Tapping the surface of the glass case containing Fido, his pet amoeba, Unspeakable Hunter sighed. Being bounced around the timeline after an accident involving fifteen bottles of Everclear and a box of Timeturners, he was used to being busy. However, he had nothing to do.
The fifteen-foot-wide jellyfish-like creature with rows of jagged teeth in its gaping mouth, stinging tentacles and the ability to spit venom flung itself at the glass, a ten-foot distance. He chuckled fondly at the mutated carnivorous amoeba, moving to the immense glass tank containing a large amount of water, some ornaments and a Megalodon shark, coincidentally named 'Jaws'. He smirked, remembering the last time the Minister had come down trying to take over the Department of Mysteries, he'd nearly ended up fed to Jaws.
Being Master of Death had upsides and downsides. His pet amoeba and megalodon was an upside. Immortality was a bit of a downside, though it was useful during the years he was rebuilding a Timeturner after accidentally blowing himself into the past, because dying then would be an irritation.
"Boss!" called one of the Unspeakables, dashing into the room and, with practised ease, sliding under the hail of spellfire sent at him.
"What." asked the sepulchre voice of the Chief Unspeakable.
"Sir, one of the deities of Asgard landed in New Mexico about an hour ago, we don't know why he or she is there, but readings say his or her power is significantly reduced." replied the Unspeakable nervously, knowing the rumours about the boss-man feeding people who displeased him to his pet amoeba and megalodon.
"Fucking Asgardians. At least it gives me something to do." sighed Hunter, his voice going from the sepulchre to its normal slightly husky baritone; "Get me Unspeakables Raven and Fey, combat gear, now!"
Under his hood, the junior Unspeakable paled. Raven was known for nearly killing anyone who touched her collection of literary tomes, and Fey was simply sadistic in her use of magic. However, he nodded sharply and swept out.
Sighing, Hunter opened a cupboard in one of the walls and pulled out a pair of boots, a vest and several leg and arm guards made from a dully-shining green leather, a set of metal guards for his legs and arms, a chainmail vest and a gleaming silvery-metal cuirass with a gold sunburst in the centre.
Throwing off his Unspeakable robes and stripping down to dark-blue joggers and a long-sleeved t-shirt, Unspeakable Hunter was revealed. A man of around six feet tall with a mop of messy black hair, twinkling emerald eyes. He pulled on the basilisk hide guards and vest over his joggers and t-shirt. Then on went the boots, the chainmail vest and then the cuirass. Finally, he pulled the robe back over the ensemble and flipped up the hood. Under the robe were enough knives and guns to start a small war, as well as his battle sword, a hand-and-a-half bastard sword, and a duelling Espada Ropera.
Drawing the thin-bladed rapier, he twirled it around a couple of times, grinning at the perfect balance and minimal weight of a perfectly-made sword.
"You called?" drawled a female voice from the entrance to his study.
While Harry, Unspeakable Hunter, wore a mottled dark-blue robe, Fey wore a simple black hooded cloak, tunic, hose and boots which allowed her to blend into the darkness anywhere, and Raven was clad in a royal-blue dress with a studded leather cuirass and boots, the hood of her cloak also casting her face into shadow. Raven was armed with a longsword while Fey had two daggers visible in her belt.
Fey had been an enemy who he had effectively enslaved with enchantments, but he had never used them to do anything more than rein in her worst tendencies. Raven had long been a close confidant and friend whose life he'd saved by pouring his own into her, binding them together.
Despite having released his enchantments on Fey five-hundred years before, she'd never left their side... or bed.
"Indeed Morgana, it seems that the Asgardians have decided to chuck someone down here again." Harry rolled his eyes; "I want to find out what the hell they're doing, possibly neutralise them or otherwise 'request' that they bloody well stop using this planet as a playground."
"Why don't we try diplomatics instead of going in cursing anything that moves?" asked Raven.
"Rowena, these are Asgardians, their whole culture revolves around beating each other up and beating their chests." Morgana replied contemptuously; "At least we have the infrastructure in place in America after the incident with the Royal Marine who got turned into the raving monster."
They collectively shuddered, they'd all seen, done and been involved in some pretty strange and horrifying things, but that was up there with the best.
"Business faces." Harry warned, going back to the sepulchre tone.
The other two snorted as they swept out of the office into one of the many hallways of the Department of Mysteries Special Operations complex under the Antarctic. Morgana, under her hood, was tall, thin, pale and held herself with predatory elegance, her jet-black hair when loose, hanging to the middle of her back, sea-green eyes and a usually expressionless face, except for a slight smirk, full of contempt and arrogance.
Rowena was as tall, but had more accented curves, slightly wavy dark-brown hair and grey eyes, sharing similar aristocratically sharp facial features. While she was aloof-looking, none of Morgana's arrogance showed on her face, there was a graceful elegance about her.
"New Mexico." he barked, stepping onto a circular platform in the centre of a room with a couple of Unspeakables sat at control consoles at the edges.
"Right boss." replied one of them, rapidly typing at a keyboard.
A moment later, a glass cylinder descended from the ceiling and covered them, and then everything went icy cold for a second and flashing green rings appeared around the three Unspeakables.
Emerging from a small abandoned warehouse in the New Mexico desert, three rather conspicuous figures suddenly were rendered invisible.
"Do we have direction?" Rowena asked over their headsets, ever practical.
"Fifteen miles south-west from here was the impact site." Harry replied, glancing at his watch; "However, we've just encountered an issue I hadn't calculated for when building that machine and designing how it transports us along time-streams... we left England at zero-nine hundred hours but due to the fact it sends us east, not west, in England, it's zero-two hundred hours, or five o'clock in the evening here."
"Genius. You utter imbecile." sneered Morgana.
"Come on, it's a prototype which was only finished a couple of days ago." he protested.
Morgana sighed in exasperation and activated the broom enchantments on her clothes, rocketing into the air. Harry and then Rowena followed her, fanning out slightly so that they'd be able to see as much as possible. It was an old tactic they'd developed many years before.
"Fire to the east, small village, smoke, flames." Rowena barked.
"Check it out." Harry ordered, sighing slightly.
A few moments later, she reported back;
"I'd say it's worth coming down here, if you include civilians, some kind of metal monster spitting flames and throwing cars around as suitable levels of destruction."
Harry, Rowena and Morgana all regained visibility and burst into clouds of grey smoke, swooping down on the village like pillars of some kind of phantom mist.
"Rowena, civilians, Morgana, back-stab." ordered Harry aloud as he hit the ground running.
Morgana sank it the shadows like a wraith as Rowena tried to get everyone out of the path of what was probably going to be a brutal battle. Harry slowed to a lope as he approached the twenty-foot monolith, like a suit of armour but made of hundreds of strips of metal overlapping each-other.
It glared down at him, and a moment later, a jet of flame was spat from the head of the automaton. Harry sensed it to be normal fire projected by compressed gas and, drawing the Elder Wand from a sheath in his sleeve, simply vanished an inch-thick layer of the air directly in front of him and maintained it thus. The burning gas couldn't go through a vacuum, so it simply burned up where there was oxygen.
Immediately, Harry was on the defensive as a massive metallic arm was swung at him. He ducked under the first swing and flung up a shield against a downward punch. A sound alike to that of thin glass shattering was all the warning he got to dive out of the way as the gleaming metal slammed into the road.
Twirling his wand, stone vines sprang from the concrete and wrapped themselves around the monstrosity. Promptly, the seams between the plates of metal lit up with flames for a second so intense that it caused the stone to fracture and collapse. Cursing under his breath, he turned a nearby car into a massive knight made from scrap metal, which promptly snatched a lamppost and swung it at the automaton.
The blow caused an off-tune bell-like note and bent the lamppost, while causing a noticeable indentation on the automaton. A second swing was intercepted by the hand of the metal monstrosity, which wrenched the scrap-car-turned-knight forward and ripped it limb from limb.
Harry hadn't been still. He'd flung a rope curled up his left arm around a sign above a diner, the bolas at the end firmly securing it to the sign. With a running start, he'd launched himself forward, off the ground and swung up there. Just as the automaton ripped apart the scrap knight, he'd flung the rope-and-bolas at its neck and, as it reached up and grabbed the rope, allowed himself to be wrenched over to it.
The rope swiftly vanished up his sleeve, to be replaced by a massive single-headed morning-star flail which he twirled easily before bringing it down in a crippling blow which could turn a man's head into so much mincemeat. It crumpled the metal of the automaton. Bringing it down a second time, he wedged it between the bent plates and wrenched it out, causing even more damage.
A blur of spiked metal hissed through the air as he spun it again. And then the automaton reached over its shoulder, grabbed and threw him away. Harry embedded the morning-star in its hand and gripped grimly onto the shaft of the weapon until the head of the flail came loose. He was propelled, faster than was comfortable, straight into the wall, the basilisk hide and mixture of metal armour absorbing a good amount of the impact.
"SECTUMSEMPRA!" Harry hissed, the verbal incantation lending more power to the spell.
As streaks of energy raced at the metal monster, it sensed them and brought its damaged hand up to catch them. The hand was reduced to scrap metal by the curse which slashed dozens of deep cuts, buckling the metal. Harry had to dash out of the way as it heaved a lamppost at him like a javelin, embedding it in the wall against which he'd been leaning.
With his wand held in a firm but relaxed grip and the sinister spiked flail twirling easily in one hand, Harry grimly approached the automaton. As it turned to face him, Morgana separated herself from the shadows and hurled a francisca throwing axe which embedded itself in one of the seams in the back of the right knee before sinking back into the darkness. He grinned as it began creaking ominously with every second step.
He ducked between its legs and brutally smashed the morning-star into the back of its left leg and rapidly moved back as it leapt around, trying to hit him. However his movement put him back behind it and allowed him to build up momentum with the flail for a second strike which followed the first into the back of its knee.
Placing his wand into its sheath, Harry gripped the shaft of the flail with both hands and delivered a crippling blow to the front of the left knee of the automaton before disapparating as he heard a whistling time. Holding the disapparition in place for just a few seconds, retaining a ghost-like quality, he watched a massive rock propelled by a siege engine spell smite the metal monster with enough force to knock it onto its metal ass and crush deeply into the already battered shoulder.
Morgana flung herself off a nearby building and, using all her momentum, plunged her longsword into the chest of the monstrosity and, with years of paranoia, drew it out and stabbed again. It went limp, and she looked up toward Harry, triumph on her face under her hood.
"MOVE!" he screamed, dashing towards her.
The automaton simply swiped her away, coincidentally straight into Harry. Luckily none of their various weapons injured each-other, but the impact velocity of the two into a building heavily concussed Morgana and outright rendered Harry unconscious, basilisk-hide armour or none.
Rowena was far too composed a person to let a scream of rage loose, but she calmly strode down the street toward the automaton, a firm scowl on her face. When it lunged at her, she took a single step to one side and brought her huscarl's bearded battleaxe down in a two-handed grip towards its arm. Goblin-wrought steel against Asgardian alloy was a difficult fight... except for the number of enchantments and substances on the former.
The axe embedded itself in the metal, delivering an immense shockwave to both the wielder and the victim. There was a reason Rowena had been the daughter of a Saxon chieftain and a warrior princess in her own right. Calmly, she hooked the axe onto the shoulder of the metal monster and wrenched herself up onto its back, hewing deeper into the metal of the shoulder, where Harry had pulverised it, in a series of vicious blows.
Its left shoulder was ruined between the first blow of the scrap-knight, Harry's attempts and her own attack. Rowena hooked the tip of the axe around a bent sheet of metal as the automaton bucked furiously, trying to throw her off. Resolutely, she stayed attached, and when it finally ceased, she tore the weapon out, ripping the metal again. This time, it ripped up another lamppost, and caught unprepared, Rowena was thrown away by the vicious back-handed blow it dealt to her armour.
Through her dizziness and aching ribs, she watched as horrified silence descended, a lone blond stepped forward, taking long, steady paces towards the automaton. Before she could watch what happened, darkness descended on her eyes, robbing her of consciousness
By the time her vision returned, the blond was standing tall, gripping a war-hammer and wearing scale armour, the automaton reduced to scrap. Morgana swept over, and in a rare moment of emotion, said;
"You're still alive. Thank God, it saves Harry a lot of paperwork."
"Happy birthday to you too Morgana." Rowena groaned, standing up, applying a healing spell to her ribs and head, before reflexively doing the same to the other witch, knowing they went through far too many scrapes together; "Where's Harry, I saw him get taken down."
Morgana cocked her head in the direction of the blond and the civilians.
Harry was a sinister shape, swathed in darkness, out of place in the sunlight of New Mexico. The easy twirling the morning-star in his hand didn't lend his appearance any approachability.
"When did Midgard become a playground for the grudge matches of the Asgardians!" he hissed as the civilians looked at him and the suddenly-stilled flail in fear.
"Hail friend, you have been a part of a great victory, one which shall be told for many years before roaring fires!" replied the blond jovially.
Harry scowled at him, before realising it was pointless.
"Sorry, I didn't hear a reply in that. I'd really like to find out why a piece of Asgardian engineering landed on this planet and began destroying everything!" he demanded; "And why during the period that the three best operatives of my department were getting our asses kicked, you were standing around like a bunch of imbeciles?"
"Lay off, he's just had a traumatic day!" protested one of the women.
"I had a bad day. Sunday the second of September sixteen-sixty-six. I burnt London to the ground after setting fire to my laboratory over some baker's shop." Harry deadpanned; "Now, any possibility of getting my answers so I can either pretend this never happened or wipe your minds of my existence and pretend it never happened?"
Several people glanced at the weapon in his hand which was, rather ominously, starting to swing again.
"Thor was thrown out of Asgard, his powers stripped because he decided to invade Jotunheim with us." said another of the women, wearing plate-armour.
"Moron." sighed Harry; "Right, so what's with your scrap-metal monster."
"It's a vault guardian under the control of the Allfather." she explained hastily as the morning-star began spinning even faster, turning into a blur. Having seen him using powers beyond those of normal Midgardians, she was not going to try starting a fight with him.
"Right. So the old man's evidently gone senile since I last saw him." Harry growled, eyeing them. ; "Raven, can you fix these imbeciles up! HEIMDALL, OPEN THE DAMNED BIFROST OR SO HELP ME GOD, I'LL FEED YOU TO MY PET SHARK!"
Injecting pure magic into his voice, he was a bit annoyed when it took nearly five minutes for the rainbow bridge to open, by which time a couple of men in suits had arrived. Calmly, Harry stepped into it.