Lyrical Wizardry

AN: Hey, thanks for all the follows and favourites! This has become my most popular story (by statistics anyway) to date. Was this story posted somewhere that I should be aware of?

-Chapter 3: A Change in Plans-

[Ministry of Magic]

"CODE BLACK!" shouted Natalia.

In that split second Fate and Natalia both escaped their bindings. Fate's body cackled with lightning and forced the shackles to shater. Natalia seemed to just muscle through the bind by pulling against the chains, snapping them all. In a flash, the two women activated their devices. Fate reappeared from a flash of light wearing her white cloaked barrier jacket.

'They didn't really take us that seriously,' thought Fate as she held the magically powered scythe in a ready position.

The man named Harry Potter staggered back as the security around the two TSAB elites all tried to attack. However, Natalia seemed to be comfortable in close quarters combat. In a second, she had dashed towards the nearest auror, and grabbed his wrist, twisting it so his wand fell out, and threw him into a second auror, and crumpled them into a heap on the floor. Fate turned to Harry, and quickly sent a binding spell that pinned his arms to his sides.

During that precious second, Fate had flown forward, and sliced at the only door that lead out of the room in half, with Natalia sprinting out after her, and keeping pace, her feet leaving a trail orange flames in the air on the floor as she ran.

'How does she run that fast? I'm going slower indoors but she's still able to keep up with my flight speed… is she a cyborg?'

"Fate, do you remember the way to the elevator!?" said Natalia mentally.

"Make the third right, then it's at the end of the corridor."

Suddenly a metallic looking wire shot out from below Fate, and punched through the wall on her left, latching onto it. Below, Fate saw Natalia sliding forward on her side as the cable pulled her towards the end of the corridor. A red haired girl seemingly surfing atop a red Belkan triangle accelerated past Fate as she was pulled across by a wire attached to a mechanical looking device on her left hip. She skidded past Fate and aimed a second wire at the wall, and anchored it to the corner just before the third right.

'Not bad!' thought Fate as she picked up her pace of flying. Natalia released the first hook, and used her momentum to swing around to the right straight down the corridor.

"Good memory!" said Natalia mentally as she disappeared past the corner, and the wire that she was swinging from disappeared too. Fate rounded the corner as well, and saw Natalia running down the corridor at speeds Subaru would have been proud of, towards a startled guard who was trying to level some kind of wand at Natalia. Though he seemed like he was ready for a ruckus or an escape attempt, it looked like he wasn't prepared to see Natalia sprinting at speeds no human would achieve, and leaping up to have her knee collide with his chin. After the hit, Natalia planted her feet into the ground from the jump, and braked, leaving scars in the ground as she skidded towards the elevator's doors.

"Give me a second," said Natalia. "I don't want to crash into the elevator door and hit something on the other side."

"Alright," said Fate mentally. "I'll cut it open, stand aside."

Natalia complied by pushing herself off towards the right, and jumping towards the wall next to the door, and drop kicked it, sending cracks crossing over the walls.

A yellow scythe blade whizzed past Natalia and blew the elevator door open. Natalia peeked up, and gave a thumbs up, before shooting a metallic wire into the shaft and beginning her ascent.

"There's more room to fly in here for you, maybe now you'll be able to use some real speed" she said jokingly.

Fate flew into the shaft after Natalia, and pitched up, seeing her shooting cables from the hip mounted devices latch onto the walls, and accelerate Natalia upwards. Thankfully, they entered the shaft with all the supporting cables for the elevator visible, implying that the lift was below them, and wouldn't block their ascent. The doors of the elevator shaft, leading to the different floors, were all flying by.

"I'm breaking through the top floor," said Natalia as she was alternating between cables to pull herself up the inside of the elevator shaft on the wall opposite the doors. She fired her leftmost grappling hook towards the wall beneath the door, and she swung herself over the top, and slammed her right boot into the bottom of the door, which impacted with an orange spark.

Harry struggled against the golden rings that bound him in place. The truth was he wasn't going to wipe their memories for certain; he'd have to decide if it was safe to let the two girls know about their world.

Apparently legimency was not in their skills. Nor was it easy enough to produce a legimens to aid their own investigation. Though judging by their reaction to believing their memories were to be wiped, he doubted that the result would have been any different had there been a legimens and they realized what they were doing. The other two aurors were stirring from being thrown by the girl who called herself Dixie, but were in no position to do anything right now.

Suddenly, the bind's glow began to fade just a little. Harry found that he was able to use his arms just a little, and wriggled just enough so that his wand landed in his sleeve.

"Finite Incantem," he said, pointing his wand at his ankles. He found himself falling as the bind broke, and he rolled onto the floor to slide his hands past his ankles. Reversing the wand's grip, he managed to get the eleven inch holly and phoenix feather wand to point at his wrists, and broke the second bind.

'Thank God a fairly supple wand chose me,' he thought as he raised it and silently cast a summoning charm.

Fate overtook Natalia flying over her sliding form as she burst out of the elevator. Though Natalia wasn't flying, her ability to use the two cables attached to her hips to move was more than enough in an indoor environment. She saw the recon captain push herself off the floor, and she bounded to her feet from the slide, and continued to sprint like a madman, again trailing orange flames.

The atrium of the Ministry of Magic parted like the Red Sea as Fate and Natalia sprinted for the exits. Guards had begun to shoot all kinds of spells at the retreating TSAB agents, but owing to their speed and agility, many of them fell short, or otherwise simply didn't hit the mark.

"Fate, lets take the eighth fireplace on the left."

"Roger."

Suddenly the two women steered left, Natalia firing a wire towards the wall, whilst Fate pitched up towards the ceiling of the atrium, and performed a barrel roll towards her right whilst turning towards her left, and dived towards the fireplace. Natalia's more direct course allowed her to overtake Fate, and she performed a slide assisted by the wire from her device pulling her, and entered the fireplace, and was engulfed in green flames. Fate knew from what she saw on the way into the Ministry of Magic that this was a fairly normal occurrence, but she still felt a little unnerved at the prospect of flying towards the fireplace at speed.

She realized that she didn't need to worry about the fireplace at least. She emerged on the other side of the employees' entrance in the toilet without problem. She did have to worry about a collision with Natalia who was only barely able to get out of Fate's way

Harry knew he was too late. The Atrium was still in a state of chaos as he exited the elevator shaft on his Firebolt. He saw the state of the room in front of him and knew that this was going beyond a simple breach of the statute of secrecy.

"Where did they go?" said Harry, wand drawn. Three aurors formed up behind him as one of the guards said they left through the employee entrance. The scars in the ground seemed to indicate the path of at least one of the escapees.

'We need to apparate and intercept them,' thought Harry. An old Hitwizard named Arnold Peasegood joined him broom in hand.

"Potter, I heard the commotion and called up everyone I could grab. Auror Williamson should arrive through the lift about now." As he said this, another old veteran auror flew out of the lift shaft, and hovered by Harry.

"Alright, we're going to apparate outside of the employee entrance. Shrink your brooms in case we're able to fight them on the ground, otherwise, chase them into the air."

Natalia and Fate both walked out of the toilets, back in casual wear, and no longer wielding any devices. They strolled out of a part of the Shaftsbury Avenue toilets that seemed to be invisible to non-magical people.

However, as they reached ground level, Natalia was suddenly aware of a triplet of rips in space and time. It wasn't a freak occurrence; it was controlled.

"Fate," said Natalia. "Did you catch that?"

"I did," she replied. "Two o'clock from us, inside the Trocadero building. Ground floor."

As the two continued to walk casually through the crowded London streets, they were contacted by their ship.

"Sandalphon here, how would you like to proceed?"

"Do not initiate pickup yet. We need to lose our tail first," said Natalia.

They continued to walk through, towards Leicester Square. Natalia spared a glance to the side, at the entrance to a purple coloured building, and saw three overdressed men in trenchcoats and ties; far too overdressed to simply be coming out of the arcade or cinema in the building.

"If this is all they sent after us, they're in for a world of hurt," said Natalia.

"Can we try to avoid fighting more?" asked Fate.

"Probably not," replied Natalia. "How good are you on the ground?"

"I can hold my own," replied Fate. "But its definitely not my strong suit. However, they're disadvantaged too; they don't appear to have any assistance for situational awareness."

"That's true. So in this crowd, they'll have to get close. Lucky for us. Sandalphon, can you track our three pursuers?"

"Yes ma'am. They've split off into three, and are trying to cover more area. Potter is at you8r six, two hundred metres behind. One of the old guys is at your seven, one fifty metres. The other is at your four, one hundred and eighty metres. All are closing."

"Do they have clear line of sight?"

"No."

Natalia found an area of relatively open space in the crowd. A plan began to formulate in her mind.

"Fate I'm going to be bait. Can you slip into the crowd?"

"… that won't be a problem."

Natalia split off from Fate, and sat down next to one of the statues. She purposely faced away from the pursuing aurors.

"Two are converging on your position Natalia," said the Sandalphon. "They've increased their pace. Fifty metres out, your eight and six. Fate is being tracked through the crowd by the third, but he's having trouble keeping up."

"Tell me when they're through the crowd and have a clear shot at me," said Natalia.

Several tense seconds passed. Natalia had to resist the temptation to snap her neck around to take a look, but she had to trust her crew on the ship.

"NOW!"

Natalia suddenly leapt to her feet and spun to her right. Halfway through the spin, she felt something graze her side. She could sense that it was magic of some kind, but didn't know what.

"Oi! Watch it!" shouted a man that she nearly collided into. He was about to throw more insults her way, before she ducked down and sprinted at the older wizard who just tried to shoot at her. It wasn't very difficult to spot him; he was wearing a trench coat that was far too hot for this time of year, and he also had what appeared to be a baton like device in his right hand.

She covered the distance within half a second, and had ended up right next to the older man. He tried to point the wand at her, but Natalia locked up his right elbow, forced him to drop his wand, which landed in a shower of sparks on the floor, and then threw him in the direction of the other man wearing a trench coat and tie, and parted the crowd.

Harry barely had time to defend himself as 'Dixie Walker' used Peasegood as a projectile. He cushioned the landing of the hitwizard, but before he was able to fully look up and get a bearing on where the red haired girl went, she had rushed right up to his face.

"Repulso!" he shouted without thinking. The woman twisted out of the way of his wand, which bought Harry enough time to open up some distance between them. "Stupefy!" he shouted, shooting a red light at his assailant. However the spell was met with a triangle shaped shield spell that he'd never seen before, being cast out of her left hand.

"I could take care of you, even without weapons," taunted 'Dixie'.

By this point the crowd had scattered, with people screaming as the magical battle continued. Harry knew that he needed to end this battle fast. Aiming a quick spell at his feet to produce thick white smoke, he managed to obscure the vision of his opponent enough that her next attack missed. He held out his left hand, and silently unshrank his Firebolt with a sudden sharp pop. He quickly swung his left leg over the broom, assumed a seated position and then took off.

However, he didn't expect to run into a blonde twin tailed girl in midair, wielding a scythe. 'Felicity Lamborghini' flew towards Harry, and he barely managed to avoid her with a sloth grip roll to his left. He felt the yellow energy blade skim his shoulder, followed shortly by the passing of a slightly heavier mass.

Midway through his roll, he saw the red haired girl crouching down, and preparing to jump at him. There was a burst of orange flames before she launched herself off the ground, and flew straight at him, foot first. The flying kick barely missed. As Harry righted himself mid roll, he saw behind him the blonde cloak wearing girl bank around, and try for another scythe attack.

'I might die…' thought Harry as he banked around to avoid meeting the scythe wielder. His mind flashed to Ginny, to James, to Albus and to Lily. 'They obviously know some form of magic, and so there's no reason to keep everything a secret from them.'

He made a quick decision, and turned away from Leicester Square, praying that they wouldn't follow him.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the two girls run in the opposite direction, away from the Ministry. Looking towards the ground, he saw Williamson twitching on the ground, like he had been struck by lightning.

[Hogwarts – Later that day]

The fallout after the two escapees had reached Hogwarts far too quickly. Jaeger was given the message discretely by his device in the middle of teaching a class, which he managed to conceal as things went on.

Thankfully, he had multiple teaching aids that prevented people from realizing that he was losing interest rapidly in telling fifth years on how to deal with werewolves.

"Excuse me class," said Jaeger. "I have just been informed of a matter that needs my attention. Could you please turn to page two hundred and sixteen, and answer the questions on that sheet. Once you have finished, please grade your own tests. If you require assistance, I have already uploaded the correct simulations into VR. Its non interactive, so don't expect anything to come out of it. Remember, the only person you can cheat here is yourself."

Jaeger left the room in a hurry. He knew that his time was limited. His Intelligent Device Warbeast was relaying a report from the Ministry of Magic to him from Harry Potter; a second attack, similar to the one that happened in Gringotts. From the description he was being given, he recognized one of the perpetrators.

Fate T Harlaown and the TSAB were here.

'Maybe my time is up. Of course, there's still the chance that they dropped the case against me.'

However, as he walked down, he passed a poster for something which made him consider another possibility. It was a poster for his own VR Training sessions, intended to be a compliment to Defence Against the Dark Arts classes.

He knew that there was a little hard core of roughly twenty students that would support the VR Club's activities regardless. He was sure that he could spin the activity to help the students defend themselves if they came under attack from the outside.

[Aboard the Sandalphon]

Natalia was gasping for breath. As much as she'd shown that she could keep up with Fate's flight speed on the ground, she did of course end up straining herself almost too much. Since the ship had teleported them out, she had been indisposed, and was resting in her quarters. This meant that Fate was the commanding officer aboard the ship, and was in charge of delivering the report. Thankfully for her, it was rather short.

The civilization discovered is an archaic society with powers available that could destabilize the TSAB unless stringent checks are placed on them. The ability to alter memories is volatile, and speaking primarily from experience as an enforcer, it would make order almost impossible to keep across the Administered Worlds if this society was accepted into the TSAB.

The report on Lost Logia is incomplete. We will require time to recuperate from the battle and to rethink our next move. Thankfully, their combat ability is well within our limits, and we do not urgently require reinforcements. We can continue the mission as before if it is required.

Sending the report, Fate looked out of her window over at the blue marble like planet they were orbiting. What was it about this little planet that seemed to attract the strangest things?

During her musings, she got a response back from the TSAB. It seemed like she would need to stay aboard the Sandalphon for now to continue her current duties in monitoring for Lost Logia. Apparently though, Natalia was also ordered to stay.

[Hogwarts - The Next Day]

James stretched himself awake the next morning. Though he was a little disappointed that last night's defence club session was cancelled due to an emergency, he did use that time to actually do his Charms homework for once.

Of course, that meant that all he had left to do was play some exploding snap or chess with the other twenty or so top scorers in the additional DADA scenarios, who were also looking forward to returning to that extracurricular activity.

He shook those thoughts from his head as he approached the Great Hall. The Gryffindor table was quiet that morning; it seemed like quite a few people were unable to sleep without their typical sessions of slaying death eaters in historical battles.

Melissa Hunter looked a little drowsy as James sat down next to her. Despite her state of near unconsciousness, James still thought that the brunette girl was rather pretty, and had a little way of being cute without meaning to.

"Morning," said James. Melissa turned her head towards the firstborn of Harry Potter and smiled back.

"Hi," she replied. "Shame about last night huh."

"I guess," said James. "But then again, I actually got Charms work done."

"You're telling me," she replied. "I managed to do some transfiguration at like four am. Can you pass the butter?"

James reached out and picked up the plate with butter and passed it to Melissa.

"Here you go."

"Thanks."

Breakfast continued rather uneventfully, through the usual throng of owls entering the great hall through the skylight, however, midway through breakfast, there Altima Jaeger stood up. The entire hall fell silent as the one eyed defence against the dark arts professor prepared to give a notice.

"I have an important announcement to make," he said. "For the first time in nineteen years, the wizarding world faces a serious crisis that directly threatens its well-being." James' eyes suddenly lit up. He had no idea what Jaeger was going to say, but he knew that if his hunch was right, this would be something he was very much interested in. "This is why I will be cancelling Defence Club this year." There was a collective groan from all around the tables. James however remained passive. Melissa looked like she was about to say something, but noticed James and kept to herself. The hubbub though eventually died down, when they realized that Jaeger wasn't moving from his spot. He wasn't finished. "Instead of Defence Club, I will be running VR Training, a practical self-defence training extracurricular class in both classroom and virtually constructed environments for any student who wishes to learn skills to defend themselves and their colleagues should the worst happen."

This time the great hall's noise betrayed an overall feeling of joy and excitement.

"Self-defence training? That means last year didn't even count as practice!" said one Gryffindor boy.

"Will there still be historical battles?"

"I hope they run the White Devil again. I want another crack at her."

"Signups work on a session by session basis," said Jaeger. "Booking for the first session tomorrow starts tonight after dinner. As before, each session is limited to fifty places. If you don't get into the first session don't worry, there will be additional training every night. That is all. Information will be put out on noticeboards throughout the school. Please direct all questions not covered by the notices to my office during lunchtime."

[Aboard the Hayabusa, in orbit around Callisto]

Reina was panting as she stared at her hands, curled up on the floor, with her device activated. By her side was an empty syringe gun, which she had dropped onto the floor. Simmons was monitoring her life signs in the medical bay as she twitched and convulsed.

"FUCKING OW!" she screamed as her body glowed a strange blue colour. "Maybe we should have run the simulations with a bit more care?"

"No, this is within normal limits," said Simmons. "Its interacting with your linker core just as predicted." This continued for a minute until the blue glow began to subside. Reina was panting as her eyes flicked from left to right, reading text that only she could see at high speed.

"Who'd have thought that making a device compute using virtual space instead of mana circuits would yield so much more throughput?" said Reina, slowly getting accustomed to the apparent injection she'd just taken. "The fact that this new material is so versatile just takes the goddamn cake."

"The test chamber is stable," said Simmons, ignoring the increase in aggression in Reina's voice. "Want to try activating?"

"It doesn't look like the upgrades have taken effect just yet," said Reina, slowly calming down from what must have been a huge hit of endorphins, adrenaline, and what other hormones were triggered by the injection. "The program needs time to… settle in."

"Jeez," said Simmons. "Settle in? That sounds like we've just installed a virus."

"Not quite," said Reina as she stood up from the floor. "The diagnostics I just read say that the new components are adapting themselves to the IWS' pre-existing infrastructure."

"That is correct," said a disembodied robotic feminine voice from her chest. It sounded different to when she was last on Earth. "This new material is augmenting Reina's Linker Core. I am quite frankly stumped with what to do using the additional resources. It could be several days before the new systems are ready to use."

"Just to check, can you give me a rundown of the projected upgrades?" said Simmons

"Certainly. Linker Core output is projected to at least double, and all other functions related to it are set to increase as a result of this. I also predict the possibility for the acquisition of many new weapons subsystems related to an increase in processor power, which I am unable to predict at this stage."

Reina nodded silently, stretching as she did. The cold blue light of the testing chamber seemed to resonate with her form as she stood and put a robe on over her body suit. She reasoned that Metatron would need to be active until the program fully settled in, so opted to perform the rest of her duties today with an activated device.

'Thankfully, that arm blade leaves my right hand free,' she thought to herself.

"Simmons, lets head back towards U97," said Reina. "We'll need to keep surveillance on the planet if Papa is really hiding there."

EDIT HISTORY: Added a missing line break