Nickolai glanced back toward the shouting line of picketters as they walked up to the museum's entrance. Standing by the doors, an elderly man with thinning grey hair and a mustache, dressed in a battered old black blazer was waiting for them.
"Dreadfully sorry about those poachers!" the old man shouted to be heard over the chanting of the picket line, only to get blasts of profanity in return.
"Only a matter of time, I suppose?" Nickolai said to his old colleague as the rest of his company fell in behind him.
Glancing over the rim of his sunglasses at Hiccup, the elder's smile widened. "Is this, is this him?" Without even waiting for an answer, he moved past Nickolai to get a closer look.
Amused, Nickolai turned and watched. "Hiccup, this is my colleague and old professor, Martin Lieber. He's now the curator of this museum, and made me and many others into the people we are today," he said as Martin circled Hiccup, eyeing the Norseman up and down. Without warning, Martin reached out to lift up Hiccup's arm to get a better look at his outfit.
"Hand stitched!" Martin exclaimed, his finger brushing along the stitching of Hiccup's armor as he admired the craftsmanship.
"What else would it be?" Nickolai pointed out.
"Animal bone or iron sewing needle?" Martin asked curiously as he rounded Hiccup.
"Uh, iron," Hiccup said then looked to Nickolai when Martin ducked just out of sight behind Hiccup.
"What is he, uh, doing?" Hiccup asked, sounding uncomfortable despite his curiosity toward Martin.
"Martin, stop poking the poor fellow. His name is Hiccup," he said, and then turned to look Hiccup in the eye. "He's being a scholar."
"This is the genuine article!" Martin said with uncontained excitement, which made Hiccup snort, seemingly more at ease. "Really glad I bet on the right pony this time."
"You act as though I've been wrong in the past," Nickolai jested as he watched Martin explore Hiccup's armor with awe.
As Martin came back around to the front of Hiccup and admire the details of his chest plate, Hiccup plucked the sunglasses right off Martin's nose and curiously held them up to his eyes.
"Hiccup!" Nickolai chided as the Norseman put the glasses on his own face and looked around.
But Martin just laughed. "I did the same! It's fine!"
"It's made of... glass?" Hiccup pulled the sunglasses off his nose before looking them over, sounding almost disappointed.
"They are," Martin said with a nod. "You're very perceptive!"
"I have… had eye-wear like this. But I made them out of, er, amber." Hiccup handed the sunglasses back over to Martin who took them and put them back on.
"He's a craftsman," Nickolai said with an excited grin.
Another shout from the picket lines and Nickolai could see it had both Martin and Hiccup anxious.
"We should take this inside. Follow me," Martin waved them to follow.
The group filed into the museum. Nickolai smiled as Hiccup looked all around him with wide eyes. Despite the picket line outside, the museum was still packed with tourists and locals alike.
"Emi, keep an eye on him. Don't want him getting lost," Nickolai said, seeing Hiccup's eyes wander around the large foyer.
"Here's the situation," Martin began as they passed by the entrance desk, Martin waving to the staff that they were with him. "I was able to get into contact with our," he glanced around, "immigrant friends."
"I think we can call them Asgardians," Nickolai said dryly. "It's not like we're out in public at the moment."
"True. Well, Thor has agreed to come... provided Hiccup can be confirmed as one of them—and to do that, he is sending a 'herald' to investigate."
"Who?" Nickolai asked.
"Someone by the name of Valkyrie," Martin said. "No idea if that's actually a name or a title." He looked around. "Where did they go?"
Nickolai turned to see that Hiccup had paused as they had passed an enclosed display case. Both Emily and Nikki had stayed at Hiccup's side, keeping an eye on him as he stared deeply into the case.
"This is what you mean by," Hiccup swallowed, "'Looking into the past'?" Nickolai looked into the display case as he rejoined the ancient Viking and his partner. The glass case contained several corroded sword fragments, excavated from various burial sites; time had not been kind to the weapons, as their iron was worn down almost beyond recognition and any remnants of their hilts were likewise long gone. But there was one exception; resting snug in a velvet case on the top shelf was a sword, the blade still in good shape, with an ornate grip, guard and pommel, made of dragon heads, while runes dotted the blade itself. As Nickolai came closer, he could see that it was the dragon hilt that Hiccup was eyeing intently.
"We look into the past, so that their stories can be told," Martin explained slowly.
"Being forgotten is a terrible thing," Nickolai added.
"You skalds are basically telling ghost stories," Hiccup said morosely.
"I suppose one could look at it that way," Martin nodded.
Without warning, Hiccup reached up and snapped the lock on the front of the glass case off with a loud crunch. An alarm went off as he opened the glass door. Nickolai and a few visitors within hearing range yelped in surprise.
"What are you doing?" Nickolai demanded, shocked by his sudden and unexpected vandalism.
Hiccup appeared distracted as he grabbed the sword shaft and pulled it out of the case. He pressed a nodule, clearly expecting something to happen. He shook it once, then twice and grew frustrated when it didn't work.
"I don't understand, it should work!" Hiccup growled.
"Hiccup?" Nickolai cautiously approached the young man. Seeing Hiccup's growing anger left him uncomfortable and unsure whether the Norseman would turn his aggression on him, based on his apparent growing hostility towards scholars. He signalled for the girls to stand back. But then the way that Hiccup was handling the blade gave him pause, and a thought occurred to him. "Do you... know that hilt?" he asked slowly.
"Know it? I made it! But someone broke it!" Hiccup turned it this way and that as he looked into the larger mouth of the polished metal dragons. He turned it on it's side and tried to pry it open with his fingernails when another nodule failed.
"That's probably because it's a replica," Martin said cautiously. "The real one was lost to us back in World War II. When Nazis raided and took anything of value. Oh, we are still paying the insurance for having lost that," he groaned.
"Replica? Nazis?" Hiccup looked towards Martin. His obvious frustration faded, replaced by confusion, and he held the replica up to his eyes. "It's a copy?"
"I'll give you a brief history lesson later. But what you're holding is a fake. For display," Nickolai intervened.
"For... why!?" Hiccup demanded, his voice sounding thick.
"You can always make a new sword, right? You said that you made this one," Nickolai cautiously suggested... and then flinched at the sight of tears building up in Hiccup's eyes. Emotionally compromised superhuman with super strength... museum full of irreplaceable fragile artifacts... not a good combination.
"You don't understand. This sword, this is my key," Hiccup choked out.
"Key? Key to what?" Nickolai repeated, his curiosity growing.
Hiccup still seemed hesitant about giving a full explanation, but it was clear to Nickolai that, whatever it was he was protecting, it was of great value to him. And the possibilities were...
Nickolai looked at the sword-replica Hiccup was holding in his hand. Combining the fact that this young man had been kept on figurative ice for a thousand years with the fact that he had not broken down into mourning... it seemed too much to hope, but Nickolai asked gently, "Hiccup... is that the key to your people?"
Hiccup froze, but before he could say anything else, another voice intruded.
"He's hidden an entire island chain," a woman interrupted them, speaking in English. The group looked up. Crowds parted as a young woman dressed in very tight leather glided toward them. "At least that's what Heimdall said when he briefed me."
"Excuse me, what?" Nikki blurted.
Martin looked at her. "You must be Valkyrie?" he asked, his tone accented.
"I am," she said.
Meanwhile, Nickolai's mind was racing at what the Asgardian had just said. An entire island chain. Hidden. And if they were in the same sort of stasis that Hiccup had been in…
He turned to Hiccup, seeing a baffled and confused look at their sudden shift in language and tried to collect his focus.
Before he could translate for the young man, however, Valkyrie walked up to Hiccup. "So, you're the one claiming to be Odin's grandson?" she said in Old Norse.
"Yes! Where's Heimdall? I have to speak with him!" Hiccup replied, his voice filled with pain.
Valkyrie stepped back to look him over. "When I heard that the hag had spawned, I expected a serpent, or maybe a draugr. Not a fishbone."
Hiccup scowled at her. "I'm not my mother."
"I can tell. The people around you are still alive," Valkyrie shot back acidly.
"What did Heimdall tell you?" Hiccup asked, his words coming in an odd mix of Old Norse and modern Norwegian. "That I knew her all of, what, two days before Odin's mask failed after my father died? That she threatened to kill everyone I loved? That she tortured me and left me to die? What do I have to tell you to convince you that I'm not her?"
Valkyrie blinked, but her face set even tighter as Nickolai and Martin both reeled at what Hiccup had just said. Before they could ask any of their burning questions, she said, "The fact that you're holding a blade that looks like one of hers doesn't help!"
Hiccup scowled and held up the sword. "This," he pointed to the hilt, "is a copy of what I made. I have no idea where the blade came from! But this is a fake! A copy! For all I know, some blacksmith in the last thousand years took what I made and added this, and then it was copied! I just want to find my sword!"
"Why, so you can go around and butcher people like mommy dearest!?" Valkyrie shot back. "If you have the slightest dribble of her power in your blood, I'll spill it now and save us all a lot of grief!"
Hiccup, with a cry of obvious frustration, opened and closed his hands in a spasm, snapped off the blade—making Martin cry out in surprised objection—and shoved the bare hilt onto the thigh holster that he'd reached for previously, where it fit snugly. "There, happy?"
"Not in the slightest. Your mother slaughtered nearly every Asgardian, and the tattered remnants are huddled on a cold rock in the middle of a colder sea, and I'm supposed to bring you to them!?"
Nickolai felt himself choking. Ever since their arrival, the Asgardians had been closed-lipped over what had driven them into exile.
"I'm not Hela!" Hiccup insisted. "My mother was Valka! As far as I knew, she was a woman of Midgard! And I knew her for all of two days before Odin's spell failed after Da... after my father died!"
Valkyrie looked at him impassively, but her eyes were still filled with venom. "You're not helping your case by simply repeating the same words over and over. She's not your mother, but she was, under the spell, and you barely knew her?"
"Hela tried to kill me! She left me to die! Look!" Hiccup wrenched up the cuff of his sleeve. "I hung on a tree for eight days, her swords through my body, waiting to die!"
Nickolai glanced a look at Hiccup's wrist, and saw the wounds that Emily had reported to him, back when they'd thought that Hiccup was just a well-preserved corpse.
###
Nikki grew bored as she listened to the altercation between the Asgardian and Hiccup in Norwegian. She may not have understood the specific words, but the body language and the tones coming off the Asgardian were definitely hostile.
Then she froze as those were suddenly aimed in her direction. "Is this being filmed?" the Asgardian asked.
"I... no!" Nikki blurted and turned quickly, pointing her phone out onto the museum floor, towards the wandering crowds. She would have to edit that out at some point.
That was apparently enough, as they went back to arguing in Norwegian. Nikki rolled her eyes. Her aunt had tried teaching her, but it was difficult to wrap her tongue around the words to form the syllables and consonants, and she secretly envied her aunt for being able to speak it. She had a lot of questions for Hiccup, but they didn't look like they were going to get answered anytime soon.
She decided she'd wander off, grab some ambient footage for her documentary while they argued—and it didn't look like the Asgardian wanted her there. Not that drama wasn't exciting for the documentary in the making, but Nikki wasn't going to risk getting her phone snatched and crushed—she did, after all, have hours of footage on her memory chip that she didn't want to lose.
And her teacher almost certainly wouldn't buy the excuse that an Asgardian had destroyed her homework.
So, background shots it was!
Nikki started to explore the halls of the museum, sweeping her phone camera around to get good shots of the Viking-era artifacts on display. The place was peaceful save for the bustling din from the visitors, and Nikki had come to the conclusion that all museums were equally boring.
Ambling around, being careful not to make sudden movements that would make the footage unusable, she entered a small alcove which had more artifacts behind glass. She let the camera linger over each of them in turn, figuring that they'd make good filler footage, when a pendant depicting three ravens in the form of Odin's triangle caught her eye.
She took a closer look, Nickolai's endless lectures on Norse mythology echoing through her head. He'd been very specific: Odin only ever had two ravens in the stories.
Quirking her eyebrows, she looked at the info panel and sagged in slight relief. Thank god, it had an English translation!
Hulgr, Odin's lesser known third raven. While Huginn and Muninn represent Thought and Memory, respectively. Hulgr represented Mind. It is said that Hulgr was cursed by Hela for refusing to bow down before her and was transformed into the serpent Hrafnir, the World-Devourer, as punishment. Hrafnir began devouring Svalbard, and had already swallowed a portion of the archipelago before Odin stepped in and slew the cursed serpent.
Nikki rolled her eyes. Norse mythology was crazy!
But then a random comment from a few minutes before whacked into her head as she looked at the words. Already swallowed a portion of the archipelago...
He hid an entire island chain...
Nikki cocked her head in thought as an idea was slowly forming in her mind. Serpent was practically another word for dragon. And Hiccup had many dragon images on his clothes, so many that part of her wondered if he had dragon tattoos—or if her aunt would find out personally.
But... hmm...
Well, if he had done all that, someone would have noticed. North mythology was indeed crazy, an obscure chaos of legends. Would it really be surprising if Hiccup's deeds had been recorded as either or both Hulgr and Hrafnir instead of simply, boringly, saying what happened?
She was about to step out of the alcove to go find Nickolai and tell him her theory, when she heard the noises.
Shouts and the sounds of something heavy falling to the ground.
She peered around the corner to the entrance, and sucked in a breath when she saw men with guns and bodies on the floor before her sightline was obscured by terrified visitors. Immediately she threw herself underneath the display cases, and pressed herself as far back into the space as she possibly could as people began to stampede past her, deeper into the museum to get away from the threat at the doors.
Her hands trembled as she tried to pull up her contacts list on her phone, her tone shaking as much as her hands, "Idiot! I should have known trouble would follow Fuzzball!" She found the number—which she had been admonished repeatedly was for "emergencies only"—and dialed. As it rang, she scolded herself. "This is what you get being around an Asgardian. Come on, come on, pick up!"
As the phone rang, Nikki's chest tightened in fear, and she forced herself to breathe in and out through her mouth like how her aunt had taught her, in order to keep from panicking.
Finally the screen flickered to life.
"Nikki?" a familiar face greeted her on the screen.
Nikki found it difficult to communicate, her fear lodged her words in her throat and tears blurred her vision. "Mom," Nikki finally forced out.
"Nikki, what is it? I'm at work," her mother said. "No, sir, it's just my daughter. She—"
A shout came from nearby, and in the next moment Nikki was hauled out of her hiding space. She gave a squeal of pain as her arm was twisted behind her back and the phone was plucked from her hands. "What's this here?" an angry and distinctly female voice inquired. "I thought we had jammed—oh shit."
"Nikki!" came her mother's faint call of alarm from the phone, then a different voice came through the phone, male and confident and famous.
"Congratulations. 'Oh shit' was the right reaction. Why are you holding the..."
"Daughter. Her name is Nikki," her mother's voice, terrified, supplied.
"Daughter of one of my employees like that?"
The woman holding the phone, whose face was was halfway covered by a mask, gave Nikki a calculating glance, looked up at the phone, and then down at her again. And the face under the mask hardened. "We have no quarrel with you, Stark," she said in accented English. "We're here for the Asgardians' artifact." She looked up at the man holding Nikki. "We'll be in and out before you can get your armor on, much less leave the US. And assuming she doesn't do anything stupid, the girl will stay unharmed. But you might want to talk to your alien friend Thor about staying out of our way."
"Right, so, now, here's how it's going to actually go," came the voice from the phone. "You hurt that little girl and—"
"Stark, if I get a whiff of Iron Man around this museum, I'll reduce it—and all of the lies and lives inside it—to a smoking crater," the woman said curtly. "Back off and save your heroics for when there isn't an ocean in the way."
She thumbed the phone off and tossed it back to Nikki. "You're our prime hostage now. I tell you to call him, you call, got it?"
Nikki swallowed and nodded.
"Say it."
"I... I got it."
"Good. Tord, carry her. Leave her hands free for the phone, but make sure she can't run."
As her feet were zipcuffed together and she was slung over Tord's shoulder, she clutched at the phone like a lifeline, the screen only an inch from her eye.
Which is why she saw the screen light up slightly and plain text scroll across it.
NIKKI. TURN PHONE SLIGHTLY. NEED TO SEE WHAT THEY'RE CARRYING.
Her eyes went wide, but she did as instructed as they moved along.
A few moments later, they were in one of the large exhibit rooms at the back of the building, where a reconstructed Viking longship took up most of the room. More men in masks and carrying guns were already patrolling the room, and a dozen or so hostages were already zipcuffed together at the base—next to a trio of plain black backpacks. And the way those bulged made Nikki's guts want to melt in terror.
"What's this?" one of the masked men asked.
"American. She's apparently one of Stark's people's kids. I threatened him, but we have to assume that the Avengers might show up."
The masked man swore in Norwegian.
Nikki, feeling slightly hysterical, commented, "Don't you know you shouldn't swear in front of impressionable youth?"
Tord threw her to the floor and she cried out in pain. He was about to kick her when the woman interrupted. "Don't bother with her!"
"Fine." Tord put her with the others, and the terrorists came together in the middle of the room. Nikki did her best to hold up the phone to give it a look around the room without being obvious about it. More of the terrorists came in, carrying hostages, and the leader asked, "Have we found the artifact yet?"
"No. Apparently some old German and an... American... woman... brought..." the man said in a voice of dawning understanding. He turned to Nikki, pointed his gun at her, and shouted, "What did you find!? Where is it!?"
Nikki stared at the barrel, the opening seeming as wide as a manhole cover. She'd been stupid before. She'd stolen a car to prove that she wasn't just some stupid AV-club kid. And now she—
A heavily accented voice called out in thick English, "STOP!"
She looked up to see Hiccup standing there, a sword and shield in hand.
###
"I wouldn't feel safe with him on New Asgard," Valkyrie shot at Nickolai, crossing her arms over her chest.
Hiccup scowled; she wasn't even speaking to him any longer. And while he understood Valkyrie's urge to protect her people, to say that she was being belligerent towards him was an understatement.
"But if he's half Asgardian, shouldn't he be with his people?" Nickolai asked cautiously.
"So he can finish off what mommy dearest started? Over my dead body," Varlkyrie growled.
Nickolai flinched.
Hiccup gritted his teeth, and he spoke up to draw her attention back to him. "The skald is right." She looked at him, her gaze dripping with disdain. "I should be with my people. But my place is not with you."
"Hiccup…" Nickolai spoke up softly. "We don't know if your tribe is… well," he faltered as though struggling to find the right words. "It's been a very long time."
"And whether or not they'd want you back," Valkyrie spitefully added. "I'm surprised you managed to live so long among them. Your father must have been blind to your mother's trickery or a fool to want to keep a bastard like you—"
Before Hiccup realized it, he was right up in her space, staring her in the eyes. "Insult me all you want, but if you think you can get away with insulting my father, you—"
There were sudden shouts of panic and the sounds of a stampeding crowd, which cut him off. Valkyrie pulled her weapon and jumped back from him. "What have you done!?" she demanded, pointing the blade at Hiccup.
"It's not me!" he protested.
Emily— who had focussed on the argument— looked around in panic. "Where's Nikki?!"
A farspeaker at Martin's belt suddenly gave an odd, grating squawk, and he plucked it up to hold it to his ear. His face went ashen in a matter of moments.
"What is it?" Valkyrie asked.
"Terrorists. They're taking hostages. I need to get you all to safety!" He motioned them to a nearby door, marked with Latin lettering.
Hiccup scanned it. "'Staff only'?" he muttered. What did it... oh. Of course. Staff of office. That must be the connection.
Shaking his head to get out the random thought, he followed Martin and Nickolai through the door — and helped Valkyrie pull a protesting Emily through as she tried to go after Nikki.
He looked around the corridor behind the door as Martin took out a fine brass key and locked it after them. It was not as nicely appointed as the main areas of this museum, featuring plain white paint over some bricks and an odd and worn tile floor; the parallel that came to mind was the back-chambers of the mead hall or the smithy, as compared to the more formal areas.
Valkyrie immediately turned to Martin. "What is going on?"
"I don't know!"
She turned and looked at Hiccup. "This is almost certainly your fault!"
Hiccup blinked. "How!? As far as they knew, I didn't exist until yesterday!"
"And this place wasn't under siege until this morning!" she rebutted.
Hiccup scowled. "Fine. Then—"
Emily's farspeaker began to play music, as it had done a few times before. She blinked and convulsively grabbed at it. "That's my sister. Oh god." She held it up to her ear, her expression terrified... "Eve, I'm—" she started to say, but then her expression became baffled. "Uh, yes..."
Then awed.
"It's... for you," she said quietly, and handed it over to Valkyrie.
"What?" Valkyrie took the device and held it up to her own ear. "Who is—Stark!?" She took the farspeaker away from her ear, fumbled with it, and then another man's voice, speaking clipped English, came from it.
"Listen. I'm on my way, as is Thor. It's a Humans First! operation. From what we've been able to tell, they've got fifteen hostages in a room with a longboat, along with three backpacks full of explosives."
Valkyrie nodded as if this all made sense. "But how are you getting here in time? You're on the other side of the ocean."
"I know a guy. In fact, Friday, brief them. I've got to take this call." The strong voice cut out and another woman's voice came on.
"I'm going over the footage from Nicole Peterson's phone. There are six terrorists, armed with pistols; they have backpacks filled with explosives, which they are in the process of arming. Their objective is an 'Asgardian artifact'..."
That was as far as she got before Hiccup looked up, to see Valkyrie looking at him with anger and condemnation.
It was his fault.
Without another word, Hiccup turned and kicked open the door. It tore free of its hinges as if they were made of parchment, and he bolted out before anyone got the chance to stop him.
This was his fault, and he was going to fix it.
Reflexively, he reached for his sword in its holster, but then remembered that it was nothing but a useless copy. Cursing inwardly, he looked around for something, anything, he could use as a weapon—and almost laughed. The walls around him were filled with all kinds of weapons. He only had to choose.
Hiccup grabbed a double-handed sword, crafted in the mainlanders' style, from a display case, followed by a shield from a wall display. It was thick steel, but to his enhanced strength, both weapon and shield felt like they were carved from light pine. He vaguely recalled having seen a longboat on the way in and—
He heard footsteps from behind him, but he was running too fast for them to catch up, the spike of his prosthetic digging into the floor as he ran—and he was there.
He stood in an intersecting hallway and saw the longboat, and the prisoners beneath it—and one of the masked men was pointing what could only be a weapon at Nikki's face as tears streamed from her eyes. Her feet were bound, and she was staring up at the man who would be her killer in frozen terror.
"STOP!" he bellowed—and they all turned.
In Norwegian—he hoped—he said, "Nobody needs to die! You're here for an artifact of Asgard?" He held the shield up in front of him. "Well here I am."
AN: Has anyone guessed who Martin Lieber is by the end of the chapter?
I felt it was an honorable tribute to include Stan Lee in Resurrection as a cameo. May his memory be a blessing.