If you're all wondering what happened to Jake, he's still there. Last chapter was just more focused on Sora interacting with the Avengers, so I didn't mention his presence since he already heard most of the information from Sora earlier. Anyway, this chapter is going to be less dialogue heavy, and more focused on the events.
Chapter 29: First Contact:
Washington D.C. – S.A.C.K. Headquarters:
"So you met Xion?" Sora asked the formerly frozen super soldier as the group walked through the hallways of the S.A.C.K.'s underground headquarters. After explaining the origins and history of the secret society, a man with no eyes named Gordon teleported to Avengers HQ and brought them to the Society's base on the outskirts of Washington D.C. for a tour of the facility and a meeting with the group's leadership. Apparently, the man was part of a race of super-powered people called Inhumans, which Sora thought was awesome. The experiments performed on the original generation of Inhumanity by the Kree, however, less so. The brunette Keyblade Master's thoughts drifted back to the present when Captain America answered his question.
"Yeah," Steve replied. "My wife and I ran into her outside the theater in New York City on our way to see a play called Wicked. It was an adaptation of an old movie from my time, The Wizard of Oz, told from the villain's point of view. Anyway, we were both part of the society at that point so we recognized a Keyblade when we saw one. She was on the run from Organization XIII at the time, and since she hadn't ever really had much in the way of a normal life, we bought an extra ticket for her to come see it with us. She really enjoyed the play. I think it helped her with a lot of stuff that was bothering her too." Sora nodded. Xion had told him about her secret love of the play and how she'd ended up seeing it.
The conversation gradually died down as the group filed into a large conference room for their meeting with the Society's leadership. The Avengers were all hurt that Steve had kept this a secret from them for so long, but they could also understand why and most of them were planning on joining the Society if offered. After all, they were some of the only people who knew, and it wouldn't hurt to have a support network when dealing with the Hellfire Club or the Legion if they eventually showed their faces on Earth. Bucky, Natasha, and T'Challa got a pass on the "being mad about secret keeping" issue, since everyone knew that the three of them had secrets. The fact that they were part of this society with Steve (and T'Challa being part of the council running it) was just par for the course in their cases.
After a few minutes of waiting, a group of six people filed into the room. The first was a bald, muscular African-American man who looked to be in his late mid-fifties. The second was a black haired woman in silver armor who the Avengers apparently knew if the glances she sent them were any indication. The third figure Sora recognized immediately from his Mark of Mastery exam in the Realm of Sleep. The fourth was an enigmatic Asian woman with dark hair braided just above her shoulders. The fifth was a lanky man with short auburn hair and large round glasses, and the sixth was a woman with brown hair who sat next to Steve, who was seated the closest to the empty chairs now taken by the council. From there, introductions were made.
The African-American man now seated at the head of the conference table was Joshua Sweet, one of the society's founding members kept young by Atlantean crystals. The armored woman was Lady Sif, a friend of Thor's from Asgard. The third was Neku Sakuraba, while the fourth was Jiaying, former leader of the Inhuamns. The fifth was Milo, King Consort of Atlantis, and the sixth member of the council besides the Black Panther was S.H.I.E.L.D. co-founder and Captain America's wife, Peggy Rogers, also kept young by Atlantean crystals. Tony was immediately fascinated by the longevity-granting properties of the small teal crystals, and only the fact that Atlantis's existence was a secret kept him from bringing in a few lab junkies to help him study them.
An hour later, the team had been inducted into the Society and were now touring the briefing room for when they needed to send their members on reconnaissance or combat missions when the report came in from S.H.I.E.L.D. (Or rather, the high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents who were part of the club got the update and relayed it to everyone else). Agents of HYDRA (Having fought one himself in Olympus Coliseum, Sora thought that the name was a fitting choice given what he'd been told of the group's history) were making plans to raid the headquarters of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Lagos, Nigeria to steal an unknown chemical with the potential to be used as a biological weapon in the wrong hands.
Without waiting to be asked, Gordon teleported everyone back to Avengers HQ so they could get their gear and go. Just because they were trying to help their newest member get home didn't mean that they'd forgotten the nefarious groups already in existence on Earth. Tony, Bruce, Thor, and Rhodey stayed behind since the team needed to avoid civilian casualties in such a crowded city, while Hope and Scott felt that their shrinking abilities would only be overkill. Meanwhile, Steve, Natasha, Bucky, Sam, Wanda, Pietro, and T'Challa geared up for battle. Sora didn't have anything but his Keyblade and the clothes on his back, so he was up and ready to go before anyone else on the team was ready. The leadership of the S.A.C.K. had stressed the importance of maintaining the society's secrecy, so rather than have Gordon teleport them across the ocean, they all boarded a Quinjet and set off for Nigeria.
Montressor – Benbow Inn:
Sarah Hawkins sighed as she finished wiping the counter as the last of the breakfast rush customers paid for their meals, checked out, and left. She'd hired a few extra hands to keep the Benbow Inn operating at peak capacity in the last six years, but the morning rush with people checking out, asking for assistance, and ordering breakfast all at once was still exhausting no matter how often she had to do it. She wasn't as overworked as she was back when Jim was still in his teenage rebellion/juvenile delinquent phase all those years ago, but running an inn and restaurant out of your home around the clock was still tiring work.
After Jim had returned home from his voyage to Treasure Planet, he gave her the jewels he'd brought back with him for her to sell in order to raise enough money to rebuild the inn. Construction took a little more than a year, during which time she'd hired a few recently unemployed neighbors to help with various tasks from interior decorating to being on the inn's housekeeping staff. After its rebuilding, the Benbow Inn had become a popular tourist destination to visitors of Montressor, and over the years, she'd had to build more extensions to keep up with the demand. Not enough for it to grow into something like one of those upscale resorts on Turo, but enough to ensure that Sarah had enough rooms to deal with the tourist traffic.
The single mother and Innkeeper was jolted out of her nostalgic reminiscing by a bright light coming from outside the inn. She looked up just in time to see a small, flaming spaceship slam into the ground at the edge of the parking dock at the edge of the property. Startled, Sarah raced out the front door and sprinted for the burning craft, which from its size appeared to be an escape pod of some kind. Rolling up her sleeves, she dashed forward to get see if there was anyone inside who needed help. As she neared the impact crater, she saw a young woman, human, with blond hair and blue eyes, climb out of the crater.
"Are you all right?" she called out as she raced forward to help the woman up. The woman appeared confused for a moment, then nodded as she took the innkeeper's hands.
"Yeah," she answered. "Is this Montressor?"
"It is," Sarah replied as she helped the blonde back to the Benbow Inn. Even if the woman appeared to be fine, she still needed to be checked for internal injuries from the crash just in case. Once she got her guest inside, she instructed the concierge to call a doctor before bustling about and getting the necessary equipment to treat the woman's injuries. Cold towels, bandages, pillows to elevate her head and legs, the works. A few hours later, the doctor left, having given the young woman a clean bill of health, and Sarah left her unexpected guest to sleep in peace. From the sound of things, she and her husband were in law enforcement on their home planet, and a criminal gang she had busted a few years ago had come after her for revenge. She'd been abducted, but had quickly managed to escape to safety.
Delbert and Amelia arrived with their children as she closed the door, and she quickly explained the situation to the couple. The captain and the astronomer had gotten married a few months after the Treasure Planet voyage, and Amelia had quickly become a close family friend just like Dr. Doppler had been since Jim was a child. Ameila and Sara had been good friends ever since, As soon as they heard what had happened, both of them offered to help in any way they could. For now though, all they could do was wait until the woman woke up. She hadn't said much about her personal life, but Sara had at least been able to get her name before she drifted off to sleep: Rose Long.
That's right, people, Steggy FTW! In all seriousness, I never really had any particularly strong feelings for the Steve/Sharon pairing, so when I knew I was incorporating both Marvel and Atlantis: The Lost Empire into this universe, I decided to have Peggy use an Atlantean Crystal to stay young until Steve was unfrozen. Virtual brownie points to those of you who picked up on the hints and figured it out ahead of time.
Obligatory shout-out to my favorite KH 358/2 Days fan-made video? Check. When I was writing The Xehanort War last fall, I came across a fan-made music video combining the visuals of 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts 2 with the song Defying Gravity from Wicked. There were so many parallels that I keep coming back to that video every time I'm surfing YouTube. So in every story I write in this universe, I reference that by having Xion be a Wicked fangirl. She basically made a pit stop on modern day Earth during her "fugitive from the Organization" stage during Days, where she ran into Steve and Peggy (who those who figured out Steve's membership in S.A.C.K. can already guess), who were on their way to an afternoon showing of the play, and after hearing of how she was on the run from the Organization, brought her to see it to give her a dose of normality.
In this universe's backstory, Wakanda gradually became less isolationist after the battle in Sokovia, and while they don't share all their wonderful gadgets with the world, they aren't hostile to all outsiders or anything. Also, T'Challa's dad never died in this universe. Getting old (and may or may not be targeted by The Legion later on in the saga), but still very much alive. Wakanda has always known about the Keyblade and the whole world order deal, so once they heard of the S.A.C.K., the crown prince of the country basically serves as the kingdom's representative on the Society's leadership council so that Wakanda has a seat at the table.
For those who haven't picked up the subtle hints from my previous fics in the Acolytes of Chaos universe, the reason there are humans on worlds outside of Coalition territory is thus: since the Tesseract only teleports, rather than destroying, everyone "killed" by HYDRA's fancy space cube powered guns in Captain America: The First Avenger is still alive somewhere in the universe. So in this universe they all ended up on either Montressor or the world that would eventually become the Incredibles world, and society went in different directions from there. The Montressor humans went with the whole steampunk look from Treasure Planet, while the ones on the Incredibles world took things in a modern direction in terms of technology, culture, and fashion.
So yeah, Rose is now on Montressor from Treasure Planet. I have no intention of any characters playing the damsel/dude in distress role (except for one case at the end of the saga, and that's only a partial case, staged to make the heroes think the trope is being played straight), so Rose is doing all the rescuing herself. Nobody's waiting around to be rescued in this story (the only exception to this being the handful of times a character does this in a Disney world when the story of it follows the movie). And speaking of Disney worlds, after KH5, the story will be set entirely on Earth, so enjoy the Disney worlds while you can (this isn't to say that the Disney worlds aren't important to the plot, merely that the plot is moving in a more Earth-centered direction, which those of you who remember a few conversations in The Xehanort War and the interquels will immediately figure out).