Joe's Note: When I did the original story, I wrote Chapters 1 through 3 as a single long piece and then broke it up into more digestible chunks. This time around, it was more like Chapters 1 through 6 as a single piece so we're going to be getting a large number of updates to this story all back to back pretty quickly. That said, I want to keep this story's chapters to a manageable size because unlike when I started writing fanfiction, I'm currently holding down a fifty hour a week job, which cuts into my writing time considerably. Which reminds me, I do have a under the name 'joehundredaire' if you want to check it out. Just put the tip in, see how it feels. I tend to post there as soon as I finish anything, whereas it can take days to weeks for me to find the time to post it onto an archive site. Also, there's art.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Jade, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Clark, Adrien, erlking, ridillin, Haematite, Charles, Jacky, Edward, Andrew, Roofcrawler, Wil, PbookR, Samuel, Mikey, Beverly, Daniel, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Joseph, Jason, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Chris, George, Koby, William, Devin, JJbelle, David, Gavin, TheTenthAncestor, Lookshy, Mauday, John, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on P-treon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
For the next hour or so, Izuku sat on the grass near the gazebo in Endurfæðing Park drawing first Stormbreaker and then the Asgardian girl... woman... female whose name he was too cowardly to ask. The former because he'd gotten a lot better at drawing since he was eleven and had last stopped by the park with one of his notebooks in hand. The latter, he rationalized by telling himself that he needed to get better at drawing European features. Especially with Captain Celebrity and other American heroes breaking their way into the Japanese hero scene.
The fact that she was astonishingly pretty certainly didn't hurt matters any, of course.
Eventually, though, he exhausted all available entertainment in the park - up to and including sketching what he might have looked like if he'd been able to lift Stormbreaker and become the new Thor - and opted to move on, slowly making his way down the sidewalk toward home. Checking his phone along the way, he perked up a bit at a message from his mother, and then ducked into the nearest store obligingly to pick up some ingredients for dinner that evening. When he reached the apartment, he swung the door open and called out to her from the genkan as he slipped his shoes off. "Mom! I'm home!"
"In the living room, honey!" Izuku followed the sound of her voice to find his mother staring at the television with a look of concern on her face as the news played. "You made it home okay? Nothing out of the ordinary today?"
Izuku shook his head, looking from his mother to the television and back uncertainly. Why? What had he missed that her out of sorts? "No? I stopped by Endurfæðing Park on the way home, which is why I'm late. Apart from that, it was just a normal day. Why?"
Shaking her head, Inko Midoriya rose to her feet and gently guided for him to take her spot on the couch before taking the bag of groceries from him and hustling off to the kitchen. "Well there was some sort of gigantification quirk villain this morning during rush hour, and then a sludge quirk villain of all things was seen robbing stores all through the neighborhood this afternoon. All Might went after him but the news doesn't report him capturing the villain so I'm worried that means he's still out there."
"All Might? Here in Musutafu? I wonder why; his agency is Roppongi. He travels all over the country fighting crime but I never thought I'd see the day that he was in my own neighborhood!" Sitting up straighter, Izuku unzipped his backpack and pulled out his damaged notebook. "I'll have to get this copied over to a new book right away. What if I meet him? I can't possibly expect him to sign something this battered!"
Looking up from the counter, Inko shook her head fondly. "You need to take better care of your notebooks, Izuku. That's not the first time you've had to replace one that got too damaged to make it all the way to the end." Izuku bit his lip to avoid responding; his mother had no idea what sort of bullying and harassment he put up with on an ordinary day and it was going to remain that way if he had anything to say about it. "How was the park? It's right nearby but I can't remember the last time you took the time to visit it. You're always so focused these days, sometimes I worry that you're missing out on the world around you."
Izuku considered how to respond to that for a few seconds before deciding to focus on the aspect that would please his mother the most: positive human interaction. Well, after a fashion. "I talked to a girl today!" His mother let out a gasp and he nodded eagerly. "At the park. She was watching over Stormbreaker. We talked for a while and she took some pictures of me trying to lift it."
"Oh, that's wonderful! Talking to someone new is the first step to making a new friend!" Inko leaned forward conspiratorially. "Was she pretty? What's her name?"
Blushing, Izuku racked his memory only to come up empty. Heck. He hadn't bothered to ask her what her name was, had he? He'd forgotten something that simple, but managed to insult her by directly asking her how old she was. What an idiot he was sometimes. So he shrugged in response. "Gazebo-san? Maybe I'll stop tomorrow and ask if she's there again. Or ask whoever's there what her name was. That might be less embarrassing than admitting that I talked to her for a while and didn't even bother to ask her name."
Inko offered him an enthusiastic thumbs up in response. "Do it! And... was she pretty?"
"Mom!"
"She was!"
The following afternoon found Izuku watching over his shoulder constantly for something that could vaguely be considered a 'sludge villain' - there were no pictures of the dastardly fiend, only warnings that he was still at large after escaping from All Might - as he made his way back to Endurfæðing Park. His eyes lit up as he realized that not only was the pretty blonde Asgardian from the day before back for a second day in a row, but she had a friend with her. An equally tall friend. He hadn't really noticed the day before, but the blonde was awfully tall. Well, he was on the shorter side for his age, but she was still tall regardless of that. Probably a good 190 centimeters or so. When she looked over and gave a start at the sight of him, he raised his hand cheerfully and called out to her. "Gazebo-san! Hello!"
He immediately regretted his polite greeting when the dark-haired woman accompanying the familiar face burst into laughter. "He just called you Ms. Gazebo. That's... I can't... Sylvie Gazebo. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"
Scowling, the blonde Asgardian elbowed her companion roughly in the gut, making her stumble back with a loud grunt. "Shut up, you. He's being polite. We spoke yesterday and he didn't ask my name and I didn't offer it." Turning back to Izuku, she offered the same plastic smile that she'd given him yesterday, the one that didn't nearly reach her eyes. "My name is Sylvie. If you're going to be visiting me regularly, I suppose you can call me that. Or Lushton-san, if you're feeling formal. I'll never get used to how you lot refer to everyone by their last names. I don't even have one, I picked my own a while back."
Blushing faintly, Izuku bowed in apology. "Forgive me, Lushton-san. I won't call you Gazebo-san again." Straightening up, he looked over at the amused looking dark-haired woman but when she took no steps to introduce herself, he decided to focus on the one woman he actually had a moderately positive rapport with. "Did you finish your book after I left yesterday?"
"I did. The ending was disappointing, much like most Midgardian literature. I have absolutely no idea what Koli here sees in these 'romance novels' of hers, but I find them positively boring." Scoffing, Sylvie tossed her hair before gesturing to where her familiar tablet sat atop her podium. "I fancy myself a love expert and all but even I wouldn't make the choices that some of these characters do."
Izuku found himself struggling to respond to that. After all, he'd never read a romance novel before. He was pretty sure that was a girl thing, or possibly a woman thing since his mother read them on occasion. Possibly a mildly embarrassing woman thing, given that his mother tended to keep them in her room and not read them in front of him. Looking slightly to his right found the dark-haired woman staring at him intently and so he decided a change of conversation was in order. "I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself either. I'm Midoriya Izuku. And you are?"
The dark-haired woman gave a start at being addressed directly before offering him a faint smirk. "Koli. Just Koli. Koli-sama, if you would. I do believe I'm deserving of that level of deference."
Wow. He'd finally met someone with more of an ego than Kacchan. That being said, Asgardians were superhumanly strong... and as Sylvie had demonstrated, some of them had a talent for magic. Considering he didn't want to find himself turned into a frog or some such... "Pleasure to meet you, Koli-sama." He found his eyes wandering over her: dark hair with what looked like actual golden coins of some sort woven into it, a dark green dress with golden accents, and a magnificent horned golden headdress. "You, uh, wouldn't happen to be an admirer of Loki's, would you?"
Koli looked a bit startled at the question even as Sylvie bit her lip to avoid laughing. "What would make you say that?"
"Um, well, well there's the entirely green and gold outfit. And the horns. And to be honest, the way you requested that I call you Koli-sama just makes me think that you're one step away from demanding that I kneel before you or something." Izuku squirmed a bit as she stared back at him in disbelief, working his index fingers against each other nervously. "Did I mention the horns? Oh, and your name is an anagram for Loki. I'm not very good at anagrams usually but there's only four letters so... yeah. Wait... are you Loki? Like, actually Loki, not just an admirer?"
Exchanging a look with Sylvie, Koli let out a despondent sigh. "How is it that nobody in Tønsberg has made the connection even after all these years, and a young Japanese boy was able to five minutes after meeting me?" Crossing her arms over her chest, Loki stared down at Izuku with a mirthless look on her face. "I should probably tell you a lie, being the goddess of lies and all, but I really can't be bothered at this point. You deserve a reward for being the first one to figure it out, I guess. Fair warning, though, if you tell anyone, I will literally kill you. I will end your existence if you ruin this for me."
Izuku let out a soft squeal, ignoring the threat to his safety as he often did when chasing after hero fights. Mostly because... Loki! He'd gone through a pretty hefty Asgardian phase when he was younger, lasting considerably longer than his Olympian phase, namely because of the presence of Stormbreaker in his own backyard. He'd always imagined what if he could be like Jane Foster and become a hero by taking up Thor's mythical hammer, and set out to learn as much about his potential people as he could. There wasn't a lot to go by, though; Thor had stopped giving interviews for obvious reasons and most Asgardians kept to themselves even when they ventured out of Tønsberg. The small enclave here in Musutafu was mildly more approachable but still largely kept to themselves. "I have... so many questions for you."
That caused Loki to exchange another, decidedly more uncertain look with Sylvie before looking back down at Izuku. "I... did just threaten to kill you, right? You heard that?"
Waving dismissively, Izuku shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and began digging for his notebook. "Kacchan threatens to kill me on a daily basis. I'm remarkably desensitized to that sort of thing after a decade or so of it. But if I'm going to die, I'd like to at least get the answer to a few of my long-standing questions first. Can I ask you a few things?"
Mouth opening and closing several times in disbelief, Loki finally shut her mouth with an audible click and shook her head sharply. "No. No you may not. Ask Sylvie. We grew up together; she was there for most of my early adventures and has at least a passing knowledge of my later in life escapades. I am leaving." And with that, she swirled her hand in a tight circle and created a glowing green portal that she stepped through, disappearing from the park.
"Well, I guess that I might as well spend the afternoon talking to you seeing as how you just scared my friend away." Izuku opened his mouth to apologize - he'd just wanted to ask some questions, not scare Koli-Loki-whoever away - but Sylvie waved her hand dismissively as she gave him an amused smile. "I never thought I'd see the day where she'd flee from a mere mortal other than Jane, but here we are."
Vibrating excitedly, Izuku tapped the tip of his pen against an open notebook page several times before using it to gesture to where Koli had just disappeared. "So was that really..?"
Sylvie quirked an eyebrow inquiringly. "Loki? After a fashion. Not the one that died on the Statesman at Thanos's hand, either. The one that Thor talked about posthumously is just that, dead. That's... another Loki."
Pen blurring as he scribbled notes down, Izuku paused and cocked his head to the side curiously as he stared up at Sylvie. "So is it true that Asgardians can reincarnate, then? Was he reborn as a she after his death at Thanos's hand and that's Koli?"
While Sylvie seemed amused by the question, the gentle shake of her head put Izuku right back where he'd started when it came to understanding what was going on. "Contrary to what Koli said, I'm not actually going to answer all of your questions. We Asgardians live for a long time and tend to accumulate a lot of secrets in that time. I'm not going to just give them all up because some admittedly amusing boy asked me to."
"Can you at least tell me what you meant by picking your own last name?" Izuku flipped back to the page that he'd started on Sylvie the other day and transferred into his replacement volume when he got home. "Thor was Odinson and Loki is... Odindóttir? Which I suppose is why Koli doesn't use a last name; that would attract a bit of attention. But Asgardians clearly have last names. Why didn't you?"
Groaning, Sylvie buried her face in her hands. "What part of secrets didn't you understand, boy? You know what? Fine. You already know the truth about Loki, so I suppose there's no harm in you knowing a tiny bit more about me. I picked Lushton at the same time I picked Sylvie; I wasn't born either. My real name is Incantare Amora although most Asgardians know me as the Enchantress..."
