T: Hello again loyal readers! I hope you have been enjoying the story till now. Here's the newest chapter, until the next one appears at least. Now we are on with Atlantis's world for a while now. Anyway, read on!
A day had passed since our heroes had been saved by the mysterious laser blast, it had puzzled Mickey ever since but now was not the time for deep thinking. They had arrived near their destination and programmed the Excalibur to keep in orbit of the planet.
"Here it is. The world we have been looking for!" Mickey said as he pointed at the planet below.
"So what can we expect in Atlantis then Mickey?" Riku said as he stood beside him.
"Well, first off we need to get there." Mickey said.
"What, can't we just land there?" Sora said looking slightly shocked.
"Remember Sora, it is Atlantis! It is under water." Kairi said in a know-it-all way.
"We have been able to land in Atlantica before with ease, and that was underwater. So what makes this place so special?" Sora replied.
"Atlantica?" Kairi asked looking at Sora with a raised eyebrow.
"I'll take you there sometime. I'm sure you'll like it." Sora said answering her question.
"Well unlike Atlantica, Atlantis is not only underwater, but it is also protected by an ancient artefact if I remember correctly." Mickey said tapping his head, hoping it would remind him.
"Something similar to Alexander?" Kairi asked.
"Kinda more advanced, but I can't really remember. It has been a long time." Mickey said in sadness.
"Right..." Kairi said.
"Don't worry! Once we get there I'm sure we will find all the answers!" Sora said trying to cheer up.
"Mmm, I guess you're right." Kairi said.
"Sora, right? Now I am scared!" Riku said in mocking scared voice.
"Shut up!" shot back Sora, amid Kairi's giggles.
"First we need to land, any good locations Donald?" Donald was typing something into the computer.
"It says the museum is a good place. In the basement."
"Very well, we shall land there. Hopefully there won't be anyone who notices us coming out." Mickey said before they all got onto the teleporter.
On the planet...
A meeting was being held in the basement, a man stood behind a small podium. He wore glasses that were a bit too big, he also wore a pale yellow shirt with a ribbon on he wore a brown jacket as well. Resting on the podium was what looked like a small shield, there was also a map of the world behind him and too his left was a blackboard with the words 'The coast of Ireland' on it and to his right was a small statue of a bearded man. Above the writing seemed to be the original language it came from. The man's name was Milo Thatch, he worked in the museum.
"Good afternoon gentlemen. First off I would like to thank you for taking the time to hear my proposal. I am sure you have all the heard the legend of Atlantis, a continent somewhere in the mid'Atlantic that was home to an advanced civilisation possessing technology, FAR beyond our own. At least according to our friend play dough here." Milo said while patting a statue of a historian who was sitting next to him.
"Who was struck by some, some cataclysmic event that sank it beneath the sea." He pointed to a small fish tank to emphasize his point.
"Now you may ask, why Atlantis? It's just a myth, isn't? Pure fantasy?" Milo said looking left to right at the men before him.
"Well that is where you are wrong!" He held up a bunch of slides.
"10,000 years before the Egyptians built the pyramids, Atlantis had electricity! Advanced medicine, even the power of flight! Impossible you say. Well no, not for them!" Milo said smiling at the men, the slide showed ancient carvings done by Egyptians and other races showing flying vehicles that resembled aquatic animals.
"Numerous ancient cultures all around the globe believed that Atlantis possessed a power source of some kind. A power that was more advanced than steam, than coal. More powerful than our modern, internal combustion engines." The slides showed pictures of different power sources as he spoke. He looked back at the men gathered before him.
"Gentlemen, what I propose. Is that we find Atlantis, find that power source, and bring it back to the surface! Now..." Milo pulled out a slide showing what looked like a page from a book.
"...this is a page from an illuminated text that describes a book called the 'Sheppard's Journal'. It was said to have been a firsthand account of Atlantis, and its exact whereabouts." The slide showed a page of text with a man holding a book in his arms. The writing on the page was written in Atlantean. After describing it, he moved to the blackboard.
"Now, based on a century's old of Norse text. Many historians believe the journal resides in Ireland." He rolled his eyes at this before bending down to pick up the shield.
"But...after comparing the text. To the runes on this Viking shield." He had struggled to lift up the old shield from where he placed it.
"I found that one of the letters had been mistranslated." He rolled up his sleeve without letting go of the shield.
"So, by changing this letter, and inserting the correct one." Milo rubbed out the R with his sleeve.
"We find that the Sheppard's Journal, the key to Atlantis. Lies NOT, in Ireland, gentlemen. But in Iceland!" He drew a C where the R used to be and turned to face the men.
Silence greeted the room, the only sound heard was the faint tapping of Milo's fingers against the trim of the shield. His eyes darted between the men, letting them take in his words.
"Pause for effect..." He whispered to himself with a silly grin on his face.
"Gentlemen..." He had put down the shield, nearly dropping it and stood back up.
"...I'll take your questions now." He said rolling up his sleeves with a small smile. A few seconds later, several bodies fell from nowhere and dropped right onto the men listening to his speech.
Many moans and groans were heard as they got to their knees and looked around.
"So this is the basement?" Goofy said pulling himself up.
"Nice landing co-ordinates Donald." Riku said rubbing his sore behind.
"We landed on..." Riku removed the object he was sitting on. "...A bunch of masks?" Riku raised an eyebrow as they had fallen on numerous other masks and hats made to look like people.
"Who the heck are you lot!?" Milo yelled in surprise at the surprise visitors.
"Ah! A HUMANETH!!" Choco yelled in surprise.
"Huh?" Everyone turned to look at the shocked man.
"Um, these your masks?" Sora said holding one.
"Uh, yes, but who are you?"
"I am Sora. These are my friends. That's Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, King Mickey and they are the Turks." He pointed to each in turn.
"We have names!" Reno said trying to stand but kept falling on random objects.
"Uh, hi there. I am Milo, Milo Thatch." Milo was about to say something when the phone began ringing.
"Um, excuse me for a minute. And keep quiet." He leaned on the blackboard and grabbed the phone.
"Photography and linguist, Milo Thatch speaking." A very loud yet muffled reply came from the person on the other side, Milo's smile quickly disappeared.
"Yeah...yeah, just...a sec." He put the phone back on its stand and walked over to light switch.
"AH! MY EYESETH!!" Choco yelled as he shielded his eyes from the light.
Milo walked past the abundance of bodies, most of them had got up except for Choco and Reno, Reno was too busy pretending he was a native warrior wearing the mask. Milo quickly took it off him and threw it to the side before walking over to what looked like an old boiler unit.
He turned a few knobs on the machine resulting in the boiler growing like a hungry tiger before picking a wrench up and whacking it rather hard on the boiler. It made a slight explosion sound, everyone par Milo looked at the boiler with a shocked look; Milo had walked back to the blackboard which showed a map leading to a location in Iceland marked with X. He leaned on it again much faster this time and picked the phone back up.
"How's that? Better?" More muffled mad rambling could be heard as Milo slowly put the phone back on its stand.
"So what are you doing down here Milo?" Mickey asked before grinning at the map on the blackboard.
"Well I was practicing for a meeting I am having later. Then you guys fell from nowhere. How did you do that?" Everyone looked at each other.
"Oh it's kinda complicated."
"Uh what was originally on the map?" Kairi asked looking at the missing part of the map.
"Huh?" Milo looked at the map and looked at his jacket before chuckling nervously.
"It was supposed to be the directions to the Sheppard's Journal."
"The what?" Donald asked with a confused look.
"It's a journal that, in short term, leads to the lost city of Atlantis." At hearing this everyone in the room par Milo gasped.
"Atlantis!? We need to get there!" Mickey said.
"Well, good luck with that. It's been lost for years. Besides I need to get ready for my meeting soon." A koo-koo clock could be heard, at least until Choco shot it.
"What the?" Milo stared at Choco.
"It was a lower bird creature, only Chocobo's are allowed to exist!! All others must DIE!!" Choco quickly received a slap from Tseng.
"Rrright. I take it you people aren't from around here anyway." Milo said gathering numerous papers and books.
"What makes you think that?"
"You're wearing funny clothes. And you have a talking animal." Everyone looked at his clothes and theirs and didn't think so. Choco on the other hand had written Milo down for extermination upon conquering the universe.
"Well, I would love to stay and chat, but I need to get to my meeting."
He stopped at a small picture and looked at it, it was of his grandfather. He smiled as he remembered the times he spent with him as a child.
"Who's that?" Kairi said looking at the photo.
"My grandfather, I miss him."
"Oh sorry I didn't know." Kairi said looking sorry for him.
"It's okay, it's just that-" He was interrupted by a sudden sound.
He went over to another native warrior mask and saw a message appear in its mouth. He picked it up and read it out loud.
"Dear Mr Thatch, we would like to inform you that you're meeting today has been moved from 4:30pm to 3:30pm." He looked at the clock that was now missing a top half of it managed to make out that it was 4:05 now.
"What?" He was confused about this sudden development until another tube with a message appeared quickly.
"Dear Mr Thatch, due to your absence the board has voted to reject your proposal. Have a nice weekend, Mr Harcourt's office!?" He looked rather shocked.
"THEY CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!!" He yelled out loud, everyone was looking at each other confused. They had never seen anything like that before.
Milo grabbed his coat and other such belongings and ran off up the stairs; everyone looked at each other before shrugging it off and following him.
When they got out of the basement, they couldn't find any sign of him. They looked over the museum but couldn't find anything.
"Argh, where could he have gotten too?" Sora said as he met up with the others near the entrance to the museum.
"Who knows, besides why should we care?" Riku said with his arms crossed.
"He knows something about Atlantis! Surely that is a good enough reason." Kairi said looking at Riku.
"Mmm, I say we - what the?" Riku looked to see a short man hide behind a small bush in the museum. Shortly afterwards, Milo appeared.
"Uh, sir?" He moved the bushes aside.
The man smiled weakly before opening his umbrella quickly, this resulted in Milo dropping his things and giving the man time to leg it out of the museum. He ran past Sora and the others who looked at him strangely along with several others while Milo followed him in hot pursuit.
"Should we follow him?" Sora asked to no one in particular.
"Hmm. Okay." Riku answered as they all saw Milo holding a small map in front of the mans face. The man was sitting in an old fashioned car.
"This museum funds scientific expeditions, based on FACTS! Not on legends and folklore!" He said shoving the map and several other papers back into Milo.
"Besides we need you here, we're depending on you!" The man said patting Milo's cheek.
"You do?"
"Yes, what with Winter coming that boiler is going to be needing a lot of attention."
"B-boiler?" Milo said looking angry and shocked, more shocked than angry.
"Onward driver!" The car he was in sped off down the street but Milo managed to keep up.
"The...the journal...it's in Iceland! I am sure of it this time!" The man wasn't paying any attention to Milo and just closed a small curtain on the window. He looked rather aggravated before a bump startled him.
Milo had jumped onto the car and was looking at him through the front window.
"Sir, I really hoped it hadn't had to come to this. But this is..." Milo pulled out a small letter from his coat and stuck it on the window.
"A letter of resignation! If you reject my proposal-" The driver then began to shake him off by driving left and right a bit, he succeeded in doing so as well.
"I'll QUIT!!" Milo yelled at the car.
The vehicle stopped suddenly and began to reverse backwards to where Milo was.
"I mean it Sir. If you refuse to fund my proposal-"
"You'll what!? Throw your career down the toilet just like your grandfather?" When he mentioned his grandfather, he made a crazy expression with his finger twiddling around indicating he was a loony.
Sora and the others saw what was happening and stopped a few metres away, but kept within hearing range.
"You have a lot of potential Milo. Don't throw it all away chasing fairytales!" Mr Harcourt tried to convince Milo.
"But I can prove that Atlantis exists sir!"
"You want to go on an expedition?" He reached inside his coat pockets.
"Here..." he threw Milo a small coin. "Take the trolley to the sea and jump in!"
"Maybe the cold water will help clear your head!! Driver!" He closed the curtain before splashing Milo with water as the car left.
Sora and the others walked over to him and helped him up.
"You okay?" Sora asked.
Milo sighed. "I'll be fine. I should have known he would refuse, they never believed me about Atlantis."
"We do!" Goofy said trying to cheer him up.
"Mm, thanks."
"So what are you going to now?" Kairi asked looking sorry.
"Probably go home, nothing else to do."
"We'll go with you! Besides we need to find out how to get to Atlantis." Mickey said.
"Why?"
"Well..." Mickey told him that they needed to get there but didn't tell him everything just yet.
They followed Milo until they got back to his flat; he walked and kicked his shoes off. The room was small and some of them had to stay outside. It was dark now and was raining heavily accompanied by thunder and lighting.
"I'm home. Fluffy? Here kitty..." Milo went to turn the light on but nothing happened.
"Milo James Thatch?" A voice spoke out, and the silhouette of a woman could be seen.
"Uh, who are you? And just how did you get in? The door is locked!" Milo said looking at the woman.
It was hard to tell but she was wearing a fluffy coat, with hat to match. She had blonde hair and wore a black dress.
"I came down the chimney, Ho ho ho." She said as she sat in a chair.
"Who is she?" Kairi asked Sora and Riku who were there.
"My name is Helga Sinclair. I am acting under behalf of my employer who has a most intriguing proposition for you. Are you interested?" she asked looking at Milo.
"Your employer, huh? Who is your employer?" A flash of lightning illuminated the room for a second, before the light faded and only their eyes could be seen in the darkness.
T: There we are, hope you enjoyed it. Till next time!