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Still, Magical Minds had given out literally thousands of those weapons to troopers worldwide, and Harry knew that, troopers being troopers, there would be a lot of attempts to figure out how they worked. And still other attempts by army officers or government officials who wanted to have their own source of such weapons.
I wonder how many of the weapons I've gotten reports about exploding were because some too-clever trooper has decided to try and get around the security despite warnings to the contrary, or some idiot government has ordered the attempt. Given the extenuating circumstances, Harry was willing to not go through with his threat and cut the parent country of those troopers off from the rest of Magical Mind's products, but that didn't mean he what was going to let any of them figure out ways to create similar weapons if he could help it. I probably can't stop it from happening at this point, especially since the Russians developed energy weapons on their own, as did the Chinese, but my efforts can at least slow that kind of thing down for a bit.
"Still," Harry said, returning to the here and now as he looked at the Black Panther thoughtfully, "you're very certain that most of the Press Gang is in the city."
"Those robots of theirs are actually easy to track. Their energy signatures are quite distinctive, and, despite the mental assault that Diamond and Professor X are dealing with, we've been able to continually track enemy movement outside of the city. Inside of the city, with all the concrete, steel, and buildings, it's far more difficult, but Genosha is relatively regimented. Out past the suburbs it quickly becomes less developed, and our low-flying recon drones have lately begun to give us more information like that than before. I know they've pushed in at least four hundred of those giant robots, and if they routinely put one of those with two squads of regular troopers…" T'challa shrugged. "That should be a goodly portion of their military."
Harry nodded. The Wakandan recon drones were extremely advanced little models, almost equal to something that Dr. Doom or Reed Richards would've come up with, and had exteriors of vibranium, making them difficult to destroy. It was a reminder to Harry that, whatever their ongoing personal issues with one another, the Black Panther had a scientific and industrial base he might do well to tap in the future.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to invite him to my wedding with Ororo, whenever that actually occurs, the wizard thought with some amusement. Not that he blamed the man for his infatuation with Harry's Nubian goddess, but the fact that the Black Panther did, according to Emma, at least, still hold a bit of a candle for Ororo despite the woman putting him down in no uncertain terms did bother Harry even if the man was unwilling to get between them.
"Still, if you're certain that the Press Gang has mostly concentrated into the city, that gives us an opportunity to defeat the majority of their forces in detail," he said aloud, not letting any of those last few thoughts show on his face or in his voice.
"I don't see how," Black Panther said bluntly. "My men are worn down, we lack the heavy weapons necessary to fight groups of those robots, and my Rules of Engagement, rules I came up with, I might add, forbids us from devastating the city in this fight, whereas theirs quite blatantly do not. Your men have performed incredibly well to help us hold the line, but even with you here I don't see any way to create the swift reversal you seem to be saying we should."
"I'm proud of the way Thunderbird and the others have performed. But you really should have realized something when he first arrived. Since this war began, the Custodes Mundi have mostly been operating without their big guns," Harry said with a smirk. "Hela, myself, Ororo, and Phoenix. And when it comes to clearing this city, heh. You might want to call your troops, warn them they're about to get some help and not to be alarmed at the giant creatures of stone and concrete appearing around them."
Before T'challa could do more than blink, Harry knelt down to place his hands on the concrete of the street that they were currently walking down. "Shi Jundai!" Harry said coldly, pulsing a portion of his power into the spell and the ground around him.
The Black Panther gasped at the sight of hundreds, then thousands, of clay, stone, and concrete golems shifted out of the ground, their very bulk slowly obscuring how far the spell had spread, filling in the roads all around them and then on in every direction. They stood there like so many dozens of soldiers, turning towards Harry and staring as if waiting for him to give them orders.
Harry gestured towards the northeast of the city with one hand, using the other to point to a nearby group of the Black Panther's soldiers in their odd traditional African tribesman garb. "Help the people that are dressed like this and fight the people to the north of here who are on top of giant metal golems like yourselves and those with them."
As one the golems raised stone swords in a salute before turning and marching off. T'challa stared after them for a moment, but then he was on his radio, contacting all of his men and the marines which had recently arrived to aid them, telling them not to worry about the golems now streaming towards the north of the city.
And there were many, many more that neither man could see at present. Harry's spell had basically transformed six or seven city blocks in a circle around him into a literal army of golems. It was about to be a very bad day for the Press Gang.
T'challa held his headset away from his head as a woman somewhere on the line started to shout at him in Wakandan, and Harry smiled at him in as innocent a manner as he could contrive. "Will that help, do you think?"
"If they don't just retreat. I certainly would if I saw that coming at me," the Black Panther said with a chuckle, gesturing at the slowly disappearing forms of the golems as they marched off into the city. The fact that a lot of them looked like The Thing amused him tremendously, but he wasn't about to comment on that to Harry Potter. No, I'll save that for when Ben is around. That'll be much more amusing. Although the ease with which he did that, that's somewhat concerning. How powerful is Ororo's paramour, really?
"I can do something about that too," Harry said with a chuckle.
With that Harry flew back up into the sky, stopping when he could look down and see the entire city, then he thrust out his hands in a downward direction. "Sciath na Bhféadfadh!" he intoned, creating the same kind of energy shield that he had used to contain the Solus Perdito spell with which he'd destroyed the Air Force bases in Russia. He found it somewhat ironic in a morbid sort of way that now he was using that same spell, a spell he'd used to limit the damages his other spell had done, to contain a portion of the enemy in order to wipe them out.
As thousands of people throughout the city looked up astonishment, a wall of golden and blue energy began to rise from all sides, meeting in a dome above them, completely blocking off the city. That shield was reinforced by two more shield spells of different colors, and then Harry clenched his hands into fists, concentrating as he reached out and forced the three energy shields into a single magical edifice. With that done, Harry descended to the ground, cocking an eyebrow at the Black Panther. "Will that do?"
"Now I know you're trying to show off," T'challa huffed, and Harry laughed, shrugging his shoulders. "Really, I just want all this finished." His face turned grim as he spoke. "I want this finished as soon as damn near possible, and I want Sinister to die." He paused, then went on. "In pain, over a period of minutes. But yes, I want this over with."
The Black Panther blinked, then cocked his head in wordless question as to what Sinister had done to garner such hatred. But Harry simply smiled back at him thinly, gesturing out into the city. "Now, can we go see Thunderbird?"
After a second spent staring at Harry to see if he would elaborate, T'challa finally gave it up and nodded, gesturing for Harry to follow him through the city. A bare twenty paces later he took to the rooftops by climbing up an apartment building and then leaping over to the next.
"Now who's showing off?" Harry shouted after him before floating to land on the rooms beside him, cocking an eyebrow almost aggressively at the other man. In response T'challa simply snorted, then rushed on, heading towards the south of the city.
They found Thunderbird and the rest of his team embroiled in a battle with seven Mutant Liberation Front members. Three of them were energy manipulators. One blasted out energy from her hands, the second from his mouth, and the third from his chest. The color from each was different, with the last being larger and stronger seeming, since it sliced through a car like a large bolt of plasma, and the first did no damage to the wall it was hitting as Havok and Thunderbird dodged them.
Closer to the Apache warrior Harry had chosen as this impromptu team's leader was a giant man that Harry recognized as the one who went by the code name Sumo, who Mystique and her team had tangled with before. He was busy throwing around Thunderbird while trying to dodge incoming fire from Coyote on a nearby roof, who was aiming unerringly for his eyes and face. Though those shots wouldn't kill the large, extremely durable mutant, it would certainly blind him, and then Thunderbird might be able to finish him off.
Nearby, another three were climbing a building. One looked as if he was a lizard of some kind with a human head, the other had frog's feet, and the third had claws on his hands and feet. They were trying to encircle Havok and Thunderbird from on high, but, as Harry was about to rush in, he saw Banshee stick his head out from an upper story window in their line of advance. A point blank sonic scream smashed two of the crawlers off of the building to fall down to the ground below. Only the man with claws was still in place, but his head was lolling, and Banshee was able to fly out and then back, grabbing at his insensate form from behind and then attempting to pull him away from the wall with scant progress.
A nearby building suddenly began to collapse, or so it seemed at first, with smoke billowing out of it, causing dirt and dust to cover the battlefield. But then Cortez was there, hidden in the smoke just long enough to get into point blank range with Sumo, blinding him with a blast of energy to the face. In response Thunderbird didn't close to finish him off, but instead ran past Sumo to grapple with two of the energy shooters before they could pull back from where they had been stationed, using a turned over car on the side of the road as cover.
He smashed their heads together with bone crushing force, and they fell unconscious to the ground before a kick sent the third flying. That put every member of the MLF but Sumo down. And as Harry watched he took a blast from Havok and then another from Cortez, absorbing both sort of like the Blob. It was evident that he had an even higher level of durability than his size and strength would suggest.
T'challa had watched all this with Harry as they closed, and he cocked an eyebrow at Harry and then bowed grandly towards him, waving a hand forward even as he continued to run towards the action. Harry nodded back and gestured with one hand, sending out a low powered Wingardium Leviosa which took the Sumo wrestler in the back, lifting him off the ground. "W, what?! What is…"
Thunderbird didn't look a gift horse in the mouth, instead he grabbed at Sumo's legs where they floated in front of him and began to twirl him around, his current weightless nature allowing for this easily, whereas before Thunderbird would never have been able to lift him. He twirled him around four times before he hurled him up towards Banshee. "Banshee, pass!"
Turning from where he had been utterly unable to remove the claws of the third wall crawler from the wall he was stuck on, Banshee saw Sumo flying into the air up towards him, his curses filling the air around him. The Irishman grinned and then breathed in deeply while matching his speed to Sumo as he started to hover in the air, the spell Harry had hit him with slowly overcoming the momentum Thunderbird had given him. Then he hit the super-strong mutant with a point blank blast of sonic energy designed to scramble and knock him out regardless of his physical durability. The eardrums and mind of an individual were often not as durable as the rest, and Sumo screamed before he fell into a deep unconsciousness, still floating there in midair.
With another spell Harry arrested the Asian mutant's momentum gesturing him down towards the ground. By this point he and T'challa had reached Thunderbird and the others, who all came forward, with Thunderbird saluting Harry before holding out his hand. "Good to see you, boss. And thanks for the assist there. That bastard is really tough to deal with."
Harry shook his hand and then nodded to the others. "Good work, all of you. Decent teamwork and a good overall scheme. Although, how did those energy users get the drop on you initially?"
"They were hiding in a meat delivery truck at the back of a grocery store; attacked us when we passed by," Thunderbird grumbled in irritation before Havok, who had opened his mouth, could say anything. "I suppose we should have been ready for them, but we fought this group late last night, and we thought they had simply retreated to meet up with other groups. But that seems to be against the modus operandi of the Mutant Liberation Front for some reason. We let them think Anna and Banshee had been downed in their initial ambush and retreated a block before springing our own ambush on them."
Harry nodded and looked at the group. Besides Thunderbird, who looked a little dirt smudged and bruised, especially in the face, where he seemingly had taken a lot of punishment from Sumo or some other super-strong individual, the group looked battered and exhausted. Even in his armor Coyote slumped, while Cortez was missing half of her hair, the rest of her face showing signs of being healed by burn paste, and Havok's eyes were bloodshot. Banshee looked fine at first glance, but it was clear to someone looking closely that he was exhausted, and one of his legs wasn't bending as well as it should.
They hadn't been together as a team for very long, but all of them had been fighting in this war nearly from the beginning on other fronts, and this latest operation was pushing them just as hard as fighting the Russians, maybe more.
Still, that is what pepper-up potions are for. And I can get them a proper meal too. "Corey," he asked the thin air.
An instant later T'challa leaped away, cat-like metal claws popping out from his black gloves as he stared at the little creature that had just popped into existence directly in front of him.
"Yes, master, what can Cory do for you?" Corey asked while looking around excitedly. While not as interesting as popping into space on one of the asteroids there, at least this place was new. And he loved popping to new places.
"I think we need a few pepper-up potions and two picnic baskets worth of food, along with two bottles of wine and one of… Does anyone else have any preference?" When Banshee replied he'd prefer a small whiskey and a large lager while Cortez wanted a hard lemonade, of all things, Harry added them into his order and, several minutes later, sat down on a large blanket laid out on the roof of the tallest nearby building.
Nearby another blanket was set out, and Cory, after laying out the food magically, was now pouring a grateful Banshee his drink, while Cortez, Coyote and Coyote sat with him, shaking their heads in slight amusement. Of course, all of them had seen Harry's magic at work before and, indeed, the house elves too. But the idea of simply conjuring up several baskets of food in order to sit and have a picnic on top of a roof in the middle of a city that was a war zone was unusual, to say the least.
"So, talk to me," Harry said, turning back to Thunderbird as the other man sat down across from him.
Thunderbird grabbed a chicken leg and chewed on it enthusiastically, glancing sideways at T'challa as he did. "One thing you have the Black Panther and his people beaten all hollow on is food."
"It is not my fault that you and the rest of your team are effete Americans who don't know what good food is," the man in question replied with an eye roll, ignoring with lordly disdain the shout of "'Ere Now!" from Banshee, who was most decidedly not American.
As he finished his chicken leg, however, Thunderbird became serious, staring at Harry. "What do you want to know?"
"How did your team do? Were there any problems? What do you think of the Mutant Liberation Front? What do you think of this Mr. Sinister in person? I understand he was part of the ambush on T'challa," Harry reeled off quickly, looking at the other man expectantly.
The Apache warrior had grabbed another chicken leg as Harry was speaking and now chewed on it thoughtfully before replying. "In terms of my team, I think we did pretty well. We mesh decently. Banshee is one hell of a team player, always looking out for his comrades, sharp and on the ball. Coyote is much the same way. Cortez is getting there, and her long-range energy blasts were a major help, though she needs more target practice. She also has a…" He frowned thinking about how to put it. "A city sense, I suppose? That I lack. She was able to spot several places where an ambush could occur and even spot two ambushes before they did occur long before I could."
Harry nodded at that, then decided to bite the bullet. "And what about Havok?"
"He was the team's problem child, if only in a very specific way," Thunderbird said with a slow nod, glancing over towards where Havok was sitting, trying to not look as if he was attempting to listen in and failing both at listening in and looking as if he wasn't trying to. "He's got a bit of an ego and a major chip on his shoulder. He's arrogant and thinks he should be the leader, but…"
The younger man saw Harry simply staring at him blankly, and John Proudstar rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know there's a lot of the pot calling the kettle black, but there's a difference too. I came to the X-Men a blooded warrior; he didn't. And even if I was arrogant, you and Cyclops bashed that out of me quickly enough."
"Technically that's not true," Harry said slowly. "Havok had a lot of combat experience when he was one of the Hellions, or whatever they were called, under Sebastian Shaw. And he was team leader too."
"That's probably where it comes from, then," Thunderbird said with a nod. "He thinks he should be team leader and tried to override my orders several times and go his own way as often as he possibly could. That got us all in trouble at first until Cortez and Banshee both had a long chat with him. Still, his resentment is there. He's got a major chip on his shoulder, and this whole issue with Polaris isn't helping him."
"As far as I can tell, Polaris has dumped him or broken up with him anyway. Wait, what is the line between breaking up and dumping someone?" he asked, looking at the two other men, who both shrugged ignorance, and he went on with a sigh. "Anyway, she's done with him. If anything, I think she and Betsy are currently competing over their mutual interest in Steve."
"Steve? You mean Steve Rogers?" Thunderbird asked, shaking his head. "Guardian spirits, but you talking about Captain America like he's an old friend or, heck, his being around again still throws me!"
"Well, I wouldn't call him an old friend, unless I was talking about his age, of course," Harry said with a chuckle. "But yes, he's a friend." And might well become the day to day team lead for the Custodes if I can convince him after all this is over. "But from Polaris's perspective they've broken up, and she's moving on. I'm uncertain whether or not she's made that last point clear, but I know she's made the first one clear to to Havok several times. On the other hand, I also know that Charles said that his fixation on her was part of the indoctrination he went through as one of the Hellions. So perhaps it's something we should look into more closely…though I thought Charles already had."
Thunderbird got an odd look on his face and then shook his head slowly. "Um, Professor X just told me that he had, actually, and that any lingering connection between them was purely in Havok's head. He used their bond as an anchor to offset the amount of changes he's had to go through since his indoctrination was broken in the first place, and it hasn't been easy for him."
"That makes sense. We'll have to do something about that, but not right now," Harry said with a slow nod. "But now on to the more important questions."
"The Mutant Liberation Front seems to be made up of an odd mix of hardened killers and terrorists, obviously, on one hand. But on the other hand there are idealistic kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Kids who have been dealt a really nasty hand in life thanks to their mutant power and who are in it because they really think this cause is worth fighting for."
"Even after we have shown that humans and mutants can coexist, even after all of the good we've done?" Harry asked, frowning.
"Pretty much," Thunderbird said with a nod. "Although I'd lay odds that Mr. Sinister has somehow been able to cut them off from any kind of news network or information about the outside world right up until he released them on Genosha. But I don't think he really understood what impact so much combat and violence would have on them."
Thunderbird gestured down towards where the prisoners were still unconscious on the ground below. All of them were trussed up in chains, with Sumo still floating above a conjured cage surrounding them.
"That lot, two of them are the hard-core kind of sort, though I'm not certain if Sumo started that way. But while I can't tell about some of them, the one with frog powers and the one with the claws, if you look into their faces—when they're not trying to kill you, anyway—well, they look shell-shocked, like they're just going through the motions. We've all seen more than a few of them simply hesitate or just not give their all in any given fight."
Shaking his head, the Apache went on. "On the other hand there are the Marauders, the lieutenants that Sinister uses. Each and every one of that lot are cold, hard killers with murder raps in America and elsewhere from well before this. But we've done a decent job of taking them out in turn since we arrived. Although it's strange: I could've sworn that I saw someone like one of the people we had fought in the Vault during that last skirmish with Mr. Sinister."
"Numbers? How many mutants are we talking about spread across the MLF?" Harry asked. Mystique and Morph had never gotten that kind of information from the inside thanks to the MLF's cell organization, so he needed to know.
"If you're talking about hard-core true believers, twenty to thirty. It would've been two more before this last fight," Thunderbird said with a chuckle and another gesture down towards the prisoners. "If you're talking about the kids who are were just fed a load of shit and bought it…" Thunderbird shrugged. "Thirty or forty? Maybe as many as fifty. I haven't been able to get away from the city, but I know that most of them are camped right outside its outskirts, with only smaller groups still operating out elsewhere in the hinterlands, and most of those groups we've heard about don't look to be going around attacking the other locals.."
"I'm not certain you can use the word hinterlands to describe anything on an island this small," said the Black Panther ruefully. "Still, his numbers are accurate for all that."
Harry nodded, looking a little happier now. "Good. If they've just been led astray or indoctrinated, we don't have to kill them all. There's been enough killing today."
With that Harry pushed himself to his feet and flew up into the sky without another word, leaving the other two men to blink after him until they saw him fly through the shield dome he had created, which quickly closed behind him. There Harry used a spell on his voice, and when he spoke, his voice rang like thunder, so loud it actually hurt the eardrums of many of the people in the city below him.
"To the Mutant Liberation Front and its master, Mr. Sinister, my name is Guardian, or Harry Potter as I am known now worldwide. I am here on Genosha now to deal with you. You have no hope of victory or escape any longer, but I will give you one hour to surrender. After that I will attack, and no quarter will be asked or given. To those liberation front members who can hear my voice, I urge you to find an Internet connection, or even a library of some kind which has magazines about current events. You have been lied to!"
He roared the last words so loudly now that everyone in the city below had to cover their ears. He went on in a more normal volume, but his voice was still noticeably grim as he spoke, his words falling like anvils in a silence that seemed to encompass the entire small island of Genosha. "Your side is not fighting for mutant rights. You are fighting, if you're fighting for anything more than Mr. Sinister's own position and goals, for mutant supremacy. There have been other groups throughout history that believed their genetics made them superior, that they made them better, and anything they did to those who did not share their genes was not something to be mourned. I am giving most of you the benefit of the doubt in thinking you do not believe that any longer.
"If you do not wish to surrender while your leader is still around, then simply stand aside. This is between Mr. Sinister and me. No one else needs to die today," Harry repeated his earlier words before turning back and heading back down into and through the shield around the town. A minute later he was sitting back across John and T'challa while they and the others removed their hands from their ears.
"Do you think they'll listen?" he asked after they recovered.
Thunderbird spent a few seconds glaring at Harry for the pain he'd caused them all with that little stunt, but after his ire dissipated, he shook his head. "For the most part, no. Though if any of them are currently camped out near a library, perhaps they'll take the few minutes to check up on your story. But if you're expecting a wider rebellion, you'd best think again."
"No, that wasn't what I intended. I wanted to get them to start thinking for themselves and possibly to step aside. If I have to fight anyone to get to Sinister, I'd rather it was serial killers or unrepentant mutant supremacists who turned to terrorism willingly. If I can get a few kids who have realized this is a lot more serious than shouting slogans or learning to defend themselves to step aside, it's time well used. But what did you think of Sinister himself?" Harry asked, knowing that his moment of humanity had certainly cost him any element of surprise he might have otherwise had and not wanting to talk about it further. "I understand he was actually involved in the ambush on T'challa."
T'challa scowled, wiping his fingers on the picnic blanket underneath them as he glared up at the sky. It hurt to know that, without Thunderbird and his team's arrival, he would have been killed, and worse, that he hadn't even done much to slow Mr. Sinister or his best troopers down. He liked to think that that wouldn't have been the case one-on-one, and certainly it was with most of them. But Mr. Sinister, something about that man told T'challa that even one-on-one he wouldn't have much of a chance.
Thunderbird thought for a moment, then said slowly, "It was an ambush from start to finish. He likes to use bait, I think. He used T'challa's troops as bait for him, and then when T'challa was there, ambushed him. There is always going to be more, too. He's always going to bring something a little different. He's a planner, not a natural tactician. He also didn't react well when my team and I showed up. Not angrily, but he was unable to deal with the sudden surprise of our arrival. But even with that, if we're going to be fighting him on his own ground, that will make him very dangerous."
Harry thought for a moment, then smiled grimly. "In that case, would you say that he would know about my weaknesses and about how to defend against magic, perhaps?"
'Yes," John said bluntly. "Very much so."
"Well, that's fine," Harry said with a nod. "I can plan for that, and if he's gone for my most glaring weakness, there is a way to counter that too." Thunderbird looked at Harry quizzically, while T'challa simply sat there, understanding that he was missing half of this conversation. Harry, however, just smiled. "Never think that the gifts of the gods are as simple or utilitarian as they appear."
After he was done speaking to Thunderbird and T'challa, Harry left them with one of the bottles of wine and the rest of the alcohol he had had Cory drop off and carried the other one with him towards the the area of the city where T'challa had indicated Emma and Charles had been set up. As he did, Emma finally got it into contact with him mentally, her diamond-like astral projection appearing in his mind via the conduit Jean had created, which only the two of them could access.
"Well, it's about time," she said waspishly, her dark blue eyes flashing with anger, an expression that in the astral plane was not at all hyperbole. "Is there any reason why you decided to meet with Proudstar before you met with us?"
"I had understood that you and Charles had things under control and wanted to touch base with our least-experienced team leader," Harry replied soothingly, his own much more plebian astral form moving over to Emma's, putting his arms around her shoulders, and pulling her into a hug that, while a pale imitation of the physical variety, at least would convey his feelings to Emma. "Are you all right?"
"No, I'm fucking well not!" Emma barked back before she seemed to calm down. "Well, the enemy telepath did finally run out of willpower a few hours before you arrived. Charles and I are indeed now free on that front, and I can, for the first time since my arrival here, notice my own physical body again." Her astral projection paused in her speech, frowning as she looked away from Harry, out past the outer ramparts of his defenses, and then shook her head. "God damn, I need a drink and I need a bath too! Ugh, this heat and humidity is soo not good for the skin."
Harry chuckled, pulling Emma's astral projection into a tighter hug, knowing that despite being cast in diamond, Emma would feel it. "Well, I can deal with the first. In fact, I'm carrying a bottle of wine already. And I can conjure up the second. Although, if you are asking me to help you in the bath, I'm afraid my little deadline to Sinister and his coterie of pawns does not let me enough time to properly…wash…you."
Emma's diamond form projection tinted pink at that, a sign of both pleasure and lust mixed rather than a blush. "That's good. And if you come bearing wine, I suppose I'm done trying to rip your head off. But this has not been a fun time for me," she said in a tone of manifest understatement.
"I'm already within sight of your tent's guards, and I will have Cory pop back to High Note to get you some more food too," Harry sent back soothingly, looking around physically as he came to the area T'challa had described to him. The tent was set in an open-air market, which looked oddly peaceful and undamaged despite the violence which had raged and was still raging throughout the city, with hundreds of refuge tents set up around it. The tent itself had heavy protection around it in the form of twenty guards. Half of them were American marines, the other half Wakandans, with heavy guns hidden behind sandbags at eight positions surrounding the tent. Harry was waved through without comment, with the commander murmuring that T'challa had called ahead, not even noticing the looks of awe and shock a lot of the locals were shooting his way.
"Just so long as the wine is properly chilled, I don't care about the food at this point," Emma retorted, but there was no more heat in her voice.
As her words had warned him might be the case, when Harry pushed his way into the telepaths' tent, he found Emma looking incredibly haggard. It was an air-conditioned tent, and she and Charles were reclining in extremely comfortable looking chairs. But it was obvious that both of them had not moved from those chairs in far too long, and both of them were covered with sweat despite the air conditioning. Emma's hair was also matted to her head, and her skin, normally pale but vibrant, now looked almost sickly.
But despite her haggardness, Emma still pushed herself out of her chair, her eyes bright, as she moved towards Harry. She then grabbed him by the front of his crysis suit and pulled him into a fierce liplock. And yet, as they were kissing, Harry could feel her body trembling against his, and not with passion. No, Emma could barely stand on her feet. Her body was utterly exhausted in a way that she had not been when he had met with her after leaving the coven spell fighting against the Dire Wraiths' cold spell.
Before he could get the words out, though, Emma anticipated his question and sent, "I am fucking exhausted!" before pulling back and saying aloud, "I didn't push myself as hard as Phoenix did earlier, but fighting Sinister's telepath seems to have nearly made up for it."
"Indeed, wherever this Sinister fellow got this telepath of his, he or she is most puissant," Charles agreed. He didn't look nearly as exhausted as Emma, and Harry idly wondered if that was because he had been fresher when called in or something else. Charles's next words put that into perspective quickly. "I cannot quite get get a sense of the mind behind this, but he or she is incredibly good on the attack, as our inestimable Diamond prefers to be. Myself, I excel at defense, even defending other non-telepathic minds from telepathic assault."
"What he's not saying is that Professor X is also far more skilled in pure telepathic combat than I am," Emma said sardonically. "I've only rarely met other telepaths that are on my level, whereas this elderly fellow apparently met and defeated another telepath in single combat years ago. What was his name?"
"Less of the elderly, if you please," Charles replied primly. "But yes. He called himself the Shadow King, and he was attempting to take over the criminal side of Cairo. Ironically, dealing with him let Storm escape my attention for long enough that she was able to get out of the city entirely without my knowing. We fought for hours in the real world and far longer on the astral plane. But in comparison to him, this new telepath has tremendous power but little experience in wielding it. Indeed, if we could but find his or her mind, I'm almost certain that we could defeat them. But as powerful as this individual is, they are also extremely good at hiding."
In contrast to Charles, Emma had never had to fight an opponent on the mental plane that came near to her own level. While the fight for Hela's mind against Those Who Watch Above in Shadow had been a hell of a baptism, it was also extremely different. In that fight she'd one mind to defend and, okay, partially reclaim, but she had also had Hela in her corner, able to help her along. And, for all their power, the Shadows had not been at home in the astral plane, able to fight there as well as a telepath could. It had also essentially been an offensive duel, the Shadows attempting to attack Hela while she concentrated on attacking in turn.
Here Emma had thousands of other minds to defend, and not a one of them had the ability to help her do it. All most of the Marines or African troopers could tell was one moment they were suddenly under attack by gremlins and Devils taken from every mythology on Earth, and the next those creatures disappeared. If not for T'challa making sure everyone knew it was a kind of psychic assault, he would have had most of his people questioning their sanity.
"What is the fight like on the astral plane?" Harry asked before asking Cory to reappear. Cory did so and started to hand out small plates of food.
"Consider the defense as a wall of diamond," Emma began, pausing as she took in Harry's sudden smirk and thwacking him on the thigh lightly before going on. "We can construct walls around the minds of the individuals in the city, but we cannot maintain them for very long. So we leave it in place as a sort of early warning system. Once the attacks began, we then rush our reinforcements, as it were, to the minds under attack. It gave the enemy the advantage of initiative, but thankfully they seem to have been forced to retire."
"And I have to reiterate," Charles said, swallowing his own food, which he had instantly begun eating with far less decorum than Emma was now doing. Such things were ingrained in her, after all, despite her exhaustion. "That those attacks were powerful, far stronger than even my own would have been against so many minds at once."
"And you can't find this telepath's mind?"
"No. Whoever it is has some kind of mechanical device that obscures their mind. We can sense their actions on the astral plane, but we can't quite grab onto their thoughts. Even so, there must be a cost." Harry looked at him, and he shrugged. "Psychic powers are the closest mutants can come to wielding magic, in a way, and, like magicians, we always have a limit to what we can do, not in terms of 'spellwork,' but in the overall power we can output at any given time. I think they're resting right now, but I also think they pushed well beyond what I would have termed human endurance. I think the telepath has shot their bolt," he said definitively, "and your attack on Sinister can go through without further distractions from that quarter."
"Good to know," Harry said with a nod.
"So, what are your plans?" Emma asked, looking at Harry. "We heard your earlier announcement, but beyond that…"
"Well, I'm going to kill Sinister, obviously," Harry replied sardonically before shaking his head. "Beyond that, I get to step back and play peacemaker."
"Why?" Charles asked, blinking. "I mean, I understand what you said here to Mutant Liberation Front, and I fully endorse attempting to aid those poor, deluded young people. But surely the Russians made their own bed, and you can expect the rest of the nations of the world to handle peace talks."
"I would've said so, but we now have definitive proof that many of the Russians were actually replace by alien shapeshifters," Harry said, reminding himself that Charles had been somewhat out of that loop, and Emma obviously had not brought him up to speed when she called him in for help here. "We don't want to invade Russia. If we can make the Russians aware of the alien threats that are out there after helping them deal with the Dire Wraiths, that will bring in the last major block on Earth, and we'll need it. Specifically, we'll need that warren of tunnels the Subterraneans dug out for them throughout Russia. Oh, I have no doubt that Russia is going to deal with a lot of internal division, segments along the borders wanting to break off from the Russian Federation, and I know that's Azerbaijan and Georgia will demand reparations in terms of lands, and the Chinese will want that island in the Alar River back. But beyond that, I mean to make certain that the reparations they are forced to pay are not nearly as onerous as those placed on Germany after World War I. We do not want to repeat this, after all, and those tunnels… Well, they could be very important. As could the industrial capacity hidden within those tunnels."
Emma blinked at that, her eyes widening as she put the dots together, and nodded in fervent agreement before she turned away, looking out towards the ocean. "We have Cyclops and the rest incoming, Harry."
"Good." Harry allowed a thin smile to cross his face. "We've got less than half an hour before my deadline is up, and I mean to have us all ready to go when it becomes time to bring the hammer down."