"Okay, gents. This is the very real bloody deal. I know we've had that mission back in Hogsmeade, but this... Rescuing a specific person with no help from the outside. Using no magic spells whatsoever..." Harry spoke quietly, mindful of where he was and what they were about to do. "Hazardous environment that isn't familiar whatsoever to any of us... Are you ready?"
"Is anyone ever really ready for this sort of thing?" Darian asked.
"I wonder how people who do this shit for a living deal with this..." Aki mused.
"You may always ask my father if you ever meet him..." Lucas said.
They went silent again as they moved further away from their base cave.
Random thoughts passed through Harry's mind as they made their way through the mountainous terrain.
"I would have never imagined doing this sort of thing when I was a child. Then again, I never even knew about magic until I turned eleven either... Everything I've been through since then, Voldemort related and otherwise..."
He clenched the handles of his butterfly swords briefly.
"Then the Magix and the Earth Fairies factors came into my life and added a whole new dimension to my life. Literally. Several of them, in fact..."
Harry looked around at his squad mates.
Aki, next to him, had one of his guns out and was constantly sweeping it cautiously, Lucas was a bit out in front of them, his hand ready to draw his sword at a moment's notice and Darian covered them from the back with his own sword.
Harry remembered the last time he'd gone on a rescue mission.
Or rather, the time before the last time.
Bloody hell, he was seeing more action in his life lately...
The Ministry of Magic escapade... fiasco... every sort of negative adjective one could think of to describe it...
His 'squad' back then had been his ever present best friends Ron and Hermione (how were they now, during the second year of his absence from Hogwarts?), Ginny and Neville (never paid too much attention to them before- he certainly was now!) and Luna (who had pretty much come out of nowhere).
The way that ended... with the death of the godfather he had barely gotten to know...
Hopefully, this rescue mission would end on a much more happy note than that one had...
This Red Fountain squad had been to his home world. He'd love to introduce Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville and Luna to Tir Nan Og and Magix someday...
He blinked and shook his head to clear it.
Daydreaming and wandering thoughts could... would have to be saved for another time.
He'd have to forget about his friends, Roxy and even the ever looming threat of Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters for now.
He was on a rescue mission. He'd promised himself and Jasper that he'd help rescue Amethyst and he certainly wasn't about to fail on keeping that promise...
"Three of them inside the cave with Amethyst, but where's the fourth one?" Harry wondered as he glanced inside the cave.
Two of the male kidnappers and the female kidnapper were present, but the third male kidnapper was nowhere to be found.
Where was he? Was he lurking in the shadows somewhere? Was he going to be a hazard to them all in this?
Darian glanced around them, then looked over from the other side of the cave in askance, as if he too, was wondering the same thing that Harry was.
Aki was donning a similar, slightly confused expression while Lucas' facial expression was currently unreadable to Harry.
Harry made a sign for them to remain quiet and in position as the kidnappers began to speak again.
"I just can't believe that a little boy managed to evade us in this mountain range!" one male growled.
"He wouldn't have managed to escape us in the first place if someone hadn't failed to ensure that they were properly secured while others went to get supplies from the ship that one night!" the female levelled the other two kidnappers with a venomous glare.
"Say... where is their vehicle anyway? None of us ever spotted one..." Harry thought.
"Evaded us? Jasper probably got himself mauled by some manner of monster or animal. I hear this part of Magix has lots of 'em just ramblin' around the place. One just got to him first, is all..." the third kidnapper present shrugged, indifferent to it all.
Amethyst, who was ungagged at this point, but still heavily chained up, let out a wail of despair at these words that tugged at Harry's heartstrings.
"Shut it, you!" one of the males flashed a gun at her and she screamed and huddled as far away from him as she could within the cage, which when taking into account its size, as well as the chains hampering her movement, wasn't very far away at all.
"You want to be gagged again? No? Then you will shut the hell up, before we..." he put the gun through the bars of the cage and pointed it at her head, eliciting a fresh round of tears and whimpering from her. "...make you shut the hell up!"
The other two kidnappers chuckled appreciatively.
Harry had to bite back a growl.
"We should probably feed her, She hasn't eaten in two days and if he doesn't find the boy on this last search, the deal is off for certain and no one will want to buy a starved looking little witch, now would they?" one of the male kidnappers said.
"B... b... buy? Buy me? You said you were going to ransom me back to my parents! Not sell me to a stranger!" Amethyst gasped in horror.
"Correction! We were going to ransom you and your brother back to your parents. Seeing as he isn't here, we'll just have to do something else with you to get our money, won't we?" the woman sneered at her.
"No... No, please no. I want to go home. That's all I want. To go home!" Amethyst wailed. "I can forget this happened. "I don't know your names! I've not even seen your faces!"
Harry clenched his fist as the kidnappers, who had indeed hidden behind full-face masks the entire time all stood up simultaneously.
"No chance of that now, girlie!" one kidnapper sneered.
Darian looked up at him in askance.
"Not yet," Harry mouthed.
Darian looked incredulous, but held his ground.
"Pity we don't get signals off these here." the woman held up a cell phone. "it would be so much easier to keep in touch with a certain other individual to find out where the hell he is..." she ground out the last part.
"He ain't finding that brat. We might as well pack up our stuff and get the hell outta here. It's been over a week since we snatched 'em and been hiding up here. If we don't move on, someone might find us soon!" a kidnapper exclaimed.
"What are the chances of that happening? We're up here, holed up in the wilderness, we managed to cross through inter-dimensional airspace undetected, hell, we managed to kidnap nobility of one of the richest planets in existence without being caught then, so why the hell would we be caught now?" the woman scoffed. "Anyway, let's get ready to move. As was said before, we can still get a good price for the girl on the black market..."
Harry made a motion to Aki, who nodded, raising one of his guns and aiming it carefully.
The kidnappers undid the cage and left Amethyst, still wrapped in chains in the back of the cave as they assembled their supplies.
Aki fired his gun and a blast of energy from it barrelled into the biggest, most muscled of the lot, hitting him square in the chest.
Eyes widening in surprise for a few brief seconds (though they felt so much longer to Harry and his squad), the big, burly man toppled onto the ground with a thud, raising a small cloud of dust and pebbles when he made impact.
"What the hell was that?!" the woman shot to her feet, looking around, startled.
Harry nodded, the other three members of his squad nodded back in acknowledgement and they moved in, taking the other two still conscious kidnappers present (and Amethyst), completely by surprise.
"That would be us." Harry said coolly, standing in front of Amethyst, swords pointed in the kidnappers' direction, Lucas on his right and Aki and Darian in front of them, their weapons poised.
"What the hell? How did you find us?" the woman snarled as she drew a weapon. "No law enforcement is supposed to be able to find us up here?"
"Good thing we're not exactly law enforcement- yet, now isn't it?" Harry asked.
"Lucas, help me cover Amethyst as we fight. Don't want a stray missile hitting her!" Harry whispered to him.
Lucas only nodded, then returned his attention to their opponents.
"Everything is just rolling down shit hill today, isn't it?" the other male kidnapper muttered.
"They're just a bunch of damn kids! Teenagers! Are you seriously telling me that you couldn't beat a teenager in a fight?!" the woman snapped.
She turned her attention towards Harry and his squad/friends.
"I don't know how you found us. A bunch of teenagers on a little daring camping trip, I suppose. But I won't have you mess this up!" she exclaimed.
"Mess this up even further, you mean?" Aki asked calmly.
The woman responded by throwing a knife with a serrated blade at him, which he smoothly dodged, the blade crashing against a cave wall and snapping in two with a loud snapping sound that echoed.
The fight commenced.
The male still standing lunged for Harry and Lucas, but Lucas blocked him off with his sword.
"You're not going anywhere near that girl!" the normally calm and serene, seemingly unflappable Lucas looked as if he was fighting someone who had murdered his entire family, burnt down his home and stole his favourite chocolate bar.
It would have greatly unsettled Harry, were he not in the situation he was currently in.
He was standing near to Amethyst, protecting her from any stray missiles or attempts to come after her.
"Who are you?" Amethyst tried to make herself as small as possible as the fight raged on.
"My name is Harry Potter," he ducked and shoved her to the ground as some stray blasts from Aki's and the woman's gunfight barrelled towards them.
He felt the heat of the blasts nearly singe them and would have shuddered at the close call, had he not experienced far more horrifying circumstances than his current one.
He fetched a pocketknife out of his pocket and began picking at the locks keeping Amethyst's chains in place. "I know who you are. You're Amethyst De L'Or."
"I guess news of my disappearance must be all over the AAH!" Amethyst screamed when a gun blast from one of the kidnappers nearly hit her in the head.
Harry pursed his lips as he picked each lock and was finally able to unlock each and every one of them, sliding the chains off the girl.
He then turned his attention to the magic suppressor cuffs, still on the girl's wrists.
Harry swore internally. He'd forgotten that these kinds of restraints, for obvious reasons, were not so easily picked...
"They have not taken these off me since they put them on..." Amethyst spoke quietly, her voice quavering.
"Before your attempt escape or after it?" Harry asked.
"After. They decided they couldn't take any more risks with me. It's not as if that mattered. I can't cast any spells in this freaky place and even if I could, it wouldn't do much good against the likes of them!" Amethyst sniffled, tears beginning to run down the sides of her face again.
A shout of pain from one of his squad mates drew his attention back to the fight ongoing around them.
Darian, who had been fighting the woman, along with Aki, had been struck with an energy blast from the formerly unconscious kidnapper, who unfortunately, wasn't more damaged by the shot that Aki had fired at him earlier.
Harry frowned a frown that would probably have the likes of Draco Malfoy and his cronies backing away from him as he took in the sight of a staggering Darian, his good arm clutching his now burning, bleeding arm, his weapon falling to the ground with a clatter.
"The hell?" Darian snarled.
"Did you really think a novice was going to keep me down?" the man sneered.
Darian retrieved a throwing knife from an inside pocket of his (now regrettably) short-sleeved jacket and threw it at the man, whose face it grazed, drawing blood.
"We're not just any novices..." Darian spoke slowly, in a tone Harry had never heard him use before.
A tone that promised great pain and torment for the person on the receiving end of the words being spoken.
As the man fired another blast at Darian, Harry stepped in front of it, deflecting it with both of his swords clutched in one hand, swiping the blast away into the roof of the cave, where it exploded, sending a shower of dust and small rocks all about them.
Aki swooped in, turning his energy guns up to full blast and firing both of them at the man simultaneously.
He was lifted up off the ground with the force of the energy blasts and slammed into a cave wall, shaking loose even more debris as he slid down it, a small trail of blood following him down until he flopped down onto the cave floor, unmoving.
"When I put you down, you stay. the hell down." Aki looked down at the man with an expression of utter disgust before dodging another throwing knife from the woman.
Harry heard Amethyst screaming and looked around to see Amethyst narrowly dodging an energy gun blast from the other man, her movement hampered by the magic suppressor cuffs that he still hadn't figured out how to get off her yet.
She tripped and fell flat on her face and the man was just aiming his gun for her head when Harry stepped in front of the blast and deflected it with one sword while the other sword in the pair hooked around the trigger of the gun by the tip of the blade and tossed it outside.
Even the kidnapper looked mildly impressed by that bit of sword-work (as did Harry himself!) for a brief moment before the deflected blast caught him in the shoulder and knocked him down onto the cave floor, groaning before falling silent as well.
"Two of you down..." Harry started.
"One more of you cretins to go..." Darian finished as the four of them turned in unison towards the last one standing- the woman.
"Oh no you don't!" the woman moved faster than they had expected and soon had Amethyst in a tight grip against her own body, a gun pressed to her head.
Amethyst began to cry again.
Harry growled and began to swear under his breath.
"Now I believe that I am the one with the upper hand..." the woman chuckled. "I suggest that you drop your weapons. Now."
They hesitated and the woman pressed the gun against Amethyst's head.
They instantly dropped their weapons.
"Now, you're going to let me leave here. With little Amethyst here." the woman said.
"Not a bloody chance." Harry thought. "I have my wand on me, but she doesn't know that I'm a wizard of any sort. If my magic would only work here..."
They stared the woman down as she began to move away, Amethyst in tow.
"I can't let her get away with Amethyst. Not again. Just one spell. It doesn't even have to be particularly powerful. Just enough to distract her and get her to let Amethyst go, so we can move in and grab her..."
"Don't even think of trying anything funny." the woman swept the gun around.
"We wouldn't dream of it." Aki said.
He, Darian and Lucas all looked at Harry simultaneously, as if expecting him to attempt to do something about the situation.
Which they probably were...
It was that- and the completely terrified look in Amethyst's eyes- that made him act.
Before the woman could react, Harry had moved up his arm and pointed it directly at the female kidnapper.
"Stupefy!" he cried out, aiming for the woman.
The bright red beam of light hit the woman directly between her eyes and she fell to the floor of the cave, Stunned.
Amethyst ran over to Harry and held onto him as if life itself depended on it, although her grip was hindered by the magic suppressor cuffs she still wore.
"I thought you said you couldn't do wandless magic!" Aki exclaimed after several moments of stunned silence.
"I certainly couldn't before, but I didn't have time to try using my wand and I had to try to do something and... well, something in my mind just told me to try it and it worked!" Harry shrugged, still shocked himself.
"Think you could try some sort of unlocking spell on the magic suppressor cuffs on Amethyst then?" Lucas gestured to the girl, who was still holding onto Harry tightly.
"I sure can. Just... take care of those three dirtbags." Harry gestured to the three unconscious kidnappers. Then we have to go out looking for the fourth one. We can't have him surprising us."
"We need to check on... him as well, remember?" Lucas reminded him.
"And we need to find their transport as well. It's got to be hidden around this place somewhere..." Aki pointed out.
Harry nodded. "As soon as we've got a handle on things here. Now..."
He knelt down and guided Amethyst to sit as he closely examined the cuffs on her hands.
"I can't exactly destroy them without hurting you, so I'd have to try an unlocking spell of some kind. I suspect regular strength unlocking spells won't work on these anyway and in this magic limiting environment..." he paused to think.
"A numerical modifier then, after the usual incantation. Increases the strength of the spell by either two times or three, depending on which one I attempt..." he thought, recalling a bit of information he'd gleaned from a book he'd acquired in Diagon Alley that summer.
"I'd better try this one with my wand. I still channel my magic better with it. That wandlesss Stunner was a just a jolly good bit of luck..." Harry pulled out his wand and twirled it before putting it in the dead centre of the magic suppressor cuffs.
"Alohomora Tria!" Harry made the appropriate wand movement over the cuffs.
They not only fell off with a clatter, but also cracked all over.
Amethyst held up her newly freed hands, looking at them in awe.
The next thing she did was hug Harry properly, as tightly as she could.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you..." she cried.
Harry patted her back. "You're welcome, Amethyst. Now come on. It's not over yet. We still have more things to do..."
"Just you wait until our last member gets back. He may be one against four, but he'll make you all pay..." the woman glared them down, but all four specialists were completely unbothered by the venomous looks she was giving them sometime later after they'd finally gotten them restrained and they'd awoken from unconscious land.
"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Harry raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't think that you're in a position to threaten us, if I were you. Especially since you're the ones chained up now..."
Amethyst clung onto Harry from behind, refusing to let go and quivered so much that Harry could feel it, even through the adrenaline currently running through his veins.
"Plus there's the fact that he's faced down people and creatures that are much scarier than the likes of you..." Darian said, massaging his haphazardly bandaged arm idly, wincing only slightly.
"I don't believe that." the man Harry felled scoffed.
"Fine then. Don't believe it." Harry turned his attention to his squad.
"There's a small matter we need to take care of elsewhere..." Harry inclined his head towards Darian. "Hey, you up for a walk?"
"Sure am. Are you checking on you know who?"
Harry stared him down, looking over the top of the frame of his glasses slightly, eyebrows raised. "I certainly am not..."
Darian paused, before it clicked and he finally realised what he had just said.
"Oh."
Lucas and Aki snickered. Amethyst's expression flickered from one of general anxiety to one of confusion for a brief moment.
"Oh yeah. I'll come look. Hazards out there though. Should we leave her here or bring her along?" Darian glanced at Amethyst, who was still hiding behind Harry.
"We can handle anything that comes our way between us. Besides, she's not seen anything outside this cave since these bastards brought her here, so why not?" Harry shrugged.
"Lucas, Aki. Hold down the fort, won't you?" Harry gently guided Amethyst out of the cave by her shoulders, Darian close behind them.
"Where are we going? That last kidnapper could still be out there, looking for my brother!" Amethyst huddled closer to Harry, as they walked, almost to their base cave.
"Or he could have heard the commotion of the fight between my friends and I and your kidnappers and decided to do a runner. Either way, he's not who we're looking for right... what the bloody hell happened in here?!" Harry stopped short at the entrance of the cave.
It looked like a tornado had hit the front of it.
Scorch marks adorned the walls of the cave which had significantly more holes in it; rocks and dust were strewn all over everything, the air smelt vaguely like dung and in the middle of it all, stood Jasper- Harry's Invisibility Cloak draped around his shoulders, looming over the unconscious form of the fourth kidnapper, gloating like a maniac.
"Well, now we know what happened to the last guy..." Darian looked amazed.
"I put those things you gave me to good use!" Jasper exclaimed gleefully, looking (in Harry's opinion) like a child on Christmas morning.
"Indeed you did..." Harry looked around, equally as amazed as Darian.
Then, it happened.
Jasper caught a glimpse of his big sister hiding behind Harry.
"Amethyst?" the Cloak slid off his shoulders and fell to the ground.
Amethyst peeked out from behind Harry. "Jasper?"
She darted out from behind Harry and ran towards her brother as he ran towards her.
They barrelled into each other at full speed and somehow avoided toppling over, and began to cry tears of relief, laugh and chatter excitedly at the same time.
"Darian, are you... are you actually crying at this?" Harry looked at the larger teen, surprised.
Darian wiped his eyes quickly. "No." he said, a bit too quickly. "Why the hell would I be crying?"
"Nothing wrong with tears of joy, Darian." Harry spoke teasingly.
"Go to hell, Harry." Darian scowled.
Harry chuckled. "I think I'll go look for the kidnappers' ship. It has to be around here in these mountains somewhere. Are you good with that arm to keep an eye on things here and restrain that guy?" Harry inclined his head towards the battered looking kidnapper.
"I'll be fine. Go." Darian waved him off- then winced as he realised that he'd waved with his injured arm.
Harry turned to leave and chuckled.
As he left though, his mood became more pensive.
"Saving those children... It... doing that and seeing their faces when they realised they were finally free of their captors... that was such an amazing feeling. No wonder some law enforcement people enjoy their jobs, regardless of what sector of the field they're in. I... I really do think I can see myself in this area. I know it won't always end happily, but the chance to help the good guys and give the bad guys what they deserve... I bet... I know that finally offing Voldemort and his Death Eaters will give me the same feeling. Then I can finally be free of that aspect of my life and move on..."
He smiled to himself.