He rather liked Finland.

Sure, the police could be more incompetent, and the food could be a bit better, but other than that, it was really a rather nice country. He, as Ambrose Jaager, was supposed to be in Stockholm, Sweden for a conference on something. The conference itself was over - it'd passed in a blur of boredom and Candy Crush - but he'd said he'd wanted to stay there for a couple of days. Because, after all, from Stockholm it was only a short flight to Helsinki across the Baltic Sea, and that was his real destination.

Ambrose wouldn't be able to officially adopt Panu, thus placing him under his care, until all records of Panu's past were erased. Therefore, no suspicions would be raised when the announcement inevitably went public, and Panu's birth parents wouldn't go crazy either. And that was why he, as Jörmungandr (Jabberwocky had been an old name, and one that only Americans would recognize, now that Ragnarok had entered the public eye), was below the city itself, idly tearing up the sewer system. The entire police force had been alerted and was swarming the area, but they were having great difficulty locating him - anyone who came down was rather rapidly dispatched of, and while there were no fatalities, there were a great number of concussions to be helped.

All this was a distraction, however - he was merely keeping the Finnish police away from their police station, where the physical files on Panu were stored, as Panu himself broke in to destroy them. The badly slotted earpiece in his ear was connected directly to one Panu possessed, and Ambrose spoke as he tore down a stone wall.


"What's your status, Muninn?" he asked curtly. He wasn't entirely sure how Panu got into the country, to be honest - he couldn't bring Panu with him, and he couldn't pay for an airplane ticket for such a young child because that would throw up instant red flags. No matter, though - he was here, and their operation was so far going smoothly, and that was the important part.

Finland was the best country. Everything was perfect from the moment the plane landed, and Panu Corydon stepped off, an fox-print backpack over his shoulders. His hair was dyed brown, a light brown that was not so strange with his blonde eyebrows. It was very strange to look at in a mirror, even so, and he was not wearing his hoodie or his headphones which was stranger. These he had left back in America on top of his dresser, the hoodie folded and the headphone cord carefully wound so it would not turn into the snarly mess that cords always turned into when you stopped watching them. Their absence made him feel very light and exposed, but also very proud, so that he could hold his head up extra high. He was not wearing his headphones because here, the swan logo had meaning. All he needed to do was open up his wifi and let the airport know that Joutsen was on their network and people would panic and run and police sirens would come and--

--But he was alone right now, Mr. Jaager was coming on another flight and his family was not with him. So he wisely kept his network hidden. He was undercover as a Normal Child. That is why he had borrowed Kaz' last name, because no one here would know it. That is why he had brown hair and was dressed in the nice clothes that the Sarto tailors had made for him, and a light fall jacket. All of his clothes fit which felt very weird.

But still. Everything was perfect, if he ignored how small he felt. The food was amazing and the air was the right temperature for wearing his hoodie without getting hot. It was 15 degrees--Celsius, not stupid Fahrenheit--and even though this was almost as far south as one could go in Finland, already it was autumn and not stupid-lingering-ridiculously-hot-summer like in New York. Almost he could taste winter on his tongue when he breathed. If he went north, it would be even better.

Very especially, the language was perfect. He left New York at the same time Jaager did, and spent several happy days in his home country, listening to the music on everyone's tongues.

This is why it took him a very long moment to respond to Jaager's transmission. There was something like a bad taste in his mouth when he thought of speaking English again.

>> "What's your status, Muninn?"

Still, a tingle went up his arms at hearing his new name. This mission was the first time Jaager--Jörmungandr--had really used it. It reminded him that he was a raven now, not a swan. His place was in New York. Once they were finished here he would be Jaager's son, and everything would be even more perfect. More perfect than summers in the 20's and a sun that could be up at midnight and winters that were so dark it was like the world had ended and only stars remained.

Once he was Jaager's son he would never have to see Finland again.

The police man was hurrying down the steps with his squad. He was wearing heavy gear, defensive and offensive, bullet-proof padding and a big gun. But he stopped when he saw the boy wiping the corner of his eyes with his sleeve. He knelt down, and raised the visor of his helmet.

"Are you alone? Where are your parents?"

It was humiliating to be caught crying by one of these people, but since he had, he could use it. "She's a police officer. They said on the TV that there was an attack, and she will not answer her phone, so I came to find her--"

"Mäkinen, we're moving out!" Another officer shouted, from the bottom of the stairs.

Panu's officer waved the man off, and stayed kneeling with the boy. "What is her name?"

"Mother." The blonde boy replied.

"No, what is... ah... what is your name?"

"Panu Korhonen." Korhonen was the most common surname in Finland. Probably there were fifty Korhonens in Helsinki's police.

"Mäkinen!" The other officer shouted.

Mäkinen glanced towards his teammates, then back to the boy, and every line in his body said that he wanted to be with them and not with Panu. "Go into the station. Okay? It will be safe in there. They'll help you find your mother. Don't worry, no one has been badly hurt. Mutants sometimes seem scary, but we think this one is just new, and cannot help himself--he went underground where he would hurt less people, so he's probably knows that he needs help. Everything will be okay, just go inside." 

Panu nodded very quickly to show he understood, and the man ran to catch up with his team, though he looked back once at the boy he was leaving alone on the station steps. Police in Finland were very nice. Probably Panu should not hate them, but he did.

He lifted up his hand again to rub at his face, and spoke quietly into his sleeve. He had the little transmitter clipped there, since he did not need it in his ear to hear what Jaager said. "I am going in now, Jörmungandr. It is almost empty now. I think they are carrying tranquilizer weapons, they think you are new mutant who is out of control." He tried to put humor in his last words, because it was bad enough to cry near police. He did not want Jaager to know he had been crying. The man had sent him in alone just like he was an adult and a full member of their new family, and Panu had to be very strong and responsible and do things on his own so that Jaager would not think his confidence was misplaced. Panu would be a good son.

He walked into the station and past the front desk exactly like he knew where he was going. Which he did, this was a public building and the plans were not very secret. As he passed, one of the sergeants yelled at him even as he was also trying to yell into a phone.

"Stop! Where are you going? You can't go back there--no, there's a kid wandering the station, hold on--"

Panu looked over at the man and made his eyes very very wide, because this is what people did when they were frightened. (Hopefully he was looking at the right place. Eyes were stupid anyway, why did everyone use them so much?) "Officer Mäkinen said I should come inside--"

From somewhere not so very far off, something underground rumbled as supports were torn that should not be torn.

"Hold on, I said--kid, who's your mother--listen, we need to get the cordon finished, there's no pinning this man down until we do--"

Panu took a deep breath and kept talking even as the sergeant was talking, adults always seemed to panic when he did that, especially if his voice was getting louder and putting less space between his words as he went. This was especially effective in northern Finland, where people barely spoke at all to begin with, but he thought it would be equally effective here. Parvi had taught him this, for other missions. "He said it it would be safe here, he said I could wait at my mother's desk, he said it was not safe to be in the streets because there is a great big dragon--"

"The western perimeter is established, but there's still gaps in the north, and the east doesn't have enough men, we need to--you know where your mother's desk is?--no, I was talking to the boy--just go up, wait, no not you, go ahead, go in!"

Panu scrambled off as the man tried to untangle his conversation. It was very empty inside. Paperwork and coffees and half-eaten lunches were left on desks where they had been dropped when the big bad dragon had started tearing holes under their city. Panu was not even sure they knew it was a dragon, he did not know if anyone who had seen Mr. Jaager was awake again yet.

It was strange that the man was not killing anyone. It was not how his old family had worked. Somehow this was okay, though. Even if they were police, they were Finnish police. It would be wrong if Jaager hurt them too badly. Only Fins should kill Finnish police.

Metal detectors cried out as he passed out of the foyer, but another officer was running out at the same time, so the sergeant did not even look up. Panu started down the stairs, towards the records department. His fox-print backpack was heavy as he ran. Jaager had spent a few days in Sweden first, which had given Panu plenty of time to get the bomb ready. He wanted his records very very gone.

...was Panu crying?

He was. Even though, on some level, Ambrose knew crying was something children his age did, he still couldn't suppress a faint twinge of annoyance.

Oh, wait. Ambrose listened to what he could hear from the other end of the line, even halting his destruction for a bit, to figure out what was going on. It seemed Panu hadn't been crying for measly sentimental reasons - he'd done it to trick the policeman into letting him in. Brilliant. It seemed as if the child was smarter than he'd expected.

"I am going in now, Jörmungandr. It is almost empty now. I think they are carrying tranquilizer weapons, they think you are new mutant who is out of control." Ambrose gave a little huff of amusement. That was rather idiotic of them - darts wouldn't pierce his scales, unless they hit just the right spot on his bad leg, and they wouldn't know about that. And didn't they realize that the destruction was too deliberate, too spread out? He was leading them away, and they hadn't noticed as of yet. He doubted that they ever would.

He listened as Panu cleverly tricked the desk sergeant into letting him in - Ambrose's opinion of him was just getting higher and higher. Now he could hear Panu's footsteps tapping against the tiled floor, running to his destination.

"Very good," Ambrose said, rather pleased, as he ripped out another ladder and almost surgically removed the ten-foot circle of ground below it, tossing it into the sewage. That would slow the police down. "Remind me to install something in your phone that would allow you to control all your dro - er, dogs, from there." He'd seen apps that could do it, and if other companies could, than JW could easily replicate it. "But first. Remember what I told you back in New York? About the mask and the cameras, and the spray paint?" He'd assumed Panu would be very good about wiping the footage, but that hadn't been what he wanted. He wanted the attack to seem like a random Ragnarok bombing, and then the connection to Jörmungandr would be made, and Ragnarok's fame would rise - and in all that, nobody would even consider that the sole target of the bombing had been Panu's records. Before he'd left, with Panu about to leave immediately after, Ambrose had given him a mask. It was a slightly creepy thing, which was intended, and customized for specific members of Ragnarok who didn't have convenient alternate forms to conceal their identity with. But Panu's was meant to resemble a raven's, and the two eye lenses were also the lenses of cameras to help Panu see (cameras were also studded along the strap at the back, for 360 degree "vision"). They had three options, regular, infrared and night vision as well - essentially, Ambrose had not cut any corners when building it with the help of various unaware scientists, each tasked to built a different part and none knowing of the final product.

He'd told Panu to put on the mask and change into all-black clothes once he'd gotten inside, and to wipe any footage of him without it on. The clothes he'd provided were rather robe-like as well, in order to conceal Panu's true age. His last command had been for Panu to explicitly send the footage of Muninn blowing up the station to the media, but not before spray-painting a message that alerted the world that Muninn of Ragnarok had been behind the attack. Ah, fame - one thing that Ambrose was very good at achieving.

“I remember,” the boy sent back. He couldn't not remember, unless he deleted the files, or archived them to a server. He did not think Jaager understood how Panu's brain worked on the inside. This was not a surprise, and not something that made Jaager stupid. Panu did not tell adults theses things, because it as hard to explain, and it made them nervous that everything they said and did were recorded.

It was enough to say he remembered, without saying that he could replay the clip of their conversation on any computer screen if Jaager wanted him to.

The records room should be empty. In New York, Panu would have known for sure before he had ever entered the building--Americans liked cameras, and put them everywhere. Finnish police had not liked cameras for years. They had them still in their entryway and their interrogation rooms, but elsewhere they hung useless and disconnected, gathering dust as they hung dead from the ceilings. They had learned their lesson.

Finland was a small country. There were more people in New York City alone than in all of their country; three million more. Maybe outsiders thought this made them weak, small like mice, easy to prey on.

Fins were small, but not like mice at all. They were like martins and lynx and wolverines. Also like swans.

Finnish police were like arctic foxes. Swift and hard to see, and when they pounced into the snow, sometimes things died beneath their paws. Panu hated them, but he was proud of them, too, because they were also Fins, and even though they had not thought him a threat in many months, they had not forgotten the lesson he had taught them. They had not plugged back in their cameras.

He hoped Jaager did not underestimate them. Also that the dragon remembered to look up. Many animals thought they were safe in their burrows, until the small paws struck.

---

The blades were a steady thrumming felt through her body, but barely heard. Captain Milja Laine was no stranger to helicopters. She had reached for the headphones first, and her seat belt second. A third of Naali Group rode with her. Two other helicopters shuttled the rest, though the twelve man team could easily have fit into just one of the military-grade air crafts.

Naali Group dealt exclusively in mutants. They tried to avoid beginner mistakes like put the squad in one helicopter. If nothing else had come out of their dealings with Tuonela, a decent equipment budget had.

"Past appearances? Known affiliations?" She asked, continuing the conversation from outside.

Officer Karlsson was glued to his laptop screen. “Negative in our databases and Norway. Sweden is being slow on the search. Interpol reports, and I quote, 'no black dragons, but if it turns out to be blue, please nuke it,' end quote.”

There were several hearty swears at that. They had some initial reports from the scene, but underground passages were notoriously dark, and the difference between blue scales and black was hard to tell.

“What's the file say?” Laine asked. They were twenty minutes out from the scene, and swearing did not help.

“Codename… It's English, I'm going to butcher it—codename <Indominus Rex>? Twenty-three counts of murder. Suspected of having a strictly human form, given the ease with which he hops borders. MO is women, blonde, early to mid twenties. Last seen in Belgium.”

“Doesn't match,” another of their team put in, through the radio.

“Doesn't,” Laine agreed. “Still no reports of deaths?”

“None,” their techie affirmed. “Several officers still unconscious, but overly enthusiastic concussions and a few broken ribs seem to be the worst of it. It's more focused on tearing apart the sewer system. It seems to be avoiding us. No signs it's trying to surface, either. Evacuation of the city center is about forty percent complete. Karhu Group is holding off operations until that's done, or until it shifts its attacks to humans. They've ruled it a new mutant, out of control, and turned jurisdiction over to us.”

“Nice of them,” Laine said dryly. Not even she was certain whether she was being sarcastic. If it was a new mutant on a rampage, it was nice of them—Naali Group stood the best chance of containing it without causalities. But really. Karhu couldn't have handled this alone?

There'd been talk of disbanding Naali since Tuonela had been taken down. Their small squad carried a distinctly higher price-per-head than the Karhu Group, and even though they'd proven their worth, there just wasn't that great a need for them in Finland. Not many crime groups targeted their country, and mutant crime groups were rarest of all; they were just too damn cold to attract criminals from the outside, and too small to breed them on the inside.

This felt a little like petty blame passing, to her. If something went sour, it was Naali's name that would be in the papers.

“We treat it as a new mutant until it gives us a reason not to.” Laine made the call, and hoped she wouldn't regret it. “Karlsson, you'll head to the station when we set down. Keep us connected. Everyone else, teams of four. Integrate with the Helsinki squads, but keep in touch with Karlsson. Five minute check ins. Don't get cocky.”

Their helicopters touched down at three different points in the city. The Finnish police's Adapted squad stepped out, a dozen strong.

((OOC: Karhu Group (Bear Group) is a real thing. 90 police officers specialized in anti-terrorist operations, based out of Helsinki, but meant for deployment nationwide. I love Finland. <3

Naali Group (Artic Fox) is my made-up subdivision of the Bears, focused on mutant terrorists~))

[OOC: Sorry about the wait. Real life has become important again.]

The ground was vibrating, ever so slightly, and Ambrose swung his head up. His heat-sensitive vision could see through the ground, but even so, he could only faintly see the figures of people above. That probably meant something aerial, though the signatures were getting stronger, so he presumed that they were landing. It looked as if the cavalry was here, and he was going to have to handle that.

He slithered out of a pothole, slinking behind a building to watch the helicopters land from a distance. Three people had been standing guard by the pothole, but Ambrose had easily and silently dispatched them, moving with unexpected grace for his large form. Now he sat squinting at the incoming squad, trying to determine their next actions. They seemed to be preparing with nonlethal force, like the other policemen had been doing, presumably because they didn't believe him to be causing this destruction intentionally.

They were very wrong.

Ambrose scanned the area, squinting to try and find a projectile of sorts he could use. It took him a bit, during which the soldiers started getting fully settled down and preparing to enter the sewers, but eventually he could make out the shape of some kind of tiny electronic car. That was well within his capabilities, so he picked it up easily and as stealthily as one could, before launching it at one of the helicopters parked on the ground with a roar.

In a burst of blaze-white heat, the helicopter seemed to disintegrate to Ambrose's limited vision, even though he could logically infer that it had either been smashed or exploded. Either way, something - likely the fuel - was burning, and that he could see. But his aggressive move had gotten the attention of the soldiers, who were now gesturing at the general area where he was concealed. Ambrose smiled toothily, even if they couldn't see him, and slipped back through the nearby pothole into the sewers. Their use of nonlethal force had been almost laughable, and almost insulting to Ambrose. So he'd left a little note - a message, one could say, that he was a Big Deal.

Painted on the building wall, the blood still fresh as the shredded corpses of the three guards lay at its base, was the symbol for Ragnarok.

"Muninn, the police should be leaving you alone," Ambrose almost purred, very much pleased with himself for thinking up such a brilliant idea. "Let me know when -" There was an unusual tingling feeling down his spine. "- you're out -" That feeling again. And this time, Ambrose froze, because this felt like he was transforming back into a human, and -

Adapted.

Ambrose recoiled from the man standing serenely in front of him, pointing a weapon of some sort at him. He scrambled to get out of its range, but there was still the painful feeling of bones crunching as his body tried to become human, and no, he wasn't human, what was this -

Ambrose was flailing, even if he didn't realize it, and his tail smashed into the wall of the sewer tunnel. People were shouting as they tried to swarm to where he was, since the amount of noise he was making was rather easily giving up his location, and he only became aware of his surroundings again when the world straightened out and he realized that his contortions had ended up collapsing part of the tunnel on the damned Adapted. He immediately fled, just running, to try and get away from the soldiers. He didn't stop until he was well out of the way.

"Muninn," he snarled. "You said nothing of Adapteds."

Staying next to newly landed helicopters was not standard operating procedure. It was very much the opposite of standard operating procedure. There was something about helicopters that just screamed “target” to mutants. Some stats grad students at Helsinki U had put together a tongue-in-cheek analysis, using cases from New York and other big cities: “The Survivability of Helicopters in Mutant Engagements, or Lack Thereof: a Compilation of Case Studies.” The paper had passed through department email chains for weeks. Whenever there was a helicopter on the scene, if the mutant had some way of destroying it? You'd better believe it was destroyed, with a p = .95 confidence, whatever that meant.

“How did that even blow up?”

“Fuel tank? That's a lucky shot.”

“Was the pilot still on board? Lahtinen, come in--”

“I'm fine. Smoke break. Bathroom break now, I think. Goddamn, you all saw that, right? You're going to tell my wife, right? She's keeps stealing my goddamn cigarettes, right from my pockets. I'll take lung cancer in twenty years over incineration today, thank you--”

Captain Laine cut through the chatter. “Everyone on C Flight, sound off.” They did. All of them. “You're alive, good. Now put band-aids on your knees, get a kiss from mom, and get into the field. Net formation until you find squads to integrate with, I don't want any one of us standing within 20 feet of another. Spread your fields as wide as you can.”

Don't be the morons who stand together and get killed as a group went unspoken.

“Yes, Sir,” came four voices in near-perfect unison.

Laine shook her head, and gave a thumbs up to her own teammates. The fireball had been visible, even from the top of the Helsinki police department. “They're fine. Our budget isn't, but they are. Same orders for you. B squad, same. Karlsson, set up shop here.”

“Yes, Sir.”

'A' squad—her own group—started down the stairs. She didn't like being bottle necked like this with a mutant around, but they weren't about to redesign every building in Finland to have multiple stairwells. Once they hit the ground floor, Karlsson took his laptop bag and whatever else he carried in that bulky backpack of his, and ducked inside the station. The rest of them headed out the front door, with no more than a cursory wave to the sergeant on duty. He looked stressed.

Out on the streets, they scattered their own formation as they worked their way towards the established perimeter. The idea was to stay in visual range at all times, while spreading their adapted auras out over as large an area as possible without leaving gaps. Dragon-sized gaps, in this case: that gave them a lot more leeway than usual.

“Karlsson reporting. Field HQ all set up.” Which is to say, he'd found an empty desk to set his laptop on. Karlsson was one of those younger techies who loved to sound important. If he hadn't discovered his adaptation around the same time the police were heavily recruiting, he'd probably have been a software engineer moonlighting as a WOW item farmer. “Check ins are a go.”

“Laine reporting. All clear.” The sound off went through A, B, and C squads. Once. Twice. Just before the fifteen minute check in, C broke the order, Heinonen whispering into his shoulder radio.

“I have visual. Can confirm, this fellow's black as your mom's--”

“Oh don't you even--”

“--Coffee. She makes damn good coffee, your mom.”

“You're a bastard, Heinonen.”

“Had it with our breakfast, we did. Went well with my cigar.”

“Go get eaten.”

“That's what sh--”

“Proceed with caution, Heinonen,” Captain Laine interrupted.

“Who's got the thirty foot range here, Cap? This thing won't know what clipped its pretty little wings. Nap time, and we all go home.”

A, B, and C made the twenty minute check in.

A, B, and three others made the twenty-five.

They all felt the tremor through their legs, like a whale trying to break through the pavement.

“Heinonen. Report.” She waited, trailing the back of the regular police squad she'd integrated with. “Karlsson. Last location for Heinonen.”

“Sending it now.”

All their phones gave a little buzz as the map loaded. Laine didn't trust it—on principle, she didn't trust it. The case that had made her career was Tuonela. Four years of chasing a team with a technopath had left her extremely gun-shy about anything more complex than her gun. Especially with Takala missing from his parents. The last they'd been able to trace him was an airport, on a flight to central Europe. From there, it had left their jurisdiction.

Interpol was getting sick of Scandinavian prepubescents on its watch list.

Heinonen had been in a tunnel, not far from where C had landed. It didn't take long for one of his squad mates to get to the location.

“Visual on Heinonen. He's dead. Looks like a tunnel collapse.”

“Bastard,” another of his teammates cursed. It was impossible to tell whether he was talking about the dragon, or the dead man.

---

In the basement of Helsinki police headquarters, Panu did not see or hear or sense the helicopter land. It just suddenly appeared, already taking off again.

He reached out to every computer and phone and piece of tech in the building. Not to use them, but to watch.

The blind spot moved downwards, by the eastern edge of the building. Probably a stairwell. For a terrifying moment it came almost close enough to touch him, but then it was leaving, briefly blacking out the lobby camera in its wake. This is why in Finnish, Panu called them Blackouts.

In English, they were Adapteds.

He did not notice the smaller field peel off on the main floor. It was like a shadow compared to a solar eclipse.

The blond boy took in a shaky breath, then another (and one more). Then he kept working. Captain Milja Laine was here, but she was not anywhere close to where Jaager was. Probably everything was still fine. One Adapted was no problem, as long as it was not next to either of them.

He had changed into his mask and his robes. The robes were over his clothes, and were light. The mask was very heavy. But it made up for it by being made all-around with pinhole cameras and other useful things. He could see everywhere, and in more than just the visual spectrum, and also he could synthesize his voice through a speaker if he wanted, which was good. Sounding like an eight year old was not the image Ragnarok was trying to project.

The records room had been empty, its officer called onto duty. Alphabetical order made it very easy to find his file. Now there was a bomb in there. It did not tick or countdown or anything stupid—it only listened. He would tell it when to go off.

Now he was finishing with his graffiti. It would look better scrawled on a main floor, with pretty picture windows and blue Finnish sky, but he was not stupid enough to do it on a main floor. There was a police logo hung on the wall, and pictures of retired officers. He had written over this in black letters. Now he was standing back to look at it, so that later they could send it to the media.

He was almost done. Soon he would go upstairs and past the overworked sergeant, and then anyone still in the station would be very dead.

This is when Ambrose reported in, with a purr that said just as much as his words. But something started to go very wrong. Panu knew what it was before his new father even accused him, but he did not understand. She could not have gotten there so quickly. It was not possible.

>> "Muninn. You said nothing of Adapteds."

He did not know what was worse: the words, or the anger. It was not anger for Adapteds.

“There is one. She—she should not be in your range yet, she only just arrived, she was on foot--” He stammered to explain it, even to himself, as something in the back of his mind tried to open up like a hole in the floor of a cave.

Relevant memory file detected, download file 2014122511019212?

No, he spammed his own mind, No no no no no.

He did not know what was on that file.

(He knew exactly what was on that file, he could only archive sight and sound but a memory was so much more, it was the feeling of helplessness and the touch of rough hands shoving him somewhere safer and tears on his cheeks stupid stupid tears that were too late and he was saying something, he felt his mouth moving but he had taken out the words, and a hand hit him so hard that maybe his head fell off, that is what it felt like, and then he was on the floor--)

He did not want to know what was on that file.

“Just one Adapted,” he repeated, with determination. “A woman. Milja Laine. Captain in Finnish police. Karhu Group—they are like American SWAT. Very competent, please be careful.”

He silenced his own end of the line, and ran back up the stairs. He would get out, and tell the bomb to explode, and then they could leave. Leaving was the best thing, everything would be okay when they left. America was a big country, very big, their police did not adapt as quickly to threats as the Finnish police could.

Adapted as a stupid word.

He felt the computer blip into his range as he reached the top of the stairs. It was a very nice computer. High end, wired to the network here.

He had not felt it before. Even now it felt weird, distant, faded, like a ghost in the corner of his eye.

“Sending it now,” a younger man said. “Jesus, Heinonen. Jesus. You ass.”

A young officer was standing over a computer typing, because that is what humans had to do with computers. But he was doing very cool things, for a human. A live map of an entire squadron.

Naali squad.

(--the hand picked him up again, and this time it did not drop him on the ground, it slammed him, and he felt the connections to all his eyes cut and it wasn't the blackout woman who did it, it was the pain in the back of his head, and he hoped--)

“No,” Panu said, backing up until he was against a wall. He shook his head, which made for a strange scene: a black raven, shaking its beak in denial. “No no no--”

The young police officer looked up. He wasted no time in grabbing his radio.

“Dragon's got a partner, I think, police station, short, wearing a robe and bird mask, both black, maybe male, shit, ah, looks like one of those old doctor masks from a Ren Fest--”

“Catch him,” the stupid evil awful woman ordered, and Panu knew her voice even through the radio.

“Okay? I'll try?”

The young officer looked at Panu for a hesitant moment, standing over his computer with its very nice programs. He was an Adapted too, but weaker. One of the ones with barely any range at all.

There were different strengths to Adapteds. From ones with very long ranges that shut everything down, to very short ranges that were not very useful at all. Panu did not know how he knew this, when he had only ever met one Adapted.

The officer reached for his gun.

The boy bolted, like a rabbit. The sergeant shouted something but he did not listen, then he was out the doors, but he could feel the little graying out behind him as the young officer sprinted past the desk too and cut Panu off from the station camera.

He was almost down the steps outside, but he could hear the doors slamming open behind him, there was no time no time nothing he could do--

(Only one thing he could do.)

The explosion picked him up like a real bird, and he flew into a car. The feeling of maybe being dead, but not quite sure, was very familiar.

Access memory file--?

The answer was still no. Thank you, brain, for being so helpful.

Not very far away, he heard ringing ringing ringing a groan and ringing. The young officer was maybe still alive. He was on his back, and there was blood coming from his ear.

The desk sergeant was definitely not.

Panu found his knees, because his feet felt too far away. He dragged himself off, not on the main street, somewhere darker. An alley. He curled up in the space between parked cars and tucked his knees to his chest and tried to breath deeply while the world kept spinning around him.

“Mission is success,” he said into his radio. “Watch out for more Adapteds. Maybe they get more, while I was gone.”

Probably not. Probably the foxes had been here a very long time, living in the snow.

His head hurt a lot, which made it easier not to think. Probably he would just stay here for a little while.

---

“Karlsson, report.” Laine's hand tightened on her radio. She took a breath, and flipped the talk switch again. “All teams, we are dealing with an organized attack. At least two participants, assume more. I am authorizing lethal force. Repeat, authorizing lethal force. Take command of the units you're with, and--”

The radio crackled. “Naali Group, stand down. Repeat, stand down. We're dealing with a terrorist situation. Karhu will take the lead from here. Integrate with our units, and support.”

She took her hand off the talk switch, because some things cannot be said on broad channels to commanding officers. When her voice was composed again, she hit it.

“Understood, Sir. Foxes, you heard the man.” She let her hand drop. “F*** you, too, Sir.”

She could see the news already: Naali group called in to deal with mutant, casualties force Karhu to take lead. Karhu saves the day. Politicians demand inquiry into Naali effectiveness and budget and goddamnall.

She was getting canned. They all were. And the last thing on Karlsson's line had been the explosion.

She clicked on her radio, one last time. “Prioritize your lives,” she told her squad. “Remember, this is Karhu's operation, now. No show boating.”

A hearty round of “Yes, Sir's” answered her.

The bears wanted to be dragon slayers? Fine. This situation was all theirs. She'd just lost one man, maybe two. The other ten were going to live to spend their severance checks.

Ambrose did not care about Panu's excuses. So he did not listen to Panu's confused words, took no note of anything the boy said until he confirmed that his mission was complete. He also warned of more Adapteds, though he should've known. Panu should've checked up on the defenses they would be faced with - he was supposed to inform Ambrose of the defenses they'd be faced with - and he hadn't even bother to tell Ambrose about the one Adapted that the Finnish police had that he knew about. No matter, though - he'd deal with the boy later. He'd heard the explosion, so at least Panu had done something right. Now to get out.

"Head to the safe house," Ambrose said coldly. "And stay out of the way. You've made enough mistakes already." The safe house wasn't actually a house, nor particularly safe, for that matter. It was a hotel room - more specifically, Cail Rendfur's hotel room, since the man had decided to go on vacation the same week Ambrose Jaager flew to Sweden for a conference. It was always good to have other Ragnarok members available as backup, and this time was no different. Ambrose didn't expect Cail to help Ambrose escape the police force, though - he expected Cail to essentially keep Panu in time out.

Now, Ambrose was deep into the sewers, having gone quite far in his mad rush to get away from the unexpected Adapted threat. His mutation was a bigger part of him than his human form was, and losing it would be not unlike losing a limb and being expected to live with that. Although, not really, since he could regenerate limbs thanks to his mutation. But the point still stood.

Ambrose suddenly realized that he could hear someone speaking on a radio above him, although the man probably wouldn't be able to hear him. It sounded as if the man was part of... Karhu Group? And that they were now looking for him. It was easy enough to slither aboveground and take out the group of three men that were standing there, watching the sewer, now that they knew he was down there. Scratching out the R that was their logo was equally as easy. What was hard was figuring out how to get out of the city now. Cail would handle Panu, but Ambrose had to get back to Sweden. Which he had to do in his normal form, because going as a human would be awfully suspicious, considering he was supposed to be in Sweden. He could come back the way he came, but that made him a rather clear target. So he was going to have to do this the hard way - swim. He'd flown from Stockholm to Helsinki in under three hours. He highly doubted he could swim that fast. But he could fly part of the way and swim the rest.

So now he just had to get down to the water, which would be the Gulf of Finland. Good thing sewers tended to go straight towards large bodies of water. He ducked back into the tunnels and started walking. He was long out of the zone that the enemy believed him to be in, and until they discovered the bodies, he'd have quite the head start.

When there is an earthquake, things on shelves shake and rattle and fall to the floor. Brains were like this. When they were shaken or knocked, old things fell out, and rolled across the floor, and there was no order to them.

Officer Karlsson or maybe Panu or maybe both were dreaming. It was a dream that tasted like smoke and dust, and had sirens in the distance, but none close. The city center had already been evacuated, so even though there had been an explosion, it would be many long minutes before any help arrived. One of them held on to that concept: help. Help was coming, he just needed to keep breathing even if it hurt, because help was coming. The other of them knew that he needed to start moving again, soon, now, because help was coming.

But neither of them really moved at all. Too many things were loose in their heads.

A year ago, Officer Karlsson had been very new to Naali squad, and even younger, and it was very hard to block the door to a room when you are a scrawny programmer fresh out of grad school and you didn't hit the station's gym nearly as often as the rest of your team.

"Say that again, Karlsson, I don't think the Captain heard you," Heinonen said. He was a tall blonde man, who moved with easy, smirking confidence. Emphasis on the smirking.

"We're being hacked. By Tuonela. Wait no wait no--" The programmer braced his hands against the door frame as his fellow Adapteds tried to shove past him. "Do not go in there, please, your auras will stop them--"

"Officer Karlsson," Captain Laine said, slowly, like maybe he wasn't nearly as smart as his resume had made him out to be. "Please explain why it's a good idea to let a terrorist group hack into the Finnish police network."

"It's not the whole network they're targeting, it's Naali in specif--NO! Stop stop stop!" Karlsson's arms were going to fall off from exhaustion, at this rate. "It's just... it's Takala, he's up to something weird, I'm not even sure what he's doing, hell, I've never even been able to know he was doing something--"

"Officer Karlsson." The Captain made it a statement. The kind of statement that made him want to stand down immediately. He'd only been on the team for a few months now, and he didn't have the same police background as them, and he knew what he looked like right now: a college kid who was being a stupid college kid.

His fellow Adapteds shared a look, then shoved past him.

Panu recoiled back into his own body with an oww oww oww his head. He curled around himself, and drew his knees to his chest and pressed his hands against his head so that maybe if he squeezed hard enough he could make the pain or his brains squeeze out, either was okay, just oww oww oww. Adapteds were awful and they should all die in ways just as painful as this.

Across the room, Perämies snorted. <Melodramatic much?> he texted, straight into Panu's head, using Panu's own sending capabilities, so that it was a loop of awful. His brain was too raw to be sending and receiving right now, the power hijacker knew that and he did it anyway because he was just as stupid and awful as the Adapteds--

<You're going to make me blush,> the man sent.

Panu shuddered and curled more tightly, and finally pried a hand away from his head long enough to glare aimlessly with his stupid useless eyes. "Oww," he said, defiantly.

The man laughed softly. And then there was the sound of soft sock footsteps on the hardwood floor, and the couch cushion squished next to him, and there was a hand on his hair, big and warm and familiar. At first the seven year old was very still and stiff and glaring. But the hand moved in gentle strokes, and the man hummed a wordless song from deep in his chest, and slowly, slowly, Panu relaxed. He crawled into Perämies' lap, and tried to listen to the song and not to how much his own head hurt.

"Did you get the information?" The man asked after many minutes. His voice was soft, and not so mocking, even if it was still very much amused.

Panu shook his head. "They knew I was there and they brought an Adapted and then everything was terrible."

The big hand continued to stroke, slowly, gently. "And what have we learned?"

"You are better at my power than me. I need you."

"Good. Good boy." That was all he had to say. The lesson had been learned; the teacher did not need to lecture. "Rest. We'll break back in tomorrow."

The seven year old stared blindly at a room he could not see. Someone was laughing in another part of the house; someone else was saying something angry, probably to the person who was laughing. It was all familiar, comforting. The house changed but the people did not. This was his family. This was Tuonela. "Can I make it go away? It hurts."

Perämies did not stop him, so Panu tucked the memory, of the hacking and the pain that followed, safely away. Afterwards he was very relieved. He did not did not did not think about why he was relieved. Peramies assumed it was because the pain faded, receded, went down to a tolerable dull throb that was easily soothed away by a warm hand in his hair, and wordless humming.

Once the memory was gone, Panu thought so, too.

"Holy shit," Karlsson said. "Holy. Shit. Holy sh--"

Heinonen whapped the back of his head. "Sorry, kid. Your record was skipping. So you going to tell us what Takala did, or what?"

Karlsson turned his screen. There was a file pulled up. Panu Harmaajärvi. Missing child, abducted from Vaasa Mall on November 11, 2011, age 5. Case unsolved. Presumed dead.

Special case notes: help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me help me

On a Helsinki street, where it tasted like smoke and dust, a young officer coughed weakly. "Panu," he said, because things had fallen off the shelves of his brain and hit the floor and he was trying very hard to pick them up, trying very hard to not let them slip away, because help was coming.

"No," the boy sitting in the alleyway said. He shook his head, and the raven mask moved its beak, back and forth. "No no no."

Open memory file--?

"No."

The eight year old pushed himself up, using the brick wall behind him for support. He took off his mask and his robe, and shoved them in his backpack, and zipped it closed with shaking hands. Now things tasted even more like smoke. He took his digital camera out, and turned it on, and slung it around his neck so he could see again. Everything looked as cloudy as it tasted. So he took his hand and put it on the wall, and used the bricks to guide himself. Away. He could do that. Everything hurt, but it was just melodrama. He was always melodramatic, this is what Jaager always told him.

No. Not Jaager. Another man who sometimes talked like Jaager, but whose hands were warmer.

It was very hard to think right now, but he did not need to. Safe house. Safe house was a place on his phone, and he only needed to follow the directions as they were told to him. He could do this.

Panu stumbled out of the alleyway, and into the deserted city. The hotel was not so very far. Helsinki was not so very big.

Later that night, the terrorist group Ragnarok would claim the attack, and a video would air on Finnish TV and then international news. The basement of the Helsinki police station, very soon to be demolished. A wall with the Finnish police's logo, and a framed row of officers, smiling. Black paint sprayed over them.

What Panu had written, in the old Scandinavian Rök runes, was this: Slangen vokter en tom stein.

Maybe in America there was need for more, for some crude writing of their group name like a street gang tagging a train car. Not here. Not in his home country. Scandinavia was the birthplace of Odin, and it was where the end began.

Slangen vokter en tom stein. The snake guards an empty stone.

Ragnarok had begun.