OK, so boring but necessary introductory chapter. It helps establish something of a time line. Hopefully its at least interesting and will give a bit more insight into Darcy. This takes place a month after Genius Adventures 1.

As I've said (and will continue to say) I don't own these characters. This is simply something fun.

- Illusinia

A series of cracks echoed around the mostly moved into space, all of which came from Darcy's spine as she stood from hunching over a box of assorted stuff. Though everything had been packed by her personally, some of the boxes were old ones from her parent's place which she finally found reason to pick up given she was moving into an actual apartment in New York City rather than a dorm room at UNM. She'd been forced to move with the rest of Jane's team to the city following Thor's return. In fact, the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. operation in New Mexico had pretty much been moved at this point. She was the last to move, needing an extra month to actually finish her degree and pack up her dorm.

Now, she stood in the middle of the living room of her new one-bedroom apartment in one of the large apartment buildings around S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. Though she'd been offered housing on the base, it had seemed more prudent and less personally invasive to live in one of the nearby buildings. Jane had readily agreed and gotten an apartment on the same floor for herself and Thor, who also had rooms at S.H.I.E.L.D. but who everyone knew would be staying with Jane the majority of the time. Steve Rogers, one of the other Avengers, lived in the building somewhere as well but Darcy didn't care much about where. The man struck her as beyond strange, even for someone from the 1940's. Soldiers from any time were never that polite.

Cracking her back again, Darcy moved to where one of the last boxes she had to unpack was stashed by a bookshelf. This was one of the boxes from her parent's house and she wasn't honestly sure what was in it. It said 'Books' on the outside, but she knew there were a few boxes that had been intentionally mislabeled, mostly to keep her parents out of her business.

Opening the box, she was met with what looked like a bunch of stacked books, which she knew immediately to be a fake lid. Those same books were already on the shelf behind her. The lid was gone in moments, carefully unlatched for potential future use, and she found herself face to face with a box of stuff from high school.

Most of it looked like junk, notebooks and the like, but Darcy knew better. Picking up the top one, she was faced with a page filled with Norse runes, one of the many ways she'd encoded her notebooks in high school to avoid nosy digging. When translated, the notebook would read like a pranksters wet dream: a list of various pranks and the means to execute them. Though she rarely used the same prank twice (that was boring and Darcy prided herself on her creativity), she did design her pranks on paper along with anything she built to actually execute the prank. Those devices could be reused over and over again. Smiling at the words written on the page, her mind immediately understanding the language which had become almost second nature so many years ago, Darcy set the notebook aside for later perusal and moved aside a textbook on power calculations she'd 'edited' to pull out an old frame from the bottom.

Several pictures were displayed inside, about five in total. All of the photos were of at least two of the same three individuals, two girls and a boy, in various combinations and poses. Most portrayed only a young Darcy and another dark-haired girl with conniving brown eyes and a wicked smile, but two photos also featured a young boy with black hair, pale skin, and sharp green eyes. One was a group shot, with all three of the participants clearly up to no good and covered in paint. It had been one of their few failed pranks as a group, but they'd laughed about it later. The other was a photo of just Darcy and the boy, with Darcy practically laying in his lab sound asleep, and the boy's head settled back against the couch top, also asleep. A faint laugh bubbled up from Darcy's throat as she traced the boy's image. Those were the times...

Setting aside the frame on one of the bookshelves, Darcy pulled a large shoebox from inside next. Opening it, a true smile bloomed across her face. Inside sat a partially burned candle green with runes carved in the outside, a shallow dish with traces of ash, and a small statue of a blue man with a horned helmet, long sorcerer's robes, and bright red eyes. Grinning, she lifted the statue from the box and stroked her fingers over the figure. My shrine to Loki. I wondered where it went.

The smile stayed in place as Darcy carefully set up the shrine on a small side table next to the bookshelf. When she'd arranged everything properly, Darcy stood back to admire the small dedication before a mischievous smirk worked its way over her features. Oh why not...

Retrieving a lighter from her purse, Darcy knelt before the shrine and lit the candle, speaking the opening Norse she'd learned so many years ago before stating her request. Despite how many years it had been since she'd done this, the words flowed easily and her soul felt lighter when she'd finished. Maybe, just maybe, finding this box was a sign. She hadn't gotten up to much mischief in the last few years, but perhaps it was time to change that. After all, it was the best way to stretch her mind, and everyone needed a good laugh now and then...

So can everyone guess who the boy in the photos is? If not, the answer is in the next chapter. (Yes, this is a chapter story for a change...)