So apparently she was on Asgard. Terrific. At least the suit was easy enough to store, even if it was a hassle. And the damn power unit was damaged to the point it was impossible to fix... she would have to get a new one. Thank the gods (...on second thought, thank magic. Who knew who would hear her on Asgard) that she had designed her suit to run off a back-up of magic instead of just the arc reactor!

Someone clearly had sense, because she definitely heard Nyx say something about 'triangulating' and 'location found' two days after landing here.

Well, if she was stuck here then she was going to make the most of it until she could boost the signal enough to connect to earth and make a call.

Which meant getting into the palace and hopefully finding something to power the suit more than magic could... they could lock onto her signal, but they couldn't connect.

Something she planned to fix the second she got home.

When she walked by the outdoor training area, she briefly toyed with the idea of being a warrior.

That idea died when she saw how the arrogance of Thor, and how obvious Loki's resentment of being excluded (rather discreetly mind you) by Thor's friends was to anyone with eyes that bothered to look.

She would give the blond idiot credit... he did genuinely seem to care for Loki. His friends were another story.

It didn't help when she kept hearing how great Thor was, but heard little to no mention of his brother.

Mind made up, she made discreet inquiries about learning from whoever it was that did maintenance of the vehicles she kept seeing around the place.

Once they got over the incredulous disbelief someone wanted to actually learn something useful as opposed to beating the shit out of people with their weapons and generally getting close to Thor, the engineers happily accepted her as an apprentice.

Which meant she had easy access to several toys and items to boost the signal of her suit enough to reach earth, even if it did cut out a lot for some reason.

She stuck to using Morse code... at least that was easy enough for a machine to translate and could be set on a repeat if need be to insure it got through.

Stuck on Asgard. Working on repairing suit. Stick to Morse code. Signal cuts out a lot here. Jazz

'Glad you're alive. Will work on a replacement core for suit. Told press you decided to learn more about building things. Tony'

Figures he'd tell the press she was getting a higher education or something, so she could properly take over the business rather than relying on the ready made toys.

Some people had the knack for creating new things, others didn't.

And she did, which was why she wanted to learn how to do it properly.

Jazz finished up the work that she had for the day, before taking her meager pay and heading to the tavern.

Ordering up some mead, she happily sat down and people watched. Much to her annoyance Thor came in about an hour after she did, and was already being a braggart.

Well, she had finished her current drink and she could use another.

Ignoring Thor entirely, she stood next to Loki instead and said "Two meads. One for me and one for the poor fellow who has to listen to the braggart take all the credit."

Loki's eyebrows went up, especially when he realized that a rather attractive young woman had just bought him a drink.

She smiled at him.

"You look like you need one, especially if they're going to ignore your accomplishments again. I find it rather odd they always focus more on Thor and never say much about what it is you do to help, because last I checked, Asgard had two princes not just a blond with a hammer fetish."

Loki's mood lightened considerably hearing that. It had been far too long since anyone wanted to hear about what he had done to help, rather than focus on his idiot brother.

"Loki," he said, holding out his hand and accepting the drink.

"Jasmine, though all my friends call me Jazz," she said cheerfully. "So is it true you know a lot about pranks, or was that just a rumor?"

Loki smirked. It looked like his night wouldn't be a total waste after all.

A week later...

Jazz had to admit, she didn't expect that a fun night of having a long discussion about magic would lead to Loki seeking her out after work. It was a nice change of pace, especially since it meant she now had access to the palace library.

It was fun, discussing magic and theory with Loki. Well, that and pranks. The palace was hit with a rather large amount of them for over a week...particularly Thor. He had eaten a cake, only to turn into a large and surprised canary for an hour.

Thor looked at his brother with a smile on his face.

"You seem to have cheered up brother. Have you finally found someone worthy of a courting?"

Everyone knew that Loki had been visiting a young female mage who had chosen to learn how to build new machines rather than become a warrior or a palace mage.

Jasmine was a woman of great wit and wisdom beyond her years. She was also quite beautiful, not that she seemed to notice or care about such things. She didn't dress up, nor did she bother with anything more than the most plain clothes, and yet men's eyes would be drawn to her without fail.

"And what business is it of yours who I spend time with?" demanded Loki, defensively. He was not going to be happy if Thor somehow managed to draw her attention to him.

Then again Jazz would openly call Thor a braggart with no little amount of disdain, so perhaps he was worried about nothing.

"Nothing brother. I'm just saying I'm happy for you. You seemed so dark and unhappy before, and now you're smiling like you did when we were children and you were learning new spells," said Thor quickly.

Loki paused at that.

Now that Thor mentioned it, he was feeling a sense of happiness he hadn't felt in years. Someone was actually paying attention entirely on him, not Thor and listened to what HE had to say.

Thor smiled at his brother. It would seem Loki had finally found someone worth his time. Someone who could keep up with him. Thor clapped his hand onto Loki's shoulder.

"I wish you luck, brother."

As Loki went to see Jazz, he thought long and hard about his interactions with her.

From what he could tell, she was more or less oblivious to romantic advances. The few times he had leaned that way, she had given confused looks and never tried to reciprocate.

Loki almost paused.

Perhaps it wasn't that she was oblivious, but more that she had no experience in that sort of thing. It would certainly explain why she had no awareness of herself as a woman, as she often dressed up as a man and rarely wore anything that remotely resembled a skirt.

"Loki, what brings you down here?" asked Jazz rather cheerfully.

Loki didn't know he relaxed, but he did. With Jazz he knew that she was more or less honest and didn't really care about what most of Asgard thought of him.

He noticed she was working on something on the bench.

"What are you playing with now?"

Jazz looked at the computer with a sheepish expression.

"I've been trying to fix this for weeks, with almost no luck. At best I can do the most primitive of transmissions with it," she admitted. "It doesn't help that the power source is completely shot."

"Perhaps some time away from it would help to clear your head?" suggested Loki.

Jazz looked thoughtful.

"It has been a while since I did any real sparring practice."

Loki's eyebrows went up.

"You know how to fight?"

"I'm decent enough with magic, but I prefer to do without it. I've had some training."

Interest openly piqued, Loki lead her to the practice grounds where there was training going on.

Seeing the odd pair of fans she brought out, Loki gave her an odd look. Jazz smirked at him, and made a traditional "come at me" gesture.

All the fighting around them stopped as people stared at the style she used. It was fluid, graceful and quite interesting. They had seen nothing like it, and it was clear the fans were razor sharp.

Loki had to grimace slightly at the few cuts she had managed to inflict.

"Your fighting style seems quite interesting."

"Afraid to get a little dirty, princess,"asked Jazz with a grin, her tone clearly saying she was teasing him.

Loki smirked.

"Hardly," he replied, pulling out his daggers. To his surprise and delight, Jazz was able to keep up with him without the slightest trouble, and it took him several moments to realize why his footing always seemed off at the critical moment.

She was using small, almost impossible to detect bits of magic to pull his clothing or his shoes in another direction. Not enough to get the notice of any serious fighter, but more than effective when it came to altering his blows so that they did far less damage or missed entirely.

He would have to try that particular trick on Thor sometime.

The match only ended when Loki came to the startling realization that she had successfully gotten past his guard long enough to have her deadly fan at his throat in a certain kill strike.

It was the most intense fight he had in far too long, and he could tell that his skills were definitely rusty from a lack of a real opponent.

Jazz smiled at him, and it took him a few moments to realize he was grinning back.

"What style was that?" asked Loki.

"Tessenjutsu. It's a rather obscure fighting style where I come from that uses battlefans, as opposed to swords or a staff," she replied cheerfully. "Of course I still have a long way to go with straight hand to hand, as opposed to using weapons or magic."

Both of them were startled at hearing Thor laugh.

"It would seem she has you beat, brother!" laughed Thor.

Despite being slightly winded, a wicked smirk came across her face that Thor missed. Loki, however, did not.

"Care to try your luck? I'll even go easy on you and switch to one of the other weapons I know how to use," said Jazz.

Thor rather gamely took the invitation, and Loki went to the side to watch the show. He was rather curious who would actually win, and would be silently cheering for her.

Jazz easily switched out her fans for a medium-sized staff that was about as tall as she was, with a respectable amount of weight to it.

Thor took his position, and at a quiet signal charged at her with all the grace of a bilgesnipe.

Jazz smirked, and used the staff to go airborn, before landing lightly behind Thor and using her staff to trip him without effort. Then, before he could get his wits about him, she grabbed his leg and using the momentum of him falling, proceeded to toss him. He didn't go far, but it was still fairly surprising for anyone who was watching.

Thor shook his head clear and proceeded to bring out his hammer. There was a hint of respect in his eyes now as he took her seriously.

There was a resounding crack as the staff broke into two almost even pieces, but without batting an eyelash she kept the two broken pieces and used them as seperate weapons. She blocked Thor's punches with her left side and used the right to deliver some rather nasty blows to his midsection. When she performed a roll, she then displayed a very interesting bit of flexibility that had Loki thinking of more fun ways to put to use in the bedroom that had Thor flat on his ass.

He was already enjoying this show, and it was clear that Jazz was having a lot of fun herself.

Then Thor's temper came into play as he lightly threw Mjolnir at Jazz. He fully expected her to dodge or take a minor hit.

Without really thinking about it...mostly because she didn't actually think he would use Mjolnir in a freaking spar, Jazz waited for it to pass right by her before she grabbed at the handle.

Everyone expected her to go flying, as Mjolnir was decidedly picky about who was allowed to weild it.

No one expected her to use the forward momentum of the hammer to send it right back into a shocked Thor's stomach, resulting in him crashing into the ground.

Complete silence.

Jazz was too busy trying to catch her breath, before she noticed the odd looks everyone was giving her.

"What?"

Loki was the one to break it.

"You just threw Mjolnir back at Thor," he replied.

Jazz blinked, then stared at Thor in disbelief.

"You used your primary warhammer on me? During a simple sparring match?" she said absolutely disgusted with him.

"You were able to grab Mjolnir and throw it back. How?" asked Loki baffled.

Only Thor was able to weild that hammer...for anyone else it was impossible to move.

Jazz looked sheepish.

"I have no idea. I just thought he was throwing a normal warhammer, not that."

That would explain why she grabbed it then. It was understandable why she would make such an error, because Thor normally didn't use his main weapon during training or lighthearted sparring matches. The hammer had been flying past her rather fast, so she might not have recognized it.

Either way, it was clear that Jazz had won that round. Thor was too rattled at having his hammer thrown back at him to be in the mood for it anymore, and Loki was still stunned she could even use it.

Probably for the best...she was exhausted.

Jazz was not happy with Thor.

After she accidentally threw his hammer back at him, he had come to bother her during work to see if it had been a fluke or not.

It wasn't. Jazz had been able to pick up Mjolnir with ease, though she held the hammer with distaste. Warhammers were not her weapon of choice, and she was an engineer, not a blacksmith. About the only thing she did like about it was the fact it could control the weather, but she had always been more about wind rather than thunder or lightning.

It wasn't like she was going to use the hammer to recreate Frankenstein, after all.

Finally Jazz had enough and set a ward to keep Thor out using his own magical signature. Anyone else could walk through it, but not him. A fact that entertained Loki greatly, because he borrowed it to drive his brother nuts for a week.