The War of Titans 24

“Sir, Wolverine has been sighted in London.”

“Any signs that this is their regular mutant retrieval process?”

“Their plane was not seen or heard leaving towards Britain sir,” he shook his head, looking at the satellite’s readings they had specifically kept trained out for Xavier’s and the Fantastic Four’s movements. “However, this morning they flew out towards South America, and rescued a mutant from a self-caused fire in Chile.”

“Alert the ground team,” he said, swiping away the schematics for the Helicarrier modifications from his screen as he met the eyes of the agent before him. “Are any of the Alpha class mutants within them?”

“So far none have been spotted sir, but chances of Ororo Munroe being with him are quite high.”

“Get surveillance up and running across Britain,” he ordered calmly, remembering the situation with Loki as vividly as it had happened yesterday. “From ATMs to phone cameras, I want everything scanned for every known associate of Xavier. And send someone down to his mansion, and get those telepathy blockers stuffed inside their brains before that.”

“Sir,” the man nodded, pulling out of his office with a short salute before the doors closed behind him.

Pressing a button on his desk the next moment, Fury rested his chin upon his hands as the visage of Agent Hill came alive on a holographic projection before him. His eyes flicking towards the old woman visible behind her, he looked at his agent, “Agent Hill, report.”

“We tracked the known British mutants through the collection of every database the SHIELD has its hands on,” the woman began, pausing for a moment to continue, “and based on what we gathered from the attack site, we are dealing with an Alpha class threat at the least. Ten mutants are MIA, and none have been spotted so far. Barton and Black have been running recon all over the city, but none of the contacts have any news about them or the attacker.”

“And what does Harkness have to say about it?” He asked, looking at the eccentric sorceress sitting behind Hill, and the woman met his eyes with a Cheshire grin, waving a bony hand merrily, “or has she been knitting her sweaters all day long?”

“She created some sort of protection for our safe house,” Hill began, before she gave out a sigh that Fury had always associated with Stark and his shenanigans. “She has also…insinuated towards a large-scale killing of the humans in London, quite possibly a genocide. Based on our findings, Harkness has concluded that the perpetrator is a powerful sorcerer aiming to sacrifice the mutants that have gone missing, to assimilate their powers.”

That…hadn’t been what he had been expecting.

“Why attack STRIKE and MI6 then?” he said, looking down at the reports Hill had sent to him previously, his single moving over every bloody spot, every scorch mark in the photographs, “If this sorcerer just wants mutants, why go through the trouble? Just kidnap mutants from the streets.”

“It is because London is one of the Nexus sites, and the only accessible one right now,” the witch spoke, sighing from her place as she looked at something out of his view. “Earth’s natural magic flows the strongest through the Nexus points, and London is the only one currently available for any kind of use, from opening tears in dimensions to performing large-scale rituals.”

“And do you have any guesses on who our target is?”

“I do,” she nodded, and for once, Fury saw something other than acerbic amusement in Harkness’ eyes as her expression tightened for just a fleeting moment. “But I’d rather not alert either of them if there is a taboo upon their titles and names. But what I can tell you is that it is going to happen on the next full moon.”

“Three days,” Fury spoke, his eye flicking to the reflection of the waxing moon behind him. This… was a glaring weakness in SHIELD's capabilities to execute its function. Terrorist organizations? His soldiers could gun them down. international criminals his agents could find and arrest, and none were better at espionage than his top agents…but when it came to the supernatural, SHIELD was weak…pitiful even. And Fury didn’t like being the one with the shorter stick. Even with Loki, if it hadn’t been for the abilities of Thor, Dr. Banner, and the Ravager, they would have lost miserably in New York, nuclear button or not. Even now, none of the eleven he had sent to London could deal with magic or an Alpha-class mutant abilities on their own. Sure, bullets and weapons were no issue for them, but magic, he had learned, was a great middle finger to reality. What use were bullets if they never reached the target? And once again, he was forced to depend on someone out of his jurisdiction, out of his control for help. “Harkness, what is your plan to deal with the enemy?”

“Plan?...what plan?”

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Flying above the city, Harry hummed quietly as he looked for every bit of magic he could find in the city. At the edge of his senses, the Sanctum of the Sorcerer Supreme glowed like a star, the numerous wards and enchantments as strong as Hogwarts itself—and that was a big deal, considering Hogwarts wards were distributed over an area hundreds of times bigger than the building the sorcerers were in.

There were a few other spots of magic being revealed, pinpricks compared to the roaring inferno the Sanctum was, but he disregarded them as nothing but minor artifacts and charms. It was maddening, that even after hours of searching the city via every means he could think of, he had been unable to find even a hint. Even Charles with his telepathy, sitting all the way back at the mansion with Cerebro to augment his powers, was incapable of finding their missing charges.

Suddenly, he felt the clouds near him shift slightly, his connection to them allowing him to sense the unnatural disturbance created amongst them. Pausing for a moment, Harry apparated back to the small house they were staying in, and as the world came back into focus for him, his eyes zeroed in upon the shining claws barely an inch away from his skull.

“I told you not to do that,” Logan growled, as his claws retreated back inside his arms with a quiet schlik as Kurt and Rogue both jumped to their feet. Looking back at the spot in the corner where he had aimed his destination in lieu of Logan’s warning, Harry frowned and looked down at his feet…It had been a long time since he had gotten even a single foot wrong while apparating.

“Sorry about that,” he shook his head, before he saw Ororo walk into the room. ”What is it that you wanted to discuss?”

“Logan went through a few contacts of his,” she nodded in his direction. “A day before the children were kidnapped, someone attacked the MI6 safehouses and compounds, and another British secret agency was also attacked the same night. We think it is not a coincidence.”

“They got the metahumans,” Logan growled from his left, throwing a photograph towards him. “Britain had mutants joining in on its defense program, so secretive that they haven't even told the public about the bloodbath—and every single one was either gone or dead.”

“Charles’ mansion is one thing, it is known to be a mutant school to pretty much everyone with even the average levels of clearance,” he muttered, staring at the spike of ice spearing out a woman’s eye socket, while another sprouted through the side of her head. “But I doubt the knowledge of this secret mutant team was that spread out, if there aren’t any active searches going on around the country. This sorcerer is targeting mutants under the government too, so they are more prepared and powerful than what we expected.”

“Were you able to find anything?”

“Nothing I am afraid,” he sighed, shaking his head as he looked out of the window, the glimmering lights of the London city nothing more than pinpricks at this distance. “I think I will go out for another look, go out a little farther this time.”

“Uhmm,” Kurt spoke up, raising his hand quietly, “I get that you found a trace to London, but why are they here in the first place? Wouldn’t a place away from their attack be safer for them?”

“Usually yes,” he nodded, remembering the words of Morgan, as well as the gist of this Black Queen he had gathered from her warnings, “but we are dealing with quite possibly a very old witch, and usually that translates into power, as well as arrogance. Also, London is magically a very powerful site, as it is a Nexus point for the magical energies flowing through the Earth. The presence of Stonehenge, as well as another magical site nearby also make it a perfect place to enact rituals of all kinds.”

“Isn’t there something like an eclipse or something needed for this kind of thing?” Rogue said, turning around her phone to show the cartoon playing on the screen—and why did that witch look like a demonized McGonagall?! Watching as the purple-robed, wart-nosed witch raised a staff towards an eclipsed sun with a menacing cackle as the city before her was enveloped in a poisonous green mist. Looking back at the white-haired mutant as she shit it off, Harry saw her point towards the window. “Can’t you…I dunno, do some mumbo-jumbo to figure out if this ‘Black Queen’ is gonna do something according to the stars and shit.”

“That…seems plausible,” Ororo nodded slowly, before turning towards him. “Can you do it? You did have astronomy as one of your subjects back home, didn’t you?”

“Never was really interested in it, to be honest,” Harry sighed, a flash of Aurora Sinistra’s moonlit face as she explained the intricacies of the lunar cycle and planetary movement passing before his eyes, before it was replaced by Hermione helping him and Ron chart the magical connections on a parchment. Sighing again he looked at the ceiling above, turning it transparent to the view of the moon above. “Never did many rituals too, now that I think about it…buuuut, if I were kidnapping a bunch of powerful humans, after attacking a powerful nation’s military directly, and staying near a Nexus…I would wait for the full moon for any kind of magical activity.”

“Three days,” Logan muttered, seeing the moon above disappear behind a cloud, its rays filtering through the gaps to shine upon them.

“Three days” Ororo echoed with a nod.

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“I am missing something,” Harry muttered, standing atop the Palace, staring at the people below him. It had been a day already, and still, he had been unable to sense something that even remotely felt like a warded dungeon. He had tried knocking on the London Sanctum’s doors, because there was no way that the Ancient One didn’t know about this elusive Black Queen. Not if her legends went way back to the Roman Empire, and a dozen others throughout history.

But the wards had stopped him before he could take even a step on the stairs, a silent refusal of his demands by the Sorcerer Supreme. While it certainly irked him something fierce, Harry knew he had no right to judge her. Not when he was also involved only because it was his vested interest in the mutants. Had it been some other people, he doubted he would have been so inclined to save them, not if it could be avoided. But his disgust towards muggles aside, Harry knew he needed to hurry up, and hurry up fast because he doubted that Hank and the others were receiving a spa treatment right now in that dungeon.

“The muggles were attacked,” he muttered, turning in the general direction of the SIS building, zooming in upon the helicopters still hovering above the area. Apparating right above one of them, Harry barely kept his foot from being slashed by the rotating blades of the chopper as his magic reflexively kicked in, sparks flying off the point of contact as his skin was covered by a patch of greyish black. Righting the helicopter with a timely levitation charm and casting a confundus upon the pilot, Harry righted himself and stared down at his torn pants.

That was the second time in as many days…and Harry was damn sure that it wasn’t a coincidence anymore. Looking at the alley beside the SIS building, he spotted a dumpster and apparated next to it…or at least that had been his intention. Instead, as he stood there decidedly a couple of feet away from his intended spot, Harry felt the beginnings of a frown form over his face.

A displacement ward…one that was enough to affect even him, despite the enchantments woven into his very skin, and the fact that he was the only one with his brand of magic in this world. Well, there was Morgan, but he doubted the ancient witch had any reason to create an expansive ward over all of London, not for displacing teleportation at least. And the perplexing thing was, he still couldn’t feel the ward through his senses, even after realizing its existence. “The Black Queen,” he muttered, calming down his thoughts as he turned towards the building beside him. It was the only plausible explanation right now, but that raised a host of other questions. Did the woman possess magic similar to his own, because from what he had seen, he could somewhat sense the dimensional energies the Sorcerers wielded—and the only kind of magic that had been cloaked from his senses before was back on his Earth, used and perfected by his own kind.

While it wasn’t affecting his apparating too much, it could still lead to unseen errors and mistakes if attempted during a fight with the witch, or her underlings. Even a single foot out of line was enough for a blunder to occur, especially when dealing with someone as dangerous as this witch ought to be—Morgan’s words had certainly left an impression on him. Walking through the wall in front of him, Harry looked at the reception, his eyes flicking over the guards standing at every corner as his cloak automatically covered him. Once again thanking legilimency, he peered into the memories of the nearest man, pausing for a moment at the name Captain Britain and something about his sister, before moving onwards towards the attack and the information about it.

‘They brought in SHIELD’ he thought, catching the memory of meeting the eleven Nick Fury had sent to avert the disaster and capture the attackers, his eyes narrowing upon the ‘Hawkeye’, ‘An excellent archer, or a superhuman masquerading as one? Nonetheless…I need to see the man in charge for the safehouse location.’

Pulling back from the clueless man’s mind, Harry walked up the stairs, taking his time to look around himself. Muggles ran around like headless chickens every two minutes or so, files and papers in their arms as the cacophony of their panic and hurry echoed on every floor despite the glass panes separating everyone. It was nostalgic in a way, he smiled grimly, once again watching the non-magicals panic about a magical problem. Back in his world too, this had been the response from everyone when Hermione and her order of muggle borns had decided that the time for secrecy was over.

They were going to usher a new age in Magical Britain, remake and recast it in a modern world under the aegis of the Queen of England, and slowly but surely, bring in the whole Magical world under it. Sure, the wizards had a lot of muck on their backs, and even more hidden underneath their robes, but that didn’t mean that the muggles were going to the light-bringers for their world. Not with them being every bit as evil, bigoted, and stifled in stereotypes as Hermione had made out the purebloods to be. One didn’t even need to look past Britain to see that hubris and playing superiors was as much a muggle habit as it was a pureblood one.

‘It isn[t as if you were there to tell Hermione all of this before shit went down’

And there was it. The traitorous, nagging little voice in the back of his mind, that rose up in the scant few moments of peace he had managed to get in the years days past Daphne’s and Altaria’s deaths. A voice that told him that it was his fault too, that Hermione was left alone once he found companionship in Daphne. That he had been her only friend besides Ron, and even then, her relationship with him had been far better than with Ron—and with him basically gone from her life, there had been no one to shield her from the whispers of jealous students who mocked her for her teeth and being a teacher’s pet, or Draco’s stooges who had always loved humiliating and name-calling the muggle-born.

But the next moment, her face as she had called him a pet to Daphne’s whims swam through the front of his mind, followed by the tear-filled, pain-stricken eyes of Daphne and Altaria as they had died a scant few seconds after his arrival…and the voice was crushed beneath the tide of hate-filled fire that roared through his thoughts. He could wallow in the despair of his thoughts and madness only after Hermione was dead by his hand. It wasn’t even solely for the sake of the fact that she had been there to arrest his pregnant wives, or that she had been unable to save them from the muggles.

It was because whatever she had become, it was only because of him. It was his name, his clout, and his ignorance that led her to amass such power, such a mindset that had led to hundreds of thousands of deaths for his kind. Children were enslaved and experimented upon across nations once her runic inventions were recreated and spread all across the Anti-Mage Alliance. Creatures were captured and torn apart to create machines analogous to them. Their homes and settlements were captured in the name of religion and ‘Earth doesn’t belong to Freaks!’, and even after a peace delegation had been sent under hsi nose to the enemy, it had been rebuffed.

He knew Hermione wasn’t the one giving the orders anymore, and neither had she been the one to burn and torment and experiment upon his people…but she had the one to kickstart the shitstorm his world had devolved into. As he stared down at his hands, he saw them shift into the claws he had been so fond of using, bloodied and covered in gore from tearing apart muggles like tofu. He remembered the way he had been standing right before the Stark Tower, blasts and spells raining all around the city as his magic, and that of hundreds others had sang with revenge and dark joy…only for all of it to be snatched away a moment later.

And now he was here, in a new world, with dare he say, people he had come to view as a family of sorts—and once again, something had decided to fuck with his people. Snapping back to the present with a deep breath, Harry pulled back his emotions within his control, occlumency working overtime to pull back his rage and lingering traces of bloodlust as thunder crashed through the sky above. Closing his eyes for a moment, he exhaled and phased through the door before him, stopping the cloak’s magic right as he opened his eyes, piercing through the mind of the man before him.

His thoughts could wait. He had work to do.