Uninvited Guests

In a military base somewhere Northeast of Nottingham

A young man in a military uniform without any identifiers except for the name tag, Sgt. Cramer stood in front of a desk manned by a man whose uniform only carried the name, Major Hall.

"Sir, we've discovered the potential location of subject 0842."

"Remind me, what was special about that one?"

"Rapid growth and physical development. First discovered in an orphanage with the address 150 Newham way."

A light seemed to flicker in the major's eyes. He had spared no effort to rediscover the location of the 'miracle child'. An ambitious plan of his hung in the balance of finding that child, and now it seemed that it was once again in his grasp. The major was one of the people that were extremely paranoid about the Communist threat. Recent intel had even pointed out that there were small teams being assembled and moved around on the other side of the wall, under the guise of border patrol and military exercise.

Yet, as soon as the major had heard of the incredible properties of that infant, he knew that if the cause of its unusually fast development was discovered, it would be possible to isolate and reproduce the effect, on a much larger scale. He hoped that a factory could be created where new soldiers could be grown from fertilized eggs to ready for battle within the timespan of a single year.

He had already diverted some funds to a off the grid research lab where the personnel was tasked with creating viable artificial wombs, to begin the production of his very own army as soon as the secret to rapid growth was discovered.

"Oh, right, that one. What do you mean by the potential location?"

"As you've already been informed, the subject was adopted out of the orphanage. Our agents have tracked down the name of the person that adopted the subject and discovered the same person had bought a large plot of land in the Scottish Highlands."

"Send a few platoons there and have a team of our own tag along. Play it off as a rough terrain exercise. Your orders are confirm and capture."

"Yes, Sir! It will be done, Sir!"

Late night, afew days later, near Gaude's mansion

"It's right above us. We'll just need to scale that cliff and do some recon."

"Couldn't we just come in with a helo or something?"

"The orders were to be stealthy until the target is captured and you damn better stick to it."

A few minutes later, five people armed with cold weapons and tranquilizer guns could be seen halfway up the cliff. They continued scaling it in near-perfect silence. Any sound they made in the process was quiet enough to be inaudible from ten feet away.

As they were close to the top, the location of what looked like a mansion from the surveillance photos, they were greeted by a child bowing over the cliff's edge.

"What are you all doing down there?", the child asked.

"Get away from the edge, kid. It's dangerous!", one of the men said quietly enough to not be heard too far.

"Isn't it fine? You all are down there and nothing has happened to you.", the boy said, not moving from the edge.

"Just get away from the edge. I'll give you something good if you do."

"Something better than Jelly Babies?"

"Yeah, better than anything you've ever had. Now, back away."

The men continued climbing.

Suddenly, the child yelled out: "Mandy, we have guests!"

"Hey, keep quiet. We're planning a big surprise for the owner of this house.", one of the soldiers said.

A moment later, a pale girl's face, with dark hair, similar to the boy's peeked over the edge.

"Oh, not that kind of guests. They look strange. Are they clowns?", came the little girl's voice.

"Not quite, but I think we can have a bit of fun with them. Just remember to not break them, I'll still need them later. We should back off a little, to give them enough space to come up."

As the little boy finished explaining, one of the men had crossed the cliff's edge, pulled his tranquilizer gun and taken aim at the boy – he had recognized their target a while ago. The boy resembled one of the predictive sketches they had been shown.

However, each time he pulled the trigger, the boy quickly shifted his body's position, dodging the dart. After five, the gun was out of ammo.

"These are really slow. Spells move so much faster.", the boy commented.

The man, his tranquilizer gun now no better than a brick, decided to go into restrain the target by force. He started running towards the little boy, his arms outstretched.

"Oh, you can have these back.", the boy spoke.

The man felt five pricks on his exposed neck. He raised his hand and grabbed at whatever seemed to still be lodged in his flesh. He discovered that it was actually one of the tranquilizer darts.

"Hoow the heell diid yyyooouuu…", he said, before slumping down on the perfectly trimmed lawn.

"That one was boring. Do you want to have a go with the next one?"

"Yeah, why not, but I don't think I can make it a lot more interesting. Oh, I know what to do, but I'll need two of them."

"Anything for my little sister. Have fun!"

As soon as another one of the men had climbed over the edge, the little girl said with her eyes glowing red: "Come here."

The man did as he was told.

"Now, wait for my next command."

The same repeated with the next one.

"Both of you, throw away your weapons and then fight each other!", she said in a commanding tone.

The men both disarmed themselves and started circling each other, to find the best opportunity to strike. One of them started with a kick, but it was nimbly dodged and a punch landed in the first attacker's gut.

"That's no good, you have to make sure you don't get hit first.", the little girl, or Amanda, said, however, this time there was no commanding tone and the men didn't react to her suggestion.

Meanwhile, another one had climbed to the plateau, and one more after that.

"Mandy, you've given me a good idea."

With a flick of the boy's hand, the two newcomers found themselves stripped of all their weapons.

Then he took off his hoodie and with another wave of his hand, sent it onto a lawn chair in the distance.

He then did a beckoning motion towards the two soldiers. "Show me what you got!", he said.

The two men looked with puzzlement at the two members of their team that seemed to have gotten into a physical argument, but decided to complete the mission first and investigate the strangeness of the situation later. They charged at the boy, Gaude.

"Really? Is that the standard of hand to hand combat these days?", Gaude asked.

Yet, as he was about to punch the two in the gut, the limit of his reach, he discovered that both of his wrists had been grabbed by the two men. Gaude used all of his strength to yank his arms free.

"You damn sneaky bastards!", Gaude yelled indignantly. "Can't you just fight straightforwardly like men?"

Gaude continued with a sweeping kick, hoping to swipe the feet from under one of them, but the man retreated by half a step, making Gaude's attempt fail miserably.

"Mandy, I think mine are better than yours!", Gaude shouted to Amanda, who was watching both of the fights with amusement.

"No, you're just really bad at that!", Amanda didn't hesitate to put a damper on Gaude's mood.

"Hey, you're supposed to be on my side!"

There was quite a bit of truth to what she said – Gaude hadn't practiced hand to hand combat since he was dragged into this world, he wasn't used to his extremely short reach and generally small frame.

Each attack that Gaude tried to make had failed miserably. That was of course, until he cast the Supersensory charm on himself. He couldn't just remain the loser. He also started using telekinesis to hinder the movements of his opponents and after a while, he managed to get a few hits in on them.

"What do you think now, Mandy?"

"I think you're using magic. Nobody gets so much better so fast."

Gaude wanted to rebuke her, but his guilty conscience didn't let him. She was right. He was horribly out of practice.

"Fine, fine. Let's just process them and return them to sender."

A healthy dose of Veritaserum, a cocktail of loyalty potions and a magical contract later, the five men were sent back with the instructions to give false information to their commanding officer.

Half an hour later, in a military base near Nottingham

"Sir, it seems the intel we managed to get our hands on is expired. The house was occupied by the young couple of James and Lily Potter. The house and land was bought a month ago by Lily's grandfather, Albus Dumbledore as a wedding present. It seems that the transaction was made in cash. We don't have another lead for Charles Vywin's nor Ronald Cortshutt's, now most likely Ronald Vywin's address."

The Major was under constant stress from going behind the backs of his superiors and the fear that his embezzling would be discovered. While it was for the good of the nation's security, he knew that the seat-warming politicians and even his own superiors might not see it that way. Now, he got another piece of bad news and snapped.

"Bloody fucking hell! I was so close this time! Keep looking, and don't disturb me with just a suspicion next time, or you might find yourself getting very familiar with the mutagen experiments."

The young sergeant closed the door behind him with a pale face, leaving the major to his own devices. He had no desire to be subject to those experiments. He liked his current appearance and sanity way too much for that.

Suddenly, a child's voice spoke from behind the Major: "Mister Hall, you really shouldn't be so harsh on your men. They're doing the best they can, considering the situation."

"What? Who are you? How did you get in here? Security!", Major Hall shouted while turning towards the voice, yet there wasn't anybody behind him.

The child's voice continued: "I'm afraid your security is a bit preoccupied at the moment. They had a very close encounter with a whole ne-"

"What do you-"

"Hush, I'm not done talking yet."

The Major felt his body go completely rigid. Suddenly, he was unable to blink, not to mention speak.

"I just discovered that you're one that appreciates a few good experiments. You know, I'm a man of science as well. Sadly, I have a feeling that there's a lot of secrets in your head that I wouldn't know to ask for, which means I'll just have to give you the standard treatment and have you wait until I've learned a few new tricks.

Of course, chances are that once you've received the treatment, you'll just tell me all about every single secret you have."

Hall's pupils contracted, the only outward sign of his reaction.

Suddenly, the Major felt some kind of a liquid slithering down his gullet, as if it was alive.

After a while, Hall thought about what he'd been doing so far. 'Why did I even want to send people to capture subject 0842? I could've just given him a call and asked for a few samples. If I asked nicely and gave him a few benefits, he might have even told me how he managed to grow so fast. After all, he's a true patriot, just like me. Damn, I better apologize now.'

"Listen, man, I'm really sorry about trying to sneak behind your back to get a few samples. Let's just laugh it off as a prank, yeah? Look, I was just really curious about how you managed to make your body grow so fast."

That was enough to let Gaude know that the loyalty cocktail had taken effect. It was now time to implant a backstory that was plausible under the influence of the potions and let the major's mind fill in the blanks.

"I'm sorry, it's top-secret stuff. Something you'd find out about if you worked more than half of your life you-know-where."

"How did you get to an orphanage from there? Wouldn't it have been much easier just to call me up and have my people help you do whatever you wanted to do?"

"There was a disagreement. It's best if you don't know any more than that. I would appreciate however, if you briefed me on how far you've gotten with your projects. Maybe I'll be able to give a few pointers here and there. Of course, I can't give you the blueprints or anything like that, that would be outright breach of protocol."

"Alright, fine. I'll just get the documentation for the things we've managed to finance here."

Gaude ended up learning a lot of information that he couldn't really make much use of – his knowledge in science was full of gaps when it came to high school level, not to mention what he was looking at now. Sure, it was dumbed down so that anyone who had taken a few college courses could understand the reports, but for Gaude, it was a frustrating jumble of jargon, graphs and spreadsheets.

He ended up having the major interpret the information to him. Once he was fully briefed on the key experiments that the major was aware of, Gaude had the major sign a contract, then summon his underlings one by one, dosed them with the cocktail and had each of them sign a contract as well.

Naturally, Gaude didn't leave after the contracts were signed.

Once everyone under Major Hall was contracted to become Gaude's subordinate, he gathered the top brass into a single meeting room.

"It so happens that I'm in a need of an organization that deals in matters that might infringe upon a few regulations and interests of certain groups. It turns out that you lot are exactly what I'm looking for, you even have a research facility going. With a few modifications and personnel changes, many great things will be accomplished with that facility of ours.

Naturally, we'll have to introduce a few new departments into the mix, as being purely focused on the biomedical field won't get us very far. You don't need to worry about the funding in the future – I'll be taking care of it all."

Due to the fact that each of them were freshly filled up on loyalty potions, none of the people in the room felt it in any way strange that they were listening to a kid setting the future direction of their organization. To them, it felt like it was par for course, as if it was the only way forward to greatness.

Some of them, similar to Major Hall had even relaxed quite a bit – there was a new person taking the leadership and all the responsibilities that came with it. If things went south, they could rely on him to get them out of it in one piece.

"You can all maintain your position in the army, that way you can keep your eye on the radar, so to speak. I want to know the moment anything that cannot be explained by logic and common sense happens in the world.

However, the first order of business will be to undo the damage you've done. Namely, we'll be going through the books line by line and find out what you've supposedly spent the funds on. Then I'll acquire whatever is supposedly already present here. I don't want a nosy inspector to come causing trouble."

It wasn't going to be too hard for Gaude to get most of the gear for the entire battalion, if need be. The Firepit had taken off better than he had expected, and currently, it was bringing in the second biggest revenue of all his legitimate enterprises.

Gaude continued the briefing with a few more terms and conditions, as well as changes to the organization's structure.

Even the name was changed, to 'Department of Statistical Inconsistencies' – in Gaude's opinion, it was a good umbrella phrase for anything out of the norm, any magic-related phenomena included.