The less said about why this took so long, the better.
Watching Moriarty's play had been interesting. Max had to admit it was genius as she watched Sherlock get rid of his friend, ready for the final showdown. One that she would change into Moriarty's final downfall and Sherlock's rising from the ashes of his destroyed reputation.
Then her phone rang.
Mycroft knew not to call her, always text. But there it was. She picked up and her blood froze as Mycroft rushed out an explanation. He needed her immediate assistance, a high ranking member of the SIS was kidnapped and in a place there should be no escape from. He needed her more supernatural skills. Max's brain was going a mile a minute hashing out a secondary plan, from the scarce details given to her she would need to go to the other situation, no doubt engineered by Moriarty to take the focus off Sherlock's finale and prevent anyone from interfering. Max wondered if he knew about her involvement while she created a clone to stand in for her at the finale, as an after though she created another. She had no idea what Moriarty knew and it was best to be prepared. With that done she apparated to the location Mycroft had sent.
There was a crunch of gravel as her feet landed in a car park of an empty industrial estate she quickly made her way to the temporary command centre, otherwise known as a bunch of cars and a SpecOps van. A few of the armed men moved to stop her but were waved back by Mycroft. Ushered into the van Max saw a complete set up and unfortunately a certain double-O agent who immediately reached for his gun, pointing it at her head, Max had already returned the favour. It was a bit awkward in such a small space and a few of the technicians flattened themselves as far away from the two assassins.
"I hardly think now is the time," Mycroft interrupted. There was a short tense silence as the two of them glared.
"If you intentionally screw up this mission I will not hesitate to kill you," Bond threatened as he left the van and slammed the door. Mycroft gave her a weird look but started to explain the situation in detail.
Feeds showed the inside of one of the warehouses with a young man hung from the ceiling by a single chain, another chain attached his feet to the floor, stretching him out. The man bore more than just a passing resemblance to Sherlock and when Max voice that observation Mycroft admitted it was his other younger brother.
Then came the details of the traps that made extraction impossible for normal people. A multitude of motion sensors and pressure sensors linked to explosives. The chains themselves were wired so if too much changed then the explosives would blow and to top it all off there was a video camera watching. Mycroft explained that Moriarty wanted him to see both his brothers destroyed while helpless to save them. The camera was just in case they managed to get past the sensors so Moriarty could show that all their efforts would be for nothing.
Max already had a plan mostly finished by the time Mycroft finished, then it got made redundant when he added one detail.
"It's a magic dead zone." There went the apparate in and out plan.
"What do you expect me to do?" Max asked, rehashing the plan out thanking the deities that she'd met that magic and charka were different enough that chakra would work for a while.
"Whatever it takes to get the job done, you have a habit of doing the impossible."
"Get a medical team who are cleared for weird shite ready to follow me, and then when I get your brother out they will need to run and get as far away as possible. I would recommend you also move further back, there's no way to stop the building exploding. I'll give them as long as I can."
"The team should be outside waiting."
"Quick question, how much does your brother weigh, approximately?" Max asked as they exited the van. She got a crazy look but a rough answer. She led the small team of medics closer to the building, flashing FA to confirm her target's location. She henged into Mycroft's brother and adjusted her worn weights so she would be practically identical when she replace him with herself. Focusing on the image from the screen she mimicked the pose and switched. Max was so glad she'd had so much practice to do this without hand signs as she hung by the chains in the warehouse. This extraction would have been so much more difficult otherwise. As it was with the magical dead zone her henge would only last a few minutes but that should be enough time for everyone to get clear. She mildly regretted not leaving a few clones around.
FA confirmed that the target was in safe hands and everyone was retreating. Max allowed herself to focus on her clones with Sherlock. So far there was just a bunch of words being used like chess moves. It was amusing to watch, her clones would stay on standby until told otherwise.
Moriarty shooting himself came as a surprise and the click Max heard in the warehouse followed by a ticking gave Max the impression she should leave. The others should have had time to get far enough away. Max powered up her limbs and broke the chains, shushining the second her feet hit the ground. The blast still knocked her off her feet and back a few meters. Shushin only had a finite range and it obviously hadn't been far enough. Max looked back at the burning ruin, nothing would have survived that. If they had stayed in position they would have been caught up in the edges of the explosion.
Only half focusing on what she was doing she stumbled away from the burning wreckage, allowing her henge to drop, to where the remnants of the extraction team were, the ambulance was gone, with it Mycroft and his brother.
Talking of Mycroft's brothers, Max's clone switched out with Sherlock half way through freefall over the side of the hospital. She knew Sherlock had a plan, but she also knew that Moriarty had a person on the street to confirm the death. At least Max had improved in faking injuries with blood on her clones.
To her surprise, Bond was still there when she got to the team, she wasn't sure why they were still there, possibly to see if she survived and keep onlookers away. He was just lounging by the van while everyone else worked to pack up the equipment.
"Mr Holmes sends his thanks," the agent said gruffly avoiding actually looking at her face, he probably wasn't used to being a messenger. Max nodded in acknowledgement, she was unsure of what to do, she didn't really want to apparate out in front of normal people but she ached now and it hurt to walk. Risking a glance she noticed she was actually bleeding and she had parts of her now wrecked phone sticking out of her leg. At least she had an excuse for taking a while to get back into contact with everyone.
She sat on the gravel and meditated until everyone was gone. It was nice to have some peace and quiet, now that she had some. Then again anything was better than the confrontation that would happen.
Naturally the peace didn't last long. The crunch of gravel under tires heralded a new arrival. She recognised the voices that were bickering as they got out of the car and heard the pause in gravel crunching as they noticed her and stopped. Max wondered why they were here, after the battle of new York she'd done some research and tracked it back to 'Warehouse 13' which officially existed as an IRS warehouse. Unofficially it collected mysterious artifacts. Max bet that the magical community just loved that.
"I'm guessing you're going to tell us that this isn't our jurisdiction either."
"Probably isn't yours," Max muttered refusing to even open her eyes, she could see them well enough with FA, though having a dark spot where the dead zone was weird and Max was trying to figure out why.
"How do you know?"
"You said you were secret service. However we are currently in England and there is no president anywhere close to here. If you're referring to your other career, then I wouldn't know as I don't know what you do but I'm going to say no regardless." She was going to get them to admit what they did, what she had found out she shouldn't have been able to and would warrant some research into her own background which would be annoying.
"You know, with the building on fire, I'd have thought someone would be here to put it out." It was cute how they tried to be condescending but Max really wasn't in the mood after Mycroft and 007.
"Need to wait for the bomb squad too." Max informed them, there could potentially be other explosives in the area. She gestured to the collapsing building. "That was the work of a mad man." That got their attention nicely.
"Why are you here?" Max could definitely see them being some sort of government agents, they asked so many questions.
"Fancied hanging around, always loved a burning building." Only from the outside. She'd been inside more than enough. "What are you looking for? Don't give me some bullcrap either, I'm not above abusing my power right now." Max grumbled as she finally got up.
"Who are you?"
"I can't believe it took you this long to ask. The name's Rho." That sparked some recognition, though they frowned at the obviously fake name.
"You were on that Kira case."
"Yes, I helped solve it."
"Can you settle something for us? Was it some weird voodoo shite? Because I think it is but Myka thinks it was an artifact that should have been collected, but it was before our time."
"It was like an artifact and like the tesseract it did not belong on Earth, but we destroyed it anyway." Lies, well, mostly, sort of. Max actually couldn't remember what happened to all of them. The guy looked a bit down at not being right with his theory.
"Look, we really need to get to work." The woman, Myka, declared dismissively.
"What are the symptoms?" That got an odd look but masked it pretty quickly.
"You are not helping us."
"Are you still sore about New York?" No matter how hard the adults tried they looked a bit pouty, so yes they were sore about it. "Well, try to be a bit more useful than you were in New York." Max was allowed to be bitter with a smile too. Without waiting for whatever response they had Max apparated out of there.
It probably hadn't been the best idea to apparate without a solid destination in mind. At least she was all there, no missing bits. She did know where she was too so it wasn't all bad, it was just something she shouldn't make a habit of.
In England Max had few places she called safe. One of them she hadn't technically visited in this dimension, but here she was standing by a tree in a park near her old home from her former dimension. She was glad it was deserted, still school time and no parents with toddlers milling around, that would have been a pain to cover up. A quick clone and a short wait later and Max had a new phone, the old sim card still in one piece.
She sat against her tree and pulled out her phone, fiddling with it as she mulled over her next course of action. She'd promised to sort things out after her current mission and that was all done and dusted. Now that she had nothing to do she could feel the aches and pains she'd been ignoring so well. Maybe she just needed a break, somewhere nice and calm. Or with something easy to do at least, calm would just drive her nuts.
Max almost dropped her phone when it vibrated into life. She sighed as she saw Laura's name there and reluctantly swiped at the screen to accept the call.
"Don't you think the explosion was a bit excessive?" Laura asked in that long suffering tone that had Max rolling her eyes.
"Contrary to popular belief not everything hugely destructive is my fault."
"So Forks was someone else then?"
"No that was me, I'm sure there are something's that haven't been me though."
"Does the explosion mean you're done with your mission?" Max paused trying to decide whether to lie and procrastinate. "I'll take that as a yes. There's a plane ticket booked in your name to California. I know you were going to sort out your relationship with Itachi and you can do it in the lovely town of Beacon Hills, California."
"What's wrong with it?"
Guess the next crossover (and what I spent that last week and a half watching)
Reviews would make me feel a lot better than I've been recently.