Fundraiser event

A few days later

In a London warehouse district, there was a warehouse with enough dust in it to leave noticeable tracks in it if one were to walk in there. Most of the lights on the ceiling were broken. And indeed, there were paths worn into the layer of dust. There were people in the building too. They were walking around, taking occasional looks out from the windows or sitting on chairs.

The warehouse was lined with shipping containers where occasional muffled speaking or coughing could be heard – it was obvious that the warehouse was storing live cargo, the intelligent kind.

From one of the containers, the one with its door ajar, a man emerged while fastening his belt. From his disheveled looks, one could easily tell that he had been 'sampling the goods'. It was a common practice in the trade and the article that was no longer in mint condition would simply be disposed of. The higher-ups didn't care too much either as long as it was one per shipment or two. The missing item could simply be written off as suicide or death due to disease.

Suddenly, a few of the night guards noticed the warehouse's doors being flung open. A young man walked in, holding a walking stick in hand. If one looked closely, they would notice that there was a silver werewolf upper torso for its handle, with arms spread wide. The head was made in a fashion that allowed for a comfortable grip, distorting the proportions quite a bit.

The guards tried to pull their various weapons but suddenly heard quiet popping sounds and right after that felt an extremely sharp blade at their throats.

As that happened, the newcomer begun speaking in a cold, monotone voice: "I would greatly appreciate if all of you stood right where you are. It would be a shame if some of you got a real close shave before I had a chance to ask a few questions from you."

The men froze in place, only moving their eyeballs to look around, in hopes to see at least one of their assailants. Most of them were unable to see anything, except for the pair that was playing cards. They saw a man dressed in black, skintight and stretchy-looking fabric behind each of the guards, holding a F-S knife to their throats.

"Here's the life and death question: Who's your boss and where do they live. The one to answer gets to walk."

One of them didn't seem to get the magnitude of the situation. He replied "Why the fuck should we tell you that? How about we kill the lot of you instead?"

Before he finishes speaking, he tried to roll to the side and pull a gun from the holster on his hip in the same motion. The moment he did, his head suddenly decided to go on a solo adventure of rolling across the floor while the rest of him lied down twitching and doing the best fountain impression that it could manage.

The youngster who had spoken to them before, wiped the blood off a sword with a dragon coiled around the handle, then re-sheathed it into the walking stick that turned out to be a scabbard for a thin blade.

"As you can see, not co-operating leads to a rather anti-climactic ending. Now, who's going to tell me what I want to know?"

Soon, the knot in one man's tongue became undone and he gave out an address.

"You'll all wait here until I check the address. You already know what would happen if you lied to me."

Fifteen minutes later, there was a man bound in steel shackles within a dark room. Suddenly, a light turned on in the room. The room had white walls, ceiling and floor. There didn't seem to any walls to the room, it seemed to extend as far as the eye could see. It wasn't helped by the fact that there were no visible sources of light that would let one estimate the distance.

A boy, seemingly no older than fifteen, entered his view. From his breast pocket, he took out a phial with transparent liquid inside and spoke: "Open up."

"Let me go, kid. If you do, nothing bad will happen to you or your parents.", the man spoke, then quickly shut his mouth again. He didn't want to be dosed with whatever his apparent captor wanted to give him.

"Your words hold no power over me. My parents sent word from their mansion overlooking river Styx that they're in need of new servants. Anyone you send after me, I'll consider them willing to sign that contract.", Gaude spoke, as if disappointed in his prisoner somehow.

Suddenly, the captive felt a force prying his jaws apart. He tried to resist but couldn't. His head was held still and his tongue pulled out of his mouth. He felt three drops of liquid being deposited on his tongue.

Five minutes later he had for some reason answered all the boy's questions truthfully and was once again left alone, until after a sudden prick on his neck, his world went dark.

The youngster who had left a while ago, reappeared in the warehouse.

He turned to the man that had given him the information and speaks "You're free to walk."

The man quickly ran towards the door. The boy in the business suit dragged his index finger across his throat. Suddenly multiple thuds could be heard, followed by gurgling sounds. A moment later, another thud could be heard outside of the building.

"They never listen, do they? I told him he can walk away, not run. Such a disobedient bunch.", Gaude said.

The men in black bodysuits or to be more accurate, partially dragonified ex-criminals just stared at Gaude. While there wasn't a drop of blood on his clothes or skin, he didn't look any less like a demon to them. What made it even worse was the fact that he had done everything with an innocent child's face.

###

In this mission, the elves were only backup, for the case that the enemy turned out to be heavily armed. While Gaude wanted to put the part-dragon ex-criminals to the test, he didn't want to lose them. He hoped that with time and training, they could become reliable assets.

As to why Gaude was more than happy to send some servants to his dead parents, it was due to the fact that they were modern-day slave traders, something that rubbed him the wrong way big time. Besides, he needed to get his men used to killing, those that flinched at a critical moment would do more harm than good.

The elves soon apparated Gaude's small team to yet another luxurious-looking mansion. Upon getting Gaude's signal, they quickly cast an invisibility illusion on themselves and moved out. Soon light flashed from different locations. It was the elves' turn to show the result of their training.

An elf apparated in front of Gaude. It gave a 90-degree bow before him with its arms crossed in front of its chest and palms cupped over its shoulders. "Master, we have located the most likely person to be the ringleader. She has been delivered to Interrogation."

"Thank you for your excellent work. Let us depart for the next location. This time, the task will be accomplished using poison darts. Summon cleanup to take care of this place."

The elf spoke in a deep, quiet baritone, "By your will, Master."

The elves were no longer speaking in their squeaky voices. Snape had brewed a potion that changed their voices to more melodious ones, permanently. In addition to assassination training, the elves were also undergoing butler and maid training depending on their gender. The effects were starting to show already, which Gaude and anyone else that had the privilege of being served by them found rather pleasant.

"Your hand please, Master."

The elf took a hold of Gaude's hand and co-apparated him to a modest-looking house.

The elves gathered in front of the one that had helped Gaude with transport and he quickly explained their task. A moment later they dispersed. There was barely a sound to be heard when a dart was shot from right beside you, so from a distance it was completely silent. Soon the elf reported that another ringleader had been delivered to interrogation.

Gaude had trained a few elves as interrogation staff. He wasn't going to give those criminals access to sensitive information even if they were bound by a magical contract to do his bidding. They might somehow find a way to circumvent the contract and then he'd have to hunt them down one by one.

Meanwhile, the elves were loyal to a fault. The elves didn't even have to do any torturing. The Veritaserum that Snape had brewed by that time would've been more than enough to interrogate everyone in London and have some left over to do a rerun on those whose story didn't add up.

Snape had said that the Veritaserum was already in its most perfect form and it would be impossible to improve on it. Gaude suspected that Snape simply didn't want to risk inhaling the vapors of a supercharged Veritaserum and becoming unable to tell a single lie for the rest of his life.

After the truth was extracted from the criminals with the help of Veritaserum, they were given the antidote for it and moved into a holding cell so that Gaude could give them a few potions to let them understand who their lives belonged to. The thing about contracts was that the signature had to be given willingly. It worked just fine for Gaude's purposes, after all, loyal people put on more effort than reluctant ones.

Naturally Gaude was going to have them shift their focus from criminal activities and have their entire organizations become workers in his logistics and construction companies following re-education.

Of course, the expenses were paid from their future salaries. Gaude considered it an investment to their own futures, even though they'd be worked to the bone on more difficult positions. The slightly less-demanding jobs would be left to civilian hires, meaning those that had a clean past.

Naturally, Gaude was going to administer loyalty-inducing potions and contracts to all his workers, just to avoid having to get rid of them later. The clean-up would become a hassle otherwise.

Once Gaude had dealt with all the 'new hires', he moved on to the next location, a warehouse that was reported to deal in human trafficking.

There were multiple shipping containers stacked in the loading area. From one of those Gaude heard faint talking in a foreign language. It sounded somewhat like Russian. He had the men open it. What greeted him was a smell of sweat and excrement. There were 20 young women inside the container, with a little bit of food and a bucket to do their business.

After trying hard to talk to them, Gaude found one that could communicate in broken English.

"We leave Great Soviet Union, go America. We America, yes?"

It turned out they had been duped. Most likely to be sold as sex slaves. It may have been under much different circumstances, but it reminded Gaude of what had happened to his daughter. At least none of these girls looked like they had been pumped full of drugs and 'broken in'.

"Keep watch over the girls. Capture everyone else. Take them to interrogation. We will capture every single person that was involved with this. After they've been interrogated, take them to storage. I have a feeling that there's going to be some human experimentation coming up in the future."

Gaude? He went on the hunt as well. The exception was the people that he found first got off easy. Gaude made quick work of them through serial decapitation, one of his hobbies from his past life.

One of them tried to be clever and had snuck behind Gaude with a pistol and even got off a shot, however all that earned him was piss Gaude off even more. The bullet was deflected by the shielding charm that Gaude had cast the moment that the Supersensory Charm had alerted him to the man's presence. Gaude shoved his short sword into the man's stomach and cut upwards until he reached his victim's chin, his guts spilled onto the concrete pavement.

An hour later, they had purged that human trafficking ring from 4 different cities. It turned out they had customs and port officials in their ranks on both sides. Gaude would have no need for corrupt officials since extension charms and international Portkeys were more than enough to transport any kind of cargo to the South Pole if need be.

As for the girls, Gaude offered them jobs as the kitchen staff of his various companies. After hearing about the salary Gaude was offering, they were more than happy to accept. They would take care of the Muggle workers' meals.

Gaude figured that he had seen enough and returned home.