Sisters Duel

Bloom strides into the Throne Room, noticing and not caring about Hela sitting on the throne for the moment. She sees the paintings from the ceiling broken on the floor, and then looks up to see a painting of Hela and Odin leading an army of Asgardians. "So, your alive. I was wondering if you were even alive when you collapsed."

Bloom looks up at her adopted sister, and watches as her crown turns back into long black hair. "I see you've redecorated the place. Or maybe un-redecorated would be a be a better term this time. I take it the stuff currently on display happened?"

"Yes, it seems his solution for every problem was to cover it up - or cast it away."

Bloom says "Ah, right. I remember Thor's coronation, how badly that went. Allfather banished Thor, to try and teach him wisdom apparently. All three of us, the siblings you've met anyway, know what it's like to be told one thing and have it turn out to be completely false. Loki and I were told we were related by blood to Thor, Thor was told he was Odin and Frigga's firstborn. You were told you were worthy of the throne."

Hela smiles somewhat nastily, and says "You never knew him at his best, Odin. Then, one day, he decided to be a benevolent king, to have Thor - and he cast me out because I didn't fit that image."

Bloom says "Well, you know. Fathers and their expectations. Thor doesn't want the throne anymore. Loki doesn't want the throne anymore. I never wanted the throne to begin with and still don't. And as Odin's Firstborn and our sister, you have a claim to it - I'm not saying otherwise, neither of our brothers are saying otherwise."

Hela looks intrigued, and asks "Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying you can't go around killing everyone you see just because you want to."

Hela gets angry, and her crown reappears from her hair. Bloom shrugs, and says "Fine, I tried to reason with family."

"So, you seem to be a fighter. Will you challenge me for the throne?"

Bloom starts laughing at that, and says "For me? No, I already said I never wanted the throne. Besides, I'm pretty much stuck with ruling another planet when I marry anyway. Thor will likely get the throne after all is said and done - I'll just make sure it isn't me - but how about we settle this with a good old-fashioned Asgardian duel? The winner is the one who's left when the dust settles and her opponent is gone. Deal?"

Hela seems taken aback for a moment, then grits out "Fine."

"Great! You can use all your tricks, I can use all mine. Sirenix!" She transforms, and draws her sword to fight.

Hela makes her own sword appear, and they get fighting. They fight all through the palace, equally matched in power and fighting skill - but Bloom's still got the advantage, she can fight and plan at the same time and has lightning-fast reflexes.

Hela says "Your good. Shame you wouldn't join me."

"Sorry, I don't do endless wars and destruction." Bloom swings her sword in a spin, releasing a wave of fire that knocks Hela back through a column.

Hela summons spikes from the ground, but they break on Bloom's shield. "What? Who are you?"

"Bloom, fairy of the Dragon Flame. Second Princess of Domino, and your, Thor, and Loki's adopted sister. Oh, and you have another sister who's slightly older than me. Her name's Daphne, but I don't think you'd get along very well."

They clang swords together again, and Bloom catches the blade Hela tries to throw into her chest. "Impossible!"

"No, magic! Lava Jab!" Hela gets put through a wall, getting angrier as the fight goes on. "Well, if we can work something out, I've just found the best sparring partner ever! You're the only person in all of creation who I haven't beaten in the first few minutes of a fight."

Hela seems to snap at that, and screams "I was his weapon! He used me to conquer all the Realms! Of course I'd be a good fighter!"

Hela's voice cracks as she says this though, and Bloom says "And then he just abandoned you, threw you away and erased you from history…"

Hela looks like her composure is breaking, making Bloom think that maybe this doesn't have to end in death. "Just because I was what he made me into! He didn't like it, so he imprisoned me and tried to erase what we'd done - what he did."

Bloom blocks a swing from Hela's sword, and says "I know what that's like. My birth father, Oritel, we didn't get along for a while. He wanted me to be one thing, I was firmly the opposite. He wanted me to be this perfect princess who goes around in dresses and heels, well, you can see I'm not. I survived a planet filled with dragons, I'd been kidnapped multiple times, oh, and I'm part dragon. That little factor didn't help with the whole perfect-princess routine either. I'd rather be riding Ember or running fast as the wind or training with the guards - rather, training the guards at this point - instead of stuck wearing some ridiculous dress and pretending to be something I'm not."

Hela says "Really? We have more in common than you'd think then. For centuries, Odin shaped me into his perfect weapon. Forged me so strong and hard that nothing would break me - not even him. And then, one day, he decides he doesn't need me anymore when he turns to peace. If he wanted his daughter to be more peaceful, he should have turned to it before he turned her into a weapon!"

Bloom asks "Did you want to be a weapon? At first, did you want to become the Goddess of Death?"

Hela blinks, nobody ever asked her that question ever. "My connection to Asgard cannot be changed."

"No, but killing anyone you can see can be. You don't just snap your fingers and people die, do they?"

"Please, if I could do that, you'd already be dead."

"So your called the Goddess of Death because you fight so well then. And because you can make structures come up out of the ground."

Hela says "That part is my connection to Asgard. I can summon many constructs out of nothing at my will."

"So…none of your powers directly give you power over death, 'Goddess of Death' is more of an honorary title then?"

Hela blinks, thinks about it for a moment, then says "That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

"Would you like to stop being the weapon Allfather made you into? Stop being what he made you and make yourself something else?"

Hela's headdress falls back into her hair, maybe from shock or despair, and she says "I wouldn't even know how. I wouldn't know where to begin. I was so angry at Father for imprisoning me, locking me away for being what he'd wanted before, and now…"

"And now everything's gone to heck, right? Nobody remembered you, your siblings never knew of you - you didn't know you had siblings…"

Hela drops her swords, and whispers "You win, I yield. I don't want the throne, I want to go back to how things were when I was accepted. When I was loved and honored."

Bloom says "I can't do that for you, sister, but maybe I can do something else for you."

"What? What could you do? Odin taught me to be ambitious, ruthless, taught me to have a bloodlust. What could you do to reverse all that?"

"Well, you see, Sister, magic helps a lot here. If you'll let me, I could take the bloodlust away. Give you the chance to be something other than the weapon father made you into." Bloom starts glowing orange, shocking Hela and having her react by summoning another sword - Bloom pauses, then slowly sheathes her own sword.

Hela lowers her after a moment, and asks "What are you doing? You're on fire!"

"Not exactly, it's my magic. When I said I was the Fairy of the Dragon Flame, well, my magic is colored orange. You can summon structures from the ground, I can manipulate fire, for example. I can actually do just about anything with a little imagination, and one of those things is healing someone. Changing their hearts, their feelings, maybe reverse a change in them…"

"Why? Why would you do this for me?"

Bloom says "We've all had problems, Hela. Thor used to be an arrogant jerk, you'd have speared him on a sword the instant he tried to tell you to know your place. That changed when he was banished, he learned a few life lessons. Loki? Well, when Thor was banished, Odin went into his Odinsleep. Loki had no choice but to be ruler of Asgard for a time, and the power got to him. After so long of Thor telling him to 'know his place' and then his place being at the top, well, it went to his head. He'd played a trick on Thor, let three Jotuns into the Weapons Vault to disrupt Thor's coronation - for all the years of his treatment - and then it got out of control from there. After two years, during the last Convergence, mother was killed and Loki had been put in the dungeons by Odin. Loki left Asgard via falling off the Bifrost, then returned to Earth to rule it - and invaded with an army of Chitauri. He was beaten, brought back to Asgard, and Odin imprisoned him - and then Mother died, and I decided I really needed the brother who'd cared about me back."

Hela snorts, and says "So I take it you changed Loki the way your offering to change me."

"Yeah, good guess, sister."

"And what about you? You said you all had your own problems."

"Me? Well, it's complicated. Before the Convergence, I'd been kidnapped by an evil wizard known as Valtor. He imprisoned me underneath Cloudtower Castle for two months. I don't remember what happened anymore, but I do know it was bad - very bad. I escaped to Pyros, the planet of Dragons, and then I didn't leave until my friends found me. But I'd changed during those two months under Cloudtower, when I left Pyros I was paranoid, I never left Alfea, I'd have flashbacks of what happened. Basically, I was a total mess."

"So what changed? Or are you still…?"

"No, I lost my memories last year. Got most of them back, but Cloudtower never returned. Neither did the paranoia, the fear that I'd be locked away again forever."

Hela looks at Bloom with sympathy, and says "I know what it's like to be locked away forever. It wasn't fun."

Bloom smiles wanly at her, and says "No, I bet it wasn't. So, would you like to start over?"

Hela bites her lip and nods, saying "Do it fast, sister."

"It won't hurt, you'll just start thinking and feeling differently." Bloom starts glowing brightly, blue and orange mixing.

Hela closes her eyes, only opening them when Bloom brightly says "Done!"

She doesn't feel much different from before, except for the warm tingling sensation warming every nerve in her body. As it fades, Hela looks around, wondering exactly what Bloom did. "Um, what's different?"

"Feel any massive need to destroy or conquer anything, sister?"

Hela takes a full minute to realize she doesn't, then falls backward in a dead faint.

Bloom chuckles and says "Yeah, thought I might get that reaction. If you'll excuse me, I have to pass out now." She does exactly that, not even transforming as she hits the ground already unconscious.

Minutes later, Thor, Loki, Valkyrie, Sif, and Heimdall run into the very much destroyed courtyard to see both women on the ground. Loki and Thor run over to Bloom, and Heimdall says "They're both alive."

Thor and Loki look at one another in shock, and Sif asks "What? What in all the Nine Realms possessed the victor to leave the other alive?"

Thor says "Bloom didn't take Father's death too well Sif, maybe she didn't want to lose any more family."

Loki asks "Remember the Convergence? When she gave me a change of heart?"

Sif says "You can't seriously think Bloom gave the Goddess of Death a change of heart! She's killed dozens of people, if not hundreds!"

Loki looks down at Bloom, muttering "Bloom! Do you always have to see the good in people? What did you do?"

Bloom groans, and Thor says "Bloom! Wake up, you need to tell us what happened."

Hela stirs, and says "I'll tell you, wait, what happened to her now?"

Loki says "First, tell us why both of you are alive."

"She wanted to know if I could change, if I wanted to be the weapon Father made me into. I originally didn't, so, well, according to our sister on the ground there, you'd have an idea of what followed."

Loki says "She…"

"Changed my heart. Changed it back. Father taught me to be the Goddess of Death. Bloom gave me the chance to be something else."

AN: Yeah, a kid couldn't seriously be that ambitious right away - and given the fact that Allfather was never the shining angel he probably taught them to be even in the movies, why not add another lie to the list? He's already dead, so heck. Besides, even in the movies he hid Hela's existence from the two of them until he was moments away from dying - so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that he trained Hela to be a perfect killing machine. As for why Bloom let her live and gave her a chance to start over, she tries to look for the good in people - which would be why the Wizards didn't die on the beach when they showed back up. And as a bonus, she now has an equal sparring partner - the Einherjar will likely love Hela in a few rounds in the training ring when she doesn't go down easily to Bloom. Besides, I'd love to see Thanos try to invade Asgard with Hela there - and Bloom on the way, because she'd likely get a vision about him being on the move. Anyway, enjoy! More updates coming soon! And yes, Thanos is going DOWN!