Hi, LVC again. It's really nice to see my story getting so much traffic. To those of you who have favorite-ed and/or begun following me thanks muchly. I am honestly pleasantly surprised, although I must admit having no feedback is driving me a little bonkers. So you know want. O_O Anyway, the standard disclaimer applies. I do not own Marvel, the Avengers, etc. Enjoy!
LVCatullus
Chapter 3
The week passed by fairly quickly and this morning I find myself waking up to the sound of knocking at my door. "Just gimme a minute!" I sit up and find some pants to pull on and decide to throw on a bra while I'm at it. The knocking still hasn't stopped even as I'm shouting random noises at the door. I'm not much of a morning person. My hair is a mess and I probably look pretty pissed, but Maria is standing unfazed by my appearance and quickly tells me to get my shit together and meet her in the conference room from before, only not in the same words. After a quick tooth and hair brushing I'm riding up to the fortieth floor, as I have been told, and dreading the act of stepping out of this little glass box and into the lion's den.
Upon the ding I slouch out of the elevator and slide my key card through the reader and enter. As I expected, there's Fury in all his black leather trenched glory as well as a few other people I didn't recognize. Two women and an middle-aged looking man. The shorter of the women has thick curly brunette hair and a punk fashion sense while the taller one is thinner with lighter hair and next to no fashion sense. It seemed to work for her, though. The man is quite tall, at least six feet, and of Northern European background I believe. His hair is blond and he has the kind of slouch that tall people get when they're self-conscious.
Fury steps forward and greets me. "Took you long enough, Agent." Ain't he just brimming with kindness. "Get over here so we can brief you." I straighten into my soldier stance and stride across the room to stop in front of Fury. I consider giving him a flippant salute, but decide that I like having my fingers.
"This is Dr. Eric Selvig," he stated gesturing to the tall man. Continuing on he waved at the tall woman, "Dr. Jane Foster," and finally, "Darcy Lewis." I shook each of their hands and went back to my original position. "They're going to explain what they can about Asgard and Thor so you have an idea of what to expect." Then, he stepped aside and waved me forward.
Dr. Selvig speaks first. "As you know Asgard seems to be in a separate universe from ours and possibly even a different dimension. I can't tell you how to travel there or what you'll experience while you're traveling, but we can tell you a little about Thor and what we know about Asgard. Although, a good deal of what we know about Asgard comes from books and Thor's stories."
I nod. "Of course. I'm delighted to have all the help I can get; I'll need it. So, why don't you tell me what you can about Thor first, since you've actually met him?" I still have a hard time believing that the Norse god of thunder is real.
Jane pops in this time. "His appearance is human, but he does have some abilities that are classified as superhuman. As you can guess he can create an electric charge and discharge it with the use of his hammer, Mjolnir. He's also incredibly strong and has a very high healing factor." She stops then, thinking of what to say next.
"He's also super hot." I turn to stare at Darcy, not sure if I heard her correctly. Gazing around the room I notice that everyone else is giving her pointed stares or rolling their eyes, or in Fury's case eye. "Right," I drawl.
This seems to get the room back in order. Jane continues, "I met him a few years ago in New Mexico when we were doing research on an astrophysical anomaly. We were out in the desert in our van when we saw a storm touch ground a few miles south and we drove right towards it. I was hoping to collect data for a project I was working on. Anyway, we didn't see him in the cloud of sand and Darcy sort of hit him with our van."
"Hey, you're the one who told me to drive into the storm," Darcy turned to me, "I was just there to get the college credits I needed to graduate. What kind of crazy person goes around driving through tornadoes?" I give her my patented sarcastic stare. Looking away she scuffs her black Converse on the floor. I turn back to Jane and prompt her to continue.
"Right, so yeah. He was knocked out for a bit and after a rocky introduction we hauled him into the back of the van and took him to the hospital."
The conversation continues much in this vein with me noticing more and more how much Jane must care about this alien and how hilarious and annoying Darcy could be. Dr. Selvig filled me in on what happened last year with the alien invasion and the Avengers initiative with a little, the operative word being little, input from Fury where needed. At last I was brought up to speed about Thor and the past year and now we are beginning to get down to business. Selvig hands me a children's book of Norse mythology and a larger tome of a more academic nature on the Norse Saga.
"You'll need to study these a bit. There's not really anything I nor Jane can tell you about Asgard itself. The books probably can't tell you much either, but it's better than nothing," he ground out with a sigh.
"Thanks, I really appreciate you all taking the time to talk with me, and the wonderful reading material," I chime, waving the children's book around. Eric lets out a chuckle while the rest of them just smile awkwardly, except Fury- he is the master of the poker face. Alright, so I'm a little out of practice with my comedy routine. Remembering why I'm going on this jaunt in the first place I pose a question to the group. "So we know next to nothing about Loki?"
Fury finally decides to speak up. I was beginning to think he had gone mute. "All we know is that Loki is Thor's adopted brother. After finding out he wasn't an Asgardian, but a Jotun, a frost giant, he became unstable and somehow fell into leadership of the Chitauri. He is now locked in a cell underneath the royal palace, or so Thor believed would happen. Let's just hope they haven't executed him." From what I've heard of Thor so far, he doesn't seem to be the kind of man to give up on his brother and let him be hanged or whatever. All throughout the narrative of last year's war Thor had been trying to save Loki. I don't see why he would have given up now.
I rise to leave and wave goodbye to Jane and her team and make to leave the room so I can read over my mythology books, but Fury stops me. "We found this after searching through our records of Thor." Fury reached into one of his trench pockets and withdraws a plastic baggie and hands it to me. Hair? "Where did you get this?" I ask lifting the bag up to the light. Inside is a single strand of gold-blonde hair.
"We came across it last year and kept it in case we wanted to do a DNA sequence." Wow, Fury. A mercenary to the bone, not a sentimental cell in his body. I nod my thanks and once more head for the door, making it this time. I feel the pocket of my jeans vibrate and pull out my phone. One new text. "You have two days. –F." Thanks for the ultimatum.
Once I find myself back in my cubicle of a room I settle onto my bed for a long period of reading. If I sit at my desk my butt will fall asleep and I'll just have to move to my bed anyway.
