The sky was the same steel gray it had been all day, making it difficult to tell what time it was. Amidst the shadows of New York's tall buildings, the figure barely registered the failing light. Why should he? His whole life was darkness now.
He had been a king once. A prince before that. But few of the ghosts of his past would recognize him now, cast out…. Stripped of his powers, accused (and as he was willing to admit to himself, guilty) of fomenting death and destruction, he had gone from one of the most powerful and skilled beings in the Nine Realms to the wretched creature he was now – weak, soft, and above all, mortal.
His stomach growled, but he ignored it. The ragged shreds of his pride wouldn't let him start to dig through garbage cans again until his hunger was overwhelming. So instead, he huddled in the alley that was his temporary home and tried to shrug deeper into his coat.
"Well God of Mischief, you were harder to find than I thought." He whipped his head around in the direction of the voice. It came from an unimposing figure standing at the mouth of the alleyway. The man resisted the urge to slink away further into the alley. It had been so long since someone had spoken directly to him.
"I have to hand it to you," the figure said, "for someone who lost the use of his normal resources, you were able to hide quite well. And you look nothing like what I expected." The voice was high pitched, but did not bear the tremor of youth. He suspected the figure was a female. The man had no access to a mirror, but he knew the figure was probably correct in her assessment of his appearance. After his fall to earth, one of the first things he had done was to cut his dark locks, sawing at the hair with a knife. He cut as close to his skull as he could, until he was left with a heap of ruined strands in front of him. He performed this same ritual on a regular basis. Further, he had been living on the streets so long that what little excess flesh had been on his lanky frame melted away, taking with it more precious weight. He ate only irregularly, and never well. He hadn't bathed in months. He wore the only clothes he owned, and they grew more frayed and dirty with each passing day. No, the man had no reason to doubt that he bore little resemblance to who he had been mere months before.
"While undoubtedly that half-starved look of yours might be appealing to some of the modeling agencies on Madison Avenue, I don't believe you achieved it by choice." The girl tossed him a white paper bag, which landed at his feet. "Enjoy." The delicious, heavenly smell of food wafted from the bag, and he scrambled to reach the contents inside. He was barely conscious of what he was eating, aware only that it was warm, solid, and not in the least spoiled or rotten. The food was gone in short order, leaving him feeling replete for the first time in recent memory. The figure merely watched impassively.
"How did you find me?" the man asked after a time. "Let's just say that I was able to get my hands on information that you might be somewhere in the city and I was able to use resources which are… unique to me in order to locate you," replied the girl in the hood. He'd once been known for his silver tongue, but he had no time for pleasantries these days. "What do you want?" he inquired bluntly. "To help you," said the figure.
"Why bother to help me?" he asked skeptically. "Why go out of your way to do anything for me when you would likely be rewarded handsomely for revealing my location?" Although the girl's faced was obscured by her hood, he could nevertheless see her smile. "We want the same thing, but at the moment, we are incapable of achieving it by ourselves." He snorted. "And what exactly is that?" The smile beneath the hood grew wider. "Revenge, of course."
Revenge. It had been long weeks since he had thought of that heady sentiment. After his first mad scramble to hide himself, he had burned with the need for it. He'd schemed and plotted and fantasized about what he would do when he managed to return to his proper realm. He would show them all what came of not giving him his proper due. Such thoughts were easy to sustain at first, but as hours trickled inexorably into days, then weeks, and now months, survival had replaced retribution as his main concern. Still, even though the desire was blunted by the harsh reality of his current situation, the figure's words were enough to pique his curiosity.
"You claim to be able to give me vengeance I crave, yet you offer no explanation as to how you intend to do so. What makes you so special?" The hooded smile didn't waiver. "To answer your question, I must ask you a question first. Tell me, what do you know of mutants?" The man sat back, ruminating for a moment. "I'm only vaguely familiar with them. From what I understand, they are human, but possessed of abilities not seen in the rest of humanity."
"Simplistic, but correct," said the hooded figure. "To my knowledge, no mutant possesses a wide range of talents, but many possess more than one ability or mutation. And though their powers may be limited, a select few are quite powerful. I am one such."
"You are a mutant?" he asked. "I am," the figure stated simply. "And what ability are you gifted with that makes you so certain that you can aid me?" The figure drew a little closer then, shrouding herself further in darkness. "Empathy." The man snorted then. "You can understand what people are feeling. Good for you." The figure just kept smiling. "You misunderstand me. Perhaps I should have said detective and projective empathy. I am able to sense the emotions of others and manipulate them." The man began to look at the figure more intently. He waited. "I am capable of knowing… intimately knowing… what the people around me are feeling and I can shape those feelings according to my whim. I can make them feel sadness, anger, fear, passion, joy, and trust. I can do it so subtly that they aren't even aware that they are being affected. And I can do it to several hundred people at once. Surely you can appreciate how affective that could be?"
The man did. He really did. When he was possessed of his full powers, he could do many things. Lob fire balls. Raise automatons to fight on his behalf. Construct buildings. Even conjure realistic illusions. But nothing he did could have the direct effect on another being's psyche as this girl claimed to be capable of. "My powers allowed me to find you," said the figure. "I've been roaming the city for a few weeks, sifting through the fog of emotions of the populace and seeking out any signature that might be you. I've gone through a lot of dead ends, but I managed to detect just the right mix of despair, anger, and near-hopelessness that led me here."
Yes, such abilities could be useful indeed. Paired with some of his own powers, he and the girl could make a formidable team. Yet he could not comprehend how the hooded figure could use her own abilities to aid in the return of his. "Useful, I will admit. But how exactly is that supposed to help me?" asked the man.
"It's quite simple. The return of your powers and your welcome to Asgard is predicated upon your redemption, is it not?" The man nodded in ascent. "I can't actually cause you to seek atonement – that would require abilities I do not possess. But redemption is less a conscious choice than you might think. A good bit of it is an emotional component. All I need to do is slowly and carefully manipulate your emotions over the course of a week or two, and we should accomplish a good facsimile of remorse."
"I don't know how I feel about that. I don't like the thought of a little ape being in my mind," said the man. The figure turned her head to the side slightly. "A point, I grant," she said, "but one that must be endured if you want to regain your place. I assure you, your emotions cannot be affected by my powers beyond a certain distance, so any long-term action of my part would require my continued presence. Further, I have no desire to see you redeemed in the long term. It would allow you to rejoin your foster family, but would do very little to make sure that you uphold your end of the bargain."
The man looked at the girl suspiciously. "And what exactly would be my end of the bargain?" The smile on the figure's face took on a nasty edge. "Nothing impossible. I have no desire to conquer and rule this world, if that is that you're asking. No. I want those hypocritical wretches who offered me up as a sacrificial lamb to pay for what they did to me. I want to see their lives fall around them before burning to ash. And I want them to know that though I am the instrument of their despair, they brought their misery on themselves."
This was an answer that the man could respect. Not a pretty answer or a noble one, but honest and compelled by the same dark forces that fed his own desires. "So," said the girl in the hood, "I help you take back what is rightfully yours, and in exchange, you help me to satisfy my own debts." It seemed a more than fair exchange. The man might even give the girl what she wanted, if she played her part well. But there was no need to let her know that.
"Do you accept my proposal, Loki of Asgard?" queried the figure, saying his name for the first time. The plan was mad. It was insane. And it might just get him what he wanted. He'd be willing to accept aid from the most disgusting creature in the universe if it meant attaining the revenge he thought had been denied him. "It seems we could be of mutual benefit to one another, but where I was raised, it was considered bad business to start an alliance off if you do not know your ally's name," said the God of Mischief.
The hooded figure chuckled. "How rude of me not to introduce myself. You'll forgive me if I don't supply the name on my birth certificate. I had it a long time, but I cast it off when I was betrayed by my kind."
The figure stepped into a circle of light from a lamp in the alley and for the first time, Loki could make out something of the outline of her face. Most striking however was how the light reflected in her eyes. They seemed to glow a deep blue in the lamp's artificial rays. "I was no longer part of their perfect, ordered little world. They took away my opportunity to live an ordered little life. So I became something different. Something opposite. An agent of chaos, if you will."
The girl smiled then and her eyes glowed brighter, and in them Loki could see elation, and anger, and sorrow, and even a hint of madness. "You may call me Eris."
