I will be keeping the chapter theme naming going from The Xehanort War, so once the story gets off Earth, you'll be seeing some chapter titles from The Xehanort War reused alongside some new ones for the field and battle music of new worlds.
Chapter 2: Heading to Work:
Earth – The Playground:
"Good morning, Agent Long," the portly man in charge of the security of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s facilities greeted as Rose walked into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters. "Director Hill is waiting for you in her office." Rose nodded to Eric Koenig as she walked through the corridors of the multi-level bunker that served as the nerve center of the international security agency. Because of her time in the Hunstclan, she'd never really had an idea of what she wanted to do with her life, or what she'd want to study in college. But in high school, she'd joined the Judo team to give herself an outlet for her combat skills, and had quickly won first place in many subsequent tournaments. That had been enough to catch S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interests, and Agent Daisy Johnson had come around during her senior year with a job offer that she couldn't resist.
In her first three years as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, she had a few friends, but because of the size of the organization, she didn't get to see them all that much. But after HYDRA's corruption had been exposed by Captain America, the agency had downsized as part of their deal with the international governments to maintain their legitimacy. They'd traded a few bases to various governments and lost a few to HYDRA. Half the agents who weren't HYDRA either retired for jobs in the private sector or simply began selling their skills and knowledge to the highest bidder. But the comparatively few agents who remained loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. and what it stood for became a lot closer as a result.
Now, she knew the names of almost every agent stationed at the Playground, and almost all of them knew her name. She passed by Agents Fitz-Simmons working in the lab on her way to Maria Hill's office and chuckled a little. It had been a running joke about how similar the two were that everyone referred to them as a single person. Then when they got married a year or two after Simmons' sudden trip to space, they decided to hyphenate their last names so that everyone would continue to refer to them both as such. Some people would think that weird or stupid, but Rose was used to the eccentricities of her fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents and thought it was a cute little in-joke.
She shook her head to focus herself back on the present as she walked into the common room to find Hunter reclining on the couch with a beer in one hand and his wife Bobbi's shoulder in the other.
"Uh oh," Rose commented with a smirk on her face. "Whatever's going on must be serious if Hunter's drinking this early in the morning." Hunter loudly protested despite Bobbi's uproarious laughter. Though Lance Hunter and Bobbi Morse had gotten married again five years ago, Bobbi was still referred to by her first name or as Agent Morse to avoid confusion on paperwork or in mission briefings. "I take it Hill's got all hands on deck for whatever this is?" Rose asked the couple as she stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the director's office. Bobbi and Hunter nodded before Rose sighed and headed up to find out what exactly was going on.
She reached the director's office to find Maria Hill waiting there along with her second in command, Phil Coulson, looking at different documents, photographs, and what appeared to be drawings displayed on the wall-mounted monitor of the office. She greeted her superiors respectfully before taking a seat in the chair across from Director Hill's desk and asking what all this was about.
"The Elders of Lai Shi gave us a call," Coulson began. That narrows it down pretty easily, Rose thought to herself. There were only two reasons that the isolationist Inhuman community of Lai Shi would make contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. Either there had been an Inhuman who went rogue, or Raina, a former ally of HYDRA incarcerated in Lai Shi after undergoing Terrigenesis and gaining the ability to dream the future, had a vision. Given the urgency of the call, Rose was willing to bet money on the latter, and voiced her thoughts out loud.
"For the last six years," Maria Hill explained. "Raina's visions have been mostly quiet and benign. She hasn't experienced anything earth-shaking since the raid on Von Strucker's lab in Sokovia. But last night, she woke up screaming so loudly she woke up the entire compound. It took half an hour before her assigned therapist was able to calm her down enough for her to coherently explain what she'd seen in her vision." Rose nodded in understanding, though privately, she thought that if this turned out to be as serious as the director was making it out to be, then it was likely to start making waves in the magical community soon enough, and Jake would probably be able to get better details than Raina's out-of-context predictions had been in the past.
"Once she was coherent," Coulson went on, picking up immediately where Hill left off. "She described seeing a vision of a calamity far greater than anything previously seen in recorded history. She explicitly described multiple large planetoids hurtling towards Earth, the destruction of Asgard and the other realms of Norse Mythology, some group she referred to as "The Timeless Ones" and something about "darkness fighting darkness while light fights light." Rose had to blink a few times to process what she'd just heard.
"So from the sound of things," she voiced aloud. "We have multiple cataclysmic events coming up on the calendar, but we don't know where or when. And other than the large meteors and mythological Armageddon, we have no idea what exactly is supposed to happen." She never mentioned the instinctive fear in the pit of her stomach at the mention of the term "Timeless Ones." There was only one thing those words could refer to, and the thought that they were active was setting off alarm bells in her head. She had to warn Jake as soon as she left the Playground.
"The whole Darkness and light thing is pretty easy to interpret though," Coulson replied. "From the sound of things, it seems like that part refers to villains fighting villains and heroes fighting heroes. Of course, it's a prophecy. Those things are never understood until after the events have already happened. Just once, I wish that anything prophetic was actually specific on the details." Rose chuckled at her superior's joke before asking what they were going to do about it. The director pointed out that they couldn't formulate a plan until they knew more, so until then, they'd borrow an old adage from former director Nick Fury. "Until such time as the world ends, we shall act as though it intends to spin on."
But unbeknownst to Rose, both Coulson and Hill knew far more than most of the other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. As members of the Society of Advanced Cultural Knowledge, a secret society for the relatively small number of people in the world who knew about the ancient Keyblade War and the impact it had had on Earth's history. Daisy, Bobbi, Hunter, the Fitz-Simmons, and the absent agent Alphonso Mackenzie were members of this little club, started by eccentric millionaire Preston Whitmore after his company's covert expedition to the presumably (but in fact alive and thriving) lost city of Atlantis.
Both leaders of S.H.I.E.L.D. kept this information from most of the lower-ranked agents. Aliens and Norse gods had been hard enough for the general public and the agency to accept. Add in the reveal of the Keyblade and all the insanity that came with it, and everyone in the S.A.C.K. agreed that the world wouldn't be ready for that knowledge to be made public for a while yet. Agent Mackenzie (referred to as Mack by his friends for short) was currently at a S.A.C.K. meeting being held to discuss the meaning and ramifications of Raina's vision and what it would mean for the future of their society and the worlds.
Thanks to Ludor, Zack, Isa, and Xiruk, they were able to speculate that the planetoids Raina talked about after her vision referred to the scattered fragments of the original world returning home after eight thousand years. The potential destruction of Asgard didn't warrant much discussion, both because it was a common subject of Norse Mythology, and because worlds being destroyed had been done before by the Heartless and was therefore nowhere near as impactful as the restoration of the original world. Raina's comments about Darkness and Light were more ominous.
While the idea of the forces of evil fighting each other for power would ordinarily be cause for rejoicing, the part about Light vs. Light implied the ranks of the Guardians of Light (as Xehanort had informally dubbed the group of Keyblade Wielders who ultimately slew him) would fracture and fight each other more than they fought evil. The "Timeless Ones" on the other hand, were a complete and total enigma. Nowhere in their century of existence had the Society ever encountered the term in the course of their research. They had a theory, but without any hard evidence, they had nothing more than speculation to go on. Raina's little prophecy had thrown a box full of metaphorical jigsaw puzzle pieces into the air, and now everyone was scrambling to figure out how they all fit together.
Earth – The Isle of Draco
It was, Jake Long reflected, the first time he'd managed to ride the enchanted elevator to the hidden island of Draco without losing his breakfast all over the grass. With the increasing technology level of the mundane world, dragons were no longer allowed to travel to Draco by air for fear of accidentally exposing both the existence of the magical world and the location of the headquarters of the Dragon Order. So everyone had been forced to take the Enchanted Elevators (which had been moved to more secure locations to avoid detection), an unpleasant method of transportation that left the rider's stomach queasy and often resulted in copious amounts of vomit being deposited on the grass outside the castle on Draco that served as a meeting chamber and place of ceremony for Dragons all over the world.
Jake hadn't come to Draco in over six months, and he rarely cared to. His relationship with the Dragon Council had always been strained. Many of them, particularly Councilor Kukulkhan, disapproved of his relationship with Rose, mainly because they were constantly suspicious of her past as a former slayer. Most of the magical world was skeptical of the idea of a former member of the Huntsclan could ever stop being a slayer, but those living in New York had been won over by all the times she'd helped him in his duties as the American Dragon.
But he'd never cared what anyone else thought about his relationship with Rose. He loved her no matter what, and the fact that she chose her love for him over her loyalty to the Hunstclan was proof enough for him. He'd never reveal the fact that in a past incarnation she'd actually founded the Huntsclan, though. That would only worsen public opinion of her and was her secret to share anyway. And she had no intention of telling anyone outside their families the truth about her past as an Unchained.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts as he marched into the Council chamber for the meeting he'd been summoned for. The rest of the Dragon Council was already there, as were a number of magical creatures of varying species from Centaurs to pixies. He was about to ask someone what was going on when Councilor Andam spoke.
"Good morning everyone," the Norwegian Dragon greeted. "Thank you all for coming. You have each been selected to represent the major representatives of the magical world in a diplomatic missions to Asgard in a few hours." This got a buzz of excitement from everyone in the room, and Jake's interest piqued. They're actually sending me to Asgard? He questioned with amusement. Even though he'd matured since middle school and his early days as the magical protector of the United States, he still had a tendency to accidentally disrespect authority figures without meaning to. So he was surprised that the council had actually picked him to represent the entire dragon race.
Despite his internal confusion, he listened as Councilor Andam continued by explaining the purpose of the mission. With Asgar becoming more active in the universe again, it was time for them to renew their treaty with the "Realm Eternal" and so the diplomats were being sent to Asgard to negotiate the finer details of the treaty. It wasn't anything major, just an agreement that Thor, Sif, and any Asgardians who traveled to Earth would refrain from revealing the existence of the supernatural community to the rest of the world. If the magical world was to ever be exposed (and given the continued prominence of S.H.I.E.L.D., Jake was certain that it was only a matter of time), they wanted it to be on their terms.
After Andam finished giving everyone chosen a refresher course in how to interact with Asgardians, Jake discreetly walked up to the Councilors' table to ask why he had been chose instead of his sister. Andam's answer surprised him.
"Mr. Long," the older dragon answered. "You may be as brash and impulsive and unintentionally disrespectful towards authority as you were when you were younger, but your heart is ultimately in the right place. And your Sister already has enough on her plate with her own duties as the American Dragon without having to take a day off for this meeting. But the reason I really recommended you is because you know how to see both sides of a situation. You can look passed deeply held prejudices and recognize when something is wrong."
The councilor's sterling recommendation made Jake grin. Andam was one of the few dragons besides his grandfather to be accepting of his relationship with and subsequent marriage to Rose. He thanked the Norwegian Dragon for his approval and recommendation, then ran to catch up with the rest of the delegation, who had already started walking out of the palace towards the section of the lawn that had been set aside for the Bifrost to transport them all to Asgard. Showtime, he thought to himself.
It was a little vague and unclear in Ripple Effects, but Raina's still alive in this universe, so the Inhumans have been using her powers of prophecy to their advantage.
And yeah, Jake and bunch of magical diplomats are heading to Asgard. Will Jake cause an interplanetary incident? Will the meeting go well? Will there be some villainous faction launching an attack on Asgard only for a smaller team to sneak in and steal something critical to the plot from the palace vaults? Time will tell. ;)