And now we're onto the second chapter of the Saga.
And may I say that I am most excited to be writing this one since it will dabbling on Norse mythology and folklore as well as the Old Norse pantheon gods and goddesses, which I must admit, I have become obsessed with. Just a little reminder, I'll be taking inspiration from the God of War franchise in regards to the Norse gods, most notably the 2018 game and the Ragnarök sequel. I've recently started playing the second game and I must say it's truly a fun game to play. Such awesome graphics, excellent world-building, vivid storytelling and compelling character arcs.
However, I'm not much of a fan of the headache-inducing puzzles because they are such a pain to solve. In every other way, I think buying that game was totally worth it and it's helped get my creative juices flowing for this story. However, the characters and worlds will only be inspired by the canon from the games, not actually be them, per say as this is NOT a crossover. I'll simply be merging both the Norse pantheon presented in the two games with the original Norse/Germanic mythology.
Oh, and don't be surprised if you catch any MCU references, too.
And I really hope you all enjoy this story. So without further ado, let's dive in and see what's next in Kris's story.
Seven months.
Still can't believe it's been seven months already.
Seven months since the SkyDome incident, the "Pandopocalypse of 2002" or the 'Hurricane Blanco' or whatever the media calls it.
Seven months and Kris has still not woken up from his coma, leaving his family and his friends INCREDIBLY worried.
It was the month of December and during the holidays. Snow fell all over Toronto like a cold, white blanket and snowfall came every now and then. Christmas lights, trees and decorations had lined the streets and the stores and businesses in each district. Snow plows had plowed paths in the buried roads for cars to traverse easily. People went from store to store for their holiday shopping, men in Santa Claus outfits representing the Salvation Army rang bells and yelled 'Ho ho ho' to draw passing bystanders in to deposit some change.
However, it was most certainly not a very merry Christmas for everyone in the city of Toronto.
For starters, Ming Lee's $100,000,000 debt has finally been paid off - it was paid off twelve weeks ago; the Lees and Mei's friends were lucky enough to have made so much cash in such little time - and she's been healed from her serious injuries. And she's gotten some dental work on her broken and missing teeth, receiving artificial replacements.
Her house arrest period has ended and now she's been attending daily therapy sessions on Thursdays at noon. But unfortunately, things between her and Mei have…not improved.
In fact, they've gotten a tad worse.
Mei has been acting cold and distant toward her mother and maintaining very little communication with her, only giving short and monosyllabic responses like 'good morning, mom', 'bye, mom' or 'I'm okay, mom'. She often avoids eye and some physical contact with her, refusing to even hug her. Ming had to respect her daughter's space and keep her distance since the girl was still grieving over her best friend and, even though she won't say it directly, is pretty much angry at her because of it. But not only that but also because Ming had received a letter from her school telling her that she was now banned from showing up on or even near the premises and if they ever caught her trespassing again, the police would be informed and they'd come to arrest her.
Jin is surprisingly the only person Mei willingly holds conversations with. After all, he was the one who gave Mei the confidence to not go through with the ritual in the first place, reminding her that sometimes we need to accept the messy parts of ourselves.
Additionally, Mei has brought a huge new change to her look which exuded her newfound maturity and self-made, rebellious persona. She has long since ditched her glasses and taken to wearing contacts instead. Her hair was given a tiny ponytail on the side of her head. She wore a red T-shirt with '4*Town' on it over a dark gray long-sleeved shirt, no longer wearing a skirt, black jeans and hiking boots. As for makeup, she wore discolored eyeshadow with one eyelid painted cerulean and the other faded purple and reddish-pink lipstick. She also got piercings on her ears and one on her left eyebrow. Even her fingernails were painted blood red. And on some occasions, she would wear Kris's dark brown jacket as a way to remember him, not even caring if it was a size too big for her.
The entirety and general aspect of her brand new appearance was a HUGE far cry from her old self. Basically a means to shed her old nerdy, perfect, goody two shoes and bring out the new her, to taint her perfect image instilled in her and even as a proverbial middle finger to her mother, purposely insulting her impossible expectations of perfection.
All of which Mei knew Ming would've hated seeing in her precious little Mei-Mei. But she didn't care anymore. She just wasn't her little baby girl any longer. She was a woman now. Her own woman, to be exact.
Mei has since lost all hope in Kris's recovery.
She never had the chance to apologize to him and probably never will.
Her social life at school hadn't been going so well, either. Her friends had been giving her the cold shoulder recently since they're still mad at her for selling them out and for what happened with Kris. Even his friends wouldn't give her the time of day, mostly Stig, since he pretty much blames her for everything.
Mei was definitely a loner now.
Ming Lee, while trying her damndest to get her life back on track, things for her were no different from Mei's. She has become estranged from her daughter, she tries to take her therapist under advisement, even if none of it helps mitigate her insecurities and her stress. Her and Jin are having a hard time communicating without making things feel awkward between them and Ming was beginning to think she's been making her husband feel underappreciated and taken for granted. And she was quite positive that everything between her and her mother has not gotten any better as well either after the SkyDome incident.
Some people outside their home had not forgiven her for the fiasco, either. Last week while she was walking through town, some guy caught her unawares and splashed her with a bucket of sewer water as payback for scaring his little sister for life who was at the concert at the time, even calling her a 'freak'.
Her extreme guilt for her horrid mistreatment of Kris, firing him for the most asinine reasons, raising a hand to him and everything that went down at the SkyDome. There was no denying that she had driven him to his violent murder-rage, provoked him. If she hadn't smashed his guitar, none of this would've happened. But she had let her foolish pride and her uncontrolled anger and her selfishness get the better of her and she had endangered the lives of everyone, Mei included, because of that.
The harsh, scathing, demoralizing words she screamed into Kris's face before breaking his guitar still echoed in her mind and the sound of his loud wail of anguish fury before unleashing his wrath upon her still rang in her ears. Since then, she's been having nightmares from time to time.
Seeing Kris there before her, crying tears before seething and glaring daggers at her, demanding to know why she hated him so much and what he ever did to her to deserve such hate. And every single time, Ming tried to yell out something. Anything. To tell him that she was sorry. That she never hated him and that her actions were dumb and unjustified.
But there was only silence on her end, which made the boy sob like a baby before disappearing, his weeps still echoing.
It really broke her heart.
Lastly, things at the Bengtsson household have gotten very bleak and colorless.
Waiting day after day for Kris to awaken and never doing so has brought a wave of hopelessness among the family. Elsa has resorted to drinking again. Every night, she'd down bottle after bottle until she saw weird colors before her face then pass out and wake up with a hangover every night. The poor woman's unhealthy coping mechanism was concerning Carl and Morten. Stig has especially been devastated seeing his mother become a grieving alcoholic to deal with her problems.
There have been nights when he had to help hold her hair back while she emptied her guts in the toilet. One night, she came tumbling down the basement stairs and plopped herself down onto Stig in his bed to sleep with him. He didn't even argue against it and just rolled with it, since the woman was not in the right headspace at the moment.
Meanwhile, Morten has been nose-deep into some old research of his after witnessing the disappearing ravens and attempting to find how it connects to Kris in a way. So far, he's found nothing yet.
It was another quiet night at the Lee family home. Everyone was gathered around the dinner table - Ming, Jin, Wu and Mei - eating some morsels Jin had prepared as per usual. The unnatural and uncomfortable silence that enveloped the table was super uncomfortable. Sure, it's been like this for quite some amount of time since the incident. Mei, however, avoided everyones' eyes, including her mother's. It was starting to put both Jin and Wu on edge. Jin has always known how close Ming was to Mei, even more close to her than she was with him, but he didn't have the stomach to bring that up to her.
Ming ate like she was in a trance or like a robot just following its usual programming. Just sit there noiselessly, eat, try and fail to maintain eye contact, repeat. Few more disturbing moments went by until there was almost nothing left at the table, Ming stared directly at her daughter with a steely glance while taking a sip of her tea.
Once Mei finally met her gaze,...she just frowned and rolled her eyes before looking away.
And that was enough to send Ming over the edge.
SLAM!
Ming's teacup was smacked onto the table with enough force to nearly leave a crack on it, splashing some of its contents in the process. Panda ears materialized on her head in response. And then…
POOF!
Her rage made her panda out, which thankfully wasn't kaiju-size like back at the SkyDome. The God of Thunder must've managed to have beaten her down to size. Mei just sat there across from her, unfazed by Ming's angered transformation. Her mother's infamous furious outbursts were nothing new to her at this point.
"Ming…"
"Stop it." The furious mother scolded her child, nostrils flaring.
"Stop what?" Mei groaned.
"Making that face at me." caterwauled her mother.
Mei sighed in annoyance, rolling her eyes once more, to which her mom caught on.
"There! See?! You just did it again!" Ming jabbed a finger at her. "Don't you roll your eyes at me! If you have something to say, then say it!"
"I have nothing to say to you." Her daughter spat.
"Mei!" Wu gasped at her granddaughter's rude attitude.
"You do not talk to me that way! I'm your mother!"
"Whatever." But Mei shook her head, shoving her empty plate away and getting up her seat to walk away in a huff.
"Whate-!?" sputtered Ming in disbelief, caught off guard by that curt response from Mei.
But she wasn't going to take that disrespect from her daughter. Not in her house.
"Mei-Mei!" Ming thundered as she charged after her while Jin and Wu just sat there at the table and watched with strained faces. Fortunately, she's had enough practice over the past months to be able to carefully move about the house in panda form. Jin, though, was brushed by his wife's tail as she raced past him during her warpath.
"Hey! Get back here! Don't you walk away from me, young lady! Look at me when I'm talking to you! "
The furious Ming grabbed at her daughter's arm with her giant paw, who angrily and effortlessly yanked it away before facing her, glaring back before panda'ing out herself.
"Leave me alone!" Mei roared.
"This attitude of yours isn't gonna bring Kris back!"
"Well, Kris wouldn't even be in this mess if it wasn't for you!" The formerly-nerdy teen girl bellowed. "All I wanted was to go to a concert and have fun with my friends, but you just couldn't know when to just back off! Because everything, EVERYTHING, always has to be about you!"
"Mei, you know how important the ritual was!" Her mother argued back. "It was for your own good! I told you would've panda'd all over the place if you had gone!"
"None of that ever happened until you showed up with your Panda-zilla tearing the arena up, scaring the living crap out of everyone and traumatizing the life out of poor Kris!"
"You think I don't regret everything I've done that night?!" Ming pleaded. "You think I enjoyed ripping that place apart, almost hurting all those people and having to pay a massive debt just to avoid prison!? Yes, it was reckless! Yes, I've made one too many snap decisions! But it was only because I was afraid for you, Mei! You know I can never live with myself without you there with me!"
"I'm not your perfect little girl anymore, mom! I'm a growing woman and I don't need protection! Contrary to your beliefs, I can make my own choices!"
"Oh, like what? Sneaking out to go to parties? Lying to me about mathletes? Exploiting and merchandising your red panda behind my back? Shaking your butt in my face like some… pole dancer?!" Ming challenged.
"That was me trying to live my own life, okay?! And I definitely don't regret that last part!" Mei defended, her face turning a darker shade of red in contrast to its already bright red fur. "I didn't enjoy having to keep secrets from you, but maybe I wouldn't have a reason to if you weren't such a….such a…"
Mei was about to say, but fought to try and force them out.
"What? Such a what?" Her mother dared, fists on her hips in a challenging and intimidating stature.
"A crazy psycho bitch!"
Ming gasped with bugged-out eyes and a paw to her mouth, poofing back into human.
"Meilin Lee! You watch your language!" Wu shouted from the kitchen, appalled by the girl's intolerant mouth. "You should know better than that!"
The girl was too angry to really care, however. Afterwards, she transformed back and stormed off into her room, slamming the door shut, but Ming wasn't finished with her.
Not by a long shot.
"What did you say to me?!" Ming snarled, bouncing into her room to face her once more, having poofed back into human herself. "I know you're angry, but this is NOT how to speak to your own mother! Do you not understand the sacrifices that I've made for you? Was that all for nothing?"
Then Mei's face softened to a sarcastic expression.
"Well, I'm very, very sorry you feel that way, mother." She jabbed, sassily. "In fact, I'm sorry that you can't learn to face facts. And I'm sorry that I'm not perfect! And I'm sorry that I'm not good enough for you! And I'm sorry that I'LL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!"
That did it.
SLAP!
Mei's body fell against her desk from the blunt force against her face, feeling the burning sting on her face as she raised a hand to it and looked back at her mother in shock and disbelief. Her mind tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Her own mother stuck her.
At this, Ming gasped with horror at what she had done, starting to get flashbacks of slapping Kris in the face back at Tyler's party. How gobsmacked and vulnerable he looked.
"Mei-Mei, I…."
SLAP!
But her feeble attempt fell on deaf ears and she barely had time to even think before Mei glared furiously back at her before swiping a hand right back at her mother in retaliation, forcing her to the ground. Ming's heart dropped when she did and she looked back at her gobsmacked, just in time to see her panda out and stand over her mother with a fierce, threatening stance and fire in her red eyes like a wild animal.
"GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" She roared, articulating each word out loud. "AND LEAVE! ME! ALONE!"
Getting the message and not wanting to upset her daughter any further, Ming rushed to her feet and was out of the room in seconds, shutting it behind her, then taking a moment to catch her breath, still holding her stinging cheek. After a couple of seconds of replaying their words at each other, she approached the kitchen with a heavy heart.
"I'll be in my room." She sighed and somberly walked to her and Jin's master bedroom in sorrowful defeat, letting a few tears leak from her eyes.
And then the silence returned even more uncomfortably so.
Mei sat at her desk in her room, fuming and clenching her fists, but feeling a little bit of regret for her words and actions, but what's done is done.
Even her room had received a massive makeover. No longer was it filled with school books, schedules on her calendar or even all the awards and metals she's won. Those were placed in boxes and stored in the basement. And now there were posters of 4*Town, one for each of the band members, especially Robaire. Wu kept complaining of seeing the number 4 everywhere in the room, since it was the unlucky number in Chinese culture, but Mei kept, rather rudely, telling her to stop whining and to just deal with it since it was Mei's room and Wu was just sleeping in it, fed up with everyone hating on her favorite music and her idols, not to mention her grandmother's sense of superstition. Eventually, Wu decided it was best not to push her luck and got used to it.
For Mei's sake, of course.
Mei's relationship with her mother has been fractured like this for a long time. Sure, they've butted heads a couple of times, but Ming had never once struck her before nor has Mei ever struck her. Now she was beginning to see how Kris felt that night. The girl sighed and her eyes fell upon a box sitting on her desk and looking inside made her feel sick.
It was all the broken pieces of 'Robaire Jr'.
Mei just couldn't bring herself to throw them away.
A long time ago, Kris had given her the tamagotchi as a gift and it's been a symbol of their friendship ever since. But now that it's been destroyed, all it was now was a harsh reminder of her mistake and a sign that their friendship was over.
Unable to bear it any longer, Mei sniffled and shook as she dropped her head on the desk and began to cry. She just really wished Kris was still here and could hold her in his arms and say that he forgives her.
If only. If only.
That pained, mentally-anguished look he had in his eyes would surely haunt her for the rest of her life.
Elsa was looking around for her father to tell him that dinner was ready, but she wasn't sure where he was. Probably in his study, no doubt. He's been spending a lot more time in there for the past seven months. And in that room, she found him with a bunch of books on Norse mythology and stacks of papers he's been using to write down some notes. Morten always took his research very seriously, especially during his old lecturing profession.
"Dad, hello?" Elsa knocked on the open door to get his attention. The old man was still flipping through pages. "DAD!"
He jumped and finally looked at her, sighing.
"Elsa, don't do that! You're gonna give me a heart attack." He reminded her, his nose still deep in the book and ignoring the smell of whiskey on her.
"What are you even up to, anyway?" The distraught woman demanded. "What is all this?"
"I'm just doing some research."
"Yeah, I see that. But on what exactly?"
"Well….." He started lamely before sighing and gestured for her to come closer. "Okay, listen. This is gonna be hard to believe but, months ago, I saw ravens in Kris's room."
"Ravens?"
"Yes. And they were standing on his chest, watching him. Almost like they were keeping an eye on him." explained the old professor. "I don't even know how the hell they got in. The window was shut."
"Um, okay….?" Elsa drew a massive blank on how to react.
"After I let them out, they just disappeared into thin air." concluded Morten. "I couldn't believe my own eyes."
"Uh, wow." Was all Elsa could say.
"But I've been reading into it and after some consideration, look here."
Morten grabbed the book he was reading on the details of the Æsir gods and goddesses of Norse religion and folklore, then pointed at the illustration of an old man with an eye patch, sitting on a king's throne and holding some sort of spear. And perched with him were the same two ravens he had seen.
"Call me crazy, but I believe they were Huginn and Muninn, the pet ravens belonging to the All-Father, Odin. They're his eyes and his ears all across the Nine Realms, especially Midgard."
"This isn't one of your lectures, is it?" Elsa still wasn't buying it.
"I know what this sounds like, Elsa. I do." Morten insisted. "I've been seen as crazy before, but I assure you that I'm truly onto something here. Though, I'm still trying to connect the dots."
"Alright, look. If I believed you, which I don't, what does all this have to do with Kris?" Elsa asked with a hard look.
"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to solve, but so far, I haven't found shit." Morten explained, breathing a stressed sigh, rubbing his eyes. "I've been searching around for weeks now and nothing is getting me anywhere."
"Wow."
"But I do have a theory."
"Oh, no."
"Just hear me out." Morten looked her in the eye to show her how desperate and serious he was. "Maybe there was a reason those ravens were there. Perhaps it meant the All-Father was looking out for him. With this in mind, I think it all means that there's something about Kris that we don't quite understand. Remember when I told you he was changing?"
"Y-Yes?" The woman nervously furrowed her eyebrows.
"Well, before his coma, I started noticing some signs. He's made a few sparks with his hands without getting affected by it and his strength appears to have increased. Coupling all this with the runes he's drawn all over the walls, it seems that somehow, our family is a lot more complicated than we realize."
"What are you saying? That Kris is turning into some kind of god or something?"
"I'm saying that we need answers." Morten answered stiffly. "But I can't find them here. Loopy, we're gonna need to fly back to our old home country to find them."
"Back to Norway?" Elsa blinked with surprise. "Are you kidding me? I'm not gonna fly us all the way back to Norway in the middle of Christmas. Besides, we can't just leave Kris here unattended and I don't want to have to find someone to look after him for us."
"Loopy, we have to. And we'll find a way to transfer him onto the plane." Her father persevered. "We need to find out what's happening to him and how to fix this. He's been in a coma for seven months now. No one's been in a goddamn coma for seven months. I'm getting really desperate here."
And he truly meant it. Elsa sighed deeply. This was all still crazy to her, but she would only go along with it if he was positive that whatever he was on about would help Kris.
"Fine. I still don't believe any of this, but I'll entertain you. For now, at least." She told him, still skeptical. "When do we leave?"
"The 18th, when winter break starts. First thing in the morning. All of us will have to go together." Morten explained readily. "I'll need to call Aksel when we get there to help us out."
"Who's Aksel?"
"My brother." Morten sighed, eyes falling to the floor. "We haven't spoken to each other in ages."
"So I have an uncle." hummed Elsa with thought. "Interesting. And you're sure that he can help us."
"I think so. But I've been hesitant to contact him for a long time. Not even after his wife died of a brain tumor six years back."
Elsa's mouth widened and then closed.
"Well, you better hope this so-called plan of yours works, because if it doesn't, we're heading straight back."
"I cannot promise anything." Morten admitted. "All I ask is for your support."
The following morning at the Lee home, things seemed even tenser than they were before. Ming had prepared breakfast for only her, Jin and Wu, since she knew in her gut that Mei won't want anything. She didn't even have the heart to go knock on her door to ask if she needed anything. Not after their spat from last night.
Ming miserably sat there at the table with a bowl of congee while her husband looked at her sympathetically. Mei was busy getting dressed and ready for school. Only one more day left before winter break.
"I suppose things could've gone better." Wu decided to speak up.
"Yeah, how?" Jin demanded, unconvinced.
"Could've approached it gently instead of snapping at her firsthand." The strict old woman, leering at her daughter, who looked away.
"And would you have handled it?" asked Jin bitingly. "Blame her for the ritual failing or even the Bengtsson boy?"
"Don't contradict me, Jin." She warned.
"Believe me, I know how you are and I know how you get." The bespectacled man remarked.
Wu scoffed at him and was nearing the point of barking back a retort his way when the apathetic Mei entered the kitchen in full winter garb and her bookbag.
"Morning, Mei-Mei." Ming weakly greeted her.
No response left the girl's mouth. She just snatched up a bran muffin to eat on the way and headed out the door without once looking into anyone's eye, not even Ming's, and not saying a single word.
"And have a nice-"
SLAM!
"...day."
Ming sank in her chair, utterly despondent, then rested her head on her arms on the table. Undoubtedly, she had only made things worse. Maybe she really should've approached it gently. It's always act first, think later. Just like what happened with Devon. Not only was he fired after her outburst that night when she accused him of taking advantage of her daughter and humiliated him in front of everyone, but his parents had filed a 10-mile restraining order against her. Yet another life she's ruined because of her impulsiveness.
Jin held her hand for comfort, but it wasn't enough. She's already made a mess of things. Her own daughter kinda hated her now, Kris was comatose for an indefinite amount of time and here they all were stuck with their red pandas until the next red moon.
Which they had learned was THREE YEARS from now!
There's no way they can remain in Toronto and hold onto their pandas for three years.
But Ming hasn't lost hope. Not just yet. Somewhere inside of her, she believed that maybe she still had a chance. A chance to make things right with Kris. Devon was a consequence already damaged beyond repair, but maybe she can find a way to help Kris somehow.
The boy's already suffered enough because of her actions and she wasn't going to let anything happen to that boy on her watch.
She just hoped it wasn't too late.
And that's the beginning of our second story.
Yeah, things between Ming and Mei have deescalated dramatically and Mei seems to not hold a grudge against her controlling mother for everything, especially for Kris's situation. Meanwhile, Kris's grandfather, Morten, has been busy with research after witnessing the two vanishing ravens and believes that the answers to waking Kris up are back at their home country in Norway. Elsa is reluctant to transport her comatose son all the way across the Atlantic back to Norway, but she's desperate to help her baby boy.
Stay tuned!
Next Chapter: Hoping to atone for her mistakes, Ming goes to visit an unforgiving Elsa at her house. With some convincing, Elsa begrudgingly lets her in and after taking a gander at the boy's room and then Ming makes up her mind to go with the Bengtssons to Norway to help them in any way she can.
Next Update: March 24, 2023