were up in Fortress Mars. Sam Guthrie was also not here, being in Camelot that day to spend time with his family.

Each of the younger teens wore their new uniforms, which they had been assigned and even had helped come up with after their first few days in the mansion.

Bobby's was the easiest, looking like a slightly remodeled version of Kurt and Cyclops's: dark blue with a large red X on the chest. Like all of them, Iceman's uniform was made of the Fantastic Four's unstable molecules, so that when he activated his powers it would mirror the change. Warren's, too, was relatively simple: a full body suit of white and light blue with slits in the back for his wings and, again, the large X that Kurt, Cyclops, and Bobby wore. But Angel's had a built in image inducer like the device Kurt used to go out in public which could make him look like a large bird at range. He also had two empty holsters at his side, for when he eventually passed Scott's gun lessons.

The two girls, like Rogue, had taken the opportunity to create somewhat more original uniforms. Jubilation, call-sign Jubilee, wore a tight pair of purple shorts, which made some sense, a shirt like the rest of the X-Men, and a long, yellow overcoat. She also had specially modified glasses designed to protect her eyes from any close range use of her powers, fingerless gloves, and high, tight boots with long heels.

The heels had actually caused a bit of a row between the girls, but Scott had let that entirely in Wanda and Rogue's hands after giving them permission to bring in any of the others they wanted to. But Jubilee apparently won the argument somehow about her ability to fight in heels. Scott had no idea how, and didn't want to know.

In contrast, Tabitha, whose call sign was Boom-Boom, had twin black X's on the thighs of her bright yellow pants. With those pants she had a short sleeved shirt in black that hugged her upper body like a second skin. She had yellow wrist guards on, but had kept her hands entirely free. She wore a knife at her side, which John and Scott had been training her on, as well as another pair of glasses. None of younger teens had any of the physical energy burning magical arrays that the X-Men had on theirs just yet.

As the Blackbird soared over the countryside, moving from the mansion in New York State to Illinois's northern counties, Scott began to explain what was going on. "The three missing mutant kids are all boys between twelve to fourteen years old. All three of them come from small families in the area," he began. "We've known about their mutant powers for a while. All of them are basically of the same general type: simple physical mutations. One of them has goat feet, another can grow suckers from his fingers, apparently, and the third can grow gills at will. Simple things, but physical differences that make them stand out from the crowd."

"And make them easy targets," John cut in grimly. "Given how the police have been stomping on the Friends of Humanity for the past month and a half, we thought they were safe, but we began to keep tabs on them with Cerebro occasionally, just like every other young mutant in America, after the battle in the Vault. Xavier and Xi'an were all taking turns checking up on them periodically, but we still didn't catch this until the Big Book of Students warned us they were in danger."

"Exactly. Given the area that this occurred in, we are feeling it is, as I said earlier, the Reclaimers branch of the FOH. But the Reclaimers would have already simply killed them if that was their goal. No, it's clear that the Reclaimers, or whoever this is, is after something different."

"That's interesting an' all," Jubilee said, trying to cover her fear at going on her first mission with bravado. "But what's our roles here?"

"Shock, awe, and misdirection," Scott said bluntly. "You and Boom-Boom, in particular, are going to make some noise, but only when I tell you to. First, we'll be landing about a mile away from where the Big Book of Students and Charles tell us these three are being held captive. Warren, you'll take a recording device that will link you to our systems here and fly over the base from as high up as you possibly can.

"Time to see if Kurt's image inducer can actually work," Warren said with a nod.

"Once we know the number of people on guard, we'll determine how best to attack from there. But Kurt, you and Wanda will stay on standby. The two of you are the only teleporters we have right now, and that means it'll be your job to get the prisoners away. Iceman, you're with them. Of all of us, your power lends itself easiest to defending other people. John…"

"If we need to split up further, I'll go with them," Scott's second-in command said, nodding. "Give the SAR team a greater offensive punch."

"Should we take them right back to the mansion?" Wanda asked professionally, leaning forward from where she was sitting next to Kurt.

The two of them seemed to do that, Scott noted absently. Whether there was anything going on there, he couldn't say, but Rogue seemed to think that there might be after their shared experiences in the Savage Land. It was true, at least, that their senses of humor were alike, which had caused Scott a few headaches here and there. Not that he would have it any other way. So long as Kurt was joking around, getting the rest of the mansion's inhabitants to smile, everything was fine and running smoothly. It was when Kurt wasn't trying to be the life of the party that things had hit the fan.

"If you can port them back to the mansion. The police report was still being worked on by the time we were leaving, so we have no idea if their parents are still alive or not. The Professor can't pick out their minds from so far away even with Cerebro, so it's possible. But given how the Reclaimers work…"

Scott shook his head grimly, and the rest of the X-Men nodded. Since appearing on the scene less than a week ago, the Reclaimers had gone full-on terrorist, killing whole families to get at a single mutant. They weren't trying to convince anyone of the rightness of their cause; they were punishing the families involved for bringing mutants into the world and said mutants equally. They didn't even leave behind pamphlets or diatribes against mutants. They simply killed them as brutally as possible.

"I understand you think these Reclaimers might somehow have scouted you X-Men out. Given all the recordings about your activities, I even understand it," Iceman said, his voice deadly serious. "But seriously, what can they possibly have come up with to stop our three powerhouses?"

"We don't know, but I'm not willing to find out by simply smashing my head against it. We do this by the numbers," Cyclops said, looking at them all grimly. "Treat this as seriously as if we were facing other superpowered threats, understood?"

He got a course of 'yes sirs' from that, and Scott nodded, turning back to the controls of the Blackbird as the autopilot disengaged on command. Moments later they were down on the ground, landing in a natural clearing. John and James were the first out, moving around the Blackbird with the ease of well-trained Apache warriors before reporting the all clear. Then Angel flew up and out, heading towards the edge of the town where the three mutant children were being held.

This town was slightly run down, which reminded the three most experienced X-Men of the town the Guthrie clan had lived in. Except, instead of being initially built around a dying mine, this town had been built near a now derelict steel factory. The factory was separated from the nearest group of houses by a long dirt road, and at the other end of it were several lumber yards and large communal farmsteads, evidence that this town had already successfully moved on from its origins, even if it wasn't exactly affluent.

And, like clockwork, it was in the steel factory where the three mutant children were being held.

From high in the sky Warren peered down through a large telescope, recording what he saw. The outer edge of the factory complex was empty of people, but there was movement in the two outer buildings, not a lot, but he caught it. And deeper into the factory, near the back of the loading area, there were about an even dozen people in view from his vantage point, but no doubt hidden from anyone on the road leading to the factory or beyond the chain link fence that surrounded it.

Looking at them closer, he saw that those men were all armed, and armed with odd looking weapons. They weren't guns, but a few looked something like grenade launchers. Others… Are those super soakers? What the hell?

That question moved to the background as Angel saw another dozen men come out of the main factory building, switching places with those on guard. So, at least,what, thirty men? No, assume that they can shift those on watch near the front with others, so thirty-five minimum. Given the size of this place, maybe… Urgh, this is a skill I would never've thought I'd ever need. Um, maybe twice that as maximum? But then, how the hell did they…? Ahh…

The 'ahh' thought was caused by Angel swooping a little lower to the left side of the complex from the point of view of someone coming up the road. There was a large gap in the wire fence there, hidden from the road by the turn of the outer wall which faced the road. And beyond that the scrub brush started almost immediately, heading out into the forest beyond. Winging further out, he slowly swooped over the forest until he came to what looked like an old interstate bypass.

With that mystery solved for now, Angel zoomed back the way he had come, alighting next to the Blackbird. Entering quickly, he found Scott and the rest of the enlarged team of X-Men poring over the small table in the back, where the recordings from his flyby were already playing. Scott and John both looked up, nodding at him in approval before going back to what they were doing.

Those nods made Warren smile, a regular smile rather than his normal playboy version. Neither man was exactly quick to praise the youngsters, and all of them had responded by pushing themselves harder than they would have believed possible to win the older X-Men's approval.

As he joined them, Charles's voice echoed in their heads, causing Boom-Boom and Iceman to wince, not having gotten used to telepathic communications just yet. I am sensing around seventy minds in that area. The three mutant boys are unconscious currently. But one of them is in great pain, and their comatose state is not a natural one.

"Okay, so we think those grenade launchers have gas canisters in them," Scott said, gesturing to the images of the twelve men moving around in the open-topped loading area. "The super soakers, could be acid or something similar.

"Their gear is too good for them to just be a rogue group of the FOH, unless the FOH have richer, more connected backers?" Wanda asked. "And, if so, should we be bringing in one of the telepaths on this?"

"After we capture them all and get the prisoners out, yes," Scott said, looking up and out the nearest window.

I will volunteer to go through their minds after the battle is over. I think that is a most excellent idea. These weapons concern me too. I sense a great deal of confidence from their minds, and anticipation. They believe they are ready to face you. Charles hesitated before his mental voice went on. I can also sense a great deal of bloodlust and hate. They, all of them, hate mutants with a passion I have not felt in any other instance. Hate, yes, but this all seems personal, or, or perhaps the term is more rabid? The distance and the strength of their emotions is blocking me from being able to get any thoughts from them.

"We're running out of night to play with here, so let's get a move on," Scott said decisively. "Team Shock and Awe—that's you two, girls—you're under James. Head out, intercept the road, and attack from that direction. Draw a lot of attention. Angel, Rogue: with me. Angel, you'll drop us here on the northernmost rooftop, then you provide air cover on my order. We'll be flanking them."

With that Scott reached into a nearby locker and pulled out several bandoliers of grenades. "They're stun grenades, one of the newer toys I requested from Reed recently," he explained. "Drop them the moment you see people leave that main complex."

As Warren took the bandoliers with a wicked grin on his face, Scott turned to John. "You'll be in charge of getting the prisoners out. How you do that is up to you."

John nodded grimly, and the X-Men broke up. Moments later John led his team through the forest around the factory towards where Angel had found that the kidnappers had made their own entrance. Once he was satisfied at how well Kurt, Wanda, and Iceman were hiding, he began to use their short range communicators to explain his plan.

Elsewhere, Jubilee and Boom-Boom had followed James, the younger Proudstar sibling who had taken on the moniker Warpath. At his command the two younger girls exchanged wicked grins, then began to use their powers. Jubilee's powers allowed her to create pyrotechnic blasts of energy which she could use to lash out with a attack that looked like dozens of flashing fireworks or to charge an object with energy, causing it to explode. Boom-Boom's allowed her to create small blasts of explosive power in her hands. Boom-Boom blew some of the outer wall down, letting Warpath move forward. The two girls followed, using him like a moving wall as they lit up the night. Once in the complex, they both started to aim at the nearest buildings, from which the kidnappers on watch had begun to fire at them.

These guards were quickly joined by others from the main building. The groups inside were joined swiftly by the dozen who had been outside exercising before that. They blasted back with their grenade launchers, which indeed fired some kind of gas, but James dealt with this by blowing as hard as he possibly could, pushing it back towards the kidnappers.

At that point Rogue launched herself forward, landing in among the group closest to Cyclops's and her position as he started to rain fire down on the rest. His eye beams caused even more of a light show than Jubilee or Boom-Boom, smashing through and hurling people left and right as he fired with as wide a beam as he could. He wanted prisoners, after all.

The men and few women with the super-soakers tried to turn them on Rogue, but Rogue was moving too fast for them to hit most of the time. When they did, the super soakers proved to be filled with something like superglue, intended to slow their victims down, and acid. The acid didn't do anything to Rogue's yellow Orichalcum armor or the unstable molecules of her suit, and she was far too strong to get entangled with the superglue. It slowed her, but it didn't stop her. The people wielding them realized this quickly and began to dump them, reaching for sidearms, as Warpath started to hurl bits of debris at the windows where fire was still coming towards him.

"Angel, now," Cyclops ordered.

From above Angel began to dive bomb the group of kidnappers, flashbangs and stunners going off and knocking men out or blinding them in turn.

With most of their people caught in the open between the various factory buildings, outflanked, under fire from above, and now facing a raging Rogue right in their faces, it was no surprise that none of the kidnappers already engaged with the X-Men noticed the Thunderbird's group enter the main complex. Or rather, Iceman and Thunderbird did. Nightcrawler and the Scarlet Witch followed their progress from above, waiting.

The two inside found the room where the three kids were being kept, just as the kidnappers outside started to use bazookas of some kind on Rogue and Warpath. Thunderbird heard Cyclops calmly ordering Jubilee and Boom-Boom to fall back, their part being done and there not being any reason to put them in danger any longer.

At the same time, both Thunderbird and Iceman heard a voice from inside the room shout angrily, "Well, we might not be winning against those costumed freaks, but at least these younger monsters won't survive. Kill them!"

That was more than enough, and Iceman burst through the door. He raised his hands and a wall of ice flared between four men and the three kids they were here to rescue. Bullets banged off it, but another man had flung himself towards the kids over the still forming ice wall and he now stood up, hefting a knife.

While Thunderbird charged forward, closing the distance with the four gun-wielders, Nightcrawler and the Scarlet Witch suddenly popped in from above, their different types of teleportation on display. Nightcrawler's punch took the man with the knife in the side of the head, hurling him to the side as his companion grabbed two of the kids, popping them instantly back to the X-Mansion.

Within an instant she was back, looking tired. She glanced around at the others as she moved toward the last boy. "Charles has the medical bay ready and is handling the kids with Xi'an and Ms. McTaggert. Ms. Steed is there too, though I doubt she'll be much help. I won't be able to teleport back after taking this third kid; it's too far for me with an added weight."

"Go," Thunderbird said as Iceman's wall of ice faded away. "We won't need the help here." With that he turned aside, staring at two other objects in the room and the blood that covered half of the wall and the floor around them. He ignored the sound of Nightcrawler porting outside and Iceman beginning to dry-heave behind him, tapping his headset. "Cyclops, we're done here. The kids are away, but there's something in here you need to see."

"Roger. We're nearly done out here," Cyclops replied calmly, though he was concerned by the dull tone of Thunderbird's voice.

Thunderbird turned away from the two crucifixes and the body which might once have been a child, glaring at their prisoners before reaching forward and grabbing Iceman's arm, stopping the man from bringing down a knife made of ice into one of the unconscious men. "No, we don't do that," he said coldly. "I know why you want to, but we don't kill like that."

"Why!?" Iceman shouted, trying to pull his arm away from John and glaring at him, angrily gesturing towards the two bodies on the crucifixes. "Look at what they did! Look what those animals did!"

"Yes. They did that, not us. We're better than them. That's sort of the entire point," John said. "We can kill in battle, but no killing in cold blood, not like this. We arrest them and we turn them over to the authorities, and they get the fucking death penalty for their crimes. That is justice, not murder after the fact."

"Besides," he went on more grimly, seeing that that line of enforcement wasn't quite working. "The more prisoners we have to question, the more of this Reclaimer faction the police and FBI can roll up quickly. Not even mentioning their backers."

Iceman growled, his hands still extended as he glared at the prisoners before turning away, canceling his power. "They're not worth the effort," he growled, moving back through the shattered warehouses. "But you'd better not let any of the others see that shit, or else you'll have to stop them from trying to do what I just did."

John just nodded at that, letting Iceman go as the battle outside ended swiftly. The rest of the youngsters were ordered back to the Blackbird, and they went willingly, given the number of sirens shrieking towards the factory as the sun began to peek over the horizon.

After making sure the others were tying up their prisoners, Cyclops moved to the entrance of the complex as he got in touch with the professor. Xavier had woken up the kids and had already begun to see to their welfare, with Una popping in from Camelot to take over. The Kree nurse's bedside manner and unique clothing and looks helped put the kids at ease. By the time the police had actually pulled up outside the complex, he was ready for them with news of the three kids, with John bringing out the two bodies as evidence. He was even able to cite the police reports of the three missing mutants, given to him by Charles, who was getting them from Dennis.

With all this and the fact that they recognized Cyclops from the news, the sheriffs and state police who had gathered at the sounds of the massive firefight calmed down, calling it in and verifying what Scott had told them about the kidnappings. Next of kin had already been found for two of the mutants, though the third, the boy with gills, didn't seem to have any anymore. His parents had been killed in the kidnapping, while 'only' one parent had been at home during the other assaults. That was truly scant comfort in this instance, but there was nothing Cyclops or the police could do to change that.

The police were also all grateful for the number of prisoners the X-Men had taken rather than the number of bodies they could've piled up if they had wanted to. There had been seventy-five Reclaimers hiding out here, and fifty-two of them were still alive and able to answer questions. This all came together to make the police actually understanding and calm when talking to Cyclops. That and, honestly, none of the police here were stupid enough to start a fight with the X-Men, knowing what they could do.

During this discussion the FBI showed up led by a friendly face. Natasha Romanov nodded imperceptibly toward Scott, gathering the locals together with Scott and his second-in-command as they went and reentered the area, with Scott now walking through the battle quickly and expertly at her terse request. Natasha explained that the FBI would be taking command of the questioning of the prisoners along with expert advisors, a line which intimated that they'd be bringing in Charles to help clandestinely. Since the Reclaimers were a nationwide terrorist group, this made a lot of sense to the locals, who cheerfully handed the prisoners off to her people, whereupon they were ushered quickly onto various large shuttles. Those shuttles were holdovers from shield, and the FBI had been quick to claim them while SHIELD was being shut down.

As they were finishing and the locals had been sent on their way once more to explain things to a crowd of townsfolk who had gathered, Natasha leaned in, whispering, "Myself or one of the others from SHIELD will be working on this case from now on, and I will probably be named the official go-between between the FBI and you lot too. You did good work here, though I guess after the last few fights I know you've had this seemed a walk in the park."

Scott didn't reply to that, since he knew that Natasha was sort of needling them. The gas the Reclaimers had might've been a viable threat against them, if not for Warren recognizing it. "You know we didn't discover any of their real leadership here, right?"

"If they've compartmentalized as I'm afraid they have, they probably won't be able to lead us to their leaders, no," Natasha said sighing. "But they might be able to lead us to whoever supplied the weapons, and then from there, to others. We'll keep you informed of anything we find. I trust if the FBI needs to call in a team of heavies against these assholes in the future, we can rely on you?"

"Is that a trick question?" John asked grimly.

After that the groups began to disperse, all of them grateful that this town didn't have any local news reporters and not wanted to tempt fate further by remaining here long enough for one to arrive. As the X-Men were moving toward the Blackbird, which had touched down in the complex, a little boy broke through the cordon of family members and shouted, "Cyclops! Can I get your autograph?"

All of the X-Men stopped in shock at that, and Cyclops stared down at the picture the boy was waving around. It showed him propping up the American flag on the roof of the Vault after the battle. "Um, sure kid," Cyclops said slowly, reaching down for the picture and staring at it. "I, um, hadn't known anyone had taken a picture of that, actually…"

"It's been making the rounds," Natasha said, her lips twitching in amusement as the X-Men and her own team of agents fought to keep in their laughter at the suddenly poleaxed commander. "You've become something of an icon, right up there with Guardian, E, the Phoenix, and the Captain."

Scott couldn't form a reply to that, though looking over at his fellows he groaned, knowing that he would never live this down.

OOOOOOO

Shock was the order of the day in the halls of power of the Kree Empire. Ronin and the Supreme Intelligence were now in almost open war, and everyone else was walking on egg shells, from the admirals to the few influential members of the industrial sector. This war of ideology had not been started by the utter debacle that had been the Kree's attacks on Earth, though that had been the spark for their open division. Since the Supreme Intelligence's decision to send a small force to deal with Earth had failed miserably, and since he hadn't had anything to do with the original plan to spy on the humans in the first place, Ronin's position had been strengthened immeasurably, made even worse by the fact that the Supreme Intelligence had tried to keep the truth from getting out, only to fail.

Now, with its own position under threat from its own screw ups, the Supreme Intelligence was slowly losing influence on everything but logistics. Ronin had been named as Supreme Commander of all Kree military forces, although he had not been prepared for the amount of paperwork and minutiae that this entailed.

Now he leaned back, staring first at one screen in front of him on his desk, then over to numerous other screens spread out on a nearby wall. "I do not like this," he said bluntly. "The information that those carrier drones brought have told us that the humans are both expanding in power and growing technologically at a rate unheard of. They could become a strategic threat soon if left alone. And if they ally with our enemies…"

The words didn't have to be said after that. Thanks to its unique location, the idea of the Skrull using Earth as a stepping post to attack the Kree from a new quadrant was worrisome.

"We can't step up ship construction. The current speed with which we're churning out ships and crew has been calculated to a fine detail over the past hundred or so years. Unless we want to show weakness somewhere else, we can simply not conjure up the ships needed to sterilize this Earth planet," said Eu'thanzie, a grizzled Kree who was the most senior of the current active fleet admirals. Indeed, he was so old that, in a few years, it would be time for his mind to be added to the great bank of knowledge that made up the Supreme Intelligence.

He didn't mention that Ronin had begun to build up another Grand Fleet, pulling ships here and there from existing battle fleets. Ronin had a few interesting ideas of how to finally break the bloody stalemate that existed between the Kree and the Skrull. Those ideas had long been vetoed as being too risky by the Supreme Intelligence, but with its recent losses, it no longer had the power to do so.

"Further, we can't pull more ships off of commerce protection details," said the Admiral of the Interior, Track'all. "With the sheer number of pirates and raiders the Skrull have active in our area of influence, we need all the ships we have where they are."

"So we need to think of less resource intensive solution," Ronin mused. He was not happy with this, having hoped that his bigger hammer idea from earlier would still be viable. But it simply wasn't. Not after the humans had proven to be able to stop a fleet of battleships led by a Planet Crusher. That simply was not going to happen. The common rule was that to defeat a Death Dealer or a Planet Crusher, you needed another ship of similar size. And there just wasn't one to be had, let alone enough ships to take on whatever odd powers the humans had developed beyond the known quantity of the Fantastic Four.

"Special services?" he asked, looking up at a third man.

That Kree was noticeably younger than the others, but his face was pockmarked with scars. He shook his head once. "All of my forces are already engaged. I could pull them back, of course, but we would lose a few planets if I did."

"Unacceptable," said more than one voice. This included the Supreme Intelligence, who was, unfortunately, part of this discussion, though it had been told to remain silent unless it had a solution to this issue.

"But perhaps what we need is a truly unique approach," the scarred man went on. "We are not the only powers that could possibly be interested in Earth, after all, and while I don't want to do anything to make the Skrull look that way, there are the Badoon to consider."

"You are suggesting that we remove some of our patrols from that area which keep a tab on such things?" Ronin asked, then nodded with the other man. "Yes, there are indeed others that could take an interest if they think we are no longer interested in that area of space. If the alpha predator looks away, the lesser competitors will play."

Of course, Ronin thought, calmly tapping a single note from one of the scout fleets operating in Skrull territory, that begs the question of who actually is the larger predator here. The sighting of the Mad Titan indicates that we might well find out soon...

OOOOOOO

Astonishingly, after the adventure to retrieve Mjölnir nothing of a violent or surprising nature happened which called for the Custodes before the date Harry had settled on for his meeting with the UN. In that time E had proven to the Senate that he was, if not human, at least an intelligent sentient, and had even been given a limited US citizenship, much to the chagrin of a few other nations, who had been pushing for the AI super-robot to be either dissected, destroyed as a menace to humanity, or made into a technological resource that needed to be shared with every nation equally. When they had heard that, Emma and Hela's laughter had possibly been the most cynical sounds Harry had ever heard.

Public opinion, however, had gradually come around to seeing E as an individual who had a right to life, whatever his origins. That and Reed and Steve's backing and willingness to serve as his minders had given E the win. E had then turned around and promptly used his nanites to repair the damages done to the ships lost against the Hulkbusters and even the damaged buildings, et cetera, in Florida. He had not done the same to the complex which had built the Hulkbusters in the first place, saying that there was no need.

Since then E had been in discussion with the think tanks, Reed, and Carol practically every hour. Reed and E, in particular, were discussing ways to enlarge and repurpose the nanites Reed had heretofore been using in limited amounts, which would add to their industrial capacity to an almost limitless degree. If they could solve that issue, Earth could see its first home-built ship in a matter of a month or two instead of the year or more Harry had feared.

E also had some insight on other problems, though he also proposed more work at the same time. The incident with the piece of the original Enterprise he had absconded with was one such, but the biggest and most surprising issue was when E requested to be a part of the meeting Steve set up with the president pro-tem and a few other Senators.

Following directions he had been given by Steve, Harry landed near a small, walled mansion, one of many in this area outside Washington D.C. Since this meeting was off the books, so to speak, he then used Notice-Me-Not Charms to cover himself until he was within sight of the two security guards on guard at the entrance. They both were in suits, but what agency they served Harry couldn't tell. Flipping out his phone, Harry called Steve and waited until the man himself came out and stood by the gate before canceling his techniques.

He was far enough away that his sudden reveal didn't cause much consternation, which won Harry a wry nod of recognition from Steve as he opened the door. "Come on in, Harry. And thanks for not giving our so-called guards here a heart attack."

One of the guards snorted. "That's like setting poodles to guard lions, Cap'n." He held up a hand over the small headphone in his ear as both Steve and Harry smiled at that. "Mr. President is waiting for you with the others in the second story solarium."

"So that's official, then?" Harry asked. "I thought it wasn't official until tomorrow's swearing in."

"That's true in terms of the public, but given the ongoing shakeups, Representative Northton has already been sworn in via a private ceremony," Steve replied.

"Smart," Harry replied. The two of them made small talk as they entered the house before heading up to a large, comfortable sitting room on the second floor with wide windows. Already present were E, standing alongside one wall, and a senator Harry had already met named Robertson. He also recognized Miriam Moon, a representative from the House's Military Oversight Committee that Emma had given him a dossier on. But the most important man in the room was the former Speaker of the House and current acting President, Samuel Northton.

An older, white-haired man with a deep tan from his native Hawaii, Samuel Northton was the Representative from Washington. He had fought in Vietnam, and he thought of himself as an old-time Hawk rather than a Republican or Democrat. "After all, both Wilson and Roosevelt were Democrats," he was fond of saying despite said party's stance having shifted so drastically neither president would recognize it, which was another thing he was fond of saying behind closed doors. He was intelligent, personable, willing to compromise on anything but his personal morals, and had been Speaker for the house for four years now, having served as Washington's Represntative for two terms.

Harry and Emma had honestly thought about bringing him in as part of the group of diplomats Harry and his allies had met with secretly after the last Kree attack, but they had decided against it, since he had been going through medical treatment for a faulty lung at the time.

Striding forward, Harry held his hand out to the man, nodding at the others. "Gentlemen, lady. I'm happy to meet with you all at last. Mr. President, Senator Moon, are you willing to be read into the full secret about who I am, or are you more comfortable speaking to me in my Guardian persona?"

While he wasn't wearing his crysis suit, Harry had a modified illusion spell on himself at the moment, covering his identity for now. He didn't want to ruin the surprise of his coming out party at the UN, after all.

"We are," Samuel replied, while Miriam nodded her head. "Let's get this over with now so that we can get on to more important matters." With that in mind they both took the forms Harry handed them, signing quickly.

After they had gotten over the now routine response of, 'Oh my God, why didn't I see that connection before,' Samuel gestured for E, Steve, and Harry to sit down. "All right, let's get down to brass tacks, Mr. Potter. We understand the agreements you've already made with others, or as much about them as Jeff and Steve were able to tell us. I also understand the nature of the threat the Kree, Skrull, and others represent. I've even read the briefs the Fantastic Four prepared."

Miriam quickly took over then. "We also understand what you and the Custodes have done already, both to defend Earth and the US in particular. Though in the latter case you helped protect us from our own mistakes, rather than an exterior threat. However, you have to understand the American public's perception of things. First, we will be unable to second to you any large military units or material until we can do so openly. There are just too many people who would notice or have to be read into the secret for secrecy to be an option."

"Myself and my advisors expected that, ma'am," Harry replied calmly. "We also expected that the purpose of this meeting was to create an agreement that we would use after my meeting with the UN."

"And there we run into the other problem with public perception. The United States of America is the most powerful country in the world, perhaps the only true superpower remaining in terms of projecting power worldwide, regardless of China and Russia's own strengths." Samuel took over, his voice calm and matter-of-fact rather than prideful. "We have acted as the world's policeman in many ways since the end of the Cold War and even before that. We cannot, the American public will not, accept the idea of our putting our defense solely in the hands of another military power."

"Two of my highest ranking officers come from America, as do a majority of my workforce. The Earth Defense Force is a representative group which will, as time goes on, represent more and more of the world's nations. I'm hardly another military power in the normal meaning of the phrase," Harry protested.

"That is true, but again, it is a matter of perception. If you were willing to turn over command of the defense fleet, or perhaps the static defenses, to American control, that would be easier to work with." As Harry's face turned frosty, Miriam went on. "You would still be in overall control, and, of course, the industry would still all be yours."

"No," Harry said, his voice cold and certain, as if a mountain had just spoken. "I will retain command of the Earth Defense Force. There will be no appropriation of power, there will be no ship or station that will answer to any one country, not now, not later. While I might be willing to trust someone like Steve in control of such a ship, or perhaps even America as a whole, the rest of the world would not. America alone cannot supply enough troops or material to protect all of Earth. I cannot anger the rest of the world simply to kowtow to American sensibilities."

"Then we are at an impasse," Samuel said firmly, though perhaps not as powerfully as Harry had just spoken. "America will have to create its own defense system, then."

"Good luck," Harry drawled in amusement. "Does that mean you've figured out a cheap way of getting out of the gravity well?"

To that the only response Harry was given was stony silence as Steve shook his head. He might have set this meeting up, but he had no idea how it was going to go and was rather dismayed by it. Worse was that he could see both points of view, as well as one point the Senators hadn't brought up: that Harry, for all his skill, power, and abilities, was not a naval officer.

He hadn't been trained in that area. He didn't have the experience or the knowledge there, and his Earth Defense Force didn't have the institutional experience to call upon that the US or British navies did. He had access to that experience via his officers and personnel, but that wasn't quite the same thing. Moreover, it was Harry's own lack of experience as an admiral that concerned Steve. But it looked as if that point had gone right over the politicians' heads.

For his part Harry was not happy with how this meeting was going, though he could intellectually understand why the US would be leery of trusting him to lead the only real defense the planet seemed to have against exterior threats. He knew that many other countries were similarly leery of it, though unlike the US most of them didn't have as much to offer.

When it came to the US, however, Harry knew he needed their aid. He needed those trained sailors, and, much like why he had reached out to China, it came down to numbers, though in this case it was trained numbers.

The UK had an excellent navy. In quality it might be better than the US's, thanks to the king having lavished so much attention on it since he had taken the throne, allowing the UK's army to shrink in turn to the point it was barely a division strong. But it was small in comparison to the US. The UK had three super-carriers, some hundred destroyers and other ships, and twenty subs. The US had twenty carriers, and their fleet was equally larger in every way than the Brits, save in the number of subs. That was a major source of manpower, manpower that was already trained in many ways which he wouldn't have to see to.

While Harry was thinking about reaching out to Emma and the others for advice, E spoke up. "If I may interject. Am I understanding correctly that your concerns are that you do not wish to turn over defense of America entirely to Mr. Potter? And, Mr. Potter, do you have any objection to America building such a defense?"

"No, not really. My main objections to it is that I couldn't be seen as helping them, or else I'd open myself up to accusations of favoritism, particularly from the Chinese and Russians. The Chinese I've already started to bring aboard, but the Russians are a problem I haven't figured out a solution to just yet. My UK allies might have an issue there too, but not a large one given how much they've already agreed to invest in the Earth Defense Force and how much I've favored them in other areas. That means America would have to find some other way out of the gravity well, and unless Tony or Reed has come up with something and agreed to sell it to the US government, I don't see that happening anytime soon," Harry replied, looking at the sentient android quizzically. "Why?"

"What if there was a defense that didn't need to be space-based?" E asked.

"There isn't one, not really. Oh, I've looked at the idea of planetary defense platforms, but they're of limited utility in terms of actually defending the planet they're based on." Harry frowned. "But you should know that already, E. Where are you going with this?"

"I might have an idea of a weapon system that could escape the gravity well and be a true threat to ships in orbit," E replied calmly. "I was speaking about this with Dr. Richards, and a concept he rejected as being too short range for use in space at one point could be used here."

E held out a hand, and the nanites that made up a portion of his body flowed out over the hand for a second, creating a holographic device in his palm. The next second it activated, showing a weapons system.

"This is the Hellbore. It fires a deuterium fusion pulse. The recoil is equal to regular cannons of a similar size, but the power it packs should be enough to destroy any Kree unit below that of one of their equivalent of a dreadnought class. It is, despite looking like an energy weapon, one which starts in a solid state. The core is loaded into the firing array, where the constituent atoms, predominantly…"

"The weapon design sounds good," Steve broke in before E could go into too much scientific detail as he read over the details. "But they're still a flawed system in terms of defense. Looking at the tonnage, there's no way you could mount them on something able to move fast enough to dodge incoming fire."

"Even on some kind of jet-powered hover tank," Miriam said, then shrugged as everyone looked at her. "What, I'm a Sci-fi reader, so sue me."

"That would be true, but what if they are not on land? What if they are on water and can also move at relatively high speeds?" Another image popped up in the hologram, and Steve gawked for a moment before breaking out into chuckles.

The politicians all leaned forward, looking at the image intently, then Samuel chuckled. "How much would this cost, and how much of America would these ships protect?"

"Once on the move, they could project firepower into space across 90% of America so long as they stay within its territorial waters," E replied, his robotic lips quirking into a smile. "Further, the work of replacing and upgrading these ships would still be nowhere near as much as building new ships. Either the space or sea based varieties."

"And as for cost, I'd be willing to set up the work gratis so long as you can provide security and agree to second twenty-five percent of your navy's personnel to the Earth Defense Force within an agreed upon timeframe," Harry replied, thinking furiously as he looked at the specs for the guns. There were a lot of issues with it, but they didn't create much in the way of heat that being in the ocean couldn't handle. They didn't even need new barrels, just new loading mechanisms. The Hellbore's accurate range was the reason they couldn't be used in space, being unable to remain in a form which could do damage at the ranges in which normal space combat occurred.

Although they could be a good weapon to put on the Ravens if not for the heat… But the heat could be dealt with via magic. Hmm… I'll bring it up with Reed and the think tank. We'll need to look into that.

"You could also sic Tony on this project, so long as you could make him keep his mouth shut about it in public," Harry went on aloud. "You'll need him or one of the other big brains to figure out a way to make those ships fast enough or durable enough to take the pounding they'll need to once they engage."

"Agreed, but shield tech and cloaking technology could both be applicable here," Miriam said with a grin. "For my part, I agree. We can use this idea to show the public that America still controls its own defense for certain. It's even an idea that can be better understood by the majority of our citizens. Too many people do not understand the idea that being on land, or, in this case, a planet, is not a viable position in terms of defense. You're always giving up the ultimate high ground."

"The symbolism would certainly appeal to a large majority of our constituents too," Jeff said thoughtfully.

Everyone there could agree with that as they looked at the image of the USS New Jersey, BB-62, in the image.

Later, Harry, Steve, and E left the house together. "That was an interesting suggestion, E," Harry said mildly, his eyes flicking over to the android. "And it seems to have worked very well to combat their reluctance to turn over their defense entirely to us. Which is good, I suppose. I could wish most countries were so willing to spend to see to their own defense."

"Thank you, Mr. Potter. I thought it a viable concept when I found the Hellbore concept. It will not be a perfect defense, of course. While it will probably be more help against threats which enter the atmosphere, but it will be a defense that America can control as they see fit, which, as you say, is the important point," E replied gravely.

"And I suppose…" Harry continued, just as mildly, "that a report I got from Reed and Pinoptes about you using up half of your computer capacity to play numerous versions of the game Kantai Collection had nothing to do with it? Or the fact that you apparently have a picture of the ship-girls Nagato and Saratoga on the wall of your lab up in High Note?"

"Of course not," E replied, but he had looked away as he did.

"I honestly have no idea what you two are talking about, and I am not certain I want to," Steve muttered.

"Meh, I'll send Kitty to you. She'll get you up to speed on modern gaming quickly," Harry replied dryly.

Other things had also been moving apace. Mystique and Morph continued to worm their way into the so-called Mutant Liberation Front, occasionally getting word out. They now knew of three different recruitment centers scattered around North Africa, but hadn't found anything that could be considered a major base. Charles's efforts and even their new access to SHIELD files hadn't helped much, unfortunately, other than building up background on a few mutants who might be working for Sinister and the group called the Marauders, who Scott and his X-Men had fought.

On the diplomatic and political front, Harry had been told clandestinely that many of the countries who had sent representatives to meet with him had put in place the organizations they would need to meet his manpower requests when he came out in the open. Many of the countries he had made material-based deals with were also ready to move forward, like India and Finland.

Harry had bought land in Germany already, waiting to start work on his next arc reactor until after Germany openly declared its willingness to meet his manpower requirements via recruiting. They had also taken a step forward in meeting his demands for social reform, and a shipment of Magical Minds potions was ready for transport in the next few days.

On the other side of the pond, Emma's takeover of the various bits and pieces of Ozcorp she had been interested in had wound down, with her controlling upwards of thirty-nine percent of the company's previous holdings. The rest were still under heavy FBI investigation, which would no doubt continue for months. Despite that, it looked as if some portion of the company would survive, since Osborn's son had already been found innocent of any knowledge of his father's activities.

Work had also begun on building up housing and other facilities in the Savage Land. Protected by the surprisingly robust sonic technology that Magneto had devised, workers of dozens of Hellfire Club-related construction companies had been vetted and brought through the Doors, temporary dwellings had been set up, and a plan for an actual city had begun. It wouldn't be a large one, but it would be the safest city in the world, despite the dangers of the environment itself.

Ororo had taken up the tasks of making certain that Harry's workforce had someone they could contact if they had questions about what citizenship in his country would entail and of enlarging the educational system in preparation. She hadn't brought in more teachers to Camelot, but she had been streamlining the curriculum so that further teachers could be added on easily in the future.

On top of that she had had worked extensively for a few days with Douglas Ramsay and Jean to create several classrooms in the Savage Land's citadel. Once they were done, they would have the same technology as Camelot itself: hard light systems, internet uplink, and a connection to Pinoptes, who had, despite his primary mandate, truly begun to enjoy being part of the educational structure, as he put it. Ororo also worked as a go-between at need between Shanna and the other locals and the construction crews in the citadel.

Hela had also been busy, of course, aside from her ongoing duties as the Asgardian goddess of death. Among the various personal projects taking up her time she had followed up on the bits and pieces of the statuette which had caused Harry so much trouble, while also helping Dr. Vorlus with his studies, learning as much about her history as she was teaching him in turn. She was also continuing her own education in politics and history, an ongoing task if ever there was one.

Not that all this meant Hela was all work and no play, although from some of the stories Dr. Vorlus had shared with her of her past that was not the impression she had left on Earth. While it would have surprised those in the prior ages that had thought her cold as her land, Hela followed the example of Harry and the others to 'have fun'... Quite often she could be found in the company of Ororo or bantering with Emma in an effort to get to know the blonde better. Although some in Camelot would still wonder how much of the 'banter' was play and how much had teeth.

Other times she would go and set herself amongst the younglings and tell stories, finding an odd joy in them as she did when she saw the souls of children at play in eylandəvbarnœska. Garm and Dani could often be found in her company, the grizzled lupine always keeping his liege lady foremost in his care even as he continued to 'tutor' Rahne and tell his own yarns of hunts past to Dani. On top of this, one evening Hela and Harry had made time for an early evening date consisting of early dinner and some theater.

They left first by a magic carpet, and then by Harry's car. While not taking as much joy in going fast as Emma or Jean, Hela still enjoyed the car, and the sights of the trip. Especially since the Huayra had spells on it which allowed it to actually move in and out of traffic, ignoring it at need and being ignored by the normal plane around them. Harry said he had modified it from something in his old world called a Knight Bus.

Once in London Harry parked the car and they walked for several minutes taking in the sights of Shaftesbury Avenue, where Harry took Hela to the same theater where he and Ororo had gone to see Les Miserable. Now it was showing Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat from the same stall seating. "Mind you," Harry said as he held open the door for Hela, who smiled at this small gesture, "I can hope that we won't be interrupted by another spy looking to make contact with either of my personas this time."

"If we are, I cannot promise that I will be as gentle as you were in aiding the interloper out the door," Hela replied sitting down and staring out and down to the rest of the theatre eagerly. Among her people and the Asatru plays like this was a part of their tradition, and she was looking forward to this one with interest, having no prior knowledge of the tale. "Now, I believe I was also promised some chocolate treats?" Despite having been on Earth for a while now Hela had yet to get used to chocolate and the sheer number of ways it could be made to be utterly delicious.

"Then I will return anon with a proper offering milady," Harry quipped, exiting the door. True to his words he came back quickly with drinks and small containers with Reese's and KitKat bars. Hela was magnanimous enough Soon after that the lights started to dim in preparation for the play, and the two turned their attention to the show as it began.

To Harry, who had seen a musical on TV of this play before, the most enjoyable part of the evening was watching Hela's reaction to the story. She scowled in rage at how Joseph was cast out by his brothers, yet at the same time she also had harsh words to say to their father about playing favorites. After that she began to give some running commentary on the play as it went on, only falling silent during the music, which she seemed to enjoy greatly. They both clapped at the end when Joseph's family had to come to him for food and mercy at the end.

As the play drew to a close, Harry helped Hela out of her chair, smiling at her. "So, I take it you enjoyed that," he teased.

"It was indeed a most enjoyable tale, although I think that harlot should have been publically flogged. To throw off your vows of wedlock for physical pleasure, and then to strike down the one who spurned her? Bah!" Hela growled, even as Harry tucked her hand in his. "on the other hand, the music was amazingly good. I am used to sagas, laments and admittedly drunken caterwauling. I only tried once to see what Old One-Eye's halls were like, once was more than enough thank you. The only Aesir who can hold a tune is Tyr, the rest only think they can. Yet these were much more varied and far more upbeat for the most part. Yes, I enjoyed them greatly."

They continued talking as Harry led them out of the theatre and through several streets to the restaurant that Harry had found for their date. When she caught sight of it, Hela had to smile at the sight of the restaurant Harry had lined up for their dinner. Yet despite her smile she was attempted to tweak Harry's nose about it in recompense for his teasing Hela about her enjoying the songs from the play. "My Harry, you're certainly trying to appeal to my Asgardian heritage aren't you?"

The restaurant in question was actually on a tributary of the Thames. The London Shell Co. was a small riverboat which had been refurbished into a small but high quality restaurant. It specialized in seafood, with a menu that varied on a weekly basis given what was available. It was small, personable, and created a unique dining experience, or that was what everyone said anyway.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I just hope that this place lives up to its reputation in terms of its seafood meals," Harry replied airily, not even hiding his grin making his protestations a blatant lie.

The riverboat was separated into two areas, one out in the open over a canvas shelter, the other inside the riverboat. One door there led deeper into the back of the boat where the kitchen no doubt resided. There were only five tables, one for large groups, the others small and intimate. Lighting was provided by strung up lights on the poles holding up the canvas, which entered the rest of the riverboat. The sound of the city covered it all, but there was also the sound of violins coming from a few speakers.

Later after pulling out her seat for Hela, Harry sat down across from her and the two of them talked for a time while they waited for the one waiter to come by and take their orders. As they did, Hela had to ask, "Is there any reason why you have not taken young Melody to see that show yet? I would think it would be something she would enjoy."

"I've thought about it, but first, this was actually the opening weekend of that opera here in London. And I decided that I wanted to treat you." Harry said simply, causing Hela's small smile to widen. "And second, I think I'd have to wrestle her to get her out of the theatre afterward."

"True!" Hela replied with a laugh, Melody's ability to see music in everything often led to amusing situations as the goddess could recall. They continued to talk about the play for a time until after they had ordered their food, both seafood meals since those were the specialty of the house. Hela ordered what was labeled a shark steak, while Harry the shrimp and linguini meal.

Then as they started to run out of topics pertaining directly to the play, Hela began to wonder what ancient Norse tails would have made good operas. "Our history was rife with skalds and many a saga, it would be interesting to see how many could translate into this more modern medium."

Harry smiled at that, but then said, "I'd like to see some of Terry Pratchett's works made into plays, those would be fun. You couldn't make them into operas though, nowhere near enough songs or dances. On the other hand, I would pay good money to see someone dressed like Rincewind singing a song about running away. The movies they came up with based on the books were decent enough, for all that they had to conform to the limits of live action performance in many ways."

"Or Susan Sto-Helit bemoaning the fact she is related to Death," Hela said, her smile thinning noticeably. "Though I suppose that rather strikes to close to home in my case, does it not?"

"Yes and no. Neither of you had a choice really, but while Susan spends her time trying to run away from the supernatural entirely, you embraced your role and have always seen to your duties faithfully. Then again, Susan was a mortal, whereas you, milady, are not."

"Really, I hadn't noticed?" Hela replied dryly, though her eyes sparkled with appreciation at Harry's compliment. Too often Hela had sometimes considered herself a forgotten god among the Asgardians. Her role after all was to look after the souls that didn't make Odin's cut for Valhalla or for Freya's in Sessrúmnir, which included of course the dishonorable dead, the sick or those unremarked in old age. And the other Asgardians had never really showed her as much respect as she should have given her power. Fear yes, many Asgardians had feared her, but that was just it: they feared her when they thought of her at all. Most of the time, as far as the mishmash that was her long term memories could tell Hela, she was simply ignored. That was even harsher than simply being feared in many ways. Hela realized this might not in fact have been the case in ages past, but she didn't know that, and couldn't prove it.

From there the conversation segued into more personal matters. They talked about Rahne and her progress under Garm, as well as the rumor she might be developing a so-called 'girl crush' on Dani. "I have no idea where the name for that phenomenon came from and I am uncertain I want to." Hela said drolly. "Still, I can see some of her appreciation at least when the two interact."

"Since this is the first I've heard it milady, I'm afraid I can't help you there. On the other hand, I think Betsy's been sniffing around Steve whenever he's been in the castle these past few days." Harry said with a chuckle as he remembered something Piotr and Amara had passed on to him.

"Hmm, now that would be an interesting pairing," Hela mused, before changing the subject. While she was willing to speak about their deepening relationship later, they were still in public even hidden under Harry's modified charms, designed to protect their identities. "On another topic, I understand you and that Russian priest have had some arguments of late?"

"Father Garnoff believes I need to be doing more to help Russian mutants. I'm afraid there were seven names that appeared in the Big Book before turning to black instantly this past week, and four of them were from Russia. Garnoff knows we're still stretched thin in terms of our retrieval teams, but he keeps on trying to come up with ideas to pressure Russia into agreeing to my mutant rights reforms. The problem is that none of them would work. It doesn't help that the Orthodox church in that area has had to go to ground again. I'll admit to being surprised they took the stance they did, to protect their flocks, mutant or not, but with society so much against them as well as the government there's little we can do without far more resources on the ground than we have right now."

From there the conversation turned to more serious matters until the food arrived. After that by mutual agreement they changed the subject to happier things. The food was excellent, and the night ended on a high note as Harry escorted Hela to the hall of runic doorways. Hela had plans for wine and night over at Emma's, the other girls having already left by the time Harry and Hela returned to the castle. Harry in turn had plans with the Thing and a few others for a poker game over in the Baxter Building.

With a wave of her hand Hela changed the dress she had been wearing, a slinky, green number that covered everything but hinted at what lay beneath, to her every day one. Reaching out, she cupped Harry's cheek, stroking her finger along his jaw. "Tonight has been a lovely evening Harry, thank you."

"You are welcome milady. But can your would-be paramour ask if it has been good enough to win him a kiss?" Harry asked, taking her hand in his and pressing it against his chest.

Hela could feel the beat of Harry's heart, steady, but speeding up as she listened, and a warm smile spread on her face even as she flushed faintly at the directness of his question. "You may indeed."

For a moment Harry leaned in, then as Hela backed away slightly he laughed getting it. "Very well Hela, may I have a kiss to end the evening?"

Hela had barely a moment to nod before Harry's lips pressed into her own, his arms going around her waist. While his hands didn't stray, the touch was almost like fire against her nerves, leaving a trial of goosebumps behind. And while Harry had quickly taken control of the kiss, he made no move to deepen it. That he let to Hela.

Without hesitation she did so, and the two of them began to make out for a moment. There was love and desire mixed in this kiss, as well as a healthy bit of pure lust, and Hela, who had never kissed anyone like this before, moaned into the kiss before gently pulling away, their tongues remaining in touch for a second even after their mouths separated. "Enough for now, my seidr man," She said, her voice a throaty alloy of love and stern control. "I am not quite ready for where more of that could lead."

"I will never press you Hela. But does that mean you have decided that we are past the courtship phase?" Harry asked intently. "Even if nothing more than kisses happen just yet milady, I would dare to bet that you will never have had as good a night's sleep as you will in bed with the other ladies and I."

"I daresay you are correct there. You would certainly keep my Shadow-fueled nightmares at bay," Hela replied with a wry chuckle. "But I will give you my reply after this United Nations foolishness is done, not before. You must have your mind fully concentrated on this, your first true moment in the public eye of the whole world."

"Foolishness? You think I shouldn't talk to them then?"

"No, you need to, and you need to admit to being Guardian in front of as wide an audience as possible. However I think it is foolish to believe that anything further of substance will be accomplished there. Why talk to the ambassador, who has no power to make decisions? You should always talk directly to the king."

Leaving Harry with that thought, Hela turned and entered the portal to Emma's house.

For her part Jean was busy with the work going on in space, of course. She had taken Polaris under her wing almost despite the two actually being of an age, and both of them spent a lot of time working with the repair teams on the Kree Doom Bringer, which would eventually be rechristened as Warspite.

On top of this, Ororo, Harry, and Hela had made time to work out with the Custodes. Steve had yet to join them, working with the US government to slowly transfer the remaining SHIELD holdings to other agencies and seeing to the destruction of the helicarrier, which had been ordered by the president pro-tem, no longer wanting any agency to have the massive flying carrier under its control. E had actually used the material from it to help in his repair projects.

However, all of them, including Jean, had made it a point to leave the evening before the day of Harry's meeting with the UN free. The extended family actually had plans to fly into New York, or rather, Harry Potter and the others had plans to do so, including the kids. Melody, Illyana, and Einzahl would be coming with them on a plane Harry had bought from Emma for the purpose.

Several hours before they were due to leave, Harry came into the bathroom after putting a few pieces of clothing into a small bag (more so he was seen carrying things than anything else) in search of his toiletries to find Jean standing naked in front of the sink. She was staring down at her breasts and stomach, which had a noticeable bulge now, a morose look on her face. Her breasts had started to grow, going from a decent C-cup to pushing D and becoming slightly saggy, where before they were almost superhumanly perky. Her strawberry colored nipples also had slightly changed color.

The sight took Harry's breath away, and he paused, staring.

Spotting him in the reflection, Jean looked away. "Gah, how can you even look at me?! I'm like a slowly expanding blimp. Why the hell haven't we looked into in-vitro technology? I am feeling so damn ugly right now, and I've started having morning sickness at the oddest times, and…"

"Stop, Jean," Harry said, moving forward to enfold her into a hug. He pressed himself into her back, his hands moving around her stomach tenderly. This wasn't the first time he had dealt with Jean's being depressed due to her changing hormones. "You're not ugly; you could never be ugly, inside or out. We haven't looked into in-vitro because it was never a priority. Maybe we can look into it in the future. Your morning sickness isn't an issue; that's why we have both potions and house-elves."

Jean sniffled, looking away, though Harry could tell she was already reacting to not only his words but his touch. "How can you say I'm not ugly? Look at my tits; they're sagging! And my stomach, it's like I ate half a watermelon already, and it's only going to get worse!"

"Because pregnant women are sexy, and you've always been sexy to begin with. Yes, your breasts might be sagging right now. That's because they've grown; they'll go back to normal after your pregnancy is done." Moving her hair aside, Harry began nipping at Jean's bare collarbone. One hand moved up from her stomach, hefting one of her breasts as he began to fondle it, while the other one moved down and around to Jean's rear. "Let me prove it to you…"

Moaning, Jean leaned back into Harry's chest, enjoying his ministrations. Yet at the same time her analytical and conscientious mind told her they didn't have time for this. "We're due at the London Airport in a bare hour and a half, Harry. We don't have timMM…"

Jean's voice broke out into a louder moan as Harry moved down her back, leaving a trail of kisses as he slowly disappeared from the mirror's reflection. "We have time enough for this. There is always time for us."

Exactly an hour later, Jean and Harry joined the others in the main hall. Everyone else was already there, wishing them luck. The girls, save Rahne and the younger set, all saw how Jean was glowing more than usual and snickered to themselves, but moments later the group going to New York was ready to go. This included Piotr, Amara, the kids, Jean, Emma, Hela, and Ororo. Ororo and Amara would be accompanying Harry openly to the meeting and would reveal themselves as he did. The others would be heading to Emma's mansion, where they would be in telepathic communication with Harry during the meeting, while Piotr would come back to Camelot with the kids.

They once more used the magic carpet to head down to London, where they went through the airport like normal, albeit incredibly rich, people would, boarding the plane. The kids promptly began to watch a movie, while the girls and Harry spent some time simply talking to one another. Hela and Jean began to talk about the Phoenix, of all things, and how she was similar and yet dissimilar to Death, while Ororo and Harry talked about the kids and what they wanted to do the next day.

The next day the group openly went around New York, spending the morning shopping and seeing the sights. Harry Potter, whose public face was well known at this point, of course drew a lot of attention, but he and the gorgeous black woman on his arm ignored them, apparently simply on a trip with several others, both employees and children. No one approached them, which Harry was thankful for, though he could see several people try to build up the courage to do so.

Harry and Melody did an impromptu little dance in FAO Schwarz on the giant piano keys, which drew a lot of laughter and seemed to make the group of impromptu admirers or questioners back off, realizing that interrupting someone's family time would have been intolerably rude. There were still many pictures of them taken, however, but none of those pictures would include Jean's pregnancy. That was still covered by as many illusion spells as Harry could contrive, and Jean wore an emergency portkey in the form of a bracelet to go with the defensive spells on the wedding ring Harry had made her. After Sage had told him about how the attacker had shifted priorities to Jean when she showed up, Harry was taking no chances.

Eventually, however, the free portion of their day ended. As they walked back to the hotel, Melody looked up at her father, smiling brightly. The spells Harry had designed to muffle her mutant power to a level such that she could be in public had worked even better than they had the last time, and she had loved her day out. "Have you recharged your happy meter enough, Father?"

"Happy meter?" Harry asked, smiling down at his first daughter and pulling her up onto one shoulder, placing his other hand onEinzahl'sshoulder. Piotr already was carrying Illyana on his shoulders, and Einzahl was holding Ororo's hand. "What exactly is a happy meter?"

"Oh, you know what it is. It's the amount of happiness you have in you, which helps you deal with all the things you don't want to," Melody replied, letting loose a giggle. "You and all the others need to refresh your happy songs before doing things like this meeting, which you're not looking forward to. You have to do it, but I'm happy to see you'll be as recharged as you can be."

"Heh, well, that's one way of seeing it, I suppose. And is that why you and the others have been acting particularly good today?" Harry asked, reaching up to pull the end of Melody's multi-colored hair. The girl's elfin features and hair color had drawn almost as many glances and mutters as Harry and Ororo, many of them being anti-mutant. But no one had tried to make trouble for her thanks to their presence, even though Harry hadn't been actively using his magic to stop that.

"Yep!" Melody chirped. "We'll make up for it by running around and trying to escape you all when we go to the beach. But I asked the others to behave for you today."

"Well, thank you for that, princess," Harry replied, laughing.

The group entered the hotel, asking their way up to the rooms they had booked on the top floor for the single night they would be staying in New York. The moment the door closed behind them, Jean pulled out a scanner Reed had designed for their espionage people. A moment later she had found two bugs and covered them for the moment with devices which would block the signal with nothing for a few seconds, as if the group had yet to arrive.

As she was doing this, Ororo and Harry hugged or kissed the kids goodbye. Cory and Clare appeared there, waiting to teleport the kids back. But they also brought Garm with them. Harry and Hela exchanged evil smiles as Harry asked, "You ready to play bait, Garm?"

"Eagerly," Garm said, showing his fangs.

Harry fully anticipated that someone would be along to try and kidnap the kids, though he and his ladies had argued about whether that attempt would come before or after the big reveal. Harry and Emma felt both, Hela after, and Jean and Ororo said that the FOH would try to kidnap them to get back at Harry for his stance on mutant rights before the big reveal, or at least before they heard about it.

However, since Garm had not had many outings of late save with Rahne, he had volunteered to replace the kids. This way not only would the kids be safe, since that was obviously a given thanks to the house-elves, the would-be kidnappers would be, "appropriately dealt with," in Hela's words.

After letting the youngsters all pet his sides, the giant wolf moved over to the suite's sitting area. Once there he extended one claw from his paw, trying vainly to tap the controls of the TV.

"What are you trying to watch, my wolf?" Hela asked, moving over to help her protector, leaning up to scratch at his ear with her other hand.

"There is a series on that young Dani recommended to me, a Wolves in the Wild series set in Northern Canada somewhere," Garm replied, his eyes twitching away shiftily.

Of course Hela caught this, but didn't say anything, instead turning the TV on and looking at Harry. "How do I bring up the channel selection?"

"Oh there's no need for that, mistress. I can…" Garm began.

But Harry had already moved over to help her, still carrying Melody on his shoulder. She smiled happily at the giant wolf, then asked, "Oh, are you going to watch Homeward Boundagain? I know you liked watching the ending the other night."

Cocking her eyebrow behind her half-mask at her protector, Hela watched as he seemed to shrink slightly, looking away sheepishly. "The, um, the comedy is amusing to my mind. And I can at least hope that sarcastic feline eventually gets hers!"

Keeping a giggle from escaping with goddess-like control, Hela nodded and let Garm retain what tatters remained of his dignity. "Of course, Garm. Let me just find the right channel."

Moments later, she and Jean were teleported by Cory to Emma's mansion and the kids by Clare back to Camelot. Harry, Ororo, and Amara changed into their uniforms and left via a magic carpet that already had Scott sitting on it. From there they would fly down to land in front of the UN.

Behind them they left Garm, who, now that he was alone, settled down to watch the show. This did not mean he was not on guard, of course. About an hour later, when someone smashed open the door, they discovered this to their cost, finding not the kids they had been looking for, but a wolf larger than a man was tall and a gaping maw full of sharp teeth.

Elsewhere, Guardian landed in the plaza in the front of the UN building. Despite being crammed full of people wanting to see what happened, the area was being held open by police and National Guardsmen.

Landing, he strode forward toward the front entrance to the UN, Storm by his side, and Cyclops and Magma fanning out like an honor guard as they followed. Behind them he could hear hundreds of cameras flashing, hundreds of shouted questions, and more than one newscaster speaking live about their arrival. He ignored it all, however, knowing that the meeting itself would be recorded by other newspaper reporters. Harry had wanted this to all be done in as public a manner as possible.

Addressing the UN security personnel and the leader of the National Guard contingent, Guardian held out a black-clad hand. "Good afternoon. My name is Guardian, as you no doubt know, and this is my party. I believe we are expected."

OOOOOOO

If they thought about it at all, it would probably surprise a lot of people that Latveria had a seat in the UN. It shouldn't have, considering what other countries did, of course. But Doom's more obvious than normal despotism and his nation's recent actions still made it rather unexpected.

Something that had made many of the other ambassadors even more nervous about that than usual, however, was that Dr. Doom himself was there today to represent his country. Wearing his armor as always, Doom lounged in his ambassador's chair, somehow appearing as comfortable as if he was sitting on his throne back in Latveria. He had vowed on his name to not attack anyone there when he first showed up that morning, but even so, with his armor and his presence, the self-made king was a imposing figure.

This was not helped by the fact that he was also drinking wine out of a cup made from the Red Skull's cranium, which he had personally extracted from its owner. Thankfully, he had done so after the man had been safely dead. Many of the other ambassadors had stared at the gruesome trophy at first, though more than a few seemed to approve of it—if not the trophy itself, then at least the victory it represented.

And none of them wondered why Doom had decided to be here in person today of all days. Everyone knew today would be a momentous day if Guardian appeared as he had promised he would. And while many of the ambassadors here were incredibly leery of the man and the power he represented, they felt he had at least told the truth about showing up to talk to them.

The ambassadors all looked up in expectation as the doors to the assembly hall opened, and Guardian and his followers strode in. There were some mutters from the American and Canadian ambassadors as they recognized Cyclops and Storm, but they silenced themselves as the group was led forward. "Ambassadors, we present Guardian and friends," one of their guides said, gesturing the group of super-powered individuals forward.

Guardian AKA Harry paused, taking in the room. Along three quarters of the room there were five raised levels like an amphitheater, with each nation's ambassador having their own seat, their own headset, notepad, and table. Along the back wall was a further area devoted to the translators for the various countries, each of them separated into their own small, soundproof cubicles. Harry wondered idly how many of their languages Ororo could already speak,

Directly above the translator cubicles was a balcony in which a group of video cameras and their crews worked to cover the entire room or bits of it as fitted their viewership. Harry was amused to note that there seemed to be more such up there than was probably normal, given how crowded it was. Well, they expect a show, and I bet we will deliver one way or another, though what kind, I can't tell yet.

At the front of the room on the floor was a raised dais leading back to the far wall, upon which was a large UN symbol, but Harry could see that it was also a computer screen at need. On the dais before it was a long, lightly curved table facing out toward the rest of the room. There sat the permanent members of UN Security Council: the US, Russia, the UK, China, and France.

Ambassadors from nine other countries also sat there, their positions rotating on a yearly basis, but their power to make policy was very limited given that the five permanent members held veto power. At the moment the countries represented there were India, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and three countries whose flags Harry couldn't recognize offhand. Emma's voice speaking into his mind, however, filled in the blanks, telling him one was Bolivia, and the other two were Malta and Cambodia.

The way it was set up, however, and the way Guardian and his group had been led in, made it seem more like they were petitioners coming before them more than anything else. The way the Director General stood up and began to talk to Harry and his people reinforced this notion. He seemed to want to put them into their place in no uncertain terms.

"Guardian, you have been asked to present yourself before this body for several reasons. The first reason, of course, is about rumors that have reached this body about further aggressions between you and the aliens known as the Kree. You have somehow decided that you personally are able to make policy for Earth and humanity despite having no such mandate. We, the united nations of the world, demand an explanation," the man said, glaring at Harry, not angrily, but certainly patronizingly.

Oh, dear. They demand? Aren't they cute when they speak as if they are in charge here?" Hela said snarkily, her voice carried to Harry's mind via Emma's power. In the background Harry got the impression that Jean was laughing dryly.

"Well, if they think that, it's time to disabuse them of that notion," Harry replied, before addressing the room, using a spell to let his voice reach every person there equally. "Demand? You demand of me an answer for my actions? You misunderstand the reason for this meeting. I am not here to answer to you, nor because you may have requested my presence. I am here of my own volition to demand action from you. I am not some supplicant called onto the carpet."

He waved his hand towards the long table, casting a transfiguration spell on it. As the ambassadors all shouted and scrambled away, the table expanded along its length to allow for two more seats. Harry stood, making no more moves, while the guards who had walked them in grabbed at their weapons, only to stop as they noticed no one had been hurt.

After they realized that but before anyone could say anything, Harry moved over to the table, holding a chair out for Ororo before sitting down beside her. Behind him, Amara and Scott moved back to the wall, taking up station with the various security personnel there. Harry leaned back, his masked gaze looking first at the speaker, then at each of the Security Council's members. "I will be treated as an equal, or I will not treat with you at all."

Leaning back in his chair Doom silently applauded Potter's stance, watching the faces of the people around him as well as the Big Five. Russia's ambassador looked furious, of course, while the Frenchman looked dyspeptic. Despite that he backed down quickly, making Doom wonder if the man had been given marching orders to make nice with Guardian. The US ambassador also said nothing, merely sitting back down and examining Harry thoughtfully. He was a younger man, a recent replacement assigned to the UN barely two days before by the president pro-tem, and Doom had little to no information on him.

"You say we should treat you as an equal, yet why should we do so?" the Russian ambassador barked. "You have no power base, no nation, no army! You only have your own resources and those of your followers! And no member of the UN has ever hid his identity as you do! Even Dr. Doom does not do that."

For a moment the room fell quiet, wondering if Doom would respond. But other than taking another long sip from his favorite cup, Doom did not respond. Instead he simply looked back, his masked glare causing the Russian to quail most nicely.

"I will answer your points in order, Mr. Orolovno," the masked Guardian replied, pronouncing the Russian name correctly, something that few English speakers could the first time. "First, you should do so because you all know some of what I have been doing to protect this planet from the Kree. Something, I shouldn't have to add, that should have been this body's duty, but one which none of you even attempted to meet. I know you all have seen the Fantastic Four's reports on the Kree and Susan Richard's announcement after the last battle."

As the Russian scowled and mutters began all around, Guardian continued calmly. "As for my power base, I have built up a massive defense force in space, and I do, in point of fact, have a large power base beyond my own personal power, the nature of which I will elucidate here. Tell me, Mr. Orolovno, would you like to travel to Mars to see some of the work going on? Or would you like to wait until I bring forward the Kree prisoners my men and I have taken? Including the commanding officer of this last attack?"

That shut the mutters down immediately, and the numerous cameramen who had been gleeful before were now thinking Pulitzer prizes. The new US ambassador's calm statement cut through the sudden silence easily. "And the last point my colleague raised, Guardian? I believe the time for masks is past."

"I think so too," Guardian replied. To the barely hidden surprise of many there, he reached up to his mask, pulling it off slowly as he talked. "After all, I am not here just as Guardian, leader of the Custodes Mundi, but as Harry Potter, owner of Magical Minds, Arc Technologies, and others."

For a moment the silence in the room was profound, then it disappeared into shouts of surprise, shock, and more often than not various repetitions of the refrain, 'Why the bleep couldn't we make that connection before this!?' Harry simply sat there, smiling beatifically as this storm of responses went on, exchanging a brief look with Doom, who was chuckling at everyone's reaction.

Inside his head Harry could feel Emma and the others laughing too, while beside him Ororo rolled her eyes. She had rolled them too soon, however, because a second later Jean turned to Emma and asked brightly, "So, want to bet on how long it takes them to recover?"

In the end it took about ten minutes for everyone to calm down, making Emma's bet the closest of them all. Eventually the Indian ambassador spoke up, his tone dust dry. "You do realize this raises further questions, Mr. Potter?"

"I am willing to answer your questions about myself, so long as they are not too invasive, though I am not willing to answer any questions about who the Custodes are. Their identities will remain secret until they each make the choice to go public with them. That is their choice, and that is not up for debate," Harry warned.

"However," Harry went on over the protests and cries of 'full disclosure' at that, "perhaps we can get to the real reason why I'm here."

"Now wait a fucking minute!" shouted the Brazilian ambassador. "Is this all some kind of plot you've come up with to further your pro-mutant social platform?! Why have you created the Custodes?"

"I agree with my colleague. Your company's social stance has not solely addressed what you would need to in order to get humanity to worry about space-based threats. Why, if you are from another dimension as you first interview stated, did you decide to champion mutant rights? What do you have to gain from it?" asked another ambassador speaking English unlike the first one, his accent distinctly high-class.

Harry shrugged and explained how he had come to see the mutant cause as this world's wizard versus mundane conflict, giving a brief overview of his life. This caused a few ambassadors who were devout Catholics or Muslims to denounce him and his company's goods as tools of Satan. There were also shouts about how his companies had monopolies and therefore should be broken up, which caused him to laugh. No one else, after all, could create his goods, and he certainly wasn't willing to share his manufacturing secrets with them.

The UK ambassador soon came in on his side of things, followed by the Canadian ambassador, and finally the Italian and others. There were other questions about why he had decided to take the mutant's side, which Harry answered by saying he had determined to bridge the gap between them in as many ways as possible.

Harry's favorite was a shouted question from the Egyptian ambassador, who shouted, "What right do you have to sit there and dictate who and who is not human? Who gave you the right to decide you knew what was best for humanity!?"

"Because no one else was doing it," Harry replied, his face a wintry frown. "You're going to listen to me saying that several times. But the gist of why I decided to is that my definition of human is very broad. And I come from a world where a small minority with powers gave rise to those who believed that magic gave them the right to play with the lives of those who didn't have it. To rape, butcher, and control those who had not been born with magic, and to further control those who did not come from their own society."

His eyes flicked over to the German, Turkish, and Russian ambassadors before gazing around, his glare a laser. "Further, I am a student of history and know what can happen to a small minority who sticks out from the majority for one reason or another. What has been done in the past in the name of religious or ideological fervor or even simple expediency could all too easily be done because of fear and hate."

While those three worthies, especially the Turkish man, began to boil over, Harry went on calmly, his voice a cold scalpel, cutting them off before they could speak. "Genocide fueled by hate on one side and the possibility of mutants giving rise to a group like my own Death Eaters. Is it any wonder why I felt the need to try and stop either of those from happening?"

Despite Harry's attempt to claim the moral high ground (or his success in doing so, according to Jean and the others) the questions went on for another forty minutes merely about what Harry had been doing to ensure outright war didn't break out between mutants and non-powered humans. Halfway through the tenor of those questions shifted, mainly because of how vague Harry was on the details: where Magneto's base had been, what had happened with most of the madman's people, what he was currently doing, and so on. One major hang-up was that Harry was open about spiriting away mutants to be trained in how to use their powers to a school, but refused to give the names of his students and, of course, refused to disclose where Camelot was.

His refusal on this point got more and more blunt as the ambassadors railed about it. They hated the fact that they had little to no idea where Harry's main base of operations was. This bothered them all equally, even the ambassadors of the UK and America, though they just remained silent.

Eventually he shut them up by saying that if they didn't stop questioning him about that point, he'd consider all of them fishing for information to be used in a military attack. "Needless to say, any such move would be considered an act of war. One I would respond to via decapitation strikes on the leadership of the countries in question. Including any ambassadors they have to this body."

This thinly veiled threat and Harry's bold challenge as to why they had been prioritizing that item in their questioning won a moment of silence, which the chief speaker used to call for a brief recess, which everyone agreed to, if only for the legendary bladders of politicians failing them.

Harry and his people also retreated into a room where they hid out, avoiding the opportunity to mingle, much to Emma's chagrin. But Harry wanted to cover the space-based threats before letting the ambassadors attempt to corral him in a less formal setting. "Okay, everyone, how do we all think we're doing here?" Harry asked tiredly, conjuring up and then plopping into a nice, soft sofa with Ororo curling up next to him.

With Jean and Emma linking them all, the command group all were able to speak without anyone being able to listen in. "I think you ruffled a lot of feathers with that last threat, but given how they were acting it was the only way to get on with things," Emma said first. "However, once they calm down many of the ambassadors will respect you for taking that hard line. Remember, threats and power are what is respected here. Don't expect moral high grounds to gain you much, since they will all be wondering what you're really getting out of it."

"If cynicism was an energy source you might be able to power one of your starships with the amount found in that room," Hela said, then added, "With perhaps the addition of Emma. But she is right, as I feared. These people care only for their own positions, Harry, not humanity as a whole and certainly not anything else."

"I agree to a point," Scott said, leaning back in his own conjured chair while Amara paced the room like a caged animal, making Harry thankful that he hadn't decided to bring Dani along. The Cheyenne would have been going stir crazy having to stand still for all that time. "There are a lot of side conversations going on among the smaller countries from what I could tell. Most of them are leery about what your stance on mutant rights is already costing them—access to your goods, I mean—and are waiting with trepidation for the next shoe to fall."

Looking over at Amara, Scott got a nod back and went on. "Yet at the same time there seems to be some real, visible signs of relief or something similar. Harry, none of these people are evil, they are simply self-serving. None of them could have, or would have, tried to find a 'solution' to the mutant problem. But they are thankful that someone has been able to bridge that divide, and I think a lot of them will simply accede that you had a point and let it go at that."

"You know Jean and I could make certain that's the case," Emma said, looking over at the redhead, who had actually decided to take a nap after telling the others to, 'wake me up when we get to something more interesting.' "I wouldn't even have to change their minds for them. Just…see if Scott and Amara are right."

"No. I know you mean well, Emma, and if they were all bigots or more directly dangerous to us, I might have allowed it. But these are not enemy combatants or even supporters. They are simply politicians doing what they do best: looking out for themselves," Harry replied grimly. "I will not bend on that moral line even if they would in my place. It's called being the better person, love. And it can be thought of as a victory at times like this all on its own. Just remember, for all their bluster these idiots really don't have power to threaten us."

"Or to make decisions beyond a certain point. Best to keep that in mind when you go back in, Harry Potter," Hela warned.

Once the UN reps came back, Harry finally got to the real reason why he was addressing the UN: the space-borne threats that were out there. Harry felt they had been making enough headway with separate countries that attempting to further address mutant rights with the UN was pointless. However, he needed them to know about and agree to, or, at the very least, not get in his way as he continued to be build up the EDF.

This conversation went on until dusk with many stops and starts. Several of these points Harry knew, going in, would be problems, such as his owning a large and varied space fleet, albeit one entirely taken from the Kree. That and the fact that he, Doom, and the UK had already created the EDF stuck in a lot of craws. But with Doom, the UK ambassador, and Harry all talking about it, the UN assembly was forced to realize that without Harry and his efforts, humanity might well have been conquered or simply wiped out. The nature of the fait accompli bothered many of the ambassadors, and they were extremely vocal about it. Worse was how large the EDF had already grown.

It was also telling that only Russia of the five permanent Security Council members objected. When the Russian ambassador realized that not even China objected, he shouted about how Potter had been making deals, and why the hell he hadn't done so with Russia.

"Because Russia has refused to make any inroads toward mutant rights. In Russia, being a mutant is worse than being gay, and many young mutants are mobbed and beaten to death the moment their mutant abilities become visible. It is worse than the pogroms your country used to let loose on the Jews. Because Russia seems to be saber-rattling all the time, and I don't deal with countries who seem to think that their might allows them to threaten their neighbors with impunity even as they prey upon their own citizens," Harry shot back angrily. "If you wish to throw stones, Mr. Orolovno, perhaps you should first make sure you're not living in a glass house."

This statement won a surprising round of cheers from Russia's immediate neighbors, as well as Doom tapping his gauntleted knuckles on his desk. At that point Russia stormed out of the room, and the discussion continued.

Doom took this moment to stand up and tell the assembled ambassadors about how he had been convinced of the alien threat, and how much aid he had given in return for, "some small aid on a personal, familial project of mine." This rather neatly cut out the impact of Orlovno's storming out. It also served to emphasize both that Doom's priorities had changed and once more how large the EDF was swiftly becoming.

Still, one aspect that kept coming up which surprised Harry was the idea of opening dialogue with the Kree. He would have thought that politicians would at least be able to read, but it seemed none of them had bothered reading the portion of the Fantastic Four's packet on Kree society. To combat this concept Harry waited until a break for lunch, then teleported in a few of the Kree prisoners to answer questions.

The main speaker for hits group was Rika, who Harry introduced as the leader of the latest attack, which surprised many of the ambassadors. There were also questions about it being a ruse, or some kind of scheme. "After all, he looks just like a human with his skin painted blue. What's to say that isn't the case!?"

A demonstration of Rika's strength and his inhuman accent helped solve that particular piece of stupidity. This, however, simply meant they could go on to the next piece. Several different ambassadors asked Rika questions, which he answered as well as he could, but his lack of understanding of some of the questions, such as why Earth had been targeted, disturbed many. That was okay. That bothered Harry too, since none of their prisoners, not even Mar'vell, understood why he had been sent here initially.

Yet that didn't stop a few of the ambassadors asking Rika if Earth could join the Kree Empire.

In response Rika laughed. "Of course not. You are not Kree."

"But you have surely absorbed other races, brought them in peacefully into your fold?" asked a random ambassador.

"No, why would we? What could non-Kree possibly have to offer?" Rika asked, looking confused. "If you are not strong enough to fight us off you are not worthy of surviving at all. All you would be worth would be as cheap labor on jobs which have too high a fatality rate for Kree to be used on, and there are not many such."

Yet the ambassadors persisted, seemingly believing that as a naval officer Rika was not a representative example of his people. The next direct question on this point came from Romania and had Harry and all the security council ambassadors scowling. "Yet surely you have to admit that if we surrendered and became part of your empire you could have access to our resources for far less a cost. This would, of course, include the minds of those like Reed Richards and others. If that were the case, surely your people would have mercy on us?"

"Why do you keep bringing this idea up?" Rika interrupted abruptly, almost growling the words. "YOU…ARE…NOT…KREE. You do not matter. Your planet, your race, your so-called nations, you do not matter. We do not treat with species such as yours; we eradicate them."

"If you fight like that, then why in the hell did you surrender?" asked someone else from the far back. "That seems odd to me."

"I surrendered to save my people dying in battle against a superior opponent who had us trapped, and because primitive races like yourselves often believe they can ransom Kree soldiers back. You can't, but that doesn't stop many from trying. This in turn allows me and my fellows live for a time," Rika said, shaking his head and answering the question more fully than he had before. "I was honor-bound to surrender my men when our position became untenable. This does not in any way change our fate, but at least plasma bombardment is supposed to be quick."

That shook the UN assembly, causing a moment of silence, and Harry spoke into the sudden silence quickly. "At this point I feel like I'm a bloody teacher who should be asking the class if they've read the assigned chapters. Have any of you actually read all of the Fantastic Four's report on the Kree?"

Only four hands in the whole room minus Doom went up, though Harry was interested to note that the Indian ambassador was one of them as was the American, while the UK ambassador had not. "All right. Until such time as you all can be bothered to actually read about the issue under discussion, we can table asking Rika or the others any further questions."

With that Harry waved his hand. Cory, who was on station for just this purpose, popped in at that signal and, unseen by any, popped back out with Rika. He was so quick about it that to the politicians around him it looked as if Harry had done it himself. This unilateral decision brought shouts and cries of outrage, but Harry ignored them. Instead, after sighing theatrically, Harry went into further details about the battles against the Kree, "Seeing as you people evidently can't read." He covered the first battle against the Hellion and had Una come in and corroborate the commander's orders.

This served two important functions: it emphasized the callous nature of the Kree Empire in its orders and gave the ambassadors and the public beyond the first indication that there were Kree individuals who were not nearly as sociopathic as the majority. The fact that none of those individuals were in power, however, was equally telling. Una was the equivalent of a senior doctor, but Mar'vel, a hero to pale-skinned Kree and Una's lover, had not been nearly as empathic towards humanity as she was.

And the fact she, an alien, agreed with Harry that the Kree would never seek peace, went over very poorly. Like Rika before her, Una fielded numerous questions on this point despite Harry's earlier remarks against it. But while she was more sympathetic about it, the answers were much the same as from Rika: that the Kree would not treat with non-Kree.

From there Harry talked about the mission to steal Kree ships and then return. Many of the ambassadors surprised themselves by cheering at that point, but not nearly as many cheered for that as they did the news that the light show from months back had indeed been another battle against a Kree fleet intent on bombarding Earth back to the stone age. Many of them had been informed of this but hadn't believed it until now, and Emma, watching the news from outside the building, told Harry that they weren't the only ones cheering. Of course there were still numerous ambassadors wondering why Harry had taken it upon himself to act like this, but they were few and far between.

However, the biggest reaction was reserved for the battle that resulted in Carnit'Rika becoming Harry's prisoner. The larger ships, the size of the action, and the fact that normal people had died on Fortress Mars drove home the serious nature of the conflict. Here Doom, Reed, and Harry all actually had sensor and even video recordings, and Harry contacted Carol and had her describe the action from her position on Fortress Mars.

When Reed shared a recording from Johnny's perspective as he helped hunt down missiles, a few of the ambassadors whooped with each kill while others became stony-faced. They knew the Earth had survived, and now they were worried about the bill coming due.

Yet when Ororo's final act in the battle shattered the last of the missiles in the upper atmosphere, half the assembly jumped to their feet and began to cheer. Her status as a mutant and even Harry's stance on mutant rights was forgotten in that moment.

However, after that, Harry began to describe what he expected from the governments of the world going forward, as well as what would happen should a nation not sign on. That if it came down to a choice of which nations had priority during an attack, say in a missile or orbital bombardment, the nations which had ponied up would be the first to be defended.

There was a lot of dismay at that, and horrified shouts of protest made any attempt to speak calmly impossible. It took Harry shouting at the top of his Sonorous-aided voice to get the ambassadors to quiet down. Once they did Harry then went on to talk about the types of somewhat lesser deals he was willing to accept, mellowing his message slightly but still taking a harder line than most politicians were comfortable with.

The UK ambassador and Doom took this opportunity to stand up and say they had already made agreements with the EDF to meet Harry's requirements above and beyond the aid they had already given. The US and several other countries followed suit, and soon it became clear that Harry was fair and somewhat even-handed, despite the nature of his demands.

This quieted down many, but not all. Once more there were numerous shouts that many countries would refuse to deal with a terrorist, no matter his manifesto. There were still others who didn't want anyone else to control their orbitals whatever happened.

The Russian Ambassador had returned at the dinner break and had been silent up to this point, stewing in his chair. Orolovno was furious about the entire thing, and he was the loudest of those protesting now. He shouted that Harry had the entire world hostage, agreeing with those other ambassadors saying that Harry was some kind of terrorist.

But Harry coolly replied that even UN troopers needed to be paid and led, and he was the only one in the game. "If Russia or someone else can get into space and help out in a meaningful manner without my aid, I would be happy to see it."

That shut the man up since that was the crux of the matter: no one had been able to figure out a way to get into space with enough infrastructure to come anywhere near matching what Harry had. Not even a hardcore politician could argue that point. Of course he was still glaring daggers at Harry and Ororo, but they ignored that with ease.

From there Harry handed out packets to the as yet unaligned countries, including France, since Harry hadn't heard from them. The ambassador of that country smiled and took the packet, saying they would be in touch within the week. He had been impressed and actually touched when he heard the name of the Verdun defense platform, though Harry had not described how they were being built or anything about his industrial capacity. He had described the Kree ships and Fortress Mars, however, which had been enough.

As it was pushing near nine at night, Harry decided to end the meeting now, something which everyone else in the room agreed with eagerly, wishing to check in back home as to what they should do before continuing the talks the next day. As they began to break up, Harry got in a final word. "Remember, ladies and gentlemen, the deals we make will see to the defense of Earth, of our species, against an alien who denies us the right to exist. Not just to exist free, but to exist at all. When balanced against that, is the aid I am asking for really that steep a price?"

That drew numerous scoffs, sneers, and shouts from the more bellicose or stupid ambassadors. However Harry and his companions were able to exit the room without further trouble. Outside the building they found the soldiers who had been keeping order around the building still there, having been reinforced by another company of men.

As Harry led the way outside, many of the soldiers turned and, apparently without orders, began to salute Harry and Ororo. The two of them in turn returned the salutes, as did Amara and Scott as they followed the two out of the building. Behind the line of soldiers was a massive crowd of New Yorkers, and someone in there began to cheer as the four of them and Steve exchanged handshakes before separating.

With the cameras snapping among the massive crowd, Harry gestured. The four of them gently rose into the air, disappearing into the sky of New York. They left behind them a nation and a world that now knew it had begun to change and had to change even more to survive. But it was also a nation that now knew what was being asked of it, and a world beyond America that felt that, just perhaps, it was up to the challenge. The question was, would the rest of the world be willing to attempt the same?

End Chapter

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Now I know I will be asked this given the latest Avengers movie (it's a cliffhanger if you haven't; don't go!), but yes, the Avengers as a unit are done. Steve will become Harry's second in command, since Dani and Amara need more seasoning, and Piotr would never be comfortable in that role. Stark will eventually join the ever-growing think tanks, along with Parker, if he ever bothers to think beyond his own realm of New York or his next paycheck from his photography work. Pym is going to do jail time. Thor is no longer an Avengers member at this point, though he will be back, and he'll bring the thunder LOL. Lance is going to become the first of several mutants employed directly by a country's government as paramilitary teams, along with E, possibly, though he'll also work with Harry and his group. And Banner will slowly work back into Harry's good graces as he works through his mental issues.

Ahh, and for those of you who don't remember, E is the equivalent of Vision and Ultron merged. But without his sick and twisted desire to manipulate the Scarlet Witch's mind.

From here, the next chapter will segue into Thor and company's fight against the Dread Wyrm, and, from there, the battles against the Shadows will start in earnest. I wish we could get these chapters out on a more formal time frame, but Mordreek and I are not quite to the point where we can promise anything on that point. Despite that, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter.