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Piotr had been waiting quietly watching the comings and goings of the camp below him and, despite knowing that his new acquaintance had used some kind of spell to make him invisible, hid as well as he could. He spotted several of what he supposed were mutant soldiers being trained here and there, noticing as he did that they were not exactly trusted. Only three of them were training as a group and, even that, only for one exercise before two of them walked off in the direction of the row of barracks.
The others were always trained separately, always surrounded by at least a platoon of other men, ostensibly training as well. It was obvious that the majority of the soldiers on the base did not trust the mutant soldiers, in particular two of them, keeping them well apart. He didn't know why that was but it was pretty obvious from his current vantage point.
Piotr's eyes hardened as one of the two, a young man Piotr estimated was possibly a year or two younger than himself, was smashed to the ground by the butt of a rifle. From this distance, he couldn't say why, but it might have been for failure to complete a climbing exercise fast enough to please his supervisors. He noticed the other one of the two who seemed to be the least trusted, turned and almost moved toward where the young man was, before stopping herself.
He was so busy trying to control himself at the sight of a younger man being beaten like that, he didn't notice two of the Super-Soldiers moving toward the building he was hiding on. One of them was a woman, with long black hair down to her waist, wearing a black jumpsuit with a long V neck cut out of the front and boots that rose high up her thigh. The other was a man almost as tall as Piotr and even wider across the shoulders, with close cropped brown hair and deep-set brown eyes. He was the one that had changed into a bear and was lifting a massive block of granite as an exercise when Piotr and Harry first arrived.
The two of them had stopped momentarily to talk to the officer who had brought Piotr in, who stiffened and began to walk hurriedly towards the base's command center. The two super soldiers continued toward Piotr's location, the woman leading the way.
Once there, the woman paused for a moment, muttering a spell in Russian under her breath, then spread her hands up towards the roof of the building. "Pust' sokrovennoye vidno!" Above her the spell that had covered Piotr slowly faded, although he didn't notice right away, staring out over the base as he was.
At the same time, the man had charged inside, racing up the steps and transforming into his bear form moments before slamming the door onto roof open and charging out. Before Piotr could even think of what was going on, he was grabbed in a literal bear hug and lifted off the ground. "I know not who you are, or why you have invaded our base! But know that we Soviet Super-Soldiers do not take kindly to being snooped upon!"
The woman floated up the side of the building to land gently on the wall surrounding the roof. The bear then looked to the side and laughed. "You were right, Fantasia, there was someone here!"
"Yes," said the woman slowly, looking at the young, black haired Russian boy through narrowed eyes, "but I do not think that this one cast the spells I felt on him or that odd golem-like creature that took this one's place, Ursa Major. No, someone else is here even if I cannot sense him. See if you can squeeze any information out of this one, if the other one is truly invisible to me, he could be anywhere on the base!"
Ursa Major grunted, then willingly began to squeeze the man in his arms, while below them around the base the alarm began to sound.
Piotr gasped, his air leaving his body explosively under the brute force of the giant bear's grip. He could feel his ribs creaking and groaning and he realized he was in real danger here. As Harry had tried to describe, Piotr reached deep inside himself, searching for that feeling he had felt when rushing to save his sister from the out-of-control tractor, searching for the feeling of steel deep in his soul. He found it.
It started from his toes, that feeling of change. His skin changed color, no longer skin but metal. Segmented bands of shining metal encompassing his body from his toes to the top of his head. It also added a foot or more to his height, Piotr could feel it as his body pushing the bears grip around him back, letting him breathe again. Taking a deep breath, he slammed his head back into Ursa Major's nose.
On any bear the nose is one of the most vulnerable spots, a bundle of nerve endings that hurt like the blazes if you smack it. Ursa Major, despite not being an actual bear still had this weakness and he howled, letting go of Piotr as his claws rose to his face.
Piotr turned, one fist coming around like the hand of god, slamming into the side of the Ursa Major's face smashing the larger bear off his feet and over the side of the rooftop. With that threat momentarily dealt with, the former farmer turned to the woman a little worried, he was not brought up to hit women after all. He didn't have to do anything however, for Fantasia was already gone.
A bright red beam of light slammed into the side of the building, shattering the rooftop and hurling stone everywhere, some of which slammed harmlessly into Piotr's metal form. Piotr cursed, looking in that direction he saw that two tanks, part of the base's quick reaction force, had taken the building under fire from the end of the dirt path that crossed in front of the building he was currently hiding on. Down below, the few people that had been inside the building were running outside and four fire teams were quickly moving into position around him.
Piotr grabbed up a large piece of rooftop hurling it back at the tank that had fired on him. The chunk of masonry slammed with destructive force into the barrel of the laser, destroying it. That allowed him to jump down from the roof, landing heavily amongst a group of infantrymen. His fists flashed out slamming them one way and the other, trying not to hit them with enough force to kill them but still throwing their bodies around like rag dolls, staying in among the troops to protect himself from the other tank, which couldn't hit him now with the buildings and its own men in the way.
The protection of the soldiers around him proved to be an illusion however. A bolt of lightning slammed down into them from seemingly out of the clear blue sky. The soldiers around him screamed in agony from their ricocheting bits of electricity, and Piotr staggered to his knees screaming with agony.
"A boy with an iron boy should not challenge a god-touched avatar who wields lightning!" said a booming voice. From out of the sky came one of the Super-Soldiers, one that Piotr hadn't seen before. Rather than the normal matte black bodysuit, this one was wearing what Piotr would term a period costume, something that looked like something a Slavic warrior would wear it. He was wielding a massive axe in one hand, the end of which was crackling with the residue of a lightning blast. "I know not why you think one man alone can stand against a force such as ours, nor do I particularly care. I should thank you, however, live targets are always more interesting!"
Piotr looked up through bleary eyes, the metal of his skin having saved him from the majority of the damage the lightning bolt could cause, but not all of it, and the effect of the electrocution was fading slowly. In front of him the man readied another lightning bolt, preparing to knock Piotr out.
Just then the axe wielder was smashed to the side by a blast of wind, which picked him up, hurling him into a building on the other side of the road from where Piotr was kneeling. "One," said Harry's voice coming from the smoke and ruin of huge hole at the far end of the area where a small building had once stood, "he did not come alone. And two, if you're going to play with lightning, try and face the master."
"gwaywffon mellt!" Harry shouted and a spear of lightning appeared in his hand, crackling with power and longer than he was tall. He hurled it forward into the rubble where the man had been thrown from his previous attack. The man had just been getting to his feet, and he looked up in shock as the lightning spear slammed into him. Whatever immunity he had to his own power did not stretch to stopping this. He shouted in agony as he was thrown back, his chest and side burning from the lightning spear's strike.
"Th-thank you for the timely rescue, Mister Wizard." Piotr said, climbing to his feet and almost absentmindedly using Harry's codename. "I was found out by a woman named Fantasia. She and a man called Ursa Major attacked me, he was the one who transformed into a bear. What are our plans now?"
Harry shrugged. " I found enough here to make me want to wipe this place out, if you want I can get you out first though." He went on to describe the 'lab' of Dr. Phobos, as well as how he had rescued the latest victims of the now dead doctor.
Piotr's eyes hardened as Harry gave his description, and his eyes burned with righteous anger and resolve as he through off the last of the effects of the lightning attack.
At that moment three APCs came around the end of the road and another burst through the rubble of the building where Piotr had hidden and began to fire on both Harry and Piotr. One was using a laser weapon that was much less powerful than the one the tank had sported, but also far faster firing, while the other two were armed with regular machine guns. These wouldn't have been much danger to either Harry or Piotr, but the APC's had cleared the line of sight for the other tank which immediately fired.
Harry grunted as the cannon round from the tank impacted a hastily woven shield shattering it and moving through to slam into his body. Luckily his crisis suit and Magia Erebea enhanced body was up to the task of taking the blow, but he was thrown off his feet skidding backwards on his ass. His return spell however slammed into an APC blowing it to pieces and killing the crew inside.
Piotr had simply run forward, taking the shots from the APCs on his armored body, slamming bodily into one APC which flew backward, slamming with crushing force into another. Then Piotr leaped forward into a group of soldiers who had tumbled out of them. His steel fists smashed out with untrained but powerful blows, throwing them hither and yon.
OOOOOOO
Nikolai was a young man, only a year or so younger then Piotr. But his life had been even harsher than Piotr's had been caring for his family and working on the communal farm. Nikolai was selected at a very early age to be put through the Russian equivalent of the Red Guardian program, which was the Soviet equivalent of the program that had developed Captain America. This program was had many more men than the American version, but despite this was nowhere near as successful because none of their scientist had come up with a way to replicate the original formula given to Captain America.
During WW2 they had come up with a somewhat similar serum, and it had been extremely successful. The man wasn't as fast but was even stronger than Captain America. But it had severe downsides, shortening the life of the man who had been given it by more than half.
Only one man, Aleksey Lebedev, was given it before the Red Skull (not wanting anyone else to have the physical skills he had) destroyed the serum and killed the scientists who came up with it. Still, the Red Guardian, as he was called, had become a rallying point for Russia against German aggression.
When mutants began to initially appear however, the Red Guardian had protested against the pogroms against them. Lebedev had been a hero both for the soviet people and for the allies. He had worked with Captain America and the original Defender, so when he protested it had carried a lot of weight. This forced the government to take direct action against him, but Lebedev had the last laugh.
Realizing his life was in danger, Lebedev hunted down every scientist who was working on recreating the serum they had given him. He destroyed every piece of research, killing every scientist who had worked to recreate it before they killed him. This had forced soviet scientists to start from scratch yet again and it had only been in the last few years where they had made any progress.
Nikolai was one of two people who had been chosen to try the latest attempt at the serum, though in his opinion it wasn't worth it. The scientists hadn't exactly made a big secret of how they had come up with it. The mutant freedom fighter, Iron Curtain, had been captured months ago, long before Blind Faith had finally been hunted down. The present serum, which Alexei Shostakov, the other man who had been put through the current training had already been given, was based off analyzing the Iron Curtain's blood and putting that together with some bits and pieces they'd been able to figure out from their spies in America. Together, it seemed to work, but the failing was that it would almost certainly have the same downside as some of the previous, rejected versions, that of shortening the users lifespan tremendously. It also seemed to do something to the man's mental abilities, enhancing his already huge ego while adding a bit of darkness to his personality. Or perhaps that had always been there, hidden until he had real power.
Despite his lack of serum however, Nikolai was a superb soldier, having been trained since he could walk. But he wasn't exactly loyal to the government. His indoctrination hadn't taken, for a single, simple, reason.
He shared a long glance with his sister, who was a mutant. The two of them had been trained together for the past seven years and the indoctrination hadn't taken in either one of them because of one another. The indoctrination forced you to put the state and following orders above all, and neither sibling was willing to do that because they were loyal to one another. It had been his sister Laynia (codenamed Darkstar) who had kept Nikolai sane during his early years of training, which had happened under their father before their father was reassigned elsewhere. And it had been Nikolai who kept Laynia sane in turn when her mutant powers activated and she was forced to join him, becoming a Super-Soldier trainee.
Now, they glanced at one another. With that odd connection couples and siblings sometimes have both wordlessly turned and began to take the fight to the infantrymen around them.
Darkstar's powers allowed her to manipulate an odd energy the scientists who had tested her called darkforce, in a limited manner. It was a kind of energy whose characteristics were only vaguely understood at this point. What she could do with it at this point was fly, create shields, blasts of varied power. She could even use it to create near-solid objects, which had the same tensile strength as steel, though she couldn't sustain any such projection for very long.
That didn't make her powers any less lethal however. She turned and blasted the seven soldiers who had been around her when the alarms sounded to powder, then turned her sights on the others she could see as they tried to bring their rifles to bear before she could blast them. They did not succeed and their bodies flew away, charred, broken, and very dead, allowing her to concentrate on the other soldiers now running toward her.
Nikolai on the other hand had no superpowers, but he was a fantastically trained soldier, well above the norm even here. He struck out, slashing one with one hand across a soldiers throat while slamming his other hand into the face of the sergeant who had been beating him a moment ago. He flew back with a shattered nose and skull. Nikolai's legs then lashed out, tripping the two soldiers behind him who had tried to raise their rifles toward him, then grabbed their weapons and began to fire into the soldiers around the training area who hadn't yet gotten to their emergency response stations.
Swiftly he dove into a nearby foxhole, one of the many obstacles that were part of the training ground. Once there he raised the rifle and began to fire single shots at some of the soldiers he could see deeper into the base, allowing his sister to take out the majority of those closer and without any cover of their own.
As the base roused itself, however, the two rebels and the two invaders would have quickly been overwhelmed if one of them had not been named Harry Potter.
OOOOOOO
Harry jumped up from where he had been dumped by the round from the tank, scowling angrily as the noise of more combat and moving troopers reached him from all around. The base was waking up to the danger that had suddenly appeared inside it. "I think it's time to even the odds!" Then he knelt down swiftly planting his hands on the ground and shouted out a spell. "Shi Jundai!"
Piotr, who had taken refuge from the laser cannon behind some rubble (he did not want to see what a laser could do to his metal skin just yet), gaped in astonishment. From the ground rose over 300 golems holding blades of stone. Four of them immediately brought their blades around slicing apart an APC and a infantry fire team that had been unlucky enough to be right beside them as they formed.
"Attack!" Harry shouted, and the golems moved inexorably around, overwhelming the troopers. This show of magic power unnerved even the infantry of the base that had been trained alongside the Super-Soldiers and more than one ran in panic, which was actually the best thing they could do. The only weakness the golems truly had were how slow they were.
Only a blow from one of the tanks, of which there were three manned now, could really damage them and there weren't enough tanks moving at this point to offset the golem's numbers. Then there was the fact most of the tanks were long range platforms. The short ranges of the base worked against them. The tank commander realized this and quickly ordered the few tanks that were already moving to pull out of the crowded area of the base into the airfield, the surrounding training areas, and the machine park, but Piotr and Harry didn't let up.
"Piotr, head toward the machine park, destroy as many of their tanks as you can before their operators can get to them! I'll keep riling up the base and take the fight to the Super-Soldiers and the infantry." Harry ordered, understanding the threat the laser armed tanks could pose.
Piotr nodded. He was not happy to fight like this, but if what Harry had told him was true, Piotr was more than willing to help destroy this wretched place. "I understand, but don't forget the helicopters!"
"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!" Harry retorted as two spells streaked out, smashing into another group of soldiers, blasting them to pieces.
The steel-clad mutant laughed as he raced forward through the rubble of two buildings, getting underneath the cannon of the last tank of the quick reaction force as it tried to retreat. He grabbed the barrel, twisting and crushing it before lifting it up grunting slightly. There was a shriek of metal and the turret came off entirely, dragging along one of the soldiers who had been sitting there, who leaped away in terror. He hurled it at another tank which had been able to escape the carnage of the golem charge. The turret slammed into the other tank with enough force to actually flip it over onto its side.
Ursa Major had recovered by this time and had gone looking for Piotr, ignoring the other attacker, to get to grips with the one who had hurt him. He charged out of the smoke and confusion of the battle, slamming into Piotr's side and bringing him down to earth, pinning one arm and raking his side with his claws, slamming his paws into Piotr with punishing force.
Even Piotr's metal body could only take so much of that and he grunted in pain, feeling his metal skin buckle a little under the blows. Still, he was game and brought his forearm around to slam into Ursa Major's head throwing the huge Kodiak back enough to let him get his other arm free to push the bear off him. The two titans glared at one another for a moment before slamming bodily together. Their arms began grappling and punching, Piotr's legs kicking out when he could, as the battle became up close and personal.
Harry had other worries, one of which was taking out the Comm. tower. He didn't want anyone to be able to call in more aid after all. He took to the air for just a moment, protected by a strong shield, and as soon as he was in sight of it, shooting out a silent Bombarda at the tower, shattering it entirely.
Nearby, two Super Soldiers came out of one of the barracks. One of them was the one Harry had seen watching Ursa Major training, who had gone there to grab a energy bar. Now, however, the large backpack he wore was explained as four tentacles made of some unknown metal came out of it, each of them transforming into different weapons. He leapt into the air trying to close with Harry, but Harry backed away easily, slamming him backward with a single spell to the ground.
The other was dressed in a form fitting red suit with a black star on the chest and was wearing a large circular shield on his back which had the hammer and sickle sign on it. He however, was much less headstrong than his friend. Alexei, in fact, always had his mind on the main chance and decided he wanted nothing to do with the sorcerer who was behind this attack.
Instead, he looked around trying to find a better target and smirked when he saw Nikolai had taken the chance to defect. Alexei had never liked that little punk, always nipping at Alexei's heels, yet never really ready to take the final plunge. Alexei had been in this program for several years longer than Nikolai and he had put in his time as a spy as well. The idea of someone who had only been trained for this, who hadn't really put in the time as a soldier of the state, getting the super-soldier treatment was damnable to him.
And Nikolai had protected his hot ass of a sister since she had arrived here seven years ago, never, in all that time, letting her anywhere on her own unless an officer was with her. Where Alexei could intimidate or convince a few of the regular troops to join in on some fun, the officers were something else, under orders to treat both Darkstar and Fantasia as untouchable objects, just in case their powers could go out of control. In Darkstar's case, that was even more of a concern than in Fantasia's, so the officers were under orders to make certain they were both treated well. With a grim smile he raced off in that direction.
Above him, Harry had cast another lightning spear, which pierced straight through the tentacle wielder's chest, killing him instantly. Then he turned to a tank that had ignored the tank commander's orders and charged into the base.
OOOOOOO
"I don't care if they're ready or not! Get the Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo out there! There's some kind of magic user. he just created a fucking army of stone creatures and we need more firepower!" The base commander, a general, was a veteran and he had responded quickly to the emergency. In the corner of the command center, the only Super-Soldier that had been assigned there lay dead, gunned down before he could even think of betraying them like Darkstar and her brother had. He snapped out orders quickly, trying to get control of the battle.
Even as one of the general's aides passed on that order to what had been dubbed the Iron Institute, the general ordered two of the infantry companies that had not yet engaged the invaders to pull back to their armory to rearm with heavier weapons. Ostensibly, the force of this base was one tank company, five infantry companies, and two motorized rifle companies. In actuality, it was two regular infantry companies, two heavy weapons companies, and one sniper and recon company, the majority of which unfortunately had been training with Nikolai and Laynia and had died when they turned on them.
Their weapons with the more expensive payloads were not normally used in training but they were available for emergencies like this. With one of the motorized rifle companies already wiped out by the sorcerer and his golems, the general hoped that the heavy, crew served laser cannons and machine guns could at least hold the golems off. If they could, the powered armor and Super-Soldiers could deal with the wizard and the metal mutant.
He turned to another one of his aides, and said crisply, "Get the helicopters into the air, use them on the perimeter to cut down the traitors in the training ground, if you can. I also want one helicopter to head towards the nearest base with available troops, now!"
"But sir, this is supposed to be a secret installation, no normal military unit is supposed to…"
"Do you think that would matter if the base no longer exists after this?! Do it!"
The man gulped, but nodded his head and moved off to do his general's bidding. As he did, the base commander turned to another aide, a young man he knew to be among the fastest runners on the base. "You, I have a job for you…"
OOOOOOO
In the Iron Institute, the mutant known by all by the name of Gremlin, who willingly worked with the state to round up his fellow mutants, paused in his work on the Crimson Dynamo when they heard the barked order to two send out their creations. He sighed faintly. While the suits were ready, calibration, personalization, and final tests had been scheduled to take another week before their first real combat mission. Still, that was more because he and Anton were both perfectionists and Gremlin knew it. The suits were ready and they would be more than enough to help the rest of the Soviet Super-Soldiers against the rather idiotic traitors and attackers.
He looked over at Boris, who was clamoring into the Titanium Man suit, then to Anton Vanko as the Crimson Dynamo's helmet was lowered over his head. The two men could not be more dissimilar. Anton was a man of average height but immense intelligence, a genius at physics whose father had worked with Howard Stark to create the arc reactor before being deported back to Russia. The reactor the suit he was now wearing used was far less economical, but it could put out the same amount of power for short amounts of time. Boris on the other hand, was of only normal intelligence, yet was a massive bruiser of a man, who perfectly exemplified the thinking behind his armor, strength over speed.
And, contrary to what Harry had thought, both suits had been the works for years before Iron Man appeared on the scene. Indeed, work had begun on both to counteract Dr. Doom rather than Iron Man. Of course neither had been used against him yet, but plans were in the works to send in a special team to take Doom out and seize Latveria before installing a puppet government that would funnel its technology back to Russia.
The Titanium Man, fourteen feet or so of perfectly controlled Titanium in the shape of a massive man, was the first to be ready. It systems were not nearly as sophisticated as the Crimson Dynamo's, and it source of power was a very old-style electric battery, which meant it wouldn't be good for a long extended battle, but it was simple and easy enough to operate plus was massively powerful and durable. "I'll leave now." Boris said via the armor's loudspeakers, grabbing up one of the large twin-barreled Gatling cannons that fit along one of his arms.
"Dynamo," Boris went on, now using code names as they were going into battle. "You follow up, I'll head towards that magic user. If we take him out the golem army will probably fade, then we'll be able to simply overwhelm the traitors and this other interloper."
The Crimson Dynamo's operator nodded his head, flexing one hand as he scientists finished hooking its relay system up to his fingers. "I'll be right behind you."
OOOOOOO
Dum-Dum Duggan scowled, slamming an autopsy report down on his desk. Specifically, it was the autopsy of the terrorist that Phoenix had dropped off. "How they hell did Talmud sneak a fucking cyanide pill in?!" He barked angrily looking around and his lieutenants. "We did a fucking full body strip search, a cavity search, and scanned his teeth for hollows, too, so can one of you useless fucks explain to me how this happened!?"
None of his men would meet Duggan's eyes, knowing that this was a major blow and actually having no real idea who it had happened either. The terrorist leader, Talmud As'avier, had barely been in their custody for a day, and somehow, despite being under 24-7 suicide watch had managed to kill himself. SHIELD wasn't exactly naive when it came to this sort of thing, and the man had indeed been searched as thoroughly as they could do it. Yet still the man was dead, not by a cyanide pill, but by cyanide. The difference was important since the autopsy hadn't been able to tell them if the man had taken the cyanide via mouth or what. All the guards had been questioned, but not one of them had seen the man even reach for anything. One moment he was alive, the next moment he was foaming at the mouth then dead before any medical aid could reach him.
The Army major, there as the base liaison to SHIELD, scowled. Could that mutant who dropped him off have done something to him, some kind of delayed reaction?"
"I've had just about enough of your damn fascism!" Duggan practically snarled. "That young lady did us a major favor, and you want to tear her down just because she's got powers that you don't! Remember, if not for her we wouldn't have even had the bastard in the first place. If you don't have anything constructive to add to this discussion major get the fuck out of here!"
The major scowled even more, but didn't respond verbally, just leaning back.
Duggan nodded grimly then turned to stare down at the printout of a picture taken from one of the man's arms, showing a tattoo of some kind of creature with many separate, smaller heads around a single skull. The image reminded him of something, something he had seen once in a mission during WW2, but for the life of him he couldn't remember where. "These guys don't run themselves like any kind of terrorist cell I've ever heard of, they're too damn good at information control and suppression. Far too damn organized over way too wide an area without any sign of communication either." Whatever the aim of this HYDRA group was, it went well beyond helping their catspaw terrorist bands. In fact, his instincts were telling him any such connection was there just to draw interest to the Middle East from elsewhere.
"And some of the weapons we've seen lately." he shook his head. "They're way too damn advanced. They've got a major industrial and tech base, way beyond the level they should have if they were just a new terrorist group, no matter how well dispersed they are." SHIELD and the UN had only run into a few advanced weapons, but when you're talking about portable heavy lasers that can punch through tank armor or anti-air weapons that somehow vibrated planes to pieces, a few times was enough. Dum-Dum had lost a third of his men since starting this job, and he was lucky, even so.
Damn Stark anyway. Cold Steel's all right for the small stuff, but Hammer Industries had major connections to the underworld, and there was no other company that could match Stark for high-tech weaponry. Duggan didn't think Hammer was connected to HYDRA, not directly anyway. Hammer was all about profit, and this group's aim, destruction and chaos, wasn't one Hammer would be interested in. While there could be profit in war, if a country's economy tanked then Hammer wouldn't see any return.
His lieutenant, a young man with dark black hair swept back over his head and wide shoulders, shrugged. "There's some kind of deal in the pipeline with Reed Richards, and pressure is being brought to bear on Stark to restart sales to at least SHIELD, if not the rest of the American military, so we might be able to match them their eventually. The tech we grabbed from the site of Talmud's cell should give us a better idea of what we're facin' boss. It's not a complete loss."
After a full night spent arguing about it with the locals, SHIELD had gotten agreement that morning to go in and search the area where Phoenix had taken that terrorist cell out. They found two boxcar loads of tech, one full of energy based weapons and the other, parts of what the eggheads were telling Dum-Dum were components for some kind of communication gear.
The guns weren't quite as high tech as Duggan had heard the one gun they had gotten from a blocked AIM kidnapping of a scientist in Canada. (SHIELD had good relations with Canada, one the few countries that they did.) That gun was just as powerful as the heavy rifle-sized guns Duggan and his men had captured, but it was the size of a pistol.
Duggan sighed. "I want all that gear we found boxed back up and ready to go in twenty minutes, and a full guarded flight ready to head back to America. I know it's standard procedure to keep it here and bring the scientists here to study it, just in case, but this base has proven it isn't secure enough. I want it all gone before someone realizes we may have come up with more than just Talmud."
That brought him back to what they had originally been discussing. "I want every damn person that came within twenty feet of the prison questioned, run through the fucking ringer, and their possessions searched. I do not fucking care about their god-damn first amendment rights, someone got to our prisoner, and I will, by god, learn who."
The base rep made to protest but a single glare from Duggan shut him up once more and Duggan went on. "After that, I want the local air waves rechecked for anything unusual. I…"
He was interrupted by a knock on the door frame. Dum-Dum turned, along with the others you talking to stare at the young ensign that stood there. "I'm sorry sir, but, um, you might want to come and take a look at this."
"What is it, ensign?" Duggan asked calmly, not ripping the boy's head off as many officers would have. He had a lot of time for young ensigns. If you fed and watered them properly, many of them became very good officers, eventually. That was one lesson he had learned from Nick during the war.
"Sir, we, we picked up something on long-range scans, via one of our long range projects, a certain apparition in the system." He spoke obliquely, knowing that a few of the man in the room were not cleared for Operation Ghost.
Duggan stiffened and nodded sharply, then turned to point first at his second in command, then the lieutenant who had sweptback black hair. "Reese, get the crates and stuff out of here, Frank you handle the investigation, jump on it right now. The rest of you are dismissed."
The major, unfortunately, did have clearance and followed Duggan as he raced out of the conference area toward the area of the base taken over entirely by SHIELD, the ensign right next to him. Even so, Dum-Dum kept his voice low as he looked over at the ensign. "Fill me in."
"Ghost 3 was flying over Siberia, everything was checking green all across the board and it found what looked to be a secret base of some kind. It was camouflaged really damn well, covered with some kind of odd illusion field for a time but when the action started that went down quick. It's somewhat bigfor a hiddenbase, sir, and old judging from the buildings, possibly as old as World War II. It's got its own airfield, a dozen buildings, maybe four companies of mixed mechanized and regular infantry, at least a full company of tanks along with its own organic air assets. It's also got the oddest set up in terms of tech I've ever seen, a mix of really high tech gear and old fashioned stuff, even the tanks reflect that kind of mix. It looks as if the Russians have started to develop their own gear as well, this base has all the earmarks of some kind of testing bed for new gear."
"They were bound to of course." Duggan said while the major scowled agreement from his other side. "That's part of why we're here. But what do you mean, 'action'?"
The ensign said hesitantly, "I don't think you'd believe me if you don't see it for yourself first, sir."
By this time, they were at the entrance to the cordoned off sector of the base SHIELD had commandeered and Duggan flashed his badge to the two guards outside. Both of them took a moment to look at it before running it through their system along with the major's before letting them in.
He nodded at that, pleased. It'd taken him a while, but he had smashed this group of agents, taken from the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, naval intelligence, and army intelligence together into a coherent unit. They all had operational security written into the inside of their eyeballs by this point, as well as the need to never let down their guard. There was, by God, not going to be any leaks from his troops. Duggan wished he could say the same about the regular army officers and soldiers here, but that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Still, hopefully Frank's investigation will turn up something and we can find out who the hell 'helped' Talmud to die before we could squeeze him.
A moment later, the ensign had led them inside to what was Project Ghost's headquarters. Project Ghost was a system of utterly invisible, ghost-like automated drones that were the brainchild of Tony Stark. As they weren't weapons, Stark Industries were still making them, including some new versions, but the ones they already had were scary enough. Dum-Dum and his men had arrived here with a full complement of twenty of them, though they only used four at a time. The drones were able to literally ghost through any nation from here to China on one side or Italy on the other without anyone knowing, though at that range they were only good for half a day. The Bronx-born SHIELD commander was a little ambivalent about the lawfulness of what they were doing, but seeing as none of the countries directly around them were exactly democracy friendly, save for India and Israel (a few were moving in that direction slowly, but weren't there yet) he was willing to overlook it, most of the time.
On the other hand, Dum-Dum had ignored the orders that told him to send a few over to Israel and into India with a certain degree of amusement. Seeing as a local man had come up to him and greeted him by name the first time he left the base and had given him a certain call sign before disappearing before his lieutenant could follow him into the crowd, it was pretty obvious that the Israelis at least knew SHIELD was in the area. Duggan wouldn't put it past them to have figured out a way to spot the drones somehow.
India, on the other hand, was the largest growing democracy in the world. He was not going to be party to anything that would bother them in any way or make them turn away from being allies of America. He might have a major problem with the fact that they had a caste system and a lot of other things, including the way they treated women in certain areas of the huge country, but that didn't mean it was SHIELD's job to look over India's collective shoulder.
As they walked in, it was obvious what was going on. Someone, apparently two someone's with possibly a few agents on the inside, were staging an all-out attack on the base. At the moment it looked as if they were holding their own at least and possibly winning but that wasn't what shocked Duggan and the army major. "D-did that one man just transform that tank's gun into glass?" the major stuttered in shock.
Dum-Dum frowned at that, sitting down in the chair set into the center of the room, fiddling with his bowler hat's rim in thought. Then he grinned as somebody whose body looked it was made of polished steel slammed into a tank throwing it back into a person who looked like a giant bear at the moment. That one, Duggan recognized from a few files on the new Soviet Super-Soldier program. According to SHIELD sources, the Russian government was supposedly putting together a group to be a government-sanctioned team to be like the Fantastic Four that they were calling the Soviet Super-Soldiers. The team was supposedly a mix of mutants and 'super-soldiers', though what made them super was up in the air.
The two massively powerful fighters came together on the screen. He barked a laugh as the other man apparently began to take the fight to an entire company of soldiers, throwing them around and smashing buildings with his powers which were obviously magical. Dum-Dum hadn't fought many sorcerers (only two actually in his time as a Howlin' Commando and looking at this he was glad of that), but he recognized the signs of spells. Though this guy had a shit load of spells and they were head and shoulders above anything he'd ever seen in terms of speed and power.
"What should we do, sir?" said the major looking around at the screen anxiously. "Whoever that is, they're breaking international law, and you know the soviets will bleat and whine about it and blame it on America."
"Son," said Duggan now leaning back in his chair with his hands folded behind his bowler hat, propping his feet up on the table in front of him, "international law is more like guidelines. Yes, I prefer most people to follow them, but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. And goin' by the people runnin' away over there, I'd say they're breaking a few international laws themselves." He motioned to an area directly under where the drone was hovering over the surrounding forest where some kind of little creature (or possibly a mutant who had been done wrong by his mutation) had just popped in.
Even from the height that the drone was hovering at now they could see several of them were injured, and many of them had obvious mutations. The most obvious one was the teen in the lead who looked like a cross between a man and a Siberian tiger. "Last time I checked training young teens to be soldiers was against international law. Nah, in this case I'm just goin' to sit here and watch the fireworks. The best thing about it is, when we deny any knowledge of it, we'll be tellin' the truth. After all, we really did have nothing to do with this."
Duggan laughed suddenly. On the screen a man dressed like someone out of a Viking epic had just tried to attack the sorcerer. Yet, he was thrown aside through a building with a single punch, and then the man turned his attention to some helicopters that were trying to get off the ground. "You all better hope you started recording this from the beginning, and someone get me some popcorn!" He shouted over his shoulder. "This looks to be damn good."
OOOOOOO
Harry frowned suddenly as he felt a spell go off near him and he ducked reflexively but it wasn't actually an attack spell, it was an illusion. The illusion tried to cover up the attack of an infantry fire team with heavy weapons, both the sound of the heavy thrum of their portable crew-served cannon and the sight of them setting it up at the far end of the makeshift street Harry was standing on at the moment.
His mage sight, however, enabled him to see through the illusion as if it wasn't there however and he shot out a mid-level attack spell even as he dodged the ravenous beam of orange light that their cannon emitted. "Terra Hasta!" Dozens of thin spears shot up from the ground, impaling the soldiers and destroying the cannon.
The illusion caster tried again, trying to cover the charge of the man with the axe, his side still smoldering from Harry's previous attack. Harry saw through it once more. Ducking underneath the blow he returned one with all his magically enhanced strength straight up into the man's jaw. He felt the bone shatter and the man's left his feet flying backwards, sailing through the air of the base to land somewhere out of sight and, hopefully, out of the battle.
"Are you a one trick pony, whoever you are?" Harry called out sarcastically, weaving a shield in one hand to block incoming blows from a machine gun armed team who had moved into the rubble of the building on his left side. His other hand rose quickly and another lightning spear shot out to impact the first of three helicopters that were trying to take off from the airport, shattering it into pieces.
Those pieces fell down, impacting the other two below it and forcing them to evade wildly. That availed them nothing, however, as Harry swiftly turned, grabbed a piece of debris with a spell, then hurling it at the second helicopter, slicing it in half. The helicopter's front half fell to the ground, the rear portion fell directly down into the canopy of the third helicopter, killing the pilots as it slammed through the glass.
He ducked underneath a dark curse, made of bits of arrowhead shaped green darts, then leaped to the side as another curse tried to take his legs out from under him. This time it was a crescent shaped cutting spell, which he thought might be similar to a spell Selene had used during their battle in London.
In response he flipped himself over through the air, slamming his hands together and sending a shock wave through the air. "Aeris Fluctus!" The spell picked up and threw several troopers around, including a black haired woman dressed in a formfitting black bodysuit with large purple boots, who desperately weaved a counter spell to Harry's second attack, a Bombarda spell sent straight at her.
Harry was distracted by two more teams setting up their cannons and firing at him. The orange colored stream of energy from one nearly caught him in the side and he whistled, a little impressed at the power of it as it cut a channel through the debris of the battle and the ground. The other sent small pulses of purple light toward him, yet these didn't get through Harry's Protego. He dealt with both teams quickly.
The woman tried to disappear behind another spell and Harry chuckled grimly, ducking underneath a sniper shot that would have taken him in the head. This wasn't a bullet, either. It was another laser based weapon, though its bolt was the same orange as the cannon round. Realizing he didn't want to find out if his crisis suit could stop that, Harry paused briefly then spat out a spell. "Orbis fulgur scutum!" Around him suddenly appeared four foot long flat ovoids of crackling lightning. They began to orbit around him, intersecting the next two blasts from a sniper well out of Harry's sight.
This spell was a family spell he had found and, like many, it had its good points and its weaknesses. For one, it was, as the name implied, ovoids of lightning. They couldn't block area effect spells and were easily overcome by real curses, such as bone breaker hexes or similar, which didn't 'carry their nature' through the air only really imparting their nature when they hit their target. For pure energy spells, however, like Diffindo or Reducto, they were very good and they proved able to stop the sniper rounds easily enough.
However, this had given the woman enough time to fall back on what seemed to be her mainstay, casting illusions and cutting spells. The illusions Harry ignored. The cutting spells were easily intercepted by the lightning spheres.
Harry was getting rather irritated by being held up by this amateur and he shouted his next spell swiftly, bringing his hands around in a wide circle around him, glowing slightly as he cast the spell in Italian. "Lasciate tutte le illusioni spariscono!"
It was one of the spells that he had learned from Blaize Zabini. Daphne's cover wizard, Blaize had been a surprisingly intelligent and romantic young man, who had returned to Italy to marry his childhood sweetheart a few days before the battle of Hogsmeade. His family magics leaned heavily towards illusions and dissipating said. This woman was no match for the illusion specific finite class spell, which could even remove illusions based off runic arrays and even force an animagus back into his human form.
The illusion that the woman had tried to cast over herself and the other deceptions she had tried to cast on the surrounding area failed, blinking out with a suddenness that was shocking. Harry's spell also took with it the transformation that had covered Fantasia's own appearance.
Instead of a woman, there appeared a grotesque monster, with wide wings, a beak for a mouth, and covered with a mix between skin and scales that looked altogether horrible. The thing shrieked trying to dive out of sight but three of the soldiers had seen the transformation and obviously not been expecting it. At the sight of the horror where the woman (who had been their not so-secret object of lust) had been, they reflexively turned their fire on it. Whatever it was, it was not bulletproof and their bullets riddled the thing causing it to dance in place, screaming in pain before falling to the ground dead.
Harry had taken a single moment to stare at this monstrosity, wondering if she had been a mutant and that had been her normal form, or if she had been something else entirely. That was all he had time to think of however, because at that point Titanium Man joined the fight.
The massive metal armored man had slammed down into the ground from the smoke filled sky, his Gatling gun filling the air between the wizard and him with bullets. Harry ducked to one side, not really wanting to trust his crisis suit to stop so many bullets traveling at that speed. He knew it could, but it would probably hurt like the blazes even with his physical durability strengthened.
This proved to be a good move, as the rounds of the Gatling gun were not normal rounds but explosive, much like the ones made for Fury's special gun, only somewhat less powerful, being full of regular gunpowder rather than cordite. Upon hitting the building behind Harry, they exploded with concussive force, scattering bits of masonry everywhere. The green metal man raised his other hand and two beams of power, not lasers but circles of force, shot out, trying to slam into Harry. One of them clipped his arm and he hissed as it damaged his crisis suit, but it didn't get through, merely blistering the skin underneath. Already the suit was repairing itself, as was his skin.
Harry returned fire throwing to Bombarda's at the green painted mountain of metal. Yet the armored man simply shrugged them off, his armor able to withstand the magical assault. Seeing that, Harry cast a high level cutting spell and sent that forward, followed swiftly by another lightning spell, a circular beam of blue power that zoomed towards his target right on the heels of the cutting spell. "Kesmek! Fulgur plumbum!"
The man raised his hands to block the first spell even as he dodged. The cutting spell impacted on his outstretched hand but he had already moved so the second one missed. He lost two fingers of that hand and apparently had actually lost a few fingers if the squealing on the armor's loudspeaker was any indication.
He returned fire, however, with more of the armor's weapons coming online to try and kill Harry. There were the two power beams, the Gatling gun, mini-missiles that launched from its thighs, and a blue/silver electrical attack that shot out from its helmet.
Harry dodged, blocked, or deflected all of it, throwing back spells as fast as he could. The man's titanium armor was able to block most of his lower level spells and he too, dodged all of the spells it could. Harry took off bits and pieces of the armor, but the man was using mobility and the surrounding shattered debris of the base as well as his own comrades as shields against Harry's attacks. Several times, he actually pulled an infantryman in front of him or dodged behind one, letting the unarmored man take the brunt of Harry's spells.
Harry was irritated that for some reason his transfiguration spells couldn't catch on the power armor. He supposed that it was because the armor was made of so many different materials and had electricity coursing through it, but at the moment it was just damn irritating to be unable to end the fight quickly that way.
Once, the Titanium man closed in and tried to grab Harry but Harry dodged and delivered a punch with all his Magia Erebea strength behind it, throwing the man back through a building and out the other side. The blow actually deformed the Titanium Man's chest plate around his fist. A Lacero brought the man back but he disengaged by blasting the ground underneath Harry, causing him to lose his footing and let go of the spell for a second. Harry took a few blows in return, his defensive spheres long gone, but the Titanium Man was becoming more and more battered as the fight went on while Harry's crysis suit and Magia Erebea kept him going.
Ten minutes after the green monstrosity arrived, the Crimson Dynamo joined in, changing the flow of combat once more. Striking from on high, the man in the red painted suit disdained close combat. Not even landing, he simply fired from on high at Harry. Most of the Crimson Dynamo's weapons were energy-based and there weren't nearly as many as the Titanium Man had. But what he did have were actually more dangerous, concentrating more on penetrating power. From his hands came small slivers of plasma, hotter than the Titanium Man's force blasts and able to burn their way through rather than blast their way through their target. From his eyes came dark red colored lasers which pierced their target, slicing through it like a hot knife through butter.
Even Harry had to be aware of the plasma bolts, proven when one blew through his most recent lightning shield to impact his arm, burning his suit away and burning his arm to the bone. A hissed healing spell and pouring more power into his Magia Erebea began to heal the wound almost immediately yet Harry knew he couldn't take another blast like that. Still, even with that Harry was pretty much coasting in neutral, as he had his mind on the battle as a whole.
For the next twenty minutes, Harry dodged and guarded more and more, only blasting out when he had to, not at the two armored units fighting him, but at the four remaining helicopters when they tried to lift off. When the last one crashed back to the ground, shot down by a Rifela from near the other end of the base from the airfield, where he had been forced by his attackers, he nodded, grimly satisfied. Communication is down, helicopters are down, the base is cut off entirely, now to end this.
With that thought, Harry then went on the attack, killing several fire-teams around him and wiping out an entire platoon before taking it to the two armored men. Both Anton and Boris fell back under the sudden assault, as the battle they had thought they were slowly winning suddenly turned against them.
OOOOOOO
Jesse and Christopher had been shown around the castle, then, after a large meal (for them), had run down to the lake to play in the water's edge. Two house elves followed them, ready to jump in if they went out too far or begin to drown, since neither could swim. The novelty of all that water, however, that was actually clean enough for them to go in, had both of them very interested in it. then the two were shown their beds, and fell asleep around nine.
Melody and Illyana had done the same thing, but by the time the two boys arrived had retired to Melody's room and were watching a Disney movie with subtitles for Illyana for the rest of the evening.
Ororo had immediately made both grandparents, whose names were Ivan and Moisha, much happier about their decision to let Harry spirit them away. Her calm demeanor, mastery of Russian, and general appearance had gone a long way to make them realize these people really knew what they were doing.
It was now pushing eleven o'clock, however, and not only had Harry not appeared, but their grandson hadn't either. Despite Melody still distracting her, all three of them were growing worried. So were Ororo and Jean. Jean busied herself with the kids, while Ororo had taken time to cook the meal for their date tonight before turning it over to the elves to keep from spoiling, but both were unable to keep it up. Neither liked the fact they knew, not just thought, but knew that their lover had run into something and they were stuck here, unable to help.
"There's got to be some-way to get there!" Jean muttered. "I should have gone out after him the moment you returned, I could be there by now!"
"We had no way of knowing we would arrive in time to aid him and missing each other in transit would have been even worse." Ororo said, philosophically. "Still, you're right, we need to get there somehow. I refuse to let Harry go into danger without me, he might allow it to become a habit." She thought for a moment then asked the air. "Clare, can I talk to you?"
A moment later the elf appeared in front of her, looking worried. "Yes mistress?"
"I have seen elves pop up around Harry even when he doesn't actually call for them, is there any reason why you couldn't take us to Harry now?"
Clare wrung her hands worriedly. "Mistress, we's not be able to pop to someplace the master not be owning unless he calls for us, and even then, we's be limited by range. Cory be gone, and only he be able to get to where I's can feel the master from here."
"That doesn't make sense to me, Clare." Jean confessed. "You can pop up to High Note when its above us and the distance from the ground to orbit is far farther than here to any place on earth."
"Its be much more difficult to go sideways than up, Miss Jean, we not know why. And High Note is not above us anymore. I's could maybe get to it alone, buts not carrying anyone."
Ororo looked at the ceiling for a moment, thinking. "Tell me, can house elves work together in popping?" Clare nodded, and Ororo smiled. "Then could you get Jean and I to High Note, if you worked together with a few of the others who specialize in popping?"
Clare pouted in thought for a moment then nodded. "Maybe mistress, do you want us to try."
"Yes, I think I do. Harry has been gone too far for my peace of mind and I just know the irritating man has gotten himself into trouble, somehow. If you could get the best poppers that are in the castle at present, Jean and I need to get dressed in our business suits." Jean laughed at that, but nodded and the two women raced off.