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"Boss, those two Middle Eastern businessmen who requested a face to face with you a few days ago are at the front security desk. Do you want to meet them down there or me to assign them an escort? Oh, and the Taiwan ambassador called, asking if you could stop in tomorrow morning for a breakfast meeting," Mary Jane Watson said after knocking on Harry's office door and receiving a verbal reply. She looked down at her PDA for a moment, then nodded. "Security's cleared them already, so that's a good sign, I guess."
"It is, and I think I'd like them to be led up here, MJ," Harry replied as he looked up from his work at the redhead. "As for the ambassador, see if you can schedule him for afternoon tea instead. If not, then see if you can find out what he wants to talk to me about before bumping it back to me."
"Gotcha. Don't forget, though, you've got that meeting with the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the public honorarium at the Arc de Triomphe with the King, the French PM, and Captain America tomorrow too."
"You can call me boss when on duty and Harry when not, but you still can't call him just Steve?" Harry teased then waved her off as MJ blushed. "I'm just teasing you, MJ. Go on, get back to work. And don't worry; I won't forget."
Watching as she left the room, Harry smiled for a moment. Some people made it a habit to rise to any challenge put before them, and somehow Mary Jane Watson had proven to be one of those people in her chosen field. How much of that was based on the fact that she and Wyatt Wingfoot were now bunking up together in a large apartment nearby was up in the air, but she had taken the series of revelations about who her bosses actually were quite well after the attempt on her and Paris's lives, and all of them had learned, in turn, to prize the young New York native's grasp of public speaking and interacting with the common man. Now she served as his, Ororo's, and Sage's primary secretary and public relations manager and seemed to be thriving.
Glancing down at the paperwork he had been working on, Harry sighed but put it away. It had been a concept Kitty and Dr. Druid had come up with to speed up work on enhancing the emergency port system runic arrays, the ones that would be fitted on all EDF personnel in space. Those were tricky, since they needed to hop the line between porting them away to save lives and not doing so for anything less than life threatening injuries or circumstances (like, say, a Raven blowing up around its operators). Space and space combat was a cold hard bitch and Harry was grimly certain even with magic people would die in battle. But these would be a major force multiplier.
Standing up, Harry stretched, walking around his office in the Magical Minds headquarters just to get some kinks out. Since he had come out in front of the United Nations, this had become his principal, public, headquarters. Indeed, it had become the head of his whole movement/operation, whatever the label should be for everything Harry was doing, had done, and was going to be doing.
Ororo, Harry, Sage, and MJ all had their own rooms within the suite that took up the entire topmost floor of the Magical Minds building. Ororo was rarely in hers save for meetings, busy as she was in Camelot, with Hela in the Savage Land, and with Pinoptes up in orbit. But it was still there for that purpose, and, beyond her work on creating the educational systems for Fortress Mars, Camelot and the Savage Land, she had stepped into the position of public second-in-command for this entire boondoggle Harry had started.
For her part, Sage practically lived in her room, which was actually larger than Harry's, though most of that was due to the massive super-computer that took up a third of it, which Reed had designed for Sage personally. It let her handle all the work she was given with ease while allowing her time to focus on helping to steadily enhance their connections with various spy agencies the globe over.
Sage's work also included having taken over most of what Harry had initially been doing on the business side of things, thankfully. Magical Minds and its smaller companies ran like a machine now. This included the burgeoning business of supplying raw ores from Harry's asteroid mining operations with Emma's help, Saab's ongoing restructuring, and Arc Technologies and its rapidly growing list of clientele and infrastructure.
This allowed Harry to concentrate on the political, magical, and organizational sides of things. Yet, even there, Harry had finally learned the magic of delegation and did so relatively well. A case in point being the creation of his own country, which had really started to take shape now, in the Savage Land and on Fortress Mars. But, once the initial Bill of Rights and Responsibilities had been written, Harry had washed his hands of the process of creating further laws. He was a hardcore personal rights person in many ways but understood that a lot of people didn't think that way and was willing to see what solutions other people came up with, so long as they realized that he was serious about retaining veto power in his hands and a few other matters.
But Harry had found that a lot of people simply had no idea what amount of work had to be done to create a working government, especially one that was growing out of a company and a military which were already largely in place and growing even faster. Still, he'd found Sage to be a help there too, along with MJ as a sounding board, Douglas Ramsay and his father, and several hundred lawyers hired from dozens of countries on just as many recommendations. He figured that eventually their arguments about verbiage and this or that governmental type would create what he wanted: a democratic monarchy in the line of what the UK had at the moment, but with a few more powers in the hands of the crown.
Although I still have to chuckle at how those lawyers all had conniptions about how major an impact easy access to Veritaserum will have to the legal side of things. There's no need to have lawyers involved in cases of rape or murder outside of how to phrase the questions asked once the perpetrator has been identified or even narrowed down to a small list. And many of them had declined his job offer when they learned that Harry would enforce the death penalty for rape and first and second degree murder, but enough hadn't to fill a large hotel.
Laughing, Harry set those thoughts aside and sat back down, picking up his cup of tea and heating it with a spell as he stared at the roof of his office ruminatively. A month tomorrow. It's been a full month since that first UN meeting, and so much has changed in that time. Yet, even so, there are so many things to do, and many of the problems we were dealing with then still exist now.
Even now Harry could only chuckle at how naïve he'd been to believe he could work with the UN as it was structured on something so huge as what he had been asking for. Numbers and shouting loudly won in the UN rather than reasoned argument, and the Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries, most of whom had seats in the UN, had reacted badly to the idea that they'd have to pay for the defense of Earth and that he wasn't going to be giving them any handouts that wouldn't help them meet that criteria. For many reasons, religious, economic, and societal, many of the countries had just rejected his offers outright when he was in front of the UN. So Harry had, after about a week of nonstop talking, decided to bypass the talking heads entirely to meet personally with the heads of their governments.
Russia shut him down cold, which Harry was very worried about. Worse, Russia's saber-rattling continued even now and was getting worse. They were making noises of reuniting with other Slavs, but that was just a sop to their own public opinion. But at least Harry and his allies were no longer alone in their concerns there. NATO too was getting worried, and the US and other NATO forces had moved in troops to respond to any aggression.
Of course, NATO doesn't know that Poland, Finland, and others have made treaties with myself and Doom, either. Although, they have been warned by Reed and me that aliens might be involved in Russia's growing mutters about needing 'elbow room'. If they believe that, though, that I can't say, even now. NATO's not been friendly towards me and mine for some reason, though I'm getting an anti-mutant flavor there.
But instead of meeting with each government in turn, Harry, with Sage, Emma and Hela's help, had conducted meetings like the one he had after the last Kree attack with the heads of countries from each continent and, from that, created five new organizations which he imagined would grow into seven in time. Each of them had a sphere of influence, working with the countries of those areas to meet the requirements he was asking each country to meet, tailored specifically for each. It would take a long time, even so, for many countries to meet those requirements, but it was a better way forward then a simple blanket demand had been.
The names each group had come up with, that was all them. And if they eventually grew to be miniature, local versions of the UN, that was fine with Harry. So long as it wasn't at gunpoint, Harry was willing to leave how the various nations went about getting him the people or resources they had agreed to up to the countries in question.
The South American Resource Union had, perhaps, the easiest time of getting up to speed for various reasons, mainly being that Harry had bluntly stated that, outside of mutant rights, he didn't care about their internal issues and wasn't going to make any further societal demands. Those countries also were used to feeling as if they were weak in comparison to foreign powers, and none of them had the history of fighting against such the Middle Eastern countries did, and had seen the lights in the sky from the last Kree attack. There had still been several dozen violent anti-mutant protests in Ecuador and Colombia and in Brazil, but not in Argentina or Bolivia.
SARU was led by Brazil and Nova Roma, and, for the most part, those countries had agreed to trade resources and manpower for defense. Building of recruitment and training centers was going full tilt in those countries, though the education and vocational levels of those countries varied. But some of the other resources his people needed but couldn't supply in space, in particular, food, for now—meats and such—were just as good. Because of that, two of the first ten Verdun space defense platforms which had come online had been stationed over the center of South America as a visible sign of what those countries had earned.
Alas, SARU did not include Mexico, which had refused to even talk to Harry or his representatives. Venezuela too refused to speak to him. SARU hadn't been able to make any inroads towards bringing them around. And Ecuador was something of a problem child.
The African Defense Organization was led by Wakanda and others, though Wakanda and its king, T'Challa, was the major power there. They were working with their neighbors to contribute numbers, but little in the way of resources outside of Wakanda's vibranium. Those men and women were entirely untrained for the most part, and a lot were entirely uneducated. It would be years, maybe even a decade, before most were worth the amount of cash and time Harry, Pinoptes, and Sage had begun to pour into their education and training.
Wakanda had an immense local tech base and was slowly becoming the center of what could become a modernization of the industrial and transportation capacity of the rest of that continent. But it was going to be incredibly slow, and it too had problem countries, like Somalia, Sudan, and others. Here, Harry had turned over to T'challa weapons, plans, and resources to bring any nation to heel who attempted to steal, invade, or otherwise get in the way of the modernization program, with all due force. No one had pushed beyond their own borders yet, but everyone Harry talked to about it were convinced that was only a matter of time in Somalia's case given its pirate problem. Sudan too would be an issue once it saw its neighbors starting to have better infrastructures and economies than it did. Uganda might become an issue as well, if its warlord decided to be even stupider than normal.
Harry and the Custodes had also been heavily involved in protecting mutants from one edge of Africa to another for the past month as the ADO attempted to get to grips with that side of things in conjunction with the retrieval team under Wendy (Stinger to her enemies). Some four thousand mutants of all ages had been extracted from various mobs and hunting tribes. But they had also clashed openly with Sinister's Mutant Liberation Front in low key skirmishes: no real, set battle. Most of them had joined the 'colonists' in the Savage Land, while many youngsters with more dangerous powers had joined the classes in Camelot.
But if Africa was a hotbed for violence, at least a large portion of Europe had matured beyond such. The European Union was the name that that organization had come up with and was led by France, Germany, and Italy. Many of those countries were actually starting to make noises about shifting the European Union into a permanent, broad governmental body rather than an organization to meet their treaty obligations with Harry and the EDF. Harry didn't think it would survive for long, but it was a step in the right direction.
In every country west of the Ukraine, the governments had been dealing with mostly peaceful protests, a lot of angst, and feet dragging. But with France on board at last and helping its other former shadow allies of Germany and Italy, that meant the largest players in the region were herding the others along decently well.
Hell, Germany just passed its first law stating that mutants were people under the law and therefore had all the rights of other citizens the other day, and already attacks on them have dropped. I'll take that as a win right there! The fact that work on the first Arc Generator in Germany had just begun was not lost on Harry, but he still took it as a win, hence why two more Verdun Platforms were stationed over Europe.
In contrast, most of the issues the Pan-Asian Alliance was running into were organizational, with education being just a slightly less irritating issue. With China and India moving together, none of the other nations were making more than vague noises about being against the requests in manpower and resources. India and China both had already earned their own Verdun platforms overhead. The others, though, just didn't have the educational or internal infrastructure necessary to meet Harry's requirements.
In Asia, again, the mutant question was a hot topic, and both Custodes and X-Men had been called in on missions there, once more running into the MLF. But in Asia, the carrot of educating the people who came forward to join the EDF and grants to their families to receive further education, plus pumping money into those economies, served well enough to get many over the anger of being dictated to by a foreign power.
But even in Asia there were problem children. Despite China telling their 'little neighbor' do go along with things, North Korea refused to have anything to do with the EDF or Harry's pro-mutant stance.
Of course, Harry dealt with many countries directly, as he had been for a while. Britain, China, and the United States were the most important of them, since all three were giving Harry what he so desperately needed over the past month: trained, educated naval men and women to grow the EDF beyond its current size. The US Navy was slowly downsizing its surface fleets, starting with two of its CATOBAR-equipped fleet carriers, their fleets added into others but not sent into mothballs. Those men and women had been added into the EDF, and now Fortress Mars was nearly fully manned, if not equipped. Fully half of the ships they had stolen from the Kree were now online and working up in various games. Even the Hydrogen Harvester was online, fuel flooding into the ships as they came online. Now we just need time to get their training and reeducation on how things work in space and the various systems up to snuff.
So, on the whole, Harry was happy with how things were going on the EDF front and the general trend of the whole 'Mutant Question.' Although, that last was now the chief source of his headaches when dealing with the world at large.
Father Garnoff and Nikolai had begun to lead a kind of Underground Railroad project effort to get mutants out of Russia, who still came down on mutants, treating them like they had the Jews before them. Only, in this case it's not largely beatings or seeing their houses burned out mutants have to fear, but death by bigoted mobs or conscription if their mutant power makes them 'valuable to the state.'
The Middle East was still something of a quagmire. The Mullahs in Mecca had taken to branding Harry "The Great Satan" and had even called for a Jihad on him and Magical Minds for their obvious worship of Shaitan. Luckily, most people weren't listening, and, even there, the United Arab Emirates and others, including Egypt and Israel, were proving more susceptible to his overtures.
Outright bribes, really, in many ways, but whatever works, Harry reflected, scowling as he remembered the list of names which had appeared in the book in Camelot from those countries only to go black nearly immediately. Harry had created a spell to transfer those names to another list, and it was growing quite long, something that he was quietly very angry about. But there was a limit to what he could do about it unless he wanted to pile up the bodies.
Elsewhere, the Reclaimers and the MLF fought each other and the X-Men out in a few cities in America, but they seemed to be based in different areas. The Reclaimers had their primary bases in the United States and Canada having grown out of the Friends of Humanity, while the MLF was based in Africa and Asia. Genosha, in particular, was becoming a hotbed of conflict from both sides, something Emma was personally watching over.
"Harry, I know I've mentioned Genosha before—the blackout they created a few months ago, pushing foreign business out," Emma had said, scowling as they all sat around a map of the world. "But there is something…off about it. It's nothing in the data. I've had Sage looking, and she can't find anything. Yet all my instincts scream that something is going on here! It came about too…too suddenly, the story about there having been an attempted military coup is too pat, and the rising tension is just worrisome in how quickly it's spread."
"I agree with you, love," Harry said, squeezing her hand. "And you're right, there's something odd going on there. But until we know what's going on, I don't want to send us into that morass. The MLF is too strong, and their opposition, too, for that to be a simple decision."
Worse, of course, was that the MLF, while not gaining in terms of numbers all that much, were still around, and so was its mysterious leader, Sinister. There, though, they were at least able to gain some information on the man himself, thanks to Sage and Destiny.
Flashback:
Sage had requested a meeting and had even come to Camelot to give her briefing. Normally she tried to stay away from Camelot and any other area with a high amount of background magic. It seemed to interfere with her powers somehow, making her twitchy and nervous for a reason they hadn't been able to devote enough time to figure out. But she had had to for this, because of her fellow speaker, Destiny.
Destiny was fading fast; everyone could see it. Her body might not have aged any more than it had since she and Mystique had joined Harry's faction, but her energy, and even her mind at times, had begun to go. Dr. Druid and Una both said it was simply age catching up to her, coupled with the strain of her powers finally breaking into her mind. And no magic could cure old age, save the elixir made from the Philosopher's Stone, but that was beyond Harry's knowledge.
But at the moment she seemed to have some of her old energy back. She sat up in her chair and looked around with bright eyes as she sat next to Sage, looking around what Harry had taken to calling his High Council.
Looking around at them all, she smiled wanly. "As some of you might know, but most do not, myself and Raven left New York and Magneto's employ not because we had decided we disagreed with his policies at the time, but because of an external threat to my life. Specifically in the form of a man we knew as Dr. Essex. He was a mutant we had the displeasure of meeting in passing during World War II, where he was working in Auschwitz, performing experiments on some of the prisoners."
Wordlessly, Sage input a command and an image taken from a Gestapo file popped up. Next to it were two more, a still-life painting and a color photograph marked to have been taken in Cambodia. Though the hair was different and the eyes differed in the painting, all three were very obviously the same man, which Destiny elaborated on by saying simply, "In my vision of him which warned he was after me, I saw him as the same age he was back in World War II, aged not a day."
"So we are talking about someone who's possibly immortal, a healing factor of some kind, I presume?" Harry asked, looking over at Steve and Logan questioningly, the reason for Wolverine's presence here, since he rarely left the Savage Lands these days, becoming clear. "Anything either of you can add?"
Neither of them could say that they had met Essex, but Logan said gruffly, "His healing factor might be better than mine is these days. I mean, I age, no matter how slowly, but it looks as if he doesn't age at all."
"Indeed. His healing ability could be better called regeneration, perhaps. I also know that he is able to use telepathy," Irene said, a shudder of revulsion going through her. "He can influence those around him to a certain degree, deaden pain, even force people to respond to his questions as if they came up with them on their own. We can also assume that he can hide himself from other telepaths, or at least keep their influence out of his mind."
Sage took over the meeting for a moment, showing two more images and a video. The video was grainy, looking like something taken from a security video of some kind, and was of a battlefield. It showed two men fighting one another: a middle-age man with a long coat and dark hair and Sinister himself. The man with the long coat tried to keep his distance, lashing out with energy attacks of some kind. But Sinister took a blast from the other man and kept on coming, smashing the man with a blow that sent him crashing through what looked like a concrete wall.
"Super strength as well. And if he has telepathy, then he might have telekinesis himself," Jean mused. "That's…a lot of different powers for one mutant, admittedly. But if he's that strong and if he believes in mutant supremacy like he seems to, why didn't he work for Magneto, or even vice-versa? Did Magneto know about him?"
Irene shook her head, as did Amelia Voight, who had been asked to join them just for this point. "Not to my knowledge," the latter supplied. "although if he worked for the Nazis, it's no surprise they wouldn't have been working together."
"I also do not know if he believes in mutant supremacy so much as the supremacy of constant evolution," Irene equivocated. "From what little Raven and I overheard when we tried to infiltrate Auschwitz, at any rate he believes humans are an evolutionary dead end. I believe mutants whose powers are not strong enough would be treated similarly."
"We also know that at one point he had a family in London," Sage supplied, enlarging the still painting where it hovered above them, the image supplied by the hard light system. "This man was known as Nathaniel Essex, and he was a contemporary of Darwin who was kicked out of the Royal Scientific Society for his immoral views on how evolution should impact the human race."
Sage allowed herself a small, victorious smile. "Someone tried to erase all records of the man, but I was able to discover that and the fact that he was married to a Rebecca Essex, but she divorced him for reasons I haven't been able to discover. I also found a newspaper article from the time which implied that someone was snatching up homeless and performing experiments on them."
Nodding, Harry leaned back. "So, we know his powers, and we can at least infer his goals and why he might have been willing to grab Jean." Everyone there nodded at that, various levels of anger showing at the idea. After all, Jean's children would be the sons or daughters (or both) of a powerful wizard and an almost equally powerful mutant, so could be seen as a excellent source of genetic material or something to experiment on, an idea that made Harry's blood boil. "The question is, what resources can he bring to the table?"
End Flashback
From there Sage and Irene had remarked about how some Nazi gold had never been recovered, how the man had been around for a long, long time, and that he had been working in the shadows for all that time. Whatever his end game was, no one knew, and, worse, they had not seen hide nor hair of the man, even with Mystique and Morph infiltrating the MLF. A planet was a very large place to look for a single person who could hide from telepaths and magic both, after all.
Harry had tried to find him magically, using everything from the simple Point-Me to more obscure rituals with Dr. Strange, even Gaea helping. But even the goddess could not tell them where Essex was. Something blocked her from finding him even though he strode her earth. No, unless they could find something the man had owned and treasured or some of his blood, there was no magical means to find him.
Despite that, though, thanks to Morph and Mystique they were building up a list of known mutants allied with the MLF and a feel for the group's resources. When it came time to really hammer it out with the MLF's big players rather than their expendable recruits, Harry and his team would be going in armed with that knowledge, an invaluable resource. Although the reports about Mystique seeing mutants which match some of the ones Cyclops told us were killed in the assault on the Vault is very worrisome.
But this was pure espionage work: slow, slogging, and, in the end, they just would have to wait for a break to go their way or maybe for some luck to turn their way.
So, with that in stasis and the EDF slowly becoming more independent of his day to day running of it, beyond the political issues, Harry had been able to concentrate on the magical side of things. For one thing, he had truly begun to train Illyana for three hours every morning. This actually led to a bit of an adventure for the Russian born sorceress:
As part of their weekly schedule, Melody, Illyana, and all the other students in Camelot went on a trip to the Savage Land, so long as their parents/guardians gave their permission. Harry was usually able to routinely go with them, making it part of Illyana's magical education since he had begun to take her magical training more seriously. One week though, Harry couldn't get out of a meeting with the German and Swedish ambassadors who had requested to speak to him personally instead of his representative to the European Union. This left it to Ororo to watch the kids with the other teachers.
Unfortunately for Ororo, Illyana had been feeling a little put out that day and, worse, bored yet full of energy at the same time. The meeting between the ambassadors was going to go all day, which had also cut into her time with Harry that morning. Piotr had also been busy with something for his girlfriend all day too. Thirdly, Hela had turned the tables on her again that morning in their ongoing pranking feud.
Finally, thanks to yesterday's lessons with Harry, Illyana had access to the library. As any parent or guardian of a highly intelligent child could tell you, access to a library is most definitely a mixed blessing at times. When the child in question is a magic user with access to a library with magic spells, that duality is magnified.
With Melody cheerfully singing to a few giant birds nearby and the other kids watching her or listening to the teachers explain to those interested some of the flora and fauna of the Savage Land and why it was important, Illyana had moved slowly through the crowd, away from her friend. After reaching the back of the group, Illyana concentrated, then attempted to use a spell that she had read about which apparently was one of the ones that Harry and the others made frequent use of, a notice-me-not spell.
She didn't have the movements precisely right, but she got incantation correct, or so the young Russian later supposed, considering she was able to leave the group. She'd ducked behind a tree nearby before looking around her excitedly and smacking her hands together eagerly. "It's time to go exploring!"
With that in mind, she headed out deeper into the un-cleared portions of the jungle, away from the group. Several minutes later she pushed through a series of low hanging giant vines, not noticing that she was passing through the field of the sonic disruptor stations that kept all of the larger animals out of the area around the tower and the rest of Harry's holdings here in the Savage Land.
Illyana's absence was eventually remarked upon by Melody, causing Ororo to turn away from where she had been explaining about some of the animals. Wolverine and his daughter Laura had helped with that portion, with much grumbling, admittedly, from Wolverine, and Ororo had hoped that it would be interesting enough to grab all of the kids' attention, despite the fact that it had been pouring rain the past three days in Scotland and this was actually the first time any of them had gotten out of the Castle. She'd even planned to let them all swim in the lake that formed the center of the Savage Land. A small part of the lake had been walled off for such things and, with enough adults around, including many of the locals of several tribes, it would have been safe.
At first Ororo wasn't worried. Illyana could handle herself, and, even if she couldn't, she had several dozen magically charmed items on her, just like the rest of the kids, thanks to Harry's paranoia. With those, Ororo doubted anything here in the Savage Land could harm the girl. Terrify her, yes, but harm Illyana, no.
However, when she questioned the other children closely on the last time they saw their companion, that made Ororo more worried. The area where she and the other teachers had talked about the plants was closest to the border of the natural Savage Land and the area claimed by Harry and his allies. With that information, she quickly left the children with the other chaperones, boosting up into the air.
By that point Illyana had cheerfully wound her way through the Savage Land, stopping and staring at one of the giant herbivores for a time before moving on. She found interesting animals who showed no fear of her, including a lizard the size of an iguana with a massive frill of gold, purple, and lime green. She climbed over rocks and ducked under massive, cool looking trees, always moving away from where she had begun with the cheerful confidence of youth.
At one point, after ducking under a tree that looked like a baobab tree but with different colored bark and leaves, Illyana stopped, a loud growl echoing through the forest from nearby. She turned to the left and was just in time to see a giant cat that she recognized as a sabertooth leap towards her.
Squawking more in outrage than fear, Illyana ducked to one side and thrust out with one of her hands, the jewelry on her wrist flashing with magic as she did so. That jewelry, a thick gold and bronze band, was charmed by Harry and Kitty with various spells. So when the tiger tried to pounce on where she had been a second ago, it found itself pushed up and away as if it had been hit by a battering ram of air.
It yowled in shock, then quickly shut up when the side of its head smacked into a tree headfirst. It didn't kill the tiger, but it certainly warned it away from this odd little human prey, and, after shaking its head a few times, it snarled once before twitching and moving away, its entire posture saying that it had just been playing and that the last few minutes hadn't happened.
"Hehehe! For all its size it acted just like a house cat," Illyana chuckled. Then she turned, skipping away.
Eventually she began to get a little tired. Standing on top of a bluff overlooking an awe-inspiring series of waterfalls, she sighed and looked around her before looking back up in the sky. "I suppose it's time to head back. I wonder if Ororo is already looking for me." Illyana sighed, knowing she was in for a scowling and possibly a loss of privileges. But in her mind it had been worth it. This hike had been fun, and she had been bored, darn it.
With another put upon sigh and a pout, Illyana turned back, only to stop as, without any kind of warning, a dinosaur around the height of a normal man sprang out of the foliage to one side. It was low slung with long back legs marked by huge, spur-like claws and somewhat prehensile claws on it's forearms, which were shorter but not so short as to be like a T-Rex, which Illyana had always thought just looked silly. The thing had a full mouth of large teeth, and it tried to clamp them down on her.
Another charm activated, covering her with a protective spell, and the dinosaur's attempt to clamp down on her stopped before it was repelled. Its jaws were flung so wide by the defensive magic there were the sounds of cracking and shattering bones, and it reared backwards, falling to the side, its jaw broken and all its teeth shattered. But, before Illyana could think the danger was over, another raptor burst out of the foliage nearby, its back claw lashing out in a cutting slash towards her.
This attack too bounced off her, shattering the raptor's leg and claws. But the impetus of this attack, unlike the first, pushed Illyana backward too, and, with a scream of shock, Illyana found herself knocked off the cliff. She fell rapidly to splash into the river, where she was rapidly grabbed by the current and pushed downstream.
Gasping, Illyana pushed her head out of the water, but couldn't work against the current, not even enough to get to the side of the river. This was one threat that she didn't have a specific charm for. After all, Illyana could swim perfectly well for her age and would always be around other people, and in the lake by Camelot there was no undertow to worry about. This left it to Illyana's own skills, and it was all she could do to keep her head up above water. She felt her back and sides smack into rocks with enough force to activate her protective charms until they simply ran out of juice, and she started to feel real pain, and with that came even more panic.
But just as Illyana's strength began to waver, she dimly heard a series of splashes. An instant later something soft and furry suddenly was under her feet, thrusting her backwards against the current. Another furry thing pushed into her side and began to thrust her to one side of the river and into a shallow eddy there, a twist in the river protected by several large rocks. Gasping and hacking out water, she clung to the furry thing, hearing a chittering noise now over the pounding of the water and her own heartbeat.
Opening her eyes, Illyana stared into a face almost as large as her own but very, very different than any human face. "Oh!"
The animal in front of her was larger than her, about half again her own height, perhaps, in length. Its face was wide with a short snout, whiskers, and black fur except for right underneath its chin, which was white. It had small, beady looking, but somehow kind eyes backed by small little flaps of ears, which seemed to be able to close down over themselves. Its fur was currently wet but felt soft, and it chittered at her.
She nodded at it and said, somewhat hesitantly, "I'm fine now. Thanks. Wow, I was not expecting that.…"
Around her she heard other chittering noises, and another heavy body pushed against her in the back. She turned in that direction and saw another creature, which she now knew to be an otter even though they were larger by far than any otters she had ever seen in any pictures, and their hands looked a little more prehensile too. She stood up at the second one's nudge, and the one in front of her moved to her side while the second one pushed her lightly in the back again.
She looked around, and found seven other otters of various sizes, including four that looked little more than children. There was also a huge male one who looked even longer in the body than Piotr was tall, its face and sides marked by scars.
It looked at her and honked out a distinctly amused sound before turning away, obviously leaving her fate up to the youngsters around her. Nearby she saw a few others only slightly smaller going back to fishing, making little noises at one another as they did so, but she couldn't understand them. "Darn it, if only I had Danielle here. She could maybe understand you all."
At the otter's nudging, Illyana sat down on a nearby rock sticking out of the water and watched them at their play for a time until the one she had found herself staring at before came over to her, pushing its head against her knee. "You want me to play?" she asked, then smiled and slid off the rock back into the water. The others all looked up at that, but Illyana had regained control of herself now and tread water there, going so far as to splash the otter in front of her.
For some reason she could understand with this one was saying, though it took her several minutes to realize what that meant.
The two of them were still playing when Ororo zoomed overhead, having followed another charm on a tiny clip on an earring that Illyana had almost forgotten about. Looking at the scene below her, Ororo sighed in relief and alighted down slowly so as to not spook the large clan of otters who had seemingly found Illyana, or vice-versa.
The otters all quickly moved away, barking in challenge and warning, except for one that was closest to Illyana, with the patriarch looking warily at the tall human. But Ororo simply nodded at them all and then smiled at Illyana ruefully. "I see you've had a bit of an adventure," she said, gesturing the girl over to her.
A few cuts and bruises that Illyana hadn't even noticed she had acquired in the river were quickly healed, and Ororo did the same thing for all of the otters nearby, who all looked down at their bodies and then chattered excitedly at one another. "I hope you've learned a lesson about not running away. Those charms of yours are supposed to be last-ditch defenses, not an excuse to run off like this. You do know you will be grounded when we get back?"
Illyana pouted, then pushed herself up, grinning before reaching down for the otter she'd been playing with, who barked happily, leaped into her arms, and then somehow crawled up her body to wrap itself around her shoulders, its weight making her grunt, given its size. "Well, if I'm going to get in trouble, at least I got something out of it! Ororo, meet Skipper! I think he's my familiar!"
This had led to Harry upping her training quite a bit, but with Skipper next to her, Illyana had surprisingly started to take her training more seriously. I Just wish I could convince myself it was because of her brush with danger rather than more…impish reasons, I suppose?
Beyond that, Harry had been working on bits and pieces of magical research and specific tasks only he could do. These ranged from being in space with Lorna and Jean, working on Fortress Mars to make it more livable, to using magic to help aid crippled veterans from the fall of SHIELD along with Ororo every Saturday for four hours here in Magical Minds. Both of them wished they could do more there, but unless they wanted to devote their time entirely to creating such 'miracles,' there was a limit to what they could, or even should, do. Even now, most of those who had been healed had their memories of how that had happened erased.
One exception to that was Dugan. He had been crippled during the battle, where he and his team of agents had been pinned down during AIM's assault on SHIELD. After Steve had told Harry where to find the man, Harry had quickly gone there and healed him before helping Dugan escape from the permanent care center he'd been dumped into. America's government understood that he hadn't been high enough up the food chain to have been tainted with the same brush as Fury and the others in command, but there was little they could do for a spine and missing limbs.
Harry had no such limitation, and, after healing him, Dugan had agreed to step into the chief trainer position for Wendy (AKA and her team of retrieval experts on weapons and tactics. Dugan wanted a break from the spy business, and training up an emergency/hostile environment rescue team like that was something he could sink his teeth into for a cause he could get behind.
Another exception to the use of memory charms was Charles, although in his case he was also not actually healed. He had finally followed up on Harry's offer, only for it to fail. Even with his spine healed, Charles couldn't walk. The master telepath and psychologist believed his inability to walk was now psychosomatic in nature and something he would have to come to grips with in time.
Beyond that, there were two projects Harry took on, one of which was for the pure, personal joy and desire to help someone dear to him: creating a magical array like the one he had given Rogue so long ago to allow Melody to think clearly. This was proving to be very difficult, but Harry felt he was close to a breakthrough now. The second was not entirely magical in nature, though magic would eventually be the means through which it was possible: space colonization and terraforming. The impetus for this crystallized in Harry's mind during a conversation between Harry, Reed, and Dr. Doom as they prepared to explore the solar system beyond Pluto.
"The phrase, 'all your eggs in one basket,' comes to mind very strongly whenever I stand up here and look down on Earth," Dr. Doom had mused, as he, Harry, and Mr. Fantastic stood on the bridge of the ship Doom had captured in the second Kree assault on Earth. Around them Latverian naval ratings and officers moved about their duties with purpose and confidence, a sign that won a brief nod of approval from their monarch even as he continued to sip at the wine Harry had brought along.
"Agreed. I hope to use this and other explorations to find disparate planetary bodies and figure out how hard it would be to terraform them to suit as second homes for humanity. I'd think about setting up a moon colony, but not only is that too close to home, but that would be a project and a half, considering the moon doesn't have an atmosphere," Harry replied, pouring a glass for Reed, who twitched but remained silent, something Harry noted with an internal eye-roll.
"You realize that I have already begun my own search for such, and that I will take it most poorly if you attempt to poach any such discovery?" Doom asked mildly, if forebodingly.
Harry shook his head. "Understood and respected, Your Highness. I would, however, think there is a limit to your means, if not your ambition. And colonization of that type serves everyone, just as Fortress Mars does."
While Doom chortled at the subtle dig, Reed nodded, moving over to a computer and popping up some planetary data. "Actually, I think we should start in the outer edges of the system. For one thing, our scanners are, perforce, detailed to spot incoming threats, not threats which might already exist out there. And, for another, there are so many questions about the Oort Cloud and the area beyond Pluto that we could answer."
When Doom nodded at that, Harry shrugged. "Gentlemen, this is a break for me. So long as we get away from our giant blue marble home and all the people on it who just know they have to talk to me, I don't honestly give a bloody shite what we do."
"Rough day?" Reed asked, as Doom, with a gesture, sent his crew moving, pulling the ship out of Earth orbit.
"Rough week. Politics, business, public speaking, and no rest for this weary soul to be found at home. Let's just say that Jean has been having mood swings and leave it at that. I've taken my turn in the trenches there, and now Ororo can take her turn."
"Not Ms. Frost or the Goddess Hela?" Reed asked, looking a little bemused. He had been somewhat uncaring of Harry's romantic entanglements, but the idea that his young friend had a harem of such immensely powerful, willful women was still something of an oddity to him. As was, to be honest, the idea that gods existed at all.
Harry looked at the rubbery scientist in shock. "Are you mad, man!? Emma has about as much compassion towards Jean's mood swings as she does the common man on the street, and Hela is many things, but calm and able to put up with someone else's mood swings is not one of them."
"Ah, a point, I suppose," Reed replied, wincing while, again, Doom chuckled in the background. His own romantic issues were proceeding as well as they should, and that was enough for him at present. For Reed and Susan, this was their second time on that adventure, and so long as they both didn't make the same mistakes as last time (and didn't have to deal with extradimensional entities attempting to steel Susan away) they would make it through this time well enough.
From there the three of them talked about what Doom wanted in space, what questions Reed was most interested in answering, and then, to Harry's amusement, the two super-geniuses started to take potshots at the regular scientific community back on Earth. Their opinions on specific scientists were hilarious to listen to, and the way they spoke about those scientists who worried about, 'messing up space as we have Earth,' was unprintable but certainly enlightening.
Within the Oort Cloud, Harry marked seven asteroids for especial mining operations, their ship getting readings from them showing they were heavy in certain rare metals. Hauling them in would be a nice project for a few EDF crews. A few others were marked by Reed as having unusual readings entirely, which showed they might have been from a proto-planet which had never formed.
One more find, though, had Harry step in as mobile peace keeping force for a moment. "It is not a planet!" Reed asserted. "Look at its orbit; its too elliptical and it hasn't cleared its area of space of small detritus! By the very definition it is not a planet!"
"A definition decided on arbitrarily by fools who thought that such a definition was important for purposes of pure nomenclature," Doom responded, a sneer in his tone even if it was not visible behind his mask. "That planet is patently massive enough to make its own gravity and thus shape itself into a sphere; indeed, it is denser and heavier than Pluto! If you think Pluto is a planet, than that, too, is one."
"I have never ascribed to the theory that Pluto is a planet either," Reed retorted hotly and, Harry felt, drunkenly. "Neither of them are large enough, nor are their orbits predictable enough. And again, look at their near orbits. That, at least, I agree with."
Harry held up a hand, getting physically between the two scientists as Doom looked to be ready to launch a energy blast Reed's way. "Gentlemen, is this really important right now, the definition of what we are seeing, I mean?" He waited a tick, then went on, his own words heavily enunciated so as to push past his own rather nice buzz. Jean had given him an exemption of his promise to not drink alcohol today, and it was quite nice to unwind a bit. "Rather, I think we should be looking at whether or not it is a material find, rather than a scientific one. Unless one of you can tell me something different?"
There were two grumbles at that, and Harry poured them all more wine. "So," he said after draining half his cup. "Any takers on what this, whatever it is, will be comprised of?"
It turned out there were a lot of light and heavy metals, but nothing really that stood out beyond that. So, while interesting, the find, the name of which they were still arguing about hours later, didn't matter all that much. Still, Harry wondered about it.
And, of course, since that first UN meeting there had also been the personal relationship side of things to consider, a single moment of which stood out starkly for what it meant:
At one point Harry found himself with a blessed night off, and, to his joy, he found that he wasn't the only one. Hela and Emma were both free as well on that cold, rainy night in Scotland. Jean and Ororo were both out. Ororo had spent the day with the younger students and teachers but was currently out with Steve, Ben, Piotr, and Betsy, for some reason, over in California.
Jean, on the other hand, was up in Fortress Mars, going over some plans with Carol and the design teams, with the implicit plan to bunk up there in the quarters they had all prepared for themselves. And, while it hurt Harry to think it, he was happy that she had decided to do so. Over the past month Jean's attitude had taken a turn for the worse as her body really started to show, limiting what she could and could not do. Physically, Jean was fine. Her body was handling the pregnancy about as well as any woman's could, according to Una and Amelia.
But emotionally was a very different thing. Worse, her powers had started to act up occasionally, meaning that Harry and the others were not willing to take a chance with her being out in public at all. This, in turn, had forced Mary Jane and a few of the others to step up and take her place in public events dealing with Arc Technologies and Saab. But Jean wasn't someone who took enforced idleness—she called it captivity, occasionally—very well, which added to her emotional turmoil.
However, those thoughts were not foremost in Harry's mind as he looked down at the recipe and then around at his items. "Traditional Norwegian dishes it is," he muttered, shaking his head. "Although, since I haven't had time to practice either dish, you'll forgive me if they aren't very good."
"They must be better than your first attempt at that first lutfisk you attempted, my Seidr man," Hela said with a laugh, taking the glass of wine that Emma held out to her. She sniffed it appreciatively, then took a sip before nodding in approval.
Unlike Ororo and Harry, Emma had never really tried to keep to the no alcohol rule that they had imposed upon themselves in a gesture of solidarity with 'the pregnant one.' Emma thought of that as so much foolishness, and Hela had never even made a attempt to join them in it. "It's a Cheval Blanc red from 1947," she said to Hela. "I understand it is supposed to be fantastic with meat dishes, although I will of course bow to your superior knowledge of the dish in question to make certain that it is worthy of the wine."
"Ouch. Pile on me, why don't you?" Harry muttered, smirking over his shoulder at her. "Although I do have to say that I understand where you're coming from, since Hela's right. My first attempt at traditional Norwegian food was nothing to write home about."
"Ah, being told I am right, a thing no woman can truly get enough of, but I must disagree with the rest of that statement. It was something to write about, in the obituary column," Hela replied lightly. "Considering that the fish had the consistency of tar and tasted of poison.…"
"The fish was supposed to soak in a solution of cold water and lye, something I've never tried before, and don't get me started on the preparation time," Harry replied with an eye-roll, turning back to his duties as chief cook.
With a shared chuckle the two women returned to setting up the table between them by hand, something Hela felt was necessary for some reason. As they did, they went back to their earlier discussion on what they had each been spending their time on.
Emma was personally having the time of her life working with Sage and Harry making deals, both public and back door, to bring in more materials for the EDF; pressuring different countries on pro-mutant rights; and, even more importantly, making deals to bring in the raw materials Harry was mining out in his various asteroid operations in various ways so as not to throw the economy of the world into a spin.
"Although," she muttered, looking over at Harry as she finished talking about a deal to bring seven-hundred thousand metric tons of nickel iron into China, "of late whenever I bring up that point with Harry, he simply smirks at me for a second before taking it seriously. Is there anything you wish to share with the class, Harry?
"Not if I can help it," Harry said with a shake of his head, though his voice had the ring of honesty to both ladies' ears. "Let's just say that some of the material we've found isn't going into the open market and leave it at that."
"That's the best answer I've gotten from him on that point," Emma said morosely as Harry quickly turned away from her glare to concentrate again on the food.
"Perhaps you're not using the correct…interrogation methods?" Hela asked, a sardonic smirk on her face as she looked Emma up and down. "I would be astonished if you could not come up with some means to get the answer out of him given your past crass comments and flirtations with both Harry and myself."
"Oh, I've tried that too," Emma said without any attempt at prevarication and no sign of embarrassment. "It didn't work. He simply smirked, said it was for my own good, and then, when I attempted to insist while we were busy in bed, did this thing with his tongue that.…"
"Yes, thank you, I have heard more than enough about his lingual skills," Hela hissed irritably.
"Hearing and feeling are two different things," Emma replied drolly, her tone ruined by the salacious look on her face as she looked Hela up and down in turn.
"But what about you?" she asked after Hela didn't rise to the bait. "What have you been up to? I don't think I've seen you in person for, what, two and a half weeks now? God, we're all to fucking busy, aren't we?" she ended morosely.
"Yes, we are, else I would have gone forward with my idea of going to some Althings in Norway and elsewhere," Hela retorted irritably. "But that simply hasn't happened, which frustrates me no end. But as to what I have been doing, I have been overseeing the Savage Land and its various groups and their interactions with the settlers, for one. Seeing to my own duties, for another, which are magnified now that I am on Earth and Earth itself is cut off from the rest of Yggdrasil and its various realms."
That had been a pleasant surprise, but had perforce caused her to redesign portions of her realm to house those souls she would normally not have had access to: those souls that would have gone on to Odin or Freya's halls. This had taken some time, since, in many ways, Hela was far more flexible than her realm and the magic within it. Oddly, Hela had also seen some of what could only be called seepage: non-Asatru dead whose souls found themselves within her realm. That was beyond bizarre, but thankfully Hela had been able to contact Death and had begun to solve that issue too. "I have also been looking in on how the process of creating Harry's new government is going."
At that Hela turned to glare over at Harry. "You really should be going back to a more hands-on touch with that, Harry. I have caught several attempts of the lawyers and their ilk to limit the power of your crown."
"No," Harry said bluntly, turning her down flat. "I'm no lawyer; I'm barely a revolutionary. I am a leader, admittedly, and I suppose I would hold my hand up to being a statesman at this point. But that doesn't mean I know how to really create a long term bureaucracy and governmental body. And I know about one of those attempts, Hela: the creation of a senate to oversee the further creation of laws and ordinances. I endorse it so long as everyone involved knows that I will retain veto power and nothing is done to take away from the fact that the EDF and the defense of the Earth will always have first priority in spending, followed by the educational system. And that I was serious about certain rights and the use of Veritaserum for capital crimes."
The two of them locked eyes for a few moments, but then Hela sighed and nodded. "It is not how I would be going about things, and I find many of the laws they are attempting to create repugnant in their pandering to those with scant drive and little ability. But if that is how you wish it to go, do not come complaining to me later when your government is not what you intended."
"As long as it works, expands, doesn't steal rights from people in the name of defending them, and doesn't run on a deficit, that's all I care about," Harry replied with a shrug.
Hela shook her head but then turned back to Emma. "In short, I haven't had much time at all to simply have fun. What little time I do have for such is spent in mealtimes with everyone here in Camelot or with Ororo and, at times, Jean in private."
"Are you fishing for sympathy, Hela?" Harry asked quizzically, looking over his shoulder at her as he finished preparing the first plate of thin, yet soft, bread, something like pita bread only not quite, turning and moving over to place it on the table between the three of them. "If so, you should be prepared for disappointment."
"No, I'm simply making a comment. And you'll note that I didn't mention anything about trying to figure out a way to hurt those Shadow-blighted bastards, wherever they are!" Hela growled. A few months it might have been since Harry and Emma had saved her, but the feel of those tentacles in her mind, the touch of their creatures' boots on her realm, still galled and horrified her.
This was made worse by the fact they still didn't have a means of striking back yet. For one thing, nothing they had done during her escape had actually hurt the Shadows themselves. Hela had been broken free of their connections, but that was a long way from actually hurting the ones who had ensorcelled her so in the first place. For another, while Harry might be able to get them to the Great Tree again, if they didn't have a way to actually strike at the Shadows directly they couldn't do anything to free her fellow Asgardians and would inevitably find themselves in conflict with Odin and all the rest.
"I understand your anger, Hela, but we can but wait for an opening," Harry replied with a sigh. "We haven't made any progress with freeing Sigyn from her stasis either, if you'll recall."
"And she hasn't been any help on either of those points," Hela said of the side. "We can't even free my mother's mind from their touch!"
"Fighting shadows is difficult: the brighter the light you shed, the more there are shadows elsewhere. I have a few theories, and Dr. Strange has a few more, but essentially, unless we can get back in to those realms without their finding out, we would be faced with a war on two fronts, mentally and physically. And, no offense to Emma, but I think I'd prefer to go into that kind of fight when Jean is at the very least recovering from her pregnancy."
Harry frowned, staring off into the distance even as his hands continued to stir the meaty stew dish that he was creating. "I have a theory that the Phoenix Force could possibly be a deadly element against the Shadows, but there's no way of testing it." Harry had tried to get in touch through Jean with the Phoenix Force on that point, but the entity had not responded.
"Let's change the subject," Emma said brightly, if a little sharply. "Perhaps to something with a solution we can actually work at rather than tilting at windmills?"
"Yes," Hela said, almost glaring at Harry. "Let's talk about these separate deals you're making with different countries. You're not going to demand the same type of aid from all of them? That smacks to me of a sign of weakness, almost, considering what all it might entail."
"No," Harry said mildly with one raised eyebrow as he set the soup down on the table. "It would be a sign of weakness if I had caved to the demands that I turn over control of the EDF to the UN or the demand for 'national units.' I didn't, and there aren't going to be. My officers will be chosen by me, with consultation with others and based on combat experience and general intelligence. The units will be composed of randomly assigned men and women with the needed skills, and they will conform to the EDF and its culture. A culture that I have taken from the British and American navies, true, but since those are the largest navies in the world and, inarguably, the most experienced and battle-tested, I don't see a problem there."
"Ah," Hela said with a nod, backing down with a faint smile. "I had been concerned about that last point, given some of the rumblings that I overheard from the South American contingent when we met with them last. On the other hand, you did follow my advice and went over the United Nations head eventually, so I will take that as a sign of your gaining wisdom, if slowly. Then again, councel is just that, for guidance and 'counsel.' One rarely meets the right course of action letting such dictate all their lives, and you certainly know the modern man better than I do."