Of Course You Know This Means War?
A Matantei Loki Fanfiction part 3
&*&*&
Whether it was a peculiarity unique to the body of a dog, or simply that Fenrir was still adjusting to the physical laws of Midgard, he couldn't have said. But he knew as soon as he woke that something was changing.
He sniffed every inch of the mansion's floors, wandering in winding patterns across elegant carpets, and whining at the unease of it all. Except for a breakfast break Fenrir's morning was spent thus. At last even Yamino couldn't handle his brother's constant being underfoot.
"Nii-san, please! Are you hungry? Do you want to go outside?" His words were polite, but his expression betrayed his stress.
"There's something wrong," Fenrir murmured to himself as he hopped up the stairs, not looking back at Yamino.
Loki was in his upstairs study, as was his habit at this time of day. At the end of each month he looked over all the newspaper clippings he had collected in his search for unusual activities to look for patterns. Anything unusual would be recorded in his large log book. He was in the middle of trying to see the connections between South American flooding and supposed cattle mutilations when Fenrir poked his head in.
"Daddy, are you busy?"
Loki look up, surprised. "What is it, Fenrir?"
The black puppy crossed the room and hopped into Loki's lap. "There's something wrong," he said.
"Like what?" Loki hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, but he trusted his children's intuition.
"The air," he said, "is wrong. It makes my ears feel funny."
"Well, the weather's changing. Look." Loki placed Fenrir on the sill of the wide window. Against the distant horizon dark smudges of clouds were gathering.
"It looks like a storm," he went on. "There's more moisture in the air and the pressure changes."
"That must be it," Fenrir reluctantly conceded.
&&
Heimdall floated just above the tip of a TV broadcasting tower to survey his work; he was quite pleased.
Getting a storm to gather above a city was the work of a moment---he was, after all, a god of weather and storms. But this one was special. It had been centuries since a storm needed this much of his personal attention. The level of detail this storm need for it to focus one location was astonishing. Even though he had only a few days worth of planning, Heimdall was lucky to have chosen a time when the weather was given to storming.
"Enjoy it, Loki," he said to the cooling air. "I've worked hard."
&&
By the time Mayura reached the front door she was drenched. Her normally impeccable school uniform was now pressed embarrassingly close to her body and was trying to wring our her skirt when Yamino answered the door. He politely kept his eyes from moving too far south as he ushered her in and offered her a blanket.
"Uwaa, Yamino-san! This rain is so strange! How long has it been pouring like this?"
"It started just after lunch; it's been horrible. The wind----"
The sound of crashing metal and the thump of something heavy hitting the floor interrupted him. "Yamino-kun!" Loki called from back in the house.
Mayura followed Yamino's trot into the kitchen. "Loki-kun, what's wrong?"
Loki stood in the center of the kitchen, overturned pots and pans and a fallen ladder around him. The contents of the pots must have fallen on top of him, because he was as wet as Mayura; he looked ridiculous with his heavy coat clinging to his small body.
Loki pushed dripping hair from his face. "I was going to say we need more buckets."
Mayura looked up at the dripping ceiling. "It's leaking in here?" she asked unnecessarily.
"This house is very old. It leaks." Loki said, also unnecessarily.
"But isn't there a room above the kitchen?"
Loki and Yamino blinked at her in unison then rushed up the stairs.
"What's above the kitchen?" Mayura called after them. When there was no answer she started up. "Ne---what's up there?"
She found the two rushing around with boxes and stacks of stuff bringing them out into the hall and away from the side of the room.
"What is all this?"
"Remember those magazines? Well, we put them up here so they'd be out of the way, but they've caught all this water and it's now dripping through the ceiling." Yamino explained all this as he rushed back and forth between the unused guest bedroom and the upstairs hallway. The ceiling above the room was dripping in steady streams from the leaky roof.
Mayura went back down the stairs and carried up a stack of bowls and containers from the kitchen then placed them to catch the worst of the water. Soon the room was peppered with everything from ceramic bowls to a plastic waste paper basket. The three stood back.
"This storm came on us very suddenly," Yamino said. "There was nothing on the news, but the winds have pulled shingles from the roof, even!"
"It's a mystery!"
Loki walked out of the room suddenly, shaking water from his sleeves as he went.
"Yamino-san? What's wrong with Loki-kun?"
Yamino laughed a little nervously. "Well, Loki-sama doesn't like water."
&&
The rain continued all afternoon. Mayura used her cell phone to call her father to ask if there was any unusual weather at their house, but was told everything was clear and fair. She immediately began forming theories; aliens, government conspiracies, even angry spirits figured in her far reaching speculations. Yamino patiently listened to her, but he had his own theories about the storm's origin. Soon he excused himself to bring Loki tea.
Loki had dried himself off and found more clothing to change into. He sat facing the window in his study looking depressed and irritable. Yamino set the tea tray on the large desk near Loki's elbow.
"Would you like anything else, Loki-sama?"
Loki didn't answer. Yamino moved over to look out the window.
"It doesn't look like it'll let up any time soon, does it?" he said conversationally. Outside, the rain came down so hard that they couldn't even see into the street beyond where (they were sure) sunlight and mild weather still prevailed.
"Heimdall did this."
"Yes, I believe so."
"He knows I hate water."
Yamino didn't answer.
"I'm not leaving the house while it's like this."
",,,"
"My house is falling apart." His voice rose. "My house is falling apart, and I don't know what to do about it!"
"Is there a way to drive the storm away?"
"Not without more power. He made this very strong."
"What shall we do, then?"
Loki continued to gaze out at the torrential rain.
&&
The hours passed slowly inside the house. Even will all the lights on, the mansion had an eerie half-light reminiscent of an funeral parlor after all the mourners have left. Loki wandered moodily through the twilight picking things up, carrying them around, then putting them down without even looking at what he held. Yamino followed his father around to gather up the books and trinkets and return them to their proper places. Fenrir trailed after both, whining softly in worry.
Loki, meanwhile, was agitated. The heavy presence of water everywhere left his senses feeling fuzzy and vulnerable. He kept expecting waves of rainwater to wash through the doors and drown him; he was irrationally melancholy and that made him even more upset. He was not often given to self-pity, but he was now.
He didn't deserve this, no one deserved this. Here he was, Loki, the very blood brother of Odin himself, exiled, lonely, near powerless, and in a highly inconvenient body. He loved his children certainly, but he often craved more interaction then a butler, a puppy, and a high school girl. Loki surveyed the rooms with their expanses of books, furniture, and the other trappings of his new life and sighed; he was not cut out for the mundane routine of daily mortal life.
The knock on the door went unnoticed until Yamino came to the door of the room Loki was currently in and announced a visitor.
"Tell them to come back tomorrow," he ordered.
"I really think you should speak with them, Loki-sama."
"Fine."
Loki walked into the parlor where he could see the hooded head of his visitor just above the low back of a chair. The aura radiated by the visitor revealed the true identity.
"Heimdall."
Heimdall turned around in the chair. "Good to see you, Loki. Nice weather we're having, isn't it?"
"You did this!"
"Of course. It's some of my best work in years." He stood up and shook rivulets of water onto the floor as he removed the raincoat. "You ought to be flattered."
"I'm not. This is really low, even for you, Heimdall."
"It's nothing compared to what you've done to me."
"I'll admit that the god people were a little over the top, but I thought you'd appreciate the irony."
Heimdall glared at Loki. "That's not what I'm talking about and you know it!"
"You started this with those damn magazines; you couldn't have thought that I wouldn't retaliate. Just admit it, you started a prank war with the wrong deity."
"Funny how it's YOUR house that's falling down."
"You'll have nothing to laugh at when this rain stops. You'll be very sorry you messed with me."
Heimdall stood up and put his coat on as he walked to the front door. "Well, Loki, you'll have lots of time to think while you wait for the rain to let up." Heimdall let himself out. Loki watched the other god walk to the edge of his property in the downpour, exit the gate, then remove the coat and walk off down the street into the clear evening air.
"Damn him," he muttered. "He'll regret doing this to me."
&*&*&
Hey, it's an update! Yah, it took a little longer to finish this then I originally thought. Actually, part 4 was all finished long before part three had moved past an incomplete rough draft. It had been written on a friend's Apple laptop so it was a real pain to get the file from him.
This was a slightly harder part to write since I wasn't dealing with any major character moments. It's a transition between the first two pranks and the fourth, final, prank. In part four there's more Mayura, more Loki, more Heimdall, and more Freyr.
As usual, feedback is more then welcome. You can e-mail me at haruhara_raharu@yahoo.com or find me at the Hemuloki LiveJournal Community as "kalhara."
Thank you for reading.
A Matantei Loki Fanfiction part 3
&*&*&
Whether it was a peculiarity unique to the body of a dog, or simply that Fenrir was still adjusting to the physical laws of Midgard, he couldn't have said. But he knew as soon as he woke that something was changing.
He sniffed every inch of the mansion's floors, wandering in winding patterns across elegant carpets, and whining at the unease of it all. Except for a breakfast break Fenrir's morning was spent thus. At last even Yamino couldn't handle his brother's constant being underfoot.
"Nii-san, please! Are you hungry? Do you want to go outside?" His words were polite, but his expression betrayed his stress.
"There's something wrong," Fenrir murmured to himself as he hopped up the stairs, not looking back at Yamino.
Loki was in his upstairs study, as was his habit at this time of day. At the end of each month he looked over all the newspaper clippings he had collected in his search for unusual activities to look for patterns. Anything unusual would be recorded in his large log book. He was in the middle of trying to see the connections between South American flooding and supposed cattle mutilations when Fenrir poked his head in.
"Daddy, are you busy?"
Loki look up, surprised. "What is it, Fenrir?"
The black puppy crossed the room and hopped into Loki's lap. "There's something wrong," he said.
"Like what?" Loki hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, but he trusted his children's intuition.
"The air," he said, "is wrong. It makes my ears feel funny."
"Well, the weather's changing. Look." Loki placed Fenrir on the sill of the wide window. Against the distant horizon dark smudges of clouds were gathering.
"It looks like a storm," he went on. "There's more moisture in the air and the pressure changes."
"That must be it," Fenrir reluctantly conceded.
&&
Heimdall floated just above the tip of a TV broadcasting tower to survey his work; he was quite pleased.
Getting a storm to gather above a city was the work of a moment---he was, after all, a god of weather and storms. But this one was special. It had been centuries since a storm needed this much of his personal attention. The level of detail this storm need for it to focus one location was astonishing. Even though he had only a few days worth of planning, Heimdall was lucky to have chosen a time when the weather was given to storming.
"Enjoy it, Loki," he said to the cooling air. "I've worked hard."
&&
By the time Mayura reached the front door she was drenched. Her normally impeccable school uniform was now pressed embarrassingly close to her body and was trying to wring our her skirt when Yamino answered the door. He politely kept his eyes from moving too far south as he ushered her in and offered her a blanket.
"Uwaa, Yamino-san! This rain is so strange! How long has it been pouring like this?"
"It started just after lunch; it's been horrible. The wind----"
The sound of crashing metal and the thump of something heavy hitting the floor interrupted him. "Yamino-kun!" Loki called from back in the house.
Mayura followed Yamino's trot into the kitchen. "Loki-kun, what's wrong?"
Loki stood in the center of the kitchen, overturned pots and pans and a fallen ladder around him. The contents of the pots must have fallen on top of him, because he was as wet as Mayura; he looked ridiculous with his heavy coat clinging to his small body.
Loki pushed dripping hair from his face. "I was going to say we need more buckets."
Mayura looked up at the dripping ceiling. "It's leaking in here?" she asked unnecessarily.
"This house is very old. It leaks." Loki said, also unnecessarily.
"But isn't there a room above the kitchen?"
Loki and Yamino blinked at her in unison then rushed up the stairs.
"What's above the kitchen?" Mayura called after them. When there was no answer she started up. "Ne---what's up there?"
She found the two rushing around with boxes and stacks of stuff bringing them out into the hall and away from the side of the room.
"What is all this?"
"Remember those magazines? Well, we put them up here so they'd be out of the way, but they've caught all this water and it's now dripping through the ceiling." Yamino explained all this as he rushed back and forth between the unused guest bedroom and the upstairs hallway. The ceiling above the room was dripping in steady streams from the leaky roof.
Mayura went back down the stairs and carried up a stack of bowls and containers from the kitchen then placed them to catch the worst of the water. Soon the room was peppered with everything from ceramic bowls to a plastic waste paper basket. The three stood back.
"This storm came on us very suddenly," Yamino said. "There was nothing on the news, but the winds have pulled shingles from the roof, even!"
"It's a mystery!"
Loki walked out of the room suddenly, shaking water from his sleeves as he went.
"Yamino-san? What's wrong with Loki-kun?"
Yamino laughed a little nervously. "Well, Loki-sama doesn't like water."
&&
The rain continued all afternoon. Mayura used her cell phone to call her father to ask if there was any unusual weather at their house, but was told everything was clear and fair. She immediately began forming theories; aliens, government conspiracies, even angry spirits figured in her far reaching speculations. Yamino patiently listened to her, but he had his own theories about the storm's origin. Soon he excused himself to bring Loki tea.
Loki had dried himself off and found more clothing to change into. He sat facing the window in his study looking depressed and irritable. Yamino set the tea tray on the large desk near Loki's elbow.
"Would you like anything else, Loki-sama?"
Loki didn't answer. Yamino moved over to look out the window.
"It doesn't look like it'll let up any time soon, does it?" he said conversationally. Outside, the rain came down so hard that they couldn't even see into the street beyond where (they were sure) sunlight and mild weather still prevailed.
"Heimdall did this."
"Yes, I believe so."
"He knows I hate water."
Yamino didn't answer.
"I'm not leaving the house while it's like this."
",,,"
"My house is falling apart." His voice rose. "My house is falling apart, and I don't know what to do about it!"
"Is there a way to drive the storm away?"
"Not without more power. He made this very strong."
"What shall we do, then?"
Loki continued to gaze out at the torrential rain.
&&
The hours passed slowly inside the house. Even will all the lights on, the mansion had an eerie half-light reminiscent of an funeral parlor after all the mourners have left. Loki wandered moodily through the twilight picking things up, carrying them around, then putting them down without even looking at what he held. Yamino followed his father around to gather up the books and trinkets and return them to their proper places. Fenrir trailed after both, whining softly in worry.
Loki, meanwhile, was agitated. The heavy presence of water everywhere left his senses feeling fuzzy and vulnerable. He kept expecting waves of rainwater to wash through the doors and drown him; he was irrationally melancholy and that made him even more upset. He was not often given to self-pity, but he was now.
He didn't deserve this, no one deserved this. Here he was, Loki, the very blood brother of Odin himself, exiled, lonely, near powerless, and in a highly inconvenient body. He loved his children certainly, but he often craved more interaction then a butler, a puppy, and a high school girl. Loki surveyed the rooms with their expanses of books, furniture, and the other trappings of his new life and sighed; he was not cut out for the mundane routine of daily mortal life.
The knock on the door went unnoticed until Yamino came to the door of the room Loki was currently in and announced a visitor.
"Tell them to come back tomorrow," he ordered.
"I really think you should speak with them, Loki-sama."
"Fine."
Loki walked into the parlor where he could see the hooded head of his visitor just above the low back of a chair. The aura radiated by the visitor revealed the true identity.
"Heimdall."
Heimdall turned around in the chair. "Good to see you, Loki. Nice weather we're having, isn't it?"
"You did this!"
"Of course. It's some of my best work in years." He stood up and shook rivulets of water onto the floor as he removed the raincoat. "You ought to be flattered."
"I'm not. This is really low, even for you, Heimdall."
"It's nothing compared to what you've done to me."
"I'll admit that the god people were a little over the top, but I thought you'd appreciate the irony."
Heimdall glared at Loki. "That's not what I'm talking about and you know it!"
"You started this with those damn magazines; you couldn't have thought that I wouldn't retaliate. Just admit it, you started a prank war with the wrong deity."
"Funny how it's YOUR house that's falling down."
"You'll have nothing to laugh at when this rain stops. You'll be very sorry you messed with me."
Heimdall stood up and put his coat on as he walked to the front door. "Well, Loki, you'll have lots of time to think while you wait for the rain to let up." Heimdall let himself out. Loki watched the other god walk to the edge of his property in the downpour, exit the gate, then remove the coat and walk off down the street into the clear evening air.
"Damn him," he muttered. "He'll regret doing this to me."
&*&*&
Hey, it's an update! Yah, it took a little longer to finish this then I originally thought. Actually, part 4 was all finished long before part three had moved past an incomplete rough draft. It had been written on a friend's Apple laptop so it was a real pain to get the file from him.
This was a slightly harder part to write since I wasn't dealing with any major character moments. It's a transition between the first two pranks and the fourth, final, prank. In part four there's more Mayura, more Loki, more Heimdall, and more Freyr.
As usual, feedback is more then welcome. You can e-mail me at haruhara_raharu@yahoo.com or find me at the Hemuloki LiveJournal Community as "kalhara."
Thank you for reading.