Had a little extra time on my hands tonight so in the middle of writing chapters of Cut Off One Head I started working on the first full chapter of Connected Worlds, only to surprise myself by finishing the entire chapter in only an hour.
Just a head's up to everyone, this story won't be as long as The Xehanort War was, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to put the same amount of effort and quality into the story.
Chapter 1: Morning Routines:
Six Years Later;
Earth – New York City:
Jake Long groggily opened his eyes to the sound of his wife making herself a light breakfast in the kitchen of their small apartment. He looked over at the clock and, noticing that it was 3:30 in the morning, sighed as he realized that this meant that Rose would be home late from work tonight. Whenever there was an emergency at her job, she always ate an early breakfast and typically didn't come home until late at night. But he'd nevertheless learned to accept it. It was the price of being married to a secret agent.
The former American Dragon groaned as he sat up on the bed and shifted back into human form. His little sister Haley, the current American Dragon, had been overwhelmed by a troll attack at the Magus Bazaar, the hub of New York City's supernatural community. Naturally, she'd called in her older brother and his wife for backup, and Jake had ended up going to sleep with more than a few bruises that night. He'd slept in dragon form since it was used less energy that would be better put towards healing his bruises than sleeping in human form would.
As he finished getting dressed and walked out of the bedroom, he thought of how much his life had changed since he'd found out about his heritage on his thirteenth birthday. Falling in love with Rose. Finding out she was a member of the Huntsclan, an organization seeking genocide against all things supernatural. Rose deciding that her love for him meant more than the prejudiced views the Huntsclan had raised her to believe. Rose attempting to sacrifice herself to destroy the Huntsclan forever at the cost of her own life, immediately followed by Jake saving her life at the cost of her memories of him and the supernatural. Rose recovering her memories in time to help stop the Dark Dragon (the number one supernatural threat in the entire world) from enslaving the entire dragon race.
After the battle against the Dark Dragon, their lives had been relatively peaceful. They'd finished high school without any problems, and their relationship remained steady. By the time they graduated high school, Jake decided to become a mythology teacher (the irony being that as a mythological "creature" himself he knew for a fact that half the stuff he'd be teaching was completely bogus or wildly inaccurate), while Rose had been planning to enlist in the military, until a different, more covert government agency came along and offered her a job. Then after three years her agency got downsized in a wild public spectacle that nearly destroyed the organization.
But thankfully the agency had recovered and Rose remained employed in a job that allowed her to put the skills she learned in the Huntsclan to a more positive use. She and Jake had gotten married five years ago, and after Jake retired as the American Dragon (a position requiring him to serve as a mediator, representative, and guardian to every supernatural being in the country) when he started college, they'd finally been able to settle down. Sure, Rose's job was often dangerous, but that was something she did for a living of her own volition. Jake had to hold the position of the American Dragon by virtue of being the only Dragon in the U.S. old enough to fill the position.
Jakes thoughts snapped back to the present as he walked in to the kitchen to find Rose finishing off an egg and cheese sandwich with sausages and bacon. Something big was clearly going on at work, since she was already dressed in full combat gear with a loaded pistol in a holster on her right hip and her old Hunts-Staff leaning against the chair behind her. Though her right hand was her dominant one, she had trained her hands to get used to wielding each weapon in either hand for the purposes of duel wielding in case a situation required her to use both her gun and her staff.
"Hey," Jake said as he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek pefore sitting down across the table from her. It had become a recurring thing for them because of her irregular work schedule that whoever got up first would make breakfast for the both of them, so Jake took a bite out of his own sandwich after pulling in his chair.
"Hey yourself," Rose replied with a smirk. "Sorry I've got to run. My boss called me in early today. She told me it was urgent but she didn't say why."
"Don't worry about it," Jake answered with a smile. "They probably figured that it would either take too long over the phone."
"Yeah," she commented as she finished the last bite of her early breakfast. "That's what I figured too. But that reminds me. You've got that meeting at Draco tonight, so what are we going to do about dinner?" Even though Jake had retired as the American Dragon, the Dragon Council still requested his presence at important meetings when they felt his expertise would be needed for a given situation and his sister was unable to attend. At least it was the summer and he didn't have any classes to teach, so his schedule for the next month was pretty clear. And because it was a Sunday he didn't have to attend any school-related functions at work. The downside was that the meetings could take anywhere from half an hour to the entire day.
"I don't know," Jake responded after swallowing another bite of his own sandwich. "I guess we'll just text each other when we're on our way home and if I'm still at the meeting you can just grab me some take out, and I'll do the same for you if you're still at work when my meeting's over. If we both get done around the same time we can meet up and actually go out somewhere without having to worry about our schedules." Rose nodded her head in agreement before looking at the clock.
"I've got to get going, Jake," she said as she grabbed her staff and threw it into the duffel bag hanging across the back of her husband's chair before giving him a deep kiss on the lips. "I'll be back as soon as whatever's going on at headquarters blows over. I love you, dragon boy. Good luck at your meeting"
"I love you to, Rose," he called out before she walked out the door and down to the garage. After throwing her gear bag into the backseat and fired off a quick text to her boss. "On my way," she said before starting her car and riving over to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. Facility. The Playground, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Headquarters following the HYDRA Uprising in 2014, was all the way down in Virginia. But it was quicker to drive over to The Cocoon, the Manhattan base that served as a training facility for Agents both new and old, and fly a Quinjet over than to drive all the way down through several states to reach the facility. Whatever was going on was certainly important, otherwise Director Hill wouldn't have asked her to come in so early.
The Realm Eternal – Palace Dungeons:
"Loki," the imprisoned former prince of Asgard looked up from the book he was reading at the sound of his name to find Odin, the king of the Realm Eternal standing outside Loki's prison cell. The black-haired prince smiled. Between his status as a prisoner and Odin's duties as king, his father did not visit often, but the disgraced Frost Giant appreciated the few times Odin would visit. When Thor brought him back to Asgard after his failed invasion of Earth, Odin had wanted to have him executed, but his mother had pleaded for his life and managed to get his sentence commuted to a life sentence in prison.
For the next year and half, he'd sat in his cell, fuming at all the slights against him both real and imagined. He'd even denounced Frigga as his mother in a fit of angst-driven anger. But then, at the suggestion of his Midgardian friends, Thor had arranged what the humans called a "group therapy session" to deal with their collective emotional baggage, believing that while Loki may not be redeemed from his ways, that the family could at least try to reconcile with him, rather than simply keeping him locked in the dungeons never to be seen again.
Loki had scoffed at the notion and openly expressed his doubt that such a concept that it would even work. But to the surprise of everyone except Frigga, three hours of angry venting, guilty-driven soul-searching, tearful confessions of concealed emotions, and exhausted hugging later, Odin, Loki, and Thor had managed to make peace with all of their issues and reconciled. Though he was still as sarcastic and as much of a trickster as ever, deep down he was glad to have his father and brother back. Odin couldn't go against his own decrees and have Loki released from prison, but he at least came by his cell whenever he could to visit and discuss the latest news, occasionally asking Loki for advice on political decisions both major and minor.
"And to what do I owe the pleasure today, father?" he asked dryly. Despite the seemingly acidic comment, Odin recognized the lack of malice in the remark. He knew that dry, sarcastic comments were part of who Loki was, and had learned to accept that.
"I wanted to let you know," the Allfather replied. "That we will be having a diplomatic emissary meeting on Asgard this afternoon. Given your penchant for statesmanship, I thought that you would want to weigh in your thoughts on the discussion before the dignitaries arrive." Loki smiled. He'd come to accept that he would never be king, but he reveled in the cloak and dagger mud pit of politics. After asking Odin for news updates on the politics on the nine realms, his father commented that while Thor was born to be king, Loki, it seemed, "was born to be a statesman."
"Well," he began. "Who's coming, and when do they arrive?" This is going to be interesting, he thought to himself as Odin began to explain the purpose of the meeting and what would be discussed at the gathering. If only I could actually attend without having spears pointed at my throat, but oh well. I made my choices and now I have to live with them.
I loved watching American Dragon: Jake Long when I was a kid, and I really wanted to find a way to include the characters in the Acolytes of Chaos universe. Most of the background information I referenced came from the show, but some stuff that didn't was inspired by AD:JL Fanfic stories here on that were accepted into my headcanon of the show's mythos. Jake deciding to become a mythology teacher is a reference to the fanfic Say Yes by Fantastic Nonsense. Dragons in the AD:JL verse sleeping in dragon form was based on A Dragon's Nest by Mandaree1.
Much like in the amazing Harry Potter/Avengers crossover Child of The Storm, Loki has been quasi-redeemed offscreen. I know it seems like a cop-out to have Loki pull a heel-face turn all of a sudden, but since Thor: The Dark World doesn't happen in this universe, I felt that having him try to take over the world again would be too repetitive. I also figured that given all the issues Loki and Odin have in their relationship and their inability to express them, I figured that a decent psychological therapist and a few family therapy sessions would be enough for the Asgardian royal family to acknowledge and move past all their emotional baggage and reconcile. I'm a sucker for fluff like that. The comment about Loki being "born to be a statesman" was even a quote from the aforementioned Child of The Storm, and I tried to take influence from the fanfic saga The S.H.I.E.L.D. Codex by KhamanV (a series of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D./Thor Crossovers in which Loki decides to try redeeming himself after being kicked out of Asgard after his little stunt at the end of The Dark World gets discovered by allying himself with Coulson's team. Hilarity and Feels ensue) for Loki's personality, where he's basically the exact same only with some rarely verbally expressed regrets over the things he did and a desire to atone for his past misdeeds.
Some of you are wondering why I'm focusing on characters other than the main Kingdom Hearts cast at the beginning here (but we will be seeing minor characters who appeared in other Acolytes of Chaos stories), so let me assure you that while Sora and the gang won't be appearing until Chapter 7, they're still the center of the story. I'm just using the first six chapters to establish some of the other major players in the overarching conflict.