I know I said I was going to wait until the weekend to post this, but I had a lot of free time on my hands.

Fair warning, this fic is extremely heavy on the continuity of the Kingdom Hearts games and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (movies, TV shows, and Netflix shows), so if you haven't read at least basic summaries for the plots for any of the above, there's going to be a lot of plot elements that will confuse you in later chapters.

Anyway, hello everyone. For those of you haven't read my Kingdom Hearts 3 prediction fic The Xehanort War, I suggest you at least skim through it, as this is sort of a sequel to that story, so you'll probably be lost. Not everyone will want to read it, but the events of this fic don't reference that fic a lot so I'll just leave explanations for those references as needed. Don't expect any Kingdom Hearts characters to show up though beyond a reference every once in a while (although there will be a few guest appearances eventually). Ripple Effects is about setting up the Marvel elements of the overall story I've got planned for The Xehanort War's sequels.

And for those of you who have read The Xehanort War and its first sequel, welcome to the second installment of the Acolytes of Chaos saga. Like Regroup and Rebuild, Ripple Effects will be a collection of One-Shots. But unlike the previous entry in this saga I've been writing, the stories in Ripple Effect are less connected, taking place over the course of several decades as opposed to a single month. As far as the Kingdom Hearts timeline is concerned, this story actually spans from decades before Birth by Sleep to three years after Kingdom Hearts 3. This isn't going to be a long, elaborate story like The Xehanort War was, though. This is mainly a series of One-Shots dealing with how the Marvel and Kingdom Hearts aspects of the universe of TXW tie together, with a few loose over-arching plot threads along the way.

I own nothing. Kingdom Hearts belongs to Disney and Square. All Final Fantasy characters who appear or are referenced belong to Square Enix. All Marvel Characters/Locations referenced belong to Marvel. All other properties mentioned belong to their respective owners.

Just want to outline this for those who aren't familiar with how I handle different forms of dialogue in story:

"Talking"

Thinking

"Singing"

"Speaking in a different language"

"Written Text"

Episode 1: The Dark World

Svartalfheim – 2,987 B.C.

4,989 Years before Birth By Sleep

At last, the armored figure thought to himself as he looked up through the top hatch of his flagship at the Nine Realms converging above him. After three thousand years of warfare, we will finally plunge Ygdrasil into Darkness where it belongs. And there are not enough Keyblade Wielders to interfere this cycle. In the past, the wielders of the Keyblade arrogantly policed countless worlds in the name of keeping balance. As if balance can exist when Darkness is ground under the armored heel of Light, the figure thought with disdain as he walked from the top of his ship across the mesa toward where the battle was taking place.

"Malekith," his Lieutenant, Algrim called out as the leader of the Dark Elves strode up to the cliff overlooking the battle going on below. "Asgard's forces are upon us." Malekith nodded as he looked down at the small Asgardian strike force being swiftly annihilated by his troops. Only for the tide to begin turning an instant later as the multicolored pillar of the Bifrost pierced the skies of Svartalfheim, striking the surface and disgorging Asgardian reinforcements under the command of Bor Burison. With the arrival of King Bor and a platoon of Asgard's mightiest warriors, the Dark Elves began dropping like flies.

"Send in the Kursed," Malekith ordered as he watched the tide turn against him. Algrim briefly walked away to relay his superior's order. While the elite Dark Elf warriors used the eponymous stones to permanently enhance their powers enough that they began to easily over power the Asgardian fools and tip the scales back in their favor, Malekith looked up at the large portals leading to the other realms of Ygdrasil hanging in the sickly gray sky above him. It was time. Time to plunge the worlds back into Darkness. To avenge his wife and child.

Malekith had only been a lieutenant in the Dark Elf army during the last Cycle. He hadn't always been the remorseless conqueror he was now. He'd actually been an advocate of peace between the Asgardians and his people. Until the day it all came crumbling down. The day he met Bor, crown prince of Asgard. Although the Dark Elves had been born from the Darkness when it consumed Midgard at the climax of the very first Keyblade War millions of years ago, they were not the spawn of hell as the mortals and Aesir believed.

For all those countless millennia, the Dark Elves remained hidden on Svartalfheim, developing their advanced technology not to conquer the universe as the Keyblade Wielders kept warning the human public, but to protect themselves from persecution. Malekith was only a mid-ranked commander in the Dark Elf armies when he met Bor. The Asgardian prince had been trying to sneak into the dark world in a feeble attempt at boosting his own personal glory by defeating the "demons" that lived there.

Malekith had swiftly disarmed the arrogant prince, critiquing his fighting technique before politely telling him to return to Asgard and leave the Dark Elves alone. Despite the warning, Bor returned a few weeks later, and the process repeated until Bor finally started conversed with him civilly. From there, an unlikely friendship was born, and with Bor's change in attitude, Malekith came believe that the rest of the realms might actually accept Dark Elves as their equals. He'd discussed the idea with Bor on one of his visits to the dark world, and while the Asgardian prince had said he hoped it would happen eventually, his face appeared uncomfortable. If only the elf had known what the prince's discomfort would lead to.

That had been a week before Bor's coronation. A few weeks after that last meeting, a strike team of warriors comprised of both Keyblade Wielders and Asgardians launched a surprise on Svartalfheim, releasing a synthesized gas into the atmosphere engineered to be poisonous to all life on the dark world present at the time of its release. Hundreds of thousands of innocent elven men, women, and children perished that day. Though the conflict with Asgard predated the previous Keyblade War, Malekith still remembered the tragedy of that day.

He remembered running from the clouds of toxic gas with his wife Nathalis carrying their son Olenir in her arms. He remembered the Keyblade Wielders firing their spells into the crowds of fleeing elves. He remembered being separated from his family in the mad rush to board the spacecraft that would take them all to safety. He remembered forcing his way through the crowd to reach his wife and child, only to be forced back into the ship by the flow of bodies. He remembered screaming at the top of his lungs in incoherent grief and rage as he watched his family vanish in the onrushing toxic fog while the ship's boarding hatch closed.

The survivors of the Light's attempted genocide of their people fled to the nearest planet with a breathable atmosphere. Of a species whose population once numbered in the millions, only five thousand survived the slaughter, two thirds of which were unarmed women and children. Eventually, they sent a scout ship back to Svartalfheim to see if it was safe to return, and upon their return, they reported that King Bor himself had been the one to order the use of biological warfare against the Dark Elves. And yet their king Karasiv refused to take action, preferring instead that their people should remain hidden and avoid conflict.

But Karasiv's subjects did not want to hide in the dark, afraid of being attacked without reason. No, the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim wanted justice for what Asgard and the so-called "Guardians of Light" had done. Enraged by the death of his family, Bor's betrayal, and Karasiv's cowardice, Malekith deposed the Dark Elf King and took the throne himself. With the support of his people, he promised that with him as their king, they would seek vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them, and if the people of the Nine Realms believed the Dark Elves to be destructive conquerors, well that was what they would get.

You will be avenged, Nathalis, he silently vowed as he turned around and strode towards the large stone mechanism used to house the Aethir. He would have preferred to use the completed Gauntlet of the First Keyblade Master for what he was about to do. But since the other components had been scattered across the stars, the Reality Stone would have to suffice. He smiled in anticipation as the pillar lifted, exposing the Aethir hovering in the air in a liquid state. But milliseconds before he could absorb it into his bloodstream, the Bifrost tore into the earth right where the pillar stood, tearing the Infinity Stone from his grasp.

Enraged, Malekith unsheathed his blade and tore through the Asgardian warriors who charged out of the rainbow bridge in a pathetic attempt at a surprise attack. He killed them all and charged towards the open portal, but it closed before he could enter it, leaving behind scorch marks on the surface of the dark world. With the Aethir no longer in their possession, the Dark Elves were clearly fated to lose the battle. His body trembling in silent fury, Malekith initiated his failsafe plan, activating a powerful electromagnetic pulse that caused all of the Dark Elf warships to deactivate and crash down on the Asgardian armies below. All but one.

"Their deaths will mean our survival," he told Algrim as the two elves walked towards the side of the mesa opposite the battle. "This war is far from over." As they neared the cliff, their flagship, the Nathalis, rose up for them to board. The destruction of the fleet was no great loss to Malekith. The warships were manned by skeleton crews anyway, since they lacked the numbers sufficient to properly crew them. Except for one. Ever since the Asgardians used biochemical weapons to devastate the surface of Svartalfheim, Malekith knew that the Dark Elves needed to have a plan to ensure that their race would survive even if Asgard were to invade.

So the Nathalis was designated a refugee ship. It was still armed and capable of defending itself, but its purpose for the remainder of the war was to protect the few women and children who survived the poisoning of Svartalheim's atmosphere, along with a contingent of warriors to protect the families should the vessel ever be boarded by enemy troops. That way even if the Dark Elves lost the war, their species and their families would survive. With their leader and his second-in-command aboard, the Nathalis cloaked itself before engaging its warp drive and vanishing into the Realm of Darkness.

As the convergence ended, Malekith and the other passengers aboard the Nathalis went into hibernation. The battle had been stressful for everyone, warrior and civilian alike. So every Dark Elf male, female, and child aboard their last ship climbed into a hibernation pod on the upper decks. Once inside, they would rest in stasis and recover from the strain of fighting and running. Of fearing for the safety of their loved ones. When the convergence happened again in five thousand years, they would return to the Realm of Light, and they would take revenge on the Keyblade Wielders and Asgardians who sought to exterminate them.

While I enjoy Thor: The Dark World, I really wish they'd developed Malekith more as a character, so in the Acolytes of Chaos saga I'm fleshing him out some more. I decided to have his backstory be something that could be plausible in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while also tying into to the Kingdom Hearts mythology. Also, I know I said this would span several decades, but I decided to include Malekith in my overall story fairly late in the planning stages, so I threw in the distant prologue at the beginning to help with the world building. Malekith and Algrim's spoken dialogue comes from the opening of Thor: The Dark World.

Now for those of you who haven't or don't want to read The Xehanort War, explanation time:

*The Keyblade War: In the universe of The Xehanort War, the Keyblade works for the Kingdom Hearts universe the way Harmonic Convergence works in The Legend of Korra. It basically happens every 10,000 years and Earth either breaks apart like it does in KH canon or keeps on ticking for another 10,000 years. When characters who know that talk about cycles, that's what they're referring to. The reason there are fewer Keyblade Wielders after the previous one is because Daybreak Town (hub world for the Kingdom Hearts browser/smartphone game (as with most Kingdom Hearts games, came out in Japan first. US release date has yet to be confirmed) Kingdom Hearts X (pronounced Key) set during the time period shortly before the Keyblade War begins) was ground zero for when the original world split apart into the smaller worlds Kingdom Hearts fans all know in the games, and 3/4 of the Keyblade Wielders who fought in the Keyblade War were killed when the whole "world consumed by darkness thing" happened.

Back on the subject of the chapter, Christopher Eccleston (Malekith's actor for those who don't know) confirmed that scenes that were filmed for Malekith's backstory but ultimately cut from the finished movie revealed that he'd previously lost his wife and child (whose names (and in the kid's case gender) I made up for the purposes of this fic), and that there was a reason for why the Dark Elves all followed him. I used that information to construct a backstory for why Malekith wants to destroy the universe. I'm going to come back to the Dark Elves in another One-Shot later on.

For this fic, a few things to note, the Kingdom Hearts elements adhere closely to canon, while the Marvel side of things is AU. Fair warning, this is going to start getting into mega-crossover territory later on, but only in regards to Disney properties like Kim Possible, Lilo & Stitch, etc. The overall story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the same, but certain things happen slightly or majorly different.

Now that that's all out of the way, next chapter, Wendy Darling finds some familiar faces waiting at her window a few years after her previous trip to Never Land.