The Three Kings: Strike

Disclaimer (1): Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Studios, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

Disclaimer (2): The iPad is developed and marketed by Apple Inc.

Warning: Mentions of sexual situations, nudity, minor character death, being buried alive, being burned alive, body horror, physical illnesses, past character death, child abduction, death threats, misogyny, classism, unintentional misgendering of a closeted character and slavery.

Epilogue: Aftermath

"That's enough. I'm good, I'm good," Marcellous pants beneath her, his back coated in sweat. Holly bites at his shoulder one last time, enough to leave a dark purple bruise, before pulling out and rolling off of him. She unclips the strap on and slides it down her legs, dropping it on the ground with a wet thump.

Marcellous breathes into his pillows for a few seconds, his skeletal chest rattling with every inhale. Holly runs the tips of her fingers over the ridges of his spine, counting every bone that she finds. She presses a kiss to his shoulder and when he tilts his face to the side, she can see his smile.

"You liked it?" She asks. Marcellous Sidonia, son of Titus, hums in the glow of his pleasure.

He and Holly had been in and out of each other's bed for nearly two years, ever since Marcellous's father had been appointed as Minister for Magic. At first, Holly had only done it to ensure his loyalty - as the only trueborn heir that had been gifted to the last four Italian families, Marcellous was the key to the Forum Romanum. But after a while, she'd come to enjoy his company, even desire it.

Marcellous arched his back and rose up onto his elbows. She sees his skinny arms trembling and knows that he can't do this for very long. Holly's jaw clenches in anticipation of the conversation she knows that they're about to have.

"It won't be long now before Luccennia Sorio forces the Ministry to appoint her in place of my father," he says, his voice dripping with his disgust for the Vestal girl. Holly can't help but agree. In the chaos created by the mages of San Francisco in July, the Vestalis Maxima had performed a silent coup, using the support of the more numerous unclean families to implicate various high ranking Ministry officials connected to the Department with 'crimes against humanity.' Now, just over a month later, the whole Forum Romanum knew that it was only a matter of time before the girl would start the push to make her ceremonial position a little more concrete.

'For the good of the wizarding world,' Holly seethes, thinking of Luccenia's announcement the other day. Like that upjumped bitch knows anything about what's good for anyone.

"If Kiyoshi had just stuck to the plan, this wouldn't have happened," Holly growls. "She gets emotional and now we have to deal with mages crawling out of the woodworks. It's just like it was back when I was a girl. You couldn't breathe without seeing their filth."

Marcellous lays back down, his arms finally giving out on him. Holly strokes his pale, almost translucent skin. He loses more strength every day, she thinks. How much longer will I have him for?

"I would have loved to have seen you then, dressed in your armor and fighting in the Battle of Camhalnn. Did they give you an army to lead? Did you slay King Arthur yourself?" Marcellous asks.

Holly smiles at the memory, "No. I never led the army, but I squired for Rowena Ravenclaw, my cousin. She killed Arthur, along with Sal. And when she knighted me afterward, it was the proudest day of my life." She closes her eyes, remembering kneeling in the mud as Rowena's bloodstained sword tapped each of her shoulders and then her head. Holly points toward her clothes have been piled, a blade with a bronze and azure hilt laying on it. "That used to be hers. Justice, she named it. Rowena gave it to me after her daughter disappeared, saying that I was all she had left."

"I wish I could have met her," Marcellous murmurs as he turns to face her.

"I'm glad you didn't. Rowena was the most beautiful creature dressed in leather and steel," she kisses him lightly on the lips. "You never would have even seen me if she had been in the room."

"I doubt that," he tells her. Then his face hardens, "But we still need to do something about Luccenia. The girl cannot be allowed to do what she wants. If she becomes Minister, she'll repeal the Pureblood Protection Act and forces us to marry mudbloods and mages alike."

You're just jealous that your bastard half-sister has taken your father's position instead of you, she thinks but does not say.

"My mother made our plan nearly twenty years ago, so we always knew that there were going to be unforeseen consequences. The Department had become too polluted and needed to be purged of its filth. We just never expected it to go this far. And now with the Ministries of the world raiding our facilities, we need to make sure that no information that could compromise us gets into the wrong hands," Holly repeats what her mother had told her after the woman had ordered the burning of all their remaining records and the activation of reprogrammed Kill Codes. "But now… The two mages who spoke at the conference, they worry me."

"How so?"

Holly frowns, "The boy… Bakura, that was his name. He reminded me of someone that I'd met long ago."

"Who?" Marcellous frowns.

"The Spirit of the Millennium Ring," she answers. "The severed soul of the Thief King."

Marcellous jolts upright in bed, the motion throwing him into a coughing fit so harsh that Holly has to reach for the nightstand and grab the cloth lying there. When she brings the pale pink fabric to his mouth, it comes away bright red.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself. You're not well enough," Holly cautions him.

He ignores her, "You're telling me now that the Thief King was a mage!"

"All of them were mages, Marcellous. I've told you this already. Witches and wizards didn't exist until the start of the Roman Empire," she snaps back, scared. If his memory is going along with his health, it won't be long until…

"You have?" Marcellous frowns, confused. He presses his palms into his eyes, "Damn it. Damn it all. I keep forgetting." He grits his teeth, "No matter. There are more important things. If what you say is true, then the girl beside him must have been-"

"The Lady Pharaoh," Holly finishes for him.

"If that bitch Luccenia isn't stopped soon, you'll have no way to fight," Marcellous moves his hands away from his face and stares Holly directly in her eyes. "You need forces. You need an army, my love."

Holly's heart skips a beat. Is he saying what I think he's saying?

"You are the granddaughter of the great Pompilia Sidonia, the first child of the final Pendragon Queen. You are the Daughter of Albion, Holly. Pureblood houses great and small across the world would pledge their allegiance to you in an instant if you reveal who you are," Marcellous implores. He takes her hand in his, his fingers trembling with excitement. "And you would have me. For the rest of my life, no matter how short it may be." He pauses, building up the courage to ask, "Hollarius Hufflepuff, will you marry me?"

Yes, she thinks. It's on the tip of her tongue, waiting to slip out. But instead, she says, "I have to ask my mother."

She sees Marcellous's throat bob, realizing that he believes her answer to be rejection. Holly kisses him for all that she's worth, refusing to let him think that a moment longer.

"You were supposed to ask my parents first, lover. But since you skipped that step, I have to do it now. I'm sure that she'll say yes," she tells him and a smile breaks across his face. Marcellous laughs and tugs her back into bed with him.

An hour later, Holly crawls out of her fiance's embrace, being careful not to wake him. She pulls her robes back on, the brightly coloured silks feeling like whispers across her freckled skin. She flattens her short hair with her hands, pressing it back into place and hoping that it doesn't look like she's been rolling around in bed with Marcellous for most of the evening. Finally, she straps Justice to her belt and pads out of the room as quietly as she can.

The House of Sidonia had been Holly's home since her mother had left Hogwarts nearly a thousand years ago. Holly's long-dead cousin, Flavius, had taken them in after the news of Salazar and Sephare's death in France reached the castle. Her mother had been devastated, fleeing the country with Holly, her only remaining child, and claiming refuge in the house of her mother.

Holly walked through the open courtyard of the temple, taking time to admire the statue of Pompilia Sidonia that stood in the center of the floor. It was nearly twenty feet tall, the marble painted so finely that she almost appeared to be alive. At her feet was a fountain filled with crystal blue waters. A few children were playing inside, splashing each other while their smiling parents looked on.

Families from the lesser houses, unclean filth muddying the waters of my grandmother, Holly snarls. She turns her nose up and walks past, her temper flaring when they do not bow. If they knew who I was, they would throw themselves at the floor and beg for my forgiveness.

Holly thinks of what Marcellous has promised her and hastens her steps.

She knows where her mother will be at this time of day, so Holly descends the steps into the dungeons below the floor. Walking quickly through the dark corridors, she comes to a halt in front of a wall that supported a single torch. The light of flame licked the metal hilt, revealing the words Focis, Domum, Familia.

Holly taps her wand against the wall four times, then waits and does it again twice more. The torch flickered before disappearing entirely, dissolving into the wall and taking the bricks with it until an archway was formed. Holly walked through and into the tunnels below.

She knew the way by heart now, going deeper and deeper into the earth. The ancient passageways had been carved by the Peverells for the original Vestal Virgins nearly two thousand years ago, weaving intricate designs beneath the entire Forum Romanum. They all lead to a single place, a vast underground cave that had once held the fifty wizarding clans of the Roman Empire. Now it served as the Department of Mysteries division within the Italian Ministry and was called the Cave of the Eternal Flame.

Holly finds her mother there, sitting on an ancient stone bench in front of the massive crack in the stone wall. And Helga Hufflepuff is not alone.

Trista Latner rises to her feet when she sees Holly, finishing up her conversation and walking toward the exit. She shoulder checks Holly on the way out, smirking the entire time.

"Nice hickey," Latner says loud enough for Holly's mother to hear. She wants to punch the bitch in the face.

"What the fuck what Latner doing here?" Holly says, rounding on her mother. Unlike Latner who preferred to look scandalously young, Helga Hufflepuff kept her age somewhere in her forties and fifties. Her red hair was streaked with grey and her face was just starting to show signs of wrinkles, but her blue eyes were as bright as ever.

"I made some arrangements this afternoon while you were… busy," Helga tells her without looking up. In her hands was a file, marked in the Labs pale yellow crest. "And watch your language."

"Arrangements?" Holly ignores her mother's quip at her unladylike behaviours. Rowena had never cared much how her squires spoke, so long as they called her Dame. Holly had picked up the habit young and had never desired to break it.

"Yes. Arrangements," Helga continues, flipping open the files cover and flicking through the pages. "Jermaine Sport volunteered to take Polyjuice Potion to disguise himself as Latner. He will be executed tomorrow in Latner's place, god rest his soul."

Jermaine Sport was the last of the Inner Circle aside from Latner. Holly had liked him.

"Why?" She asks, incredulous.

"Jermaine was loyal. I asked him to do it and he did," Helga answers, turning another page.

"And that's how you reward his years of service?! Being burned at the stake in front of a world looking for a scapegoat? He worked beside us for two hundred years, mother!" Holly shouts.

"And in that two hundred years, he learned that sometimes there things greater than yourself," her mother tells her. "He won't suffer if that's what you're worried about."

Holly cannot believe her mother sometimes. She clenches her fists at her sides, trying to think rationally.

"Why are we saving Latner?" She asks, "I thought the whole reason why you sent your new husband to the Labs was so that he'd die taking down Kiyoshi - you know, because they weren't loyal. So why are we keeping Garrish's slut around?"

"Trista Latner still has some use to us. And when she no longer has anything to provide, then we can kill her," Helga says. Finally, she looks up from her file to examine Holly. She blinks, "Hollarius…? Is there something that I should know?"

Her mother had always been able to read her like a book. Holly sits down on the bench and rings her hands, "Marcellous asked me to marry him."

Helga looks surprised, putting aside her file, "And what did you say?"

"I said that I'd ask you."

Her mother rolls her eyes, "I think that we're far beyond the point where you need my permission to approve a betrothal, my daughter."

"He promised an army if I did," Holly tells her.

Helga thinks about it for a moment, leaning back and gazing up at the massive crack in the wall. When she finally answers, it is in a voice that reminded Holly that her mother was over a thousand years old.

"Men who promise armies rarely do it with good intentions," Helga says. "If he is giving you the forces of House Sidonia, you need to remember that it is also an army that he can take away."

"It isn't just House Sidonia, though. He said that if we reveal ourselves to the other four houses, they will pledge their allegiance as well-" Holly explains but is cut off before she can add in that the purebloods from other countries would follow suit.

"Three houses, not four," Helga corrects her. When Holly frowns in confusion, her mother reminds her, "The Zabini heir is currently living in exile. After Titus Sidonia gave her father permission to marry that poor girl, I'm sure that she will want nothing to your darling fiance."

"Between Sidonia, Seanus, and Papas, we won't need the Zabini's. And the Sacred Twenty-Eight will follow, as they did when you founded the Coalition," Holly implores. "Besides, we need forces, mother. Especially if we're going to be taking on the Three Kings."

"The Papas will be extinct within the next twenty years. Decimus's health has declined to the point where he can barely get out of bed. His only heirs right now are Titus and Marcellous Sidonia, through his daughter Pomponia," Helga interrupts. "The Seanus's are next. The current ruling pair may have just managed to conceive a few months ago," and Holly had remembered the nearly week-long party that had been thrown in celebration when the news had been announced, "but there's no guarantee that there will be another child born to this generation for theirs to marry."

"But you could fix that," Holly shouts. Helga goes very silent, very quickly. Holly continues, "Just use your divine weapon! You could cure our allies and kill our enemies in one fell swoop. You could…" she thinks of Marcellous wasting away in their bed upstairs and nearly chokes up. "You've kept the both of us alive for a thousand years, mother. Can't you keep them alive a little longer."

Holly doesn't realize that she's crying until her mother lifts her chin and forces her to look up. Helga's face is uncharacteristically soft, reminding her of the woman who's once lived and laughed in Camelot's walls, who gathered her students around her to teach them the properties of each magical plant in her classroom.

"After nearly a millennia of living, you have never married before. I had to be sure," Helga tells her. "You really love this boy, don't you?"

Holly nods, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, "I do, mama."

Helga sighs and drawing her into her arms. Holly rests her head on her mother's shoulder, knowing that this gesture of affection would not last. She savours it for as long as she can, before pulling back and ending it on her own terms.

"A global civil war is just over the horizon, Hollarius. Marcellous's ambition to overthrow his bastard sister and avenge his father is just one step in his dream for the return of the Roman Empire - and you know that he will not stop there. If you say yes, we will become involved in a war for wizarding superiority," her mother says at last and Holly can feel her heart sinking in her chest. "I need you to do something for me first," Helga reaches over and drags her discarded file, handing it to Holly. "Tell me. What do you think?"

Holly frowns at the complicated jargon, wondering what her mother hopes to accomplish here. The research that went on in the Labs was never something that she fully understood.

"It looks like Latner's old research," she answers. "Something about cycles."

"Yes. Trista Latner was first given the opportunity to take the Flamel Test after she discovered the existence of mage reincarnation," Helga explains. "All mages seem to do it and if given enough time, you can track it. Here," she points to an example on the page. "This sequence includes Tawas Wasti, Teodros Hakim, Tomisław Brzozowski, and Tristan Taylor, just to name a few. All had the same power over volcanic forces. All had names that started with a T."

Holly thumbs through the rest of the pages, trying not to think about Marcellous. She notices the same pattern of similar powers and similar sounding names, over and over again, except…

"These three. At the bottom," she points to the sequences listed. "Their names don't match."

"Exactly. Latner didn't know what to think about it at the time, but I want you to look at the last names on the list of these two," Helga points to the ones on either side of the page, ignoring the middle.

Holly's eyes flick to the bottom, frowns, and then it hits her.

"Ryou Andrews," she breathes and looks at the powers that each person in his sequence had exhibited. "Invisibility, intangibility, power theft. And then…" she skims to the end of the next column, "Yuugi Mutuo. Energy manipulation."

"Someone, maybe a god, was trying to hide the people in this sequence. Why?" Helga asks in a way that tells Holly that she already knows the answer.

"Ryou Andrews was last seen in possession of the Millennium Ring. And Latner said that Yuugi Mutuo probably had the Puzzle," she answers, staring at the page. "Latner found a way to track the sequences of the Three Kings…"

"Well, one-half of their souls at least. The other halves were imprisoned within their respective items," Helga corrects her.

But Holly is already looking at the bottom of the middle column, noting the powers of touch telepathy, healing, and something that Latner had labeled as 'Armor (?),' "There's no name. Not one that's recent enough to be anyways. The last person in this sequence was… a woman named Ora, from some Indian tribe in Canada. She died in the late 1800s."

"If Ryou Andrews and Yuugi Mutuo were both able to bring back the Thief King and Lady Pharaoh, then I seriously doubt that there isn't someone out there already that's capable of helping the King Commander return." Helga looks back at the crack in the wall, her eyes following its trail up to the ceiling, "We're running out of time. The Rip will be closing soon."

Holly nods, When the last one closed, the Empire tore itself in half. The east continued on, but… the west collapsed and caused the greatest dark age to ever plague Europe.

"We need to find this person. As soon as possible," Helga continues on. "You and Latner are going to be working on that together." She holds up her hand to silence Holly protest. "I don't care if you don't like her. After the stunt you pulled with the airplane and the Dementors, you need to learn to control your temper."

"The goblin queen made a fool of us. She had to be punished!" Holly shouts.

"And it won't take much for those damn mages to spin a story around it to make them look like tragic heroes who were just defending themselves," Helga says. "You need to be better than this. I need you to be better than this."

Holly grits her teeth together, "Yes, mother. And what are you going to do in the meantime?"

Helga's smile did not reach her eyes when she reached into her pocket and revealed a small red stone. Holly recognized it immediately as one of the hundreds of fakes that her mother had created over the years.

"I"m going to pay a visit to an old friend," Helga tells her. "It's time that the story of the Flamels died, now that my husband is dead."

Holly nods, understanding.

"Any more questions? No? Good. You may leave me," Helga says, dismissing her. Holly returns the files, rises to her feet and turns back to the tunnels. But before she can disappear into them entirely, her mother stops her. "Hollarius."

Holly doesn't think that she can face Helga again, "What?"

"When you see Marcellous next, will you tell him that I am grateful for his offer."

Holly waits for the inevitable, But we are not interested. It never comes. There's a soft smile on Helga's lips.

Holly's eyes widen with realization. She sprints through the tunnels, up into the dungeons, and through the courtyard where the unclean are still playing at her grandmother's feet. Holly nearly crashes through Marcellous's door, completely out of breath.

Marcellous Sidonia is standing on his own merit, his muscles filled in and his skin a healthy shade of pink. He's staring at himself naked in the mirror, watching his chest take one full breath after the other.

He turns to her, eyes wide with amazement, "Holly? What…? What's happening...?"

"My mother," Holly explains, her eyes overflowing and her heart bursting with joy. "She said yes."

Just over a month later, Odion pulls out Cassie's chair for her to sit and ignores the weird looks that they are getting from the other patrons in the cafe. She can't blame them; they're an interesting looking pair. Cassie was wearing her favourite pale blue sundress, a floppy, wide-brimmed hat, and pair of aviator sunglasses while working her way through two large meaty pizzas. Odion was a seven foot tall giant with a fucked-up face half hidden by a hoodie that was too thick for the warm weather and jeans that were falling off his hips. He was also poking at a paper bowl of blackberry gelato with the world's tiniest pink spoon.

"How is he?" She asks in French so that nobody to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Odion sighs and responds in turn, "He's been better."

"Has he been worse?"

"He slept for nearly eighteen hours yesterday, so… yeah, I guess."

Cassie looks down at her food, "Well, at least he's sleeping. When we visited New Brunswick earlier in the year, I don't think that he got any shut-eye the entire trip."

"The doctor put him on new meds while you were away and he hasn't adjusted fully yet," Odion explains, his accent blurring in and out of his speech. Cassie cringes. That only happened when Odion was actually worried.

"You know, I never asked. But how did you turn out fine while Leo and Ishizu are…" she leaves the question hanging, because she has never had any idea how to approach this topic. From what she understands, Clan Ishtar was beyond fucked up.

"They started kidnapping locals who wandered off into the desert to use as servants a couple centuries ago," Odion says without any hint as to how horrible that sounded. "They must have taken me really young because I don't really remember life before the tombs."

"Merde," Cassie swears.

"On a brighter note, how was San Francisco?" Odion changes the topic entirely.

"Colder than you'd expect California to be," she answers, trying not to think about she'd watched Almeida die and her sister almost refuse to grieve out of spite. Cassie looked up Meron's daughter on Facebook before her flight back to Pearson International. Salayish Lee was a cute kid with a good set of grandparents and a father that she's never going to see again. "The mages were nice. Though... "

"Though?" Odion prompts.

"There's a pair of them that are… suspicious, to say the least," Cassie says, pulling out her iPad and setting it up around her empty plates. She wipes her greasy fingers off on her napkin and starts to the Jackal's app. "You know anything about Seto Kaiba?"

Odion raises the only eyebrow he has left, "Kind of? I know about a Gozaburo Kaiba, who was the head of KaibaCorp, that weapons manufacturing company that went bankrupt a few years ago. They related?"

Cassie types furiously into the keyboard for a few seconds, calling up everything that they had on Seto, "Seto and his half-brother, Mokuba, were adopted by Gozaburo after their mother and Mokuba's father died in a car accident. There's a history of physical abuse - suspicious hospital visits, neighbours making phone calls, concerned private tutors, etcetera, etcetera - before Gozaburo takes a fall off his balcony and dies. The two brother drain his account and go on the run, disappearing off the records until San Francisco happens."

"Aside from the attempted murder, none of this is suspicious," Odion counters.

"Normally, I'd agree with you. Except he introduced me to a pair of sisters."

Odion frowns, "That can't be right." He grabs her tablet and turns it to face him, scrolling through the information on the screen. When he finally looks up, he says, "Definitely doesn't have sisters. Who were they?"

"Amanda Green, who I can track on our database. She's got, like, five other sisters - her mom was really into the whole hippie, free love thing - but none of them are either Seto Kaiba or the other girl he introduced me to," Cassie says.

"What was her name?"

"Atem."

"First name or last?"

"I don't know," Cassie says. "Either way, I can't find anything on her. Nothing. She's got a fake ID, but I can't find any information on this girl passed the date it was issued. It's like she popped out of nowhere."

"That's not possible," Odion implores.

"Yeah. Her boyfriend, Bakura, is the same way," Cassie leans forward and switches to a whisper. "Odion, where there other clans like yours out there?"

Odion shakes his head, "None. We were the only ones. And what makes you think that?"

"Their accents," she says. "They sound like yours."

That causes the giant man to blink, "What?"

"And the night I arrived, Seto invited over a bunch of friends. Bakura and Atem showed up and…" Cassie pauses, thinking of the right words to say, "At one point, those two started speaking to each other in a different language and, Odion, I could have sworn that it was Isharin. Here, I recorded it."

Odion's face is pale under his scars, tapping at her phone for the file and listening to it up close. Cassie watches as his lips tighten up as the sound plays, before relaxing entirely.

"It's not Isharin," he answers. "But it's close."

From what Cassie understood, Isharin was the native language of Clan Ishtar, a combination of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and Akkadian that had been blended together over the course of three thousand years. If what Bakura and Atem had spoken could even be considered similar, then there was still something very wrong with those two.

Cassie could read Isharin. Leo had taught it to her for the days when he was too ill to type, since he'd programmed his computer to translate all other languages into his native dialect after he'd failed to learn how to read English. But Cassie couldn't actually speak Isharin - there were way too many tongue clicks and pops incorporated into everyday words for her to manage. Hell, she'd anyone outside of a native speaker who could.

In all honesty, she doubts that Odion is even Odion's real name. He might have changed it when he reached the surface so that other people could pronounce it. It's the same thing with Leo. From what she understood, he'd merely been typing the Isharin word for lion as his username for years, only for the translation program to spit out 'Leo' as a response.

They finish their meal and pay at the counter, ignoring the odd looks that continued to follow them down the street. When they reach their apartment building, Cassie waves at the doorman. The poor kid must be new, because she doesn't recognize him. The boy lets out a soft meep when he sees Odion and almost ducks under the desk.

The trip up to the top floor is uneventful, except for when Mrs. Baker, a ninety-year-old lady who lived on the third floor, accidentally boards the elevator while thinking that they're going down. It takes a few minutes to get her all sorted out. Cassie teases Odion the rest of the way up because Mrs. Baker may not be able to see the man's scarred face through her ancient-looking bifocals, but that hasn't stopped the old bird from flirting outrageously with him whenever she sees him.

Odion is in denial about the whole thing, but Cassie will break him eventually.

The elevator opens up directly into the penthouse after they provide both a fingerprint and retina scan. The central sitting area is lit up by the afternoon sun, casting long shadows whenever it hit the spaced out sets of furniture scattered throughout the room. There's a kettle on the stove, hissing with steam.

Cassie almost panics, thinking that Leo had fallen before she hears his soft, raspy voice, speaking in the language that she's never going to understand and sees him pulling the kettle off the hot the stove.

Odion tells her that Leo is somewhere between eighteen and twenty years old (Clan Ishtar ran on a different calendar, so dates were a bit hard to match up), but you'd never know that if you saw him. He stood just under four and a half feet tall, weighted probably no more than ninety pounds, and had webbing between the six fingers on each hand. He wore a thick pair of sunglasses while he was out in the daylight, but Cassie had seen him without them a few times and knew that his eyes were sunken into the back of his skull and surrounded by bruise-dark skin, his pupils the size of quarters. Leo had no body hair to speak of and covered his bald head with a bright yellow bandana. His skin was grey and transparent enough for her to see the veins and arteries pumping blood beneath the surface.

He could only drink water if it had been boiled first, could only eat a specific kind of mushroom that he imported from Egypt, and would probably not live to see twenty-five unless he returned to the tombs of his birth.

"Cassie!" Leo wheezes when he spots her, his voice whisper soft. He hops forward on his crutches and gives her a hug. Even though the three layer of clothing that he wore just to keep himself warm, she could still feel his ribs against her hands.

Leo switches into Isharin to greet Odion, who treats Leo with a kind of reverence that the kid has been trying to break him out of since Cassie met the two. She watches Leo carefully, her eyes flicking from the crutches to the kitchen where the kettle is still sitting but no longer boiling. She walks over and pulls on a pair of disposable gloves before grabbing Leo a sanitized glass from the cupboard, filling it with steaming water.

"You didn't have to do that. I was going to get it myself," Leo tells her and he hobbles back into the kitchen, jumping up into one of the chairs. She presses the warm glass into his hands and he yelps at the heat despite the thick gloves he wears. There's a box of disposable bendy-straws on the counter and Leo picks his way through them until he finds one that's bright red.

He's using his crutches and he's keeping the water down, Cassie thinks. It's a good sign, because there were sometimes entire weeks when Leo couldn't walk and had to use his wheelchair, let alone the days when he couldn't muster the strength to get out of bed. She should be happier, but it still left a bitter taste in her mouth. It's a small jump upwards on a scale that only goes down.

Leo gets distracted from his drink when his phone pings, alerting him to a text message. His whole face lights up when he reads it, the capillaries in his cheeks expanding ever so slightly. He's blushing, she notes.

"You know," Cassie says, leaning across the counter and watching as he purposefully ignored her in favour of answering his messages - something he very rarely did. "You've made quite an impression on a pair of people back in San Francisco. Apparently, they said you knew them as Snake and Hawk?"

Leo pauses mid-text and squeaks out, "Pretty Boy and Baby Girl?"

"Uh huh," Cassie smiles, knowing that she's got him. Regardless of Leo's online fan base amongst the Jackals, she's never actually seen him so rattled by a pair of admirers before. "They wanted me to tell you to thank you for all of your help."

"You… met them?" He asks and his phone pings another four times.

"I did."

"Well?"

Cassie raises her eyebrow at him and smirks, "I mean, they're not my type but-"

Leo groans, slamming his head into the table in frustration while holding his phone up over his head, "Fuck, they're gorgeous, aren't they?"

"You are so screwed, my friend."

"Shiiiiiiit. "

They banter back and forth for a while, catching up on all that Cassie missed while she was away. Leo holds her hand when she talks about Almeida even though she still doesn't know what to think about the death of the pirate captain. He even offers to take his glove off so that can feel a little bit of what she's going through, but Cassie refuses. She doesn't dare touch his skin, in case she has some virus that his lacking immune system can't fight off.

Then, suddenly, Leo tenses. His eyes glaze over as his soul slips from his body and into someone else's halfway across the world. Cassie and Odion sit in silence and wait for a reaction.

When Leo returns, he's furious.

"They fucking burned it all!" Leo shouts, "All the records that Palamo and Bruneau collected. And they killed all the people inside!" He grabs his crutches and hops his way back to his room, "Fucking Department of Mysteries! Just when we think that we have something, they take it away!" He pauses mid-step, "It had to have been an inside job. Cassie, does your mother still have the French Ministry employee records? Odion, start making calls. We have to figure out who did this!"

She nods, hurrying to find her phone. The Scorpion King had given her an order and as a Jackal, it was her duty to comply.

"Firs'-years! Firs'-years over here!" A great booming voice splits through the darkness. Amane turns and looks up, seeing a bright lamp bobbing over the heads of all the students pushing their way out of the train. Looming in the shadows cast by the light is a giant harry face. Amane jumps back and bumps into Blaise.

"That's Hagrid, the caretaker," he explains as the massive man turns his attention toward another boy, addressing him by name and calling him over. "Didn't your brother tell you about him?"

"He did. I just didn't think he'd be so big," Amane says.

"C'mon, follow me - any more firs'-years? Mind yer step, now! Firs'-years follow me!" Hagrid calls again and Amane follows a set behind Blaise, ducking her head and feeling horribly embarrassed. People are staring, pointing and whispering, but not at her. She swallows, feeling fear for the first time.

Slipping and stumbling down the steep, narrow path, Amane tries her best to focus on Blaise's feet in front of her, stepping where he stepped and ducking when he ducked. One of the boys next to them keeps sniffling, mumbling about a lost toad.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," Hagrid called over his shoulder. "Jus' round this bend here."

Amane looks up and a gasp escapes her mouth. They all stood on the edge of a massive black lake. Across the water and perched atop a high mountain was a vast castle, bright windows illuminating the many turrets and towers.

Hagrid calls for them to climb into a boat, which draws Amane's attention back to the water just in time to see a small fleet of dinghies rise out of the water. Blaise grabs her hand and drags her into one. She clutches at the wooden seat, trying to keep her eyes shut to block out the rocking waves.

"You alright?" Blaise asks as two more first-year students climb in with them. Amane nods even though its a blatant lie, pressing her leg into his and trying to ground herself.

"You're… Blaise Zabini, correct?"

Amane cracks open an eyelid to see their companions just as Hagrid called for the boats to start moving. The other boy in the ship has white-blond hair and a pale, pointed face.

"I am," Blaise confirms with the tilt of his head. "You're Draco Malfoy. And…" he turns to the girl sitting to Malfoy's left, "You're Pansy Parkinson."

"Who are you?" Parkinson asks, her pug nose scrunching up like she smelled something foul when she turns toward Amane.

But before she can answer, Amane hears Hagrid call, "Heads down!"

She barely manages to duck in time to avoid getting hit in the face by a curtain of ivy. The boats float into a dark tunnel beneath the sheer cliff face and beneath the castle itself. Amane closes her eyes again and keeps them that way until the bow hits something solid. They've landed in some kind of underground harbour, where the boats beached themselves on the rocks and pebbles.

"Oy, you there! Is this your toad?" Hagrid shouts out and the crying boy from before shouts out a name, clambering toward the giant and holding out his hands for his pet.

They start moving again and Blaise purposefully leads Amane away from Malfoy, heading up toward the front of the line. She glances to the side and sees a boy with black hair and bright green eyes that seemed to be trying to drink in everything that he could see. The passageway opened up and they suddenly found themselves outside on a damp grass field in the shadow of the castle.

Hagrid leads them up a flight of stone steps and up to a massive, oak front door. He asks, "Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?"

The crying boy nods and the giant knocks three times on the castle door. It creaks open and reveals a tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes.

"The firs'-years, Professor McGonagall," Hagrid announced.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here," the Professor said, drawing the crowd into the Entrance Hall. Massive torches lined the stone walls of the castle and drew attention to a magnificent marble staircase that led to the upper floors.

Amane thought that they would head upstairs. But instead, McGonagall leads them to a small empty chamber just off the main hall.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," the professor said. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses."

Amane loses her focus then, drowning out McGonagall's words and she took a look at her classmates. Nearly forty girls and boys stood shoulder to shoulder, quivering in the cold room as the professor's jaw finally clamped shut, turned on a heel, and left the room.

Amane's stomach drops, suddenly terrified. For months now, she'd imagined walking through the Great Hall, holding her head high and defiant, finding Igraine Selwyn or Sam Rowle in the crowd and giving them a piece of her mind. But now, after the news coming out of the Confederation, she's afraid.

Amane had been listening to the newest Celestina Warbeck song when the official broadcast had cut through. By the end of the program, Amane had been reduced to tears, clutching at her mother's arms while the Zabini's looked on, unable to do anything to help.

Why had they come so late? Amane kept thinking, remembering when the voice of an eight-year-old wizard-born mage came over the radio, announcing that she had been an brought to an island controlled by the Department and sentenced to execution. In the articles that had come out in the days after the fact, it was revealed that Rebecca Hawkins had been given up by her parents around the same time that Ryou had been arrested. A sick feeling fills her stomach. Had they known each other? Why was Rebecca Hawkins alive and Ryou wasn't?

She's so distracted by her musing that she almost misses it when twenty or so ghosts stream through the back wall. They argue about someone named Peeves for a few minutes before McGonagall returns and leads them out of the chamber.

The Great Hall was just as Ryou had described. Lit by hundreds of floating candles, students sat on either side of four long tables. Amane trails behind Blaise, who keeps tugging her away from Malfoy. The pale blond boy seemed to have abandoned Parkinson, replacing her with a pair of big boned boys that flanked him like bodyguards. Amane doesn't like the look of them any more than she had Parkinson, but at least the girl had no idea who she was.

Amane catches a glimpse of Igraine Selwyn at the Slytherin table. Ryou's old girlfriend looks gaunter than her pictures had made her out to be, her brown hair laying lank at her shoulders and her cheekbones sharp against the shadows of her face. Her neck is horribly scarred, as if something had been at her. Amane clenches her fist. Ryou did that.

McGonagall brings them to a halt before the central dais, atop which stood a final long table. The on the other side, professors sat on large ornamental chairs and drank from golden plates and goblets. Amane catches the eye of Albus Dumbledore, who she and her mother had had a meeting with not a week after the Confederation's announcement.

Natsuki had explained that Amane wanted to attend Hogwarts, as her brother had done, and in spite of the danger. Dumbledore had made empty promises left and right about the school's reputation of safety, but her mother had cut him off and reminded him that Ryou had been systematically tortured beneath his roof for nearly five years and no one had lifted a finger to help him. In return, Dumbledore's blue eyes had gone cold as he reminded Natsuki that her son had crippled two students and murdered a third.

In the end, Amane had been allowed to come to Hogwarts on a conditional basis. She would be enrolled under the guise of a foreign student from Japan, using her mother's maiden name instead of her father's. The only people who would know her true identity would be the Headmaster himself, her eventual Head of House, and the matron, Madam Pomfrey who would be bleaching and dying Amane's shortened hair a tea-brown hue about once a month. But if Amane caused trouble or targeted the two remaining students from Ryou's attack in any way, she would be expelled immediately.

The Sorting Hat is revealed and it sings its usual tune, describing its job of Sorting and giving a brief introduction to each house. Amane almost wants to be in Slytherin - not because of Igraine Selwyn or even Sam Rowle, Ryou's former best friend. Instead, she thinks of the parchment that had been tucked into Blaise's luggage and of the four snakes that made up the border. Amane grabs onto Blaise's dark robes and holds on for dear life.

The Sorting begins.

Amane's heart pounds as the Hat calls out "HUFFLEPUFF!" and Hannah Abbott skips over to the table of yellow and black, almost expecting the call for Andrews, Amane to ring out. But instead, Susan Bones is summoned to the three-legged stool and the Hat is dropped over her eyes.

"HUFFLEPUFF!" The Hat calls again and Bones runs off to join her friend. Amane lets out the breath that she's holding

The names keep coming, one after the other. Amane recognizes a few of her future classmates from gatherings that her father had taken her to. Lavender Brown was a pretty black girl from a pure-blood family who had been arranged to marry a Norwegian wizard since she was eight years old. She had gone to Gryffindor, while Millicent Bulstrode, a pudgy bastard girl who'd been taken in by her father after her mother died a year prior, joined Slytherin. James Andrews had been trying to get a match between Amane and Gregory Goyle in the months before receiving Viola's proposal, so she is not surprised when he enters Slytherin as well. And to everyone's surprise, Stephanie Johns joined the ranks of Gryffindor House. The girl had been one of the orphans discovered during the French raid and had been adopted by a local wizarding family.

This Sorting seems to have everything - there's even a near hatstall. Hermione Granger, a girl with bushy brown hair and dark skin, silences the Hat for nearly four minutes before declaring her a Gryffindor.

Then, when Megan Jones hops over to the table decorated in yellow and black, Professor McGonagall shouts out, "Kitamori, Amane."

Her lungs seem to freeze, her heart stopping in her chest. Amane's legs move without her permission, climbing the steps up to the stool as if she was walking to her own execution. She sits down on the wooden seat a little too hard and nearly knocks herself over. Her cheeks are red with embarrassment as a chuckle rises up from the tables below. It's the last thing that she sees before the Hat is dropped over her eyes and the world does dark.

"~Oh my~," says a small voice in her ear. "~In all my thousand years, I don't think that I've ever actually had a student attend under a name that wasn't their own.~"

Amane jumps, rattling the stood again. She nearly rips the damn thing off her head when it speaks again, "~Don't worry, my dear. I won't tell anyone. Though I do offer my condolences regarding your brother. He was a bright boy with a good future ahead of him. He didn't deserve what happened to him.~"

If he was so smart, why didn't you put him in Ravenclaw? Amane thinks, anger seeping into every pore of her being.

"~I considered it, but Ryou Andrews did not possess the intelligence that Ravenclaw normally wishes to cultivate. He understood people and how they worked, what they wanted and what he was willing to give.~" The Hat tells her, "~And at the end of the day, your brother asked me to put him in Slytherin.~" Somehow, she can feel the Hat sighing, " ~But we are not here to talk about him, are we, my dear? Let's have a look at you.~ "

Amane hopes that she gives the Hat the mental version of the finger.

The stupid thing chuckles at her, "~Oh, yes. You are rife with anger, seething and bubbling up inside of you. You feel alone, trapped by circumstance. Even in your own home, you are forced to keep secret after secret. Your brother's kiss. Your father's murder-~"

You leave that alone! Amane shouts.

"~Defensive. Protective. Normally, one might consider Gryffindor, but with you… no. You don't do this out of honor or some moral code. You do it out of-~"

Fuck off, she squeezes her eyes shut. Everything seems like it's burning, from her ears to the tips of her fingers. Get out of my head! She is not going to cry because of some stupid hate.

The Hat continues to pick her apart, regardless of her feelings, "~Not particularly brave either. Or all that smart - there's none of your brother's emotional intelligence in you, perhaps he got that from his mother. You're not cunning, you're not chivalrous, you're not even all that funny.~"

The Hat pauses and then says the thing that she has been thinking for years, "~You, Amane Andrews, aren't much of anything, are you?~ " She feels the brim of the hat peal into a grin, "~And I think that's why you're going to be the most important person that I Sort today.~"

What? She thinks.

"~You're a blank slate, my girl, and brimming with potential. But you need to gain a sense of self outside of your brother, away from your father and mother. You're an outsider looking for a place to belong.~" The Hat hums as it comes to a conclusion, "~Oh yes, I know just where to put you. I've always been such a fan of irony.~"

She feels the seam in the brim open wide and then pauses, "~Regarding your little quest, might I suggest that you start by paying a bit more attention to the ghosts.~" That's the last thing that Amane hears out of the Hat before it shouts out, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

Iris, their leader, pulls out a map that they'd nicked from a muggle bus station a few states over. Its crumpled and stained with mustard, but Iris treats it like its made of gold. There are nearly eight people in their group, wearing ragged robes and down to their last Knut. Mitchell keeps the snapped pieces of his old wand in his belt and a torn picture of his family in his wallet, testaments to remind him of why he needed to do this.

If I go back, they'll kill me. I can't… I can't live with them anymore.

"The coastline should be over that way," she tells them, pointing due south of their location. "Once we reach it, the bridge should be to the east."

Mitchell had been traveling for nearly three weeks at this point, having packed his bags the night that he'd heard the Confederation broadcast. He'd hitch kicked all the way from Paris to London where he'd met up with Iris and her crew, who were determined to make their way across the Atlantic even if they had to fly. It had never come to that, but the steely-eyed expression that Iris wore when she faced down the man that she'd bought their black market Portkey from had told him that she was not messing around.

Once they'd made it to the States, it was clear sailing. Iris had made contact with someone on the inside who was willing to help. She'd labeled their checkpoints and used her skills with muggle computers ("My dad worked in sales," she'd told them the first time that she'd logged onto one at a local library) to make sure that the Jackals knew where they were and how many were in their party.

Once they hit the coast, they're met by a married couple, a witch and a wizard from Russia who barely spoke any English, and their fifteen-year-old son who was twirling a spoon in his hand. Mitchell watches as the metal seemed to bend, twist, and melt around the kid's fingers before returning to its original shape. Something grabs hold of his heart and, for the first time in years, he allows the gills on the side of his neck to appear. The boy's blinding grin is worth everything in the world.

Iris leads them further east along the beaches. The Russian kid talks Mitchell ear off the entire time, seemingly forgetting that they don't speak the same language. Behind them, Austin is whispering back and forth with Ruth, a twenty-eight-year-old girl who could talk to birds. She's telling him about a girl back home who's going to follow once Ruth gets settled. Iris doesn't allow anyone to give Ruth a hard time about loving another woman, saying that they're all running from the same thing.

There is a gasp and Mitchell comes to a halt, staring out at the spectacle before them. A massive red bridge crosses the bay, held up by thick metal poles taller than the walls of Beauxbatons. A series of cables connect everything and muggle cars drive across it at breakneck speeds.

"We made it," Iris whispers, her voice as soft as a secret prayer. "I can't believe… We did it. We're safe."

She's a wizard-born mage. So is Mitchell. Together, they stare out over the bay, admiring the Golden Gate Bridge for the marvel that it is.

And there, in the distance, is San Francisco.

The End

And so Strike comes to a close.

This is normally where I say thank you to all those who reviewed for the last chapter. But this time, I'm going to do something a little different. I'd like to thank everyone who has reviewed for The Three Kings: Strike since the very beginning:

iceprincess reniee, Dan Sto Helit, Fan Wyrme, Safiruu, dragomira, anita15, CrimsonStrawberry17, MysticMaiden 18, Rita Mu, green lilah, Chuchutu, Tz342, Evilkitten3, vorpalraven, JERUSALEM's Bride, Moonfirekitsune, Unformal Sorrelle, Eliphas-Chaos, Yoru no Katana, , Winterholt, RogueDragonPrincess, nequam-tenshi, InsanityByDefinition, Kaderin, Hollow Mashiro, and Sleep Deprived, along with the guests that left anonymous reviews.

Thank you to all of those who favourited this story or put in on story alert.

And most importantly, thank you all for sticking with me through two more years, 140,000 more words, and twenty-three more chapters of insanity. You all have been my greatest inspiration and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all of you.

I do have a confession to make. I made a mistake when I said that there would be a two-year gap in between Strike and Resist. I had accidentally been referencing that Resist would take place during Harry Potter's second year at Hogwarts. So instead, there will be a one-year gap plus or minus a month, as the final scenes of Strike's Epilogue take place in September. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

I leave you all for now with an exert from the prologue chapter of Resist, which will be the third book in the Three Kings series. The prologue is a compilation of articles that will cover some of the events that have taken place during the gap:

Sidonia Heir Missing?
Taken from Acta Diurna, September 2013

Marcellous Sidonia has not been made a public appearance for nearly three months. Marcellous is the heir apparent to House Sidonia and heir presumptive to the Papas fortune. Anyone with information is encouraged to speak to their local Auror office.

Marcellous was last seen was at the House of Seanus during a party celebrating the conception of Quintus and Otacilia Seanus's heir. It is believed that Marcellous left the celebration early after falling ill, though he was seen later that night traveling the streets in his litter while in the company of a young woman.

After the arrest of Marcellous's father by his ambitious half-sister, the Vestalis Maxima Luccenia Sorio, rumours are flying as to whether... (ctd. page 3, column 2).

Until next time,

AlcatrazOutpatient