"You wish to prove your loyalty to us, do you not?" Strucker asked Blaze and she rolled her eyes with a huff.
"I am loyal to Surtur alone," she reminded him, "But, yeah, I want to get on your good side, I suppose. And if I do this then you and the other Heads of Hydra will agree to my bargain?"
"Yes."
"Fabulous," Blaze unsheathed her sword and looked at the figure kneeling on the floor before her. He had a bag hiding his face. Whoever it was, Hydra wanted him dead and they thought the best way to have her prove her loyalty to them was to kill this guy. Apparently humans saw killing someone as a big deal or something.
"You do not wish to see who you are killing?"
"Hey, as long as it's not a little kid - and unless Midgardian kids look the same as full grown Asgardian males, it's not a kid - or my mother - who is already dead - then I'm game for killing pretty much anyone," Blaze swung her sword without a second thought, before the man even had a chance to scream. His head rolled across the floor and the hood came off, "Look at that, someone I don't even know."
"You are certain about that?" Strucker tugged the hood off the head some more but Blaze still didn't recognize her victim, "He claimed to be Asgardian as well. Said he deserted from Odin's army many years ago."
"Then he should be glad I got to him before Odin did. If I remember correctly, deserters are treated the same as traitors," Blaze winced, recalling a time she'd seen what was left of a traitor's displayed body, "They're whipped soundly and then left to this big horrible snake who drips poison in their eyes. Nasty business."
"You don't care that you just killed one of your own kind?"
Blaze honestly didn't care who or what she killed most days. Killing was killing, blood was blood. But she knew she had to convince Strucker that she was trustworthy so she sighed and put on a brave face.
"It wounds my soul and I hope the Norns will forgive me one day, but I'll do what I must to gain your trust," she resheathed her sword on her back and clapped a fist to her chest respectfully.
"I believe you have succeeded," Strucker smiled at her, "Now let's talk about my scepter, shall we?"
"I'd be glad to."
And as she told him all about how wonderfully powerful an Infinity Stone was, she quietly stole a flash drive from a computer. One would think that these people would be smart enough to refrain from marking every single one of their bases and conveniently downloading it onto something small enough to swallow, but they'd done just that. And now Blaze shoved it down her gullet, covering it with a yawn. It wouldn't be fun to make herself throw it up later, but it would be worth it. Offering the locations of a few Hydra bases would be just the thing to get the trickster to fall right into her clutches. And then she could go back to Asgard, finish the plan, and finally go home. Surtur would be so proud.
A note from the author: Sorry, this is one of those short necessary chapters! I could have tagged it on to the bottom of the last one, but I feel like that would have ruined the fun of Linn and Bjorn chatting with Tony. So it gets to be it's own chapter.
I probably won't post again until at least this weekend but maybe not until next Tuesday. Although... I did agree to cover someone's shift next Tuesday so maybe not then either. *shrugs* Guess we'll have to wait an see! Thank you for your patience with my wacky update schedule!
Special thanks to my reviewers:
ferbette: I wish Tony were my cool rule breaking uncle. XD
Ninja Squirrel: Whaaaaat? I spelled a word wrong and Google Docs forgot to tell me? I'm so shocked. Thank you for catching that! I've gone back and updated the chapter. I know my spelling and grammar and punctuation (I flipping hate punctuation) skills aren't great, so thank you for putting up with me! Also, Natasha is totally Linn's weapons supplier. I have a deleted scene were Maisy found a bunch knives in Linn's stuff and yelled at Loki for it, but he had no idea where the knives came from and I was going to have it turn out that after the whole Mr. Pie Incident, Nat started giving Linn knives all the time. It didn't really work with the rest of the story so I saved it on another doc and took it out of the main story lol.
Guestanewone: Let's just say Bjorn is not the best and keeping secrets. XD
Dragoncat: I don't think Maisy would ever approve of murder, but to be fair, she did try to stab Egil with a fire poker in TDDYP...
Thank you all so much for your continued support! Love you bunches! :D