Title: Cover Up the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Politics, some discussion of racism, Lady!Loki.

Author's Notes: Hey folks, I'm back! Happy new year to all of you, hope you had a good winter interlude. We're starting to get into the plot of this fic.

Somehow, before he even quite realized it was happening, Loki's schedule slowly filled up. It was a jarring transition from the slow, patient pace of life in Asgard - which measured things by years or decades, or perhaps moons if they were in a particular hurry - to the hectic, jerky, seven-day cycle that Midgard for some reason favored. Mortals rushed from one day to the next, hurrying towards the end of the week - and then no sooner did the week-end arrive than it was over, and the whole carnival schedule started over again.

On Mondays and Wednesdays Loki gave his lecture on the cosmology of the Nine Realms to large classes of students at once. While his cosmology lectures were aimed at teaching the basics and interesting as many of the children as possible in what lay outside the borders of their Realm, it was more flash and spectacle than serious scholarship. But a smaller number of students showed genuine interest in a more serious, intensive study of the history of the Nine Realms in general and Asgard in particular, and so he felt obliged to meet with them twice a week after the initial lectures to fill in the details.

Then there were his defense classes, starting early in the mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays and continuing on well past noon, as he broke up the class into their levels of ability and practiced with them more intensively. He was not to be granted respite during the afternoons, however; as soon as word had gotten around the faculty about his easy displays of seidr in the classroom, the other teachers were all mad to find out how did it. Somehow, what had started out as a casual 'little demonstration' as requested by Hank McCoy had devolved into a sort of unofficial metaphysics workshop, meeting on Thursdays and Saturdays to compare Loki's talents with various mutant powers and debate interminably about how similar or different their sources really were. (If he were being perfectly honest with himself, Loki did find the discussions fascinating, but by the time Saturday rolled around after a long week of wrangling with young mutants, Loki wanted nothing more than to rest. Retreat to his apartment, lock the door, draw the curtains, turn off all the lights, sit in the overstuffed armchair and just rest.)

He still met with Xavier three evenings out of the week to talk, about topics ranging from Asgard to Svartalfheim to Thanos to seidr to his students to anything else that was weighing on Loki's mind at the time. Xavier had, as ever, an uncanny ability to perceive Loki's mood, and on the rawer days he kept the topics on far-ranging subjects of politics and war. Only on the good days, when Loki felt strong enough for it, did he press Loki about the topics that hurt him most: his father, his brother, his time with the Chitauri, home.

But not about Frigga. Never once in their sessions did they talk about Frigga; Loki found himself steadfastly avoiding all thoughts of her. He had been away from Asgard, he reasoned, for long periods of time before without being unduly plagued by thoughts of his mother - why should now be different? What had really changed in the day-to-day life of Loki, outcast of Asgard, whether his mother was gone or simply held out of his reach?

So he thought not on her. As long as he kept his mind on the tasks before him, he need not dwell on memories of her or the pain that they inevitably brought. And so long as he did not think on her, he didn't miss her.

Not at all.

Well, not much.

Not much at all.

One distinct advantage that the 'workshops' had over the classes with children, Loki could not deny, was that there was a great deal more drinking involved. Indeed, all of the faculty at Xavier's School for Mutants had a fondness for alcohol that Loki could not imagine his own stuffy tutors indulging in - but then, considering that the instructors here had to deal with nearly a hundred superpowered mutant children instead of just one shapeshifting brat, perhaps it was understandable. They would gather at a taproom - (or as Hank preferred to call it, the dispensary) near the outside edge of campus and get their drinking and talking out of the way at once.

Loki was not particularly impressed by the alcohol of Midgard (although several of the teachers that hailed from further away assured him that the alcohol served in their countries was much finer) but he drank anyway, to keep company. Truly, he found the slight warm glow that was all Midgard's pitiful excuse for mead for instill in him to be more than sufficient; he had no mind to drink himself into a state of foolishness around these people he still did not know well.

This Thursday night, he was nursing the last of what Cecilia had referred to as a 'martini' with Hank and Jean Grey as the evening wound down. Cecilia Reyes, the dark-skinned healer, was engaged in quiet conversation with the battle-scarred blacksmith known simply as Forge. The two of them had been very interested in Loki's descriptions of Asgardian healing magic, debating speculating to what extent it would be possible to duplicate it with Midgardian technology; now they were arguing between themselves the exact differences between magic and technology. Since the distinction was rather lost on Loki - all of what they described fell under what Asgard would consider 'magic,' that was to say, using artificial enhancements to accomplish anything that could not be done by natural means - he had very little to contribute to that conversation.

The conversation, as it often did, had worked its way around to the antics of various students in their classes. "...and so we made a special chair for him, with slots in the back to accommodate his spines," Hank was saying. "And as far as that went, that was fine. But he had this bad habit during class of pushing his chair back - you know - balancing on two back legs while he put his feet on the desk. Well, one day one of his classmates surprised him - snuck up on him - and he lost his balance and fell backwards - right onto his spines! The floor was wood, of course, and the tips dug so hard into the seam between the boards that he was completely stuck. It took two teachers and a set of spreader clamps to get him shaken loose again."

"I'm telling you," Jean said, rolling her eyes playfully, "You never had him, but Kurt was worse. I'm not even sure how he did it but I walked into homeroom one day to find every chair and desk stuck upside-down in the ceiling. And there he was, sitting in his own desk - on the ceiling - pretending that everything was completely normal..."

"It's hard to top Kurt stories," Hank agreed. "I do rather regret that he was never in any of my classes."

Loki could have topped that story with any number from his own childhood in Asgard, but for some reason he refrained. He did not wish to make a point how different his upbringing had been from any of theirs, and the events of the past few years had left a bitter tinge to all of those memories, even the fond ones of outwitting the tutors and escaping through the windows to spend the day romping the palace grounds with...

Well, it was all water under the bridge now.

"If it comes to desks and chairs," Loki said, "I believe I have one. The other day during my History of Vanaheim session, Katherine - you know, Kitty Pryde - was starting to nod off to sleep at one of those strange desk-chairs in the red room. It came into my mind to teach her a lesson, so I left an image of myself at the lectern and stole around behind her. It was my thought to pull her desk back across the floor, just to startle her - to teach her the merits of staying alert, you understand. But when I took hold of the chair to pull it out, it passed right through her legs! She'd phased when she'd fallen asleep, you see, and so she just kept sitting there in mid-air with nothing beneath her."

Hank burst out laughing, and Loki smiled in triumph as he took a drought of his mug. "That poor girl, Loki," Hank chided him, even as he continued to chuckle. "You really shouldn't be so mean to her."

Loki snorted. "I have better things to do with my time than teach to children who can't even bring themselves to stay awake during the lesson," he said. "I don't understand why she bothers to come to those classes, if she has no care for the knowledge."

"Don't you?" Hank leaned forward, his eyes twinkling. "I dare say her interest is more in the teacher than in the subject. Or hadn't you realized by now that our Kitty is harboring an enormous crush on you?"

Loki stared at the Beast, sputtering slightly as he tried to come up with a response. 'You're joking,' was the obvious one, but he could tell that Hank was being entirely too truthful - or at least believed he was. "Surely you must be mistaken," he managed instead.

Hank chuckled. "I don't believe I am," he said.

Jean put in, "According to her roommate, she's been seeking out and acquiring pictures of you from any possible source - the yearbook, newspaper clippings from New York, anything - and turning them into a positive shrine in the corner of their room."

Loki made a strangled noise that could not even charitably be described as a word, and Hank laughed at him again. His mirth quieted in the next moment, though, and he leaned forward slightly with a serious air. "I trust that I don't have to remind you not to do anything to act on her infatuation?" he said, with just the slightest rumble of threat in his voice.

"Certainly not," Loki said indignantly. "She's only a child." As lonely as he might have been in the past few years - decades - for affection and companionship, he was not desperate.

"Glad to hear it," Jean murmured.

"A child, perhaps, but growing up quickly," Hank said, turning serious. "She could do great things, you know."

"Yes, I can imagine," Loki said, relaxing somewhat now that the conversation had moved away from the ridiculous prospect of student infatuation. "With her power - if she learns to use it properly - she could be a great spy."

"I don't know about that," Jean said. "But I think Hank was referring more to her future as an X-Man."

Loki scowled. "An X-Man? The warrior band that Professor Xavier talked about?" he demanded incredulously. "That's absurd! She's not qualified for battle - absolutely not."

"What, because she's a girl?" Jean cocked an eyebrow at him, and Loki rolled his eyes.

"That's exactly why - because she's still only a girl," he said firmly. "Not even yet a woman. Both men and women can be born with the passion for battle - but just because they can doesn't mean that they are. Kitty doesn't have the right temperament to be a warrior, and likely never will. Teaching her to defend herself is one thing, but it would be cruel to subject her to the brutality of the battlefield if there was any chance not to."

He was diverted for a moment to brood on his own words. In Asgard, of course, men were expected to become warriors and women were not. There were a few exceptions, like Sif, who clawed her way past Asgard's prejudices with a single-minded fury for blood, and won the respect of the warrior class thereby. But however strange and unnatural a woman warrior seemed to them, a man who had no taste for battle was even worse. Sif at least had been able to win a grudging respect for them, but a man who preferred the gentler arts never would.

How much different might Loki's life had been, if he had grown up among people who had respected his choice to walk another path? How different, if there had ever been a choice in the first place?

Hank sighed. "Just between you and me, I think you're right," he said ruefully. "But it's not really up to us. Professor X himself wants Kitty to be ready to go on active duty as soon as possible."

"What?"

"He has his reasons," Jean told him gravely.

"I can't imagine any reasons that would explain such foolishness!"

"They need Kitty - and specifically Kitty - for what she can do that no one else can," Hank said. "You know what her power is, do you not?"

Loki gave a short, jerky nod. "She can phase through matter, passing through it while leaving herself untouched," he said. "Hardly a great offensive capability - unless he plans to employ her as a spy?"

"No, no," Hank assured him. The big blue man glanced aside furtively, then leaned back in to Loki and lowered his voice. "This goes no further, my friend, do you understand?"

"My lips are sealed to silence," Loki swore solemnly, even as his ears pricked and quivered. What was this now - secrets kept from their own people? That he might gather? He put on his most encouraging manner.

"The anti-mutant faction in the government is picking up steam again," Hank told him soberly. "They've revived the Sentinel project, and our inside sources say that it's really going forward now - they've reverse engineered some of the junked copies of Tony Stark's technology, and have developed a brand new breed of fighting machines. Machines that can move and fight and think on their own, every one of them packed with an entire arsenal of killing firepower - and the latest in portable genetic scanning technology. They intend to release these killing machines into the general public, to hunt down and kill every mutant they can find."

"Is there no law and order in this kingdom?" Loki said incredulously. "What court, what body of judges would possibly allow such a thing?"

"They don't," Jean said. "Legally speaking, this is all shady as hell. But that won't stop them from going ahead with it anyway, while denying to the public up down and backwards that they're doing any such thing."

"Eventually, their cover will slip and word will get out to the public, there will be enough witnesses willing to come forward to make a case of it, and hopefully the courts will put a stop to it - but that could take months, years!" Hank exclaimed. "Will we just sit back and allow them to make innocent mutants martyr to the cause in the meantime? We will not - we cannot!"

"But why Kitty?" Loki pressed. "What's so special about her?"

"You know she can pass through matter and be unaffected from it," Hank said. "But the things she passes through are not always unaffected. Anything electronic or circuitry-based is completely fried when she phases through it - and that makes her absolutely invaluable against the Sentinels. They can't touch her, but she can destroy them with a touch. She can accomplish alone what an entire brigade of fighting mutants wouldn't be able to do - take down the Sentinels."

"I see," Loki said slowly, his thoughts spinning.

"Do you see why Professor X is so set on getting her ready to fight?" Jean sighed. "Hopefully, it won't come to that - he won't assign her to the active squad unless he absolutely has to. But if it does come that far, she has to be as ready as we can help her to be."

"I had not realized that the mutant's position in this kingdom was so... tenuous," Loki said. Dire, was what he actually thought. "Your own government seeks war with you?" He'd been aware - from observing the dynamic between Fury and Xavier upon the Helicarrier - that relations between mortals and mutants were somewhat strained. But Fury, whatever his myriad deficiencies, had been able to put aside his prejudices to call upon the wisdom and power of the mutants in the person of Charles Xavier. Was Fury not a commanding force in the government of this kingdom? Were they truly so two-faced, so unscrupulous, so moronically short-sighted as to seek to exploit the mutants' power with one hand and war upon them with the other? Apparently so.

Hank grimaced. "If it were only the government that would be bad enough," he said. "But public sentiment has taken a turn for a worse, as well - people are frightened, and they'll vote for anything or anyone who promises to be 'tough on freaks.' The X-Men have been out in the field for weeks at a time - mostly acting as body guards, or breaking up anti-mutant riots. That's why you haven't been introduced yet to any of the X-Men aside from Ororo and Jean - and my humble self, of course."

"You? You are an X-Man?" Loki said, surprised. His gentle, scholarly friend was not at all what Loki imagined when he thought of Xavier's mysterious squad of mutant warriors. He had pictured another team like Storm - hot-tempered, disdainful and righteous, bubbling over with leashed power and the intent to fight and kill.

Hank grinned at him, his teeth suddenly looking very white and sharp against the dark blue background. "Indeed I am, my friend - or at least, I was. I was one of Charles Xavier's original proteges back in the 1960s, when he was first starting out. One of the originals. But time marches on, and I am no longer as young and spry as I once was. And since spryness was my primary stock in trade - well." He looked momentarily embarrassed.

"It could be worse, Jean murmured, and she and Hank shared a look.

"Ah, well," Hank said in a tone of forced cheeriness. "There are worse fates for an old soldier than retiring to a life of ease in the countryside, imparting our wisdom to the next generation!"

But Loki's mind was still on the public sentiment' comment from earlier. "A poor measure of gratitude these peasants show to you - returning your attempts to protect and do good with hatred and violence," Loki said, half to himself.

Hank grimaced. "Would that I could say they have no reason to fear us. Unfortunately, we're not the only mutants out there - not even the only mutants to organize themselves. And the Broth -" He cut himself off abruptly, lips pressing into a tight line, embarrassed.

Jean glanced at him warningly. Watch it, Hank, Loki heard her voice whisper at the very edges of his thought.

If Loki were a cat or a wolf, his ears would be pointed high, quivering at attention. But he forced himself to act casual, unconcerned. "Oh, yes - that is the faction led by Erik Lensherr, is it not?" he said offhandedly. "Professor Xavier told me all about him." And if Xavier trusted me with that information, you know I must be trustworthy to hear the rest, mustn't I?

Hank relaxed slowly. "The Brotherhood of Mutants, that's right," he agreed. "Frankly speaking, I don't think they could have come up with a name that more clearly screams 'Hello, we're terrorists!' if they tried."

Loki laughed. "They make mischief for you, do they?" he said sympathetically.

"Far worse than mere mischief," Hank said bitterly. "They're a bloody menace, to us and the humans alike - bombings, kidnappings, attacks orchestrated on major public monuments, even assassination attempts. Every time we try to prove our good faith to the government, the Brotherhood is right there with some nasty choreographed event to make us all look like a group of bloodthirsty savages. It's a vicious cycle - the Brotherhood commits an atrocity, the government cracks down in response. A new group of mutants gets victimized, and the Brotherhood gets a new batch of recruits looking for revenge.

"And they'll attack the X-Men in the field, too," Jean said, her grey eyes snapping with anger. "Professor X keeps claiming that Magneto has honor in his own way, but I've certainly never seen it in action. Too many of my friends have been hurt trying to put a stop to that madman's schemes."

Hank sighed. "We're fighting a war on two fronts, and every time we start to get anywhere they push us back." Glumly, he took another swig of his beer.

"It sounds like you are beset on all sides, indeed," Loki agreed. "Perhaps you need to seek allies farther afield."

"Well, that's why you're here," Hank said, wiping foam away from his dark lips. A moment later he seemed to realize how cold-blooded that sounded, because he blurted out "Not - not that I wouldn't be thrilled to have you here otherwise of course - no offense intended."

"None taken," Loki agreed, more amused than offended by the little slip of the tongue - it was not as though he was any stranger to realpolitik, and he knew well that Xavier's interest in cultivating him as an ally was one reason Xavier had exhorted him so persistently to come here.

Not that he intended to be anyone's pawn but his own. This 'brotherhood of mutants' sounded like a menace indeed, but Loki's busy mind always worked to examine all sides of a new issue, looking for an angle to insinuate himself. One man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter, after all, and from everything he'd heard about mortals' attitudes towards mutants, the mortal government needed no prompting from Erik Lensherr to commit atrocities. Who had committed what acts in response to whom was a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg question, and pretty much moot by this point.

And if there was a pool of hurt and angry mutants that had been wronged by the government, then it was no surprise that many of them sought out the side that promised them payback for those slights. It was only natural - justice or vengeance, whatever you chose to call it, the natural reaction of one who had been wronged was to even the score. By contrast, to ally yourselves with your former enemies and protect them from your own kind must be a tremendously difficult choice to make, and Loki couldn't see how so many of them did it.

Unless of course it was not allegiance to a higher ideal that inspired them, but rather allegiance to Charles Xavier. Loyalty to the man who carried the banner of peace and forgiveness and shared humanity, the triumph of love over hatred. Loyalty to the man who had saved them all, and lifted them from whatever swamp of pain or rage or despair they had once been mired in.

That, Loki could understand all too well.

It was near midnight before the last of the drinking party broke up - actually they had ceased drinking some time earlier, but Cecilia had been very concerned by the possibility of 'driving while drunk,' and so Jean and Loki had lingered to chat with her until she felt safe enough to attempt it. The both of them lived on campus and so need not concern themselves with such things, as their apartments were only a short walk away. He could have just teleported the short distance to his apartment, but the time spent outside helped to clear his head, and the cold never bothered him anyway.

The days were shortening rapidly as Midgard scrambled towards winter, and with the warmth of the sun hours gone a wet and frigid chill had settled over the campus. Orange-yellow lamps hung from the eaves of buildings and overhung the roads and walkways, though they were too weak to really illuminate more than the shadows concealed. Loki walked through the darkness under the leafless trees, bare twigs trembling with the weight of the autumn fog, and his breath blew away from him in clouds.

The more time he spent with the seidmenn of Midgard, the scholars and healers and mages that lived and worked at Xavier's school, the more they had come to pester him about his biology. Jean Grey and Forge had both expressed interest in putting him before scanners to take measurements of him while he demonstrated his powers; Cecilia and Hank both wanted tissue and blood samples in order to examine his DNA. The thought of having his inner self pawed over, though, bothered Loki in a way he could not quite name.

He found something about their frank curiosity off-putting, even if he could recognize the spirit of true scholarly inquiry that drove it. It was not that he did not understand their desire to know more about the enigma that was Frost Giants in general and himself in particular - he himself knew far less about the topic than he wished too, and it maddened him not to know where to turn to find the answers. They were curious, and he was curious too, it was just that... he did not want them to be curious at the same time. Didn't want to share his findings, whatever they might be, with others just yet.

What did he fear - that they would seek out his weaknesses and use them against him? It wasn't unthinkable, Loki had to admit; yet these men and women were loyal to Xavier, and Xavier already had the power to take him apart, if he so wished. Did he fear, instead, that they would stumble upon some yet hidden secret in his flesh - in his bones - so repugnant as to turn them against him forever? Could their clever machines and scanners and tests register the presence of sin, of corruption? Did he fear their curiosity because they were not his friends, or because they were the only friends he had and he did not like to risk them? Or both?

He was drawn out of his ruminations (not brooding) by a sudden distant commotion coming off from the left. The campus was hushed, and the noises muffled by distance and walls, but his hearing was sharp enough to pick it out of the background. Loki frowned as the sounds drifted through the air - female voices raised in anger or distress, scuffling and shouting. He turned his head and took a few steps, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, and caught a light burning in the window of a building several hundred yards away. If he remembered Jean's tour of the campus aright, that building was one of the student dormitories - one of the girls' dormitories, specifically.

For a moment Loki hesitated. He was not here to play campus police, and really of all the faculty and staff on the conference, the last one to be taking a firm hand towards youthful exuberance would be the God of Mischief. He had certainly made enough messes in his own youth (usually with, sometimes without Thor in attendance) that he had no moral ground to interfere on anyone else's save perhaps to criticize their technique.

However, as he hesitated, the female voices rose in volume again and this time, Loki was able to pick out the shrill note of distress in them. He set his teeth and swung off the path, marching towards the girls' dormitory with firmer purpose. Best go and see what this was all about, then; if it turned out to be too much trouble, he could always call one of the other teachers.

But as he turned a corner and the girls' dorm came in view, a subtle flickering light caught his attention - not just in the windows, but crawling along the corners and the edge of the roof, as well. It was a sullen red-orange glow that had not the right look for Midgard's electric lights, nor for a true fire.

It was mage-light, and all thoughts of leaving to find another teacher fled. This was his area of expertise, and he was far more equipped to handle it than any of the rest of them (save perhaps Xavier himself.) Loki's steps quickened and became more forceful as he strode towards the eerily lit dorm.

Loki strode up to the front stoop, a lamp glowing in a wrought iron cage flanking either side of the door, and knocked firmly. The sounds of chaos had grown louder as he approached, and he heard several different female voices risen in chorus inside, as well as the thudding and crashing noises that might have been furniture shifted about at high speeds. More disturbing than any of those, however, was the faint scent of burning that tickled his nostrils - well out of place on this cold wet night, it was not the sharp scent of woodsmoke nor the dirty reek of melting plastics that he had come all too unpleasantly to know. Instead it smelled like burning... stone?

He could just break the door down, of course, but then the girls would have a broken door until someone got around to fixing it for them. He would knock once more, Loki decided, and then simply teleport inside. He raised his fist and pounded on the door once more, the noise echoing throughout the house ahead.

Just as he was raising his hand with his fingers curled into the shape of a cantrip, there was the light pattering of feet in the hallway beyond, and the door wrenched open. The girl standing beyond it in her nightgown was not one of Loki's students, and thus not one he knew well; she had huge blue eyes and curly light brown hair that tumbled past her shoulders. Her eyes were even more prominent right now due to her alarm, the whites showing all about the rim. "Yes?" she panted, evidently having come in a hurry. "Prof - Professor Loki?"

He was torn for a moment between an encouraging smile and an intimidating frown, as the smell of burning rock wafted down the hallway towards him. The crashing of furniture had halted, it seemed, but the high female voices still carried on beyond. "It seems that you young ladies are having some trouble," he noted. "If you would be so good as to stand aside and let me in, I'll see what I can do to help."

The girl's eyes got even wider, and faint golden sparkles seemed to dance around her head for a moment. "You can't do that!" she blurted. "Curfew starts at 10, guys aren't allowed inside after that."

"You cannot be serious," Loki said incredulously. "You expect me to just walk away and let you girls continue to burn the house down around you with your crude experimentations into magic?"

"Well - "

"Who is it?" a familiar-sounding voice yelled from the hallway beyond. "Tell them we've got everything under control!"

"It's Professor Loki!" the girl yelled back, keeping the door most of the way closed and blocking the open wedge with her body. Of course, since she barely came up to Loki's collarbone, that did not actually do much to restrict his view of the hallway. "He wants to come in!"

"Well, he can't!" The second speaker came out of a door down the hallway, which Loki made a mental note of, and came forward into the light. He recognized her straight dark hair and fiercely scowling face immediately, despite the light gauzy nightgown she wore; it was Tenko, one of his more avid students of the self-defense class. She shot a hard look at her classmate. "Alison, you were supposed to be taking care of the noise!" she hissed.

"Well, sorry! That much noise was too much to convert into light, it would have lit up the whole building enough that everyone would have come to investigate!" the curly-haired girl defended herself. "Half and half was about the best I could do. Nobody should have been able to hear it."

"Well, evidently someone did," Tenko snapped, and turned to glare at Loki as though this were all his fault. She looked straight at him with her smooth dark eyes, and crossed her arms in a stubborn posture. "This is the girl's dorm. No men allowed!"

Loki gave an aggravated sigh and took a short step back, then concentrated before passing his hand from his the top of his head over his face and on downwards. The magic took hold on the crown of his head, an electric prickling sensation that stood his hair on end before it cascaded down across the rest of his skin. It was a change he was well-practiced in, having taken this form on many occasions during past adventures; features attenuating, lines softening, chest and hips swelling gently to fill out the silhouette. He altered his clothes as he altered the rest, if only to keep it from pinching and dragging in uncomfortable places.

Loki's hair now fell about her face in tumbled waves, and her voice had changed from tenor to contralto. She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms, her suit coat now a cloak that draped flatteringly over her new figure. "How about now?" she demanded of the two teenage girls in the hallway. "Will this do?"

They gaped at him, then quickly disappeared behind the door for a hissed consultation. She caught some of the words, of course, although not all of them. "How'd he..." "Magic, it has to be magic!" "Well, doesn't that mean we should..." "She might be able to..." "Fine, you tell her then!"

After a few more moments of hurried consultation, Tenko scampered away down the hallway, and the curly-haired girl popped around the door once more. "Uhm, come on in," she squeaked as she pulled the door wide, and Loki gave her a wry smile as she breezed on into the hallway.

~tbc.

A/N: Cut because this chapter was getting ridiculously long. The next half is almost done; it should be out in a few days. Sorry!