As everyone gathered their wits and the Magisters started to get control of themselves, several nondescript black vehicles drove up, led by a black 1987 Ford LTD Crown Victoria. Men and women in matching black suits and wearing dark sunglasses poured out of the vehicles, immediately arresting the Magisters and taking them into custody...save for Michael McDoesn'texist, who seemed to have vanished. Out of the Ford only two men stepped out...and as much as Jade hated distinguishing people this way, they were deliberately so similar that on sight she could only think of them as being old and white and young and black.
The older one stepped forward and removed his shades, unfolding an ID in front of the group. "Archaeological Preservation Society...Division 6," he greeted calmly. "I'm Professor Jones, and this is my partner Dr. Croft. We'll take care of things from here."
Jackie took the badge he was offered and examined it. "...I didn't know there was a division 6..." he murmured under his breath in surprise. "...then again, I only learned the APS was global last week..."
"Right," 'Professor Jones' commented dryly as he took the badge back. "Look, the energies of that discharge have left the site a little unstable, so I'm going to need most of you to step back a ways while we work on the cleansing. Dr. Croft, please escort this group away." When this got no response, he cleared his throat. "Dr. Croft!"
"Oh, right, that's me," his partner muttered as he moved forward. In a more normal level of voice, he instructed, "Alright everyone, let's move along and I can explain exactly what just happened..."
To Jade's surprise, Alucard, Hsien Ko, and Anderson calmly led the group to follow the man. However, the older man grabbed his partner as he went off. "No neuralizer," he instructed calmly.
"What?" the younger man demanded in shock. "Why not?"
"Those that aren't from allied organizations with security clearance are either non-human or have a divine blessing," the older man pointed out flatly. "It wouldn't work."
"Then what's the point of a cover story anyway?" the younger man demanded aggressively. "And how come you got to be Jones? I'm J!"
"When you're senior partner, you can get those answers and pick the pseudonyms, Slick," the older man answered calmly. The younger man made several angry faces, then turned and stormed off.
Hsi Wu started to turn to follow the group, but paused when he saw Jade wasn't moving. "Jade?"
"I need to stay," she stated firmly, pulling the hood of her robe up. "I...I don't know why, but I do."
"You're right about that, Miss," the older man confirmed calmly as he knelt down to her level. "Generally the Chosen One is gentled into this...but you seem to have a good handle on this. I suppose you want answers."
"Starting with who you really are and ending with what's going on, yeah," Jade pointed out a trifle waspishly.
Nodding, the man pulled out a different ID. "I'm Agent K, of the MIB. My organization monitors and regulates extraterrestrial traffic on and around the planet Earth until such time as humanity and the other races of the planet are ready for official first contact...and the races of non-terran origin are ready to deal with humans in an official capacity, which is the bigger hurdle these days. I take it you and yours are responsible for the reality ripple and history shift that made that change recently, as well as making us a little more official with sponsorship from The Triumvirate?" Jade blinked for a time in surprise, then nodded. "That's made the job easier and a lot more complicated, so I'm not sure if I should thank you for that or not.
"As for what's going on...there are only two things anyone knows for certain about Stonehenge, and those things are kept to a very strict 'need-to-know' basis by The Triumvirate which basically boils down to 'if you aren't in the know, you don't need to be'," Agent K continued. "First is that Stonehenge is somehow older than the sun-"
"But I thought the carbon dating put it at-" Jade began.
"Deliberately faked to keep the secret," K pointed out flatly. "The second thing known for sure is that the first Chosen One awoke as the Chosen One after sleeping inside Stonehenge, and that was before mankind had developed language. So there's a direct connection between Stonehenge and the Chosen One."
"So...what does that mean, exactly?" Hsi asked carefully as Jade reeled, remembering that flash of awakening in a circle of stones understanding the concept of self for the first time, a memory from the first Chosen One.
"Magic as we understand it couldn't exist in this area before the sun, the fields just didn't work," K explained calmly. "And it obviously wasn't built by anyone born of Earth. As such, it's under our jurisdiction. It was finally determined that whatever it does do, it's in no way harmful to the planet...so an investigative team used the Brotherhood of Magisters to activate it to find out what it really is for. There are structures like Stonehenge everywhere in the universe that there's civilized life...and all of them are older than all civilized life known in the universe." His eyes got hard. "Each world that has one also has some equivalent of the Chosen One, though they serve different roles on each world."
"And so Earth's the testing ground to see what it-" Jade froze as she felt the touch of a powerful mind.
A massive disc seemed to descend from the sky, visible only to those standing within Stonehenge...and lights and sounds echoed from it in a pattern. Jade felt her mind open up as something beyond her ability to understand or even begin to grasp attempted to make direct contact with her, and the world around her faded from her awareness, with only the faintest touch of Hsi's mind keeping her from losing herself completely.
...well, didn't see that coming.
Oh boy, Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith!
Also:
i.imgur.com/HkPOzEH.jpg?1
I was hoping for Lilo and Stitch aliens but this is just as good.
Magic and aliens? Oh Tats, how you spoil us
9037512
They're probably with the agency now.
So if I'm reading this right, Stonehenge and similar constructs are basically the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey?
can........... can we get mat pat from game theory here please?? I think he'll want to know this.
Everything was going fine until Alucard and J got into an argument over the noisy cricket.
Huh. And here I thought there'd be an X-Files reference.
9037514
.....*looks at Steven Universe*
9037547
That's alien powers, that barely counts.
9037537
They probably have been brought into the MiB. Their main foe is probably part of an anti MiB.
An interesting chapter and now how will this change things further.
Here come the men in black~
Also, K seems to like making references with fake names. Jones and Croft.
MiB, in England. Oh dear Torchwood isn't going to be happy with that at all.
9037552
I dunno...some of the stuff they pull off seems pretty magical to me. then again "Magic is just science we don't understand" and "Any significantly advanced technology could be indistinguishable from magic" seem to define that show.
not sure where this is going........continue
9037537
I was thinking a grown up Lilo and Stitch.
Men in Black, Tome Raider, Indiana Jones... So many cross overs is making my head spin
And now that ending!
Whats next? Mister Rogers fighting the Iron Giant in a blood stain sweater!
9037602
Don't forget... "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
9037552
Simply saying "alien powers" isn't an explanation one way or another. Superman has alien powers that are supposedly from biological sources and therefore scientific, but then he'll do something that is not allowed by science and should therefore be magical.
9037602
I normally hate those phrases because they are usually an overused cliche that is never properly explored in whatever world they are used in. SU does it right though. They don't explain any of it, so it all could be one or both.
Normally I say it's either magic or science and that it can't be both. I say this because few writers do a good job of portraying the thing as being able to be both.
9037613
Given the time this takes place, Lilo would be the age she is in the first movie.
Another slap in the face of Science! So gullible to believe the carbon dating method would work on alien-tech.
Does this mean Michael McDoesn'texist is actually an undercover agent of MiB?
9037638
The quote is normally "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology." "Advanced" is from the other-way-around version.
9037651
Actually, since it's set five years in the future relative to American Dragon timeline, she'd be five years older than that. A teenager.
9037533
Well drat. I was rather banking on this.
Huh...
9037676
Agent M?
9037680
That's my POINT, you know. :D A magical society that reaches sufficient magical advancement will have powers and items indistinguishable from a siliarly technologically advanced society.
i... uh....WHAT!!!!!
......Okay, I'm sorry. I usually don't do this, especially not with stories I've followed for so freaking long, but I've officially completely lost interest in this story. I know the fillies are still important, they're the reason this world is the way it is now, but they don't feel relevant anymore, and now we have the Men In Black and Aliens on top of Abridged Alucard. And really, Abridged Alucard alone was enough to severely damage my interest in this story.
The problem is that this doesn't feel anything like Jackie Chan Adventures or Friendship is Magic. It hasn't for a while. There's so many crossovers here, with so many different universes of varying tones or premise, that it's hard to keep track of everything, especially since I barely know any of the franchises you've crossed over with in this story, and those crossovers are starting to drown the original world this was supposed to take place in as you introduce more and more characters and magics and the like from these other worlds. All this is also compounded by how you don't seem capable of keeping anything E-rated. Be it pointless F-bombs for the sake of a reference, or violence that would fit as Mortal Kombat fatality even in the least violent worlds, there is almost nothing left of the original Jackie Chan Adventures, and this applies to your other stories to.
I mean, the one thing I can recognize a little bit is the characters, but even they're hard to see anymore. The problem isn't with what you've done to develop them, I'm all for what you did with Valmont and in fact that was one of the reasons I stuck with this story for so long. But there's just too many crossover characters and too many odd powers, so it feels like the core Chan Clan falls to the wayside for the guests to shine somehow. Another user said this a while back, and while I defended this story at the time, I can't really disagree anymore. This story doesn't feel like it's about the CMC or Chan Clan in general anymore, it feels like a world where absolutely anything goes and you're free to do whatever. I know that's not really the case, but that's what it feels like, especially when you bring in Abridged Alucard and then have him lose. Granted, Micheal McDoesn'texist was funny, but still. And for me, it feels wrong in the worst way to have anything from Hellsing Ultimate, either the canon or abridged versions, crossed over with Jackie Chan Adventures and Friendship is Magic.
I also simply cannot personally enjoy a story that tries too hard to be "realistic", especially when it's combined with other unrealistic elements and ultimately just feels needlessly edgy. This is the issue I had with Henriette's gruesome murder in Dressed to Steal. Your defense is that it's realistic, which I'll admit it's true to life, but fiction doesn't have to work that way. Fictional pirates are allowed to be above that, because unless you're trying to write an alternate human history, you have an artistic license to play with physics and particular rules or reality as you wish. And you had a pirate slaughter someone in the same story as a ninja who only used his blade to cut through plants and things rather than being an assassin as ninja are supposed to be.
That said, I don't mean to insult your skill as writer. You are amazing. You made Other M great, I've enjoyed most of the other PWNYverse stories, and I'm really loving My Own Wings. This is all just my personal grievance, why I myself just can't be interested in this particular story anymore. Aspects that prevent only myself from enjoying your good work.
And beyond all that, the basic reason I love The Rock in the Gulch and not this story boils down to that fact it's not out-of-character or contradictory to the source material to add those references, have that kind of violence, etc. Red vs Blue is an adult-oriented long running series originally started by some guys screwing around on Halo. Friendship is Magic and Jackie Chan Adventures are both shows specifically made to be family friendly. When asked about the inspiration behind the show by fans, Jackie Chan himself stated it was because he wanted to make something that was good and entertaining for kids.
Again, this is all just my own personal feelings. It's not my intention to insult you or your stories. To be honest, I've been nervous about actually saying any of this. I don't like upsetting people, but sometimes I can let my dislike for something slip through a bit too much or I don't do a good job of getting my point across, at least not in the manner I want to. I'm sorry if that happened here.
CALLED IT!
Well it was only a matter of time before they ran into those guys.
9037740
THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT OUT!
9037740
I'm going to agree with you here, this story is starting to seem like Tats is trying to fit as many crossovers as possible into a single story. Less crossovers, more CMC shenanigans!
9037740 I must admit, this has seemed to lose sight of it's core setting. This was originally based on an episode of JC Adventures, but crossover has reached saturation.
I love your other stories, and I'll probably keep reading this one, despite it's meandering pace, but I thought someone else should support the view.
Oh boy, the Men in Black! I loved that show.
Never thought I would find an excuse to listen to this theme again.
9037625
That's not until My Little PWNY
...and then THIS craziness happens; what else should we expect: the Spanish Inquisition?
9037651
I was thinking since Lilo met Jake Long in that crossover episode and Jake has been shown to be an adult now in an earlier chapter.
9037740
If the person who you refer to is who I think, they specifically complained that the character focused story wasn't giving an exposition dump of world building at every change from canon. Keep in mind that this complaint was only in regards to the world after the wave that changed literally all of history. Basically they were butthurt about a reality warp not having the world be how they thought it should be and then complaining about everything that changed not being explained in one go.
Outside of that....you are right. I want more cmc. If the story was going to use such levels of violence then a villain should have been used instead of the cmc so that they could be the cause of the violence and Jackie could teach them a better way. I only recognize about half the crossovers and references.
Honestly, I think I'm only still reading so I can see where the crazy ends up going.
9037926
I had forgotten about that.
And now we see a universe with more than magic! ...wait, it already had that, Stitch exists!
I'm pretty sure at least one of them would letter know if everything is going to be K. Though not beaming at the prospect at least Jade will get to know one more thing about being the Chosen One.
... MIB and Close Encounters... Is there anything that's not going to be crossed with this? I don't mind, just, wow. What's left? Looking forward to more.
Keep up the great work. Deus tecum.
9037979
Honestly We have gotten a good focus on the main case before these last few sets, which helps set them up for the changed world and these last few sets have been showing more of the changed world and showing us some of the radical changes they are exposed to that members of the Chan Clan not at the epicenter of the reality change are so use to.
9037533
I can see that happening. Alucard with a noisy cricket = Pinkie Pie in Tats other story. Enough said.
9037906
Ah, but we're expecting them now, so they won't appear!
Wait. But if we think they won't appear, then that means we're not expecting them anymore!
So does that mean they can appear again?