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Omake for 'MAF' – The Bastards Above
Note: Odd Ideas # 176
Minerva suppressed a smirk when she saw a drawing of a broom riding woman wearing little more than a come hither look and a pointy hat adorning the wall outside her muggle counter part's office. It was nice to be appreciated even if that appreciation's accuracy was severely hampered by the heavy clothing and oxygen masks her unit wore when they went aloft.
She rose her hand and gave three sharp raps on the door.
"Come!" the officer's voice called out.
She entered and her smirk deepened at the man's obvious confusion.
"Can I help you?"
"You already did," she replied. "Two weeks ago over the channel. Bastards jumped us, I had four on my tail. You were kind enough to use up most of a belt to get me out of the situation."
The man's eyes widened in shock. "You." He grinned wide. "Only returning the favor, one of yours did something similar for me a couple months back. Have a seat."
"Thank you."
"Can I offer you anything? Booze, cigarettes?"
"Perhaps later, best get business out of the way first."
"Nothing good, I take it?"
"Never is," she agreed. "The magical government has determined that the risk to the statute of secrecy, that's the law that keeps my sort and your sort from mixing too much, is in serious danger of being broken."
"What's that mean?"
"Means the bastards have ordered us to kill or wipe the memory of any pilot that sees us," she said in disgust. "Allied or enemy, doesn't mean a thing to them."
"That why you're here?" he asked calmly.
"To warn you? Bloody right it is!" she agreed. "Gave orders to my second to kill any of mine who try it if I'm not there to do it myself."
"Oh."
"Not that anyone on the sharp end would do it, I hope, but I've found that being prepared for the worst is better than hoping for the best."
"Get less surprises that way," the RAF officer agreed.
"I'll keep mine from doing anything stupid, but the bloody Ministry has more on tap than just us. You have my word I'll do my damnedest to prevent anyone else from doing anything stupid either."
"But you can't guarantee it."
"No," Minerva sighed. "Best I can promise is vengeance if it comes down to it. I'd be willing to get pre-emptive, but the last thing I need is another bloody war on my hands."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that till after we've dealt with the bastards in Berlin."
"I'll take that drink now, if the offer's still good that is."
Omake for 'MAF' – Luck goes both ways
Note: Odd Ideas # 176
Minerva's counterpart gave her a sharp nod as she entered his office for the second time, this time accompanied by her second.
"I take it from the sour look on your face that your command has thought up another stupid and potentially treasonous plan?"
"They're forming a group of Aurors, magical police, to follow us and take care of any allied pilots we miss because we're too busy doing our real bloody job," Minerva spat. "Also want to make sure we follow all the idiotic orders we've been ignoring."
"No oxygen, no going after enemy planes, no hitting any bombs that don't threaten magical areas, no honor," her second said calmly. "Seems they want to take all the fun out of the war."
Minerva's jaw clenched. "You said something about asking your command for a bit of help to deal with the situation if it got bad. That offer still open?"
"Depends on what kind of help you want."
"A bloody big bomb to drop on the Ministry during their next big meeting," Minerva stated savagely. "My people will be first on scene and will be horrified to find no survivors."
"Where, for the sake of gathering information, would this bomb need to fall?"
"Mr. Riddle," Minerva barked.
Her second pulled out a map of London and placed it on the desk. Here," he said, jabbing down a finger. "This is where the Ministry building is. In the middle, you'll note, of a rather large residential area."
"Meaning we'd kill a number of our own people, assuming high command was willing to green light a raid on our own land."
"One bomb," Riddle stated. "We'll take care of getting it where it needs to go."
"How?"
"Was thinking I'd strap a cargo broom to it and ride it down," Riddle said cheerfully. "Questions?"
"Suicide mission?" the RAF officer asked.
"Survivable if I get the timing right and with zero civilian casualties if I have the nerve to wait long enough."
"I need to make some calls. Can you wait here or do you need to come back?"
"We'll wait here until the Hun calls us away," Minerva promised.
IIIIIIIIII
Tom had a big grin on his face as he waited for the bomb bay doors to open. He was in the lead plane of a flight of eight bombers on their way to ruin the Ministry's day.
It was funny, he thought to himself, how much things had changed since he'd been thrown out of school and forcibly enlisted. He'd have never believed how exhilarating it was to be shot at, to fight an areal duel with another mage and the feeling of triumph one felt after downing another foe. As a student he'd feared death to the point of doing research into ways to defeat it. As a knight of the sky, he loved the danger and accepted the fact that his luck might run out one day. How boring things would be if one knew they had nothing to fear.
"Three minutes!" one of the crew called back a warning.
"Ready!" Tom called back. Each bomb in the bay had six cargo brooms strapped to it, same with the bombs in the rest of the flight. All of them enchanted to follow the ones on the bomb he was riding. His heart pounded in anticipation of the most important mission of his carreer and the most fun he would have in his life.
"Bugger the wizarding world," he muttered to himself. His Schoolboy dreams of vengeance and destruction were about to become reality.
The doors opened and an instant later he was riding the bomb that would change the world.
IIIIIIIIII
Rumor flew through the village of Little Hangleton. Everyone had seen the staff car arrive at the big house with what they all assumed was a very senior officer in the RAF. It wasn't until the car stopped in the village so the AVM could get something to eat that they were able to learn a bit from the man's driver.
It was explosive. A few of the older folks remembered the scandal of the marriage of young Tom Riddle to one of the local girls and how two had gone on the honeymoon with only the boy returning.
The driver filled in the rest, of how Tom Riddle had abandoned his pregnant wife and how the poor girl had gone on to live just long enough to give birth to and name a son before dying of a broken heart. How the unwanted son had grown up in an orphanage and enlisted in the RAF to defend his nation shortly after hostilities had broken out.
"Musta lied about his age to get in," Sarah Foster, the blacksmith's wife said tearfully after a bit of mental arithmetic. "The poor lad."
"Bloody good thing he did," the Air Vice-Marshal's driver spoke up. "Can't say much, don't really know the details, but I can say that he was seriously wounded on a secret mission." He glanced around. "One high command figured was a one way and he was the first one to volunteer. Bloody hero he turned out to be, much better than the rotten stock on his father's side anyway."
The Air Vice-Marsha was a good sort, going so far as to compliment the food at the local public house, telling the landlord's wife that it was fit for the royal family before slapping one hundred pounds on the table and stating that it was to buy drinks for the town that gave the world one of the bravest men he'd had the good fortune to meet.
"Bring the car around, Jeffrey!" the Air Vice-Marshal ordered.
"Yes, sir!" his driver hastened obey.
The officer didn't say another word until the village had disappeared from sight. "I trust you did your part?"
"Yes, sir, bastards in the big house will rue the day you came to tell them about their son and will regret bitterly the fact that they didn't want to meet the boy."
"Good. It's the least we can do for the lad after what he did for us."
"He hurt bad, sir?"
"Not so bad that he won't be able to return for duty, Jeffrey. I'm told he'd have been gone if he waited a bloody instant more than he did."
"Yes, sir. Home, sir?"
"Home, Jeffrey."
AN: Based on an idea by Cal.
Omake for MAF by Cal
"The part I don't get," said Private Booker, "Is why we don't do the same thing with 'Itler."
Lieutenant-Colonel Durnford-Slater gave him a sharp look. Private Booker was hands down the best shot available to 3 Commando, but was also a genuine Cockney geezer and had spent a not insignificant portion of his pre-war life in the slammer, when he hadn't been in goal he had usually been being looked for by the police, and he wasn't exactly what one would call any great intellect either – he was, truth be told, marginally less intelligent than a brick.
"That'd occurred to me too," said Sergeant Anders – very large, very Norwegian, looked a bit like what one would get if one were to take a bear and clad it in battledress. He was the team's second marksman, there in case something untoward were to happen to Booker or to his weapon. The pair of them were as alike as night and day – Anders had brains to go with his brawn, he had been studying to become a doctor before the Nazis took his country away.
The plan was very simple. Air Commodore McGonagall's plants in Grindlewald's organisation had hit paydirt – they knew where the Dark Lord was going to be for a meeting ahead of time, and while the man Booker had taken to gleefully calling 'Wizard 'Itler' had anti-apparation precautions in place these were quite short ranged.
They did not, for example, cover the rooftops of the buildings the other side of the street.
Thus the presence of the third member of the team, Algernon Croaker. His involvement had a twofold purpose; he knew Grindlewald's face well enough to pick him out from a crowd, and was the transport for the operation.
Gellert Grindlewald didn't know it, but when he stepped out of the cafe, warded against all forms of magical transport, in which he was attempting to organise a deal that'd see one of Germany's largest vampire clans on the rampage in central London, he had a date with A, destiny, and B, a .303 bullet in the face.
"Actually that's rather simple," Durnford-Slater said. "This came from the top, gentlemen, the very top, none other than Churchill himself: Hitler is quite mad."
"No, seriously sir," Booker started.
"No, soldier, I'm quite serious. He's got more bats in his belfry than Salisbury Cathedral, he's spent the entire war sending his boffins on fool's errands and effectively flushing money down the lavatory by the shipload. The first and foremost thing putting a bullet between Hitler's eyes would achieve is replacing him with a competent commander and as it so happens the Huns having someone as mad as a March hare in the top seat suits Churchill down to the ground. Anyway, that's quite enough chatter, it's high time that you three were off to the restaurant in Hamburg."
"Yes sir," said Algy, placing his hands on the other two Commandos' shoulders and vaguely wondering why Minerva – with whom he had recently been once again honoured by first-name status after a space of three years – had insisted that they prepare for the operation in a muddy field. "Let's get 'er done."
To his immense surprise it went without a hitch – Apparate onto the designated rooftop, lay down with omnioculars and Lee-Enfields, wait until the right face exited the designated cafe, mission successful with one round fired – and they were back in Largs not half an hour later, leaving nothing but muddy bootprints and a single .303 cartridge case on a rooftop to which their was no ladder-free access, and a Dark Lord laying dead in the street with the entire back of his skull blown off and his eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.
Omake: Be sure of your vicim and who's behind them.
Note: Second Omake in 'Odd Ideas' for 'Old Soldiers.' First was in Odd Ideas chapter 112.
Chief Warrant Officer Billings had joined the army just out of high school, twenty eight years later and he'd gone from scared seventeen year old recruit to the senior CID special agent on base.
"Figured out what happened to the guy from AAFES, Chief" one of his men announced as he walked into the office.
"The one that looked like he'd stopped a truck with his face? Enlighten me, sergeant." Not normally something that merited his section's attention, but there were other reasons he was interested in that particular individual.
"He tried hitting on the wrong girl, Chief. She told him to stop, he didn't."
"So she stopped him." Billings grinned, nothing made him happier than situations in which the designated victim was able to turn the tables on the perp.
"So two of her boyfriend's men decided to give him a lesson in manners, Chief. Said they didn't want the boss to get into trouble for murdering him."
"What's her boyfriend do?"
"Major in the SAS, Chief."
"Which would make the girl . . ." couple moments as he goes through his mental filing cabinet. "Damn. That's what we call a failure in the selection process."
"She dropped by earlier today, Chief. She gave me a file filled with directions on where to look to get the evidence we need to prove the embezzlement charge we've been trying to make stick. Seems she wants him somewhere safe from her boyfriend's wrath."
"Never struck me as the vindictive sort."
"I'm told he likes to be sure that old problems don't resurface, Chief. Some of Mad Jack's men have stories about him that would curl your hair."
IIIIIIIIII
Neville wasn't sure what was important enough for the Ministry to issue a summons for him to appear. It had been a while since he'd been in the building and years since he'd been there on anything but personal business.
The duty Auror at the front desk flinched when he put the prosthetic on the counter. Ravenclaw, couple years behind his, if Neville remembered correctly. Too young to have taken part in any of the late unpleasantness unless she'd been very unlucky.
"I'm going to need your wand, Mr. Longbottom," the girl . . . Auror, said nervously.
"No."
"I'm sorry, it's procedure, sir," she persisted.
"Tell whomever it is that I'm going back to my new wife and we're going to be taking a second honeymoon. Two an a half days after the first ended is more than enough time to wait." He grinned. "Be a while before we get back and I won't be answering any owls while I'm away, much too busy, you know."
"That won't be necessary." A weaselly man stepped from behind the fountain in what Neville was sure was supposed to be a poor attempt at a dramatic reveal. "Lieutenant Longbottom is here on official Ministry business. This way, Lieutenant."
Slytherin, eight or so years ahead, a toady bastard with no real life skills aside from sucking up to the biggest fish in the pond. Neville gave a mental snort, Percy had pulled it off better than the toad in front of him could ever ever dream.
Neville paused in the doorway to see who had demanded his presence. It was the usual, department heads and MWs, idiots who'd settled on government service after discovering they had not valuable skills to see them through life. The last face was a bit of a surprise.
"Minister," he said politely.
"It wasn't my idea to call you here, Neville," his sort-of mother in law said quickly.
"Alright, Amelia, who's was it then?"
"It was a group decision," the alpha rat said pompously.
"Why don't you get to the point and stop wasting my time." Ignoring the sputters of outrage, he took an empty seat and propped his legs up on the table.
To Neville's silent amusement, the man's expression didn't waver at the show of disrespect. Sign of a true politician, he thought approvingly, man would probably not bat an eye if he showed up to a meeting and found his peers without a stitch of clothing.
"Are you familiar with the principality of Ghore?"
"I am not."
"It's a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, found shortly after the great separation it has never suffered the indignity of having a muggle set foot on it. Two days ago there was a coup against the island's ruler, Prince Cyril."
"Why do we care?" Neville asked, wondering what made it special enough for anyone to care and how much money it was making the idiots around the table to make them in specific care.
"It is the sole source of several rare and consequently valuable potion ingredients, the usurper government has announced their intention to raise tariffs by some fifteen percent." The alpha rat gave what Neville supposed was meant to be a friendly smile. "As I'm sure you'll agree, it is absolutely unacceptable for a government to withhold or raise the price on such a vital resource. Many, myself included, would go so far as to call it an act of war. That's where you come in."
"Do tell."
"We need you to recruit a new unit of green jackets to take back the island and restore it to its rightful owner, Prince Cyril. We are prepared to-"
"No," Neville interrupted. "Lack both the ability to care about the situation and the ability to resolve it."
"What?" for the first time since the conversation began, the alpha rat looked unsure of himself.
"I don't give a damn that the island's new government his hitting your pocket books," Neville said slowly. "Even if I did, I don't have the skills necessary to take the island. For that, you need one of two people. The first is Jack Churchill."
"Impossible," one of the beta rats harrumphed. "Man's a squib."
"The second is Harry Potter."
The room went dead silent. In the halls of the Ministry, the name Harry Potter was treated with the same reverent fear that Voldemort had during the last two wars. There were several reasons this was so. The principal two were the fact that as a boy, he'd managed to take total control of the Ministry and had shown no hesitation to use violence to accomplish that goal. The second, and the one that those that walked the halls of power found most perplexing, was the fact that he had then voluntarily handed power off.
"It has been decided that he is much too ruthless to do the job properly. You would-"
"Do you know what that word means?" Neville interrupted.
"What?"
"Ruthless." He grinned. "Do you know what it means?"
"I know what ruthless means," the alpha rat said sourly.
"Lacking pity or mercy," Neville continued. "That's what you need, someone who can set aside anything and single mildly pursue their goal."
"Your answer, Mr. Longbottom! I will have it now or I will ask you to stop wasting the Ministry's time!" the alpha rat thundered.
Neville snorted in amusement, no one who'd faced combat would find the man anything but pathetic. "Alright, do a few things for me and I'll do this for you."
"What do you need?"
"The first is to get Harry Potter or Jack Churchill here. The second is to give one of them command. The third is to have either of them train the troops. The fourth is to have them plan the operation. The third is to have either of them order me to carry it out. Do that and I'll take your island and I'll even tie a bow around it before I hand it back. Fail that and you lot can all sod off. Questions?"
"Thank you, Neville," Amelia stated, the grin on her face promised pain for the plague of Ministry rats. "That will be all."
"See you around, Amelia." Neville kicked his feet off the conference table and stood up.
"And be sure to give Harry my best," the Minister finished. "Assure him that all is going well here."
"I'll do it right after I tell him all about the meeting we had here today," Neville promised, taking pleasure in the looks of fear that now adorned the rats' faces. "Toodles."