HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LOVELY GULLINKAMBI AKA THOR'S PENGUIN...please reference Natasha's penguin in "Who Doesn't Have A Soul?" for refreshers xD (I have no idea why he's named Gullinkambi, but he is...thanks to Pikapegasus and I...)
Shoutout to StellarAngel88 for following!
Was that a penguin?
Matt Rogers squinted at the end of the hallway, frowning as he saw a misshapen waddling figure dragging Thor's hammer. As far as he knew, no one had the ability to lift Thor's hammer, let alone lift it. He hurried down the hallway silently, taking care to make sure no one saw him following it. As the penguin turned a corner, Matt checked around discreetly before scurrying after him, breaking into a sprint as it waddled into the elevator, all the time still carrying the hammer.
"Well...hi there," he said quietly as the elevator descended, the penguin staring at him. "'m Matt. Matt Philip Rogers. " When the penguin said nothing, he shrank back to the other side. "D'you gotta name?"
"I am Gullinkambi," the penguin squeaked, sounding very much like Matt's own five-year old self. "Long ago, I was rescued by the Lady Romanoff from my artificial habitat at the zoo, and taken to Asgard as it seemed I possessed the power of Thor. It is why I can lift his hammer," he explained, lifting it up casually.
"Wow," Matt said in awe, his blue eyes as wide as saucers. "I've never met anyone 'sides Uncle Thor who can lift Mew Mew. Not even Dad." Feeling more confident, he edged closer to Gullinkambi, reverently touching Mjolnir's handle. "I wonder if Uncle Phil can lift it or somethin'." Another thought crossed his mind. "Hey, Gullinkambi? Is that how I say it? How come I haven't seen you before?"
"Prince Thor decided it was better for me to reside where I could not be seen, as the world clearly is not yet ready for the unveiling of a mystical penguin," Gullinkambi answered, picking up the hammer once again as the doors opened. "And Matthew? You may call me Kambi."
"Kambi," Matt decided shortly, shivering as he was met by a blast of cold air. "Is this...is this where you live?" he asked, looking around. "I don't remember much of Uncle Brucie's science. He just said that penguins live in cold areas."
"That is correct, Matthew," Kambi said, casually depositing Mjolnir into a hammer-shaped depression in the ice. "You look cold," he said to Matt, whose lips were steadily turning blue. "Would you like a jacket?"
"D-d-d-d-do you h-h-h-h-ave one?" Matt had only been in the habitat for three minutes, but he was already freezing his butt off. He had the inkling Natasha wouldn't have been happy if Tony had to make him a prosthetic behind. Instantly, a warm, furry coat appeared and draped itself over its shoulders, and all of the energy Matt had put towards shivering automatically went towards awe. "Thanks, Kambi."
"It is no trouble," Kambi answered, motioning for Matt to follow him deeper into his enclosure. "After all, it is not every day one gets to meet the famous son of Lady Romanoff and Captain Rogers." When Matt gave him a confused look, he hastened to add, "At least, that is what I have heard from Prince Thor."
"I dunno about famous..." Matt said, scratching his head. It was actually a little harder to do when a large hood was thrown over his head, and he wished he'd asked for a hat and gloves. "All Momma and Daddy tell me is that they stopped some bad guys from doing bad things. Momma says that she'll tell me when I get hair outta my 'pits." An amused smirk escaped Kambi's beak, and he swung open a door, ushering Matt in.
"This is where I reside," he said, and Matt's head spun as he took in the scenery around him. He and Kambi were standing on a high, icy ledge, and below them lay a maze of sledding lanes, twisting and turning deeper and deeper below him until he couldn't see the bottom. In fact, to his right seemed to lay the starting line to the entire course, marked by a red and white checkered border. A chilly wind blew throughout the entire complex, but this time, Matt could see the large air conditioner in the corner, supported by the coolly lit lighting system. "It is not much, but I hope you will find it interesting."
"It's...it's..." Matt was at a loss for words, half of them taken away by the cold temperature. "How do you get around?"
"Simple," Kambi launched himself onto his belly, gaining speed as he zoomed down the long, twisting paths. "All you have to do is slide!" Matt stared for a few moments as he watched his newly found penguin friend glided smoothly down the spirals. He gulped, watching dizzily as Kambi grew smaller and smaller. It didn't look too hard...
"Alrighty," he said to himself, shrugging his shoulders. "I guess here goes nothin'." With a cry, he threw himself onto the ice slide, his eyes wide as the ice whizzed past him at eye level, more air blowing through his unruly hair. "WHOOOO!" Before he knew it, he was at the bottom, Kambi watching amusedly as he hopped up, brushing ice off of his coat.
"Whoa," he declared quietly, gazing up at the small patch of light that was the top of the tunnel. "How many floors did I go down?"
"You started at approximately the sixty-fifth floor," Kambi informed him, busily fiddling with his own door. "We are now on the fortieth." Matt's heart seized. The fortieth?
"Uncle Tony said to never go on the fortieth!" he squeaked, panic showing on his face. "He's gonna kill me if he found out I was on the fortieth floor!" He grabbed onto Kambi's fin, tugging on it insistently. "Kambi, you gotta take me back. I can't be on the fortieth floor!"
Remarkably, Kambi's face was nothing but serene, and he said nothing as his own door opened to reveal a lavishly decorated igloo. "The reason Stark has forbidden access onto the fortieth floor is because it is the ventilation system for my abode, and one simply does not want to get lost in it, lest they never find their way out again." The urgency on Matt's face collapsed.
"Oh." Wonder dawned on him as he stepped in, his jaw dropping open as he regarded the shimmering ice dome above his head. "Did Uncle Tony build all of this for you?"
"Nay, 'twas simply the magic of Asgard," Kambi said, placing Moljnir on his small, wooden table. "And now we wait, Matthew," he said finally. He gestured to the ground. "Please, won't you sit? I've got quite the selection of rugs for you to choose."
"...sure?" Timidly, Matt pulled up a blue, fuzzy rug and plopped onto it, the hood of his coat immediately falling over his eyes. "If you don't mind me asking, Kambi...what are we waiting for?" His father had always taught him to be polite in company-Matt guessed that penguins were no different.
"Why, your relatives, of course," Kambi's beady, black eyes sparkled. "After all, they are going to come looking for you, are they not?"
"WHERE THE HELL IS HE?"
To say that the Avengers were looking for Matt was an understatement. Their efforts probably ran more along the lines of 'turning everything over, whether it was rationally possible or not, and trying to find Matt in it'. So far, Steve and Bucky had turned over a couple of couches each, and Natasha had gone so far as to even look in the refrigerator for her son.
"I can't believe we can't find him!" Natasha exclaimed, hysterically brushing her hair out of her face as Steve righted yet another piece of furniture. The stress was starting to show on her face, despite her tight lid on her emotions. "He's gotta be around here somewhere, Steve, I just don't believe he'd up and run like that, he's only five, for God's sake..."
"That, or this is the greatest game of hide and seek he's ever played," Steve chuckled. "Clint will be extremely disappointed if Matt manages to beat him at age five." Natasha gave him a glare, and he backed away, his arms in the air. "Alright, alright. So he's missing."
"I think I have a clue as to where he went," Tony dashed in, nearly skidding on the polished floor and crashing into Steve. "J and I have been going over the footage from the last couple of hours, and the last time we saw Matty boy was when he was going into the elevator with a weird figure." He held up a tablet, pointing to a black and white figure on the screen. Behind him was Matty, looking as if he'd entered the elevator completely voluntarily.
"So where did the elevator go?" Bucky asked, sighing. "Was the the Tower of Terror or something?" He remembered how the last prank had gone-poor FitzSimmons had had to be fished out of a whirlpool. Simmons' nightmares hadn't gone away for weeks.
Tony paled. "It went to the fortieth floor." All of their faces went slack-they all knew it was forbidden to head to the fortieth floor, even to going so far as to drill into Matt's head not to visit it. "There's not point of return on the fortieth floor."
"Oh, do not be so despondent about it, Friend Stark, Thor rumbled as he entered, his maroon cape flapping beside him. "There is but another way to enter the fortieth floor. Although whether we will all escape unscathed, I cannot say."
"Tell me," Natasha hissed at him, her mouth set in a resolute line. "Tell. Me." When Thor hesitated, she reached for a knife, twirling it in her hands. "Lady Sif likes me. She'll understand why I had to murder you."
"The elevator," Thor gestured. "Let us begin on the sixty-fifth floor."
"Oh fuck, it's cold," Tony hissed as they emerged onto the landing of Kambi's lair, all of them wholly unprepared for the blast of cold wind that hit them. "How the hell did I engineer something this cold?"
"Language." Steve murmured.
"It is some Jotun magic," Thor answered , peering down the crater once more. "That is the only way I can fathom that it would get this cold in an area such as this. I see that Gullinkambi has made good use of the climate here."
"You call this ice maze a good use?" Tony asked incredulously, looking down and almost tipping over. Natasha grabbed his collar to prevent him from going down. "I call it great. How long do you guys think it'll take me to build something like this instead of the staircases?"
Steve and Natasha exchanged looks. "No," they said in unison. "No."
"First one to the bottom?" Bucky asked, peering down the slide. "Think it'll hold my weight?" Thor didn't give him a chance to reply as the god plopped down onto the slide, gaining speed as he went down on his stomach. Natasha was next to follow him, screaming as she spun every which way. Steve gingerly stepped onto the ramp, not wanting to follow his wife's results, only to have his foot give out beneath him. He landed with an audible thud on the slide before starting down, and he scrabbled at the ramp, attempting to find some grasp before heading down, shouting all the way.
Tony, who was the last one, peered into the chasm, levelling his chances of jumping and surviving before sighing and balling up his sweatshirt, leaping onto the ice slide. "What the actuallllll fuuuuuuccccckkkk!"
He crashed into the ice wall across from the end of the slide, the collision echoing loudly in the chamber. Steve and Bucky looked concernedly at him, while Thor and Natasha pressed on unconcernedly.
"Stark? You good?" Tony waved off their helping hands as he stood up, his vision wobbling a bit before turning back to normal. "You got a concussion or anything?"
"I'm fine," Tony insisted, staggering on despite the throbbing pain in his head. "Let's go see what the squirt's up to, alright?" Steve and Bucky brought up the rear of the group, the five of them cautiously making their way through the lair.
"That's the door?" Steve asked, squatting down to the entrance of Kambi's igloo. "I don't think I can make it in there."
"Is that Daddy?" a muffled voice asked, and a fifty pound weight smashed into Steve as Matt excitedly flow into his arms. "Hi Daddy!" Pulling himself out of Steve's embrace, Matt grinned happily. "I met Kambi today! He's a penguin that Momma rescued from the zoo once!"
Natasha turned to Thor, who looked sheepish. "Gave it to an animal sanctuary, huh, Thor?" she asked sarcastically, planting her hands on her hips. "Is that what happened to Stevie Jr?"
"His name is Gullinkambi," Matt insisted. "But you can call him Kambi for short!"
"I was indeed once named Stevie Jr," Kambi said as he emerged from the igloo also, holding Mjolnir's hammer aloft. "Your mother decided to name me after your father, for he seemed to be the only reason she still had a soul." He slid the hammer over to Matt, letting it come to a stop at his feet. "I believe you have earned the right to a trial, young Matthew."
Everyone held their breath, especially Tony. His pride would never survive this if his nephew picked it up before he did. Matt himself looked slightly apprehensive, and he glanced at all of his relatives nervously. "You guys'll still love me if I can't pick it up, right?" he asked.
"Honey, no one in this family can pick it up," Natasha reassured him, crouching down to ruffle his hair. "We might not love you if you manage to pick it up, though," she joked, giving him a small kiss on the head. "Just remember that." Matt stuck out his tongue at his mother.
"Why, 'cause you'd be jealous all the-whoa!" Matt had heaved with all of his strength, and Mjolnir nearly sent him backwards with its force. He gazed at his parents in shock. Steve looked like he was about to have a heart attack, while Natasha was cursing herself for leaving her phone upstairs this one time..."I can lift Mew Mew!"
"And now that we've learned that, we've gotta coach you on how not to call it Mew Mew," Steve sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I still regret letting your Aunt Darcy teach you how to say that in the first place."
"Well done, Matthew!" Thor boomed, picking up Matt and swinging him in a circle. "You are worthy of the power of Thor, indeed!" Matt let out a giggle-scream as Thor tickled him, nearly being dropped to the ground.
"Does this mean I get to go to Asgard?" Matt asked once the celebrations had died down, mostly after Bucky had tossed him into the air a few times and Tony had broken down into a fake crying jag.
"Of course!" Thor exclaimed, holding Mjolnir aloft and allowing them to soar upwards. "I am sure Lady Sif would be honored to meet the son of Lady Romanoff. But for now, you must say goodbye to Gullinkambi, Matthew."
"Bye, Kambi!" Matt waved a tiny hand at his new friend, who waved back just as amusedly.
"Goodbye, Matthew. I am sure we shall meet again some day."
Because the world needed cute Kambi AND I WANTED TO WRITE SOMETHING FOR HIS BIRTHDAY aka there is an adorable picture somewhere of Thor holding a penguin that says "THIS PENGUIN IS WORTHY OF THE POWER OF THOR"
Your reviews really do make my day! And they inspire me to write faster, especially in this college app dejection. Love you all! :)
