Yes, this chapter is slightly shorter than the last one, but I found the exactly perfect place to cut it off, and I had to have a cliffhanger.
Either way, as you've probably guessed by the chapter title, this is about the repercussions of the previous chapter, a sort-of filler chapter that introduces major plot points and checks in with most of the characters.
And, if I'm honest, I really like writing Matilda's parts! She's fun to write, and even though I should maybe possibly be getting her to use many more complicated words, that requires a thesaurus and would confuse you readers, so I haven't.
So, onto the chapter!
Midgard/Earth
Somewhere in New Mexico….
Thor seized his chance, bolting towards the screen of the facility.
All strategy left his mind as he tore the wall open, revealing Mjölnir stuck in the same pillar of rock as it had been earlier.
Thor smiled, victorious, as he wrapped his hand around its handle.
I'm forgetting something, he realised. Mjölnir didn't even budge for me last time…
He tugged on the hammer just to test it – predictably, it didn't move.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Jane lingered by the hole Thor had made in the wall.
She remembered watching this part from afar, and, as it had last time, the hammer didn't move an inch.
A small flash beside her revealed that Loki had just teleported in, though her quickly hid himself in the form of a snake which was the same colour as the mud.
His head popped out of the mud. He seemed slightly disgusted at the environment he'd just placed himself in, which leaked into his tone when he next spoke:
"The big oaf didn't learn, after all," Loki said.
"I guess so," Jane agreed.
"Ssssshhhould we leave?" Loki suggested.
"Probably," Jane agreed again, and Loki offered her his tail. She tapped it, and he teleported them both back to town.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Jackson slung Fierro's arm over his shoulder and lifted the einherjar.
Riptide lay on the ground, still buried hilt-deep in the mud.
He kept slipping on the way to the medbay area of the facility, as he was presumably too mentally tired to tap into his powers at that current point in time.
Matilda watched them go, then sighed: it had been a long day, and was going to be an even longer night.
She found Coulson by the few holding cells they had there.
The intruder was sitting in a chair, less muddy than he'd been before, and, Matilda wasn't going to lie, he looked fairly handsome without most of the mud he'd been covered in previously – evidently they'd given him a hose-down first.
"How are Jackson and Fierro?" Coulson asked her.
"Agent Jackson took them to medbay," she said.
Coulson nodded, before gesturing to the intruder. "I need a witness. Do you mind?"
"Not at all, Agent Coulson."
He smiled. "I've told you multiple times to call me Phil."
"Perhaps I will next time we meet outside of work."
Coulson slid the door open, and they both stepped inside.
"You made my men," Coulson began, "some of the most highly trained professionals in the world, look like a bunch of minimum-wage mall cops. That's hurtful."
The intruder (who was now the prisoner) met Coulson's gaze, his steely eyes giving nothing away.
He's been trained for captive situations, Matilda noted. He knows to show neither weakness nor emotion during an interrogation.
"In my experience," Coulson continued, "it takes someone who's received similar training to do what you did to them."
Matilda nodded, assessing every change in their prisoner's posture, every shift for comfort, every tensing – or untensing – muscle, every blink and shift of the eyes.
"Why don't you tell us where you received your training?" Coulson suggested. "Pakistan? Chechnya? Afghanistan?" he started listing countries, before moving on. "No, you strike me more as the 'Soldier of Fortune' type. Where was it? South Africa?"
Matilda internally rolled her eyes, before adding; "Or maybe your training wasn't of this realm. Were you trained at a camp of the gods?" his eyes widened, and his gaze moved to Matilda, who mentally smirked. "But you didn't recognise the tattoo. Maybe you might be a resident at Hotel Valhalla? But you don't seem to be an einherjar. Perhaps it was the House of Life, but I didn't see any hieroglyphs out there."
Coulson coughed.
"Right, sir," Matilda said. "Please, continue."
He kept going as if Matilda had never intervened.
"Certain groups would pay very well for a good mercenary like you. Who are you?"
The prisoner glared at the pair of them.
"One way or another, we find out what we need to know. We're good at that."
A sudden beeping filled the room, and Coulson pulled a communicator out of his pocket.
"Don't go anywhere."
They left the room.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Loki's teleportation was seamless, perfect.
He appeared in the room right as the two Midgardians left.
"Loki?" Thor said. "What are you doing here?!"
"Checking on you," he said, a smile playing on his lips. "We didn't plan for those three, did we?"
"No, we did not," Thor admitted. "But the telepath –"
"Telekinetic, Thor," Loki gently reminded him. Some things about Thor never changed.
"The telekinetic mentioned something about a… a 'camp of the gods'. She spoke of a place called 'Hotel Valhalla' and 'the House of Life'."
Loki chuckled. "Those four places would be locations of the immortals' children," he explained. "Hotel Valhalla is simply Valhalla, the House of Life is the headquarters for the Egyptians' magicians, and camps Jupiter and Half-Blood are the training grounds for the Greeks' and Romans' children."
Thor nodded. "Now I know why those names were familiar. What of Asgard?"
"Father has fallen into the Odinsleep, and things within magic itself are twisting – Mother has felt it too."
"What is affecting your magic?"
"A primal force – neither of us can identify it. Mother says she can feel it twisting time, though."
"A primal time force?"
"Exactly."
Footsteps approached.
"I cannot stay much longer," the Trickster said.
"Thankyou, for coming here," the Thunderer replied.
Loki smiled. "Farewell, brother."
And he was gone.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Matilda had thought she was pissed before, but now she was even angrier.
The thing that had pulled both her and Coulson away from a very important interrogation had turned out to be a false alarm, and she'd yelled at a few agents to get back to work before they made their way back.
"Goodbye…" the prisoner said right as they entered.
"Goodbye?" Coulson asked. "I just got back."
Someone else opened the door.
"Sir?" the agent said. "He's got a visitor."
They exited the cell and walked towards where this 'visitor' was.
"Can I do the talking this time?" Matilda asked Coulson on their way.
"Of course, Agent Honey," he replied, smiling. "If this guy is who he says he is, he might be using quite a few complicated words."
Matilda rolled her eyes. She was smiling too. "I know a lot of complicated words, you cretin."
"Of course you do. You're the youngest SHIELD agent in the history of the organisation."
"His name is Donald Blake?" Matilda said in disbelief.
"Doctor Donald Blake," the visitor, one Dr. Selvig corrected.
"You have some fairly dangerous co-workers, Doctor," Matilda noted.
"Well, he was reasonably distraught when he discovered that you've taken all our research," Selvig responded. "That was years of his life, gone!"
A quick succession of beeps went off from the nearest computer. Matilda gave the operator of said computer a 'really?' look, before turning back to Selvig.
"You can understand how a man could go off like that," Selvig continued. "A big, faceless organisation like yours coming in with their jackbooted thugs and…" he paused as Matilda raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, that's how he put it."
"Well, fortunately I can understand that, but unfortunately, it still doesn't explain how he managed to tear through our security," Matilda said, already somewhat fed up with this guy.
"Steroids!" Selvig said, as if that explained it. "He's a bit of a fitness nut."
More beeping went off, which Coulson quicky attended to, but Matilda looked at the screen: the ID that Selvig had handed them for 'Donald' was bringing up an alert signifying that it was a false ID.
"It says here he's an MD," Coulson said.
"Well, he is," Selvig said. "Or he was. He switched careers and became a physicist – a-a brilliant physicist. He's-he's a wonderful man! He's a man in pain!"
Coulson smiled, and they let him in.
Matilda left the two and went to check on Jackson and Fierro, who were currently recovering from taking quite the beating from 'Donald'.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Alex groaned, sitting up in one of the beds in the medbay.
"How long?" he asked simply.
"Approximately forty-five minutes," a very familiar voice said.
"You could've just taken me to the Hotel –"
"And gotten my arse handed to me in the process?" Agent Honey responded. "Might I also remind you that your boyfriend is not within our jurisdiction, as all beings outside of this realm are, and I am not able to travel through the trunk of Yggdrasil like you can, Agent Fierro."
"Touché," Alex said, and began to stand, but suddenly found his legs betraying him and moving themselves back into the bed.
Fuggin' telekinesis, he thought, before searching the medbay visually.
"Where's Percy?"
"Agent Jackson has gone to get some drinks in town, and check to see if our intruder's friend has actually taken him to get any themselves."
Alex nodded, and as he tapped into his mom's magic to check if his shapeshifting was still working, he felt something twist – something was playing in the deepest parts of the magic he used so often, and yet barely touched…
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Joutenheim's Reflection
A while before…
The icy plains of Joutenheim were no place for its visitor, but, to be fair to the realm, its visitor didn't know where the hell he was.
The visitor looked to be around twenty, though his golden eyes conveyed that he was so much older than that. He had short, sandy-blond hair and tanned skin that was mangled by a long scar that traced from the corner of his eye to his jaw and slightly down his neck. He wore black clothing that looked like a more practical version of the robes that primitive civilisations had worn.
He looked around the landscape, and the previous statement came into play; he didn't know where in Tartarus he was.
He began his hike towards a large castle-like structure. His previously empty hands were now occupied by a scythe – one of the most dangerous weapons in the universe.
He knew the secret paths of the universe well by now, and had given a tip-off to one of the occupants of this realm where one of use to them was, and how to access it,
He entered the antechamber of the castle.
"Kill him," a gruff voice growled.
The visitor smiled. "After everything I showed you?"
The one sitting upon the throne looked down at him, red eyes gleaming. "So you're the one who showed us the Secret Ways into Asgard?"
The visitor chuckled. "If I was to be honest with you, I'd tell you that that was only a spot of fun – to ruin the prince's big day."
The apparent ruler of the realm's gaze didn't wander. "I will… hear you."
The visitor approached and met the ruler's red-eyes gaze with his own golden eyes. "I will take you and a few of your soldiers into Odin's chambers, so that you may slay him where he lies, deep in the Odinsleep."
The ruler pondered this for a second, before posing a question for the visitor: "Why not kill him yourself?"
The visitor didn't even stop to think. "It wouldn't be as rewarding. Besides, who better to ally myself with than the King of the Frost Giants himself? That would garner quite a lot of attention, don't you think?" the visitor chuckled. "And you'd be rewarded in turn, with a treasure that is rightly yours."
There was a cracking of ice as the King of the Frost Giants rose from his throne. "You'd give me the Casket?"
The visitor smiled. "Why of course I would! I have no need for it, seeing as I can plunge entire civilisations back into the Stone Age."
The king smiled, greed and longing piercing his voice. "You have yourself a deal."
Aha! The villains are coming along nicely, are they not?
Yes, I know I said that we'd check in with Gorr, but this scene on Joutenheim was just better than the few I played around with.
Welp, I have just realised that one of the 'four weapons' the eidolon spoke of last chapter was re-forged a few years before this part of the universe set itself up.
Any guesses as to who this golden-eyed guy is? Aren't there many people in this universe who match that exact description and are way older than their current host?
I mean, there are... right?
So, guesses for the above and feedback are welcome via that review box!
-Wolf (:
(P.S.: if you didn't look it up yourself, 'cretin' is a synonym for 'idiot')