So, this chapter was (much) later than I promised. For that I apologize, but hopefully the advances in plot this chapter will make up for it. Special thanks to thenumbertwentyseven for their constructive criticism and contribution in pointing out copy-and-paste errors in the story, and another mention to lucidhalos and her amazing stories. Really, read them.
And one last thing: for those of you who previously knew me by a different username, it has been changed to peppermiintmocha. That's all! Enjoy the chapter!
She ended up going to Nepal alone, which was somewhat of a disappointment. Neither Stark nor Banner seemed to want to, and Romanoff and Barton were off on yet another mission. Steve was suffering ー sorry, receiving ー his Triskelion orientation (which Vanessa had done before, and it quite literally took days), and of course, Thor was on a different planet entirely.
She'd considered asking Fury and taking a SHIELD agent with her, but after some consideration that became out of the question ー the existence of the Tesseract alone required Level 7 clearance, and how did she know who to trust? She trusted Coulson, but he was off somewhere, busy with things she had no right to know; and she would have trusted Fury, if not for the fact that he had kept the Avengers Initiative from her and how many secrets that man was reputed to keep.
In the end, she got permission and some funds from the director, packed up her things, and flew to Kathmandu in a standard passenger jet.
The mission wasn't an officially sanctioned SHIELD operation, but rather just a preliminary investigation. If she were to find something of notice, perhaps SHIELD would send a team, but for now, she travelled alone on a standard passenger jet, dressed like a typical tourist in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Her long black hair was tucked into a baseball cap, and she was only carrying one concealed weapon. While having a firearm probably would have given her some additional sense of security going into the investigation of a potentially dangerous energy source and those affiliated with it, she couldn't carry a gun onto an airplane. Instead, a quick visit to the SHIELD armory turned up a ceramic-graphene knife she could take with her, should the need to defend herself arise.
She really hoped it wouldn't, and the first leg of her trip passed without incident. The flight was long for her taste, especially when taking into account the three hours she spent at Jakarta for a layover, but at least there was no greater trouble than being recognized by a group of Indonesian tourists and pulled aside for autographs. More than a month since the Battle of New York, fame still felt unfamiliar to her, even as she wore sunglasses on the streets to hide her most distinctive feature and avoid being recognized.
But Vanessa moved on.
Nineteen hours later, she set foot in the airport. Though she was still shaking off her grogginess, her senses immediately picked up on a faint but undoubtedly primordial presence across the city. It pulsated with power in the same way the Scepter and the Tesseract did, but had its own unique signature, as if it held the essence of time itself. She knew immediately that it had to be her target.
Wasting no time checking into her hotel and depositing most of her belongings on the floor, she entered the coordinates into her phone to obtain a route. The easiest way to reach her destination would be by car, but she didn't want to hail a taxi for paranoia – the cabbie could recognize her, they could know something about the thing she was searching for... the possibilities went on. Bussing would require transfers, and the one remaining option was walking. She decided that it wasn't a bad idea.
The city didn't fail to fascinate her as she navigated its bustling avenues, following the beacon in her mind. It had been a long time since she had last treaded streets like those. Crowded markets boasting fancy silks and spices, street vendors with carts covered in delicacies, the nutty fragrance of sesame wafting into the air ー all of it reminded her of the night markets of her childhood home.
Half an hour into her expedition, she ducked into an air-conditioned fast food joint to grab a late lunch as well as to seek refuge from the sweltering summer sun. While Vanessa was fairly resistant to high temperatures, and Kathmandu was relatively cool compared to her birthplace of Shanghai, she still wished to avoid the peak of the day's heat.
It was then, in a cool corner of a McDonald's, that she noticed she was being followed.
A presence had stalked her into the restaurant, and she realized that the same signature had been there just outside of the airport, on the streets, and even on the bus she had taken. How could she have not noticed it before? She blamed the mild jet lag she was beginning to experience.
There was something else about the energy, besides the fact that it had followed her, that was intriguing. It exuded an eerily mystical quality that was mixed with the signature of a typical human. The strange blend created a sensation that sent shivers down Vanessa's back, now that she was fully aware of it.
Carefully activating her eye abilities out of sight of the other occupants of the restaurant, she cloaked the silver of her irises with dark swirls of illusion and locked her gaze on the source of the energy.
It came from a fairly young East Asian woman with long, wavy hair, dressed in some traditional linen garb reminiscent of the ones worn by several of the street vendors she had seen outside. Despite the heat, she wore a light beige cloak, looking rather out of place in a western fast food chain.
Vanessa briefly considered confronting her… follower, but decided against it. There was a certain unsettling prickle that the woman's ambience possessed, something dangerous.
Picking up her plastic tray, she walked over to a nearby trashcan and set it on top of the stack. She kept an eye on the woman with her peripheral vision, and for a second caught an disturbing glimpse of a dark brown iris trained on her.
Vanessa exited the restaurant and was immediately assaulted by a wave of dusty heat. Inside the McDonald's, the signature had yet to stir, but she monitored it closely as she hiked up a steep, uphill road. Sure enough, the second she was out of the sightlines of the restaurant's windows, the energy was spurred into action.
She wondered if she could lose the woman, and put this into practice by ducking down a shadowy alley decorated with clotheslines hung with colourful washing. For a normal person, doing so in an unfamiliar country was a terrible idea, but Vanessa's senses told her that the area was deserted, save for the small stray cat that was pawing through a garbage can.
She wove through small streets and back alleys, taking a long and squiggly path towards her destination. However, that soon proved futile as she recognized the signature, somehow perched on a rooftop, monitoring her as she stopped for breath in a narrow slit between two buildings.
Vanessa wiped away the beads of sweat forming on her forehead and tilted her head upwards to catch a fleeting image of a sweeping cloak, before the woman slid out of her line of sight. She was still above her, though, so Vanessa called, "Hello there."
She waited for several seconds for a response, which came in the form of rustling cloth and a dark shadow jumping from the building and landing with a muted fwump on the dusty ground. The figure removed its hood, further confirming that it was the woman from earlier.
"Er, it's nice to meet you," Vanessa said, one hand extending in a handshake while the other moved to her waist, as if to tighten the jacket tied around it. Instead, she felt her fingers brush the faint outline of the knife concealed in its folds, in case she needed to defend herself at a moment's notice.
"Likewise," said the woman, taking her outstretched hand. She had a faint accent. "Tina Minoru."
Japanese, the SHIELD agent observed. Living abroad for ten to fifteen years, probably. Mid to late twenties… wait, is she even human?
What else could she be, though? An Asgardian? That was unlikely ー she felt powerful and skilled, yes, but the amount of energy present within her couldn't be compared to the likes of Thor and Loki. Then what?
"Vanessa Liang," she introduced, determined to find the answers for herself. She rejected all of her practiced aliases, since it was likely that the older woman already knew who she was, anyway. "May I ask why you've been following me?"
Minoru gave her the ghost of a smile. "You're Vanessa Liang," she repeated, as if that simple statement was enough to answer all of her questions. "Perhaps you're better know as… Sterling."
"That's true," she admitted. "If you'll allow me to be frank, though, what do you want with me?"
"That depends," Minoru said cryptically, the tone of her voice bearing a semblance to Fury's. The SHIELD operative groaned internally.
"On?" Vanessa asked, feeling apprehension stirring in the pit of her stomach. She still hadn't quite yet recovered from her last confrontation with an otherworldly deity, and she desperately hoped that Minoru wasn't one of those.
"Why you're here," she replied. The corners of her mouth lifted briefly, as if in reassurance. "What brings you to Nepal, Miss Liang?."
"Work," said Vanessa simply. Minoru looked as if she was about to press for details, but she held up a hand. "I can't tell you any more than that. It's quite classified."
"Of course, you're an associate of SHIELD." Minoru nodded, and Vanessa wondered what exactly the woman was aware of. "What would it take for you to tell me?"
Oh, more informational bargains. I seem to be coming across these a lot, lately.
She opened her mouth, about to say "A trade-off," but at the last moment she changed her words to "There are people coming."
It was true. She sensed four presences closing in on them in the narrow alleyway, and soon enough, the leader of them emerged from the shadows and blocked off the exit.
He was tall and intimidating, with close-cropped black hair and a tanned, scarred face. Vanessa, however, was relatively unfazed ー there was nothing particularly imposing by his power signature, and after Loki, the gangsters like him on the streets of New York all seemed much more bark than bite.
"Give us money and we let you go," snarled the man in heavily accented English, baring a mouthful of crooked teeth.
Behind him, one of his subordinates snickered something in their native language, causing the him to grin sharply. Next to her, Minoru visibly stiffened at the suggestion, her face becoming stony with anger.
It took Vanessa a couple of seconds to come to the correct realization, and she didn't need to understand Nepali to know what they meant. Ordinarily, she wouldn't draw her weapon on a civilian. If they were asking for money, she could give some to them and avoid conflict. It wasn't like the money was hers to begin with.
But what they were possibly hinting at was a different story, and she wasn't exactly keen on being assaulted in a foreign country.
She slipped the sheathed ceramic knife out of the folds of her jacket just as the man took a large step forwards. He froze in his steps when he saw her weapon, eyes narrowing in hesitation and surprise. But then, he grunted and picked up a conveniently placed wooden stick that lay on the ground and dusted it off, the predatory smile returning to his face.
"Uh... if you see the opportunity, run," Vanessa told Minoru, already trying to discern the best way to defend them. But the woman only smirked.
"Run?" She cracked her knuckles and tossed her long, black hair behind her. "You wouldn't say that if you knew who I am. You're the one who should run, Sterling."
A chill ran down Vanessa's spine, both from the unexpectedly aggressive edge in her voice and the dangerous quality that seemed to surround her in almost visible waves of energy. For the first time, she found the words to describe the smoldering coals that comprised her ambience, and as weird as it sounded, Tina Minoru had a… flavour. She wasn't the first or only ー Cordelia's energy was citrusy and her late mother's was floral ー but she was certainly unique, her vitality spiced with distinct notes of cinnamon.
Her power coiled inside of her and released in an instant of explosive energy. She launched herself at the leader of the gang, bypassing his flailing stick easily and landing a very solid punch to his cheekbone. Vanessa almost cringed at the wet crack, before snapping out of her incredulity to assist her new, tentative ally.
She kept the knife in its sheath, defending herself carefully with the flat of the blade (ceramic tended to be good for cutting, but brittle) while landing kicks to finish, aiming mostly for the fleshier areas of the stomach and waist to avoid seriously injuring any of her assailants. While it seemed that they had plenty of experience fighting, all but the leader were unarmed and none of them were professionally trained like she was, or like Minoru appeared to be.
Within moments, the fight was over, and the men scuttled away in defeat.
Minoru huffed as they left, "I alone would have been enough." There was a brief pause before she added grudgingly, "But you're quite good."
"Thank you," Vanessa replied graciously, brushing the dust from her jacket. "Now can you tell me who you are, exactly?"
"Maybe later," she answered, making Vanessa inhale deeply to hide her growing frustration. "And only if you tell me what brings you here."
Vanessa hesitated, for good reason. Did she dare tell Minoru she was tracking an energy source that has the potential to be as powerful as the Tesseract or the Scepter?
The answer was no. But at the same time, there were things she also needed to understand, and at the rate things were going, she wouldn't be getting answers any time soon.
"Fine," she agreed, choosing her next words carefully. "I apologize for running away from you, by the way. I wasn't sure what your intentions were and paranoia kind of comes with the job, which brings me here… I'm here on a SHIELD research project. We're looking into gamma radiation."
It was not a complete lie ー just not the whole truth. Minoru seemed somewhat mollified, but not entirely convinced.
"Gamma radiation?" she pushed on. "In the city?"
"Just around," said Vanessa casually. She could feel the pulse of the energy just a few blocks away from their current location, constantly present at the base of her skull. "Our instruments have been picking up an unusual amount of it in Kathmandu, yes. The first possible source I need to inspect isn't far from here."
At this, Minoru's dark eyes narrowed, the elegant arches of her eyebrows drawing in towards each other. "Is that so?" she muttered.
She cast a barely perceptible glance at the entrance of the alley, towards the direction of the energy signature. If it were not for Vanessa's enhanced vision, she would have missed this fleeting piece of confirmation that Minoru knew what she was searching for.
"You know where it is and the cause of it," she observed. "But I don't suppose you want me to. Are you going to stop me?"
The older woman seemed to be considering the same question, the contemplation plain in her expression. Finally, she shook her head. "No," she said, shooting another brief look at a tall pagoda in the distance. "But keep in mind that I'm interested."
With that vague statement, Minoru spun on her heel and jumped, landing with one leap on the top a building and disappearing from sight. Vanessa sighed, resigning herself to returning to the crowded, winding streets, wondering how the heck she got herself tangled in something weird, again.
It isn't quite as bad as an alien invasion, though, is it?
Not yet, anyway.
Minoru's presence followed her closely from the rooftops as she wove through the tangle of people, turning down a vendor as politely as possible as he offered her dried persimmon. The dusty fragrance of a familiar childhood snack almost tempted her to pause, but she had a task to finish and answers to find.
Carried away from his hawking calls by the stream of people, Vanessa very nearly knocked over a running child as she freed herself from the other travellers. This was because her internal radar was screaming at her as she found herself in front of a small, unadorned door. She could very plainly feel the signature she was tracking within the building, and a quick check with her phone told her that she had the right coordinates as well.
She raised a hand, her knuckles hovering over the wood to knock. But what would she say if someone were to open it? Hello, I'm here to inspect your home for gamma radiation. And no, you don't have a choice in this matter. Oh, she was beginning to sound like Stark.
Before she could regret her decision, she rapped on the door three times, and took a step back to wait. She could feel Minoru's signature perched overhead on a tall pagoda, watching her like a hawk.
What if this is a trap of some kind? she wondered. It was definitely possible. But she didn't have much time to dwell on the fact, because then the door opened.
And standing in front of her was Tina Minoru.
It was a split-second's decision that Tina Minoru pulled out her sling ring and jumped through a portal, nearly breaking the record she had set for portal-casting speed amongst the Kamar-Taj practitioners. Appearing in front of the door to the compound as Vanessa Liang's knuckles tapped against the wood, she startled the sorcerer who was just about to answer the call.
"Sorry," she said quickly, recognizing the dark-skinned magician as her own apprentice, Karl Mordo, and one of the most recent additions to their host of more advanced trainees. "I'll get it."
He nodded, and with wide, surprised eyes shuffled a few steps back. Minoru unlocked the door with magic and swung it open, revealing a bewildered looking SHIELD agent, whose eyes flickered upwards briefly and back to her.
"Come in," she said briskly. "I'll take you to see someone."
The younger woman stepped in tentatively, the expression on her face plainly shouting, Why am I doing this? Seeing this, Tina smiled a little.
"This is Kamar-Taj," she announced, flinging open a set of large double doors to reveal a long balcony that overlooked the training area and wrapped around the base of the biggest pagoda. A class of novices were training with sling rings in the courtyard below, instructed by one of her close friends, Yvonne Marks, a magician who came from the London Sanctum.
Vanessa only nodded slowly, taking in the scene with her mouth slightly ajar. "Uh, okay."
"Er… Master Minoru," said Karl Mordo somewhat timidly, pulling Minoru aside. "One of the first things you taught me was to not let just anyone in."
"She isn't just anyone, Mordo. And the second thing I taught you was to trust my judgement," she retorted. "And trust yourself. It's not often you come across someone of such caliber, and it's hard to deny that we're in desperate need of new additions."
When the Dark Dimension launched an assault on the Hong Kong Sanctum a month ago, the Masters of the Mystic Arts realized that their ability to defend Earth from Dormammu was no longer adequate. While they had managed to fend the attack off, it was at a cost they weren't quite willing to pay. As a result, all senior disciples like Minoru herself were given instructions to recruit if they found someone suitable.
Originally assigned to keep an eye out for any suspicious behaviour from Vanessa Liang, an enhanced, while she was in Kathmandu, Minoru ended up more intrigued by the Avenger and SHIELD agent after she found her way to the doorstep of Kamar-Taj without any help or indication of having knowledge about the place.
Normally, the protective wards over the building turned away spyware and magical tracking, but they did not seem to hinder Vanessa Liang. There either had to be a hole in security or Sterling was gifted; Tina Minoru was willing to take her chances with the latter, given their situation.
Mordo pulled her aside, a few steps away from their guest. "She's one of them, isn't she? One of those people they call the Avengers?"
Minoru nodded. "And?"
"How do you expect her to do this and that at the same time?"
She blinked twice. In the rush and excitement of finding a promising recruit, she had completely forgotten to consider that said promising recruit was also one of several individuals known as 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' and on her way to becoming a celebrity.
But they could find a way around that, she decided. One of their most skilled sorcerers was once a famous athlete but managed to balanced his two careers without exposing Kamar-Taj to the public. While Vanessa Liang's situation was somewhat different, she hadn't seen so much potential since… well, herself. The opportunity was just too good to pass up.
Okay, so maybe I don't have a way around it yet, but it wouldn't hurt to enlist the girl as an ally.
"What is this place?" asked Vanessa, her incredulous eyes glued to the neat, tidy row of swirling portals. "You call it… Kamar-Taj?"
"Yes," she replied proudly," and I believe we have here what you seek."
This statement seemed to prompt Vanessa out of her fascinated stupor, and she met Minoru's dark brown eyes with a pair of her own. "And why, may I ask, are you telling me this?"
As she followed Minoru through the compound, Vanessa listened to the sorceress (she was still trying to wrap her head around it) explain.
"We call ourselves the Masters of the Mystic Arts," she said, tilting her head towards the group of training men and women in the courtyard. Vanessa hadn't been able to discern their signatures earlier, and she speculated that it was due to the fact that they were masked by several larger ones, the most potent of which was the one she was tracking.
"The Masters of the Mystic Arts," she repeated. "How did you get these abilities?"
At this, Minoru wore a prideful smile. "Unlike you Avengers, whose powers were concocted in a lab or built from machinery, we learned this."
Vanessa didn't take any offense from her statement. It was impressive, no matter which way she looked at it. A man maybe in his early thirties extended two fingers in front of him and a shower of red sparks opened up a rift in the air, which expanded into what appeared to be a dimensional doorway. Within a spinning circle, she could see a painstakingly familiar skyline ー New York.
"That's a portal? Can you just go to New York like that?" The fascination in her voice must have been palpable. "How does it work?"
"Magic," Minoru smirked. "We can't divulge the secrets of our art to outsiders, though."
"You let me in," Vanessa pointed out. "I still don't know why you did that."
A voice in her mind was alternately yelling it's a trap! and none of this makes sense!, but she was ignoring it in favour of her curiousity. There was so much that she wanted to know that she didn't even know where to begin.
"Soon," Minoru promised, taking a look back to make sure Vanessa was following. She waved to a passing sorcerer, who waved back with a sweep of a cream-coloured robe. "I'm going to take you to see someone."
"Who?" Beneath the veil of illusion, Vanessa's eyes were still glowing silver, taking in everything with flawless detail. It was beginning to become difficult to focus on anything, with the orange sparks of magic to her right and a long corridor of ornately decorated doors to her left. Her senses were also going haywire as she noted that Kamar-Taj (whatever the place was) wasn't exactly picky about who they allowed entry. She saw in the courtyard below people of varying nationalities, ages, and a myriad of different energies, all thrumming with bright vitality.
"The Ancient One," replied Minoru. The response caused Vanessa to temporarily forget her awe and sigh, long and deeply through her nose. Why did everything have to be so cryptic?
"The Ancient One," she echoed, doing her utmost to conceal her impatience. "Who are they, exactly?"
The woman stopped abruptly in front of a panelled door of wood and paper, and she slid it open to reveal a wizened old man whose head was bent over an open folio. "The Sorcerer Supreme," Minoru declared.
She couldn't have been talking about the old man, Vanessa decided ー how could he be the Sorcerer Supreme when there was a much more potent presence that lay on the other side of a painted screen?
"I'm here to see the… Ancient One," she told the man. He glanced up from his reading and nodded once, picking up the papers and leaving the room with his dark blue robes trailing on the floor.
"Not bad," said Minoru. "Most who come here have more preconceptions."
Vanessa shrugged. "I trust only what I see. And feel."
"Then tell me, Miss Liang," came a harmonious female voice as the tip of a shoe made itself visible from behind the screen. "What do you see and feel here?"
The speaker stepped out into the open and Vanessa gave herself a moment to take in the Ancient One before answering. She was a slender woman with a shaved head, her gait graceful as she made her way towards the centre of the room in the cream-coloured robes that seemed to be the standard. She held a sort of timeless energy ー living up to her name as the 'Ancient One.'
Vanessa briefly wondered if she were the source of the signature she'd been tracking, before dismissing the idea. There was a larger power still waiting in the bowels of the compound.
"A simple room occupied by three people," said Vanessa, looking around the place in rumination. "None of them quite ordinary."
The Ancient One tilted her head as an indication to continue.
"And I feel energy," she concluded. "So much of it, in all sorts of natures and forms. Who exactly are you people, and what exactly is this place?"
The Sorcerer Supreme smiled and gestured to a low table surrounded with wooden seats. "Please, Miss Liang, take a seat. There is much to talk about if you want your questions answered. Would you like some tea?"