Chapter 30: Doors Open From Both Sides:
Earth – New York City:
“I’ve got our lost sheep,” came the familiar voice at the end of the phone as the Warden of the Legion received the phone call from her safe house in Manhattan. “Move in and eliminate all witnesses. Protocol 198.4” Warden Lerena nodded as she gestured to the rest of her hand-picked strike team that it was time to move. “Make sure there are no survivors.”
“As if I ever leave them,” the blonde-haired Legionnaire replied sarcastically. “Don’t worry, Marluxia. The evidence will make it look like a robbery gone wrong. We’ll have to sacrifice a few of our recent initiates so S.H.I.E.L.D. and the other authorities will buy the deception. Anyone who catches us in the act will be killed and added to the cover up. I’ve done missions like these a thousand times now.”
“Just be careful, Larxene,” High Praetor Aurilam remarked teasingly. “Since the invention of the security camera it’s been getting harder and harder to manage cover-ups of this scale. Don’t do anything too risky. Good luck.” With that, the former Graceful Assassin hung up the phone leaving the Savage Nymph to prepare for her strike mission. Lerena smiled an insidious grin. As the Warden of the High Council, she fulfilled the role of a professional hit-man (or hit-woman in her case) for the Legion, doing the dirty work and handling assassinations and cover ups. After doing it for so long, she took a great deal of pleasure in her work. Today was a momentous occasion, but as far as she was concerned it was just another day at the office.
New York City – Longs’ Apartment:
“Whew,” Jake remarked at he landed on the balcony of his apartment. It was ten o’clock at night and he was looking forward to some long-awaited sleep. “That was exhausting. I’m just glad those Hobgoblins were in numbers just small enough for the three of us to deal with.” Rose voiced her agreement as she climbed down off his back before he morphed back into human form. It had been a rough night. Jake’s sister Haley had been overwhelmed during a skirmish with a group of Hobgoblins at the Magus Bazaar and called Jake for back-up. Needless to say, it had been several hours before he and Rose were able to head home.
I guess it’s back to the dream charms tonight, Jake thought as he and Rose walked into the apartment.
“I guess we’re eating leftovers tonight,” Rose commented longingly. Between her job as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent and his job as a mythology teacher, they hadn’t had a chance to have a real home-cooked meal in a week. They both loved their jobs, but sometimes the hours could be a bit tiring at times. Thankfully, Director Hill had given Rose leave for a few weeks, and he’d managed to earn some time off from his teaching job. So for the next two weeks, the Longs were looking forward to sleeping in all day, staying at home all day binge watching their favorite shows on Netflix, and maybe a little extra time in bed.
“I can go heat up dinner while you change out of your combat gear,” Jake offered. While a dragon’s scales were as hard as diamonds, humans weren’t that durable. That was why Rose always went into supernatural battles like this in her own custom outfit. She wore a black leather jacket and gloves over her old Huntsclan uniform, which was lined with Kevlar and gave her better protection in a fight against magical creatures. That and her old Huntstaff.
“Sure,” Rose replied as she gave her husband a quick kiss. “I’ll get the dream charms ready while I’m at it.” With that, she headed towards the bedroom. Jake smiled as he watched her go, thinking of how much she meant to him. He walked into the kitchen and promptly began digging around in the refrigerator to see what they had that they could eat for dinner. After rummaging through some week-old Chinese food, a half-eaten basket of Shwarma, and nearly a dozen unfinished pasta dishes, Jake finally withdrew from the fridge with a Tupperware container full of turkey from the last time they’d had the time to cook dinner. Satisfied with his find, he shoveled the meat out of the container and pulled out one of the less-full pasta dishes. He put a serving of both on each plate and put them in the microwave one at a time.
Meanwhile, Rose walked into the bedroom and moved to take their dream charms out of the night table on her side of the bed. She left one on the table and one on Jake’s pillow, then want to put away her Huntstaff. As she opened the closet where she kept her combat gear, her eyes were drawn downward towards the small duffel bag lying on the ground next to the door. Rose sighed. She didn’t want to be paranoid, but one of her old friends from her Huntsclan days had called her warning her that she needed to have a travel bag ready to go in case someone came after her. Despite her relationship with Jake and all the good she’d done for the magical community in the last fourteen years, she still had plenty of enemies in the supernatural world.
Her wish with the Aztec skulls to destroy the Huntsclan back in middle school had only ended up killing the adult members with the dragon birthmark. The younger members, who weren’t born with the Mark of the Hunstclan and weren’t experienced enough to be considered true members, had been spared. Apparently because of their age, not knowing any better, and not being considered full members by the rest of the clan meant that the magic of the Aztec skulls overlooked them. Once she’d regained her memories in Hong Kong, she and Jake had gone around finding everyone to see where they stood on the clan’s destruction. A few of them were true believers in the clan’s cause, and had gone on to become mercenaries who’d harassed the magical community before being caught and thrown in prison either in a major city or on Draco itself.
The rest however, had joined out of curiosity, peer pressure, or simply out of a desire to seem “cool”, and had sworn off harming magical creatures, as she had done. A few even congratulated her on her relationship with Jake. Rose o her head to clear her thoughts and focus back on the present. She was just being paranoid. The bag would be helpful in case of emergencies, but she was confident that she and Jake could handle anyone who came after her. As long as
they didn’t get involved, they were fine. A flicker of light behind her attracted her attention, and she turned in time to see a wreath of blue fire spread across ceiling of the bedroom, framing a field of stars. Most would be in awe of the sight, but between her position as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Jake’s access to the supernatural community, and her past in the Huntsclan, she recognized the power of the Space Stone when she saw it.
Rose kept her stance and demeanor neutral, but inwardly prepared for a fight. She had no idea if whatever would come out of that portal would be friend or foe. Her eyes narrowed as two masses of blue light, people attempting to pass transport themselves across the universe by harnessing the energy of that cosmic cube descended out of the portal and into her room. One of them hit the ground in a burst of blue fire, setting the bed sheets on fire, singing the carpet, and generally scorching just about everything in the room. Thankfully the furniture was replaceable and everything that held sentimental value to both her and her husband was either protected by something else or simply spared from the destruction. Rose herself barely brought up a Reflega spell in time.
The other figure, however, landed in a crouch with the grace of a cat. The light faded from the man’s body without leaving a scratch on his environment, save for leaving a small patch of burnt fabric beneath the soles of his boots. All the marks of someone who had experience with the Tesseract’s power and how to use it properly. While the brown robes were a new addition, her eyes widened in horror as she recognized the man’s flamboyant pink scythe and lighter pink hair. Knowing that she had no chance of acting against the intruder’s infamously fast reflexes, Rose did the only thing she had time to do before High Praetor Aurilam lurched forward and forced her mouth closed. She screamed.
“ROSE!!!!” Jake shouted in panic as he heard his wife scream. Without even bothering to close the refrigerator, he sprinted for the bedroom. As he raced towards his wife, his mind cycled through all the things that could possibly make her react like that. She didn’t have any fears of snakes, spiders, cockroaches, or anything like that. And if a magical creature or entity had dropped by his house, they would have come through the door. That left only one option: there was an intruder in their apartment. Jake’s horror only increased when the screaming stopped before he’d even made it to the bedroom, and by the time he made it through the door, the bed was on fire and everything else was scorched, while Rose was nowhere to be seen. Lying at the foot of the bed, however, was a young man in his early twenties, wearing a black and red jacket and matching pants.
Jake was freaking out about Rose’s disappearance, but reason quickly reasserted itself. One, the guy at the foot of the bed was unlikely to have anything to do with Rose’s abduction (for that was what it obviously was), or the intruders wouldn’t have left him behind. Two, even if the man was involved somehow, Jake wouldn’t get any answers out of him while he was unconscious. So he moved his unexpected new house guest and laid him on the couch in the living room before going back and extinguishing the flaming bed. Once the fires had been put out and the smoke detectors turned off, he went back into the living room and dug out some old sheets, lashing them to the couch to keep his guest contained in the event that his intentions were hostile. An hour later, the brunette stirred.
“Where am I?” he wondered aloud as he took in his surroundings.
“Manhattan,” Jake answered bluntly as he walked around the couch. “Before I let you go, I have some questions for you.” The young man, only about five years younger than Jake himself, looked at him in both confusion and curiosity, with a layer of caution and concern buried underneath. Clearly he knew as much of what was going on as Jake did, but the former American Dragon decided to ask some of the questions he wanted to ask anyway, just to be on the safe side. “An hour ago, my wife went into our bedroom to get changed. I hear her scream, and come running in to find you unconscious on the floor and the rest of the room on fire. Did you have anything to do with that?” The man looked contemplative for a moment, as if thinking through the last thing he remembered to see if he did indeed know anything about what was going on.
“Not that I know of,” the guy answered. “The last thing I remember is grabbing this blue cube and being in excruciating pain. The cube opened up this portal on the roof of Knowhere, I start getting dragged up towards it, and the next thing I know, I wake up tied to your couch.” Jake sat down on the kitchen chair he’d dragged in for the impromptu interrogation, thinking over what he’d been told. Because dragon senses were sharper than a human’s, he could tell when someone was lying from their heart-rate and perspiration, and this young man didn’t appear to be lying. With an exhausted sigh, he stood up and untied the makeshift ropes, releasing his guest.
“I still have questions,” he explained tensely. “But since you’re not a threat, how about we continue this discussion over some food.” As much as he was panicking about Rose’s disappearance, Jake knew that the guy who’d been left behind in her place was probably hungry if the sound of his growling stomach was any indication.
“Thanks,” the young man replied cheerfully, putting on a brave face despite his worries. “My name’s Sora.”
So Sora is now on Earth, ladies and gents. You all know he’s going to be hanging out with the Avengers, helping fight HYDRA. As for what shape that fight will take, the plot of Captain America: Civil War may not have happened in this universe, but that doesn’t mean that some elements (more than one Winter Soldier for example ) won’t be thrown in to add to the conflict. Sora’s not going to just go around advertising that he’s from another world, and the Avengers’ reactions to the truth about Sora, the Keyblade, etc. will be both varied and surprising.
And where Marluxia pops up, his co-conspirator Larxene is sure to follow. Her human self’s title as Warden of the High Council is a reference to the Wardens of the White Council from the Dresden Files novel series, who are basically wizard cops, like Aurors from Harry Potter for wandless magic users. This chapter title is a quote made by Hawkeye's from the Avengers about the Tesseract being a doorway to the other end of space. Anyway, coming up next: Jake and Sora discuss their situations and figure out what to do to get Sora home and Rose back to Earth.