Sibling Rivalry
1. The Slander of Loki
In which Loki decides to read what the mortals wrote about him in the Poetic Edda.
Loki paced the length of the earth-and-log cabin that was currently his home. He hated the thing, but the locals seemed to think it was an appropriate construction design for Asgardians. In truth, the design wasn't overly bad, but earth? Wood? He felt like some Vanir peasant, rather than a Prince of the Nine Realms.
After an insufferably long wait, Astrid, the woman designated a liaison to the Asgardian refugees by what passed for a leadership on this world, appeared in his open doorway. She'd only had the job for a month, but she already looked ready to quit. Loki suspected Thor's constant demands for mead and hair stylists were starting to grate on her.
"You asked to see me, Loki?" Astrid asked. She was a pleasing enough woman to look at, for a mortal. A shame she wasn't a few hundred years older. She looked old enough to be his mother, and yet was still a child, in terms of Asgardian lifespans.
"I summoned you an hour ago," he said. "What took you so long?"
"Believe it or not, I have a very busy schedule. There are almost two-thousand Asgardians on—"
Loki held up his hand to stall her onslaught of oh woe is me, I have a lot of work to do. It was as if she didn't even like the job she was doing, and Loki knew for a fact she was being well compensated, financially speaking.
"I am bored," he told her. "I require entertainment. A play, perhaps. I used to throw the most magnificent theatricals, back when I was Odin. My favourite was 'The Death of Loki.' Actually, that was the only play the troupe performed. But it was a crowd-pleaser!" A fair maiden or two had even shed a tear for the heroic God of Mischief.
"We can't bring in any more entertainers," Astrid said. "Not after what you did to the last one."
"I asked for a minstrel, and you sent me a child with an even worse haircut than Thor's! He might not have been so bad if his voice wasn't as high-pitched and girlish as a Valkyrie's. In fact, I know a Valkyrie with a more masculine voice than that eunuch-child's."
"Justin Bieber was considered a very popular singer."
"And now he's a very popular frog," said Loki, unable to help the smug tone in his voice.
Astrid consulted her communications-device, her fingers flying over the bright screen. "Speaking of which, we've had another request from his mother and his agent, not to mention several million of his Twitter fans, to turn him back."
Loki aimed a very pointed glare at the frog in the terrarium at the other side of the longhouse. "Not until he promises to never sing again."
"Ribbit."
"Fine, you stay as you are." He dismissed the frog and turned back to Astrid. "Now, please organise suitable entertainment for me. I'm getting bored, and you won't like me when I'm bored."
Her expression said she didn't like him even when he wasn't bored, but she very sensibly didn't give voice to the sentiment. "Oh, very well." She sighed—sighed!—as she reached into her handbag. He considered turning her into something small and rodent-like as punishment for her impudence. That was, until she brought out what looked like a larger version of her communications device. "Here, take this."
He accepted it, and turned it over in his hands a few times. "This is what passes for entertainment on this world? I've had more fun on Vanaheim, and the Vanir idea of fun is wrestling wild boar in the nude."
Astrid reached out and pressed a button on the device. It hummed silently to life, the screen glaringly bright.
"What manner of thing is this?"
"It's called a tablet," she explained. "It has a music player, a video player, and a WiFi connection. You can use it to listen to songs, watch plays, read books, or commit online fraud. Have fun."
"Wait, woman! How do I use this 'tablet'?" he demanded.
"See that big round speaker-icon button right there?" she asked, pointing at the screen. "Press that, then speak your desire. The tablet will do the rest."
She left him with the magical wish-granting tablet, and Loki settled down into the luxury pleather chair gifted to him by the Norwegian government. Once he was comfortable, he pressed the button.
"If I am to observe plays, I shall require sustenance. Bring me a flagon of mead, and some of that popped-corn I've been hearing so much about."
A feminine voice responded from the tablet, but it didn't sound like a real voice. "Here are the different ways of preparing popcorn."
"Preparing? I don't want to prepare it, I want it brought to me!"
There was no response. Perhaps the tablet-maiden couldn't handle something as complex as popped corn. He pressed the button again. "I wish to read about myself, Loki, God of Mischief."
This was more like it! The tablet was resplendent with listings of his glorious adventures. He started with one that sounded very promising: the Poetic Edda. It was time to find out exactly what the people of Midgard were saying about him.
"How is that, sire?" the stylist asked.
Thor turned his head from side to side, examining his profile in the mirror from all angles. Despair welled inside his heart.
"It's terrible! I barely look any different!"
"It will take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."
"Forget about Rome, this is my hair! Do you have any idea how long it took me to grow it to that length? The amount of conditioner I had to procure? I told the supplier it was all for Mother and Sif, but it wasn't, it was for me."
"They think I did WHAT?!"
The anguished cry echoed down the corridors of the longhouse complex. Thor gave the stylist his gentlest pat on the shoulder. "Thank you, my good man. You've done your best under difficult circumstances. Now, please excuse me; I fear my brother is engaging in further mischief. I must see to him before he turns more eunuchs into frogs."
He strode down the corridor towards Loki's quarters and automatically reached for Mjölnir. Too many times had he done that, lately. But the weapon forged in, or from—he wasn't always clear on which—the heart of a dying star, had met its end above the fjords of the country he now called home.
For a wonder, Loki wasn't embroiled in chaos and mischief when Thor strode into his quarters; instead, he sat in his beloved black pleather chair, holding one of those tab-lutt things in his hands. Judging by the expression of anger on his pale face, though, he wasn't far off performing another act of amphibianisation.
"What troubles you, brother?" Thor asked.
"What troubles me? This troubles me!" Loki poked his fingers against the surface of the tab-lutt. Have you seen what the mortals have been writing about me? Apparently, I fathered that oversized lapdog, Fenrir. And Jörmungandr itself! I wasn't even born when Jörmungandr was old, how could I have fathered it?"
Thor nodded in agreement. "And you've hardly had the best track record with the maide—"
"Hey, do not go there," Loki snarled. He swished his hand over the tab-lutt to turn the page. "Fathering monsters isn't even the worst of it. Somebody here wrote that I'm the mother of Sleipnir. Sleipnir!"
"Wasn't that Father's old horse?"
"Yes! And as I recall, you were the one who stole it from the stable for a joy-ride! You and Volstagg. Father had to get a new one when you crashed it into Vanaheim."
"Ah yes, I remember." Good times. Good times. "But we were only children at the time, no older than two or three!"
"Thousand," Loki added. He glared at the tab-lutt, his blue eyes murderous. "How could they possibly think I'm both a mother and father to all manner of strange beasts? Don't they know that's not how nature works?"
"Well, there was that time you pretended to be a snake," Thor reminded him.
"Performing a minor party trick and spawning actual monsters are two entirely different things!" His fingers danced once more over the tab-lutt before he turned it around and held it right up to Thor's face. "And look here, they claim I killed Baldr."
"Baldr?" The name rang a bell, vaguely. "That tavern drunkard who called you a—"
"Yes! I mean, we fought, of course, and I soundly thrashed him"—Funny, but Thor didn't remember it that way—"but I didn't slay him, and I certainly didn't arrange for his brutal murder." He sank dejectedly into his chair. "How can this be? Why have the mortals been told so many lies about me?"
"Oh, uh, I, um… it must've been Baldr." Thor scratched his itchy beard. Definitely nothing to do with that time he and Hogun had come on a drinking party to Midgard, gotten absolutely sloshed, and told a bunch of mortals, including an inquisitive bard, a few tall tales about the God of Mischief.
"No wonder these primitive apes hate me," Loki sulked. "They've spent several thousand years believing I'm some sort of Asgardian-slaying, monster-spawning philanderer!"
"Err, actually, I think they mostly hate you because you went on a mind-controlling slaughter-spree before unleashing a bloodthirsty alien armada on their planet."
"And that's the lesser of the evils I've been accused of!" Loki turned his gaze back to the glowing screen. "Let's see what other lies these mortals have been taught about m—Hey!" The glowing screen promptly went blank. Loki shook the tab-lutt. "Do my bidding, device: I command you to show me more!"
"I believe it ran out of power," Thor suggested. Mortal devices were always doing that. Power, electricity, global warming… it was a complex cycle. "It just needs recharging. I think I have a spare charger in my room, if you want to borrow one."
"No need, I'll just recharge it using the greatest power of all: magic!"
"Brother, I don't think that's such a good i—"
Too late. Loki lifted his hands and cast a spell. The tab-lutt exploded into a thousand tiny fragments, much like Mjölnir at Hela's touch. Why must his siblings always destroy things?!
They managed to waft most of the acrid black smoke out through a window. Coughing and spluttering on the lingering plastic fumes, they surveyed the shiny mess the tab-lutt had left on Loki's floor.
"It was clearly faulty," the God of Mischief declared, with a glare that defied Thor to argue with him.
Thor didn't bother. He was starting to learn that sometimes, there was just no arguing with family.
Author's note: Thanks for reading! I have a few chapters pre-written, so this story will update every Wednesday, at least until the New Year. If you have an idea for a stand-alone piece you'd like to see in this story, drop me a PM, and if I like it, I'll write it and credit you for the idea.