The next morning Loki made sure that her guest knew where everything was and how to use the credit cards if she wanted to order something she saw online. She then had to explain how to use the touch screen on the computer and other things.
"Is there a spending limit?" Angela asked. "There's one on the ship I serve on with the Guardians of the Galaxy."
Loki grinned. "Not with me there isn't. If I fill up a card I just throw it away and get another one. After all as the god of mischief I'm also the patron of thieves as they commit a lot of mischief."
She frowned, taking in Angela's drawn look. "I don't want you to leave the house." She warned. "There's still residues of the drug in you and the spell is only just beginning to finish up. I don't want to have to bail you out of jail or worse find you in a hospital." She didn't tell Angela that the spell was still defying her attempts to unravel it. Curse Mephisto as he'd been right about what would happen to either of them if he just tried to pull it out by its roots.
Angela grimaced. "Yes, mother." She frowned. "What about you? You have the same mixture in you."
Loki smiled at her and resisted the urge to pat her cheek. "It's different for me. I'm the god of mischief. I'm always in trouble."
"Where are you going that's so important?"
Loki looked at her as if considering not telling her and then said. "I have to check on the results of an explosive present I left at Stark Tower last night."
"You didn't preempt my blood right, did you?" She demanded.
"You are still free to wreak havoc on your attackers. The only thing I attacked was real estate and Stark will I'm afraid only pay for it out of his spare change."
"Then you used too small a bomb." She growled. "I would've done enough damage to make him weep."
Loki touched her hand. "Believe me it's only the first payment of many on the installment plan. In the end Stark will know what tears are, for having created and fostered the environment that did you harm."
She left with an airy wave of her hand. "I just want to be sure that Stark got the message. If he amends his ways and starts treating women better I may lower the number of payments but if he doesn't?" She turned and grinned. "Then you can use a city-beater bomb on him from the Guardian's ship."
After Loki had left Angela found the quiet unnerving with all the whispering urges that she was trying to ignore and so she turned to cable TV for her entertainment. She'd be watching a stupid talk show trying to figure out what all the shouting was about, even to her in her ignorance they seemed stupid, and then she'd start fantasizing about a man or woman on there and then they'd do something stupid and turn her off. She switched to the sport channels.
She found football even stranger as they threw it instead of kicking it with their feet. What a stupid name. Why wasn't it call throwball? Then soccer which should've been football implied they punched each other. And then there was hockey where they hocked nothing. She threw up her hands in disgust. Midgardian sports were just stupid.
The one thing that resonated with her was a sports talk show where the talking heads were discussing the different leagues' responses to violence against women by their players. The lengthy list of women and children abused by the players enraged her. Then she listened to the punishments they proposed and found them to not be worthy of the name. Suspensions and fines? And not one cent went to the women and children who had suffered? Those weren't punishments and didn't help the victims at all. It also angered her when she realized there was little or no mechanism in place to protect the women from being abused further.
Angela thought long and hard on this. She sympathized with the victims and after her own abuse she wanted to do more to help. Abruptly she realized that she had found her purpose in existence. She swore she'd spend the rest of her life helping to defend those women who had no one to fight for them.
When she looked back up at the screen the talking heads had moved on. She changed the program when they started spouting statistics of points per game. How boring.
She switched back to what were called the adult channels as she could understand them better. However that didn't help her emotions but that wasn't a problem she thought as she was stronger today. Then she started watching the commercials on those channels.
The toys for adults had her almost rolling on the floor with laughter. What were they? Masochists? Then she saw the lingerie ads and sat up. She didn't realize it but the drug and the spell were still at work here. She wondered how she'd look in them and what the reaction of her sister would be to this? Rocket always claimed that clothes made the raccoon. Wouldn't that be true for a woman too? Under the influence of the spell she decided to order some.
She couldn't even guess at the sizes and so she ordered one of each size that they had and since she wanted them today she clicked on immediate delivery. She had the feeling this bill was going to be huge. Maybe she'd filled two of his cards today? Whatever shopping was, she found she liked it.
She hadn't realized it yet but under the spell she was fitting into a stereotype image of women as a compulsive shopper and conflicting with her own desire to have women treated decently and not as sex objects. That would soon be brought home to her.
She idly flipped through the channels and then found the ones on animals and settled down to learn about earth life. The programs were good and she enjoyed them except for the damn commercials which seemed to have been written by idiots for idiots. The only program that made her laugh was the one on the courtship and mating habits of raccoons. She had a feeling that her buddy Rocket Raccoon would have a screaming fit if he saw it. She grinned and recorded it just for him.
She finally turned off the set and slept for several hours only to be awoken by Brown Delivery which appropriately brought the packages in a brown truck. She took the packages and immediately started exploring what was in them.
She tried on several of the outfits that fit her or at least her impression of what was a good fit. She frowned as she looked at the mirror. The women in the ads had looked marvelous but she just looked silly.
She went to a closet and went through several of her sister's outfits. When she was done she realized that with these outfits very little skin was revealed and they didn't fit like Spandex. She tried on one of the outfits and immediately saw the difference. She looked good but not as a sex object. In Heven they'd called such outfits as her sister's practical and useful, suggesting while not showing. She concluded the sister trickster would not be impressed with the results of her shopping.
She went and got another beer. This time she used the bottle opener as Loki had suggested after watching her rip a bottle cap off with her teeth. If she ever went back to Heven she might introduce bottle openers there. She sat there on the couch idly flipping through channels while she tried to organize her thoughts and fit in her new conclusions.
Then she came on a channel which was showing the results of what looked like a trial. The tall black man in the judicial robes was pointing out to a sparsely dressed black woman that her outfits could indeed cause her trouble as many times that was the way street walkers dressed. Angela wasn't sure what that meant but it didn't sound good.
Then the judge said something that made her sit up and take notice. "Girl, if you dress cheap like a tart and act like one, then that's how everybody will treat you, men and women both." He finished with. "Sister, you dress and act cheap, then everyone will conclude that's exactly what you are. Cheap."
Suddenly everything came together and Angela blushed bright red as she realized what she had been about to do with the lingerie. She got up and paced in a circle. She had a lot to mull over.
Meanwhile Loki was looking over the rubble from the damage she'd caused last night from the street level outside Stark Tower when her brother Thor landed beside her. "Brother." He said as he sheathed his hammer.
Loki smiled. "Gender inappropriate, brother."
Thor grimaced. "I swear I'll never get used to your changes of form. How do you do it?"
"That would be telling." Loki turned to regard the damage. "Have they figured out who did this yet?"
"Nay. The speculation is that some disgruntled female employee of Tony Stark's sought revenge for an imagined slight."
"The slight was not imagined, brother. Someone tried to rape our sister last night and I left the appropriate message to all their kind."
Thor froze and then his face turned red. "They did what?"
"Are you deaf, brother? Friends of Stark, two men and a woman, supposedly at Stark's insistence, fed our sister a date-rape cocktail and then put a love spell on her at ten times normal strength. Luckily she has your constitution and fought off the effects long enough to escape to me for help where she collapsed in my arms."
"Is Angela all right?" Thor was gripping his hammer so hard that the handle groaned.
"It looks like she'll recover but believe me when I say she's mad. When she gets well I think she plans to drop a city-buster bomb on Stark Tower."
"It may not be standing long enough for her to do it for if Tony can't convince me he had nothing to do with this then I will level it myself." Thor snarled.
"I take it you'll confront your friend then?"
"Aye. But I have known him so long and fought so many battles beside him that I cannot believe this originated from him."
"Brother, remember that you're dealing with the man who turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk not caring whom he hurt and then don't forget he cloned you as the mutant monster Ragnarok and used it to kill many other heroes in the hero civil war. Stark is not to be trusted as he dissembles almost as well as I do. His kind only understand and respect one thing, and that is force."
"Which you have little of. So why this?" He gestured at the rubble in the street.
Loki smiled. "It is but the first installment of many until the debt is settled. I plan to make Tony a long-term project. Even if it has to last five hundred years I'll have him jumping at every strange noise."
"I still will not believe this of him who is my friend." He raised an eyebrow. "They tell me no-one was hurt. Was that by intent?"
"Aye, brother, it was. The innocent have no part in this and if Stark's hands are clean then the only thing I'll demand of him is that he cleanup his act. But if he refuses, then he has five-hundred years of worries."
Thor nodded. "A good point. Be assured that I'll get to the bottom of this. Be careful, Loki, as Tony makes a bad enemy." He threw himself into the air with his hammer and left.
"Fare thee well, brother. For Stark's sake I hope you're right about his innocence for if you're not, when Odin the All Father finds out about this then Stark will truly learn what a bad enemy really is. For Odin will turn Stark Industries into a grease spot and send Stark's soul straight to Mephisto's summer place."
She grinned. "As for me I'll keep it quiet from the All Father as I agree with the Chinese and their use of the water-drop torture. It's so much more satisfying."
