Nexus Event - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

“I still think... Anthea would have been a better choice for this,” Pepper stated as we were shown into the semicircular room. I admired it, having never gotten to see it in my former life. Or, well... the life the original me had lived, however one wanted to put it.

It wasn't often one got to see a real, functioning workplace that was centuries old.

Although, given that I'd just been in Dumbledore's office recently, this would make the second in as many weeks. Then again, as an American, the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts just didn't have the same weight to it. Although it was just as likely that I was being pragmatic and modern in that regard. Even people who were drinking the kool-aid as far as wizard supremacy went understood that outside of a defensive citadel and a place to shape young minds, Hogwarts held no inherent power.

The Oval Office, though?

It was a room that had weathered the rise and fall of two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the Civil War, and so many other crises besides. It was the place where the most powerful man in the world sat with codes to launch the most modern and capable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction the world had ever seen.

Even if Hogwarts was five times older than the White House, the effect this building and this room had on history during that comparatively small time period was dramatically outsized.

“Anthea still has a certain reverence for the chain of command,” I replied, using the name Sam and I had given the British government during our time meeting with them. Although it was unlikely we were being recorded right now, given the shadow of Richard Nixon still looming over the office of the presidency barely a decade and a half ago, it was still possible. So, even as 'alone' as we were in the room, it was still better to use our cover names.

“And I don't?” Pepper asked, challenged.

“Not in the same way,” I murmured, taking a step forward and looking over the Resolute Desk. “You and I are, or at least were American in our nationality. That's true. However, neither of us were actually affiliated with our respective governments in a subordinate role. There's also the fact that, given your previous position as part of the corporate world you frequently had a more... let's be polite and call it 'adversarial' relationship with the government.”

Pepper grimaced and I felt a desire to argue the point rise up, even if her cooler head overrode it. “There's some truth to that, I suppose, and it is your prerogative as the team leader.”

I turned and raised an eyebrow. “You disagree?”

Pepper frowned, her mind waffling despite her firm expression. “Not... necessarily. I just think Anthea's main zone of competence would be more useful here.”

I huffed a quiet laugh. “Oh, you don't need to be worried about military matters. I'm not expecting you to offer any kind of insight on that subject. Frankly, I'd be amazed if we even broached that topic in anything other than a vague way today.”

Pepper blinked, furrowing her gaze. “Really, I would have thought...”

Blessed is the Bat-Mind for it perceived the true reason for her confusion and uncertainty. Pepper Potts was, in fact, a gifted logistician and in her own way a politician. Except, while her role as a leader of big business had her interact with elected officials, she very much was not one of them and did not understand things from their point of view.

Her concerns were, for most of her life, centered around Stark Industries. Even before Tony had appointed her as the CEO of the business, being the primary interface for the owner of a plurality of shares and son of the organization's founder meant a certain amount of understanding of the levers of power was required. Having not known her specific Tony I couldn't really say for certain, but there was likely a great deal of 'translation' required in her role as his personal assistant.

For one, I can only imagine that there was a fair amount of drunken rambling and cursing that she had to edit out of official reports on whatever Tony had invented before he went semi-sober.

One couldn't just repeat the boss' words as their own, after all. The work of a secretary/personal assistant was to act as a buffer between interactions between members of the organization that would create friction between themselves. She was the gatekeeper to ensure that people who would piss off Tony or who Tony would piss off would not actually get to meet with each other, but that important communication would flow between the two regardless.

Grasping these nuances was integral to her position and only became more so when she stepped up to fill the top slot.

But those were matters of internal politics.

At the end of the day, Pepper would still be CEO with her position locked in by virtue of being the now-majority shareholder's love interest. She was, in practical terms, unassailable. In a very real way, her only concerns were her self-motivated demand that the company run in both a moral and productive fashion as well as keeping infighting to the bare minimum. Pepper was more of an Consort-Empress than a conventional business leader.

Externally, this meant that anyone who interacted with Stark Industries knew that the buck stopped with her. You either had her approval or you didn't. You could try to go around her and pull a fast one through some department head or board member, but with JARVIS, Tony, and the fact that Pepper's position had been an informal one for years prior to her formal appointment; meaning she'd already solidified a core of internal support and likability... Well, I'd imagine those attempts wouldn't result in much.

Stark Industries also didn't have a real peer group among corporations, no matter how some industries would like to protest such a claim. In other words, she was used to coming into a room and getting down to business almost immediately, if not politely dictating the terms of the agreement she'd appeared to 'negotiate.' I was sure she'd give or take on a few small points to let everyone walk away feeling they weren't having the terms forced upon them, but that was just to soothe their egos and deny the reality in front of them.

Right now, I'm asking Pepper to face off against the President of the United States without all of that backing.

Also, as I had intuited earlier, Pepper just didn't have the understanding of how an elected politician's mind worked.

I shook my head. “If you've ever seen the first episode of a new season of a piece of media, it usually has a long 'as you know' segment. That's what this is. The President and I are going to lay out our current positions, what we have to offer each other, show off a few of our capabilities to underline the fact that neither of us are defenseless on our own, and then we'll arrange a meeting schedule for the next month to hammer out the finer details and adjourn. We're putting faces to names, introducing each other, and well sizing up each other's phalluses, not to be too crass about it.”

Pepper smiled, a feeling of nostalgia wafting off her. “So I'm here mostly to help you put up a confident front?”

“I also trust your interpersonal skills,” I nodded at her, going back to scanning the Oval Office. “And there's certainly no harm in having a second pair of eyes on things, as long as they can at least pretend to be impartial.”

“I would have thought you'd ask... your sister,” Pepper replied, though much of her anxiety had quieted she was still wary over the possibility of being observed or overheard. A good trait to have at the moment. “Given how close you two are.”

I snorted and raked my eyes over her, pushing a feeling of attraction towards her. Instantly, Pepper blushed and looked away even as I felt a burst of desire in her own psyche. “Do you really think she wouldn't do her best to start some kind of crisis or scandal just for the hell of it?”

Pepper paused and sighed. “She would, wouldn't she?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but the opening of the door cut me off. A set of six men entered, all of them nearly soaked in magic and power. If that subtle feeling wasn't enough, the fact that they had wands in hand would have sealed it. Pepper moved to hit the emergency teleport beacon, but a raised hand from me stopped her.

Well, well, well... someone's been busy.

Two further individuals entered. They, like the half-dozen before them, all wore the nondescript black suits of the Secret Service, complete with the telltale earpieces. The first set, with wands, even looked to be wearing firearms at their waist. The only sign that the four men and two women holding magical sticks weren't regular secret service members were the scattered tattoos and odd hairstyles or coloration. Nothing like a mohawk, but I could see a ponytail laced through with green and purple ties and one of the girls, the blonde, had an ankh in opalescent ink under one eye.

“We'll need you to submit to a perfunctory... scan before we show the president in,” the head agent spoke up, a feeling of being mildly uncomfortable with the word 'scan' in particular as two of the wand-wielders stepped up.

“Do you plan to start magically searching all foreign dignitaries?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

The head agent frowned. “I can't reveal internal policy to unknown quantities. It's either the spell or the door. Choose.”

I traded a look with Pepper, who shrugged minutely. Turning back to the man in charge of the security detail, I held up my hands. “Fine. We'll agree to non-invasive spells only for the sake of demonstrating good faith. Fair warning that we're both equipped with teleportation beacons that will activate if you decide to stop respecting boundaries.”

Pepper pushed something akin to playfulness at me. “Are you sure that's wise, sir?”

“Like I said, we need to demonstrate good faith. Keep the natives happy,” I gave her a small smirk, watching the twitch on the secret service man's eye. Regardless of my jab, though, the man nodded professionally towards the two magicals who'd stepped forward, their wands sweeping through complex motions.

“Something that reads as a weapon on both of them,” the witch of the 'scanning' pair stated, looking at her boss. “Nothing I recognize, though.” Her counterpart nodded to corroborate her decision.

I held up a hand, “If I may?”

The secret service man nodded, the witch and wizard stepping one pace away. That done, I slowly reached around to the small of my back, where I'd hidden the sheath. Pulling free the metal and ceramic cylinder I held it aloft for inspection.

Even as the magicals sent each other quizzical looks, the head of the secret service team blinked, turning his head slightly. “You're fucking joking.”

I raised an eyebrow with a slight grin. “I can turn it on if you'd like. Fair warning, it's the genuine article.”

The man's jaw flapped for a second as he gaped. Finally, he took a deep breath and shook himself. “You know what, sure. Why not? My life's been insane lately anyway. Jesus, lightsabers. Her too?”

Pepper wordlessly took out her own more 'weapon from a more civilized age,' her own smile showing.

“Her too.” I nodded. “I don't have a problem handing them over, but I'd prefer if they stay in the same room. These are fairly dangerous, even if they're locked to our genetic signatures. If you want to post guards over them off to the side, I think that's a reasonable compromise.”

The secret service man grimaced, but nodded, and began barking out orders. I noticed the discreet sticking charms placed on the sabers as well, but decided not to make an issue of it. Our force talents were coming along nicely and a simple 'pull' would bring them back to our hands no matter a little magical glue.

We'd tested that.

Shortly thereafter, President George H.W. Bush was shown into the room, his entrance almost wholly without fanfare. Contrary to what he'd looked like during the Reagan years, the man before us now was visibly aged. Not quite 'old,' given he still had a good bit of color in his receding hairline, but the presence of thick glasses and a face that was beginning to sag in the cheeks. He still had an energy to him, but I could definitely see that he wasn't quite the man he'd been a decade ago.

“So, you're the... Agent that has my boys all up in arms,” President Bush stated, his tone brusque as he seated himself. “I believe you gave Major's boys the name 'Geoffrey'? But this isn't Ms. Anthea, if I recall the dossier properly.”

“No sir. Anthea was otherwise engaged today. This is Ms. Salt,” I replied with a slight smile as Pepper's irritation surged in a sharp spike.

The feeling I got from the President, though, was more interesting. The man had the sensation of someone who was recovering from a severe psychic shock, a person who'd had the foundation of his life shaken violently. I didn't need to guess why, but it told me that his firm demeanor and lack of civility was more a front than anything else.

“And you claim to be representatives from an organization you call, 'The Agency.,'” Bush stated with a frown, glancing down at a folder that now lay open on his desk. “Which are, in your own words, 'a group of interdimensional volunteers and emergency first-responders to large-scale cataclysms.'”

He looked up at me, trying to convey just how serious he was taking the matter. “Is that what we're facing here, Geoffrey? A cataclysm?”

“Much of eastern and south-eastern Asia will cease to exist inside of seven year's time, one way or another,” I stated firmly. “It's up to you if you'd like to refer to loss of life on that scale as a 'cataclysm,' sir.”

Bush swallowed, reaching for a glass of water near his side. “I see... and this coming event will be the result of a, to use your own words again, 'demon invasion.'”

I held up my palms, not quite a shrug, but the gesture seemed to communicate just how out of my hands this entire fiasco was. “In layman's terms, it's accurate enough. The event is specifically referred to as a 'Death March,' if you want to be technical about it. But technicalities regarding the politics of dark gods, abyssal princes, and large-scale multiversal incursions are full of time-wasting jargon that I'd have to tediously explain. So, for the sake of brevity, yes, it's a demon invasion.”

Several of the secret service members shifted uneasily at the declaration, even as the President took a deep breath and pulled his glasses off his face before dropping them to the table to stare at me in a much more worn and desperate manner.

“Normally,” Bush cleared his throat and started again. “Normally, someone peddling this kind of bull would be shown out of the Oval Office and into a padded room, complete with a few heads rolling given how far up the ladder they got with their madness.”

“Normally,” I reiterated, nodding and yielding the floor to him again.

“Normalcy, though, implies a string of events where we weren't handed evidence on numerous ongoing intelligence operations by foreign agencies within the CIA. They don't provide information on future domestic terrorism on American government buildings complete with names and dates. They don't tell us about an entire – magical – subculture living underneath the country's very nose. So, yes, I believe we have very much moved past the point of 'normalcy.'”

I nodded, looking to Pepper. “Ms. Salt, if you would?”

She nodded, reaching into her expanded purse and removing a large file, which she handed to me and I handed to the secret service agent, who neatly intercepted it and offered it to a wizard to wave their wand over. Bush seemed unhappy about the entire course of events, frowning the entire time even as he accepted the documents.

“That's a copy of the information we've already given the British, just in case someone decides to play games,” I stated, then flicked my gaze towards the arrayed security. “And I'll go ahead and say that seeing such a forward-thinking attitude towards integrating magicals is very reassuring.”

“Even if I'm still not sold on the entire thing, sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire,” Bush stated, picking up his glasses again and beginning to leaf through the pages, nodding to himself as he went. “So, what's your Agency's stake in this?”

“Your world is our Afghanistan,” I replied bluntly, Bush wincing as the statement struck home. “One of our allied organizations has holdings on the far side of where the Death March is coming from. You fall, our friends are next.”

 Bush looked up at me. “And your leaders couldn't spring for a little more help? Not that the warning isn't appreciated, but I'd say we sent a fair bit more than a handful of people to fight the Soviets.”

“It's a matter of escalation, much like your own conflict. Our operational norms are different, though. A group of Agents or Contractors would easily be considered a WMD by your own standards,” I explained candidly.

The non-magical security and Bush stopped to stare at me with that declaration, their eyes sweeping over my unassuming form.

Ms. Salt laughed lightly. “We're all the more dangerous because we don't look it, but Agents can wreck some real havoc when push comes to shove. Sending one is actually one of the strongest statements a group like ours can make. Sending multiple would open up the possibility that the Death March's backers would supply them with threats of a similar caliber.”

In Company parlance, that's usually termed 'PvP.' I don't think we're quite at the time period that the brass would understand that term, though.

“So the portal for this Death March is going to open in five years,” Bush stated, very obviously changing the topic as he closed the folder and put it away. “And you're sure it's going to be in east or south-east Asia?”

I nodded. “The Death March's portals hone in on the densest population centers. While they don't usually target worlds past their industrial revolution based on their desire to face warrior cultures in a more primitive form of warfare, they're not stupid. They very much understand the correlation between population density and political centers of command and control.”

Bush nodded, rubbing at his chin. “So their usual methodology is to strike a capital city and decapitate the regime, then?”

“Insomuch as they have a typical MO,” I replied, making the man frown again. “You have to remember that, for all intents and purposes, we're dealing with an army structure that is largely medieval or even ancient in nature. A given leader will also likely hold some type of noble status and be personally responsible for securing supplies for their troops, with the troops being personally loyal to them as a result.”

The President nodded slowly, his next words reminding me that the man had a history of military service. “So we're going to see vastly different tactics and strategies based on who the commander is, then. Any idea who's going to be the leader of the initial push?”

I shook my head. “Given the intelligence I have, they're currently looting and plundering the last parts of the world they just conquered. Once they finish that, they'll begin preparations for opening a new gate. Those preparations will include a series of gladiatorial matches and offerings to their gods to compete for the position of leading the first troops through the portal.”

Bush grimaced. “You've mentioned their 'gods' multiple times now. What are they, really? And can we expect them to intercede during the invasion?”

I took a deep breath. “High-Order Cosmology isn't exactly my field of expertise, but generally-speaking there are capital-g 'Gods' and lower-case-g 'gods.' The latter of the two is what we're dealing with here, thankfully. They're essentially extra-dimensional entities who use prayer and offerings to sustain themselves and grant blessings. They can be very powerful, and are fairly high-up on the cosmic order of things in this instance, but that same level of power means that they can't just appear on the material plane. Doing so would, well... break things would be the easiest way to put it, specifically parts of physics. Which would, in turn, kill a great many of their worshipers. Which would-”

“-mean they no longer receive prayer and offerings, undercutting their own existence, I see where you're going with this,” the President nodded, focused fully on my words. “And, ah... can we expect any help from, ah... up above? The, er – Capital-G God, as you put it?”

I grimaced slightly. “Without going too far into divine politics, direct intervention by the faction we call the White Heaven and its armies known as the Silver Legion is... unlikely. They are, however, the reason that the Death March won't be reinforced beyond its current numbers. As well as the other reason the dark gods won't be manifesting. That kind of escalation on their part would mean intervention by other parties would be allowed.”

I narrowed my eyes at the older man somberly. “That's not really something you want happening in your solar system.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from one of the service members.

“I-I see...” The President took a deep breath and leaned back. “Well, I suppose it's good to know we haven't been entirely forsaken.”

“I'm not really a religious man, but I believe the response is usually, 'God helps those who help themselves.'” I replied stoically.

“Words to live by,” Bush furrowed his brow. “You're not religious, though? Even knowing... all of this?”

I smiled a bit sardonically. “Forgive me for quoting too many words that aren't my own today, but people often advise you to, 'never meet your heroes.' Believing in something ephemeral is a different beast than factually knowing the considerations that go into things like divine interventions. The meetings and bureaucracy take a lot of shine off the whole process.”

Plus, a lot of angels are judgmental pricks even on the best of days from what I've read.

“That's... not something I ever considered, I suppose. I thought it would be more...” The President waved a hand, his eyes flickering towards the men with wands involuntarily.

“It depends on the faction,” I replied with a sigh. “But, I think we should discuss more relevant issues. Doubtless, you probably want to know about the technological exchange we're offering.”

The President nodded, leaning forward now. “Yes, that does sound like a good subject to broach. The researchers at DARPA and a few other contractors have had some luck applying magic to a few projects, butt we're still in the early days and sourcing willing and talented magicals has been difficult given their proscription against involvement with our affairs.”

I nodded, beginning to outline the broadest strokes of what technologies I was willing to part with. The vast majority of things we were going to be giving them were very foundational things. Better materials, designs for better chips, some programming that was compatible with their current networks...

Then we got down to setting up more meetings, this time with other personnel from various departments. The President would be at some of them while others would occur without him. Pepper stepped in to 'remind me' that I had pressing obligations as well and I assured people that either she or Sam, under her Anthea identity would be able to attend in my stead, likely accompanied by another member of our team.

Despite the meeting lasting only a few hours, it left me fairly exhausted, if only mentally.

Still, there was no rest for the wicked. I had bills to pay and mouths to feed.

Also, a birthday party to plan. But first...

…

I walked around the side of the building, finding the dark-haired man sitting in a lounge chair and staring out at the sea. He was still painfully thin, even with a few weeks of good food and better living conditions combined with the modern marvels of medical treatment from both sides of the magical divide. Even if he wasn't in peak form after what he'd been through, it was still better than he had any right to be. Especially with Angela synthesizing some truly incredible mood stabilizers and antidepressants.

The man twitched at t he sound of my shoes on the sand, turning to look at the young blonde boy approaching him. I did my best to give him a charming smile.

“Well, Mr. Black, if you're feeling up to it, I believe it's time we had a talk.”

Sirius Orion Black took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah, let's.”

~~~
So, who wants an extra-long chapter? Well, that's what I've got. It's a big one, meeting the President and everything. It also involved a lot of research and some detailed writing, so it took a bit longer than expect, but that's the story of my life.

Anyway! I'll have the next chapter of Winning Peace out over the weekend. Turians!

Next week will probably be the Industrious Marvel chapter, it's still cooking.

Until then, Rock on, Stay Awesome, and Thanks for your support!