ADISCLAIMER: I do NOT own the characters, nor do I own most of the banter from this chapter-I read the original Thor script, and the banter that wasn't included in the movie is amazing, and I was all like, 'O_O I CANNOT DO BETTER THAN THIS' and so I copied a lot of it. Credit goes to Marvel and their awesome script writers. I own nothing. NOTHING.
"I WON!" Thor roared, pulling his steed to a stop. Sif and the Warriors Three came up just behind him.
"Indeed, you won second place," Loki nodded, getting up from where he'd been laying on the bifrost. He stretched exaggeratedly.
"Heimdall, may we pass?" Thor demanded, striding over and standing in front of the gatekeeper purposefully.
"Never," Heimdall said, pausing long enough for the anger to surface in Thor's expression, before continuing, "Has an enemy slipped my watch, until today. I wish to know how that happened."
"Than tell no one where we have gone," Thor ordered, striding past and nearly tripping as
Loki stepped on his cape.
"What was that for?!" Thor demanded, rounding on his brother.
Loki raised his eyebrows. "It was an accident. Really brother, what crawled into your cape?"
"The last time something crawled into my cape, I believe it was a spider that you conjured,"
Thor shot back.
"That was an accident," Loki shrugged. "I meant to set it on Hogun..."
Hogun's dark eyes widened in fear at the thought of the huge black spider crawling up his cape, eight long hairy legs tickling across his neck...
Sif took her long pony tail and tickled his neck, snickering and jumping back as he flailed.
"AIEEEEEEE!" he shrieked. "GET IT OFF MEEEEE! "GET IT OFFFFF!"
Volstagg knocked him in the head with the brush of his large eight-pronged double-headed fork and Hogun collapsed.
"What was that for?!" Hogun groaned, as Volstagg bent over and tugged him to his feet.
"I got the spider off you!" Volstagg replied brightly.
"Be warned," Heimdall intoned soberly. "I will honor my sworn oath to protect this Realm as its Gatekeeper. If your return threatens the safety of Asgard, Bifrost will remain closed to you. You'll be left to die in the cold wastes of Jotunheim."
Thor just grinned cockily. "I have no plans to die today!"
"None do," Heimdall pointed out. Perhaps if Thor had taken a moment to mull over that thought he would have realized the weight of it—but he didn't, and so it didn't it bother him.
Heimdall inserted his sword into the control panel, and the apparatus of the Observatory starts spinning, energy traveling along the bifrost in rainbow pulses, feeding into it.
Turning his sword in the control panel, Heimdall swung the Observatory's giant turret around, aiming it into a section of space. He then plunged his sword deeper, and a rainbow
beam shot forth.
The bifrost opened at the end of the platform they stood on.
"All is ready," Heimdall declared in his deep voice. "You may pass."
"Can't you just leave the bridge open for us?" Volstagg asked. He hefted his double-headed fork over his shoulder, after doing a fancy spinning twirl around his head during which he almost hit himself.
Heimdall stared at the redhead like he was an idiot. "To keep this bridge open would unleash the full power of the bifrost and destroy Jotunheim with you upon it," he stated, slowly, as if for a child's benefit.
Loki tilted his head with interest, calculations churning behind his eyes like thousands upon thousands of gears; which in turn spun thousands upon thousands of more gears.
"Ah," Volstagg said, shrugging it off. "Never mind, then."
Thor strides forward, turning when nobody follows him. "Come on," he said with a grin that turned teasing. "Don't be bashful, now."
They joined him at his side, and they all step towards the bifrost, their bodies seeming to become distorted and elongated, and they all appeared to be doing the 'throw-up' hip hop move where they bended at the knees, then rolled upwards first through their hips and then chest and lastly their head nodded harshly forward.
They were jerked into the maelstrom of color and raw power.
Or maybe it would be called a vortex. Or a tornado. Or some other swirling and chaotic force of nature. Like a cyclone.
Ripping a hole through Jotunheim's previously unshattered crystalline blue sky, the bifrost set them down on a far icy cliff, snow flurrying up around them as runes are imprinted into the ground beneath their feet.
Volstagg lost his footing and fell backwards, Thor grabbing his belt just in time to save the large man from a death of falling off the icy ring of Jotunheim and into the black abyss of deep space.
"Come on big fella! Up...!" Thor said, as Volstagg teetered there for a moment, before he managed haul the burly man back onto the ice.
"This belt!" Volstagg cried, placing a hand on it appreciatively. "This belt is now my lucky belt! I will never remove it! Even when bathing!"
"You bathe?" Fandral asked with a snort.
Before Thor could interrupt and say "Come on, let's move," Loki interrupted with "You all! Move!"
Startled, the others quickly got out of his way, watching perplexedly as he read the runes. His lips moved soundlessly.
"Just as I thought," he murmured to himself, before looking up at them. "By all means, what are you waiting for?" he asked, as if it had he who'd been waiting for them, rather than the other way around.
They turned to regard the glacial landscape and turned their backs on Loki as he joined them, shouting "BOO!" into Thor's ear as he gripped the mountainous shoulders.
"Loki," Thor said in annoyance, slapping away the laughing god. "Are you trying to alert them to our presence?!"
Loki gave him a deadpan. "Of course," he droned. "I'm alerting the Frost Giants to our presence because no way in the Nine Realms would they notice a huge beam of rainbow light rending a hole in their sky and roaring like a frozen waterfall crashing down."
At that moment, there was an avalanche of part of a towering icy structure, that looked like the remnants of something rather large and moderately important, like some sort of arch. Or pillar. Or something.
"We shouldn't be here," Hogun said soberly, gripping the handle of his egg whisk.
Thor squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, puffing out his chest in determination. "Too late now," he declared, and started forward.
"Actually, it's not," Fandral protested, catching up to the thunderer. "We could turn right around, hop back to Asgard, share a mug by the fire..." he licked his lips wistfully and instantly regretted it as his saliva froze there. "Could be nice."
The crown prince completely ignored him, continuing forward with footsteps like thunderclaps.
Or at least, they usually sound like thunderclaps in the echoing halls of Asgard, but trudging through the snow they sound more like slush slush squelch.
Strolling next to him Loki breathes out in a part exasperated sigh, part exhilarated laugh. "Perhaps we should wait," he offers lightly, with his most conniving expression prepared for when Thor whirls around to look at him.
"For what?" Thor demands haughtily.
"To survey the enemy," Loki answers, smirking as if that should be obvious. "To gauge their strengths and weaknesses from a distance."
He could already hear faint noises filtering over the landscape like escaped butterflies, and curiosity and suspicion were eating away at him.
"I'm liking that," Volstagg nodded. "Gauging. Surveying. Particularly the distance part."
Thor growled at them, turning back around and stalking towards the icy city. "We know all we must. It's time to act," he said determinedly.
The rest followed somewhat reluctantly. Except for Loki, who followed directly behind Thor, trying to give his brother flat tires.
"He's just got to swing his spatula..." Sif sighed.
They all lean into the wind, fighting against it, shivering violently. Except for Loki, who was protected from the wind behind Thor's muscled bulk, and was sauntering as if through a spring meadow.
Seeing this, the others got into single file behind him, all trudging directly behind the thunderer.
It didn't seem to work that well for them though, and a chorus of teeth chattering began, accompanying the howling of the wind in a sort of frigid symphony.
Thor, invigorated, turned back to his comrades. "It feels good, doesn't it?" he asked with a huge grin. "To be together again, adventuring on another world?"
"Adventuring?" Fandral snorted indignantly. "Is that what we're doing?"
"What would you call it?" Thor asks, still grinning. It was that grin that promised rash behavior and a fight of epic proportions.
"Freezing," Fandral said immediately.
"Starving," Volstagg added.
"Whining," Sif snapped.
Their complaints did nothing whatsoever to dampen Thor's mood. "How about a song to lift our spirits?" he suggested, still grinning.
The others groaned.
"No, not that!" Hogun protested.
Sif shook her head vehemently, her long black ponytail whipping into her face as she begged "Please don't make us sing again!"
"If I have to listen to Volstagg's singing voice one more time, I'll fall on my own rolling pin!" Fandral declared, shuddering.
"Well," Sif smirked, tilting her head to glance over her shoulder to glance at the blond. "Now I'm on board."
She was pretty sure Thor grinned, but she couldn't catch his eye to share that smile because Loki was in her way.
"Ouch!" Fandral cried, clutching his chest. "The burn of betrayal!"
"Good! It'll warm you up!" Volstagg laughed, clapping the other man on the shoulder.
Sif glanced around, apprehensive. "Where are they?" she asked, breath visible as it drifted from between her lips.
"Hiding," Thor growled, letting his eyes flick across the still landscape. "As cowards always do."
Loki rolled his malachite green eyes at the sky. "Hiding," he said, "and watching our every move. Like intelligent beings: observing in order to exploit weakness instead of rushing into a battle before they know anything. Cough, unlike somebody else I could mention, cough. "
"Are you hinting at something?" Thor accused.
"Congratulations," Loki replied, dryly sarcastic, as he clapped his gloved hands slowly and exaggeratedly. "You have finally caught on to my hinting that there is a difference between fear and caution. Would you like the definitions too?"
"Shut up you two," Sif snapped, rolling her dark eyes.
They did. Though Loki stuck his tongue out at Sif, and Fandral had to bite down the urge to ask why Loki's tongue didn't freeze off, because when he started to open his mouth he was glared at.
They reached plaza, hair prickling at the backs of their necks as they sensed the frost giants surrounding them, creeping through the shadowed crevices. Hands slip to the hilts of their weapons.
"What is your business here?" a Jotun sentry calls, voice like crackling ice.
"I speak only to your King," Thor snapped. "Not to his foot soldiers."
"I am Laufey, King of this Realm."
Glancing towards the source of the voice, the Asgardians saw a Jotun sitting on a throne on a sort of balcony-like thing, staring down at them with regal-backed posture and red eyes that glinted with... something. Mockery, maybe, like he knew somehow how this situation was going to play out.
"I am—"
"We know who you are, Odinson," Laufey growled. "Why have you brought the stench of your blood into my world?"
"I demand answ—Loki what are you doing?!"
Loki had sidled up to Thor, standing slightly on his tiptoes to sniff Thor's neck. He made a disgusted face and waved at the air in front of him in a sign of having smelled something putrid.
"Laufey's right," Loki said, crinkling his nose. "You stink. When was the last time you took a bath?"
"Not as long ago as Volstagg, I'm sure," Thor said, glaring at him.
Laufey watched this in barely concealed amusement, before saying snidely, "You 'demand?'"
"How did your people get into Asgard?" Thor did, indeed, demand.
"That's what you came her for?" Loki cried indignantly, before Laufey could begin to answer. "I could have told you that!"
Several Jotuns on the sidelines picked up their instruments, beginning to play music as the tension in the air rose, just begging for a fight to break out.
The music was a combination resonating drum beats they could feel through their feet, a high sort of icy tinkling, like someone was playing icicles with a metal tea spoon, a whistling wind sound like some kind of flute, and a lilting-voiced violin-like string instrument.
Loki started nodding his head to the beat. "This music: I like it!" he proclaimed. "You could dance to music like this."
Thor however had turned his attention back to Laufey. "I demand—LOKI!"
"Sorry!" Loki apologized, peeking out from behind Thor, who'd he'd ducked behind when he pissed off a Jotun in the crowd by making a rude hand gesture, prompting the insulted Jotun to throw a snowball at him. "It wasn't my fault!"
At the dubious looks sent his way, Loki amended, "Okay, maybe it was sort of my fault. But it wasn't me who threw the snowball! It was him!" he pointed at the Jotun, who already had another snowball in his hands.
The music picked up even faster, and a few Jotuns got onto the floor and started breakdancing.
"Oh come on, Brother," Loki said, turning around and starting to walk back. "These frost giants are ridiculous."
Thor growled, but nevertheless started to follow his younger brother.
"Run back home, little princess," a Jotun mocked Thor.
The thunderer froze.
"Damn," Loki breathed. Though how much he meant said statement was debatable, since he seemed to be smirking.
Thor was certainly grinning, as he whirled around and hit the Jotun in the face with his spatula, knocking the giant backwards.
"Silly spatula!" Volstagg laughed nervously. "Has a mind of its own!"
But despite whatever the Asgardians were thinking about the situation, the Jotuns took up the challenge of a fight, icy armor beginning to form crackling along their bodies.
"I'm hoping that's just decorative," Fandral said weakly.
Snowballs were suddenly flying from all directions, and he was already whipping his mighty spatula about his head, stirring the sky into a storm like whooped cream.
The other Asgardians formed a circle around Thor, who was flinging his spatula around and grinning in exhilaration as it hit frost giants and knocked them back.
"NEXT!" he yelled.
The Jotuns had at him. With snowballs. Lots and lots and lots of snowballs.
Fandral sliced the snowballs with his rolling pin before they could hit him in the face—he'd originally tried to hit them like they were baseballs and he had a baseball bat, but that didn't work because, well, it was a rolling pin.
Sif on the other hand had a double-sided butter knife that was almost as tall as she was, and was succeeding quite well at said parody of the Midgardian sport.
Volstagg was catching the snowballs on the eight prongs of his double-headed fork and trying to fling them off, sending them an rather impressive three feet in any direction, including backwards into his face.
And Hogun's egg whisk was, well, whisking. He was covered from head to toe in powdered snow, like either powdered sugar or really, really bad dandruff. He could barely see through his own self-created blizzard, and was starting to get pegged much more often.
"I'm going to get bruises from this," Volstagg groaned, as he was nailed in the shoulder.
"Well? What move, do you think?" Fandral asked, figuring that maybe they'd do better working together than this ridiculous solo thing they were doing.
They weren't all Thor, after all.
"I say we use the, 'Norn's Revenge'," Volstagg suggested, finally getting the hang of ridding his fork of accumulated snowballs in a somewhat threatening manner.
Fandral snorted. "At this close range? I think 'The Alfheim Lunge' is a better move."
"Maybe if they were three feet tall!" Volstagg said, disgusted. "No! How about 'The Randy Valkyri'?"
"Shut up!" Hogun said, tired of their childish bickering.
As a group of frost giants gang up on Sif, hitting her with snowballs from all sides, she shouted, "If you don't treat me like a lady, I won't act like a lady!" and promptly twirled, sticking one blade of the butter knife into the snow so that it splashes up into all their faces.
A Jotun got up close enough to grapple with Volstagg, but the Asgardian just grinned. "You may be taller, but I'm wider!" He then launched his mighty belly at the Jotun and sent him flying.
Avoid such pointless tactics (like the belly thing could ever work for Loki), Loki had decided to play a game of dodge-ball. He was doing quite well, he thought, as snowballs flew through his illusions and hit other Jotuns and he weaved and dodged the packed snowflakes or caught them and threw them back, up until a frost giant finally managed to peg him in the face.
Acting on vindictive instinct, Loki created his own especially large snowball out of the air, flinging it into said frost giant's own face.
Oh wait. He'd never done that kind of magic before.
His flesh tingled, and Loki glanced down at his hands, pulling off the black gloves. Ridiculously vibrant green eyes widening as he saw that his hands were an icy cobalt, his nails a stony black, before his skin slowly melted back to his usual pallor.
Questions darted like hunted rabbits through his forested eyes, jumping to conclusions and tossing them away just as quickly, thoughts clicking and clashing with feet clad loudly in tap-dancing shoes.
Questions perhaps for a less dire moment. He leapt back into the game, turning a hail of snowballs angled at Fandral into water that flowed around him.
Thor chose that precise moment to bring his spatula down in his signature lighting strike, Jotuns and Asgardians alike being throw backwards.
Cracks and fizzures began snaking across the thin ground of ice, and as creatures of all complexions began running, Laufey sighed, taking the Casket of Ancient Winters and placed it on the pedestal.
To Helheim with formalities and ridiculous ceremonies. They needed the Casket now.
As fast as the ice crumbled away, suddenly a wave of blue energy swept through, repairing and strengthening the ice.
There was a moment of silence, before cheering started, and the music pulsed back up.
And then the party was crashed.
By Odin.
Yay.
There was a burst of rainbow light and a high keening noise, and suddenly Odin was there atop Sleipnir, who hoofed the air with his four front legs, before settling down onto all eight.
"Hey Sleip, buddy," Loki said, coming over to pet the horse's nose. "I see Odin took you out again without daddy's permission." Inside joke. Sleipnir was NOT Loki's actual son, no matter what those crazy mortals thought—he was simply called Sleipnir's daddy because Sleipnir loved him so much, and used to follow him everywhere.
Loki was still one of the only beings in the Nine Realms that Sleipnir would listen to.
"Laufey, end this," Odin stated.
Laufey sneered, wiping the remnants of a snowball off his face. "Your boy sought this out."
"You're right," Odin admitted. "These are the actions of a boy. Treat them as such. You and I can stop this before there's further bloodshed."
The King of Jotunheim actually furrowed his brow, glancing around. "Was there any bloodshed?"
Asgardian and Jotun heads all shook "no".
With a deadpan, Laufey proclaimed, "We are beyond diplomacy now, Allfather. He'll get what he came for—"
Odin's expression became grim and determined.
"—a snowball fight!" and with that, Laufey, King of Jotunheim, pegged Odin, King of Asgard, in the face with a humongous snowball.
Snow dripping down his face, Odin raised his staff, saying, "I don't think so," as the bifrost beam of rainbow colors came flashing down and pulled all the Asgardians back up to Asgard.
"Shame," Laufey said, looking after them with an unreadable expression. "I was actually starting to enjoy that."
They materialize back in the Observatory, Heimdall standing at the controls. Odin pulled Heimdall's sword from the control panel and threw it at him. Heimdall caught it, backing away before the yelling started.
For some reason Sleipnir was suddenly nowhere to be found. Poof! One moment Odin was on an eight-legged horse, the next moment he wasn't.
(Best guesses were that Sleipnir dumped him on Loki's subtle prompting, and that the horse was already bouncing down the bifrost toward the stables, where he could finish his breakfast that had been so rudely interrupted.)
"Why did you bring us back?" Thor demanded angrily.
"Do you realize what you've done?" Odin snarls. "What you've started?"
"I was protecting my home."
"By seeking out a snowball fight?!" Odin asks in disbelief. "How is that supposed to protect the kingdom?!"
Thor set his jaw.
Turning to Sif and the Warriors Three, Odin shouts, "Get out of here!"
They do.
"There won't be a kingdom to protect if you're afraid to act!" Thor says, continuing the verbal fight. "The Frost Giants have the Casket!"
Odin stared at him.
"Whatever the cost, the world must know that the new King of Asgard will not be held in contempt," Thor declares.
"That's pride and vanity that talks! Not leadership! Have you forgotten everything I've taught you? What of a warrior's patience, cunning?" Odin bellows.
Thor blinks. "You taught me something?"
Furious, Odin roars, "You're a vain, greedy, cruel boy!"
"And you are an old man and a fool!" Thor shouts right back, not to be outdone.
The whole world seemed to stop at Thor's words. Odin fell quiet. When he spoke again, there was something... perhaps slightly terrifying beneath the calmness of his words. He was the Allfather for a reason, after all. And it wasn't because he could stab himself with a fruit skewer and hang on Yggdrasil for nine nights.
Okay, well, that was part of it, but still.
"A fool, yes!" Odin said softly. "I was a fool to think you were ready."
Had things gone completely according to plan, Loki would have probably fist-pumped.
But things had not quite gone according to plan.
Taking a step towards Odin imploringly, Loki started, "Father—"
"HUUUUURGH!" Odin roars, pointing a finger at Loki, who goes rigid.
Odin turned to direct his attention back to Thor. "Thor Odinson... You have disobeyed the express command of your King—"
"SHUT UP!" Loki yelled, clenching his fists at his sides. "SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO
YOU!"
"Through your arrogance and stupidity—" Odin kept on, ignoring his younger son.
"DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON ME! I WON'T BE IGNORED!"
Both Thor and Odin turned in surprise, to see Loki panting, chrome tourmaline eyes flashing. "My hands turned blue," he stated.
Odin blanched. "Just a trick of the light, I'm sure..." he trailed off as Loki formed a snowball in those pale hands and hurled it into his face.
Only Loki's hands weren't so pale anymore, creeping over with a deep cobalt.
When Loki spoke, his voice was low and raspy. "Am I cursed?"
"No," Odin said, wiping snow from his face for the second time that day.
"What am I?"
"You are my son."
"What more than that?" Loki advanced towards him, catlike, one booted foot in front of the other, heal to toe. "The Casket wasn't the only thing you took from Jotunheim that day was it?"
Thor, for once too shocked to say anything, just watched with horror coming slow as dawn over his features.
The Allfather sighed. If only Loki wasn't so damn clever...
"In the aftermath of the battle," Odin said, "I went into the temple, and I found an abandoned runt that just so happened to be Laufey's son, and so I took the child for my own."
Fractures. Fractures everywhere.
"You took me for a purpose." Quiet, words so quiet. Fractured. "What was it?"
"You were an innocent child—"
"TELL ME!" Loki screamed, face twisting with pain and emotional turmoil, green eyes reflecting the light like shattered gems.
Another longsuffering sigh from the Allfather. "I thought to unite our kingdoms, bring about a permanent peace, through you. But those plans no longer matter."
"What, so I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up, here, until you might have use of me?!"
"Why do you twist my words?"
"Oh it all makes sense now," Loki snarled, "why you preferred Thor, All. These. Years. Because no matter how much you claimed to love me—"
"IS THIS TRUE, FATHER?!" Thor roared, finally deciding to step in, after just standing there with his mouth agape for a while. "WHY DID YOU NOT THINK TO TELL US SOONER?"
"I wanted only to protect Loki from the truth—"
"What, that I am the monster parents tell their children about at night?"
"THE TRUTH THAT FROST GIANTS AREN'T ACTUALLY BLOODTHIRSTY MONSTERS, AND DON'T DO MUCH WORSE THAN THROW SNOWBALLS?"
"THEY WEREN'T JUST SNOWBALLS!" Odin roared angrily. "THERE WERE BLADES OF ICE TOO! HOW DO YOU THINK LAUFEY TOOK OUT MY EYE?!"
"I thought you carved out your own eye in exchange for a drink from the Well of Wisdom," Loki said bitterly.
"ARGGGHHHHHHHH," Odin bellowed, taking up his oversized fruit skewer. "I've just about had enough of you! Thor, you are banished for being an arrogant idiot! I take from you your power in the name of lots of people," he held out his hand, and Mjolnir the spatuala flew into it and Thor's armor flew off him, Thor looking down at his casual shirt and pants and back up in alarm. "AND I CAST YOU OUT!"
A blast from the fruit skewer sent Thor into the bifrost beam, which was somehow back on and pointed at Midgard...?
"And YOU," Odin said, pointing the skewer at Loki, who was glaring at him fit to turn entire forests dry and dead and wilted. "You are banished for being emotionally compromised! I can't take away you're power because you're a Frost Giant and taking away your magic would probably kill you since it's an essential part of your lifeforce since you thrive on Chaos and not in fact Idunn's apples, but I can CAST YOU OUT!"
And so with that Loki was blasted into the bifrost as well.
Odin breathed heavily, sinking to his knees even as he hurled Mjolnir after them, saying, "Here, take that too! Only there's something I should probably say about worthiness... oh bugger..."
The Allfather fell asleep.
After a moment Heimdall came up to the control panel and turned off the bifrost so that it wouldn't tear Midgard apart.
So this chapter was fairly close to the movie/original "Thor" script, but I can assure you that things get changed up a LOT from here on out ;3 For one thing, in this parody Loki is Thor's favorite... 'cause I love bromance ;3 And because I could. So there.