Mist of Shadows
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Dawn and Reincarnation Part 45
🕑 Added 2021-01-12 08:03:04 +0000 UTCPuck listened with half an ear to the Minister's blathering about duels, old laws and respect for authority and other such things that didn't honestly matter all that much as far as he was concerned while he glanced over the students gathered in the great hall to watch the duel. He was fairly sure they would have held the duel somewhere less public if they'd had an inkling of the type of magic he had access to.
It boiled down to power and what they thought they could get away with, they'd lost any fear of the muggle government beyond staying in hiding which meant they generally felt like they could do anything they wanted provided they didn't cause enough fuss to get the ICW to cause trouble, he figured he'd disabuse them of that notion.
"Let this be a lesson for all future troublemakers," Umbridge announced, glaring at the Weasley twins, "anyone found causing trouble will be dealt with."
"Shut your trap and get in the ring," Puck replied sarcastically as he stepped into the dueling ring that Dumbledore had drawn in the Great Hall so everyone could watch the duel.
Umbridge smirked as she stepped into the ring with her wand ready. "I'm going to enjoy this."
"I highly doubt it, but you know it takes all types," Puck replied as he wove spider web like threads of air close to Umbridge without touching her.
"Try to maintain some dignity," McGonagall suggested, wishing she could justify volunteering so she could hex the bitch.
"What do you expect from a muggleborn?" Lucius asked, making it rather clear of his opinion on anyone that wasn't a pureblood.
Albus glanced at Lucius Malfoy then at the aurors that Fudge had brought to observe and possibly interfere with the duel. "Last chance to step forward as a second in the duel."
"You can't threaten my aurors," Fudge blustered.
"I didn't threaten your aurors, I just explained that if they step forward to volunteer that I would be forced to step into the ring to protect my student," Albus replied calmly, slightly disappointed that Lucius hadn't stepped forward as he wouldn't mind an excuse to take care of one of Riddle's bankrollers.
Fudge scowled. "Get on with it."
Albus glanced between Puck and Umbridge. "Since I suspect a bow is out of the question, a simple nod to your opponent will have to suffice. You may start the duel after you nod and when I say start, understood?"
"Of course, Professor Snape covered basic dueling etiquette back in second year," Puck assured Dumbledore then nodded towards Umbridge.
"Nasty little shit," Umbridge said, glaring at Puck and barely nodding a fraction of an inch.
"So much for civility, you may start," Albus said, hoping he hadn't made a mistake in not talking Puck out of pressing the duel when he had a chance.
"Reducto!" Umbridge shouted, sending out a blast of magic that Puck sidestepped, causing the magic to splash against the shield Albus had conjured to protect the students from stray spells.
Puck gestured and yanked the threads of air through the Defense teacher, causing a decent percentage of the Slytherins to get covered in Umbridge brand chunky salsa. "Next?" he asked, looking at Fudge and Lucius Malfoy.
McGonagall stared in shock at Puck, wondering how he'd pulled the spell off without a wand and where he'd learned such destructive magic.
'I should have had Flitwick conjure a solid shield,' Albus mused, relieved that he hadn't had to step in to end the deal before his student got hurt.
Fudge stared for a couple of seconds at the scattered bits of his Undersecretary then shouted, "Arrest him!"
"Are we going to do this the legal way or the fun way?" Puck asked as he looked at the aurors staring at him in shocked disbelief.
'I'd give him points for style if I didn't want to ruin my cover,' Snape mused, wondering how the hell he'd managed to kill Umbridge without waving his wand in a complicated pattern or chanting an incantation.
"No," Tonks said thoughtfully as she took a step back, wanting nothing to do with a duel with someone that could rip someone apart wandlessly. "It was a perfectly legal duel."
"You're welcome to step into the ring Fudge unless you're scared of a child?" Puck taunted, watching Lucius out of the corner of his eye as he stepped forward to no doubt whisper something in Fudge's ear. 'You're making this too easy.' He used a thread of air to 'help' Lucius into the ring. "Excellent, we have another challenger. Normally, I wouldn't attack a mentally deficient individual but in your case I'll make an exception."
"What!" Lucius demanded, wondering what he was talking about and who had shoved him into the ring.
"You did claim the imperius defense the last time around," Puck replied with a smirk and an over the top wink.
"Fine, I'll be her second," Lucius snapped then paled when he realized this gave Dumbledore the perfect chance to attack him.
"Kill the mudblood!" Draco shouted from his spot at the table, less than happy about getting covered in blood.
Snape reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration, wondering if Draco's behavior would improve without his father around or if he'd just fall into a self destructive spiral and double down on his stupidity.
"Nod to your opponents and start on three," Albus said, trying to stay focused on the duel and Fudge and not the questions running through the back of his mind about how Puck had managed to kill his Defense teacher and where he was going to find another one.
Puck nodded towards Lucius, not taking his eyes off him but willing to play along for the moment.
'Even if I win, I'm going to lose, I might as well make it hurt,' Lucius thought as he studied his son's classmate, trying to reconcile his son's description of the annoying mudblood bookworm with the dangerous duelist that had just shredded a ministry employee without any real concern or apparent effort.
Dumbledore sighed when he realized Lucius hadn't nodded. "So much for niceties. Three, two, one, start!"
Lucius quickly conjured the best and most powerful defensive shield he could.
Puck used a small horizontal gateway to cut clean through Lucius' neck and drop his head over Draco's table. "I was hoping for more of a fight."
"Liar," Tara muttered, recognizing the gateway. 'Xander would have tossed in a couple of jokes which means you're probably Spike or Ethan,' she mused, fairly sure the rest of the group wouldn't have gone for something that drastic or public.
Draco shrieked in anguish when his mind connected the dots between his father's headless corpse and the severed head looking at him with a shocked and confused expression.
"I think we're done dueling for the day, quite educational, wasn't it?" Albus asked Fudge cheerfully, making a mental note to talk to Puck about his choice of spells.
"Albus!" McGonagall complained.
"It was a good lesson about not judging a book by its cover and being polite," Albus said, giving Snape a stern look.
'Cover be damned, I'm not giving him more reasons to kill me,' Snape promised himself.
"What are you teaching them!" Fudge demanded after the gears in his head started spinning again.
"The same thing we've always taught them, how to be successful witches and wizards," Albus replied. "Now, I think it's time that you leave and stop interfering at Hogwarts."
"What about the Defense position?" Fudge blurted before he could stop himself.
"I have some contacts I can talk to that weren't in the country at the start of the term, if I need the ministry's assistance I'll let you know," Albus explained.
Puck waved at Fudge. "You seem unwell, perhaps a change of occupation would help."
"Is that a threat?" Fudge blustered, glancing between Puck and Albus. 'Shit! Lucius was right, he's building an army! Keep it together Fudge, you just need to get out of here in one piece then you can send the aurors after him or the kid's family, that would give me plenty of leverage.'
Puck shook his head. "No, just a friendly observation."
McGonagall pulled her attention off Draco who was clutching his father's head with white knuckles and looking catatonic then looked at Snape. "Perhaps you should take Draco to the infirmary."
"I suggest Saint Mungos, my sister is still in the infirmary because of Umbridge, I'd hate for Draco to open his filthy mouth and cause trouble," Puck said firmly.
Snape cut Minerva off before she could argue, "That would be unfortunate, I'll drop Draco off then settle my house, we have things to discuss," he said then turned and walked over to collect Draco, wanting to get him out of the Great Hall before he did something that would get him killed or crippled. 'At least I won't have to listen to Umbridge's fake cough anymore. Which wine goes with congratulations, your husband is dead?' he mused as he left the room, floating Draco in front of him.
"Ravenclaw, follow me!" Flitwick ordered as he headed towards the exit, less than happy about the entire situation but hopeful that certain students would get the message that actions had consequences.
"Hufflepuffs, let's go," Sprout said, trying not to sound cheerful about Umbridge being gone as she'd been a nasty little shit even as a child.
Albus barely resisted the urge to make a shooing motion to get Fudge moving. 'Hopefully we don't get another clown for a Defense teacher from the Defense Teacher summoning device. Then again, they're usually competent, just weird.'
"Gryffindors, with me," McGonagall said, pausing as she turned and realized that Seamus looked like he'd just seen his grave stone. "Someone collect Mr Finnagan," she paused when she noticed Fred and George spring to their feet, "not the Weasleys."
"Just trying to help," Fred said cheerfully.
"It's not like we'd have let him hit any walls or fall down the stairs," George added with a smile that no one would believe even if they didn't know them.
"Right," she muttered then started walking, wishing she could drain a bottle of fire whiskey and forget about the fact that one of her students had just gleefully murdered their Defense teacher. 'Normally they at least have the decency to wait for the end of the year. I swear Albus only hires them so he can get rid of,' she paused as she actually considered the idea that Albus only hired them to get rid of them then discarded the idea as ridiculous, mostly because he'd hired Remus and he liked the werewolf, not making the connection that the people he wanted to keep were actually decent teachers.
'Hopefully we get someone that isn't horrible,' Rose mused as she followed her friends out of the Great Hall, wondering where Puck learned the spells he'd used.
0o0o0
To most people in space faring cultures taking a tour of a salvage yard would have been something for a field trip or something to see once unless you were a mechanic and you needed cheap parts, for a young Builder trying to build up her scans it was beyond amazing. Even just walking through Griff's transport ship and scanning everything remotely interesting on the way to the cockpit had filled in a bunch of fuzzy areas on Dawn's transport schematic. "How do they keep everything organized?" she asked as Griff maneuvered his cargo ship down one of the 'lanes' suspiciously clear of junk.
"Tractor beams and drones," the humanoid hippo replied, rather amused by Dawn's enthusiasm for something most people didn't give more than a passing thought about.
"How come they haven't recycled everything?" Dawn asked, her gaze darting from one strange ship to the next that she could see out of the cockpit window, half of them with obvious signs of damage or missing sections of the hull while the rest looked curiously intact.
"Raw materials are cheap, you make more credits selling parts to the civilian sector than you do scrapping everything," Griff explained as he carefully closed the distance to a decommissioned cargo ship that would let Dawn bounce around in zero gravity while he looked for some military grade sensor nodes for a client. "It shouldn't take more than thirty minutes to grab the sensors I need for a client then we can head to one of the Calnarri wrecks and you can look around as long as you don't take anything."
"No worries, the only thing I'm taking with me are memories," Dawn assured him, finishing the rest of the statement in her head, 'and scans.' She worked on scanning the massive cargo ship they were approaching. "How are we getting inside?"
"That depends, how comfortable do you feel about using your suit's flight system?" Griff asked with amusement, fairly sure she wasn't considering how long it had taken her to get the suit on.
"Considering I have no idea how to use the controls, not very," Dawn replied, wishing he'd given her a manual on the extra suit, not that it would have helped as Griff's ship had only taken about ten minutes to get to the salvage yard.
Griff glanced at his passenger, wondering which backwater colony she'd come from where she didn't at least have basic training with flight suits. "In that case, I'll land the ship in one of the cargo bays so you can get some practice without worrying about drifting into space and getting lost. It's slightly more annoying than landing on the hull and going through an airlock but not much."
"Sorry," Dawn offered.
"Don't worry about it, it saves me from having to check the airlock for explosives," Griff replied with a grin.
"Explosives?" Dawn asked warily.
"Not everyone that makes salvage runs likes the competition," Griff explained as he flew into the cargo ship's shuttle bay.
"Isn't that illegal?" Dawn asked, before realizing she should probably let Griff concentrate on flying.
"Technically but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen and there are always idiots coming through that don't quite understand the Empire," Griff explained as he landed near one of the doors that went further into the ship.
"So you're saying the Empire would care?" Dawn asked.
"It would depend on the reason the bomber set the explosives and who they killed and how much they could pay to avoid ending up sold to a meat shop," Griff explained. "If some idiot set it up to randomly kill people, the fine would be enough to bankrupt entire star systems. If they set it up to kill a specific target and missed, they're only probably screwed depending on resources and the value of the target."
"And if they hit the right target?" Dawn asked.
"Provided the target wasn't human or Calnarri and was guilty of crimes worth being put to death over, they'd probably just have to pay a fine for using explosives in the salvage yard," Griff said as he powered the non essential systems down to save energy.
"In other words, don't be a lazy bastard?" Dawn asked as she stood up.
"Pretty much," Griff replied as he got up out of his large chair. "Either way, it's best to avoid getting blown up in the first place."
"How does the flight suit work?" Dawn asked.
"It uses several tiny gravity pulse generators placed in strategic locations on the suit to give you motion which is why you can't use the suits to fly in a gravity well, you'd fry the power system and the generators if you tried to generate enough lift," Griff explained as they left the cockpit and headed for the airlock.
"Makes sense," Dawn agreed, having looked at the suit's schematics. "How do I turn it on?"
"You should be able to bring up your helmet's interface by tapping your thumb and first finger together twice in rapid succession. From there, it's a simple matter to customize how you want to control the thrust, I suggest using your off hand." Griff stopped in front of the shelf next to the airlock, grabbed a helmet and tossed it to Dawn. "Put it on then check the oxygen level." He grabbed his own helmet and started putting it on.
"I'll take a look," Dawn said as she put the helmet on, feeling a bit uncomfortable as the foam-like liner adjusted to fit her head. She tapped her thumb and index finger together twice and glanced over the various menus, 'Oxygen, temperature, and a doll with the location of the gravity generators,' she mused. She focused on the readout for her air supply, not sure what the exact numbers of various gases should be but fairly sure the numbers looked close enough. "Ninety nine point five percent and the readout is green, is that good?"
"Good enough," Griff replied as he opened the airlock. "Once we're inside, I'll pull the lever and the system should reclaim most of the air which means don't take your helmet off."
"How many people are that stupid?" Dawn asked.
"You'd be surprised," Griff replied as he stepped into the airlock. "It shouldn't take more than a minute. Once we're outside, I'll give you some basic pointers then I'll let you have fun, just call me on the coms if you run into trouble."
"Sounds good," Dawn agreed, figuring she could always shadow jump back to the ship or slip into the dream world if she ran into issues.
0o0o0
Sabrina glanced at the couch where Xander and her duplicate had an attractive girl sprawled across their laps. "Where's your familiar?" she asked Willow.
Willow glanced up from the spellbook she was reading. "What? I don't have one."
"Is that the difference between Red and Black Wizards?" Sabrina asked.
"What are you…" Willow trailed off as she followed Sabrina's gaze and realized she was talking about Faith. "Ah, no, that's just a Xander thing."
"What can I say, I'm awesome," Xander said with amusement.
"Very much so," Faith agreed, rather amused by the looks Nick and the other Sabrina were giving her, both of them not quite sure what to make of her.
"What's the difference between Black and Red Wizards?" Sabrina Morningstar asked.
"Mostly spell selection and weapon training," Xander replied as he absently played with Faith's hair.
Willow looked up from the strange spell book that reminded her a lot of the books back in Sunnydale. "Black Wizards focus purely on destruction while White Wizards focus on healing and protection, Red Wizards focus on both types of magic and swords but lack access to some of the spells, mostly the more destructive spells and esoteric protection spells."
"I'd rather have the healing spells considering the collateral damage some of your best spells cause," Xander said, thinking about some of the 'memories' of Willow testing her top spells in a barren wasteland. If he wanted that level of destruction, he'd just use a sa'angreal.
"When you say collateral damage, how much are you talking about?" Nick asked.
"Her flare spell could probably level half of the town if she pushed it," Xander said thoughtfully, comparing the size of the blastwave from his new 'memories' with his memories of Sunnydale.
Sabrina stared at Xander. "Half the town?"
"Depending on the size of the town," Willow admitted, glad that she'd never actually tested any of her top spells on a town.
"You're serious, aren't you?" Nick asked warily.
"Pretty much. What about you?" Willow asked, curious how much of a boost Sabrina got from being related to Lucifer.
"Most of my spells aren't nearly that impressive," Sabrina admitted. "I'd need to use hellfire or conjure a storm," Sabrina said, glancing over at her twin.
"Or get creative," Sabrina Morningstar said thoughtfully.
"For the best," Zelda snapped as she walked into the lounge with Hilda. She raised her eyebrows when she saw Faith. "Friend of yours?"
"Familiar, more or less," Xander replied as he let her vanish and reappear behind him and Sabrina so that she could give Sabrina a shoulder massage.
"Some type of Succubus?" Zelda asked warily.
"No, she's just a flirt. Any problems with the improvements?" Xander asked Zelda, changing the subject before Faith said something she shouldn't.
"Just a bit," Faith said as she started giving Sabrina Morningstar a shoulder massage.
Zelda considered pressing the issue about the strange girl then decided she didn't care enough to cause trouble. "I'm slightly confused why the coffin she created generates half dressed witches with fake fangs when you bleed on it and pull a lever but for the most part the changes are acceptable."
'When you bleed on it? I'll have to ask Luna for the details,' Xander mused, fairly sure there was more to the coffin than just creating random witches, mostly because he was fairly sure it should make warlocks as well unless Hecate's contract had other plans for boosting the number of warlocks in the area.
"That's because you don't know how to have fun any more," Hilda said with a grin, rather happy about the various changes the delightful girl had already implemented. "I'm looking forward to going monster hunting in the dungeon."
"Sounds fun. Do you think we could take the gang through a level or two?" Sabrina Morningstar asked Sabrina, wanting to spend more time with her friends before she had to leave.
Zelda shook her head. "You expect mortals to be able to defeat something that is supposed to give witches a challenge?"
"We'll have to see after we deal with the last of the Eldritch Terrors," Sabrina said thoughtfully, fairly sure her friends would be fine.
"Speaking of Terrors, can you deal with this abomination," Luna asked as she walked into the room carrying Blackwood's severed head.
"I'm immortal," Blackwood taunted.
"I've heard that before," Xander said, thinking about the Judge. "It didn't pan out for the last guy."
"What are you thinking?" Willow asked.
"Balefire or tossing his head into space," Xander replied as he used a thread of air to float the head over so he had a clear line of sight then opened a gateway at the edge of space behind the head.
"Balefire?" Blackwood asked scornfully.
"You might want to avoid looking at it, it's bright." Xander raised his hands and unleashed a thread of balefire at the severed head. He wasn't particularly surprised when the beam of light burned a hole through the severed head and burned it out of time. He dropped the weave for balefire and closed the gateway with a grin. "Apparently he was just mostly indestructible."
Zelda stared at where Blackwood's head had been. "That shouldn't have worked, he had the Mark of Cain."
Xander shrugged. "Nothing is perfect."
Luna frowned as she scanned Xander and nothing happened. 'Magic resistance?' she mused, figuring she'd have to have a chat with her minion when she had a chance.
"Do you think you can do the same to The Void?" Nick asked, wondering if it would be enough to kill Sabrina's father.
"If not, we'll find something else," Xander promised, fairly sure they could come up with something or find something that would deal with the void.
0o0o0
