The wind rushed by the duo sitting upon the cloud, whipping their hair to and fro. Harry actually smiled from the experience. The entire world was naked before his eyes: the tops of the mountains ringed by soft mists and snow, tiny trails cutting through dense forest, and a gorgeous horizon of blue and white. He'd seen a lot of the world as an Enforcer, but usually from the gritty, bloody ground of a battlefield, the congested streets of a city, or behind a small window in an airplane.
This, however, was far, far better.
The fresh air and the wind in his face. The warmth of the sun on his skin. And the view.
No wonder mankind worked so hard to learn to fly. Harry briefly felt a pang of jealousy for those long-ago pilots who flew bi-planes with their cockpits open to the sky. This, he knew, was the closest he would ever get to heaven.
He laid a hand on Sun Wukong's shoulder. Maybe working with this one wouldn't be so bad, after all. "Quite a view, Berserker," he said softly. "Just take a look at it. There's no evil from up here." Then he went to his bag. "That snack I gave you probably wasn't enough. Let's have a little supper, all right?"
Somehow, the cloud they rode had firmness to it, allowing Harry to draw a rune on it with a piece of chalk from his bag. Then he took out a battered, fire-scorched Altoid tin and opened it; inside was some tinder and cotton balls. He deposited a healthy amount of it onto the rune.
He noticed his Servant watching him intently, perhaps even in confusion, so he explained, "Its my fire-starting kit. Made it myself. Just using the tin to hold whatever dry twigs and fluff that would make for good tinder. The rune has just a trickle of mana in it, enough to serve as fuel for the fire once I get it going from the tinder." He shrugged. "Normally I'd just use firewood, but that's kind of hard to come by when you're several kilometers up in the air." The he gave Berserker a smirk, the first smile he'd ever shown her in their short time together. "Want to see a trick?"
He retrieved his water bottle from his bag. Fortunately, there was still a healthy amount left. He angled it such that it captured the sunlight, focused it through the water, and out the bottle like a lens. It took some finagling, but he eventually got it focused tightly on the tinder. Smoke emerged and then a flame. Small, at first, but then the burgeoning fire grew into a vigorous, contained cook fire as it drew fuel from the rune underneath.
"Fire from water," Harry said. He reached into his bag one last time for a steel mug with a wire handle and a can of soup that he opened with a small flipper knife. They'd soon have a modest feast of hot beans and canned vegetables.
By the time their meal was finished, the sun had fallen below the horizon and the moon began its crest overhead. The stars blinked out from a black tapestry. And still Sun Wukong's cloud carried them ever onward to the land of the rising sun.
Harry rubbed fatigue from his eyes. "Get some sleep, Berserker," he advised. "Like you predicted, we'll be in Sasebo by dawn. I intend for us to have a busy day once we land. So sleep while you can."
He took his own advice, curling up on one end of the cloud and letting slumber claim him. As consciousness faded, he recalled his early days as an Enforcer, memory that faded into dream. Unknowingly, those memories would exchange with those of the Servant at his side....
---
He was twenty-two, freshly graduated from King's College, and freshly hired by an Enforcer unit within the Mage's Association. His was the unbeaten path. Yet, life seemed to favor the circular, bringing him right back to the secret heritage he had been forced to abandon. He showed up at the mansion as instructed by his new employer and was escorted to an opulent sitting room. Two others were already there. One was a light-haired and strapping young man about his age with a German accent. The other an Indian woman, also close in age, with both a native Tamil accent and a perfect RP accent suggesting she'd studied in England for some time.
As per their employer's instructions, they did not introduce themselves by name. Those would be handled by their employer. An antique phone sat on the table before them. It rang. The voice on the other end was soft and inviting.
"Greetings. You must be the new recruit. I am Kite. With you are Albatross and Wren. From this day forward, you will be known as Harrier."
The newly-dubbed Harrier blinked. "Codenames?"
"Yes. It is best if as much personal information is kept off the grid as possible. My belief is that anonymity is the best defense against those who would seek retaliation for suffering our services. Hence why I provided codenames for each member of this team, Team HAWK."
The Indian woman, Wren, added, "We're glad to have you on the team, Harrier. I've done a lot of research on you." At his look of surprise, she went on, "Most recent in a long line of rune mages based out of London, yet exiled for having few magic circuits and, thus, incapable of carrying on the family's Magic Crest. Afterward, you made a life for yourself in the mundane world and completed a chemistry degree at King's College. In your last year, your old training in your family's rune magic came to the attention of the Fraga clan of Irish mages. They offered you a chance to return to our world as one of their adopted children. They taught you combat, tactics, demolitions, and how to use what magic you had in the heat of battle. They made you a killer. HAWK will make you marketable."
Harrier frowned. "How the hell did you learn all that?"
Wren smiled. "That's my gift. My magic is focused on gathering and processing data. However, it doesn't work very well on magical research, just electronic." She nodded toward Albatross. "His is healing. However, he must transfer wounds from his patient to his own body."
Harrier read between the lines. "In other words, neither of you have magic that any magus family would want to develop. You're like me -- outcasts."
Albatross nodded and confirmed, "Pretty much, yes."
"And Kite?"
The voice on the phone answered, "Let's just say I'm in no physical condition to continue my family's lineage and they, too, cast me out. But my telepathy is second to none. And you're correct: we are outcasts, without clan or resource but what we can scrape for ourselves. That's why I founded HAWK -- to give us the clan we've been denied. That we can make a profit at the same time is simply icing on the cake."
Harrier then asked, "All right. So where do we start?"
---
Their first mission went tits-up pretty quickly. Hardly a promising start to HAWK's career. It was supposed to be a simple search and destroy assignment. A Dead Apostle was on the loose, attacking villages in the wilderness to feed his thirst for blood. This particular specimen had a powerful healing factor, rendering it largely immune to their various weapons. Over two hundred rounds from three FAMAS rifles failed to put down the blood-sucker. Now Harrier, Albatross, and Wren were on the defensive, eventually fleeing to the more confined spaces of a cave system they discovered. At least here, they could limit the Apostle's mobility and keep it from leaping into the trees for a height advantage.
Albatross and Wren took up positions at the cave opening, their rifles blaring as the Dead Apostle made his approach. Harrier took up a spot behind them to reload, then paused as he noticed several pieces of bat guano on the ground. He raised the gun upward, allowing its attached flashlight to illuminate a colony of bats clinging to the rocks above. Harrier drew a lighter from his pocket and experimentally opened a few small flames, noting how much larger they became in an instant.
He immediately called out a warning. "Cease fire! Methane gas!" Fortunately, his companions instantly obeyed. They last thing they needed was an errant spark to cause an explosion in a confined space....
...Or maybe it was exactly what they needed!
Harrier looked around quickly. If there were animals here, then there had to be a water supply...there! A pool of water. Hopefully it was deep enough. "Albatross, Wren -- dive underwater at my mark!" All three ran to the edge of the pool, just as the feral Dead Apostle appeared. Harrier quickly drew a rune on the ground, one designed to enhance flame. Then he locked his lighter to the open position. "Just a little closer, you toothy bastard...."
The Apostle leaped at them.
"Dive!" Harrier flicked on the lighter and let it drop over the rune. As one, all three Enforcers dove beneath the water. The lighter's small flame became a brief, large blaze...and ignited the methane gas floating in the cave.
The resulting explosion rocked the cave, incinerated the bats -- and the Dead Apostle. From beneath the water, Harrier saw the yellow-red explosion dance above like a dawning sun. When the light faded, the three emerged from the pool, only to find the charred and very dead remains of their quarry.
Harrier felt Albatross' meaty hand on his shoulder. "Good work, Harry," he congratulated by way of nickname. "Looks like you're gonna fit right in...."
