Chapter 10: Online Chess and Demigods

Marion gave a two-dollar tip for the pizza delivery guy and closed the door behind her, bringing in the carton boxes to the kitchen table. "OK, we got marguerita, mushroom and peppers, and a double pepperoni and bacon." Opening the boxes filled the kitchen with mixed aromas of pizza crust, cheese, vegetables and meat.

"Why'd you get two of the same pizza?" Banner asked as he cut himself a slice of marguerita and placed it on a plate.

Before Marion could say anything, Anubis constantly snickering while typing on a laptop like a maniac made her sigh. "Anubis, are you really going to be on your laptop while we have guests over?"

"You know that this time is the only time I get to play online chess with other immortals online." He said. A ding came from the laptop. "Ooh, Kory responded... and screwed up my horseman. Dang it!"

"You're playing with Kory?" Marion asked. "Anubis, it's practically midnight back in Norway, you really think online chess is a good way to sleep tight?"

"It's the best time of the day to share our mutual distastes for fathers." He cleared his throat and read: "'Dear Anubis, thank you very much. It's very nice to know that somebody else understands what it's like to have a jerkass godly father who could care less of what you think of him. Good thing I've set up a moat of lionfish in my backward in case he tries to break in to apologize.'" Ooh! You have a lionfish moat? I am SO jealous!" He typed. "Oh, and I think I'll move this pawn..."

"You really had a bad social life in Egypt," Banner shook his head in pity. Natasha merely ate her mushroom and pepper slice.

"Marion, do you want me to ask Kory how Aaricia's doing?" Anubis looked up from the laptop.

"Aw, but of course!" Marion smiled.

Anubis typed on the computer and waited for the ding. "Ha! I might just win!" The ding came and he groaned. "Aw, man! Kory beat me!"

"Sounds like your Kory friend is quite the chessmaster," Natasha smirked.

"Doy. She's Loki's kid."

Natasha choked on her slice of pizza. "And here we go," Marion sighed.

"Loki reproduced?" Banner exclaimed.

"Twice, actually." Anubis kept typing. "Marion, Kory says that Aaricia is doing great and that she and a bunch of her demigod buddies in Norway are trying their air-quote hardest to create the best idea for Aaricia's upcoming sweet sixteen."

"Shit! I can't believe I forgot! Next Wednesday is Aaricia's birthday!" Marion facepalmed herself.

"Uh, I'm sorry to interrupt your teenage drama, but...Loki's kid?" Banner was still bewildered.

"'Hey, Kory. Guess what? Banner and Romanoff are with us and they accidentally found out that you are Loki's kid.'" Anubis sent his next message and waited for a minute until he told Banner. "Hulky, Kory asked me to tell you to swing Loki by the foot like you did back in New York, but this time until his skull breaks."

"Why would she want me to give her father a lethal concussion?" Banner asked.

"Were you paying attention in the last minutes?" Anubis asked. "Kory's hated her father the same way I hate Seth. Well, except she's more physically expressive about it since 1942."

"Wait, how old is she?" Natasha asked, confused.

"Remember what I told you about demigods?" Marion took a bite of pizza. "They live 2700 years, stop aging at one point in their lives, and need to be killed through drastic measures. Kory, or Kory Ikolson- because demigods have both mortal and immortal identities and Kory Ikolson is her mortal identity- was born in Tønsberg, Norway, in December 21st, 1920. So technically speaking, she is exactly as old as Captain America, but in her case, she's stuck to look like she's in her early twenties until she dies in probably the 47th century."

"Add the salt to the vinegar, she found out her dad was Loki in World War II right after HYDRA burned down Tønsberg to get the Tesseract and Odin came with some Asgardians to inspect the church the Cube was once hidden," Anubis said. "Kory lost her mother in the rubble and she did not take it well when not only did she find out that her father was the God of Mischief, but he wouldn't lift a finger to change her life. And since 70% of demigods stop aging when they meet their divine parent, Kory stopped aging in 1942. But meeting your dad on the day HYDRA destroyed your hometown was no good on Kory: even though it meant her demigod powers kicking in, she now suffers from MPD."

"MPD?" Banner asked. "You mean, multiple personality disorder?"

"Trust me, it's not the weirdest side effect I've seen when it came to demigods or demigoddess discovering their godly heritage and ceasing their age." Anubis paused his hogging the laptop in order to grab three slices of bacon and pepperoni pizza and devouring them all together like a three-layered sandwich. "Eternal youth is like a coming-of-age ceremony for those hybrids and they're not pretty. A majority of the time, it's either because their godly parents stop by for a visit or their powers bloom. Minor cases include abusive mortal stepparents, traumatic experiences leading to early exposure, or human sacrifices."

"Wait, why human sacrifices?" Marion raised a finger.

"You'd be surprised by how often the Aztecs and Incas would unknowingly do a human sacrifice by killing a god's child. I think Quetzalcoatl made El Dorado melt at least five hundred times when the priests kept being idiots and sacrificing Old Q's daughters. That's why the Spanish could never find the city of gold."

"Aside from you and Marion, does anybody else that your friend is Loki's kid?" Natasha asked.

"Uh, the immortals we interact with on the online gaming chat room, whoever her friends are in Norway, and the NU... Last one being until Kory and Aaricia quit the agency."

"Kory and Aaricia quit the Northern Lights Union?" Marion exclaimed.

"Yeah, Kory told me they quit in November.
"Anubis! Why didn't you say anything?" Marion slammed her hands on the table.

"Do I ask you what you message to your friends on Facebook?" Anubis asked sarcastically. "Besides, Aaricia's your childhood best friend. She could have told you herself now that she no longer works for those bastards."

Marion calmed down. "I guess you're right. The way the Scandinavian League hires its mortal agents is just savage."

"The Scandinavian League?" Natasha spoke up. "I thought the agencies don't contact each other."

"True." The teenage redhead nodded. "But those who co-work can contact between one another. Many organizations prefer to work alone, and then there are some who like to co-work in couples. The only ones to work as a trio are the Scandinavian League, and unlike the Greek alphabet naming of most of the organizations would imply, the SL are considered the big guys in the Themis Protocols because while the other divine immigration organizations rely on soothsayers or prophets to guide them like how GAMA has Tiresias, the ones in Norway, Sweden, and Finland are the only ones to be guided by three hags called the Norns."

"Thor told me about them after Ragnarok hit Asgard and he kept cursing them," Banner said. "Aren't they like the Viking versions of the Greek Fates?"

"Most myth interpretations aren't real," Anubis closed the laptop. "The Norns are the only known existing figures that 'Fates' would label. Each decides what was to happen, what is happening, and what will happen in an individual's fate. They don't decide Fate with a capital F itself, but what the fate of a mortal and a god should be. One Norn runs a divine immigration... and frankly, the entire Scandinavian League is one Amazon brigade mayhem. All the employees are female and three-quarters of them are either Norse immortals who live away from Asgard, foreign immortals who immigrated, or demigods who still have yet to outlive the mortals.

"By the time Kory found out her heritage, she came in contact with other native immortals who warned her not to get on the Scandinavian League's bad side, so she tried to avoid being spotted as possible. Problem is, when you are an offspring of Loki suffering from MPD, you have at least half of your personalities showing off and one of them defines M. Hyde tormenting his Dr. Jekyll."

"Like how I have my issues with the Hulk?" Banner asked.

"Exactly. Her... dark side calls herself by her immortal identity, Kaïra Lokisia. She still hates her father, but she definetly has the sense of greed as the God of Mischief. Heck, the only reason NU tracked her down in the first place was that she tried taking over Norway in 1968."

"I just can't understand why she just went for Norway," Marion started storing the spare pizza slices in containers after she made sure that the others didn't want more. "Sure, the skiing, the fishing, the northern lights, and probably the blonde Viking hunks... but why take over just one country and a cold one? If it had been me, I'd try taking over the Bahamas or someplace hot that I could vacation wherever I want." She put the full containers in the fridge. "Still, what did those jackasses at NU do this time to finally make Kory and Aaricia quit?"
"Kory wouldn't get into details. She just claims it was family iss... OOOOOOOOOH." Anubis grimaced.

"You think that Loki took the opportunity to go to Norway?" Banner guessed.

Meanwhile

Sarasota, Florida, is one ideal town in Florida. The beaches, the aquarium, the mini golf, sunshine and palm trees... It's anyone's dream to live in one of those big fancy houses near St Armand's Circle that border the white sand beach of Lido...

"Ouch!"

Well, most of them.

After arriving in their Florida neighborhood, Bonnie, Zoë, and Barnes instantly went to Zoë's house to get the scientist the Colchis Kelp wrap her hands needed to get rid of the minor Soul Stone poisoning. But while the kelp was capable of curing the poisoning, it had a very unpleasant stinging effect on the skin. Barnes had to hold down Zoë's wrists while Bonnie applied the seaweed lotion on her hands.

"That's what you get for holding an Infinity Stones without the right protection." Bonnie shrugged. Once she had covered the hands with the entire lotion, she threw away the aluminum foil and washed the brush in the kitchen sink. "Zoë, do you still have any of that Hyperion Sunscreen?"

"Sorry, Bon. I finished it all." Zoë shook her head.

"Damn. I have to run to my house across the street to get it from my bathroom cabinet. Barnes, keep her wrists pinned down." The banshee made a run out to the front door. Zoë kept biting her lips. The Colchis Kelp was by far the most painful healing plant ever to grow in the Americas.

Barnes' grasp left her right wrist, leaving her a bit surprised when she looked to see his metal fingers clutching on hers, leaving the scientist rather surprised. It still felt rather odd, sitting next to the assassin who killed her parents while his creators killed her grandfather. Had she followed the cycle of revenge, Zoë would probably die. She wasn't like her action-prone colleagues, Marion, Anubis, and Bonnie. Her muscles were best at handling scientific research.

Besides, he risked his life sparring her from what HYDRA ordered him to do to her. Such a sacrifice was worth letting the assassin live.

"Thanks for removing the chips off me," Barnes said quietly.

"I didn't take out all of them," Zoë said bluntly. "Louse attacked before I could remove the one closest to your brain." She wished she hadn't said that. Now he was tightening his hold and the vibranium was not making the kelp lotion any soother.

"Will the trigger words still affect me even with just one chip in?" He asked.

"I should hope not. Dr. Strange used his magic to burn the chips to oblivion so they could never be used again. They were supposed to match whatever are the last eight words HYDRA used to hypnotize you. Since you only have the first chip left inside you, I'm guessing that until I can remove it, you'll get whatever reaction you get whenever you hear the word."

He merely nodded. His metal fingers let go and moved upward. Zoë almost feared he'd crush her skull, but he merely let his fingers through her brown locks like a curious child. Unlike most metals she had to deal with, Zoë noticed that his arm's vibranium was quite warm. Close to the heat of a normal human body.

"I'm kind of surprised," he admitted. "I killed your parents. Yet you let me live."

"Don't get your hopes up." Zoë gently pushed his arm away. "I don't like you because you killed them. But I don't hate you because you saved me."

"Hm."

"Besides, what chances do I have against an ex-HYDRA killing machine? The worst I could do is slap you."

It was in-between a joke and a threat, but that didn't stop Barnes from smirking. Just then, a door was heard opening and closing. Barnes and Zoë put some distance between each other to keep Bonnie from guessing that something happened while she was gone.

"Zoë, we got a problem! Anubis and Marion left their location!" Bonnie held up her phone. "And the agent body heat locating satellites spotted them in Norway with Banner and Black Widow!"

"Oh, that's not good," Zoë grumbled.

"The plagues will locate him," Barnes said.

"Well there's that and two other problems. Divine immigration organization agents in a foreign country, that's bad and problem one. The fact that they are in a Scandinavian League country is problem number two."

Morning in Tønsberg, Norway

The sunrise illuminated the sky in its bright orange colors with slashes of punk and fading dark blue that reflected onto the fjord. While adults were waking up to head off to work, many children went out to play in the snow or skate on the ice. Fishermen went out on their boats to throw their nets in the cold waters and bring back the catches of the day.

As the citizens of Tønsberg went on with their normal lives, a blonde fifteen-year-old went out for a morning stroll on the rocky beaches that bordered the Oslofjord. Normally, a girl of her age, especially a mortal girl, would prefer spending her morning in bed or maybe drink hot cocoa and read a magazine of American hunks rather than go out in the cold to walk by the cold waters. Falling and possible hypothermia was something she would dread the most, but since this girl in particular was familiar with the peculiar things in this world, she knew there were worst things out there than dying from freezing water exposure.

But frankly, with the tensing stuff happening back home, a cooling walk by the shore was one of the best remedies.

It was only by the time she walked towards the tidal pools, barricaded from the town's view by layers of trees, that she heard a wailing a sound. It sounded like it wasn't human, but at the same time, it sounded like it was afraid.

The girl took precautions. The rocks on the tidal pools could easily make you slip and cut your skin open.

After five minutes of cautious stepping, she rushed as fast as she could when she saw a small-wired cage trapped in a tidal pool. And in it was a strange creature, with four flippers, a fish tail, and a face that made it look like a hybrid of a horse and a giraffe. Well, except it had teeth...

"Aw, you poor thing..." She put her hands on top of the cage. A lock prevented her from opening the cage. "Evidently, somebody didn't want you to run off."

The creature whimpered. The girl went through her purse and pulled out a hand- sized wire cutter. "Good thing I have this guy just in case. You might want to back up."

The small thing backed up. The girl put her hand on top of the cage to hold it down while her other one used the wire cutter to snip the strings. After close to ten minutes of cutting, she managed to create an opening big enough for the creature to crawl out of.

"C'mon," she said encouragingly. She held out her hand to it. It hesitated at first, but then the creature settled to squirt water out of its nose and cuddle in her hand, making a very weird but cute purr. "Oh, you are so adorable!"

Her fondling over the beast took a pause when she turned her head to hear distant feet walking but approaching. "Hurry up, mate!" A gruff male voice was heard speaking. "The beast can't be far in that cage of his!"

The creature whimpered in fear. Luckily, a fog was beginning to cover the fjord, so the crooks could not see the girl quickly bundle the beast with her scarf, pick it up in her arms, and run as fast as she could back to town.

"Oy! The beast is gone!" One of the voices shouted in the distance.

"Aye, and it didn't escape on its own! Someone has been setting our bounty free!"

The girl ran as fast as she could until she reached the town. She avoided any contact with any other people she might know while tucking the beast's head under the folds of her scarf. Finally, she reached the neighborhood in Tønsberg were many rich or well-off citizens lived in big mansions. She went through a driveway under a row of cypress trees and unlocked the front door to the green-and-cream yellow mansion that bordered the Oslofjord.

She quietly closed the door behind her. "Kory?" She called out. "Are you home?"

No answer. She put down her purse and carried her new friend to the kitchen. Once she settled it on the kitchen counter, she quickly ran to the laundry room and came back with a water basin that she filled with water from the kitchen. After she struggled to carry it to the counter, the creature eagerly jumped in and started making a splashing mess.

"Having fun, aren't you?" She smirked. The creature squirted some water on her, making her laugh and poke its nose. "Wait here, silly thing, while I go get a sponge."

"Since when do you have a water horse?"

The girl yelped and held a hand over her heart. Four people were standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "Anubis and Marion... With the Hulk and Romanoff?"

"Hi," the adults said in unison.

"What are you guys doing here?" the blonde girl went to hug Marion. "You might get a notification from GAMA or NU!"

"I know, Aaricia, but things are getting messed up." Marion admitted.

"Where did you manage to find this baby water horse?" Anubis walked to the kitchen counter and bent down to have a better look at the creature swimming in the basin.

"A water horse? It looks more like a miniature Loch Ness monster." Banner sat down to have a curious look himself.

"Hey, give him some space!" Aaricia pushed the men away from the water horse. "He just went through a bad time!"

"Did he lose his mother?" Romanoff asked.

"It was bound to anyway," Anubis said. He gently stroke the water horse down its neck, making it adjust comfortably. "These creatures are very rare. Back in the old days, only a hundred could live by generation. The moment one lays an egg, it dies before the baby hatches. And yes, Banner, 'water horse' is the more fashionable western attribute for primarily aquatic beasts like hippocampi or the Loch Ness monster." He turned to Aaricia. "Does Kory know about your new pet?"

"No, I just found him this morning." Aaricia went through the drawers until she found a sponge. The water horse waved its flippers at her as if to expect a hug while she scrubbed its smooth skin. "The poor thing was in a cage trapped in a tidal pool. If I hadn't saved it, either it would have died of hunger or those crooks would have done something nasty to him!"

"What crooks?" Banner straightened his glasses.

"IN poachers." Anubis growled.

"It's a frequent thing where some INs in certain countries hunt down mythological creatures and try to sell them in the black market," Marion explained. "Most of the time, they are hunted because of false rumors claiming that their organs have healing powers."

"And with such poachers, many species get as endangered as the pandas." Anubis pointed at the water horse. "Like I said, there usually was one hundred of his kind per generation, but ever since the Loch Ness monster myth, they've been hunted for trophies. Now it's only ten per generation."

"Barbarians," Aaricia said. She finished scrubbing the baby water horse and pulled it out to scrub him dry. "I hope you guys aren't here to steal him from me."

"We didn't know you were going to adopt some sea pony," Marion said. "Aaricia, did Kory's dad show up at all?"

"Are you asking for recently or in the past seventy years?" Aaricia rubbed the water horse's horns, making it react with neighing laughter. "Ooh, aren't you a ticklish fellow?"

"Aaricia!" Marion waved her hand.

"Did Loki show up in the last two days?" Banner asked firmly.

"Yeah, he came in the middle of the night. I woke up around 1am or something after I heard what sounded like Kory shouting. Next thing I heard was Kory springing one of the security trapdoors open and I saw Loki falling into the backyard's lionfish moat from my window." Aaricia briefly walked towards the stove and pulled out a screen that was hiding in the fan. Footage of all over the house was shown to them and Aaricia taped on the one showing the moat in the backyard. Puddles heading toward the fjord suggested that something walked away. "Looks like Loki walked away after she dumped him in the moat."

"How'd she get the lionfishes to survive the Norwegian cold?" Romanoff asked.

"They're Asgardian lionfish." Aaricia pushed the screen back into the fan. The water horse whimpered at the sight it had received on those white-and-blood red colored marine animals. Seeing that her new pet was looking uncomfortable, Aaricia picked it up in her arms and hugged. "Don't worry, Fjordson. You don't have to swim with those meanies. You can swim in the indoor pool until I can convince Kory to let me install a tank aquarium just for you."

"Fjordson?" Anubis arched an eyebrow. "Fjordson the Water Horse?"

"What are you going to do once that thing..." Romanoff began.

"His name is Fjordson," Aaricia corrected the Black Widow. "And don't worry, I'll eventually figure out how to handle him when he becomes an adult."

"Aaricia, what about Loki? Did Kory tell you what he wanted?" Marion asked.

Aaricia opened a drawer and started matching Fjordson with colorful ribbons until she settled to tie a blue bowtie on him. "Sorry. Kory left in the morning. One of her other personalities took over and dragged her body to work."

"Shit! Which one?"

"The party animal personality who runs the Nine Worlds Club with Bacchus in Oslo. We got a door upstairs that leads right to the capital."

"Did Kaïra show up at all when Kory talked to Loki?" Anubis asked.

"Yes."

"And she also wanted Loki kicked out."

"Duh."

Anubis sighed in relief. "Nothing has changed."

"Oh, and she kinda stole the Tesseract from Loki's pocket."

"WHAT?" They all screamed. Fjordson squirted water out of his nose in startle. Aaricia cuddled him in her arms to soothe him.

"AARICIA!" Marion slammed her hands on the counter. "Couldn't you have mentioned that sooner?"

"Hey, you asked if Loki showed up!" Aaricia pointed out. "If you wanted to know if Kaïra took the opportunity to steal an Infinity Stone while Kory and Loki were distracted with their argument, you should have said it sooner!"

"How did you find out that Kaïra stole the Tesseract?" Anubis asked.

"I didn't have to recheck the security footage. Once Loki got kicked into the moat, I heard Kory shutting all the doors and windows in the mansion, but while I heard her doing that, I saw Kaïra in the bathroom holding the Tesseract in her hand. Now I don't know if Kaïra's either frolicking around with the cube in her hands or if she's holding it in Kory's tri-conscious."

"A tri-conscious?" Banner asked.

"It's like a subconscious within the subconscious," Aaricia explained. "When someone has multiple personality disorder, his or her personalities get stored in the subconscious until something in the outside world triggers one of them awake, briefly taking over the original. But Kaïra had it bad because of her past and her heritage as the kid of the God of Mischief and Lies. Her subconscious tore apart when she hit her eternally young status, and when it reformed, it got split in half. One half where most of her personalities reside, her subconscious, and the other half becoming her tri-conscious, her second subconscious. The home of her evil personality, Kaïra Lokisia. Unlike Kory and the other personalities, she doesn't need a trigger or Kory's body to take action. She has such strong powers, she can phase herself into the real world and become solid to do whatever she wants!"

"So if I get this straight, Kory and Kaïra can be in two different places at once?" Banner gasped. "Kaïra can just... leave Kory's body whenever she wants?"

"Not without the side effects." Aaricia listed the side effects with her fingers. As she did, Fjordson tried to playfully bite them the same way a kitten tried to bite your thumb. "A, Kory can't be killed."

"Because if the original body got killed, the personalities would die, along with Kaïra," Romanoff guessed.

"Exactly. If Kory's in a situation where she could get physical harmed or in danger of death, it's Kaïra's sole excuse for stepping in to keep her safe. B, even with opposing moralities, Kaïra still shares Kory's feelings. She can't hurt me and they both have the same crush."

"I pity the guy already," Marion sighed.

"And C, Kaïra can only stay physical for twelve hours. Once those twelve hours have passed, she must go back to the tri-conscious to rest for another twelve hours. As you can tell..."

"Time out. If Kaïra can phase herself out of Kory, can she turn invisible?" Banner asked. "Because if Kory and Loki couldn't even notice her stealing the Tesseract from his own pocket, then that means she should have taken the opportunity to make it so that she won't be seen."

"And gods know why Kaïra would want to steal the Tesseract." Anubis turned to Marion. "Marion, take Banner back to Mediansburg. It looks like Romanoff and I will have to go to a club in Oslo."