Chapter 8: Talks, Trades, and Travels
"Thank you for coming Mr. O'Connor." The Ancient One was a bald caucasian woman that looked to be in her mid-40s, but in reality was likely several centuries old. She spoke in a calm and measured voice.
Sean was in the heart of the monastery of Kamar-Taj, the place where the Masters of the Mystic Arts were trained. Here Dr. Strange would be trained to become the next Sorcerer Supreme, learning everything they had to teach faster than anyone else had. Sean himself wasn't too interested in investing the time into learning magic right now, but if he could pick up a few resources for later he wouldn't be opposed.
"It was my pleasure. I had considered coming by earlier, but didn't want to step on any toes." Sean sat in the chair offered to him and accepted the cup of tea.
"Your consideration is appreciated. I must say your presence has changed a great many things." The Ancient One seated herself across from him. "And yet, you've always been a part of the course of events. It's an interesting conundrum."
So she could tell that he was inserted into things, but it was thorough enough that he was a solid part of the timeline as if he had always been here. That was good to know. It didn't really change anything, but he would be more aware of people that are in contact with dimensional energies catching on to him.
"I can only hope my changes are for the better."
The older woman nodded, "Most of them have been, however I asked you here to discuss the coming threats. Two in particular."
Sean nodded in understanding, "I assume you mean Dormammu and Thanos." At her nod he continued, "So what did you want to discuss about them?"
With a deep sigh she leaned forward slightly, "I know you already have plans in place for Thanos, something we can discuss more in depth later. I have to ask you to stay out of the events coming up with Dormammu."
Her announcement didn't really surprise him, "Why? I can think of a couple of reasons you would ask that, but I want to hear it from you."
"In order for the world to be prepared for Thanos, things need to proceed in a certain manner."
"That makes no sense." She actually seemed surprised at his quick rebuttal, "I get that you want to atone for things I can't even begin to guess at, but let me put it to you like this: To make Strange the Sorcerer Supreme you want to take Kaecilius, yourself, Mordo, potentially dozens of Masters and Apprentices, and two of the Sanctums out of the picture."
The Ancient One genuinely looked like she hadn't considered some of this, so Sean continued, "I can understand that Strange is supposed to be the best Sorcerer ever, but he can only do so much. There is no way that in a short amount of time, even with the extraordinary circumstances, he can equal all of you put together."
She sat back and seemed lost in thought, so Sean left her to her thoughts. It was a quiet five minutes, during which Sean realized his cup had refilled itself. Eventually the other person in the room came back to her senses and looked at him in a different light.
"I hadn't considered it like that. You said we would lose Mordo?"
"As I'm sure you know he doesn't take the revelation of your power source very well. After everything settles with Dormammu he decides that Sorcerers are stealing power and perverting nature. He attacks students that leave Kamar-Taj, like Pangborn, and strips them of their powers."
Again she was shocked. It was understandable because those events would happen after her death so she had no way of seeing it.
"I see. You have given me a lot to think about. If you would excuse me I think I need to meditate. Master Hamir will show you out, feel free to visit Bruce on your way."
Sean could tell he had shaken her a bit, so he stood before bowing respectfully and turned to leave. He was almost to the door when her voice sounded out again.
"Oh, and if I could ask a favor?" He nodded, "I've had a copy made of any of the books in our library that can be copied. Those with certain protections or enchantments can't be, but others can. May I ask you to store them, so if the worst should ever happen there is a copy of our knowledge outside the Sanctums. They are primarily the basics and starter volumes, nothing too advanced."
It was clear that she knew he would make use of the books himself, but didn't seem to mind. Sean wasn't going to turn the opportunity down so he agreed and continued through the door. On the other side the one handed Master Hamir waited to guide him from Kamar-Taj.
LINE BREAK
Until Sean got the call that the Convergence was starting, he'd asked Erik Selvig to let him know, he was free to move around and prepare. To start off he wanted to upgrade his Fortress' technical capabilities. His server primarily, but he was looking to put together some drones to handle some of the more menial work and maybe give the workshop an upgrade. Fortunately, he knew a couple people with access to some high-tech toys.
He could try getting everything from Tony, but he decided to see if he could convince Wakanda to sell him some stuff. Sean also hadn't been keeping up with the talks between them and Asgard, so it would be a nice chance to catch up.
Of course, the first thing he did was call T'Challa to make sure he was cleared. He was surprised to be not only welcomed, but even offered a ride and he had no reason to refuse. Apparently the talks were going very well, though nothing had been made official yet.
Once he arrived he was met by Sif. She bowed lightly, "My Prince."
"Stop, Sif. We're friends." He smiled and exchanged hugs with her, "Where are my brother and T'Challa?"
"They are sparring, you know how Thor is." She started leading him into the palace, "T'Challa said you wanted to talk about trading technology? He said you should talk to his sister, I'll show you the way."
Sean followed Sif down to the lab area. When they walked in they found a young black girl dancing around to some pop song. This was Shuri, the sister of T'Challa. She was likely one of the smartest people on the planet, up there with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.
She spun around with the beat and stopped when she saw them. For a long moment the three of them stared at each other. Shuri blushed and went to one of the consoles, pressing a button to turn the music off.
With all the regalness that fourteen years growing up as a princess had taught her, Shuri turned back to them, "Lady Sif, is this Thor's brother? T'Challa said he might be coming."
Sean decided to throw her a bone and act like nothing happened, "Hello, I'm Sean. I was hoping to talk with you about upgrading some of my tech."
"Shuri," she perked up as soon as he mentioned tech. "What are you working on?"
For the next few days Shuri helped Sean design and build a full server farm with a massive mainframe at its core. It used all of the Vibranium he had stocked up and then a little bit from Shuri, but since his stock regenerated he wasn't worried about it. They also used some of the Chitauri salvage to make it even more advanced. The final product was decades, maybe centuries, past what was available even in his original time. The cooling system Shuri installed kept the storage room it was in at a brisk twenty degrees fahrenheit, no matter how hot the system itself ran.
She also worked with him to design some drones and write a base code for them. He would have to wait until his box gave him more Vibranium so he could start building them. In exchange Sean gave her the designs for the Arc Reactor, a couple of his repulsor pistols, and a portion of the remaining Chitauri salvage.
Wakanda's power and weapons were better, but having different examples of tech can help to advance ideas. Just because his guns weren't quite as powerful, doesn't mean that the method he used to focus the beam couldn't help them in some other area. The same concept applied to all technology and engineering, even chemistry or biology could benefit from studying other examples.
Eventually Thor and T'Challa came to the lab, Sean enjoyed the frankly dumb look on Thor's face. The man was smart in his own way, and no one would discount his bravery, but technology was not his strong suit.
After staying the night in the Golden City and spending time with his brother and new friends, Sean was on his way to his next destination.
LINE BREAK
While Sean was traipsing around Asia and Africa, Ava had a different mission. Using her newly stabilised intangibility she would be retrieving some of the items that Sean hadn't gotten around to. Now that he had an extra pair of hands he had asked her to look into some of them if she had time.
Ava didn't mind stealing a few powerful items to keep them out of the wrong people's hands or to put them in the right hands. She had made a deal with Sean that he would explain the reasoning behind when he asked her to do something. Just to make sure that everything was above board.
Ever since she had met Sean he had been nothing but kind to her. He had saved Ava from falling down a path that she would have come to regret. When he had asked her to join him on this crazy Jump Chain thing of his she had made a decision.
Ava would help him the same way he helped her. She would try to help him keep his morals grounded, and not let him fall down that same path. Neither of them were particularly law-abiding, perfectly content to work to their own advantage. He was a mercenary and she had been little more than an assassin for Shield. Both of them were perfectly fine with a lot of the more morally gray actions, like theft, sabotage, and killing where necessary.
As long as they kept each other in check, no matter how powerful they became, then they would remain people that didn't regret the actions they had taken. That was more than a lot of people could say about themselves and the people around them. Just hearing Nat talk about how 'red her ledger is' was enough to make one wary of that much regret.
Ava had bugged Sean for a list of things that were floating around the world that may need to be removed, or anything they could make use of. Fortunately they had discovered during their time in New York that now she was officially a companion she could summon a portal to the Fortress. They couldn't use each other's portals to change locations, but she was free to make her own.
So now she was off to collect a rather eclectic assortment of things: Berserker Staff, Diviners, a Kree corpse, a badly made super serum, Gravitonium, a Hyperbaric Chamber, a Particle Infusion Chamber, and a Tesseract powered device in Peru.
Of course if she happened to pick up a few other things along the way, well he wasn't going to argue. He did also give her a number of names to keep an eye out for, a couple to avoid and a couple to leave messages for.
If Ava was being totally honest, she also wanted to prove to Sean she could hold her own on the journey to come. Sean might find his Fortress a bit more full than he was expecting once they met back up. What girl doesn't like to do a bit of shopping, especially on someone else's dime?
LINE BREAK
After a lengthy phone conversation Sean found himself ensconced in the New York office of Shield. He had asked to meet up with Fury to discuss some things. He figured it was time to lay the groundwork for moving forward.
"O'Connor," the large cyclops said as he entered the room and sat at the table. Sean had already taken a seat when he was first shown in.
"Fury, a pleasure as always," the two men shook hands and settled in to talk business. "I assume you've already assembled Coulson's new team?"
By this point Nick Fury was used to Sean knowing things he shouldn't, "Yes. He has Fitz-Simmons, May, and Triplett with him. They are currently trying to track down a Rising Tide hacker that seems to be very good at getting Shield intel." It was clear by the look on his face that he was hoping Sean had more information, he was in luck.
Sean nodded, "She goes by Skye, she should be near a diner in L.A. living out of her van. At least that's where I think she should be. Coulson will want to recruit her, and he definitely should. When she's settled I'll pay them a visit, I know about her past. If we play our cards right this should give us a good resource moving forward."
Fury made a note on a tablet that Sean hadn't seen him pull out, "Good to know, do you have anything else for me?"
With a deep sigh Sean leaned forward, "I can't tell you everything, not without breaking confidences, but something is coming. The scepter and the cube were two of six items spread across the galaxy that give someone power over fundamental aspects of the universe. Power, Reality, Time, Soul, Space, and Mind.
"They are called the Infinity Stones. The scepter holds the Mind Stone and the cube has the Space Stone. Of the other four one is on Earth, another will be here shortly, and the last three are all waiting to be retrieved. Within five or six years, a mad man bent on genocide will attempt to collect all six stones. He wants to use them to kill half of all life in the universe.
"I have two stored away and I plan to put a third there as soon as it arrives. The remaining one on Earth is well guarded for the time being, but the other two will almost certainly be found. At that point Thanos, the man I mentioned, will come to Earth to find the remaining stones. As long as he doesn't have all of the stones he can be beaten, but he will bring an army of literally galactic proportions.
"In order to be ready for him, we need all the power we can get. The Avengers and Shield both need to grow and prepare for war. There are three other groups that I will be talking to about joining that fight. It will be up to each of them whether to reveal themselves or not.
"All this being said, let me make it clear that when the time comes, Asgard will fight with you." Sean sat back after that rant, he sipped at the water that was provided. Now that the stones were in play it was time to start preparing. If they could have an army ready to meet Thanos then they actually stood a chance.
Fury was taken aback, clearly not expecting that, "Any reason you didn't think to mention that before?" He defaulted to wit while he tried to gather his thoughts.
"You had quite a bit on your plate, now that Hydra is underground and New York is done with it should be easier to focus on the bigger threat." Sean explained, and as much as Fury wanted to he couldn't really find a fault with that argument.
"So how do we prepare for something like that?"
"Well, I have a few ideas…"
LINE BREAK
It was almost another full year before Sean received a call from Selvig. During that time he helped Fury to prepare for Thanos' inevitable appearance. Wakanda, with advice from Asgard, decided it was time to stop hiding from the world. One thing that made this easier is that the Avengers were now based there and added another layer of protection.
Speaking of the Avengers, they were now officially an independent global organization. Strictly non-profit and funded by donations, mostly from Stark, Sean, and Wakanda, they responded to crises all over the world. Rhodey had chosen to resign his commission and joined them full time, as did everyone else in a similar position.
With Sean's advice Tony had avoided interfering in the cleanup of New York City, at least he didn't stop the crews from working. Instead he hired all of them to make sure as much of the technology as possible found its way to either Shield or the Avengers. One particular crew, run by a man named Adrian Toomes, had a couple of extra eyes placed on them by Shield though it proved unnecessary.
Now that Wakanda and Asgard were firm allies an embassy was set up that became the default Bifrost arrival and departure area in Birnin Zana, so it wasn't uncommon to find a few Asgardians around the city. This also prompted Sean to bring both groups, as well as Steve to represent the Avengers, into the preparations with Fury.
There was a bit of discontent with him for having made all of these moves without telling anyone, but after explanations had been given everyone settled down. It wasn't long before the Masters of the Mystic Arts joined these discussions, though they were still a secret from the rest of the world.
The Ancient One had taken Sean's advice to heart and sat down with both Kaecilius and Mordo to discuss everything. Apparently it had very nearly devolved into an all out fight, but after several weeks the two were now her staunchest supporters and advisors with Kaecilius joining the Avengers to help other people in his situation. Bruce had stayed long enough to gain full control of his transformations, but opted to return to scientific endeavours rather than learning sorcery.
Sean took the opportunity to fix a few more problems before they could become such. Killmonger was picked up by Shield and left in a room with Fury for several hours. Sean wasn't sure what was actually said in that room, but the Killmonger that emerged seemed more thoughtful and cautiously optimistic than the man who would be King in another life.
He took up his birth name N'Jadaka and lived in Birnin Zana now. There was still a lot of unresolved anger and tension between him and King T'Chaka, but he got on surprisingly well with his cousins T'Challa and Shuri. For the first time ever, and at T'Challa's insistence, there were two Black Panthers. Though N'Jadaka went by Gold Panther. This way the Black Panther, T'Challa, could stay in Wakanda and protect its people as was his duty and the Gold Panther, N'Jadaka, could join the Avengers to represent Wakanda on a global scale.
Another issue that Sean stepped in to fix was that of Hank Pym. He nudged Tony and Fury into approaching the older man that had been an integral part of Shield in its early days. Once he realized that Shield wasn't what it used to be, and now knowing that that meant Hydra influenced, he accepted their help to stop Darren Cross and reclaim his company. When he mentioned that he was too old to continue being Ant-Man Sean pointed him in Scott Lang's direction. Whether that led to anything was up to them.
Coulson's team had a much easier time of their mission, in fact it was down right boring. With Ava snatching most of the things they would encounter and Hydra even further underground than ever they had very little to do. It got to the point that they became more of a mobile training/observation posting that rotated newer agents through to get experience in the weird side of things.
They did however recruit one Daisy Johnson, known primarily as Skye, though Sean had yet to approach her about her past. He wanted things to settle a bit before he got into dealing with a group of genetically modified humans that might try to kill everyone else.
Throughout all of this Fury was still working on rooting out the last few remnants of Hydra. It was in one of the raids launched on a suspected base that they encountered the Winter Soldier. He escaped initially, but through a month long game of cat and mouse Sgt. James Buchanon 'Bucky' Barnes was finally brought into Shield custody. Deprogramming the Hydra brainwashing was another matter entirely, but at this point Shield had some experience so it was progressing well.
There were a few names besides Bucky that Sean had given to both Fury and Steve that were prospective recruits to either Shield or the Avengers. Names like: Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Matt Murdock, Danny Rand, Robbie Reyes, and Carl Creel. People that could do some serious good, but that had various issues to handle first. Sean decided to leave it up to the two men as to if or how much they would get involved. A couple of those people had already received a message from Ava to call Shield if they needed help, though Sean rather doubted any of them would.
Finally though, after all of that, Eric Selvig called Sean to tell him that the Convergence was approaching and that Jane Foster had gone missing through a portal of some kind. Fortunately she came back perfectly safe, but Sean knew that it was time to get things done. He had already warned the group planning for Thanos about what was likely to happen so Thor was sent to retrieve Jane and take her to Asgard. When the Dark Elves arrived they would be met with the full might of Asgard's army, as well several of the Avengers, Wakandans, and Sorcerers.
They were treating this as something of a trial run for some of their plans for Thanos. So it was that when the Dark Elves arrived, they found an empty city and the shields on the palace already in place. All of the non-combatants were either in Wakanda or in the palace.
The fight was swift and brutal, but not nearly as one-sided as it could have been. The Asgardians and their allies suffered minimal casualties and the Dark Elves were stopped in their tracks. They never even had a chance to see Jane Foster, let alone extract the Reality Stone from her. Sean and Ava were of course on hand to grab as much technology and bodies as they could.
Between the combined technical prowess of Wakanda and Asgard a method of extracting the reality stone had already been devised. Once that was finished the stone would be placed with the others in Sean's storage. It was already agreed that when Thanos arrived the time stone would join them.
Sean felt that the battle was a little anticlimactic, but like a few of the other movies Thor 2 was only such a big deal because none of the other Avengers showed up and the Asgardians were taken by surprise. Their swift victory was followed with a long celebration spread across both Asgard and Birnin Zana.
With that taken care of almost all of the outstanding issues were dealt with. Once Guardians of the Galaxy had a chance to play out then Thanos would be coming after the four stones now in possession of Earth. The only other problem was Ragnarok, but that would only trigger if Odin died, and he looked in no hurry to pass on.
There were also the Inhumans to deal with, but now that Thor 2 had come to pass and everyone was well on their way to being ready for Thanos Sean decided it was time for a chat with Daisy.
AN: Sorry for the short chapter, and quick resolution, but this one gave me a lot of trouble. I don't know what it was but I just couldn't get it all to work for a while. Anyway, there's probably only one or two chapters left. I decided to deal with most of the outstanding issues in one go. We'll be skipping pretty much all the way to the final showdown next chapter, depending on the length of that will determine if I need to split it or not.
Let me know what you think!