suggested music: "Ballade von der Erweckung" by ASP
Earth, Transdacia, Doomheim - Natasha
So director Fury had assembled a team he called „The Avengers" after that spaceman's attack on the president, and Natasha was required back at headquarters to join the team. Understandable.
She was certain Victor von Doom was amassing a robot army to protect his servers, but had no proof yet. Transdacia was not a suitable operation base in any case, much less an ally. No police or army to speak of, ruled by criminals who manipulated elections, its citizens undereducated and still very much caught up in superstitions about gypsy magic and mythical creatures.
She hadn't decided yet whether the tall man with the British accent who had just moved in was a neo-pagan esoterics freak or just an ordinary pedophile looking for child prostitutes, to have come here, but that was of no consequence. Had she the time, she might have played with him a bit, for the exercise.
What bugged her was that Institute for the Physics of the Paranormal, with its immaculate windows, not flaking off paint and unbroken doors. Had Doom installed an outpost there? She decided to do a short walk and take one last look before leaving.
Midgard, Transdacia, Doomheim - Loki
The magic wards on the abandoned physics institute were stronger than Loki expected, much stronger than any mortal should be able to create. The underlying magic was Asgardian, the god recognized.
It spoke of an artifact with purpose unfulfilled, effusing its innate power trying to connect. Connect to whatever it was supposed to guard, hit, heal or confine. The sorcerer analyzed carefully. This felt like a confinement spell. Connected to the building's lesser perimeter spells of human set-up, it would not allow humanoids to enter or leave.
Not a problem for a shapeshifter.
It proved to be worth the effort. The artifact turned out to be a cylindric container the length of his forearm, crafted of crystal and eternium, engraved with runes of Asgard. The tesseract container, the runes stated.
Who would have thought the mythical tesseract would be on Midgard, that ancient portal-opener which had gone missing around the time of Odin's birth, according to the chronics? Or was it on the planet still? In any case, its container lay here, longing.
The two could not have been separated all that long; less than a century, he guessed. Or else humans would not have been able to handle the empty case, or work in the building around it. But the wards had strengthened recently, it seemed. That could only mean one thing: The tesseract was indeed still on Midgard, liberated from its case, now being stimulated.
That looked like a serious problem. If the tesseract was as powerful as the old volumes claimed, it could open and establish a stable portal anywhere. What if some unsuspecting mortal would-be magicians opened a portal to Muspellheim and let fire demons though? That could be realm-threatening. Or worse, Jotunheim ...
For a moment, the young prince contemplated calling Heimdall to beam him up for counsel with the Allfather, but then decided against it. Whoever had the tesseract now might notice. Better to lay low, not draw attention, and reclaim the thing before harm could be done.
Trying to impress father by bringing back the tesseract all on his own was not part of the decision, he told himself.
Since night had fallen by now, the trickster god took the shape of a bat to exit the building. He'd have to buy or build a villa after all. A minor inconvenience.
He'd have to get in touch with construction companies anyway. The place would not prosper the way it was, with its pothole-riddled streets for draft horses to break their legs and motorcars their axes, and that dysfunctional airport. The railway did not operate at all because of chronic theft of copper cables. But for his plans, he needed money.
So much to do, so little time.
Earth, Transdacia, Doomheim – Natasha
No way in.
She'd tried everything, even a grappling hook to the roof; all futile. The building had some kind of force field inches from the wall, preventing entry.
Getting so close demanded all her willpower already – apparently there was a second barrier in effect, something rather like hypnosis, redirecting people away and around, pointing their attention elsewhere. Natasha probably would never have checked out the paranormal physics institute had it not been mentioned in the briefing. Some indoor service agents had found it on satellite images, occupying the same place where maps from the 1940s showed a Hydra base.
Something of interest was clearly in there, but Black Widow could not take a look at it. The locals tended to ignore the building; they knew nothing but that nobody could enter, or had since Soviet scientists moved out. Missions with no outcome were frustrating. She hated not having the time for more research, but clearly she was needed back at HQ. Fury would just have to make do with a preliminary report.
Well hidden in the archway of St Martin & the Pauper, she settled for taking some infrared and night vision pictures of the building for later analysis. A bat flew by, a large one. On the infrared monitor, it showed as colder than the buildings it passed by. It vanished in the park opposite, behind the Max Schreck Memorial. Not a second later, a tall, dark-clad man emerged.
The next day, police would have to investigate a break-in to a grocery, where the shopowner reported garlic, garlic crackers and garlicked salami missing. The sacristan at St Martini, too, noted a window pried open, but since nothing of value was missing, he shrugged and just refilled the holy water basin.
