Wizards vs. Muggles (Free-form)

Boston
"I was hoping we could subdue her with less of a struggle that way," said Alzey. "See, I specialize in fire magic, kaboom-style evocations, that kind of thing. Also, there has to be a reason why they're using Nerak instead of just disappearing with Murray, and I want to find out why that is."

"So your brilliant plan hinges on this doppelganger—who can possibly change her appearance—being stupid enough to bollocks things up until we can figure out what she's trying to pull," pointed out Charmdrummer. "And then what—we snatch her and beat her head against the wall until she coughs up what she knows? Remind me again why we don't do that now?"

"I don't want to level half of Boston taking her down," answered Alzey. "Also, if she ducks the first salvo, she'd just beam right back home, Scotty." He grinned at Charmdrummer's carefully-maintained lack of emotion, but the smile disappeared quickly. Alzey started to pace. "Look, make no mistake, we're gonna have to grab her and bag her eventually. The question is how to do it so she won't bolt and her handlers won't figure it out until it's too late."

edited 22nd Jan '13 11:24:44 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

After a while of working on her long-forgotten Merlini project— and getting tired, and moving to the library, only to work on him a bit more before getting bored, and moving to the living room, Lita decided to continue reading "Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces" to get her mind off of where she'd gotten stuck in her project.

We cannot, however, predict when it is going to emit the light or, with several atoms, which one is going to. You may say this is because there are some internal "wheels" which we have not looked at closely enough. No, there are no internal wheels; nature, as we understand it today, behaves in such a way that it is fundamentally impossible to make a precise prediction of exactly what will happen in a given experiment.

Lita closed the book and took the notebook out of her pocket in annoyance. She'd never get done if she kept moving around and reading things. Like any heuristic algorithm, it needed exposure to patterns. Else she'd end up driving herself crazy with all the details. It'd be annoying, time-taking, and slow, but it had to be done. And it was best to start right away.

So she took her pencil out of her pocket, and started drawing Merlini on the pages of "Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces". It was painstakingly annoying, but there were only around 140 pages, and the design was one that could be drawn in under five seconds. It didn't take as long as she thought it would, finishing in under thirty minutes, and next she summoned a dictionary to her from her grandfather's library to repeat the process. Unlike the other book, this one took forever and her hand was starting to get sore.

edited 23rd Jan '13 1:54:29 AM by Faramir

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you can't sell him fish anymore. http://thoughtfulspurts.wordpress.com/

Catalonia/Lita
From elsewhere in the house Lita heard movement; the clock on the wall said it was seven-forty when Karla came into the living from a side door, a thick manila folder beneath her arm and a very large mug of steaming tea in her hand. "Good morning, Lita," she said, suppressing a yawn. "I heard moving-about earlier—"

Before she could finish her words there was a loud pop. A second later William Garza came in, greeting the portraits in Castillian-accented Catalan, before setting down a basket full of oranges. "You're up early, Lita," he said, grinning at her. To Karla he gave only an inclination of his head, before he produced a fist-sized cherry and handed it off to his granddaughter. "Now I remember telling you to get used to waking up again after the summer, but this is vacation time."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Karla waspishly, hiding another yawn with a long sip of tea. "Pardon me..."

From the basket William pulled out a thick envelope. "Here's the requested decode of the journal segments," he said. "Simplified to the Naval cipher—I told my contact not to go further. Now if it's all right with you, and with you, Lita, I've not yet eaten."

"I thought I heard cooking earlier," agreed Karla, opening the envelope and pulling out the papers. In a moment she frowned, set aside her tea mug, and pointed her wand at the stack. "Apparecium," she muttered, and began a series of manipulations with her wand. The stack of papers floated slightly and began to separate into several piles.

In a minute William came back in, a steaming dish of rice and fish garnished with orange and lemon slices balanced on one hand. Karla appeared not to notice, her eyes half-closed, still busily sorting out her stack of papers.

William smiled appreciatively at Lita with roguish delight. "You didn't learn this in Hogwarts, I don't think," he said. "The elves were friendly in my day and looked the other way when snacks or sweets were involved, but they had a habit of chasing out everyone who tried to use the stove."

edited 22nd Jan '13 11:21:26 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Lita rolled her eyes and kept drawing small triangular wizards on the corners of each page in the dictionary— with the previous drawing disappearing with each new one.

"I'm honoured you guys are talking to me now." She said, not lifting her eyes from the dictionary or taking a bite from the cherry on the table.

edited 22nd Jan '13 11:20:18 PM by Faramir

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you can't sell him fish anymore. http://thoughtfulspurts.wordpress.com/

OTIS

Alex had nearly gotten up when the grenade went off, and likewise to the guardsmen quickly flattened out in response. He looked around, wondering what to do now when he heard the radio. Well, that settled it. "STAY DOWN! FIND COVER!" Alex screamed out to the guardsmen, looking to do so himself as he crawled along the ground. If he did find cover, he would set about getting his P90 reloaded.

You are reading this.

Catalonia/Lita
"I'm surprised you'd say that," said Karla distractedly, behind the cloud of flying papers; the flashes of reflected documents raced and blurred across her glasses. There was only a touch of pique in her tone. "You missed out on quite a bit when you decided to hop out, but even then you were patched into the conversation. You hardly lacked for chances to jump back in, and yet—"

William sighed as he glanced towards Karla. "Ma'am. Please?"

"If you say so," murmured Karla, her eyes still on the dancing sheaves of paper before her.

edited 23rd Jan '13 1:14:21 AM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Lita tensed and glared at Karla.

"Right— and the second I jumped in 'Lita, las reglas del buen oyente y buen hablante', 'Lita, deja que los adultos hablen', 'Lita, aun cuando estas cosas te afectan a ti directamente, tu opinion no nos importa en lo mas minimo afuera de formalidades, asi que vamos a decidir nosotros y ya'." She clenched her fists for a moment before going back to the dictionary and drawing Merlinis there.

"Not to mention it didn't seem like I was wanted in the conversation— what with neither of you directing two bloody words at me on the whole of the night. Had to bleeding deduce what was happening."

edited 8th Feb '13 6:17:38 AM by Faramir

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you can't sell him fish anymore. http://thoughtfulspurts.wordpress.com/

Chessie keeps her peace, letting the big wigs have their pow-wow... depending on how long they stretched it out she might just have to chime in with her own thoughts.

Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles.

James strained to get a decent visual through his scope. While some people would have suggested an infra-red scope for this sort of work, he knew that was actually a bad call. The snow would serve to reflect a lot of the IR radiation, rendering the scope useless.

"Yup. That tasted purple."

Otis ANGB/Character insertion: Terrence Walker
It was bad luck that delayed Terrence's trip to Otis Air Base, where he had been slated to talk with the Brits. The National Guard-supplied Humvee had developed a flat tire, and it took an hour later than planned for it to reach the air base, just as the snowstorm developed with unnatural ferocity. Luckily this seemed to be its edge, for there was just enough visibility behind the flying sleet for the truck to inch its way to cover and for Terrence to join up with a group of Massachusetts State Guards. Though they knew that the Occulus team had arrived, there was no chance of getting to them in this weather. The Guards captain had just established that when the radios crackled and distant assault-rifle fire rattled, and the Guardsmen and women scrambled for their guns and stepped out into the night. Blinding snow limited visibility to mere yards, with sodium lighting hanging in the murk like metallic-yellow star shells the only source of direction.

---

Through his scope James could intermittently see low stationary shapes, peering from between diaphanous panes of blowing snow, before the friendly machine-gun opened again in long bursts. Answering fire from the shapes was nearly as heavy; the coughing rattle of an SAW, the thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets hitting an aluminum hangar behind them. Screams from the Guardsmen for medics drew more fire, though no more accurate than before.

Cover was not plentiful on the hard tarmac, but where the tarmac met the packed dirt at its boundary snow had built up. More soldiers were scrambling for the cover, one or two trying to drag the fallen with them. Over the radio, Price, who fired short bursts when the machine-gun paused in its fire: "Occulus, we're not getting anywhere with this lot."

"C-and-C is not here," Wilkins' voice was surprisingly calm, but he had to shout to make himself heard. "Mixed force, no homogeneity, don't have their own commanders, no comms." From ahead the SAW rattled again, sending tracers streaking by with sharp sonic cracks. "We'll have to work on that."

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Catalonia/Commando Group
The lieutenant nodded and reached for his radio, and uttered a stream of directions in Spanish. From their post, the Occulus liaison team could occasionally see men making their way down the slopes to the castle. They were scattered but the castle was a familiar landmark, and from all around silhouettes converged—not quite carefully enough. There was the sound of boots scraping against loose dirt, and one of the Spanish soldiers slipped and slid down a slope in a cloud of dust and tumbling debris. He picked himself up, but someone in the castle had evidently noticed: someone glanced out of a window with a shielded light in their hand, and disappeared. The lights went out shortly after that.

The lieutenant was not cursing so loudly that he could not hear his radio squawk: the Major said that Diaz had requested the Britishers' presence back at HQ.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

"We need to get into the castle right now—they know we're coming and they're going to try and escape." Clark said. "Ask if they can wait or relay their needs over the radio."

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

Commandos/Catalonia
"Some inconsistencies regarding Colom," came the word, eventually. Other orders came through the radio, and the lieutenant gestured for their team to wait in overwatch, while another platoon threw open the door and filed into old Castle Maturin. As feared, the wizards seemed to have Disapparated from entirely; reflected flashlight beams shone through lower-floor windows, and the only moving shadows were those of the soldiers themselves.

---

Azkaban Cell 627: the Potter Interviews
Present: prisoner H. J. Potter, Inquisitor-in-Chief D. Umbridge. Interview commenced 1 November, 7:15AM
Umbridge: Hello, Harry—I may call you Harry, mayn't I? I trust you've slept well? Tea?
Potter: No, thank you.
Umbridge: Are you sure you don't want some? Lemon or sugar? Or coffee?
Potter: All for me? You shouldn't have. Besides, you know what'd I answer anyway.
Umbridge: Oh, dear. You should hydrate yourself more in the morning, Harry. I read this interesting article in the Daily Prophet that said—oh, but never mind. Potter, you know why I'm here.
Potter: Assume I don't. Enlighten me.
Umbridge: Well, well. We have you on thirty-nine separate charges of vandalism. Each one mandates two to four weeks of jail time. On top of that, we intend to have you for destruction of important Ministry property, plus travelling on departmental time without leave, lying to the poor warden about the purpose of your visit, unauthorized issuance of orders to said warden, and several more. All told...it might be years before you come out of here.
Potter: Thirty-nine separate charges? One for each dementor?
Umbridge: Just so. Now—
Potter: Yet I remember that whenever possible cases are, uh, consolidated, as much as possible. That was all in only one incident, after all.
Umbridge: They were thirty-nine individual dementors there, you know. Naughty boy.
Potter: It is just that I recall something. After all, in the case of Mulciber, you somehow got the defense to argue—successfully, I recall—to "consolidate" the murder of the Chaudhury family into one case, on the grounds that they were only Muggles and that it'd be easier on the very busy court to handle one case instead of three.
Umbridge: I fail to see how this is relevant—
Potter: I helped to handle that case. First case I did as a newbie Auror investigator; it was down on the backlog—lots of prosecutions to handle, they did this one a year late. There was this manila folder, autopsies neatly typed, and the pictures clipped on. The photos, with Mulciber glaring daggers from the perp mugshot...it was the first time I had to actually investigate a murder. I thought I was hardened after the war.
Umbridge: Back to your case, Potter.
Potter: We reckoned Mulciber'd been after just the old man. Rajiv Chaudhury. Tried for weeks to scare him before he moved in, but he was tough. Had to be, to carve out a place for his family in that neighborhood. He wasn't frightened, even after Mulciber blew the door in and tried to torture him to death. Two hours, Mulciber boasted. I still think Mulciber was lying to make himself look tough.
Umbridge: Potter, if you please!
Potter: That would have been Azkaban for life, wouldn't it? But Rajiv's wife came home, tried to stop him. Indira Chaudhury. And her kids, too. Johnny and Michael. Six and four, respectively. Just came home from school.
Umbridge: Potter!
Potter: Mulciber just killed Rajiv then and there and turned to face them, fired off a blasting spell. The explosion killed Indira outright, wounded Johnny with the shrapnel. He bled to death ten minutes later. Mulciber, of course, ran like hell. Took two days to track him down; Ron and Neville were on the takedown team. I got the job of extracting the memories from little Michael and then wiping them clean. Then played them back in front of the Wizengamot, with my hands shaking like a twig, because even they had the humanity not to make the little boy recall that day in person. I'm no dab hand with the Memory Charm, God knows. Even after I'd driven him to his foster family, which took him in like their own flesh and blood, he still turned to me and asked why his mother wasn't moving.
Umbridge: Potter!
Potter: You sit there calmly and say that you could make thirty-nine individual cases for those Dementors I destroyed, you who had the gall to "consolidate" the murders of Rajiv and Indira and Johnny Chaudhury into only one charge because they were only Muggles?
Umbridge: ...you're out of line, Potter. We'll continue this some other time.
Interview finished 7:43AM

edited 15th Feb '13 5:22:36 AM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Clark grit his teeth. They'd lost the element of surprise, and any useful information was likely already gone.

"Tell them I'm coming back to deal with these 'inconsistencies.'" He said.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

James' finger tightened on the trigger, sending a crack through the air as the round inside fired.

"Yup. That tasted purple."

Catalonia/Commandos
The squads continued checking in on schedule: there was nothing they could find that was off about Castle Maturin just yet; nor was there any sign of what it was that the people they'd spotted had been moving. The search would continue on, augmented by a full infantry company that took up positions around the castle.

Back at police HQ Diaz welcomed Clark and Olivia with a worried expression, holding up transcripts of the interview.

"Colom said he'd spent only a few hours walking around the castle," he said without preamble. "Add to that the time he spent sleeping. But he was missing for several days. Not only that,"—he gestured to the medical report—"the doctors say he's dehydrated, overexerted. Underslept and underfed. He was alert and awake in the interview but the doctor is sure he hadn't slept for two, three days."

---

Catalonia/Lita
"Which I thought you would do well enough," said William Garza amicably. Karla simply remained quiet, occasionally muttering something under her breath that would change the pattern of papers dancing beneath her wandtip. William looked at both Lita and Karla as he spoke.

"The castle's out," he said. "It's swarming with soldiers, and even the French gendarmes are there on the La Vaill trail. Whatever it is we're looking for, we won't be finding in the castle itself."

At that Karla looked up. "The annex? The quarry?"

"Shielded more heavily than ever," confirmed William. "They layered everything on it but a secret-keeping spell, and I think that's just because they didn't have the time to set it up. The entire quarry building complex isn't visible to anyone who's not looking for it."

"And anyone to who is?"

"It'll keep them out for a day or two, perhaps," said William. "I don't understand it myself. There's nothing in the quarry annex but old documents—I mean, really old. All declassified, academic interest only, lots of cursed books kept there for safekeeping."

"You'd be surprised at their utility," said Karla. She closed her eyes for a moment before blinking. "Lita, do you understand what's going on here?"

William glanced heavenward, covering the motion by spearing a piece of fish on his fork.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Clark frowned. This is what he'd come back for? He wanted to take control of the castle with all haste to ensure they could take inventory of anything the wizards might have left behind in their haste, and to catch any clean-up crews that might show up later. Staying outside the castle did none of that.

"Well, he likely had to make his way back on foot—that could account for the exhaustion. However, the inconsistency between his alertness during the interview and his physical state is troubling. Do you know if he drank anything unusual?" An invigoration potion might account for it.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

Otis ANGB

"Stay low and use the snow as a screen" Warren said as he got lower and moved away from the packed snow drift, and moved away from the strip. "Our guns are drawing their attention, lets finish this flank and get in a better position to kill these guys."

"We're doing what we can Price, let me know if you guys see anything up there; we can't consolidate shit if we're still getting shot at. "

OTIS ANGB

Visibility was shit and using the muzzle flashes as reference to shoot at wasn't working as well as Alex had hoped. He packed it up and followed Warren, staying as low as he could while still keeping up. "If they can't see through this snow any better than us, then we could try sneaking up on them without shooting right away... But that would be a pretty big risk, assuming that their visibility is likewise compromised" Alex pointed out, trying to get a feel for the situation as well as he could through all the damn snow.

"There really isn't much cover to move up on them with, if any" Alex said, mostly just talking to himself.

edited 22nd Feb '13 8:34:49 PM by FirockFinion

You are reading this.

"I understand it's full of secret spy stuff that neither of you's bothered to explain." She said, doing her best not to glare at Karla, and focusing on the drawings of Merlini. "Probably involves Harry Potter's stay at Azkaban and Albus Dumbledore, definitely involves headmaster Shacklebolt, and apparently is centred around some 'Q-network' that you want to get me on."

"I understand my grandfather's some kind of info-spy-secrets person which, okay, I get why I didn't know before, spying is secret, fine, but not telling me last night was kind of a huge dick-move." She said, giving her grandfather an annoyed glare that was far less angry than she'd been before. At least he was trying to be nice about it now.

"Not that you've told me anything about that. Or everything else. Especially the djinn which I know nothing about."

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you can't sell him fish anymore. http://thoughtfulspurts.wordpress.com/

"Well, if we can capture her in the first place without attracting much unwanted attention" Paxton said closing his eyes in concentration " I could take Narek's place, after all there not the only one with a shapeshifter" his short black lengthening and changing color slowly to a golden color before settling back to normal. " But I would need more information about Karen, and I would need Narek's knowledge as to not alert his or her handlers"

No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.

Catalonia/Commandos
"Nothing that we could tell," said Diaz. "And...that's the thing. Recall his written statement." There was a copy lying on Diaz's desk: sparse and dusty, temporarily commandeered.

"Colom said he wandered in the castle for a few hours before falling asleep and waking up in Barcelona," said Diaz. "He supposedly never left the castle. And the time discrepancy. They left on October 27—that was five, now six days ago. If Diaz is telling the truth, he slept for five days while he somehow sleepwalked back to Barcelona in such a state that the doctors say he's been exerting himself heavily for the past few days, while the rest of his team is still missing. It doesn't add up."

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Clark frowned and began running through his memory for anything that could take control of the body without its owner's knowledge or memory. Short of an Imperio+Obliviate, he couldn't think of anything, and that combination seemed unlikely.

"He didn't mention anything suspicious where he woke up?" There'd be no good in going back to look at the alley now, the scene was probably already corrupted by passers-by.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

"He could have been simply drugged," Olivia suggested, looking to Clark. "Not that there'd be much reason to when you can simply wave around a twig and say a few words to do whatever, but it's a possibility."

I am become Death, Destroyer of Miniputts.

Boston
Alzey grinned. "Certainly a possibility. We'd have to capture her first for that to work, which is another argument in favor of 'subtle'. As for information, it'd depend on what the doppelganger knows..."

Charmdrummer sighed. "There you go using that word again."

---

Karen lived at a neat little house on the city's outskirts, a good hour's drive from the embassy; progress was slow because rush-hour traffic and the snow that blanketed the city with white. News radio was filled with reports about the unseasonably early snowstorm. Traffic police were out and about in force, but no armored Humvees. Two weeks ago the general in charge of stateside deployments for the Atlantic seaboard had made the controversial decision that Army forces would normally stay in their barracks instead of digging in the cities; two pundits were expounding on the wisdom or the folly of that decision. Alzey frowned and fiddled with his radio: static washed over the speech like breaking waves.

"...opposite of his regiment in Ta...control the countrysi...big freaking sand wall to keep th...not what's proven to work," one pundit said. Voices distorted and bent to some background counterpoint. At some point someone else was talking, but the insistent static grew louder, if anything.

"...not in active insur...need military police and the local National Guard for that, you need... ...isn't a conventional COIN scenario. Most insurgencies sustain themselves because the govern... ...t'll probably change if there's active resistance..."

Alzey sighed and flipped through several channels. "None of you are working any mojo, are you? First time I've had this problem with a freaking vacuum-tube radio."

---

The lights in the house were off when both cars made their initial pass, several minutes apart in case there were watchers. When the passengers rendezvoused nearby, Alzey was looking grim. Charmdrummer was the first to speak up.

"This woman. She didn't say she was on vacation, did she? Told the post office to hold her mail?"

"Well spotted," confirmed Alzey. "I checked; she didn't. So I wasn't the only one to notice her mailbox'd been emptied. Halloween decorations taken down, too. She'd always put on quite a show for the local kids."

"Today's, what, the First of November? Fast work." Charmdrummer scowled at his reflection in the side mirror. "Well, it'd mean someone's still keeping up the masquerade that Karen's around. At bloody least. Anyone with ideas?"

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.