Chapter 399: Cicada <- Mantis <- Oriole
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Quinn stretched on the roof in his Noir gear configured into a grey urban camouflage setting. It had been a second since he had put on the suit— the Taboo curse had run out of steam with no Snatchers responding to the calls— he had done a month where he had slept in two very short shifts and had gone out after anyone who had responded to his Taboo calls and swept the floor with them hard. Since that month, the Taboo activity had been cut to near zero, excluding some exceptions.
After ticking out the last crack in his back, the mask appeared over his face, and he moved towards the center of the roof to the edge. He turned invisible, stepped on the ledge, and looked down at a window of a calligraphy store, behind which an elderly friend sat trying out new stationery. Quinn turned his head around the street and scoured the general crowd, and there he saw it— people acting weird while trying to blend in naturally.
'Use magic, you morons,' he thought, looking at the fools who were not using a single shred of magic.
Head of Beast Division, Steven Jeffery— the man in charge of sub-departments like Centaur Liaison Office, Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau, Troll Patrol. . . and the Security Council of Werewolf Caution. It was clear why he was a target today; eliminating the man in charge of so many important sub-department would cause so many security problems that the DMLE would receive a ton of tension.
'A perfect start to the day. . .'
Quinn stretched his gloves over his hand and stepped back down. He turned to the side, ran, jumped over to the next roof, and crossed the distance before dropping into the alley below. He cut his fall with magic and silently walked behind the Death Eater, standing in the shadow of the wall, smoking a pipe— he was doing the best job, so Quinn decided to take him out first.
Quinn tapped the wall, and the bricks shifted behind the man, creating a void in which he fell. Quinn snapped his finger, and the sound of the horrified man's scream was snuffed out. When the bricks closed, all that was left behind were the Death Eater's hands, and the fingers moved around, trembled, and even desperately flexed in search of freedom. Quinn extended his hands and intertwined his fingers with the Death Eater's, along with various tiny holes for breathing purposes.
"Sorry, but this is going to be traumatic," he muttered. Tetani Nervum coursed through the Death Eater's arms and crippled them to the core. He then released the Death Eater from the wall imprisonment and dropped him down to the ground. He crouched down and entered the man's head to get some concrete information about the plan.
'Got it.' Quinn got up and cast an anti-attention shroud over the Death Eater. He walked out in the street while being invisible; he spread his arms wide, and invisible magic started raining down on the Death Eaters. Their eyes dulled and hazed for a moment before they returned to normal.
He dipped into an alley again, and a moment later, he was out in his John disguise. He wasted no time and entered the calligraphy shop— behind him, not a single Death Eater twitched even a muscle.
"Welcome, sir," greeted the female employee with a smile. "How may we serve you today?"
Quinn smiled, "I'm here to pick up a guest." Even though she was still putting up a professional smile, he could see the confusion in her eyes. He didn't wait for her response and clapped once; a wave of magic surged out of him, and it was like someone had pushed pause on a video; no one moved or reacted and remained utterly still— except Quinn.
He walked to Steven Jeffrey. There Ministry top-brass had his eyes concentrated on his writing with the quill's tip touching the paper that was soaking up the ink, creating a widening ink blot. Quinn snapped his finger, and the quill slipped out from Steven's hand into the ink pot.
"Let's get you out of here," Quinn tapped the man on his bald spot, and Steven went limp.
Quinn walked out of the shop with Steven in tow, floating beside him under an invisibility spell. He looked behind and clapped again for the store to resume its activity again— the female employee who had greeted him blanked out for a second before turning to another customer. Quinn gazed at the Death Eaters, who had their eyes trained on the shop window and hadn't moved at all; even though Steven Jefferey was no longer there, they didn't react. Such was the power of illusion magic. They saw an illusion of Steven Jeffery doing what he was doing before.
'Two minutes,' noted Quinn. According to the scouting, Steven left the calligraphy store at the same time every Friday. He dumped Steven Jeffery on a bench on the street and then walked towards the Death Eaters.
Two minutes later, out of a team of six Death Eaters, five had their hands crippled, and Quinn was staring down at the unconscious sixth man. "You're one lucky guy, Goyle," Quinn shook his head. Every team leader had to report back on specific points of the day to communicate that everything was going according to the plan. "Get ready to have a good day. . ." He placed his hand on Goyle's head and began fabricating.
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Rivers Lock apparated into a forest with nothing else but trees. A place away from everything, somewhere he had explicitly chosen to hold meetings. If he had chosen the meeting point in the headquarters or a place with a roof, some of the team leaders would've been bound to become lazy, thinking their job was done. In a place like this, they would rather go back and wait with their people.
He turned to notice a bulky large-framed man sitting on a luxurious chair— clearly conjured— under a tree's canopy shade.
Rivers walked in front of the chair and asked: "How did it go, Goyle?"
Vincent Goyle, who had been combing his long beard with a beard comb, looked up at Rivers with unhidden displeasure and snorted, "What do you expect?"
Rivers stared at Goyle without a word. Goyle stared back that soon turned into a glare, but Rivers continued to stare down at the man. He knew many Death Eaters didn't like him, labeling him as a 'fake' Death Eater because of his past as a Novellus Accionites. It hadn't been a problem when he had been under Pettigrew's 'mentorship,' but they had turned on him when the Dark Lord had begun giving him attention. Miserable people playing their pathetic politics. At least people like Rookwood and Pettigrew made the experience bearable.
When Goyle saw that Rivers didn't budge, he grumbled, "It's done. Jeffery is on the allocated area."
"Dead?"
"Dead."
Rivers nodded, "Good, now return," and turned away to leave.
"Don't be proud of this," called Goyle, scoffing. "You're nothing but a bug."
Rivers didn't reply. It wasn't needed. Goyle was a simpleton whose brain operated like an ape. He apparated out, not giving another look to Goyle.
. . .
When Rivers left, Goyle stood up and also left by way of apparation, all the while grumbling about pathetic lowlives. He left the forest and arrived at a small cabin situated in a grassland with a gentle breeze wafting the green pastures.
"I've returned," said Goyle upon entering the wooden cabin. "Any problems while I was gone? . . . No? Good. . . Where's the body? In the back." Goyle walked to the back room and looked inside the back room, and gazed at the table in the center of the room. He nodded before walking back into the front. "Anyone by chance brought something to drink?" he asked. He got no response in return. He sighed, "No matter, we shall drink our hearts out when today ends, and celebrate in the name of our glorious Lord."
He cheered, sat down on the padded rocking chair, swung back and forth. . . and seemingly talked to people who were not there, laughing all alone in the small cabin. There was no one in the little house, not even a dead body in the back room that Goyle had just seemingly checked.
All alone.
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Quinn looked up at the hole in the ceiling, watching the light snow falling down. He followed a little flake as it fluttered past his face, weightlessly made its way down to the floor, and gently landed on a Death Eater's check. The cloudy white snowflake dyed red from the blood that bled out of a shallow cut.
Fourteen Death Eaters laid around him in all sorts of horrendous positions and shared the fact that they all were riddled with injuries. Quinn sighed; things had gone awry so quickly. He looked at the cause of it, and he couldn't say that he wasn't surprised.
Nott Senior. Father of Theodore Nott. The man that had once tried to make his underaged son into a Death Eater. Quinn had thought that the man would be more shrewd if he had once tried to leverage his son, but it turned out that he was just another idiot.
"To be not trusted by your own side, what a pitiful sight," he sighed.
The day had started great; he had begun with Goyle's team and had made it through half of the teams before lunch without a hint of trouble. But then he met Nott's team and faced the first unexpected situation, and none of it was his fault. Nott's target was Colton Hirsch, the high-functioning alcoholic.
The operation had started well, with Quinn identifying every single one of the Death Eaters in record time. They were just sitting around in the biggest bar in town, watching Hirsch without even pretending to hide. Unlike with Goyle, he couldn't repeat what he did in the calligraphy store with so many people drinking in the bar, so he decided to target Hirsch instead.
When the drunkard decided to go piss, Quinn followed him with the plan of shooting Hirsch with a stunner inside a stall, tapping him up in there under an invisibility spell and then taking his place. But it turns out that Nott had the same plan as half of his team followed them inside the washroom.
Wands were drawn, and in the tight quarters, Quinn had taken quick action and used hostile force against the Death Eaters, breaking bones and knocking consciousness. Alas, they had squealed like pigs, and some of the noise leaked out before Quinn could silence it, causing the rest of the Death Eaters to come inside. He had knocked them out instantly, but then something shocking happened. A hole blew up in the ceiling, and spells rained inside. Taking them out was simple, and Quinn had done so, but the gaping hole in the roof could've created a problem.
"Let's hope no one was scouting," Quinn muttered.
He snapped his fingers, and the debris flew back to the ceiling, sealing the gap up; in a couple of seconds, the roof was whole again. He walked to Nott and targeted the feeble mind of the fool.
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Quinn West - MC - Let's see, shall we?
FictionOnlyReader - Author - 1 down, 1 to go.
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Chapter 400: 400!!!
If you want to read ahead, you can check out my Patreón @
[ https://www.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis.
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Quinn observed the Death Eaters standing outside a local Quidditch stadium.
The target was yet again a department head, and the reason she was visiting a stadium was to see a game that her son was playing in as part of a local team in a second-tier league. Quinn gazed around to see if he could discover someone hidden, but none was in sight. He sent out the gentle winds to do his scouting, but they also returned empty-handed. The Death Eaters he could see were the only ones present.
'Which means that the situation with Nott hasn't created a problem,' thought Quinn. After the fight at the bar was over, Quinn had read every Death Eaters' mind present in the washroom, and he had found that the two teams didn't have any communication with the Rivers Lock, which meant that he could spin the narrative any he wanted. He had edited the memories in the mind of Nott and Rivers' spy in Nott's team to make it so that they would remember their operation as a success— while the backup-cleanup crew was expunged of their memories of ever getting a distress call from the spy and were made to believe that Nott's team had done the job correctly.
It was a three-way insurance. Rivers would meet Nott and get a positive response; he could call upon the spy and get the same answer; the backup crew's leader would convey the same result.
Quinn let the winds under his feet go and allowed himself to freefall from the sky. The winds fluttered for a moment before Arresto Momentum cut his fall, and he was beside the Death Eaters. He flicked his wrist, and the Death Eaters fell down like bowling pins.
"One more, and I'll be done for the day," he sighed, "but before that." He looked at the target walk out of the stadium's VIP gate and flicked his wrist again, and she fell down on the ground, face first. Quinn wrinkled his nose. "Sorry about that," he muttered. He was going to need to fix that before he could let her go. He couldn't let any of the targets continue on with their days because the Death Eaters had plans with their corpses.
'Better than in my care than theirs,' Quinn shrugged as he got to the standard memory alteration.
. . .
The sun was near setting, with the sunset red almost out of sight and about to be replaced by the evening blue. Only one Death Eater team was left, and Quinn had saved the easiest one for the last.
He turned his head from the changing sky when he heard the pops of apparation. The last Death Eater team had arrived. He stepped out from the shade of the tree and came upon a huddle with the last leader, Lucius Malfoy, addressing his team. Quinn sighed when he saw the long sleeve that hid Lucius' right missing hand. That hand could be healed back to new in a week tops; the cut wasn't caused by dark magic and only needed the material and the jolt from magic to regrow— but Lucius hadn't grown it back because it was fear rather than magic holding him back.
'I hope he doesn't get punished,' he thought as he raised his hand for several stunners to fly out of his hand. The entire team dropped to the ground, and it made Quinn realize how easy it was some time to simply take out people from the shadows.
He sat down the Death Eaters and cast Tetani Nervum onto everyone except Lucius as he still had a job to do. As the soot and haze covered the Death Eater, he heard footsteps coming to a skidding stop. Quinn turned and saw a middle-aged in track pants. It was the target; he had his house right around the corner, and around the same time every day, he would go for a run around his home. Quinn shrugged, and a stunner caught the man in the chest, and he flew a couple steps back before falling down to the ground.
"Well, time for chaos."
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"Lucius Malfoy just reported back," said Rivers to the Voldemort, who was again reading in his room. "The last Ministry head has been captured and killed. They're ready to be presented."
"Good, give them the signal to proceed."
"They'll move at six."
Voldemort's hand, which was writing on parchment, stopped. He leaned back on his chair and stared at Rivers for a moment before saying, "I would like to see."
"My Lord?"
"I would like to see one of the displays."
Rivers thought for a moment before shrugging internally; he didn't mind the Dark Lord tagging along. The Dark Lord was the one who ordered the operation, Rivers had no say in refusing him, so he asked, "Which one would you like to go visit?"
"Lucius. Perhaps I was too hard for him. I shall witness his work and graciously bestow the permission to have his hand healed back. It'll be excellent to re-affirm the fickle Mafloy into out of our ranks. I'm sure he'll be elated," said the Dark Lord. "Where is Malfoy?"
"He's in charge of Diagon Alley."
"You must like him to give him Diagon Alley."
"He was the most logical and calm of all. It was a rational choice to give Diagon Alley to Malfoy," Rivers said before posing a question. "Your room has changed quite a lot, My Lord. May I enquire the reason for the sudden change."
Voldemort raised his right arm for a wand crept out of his sleeve and slid into his hand. Rivers stilled as he cautiously gazed at Voldemort while hiding all his emotions; he didn't dare to reach for his wand. Voldemort gazed at the wand as he spoke, "Magic is power, Rivers. If you master magic, you can master pure power. Mastering magic, however, requires knowledge— the more knowledge I gain, the more magic I'll master, and more power I'll acquire." Voldemort looked up at Rivers. "I can sense that you disagree."
"No, My Lord. You are correct."
"You're simply saying that to agree with me," Voldemort called him out. "Both of us have been leaders of organizations. I of Death Eaters and you lead the Novellus Accionites— but the truth of the matter is that the only reason you gained followers was that you used my name. . ."
Rivers kept his face steady, but his fist clenched behind the table.
". . . and why do you think that is?" continued Voldemort. "Even when the world thought I had perished, they responded to my name— why? Because I commanded that much power. So much so that even after my death, people didn't dare to say my name and taught their children to not utter it." He pointed his wand at the book and raised it up, "This is the source of all of it, Rivers. Magic and knowledge. You are witty and wise, but you lack the might of magic. . . and that's the difference between you and me." Voldemort stood up, "Come now, as we witness the start of my rise."
Rivers silently stood up and followed after Voldemort. As he looked at Voldemort's back, Rivers clenched his jaw as he failed to think of a way to get rid of Voldemort. . . and that made him feel what he had been just told.
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In the winter, even with a thick coat of snow coating the roads, roofs, and the nook and crannies of the Diagon Alley streets, the Diagon Alley was abuzz with people shopping in the shops that the marketplace had to offer. The shops sparkled with their lights under the night sky, shining their glows on the paved paths.
"Ugh, the cold's hurting my back," Sirius Black pressed the sides of his fists into his lower back.
"What happened to your back?" asked James, looking around the street, observing everything that entered his eyes. Today was the monthly random check of the area under their jurisdiction, which they did to check if the rookie Aurors were doing a good job at their patrol duties. James was in charge of Diagon Alley and had placed his most promising subordinates on Diagon Alley, so he wasn't expecting any problems, but it was better safe than sorry.
Sirius groaned, "I didn't sleep well yesterday."
"What happened?"
"I was with this girl I met yesterday, someone I picked up at the bar," said Sirius twisting his waist in an attempt to gain some relief. "We were having fun, as we ended up at her place—"
"Okay, okay, so you slept at her place, and the bed didn't suit you; is that it?" James said with a sigh.
"I did sleep at her place, but not on her bed. . . things were pretty wild, and I woke up on the floor with her draped on me," Sirius smirked and then gleefully said, "It was a good night."
James shook his head. "When are you going to settle—"
"Oh, here we go."
"— find a good girl, start a family—"
"Can we not do this again."
But before the banter could continue, they heard screams and shouting of men and women that cut through the joyous theme of the streets. Sirius and James turned back and saw a crowd of people gathering around a spot. They exchanged looks, and their faces assumed an Auror-on-duty expression as they ran towards the crowd.
"Move aside, move aside!" Sirius pushed people aside as he and James made their way to the front of the crowd. "Aurors! Move back, move back!"
When they reached the front, two Senior Aurors gasped when they saw the scene that had gathered so many people. Seven people, on their knees, forming a circle with their heads bowed down to the ground; their arms hung wide on wood beams. One sleeve each of the seven men were torn, revealing their arms— and showing the tattoo made up of a skull and a snake— the Dark Mark.
"Death Eaters," whispered James.
"Who did this?" said Sirius.
"I can guess, and I'm pretty sure it will check out their arms for magic, but he has never been so public with his showings."
"No, not in public like this."
"What did they do? Or is he planning something?"
"How would I know. . . let's get the people away from the scene."
James and Sirius were about to call out to people when they heard someone call out to them by name. They turned to see a Junior Aurors pushing her way to the front.
"Sir. . . sir," she huffed to catch her breath. "Sir, twelve Ministry departments are missing! None of them—" The female Auror stopped when she saw the seven Death Eaters. "W-What happened here?"
"Continue the report," ordered James.
"Err, yes, sir," she said with her eyes still on the Death Eater kneeling circle. "Just now, we got a report—"
"Sirs!" another voice called after them. Three Aurors turned to see another Junior Auror pushing his way to the front. "Head Auror is calling you back to the Office, sirs. We got multiple reports of Death Eaters sightings—" his eyes went to the Death Eaters— "exactly like this! Oh my god, who is doing this?!"
Sirius and James looked at each other. "He's involved," said Sirius. James nodded, "Oh yeah, no doubt about it. . . let's go—"
"Sirs!"
"Again?!" Sirius exclaimed when another Junior Auror came running through the crowd. "What is this? Why isn't just one of you relaying messages."
"Sirs!" exclaimed the third Junior Auror, standing in line with the other two. He looked at the female Junior Auror before continuing, "The department heads have been returned in a group outside one of the Office gates!"
James was speechless, but Sirius had one final thing to say, "Today is a Friday, man. . . why can't they choose a better time?"
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On the roof of a building in Diagon Alley, Voldemort and Rivers watched the commotion.
"Lucius reported that the operation was a success," frowned Rivers. He looked at the Dark Lord, who hadn't said a single word since they had arrived.
"Do you see the Aurors there?"
Rivers moved his eyes, and to his surprise, he saw James Potter and Sirius standing in the front of the crowd.
"I heard what they're talking about," said Voldemort. "One of them said that all the department heads just showed up at the Aurors Office— and they," he pointed at the Death Eaters, "met the Invisible Vigilante, I can sense his magic inside their arms. . . so I will ask this once, Rivers Lock— when did you start colluding with the Invisible Vigilante?"
". . . What? I'm not colluding with the Invisible Vigilante."
Voldemort turned to Rivers, and he backed away, feeling the eyes of the ruthless man on him.
"You were the one who knew the entire plan, Rivers. You're the only one that could've told him about it."
". . . I didn't."
"Speak the truth."
"I did not collude with the Invisible Vigilante. I haven't even seen him in person."
"You leave me no choice," Voldemort raised his hand, and Rivers felt like someone had buried everything below his neck into the ground— he couldn't even move his toes. "If you won't tell the truth, I'll look inside myself."
Rivers felt like his heart would leap out of his throat, and Voldemort moved closer to him, and when the pain arrived, he couldn't even scream out.
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Quinn West - MC - Chaos. . . just the other way around.
Rivers Lock - Death Eater - Nooooo!!!!!!
Voldemort - Dark Lord - I'm feeling displeased.
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If you have any ideas regarding the magic you want to see in this fiction or want to offer some ideas regarding the progression. Move onto the DISCORD Server and blast those ideas.
The link is in the synopsis!
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
FictionOnlyReader
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Just like always,
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