Chapter 141 - Chapter 32: Road to Kingship

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"…Reports are still coming in from all over the world about the amazing light show that occurred late last night and what it could mean. Numerous amateur and hundreds of professional astronomers around America and beyond also reported the lights of what could possibly have been explosions in space, including several dozen directly in orbit. Reports from NASA's advanced light imagery teams report other similar lights over and around the planet Mars. Are we supposed to still call it a planet, Charlene?" a handsome looking man asked as he sat behind a desk while numerous cameras recorded all around him.

Behind the newscaster on a large TV screen was displaying an actual recording of Storm's lightning show taken from the surface. It wasn't the only such, of course. The light show had covered half of the planet's hemisphere, and had been so bright that even people without any optical equipment were able to see it from the surface.

"That's a good question, Ted, especially since it has no atmosphere as far as any of the scientists we've been able to talk to can determine. Without an atmosphere, there is little light refraction from it to tell its current position, though thankfully it doesn't seem to have been knocked out of it of its orbit during the fight between the superhero Guardian and the purported alien Thanos," said his coworker sitting next to him, while looking down at several papers on her desk.

"So was this lightning show a sign of another alien threat, a sign that Guardian has begun to build some kind of orbital lightning-based weapon? Or is it simply a random natural occurrence? We'll be speaking to several natural scientists in the coming hours that follow up on that last point if necessary, but to answer the first two, we go live to sunny San Francisco, California with Kimberly Doucet who is attempting to talk to the Fantastic Four."

At that, the image on any TV watching the report from NBC faded to black for just a moment before being replaced with the image of a youngish looking woman dressed in a severe business suit, speaking into a microphone as another camera recorded her from nearby. She wasn't the only reporter there; there looked to be at least a dozen other reporters in the background, and an equal amount of cameramen.

There was also a crowd of locals, but they seemed to have decided to stay to one side of the various reporters, though there were a few that looked more official, accompanied by obvious Secret Service men. Those of that group were all glaring at the reporters and one another equally, save for a bald, middle-aged man standing alone in the group who looked amused by the rest of the Secret Service men around him.

"Thanks Ted. Well, as you can see behind me, here at the Baxter Building there's a bit of a pandemonium at the moment. As the world's foremost superhero team, everyone seems to have decided to see if the Fantastic Four knows about what went on yesterday. When we arrived, we were informed that Susan Richards, the wife of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, would be making an announcement. That time is rapidly approaching, as you can see from the preparations behind me."

As Kimberly was talking the various reporters and officials were being ushered to seats in the auditorium, while the cameramen were being moved to the sides of the wall by two blocky looking robots of about medium height that looked nothing so much as short versions of the robot from Forbidden Planet. Even the voice was something like that robot's. "Please move to your designated seats. Mrs. Richards will be with us momentarily. Please move to your designated seats…"

When it came Kimberly's turn to be seated the camera began to track the robots as the cameraman moved to the place to which the one robot was directing him. Whenever one of the cameramen tried to move their equipment, however, the robots would stop them, their arms lengthening noticeably to cover the camera lenses and slowly pushing them backwards with more than human strength. Even reporters could learn over time, so it didn't take long for the robots to create some form of order.

Moments later Susan Richards appeared quite literally, her invisibility slowly fading away as she stepped forward to take a place in front of the podium at front of the room. "This is going to be a very short preliminary announcement of what has occurred, ladies and gentlemen of the press," Susan said quickly, smiling at them all. Her pregnancy was very noticeable now, especially when she wore her official Fantastic Four uniform.

That wasn't the important thing at the moment, however. "At around 10 AM local time, a Kree fleet consisting of what amounts to several battlecruisers and their equivalent of a dreadnought like those in World War I appeared in the system. Their approach to the system was discovered and then communicated to us here on Earth by a new kind of sensor my husband created called a psionic transmission array. You'll have to ask Reed to explain the science to you. If you feel up to it, anyway." Susan rolled her eyes with a chuckle. "It goes right over my head."

Actually, it had been sheerest luck that Reed's psionic transmission array had been in place just in time to discover the incoming gravitic wave from the hyperspace fleet. He had finished installing it into Babylon barely a day before the attack arrived, and had spent most of the remaining time prior to the attack tweaking it in his spare time. Even Harry hadn't known that it had been online until the data from the relay appeared on Pinoptes' screen.

Which, of course, was quite fine with Harry, not even discounting the whole "actually seeing them coming" thing. Harry wanted his friends and allies to feel comfortable with moving forward with their own plans like that.

After a round of nervous laughter went around the room, Susan spoke again. "Their mission was to annihilate all life on this planet." That shut the moment of levity off like a guillotine, but she continued without pause. "This is in keeping with the Kree doctrine of escalation. We are not a threat to them, but they wanted to control this planet and to make certain that we remained a non-threat. That was why they sent the Sentry more than half a year ago. When the Sentry did not return they sent warships, hence the light show a few months back. When we destroyed that fleet, we in this instance being the Custodes Mundi and the Fantastic Four working in conjunction, they escalated once again with this assault."

She looked around at their faces, some disbelieving, some horrified, some simply worried. "Let me make this clear, ladies and gentlemen of the press and those watching at home, even the Secret Service people who will no doubt try to demand answers I cannot give at this time. The Kree are the equivalent of Nazi Germany, or rather, Nazi Germany as it would have been under the Red Skull. They are a race composed nearly entirely of what we would perceive to be functional sociopaths. The United Nations has been given packets of information gleaned from the Kree, from their technology to their way their minds work after each attack, showing how we came to that conclusion.

"While they may look just like humans with blue skin in many cases, they are not human. They do not feel emotions as well as we do. They do not have any kind of empathy for the most part outside of a few scattered cases in a very large survey set. They are fighting a war against another alien race we have had contact with, the Skrull and that war has been going on for longer than the humans took to evolve from apes. They are not going to ignore or respect humanity. They are not going to make peace with humanity. The very idea of treating us as equals would not even occur to them, and the idea that we would demand such would be considered simply laughable!"

Susan stopped for a moment to let her words sink in before going on softly. "This fleet, too, was stopped, though it was not a bloodless victory and came far too close to disaster. From what I understand—I was not involved in the fighting due to my condition—the light show from yesterday was the result of the mutant Storm, second-in-command of the Custodes Mundi. She used her power to detonate several hundred missiles which had evaded the best defenses we could put up. Each of those missiles would have cost millions of lives, ladies and gentlemen. They would not have even been seen until they were right over their target, such was their camouflage."

The fact that the lightshow had been caused by a mutant was like a bombshell going off, since despite Harry's best efforts the mutant question was still very much in the common consciousness. That said mutant had saved so many lives also made an impact, though that one would take a little while to sink in over the automatic fear too many people still felt occasionally when they thought of mutants.

"Humanity can no longer ignore the threat from space," Susan went on, staring around her. "The Fantastic Four and the Custodes Mundi were up to this task, but remember what I said about the Kree doctrine of escalation. We stopped this attack by the skin of our teeth and the use of far too much luck. What will happen when a complete battle fleet rather than a single flotilla attacks Earth? What will happen then to humanity? Those questions must be answered by the governments of the world, not me."

And with that ladies and gentlemen, I will leave you. Expect an announcement of another public broadcast sometime in the next week or so." Susan turned away, disappearing into invisibility as she ignored the shouted questions from behind her. She had, after all, given them all the information she herself had at this point.

OOOOOOO

"Well isn't that just fantastic, no joke intended," grumbled senator Pulmer as he leaned back in his chair, twisting in place to look over at Director Fury who was standing at attention at the far end of the table. The group of senators facing him right now along with the President and two of his cabinet members were not the Senate oversight committee. They were not part of the structure of the Senate's dealings with either the spy community or the military. They were, however, highly influential, and had both put their names into the running for president. "So can you add anything to that theory, or are you just going to tell us how useless your program is again?"

"Senator, SHIELD has done a lot of good since our inception," said Fury coldly. "Technological terrorism is almost a thing of the past these days thanks to our assaults on AIM. HYDRA is a pale shadow of what it was in the Americas, Europe, and Asia thanks to us. We have stopped over a dozen world-level threats, shut down several government programs which no longer responded to the government of the United States and Canada, stopped the creation of Hulk-type soldiers which might well have served their creator rather than the government, and kept several dozen of this government's skeletons from coming out of the closet in the past few months."

He shrugged his shoulders as the senator, a senator Murasaki from California, who despite his name had no sign of his Japanese heritage in his face, seemed to swell up with anger. "Have we dropped the ball a few times?" he continued. "Yes. On the other hand we've always been quick to pick it back up again, and given that SHIELD's councilors were unable to get other governments outside of Canada, Brazil, and some of the Peloponnesians to open their borders, we have done very well."

Only one of the men facing him was on that council, and a faint exhalation from him drew everyone's attention. "We screwed up badly in the first few years of SHIELD's creation. Too many of my fellow councilors, and even I, believed that it was simply a larger, more technologically advanced version of the various spy agencies already in existence. We eventually began to make overtures to other countries, but when Britain decided not to follow through with their original deal with us, that started a spiral that we've not yet recovered from.

"Further, SHIELD was not supposed to be our main deterrent against alien threats, Murasaki. That task would've gone to SWORD, but the funding for that never even came close to matching what it would have needed."

"It would have if you had done your job properly!" the president said sharply, glaring at the man who simply looked back at him. The councilor's position was secure; the president's was not. He was being seen more and more as a defunct president with little actual power base of his own. His prevaricating on the mutant issue, the whole debacle with the Sentinels which appeared on his watch, and numerous other issues had really hammered his popularity in the public eye and his own party's backing of him. Both parties were now eagerly looking forward to the presidential election next year.

"Back to the original question," said another senator, the Republican representative from Georgia. "Can you tell us anything Mrs. Richards did not?"

"Precious little, Senator," Fury replied honestly. "While SHIELD has developed numerous sensor arrays of our own to detect anything in space their range is limited. Further, our ability to project power into space is nonexistent outside of Ironman, and his deployment speed to combat threats from that theatre is rather slow."

He went on hurriedly before the various senators could voice their opinions on Ironman once again. Tony Stark's general attitude towards the elected body of the American government was condescending at best, combative at worst. At the other side of the scale the fact that he refused to hand over the Ironman technology stuck in a lot of craws. "However, we were able to detect numerous missiles coming towards Earth, the number approaching around four hundred missiles. We detected the battle going on around Mars and the missile separation hours after it happened, of course. We were also able to watch a running battle in something approaching real time as the Custodes Mundi and the Fantastic Four did what they could to destroy the missiles closer to home."

Fury shook his head ruefully. "Honestly, we didn't see Storm's stand coming. We'd feared the worst when several hundred missiles got through the Custodes."

"So the Custodes Mundi saved us once again," said another senator. His tone was surly, but his face was thoughtful as he leaned back, staring at the ceiling for a moment. Then he looked over at the councilor. "What was the major issue with us getting into space?"

"Getting into space," the other man replied dryly, holding up his hand quickly as the man seemed to snarl at him. "I'm not being facetious. That was in fact the problem. Wasn't it, Director Fury?"

"Yes, sir," Fury said, nodding his head to the councilor. Nick didn't like the man. He had far too many secrets, far too many skeletons in his closet. But Fury knew them all, and for all of his faults, and they were myriad, the man was at least competent and intelligent. "Even with Tony Stark and Dr. Henry Pym on the topic we have not been able to create or discover a way out of the gravity well that is at all applicable in terms of time and effort. We simply can't create the infrastructure to build it, not quickly, and certainly not cheaply. The latest results I saw from the two of them would take up the majority of America's total GDP and would take a minimum of two years to put in place."

After a round of winces at the very idea of something costing that much one of the senators spoke up again. "So we're left to trust Guardian, then. I don't like that. I don't like having no handles on the man. I don't like the fact he has no one to answer to. I don't like the fact that we know next to nothing about him or the other Custodes other than most are mutants, and that at least one seems to have Omega level powers!"

Fury could've said something there. He, of course, had known that Harry Potter was Guardian. The magical illusion or whatever it was that made people unable to make that mental connection had never worked on him, since he had known it before Harry had cast that spell, and his spy's mind allowed him to see past it. But he couldn't actually speak about it to others, and frankly he saw no point in trying to do so now.

In fact, Nick found himself in the highly unusual position of actually defending Guardian AKA Harry Potter. "While I understand your points and agree with many of them, Senator, I think you're wrong on your first point. I think he does have people to answer to: his own team and himself. Other than that, let's face facts. Guardian didn't have to step up to the plate when it came to defending Earth from space, he chose to do so because he saw a threat that no one else was addressing. We have to give him some respect for that."

"What I don't like is being in the dark so much," said another senator, shaking his head. "Where did the reports from the Fantastic Four on the Kree disappear to? Why were they not made known to the Senate? Why hasn't the UN been looking into the space threat?"

"As for the last, the UN spoke about it for a few days after the last Kree assault, but there are so many other issues facing the UN in the world, that an existential future threat from space which had no 'clear evidence' beyond supposition and various odd phenomena behind it didn't seem really important," the president said wearily. "Hopefully this will have pushed them into acting, but I don't know if they even can. The UN as a body is, as we all know, rather fractious, and even the Security Council can rarely move in lockstep."

"I'm afraid they're going to have to on this issue, senators, since America might have the industry, but it doesn't have enough money," Fury said with a sigh. "Until they do, and until we have enough time to put the infrastructure in place to get us up into space, we're going to be forced to rely on Guardian."

"A wild and very loose cannon which may have an orbital base of operations already. This does not make me happy," said one of the cabinet members. "Do you have any agents in place within Guardian's faction?"

"No," Fury said bluntly. "We've tried a time or two through various means, but his defenses against such always sniff them out." That was true even for Harry's public industries like Magical Minds and the rest. Fury had even tried to infiltrate Saab at one point, only to discover the proprietary technology of the hover tech was kept under lock and key. The moment the spy tried to get to it he was found out and deported from Sweden quite quickly. "On the other hand, senators, Guardian has reached out to various people, as you know."

The senator who had asked the question about what had kept SWORD from getting off the ground nodded his head. "Captain America, Whittaker, and a few others, yes. That was actually a rather ingenious way of informing the governments of the world what was going on while also opening up communication channels. Unfortunately most of those channels are in the field right now and thus not available to us. We could have gotten Admiral Whittaker and General Murphy in here, I suppose."

"I doubt they'd have any more information just yet about this latest attack, Senator," Fury said respectfully. "However, Guardian has already reached out to Captain America and has invited Steve to the next meeting a few days from now. He has also informed Steve that he can take a plus one, and I intend to be that plus one."

"Who would wear the dress in that relationship?" a cabinet member quipped, eliciting a few groans from those around him.

"We'll have to send a few representatives along with the others as well, so long as that plus one bit was also directed to them at least," the president said thoughtfully. He looked up at Fury then, shaking his head and gesturing to the seat. "Oh sit down, Fury. You're not a private up on a charge! Let's get down to brass tacks here."

Fury nodded, and the meeting continued from there, though it became much more technical about what kind of sensors SHIELD already had in place, what NASA was doing about all this, whether or not NASA should be considered defunct, and other such things of a bureaucratic nature. In the end, it was decided that NASA's budget would slowly be dissolved over the next year, but that the decision to shut it down entirely would be left to the next president.

Each budget cut would be accompanied by a series of commands for them to revamp their technology and outlook of space exploration to match current events, and if they did not meet that demand the budget cut would go into effect. That's a step in the right direction, at least, Fury thought, leaning back and sighing as the meeting continued. Now if only we can get them to release that budget to us and quadruple it and our manpower, then maybe we can get ourselves up into space!

Elsewhere meetings of similar makeup were occurring. In China the Mandarin met with the State Council and was informed that China would be prepared to offer an alliance to Guardian in return for his backing in the future, and to pass it on to the man when they met. The idea of a mob boss meeting with a government like that would have been anathema in European countries, but Asian governments had a far more pragmatic view of crime, so most wouldn't bat an eye at it. Meanwhile in Japan the emperor met with Sunspot to discuss Guardian's character, and then sat down with various members of the Diet to discuss whether or not article nine of the constitution extended to extraterrestrial threats.

Most governments simply had to spin their wheels, or called in the specialists Harry had invited to his previous meeting to grill them on what they thought was going on. Consternation, shock, and growing fear rippled through the halls of power nearly everywhere on Earth, as the governments of the world woke up to the fact that they really had dropped the ball badly on this point. And worse, many of them began to realize that they would have to work with the man who had picked said ball up, not as a random superhero, but as an equal going forward.

OOOOOOO

In Britain, William waited patiently for his son, Duncan to return from visiting his granddaughter in Camelot that afternoon. Duncan returned quickly, sitting down across from his father and sipping at his tea for a moment while his daughter raced upstairs to talk to her mother about what she had learned in class today. Anne was most definitely a homebody, content with staying out of the public eye and seeing to her family for the most part, while running several philanthropist groups from afar.

"I talked to Sir Dennis. They don't know if they have lost anyone yet. The reports are still coming in, but they didn't lose anyone from among the actual Custodes, at the very least. Dennis does know, however, that Potter's orbitals or their equivalent, at least, took another beating." Duncan now set his tea down sharply, staring at his grandfather. "I think it's time we move forward with the Montgomery scheme."

"Indeed. You'll sit in with me when I speak to the Admiralty board and general Mountebanks. We'll outline the plan to them and see how many holes they can poke in it. However when Mr. Potter calls a meeting for aid in the future, I mean for the United Kingdom to be ready to meet his call, whatever that might be."

OOOOOOO

Carol was dead on her feet. It was all she could do to not lean against the wall of the tunnel as she moved towards her quarters stationed on Mars, or rather Fortress Mars. Every one of her workers from sensor techs to miners were unequivocally behind the 'Fortress' part of Mars's designation now. It had been baptized in fire and the lives of several of their fellows, and had proven itself. That had been gratifying, as had been the alacrity and speed with which her people had reacted to the attack.

But there had still been sixty-two killed when tunnels collapsed, and a further twenty-five dead on the surface near the site of the massive beams of power which had destroyed the gravitic anomaly array. That hurt. It always hurt to lose people, especially in this case.

At a purely logistical level it was not the scientists' deaths that hurt them the most, but the miners'. They had more scientists coming in and the framework for hiring more was well-established by this point. Furthermore, their retraining didn't take any real time at all. They did not have as many trained miners and techs, and their training was costly in time and money.

Carol stopped before entering her room as she nearly stumbled into a group of four men and women standing there, waiting for her. All of them looked as tired as she did, which was gratifying, but they were still standing between her and her bed. "What?" she growled gruffly.

"Carol, we represent most of the scientists and miners that work for Mr. Potter at this point," said one of the men bluntly. "All of us here on Mars, all of the ones working in orbit, and even a large portion still on Earth who know about his space-based industry. We have a proposal we want you to pass on to him."

He held out a stack of papers, and Carol took it. As Carol flipped through them she saw that most of the first dozen pages were simply names next to signatures, but when she reached the last page she blinked in surprise, then reread the small, neat script, then looked up at them. "Are you all serious about this?"

"Deadly," said the man with a nod. "That's the point really, so are the Kree and other space-based threats. And we rather like our families being, you know, alive, which they would not be right now without Mr. Potter and the Custodes Mundi."

"I'll…pass it on then," Carol said, still somewhat in shock.

"Tomorrow's fine," said one of the women, shaking her head. "If you want to wait until after the wake we're having tomorrow, that would be the best time, I think. We'd also like you to pass on an invitation to Mr. Potter to come and join us there. In fact, we'd like to see the entire Custodes Mundi there. We need to tell them we appreciate what they've done for us, for our families, hell, for our entire planet!"

Carol nodded. "I'll do that too, but for now get the fuck out of my way. I want my bed."

They all chuckled before moving away, and she slapped the door open before collapsing into the simple cot inside. It was small with a very thin mattress, but she'd slept on far worse in her time as a soldier. I wonder how Potter's going to take their request, Carol thought before exhaustion claimed her.

OOOOOOO

Sinister frowned, leaning back in his chair, the blue and white of the various computer screens the only light in his lab as the TV shut off, his mind awhirl with thoughts and memories. The Kree had come to Earth in the past. Sinister knew it for a fact as he had their genes on hand and several examples of their technology and even anecdotes from their society. A snap of his fingers and a whispered command, and one computer screen popped up the called-for DNA strands.

"As I thought. A dead end race with a certain level of neurosis and emotional instability on a genetic level. More powerful physically, able to take more damage and go with less sleep, but with each successive generation without new DNA the race becomes more and more sociopathic. And…" Sinister paused in his musing looking at a few strands in particular, pulling them up and examining them more closely.

"And there is distinct evidence of at least two eugenics programs in their past, as well as a long term breeding program. There has been no sign of mutations among the samples I've gotten or the information I have gleaned from stolen computers on their society." In other words they were of no interest to Sinister. Worse, from what he could tell of this last encounter and the Sentries the Fantastic Four had dealt with, their technology had not evolved since his…patron…had dealt with them back in the days of the Egyptian dynasties.

"But they could be a threat to bring out the best in both mutants and humans. I will, however, need to step up my campaign of provoking both sides of that conflict to make certain they do not unite against the exterior threat as Potter foolishly believes is the way forward. That dovetails with my desire to get my hands on Jean Grey as soon as possible. Her fetus must not grow beyond a certain age, or else I won't be able to play with its DNA as I wish to. However, to keep the fires hot between the two races will take more of my logistical reserves than I would have wished. Still, let us see…"

With that he turned to his computer and began to rework his plans for the next few months, condensing, moving resources around, changing and reorganizing on the fly in a way that he never enjoyed doing. Still, it had to be done to achieve his desire, his obsession of creating the ultimate mutant.

OOOOOOO

As he sat down in one of the chairs in the control room of Babylon, one would have thought that Harry Potter was feeling joyful, weary but happy at once more saving Earth. But all Harry really felt was tired, not so much of the body, but of the mind and soul. He had lost people, even friends before, but it was never easy, and he had thrown his all into rescuing those he could in Fortress Mars who had been buried or cut off by the cave-ins. This had kept him busy for nearly twenty hours. The only breaks he'd allowed himself were to call Jean a few times to make certain Ororo was all right, and to tell Steve to bring Fury to the next meeting, in a roundabout way, of course.

Not being there for his lady was painful to Harry, even though he knew Ororo would have forced him to turn right around and get back into space to help their people. Hela had apparently dropped Ororo off at Hogwarts where the doctors had immediately gone to work on her with Jean's aid.

According to Una and the other medical specialists there was no danger of her dying from her exertions which had been a weight off Harry's shoulders. But she hadn't woken up yet, and there was little Jean or any telepath could do to get into Ororo's head to see what was wrong on a mental level.

Staring at Earth as it passed below him, Harry simply sat, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and two glasses held forgotten in the other, his mind a jumble. His worries about Ororo, his concerns for the future, and his thoughts on the surprise surrender all were competing for his attention. He had been tempted not to accept the surrender, to continue his attacks, but it would have served no purpose but to sate his anger at the man's actions towards Earth. No, better to destroy his pride and steal his ships rather than wreck them further.

To one side of Harry's current position the door to the control room slid open, and Doom strode through. He looked at Harry's hands and nodded his armored head once, moving to sit beside his ally-cum-friend. Holding out a hand, he accepted a glass and watched as Harry poured them both a half-snifter's worth of whiskey before speaking. "They will come in force next time," said Doom, simply.

"Yes. Hopefully this near run thing can be turned to our advantage in the court of public opinion so we can rally Earth's population against the threat," Harry replied, his voice somewhat dull in comparison to Doom's powerful if sepulchral tone. Yet despite that, there was still a hint of cold steel in his voice, a deep, powerful rage that had simmered like congealed lava.

"And the prisoners?"

"They and their continued well-being will be predicated on what occurs during this meeting." Harry replied grimly.

Doom nodded at that, and then both men turned to look at the door as it opened once more. The Thing and Piotr in his Colossus form came in leading Rica, who was looking much less dapper than he had when he had formally surrendered to Guardian in person. The past day had been spent seeing to the wounded among the Kree crews and seeing to their placement in an asteroid prison, which Harry had to create on-the-fly with Jean's help due to the sheer number of prisoners they had just received rather than looking after his own people.

Busy day, Harry thought as he leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his chest as he stared at the former Commodore, now prisoner. "You surrendered," he said, his voice cold as ice. "Explain."

Rica blinked, then shrugged. "I saw no way to achieve my mission. Continued fighting would only have escalated the cost of lives on my own side, as well as your own." The fact that he added that second part as sort of an afterthought showed precisely how little he cared about that. Why he had even mentioned it was explained in his next sentence. "That would obviously have had a detrimental effect on your treatment of me and my men when the battle eventually ended."

"Your mission was to annihilate my people, to wipe away Earth's population," Harry said, his voice like that of a glacier as he kept control of his temper with difficulty.

"Yes, it was," Rica replied, again giving what in a human would have been called a Gallic shrug. "I was given an order, and I chose the means to carry it out. The plan was mine, and it would have worked too."

The sheer callous way he spoke of the near extinction of their race made both Harry and Doom's hands clench around their glasses. Sociopaths, the lot of them!

"I accepted your surrender on the belief that you and your people would agree to answer any questions we had about your fleets, your people, and your empires. You will therefore answer any questions asked of you freely and without any hint of prevarication," Harry said, standing up and glaring at the Kree leader in the eyes, his emerald eyes stones. "Do that, and I will ensure that you and your troops are treated well. If my people sense even a tiny bit of prevarication or hesitance on your part, I will not hesitate in having the knowledge ripped out of your mind as painfully as I can manage it. This includes any and all scientific information, any and all information we wish to ask you about your ships and their capabilities, anything! Is that understood?

"Those questions will begin soon," Harry said, calming down as the man nodded, trying to seem like he wasn't shaken by Harry's threat, which Harry rather doubted. "Be prepared for it. For now, I'll have you conducted to your cell along with your men." A call to Cory sent the man away, and Harry turned back, sitting down once more next to Doom.

The two of them were silent for a moment, then Doom spoke slowly, as if the words were being winched out of him. "Latveria will soon be ready for a general call to war. Yet we are not economically prepared to push into space. We will need aid there, and my acquired lands will be even further behind."

"If you can provide trained techs and miners, I'll provide the way to get them up into space and give them jobs among my industries for now. We aren't ready to integrate naval personnel yet, though I might be speeding up the timetable on that," Harry promised even as his head began to fill with fog. There were too many things he needed to think about right now both on a strategic and tactical level: setting up a meeting with Steve and the others, building up his space-based industry further, seeing to the internment of the dead and making certain their families got whatever they needed, checking on Ororo, organizing the rebuilding project on Fortress Mars, and thinking about what he would say in the eventual public announcement about what had occurred.

He was also simplytired mentally. As powerful as Harry was magically, that did little to help his mental exhaustion or his ability to keep so many balls in the air beyond a certain point. He was very, very good at it, but not up to the level of a god or goddess, despite his brushes with divinity.

"By the way," Doom said after another moment's silence as the two men finished their drinks. "How likely would you estimate the idea of the Russian government being under the control of more of those shape changing aliens that you discovered?"

"Reed sent me a file on the blood sample I gave him a few weeks ago, saying that there was significant evidence of that creature having been some kind of Skrull offshoot. Unfortunately he's had no luck in creating a long-range scanner that would be able to tell us if more were still around. As to the chance of the Russians being under alien control, I'd say fifty-fifty."

He looked at Doom sharply, his muddied thoughts coming together for a moment. "Are you asking me if I think that the Russian's recent buildup of troops along your shared borders is because the aliens consider you a threat?"

Doom bellowed laughter, shaking his armored head. "No, no. I fully understand that the Russians themselves are more than enough to view me as a threat. As they should, if they continue to funnel money and equipment over the borders to the Red Skull in the remnants of Croatia. I will admit to having been surprised by how well he conducts a guerrilla war against my occupation forces, but the noose is tightening. The Red Skull personally cannot escape Croatia any longer thanks to a little trick my mother taught me, and with that it is only a matter of time."

Harry understood that to mean it was a magical spell of some sort and nodded slowly, thinking about how he'd go about doing such a thing. It would be easier to keep someone away then to confine an individual, especially over such a large distance, but it could be done.

"However, if new weapons show up in Russia's hands, then we will have to consider whether we have a second group of aliens to deal with, acting and using the Russians as their local patsies," Doom finished.

"We'll have to be careful with that label…" Harry warned, even as he nodded agreement. "But they aren't Skrulls, Reed was very clear about that. An evolutionary tangent, he told me, one that occurred long ago in their past."

"As if that matters," Doom scoffed. "So long as they have the same shapeshifting power, I will treat them the same."

"Actually that wasn't what I was thinking," Harry said, forcing the thoughts through his muddied mind with difficulty. Have to get a pepper up potion, he thought, but even that thought was hard to hang on to as his worry about Ororo started to take center stage. "What I was thinking was that because it happened so far in the past we won't be able to predict their movements and their long-term goals by looking at the Skrull. The Skrull themselves are not nearly as warlike towards third parties as the Kree are, and while they are excellent infiltrators, they wouldn't be interested in taking over entirely unless the planet gave them a strong strategic advantage, which we don't."

"A good point. Yet the differences might also make it all the more likely that they could be using Russia as a stepping stone. In that it would have few equals given its defensive abilities." Doom countered.

"Yes," Harry muttered, holding one hand up to his forehead.

Doom went on, turning away so as not to watch Harry's moment of weakness, as was polite. "Back to the topic of the Red Skull. Might I borrow the services of young Douglas Ramsey? From what I understand he is able to discern the actual meaning behind any communication medium? My communications specialists have overheard snippets of clandestine communications sent out of Croatia to dozens of places the world over."

Harry concentrated again, nodding. "I'll ask him, and if he agrees, I'll have him sent to you formally via one of our magic carpets tomorrow. But those messages, you have no clue as to their meaning?"

"None. They were one-way messages, which is all my communication specialists were able to determine. They were not in German, Hungarian, Austrian, or any other known language, including many that the Red Skull was not known to have actually spoken. It sounds like pure gobbledygook," Doom said, shaking his head. "I myself tried to decipher it and got nowhere. I assume then it is not actually a message per se, but that the sending of the message was the whole point. But it is better to be certain of such things, and it could be interesting to see if Douglas can get meaning out of even that."

"HYDRA's been hammered so badly it can't have many resources left," Harry said thoughtfully. "Sleeper cells, perhaps?"

"That is my thought," Doom said with a nod. "But where, how many, and what their objectives would be once activated is all up in the air."

"Not really," Harry said, shaking his head before grunting slightly in pain, his eyes almost crossing though he continued to talk. "Consider the man himself."

Doom frowned behind his mask before he got it, making a mental note to not underestimate Harry's basic intelligence once more even when he was obviously exhausted. "The Red Skull is a sociopath, a narcissist of the first degree. At this point even his closest advisors must be aware he is losing, and so must he be. If so, he will lash out as much as possible."

Harry nodded decisively, writing out a message on a conjured piece of paper for a moment. "I'll pass that on to MI5 and let them send it on to the rest of the secret agent community. That warning could save a lot of lives."

"Sound thinking. I'll have an estimate of how many men and women I can loan you and what kind of schedule it will be on in the morning," Doom said. With that he sat down his glass and left without another word.

Harry was only alone for a few seconds before Emma came in from nearby where she had been monitoring things telepathically. Not Doom, of course. His mental defenses were based both on his own powerful and very controlled mind, which could pose some defense against even the telepath's power, and technology. She had been monitoring Rica.

"I can get into the Kree's mind at will now," she reported as she sat down in Doom's vacated chair, taking one of Harry's hands in her own. "Despite the alien nature of his mind, I'll know if he's lying or trying to hide anything, though how to discern what is important and what isn't on a military and social level I'll leave up to you and that psychologist that Reed brought in."

"I don't think we'll have much trouble with Rica. That was a beaten man simply looking after his troops the best he can," Harry said, closing his eyes and leaning back for a moment as his free hand came up to knead his forehead. "I'll want to possibly bring in some of our allies in Britain as well. An admiral would have a better idea of what's important I think on the military level. Remember when it comes to naval matters I'm a rank amateur."

"So long as whoever it is passes that Trust Me array of yours, I have no problem with that," Emma said before both of them looked up as the door opened.

Hela came in, sharing a mutual sneer with Emma before blinking as Harry crossed the distance between them before she could react, pulling her into a hug. She flushed and was about to push out of his embrace, considering it somewhat unseemly in front of Emma but Harry spoke before she could. "Thank you for saving Ororo, Hela." he said, his voice trembling for a moment at how close Ororo had come to falling to her death at the very least.

At that Hela slowly returned the hug for a brief second before gently pushing him away, willing her flush to diminish under her mask through willpower alone. "She is my friend too Harry Potter." She looked around then frowned noticeably below her mask, shaking her head. "And why are you stewing here all alone like a troll in its cave?"

"Just thinking, planning, and trying to get my mind in order." Harry quipped, but Hela was having none of that.

"Bed would do more to settle your mind than just sitting in the dark like a barrel of fermenting mead." Hela said, pulling him toward the door with gentle if implacable strength. The fact she didn't really have to put much strength into it was somewhat telling. "I know you have a room here, go to your bed Harry Potter, and we will talk more in the morning."

The next day it was Hela and Emma once more who roused Harry from bed. He had woken up, called Camelot to check on Ororo and then simply slumped back in bed, his hands curling and uncurling as he did, a scowl on his face as he tried to concentrate on one of the many, many things he had to deal with. But for some reason he couldn't his mind wasn't so exhausted any longer, but he still couldn't bring his thoughts under control or prioritize then into any kind of coherent outline. There were just so many things he had to do, so many things he had think about right now that it was as if his mind was shutting down under the strain rather than trying to deal with the flood of problems. This was not helped by the fact he couldn't forget the people who had died on Mars. Sixty-two people died in those tunnels, god damn it all, I don't like losing people!

The door to the bedroom that overlooked the botanical jungle that gave Babylon its name opened at the same time Hela floated up over the edge of the balcony. She and Emma, who had come through the doorway, looked at each other, exchanging yet another sneer before turning their attention on Harry.

"Harry, what are you doing still in bed? Did you ask one of your house-elves to bring you breakfast in bed?" Emma asked, smiling as she moved to sit on the bed next to Harry, leaning up against the headboard.

"No, though it might be a good idea. I'm just, just thinking, making a list in my mind of what we have to do, what else is still going on, how I want to handle telling the families of the dead what happened, that kind of thing." Harry replied, his voice brittle.

Emma and Hela exchanged an inscrutable female glance, for once united in their minds before focusing once more on Harry. "Harry, we've lost people before," Emma replied softly, taking his hand in her own, her thumb running against Harry's palm in soothing strokes. "While it is tragic, you can't beat yourself up about it when we all did everything we could against an alien invasion fleet. It would have been much worse for all of Earth without you, your people and their contributions."

"I've only done what anyone should have." Harry said, looking away, his conditioned response in the face of praise kicking in again. "It certainly hasn't been enough."

Hela's eye's narrowed from where she was leaning back against the wall and watching them both, having made no move to join the two of them on the bed. "I have warned you before about such moments of blind modesty Harry Potter! But I see that like most men before, you prove stubborn in the face of personal advice." She growled. "You say such lines, yet name me one man who could have done more for your people in so short a time, let alone in such grand scope and scale!"

She marched forward, leaning over the bed to poke Harry in the forehead, making the wizard's eyes cross as he tries to keep focus on the feminine appendage of doom. "You denigrate both yourself and those who have chosen to follow you when you say such things."

Leaning back up she went on, her hands on her hips as she continued to glare at Harry. "Yes, you have lost people Harry Potter, in what universe do you live in that you think you can have a battle where only the enemy dies? They died so that others might live, so stop sulking about it and making a mockery of their sacrifice."

"I am not sulking," Harry said, scowling at her which Hela considered an improvement over his self-flagellation if a miniscule one.

Emma however agreed and took Harry's face in her hands to make him meet her eyes. "You are sulking Harry. We lost people again, and that affects you deeply. I understand that, I even approve of it in moderation, and I know that worrying about Ororo isn't making this any easier for you. However, there is a time and place for wallowing in such emotions and this is not one of them. You're right, we just have too damn much work to do."

"You scored a major victory, "Hela said taking up the tale from Emma, the two of them working surprisingly well together for a moment a part of Harry's mind noticed with both amusement and irritation, since their coordination was directed at him. "You led your people against an opponent that outnumbered them, had better technology, far better ships, and at least in part the element of surprise, and you succeeded in defending your planet against them for a third time when they knew at least some of what to expect. No jarl would follow a king that spends lives like coin but to say that you should have been able to lead them through the fight with no losses at all is to hold yourself to a standard that not even Old One-Eye would hold himself to."

"We're not belittling the losses here on Mars Harry, if anything we're doing the exact opposite." Emma said as Harry made to speak, not willing to let her man stop the roll Emma and her erstwhile ally were on. "I've been down to Fortress Mars since the retrieval operations began. And the people down there aren't mourning… or rather they are, but they're also celebrating."

Harry's eyes widened at that, and some spark came back to his previously dead emerald eyes. "Yes, Harry, they are celebrating the fact they won, that they are alive, just as much as they are mourning their dead friends. Just like you all did after that fight against the zombies."

"Bah, do not belittle Draugr by calling them mere zombies, I have seen modern interpretations of undead and they are but pale imitations of the reality that was known to the tales of old." Hela scoffed. "But she is correct about the reaction of those on Fortress Mars and elsewhere. Your people mourn the dead as they should, but also honor their loss in a battle they by all rights should have lost, and indeed would have lost both their lives and the lives of millions of others without you."

Her voice softened as she went on. "You cannot allow your mind to dwell on the negatives Harry Potter. A leader must always be moving forward, concentrating on what is to be done and what new challenges he must face, not the cost of the last one. To do so will break you as it has done other men and women of the past."

"Now stand up, and act like the jarl, the king you are," Hela ordered regally. "Your people need to see you well and a part of the festivities. It bodes ill when a leader holds himself apart from his people for too long when revelry is to be had after such a victory."

Harry sighed but nodded, his eyes were clear once more, showing he was once more tracking appropriately. After a meal and Harry once more checking in on Ororo, the three of them went down to join the wake. Several of the Custodes were already there, Paige, Danielle, Piotr, Amara and Nikolai. The wake was rather raucous, with music blaring from several different rooms of the Fortress Mars' complex. You could find rock in one place, opera in another. In a third Hela held court with modern Norwegian and Scandinavian music that she seemed to have developed a fondness for, leading group dances and drinking like a sailor on leave without ever completely losing her hauteur or controlled demeanor.

Drink was plentiful everywhere as was food brought in by house elves under Cory's direction. And everywhere a present went they heard tales, mostly exaggerated sometimes true tales about the people who had died in the cave-ins or on the surface under the actual bombardment. For all that it was about the dead, wakes were also about the affirmation of life as Harry well knew, having been involved in several such gatherings though it was a first for many of the people there and the Catholics in particular were looking rather askance at the goings-on until they were sufficiently inebriated.

Staying away from the alcohol Harry danced the night away with Emma and Hela, and even once with Paige and some of the other ladies present. Jean was not there, having elected to stay behind with Ororo, which Harry could well relate to having done the same that morning for several hours.

The two of them had discerned that Ororo was still using her powers on an unconscious level which was keeping her mind from actually recovering from her previous overuse. But neither of them could get her to wake up either. Gaea had even showed up for a brief moment telling them she was helping Ororo to control the amount of changes she had been forced to make in the entire world's weather patterns when she defended the planet against the missile bombardment. A few tornadoes, several snowstorms, and one hail of insanely hard ice in the desert of Arizona were the only visible marks of that change over the next week thanks to Ororo's continued efforts.

Harry couldn't allow himself to be selfish, but it had been hard not to shout angrily at Gaea and force her to do all that work on her own, which she couldn't have. Ororo had overthrown the natural order in the weather system and Gaea's powers were not geared to actually controlling her own normal ecology outside making certain everything continued to run.

Despite Jean's not being there, Harry had fun and continued to recover from yesterday's mental exertions. He was even smiling at the end of it as people, mostly asleep, were bundled up into various corners, alone or with company, and numerous house-elves began to pop into existence here and there to drop blankets on people.

He was about to hunt around for Hela when Carol made her way through the throng to him. "Harry, some people want to talk to you if it's convenient. I told them they should probably talk to you directly."

Harry frowned at that, but nodded in agreement and followed the other woman into the nearby command center. Most of it was turned off at the moment, but there were several people there already who came to their feet as Harry entered, one of them even going so far as to salute. Harry returned the salute without comment, one eyebrow arching as he looked at them all. "Terrence right? And you would be Mrs. Coraline, Shusooque, and Paras? Your wife just had a child right Paras? Sorry I can't remember your first name. Is your wife doing well, and was it a boy or girl?"

"Er, that's fine Mr. Potter, I um, she's doing well, and so's the baby, a boy sir…" Jacque Paras replied, looking at the others who were all smiling happily at being recognized so quickly by their employer.

"Good to hear it, but I doubt that's what you all wanted to see me about. So let's get down to why you all look sober after what, three hours of a rather raucous party shall we?" Harry said, smirking at them all and leaning against a one of the monitors.

Terrence held out the same packet that they had shown Carol the evening before. "Sir, we represent a group of scientists, technicians and miners who would like to petition you to move our families to whatever hidden bases you have on Earth, or if possible up here."

"Excuse me," Harry blinked standing up abruptly at that. "What?"

"Sir we know the missile launch in this last battle would've killed two-thirds of the population of Earth at the very least." Shusooque, an Asian from one of Harry's American hiring stations spoke up. "That includes our families, Sir. We've learned, that is we've seen while working for you that there is really no certain way to protect Earth from orbital assault like that, but we also know that you're the only person doing anything about it at the moment. So we'd like our families to be made safe."

Harry began to flip through the list of names first, his eyebrows arching further and further up his forehead as he did. He looked up after he finished reading. "If I'm not mistaken, this is quite literally every individual here on Fortress Mars, and something like 90% or so of the people on work in the orbitals above Earth. There are even a lot of names here from the training classes, both those among the training cadre and their students."

"That's correct sir."

Harry waved them all down into seats. "Oh sit down you lot, honestly I don't bite. Much anyway, and my ladies would probably object if I did so in this case."

He began to pace reading what amounted to a plea to house and protect their families more than anything else as he thought about how to deal with this. While he could create habitats as he had for the Ravenspires or the prisoner habitat they would be without any amenities, and putting such amenities in would take a lot of his personal time.

I suppose I could get Jean to hollow the asteroids out, but putting in housing, heating, or anything of that nature? No, that would take advanced wards and spell work, and while Kitty could do the wards I have other plans for her in the near future, here on Fortress Mars in particular. And Camelot is too small for all of their families.

That left only the Savage Land, which had its own issues. The Savage Land was huge and the few surviving natives after Magneto's wars of conquest were firmly behind Harry's control of it at this point thanks to Hela and Ororo's work there. But that didn't take away from the fact it was a harsh place to live with no modern amenities outside the citadel and the port.

"The problem is logistics," Harry said stopping his pacing and looking at them all, meeting their eyes and giving off an air of focus and calm at odds with the listless manner he had begun the day,. "I don't honestly have any place to put your families just yet, not anyplace they would be comfortable in anyway. I have a hidden base on Earth that could take them in, but it has no amenities, no housing, no roads, and no food that you wouldn't have to hunt yourselves. Putting such in place will take time and asking your families to move to such 'accommodations' would be putting a lot of stress on them, so..."

"Sir, were willing to wait for a time, as long as we can, that is…" Terrence paused, hesitating as he thought about how to put it. "Sir," he restarted, "I'm an American. My friend over there is from Belgium and came to Britain and then signed up with you. Mrs. Coraline is from Greece, Jacque is from Canada. We're not-we're not talking about just asking for you to defend our families. We are talking about our loyalty and the loyalty of our families to you."

"You are a shield for humanity, the only one acting as such. That alone would be worth our respect." Jacque said seriously. "But you go out of your way to pay us more than most people would given the usual nature of our jobs. You look after our well-being, you offer paid education grants to our families. And most of us have met and talked to you. Our loyalties are a personal thing…"

"Like that of a warrior to his lord perhaps?" said a new voice. The group all turned in its direction and saw Hela walking through the doorway. Her steps were certain, and her eyes behind her mask clear of any signs of the monstrous amount of alcohol she had imbibed. Harry actually wasn't surprised by that, since he had been dancing with her on and off throughout the evening. Hela really liked to dance, even if she thought most modern dances silly or just improper in public. Harry still got flashbacks to her reaction to 'twerking', which had been unpleasant in the extreme.

"Erm, yes miss," said one of the others, looking at Hela askance. Harry's work crews hadn't yet gotten used to Hela's presence yet, and had no real idea where her position was in the hierarchy, though they all knew it was pretty high. A few of them had looked at her name sideways a time or two, but even the scattered Asatru among them hadn't quite made the connection yet from Hela the woman to Hela the goddess, since her appearance was so unlike her historical version. Well, that and she wasn't being followed by a ginormous wolf of doom, as far as they knew anyway.

"You're talking as if you're asking to immigrate to my country…" Harry said slowly, looking at the three speakers, grabbing their attention once more, his own eyes flitting to Hela then Carol before concentrating on them.

They all exchanged glances but one after another they nodded. "Yes sir, that's basically what we're asking. At this point, you already employ enough people to make your companies a decent sized country anyway so it's not all that far a stretch." Said Alexia Coraline.

"All right," Harry said after a few moments of silence. "I'll agree provisionally to this but as I said it'll take time before I'm ready to take in so many colonists," he said using the word with a faint smirk on his face, enough of an Englishman to revel in the irony of the situation if only for a moment. "At that time, I will ask again if you're willing to go that far. If you are, then you will become the first of possibly many people to do so. For now," he said clapping his hands "head back to the party all right?"

Harry waved off Carol, as he stood there for a moment staring at nothing while Hela crossed the distance between them. She stood in front of him, staring him in the eyes with a subtle but unmistakable air of both smugness and pride. "You see Harry Potter, you have become a king, as I told you once in that memory of yours when I first met Jean Grey. You now have two choices: to embrace it, or to try to fight it. Are you a mere merchant, a mere warlord or something else, something that is both those things and more? Now is the time to decide Harry Potter." Hela's voice was solemn and she spoke with an almost formal cadence. It seemed to Harry as if she weren't just asking him if he was going to accept the situation as Hela the observer, but as if Hela the goddess was speaking to him as an equal.

"No choice then," Harry said in reply, one hand coming up to gently trace along the side of her chin. Hela flushed at the touch, but didn't look away, indeed she moved slightly closer, her own hand coming up to do the same to Harry. The feeling of the moment had shifted, but like with most of his interactions with Hela, it did not feel out of place. "Better to ride the storm rather than be buffeted along it."

"I could make such a bawdy joke right now, but I will hold myself back at present," Hela replied dryly, causing Harry to laugh quietly before turned away from Hela, as Hedwig suddenly popped into existence in the air above the two of them.

Alighting on her Harry's shoulder, Hedwig, held out two pieces of parchment and a pen, and Harry chuckled, taking them from her after rubbing her feathers affectionately. "Someone wants some extra bacon I see." He teased.

Hela nodded her head in approval. "A most magnificent familiar you have there Harry Potter. Though I imagine looking out for you as she does is a fulltime job."

"Preck," Hedwig precked agreement then flew over to Hela's shoulder, lightly pulling at her hair. For some reason Hela got the impression the owl was trying to say that it was, and that was why she had allowed Harry to attract so many women, to help ease the owl's never ending task, which caused Hela to chuckle as one hand rose to stroke Hedwig's chest.

Even as he wrote out a message to Charles and a list of books he would like the man to gather from his library, Harry began to give out orders, not to Hela or Hedwig, but his personal house-elf. "Cory, I'll need you to set aside a lot of pepper up potion's, enough for… eight… people to keep using them for several months. When you have them packed, drop them by the doorway to the farms in Babylon and wait for me there. We have work to do."

"I will do so master," the little house-elf replied, popping into being for a moment, then disappeared as Hedwig took the message he had just written to Charles. With the two of them gone, Harry turned back to Hela. "I will also need your advice on this going forward Hela… and thanks for giving me a kick in the ass. I sometimes need them as you might have noticed."

"Of course I am available for advice Harry. Indeed, it is pleasing to me to see that you have never fallen into the most common mistake of all too many leaders throughout time, that of not listening to their advisors. As for kicking you in the rump, I will keep that in mind. As I said tis a rather common male failing even the best of your gender fall for," Hela replied drolly then feeling rather daring kissed Harry on the cheek before walking off, putting a bit of an extra sway into her hips as she did.

Harry stared after her for a moment before shaking his head and, between one moment and the next disappearing, popping to the runic doorway. From there he made his way to Babylon, and swiftly went to work on creating what he needed to for this project. It might have taken him by surprise, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try to get it right. No need to court more losses through half-arsing things after all.

The next day found Harry standing in front of a room situated to one side of the botanical gardens with Kitty, Piotr, Amara, Sage, Emma, Hela, Shanna the She-Devil and Charles.

"We're all here now Harry," Emma said, after exchanging a surprisingly cordial greeting with Hela. While they sneered and sniped at one another occasionally, they got along slightly better with one another whenever they were concentrating on something other than Harry and their disparate relationships with him. "What's this all about?" Given the people here she really couldn't think of why all of them would be involved in a single discussion.

"After the wake I was approached by a group of my employees who had a request they wanted to run by me. The size and scope of it however has brought to a head a long term plan we've talked about before…" Harry began, explaining what had occurred.

"So this calls for a rewrite of the Israeli Initiative we talked about…" Emma mused, then laughed, shaking her head at Harry's naiveté. "Yet you told them that you'll have a response for them within a few days? Harry, you have no idea about the amount of work you're talking about here. This isn't like in the imperial era where all you needed was a charter, the means to get to wherever you were going and the ability to fight off or conquer the natives. Especially since in this case, the natives are our allies." She gestured over to where Shanna was watching everyone else shrewdly.

Though the Savage Land's chosen leader had lost much of her memories of her life before her arrival in the Savage Land, but there was nothing wrong with her intelligence. She understood what Emma had said. "My tribe and the others we are allied with are willing to cede that none of us alone control the Savage Land and would be willing to leave these colonists alone, but that would only hold so long as they don't encroach on our territories."

"I don't see any reason why they would do so, that's not a concern. Most of the Savage Land is empty of people at this point." Harry said that with sadness, as most of those lands had held various small tribes of disparate groups or even races. Magneto had wiped them all out in his conquest of the Savage Land. Since the Savage Land was almost as large as Australia in size, that left a lot of land available.

Most of that land of course was jungle, mountain and hard scrabble land, the equivalent of virgin land for the most part. Living there would be incredibly hard even with the magical doorways: building roads, laying cables and all the rest of the industry of a nation would also be very tough.

"I said this wasn't about just the physical aspects of it." Emma cut in. "I meant the organizational aspects of this. We'll need to create a government, bureaucracy, numerous departments! We'll need to control who comes in and out, give out passports, create laws, bills of rights! The sheer organizational needs of creating a country would be the work for hundreds of people and years of time!"

"I've already begun work on an outline with Sage's help, but you're right, it would take a lot of time. But time is something I can give us in abundance if we're careful."

"You're going to have to explain that Harry," Charles said mildly while Sage nodded affirmation that she had helped him start on the monumental project. She had concentrated on finding as many versions of colonial charters she could find, and an outline for how to go about creating the infrastructure needed to create a colony in the Savage Land, as well as laws to govern that developing industry so it would not hurt the environment over much.

Charles too had helped Harry right up several outlines for a Bill of Rights for Harry's Israel Initiative. He hadn't liked the idea of the original concept, considering how much trouble Israel had faced since the beginning and his belief that living together was the way to build cooperation and understanding between mutantkind and normal humans. This new concept however, sounded much more promising, even if Harry was only willing to open his new nation's borders to his own workers at this point.

"I agree with Emma that we'll need to create a bureaucracy, but I intend to cut that down to a minimum as much as possible. Bureaucracy is almost always the failing point of modern governments and the longer we can stave that off, the better. I've also already put Scott, Shiang Chi and Nikolai on creating a doctrine to train boarding troops, though they won't be working with us in here since I think that issue is more reworking current training methods than building up from the bedrock."

Shiang Chi was a harsh disciplinarian who was easily the best hand to hand combatant of anyone in Harry's sphere of influence. Nikolai brought experience in both fighting the Kree and the Russian model of small unit tactics. Scott brought a more personable approach and a mastery of unit tactics, mostly built around his experience as an X-men and marine training books. Carol would join them later, bringing her own viewpoint and experience to bear on the issue.

"However, we will create the Magna Carta of this new nation, and a foundation for the laws and organizing the physical aspect of this. But as to the question of time," Harry paused, gesturing to the open doorway beside him. "I've put another time dilation array in place in here."

The room was quite large, separated by walls here and there and with an offshoot doorway in one wall. The main area was dominated by several computers set in a central circle, with comfortable looking chairs facing them. There were several sofas pushed against its walls, and two bookshelves filled with numerous books, next to which Cory was standing, placing books into the bookcase as they watched.

As the group entered and looked around, they noticed the runic arrays cut into the walls all around them, though they weren't powered up just yet, and the door had to be closed for the array to connect. Kitty concentrated on that aspect, while the others moved around the walls which separated the main room from the rest. One of the rooms was a bathroom further separated into boys and girls rooms, including a handicap version for Charles. There was no plumbing but there were dozens of runes set around the toilets rooms. The second separate room was a well-stocked kitchen. The doorway in the main room led into a hall which led in turn to separate sleeping areas.

Looking them over absently Kitty broke out into giggles as she noticed that one of the rooms, the one at the far end had a separate runic array on it. She recognized it as a sound dampening array, hence her giggles.

"Hmm… I'm not exactly happy about the idea of aging, but that is a thought. But why haven't we made more use of those time capsule things?" Amara asked somewhat warily from where she had moved to read the tittles of the various books.

"For one thing, they are of somewhat limited utility since they can only affect an enclosed and small area. Powering them initially is also tough, or would be for most wizards, and it gets worse the larger the area encased, just like the expansion arrays or charms. But for another point, speeding up time like that is very hard on nonmagical bodies. Over exposure will have a permanent effect on your bodies. And it's worse if you're wearing the suits designed to offset the magical array that speeds up time."

Emma twitched at that, as did Piotr, Kitty and Amara, while Sage, Scott and Charles looked blank, not having any idea of what that would entail as the others did. Piotr had sat in on Harry's few lessons with Illyana, and some of those had covered how magic, particularly runic arrays, could go wrong, and Kitty had been given much the same information, while Emma and Amara simply had very active imaginations and trusted Harry to know what he was talking about.

"Playing with time is not something mortals should do lightly. Even the most potent of magic users among the Aesir and Vanir do not manipulate it without a heavy price to be paid when one least expects it," Hela said, frowning as she looked over the intricate rune work done by her prospective consort. "Despite that, it may aid us here in this. Yet, why did you ask me to be here Harry Potter?"

"You are a ruler in your own right even if your citizens can't exactly go back. You're an excellent organizer and you know about laws, far more than I do for certain," Harry replied promptly. "I value you on that basis alone, and what you've done with the Savage Land shows what you can do."

Hela felt her lips twitch into a pleased and proud smile and did nothing to stop it as she watched Harry stand up, pulling out a small gold and bronze watch. "So here's how we're going to do this. We'll carry in supplies for us all, then we will work on this project until we have the framework I want in terms of law, bureaucracy and sheer organization. Those of you without magical power will have this watch on you. It is set to go off every four hours. Both my and Dr. Strange's arithmantic equations tell us that after four and half hours the damage to your bodies start to build up, and it starts to get deadly after that very quickly. So we'll give you breaks of an hour out here for every four hours in there."

Harry smirked. "Think of it like spending too much time in a low gravity only…magicky. Luckily the accumulation dissipates quickly. However if you start feeling unusually tired, your bones start to feel sore or you get headaches, please tell me, and we'll let you out of the room quickly."

"Dr. Strange?" Emma asked, putting a certain emphasis on the so-called Sorcerer Supreme's name. Harry nodded grimly. "Yes, I know what you're going to say there, trust me, he and I are going to have a little chat about him expanding his duties and obligations soon enough."

"Good." With that Emma turned back to the current topic, looking at the watch in Harry's hand. "It will be very odd, coming back in and finding you all have done so much work in that time. What's the time dilation for this room?"

"This area's actually sped up even more than the normal farming zones. Every hour out in the real universe will be the equivalent of a week in here."

Emma winced at that, shaking her head. "Damn Harry. But, but what about Jean? We'll think we've been away from her for months."

"I know, but it can't be helped. Jean and I talked about this mind to mind a few hours ago, and while she's not happy, she doesn't have magic and her abilities don't carry over in this manner, that's the long and short of it. Plus I have no idea about the effect of the dilation on a pregnant woman and her child, or in this case, children. No way am I willing to chance anything there." Harry replied firmly. It would be hard to be apart from Jean for so long (again!) but they both agreed this needed to be done. And that much pampering would be done on both sides to recover from the absence, but that was for later.

As Harry went on to answer a few questions from the others Emma reached out mentally to Jean, smiling as the other telepath's presence met her halfway, their minds exchanging the telepathic equivalent of a deep hug. "Jean, this plan of Harry's, did you really agree to it?"

"I think it's necessary. I don't like it, but when has that mattered in the great scheme of things?" Jean's mental voice replied lightly as their telepathic avatars formed in the nearly permanent mental highway between their minds, which closely resembled that between Jean and Harry, small somewhat, but built of both their powers rather than Jean's alone. "He's right of course, the effect of that much disparate and conflicting time manipulation can only have a negative effect on the babies.

"Damn. I'll miss you a lot when I'm in there, and you won't even know I'm gone…" Emma quipped, running one hand through her long blonde hair.

"Heh, then contact me the moment you're out here. I'll take a break from my own work to come and spend those hours with you, and freaking gladly!" Jean replied swiftly, her astral projection hugging Emma's to her, an odd feeling that was part mental yet had enough physical overtones that it carried into both their bodies.

Emma reveled in the hug, her physical eyes closing as she did. She still kept her mind on the task at hand however. "And what does our love have you doing?"

"Finishing the organization Ororo started for Avalon Academy, see to completing the armament of the X-men, organize the surveys of the new ships we took in this last engagement, see to the organization of Arc Technologies and the biggest one, work with doctors Reed and Banner in expanding and updating the sensor network."

Jean paused a moment to let the number of her jobs sink in before finishing dryly. "Needless to say, most of my jobs, including the last one, will not be done by the time you lot are finished in there."

"Busy, busy, busy…" Emma drawled, shaking her head.

"I'll also be watching over Ororo as often as I can. If she wakes up one of us have to be there." Jean said, her voice becoming serious.

"Agreed." Though Emma couldn't say that she felt the same depth of love toward Ororo that she felt to Jean and Harry, she still did love the weather goddess. Ororo's latest moment of heroism had touched even Emma's soul, and she had stopped in to see her before coming up to Camelot to meet Harry today. "Did Harry stop by?" She asked now, surprised to not know the answer to that one.

"No, he wanted to, but then getting him to leave would have been impossible. He would have simply sat there, trying to think of how to get her to wake up, even after Gaea showed up to tell us what Ororo was currently doing, and why her mind wasn't healing as it should be. Better to give Harry something to do instead of letting him stew on top of brooding."

"Hmmm…" The comment about Harry's brooding had caused Emma to remember how it had been mainly Hela who had brought their man out of said funk.

Of course the other telepath caught that, and she sighed, a very odd thing to hear in the astral plane, though thankfully without any effect on the physical plane. "Emma, I know you haven't, um, bonded so much with Hela, but I also know you two respect one another after that first meeting. I have even heard the two of you exchange at least a few friendly words. Is it so hard to admit that maybe Hela could earn a place among us through heart and deed?"

"No, it isn't but that doesn't mean I have to like it," Emma replied tartly as she gave the telepathic equivalent of a pout, to which Jean just chuckled. The two remained connected for a few minutes while in the material plane Harry handed out and fitted several suits with the runic array designed to make certain the body of the individual wearing it wasn't affected by the sped up time around them to those without magic.

When it was her turn, Emma sent a last telepathic caress to Jean before pulling back her power, opening her eyes and looking around at those present around her physical body. She frowned then, cocking her head to one side thoughtfully. "I understand why most of us are here, but why young Miss Pryde?"

Harry smirked at Kitty, patting her head. "She's here to learn about the arrays of the time and anti-dilation arrays. Just because they are of limited utility doesn't mean they have no use at all. I mean for Fortress Mars at the very least to be a test bed to other ideas. Now come on boys and girls, get your suits on and let's get to work."