A Birth day

"Before the clinic, we had two emergency beds and a first aid kit that we shoved into a leftover bedroom in the main building," Angus said, 'but this fall, they had a bit of a mini epidemic there of the kids getting a muggle thing--some sort of a muggle bird curse."

"Chicken pox," Robert said. "Its a muggle thing that the kids can get."

"Anyway," Angus continued, "that forced us into having to face that we were not equipped to take care of anything there that involved more than a couple kids at a time, so we added a fully functioning clinic. It even has a sterile room for minor procedures and surgeries."

"Angus needed to know about it because, after all, he's the one who signs all the checks for anything at any of the Lupin properties," Robert said, "but the clinic is brand new, and this will be the first real large sized arrival of kids they'll take in tonight. I have every confidence they'll do well with it."

"As for intel, Michael's here," Robert said. "He's been here the whole time you lot have been here because he took a hit tonight in the head. Nigel's been tending him, in between tending the others because he knew we'd need him before the night was over. Marcus went over to the room next door, the captain's quarter's, to see if Irene has any new information because she has agents in the field 24/7, and if anybody is going to find out where the kids are. When he knows, I'm sure he'll come right back over here. He knows you guys are going nuts when you're not in control, so he won't drag his feet."

"Do we need to give Michael a heads up?" Angus asked quietly.

"Nope. Michael has done 40 years of this work. He's always at the ready on nights like this," Robert said. "Now you lot listen carefully. Divide our agents up in fours. I want an equal sized team at each location. I don't care how you divide them, but just get it done.

Marcus returned and handed Robert a note. Robert turned and put four lighted pushpins in the map. 

"There's one on every side of Paris. Marcus, you know the north area coming in from Calais. You take a team to that location. Jack, there's another location in the south, not all that far from the park you were at. It makes sense to send you there since you were already in that area tonight. Jess, you take a team to this location right here on the west side. And that leaves Michael on the east side near one of the big cemeteries there. Michael's particularly gifted in working in the dark, so that will suit him just fine. Now, listen. Each team needs to go get a new kit that Mickey designed. He calls it a ready kit. It's shrunken, and it'll fit in someone's pocket, but when its resized, it has some water bottles and some granola bars and such in case you get a kid that absolutely has to eat straight away. Any kid with a medical issue might need an emergency snack before you can get them to us. Get your teams and get going. If you get into a bind, we'll have to come after you. Good luck."

Jack and jess chuckled and looked at Robert as Marcus retuned with a note . they heard Robert and Marcus explain about why they had upgraded the medical bay at Colorado and not one of them would disagree in why they did it.

Now with information in hand they stepped closer to the map watching as Robert pointed out each area that each had to go and recover the children from that area. each heard what they part that had and nodded. " okay so new kit then to the area south of the park" Jack said Jess looked at Robert and nodded too.

" I'm the west side" she said " all the kids to Colorado and if they need immediate attention use the kit" she said as Yu who had left to gather the kits handed each of them one each to which Jess clipped it to her belt as did Jack, Yu handed Ruby one just in case who clipped it to her belt of her trousers. He then handed Michael one then clipped one to his belt.

Jack ported first to the park he knelt down hearing voices off in the distance he also heard soft whispers several of the men he had brought with him moved quietly , his hands signed for them to surround the men and take them out quietly so not to startle the kids.

Jess ported with Ruby to the west side she walked with Ruby in the darkness watching she saw two men sitting outside a Wearhouse door. she motioned and Ruby nodded as together they moved Jess motioned two men to go up on the roof and scope out the area, receiving an all clear signal she moved closer to the two men Ruby moved to the other side of the road keeping to the shadows as they drew close , Jess reached out sending the man to his knees with a pressure point Ruby wasn't as stealthy and just hit the back of the mans head sending him to the ground out cold. together they placed him as if he was sleeping against the wall.

Jack saw several of his men were ready and he paused waiting until all the men stood together now his men snuck up on the and cast Petrificus sending them toppling to the ground while he snapped the lock off the trailer and opened the door as each man brought a child out he gave some of the worst protein bars and others bottled water before some of the men took them to Colorado " good work take the trash to Azkaban and get these kids to Colorado there expected." he said watching the healthier ones ported away , right away the others took some time.

Jess and Ruby unlocked the door to the Wearhouse and peeked inside crates littered the area but she saw two men looking down from the skylight motioning to them she snuck up on two of Toms men knocking them out and hiding them in crates as they moved to where the large cages stood with children inside. " standing now she quickly undid the lock and hustled them out of the building again several men ported four at a time seeing a small girl she picked her up and gave her a bar to eat and a bottle of water before she too ported to Colorado and gave her to a healer before returning to the wear house to make sure all the kids were gone. As she moved to open a second door she found it too locked , unlocking it she found women with babies " Jason over here get these to Colorado too" she said seeing how scared they were " its okay were not here to harm you, were taking you to be helped, your free now" she said noting how dishevelled they were. Ruby and Jess once all were out ported to HQ and went to find Robert " all at Colorado we found women and babies too, not sure but I think he was selling the babies" she said then handed over al paper work she had found there to him.

While the team was out, there had been trouble at Michael's location in the east. Robert told Angus to take command again, and he apparated out to go help Michael. Marcus was longer than Angus believed Marcus should be. 

Now alone and in charge, Angus was pacing, smoking, and drinking firewhiskey in the office, trying to push beyond his own limits as it was, he was debating on whether he needed to go to try to assist Marcus. He wanted to, but he was barely on his feet, and he knew it. He did not want to be a liability to Marcus because he knew that, if push did come to shove, he would drop everything to protect Angus. And they couldn't afford that tonight. 

Robert had had to help Michael fight their way in, but once they got in, Michael and the rest of Michael's team transported 27 kids to Colorado. When they arrived in Colorado, the facility was working quietly and calmly and every kid was immediately welcomed by either a staff member or a teen volunteer that had offered to come and welcome the kids in and get them to a waiting room and help them get some food and drink until they could be seen. The new kids that were rescued were upset, some hysterical, but the quiet calmness of the staff told Robert the staff was ready, willing and very able.

When Ruby and Jess came in, Angus took the paperwork they'd found and listened to the fact that they had found babies there too. 

"No," Angus said. "He's not selling them to muggles. That isn't what he has done, historically, anyway. Selling them to wizards, maybe but not muggles.  You remember his country estate that we raided a couple years ago, the one that had that big tunnel and set of rooms underneath? Originally, that was where he had the babies taken. Remember, they're only valuable to the muggles because they're magical. The babies have to be raised up til their old enough to be taught the one or two spells that the muggles will need them to do. Then the rest of their abilities are blocked. So until we get those kids, they never have any idea that they're capable of more. Tom generally doesn't have much use for babies because they're expensive to raise. He has to keep them til their at least 11 or 12, and that's very expensive with not enough profit to make it worthwhile to take babies. Irene has said that, by and large, he simply sells the babies to wealthy wizard families that can't get pregnant, and he gets rid of them pretty quickly these days."

Angus heard another team arriving back. He started seeing people passing down the hallway to the sleeping rooms. The team members were heading to the sleeping rooms only to freshen up, not to sleep.

"Hey, who's your team leader?" Angus called.

"Marcus," one of them replied. 

"Where is he?" Angus asked. A team member stopped at the doorway, hesitating. "You tell me right now. Where is he?"

"We were caught, and Marcus headed off on his own, ordering us to get the kids out and not worry about him. He made some sort of distraction. A damned big explosion of something, giving us time to get the kids and get out and get them to Colorado. We went back to try to find him, and that warehouse is gone, blown to smithereens. And we haven't seen him since."

"Oh, God," Angus said, suddenly fearing the worst. He sat down slowly. With Robert out, he didn't have the luxury of being able to leave. There was no one else there that could do what he did, not til Robert came back anyway.

Ruby and Jess listened to Angus and nodded " makes sense" Jess said " I'm glad we shut that one down" she said then heard and saw Angus leave to talk to some one. Hearing what he had been told Ruby hurried over to Angus a she saw him slowly sit down.

" he's okay" she told him " he knows how to get out of those situations its what he's trained for" she spoke again as she heard Jack port in " Jack Marcus is missing" she told Jack he was about to leave when she spoke again " Wearhouse is gone , blown up they said " she told Jack " find and let Robert know." Jack nodded again writing a note he sent the note threw the floo knowing that's most likely where he would be.

It was Now Aria arrived looking like thunder she looked at Angus and the men who had been part of Marcus team. " did you get the kids out" she asked the man nodded and Aria nodded back " good" she said " we need to keep going , if Marcus found away out he'll come here or to any of the smaller bases, but for now we keep bringing those kids home" she said looking to Jack and Jess " you should know that" she moved to the canteen and pored a hot coffee and added fire whisky to it taking a mouthful for herself before returning and handing Angus a cup " drink this" she said " steadies the nerves" she added and looked to Ruby " sometimes we need it to keep going" Aria looked at her then Angus.

After a moment she spoke again " come on we have a war to win, metaphorically speaking"

"Michael's team was overwhelmed with a concentration of Tom's men, so Robert left to help," Angus said tiredly, seeing Edward come in and sit down with a whiskey glass of his own. "Robert isn't available to help us right now. He's in a tight spot of his own." 

When Aria brought the coffee to him, Angus took it from her. "Thanks," he said. He listened to her as she tried to rally everyone. "We're not getting any more reports of new hot spots tonight, so when Michael's team finishes their raid, maybe we will have outgunned him for the moment. So, as I see it, we have three primary tasks right now. First, we need to make sure that Michael's team has plenty of back up and that they get their kids and get out safely. So, if you want to help, you could go assist there. Their location on the east side is still lit up on the map.

"And the other two tasks?" he continued. "We have just rescued the largest pool of kids this organization ever had, and when Michael's team can get their kids and get out and get back, there will be more.  and they will all need admitted and registered, bathed, clothed, fed, and given beds for the night. Take a look around. We have so many kids here right now that they don't even have a place to sit. We're tripping over kids here, as I'm sure they are in Colorado. And, remember the time change. Colorado is eight ours behind Paris. So, it's almost eleven here. That means its only three in the afternoon in Colorado. And that means we're going to have staff and kids both who are, as muggles put it, seriously jet lagged.  Regardless of time zone, the kids are still going to be exhausted, confused, and traumatized--many of whom have lost everything and everyone they've ever known and who are going to have to start completely over with only us to help them. 

"As I see it, some of you should go help Michael, but you don't all need to go. If you don't, though, some of you could stay here and lend a hand with the kids we have. We're over the limit of kids that we're prepared to house here, so we might need to take some more of the kids that we don't have room for here to Colorado. Or, you could go lend a hand to the mountain of kids we have in Colorado. If we think we're overwhelmed here, they're dealing with about four times the number of new kids there right now than we have right here. Colorado needs help too, I'm sure. Those are the three tasks we have right in front of us." He sighed heavily, wanting to make sure he had all his bases covered.

"Ru," he asked quietly, "if you get a minute, would you please check on our kids and Dean? Make sure we know where they are and that they're all safe. I'm sure the school has to be crazy right now worrying about where the hell Dean is. He should have been back to Hogwarts hours ago. I'll try to get a message through to his Head of House to let him know that Dean's not being there is not Dean's fault." He wrote a hasty note and called a messenger and asked them to try to send the message through the floo to Hogwarts. He had a couple contacts at Hogwarts now, and one of them just happened to be the current Gryffindor head of house, the very person that actually did need to know where Dean was. 

"And what is it that you need right now?" Edward asked quietly. "How can I help?"

"I need to go see if Irene can put any more agents out near the warehouse where Marcus's team was, and see if they can get any intel at all about where the heck Marcus went. Somebody has to know something, damnit."

"I'll go over to the floo and ask her. You need to conserve your energies. Just a thought, though. They may not find anything. Remember, Robert hired Marcus for two reasons--first, he was the best Robert could find to protect Khaat, and second, Marcus was a highly skilled espionage agent. Espionage men are exceptionally gifted at getting out of nigh onto impossible situations, and they do it without being seen. So, for those particular reasons, I think there is a far better than average choice that Marcus is out there. He's in a tight spot of some sort, or he'd be back here by now. However, the fact that he isn't here does not mean, at all, that he's done for. If we can't come up with a lead, we may have to just wait for him to surface again."  

Angus nodded, knowing full well that Edward was right. Edward went next door to open the floo again to Irene. Angus took another sip of his coffee and lit another cigarette.

Aria looked at Edward as he spoke and nodded " exactly" she said as he spoke again " I can help quicken the flow of kids here " she said " Jess you can give them a check over as you pass by, we need a triage system" Aria looked to Jess who nodded and looked to Angus as he drank and nodded to Edward. Jess quickly moved to the office returning with tags of different colours.

"we can use these to tell who's bad and whose not meaning the non urgent can be moved quickly" she said then moved out the office and began tagging children with different colours " do the red tags first the green send to Colorado after they have been fed and given clean clothing" she told two nurses . it was now three more arrived each with medallions on and they went to work.

Aria did the same if a bit slower once done all the green were taken to a fae place and only yellow and red remained in the HQ , Jack walked around the HQ with Yu .

"we can go help Michael." Jack said with Yu while Ruby went to find Dean and the kids, she wrote a note to the school saying dean was with them but the kids were unwell and would be back in a few days before she headed to find them in the kitchen, she walked over to them.

" okay, so how you guys doing, Edward asked me to find you all, just to make sure you were okay." she said with a smile as she saw they were grabbing food while they could. " you have all done great today" she said smiling.

Jack ported with Yu over to Michaels position and walked over to him " so what's the situation?" he asked as Yu stayed with the rest of the men." Edward asked us to come bolter your position." he added

Michael was just rushing out of the warehouse when Jack and Yu arrived. Leaning against the outer wall of the warehouse, he gasped for air, coughing and sputtering, as thick noxious clouds of foul looking and putrid smelling green smoke rolled out of the warehouse. 

"Some sort of magical poisonous gas grenades," he said, trying to catch his breath. "I think they're using some sort of old muggle hand grenades to contain the gas. I saw one of Tom's goons pull a pin on one before he threw it. Robert, the team, and the kids all are still inside. Give me a second." He gathered himself, tried to take in a large breath of air, took a few steps back from the warehouse and then turned back to face the building and fired repeated Bombarda spells at the windows in the warehouse, and the smoke poured out of the broken windows, hoping to get some desperately needed fresh air to all the people still inside. 

"Tom is desperate as hell," Michael said to them, still coughing and trying to catch his breath. "Anybody willing to gas their own thugs is a dangerous, desperate man. Never mind what it does to the 'product' he's trying to sell. Either that, or one of his thugs is trying to run part of tonight's operations and Tom doesn't entirely have control right now. Tom has never done anything like this, though, so we're going to have to reassess this sometime tomorrow after this is all overwith." He took a couple more breaths. 

"And, there's something else. Pay attention for one moment to what you don't hear and what you don't see. This is a muggle neighborhood. Did you notice there are no muggles gathering to see what's going on? No muggle first responders? He has to have this warehouse surrounded with a protection grid of some sort to keep the muggles away." He paused and took a couple more purposeful breaths between the coughing. "I have to go back. Robert's somewhere towards the back. That's where the kids have to be. I have to get back in there and find him." He turned to go back inside.

Jack saw Michael and moved to his side hearing all he had to say about what was going on inside s " what about bubble head that would give us air and stop the gas?" Yu said to Michael as he looked to Jack.

"worth a try" he said as they let Michael catch his breath as he continued to talk " okay Robert at the back." he repeated and Yu cast the bubble head even though they weren't in water it would give them air to breath for a short time. Ducking down they headed in and crept over to behind one guy taking him down they continued to the back where Robert was " Yu cast bubble head so they had fresh air " should hold just don't get too close to anything sharp" Yu said and chuckled as he motioned to where the guys stood hurling gas grenades. " shall we deal with them?" he asked looking to Robert in front of him with a kid close by ." Yu get the kid out and over to HQ I'll get Robert" he said and Yu picked up the child and ported away returning to where Michael was sat and now Jack with Robert too.

Michael went back inside and saw Jack get Robert out and a child. That definitely helped. Michael did care about the kids but he was far more grateful that they'd gotten Robert out. Michael worked with the rest of the team that was still inside to find and get the rest of the kids out. Michael ordered the team to get the kids to Colorado. He made one final check by himself to make sure that there wasn't any child still left behind. Only when he was sure the building was completely empty did he finally leave.

"I think we're all clear here," Michael told Jack and Robert and Yu. 

"Well done, All," Robert said. "Let's get back to HQ and make sure nothing else has cropped up while we were out. If we're finally clear for the night, we can start sending team members home. This has definitely been the busiest night we've had in decades."

When Michaels' team members started to apparate back in, saying Michael's team was clear and that they were all on the way back, Angus didn't have it in him to wait another moment. 

"I'm going out," Angus said. "Its gonna have to run without anyone in command until Robert or I return." He flicked his wand and apparated out.

He landed at the north side, where Marcus had taken his team. The team was certainly right. The warehouse was fully engulfed in flame, and muggle firefighters were trying to extinguish the ruins. Angus walked the area, as close as the firefighters would let him get. He asked them if they'd found anyone in the warehouse, but the muggles hadn't been able to get inside yet. It was just too hot. 

Despite the fact that this was not at all a safe neighborhood for anyone to be walking alone in late at night, Angus walked the warehouse district, walking the bank of the Seine, having to stop several times because he was just too weak and tired to go very far. When he got far enough away from the muggles, he apparated to the other side of the river, believing that he might well be looking for a body, but if Marcus wasn't able to get back to HQ, Angus knew Marcus was in trouble, and he was determined to try to find him.

Ruby watched as Angus ported out of HQ she also saw Robert return with Jack " Angus ported out , I think he's gone to find Marcus " Ruby told Robert as Aria looked at Robert.

"I can go help him" she said looking at him and waiting for his say whether to go find Angus and help him find Marcus. Jack moved to look at Robert as he spoke to him.

" would keep him in our sights and if he gets too bad she can bring him back" he added hoping Robert would give the go ahead as Jack removed the bubble head charm he'd placed on himself and Robert