Eloquent to the last, Thor put his hands on his hips and looked over the smoking car. "Well, shit."

Hela threw him an exasperated look but flipped open her purse and dug around for her insurance card. She'd never used it, but it apparently had some kind of roadside assistance for when her stupid car decided to pull a stunt like this. She'd driven the thing in LA traffic for years, and it picked now to erupt?

Past the smoking car zoomed dozens of cars, vans, and semis, all trucking to who knew where. Fenris barked at them and bounced back and forth on his toes like he couldn't believe he was free from the car, and Loki stopped recording and started typing.

Hela leveled a finger at him. "Do not sent that to your mother."

He stuffed his phone in his pocket and shook his head adamantly. "Didn't."

"Good."

Thor strode past her with an old board swinging from his hand like a bat, heading for the car.

"What are you doing? Don't get to close."

Thor stopped a few feet from the car and brandished his 2x4 like he would club the smoking mess if it made a wrong move. "Nah, I'll be careful."

With an exasperated sigh, Hela glanced at her phone. It was almost seven thirty at night and eighty-two degrees out. Much cooler than the desert they'd been driving through, but still hot enough to be annoying. Weren't the mountains supposed to be cooler?

Hela fished her insurance card out of her purse and flipped it back and forth, scanning for the customer service number when her own phone started buzzing in her hand. Frigga's name light up the screen in white letters and a default silhouette icon. She glared at Loki—who was most certainly not making eye contact—and answered. "Hi, Frigga."

"Are you okay? I just got Loki's video."

Hela held the phone away from her ear as Frigga spieled through her concerned questions, voice pitched just a bit too high. Once she paused, Hela held the phone back up and said, "We're all fine. I just need to get the car to the shop, and I'm sure we'll be back on the road in no time."

BANG.

Hela leapt halfway out of her skin and whipped around. Thor stood well away from the car with the 2x4 over one shoulder like a baseball bat, and there was a noticeable dent in the front fender.

"Thor, what the hell?"

"It's fine." Thor smiled, one eye squinted shut against the sun, and he raised a hand in acknowledgment. "Just making sure it wasn't gonna explode."

Hela bit back a curse. She always imagined her delinquent college adventures or some great business scandal would be the only way she'd end up in jail, but fratricide on the shoulder of I-15 was looking more and more the likely culprit.

"Helen? What's going on?"

"Nothing. We're fine." Hela held the phone down. "Thor, I swear, if you don't get away from that car, there won't be anything left for your parents to fight over."

Thor tapped the car hood with his board, then used it to pushed up the hood and vent all the smoke while staying well back. "It's okay. I took a shop class."

Hela threw a hand in the air and looked at Loki. "Oh, he took a shop class. Of course. That fixes everything."

The black-haired boy held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, I'm listening."

"Frigga, why don't you book us a hotel? I'll get on the phone with roadside assistance and…"

"Hey, lady. Need some help?"

Hela spun around. Parked in front of her car was a tow truck with a red bush-bearded man coming around the front.

"Oh, thank God. Frigga, there's a tow truck. I have to go. Book the hotel and text one of the kids."

"Helen—"

"Bye." She hung up and passed the phone back to Loki. "Text your mom."

"Kay."

Bright and early the next morning, Hela and the boys went to the nearest mechanic and loitered in the lobby for two hours before the mechanic appeared. Now Hela stared at him, an entirely average looking man with a clipboard and axle grease under his nails. If he swapped his jumpsuit out for a suit and tie, he would look like any of the business clients she teleconferenced with. He was certainly irritating enough, ticking down his list of everything catastrophically wrong with her car, tapping every reason she wasn't hurtling down the highway towards Minneapolis.

She gripped her Styrofoam cup of complementary, lukewarm coffee tighter. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Wish I was, ma'am." He gestured to the bustling garage with his clipboard. "Well, we've got a blown head gasket and a pretty square dent in the front fender."

Thor. Hela sighed and shot a look at the boys over in the waiting area—Loki playing video games in the kids' corner and his delinquent, fender-bending brother shoveling sugar packets into a Styrofoam cup. She sighed again. "It doesn't need to be pretty. How long is that going to take to fix, and how much is it going to cost me?"

"Well it isn't going to be cheap, unfortunately, but once we have the parts, we can get you fixed up and back on the road."

"Wait, wait." She held up her had. "You don't have the parts?"

He shrugged. "I'll get in touch with our sister shop here in town and see what they've got. Probably get you back on the road by tomorrow morning."

Hela clenched the cheap cup in her hand. She checked all the nearby airports—no seats on any planes for another three days, so this car was her one shot to Chicago on time. Tepid coffee burst over her fist and pooled on the floor, but she didn't flinch. The mechanic jumped, eyes wide.

She picked a napkin off the table and wiped the lukewarm liquid from her hand, dropped it on the floor, and mopped it up with her boot. "Fine. Whatever you need to do."

He gestured to the brown and russet waiting area. "You're welcome to wait. Otherwise, we have a shuttle that can take you and your kids to shop and maybe grab lunch."

"They're not my kids," Hela said, almost a reflex at this point.

The mechanic didn't react, so Hela glanced back at the boys. Thor had wandered away from the Judge Judy reruns in favor of the free coffee, where he was now pouring six sweetener packets into a Styrofoam cup. In the kids' space, a round rug in the corner with a TV, some books, and a wooden train set, Loki slouched in a bungee chair with Fenris curled sullenly under his feet. He held a video game control almost under his chin as he lazily pushed the joystick back and forth. They'd been quiet for a while, but she had no idea how much longer that would last.

Hela glanced back at the mechanic and his clipboard. "How do we catch the shuttle?"

"I can have it out front for you in about ten minutes."

"Wonderful." She spun on her heel and strode over to the boys. "We're going to lunch."

Thor slid the empty sugar packets into the garbage and chugged the whole cup of his super coffee in about four swallows. He was going to be insufferable in about twenty minutes.

"How much sugar did you dump in that?"

"It's like airport coffee; it's the only way I can drink it."

"You're both addicts."

He winged his cup into the garbage. "I don't tell you how to live your life."

Hela rolled her eyes and waved at Loki. "Let's go."

He sighed and turned the game off, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled over gripping Fenris' harness and a fair amount of scruff. The dog needed a haircut. And honestly, so did the boys. If they ever made it back to Minnesota, maybe Frigga could arrange that.

The three of them walked outside and climbed into the shuttle van that bussed them a few streets down to the Original Pancake House where a waiter set them up at an outdoor table with an umbrella. In the shade under the table, Fenris lolled and whined, so Loki grabbed his water glass and set the whole thing on the cement. The dog down the water in two slobbery tongue laps, and Loki put his glass back on the table for the waiter to refill.

Thor wrinkled his nose. "That's gross."

"He's thirsty."

"Somebody else is gonna have to drink out of that. You could have asked for a doggy bowl or a to go box or something. Ew."

What the boys decided to police each other on felt random to Hela, but at least she wasn't the one yelling at him. The waiter returned with food, and the slobbered cup did get refilled to Thor and Hela's chagrin. Thor whipped out his phone, probably to text all eighty of his friends, and Loki did the same, probably updating his mom since Frigga wasn't texting her in a panic every forty minutes.

Halfway into their meal, Hela's phone buzzed, and with a groan she answered.

"Sorry, ma'am." It was the mechanic. "I called all the shops in town. We'll have to order them from San Francisco, which will probably add three to five days—"

"Five days? I just drove here from L.A. in one."

"That's quite a drive." He sounded impressed. "But uh, that's probably why the engine is looking like it is. The more we look, the worse it is. Even with expedited shipping, FedEx only goes so fast, ma'am, and we do have to install the parts when they get here."

"It's fine. Just get it done as fast as you can."

"Please."

Hela whipped her head to Loki, who was already back to shoveling his Nutella crepes in his mouth, so she sighed. "Please. How much is all this going to cost me?"

"You're probably looking at upwards of a few thousand."

Groaning, Hela covered her face with one hand. "And how long is it going to take?"

"Hate to tell you this, but your car is going to be undrivable for at least a week."

Groaning, Hela covered her face with one hand. "Okay. Okay, I'll... call you back."

"We'll wait to hear from you." He hung up and left Hela to stew.

She slammed her phone on the table, shaking plates and silverware, and she growled and stabbed her apple pancake with more vitriol than it probably deserved. A tine caught one apple bit that burst and oozed.

"So…" Loki tapped at his plate. "Are we gonna make it home?"

She dropped her fork and ran her hand over her face. "I don't know honestly. There's no plane tickets, my car is going to cost a million dollars to fix, and we're not going anywhere for a week. Why don't I just buy a new car at this point?"

"Why don't you?" Thor took a swig of orange juice.

"Why don't I what?"

"Buy a new car. It would be faster." The kid wiped his mouth—on a napkin, thank God. She'd half expected him to use his sleeve.

"Sure. Do you have any idea how much a car costs?"

"Fifteen hundred bucks?"

Hela snorted. "A lot more than that."

He pointed over her shoulder across the street. She turned in her seat and followed his pointing to the ugliest car she'd ever seen. It was a bright orange hippie van, dented and fender bent, and across the dirty windshield in pink spray paint was written "$1,500" and a phone number. Her jaw dropped and she looked back at the boys who were watching her expectantly. Loki stuffed an entire crepe into his mouth and chewed, unaware of the chocolate smear on his cheek. Waiting. They were actually serious.

She pushed her chair back, and it shrieked. "Absolutely not."

"Aww, come on. It would be awesome."

"Maybe for the five miles we get down the road before the doors fall off. There's gotta be something wrong with it."

Shrugging, Thor stuffed another piece of bacon in his mouth and mumbled around it. "Well, if it runs, it's better than whatever's in the shop."

He had a point. If her car wouldn't run, then they'd never get it out of the garage, let alone all the way to Minnesota and Chicago. The next thing she knew, she was across the street, looking at the wheeled monstrosity. If she thought it was ugly at a distance, it was absolutely florescent up close. The fenders and doors were all intact, but there was some definite rust around the handles and the wheel well. She sneered. "It looks like a piece of garbage."

Unfortunately, Thor had the gall to look excited as he circled it. "It looks like an apocalypse van. Like, throw some metal bars on the window and bam—zombie proof."

"There are countries newer than this van. Is it even safe to drive?"

Thor kicked the fender. "Let's call and find out."

"Don't touch things that don't belong to you. And what am I supposed to do with it once we get back to Minnesota?"

"I'll keep it. I'm getting my license in a couple years; it can be my first car."

Loki's eyes got wide at that, like he hadn't considered his brother behind the wheel of a car, but Hela snorted and raised her eyebrows at Fenris, who just looked back at her with a bored, mournful expression. She looked back to the blond. "You want this hunk of garbage?"

"Well, I'll give it a paint job so it doesn't look like a Cheeto. And all my friends would fit."

Hela rolled her eyes, but she wasn't seeing all that many options. So she called the number and got the owner to agree to have a mechanic look it over before purchase. "These old cars are ugly, but they last. It'll get you where you need to go," said the mechanic back at the shop. That and, "You're brave, lady. I'll give you that much." But it ran, and at this point, that was what mattered.

The inside of the van was only slightly more tolerable. The driver and front passenger seats were peeling faux leather, and in the back, blue-and-silver-checked benches that somehow collapsed into a bed. Green fabric curtained the windows, and the whole thing smelled like old, hot leather and pinewood from the faded air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. Maybe somebody—or a couple somebodies—had tried to renovate it and abandoned it mid-project.

It was, as Loki pointed out, a hot mess.

But it had seatbelts, so she supposed that was a plus.

They drove back to their hotel, packed their stuff, and checked out. Thor and Fenris sprawled out in the backseat—"more leg room"—and Loki took shotgun. They hadn't been on the freeway more than fifteen minutes before Hela realized she couldn't drive another mile with the revolting orange frame staining her peripheral vision. For looking like a traffic cone, it was a real safety hazard. With a disgusted sigh, she waved a hand at Loki. "Map me to the nearest Walmart."

He pulled an earbud out, backed out of his texting, and started typing on his phone. "Uh, okay. Take the next exit."

They pulled off the freeway and wound down a convoluted frontage road to a super Walmart. The inside was dim and fluorescent and gave the feeling of being in an entirely different dimension. The boys vanished, but she grabbed some more bread and peanut butter then rolled her sticky-wheeled cart to the back aisles until she found paint. There she grabbed a couple masks, rollers, painting tape, a bucket of green auto paint, and a few cans of spray paint. If she had to drive Thor's apocalypse van across three states, then it would look half decent.

She found the boys in the self-checkout aisle with a twelve pack of Dr. Pepper, a family sized bag of Cheetos, and a box of granola bars.

In the parking lot, Hela pulled around the back and handed out masked and rollers. "Make sure you cover all the orange, for my sanity's sake."

Thor snapped his mask on and stripped off his shirt.

"Thor Blake, I swear to God, if you take off your pants I will leave you in this parking lot."

Thor snorted. Loki had already grabbed his brother's shirt off the ground and tied it around his head to protect his hair. Then he grabbed a roller. "Let's do this."

They attacked the ugly paint, and in twenty minutes had covered the van in a much more tasteful green. Then Hela grabbed a can of black spray paint and took it to the sides, sketching wicked looking lines that spiked and branched across the door and jutted across the frame in striking relief.

Thor and Loki gapped at her. "How did you do that?"

She smirked. "You think you're the first delinquent Odin ever raised?"

She and Thor gathered up the used supplies and walked them to the nearest trash can, only to come back to Loki finishing up his own addition to the paint job:

RAGNAROK

Thor wrinkled his nose. "What the heck is that?"

"End of the world. It's our apocalypse van, and it sounds cool."

"It's dumb."

Loki opened his mouth to tell, but Hela held up a hand. "Fine. Call it whatever you want; I honestly don't care as long as it runs."

Thor and Loki started arguing, but she hopped in the front seat and turned the key. The engine groaned and turned over, but the boys kept yelling at each other.

"You're stupid."

"No, you're stupid."

And Hela leaned back for another long drive.