Lita, unable to see through Kieran's plan, simply smacked her hand on her forehead and started shaking slightly with a mixture of anger, exasperation and despair.

Catalonia

You're a fool if you think that I'm going to stand here and divulge everything to you in the hopes of you being swayed to join us" the wizard said with derision. "I've already said my peace and there isn't any point in wasting precious time, we have to -" He was cut short as a sudden shock wave spread across the floor, small vibrations being felt in the collective feet of everyone.

Seconds later another robed wizard came running up a flight of stairs and straight for the apparent leader of their group, the two briefly exchanged words before beginning to move with a new found haste.

"It seems as though it's time for us to take our leave, this is your last chance to come with me, if we meet again I daresay it will be under conditions favorable to you."

Catalonia

"Are you lost?" a soft female voice asked Allan as he strode down the hallway. "The briefing is about to start, you must be the new guy."

edited 27th Mar '14 4:04:33 AM by kino

"What the—what is going on?" Lita asked.

"So they're scampering away. I don't like people who do that. So can we beat the robed people up now?" Kieran directed his question at Lita seeing as she was the one doing the shaking act for some reason.

edited 27th Mar '14 12:58:48 PM by Tricksen

"Do what you want, a djinn might be this close to killing us anyway." She said, looking very worried.

Catalonia

There was a momentary pause from both sides before the wizards began to coalesce and make their way towards a passage way in the distance in pairs while their compatriots held their wands at the ready and provided cover for their escape. Seconds later Clarks radio squawked to life and the voice of Spanish soldiers filled the air"...breach compl-to entry. Mr. Clark, come in? Can you hear us?

"What?" Allan asked, turning around to look for the voice. Had he really been wandering around for hours?

Grinning gleefully at being able to attack, Kieran sent a volley of stunners towards the wizards, his mood increasing considerably as he faced the prospect of getting into a duel. "Yeah, this sort of means no to your offer, just in case you were too thick to notice."

edited 29th Mar '14 1:14:11 PM by Tricksen

Minton

"You're not part of the flight crew here so I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're one of the shoot first don't ask questions crowd here" the woman said as she shuffled a cup of coffee and stack of papers long enough to put her hair in a hasty ponytail. "I'm Lt Chacon, but you can call me Trudy."

Catalonia

Kierans words fell on deaf ears as the spells rang out in the open room. The wizards had been waiting and his stunners were promptly countered or blocked while the remainder of the enemy group beat a hasty retreat through a far hallway. The leader of their group turned to Kieran and fired off a stunner before stepping back and reaching into his pocket, seconds later the room went black.

Shouting, "Protego!" Kieran blocked most of the spells heading towards him and ducked the others. The leader's stunner going into his shield, Kieran dispelled it, and, pointing at where he estimated the wall to have been, yelled, "Reducto!", which, if his aim was right which it most likely was, would make the wall explode inwards. Then, to aid himself in seeing, he cast the Lumos charm, resulting in a bright blob of light on the tip of his wand.

"Peruvians really need to export other things, given how their darkness powder is selling." Lita said. She took a deep breath, she was not going to freak out. They might be on the verge of death by soul-eating abomination, and still have soldiers to save, but she was not—crap, the soldiers. She tried to summon a Patronus. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Every second, the compounding idiocy and danger of the situation she was in tore at her.

"The bad guys are escaping." She whispered clearly. Karla and her grandfather could hear her. "The bad guys are escaping. Please do something."

The ground beneath her cracked, which told her that for all her efforts, she was freaking out. She wanted to break something. To burn something. She wanted to somehow get into everyone's brains and stop them from making stupid choices and killing people and causing trouble. She wanted to be back home, alone, able to rest, without having to put up with wand-happy Aurors attacking people and a constant headache and no one doing what she said because she wasn't imposing enough or old enough for people to give two shits about what she said.

Avia pulled down her backpack when the firing started and put it in front of her chest. While it will not protect against all spells and bullets, it might repel some. But before she had the time to pull out anything, the floor cracked, and something pushed her aside. Was it that Djiin that they were talking about earlier? Avia was on the verge of regaining her balance when a spell hit he leg, causing the bone to shatter.

Avia shouted, but she had gone through worse. She drew out her wand, feeling that maybe this time, she could use it quickly, maybe this time with all the stimuli she could think better, but her mind froze and her hand quivered with the pain, then she was hit. Again. This time, a spell hit her hand and the wand flew away like mad.

edited 8th Apr '14 6:33:46 PM by Humanomusician

Catalonia

Kieran's spell impacted the wall and fragments of stone and mortar burst in various directions upon impact before the oppressive darkness took over once more, the sharp cone of light from his wand barely managing to keep the black at bay. A stray spell was all that was heard before an unnatural silence entered the room. It took a few minutes but eventually the darkness began to dissipate and the group began to regain their sight. The relif was short lived as it turned out that their opponents had fled, leaving them with nothing more than an injured teammate and even more questions.

“Lita, grab your friend Clark and get out of there now” Karla said tersely, her voice flowing into Lita's ear as though she were standing next to her. “The Spanish have breached the structure from underground, it would be best if we made our exit. That takes priority right now.

As the darkness dissipated, Kieran scanned the room to check if there were any more enemies still in the room. Apparently not. However he did notice Avia in apparent pain. Kneeling down next to her, he asked, recalling his training in healing, "Erm, everything's going to be all right, just tell me where you're hurt? Then we can fix it."

"Is my leg, below the knee.", the ex military medic answered, "Are you not able to see the angle it is in?"

Avia took her backpack and put her hand in, trying to find a certain potion by touch. "Mekalef avokado baxoshex", she said in a low voice. She really did not need the help of that adrenaline junky if he did not identify the injured limb immediately. "Eifo ata, mefager she'kmotxa?", but the potion was nowhere to be felt. She groaned in frustration, and growled at the man "Give my wand. It got lost."

"OK, OK, no need to growl like some sort of animal, unless you are one. And no need to act like a muggle with a flashbang too. Unless your facing a muggle. Like that Clark guy. Or the American with the shotgun. You can play with your pretty bomb's against them. Anyway, ''ferula!" A splint and bandage would be wrapped around where Avia's leg was shattered.

Satisfied with his work, Kieran then cast a summoning charm for her wand, the named wand flying into his hand. Kieran lazily chucked it at Avia before asking Lita, "Okay, what now? Since your the one sent by whoever the hell sent you, I take it you have an escape plan. And it better be good considering we have someone with a broken leg here."

London – Ministry safe-house

The assorted members of Karla's team lounged on furniture in a rough semicircle as the filtered into the room, a sense of gloom and trepidation hung about the room as it slowly filled with the members of the ad-hoc intelligence team. The wizard they had encountered had escaped with the majority of his followers, and the information they had been seeking had vanished along with him. Karla’s team had to beat a hasty retreat moments later, leaving Mr. Clark and Olivia alone to answer the barrage of questions by the Spanish soldiers.

Despite the setbacks, Karla had a look of grim determination and newfound purpose as she sat down and call the room to attention. “Don’t be disappointed. There are always setbacks in this line of work.” She said as she surveyed the group; stopping at Lita. “Despite what happen in Spain, we now know that we have another faction to contend with, as well as an even greater power that we will have to deal with.”

“Hopefully this task before us will be a bit more manageable with additional help, Mr. Jones and Casshern here, please introduce yourselves to the group”

RAF Minton

“Let’s go before all the good seats are taken.” Lt. Chacon said as she took off at a brisk walk, somehow managing to balance a stack of folders in the same hand she carried her coffee cup. Minutes later they were walking through the wide double doors of Minton’s main conference room, catching a curious glance from Chavez as they say down next to Warren and his team.

“About time you got here, Clark and Browning were already here before we landed, Six is about to brief all of us.” Warren said as he surveyed the room. “Welcome to OCCULUS kid.”

Deciding after a beat that he might as well go first, the blond wizard in fairly plain muggle attire rested his elbows atop the copy of Essai Général de Tactique sitting on his lap, and steepled his fingers. As per usual, he'd briefly and discreetly taken a look in the minds of each of the other people as they walked in, perfectly facilitated by his purposeful choice of one of the half-circle's end seats. Except for Karla, whom he'd rapidly decided it would be a bad idea to probe any deeper in the future, the majority of the team seemed relatively easy to read. That wasn't exactly an unusual observation among British wizardkind, of course, as he'd found over the years that many of them tended to be highly emotive, but it was a little worrying that individuals with such apparently normal minds were part of a team that specialized in covert work. Had the little rumors he'd been picking up in thoughts over the past month been true? Were they really just conscripting random witches and wizards off the street?

"Hello there, everyone; Pleased to meet you," he began blandly, "My name is Callistus Cato Casshern. Feel free to just call me Cal, though. I know it's kind of a mouthful for some people." He made a weak and quickly fading attempt at a smile. What had happened overseas was obviously not creating the best atmosphere for a first meeting, but some basic sense of decorum urged him to try and seem at least a little upbeat about things.

"I'm from France originally, but I moved across the Channel to work as an Obliviator some years ago. If you need to erase evidence, I'm your man!" Whoops. That probably sounded weird, didn't it? Get it together, Casshern. "Aside from my experience there, I'm fully fluent in French and Roman Latin, and I also possess what I like to think of as an encyclopedic knowledge of the Dark Arts." He leaned back again slightly once he'd finished, wondering silently whether he really should have mentioned his Dark Arts expertise, but he'd thought it only fair to mention in the interest of full disclosure. Well, mostly full disclosure.

Instead of waiting for the others' responses in words, he opted for satisfying his curiosity and apprehension immediately, and began to softly pick at the brains of his new comrades once again, especially that of the young Spanish woman. Something about her mind had given off the unsettling impression of... instability, for lack of a better word.

edited 22nd Apr '14 6:48:49 PM by darksidevoid

Lita began feeling a tad uncomfortable looking at the man. Then a tad more uncomfortable. Like she felt when Karla looked into her eyes to check if—

She tensed and gave the obliviator a glare before closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. Not a good start on the new members of the group. Hopefully the remaining new guy would be at least civil enough not to rummage through her brain.

Calm, cool, collected. That's what he had to be. That's what an Auror was. Still he could not keep from shifting around excitedly as his new teammates filed in. They were much more motely than he'd expected, but still this was going to be his team. They would right wrongs and kick ass together. This was going to be the best. He didn't really know how to start though, but Cal — his actual name had too many C's for him to remember - went first helpfully. He started a bit when he spoke of being an Obliviator and knowing a lot about the Dark Arts. That sounded very... suspicious to him. But still, he'd been recruited because he was a good guy, right? And surely that feeling as if someone had brushed against his mind was all in his imagination...

JJ realized he'd let the silence stretch a bit and hurried to fill the void. "I'm Jacob Jones, but please," Please "Call me JJ." He had been planning to just say he was an Auror and be done with it, but Cal had shared so much of himself...

"I'm an Auror, actually I just exited the training program a month ago." He shrugged, "Before that I was at Hogwarts — Go Slytherin." He couldn't help adding, some pride for the house still filled him, even if he had been shunned most of his time there. "And before that I had no idea I even had magic so... Yeah..." He shrugged again, not sure what else to say.

Lita stopped and smiled, thoughts of Callistus' mental invasion disappearing when she realized the other new person was not insane. Or bigoted. Or a complete idiot. Or a likely criminal. She paused after realizing she was just looking at him and smiling and that was probably a little weird, and she turned to Karla.

"So, what now?"

For any non-legilimens, one of the many reasonable responses to the unmistakably angry look that Lita had sent Cal's way would have been to arch a confused-looking eyebrow. So, that was exactly what he did, contrary to his crystal-clear knowledge of the glare's origin.

The fact that she'd caught on so quickly, even if she had no proof, was a little disconcerting when he thought he had taken care to be subtle about it. Maybe the instability he sensed in her mind was an indicator that she was suffering from excessive paranoia? That would certainly make sense, considering the line of work. He wasn't exactly bereft of a healthy level of mistrust himself, after all. Then again, the fact that Karla had used legilimency on her in the past - he gave himself a small mental pat on the back for his decision not to search the older woman's mind further, now that he knew for sure she was adept in both mental arts - that could have contributed to his new Spanish comrade detecting him more easily as well...

After discarding that line of thought to listen with interest to Jacob, the French-born wizard couldn't help but crack a genuine smile when the young witch across from him turned to Karla as if they were going to be handed an assignment immediately. Impatient? Or maybe you just really hate introducing yourself?

"Aren't we going to finish introductions first?" he interjected, "I mean, I don't know anything at all about the rest of you, aside from JJ here." He nodded politely in the junior Auror's direction.

edited 25th Apr '14 8:10:56 PM by darksidevoid

"So an Obliviator who knows a bit about the Dark Arts, and a rookie Auror? Fair enough." Kieran commented lazily, having not paid attention to the finer details, or Cal rummaging within his head. However, he did introduce himself at Cal's prompting, "As for me, I'm Kieran Martin, and have been an Auror for around a decade, and speacilize in combat magic and charms. Happy?"

"No." Lita said. "Lita Garza. Spanish witch. Muggleborn. Book worm. Ravenclaw."