Title: Rebellion
Summary: A pair of supervillains make a break into the vault of Asgard's most sacred treasures. Their hearts are dark, their intentions foul, and it is way past one of their curfew.
The vault of Asgard was cool and quiet, pale light spilling off the burnished rock slabs that made up the walls. It had a hushed, dampened feeling despite the unpadded stone surfaces of wall and floor, the massive stone blocks reinforced with layers upon layers of protective magics. Asgard's treasure box, containing all the most breathtakingly valuable and terrifyingly dangerous of all her kingdom's spoils. Gold and jewels glittered from some niches, and other, more ancient objects glittered with a malevolent life of their own.
Despite all the power and danger contained here, this was usually the most boring stretch of the Einherjar's patrol route. After all, it was buried in the very heart of Asgard, where any intruder would have to fight their way through the entirety of the city, past the defenses and the palace itself, down to the heart of the vault. Sure, it had happened once before - when the Frost Giants somehow snuck in - but what were the odds of that happening twice?
That's what the two guards on patrol were probably thinking a few seconds before a new shimmer formed in front of the heavily runed and warded vault entrance, followed by a puff of odd-smelling breeze. The first guard whirled around to face the threat, polearm raised, but his blade bounced off an invisible wall in mid-air, and a moment later the weapon was wrenched from his grasp by an invisible fist. He opened his mouth to yell, but choked as no air escaped the sudden constriction around his throat.
The second guard turned to run, but a blur of black and green resolved itself into a menacing figure lurking right behind him, and a swift and brutal melee resolved itself with the guard toppling unconscious and with an ominous sounding crunch to the marble stones.
"Oh, well done," applauded the first figure, who had now stepped out past the concealing shadow and loomed in the flickering light of the vault. He was tall and broad-shouldered, black-haired, with skin that gleamed so pale and starkly white he almost appeared to be stone himself, and malevolent red eyes. "I must say, I've never seen cloaking spells used to such fine effect in combat before, Loki."
The other figure resolved himself into a tall and skinny warrior dressed in gold and green armor, with tall curling horns lending a good extra six inches to his already impressive height. "Oh, it was nothing," he said modestly. "Your telekinesis and force fields are much more impressive, Mister Sinister. Can you truly shape them into any form you like? The possibilities... astound."
"Yes, they do," Sinister accepted his due with grace. "But truly, it would all be for nothing without your teleportation skills to bring us here in the first place; and teleportation, alas, is a skill I have never managed to master."
"Such a shame," Loki shook his head sympathetically. "It really broadens your horizons. Now, the wards on this door - they are set to block magic, but they are no defense against your kind of power. Care to do the honors?"
"Certainly," Sinister said, and turned to focus his telekinetic powers on crumpling the door. Privately, he was already drawing plans to stab Loki in the back the moment he no longer needed him, at least disabling him long enough to get a few good blood and tissue samples. If he could crack the alien's gene code, the effects on his work would be revolutionary. To say nothing of what he could do with Loki himself, if he got his hands on him...
Loki, no doubt, had his own plans for betraying him at the first opportunity. Such was the way of supervillains. Until then, though, there was more to be gained by cooperation than opposition; and even if there hadn't been, there was no need to be rude about it. Standards had to be upheld, after all.
"The scale of the architecture here is magnificent," Sinister complimented as they walked together down the stairs towards the vault. "A grand accomplishment which dwarfs anything we have on Earth."
"Well, Earth, of course," Loki said with a shrug. "A shame that the grand scale of architecture is not matched by an equal grandness of minds on the part of its inhabitants. Petty, small creatures, all of them - save Odin, whom they obey with a mindless fanaticism. Asgard! Ants led by a dog!"
"That is a very apt metaphor," Sinister congratulated him, and Loki glowed.
"I know, right?" he said, pleased. "But you, Nathan - may I call you Nathan? - you are not like those other mortals, the mindless sheep. You have vision."
"Alas that my countrymen do not," Nathan said mournfully. "Petty and tiny, all of them. Especially those tedious heroes. Always nattering on about protecting the peace and the innocent, when all they're really protecting is their own power invested in the status quo. It's like they don't even want to consider the possibilities of what their lives could become if they consented to become the undead chattel of a benevolent godlike tyrant."
"Yes, well, that is why we are here, is it not?" Loki commiserated as they descended the final steps into the Vault. "With the Tablet of Life and Time, you will no longer be constrained in your work by such trifling things as 'death.' You will at last have the power to realize your vision upon Midgard! Fuck the system!"
"Young man," boomed a new voice that rolled off the walls of the vault, seeming to come from every direction at once. It was deep, bass and resonant, and seemed to throb in their very bones. "Do you have any idea what century it is?"
Loki froze in mid-step, his eyes threatening to bug out of his head. "Oh no," he moaned.
Standing at the end of the hallway inside the treasure vault was a tall, white-haired man in gold robes and a gleaming golden eyepatch. In one hand he held a tall staff, also gold. (Nathan was beginning to get the idea that gold was, as it were, 'a thing' with these guys.) The old man raised his staff and leveled it at Loki, along with a stern glare. "What do you think you're up to, creeping around the Vault at this time of night?" he boomed out. "We've been worried sick! Where have you been?"
"Out," Loki said sullenly.
"Out where?" the old man interrogated remorselessly.
"Out with my friends," Loki snapped back. "You know, the ones that you are embarrassing me in front of, Odin."
"That's All-Father to you, young man!" the old man - Odin - said sternly. His one eye passed over Nathan, the stern light of holy retribution in his eyes. "Loki, you know I don't approve of you keeping company with these supervillains! Your mother and I raised you better than this!"
"Well, it's too bad you aren't my real dad!" Loki shouted. "Maybe then you could get to tell me what to do!"
"ENOUGH!" Odin roared, his voice shaking the recesses of the vault. "You are still my son and I will not tolerate any more of this self-destructive behavior!"
He leveled the staff at Loki and a fountain of gold (of course) light shot out of the end of it, enveloping Loki in a glittering cocoon. Loki snarled in fury and tried to fight back, green magic flaring and flashing, but it was no use. "Loki Odinson, I banish you to your room for the next ten years!" Odin shouted, and slammed the butt of his spear against the ground.
Loki howled as the golden light coruscated around him, his form attenuating as it was magically dragged off elsewhere. "Your reign of oppression will not last forever, tyrant!" Loki screeched back at the King.
"And don't think I don't know about those tomes of dark magic you've been hiding in your sock drawers!" Odin called after his fading form. "Don't you know what those things will do to your personal entropic field? I'll be up there after dinner and you and I are going to have a long talk about that!"
"You are ruining my life!" Loki screamed as he was dragged off into the nether. His voice faded into an unintelligible snarl as the last of the golden light faded, and was gone.
Odin turned to Sinister, now alone in the vault. "Ah," Nathan said, unable to hide his nervousness. He might be a Victorian mad scientist, but he wasn't an idiot; he knew better than to try his odds here. "Perhaps I should just... be on my way back to earth, shall I?"
"Perhaps it's best if you do, mortal," Odin said, and aimed the spear at him in turn. There was no time to react - or to attempt to correct the mortal title - before another cloud of golden light shot out of the end and enveloped him, and the vault vanished around him.
Sinister spent the rest of the week trying to fight his way out of the deep jungles of the Amazon to somewhere he could hitch a ride back to Nebraska, and swearing the whole time to never again attempt an alliance with angsty emo teenage gods of chaos.
~end.
Author's Notes: Nathan Essex, aka Mister Sinister, is a Marvel villain mostly from the X-Men continuity. He seemed like the sort of evil but genteel supervillain that would be likely to try to strike up a deal with Loki.