"You may try Avengers but you must know it is useless to attempt to avert your fate. We all have our destinies, and yours is to beg for my mercy!" Loki shouted at the team. As the insanity had receded from the battle of New York it was found that defeating the God became a lot more difficult.
Thor was in Asgard while Odin was in slumber and well, when the cat's away...
The Avengers were way in over their heads, Loki had his actual staff back, not the stupid sceptre – a staff that could channel his actual magic, and with his throwing knives he was pushing the hero's further and further back.
Loki didn't actually want to kill them, why would he? They were his favourite form of entertainment. He did, however, want to maim one of them, that was always fun, especially when he realised that their medicine was much advanced since the last time he was there and so could handle a little maiming. The Hulk was the target this time, he couldn't die, not really, and so Loki could do whatever he wanted to him with no worry of braking one of his toys.
The mischief maker was about to make the maiming blow when the scene was bathed in a soft green light and a horse trotted out of sudden mist. Did he have eight legs? What? And for some reason when the beast opened its mouth instead of a neigh or a whinny, an understandable, if accented, voice rang through the din.
"Mummy, Mummy! Look at me! Look Mummy look!" Yelled the horse as it bounced (who knew a horse -even an eight legged talking one- could bounce) around them all. What the Avengers weren't expecting, but probably should have was for Loki to look slightly embarrassed by then completely ignore them in favour for the newcomer.
"Aww, that's brilliant Sleip, now, Mummy's a little busy right now, but I swear I'll be around in a little bit, why don't you play with your siblings." Loki cooed putting the staff down for a moment, which was the only distraction the Avengers needed really to gather themselves and catch their breath and to surround the God. The decision was to not interrupt the talk between Loki and the horse 'Sleip', at least not yet. They didn't want to find out what would happen if they did. Loki seemed to want the horse to leave and so they found it would be safer to wait and see if the it-he-she-whatever would go away.
Luckily it did, and they didn't have to attack an unknown as it hadn't done anything other than call Loki "Mummy" and you couldn't choose your parents – though why it said "Mummy" rather than "Daddy" they had yet to ascertain.
As soon as the horse disappeared Loki was surrounded any attempt at fleeing smothered while Loki was still distracted. Tony was ecstatic to see that the handcuffs he had recently created worked just as well as the Asgardian cuffs and so the liesmith was taken to the closest SHIELD base for questioning.
On the way they had time to do a little questioning of their own.
"So..." Tony started "What was the horse and why did it call you Mummy?"
Loki sighed, resigning himself to the whims of the mortals; perhaps his tale would shock them enough he could escape again.
"'It' is a 'He' and he is my son. Sleipnir. You may have heard of him." Loki explained.
"How the hell do you have a horse for a son? You fuck one or something?!" Tony enquired.
"Yes, actually." Loki replied, smirking as they blanched.
"That's, just wrong" Steve replied, looking a little sick.
"Yeah, you got a horse pregnant?" Clint asked.
"Your mortal ideas on right and wrong are hilarious. You are a primitive race with primitive views. Your technology is far behind our own and your internalised racism has caused many, many wars. But if it makes your delicate sensibilities feel any better, I did not get a horse pregnant, a horse got me pregnant. Though he was a magic horse rather than a common beast, and I happened to be a mare at the time.
I would also kindly ask you not to try and insult my son, he happens to be the most well adjusted of all my children at the moment and he is still quite young, not yet proficient in shifting other than the ability to speak, though I used to have to shift to a horse to talk to him so he may learn yet"
They just stared at him. They didn't know what was the most disturbing, the fact that Loki was a parent, fucked a horse, got pregnant from a horse, or that he could shapeshift! How did they not know he could shapeshit?! He could be walking around free at any point and no one would know!
"Kindly shut your mouths mortals, you might catch flies." Loki snarked.
Loki continued to comment on things, some insulting, and some interesting. To be honest Tony wanted to sit Loki down and just make him explain everything about everything rather than question him on his evil ways. Loki was an annoying and wicked bastard but he was also a scholar so…
"You don't need to explain your electricity mortal, Thor may not know about it, but that's only because he never paid any attention in our history lessons"
"Wait, hang on… what? History lessons?" Clint blurted out, scowl transforming into chagrin when Natasha elbowed him in the ribs for his slip up. She was mean like that, her elbows hurt.
"Yes, history. The other eight allied realms are much further in progress than you. You came about much, much later than us, and so we let you grow on your own – helped out now and then, but really we were not to interfere until you had at least gained magic or dimension travel"
"Sounds like the prime directive" Tony winked, nudging Bruce.
"The what?"
"Star Trek… never mind"
"I assume that is a reference to some part of your popular culture? Anyway, it shouldn't take long, you have achieved a great deal in only a short while, it shouldn't take more than a thousand years or so before you become an official part of the Nine Allied Realms. Of course by then you will have had to achieved realm peace and have either a realm leader or a spokesperson."
"What if we don't want to be part of the allied realms?" Steve asked, aware that the entire conversation was being recorded and SHIELD would want to know.
"We go to war. You have to be part of the Nine Realms, you are on one of the branches of Ygdrasil. You are also the only realm that is in both physical and metaphysical worlds at exactly the same time, all the time. It's why everyone on the outside wants to invade, because it's their only way to be able to tap into the tree."
It was probably a bad idea to be informing the mortals, but they would learn anyway, and they might as well lean the correct things. Misinformation is a dangerous thing. It also meant that no one noticed as we slowly escaped from their bounds. Just because the handcuffs depleted his magic, didn't mean he didn't still know how to pick them the 'muggle' way.
"Mummy! Mummy! Look at me! Look at me! I can transform now!" Loki's child returned, but this time as a centaur, eight horse legs but with the torso and head of a thirteen year old child, with very black hair and green eyes. Takes after his mother.
"Oh that's fabulous darling, for now why don't you change back hmm? Okay, lets go." Loki called to him, breaking away from the stunned Avengers. They looked at the mother and son as they rode away, fading into the beyond.
"Oh that's just great isn't it? He stole my phone!" Tony cried out.
Over the next week or so, a series of "family photos" cropped up on the internet showing Loki, a horse, a women in her late teens early twenties, a fifteen year old boy with wolf ears, a man with fangs, a couple women, two twin boys, and Sleipnir, fully transformed this time.
"I don't care how cute they look or how many phones I can have, afford or make it's the principle of the thing!" Tony raged.