Standing inside a slightly crowded office space filled with shelves and boxes full of old papers, the wizards gathered in it all held their breaths for a moment as they felt an instinctive sense of danger.
The dim flickering fluorescent lights caused shadows to shift around ominously highlighting the deep frowns and angst each person present carried.
All of a sudden, a bang as loud as a backfire opened up the world to push out five people, causing them to spin into their positions in the room, each looking around in curiosity while steadying themselves.
What met their sight was three people looking at them with slight frowns and disgust while one other person sent an apologising glance their way.
Tonks stepped forward to introduce everyone.
"Hello Tom." she said, looking at a greasy haired young man in his late twenties who just snorted in response. But Tonks did her duties with a clearly 'masked' hint of annoyance, "You know Belmont. These are my little ducklings on this mission, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and Loki Black."
Tom clicked his tongue, "You're annoying enough to deal with alone… now there's four more of you."
The conversation fell apart at that with Tonks visibly fuming, ready to throw hands with Tom.
But while two other team members shared the same outlook as Tom, one of them sent an apologising glance their way again, not daring to act out by even introducing himself since his 'leader' had given the order but apologising nonetheless.
It helped put Tonks at some ease just when she was about to cock her fist back and throw the first real punch to send Tom flying through the walls and the floor.
The fresh silence and the time to adjust to the dizzying effects of a portkey teleportation slowly introduced the newly arrived group to the sounds of the general hustle and bustle outside their room.
There weren't any firing sounds or loud commanding shouts, or even blaring engines or sirens, just a thin disorderly shuffle of feet that indicated everyone on the other side of the walls around them rushing around in panic.
'Huh…never been to a military base before…but this is pretty quiet not gonna lie.' Loki thought to himself after activating spirit vision to observe everything outside.
There were guards right outside their door, protecting a 'wall' that led nowhere, no doubt a military tradition to them that held on because no one here asked too many questions.
Two groups of people sat near them, one on the left and the other on the right, leading to the shuffling of feet as people carried printed documents between the two rooms connected only by the short corridor they were hidden behind.
The floor underneath struck as odd to Loki since they were filled with fewer and fewer personnel until he realised that they were underground and not in some high-rise or even tall building.
So he looked up to check.
Sure enough, when he turned his head back up he saw several clumps of colours orderly moving around on the 'roof'.
They were a good fifty feet underground. So likely not a very important Launch Control Facility.
'None of them show any signs of being controlled or manipulated.' Loki thought to himself returning to observe the office workers nearby, observing now not only their emotions but also their Bodies of Heart and Mind to see if they had any disarray.
Their bodies showing signs of slight neglect, turning a gloomish gray over their minds to show a clear indication of unresolved mental trauma or just pressure.
Some even had full stomachs, indicating that they'd recently had a heavy lunch.
'There doesn't seem to be anything wrong here…it looks like it's what it should be for a world slipping into chaos? Even better maybe given that they're not on the ground wailing?'
But Loki didn't jump to any conclusions just because everything seemed normal.
As Loki examined everything outside, a man walking up to this room from the office on the right made Loki focus on examining the real world. His eyes switched back to normal as he observed the thick layer of dust that had settled on what might've once been 'important' documents since his theft abilities designated them of at least 'some' value more than simple parchments.
A strange theory settled in the back of Loki's mind about the room they were in.
'I bet there's some 'hidden' lore here about some random vanishing room where documents go but never come out of…'
'Did the head of this base perhaps even use this room to store documents that no one should easily see?'
'Strange how two entirely different worlds are kept apart by a single flimsy looking door.'
Loki was about to chuckle to himself at the thought but-
It was at that moment that the door to the room creaked open creating a slight draft that shot up untouched dust into the air, twitching a few noses but once a thin but large floating bubble popped up around their heads, they relaxed, turning their eyes towards the 'intruder'.
"...is this all? Two teams?" The thin man holding a pad squeaked, his gaze lingering on Tom's team for a while as they simply shrugged their shoulders to indicate that this was all before he looked at Tonks and everyone under her with unmasked disappointment.
Ron's eyes took in the person receiving them and quickly sucked in 'all' information about him, including things like his regular habit of biting nails, to his rather strange recently developed habit of sitting on his knees if the dust on the shins of his pants that he'd forgotten to brush away were anything to go by.
To sum it all up according to Ron, while the person didn't look very strong himself, he seemed like he had something to rely on to protect them in these trying times, at least he thought he did.
Loki's observations went a few layers deeper.
'He looks like he's in his twenties and he's weak.'
'With his lack of strength, he's likely only here to be the bridge between the Muggles, the Ministry Wizards and the Unspeakables/Beyonders since neither would willingly take orders from the other during this time.'
'That pad he's holding probably has all our assignment details. But with how thin it is, I doubt there's anything more to it other than 'be quiet about whatever you do'.'
The order seemed reasonable enough to Loki since they had to keep an eye on and examine everyone in relation to the silos in this military base. Which meant that they couldn't very well just overturn everything as that would only increase the work during cleanup, and might interfere in case of any slightly important emergencies like World War Three.
'Will we be assigned undercover positions and be advised to use magic as we deem necessary to make the situation easier then?' Loki wondered.
That was when the thin man's eyes flickered on Ron, specifically his head for a second as he felt a second stage of disappointment when he realised that a Weasley was in his team.
He'd dealt with Arthur before.
And none of those times were anything remotely pleasant given how eager Arthur was to know about the 'exotic' animal called a 'muggle'.
The man just hoped that not all the Weasleys were like him.
And then as if he'd realised how much trouble he'd landed into he spoke with a resigned sigh.
"Alright. There's eight of you to finish this task by noon tomorrow and all your assignments are here on this pad! Please line up for me so that we can get this done as soon as possible. Tom's team is a regular here but Tonks, your team will have to transfigure your dresses to match the uniforms whose pictures I'll hand out."
"Please remember not to violate the ministry's guide-" Before the man could finish his words, Tom slipped past him and walked directly into the military base, completely unprotected except for a thin muggle repelling charm applied to his body.
"Are you serious? Tomorrow afternoon? What are we? Ducklings that just learnt to walk?" Tom sneered as he walked out causing Tonks to nearly fly out and hit him.
And just as the messenger man opened his mouth to speak again, another two from Tom's team left, brushing past his shoulders rudely without sparing the rest of them a single glance.
"....rude." Ron commented, causing the last member of their team to rub his forehead in embarrassment as he walked up to the messenger man at the door.
"Argh…I'm sorry for their behaviour, Karl. You know how they're, you've seen what these fools strutting around all over the place do here anyway, it shouldn't be any different than those other times we were here right?"
Karl sighed, "Just…keep them under control this time…no confounding anyone strongly enough that they need to be sent to a psych ward for a week as they make claims about being abducted by gods and angels."
"A psych ward? What's that? Anyway, you said that the documents are on the pad right?" The man said, flicking his wand as he dragged the pad out of Karl's hands and walked past him once again, leaving everyone remaining, Tonk's team, to become dumb founded and look at each other like headless chickens.
"I…guess that solves it? This has short guidelines and your task in it." The man said after throwing a small booklet towards Tonks with a shake of his head, pulling out a piece of his shirt to clean his glasses as he walked away.
"That booklet contains a list of the targets that the ICBM below is targeting. Make sure that you can verify that the list is still accurate by the end of the day, that's about how long it takes Tom. Any additions or negations should be written in at the end. Grab a pen from any table, Muggle's seem to think pens going missing is normal."
"Oh, and if you need to talk to any of these people here the basic terms are in the pamphlet."
Loki grabbed one of the booklets mid air by pulling it to himself.
There were two of them, presumably because one was meant for the other team that took off because they'd done all this already a dozen times.
The other one landed with Tonks as he studied everything written in it calmly with everyone else gathering around those closest to them.
Belmont found it rather weird how easily Tonks trusted Loki to interfere with the team when he too was still at Sequence 7 according to the files they were handed some time prior. But he chalked it up to her 'intuition' as a member of the Arbiter pathway and ones she gained from 'constant vigilance'.
In truth Tonks was still embarrassed from Loki one upping her in verbal trickery, so she decided she'd learn a little from him since her upcoming sequences might involve it.
Loki noticed her hair shifting colours again, only slightly this time, as he wondered how it all worked.
And also because she, like the other Beyonders, didn't have much patience to go through a random list of 'targets'. She was only doing this since it was their task and was 'required'.
The guidelines were simple, in summary, blend in with the personnel around them and move to inspect all the people in the chain of command responsible for launching the ICBM.
Take notice if any of them had any traces of lingering magic, specifically of the kind used to control the mind using spirit vision or any similar means.
Once confirmed that everything was normal, the mission would be marked complete for their team after the missile targets were confirmed by the other team.
But-
'Hmm..?' Loki came to a pause as he read one specific target in the book as did everyone else.
'One of the targets of the Launch Control Facility is…London?'
"Bloody hell…" Ron exclaimed softly.
'...why is a random LCC's target London?' Loki asked himself, a hint of an answer already forming even before he finished.
'To assure mutual destruction of the Ministry in case the wizards try something funny?'
'Sure, but that's rather shallow isn't it?'
Beyonder or not there were several spells one could use to keep themselves safe from an ICBM, the simplest Impedementia jinx could slow things down enough to a crawl that it would be hard for the missile to actually explode, even if they're primed to explode in the air.
'It would be way easier and more effective to just bribe a random crook from Knockturn alley to go rogue during Hogwarts' start of term season…'
But while everyone else was confused, Hermione's gaze sharpened. Her not so politically acumen brain, having been 'activated' by Professor McGonagall quickly realised a sticky mess that would come along with this mission.
Even though she didn't know what the 'sticky mess' actually was, she could smell from miles away that simply knowing information about muggles being ready to attack the wizards at a moment's notice was enough to put them on some sort of metaphorical list somewhere as they'd be asked to do things that were only 'riskier' politically from here on out.
"No wonder those guys hated working here…all this sounds bonkers…." Tonks whistled.
"I thought that was because they were purists? They kept giving Hermione and Loki this weird glance while they were here." Ron asked with some confusion, laying plain his observations.
And Belmont nodded, "While it's true that some of them are 'purebloods', even if not part of the Sacred Twenty Eight, they're attitude wasn't purely because of that. They're like that mostly because they feel like they've been 'demoted' to work alongside us."
Ron was left speechless. He couldn't fathom the feeling of someone being 'demoted' to work with 'him'.
"What do we do Loki?" Hermione asked softly.
"What else? Let's start with divination. Divine if we'll encounter anything dangerous on this mission."
Hermione nodded and quickly pulled out her Sefirah Castle connected special Topaz pendulum that she let hang before closing her eyes and murmuring the sentence, "This mission is dangerous.", seven times before opening them up to see the result along with everyone else.
"Anti-clockwise."
"So no danger I guess?" Ron asked, still not very sure if he trusted something that worked like a sneakscope which he knew could be tricked from Fred and George.
But he wisely kept his complaints to himself, lest Hermione make his little pimple problem worse.
Loki nodded seeing the divination, "Alright. But even though that's normal, stay vigilant, divinations can be interfered with."
Loki wasn't just saying this to follow some protocol, he was genuinely worried that even the Sefirah Castle's divination might be interfered with in case it had something to do with True Gods for some absurd reason since the situation was already so crazy.
Especially since all the members of the Tarot clubs had received warnings from their spirituality to grow stronger.
Tonks nodded and spoke up, "Me and Mione will go around checking the left half of the pamphlet targets, you guys will figure out the right half."
Loki nodded, not disagreeing with it since logically both Hermione and he were divination experts, putting them on the same team would be wasteful.
But personally, Tonks wanted to split up to finish the task faster so that she could show the crooks that getting to work with her and her team was a privilege, not a demotion.
After taking their own pamphlets, the two teams quickly transfigured their clothes after which Loki asked everyone on his team to cover themselves in a thin layer of the Muggle repelling charm.
Ron, who couldn't cast the charm, was helped by Loki.
Upon leaving, the first thing Loki noticed was the two guards standing outside, staring blankly at the wall in front of them.
They weren't under the imperious curse, just a little dazed, suddenly finding the walls very interesting since five heavily 'anti-muggle' charms were functioning right beside them.
Loki divined the location of the office of the personnel on the lowest rung of the ladder, a hook to start at for his team while Tonks simply 'intuited' a similar target by looking at the list on her pamphlet.
Giving each other one last glance, the two teams split up.
As Loki had guessed, their portkey had been set up to teleport them smack in the middle of the base, not to close to the silos to avoid malfunctioning any key or critical systems to prevent misfiring alarms, and not too far away from them to avoid having to make them walk too far before they reached all their target personnel's offices.
"So each office goes deeper into the structure?" Ron asked while keeping to Loki's left side since Belmont had been eyeing the muggles funnily.
Belmont noticed and commented with offence, "It's just been a long time since I've seen muggles before so I'm getting used to the scent of 'fresh' blood."
"Wizards don't have this scent?" Loki asked with some confusion, he'd assumed that Wizards, especially Beyonders probably smelled way better than simple muggles.
"Ah. That's true. But…these people are just so…weak…it's like dangling a juicy candy in front of a baby…it takes some self restraint to hold back."
Loki sighed and shook his head. He knew just why this man never grew any stronger than Sequence 7 in spite of being well into his twenties as an Unspeakable.
'He's so into the role of a vampire that he's forgotten to be human. No one wants to give him the potion for the next sequence.'
'I wonder if that's how most vampires die out in this world, instead of truly living their nearly three hundred years immortal lifespan.'
Ron shuddered at the madness behind the statement as he remembered the words Hermione often repeated to him, something he'd learnt from her that Loki had told her before-
'We are guardians, but also a bunch of miserable wretches that are constantly fighting against dangers and madness.'
He hadn't understood what it meant before but he felt like he was sort of getting it now.
'Will I become like that too?' Ron wondered but quickly cheered himself up. 'Hah~ If Dumbledore was alright, then I'll be just fine~!'
Moving with each other under the cover of a muggle repelling charm, Loki and the others passed through the office on the right undetected by anyone.
But Loki did make sure to keep scanning everyone around for any signs of abnormalities as they slowly made their way through to their first target office.
'Other than the previously detected mental stress they're rather normal…they're all eating well.' Loki thought to himself.
Without any further difficulties, the trio made their way to the 'office' of one, 'Sergeant First Class Garcy Witfalls.'
Given the rank of the officer behind the door and the vague images of televisions that could watch this and the entirety of the next few levels underground during his divination, Loki assumed that it was someone stationed to keep an eye out on CCTV's.
Loki looked in with spirit vision, paused, frowned and then smiled as an idea popped up in his mind. A ritual to welcome the newbie among them of sorts.
He didn't knock on the door, instead he paused and simply asked Ron-
"Why don't you take us in?"
"Huh? Me?"
"Hm~m."
"...erm, alright."
Ron pulled out his wand and steadied himself softly with deep breaths and took charge. He placed his hand on the doorknob and pushed open the door without a knock.
The door opened soundlessly, a testament to its well oiled hinges as Ron stepped inside quickly with his wand pointed at the sole resident inside.
Seeing an important door suddenly open and three people standing outside without triggering any alarms would've been shocking for anyone and caused them to shout or panic, but it was Ron that yelped in surprise instead.
To say that Ron was surprised would've been an understatement.
He had caught his target with his pants down, literally.
Their target, Garcy, was a middle aged man that had a certain air of authority around himself, wearing a heavily armoured kit to protect himself.
But right now, Garcy had just stepped out of a connecting bathroom, searching for paper to use as toilet paper.
Holding a bunch of newspapers, with his pants down, Garcy stared blankly at Ron whose muggle repelling charm had fallen off because he'd primed too much spirituality into his wand to fire off a stunner at reflex.
The newspaper slipped out of Garcy's hands and fell to the floor as he rushed to the control panel and before he could react to push the panic button at his desk, Ron acted.
"Stupify!"
A thick red bolt of light flew out of Ron's wand, flying through the air as it knocked into Garcy's chest and threw him off the floor and into the wall behind him, knocking him completely unconscious.
Ron turned around to look at Loki, fuming as Loki just smiled funnily.
"Come on, that wasn't as bad as spiders was it?"
The mere mention of spiders brought Ron to a halt, not because he was still afraid of them, no the first job at the Department of Mysteries had made sure that he'd spent enough time among them without any sense of time that he'd grown numb to it.
He froze because it brought up the traumatic memories of those times he was trapped in a timeless state with them. A sort of an after shock.
Loki patted his shoulder and turned to look at Belmont.
"Care to cook up a potion to knock him back up? We need him dazed enough to be able to give us access to the go down."
Belmont looked at Loki with confusion, "Permission? Why? I thought we couldn't use magic on the lower floors? This is too high up to be of any real consequence."
Loki nodded, "Yes. But we've got a newbie with us. It's better we get him to break into his role before we go there."
Belmont nodded, quickly pulling out a few herbs and ingredients to prep a simple mashed potion whose smell was enough to wake a dead man up.
"Why don't we just confound him?" Ron asked, eying Belmont's potions with a little hate since it reminded him of Snape.
Loki shook his head, "You didn't notice since you were focused on something else earlier but the moment you fired magic everything in the room started to flicker for a second. I don't want to take any risks. And we have all day anyway, so let's make sure nothing unnecessary happens."
Ron nodded, turning around to look at the large CRT TV's set up to show the different CCTV cameras sprinkled around the floor.
"Oh! There's Tonks." Ron said, pointing at a lift operator that Tonks knocked out with a swift head tap before Hermione pressed the button of the floor they wanted to visit.
It seemed like Hermione had divined the best time to take out the guard and they'd settled out on the same moment that they'd taken out the one in charge of monitoring everything through CCTVs.
Loki nodded and grabbed Garcy's head, opening his mouth and making sure he wouldn't swallow his tongue as Belmont brought out a small vial filled with crushed herbs.
And even though the vial wasn't directed at him, Loki found the smell emitting off of the vial, 'awakening'.
It felt like he'd been doused in a tub of ice cold water straight from the black lake during winter.
So it was a little strange when Garcy didn't wake up.
Seeing Ron's panicking and horrified face that would've surely made him lose control, Loki quickly stepped in, "He's awake. Just knocked out a lot colder than we initially thought. He was already tired before, knocking him out probably gave his body a chance to rest."
Belmont frowned too.
"I guess Mr. Weasley here did need to 'break in' as you said earlier. This spell was too strong."
He then pulled out a few more herbs, crushed them and placed them into the vial and shook the contents to mix them up.
When he uncorked the vial again, the smell was nearly unbearable.
Loki felt like someone had set his entire lungs on fire.
The effect was immediate, Garcy woke up.
Belmont immediately changed to a new vial, forcing a light lilac coloured liquid down the poor Sergeant's throat.
Still in a daze from being affected by such a heavy spell, the contents of the vial worked almost immediately and lulled him into a half dazed sleep.
"You used the entire vial?" Loki asked, surprised, since he assumed that only a drop of the strong Confusing Drought was enough.
"Eh. He withstood my potions once, better to take precaution than be unsure. The potion won't harm him anyway, he'll just be a bit delirious and believe us for a while…a few months, but only us."
Loki nodded and turned to Ron to give him his second mission, "Ron, you'll be responsible to get our 'passes' to the lower levels."
Ron was about to interrupt, wondering why he was responsible for such a tedious task, but when Loki said-
"You could be my boss if you manage this right."
-he lit up as he turned the pamphlet to familiarise himself with the terms on it and quickly turned to the dazed Garcy.
In the meantime, Loki and Belmont kept an eye on the CCTVs to make sure nothing interrupted them anytime soon.
Ron observed the dazed man for a few minutes, studying both him and the office they were in, and after noticing the lack of any personal memorabilia on his person he decided to use a direct and more official approach as described in the pamphlet.
"Sarge, that is Senior Major Trevor Belmont, an Observer from AFGSC staff, I'm Technical Sergeant Ron Weasley, a member of the Overseer team, that is Technical Sergeant Loki Black a missile technician. We're part of the Operational Readiness Inspection team that's here to conduct a surprise Intel Injection Evaluation on the lower levels of the LCC. Could you arrange an escort team for us?"
Garcy in a daze nodded plainly.
Truthfully, anything Ron had said would've worked, even if he'd asked Garcy to clean himself with his mouth like a cat or a dog.
But Loki wanted Ron to truly start acting as a spectator. Given how Harry was already strong and Hermione was on her way to become stronger, Ron was just way to weak to be involved with anything about them anymore.
It was a disaster waiting to strike.
And Loki didn't want to see Hermione sad again.
Loki helped Ron help Garcy stand up and make ORI 'passes' for the three of them, arranging proper documents, to assume the identities of members of an evaluation team sent to ensure that the ICBMs are properly guarded.
Of course, such 'passes' weren't all powerful and they wouldn't be allowed to roam around freely and openly so Ron had chosen the best cover story.
Performing an Operational Readiness Inspection. A short external mission where the working condition of the safety mechanisms, both human based and mechanical, in place to protect the silo was thoroughly checked.
Ron then turned to Loki and Belmont to explain the rolls he'd assigned each of them.
First to Belmont, "Given you're having trouble controlling your desire to feed on 'fresh blood', yeah I saw you trying to sneak in a nick on his neck to taste him earlier, you'll be the Observer. Your only job is to observe me and Loki and be silent about it."
Belmont blushed but managed to stay calm and nod.
Then to Loki, "And you're a mere missile technician that works under me! So I'm boss! Got that!?"
Loki cracked an amused smile but didn't say much and simply nodded.
'Hmm…everything's gone well so far.' Loki thought as they waited for their 'escort' team that would move around along with them throughout the lower levels to ensure they weren't up to any funny business.
Their escort team soon arrived and was visibly confused when they saw instead of a large team of a dozen or so people, such a small team of three.
Garcy stepped in to explain, and this was where they saw him regain his authoritative force as he spoke harshly.
"Senior Major Trevor Belmont, an Observer from AFGSC staff." He said pointing at Belmont who was standing silently with a constipated plain face, that was more a result of him wanting to hold back his urges to chew on the vitality filled men who'd just arrived.
"These two are Technical Sergeant Ronald Weasley, a member of the Overseer team and Technical Sergeant Loki Black, a missile technician."
But it clearly didn't work.
Clearly no self thinking man would think actual boys whose height was around a hundred and sixty centimeters, a head and a half shorter than everyone on the escort team would actually be a Maintenance Overseer and a Missile Technician.
Yet hearing that Belmont was a Senior Major who looked like he'd stared death in the eyes and dragged several people out of it all by himself they questioned their own brains.
Eventually the eyes of the head of the escort team met Loki's and after sensing their depths he agreed, albeit extremely reluctantly, making up reasons in his head to satisfy his own curiosity but he didn't question orders.
"Good." Garcy nodded, "This is Staff Sergeant Funni Chadwick, he will be your escort."
Ron and Loki nodded as Chadwick and a smaller portion of his team, since moving around with a large number for just three people was unreasonable, unwillingly followed them along with Belmont out and into an elevator towards the depths of Launch Control Centre.
Loki however acted calmly, activating spirit vision to check on everyone around himself.
'They're pretty pissed if their auras are anything to go by…'
'Hmm…?'
'Why is everyone on the escort team so full? Like they just had food?'
'Does the entire facility have a common lunch time? Yeah, that's probably it-'
'....wait a second.'
Loki almost froze still as his mind brought back everything he'd 'missed' until now, written off with one excuse or another until now in mere moments.
It all brought him down to one question-
'Hermione's divination was interfered with!?'
-which only raised a hell lot more questions.
---
A/N :
I might participate in the Fanfic Fiesta competition this month on webnovel, which of the following novels are you guys interested in? I will upload the first chapter tomorrow, so votes only count by then.
Each one is a crack fic in Naruto so they all have absurd plots and powerups, but each one will be focused on a single ability to exploit to the extreme.
-> Reincarnated as a Healing Fish in Naruto With Wood Release.
-> Naruto : My Horror World
- This one is a pure genjutsu based fic with MC becoming a genjutsu master whose skills are almost as good as Infinite Tsukuyomi. He learns Genjutsu by putting people in genjutsu in class to play games with them, it's an ACG fic with various games from 2D like Mario and Hollow Knight to 3D like Skyrim and Metal Gear, and obviously Horror Games like Silent Hill PT, Outlast, Resident Evil, etc. too. (I prefer this one, but any is fine with me.)
-> Naruto : My Girlfriend System
- This one is about a MC who doesn't want to emotionally manipulate women to build a harem, and instead enrolls himself into the Fire Temple and becomes a monk to spite his system. He learns all of Kungfu Hustle moves and becomes bald and OP.