Chapter 61 Advancing Towards the Future

Nicholas Joseph Fury was not someone who enjoyed playing games and neither did he appreciate it when someone was playing games with him.

The only thing preventing him from balling up the file on his desk and slamming it in the trash was the glare of his assistant who likely knew what he wanted to do if she took his eyes off him.

Maria Hill asked with a tiny smirk at the corner of her mouth, "Would you like some coffee?"

Fury gave her a stern look that would have sent lesser men to their knees but she only stared back with moderate amusement. He said, "No. I would not like some coffee. What I would like is some goddamn intel on what the fuck we are dealing with."

The file was a summary of everything they learned from what they called the Hand Massacre which occurred a few days ago. Intel showed that Jade Chan had not made it to school. That Harry Potter left the University and went home in the middle of the day and exited his house with a briefcase before taking a cab to an abandoned warehouse. That the surveillance crew was able to follow him and use a camera and long distance mic to record the conversation he had with the people he went to meet.

Up to that point, the file had nothing wrong with it. It was what came after that which boiled Fury's blood. According to the tape, Jade Chan had been kidnapped for some sort of ransom. Harry Potter came and provided the ransom in a security locked case. The Hostage was called, but revealed that she was not safe. Then things stopped making sense.

Harry ordered someone to kill the one in charge, and someone in a goddamn mask fell through the roof covered in what witnesses described as golden lightning. He then rips the dude's muthafucking heart out and Harry Potter is filmed casually walking out of the warehouse while the man in the demon mask tears through what appeared to be highly trained martial artists like they were made of tissue paper.

Harry Potter returns home and leaves one hour later, returning with Jade Chan who returns to school the next day with a note stating she was sick the previous day.

Authorities later discovered a warehouse filled with corpses which were slaughtered in a manner very similar to the one displayed by the man in the demon mask. One analyst determined that from how the doors were wrenched open, someone had been kept there and rescued after quickly dispatching men who would put Fury's best agents in a tough position if taken all at once.

There were two things Fury did not like about the file. The first was what was missing. There were no details as to the identity of the one who destroyed the warehouse and the one who dispatched the leaders. What was irksome was that both seemed to happen at the same time meaning it was either someone very fast or two different people using the same means. Fury didn't like either possibility.

The second thing about the file he didn't like was the brutality of it. With the exception of the one Potter gave instructions to kill, none of the other victims were instantly killed. Instead they were fatally wounded and left to die in an agonizing matter. Fury wasn't a bleeding heart who gave a damn about what happened to people who kidnapped children, but what he did care about was that such viciousness could only be a message. What Fury didn't like was that the message obviously wasn't just for the Hand, the group the victims had been identified to have belonged to.

It was obvious that Potter knew he was being watched. Potter's tech promised ownership of the future to whoever controlled it and Potter wasn't sharing. Fury intended to make contact with the young billionaire soon, but he'd lost his method of approach.

On paper, Potter was clean. Sure, Fury had a list of Potter's suspected secrets, but he didn't have proof of anything good enough to leverage the world's youngest Professor to play ball.

That usually wasn't an issue. Fury just had to use his suspicions of those secrets against him and put some fear into him before promising protection. Those mutant girlfriends of his could act as bodyguards but they were not always around. But Potter just showed everyone watching how the smartest person in the world deals with those kinds of threats. The fact that Potter did so knowing he was being watched was a clear indicator of how well that would turn if Fury tried it.

What Fury really didn't like was that this move worked. Potter knew that until someone figured out the identity of the man in the Demon Mask and how to counter him, no one would try to threaten him again. This also meant that Potter was confident no one would find his identity.

Fury had access to most intelligence networks one way or another, but the file on his desk showed no results in any of them. Fury considered that it might be a Magical. Fury had been the Director of Shield for over ten years and knew of the Hidden Magical World of course.

In his opinion they were walking bombs which, mostly, kept to themselves. It became an issue when one wandered out of the wards containing their isolated community because most electronics had a substantially reduced shelf life in their presence save the ones who were born without their ability, the ones called Squibs.

Attempts had been made to work with Magicals throughout history but it never ended well for either side. How could you work with someone who valued nothing you owned and could erase your memory or turn you into a frog and teleport away if you pissed them off? The fact that munitions randomly went off near them because the chemical physics of gunpowder changed into something more volatile in their presence made cooperating after the 20th century even harder. Hitler tried of course, but he tried everything. Most of those he had work with the Magicals either vanished or had their memories erased which was in fact something that contributed to his loss in the war. They only cared about themselves and were dangerous and unpredictable to work with. This was the main reason that governments knew not to work with them and treated them as radioactive.

Most Governments had ways to detect Magic. There were certain materials which acted as a litmus paper in the presence of Magic and changed color, like a Geiger counter for magic. Their wards were quite adept at preventing magic from leaking so as long as the location was warded, the magic under White Hall wouldn't harm the tech in the building itself and their shopping centers wouldn't affect the surrounding areas.

None of that meant anything however because according to the paper that was stuck under Potter's desk and recovered, Potter was a Squib. Magic was detected from him but the level was not enough to cast spells or harm electronics. The difference between Potter and other Squibs though was that Potter had figured out how to make magic work with tech.

Fury still remembered that video which was broadcast on an unencrypted channel in Britain a few years back. He'd had it classified and declared a hoax, but the footage clearly showed an evil wizard leading dozens of others getting played by an eleven year old with toys and fine china. The boy in that video clearly matched Harry Potter, but the video showed him using magic which meant either he wasn't a squib or what he used wasn't magic.

Then some years later he goes and enrolls and Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters. Fury still found it impressive how few people actually knew what went on in that school.

So was he a wizard or a mutant squib? Then there was that Mutant Detector on that 'Debate,' which showed he wasn't a mutant either and was simply using tech.

Every little secret Fury could use against him was disproved in public which left threats as the only path and now that road was ruthlessly closed.

Fury continued to glare at the file on his desk with the hope it would burst into flames at some point but his wish was not to be. The only thing Fury could really hope for while he tried to figure out another way to approach Potter was that the sixteen year old genius wasn't up to something unspeakably diabolical until then.

Back in Harry's study, the sound of his villainous laughter echoed darkly throughout the house at the completion of his latest sinister plot.

"It is alive, It's Alive! IT! IS! ALIVE! Ha HaHA hahahaha!"

Wanda teleported behind Harry and whacked his head with a rolled up newspaper. "Bad Harry! Bad! No diabolical laughter before noon on weekends."

Harry rubbed the back of his head and smiled awkwardly. Wanda's teleporting had become finer than threading a needle and Harry didn't even feel a ripple in space when she appeared, allowing her to sneak up on him.

Rogue teleported in using Kurt's power and asked, "Alright, what have you done this time?"

Harry smiled and activated the newly completed program. A white light formed above the desk and revealed the form of a floating corgi wearing a chef's hat.

The corgi moved his legs as if he were swimming and started moving through the air.

Wanda instinctively grabbed the corgi and held it to her. She said, "It's warm. It feels real."

Harry nodded. The Danger Room could simulate heat and cold thanks to the air conditioner jerry rigged into it from an alien spaceship but the house's Hard-Light constructs didn't have a temperature.

"I've upgraded the house's Hard-Light system with targeted microwaves which can heat targeted spaces giving the construct the feeling of warmth. That part was easy. The hard part was programming the details of soft fur, warm bodies, and texture to perfectly duplicate the real thing."

Wanda was petting it and said, "Ok. Why the hat?"

Harry snapped his fingers and two more corgis appeared floating in the room. One had a bow tie and the other had a feather duster in its mouth.

"I was thinking of having a Hard-Light Butler but then I realized that a Hard-Light butler didn't need to have a human shape. So now we have a Hard-Light Chef, Butler, and Maid, all programmed to do everything required of them and also in the form of flying corgis."

Wanda and Rogue kinda just gawked at the floating corgis. Rogue seemed to be trying to think of something wrong with this, but she actually couldn't find anything. Tangible Holograms didn't need to walk so why not float or fly? They just needed to interact with physical things so they didn't actually need to look human. Rogue shook her head and said, "It bugs me that a floating corgi butler makes logical sense in this family."

Harry laughed and pointed at the bowtie wearing corgi. "Our butler is named Twinkie." He pointed at the one in the chef hat who seemed capable of expressing joy at being pet due to the sophistication of the programming, "That one is Little Potato." It did in fact have a browner color scheme that the golden colored Twinkie.

Harry pointed at the last one floating around with a feather duster in its mouth and said, "You can decide the name of our maid."

Wanda said, "Fairy. That one's a girl right? She can be fairy."

Rogue said, "Fine with me, but why Fairy?"

Wanda smiled and said, "In folklore corgis were said to be the mounts of fairies. Since she can already fly, then she is a fairy."

Harry nodded and made some adjustments in the programming. "Sound's good. Little Potato will be cooking from now on except for special occasions. I've had my own cooking session recorded for the last two months and they will be used as reference. The food probably won't be as good," Little Potato turned his head away from Rogue and barked. Harry smiled and said, "But it should still be delicious and I can use my time for other things now."

Harry was quite busy these days and even with the Time Turner he was still making breakfast and dinner for five mouths every day and more during Jade's study groups. Now the Hard-Light system would perform all the tasks needed to make the food and anyone who walked into the kitchen would see those tasks performed by a floating corgi in a chef's hat.

He continued, "Twinkie can deliver tea on request and perform small tasks. And Fairy will clean anything that doesn't already clean itself. You can summon them by calling aloud for them and they will appear and when not working they will behave like common house pets."

Wanda asked, "Why not an actual corgi for a pet?"

Harry shook his head and sighed. "Two reasons. First, these won't require care and don't need to be walked. Second, I don't know if Goose would eat an actual dog if I brought one home and it barked at her."

Harry's familiar actually had her own room with magically cleaning litter box, water bowl, and multiple types of food. Harry even made a computer and tv Goose could use to entertain herself with which worked using cameras and motion sensors to navigate and change the channel. She was likely the most spoiled cat on the planet but her room also had some paths into Harry's room and study and she would often climb onto Harry's lap and enjoy being pet.

Harry showed Jade and Jean with the former excited to see the looks on her friend's faces at the next study session on Tuesday.

The following Foundations of Metaphysics class was the due date of Harry's second project. With the exception of Doom's solo act, every other group which entered only submitted a blueprint while Doom himself actually brought a prototype. Reed and Susan submitted by email a basic blueprint but Harry could tell that they were too busy in other matters to put the same effort into it as their last one.

During the lecture, an enormous blue circle appeared beneath the class and started glowing. In a flash of blinding light, the walls vanished and were replaced with what looked like a massive throne room of a king with an old man wearing a crown sitting on an ornate throne at the end of the room. The students were still in their chairs and looking around as they appeared to be surrounded by priests and men in strange robes.

A man who looked more holy than the rest shouted, "Brave Heroes! Please Save us!"

Since the blackboard was gone, Harry was staring directly at the holy man. He said, "No. Send us back."

The holy man said, "We cannot, it was a one way summoning. But the Goddess may return you home if you can triumph against the demon king!"

Harry shook his head and said, "Then tell the Goddess I will help the demon king unless she sends us back right now."

"What?! No! How dare you!" the holy man angrily shouted at him, his face filled with fury.

The King had stood up by this point and shouted, "Guards! Seize Him!"

Harry snapped his fingers and a barrier appeared around the students and Harry. The weapons of the incoming guards bounced off the barrier.

Harry twisted back but remained facing the king and slowly said, "Ka... Me.. Ha.."

The pope fellow shouted, "All mortals must fulfill the will of the Goddess!"

"Me..."

The old man continued, "Those who defy her must be exterminated!"

Harry twisted forward with an open palm double handed thrust and shouted back, "HAAA!"

A blinding beam of light whited out the room and when it cleared away, the holy man in front of Harry, the King, the throne he sat on, and the wall in the back were all gone. A massive crater extended out from the barrier where Harry stood and extended further than the eye could see.

Harry looked up and said as if speaking to someone, "So, gonna send us back?"

Another blue circle appeared below the students and with another flash of light, they had returned to the classroom.

Harry was very glad none of his students were epileptic otherwise he couldn't do pranks that required flashy lights like this.

As if nothing important had occurred, Harry returned to his lecture while silently praising himself at the dumbfounded looks on his student's faces. They probably thought they had gotten used to Harry's pranks by now but the dropped jaws and frozen faces of disbelief at what had transpired proved that Harry still got them.

At the end of class Harry took Doom and his prototype wooden puppet down to a testing room. Within was a neatly built inner room with walls of glass and several metal coils coming up from the ground and hung from the ceiling. The glass had been treated to prevent any signal from entering from the outside so the puppet could not be controlled. Inside the glass room was a line on the ground and twenty feet further in was another line.

"Don't enter with anything metal or sensitive to magnetic fields. Just place your puppet at the starting line and enable it and close the door."

Doom's puppet showed that it had been cut open and the exterior was likely just a shell and frame for the hidden inner workings.

Doom set his puppet on the starting line and pulled something out of it before closing the door. The puppet leaned forward as if it would fall but its leg lifted and stepped forward. With each motion it stepped again and again but a third of the way through the course it fell over causing Doom to frown.

Harry flipped off the switch for the magnets in the room and entered himself to pull out the puppet. Harry said, "Your use of nonferrous memory metals and endothermic reactive materials to act as muscles is definitely better than the blueprints submitted by your fellow classmates. However the magnetic field was too strong and the extremely weak effect of the magnets on those metals was still enough to overcome the chemical program you built into the puppet."

Doom didn't show it but Harry could tell that he was surprised that Harry easily figured out how his puppet worked without taking it apart.

Harry then walked over to his own puppet on the wall and placed it at the starting line before closing the door. Harry flipped the wall switch to turn back on the magnets and after a few moments, Harry's puppet actually took a martial arts stance. With another movement it stepped forward and took another stance. The puppet was not only moving through the magnetic field without issue, it was also performing a martial kata while doing so.

Doom didn't blink as he watched Harry's puppet from the other side of the glass. Making a puppet do that wasn't difficult. But making a puppet do that in such a strong magnetic field under the given restraints was something even Doom didn't know how to do.

From the outside Harry said, "I'm glad you won this time. I doubt Reed has enough of a mystical foundation to understand how the puppet works."

Without batting an eye Doom stated, "You are a Sorcerer."

Harry confirmed, "Personal student of the Kamar-Taj's Ancient One from when I was twelve."

Doom continued, "And Metaphysics is just the science of magical energies."

Harry smiled and walked back inside the magnet room to pull out his puppet after it had finished the twenty foot kata.

Once out, Harry pulled apart the puppet's joints and showed them to Doom.

After looking at it for a few moments, Doom asked, "What is this crystal?"

The joints appeared to be connected by a hard crystal but the crystal was unlike anything Doom had seen before.

Harry turned on the Hard-Light system on his briefcase and showed him the chemical formulas. "This is something I've been working on even before I went to Kamar-Taj. Or at least this is something that I created from a project I started when I was eleven. It is basically crystal muscle tissue and doesn't include any metal at all. It is chemically programmed similar to your setup but the movements of the crystal are far more precise."

This was actually the result of Harry's effort in looking up ways to make a better broomstick. Current broomsticks absorbed a solution into the grains which hardened into a three dimensional crystal matrix which held the spells the broom used to change ambient wizard magic into flight. Harry's first target was to figure out everything he could about the solution which turned into the crystal matrix and eventually he figured out how to make crystal muscles that didn't even require magic materials to use.

Harry was still working on a magic version that he could use to plant a crystal seed into something and it would grow a crystal matrix muscle structure under the surface which could be controlled by magic instead of chemical reactions.

While Doom was looking over the various formulas, Harry said, "The world we live in is defined by its composition. By creating new materials, you can redefine the world."

Doom said, "Like your Metagems."

Harry smirked and said, "Metagems are just a red herring. You think they are valuable? Ask me how I make them. I know you want to."

Doom gave Harry a somewhat cold look. Harry had just blatantly accused Doom of being in his class to steal the secrets of the Metagems and Harry was offering them as bait if he admitted it.

Not being one to back off, Doom directly asked, "How do you make them then?"

Harry smiled and answered, "I use sound waves to alter the physical structure of normal gems. Do you know why that information is worthless?"

Doom's eyes widened just a bit before narrowing. He understood the implication almost instantly. Even if Harry gathered the world's greatest minds and showed them all the process of changing a gem into a Metagem, they'd never be able to replicate it if it used sound. That was because using sound to alter something meant there was zero room for error. The valuable intel would not be the machine Harry used to alter the gems, but the program which the machine used to do it correctly. Without that program, the greatest minds would have to figure it out from scratch and it was obvious how confident Harry was that such a thing would take thousands of years if fast and hundreds of years even if all the resources of earth were devoted to it.

Harry continued, "Metagems are just a distraction. You are older than I am and got your Doctorate before me, but I still consider you my student Dr. Doom and I don't want you to be distracted. I don't know what level you are in your Sorcery, but if you need some assistance or have any questions, feel free to ask."

Doom directly stated, "Then I do have a question, one Sorcerer to another. If you wanted to free a soul from a devil, how would you do it?"

Harry considered it and asked, "How did the devil acquire the soul and which devil is it?" Harry's hands then glowed with red mandalas and Harry sealed the space in the room under Doom's eyes. You don't speak a devil's name without them knowing but this spell would hide them as long as the name was only spoken once.

Doom took a moment to observe the barrier and said, "The soul was exchanged for the promise of power to enact revenge and the one who made the deal... was Mephisto."

The room glowed bright for a moment as if it would shatter but after a moment dimmed and returned to normal.

Harry shook his head and said, "Him huh. Relatively speaking there are only three ways. The first is to exchange it for something he wants. I would never recommend this way of course because nothing good can ever come out of a deal with him."

Harry saw a dim spark of fury in Doom's eyes and knew that he was thinking of something.

Harry continued, "The next way would be to use force and take the soul yourself. However this would be, by far the most difficult way. You'd have to separate him from his dimension because if he is connected to it while within it, his power would be unlimited and there is no way to fight someone on his level with tricks."

"The third way is to use a massive threat. How I would do it is I'd design a massive weapon which could destroy his domain and then I'd make two of them. Without any warning I would use one of them in his realm. Someone of his level should have multiple ways of protecting his realm so it is unlikely it would actually be destroyed. Depending on the damage though, if it is enough, you can threaten to use another of the same weapons and state that until you were given what you wanted, you'd continue using it over and over."

For the first time since Harry had met Victor Von Doom, the man actually gave a look of surprise. He'd obviously not thought of such a possibility. The problem when dealing with devils was that they could not be threatened or blackmailed in the conventional sense. Harry was beyond conventional logic however and knew far more than most about devils and demons.

Even a being of Mephisto's caliber would not give up his domain so easily. And he couldn't use the soul Doom wanted as leverage as Doom could simply state if it was harmed, Doom would destroy his realm no matter what. This was a strategy that would actually give Doom a position to bargain that was not impossible.

Of course destroying his realm was not going to be easy, but it was a direction which was something Doom didn't have before.

After a few moments Doom said, "Thank you Professor Potter."

Harry removed the spell on the room and said, "Anytime. Are you gonna watch the launch?"

Doom didn't answer and simply took his puppet and left.

The Storm Foundation had a bunch of cameras in their rocket and many of them would be streaming live. They actually used some equipment brought from Brilliance Inc. to deliver the signal which allowed various news groups to televise the launch which was something that had never been done before.

Thankfully Harry didn't have any classes during the launch and sat in the teacher's lounge with other faculty members watching the countdown on the big screen tv.

Professor Sterns sat on the same couch and said, "I hope those kids will be alright up there. I've had a few of them in my classes in the last few years."

Harry agreed but wasn't too worried. Susan sent him an email that his modifications had been given to the design team and though expensive, she'd been informed they had been implemented. With that anything short of a coronal mass ejection shouldn't affect their ship.

The countdown finished and the rocket launched into space to the cheers of the faculty room.

Most of the news segments were discussions by experts on the nature of the pyramid that was in orbit. News clips of the pyramid shooting into space a few months ago and some videos of the purple sky were sporadically aired as many around the world waited and wondered if this mission would give any answers.

The rocket eventually parked itself in geosynchronous orbit near the pyramid and the camera showed the world a clear look at it along with a clear look at the hole in the side and obvious damage it had taken.

Harry lightly reminiscent back to his wedding day. There were a lot of regrets about it being moderately ruined by Apocalypse and the ceremony failing. Because of the type of ceremony held, there was no way to use time travel to go backwards and get the timing right. If Harry took Jean back a few hours and tried to do the ceremony, the seal on Jean would resonate with her past self which had been battling Xavier and be placed on both at the same time creating a paradox. Sealing a cosmic entity didn't allow cheating and trying that would have certainly killed them all from the backlash. Creating the portal he used to head to space and destroy the inner workings of the pyramid also unseal the space on the island which allowed Sinister to run off in the alien spaceship, but at the time Harry couldn't care less about the man and had no other choice.

Once in position, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm got in some spacesuits and headed out into space to check the pyramid. On live tv they flew through the vacuum of space and approached the massive hole Harry dug out of the ship and entered the depths. Even inside the pyramid in outer space, the cameras still provided an excellent picture.

Experts on TV started debating the Egyptian symbolism while Ben and Johnny started setting up equipment.

About thirty minutes later alarms within the shuttle's cockpit started blaring. Susan said on camera, "There's something coming. Johnny, Ben, get back here on the double."

Johnny wasn't the type to argue with his sister and rushed out, but Ben first went to grab the equipment. Reed saw this on camera and shouted, "Leave it Ben! Get back here now!"

Ben used his suit's propulsion to quickly leave the pyramid. The fact that Reed had told him not to take back the equipment told him how serious this was.

The ground team was asking questions and Reed answered, "Some kind of energy storm is going to pass through us at any moment."

Both Johnny and Ben were rushing back to the shuttle. Harry calculated the timing and determined they'd make it back before the storm hit so they'd be fine.

As Johnny approached the shuttle's airlock door, the energy storm passed through the pyramid. What happened next was something no one could have guessed. On live tv, the pyramid exploded with a flash of light of indescribable color. Harry stood up from the couch as the other teachers nearly cried out in shock. Johnny made it inside the airlock but Ben was still outside. The wave of strangely colored energy was gaining on their position but Ben made it inside. Johnny hit the switch to close the door right before the wave of energy hit the ship to everyone's relief.

The relief however was short lived as the wave of energy passed unimpeded through the hull of the ship.

Harry's breath froze. That wasn't supposed to happen. This meant either Susan lied to him or someone lied to her. It was easy to figure out which but it didn't matter in either case. The energy stored on the pyramid was designed to awaken the X-Gene of every human with a dormant X-Gene on the planet and was something not all of them would survive. That energy was then supercharged with Harry's magic to the point it destroyed the entire system designed to spread the energy over the planet. And that mixture was just hit by a cosmic storm of all things and exploded.

Yeah.. That wasn't good..