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No matter how strong a government's control of the reins of power is, there will always be internal threats. Of course, if the government was truly despotic, any opposition had to be very clandestine and circumspect, even more so when the ruling government was riding high on a wave of success. This was made worse, in a country like Russia which had not too distant memories of gulags and political opponents being jailed at the slightest provocation.
But now that Russia was facing a full reversal on nearly every front, as that news slowly trickled out to these objectors, cracks began appearing in the enforced governmental solidarity within a few hours. This was shown in a meeting taking place in Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in the Russian Federation.
"Are you sure you weren't followed?" asked one man, who finally stopped pacing, much to the relief of the other men in the room.
The man he spoke to, like the speaker himself, was a representative in the Duma, the Lower House of the Federal Assembly of Russia, and had been the last one to arrive. Now he smiled thinly at the pacer. "I am positive. Even our closest friends have trouble telling me and my twin apart. We have used that and this method to ditch our tails, or, in his case, his wife, numerous times."
There were some rumbles of laughter at that from the other men in the room, but they faded quickly. For a moment the room fell silent, all of them nursing large glasses of vodka or some other heavyily alcoholic drink, such was their need after the last few weeks, despite it being only around seven at night, local time.
Present at this meeting were three members of the Duma and two representatives of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Assembly. Each of them represented six or seven others who were of like mind to the men here but who were unwilling to go beyond simply talking about their current troubles.
With them was also Yekaterinburg's chief of police. He had been brought into this quasi-conspiracy by necessity, the better to keep the Federal Security Service from finding out about the meeting. Not that meeting like this was itself illegal, but such was the air of politics in Russia today that any attempt at even constructive opposition was bound to bring down a nasty response. That had been going on long before the war actually began, but even the the men present here hadn't realized how bad it might become until it was too late.
Yet, even with that, they and their allies in the assemblies knew that Russia was no stranger to oligarchs or tyrants. Such things would pass, and Russia would endure. But this war, if what my agents in the military are reporting is true, this war makes no sense, nor does the way we've gone about it, thought one of those men, a man named Alexei. He said so aloud, looking around at the others and leaning back, sipping at his vodka and crossing his legs as he put them on the table in front of him, the picture of a man at his ease, though his eyes were hard and narrow as he looked at them all. "What do your sources tell you of the way this war is going since that blasted King Winter weapon was destroyed?"
King Winter was the term the Russian government had used to sell the idea of having weaponized winter and used it against their enemies. All the men here had been very concerned about that and had doubted that such a weapon, one that effected so much of the world's ecosystems, could ever be 'turned off' as easily as the president and his cabinet had implied. And even for Russia, the results of an endless ice age would have been catastrophic.
"Much the same as yours, I have no doubt," another Duma representative confessed. His name was Konstantin, and he was the youngest one there by a good seven years or so. He was also a former military man and had retained a great number of military contacts when he went into politics.
"Our air forces on the European continent are just gone, wiped out," he went on bluntly. "We still have air forces in Asia but transporting those jets to where they could be of use is going to take a lot in terms of logistics, a logistical flexibility we no longer have. The so-called Allies have been on the move all day, gentlemen, and with their superiority in the air, I do not think we can stop them short of the borders."
"It is worse than that," said another man. His name was Leonid, and he was actually one of the most well-placed of all of the people here, having formerly been on the Federal Assembly's oversight for internal affairs. He no longer retained that position, having stepped down due to ill health a few months ago, but there was nothing wrong with his mind, and a lot of his connections were still in place, both within the government and without.
"Belorussia is very close to openly revolting, gentlemen," he went on calmly. "They were not pleased to be used as a jumping-off point for the invasion of Poland and have seen the majority of their local military forces ground under in this war already. I have it on good authority that if the president tries to order up the reserves, Belorussia will not only not obey, but the reserves to be brought up there will take up arms against any attempt at enforcing that order, while reaching out to the Allies, and Poland in particular, for peace talks. No one there wants to face Captain America in battle or the implications of doing so."
There were some grunts of humor at that, but there was sober reflection too. While he was primarily a symbol of Americanism, the 'Mom's apple pie, baseball,' and all that traditional 'American way' crap, Captain America remained a symbol of…well, good. The good fight, the righteous war, the human way. Even among Russians that kind of sentimentality was powerful, especially after he helped the Red Guardian in World War II against the Red Skull, Baron Strucker, and the Master Man and their armies for a time before the Allies launched their own invasion of Europe. When he had shown up again, alive after so long, even Russia had been surprised and elated at the return of such a hero. To face him on the opposite side was telling to the common solider, and even these men, jaundiced politicians all, were not immune to that.
"Why was the war even launched?" asked the police chief, scowling. "That is a question that a lot of people at the municipal level have been asking, as we have been dealing with numerous calls for more information and a growing call for peace, up to parades and rallies. We have asked numerous times for some level of compromise, but all we get from the government is an order to suppress any such."
He let a small sneer cross his face then. "We see it in the news, we see these stories about our fellow Slavs in Poland, Finland, the Ukraine, and so forth being abused. We see it, and we know to take it as half-truths at best, a return to the Stalin way of conquest at worst. Why?! What could possibly be worth this, making an enemy of the rest of the world, launching our armies like so many daggers at our neighbors' throats, using that cold weapon! I do not mind telling you, gentlemen, that that King Winter thing terrified me, and I am glad it has been broken."
"That is the odd thing," said Leonid, pushing his small, spare, wire glasses up his nose as he spoke. "As far as common military men go, there has been no actual objective to any of our attacks beyond the one in Asia, which succeeded. Instead the army groups were simply ordered to attack across the border with no clear goals or rules."
"For my part I heard some strange reports about mining equipment and field engineers on the Finland front being seconded to some strange top-secret project. One that was separate from the military and the military command structure," said another man, who came from Leningrad. "Is that not strange? And the Omega clan were also removed from the regular military command, but they have not reported in since yesterday. And I recently learned that several of my old friends who looked into that have, since, themselves gone missing."
"What about the tunnels?" asked one of the men who had been silent since he entered the room. Aleksandr was a current member of the Oversight for Public Works. "Do we know where they came from? They were reported in the news, but that was the first I've heard of it, and I've seen no reports about how they were created and when. And I have been threatened to stay silent instead of searching out further information."
"What is going on in this country?" groaned Konstantin, leaning back in his chair and putting a hand over his eyes wearily. "Are we really back to the days where one hand doesn't know what the other is doing, and either could be executed at the drop of a hat?! There is a reason why we stepped away from communism, my friends!"
"The president and his cabinet," Leonid said musingly, while Aleksandr nodded next to them. "They are after something, and perhaps the generals all understand the importance of whatever they were after. But whatever it is, we didn't seize it, and we are now retreating on all fronts. This is worrisome."
"Worrisome! Please!" the police chief barked a laugh. "Worrisome is finding that you have bought watered down vodka rather than the real thing. This is an unmitigated disaster."
"Yes," said Aleksandr, his voice calm. "It is. But what are we going to do about it?"
Leonid shook his head. "What can we do about it at this point? Nothing, nothing until we know what's going on. And even then we'll have to figure out some way of getting the word out. We are all known as opposing the war, and even now, with the war turning against us, that information has yet to reach the public where it could defend us. Our positions are very tenuous."
"That is the problem of being a state in which the state runs every media outlet," said one of them.
"Bite your tongue. If we allowed for free press, we would be no better than the Americans or the British or, heaven forbid, the French!"
There were some chuckles at that bit of humor since most of these men did agree with the fact that the government needed to be the one running the media. Media outlets attacking the government or invading people's personal lives was something no one wanted to see, if only because that last was a prerogative that should be reserved for the government.
"Nonetheless, what do we do?" asked the police chief.
"We look for clues; we push for more information on how the various fronts are doing. We need concrete things: numbers, wounded, objectives taken or lost. We grind the fact that this war didn't really have a goal as far as we can tell into the rest of the Duma's faces until they are forced to agree with it. Now that we are losing, we should make headway. After that, we will see."
OOOOOOO
Harry blasted through the air so fast that his passage would have made a jet look slow, yet he was somehow not leaving an audible boom behind him. When he thought about it, Harry put this down to the fact that he was using magic to propel him through the air, and magic, at its very bedrock, was supposed to defy natural laws as most people understood them. At the moment, however, his thoughts were not on his passage but on the events of the day, his mind burdened, almost weary, and not even with the revelations about the Dire Wraiths and their quisling human allies. No, what Harry was thinking about, brooding about, really, were his own actions earlier that day.
It wasn't every day, after all, that you became a mass murderer in the space of single afternoon. I know that it had to be done intellectually, but emotionally is another matter. It had been Harry who had made the call that, to force Russia to the negotiation table, the Russians had to be shown they could not win. They had to be dealt a turnaround so abrupt and violent, and further, so visible to the masses, that there would be no chance they could come back from it or hide what had occurred from the Russian public. That didn't make it any easier to stomach the fact that Harry had coldly decided to annihilate several thousand Russian soldiers who, from their own perspective, were just doing their duty.
As Harry sped over the Mediterranean, his thoughts were interrupted in a most pleasant manner by seeing Ororo in the air in front of him, having somehow figured out his route from the secret base near Stalingrad. Of course, this actually didn't take much planning on Ororo's part. She had simply drawn a line between where the Dire Wraith's headquarters for their magical assault was to Genosha, off the coast of Africa.
Now she smiled at him, and Harry found himself slowing down automatically. The two of them came together, linking hands as they flew through the air for a moment together, making light loops around one another. Ororo then leaned in and kissed him, and Harry smiled against her lips, feeling his earlier mental weariness leaving him. Being around Ororo somehow reinvigorated him mentally and physically in a way that absorbing so much magic from the Planetary Soul Constrictor had not been able to. "I love you, my lady," he said aloud as they pulled back from the kiss.
Ororo smiled winsomely at Harry before kissing him once again, then pulled back. "I know. Gaia also told me you had turned down godhood again. God Potter: it doesn't have a very good ring to it, does it?" she quipped before becoming serious. "Still, we have come to know Hela, so we know gods are not, technically speaking, all that godly."
That was a bit of an understatement considering that, of his current lovers, Ororo was the one who was closest to Hela. The African born weather witch viewed the Asgardian goddess of Death as another sister wife, even if they hadn't actually slept together.
Harry winced a little. "It's true, I suppose, that gods like the Asgardians aren't all that different from people like you and me. However, there is a difference between that and gods like Gaia and that magic one, Balthakk. Or gods like the Vishanti, who Stephen calls on for some of his magical spells. When this came up after I absorbed Balthakk's powers from his gem, something told me that the change would be much more profound than simply becoming an Asgardian would be, for example. You know how I became stronger and faster after absorbing the yellow gem's power, and I can tell I've gotten a similar power up now. But there was a moment back then, and another one just now, when, when my emotions didn't register, when I could feel what I would term my humanity slipping away."
He fell silent then, scowling and looking away. "I am afraid about how it would change me to make that leap. Would I become like Hela and the Asgardians, powerful but, generally speaking, still human? Or would I become like the gods of magic are supposed to be, omniscient in their sphere but disconnected from everything? Forced into separate dimensions, only able to interact with this world through avatars and creations like the Juggernaut?"
Turning back, Harry let his arms, which had been around her Ororo's shoulders, shift down her body to rest on her hips, pressing their bodies together as they slowly revolved around one another in midair, staring into Ororo's eyes. "I want to hold my and Jean's children as a man. I want to be with you as a man, have a family with all of you, give our children a home as a man. No matter how many other demands on my time I might have decided to take on," he said with a chuckle. "I want to do it my way, not be forced into a, a preexisting mold by the universe."
Ororo smiled at that and then leaned forward and kissed him ardently, putting all of her emotions into the kiss before slowly, rather regretfully, leaning back. "I am not arguing your decision, my love. I just wanted to make certain you understood why it was a good idea," she said, turning back to the conversation as if her kiss had not happened. "Worship is not all it's cracked up to be either. Hela and I have talked about it. The God System, she calls it, a system of worship and belief feeding the gods' power to a certain extent. But at the same time it makes even her fit a certain mold. Hela can shuck it off when not dealing with worshipers, but, as she has dealt with worshipers since coming here, Hela's found it somewhat constraining."
She leaned back out of their embrace to gently poke Harry in the chest. "And she has a very specific portfolio, a specific task and place in her pantheon, one which she was born into. You, Harry, would be ascending to godhood. I don't know what would happen to you because of that, but the best we could hope for would be that you would be forced to become what Gaia called once a Sky Father, a male head of a Pantheon."
"And while I can see you and the others being goddesses to my god rather easily, being the big head in the sky doesn't really interest me," Harry said dryly. This caused Ororo to roll her eyes, smacking his chest with one hand lightly, though she was smiling as she did it.
But before she could reply verbally, both of them felt a change in the air around them. Everything seemed to stop as a single moment was stretched out to infinity, the feel of the wind around them halting and the sound of distant birds stopping, as below them the Mediterranean slowed to a stop.
A moment later the lady Gaia stood there, clad in a new guise, one that took both Harry and Ororo aback, causing them to stare at her in shock. She smiled at them, bringing the feeling of spring into this endless moment over the Mediterranean: the smell, the feeling, almost, of green grass underneath their feet, birdsong, and the blue sky above distracting them somewhat from her new form.
And when she spoke, Gaia didn't seem to notice their shock, instead addressing her words towards their current conversation.
That was the sort of feeling her smile gave them both, and Harry could feel his weariness, what bit of it Ororo's mere presence hadn't dissipated, disappear entirely. "You are wise beyond knowing, Harry Potter," she said, one finger tapping his chest and then Ororo's lovingly. "You would indeed become a god of magic. There is no place within the local system as created by He Who Stands Above All for another Sky Father."
Then she laughed gaily, twirling away to put a tiny bit of distance between the three of them, her bare feet kicking off the air underneath while creating more of that green grass smell. "But if you keep pumping me full of vitality like this, Harry Potter, I will force you to take responsibility!"
Since Gaia was currently wearing the form a teenage girl, perhaps about fourteen or so, that caused Harry to hold up his hands as if warding away a disaster, while Ororo burst out into giggles. Her body type was that of a hearty farm girl with a bit of the milkmaid archetype thrown in. Her skin was tanned to a light brown color, and she was wearing a pair of jeans over wide hips with a t-shirt that strained to contain her chest. This was so removed from her normal matronly appearance that Ororo simply had to ask, "Lady Gaia, why do you look like…um, that?"
Gaia laughed and pointed at Harry. "Because of him! What do you think I meant when I said I would force him to take responsibility?"
At that Harry gulped, looking over at Ororo, who was also looking at him speculatively, but thankfully with the gleam of humor in her eyes as Gaia continued. "As I said, you pumped me so full of your Harry that I feel younger and more vibrant than I have in millennia." She sobered slightly then. "But because of that power I was able to reverse the impact of what would otherwise have been an extinction level event."
At Harry's look of shock, Gaia waved her hand airily. "Oh, not for you humans, but you are not the only species I have given birth to. No, the cold was worse for animals, ranging from birds to bugs and small animals. The lizards and snakes, in particular, were hard hit, and despite my best efforts I know we lost at least fourteen, maybe as many as thirty-six different species of bugs and reptiles combined thanks to the cold. Still, because of the added magic you pumped into me, I was able to keep hundreds of species alive that would otherwise have died. The assault of winter the aliens launched against my body has far had far-reaching consequences, much of which Ororo and I will be busy trying to put right for days."
Ororo nodded, moving past the surprise of her goddess's current physical body for a moment. "Even now, half of my attention is concentrating on that. I won't be joining you in the combat against Sinister or his people."
"You don't need to," Harry said with a shrug, his hands flickering with all the lights of the rainbow for a moment. "Even if my current power up turns out to not be enough for some reason, Hela will be along with the others shortly. I think at this point we are done with Russia. We can leave Steve to help on that front with his team while we turn our own attention, the Custodes Mundi's attention, to Sinister and putting him down like the dog he is. Still," he went on with a sigh, "It's depressing to hear you'll be busy with that. I hoped after Sinister was dealt with all of us could take a well-deserved few days off."
"Don't be a child," Gaia said sternly, her young-seeming form not at all matching her current tone. Indeed, it was rather jarring for both her listeners. "The battles might be over by that point, but that does not mean your work will be finished. And you know that. Wallowing in self-pity does no one any good."
"I wasn't wallowing," Harry said primly, looking away. "I was… I was simply dipping my toe in the pool of self-pity, certainly not wallowing there," Harry said, trying to look offended and failing.
This caused both Ororo and Gaia to laugh, and Harry smiled back at them, his earlier morose attitude over having basically killed so many people in an afternoon leaving him for now. It might come back in the dark of night, but for now he could set it aside as the necessity it had been.
"But do you need more magic?" he asked Gaia. "You were saying that it helped, and I think I could give you a bit more and still have near to full reserves when I face Sinister."
Gaia laughed gaily once more, shaking her head before running her hands down her teenage body as she grinned at him. "Are you so eager to thrust your magic into my body again?" she asked coquettishly.
The mix of her current teenage body and the knowing, almost sinful, look she was giving him caused Harry to stutter a moment before shaking his head and once more holding his hands up in surrender. "I'm just going to stop now."
That caused Gaia to laugh again. "No, Harry Potter, I do not need more magical power. At this moment all I need is time and attention, and as a goddess I have both. Ororo's attention on the weather patterns will allow me to handle everything else that needs to be done to keep things going." She then sobered, her tone and face showing a new level of seriousness. "But I did not come here only to reiterate what you already sensed somehow, but to tell you that you are dangerously close to crossing a line, whatever you do."
She frowned, pouting almost as she raised a finger to her lips in thought. "The world as we know it, o,r rather, the universe, is no longer young. It could not sustain a creature who embodies as much magical power as you were about to become without straining. There are rules that we all must follow; the system exists to keep gods from affecting the physical realm much around them. That is why my ability to affect even my own ecosphere is constrained, why I was so delighted when Ororo was born and then again when she became my chosen champion. You would be, as I said, forced into the mold of a god of magic.
"Emotions would become a distant memory, your connections to this world as Harry Potter, the individual, would be severed. Oh, what you have done would remain, and people would know you and your deeds. In that manner you would be well placed to be worshiped as a new god of magic, with thousands of believers worldwide. Indeed, you would probably have to fight the other gods of magic for a place because your ascension would force them aside. And whenever you won, you would become stronger, but more disconnected from the material plane, from the wants and desires of a human being. Magic is tricky like that. What you call magic is basically the stuff of chaotic change on the molecular level changed into energy."
Gaia paused then before reaching forward with one hand to grab Harry's chin, holding his gaze with her own. "But, Harry Potter, you have denied yourself godhood more than once now. Be very careful. The system exists," she repeated her earlier phrase, "and it does not like anomalies. Keep your power merely to that of a regular god like young Hela, and you will have no issue. Keep it at its current level, and you will be straining the limits of what is allowed but can get away with it, for now, much like that mad Titan you fought gets away with being as powerful as he is. But let it rise further than it is now, and you will no longer have the option to bow out of this 'great honor.'"
There was something in Gaia's tone, and Harry blinked, cocking his head to one side as he looked back at her thoughtfully. She seemed to realize that she had given away a little too much there and shook herself, smiling at him. "Remember that, Harry Potter. Until next time." With that Gaia's presence disappeared, and the stretched out feeling of the moment evaporated with her, leaving the two lovers flying on together over a Mediterranean that was once more moving and alive.
"Well," Harry said after a moment, forcing his tone to be light, "it's always nice to have my suspicions confirmed, anyway. But can we turn to more practical matters now?" The idea of being separated from his life here, not just his physical form, but his life with the others, his connections to the physical plane, terrified him something fierce. But, at the same time, Gaia had mentioned Thanos, and Harry knew there were other deific powers out there which were not themselves gods, like Galactus. Perhaps, perhaps there is another way forward there, to have the power of a god on that level without being forced into the mold. But it is something I need to examine very, very carefully and at length.
"What can you tell me about the war?" he asked aloud in an effort to move past such thoughts. As he had been busy with Hela and infiltrating, and then before that devastating the Russian Air Force, Harry had not kept up with the events of the last half day or so. In fact, he had lost track of time entirely somewhere along the line, shifting from one time zone to another, a trend that continued now with this cross-continent flight.
Despite his light tone, Ororo could easily tell Harry was rattled at the moment and went along with the change of topic with a certain amount of eagerness herself. "Since you are heading into the small island, I shall begin there. T'challa is once more in charge of that front, but there is scant headway being made there. This new telepath that Sinister has somehow spun out of whole cloth is forcing our forces to fight a defensive war, even with Emma and Charles both aiding them. As I understand it, defending minds like that is far tougher than attacking them."
"Defense is often harder than attacking in a siege. You have to be strong everywhere, whereas the enemy only needs to feint to one side, then attack in another direction. Plus, they can coordinate with the rest of Sinister's forces to take advantage of any headway made on the physical plane," Harry said with a shrug. "But so long as we're not losing people or our foothold on Genosha in the port, we can reverse that trend easily."
"The fight in the Caucuses has bogged down, literally. Mud and lack of roads and destroyed bridges is slowing everyone down as we fight through territory the Russians took in their initial push. Every general I've talked to says it will be days be before the Russians get over their shock at the sudden reversal, and there's no sign of our control of the skies being challenged thanks to you and your efforts, but both their retreat and the Allies' push after them will continue to move slowly."
Harry nodded grim satisfaction at that.
"The SAS and other special forces are to be dropped behind enemy lines tonight. Their missions, as far as I have been told, is to disrupt the logistics and communication lines in Russian territory as well as perform decapitation strikes on enemy generals. The one mission I know the SAS has that the others do not is to try and find every tunnel and tunnel entrance they can."
"Ah," Harry winced, thinking for a moment before nodding. There wasn't anything he could do about calling those special forces back, and, despite the fact he felt the Russians as a while had been duped into this war, they were still at war for now. Generals and others were legitimate targets. "Did the warning about the Dire Wraiths and how badly they've infiltrated the Russian government and military get out?"
"Indeed, but are they bullet proof?" Ororo asked.
"Not unless they have time to throw up a shield, I don't think," Harry said.
"And if they do, they reveal themselves to the humans around them," Ororo said. "You did right in leaving most of the people at the Institute of Parallel Thought alive and having those two guards involved in the questioning of Dr. Volkh."
She shivered, shaking her head, and Harry looked at her quizzically. "Gaia told me that if any human had been involved in this, she would have demanded their soul from whatever religion they believed in. And Hela's report said that this man was a communist?"
"Something of the sort. A communist like Stalin rather than those who came before him, although in terms of their views on religion there isn't much difference: religion is the opiate of the masses or whatever it was."
"Exactly. Thus, he will have no defense when he dies. Gaia will claim his soul, and for what he helped to cause…" She shivered. "We have only seen Gaia in her nominal guise as the mother. But winter too is her rightful domain, and she can be as cold as the Arctic and just as unforgiving."
Harry nodded, stroking his chin thoughtfully, though he had scant sympathy for Volkh. Instead his mind was on the rest of what she said. "I think it's time to unleash Sage," he said with a grim little smile. "Pull her off of the logistics aspect and tell her to assign everything she's been doing in terms of the EDF or Magical Minds to someone else."
Since joining them, Sage, or Tessa, had taken on more and more of the day to day organization of the various aspects of Harry's growing power base. The fact that she didn't need sleep and had a mental capacity greater than most computer networks helped immensely. In return Harry made certain she had everything she wanted, from the latest greatest computers, to hard light technology, to installing her favorite coffee and donut store in the first floor of the Magical Minds Headquarters—which had an overall positive effect on his workers' morale, if not their waistlines—and she was easily the most highly paid individual on his roster. Even Ororo and Jean were not paid nearly as much money, though they had, technically speaking, more authority.
"Tony has his own JARVIS and the actual humans involved now on the ball in terms of the logistics side of things, right?"
Ororo thought for a moment, then nodded. With Hela and Harry out of communication, it had fallen to her to communicate with their allies, and she had taken that aspect on after retreating from her role in the aerial assault up the Caucuses. "Except for the hover retrofits. Those were bogging down, but I believe that Dr. Doom has agreed to send construction droids into Poland and then sent down a shipment to Turkey. Those will have cost the Turkish government and the rest of the allies quite a lot, and Georgia and Azerbaijan will probably be in his debt for decades after this is over given their low GDP if he decides to release them to help rebuild after the war. But yes, we can do that. What do you want Sage to be doing instead?"
"I want her to attack the Russian propaganda machine and its news networks. Russia has never been an open society as America or the UK would understand the term, so the government was possibly able to keep the sudden reversal from the news, and, more importantly, we know they were able to feed the public enough bunk to get them behind the war in the first place. But the Russian people need to know about what is going on in the war, about why it was begun, and about the Dire Wraiths. They need to be turned against the war in no uncertain terms."
Ororo frowned but nodded thoughtfully. "We don't want to invade Russia."
"Exactly. We can't conquer Russia. Defeat it in war, yes, and we've already begun that process. But conquer it? No. Russia would have been difficult to invade at the best of times. With all the tunnels that they used to ship troops to the front without anyone being the wiser, that aspect has been tripled. We can't take the time, effort, or pay the lives to invade Russia, and, besides," he said with a sigh, "the common man on the street doesn't know anything about the reasons behind this war, doesn't know why it was launched. All they know is what their government tells them. They no doubt know to take that with a grain of salt, and I'll wager that even in the government there were a lot of people against this war. Once the secret of the Dire Wraiths are forced out into the open, I hope to see those, call them those moderates, taking a center stage."
"It will be very hard to keep that from becoming a witch hunt," Ororo warned before nodding. "Still, I'll pass that on to Sage."
"Further," Harry went on, "I want to split up the teams more now that the Winter Guard have been mostly eliminated. I'll radio Danielle, Lance, and Wyatt to pull back. We'll second them to the Fantastic Four for their hunt for the Mole Man's impostor. Remove him, and the Subterraneans won't fight further in this war. Maybe afterwards we can even negotiate with them.
"Magma, Psylocke, Husk, and Colossus should join the team already in place in Genosha. I'll tell Thunderbird that it has nothing to do with his leadership, though," he said with a scowl. "He's done the best he was able to under trying circumstances, but if nothing else, we need more firepower there to keep order after I remove Sinister."
"With extreme prejudice, I hope," Ororo quipped while also nodding.
"Oh yes, you can take that to the bloody bank, love," Harry said with a smile before turning back to the matter at hand. "Steve will retain command of the team left in Poland, of course, since I'll wager that will be the front that opens up fastest thanks to Dr. Doom's involvement in the retrofitting process. In contrast, the X-Men will pull back entirely, since I doubt they'll be needed up in Finland any longer. Although maybe we'll leave Logan and his daughter in place. They can hunt behind enemy lines for these Dire Wraiths. Hmm… Shift Iceman, if he still is good to fight, to Steve's command too. I'll wager he'll be of more use there than anywhere else. Can you ask Reed to send Steve a few of those devices that he made, and two for Logan and his daughter?"
"I can, or perhaps we could simply send Garm to join Wolverine," Ororo said, still trying to add a bit of humor to the discussion so that Harry wouldn't backslide. "After his experience in your assault on that research facility, I have no doubt he'll be able to sniff them out regardless of their form."
Harry laughed. "Yes, that would be a good idea if we wanted to terrify everyone on both sides of that war, since I've no doubt both the Finns and the Russians have legends of giant wolf monsters. But for now I think that's all of the micromanaging I can do," he finished with a self-deprecating chuckle.
Ororo laughed with him but then kissed him, hard, her hands descending to grasp on his buttocks as she opened her mouth, allowing Harry's tongue access in a long, tongue-twirling kiss before pulling away. "I will see you after this," she said fiercely. "And whatever our other obligations, I will claim a bit of time of our own Harry Potter, all of us."
"Oh yeah," Harry said with a sigh, pulling back from this kiss very reluctantly. "That is one idea I can most definitely get behind, love." But alas, after that both lovers had to back away, with Ororo floating to one side and Harry resuming his journey towards Genosha. They both still had work to do.
OOOOOOO.
It was perhaps the most horrible of ironies that, while Gaia was talking to Harry and Ororo about extinction level events, the Dire Wraiths were actually dealing with one, but, for them, it wasn't about their local ecology but their own species. The halls, streets, and buildings scattered all across Direhome, the Dire Wraiths' one planet, had slowly become silent as more and more of their population were joined to the ongoing magical assault via the Planetary Soul Constrictor. But after Harry's returning strike, that silence had shifted to that of the grave.
Not even Samantha had known how many billions of her people had been ordered to take part of that side of things. More than two-thirds of her entire species had been pulled from everything else they did to take part of this attack. Food production, technology, education, construction, governmental duties, everything and anything that a society needed to run had slowly ground to a halt, the Dire Wraiths' desire for the Ocetite overpowering everything else. Those gems and the power they represented to the Dire Wraiths was like a drug, a siren song to their whole race. The idea of obtaining a planet's worth of Ocetite had blinded them to everything else.
Thousands had suffered the equivalent of a magical aneurysm when Harry had allowed the power of the sun to flood into the ley lines of the Earth. But billions had still been living and connected to the coven spell, unable to pull themselves out. Though each in turn had been badly drained of their magic already, Harry's later draining attack had finished them off.
Of those who had still been connected to the crystal, less than half had survived, and of those not one retained their magic, their ability to shape shift. With that they lost the ability to survive in the harsh realities of the nexus that their planet was situated within. Many of those, the ones who had joined the coven later in its assault, were simply comatose but might recover in time. Others, others were simply dead, their bodies turned to ash, their minds unable to sustain the shock of having their magic snuffed out like candles under the power of Harry's mutant power and his will. The Dire Wraith society, such as it was, might survive, but it would take centuries, perhaps, to rebuild their numbers and their society to an equal level.
Now the survivors could only stare around them in growing horror. Whatever they had hoped to gain, it most decidedly could never have been worth the price their society had just paid. And with that understanding more than one remaining government official decided never again to mess with Earth. The cost of it was simply far too high. Indeed, if they had had the power they might well have removed their existing spies to aid in rebuilding at home. But they couldn't. Those spies were on their own.
OOOOOOO
After flying over a large portion of the African continent, Harry once more hit open ocean, but only for about ten minutes at his current flight speed, having slowed down tremendously. He had spent much of that time calling ahead. It wouldn't do for him to be shot at after passing through the United States Navy's cordon around the island and cancel his invisibility spell; it would be undiplomatic.
I have enough people worried about what my magic can do already, and that number's going to rise after the news of this day has time to really percolate. No need to make the good men and women of the US Navy even more paranoid than they already are, Harry thought to himself.
So it was that Harry flew over the defensive formation of four light cruisers, each leading a group of destroyers. He saw most of the destroyers sitting a little closer to the shoreline and the others moving around at a set distance from them and the island, with the cruisers behind them, covering their smaller brethren and the distant shore. And, by the one real port, a heavy cruiser sat, its guns pointed towards the island but silent. Genosha hadn't had a navy to speak of, and, astonishingly, only a few ships had tried to leave, and all of them bar one had turned back when ordered to.
But then he was over the port city, whose name, Harry reflected, he probably should learn at some point in the next two hours. Descending towards the ground, he saw numerous anti-air installations here and there, all of them operated by Wakandans.
As he landed he was greeted by T'challa, his mask pushed back to reveal his face. The two men clasped hands, and Harry looked the African king up and down, "Huh, not even a limp. Why it's almost like…"
"Don't finish that line, Potter," the king said with a mock growl, shaking his head. "You're not nearly as funny as you think you are."
Harry laughed, which T'challa joined after a second before leading Harry off deeper into the city through a series of strip-mall-like areas towards the front. "How is it going here?" Harry asked, gesturing around them.
"We are being pressed hard," the Black Panther admitted. "The Mutant Liberation Front is to our south. They are pressing in on the ground occasionally, but it's in the Northwest that the so-called Press Gang is pushing us harder. It also brought up a lot more of those high-tech toys of theirs: the robots that they have to drive, energy guns, and, for some reason, capture nets. Energy nets that act like an overpowered taser. But it's their numbers and organization that make them more dangerous than the MLF, at least without Sinister or his lieutenant Arclight involved."
"How much of their forces do you think they've pushed into the city?" Harry asked, his eyes narrowed in thought.
The Black Panther paused at that, then quickly got onto the command data net with his people before replying. "I think the Press Gang has pushed most of its troops into the city since the MLF aren't attacking them anymore. The Mutant Liberation Front itself… They're so disorganized…"
Black Panther paused. "No, that isn't the correct word. They are compartmentalized. Each group operates under a different local commander and very rarely operates with any of the others. When they do it can be devastating, but they don't normally work in more than six or seven teams at a time. It makes for deadly guerrilla warfare and is giving my people fits, almost as much as the fact that a lot of them are bulletproof. I don't suppose you could see yourself giving us some more energy weapons?"
"We've already handed out quite a lot of those, both to you and the various Russian fronts, so that would be a no," Harry replied dryly. The Black Panther shrugged as if to say, 'Can't blame me for trying,' and Harry went on. "And I know that you've reverse engineered at least a few bits of those before their safety runes exploded."
Though he wasn't as blindly optimistic about it as Tony Stark, Harry didn't want to see the proliferation of energy or gauss weaponry. Hover technology, he was more than willing to let that be copied regardless of it being under a patent. But weapons, no. That particular genie would remain in the bottle as long as he could keep it there, at least in large amounts.